I really wish that were the case but foraging causes you to move at half speed :(
There will be plenty of opportunities when speed isn't a concern.
OK. Lots to respond to, little time.
"Your" NPCs obviously have a strong connection to you. Of all of you, only Cueta took any that were enemies, and they aren't here so you can more or less expect them to do as you ask. On the other hand, they're not automatons, and they will act on their own when they feel they should.
You are welcome to invite them with you when you go exploring. For some that will be more practical than others, obviously. Bern will go in a heartbeat.
Building a seaworthy raft will take time and some skill. Does any of the PCs have craft: shipbuilding or at least carpenter? Anyone can tie a few logs together, but once you're out of the bay, you're in the open ocean, and the water's rough. Despite Cueta's assessment, you can guess the Harpy broke up at least a hex or two east of the mouth of the bay.
If I haven't answered a question, feel free to repeat it or PM me. Life threw me a few curveballs yesterday, so I'm scrambling a little.
Take your time Nerk, it happens.
Vallen and Cueta both have carpentry skill (Vallen has a set of artisan's carpentry tools as well). Does anyone know how to navigate a raft though...?
Perhaps we could convince the captain of the ship to loan us a sailor or 2?
Alright, that puts the Harpy somewhere between 24 and 36 hours travel provided our boat moves at 30ft.
Swapping our rowers that puts us two days or so each way. Plus at least three days to search the hex for the wreck, provided we pick the right one to begin with.
This means that we either need to convince the Lillend to give us a boat permanently or we will have to wait until we can build one as they will have left by the time we make it back.
We'll also need supplies, for safely at least 10 days of food per person who goes.
Looks to me like it might need to wait at least a little while.
I'm fairly certain Ceuta is capable of navigating once we are able to set out though.
@ Ben: To the best of your recollection,
Denny Sandlock Ben's Father
Cara Sandlock Ben's Mother
Hobie Grimm Friend of Ben Sandlock
Jane Grimm Hobie's wife
Valentinian Friend of Ben Sandlock
Gregor Hosk Friend of Ben Sandlock
Zepher Hosk Freind of Ben Sandlock
Gemma Hosk Zepher's wife
Kylie Darne Friend of Ben Sandlock
were all on the Golden Pegasus when they set sail from Absalom. You know that several halflings were pulled out of the sea and onto the Harpy when the Pegasus went down, but not which ones.
@ Gair: Since you'd really only be rowing up the coast, not fully exploring the hexes and a ship wrecked on the rocks shouldn't be hard to spot, I'd allow you to simply move across the hexes in 8 hours and keep an eye out for the Harpy. So not as bad as all that.
@ Kal'Tos: I mentioned the captain was friendly, but so far nobody's approached him with any requests.
Oh thank heavens! In that case we should simply petition the captain tonight or tomorrow.
How large are the Lillend's longboats?
They can hold ten safely, twenty absolute maximum, but everyone beyond that requires someone to make a Profession Sailor check, DC=to the total number of folks in the boat, each hour. No taking 10. Halflings count for half.
@ DM Nerk and Vallen: I also have artisans (carpentry) tools. I worked as a deckhand and used my skills to do some light ship repair, so I was hoping to be able to use my carpentry skills to do a little boat-building - perhaps rafts and the canoes and bullboats of my Ijo people only, as I figure these could be done without any advanced shipbuilding skills?
I also have profession (sailor) as a skill, so I should be able to get us to the wreck and back.
As far as the NPCs go, just to clarify DM Nerk, I don't know of the existence of my NPCs yet (if in fact they are there)? This was my assumption, but I figured I should check with you.
More people also means less cargo can be hauled, and one dwarf with ant haul cast can probably do the work of many men anyways.
And if Vallen can cast ant haul on the rest of us as well...
@DM Nerk, everyone beyond 10 or 20 requires a profession (sailor) check? And, if the boat is not overloaded with people, can I take 10 on the check if the weather is good and there is no danger?
