Monster Mashup - Table 4 (Inactive)

Game Master CaveToad

Oh god butterfly sting is broken as hell.

Edit: Cut a line. I read something wrong. I blame my dyslexic girlfriend.

Escape route would be a really good choice, I also have an ability to teleport past the front line, so with that we could really work groups of enemies.

I already have escape route, btw.

Yeah I will stick with light armor unless I can get my hands on mithril. In fact I plan on switching to a chain shirt ASAP.

Oh god butterfly sting is broken as hell.

Are you implying smite evil damage doesn't multiply on a crit? Because it does. And my primary weapon has a x3 crit.

No, I'm saying it does, so Shaeyl getting Butterfly sting would be extremely good. It's definitely extremely good for a feat, would not blame cavetoad if it were banned. If it's not, perhaps I should invest in greataxe instead of greatsword, haha.

I'll pick up Escape route then. Thematically fits Kalora super well too, since I'll be doing a lot of AoOs, so it's actually like I'm watching everyone's backs haha.

Perhaps in the future when I actually have plate armor we can rethink bulwark, maybe just for the squishier people. +4-6 AC just from being near me is pretty cool, if we're having trouble being hit too much.

Blah, nat 1 on reading comprehension, sorry.

This actually reminds me of the disappointing conclusion to my first homebrew campaign. The final boss was a balor, and the party was only level 13. They were well-prepared for the fight and knew exactly what they were going up against and had some buffs from a level 20 cleric, but still, that's one hell of a fight.

But then the paladin won initiative, charged, and got a smiting first-hit-against-an-evil-outsider double-crit with a greataxe (double crits were a houserule I had for nat 20's only). He did like, 280 damage in one hit.

Yeah that's why I usually stay away from high crit multiplier weapons. When they do happen, they can either make an encounter really memorable (say, if you save the day with a last minute crit kill), or extremely anticlimactic (like your story).

I tried for a long while to figure out what weapon would be coolest for my new character - I really liked the greataxe thematically and 'rule of cool' wise, but ended up going with greatsword for that reason. Otherwise identical, except for the crit stats.

It's still pretty tempting to be honest.

Actually it has been mathematically proven that greatswords have more DPR (damage per round) than greataxes. Not only do they average 0.5 damage more per hit, the increased crit range is more efficient than the x3 crit multiplier.

But that's just the statistician in me :P

In another game I'm playing a kinslayer inquisitor (coolest archetype ever) who uses a tetsubo. I'm just waiting to slam a skeleton into dust with a bludgeoning x4 weapon.

I mean I know that there's a difference, I mostly meant the other stats. Any 2d6 or 1d12 weapon will end up being 3d6 with a large character. Greatsword is the 'right' choice, but that makes it the generic choice too. It wastes less damage with overkill, plus being slightly statistically better. But that's the boring reason to choose it.

Wish there were more non-reach choices that did 1d12 or 2d6 damage, other than Greataxe, Earthbreaker and Greatsword.

Just because it's the more powerful choice (by a hair) doesn't mean it's the 'right' choice. When I'm playing a two-handed front-liner and I'm considering my weapon of choice, my first thought is "What kind of weapon do I envision my character wielding?"

Yup, those are the three big-hitters that are non-reach.

That's the right way to approach it.
I was just making fun of the people that often post on people's builds, correcting every minor thing because it's not 100% mathematically ideal, and seem to ignore thematic decisions. I remember quite a few in the original recruitment.

What ended up making the decision for me was that I really like the idea of sundering (even though I will likely never use it!), and I wanted a slashing weapon because it's way cooler to me to cut someone's sword in half than smash it with a hammer. So Greatsword or Greataxe, and then I found cooler looking art for a greatsword that fit my character than I did Greataxe. Simple, no decorations, well worn, and big. Helps me (and I guess other people) imagine my character better to have a concrete image that fits perfectly.

I considered flail for a bit, but that would just make me downright sad to sunder with. Very cool otherwise, minotaur with a big-ass flail is my jam. Considered a trip or disarm build just to make it worth it.

So did the group remain in the room you are currently in or moving somewhere else?

Well Grub needs to get his fat arse up for us to go anywhere :P

Yup, stuck here until Grub responds. Someday we'll leave the dungeon.

Anybody's character got a deck of cards?

Once Grub checks in, is the plan to go back topside? Or rest and level up in the dungeon? There is one unexplored room. Are there plans to check that out? Let me know your thoughts so I can prepare. Also, assuming you get out, you can start levelling your characters, just have the complete version not uploaded yet, in case something happens before you level up ;)

A single room left? Unnnnfff that hurts my OCD, but I'd rather feel a little offset than get somebody killed.

