DM Puppet Master's Humble Bundle Welcome Campaign (Inactive)

Game Master Anon A Mouse

Do we actually know if the tigerman is related to the cult? We can try looking for him and see where that takes us. If we don't find the cult that way, they will probably find us.

Regarding the ideas for Marzela's spells, anything that can deny a Dexterity bonus to the enemies, or help flanking, will greatly help Jaed deal more damage. I don't which spells can help with that, tho.

If we can find a seller I could try to get fly or something else to help even the fighting.

Clerics have blessing of fervor instead of haste.

Oh, good call. I saw something like that, but you could only target yourself. Sorry... I usually play Sorcerers and Bards so I am not quite as familiar with the Cleric spells.

Leckumgee's a very small, kind of poor village, so you're not going to find any magic items being sold there. The nearest place likely to have a scroll of fly is probably back in Niswan. For the same reason, I'm also going to point out that if any of y'all's characters die, it's going to be awkward finding a reasonable way to resurrect them before the end of the module short of Finnrick's reincarnation spell. Just saying. :-P

As for making creatures flat-footed, the only spell that comes to mind is hold person, but the key there is it only works on humanoids (in terms of things you've fought thus far this module, the tigerman was a humanoid along with humans/elves/dwarves/etc, but the garuda and naga were not). Summons are also typically a good way to give people flanking.

If I die, you have my permission to reincarnate me. :) Maybe I'll come back as a squirrel. ;)

Tired from IRL D&D game. Will update tomorrow evening.

Still haven't heard anything from Finnrick. If he hasn't shown up by the time you guys leave this village, he's probably going to stay behind. If his player shows up again he can catch up with everybody.

Jaed is going to be sad if Finnrick stays behind :(

Lily is going to be extra sad if Finnrick stays behind! :(

Hey DM, is it reasonable - since Lily has a 22 Intelligence - that she would remember if any of the people who tried to grab her were people that she saw around the village earlier in the day?

Sure, you can recognize a few people in from the village in the group. But not all. Perhaps you simply don't recognize the others or possibly you just didn't see them around at all. It's hard to say.

Are you saying that no matter what we do, no one will talk to us, and there is no information to be had?

Nope. I'm saying they're hiding in their huts/pretending they're not there, so how do you want to approach them?

Okay. I just wanted to make sure you weren't DM-hinting that we should give up on this and do something else. Thanks.

Just a heads up that I'm going to be traveling/visiting a friend Friday-Monday. This may affect my Sunday/Monday posts depending on how busy I am.

That last double-attack brought me down to 4 hp before I healed us back up. Looks like another impossible battle. Sincerely, not sure how we're going to take any of the big baddies in this adventure down. Even things that should be weak to our character's strengths are not.

Any ideas? As a character, Marzela is thinking about giving up on this quest entirely. It's something where she should go to the church and request backup from people way more experienced than herself, hopefully evacuating the village on the way back to town to save the people who weren't part of the cult.

As a player, I'm still in of course if there is any hope, but I am not seeing it. This is three baddies now that we just can't kill, and on this one I'm not even seeing a way to solve it with a night's rest and new spells. Kind of tempted to just let the character die, honestly. Someone throw me some ideas of what else we can do.

There's a reason why everybody says the fights in this module are rather brutal (which I did point out when Carrakas suggested the Ebon Destroyers). The writer has clearly thought through enemy design carefully; creating a ranger who ignores difficult terrain and attacks in an area of difficult terrain or a flying enemy who specializes in using a bow and keeping high up in the air.

FWIW, you were doing damage while the vetala was inside the zombie bodies, but Jaed's damage was reduced rather significantly due to the type of damage it was. The channel did affect it, but the one harming channel that included the vetala both included very low damage rolls and the vetala made its save.

I fully expect to die again next round as apparently I can't get out of the gaze attack even when I move away from it.

I expect that we can't finish this module and it's causing me to lose interest in trying.

You move and then the vetala has a chance to move to get as many people within 30ft of it as it can. Since the gaze attack effects people at the beginning of their turn and not its turn (unless it also decides to use its gaze attack as its standard action), that's why you're still in range of it.

... but the Vetala didn't move. It is 40 feet away from her.

Let's just finish this.

Nice thing about google docs is that you can revisit the history.

Before Carrakas'/Vetala's last turn: Lily is 25 ft away
After Carrakas'/Vetala's turn: Lily is 30 ft away
After Lily and Marzela have taken their turns this round: Lily is now 40ft away.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If you guys don't want to fight the vetala, that's fine. I'm just not really sure what's to be done about later fights since I have no reason to believe the writer made those any easier than the earlier ones.

