Ruins of Azlant (Inactive)

Game Master Nathan Goodrich

Yeah, I think Dak must be continuing to deal with real life. If you want to pick up the game, I'm definitely OK with that; I think that's honestly more likely to be successful than recruiting a new GM. We'd have to recruit 2 or 3 players, to get us back to a full roster.

I'd hate for you to lose out as a player but I do agree that it's probably more successful for us to recruit additional players when we have a GM, then to be like "we need a GM and ALSO half a party."

Let me take a week to get the AP and do some reading, then. Once that's done, we'll start recruitment (giving me a little more time to read up). We could do them completely concurrently, but based on what I see in my first browse over the files, I may want to change up recruitment a bit.

I don't want to change up the character build rules much. New players will probably have some altered campaign traits and/or background considerations given how far we are in the campaign.

The one thing we've done in the campaign that I'm not at all sure I want to continue is the relics. I don't have the War for the Crown rules for them, and they were applied inconsistently (from my not-knowing-how-they-work perspective) anyway. I'm hoping that won't mean taking away Aurelian's rapier but just putting it onto a normal track of progression instead. That will be easier to justify if in its current state it is just an item the party could possibly have found along the way. It seems like the base Ioun Rapier is probably from this AP, but I don't know that yet.

A small update: I've skimmed through books 1 & 2 so far to make sure I understood what happened there. A few important items came up:

First, there is a detail about our party's participation in the colony that either never came up or was something I just missed. I think it would have impacted some of the roleplaying had I known about it, so I'll present it here.

The individual colonists each have their own motivations for joining the colony, but certain incentives and potential rewards appeal to just about anyone. If the Bountiful Venture Company successfully exports goods from Ancorato, each settler in the first few groups of colonists is entitled to a small share of the profits. This occurs only after the initial costs of the settlement are recouped, which may take years. Additionally, these early settlers receive a land grant once the colony becomes self-sufficient. These benefits serve to make early settlers feel invested in the venture while motivating them to work hard to quickly build an infrastructure for future settlers and industry.

Additionally, there are some encounters in Book II that we never did for some reason. One short encounter was entirely missed that is next to a landmark that our characters very probably should have seen. The blood forest back on Ancorato was kind of handwaved away, but it was several encounters long. We also didn't do a set of encounters on the north side of Ancorato. I'm thinking our GM at the time decided that we didn't notice anything there, so I can't say that they were wrong to have us miss them.

It did cause us to miss some treasure, though. As one example, there is an item in the blood forest that Sarine would have very much wanted to have.

In a very broad sense, the book suggests some ways that people can be determined to not be Faceless Stalkers. We probably could have figured those methods out by now. The method our party hit upon somehow is a difference in the color of blood, but the book makes no mention of that.

I've also caught up with where the party is at in Book 3. Our group's proclivity to go immediately after missing colonists is still hurting us some, but I think I'm more or less up to speed on how things have happened so far in that book.

Tettia & Prim were both mostly out of spell power at that point in the fight, so it might not be crazy to have us finish up that fight before we do any further recruitment.

I'm fine with finishing up the fight -- or just handwaving a bit and getting us to a place where we could pick up new recruits (whether one of them is a wyrwood, or perhaps some captives we find in this cave...).

I'd say with PBP, sometimes it makes sense to skip encounters. I've tried to do more of that honestly since combat can be so time consuming I'd rather focus on battles that actually mean something, and just make up for the missed treasure elsewhere. Also, IIRC, we avoided the blood forest? I thought we decided to just try to stay out of it.

I think the big thing to me is the way to determine if someone is a faceless stalker. If we work with the blood color, that's fine, but having some other option(s) at some point might be helpful.

We did circumvent the blood forest the first time. It got handwaved later as we were clearing up the island here.

As far as identifying Faceless Stalkers goes, the suggestion the books make is to take advantage of their DR/piercing or slashing. They resist bludgeoning damage. More broadly, they have other limitations like not eating normal food & needing blood. They aren't the perfect mastermind imitators I had assumed they would be. Keeping up the charade in a village that isn't expecting them would be way different than hiding among a village that is.

Thanks for doing all that work and reading, and shedding light on those aspects we may have missed. I have little else to add beyond that, but just registering my interest is still here, etc.

So a little pinprick test would probably work, since that wouldn't be enough to overcome DR/piercing (and wouldn't seem insane to do on a normal person).

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Sounds like we're in a good spot, then. I'd say let us know how you want to proceed, Sarine.

A quick clarification: the DR is bypassed by piercing or slashing. Bludgeoning is what they resist.

I'm trying to finish reading Book 3 before we start recruitment or I make other decisions. It's coming together fairly swiftly though.

Oh. That's a little harder to easily check for, but we could stub someone's toe. :)

I think I'm ready to get things moving for recruitment now. A few issues I've been mulling over though:

* My starting preference was to finish the current combat and then use any rescued people as a starting point for new PCs. But things would come out really weird if the party lost the fight. I don't think that would happen, but things can get weird when the party is outnumbered 8-3 and is trying to avoid killing (some of) their enemies. The actual chance that we'd have been able to free the colonists of control is pretty low, but that's what GM power is for.

