@Garidan: I found a 3rd Party one that adds Int to DC. But it is a mid-level feat. There is another one for alchemists only that is like power attack for alchemical items DC.
Links, please! Valjoen has shown that he's up for negotiating character stuff if the result is interesting, so those might be workable.
Alchemical Strike, sort of Power Attack of alchemy DCs.
Advanced Alchemy, 3rd party Int to DC.
Alchemical Strike, sort of Power Attack of alchemy DCs.
Advanced Alchemy, 3rd party Int to DC.
Hmmm. That first one isn't bad, though I'm not keen on the prequisite feat, which looks an awful lot like a tax feat. Also, make it more potent by throwing it harder? :p.
The second one is interesting, and feels a bit more convincing too, though the increase isn't the greatest until there's some serious stat investment done on Garidan's part (even then, however, +4 is better than +0, lol).
The first one is definitely for alchemists, since they get the prerequisite feat for free, and can take it as a discovery. I'm imagining it less as throwing it harder and more as . . . "argh!! my eyes, you got it in my eyes!!" ;-)
I think that the plan to which Foramdar agreed is to hold the archer's fire until the main force is engaged. They are in reserve to pin down people trying to force through the trap. Not sitting targets for archers, who they cannot see, to be picked off while they sit upon these poorly made walls. :-)
I'm still a little confused why they weren't hiding in the towers from the beginning.
Sorry. No one ever said specifically to have them hide in the two towers by the water gate. There are no other towers on the wall. To the east of the destroyed gatehouse is just a turret, not a tower. I had placed all of the archers and the NPC‘s along the wall, and I was never told to move them. As for the archers being picked off, when over 100+ arrows are coming down on the walls and only seven actually hit somebody, I would call that pretty good protection from the volleys. These walls only have battlements, no matriculations. For over 7000 years, no army is ever approach from this direction. This gate house was only used for people traveling to the dwarven strongholds in the iron mountains in those few people that may travel to or from the first land.
If you prefer not to have your archers fire up on them as they approach, I’m fine retconning their last action. They can’t hold until you set off the trap. Just let me know.
So I've placed the barricades. In the inner alley, Foramdar should post some pikemen. Anybody with a reach polearm. Outside the second barricade we should place some archers (why I needed a couple of extra rows(. When the army bottles up between ruined gate and the barricades, the open space becomes a killing field. With the cavalry waiting to smash them from behind. We should also have archers in reserve in the towers to fire down from the walls once the trap has sprung. Does that make sense? Questions?
*Emphasis added*
The die is cast on archer placement now, but I would prefer that they not reveal themselves until they won't be massacred by the archers in the darkness. The gnollish army can only get inside through this gate. Let's make them work for it instead of getting free kills. If they never test the gate and expend all their arrows that's still a win.
While I think the Haemil royals are insane for having only a 30 ft wall with no enclosed battlement with arrow slits, countries, armies, and royals make mistakes all the time. I'm just surprised that in 8000 years nobody spent money on this portion of the defenses. While I doubt they could improve the defenses on the god-made walls -- if I were king, I would make the northern gate a wonder of the world in over compensation for the whole divine fortress thing. But that is just me.
I may be mis-remembering, but in the previous battle I thought you described the rectangle portion of these walls as towers.
Maybe Foramdar has good reason for those actions, but am I wrong that in sieges attrition favors the defenders unless they waste resources? They don't have infinite arrows, but they are likely much better shots than our archers who need light to see. The gnoll rangers could kill all of our wall archers without losing a single person, if they knew where our archers are right?
Does Foramdar see something that I'm not?
Edit: Blergh. You are a great GM. You put a lot of effort in. I shouldn't knit-pick the small stuff, especially since running a battle of this size is a lot of work with a lot to keep in mind.
Sorry!
They cheaped on Haemil's back door because they blew their budget on the front, rofl.
On a different matter, in the new Netflix cartoon, the Dragon Prince, humans suck out the essences of magical creatures to power their magic and craft. All I could think was #squadgoals
We were doing it before it was cool!
No worries. I like lively debate.
The thing about Earthenwork is that while it looks impressive, the gods didn't build it really to defend but rather to intimidate Gaeruhn & Kiravor and their mortal armies. They lifted the plains up from the earth creating a massive plateau and built a fortress out of a mountain. The walls protecting the front of Earthenwork are 700 feet high and 100 feet thick. During the Godling wars, it had the largest population, but that has since shrunk as mortal men spread out across the continent.
