[AP] Curse of the Crimson Throne by GMs Rutseg, Zek and Snowheart (Inactive)

Game Master Balacertar

@Ilsa I changed my route to a little bit more Poison. based so that should work good.

Ack, Brin, you just reminded me I needed to get back to you on a question. PM sent. Let me know if you disagree. I'm always open to alternative views.

@Ilsa I changed my route to a little bit more Poison. based so that should work good.

Okay, I hope it doesn't cause you to change your concept. My entire character, as you will soon see, is built around a certain idea that makes it hard for me to swap spells.

I just didn't want to cover the same bases, if possible.

Now that y'all are converging on 3 Lancet, I'll let you determine how you interact with each other. Feel free to strictly roleplay your back and forth, or add in some dice rolls if you want to be a little "untrusting" at this point. I'm easy.

Looks like we've got Quinlan as the first to enter. However, I'm heading to bed (a toddler is exhausting), but am expecting this snow storm on the East Coast to shut down the city tomorrow, so I will follow up then.

get some rest... we'll be here tomorrow and if roleplay goes well, you'll have a lot of reading to do.

It's nice waking up to so many posts ! I've got a good feeling about this, but am I the only one from the UK here?

East Coast US over here. I'll be posting most often in the evenings (EST time zone) and sometimes shorter posts during the day, like now.

I'm Utah, USA (Mountain Time) so will likely be last to post. However, I will be posting from morning until evening (where appropriate) so hopefully things won't delay much for me.

California over here, posting whenever I can.

Calif. Too... usually post random times but often at computer all day/eve

Gregor, I hate to be a party pooper, but I'm showing your point buy as 26.

Am I missing something?

Since Ilsa mentioned it, Kalem and Varor, you might want to double-check yours too.

Thanks guys. Not something I was checking for and happily one easily fixed. :-)

Kalem has a randomly rolled racial that gives +2 Charisma in exchange for his spell like ability. That drops Cha down to 14, which lowers point buy to 20. Take a look at recruitment thread for the roll.

Wow that's really sweet! And yeah, I missed it from the recruitment thread.

Yup! Was pretty excited to get it. Almost wanted to make him into a sorcerer or oracle, but felt like that would be cheating. I mean, starting with Cha19, with it being 21 for spell DC purposes? Far too broken.

Gregor was originally for a different game he's all updated on hero labs but forgot to get it up here sorry! I will make sure it's sorted today.

FYI, the fortune reading is going to be a bloody long wall of text but I included some legitimately useful information and other bits that may just make for some fun RP. Anyway... I typed it up yesterday and I forgot to save it to my Dropbox. I'll aim to post it tonight after having Zellara react to any other questions.

Also, in case you missed it in the recruitment thread, instead of hero points we will be using Harrow points. Every time you get a Harrow reading (six times during course of adventure), you get at least one Harrow point. Based on the cards drawn, you may get more. Please track them just like any other expendable resource. They're not as flexible as Hero Points; the things you can use them for change with each chapter of the book. I'll put that on the Campaign Info tab so we have it in a reliable place.

I'm a little tickled by this. Years ago I actually bought a Harrow deck as a one-off prop for a Jade Regent campaign. Now I'm actually using them again. Even if we're not F2F, I get a kick out of it (and the fact that it's PbP gives me time to read everything on interpreting them and then just write it out).

Thats pretty cool Snow, I look forward to knowing my real fortune.

I plan on running Crimson Throne for my home game soon after we finish up our run of Giant slayer, It's one of the reason I wanted to play just to see the flow of it all before I get the books and start reading them.

Getting a Harrow deck could really be fun.

Bashiel I was going to PM you but it looks like you have that turned off. Question: I looked up the ghost hunter archetype and I think I got that down, but is there anything in terms of game mechanics I need to know regarding the spirits/ancestors Bashiel dialogues with inside his head?

@Gregor -- Well then, I hope I don't c*ck it up. ;-)

@Snow: For the most part, the spirits and their comments are just for flavor. I do have a feat that lets me channel spirits once per day to gain access to skills I don't have. I plan to flavor that as channeling one of the ancestor spirits.
I'm also planning on picking up a level of the Medium class at some point later on. But that won't be for a loooooong time.

PMs should now be enabled now, if you have any other questions in the future.

Also, now I kinda wish this was F2F so we could see the real Harrow deck in action :>

I've put this information on the Campaign Info tab, too, but here it is again:

Harrow Points
In “Edge of Anarchy,” the PCs are faced with numerous situations where they need to be quick on their feet or skilled with their hands. During this chapter, a character can spend his Harrow Points in the following ways.

Dexterity Rerolls: A PC can spend a Harrow Point to reroll an initiative check, Reflex save, attack roll modified by Dexterity, or Dexterity-based check. The PC must abide by the new result (although if he has additional Harrow Points, he can use them for additional rerolls).
Dodge Bonus: A PC can spend a Harrow Point to gain a +1 dodge bonus to his Armor Class for one encounter. He can spend up to 3 Harrow Points per encounter to increase his Armor Class in this manner.
Speed Increase: A PC can spend a Harrow Point to increase his base speed by 10 feet for one encounter.

Even if we couldn't see you run through it in person, your writeup definitely did the Harrowing justice :> Now I kinda wanna use it in my own games.

One question on harrow points, do they roll over from book to book if you don't use them? Or do we have to use these two in book 1?

I think we can have them roll over, yes.

Great harrowing, that was a joy to read

that was cool did you actually pull them and read them or did you take the info and make it to fit the game?

Thanks guys. The cards were pulled completely at random from my actual deck. Like Tarot cards, there are descriptions of what each card means in a certain position, so I worked with that and considered your various backstories and the adventure, wrote something up, then tweaked it a bit more based on conversations y'all had today.

