GM Mezegis The Begger's Pearl (Inactive)

Game Master Mezegis

Discussion Thread

Norine has been redone a bit, dropping Str and Dex and raising Int, which I think is more in keeping with her character as played.

I need to look at spells, I guess.

DOT. haven't leveled yet...

Any preferences for characters this time round? We're losing Mez but gaining... Dracothis perhaps?

Hmm. I haven't really inventoried the skill set. If we have Dietrich and Ebon, then we have the frontline fighters, but Mez had some good skills. We haven't had a rogue character. We also haven't had an electricity-breathing dragon, so that would be kinda cool, too.

I too am not 100% set on who I play. I thought about bringing Todric back. He's been re-built as a Lore Warden fighter - so good Int and knowledge skills with decent melee capabilities.

My rogue's tied up in a never-ending PBP. My first online PFS scenario that we started back in June!

I had thought of creating a monk - at first I thought of using Dietrich because he can still be re-trained and is on level with everyone else. But I do have another character with just one chronicle free.

Play what you want, I'll kill you either way... WUAHAHAHAHA!

*cough* Sorry bout that, don't know what came over me...

The group already has the key 3 with Ebon/Norine/Targost as far as fighter/cleric/spellcaster. That leaves everyone else to fill in with whatever they want. I'm actually not a fan of Lorewarden, because I feel you lose the flavor of a warrior and become akin to a ranger or rogue that focused on knowledge. I understand why people like it because you can play the "Smrt" fighter, but that is an RP choice. You already know my feelings on Monk.

Except rogues are crappy fighters and rangers have nature flavour and magic. Imo, Lore Warden is a great archetype that really does wonders for the fighter class. :)

My open characters are Calanthe (tiefling witch 2), Ellie (halfling gunslinger 2), and Liadain (aasimar bard 1). I've also got a gnome sorcerer idea in the back of my head.

I really like how you play Calanthe, after haivng GM'ed for her a few times. We don't have a ranged striker without Ellie, and I'd really like to see how you play a bard! So, I'm not much help in picking.

What I want to play, of course is a fighter/wizard/rogue/monk/cleric with 10 levels in each. He's incredibly charming but also hides a heart of gold beneath a crusty exterior.

He might also be an orphan.

I've got some work to do on Dracothis (haven't been keeping him up and need to level, etc.), but I do have a new character that I've been wanting to try out, if you folks will accept him. His name is Brandon Burrowarden, and, well, I'll let him introduce himself.

A halfling walks out onto the stage and waits while the microphone is adjusted to his height. "My name," he begins, "Is Burrowarden. Brandon Burrowarden. I catch criminals. No crime is too large or too small."

Play what you want, I'll kill you either way... WUAHAHAHAHA!

*cough* Sorry bout that, don't know what came over me...

It's all good Mez, I'm just waiting to add Malfeas to the Dalsine Death Toll.

Oooph. After I dropped out, I read an article about surviving 1st level in PFS and it mentioned staying away from scenarios with high death tolls, with its one specific mention being The Dalsine Affair.

I think I've been itching to try Tod most - he's got some knowledge skills that Norine hasn't and he's a decent stabber, so he can help out in multiple ways.

Power Attack works with a rapier wielded with Weapon Finesse, I hope?

I wouldn't have expected that it would but, reading the rules, it seems to. It is probably just uncommon to have a Str-damage feat (Power Attack) combined with it Dexterity-instead-of-Strength feat (Weapon Finesse).

Yeah, it's weird but I also found several posts indicating that it is legal, in addition to no rules against it.

Mechanically, it would allow my damage to scale a bit better and overcome some of the limitations of wielding only a single one-handed weapon.

It also allows me to take advantage of both agility (dex) and power (str) in combat.

Flavor-wise it's like saying that I'm nimble enough to hit weaker points in my enemy's defenses, but strong enough to really drive those blows home when I do hit.

If you qualify for Power Attack, there's nothing stopping you from using it with Weapon Finesse.

