Here be dragons! Adventurers keep out! (Inactive)

Game Master Davachido

Here is my super spy. Tell me what you think. I might need to talk to you about how the Pally powers work what with us all being evil.

Edit: I wish there was a better picture of a man in a suit.

I need to get to bed so I'll answer some questions in the morning.

@Everyone: Documents have been updated for the new week, you guys can do some more things if you like or we can let the next week roll over and let more events unfold.

You can of course at this point now that more things have happened assign more troops to missions.

@Min: Bard looks fine

@Shard: Dragonborn have now arrived, you may not get Liopleurodon as a animal companion but doesn't mean you can't try to make a unit out of them if you decide to get some people to tame them.

Did the escalation roll on the battle front this week? It's a d6 and my spy saboteurs take their dice away.

what would using lots of counterfeit money to buy up military supplies be. I would think disruption sense it's poisoning the economy. Also I want them to wear disguises in order to do it right.

Spend the money in these ways
1.go Ahead of armies and squads dressed as solders and buy up and the military supplies at 10% higher then the normal army price. Say that this is the normal army price and if anyone has been paying less then there has been some shaving off the top.

2.In general when spending the counterfeit money always be dressed as the enemy army, rank changing as they go. We want the army to be blamed for the counterfeiting. Also give them a reputation for generosity that they can't live up to when peoples expectations are betrayed they get angry. It would not be the first time it's happened. Some places to spend money are.
A) gambling dens you usually don't leave with the money you came in with.

Bard James Bard will lead the force and do most of the face work.

What would be the mission ratting for this be?

Escalation dice happen after one week, so this week will have escalation.

Just noticed one thing with bard, can I ask you to make him like an NPC? I don't mind the Gestalt bit but his stats should follow Heroic NPC, not base character creation.

I guess disruption is not really all that clear. Disruption as I've got it in the document is for stuff like stealing horses or supplies from an attack line. Changing the direction of an enemy army. Harassing a village. Planting traps ahead of an army or important procession, that sort of thing.

Sneaking in money to an economy is again Infiltration. (Considering in your example they are wearing disguises and carrying a face, even more so)

Mission rating 4 (I)

Hey, everybody. I'm sorry for my absence. It was much longer than intended. I really only was going to be away for a few days as family visited. Then the hammer of life came crashing down--AP tests, school work as the year comes to a close, trying to find a summer job... Things piled up. As such, it's been two weeks since I even got on the forum.

That said, school is still in session for a couple weeks, and after that I'm planning to get a job in the summer. All that aside, the absence has made me realize how busy I am and made me think about my ability to keep everything together. As such, I'm trying to get my affairs in order and make sure I'm only trying to do what I can do. I'd hate to bog other people down with substandard playing, and that means cutting some losses.

I'm sorry to have to say it, but I need to drop out of this game, everyone. I've had a lot of fun playing in it, and I wish everybody the best, but I've realized that I'm trying to do too much. I hope to get a chance to play with you all in the future, when I'm more able to participate in PbP games like this.

Best of luck to you all, and happy gaming!

--Loup Blanc

Well then the Spy saboteurs are kind of worthless at this mission and about every other mission I was thinking of having them do. How I am I going to use this hord of counter-feit? The spy saboteurs are only any good at amateur small scale sabotage and are not really spys at all.

It's not just about sneaking money into the economy. It's also about buying a bunch of stuff and discrediting the army.

Can we change the Spy Saboteurs to (I). I can't think I am every going to want to asign a disruption mission. Seems so inelegant.

You can rob someone with stealth and force, but a few words and some good looking papers everyone will trip over themselves to give you their stuff.

@Aurelie: Work before play, enjoyed playing with you. Have a good one!

@Min: Okay, you do realise your saboteurs have as high mission ratings as most elite troops right? If not higher. Not to mention the ONLY thing that has higher mission rating is your other unit. So worthless? Really?

Have you also realised that almost every starting unit pair for every player has also has two different specialties to so that players can do a variety of stuff? Just because your unit doesn't have that one specific specialty does not make them somehow fail at doing that mission. A mission rating 4 can easily be done by the Saboteurs so I really don't see your issue here. Most of the mission ratings that you want them to do will not higher than that either. Not to mention as basic troops they can do up to a potential of mission rating 7. Whereas most basic troops need to have their specialty in order to do that.

