Any suggestions on what skills I should grab? 9 ranks/level is a lot more than I'm used to.
By the way, one suggestion for future fights:
Combat banter goes a long way towards establishing character and livening up the dice rolling. Last words as well.
I'd love to do this too, but I'm still struggling to get Machaera to sound consistently loopy - sometimes a bit terse, but decidedly fey. My own voice tends to OotS' Vaarsuvius, and nobody's got time for that.
Oooh, and leveling up. I'll worry about non-random stuff later, but for now, hit points!
Io, as for skills, I don't see why you can't go with pretty much anything you like. I still remember you and our caped crusaders haring over the rooftops, so maybe things to continue to improve with various terrains? Machaera's focusing on magicky knowledges and such, but the more people who can do that the merrier, so don't worry about stepping on any toes.
I'm still working on nailing down The Merlin and fighting a strong urge to go Batman '66 on him, though that might be really fun. I'll try to step it up moving forward. Good looking out.
I think I'm good to go.
Barring one skill point (still deciding), I'm good to go as well.
Are we rolling for HP? Is average an option?
-Posted with Wayfinder
I am hung up on what feat to take on Yanis.
Average is option, or you can roll. I never accept rolls of 1 for hp, especially given the deadliness of Pathfinder with even simple monsters like giant spiders with class levels.
I took a Psicrystal as my next feat.
Yanis, this is always a good choice if you want more powers. I've played psionic characters of all stripes for years, so here are four suggestions.
Extra Power Known gives you the ability to take a power from your base list Extra Power Known
Given that all psionic characters are based on the sorcerer idea for a limited amount of powers, but more potential to use them, this can be a good choice.
Psicrystal Affinity allows you to get a psicrystal, which acts a familiar with some nice boosts and the ability to deliver touch powers, etc
Expanded knowledge also allows you to take powers 1 level lower then the highest power you can manifest from any psionic power list. This is a good way to expand your knowledge into other areas, such as offensive, defensive, and other powers you don't get on your list.
Lastly, there is also this feat, Expanded Collective, which allows you to add two more people to your collective.
Now I just have to figure out and understand how the gear works for Psionic's
I'm gonna go with average, which is 7 on my d12.
My feat is: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/cornugon-smash-combat
Average is fine, Headsman. However, you still need six ranks in intimidate for Cornugon Smash, and you can only put a maximum of 3 ranks into anything at 3rd level.
Now I just have to figure out and understand how the gear works for Psionic's
Which gear did you want to know about, Yanis?
I think reading more I kinda understand it. SO I can buy a crystal staff and put my Psicrystal in it.
Woops. Missed that part.
With great creativity (... and to try and offset the dice hate), I picked Weapon Focus: Greataxe.
Do we need to rest first to receive the HP, spell(s), and other benefits of a level up?
Well, you'll be resting anyway, so you can go ahead and level your character.
Treasure summary is up, sans detect magic and such
Question, stormcrow:
Headsman's axe is a bit of a heirloom, and I'm a bit down at the idea of replacing it, especially this early on.
Would it be possible for some fee to have whatever enchantments are on Gaedrenn's axe 'transfered' over to Heads' axe by someone apt at magical crafstmanship?
It is quite possible. There is an equivalent of the 3.5 artificer class from Eberron I used in my games called the artisan. They specialize in making and modifying magical items and constructs. An artisan can transfer those enchantments over for a reasonable price, probably around 1200 gp or so.
... eeeeeesh. Pricy.
Or there is always the enchanted heirloom
route using Weapons of Legacy, but that starts out at 2000. That transfer cost is 40% less then getting your current axe enchanted at +1.
"That transfer cost is 40% less then getting your current axe enchanted at +1."
The other axe, though, becomes nonmagical, losing 1000gp in value, and bringing the total price up to 2200 gp, no?
Mmh... I wish I'd thought of this issue earlier when I went for the 'heirloom weapon' angle.
On the topic of crafting, I guess this might be a munchkin-y question, but is the stock of an axe-musket close enough to a haft that Machaera could make it out of wyroot? If so, and I know it’s kind of irregular, but I rather like the idea of Machaera of continually tinkering with and improving her weapon, would it be too much to hope that we could handwave her gradually improving its capacity for life/arcane pool points? Buying or crafting a top-of-the-line model would be prohibitively expensive for quite a few levels, compared to gradually improving it.
Or perhaps a living steel pepperbox first, alternatively... There are just too many interesting possibilities for a crafty sort of character!
The Black Merlin might have an in with a pretty decent gunsmith in town if you're looking for firearms.
"That transfer cost is 40% less then getting your current axe enchanted at +1."
The other axe, though, becomes nonmagical, losing 1000gp in value, and bringing the total price up to 2200 gp, no?
Mmh... I wish I'd thought of this issue earlier when I went for the 'heirloom weapon' angle.
The total price is still less then getting your axe updated. Yes the existing axe loses that +1 enchantment, but since you essentially gained it for free, no one in the party has craft arms and armor, and you can only sell it for 1000, it's still cheaper then getting any masterwork greataxe enchanted for +1 (since you have at least two from the wolfmen back in the earlier parts), which would cost you 2,000 total. Plus you get to keep your fire-forged option without buying it anew. So in total, it's simply 200 gp over the trade in value for Gaedren's axe without negotiation. As for the Heirloom weapon point, there is also this I found in Unchained we could use if you don't want to go the Weapons of Legacy route. This could also work for Machaera's desire for an ever increasing weapon. http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/unchained/magic/scalingItems.html
@Machaera Yup, you can make the stock of wyroot. I would rule that you're only going to get the life point back via hitting someone with the ax-musket, rather then shooting them with it (since the entire idea is that the wood is storing the life force through impact). As for increasing the arcane pool stuck in the item, it would be easy enough to make it some form of magical enhancement to increase the arcane pool, and there is always the black blade magus archetype to draw inspiration from.
