GM Tarondor's Ptolus Campaign

Game Master Tarondor

Tilver: Understood.

Silas slashes open the guts of one little ratling, which falls to the floor, coughing and squeaking.

Dain, Velika, go!

ok, based on the above, I am assuming that Tilver should actually be 10' from the ratlings, so I am going to shift his token 5' to where I suspect he actually is, then go

Dain moves into the room, scattering rats and stabbing his spear at the ratling that is still standing.

Move: NW,W; attack upright ratling with spear

attack with spear + Inspire Courage: 1d20 + 5 + 1 ⇒ (14) + 5 + 1 = 20
spear damage + Inspire Courage: 1d8 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (8) + 2 + 1 = 11

Current AC = 20 from Shield of Faith

Velika stays out of the way and focuses on her song, which is just getting to the part about roasting some rats in the oven.

Continue Inspire Courage (round 4)

Inspire Courage: +1 competence bonus attack & weapon damage; +1 morale bonus save vs. charm & fear

Prescient, Velika! ;)

Back up. Silas still owes me that DC 12 Fort save.

Fortitude Save: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (15) + 7 = 22

Dain kills the last ratman with a swift stroke of his spear.

The horde of rats swarms over Dain and Silas, biting and gnawing mercilessly.

rat swarm v. Silas: 1d6 ⇒ 6
rat swarm v. Dain: 1d6 ⇒ 3

INITIATIVE ORDER
Velika
Silas (12 damage)
Rat Swarm
Holys
Tilver
Dain (3 damage)

PYTHONESS HOUSE

Anyone, go!

Silas steps back and begins swinging and tearing into the small creatures that are crawling all over him.

Falchion with Power Attack and Bard Song: 1d20 + 8 - 2 + 1 ⇒ (4) + 8 - 2 + 1 = 11 Falchion damage with Power Attack and Bard Song: 2d4 + 4 + 6 + 1 ⇒ (3, 2) + 4 + 6 + 1 = 16

Secondary Bite Attack with Power Attack and Bard Song: 1d20 + 8 - 5 - 2 + 1 ⇒ (15) + 8 - 5 - 2 + 1 = 17 Secondary Bite damage with Power Attack and Bard Song: 1d6 + 3 + 4 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 3 + 4 + 1 = 13

Current Buffs- Sheild Spell.

5 ft step NW to get out of the swarm and then attack.

I love the image of Silas biting the rats off his own body.

Silas swings his big blade, killing only a few rats. But he absolutely savages a horde of rats with his bloody jaws.

INITIATIVE ORDER
Velika
Silas (12 damage)
Rat Swarm (6 damage)
Holys
Tilver
Dain (3 damage)

PYTHONESS HOUSE

Rain, Tilver, Velika and Holys, go!

With his metamagic rod in hand, a fan of flame roils forward from Holy's fingers to engulf the rat swam.

Cast Burning Hands into the room, using Selective Metamagic rod to exclude allies (can exclude up to 4 which is fine):

Burning Hands damage: 4d4 + 4 ⇒ (1, 4, 2, 1) + 4 = 12 (4d4 base, +4 from Gold Draconic bloodline' DC 17 Reflex save for half.)

Lesser Selective Metamagic Rod uses remaining/total: 2/3
Spells remaining/total:
2nd (4/4)—scorching ray
1st (5/7)—burning hands (DC 17), mage armor , protection from evil, ray of enfeeblement (DC 15), vanish
0th (at will) —acid splash, arcane mark , detect magic , flare (DC 16), light, open/close (DC 14), prestidigitation, read magic, resistance

Tilver steps aside to allow Holys to take care of their rat infestation.

"Burn 'em all!"
Tiler doesn't have any anti-swarm ability.

Velika will wait to see what happens with Holys' spell. She doesn't really have much for anti-swarm either.