If you really want to get another basic unit to do it try to buy one up, we still have Ka-Ching around.

O.k. O.k. Just don't really have any idea what to do with them. In order to to do their type of disruption I would need a target. And considering that Accuser demons failed their mission so badly Incidentally I can't actually think of any way by the rules that could have happened. Dimensional Anchor is a 4th level spell and if they have enough 7th clerics to spam that to lock down all the Accuser demons in one round we should give up right now. There is one possibility that the supply depots all had Hallow dimensional Anchors on them, but there is no reason the Accusers would need to get that close. Not the mention putting up that many hallow spells for what have to be expensive. O well I guess that's how the mission rules work. Next time we need to keep in close contact close contact so they can use their powers

Thanks for the Ka-ching. I'm going to see about hiring a team of high Cha types. I think I will call them the Con-men. Need to see about getting someone else to help with the ka-ching.

Edit: The Spy saboteurs have a mission rating of 3. If the mission they are attempting has a difficulty of 4 they have a less then 50 chance of succes and a much higher chance of being destroyed.

edit: @Aurelie: Sorry to see you go.

Higher than 50% how do you figure? And being destroyed needs to have a net of at least -1, considering the swing is -4 to 4 I don't see it would be destroyed quite so easily. Considering 0-4 all either make them succeed or not take damage, -2 -1 causes it to take damage and -3 -4 destroy it.

Also for the sake of rules do not look at the rules of the monsters compared to the rules of the missions. The missions puts into play a whole range of factors. Maybe the clerics and enemies all knew accusers were coming again due to divination and hid from them. The accusers tried to find an area to look for their targets but their targets ambushed and killed them being so brittle.

Re-reading the mission rules yes they don't have that high a chance to be destroyed still I don't want to send them on a mission with a less then 50% chance of success that only tips my hand and lets the enemy know what I am up to.

Should my group of a dozen shadows be some sort of mission unit? or are they considered something else?

Also, as I level, could I choose to apply one of the Shadow variants to Malakai instead of increasing her HD? Or maybe give her class levels?

I know it might not matter any time soon, just something I've wanted to ask for awhile now.

They aren't big enough to form a unit yet, though if you keep making them bigger group I'm sure they could be. You can speed that along by trying out a Ka-ching roll on your own or with help from someone else.

As regards to the variants yea I don't mind, same with the class levels. Just so long as her total level doesn't end up being more than yours minus 2.

@Vaklam: which artifacts are you asking about? I can't tell.

If Little Aurelie is going to leave then I would like to come up with a in-story reason. Maybe some of her angels turned on her?

Why do we need to take it over? As long as we have somebody in league with us in control, leave it be, in case Loup can eventually come back.

In the meantime, we have four players at the moment, which is the norm. However, this is game is anything but, so do we think we should look for at least one replacement?

I plan on making some Mold, Mindslaver Using the new plant samples I have been getting from the forrest. Who wants to join me in the ka ching? I think it's a 2d6. Have 3 by myself so I only need 2 more people to make a good run at it. This forest job has really increased our resources.

I plan on reducing it's intelligence for safeties sake it will not be able to operate farther then 10 miles from me or the others who helped me on the ka ching.

Edit: Also I have been thinking about what sort of Mission to send the Spy saboteurs on. Poisoning the wells is kind of worthless due to ease of detecting Poisson and purifying food and water. In those clerics have been getting in the way a lot lately. I need some way to distract them. The only way I can think of that the Spy saboteurs would be good at is spreading a plague. I need to make a disease. This is made somewhat easier by they fact I know the spell Contagion. I need a fast spreading disease with worrying symtoms. Leprosy seems to be the right on the button. It does not need to be very deadly, but in needs to be debilitating and look gross. That should force all the enemy clerics to come and expend all there spell slots for weeks curing people. What sort of mission rating would that be?

Can I cast Contagion onto a bunch of lumps of flesh and my agents can just keep adding need lumps to the bag and take them away and spread them around the city. Feeding them to sray dogs, cats, pigions and rats.

