Adventure Path Reign of Winter

Game Master Almonihah

Speaking of which, there's been some references made to the Mantle of the Black Rider which we never got, and which was the principal reward on the chronicle for Book 1. Did we ever decide if we were going to get those somehow, or should we forget about that?

Yeah, that confused me as well. I mentioned the mantle in the Gameplay thread initially because of the chronicle...but then I went and re-read our encounter with the Black Rider, and it wasn't mentioned, so I adjusted...just guessing our first GM missed that somehow?

Other than that, I guess I'm ready to bid Book 2 adieu. I'm curious about the knife-wielding maniac who killed Bragda, and I wonder if Greta will ever find love, and if Solveig and her diva will live happily ever after in their Grey Gardens, but such tales can wait for another day.

We fared better than in Book 1; only one death and she was reincarnated, and one (Hace) that had to leave. Much better than the brutal attrition and very close to TPK encounters in Book 1. The additions of Maka and Tez were essential to that...

I was curious about the killing of Bragda too...I also wondered about Greta and some of the other NPCs. Just curious...was there ever any chance of her, or perhaps some of the others, helping or joining us? There for a moment, I thought Ringeirr was going to join us when he made his last visit...

Yeah, Ringeirr was an option but with the children and the already large party I elected to have him move on with those duties.

Thanks, GM, makes sense...I was just curious...

What about the mantle though? Was that just something that might've slipped by our previous GM?

I think so. I got distracted trying to figure out how chronicles worked. They seem simple enough to fill out, but I'm not sure where to find blank ones and I don't know if I use my pathfinder organized play # as a player or what.

Anyhow, mantle is next on my list as I know I meant to look into that earlier.

Bulvi, I'm happy to activate the scroll for you but I wonder if I've got a problem. I don't have the Read Magic spell in my list. If I'm reading the rules correctly, I need to have that in order to read the scroll. Since Make Whole is on my spell list, I can activate the scroll without a check. I'm just not sure that I can read it. I've never looked at the rules about this before and I've never had any GM point this out so maybe I'm misunderstanding things.

I can do a Spellcraft to get around the missing Read Magic, but the DC is 22 and I only have +4 on my Spellcraft.

Is Read Magic really necessary?

Edit to spoiler long post and respond to Sakitu.

Does another member of the party have read magic? I'd just as well have someone help Sakitu read the scroll so that it can then be activated. Not exactly by the book, but makes sense to me.

Yep, that's fine on the Black Rider Mantle. Just wanted a final thumbs up or down.

I think the purpose of the Geas is to compel a party that likely has good-aligned players to actually want to find and help Baba Yaga, who is literally the Boogeyman and incredibly evil. Not all players would automatically make the realpolitik choice to help her. I think our characters had definite qualms but eventually made the expediency choice and bought in to the mission, meaning that the Mantle is superfluous. The stat bump just acts as a nice incentive to accept that geas in the first place. I mean, I'd love an extra +2 agility, but I agree we're doing fine as we are.

I just have to sit back and let Maka and Fin fry and skewer everything.

My work has been hellish for the last few days. We’re downsizing our department by about 25%. I am currently fine for now; although the future doesn’t look terribly bright in that regard. I might be a bit less active for the rest of the week simply due to a lot going on, but I should still be able to post at least once a day.

I’ll let you all know if anything changes and I’ll make a post later this afternoon, but if I am a bit more sluggish than normal with my posting rate that would be why.

Thanks for the heads up. Best of luck and most of all stay safe.

Read magic is not required, rather it allows one skip a lot of work "decrypting," for lack of better term, the magical writings of others.

Basically, writing a spell is a bit like math, but while you might write a formula with variables X, Y, and Z, someone else might use A, B, and C. Thus normally you need to figure out what their variables mean, metaphorically speaking, but the spell Read Magic is akin to Comprehend Language in that it makes it clear instantly.

From my understanding you need to decipher the scroll before using it. The DC is 22 and read magic will do it instantly, but since there is zero penalty with the exception of if it is cursed or something strange and there is expressly no limitation on how often you can try you are able to take a 20 on it.

It takes a full-round action to attempt to decipher a scroll so as long as you have 2 minutes or 20 rounds and some change in time taking a 20 effectively emulates rolling an average of 20 times till you get it right.

So with a spellcraft of +4 and a small amount time you can auto-pass any scroll with a DC 24 or below. So a scroll of a 5th level spell or higher would require read magic or someone to help you decipher it, but anything below that would be easy enough to figure out and just cost a few minutes of your time.