The gods didn't make any magical protections of the city. The walls were too thick and high for mortals to overcome them given their power at the time... and the defenses were nothing compared to the power of Gaeruhn and Kiravor. The fact that Calledrym put a flag in the ground and said, "here I am," to the brothers was more powerful and concerning to them than any physical defenses.
Since then, the men of Haemil, constructed several roads to and from the plateau and guarded them with Keeps. Only twice (of the history that I've written so far) since the Godling wars has any hostile army even marched upon the open plains of Haemil and knocked on the front door. As for the back door, the gods didn't build it as they thought there was no need. The First Lands were hidden... and the dwarves were to consumed with mining the Iron Mountains for its metals and gems. Since then, Haemil and Ballyndom have never been at odds, but rather have a healthy trade between them. The Northern gate was built to control traffic to and from the Pass of Shamet... and possibly to protect against the orcs of the First Lands (once it was discovered), which honestly weren't much of a threat given the population and military that Haemil could call upon.
Even so, the gate would have normally been well manned and patrols of Riders and Rangers would travel up and down the pass and in the lower mountains. However, since the Shaping and the subsequent arrival of the gnoll forces from the lowlands, Haemil has mobilized their armies to protect the main gates of the city, and they are currently occupied with a massive army of gnolls, giants, ogres and more... bombarding the gates with seemingly an infinite supply of fire-based evocation spells.
So... with relatively little time, supplies and forces, you and Foramdar are charged with holding the back door.
My bad on firing the arrows too soon. I'm trying not to have him command or plan any tactics as I know the gnolls tactics... and its a bit hard not to meta... so, any help you guys can give me to control Formamdar and the two clerics, I'm good with it.
On a different matter, in the new Netflix cartoon, the Dragon Prince, humans suck out the essences of magical creatures to power their magic and craft. All I could think was #squadgoals
Dam.... stole my idea... that I'm sure I saw somewhere else and stole.
if I were king, I would make the northern gate a wonder of the world in over compensation for the whole divine fortress thing. But that is just me.
Yea, but then the GM wouldn't have a weakness of the fortress to try to exploit, thereby needing the heroes to prevent it.
I may be mis-remembering, but in the previous battle I thought you described the rectangle portion of these walls as towers.
Maybe Foramdar has good reason for those actions, but am I wrong that in sieges attrition favors the defenders unless they waste resources? They don't have infinite arrows, but they are likely much better shots than our archers who need light to see. The gnoll rangers could kill all of our wall archers without losing a single person, if they knew where our archers are right?
Does Foramdar see something that I'm not?
The two square towers around the river are towers. The gatehouse was two towers. And the round area on the western wall beyond the river is a tower. Then square to the east of the gate is a turret or open area. Notice the lack of lines separating it from the wall. The other towers there is a line indicating a barrier between the top of the walls and the towers.
True, about resources, but with so many gnoll archers in 3 volleys they had killed quite a few men by just peppering one section of the wall. Nobody communicated what was happening with Foramdar. So when word spread and he saw them running across the battlefield he retaliated. My mistake for not remembering you were wanting to wait.
And No. He doesn't see something that you're not. If he sees anything, I'll communicate it via the message spell.
if I were king, I would make the northern gate a wonder of the world in over compensation for the whole divine fortress thing. But that is just me.Yea, but then the GM wouldn't have a weakness of the fortress to try to exploit, thereby needing the heroes to prevent it.
A pox on the needs of the narrative. :-p Haha. Good point.
Not meta-ing tactics can be tough if you are playing both sides of the board. That's next level in chess.
I'm sure some of our tactics will not go well. I'm giving a 50% odds that our reserve calvary is going to get a backdoor surprise from the warg riders. If I remember correctly, Foramdar said his own rangers would alert us when they tried to cross the river. That didn't happen. I'm guessing their scouts out scouted our scouts. (Like in Banner Saga: all your scouts will die.) If that's true, then they might also find our calvary.
Which would not be great.
But unless their giants try to make another hole in the wall (which if they try the archers should shoot them!), they still have to come through our meat grinder.
Valjoen, a question just occured to me regarding Garidan's armor and the limit on essences that it can take. Do the essences fed to the armor for the purpose of adding new spellscribed spells, or upgrading existing spells, count against the total number of essence the armor can take?
Because if they do, that's going to quickly peg the maximum that the armor can take--6 between the spells themselves, and possibly that many again for upgrading--when added to the essences spent for other enhancements.
