GM Ladile's TL;DR: A Pathfinder Society Campaign

Game Master Lady Ladile

Yeah, just haven't updated the map token; will do that in a sec!

I really want to cast Shadow Trap. Things cast shadows in water, and often small fish hide in them beneath docks, ships, and flotsam. But the spell also says it prevents movement "as if its shadow were anchored to the terrain," assuming the normal usage on solid ground in 99+% of encounters. Its shadow wouldn't reach the seabed in these waters, but would the deeper water that the shadow does reach be able to restrain it, or would the spell simply have no effect as the dragon drags its shadow along?

^It's a moot point now but for future reference I'm going to stick with the interpretation that there needs to be some sort of solid object to anchor the target's shadow to, whether that's the ground, a building, a ship/airship, a big rock, etc.
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Happy 4th of July for those that celebrate, wherever you might be! And Happy Monday (or Tuesday, in some places) if you don't! Hope everyone's had/having a good one :)

Yeah, 4th of July was yesterday (here) :)

But Belated Fourth to those still living in the past.

A reminder that we also have three free found potions. Slipstream, Bear's Endurance and Invisibility. They won't be usable underwater, so should probably be taken before we go down to the ruins. I'd suggest anyone who needs a swim speed and had to buy a consumable for such a thing to use the slipstream potion (20 ft swim speed for 30 minutes, if no one wants it, Maria will use it instead of a 3 minute extract). One of our tanks that doesn't have a +2 belt of con should probably take the bear's strength (+4 Con for 3 minutes). No clue about invisibility, it could help anyone (invisible for 3 minutes).

Malachi is more glass cannon than tank. It takes a couple of spells to get his AC halfway decent and he relies on hitting very very hard.

Mal does have an ioun stone boosting his CON. The invisibility potion would be quite useful, either to get away in an emergency or more likely to set up a sneak attacking full attack.

Mal doesn't actually have a Swim speed unless he uses Wildshape to become an aquatic animal. Whilst giant octopus and bull shark are both decent forms to take, tentacled tengu will generally be more useful ;) (And I probably should have prepared a couple of Touch of the Sea spells).

Just be aware that invisibility does not function particularly well underwater.

The Grandfrogger is correct, though it does still do the most important thing, which is to negate AoO's.

Here is my vote/suggestion then as to potion allocation. All are taken before we jump into the water to swim down to the ruins.

Zithembe gets the Bear's Endurance to survive even better than normal.

Malarchy gets Invisibility and Slipstream, so he can go all 'glass cannon to the max' and also swim.

Maybe we should find out how far away the ruins are. :)

Zithembe hasn't responded to the Malachi conversation because I assume that he intentionally avoiding Zithembe hearing him (and his Perception is peanuts). Though, until the conversation with the undine is resolved, Zithembe wouldn't have responded even if he had heard.

Your GM appreciates both the willingness to RP your characters' less savory/endearing aspects without going overboard as well as the willingness to communicate with each other about it OOC :)

Nautical nit. It would be a  pinnace,  not a "lifeboat."

'rowboat :)'

'landing craft :)'

Your GM also appreciates your willingness to occasionally sass each other :)

Yay someone noticed!

Hopefully it was just received as a very light hearted sassin'

It brought a smile to my face to come up with those alternative options and I was trying to come up with more ways to say it that were also wrong this morning, chuckling to myself while drinking coffee.

Oh, noticed and absolutely received in the spirit it was intended! :)

TBH, I initially thought that it would correctly be called a "launch," but something struck me as wrong about that, too, until I looked it up. Launches are modern pinnaces with motors. Pinnaces were from the Age of Sail, which likely explains why no one knows the word any more.

"Landing craft" made me laugh.

I, too, made that post over morning coffee. At an outside table overlooking  Benchasiri Park (aka Queen's Park) in downtown Bangkok.

I'll be on vacation this Friday evening.

It will be a very busy vacation, as I have a job interview next week, and I'm moving home the week after.

