Defense of Brookside

Game Master caster4life

Hey guys, just a heads up, I'm traveling this weekend, you may need to bot me. I'll try to post, but don't slow things down waiting for me.

So a while ago -- 2014, I think? -- I had just made a wizard who had the arcane discovery Yuelral's Blessing, which gives you +1 CL and +1 save DC on spells that appear on both the wizard and druid spell lists.

Great! ... but how do I figure out what spells are on both the wizard and druid spell lists?

Rather than cross-referencing them manually, I located a spreadsheet full of spell data and sank a ton of time into writing a little web site that would make answering that kind of question trivial.

I tinkered at it a bit here and there for years. Occasionally I've shown a few friends, but it was just running on a little server under my desk and not really ready for prime time.

But at our illustrious GM's urging, I have finally put the finishing touches on it! I give you: Pathfinder Spell Facets.

The idea here was to use faceted classification to let you drill down to a subset of spells relevant to your interests. Are you playing an Eldritch Knight and desperately want a comprehensive list of Wizard spells that lack somatic components? Hit the "require" button next to "Wizard", and the "Forbid" button next to "Somatic", hit the Search button and boom, there you go.

This is a soft launch for this group because I want to get a little feedback before posting it in the main Paizo forums and the Pathfinder subreddit. Please take a moment to try it out and let me know what you think.

I invested some time in making it work on mobile devices, but I have a limited number of those to test on (i.e. one) so it may be flaky on some mobile browsers.

I also went ahead and used the CSS grid specifications for layout, including the grid-template-area and grid-area properties, which are not universally supported. As a result it will fail badly on Internet Explorer. And I do not care. If you happen to be one of the ten people who still use Internet Explorer, I urge you to move on to something else, because it is irredeemable.

THIS. IS. AMAZING!!!

I haven't had time to dig in too deeply but this is a tool that will be used for years and years! I did notice a few spells pop up with duplicated entries occasionally (saw liberating Command and snowball do this) but that's not a big deal at all. Some of the time loading a spell is slow, others it goes pretty quick, dunno why.

I'm using chrome on an android phone btw.

Now I just want to know, where will this be hosted long term, it will be right? You can probably make some good money with it just letting people donate to a patreon or something like that. At least enough to cover the cost of hosting it.

This is an amazing work. Thank you!

The link above is a stable URL. Previously it lived on a tiny server that lives under my desk. For an actual launch though I'm moving it to my actual web host, Gandi.

I, err, registered the domain name three or four years ago, and it's just been sitting there empty until tonight.

Yes, there are duplicate entries for some spells. Usually this indicates that the spell appeared in more than one source. Sometimes they actually have differences. I think Snowball got errata'ed and then reprinted, for example.

The performance on my host has been uneven tonight. I'm not 100% sure why, but I had to reinstall my webmail client due to upgrading PHP in preparation for launching this and that may have had something to do with it.

INCREDIBLE!
Wow, this would be useful so often. I also ended up doing a bunch of hacking stuff together to answer the Yuelral question.

So this is what it looks like when a pathfinder player hits lvl 20 and gets their gaming capstone ability.

Will have to check it later, from home. Work does not permit.

@Kaz: I was mostly concerned about those guys put to sleep and ones like Rollinsby.
You are right though that at least the captain will be a prime witness AND know something was wrong about us, so maybe it's not the smartest idea to try and pretend. It made sense to my sleepy mind :D

On the plus side, it's not every day that a party member says "hit me!" It would be a first that a character of mine knocked out a fellow party member.

I think the spell search is great, as I have previously stated in private threads. Very, very useful.

I noticed that the spell levels seem to be working backwards for me. If I want to see spells of a certain level I have to forbid them, if I want certain levels included I have to require them. Some more complicated searches don't seem to work. I'll try a few specific inputs and then record the results for you and send via PM

Also,a feature that would be nice would be the ability to sort by level in the results. Another nice would be an and/or function. For instance if I want spells that appear on the magus list or on the bard list, which don't have somatic components. But I'm getting greedy here.

Yes, I am unsurprised. Doing a search boils down to a single SQL query, but building that query takes just over 400 lines of PHP at the moment. It's horrifically complicated handling such a large number of potential search terms. Glitchy searches are definitely in there. Sometimes when I have had a particularly complex query, I skip the UI I made and go have a chat with the database directly in SQL. For example I once wanted to build a list of spells that use gems as material components, and that was not something I had a facet for, so I did it manually.

Sorting by level: at the moment, it sorts first by level and then by name, but only when you're looking at spells from a single class.

If you have spells from more than one class, it sorts by name because you can't effectively sort by level under those circumstances. Spell levels are wildly inconsistent.

Take Scrying, for instance. Scrying is level 3 for bards, mediums, mesmerists and skalds; level 4 for arcanists, druids, hunters, occultists, psychics, shamans, sorcerers, witches and wizards; and level 5 for clerics, oracles, spiritualists and warpriests. Which level should it be for sorting purposes in a multi-class search?

