KC's Age of Worms

Game Master Kobold Catgirl

Level Up Summary

+1 Alchemist Level
--Favoured Class Bonus: +1 Skill Rank

+1 Dexterity

+5 HP

+8 Skill Ranks
--1 Craft (Alchemy)
--1 Diplomacy
--1 Heal
--4 Escape Artist
--1 Perception

+1 BAB

+1d6 Bomb Damage

3rd Level Extracts Unlocked!
--New Extract: Fly

Action Points: +2d6 to a d20 roll now!

Rynjin wrote:

No. Why?

I think Tanith forgot about your favored class bonus.

I thought prestige classes never counted as favored classes.

Ah, that's right. Then yeah, not sure how he's getting the extra HP.

Ah, s&%#. I always forget about that. Or that Favored Class bonuses aren't just an extra thing you get at level up anyway.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Favored Class bonuses. I don't quite see why it's so important to encourage single-classing, and it doesn't exactly work at keeping people from using crazy combos anyways. Just seems like extra paperwork. :P

...the Head of Vecna?

Wow. What a con he was going to pull off. XD

"I imagine Ph'rexis would be more than happy to buy it--his shop's full of odd magic stuff like that." Carina shrugs.

Does Ph'rexis really have a shop? :U

It's full of stuff that he sells on occasion. I think that qualifies as a shop.

It's been a while, so here is Zyrxog's original monologue. The relevant portions here:

"What I did was not on my own initiative based on any personal antipathy, but at the request of an old ally who I believe has ill used me."

"My ally has plans for a new age, and he does not act alone."

"I wish to learn more of this Age of Worms. Rot and decay are not any more in my interests than they are yours, you know, and what my old ally has planned could be my undoing."

"My immediate priority is to investigate the activities of my colleague."

So Zyrog was planning on betraying his ally (Rakian?) and was going to use us as agents in said betrayal.

That's about it. Loris Raknian.

You working your way through Astraden's pile of spellcraft rolls?

It occurs to me that we should come up with a cleaner way of doing this in the future.

I suspect a few of these things are going to take some big rolls to identify. Carina once we get topside do you mind cooking up an identify and giving it a shot?

Sure. It'll take me a day to refresh my extract slots, though.

That should be fine. We're going to need a couple days to pawn/launder this stuff anyway.

KC, a question I've been wondering for a while and now has some small bearing on events at hand: since I can spend an AP to emulate a feat, can I spend one to gain temporary access to a bard masterpiece (that would otherwise involve spending a feat on)?

(If so, I can un-petrify the pseudodragon myself...)

I'm not entirely sure that's a balanced trade, but I'll think about it.

There are times I really wish we had sessions so I could call the end of a session on certain dramatic lines. Or at least something like a commercial break.

Well, that's the end of Hall of Harsh Reflections. In the next installment, The Champion's Belt, you will have the chance to learn more of Loris Raknian, and learn why he did what he's done.

In the meantime, I'm sure people have some dramatic opinions this time around on how things were written and run. So let's hear them. :P

Not many, besides the ones I've already stated.

Especially the bit about fleeing enemies. Maybe my hatred is irrational, but I always feel cheated when that happens.

Gauss did that all the time in his Way of the Wicked game. Every time something could teleport, it fled the moment it dropped below half HP, only to come back at the exact moment it could bite us in the ass the worst. And there's jack all we could do about it, because of SR.

Celestials and their SR made me MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD, and Zyrxog having SR on par with freakin' Ithaqua from the Mythic Cthulhu fighting game I'm in is even worse. You have this lingering feeling of "Maybe I could have stopped him!" before being told "Nah, you had no chance anyway".

I normally like good enemies who get away; recurring foes are cool, and plus that means you get to earn XP for them multiple times! Win/win!

Of course, as you've recently pointed out, we're a no-XP game, so all we get out of it is a recurring enemy to show up later. But with Smenk and Filge officially dead-dead, there was an open slot for one, anyhow! Shame he's so scary and cheesy, though.

All things considered, I enjoyed this part of the AP.

It was easily one of the most stressful adventures I've ever gone through--the entire doppelganger hideout and the final fight with Zyrxog were especially anxiety-inducing.

If anything, my main issue is with how unlucky the dice were--the doppleganger hideout was MUCH harder than Zyrxog's fight, if we're going by the number of PCs killed.

Just hit refresh to find 80 gameplay posts since yesterday, and a not insignificant number of discussion posts as well.

(T_T)

I had to spend most of the day writing a paper for homework, and am about to start my real life Pathfinder group. I won't be able to level up Rodrigo and catch up on the posts until tomorrow at the earliest. Sorry, you guys are just too prolific!

Discussion wasn't that bad afterall :P

I thought the installment was fine despite dying in it. It was hard, but honestly it was the best running of an urban mystery type adventure that I can recall from the last 15 years of gaming. It's very difficult to have NPCs who are smart actually play smart, and I feel you did that well. Looking forward to the next bit. I don't care how many enemies run away as long as we win in the end.

Is Gark still dealing with tooth pains? =(

Yeah, but they're not so bad. I've just been running a game :V

I hope they gave you a prescription for some decent pain meds.

Happy Easter Weekend, everyone! :)

Happy Easter Weekend, everyone! :)

Indeed.

I hope they gave you a prescription for some decent pain meds.

Yeah! But I mean it when I say it is not so bad. The real issue for me was how long it took for the wound to stop bleeding. It's rather unpleasant to be biting down on gauze for 12 hours D:

But thank you for your concern!

I put up an alternate version of Carina's portrait on her profile in celebration of Easter.

before you ask no I couldn't find a rabbit tail I had to make do with what I had

Leveled up using hero lab. New stats are in my profile. No major changes, +1 will save, some skills, +1 bab, and transposition which will be nearly useless with Rodrigo's playstyle. Oh, and learned fly spell.

