Drazan, where are you scouting?
That would really depend on what Shadeholme ends up deciding to do but if other people (npcs are people too) will contribute to scouting, we can scout random forest locations, the river north and south, and the surrounding area in general to feel out the enemy forces and their location. If we can get 3 or 4 people total I say all options, and if we get 6 to 8 we can double up on scouting teams. Any less than 3 and we would need an answer at the meeting as to what we are going to ultimately do.
Drazan will scout the most likely to be dangerous areas. The ground he can cover will aid him in avoiding confrontation directly with the hordes and if forced into a fight his devine connection makes him a scary and dangerous person.
Istiel would of course join in the scouting, but she only moves at 40ft compared to Drazen's 50ft.
The more I think about it, the more I know Istiel would go scouting as well. I would suggest her and Scree go out, but they'd end up getting themselves killed. Suuha is another option, but he's been acting weird... I don't think he wants to fight anymore, either.
Once Drazen gets back and reports on the scouting, Istiel will likely go scouting herself on the 24th. (Alone, maybe, or both her and Drazen can go, but Istiel has +9 stealth so alone isn't a bad option.)
Also, Istiel will be taking a potion of cure moderate wounds from the satchel. That leaves 4.
Drazan will take one CLW Moderate as well so that leaves 3
Istiel should definitely scout compared to staying with Naira. I'll take a few soldiers to protect myself and perhaps the other engineers as well.
I'll probably spend most of my days conducting research, assisting in maintaining our defenses, dealing with any water-related complications we may have such as preventing flooding.
Unless a skinwalker is after me, I doubt Ill need such quick methods of healing, we might want to have everyone leaving take one, and save the leftovers for later. Who knows, maybe we will find ourself in a moment where an NPC might need it more.
OK, scouts:
Each day, if you would, pick a goal (e.g. "I'm going to scout where I think the main camp is," or "I'm going to look for survivors in the Low City.")
Roll me a stealth and a perception check. Stealth to get around to where you're going unnoticed, perception to pick out any relevant details. Since you're going alone and move quickly, unless you really bungle a roll you'll be able to get away without getting into combat. DCs for both stealth and for perception will be based on what you're trying to accomplish and where you're trying to go.
Feel free to get creative with your skills; maybe something else could be substituted for stealth/perception, given the right circumstances.
On NPCs: In general, they're going to do what they think they can to help, in safety, unless directed otherwise. So, the engineers will shore up defenses, soldiers will patrol, Telowo will hold mass and offer guidance, etc.
Feel free to assign other jobs to NPCs. PCs may or may not agree to do those jobs, but it won't hurt to ask. Bellet and Hamfatten's NPCs will generally only do what their leaders want them to do. Otherwise, you can assign teams to tasks, and approach named PCs as well, with various degrees of success, depending on the teams/NPCs' skill sets and how they line up with the tasks you'd like them to do, danger involved, etc.
Note, putting NPCs into danger (say, sending a squad of soldiers to scout the forest) may result in them getting killed, captured, or [REDACTED].
One thing I should bring up now (and will in the gameplay thread shortly): she's been casting cures each day, but Helgya can brew potions of CLW (up to 3/day). It will cost 5 goods/potion.
I say yes to brewing potions. We could use a few more just in case.
Scouting it is!
You want the rolls and plans here or in the gameplay thread?
Istiel will start by going to the docks and seeing what kind of watercraft we have available. That shouldn't take too long (unless something bad happens), so she will spend the rest of the time skulking through the low city seeing what the frozen are up to. Movements, interests, etc.
Given her relatively high stealth (she's no Rigel :( ), if there's anything important you guys want scouted let me know.
In thread here is fine.
I'm actually tempted to send Imix along - he's a decent scout if he can stick to the waterline.
Unfortunately Imix would slow down Istiel/Drazen unless they're in the water, and then there's be slowing Imix down.
Imix could scout the canals himself? He does have pretty good stealth, especially in water.
Gozran 24-
Istiel will check the docks and get a count of available watercraft.
Edit: Are you f$#%ing kidding me? CAN I JUST ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING PLEASE
If that doesnt take the whole day/she isn't discovered, she will explore Old City and see what the Frozen are up to/how closely they're watching the walls/how entrenched they are in the immediate area.
^Hahahaha, yeah, you'll be discovered. Perception is good enough that you'll get a good count, but it is going to take the whole day.
That fire that I alluded to a couple weeks back? It is raging. Lunch meeting with bigwigs today, so no update until later.
Fair enough.
Hmmmmmmm Istiel really wants to check out monk's mound and the fire, but i have the feeling it would be very dangerous.
During your lunch meeting be sure to pitch an idea for "creative enrichment hour", which allows all employees to pursue creative endeavors for an hour each day to stimulate thought and post in the their favorite PbP.
