The Ballad of Bloodmarch Hill

Game Master Joana

"By the way, when you say 'reports' who is it are we ta be reportin' to?"

I echo Dorn's question. Are you guys heading out? And if so, where? Ivory Hall?

Ali is intending on breakfast- after that, wherever Marikel chooses to drag her. Or failing that, maybe slipping out and breaking into Sawyer's house in hopes of finding incriminating evidence.

Marikel is chasing Tyari... again. :-)
So, heading to Ivory Hall with a hungry rogue :-)

I am intrigued to see that our friends, the Twisted Nail, have a part to play in the next AP.

Ooh, ooh, it's dropped.
Can't wait to get home and download it. :-)

And what if we wipe out the Twisted Nail in this AP? Huh? We do get to do that? Right? :-)

Apologies for the delay. I need to put together a map for the area; hope to get it done tomorrow.

Oh glorious GM.
Would a Channel Energy count as an area attack against a swarm for + 50% extra damage?
Are we safe yet? :-)

Yes, it does.

Already accounted for.

Y'all are really close. See if someone can hit it again. :)

You know what? With Marikel and Skyreaver's soft cover, 14 doesn't hit, but since you only really need the splash damage anyway and can target a grid intersection by hitting AC 5, we're going to call it done.

Does the party want to continue to explore the westward passage or go back and try one of the other ways? Vote West, East or South.

Ali would vote to continue down their present passageway, if only because she knows Marikel is afraid of heights.

Ha! That's just wrong. :)

I'll go with East. For just because reasons. *Shrugs*

It vote east as well. Just because it isn't west.

Alicia is so mean to poor Marikel. :-)

I probably should have thought that phobia through before introducing it. I mean, Giantslayer! Giants aren't exactly renowned for living in low places.

In fairness to Marikel, a twenty-foot fall into water for a character in Medium armor is fairly dangerous ... like the Scarecrow and his lighted match. :)

I had a cleric of Gorum in a game I was running who had just saved up enough for full plate when the next encounter was in a swamp. He spent most of the time just double-moving through difficult terrain trying to get to the fight ... until he stepped into the hidden deep water and sank like a stone.

Really, Alicia is just mean.

Btw, whatever happened to Levvy?

I don't know. I keep hoping he'll pop in sometime and tell us.

I know Navior has had a lot on his plate, both personally and professionally. His blog has gone dark, but he's still retweeting things on occasion so he's not offline entirely. He's always welcome back to my game.

Continuing forward? If so, who's taking point? Alicia, going to point out the danger of webs to anyone?

Dorn shall lead the way.

Marikel too... in another direction :-)

Again, if Marikel is leading away from something you or your character wants to do, chime up. If you can't make it work in game, mention it here and I'll have Marikel think of something and change his mind.

Metagame, earlier encounters may have clues and goodies that are useful in later encounters, though sometimes they're just used to weaken the characters.

Characterwise, anyone can be curious, want to check something or just get fed up with Marikel making demands. Don't be shy :-)

Sorry for the slowdown. End of the school year/gearing up for the summer has been getting to me this week. I'll get the gameplay going again this weekend.

No issues at all. Work has been busy so I've not been as quick to respond. And there'll be a two week holiday in two weeks for me too, but I should remember to check in, even without my work lunch breaks. :-)

Because animate dead is an instantaneous spell, skeletons/zombies/etc. don't have a magic aura detectable with detect magic. Detect undead would be the spell you'd need.

I wrote the post using the word evil then remembered I wasn't a Paladin. I figured Marikel wouldn't let that stop him. :-)

Ok, so Marikel is advancing. Marching order/actions/precautions from the rest of the party?

I will be out of town for a long weekend starting tomorrow. I will try to check in, but if we run into a combat, I'm going to wait until I'm home Monday evening (Tuesday in Australia) to deal with maps/init/etc.

So, what now? I presume you're going to continue into the cave. Are you going to approach/examine any of the skeletons and/or their gear? Are you going to make a point of not approaching/examining any of the skeletons and/or their gear?

Dorn, you can use a standard action to grab the spear, which the skeleton doesn't have in hand yet

For the record, I misspoketyped. Picking up an unattended item is a move action.

Marikel Selentin wrote:

"These things are long gone. It would take powerful forces indeed to move creatures this size."

Despite Marikel's assurances, he continues to whisper and follows Dorn's directive.
(Double move to AE31)

Quoting this because it's an invisible post for me: Marikel shows up as the last poster from the main forum page just under 3 hours ago, and the post is in his posts tab; but it's not visible in the gameplay thread for me. If any of the rest of you can see it, ignore my repetition.

