Honestly, that's really good to know. He hinted at his changing motivations in the Banquet, I realize, but it's good to hear confirmed out-of-character.
Oh, and yes, everyone except him and Tanith. I think Eben's actually avoided death, too, though it's possible he got breath of life'd once. He did get feebleminded at one point.
Yep--Eben's been feebleminded and breath of life'd.
I'm happy with how Carina's arc has been going so far. The only question now is what'll happen when she catches up to her 'sister'--I'm torn between wanting to re-merge with her, turning back into a tiefling and permanently silencing her--or blowing her to smithereens with holy bombs and dealing with the potential fallout. Such as, in so doing, putting her on a timer until she fades out of existence because of the information Farrukh dug up...
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Eben: Continue to romance the blacksmith Lowri, keep Lorwi from harm while she works with Mahuudril, save the world
I think Lowri would punch Eben rather hard at the patriarchal white knighting aspects of this.
And yeah, breath of life at least semi puts Eben in the 'death club', though he hasn't gotten the benefit of hanging out with and getting messages from his patron deity. Which is good, because I don't think he has a ptron deity and it would probably be a conversation with a random god "Um, yeah, hi, I'm Osprem, and I'm your celestially-appointed divine representative. So, y'know, don't f##% it up with this whole worm-y thing, I guess?"
Honestly, I'm good regardless of 'personal story'; I think at heart I'm a simple enough soul that I'm perfectly fine with living for levelups. (One level to Improved Precise Shot, whoo!)
No, no, Lorwi is Lowri's twin brother, see, he just gets into trouble a lot, it's actually a very nice gesture to... wait, no, that was a typo.
I think early on I had some dream of Tanith proving himself as Kord's progeny via some incredible feat(s) of strength. You know, the kind of thing that forms the basis of myth and legend. Maybe that had already came to pass. Or maybe it'll be covered inherently by saving the world. In either case it's probably not a big deal. What I imagined for Tanith isn't where we ended up.
So... the real character arc was the friends we made along the way?
He did wrestle a dragon... but yeah, I can see how that became decentered in some ways. He had a good focus on building the shrine to Kord in Greyhawk, but that's mostly completed now with the purification of the Festering One's shrine.
I did just remember that Smenk is in play in Alhaster, though. That's possibly Tanith's one loose end. Serving Smenk for those years is arguably the one lingering stain on Tanith's conscience, and the one really "non-heroic" thing in his backstory that would make it harder for people to sing songs of his greatness. Maybe you'll get the chance to put it right.
Talking about all this is also useful for me because it helps remind me who the campaign's stars are. We have a really good group here, and I want to make sure everyone's story is being done justice—even if that story is just "this guy's really chill and nothing gets him too down".
Dealing with Smenk would be great but I don't think he's the kind of final challenge level 15+ characters overcome to solidify themselves as legends. I'd imagined something like brawling with and overcoming some mythic giant or beast. Part of the problem is that all our big threats at this level are super gross worm monsters which are decidedly not glorious to be punching and wrestling with.
Maybe something wrestle-worthy will come along before this all wraps up.
Nah, you just need to know how to spin it.
"And lo, as the remnants of the acidic slime GLEAMED upon his breast, the Scion of Kord proclaimed 'Bring me my towel, that I may be cleansed of this foul stain' and, once dry, proceeded to perform over 10000 squat thrusts and curls, as the Great Worm was, in truth, no fitting workout for such a mighty warrior."
On reflection, I think Tanith's really, really gonna like this installment.
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@Cuetz and Eben: The rest of us are on discord which has helped quite a bit with coordination and just catching up. If you're down to join us shoot me a PM and I'll get you an invite.
I've avoided that because I really really hate Discord. I'm good with just following along here.
Cuetzpalli already died and went to heaven as it were. He's back to help his friends, and save the world. If he ran into Spiny again at some point he would probably enjoy it, but as far as he's concerned Spiny is free. Cuetzpalli wouldn't go looking for him, especially before the whole age of worms thing is resolved. Maybe in retirement...
RE:Discord - I think I'm good too, thank you for the offer though.
All this is excellent to know! I'm enjoying your characters as they are right now, whether they seek out arcs or not.
Also, I've been thinking about it a lot over the last few installments, and I've finally decided to add a new feature to Action Points:
Cheat Death. Whenever you would otherwise die instantly, you can spend half your normal maximum in Action Points to instead stabilize at negatives equal to your Con -1—basically, on the brink of death but alive.
Alternatively, you can spend however many APs you have left to remain conscious and fully-functional for up to double that number in rounds, after which point you die no matter what ("wounds beyond anyone's ability to heal", barring a heal spell or similar).