Make that Bubonic Plague. Fatigued should slow them down and it spreads rather easily. Also historical president. Was known as the black death. Most of our troops are ether immune to disease or have high fort saves. Still might be a good idea to spread it far into enemy territory to reduce the chance of it coming back to us. Dros Darnell seems a good place. If the agents do the job right they won't even know we did it.

What happened with the accusers.

@old smoky said:

The accusers attempt to spy on the adventurers and if there is a convoy to troops.

Difficulty 3 (I), Mission rating 5
success?: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 3, 1, 5) = 14 Net bonus of -4. This unfortunately sets their level to 1 for this mission, thus killing them.

The accusers attempt to spy on where supply lines and troops might be. However due to previous run-ins with the accusers the enemy is prepared. Clerics are on hand with ways to stop the accusers from escaping and they are shot down before they can retreat.

Elsewhere on the east coast, reports come in of a boat that was unmanned. The ship was rigged with a ton of explosives, it came in off the ocean powered by something and was flung onto shore. Some major damage was sustained to any remaining villages off that side when the ship exploded. No-one has determined the cause of this rogue explosive flying boat.

At Roquefort a group of the best raiders from the Dragonborn tribe arrive. They have some impressive techniques and handle on divine magic that The shard has seen. Many are individually trained to handle intense situations and are a reliable fighting force.

@Leonard: I need you to cast lessor planner ally. For the missions I am planing on doing this week and need I fast reliable way of transferring equipment for my teams both in and out of enemy territory. One accuser devil should be enough for that.

It's amazing they managed to get all of them sense they should have all been spread out. I don't know of any divination spell that good at least none I can find I have to copy that spell what ever it is. They knew where each of them was going to be. And sense you gave them open ended instructions even you didn't know that. Maybe one of them turned traitor? No they were all spread out. Sorry I'll stop picking at it.

@ Min, that can be arranged.

Thanks. I would do it myself, but it's a lot of trouble to planner bind teleproting devils. Also as I said before I prefer to bind demons.

Thanks. I would do it myself, but it's a lot of trouble to planner bind teleproting devils. Also as I said before I prefer to bind demons.

I have a portal, apparently. Plus I need to talk to Puck about the incompetent devils he sent my way.

@Min: Okay I'm going to have to ask this, can you stop whining, contesting and arguing almost every point I make? It is really starting to spoil my enjoyment of running this game. Just because something doesn't go your way shouldn't mean you have to whine about it.

With regards to the rules again it is meant to be simple so we do not spend days figuring out the exact workings of each unit. The Accusers just screwed up with -4, maybe they were unlucky, maybe somewhere betrayed them, maybe there is something the enemy has that you don't know about.

In the end it doesn't matter all that matters is they failed and the game carries on. Nothing is stopping you from getting more of them or thinking of something else to do.

The fact that Leonard is now kind of pissed off (IC I assume) and is going to argue with Puck is interesting and will probably lead to something cool in the end. Your troops are made to die and get recruited constantly in a wave. So seriously just because one troop died is not the end of the world.

Ya all right. I am sorry. It's just some times it feels like we are both working under completely different sets of expectations. When my expectations turn out to be wrong after over thinking it for a long time I get something you might call Cognitive dissonance. In order to help prevent this from happening I am going to make a point of telling what I plan to well in advance so we both know whats coming sort of. I have not really been doing that before because I noticed in other games that if you tell the DM what you are planing they tend to be prepared for it. However, now I relies a flaw in that thinking. The DM is always going to throw up obstacles for that is neassary to keep the game interesting and if you don't give him/her time to prepare they might be ad-hoc obstacles. It's better to announce your plans early and have well reasoned obstacles. Also if the plan is obviously infeasible for some reason that your character would know then DM can mention that before you set all your hopes and dreams on it.

If I may ask sense that it seems to be one of the places where our expectations differ. How common are high level characters?

I can't recall if we ever settled upon an official make up for my populaton.

Do I have all undead, a decent mix of living/undead or mostly living?

I expect most of the undead are at the front they are generally unskilled labor. One there better uses is as expendable troops.