@Oios: Would really like your input.
Once the meeting is resolved, I'll start moving Imix.
Would like to have him trial his new Animate - probably just sending rocks to the Frozen (Rocks Fall. Everyone Dies.)
Would also be keen to check out the boats from underwater, though it sounds like that might be by himself, which sounds dangerous.
Would also be keen to check out the boats from underwater, though it sounds like that might be by himself, which sounds dangerous.
Got a swim speed, and a 30ft range blind-sense to anything in the same body of water as me, and am a water focused controller if you need a water-buddy. Technically, underwater I would have Improved cover from people above, giving me a total of +13 to stealth while underwater.
Put my gear on my character sheet, I have an external sheet I track everything on that I need to migrate my new, fourth level stats to.
Chronicler's Kit
Fishing Kit
Map Maker's Kit
Map of Baunti Valley
Scroll Box
Backpack, Masterwork
Buoy
Canoe
Diver's Kit
Signal Whistle
Abacus
Chain Belt (Twine, not metal)
Engineer's Tools (Masterwork)
Traveller's Outfit
Engineer's Gloves
Only hiding when necessary... 2 days worth of scouting
Oios has a really good reason for not being able to respond, incidentally, but we seem to have ended up with a bit of a three way tie.
Will move on for now, though I'd like it if we all agreed on The Destination - which we tell no-one for security reasons.
Well, we're not going anywhere for now, so he's still got time to give input.
Don't forget Rhime is still out there in the canals... Though he and the other crocs have likely gotten fat and lazy from all the corpses.
Drazan, where are you scouting? I'll need an area/goal please.
Imix, give me rolls for Goz 23 if you are scouting the underside of the boats. You'll get a circumstance bonus to stealth +4 for approaching from the canal.
Naira, give me rolls for scouting or research, whatever you're doing on Goz 23.
During your lunch meeting be sure to pitch an idea for "creative enrichment hour", which allows all employees to pursue creative endeavors for an hour each day to stimulate thought and post in the their favorite PbP.
I instituted something like this for my staff. They get a few hours each week to work on whatever project they would like, within the bounds that it must benefit special collections in some way. Don't think I can sell Pbp this way, sadly.
And double-sadly, my meeting wasn't one of those meetings. It was more the meet with the heads of three different cultural institutions and try to come to an agreement before lawyers get brought in type of meeting.
Blerg!
Of the two options given I suppose the enemy camp option.
I instituted something like this for my staff. They get a few hours each week to work on whatever project they would like, within the bounds that it must benefit special collections in some way. Don't think I can sell Pbp this way, sadly.
And double-sadly, my meeting wasn't one of those meetings. It was more the meet with the heads of three different cultural institutions and try to come to an agreement before lawyers get brought in type of meeting.
Ooooh that's really cool! Hey, PbP can benefit special collections if it's one day housed IN the special collections!
Hope you guys came to an agreement in your meeting though, youch...
BTW, thanks for the inspiration. I was struggling to find something to give me the juice to write Istiel's Ki unlocking, and under the log in the forest was just what I needed.
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Things are good on my end. Mom and baby doing well and I should be able to get a bit more free time Mondayish? Definitely by first week of December. Will try and catch up and post here and there.
Also I would like to say you guys are crazy and I love you all.
Ha! We love you too.
Good to hear everyone is doing well.
IF the Cthonic=Cthullhu is problematic, happy to have it be Imix's misunderstanding or just remove it.
Wow, Imix, that is AWESOME.
Also... 6 keelboats, 7+ canoes.
It disturbs me the Frozen are using them, or going to use them. Might be fun to sink them all just so they can't have them, frankly.
I wonder where they learned to sail?
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Trying to get a submission together tonight, will move us along tomorrow.
Very nice posts, Imix and Istiel. I love everyone's creativity.
I am however, a little worried about power levels of things like creating CR 9 encounters at level 3. I had originally thought that was the type of things you'd be doing at epic levels, but we're already there.
It makes me think that the bad guys, in order to offer challenges, have to have nukes too, and that can make things really swingy, or I'm going to have to put together more filler combats to waste your party resources, which I'm not really a fan of (I don't think traditional dungeon design works well with the pbp format).
I don't have an issue with the Cthonic stuff, Imix - it is quite cool.
Thanks Isitel - your post inspired me to push myself :)
@GMBP: Thanks for raising it GMBP.
This is your game, and you're doing a great job running it, writing great posts and setting up amazing scenes. If you want to lower the power level I can.
As regards this instance, if you don't want to ret-con the post out, you could have Imix have known of an old monster pack kept asleep under the water (Previous Suriname record?). Rousing them then becomes the metaphysical equivalent of burning down the forest, creating a third party inimical to both sides.