Gave me some good ideas for how to shape the adventure coming, too. I thought about pre-selecting cards to fit a certain narrative, which is what I did in Jade Regent, but I thought what the heck, lets see what happens. :-) Really glad you liked it.

oh wow... super impressed by the Harrow reading... I imagined you just cut and paste from the module, but I give you mad props for a custom reading! You rock!

I just read through it all again and yeah, the random reading and the way you made some of the conclusions just maddeningly vague enough to get me thinking was awesome. Mad props is right :>

Awesome harrowing. Also I fix my stats only thing worth mentioning is that it puts my perception at 4

Just brilliant snow! Very impressed with that reading.

Yeah, also blown away with the reading. Let's all keep this up...SUPER immersive, all around!

Sounds like you've got the outline of a plan. Feel free to wrap up and tonight I'll post something on the approach to the fishery along with a map.

One question: what time of night are you going to begin your scouting? It's currently about an hour past sunset. Call it 8pm roughly.

Yeah I think Bashiel has said his part and we have an idea of how we want to approach things.

Not sure if you guys want to discuss timing in character (might take a while), but I was thinking a midnight scouting session with the assault immediately afterwards. If we want to go before that, at least waiting an hour would be appreciated so that Bashiel can prep a new class skill (Stealth, swim or kn:local seem appropriate).

Bwahahahahahahahahaah!!!!! @ Brin

Alrighty.

Map of the exterior of the Old Fishery is up on the Google Drive and a general description is posted (or will be shortly) in the gameplay thread. Here's how I'd like to handle the scouting:

1. Tell me who is going, who is staying back, and how far is the second group staying back.
2. For anyone who is scouting, based on the map, tell me what you'd like to do. It's okay to build in some "if x, then y" statements. For anyone who is staying back, I'll assume you're just watching for trouble and trying to stay relatively concealed unless you tell me otherwise. Another option is to stay "really" far back such that you can't see the fishery and anyone at the fishery can't see you, but maybe folks hanging back watching the scouts could relay a signal to you.
3. For the folks doing scouting, give me 5 1d20 rolls. For anyone holding back, give me 1 stealth and 2 perception checks. (I don't know that I'll need them, but having you roll them in advance will help.) Based on what you describe you want to do, I'll use those as necessary and modify them based on your stats.

As for scouting, the only ones with decent stealth are +10 for Gregor, +8 for me.

Given how I have been playing Ilsa as apprehensive and just learning her powers, I doubt she would volunteer to scout, though.

Since Gregor is the best, anyway...we'll let him decide whether he is scouting or we all stick together.

I'm home sick today so I'll update the map shortly with everyone's positions. Presently, Bashiel is going to listen at the south door and Gregor is going to open the east door. I assume he is trying to do so stealthily, but with the door open I'll want everyone in the room to give me a stealth check.

I'll wait to resolve things until everyone has had a chance to post and state their positions/actions since my last in-gameplay post.

Map is updated with some guesswork on my part as to where folks are. I don't know how it shows up for y'all, but just to be safe, it is map "01-1".

Map "01" is just the overview of the full building rather than the smaller map I'm using for tactical purposes. I'm thinking this may be redundant an extra work for me, but for now they're both there.

I understand all the Snow, Gregor isnt really thinking right now hes reacting. But he'll just need some of the more rational thinking party to keep him on goal.

I'm pretty hesitant to open either of these doors... whichever we open will probably end with the place coming down on us. Once you check this door Gregor, do you wanna bite the bullet and give it an open, just to keep us going?

Otherwise we might stand around being quiet and stealthy for another couple of days lol.

I've only got a +1 modifier to stealth. I'm going to blow the roll sooner or later. Might as well go for speed while we are able...

Against all odds, the stealth mission continues!

All the way to the end! Our luck will surely hold up.

I just wanted to ask is anyone else having trouble with the boards? None of my games are showing up as having new posts when they do.

Yeah, I'm not getting updates for anything. Having to manually check each thread.

FYI - campaign tabs aren't showing with new posts. Paizo is working on it; apparently got borked when they did an update a couple days ago. Hopefully fixed today. Discussion in the Website Feedback forum.

updates were down but now back up! hooray!

Yeah, post notifications are back!

As an OOC comment for the future: Since we have a very "diverse" party (I'm looking at you Brin and your "cook people alive" class/backstory) I'll be leaning more on the "righteous punishment" rather than "lawful process" side of Paladin. The players guide suggests as much anyway (I assume that means we'll be going against the lawful authorities soon enough).

So there's not as much need to try to keep secrets like Kalem just did, especially if there's a good reason for taking out some evil guy. Plus its bad for party cohesion and trust.

Well to be fair Kalem doesn't trust the party yet. And all he knows is that he got shut down on suggesting leaning on lambs - and much of the party wants to bring Lamm in alive. To him, a discussion about the halfling would likely lead to the little monster staying alive to harm other children in the future.

Once he trusts the party more (ie: gets to know you all) he'll be happy to find people whom he can be himself around. And by that I mean not using Bluff on party memebers...

Bashiel, that's fine with me. There will be consequences if you engage in evil activities or condone them but in general I'm not one of those DMs that tells players their paladins are worshipping their gods "wrong".

Unless someone expresses an objection to Kalem's sereptitious execution of Hookshanks, I'll assume the halfling is dead from a cut throat or blade into the heart.

Okay, as to the map, the left side is north, right side is south.

In this latest room, you've got two doors on the east wall (towards the river and boat), one door on the south wall. If Gregor isn't spatially challenged, he may recall that's where he heard some snoring while he scouted the perimeter.

Let me know how you'd like to proceed and I'll follow up tonight.