GM EDDV's Ire of the Storm

Game Master eddv

Go ahead and check in here, copy/pasting over your recruitment thread info

Those of you with fresh level 1s free to modify your build and the like

I am gonna give some time for everyone to get themselves all finalized before pressing on to begin the game

Antal rides in on muleback, cloaked, with hood protecting his eyes from a torrential downpour. His pack is lashed behind him with rough rope linked to meticulously packed saddlebags. He bristles with weapons sized for him specifically; sharp points visible and also dripping with water. Empty map cases, climbing gear, and large clay urns hang from the side of the animal.

Lightning flashes!

The halfling's eyes are observant beneath the brim of his hood, and clean white teeth appear in a brief grin within a bearded face. He guides the mule carefully through the rocky, muddy path.

"Hello all!" he says, a deep voice for a small frame. His voice echoes somehow across the discussion thread, into letters on a digital page.

Character: Antal Strongheart
PFS#: 28901-10 CORE
Faction: Scarab Sages

Character Concept: A halfling ranger with divided loyalty, to the scarab sages and to the church of Irori. A seeker of knowledge, history, and treasure. Antal would like to remain neutral, but against his better judgement he will side with the colonists and become involved in their conflict.

Build Notes
Since this is a fresh level 1, I have some opportunity to update my build to better aid the party. Please let me know any ways to improve the setup.

In terms of build choices, I was thinking purely based on the module description that humanoid reptilian would be a good choice for favored enemy. I will also plan on picking up tracking via survival and aided by the ranger boost.

Unless provided by traits, I do not have any disable device but am otherwise geared for exploring ruins.

Language-wise, I chose Vudrani only as a nod to my origin in Jalmeray, searching for tombs in the Segang Jungle. If it would work better for the campaign, I could choose something a little more local.

Whether you want to switch it or not is up to you, but as a point of information, the 'common' tongue down here is actually Polyglot.

As for whether or not you want to cover the traps, that's entirely up to you whether you want to devote any of your build to that. It's a thing that can be helpful, but isn't necessarily required by any stretch

I will say you were primarily chosen because youre a melee build which will help this caster-heavy party.

Ok, I will likely leave the traps part out for the moment. I will continue to focus on melee, as you say. That should give me plenty to do! I certainly appreciate the opportunity to play.

Hmm.. if I had a spare skill point I would put it into linguistics to reflect some time studying the language and preparing to travel to the colony. I'll give that some thought. I like where the rest of the skill points are presently.

Looking forward to meeting the rest of you.

I’ve been known to spring a lock or two... hiccup

A tall blond woman in wearing a tricorn hat, and a fancy purple coat walks into the room, "Sharing the rum is required." she tells Xanko with a mischievous smile. "It's an offering to Cayden you see."

Recruitment Thread Information

Vera is a human Cleric of Cayden Cailean. She's a sailor, and a healing cleric. She grew up near Riddleport, and has been working on different ships for the several years.

Character: Vera Darkone
PFS#: 110249-18
Faction (if applicable): Liberty's Edge
CORE or CLASSIC: Core

Character: Arisira (F Halfling Bard)
PFS#: 273096-5
Faction (if applicable): Exchange
CORE or CLASSIC: Core
Character Concept: Bard/Archer, personality is playful/sarcastic/optimistic.

She is currently in a game that is DRAGGING. I would hope that it would finish up soon, but- geeze- is it painful to the point that it might fall apart, even though we have already beat the BBEG.

I also hope the party fit wasn't purely on the hope of damage output because I think you might be disappointed with a halfing wielding a shortbow!

I am really excited about the game. I think I am going to rework her backstory to fit a little better into the story line/setting. Is there a time that you want everything settled by? I am also in a fair number of games right now, two of which are speed runs. In an effort of fairness to this group, I won't be replacing games as they fall off- to make sure you guys are getting the best of my time and RP.

All said and done, I am looking forward to building a longterm group dynamic and story arc! I really appreciate the opportunity GM Eddv!

I wasn't going to add any more games, but this recruitment came up and I couldn't pass up trying for it. Eddv is a great GM.

I'm very excited to be in a long term game with you all.

I also hope the party fit wasn't purely on the hope of damage output because I think you might be disappointed with a halfing wielding a shortbow!

Well, I am a halfling planning on two-handed melee fighting! You're in good company.

I wasn't going to add any more games, but this recruitment came up and I couldn't pass up trying for it. Eddv is a great GM.

I feel like I am going to be playing with great players! I hope the group dynamic will be excellent and we can do some great storytelling together.

