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@Damvorak: Pain claims you suffered much pain to obtain the staff, and I'm sure folks will love that you brought along a wand. I'm guessing you picked it up with your first 2PP?
Yeah. I had to work with Painlord for many hours at Kublacon last year. The pain was excruciating.
And yes, the wand is from my first two PA/PP.
Because I am evil.
I present to you the forcing function to start hammering down your character...
Remember, those of you who aren't 2nd level, you can change any aspect of your character between scenarios.
If you're still sorting out crunch, that's fine - I suspect we'll be in roleplay mode for at least a few days.
Still need to do gear, but I think I'm done other than that.
I took a quick peek when I was trying to describe your PC... I saw some snazzy magic items, so I'm guessing Ram's gear is still a work in progress.
Still need to do gear, but I think I'm done other than that.I took a quick peek when I was trying to describe your PC... I saw some snazzy magic items, so I'm guessing Ram's gear is still a work in progress.
Yeah, that's all copied from a higher-level character's "sheet." Saves me a lot of formatting that way.
I think I've figured out my problem. Ramli really wants to be an ifrit. Which means I think I'm actually going to do a fair amount of tweaking, though the basic personality's probably going to do the same.
Will try to have it done by the end of the night, though his name is among the things that are likely to change.
What to pack, what to pack? I've got 29 silver pieces to spend on gear left over, and I'm the type to get insanely pedantic about spending it.
And good lord, halflings feel so... so white bread! It's a real challenge for me. I'm used to feeling ten times hammier. I'm sure I'll find a way to spice him up before the weeks out, though, so there wont be any drastic changes (until scenarios end, at least). As for the fluffy parts of his sheet they may have to wait a couple of days. I'm a week overdue on what's to be the first of four essays in the next month or two, and I'm bracing for the ochre jelly to hit the blade barrier some time soon.
Picked up some silver bullets, a torch, some candles and two loaves of bread. Leaving hopefully just enough for a hot bath and a meal when we reach Bellis! (Suddenly spending a good chunk of gold on a silver holy symbol seems like a poor choice. :P)
This is my first stint GMing a PFS scenario.
As a player thus far, my missions have been fairly easy to complete - they've never required a successful skill check, just taking an action at a right place.
I have a question for the experts on this.
Here's the mission notes:
**
The question here is - say the PC cannot make the Sense Motive check. Does the GM have the discretion to give the player other opportunities here? Like if they player didn't understand and instead used Diplomacy or Intimidate as a second check to dig around?
Or, is this mechanic intended so that some folks actually fail their faction mission if they miss the skill check described?
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It does seem somewhat unfair. I'm all for encouraging players to take diverse skills and not dump stats, but with some classes, there're only so many skills you can take. I gave a rank to Diplomacy as my non-class skill but there are still half a dozen class skills with no ranks, and that's even with putting a couple points in Int for the sole purpose of having more skill ranks.
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I'm a bit unclear about the official official ruling, but I've seen a good number of judges take creative or magical alternatives to checks. Not sure there is one in this case. If the gnome just goes mute at the mention of these other friends, is there any alternative short of a mind-reading spell? Perhaps a Bluff to set him at ease...
As I'm sure you can guess, it's not elaborated on the what happens in the case of a missed check.
The gnome simply responded with a blank stare.
A sense motive check can read his body language - does his lip quiver? does his eye twitch? does he shift his weight? does he have trouble with eye contact?
Presumably if you make the check, you correctly connect his body language to his guilt or innocence.
A failed check possibly misreads the body language. It fails to determine if he looked nervous when he had a blank stare, or he appeared calm when he had the blank stare.
Ultimately, I assume the prestige from the faction mission comes from the report that Benjamin and Ramli both provide that says something along the lines of "In my expert opinion, Falbin knows [something|nothing]...".
The mission doesn't suggest other skills can be used to determine this, it does spell out that the venture-captain specifically wants:
When you surprise him with this question, his initial response will show truly whether he knows anything, so long as you are skilled at reading faces and interpreting body language. Pass along whatever Falbin's response reveals.
