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@Storm-any thoughts on how we should proceed with vigilante identities?
I would establish your identities based on a specific region or regions of Korvosa, and why you decided to become a vigilante in that specific area. Korovsa is a town of laws, not necessarily justice, and there are a lot of poor and rich areas run by crime lords all over the city. I would also pick a social identity that allows you movement, so you don't get the 8 to 8 syndrome of working interfering with your crime fighting.
I believe Corvus working as the primary owner of the Cator Trading company would allow him the flexibility, as a merchant/deal maker, it would be expected that he would be to and fro between the docks and the business location, as well as several business meetings. Of course, I'm only speculating. But the main question is would the vigilantes interact with the party in their vigilante identity, their social identity, or both? I'm guessing it's really between the first and last.
If one of your two identities doesn't interact with the party, I can't imagine you'd be able to use it much.
Or is there a plan for the characters to do their own thing aside from the party?
As an urban adventure, I'm guessing the downtime/investigation time would be done in parallel to what the rest of the party does. For example, Bruce Wayne uses his resources to develop an antidote to Raz Al'ghul's drug, but appears in vigilante mode to deliver it to Gordon. There are costs to doing this, but it may make more sense, at least to begin with.
Could definitely work, just as long as some care is given to making sure everyone has something to do during downtime.
A question for my fellow players:
I've been pondering Headsman's 'voice' so to speak, and he's turning up pretty foul-mouthed in my mind. Does anyone have issues with swearing? I'll reel it in if it's a problem.
*Dances gracefully through the thread, scattering dots as she goes.*
Hello, everyone, especially you vigilantes, whom I don’t think we met in the recruitment thread!
As far as getting the party together, and related to how you imagine your caped crusaders, I notice both Corvus and Kilo have backgrounds in which Lamm murdered members of their family, whereas Machaera has the Framed! campaign trait - would it be fun if Machaera had been accused of one of those murders? Or too much angst?
Also and/or alternatively, Machaera does dabble in gunnery (I envision her as tinkering away until she’s crafted a handful of improbable weapons), so maybe she knows Kilo in his social identity, at least, from finding a place to buy bullets and powder in Korvosa? Or maybe she’s heard of or spotted the Albatross, but not the Black Merlin? We could make it as complicated or not as everyone’s happy with. ;)
For what it’s worth, I find the idea of the party assembling and meeting two strange bird people, one in black, one in white, delightfully uncanny. (Incidentally, have you folks seen Judex? I’ve only seen the remake, myself, but I can’t help but think of the opening scene now.)
I believe the campaign has 'uniting the party' covered, but I wonder if some of our characters might have met before. Io and Headsman were Little Lambs during the same time and know each other from that, but I'm not certain if and where Heads might have encountered other party members.
Yanis is slums doctor, he goes around helping to heal the sick and dying. He does this all by drawing the sickness into himself then curing himself
Alright, I'd like to get a feel for how you guys see your respective characters playing in combat and out of combat.
In combat, Heads is a heavy-hitter. He's built to charge in melee and deliver pretty scary blows. He can also trip foes to set up for attacks of opportunity and disable threats.
To our wonderful and magical casters: If you can provide him with buffs (defensive buffs, especially) and healing, you will make him a very happy lad.
Outside of combat, Heads is more than ready to play the 'bad cop' role with a scary +12 in intimidate.
Yanis can make sure that Heads is healed, as long as he is part of my link party any healing I do to myself or anyone else does can be distributed to each other member of the link.
Io dotting in! She'd know several local healers, and while she prefers a very literal hands-on approach, she's smart enough to form allies in her 1-woman war.
I’m afraid you’re stuck with a madwoman here, both in character (who would risk using primal magic?) and out (who’s crazy enough to try to extract as much utility as possible from a magus?).
It will take a few more levels until the mechanics reflect Machaera’s concept, but the plan is to keep things flexible and witchy.
In combat: Depending on her assessment of the threat level and where everyone is on the battlefield, she’ll normally be choosing between opening with a spell, hex, or ranged attack before closing to support one of the beefier fighters, using spell combat and such to make the lives of any other targets of opportunity miserable. As a hexcrafter, she’ll be trying to learn some interesting curses for debuffing as well as some walls and clouds for battlefield control. Basically, she won’t be the first into melee, but hopefully she’ll be able to adapt quickly to most situations.
