Something Wicked This Way Comes (Inactive)

Game Master Fanguar

...with that accent? How many guards do you think the keep has who sound like pastiche nazis?

lol.

"Ach. Zer ist a flaw in minn kunning plan!"

I have no ranks in disguise(However, I do have the Hat), but I believe my bluff is by far the highest at +16.

With the hat you should be good since you're human and don't need to disguise yourself as anything other than a different human. The hat's illusion means they don't get a perception check against the effect since the Disguise skill isn't actually in play.

Vank will need to disguise himself as a different race, but with the Hat's +10 bonus that should put his Disguise high enough that the guards shouldn't have much of making the perception check.

I think Haruk and Vank get my votes for our guard stand-ins. We haven't seen Haruk get a whole lot of spotlight time, so this will be a good opportunity for that.

So Vank and Haruk get the guard detail. We off to grab a servant (they will double as a mobile blood bank once they've fulfilled their purpose)

What's the rest of us wandering as? Are we accompanying the doppleguards or have a separate mission??

If in doubt I can assume the guise of Bani Odenkirk - the Northman who lost the drinking comp with the dwarves...

Heading to my work my very first GenCon later today, so posting will be spotty, at best. Bot me as needed!

For all my games:

This Friday, Aug 19th, and Sat Aug 20th, plus next Thurs Aug 25th-Sept 6th(possibly longer), I will have potentially spotty posting.

Friday is the huge, EPIC 5 year anniversary wrestling show for the promotion my brother works for, House of Glory.

Saturday is NXT Brooklyn II.

And then next Thursday I leave for Atlanta for several nights of LARP and awesome friends before making my way to New Orleans for the 25th anniversary Grand Masquerade event for Vampire the Masquerade.

Thus, please bot me as necessary.

@Monkeygod: as a total wrestling mark I'm impressed - enjoy :)

@Monkeygod: as a total wrestling mark I'm impressed - enjoy :)

The HOG event will feature EC3, Mickey James, Drew Gslloway, and this little tag team you might have heard of:

THE HARDY BOYS!!!

Black Dow wrote:

@Monkeygod: as a total wrestling mark I'm impressed - enjoy :)

The HOG event will feature EC3, Mickey James, Drew Gslloway, and this little tag team you might have heard of:

THE HARDY BOYS!!!

Holy $***! Holy $***! ;0

Man that's cool - seen Galloway when he wrassled o'er here for ICP. Looks a great event - enjoy!

Sorry gang - work and visitors from Atlanta have limited my pbp time.

Taken annual leave the morrow, so will hopefully be up to speed by then.

Cheers

Sorry really busy at work will catch up later in week.

@Xanos: Enjoying the philosophical discussion betwixt reborn Necromancer and newborn Vampyr. Nice break from all the plotting and planning :)

I'm enjoying it too. Feels like a movie where they keep cutting back and forth between a casual conversation and a gristly murder to contrast how casual the bad guys take these things.

The haunted house I help with every year is kicking into high gear. My posting time will be extremely limited until monday. Please bot me as necessary.

Sorry for delays, my 6 month old son has been teething and waking us 5+ times a night.

If we kill the wizard we might be able to pretend to be soldiers and hide out under their noses. If the wizard is alive, we don't want to risk it. There will probably be a lot of divinations flying around while they try to figure out what happened.

Also, we could discuss these things in character. They'd be good RP opportunities.

Agree 100% - a lot of our scheming should be decided here in the OOC thread and actioned as in-game decisions. Will allow the flow of dialogue (and ergo the game) much more.

Sure, I don't think anyone can easily pick that lock to get the the last of the guard captains. we could knock on his door and get him to open it but that is likely to be less silent that sneaking in and killing him in his sleep. A silence spell would give us time to destroy the door and kill him but that would leave one 2nd level spell to get into the tower and kill the wizard.

on the wizard side I can levitate up to the top of the keep with a rope and lower it down for everyone else but we might get spotted on the way up by a passing guard patrol and escape would be difficult. Fighting the guards outside the main entrance will require a silence and might get spotted anyway. we are probably better looking at going up through the kitchen or distracting the guards in some way, maybe Haruk could charm them something.

I thought we had some people in the party with decent lock picking skills?

So, we've been plugging away at this chapter of the AP for like a year. The nature of PBP makes free form style adventures like this chapter very slow and I wanted to see how people were holding up. Is everyone happy plugging away as is, or shall I hand wave us a bit.

