DM Alexander Kilcoyne's Sargavan Saga

Game Master Alexander Kilcoyne

Qhude: FWIW, I always pictured skinning a wild animal in the field as falling under Survival. It never even occurred to me to consider whether it might be a Craft or Profession, since it seems so.. uncivilized. Of course, a barbarian might dispute that. ;)

It could depend on the purpose of the skinner. If he's merely interested in harvesting the meat, it would be a Survival check; if the main idea is to get the skin off in one whole, attractive, useable piece, it might be Craft (taxidermy). :)

P.S. The old d20 SRD actually lists Taxidermy as a Profession, not a Craft. Scroll down to "Monster Parts." Good in that you don't have to take a penalty for not having appropriate tools!

I rule skinning it is survival. Trying to do something pretty with it i.e. taxidermy is a craft skill.

Is Qhude planning to run around like a Mwangi Hercules with a lion-skin cloak? :)

Is Qhude planning to run around like a Mwangi Hercules with a lion-skin cloak? :)

Only a little :P - but it looks like I'll have company with N'Bellocq pimping it up too. Have to put a little aside for some smoked goggles, top hat and jewelled cane next time we're in town.

Just need to be attacked by ostriches next.

N'bellock will at least sport the lion head, but he already has a nice cloak.

Oh, and happy New Year, everyone!

New Year's weekend is deader than Christmas around here. :P Hope everyone gets their New Year's Eve slept off soon.

Oh, and when you get back to normal posting, Ansha, that was Tebati's way of asking you to prestidigitate her clothes and armor clean.

I could have sworn a Terbutje was around before UC as a Mwangi in my Serpents Skull game wields one- anyone know the original source? I will add it as an exception to my UC is banned rule if i'm mistaken, its very thematic for Sargava.

I could have sworn a Terbutje was around before UC as a Mwangi in my Serpents Skull game wields one- anyone know the original source? I will add it as an exception to my UC is banned rule if i'm mistaken, its very thematic for Sargava.

It's in the Adventure's Armory.

Oh, and I hope you don't mind me posting. I've been lurking since the beginning and I wanted to jump in and let you know how much I've been enjoying it!

Happy New Year everyone!

Heh - DukeRuckley beat me to it, thought the Terbutje would be in AA.

DM AK - the belligerent response in thread is partially to open up to what Unwe may have wanted to talk about prior to the attack as well.

Duke- I love hearing I have lurkers in any of my games, all discussion threads are 100% lurker friendly!

Qhude- No need to justify it, your going to get a belligerent response back from the badly wounded Unwe :).

Tebati has a cure light with Qhude's name on it, just didn't want to interrupt him immediately after the fight. And now she won't interrupt while he's talking with Unwe.... :)

Aaaand back to posting as normal!

You might be. I've just been subjected to 'Spend time with girlfriend's extended russian family 4.0', for the 4th day in a row. Very much looking forward to my day off tomorrow!

Did you get Tebati's question about the Freeman Brotherhood, AK? It was the last post on the page, and those can sometimes get skipped over. I'm pretty sure you spoilered the information back during the Trials, but she didn't make the Knowledge (local) roll and no one's mentioned it since. Can Jeggare fill her in?

Yeah I saw it just not had time for a detailed IC post yet since my last. Will respond in kind later tonight.

Cool; thanks. Don't mean to nag. :)

Ansha spends the interim hours studying her spellbook. Memorizing two Charm Person spells against her next day's spell list.

This threw me a bit and I was pretty sure RAW you can't do this as it would effectively allow prepared casters to 'supernova'. Am I wrong here?

Willing to accept I might be in the dark on this. Wizards are the class I play least though i've DM'ed for them dozens of times in the 3.X era. I know you can leave spell slots open and fill them later but i'm pretty sure you can't prepare against next days spells.

Have delayed responding to Ansha while I pondered this.

Rest: To prepare his daily spells, a wizard must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but he must refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period. If his rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time he has to rest in order to clear his mind, and he must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his spells. If the character does not need to sleep for some reason, he still must have 8 hours of restful calm before preparing any spells.

Her rest was interrupted, but if she goes back to sleep in one of the empty wagons as soon as possible after the fight (once the immediate tidying-up activity dies down), she could still prepare spells only an hour later than normal and question them in the morning.

Hour later than normal, sure. Pathfinder Elves still need their 8 hours I believe, so Ansha needs a few hours to fully rest.

@Jacob

"She worships a piece of driftwood."

Ha! That had me laughing pretty good.

Ansha Saeralyan wrote:

Ansha spends the interim hours studying her spellbook. Memorizing two Charm Person spells against her next day's spell list.

This threw me a bit and I was pretty sure RAW you can't do this as it would effectively allow prepared casters to 'supernova'. Am I wrong here?

