The Forgotten God (Table 1) (Inactive)

Game Master Rednal

Yeah, that was the plan of the disguise. Hide the gourd as part of my costume, put the plans in my hat, and have Hadran cover the hat with an illusion.

"Well, I'm surely able to place these depictions in my hat, which they'd have little cause to check without scanning for auras..."

I guess I may have not outright stated that that's what I was doing, but if I wasn't, there'd be no need for Hadran to concentrate on an illusion because I wouldn't need to hide my hat.

Right now, the flag that would go up is that there's magical auras atop my head, but until one is distinguished as being of the illusion school and the second of conjuration, I can explain any of it away as part of my disguise for losing the bet.

Cool. In other news, I think I've got an idea of how to incorporate Recharge Magic into Truenaming. So, the conceit is that truenamers must follow the universe's laws in order to work their magic, with some particular breaking of these rules either outright forbidden or coming with penalties. What if we run with the idea that, as part of my agreement with the universe, I can circumvent these laws so long as I refund the energy expended a la divine-sourced recharge rules. Whenever I'd break one of these laws, I'd be subject first to being locked out of the recitation level as per the bard/sorcerer table, and once that's done, whatever normal 5-round countdown for that particular recitation begins. This would be an option rather than the defacto way that truenaming worked from now on, and yes, I could only break one law per recitation. Examples for each law, as I think they'd work:

Law of Croaking Failure
When attempting to recite incendiary remarks, Burkhardt fails his truenaming check. Deciding he could do without the penalty, Burkhardt refunds the universe: he loses access to 2nd-level recitations for 1d4 + 1 ⇒ (4) + 1 = 5 rounds but can speak at any volume and takes no penalty on truenaming checks. After this time he regains access to those recitations and may attempt incendiary remarks or any other 2nd-level recitation normally.

Law of Familiar Phrases
Burkhardt is remembering how to use truenaming, rather than learning it as mortals do. When reciting incendiary remarks, he determines that in the moment, a surge of his divine power can better bring his lexicon to mind. He takes 10 on his truenaming check despite incendiary remarks being of the highest level he can cast. In exchange, he loses access to 2nd-level recitations for 1d4 + 1 ⇒ (1) + 1 = 2 rounds at which time the law of flowing rhetoric takes effect and he must wait 5 additional rounds before reciting incendiary remarks again.

Law of Flowing Rhetoric
Burkhardt and Hadran are low on hit points. He casts lesser wholeness locution on his next turn and, breaking the law of flowing rhetoric, casts it again on his turn after that, before the previous effect ends. Both effects work normally and, in exchange, he loses access to 1st-level recitations for 1d4 + 1 ⇒ (1) + 1 = 2 rounds at which time the law of flowing rhetoric restarts, and he must wait 5 additional rounds before reciting lesser wholeness locution again. (Note however, that unless you determine this unbalanced, my thought is that I could repeatedly break this law to simply cast a given spell more often than normal, so long as I'm willing to lock out the entire recitation level each time I do it.)

Law of Finite Malleability
Shortly after a fight ends, Burkhardt determines he's suffered a bit of a beating. Without pressure, he decides to cast mending verse on himself while bypassing the law of finite malleability: his truenaming DC does not increase after his successful casting, but in exchange, he loses access to 2nd-level recitations for 1d4 + 1 ⇒ (2) + 1 = 3 rounds. At that time the law of flowing rhetoric takes effect and he must wait 5 additional rounds before reciting mending verse again. (My thought here is that I'd negate the MDC of inflections as well, but not the TDC: harder to cast in the moment, but I return to square 1 by the end. At first blush it sounds a little overpowered, but aside from spamming some nasty opening combos, I think any attempt at abusing this will simply lock me out of my recitations for a larger part of battles than I might like. :-P

.

Thoughts?

*Rubs chin* I think it's workable... but I'd like to add each Law to the cooldown, rather than simply a given effect. That is, if you're on a cooldown from breaking the Law of Flowing Rhetoric, you can't break that law again until the cooldown is over. It shouldn't be too big of a burden, and helps to enforce the recharge system's general push against spamming abilities.

Also, don't forget that some abilities may have specific cooldowns, rather than general - you should be checking your list and comparing to the recharge magic page to see what's general and what isn't.

