Mended Wall's PBP for beginners (Inactive)

Game Master Hoary and Wizened

I don't think it makes much difference, but Skiirsh shouldn't be able to roll constrict damage twice in one round. He gets two chances to attempt the grapple if both of his attacks hit, but he only gets constrict once if either (or both) of them succeed unless they are against different targets (I don't think his ability allows him to grapple two targets at once, but there are creatures that can). At least, that's my reading.

Though it's not RAW, it would make sense to give him 1.5x STR on the constrict damage if both grab attempts succeed (for using two hands), though...

So each claw attacks separately and if it hits does its own damage, and each gets its own chance to grab, but no matter if one or both successfully grab he only gets the one die worth of constrict damage? Man, those rules make no sense to me. That's why I used to run one attack = both claws simultaneously, it was just easier to think about for me.

Constrict damage is damage that he gets to do when he has someone grappled, not part of an attack. Once a grab attempt succeeds, he has the target in a grapple. Getting two grab attempts doesn't allow him to double-grapple a target (that wouldn't make sense), and unless he has text that says otherwise, it doesn't allow him to grapple multiple targets simultaneously.

I hear you, and at the same time I really don't. It doesn't make sense to me that the creature gets to make two separate attacks, and two separate attempts to grapple with two separate limbs, each with their own damage die, but only gets one damage die of constrict. For the very reason of what just happened in the game, both claws hit, both did damage, both successfully grappled, why shouldn't both get to "clench down" and constrict? Wouldn't it be much more deadly to have two claws wrapped around someone's throat, instead of one? If Homer has only one hand wrapped around Bart's throat he can only do some much squeezing. If, though, he has both hands wrapped around his throat, the potential for eyeball popping shenanigans greatly increases? Right? Shouldn't that deadliness be represented by another damage die? Know what I mean?

I think that, since the creature has multiple hands but can't grapple multiple targets, the rules assume that once one hand grabs the target, the grappler automatically gets both hands on them, so the constrict damage is already for both hands.

Of course, if you want to rule it that way, it's your prerogative as GM. I'm just saying that I'm pretty sure it's not RAW or RAI.

No, I agree with you, and after you pointed it out I realized that, of course, that's the RAW and RAI. I'll run it how it's developed, otherwise it might throw other things out of whack somewhere else. I might, as you suggest, just give a 1.5x damage output if both hands successfully grapple. At least in that case it provides a little "reasonable" allowance for realism. :D

I think that's a reasonable way to reward the second hit while not making creatures with that ability too OP, when they already tend to do huge amounts of damage compared to other creatures with the same CR.

In game I suggest we try to kill off as many retreating kobolds as we can w/o using up resources, ie with eagles that will go away anyway, missile weapons, hexes and cantrips.

Then we heal up, remove excess snot and try to find and negotiate with/ kill off their king asap, before they have a chance to regroup and organise. Or flee.

I agree with Chillel's suggestion here. I think this is what Illiam was suggesting as well.

Agreed.

Sorry everyone, my computer of two years died on me. It took both my IT friends the better part of the weekend and monday to get it in a working condition.

So, I pretty much laid out my plan in-character. Turn invisible, sneak past the guys in area 30 on the map to get to areas 31-33, steal any magic items I can get my hands on (I assume being invisible grants a bonus to sleight of hand checks to steal from someone unnoticed, as well as to stealth?), summon some creatures to screw with them (which won't break my invisibility, unlike direct-targeting spells would), then head back out before my invisibility runs out.

There may not be any light in there, so I will need to bring some with me. I can summon a fire elemental to cast some, but I'd like to do some reconnaissance/stealing first. We'll need a GM ruling on how obvious the light will be to creatures who can already see in the absence of it. If necessary, we can do some experiments with Goruck's darkvision to find the best way for Illiam to see where he's going without making the presence of his light obvious to creatures with darkvision.

The question remains, should the rest of you engage whoever is in area 30 while I'm in there as a diversion, or wait and stay out of sight until I return? Maybe start attacking when you hear the commotion from my summons?

