I'm not ready to commit to it, but I'm definitely considering continuing the campaign if you two are interested.
I love playing Thren. It's great to play a generally carefree pirate. So definitely willing to continue.
As for things to wrap up, I never managed to stir up too many entanglements. It feels like Caulky is on safe path, I'd like to make sure that is secure.
New Spells Memorized:
Witch Spells Prepared (CL 8th; concentration +14)
4th—summon monster IV (3)
3rd—fly, haste, lightning bolt (2, DC 18)
2nd—hold person (2, DC 17), molten orb[ACG] (2)
1st—frostbite[UM], mage armor, nauseating dart[ACG] (2, DC 16), ray of enfeeblement (2, DC 16)
0 (at will)—detect magic, read magic, stabilize, touch of fatigue (DC 15)
This is one of those situations where as GM I don't know if I should say anything or not.
Suffice to say you guys are doing your best to find the absolutely most convoluted and upside-down way to get into this building. I tried to look up on forums how other GMs and parties did this, and there is absolutely no one who has attempted anything other than the most obvious and direct routes in (trick the way through with the password, or full frontal assault).
I am delighted you are attempting to be creative.
However of course you are forcing me to try to figure out answers to questions the AP has nearly no guidance for. And I am only so capable of GM creativity.
So if anything fails to make sense or goes bizarrely amok, that's on y'all. ;)
By all means, carry on. I'm fascinated to see how this will turn out.
And as always I am up for whatever as long as there are absolutely no discussions of door hinges.
I plan to keep door hinge conversations to 'is the door still on its hinges', if even that.
Here's my thought process:
There's two squishy PCs, a familiar, and a cohort. Thren has had nothing but bad days with mighty muscular monsters. Even piratey muscle is more than she wants to deal with. We're here for the spy, not the hired help. It's a reasonable assumption that the spy will live/sleep on the top floor of the building, so that intruders have to run a gauntlet.
Yeah, squishy, I'd rather not.
So this is all about trying to get into the building as quietly as possible and catch the spy without fighting the mooks who will likely hurt us a lot, expending far more resources than we can afford to use. We're not a full party, we can't put this in the hands of the die roller that much. So I want to try to just cut straight to the boss to maximize our chances of success. I ask a a lot I know :-)
I'm not criticizing your desire to protect yourself. I'm just asking for your forbearance as I try to adapt. Mainly all of this is just a sign that its time for me to stop gming, I just really struggle with this kind I'd thing. But since this is the very last dungeon crawl we are playing through, may as well make it balls to the wall insane as possible! :D
Here I'd hoped to make it as easy on you as possible by cutting down on the number of encounters you'd have to deal with ;)
I'm not criticizing your desire to protect yourself. I'm just asking for your forbearance as I try to adapt. Mainly all of this is just a sign that its time for me to stop gming, I just really struggle with this kind I'd thing. But since this is the very last dungeon crawl we are playing through, may as well make it balls to the wall insane as possible! :D
Well, thanks for sticking with it. I'm honestly expecting disaster here, and an ignominious but not watery death.
Sorry for the delay folks, went camping and had a busier Sunday and Monday than expected, and am still researching how to run certain pieces of this. Will post today, either later this AM or, more likely, tonight.
I think we can safely say we can throw out most of this section of the book given our rather unorthodox entry methods :)
It's more that there are some mechanics involved I need more familiarity with and didn't realize that until I started looking at certain stats.
Ah, the fun of alchemists. They're very good at going nova, and as a boss, that's what bosses do. I expect to get blown to bits.
I'll summon something with scent to help find zero in on the invisible bomber.
Gonna need it!
For that matter, blindsense or blindsight is gonna be more useful. Giant bat maybe?
Will post tomorrow some time. A tree nearly fell on me today (I am fine, my car is mostly fine) so I am taking some me time.
Ugh! Street tree I assume? Around the corner from your place?
Not the trees you are thinking of, although the city still has yet to remove some of the ones that desperately need to be.
No, I was driving to a friend's, and right after I turned onto their street, I saw a tree's branches waving wildly and I realized it was about to fall. I slammed on my brakes and the tree fell right in front of me. Top branches pinned in the front end of my car, but no major impact and I was completely uninjured. City came and cut the branches and I was able to drive away with a slight dent in the hood. Counting every goddamn blessing I have because damn that was scary.