You were selected for those fabulous SKILLS Arsira, the bard list complements the ranger list well, so I thought it sounded like a good fit.

I also think I have the introductory hook worked out but.... I want to make sure everyone is checked in and settled first. I'll want to move things forward a bit tomorrow around the time I did the selection.

The game will begin with something of a roleplaying section so you'll have some time to tinker even after that if you'd like, I will post when I want things locked in.

As for hooks, this being the situation it is where we are using a module, your characters do not HAVE to begin as members of the Pathfinder Society but since a few of you are using established characters there are basically going to be two hooks.

Pathfinders
Colonists

Colonists
The entire idea of this module is that a number of new colonists are moving to Pridon's Hearth, a new settlement further to the south than previous Sargavan cities, which is just now being established. Your character would then be one of them. You could be taking this opportunity to go there for any number of reasons. You could be poor and from Eleder looking to pursue your fortune or perhaps you have a criminal past. If you go this route, I would like for you to flesh out your character's motivation for moving to an upstart little colony like this and what they hope to get out of the experience.

Pathfinders
For our Pathfinders, you are agents that were sent to work with Venture-Captain Finze-Bellaugh immediately after your confirmations and he has sent you to Pridon's Hearth to try and establish an outpost that the Society can work out of as this is a section of the Kaava lands that has been previously untouched and thus may have new discoveries to be made. Your mission is to establish good relations with the authority in this town and give the Society an edge in getting established before the Aspis come in and try to lock it down like they do most settlements on Garundi. You can have a specific reason for wanting to work out of Sargava or this can simply be a job to you.

Thanks again for being able to join! I will need tomorrow to finalize the character and will post then! :-)

Xanko is a Cayden follower and even looks like him, so people say, I think he will fall in love Vera in short order.

"That it is M'Lady.... that it is..." Xanko says as he takes a swig of Vera's rum and offers her his flask of Brandy. "The gnome kind... very tasty..."

Character: Xanko Rhenee
PFS#: 114768-47
Faction (if applicable):Exchange
CORE or CLASSIC: CORE
Character Concept: Fighter that is a swashbuckler theme- would take the duelist PrC. Care free, noble irritating, fighter with swagger. Light on his feet and light with his fingers. Xanko is often called the Varisian Cayden Cailen due to the similar looks. However he has an irritating and abrasive personality. He is a dandy of a swordsman and hails from the Varisian barge folk, who are known to be less reputable than others.
Useful SkillsDisable Device.

I like the pathfinder society angle. Please let me know if the approach below fits. In this case I would have been sent to meet Venture-Captain Finze-Bellaugh as described above.

Antal was working out of Niswan in Jalmeray, exploring some of the safer edges of the Segang jungle and picking through ruins.

He picked up a lead that the scarab sages were looking for rangers to head to the colony, and it seemed like a simple job. For this reason, Antal is now working for the PATHFINDER SOCIETY.

His masters at the TEMPLE OF IRORI had a mission that would start in Sargava at Pridon's Hearth. For them, the acquisition of knowledge and the covert thwarting of treasure hunters is requested. He is to report back often, and take discretionary action.

What conflict could there be, serving two masters?

I am going to do some character reworking today. Nothing major, but just shifting around skill points, and potentially changing traits. At this point, she is primarily built to be the face and not a knowledge/skill build (although her skills are pretty decent). I don't see anyone else with face skills, so I'll keep that as her primary function.

Useful Skills: Face, knowledges (Local, all considered "trained"), UMD

this is CORE correct?

Useful Skills: Face, knowledges (Local, all considered "trained"), UMD

I've sunk some points into the following: (8/level with favored class and intelligence applied)

I'm flexible about placements to fill in gaps for the party. I'm assuming we will be a bit low magic for a while and the "movement" skills plus survival and stealth will be pretty useful for exploring.

Unfortunately I had to shave a few points off of Charisma to make up for the halfling strength penalty.

this is CORE correct?

I hope so! Everyone else seems to be so far as well from what I can tell.

Thanks Antal. That is very helpful!

6/Level
Diplomacy
Know (Arcana)
Know (Local)
Perception
Perform
UMD

Level two gets versatile performance (SM and Diplomacy rolled off my perform) so Diplomacy will shift over into bluff.

Xanko has disable device +7, Perception +2, Survival +5, Swim +4 and Dance -1 (Cayden wants us to drink and dance and Xanko is a bad dancer, but he will dance, plus he needs it to get into duelist PrC). Xanko will always add a rank into DD, but he wont be able to detect traps or do anything about magical ones.

