GM Kiora's Wrath of the Righteous

Game Master Kiora Atua

The horns are certainly for short-distance warnings. It is the difference between fire alarms in individual apartments and the ones that go off for the entire building. The other locations wouldn't react to horns even if they heard them because they cannot afford to have their entire army running to one side of Drezen because of a native abyssal threat or somesuch. Granted if we allowed them to sit around blowing horns nonstop for an extended period it might attract attention, which could eventually set off the alarms. If we commando in, however, we stand a good chance of disabling most everything in a short period.

With a bit of bluff and diplomacy, I might be able to impersonate Arta enough to send away the Shantak as well. Doing so for a half day even would be beneficial in reducing the probability of the shantak warning someone else by flying away.

As far as the storm goes, I'm at a loss. Even if we took the tower tonight we would not have storage for the cavalry's horses or our wagons and siege equipment. Nor do I think we would even have time to unload the wagons. I honestly do not think it is possible for us to find cover for ~300 people ~100 horses, 10 wagons, two catapults and all our supplies--and that is assuming the storm just kills people and melts through organic stuff. If the storm melts stone and metal, the tower wouldn't even be a safe location.

The spoiler states that acid rain that can melt through metal is extremely rare (though possible, I suppose). You should assume your heavily armored soldiers are safe. Your lightly armored soldiers (clerics, ranged attacks) and particularly your civilians could be hurt, though.

While I am not gonna argue the ruling, in the real world it's not really believable that plate armor would do anything to keep acid away from the person even if it's immune. :P

But that still leaves the majority of our people, horses, wagons and siege engines that need to be covered by something sturdier than cloth or leather (and probably even wood). We also don't know if the acid will pool or create acidic mud which could render the area the camp unsafe for an extended period.

Can resist energy be cast upon objects? If so how big?

Resist energy only works on creatures.

Among other things, we're gonna need to secure Nurah's cage, somehow. :P

I'd be okay with it working on objects. I'd limit it to a contiguous object up to 10 cu. ft. + 1 cu. ft./ caster level.

Oh. Well, there's that. :P

Is there any way to guess at how long the storm will last?

Thanks to Xanderghul's planning, we have 7 web shelters and 7 resist energies for certain. I don't know if Sosiel or the other 5th level cleric ended up having any resist energy or web shelter. If so that'll change the calculus slightly. Web shelter can produce a 10' radius hemisphere max, but it's adjustable from 2.5-10'.

A web shelter could in theory fit ~50 people and 2 wagons with some creative packing (10'x5' for a wagon seems to be real-world dimensions). Tent guide suggests 20x20 tent can fit up to 100 people with theater seating densities (4 sq ft per person), so a hemisphere would probably be half that. 1" of 10' radius hemisphere web shelter is 52 cu. ft. If we propped it up on wagons, we could turn it into a roof that would instead hold (3.14*10^2/4) ~70 people. Since it's propped up, we could have people sitting on crates and stuff, so we could include a bunch of our supplies in that.

4 castings of resist energy could create a single web shelter which could survive all but the even the nastiest of acid storms (I doubt they are going to get above 10 damage at a time). All 7 castings could produce a 9' radius and 10' radius shelter. That would likely get us up to ~140 people.

If Ehren prepares a resist energy and uses a stone shape, he can produce a 15x15 stone canopy 1" thick that also has resist energy on it, assuming he uses place magic on both castings.

Alternatively we could use 1 resist energy from another cleric and ehren's second stone shape to extend the stone canopy to 15x26 @ 1" thick, and still get 2 9' radius hemispheres. which would get us up to ~220 people. How many people in heavy armor do we have? In theory the remainder could hang out under web shelters just in case the acid rain is not so bad.

This *still* doesn't cover horses, of which I assume we have 98+2x10 for a total of 118. Horses can be packed at a density of 14sq ft per horse, assuming 1250 lbs per horse, which means we need ~1500 sq ft of extra safe area to cover the horses.

How fast was our excavation when we dug up to the plateau? How many sq ft per minute can we clean out if Ehren digs up an area underneath the army that we cap with a resist-energy'd web shelter? Maybe we could excavate a large enough area for the entire army to be densely packed, not counting the siege engines and stuff? If we could do that, we could protect the siege engines and wagons probably with the stone shapes and one additional 9' web shelter roof.

Oh. Well, there's that. :P

Is there any way to guess at how long the storm will last?

1 hour on average, 3 hours at worst, using Ehren's knowledge check.

How fast was our excavation when we dug up to the plateau? How many sq ft per minute can we clean out if Ehren digs up an area underneath the army that we cap with a resist-energy'd web shelter? Maybe we could excavate a large enough area for the entire army to be densely packed, not counting the siege engines and stuff? If we could do that, we could protect the siege engines and wagons probably with the stone shapes and one additional 9' web shelter roof.

You can calculate that using the burrow speed assuming he can burrow away an area as large as 10 x 10 x 10' every 6 seconds with base burrow speed.

