Strange Aeons, with GM Pendrak

Game Master karlprosek

also leveled up

Sheet is leveled up!

Having been beaten up way more than at any other point in her life, Broom learns how to twist a bit so the blows aren't as dangerous and to endure the pain a bit more.
HP+8 (base 4 +con 3 +FC 1)

She became a little more practiced in aiming her acid blobs
Bab: +1

During this short and gruesome venture, especially with the dopplegangers, she has become a bit better at observing things, and having cast her mind about way more often than usual has also learned a little more about aberrations. She has watched Pouch intently and picked up just a hint of understanding about the healing arts and cooking for a large group has helped her practice her cooking skills. As a morbid synergy between these two skills catalyzed by everything that she has just seen and endured, she has developed a much better understanding of how to efficiently take creatures apart once they are dead.
Heal+1, Perception+1, Kn(dungeon)+1, Prof(cook)+1, Prof(butcher)+1

Casting about and touching thoughts that probably shouldn't be touched has also helped strengthen her will against the horrors she has witnessed.
Will +1

Having failed to find a way to change herself around like the dopplegangers do (the attempts having only made her sick), she did manage to find a way to manipulate things with her mind like Dagger used to do. Well, not quite like Dagger, the things she moved did so slowly and it was pretty weak, but she intended on practicing to improve it.
Add Lv0: mage hand.

Cage picked up Dodge and a feat.

Fort, Reflex, and BaB all went up by one.

He got better at perception, disable device, stealth, and acrobatics.

Picked up a little skill in Perform(Shadow-Puppets) to keep himself amused.

Hm, I didn't plan ahead, so I didn't buy things that could be used as implements. I can still cast my new spells, but they require a concentration check. Focus powers are unusable, though. There wouldn't happen to be a random holy text of Sarenrae lying around anywhere, would there? :)

Hm, I didn't plan ahead, so I didn't buy things that could be used as implements. I can still cast my new spells, but they require a concentration check. Focus powers are unusable, though. There wouldn't happen to be a random holy text of Sarenrae lying around anywhere, would there? :)

I'd say you will be able to find a small missive dedicated to Sarenrae in the chapel that you could use.

Is everything okay, Pendrak?

Maybe lost internet access again?

Apologies again for the delay of game. I had a family situation that required me to go out of town unexpectedly. Its been a weird few months but, again, hopefully now we can get back on track.

"Life happens, dearie, hope things worked out and you're doing well."

Agreed! Glad to see you're okay! No worries about the delay.

sorry for the delay, I will post in a bit.

Isn't daze supposed to only work on humanoids? ;)

You are so right, so my spell actually does nothing. But then, I had failed my arcana check ;P

yeah, same thing happened to me dammit

I don't understand what's wrong with the dice roller in this fight.

John must have a warped shortbow.

Isn't daze supposed to only work on humanoids? ;)

Yeah, that's right. I got it right the first time, but screwed it up the second. That particular ratling just got taken down by Miniel's arrow anyway.

Seven straight misses for John

Seven straight misses for John

I forgot how much worse off I am in melee combat. Even against touch I suspect these have high (for our level) AC due to their size. Getting up close may have been a mistake =)

Looking through our hits and misses, normal AC is 16-18, not sure about touch.

Seven d20 rolls at an 11 or below, that's a .015% probability.

John may develop a complex about being useless or his bow being cursed.

Did you mean to have her climb atop the shelf and try to get to yellow?

I did, I am running out of acid ray and was switching up to shocking grasp. It wasn't until I started typing in the numbers that I remembered I'm not as good at the touch attacks [yet!] as I am with ranged...

...Unless the ratlings are wearing a lot of jewelry or carrying metal weapons or armour, then I would get a +2 to hit them =)

Anyway, it looks like the one round of shaken did its job since that is what caused me to miss.

Nope, unfortunately the ratlings aren't wearing armor and don't have any shinies on them as far as you can see.

Alico had also asked the ratling questions, did it ignore me?

Dolorous Edd gets all the good one-liners. But I also have a soft spot for Patchface.

Folks, I will be traveling to southeast asia over the next two weeks, returning home around the first of December. I anticipate limited connectivity and long days/nights exploring.

Please bot Cage as necessary.

Happy holidays and safe travels to all!

Just checking in to see how things are going.

Hope everything is going okay, Pendrak.

Are we on Christmas holiday hiatus, or do we think this might be something a little more permanent?

Pendrak's last post anywhere seems to be the gameplay thread here on Nov 16th, so who knows.

I don't know if this is impolite or bad forum etiquette so I apologize in advance if it is.

I have really enjoyed this group and the AP so far. If GM Pendrake is missing in action, would it be possible to see if we can find a substitute GM to pick up the game? Would everyone be interested in making the attempt?

It's not impolite at all, Mashiki. And I think we're all wondering the same thing. What point is too long?

I am still here

If the last of his posts anywhere was a month ago, then now is a good time to search for a new GM I'd say.

I was going to arbitrarily wait for the 16th before doing anything making it officially a full month. I will put up something this weekend.

If we find a new GM, would having them invite us to a new game be the simplest way to move forward?

Without Pendrake handing off the game I don't know if there is a way for a new GM to take over an existing game.

there's a way. The new GM just has to ask the admins to give him/her the permissions. It's not usually complicated, though it might take a bit longer with holidays coming up.

I have put up a request for a new GM.

Feel free to add anything else to the thread or comment on any applicants.

clearly he was stolen by nightgaunts. Thanks Mashiki

Hey, guys. I'm KP. I've run this mod before, though I got swamped at work and eventually had to shut down the campaign. I have an Obsidian Portal page for it, though to be honest I didn't really keep up with the adventure logs. A better example of a past game would probably be my old Kingmaker campaign page.

