Thanks Fabian, if you have a layer with a grid that could be helpful. I'm sure I tried making one and it didn't work for some reason - I can't really remember why, but I recall spending a few frustrated hours and just thinking fine I'll use the line tool.
I think this is alright for a swamp map, you would need to insert a hut and a grid, but otherwise pretty nice.
Thanks for the 'swamp' but it won't load for some reason...
I don't have a 'layer' with a grid but this page (https://sites.google.com/site/pbemfabianscarrioncrown/characters-1?pli=1) has a jpg of a grid; I'm not sure if that helps or not.
Thanks Jack for head up on MapTools but if you have something that's working, it's hard to try something else.
I tried map tools a few years ago and did not enjoy it, I can't recall why to be honest.
Please let me know how you plan to tackle the island. Its easier to traverse the fungi than the jungle so you don't need to worry about trails - there aren't any anyway. You could go around the shore, march straight forward down the center, etc., etc.
I'm thinking follow the shore to the shipwreck, and avoid the inner part of the island until we have a better idea what's going on.
Seconded!
Grossgrossgrossgrossgross! o_o;
What?! But he's such a fun gi when you get to know him ;)
AAAGHH! IT'S A PUN MONSTER! >_< Kill it with fire!
Ugh! I'm having computer problems again. The good news? Things should be fixed next week, maybe even later today. I shall return.
My local computer guy is wonderful at what he does. I seem to be back...
But most ominously, he has advised me to save up for a new laptop.
Can I hear you say 'Argh', y'all? :(
I've been hanging onto this desktop for about 7 years and it's starting to get a bit long in the tooth. Soon enough, I will know what you're going through. xD
I'm sure you can coax it along until you get a windfall Quinta! You can do it! That's always my strategy.
I'm treating my dear old Lappie with great care, of that you may be certain. And why not? ^^ I'm very fond of him and appreciative of the work he does for me.
The hard drive on mine was dying, but I narrowly managed to get a disk image and replace the drive. Was not looking forward to trying to rebuild the system otherwise, as it was a commercial laptop and I didn't have the OS disks to reinstall it. Which reminds me...I'd better update the backup. Can't be too careful....
I'm cool with changing the target. ^^ Man, I love it when the whip works!
I'm going to leave whether Joll falls or not open for a bit, because I have trouble believing you guys meant for him not to be fully healed. This will be the last time I offer to let you heal retroactively.
I would have inquired had I noticed he was 5 hp down, but hindsight and all that.
Its never a good idea to leave someone injured inf PF, especially one of your frontliners.
If Joll goes to the big inquisitorial chamber in the Hells so be it. I should have chosen different spells to make him more effective.
Carpe:
On the matter of taking over an NPC
I am between Jask and Ishirou. If Ishirou is a monk then I would definitely take Jask.
Ishirou is a rogue, but I'd let you rebuild him as you saw fit as long as you stayed within the basic outline of Tian uncharasmatic warrior with a katana. There's always Pezzock to!
I don't think Joll's ineffective at all for the record, he's was singled out in the last encounter and effectively took the whole parties share of punishment. In this instance that high rolling assault would have taken down pretty much any 2nd level PC who was already injured.
In the last encounter I was trying to make the vegepygmys a concrete threat, rather than something you simply rolled over - and was happy with targeting one PC because the vegepygmys specifically try to stabalize any foes in danger of dying so they can drag them back to The Night Voice and feed them there special mushroom soup! Yum?
I'll also point out that all these encounters - on the Blighted Island - have been bumped up considerably from the book, partly to account for their being five of you, but more than that, because I want to get you guys leveled up sooner and I think you can handle it.
Wait! why are we giving up on Joll. Yes, he's down but far from dead, right?
This fight is not over by any means but I think we can take these guys.
Fabian (Alexite)
No, no he's not even necessarily down. As previously mentioned I have trouble believing you guys would have left him badly wounded on a several hour walk to the ship - he was 5hp down. I'm giving you the chance to rectify this if you think you would have done so in character - you do have the resources.
I don't think Joll is in any real danger of dying right now. Dragolan hasn't even gone yet and he can, at the very least, stabilize Joll on his turn if he so chooses (if not get him conscious again).