Yeah, I would suggest perhaps two or three of us stay behind and continue to explore and organize things on this end.
I agree we should be fine to borrow the boat. That team should have time to make several trips from shore to wreck to offload supplies and still return in time. This is shaping up nicely.
@ Cueta... Your profile mentions spotting them on the Lillend after your rescue, but that becomes awkward because they're obviously not there now. I think what probably happened is that you saw them back in Absalom and then during the wreck you got knocked on the head and imagined you saw them on the Lillend.
I'd say carpentry and profession sailor would let you bang together a functional canoe, though as with all things, it will take time and materials.
We don't mean to take it from them, only borrow it. Does the Lillend only have the one?
And yes, we will have to actually speak to the captain about it once we get back. Given our present location all we can do is try to plan ahead.
@ Cueta... Your profile mentions spotting them on the Lillend after your rescue, but that becomes awkward because they're obviously not there now. I think what probably happened is that you saw them back in Absalom and then during the wreck you got knocked on the head and imagined you saw them on the Lillend.
I'd say carpentry and profession sailor would let you bang together a functional canoe, though as with all things, it will take time and materials.
Thank you DM Nerk. I'll update my profile to reflect the current reality.
The NPC don't have any special equipment like tents and tools, but do they have the things they would normally have like clothing and cloaks, bedrolls, etc? Nerk said some of them had weapons (spears and crossbows). Most are commoners but some are experts. Do the experts have the tools they need to do their trades (basic things that can be carried on their person)? or do we all need to throw in together and get the smithy up so the smiths can make the tools we need to build everything else?
As far as the tools to make the tools...
I'm abstracting a lot. Things that are built with the Downtime rules. If you have the goods, you can build the thing. Things that are made with the ordinary crafting rules will need tools, or will take the usual -2 penalty for working without tools. NPCs will have something to bed down on, and that's about it. There are a few weapons and few simple tools, enough that things can get made with the -2 penalty, but nothing specialized.
Building a forge (for example) will expedite the crafting of tools, weapons, armor, etc, and will also generate gp or goods for building other things in future. The forge itself also counts as tools for up to 3 people using metalwork related skills. Not a bad investment, really.
So does Bern have any weapons/armor then?
Looking at the downtime rules as well as the crafting, it looks like setting up buildings to help us craft is really the best way to go.
Creating items yourself seems to be a good deal more efficient than using a building to simply generate gp. At least until you have a bunch of rooms working together, which without an outside from of cash is like to take many years.
On a side note, because of our situation, when we train teams, will they be as effective as the downtime rules suggest? For instance, a group of guards is frankly better equipped than not only the other settlers but also our PC's are likely to be for the next few months unless we find some gear as loot and other groups are set at 3rd level. Will all this all work the same way?
Dammit Gair... that's a good point.
Hard to see scale mail occurring spontaneously. For guards, I'd go hide armor, heavy shield and shortspear until you get a forge set up. But you can't then build guards and appropriate your team's gear.
Crafting is great, but you still have to pay half the cost of the item for materials. So there's that.
I have been ponderinga house rule that you can't create teams that require 3rd level characters until you guys are 3rd level yourselves, but I don't think that's necessary. They will be NPC classes, though.
Bern has a longsword and some studded leather.
It makes sense to me that we wouldn't be able to recruit a team that is higher level than the character doing the recruiting, at least not without a larger group of NPCs to draw from than we have.
Alright, works for me. Could we swap the longsword for a battleaxe in Bern's case. Kellid's are big fans of axes! Have to get him a shield though...
On the topic of making use of our NPC's, should give my boy some stats?
Oh and it's actually only a 3rd of the cost for mundane crafting.
On that topic, if we make items we don't personally need, we can sell them, or at least trade, yes? Would we still do so for half price?
perhaps we could use ant chitin for some shields/ armour? Not traditional but probably somewhat effective given our current situation.