I'm tempted to spin a bit of a yarn to set up an epic final battle with you holding the gate control mechanism while you are waiting for the army to attack, but if people are content with the slow, sneaky approach, we can keep on as is.

Thoughts?

I just realized that I never took my 3rd and 5th level feats!!

I'm not even sure how I pulled that level of dumb off...

This section of the AP has two issues that can be difficult in PBP format-

1st) The greater Ballentyne area is a sandbox. PbP games struggle without a central narrative to follow. Discussions of what to do next can take up a lot of time.

2nd) Inside the keep is essentially a stealth-based dungeon crawl. That slows progress a lot.

It's very hard to get around those issues without a GM willing to do some Railroading, and a party that trusts the GM to do it in a way that doesn't feel adversarial.

Personally, I'd be fine with you "montaging" us to the next encounter. You know what our characters are capable of and what resources we have to work with. Get us to the next big plot point, let us deal with it, and then move on to the next one. We can just scene-hop.

Ditto on the montaging - makes sense and would add a little more impetus to proceedings (not that I've been averse to the approach thusfar).

Big, epic final scene would work.

My 2 runes worth

I've been enjoying myself, though yes, there has been times things have dragged.

Which means I am totally OK with whatever the group chooses.

I dropped our awesome GM a note that I was having some issues slogging through this PbP, which for me I think was two-fold: (a) the sandbox nature and (b) playing from an evil perspective.

I still continue to pontificate which one is the bigger obstacle to getting fully immersed here...

Well, at this particular point, we aren't really being evil. Sure, we killed some guards in their sleep, and I charmed a cook, who was then murderized by our Vampyre. However, were they orcs or goblins, instead of humans, it would be just a normal 'dungeon' crawl.

So, I can understand how its rather hard to get fully immersed in being in the evil headspace right now.

Hoping we get some more time to evil shine, lol.

I have found this game rather slow, but its been like that since I joined and just assumed that how you worked.

I've been enjoying the attack but really this is what Vank is good at. As a consequence I have had a large percent of the spot light time. My only concern in montaging the final part is everyone else doesn't get to show off what they excel at (blowing up 20 guards with a word and wave of the hand, going head to head with one of the best knights of the realm and cutting him into bits with a scythe etc.)

I also don't have a huge problem with sandbox style games, but they are harder to keep momentum going in PbP.

So I'm happy either way but would probably vote to keep going atleast until the Duke is dead.

I don't mind the way things have been going, personally. I like spec-ops style stealth missions, and I know that sometimes the wizard gets to wait when we're playing that way. I got to demolish a flock of ravens and talk shop with Big Al.

Don't worry about hogging the spotlight. I like how you've been doing things.

As I've said before I'm also happy with how things are playing out... pace is slow but that can be a boon when RL is making its influence felt.

Echoing Xanos and Haruk, think the missions/encounters have been very fun and the group dynamic is slowly bubbling to a fine stew of evil lol (actually think we could be more evil heheh.)

@Vank: Definitely don't think you're hogging the limelight mate.

I've become a vamp so have zip complaints about not getting my moment lol.

Whatever direction we go in is fine with me.

I will say, I do still want Haruk to travel down the path of a devil transformation.

I would be interested in working to Fang to re-tool the Dragon Discpile to replicate Half-Fiend, and then maybe work on a series of augmentation feats ala the Noble Drow ones.

Would be very cool.

"A vampyr, a devil and a hobgoblin walk into a tavern..."

"...the necromancer says, 'what is this, a joke?'"

sounds like a truncation of the "architype" adventure. instead of someone offering you money/glory/whatever to go kill a vampyr, devil and hobgoblin, then questing to find them and finally slay them this one jumps straight to the end.

To use starwars as an analogy, this AP is basically you getting to be the Sith instead of the jedi. It's not about destruction for destruction sake, it's about rebuilding an empire in a different image.

As it sounds like most people are ok with the current situation, I won't mess with it too much. As for the pace, this is probably the slowest game I run on the boards. I set the pace based on the players, I don't like to drive the game all by myself and I don't bot players.

@Kaynen: I think what might be helpful is more character motivation. Looking over your background, I think that we could simply tweak it to make Kaynen a scion of House Barca, the former rulers of Talingarde who were overthrown by House Darius, the current ruling monarchy. The Barcans were half-elven, so it fits. It also gives your character a personal reason for trying to tear down the Mitrans. You could be King and reclaim the glory of your once glorious House. Just a thought.

