I'll take that as a compliment French Wolf =D. During my write up, I had actually forgotten that the drunken guard got hit with a daze. Initially he tried to counter grapple, made the CMD check and then attempted to shove you into the fireplace. It was really nice. Then I forgot that he was dazed...
Sounds good French Wolf, if anyone wants to NPC your character that would be fine. Just work it out here. If there's no takers I can handle it.
NPC notes for whoever....Kherg doesn't use his villain point or spells unless absolutely necessary.
Remember although he has a holy symbol, he has no material components for casting infernal healing (requires a drop of devil blood). Otherwise he will follow orders and provide a focus of violence until badly hurt, he can use that club first and foremost.
One thought was would the chain shirt fit him? If DM is okay with it then fine or just give it to Barnabas for now.
Last reminder, Kherg can channel healing into Mikhail.
Cheers
It's a chain shirt, by its nature its flexible. I'm fine with that Kergh. Also Grumblejack wants one of the longswords.
By all means. I had actually forgotten about him. After all, we have three longswords and only two are of use to the PCs (Mikhail and Kaynen).
Now that the vampire cat is out of the bag - sort of - Kergh would be able to know to heal him.
Here's the guard room loot recap I think we have thus far.
chain shirt x3 - mikhail, kaynen, barnabas
heavy steel shield x3 - mikhail, ?, ?
longsword x3 - mikhail, kaynen, grumblejack
leather club x3 - kergh, ?, ?
longbow x3 - mikhail, kaynen, ?
My reason for assigning the chain shirt to Barnabas over Kergh at the moment is that I think we may have a shot at Mikhail, Kaynen and Barnabas walking ahead into rooms dressed as guards and at least causing enough confusion for the party to be well-placed for surprise rounds. I wasn't sure Kergh could pull off impersonating a guard. :)
I'd be up for the three of us going ahead into a room like we work in a place like this, getting into some sort of good position, and the others listening for a code word down the hall/in the next room that means "time to attack".
Oswald will grab one of the clubs, just to have something on hand.
I updated Mikhail's gear. He has a longsword, bow, and shield, along with the guard's uniform. (He grabbed all of this from Lorin, as none of it would be bloodstained.)
Just a heads up, but I think Kaynen is wearing a chain shirt, meaning that his AC is better than before.
Wow..almost thought Ethaniel had said the word there are was gonna go rushing in.
I am actually delaying because with the hallway being 40 ft. long and the surprise round only allowing a move or standard action, there was not much Ethaniel could do other than simply move in and make himself a target.
Plus, kielbasa (why am I not surprised by Kaynen's somewhat absurd choice of signal...?) has not been uttered yet. :-)
Kaynen hasn't said it yet, because he's not sure if they can continue to perpetuate the ruse a little further or not since they had the surprise round to their advantage.
I definitely don't want to hold anyone back from having fun though, so if Mitra ends up posting this last guard is hostile anyway with his buddy charmed and 3:1 odds, feel free to rush the room regardless. :)
I seriously can't believe that worked. We got lucky so many times, it blows the mind.
I agree, you all got lucky. There were several factors that helped however. You knew the password. You knew the cooks first name, he was drunk, his friend was charmed and you were all in guard uniforms. Despite that though, you came very close to a guard screaming blood murder. I really like that you are all thinking with your brains and finding other ways to make it work.
The stabbing's going to commence soon, though.
Ariana are you there? If I don't receive a post from you by tomorrow evening I’ll have to play out your action.
Very sorry. I've been checking threads for new posts with my profile's Campaigns tab and it decided to stop reporting. Posting now.
Afternoon guys! Couple of things.
1. Ethaniel and Kergh are up.
2. Ariana you already went this round.
3. Does everything seem clear so far and Are my posts descriptive enough? Let me know if you guys have any questions.
Oh, crap, sorry. "Everyone else". Sorry about that, I missed the 'else' in there. Ought to stop writing posts the moment I wake up.
I didn't actually accomplish anything, so I guess just waive my next turn. Sorry about that.
I wanted to give Kergh a chance to post, but it's been a few days so I am going to NPC him until he comes back. Expect an updated post and the start of Round 2 late tonight or tomorrow morning.
I had the worst time trying to come up with a response to your Charm Person Kaynen. I thought I had it figured out and then Mikhail decided to attack him. Judging the effects of the spell is really tricky. Sorry it was a short post, I’ll do a nice detailed recap at the end of round 2.
Oh, don't sweat the Charm Person.
If the other guard hadn't have shouted, we could've probably gotten away with quite a bite with:
The spell does not enable you to control the charmed person as if it were an automaton, but it perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way. You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn't ordinarily do.
For some reason I was considering what might happen had we escaped all the way with Chet and imagining him ~ "Oh blessed Mitra! What have I done?! I can't go back, I'll be executed for my aid... " :)
It would almost certainly fall to pieces if the guard is attacked since it includes this tidbit:
Any act by you or your apparent allies that threatens the charmed person breaks the spell.
Since Kaynen should know how his spells function, we are in something as a grey area as we've played him as still being somewhat complicit despite being attacked. Are you GM-flexing automatic breakage (perhaps because he wasn't hit?) and allowing him to be "friendly" a little longer here? Otherwise, I'm afraid Kaynen, knowing his spell is broken, may need to execute his "friend".
If you're flexing the rule, Kaynen may attempt the opposed Charisma check, otherwise it's likely an arrow headed for the poor guard.