* I typically prefer to skip over experience math and just hand out levels at milestones. These adventures are written in a freeform sort of style that would cause milestones to come up at awkward times though. So I'm leaning toward handing out experience normally, but I'd be willing to hear opinions on that.

* The hardest problem is what to do with treasure. The current party's treasure isn't in terrible shape, but that's before we reformat most of the party and start over. I'm not really wanting to let the new PCs start off with gear based on their Wealth by Level...the AP is balanced differently than most campaigns according to the books.

I haven't seen anything about Aurelian's Ioun Rapier in the AP. Do either of you know if there is a rules source for it?

I've considered rebooting the treasure entirely with the new party coming in. That would mean I'd need to go through the books and find all the treasure that the party could reasonably encounter in Books 1 & 2, involving some judgment calls. That would probably include some encounters we never did, such as perhaps the blood forest treasure I mentioned earlier. That one is easier to justify than some since the campaign says we did it...except that we didn't. It's weird. Any treasure we passed over probably wouldn't make the cut. Treasure we in fact did get would probably be handled just like we did in game.

That wouldn't mean that the party would just be stuck with whatever the books hand out, since the party is supposed to have some access to trading through supply ships as well as nearby aquatic cities via the locathahs we met. So you'd have some opportunity to shake things up.

I'd like feedback on this point specifically.

* When the AP first started, I was hoping that it would include some Kingmaker-lite sort of elements in terms of building up the colony and getting to see our home base expand. That book acknowledges some of that sort of thing going on, but it doesn't give much direct support for it. If you guys would prefer, I can slow down the plotting somewhat to allow for more in-colony downtime for the PCs to grow into colony leaders & such. That would probably include some opportunities for you to determine how the colony develops as it emerges from its defensive huddle. The scene change from Book 2 to Book 3 didn't allow for that at all, really, but I see some potential spacing we could use coming up.

* I think probably resetting somehow would be best, honestly. It's odd that we're in the middle of a fight and going to have to replace the majority of the party. If it's me, I handwave most of this (though I don't know how much that actually involves) and get us going again. Alternatively, if Zay is fine, we could both try to pick up one of the other PCs and we'll run them for the duration of this fight. I'd prefer the former, but I could manage the latter, I think (partly it depends on how well they've tracked their resources).

* I'm fine if you want to do XP, mostly. My one concern is that I think it's worth skipping some fights in PBP because they're not really load bearing. Especially if we're in an exploration mode where we're having one fight in a day and there's no real danger of dying, that's just too much time for too little reward in PBP, IMO. That could also throw off leveling. That said, I think that might be more on you (you could just add to XP rewards too).

* I think reskinning treasure sounds like a lot of work. I'm fine subbing out my ioun rapier for something else -- I'm not quire sure where the GM came up with that idea -- but I would try to minimize some of those changes. I know there's some Azlanti/ioun specific things here, so if we've missed some of that, it could be retconned in. But otherwise -- without having to read the adventures -- I would be leery of that as seeming like more work than it's worth.

* My feeling is the Kingmaker-style development, like many subsystems, don't work well in PBP unless you have one person really dedicated to it and others willing to go along (for instance, in Primrose/Shadowlord's Irongfang Invasion, I handled a lot of the refugee tracking because I enjoy such tracking, but it was basically ignored completely in my own run of that game). The caravan stuff in a Jade Regent game I was in just seemed to suck up so much time/energy to figure out -- again, I say that as someone who often enjoys those systems, but they're just so much easier when you can hash things out face to face instead of possibly having to wait for 24 hours to go back and forth.

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How are you thinking of doing recruitment? Looking for specific folks or open call?

* Since the books don't support it directly, when I mentioned Kingmaker-lite, I mean REALLY lite. Just basically describing how the colony grows over time & what the PCs want to do with their efforts & land. I wouldn't intend to put any dicerolling into it.

I didn't have any ideas for recruitment other than open call.

Oh, I'm fine with that, then. Making the colony something we care about makes sense.

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It may be worth recruiting from other games we've run. I certainly have played with a number of good folks, who I know are reliable posted. Certainly up to you -- open calls can be a lot of fun (and give an opportunity to folks who are newer to PBP), you just don't always know what you're going to get.

Reliable people are amazing, but I like to give newer players a chance. Let's split the difference. If you have anyone in mind, feel free let them know we'll be doing a recruitment. I'll plan to put it up tomorrow morning. If they look at our starting recruitment for this game, the new version should be close to that.

I'm a little late on this, but I finally got the recruitment page up here.

Feel free to stop by to introduce your characters if you would like. As above, if you know reliable players that might be interested, please direct them to the recruitment thread.

One thing I remembered while writing out recruitment is that we did some rolling for HP during character advancement, with a minimum of half+1, and that always bothered me. If you guys want to keep your existing HP rolls I'm willing to let that stand (and new players would get similar rolls) but any new levels will probably be on the half+1 basis.

Zay, our original GM was requiring the Mostly Human trait for Undines. Do you know what that is? I couldn't find it.

