[GM Striker's The Ruins of Azlant] Table 2

Game Master JankInTheTank

at the shipwreck

"I'm not good at hid..."

Stealth: 1d20 - 4 ⇒ (1) - 4 = -3

Boy ARE you.

It seems Alyn decided best procedure was to start a magical fireworks show to conceal among the storm :)

Nothing on the knowledge local check? Wanting to make sure she is a human.

Nice oddball.

I am really looking forward for the GM's description of human female lore :)

We are in danger to stall the game here deciding how to proceed.

Let's agree on this direct questions to try move us forward:

Do you want to trigger the combat before crossing?

If not, do you want to try jumping with the rope, or swimming with the rope?

We get ambushed if someone slips while crossing them the chuul has the advantage. We take the fight to it now we have the advantage. Lara and Lolito can enter from their side but won’t have water breathing.

Lolito's Ki Metabolism allows him to hold breath 14 hours.

If you are ok I will go ahead and trigger the combat jumping into the water.

Let those that want to buff cast spell first then jump in.

Kragg will cast water breathing on himself, Thame, and Alyn.

Sounds good.

Ok, I will wait for Kragg to cast the breathing spell so everyone is ready to face an attack while swimming to the other side.

Maybe the chuul is just hunting downriver after all :)

surely. I'm sure everything is perfectly safe here

surely. I'm sure everything is perfectly safe here

The typical deceptive battlemap :)

Alyn already pointed it out, but I wanted to remark a good thing of that haste (great Thame, thanks!) is everyone suddenly got better at jumping. As for acrobatics you "receive a +4 racial bonus on Acrobatics checks made to jump for every 10 feet of their speed above 30 feet"

Stat Tracker

Global Condition: None |

Global Condition:
Thame HP: 27/27 - AC: 12/12/10 Status:
Lara: HP: 28/28 - AC: 17/12/15 Status:
Kragg HP: 31/31 - AC: 19/10/19 Status:
Lolito HP: 44/44 - AC: 19/18/16 Status:
Alyn HP 38/40 - AC: 20/11/19 Status:
Trick HP 28/28 - AC 17/11/15 Status:

I don't think you've updated that tracker since we leveled. Lara's max hp is now 35, and Alyn's is 49, just from a cursory glance.

as I mention every time we do a level up, i leave it up to you as the players to update your stats on the slide deck, both the dice roller templates and the AC/HP lines. I occasionally do spot checks to find things that are out of line and remind people to update, but I am running 5 games right now plus 2 more in real life and I am not going to make sure that all of these stats are always up to date.

Everyone please take a minute the next time you post to verify your stats in the tracker and roll templates.

in reply to the question about delaying, you can definitely delay and ready actions. it is a little looser in PbP since you all take your actions in whatever order you want then pass over ot the enemies. I will usually try to adjudicate your actions as a party in the order that makes the most sense (like waiting for an ally to get into their flanking position before your rolls etc). if you want to specify that you want to act after a specific action by an ally that is completely reasonable to me.

Yeah in hind sight I should have waited another 2 rounds and added barkskin and shield of faith. However I was concerned that it would assault Alyn immediately. I have the higher ac so wanted to take the attacks from the chuul and let Alyn do the damage. As long as you guys keep piling on the hits I will survive long enough for it to drop and then heal myself.

39+18+15=72 damage without Alyn hasted attack. As long as it doesn’t crit I should be ok

Rough rolling this round for Alyn and Trick.

Alyn, shouldn't Trick's attack and damage in Battle Form be (with haste and flanking) +11 (1d6+4) instead of +13 (1d6+10). I am probably missing something.

I think we should be ok Kragg, single enemy combats go always fast thanks to the advantageous action economy for the party, unless the monster has special defenses or... bad luck happens.

Ya it was copy paste error. Appologies.

5 bab + 3 str + 4 flank + 1 haste -2 power attack = 11 (maybe +1 height)

Damage is + 4 Str + 6 power attack.

So we are both half right.

all of that was just barely enough to drop the thing. it had a boat load of HP, but you guys rolled pretty hot there.

I see now, Eldritch Guardian lets your familiar use all your combat feats in exchange for your level 2 bonus feat. Wow, in combination with the already good Mauler archetype that makes a familiar even better than an animal companion or cohort.

And then, Combat Reflexes+Outflank, I see where you are going there. You will want Improved Critical next. With the high flying mobility of the flying fox you are going to outflank a lot.

The +4 flanking is already super good, but the breaking point is the AoO on a critical with Combat Reflexes. To exemplify my words, I cannot resist the temptation of telling a story from my Crimson Throne group. We were at Scarwall fortress, reaching the end, at one of the last bosses, the Nightshade Nightwing. A terrible undead that wanted to make a deal to make one of us an immortal servant of the fortress or fight. The Inquisitor had had Outflank for a time now, but the Barbarian just got it. It was the first round and the sorcerer cast haste, then the Inquisitor and the Barbarian maneuvered to Outflank and the Inquisitor got a critical hit, the Barbarian got an extra attack. The Inquisitor still had 2 more attacks, with his scimitar and Improved Critical he scored another critical, which triggered another attack from the Barbarian. Next it came the Barbarian round, with full BAB and haste, and Improved Critical, in addition to his 4 attacks, he scored like another two criticals which triggered two more attacks from the Inquisitor, with his scimitar he got 2 more criticals which triggered two more attacks from the Barbarian, from where he scored another critical triggering another Outflank extra attack of opportunity for the Inquisitor who scored another critical triggering...

We started to call this the Ping-Pong feat line while the damage pilled to more than 300 hp in a single round. Obviously the undead was destroyed before it, or anyone else in the party, could have an action.