I'm also willing to add custom uses for some of you who have "shticks" that aren't really supported by the rules—like Tanith being able to spend an AP to wrestle a spawn of Kyuss or a barbed devil. If you have one in mind, ask me now or at the time, and we'll work out how much it should cost.
I was thinking about eliminating the "emulate feat/reserve spell" option, but I may hold off on that for now, unless you have an idea for a custom replacement for your character that would balance it out.
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Never again. Never again with ropers.
And I thought the Entangle spell was obnoxious in terms of rolls...
Just imagine if we had a f&@!ing wizard like Erip casting Evard's black tentacles here and telekinesis there. Now I'm glad I killed her.
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Could be worse. Imagine if those tentacles threatened for AoO purposes.
Oh, it's worse, because by RAW they should actually provoke—they're treated as ranged weapons in Pathfinder. I just can't bring myself to run it that way. Imagine if every single strand attack came with a Schrodinger's "or maybe they die instead" disclaimer. I gave them lower Will saves from being inbred, so that's to balance out the house rule, if you want to see it that way.
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Astraden: Save the world
I have had a few side goals with Astraden, but she's about as disorganized as I am in real life so I don't know that she's been pursuing them that well:
- fix up Diamond Lake, retire to Land house (post-campaign)- "stop death" on a macro scale (expressed during a conversation with Cuetzpalli, it's something she'll try to do if she gets her hands on miracle-level magic)
- mend fences with all her siblings (I feel like this isn't the easiest/most entertaining thing to write about but it probably needs to happen on screen if it's going to happen)
I think I might have messed up slightly. Historically, Aklo has almost never been mentioned in this PbP, which makes me think that I decided to replace it with Undercommon entirely to be more Greyhawk-faithful. It's not really fair to punish you for not knowing a language I didn't suggest existed, so... assume they're the same language, just that Aklo is the original form, Olde Englishe style. Except instead of being the pretentious fancy-speak, it's the way the language was spoken back before gods knew how to speak.
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I could have fudged it, but like two clown cars crashing into each other, it was just too horrible and hilarious to look away from.
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Well, at least with the big guy dead you don't have to deal with Astraden's touch of chaos!
For what it's worth, I literally can't stop laughing, and this is a day I had a needle inside my eyeball, so I NEED a good laugh.
Needle....eyeball....?
o_o
I hope you escape the mind flayer lair soon.
Less illithid, more 'Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange'. Eyelid clamps and all!
I had nothing to do with this.
In seriousness, hope you're bouncing back. I can barely stand a shot in my leg once every two weeks.
In retrospect, Clunk's action was not the best call, but I guess 10 Int won't always make the best maneuvers.
So, some slight confusion—Astraden wouldn't have been adjacent to the roper if she hadn't been hit (and thus pulled to its clutches), so Farrukh shouldn't be able to do the ripostes. However, you can damage the tendrils, it had 4 HP left, Cuetzpalli and Clunk ended up not getting full attacks because of the confusion, and it's a cool moment and you only get it once per day. So we fudged some numbers, because really, if I'm not allowed to fudge time paradoxes when a PC is literally bending time, when am I?
As a point of order, I think he can do that four times a day.
Didn't the spoiler say once per day?
Upon reaching 5th level, the warder becomes ever more skilled at adapting to the flow of combat. Once per day, the warder may activate Extended Defense as an immediate action. When she does, the character chooses a counter she has readied; she may initiate that counter as a free action (even on another’s turn) at will until the beginning of her next turn. At the beginning of her next turn, the chosen counter is expended. Every three levels beyond this (8th, 11th, 14th, and 17th levels), she may use this ability an additional time per day. This ability can only be used with counters that negate attacks or allow the warder to use another roll in place of a saving throw.
Bolded for emphasis.
[EDIT: Good to know, Tanith. I think that it's one of the core abilities important to Farrukh's build (since he's mainly designed to protect allies), but it is a very powerful ability to have four times per day. As we know from the "but fighters can go all day!" debates, "four times per day" is not as stark a limitation when most adventuring days don't go on very long. :P]
So, I'm cleaning up the Campaign info tab, and I'm gonna remove the installment recaps (I never finished them, and they're less important than up-to-date lists of NPCs and stuff). That said, I didn't want to just throw away something that took me ages to write, so reposting it here:
Erip and Farrukh were the catalysts. Erip was a dwarf necromancer of no mean talent or intellect, though s/he was frail and clumsy. Farrukh was just a slayer from the wilderness, but his keen knowledge of the underground setting would prove invaluable in their efforts. It was they who met and planned out the exploration of the last unexplored cairn in the Diamond Lake region.
Others joined them. Tanith, a worshiper of the Brawler, Kord, was invited by Erip. Cuetzpalli, a fearsome Cuthbert-worshiping Olman warrior from the mysterious Isle of Dread, was invited by Farrukh—along with his vicious dinosaur, Spiny. Tanith invited Robin, an eccentric fisherman, and Robin in turn invited Carina, a tiefling alchemist with a dangerous past.