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For now, we'll say yes to keep the relative power of the armor in check. As we progress in levels, I may allow for something different, similar to how wands don't have limit on spells.
For now, we'll say yes to keep the relative power of the armor in check. As we progress in levels, I may allow for something different, similar to how wands don't have limit on spells.
I would have thought requiring Garidan to make a skill check prior to casting an armor spell--granted, I'm taking UMD ranks as I get them, but it's still a check--and the (current) 1/day limit on use would be a sufficient balance.
At any rate, I'd like to propose that you at least allow essesences put toward upgrading an existing spell to be considered a wash. Otherwise, spellscribed, plus the maximum of 6 spells, and upgrades for at least 5 of them would come out to 12 essences in total. And that actually violates your own maximum limit for ability essences invested in an item!
I have a path for Torenz, taking a double move.
I've moved him and his darkvision ring. Those gnolls marked with a light blue border are no longer visible to him, but I've kept their location marked on the map. He doesn't know if they've moved or not, however.
For now, we'll say yes to keep the relative power of the armor in check. As we progress in levels, I may allow for something different, similar to how wands don't have limit on spells.
I would have thought requiring Garidan to make a skill check prior to casting an armor spell--granted, I'm taking UMD ranks as I get them, but it's still a check--and the (current) 1/day limit on use would be a sufficient balance.
At any rate, I'd like to propose that you at least allow essesences put toward upgrading an existing spell to be considered a wash. Otherwise, spellscribed, plus the maximum of 6 spells, and upgrades for at least 5 of them would come out to 12 essences in total. And that actually violates your own maximum limit for ability essences invested in an item!
I agree that making them count as normal essence slots on the armor is not warranted. I need to think about it more to see if I want to put any limit on them. When you're ready to apply or consider applying more essences, let me know and I'll think it all the way through to make a ruling.
There is a built in limit on how many spells can fit on a piece of spell scribed armor.
There is a built in limit on how many spells can fit on a piece of spell scribed armor.
And their maximum spell level as well, it's 6 and 6th respectively. I figure that--taken with the skill check and limited daily uses--would be a sufficient balancing element against the essences put toward adding/improving spells not counting against the armor's essence limit for abilities. (Maybe also that those essences aren't being spent on other things like skills, actual abilities on gear, or enhancement bonuses, i.e, all things that are constantly active and available once selected.)
Mind, I'm not trying to compete with the party's casters with this armor, just squeeze a little interesting utility out of a niche armor ability that I felt was something Garidan would be naturally interested in having. In fact, I'm almost 100% that the next permanent spell will be fly and the one after that will--if a suitable caster's essence becomes available--be one of those magic shelter spells (no more grubby tents in the cold for us, lol). Then leave the last two slots open for temporary spells once someone in the party figures out what manner of mysterious expendables Valjoen requires to add them.
As an aside, Gruskorb and Truk'tosh might want to consider spellscribed on their own armor. Garidan has make UMD checks to pop his spells, but if theirs are drawn the caster lists of their classes, they might not need the skill to make use of the feature.
I could drop my black tentacles. They're very grouped up, the effect would be devastating.
The illusion doesn't go away just because they fall through it. From their perspective wouldn't it appear like they just "disappeared"? Did they all beat the saving throw required to see through it to know how far they need to jump?
Seeing someone 'disappear' might qualify as interacting with the illusion.
Totally, and then they would need to make a DC 21 check to say, hey illusion as opposed to sucked into an alternate world etc.
I didn't say it in the text but I assumed that the first line of gnolls that all failed their will saves and fell, would have shouted that they had fallen into a pit. I gave the second line a reflex save to react in time. Those that passed the reflex save (3 of them) and the third line, then had to make an acrobatics check to leap over the pit, although I meant to give them a penalty that I forgot to include. With the -2 penalty, two more gnolls would have failed to make the jump. I'll move them now.
So, as it turns out, only 4 of the 15 were able to jump over the trench... a well laid pit trap.
That makes sense. Did something happen to the map? It looks like the wall beneath Niyut disappeared.
Nope, looks fine to me.
@Malthazir:
I found these two feats in the new Plane-Hopper Handbook.
Retributive Summons
Your training in counter-spelling summons is so extensive
that you can redirect some of your foes’ power to call forth
your own allies.
Prerequisite: Spell Focus (conjuration) or counter-summons
class feature (Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Paths of Prestige 46).
Benefit: When you successfully counter a summoning
spell with dispel magic or your own summon monster spell,
you can immediately summon nonevil creatures
as if you had just finished casting a summon
monster spell of 2 levels lower than the countered spell.