I might be a few days without internet, but I guess I'll be back at the end of the month

Have a lovely holiday Hep, and good luck with the interview and house move!

Thankies! I'll try to be even more awesome than always. ;-)

Yes, have a good holiday, good luck with the move, and break a leg on the interview!

And if you happen to read this before you head out, any requests or guidance if I should need to bot you? :)

Do we need a Ride or Handle animal test?

So the spell says:

You summon a school of hippocampi (one plus one per 3 caster levels, to a maximum of six at 15th level) to serve as combat-trained mounts.

So what’s a combat-trained mount? According to the CRB:

Horses, ponies, and riding dogs can serve readily as combat steeds. Mounts that do not possess combat training (see the Handle Animal skill) are frightened by combat. If you don’t dismount, you must make a DC 20 Ride check each round as a move action to control such a mount. If you succeed, you can perform a standard action after the move action. If you fail, the move action becomes a full-round action, and you can’t do anything else until your next turn.

And then the Ride skill doesn’t give a DC for commanding a combat-trained mount to move (closest match I found was “to have the mount attack and take your own standard action as well”). Granted, there’s lots of other options for doing cool stuff while mounted, so we’d probably need to make Ride checks if we wanted to attempt any of those.

Anything you’d want us to be aware of @GM?

^Not at present. The scenario gives no specifics about the environmental conditions during this encounter (aside from being underwater in general) so as far as I'm concerned the water is currently calm and visibility is currently normal.

That was a nice suggestion spell wording. I enjoyed it.

As the group grows more powerful and combats more complex, I'm likely to start cutting back on letting combat round actions overlap (the whole Round 1/Round 2 thing) as following initiative order becomes potentially much more important. This also applies to special situations, such as this combat, where Other Things could happen at the top or bottom of a round that might inform subsequent PC actions. Of course I'll still try to group initiatives as much as I can (such as now, with 3 PCs acting at the top of the round and 3 acting at the bottom).

Hope this makes sense!

It totally does make sense! All good. :D

Oh, yeah, perfectly fine. I kind of assumed that you were doing it because something was gonna happen with the structure at the end of the rounds, but your explanation makes a lot of sense.

FWIW, I was in a game recently where the GM ran it exactly opposite. 6 villains, 5 heroes, and basically we alternated individually:

Big bad
Nixie1
Vanetta
Nizie5
Maldlethu
Doc Bloodshanks
Nixie2
Durg
Nixie3
Jiki
Nixie4

I bolded the villains so you can see it, but in PBP with each player posting once a day a single round took most of a week. I have to say that although I respect that GM, I thought he could have done it more efficiently but also (like you're doing) respecting the system.

Thanks for the explanation :)

Sometimes when I GM I want to have every monster on its own initiative roll and the dice can be awkward for PbP - but it can be better than having the problem of 8 vampire sorcerers all casting fireball at the party before anyone acts ;)

If nixies have charm abilities, your GM may have faced that problem and not wanted the prospect of of 5 or 6 charms hitting the party before the PCs act.

But by and large, I run block initiative just like Lady L does.

Yeah. Sometimes it us better to have an awkward initiative that takes a week to run through than all the NPCs going at once. Goblin mooks? I'll batch them. Basilisks? I give the dice a chance to break them up.

^Oh absolutely! One definitely has to consider each individual combat and the participants and adjust accordingly.

I hate to be the downer, but can the net even be thrown underwater?

Ranged Attacks Underwater: Thrown weapons are ineffective underwater, even when launched from land. Attacks with other ranged weapons take a –2 penalty on attack rolls for every 5 feet of water they pass through, in addition to the normal penalties for range.

www.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Underwater%20Combat&Category=Aquatic%20T errain

And even if it can be thrown, does Zithembe have a way to ignore the mirror images?

