The crew of the ship are resources too, right? Aren't most pirates light-footed, dexterous warriors who use sabers and other slashy weapons and know how to swim? If we hold the deck, couldn't we suggest that the crew handles the Sargasso?
I was thinking about chucking a 2d6 boulder every 6 seconds ahead of the ship would work for clearing a path. I imagine it might draw some local attention, so maybe the immediate area should be cleared first, but that's the best plan I have.
You all are on the right track. To help you out a bit:
- 1) Do you agree to help the crew out?
- 2) What tasks will you help out with (i.e. cut mats, pull The Audacious, stay on boat)?
- 3) How will you accomplish these tasks? Remember to describe any preps or supplies needed. Remember there is a store room, and feel free to commission crew to assist you.
1) Yes.
2) Stay on boat to fight.
3) With spells and a zombie.
So you are all going to defend the boat. Got it. Will move this tomorrow so make sure to have your preps ready.
Hope you are all excited, I know I am!
Let me know what you need
- map
- storeroom
- anything at all.
Once you are all set, we shall start day 1 of tugging, cutting, and looking.
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So this is the one thing I wasn't sure of... Whether or not we would be able to "try all three"
Now that I see it, "All three" will be happening at the same time, over the course of several weeks.
I'll do it in character, but I just want to put it out there that I want to do the pulling and the guard duty. Because trying everything is more fun :)
We should all get lengths of rope to tie ourselves on to the ship as necessary... and get a crew member who's good at tying ropes to help us out when the time comes. Beyond that, we'll raid them for a dose of air crystals each (in case we still fall in or get sucked under).
Consider it done. :)
Very crude tactical done. Please place yourself where you will be. Working on improving Photoshop skillz.
Trying out Gimp for some of the other maps. Always learning.
I'm going to be pretty busy today all. I just wanted to let you know that this time now was likely my last chance to post today. If I get any free time, I'll be sure to post here. Otherwise, enjoy your weekends and I'll get in a post tomorrow!
For those tugging.
First, even though the sailors have covered the shallop with a sail, the still heat, sunlight reflecting from the still ocean, have made it very uncomfortable. You are all subjected to hot conditions.
A character in very hot conditions (above 90° F) must make a Fortitude saving throw each hour (DC 15, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage. Characters wearing heavy clothing or armor of any sort take a –4 penalty on their saves. A character with the Survival skill may receive a bonus on this saving throw and might be able to apply this bonus to other characters as well (see the skill description). Characters reduced to unconsciousness begin taking lethal damage (1d4 points per hour).
The first day you will pull for 5 hours. Raim is not subjected to these conditions. I have taken the liberty of rolling for Benaiah. You started to fail your saves at hour 3, so do you stay on the tug or do you head back to ship? Do you have anything to prevent this?
Second, this is quite a physical activity. Characters need to make a Strength Check every 4 hours of become fatigued.
A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a –2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued.
Can we retro the hot conditions? See my post, coming soon...
For sure yes - just wanted to throw out all the info and let you guys work around the problem.
Thanks mate.
@Benaiah: Enjoy the cooler conditions! ;-)
Nice - so that will take care of the hot conditions, but he is still subjected to the Strength/Endurance check which he failed.
Once I have conformation from what Benaiah plans to do about that, then I will move us along.
Going forward, it will be the same so if any PC chooses the Tug option, please make appropriate preparations and roll accordingly.
Tugging will last 8-10 hours on a normal day.
If anyone wants to get on the raft to cut mats - let me know. With Malgrim's abilities, doesn't seem that any would choose this, but you never know.
So, Malgrim is turning into less of a "functional mute" than I thought he would be; that's a bit boring in PbP. On the other hand, I'm liking him as a "quiet sage" type.
I am enjoying the spread of personalities, though.
Taking some liberties, but I had a minor epiphany for an in-game reasoning behind why Malgrim can still harness Earth Kinetics while in the sea. I understand the "crunch" reason for not requiring the Kineticist to actual "create" the element they throw, but I think this fluff works pretty well.
I like what you did there, mate. Great fluff!