Yea, I meant my general populace.

In Golarion, there is an undead nation known as Geb. They use zombies and skeletons as normal labor. Living citizens are often less than even slaves.

Sorry not familiar with Geb and I can't seem to find any info on them besides some spells they have come up with.

To my understanding however inteliegent undead then to be rather high CR monsters like vampires, mummies or Litches. Are there any low power intelligent Undead?

Edit: reading more I am finding a few intelligent undead that are not too powerful to be ruled over by us.
Berbalang,

Geb info

Interesting, but unfortunately lacking in specific detail about the general population. Also there is the question if Vaklams home is heavily populated with undead where did they come from. Undead don't just happen (or at least not often). If I understand the backstory for this campaign then this area was mostly populated by waring tribes and then we took over.

I don't know of any spell or abilities we have access to that would create intelligent undead. Well guess it could be a city of Wraiths Vaklam created with his created spawn ability.

Then again may sense his city has a very friendly policy towards undead maybe a lot of them immigrated? Most undead don't seem to be the type. Most of them prey on the living.

Any other ideas?

What information are you looking for beyond this? ; Society is divided into three castes. The quick (the living, apart from thralls), the dead (intelligent undead), and chattel (living thralls and mindless undead). The quick and the dead are treated equally; the chattel have no rights.

Create undead and the greater version. It's not unreasonable that the city has a way to do
This. My city has a permanent portal to Hell, after all. Basically a 5th-9th level spell ability depending on how exactly it works.

Also many undead are created by others, such as vampires and wights.

Your right if you have a portal to hell then I guess Vaklam could have say a sacrificial alter that acts like create undead.

Or maybe he has some sort of super unholy grave-yard that gradually turns everything buried in it into undead.

Also we know he has a unit of vampire elite so they could be converting. Sort of surprised by that vampires are really powerful. I wonder the base creature is for most of them according to the vampire templet the base creature needs to have 5 hd.

Of course vampires also have a lot of weaknesses. I bet that all the battle front and camps and most of the cities are laced with garlic. Well maybe not all of them you can only produce so much garlic still I but garlic crops are likely being subsidized. How much trouble do you think it would take to make a mirror wall? Then their is the home and dwelling thing.

With all of that I can see why despite there very powerful combat powers they don't have much of a battle front rating. Still those Vampire elite should be a powerful force if we can find the right place to put them. I guess that's reflected in their "Guardian to the master" power.

Still they have an at will dominate person. I bet there are all sorts of uses for that.

@Old smoky: Sorry about giving you a hard time about the hag coven having non-dection I just found that covens can cast mind blank at will. They could cover the entire city if they wanted to. Of course this means that it is even more important that I find them.

@Vaklam: I think the only thing we settled on is that your upperclass were all Vampire. If you want your city to be like Geb, no problem.

There can be an alter, or a ritual place to create more of these undead or just the vampires do it during their daily lives or what not.

Thanks Smoky! I'm off to the Yankee game in a bit, so I will make an in game post when I return.

In the interest of full disclosure the reason I want get the shambling mound samples is that I think that is will be a good component for making a A.I. The stuff is very electrical and the Greensward variant implies that is capable of absorbing intelligence.

My Idea was 4 ingredients for making a A.I.

1)A number of intelligent souls
2)The Programing structure of the Golems we captured and I studied
3) A shambling Mound
4) a bolt of lightening because it's traditional.

My thinking is that Using the programing of a Golem I can create the basic template for a A.I. those golems were quite a bit smarter then the average able to use bows a complex process.

The Souls to provide the spark of life and Intelligence.

The shambling Mond to provide interface and to absorb the Souls into the Programing.

Do you think I need any other parts? Of course this will all need a ka-ching to engineer this just right. What do you think?

Any suggestions on what devils I should pick up and for what purpose?

Accuser's of course that greater teleport is worth it's weight in gold it makes just about everything else more effective because it also us fast communication and delivery. Might be nice to get more then one team if you can.

