The Ballad of Bloodmarch Hill

Game Master Joana

I will be traveling for the next 6 days. I should have internet access along the way, but my online time will be limited. Expect spotty updates for the next week.

Sorry, guys. I ended up being too tired/busy to do any actual posting in the hotels at the end of the days. In six days, we drove over 2000 miles, visited two science museums, saw the world's largest Czech egg, a giant Van Gogh painting, and the total solar eclipse, and toured an actual salt mine and a Frank Lloyd Wright house.

I'll get the game back up and running tonight.

Welcome back. Sounds like you had fun!

Indeed, welcome back - glad you had a good break!

That sounds awesome. I'm very jealous. :-)

Alicia quickly grabs a vial from her belt, downs the potion, and vanishes from sight.

Drinking a potion of vanish.

Ali, that's a move action to retrieve the potion and a standard to drink it. Do you want to retrive the potion in the surprise round and drink it in round one?

I couldn't find anything in the PRD that said anything specifically about what kind of action retrieving a potion would be. I'll retcon it.

Manipulate an Item

If you have Quick Draw, you can draw a weapon as a free action, but they explicitly disallow the use of the feat with magic items.

Potion Glutton lets you drink a potion as a swift action, but retrieving a potion is still a move action.

You can open your spell component pouch and nimbly separate the rhubarb leaf and adder's stomach from the live spider and probably rancid butter as a free action, but you can't grab a bottle or stick in anything less than a move action. *shrug*

Separate issue, but that right there is why I refuse to let my wizards use spell component pouches.

You've seen this before, Joana and Vhailor, but for the rest of you...

My RL group has always ignored components because they're just too dumb. Back when a round was a minute, it may debateably have added some flavor to say that the wizard was blowing granite and diamond dust in the air as part of his casting of stoneskin, but when a round became 6 seconds, it got stupid.

(Honestly, we ignored components in AD&D, too. Asking "Do I still have bat guano and sulfur, or did I use it up the last time I cast fireball?" never seemed to add any fun to the game for us.)

Reacting to Marikel's warning by promptly getting shot through the hip...

LOL! I'm just glad one of my mooks managed to hit someone. It's hard to convince the party they need to find a way to take out the archers shooting from the walls when they're pretty safe just going about their normal business while arrows bounce harmlessly off them. "Eh, just ignore those guys. They can't hit us anyway."

Not my fault you'd only been shooting at all the tin cans previously :P

Man, I've always wanted to make someone pick a lock in combat rounds. That's one checked off the bucket list!

Since it's a full-round action, can I ignore that Disable Device roll and make the roll when the full-round action completes? ;P

You're free to choose to roll either at the beginning or at the end of the action ... but only once per attempt. ;)

Awww. :(

Marikel's last post was 8 days ago. Vhailor and/or Dorn may have to step up and give a bit of direction, pending his return.

So very sorry. Away on holidays. Life has been busy busy busy.
So, my job is being upgraded and advertised. So I've spent the week before going on holidays applying for it. If I don't get it, I'll get shifted elsewhere, but I'd like to get it, so busy. Then I went on holidays to New Zealand for PaizoCon Oz. Seriously.
Apologies for not warning everyone.
Posting will continue to be erratic until Nov 1 while my lovely and I visit our cousins across the ditch. (We do not have actual cousins here... :-)

"The troops falling back need this area secured now. If the only way out of that tower is by a rope, I doubt any survivors have the strength to get out, let alone help us."

Ah, Lawful Neutral. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

I once ran a Lawful Neutral cleric of Abadar. He was all kinds of fun.

Lol. But Marikel has good tendencies. That's why he can't understand why he wasn't made a Paladin. He did everything he was supposed to. Life can be so unfair sometimes. :-D

Apologies for the non-compos postis over the last wee while - been going through the motions of hopefully finally getting a job and the various thought cogitations and whatnot that ensue. Should hopefully ease out over the next bit though.

Nothing's set in stone yet, but there's chalkmarks down...

Sorry for delay, guys. Will update gameplay tomorrow.

(Marikel's Bless and Protection from Chaos both had a duration of 3 minutes from when we burst in.)

Thank you for reminding me about those.

Sorry for the delay - boards have been 'challenging'

Completely understood. Hopefully things have settled down on the technical side of the forums now.

Marikel Selentin wrote:

(Marikel's Bless and Protection from Chaos both had a duration of 3 minutes from when we burst in.)

Thank you for reminding me about those.