I guess it could come up as an issue if in the middle of combat or a time sensitive situation and need to make a roll, but because of the ease of deciphering it's normally hand-waived in most games I have been in at least.

Hope that helps.

Given the time prior to the trip I'd just rule that Sakitu can take 20 on the skill check.

Sounds good.

@Lareg: Since we leveled and spent some time poking around in the hut as well as the 10 min casting time to activate mending. Would it be reasonable to ask to just handwaive away that we spend an extra 45min of just hanging out so I could prep the new spells I picked up at level up? Unlike a Selena and her quick study exploit or Sakitu and her spontaneous casting I need a small bit of time to prep the new open spell slots I just got.

Otherwise I am running on fumes spell wise. I still can't prep any of the slots I used today already until the next dawn comes. I figure it's probably too much to ask for another 40min to activate ritual hex though, unless you didn't think so.

At the very least I can prep a 1/4th of my spell total spell level in 15 minuets which should cover the actual time it take to cast mending.

This brings up a very fiddly and weird question as well; presuming we have traveled far outside of whitethrone....how would time-zones work? Because if it's already dawn or dangerously close to it...well..yeah.

Considering Tezuzu made a point to prep prior to travel in terms of using the cauldron I see no reason to worry about prep time for spells. Gaining a level is granular and in the scope of what the characters are actually doing I'd say during that prep time you would have had ample time to realize new spell access / etc. Or if we prefer the video game metaphor, all the new stuff is ready with the new world.

Thus far we haven't taken the time to consider a window to get a sense of what time it is in this location.

Thanks Sakitu

Ok thanks. I won't refresh my spent spells, but prep my newly acquired spells. Ritual Hex would probably take too long and be risky to pull off, but I'll add in my wondering hex as well which will be life link.

Tez will cast a harrowing, and cast another use of Barkskin since the first should be expired by now, and bit of luck before they leave the main room. Just my long duration buffs.

I'll toss up my rolls for harrowing here.

Sorry but Selena is a bit prideful and sees this as her responsibility, happy as she is for others to help, she still sees you guys as outsiders in this affair.

@Selena It makes sense for her to be prideful and arrogant. I am hoping to find an opportunity to soften Tez on her a bit, but I’m sorta just looking for an opportune moment for him to warm up. No need for apologies OOC to me at least.

Doesn't just make sense, I have it as a drawback. :)

Going to give Tezuzu a little longer to post, but will keep an eye on the thread and GMPC through the symbol reading this morning if needed.

Just saw Sakitu's roll.. Updating thread now.

I'm a big fan of everyday uses of superpowers. As might be obvious from Maka. Sure fighting big monsters and stuff is fun, but even if you are a superhero the majority of the time you would use your powers is during day to day stuff. In the same way that an Olympic athlete still mostly uses their feet to just get around. The whole secret identity thing for traditional super power stories put a bit of a lid on the concept but it's becoming more and more common. My Hero Academia being the obvious example.

If I had the ability to fly, I wouldn't fight crime. People could just shoot me. No, I would no longer have much need of a car. I could just fly around. Same thing with super speed. Telekinesis would make manual labor so much easier. But super strength would basically just be waiting to accidentally hurt or kill someone. Just like go to point at something and give someone a concussion.

I've never been that big a fan of Vancian Magic for this reason. Sure you can have powerful effects but they are a very limited resource so there isn't that much room to play round with things. At least not until very high levels or with piles of pearls of power. Conversely I absolutely love systems like Spheres of Power because of the "all day" nature of it. In a game Tez ran, my character had a couple of short range(30-60ft) teleport moves that were effectively all day. Those abilities became defining for the character, they played in to how he walked around the city, fought, went about stealth.

Similar to how fire is essential to Maka. Obviously I like kineticists for a similar reason. It's an absolute blast playing a firebender and being able to throw flames around for whatever dumb bit I've thought of. Let alone the actual utility of being able to do a minor effect repeatedly. Anyway sorry for rambling, I'm bored.

@Lareg: Did you ever decide or did we ever figure out what was up with that Ring of Regeneration? Wasn't sure if it worked or what was going on with it since you mentioned it before.

If Bulivi want to toss it to Tez to use with life-link that works for me.

Posted update via edit. Selena posted after so be sure to scroll back to previous post.

The chalice still has wine in it once the party removes it from the room. However, after just a sip it is clear that it is no longer filling back up.

:-(

Well there goes my retirement plan to open up a wine bar. I was going to name it "The Ravens Chalice". You're no fun Lareg. ;)

Blame the AP. I'm just following directions :-P

I'll make you a deal. If we finish all the books of this AP I will personally run a group where such a wine bar is established...