The problem is that you explicitly can't use a rapier two-handed so the biggest damage boost (3-for-1) isn't available.

Works well with Elven Curve Blade though.

The problem with the elven curve blade, though, is that it is exotic, so you would need a feat to be proficient with it, at least as a human character.

Stil waiting on Ebon to level up and he and Targost to check in. Feel free to RP in a random tavern if the game play if you wish.

Hi all,

I was looking through my scrolls, wands, prepared spells, and items, wondering what I should buy or do differently.

I have one scroll each of Purify Food & Drink, Read Magic, Comprehend Languages, Detect Evil, Detect Good, and Magic Weapon.

I also have a Wand of CLW and a Wand of Bless.

For spells, I have:
0 - Create Water (to cut down on water weights when traveling), Detect Magic, Guidance, Resistance
1 - Obscuring Mist, Protection from Evil (2), True Strike (D)

For items, smelling salts, antiplague (2), antitoxin (2), twitch tonic (2), and a Healer's Kit.

I was thinking about adding a scroll or two of Diagnose Disease and Remove Sickness.

Norine, go ahead and grab an alchemist's fire or an acid flask or two.

Very handy when you need them.

Thanks, Todric, I did grab one alchemist's fire. Maybe an alkali flask (for oozes) would be good, too. And a bandolier to make it all look good. (I'm getting pretty use to having an alchemist around, though. One of my groups had two, but this one has none, oddly.)

GM question for everyone. Am I supposed to keep things RAW and to the letter of the module, or can I do a bit of modding if I feel it is warrented and would help the game?

I ask because I'm reading up on the GM discussion for this, and I'm seeing GMs talking about adding things, intentionally not doing things, or otherwise changing how it's written.

Well, the guide says to RAW. That said, you do have leeway and room for improvisation.

For example: Don't add, subtract, or change monsters in an encounter. But you can go hard or soft on their tactics as needed.

You can add an occasional info-delivering NPC. In one game I had one of my PC's be a point of contact.

I sometimes fudge skill checks - like if the PC's are within 1 of the DC I often give it to them. But I like cinematic and heroic flavor, not just hard-numbers results. Some players ask to make a check that isn't called for, and I try to give them a reasonable response as if it were.

Make flavor tweaks as needed. Sometimes the order information is presented, especially in early seasons, doesn't make sense. You could allow the team to discover something at a different point in time if it makes more sense.

That's just my interpretation, but the goal is to try to stick to the script as closely as you can while giving players leeway to be creative and have fun.

OK, so I don't HAVE to cast that maximized, empowered, quickened fireball out of improved invisibility if I don't want to. That's good to know.

Exactly! An sometimes picking on a hard target instead of a soft one is OK, even if killing the caster makes more sense to the BBEG's ultimate survival.

I suppose it's a good thing no one has killed off any of my characters or all the the NPC's might have an inate hatred of certain characters. Though, I do think I owe WhtKnt a bit for Mez spending an entire scenario in his underwear.

:) But I'm sure that the ladies enjoyed it.

No offense to the Gnome or Halfling, but Mez like his women medium sized :D

You can also change tactics and such with changing situations. Like with the God's Market Gamble, we went really off the script. It would be silly (and bad gaming, IMO), to force things to fit that don't, or to not allow alternate things that should work. So, in one instance, in one of my games I used the RAW to give a Planes check DC for recognizing an imp, but I allowed a higher Arcana DC check, acknowledging that spellcasters familiar with familiars would possibly know about imps. It seemed reasonable to everyone at the table, at least.

Sometimes, too, the not-so-great tactics of the bad guys are built into the CR, as I understand it, so playing it smarter is actually making it harder than the writer intended. That said, I have played it harder or easier - sometimes unintentionally since I'm not the best strategist.

(I also never do coup de graces in battle, either. That just leaves everyone with a bad taste in their mouths, even though it is in the rules.)

