Absalom Abberations - A Pathfinder Society Tale

Game Master Brian Minhinnick

Lurking while I work on giving at least one level to Argor here before work. hahaha

Total Evolution Gains From Serum:
+2 Natural Armor
+1 Str/Dex
+3 Evolution Points

I'll do the Evolution Point stuff later, and edit my sheet for the above pending Jelani review and approval, as well as possible tweaks before I make anything official.

You don't gain evolution points after level 12, as I stated in my post instructing you to level up.

Oops. Missed that. Well then that’s that I guess. Heh

Lurking for a while.

Yall think we'll be sneaking?

I talked to Argor off thread and he confirmed he'll be able to cast Veil (which hopefully prevents us from needing to craft physical disguises).

I don't currently have ranks in Stealth, but I certainly could have it maxxed by the time we leave the pocket dimension. Could even get Shadow added to my armor.

(I'll just need to remember not to glow!) ;0)

Other thoughts for what I should aim for when leveling?

I may alter some ranks of craft into Disguise. Simply for off-screen use of Simulacrum later.

I've got Stealth left over from my time as a cat, so it's not bad. I still can bring up my own illusory disguise, too, (but my disguise skill is kind of weak).

I still haven't purchased my new items, selected skills, or chosen spells and hexes yet, so I'm up for ideas.

Maybe we should do short recon mission first. Go in stealthed and gather more information about the Onyx Alliance stronghold. If we can locate Imrizade first, we can plan an extraction mission without being blind. Also gathering information would presumably be easier and safer than assaulting some prison thing. We can get our feet wet in the shadow pond with a less suicidey mission?

Lurking if anyone wants to chat.

I am lurking again if anyone is down to chat.

Lurking a bit this evening.

Yeah, that's totally reasonable. Argor would be all for it. Though we need to acquire a tuning fork to both the Material Plane and the Shadow Plane for Plane Shift.

Meh, since those aren't expensive components I'm not worried about it. The Society can definitely provide you with those.

I'll be lurking most of the day today probably.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Aye, merry Christmas folks!

{smaller]Merry Christmas everyone![/smaller]

Merry Christmas all!

I lurketh. For a while at least.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Lurking for a while

Lurking while I play video games

I think I have Argor’s alias leveled up to 16. Feel free to review it for accuracy.

Also, I am open to suggestions for spell selection. I have three metamagic feats to utilize:

Piercing Spell: +1 level
Empower Spell: +2 levels
Quicken Spell: +4 levels

I quickly threw some spells together just to fill my prep list, but I’m open to suggestions as to maximized potential with spell prep.

Only thing that sticks out to me is that a magic missile, no matter how metamagicked, is a waste of a 6th level spell slot.

It's doing max 5d4+5 or (3.5*5)+5 = avg. 22.5

Something like a plain old burst of force would do more damage assuming they pass their fort save (26.25 on average). It would do roughly double the amount of a magic missile if they fail their save.

You want to quicken something like haste in my opinion, where it's something you nearly always want to do, but might not have time for in round 1 of a tough combat. With it quickened you can drop it on the group and still do another spell.

A piercing magic missile is much more effective. Only 2nd level slot, much better chance to blast through SR.

As for actual spell selection, the ones that seem sub par to me would be: finger of death, and disintegrate as they both allow for a Save and SR. Undead are also immune to finger of death.

Other 6th/7th level spells that I like:
Undeath Ward
Hellfire ray
Chains of light
Greater heroism
Power word blind (good candidate for piercing)

I dig hellfire ray and chains of light.

Also forgot about that and FoD. Now I gotta find a different Level 7 to pick up.

I'm going to be lurking today

Lurking while Wurking

Chatting on Roll20, Argor, Cladissa, and I have been debating just handwaving the Shadow Plane excursion in order to make sure the story stays intact. I'm worried that someone might die, or that the whole thing will end up unsatisfactorily if we roll out a mission to the Shadow Plane.

That being said, I'm still willing to do it. Argor has voted to go ahead and handwave things and do it as a narrative post. Cladissa is also happy to waive it.

What do you think, Gyr?

That makes a ton of sense. Looking forward to a cool narrative ending!

With hand-waving, Hrim could go too!

;D

Going to get some coffee then I'll be lurking on Roll20 for a while this morning.

Doin the lurk while y'all work.