Thus, the way I believe I would interpret this would be:
1) The PCs can take a shot at describing they feel Falbin's response either led to signs that indicate he knows something or doesn't know something. This is a coin-flip, a 50/50 shot at guessing right since they failed to notice any quirks in Falbin's reponsee.
2) Make some inquiries (Diplomacy? Intimidate?) and send a note to the venture-captain that they saw no clear signs, but in an effort to pursue their full duties, made several lines of inquiry and the gnome's responses were X and Y. This may be a second Diplomacy check in how things are worded to the venture-captain to make him feel like these agents actually did what was best given the circumstance versus they were bumbling fools who can't follow directions.
Thus, my fallback stance would be:
1) A d100 roll for your PC's random belief in what the signs from Falbin meant. High is good.
2) A pair of Diplomacy rolls. One to chat with Falbin, and a second to properly word your argument to the venture-captain about the circumstance and why you didn't feel your initial read of Falbin's reaction was sufficient.
Falbin is friendly because you saved his life. I'd suggest a DC12 (10 + 2 from charisma) to chat with him about the topic in a friendly fashion.
Venture-captain Valsin is indifferent to the rookie Pathfinders, plus the argument is being made in a written form. I'd suggest a DC16 check to write a convincing letter to him to smooth over why a different approach was used.
The third option.
If you guys have a Player Character Folio or a valid Paizo t-shirt, you're apparently allowed to re-roll a single d20 roll once per scenario.
Given this is PbP, I can't expect you're wearing your t-shirts for a month solid, but if either of you has these items, we can go on the honor system and you can have the option for a re-roll here.
Alright, that's good enough for me.
Consider your re-roll used this scenario. Feel free to RP with Ramli if you want to adjust his read of Falbin's blank expression.
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For future reference.
I cannot find the discussion now, but there was one on the boards and, If my mind is working at all, I remember the conclusion being that you can allow for creative solutions to faction missions. We certainly do in the store I coordinate.
That said you cannot make it easier, or simply dump one roll for another. In this case it's a pretty cut-and-dried faction mission. Alternatives might include a diplomacy check to allow for a follow-up Sense Motive (essentially giving them two bites at the same apple) or maybe even a tough intimidate check to force the information from him.
Your solution is of course the most elagent - allow them to use their re-roll to avoid the problem. :)
Remember too though, the presumption is that you should only succeed at something like 2/3 of your faction missions. Faction mission failure is built into the system and so shouldn't be a big deal when it does occur. They are supposed to be hard to achieve all the time and so failing one now and again because you don't have the right skill is expected.
I believe I'm more sensitive to the risk of failure of a faction mission so early in a character's career.
Those first 2 prestige points are pretty darned useful. If a character already has like 20-30 PP, I'd be less concerned about creative solutions to eke out the extra 1 PP.
I realized we never picked who would benefit from Harrol's initiative re-roll.
I'd decided in character creation I'd give it to the party rogue. Given that we have none, I dont know, perhaps a spellcaster? Any thoughts, guys?
The only full spellcaster I see if Ramli, so in future initiative rolls, I'll roll for him twice unless instructed by Harrol otherwise. :)
No problem.
I'll be in and out a lot both Saturday and Sunday as well, so things should slow down a bit on the weekend (weekends will be slow usually).
All good. I have a thesis to write now that I've reconsidered doing "Sexual Norms in Classical Greece" as my topic after reading one too many poems on the subject.
Yick.
A few millenia off the mark, I'm afraid, but it looks like a great book. I've switched to Democracy and Imperialism in classical Athens because I've read enough about pederasty for one lifetime thankyouverymuch.
Oh, what do you know? Shows how little reading I'd done. Thanks for the heads up.
St. Bernard scolds Moblyd for depriving the Judge of his fun. "Stop killing everything so quickly! Let him get some hits in!"
