Here's what we CAN do right now:
Reaghar - Scribe Tattoo (potions)Connor - Inscribe Stone (scrolls)
Craft Psionic Arms & Armor is a 5th-level feat. Connor's planning on taking Craft Universal (Wondrous) Items at 5th, along with Craft Cognizance Crystal for his prestige class requirements. (Cognizance Crystals hold power points. Not many, but a few.) At 7th Level Connor plans on getting Craft Dojre, and at 8th Level plans on getting Psychic Reformation, which will let Connor "switch out" feats and powers as needed (as in, Craft Psionic Arms & Armor for Craft Dojre, and maybe even the power that gives such abilities - Metaphysical Weapon). Depending on just how isolated we are, that 7th Level feat might be CPA&A.
So the short answer is "not yet". The best we can do is have Reaghar & Connor, or Reaghar & Sammark, craft Psionic Tattoos of Force Screen for you to temporarily increase your AC.
On Connor's checklist of "make stuff for others" is a Crystalline Focus gun for Alys. (Gives a permanent +1 to +3 enhancement bonus, variation on "Crystal Bow".) We just need to find a piece of raw jade a foot-and-a-half long and about ten inches wide first for Connor to be able to craft it.
I only now found something to spend the downtime with.
I would like to retrain to gain the additional archetype Gifted Blade.
I think it's time i stopped being the only one who doesn't manifest.
EDIT: ah nevermind, I need a trainer first, I doubt there is one among these fine therianthropes.
As I read Ultimate Psionics, Alys, I think you have two options if you want to manifest powers:
1.) take three levels of Gifted Blade, which would give you manifesting ability, opening up the gifted blade power list, which includes many good powers, from Inertial Armor to Body Adjustment. The catch is, you'd have to do the three levels. You could stop at 3 levels, and just put skills into Psicraft, to allow you to manifest from Power Stones (scrolls).
2.) put as many skill ranks into Use Psionic Device now as you can, and attempt to use Power Stones the way a Rogue would cast a scroll with Use Magic Device. Just watch out for the brainburn failure.
But I do not insist you become a manifester for the team. You're the team Soulknife (Soulbolt). Just because Connor wants to cover you in 20 tattoos doesn't mean you can't play your Soulbolt the way you want to. You saw how efficient the gunslingers were in Kol's hideout. I think powers like Force Screen, Biofeedback, Vigor, etc would help, but you don't have to change your character. Unless you want to. You can still make a gun when the rest of us run out of points.
The book says you can also wield a buckler without penalty, which would help your AC.
It's rather my own preference. I think a selection of psionic powers is much more interesting than psychic strike.
You can do the training without a trainer, but it takes twice as long.
Any way Connor as a Psion, Sammark as a Psychic Warrior, Reaghar as a Cryptic, and Selvan as a Battle Medic can act as a trainer for Alys?
Nope, sorry.
Alys will just have to spend 2x as much down time.
But she can do so one level at a time (IE: She doesn't have to do all 3 levels before they kick in).
It does require actual down time though. But she can put 3 days toward the first level change.
It's not a class retrain, only an archetype, and the first (and so far only) level that's different is level 3.
Ah, then that's even easier and faster. :)
So 10 days total? Since retraining an archetype is 5 days per class feature. And I can put 3 days of retraining into it?
Yep
So that would make Alys a Soulknife (Soulbolt (Gifted Blade 4)))? Or Soulbolt (Gifted Blade)4? Or Soulbolt1/Gifted Blade3?
It's confusing with the "no change to the class but..." archtypes.
A gifted bolt?
i usually just have it say something like Soulknife (Soulbolt/Gifted Blade) 4
For anyone who thinks I overpower the bad guys, you should avoid the games of Nightflier. :)
I just backed out of a game after the second of two encounters were way overpowered.
The latest involved the group of 6 level 1 characters going up against :
1 - Ogre
1 - Teleporting 60 ft as a 5ft move, free action vanishing, full attacking, dual wielding goblin with kukri (i think it was kukri) who double critted, with a +7 to hit, with sneak attack.
