Clebsch GM Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path (Inactive)

Game Master Clebsch73

Alphabetical looks pretty straightforward to me. Barring circumstance, I agree with that plan.

Thanks for chugging along smoothly when I am at a rough patch and can't post frequently, folks. :) I've been busy the last few days getting ready for my new job - I (probably) start within a week.

All good! Again congrats on the job. Post when you can!

Just to clarify confusion: Have Anevia + other NPCs acted, or are we waiting on them?

I just posted something. Sorry for the confusion.

I apologize for my slow response. I thought I would have a little more time than I though over the last 2 days.

It's the weekend. No rush.

Well damn. I'm really glad that I didn't die haha! It just felt like the right thing to do, and I had some inspiration on making it dramatic, so I went for it. I'm really glad I did ^_^

So am I. Just so you know, the DC for diplomacy with someone who has an attitude of hostile is 25, but in this case, there was an extra 5 added because of their crazed perspective. So with two aids, Avelina got 31. Had that failed, it would have taken a fight to cause them to disperse.

Avelina may have a lot of growing up to do, but this shows she is on the right track. Well done. Keep this up and you'll have to add a point to her wisdom score at 4th level or get a headband of inspired wisdom.

Thank you! I've been trying to find the right balance of demonstrating all of her immaturity and complicated self-delusions along with demonstrating that she actually is a good person at heart and just needs people/circumstances to push her that way.

I'm certainly considering a wisdom bump far more seriously now. It might not be at 4, but I am beginning to think she will end up adding to it at least once.

Hey, Anarya, since you are our other diplomancer and you haven't gotten to contribute to this encounter yet, would you like me to hold off until you have chance to have a go?

Anarya may be preoccupied with preparing for the new job, so I'd go ahead and take the lead. If no one does anything specific soon, I'll move things along. The real danger is past here.

Okay, I'll post today then. I just wanted to check. I tend to play face characters, and I have gotten wrapped up in my own RPing so much that I don't give other people a chance to get in, and I'm trying to do better about it.

Great to have you back, Anarya! I hope this means everything is going really well with the new job. :)

I have indeed been busy and the new job is going well. The main obstacle I'm wrestling with now is my sleep schedule, haha. I'll be used to being awake at normal human hours soon. :P

Karas, I think you got a crit confirmation to make.

Woops lol misread the die.

I think my absolute favorite thing is the fact that Avelina's spells are always presented with their fake divine names crossed over with the real spell name beside it.

It never fails to conjure a smile for me.

EDIT: For Karas/All others:

Web rules are weird, and strangely, the web monster ability acts differently than the web spell. As I don't think the spiders used magic (possible though!), I assume it follows the monster rules:

Creatures with the web ability can use webs to support themselves and up to one additional creature of the same size. In addition, such creatures can throw a web up to eight times per day. This is similar to an attack with a net but has a maximum range of 50 feet, with a range increment of 10 feet, and is effective against targets up to one size category larger than the web spinner. An entangled creature can escape with a successful Escape Artist check or burst the web with a Strength check. Both are standard actions with a DC equal to 10 + 1/2 the creature’s HD + the creature’s Con modifier. Attempts to burst a web by those caught in it take a –4 penalty.

Web spinners can create sheets of sticky webbing up to three times their size. They usually position these sheets to snare flying creatures but can also try to trap prey on the ground. Approaching creatures must succeed on a DC 20 Perception check to notice a web; otherwise they stumble into it and become trapped as though by a successful web attack. Attempts to escape or burst the webbing gain a +5 bonus if the trapped creature has something to walk on or grab while pulling free. Each 5-foot-square section of web has a number of hit points equal to the Hit Dice of the creature that created it and DR 5/—.

A creature can move across its own web at its climb speed and can pinpoint the location of any creature touching its web.

Format: web (+8 ranged, DC 16, 5 hp); Location: Special Attacks.

You are a sweetheart, Franti <3

For what it's worth, I think you capture a fool's style of humor perfectly :)

Sorry for the delayed update. I have been negotiating a new(er) car to replace my 16 year old beater. There have been some issues to take care of these past two days. Got a Titanium colored 2015 Kia Soul. So I'm ridin' with the hamsters.

I've got a very busy schedule this week, so my posts may be a little slower in coming until the weekend.

Next stop will be Anevia's house, so take care of any healing, equipment adjustments, and general role playing and I'll try to get the next encounter ready by Wednesday or Thursday night at the latest.

So I'm ridin' with the hamsters.