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In other news, I counted 29+9 damage to Sandara=38 HP. Her previous heal should have healed her back to full, so she should be at the Neon Sign state, not unconscious, dying, or dead. Is there something I am missing?
Note the door took 8 hp of splash damage after hardness. That should not hurt Sandara.
Eta: I am missing something. Point blank shot. So that's 2 more points of damage, to -1 HP. Still not seeing how you are getting to -8.
Me being bad at editing when uncaffeinated. It must not have taken my revisions, grr. Sorry about that. Let's go with 'ouch', one round KO.
I think it did take your edit, but I didn't see them when I posted.
And yes, ouch. I generally try to avoid attacking companions/cohorts/allies first, but both blocking a possible escape route and healing were both tactical concerns the Big Bad needed to address.
This is also basically the final battle of the whole campaign effectively for my purposes, so while I hope for the best for all of you, I am going to do my best to not pull punches.
Final battle of the campaign should be tough. Too bad we left the rest of the part on Brightglass chasing mummies so it's 2 PCs, a familiar and a cohort. Now, 2 PCs and a familiiar :-P Since this is someone with 11 or 12 alchemist levels based on that bomb damage, won't take long to nuke us!
Post will be up tomorrow, thank you for your patience.
No problem. Gives me more time to write the last will and testament and all. Probably in Infernal :-)
I also would like you to remember you both have hero points and this is definitely the time to make use of them.
If you are entirely out, take 1 for the ridiculously insane and ballsy attempt to enter via chimney and actually thinking that was going to keep you out of trouble--fantastic idea that obviously the dev didn't even consider enough, but perhaps not accounting for certain factors.
I've got 2 so I'm good on that end. I keep enough to survive a fatal experience once. Which from experience is a good idea for anybody.
If you are entirely out, take 1 for the ridiculously insane and ballsy attempt to enter via chimney and actually thinking that was going to keep you out of trouble--fantastic idea that obviously the dev didn't even consider enough, but perhaps not accounting for certain factors.
Never thought it would keep us trouble-free. But we're APL 7. We're squishy. Thren's AC and damage have both barely moved if at all in 3 levels. The idea is not to grind thru guards who would wear us out before the boss, who is already single-handedly winning this fight (if albeit slowly, though so far we've taken far more damage than we've dished out).
Also: Thren avoid trouble? Since when? I'm not sure that's actually possible. It'd probably take protection from three gods just to start lol
Who says you had to fight the guards at all?
In other news, I don't have time to post my combat post yet, but I did put the basement level on the screen so we have Taniwha in position.
Right now, the guards are saying we'll have to fight them. Unless the door hinges stop them, which I deem unlikely :)
I was hoping to grapple the alchemist with a dire ape and let the bats keep the guards busy. Casting the summon while I was in a position to get bombed was risky and didn’t pay off.
Maybe Then can convince the guards that more folks are coming and they should choose between getting caught and killing us?
If we can grapple the bomber she can’t bomb us. Bats should have a good shot at that with Thren’s buffs.
That kind of persuasion takes a full minute I believe, as it's Diplomacy/Intimidate type stuff. I'd had the same thought. Glad you thought to try to grapple her too. If she keeps blasting us we won't win this; her average damage is 24 points, which a direct hit with a little luck will drop you. I can take a couple of those, but so far I've been almost completely unable to harm her. Who knows what will happen when the guards get inside?
Edit: Diplomacy can't work in combat or with creatures that intend you harm, thought so. So no talking the guards out of anything.
Oh no. You can't talk the guards down now. Sorry if I sounded misleading. The opportunity for peaceful solutions to this scene are long past.
But this is extremely entertaining, and believe it or not, circumstances are much better for you than the bad guys.
Kahuranga, I'd get Taniwha to run like Chell if I were you.
Kahuranga, I'd get Taniwha to run like Chell if I were you.
Right? I'm going to laugh myself to death is Sandara, Thren, and K die ignominiously here in the spy hold. Cut to epilogue: A tiny dragon spreads the evidence of the spy ring before Tessa Fairwind. Finally, she has proof. Tidepool dragon becomes Free Captain of the Shackles! Well, at least he has a jaunty hat to look the part.