Thanks for picking up on that. It was a hurried post while on holidays and I must have deleted it to edit it or something. Glad it survived in my account and you found it.

Marikel, the spire of bones is centered around AH51. Not sure if you think it's the ledge in AK44-46 or you're purposely approaching circumspectly.

Marikel is indeed being circumspect and keeping his back to the ledge. And hopefully nothing will surprise him from above. :-)

That has to be, as a group, the worst set of raw initative rolls I've seen.

I love that I rolled a 1 and still go first.

Just as a note, per an earlier post on this page, Alicia already has both weapons in hand. I didn't see that when I was posting earlier but figured I'd make sure by having her apparently re-draw them. ;P

Alicia just moves, then.

Honestly, you guys just finished an encounter and are expecting trouble the whole time you're in the dungeon; I doubt any of you sheathed your weapons after fighting the skeleton, thinking the coast was clear.

Exactly, but I couldn't remember so I decided to play it safe.

a large dead ghost rat is left behind at the party's feet.

Relatively large, anyway. Small, rather than Tiny like the ones in the swarm.

Great post, markofbane! Identifying itemsin character is a time-consuming and usually thankless task, so I'm going to make a point to thank you for your effort. :)

The items you've discovered are listed under Uskroth's Tomb on the Campaign Info tab for divvying-up purposes. Looks like I didn't get everything from the Waves of Orcs encounters transcribed onto the tab. Grr. I believe most of it was identified shortly after Mahath and Livvy joined the party, and much of it (healing potions, for the most part) was used in the battle. We'll look at evening-up wealth if necessary when we get out of the tomb and can catch our breaths.

Ditto, Mahath. Well done.

I'll steal the breastplate and the CMW wand if everyone's okay with that. I also have a crossbow and can use the bolts.
That said, Marikel will take everything that he can but you guys take first pick- it looks like I'll get the wand no matter what.

I'm also away the next week- so may be some erratic posts. Let me know what you'll let me have and bot me if I'm holding things up.

@Marikel: Fine by me.

Cool! Dorn will take the heavyload belt if that's okay with y'all. Man that's a great item. I love useful items. :)

Will the adamantine crossbow bolts fire from a hand crossbow? I think that's about the only thing Ali would be interested in.

No, these are sized for a standard crossbow.

I'm glad you guys liked it! :) And I suppose I should have said it is okay to look under the spoiler for game term descriptions. Mahath isn't mind controlled by an ancient evil yet, so it is fine to do so. ;)

I took the adamantine bolts, the breastplate and the wand, if everyone's okay with that.

Also, feel free to shoot down the idea of an ambush, in or out of character. The mod may not be prepared for such an idea, but I'm sure Joana can handle it no matter what we throw at her :-)

No worries here.

Edit: Also, I think Dorn might just hang on to that unidentified hammer as well. Because you just never know. ;)

Y'all aren't in initiative yet, but if no one has anything else they'd like to do, I'll roll it on Monday. ;)

Alicia, I want to double-check your Acrobatics numbers. By my account, you have a +12 before your belt of tumbling which gives you a situational +4 to move through a threatened square. Should your +3 be a +4 from the belt, or do you have an additional bonus I'm not seeing?

No, I was thinking of the Belt of Tumbling. Just didn't bother looking up the exact bonus.

All right, just wanted to be sure. The extra +1 doesn't make a difference, but if you had a whole extra +4 from the belt still to add you would have avoided the AoO.

By my understanding, markofbane, your scroll was crafted at the minimal caster level and thus uses 1st-level as the baseline for its mechanics. As such, its range is only 25 ft. Since you didn't pick your starting point and there's no reason Mahath couldn't have been closer to the passageway when Alicia triggered combat, I just fudged you up to the farthest point you could have cast the scroll from.

Actually, she'll drop her hopeknife as a free action and draw that wand no one has IDed as a move action.

I'm not finding an unidentified wand in the loot list, just the inflict one that Marikel pocketed from the bone pile. Which one are you referring to?

This one. A few posts down from that, Ali snatches it back from Marikel, saying, "I'm sure I can make it work."

Looking at the loot list, it's the CLW one from Katrezra, except I didn't think we ever positively IDed it and so it's still just "unidentified" to Ali.

All right, thanks. It's always good when the DM knows what the unidentified magic items do. Otherwise, I'm just rolling for random effects like a rod of wonder. ;)