Keys to the Clockwork Dead

Game Master Matthew Stinson

Since recruitment is over I thought I would move our discussions here. We should first focus on character builting, party building, and background. I'm working weekends at the moment but I'll do my best to get a write-up for the starting area on my days off this week.

Two options for what I can play. I'm more inclined toward the Spirit Binder, but I'm happy to play either one. Still working on the Moai Cleric's backstory.

Very abbreviated Moai backstory:

I see Arnor have more Roleplaying opportunities than Doran in this larger group, specially if Anthony is playing a Moai oracle. The two of you together could end up having a lot to do out side of combat, which is great for a play by post.

Checking in. Been a busy weekend, but I'll do my best to have a build up soon.

Okay. I can roll with Arnor. And yes, I know he's called a mage even though he's a Cleric. It's a common misconception because of combination of the journal he carries around, making notes about the history and magic, etc, and the fact that he's a caster. He hasn't bothered to correct said misconception.

I didn't get a chance to do much today at work. I did assign Domains to the current list of the 10 Major Deities. Should be able to post that on Tuesday.

Y"know how when you're really exhausted working on something really important and you just close your eyes for a second and it's morning? For Sturvok he dimly remembers he had a group of close friends relying on him...for their lives, he thinks. He was doing something really important. He was part of something that was supposed to save the world, or at least his part of it. But he can't remember what he was supposed to do or who his friends or enemies were, any of it. Only that he nodded off for a moment, and awoke covered in a sheet of dust and old cobwebs. He was found by a party of dwarves out exploring the depths. They took him back with them and tended him in his guilt. He dedicated his new life to becoming a paladin, steeling his mind and stony flesh, so that next time his friends need him he will not fail. He's struck out into the world to find his old friends and mission, whatever they were...or at least their descendants or a mission of similar magnitude so he can redeem himself and clear his conscience.

Sturvok - Moai Paladin (Need a cool dwarven god here, ideally something to do with duty...or regret)

Abilities:
+2 Strength, -4 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, +2 Wisdom
(2) Str 14 +2
(5) Dex 10 +0
(5) Con 16 +3
(1) Wis 13 +1
(2) Int 12 +1
(5) Cha 14 +2:

AC 18 (10 Touch/18 Flatfooted, 22/14/22 vs. Giants)
HP 12

BAB +1
Fort +5
Ref +0
Will +5 (+3 v sleep)

Skills:
Diplomacy +6
*Knowledge: Dungeoneering +1
*Perception +5
Sense Motive +5

Flaw:
Racial Narcolepsy: On a natural 1, fort save or doze off

Feats:
Iron Will: +2 Will Save
Toughness: +3 Hit Points
Traits
Adopted [Dwarves]: Defensive Training +4 AC vs. Giants
Lucid Dreamer: +1 Knowledge (planes), +2 Will saves vs. dream targeting effects.

Starting Gold 175:
Scholar's Outfit --
Scale Mail +5, -4 penalty (50g)
Heavy Steel Shield +2, -2 penalty(20g)
Heavy Pick 1d6+1, x4 crit (8g)
Iron Holy Symbol (5g)
Holy Water x2 (50)
Portable Ram (10g)
Block & Tackle (5g)
50' Silk Rope (10g)
Grappling Hook (1g)

16 in coin

Paladin Abilities:
Aura Good: 1
Detect Evil: 60'
Smite Evil: 1/day +2 to hit, +1 damage (+2 evil outsiders), +2 AC against

Moai Abilities:
Slow Speed: 20' never modified by encumbrance or armor.
Darkvision:90'
Stone Stability: quadruped encumbrance and CMD.
Natural Armor: +1 natural armor
Slumber:-2 vs sleep effects. Sleep 2 extra hours.
Memory Fragments: add two class skills*

The above is my character pitch, copied over and pasted together from the other page.

Alright I've settled on a half elf time thief who will primarily be a skill monkey who is adventuring to become a magic item merchant. I'm almost done with him :)

http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=49513

Just need to do gear and a couple of languages.