I put up an alternate version of Carina's portrait on her profile in celebration of Easter.

before you ask no I couldn't find a rabbit tail I had to make do with what I had

Was this made with Soul Calibur V? It looks like it, anyway.

Pretty sure there's a bunny tail. Might be DLC though.

Soul Caliber sounds right. I was trying to determine what game it was from.

Yep, it was made in Soul Calibur V.

If there is a bunny tail DLC, I haven't seen it--I'm pretty sure I have all the DLC packs for the game.

I do have Soul Calibur IV, but I haven't put even REMOTELY as much time into unlocking the armour pieces for that game.

I KNOW there's a bunny tail in that one. There's one of those unitards with a fluffy bunny tail.

SC IV had a better character creation IMO. More pieces that look good, and you didn't get it telling you "EVERYTHING CONFLICTS! CONFLICT! YOU CAN'T USE THOSE TOGETHER!" every few seconds. If it clipped, it clipped.

I think that might be the Kittymeow suit you're thinking of, Rynjin...

If I had my Xbox I could show it to you, but it's still in a POD.

I had most of the stuff unlocked for IV, since I played the s&## out of that one. Only fighting game I've ever been decent at. Yoshimitsu and Voldo are the best.

I've got Soul Caliburs II, IV and V.

I skipped IV for the longest time because it had Yoda & Darth Vader in it (good lord, they didn't fit into the setting at ALL). II was by far my favourite (Mitsurugi, Maxi & Raphael are sheer joys to play for me)--I'd fire it up again, but after an incident with my Wii Sensor Bar and a running vacuum cleaner, it might be a bit of time before I run it again.

That being said, I've gotten a lot out of V, despite the near-total lack of single-player content.

EDIT: POD = Pile of Dreck?

No, POD. As in POD brand storage units.

Also, Yoda was annoying as hell. Fun fact: He is completly immune to all Horizontal attacks.

On the other hand, easy to get with my favorite noob crushing character, Zaslamel. Aka B#%&~&$+ Ringout Champion.

Ah. Silly me.

You left out his immunity to grabs.

My current favourite character to use is Siegfried--he's about the only one that I can use well enough to get through Legendary Souls reliably. I like using Z.W.E.I. and Dampierre as well (even though they're basically garbage-to-low tier).

For V I like Voldo mostly. They kinda wrecked Yoshimitsu. They mapped all his moves to different buttons and they're really awkward to execute now. Still okay with him, but I can wreck s##@ pretty consistently with Voldo.

I know how to play Siegfried and Nightmare pretty well because my friend used to kick my ass with them, so I know basically all their moves and how to counter. Or used to.

The Taki replacement is surprisingly easy to play (read: Spam).

The Xiang Hua replacement is fun.

And the Kilik replacement can kiss my ass because I hate him. Those are basically the only strong opinions I have about V.

I'd have to agree with you on Xiba--at least Kilik is still in V, so the sting is somewhat lessened...

Frankly, the two worst characters in the game for me are Patroklos & Elysium--Pat for him being a total prick and Elysium for being unimaginably arrogant and being ANOTHER mimic character that no one asked for.

Yeah, there are THREE Mimics in this. Why, exactly?

I mean, Edgemaster is fun for the comedic value (Yes, I like making super generic emo characters named Edgemaster, why do you ask?), but Kilik and Elysium too?

Patroklos is just bad on every level. His character combines the worst parts of several whiny, arrogant anime characters (to be expected, given his voice actor...) and has useless, slow, garbage moves. I hate how he plays so much. In EITHER form.

Though I did learn while searching those images that he is also the voice of Sandal (Dragon Age). Which is hilarious to me.

The only fighting games I invested any amount of time into learning was SFIV and MvC3.

I could never get into any besides Soul Calibur. The mechanics just never really clicked with me.

Plus I like the fights being in 3 dimensions rather than 2.

Patroklos is, in a nutshell, what happens when you try to compress the entirety of Siegfried's character development (spanning several games) into one game. He could have been so much more than he was, and the high-ups at Namco decided to shove the game out the door with only 1/4 of the single-player story mode finished. Suffice to say, he and every character involved in that mess of a story suffered for it.

and the way the story mode bends over and grabs its ankles to make Patroklos look good (deus ex machina included) pisses me off to no end AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH

After the first few missions I just started skipping the cutscenes literally unfinished storyboard panels with voiceover so I could quickly unlock Pyrrha Omega (who is actually fun to play) and some other junk so I don't really know the plot.

I'll put up an update sometime tomorrow after class, sorry.

So, once this dagger is dealt with, what are your plans? The burnt shrine is a "miniquest" best suited for this in-between period, though it can be placed after if we'd rather get straight to The Champion's Belt.

I think we should deal with the Mystery of the Crispy Kordian sooner rather than later. We do technically owe Anlathi our undivided attention, and the poor lady's been waiting for a week.

After the first few missions I just started skipping the cutscenes literally unfinished storyboard panels with voiceover so I could quickly unlock Pyrrha Omega (who is actually fun to play) and some other junk so I don't really know the plot.

You did the right thing doing that.

Suffice to say, it's laden with... uncomfortable subtext between Pat & Pyrrha, nonsensical reasons for fighting, a Deus Ex Machina for Pat (courtesy of Edgemaster, no less), and EXTREMELY poor storytelling in general.

So, once this dagger is dealt with, what are your plans? The burnt shrine is a "miniquest" best suited for this in-between period, though it can be placed after if we'd rather get straight to The Champion's Belt.

I'd definitely like to get to the bottom of the burnt shrine mystery, myself.