Ha, I just sent a PM to baldwin thanking him for the avatar and now I found out that DM Bluedove did it.
Well, thanks to both of you; the pic looks great!
Fabian
Anxiously awaiting what happens to Ninefigners.
Ha, I just sent a PM to baldwin thanking him for the avatar and now I found out that DM Bluedove did it.
Well, thanks to both of you; the pic looks great!
Fabian
^_^ Not a problem, happy to help!
Ok, the time has come to talk about what nearly used up Terquem's "cranky points" the other day. I may need a save vs cranky horde of PCs after this. *hides behind desk*
When the Carrionettes pull off a successful needle attack to the back of the neck, they can magically confer their soul into the hosts' body. As per the module, there is no save for this, but it's generally not easy to do during normal combat. And now that the PC's have seen it happen twice, they should have an idea of what has done it.
I've argued with myself a lot about how to make it all work using Pathfinder rules and I've probably not done the best job. So it's up for discussion here now. If we run with the mods rules, Ninefingers will rise up in round 3, Carrionette-possessed and will join Nicu in aiding the Carrionettes in taking down the party. Some people really enjoy this turn-about and some want no part in controlling the now-evil character.
I'll try not to spoil the next chapter, but I will say that if every PC falls in this battle, it is NOT the end of the game and we proceed to my very favorite part of the adventure. But I don't want to steam-roll you guys if it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, so here are some options.
We could implement a DC 15 save for the needle attack to fight off the possession.
We ran it once using "Called Shot" rules which was meant to demonstrate the difficulty of hitting such a specific target(ie, base of the neck). But I don't think there's a Pathfinder equivalent... We could maybe discuss what methods would accurately depict how difficult this would be to score a successful hit and cobble something up.
Or we can just roll with the mod's original rules. What do you guys think?
*gives Baldwin her best Don't-Hate-Me-Because-I'm-Evil eyes*
I'm easy and flexible - I'm fine rolling with the module or if you want to give us a "save" that works to. I don't have any issue with being "possessed" and going with the flow, I enjoy the unexpected.
The only thing that I'd mention is that it appears we are nearly resource taxed based on the quantity of carrionettes (8). This being the second battle against these slippery little creatures. They aren't difficult to hit but they take a couple solid whacks before they are destroyed.
I think either the hitting the back of the neck part should be difficult or the PC should get a save.
How are you implementing 'hitting the back of the neck' now?
Paizo/Pathfinder did a good job in laying out a complete variant rule system to handle Called Shots like the needle attack, it's very detailed and fully explained in Ultimate Combat and listed in the PRD:
I had a little trouble determining how the monkey's needle attack would work with the appropriate Pathfinder rules. Right now the PC needs to be prone and/or unconscious to really be vulnerable to a normal Carrionette. (Artegal was both in the Theatre, and the bleeding thing critted on it's Coup de Grace attack, here's that post.)
But the Monkey Carrionettes are especially designed to deliver this attack, and I essentially combined the construct I'm using as the base for the carrionette with a standard monkey and extrapolated a +5 CMB for the grapple and added the bite attack (another +5). But I think I may have misunderstood the rules about how you add a natural attack to a held grapple.
I don't have Ultimate Combat, so I wasn't aware there were Called Shot rules. I think it looks like the Archers would get a -10 to the needle-to-the-neck attack, and I never intended for them to make that attack at range anyway. But the monkey clinging onto hair... seems to me it wouldn't be too difficult of a hit from that vantage. The text only cites "the base of the neck" as the necessary area to hit.
I will roll with the majority vote on how to deal with these attacks, and I can ret-con Ninefingers according to what we decide on. But tipping my hand just a wee bit, this encounter is written to include Maligno and he is NO normal carrionette and is waiting upstairs with yet more reinforcements. I left him out to give the party a semblance of a fighting chance, (really to give you guys the chance to kill more carrionettes and bank more xp) but the options, realistically, are run for your fleshly lives or go down fighting. The Carrionettes won't kill anyone, they want the meat-taxis.
And my very last lil hint: However hard it ends up being to lose your bodies will apply to getting them back as well... *Evil Grin*
Most creatures have some special ability, 'precise needle jabbage' could be their ability. I'm ok with the GM just creating the mechanic and we find out what that is though game play.
At one point i had every single 2nd edition ravenloft module. I only got to run a few of them. I vaguely remember this one, so getting to play in it is like re-reading a book i enjoyed as a kid but forgot most of the details of.