1 - Wand using spellcaster goblin with damage resistance.
Oh, and no matter what we rolled initiative wise, the goblins always went first, the ogre always last.
The only reason we survived was the teleporting goblin rolled a 2 on a will save he needed 4 or higher to succeed on (it was DC 14), and two people critted the ogre. It was ruled during the fight that may kind of construct kind of warforged golem character couldn't be critted or sneak attacked (or else I'd have taken a double crit) but also couldn't heal, so my 8HP was useless against the 14 points of damage the teleporting sneak attacking vanishing dual wielding kukri assassin used. That was without double critting. Oh, and I didn't get the extra HP from being a construct, but also couldn't be healed by spells like a warforged. :)
I bowed out of the campaign after that. Near as I can figure, it was a CR 7 encounter for 6 level 1 characters. :)
What? 6x1=6 and party level +1 is merely challenging, seems perfectly fair :p
Seriously i have't had a problem with our encounters, yes they were challenging so far, but not overpowered.
I've wondered why our encounters seemed to seesaw between "at our level" and "just run away". Crits happen, be they lucky crossbow shots that take out a fellow team member with one hit, to failing Will saves for a dragon's aura. Then there was that battle where Connor's constructs couldn't hit the broad side of a barn no matter what they did. One reason Connor's interested in getting Selvan's Inevitable Strike made as tattoos and power stones for everybody. Tattoos and power stones of Vigor should also keep us from being "one-hit wonders".
Team-wise, we appear to be specializing rather than making everybody the same (like all of us being immune to an effect, or everybody having the same weapon). That's fine, as long as everybody realizes Sammark's our tower of Will saves, Connor's the construct-generator, and that we're primarily short-range. Nobody's a tank or double-crit'er yet. It's rare for us to have a battle where Reaghar's rays turn the tide, or Alys gets that perfect shot. Nothing close enough for Selvan's Bec De Corbin yet. We're good at keeping the enemies away from us for a short time. But it does mean if a single person goes down, that entire tactic of the battle from that person is lost.
Some GMs think every encounter has to be CR +3 to be a "challenge". Most players I know don't want to jump a level with just one or two CR +5 battles. It's a game with a story, not a X-box.
So are the bad guys overpowered in our game? Uh, well, I point out a Scythe Knight, a multi-dragon attack, a one-on-one with a dragon, and a lizard-man that had a deadman-switch called "Balor in a soulgem". But sometimes the plot overrides mere calculation. We're still here! :)
I do believe a good narrative campaign sometimes may require encounters with much more powerful foes, that force the PCs to flee, as long as they are sufficiently established as such, so the party doesn't just run to their deaths because they had no idea they weren't supposed to fight that thing.
And I don't think any of us were going to seriously try to take on that knight or the dragon once they had made their entrance.
I try to keep things see-sawed, some encounters should be pretty easy, some should be hard, and some should be more story than fight.
Grimjowl is an easy fight (no, seriously, he was, CR 5, with 6 CR 1/2s) for a group of 5 that was at level 3.5 with two level 3 NPCs. Granted he could have turned into a nasty encounter if he died, but I didn't see that happening, even if everyone critted in one round.
Most of the elementals in the underground were really cakewalks, especially once you realized the constructs were immune to the negative energy. :)
The silver dragon was not an encounter. If you had fought the dragon, you would have died. Same as if you had, in real life, tried to kill an A1-Abrahms with your fists. Fortunately nobody tried to attack it.
All the dragons attacking amounts to being in a battlefield during war. Sure, there's 3000 men on the battlefield on each side. That doesn't mean the PCs are outgunned. As long as the PCs are actually fighting CR appropriate foes (even if that might mean 3 to 1 odds), the background fighting doesn't matter. I've done that before, it usually works quite well. And usually the PCs have enough warning if things are going against them to flee the battlefield if their side is going to lose the war...
Calculating after that "non-stop bat out of Hell" flight.
1.) Connor had Sustenance, everybody else probably ate while flying (Sam eating on-the-go like in a car on the road).