Here's the Gods of the Campaign

DEITIES OF Aramir

Deity AL Portfolios Domains Favored Weapons

Thoorus
LG
Bulls, Bears, Mazes, Corn, Courage, Armies, Paladins
Glory, Law, Strength, War, Weather
Great Axe

The Maiden Yaga
CG
Children, Dwarves, Women, the North, Winter
Air, Good, Liberation, Healing, Nobilty
Shortsword

The Yaga Shadow
CE
Witches, the Future, Monsters
Magic, Charm, Chaos, Evil, Darkness
Shortsword

Leodin
CG
Lions, Cyclops, Tengu, Battle Luck, Soldiers, Rangers
Luck, Travel, Good, War, Trickery
Spongspear

Ny Kathancer Nikka
N
Truth, Pyramids, Tentacles, The Sea
Knowledge, Madness, Rune, Repose, Water
Falchion

Blood Maries
CE
Rams, Battle Rage, Amazons
Travel, Death, Trickery, Water, War
Shortbow

Shiv Feeo Sciff
NE
Scorpions, Assassins, Poison, Dusk
Luck, Fire, Sun, Evil, Destruction
Scimitar

Gemmetik
LN
Clockworks, Stags, Cities, Wealth, Law
Artifice, Rune, Law, Knowledge, Strength
Rapier

Gemzarvas
CN
Forest, Stags, Animals, Farmers
Animal, Plant, Weather, Healing, Chaos
Sickle

The Twin’s Calling
NG
Civilation, Balance, Walls, Roads
Community, Nobility, Protection, Glory, Earth
Halberg

Thoorus looks good for my guy. Lawful good, plus the armies thing ties nicely into the sense of duty he's looking for--also the maze seems like a good symbol for him trying to find his way back to who he used to be, and fix the things he let go wrong.

I believe I'll start moving forward soon with the characters that are mostly wrapped up. Need time to work your back-stories into the story arch I had in mind. As the other players get ready and flesh out their characters, we can add them in as we good. I think this will be slow moving at first but I think I'll get the swing of it shortly. Finding a rhythm.

Any hints on what type of campaign you are thinking of? I'm feeling a bit of writer's block and I need some direction.

Sounds good man. I'm ready to go when you are. No rush though.

Likewise, ready to go when you are. I'll put together a posting profile for Arnor in the next day or so.

Stormwind, all I can really say is I'm going to try and stay away from a dungeon crawl type game, and even in those type of scenes I'll leave plenty of room for dialog and role playing between fights.

Okay. Character profile created. Changed a few details, like the name and some abilities. Added to the background. I'll add more with some more time, like appearance and personality, and some more to the background to clarify how he got to our starting location.

Zenergy, just wanted to let you know that the elves, as with most of the core races, besides dwarves and human, are less than %1 of the total popular of these lands. In the case of the elves. Most left the region hundreds of year going, sailing west to the Asian antalog.

Also Zenergy, you get two traits which I couldn't find on your character sheet. I'm trying to work in everyone traits and feats into the story.

As of right now we have Arnor and Calcius both worshiping the Spirits of the Moai anciestors. Full free to bring up different saints, heroes, and oracles from the pass such as people today would bring up Einstein, FDR, or Patten.

Can everyone give a brief description of their characters appearance.

Large framed, barrel-chested moai with a thick neck and lanky arms and legs. His blocky face and deep set dark eyes seem perpetually weighed down with a deep sadness. His skin is a warm orangish tan shot through with vertical stripes of sparkling white quartz.

He wears dwarf crafted stone scale armor, full helm and large shield habitually, as though the effort of continually removing and donning them would be more effort than just always wearing them. He wears a heavy pack over his shoulders with all his worldly possessions inside--mostly travelling gear and his war pick, which he leaves stowed away until a fight looks inevitable. On his chest he wears a large iron symbol of Thoorus, a crop-circle-like maze design he's quite fond of, frequently spending off hours seated, holding it in front of him, studying it as if trying to glean some hidden meaning buried in there somewhere.

I've updated Sturvok's profile page with his character sheet info, gear, appearance and backstory information.