And that kind of thing is all over the place. In any search that pulls spells from multiple class lists, it's just not practical to offer sorting by level.

Some of this can be explained for game balance purposes. Bards can pick up scrying as a level 3 spell, which means bard level 7. That lines up neatly with wizards, who can learn it at wizard level 7. Hooray, game balance achieved.

But other times it seems to be a flavor choice. Clerics have to wait until cleric level 9 to scry for some reason. Flavor? Your god doesn't trust you with remote vision till you're old enough to drink? I don't know.

And then there are truly inexplicable choices. For example, warpriests don't get Scrying until warpriest level 13 for some reason. Would it be game breaking if the warpriest was able to scry as a third-level spell, gaining that at level 7 the same as a bard or a wizard? Or as a fourth-level spell, gaining it only one level after the equally devout cleric? That just makes no kind of sense at all.

Sorry for my delay. Some things were happening this week that left me very busy and sleep-deprived. Thankfully, those things are no longer happening.

So two questions:

1) Are we all going back with them to meet with Turick now?

That kind of sounds like the logical thing to do if you ask me. We want to find out what they have to say, and anyway Túrion probably needs to be present at least until that Suggestion spell wears off.

2) What are we doing about the ship?

Some options are:

1) Scuttle it.

2) Beach it.

3) A couple of us stay aboard to secure it till Turick can send sailors to impound the vessel and take it away someplace.

4) Ask some of these very-non-sailor guards to stay aboard to secure it till Turick can send sailors to impound the vessel and take it away someplace.

5) Leave it unmanned and hope it's still there when Turick's sailors show up.

6) Take possession, set our sails to the wind and head off into unknown waters, washing our hands entirely of this continent.

A ship this size probably costs about 10,000 gp. Either of the first two options would attract attention, not to mention being wasteful.

Hmmmm, it may sound a bit silly, but I think siezing the ship and secreting it somewhere sounds really nice actually. We rode to Iustia, but we've got some mediocre in game sailing experience now, and we have plenty of magical ability to make the ship function regardless. When we leave this nation it may be in quite a hurry. A ship carefully hidden somewhere seems like an excellent option.

If it turns out we don't need it we can sell it, or just leave it there. Hiding it may be difficult, but given Harold's and Turion's abilities I'd bet they could manage it without much trouble.

I vote we leave a couple of people on the ship to hide it and act as backup should the meetimg with Truck go badly. Fyrtor or Kaz and Turion probably need to go, but Harold and Mel should be safe to stay with the ship.

Thoughts?

I'd be okay with that. Though sailing a ship that size with such a small crew is likely to be difficult, and I strongly suspect that Mel's +7 to Profession (sailor) is the best score we've got in the group now that Brolin is no longer with us.

I think there's a fairly decent chance someone is going to come looking for it. Anyone with enough money to own a 10,000gp ship is likely to have connections.

That said, sure, let's go for it!

True. And we're kind of anchored in plain sight a few miles from a major city.

I don't suppose Hal has Control Water prepped?

If he does he could use it to raise the level of the water at the rear of the ship, causing it to slide forward. Essentially, an on-demand wave to push it places. We would need to furl the sails first, as the drag would probably cause problems.

If not, well ... we can have a nice conversation and wait for the others to get back, because I can't think of any other way a druid and a rogue could plausibly sail an 80-foot ship with no crew. Even if we knew where we were going to take it ...

Druid? Hal's not a druid. ;)

Evidently not!

Well, this is entirely unexpected.

Huh.

Um, if we're keeping the ship it will need a new name and a different figurehead. "The Clydesdale" with a big horse on the front is pretty distinctive, and as Hal said people will probably be looking for it soon.

Oh, and we'll need new papers for it, assuming that ships are registered in this world. They might not be.

I think I need to think about this a bit, and I only just read today's posts, 12 hours after they came out. Let me get back to you tomorrow.

The ship does have papers. You could return to Bannerhold legally but would be unlikely to escape notice.

Well, passed that with ease. With a +15 on Kn (Local) I couldn't fail at this point.

And then I got a nat 20 on Profession (sailor). Man, my dice have been on fire lately.

Man, we have well and truly split the party. GM, how far to Catlinshead and back?

It's roughly on the way to Bannerhold. It was just getting late in the day. You can be in Bannerhold tomorrow morning (if you sail at night) or midday with your new ship. The party split will not have a big effect.

You can spend the night and reach Catlinshead in the morning whenever ready but I don't want to cut the RP short on the Clydesdale. You have a little time, OOC, before you'll need to catch up with the rest of the party.

Submitted a journal article today, which is always a big hefty push until I actually click the submit button. So I will update tomorrow.