This band met and set out for the Cairn. Each of them had somewhat different reasons for the mission—Cuetzpalli had been assigned a mission by the Cuthbert fanatic, Jieran Wierus, while Carina just wanted money to get out of town. However, they were all confident.
At first, the mission went smoothly. The band exchanged barbs with some less knowledgeable adventurers—led by a snide wizard named Khellek—and fought some starving wolves.
Then they made a mistake. Small, but enough. In a room lined with hidden elevators, they activated one that had been damaged by acid. It collapsed, and a horrific spiderlike abomination crawled out. Along with a swarm of acid-spewing scarabs.
Having underestimated the spiderlike creature's speed, Erip was brought down by a single recklessly cast spell. Before anybody could act to save her, her corpse was swarmed by acid beetles.
The battle was won, but not quickly enough to save the outcast dwarf. And so the quest claimed its first victim.
After informing Erip's master, a friendly wizard (and brother of the Governor-Mayor) named Allustan, the group reluctantly set back out. They managed to recruit Astraden, a wry cleric of Olidammara. Astraden was looking for a group to keep her safe from the bandit captain she'd betrayed, but her help would prove invaluable, and she quickly became a member of the team.
The group went on to explore a strange room full of colorful lanterns. Two of the lanterns, however, were missing. Working out the intent of the puzzle, they recovered one of the lanterns in the wolf room and went down some elevators to find the other.
Down there, they fought some larger acid beetles, employing tactics to excellent effect. Robin nearly became ghoul-chow after diving into a submerged chamber full of them, but Tanith managed to get his paralyzed friend out before he drowned.
Eventually, the group found the green lantern and found a hidden shaft leading up. Here, they killed a revolting grick and ran into a young boy named Alastor Land—a child who ran away from home and came very close to making it to the end of the Cairn.
But he failed. Alastor was a ghost, and he needed his body to be buried with his family. So the group went to the Land residence, facing an injured owlbear, and realized that some other bodies were missing from the Land graveyard. Also, Carina adopted a baby owlbear.
Eventually, the truth came to light: Balabar Smenk owned several thugs, led by a chief thug, Kullen the half-orc. These thugs had been sent to assist Smenk's necromancer friend in acquring corpses, but wishing to avoid the cultists of Wee Jas, they chose to steal corpses from abandoned homesteads.
Kullen and his group were surly about being used as mere graverobbers, so after a brief brawl, Robin managed to get them to tell the group where Filge the necromancer now resided.
The group made its way to the Observatory north of Diamond Lake. Farrukh and Robin tried climbing up to Filge's bedchambers while Tanith and the rest decided to make a "distraction". This resulted in Robin being spotted by Filge's owl familiar.
Robin killed the owl, but the jig was up. He and Farrukh climbed in and engaged Filge head-on.
They knocked him out, but his creations—a bunch of skeletons and zombies—broke out and put the pair to flight.
After Astraden managed to turn the undead and destroy them, the group healed Filge. They made a deal with him: He would speak honestly and they would probably let him leave alive.
Filge explained that Smenk had called him in to investigate a strange green worm the mine manager had found. This worm came from a cult beneath Diamond Lake called the Ebon Triad. And, to be more precise, it came from an undead creature called a "spawn of Kyuss".
The Ebon Triad, it turned out, was being housed in the mines of a dwarf manager named Ragnolin Dourstone. Dourstone had made a deal with Smenk to bring in supplies for the cult, and Smenk was beginning to have doubts.
Determining that the Ebon Triad would be the next step, the group returned to finish up the Whispering Cairn. Alastor had waiting, though it strained him, as he was now finally being pulled into the afterlife. He lingered long enough to thank the heroes before fading from existence.
With the door now unlocked, the group came into an enormous chamber with a great pillar of wind at the center. Here, they discover some enchanted bas-reliefs. Carina began reading the journal, which revealed the name of the Wind Duke the tomb had been constructed for: Zosiel.
Suddenly, a trio of mystical wind warriors emerged from the pillar and attacked Cuetzpalli. They fought viciously, though with a curious air of honor. The heroes ultimately emerged victorious.
The party used the pillar of wind to be safely carried up to the Tomb. Here, they found one more bas-relief, as well as the true sarcophagus. Carina is able to use the journal and her potion-making skills to speak the ancient Vaati's name, causing the sarcophagus to open.
Again, there is no body. Instead, they find a silver diadem with Zosiel's symbol, two long, curved black horns with red tips, and a pewter box containing a dormant talisman of the sphere.
Back home, Allustan announces his intention to complete Erip's study of the tomb, as he reveals that his master was the now-dead archmage, Tenser.
