sorry, thought I posted in all my games, this week will be irregular for my posting. (last week as well).
Bupkis isn't trained in Knowledge Religion, so he has no chance of making the that check. We've largely run out of other things to check in the sunken temple.
You just don't know what to search for. Or you would have found it already.
Will read back over the gameplay thread to see if we missed something but off the top of my head it seems we've reached a deadend.
Did your rereading give you an idea? Or do you want to turn every stone until you find something? Or leave, until you come across the hint what you shall search here?
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I went back about a year and a half. Things we know:
* Grenseldek was infatuated with Storm Tyrant Volstus.
* Volstus is gathering many giants together up in Minderhall Valley. Greseldek's letter speaks of him calling for the ruin of small folk.
* The exact nature of this threat is a little abstract but we set off to find weapons to fight giants.
* We found two halves of map leading to the tomb of Nargrym Steelhand.
* We traveled to the tomb and found Giant’s Nails Scale mail and fought Lokmorr the Betrayer who killed Nargrym out of envy. Later we found Heart Spit a spear.
* In Minderhall Valley we found a cave and the single most dangerous thing in the AP so far, a painting. Shelyn be praised! The painting depicted: Aduromi, the Priestess of Crystals; Jogrothir the Hunter; Mymrith the Maker; and Rosag, Preserver of the Forge
* The painting contained a map:
One line points to a painting of a large stone temple in the middle of a lake. According to the compass, this temple lies approximately 10 miles south-southwest of the Dark Passage (J). Which is strange, because we have been there, and there was nothing in the middle of the lake."
"The second line points to the drawing of a small chapel overlooking a canyon. This area is about 20 miles to the north-northeast (M)."
"The third line indicates a small cave in the mountains around 24 miles east-northeast of here (P)."
"The fourth and final line leads to a stone temple in a swamp. This temple is to the east-southeast, approximately 25 miles from these caves (S)."
* We saw a large gathering of giants which we avoided.
* We travelled to the underwater temple in the lake and found stuff we didn't understand.
So unless there's something we missed here (must be) it seems our options are in one of the other three locations.
Wow. I'm impressed. And I'm sorry, I wasn't more clear in my statement.
When I wrote that you'd have found it, if you knew what to search for, I meant: If you would have gotten the information already - which you haven't. As the valley has no fix order in which you go where, you stumbled over that map. And you learned somthing about locations in the valley, but not the meaning of the places.
I can only presume that we need to go to M. I don't think we know of an easy way to get to P. And I think the giant gathering blocks the way to S.
Let's do one final sweep of this location and travel to M? If nothing else we can rule it out.
Sounds like a plan to me.
idk, the evil druid was rather dangerous I think. But yeah. The painting has probably been the biggest threat to us most of the AP.
Again sorry for the sparse posting.
also, who desireth the belt of hit harder.
The belt would be good for most of us but I don't mind passing on this one.
The belt doesn't do anything for Bupkis.
It helps Bupkis's carrying capacity, but you're right, it does the least for you.
I say we each roll for the belt, since it is useful for all of us. I can hand off the heavyload belt if I win.
D100, highest roll wins?
XD
Daseem, Ivan, roll when ready.
Passing.
congrats. I'll take the load belt off you for now.
Yes...let the Dwarf be even dwarfier!
@Bupkis
You as a player have the map of Minderhal Valley. As Bupkis you don't. And you don't have a GPS. You also don't have a clock, no star maps, no sextant (does that even work without a horizon at sea level).
Of course you can just go to every sidearm of the valley. But realistically you could only guess if you have to go in direction of K or F when you're standing at D.
If you come up with a way to fly for all, we talk again. Or if you have a proper idea for navigating that would work with what you have. Until then, 'going to M' won't work.
I think its maybe time for us to visit a bit of civilization soon.
Didn't we get a fairly good map of the area before we left?
A quick search revealed that Halgra had a map of Trunau and environs but that didn't go into this detail.
The other thing I found was: The area is not very well documented on maps and there are no famous towns ahead. A village that was there a decade agao could long be abandoned and new ones built at other places.
I'm not sure if Giants do maps, but as it is an area where mostly giants live and not a single human settlement exists I'd say finding a giant who has a map and is willing to let you copy or buy it is your only chance to get one.
As for civilization you could go back to the village you saved. You'd get food there. To trade the stuff you found you'd probably have to go back to Janderhoff.
Janderhoff is a long way right? Re where to go next, it feels like we need a guide, not sure where we'd find one though.
It does feel like we're stuck, with essentially no way to proceed. Unless I'm misunderstanding the information available to us.
You're stuck, because you decided that you can't move through the part of the valley where all the giants are.
You could instead just keep wandering the parts of the valley you haven't been yet.
I wonder if https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/p/planar-inquiry could be useful if we get really stuck?
How stuck do you have to be to invest offerings worth 100 gp per HD of creature called
Also the general task is: Stop the Storm Tyrant from starting a war. How you do that is kind of written in the AP Title: Slay Giants. Well, if you slay them all, that's for sure a way to stop a giant army.
Of course you can also just continue to wander the valley and see what you find. Just because you found a map doesn't change the main goal. The only thing I said you can't do is 'go to M' directly as you don't know the path there.
I'm still not sure what we can attempt/do in the "Giant Gathering" area. I got the impression that we couldn't earn experience in this area.