Area 30 is probably the last place we'll get much use out of the wand of Sleep, so we should use it on as many of them there as possible, even handing it off to allow multiple arcane casters to use it in the same round while Goruck and Kairon run interference.

Does this sound good to everyone so far? Anyone else have ideas?

Oh, I should probably also plan on breaking my invisibility by casting Color Spray (get into position the round before, so I can move away after casting). This could be the signal for the others to begin their attack in area 30 (or maybe the signal will be tossing out my light stone to make it visible, in an attempt to get them to cluster up to investigate so that I can hit more of them with Color Spray).

I also still have Create Pit, which is useless against guys on slurks and will also break invisibility if I try to make any (good) use of it while that's active. Assuming the summons don't kill everyone in 31-33, I'll plan on using that on them when the party goes in there together, unless I get a good opportunity to use it earlier. I also have Grease, which can make a good one-two punch with Create Pit.

I also have Silent Image, which might be worthwhile while invisible, maybe to set up a favorable tactical situation in area 30. I have another level 1 slot as well, which I usually save for Keep Watch, but it's probably worth preparing something offensive today. An extra Grease or Color Spray would definitely be useful. Charm Person could be much better if it works against the right target, but is likely to end up wasted since there probably isn't a well-positioned single kobold who doesn't have a higher-than-average will save. I might also decide to use it on something that will increase my chances of survival, like Mage Armor, Vanish, Expeditious Retreat, or Windy Escape.

My view is your plan could work very well Illaim. But it is perilous, especially if it isn't well enough lit in there for you and you need a light source which will give away that something is up.

And if you do something like cast Colour Spray and become visible, you could get dog piled by kobolds and die before we can do much to help you.

You should be OK if most of the kobolds are level 1, but we don't know that. If some are better and a few good saves or initiative rolls on their part it could get ugly for Illiam.

Excellent idea on passing around the wand. :)

To be clear, the color spray idea should only happen in area 30, and during normal initiative so I get a full turn. Standard: cast Color Spray, thereby dropping invisibility. Swift: shift 5ft back to get a little extra movement and avoid any possible AoOs. Move: run like hell. Illiam does not intend to take any chances with his life while he's out there by himself. In fact, if someone has a Mage Armor that they can still cast today, he might ask them to cast it on him before he goes off by himself into danger, in case something goes wrong.

And there should be other party members within that 25ft of movement, of course.

Sorry I don't have Mage Armour any more..

It is currently up and on Chillel.

I thought I had cast it early in the last combat. I went back and checked and I did.

Plan sounds good Illiam, I think I can cast a Mage Armor still, have to check later as I gotta get ready for work now.

Kairon also has Obscuring Mist prepared. Area 30 might be a good place to drop that. Set up at the edge of the mist so that you can attack people as they come out to try to find you? I don't know. He does have to get to the location where he wants it to be centered. I just used that really effectively in another game, but I was playing a skinwalker with the bat shape feat, so getting into the middle of the enemies to drop the SLA wasn't nearly as difficult. Maybe we should just save that in case we need it to make an escape.

I've listed what I have prepared (I haven't actually cast anything from my own spell slots except invisibility today), what do the rest of you have left?

If anyone has resistance prepared, they should probably cast that on Illiam before he goes on his little solo mission as well.

I'm assuming, btw, that Illiam should be the one to do that because he has the best stealth and sleight of hand, but if anyone has a suggestion for someone else that he could use his last invisibility for the day on instead, I'm all ears. Goruck, for example, might be able to use it to get into position and attempt to one-shot the king, but I don't think that makes as much strategic sense. Maybe Kairon could use it to get into position to drop Obscuring Mist. If he did that in area 33 (which, presumably, is where the last kid and Edgrin's buddy are being held, he could level the playing field in terms of visibility (nobody can see), grab them, administer healing if necessary, and try to escape without fighting Jekkajak. The spread wouldn't be enough to prevent the need to fight the king and Vreggma on the way out, though, so probably a non-starter. These plans also assume that the invisible person can sneak in unnoticed, which is pretty much a given for Illiam, but might not be a certainty for anyone else.