Finally, you will have to add in somethings at sometimes, like when the players ask the names of someone not specified in the scenario, although that is a trivial example. With my Frostfur captives, I'm proactively giving names and personalities to each of my goblins (or, trying to...), as others have done. I wish I could change a few mechanics, giving them different abilities and such, but oh well.

(Sorry if that is all useless blather: it's been a useless blather kind of day.)

Just to chime in with some examples from my games...

- I allowed a character with Profession (Cook) to substitute that skill instead of Diplomacy to influence a character who was noted to be incredibly greedy and loved food in his write-up.

- I gave characters who went out of their way to search around a random area early a locket featuring an image of two twin girls to hint more at a plot point that would come later in the scenario.

- I've completely made up locales and personalities that the PCs go to and are interested in but the module is vague on.

- A GM allowed me to substitute Use Magic Device instead of Sleight of Hand when my character was trying to make a multi-part magical device work (at a higher DC)

- A GM allowed me to use a creative solution to get a faction mission completed - rather than being stealthy and sneaking a book into a library with Sleight of Hand, my character borrowed a book and took it to a book binder to have the cover replaced with the one my faction wanted slipped secretly into the library.

I disagree with Derek on allowing for checks to succeed if they're 1 off - I think it's a bit of a slippery slope and I think characters should have the chance to fail anyway! - but I do look extra hard for chances to give circumstance bonuses (ingenious ideas, good roleplaying, etc) in the case that they are just 1 off.

The key things you cannot change are the overall plot and the bad guys general mechanisms, although you have some leeway to adapt their tactics as the battle goes by. I suggest against soft-balling combat too much, at least at first - players tend to appreciate a tough combat that makes them sweat much more than a pushover that's dead in two rounds! If things seem to be swinging against the characters too much then you can make the enemy's tactical decisions a little poorer, though.

Still - I don't like the feeling that there's 0 chance for failure.

One really odd part I was discussing with another GM is that while they have a hard and fast rule against changing 'mechanics' in the PFS scenarios, the same scenario would be presented in most cases to 4 brand-new level 1 characters with character-driven builds who's players just sat down with each other for the first time, to 6 (or even 7) almost-third level characters with optimized builds who know all of each others tactics and were even designed from step 1 to be a team. (I guess at some point in the development of the scenarios they decided to modify things a bit for bigger or smaller parties, at least. I'm not sure at what point that was.)

I would agree with Alice about the circumstance bonuses and other role-playing alternatives.

Regarding difficulty, the most memorable battles for me have been the ones where we all almost died but didn't. On the other hand, having even a 5% chance that a character dies permanently per combat means less than 5% of characters will make it to level 6. (I think the math, given 4 combats per scenario, three scenarios per level, and 5 levels, would be .95^60). Reducing the chance of death to 2% per encounter brings the survival to 6th level up to just under 30%.

This is especially harsh given that death in PFS (or similar remove-from-play fate) means starting over at 1st, while in most home games I would guess you would come in with a new character at or just below the group level. (That would seem a good new option for PFS: When a character dies, you get to make a new character 1 or 2 levels below, starting with some slightly below average amount of gold.)

Well, given a few levels raise dead is pretty cheap. That's why most players keep a reservoir of PP just in case of death.

Also - yes, a big problem with PFS is the fact that you have varying degrees of character competence. I make good characters, but typically not overly optimised, and I have no problem taking flavour based feats from time to time - but my characters do have some problems with Season 4 scenarios where they buffed the power level to account for powergaming. And yet I tend to get bored in Season 0-1 games because they're just so easy; back when I first started I actually played up on a couple of modules with absolutely no problems, and that was just using PF Core material!

I wish we had some ability to chuck in a few more mooks on the fly or something. Because you can't trust people to not be stupidly optimised and ruin everyone else's fun by soloing an encounter.

OK, Alice, now this is just between you and me, but here's what you do: 'accidentally' throw Tier 4-5 at the Tier 1-2 players now and then. ;-)

(I've heard of it happening as true accidents. I imagine such mistakes happen a lot as GMs around regular tables juggle all of the different source pages, monsters, rules, etc.)