I kind of agree that it sort of makes sense that you couldn't recruit higher level characters, but on the other hand, if you invest in it, might as well get it. Given that it's an e6 world, though, I will probably reduce the levels of the NPCs in teams anyway. Anything above first level will be second level. They'll still produce capital the same way.
Did I say longsword? I meant battle axe.
I've got stats for your boy. Don't you worry.
As for selling anything, you won't be able to autosell anything until you've founded (or just found) a settlement of some kind. Right now, the people of the Laughing Lillend just don't have anything to buy with.
I would say you could use ant chitin as raw material for making shields or scale armor. It would work like bone armor.
I don't think it's a matter of autoselling anything, but surely I can trade some arrows with the hunters for this and that, food or crafting supplies they come across? Same goes with simpler weapons for the others, stuff like that no?
Or should we basically work under the assumption that the other settlers are at best capable of feeding themselves and otherwise completely helpless for the time being?
You can try to trade for this and that, yes.
Part of the concern is that I effectively multiplied the amount of value you can scavenge by 10 for the purposes of crafting, so that you can more easily make things that you need. I can reverse that, certainly, or we can agree that if you can find a buyer at all, you'll get about 1/10th the value for things you've crafted.
I kinda regret being a book binder now lol
I'm not sure that works as finding the materials is potentially less of an investment than actually crafting the item. Unless we were to use a smaller value to determine crafting progress? Selling the harvested materials themselves at 1/10th certainly seems reasonable though.
Looking at the crafting an income rules it looks like everything beyond what we can buy with our initial capital is likely to be an extremely long term investment. Gaining enough money to earn the capital required to build or hire anyone else is going to take months, even with the bonuses provided by the building we create initially.
I think that's kind of what you are going for, it's just taking some wrapping my head around :P
I am not 100% sure that we are going to have to pay people to help us build stuff essential to the colony. Stuff just for us yes, but I cannot see most people refusing to help build a palisade to protect themselves or a common building so their children have somewhere sheltered to sleep.
Yeah, I have to admit I'm a little unsure as to the mechanics of communal projects, it seems like in our given situation that would be the most practical use of a lot of our time and resources right now...
Looking at the crafting an income rules it looks like everything beyond what we can buy with our initial capital is likely to be an extremely long term investment. Gaining enough money to earn the capital required to build or hire anyone else is going to take months, even with the bonuses provided by the building we create initially.
The thing that troubles me is that from a roleplay point of view the months spent to earn the capital to build things are also needed to build the buildings. Each room also cost a certain number of downtime days, as well as goods, labor, etc. We are in spring now we have two and a half seasons to so a little more than six months to prepare for winter.
for example a farm cost about 2,060 GP worth of capital to build and at least 84 days to build all the rooms involved. I suppose if you had all the capital you could do it all in 20 days constructing all the rooms at once.
You only have to be there to start building a room. The way I read it, you don't actually have to even spend the day there. You just have to be there and say "pit" and in two days, you magically have a pit. What is it made of? Goods, influence and magic. OK, so who makes it? Labor.
I suggested teams because they generally are built faster than rooms, but it's just my personal preference. Rooms or teams, they generate capital while you go out and explore and have adventures and stuff.
There are no mechanics at this point for communal projects. At this point, there's no community, just a bunch of people sitting on the beach realizing they're having a bad day. To most of them, you guys are just some guys who went for a walk. If you want to get people to build a palisade, talk to 'em. I'm just the GM.
Which is why we as group are talking right now. So when we get back we have a gameplan for keeping people alive, as possibly making ourselves rich in the process.
Fair enough, though without managers, teams and buildings don't generate much of anything if you're not there. Managers don't become sustainable until you have large buildings generating impressive amounts of capital.
At 4gp a day with roughly a +7 bonus, a Master Smith needs to be overseeing a smithing operation that provides a +22 or so bonus before they start to break even.
