"The Meat Grinder:" DM Norv's The Tomb of Horrors (Inactive)

Game Master The Norv

Feel free to dot here as well, players! Can't wait to get started!

Dotting.

Had to go searching for the thread.

Quadravos φ(it's Phi, also known as the golden ratio in mathematics) reporting in.

So you can write it as Quadravos Phi if you like, or just Quadravos.

Have been busy copying stuff into this profile and getting the relevant info under my name. Do you want it visible at all times or is the spoiler tags like i have them now also good?

I have one question. I have 2 ioun stones, can I check for resonant powers with my wayfinder?

Going to look over my spells again and see what I'm going to prepare today. He'll have had prepared a selection for the travel to the town of Dusk Hollow.

Dotting.

Dotting also!

Glad to see so many people eager to take on the "impossible." ;)

Just going to wait till we have a checking-in/confirmation post from Alaric and Quadravos over in Gameplay before we get things started!

Quadravos Phi, each ioun stone has an independent 25% chance of having a resonant power with your wayfinder--so you'd roll them separately. Hoping that answers your question. Let's use the static assignment of resonant powers as listed here.

Checking for resonance :
Cracked Dark Blue Rhomboid: 1d100 ⇒ 80 (resonant if 75+)
Cracked Dusty Rose Prism: 1d100 ⇒ 5 (resonant if 75+)
Dull Gray Stone (Ioun Torch): 1d100 ⇒ 78 (resonant if 25+) forgot that I also had this one. Although I will seldom put it in the wayfinder, read magic 1/day could be handy from time to time.

Hey, in the gameplay thread, I tried to tee it up nicely for you Quadravos φ :)

Ok, so, a couple of things for the Tomb:

• I'm going to encourage you guys to make your own Perception, Knowledge, Sense Motive, etc. checks, rather than prompting you.
• Related to that, if you're searching or investigating something, try to be as specific as possible; there are a lot of things in the Tomb that are triggered or deflected based on pretty specific parameters. So, for example, with this hill, try to specify where exactly you're searching, and how. Eg., "I'm going to comb over the western side of the south slope, using my sword to search for any hidden handles or levers," rather than just, "I search for an entrance."
• If it comes to combat, I will generally roll initiatives, saves, etc. to speed things along.

Sound good to everyone?

For purposes of looking for the Tomb/entrance, let's say that each side has central, eastern, and western sections (or, for the east and west sides, central, northern, and southern).

• Got it, should really make a copy-paste for all my knowledge skills then ... You know, for those situations that I don't have a clue which of them might be relevant ;)
  
• Will try to be as precise as possible with my searching descriptions then :)
  
• That is fine by me, i've seen PbP's where everyone rolls those themselves, and does bog down combat a bit.
  

So, in short, sounds good to me :)

@Ibid, natural 1 on a skill check does not equal an auto-failure as far as I remember (I know there are people that use that rule, but it's not the standard). Only places where 1 & 20's are automatic failure/success are attacks, combat maneuvers & saves. Chances are of course that rolling a 1 means you don't get close enough to the target DC for the skill :)

@GM, in a normal 24 day, Quadravos casts his extended mage armor at 10:00 the first time and at 22:00 before going to bed for 2 hours somewhere in the period of 22:00-6:00 & preparing his spells at 6:00 the next morning.
I'm not certain how long it will take to get up the hill, but I will currently assume we are already past 10:00.
So I will be doing the following in my next gameplay post :

• Use the echoed Mage Armor to cast it again for the night (not that he thinks the inn is unsafe, it's purely a routine for him to have mage armor on 24/7). This time around it's also purely for routine, rather than anything else, but it will become relevant in the dungeon I think.
  
• Prepare his spells for the day & cast the first echoing extended mage armor of the day at "10:00", if this has not happened yet, please let me know.
  
• Say what he does when we arrive at the hill.
  

@Everyone, I was wondering something. Which would you guys prefer as sleeping arrangements for us in the dungeon? Tiny Hut or Rope Trick? I'll leave a slot open on their respective spell level once we have decided. Maybe will leave some other slots open as well, if it's less than 1/4 of my total spells, it takes about 15 minutes to prepare the open slots. Another question, which do you all prefer? Haste or Slow? I think both can have their uses. :)

I think i prefer rope trick and I know I prefer haste as a martial character, divine not real sure.

Haste for sure.

Quadravos φ, I'm with Elan Crew and Azgar "Axe-Clown", I usually go for haste as a preference. Though this toon does use Rapid Fire, so in my case, slow might be more beneficial for me specifically. But overall, it looks like Haste is the most helpful for the group as a whole, so that's got my vote.

Also, thanks for the heads up on the skill checks versus rolling 1's.