@The Black Merlin, why who would that ever be?
Sounds great. I don’t mind just upgrading things the old-fashioned way, either paying a wizard or taking a crafting feat myself and adding interesting magic here and there. I also don’t want to push the wyroot any harder than it can go as written (an eventual 3 points is plenty), but I gather that special materials are generally not something one can tinker with after the fact, so I just wanted to clear the possibility of applying handwavium to the narrative progression of going from a weapon that holds one life point to one that holds more while still being “the same” all along.
(Ship of Theseus Paradox notwithstanding. :) )
Aaah. So the 1200 GP already accounts for the loss of value on the other axe. I see, that wasn't very clear.
I really like the idea of the scaling weapons. I'd be up for that.
@Headsman I think the scaling weapons are a nice way of doing heirloom items without all of the extra rules set and questing Weapons of Legacy has. The magic transfer is simply another way to save costs without requiring the casters in the group to be craft specialists, and this particular AP is not very time sink friendly in comparison to say one like Rise of the Runelords or Jade Regent.
@Machaera It's pretty easy to manipulate special materials. I've played in a fair amount of systems other then Pathfinder, so my DM style is more fluid when it comes to answering player desires. Equipment subsystems like special materials are simply one way to achieve that goal.
Next room description is up. Enjoy.
Just to make sure, the Albatross is still at -8?
Not anymore. Now he's up to 1 hit point.
You know, I hadn't even looked at the art for the crows card and thought about Albatross, the Black Merlin, and Yanis's bird masks. That's pretty cool.
I guess everything went as foretold...
I can get spellcraft but not detect magic, kinda sucks
I have spellcraft (though Detect Magic eludes me, of course), and can even get up to a +7 modifier with it if I use a use of Martial Flexibility (the Martial Training feat line from Path of War is my friend). So, I can be a pseudo-skill monkey, I suppose. Kind of an amusing use of Martial Flexibility, but it works.
But yeah. It's all up to Machaera for detecting.
@Yanis A couple of things to note using psionics (Ultimate Psionics version)
Detect psionics will detect magical auras as well as psionic ones, as does detect magic. That's the psionic/magic transparency thing at work (ie dispel magic and anti-magic stuff affects psionics the same, as do psionic powers against magic). Therefore, you can use detect psionics to identify magic items all day, just like anybody else. More detect items for everyone!
Another thing to note. You might want to check out your knacks (0 level powers), since you have to choose one from your healing method, and none of the ones you have match it. They either have to be lesser fortify, which grants a +1 to saves, or toughen, a +1 to the natural AC bonus of everyone in the collective. If you maintain your psionic focus, you can keep maintaining the power until you expend it. So that means you if you took toughen, you could give everyone a +1 to their natural armor for a long time until you expended your psionic focus.
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/psionics-unleashed/feats#TOC-Ps ionic-Focus Psionic focus rules. Wake up, or spend a full round action, meditate, boom, psionically focused. Then if you need to expend it, then you do, and then you can refocus for a round, and then you're focused again. Frankly, I wish I had it in real life during job interviews or dates.
Also, have you updated your PC to third level yet, Yanis?
yes he is fixed now, sorry I had not updated the PDF in my drive to do so till today. Being off work with swollen ankle allows for that.
No worries, Yanis. Sorry you hurt your ankle. Also, now that we're past playing the revenge cycle, the adventure should move a little faster.
The other thing I like about this group is that you're becoming Young Justice or Batman's team, the Outsiders, in a Renaissance era city.
Well, we were always planning on becoming the Avengers anyway, so.....
So time for the DM to ask: Is everyone enjoying things at present, or do you want to see some changes, etc? Feedback is always appreciated.
I mean, I'm enjoying it. It goes a bit slow at times, and block initiative might come in handy, but no major flaws that I can think of. I love all the little meta-jokes in this game, as well.
I am enjoying it, I know that it is summer time so things move a bit slower but all in all it is fun. We are just getting into the meat of this AP now though right?
Yah, block init is pretty much on the table at this point for the PCs and some of the larger monster groups. The smaller groups are far easier to run, and most of this AP doesn't have hordes of spiders and such to roll for. We're not doing that again (I hated that back in older editions, especially when you had to control 80+ goblins or such, before they added in full support for class levels of monsters in 3.0)
But we're getting into the meat of the AP now. This first part of the AP is pretty much event driven, so it's more of a chronological sandbox. Plus once you get the kiddies home and revived, you can all go shopping for that shiny new gear, and hopefully not get eaten by otyughs in the streets or assaulted by rioters. It's kind of like Black Friday shopping in the US, but with more stinky tentacled monsters.
I'm having fun, I think we have a pretty solid group going here. I am itching for some downtime but it sounds like that's coming up. These vigilante outfits get kind of smelly after a few days.
AS for current action, I'm all for pressing on our current task. Homeboy says he's good.