My vote is that we go back topside to rest. Resting in a dungeon is just asking for it.

Yeah bugs me too, but we'll figure it out the next day. Topside is safest. We have pretty much no resources left, everyone's hurt.

Alternative is that I can spend 15 minutes to prepare mage armor, and go scouting with +15 stealth and 25-29 AC. If there's anything we just peace out and deal with it later. If there isn't danger, well then we don't have to waste more time later coming back - we got hill giants to deal with after all.

If you want to take that risk, it's your call.

But I think first we must deal with the mountain of ogre flesh blocking the door.

I'm gonna do it. We've been in this dungeon since October, I am in no rush to come back unless there's more combat that needs to be done.

I can also Enlarge Person on Sly and you and he could flat out just drag Grub back to the surface. Grubs only like 1,000 lbs, heavy load for Sly is 400. An enlarge Sly could almost pick him up by himself. Drag weight for either of you is something like 2,000 lbs.

Edit:
Grub's only 780 lbs. An enlarged Sly could just flat out carry him up the ladder back to the shack.

Oh, I should probably explain that sickened thing. At level six, Grub can take Corrupted Flesh, which means he'll have a stench aura. I figure it works, since he has the Wasting curse. I'm just not sure if it's a good idea, since A) there's no listed duration, and B) it could end up doing more harm than good.

Eh, might not be the greatest idea in a party. There's no way to get that many people immune to it without entirely changing their builds.

Yeah, poison immunity isn't the easiest thing to get, and -2 to pretty much everything is definitely harmful when we have three flurry/TWF people in our group.

It can actually be a really powerful ability with a couple more feats. There's a later one that causes targets to be nauseated for one round instead of sickened, which would be great. But again, it's hard for a party.

The possible upside is that, if you succeed at a save, you're immune to it for 24 hours. But I don't think we can necessarily rely on that.

Maybe we can revist it when we have gold enough to purchase items that have poison immunity.

Anyway to make it selective?

As far as being in the dungeon since October, that's the way pbp's work. combat is ALWAYS slow. We can go through days or weeks of IC time with a handful of posts in a single day. But when combat occurs it will take weeks to months to process through a few minutes of IC time.

Consider that we all post once a day, and CaveToad advances a round every weekday, that means we need two weeks to cover one minute of combat (10 rounds). When we don't have people posting every day, this gets slowed down by a significant amount.

Let's assume that one of the five players we have will miss a day of posting, and that this will happen once a week. Those ten rounds and two weeks of combat just got stretched out to almost 3 weeks.

There are a few things that can be done to smooth out pbp combat, all have pro's and con's.

1) everyone posts actions and rolls. The GM then does a recap with NPC reactions, and results. This is useful as the GM only needs to do one response per turn. It requires players to have posts completed by a specific time of day for the GM to then compile the recap.

2) as information is gathered by the players, target numbers of NPC's are noted. Players can then post the results of their actions. This reduces the amount of response needed from the GM, but does involve a certain amount of metagaming as the players are actively knowing the AC, saves of the NPC's.

3) the GM posts spoilers of commonly asked for information at the beginning of a battle, like perception checks, knowledge rolls, etc. This speeds up by reducing the back and forth requests that can stretch out the first couple of combat rounds, but again gets into metagaming and player trust that if they don't meet the DC they won't use the information provided.

Yeah, there's a reason I built a marvelously simple character despite being triple gestalt.

Full attack. Add in LoH if I'm getting hurt. Add in electric damage for hard fights. Add smite for really hard fights. Try to get a flank if possible.

That's basically my entire fighting strategy as long as nothing crazy is going on.

I know, I know. Just venting.

Its not really feasible to have a set time, since cavetoad can't always post at the same time, but if I am ever the person who's missing when everyone else has taken their turns, feel free to instantly DMPC me.

Edit: Heck, I'll make a section of my profile dedicated to common rolls & strats when being DMPC'd, to make it easier.

Sadly, no, there is no way in all of Pathfinder to make the stench ability selective. It is always active, and affects every creature in range.

So we made camp above?

I'd like to clear the place before continuing on though.

Yes, you are camping in the woods by the shack.

Once everyone is leveled, we can continue. Aury, once I complete review of your character I will devise how to implement her. it might be a stretch to insert at this exact moment yet, I will have to see how things go.

