DM Dr Evil's 00-01: Silent Tide (PFS) - First PFS PbP Gameday Event (Inactive)

Game Master DM DoctorEvil

Here is the thread to post your characters for review and comment prior to opening the game on 10/5. Everyone should dot in and have their PC's ready to go soon.

This is the inquisitor you've been waiting for. Thanks for taking this on, DM!

Hey Cressyk, thanks for jumping in first. We should be on schedule for a 10/5 start. This is Cressyk's first PFS game, right? But it looks like you have more experience?

I'll be checking his crunch out in detail tomorrow and will PM you with questions?

Welcome aboard!

Hi friends,

Knorrin here, ready to serve!

~~

This is his first actual adventure, but I applied some GM credit from FS I: In Search of Lore, buying some better equipment and purchasing a Wand of CLWs with my 2 PP.

He a dedicated healing Cleric 1 of Sarenrae with Aasimar (Angelkin) and Kelish ancestry.

Feel free to PM me with questions!

~~ Matt

Here's Elael. This is also his first actual adventure, but I, like Knorrin, applied credit that I used to get some decent equipment.

Let me know what you think, I'm pretty sure he's all legal.

Twigs here.Archibald has just completed Part II of First Steps (regrettably I had to make a second "PFS Character" alias for him, and it ruined my nice neat list of aliases.). I still need to sort out the chronicle sheets, but my alias should be ready by the fifth.

Hi! A'letta here.

I have yet to make an alias for my character, but I'll see to it straight away since I got plenty of time today :)

Hey everyone! This is Rhanloi, and elven evoker from the frozen wastelands of the north...and that's not paint or dye across his eyes - it's the only place that ever saw sunlight, and so it's a very unusual tan line =)

Tada! A tanky front-liner with a decent diplomacy, bluff and sense motive. I'm not entirely sure yet if I want to focus so heavily on the social skills, but weapon focus katana and climb/swim are dreadfully boring alternatives :p

2 wizards, 2 clerics, a rogue and a fighter. This should be interesting...

And hail to my elven brother!

SAMURAI! With amazing diplomacy skills!

Hey Cressyk, thanks for jumping in first. We should be on schedule for a 10/5 start. This is Cressyk's first PFS game, right? But it looks like you have more experience?

Right. Cressyk is new to PFS, and I'm working furiously to get more experience for myself and my characters.

I'll be checking his crunch out in detail tomorrow and will PM you with questions?

Sounds good.

Looks like all 6 players are checked in!

I'll do a quick verify of your builds etc tonight and get back with questions etc.

Are you okay using Roll20 website for mapping? I am considering doing the maps, battles, etc there, but still doing the dialogue/posting here. The interface is better than simple Google Drive as I've been using. Give me some feedback either way.

In my mind, the faster we get these scenarios done, the faster you get XP and GP. If you want to have a quicker posting expectation, I am up for that. My suggestion is 2x per day minimum including weekends (unless excused). Thoughts on that? I know we have some timezone issues with European and Australian contingents and wonder how that affects them.

I can post 2x daily but can only get in to Roll20 from my computer at home...work computers run older versions of Windows and Explorer! And I can only view Google docs at work - not manipulate them at all. In one game I'm playing I only see one room because the Google doc is magnified and I can't zoom out =( First world problems!!

I'm east coast U.S. for time considerations...

imgur.com is a very reliable image host that is accessible on all platforms, from what I know :) I use it for my after action reports of EU4 games.

As for time-zones, I got plenty of time and am up pretty late and up real early .. so I should be 'good'.

I live in the Pacific Time Zone and can post multiple times a day.

I have been a player in one game using Roll20, where the maps and icons were there and the dialogue and rolls and such were here, as you describe, and it worked fine. (I have been using MapTools, mostly because I started it first, but have been meaning to try Roll20 sometime. A good way to allow players to move their own characters is nice, and doing it through MapTools presents some people with firewall problems, apparently.)

I'm in West Coast U.S as well, and generally check about four or five times a day, with significant time for posting in the early afternoon and at night, so 2x a day is perfectly doable for me.

I'm fine with whatever mapping tool you use, as long as I can easily access it :D

By the way, I totally want to keep doing scenarios as long as you're willing to run them, so if you ever want to run a PFS scenario and Elael isn't busy in one, feel free to ask me.

By the way, this is totally a good party :D Except for that both of our wizards are evokers (I kind of think evokers are boring XD) we have an awesome party.

We're just missing trapfinding for magical traps and non-magical ranged damage, I think. At least our party should have an easy time with incorporeal foes ;)

Right, cause I don't have trapfinding XD That's not exactly the kind of rogue I was planning to be. Not that I won't max out Disable Device. Disguise and Bluff are exciting to me conceptually.

oh so you're a sneaky, no-good liar eh? Explains a lot, really...

Almost. I'm a sneaky, Good liar.

I'm on Mountain time, and am generally on during the day on weekdays and at night on weekends. Posting multiple times a day shouldn't be an issue.

I've done a roll20/paizo mix before as well - it's not terrible, just a minor annoyance.

I guess my question would be what the issues you're having with Google are? With open permissions for moving the tokens around, it seems to have much the same functionality as roll20.

You should join the Chelish, Elael! We got cookies and succubi.

With all due respect (read: none) the Chelish are a pack of self-serving sycophants with no personal power who use real slaves and summoned slaves to do their work for them.

:D

I can just take your cookies and kill your succubi (I mean, not yet...considering I'm still CR 1/2...but that's beside the point).

Sounds like Elael should be Andoran...:-P

Hey now!! Not all Chelish are fiend-humping arcanomancers! Some of us serve the almighty Asmodeus and work hard to get where they are in life. Honest, hard work, none of this slavery business ye be talking about!

