Council of Thieves

Game Master Mug

@Tavi - you've picked up several light crossbows already, but I wouldn't get too attached to any one type of terrain. This is the first area after all...
@AC - Welcome back! Things moved along well enough without you.

lol, ankebiter style.

Seriously, there should be a feat where little sneaky characters can slide between the legs of other characters (hey now!) and attack to another square.

Is there such a feat? It would be like Acrobatics + feat that prevents AoO's.

I haven't heard of one, but it sure sounds fun!

Spring attack would let you move into an ally's square and attack, then move out and you could flavor it as attacking after sliding through their legs, but it wouldn't let you slide through enemy squares (unless you combined Acrobatics with it, but the DC to do so at full speed is outrageous and small-sized speed is already painful).

Oh, they'd slide faster if the barbarian threw them. Fastball Special. Or perhaps the Feat could be a Teamwork Feat called Dwarf Toss. Hey, if it's ok in LOTR movies, it's ok by me.

...let's retire our characters; I'll play a gnome wearing spiked full plate, you play an ogre-kin with a back mounted catapult.

Bad guys won't stand a chance! I forsee some new spells: Summon
Nature's Ammo, Dimension Dwarf...

So, Lucon...when a lady asks you to take her coat...? ;P

A married man? Why, that would be ENTIRELY improper. :P

I'll by staying with my girlfriend this weekend, and while I'll probably still be posting, I won't be at a computer for any length of time (and my smartphone is a very tempermental creature). Feel free to bot my combat actions if it'll speed things up, and I'll handle the roleplay.

Noted, thanks!

Amon, is it possible for you to drink a potion and then life link to Janiven? If she isn't all the way dead, that is. Then we'd have to change the title to "Failing to Save Janiven".

A title change can be arranged. That hellknight 1 has crit at least twice this battle. Must be on diceroids.

I knew Enko drank my good potion...*grumble, grumble* 2 hp... *grumble, grumble*

Mine's defective, I need another.

Is it possible to administer a potion via mage hand?

Let me look at the spell before making a ruling on that... if I rule yes then the potion would probably be susceptible to aoo as it passes close to baddies, to be snatched or broken. Similar to how the message spell can be intercepted. And it takes a move action to uncork before moving it with mage hand. In fact let's go ahead and make that my ruling. A potion can be uncorked as part of the same move action to retrieve it.

I figure it'd be interceptable, I'm just thinking in terms of the 'putting it in someone's mouth and getting them to swallow' if they're unconscious.

For an alert ally, it would be just a passing of a baton.

I'm fine with the 'pouring it down someones throat method' even via mage hand. As long as the environment allows it and it doesn't get intercepted, I'm ok with it.

Does it need to be passed to me?

@Enko - Come again?

Eventually I will take a Revelation that will allow my healing spells and channeling to provide bonus temporary hit points above and beyond normal maximum amounts, but for now it is the same old, same old. I could life link with Tavi and heal her up, but the Hellknights seem far more interested in active combatants and switching the life link would take a standard action.

Sorry, I misread the potion discussion. The bottle could be tossed to me and I could pour it down Janiven's throat if people lay down cover fire. That could be more effective than getting the bottle over there entirely via Mage Hand. However...that's beyond my strategery assessment capabilities today.

Amon, just saying that you are at 5 hp now, but if you yourself heal up, you could aid Janiven. I think.

That's my strategy right now. Heal myself, get to safety, then life-link with Janiven.

As far as leveling characters is concerned; for hp, do you want us to roll here or take a set number?

You have a choice, half the dice + 1, or you can roll and add +1. But if you decide to roll please do so in a spoiler to me. You can choose one or the other, but can't roll then decide to take half + 1. So if my hp dice is 1d8 I can either 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (6) + 1 = 7 or just take 4+1=5. This is all before your Con bonuses and favored class bonus (if you take it in HP) etc...

If anyone needs it, Jaiyana should be able to grant a +4 bonus vs. filth fever by taking 10 on Heal.

Also, GM Mug, when we level do we heal at all? I gained 9 max hp (6 from die plus one, 2 from Con, 1 from favored class). I was at 6/13. Am I now at 6/22, 15/22 (from the +9 maximum), or 22/22?

Lol, you're at 15/22.

Been awhile sorry had family in town and also first week of work and training so things got a bit crazy things should be better from here on out. I'll post tonight again tonight when I'm at my cpu.

QUESTION FOR GM MUG

The text for Life-Link states:

As a standard action, you may create a bond between yourself and another creature. Each round at the start of your turn, if the bonded creature is wounded for 5 or more hit points below its maximum hit points, it heals 5 hit points and you take 5 hit points of damage. You may have one bond active per oracle level. This bond continues until the bonded creature dies, you die, the distance between you and the other creature exceeds medium range, or you end it as an immediate action (if you have multiple bonds active, you may end as many as you want as part of the same immediate action).

The phrase, "if the bonded creature is wounded for 5 or more hit points..." in particular. Do you take "wounded" to mean a descriptive label, meaning any damage, regardless if it occurred before beginning the life-link? Or "wounded" as a verb, meaning that damage they take after beginning the life-link is transferred to me?

So Janiven, for instance. If I connected to her with a life-link after the close of the battle, could I have transferred hit points to her? I think it should mean the first definition I listed.

Diplomacy 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (3) + 8 = 11 vs GM ouch!
CLW to Ego 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 1 = 6

Aren't there a zillion CLW potions laying around, or did I drink them all? Taviiii! I can't count.