Perhaps a season 4 scenario is in order...
I expect we'll be in our last encounter of this scenario shortly, and things will be wrapped up by the weekend.
You all blazed through it!
I cant believe the pacing of this adventure. We rarely if ever see the end of an adventure in my home game, and i've gotten used to the pace of AP pbps...
I think we've managed to peek through a window in RoW in the time it took us to travel across half of Andoran and stop a mad cabal of druids. Go team!
PaizoCon this month!?
Sounds like fun.
If you guys want to either add your Society #s to your profiles, or private message them to me, I'll start working on the chronicles in tandem with this last battle.
Feel free to start discussing what you would like to do next, scenario-wise.
I'm OK if you guys want to wait until after Memorial Day weekend to begin another PFS scenario so that your characters are free to play in tabletop events that weekend.
Or, if those you playing Memorial Day weekend are swapping out characters or something, or not planning to use these particular characters, we start another scenario sooner.
Each of you, go ahead and PM me your personal e-mail address if I don't have it already.
I'll send you each a JPG of the chronicle with my part filled out, and you can fill out your part after you print it out.
Feel free to make your Day Job checks in the OOC thread anytime.
I've got my number at home, but can send it to you later today/tomorrow. My email is my username at gmail.
Up for playing anything, though all I've got are first- and second-level characters. Considering using my fighter/bard next, though I'm having fun with Ramli too.
I guess the question is how do we want to play these -- are we going to try to work our way up linearly or do a handful of first-levels so we can maybe have 3-4 second-level characters then do a handful of next tier so we can have a few at mid-level, etc. etc.? Either way is fine with me. I'm just thrilled to have a fast-moving PBP that doesn't seem like it's going to die out quickly.
I'm actually rather enjoying Harrol. But half of the appeal of the thing-a-week format of the modules is to really mix it up character wise, so I dont know whether to stick with him. We'll see what the party looks like and whether you folks want to keep him. I've got a few alternatives cooking about character wise, now that I've seen how far I can get with a magic-stone flinging cleric (very far if I let something second level and dwarf shaped do all the work).
As for scenarios, as before I'm up for anything. Having played (nearly all) of one scenario so far, and the list is far too big and daunting for little old me. I'm really happy with the pace so far (although the quiet spell seems to run through the evening and then a sudden flood of posts at about three in the morning, so you'll have to excuse me being a round behind this combat. oops!)
Harrol's number is # 84608-1 and you can hit me up at shag.grenade@live.com, boss man.
Chronicles should be sent to everyone sans Benjamin.
I'm still missing character #s for Ramli, Moblyd and Benjamin.
Excellent! So... what do I need fill out on this? And what is the general policy with these? Would I bring one to the table with my character sheet?
Fill out the details for your character.
You'll probably want to do normal track, so you'll gain the gold listed there, 1XP and 2PP (prestige points). If this is a fresh character, their fame score is now 2 Fame.
You will potentially want to go shopping now and spend some of your gold on stuff, so you'll now put that into items purchased.
You may also want to spend that first 2PP on a fully charged wand of cure light wounds. It's something of a "best practice" to bring your own healing, although as a cleric maybe you go without? Shrug.
The PFS veterans can chime in more. My total PFS experience is all within the past 4 weeks.
OK, found my PFS number. It's 83959, so Ramli would be 83959-3.
OK, as we should be wrapping up this week if anyone can ever hit this ethereal druid...
The question is when we dig into our next scenario.
I'm ready to select and run one whenever you all are. The question is if folks have scenarios that they want to use these specific PCs for in conventions this month (most starting May 24th).
The next likely scenario (based on the fact that neither Damvorak or Moblyd have played it would be):
3-18 The God Market's Gamble
Well, I'm definitely keen to take Harrol to Absalom! Depending on what level we're sticking with for PFS I might pitch another character later down the track. But the small-town cleric on a pilgrimage to the place where his goddess ascended seems like it'll be fun to play out.