.. who am I kidding :D

That was totally what I intended. Must have misclicked. Hey, I fixed it! :D

As an old-school guy, I miss the classic dungeoneering 'thief'. Do people play that anymore - people seem least satisfied with the Rogue PF conversion - and does the traps feature come up much in PFS scenarios? I've only read or played a few PFS scenarios now, all Tier 1/Tier 1-2.

Hey Dr Evil - do you want/need me to switch up Rhanloi so we don't have 2 of the same wizards? Haven't played this character in any PFS games yet (not for a lack of trying, though!) so I have no real skin in the game (like Archi, who has done a couple scenarios...)

Let me know and I'll work up something else...
=)

Two evocation wizards are better than one evocation wizard!

As for the dungeoneering thief .. if your DM runs tons of traps, yeah, it's great, but otherwise the rogue class feels pretty lackluster to me. Sneak Attack is great on paper, but poor in practice. All the other classes got damage that scales nicely: power attack and deadly aim are linked to BAB, challenge and smite and favored enemy are tied to levels and the spellcasters scale with caster levels. The rogue gets sneak, but the higher the rogue gets, the more reason he has not to be in combat. AC ain't great, HP ain't great, to hit ain't great and to be able to do damage, you need to be AWAY from your teammates.

Add in the fact that skills got condensed so you don't NEED 8+ skills, the fact other classes can do what you do while bringing more utility to the table and yeah, that's the reason why I'd say. Not that I care much about powergaming, but I truly feel like a weak character when I play a rogue. Not that that stops me from playing one ;)

I play on saturday IRL and I'm playing a ranger3/rogue3/horizon walker and the full rogue in the party just cries when he compares what he can do to what I can do :x and my apology for the lecture, haha.

ninja edit - I also think rogue talents are pretty lackluster, but if you know what you're doing, you can make it work :)

Rhanloi - I want you to play what you like. We can make it work with 2 wizards, as long as they aren't counterspelling each other...

This is PFS, so your character will only be with the group and this GM for a little while before joining other games....(a single tear runs down my cheek, and plop onto the desk). So play what you like, damnit!

Rogue may feel a weak character but once all those BBEG's are killed in combat, no one can get the loot in that DC 30 Locked chest without one. Rogue's just aren't combat characters, more like bards in a support role IMHO.

We can make it work with 2 wizards, as long as they aren't counterspelling each other...

This is such a deliciously evil idea that I can make no promises. :P

Re: the maps, I've been really digging the Google Drive setup and been meaning to learn the ropes to use it elsewhere. At the end of the day it's your call, as you're the one doing the legwork, but I'd cast my vote for the Google Drive.

Ouch! But I can see a wonderfully dysfunctional relationship between us:

"I'm your elder and you should listen to me, you young whippersnapper."

"Bite me old man - come near me and I'll turn you into a newt!"

"What?!? I was tossing fireballs around before you were born! You should respect your betters!!"

"Yea, whatever...toss this!"

Yeah, the reason that dungeoneering rogues aren't very popular any more is because most paizo published adventures don't include very many actual...dungeons. Not that Elael is terrible in a dungeon...he'll certainly be weak and all for awhile, as a rogue, but I'm fine with that.

I do know what I'm doing, and I think I can make it work :) and Elael is certainly going to multiclass. I haven't nailed down what yet, though.

If it helps, I just recently made a knife master/scout that I think might have some merit. Scout adds more ways to catch enemies flat-footed, which means more sneak attack damage. Something to look at, anyway.

eh, too late to do much build-checking tonight, but tomorrow looks a little more promising.

I think we'll stand pat on Google drive for maps (hopefully Rhanloi can find a way to view) and we'll ask folks for 2 posts per day for now, and see if we can keep the pace up.

I'm really not sure about my Skill Focus Diplomacy pick. On the one hand, Iron Will OR Weapon Focus Katana are nice, but on the other, with my Resolve and Order powers and good wisdom I should be fine in that field until 5/7+. And I can always pick weapon focus at 3, followed by weapon expertise at 5.

Decisions, decisions! I just don't know how useful diplomacy is in PFS.

ninja edit - I use the nodachi right now since it does 1d10 with brace over the katana's 1d8 with deadly, but the samurai weapon expertise doesn't let you use the nodachi .. hence me thinking - why not pick up the katana thing at 3 when I get free quickdraw with it? I could also use the naginata, but that thing has 10f reach.

I see you, you little munchkin, Jiro...

If I wanted to munchkin I'd play my patented barbarian 1 / wizard 1 with improvised weaponry and a large iron-bound spellbook! Rage, enlarge, SMASH! Oh, and also has a gore attack, because, why not.

discussion thread is now open, gameplay will open later today. I just got word that Knorrin will be unable to join us to to unforeseen family crisis. We still have legal table, but I can search for one more player on short notice if you like --any preference for class based on group dynamic?

Sword Saint

The samurai loses his mount, banner and mounted archer abilities in return fro this.

I like having a healer in the group...

You are right. An inquisitor of Gorum won't keep up with healing, unless equiped with a CLW wand. Even then, when faced with conditions and afflictions, we'll be screwed :)

Either a cleric, druid, or oracle, please :D Elael will do his best to not get hurt, but there's only so much a guy can do, right?

I asked another player to join in Zoog's spot. They will bring a healer to the table so Elael can resume insanity. I expect to post the setting post after midnight tonight (US Central time) so be watching for it.

Gametime is not far away. Please muster in the discussion tab when you can. There are a few important things happening over there.

Aziza, if you make it here, please LMK ASAP.

Welcome aboard!

She looks good to go to me. Welcome to the game. I'll get you an initiative count in the first round.