...as a mook soldier, you'll have almost no freedom of movement, your whole day will be taken up with routine - and if anything suspicious happens, it's "blame the new recruit time"...
It's your call, and I'm open to running with it, but I don't see the big plus that you seem to.
I was basing my plan on the fact that Corporal Grant and his guys clearly had some time off, and thus some freedom of movement. As to blaming the new recruit, I was figuring that the suspicious thing that might happen was the army of humanoids finding the gate open, at which point it doesn't matter who's to blame.
But I didn't mean to insist in my last post that I was going through with it - though I can see how it could be read that way. In game theory, you multiply the probability of success by the payoff to figure out if a game is worth playing. It sounds like my probability of success is low and the payoff is also low, so I'll come up with another plan.
That 0 in Diplomacy.
And it was even just below average roll: I await with bathed breath for one in the negatives. :P
It seems everyone has done something in the day, correct?
Do we move to the evening and dwarf-talking?
I've updated the Campaign tab with today's activities; if I've missed anything, or you have any questions, let me know - it's supposed to be comprehensive so we don't have to keep going back through the gameplay thread.
Sorry if I didn't post yesterday: I'll get to it right away!
PS: Instead of just splitting the money from the pelts/ivory, would it be better if we kept it communal into the Burning Balentyne Exceptionally Good fund, and split what remains after we're done. If there's still something of course: we should subtract the money we used for lodgings from it.
OK - my other game has got off the ground and is building its own momentum, so I'll be back to my daily posting(s) on this game.
It's now end of June (give or take) - by end of July I'd like to have burned Balentyne and be on the way into Book Two.
Obviously, if we get really into the roleplay and are going slow for that reason, then fine; but if I sense we're just getting bogged down in the sandbox, I'll take action to keep things moving.
I look forward to seeing the exploits of the Ninth Knot!
Due to certain events in my country and a general sense of nervousness, I find myself a little drained and with my focus diverted elsewhere. So, if my posting becomes a little erratic (i.e. posts may be coming as often as they should on some days and on others they may be sparse or brief), that will be the reason. Please bear with me for a few days. If my lack of posting seems to be holding up the game, please DMPC my character. Thank you.
You don't even have to tell us: I'm worried about the whole thing, too, and I don't even live in Greece.
Take all the time you need.
Damn, for a couple of days, it even looked like they were about to reach a consensus. :(
Quite understandable, Erevan. I hope things calm down - and not only for the sake of your contributions to this game. I had hopes they were going to work something out, but it does not look terribly likely.
DMD - I think your approach and timing sound good. I will be on vacation the latter half of July, so my posting may be slowed, but I'll do my best to keep a hand in. And I think the idea of giving us a boost if the sandbox bogs us down is a great idea, I've seen the sandbox trap parties before.
Right, that brings Starday to an end; I'll start Sunday in a bit.
Meanwhile, let's award some XP!
1,200 for befriending and getting info from the Bard of Barrington
200 XP for each bit of useful info obtained (3,200 total)
400 XP for info on the fort obtained from the dwarves
2,400 XP for getting the map
2,400 XP for finding a way into Balentyne
9,600 XP added to your total.
We're moving to Sunday, then? I was planning for Etna to go see the chapel in Balentyne: anyone want to tag along?
I suppose that a lot of people are going to be there, holy day and all that, so maybe I could get a look at the 4 captains, Havelyn, and Kaitlin.
Speaking of plans: anyone has already any ideas to throw around for the attack? I suppose we'll still be gathering info for some time, but it doesn't hurt to start planning in advance.
Word of advice: keep the anti-paladin away from the fort until you're ready to strike.
Your call, of course.
Felrin would happily join the visit to the chapel, if it doesn't conflict with his visit to the home of the old servant couple.
On a different note - can I make a request about spoilers? Would it be possible for us to use them only when things actually need to be hidden? It's tough to know whether I'm supposed to read them or not, and I think they're mostly being used to save space on the screen, which is not exactly a limited resource. If we were all at a gaming table and doing these separate inquiries, we'd likely all hear what was going on (which helps a lot with story immersion), and if the DM had something secret to share with a player, he'd pass a note or something - I see the spoiler as the equivalent of the passed note.
