I'm gonna try to get a post up soon. If I don't, I won't be home until 4.5 hours from now.
Do.we still have inspire courage?
No :o
Ary will head upstairs on her turn.
If the cultist that's not in the pit is down, Anevia will head upstairs, too.
If the upstairs leads onto the roof, Ary won't go outside.
ok :o thanks!
Yus, yus. Anevia will use her flat footed strike on the cultist if he's still up (that'll eat her last strike)
Not much going on before my turn, so I'll go ahead and put this here.
Oh, also, since I didn't expect to hit, I didn't choose:. Anevias sneak will lower AC.
I have to work by over again tonight. So... It'll be a while before I can post. Sorry.
no problem :)
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Summarize Isilme and I's strategy conversation on Roll20:
We want Sosiel to prepare:
4th - dismissal, holy smite
3rd - daylight
We want Cpt. Streigher to prepare prayer in a third-level slot.
We want 15 rangers to prepare handy grapnel, so that we can scale a tower or building just in case we have to.
We want to give two of our wands of entangle to our ranger corps - one to its leader and another to his best subordinate.
We want to distribute our potions of cure light wounds (33) and our potions of longstrider (17) among the party - at least some of them.
We want to trap the bridge leading south with spike stones during the day tomorrow. Ehren is responsible for that. The purpose is to slow down the approach of enemy reinforcements, as they left the riverbed trapped.
After we take Paradise Hill, we plan to set up the siege engines so that they target incoming roadways, and utilize entangle on incoming armies.
We plan to use the cavalry in the main interior portion of the hill and our infantry otherwise, and to do another PCs-fighting-the-boss thing on whomever is in charge.
We plan to scout tonight during the storm, with the benefit of resist energy to protect us from the acid rain. The goal of scouting is to determine the defenses and population of Paradise Hill. The scouts in question are Valaria and Ehren at least.
We plan to ring a gong on the north side of the city in the morning before we attack, to divert reinforcements temporarily in that direction while we take the Hill. We are still undecided on whose job this is. (My thought is to give a ranger with handy grapnel a potion of invisibility and have him hike out there in the night and do it in the morning before running like hell).
Our best guess for our 8 or 9 prisoners is to offer them the following choice: Give us the most useful information that you have and promise to leave Drezen forever, and we will let you go (into the hinterlands to the east). Otherwise, execution. Judiciously use Sense Motive and execute liars. We should compile a list of questions to ask to guide them.
How many cultists in the city? How many Templars versus Deskarans?
What are the overall defenses like?
What are the slaves like?
Where is Vhane? What allies does he have?
Where is Aponavicius?
I vote Tinybirb Ehren + Hydraulic Push on a gong if that's viable for 'BONGING' it. Earth Ehrenmental is also possible for just swimming through the walls up to the roof, then back down, but takes longer to return... by a lot.
I would actually suggest us dinging on the south or southwest side, because that's the side they'll expect us from. Then when they reroute troops towards us, they'll be forced to cross the area we trapped with spike stones.
West gong, not north. I think it might be better handled by Xanderghul with invis and beast shape. If we ring the north, the entire army will be marching straight towards us from the start, whereas west will cause south to go west, west to stay put, and north to go to paradise hill on the way to head west.
If not Xanderghul, definitely someone with a couple potions of invis and a potion of fly.
I noticed you can summon a specific outsider if you know their name. Normally that might no matter, but we do know the name of a celestial: Spot. Shelyn *can* summon archons if she wants, and with the name of one that has close ties to us we might actually get spot.
I think this is worth gambling 500gp on, and maybe even having him serve days per level. I am pretty sure we can get a good discount on having him help us take Drezen :o
That is an interesting proposal, assuming I can remember his real name and he doesn't try to gank me for abandoning him.
I just realized I'm not going in to work tomorrow so won't have Wi-Fi until I arrive in Germany. So... Please bot me for the next couple days. I have data but I can't handle gameplay posts on mobile.
Okay. When will you have access to wifi again?
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Sunday?
Actually, summoning Spot would be interesting in that Xanderghul has changed a lot. You joked about offering to become good, but with Spot, making the argument that you want his help because you value your allies and the lives entrusted to them, and that your life is on the line for something greater here, would likely go a long way to making him happy.
Also, I was thinking of putting the barding on Kule and leading the cavalry charge with him, and having Ary come along as well so we have someone capable of tanking whatever boss types we might encounter.
