GM Burglar's 5-06: You Have What You Hold (Inactive)

Game Master mechaedd

Going to check out the two authors mentioned as well. One of my weaknesses is that I do not read much fantasy. Tolkein and a little bit of Pratchett's Discworld series is just about it.

A friend of mine recommended a book based in the Forgotten Realms world. But I read it in college - during the height of my snooty English Major days and felt it was beneath me. Yeah, I was one of 'those' guys.

George Martin, Joe Abercrombie, Glenn Cook... any other authors to recommend? I've got a 2-week winter break coming up and could always use some good reading.

I'll be honest, this "You guys have no Int caster? How will you ID things?" is pretty amusing from all sides, having been on each (though our Summoner did crank it up there around mid game, along with his UMD.)

But, yeah, books. Books sure are... words.

I have some ranks in Spellcraft, but not sure if someone needs to use detect magic on the stuff for Desmond to recognize that an item is magical.

Luisila has prepared Detect Magic and has a (pretty poor) 2 ranks in Spellcraft and +0 Int modifier.

I note we’ve got 4-5 strong fighter types (not to mention prisoners) and a boat.

I am firmly in the “if it *glows* magically we’re taking it with us” camp. It’s all going to be VC Smine’s anyway.

I am a fan of George Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. Some of his characters (the ones that stay alive, that is) are more interesting than others, but overall it’s very well done.

Kitchen/bunks: Someone used a greatsword to break in through the northern door! Now all the bugs will get in!

Laughed at this, Burglar.

Fortunately this is a pbp, as I don't feel my Michael Buffer imitation voice is up to par.

Do you think I said the word 'challenge' enough? :-)

You could have challenged yourself more, you know. Challenge her to a challenge of challenges.

… Like, cutting out a guy's tongue while keeping him alive secretly is kinda hard when every healer refuses to help you with such a task.

lol

It's only the Osirion mission that is a "please don't ask every peasant you meet; some of the Sages are trying to hide"

Ugh, I know what you mean. From the player’s side of thing I had no idea how the Osirion Faction Goal applied to the first Season 5 scenario I played.

The GM played it straight (as he should have) and I didn’t get it. I decided to chalk it up to experience and try to do better next time, but I can see some players getting upset about the ‘success condition’ not being better defined.

Osirion's had a mission with their faction goal in it? I know their 3-partner down the pipe is coming up (and I'm super grump about the fact 2 of them are 1-5s and Ernest is precisely 6th.)

It feels like their mission is one that'll be a "you gotta trust the GM to run ALL the dialogue", and wait for someone to actively mention a sage. A potential disaster for Convention play.

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Glass River Rescue had Osirion in it.

Reeeeally? Seems... forced...

I think everyone has played GRR?

Yes, there is an Osirion faction mission in Glass River Rescue.

GRR’s Osirion mission does seem tacked on to me. I’m thinking a purpose-built ‘Faction X’ scenario might make it a bit more obvious what to do – do you agree, Des?

I keep forgetting Ernest is Osirion. For some reason, I had him pegged as Cheliax with the Wand of Infernal Healing and after he went all Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the basement in Severing Ties.

Ernest’s verbosity and Eadie’s short temper together might be interesting … I’d say he will always be too far ahead of her in levels though.

EDIT: Double Ninja'd. Need to buy a Belt of Dexterity soon!

Had to Google who that was, being the kool kid who lives in the present and never looks back (especially since my short term memory is nearly nonexistent, do ho ho.)

Yeah, pretty much every Neutral character that can use one gets a IH wand. My Abadaran has one as well, quite vocally because of the the actual healing efficiency (though she has a clw stick from the time before the ISWG.)

Though I'm surprised anyone remembered Ernest's dip into sadness after Linnea gave more 'attention' to some else (Varg, maybe?) I know I completely forgot.

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I don't know. I'm a little lost on what to do for Sczarni here. After Wardstone, I learned that some force or another is planning something against Karela, so I think I'm supposed to find out who or what is behind it. It looks like I got a reaction at least out of Helkit, and now this mutual friend... trouble is afoot in the River Kingdoms.

Linnea didn't mean to be such a tease to poor Ernie. She's just a free spirit. A manic pixie dream girl...