One of the things I remember most from every single one of those modules was that the designers consistanty confused difficulty with fear-inducing.
This was the days before CR, but there was still a basic outline of what encounters were appropriate for any given level. Ravenloft encounters consistently threw that whole concept out the window.
I have no problem at all with what is essentially a "no-save, now you're evil" ability. There are plenty of spells that do similar things (magic jar, dominate, etc)
The thing about these encounters that makes my inner-game-designer twitch is the combination of high AC, high HP and Damage Reduction. The only thing that I can think of that gets that are Fae, and they have an extremely well known weakness. Combining their toughness with a very damaging ranged attack that hits often because of their size and dex, and we have a fight that goes beyond challenging into potential TPK territory.
I'm enjoying the game, but these fights are brutal.
As an aside, my favorite Ravenloft module was a 15-18th level adventure called Thoughts of Darkness, which revolved around Vampiric Illithid.
At the time no one had ever seen that before. It came as a huge shock in the middle of the adventure when the party learned what it was dealing with. It was very well written, but the writers went completely off the deep end with the difficulty.
As if the entire idea of vampire mind-flayers wasn't bad enough, the whole land was essentially a deathtrap. One of the random encounters was a fully geared party of high level Drow Nobles, specifically geared to kill the party, who were encountered in magical darkness, during a giant lightning storm.
Oh, and at the very end, the party faces off against the Illithid master vampires, an entire army of controlled vampire spawn thralls and fracking Strahd Von Zarovitch himself, who was statted in that book as an 18th level Necromancer, 5th level Fighter, Master Vampire Darklord.
I've run it twice. Both times the only reason the party survived was because I flubbed a ton of rolls in their favor.
TL;DR, Ravenloft is mean as hell.
My thoughts on the whole puppet-neck-attack bit are a bit conflicted. In general, I feel like if there was no save, that's fine and seems appropriate, but it sounds like the ability was designed for if we were already helpless, yeah? Thus no save would make sense.
As far as the in combat thing is concerned, if there's no save, I'd say they need to do something appropriately difficult like hitting the called shot or pinning us before they can pull that off. Maybe make the called shot easier if they're already clinging to your back...?
EDIT: As a sidebar - holy crap, both Rannveig and Ylva rolled natural 1's on their attack. Ravenloft is mean.
Oh gosh, that reminds me of an Illithid Lich encounter in a Forgotten Realms Underdark campaign. *cringe*
But yeah, Ravenloft means to make you cry uncle, gnash your teeth in despair and all that. To be fair, some of the difficulty is due to mistakes in guesswork in converting the Carrionettes, but we shall persevere! I always felt like the fact that the puppets take the party captive rather than kill them helped to buffer Ravenloft's sting, at least a little bit.
The victim doesn't have to be helpless, that's another state where the attack has an auto-succeed. In combat, the Carrionettes use their paralyze attack and work together to bring an opponent down to their level, but ultimately it's about reach.
So it looks like everyone so far is good with the called shot rules. But I could still use some help figuring the proper procedure with the Monkey carrionettes... This attack below is the one that "got" Ninefingers. They have a +5 to CMB (but then you -2 for the size) and the bite is a +5 to attack as well. So assuming I assigned a tricky shot at -5, how would the attack work using the rules to add Damage to a maintained grapple?
Monkey Carrionette 3 M3 maintain hold on Ninefingers + Needle attack: 1d20 + 5 + 5 - 2 ⇒ (14) + 5 + 5 - 2 = 22
Give each of the carrionettes a special attack that let's them make a needle attack without the normal penalties for called shots, for each type of carrionette it could be a different attack, such as grapple for monkey or sneak attack for archer.
from the PRD, damage is one of the four options a character has when starting a round in a grapple, a CMB check still needs to be made to maintain the grapple and take one of the four options:
Damage: You can inflict damage to your target equal to your unarmed strike, a natural attack, or an attack made with armor spikes or a light or one-handed weapon. This damage can be either lethal or nonlethal.
In this case the monkey just needs to maintain the grapple with a CMB check, then it deals damage.
Grapple is tough already, and converting creatures will make it much harder because the feats and CR level can really change the numbers. I'd recommend finding creatures in B1, B2 and, B3 that roughly match the abilities of the creature you're converting and just use their stat block numbers for a creature that's meant to grapple at that CR level.
