Shadows of the Sand (Inactive)

Game Master caster4life

Not sure, but I have the feeling that this one is a honest-looser, paying dearly for his losses by selling that necklace.
But we probably have to make sure ... somehow ... before making another journey to the last fort.
Any good ideas?

Amari, I keep forgetting to remind you but as an unchained monk you are a full-bab class and thus get combat stamina for free. Please add your stamina pool to your status line.

Oh, I was totally forgetting that we use that system.
Never used it before, so I totally forgot about it *lol*
Have to read it up.

Combat Stamina. You get Stamina per battle = BAB + Con mod. The basic function is to spend points to increase your attack roll--which can help guarantee an attack hits. (When I was with the Planetouched group, it made an army of Level 1 fighters very powerful.) Other feats that you'd normally take will unlock alternative options for spending Stamina.

Yeah they also got power attack for free due to feat taxes. That's why Amari's Garage died. Amari, i hope you read the post where Zaza avenged you. It was epic. Also difficult for her to pull off but she did.

I read it to the end of course!
Also, yeah for auto-correct, causing your character suddenly becoming a garage :-)

@Stamina: Yeah, I didn't get that you can spend it for atk-increase and thought it was only good for the feat alternatives ... which quite frankly are mostly disappointing for their cost in my eyes.

We'll see what the man says, but I get the sense that he's not a collaborator with the Taldan spies. We could just let him go. It might even be useful to have a "friend" at the fort.

Also, between Garages and Gazebos, I'm sensing a theme running through our campaign.

Hahaha. Nice. Gotta love the gazebo story.

Full disclosure, this is s very small side quest you've stumbled onto. Choose hoe to handle it.

Yep, letting the fellow go. We're already taking his stuff after all.

We'll buy another 5 days of rations for the party and animals for 12 gp, and spend 2 of those, leaving 3 extra. Turns out we needed only two hot weather outfits and not 3, as listed in this post, so we get back 8 gold. So I have the party funds at 211 gold. If there's anything we want to buy, just say so.

Thanks for book-keeping for the party, Zaza! 100 xp as a sign of appreciation.

Just curious did we sell the venom and leather before we left...cant remember if we did that or not.

Agree we should sell the venom and leather. @GM Shadows -- can we assume we did that, and recover their appropriate worth?

Bard (Flame Dancer) 3
+6 HP
+1 BAB
+1 Fort
Song of the Fiery Gaze (bardic performance to see through fire/fog/smoke without penalty)
New Spells Known: Saving Finale, Dancing Lights
Feat: Stealth Synergy
Skills: Disguise, K. Nobility, Diplomacy x2, Perform (sing) x2, Use Magic Device, Stealth x2

*Edit* - Gonna add me some Stealth Synergy and adjust skills selected for more stealth.

Yes you can sell retroactively.

Good to see we'll have stealth synergy in play again. Fun stuff.

*sneaks in*
*looks at Zaza's sheet*
*holding back tears of sneaky-joy*
*leaves unnoticed*

XD

For the record, I didn't realize this would be such a social mission. You guys have kin dof played it that way so far, which is fine with me! But there will be more exploration and combat in the final act.

I think we've had some good combats--the party was great at taking out that sneaky sap rogue! I admittedly got off easy by inspiring a fort of soldiers to land some lucky arrow shots.

I assume that if we ever find more clues for the Ahncibel, there'll be plenty of exploration and combat.

Away this WE.
Feel free to not me where necessary.

It could be that our commander is going to plant some evidence in Abed's room--maybe the exact evidence we need. We could have someone tracking the commander's movements, and someone else keeping an eye on Abed's room. I kind of want to have Abed keep an eye on his room so he can see his commander set him up. That'll help with making sure the rest of the fort goes along with us hauling away the commander.

Hope we aren't pushing too hard too fast Zaza...we dont know how the commander is viewed and we dont really have any major proof of our position/authority.

@GM also a heads up but I wont be able to post after Friday morning most likely...taking a 7 day cruise and not going to bother with my laptop...(and I am one of the crazies that doesn't have a smart phone).

We will be back in country on the 11th and can maybe post again that night when we get back home.

I'm having friends-over at my place for Halloween and a prolonged weekend, so it is quite likely that I will not post until Monday.

Thanks for the notice!

I guess a drill is quite loud and everyone attends ..?
In that case, we could, as kind of a last resort if there is not handy window for sneaking in, just bring down the door with oh-so-lacking-subtlety.
... and hope like hell that we find proof there, or things might go south real fast^^

Oh sorry yes. There is a window but it is barred. You could potentially deal with that anyhow. Up to you.

Zaza's unlucky stealth roll and the personnel Cha leading to lack of disable device is rough but don't worry, you'll still be able to complete this part of the mission.