I don't have many fighting options with Jaed apart from swinging his swords, which is clearly not very effective. However, Jaed can be a distraction so the vetala focus on him while you use whatever spells you have to attack it from a distance. Apart from the Cha damage (I will have to think about how to role-play a character with 2 charisma), I think he can keep up for some rounds.

Regarding the fights, personally I don't mind about not being able to kill all the monsters or even failing the module objectives. I'm more interested in the story, which can be also a good story even if we "lose". So if a retreat makes sense story-wise, I'm ok with it. If we keep fighting and we are defeated, then that's also ok. As in real life, you cannot always win.

@DM: I didn't realize (stupid me) that "gaze" actually implied looking at the vetala's eyes, even it was pretty clear now that I reread the first post. So, I have a question. If gaze affects Jaed at the beginning of his turn, couldn't he just start his turn with the eyes closed, open the eyes, attack, and then close them again? It sound a bit gamey to me but within the rules.

The decision to close/avert your gaze lasts an entire round. So if you want the benefits of it, you also need to deal with the penalties for it.

Also, now that the vetala is out of the zombie, Jaed would do more damage (half damage due to incorporeal vs the quarter damage he was doing before).

Does someone have any spells that can remove the Cha damage? Just thinking if it makes sense to go back and heal or should we keep going once we take care of the vetala's body.

I don't now, but if I sleep and refresh my current spells with new ones, I can get spells that will remove the damage.

Totally okay with continuing if you would rather though. It is just more risky... but you know. That is where we are.

Sure, let's rest then. Either close to where we are or back in the village if we cannot figure out how to deal with the vetala's body.

As I interpret the map, the pillars are 10ft apart so Jaed, with a reach of 5ft, won't be able to attack the woman, am I right?

As an option, would it be possible to bull rush or jump and push her out of the pillar she is standing on? Which kind of check would that be?

Yes, the pillars are 10ft apart.

To push her off, probably just make a bull rush attempt. If you're successful, you then make an acrobatics check to stand on her pillar. If you're unsuccessful, you make a reflex save to grab the edge of her pillar to avoid falling. Though one thing to keep in mind is that if you don't have Improved Bull Rush, this provokes an AoO and if the AoO hits, any damage you receive also counts as a penalty to your bull rush attempt.

Thanks, that's what I thought. The bull rush is a risky move so I will save it for later and only if it's needed.

Do you want to follow the woman? We would probably have better chances against her in closed quarters so I would say we go after her.

I'm okay with it... I guess we could all hold onto Carrakas as he feather falls ... not sure of the rules on that, but seems sort of full circle since he carried us all up the cliff that once. :)

If it were a full-blown dungeon I would say no way, we have to finish the level first, but hopefully this place isn't that complex. :)

With the possible exception of figuring out if Jaed is a lycanthrope (which I suppose you don't actually have to do if you don't want to), that's pretty much the end of this module. Sorry you guys didn't enjoy it. :-/ Since I've now completed my initial goal of running the Price of Immortality trilogy and then some, I'm ready to end this adventure with this module.

I wouldn't say I did not enjoy this last module. Actually, the beginning was pretty fun but it is true that towards the end it got a bit frustrating (which was probably aggravated by the lost of Finnrick and Carrakas) due to some brutal fights.

All in all, I personally had a lot of fun during all this adventure and I want to thank you, DM, for doing an awesome job. It was a long run (3 years, I've just checked the first post) during which I enjoyed developing Jaed from a naive youngster to a seasoned rogue. And thanks to all the other adventurers that participated too! :)

Thank you for steering us through this whole adventure, even if the wheels came off the wagon at the end. I think the sense that we could not succeed at anything was just too demoralizing and likely contributed to players dropping out. Regardless, having a DM stick through to the end is certainly meritorious and uncommon.

Yes, thank you indeed, it was a fun game. I will treasure my Kaooa board forever. :)

Thanks everyone for sticking through for the over a year we've been playing again. And thanks Jaed for sticking around the over 3 years of this game, making you the only original party member. Happy gaming all, and I hope to play with you again at some point in the future. :-)

So I have poked back in off and on to see how things were going and I figured that since I am back (yes, the new Pathfinder Humble Bundle made me think about it) that I would actually put some thanks down to everyone who helped start this out. It ran through a rather difficult time for me, and I appreciated the escape that it provided.

And I dont know that I ever specifically said thanks, not only to DMPM, but also to the others in the group that helped make the story go...

:)