I also still have the bead of force, but I'm not planning to use it unless it's an emergency. Might be worth it if we can get enough kobolds in the area, especially if they have slurks.

Any thoughts on which route we should take from here? Looks like there are more slurks in areas 27 and 30. We should have a plan for dealing with them, hopefully without using up the Summon Monster wand. 27 sounds like it might only have one kobold, so taking him out might negate the threat there. I wonder if he would be worth trying to charm? Or should we try to bypass that area and hope he doesn't come up on us from behind?

I wish we had asked Kerrdremak what's in area 29. Maybe Gurtlekrep knows? It looks like a good route to take, but given that he bothered to number it, it's probably some kind of trap. We don't have anyone with trapfinding (except, presumably, Gurtlekrep...)

I also kinda wonder if slurks would react at all to my silent whistle, but probably not worth trying to find out.

Looking over items that might be useful, we also have the soul speaker. It doesn't mention a limit on message length, so we could "record" a long message and plant it somewhere as a distraction while Illiam is doing his invisible thing. Might help with some of the issues around kobolds spotting Illiam's light. Then again, Illiam has Ghost Sound prepared, which might work just as well. Any other interesting items we might have forgotten about?

I have a web bolt, a snowball and frost fall left as spells. So I can thoroughly immobilise and maybe kill Illiam before he goes. More usefully I do have resistance.

And I am distracted by an argument on what does and does not constitute pedantry I am have in Dolok's campaign.

... And I am distracted by an argument on what does and does not constitute pedantry I am have in Dolok's campaign.

And yes, that needs to come to a stop, or at the very least be moved over to the discussion tab please Chillel. See my DM post in my game.

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I still have all 7 of my daily fire rays 1d6 + 1, ranged touch, 30 ft.
And 5 1st level spells that can be used in any combination of: Burning Hands, Enlarge Person, Mage Armor, or Magic Missile. I will use one Mage Armor on myself, and am willing to use one on Illiam, or anyone willing to do this sneak out there thing. (I agree that should be Illiam though.) So I will have 3 1st levels left for battle.
Also cantrips: Drench, Ray of Frost (1d3 damage), & Resistance, besides Dancing Lights, & Detect Magic of course.

We do also have 4 Pinpoint & Flaming crossbow bolts. Which means they are + 1 and do 1 d6 fire damage. Should I give my crossbow and those bolts to Gurtlekrep?

And there is the wand of Magic Missiles, which if my count/memory is correct still has 7 charges left?

Don't worry Dolok. I think I have explicated the matter sufficiently in any event.

We've been too quiet in gameplay. Should I do a push?

EDIT: Just had an idea that involved the soulspeaker, but it may be more complicated than necessary. Since ghost sound has been used to imitate specific sounds in the past, but Kairon doesn't know Draconic, and Intimidate is frequently a language-dependent skill, would it be possible for Illiam to use ghost sound to emulate Kairon's voice (utilizing his Intimidate check) but in Draconic to threaten the massed kobolds? And since making the check at all requires 10 rounds of actions, I was thinking that having Kairon and Goruck throw the heads of the fallen into the large cavern as a prelude to the 'dire announcement' could be appropriate. Perhaps more grisly than Kairon would usually be inclined to execute, but: 1) I'm ready to move this forward, 2) with any luck, we could avoid another taxing encounter, at least in part, and 3) it could just be a little fun.

We've just moved our strategizing out of character for now. What spells does Kairon have left for today, other than obscuring mist? Any interesting magic items we might have forgotten about?

No, no magical tools of any import, unless we find that all the kobolds are now undead kobolds -- I still have that wand of disrupt undead, 11 charges.

Spells? Second verse, same as the first. Two bless, the mist, lesser resto, placebo effect, delay poison. In other words: a buncha heals and a 'fog' effect.