It took me six days to get this reference, but I got it now, no need to fear.

These commercials say it all.

I would like input from you all about a situation that comes up from time to time. We all know that if you want someone to believe a lie you've told, you roll bluff and they roll sense motive. But what if you are telling the truth and the other person has to decide if you are being truthful or not?

It is reasonable that someone with a good bluff skill could tell the truth more convincingly than others but not necessarily. And someone with a good sense motive would be more likely to tell that someone is telling the truth, but you would not want them to roll against a good bluff skill roll as the DC, since the higher the result on the bluff roll, the easier it should be to recognize that the truth is being told.

One could make it a straight DC such as 10 modified up or down based on how believable the truth is. If a paladin gives witness to a known criminal assaulting someone, that would be easy to believe is true (DC 5) where the reverse (a known criminal truthfully giving witness to a paladin doing something wrong) might be (DC 15).

One might start with 10 and subtract the witness's Charisma modifier, so a high charisma person gets a lower DC to be believed than a low charisma witness.

All these would set the DC for a Sense Motive roll.

Anyone else know of any way this has been handled in any Paizo rules or any house rule? Feedback is much appreciated.

This is prompted by me wanting to make a roll to see how Wenduag responds to Franti's jesting. Does she sense that he is not really criticizing her for her past actions and is really praising her and treating her with respect? This is complicated by the fact that she is a different race, with insectoid traits that might make it hard for her to understand certain concepts like sarcasm or to feel empathy in the same way as humans do for humans. That plus she is battling a certain amount of negative prejudices from her past dealings with humans.

I realize I don't need to make a roll, that as GM I can just decide how she reacts, which I may do anyway, but I like a certain amount of reasonable randomness in running NPCs like this, so the outcome isn't quite so predictable.

I've never thought about that before, DM, but your idea sounds fine with me.

I've actually never thought about it mechanically, Sounds like a good way to do it though.

I feel the lack of mechanics here is mostly to allow players/DMs to run their characters however they like, make false assumptions, misreading social cues, et cetera.

If I was going to use a system like that, I would use some of the Bluff rules for circumstantial bonuses (ie, if they want to believe you, lower that DC, if they don't like or trust you, raise it).

Maybe even use a hidden diplomacy roll to help set the base DC, as a character's friendliness and diplomatic abilities should play more of a role here than their ability to lie.

It's coming up on that season! Anyone going to gen con?

Alas, no. My step-daughter is getting married in October, so my wife and I won't be taking a vacation any time soon, much less me soloing it to GenCon. I've never been, but it is definitely a bucket list item for me.

I wanna go sometime but I won't be able to make it this year. Someday. I keep telling myself "I'll go next year!"

I'm not really a people person, lol. That's why I like PBP so much. I'd freak out with that many gamers running around in one spot,I think. I'd like to try a smaller con sometime, but I'd have to build up a tolerance for something as huge as GenCon!

I've gone for about the last 6 years at least? I've lost track. This is the first year I'm doing society play there :)

I attended GenCon when it made sense to call it that (when it took place in Geneva, WI, then HQ city of TSR, original publisher of D&D), back in the late 70s. I grew up in Indiana, so it's on my list to attend some year and combine it with a chance to visit old friends.

Have fun.

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been working 12 hour days this past week. Just coming up for air this morning. Should be more normal going forward. Thanks for your patience.

No precision damage

Welcome to d4 city, everyone, I am the Mayor, Mayor Franti! Sneak attack dice? Oh, no, not here folks, put those away.

I am glad we've now encountered foes best able to nullify my sneaking shenanigans. At later levels, foes like these will make me pretty much useless.

That's why it always pays to have more than one strength when it comes to fights. Something like the ability to do some useful combat maneuvers or some kind of alchemical attack.

I constantly forget about shooting into combat, I am the main offender! My apologies!

I thought they had DR, I also thought they had immunity to non-lethal (turns out this isn't the case). There will be a point in which another PC will need to tell me that my weapon has no effect on a foe, as I'm certain Franti wouldn't know/realize it.

No worries. I just add the bonus to the AC of the target if the attacker does not subtract it. But it helps to subtract it in the attack and to mention it as part of the attack roll. That way other people won't get as confused thinking, "Hmmm, a 16 hit before. Why didn't it hit this time?"

Note that not all elementals have DR. This one has some specials.

Anarya: I was looking up the Ill Omen spell, saw that it wasn't a normal oracle spell, so I assumed it was from one of the bonus spells. Looking to see which mystery it came from, I traced it to the Dual-Cursed archetype. All of which is cool. But along the way, I noticed you also have the bonus spell Veil of Heaven, which comes from the Purifier archetype.