My apologies, I was checking the boards at work rather than from home and it wasn't showing me any new posts at all. Turned out to be a login/cache issue. I'll go check out the recruitment, etc.

Mostly Human: A few undines have appearances much closer to those of their human ancestors; in fact, they may not even realize their true race. Such geniekin appear to be human, save perhaps minor features like unusual eye color, and they count as humanoid (human) as well as outsider (native) for all purposes (such as humanoid-affecting spells such as charm person or enlarge person). These geniekin do not automatically gain their associated elemental language (but may select it as a bonus language if their Intelligence is high enough). This ability alters the geniekin’s type, subtype, and languages.

Alright. Welcome everyone. I took too long figuring out the recruitment, but we should have our new players in here soon.

We have some housekeeping tasks before we get started meaningfully in gameplay, but I'm hoping to get through them quickly.

The first is that we need to catch the new players up on the events of the game until now. In the interest of not wasting too much time while I craft language, I'll be somewhat brief about the first two books. Feel free to add in detail. The new players have some decisions to make about how they got to where they are.

The party may want to shake out any bugs in the system. If you want to shake out any bugs in your builds now that you know who you'll be playing with, do so.

I also need to get treasure out to the new party members and I'll be figuring out how to get that done today.

Book 1 events:

The party arrived on Ancorato with the second wave of colonists to find that the first wave of colonists had entirely disappeared. They explored the remaining settlement and founds signs of some internal stife in the colony, but did not locate any survivors and only a very few bodies. After clearing out a nearby cave of water goblins, the remaining colonists got settled in. The party had started to earn a reputation as trouble-shooters.

Exploration of the nearby area continued, and they found a few Azlanti ruins. Foremost among those was Research Station Spindlelock. The party encountered a number of skum guards there and found the first pair of their missing colonists. The two colonists turned on the party and attacked them. One died in the fighting, but the party managed to defeat the other and get him to come to his senses: Rayland Arkley, the provisional leader of the colony during the first wave. Rayland's skin had become transparent and wasn't able to tell the party what happened to most of the colonists. He knows that someone controlled him, but not who.

Book 2 events:

With few leads to go on, the party started building up the colony for a few weeks. Eventually Ramona, the intended leader of the colony that arrived with the second wave, asked the party to explore the wider environment of the island Talmandor's Bounty (the colony) is on. The party explored:

* an abandoned Ulfen settlement first chronicled by one of the early Pathfinders, Durvin Gest
* a waterfall cavern that appeared to be an ancient archaeological excavation
* a laboratory in a crater that held information about the nature of Ioun Stones
* made peaceful contact with a group of locathahs led by Koloshkora (importantly, Koloshkora has trade contacts with a nearby aquatic city and has the ability to help the party buy and sell goods)
* made peaceful contact with a reclusive water naga Vriskirsa, whose home had been taken over by sahuagin and is willing to trade some of her valuables with the party at times
* defeated the sahuagin and their crazy shark. One of the sahuagin suggested that some of the missing colonists may have gone to the witch in an ancient observatory on a mountain of Ancorato.

The party went to the observatory to confront the witch and found it the lair of a number of trolls. A few remains suggested that their colonists may have been eaten, and no colonists were found on the site. The party rescued a cyclops who had been tormented by the witch over a long period of time and whose eye had been gouged out. Finally, they confronted the witch (a hag) and forced her to flee. She hasn't been seen since.

The party returned triumphantly to Talmandor's Bounty, but without any of the missing colonists. Soon after they came back, chaos broke out in the colony as many of the colonists were revealed to be shapeshifters who had taken their place and pretended to be the people in question. A visiting supply ship and the colony's government house both burned, although the ship was saved from the flames.

Book 3 events so far:
After recovering from the events of the night before, the party began looking for any clues that would tell them where the faceless stalkers had come from and where their missing colonists might have gone to. Locating tracks and tracing the behavior of some of the colonists that had proven to be faceless stalkers led them to a part of the coast of Ancorato, and they determined that the remaining creatures had fled to another island nearby, Zanas-Tahn. The party prepared a makeshift boat that got them to Zanas-Tahn just barely ahead of a storm front and they began tracking down the faceless stalkers.

Along the way, the party encountered a group of wyrwood living in a settlement called Hullhold. They initially had to convince the creatures that they were not faceless stalkers in disguise, but managed to come to an arrangement with them. The wyrwood are very interested in any Ioun Stones that the party can trade them, as they form the foundation of new wyrwoods. The party also came across an intricate Azlanti device that they explored for a time before they decided to continue on in pursuit of the lost colonists.

Their pursuit brought them to a ruined an partially sunken temple where they once again confronted a group of faceless stalkers. After several combats, the faceless stalkers deployed a group of dominated colonists against them, with a faceless stalker mimicing each colonist such that two of each person were attacking the party. During that combat, the campaign progress stopped. We've called off that combat and are assuming that the party backed out of the sunken temple to regroup.

