Hello All, I just heard from Fox, and he asked me to let everyone know he'll be held up for the next few days, but he will be back, so don't go anywhere or... hmm what to threaten everyone with, no goblin in this game, Aster could go find that succubus... no that isn't REALLY a punishment... OH don't go anywhere or Aster will make the mermaid cry!
hmmm... no that sucked... sorry Aster isn't really the threatening type. Think of a horrible threatening threat and apply that to yourself, please. Thank you.
Being unconscious and poisoned in a hole filled with water? :P
I'm going through some serious personal difficulties. I'm trying to remain functional, but it's hard. Thank you for your patience, and I'll do everything I can to make sure these games keep moving, even if it's slow for a while.
I think, should you guys make it back to the Wasp Nest, that asking Nisha for some potions to remove poison, or some antidotes, would be useful. =P
Hey, don't rush it, and take care of yourself first. I'll be waiting! This is one anonymous person from somewhere on the planet sending happy thoughts and wishes!
Sorry to hear it Fox. I definitely feel you on that front - I had a fever over 100 degrees for the last five days and it only broke this morning!
Really sorry to hear about that Fox... Really take whatever time for yourself, try to step back from things for a moment, take a breather and try to relax.
These games here are not going anywhere - they (and we) can wait ;)
@Rexandi: Good to know the fever has broke. That sounds like a virus.
Thank you, guys. I'm padding out my extra time with video games and getting out of the house at least once per day.
I'm glad to hear that your fever declined, Rexandi. Hopefully you fully recover soon.
Which video games? ;)
Currently I'm absorbed in the game called Outward. It's an indie game focused around exploration and survival. It's themed like a medieval style fantasy adventure, but I see so many hints that it's more of a post-apocalyptic game. It's fricken hard!! I've died so many times.
My backup games are Stellaris and Dead Cells.
Don't know any of those - Stellaris looks great.
I have well over 500 hours on stellaris. I'm currently running an empire based on what I would consider to be futuristic Dwarves.
I love Stellaris! I think I had about 200 or 300 hours into it, which roughly equates to 6 games.
But the futuristic dwarves are no match for the Soviet Elven Space Union!
Nooooo! Damn elves!
I have that one too, and enjoy it. Not that good at it though... sigh.
Apologies for my delays in posting everyone - this week is turning out waaaaaaaay more complicated than I anticipated - my parents are visiting until Friday, and in the meantime I am having job interviews and whatnot. So yeah...
That being the case, and if I don't post with the desired frequency, please feel free to bot me as needed.
No worries, Ederion. I don't think I'm gonna have to bot you though. I hope you manage to get some peace and quiet soon.
Yay! Freedom! I'll get a post tomorrow morning, currently celebrating Easter!
Ugh, I made a comment about the coffee house being compromised, but now I can't remember if that was this game or a different one. Please redact if I was mistaken!
The coffeehouse hasn't been compromised.
However, what Rexandi says is still valid. I've decided that you don't increase in size as your rebellion levels up. The only way to have more space is to make more space. You will need additional bases and safehouses in order to properly expand.
I should mention that there are possibilities, even by random chance that your base will be discovered. Having plans, traps, barriers, and the like are great ideas to help prevent, or at least slow down, an invasion. If you are ever curious about setting up these things, just ask me and I can set up what it takes to do it, as well as a map for you to place them.
I have a few ideas yeah - so the coffeehouse is basically a shop, leading through the pantry to a cellar/basement which opens to a secret side area where the Silver Ravens are set up?
Also, is there somewhere a list of who is currently part of the silver Ravens, and also known friends/associates?
Yup, all of Tasha's gear, bar the Belt of GS and the Printing Press is down there. Although, the printing press is north of 100lb so if I drop it on someone, it might be pretty effective. She only needs any set of (heavy) armour and a big shield to be pretty decent, though, so if we're not feeling ready, there's no need to go there.
About the safehouse, we could try and expand the basement into the sewers. Though what I feel might be better is trying to find a place already available somewhere around the town, something abandoned?
Yes that's correct, Ederion.
I have some information regarding who is a friend of the Silver Ravens. Anyone who's in the base, acting as an Officer or Team is listed. Supporters however are much more vague. They come and go often and they have no idea where the base is. They just support the idea of the rebellion. I've considered using Supporters as a means of making money, but I haven't put that plan into effect.
There are some refugees that have been living in the base, some of which I've forgotten over time. We have the cousin of Lictor of the Torrent living here, but there's also one or two halflings that have been rescued.