To summerize, it appears that so far we have:

Arnor, a Moai Cleric
Sturvok, a Moai Paladin
Anthony, as a Moai Oracle

Alex Pocsalypes, as an Amazon
Culdren Thatchet, a Half-Elf Rogue

That points me towards arcane I think, and of a core race to balance out the 3 Moai already selected.

Ok, here is the start of my character, an Elven Wizard. I did note that elves are uncommon these days, but I can roll with that. I was trying to figure out the best specialty, and eventually decided on Illusion. I've never played an Illusionist, so it will be a fun little experiment, I think.

Crunch is just about complete, background to follow.

Edit: Background complete, though it is simple.

Appearance: Gorgoron is a typical looking elf, tall for his people, but not by human standards. He stands about middling height, with a reed thin stature and slim arms and waist. He has brown hair that hangs straight about half way down his back, and deep emerald-green eyes. He dresses much as you would expect of a wizard, or an elf; he wears soft robes of the elven style, green, with leaf motifs around the edges, and carries the pouches and books common to his trade. An ornate staff is never far from his hand, and is covered in Arcane symbols.

His face is always studious, and he looks at everyone and everything as though he is making mental notes.

First post up.

Appearance put together, and linked in profile.

Culdren looks like an effeminate human with wild, neck length brown hair covering his somewhat elfish ears. Gray hairs streak along the left side of his head, a strange sign of aging for someone so young. His eyes are light brown, and his fingers are calloused from his work as a craftsman. He is somewhat tall at 5'9" and lanky. He sometimes has stubs of facial shadow and sports a goatee on and off.

I filled in my languages and traits; all that's left is misc gear.

Gorgoron- with you taking a 20 your result would be 29. You found few different entries on great and magical stone swords as they are a large part of Moai culture. The Toda was brought up in a couple stories and different versions of those stories. In most the Toda was wielded by Ishfar, the Sun Knight, just after the First Awakening. Yet some of the entries implied that it was Toda that was the Sun Knight while Ishfar was his squire and in other cases his lover. All the writings seemed to be second and third hand accounts. What most agreed on was Ishfar and Toda, or "the" Toda, were buried around 10,800 years ago. You trust that number as the keeping of calendars became part of Moai religious rites after the First Awakening, if not keeping account of history.

Feel free to tell the other characters what you want, in your own words and time.

How would you rather have the story displayed? Have infomation like this in the discussion and have everyone know above board. Or. Private message the info to only the characters that know it and let info come out in game naturally?

One option for revealing information in game would be to format it as follows:

It's on the honor system for people to not look at information not intended for them, but it works as a way of separating things out as far as revealing information from skill checks.

Everyone make two knowledge (local) checks too. One for the moai community and one for the great city of New Teshla

Did we loose Alex Pocsalypes? I was about to have him and Culdren walk in.

Just wanted to log on for a minute and report. I'm working nights this week and will need to look at my notes before moving forward. I'm hoping to do this tomorrow evening when I wake up. If there are any questions or concerns about the game play please feel free to ask. I do believe the pace of the game will quicken when I swing back to day shift in two weeks. Feel free to write what your character is thinking in the game play thread within a spoiler box. It will help my understand your character more and direct the adventure more to effect your characters for good and ill. Also, I believed we have lost Alex as his previous post have been deleted by someone. I have two people in mind to fill in if Alex does not return by the end of the weekend.

If you guess what to start a group on Facebook or have me private message you when when I post we can do that. As I'm working a day job that is swing swift and starting a 3rd party publishing company, I'm a afraid this will be the common speed that I can dedicate to the post. I apologize if this is too slow for some of you but I would like to keep going. I just want to be up front as I rather not disappoint any of you with the slowness of the game.

Looking in the Core Book and rereading the section on poisons, and I cannot find anything on detect poisons without the detect poison spell, which I believed was the case but wanted to double check for you guys.

I'm on east coast time, what about everyone else?

I think you're right. Personally, I might house-rule a little bit differently for a character that had, say, the poison use class ability or training in Craft (alchemy); such characters could make a Perception check to notice a hint of something odd, but only because they are trained in the use and manufacture of such items. DC to perceive equal to the Fortitude save of the poison, perhaps with an addition depending on additives (+5 for basic food, +10 for elaborate, say.) That's just my personal variation, though.