P.S. I'm posting, but I'm trying to consider my options.
Gotcha, Alexite scored a nice hit there to.
Lol, I think it has 1 hp left.
Nice one but I think it would have been best for Jack to get to E2 and flank the veg. He had already used up his AoO and I'm sure Jack can always tumble through the battlefield anyway.
We should be fine in this fight unless they get lucky (those spears have a nasty crit).
BTW, what are those undead-looking things on the map?
Fabian (Alexite)
He attacked my cute little mushroom men first! They only want you to join their happy fungal family - you monsters!
Nice one but I think it would have been best for Jack to get to E2 and flank the veg. He had already used up his AoO and I'm sure Jack can always tumble through the battlefield anyway.
We should be fine in this fight unless they get lucky (those spears have a nasty crit).
BTW, what are those undead-looking things on the map?
Fabian (Alexite)
Sure, but I didn't have enough movement to safely/reliably get there while also using acrobatics. The other vegepygmy has reach too and hadn't used its AOO yet. I would have had to make an acrobatics check, which would be fine, except that you are limited to only half your speed if you do that. I could have gotten there at full speed if I wanted to raise the DC by 10 (to probably 18-20). I have a +8, so that would be a 40-50% chance assuming those DC estimates are correct. I also had a 50% chance to kill him outright with a normal attack (a 3 or higher on 1d4) without risking an AoO. In the future I might pick up dodge/mobility/spring attack, but I haven't yet decided.
It's worth the risk in hindsight (because we know that I hit), but if you consider it from the perspective of not knowing whether my attack would even hit or not, chancing it seemed a bit high risk. I could have metagamed and rolled the attack first to see what I'd get in the preview window and then made my move based on that, but I wanted to play realistically.
The undead looking things are in the initial description, two fungus covered corpses on chairs, and nineteen fungus covered skeletons. Don't worry I'd never attack with three times your number of undead - not again I mean, bwahahahahha!
I also had a 50% chance to kill him outright with a normal attack (a 3 or higher on 1d4) without risking an AoO.
Well, I know you say that you don't want to 'metagame' but knowing how many hitpoints an enemy has left (and acting/modifying your tactics based on that info) IS 'metagaming'.
All I'm saying is that I think your rogue should take every chance to flank when the opportunity presents itself.
@DM Carpe: thanks for the clarification on the 'undead'. :)
Well, I know you say that you don't want to 'metagame' but knowing how many hitpoints an enemy has left (and acting/modifying your tactics based on that info) IS 'metagaming'.
All I'm saying is that I think your rogue should take every chance to flank when the opportunity presents itself.
Well, in this case it was a case of "lesser evil" or "realistic" metagaming. Even if I didn't know how many hitpoints the creature had left, I can still see that Alexite did 14 damage to it. You could say that my character would also know that Alexite badly wounded the creature just by witnessing the devastating blow. I would have assumed that it was badly wounded even if I didn't know for sure that it had 19 hp. I would have made that exact same decision because I would have figured I had a good chance to possibly kill it with a little more damage (even though I wouldn't know exactly how much) and very low risk to Jack's health.
I also argue that a character who is trained in a skill is aware of their limitations when performing that skill and the risks involved in pushing those limits, so he probably would have at least a decent hunch of how likely he was to be able to get past the vegepygmy without getting impaled based on the knowledge of his own skills and the devastating efficiency with which the creatures have employed their spears.
When I'm considering what a character does, I'm not just considering what is the most efficient mathematical or strategic course of action in a sterile, bubble-like scenario. My character wouldn't have taken that risk in this situation because he just saw Joll get skewered multiple times. These things are dangerous. Jack is a person who values his life.
However, to make an attack roll before I move and then deciding how to move based on whether it hits or not is essentially the same thing as saying Jack is psychic. :P That would be the definition of abusive metagaming. I guess I'm trying to say that I try to exercise a LITTLE roleplaying integrity when I can, while also making smart tactical decisions based around those in-character considerations, not in spite of them.
TL;DR: Jack won't risk a high probability of getting stabbed if he can avoid it, sneak attack be damned. That's the character.
Thinking on the appraise skill I'm probably just going to give you the value of things as I find anything else a bit irksome. So Jack, and anyone else with appraise ranks can reassign them.