Dumb question for core - do whetstones still function the same way (allowing for sharpening weapons?). Even though the description doesn't appear until UE the price and name for the item is the same as in the core book.

Thats an excellent question - my gut says that as a GM I was always free to reward whetstone use in such a way but that RAW the answer would be no.

Also yes this game is Core

Vera will go with Colonist. She's between ships at the moment, and needs to make some coin. Being a colonist sounds interesting to her. She thinks that setting up a home base sounds good. It might be time to settle down for a while.

Thats an excellent question - my gut says that as a GM I was always free to reward whetstone use in such a way but that RAW the answer would be no.

Roger that. Will use whetstone for funsies only.

I may tinker *very slightly* (read: a lot) but Antal is basically finished. Please feel free to review and let me know any feedback.

I have assumed that "Harmony" the mule is trained in advance, if you don't mind. Tricks are listed in stats. I do have some handle animal, though clearly not a ton. If I had to train a brand new animal again it would definitely take a while.

Vera has skills in:
Heal
Know Religion
Profession Sailor
Spellcraft

So far I have:

Pathfinder:
Arisira
Antal
(presumably) Mak'da
(presumably) Xanko

Colonist:
Vera
(presumably) Shen

Does that look about right?

@Antal - By description, mules probably only begin with the Come, Work, and Down tricks.

I will allow you to have any tricks you can take 10 to teach it, so in your case none unless you buy like....a masterwork animal training tool for 50 GP in which case that opens up

Otherwise you will have to roll (just like you technically do in PFS), but fortunately you do have a week on the boat that you can use for this and there will be downtime.

@Antal - By description, mules probably only begin with the Come, Work, and Down tricks.

I will allow you to have any tricks you can take 10 to teach it, so in your case none unless you buy like....a masterwork animal training tool for 50 GP in which case that opens up

Oof. 50gp, that's robbery!

I like it that it'll be some work to get harmony up to par. I'll adjust the tricks back to come, work, down and go from there. I will definitely spend the week on the boat to make the roll for a new trick to be determined - just let me know later when that happens after the roleplay proceeds.

I don't often play with pack animals. This is kind of a new experience, and hope it doesn't bog things down. If you are not a fan, let me know. I realize PbP has lots of challenges already for GMs.

You can go ahead and make the roll while you describe what you spend your time on while ship-board. Since this only takes 3 hours per day, that still leaves you with plenty of time to socialize and the like.

I've done so. Looks like the check succeeded, hooray!

Because your post had so much content in it (which is awesome), I struggled a bit with whether I needed to address every point in it up front and describe my entire week. As a result, I've written the outline of my plan and can dive into real-time as needed. Hope that was what you intended.

That was pretty much what I had intended - simply to lay out the scene and let you engage with it as you wished (if at all).

I plan to sort of go into real time once everyone has posted what they intend to do.

Character: Shen Hawaah
PFS#: 314670-6
Faction (if applicable): Scarab Sages
CORE or CLASSIC: CORE
Character Concept: Elf, Wizard 1

Hello, everybody! I built the character now and the profile is attached. Shen has the following skills:
• Knowledge (Arcana) +8
• Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +9
• Knowledge (Nature) +8
• Knowledge (Religion) +8
• Linguistics +8
• Spellcraft +8/+10

For now my posts should sort of remain on the dense side because there is so much material to cover. Would you all prefer that I use spoiler tags, or is the open format I used for these last two posts okay?

I will give an opportunity to continue roleplaying on the ship, which will be more fast and loose now, but I do plan to advance the time in a day or two.

I am also going on a trip for work (Washington DC) next week. I should still have plenty of posting time, I am just informing you that it may change the timing of my posts.

I like the current open format just fine! There is a fair amount to draw on.

For my part, I am attempting to use leave-offs as options for you or others to hook onto. I am new to this, so let me know what you think is working well (can send a PM also if you wish to offer especially soul-crushing advice).

This is a new character for me, and a new type of character for me. The chance to roleplay is refreshing as I explore what he wants as a means to create good dialogue.

I really like the open format that you currently have. The number of NPCs is really great and also the characters that the players created our intriguing.

I would like to post properly but I am on a little weekend vacation. Therefore, please excuse my lack of posts until Monday.

This is the first time that I am playing a character that is not really open and a a little arrogant. I will try my best to not go on your nerves ;-)

I wish you all a great weekend.

