Getting walloped at work with pre-holiday work - hope to get a post up today but if not, Taty will cast haste if needed (as Houghton posted above, the intention was to pre-cast it, but maybe that wasn't possible?) or full attack if haste is already cast.
Buffs cast / to be cast: Haste, good hope, alter self (taty only, orc), mirror image (taty only). With AL and Bull's Strength/Bear's Endurance from Zay, Taty's at
21 Str
18 Con
+18/+18/+13 for 1d8+21 (+17/+12 if Haste is not active)
Pre-casting was possible, so having it up now is fine. I just looked for it in the gameplay thread & didn't see it.
I don't think Aurelian took a hasted attack so there is still time to throw that in.
So I looked at Gravel Vortex more closely today and it's VERY close to Ice Storm. Unless the cold damage is relevant or you're a giant, they are identical...maybe corner cases with DR matter.
I don't think we had a problem here because the two spells are identical for our purposes. Broadly speaking, I'd like to stay away from spells & other optoins that come from Adventure Paths though (aside from Ruins of Azlant, obviously). There is often context-specific stuff going on with AP spells--this one looks like it was intended for use by stone giants specifically--and if there's something about it, I don't have the books to go over any details.
Again, I don't think it's a problem here but I've heard rumblings about Blood Money in quarters unrelated to this game... Not all AP spells were meant for general use.
This doesn't need to be a blanket ban but if you need an option from an atypical resource, please ask about it.
That's perfectly fair. I hadn't even really looked at the source for it, just went '5d6 no save? Druid want!' I can easily switch it to Ice Storm, it makes no real difference.
In the immediate circumstance, it makes no difference at all. No need to retcon the gameplay thread for it.
And yeah...as a generic damage spell I usually turn up my nose at Ice Storm. The Druid spell list is meager in places though.
It is a weird spell list. There's so many niche spells on it that seem very much 3.5 holdovers that I can never imagine a reason to use in a typical sort of campaign.
I play a lot of druids and have learned many of the ins and outs. There's lots of very interesting utility, and nicely scaling damage spells, but there is also a lot of generally useless stuff, so one has to be careful in choosing spells.
Handling a mini-disaster over here. I'm fine, but may not be able to post today.
Good luck with everything, GM Netherpongo!
Oh no! Best of luck.
Having surgery tomorrow. Highly unlikely I'll post at all Monday, and after that we'll see.
Good luck!
Minor disaster cleared on my end.
Good luck with your surgery, dien!
Hoping for a speedy recovery for you, dien!
Link to my pacing post from a while ago.
My best read of the situation is the party is in hurried pacing. There's an argument for rushed pacing, but I'm not sure the party decided to move onto the next fight quite at that point.
The only likely ramification is Haste is probably down. Does that sound fine?
I'll try to get to initiative for the next fight later today.
That works.
Yes, I think haste would be down. Makes sense to me.
RE: the spell- - you're the GM, of course, but my reading of it would be it'd still take the cold damage. The only thing the Fortitude save impacts is whether or not it's staggered.
As you said: 'Immunity to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects, or is harmless)'-- and the reading here is really going to hinge on 'effect' and how we're taking that. Does that mean that any spell that includes a Fortitude save as even part of its effect is therefore useless on a construct?
Or only the effect (in this case, the staggering) that actually requires the Fort save?
Put another way, if the spell just did d6 cold damage per level on a successful ranged touch attack, and didn't have the secondary clause for the Fort save, presumably it would be okay for it to hit a construct?
Because it would seem weird to me if giving a spell a secondary effect beyond just damage (thus making it a more powerful spell, overall) would also mean it was suddenly impossible to use that spell at all on an entire category of monsters throughout the game.
Either way: Zay doesn't have Kn Arcana and doesn't know shit about constructs. Zay has few offensive spells left and would think that hurling a ball of snow at something would be effective based on what they do know IC, so, it's the posted action and however you want to adjudicate it is fine. If that means Zay has a learning experience re a spell not working at all, so be it.
I always thought that if a spell did damage no matter what and had a secondary effect that required a fort save that it would still do damage to a construct or undead.
Happy holidays everyone!
Happy holidays all! I hope everyone is having a pleasant time!
Happy Holidays! I also hope ye all have a merry period of respite and relaxation.
Happy New Year everyone!
Happy New Years all :)
Back atcha all! Sorry to be so slow--- gonna plead holidays. Will go post now.
Not in a spot to make a full post right now, but Tatienne's second hit did take out the clockwork soldier.
That's something..... poor Aurelian >__<, but good job Taty!
Woo-hoo us!