Willing to accept I might be in the dark on this. Wizards are the class I play least though i've DM'ed for them dozens of times in the 3.X era. I know you can leave spell slots open and fill them later but i'm pretty sure you can't prepare against next days spells.

Have delayed responding to Ansha while I pondered this.

Hour later than normal, sure. Pathfinder Elves still need their 8 hours I believe, so Ansha needs a few hours to fully rest.

Though elves are immune to magical sleep effects, the

idea that they never rest is a myth. Instead, though
they do not fall unconscious the way other humanoids
do, elves may enter a deep trance that has the same
refreshing effect on the mind as human sleep. An elf
only needs to meditate in this fashion for 4 hours per
day, though some prefer longer periods.

That said, I think it must have been a house rule I took as RAW that elves didn't need 8 hours of rest to prepare spells like everyone else. Uhhh...Yeah, we'll go with retconning it to "I'll question them in the morning."

Also, I think I was looking at the line in the CRB that says "If a wizard has cast spells recently, the drain on his resources reduces his capacity to prepare new spells. When he prepares spells for the coming day, all the spells he has cast within the last 8 hours count against his daily limit" (218). I think that's actually worse for me than I thought, though.

Elves of Golarion was 3.5, not Pathfinder rules. I believe James Jacobs has said on the messageboards that they purposefully got rid of the old elf trance when they had the chance to write their own rules.

Fortunately for all casters, AK has already waived the Recent Casting Limit rules, or none of us would have spells after being ambushed in the middle of the night. Although wizards could at least go ahead and sleep 8 hours and then learn spells; divine casters would have to wait a full 24 hours. :)

Btw, Ansha, I have a bard going Calistrian in another game. Too bad AK has nixed Ultimate Magic, or you'd have a lot of fun with unnatural lust. ;)

EDIT: James Jacobs on trance

Bingo- Elves of Golarion is out of date on that front. I believe it was originally a 3.0 Faerun house rule in fact. Thanks Joana.

Ok so Ansha will question them in the morning. Update coming tomorrow morning or tonight if i'm up late enough.

Elves of Golarion was 3.5, not Pathfinder rules. I believe James Jacobs has said on the messageboards that they purposefully got rid of the old elf trance when they had the chance to write their own rules.

Fortunately for all casters, AK has already waived the Recent Casting Limit rules, or none of us would have spells after being ambushed in the middle of the night. Although wizards could at least go ahead and sleep 8 hours and then learn spells; divine casters would have to wait a full 24 hours. :)

Btw, Ansha, I have a bard going Calistrian in another game. Too bad AK has nixed Ultimate Magic, or you'd have a lot of fun with unnatural lust. ;)

EDIT: James Jacobs on trance

I always liked to ignore James Jacobs' rule about Golarion elves sleeping. It just doesn't make much sense of their immunity to magical sleep if they are actually capable of doing it naturally. Of course, the line most Forgotten Realms novelists took wasn't necessarily much clearer, since they'd often point out that elves could "sleep" (go unconscious) if grievously wounded, poisoned or drunk. One of my favorite FR characters, the moon elf adventurer Fox-at-Twilight, fell asleep more often than she'd enter Reverie, too--not sure how that one worked, since it was just what she did from having been around humans too long (I guess) and not because she was feeling unwell.

There're a lot of spells Ansha would have fun with in UM--unnatural lust is one of them, as are Waves of Ecstasy and Overwhelming Presence. Most of the really fun ones are higher level than we're likely to see in this game any time soon though!

I believe it was originally a 3.0 Faerun house rule in fact. Thanks Joana.

It's been around since at least the 2nd edition Complete Book of Elves. I'm actually fairly sure that it originated with Gygax and not FR, too, but I started playing in the late '80s and my only experience with 1st edition rules were the old Gold Box SSI computer games that ignored stuff like that.

I never cared for the "elves don't sleep" thing. It seemed like a relic from the days with racial level caps; in 3.x, it just seemed like a Legolas-fangirl "elves are way better than all the rest of the races" thing. Every other race in the setting needs 8 hours of rest, but the elves are just that much cooler, which begs the question why they even bothered to adventure with all those lesser beings in the first place. Why not just stick with an all-elf party and get a 25%-longer adventuring day instead of wasting time sitting around listening to humans, halflings, dwarves, gnomes, and half-orcs snore?

Of course, since in Golarion the gnomes are the First-World-related race rather than the elves, if anyone were to not have to sleep, it ought to be them. :)

I'd love to have all-elf parties, personally. <.<

Elves are one of the races I never "got." I think I've played 2 elves in 14 years and neither one for very long. They're too alien; I could never really understand their motivation and never felt like I could get inside an elven head enough to play one well. How could they not look on the "lesser" races as pets or playthings? They're too short-lived to get attached to. It'd be like having an ant farm or an aquarium; one dies, you replace it with another and never really notice the difference.