(Let's gloss over "hanging it over the side" as necessary, and just say a person "rotated in flight to the rear of the formation".)
2.) Nobody got to sleep, which is doable for 24 hours, but as I remember my college days (and Army time), we're going to be "punchy" in a few hours and "gotta sleep no matter what" in about 4-6 hours
So I'm hoping Gashan lets everybody collapse at an inn before noon.
Moving on - the return trip. Connor can make Power Stones (scrolls) of Astral Construct1 and Astral Construct2, but only at the "base" level. If he tries to make 7-hour Power Stones it will take 2 days for one stone. By "base", I mean the little ones will only last 2 hours and the medium-sized ones will only last 4 hours. (2x6=12x2) and (4*6=24) means four Power Stones of AC1 and one of AC2 at a minimum before we go back to Kalliert.
Then there's the fatigue of flying 24 hours straight. Only Connor can manifest Cleanse Body, but it is a touch, so that helps. (2x3x6) for six fliers (including Gashan) for 24 hours (8x3?) means three Power Stones of Cleanse Body, minimum. It's different for Sustenance, which everybody but Reaghar can cast (assuming Alys gets Gifted Blade retraining done and has the Psicraft to address a Power Stone in time). So Power Stones for us and a tattoo for him.
What I'm getting at is Connor needs 6 days off for crafting before we head back, minimum, and I'd like 12 days off to craft "battle" Power Stones for us as well as "return trip" Power Stones. We could do "crafting on the go" for the next 20 days, but that would yield only about half of what we need. Which means no Power Stones (or points for Connor) if we get into a battle.
In any case I'm back I'll go ahead and retro buy before posting. How much did we get in total exactly?
Selvan got 143.64 gp from selling the stuff after the first ambush, 51.5 gp partial pay in Vuomik, two small diamonds (125 gp x 2) from the halfing vault, 220.5 gp from selling Snowcoat's armor, and 100 gp in local pay from the escort job itself.
515.64 gp if you don't sell the diamonds, 765.64 gp if you do.
This is going to be weird coming from Selvan but while he's down here he doesn't see any reason why we shouldn't purchase magic items so long as they go away before we reach the islands.
Going to do some reading.
I have lots of reading to do.
So much reading.
And then writing.
A lot of writing.
Two reasons:
1.) Most non-perishable magic will be very expensive at our level, like a Handy Haversack for 2,000 gp, or a Campfire Bead for 750 gp. Do you really want to throw it away and have to buy it all over again?
2.) We're almost 5th Level, at which point Connor gets Craft Universal (Wondrous) Items, and has a sizable list of things he CAN craft that are 100% "safe and legal" for us to take back Home. (Gladiator's Gauze, rings and headbands of Crystal Light, Psionic versions of Bandages of Rapid Recovery, Muleback Cords (cheaper than a Heavyload Belt), Headbands of Vast Intelligence, etc. Connor can also craft them at half price.
So after making enough Power Stones to cover us on the return trip and in any single battle, Connor is saving his money for that first Belt Pouch of Storage.
2x potions of enlarge person
2x oils of magic weapon
5x alchemist's fire.
Saving the rest for when I have to upgrade the armor and weapons.
Posting this in all my games, both run and played in.
As you all know, I've been rather busy and traveling a lot lately. This is going to continue for awhile. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up the posts. It's now confirmed I'll be going on an overseas job for 6 weeks at the end of August, coming back early October. I will hopefully be able to continue posting, but wanted to give advance warning.
I'll be 11 or 12 hours off my normal schedule, as I'm going literally to the other side of the planet. :) First trip to this area, so I'm not sure what the internet will be like, or even if I can get to Paizo. So if, after I leave, I vanish for a month, please don't give up on me, it just means I coudln't connect due to country filters or something.
How'd that Kuwait trip go, mdt?
I'll let you know when it happens. It's been delayed twice now. it's looking like November now.
This is a 3-day weekend for me, so posting sporadically.