Pacific Standard Time, near San Francisco.

EST here as well.

Mountain Standard Time here. GMT -7

Pacific Time, Wenatchee WA.

Not sure about the poison thing. I think Detect Poison is to magically discover it without it affecting you--whether or not you have been poisoned seems like a Perception thing (the same as any other subtle thing you might be checking for ie. a cleverly hidden compartment or an enemy sneaking up on you). That said I'm cool with however you want to handle it.

Worst initiative ever. Woo!

I'd agree that Perception should usually be allowed to detect a poison as well. But it always the GM's call; maybe this was a particularly hard to detect poison...

It was a whole round of bad initiative rolls (Except for Culdren). A 1, 2, 4, 5, and a 22.

No yeah, totally.

Unfortunately, the rules don't give any information for perceiving poisons aside from the Detect Poison spell. A pain in the tuchis.

One would think noticing the effects of being poisoned wouldn't be difficult. The world going dark, sudden weakness, etc. But noticing something subtly incorrect about the coffee if it doesn't affect one? I dunno.

Did someone shine the rules lawyer signal?

Just as there are no automatic checks for noticing a trap or a secret door (barring class or race features; I'm talking by default), there are no automatic checks for noticing poison either before or after it's been ingested/injected/inhaled/contacted.

Certainly circumstances can lead to "I've been poisoned!" as a logical conclusion--such as a sudden feeling of weakness while the person who just served you drinks tries to kill someone right in front of you. However, in the absence of a special rule stating otherwise, there's no obligation for the GM to give you a Perception check to notice poison before you ingest it. There's a reason poisoned food/drink was a favored assassination method, after all: it's hard to detect without specialized means (food tasters, chemical analysis, magic).

Personally, I'd give a Perception check if the poison were particularly noticable (bleach poured into a drink) or if a character was previously established as being especially alert to/suspicious of such things.

What would the Rule's Lawyer signal look like? A book? Scales? Maybe the monopoly guy with a gavel?

I think you're right that there is no rule, and that was the general gist of the conversation above. I think what most were referring to was that in most game systems there is some sort of perception check to detect poisons in food, and so by convention, most GM's in Pathfinder allow one too. He's not obligated to, and no one above said he was, it is just noteworthy to some when a GM acts in defiance of common convention.

I tend to assume he was a) unaware of the convention and just acted with the rules as written, or b) aware of the convention but chose to disregard it for reasons that cannot presently be shared with players. Either is fine, and no slight on the GM. If he was unaware before, now he knows why players expect such, and if he already knew and decided not to use that convention, perhaps we'll find out why some time down the storyline.

Did someone shine the rules lawyer signal?

Just as there are no automatic checks for noticing a trap or a secret door (barring class or race features; I'm talking by default), there are no automatic checks for noticing poison either before or after it's been ingested/injected/inhaled/contacted.

Certainly circumstances can lead to "I've been poisoned!" as a logical conclusion--such as a sudden feeling of weakness while the person who just served you drinks tries to kill someone right in front of you. However, in the absence of a special rule stating otherwise, there's no obligation for the GM to give you a Perception check to notice poison before you ingest it. There's a reason poisoned food/drink was a favored assassination method, after all: it's hard to detect without specialized means (food tasters, chemical analysis, magic).

Personally, I'd give a Perception check if the poison were particularly noticable (bleach poured into a drink) or if a character was previously established as being especially alert to/suspicious of such things.

Well...it's hard to get poison that doesn't change the flavor of what you're eating/drinking. Even if there's no rule for detecting poison, it's not entirely unreasonable for there to be a Perception check. Semantics aside, I still agree with you and would go as far as to say that this Perception check should have been in secret. The suspense is exciting, even if it is negative.

Hey guys, sorry I've been absent this weekend my wife kidnapped me. I know there is a fight about to start and we have a discussion going on here about the poison issue. I'll try to chime in tomorrow from work with my phone if I get time. I have the person your are fighting typed up but I would like to type up the priest or at least find compatible stats for him before the fight starts. I'll take my notes to work tomorrow so I can try and work things out. Sorry again and I'll post in the morning on this discussion.