[PFS] Teamwork Experiment Table Fez (Inactive)

Game Master Nathan Hartshorn

Hey folks. Sorry for the radio silence the past couple days. I'm out of town right now and won't have a ton of time to post until Sunday. Please feel free to bot as needed.

Thanks for your patience.

...same here! :)

Sunday should feel like things are normal again! :P

Not sure if GM Fez ended up logging this to Gameday VI, but if he did:

BOON TIME!: 1d20 ⇒ 3

...drats!

I'll have limited access from Mon-Fri but will check in as I am able. Bot me if necessary.

Nah, this module still has a way to go and I figured it would end somewhere outside the purview of acceptable finish time for PbPGDVI.

If any of you guys have time for another game, the E6 Red Hand of Doom game I have taken over could use another couple of players.
The Recruitment page

GM Fez - about a month ago I GMed #9-06 "Shores of Heaven" locally and credit went to Berato. Let me know if you'd prefer I level up Berato now or after this game.

After. If you level now you'll pop out of the range for this chronicle since it's a module and range 1-2.

ok thanks!

anthys... this is intriguing... especially with shield wall feat...

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo-fight er-archetypes/tower-shield-specialist/

Well, it gives up Weapon Training.
Weapon Training is pretty crucial, so Anthys can get Fighter's Tactics.

I'm looking at Siegebreaker from Heroes of the Streets with my 1st level barbarian... my progression path may look a little like this:

1. Barbarian (power attack 1st, skill focus bonus - focused study human alternate racial trait)
2. Siegebreaker (breaker rush)
3. Siegebreaker (armored vigor, breaker momentum, furious focus 3rd)
4. Siegebreaker (armor training 1)
5. Barbarian (overbearing advance rage power if it stacks with breaker rush, weapon focus 5th)
6. Ulfen Guard (rage power tbd)
7. Ulfen Guard (feat tbd)
8. Ulfen Guard (formal training -- weapon specialization; skill focus bonus - focused study human alternate trait )

Feel free to offer suggestions for rage power and feat that have not been selected yet! :)

Hey folks! Just wanted to let you know I’ll be out of town through Wednesday and probably won’t be able to post much. Please bot me as needed.

Same here.

Guys, sorry for the drop in communication. My wife went to the ER this past weekend from a procedure that happened the week before and I've been dealing with that. Everything is alright now, but I won't be able to put the time or focus on GMing until Saturday or Sunday at the earliest. Sorry again.

No problem GM Fez - if you feel like wrapping up this adventure for personal reasons I would totally understand. We've been at it for several months and some time off with a fresh restart with a new module at some point might be good.

Best wishes to your family, Fez. Hope all goes well.

Absolutely no problem, Fez! Family first, as always. Glad to hear things are alright.

If we wrap this up soon, could we get a short-ish scenario done during OutPost? (Boons are nice, I don't get to go to any FtF cons.)

I just got a boon yesterday Anthys (I get a few a year) so you can have it:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jLt5H1BRKx6rvavo143EZiJKAG47lTqh

Thanks! I mean you can keep it if you like, but I can see how this one would be useful.

ok I'll keep it then

I'll look into Outpost more and see how long its going for.

yeah Outpost requires the game to be wrapped up in about 6 weeks I believe...

are some of your builds expected to get better at 3rd level? Berato will get 2nd level spells, Anthys will keep fightering better, but what about Marcus and Vindler? are you guys developing into a faster / stronger / more beautiful butterfly at 3rd? I ask because I'm worried about this party's capabilities. A lot of situations that are easily solved with more standard parties are causing us a lot of trouble and slowing the game down tremendously. We don't have trapfinding/disabling; we don't have any arcane buff/support. I'm not gonna lie: over the long-term I'm a bit worried about this experiment... :)

Edit: adding one more player (sor, wiz or brd) would really help this party I think. At 6 player, we suffer from the dreaded table adjustment, but a 5th player would be a nice party add-on without the downside of module adjustment .