Pretty much what I'm thinking. Zarskia's too tough for us, blows us all up, but Taniwha inherits the ship!
Pulling the question about using "two standard actions" to "rapid-cast" a full-round action spell like Summon Monster:
I'm wrestling with how things as written versus as-intended work.
A full-round action spell takes a full round (6 seconds) to cast, so the spell effect begins at the top of your next turn before you act. The option to start it one round as a standard and finish it with another standard the next with a second action gives you the advantage of also taking move actions in both rounds, but the tradeoff is that the spell doesn't complete until halfway through your turn rather than at the beginning of it (it takes even longer to cast). Further the description of the spell itself indicates that it is essentially engaging with the spell components that takes a round. Can you speed up burning a candle/incanting/gesturing with a hero point? Is that less sensible than anything else you can do with a hero point?
I expect the developers did not intend you to be able to use hero points to rapid-cast a full-round spell. Likely if they had they'd have enumerated that as its own possible use of a hero point.
At the same time, the bonus standard attack is in its own way I believe intended to be more powerful than being able to do something as a full-round action. For example, if you can attack twice at your highest BAB, that is better than making a full attack (where iterative strikes are at your BAB -5 etc.). If you can do that with a hero point, shouldn't casting a long spell quicker be possible? OTOH I think there are restrictions on casting more than one spell per round regardless of being possibly able to... which is not what you are trying to do, but indicates the devs really don't want spells to happen quicker than they say on the tin no matter what.
And it's also the end of the game, and I'd rather not slow things down unnecessarily over agonizing over RAW vs RAI when we should be in the middle of a climax. And it's your pair of hero points. If you want to spend then on this than, for example, on a possibly-life-saving reroll for yourself or Taniwha... it's up to you. You know what you need for your character.
How about this, which seems to me fair for how the developers generally want spells to work, but also lets you overcome the key hurdle you are trying to overcome (I think) so you can have your hero moment:
The hero point boosts your spellcasting acumen, allowing you to incant the spell faster, but it still takes the round for the creature to arrive from another plane. What this means is the summoned monster still won't show up till your next turn, BUT you can't be interrupted casting it and won't be forced a concentration check, etc. Does that work?
Sorry. This week for me is going about as well as this encounter is for K and T.
Ugh. Hope it can still shape up at the end on all counts.
1st: Sorry for not posting in Taniwha's alias this round.
2nd: as it is Zarskia's turn, feel free to kill T or K as is dictated by the antagonists' motivations. If one or more of me must die a fiery death, I shall consider it well earned.
Hope this week gets better than the last, SuperT.
I'll post Zarskia's post probably this evening. And yes, since this is pretty much our final battle, I'm a) taking off the kid gloves, and b) roleplaying an intelligent villain who has a specific goal in this scene, and is going to do all she can to achieve that goal. I do not delight in any harm that may be done... and the die roller also always has its own opinions about what should happen next... and hope whatever does happen can make for a fitting finale.
This is the first time in my life that I noticed that you're supposed to apply a penalty equal to your negative HP vs your stabilize check. I don't think we've ever done that. This doesn't seem like a good time to start, so I am fine with Taniwha rolling his normal check.
This said, if you prefer sticking to the rules as written, Taniwha has a +1 to Con I believe, so his actual penalty should have been -8. Given what he rolled that doesn't help much but FYI.
Just a reminder that the fog cloud itself also provides concealment, 20% if 5 feet away and 50 if further away, and you lose line of sight past 5 feet as well. Despite the hindrances, this is ultimately probably good for the rest of you.
Happy Thanksgiving all. I expect to be slow as I first spend time with my dad and then early next week have a quick getaway.
Same to you :)
Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you have a safe, restful, and restorative time.
On the road, will post this evening or tomorrow morning.
Hope it's been a good trip!
Thank you! Had a nice time despite ongoing sinus crud trying to get in the way of things. Plus came home with a bunch of chocolate so that's always a bonus.
You still with us K?
SuperT's usually busy on weekends, and it's probably a busy time of year as it's end of semester. (IIRC he's a teacher.)
No worries. Just making sure he saw we've posted. And he posted back. December's busy for lots of us :)