By that time we were all but the GM rolling on the floor with tears in our eyes. Our GM did not ban Outflank or Combat Reflexes, but he was feeling so miserable that he told us he was seriously considering to stop using Pathfinder and only GM D&D5. In any case no one has ever again used Outflank in our table. It is a terrible feat!

The full build that I originally used in PFS use Paired Opportunist and a Bardiche. Have cut a lot of that stuff for a more well-rounded build.

that's funny Lolito. my RL group just finished Curse of the Crimson Throne a few weeks ago. they discovered the joy of Outflank early on, even though it was most of their first time playing pathfinder. from about book 2 or so we had an Inquisitor, a Rogue and a Magus all with Outflank. it didn't come up nearly as often as i thought it would, mostly because they were newer players and often didn't get into position as quickly as they could have to pull off the big moves. but when it did work it was quite a thing.

Is there any scale available for the map?

I was wondering if the distance to Talmandor's Bounty was such that we could use the dolphin figurine to inform Ramona about our findings and next course of action, so she can start to prepare a mining group or something.

the island is about 15 miles north to south, and about 13 miles across at the widest point. taking the water route around the island from where you are now would be close to 20 miles i believe.

there is a scale for the map, but unfortunately it is at the bottom of a larger map that shows several other locales not part of this book of the AP

The problem with detect evil is it is very unreliable.

On one hand it gives many false negatives, because normal creatures with 4 HD or less don't have an evil aura.

On the other hand it can give false positives, because "Creatures with actively evil intents count as evil creatures for the purpose of this spell"

For outsiders and clerics is a great tool, but for low level humanoids it just does not help.

Any other options you have though at this time?

I think your speak with dead attempt before was great.

At this point I would just go with the adventure and face problems as they come to us without getting anxious at we failing to uncover what is happening. What I mean is this is a published adventure, they cannot assume we have access to divination magic and we are using it. There is sure some point at which the bad guys will become obvious, and trying to go in another route means we can derail the adventure.

Which might be fun or not, depending on the availability of the GM to come up with new content to fill the gaps. And that is why divination magic like detect evil is so falible, because it gives the GM agency to tell the story he wants to tell.

My message is just don't get anxious about having to come up with an answer :)

I will say that there are many routes to figuring out what is going on here, and a handful of them are covered fully in the AP as written. I will not hinder your creativity, and will do my best to resolve things with whatever method you use to figure out what is going on. nothing that you guys have considered at this stage would "derail" the campaign, especially in a book that is designed to be more sandboxy

as with any sandbox, you just run the risk of biting off more than you can chew if you choose the hardest path first...

new map is up. unfortunately no real map in the AP for this swamp, had to find one myself. so the grid is not great, just count the squares as 5 foot squares even though they are less square than i would like

It is a fairly good map! It is difficult to find swamp maps. I have tried recently and find out there is nothing really good for an interesting battlemap.

sorry for the delay folks. had a medical trip over the weekend (plus friday), and was stuck getting caught up on work today. I will get a post in tomorrow morning hopefully. thanks for bearing with me!

No worries. Everyone's schedule is a little crazy.

After this fight we find a place to rest. The cleric is running out of spells and healing.

GM I think you forgot the shambling mound's turn :(

If the creature kept Alyn constricted and he could not end the plant this round, and provided the plant did not kill also Lolito, the monk will focus his flurry of blows on the plant instead of jumping over the stirges.

Also, although the creature is immune to stunning, would the dragon's ferocity shaken effect take place? On a deeper read I would say no, because 'successful stunning fist' probably means the creature getting stunned, so even if the creature fails the Fort save, the shaken effect probably should not kick in.

Hi! As my holidays deep in, I will be away from Internet connection for the following few days. Do not expect much from me if anything until next Monday.

Please bot Lolito as needed. He will like to explore the caves at its fullest, specially if the bones might be from the abducted ones.

traveling today, will get a post up soon.

sorry, i know this is bad timing, but I am going to be posting much slower for the next two weeks. I have a big project coming ot a close, and will not have much time to post on my games, especially since i am in a lot of them right now. I am going to pull back from my games for the next two weeks to make sure we get this project where it needs to be. thanks for understanding!

Thanks for the heads up, GM. I appreciate it!

No problem.

First is first. Thanks for letting us know and good luck! :)

Good luck and I completely understand as it happens to all of us.

Thanks a lot for the haste Thame! That helps a lot :)

We rested just recently, you should have your spells recovered and can cast haste from normal prepared spells without using your arcane bond, as the combat with the Shambling Mound was yesterday (in-game) ;)

Will get a post up after work.

Thanks a lot for the haste Thame! That helps a lot :)

We rested just recently, you should have your spells recovered and can cast haste from normal prepared spells without using your arcane bond, as the combat with the Shambling Mound was yesterday (in-game) ;)

Derp, that's right. Thanks for the catch!

I have updated the stack tracker with the different healings and AC boosts flying up.

Level 6: Wizard

HP +5
Base Attack +1
All Saves +1

Skills:

Appraise
*Linguistics (Draconic)
Spellcraft
Bluff
Kn Arcana
*Kn History
Kn Dungeoneering
Kn Geography
Kn Nature

Spell Slots added:

1 2nd
1 3rd

Spellbook additions:

Invisibility Sphere
Water Breathing

Level 6

HP +8
Ki Power Qinggong power - barkskin
Bonus feat Hamatulatsu
Skills
Acrobatics
Perception
Ride
Sense Motive
Background skills
Handle Animal
K. history

Will get update tonight but basic level 6 cleric

+1 ban
+7 hp
+1 all saves
+1 2nd level spell
+1 3rd level spell
7 skill points: diplomacy, spell craft, sense motive, know history, know nobility, brewer x2