27 pp - Sustenance (3) - Cleanse Body (3x5) - Astral Construct2 (3x2, twice a day) = -3 pp left over for crafting. Argh. Everybody just take the heat of the "Orc city in the desert". It would normally require two weeks to acclimate, anyway.
Connor really doesn't have a reason to go wandering around the city, he'd rather be crafting with Accelerated Crafting in his room until he used up all his Power Stone materials. Which would take 8 days for 1,737.50 gp's worth. Reaghar also has a list of tattoos to make, which would take him 15 days to complete. So us crafters have got our calendars filled. :-P
But, in the interests of moving the plot along, Connor & Reaghar can only craft 8 hours a day, and with the psionics' required 8 hours of sleep, that doesn't leave much time for actually exploring the city. Still, Connor would be interested in obtaining intelligence for Atalantia, mostly in the form of maps of the region, and a book of Orc language (oxymoron, I know).
If we have to be split up, it would be best for Connor to pair up with Alys, and Selvan with Reaghar. Alys has the firepower Connor doesn't, and Selvan has his Network in case he and Reaghar get separated.
Sorry all, I'm absolutely slammed at work this week, makes it hard to post. I'll try to get something up as I can.
No problem, mdt.
Sorry, Granny took a bad fall, been busy with that.
Sorry, Granny took a bad fall, been busy with that.
I hope she's doing okay, Sam. I've got a parent with a terrible poison ivy rash. Just after we got the other one to a Medicare appointment today.
Reaghar crafts according to what Connor asked for, seeing as Connor was really into his role as somewhat of a Quartermaster for the group.
If Reaghar crafts one per day from the list, and uses the same "craft before you sleep, craft again after you wake up" as Connor did, then
Psionic Tattoo of Natural Healing (200 gp, 4pp, 12 hp) - for Alys
Psionic Tattoo of Natural Healing (200 gp, 4pp, 12 hp) - for Alys
with 1,650 gp in materials - 100 gp - 100 gp = 1,450 gp tattoo materials left after the 16-hour rest period. Connor and Reaghar are done crafting for the day, and can explore the city now.
And yes, I've got a spreadsheet for all of this. ;-) Ideally, Connor would craft until he ran out of materials, then buy some more after he got paid by Gashan, either in Org’trassah or back in Kalliert. The immediate goal is to have tattoos/power stones designed to let us live through the next heavy battle without running out of powers. The goal after that is to have enough tattoo/power stone materials to let Reaghar and Connor do occasional crafting when we get back to the airships. Say 200 gp's worth each.
These goals change if we get to Level 5 before we get to the 60-day window of meeting back up with the airships, because then with Craft Universal (Wondrous) Items, Connor has an entirely different list of things to craft.
alright. i have some inks myself from the loot i bought, so we will use what you bought first and then we can dip into what little i carry.
"No Hotlinking Allowed". Yeah, yeah, you want to play that game? Fine. Try Dropbox as a holding-source. Skip the free advertising.
Fighting glowing orbs with high-speed movement is annoying
Bonus:
What are Wingless doing in the McIntyre private gardens?
The proper use of Power Stones (yes, plural)
All I want is my own little private flying island
Future fate of Atalantius? Who can tell? If the dragons really did invade...
To everyone in my games, if I get snippy or upset, please say something to me. Between work, lack of sleep, and tinnitus coming on sunday, I feel like a bear who's been woken up in mid january. I'm trying hard not to get snippy with people, but I'm not perfect. I feel like I've got a dog whistle going off in my eardrum all the time.
No complaints, mdt, other than our slow round-robin here. I think that's because we're spread out so far geographically in RL.
Sorry everyone, been busy. I'm travelling again this week, and I may be going to Kuwait Friday (still waiting to hear). So been busy all weekend prepairing.
Whoo-hoo, mdt is a-goin' to the sandbox! :) Don't forget backup USB copies of everything, mdt, and lots of American dollars in small denominations. Most foreigners understand English until you request change back.
With the Ebola scare, maybe you need a tiny notebook of twice-daily body temperature readings in Celsius. Depends on where your connecting flights are.