We can't defeat all the giant's either. So what can we achieve?
Well, if you find Daseem's call "for glory" not appealing, you could just move through to get to the points that further the story.
I know these plains full of enemies are kind of a killjoy. Because it shows pretty much that the adventuring party is doing the job that should be done by an army. I've seen it in several APs. In Wrath of the righteous they even built a mini game around it and gave you armies of your own to command.
It could provide some fun to you to find out how you fare against a bunch of giants. But of course it is not the goal to grind this army.
Maybe we could test ourselves as our priest of Gorum would want.
After pushing our limits, depending on how we do we can maybe "clear a path"? Its points like this APs can sort of fall off. Where no one is really sure of where to go or what we can do. Issues that, while likely take up a portion of any face to face game. Are far less deadly to the campaign.
Map added
might I suggest, before our next fight we get some pre buffs going on :3. "gish" characters shine best when they get to buff before a fight. Some AC buffs may be nice. (shield of faith, shield, etc if possible.)
Just suggestions. And, ahem.. our friendly tag along bard wouldn't have spells would they? perhaps good hope? Or blur? if not thats OK but might as well ask! haha.
I built Amira for non combat stuff. The only real combat buff spell that she has is haste. Her profile lists everything, so you can look it up and tell what you want fer to cast.
The plan was to get some cure spell on Daseem next.
If you want Amira to become more active in combat situations I could add some buffs with the next level up, or see if I find some spells for battle field control on the bard list.
I've only ever played two bards before. But my favorite (and the party favorite) was always good hope. Its basically an AoE +2 (morale) bonus on all rolls, even damage. That would be my suggestion.
Good Hope is especially good with a metamagic wand of extend to double the duration.
At level 7 bards can do the very powerful combo of move action inspire, standard action haste, lesser quickening rod to swift action cast good hope.
But to be honest I think Daseem's issue is he gets hit too easily rather than problems killing things. He really needs AC 26 ish at this level which might be kind of tricky to get.
Does anyone know if magical vestment stacks with enchanted armour?
Displacement is on the bard list and would give you a 50% miss chance.
AC is, usually, considered a poor way to invest in "survive longer". It works if you plan and build for it, but if you access to magic things like:
Mirror Image, displacement, blur, etc. The magic is better because it requires less investment and allows you to buff up your offense. OF course, just hope the enemy doesn't have true seeing.
Another way, would be to invest in a wand of shield and barkskin. This would give the option to have daseem at about a +10 AC.
4 AC (shield) 3NA (Barkskin)3 deflection (shield of faith)
Bonuses of the same type don't stack, so no, RAW magic vestments at +2, would only increase a +1 armor to +2. Its basically a way to not have to invest gold in armor.
Magic Vestment allows you to "top up" the enhancement bonus of something like +1 Light Fortification armor.
It looks like Sacred Armor DOES stack with existing enhancement bonuses, so that helps.
Uskroth's Armor can give Daseem DR/5 Evil once/day (Righteous Might).
Agreed displacement etc are strong. Will have a look into defensive options.
So in a normal party we could use invisibility to sneak past. What are our options? Taking on all the giants at once seems foolish.
I can offer silence and 3xinvisibility. If I take in the 3rd level slots, I can do two more invisibility.
Would be expensive. And walking in silence will cause short time hearing loss to the giants, when we pass them.
I mean, that's likely our best plan, unless we want to go back and take out each individual giant camp one by one, so that there's only the four stone giant guards left. I'm not sure what the AP expects us to do, here. Usually, I can tell what we're supposed to do based on the context, but this feels a little...ambiguous.
Like, it's called Giantslayer, so are we really expected to just kill every giant in the valley to fight our way to the Cathedral? That seems like it would feel very grindy very quickly.
It actually calls for creativity.
We're a little weak on the magic side, or we could simply fly over the palisade. Do it at night and stay out of the darkvision range of the giants (if they have it) and you're fine. But I don't think we have fly for all.
So 1. question: Slay giants, or not?
If not, how do we get past, without being noticed. Invisibility is min/lvl, silence is round/lvl.
For distraction, Ivan could walk on the stairs invisible, and ring the dwarven gong. The others sneak in and Ivan follows with his special kind of magic.
If you want some stone giants dead, just to be sure they won't cause any trouble later, you'd need to come up with a solution, that the fight isn't seen in the valley, and that no stone giant corpses lie around afterwards.
That would change the order. Ivan over the palisade first, ringing the dwarven bell, and once the stone giants follow him, everyone else gets in and the last one closes the door.
Please feel free to come up with your own and better ideas. As there is no guarantee the ones given by Amira will work as intended.
Quick question about the map, I assume the horizontal lines are the giant stairs. How much movement does it take to go up two flights? I assume we need to make DC8 climb check for each or just one for the lot?
Taticaly I fear we're in a horrible situation, Daseem isn't wearing armour and will have to close to melee range to be effective.
Bupkis is trying to lure some of them away so the rest of you don't have to fight them all at once.
I'm trying to figure out how to join up with the rest of the party later. Bupkis can take a few hits, as long as he's not under a sustained rock barrage.
You can take 10 on Acrobatics to reach a DC of 8 and just move normally (jumping up each stair). If your ACP is too high, you could still try to roll your acrobatics for each stair you take.
If you fail you have to climb the stairs. Then you only manage half the distance.