A team Imps would be good if you want to spread a rumor or civil uprising or spreading discord. Have them going around using suggestion. (shame it's once per day, but with there low power you might be able to get a lot of them. Imagine of say a hundred soldiers decided to desert with everything they could carry. It might make a lot of the others think about following their lead)

A Amaimon could protect an army from good. However as far as I can see the enemy has not been doing that many mind control spells. However if those singing guys are under compulsion that might free them which would be interesting.

Sarglagon can cast control water at will get a bunch of them all reroute rivers. Or flood costal cities. However CR 8 so even if you could get some I doubt you could get many.

There are a lot of stuff, but most devil are high power and I doubt we could get that many if any. If we go by a power to usefulness ratio (expendable stuff is considered more useful) then Accusers win hands down against about all other devils so I would suggest geting multiple teams of them. If multiple teams of them are working at the same time the enemy anti devil stuff can't be everywhere and if it is then we are tying up a lot of their resources.

Re-reading this post later. The grammer is really really bad. I am very sorry. It almost gave me a headache what was I thinking.

Are we currently at the start of a new week/dramatic day?

Yes, I think people are rearing up to go do a little adventuring now so refresh your abilities.

I would like to use Automatic Writing to ask

"If a do not attack the witches will they change location this week?" I want to know if they will keep until I can get to them

Next question "Do the artifacts that Vaklam is wanting my help to go after contain any subset of the following Codex of the Infinite Planes, ‪Anathema Archive‬, ‪Book of Infinite Spell, ‪Book Of the Damned‬, Revelation Quill, ‪Sihedron Tome‬, Book of Eternal Necromancy, Not including the empty set?"

3rd question "will it take longer then 2 weeks to for the Varian to clear of the plague I had spread"

4th question "Is there anyone in here be dragons smarter then me?" more then 26 int

the next 4 questions depend on the answers for these questions.

Sorry for the first question it's "if I do not attack the witches will they change location this week?

third question "Will it take longer then 2 weeks to for the Varian to clear up the plague I had spread"

I just keep making mistakes and this forum does not give much time to correct them Sorry.

@The shard: Have you mentioned or told me about Aittma?

I was thinking, from what we have seen the clerics seem to be the backbone of the Varian empire. We need a way to distact and disrupt them. I have already started on this with my plague spreading, but they will quickly get wise to this and start taking precautions. I'm fine with this sense those precautions will take resources and in general be in-convent for them. However this means that I keep having to use different methords to keep them off balance. I was thinking of spreading a couter religion with James as it's prophet he'll need to use another name of course. He can blame the plague and a bunch of other troubles on whatever gods they worship in Varian.religion: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (14) + 14 = 28 Maybe he can spread the good news about Aittma.

@old smoky: can you tell me anything about the religion of the Varian? Also maybe what I know about Aittma?

Hey Smokey, can you explain what exactly the special abilities each of my units posses and please give an example of how best to use them.

I think I understand them, somewhat, but I'd like some clarification, just to make sure.

Also, if the Shadows go out on a "recruitment drive" would they eventually split into a second unit, or do they just sort of keep growing?

@Min I don't believe I've told you yet. I don't think our conversations ever made it to religion of our people.

Also Shard isn't that bothered at this time to actively pursue any knowledge about Aittma. Perhaps when I'm done with my questing this week, we could talk about your religion ideas.

@Vaklam: Shades: When on a mission 1,5 are negative dice. 2,6 are positive dice and 3,4 are nothing. This means that their have different chances of success compared to others. Usually good to do missions that are near the mission rating.

Lesser undead: They just never die, that's pretty much it. So can be used as a basic +1 to a fight or do dungeon keeping missions at no risk.

If you get them to go on missions to 'recruit' more, it might take a while but they'll eventually split.

@Min: Aittma was never mentioned to you so you have no idea about that one. The religion of Varien is very similar to Torm from forgotten realms.

Questions:

Yes
No Remember nothing on the plane is CL 20 or up so many of those don't actually exist
No
Unclear

More questions
5.do the Variens have more then 50 drakes

if yes then
6. do the Variens have more then 100 drakes

if no the
6.do the Variens have more then 25 drakes

The rest of the questions are more narrowing down, but it's hard to send a proper flow chart in these posts

Congrats on 501 game and 500 discussion posts!!!