Ok, so I can say break Law of Croaking on 1st level and Law of Finite on 2nd level, but not Law of Croaking on both? Sure, that's fair. And yeah, I'm keeping it in mind for my other abilities (I haven't gone through and listed it in my character sheet yet, and that's a task for the next couple days), but given the scope of Truenaming's design, I'm going to just assume that every recitation sticks to the general cooldown unless you specifically call it out.

...or is that what your asking me to do? Compare my Truenamer stuff, specifically, to comparable spells?

You should compare Truenaming stuff to comparable spells. Fortunately, that's not as hard as it might seem at first. XD Generally speaking, anything that's a 'combat' sort of spell is almost definitely going to have a general cooldown. Anything that has long-term effects or primarily out-of-combat utility is more likely to have a specific cooldown, since one of the very intentional goals of the Recharge system is to prevent people from being able to spam helpful utility options that are normally limited by virtue of spell slots and other built-in restrictions.

If you're uncertain, you're always welcome to ask about a specific effect.

Hmm, this doesn't sit as well with me, as it doesn't account for the difference in durations.

For example, protection from energy and lesser energetic buffer are quite comparable in effect, and protection from energy has a recharge time of 1 hour. However, a 6th-level wizard could prevent up to 72 points of energy damage over the course of 60 minutes, while I'd prevent up to 50, and only for 1/120 of the duration, 5 rounds (or 10 with an inflection), with these gaps worsening as I level.This is probably the most extreme example, but anything that sits outside of the 'general' recharge time (such as stimulate mind comparable to fox's cunning) I'd view as a non-option because the duration difference is so great (as again, there are exactly 3 H&M recitations whose temporary effects can last more than 5 rounds (gravity's bane and the two vampiric intonations): everything else is instantaneous/5 rounds or less).

That's why I was surprised that I should go through the options individually: going down the list of Recharge Magic through the C's and a smattering elsewhere, I'm finding that anything with a recharge over 5 minutes has a duration of at least 1 min/lvl, and anything with recharge of an hour or more has a duration of at least 10 mins/lvl. The truemagic system is designed to limit the ceaseless spamming of effects, yeah, but that limitation is built-in and each effect should be usable many times/day (and that's for a non-deific character). So yeah, to me it comes off unnecessarily harsh if I'm going to match recharge times effect to effect.

An agreeable compromise, perhaps, is that any recitation whose comparable spell would have a non-standard recharge time simply cannot break the Law of Flowing Rhetoric. I can circumvent the other three laws normally, with per-standard recharge times inflicted, but I simply cannot use divine power to fire off another lesser energetic buffer any time before the first one ends. Whaddya think?

This is covered by one of the other general rules, actually. XD Typically, any buffs, defenses, and so on with a duration measured in rounds/level will have a general recharge. It's powers with longer durations - 10 min/level or hour/level, in particular - that tend to have specific recharge times.

Ah, gotchya - that's what I get for skimming the guidelines. So with the exception of those three, their 5 round or less durations ought to guarantee a general cooldown. And speaking of those three.

• Gravity's Bane Comparable to fly (5 minute cooldown) | Half as fast as fly with no dispel 'float-to-earth' clause, and duration is 1 minute vs. fly's 1 minute/CL. Verdict: General
• Vampiric Intonation/Greater Vampiric Intonation Comparable to vampiric touch (general) | Damage and temp HP do not keep pace with vampiric touch's CL based damage dice, though this doesn't include a clause about draining more hp than the target can survive. The reverse damages yourself to provide temp HP to a target, but that temp HP only lasts 1 minute. Verdict: General
  

I think we can go with General Recharge for all of those, yeah. ^^

Question... are you bluffing here, Burkhardt, or is that actually how your character views them? XD Because I'm not pre-judging that, given your background.

Nah, he's being honest. Like he knows what they're generally used for (and that's why he acknowledges that the guard may need to confiscate them), but that's not why he carries them. As far as this and future conversations with legal authorities go, Burkhardt avoids directly lying at all costs, instead redirecting the topic or omitting certain information: it's tied to his views on agreements made in bad faith, and acknowledging the spirit over the letter of the law. (For that matter, his idea of the spirit of the law isn't even what the writer intended as much as how would a virtuous being interpret this.)