I sort of feel like I should justify it a little though.
When I was putting together Surinames I wanted the equivalent of a powerful weapon, but something that was situational, risky and dangerous. This was everything coming together to do that. I figured it was something a "professional" Suriname would be able to do, and in my head professional was level 3. I understood E6 to have a dramatic drop off in numbers at each level, such that only a few people made it past level 3. That said, animation's next power up is at CL 11, which Imix (if he does this trick of burning everything he has again) would hit at level 6. (base 6 + 1 spec +2 feat +1 trait +1 for half magic)
A CR 9 encounter is three teams of elite guards, or six teams of normal guards. From what we fought I'm guessing then enemy is somewhere between them in skill, and superior in numbers. The true advantage of the Nargun are the Darkness, the unexpected nature of the attack, the fact they are expendable, and the tactical advantage (DR vs ranged weapons, reach vs non-reach, my presumed lack of defences for the Frozen) which made these an amazing match for the Frozen. Even then I think the Frozen will end up just running away rather than losing a lot of people: Deadly to morale, but not enough to devastate their actual numbers.
I was pretty happy with it because this is exactly what Suriname did in my headcanon: set up a plan to do terrible things to people.
This isn't something Imix can do in a standard combat - The three animated Frozen were speedbumps during the bridge attack, because there wasn't anything to animate that would work. In this case he went out to find something that would work, and frankly the best thing I could think of was a rock - which doesn't have a lot of cool powers. I was also sweating when I set the scene up - if any of the three wild magic rolls had gone bad the whole set up would have been wasted. He's still got the problem of getting back to Shadeholme with 1 spell point without dying.
I've found myself using channel or melee attacks once in combat because (A) sickened is a terrible condition (B) it takes a full round to cast anything - which means no defensive casting (C) a lot of the powers are situational and (D) Wild Magic means casting anything is a risk. If you want to tie up Imix, just engage him. If you let him have a few rounds to set something up, then he'll be a problem.
All that said, if you want me to rebuild to lower Imix's magical potential, I can. I've specialised him a lot in magic, and I can wind some of that back.
Don't give me TOO much credit, the 9 stages of meditation are (ironically) well defined.
Cleverness is the most dangerous weapon in a tabletop game. Maybe I'm not speaking for everyone, but I think we're willing to accept whatever rulings on power you'd like to include. It's your game, after all, and we're here for the story and roleplaying.
It seems like we're in a really grimdrak world right now and whatever we do isn't going to save the Valley, which makes Imix's plan a really cool kick back at a still overwhelming darkness. Later when it seems like the theme of the game will change maybe we revisit?
Edit: Voting ABCD by the way.
Oios will go around camp with Telowo trying to bolster spirits, help with the investigation at the altar with his spiffy new Divination powers, and try to figure out why half the military is at the other half's throat.
Oh, I'm not interested in changing character builds. We've set up the rules, to walk back on them would be problematic. And I'm not voicing these concerns to just Imix, but rather in general. I wish I could share Naira's final fight capstone without ruing the surprise, but we've agreed not to bring out until that time, because it would make pretty much any P6 antagonists irrelevant.
My point is, you can "finesse" the build rules that we have to handle things way above the power curve. I just want you all to understand that with great power comes great opposition. Structurally, it becomes more difficult for me to design encounters to challenge you all. Also, because I'm not a fan of filler encounters in the PBP format, I tend to go for one or two big fights rather than a series of rooms to crawl through, which means you have more resources at your disposal, which means combats have to get tougher, which means things can get a bit swingy, in theory at least.
Relatedly, one reason why we're doing this scouting thing narratively is because I don't want to grind out a bunch of little combats that you'd be sure to win. Hope that is OK with everyone.
I'm just looking for thoughts, really. The bad guys will adapt. I just don't want to kill anyone, or worse, TPK, because I've gone overboard with a fight to compensate for it. And I'm not an optimizer, so I'm a little leery of designing swingy fights to begin with, because I don't have the time or inclination to consider every pro and con when setting these things up. I operate a lot more on "feel" if that makes sense. Party can do this = bad guy(s) need to be able to do this to make it interesting.
Also, glad to hear things are going well with the family, Oios!
Imix, I'm going to jump your rock and rope badassary to Goz 23. Otherwise, it will negate Istiel's scouting. Feel free to come up with something else to do on the 22nd.
EDIT: Actually, I'm going to jump everyone to Goz 23. Time is getting a little to wobbly. Goz 22 people hung about Shadeholme, recovering, and doing little managerial things (fixing palisades, etc.). Hey, every day can't be a winner.
BACD
ABCD
CDAB
ABCD
very simply, assumed 1 2 3 4 points
A = 2+1+3+1 = 7
B = 1+2+4+2 = 9
C = 3+3+1+3 = 10
D = 4+4+2+4 = 14
So the ABCD has it.