Dain looks back over his shoulder just in time to to see Holys pointing his rod into the room. Knowing what's coming, he still can't help cringing as flames wash over and around him. He takes a quick look to see what remains of the rat swarm. If any of the rats still live, and don't appear to be scattering, he steps back and attempts to skewer them.

5' step: S; attack any remaining rats with spear

attack with spear + inspire courage: 1d20 + 5 + 1 ⇒ (20) + 5 + 1 = 26
spear damage + inspire courage: 1d8 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 2 + 1 = 8

Current AC=20 from Shield of Faith

Rat Swarm Reflex save: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (18) + 5 = 23

The rats swarm out of the way of Holys's fiery holocaust, but many burn anyway. Dain spears several more and the rest run away!

COMBAT OVER!

"Well, it doesn't look like they were able to get word out of our approach. Should we start downstairs to prevent being surrounded or continue up here?" Silas rolls his shoulder and scratches at some of the stinging bites that found holes in his armor.

Dain smiles at the sight of the fleeing rats, then looks about the room. He pokes through the nest with his spear, looking for the All-Key, or anything else interesting.

Perception: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (6) + 10 = 16

Poking around through the rubble on the floor, Dain answers Silas,"Magill will let me know if anything dangerous shows up downstairs. So let's see what's on the the other side of the bridge."

The room is in utter disarray, a literal rat's nest of foodstuffs and trash as well as the plates, pots, cutlery, and towels that originally came from the kitchen. But no All-Key.

"Well, it doesn't surprise me that ratfolk took up residence here, but I seriously doubt they put up that wall of force. We should probably go back to the first floor and explore some of those rooms."

"Well, that leaves us with one vote for up and one vote for down. If there are more rats about I am betting they have another way out and so if Magill is watching the front door he may miss them heading for the back exit. At this point, anything in this house probably knows we are here so we should clear the rooms quickly lest we lose the key. I think continuing up here is easier so we should do it quickly and then we can take time to search after we finish."

"Lead on, Silas."

Silas crosses the bridge and looks at the door to see if any surprises were left behind.

Perception for Traps: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (16) + 7 = 23

Holys might notice that Silas is down about a quarter of his HPs.

Dain looks around before picking up a plump (and not too charred) rat from the carnage on the floor. "Magill will warn us if anything tries to come up behind us. I don't much care if some of the rats run out the back door." Here Dain uses the dead rat to illustrate a rat running away, "We're here to find the trail of this key, not kill ratlings." The rat puppet shudders and flops over on it's back, apparently dead. "Ummm...assuming they don't attack us first, of course, like these did."

Turning to TIlver, he says, "We might as well search this area while we are up here. We can search that room downstairs when we go to see what's behind all those doors down there."

Dain heads out of the room and onto the bridge. He waves to get Magill's attention, and tosses the rat down to her.

Velika smiles and quietly applauds Dain's performance. Then she pulls out her wand of Cure Light and flourish's it in Silas' direction.

Use Wand of Cure Light on Silas
Wand of Cure Light: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (8) + 1 = 9

Tilver nods. "Okay, okay. Let's see what's up here." He moves over to the next door across the bridge. He takes a look at the door, trying to look for anything out of the ordinary.

Perception: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (5) + 8 = 13

There being nothing fishy about the door, Silas opens it. Beyond is a turret room. A ladder runs through a hole in the floor up to a wooden trapdoor in the ceiling and down to the lower level as well. The floor and ceiling are made of wood. There is little here but cobwebs and some old leaves blown in through the windows. A pair of old leather boots lies amid the refuse.

Silas nods thanks to Velika and then moves to stand under the trap door leading up and says, "Would you care to take a look Tilver?"

Dain pokes his head into the room after Silas enters. "Ooooo! Uppity-up! Let's see what spirits dance on the roof!" His eyes dart around to take in the rest of the barren room. "Boots?"

"Right. Someone check those boots." Tilver checks both traps doors for...well, traps.