Given that recent event, one easy possibility to introduce new characters is to say that your characters are the ones that just fought against the party. The scenario contemplates the possibility of breaking the domination the colonists were under. If so, your characters could have very plausibly come from:
* the first wave of colonists, some of whom were taken here
* the second or a later wave of colonists, who were replaced by a faceless stalker and brought here during the events of the campaign
* something else? Lots of possibilities are plausible, but most of them wouldn't have your characters intending to be colonists

If your characters are rescued as described above, your memories are fuzzy, suggesting manipulation. You do know that many other colonists were taken deeper into the temple, but you don't know where.

For treasure: the situation isn't irredeemably messed up, but we are in a spot that is difficult to entangle. The adventure path as a whole states that it gives out some extra treasure for two reasons. First, because access to civilization is limited. Second, because the party needs to be able to handle the extensive underwater encounters coming up.

Currently, Aurelian is the only party member that has received their gear from play since the opening of the campaign. I haven't spoken with Aurelian about it, but if his gear situation is like my prior character's, he is overgeared in some ways and undergeared in others. Zay switched characters from their starting dwarf at one point and (I think) got normal Wealth by Level gear at that time.

Our first GM also started handing out relic items to some of the players. I already decided I'm not going to continue that practice since I don't own the source books for those. This mostly just means that Aurelian is going to lose his cool rapier.

We also need to account somewhat for the fact that prior existing characters left the campaign with the gear they had. We could do something in the way of finding out what they had and reclaiming the gear. I'm not sure that would really get us where we want to be though.

One option is to just let the new characters get their Wealth by Level gear & to give Aurelian a replacement for his rapier. That's not crazy, but it has some problems since the characters are actually supposed to get more Wealth than normal in this campaign.

The other option I can think of takes some work, but would keep us somewhat more faithful to the campaign I think. I've scanned through the books to find all the treasure I can and made a list of what the party should have encountered by now. A large majority of the items fit what I remembered from playing through the campaign. There are a few small discrepancies and at least two big ones. But I could set out a list of equipment for you and you could select your gear from that list. Except for equipment found in Book 3, you'd be able to make use of trading opportunities to fit the gear better to what your character would want to use, especially in weapon and armor types. If we do this, Aurelian should probably select first for what his character already has. This option probably means re-doing Zay's gear.

What do you guys think?

Hi All! I'm really excited to be joining this game. GM Netherpongo, thanks for picking this up.

I read both PCs backstories and I have to say, they're two of my favorites that I've seen. I love the overconfidence (maybe not, maybe he's just really capable?) of Auerlian, and Zay's backstory is just perfect. It hits all the right notes.

Regarding Taty, I think she would have jumped at the chance to be part of the first wave of colonists, so it makes sense that she could have arrived then. The only concern - ok, not really a concern, but more of a change, I suppose - that I have is that being mindwiped and controlled would probably be pretty traumatic, and so her more effusive and happy go lucky personality may get a little darker. But she is an unwanted child that grew up confined to an attic, so she'll get over it.

Regarding wealth, I'm happy to do whatever Aurelian and Zay wish - they've been with the campaign for the long haul and should have the say, IMO.

I'll go ahead and stealth dot in the gameplay thread now. Thanks again, I'm looking forward to gaming with you all!

As for build adjustments, I'll probably trade out Cornugon Smash for something else since Aurelian can demoralize. Depending on how gear is handled, I may trade out fauchard proficiency. And I'm thinking about trading out a 2nd level spell for shared training, which would allow Taty to share outflank easier. I'm just having trouble deciding which spell to trade out.

Otherwise, I think Taty is ready to go. She'll be a decent textbook, can buff the party a bit with spells and teamwork feats, and is intended to be a ranged backliner/spot frontliner in combat, focusing on flanking and AoOs.

Welcome to our new players! Enjoyed both of your applications. Thanks for the kind words, Tatienne/Fighting Chicken.

Re: gear-- I did indeed benefit from going WBL with Zay as opposed to the stuff Jenner had before. I admit that I would selfishly prefer NOT to have to regear Zay, but, I mean, if that's what I gotta do, that's what I gotta do. The main thing is that my direct combat effectiveness drops a fair bit if I lose my agile amulet of mighty fists-- I think you have seen enough of Zay in combat, Netherpnongo, to know that I'm not exactly some sort of broken, OP combat beast... the wildshaping just gives me versatility. The agile amulet lets me at least contribute some direct damage, but without it, I'd have to focus a lot more on spells during combat. Which is certainly an option! I just really enjoy the wild shape theme for this character.

...hmm.... I also no longer have anyone to cast mage armor. Saddest panda. *zay wildshapes into a panda*

Thanks also for the recap. It's been so long that it's pretty useful for me too, to remember what's going on overall and what order things have happened in.

Since I said it back when I intro'd Zay originally, but our new players won't likely see that: Zay is intended to be genderfluid, much like Gozreh, their patron. I tend to use 'they' as Zay's pronoun. However, neither Zay, nor myself OOCly, will be offended if characters or players use 'he' or 'she' - Gozreh has both male and female aspects, after all. Just so nobody's worried about stepping on toes!