The group decides to take a short break from adventuring before going to confront Smenk and find out what he knows.
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The new campaign page is pretty thorough. Obviously still a work in progress, but one thing I'll note while it's still in flux is that Allustan is listed twice under NPCs. (Once under Diamond Lake and once under Tenser's Crew). Of course, that could be intentional because you're just trying to annoy Astraden.
Yeah, there's some duplicates, since I started writing new bios without going through the old. Or maybe he cloned himself and now a horde of Allustans are going to come to visit Astraden at her home for tea. I'm taking a break from the castlist for now—hopefully I can complete it over the next couple days. I don't know how useful it will be, but it would be nice to have all the major characters gathered in one spot for reference.
A few changes to Farrukh's abilities relevant to you guys. He now has the Sworn Protector archetype.
This means only 3 "Wards" get access to his Aegis boost. There are a few other bonuses (Farrukh can zoom to your side a few times a day), so petition now if you want the Deluxe Total Protection package! Currently my thoughts are to protect Astraden, Carina, and either Eben or Cuetzpalli (the latter gets attacked more, but the former is squishier).
Extended Defense got tossed in the trash where it belongs, and instead he gets the 3rd level Bonus Feat back from the archetype.
Farrukh can now use ANY of his counters on an adjacent ally, which is more thematically appropriate anyway.
So: Removing conditions in. Parrying 6 attacks on an ally across the battlefield out.
Hey, I might not be able to post much tomorrow or the day after. I'll try to get at least something up if anything's needed, but don't expect more than a post per 24 hours.
I'm getting the sense people are a little lost right now. For what it's worth, the tracks you're following might be a bit of a red herring. The adventure (somewhat surprisingly) didn't even consider the PCs would choose to follow tracks, so the answer I gave was off-the-cuff, working off of what I figured made sense. The enemies you're tracking avoided the ropers, so it's quite possible they avoided the grisgols and "kraken tree" as well.
That's not to say you should do the same, though it is to suggest that there is more than one way to activate the disc. I'd encourage you to use the "collect the three ghost child eyes like from Coraline" route because it's simply more interesting and will give you some advantages you can use later.
The one thing I would discourage you from doing is agonizing for too long. The choices I can see are:
- Proceed to explore the rest of the maze and try to find the other two eyes
- Find a safe place to camp and wait for the kenku to contact you for negotiations, ideally without the xills overhearing
- Find a way to attack the xills/kenku now
- Examine the disc further
- Go ask the tempest for a GM hint if you're really stumped
I'm heading into planting season of craziness on the farm, so I'm going to be less available as we have a lot of stuff in the offing this year. I will do my best to keep up, but if I am sparse that's why.
As for our options, I vote we keep exploring and trying to find the eyes.
My only regret with this encounter is that there aren't twelve of her.
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Somebody really liked tentacles when they were writing this...
Frankly, I think they just liked creatures with 8 grappling attacks per round. T_T
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The dream!
If Carina really loved Tanith, she'd retrain to an archetype that lets her start mutating Tanith into the grappling legend he was born to be. Mimic adhesive, roper tentacles, chaos beast absorption... I'm thinking a Tusk/Human Centipede sort of vibe.
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If I did, I'm not sure the two of us would ever find time to adventure. ;)
I mean, the roper forest showed just how time-consuming rolling for multiple grabs and grapples can be. It'd be exhausting keeping track of so many.
So there's been some talk in the Discord about handling rocket tag. The way damage works in high-level Pathfinder is starting to getting a little un-fun at times, especially for PCs with middling ACs like Astraden.
I sort of recognize that we're pretty far in already, a lot of PC builds are now designed to survive or cooperate with rocket tag, a lot of us don't have time now for big rebuilds, and rocket tag is kind of closely embedded into high-level 3.x to the core. I'm just bringing it up now because it's only going to get worse, so it might be good to think about what we want to do about it.
The most drastic solution is a heavy-handed houserule: Literally just allow PCs to spend APs in order to reduce a round's total damage down to a percentage of their max HP. Like, Astraden takes 250 damage in one round, she spends two APs to reduce it to 25-75% of her normal maximum HP.
It has always been my least favorite thing about Pathfinder how the game essentially stops working correctly after about 10th level. I've yet to find a way to satisfactorily solve rocket tag, unfortunately. If we could come up with something workable, that would be great.
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I said this on the discord, but if everyone is on board with the "negate massive damage with action points" house rule KC suggested, I think that'd be a good solution that minimizes the need for reworking either encounters or characters.
An aside: Do we have a list somewhere of the ways APs can be used? I feel like we had a GM decision regarding using APs to fuel limited resources like channels but I'm not having luck finding it.
Oops, I thought I had it on the Campaign Tab. Let me put it up there.
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It's up on my profile now!