Perception (vs. traps): 1d20 + 8 + 1 ⇒ (1) + 8 + 1 = 10

"Velika the cobbler, at your service." Velika bends over to examine the boots, "Hmmmm. In surprisingly good condition for their age. Well stitched and I imagine they were once quite the fashion." She will also cast detect magic.

Velika looks at the boots for any mundane oddities and then casts Detect Magic.
I guess it might matter so: Perception: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (10) + 2 = 12

The trap doors are, well, untrapped. The boots are non-magical.

"I can go through first or if you want to feel free since you are already up there Tilver and I will follow you.

Are the boots sized for a ratman or a medium-sized creature? Are they nice-looking, or is there nothing particularly noteworthy about them?

Appraise: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (18) + 8 = 26 Holys being something of a connoisseur of fancy-pants stuff

They are old and dusty, but sized for a small human, or perhaps an elf. They are worth perhaps 2 copper pieces.

"Up or down, fellas?" Tilver looks between the two trap doors. "At least opening up the one to below would give us another way down."

"There is probably not much above. I say we clear it and then head down.

"There might be more up there than you think. From the outside it looked like there may be a bridge across to the second tower and more of the upper level from there. But really, aren't towers built to secure the most valuable things? I'd love to see what's up there."

So? Up the ladder? Down the ladder? Back down the stairs?

We go up the ladder.

The floor of this chamber is made of wood, but the ceiling is stone. There is no way to progress up farther from here. This level of the tower contains a table and three chairs, all wooden and rickety but usable. Three objects sit on the table, covered in cobwebs: a glass jar; a short, fat candle on a copper plate; and a book

Velika blows cobwebs off the book and picks it up to look through it.

Velika is trained in Linguistics and +7 if it becomes relevant

Tilver looks over Velika's shoulder, an easy feat with the gnome's height. "What exactly do we have here?"

Perception: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (19) + 8 = 27

"Seems like the only people here recently have been spiders."

Holys casts Detect Magic and sweeps his gaze over the room, including the items which have been indicated in the description of the room.

Does this room have any exits other than the ladder? Are there any windows?

Silas looks down at the boots below and the items in the room. "It seems like these items were left here for some reason. Perhaps something pointing to the key since no one found it before. Do you think we should collect them?"

Its more of a Deadlands: Wasted West thing then a D&D thing, but it may be worth collecting all of the random items we find as we go. It may be important at the end.

"Hey, that looks like a bottle of pi--" Tilver breaks off as he sees Velika staring intently at the book.

"Vellika? Are you alright?" He shakes her shoulder, trying to break her focus on the book.

Does this room have any exits other than the ladder? Are there any windows?

No and yes, respectively. See the map.

Back!

Fun Ptolus Hero Points story. Tim (Tilver) played in my first face-to-face Ptolus game. At some point in the Banewarrens, his character ran up against a fire giant who hit him hard enough to kill him. He spent two hero points to avoid death. So I ruled that instead, the giant had merely severed his sword arm.

So this seems like it might be a real setback for a martial character, but a few weeks later, the faction of angels to whom the team was allied contacted the character. One of the holiest of their angels had been killed ages before and only his arm survived. They offered to graft the angel's arm onto Tim's character in exchange for handling some small matters the angels didn't want to touch...

And if we do anything like that again, Pathfinder actually rules for that! Possessed Hand, Hand's Autonomy, Hand's Detachment

So I was browsing the Recruitment/character creation thread, and I was reminded of this:

Each of you can read the two secrets proposed for you by the others but don't read anyone else's. Each of you can choose to accept or reject either or both of the "facts" as true. The person who wrote them still believes its true, but it's up to you whether they're really true or not.

For each "fact" you accept as true, you may have one free re-roll of a d20 at any time.

I think most of us accepted our "facts", so we each have 1 or 2 rerolls available to us.

That is correct! An opportune moment for such rerolls appears to be at hand!