I recommend finding new places to seed the rebellion. Right now you have all your eggs in one basket. Also I don't really want to do renovations math if I don't have to.
I was recently inspired to write about ways to make it easier to explore underwater. Mostly magic items and enchantments. I did also think about sinking/buoyancy, but that's starting to get very crunch heavy.
Update on the Rebellion:
Rank 4/5
Focus: Secrecy
Membership: 29/35 (Officers + Party + Teams + Allies + Refugees)
Supporters: 20 (requires +10 to reach rank 5, lose 1 and you're down to rank 3)
Treasury: 1,262.5gp
Weekly tax: 40gp
Notoriety: 26%
Loyalty: +7 (Base 1 + Kethaera's Cha 4 + Nisha 1 + Archive Books 1)
Secrecy: +6 (Base 4 + Rexus Int 2 + Soul Tomes 2)
Security: +3 (Base 1 + Vacancy 0 + Nisha 1 + Soul Tomes 1)
Officers:
Demagogue: Kethaera, Charisma +4
Partisan: Vacant +0
Recruiter: Laria
Sentinel: Nisha
Spymaster: Rexus, Intelligence +2
Strategist: Tarnagius
Teams:
Skritt Squad (Sneaks, currently upgrading) Leader is Derratata, no Officer
Salties (Freedom Fighters, currently upgrading) Leader is Forvian Crowe, no Officer
Street Performers (Street Performers, currently spreading disinformation) Leader is Unnammed, Officer is Vendalfek +3
Danger: Avr 27
Streets: 25
Alleys: 25
Sewers: 30
Refugees:
- Setrona Sabinus, owner of the Tooth and Nail tavern, and cousin of Lictor Octavio Sabinus of the Order of the Torrent
- Halfling, saved from the Cathedral of Asmodeus, I forgot his name
Two things: I’m a terrible person and don’t know if we got any loot any time recently. All I know is I have relatively little cash.
DM, I’m keen to use the PF downtime rules to actually construct our front business, if that’s ok with you.
I'll take a look to see if you missed out on any loot, but ultimately it is everyone's responsibility to claim any loot that is found. I do see that the loot list hasn't been updated since Dec 2018, so it's possible that some things have been missed.
Do you mean these rules? I can't say I'm interested in using Goods, Influence, etc. I'd rather just set out a price, time, and a few hurdles to overcome such as licensing, secrecy, etc. If these rules can create that effect (I have no experience with this), then I'm happy to use them.
We can just do it with cash. The system has a good way to estimate the cost of making various businesses.
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Okay I just went through the posts since December, and there's only one instance where loot was found. It was a side room next to the well, and Ederion mentioned something along the lines of "we'll pack it up neatly for perusal later"
Here is what you got from that:
Dagger with long, thin blade. Liquid always drips from the hilt
38pp, 230gp, 392sp, 43cp
Old maps of Kintargo
Multiple ledgers that have not been perused
Also, the secret to those tiles was revealed, but no one actually investigated them. You guys went to the well to solve the puzzle instead.
The other bits of wealth have been the wand of water breathing, and the dagger that was blessed by a God.
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Did Bazzle ever figure out what the unknown property of his +2 leather armour was?
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This sounds good, Rexandi. Could you please give me a crash course of figuring out how to determine cost/time for the business?
Thank you for going back and looking for us Fox. It is very much appreciated.
I think we assumed the tiles were traps, and Bazzle was simply disarming them. The Xorn made us paranoid :)
When Aster gets back she can try and help id things.
Looking up the water breathing spell I don't see witches having it, so I put the wand in with Aster's gear for now. If we already knew that, just ignore me.
Aster will need more time to identify the dagger and armor, it seems like her trek around Kintargo has left her mind quite cloudy and befuddled.
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This sounds good, Rexandi. Could you please give me a crash course of figuring out how to determine cost/time for the business?
Ok, the usual downtime system assumes that you are working with your suppliers/laborers/neighborhood to gather influence, which you use to help your project along. In this case though we are doing everything under false pretenses so we are probably not doing that!
Each building or business is split up into rooms. Making a room has a cost in various raw materials. A typical inn costs 2,130 gp for its structures.
Inn
Create: 52 Goods, 5 Influence, 47 Labor (2,130 gp)
Rooms: 1 Bar, 1 Bath, 1 Bedroom, 1 Common Room, 1 Kitchen, 1 Lavatory, 1 Lodging, 1 Stall, 1 Storefront
A place for visitors to stay and rest.