I forgot too until updating my spell list. It can be difficult when a combat takes months :-)

And Protection from Chaos is only on Marikel... at the risk of losing our party. :-/
Unless Iomedae says otherwise :-)

Meh, last time I dealt with protection spells, it was Linah casting, and she was high-level enough to have the communal version. :P

Katrezra's spell was bane so it just countered bless on Alicia and Dorn. Alicia's attack still hit even without the +1 (not sure if she even included the bless bonus in the first place), so no change to the action; I'll just remove bless from Alicia and Dorn in the next status update.

Marikel is not quite in Linah's league yet. :-)
May never be :-)

We are now entering the sandboxy-combat portion of the module, where you guys get to try some unusual tactics to hold off waves of orcs. I have put the rules for the encounter on the Campaign Info tab for easy reference.

Marikel is happy to channel again to heal more of the guards. Also, I believe channel heals both lethal and non-lethal damage simultaneously, if that makes any difference. If we're only meant to have four fodder friends, I understand. :-)

It's a game of resource management during the battle with the Twisted Nail. If you want to expend another channel, you can keep more of the Patrol, but you don't know whether the channel might come in handy later in the fight. It's up to you.

Alicia has some items off Katrezra that might come in handy as well if someone can identify them.

Sorry for the delay. Setting up the map for this next bit is going to take a bit of doing, and I haven't had a generous enough window of free time to sit down and do it. I'll try tomorrow.

Uh, yeah. Post now. Or we'll find a new GM to run us for 2.5 years of awesome fun.
Or, maybe we'll wait patiently while you take your time, oh awesome storyteller. :-)

Lol!

AI 15 for Vhailor - just inside the door, with Carbonel one square East of him.

To be clear: you want Vhailor and Carbonel inside the tower?

I hope to put this combat in motion tomorrow, guys. Holiday prep is starting to get to me and eat up all my free time.

Intent was Vhailor just out of sight and Carb with a free sightline.
That way Carb can go meow and Vhailor pops out with a surprise color spray

Okay, so Vhailor in and Carb out, on either side of the door.

I'm just going to issue a blanket apology that will remain active through Christmas. While I intend to keep the game moving, if I don't post, please assume that I am:

Those kids, leading us to misadventure. :-)

Yeah this time of the year is the busiest time of the year for myself at work. Definitely not as busy as all that (I'm not sure I would even know how to be THAT busy... probably just run away :P) but 'tis the season.

I hope everyone had a happy holiday! We had two days of festivities Sunday and Monday with various branches of the family, went to see The Last Jedi yesterday, and spent today recuperating from Christmas.

I still have my kids out of school for another week, but I should be back to a more reliable posting schedule.

Indeed. Happy hols to all. Spent the week on the beach with my wife's family. Now back to regular internet.

Marikel Selentin wrote:

(Withdraw via AH16-19 and AG20 to AF20)

AH19 to AG20 is the second diagonal, so the farthest you can get in that direction with 20 feet of movement is AG20, which doesn't put him out of the way of the log trap. Would you prefer to withdraw directly back to AK16?

I thought withdraw was a double move? That's 35' of movement. If I'm wrong, just move me 20' to AH19.

Oh, gosh, you're right. I don't know why I was thinking you only had a single move to work with.

Oh, gosh, you're right.

That's so cute. Were you editing your language or do Americans actually say gosh? Aussies just go straight for hard core swearing, though I'd edit back to Damn. :-)

That has to be one of the more pathetic runs of d20 rolling I've seen in a while: 5 attempts, and the highest was a 7.

We're grateful and looking forward to getting the high numbers to use against you. :-)

Some of us say gosh. ;)

Gahhh! I swear, I roll decent enough to hit - which I typically throw out rolls like Joana did in her previous attack post - but then I explode with a multitude of 1's on damage. Awesome! (Psst! It's really not that awesome. Kinda stinks actually. Okay, moving on now).

There are all my high numbers. Except for the 1. Literally the only way that trap could miss was to fumble. Stupid traps with attack rolls.

@Dave: I have, in fact, been known to say gosh. Some of my PCs use strong language, though.

Well, my lovely Gosh girls, I'm away for a week, so if I don't get a chance to update, I'll just hit things :-)

I'll pause a moment in case Dave has a chance to check in; if he hasn't posted by tomorrow, I'll act for Marikel.

Thanks. Made it :-)

Dave's week away should be over now; I'll give him a few more hours to post before I act for Marikel either tonight or tomorrow morning, my time.