@Kaynen: I read the spell but for some reason my eyes kept glossing over that part. Yea, the spell would have broken. Treat it as such. I'm not opposed to creativity by you guys, and I think it would have been incredibly evil to have let the charmed guard follow behind you and watch the death of all of his friends until the spell ended, but now that he has been attacked he is running.
@Everyone: I wanted to bring up the subject of bonus villain points. If your character does something *really* evil, like charm a guard and have him watch all of his friends die, convincing him along the way that its "ok" like Kaynen's example: " was considering what might happen had we escaped all the way with Chet and imagining him ~ "Oh blessed Mitra! What have I done?! I can't go back, I'll be executed for my aid... " You can expect to receive a bonuses villain point for your despicable act.
Out-of-character, I know that Mikhail's attack would be ill-advised for this very reason. In-character, Mikhail wouldn't think like that.
No worries Mikhail! I can see why your character choose to do what he did and it makes sense.
I'm so sorry to hear that French Wolf. Thanks for the update and I will continue to NPC you. Get better soon!
Sorry, but I think I'm going to have to drop out. Life's starting to get in the way and in a very short time frame I've gone from "All the time in the world to post" to "not even reliably once per day". Which is problematic since I'm currently in multiple games. Sorry about all this, and good luck with the game, guys. It's been fun for all the time I've been here nonetheless.
I'm very sorry to hear that Ariana. I think that your character has a great concept and I wish that we would have been able to explore your heritage further. I also appreciate that you are upfront and open about the inability to continue. Best of wishes.
At least it will be easy to write her off. She either gets killed in the breakout or chooses to make her own way afterwards.
It's a pity to see you go.
Actually, some new information came in and it's now on a "I'll know by tomorrow what's happening with that" basis. So, if you haven't gone and contacted my replacement yet, I should know soon what the deal is and can at least play through until then.
Colour me confused, your descriptive text says Barnabas got hit, but the dice say it's a miss... did you mean Ethaniel?
Not trying to second-guess, but Guard 5 rolled a 17 when he attacked Grumblejack, which is a regular hit, not a critical threat...
Also, I think I will be waiting for Ariana, Mikhail and Oswald to act before posting Ethaniel's action. After all, they go before him in initiative order. :-)
@Ethaniel and Barnabas: I spend a long time working on the posts. When I previewed them, I swear there were a different set of numbers. In the case of Grumblejack it *was* a crit the first go around. Barnabas also got smacked for 9, and Barnabas never threatened a crit. That was my fault, I should have checked again before I posted and not trusted the preview button. Lets treat the rolls as they are and assume that the two guards went down. Barnabas did not get hit but Ethaniel and Grumblejack did.
I'm really sorry guys.
No worries. I have had it happen to me a couple of times in other games. :-)
Strange. It must have edited, because I saw a 19-20 rolls for the guard hitting Grumblejack when I looked at it the first time.
*nod* Same here Mikhail. I honestly don't know what happened.
Did you add another roll? The Grumblejack critical hit is at the end, where it was 19 to hit and 20 to confirm. If you move all of the guards' rolls up by one, you get the original narrative: Barnabas hit with 21, Ethaniel with 24, and Grumblejack's critical hit. Actually, it looks like something was deleted in the first half.
That may be it. I did a bit of editing in between, and I wrote up rounds 2, 3, 4 and the start of five togther intially. The post was too long so I went back and cut them in half.
No worries, it happens.
My guess is that you did at add a roll somewhere the mix. On the plus side, we now have a tiny chance of winning this fight.
Well, I gotta tell you guys, that was one heck of a combat. Barnabas, good thought on trying to jam the lock. I promise opportunities like that will show up in the future. OOC, feel free to take a little time to explore the great hall if you want. You killed off everyone and have secured the building. You would know from Lorik that guards relieve at midnight and noon so you have a couple of hours before the off going watch. Any questions?
@Ariana: Any update on having to withdraw?
The news came late so I wanted to stay silent, but fortunately yes, I will be able to stay on in the game for the forseeable future.
Ariana and Kaynen, I'll answer your questions in-game in a post tomorrow morning. Long story short however; Kaynen you hear nothing on the other side of the door and Ariana the anti-magic ward still works. Basically, now that combat is over I wanted everyone to get a chance to chime in before I did a reply.
Would someone be willing to put together a list items recovered? You still have half a veil unused, as well as the purloined items from the guards chests, the kitchen and armory.
I can't imagine we're actually going to be carrying 30 long swords out of there.... Though a communal treasure list would be nice.
Also someone should use the mwk quarter staff. +1 to hit is nothing to sneeze at.
Agreed.
I see no reason that Ethaniel or Mikhail couldn't use the longsword, battleaxe or the guisarme since they both can use all martial weapons.
Also, we should likely arm Grumblejack with something large that's leftover.
Drat at no shortbow yet!
Ethaniel can use neither armor nor martial weapons actually. He can use all simple weapons and a single martial or exotic weapon of his choice (the katana).
Thus, the weapons he can use are the heavy mace and the quarterstaff.
Of course, IC, Kaynen would have no way of knowing that. :-)
I will be out of town for the next 4-5 days. I may or may not be able to post, not really sure about that. Feel free to DMPC Ethaniel as needed.
Thanks for the update Castor.
Afternoon guys, I am going to post an update tonight describing the next two rooms since they are linked. Feel free to make some more posts about the wardstone ruin or continue planning what you want to do when you escape. I know this portion is combat heavy and I look forward to getting into some good role-play once you escape.