Malgrim That is what I like to see. Very nice ::golf clap::
So in the morning, provided nothing happens tonight, The Companions will patrol the deck as Malgrim tosses slat lick into the mats.
See you on the flip side for day two Dead Calms Rising.
Sorry for the delay in posting, busy weekend with Mother's Day and all.
Hope every is rested and refreshed.
A bit about the story line. I love where this game is taking us. Just so everyone is clear, we have not touched a single thing that I wrote when (I) we envisioned this game. Your detailed backstory and plot hooks have inspired me to write this entire prologue à la minute so I apologize with some slight delays.
I also wanted to remind everyone that this is not PFS or a prewritten adventure. I have dangled some plot hooks here and there, I have written and rewritten several outcomes and directions you might go. For now, this is as wide open a game as you can get - stranded on the open sea that is. Please feel free to take this game wherever you want it to go.
As much as I'm itching to post, I think it's probably best to wait for Malgrim and Caerador to have a say first. I know it can be daunting refreshing to find so many posts in front of you and then trying to get your own in.
I also wanted to note to Malgrim and Caerador to make sure your characters speak in your posts. This was raised to us by Painlord himself a while back in Isle of Dread. While I don't wholeheartedly agree with the way he said it or his exact point, he essentially said "don't think it, say it", meaning that our PCs can't react to your PC's thoughts, only their words (and actions).
I still like to put some words in thoughts for the fun of it - especially for things that would be lethal or offensive to say - but I have taken to saying things far more often than I used to, and using thoughts more and more sparingly (or just to add color to the post).
I personally feel that Benaiah and I are leaving Malgrim and Caerador out of the conversation / RP action a bit. That's mostly because we had a buddy thing going on by being the first two posting backstories, and now because we're posting the most frequently. It doesn't have to continue this way! Please feel free to drop breadcrumbs for either one of us to pick up (like the classic, "hey, Arimar, remember the time...") and please have your PCs speak up so we can react.
I know you two probably won't ever post as often as Benaiah and I do, but I'm sure with a bit more PC conversation and some shared experiences (provided by GM The Bob Jones™), we'll be riffing off each other in no time.
Good point on the thoughts thing. I'd intentionally had Malgrim somewhat withdrawn and be a "do more than say" sort, though I can see how that's hard to provide hooks to interact with.
I'll think of a way of quietly chastising Arimar later ;)
Nice. If it helps...
Actions (that we can react to) instead of words are fine, too. It's just that in low-action sequences it gets tricky. Also, you can be a man of few words, and still get the RP across.
It's just that in low-action sequences it gets tricky.
Sounds like someone order a batch of encounters. Sounds great. I am going for a jog (soft J) then some work to polish off tonight. Expect an exciting day tomorrow of bobbing along in the Dead Calms
Are there men on the various rafts and boats?
Yes there are 5 crew on the port raft, 6 on the starboard raft and 6 rowers in the shallow. 3 named characters plus Raim in the shallop.
Yeah, I'm having trouble finding Caerador's voice... I have a great handle on his back story, but its not one that I have shared with all of you very much yet. My main issue so far is that I am not very useful and that, as you said, I don't feel like Caerador is really a part of the team chemistry. I need to flesh out the reason he left his backstory and became a Pathfinder, and I need to get some connections for his motivations to stay. I got a cool idea from Steve on how I can connect Caerador to Arimar; I will be discussing this with you Damien soon. That combined with some personal issues I have going on has made me a bad pbp companion so far. I'll work on both.
Hey Aaron, no troubles at all, mate. I'm happy and (much like Arimar's whores) open to anything. Let me know what you have in mind, and we can work it in to the story together either on gameplay, discussion or a Google Doc.
I know it can be fun to fail, too... but wow the rolls in our readied actions are spectacularly bad. I figured we'd be fine with all the touch attacks in there, but... wow. Raim has a decent readied roll, but it may not even come into it (unless they ignore the tasty sailors in the water and for some reason go for the shallop).
Yeah... I can roll over a 10, seriously!