I gave Agaban and Amari 150 xp each for their success in furthering the mission. That brought Amari to level 3 and Agaban closer. Feel free to level up immediately when you hit a new level as long as we're not in the middle of a fight.

Nice!
@Zaz: nice ideas for the door problem. I'll post something tomorrow, it's late here and I got a lot of cleanup to do...

@GM: do you intend to invite another player in the foreseeable future to fill the gap Ash leave opened?
Otherwise I may try to look into filling some of the gaps. I could take a couple of ranks into disable device and take additional trait feat to make it a class skill...
Not the most streamlined choice for Amari but with a decent Dec I could stop-gap fill it to some extent - and it really feels like something we need. Not only in this mission but in future ones as well...

I wasn't planning on adding a fifth, no. But I would be willing to if the party would like a rogue-type added.

I wasn't planning on adding a fifth, no. But I would be willing to if the party would like a rogue-type added.

What are you thinking guys?

I think it would be a good idea to consider adding a fifth party member. "Rogue-type" is pretty flexible, so hopefully allows a good deal of creativity for potential applicants.

Sounds good to me.

Lvl 3 changes:
- Bab+
- will save +
- monk movement +10ft
- ki pool (5 points, ki strike with unarmed, 1pt for additional flurry attack, 1pt to increase increment by 50ft)
- 7 hp
- 4+1+1 skills
- feat

Holding off on skills and feat for now until we decide how to proceed.

I'm opening recruitment for a rogue-type.

Cool.
So, that should free my feat to prepare Amari for magic arrow crafting
Handwaving the level requirement for master craftsman feat, I am gonna take this one now and Craft Magic Arms and Armor at level 5.
Essentially this is wasting my level three feat altogether because it does nothing until level five ... but well, that's life ^^

Skills: (6)
- Stealth
- Sense Motive
- Perception
- Profession [Rune Archer] (3)

Most of my level up will come into effect the next time we get back to the shadow hq.
I am not starting to craft stuff out of the blue xD

Haha, those map calculations remind me of playing silent hunter on full realism ^^

Haha. Good! I've never played the game but that sounds like the desired effect.

Sorry just got back home after our cruise trying to read up now and will see about posting probably after dinner.

Good to have you back! Hope you enjoyed the cruise.

Welcome to the group Shadows, Choon :-)

Thanks! Good to meet everyone whom I have not.

The GM and I are currently working on a hook to get me in the group. I'll get the sign language on my sheet as soon as I can.

Thanks for choosing me, GM. :)

Welcome, Hadha! Looking forward to gaming with you!

Question. Does Zaza know enough about this communication bead to know that it's related to the ahncibel? And if so, is it true that the person at the other end of the line needs to be at the ahncibel?

I'm starting to think we're making this too complicated, and we just need the commander to feed troop movements while we close in on the ahncibel, and the remaining spies. Doing something more will just alert them of trouble.

The commander has a little more he can tell you if asked. The bead is connected to another bead. Whether or not that other bead has generally been at the Ahncibel is anybody's guess.

I'm leaning toward Hadha being LN with an emphasis on the N and the L consisting of almost entirely the policies and procedures of the Shadows.
His overriding philosophy? Don't be a jerk. Unfortunately for his foes this does not extend as far as most people tend to take it. He will cut a fool or straight up murder a man without compunction as long as he's not a jerk while he's doing it. Quick and clean is best.

That's very in-keeping with the style of the game.

Working on determining my feat now.

Spells level 2: Hold Person, Silence, Fog cloud (domain)

Skills: Linguistics, Appraise, Diplomacy (figure good to get the +3 for 1 rank), and Knowledge (history)

Also, gained +1 BAB and +1 reflex.

Leaning towards Stealth Synergy unless someone can point out a useful feat I am overlooking...assuming that others will take it also shortly so I can get some benefit from it.

Other option I was toying with was Improved unarmed strike since there are a couple other feats later that can build on it and would make it easier to use my other domain power.

Stealth synergy is a lot of fun!

Since we're going with the (anti) feat tax rules, I think there's an Unarmed Combatant feat that counts as Improved Unarmed Strike and Improved Grapple. In case that is appealing. Some of the other feats in there could also be good.

An interesting idea would be to go Tandem Trip together with Lo & Serenity.
Since you both use reach weapons, it should be easy to arrange yourself such that you threaten the same enemy and thus trigger the feat.
Rerolling Trip attempts is lethal.
If all three of you attempt to trip the same guy, you look at a total of 6 trip rolls. Unless you try to trip a gigantic spider or something, I would wager a lot against the poor fellow xD

The best: you don't actually have to try a trip attempt for Lo/Serenity getting the reroll - you just have to threaten the target with your spear.

Working on Level Up now. PRD and SRD are blocked at work :(

Taking Stealth Synergy and probably paired opportunists.

Hadha has some gear which you guys probably would have IDed before heading into the fight but we can handle that in discussion whenever you like.