I don't know. I'm a little lost on what to do for Sczarni here. After Wardstone, I learned that some force or another is planning something against Karela, so I think I'm supposed to find out who or what is behind it. It looks like I got a reaction at least out of Helkit, and now this mutual friend... trouble is afoot in the River Kingdoms.

I can safely say that the above statement is a benefit of playing stuff in order, which is not really something I'm too happy to notice for PFS purposes in the long run (though these "Missions per season" are gonna get messy regardless, unless they just ditch them at the end of the season and update the Secondary Condition Tracker Thing.)

Linnea didn't mean to be such a tease to poor Ernie. She's just a free spirit. A manic pixie dream girl...

Ha, no worries; his original schtick of "Over-informative egghead with no social skills but a lot of made-up stories from his grandfather" kind of stopped working when the most of the scenario happened;

That said, it gave Ernest a different (and more natural) direction to the point I almost considered writing "Letters to Lin" at the end of each scenario, letting her know what was going on. I scrapped the idea, given the modular existence of anything in PFS.

Burglar, assuming I understand correctly, I find it interesting how often you appear to roll the dice first, and then use the results to create (probably the right word?) the background details.

I tend to have a fairly rigid concept in mind and then try to adapt any stats/dice to fit the concept.

Hmm … Might be a newbie thing. Might be a control thing …

Linnea didn't mean to be such a tease to poor Ernie. She's just a free spirit. A manic pixie dream girl...

I know the trope you’re talking about, but I think the way you play Linnea makes her a LOT more three dimensional than that.

Because it's my favorite Christmas song

Burglar, assuming I understand correctly, I find it interesting how often you appear to roll the dice first, and then use the results to create (probably the right word?) the background details.

I tend to have a fairly rigid concept in mind and then try to adapt any stats/dice to fit the concept.

Hmm … Might be a newbie thing. Might be a control thing …

It's all preference. I usually have a general idea of what I want, but sometimes it's good to have all the tiny details filled out. That's what I believe those tables in Ultimate Campaign are for, if not only for "getting ideas."

It's largely a "I'm never sure what I really want in detail, just a general idea" kind of thing. And when that general idea has a lot of wiggle room and options, I tend to like too many options. Thus, dice help make decision for me.

I do not think she had eyes for me, Ernest. That kind of good-natured flirtation towards Varg usually only comes from the two vixens.

Re: Glass River Rescue Osirion mission

I don't think it's that contrived. The dwarf in question is described as an Osirion sand dwarf mystic and wears traditional Osirion clothing. That should perk up the ears of all the Osirion people to think Oh, I guess I should be friends with this guy and ask him about the Jeweled Sages. At least, that's what I thought when I GM'd and played it.

Excuse me, would you mind not making reasonable, factual observations when I’m b!tching about missing out on a boon, that I failed to obtain for reasons that were solely down to me?

:) :D

Has your Christmas break started yet, Endless?

Last two finals today at 12:30 and 5:00 eastern time. So close! Finished with inorganic chem on Monday and that was the only one I was worried about. Class averages on the exams have been low 60s and the best grade in the class was an 85. Ouch. But I think I survived, may have even pulled off a B.

Yeah, that's not long to wait now.

Crit 'em both for max damage, bud!

Christmas break? What is that? Lol.

Christmas break? What is that? Lol.

No kidding.

To be fair, I grew up on a farm so it's not so much a break as a change in atmosphere from the lab to the field.

Got a scary email from my research advisor this morning just titled "meeting" that asked me to come in and talk about applications and such. Turned out it was just because he told the addmissio office he wasn't taking on new students next year and I had put him down as an advisor so the addmissions people were saying, "hey, what's the deal?" He wrote them back and said to make an exception for me. IU is my backup though and he knows that so it's unlikely I'll stay here but that turned out MUCH better than I expected!

Oh, I hate those one-word-title emails from the overlords. I'm very happy things turned out well in this case.

Seriously. That is the best news ever. He's willing to shift funds around to take me on as a student when he wasn't anticipating to. . . AND HIS EMAIL JUST SAYS "MEETING", COME AND TALK TO ME ABOUT YOUR APPLICATION?! I mean, come on, that's sadistic. Lol!