Out of combat: The way her ability score rolls worked out, Machaera should be handy for a bunch of knowledge skills and alchemical crafting – if she can’t make it, you don’t want it (yet). :)
She’s a magus, so I’m not sure how many buffs she can learn that can be cast on others (haste, of course, and a few things like enlarge person, blur, tactical acumen), and she doesn’t do evil magic, so even with hexes (eventually), very limited healing. On the other hand, she should eventually have a decent Use Magic Device modifier, and her wizard dip puts a lot of spells on her class list, so if you can find wands with the spells you want, she’d be glad to wave them around for you.
The Albatross will play like a typical rogue, trying to strike first to maximize hidden strike. Out of combat he can stealth and eventually use vanishing trick to reset in combat. His damage will come in bursts.
Corvus offers up some social skills with bluff/intimidate.
If no one has disable device, Corvus can spend his favored class bonus to add it, although it'll be limited to non-magical.
I could go into a super long discussion on how Io foghts, how it's super awesome, and so on. Or, I could just say she fights like Captain America, minus the self-imposed restrictions brought on by things like honor and morals. So I think I'll go with the second method.
I figure I can aid best by giving you guys something to fight or compete against. Like swarms of flies.
So the plan is to start tomorrow, if I remember correctly?
Heh, just realized I forgot to dot this thread, whoopsy.
In Combat: The Black Merlin will be ideally striking from the high ground, providing ranged cover from above. Down the road he'll be flying around raining hot lead on our enemies. Kilo will fight like a more terrestrial gunner.
Out of Combat: Kilo will be the star here, he has a few useful social skills depending on the situation. He'll be dividing his free time between pursuing the mission and keeping the shop going.
Kilo and The Black Merlin will probably remain distinct identities to the bulk of the group unless things go either really well or really wrong. Most of the interaction with the group will probably be via the Merlin initially. The Merlin will gladly act as a 'middle-man' for anyone needing the services of a gunsmith within the group.
First gamepost online in Gameplay section.
While I'm thinking about it, who is on our Korvosan Avengers team? (Given how that topic popped up towards the end of recruitment)
Let's see....
Captain America/ Io
Falcon/ Kilo
Hulk(?)/ Headsman
Black Panther(?) or Black Widow(?)/ Corvus
Doctor Strange(?) or Iron Man(?) or Thor (?)/ Machaera
(?)/ Yanis
Flat-out no idea for Yanis. Also, how close to the mark did I get for the rest of you?
Corvus is more like Moon Knight...
Fair enough. I wasn't quite sure (hence the(?)), and I'm not super familiar with Moon Knight, so....
But still. We're totally the Avengers (albeit with a slightly unusual cast).
I’m terrible at comics. My father tried, but this falls largely on the “Unsuccessful” side of the list of attempted father/daughter bonding activities. I basically know about Wonder Woman, and that’s more from the cultural history aspect than the actual comics, and Batman, I guess, because he was everywhere when I was a kid, and my brother is fairly into the DC stuff.
So, Wiki to the rescue!
…Huh. Turns out there aren’t that many magic-themed superheroes. DC-wise, maybe Zatanna, with a generous splash of Poison Ivy thrown in, for the mad scientist angle, and because elves are tree-hugging hippies? But overall, I guess, and this works as a canonical Avenger, to stick to one universe - Machaera would be the Scarlet Witch? I can work with that. :)
Hulk is definitely appropriate for a heavy-hitter barbarian.
"SMASH!"
Grr. Stupid IE
Anyway again activating comic database
Io-American Dream (female alternate universe Captain America), Captain America (daughter of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage from the future)
Kilo-Blue Falcon/Robin/Batman/Huntress (DC), Nighthawk (Marvel)
Headsman-Marvel version of the God Ares. Uses an axe, and hates watching kids get manipulated.