Open format is great

Open format is fine with me. Like it seems with everyone else- this is my first "face" character. It is going to be a learning experience for everyone!

Update on the other game that Arisira is in (I know, I know, I am breaking the PFS rules). There has been no forward movement on the story for 3 weeks, and no GM post for almost 4 days. Since the BBEG is already beat (we did things out of order on accident) I think I can reasonably ask for my chronicle and then move on. GM: Please let me know when this is going to transition from RP to "Your character needs to be set by pathfinder rules" so I can cut ties with the old game should I still need to.

Well the good news is we are technically in campaign mode rather than PFS mode until we finish Ire of Storm. So you do jave until we finish this module to get that squared away.

That said I will want your character finalized by the time the ship lands in Pridons Hearth.

Don't worry about that. I have my final character already finished- just can't update my profile/header until the other game finishes. I can email you a character sheet until that happens though.

That brings up a good question, will Arisira be able to pop back into CORE PFS when she is done? (The answer doesn't change anything. I am really looking forward to a long running, consistent player module!)

By the way, I love the image in the handout, showing the jungle surroundings with a building down by the edge of the water! Hopefully there are more images coming as we progress (I always enjoy seeing the art that is created for these modules and APs).

@Arisira: Are you playing in a classic game now? You can go from Core to Classic/Standard, but you can't go back to Core from Classic/Standard.

Where can you tell if a character is core or standard besides seeing your own personal character list. Is this something you can tell about other characters or games?

For the record, I hope that Arisira is still core!

@Arisira: Are you playing in a classic game now? You can go from Core to Classic/Standard, but you can't go back to Core from Classic/Standard.

Arisira has always been core. What I have never done is a module with a PFS character. All the modules I have done up until now have been stand alone.

@Arisira: We get a chronicle for the module, with PFS credit for it.
Players who play through one of the sanctioned segments of the module receive the respective Chronicle sheet. Each Chronicle sheet gives 3 XP and 4 Prestige Points. I believe the fourth chronicle sheet for playing through the entire thing gets us 3 more XP.

@Antal: When you register your character you should choose core. The system checks to see if you are registered as a core character or not. I've had a couple of games where people had issues with core characters being registered in games that showed up as standard. I'm not sure how it got fixed. I believe Customer Service got involved.

@Antal: When you register your character you should choose core. The system checks to see if you are registered as a core character or not. I've had a couple of games where people had issues with core characters being registered in games that showed up as standard. I'm not sure how it got fixed. I believe Customer Service got involved.

Yes, Antal is core. I had just wondered if there was a way on reading a character sheet to see CORE somewhere listed.

Wanted to raise the question of mules and swimming. Is it not possible after teaching the mule to heel (follow me into places it wouldn't normally go) that I can get it to swim to shore? Or are we basically talking shark infested waters.

The description of the longboat ferry was that it was through some shallows.

Not trying to interrupt the action, I just didn't have a chance to raise this as a possibility since we moved the action directly from the boat to dry land.

Dont worry about it friend.

Made an error on my point buy, here are my updated stats

I've bumped up constitution to 14, as I had forgotten to take into account the hafling bonus to charisma previously.

I am not sure how the loans/building/housing stuff works, especially with PFS- so I will probably require a little direction about what is or isn't possible.

I imagine that, in light of recent developments, Xanko would pitch in if our central space/lodge would also be a tavern... Lets build one of those!

it better be a nice tavern.

Well, since we're a bit in campaign mode maybe we can draw on ultimate campaign a little bit? We're running core, but the building guide in there includes room descriptions and costs and isn't really character mechanics.

This all depends what the GM plans naturally.

From what I can gather so far, if we were to use "building rules" under downtime in UC the following would be my recommendation for the pathfinder lodge/bar.

We can obviously work out in game, in character or follow a different approach.

Spending Limits: Hamlet? 4 capital/day - this falls under "acquiring capital". Maybe that doesn't matter if the town will give us a loan and we can start building.
Rooms: Bunks, Bar, Common Room

Bunks: 7 goods, 4 influence, 7 labor (400gp); Time: 24 days, size 16-24 squares
Bar: 6 goods, 1 influence, 5 labor (250gp); Time: 16 days, size 10-20 squares
Common Room: 7 goods, 8 labor (300gp); Time: 16 days, size 10-30 squares

I feel like this would fall under Xando's definition of a pretty nice tavern!

I like this. Maybe add a kitchen?

Thanks for doing that leg work- i haven’t delved very much into the UC kingdom builder stuff. I guess that’s what I get for only playing PFS