Then we could have Val dress up as a cultist along with someone wearing Arta's gear, joined by a squad of 40-50 crusader infantry dressed as cultists. They could arrive slightly ahead of our cavalry, sit off to the side and flank them once the cavalry punches through Paradise hill. Ehren could go along with the cultist-crusaders underground as support.
Then Hinagiku, Xanderghul, Spot, Anevia and the rest can go along with the main infantry forces and lead the charge into paradise hill after the cavalry breaks the enemy's ranks.
Dressing a squad as Cultists has a high probability of something going horrifically wrong, though. :O
We can always go without if we're worrying about the possibility of friendly fire.
We should also hash out where we're gonna unvail the Shantakenator, our giant skeletal shantak'o'doom.
Do we need to know Spot's given name, or do we need his true name? One's a lot more complicated than the other, obviously.
I don't know if subterfuge is really necessary, seeing as we already have the element of surprise. It's possible that we'll just catch them so off guard that we crush them with little incident. :P
Are we going to scout at all tonight?
As far as the shantak goes, asides from the fact that it'd be staggered, it could be a useful asset. I do think that a skeleton would ultimately be more useful though, what with the applicable DR and full range of movement (minus flying).
Yeah, I think giving up flying is worth it having full attacks. If we get flying, we can cast it on it for short-term air-combat, so that's not that bad. Plus on the ground it'll be a complete terror, especially if we buff it. Shame heroism doesn't work on undead :P
But, we're taking away its most favorite thing... dropping fools to their deaths :(
Yeah but with it staggered it's gonna be a lot less fun, will take multiple rounds!
I am a bit too brain dead to contribute to planning. But, I approve of scouting. Similarly, the plan suggested so war appears quite right.
I see no particular problems with the plan in general.
Apologies for not being around much, I've been sick the last day or two. Hope you're feeling okay Hinagiku.
... What do you guys think of Sacred Geometry (Ascendant Spell)? Or Echoing Spell? Cool exploit or cheating?
Doing it with Ascendant spell is totes cheating. The ability to cast -any- mythic spell at no cost is Super totes cheating.
Echoing, less so... but still pretty up there on rudeness. And only then because you could only really do it once per spell. But even still, doubling your number of spell slots seems... also no bueno.
As written, yeah, but my nerfs address that :P
That's definitely something that'd need to be nerfed. Being able to turn everything up to level 4 spells into mythic at-will, for free is just crazy. Doubling your spells-per-day is also absurdly powerful for a feat.
Also, I am not sure I like echoing spell. As written it says nothing about the level of the second spell. Is metamagic on it preserved? Does it have no metamagic? Can metamagic be applied to it? If so, being able to use echoing spell on the first cast, and quicken on the second allows you to double-cast the spell each round at half the cost. Since the second doesn't use a spell slot or count against spells per day, there's no indication a sorcerer can't jack it up with metamagic for free.
I was planning on doing Reach/Persistent anyway >.< those particular metamagics feel bad.
Side note: It's highly likely Arta would be able to cast stone shape after preparing spells if we leave her alive. :(
Were we planning on leaving her alive? :P
It's probably best to just execute her while she's still down for the count.
Yeah... she's too high risk, given that she's a caster. :(
How do we know that she is a caster?
But yeah, I agree, she probably highly dangerous.
We don't, but she -did- have scrolls on her person that point towards cleric or warpriest :o
Based on damage dice for her scythe, probably warpriest. :O
Wouldn't she have a stronger aura? It was faint.
At level 10 for a character without an aura it's still faint. So... hm.
Maybe she fell when she failed to die for Deskari? :O
The scrolls were on Hildifon. So was the spell component pouch. So, I am guessing he is some kind of wizard. Arta only had an armor, weapons, and a holy symbol (which could be worn by anyone, even non-casters).
Ah, I thought they were on her! Fair points. :P
That suggests that Hildifons is a little cleric/oracle/warpriest, though... or something else that's just good at faking it.
Ugh Paizo :o
Executing Arta is a must either way. I doubt she will provide us anything useful, and she's unlikely to be redeemable. She's not likely to be a caster though, as she would have been high enough level to unleash some fairly powerful cleric spells if she was (e.g. slay living).
On the topic of scouting, who did we want to go? We're not using the shantak yet, so maybe Val, Isilme and Ehren (in elemental form)? We get resist energy (acid) and head out carefully, scout the bridge and road leading to it, then head towards Paradise hill and scout it and the surrounding area carefully? Goals: Find where their troops have barracks, find where the slave pens are, try to figure out good places to set up our ambush.