I slightly pushed a little bit there at the end, Hal. If you want to interrupt Mel's reflections feel free -- but you need 8 hours of sleep for spell prep, whereas I never actually used any of my (extremely minimal) casting options yesterday.

GM, here's a fort save versus fatigue in case you want one.

Fortitude: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (5) + 10 = 15

EDIT: Also, it looks like I used the Melia persona for my second post in the galley conversation after taking off Mel's hat in the previous one. Whoops. She was Mel Elden for the whole of that.

Wow. We just bombed those checks for selling the Clydesdale goods, hard. Double nat 3s for Mel and Double nat 1s for Hal.

Hal has a +14 in Appraise, so he couldn't fail that DC 15. His nat 1 meant we passed that. Mel's 3 plus her lordly modifier of 2 contributed nothing.

When it comes to Knowledge (local), Hal has +16 and Mel has +15. Neither one can fail to aid the other. Hal's nat 1 means he didn't meet the base DC, so his check works as a +2.

Meanwhile, Mel rolled a 3 + 15 = 18. Except, looking back, I see I forgot to include the -2 penalty for being fatigued! So that drops her total to 16, and then Hal's aid another brings it back up to 18.

So, we pass! We realize that some of this stuff might be worth something, and get 150 gp for it. If Mel had rolled 1 lower on her Knowledge (local) we would have gotten nothing at all.

Our chances were good! Just for funsies, on an average outcome (10s all round), we'd have gotten 26 Appraise and 28 Kn (local) for 675 gp. On the best possible outcome (double nat 20s for Hal with aid on both from Mel) we'd have raked in 1,175 gp.

Sigh. The dice are capricious gods.

I think it's reasonable to apply that 150 gp towards the fee for getting new (forged) papers and making some cosmetic changes so the ship isn't the Clydesdale any more.

Clydesdale becomes the Oydesdale

Perfect fix. Nobody will be able to tell the difference

"A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a –2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued."

I don't think that means Mel takes any penalty to int checks?

Oh, I thought it was one of those ones that basically applied a -2 to all d20 rolls. Add 50 gp to the total. Woo!

Hal has a bunch of buffs, if he knows he needs to use them. Just-woke-up-Hal is not that bright.

Y'know, I nearly bought an ability that lets you reroll nat 1s. Seemed too expensive for the utility...

Bought an ability?

There's a human racial feat I'd never thought was worth it. Three '1's in 6 rolls later I am considering I might have been wrong. On the other hand the spells he'd normally use to get rerolls aren't available, so I might be overreacting.

Defiant luck. I have a character with that feat since it was a pre-requisite for something else. It's not worth it. And it's so rudely restricted to one reroll a day. Forcing an enemy to reroll a confirmation roll too just ain't great.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like its worth a feat at all. Especially as if a reroll is wanted that badly, I'd rather dip into dual cursed oracle. Reroll for the PC, the entire party, and forced rerolls on the enemy.

Yeah the dual-cursed oracle's misfortune is way better. Or the cheapest option is to get a set of fate's shears, especially if you have the free hand for it and don't care a lot about getting staggered.

So, ship names.

Let's raise, consider and dismiss the obligatory "Boaty McBoatface."

There, got that out of the way.

If Mel is picking the name, she might go for "The Green Maiden" with a figurehead of, well, a green maiden with a flower wreathe.

If Melia is picking the name, it's going to be "The Spring Lamb" and the figure head will be a lamb's head with enormous sickeningly cute eyes.

I'll entertain other suggestions but bear in mind Hal and Mel are the only ones actually there.

Whatever could go wrong with a public naming campaign...

I'm all good either way. One consideration: if we do not want to have this 'wealth' we may consider transferring it to Brolin back home someday, so maybe a name to go with the sonder... :)

How about Boatmurdered?

It's a merchant ship right? Not a Corvette or fast sloop. So a less warlike name seems appropriate. Hmmmm.

It's a merchant schooner.

Somewhat embarrassingly I can't seem to find where I wrote down Hal's languages.
I was hoping to have him talk to Mel - is there a list of common (and uncommon) languages, or is it Pathfinder standard please @Brookside GM?

The languages listed under the campaign info tab would be your best guide there.

Hal: Your HP is 47/36? Is that with false life? Or are you listing max before current?

Try to remember to post under your aliases when you are in disguise. For example, I'm pretty sure Turion is speaking to Turick as Janus right now but I don't want to have ambiguity to deal with.

Also, this is your annual reminder not to look at spoilers with a ! unless you qualify. I don't do it that often but occasionally it's most fun to be uncertain IC and OOC about something.

It was from false life - I was waiting for memorisation to change the stay line... if it'll be a while I can change it now. Pretty sure False Life has lapsed by this point!

No rush. I just wanted to know in general. Can you display it at 11+36/36 in the future? That will be easier for me to make sure I know what's going on.

There's nothing in particular I'd like to do in Catlinshead.