One comment on the campaign's original gear-- this is basically just me reflecting my experience with Jenner, but I was a little underwhelmed by things like that initial seaborne axe. Since the campaign guide does all this stressing that it's a good idea to have characters be able to fight in the water, that's what I did-- I gave Jenner 'aquatic combatant' as a level 1 feat, which meant that there was this fairly expensive axe that is clearly meant to be useful to the party if they HAVEN'T planned their character with aquatic combat options, but feels kind of like "...oh... okay... thanks I guess...." if you've already taken that into account.

So I'm wondering when there's all this stressing about 'there's extra wealth to help people be able to prepare for the underwater' if it's going to be something similar.

Don't have time at this moment to read over your post fully Zay, but I did see the thing about needing certain equipment for your build to function.

I don't think the second plan I described would actually impact that. It will be easy to say that the party traded some of the existing loot for your amulet. There are LOTS of items the party won't use and can sell off. You shouldn't have a problem getting your items back, and the intent isn't to strip you of stuff you need.

I'll read more closely soon.

Hey all, welcome aboard. Nice to "meet you," Tatienne; looks like you've got a great PBP history, and I'm looking forward to playing with you. Kassiani, good to have another game with you.

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Aurelian, if you haven't seen, is very much an id-driven hedonist. Kassiani, he's pretty much the polar opposite of everyone's favorite blushing barbarian. Aurelian will flirt -- and more -- with just about everyone and everything. That said, obviously please let me know if I ever make you uncomfortable. I can certainly dial him back.

In terms of money, I have no problem (as noted before) getting rid of my relic rapier. Not counting the rapier, I'd be 10,000 gp below WBL.

The relic's actually pretty easy to break down, however. It's 9,400 gp of ioun stones (not counting the currently nonfunctioning stone that would let me breathe water), plus a +2 weapon* (8,000 gp), which puts me a little about WBL for starting 7th level.

* It's technically +3 counting keen, but that's actually useless since it duplicates a swashbuckler ability.

So, swapping the relic out with a regular +2 rapier, and the individual ioun stones, should have me right about where I should be.

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As for the rest, I think I would have everyone be WBL (which would mean not changing Zay and Aurelian, other than what's described above). If the book indicates we should have more than that, I think I would add a pool of whatever amount of gp that could only be spent on certain curated items (all water related). I think that feels like the easiest solution to me.

Note that Aurelian does have a cloak of the manta ray (7,200 gp) as his biggest piece of treasure other than his sword.

Thanks for choosing me Netherpongo, and hello everyone!

It's been a train wreck of a couple weeks for me with the power outage, followed by a dead modem (while I'm working from home), and the end of the month when things are busiest at work. I'm still catching up so I'm going to jot out a few quick things about the game questions. I'll post more later.

Given Kassiani's background and interests there's no chance she would have consented to sit on her hands while a party of explorers was busy doing things if she had arrived with the second wave of colonists.

She could have been among the first wave and mentally manipulated. That one will work. The only thing that comes to mind as a possible obstacle would be she would then have knowledge of what happened at the colony in the time prior to the arrival of the PCs. Maybe that's not an issue anymore?

I did notice there is a third ship involved, the supply ship that almost burned. Could she have arrived on that ship as a latecomer? I wrote the backstory assuming there would be another ship delivering the new PCs to the island. I can work around that if it doesn't line up with events correctly, it seems the party is on another island now? But I'd opted for that approach since being new to the area seemed the cleanest entry.

It might be worth pointing out that Kassiani only sort of half-intends to be a colonist. She'll play her role as one and so forth, and it's possible she might decide at some point to stay permanently, but really her goals are Pathfinder Society business related.

As for the magic and wealth and so forth. I'm agnostic on the subject whatever those more familiar with the situation think is best is fine with me.

When I get a chance later tonight or tomorrow I'll look more closely at the party members and see if there's anything I want to change about Kassiani's build. Offhand I don't think there is. The Rogue drip aligns well with Sanctified Slayer, the Sneak Attack abilities from both classes stack, etcetera. Kassiani isn't really a specialty build, more about the durability I can manage to get and self-sufficiency. The party shouldn't be too much of an influence on the fundamentals.

Kassiani probably won't quite manage as a full front liner, but she should do well in melee combat. She'll be self-buffing, as Inquisitors tend to do, and her damage should be quite good in busts as long as spell and Bane aren't running out for the day all the time. She'll be more of an opportunistic sneak attacker, taking them when she can but not working hard to set them up if it would mean waiting to attack in favor of positioning. Kassiani does have a very good initiative bonus, and with the Ambuscading Spell feat she can lead with a debuff in surprise rounds that will hopefully come up often enough to make taking the feat worth it.

Out of combat she'll be good at certain things like support on skill checks. She won't be a walking library like Taienne can be, but she'll be able to aid if needed on lots of checks. Kassiani is also a very good party face, but I'm sure Aurelian has that in hand already. She'll be excellent in certain areas like skills checks to ID opponents abilities and weaknesses due to Monster Lore.

...he's pretty much the polar opposite of everyone's favorite blushing barbarian.

Aw, Nebbin is the sweetest barbarian in the whole world!