We we already going to get a boat, no reason not to have a wine bar on it. That's how we pay for our voyages.

beach house in Vudra. cabana boy. That's Quasit's retirement plan.

of course, she's never been to Vudra. She just likes the concept.

Just checking in. Will look in on combat. Last check yesterday we were still missing some party member actions.

@Lareg: Not seeing a save for my misfortune on the boar in R1. Save DC is in my post. I’ll post my R2 actions tomorrow depending on if it saves or not since I’ll almost certainly cackle to increase the duration if its effected.

If it fails I’d say ya might wanna roll twice on that full attack against Maka but it looks like it misses anyways.

Thanks, hope the rest of you all had a good weekend and are safe during these wild times.

The two rolls up there are for misfortune. I just auto failed it given the creature's save. Should have put in an occ comment.

Tez, do you want to heal Bulvi and Fin or would you rather I use the wand?

I got it buddy. It is his wand after all.

Speaking of which I believe this is the first time Bulvi has taken any damage since he got that ring all fixed up. I'm curious as to if it's healing up his wounds or not?

Sorry, got too busy over the weekend. Just about to jump in today when I saw we finished combat. :-)

Bulvi would wave Tezuzu off... there's at least 96 seconds worth of banter after killing a boar like that on the way with this group!

Heh. Findurel's player is on the right track, but Findurel doesn't have the way with words that Quasit does.

Heh. Findurel's player is on the right track, but Findurel doesn't have the way with words that Quasit does.

Yeah that was my bad, folks...Fin doesn't usually talk that much, but got carried away...and when he's like that he forgets about his lack of people skills...

At first I thought I skipped a day or something.

I so wish I could be playing her in person. I don't think the tone comes across in text very well.

In other news, I've been working on a d20 system of my own. Anyone interested looking at my ideas and giving me their thoughts?

I'd be interested but I likely don't have the time.

Tez's post on scouting reminded me. Did anyone ever identify the Serpentine Owl figurine? That'd be very helpful in scouting as well...

@Selena: Sorry, missed your post. Like Bulvi, I'd be interested but not sure I'd have the time to look at it properly at this time...maybe when things get back to something resembling normal. Other than Pathfinder and the old AD&D, I don't have much other experience with d20 systems though...

Nope we have a quite sizable pile of Magic items we either haven’t distributed or haven’t identified.

I was hoping for a few days of rest if possible. I can use the lore spirit to jack my Spellcraft up to +11 and spirt magic to use the identify spell to make it a +21 and we can nail down all the magic stuff we have.

I also need to preserve some corpses just to prevent them from rotting. Asking questions would be nice but I have a few higher level divination I could use too. Plus we just leveled so I can craft items and repair those monks robes.

I got a whole big pile of downtime stuff to do and any downtime spent would give us the time to RP a little bit of Fins new monk training.

Is there a loot sheet somewhere?

That works for me...it'll better prepare us for whatever lies beyond the hut and I'm all for that...

Is there a loot sheet somewhere?

I should have some free time this weekend. I can comb back through posts and write one up this weekend if someone doesn’t beat me to the punch.

I recall Quasit had something put together also.

I recall Quasit had something put together also.

Yeah, Q put in a lot of awesome work on that one...hopefully, that can be used as kind of a baseline for what we've gathered since then...

Don't worry Fin, PF1 is is only a moderate change from baseline d20, and that is primarily setting dependent details, like class progressions, and secondary stuff like paring down the skill list.

PF1 does alter the power level a bit, then again, some folks think there is no point to a game if you aren't supernaturally awesome heroes, supposedly stories about normally powered people, like Harry Potter, Star Trek, Bilbo Baggins, etc, are unworthy of some people's consideration for a RPG.

Much of what I've done is a variety of simple modular changes. While I want feedback on them in their own right, I also want feedback on just how far I should go in changing things, which modules I should include as default and which should remain as optional in the Unearthed Arcana chapter.

Of course, my design philosophy is directly contradictory in goals from the popular direction of 5e, pf2, and other recent games. I'm going more for the misnomered "old school" ideals player agency and creativity, the stuff you just can't do in a computer game (though my explorations in computer algorithms may redraw a few of those lines).

I'd take a look, but it is likely to take an unknown amount of time to hear back from me. Feel free to PM further specifics.

I'll make a thread and link it. That way all three of you can look at your leisure and any discussion can flow between everyone.

It'll be tonight or tomorrow though.