That's fine, I can wait a bit until it makes sense.

I am all leveled and good to go.

Leveled and ready. I'll update my header momentarily.

Ok cool. I probably makes sense to plan your next action as a group so I can get that rolling. I have a wake tomorrow and a funeral this weekend, and weekends tend to be more difficult for me to get online than I would like.

Oh I'm sorry, don't even worry about it, we'll be here whenever you're ready.

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So I think basic plan is simply to just go back down, Shaeyl can check for and disable traps, and we find out what the mystery room is.

Heck, we can probably roll all of those ahead of the time and save some time. If we get interrupted before that room, well we can deal with it if it happens.

I'm gonna post mine!

Oh dear, I'm sorry for your loss. Feel free to take some off time if you need to, don't worry about us.

~~~

I can be backup trap-checker. My disable device isn't quite as high but I can throw in some assists for skill checks. And I'm a good person to be with if things go south.

Oh good! We can all at least roll for perception, and you can roll to assist Shaeyl with disabling if we do find a trap.

Actually this might be a good idea for the future. If we're ever searching for traps, just roll disable device at the same time as perception, it could save a day of waiting for posts.

Both you and Shaeyl can roll, and then if we are ever missing one or the other, we just use whichever check we have at the time, or Cavetoad can roll for the missing person.

No Escape Route, Goivan?

Oh I didn't know that was now, I thought it was a future plan.

But greater mercy so good :(

Ah that's fine, you can pick it up whenever is possible. For now it'll just be me an Shaeyl then, unless Grub wants to pick it up as well.

I now have a teleport tactic that allows me to move into a group of enemies, with escape route, I would then be able to act as a conduit to be able to move around the enemy group.

Consider how many AoO's Grub took moving into the room. If Aury was near the front, and I had teleported to the back, Grub could have likely moved through without any AoO's since the escape route would have provided him cover along his route.

Anything interesting happen while we rested up top?

If not, I'm ready to head back down and clear the place out.

Nice, is that a wizard ability or a stalker maneuver? I haven't looked at any of the ones I don't have access to as a warder.

Another thing that may help is that there exists a Path of War expanded stance that lets threatened squares do the same thing as Escape Route. That combined with Warder means that I could potentially have a 20-30' aura of Escape Route. It'd reduce my damage by a lot though in the future though, but I'll probably take it as an option just in case.
I'm gonna keep escape route for when I'm not in that stance.

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I don't think so, Cavetoad just wanted to wait until everyone was leveled (don't forget to update your header!) and healed up. Goivan, you and I are, I don't know about Grub.

When we wake up I can slam Grub with some LoH to get him healed up. Grub, is your header up to date?

POW Fading Strike, standard action to attack and teleport or teleport then attack.

At BAB +9 I expect to have the dimensional agility chain done and be able to threaten from a slew of squares, which would make escape route REALLY nifty.

Dang that's cool. Shaeyls gonna be badass when dimensional agility is finished.

Seems like we'll have a good set up, once Goivan and maybe Grub get escape route. Shaeyl popping around with teleports to get into position, and Goivan will have an easier time getting in position. Grub can grapple people into bad positions, and my replacement character can throw AoOs at anybody that tries to bother him.

And when Sly gets back, he'll have a nice safe way of punching hexes at people!

Hey guys what do you think: I am wondering whether my replacement character having Life mystery is worth it or not.

Our healths are getting higher and higher, and healing probably isn't going to scale well, especially not in combat.

You guys think standard oracle healing is going to be enough to fit our needs out of combat? I'm not sure what I would take as an alternative, I'd have to find something that fits the character as well.

Edit: Solar mystery is pretty cool - minotaurs can't get lost, so it would be kinda cool to theme a bit around knowing the sun and stars supernaturally well because of it. A lot of the abilities aren't too amazing, but some of them are really cool. Like dimension door in places of sunlight, or being able to tear open a portal to the astral plane and travel at 50mph for 1 hour per level. But also it'd be pretty much directly opposite themed of Shaeyl and wayangs shadow theme, for better or worse.

Winter is a little fitting because I already had to choose an element I was endure-element'd against, but it's not very useful mystery unless we're going mountaineering in the Alps or something.

Alright, my header is up to date again. Does intensive care mean I recover 2 strength, or 3?

Grub, I think you recover 2, because he was describing what would happen if heal worked, and it succeeded for everyone.

@Cavetoad: I think everyone's updated and ready to descend.

Once more unto the breach!