No need to worry about me. Kassiani can stand her ground just find with Aurelian I'm sure. :)

...hmm.... I also no longer have anyone to cast mage armor. Saddest panda. *zay wildshapes into a panda*

If we can get ahold of a wand of mage armor, Taty can help with this via UMD. And if we can't, panda wildshapes are a nice consolation ;)

Since I said it back when I intro'd Zay originally, but our new players won't likely see that: Zay is intended to be genderfluid, much like Gozreh, their patron. I tend to use 'they' as Zay's pronoun. However, neither Zay, nor myself OOCly, will be offended if characters or players use 'he' or 'she' - Gozreh has both male and female aspects, after all. Just so nobody's worried about stepping on toes!

IRL I work at a university where it is very much our culture to take pronouns into account with introductions, emails, etc., so I'm pretty mindful of preferred pronouns. As an aside, I enjoyed the love and acceptance of Zay and their father in your backstory.

So I'm wondering when there's all this stressing about 'there's extra wealth to help people be able to prepare for the underwater' if it's going to be something similar.

So if I understand correctly, your take is that we shouldn't worry too much about gearing our PCs towards being highly functional underwater? Other than maxing the swim skill, I didn't really do much to prep Taty for underwater, hoping that there would be gear to handle this.

Aurelian, if you haven't seen, is very much an id-driven hedonist. Kassiani, he's pretty much the polar opposite of everyone's favorite blushing barbarian. Aurelian will flirt -- and more -- with just about everyone and everything. That said, obviously please let me know if I ever make you uncomfortable. I can certainly dial him back.

I haven't read too much of the gameplay, but from what I have read, I'm not worried about this, and think Aurelian's charm is that he's fully committed to Aurelian, so I hope you won't dial this back. It is pretty perfect IMO.

It's been a train wreck of a couple weeks for me with the power outage, followed by a dead modem (while I'm working from home), and the end of the month when things are busiest at work. I'm still catching up so I'm going to jot out a few quick things about the game questions. I'll post more later.

I'm sorry to hear you were effected by the storms. I hope that you get caught up soon!

GM: Fair 'nuff re keeping important bits of our gear. Then I have no objections to however you want to do it. :P

As an aside, I enjoyed the love and acceptance of Zay and their father in your backstory.

:) Thanks! Glad to hear it.

So if I understand correctly, your take is that we shouldn't worry too much about gearing our PCs towards being highly functional underwater? Other than maxing the swim skill, I didn't really do much to prep Taty for underwater, hoping that there would be gear to handle this.

Eh, sort of -- more like that the AP so FAR had stuff that was clearly intended for "hey, you built a fighter that can't fight well underwater, let's help you out" and maybe the stuff ahead assumes we'll have that gear still. However, as a druid, I'll have a lot of spells that should be able to assist with things like water breathing, movement, etc, if necessary, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I am excite! I know it'll be a bit of hashing out before the new characters will be interested, but I'm fond of this campaign and really glad we'll get some fresh life into it. Thanks for making the jump to GM, Netherpongo, and thanks to our new players for bringing great new characters to us.

And I think I forgot to say it, GM, but I'm super interested in the idea of some Kingmaker-lite aspects-- I'd love it if the colony actually felt like one as opposed to just a place we go to collect our next round of quests, so to speak.

However, as a druid, I'll have a lot of spells that should be able to assist with things like water breathing, movement, etc, if necessary, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Ooohh, that's great! I don't have much experience with druids. Don't think I've ever seen one in a game. I've always wanted to play one, but I can never come up with a backstory that seems compelling. I don't know why, but I just have a block with the class.

And I think I forgot to say it, GM, but I'm super interested in the idea of some Kingmaker-lite aspects-- I'd love it if the colony actually felt like one as opposed to just a place we go to collect our next round of quests, so to speak.

This would be really cool and I'd be interested in this too.

Many distractions today. That will extend into the morning tomorrow. Hopefully I can post more by the evening.

I don't have much experience with druids. Don't think I've ever seen one in a game. I've always wanted to play one, but I can never come up with a backstory that seems compelling. I don't know why, but I just have a block with the class.

I have a mild aversion to pet classes, so 'classic' druid doesn't work too well for me-- I've tried it a few times in various iterations-- but I have had two druids I've had a lot of fun with-- one being Zay, to focus on wild shape as a fun thematic challenge, and also because I wanted to amuse myself with the rhetorical question of 'if this character had swum from Taldor to the new colony, how would they have managed it in their own right?' and druid was the best class for that. My other druid is a PFS cave druid-- a crotchety old dwarven grandma-- with a focus on pit spells, who wears full stoneplate. Standing around with a 30+AC while hurling spells from the front line is pretty fun, hehe.

A spell-focused druid feels kind of like a spell-focused cleric-- a lot of buff and control spells. Being able to convert your semi-lackluster low level spells into allied animals/etc isn't bad to get you through to the higher levels.

I've only ever seen one Druid played before, and that was a very low levels. I've always been interested in the class, but I don't usually play in campaigns that match the class very well.

I have a hard time getting my head around Druids actually. It seems like they would be difficult to make, several different almost independent aspects to them that have to be simultaneously considered. And also like you Zay I've never taken to pet classes. Maybe Druids aren't as hard to figure out as they seem, but when I've come close to making one I've always backed away before getting into the process.