Whew. I caught the end of the combat, then things really took off overnight! I have some catch up to do.

Level 2, though! That's exciting. What to take, I wonder?

@Amon, "Each round at the start of your turn, if the bonded creature is wounded..." tells me that it's any damage, regardless of origin or age. Otherwise, the part I highlighted would suggest you, the Oracle, would have to do the damage at the start of your turn, which seems wrong to me. In short, you could have used it on Janiven after the battle was over. I did find the part that said, "This bond continues until the bonded creature dies, you die..." very interesting. It didn't say 'until you passed out from wounds then it stops...' it said until you're dead. Interesting eh?

@Corneleous, Unseen Servant can reach up to 7'. If he's on (or she's on) tippy toes.

@Lucon, don't take a level in Hellknight, it's a dying field. *badum chhh*

I've a few options for feats. My dex is far too low for an early combat reflexes, and I'm well off grabbing stunning fist (which I'd like to do in the distant future), so my options would be Improved Bullrush/Grapple, Cleave, Improved Initiative, Toughness or Deadly Aim. The style feats are fairly dissapointing. I could grab a point in Mantis Style late to improve my stunning fists, but beyond that I don't see many options.

If all else fails, there's always Tandem Trip? What do my party members think?

My post is probably going to have to wait until morning. I'm pretty flat out. Now seems like a pretty good time to divide the treasure, as well. Would we be able to purchase equipment?

You can put in a request for equipment purchases and one of the 'rebels', probably Yakpulio, willl go and get it for you in the morning. They weren't planning on opening an entire store at the restored shrine.

I'm too feat starved (or hungry for Crane Style mastering) to get combat teamwork feats, sorry, though I'd be a good candidate for co-Tripping.

Lucon is strong, right? Cleave is rather awesome. You could get yourself some sweet armor and not worry about the -2 AC. Grapple works against DRAGONS.

Improved Initiative--well, according to the lore I've absorbed around here, buffers want to go first so they can Enlarge you or whatever.

Saving Throw feats are good too. I think you're going for big and beefy, up front, so you'll get hit with stuff besides weapons.

When you get Stunning Fist, you should get Crushing Blow as well! And Death or Glory! Fighters are cool.

I'm looking forward to 3rd level, myself, when I stand in front of 4 opponents and get +4 to my AC. :) Hmm...maybe I should take Combat Reflexes earlier...

I took power attack from the 2 handed weapon ranger tree; I don't tend to use it much until 4th level and later, but might as well knock it out now...

Almost finished, and wanted to post more dialogue, but unfortunately the power went out in the storm. I will post more tomorrow.

I'm going back and forth on Cleave at the moment. It's GREAT, but it's the kind of feat I'd take on a half-mad dwarf fighter, not Lucon. I might take it and swap it out at level 8, I'm thinking. Good point on improved initiative. I'll go with that or Step-Up.

Instead of Crushing Blow I'm thinking Mantis style for +2 to my stunning fist DC. I'm a little shaky on how

Wishing I had the dex for combat reflexes. I find it's a great front-liner feat, but you never know where you're going to go with point buy. I might throw my level up bonuses there to compensate.

As for gear I'd like to grab a suit of armour and a heavy wooden shield ASAP.

I love your commitment to flavor, Twigs; it will help make Enko look less sucky as the levels increase. ;)

Don't you have to wait for 8th level for Stunning Fist due to the BAB requirements? You could take a dip in Monk and you'd get the Improved Unarmed Strike and Stunning Fist for free.

1d8 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 1 = 6
+1 BAB
+0 F
+0 R
+1 W
Mystery Spell - detect undead Which, coincidentally, holds the record for both "Least Useful" and "Most Useless" bonus Oracle spell.
+1 0th-level spell known - spark
+1 1st-level spell per day

it could have helped in the tunnels a few hours earlier... maybe?

Maybe...

At low levels, Perception and Knowledge (religion) accomplish the same thing. At mid-to-high levels, it could be helpful in detecting undead who mask their nature with illusions, but by that point the undead are powerful enough that a variety of other divine abilities and spells could both detect them and hurt them.

The only time it is really useful is if zombies and skeletons are lying inactive.

So...I think we have our standard teams for splitting up set; Scooby Doo style. Fred (Enko) always get's paired with the ladies (Tavi/Jaiyana).

Zoiks!

I'd buy a guard dog, but Scooby Snacks are too expensive (1-time use items of remove fear is 50 gp each).

How do we feel about names? I think having "Westcrown" in the name is kind of important, to connect with the common folk like lucon. "The Light of Westcrown" keeps with the theme, but seems a bit hoighty toighty, so I'm not sure. "The True Wiscrani" is just as presumptuous, but in a good way, yeah?

Edit: Hey, how about just "The Torchbearers"? It'd keep with the "light" theme, be relatively... uh... "humble", and be easy to drop in code.

"Children of the Light" isn't terribly ostentatious, and gives it a certain piety. We could have all sort of codes for communicating and identifying each other. Kind of like the "lightning/thunder" used in WWII.

"The night is darkest..." => "Before the dawn."

I must admit, I am a fan of Torchbearers.

Scanning a forum thread I've also dug up "Firstlight", which I rather like. (Though I quite like "Children of Westcrown" too.)

I'm also quite amused and impressed with how many groups went with "The Peoples Front of Westcrown" :P