Here's the discussion thread for all of your out-of-character needs. Feel free to continue discussion of characters or anything else here or in recruitment.
DOT!
Ok so I was watching my 8 month old niece before work and the tired me forgot what kind of monster that baby is. I thought she was a sleep so I went to make me breakfast and she entered stealth mode. Erasing some of my equipment and backstory. Then the little monster saved it. She has spent all of her fathers money in video games too. The baby is fascinated by keyboards. Anyways my gear is almost done again and the backstory should be done this weekend though it might be shorter.
What the crap? The baby managed to edit, erase and save your profile?
Get this kid into computer science classes now. They're going to crack open the Matrix.
Whole bunch of button pushing, I guess. She loves keyboards and phones. I do not understand her but it was funny when it happened to my brother. I suppose this was karma because I taunted him for a long tine about it. The baby is so loud no one notices her when she is in stealth mode.
And I agree with the GIF.
Who are we missing?
GM, I have a rules question for you-
The Familiar Satchel notes that grants Total Cover, but has air holes. Would it be possible to make one that grants Improved Cover instead of Total Cover (using the same rules as Arrow Slits)
Sure.
Great, thank you.
So last night was a surprise 10 hour shift and the first really cold night. I could see my breath fog in the air. I know this not because of the air in the warehouse but because my tire decided last night was the time to rip itself apart. Then I had to stay up till 10 to go get a tire which took two hours. Tomorrow is shopping for the nieces clothing, cause it is getting cold and they need winter clothing. So that means it might take me a little longer than tomorrow to finish up. Murphy, of Murphy's Law, is my spirit animal
Hey GM, since we seem to have a bit of down time, would you mind if I built myself some undead minions? I was going to do it was the game progressed, but it seems reasonable that I'd start with a few.
Maybe just give me a selection of corpses to start with and I'll build them from there?
You could fairly easily get your hands on some common corpses. They'd mostly be drow or dark folk with a few levels in NPC classes. Getting the corpse of someone skilled would be trickier.
Most undead lose all their class levels. The ones that don't tend to be more trouble than they are worth. Necromancers care more about hit dice and natural abilities than anything else.
Any common monsters Astreth and I might have come across recently?
I more meant your going to be limited to common humanoids with 5 hit dice or less. Other common humanoids and monstrous humanoids are things like mongrelmen and morlocks, along with some evil fey.
Common monsters that can actually be turned into undead you might have met recently would mostly be animals like giant spiders or other insects (beetles, scorpions, etc), lizards, bat, and that sort of thing. There are others like driders, ropers, oozes, and gugs, but they're not all that common. You could have run into a couple though.
I had a couple of undead Gugs in another game. I liked them. I'll use a couple of them as my current big minions.
I'll have a full mechanical breakdown of how I built them, how much they cost, and their mechanics done early next week.
I'll probably staple some less powerful enemies to them because Necrocraft is fun.
Oh, as a note, Kassii has a theme about headlessness and decapitations (and also with reattaching severed heads. It's a Ydersius thing).
Would you have any problem with mindless undead not having their heads?
All I ask is that no more than one or two. Gugs are powerful and even a small group would challenge three people. Though unless you're getting desecrate from somewhere I don't see, I don't think you can control more than than anyway. And I don't think anyone wants to see out of control undead gugs.
And sure, headless is fine, though they obviously lose their bite attack then. Not that they really need it with four claws.
I might not be understanding something about Necrocraft, but it seems like a way to create custom undead, not a way to bolt new pieces on to existing ones.
Oh jeeze. They'really CR 10. I forgot that. I can create and control them no problem, but I don't want to upset game balance too much. A necromancer that runs around with a minion they can't personally take down if they have to is courting disaster.
Based on its Will save, Kassii could take one down pretty easily. More than that would be harder. A CR 10 gug translates to a CR 6 or 7 skeleton since they lose all their feats and SLAs.
You're partially right about Necrocraft. You still have to start with a base creature. It's like Eidolon Evolutions for undead, but instead of an evolution pool, Necromancers use other undead creatures as the component costs to add new abilities (hence the staple some drow to it comment).
I'll give you a full mechanical breakdown of how I do what I do. You can veto anything you don't like.
Ok, so here's the first step of making my big Gug minion. The stats are in the profile. It's pretty straightforward. Gug + Bloody Skeleton template. CR 8 (possibly 7, since not having a head makes it less combat effective than normal).
As for animating this guy, the breakdown is more complex. I'll go through it step by step-
The Bloody template counts as double it's usual hit dice to animate (but not to control once it is animated). That means our Gug is effectively a 30 HD undead for animation purposes.
When Casting Animate Dead, Kassi can create twice her caster level worth of Hit Dice.
With Spell Specialization, her CL boosting Traits, and Salt as an alchemical power component, Kassii has an effective Caster Level of 15 when casting Animate Dead (she can raise this even higher by using items and spells if she needs to, but for this Gug, it's exactly what she needs)
Normally, this undead would cost 750 GP in Onyx, but with Blood Money, Kassii instead takes 1d6 damage, and 2 points of strength damage to pay the component cost.