Marcus can do traps.
There are martial buffs (like Inspiring Sword).
UMD is an option for arcane, and the magic item mastery feats let anyone be a quasi-mage to a degree.
I'm not terribly worried. This fight, Anthys screwed up by going off on his own. With his teamwork feats, he is much better when adjacent to allies.

My thought for Anthys was Improvisation at 3rd (to do ALL the skills), and then Barroom Brawler at 4th to pick up situational feats (like Blind-Fight or Rat Catcher). That could change.

Edit: bards are fantastic and I would never turn one down. Even a wizard could get a lot of use out of Shake it Off or Scion of the Lost Empire. But I thought PFS scenarios had a 4-player adjustment. Do modules have a 6-player adjustment?

Vindlér is going to be going pretty straight with his combat tactics. He’ll continue to pick up more spells as he goes along, which will probably be mostly buffs from here on. I’ve also thought about taking a level in wizard or something to get us some arcane support. I’ll have to mull it over a bit after we wrap up the module.

No, mods don't have a 6 player adjustment, but I think Berato meant module in the general sense that most people do when talking about scenarios.

Fact check: everyone has a heavy shield except Berato, who has a buckler.

Q: in our current optimal square formation, Berato gets +6 AC (3x2) and everyone else gets +5 AC right? (2+2+1)

Vindler: if you delay we can all move as one like the Romans did! :)

There might be a few AoOs from the thugs but we can minimize that with the chosen route; small price to pay though to maintain Shield Wall though.

We discussed this before, but I am almost certain Shield Wall is not meant to be cumulative (unlike Lastwall Phalanx).
It's still a very nice bonus.
I don't know of an official ruling, but here is a thread discussing it.

Nah, I'm not willing to go read debates on this. I'll settle for GM Fez. And if it's not cumulative, it's a garbage feat that I will retrain into something useful.

For Anthys a +2 AC for one feat (nearly all the time) is pretty awesome. But if you want to retrain, Scion of the Lost Empire has been proving very useful.
Naturally I will go with whatever Fez says on the feat.

Marcus will continue to be able to handle skills reasonably well, as well as traps. We also have pretty good perception all around, so are likely to be able to find them before we set them off. He's taking one more fighter level to get the feats to work out, then shifting back to investigator.

So, I'm actually not entirely sure what Marcus will be doing next level. The original plan for him was to build around the Covering Fire feat from the Ranged Tactics Toolbox, which allows for him to use Aid another at range to aid the AC of every companion with the feat. However, there's been another feat named covering fire that works completely differently that appears to have been printed since in the Villain's Codex, and I'm not sure what happens with that exactly. Everything in the ranged tactics toolbox is still listed as legal for play, so can I still take that?

In any case, Marcus was planning to pick up a second level of drill sergeant next level, and get Shake it Off, Quick Draw and Covering Fire (from Tactician). At level 5, he'll get the ability to aid as a move or swift action, so can aid up to 3 times per round.

Eventually, the plan was to get Harrying Partners and Rings of Tactical Precision to hand out around the time we start to encounter lots of iterative attacks, combined with benevolent armor to be able to buff the group for +8-10 AC/+6 to hit against single targets.

I do have a GM credit I applied to Marcus, so he'll be level 3 soon.

Shield Wall: Doesn't stack

Covering Fire: You can still take it from the RTT, just specify somewhere that's where it is from so no one can confuse it for the VC edition.

Yeah, I'm with Anthys on the viability of Shield Wall. Even if it doesn't stack, +1 or +2 AC just by virtue of positioning is nothing to sneeze at.

As far as advancement, I'll get Lookout and Shake it Off at 3rd, then Lastwall Phalanx at 6th since it requires +3 BAB to work. My 5th level feat will be open for something else then, but I'll see where we're at if/when we get there to figure out what that'll be.

I may retrain my shareable feat into Lastwall Phalanx at 3rd, and take Shake it Off as a regular feat (since everybody else seems to be taking it, it's no longer essential to have it as shareable).