It also makes it harder to find earlier parts of the story, since spoilered text is less searchable.
What do you all think?
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm fine with the use of spoilers for mechanics and OOC conversation, since those can clutter up the reading experience. I'm just looking to make the reading less of a game of guessing whether I should look behind a spoiler, and I'd rather not have to remember to add that everyone can look at a given spoiler - because what's the point of spoilering that text?
We're sharing the information we find anyway.
I can only speak for myself, but putting in spoiler the conversation after the Nine Lessons made sense, as that wasn't supposed to be something Etna can share around: in this case, on the other hand, we're going to share IC everything we find, so that isn't a problem.
Fine. So ordered.
And Felrin - yes, you can purchase cake the day before. I'll have a post up tomorrow morning.
Hurrah! Down with spoilers and up with cake!
I've had real trouble getting online this morning; post will be up this evening, assuming Paizo is still working by then...
Quick thought: now that some of the variant rules are up on d20pfsrd, I'm seriously thinking of incorporating the automatic bonus progression into the campaign. It will save me having to ensure that you all receive Belts of Stuff and Headbands of Thing, and just streamlines things a bit.
Don't worry - this is the only bit of Unchained I'd include, it's not going to be a gradual creep into my playtest. If anyone objects, I'll reconsider.
The only slight retcon (if that's the word) is that you would all count as having a +1 cloak of resistance, a +1 weapon, and +1 armour. I doubt this would seriously affect anything.
Comments?
I do have one, sure. Ahem, here it is...
Yes!
It would mean one less thing to keep in mind and keep a look out for for both you, the DM, and us, the players. Also, one less thing to try and balance out between the various characters and players so that nobody feels left out, as this way everyone has access to the enchancement bonuses at the same time.
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Cool, now I can sell the Gloommail - oh, wait, why do I think that selling something named "Gloommail" in a lawful good nation might not go over so well.
I like the idea.
What should we do with the magic gear that we already have? Can we just sell it? I believe that by incorporating the Automatic Bonus Progression, the result is a reduction in WBL, although in this campaign, I think that WBL is sort of tossed out the door anyway.
I would probably just 'disappear' it in true Orwellian fashion. Nobody exactly fell over themselves to grab the gloom mail anyway...
And yes, the WBL in this AP is kinda screwy, so you're not losing out.
My bad - it's still effectively +1 chainmail, it just means that the +1 bonus isn't 'attached' to the armour; you can attune to a different set of armour and then it will have the +1 bonus instead.
Not quite. Check out the link DM Asmodeus provided. Basically, enhancement and other types of bonuses cease to exist within items (weapons, shields, armor, ring, wondrous items) and instead become part of the character's level progression of sorts.
Yeah, essentially you get to decide which weapon/armour your bonus applies to; so you can upgrade from a chain shirt to a mithral chain shirt and apply the +1 bonus to the new armour.
For Etna, it would apply to her clothing, as if she had bracers of armour +1.
Basically, it removes a hell of a lot of bookkeeping!
Oh, I didn't realize that the armour attunement could be applied to clothing! Yay for AC! I'll update my crunch in a bit.
I do not think it has been decided yet, as Felrin and Ottakar's players have not yet given their opinion.
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Well now, lets think about this. We are LE, with a lot of people leaning toward Asmodeus worship. Three out of five (4 of 6 with DMD), have voted in favor of this. And, if my experience in American politics is similar to Asmodean politics (and it certainly seems like it would be), then the vote and opinion of one who is highly educated or has great wisdom will always be given far less weight than one who has a pretty face and high charisma. Thus, I think that the yeas are probably up by about 10-0 right now, and Felrin and Ottakar's combined vote should be worth 1/4 to 1/2 total.
Or, we can rely on simply majority, for which the yeas have a 4-0 lead (including DMD) right now with only 2 votes left.
I like the reasoning, but since this is (to continue the Lawful theme) in effect an amendment to the contract, I'd like to hear everyone's views.