Based on the construction time for the various rooms, it will be 30 days to complete the inn (you can start all of the rooms together; some will finish earlier than others).
We of course will be adding on some special amenities:
Escape Route (16 days, 360 gp) - A back way out with secret doors!
Lodging (30 days, 420 gp) - extra rooms below for our rebel cells!
Sewer Access (4 days, 110 gp) - Another way out!
Storage (8 days, 120 gp) - This will just seem like a wine cellar, but actually connects via secret door to the rebel lodgings!
Total price would be 3,140 gp (which I don't think we can afford right now). Would take 30 days to build - there may be a 10-60% increase because we are doing hidden stuff as well (ostensibly just a basement and wine cellar but part of it will become our rebel hideout, and we need to make sure our laborers don't spill the beans and the guards don't find out...).
Once constructed it runs as a regular business. Used to earn money, a typical Inn gives +41 to your appropriate Profession check. This means it would cost us a bunch up front, but then we would have a nice front business that has extra space for us hidden below and an escape tunnel, access to the sewer system, and if someone spent a week managing it, it would earn us a little bit of cash as well.
Fictionally I see this as a two-story inn with a small tower on one side and a stable on the other side. The tower has the bedroom where the innkeeper lives. The second floor is all lodgings for visitors and one bath, while the lower floor has the bar, the kitchen, the common room, the lavatory, and the foyer. In the kitchen is a staircase that goes down to a storage area that looks like a wine cellar and food storage, but behind an empty rack is a secret door that connects to a set of small rooms (extra lodging) for use by the Silver Ravens. This area also has a grate that allows access to the sewers, and a long tunnel that extends out to a distant part of the city as an escape passage.
At a later time if we had more money we could even add more rooms downstairs, like a library or workshop, but for now this would be a great start (at an admittedly high cost, considering we don't have much treasure right now).
I really like this idea, Rexandi, and it's clear to me that you're passionate about it too.
In addition, I would treat this as an additional base, which would give you a higher max rank in the rebellion chart. You would be able to support more teams, and this would work well as a safe house should you feel in danger while travelling through the city.
I will mention that you could potentially seek out a loan from a noble house or the Court of Coin (mostly just a gathering for rich nobles and merchants who want to discuss economics, but that's probably the best place to get a loan). Normally the church of Abadar would be a good fit as well, but they're absolutely not in the position to loan money. I would love to facilitate a small adventure looking for a good patron (or a naive patron, either works). It will continue to help introduce you to how social challenges work, which will feature more and more as we go in the story.
I'd also recommend that you hire a fulltime manager and workers to earn money for you. This game doesn't assume that you will take full weeks off, just a day or two to recover from a bad fight. In the future, you will do a fair bit of travelling (though you will always return to Kintargo fairly quickly). If you'd rather not hire them in a traditional manner, you could recruit them as a special team. Doing so would take up one of your max team slots.
I'm assuming that you're most interested in the Silver Star Ruins, but if not please let me know.
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Presumably a rebel team could even manage the inn.
I'm always surprised when it comes to the witch's spell list. I think they deserve a lot more than is normally given to them.
I think the problem is the Patrons list; they reserve a ton of spells so that your Patron can give you some distinctive spell knowledge, but most of those wind up pulled off the general list as a result. For instance, I could really use disguise self, but that's reserved as a patron spell for Fey Gifts, Hag's Calling, or the Disguise Hex. There are some healing spells that I can't get because I didn't take Healing as my Patron.
Anyway, no biggie. If we DO pull this off, Rexandi will likely wind up being the traveling musician who stops in once a week to play the clavichord in the common room.
ALSO!
We have... five party members, yes? Me, Aster, Bazzle, Tasha, and Ederion? To split the coinage?
Yep!
So just the coins split to:
7 pp, 52 gp, 78 sp, 12 cp each
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Rexandi identifies the armour as Shadow armour. Did you think Bazzle had a high enough stealth? Now he gets an extra +5.
Sweet one - I wouldn't mind something along those lines for my scouting endeavors :P
Guys, after digging around some, I think our best option for underwater navigation would be:
The wand of underwater breathing we already have;
+
Having a Swim Speed (since Freedom of Action is too damned expensive). Good options for this are:
Touch of the Sea Potion (1 minute) – 50 gp
Slipstream Potion (30 mins) – 300 gp
Touch of the Sea Wand (1 minute) –750 gp
(I think these are all good choices)
+
Using Piercing Weapons (because with a swim speed, you deal full damage). Still far from ideal because we know there are those critters with DR/Bludgeoning = -2 to hit/half damage (unless we have Freedom of Movement which we cannot afford).