Elves are one of the races I never "got." I think I've played 2 elves in 15 years and neither one for very long. They're too alien; I could never really understand their motivation and never felt like I could get inside an elven head enough to play one well.

Honestly, I rarely play anything other than elves. When I do, it's humans, half-elves or dwarves. I have this aversion to gnomes that I think I picked up from playing World of Warcraft--but those things are the most annoying things ever.

How could they not look on the "lesser" races as pets or playthings? They're too short-lived to get attached to. It'd be like having an ant farm or an aquarium; one dies, you replace it with another and never really notice the difference.

You've just described Ansha pretty well. ;)

Joana wrote:

How could they not look on the "lesser" races as pets or playthings? They're too short-lived to get attached to. It'd be like having an ant farm or an aquarium; one dies, you replace it with another and never really notice the difference.

You've just described Ansha pretty well. ;)

So, see, I get them; I just don't enjoy playing them. ;)

So, see, I get them; I just don't enjoy playing them. ;)

Honestly, Ansha's supposed to be a bit atypical for an elf. But to each their own.

I've been DMing Second Darkness so I actually had to do some intensive elf-thinking-through so I could figure out how to play the NPCs (pretty much all-elf cast). I finally came up with something that made their society make sense to me so I could improvise if needed, but I'm not sure it lines up with official Golarion canon.

I will be going on vacation come tomorrow for about a week. I should be back on the 17th or 18th of January. Please DMPC my character as needed. :-)

Kieran, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Have a good vacation :)

I'm sure Tebati wants to know whether she needs to wail at the injustice of it all with what's done to the prisoners after questioning, too. ;P

Hey, she's neutral. She's fine with death. She just doesn't want them sent back into slavery for their crimes. She'll find a way to kill them herself if it looks like that's going to be their fate. :)

Or you know, we could just let them go....

AK made it clear that they continued to try to kill us long after it was obvious their side was defeated. They were all willing to die just to take one of us with them. If we let them go, they'll be back until we do kill them.

Tebati will be happy to make the same point IC, but honestly, it's not going to be up to us. We're not in charge of this caravan. It's going to be Albert and/or Jeggare giving orders.

But it's an early test of Jakob's Worst Case Scenario. :)

Yup.
This is not going to be enjoyable. I'll do what I can to keep it short at least.

Qhude will go for a run... probably best that way :P

*kicks thread* All my games have been dead all weekend. I don't know if everyone's off playing TOR, or off arguing about 5e. :P

Well I let things slow down a little while Kieran's been away as I got quite swamped myself. Wrapping this scene with Ansha up as it wasn't one I was comfortable flextiming, then i'll have another update.

Poor Stephanie. Completely ignored by Jakob in favor of a Ferret. There must be a metaphor in there somewhere.

Stephanie's not important enough for him. He has a noble hunchback in his future. Although he could always just use her until the Matchmaker to the Stars lines up his future bride and then cast her out in the cold, preferably with his wailing child in her arms. Works better somewhere snowier than Sargava, though.

Yeah, maybe a quick trip to the land of the Linnorm Kings in downtime...

*Rubs his side where Joana's kick landed*

Sorry; was aiming for the DM. ;)

;)

Qhude is still in a mystery as to why Unwe wanted to talk to him in the first place as well...

Well I let things slow down a little while Kieran's been away as I got quite swamped myself. Wrapping this scene with Ansha up as it wasn't one I was comfortable flextiming, then i'll have another update.

Poor Stephanie. Completely ignored by Jakob in favor of a Ferret. There must be a metaphor in there somewhere.

"%#^#@!(*!!"

Besides I have yet to decide on J's outlook to sex and romance. Right now I have him as avoiding the issue as a complication. Then there is the repeated feeling I get that he is gay. Might at least partly explain why he fell in with Qhude. That man cuts a fine figure in his fighting rig!
:7)

Who says Stephanie was looking for romance? Sometimes a girl wanting help putting her armour on is just a girl wanting help putting her armour on...

Sorry its been slow, a lot of stuff came up on my life this week- I am determined to try and make a solid update at some point tonight.

Besides I have yet to decide on J's outlook to sex and romance. Right now I have him as avoiding the issue as a complication. Then there is the repeated feeling I get that he is gay. Might at least partly explain why he fell in with Qhude. That man cuts a fine figure in his fighting rig!

:7)

Hey, now, this is pseudo-medieval society! One's sexual orientation does not get in the way of one producing a legitimate heir and avoiding muddying up the line of descent and inheritance. What one does for fun and/or love on the side is one's own business. :)