In the meantime Xanderghul, Hinagiku and Ary start getting rested, and we get Markus to raise the shantak and recharge the wand of haste. We return from scouting and the rest of the group rests up.
In the morning before it's light, we have rangers and infantry begin sneaking out to take places in the houses alongside the bridge, and Ehren traps it with spike stones. Xanderghul gets into place at daybreak in the trees in the south. He conjures up the army and either rings the gong or I guess just gets them to ring the gong because they think the army is there :P
We wait for troops from Paradise Hill to reach the bridge (blue square) and when they get stuck due to spike stones, we attack, trapping them on the bridge and routing them. Archers focus on either flying things first, or those trapped on the bridge if nothing is flying. Cavalry punches through any stragglers at the intersection to the top, and pushes in towards the bridge, while the remaining infantry comes around from the north as well and watches for any possible flank attacks.
When Xanderghul is satsified with his illusions, he beast shapes, invis's and heads to join us, taking around-about way to avoid being spotted.
I set up the map on Roll 20 so that the measurement tool is to scale with the map.
You guys are coming up with some good plans. Whenever you're ready, you need to execute.
You need to decide who is going scouting tonight.
Xanderghul brought up interrogation, so if you want to do that someone has to actually go do that in character.
We should also search the tower top to bottom at our leisure. Perhaps Hinagiku who doesn't really need sleep should do so? :O
That'd be a good idea. There's also a few hours before scouting people are back, and it's still not too late in the evening. There'd be plenty of time for a few people to search thoroughly *and* interrogate before the night's over.
Also it occurs to me we should be ready to get Val flying if we end up with any significant flyers. Having one potion of fly on her + airwalk should be good.
Finally is anyone opposed to having Sosiel use a 4th level spell to try summoning Spot, assuming Xanderghul knows his real name? I think a Hound Archon could be pretty potent, and worst case we get a bard that can buff our infantry while Isilme is with the Cavalry.
P.S.: Equipping Kule with the barding of pleated light today and riding at the head of the cavalry to get some major debuffs going on those attacking us :p
I'm fine with going scouting, and I think the teams would be good. Xan, Hinagiku, and Ary could probably handle interrogations while we're out.
Yes, I was thinking of a similar plan to take out paradise hill troops. So, I think it's perfect. We should be able to take out a large portion of their troops. I was thinking that it might be good to have a backup plan if demons teleport to engage us. I mean, they are bound to discover that we are fighting on paradise hill and a bunch of brimorak might teleport and start wreaking havoc on our troops.
Also, I was thinking that having them drop the bridge would be a good thing. It would allow us to strand some of their troops on the southern side. We could do the same with our bridge. Then, citadel Drezen will be cut off from reinforcements.
It'll be up to our group to respond quickly to teleporting demons, especially brimoraks or other things that might be able to do serious damage to our forces.
Dropping the bridge is probably a good idea. i was thinking we might be able to get enough uses of stone shape, that with a bit of preparation, we could build a path across the broken northern bridge over which we could approach the citadel. On one of the eastern towers is broken down, so we could have the armies enter through there, instead of having to be at the front.
You need to leave somebody Good behind if you leave the interrogations to me, thus Hinagiku... however, I think I can probably do them correctly.
I have arrived in Germany, so am available to post again during the evenings here. I am, I believe, 6 hours ahead of you folks on the East coast. I'll be here a week, though when I go back to China (on the 18th) I'll have limited internet (only if I go to a local cafe) until the 26th. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
What spells do I need to have prepared tomorrow in order to help the plan? Feel free to take a look at my "spellbooks" tab in my profile if it helps. I will prepare whatever you think would be helpful and will otherwise simply prepare my usual stuff.
The plan is fine by me, though I’m still concerned that we’ll inevitably be fighting the enemy armies in a row.
How big are these bridges compared to the Ahari Bridge? Ehren lacked the engineering know how to repair that one, so I imagine the same would apply here.
As far as Spot goes, if we can feasibly get his assistance without paying a huge premium, then it sounds like a good course of action.
I don't doubt we'll wind up with a pretty hectic day of battle one way or another. But the riverbeds are heavily trapped, and if we keep spike stones on the bridge and catapults aimed, we should be able to do some serious damage to them if they are trying to come after us.
The map in Roll20 now has proper scaling set. The bridges are about 100' wide, but as far as the north bridge goes we don't need to "fix it", we just need a path across the riverbed that's safe for our troops to cross. There's plenty of ways we can approach that.
Xanderghul: I'll take a look at the spell lists and let ya know. Anyone else feel free to come up with suggestions too, of course.