EDIT: Oh, and the placebo effect is a status suppressor.

Wish I had some pyxes.

Might as well use the blesses when we go into the big battle I guess. Nothing really tactical there other than obscuring mist, which we don't have a good way to deploy for anything other than a retreat, so I guess save it in case we need it for that.

Yeah. The only other application that I could see being reasonable would be to 'fog shield' a rush up the left flank straight to Merlokrep. And that would still be an "action economy negative" transaction, in the end.

Nothing to see here!! "Move along. Move along."

Just checking a thing on my formatting. :)

Yeah, I totally took the brawler idea you mentioned and ran with it, Illiam. :)

Hope you have a second martial character in that game who will be a reliable flanking buddy. If you're using it as your only class, it's going to be hard to make slow-progression sneak attack as valuable as Martial Flexibility...

And what the f**@ing s+~~ is going on with Paizo?!? I had to log in again today! (Pardon my language!) AND it's moving slower than molasses in January!

And what the f&!%ing s#$$ is going on with Paizo?!? I had to log in again today! (Pardon my language!) AND it's moving slower than molasses in January!

Yes, seconded, thirded, fourthed, fifthed, sixthed, seventhed, etcetera ad nauseum. With intermittent moments of "okayness" Paizo has been horse-feces for the better part of a week and a half. I'm guessing that a bunch of the slow down with PbP games in general has more to do with frustration with the site, than anything else. It's annoying as fudge to watch the little spinny thing spin repeatedly to no avail when all you want to do is partake of some text-based game goodness... That is all I will say about that at the present time. :)

Too right. The boards have eaten my alias updates three times today.

Sorry to read that Syrus!

Just now I went to check in on my game. It told me there were 3 new posts in the game-tab. ... ONE OF THE THREE WAS MY OWN FREAKING POST I HAD MADE A FEW HOURS EARLIER TODAY!!!!!

Notice to all participants

Let me start off by saying that I have had no end of fun being the GM of this campaign. It remains one of, if not the, favorite campaigns I've ever had the pleasure of partaking in. However, several things have conspired to lead me to bring to an end my GMing of this campaign. Among the culprits are: the recent shoddy-ness of Paizo.com in general, a noticeable lack of posting by some of the game's players (due to RL things for which I do not ascribe blame to those players in any way shape or form), a foreseeable end of this particular "chapter" of the story, and, and this one might be very bothersome to some here, I am making the switch to 5e permanently. If you'd like to discuss all the reasons why, let me know, we can discuss that in PM, or some other forum.

So, be aware, I will no longer be GMing this campaign once we've reached a favorable end to this current story "chapter." By my estimation that will mean the rescuing of the final child of the Hollow and the complete decimation of the Truescale tribe, and or the willing surrender and peace treaty with the same. As I look at things, what has come before, and what is yet to come, I believe that we'll still be finishing this game in the new year. So, a ways to go yet, but I wanted everyone to have time to wrap their heads around the end of things here.

Some good news? I've been (along with my gamer son) working on a homebrew setting of my own for about the past two years. It is entirely possible that I will be running a 5e PbP campaign in that world once this game ends. If/when that happens, you would, of course, all be welcome to apply for a position in that game. Obviously you'd all get preferential treatment. :D

Your friend,
MW

It's been a good run, Mended, and I look forward to concluding this part of the story. Sad to see it end so soon.

Sad to see it end, too. I'll be looking forward to the other game you mentioned.

Speaking practically, this means that this is essentially our last adventuring day for these characters. This means that we should pull out all the stops and get as much use as possible out of all of our single- and limited-use items. There are a couple of places the bead of force could be really useful, with 17.5 points of damage on average plus taking those affected out of the fight for ten minutes (which, once we get going after this break, is probably enough in-game time for us to accomplish our goals and get topside again), it's a great strategic tool that I was otherwise going to try to save.

What other limited-use items to we have? Those magic weapon oils should get used (actually, we probably don't have enough in-game combat time to make use of all of them, given that I believe we currently only have one character actively using a non-magical weapon).