As such, he always tells the truth or what he believes to be the truth, and when he doesn't, you will know because I will roll a Bluff check. For that matter, I don't have ranks in the skill so I'm probably burning mythic power every time it happens, too. :-)

Good. XD (Sticking with your character's theme is always the right way to go in this game anyway.)

So Rednal has not posted since saturday. Not sure if he lived in Texas or the path of the storm. Hope everything is alright.

Me too, though before his current race/class line announcement he did put in that he was moving this past weekend. So I'm not worrying just yet. :-)

Yyyyyyyup. XD If in doubt, check my announcement line there. If I expect to be without internet for more than a day, I'll put up a notification for you. I just got the net back today, and so we're back to our regular updates.

Cool, I'm Traveling tomorrow and will be out of town for the weekend. I will be back and check in on Monday. Tuesday I'm having surgery and they expect to release me Friday morning. I will have my laptop but not sure how my posting will be based on pain/drugs/recovery for a couple days. Just an FYI

Everything went well except for not being able to take my meds for Gout. I came out of surgery the next few days and pretty much up till today with one of the worst gout attacks I have had. Until today I could hardly hold my phone as it was attacking both my wrist, hands, right knee and ankle. I can finally type again and go see the gout Dr. for a follow up today. I will catch up over the next few days as I have returned to work and will be settling back into my routine. Sorry for the delay

...Seriously, take whatever time you need for recovery, and don't push yourself. o wo; That's CLEARLY more important.

Ahh that sucks. Yeah, getting medication is my biggest worry when it comes to disaster survival; fortunately, in the middle of the continent you only really have to worry about tornadoes and blizzards. Good luck, I hope you get it managed right quick, dude!

For future reference, how do you feel about rushing research checks in combination with this? I didn't do it because it seems like super-cheese to me; +5 DC to rush, but you gain +5 after the first failed check... so the probability of the second roll is the same as the first for the same amount of time spend, except you got an initial chance to halve that time. If you continue to rush you accrue failure bonuses at 2x the normal speed. There's no benefit to NOT rushing, near as I can tell.

*Snickers* Yeah, there is that. Honestly, though, I don't even think you need to rush it. I'm pretty sure you can't research more than one thing a day, and if your skills are high enough to Take 10 on the research, you're not actually going to get it done any faster.

Well, even if you can only research a max of 1 task/day, any spirit over 1st level requires more than 8 hours (1 day) of research per task; similarly, it'd cut down time while using the 2 hours of progress/day while adventuring.

And I did forget about take 10, which is a good point, thanks! That said... it's cool if you're not worried about it... but then I'm definitely making use of it from now on. :-P

Do I have any reason to know either way if Midfoviing is literate? :-P

I don't think it's ever come up. XD Admittedly, she's more of a "go hunt for food" sort of girl than a "sit down and read" one...

Waiting on you in gameplay, Red. :-)

It didn't get my post up? Baaaaaaaah. >.> Let's fix that.

Regarding recharge magic and spell-like abilities, I know we had gone over Goodberry from Tree constellation aspects because it was a significant downgrade of power... but I don't think we talked about whether or not At-Will abilities should also slide back into appropriate recharge times. I just realized that I had neglected the fact I had access to at-will Disrupt Undead via the Skull Constellation Aspect during that last fight, and before we get into more undead combat, I'm wondering if that will be a subject to a 1d4 round cooldown as well.

In general, at-will abilities don't trigger recharges unless they'd normally have a specific recharge time. Anything that's General Recharge (which is most 'attack' style spells, specifically including Disrupt Undead) wouldn't recharge if you have it from an at-will source. Cantrips in general do not trigger a recharge. (I mean, c'mon. They're cantrips. XD)

It's things with normally limited uses (including SLA's, spell slots, and so on) that are affected by the recharge rules.

Okay cool. Kinda what I was guessing but given the rules are from 3.5 era, they don't account for the idea of at-will cantrips. :-)

Merry Christmas! You've received the following special abilities:

Hadran: Shield of Knowledge - Gain Immunity to Intelligence Damage & Drain.

Burkhardt: Transmutation Immunity - Gain Immunity to Unwanted Polymorph Effects. (Yes, this can hide pact spirit signs at-will, and yes, you still have to show them when they say you have to in order to get their benefits.)