I looked through your gameplay posts and think I could take over fairly well. I have a couple of things I want to share, though.

Pendrak was a lot more forthcoming with information than I usually am. I don't hide the ball during a scene, but on the larger scale I don't usually have NPCs share a bunch of unasked-for information. It looks like he made Winter kind of a quest-giver NPC while I played her like a suspicious and desperate woman without much in the way of resources who had to take whatever help she could get.

In a similar vein, the situation for my PCs was a lot more dire. The survivors in the chapel were barely surviving and the idea that they would expand into the cleared-out west wing would have been beyond their means. I can roll with what is already established, but once you guys get past the library and into new parts of the asylum I'm probably going to make it noticeably worse and weirder than it was. Which even kind of makes sense, since the chapel wing is the safe part of the asylum.

I have a few house rules that I like to use: Background Skills, Streamlined Combat Options, Called Shots, Automatically Scaling Feats, and Tougher Spell DCs. I'm also open to third party classes, races, archetypes, feats, etc. We don't necessarily have to use these since I'm taking over a game and you guys already have your PCs built, but I feel like these improve the game a fair amount.

That said, I'm not huge on following the rules as written. I usually lean toward whatever makes a scene more cinematic and interesting. If somebody wants to do something cool I will usually let it happen. I will bend or ignore rules if it makes the story better.

Lastly, I have a couple of people who would like to join the game if I take over. That would expand the group by 2 but I don't have a problem with adjusting to an oversized party.

I'd love to run this game. I love Lovecraft and fantasy-horror and was very excited when this AP came out. Everything I said above is up for discussion, so let's talk about it.

Reasonable set of house rules.

Shouldn't drive too many changes in character builds.

sounds good to me.

Welcome!

I'm going to be out of town for the next week or so. I'll try to check back as much as I can, but if I'm holding anything up feel free to bot and/or proceed without me. Thanks!

Most of those rules I'm a big fan of, but I'm frightened by the Tougher Spell DC rules -- adding caster level to the DC means that it will be impossible for most creatures to save against high-level save or die spells, even a level 20 character with good ability scores, maximized equipment, and good saves! (Say, +11 base, +5 ability, +5 resistance bonus -- that's +21 to save, and for a level 6 spell that's DC 10 + 6 spell level + 5 casting stat + 20 CL = DC 41, which means they can only succeed on a natural 20.) This seems like it will require everyone to take Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, and Iron Will just to keep up with the numbers.

Oh, right. I'm not a fan of alternate rules (the feat changes, especially), but if everyone agrees to use them then I can manage.

Hi Karlprosed, thanks again for taking an interest in our group.

I am a little concerned about being constantly de-limbed by the called shot system, but having never actually seen it in play am willing to give it a try.

The one that does give me pause is the scaling spell DC. If I read it correctly, it seems like the spell saves will scale to really high levels particularly quickly.

Assuming A CL of 3 (I have no proof, just an assumption), the fear spells from those ratlings would have been 15 instead of 12 which is a significant jump for example, and that is just a low level example. At level 10 it is a straight +10 to the save DC on top of whatever it was to start with.

Fair enough. I don't need to use anything that's controversial. If you don't want Called Shots or Scaling Spell DCs, that's cool.

The only ones I would push back on are the feat changes. I think it's silly that skill bonus feats don't scale or that you need to spend a feat to decide to try to sacrifice a little accuracy for a little more damage. I like anything that streamlines the rules bloat and gives PCs more options to do cool stuff. I've only ever seen people appreciate collapsing the combat feats from 3 or 4 separate ones into 1 or having skill bonuses automatically scale every 5 levels. Miniel, why do you not like the feat changes?

I personally like the feat changes.

I also like the idea of scaling spell DCs with caster level, but I think the proposed rule goes a little too far.

A couple reasons. First, I have characters built out without them, and it takes no little amount of work to convert back and forth, especially if I really like a character and want to reuse it for another game that doesn't have the same alternate rules. Second, a lot of game mechanics (certain class features, feats, traits, etc.) aren't built around having consolidated feats, and GM rulings on how those things apply vary wildly (i.e. warpriest - I've had one game where Focus Weapon and Sacred Weapon only applied to one specific weapon, whila another where they apply to the entire weapon group), which makes it hard to remember exactly how they're supposed to work for a certain game. Lastly, it creates additional bookkeeping and makes it harder to double-check rules, since we can't just look up a feat in the book/PRD and know how it works immediately.

But, as I said, if everyone else is okay with it, I'm fine to use them.

OK, then it looks like since everybody's on board with the feat changes we'll use them. If anybody needs to rebuild based on the Streamlined Combat Options and Automatically Scaling Feats or wanted to try out some third party thing or just really wants to change things up, go ahead.

It looks like the majority of people are OK with some change to Spell DCs but agree that the proposed change is too drastic. We could do the same progression as monster abilities: 10 +1/2 level +stat mod. Using the same Fireball example from the link, a 5th level caster with a 19 casting stat would throw a DC 16 Fireball (10 +2.5 rounded down +4) instead of a DC 17 Fireball (10 +3rd level +4), but a 20th level caster with a 23 casting stat would throw a DC 26 Fireball (10 +10 +6). It's less drastic but still shows a higher level caster is more capable at using the same spell than a lower level one across the board even without any feat investment. Thoughts?

I will likely build an Obsidian Portal or something similar for this game, mostly because I like to have notes and stuff somewhere online to reference. I'll send you guys invites but if you don't want to use it don't feel pressured to.

I'll ask the admins to transfer this campaign to me.

I'll also invite the couple of players I mentioned in my post. It will make the party pretty large but I don't have a problem with a large party if you guys don't object to new players.

I don't have a problem with that formula for spell DCs.

I'll either swap John's power attack feat for weapon focus or iron will.