The Net Adept feat allows you to treat the net as a 10' reach melee weapon, but I don't know what ability Zithembe uses with the weapon. Something to do with his Medium class ;)

Ergh. Sadly, I'm not a high enough level to also get a combat feat with my exotic weapon proficiency. So possible outcomes I can imagine include 1) lesson learned and move on, 2) retcon drawing my actual weapon and attacking at melee (probably an AOO to get there), 3) swim adjacent (probably an AOO to get there) and melee attack with the net. Or something else. :)

^Feel free to retcon your action if you like, Zith. And if it makes you feel any better I had to do basically the same thing for the naga when I was writing that last post - I just happened to catch it before I'd actually posted the post >.>

In case folks haven't seen it yet, our Gameday XI convention has been officially announced! You can find all the deets here --> Gameday XI Announcement. Go forth and roll much dice!

The Grandfrogger does have a dispel magic prepared if folks want to delay until he can act again. No worries if not!

Looks like a good idea to me Grandfrogger!

The Grandfrogger does have a dispel magic prepared if folks want to delay until he can act again. No worries if not!

I also support this idea though Maria doesn't mechanically have to do anything to wait for The Grandfrogger to act. Great work on the ruins all!

I'm happy to delay for Grandfrogger's targeted dispel magic.

Heads Up:

I'll be leaving town on Friday for a week. I expect to be able to post at least once per day (probably in my evening time), but Saturday and next Friday are likely to be bereft of wi-fi.

No worries Zith & safe travels! :)

Not sure if anyone here is participating in GenCon or GenCon Online this weekend but if you are, I hope you have a grand time! Aside from Friday night I'll be off from work so I expect to more or less post here as usual, depending on how active you guys are :)

Yes, I'm playing in 6 Online games over the next 3 days. I put the PBP table that I'm running on pause until Monday, especially since one of the players is GMing all weekend at Indy, and we were about to go into combat. But I'll do my best to stay engaged here; I just didn't want to have to GM a combat.

There's a shabti boon on the GenCon charity auction. High bid is only at $15 now.
Charity auction
Bidding is by Google form; links to the bid forms are on the spreadsheet just below the sample image.

I got a very good friend who could use it for his meals-which are quite impressive. Do you have a Tyyger's spoon and a Tyyger's knife? No need for a Tyyger's plate, he hits mostly what he kills.

Tyyger sends his love!!!!! <3 <3

Work was busy last night and I'm beat! I'll try to move things along later this afternoon/evening, if circumstances are more favorable.

Hey folks, still here, just got bogged down in work busyness and such over the weekend. I'm off for the next week (yesterday through Tuesday night) so I should be posting a bit more regularly during that time. That said, I'm adopting a new kitten and go to pick him up later this afternoon so he might have me a little busy and distracted for a couple of days until he settles in :)

*edit* I'm also out of time to post this morning since I've got other errands to go do but I'll at least get your questions answered re: Knowledge checks later today!

New kitten! <3<3<3<3

I will be going to hospital with my daughter tomorrow. We may be in for a week, or we may be back home the same day. I think the hospital will have wi-fi, but my posting opportunities may be somewhat limited.

Please bot me as necessary.

@Malarchi hope everything will be fine for your daughter. Take care of her, it's more important than a game.

@Lady L: ANOTHER kitten? We want pics. ^^

@Lady L: ANOTHER kitten? We want pics. ^^

Replace the tokens for the wights with pics of your kittens. ;)

Replace the tokens for the wights with pics of your kittens. ;)

^^This!^^

Tyyger approves of new kittens! He just wants to lay on the living room floor in his Tiger form and have all the Lady's cats pile on top of his big fuzzy belly!

@Lady L: ANOTHER kitten? We want pics. ^^

Well, the other two aren't exactly kittens anymore but yes :)

Thankies for the kitten pics!

They are all adorable. It seems you aren't afraid of black cats..

Nope! My first kitten as a child was black (and lived to the ripe old age of 15) and I've had a soft spot for them ever since :)
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Things have finally settled down enough here with the kitten business that I should be able to focus on posting again! I'll get things started over in Gameplay shortly.