I'd be okay with badger-ehren digging a hole, but not a tunnel, through soft earth. A tunnel would collapse.

Digging isn't what takes the time, though. He can finish up more digging than we could excavate in a week before the storm hit. It's removing the tailings from digging. In theory if the tunnel needs supports, stone shape can provide that. Also how deep is it before bedrock?

1 hour on average, 3 hours at worst, using Ehren's knowledge check.

That renders everything I've calculated so far moot. We have 40 min of resist energy from the army clerics. If we have to plan for up to three hours, I am back to having nothing. The only option that *might* work would be tunneling, but we'd have to dig deep enough to be able to make an actual chamber, and that chamber would need to be roughly 60x60 to get people and horses in. The numbers I'm seeing for excavation would limit us to about 20x20 in an hour, which is a factor of 9 off of what we need.

Bedrock - around 5-10 feet deep.

I was confused as to why you say you have 40 minutes of RE because originally ALL of the clerics had RE prepared, but after Xanderghul's corrections now only 7 do. Sosiel has Protection from Energy, Briathos has Resist Energy.

Isilme asked me the dimensions of the watchtower, and the watchtower is 80' to a side. The gate-way leading to the portcullis intersects the towers and is 20' across.

The walls themselves are 20' tall and 15' thick.

Based on that, the gate is large enough that we could occupy it and protect pretty much all our s+#*.

I recommend we commando raid immediately. I also think we should consider using the acid rain storm as an opportunity (with resist energy) to travel to investigate the other towers perhaps. If we could sabotage the remaining towers' gongs, we would be in really good shape.

Even if all our soldiers don't fit inside the tower and gatehouse, they would fit inside of some of the surrounding buildings, some of which won't be occupied.

I'm not sure how much time it would take to return to the city. However, if we can't get back there then we just need to dig a hole for everyone to fit in and put a stone slab on top of it, right?

About 15-20 minutes for your army to get to the gate house on a hustle. You're fairly close by because you are using the surrounding dead forest as cover.

Oh - then let's go now!

We give ourselves a 10-minute head start (and then the army hustles to reach the gatehouse), we bring some of our beefier soldiers with us to take care of the mooks. We sneak in through the wall. Ehren lands on the roof to take care of the gong, maybe 2 people each head to open up the gate, and Ary coordinates with her soldiers to take out the mooks at the tower.

By "beefier soldiers" I mean we should take Irabeth, Annabelle, (Jorsal?), and the Underfolk

Irabeth, Annabelle, and the Underfolk all have darkvision and Jorsal is just too beefy to leave behind.

EDIT: If we're capitalizing on darkvision we can bring Lieutenant Mintreal Kost and Eveth Johnston as well.

I agree with bringing a group of beefier soldiers. A dozen would be good. I guess since we are trying not to waste time, maybe having Ehren invis to stone shape disable the gong and stone shape Arta into her office first? Then we move in and take the towers. Hopefully the thunder will give some cover for the spellcasting, and since he has natural shape he can do it as a tiny bird.

Since we know the golems don't go far from the doors, we can have a signal that we can send from the tower once it's safe to approach the gate.

You have that scroll of dancing lights still? We just have light patterns.

Why not just use yellow-green-red? Green means hustle forward, all clear. Yellow means threats remain, but move forward anyway. Red means full stop.

We could have Caelda Halse use daylight (very quickly, extinguishing it ASAP) when the army gets close enough to see the gatehouse.

The scroll would probably be plenty. The army will have scouts that can get close enough to watch for the sign, and with it being night and cloudy, it's unlikely they'll be spotted.

Just realized it's very difficult to pull off an android psychic, as you have to have at least 13 charisma to get the feat that lets you have emotions and without emotions you're a very poor psychic spellcaster. :(

Like... very, very poor. :(

Pick a discipline that bases its Phrenic Pool off of Charisma so the points aren't wasted?

Could play a dreamscarred press Psion instead :P

Well, you're already looking at at least 7 points of your point buy just to get to the feat. 10 points if you're playing a charisma-based psychic. But I don't wanna be a charisma psychic, especially not as an android! *poutyface*

*begins scheming as to which abilities don't need somatic components and thus don't need emotion components.*

We don't do point buy though XP There's no "waste of resources" with rolling, because if you roll well enough to get an extra 15 to throw into Charisma it doesn't really cost anything.

Early levels doesn't really hurt too much for having options. There's also logical spell to let me pick up other spells to cast a level lower... hmmm...

It also makes giant spell lists more manageable.

But also has the downside of making several spells (like my discipline spells) things I can never cast until way later... Hmmmmmmm.

I'm not really thinking of Kiora's game. So point buy/lucky rolls matter :(

Honestly, with just the first couple of levels, you have a perfectly manageable and capable spell list. Like, most of those second level spells are solid spells!

That could actually make the android theme even cooler. I'm digging it. It's just cantrips that really, really suck. And you don't really get to identify pretty much anything. But... solid overall.