Eight CR1 creatures would be a CR7 encounter, something a 2nd level party likely won't survive. Of course by those same rules eight alley cats equal a CR3 encounter, so beware when putting out a bowl of milk!
I did exactly that. I'm using a CR 2 as the Carrionette base, and it's a very close match to the original Carrionette. But the paralyze and possession abilities were transplanted onto the CR 2 and I think we end up with at least a CR 3 as a result. I think I've balanced these carrionettes a bit better, but I'm still calling them a 3 when we divvy xp.
And that's the passage I read too about combining a damaging attack with the grapple, but I still don't understand what that means in terms of number crunch. Does it look like I rolled it correctly?
Is it 1d20 + CMB +5(bonus to maintain grapple) -2(size penalty) and if that beats the target's CMD the grapple is maintained and damage is done? How do we combine the rules for a Called Shot with that?
yep, that looks right, the CMB check is just to do one of the four options, it doesn't have to be auto damage, you could give the carrionettes a fifth option of 'needle attack' and then work out that mechanic, such as a touch attack at -5 to stick the needle into the neck (and it's a fine cinematic moment where the little wooden toys are jabbing away with needles while desperate adventures try to tear them off)
I'm out of the loop right now with my laptop...I had to do a complete computer recovery deleting my hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. So, I will need a few days to reinstall my programs and get running with my laptop.
I can still game some from my Surface but I don't have mapttools on that device, so I won't be able to doa map update.
Oh! I feel your pain. I'm still without my laptop... *cries*
I'm going to be out and about today so if we have an update, it'll be late. Still waiting on Rannveig/Ylva's actions.
I'm still without my laptop with maptools. I'm waiting on some Win 7 Pro recovery disks to arrive.
Hey guys, sorry I've been MIA. I've been feeling ill and trying to trudge through my finals. After today my schedule will clear up and I'll finish the update I've been working on tonight before I turn in.
hope you feel better soon.
Glurg. Totally my bad the last few days, it's been a stressful week. Anyway, here we go.
Uh oh, I finally posted and made the move for you. Sorry, didn't see this.
Thanks, I am feeling some better today. And my finals went well, so I expect the pace will improve quite a bit. Thanks for hanging in!
Whoop. And I got ninja'd in the other thread. I'll delete that.
I just got my laptop back on line but I need to download some programs like maptools still.
I'm working up the post to advance us to the next round, and I'll be making moves for Rann and Ylva, so give me a shout if you're about to make them yourself.
I'm here waiting to grapple someone. I take it Boote is also a possessed minion.
Yes, Artegal, Nicu and Luc are now on team Carrionette. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I've been controlling Artegal's possessed character. I had him suggest to possesed Luc to help him secure Olivia. According to game mechanics, can they work that so not-Artegal pins Olivia and not-Luc secures the rope? Or does it just work out as an aid another check? I left Ninefingers move vague as I wasn't sure what you were going for, you can go another way.
Edit: Gregorio is carrionette possessed too.
Aaaand I'm back. Sorry about that, guys, internet was basically entirely gone from my vacation spot. Thanks for taking my move for me, Bluedove, and also, nice narration on that.
Also, I believe she is out of uses of her shaman ability for the day, so breaking the grapple seems like the better idea.
This fight is pure hell...
This fight is pure hell...
It is exceptionally challenging.
Are you guys disheartened? Or disinterested, perhaps? Once you're beyond the hump of this battle, it will get better. But we have to power through to get there. =/
No, just trying to figure out how the heck we're going to make it out of this.
Still here, 5 rounds of combat in 19 days is pretty slow, we could just go with an initiative of 'party' and 'GM' for future encounters to keep things moving. It's kinda wonky and defeats feats and traits for initiative, but at this pace every encounter will take a month or more to complete.
That's pretty normal for complex PbP fights. I'm also an advocate of "party initiative", but it does suck to so badly nerf initiative bonuses, so I came up with a system for my games that maintains the benefit of initiative bonuses-
Block Initiative: This is an optional initiative system that speeds PbP games up a lot. It relies on one simple fundamental: All the enemies go at the same time.
The GM makes one initiative roll for all the bad guys, using whatever bonus they think is appropriate. For mixed groups, averaging the bonuses might work.
The players either go before the bad guys, or after them.
Higher initiative players get put in group A. Lower initiative players get put in Group B.
Initiative order then looks like this:
Group A
Baddies
Group B
Within a given group, players may act in whatever order they want. This means that for the most part, players don't need to wait for anyone else before posting. They can just post according to when they are able to.