@Haruk: We can definitely do that. For tweaking the DD, there are only a couple of abilities that would need to be swapped out, so I think it would be pretty straightforward to do it.

I'm away for the weekend camping. I won't have Internet. But I doubt you USA lot will be posting much either.
Happy Thanksgiving

Right gents - just a wee heads up that I'm heading o'er to Dubai tomorrow to spend upcoming festives with my wife's brother and family. I'm back late on the 27th, and back to the work grind on the 28th.

I'll be posting throughout today and this evening, but once I'm over there posting will be spottier. Inter webs access is no issue, but time most likely will be.

Fingers crossed I'll chip in now and then, but don't wait for our Vampanzer :)

Should the unthinkable happen and I not get a chance in the coming weeks - have a very merry Xmas lads (I'll raise a tincture in your collective honour :)

Cheers

BD

GM, I have a question about how golems work in your game.

How does a golem know who it's master is?

If a golem's master was raised as undead, would the Golem still recognize it as it's master?

If someone were to possess a golem's master, could the possessor command the golem? Could an unintelligent golem somehow recognize that their master was not their master anymore?

Conundrums within conundrums within conundrums! Love it :)

Would said golem with said risen master controlled by said necromancer also all recognize that the true master is actually a mistress... The Pallid Princess ;)

I'm going to say that golem's are soul bound.

Raising its master as unintelligent undead wouldn't work, but as vampire or something of the sort, then sure.

Possessing, a la magic jar, wouldn't work, but you could charm or dominate its master.

Polymorphing to look like its master doesn;t work. Neither would it respond to a simulacrum.

There are spells that let usurp control of a golem. I would also be fine with you re-attuning a golem, it you had craft construct, by-passing construction costs.

Alright, thanks for the clarification.

Merry Christmas all

-Posted with Wayfinder

Fröhliche Weihnachten von und all!

Frohes Neues Jahr (Happy New Year) to you all one and all. Have a good 'un when it comes.

Here's to health, wealth and happiness for everyone and more wickedness around our virtual table.

Cheers

Ok, can we assume that just because our players are unaware of something that it doesn't mean our characters are idiots?

It's a pit. It has very sloped edged, which is why people next to it risk falling in. Albrekt would have been able to see that.

Also, as it stands the fight is essentially over. He can try to climb and take more damage or he can sit down there and burn. We just lob alchemist fire and bombs in until the praying and screaming stops. If he survives long enough for the spell to end, he's severely weakened when the pit spits him back out. Dismissing it now would just put us in danger again.

I'll be leaving in a few hours for MidWinter gaming con. I will hopefully be able to sneak in some posts here and there, but if not, please do not let my absence slow you down, and bot me as needed.

Looks like a nice loot drop for Albrekt and maybe for Vank.

The headband should probably go to Haruk.

Aye, I would appreciate that.

Also, GM, not sure if we'll level from this, but I imagine it will be sooner rather than later and I would like to take the first level in the Infernal Disciple variant PrC we've discussed a few times.

@Haruk: I've put something together. It meshes the DD prestige class with a devilbound creature template I found. By the end of the progression you'll be CR+1. Here the link LINKY

@Xanos (and anyone else that is interested): FYI, you'll gain access to the knowledge to become a lich at around level 11.

@Vank and Kaynen: The other PC's are getting fancy toys let me know if there is anything you are interested. For instance, I would be willing to allow you both to pick Leadership at level 6 if you are interested. Vank, there would be hobgoblins in the army if you wanted to start building the tribe up. Also Grumblejack is available as a follower (he actually becomes fairly awesome later on). The AP also provides rules on building your own Evil organization if that is something that interests you.

Couple of things Fang,

1) Are there any prerequisites for the PrC?

2) Summoning a Lemure is pretty weak and useless, as its a CR 1 creature, with hardly any useful abilities. I would suggest starting with an Imp, they at least are semi useful.

3) Why the gap in the summon list from 3rd to 9th, yet after 9th, it progresses every other level?

#1: If there are, let's just say you meet them.

#2-3: I just copied the ability from the template. I'm fine with adding Imp at caster level 5 and Zebub at caster level 7 to even out the progression.