Yeah, unless you dump some ability scores, taking the Empathy feat and the Self-Perfection discipline over Mindtech will be hard. I'd recommend dumping Strength if you go that route. That way, with a 20 point buy you can go with something like (before racial mods):

Str 7, Dex 14, Con 10, Int 15, Wis 14, Cha 15

Just make sure you don't carry anything too heavy. :P

My first psi-tech ability lets me add my Int mod to my Str for carrying capacity. :P

But... spending my feat and being bad at everything else is weighty. I'm also not one of those 'dump' players. To me, 10 feels dumped. :P

I'm not sure how I'd play without Empathy though. Emotion is such a driving factor in how I play. 'We're going to do this because it's the correct decision' is less fun than 'because it's the right decision'. :P

Yeah, dumping stats is very painful. Strength and Charisma generally aren't bad scores to dump though, provided your character doesn't need them.

I don't think that spending your feat on Empathy at level 1 is a bad call. Honestly, for a caster at that level, there aren't really any feats that will make you not "bad" at everything. :P

As far as emotions go... strictly speaking, I don't interpret androids as lacking emotion, at least not literally. Rather, they just have difficulty comprehending and expressing them, so they keep them all bottled up. That's how it is in Starfinder, at least. A good android might "do the right thing," but would likely do so without really understanding why. Or perhaps they just approach morality from a very logical, utilitarian angle. But yeah, Empathy arguably makes roleplaying one a lot easier (and is thematic for Iron Gods in general).

Yeah. Mostly I just wish that empathy wasn't a feat, but was instead a racial feature you could trade for. Because You pretty much lose half of constructed, lose the penalty for emotionless. But you also spend a feat... and have to buy up to 13 charisma on a -2 charisma race.

It's just -really- expensive, overall. I just feel like on virtually any other race it'd be just a tradeoff.

True, but Constructed is really, really good. Empathy arguably makes it better rather than worse. I feel like an alternate racial trait would have to trade out more than the feat does to make it even.

I feel like you hardly lose out of half of constructed:

You gain:
+4 on saves against:
- mind-affecting,
- paralysis,
- poison,
- stun

+You're not subject to to fatigue or exhaustion,

+You're immune to sleep effects and disease,

+You're immune to fear and emotion-based effects

-You can't gain morale bonuses

AND the Empathy feat gives you +4 to Sense Motive.

You lose 2 of 6 boni and also lose the 2 weaknesses of the android race.

Yeah, that's fair, Xander. Immunity to fatigue, exhaustion, sleep, and disease are nothing to scoff at.

Morale bonuses are really odd in pathfinder in my opinion, mostly due to bard. It's really interesting that a level 1 bloodraging android can already be rage cycling (or barbarian, but your stats aren't really built for it).

Yeah, that all makes sense overall. Maybe it'd require you to not get the bonus v. Mind-affecting?

It also doesn't remove one penalty: They're counted as both humanoids and constructs by favored enemy and the like. That's not significant, because favored enemy: Humanoid(Android) isn't going to be a common choice. But construct probably isn't even slightly rare in Numeria. But it's still probably less common than say 'human'.

But thanks to both of you :)

I have an additional possible solution to the shadow demon problem: Force Anchor. It requires a ranged touch attack, spell resistance and (due to shadow conjuration), a save... however, it prevents incorporeal creatures from phasing through objects.

That's definitely a nice choice. Keeping them from getting into the ground is going to be essential once we force Eustoyriax out of Sana.

There's also iron stake to fall back on. It has a few caveats (ranged touch, Fortitude save, allowing concentration checks), but it should affect a shadow demon just fine.

I think we should leave at least one or two with darkvision around in case something bad happens. We don't really have to expect it, but having someone at all that can deal with a single babau tossing darkness on them will be really helpful.

I don't think we should take everyone. No more than a dozen. There are roughly 50 cultists, and a dozen of our army + our group will way outclass them.

I just wanted to drop a quick line to explain why my posts have been so... short lately. And I do apologies for it.

As you know, I have returned to the town where I hold my current job. And, well, I have been having slight trouble adapting back to being far from my family and wife. It's nothing bad, but it's has been enough to decrease my ability to follow the game well enough to make adequate posts. I'll be doing my best to get back in the game in the coming weeks.

It's okay, hope things get better for you, Hinagiku :)

No worries Hinagiku, I know it's rough being away for work, and doubly so when you're there long term. Things'll get better!

You can do this, Daisy! Are you using Skype or the like to chat every now and then? You're still in pretty much the same time zones, yeah?

Thanks everyone!

Actually, I have been using whatsapp with my wife and simple telephone to keep in touch with everyone else. And yeah, 1h difference with my family and 5 hours difference with my wife (she's currently in the Netherlands)

I will be unavailable to post until late this evening, thanks!

Ouch. I hope that you're not getting to stressed out being that far away from everyone.

Good evening Kiora.

@Valaria: not stressed, but I have had a huge drop in motivation. It's something I can deal with, but I was not really expecting that. Last semester was fine, but someone this semester is different.