:)

@Ibid, nice one about the "beings watching us" in the gameplay topic :p

Haste it is then, as I don't think Sir Alaric have anything against being hasted :)

Can always use my bonded object to get that slow out if absolutely necessary :) Although it's only a DC 19 Will save for the Slow to take effect, it could be beneficial for us to have a number of enemies incapable of making full attacks on us (due to being staggered).

It's the first time I am playing a caster at this specific level. I tried to gather a varied enough selection in my spellbook as I have no clue as to what exactly we will be facing. I prepared my spells in a similar fashion, might be able to tweak what to use from my spellbook a bit once we've spent a day in the tomb.

On to adventure and beyond!!

As far as I can tell, we currently have the following sections of the hill covered :

North : Central being checked by Elan, East, West | Ibid & Azgar are checking an unspecified part of the North and Quadravos unfolded a 10-ft pole & ponders where that entrance might be.
South : Central, East, West | Sir Alaric clearing rubble in unspecified area of the south section.
East : Central, North, South
West : Central, North, South

All, I apologize that I misunderstood how we were detailing our area of search and that I was supposed to specify which section of the northern area I was investigating (west, central, or east). I will add a post, or update my last to specify that Ibid is searching in the North (western) area... I hope that makes sense :)

Before heading in anywhere I though we might want to discuss a marching order. I'm a believer of mage sandwich so nothing gets to him either from the front or rear. I've fine with rear guard or elsewhere if you think it will help more.

Alaric's high initiative and AC (and decent) make him pretty well suited to taking point and tying up monsters in melee. Would Azgar be happy taking the rear guard? We don't have much in the way of melee, so I think enlarge person and summon spells will go a long way in keeping everybody in one piece.

I'm suddenly aware I left Alaric's mundane gear blank. I've got some pressing things to attend to tonight and will probably have to wait to fix it until I get home. I honestly thought I'd finished that. Sorry! :/

I'm fine guarding the back.

I can take any position in the marching order, except maybe the head of the column. Wherever the group needs me. The musket has a 40' range to target touch AC, and I've got a 40' movement speed, so I'm hoping I can help cover both the front and the back from most places in combat.

My biggest concern in upcoming encounters is invisible enemies, because I don't have a way to detect/see them. Elan, do you think you could help me out with some invisibility purge, if needed?

I am fine with the concept of the Mage sandwich :-)
About the specifics of the sandwich, isn't Azgar our trap handler? Doesn't mean he can't come to the front if we spot something, but it's something to take into account.

I also have several collapsible 10ft poles because I was expecting we would need them and that some would brake.

Have a good allotment of summoning spells in my repertoire and in my prepared list. And for those who don't know. Due to some of my feat combinations I can double up on most of my lower level spells, if I at least can make the appropriate calculation.

Will see if I can squeeze in some enlarge person in my selection after our first rest.

Currently on iPad, will make a post in gameplay once I'm near a computer again.

@ibid, it's no invisibility purge but I do have glitterdust and see invisibility prepared ;-)

Invisibility purge was already prepared for the day. You can see my spells in my character sheet under daily resources.

I was thinking Azgar and Alric up front as Azgar is the trapfinder and me in the back. Ibid could be middle or back if in back, Azgar could move to middle when not finding traps and unlocking doors.

I'm fine with any position, really.

So it's sounding like...

Alaric
Azgar
Quadravos Phi
Ibid.
Elan

Something like that?

I'm fine with my position (listed above), I'm in the middle of the sandwich :)

Looks good to me, unless we go two wide.

I have a question about summon spells. Maybe should have asked this before we started this, but what am I required to do to give a basic command to my summons? For example in our current situation, to make them walk into one of the entry points?

I don't have time to check detailed rules at the moment, but I believe that summoned creatures come with languages (celestial or infernal depending on the template) and obey basic spoken commands. Anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong...

Once you guys pick a tunnel and start some course of action, I'll post in Gameplay again. :)

You've got it right. You summon them next to an enemy and they'll attack it, but to get them to do much else you need to be able to communicate with them.

I've had some time to look it up further. Apparantly the celestial/infernal templates don't come with language comprehension.
Do wonder how a wizard is normally supposed to command animals he summons then ...

If you want to go with your original ruling of them understanding basic commands in celestial or infernal (depending on template) I would be very much ok with it. Would slow down the game less.

If I would need to do something like use handle animal, am I allowed to at least change something on my sheet to have at least 1 skillpoint in it. Otherwise my lower level summons will be all quite useless, except for occasions where the enemy is in front of us so they have something to attack.

So, which entrance are we going for first?