As for talking to everyone, I think the point of these questions is to at least get these ideas on the table so you can think about how the mechanics of it might work for when we get back to the main group.
I'm not trying to cry foul or claim that non of this works, just trying to point out any issues I see in order to help get things running smoothly as soon as we can :) Once we all know how the basics work this will run beautifully!
I am trying to get an idea of how these mechanics work so I can plan out what to do.
We can probably use some of our NPCs as managers. Horn'Tos is probably the most accomplished smith in the camp except possibly for Vallen.
Vallen will want to stay behind with the camp while the rest of the team goes to the wreck of the Harpy.
Edit: (I didn't understand how teams worked in my original post. Original post within the
He'll work with Horn'tos and put together a Forge, loaning his anvil to the greater good. It takes 9 Goods, 1 Influence, 8 Labor to build a Forge, but Vallen can make plenty of skilled checks to generate capital.
Afterwards, he'll probably go around talking with everyone, and ask Jarla to help him, to see what kind of tools they need, and start working to gather capital and get people the tools they need to farm and cut lumber. With enough capital I'd put together a team of Craftspeople (if available) and have them work the forge. If I'm understanding this system right.
Short term goal: Put together a Team of Craftspeople. There's Horn'tos, at least. Just need 2 other skilled crafters in the settlers. Vallen will make skilled labor checks to generate the capital needed to hire the team (3 Goods, 2 Influence, 4 Labor)
Intermediate goal: Gain enough capital to construct a Forge (9 Goods, 1 Influence, 8 Labor) I feel this will be an incredible boon to the settlement.
Inbetween goal: If the elements prove too much, Vallen will likely construct a Shack (3 Goods, 2 Labor) or two for him and Jarla.
Long-term goal: Clearing the surrounding forest to make way for farms. The entire time Vallen will be making tools for the settlers to do whatever they want. Maybe they'll start clearing it themselves. This will generate lumber for people to do whatever, or for a pallisade if it's needed/they're convinced.
If we decide on a palisade Vallen can begin planning that out in his free time as well. If he's not looking for food. Otherwise someone is probably going to have to feed him.
A Palisade would be a good idea.
Structure wise I think a forge should be first followed by the palisade, that will have to be fairly big as ideally we could get all the tents, the forge and space for a large building in the centre.
Cool, I was planning to stay behind with Bern as well and hopefully with another PC we can forage and explore some more land. As well as helping to organize the settlers and do some crafting to make arrows and bows.
I agree that the forge is a good idea, seeing the need Gair will probably be willing to help out by putting some of his capital towards it. We'll need more backers in the party to get this done though. Kal'Tos would be a good bet, yes?
Who else has some initial buildings or teams they want to fund?
Once we've found some wildlife I'd like to set up some animal pens to help set up livestock and hold creatures for Gair to train. Though this is probably best saved for something we fund if we pull in some supplies from the Harpy.
All my goods are set aside for getting the smithy built.
Ok, so it looks like we have an overabundance of goods in our initial supplies.
Kal'Tor, Vallen, Ceuta and Garrak all have 5 goods each. Total 20
Grair has 2 Labor and 2 Influence, not sure what Ben has as present.
I think Vallen's initial goals are good. Get a team of craftsmen, followed by a forge.
Unless Ben has some we'll need to get our hands on 2 more labor in order to start.
The forge is going to be trickier. We'll need to earn another 8 labor, that's 80gp. Going to take a little while since most of us will be off salvaging from the Harpy as I understand it.
The Harpy expedition should take about 2 weeks with getting there, offloading the salvage to the beach and then taking a party by land to collect what couldn't be brought in the boat.
After that most of us should be able to help out with the earning of capital so we should have the labor needed in roughly 3 weeks total, plus another 3 weeks to build the forge and then we'll be good to go.
During the construction of the forge we'll be able to work on some other projects, especially if the salvage of the Harpy goes well.