Blackfire Summoning
You have learned to make your summons destructive to
the fabric of the planes, bringing blackfire in the wake
of your magic.
Prerequisite: Sacred SummonsUM.
Benefits: When you summon a single evil outsider, it
appears in a flash of blackfire, harming all adjacent nonevil
creatures. This deals an amount of damage equal to twice
the CR of the summoned creature. An affected creature can
attempt a Will save (DC = the DC of the spell used to summon
the creature) to halve this damage. A spell augmented with
blackfire summoning uses up a spell slot 1 level higher than
the spell’s actual level. If you have the blackfire pact class
feature (Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Paths of Prestige 13), you
can apply the benefits of this feat to summoned outsiders of the type or types you have selected for your blackfire pact without raising the spell’s effective level.
I think the latter, especially, could be tailored your devil summoning. Maybe fire damage instead of damage to non-evil?
@Garidan: Do you think we should expend any of our resources now? Yes, we want them to die, but there is little reason to call attention to ourselves. They have to come to us. I say we wait until they are enter the gate area on mass.
Edit: @all: I think we should wait for the archers to exhaust their arrows and defend our area. If we make ourselves targets those archers can continue their volleys.
Well, the goal is kill as many gnolls as we can, outside the defenses. And there's big wad of them waiting to die right now. We should oblige them, because thinning those numbers early, before they get inside and rush us makes their assault that much harder to carry off successfully. The elaborate trap, after all, was meant to do two things: suck them in with a soft target, then unexpectedly pin them in place for mass killing. It did the first, now it's time to bring on the second before they get their act together and scatter like hairy roaches :D.
If we do it right, we either won't need what we're holding onto after this fight, or we'll have time to recover anyway, if that makes sense.
Further, we don't know how many arrows those gnolls are packing, or what kind either. A standard quiver alone is a good amount, and that first group we killed off were packing incendiaries on top of that. That's a lot of suffering to put our defenders through for who knows how many rounds. Morale breaks under those conditions, too.
We should mangle everything that comes into reach of the gatehouse, or actually inside, and that'll hopefully thin their numbers to the point where plugging arrows is all they can really do (at which point we just clear our walls of targets and relax), or they get stupid and rush with the archers, in which case arrows aren't an issue anymore :D.
Also, to be fair, black tentacles is good against a few strong foes but absolutely devastating against waves of weak enemies.
Then use it on the archers in the dark. Perhaps that would spur them forwards. I'm content letting them spend themselves on our defenses.
@GM: What sort of Knowledge check would it be to know what to say to infuriate the gnolls? And what sort of check would it be to drive them into a rage?
Hmm, interesting idea. It will be fairly low risk to Malz too.
The bard in Malthazir would know that gnolls have a very militaristic society. Verbally abusing them to incite them to the point of breaking ranks would be very difficult, if not impossible. They have been given very specific orders by Red Mane, as well as argue Rgulblux. The gnolls are both intimidated by him and very loyal to him as he and Rgulblux have led them to many victories on the battlefield. If you just trying to make them angry and not forcing an action out of them, then a simple Bluff check would be sufficient.
The ogres and Giants on the other hand could potential he be coaxed into breaking ranks. I would do an opposed Bluff check against the ogres Will check.
I'll focus on the giants. Would that be a kn: nature to get the themes to coax them to break ranks.
Out of curiosity, if they did break ranks, would there be reasonable places for them to survive as outlaws? I'm not sure you should reveal such information to us, but it might provide a circumstance bonus/malus to such a will check.
I'll focus on the giants. Would that be a kn: nature to get the themes to coax them to break ranks.
I wouldn't retire a Knowledge check, but rather have you make a bluff check against their Will.
Sure, but for roleplaying purposes, I out of game don't have detailed knowledge of giant sociology. Out of game, I don't know what pisses giants off. I don't want to just make a check, I want to write zingers. :-p
Won't be able to access map today. Malz should have been placed about 20 feet North of the gate previously, while high enough to be above the arrow volleys.
@Gruskorb: You are up in the sphere campaign. The two of us could really use some short range teleportation right now. Please save us. :-)
Oh! it looks like some gnolls passed over the green X which represents Lockjaw. They should have taken damage from the trap and the lightning (2d6+3+2d6+its poison rider). Since it can make an AoO. It might have struck twice.
The archers (inside the gate area) can probably take pot shots at the two gnolls who got through the gate.