I've changed Desmond's spell list in preparation for the arena fight, since we have a couple of days in-game before the big event.

Asuna Senko wrote:

Christmas break? What is that? Lol.

No kidding.

Having an atrocious memory, I 100% legitimately forgot Christmas Breaks existed (and my sister is home from Earlham on such a break, so that's a double-whammy "you're bad at remembering.")

Finally got a chance to reprepare my spells for the battle. There are pitifully few low level druid spells at 10 min/lev or greater but when I saw "riding on a rhino", I thought hide from animals might be a good one. I prepared it twice and can hit everyone (including Ilivan and Sahrek). It ends once you attack but hopefully it will help for the beginning. I wasn't sure what else to prepare other than longstrider.

Yeah, I've got longstrider prepared. If hide from animals proves to be effective, it will give me a chance to cast gravity bow on myself as well.

SYNERGY!

Baz is going for Blistering Invective. Hopefully a few catch on fire and we get "flashy" points.

Not many paladin spells last more than rounds or minutes.

Why is it that every year, I wait until the last minute to do my holiday shopping, finding myself among the seething masses of humanity???

Because you lead such a busy life, Baz!

Spouse, parent, employee, GM.

If you want to do all of those things well, it takes up a bit of time I reckon! ;)

Don't worry. I waited until last Wednesday too. I am terrible at picking out gifts. Unless it's passive aggressive gifts like last year when my sister's hillbilly boyfriend got her a shotgun so I got everyone else Nerf guns. My gift was a lot more fun.

Perhaps someone should say something to the crowd, like, we didn't challenge a lizard...is Hellkit worried and trying to wear us downs....

Not sure what check that'd be, but Baz probably shouldn't try it if it's Cha based.

That, I'd say, could be used as a description for Performance Combat (which I think I can give circumstance bonuses to for descriptions.)

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Ilivan only has 22 HP as a level 4 companion (but also has a 10 con-stupid hollow bones). Remember, as a ranger Desmond's companion is his level -3 (so only level 3 unless he took Boon Companion and it doesn't look that way.

Right, right; I've never actually played an Animal Companion character, and all my theorycraft ones either had Boon Companion or were full-progression. You're probably be right there.

AC companion HP are calculated as the average HP for their HD (which is 4.5 for a d8 because someone can't math). Level 3 companion with 3 HD = 3 * 45 = 13.5, rounded down to 13 + CON. Sahrek has a 15 Con so +6 from there for a total of 19 HP I think.

Huh, I thought ACs had d10 HD, hence my 5.5 thought with the 6 HD (7th level) first post. Forgot they just get 2 HD at 1st level. Oops, ha.

At least Raise Animal Companion isn't terribly expensive, if you want to bring him back.

Which, actually, I just realized I did the math wrong for Ilivan somehow. He should be at 18, not 22. I must have thought he had a 12 Con for some reason. Silly me, thinking birds actually had a Con bonus (he started out with a negative, I had to put an ability score increase to get it to 10, lol).

Sahrek had one extra Hp from the alternate favored class bonus from the APG. That's how he got to 20.

Easy-to-kill renewable class features are easy to kill

I know, right? In our RotRL game, we have a cat-using ranger who has a punch card with the local druid for Raise Animal Companion.

I'd like to note that later, when Sure Wild Shapes and is friendly to people, I'll technically consider him an "Animal" "Companion," do ho ho. Right now, though, you're still "People Morsels." Ilivan should totally enter melee, though, just sayin'. Shocrote is still looks hungry.

Gah, I don't know! I'm rethinking my whole strategy with Ilivan as a companion after how easily he died and how fragile he is. Sure will totally take the front line when he wild shapes at 6th but Ilivan will continue to be air support.

Speaking of which, I was thinking about retraining his Power Attack into something else. The druid AC section just says that animals can choose from the listed Animal Feats but doesn't specify whether they need to meet requirements (i.e. do you need to take Dodge>Mobility>Spring Attack or can you just take Spring Attack?). My hunch is that you have to meet the prerequisites but I wasn't sure.

Also: Flyby Attack isn't listed? So I'd have to take his Int up to 3 before I could take that? Lame.