How does that sound for an initial gameplan? At least on our end. Lots to do getting the settlers organized during that time.
Sounds like a good plan to me. I have the feeling we'll be reacting to threats to the settlement while trying to accomplish these goals though. I thought it was bad when ants get into my kitchen, but when GIANT ants start walking off with our settlers...
The people staying back can use other members of the expedition as labour. We might want to convince that stupid noble that it was his idea as people seem to do what he tells them. We may have to use him as a puppet and be the powers behind the throne, so to speak. Unless people are sick no one over the age of about 8 should be sitting around in the camp for the first few weeks. Not that I am saying that 8 year olds should be doing hard labour but they can carry tools, bring people water, act as lookouts, etc.
One issue we are going to run into is raw metal, establishing a mine is a way in the future project and without raw metal making new stuff at the forge could be an issue. When we get to the Harpy if it is made of metal and we can move it, we bring it back. If it turns out to not be useful we will turn it into something that is.
Wow! A lot of discussion has happened since I last checked in, and a lot of thinking along the lines of what I've been pondering as well.
I crunched some numbers for various projects (full disclaimer: the maths makes my head hurt). First, the longhouse idea:
Longhouse (11 rooms; 1 kitchen and 10 bunks - can house 100 people). This building would cost the following: 74 goods, 40 influence, 74 labor. We would also have to spend the time (all of us taking 10 on various checks would take 31 days to raise the capital. We would also need 1880 gp to spend to earn the capital. The longhouse would earn one combination of the following, per day: 9.4 gp; 4 labor and 1.4 gp (costing 40 gp for the labor as well); 9 gp and 1 goods (costing 10 gp for the goods); or 4 labor, 1 goods, and 1 gp (costing 50 gp for the goods and labor). If we started each room on the same day it would take 24 days to complete. If we did each room concurrently it would take 256 days. I'm not sure I understand the maximum capital per city size rule, so it is feasible that the low number of days (24) is not nearly accurate.
I think with just the shear gp needed, a longhouse is just not feasible. We could alternately buy a longhouse for 3760 gp.
Yeah, any full size buildings are seriously out of the cards for the time being as far as I can see.
A forge will give us, taking 10, 2 gp or 2 goods/day (costing 20 gold for the goods). This is a pretty good return on investment, in my opinion. The forge will cost 9 goods, 1 influence and 8 labor, which will in turn cost 180 gp to earn, and about 3 days to accumulate if everyone works towards the forge (360 gp to buy outright). The forge itself will take another 20 days to build, so 23 days in all (taking us out of any other action for three of those days).
Where do you get the 3 days to accumulate figure?
A shack will cost each of us 3 goods, 2 labor, and 3 days of time, plus another 5 days each to accumlate the capital, and 50 gp to earn the capital. It provides no benefit but shelter, but it would give us and our families each shelter. Given the prohibitive cost of a longhouse, I think we have to let the other npcs on the beach build their own shelter.
All this math is assuming a gold based economy, which right now we are not. Yes us building a longhouse with just our effort will not work, however there are 80+ other people that presumably aren't going to just sit there an die. If we can make a good case for, we can probably convince some people to help us get some buildings and defenses up while others gather food.
Note the GM said we don't really have to worry about food until after the ship leaves, so we have a week of all hands working towards getting the village established before we have to worry about food.
A workstation, (carpenter's for example) is another building I'd like to get going. It would earn 1.8 gp; or 1 goods or 1 influence a day (costing 10 gp to earn). Not as nice as a forge, but it does count as a mw artisan's tools for three people. It could be used towards crafting small boats and/or houses and possibly other wooden goods (wood armor? bows? arrows? spears?) A workstation would cost 8 goods, 7 labor, and 19 days to build (3 of which we would have to spend in town gathering capital). Additionally, it would cost 150 gp to earn the capital to build the workstation (or 300 gp to build outright).