Let's say it will take two days to organize / pack everything if you decide to go somewhere.
So we're here for at least the 24 & 25 of Goz. Awful as it is, the rain might actually be helpful for the departure.
Imix went out the night of the 23rd, right? Just checking Drazan's "no lone scout" encounters were pre-Nargun.
That pile of bodies really worries me for some reason.
Yep, Drazan goes out in the morning so that he can get a full day of retraining in.
Imix is going out after him. I'll update for Oios and Imix today at lunch.
Vote sounds good on Te-moak.
I really like the challenging, swingy fights honestly. More glory for Istiel, anyway!
Gozran 23- Istiel will scout the Old City for what the Frozen are up to, might as well check for survivors. Imix's monster will be a great distraction!
I want to scout monk's mound, but i have the feeling it would be incredibly dangerous to go alone. That fire must be one of those weird lizard bird things we saw at the very start of the game.
Old City? You mean the city outside the Mound?
Ha, I meant Low City, but I guess it IS the Old City now.
Sorry I've fallen behind, work-pre Thanksgiving became quite hectic, and getting travelling plans to work have taken away my free time!
Naira's final fight capstone without ruing the surprise, but we've agreed not to bring out until that time.
It'll be beautiful, especially the aftermath. I've gone over the speech I want to make when I do it at least ten times aloud to myself. Can't wait to drop my alignment from CG to CN.
Istiel, you'll be scouting on Goz 24. Give me some rolls.
Naira, no worries. We're in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment, and I'm sure we'll be slower through Thanksgiving.
Also, if you'd like to continue researching the grotto / idol etc., feel free. I don't think I explained how knowledges work with things you've never encountered before; multiple successful skill checks for each day will return more results, as you continue experimenting. Think of it like scientific research; you come up with a hypothesis, and then test it, and then see where it leads, poke holes in the results, refine your hypothesis, rinse and repeat.
In other words, give me some more skill checks if you're interested. You've just scratched the surface!
Wow I totally forgot we were on Gozran 23, I meant Gozran 24 for my last post about scouting. Completely dropped the ball there, sorry. I'm just going to wait until BP says it's the 24th until I go off rolling dice and giving the wrong locations again.
Drazen- When you finish retraining bloodrager Istiel and Drazen can scout the route we want to take together? Or we can start the 25th.
Edit: BP then posts on top of me, making the time I had to wait to be 0. How strange.
Trying this again- Gozran 24. Istiel will scout the Low City for Frozen activity and signs of survivors/survivors themselves.
Edit edit: The dice are so cruel
@GMBP: It took me too long to get your scene reference :)
Sorry to push through in the meeting, but I would like to have a plan. This one has the advantage of being what we did anyway.
RE: the Pathfinders. I left Oios out of the group, but am happy if he comes along. Thought he might like a good IC justification to take a few days off (assuming the camera follows the Pathfinders).
Edit: if we left on the 25th (or night of the 24th) we'd look at an overall departure on the 30th. What do people think? That does give five days for people to turn goods into things like backpacks, or use the 2:1 rule to try to turn them into things like magic.
Edit edit: The dice are so cruel
@GMBP: Okay, so I realised that Imix can make "Horses", which is to say load-carrying quadrupeds. It's stupidly hard to do for something that is basically "Communal Mount", but could be really helpful here. If we could travel at full speed for the first day we could get further away from the Flame. I suspect the first night a bunch of flying Shadow-Ravens will go overhead and we'll get spotted, so I see running as being critical (as is travelling during the day).
These'd be probably wooden constructs with extra movement. Not so great at combat, but a decent strength. And of course, immune to tiring... though the guy concentrating on animating them isn't.
Will it unbalance stuff if I look at doing this?
Thanksgiving madness has almost ended, then i can read and think about your plan Imix!
Found some moments to post. Here's what Oios would like to do if possible.
Talk to Sarre and Aktuk.
Help Naira with her investigations with his fancy new divination powers.
@GMBP: Okay, so I realised that Imix can make "Horses", which is to say load-carrying quadrupeds. It's stupidly hard to do for something that is basically "Communal Mount", but could be really helpful here. If we could travel at full speed for the first day we could get further away from the Flame. I suspect the first night a bunch of flying Shadow-Ravens will go overhead and we'll get spotted, so I see running as being critical (as is travelling during the day).
These'd be probably wooden constructs with extra movement. Not so great at combat, but a decent strength. And of course, immune to tiring... though the guy concentrating on animating them isn't.
Will it unbalance stuff if I look at doing this?
No, not at all. I had figured you'd come up with something like this.
Are we good to scout a route through the wilderness on the 25th?
@GMBP: I read the post as Imix is okay to return from his night swim and prep for the next day?