Kassiani doesn't have any underwater capabilities at this point. Not much in the way of options within the Inquisitor class itself. Water Beathing is a 3rd level spell, which are still a level away for Kassiani. She'll be dependent on magical gear of some type, and we haven't worked that out yet.

I've also never been much for pet classes (outside of the Spiritualist, which I LOVE). I think the mechanics, especially wildshape, look like a lot of fun, but I have so much trouble writing a compelling backstory. I also really wish there was an archetype that functioned as a spontaneous caster.

Zay, your dwarf stone druid looks like a lot of fun!

There is a spontaneous caster Druid archetype, ummm..... Well, maybe I'm wrong about that. The Feyspeaker switches to Charisma based casting and gives some spontaneous spells, but those replace the nature's ally spells. Looks like it's not really the same thing.

(In case anyone wants to see the cave druid at level 11-- I picked more for 'fun' than for true optimization, but being able to throw out a ton of buffs like freedom of movement, communal stoneskin, etc, has never NOT been welcome at the table in PFS play, in my experience. The cave druid archetype especially gives a lot of nice bonuses for adventuring, since, you know, you're gonna probably be underground a decent chunk of time)

Getting back to this. People don't seem to be excited about non-Wealth by Level options, and we can go WBL if you guys want to. I think I should at least show you what I've been looking at before you make that decision though. I valued the stuff that the party would have before Book 3 in a summary:

magic armor & weapons: 42,100
ioun stones: 6050
other magic items: 81,615
consumables: 8409
masterwork armors & weapons: 2550
currency or currency-convertable goods: 11,319 – this total includes information from book 3, but I messed up and conglomerated it all together so the figure can stand

item subtotal: 139,724
cash total: 11,319

Wealth by Level for Level 7 is 23500, so for a party of four we'd be looking at 94,000. If we assume that none of the gear was appropriate for your characters & you had to sell it all off, we'd have a figure of roughly 81,181 (50% of item subtotal & 100% of cash total). That's unlikely to be the case though. I didn't add up some of the cheaper mundane things, but they shouldn't matter to how the totals look. Also, some of the consumables should be at least partly expended, but I don't think we used very many of them.

The totals above also don't include anything from the Bleeding Forest. The Bleeding Forest was handwaved, but holds quite a bit of treasure. My subtotal of gear for that area is 20,190.

There is a spontaneous caster Druid archetype, ummm..... Well, maybe I'm wrong about that. The Feyspeaker switches to Charisma based casting and gives some spontaneous spells, but those replace the nature's ally spells. Looks like it's not really the same thing.

Yeah, the Feyspeaker is so close to being perfect for the casters I like to play, but I think it still is not spontaneous, unfortunately.

(In case anyone wants to see the cave druid at level 11-- I picked more for 'fun' than for true optimization, but being able to throw out a ton of buffs like freedom of movement, communal stoneskin, etc, has never NOT been welcome at the table in PFS play, in my experience.

That looks like a really fun build to play. I can totally see how this would be welcome - and probably pretty unique - at a Society table.

Great stuff

I'll still defer to everyone else on this. I do think there's some really nice utility things for the party on this list (the cure potions and scrolls, the wand of mage armor, the wand of freedom of movement, the various underwater stuff).

GM Netherpongo, questions:

I took fauchard proficiency with Tatienne. I assume there's not going to be much in the way of enchanted fauchards floating around, and spending 18k gp on a +3 weapon is a bit too much at this time. Is there going to be the possibility of enchanting weapons in the future, either by taking crafting feats for our PCs or via paying a spellcaster? I ask because I'm thinking about letting the fauchard proficiency go to take a reach weapon proficiency more likely to appear.

Are ioun stones important to the plot? There seems to be a lot of ioun stones and related items in the gear to date.

OK, I switched out Taty's rogue talent weapon trick (cornugon smash) for weapon trick (combat reflexes) and took outflank with the feat slot freed up by taking combat reflexes through weapon trick.

Then, instead of taking the masterpiece Battle Song of the People's Revolt with a second level spell, I took Share Training. This way, I can give 2 allies outflank for 70 minutes/casting.

I think Taty's build is complete.

So just to make sure I'm clear re: previous treasure. We'd reset to basically starting gear for all of us. Then we effectively have everything in the list in your previous post, so we'd all go through and claim what we want from that, then sell what we don't want and use those proceeds for any additional gear (minus some of the Book 3 stuff we're not yet able to trade)?

I'm fine with that. It definitely looks like there'd be enough there to still buy Zay's amulet again.

(I see there's an asterisk by the ioun gauntlet. Is that intended?)

Kassiani also has the Outflank feat so now everyone in the party can have it. It might be interesting to build in this direction with other stuff like Seize the Moment and Paired Opportunist. Maybe Kassiani should trade Ambuscading Spell for Combat Reflexes...

That a big pile of loot!

^ I think this could be a lot of fun to build towards. I'm certainly considering Seize the Moment and Paired Opportunists in my build. I'm also thinking about Antagonize, Phalanx formation, and Arcane Strike, so I may take some levels in fighter at some point to ease the feat burden.