Following everything so far?
I'm only getting to CL 13 from just your feats and traits (CL 8 + 2 traits + 2 Spell Specialization + 1 Salt), but you have more than enough other ways to temporarily boost your CL to make up the difference so that doesn't matter.
Otherwise I follow fine.
Oops. You're right. For some reason I had it in my head that we were 10th level when I did my math.
Since I need another +2 CL, I'll use a Potion of Cure Moderate and deathwine. :)
Give me a bit and I'll have the Necrocraft breakdown finished. It's basically adding Evolutions to the Gug by grafting other undead to it. The only thing complicated about it is that you have to pay the material cost of creating the undead, and then pay again when you use Necrocraft.
So basically, Kassii animates everything separately, then glues them all together with a scroll of Make Whole and casts Animate Dead again to finish the construction.
Stats coming soon.
First, Kassii has to animate 10 1HD drow skeletons. That normally costs 250 gp, but with Blood Money it costs a few points of damage and 1 point of strength damage.
next she attaches them to the Gug with a scroll of Make Whole (150 gp)
After gluing the corpses to our Gug, it gains 3 Construction Points (CP)
To make up for the loss of it's Bite attack, I'm adding Extra Attack (claw). (1 cp)
To make up for it's loss of all it's natural armor, I'm adding Metal Armor (2 cp)
Finally, Kassii casts Animate Dead again (with a 50 gp material component cost, but not having to double the effective hit dice this time). So, she uses blood money again and loses another 2 strength.
So, by the time this monstrosity is done, Kassii has spent 150 GP, cast three 1st level spells, three 4th level spells, taken 3d6 damage, and 5 points of strength damage.
Then she takes a nap.
Makes sense.
This is why I thought a Darklands game would be fun. You couldn't get away with having a fourteen foot tall headless giant, half rotted away so it's more skeleton than anything else with its bones so stained with gore that their bloody red following around a disturbing albino snake person anywhere on Golarion's surface other than maybe Geb.
I think we are best friends now.
Ok, so here's the cherry on top of this horrible sundae-
I've taken the Gug's head and the Drow heads and turned them into a Beheaded Swarm. The stats are listed int eh alias again.
Basically, the Gug skull hovers above the body surrounded by a swirling cluster of humanoid skulls that swarm anything the Gug goes after.
It's not a powerful minion and I expect it to die in the first AoE blast, but I like it. I'd love to research some way of adding the Bloody template to my Beheaded so I don't have to constantly be making new ones.
So sorry that took me so long. I still need to get link to my spells but I think everything is there. So many alchemical items to go though.
Your minion is adorable by the way. I might steal if for a later monster in my campaign, if you do not mind :)
Don't mind at all. Steal away.
Should we sent private messages to the other players? I am getting the impression that they have probably forgotten about this game since it isn't on their games tab..
That is a possibility. I have had that issue.
I've talked with Emissary. He did lose track, but he's finishing up now. Loup is still busy and having scheduling issues, so he's probably not going to join in for a while unless things change a lot very quickly. Not sure about the others, but I'll try to get in touch.
I've had a hellish two weeks but I am starting to catch up and ready to move forward when everyone else is!
Same. I'm ready to go whenever.
Poke!
JD and Emissary have both said they're almost done. I'm guessing the holiday slowed JD down, but hopefully they'll be done soon. Hopefully it won't take much longer for things to be ready to start.
Holiday did slow me down! No internet access for a few days and then Thanksgiving meant I took longer than I wanted, but I'm putting the finishing touches on right now. After that, I just need an alias and I should be ready to go.
I am back on the boards (at least as a PC anyway) and ready when the rest of you are!
Sorry, several of the people I tapped for this game have kind of vanished for a while. I'm thinking that I'll let things sit for a while (probably until the new year) and hope that once the holidays pass, people will have more free time and we'll be able to get started.
I think there are four of us. That's a standard party. Since we are gestalt, I bet we could even make due with three.
This time of year is busy though, so I understand wanting to wait for things to calm a bit.
Gestalt? I do not recall that fact. But I am ready to go though waiting till the holidays are over is probably a good idea.
Perhaps he's confusing with something else?
D'oh! Yeah, I am. I think I misremembered things because of Astreth's multi-class build. Ignore me.
Still, 4 people is a standard party. I bet we could make it work.
Cannot... jussst... choossse... one... classss.......
I get that! Multi-classing is fun :D
We still doing this? :-)
Sorry, I've been meaning to get back to this for a while, but I've had a busy last couple of weeks. If everyone who's still interested can check in and confirm they're ready, I'll try to get things rolling.
No worries, I've had a horrible time of it lately, had to drop a number of games I could not keep up with anymore :-(
Still want to do this one though.
Here and ready.
I'm on vacation this week so my posting time is limited, but I'm still interested in this game.
*pokes game with stick*
Still up for this one.