OKie I'm leveled and ready to go.
Barb1/ Cleric of Gorum1
XD
Spent some cash on a breastplate, and 2 Pp on a CLW

Norine: Hah, nice idea. ;P

I sort of feel like playing Calanthe, so I might run with her!

Sent Targost a PM to see if he'll be joining us. Either way, I'll be posting the intro tonight, so make sure you're all updated and ready to go.

Sorry..I am here...just waiting for my chronical to level up. I was not getting any updates on the old game thread for some reason...thanks for PM-ing me!! It like Mists all over again..coming in late.....
Will get Targost leveled asap...

That reminds me, I don't think I got my chronicle yet either, and while WhtKnt should have my email address from the RoW game, if anyone needs it it's:

Mezegis (at) Gmail (dot) com

Super difficult I know!

I got mine; maybe it's in your junk box?

Hmm, it's there now. Wasn't marked as unread, so I was glossing over it. Must have happened when my daughter plays with my iphone and like to push random buttons. She's sent texts, called grandma, played games, and now apparently checked my emails...

Crazy 2 year olds!

Better than calling 911. My son did that twice at a year, once from a cell phone and once from the landline.

Most of the times, these long journeys are a few lines and a hand wave, but should we be planning on outfitting the expedition?

I was working on a rough plan with six mules, 10 days feed each (mostly grazing), 25 days trail rations (water provided by me or Ebon), bedrolls and winter blankets, winter outfits, iron pots for food and water for the mules, 2 large tents, a shovel, miner's pick, block and tackle, folding ladder, hammer and 30 pitons, etc. (For simplicity, I wasn't worrying about duplicating what people already have.) It keeps each mule ('pony') at just under heavy load (>200 lbs.), with actually about 50 lbs. left.

Total cost at this point: 296 gp.

Might be good to add in a Common-Dwarf dictionary (50 gp).

PS-Maybe the Society will pay for this part, if it is normally hand-waved. ;-)

Well Targost would certainly chip in for these supplies. Maybe even a few CLW potions as well, for group use if needed. He has not actually purchased much with his Pathfinder money...he was looking in to a wand, but anything good is still out of his reach!

A Wand of Infernal Healing is a good 2 PP purchase for a Wiz/Sor since it heals up to 10 points instead of the 5.5 points average of a CLW wand. It's slower acting, at 1 HP per round, but efficient for healing people up after the battle.

Although it isn't much damage, I would suggest a Wand of MM since then you will always have something effective to do even from the back row.

Of course, a Wand of Shield and/or Wand of Mage Armor are also good for self-preservation.

(Much of Norine's wealth is going into medicines and other expendables, it seems. :-\)

So, Norine is going to buy a mapmaker's kit (10) and a chronicler's kit (40), for expedition flavor.

So, if everyone bought their own cold-weather outfit, winter blanket, and bedroll, it would total 53.83 gp per person.

Google Drive file Pearl Expedition.

Now I feel properly geeky!

Efficient so long as you don't mind being healed by devil's blood. :P

(I actually refuse to buy wands of IH on most of my characters because they are good aligned. Also because it's dumb that a wizard spell is better at healing than a cleric spell. I might buy it on Calanthe though... because it makes sense for her to use her own blood to heal you!)

Will wait and see what the answer to Ebon's question is before I think too deeply on travelling supplies.

Outfit away, but I do plan on handling the journey with a hand wave eque post.

Hmm? So, wait, we don't have to worry about the mountain journey (and subsequent equipping), or we do? :S

RP wise, feel free to prepare for the journey as you see fit.

Mechanically, there are no encounters prior to your destination, so your preparations will not impact the overall scenario.

I just didn't want to whisk the group off on a month long overland trek without giving everyone time to prepare and ask any further questions. It seems that people are ready, so I'll update the game as work allows, or tonight at the latest.

Sorry for the slow posting. My father-in-law is in the hospital with heart issues. possibly doing surgery tomorrow, so I spent the afternoon with my wife before she drove 8 hours to Springfield.