It also means I might want to be more aggressive with my invisibility plan, and actually use something that would break my invisibility, which means I might want to use my open first level slot for Vanish, so that I have some prayer of getting back out if things don't go my way.

I'm also looking for a way to get another use out of my bag of tricks for today. Other than a possible distraction, I don't see any obvious use. Maybe sending something into area 29 to set off a trap, if there is one there as I suspect. We'll see once we're closer to it.

I have a bottle of lamp oil as well, which we could use to do what the bombardiers were trying to do when they first arrived.

I'm ready to move out when y'all are.

As for additional resources: the scroll of restoration might be useful if one of us gets hit hard with some poison. Beyond that, I have nothing else to add, I think.

Anybody gonna run out a detect magic so we can get our "loot the room" on? I don't think there's anything very useful to find, and we may be better served to just 'roll on' . . . .

I kinda stalled myself out on driving the action forward with my last couple of posts in gameplay.

. . . .

I am gonna miss this campaign.

Anybody gonna run out a detect magic so we can get our "loot the room" on?

Done.

I am gonna miss this campaign.

Ditto.

I still have the wand of Summon Monster, and I'm going to want it for this plan. Who wants the wand of Sleep? We should definitely try to burn all those charges in the upcoming battle now. I believe there are 12 left.

Aw Mended! I am so sorry to hear this! I am gonna miss this game! I know it has been moving awfully slow lately and yes, Paizo has been sucking lately, but 5E really? Wow. Admittedly I haven't had much chance to play 5E, but the little I've had I didn't care for it much. I would be willing to give it a shot in your game though. I think my main problem with %E was the DM's style and we both know I obviously like your style! So ...

Game wise I've been ready to move on for days now.

I'll miss this game too, but entirely because of the players and how excellently they played their characters. :D Which means I don't really have to miss it, we can just roll things into the new "venue" and keep our fun rolling. :D

And still not a peep from Chillel or Goruck, lately . . . .

Should we make a contingency plan for botting them?

Chillel seemed to like the idea of passing the wand. That should be easy to bot if it becomes necessary. Of course, once we get into position for Illiam to do his invisible thing, unless we decide that everyone else should provide a distraction while he does that rather than just waiting, it won't be a big deal if a couple of people are absent for a while.

We still need to decide which route we want to take from here. I'm thinking we go through area 24 and 25, then check out area 29 very carefully before entering it, because it looks like a trap. 24 also kinda looks like a trap, but enough kobolds have gone back and forth through there that you'd think they would have triggered it if it was...

In any case, we probably want Goruck with the Glintaxe (and darkvision) out in front, arcane casters in the middle, and Kairon covering our rear. Dolok will continue to provide dancing lights, Illiam will hang on to the sleep wand (maybe hand it back and forth with Dolok if necessary) until he's ready to separate from the group, and chillel will be ready to hex anything we might run into before then. Sound good?

Works for me.

Ah, clerics -- always "all back of the bus." :D

24, 25 & possibly 29 seems good to me. Do we have any idea what's in 26?

Sounds like Illiam has a decent plan as usual.

Illiam, did you want the Mage Armor as well? I'd certainly be happy to give ya one.

Wand of Magic Missile at the ready as well.

I forget, for the sleep wand, do I have to do a UMD check if I use it or what?

Yes, I want Mage Armor. With a 3 hour duration, no point in delaying that. Thanks.

No, Sleep is on your class spell list, so you don't need UMD.

As long as we're only coming up against kobolds and slurks, Sleep is much better than magic missile. Probably nothing with more than 2 hit dice before we meet the king, so each casting of Sleep has the potential to take 2 creatures out of the fight. They get a save, but if there are more than two in the area of effect, it just keeps going until the 4HD of creatures gets used or there's nobody left. In these tight quarters, that's pretty reliable.

Of course, if we run into some ghosts or something, magic missile away. If something like that happens, we'll want to pass THAT wand around.