No, just trying to figure out how the heck we're going to make it out of this.
You remember that you're not meant to make it out, right? I'm fighting this battle with one hand tied behind my back. If you kill all of this first wave of Carrionettes, it will be a nice bank of xp for you as we move forward in the game, but I will (eventually) just pull out my other proverbial hand. ^_^
I'm trying to pick up the pace, I promise. If you want to move to an alternate initiative system in the future, I'm up for it.
I know we're supposed to go down, but I don't plan on making it easy for you. :)
I like Donovan's block initiative system, and lump in NPCs with the bad guys.
I know we're supposed to go down, but I don't plan on making it easy for you. :)
What he said. =P
At the moment, I think I'm still being grappled by Gregorio? If that's the case, then I'll be struggling to get out, but I didn't want to post until I was sure. For reference, in case that is what's going down...
That seems like it will probably do the trick, and there's also Donovan's +2, if it applies.
Should probably have made that roll on the gameplay thread, but yes, that will break Gregorio's grapple.
Possessed Ninefingers is still here
Should probably have made that roll on the gameplay thread, but yes, that will break Gregorio's grapple.
Yeah, sorry about that. I just didn't want to disrupt the flow over there without knowing if my action was valid. Posted now.
I do believe breaking a grapple is a standard action. I should be stuck with just a move, which I won't be using.
EDIT: Actually...I think I lie. It's not exactly tactical, but I think Rannveig's using that move action to talk. Post in a minute.
First day of classes today, but I doubt much will change pace-wise. I'll still be making most of my updates in the evening-overnight period and I'll still be trying to get at least one update up daily.
Momentum is getting harder to maintain, and I'm concerned again that I'm losing you. I'll keep plodding along, though. I hope the next chapter will be more fun for everyone.
Baldwin, I've downloaded map tools, but I think it's over my head. Is it possible to load an image as the map layout? I need a tutorial, me thinks.
maptools has a nice tutorial, it really doesn't take that long to get proficient a good two day weekend playing with it will do it.
What I do with my COT game and my Rappan Athuk game that I DM is I snip and paste from the pdf's the screenshot of the map. I save that to my desktop, then move it into document folder on my C drive.
Then I open up my maptools and click on the File then scroll down to ADD Resource to Library and clink on it to open. clink on the folder icon and go to the far right and click on the browser to find the folder you just created with the copied snipped map. double click and the Maptools creates a path for importing the file. Click install and the folder appears in maptools for use. Then its just dragging it over as a background, I will stretch the map to make it fill more area (that is why it sometime looses image quality). Sometimes the grid doesn't quite match up but it's close enough and players really don't care much, they are so much happier with a map.
Also, the import resources has some preloaded tokens under the red token icon, make sure that you load those up....devin's night tokens are a must have.
What I do in my games is I have maptools constantly running and minimized. When I see what the player states as a move I make the change immediately, so I don't miss anything. This also lets me do frequent updates throughout the round. Personally, it feels more table top like that way and you'll get very good at using the program that way as opposed to only using it once in a while.
Dunjinni has some excellent user created art and objects that you can save using the above method to various folders. Search: "Bogie" when you get on Dunjinni and you will find some awesome already made maps. (There are others but that will get you started.) Make sure you download the user logo so folks get credit. You may find that you have to actually create only a few original maps.
Make sure you download the "Tokentool" from the maptools site. to create a token open the tokentool. Then rt. click on the an avatar, scroll to save image as, and save it on your desktop for easy manipulation. Drag the saved image to the token tool, select boarder and save. You'll need to create a file folder on your C drive to save the game tokens, then upload folder with all the tokens and mentioned above.
Here is something that is pretty neat. After you have uploaded various folders you want to use in maptools, for instance, perhaps you have the following folders that you have imported: Ravenloft PCs, RL NPCs, Taverns, and so forth. If you find add something to one of the folders that you've already imported, it will automatically be added to the maptool folder once your refresh. So if you have a new NPC you want to introduce just place it in the folder and it will appear in maptools.
Thanks, I think that will help me alot. ^_^
I'll leave the turn until tomorrow. My day wore me out, and I'm hoping I'll get some actions from the final three. Hate to DMNPC all of them... =/
Don't worry about losing me. I'm in for the long haul. As long as you're willing to run the game, I'll be in it.
^ What the man said.