Doesn't help that ranged attacks are bad with water, but I'm truly concerned about bad swim checks and will saves.
Yeah tough roles. But at least it is red shirts dying and not you.
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So my crazy plan...
wait...
READ THE GAMEPLAY FIRST!!!
I know... I'm nuts.
My plan is to try to grapple them, then tie them up. I don't think I can kill them fast enough, depending on how I can swing a weapon in the water...
Steve the player could barely resist diving into the water, so I just let that flow into Benaiah the character.
Let's have some fun... :)
::Blinks::
You just did that, didn't you?
Hmmm .... as a GM who is designing nonPFS material I enjoy running, encounters that are a bit ambiguous, either strategically or morally, as Arimar and Benaiah can testify,.
To jump into the middle of a literal blood frenzy, into an environment that you are very ill suited for (I assume you are armored up as your tagline does not reflect you unarmored stats) is ... interesting.
You are correct though, let us have some fun!
Rules - so Arimar and Benaiah are now ON TOP of the water. Since the bunyips are IN the water, they will have soft cover from you +4 to AC. Their entire body is not out of the water, so only a portion is available to hit.
But you will have +1 because of high ground on Melee attacks.
By the way - this is what I think is going to happen.
Did you just try to scare an Australian with a shark video?
Pfft.
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Speaking of helpful wizard spells - I'll second the GM. Summon spells are great.
In this particular case, a water elemental would be BOSS... level 2 spell.
In pathfinder, for the most part, the blaster/evoker wizard/sorcerer struggles to be effective. Limited blasts, and most blasts can have damage avoided by AC or decent reflex saves.
The spells that tend to be the most useful are buffs/debuffs/crowd control, or things that last several rounds.
Summon spells are great, as they give the baddies another potential target, and give melee guys like me flanking buddies.
Snowball (which you have) is great also since it gives the enemies a debuff.
Haste/heroism/protection from alignments/protection(or resistance) from energies/etc are great as well.
I'll think of more...
Fire is the most common element for enemies to have resistance or immunities to, so spells like fireball are much less useful.
Cold is probably the second most common
+1^2
Erm... and let's not forget that magic missile is a very nice, scaling, low-level spell. Every magic user who has it on their spell list should have it in their repertoire (unless they've taken evocation as an opposition school... though, in that case: why?).
Summon / Utility Caster vs Blaster Caster
The Utility vs Blaster Caster has been one of the eternal arguments of Pathfinder. I think you *can* have a decent blaster caster (especially with Dazing Spell.) Summons provide an extra set of HP, flanking buddies, and minor damage, though in a tabletop setting they do slow the game down.
The biggest problem with the blaster caster is that they need to devote a considerable amount of resources for that and aren't as flexible as the Utility caster
Oh, summon FTW, but from level 3 onwards, that 1st level spell slot can stand a high utility scaling spell that has excellent range, 100% hit chance and damages everything from demons to ghosts (with only a few, golem-shaped exceptions).
Quicken spell matamagic rod when you get the chance, too. That 1 rd casting time can be a b%&&# if the GM wants to interrupt you.
Thanks for the suggestions. I guess I need to make some changes to my concept and invest in some different gear. This Sorceror's Robe is much less effective than I thought it could be. And its so pricey that I couldn't afford much else.
It's totally not a character appropriate thing, but too bad none of us have Sail, or we could kill off the crew and have Arimar Raise them all ;)
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That didn't stop Benaiah from stealing a boat in a different adventure.
Arimar beautiful eulogy. Will use that in a later post.
So a bit about that encounter, I NEVER thought you'd jump in. Tactically it was poor choice. Thematically, the crew will worship you for it and you will see a decided change in morale. And hey, it is a game so why not.
To address the 'losing' aspect, you are not meant to fight everything, so this was supposed to be a ranged-try-to-save-redshirt encounter, and you certainly tried.
I am keeping track of xp, and I did award some extra based upon your actions.
Super impressed as always!
Heh. It was fun... and I figured I could save some more sailors with a quick walk on water spell. Also, figured I'd need to save Benaiah! ;-)
Glad you liked the eulogy.