I have no experience with these new rules you reference, and I can tell already that I like them. I'm completely in favor of this proposal.
I should point out, Tkaara, that the votes of people who have money are the ones that matter in American politics, since they get to decide who's running and whose campaign gets traction.
[/paranoia based entirely on reality]
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I have no experience with these new rules you reference, and I can tell already that I like them. I'm completely in favor of this proposal.
I should point out, Tkaara, that the votes of people who have money are the ones that matter in American politics, since they get to decide who's running and whose campaign gets traction.
[/paranoia based entirely on reality]
Ah, spoken like a true american voter. "I know nothing about the matter, but my favorite [insert conservative/liberal] newspaper says it is good, so I am going to vote [for/against] it."
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people who have money are the ones that matter
Ottakar is currently eating a loaf of bread and a leftover sausage, so I guess that we'll use Automatic Bonus progression. :P
Now I'll have to find if there are any cool items that usually go into the Big Six slots...
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There are all kinds of good things.
Bracers of Pizza Making <-- grants +10 on Profession(chef), but only when making pizza
Headband of the Black Sabbath <-- It plays Iron Man on command 1/day which leaves all good aligned people stunned for 1d8 rounds, and then shaken for 1d6 minutes. Neutral aligned are simply shaken for 1d4 minutes.
Cloak of Tentacles <-- because it is cool to have tentacles that you can attack people with
Belt of Howard <-- enables to you alter the belt buckle to appear as any belt buckle worn by Howard on the Big Bang Theory
See, plenty of cool, and sometimes more than a little useless, options.
I wish that weren't so true of American voters - though it's usually cable TV news stations rather than newspapers that drive their opinions. I don't quite fall into that category, though, as my significant other (of 25 years) is a political campaign consultant and we live our lives by the electoral cycle.
One question I'd have, primarily for DMD, about the automatic bonus progression - does the weapon attunement apply to one of Felrin's claws, or both? There's very little discussion on the boards about it and no definitive answer. It would be rather a pain to have his claws have different bonuses, simply from an administrative standpoint - what do you think? Obviously, this is likely to affect the good doctor as well.
THAT is a very good question; I'm minded to rule that it's effectively like an amulet of mighty fists. That's a little more costly than a +1 weapon (and the +2, +3 etc upgrades are more expensive than the equivalent weapons) but in the long run I think it should even out.
Does anyone who doesn't have natural attacks have any comment or objection to this?
Headband of the Black Sabbath <-- It plays Iron Man on command 1/day which leaves all good aligned people stunned for 1d8 rounds, and then shaken for 1d6 minutes. Neutral aligned are simply shaken for 1d4 minutes.
I don't know if Etna would be into Black Sabbath...
@DMD: Eh, I always thought that the AoMF was too costly. I've no problem with that.
Besides, if Felrin/Ottakar shred things to pieces, there's less probability for Etna to get killed. :P
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In my opinion, the Amulet of Mighty Fists iis designed to keep monks, animal companions and eidolons from being too over powered. However, as written, even if the monk only applied the Automatic Bonus Progression weapon attunement to his butt, he could still make an unarmed flurry using that part of his anatomy with no penalty and get the full benefit of the bonus.
In the case of Felrin, it is probably not that unbalanced. His claws only crit on a nat-20 and only do 1d4 damage. It is not like he is attempting to abuse it with 2 kukri or something like that.
If it seems to be unbalanced, we can always adjust it later.
That pretty much concludes Sunday. I've updated the campaign tab with all the new information you have.
There should be enough there for you to start formulating a plan (or plans!) and setting down dates for when you want to do what. Rather than do that in-character, can I suggest you use the discussion thread; unless you really, really, have a burning desire to roleplay your strategy meetings...
Also, there's still stuff to do in town: money to spend, errands to run - let me know what you want to do for Moonday and I'll run it out.
The aim here is to keep things moving, without railroading you.
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Oh man, I missed out on goulash and vodka?! When we let the bugbears in, let's save her...