Heading off tomorrow on a one-week road trip with my family. I suspect I'll get online from time to time, but might have several day gaps.

Hey, Jelani!

Well, I have to apologize. I thought us doing a little bit of non-serious, practice PVP would be a fun chance to try some off-the-wall tricks and stunts.

However, it's not turning out that way. I'm ready to hear about the Shadow Plane wrap up, and bring the campaign to a close (as much as I am sorry to see it end).

Also, I'm just about done with the Cladissa fate story, and I'm getting eager to post that.

No worries. Well, Gyr is out of town, so that's probably one reason nothing happened.

I'm fine with getting to the narrative part, but I'm not just going to pull a complete narrative from my bum. I still need you guys to give me some kind of plan on what exactly you're doing, or just give up and not do it.

I'm not gonna plan out the whole expedition and then write an investigation phase, followed by a break in and daring rescue, etc. It would be way too much, and way too much of me making decisions for your characters. I need a "This is how we're getting to the shadow plane, these are the disguises we're using, this is how we're going to find Imrizade..." plan, then I can write a narrative for that part.

Once she's located you guys will have more information, and I'll come back to you for more feedback before writing the rescue narrative part.

If the three of you who are still active here can't come up with that much of a plan, then this rescue isn't going to happen, and I will just write Imrizade out of the story permanently to get the game properly ended.

I absolutely do not want a stall out at 99% complete because of an NPC who hasn't had screen time in like a year, especially given that in character the characters themselves seem to be wishy washy about risking themselves for her.

Here was Argor’s plan:

1) Plane Shift to Shadow Plane, teleport to outskirts of Shadow Absalom
2) Using Veil to appear as the most common type of native creature, slip into the city and find a “safe” place to hole up.
3) Also using Veil, start gathering data on where Imrizade was possibly being kept by learning where the Onyx Alliance had established itself.
4) More Veil or Greater Possession as necessary to infiltrate those bases to locate Imrizade.

Alright, that's a reasonable beginning for me to work with. Does everyone else agree to go along with that? Obviously Thrassk is in.

Argor, if I paid for the costs to scribe, would you make a few scrolls so I could feed them to Cole? I could also learn greater possession, and I think chain lightning and greater teleport could be useful too.

Once on the Shadow Plane,, Cladissa would make our hideout her Hidden Home and layer webbing all around it. Then she can make it look like anything she wants (hiding the fact that there's webs everywhere).

She'll also do a couple tests to see if she can Control Weather on the Shadow Plane, but nothing too extreme as to tip off that someone's messing with the weather. Actually, she'd try that before we reached Shadow Absalom.

If the veil isn't working all that well (especially if the access points are difficult), she'll use animal shapes to turn everyone into some local fauna (bats, most likely), for infiltration that way.

Yeah, definitely could do the Scroll work.

I'm not sure there is any weather on the Shadow Plane. At least not as I imagine it.

I'm also having a hard time picturing the Shadow Plane. Is it just the same but with a blue filter over everything, or is it so black that there's really no light whatsoever?

How does Hrimnagel work? What if i were to cast shadow body on the Shadow Plane, what would happen? What about ethereal jaunt?

Anyway, I think one of the best assets will be my 120' darkvision, since most things will have 60. So hopefully I can see and help us avoid threats before they're aware of us.

Workin and lurkin

Hrimnagel is not coming, he refused in character and I have -1000% desire to level him up and DMPC him into the narrative.

It's like black and white TV version of the material plane, and always dark unless there is some light source strong enough to overcome say a darkness spell cast in dim light. Everything native to the plane would have darkvision for sure. Ethereal jaunt wouldn't work from there I don't think, since the ethereal plane doesn't overlap the shadow plane.

Shadow body would work exactly as written as far as I can tell.

Jelani, I haven't we finished leveling G yet. Sorry. Do you still want him leveled, given that we're going narrative?

If so I will happily do so, but probably not til I'm back from vacation.

EDIT: the plan sounds good to me! G can mostly contribute melee, including attacks with healing riders, and the ability to do extra to incorporaral and possessing does.

Since he doesn't cast spells, I'm not sure it matters much. It's up to you man.

Just going on record: I am starting to hate job interviews.

Awww :(

Lurking

Getting home from our road trip tonight. I expect to post how Gianluca emerges from the madness-making micro dimension tomorrow.