Gotcha. I'll do that in a minute.
Edit: Traded Appraise for Linguistics since it's probably the only other class skill I don't have that Jack would be good at. It sort of makes sense since he would have been exposed to a cornucopia of languages in Westcrown, and would have needed to keep up with a wide diversity of "colleagues".
Frightening revelation: Jack has the highest intelligence in the group.
Oh, yuck! o_o Original plan, guys! Keep your distance!
I'm just glad I got to hit you once! To think I was worried about whether I should advance it or not!
Ow.
(You mean, hit someone besides Joll once, right?)
Sorry; lots of stuff had piled up at work and at home, and I was kind of strapped for time. I'll get caught up posthaste.
Yeesh, ten attacks and nine are over ten, with two nineteens and two twenties. Our deal was for when I'm running PCs dice roller!
Feel free to describe foes falling, etc., since you should know their hp, etc. I'm not worried about retconning if needed.
Feel free to describe foes falling, etc., since you should know their hp, etc. I'm not worried about retconning if needed.
Cool, I like doing that and will do so from now on.
I guess you can always 'correct' things if we're wrong.
FYI since I think you guys can guess by now anyway, Ishirou is a 2nd level rogue, and Pezock a 3rd level rogue. Both 15 point buy. Ishirou is high strength Pezock high dex.
Hmmm, interesting notion...
All you need to do to cast Cure spells on a target is to be touching them. If you put a strand of hair on a person, you would technically be touching them, so long as the strand still held some live follicles, right?
... That, or I need to invest in Reach Spell sometime. ^^
Well as long as it meets all the mechanical requirements, like being within your normal reach, etc., I don't really mind how you flavor it.
Okay so I may have over done that encounter a tad, a combination of wanting to get you to 3rd faster, liking tough encounters, and probably being passive aggressive - not that that really works here - about the resting thing.
Generally speaking as a DM I am going to try to avoid situations where you have a one encounter day. I think I probably over described the severity of Dragolan's injuries, but really he was only down a point of con and str which is not a great cause for concern.
I had fun anyway. I think Joll might be the first character I lose in PbP. C'est la Pathfinder.
Eh, I think you'll be fine Joll 3rd level gives you a big power boost and you will be there soon enough. I roll ridiculously well as a DM, which makes it very tough for you guys, especially in an encounter like that.
By Paizo's calculators with the NPCs you counted as Average Party Level 3 - due to there being seven of you and Pezock being 3rd - and the encounter was 2400 XP meaning the encounter was CR 6 making it the highest encounter level Paizo for your group endorses - Epic. Yes Pezock and Ishirou got part of that XP btw.
Plus we are soon coming up to the point where it stops being me trying to kill you - bwahahaha - and paizo takes over. The individual AP forums all have obituary threads and over the next couple of weeks you will be moving onto a few encounters that show up regularly there.... Bwahahaha!
Okay so I may have over done that encounter a tad, a combination of wanting to get you to 3rd faster, liking tough encounters, and probably being passive aggressive - not that that really works here - about the resting thing.
Generally speaking as a DM I am going to try to avoid situations where you have a one encounter day. I think I probably over described the severity of Dragolan's injuries, but really he was only down a point of con and str which is not a great cause for concern.
I think the encounter went great; the heroes won but it was a close call.
Given the distances involved in an outdoor adventure, you may have days with only one encounter but I understand why you want to avoid them.
Maybe we overestimated Dragolan's injuries as well; did we have the 'mechanics' at the time?
Fabian (Alexite)
I think for me it's more the intent. If you are being active and progressing and only happen to have one encounter that's fine, if you are all banged up and or have expended all your healing again fine, but having a few relatively minor hardships and getting on with it is what being heroes is all about.
The description of the wound from the violet fungus was straight out of the Bestiary; the effect was about as minor as it could get, though. (One of the times the DM didn't roll well, to make up for the character with CON 14 and Great Fortitude blowing a Fort save.)
DM C, I think the real power-up for Joll (and Dragolan as well) comes at 4th level, when we can get L2 spells. Being able to spam lesser restoration is not a bad thing at all, and I've seen blistering invective used to good effect by an inquisitor in another game.