As for the automatic progression, if DMD feels it will make the game run more smoothly, then by all means. I reserve the right to complain if some unforeseen complication arrises later, however. :P
One thing I wish to do (we can RP it or not as you like) is to, when I get a moment to speak with Felrin, poke his brain for his knowledge of clockworks to help build a rough schematic to turn the narwhal horn into a cool steampunk ivory cane/telescoping longspear, then see if the local smith is even capable of such work, and, if so, the amount of time and money that will take. Otherwise, probably will focus on finishing that map, because a complete map of the fort seems like pretty much the most useful thing I can contribute right now.
As for plan of attack, I'd say let us plan out goals first, then we can formulate specific strategies to achieve them.
1) Eliminate: Obviously kill or incapacitate as many soldiers as possible. There are two ways of going about this: attriton, picking them off a few at a time when they are vulnerable, but this will likely sound the alarm pretty quickly and put them on the alert, thus making everything else more difficult; or all at once, just before we signal the bugbears. For this second bit, I wonder if Rosie and her wonderful goulash could be of help. I imagine her weekly feed is a big treat for the soldiers, and thus many of them will eat it, and all at once too, so if we get our hands on some poison (or I make some)...
1a) Eliminate targets of priority: Officers, the Commander, spellcasters, especially religious figures (them Mitrans are helpless without their religion). Maybe the head dwarf?
2) Isolate: kill their scouts, kill their messenger birds, maybe orchestrate a pestilence in the town so they are loath to come here for aid or supplies.
3) Starve: Speaking of supplies, taint their water, destroy their food, ammo, gear...
4) Sabotage: If they have siege weapons we can, of course, simply kill the engineers, or simply destroy them, but if we can manage to just sabotage them so that they break when the soldiers try to use them to defend themselves against the slavering goblinoid horde, I imagine the look of horror in their eyes will be delicious... Same goes for drawbridges/gates/portculli... hell, if possible I'd have fun stopping up their murderholes with Sovereign Glue. :P
5) Demoralize: Make them fear the shadows, make them fear their god has abandoned them (desecrate their temple!), make them suspect and turn on each other with clever use of disguise and revealing weaknesses like the affair we learned about.
6) Have Fun! How many campaigns let you do something this evil and fun? This is going to be a blast! :D
Oh man, I missed out on goulash and vodka?!
Well, if you will skulk in your room on leftover bread and cold sausage, you'll miss out on the fun! [/mother]
I imagine her weekly feed is a big treat for the soldiers, and thus many of them will eat it, and all at once too, so if we get our hands on some poison (or I make some)...
Did I mention there's an alchemy shop? ;-)
Remember that these guys are LG: disrupting the line of command will hit them hard. We don't even need to kill all of the 4 commanders: just having them unable to act while the orcs/bugbears/hobgoblins sweep in will be enough. The affair, for example, could come in handy: we know for sure that Timeon was passing letters among those two. If we could get our hands on them, we'll have solid proof to make one of the captains go confront his wife and colleague. If we could point him to go while the two are meeting, we'll be sure they'll be too occupied bwing at each other's throat to go back to the fort and do their job.
I like the poisoning idea, too! In normal circumstances, Dark Reaver Powder and Lich Dust are the best bang-for-your-buck ingested poisons with an 10 minute onset.
However, that doesn't work that much in our case: the gulash will be for the whole fort. Getting enough doses to render the poison effective for that much will be hard enough, and finding a strong one will be even more difficult. We'll have to find an alternative way to poison the thing instead of the normal way.
PS: Remember that putting more doses of ingested (and inhaled) poison raises the DC by 2 points: if we had to poison something smaller, we could have stacked together a large number of doses and made the DC nigh unbeatable.
I picked a couple of poison tricks in the last two weeks. :P
Sounds like you're going to need large quantities of poison; of the sort normally found, oh I don't know,
Wouldn't it be suspect to walk in and ask if they have enough to poison a regiment? They're never going to sell us that much!
We'd need someone with an high enough Stealth and Disable device to sneak into the shop, and some sort of extradimensional space where to store the thing! Where are we going to find someone with those requirements?
Oh, hi Felrin!