I'm (trying to help) investigate the entrance that Quadravos φ is at, and Quadravos φ appears to be at the corridor entrance that you (Azgar) are at :)

But to be more specific than that, Quadravos φ should probably answer which corridor he was at. I know there was talk of the investigating the corridor with "pretty pictures", but I haven't read any of the spoilers yet :O

Sounds good Quadravos φ, I tried to cast a few preliminary spells as well, at the 'Azgar' corridor. The only difference being, the preliminary spells are all I've got :)

Once you/we find out what happens, we can either do more investigation at this entrance, or move to the next non-descript corridor.

That sounds right. Try the corridor on one side then the other side and the middle after the other two are finished as its too long for most spells at our level. You could try summoning at the end of your range and wave it back to you. With nothing to attack I would think it would approach since you can't talk to it. Getting it to walk away would be more difficult I think. My 2 coppers.

Just so you know, my summons can last quite a bit longer then the average wizard of my level (not as long as a summoner though). I could currently get them up to around 19 rounds. Caster lvl 7+1 (varisian tattoo), extending them with Extend Spell would make 16 rounds + half lvl (3) from conjuration school specialization.

Hmm, thought I was posting in gameplay thread earlier, which is the reason I put it in a spoiler tag. Was at work, so must have misread the tpoic title. :)

With the way I can mess around with metamagic, I could call forth 3 creatures from Summon Monster I list via one Summon Monster II spell (extending, echoing & maximizing it). Only problem is, as I stated before that I'm not certain how I'm going to be able to direct the creatures into the separate entrances :)

There is also the slight chance that the spell fails, but that's what you get when messing around with spells like that ;)

I wanted to let everyone known I'll be backpacking today and tomorrow, and so, won't be able to post until at least tomorrow night. GMPC my toon if it will help, I don't want to be the reason we are held up.

Sooooo...anyone wanna jump in?

:P

I think it's the infamous weekend lull :)
Have seen it happen in many PbP's. It seems that many people have loads to do in the weekend that does not involve sitting on the paizo forums posting ;)

And Quadravos φ is waiting for either Elan going in using his magic or sir Alaric with either his lance or the 10ft pole he gave him.

@Norv, did you come to a conclusion on how you want to run summoning of creatures that don't speak a language?

Your original thought on the matter :

I don't have time to check detailed rules at the moment, but I believe that summoned creatures come with languages (celestial or infernal depending on the template) and obey basic spoken commands. Anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong...

My later statement :

I've had some time to look it up further. Apparantly the celestial/infernal templates don't come with language comprehension.

Do wonder how a wizard is normally supposed to command animals he summons then ...

If you want to go with your original ruling of them understanding basic commands in celestial or infernal (depending on template) I would be very much ok with it. Would slow down the game less.

If I would need to do something like use handle animal, am I allowed to at least change something on my sheet to have at least 1 skillpoint in it. Otherwise my lower level summons will be all quite useless, except for occasions where the enemy is in front of us so they have something to attack.

I've been waiting for Azgar to chime in. I didn't want to step on his toes as he said he has the trap finding covered and I can only cast this spell once as that's all I've memorized it.

Oh, my mistake. I was waiting for Quadravos' summons or Elan's spell.

Well IC Alaric slightly ticked of Quadravos, due to his comment (loving the interactions of the group btw :)) and on the other hand Quadravos thinks it might be best to conserve energy. Has up to now only used cantrips.

And OOC, I would think it's nice if others also get a chance to do something + I'm still uncertain how the GM rules non-speaking summons. Otherwise there would already be a fiendish or celestial pony(depends on what I felt like summoning, jeey for being neutral I suppose ;)) storming down the hallway.

I've been waiting for Azgar to chime in. I didn't want to step on his toes as he said he has the trap finding covered and I can only cast this spell once as that's all I've memorized it.

Sorry, I've been away for a few days. I've got traps covered for now, but I wouldn't mind a bit of help later.

Just to make sure I'm clear...you guys are proceeding down the central passage? The one that I was saying the doors swung open in was the one on the right.

Well seeing as the doors opened up to a wall, I assumed we would be going through the central passageway now :)

I'm with Quadravos, we were checking out the central corridor, trying our various forms of detection, and are waiting to see what we learn from these detections before we send Azgar in with a rope tied around his waist.

Just kidding Azgar :)

I haven't seen much activity over the last week, hopefully we can revive this game. I'd rather it not fizzle out.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help kickstart this game!

Hey all, apologies from going MIA on you recently; I just moved, and it messed up my life waaaay more than anticipated. Getting things back together (for example, now we have power, if no internet, at home) and I will post again in the next day or two.

Hope everyone is still with us, and sorry for the absence!

Still here. No problem. I've moved enough to know things go awry. Good luck finishing up (not that you ever do, still have unpacked boxes 4 years later.)

Still here.