Just saw this. Can I spend the reroll on my last action to try to beat the creature's spell resistance?

Holys has nothing of real use left at this point, other than burning 2nd-level spell slots to cast his 1st-level spells (which are more useful in this encounter).

Sure.

Also, nothing wrong with using 2nd levels slots for 1st level spells. Time to bring out all the guns.

Velika may have saved everyone's lives with her lucky glitterdust spell, so try anything you can.

Scott, not sure if you didn't catch it, but Dain's spear is magical. If you did realize that , then I just want to confirm that his +1 spear is not sufficient to overcome the damage resistance.

I did not catch it. His spear is good enough and does full damage.

Huzzah!

Great, will run the reroll for SR check. :)

Dang, I think it failed again. Will post his action for this round as well.

Starting a new job today. I probably won't be posting again until Wednesday. Thanks for your understanding.

OK. And congrats on the new job - hope it's fun!

That's great news, congrats! I look forward to hearing about it soon!

Don't tell my Momma I'm a lawyer. She thinks I'm a piano-player in a whore house.

Hey gang!

I'm letting you know that my game of "The One Ring" has seats available and if you're interested I'd be happy to have you check out the Recruitment thread.

I would love to be in. I have lots of free time. :D

I posted under Malinor on the One Ring page.

Headed to Japan tomorrow for most of the week. I'll try to post, but no guarantees it'll be consistent.

If you're going to be gone, it might be a good time for us to go into the city and restock, etc. (After attempting this lock, success or failure.) Just a thought if you wanted to post suggestions for what you'd like to sell/buy or who you might want to talk to.

Tilver wants to get his longspear enchanted. He also thinks the party should invest in getting everyone at least 1 potion of Protection from Evil.

He'll go talk to Brother Fabitor on Dain's behalf to start getting a line on who might be able to heal him. I'm sensing we might be in debt to someone for this. Tilver's other pressing matter is to let his fiancee know he's ok. Evie knows he's an adventurer, but she's still worries. Plus, it's always good to know the rumormill at the town guard.

I would like to deal with the hell hounds sooner rather then later, but taking care of the negative level should be a priority.

I agree this could be a good time to spend a few days (OOC time) in town buying and selling. Then come back either the same day or next day (IC time) to deal with the hellhounds and other matters.

After sleeping rough, Holys probably wants to go home and attend to matters of business (i.e. read a newspaper/any letters and have a nice meal).

Sounds like 3:1 for bugging out, with one district not reporting in.

What's the plan?

How far is the building from other inhabited areas? (I'm not sure if this is in the middle of nowhere, is a well-known neighbourhood creepy house, sometimes has people sleeping in it, etc). The answer determines whether or not I suggest someone stays here.

You are in Ptolus, one of the largest metropolises on Praemal (the planet).

Where in Ptolus is it?

Yeah, I was asking in the most local sense of 'where are we'. :) So it looks like we're in a residential district? In that case, if we can get these errands taken care of in a few hours, Holys suggests that he and one other stay here to stop others going in. (Holys doesn't want to be by himself in case ne'er-do-wells come up and hassle him.)

Maybe Holys and Silas stay since the latter is burly. Dain, Velika, and Tilver go and try and see about upgrading the spear and curing Dain's negative level.

If it is not possible to accomplish these tasks in one day, then the group may have to just hope nothing goes in/comes out.

Oldtown is more upscale than most of the city (and less so than the Noble's Quarter). It has big houses like Pythoness House which were built by wealthy merchants and large organizations.

Oldtown
Ptolus was founded three centuries ago as a small community surrounding fortress called Dalenguard. The fortress’ original purpose was to keep the area clear of evil creatures drawn by the power of Jabel Shammar, the citadel at the top of the Spire. It also sought to watch over Goth Gulgamel, the fortress halfway up the Spire built by Ghul, the Half God.