I plan on taking Battle Song of the People's Revolt masterpieces the next two levels at least as well, to add some more situational teamwork feats. Escape Route being one, not sure about the other. The issue I run into with this masterpiece is that it doesn't confer the teamwork feat when the masterpiece isn't being used, and the Song counts as bardic performance, so I can't run this and Archaeologist's Luck at the same time until 10th level when I get 4th level spells. Feats like Outflank, Seize the Moment, etc., are just too good to have access to on a situational basis.

So yeah, that's my long-winded way of saying, I'm happy to build towards this :)

So just to make sure I'm clear re: previous treasure. We'd reset to basically starting gear for all of us. Then we effectively have everything in the list in your previous post, so we'd all go through and claim what we want from that, then sell what we don't want and use those proceeds for any additional gear (minus some of the Book 3 stuff we're not yet able to trade)?

I'm fine with that. It definitely looks like there'd be enough there to still buy Zay's amulet again.

If this is what is being proposed, I'm also fine with that. I'm easy, other than wanting to keep my amulet. ;)

Handling some questions, probably in a fairly chaotic order:

Tatienne: Talasantri is specifically noted as being good for enchanting so long as the party can wait for the gear to make the trip there & back again, with time for enchanting. Same with Almas, except longer travel times & probably more availability.

Zay's first character was a dwarven warpriest building with Craft Magic Arms & Armor in mind, so we could also just use that. Jenner might lag behind the party a bit in levels, but it would be a way to not fall very far behind.

So you can keep the fauchard if you want. I'd trade some of the party loot away to get (at least) a +1 Fauchard and then count on enchanting it up from there.

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Sidenote #1: I read in one part that the main NPC's (Ramona & the like) can level up alongside the party, again probably at a slower pace. No indication of how that was supposed to happen was given.

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Aurelian: I think you outlined my intent with the gear option correctly. The Ioun Gauntlet's asterisk was supposed to mean that it was an item made for this campaign and probably you should keep it around (though I know of no really special plot relevance). I just forgot to say so after I wrote out the rest of the post.

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Sidenote #2: while I'm thinking of it, I didn't calculate out precise values for all the gear, mostly in the weapons & armor. A +1 longsword was rounded to 2300 for the sake of quicker calculations instead of a correct 2308, for instance. The effect is probably more pronounced in the armor since even breastplates are 200g that I wasn't counting. Not a big deal, but the gold amount isn't exact and should be slightly higher.

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Kassiani: at your option, you may want to work Carver Hastings, the existing Pathfinder agent in Talmandor's Bounty, into your background. Even if she doesn't know Carver, she likely would have known of him: that he would be arriving before or after she got to the colony.

Additionally, as I'm reading the books coming up there are places where the AP has options for Craft (Clockwork) checks to be made. Your character might be interested in taking skill ranks in that based on her background. Definitely a nonstandard specialization for Craft, and I don't know how anyone would think to take such ranks if a GM didn't point out to them that it could be a thing.

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Kingmaker-lite: the AP really doesn't help with any rules support for a Kingmaker-like structure. I checked out the GM thread for this AP and it's obvious that other GMs were missing that as well. Some made up their own rules.

I'm intended to be very lite (in terms of rules) on the Kingmaker-lite. When we get the party back to Talmandor's Bounty, I'll probably be asking things like what your character wants to do to help grow the colony & what other tasks they want to pursue. As long as your choices stay on the sane side of things (being reasonable extrapolations of the in-world situation), you are probably fine to do what you like.

I'm inclined to have more time pass between Book 3 & Book 4 than the AP suggests would be the case. In my experience far too many APs rush the party through their levels in a very short space of time. In this situation, 'more time' would probably be enough to get stone quarried, more colonists arriving and time to settle in a bit.

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With that out of the way, go ahead and select your gear/trade for what you need that isn't on the list. I'm not seeing anything that should keep us from resuming Gameplay soon (not tonight).

The new characters both seem to think that they shouldn't be second wave colonists. First wave or later-than-second wave should work (it isn't very clear how many waves there should have been by now). Later-than-second wave colonists would probably be very recent abductees while first wave colonists would have been captives for a few months by now at least. Being captive to these critters isn't much fun, so consider that when making your choices.

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If our new players want to meet my old PC, you can find Sarine Dulciare at the link or in the character list.

I don't think the party needs her around as a member, but she'll probably make some appearances in a new NPC role.

I'm glad we'll still be keeping Sarine as an NPC. <3 Demon cat!

Agreed, re: demon cat.

I think each of us should go through the treasure and note things you'd like. I assume there will be some overlap, but we can figure that out once we know. I'd say don't worry about consumables. I imagine we'll keep all of those except the ones we can't use and divvy them up pretty equally. Let's start by focusing on the bigger items.

Aurelian will definitely want the +1 mithral chain shirt, but I'll go through the rest ASAP.

Sounds like a good plan.

The thing that jumped out at me is the +1 mithril breastplate. I'll look through the item by item as soon as I can. I think I'm going to have to look a lot of things up before I know what they are.