Think this is the best we can do, still far from enough in my opinion because of the darkness (unless it is negated by Darkvision? I cannot remember).
Any thoughts?
These are good ideas, Ederion. I don't have time at the moment, but I can update the Newt Market for some potions and maybe a lesser wand or two. If none of the shops have what you want, you can always try using Diplomacy to find a private seller. No guarantee though. In the future, you will have access to a team specialized in running the marketplace, who can import special items for you, or refresh stores altogether.
Remember Tarn's suggestion: Find a way to get them out of the water. I'm not sure how you could do that, but it's a suggestion.
Darkvision can't deal with the ink. Tremorsense works well, as does shifting the water around to disperse it.
Also, you can bring a team with you. For outright fights, I would recommend taking the Salties. Just make sure they don't die.
Ok, I think the Wand of Touch of the Sea is a good idea, so we should look for that.
As for the piercing and bludgeoning weapons, Ederion has one of each.
Getting them out of the water... Tasha, can you use a net? ;)
Updated the Newt Market.
Where is the link for the market Treasure? I'm apparently blind today.
If I can get a couple scrolls of summon monster II...
Guys, I wanted to let you in on my upcoming schedule and some changes which will most likely impact my availability in game.
From the 3rd June I am starting a new job, and one with more responsibility than my latest ones - next week I will be starting the handover (Mon-Wed) in the mornings. This shouldn't impact my gaming much, but when work starts it most definitely will (I am hoping to get myself organized to post once in the am, and once in the evening, as even though I will most likely still have a PC in front of me most of the day, I am not sure how available I will be to post. And I want to focus strongly on this job opportunity).
Then, from the 15th June I have three (or four) weeks of vacations - WOHOOOOO!!!! So there's that also :D
Bottom line, from the next week until the... 15th of July or something along those lines, this will be a bumpy ride. I will keep you up to date on whether I will be able to keep up, etc. I'm not leaving though ;)
Thanks for the heads up Ederion. Congrats on the vacation, do you have plans for how you're going to spend them?
I'll be away for a little while in the middle of June. I'm going on a small retreat where internet does not exist. I'll give you guys more info when that time comes around.
@Aster, there is no link. Muahahaha I'm forcing you to travel around and shop. NPCs are pretty important in this game, and being on good terms with a shopkeeper can go a long way. In addition, you may have noticed that good and bad things can happen as you travel the city. I try to tailor them depending on how many people are present, so our poor witch isn't suddenly ambushed by 12 CCG who fight to the death.
… that would be bad.
Now that we are looking at doing some shopping I found this list of items that I found on the Yellow Skeleton. I am not sure if the potions have been identified or if the shirt is magic. (This was the same shirt that was part of my disguise along with the stolen pillow case.).
Found with yellow skeleton
- A shirt that shows no sign of decay or damage
- A dark iron symbol of a face mask
- An elegant short sword (medium)
- Two potion bottles
- A set of metal dice
- A collection of coins and gems
- A set of damaged masterwork thieves' tools
You guys have had that loot for several days, so let's identify everything.
- A Quick Runner's Shirt
- An unholy symbol of Norgorber
- A masterwork short sword (medium)
- 2 potions (Cat's Grace, and Expeditious Retreat)
- A set of loaded metal dice
- 75gp in assorted coins and gemstones
- A set of damaged masterwork thieves' tools (Rexandi could have mended them with her cantrip)
Ooh. Of nobody's taking the Shirt, I'd take it, but that's excellent for casters.
Sorry I've slowed down my posts, work's been real busy these days. I'll get on today and during the weekend, and should be better on from next week.
I took a look at the loot list.
Ederion has a Ring of Protection +2 (not sure if that is the one from our loot list?).
He wouldn't mind getting that Potion of Cat's Grace.
Depending on how much gold we have, he would like to buy a Four Leaf Clover - Link - maybe Aster and Rexandi could look for it? It costs 3750 gold.
Aster is your skill in Disguise known to us yet. I see that you have a +9. After getting possibly spotted by the Hound I was going to have Bazzle try to pick up the skill and start recommending that we start working on disguises and how we handle getting spotted and so forth. If you are a known disguiser then I won't have Bazzle reach out to NPC contacts to learn or help.