Dalenguard was constructed more than seven hundred years ago, just after the defeat of Ghul, to serve as a symbol of the union of elves, dwarves, and humans in that war. Over time, the community grew into an important
port, and the need for Dalenguard as a wilderness bastion waned. Today the old fortress is still used by the Imperial-appointed ruler of the city, the Commissar, and the area surrounding it on the city’s near west side is known as Oldtown. It sits atop a ridge higher than most of the rest of Ptolus, but still lower than the Nobles’ Quarter.

The stone and marble buildings of Oldtown reflect a grander, earlier age. Graceful columns, majestic entrances, tall stone towers, and buildings of three or even four stories are common sights here. Yet all bear the signs of age and wear. Today many of these buildings house the bureaucracy the Empire forces upon the city. Still others are museums or homes for the wealthy (those not quite wealthy enough to live in the Nobles’ Quarter).

There are wonderful theaters, auditoriums, and even a grand Arena in this large district of the city. The Arena provides a spot for tournaments, fairs, and sporting games of all sorts. Nearby, the Inverted Pyramid mages’ guild sponsors a magical ball sport simply called “the Mage Game,” held in a large indoor coliseum in Oldtown.

This is where citizens go to get licenses, like those needed to carry a firearm. The City Courts are located here, and as are the City Council’s meeting chambers. Both the Delver’s Guild Library and Maproom (but not the guild’s main office) and the City Library are here. Oldtown has a fair number of parks, monuments, and other touches of class and beauty as well.

Pythoness House's reputation alone is likely enough to keep common riff-raff away. Well, except for ratmen. Who know how many more of them there are?

You won't be able to upgrade the spear in a single day, but you may be able to buy one or to arrange in one day to have it upgraded.

Who knows how long it will take to find a restoration spell. I'm sure you'll think of something. So many possibilities!

It will be 10 hours before Dain even knows whether or not he needs a Restoration spell - he could make his save and spare us the trouble (and cost) of finding a willing spellcaster.

So if we are going to leave, we should all go, do whatever in town, all get a good night's rest, then come back tomorrow.

We all leave then, try and go shopping, and wait and see if Dain needs a spell.

I'll be out of the country this coming Saturday until July 20. So posting may be intermittent for that period, although I'll check in when I can.

Have a good trip! See you when you get back.

Thanks... am hoping the time with family and friends will outweigh the soul-crushing bureaucracy that I have to face! (I am fairly sure it will.)

As a soul-crushing bureaucrat myself...yeah, you gotta get away sometimes. Have fun!

I've thoroughly revised the maps. Check out the Where in Ptolus is it? link!

Very cool!

In the UK and soul-crushing bureaucracy defeated! (For now.) Will be out of touch over the weekend but should be able to post these next few days.

Enjoy the homecoming, buddy!

Got my passport with new visa back today, so they'll let me in the country again! (Although it's another week until I fly back.)

Its nice when they let you come home. In theory anyway.

Ah, I see my reference note saying, "He plays D&D with me" did the trick! I'll make sure to tell the customs guys too, Andrew! :)

On a different tack...based on this post, we should all be 763.6gp richer from the loot we sold. Unless, that is you want to set aside an extra portion for emergencies.

Anything to make the lines shorter is greatly appreciated!

I am probably going to be out of touch again most of tomorrow and Monday.

Out of touch all tomorrow due to flying back to the USA!

Long day. Taking a break. Will get back at it tomorrow.

We're talking about resting again... didn't we just do that?

Nope. We left and ran a few errands, then went back to get Silas. So far, we have not rested, and everybody except Tilver is Fatigued.

Oh. In that case, yes, we should rest. I had thought we rested before running errands. I had not applied fatigue modifiers to my attack rolls against the hellhounds.

Technically, Holys went home, had a bath and a nap. But Dain, Silas and Velika are beat.

(Probably out of touch for the next few days, need to deal with some things here.)

Hope all is well, buddy!