With all three of the martial PCs in favor this is going to turn into a fight with the house soaves in your side. Gabriel started things so he gets a surprise round which he used to heal himself and start his buff. Unfortunately in the surprise round you only get a standard or move action so that'll be it for him.
I'm going to need to draw up a combat map before we do much else which I'll do when over back from work. It's a half day today so I should be getting off in about 6 hours from now.
However, first things first. I feel obligated to tell you that this is going to be a serious, deadly fight. I won't be pulling punches, and I see a chance for character death here.
I'm going to give Toramin a chance to change his post due to a PM I just sent him. If he decides not to I'll start drawing up the map.
So Bjorkus and Gabriel are ready to throw down, and indeed Gabriel has just started the surprise round. Dalton is currently keeping up the facade, but if people start fighting he intends to help the party. I need a solid answer from Toramin and Rilka and Lindale in response to the situation.
Toramin is holding off. If Dalton and Lindale break cover, he will too. He isn't going to let you guys die without a fight, but he hopes to hold off and take the long approach.
What I'm trying to say is that I would very much prefer not to make my work with the healers a moot point.
So Toramin is taking much the same stance as Dalton. Going to need Rilka and Lindale to chime in and we'll be ready.
I get waiting for them, but this is a tense scene. If they haven't responded by this evening can we continue to preserve the momentum of the scene?
Huh? Bjorkus said you were supporting him. I had Gabriel ready to throw down because of that. Gah. The all in approach is the only way Gabriel survives a fight. Am I allowed to change my post?
Before you get too excited, it might be a moot point. If Bjorkus attacks and Dalton starts casting, then Toramin isn't going to let you guys die without a fight. Then it will be all in even if it ruins my plans that I have been working on since May.
I see the fight going one of two ways. Bjorkus attacks. Dalton helps him. We are all sucked into a titanic fight for our lives. Bracing. Or, Bjorkus attacks. Dalton preserves his cover. Bjorkus gets taken away after giving a moving speech. Poignant.
So, it seems to me that the ball is squarely in Bjorkus' and Dalton's court.
Thats true, but with the second one, Gabe should -not- expose himself the way he did. T.T I went all in because I was told you were all in with Bjorkus, and Dalton seemed ready to support us at least.
So, Omen, may I change my post? I can't literally edit it but still... if Toramin isn't all in, Gabe probably gets killed for this kind of thing.
You are Dalton's ostensible property. How he disciplines you is his business.
Pretty sure the Whitecloaks just proved that's not the case by taking Bjorkus Toramin.
Technically it was compulsory purchase or imminent domain. :-p
It's actually on Toramin. Bjorkus is only in if the slaves are in and the slaves are only in if he is. It all hinges on his action/inaction.
Gabriel wouldn't have been aware of Toramin's motives. You need to keep player/character knowledge separate. Yes, this once I will allow you to change your post. Try not to metagame, especially in situations where it matters.
Right. And technically it was done to punish Bjorkus for rebelling. But I'm talking more then just the whole 'attack' thing. At the moment they know he's some kind of healer but thats it. Slavers aren't too keen on paladins. :P
In the end I went off some wrong information with my choice and I'd like to change it now that I have the right information, since at the moment it won't change anyone's actions.
TOO MUCH METAGAMING.
This whole business of "I'll do this if YOU want to." is getting out of hand. Our characters do not have a psychic connection. Sense motive and prior communications are the best way they have of guessing what intentions might be.
In this sense. Gabriel is much in the dark. Act as your character feels.
Bjorkus has made his speech. He acted how the character felt.
Dalton has done his best to restrain things. That's how the character felt.
Yet we need to see what the NPCs are doing (not just the guards, also the slavers at the table with me). Unless they are statues, there should be some reaction now.
Currently, the ball is not in my court, but in Omen's.
Well said Dalton, my thoughts exactly.
For now I'm going to assume Rilka and Lindale stay quiet, watching the others and taking Dalton's cue since he's 'in charge' of the situation. I'll start working on a post. Thanks for helping to push us along Dalton.
Also, I've been working on the map a little under the Campaign Info tab. I added a lot of towns and cities as well as showing how Yenrick is divided.
I can't actually edit my post, and I'm honestly a little too frustrated with meta-gaming suddenly being a bad thing despite the fact that a.) we've meta-gamed before for the party and specific players and b.) saying something about it last night when the discussion happened would have stopped it before it started.
I might post later, but if not, just assume Gabe stands there.
I love the fact that five us on are online and actively posting but the game is going nowhere.
Democracy.
Gabriel, metagaming is never allowed. Communication is encouraged and the party has almost always had time to communicate with each other. The party gets back to the inn, has some private time, tells each other what they've been doing. Right now you do not have a physic connection so you can't check with each other unless you make opposed bluff and sense motive checks. To my knowledge the party has never seriously metagamed before, but if you believe I'm wrong show me the example.
'Yes, this once I will allow you to change your post.'
Gabriel stands there and does nothing. Thats what I changed my post too Omen.
Sorry, I did the writeup without checking discussion. I'll edit it.
So the slaves aren't inspired and Bjorkus looks like a fool. Great.