Corvus-Moon Knight or Punisher (Marvel), Mad Dog (DC)
Machaera-Magik, Meggan (Marvel, Elf Mutant), Scarlet Witch (Marvel), Black Cat when she had her hex powers (Marvel), Zatanna (DC)
Yanis-Raven (DC Comics, Psionic and Empathic healer), Elixir, Wiccan (Marvel)
Also, for fantasy comics, Rat Queens.
I’m terrible at comics. My father tried, but this falls largely on the “Unsuccessful” side of the list of attempted father/daughter bonding activities. I basically know about Wonder Woman, and that’s more from the cultural history aspect than the actual comics, and Batman, I guess, because he was everywhere when I was a kid, and my brother is fairly into the DC stuff.
So, Wiki to the rescue!
…Huh. Turns out there aren’t that many magic-themed superheroes. DC-wise, maybe Zatanna, with a generous splash of Poison Ivy thrown in, for the mad scientist angle, and because elves are tree-hugging hippies? But overall, I guess, and this works as a canonical Avenger, to stick to one universe - Machaera would be the Scarlet Witch? I can work with that. :)
Dresden from the Dresden files; Molly before gaining the Winter Lady powers.
I was definitly going for a Nighthawk vibe in the costume department. If you combine a couple of his different iterations' iutfits you get The Black Merlin!
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Dresden from the Dresden files; Molly before gaining the Winter Lady powers.I’m terrible at comics. My father tried, but this falls largely on the “Unsuccessful” side of the list of attempted father/daughter bonding activities. I basically know about Wonder Woman, and that’s more from the cultural history aspect than the actual comics, and Batman, I guess, because he was everywhere when I was a kid, and my brother is fairly into the DC stuff.
So, Wiki to the rescue!
…Huh. Turns out there aren’t that many magic-themed superheroes. DC-wise, maybe Zatanna, with a generous splash of Poison Ivy thrown in, for the mad scientist angle, and because elves are tree-hugging hippies? But overall, I guess, and this works as a canonical Avenger, to stick to one universe - Machaera would be the Scarlet Witch? I can work with that. :)
Dinosaur wraith necromancy for the win!
Corvus, if you don't mind, please do the ooc talk in the discussion thread.
@Corvus Makes sense to me. Could be a trap.
I am the night.
Oooh, does this mean we get to hear you vigilante guys do your best Christian Bale (TM) "I'm certainly not Bruce Wayne in a mask trying to disguise his voice" thing? :)
I'm not sure if Paizo added text to speech yet...
I'm assuming Corvus and Kilo are close enough to hear the conversation?
Anything of note around back?
Corvus and Kilo- are you going to make an additional alias for your vigilante identity? It might help with visualization and remembering which persona you're in, once we start interacting with your social identities.
fantastic idea, on it after work.
I thought about that but shied away from it due to data integrity. I'm not a fan of copying over relevant data to another char, when in essence they should be the same. Duplicate data points = opportunities for error. Sorry, just my life as a SW engineer kicking in...
As a fellow software engineer, I offer a solution:
Have one profile link to the other. You really only need a display facade, there's no need to copy any info over.
public class Albatross extends CorvusCastor
I also considered that approach. Not that bad, but still begs to extend the "quick" data. If only PC Gen supported the vigilante class, then the source would be preserved with a quick copy/paste into both profiles. Sadly I'm hand editing at the moment.
I suppose I should go through and separate out the two's stats. I just went ahead and copied it whole-cloth.
The benefit of separating the two really comes down to how Storm plans to handle the alter egos. If there's a lot of social encounters as the social identity, then it would make the most sense to have the separate avatar with non-combat stats for reference. At the very least, they shouldn't be walking around in armor (long term , this would include cloaks of resistance, ioun stones, etc.). How useful that is to have handy, I don't want to know... as that would mean that something terrible has gone wrong.
I broke my gear section down into vigilante and social aspects in my statblock. I did the same for skills.
Master GM can I humbly as a change to take a point out of bluff and put it into Craft Alchemy? It would be more beneficial to being a doctor.
Master GM can I humbly as a change to take a point out of bluff and put it into Craft Alchemy? It would be more beneficial to being a doctor.
Sure. Unless you're trying to get out of malpractice lawsuits...
My Insurance is all up to date. 10 million gold liability via Gringots bank ;)