That delays Improvisation, but might be worth it. It would get Lastwall Phalanx online much earlier.

I'll retrain Shield Wall with this Chronicle Sheet GM Fez... let me know what I have to do. I'll be a better cleric without the teamwork feat. Works for a martial type but not so much for a cleric I'm afraid...

Going with Extra Channel.

Map has been updated (finally -_-;). Berato, I'll make a note on your chronicle about the retraining and sign off.

Nah... moment of weakness... no retraining (yet!) I like Shield Wall too much at the moment. LOL

Understood. Let me know if anyone does want to retrain. Once this combat is over I'll finish the mod and get chronicles out as quick as possible. Depending on how long that takes I'm thinking of running a Season 0 scenario to get credit in the Outpost game day, and that'll be fairly quick. Thoughts?

Ok, that's great! I would need to retrain without being able to take that feat, as its going to be core to Marcus' effectiveness eventually as things start to scale up.

Shield Wall is not bad for all of us, I think, because we will want to make sure everyone is armored heavily to prevent having weak links to attack. Being at an AC level where things need 20's to hit you mitigates so much damage.

So this was an interesting mystery module with a lot of working parts in the background. It is entirely possible to short-circuit the entire adventure if you immediately asked about Robella and the strange vials after the first murder, which you guys held off on. Normally you are led through three murders, the first on the fairway, the second being the priest, and the third just a random guy turning away from Shiver.

As you found out the thieve's guild (run by Borvius and Robella) starts learning about you after the murders and the third one is an attempt to direct you to the Braeton Manor to frame you for their murder. Normally it is impossible to stop the murder, but you all showed up early enough that I felt justified in giving you the chance to beat Borvius and his assistants in under a minute to let them live. Normally the fourth and final part of the adventure is heading to Robella's shop, finding the secret base of the guild, and rooting that evil out, exonerating yourselves and the carnival in the process. If you want to know anything else about this module let me know and I'll answer as best I can.

Thanks for running! It was challenging, the Thieves' Guild did seem to be two steps ahead of us a lot of the way, but we did okay.

And thanks for letting us save the Braeton family. It did seem that the murder was supposed to occur at the speed of plot with no way for us to save them, which is frustrating, so I really appreciate your modification.

Anthys will spend 5 Prestige and 150 gp to retrain his 2nd-level Tactician feat from Shake it Off into Lastwall Phalanx (which he didn't qualify for at 2nd but does qualify for at 3rd). Then he'll pick up Shake it Off as his 3rd-level feat.

Question: could we possibly recruit an additional player for our arcane needs? sor/wiz/psy? that would be great... we are level 3 now, I believe.

Day Job check for Anthys:
Profession (Soldier): 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (20) + 6 = 26

Day Job check for Berato:
Heal: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (2) + 11 = 13
Heal, 3-star reroll: 1d20 + 11 + 3 ⇒ (20) + 11 + 3 = 34 --> 75gp

Anthys

Berato

Marcus

Vindler

Marcus 1st Chronicle

Marcus 2nd Chronicle

If anything looks wrong let me know and I'll fix it ASAP.

In respect to time I've left the day job gold blank so you guys can fill it in yourselves. I finally fulfilled my promise to Marcus...only 5 months late.

Among my season 0 and 1 offerings I have:

#1 Silent Tide
#2 Hydra's Fang Incident
#3 Murder on the Silken Caravan
#4 Frozen Fingers of Midnight
#5 Mists of Mwangi
#8 Slave Pits of Absolom
#13 Prince of Augustana
#14 Many Fortunes of Grandmaster Torch
#35 Voice in the Void
#37 Beggar's Pearl

If any of those work I can start up immediately, otherwise I'll pick up a different scenario.

This was 3 xp ??!?

Why didn't you guys say so? now I understand why it was a bit long... :P

Berato is now level 4... (9 xp with this one!)