Question for the group: is finding mundance crystal and deep crystal important enough to tell Gashon, our half-fiend, half-gnoll employer, about it? What I had originally planned to turn back in to Captain Selena 'tel Surta 'tel Reville of the Ashen Edge was merely a few reports, Kalliert and the Lands West, and Org’trassah and the Lands East.
But finding deep crystal changes all those plans. Forget about going back to Atalantia with just our military intelligence and some trade goods from the Surface. Deep crystal in quantity could make everybody onboard rich, and a ship-full or two would elevate the Captain within the Reville Clan. Securing an exclusive trade contract with several mines is the stuff new Clans are made out of. No more trips to the Elemental Plane of Earth. Psionic weapons with "oomph" to them like armies with Wands of Scorching Ray, or repeating rifles of multiple Magic Missile.
Now how to secure the location(s), and get the treaty back to Captain Selena? Do we just keep our mouths shut, and take the samples and information back to her at the 60-day window? Or try to find out more details about the Surface elf clan? Could Gashon help?
Obviously Gashon is interested in forging his exclusive Kalliert-Org’trassah contract. I find that there only being a week of "hands off" in Org’trassah also troubling, since by the time we get back to the Ashen Edge and convince the Captain to come here, the "treaty time" will be over with. But Gashon would only be interested in selling mundane crystal and deep crystal in Kalliert, not in Org’trassah.
The orcs do not know what they have. They think mundane crystal and deep crystal to be cheap jewelry, with a 25% discount. If Connor hadn't spend all his gold pieces on Power Stone materials he would at least be getting enough mundane crystal to make a nice Psicrystal Staff (+600 gp, 4 lbs.) out of it. If we get paid partially here in Org’trassah Connor will be asking everybody else for a loan to get the mundane crystal.
But be thinking about how we can capitalize on this information we just got from this otherwise worthless Orc-filled desert city.
Just a note, the deep crystal was the stuff they traded for. The mundane crystal they had locally.
Well, we just discovered information to make the Clan masters back home sit up and curse. Non-Atalantian psionics. The woman is the trading equal of Gashon, it seems, but her escorts might be our analogues. And one has a psicrystal staff. Grumble grumble grumble. This was a simple recon & intel mission. Now we're dealing in the deep stuff. Atalantia has competition.
Maybe this is what happens when Wingless are tossed over the side, Sammark. :) They form their own psionic colonies.
Eh, Selvan doesn't see it as the disadvantage connor does obviously.
What they have in magic we make up for in in air and firepower. It's exceedingly easy to blow up, say, this orc town from the sky.
All it takes is one lucky (or determined) archwizard or elder dragon finding a way to shield magic items from the wild magic storms and Atalantia's singular advantage is lost. Any "colonies" or refugees on the Surface trying to combine psionics and magic furthers that goal, whether intentional or not. Our flying islands are like a big fat prize to the first lich or dragon who can get past the ka-ka-blooey of our magic storms and acquire advanced psionic items and powers from the population.
We also have to consider that we don't have a Psion (Telepath) among us, and nobody has a mental shield, either. While we were psionics vs. magic that's somewhat acceptable. When we start having to deal with non-Atalantian psionists, our lack of psionic shields could be fatal.
We'll just have to rely on Sammark's Will save, I guess. :)
Connor. We have cannons, air ships, and the only threat to us so far has been flying super intelligent sorcerers who rip apart ground based cities for fun.
I think we're good.
Beginning to feel like I'm posting a novel rather than running a game...
(note in a bad mood today, so snarkyness inbound) :)
Still here, still checking multiple times daily.
I wish we had more interaction from everybody, but I don't know their situations.
I'll be at a business conference 10-11 Nov, so I'll only be able to post in the very early morning hours and very late at night.
Im around, but I have somewhat lost interest in Reaghar. In hindsight, I shouldn't have created a character for a pbp that wouldnt get good until lv6. Also, although I am around, I am quite busy (hence my taking so long to level up).
In the current situation, Reaghar also has little to say as he isnt a diplomat by any stretch of the definition.