Why again did you encourage me to post?
Isn't there a spell that allows for telepathic parties?
The message spell is a cantrip version of it. Its one of my favorites too. There's a higher level spell that's actual telepathy rather then sub-vocal speech but I don't think the duration is any better.
The slaves are inspired and Bjorkus was going to start a fight. The rest of the party thought it was a bad idea so they didn't back him up. Raul didn't consider the threat serious enough to start killing people and instead decided to non lethally control the situation the best way he knows how: intimidation.
I did not encourage you to take any one course of action. I informed you of your options.
Message is actually whispered conversation, not telepathy.
Still the best cantrip in the game in my opinion. Connects a whole party for a decent distance, etc, etc.
So does he auto grapple?
I'm not obligated to put all of my rolls on the boards. Typically when I run games I do all dice rolls behind a DM screen and my players never know what I roll. Here I only do it for convenience when I have to roll dozens or hundreds of dice at once and it's too hard to keep track of otherwise.
Well if the party is going to continue being passive, this would be a good time to cutscene Bjorkus being pummeled in unconsciousness. As long as word gets out about how 'Ares' overpowered the leader of the Aussirian Legion in his beast form, I suppose that'll be a satisfactory way to end the scene on my end.
Of course there will be the bigger problem of Bjorkus not trusting the party but that was already a growing trend.
I like a little infighting within the party, it keeps things interesting!
Indeed, I don't think I could build a character this level with a CMD over 33 if I tried. Well I can't see Bjorkus taking on Raul and 6 whitecloaks single handed (Raul alone would be quite a fight) so would you like to fast forward through some dice to where they beat you unconscious with nonlethal damage?
Yeah, that sounds good.
As long as it isn't a squash. The people need to hear about how 'Ares the Honorable' matched Raul's strength, alone, until he was overwhelmed and subdued.
You've got several slaves who you almost inspired to fight with dinner knives watch you stand toe to toe with a freaking nightmare. They'll probably have to be killed to keep that from getting out.
Oh ya, with a pure grapple Bjorkus actually has a slight upper hand since he has some abilities for it. He left a few bruises on Raul. Raul's not a grappling specialist, just has a pretty nice strength score.
Yeah those slaves were not exactly aware of that nightmare before >:)
I'm sure Bjorkus wouldn't be able to do much to get past Raul's DR with just his fists but the idea is to show folks that he can match Raul's strength. You know, show them that a god can bleed.
Will you be PMing me when stuff relevant for Bjorkus comes up or just posting in the thread?
I'm not sure how you did things with Gabe.
When he wanted to surprise the group he PMed me. Otherwise it was just the spoiler-y stuff. XD I only think we did two moments in PM's, and one was right before I got tossed into the arena with the helmet.
Aye, Gabriel has the right of it. I do PMs when I'm trying to surprise people or I'm doing something that I don't even want the other players to be thinking about. I'll just spoiler Bjorkus stuff. But I'll be keeping it fairly chronological with what the party does so Bjorkus doesn't end up getting divine ranks before the party meets up with Targ.
Divine ranks. Sweet!
I think you would be banging with only a Divine Rank of 0. Even having the capacity for Divine Ranks comes with significant life improvement!
Omen, could I use my earth elemental exchange correspondence with Bjorkus, assuming we could locate where he was being held?
I would say an earth elemental would be a perfect messenger assuming that he's being held underground and you can find him. Perhaps asking Gabriel could help with that...
Speaking of, paladin bro hug! Time to get Gabe in on the main plot.
Whew, poor Bjorkus. This will be rough on him, it might even be a turning point for his character. That's about as dark as my games get directly to PCs, but I believe we have a very mature group here and you all can handle it.
Just don't mess with his horns or humiliate him too badly.
I really don't have any good reasons why Bjorkus would stick around if he survived this. The plot's pretty consistently dumped on him at every turn.
@Omen: Gabe might know the slave area well enough, but I'm not quite as informed as him since a lot of that info wasn't really mentioned often, or if it was I completely missed it. What would you like me to do in this regard? Should I read back to see if its there?
For purposes of Bjorkus's torture-narrative, how much time is passing between each session/set of saves?
Honestly Bjorkus I wouldn't blame you if you decided Bjorkus has had enough of this espionage and decided to leave. He's a CN character and is helping the Aestheric for personal reasons. However I also see this as an opportunity to be a major turning point for Bjorkus. Maybe from witnessing the harsh cruelty of men abusing their power in the worst way possible shifts his goals in life, possibly an alignment shift to CG? Or maybe he will need to confront his father first for a comparison. I'm not sure but I see potential for some very cool, albeit dark character building. That's entirely up to you though. However I intend to have many more things happen to Bjorkus while he's in captivity, and not all of them bad.
Regarding the endurance question, the feat does not specifically cover this but the flavor supports the idea. Plus Paizo only rarely visits things this dark, so I'll say it applies.
Gabriel, you know it's underground and somewhere fairly close to the Colosseum judging by how far you walk to get to there. Ymir would be able to find it with a few hours of searching, although I'll need about five stealth checks from him.