Yeah, Merry Christmas all. Hope everyone had a great Holiday. Thank you GM Rednal for another year of a great game.

Merry Christmas! Thanks to both of ya for making this game a thing, and thanks for the upgrade, Rednal!

So it's not the GM's responsibility to keep an ongoing list of where we have and haven't been, but man, this whole running circle things REALLY sucks my enjoyment out of the game. Between this & Jade Regent I'm going to keep a tally at the bottom of my posts whenever we're doing an exploration bit like this so it can stop happening, but I'm probably going to forget until it becomes a habit, so can I ask you both to please remind me if you don't see me when we jump into the area romps?

I can try.

Honestly, I think you've gotten the point of the exploration anyway - i.e. people are gone, yo. Would you prefer to just advance to things happening a bit more actively? ^^

I would be fine with that. It would help advance the game at a better pace if we come up with a search order of things on a map Like this one we could have said we will move from building to building searching for clues to what happened here. You could then do things behind the scene and make rolls for us or we make a set of 5 or 10 perception rolls that you just use in order as we go assuming we use detect magic when we search. Then you can sum up what we came across in other searched places before we stumbled upon a new foe or task that requires decisions or actions from us. Then our daily post would help advance at a better pace I think.

I'm also cool with skipping ahead past the camp as well. Yeah, I like exploring even as it can be a touch dry in PbP, but having to sift through old posts for any reason other than 'it sounds like fun' kills me. It's why I was proactive about keeping a loot list in JR. :-)

Regarding the Ability Share feat and Erstehund... what are the limits of what I can grant him and expect him to use, given his animal intelligence? Can he only benefit from flat bonuses, or could we imagine that he could say, create a pit if granted the ability and ordered to attack?

The feat says you can share your abilities with allies, and places no limit on them. Of course, creatures of animal-level intelligence don't necessarily get the concept of spells even if they have access to them. Given the complexity, I feel like a Handle Animal check to activate the abilities would be appropriate. (That is, after all, the normal method of getting them to do specific and often complex things. ^^)

Okay. For now it's push an animal, and perhaps I can teach Erstehund a 'use spirit ability trick' of some sort? Or even 'use this specific spirit ability'?

Though secondly... Ability Share doesn't seem to specify an activation time. I know with class abilities it's a standard if it's not specified, but with feats I don't think there's any such ruling. What action do I need to use to share an ability would you say?

"Use Spirit Ability" as a trick will be fine. ^^ We'll say that the spirit itself helps manifest it (which is basically true), so Erstehund doesn't need to know the specifics as much as the general start of things.

As for the time needed... *Rubs chin* You're right, it doesn't specify an action. Other feats in the same product (Expel Spirit, Forfeiting Recovery, etc.) do, and the normal Actions in Combat table is crystal-clear that feats define their own activation time (particularly when they don't grant an Ex, Su, or Sp-type ability). There's no "standard", as it were. Given the fact that no time is listed, I'm going to go ahead and call it a free action. It wouldn't be too helpful in-combat if it required a standard or move action, since there'd almost always be something better for you to do with your turn and I don't want you to feel like it's a bad feat for you to have chosen. ^^

Alright, cool; thanks for the deliberation and judgement. :-D

Hey guys. Going on Vacation tomorrow. Will be on a cruise so no access. Its a 5 day so I will check back in on the 26th. Please bot me and move us forward, oh and try and keep me alive :)

Hey guys, It is March so it is that time again. Time for me to head off to War. Well fake war anyways :) Leaving Wednesday night after work and will be gone until the 19th. Heading to Gulf Wars in Mississippi.

We should probably just pause until then. XD Bonus points if you convince someone else there to make a follower of Hadran for their next PF/D&D/Similar game, though.

I will start to spread the gospel :)

Yup; I always prefer to pause than push things forward without anyway. Have fun! :-P

And by bonus points, I mean both of you may get actual in-game rewards if you gain followers in other games. XD As far as this series is concerned, the power of gods is not confined to a single game table.

Looking for you in gameplay, Red. :-)

Hey guys, leaving today to go to Disney for the weekend with the wife and her family. I'm in Miami all next week for work too so with travel posting will be not as normal. Will still try and get a post in a day. Thanks.

Sounds good, have a good weekend!