You can't get two bonus spells from different archetypes. Technically, you can't have two archetypes which both modify the same root class feature. But in this case, just pick one of the bonus spells that the archetypes offer. Do the same when you get to the 4th and 6th level bonus spells.

No rush. Thanks.

Hmm, tough choice. Both of those spells are pretty cool. I am going to ditch ill omen since that doesn't fit her theme as well.

I will get a gameplay post up tonight, as I am now back in town. :)

There are times when the turn based system of D20 breaks things up in an artificial way. The movement of Karas and Anarya might be one such situation. For example, Karas moves first but does not want to leave Anarya behind, so he stays by her side. On her turn, Anarya does not want to leave Karas behind and so she doesn't move either. But realistically they would both leave together.

So in situations like this, feel free to describe how you want to move and I'll work with you to make it happen.

Tarts fair. I forgot I couldn't make a new save until I was out of the cloud. Next round I'll likely delay to follow her out of the room.

As much fun as I'm having with this group, I just want to ask...anyone planning on running the Strange Aeons path? I've been wanting to run an amnesiac psychic for months now, and I'm sure one of you could do the game justice.

Id be happy to gift money for a copy of the pdf to someone who's not in possession of same that would want to run it. Just throwing it out there, lol.

Question: I have caltrops, a bag of them in fact, in my bandolier. How do they scatter? Do I select a square adjacent to me? Can I throw a short distance targeting a square, say 15ft away? What kind of action is it, can I just "drop" the bag and affect a given square?

@Ellena: If I wasn't starting a job soon and a bi-weekly skype game, I would be partial to take you up on that. I'll stay in touch if a game of mine drops.

@Ellena: I have a great interest in playing in it but I dont think I can manage running it.

@Ellena: I don't think I can commit to being DM of two APs but if someone else wants to run it, I'd create a character.

@Franti: I could not find anything online to suggest any special rules for placement of caltrops, so I'm going to rule that the word "place" means that you turn the bag that holds the caltrops upside down and pour or scatter the caltrops within a 5' square. This square has to be adjacent to the character placing them.

I think if you were to try to throw an open bag at a square, there is a chance the bag would not spill the caltrops or that they would scatter in an irregular way and lose effectiveness. It would complicate the rules for determining their effectiveness, so unless someone wants to suggest something, I'm going to rule that they have to be placed in an adjacent square or not at all.

It would make a good magic item to allow a bag to be thrown and have the caltrops magically deploy in a specific way. There is a 3rd party spell that conjures caltrops and allows them to be placed at a distance. As written it seems a bit powerful, since it's a 0th level spell with a duration of 1 round per level. One could cast it every round and create a lot of squares covered with them.

After a bit of research, I found This Item. I'll need to invest in one or two of those.

I'm not sure if I've been consistent or correct in how I handle the duration of the spell effects like the daze aspect of the Ear-Piercing Scream. I looked up some things and discovered the following rule, which is how it should be done: "When the rules refer to a 'full round', they usually mean a span of time from a particular initiative count in one round to the same initiative count in the next round. Effects that last a certain number of rounds end just before the same initiative count that they began on."

The text of Ear-Piercing Scream says, "The target is dazed for 1 round and ..."

There is some ambiguity here. Suppose Avelina casts ear-piercing scream on initiative count 7 on a target whose initiative count was 3, and the target fails his save. Does this mean the effect lasts up until initiative count 7 of the next turn (which would be 1 full round) or just until the start of initiative count 3 when the target starts his next turn.

When the rule says "Effects that last a certain number of rounds end just before the same initiative count that they began on," the key is how you interpret the phrase "the same initiative count that they began on.

Does this mean the initiative count of the target (3 in this example) or of the caster (7 in this example).

If it is the latter, then there is no difference between saying "1 full round" and "1 round". I assume the rules spelled out the difference for a reason.

Is that how everyone sees it?

For an effect like daze, it means the effect may last longer than 1 round, since it stops all activity the same round it takes effect, such as we have in the game now, the caster losing a spell that was a full-round action to cast, but then also loses his action on his next turn.

If the daze wears off in initiative count 7 of his next turn, it means that he could make AOOs or take other immediate actions after count 7, but otherwise, loses his action. I can see the logic of that. I just want to get this right, since it's obviously a common situation.

That sounds like a correct interpretation to me, DM.