I'll be joining Aurelian next round methinks :0
I’m going to heal Aurelian with the wand before he dies.
Should I bring out the Kraken in battle form, or will he die immediately?
He's dead if he bleeds out on his next turn, which is likely. (Absent hero points -- we do have a buffer here)
If you can stabilize him that means I can try and put pressure on the orb, but since so many people are heavily wounded my best contribution now might be returning to do heals.... It's a tough call because if that orb-guy can do anymore fireballs we are possibly TPKing. Forcing it to decide whether it wants to hurt just me, or hurt ALL of us, is me trying to also keep us alive.
But yeah, I may have to come do other heals.
Can the Kraken charge the mage from its existing position?
Nope. The grey circle is difficult terrain (my fault), no charging through that regardless of anything else unless your octopus is flying or otherwise ignores D.T.
That aside, I think you wouldn't have a line on it anyway due to Houghton's current position.
I was going to move out of the way, but with the difficult terrain, I can't even move and attack this round.
Will try to think of something to do.
I know Invandi is being slammed at work but I'll give him a nudge.
Sorry guys, week got away from me. It's been a lot of overtime.
FYI I've got my year 3 tenure file due in a couple of weeks, so posting is going to be slow on my end. Please bot as needed.
Been busy, but I'll try and post later today. I think Invandi is still pretty hurt too from the initial fireball?
it's true; Invandi's current health was at half. (HP in stat bar was accurate.)
Thanks Zay :)
Happy to smack you with a magic stick anytime :P
File submitted, buried in an avalanche of work but I'm digging out. I'll get caught up soon. Thank you all for your patience.
False life roll:
So Houghton has 24 temp HP.
3 barkskins memorized - one for Houghton and two for others.
2 Shield of Faiths - one for Houghton and one for whomever.
Alias updated for a rest!
Okeys, new spells selected/sheet updated. We might as well just barkskin all of us, it don't hurt. So I took two, and I may hold on to a Cat's Grace for Aurelian, at least-- I almost never take the stat-boost spells but that's because I am usually used to people having stat boosting items by mid-level, and our shopping options have been constrained by the campaign. Aurelian benefits a nice good bit from having a 4-higher DEX.
If nobody objects, maybe we can strategize a bit with some smart scouting-- I can be pretty hard to detect if wildshaped to an appropriate form, and if we can get an idea of the layout of the complex, we can better deploy some of our mid-short-term buffs for when we will have probable fights as opposed to not knowing when we should cast them. It's smart tactics to scout, I only hesitate because I don't want the rest of the party to OOCly have to twiddle their thumbs while the GM just describes rooms for us, as it were.
It sounds good to me. I’ve been hesitant to take advantage of the mist spells but I think it might be worthwhile for us to use them defensively more. I don’t want them to feel ‘cheap’ but I also think we’re struggling.
If Zay wants to do Ashen Path as well that might even be better, especially if we get a tough fight and we can’t run away. Not being able to be targeted by single target spells and having a miss chance for attack while (temporarily) not having any drawbacks would help everyone. Of course, houghton doesn’t need it, as he is a soggy fellow already.
I'm fine with people scouting. I think part of the key is fast-forwarding a little bit. Pick a direction we want to go and give us several room descriptions until there's something to stop the scout and give them a reason to go back. That way it's only a few posts.
Somewhat off-topic, but the way I've been doing initiative (splitting up the monsters & players) is 'correct' in most ways, but is slowing us down way more than I'd like.
Do we want to move to a Team Monster/Team Players sort of initiative? Does anyone know a good way of sorting which goes first in such a system? I'm open to other ideas as well.
So I typically group initiatives. I roll for each player individually, but all monsters together. It can provide a brutal first turn for the monsters if there are a lot of them and they go first, but that's usually not a problem.
If I have multiple types of monsters, I'll put them at the average of their rolls.
If we get a split -- half the party acting before the monsters, half after -- I do a "Round 1/2." Those who act before the monsters get their full round 1 actions. Then I adjudicate those, have the monsters act, then there's a full round for all the PCs (which is Round 1 for half the group and Round 2 for the other half).
I've found that works pretty well, personally.
I have everyone post as soon as they can, and adjudicate in initiative order (though I'll allow for some automatic holding, so if player A posted that they fireball, then player B posts that they're getting into melee, I assume player B held even if they should have acted first). This may mean someone who posts quickly doesn't include the benefits of a later spell, but I figure that usually all equals out in the end.
Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse anything with my post, as far as I know and intend we're just taking the one rest after the fight, not another additional rest. My order of operations on the room-rest-order may have been out of whack.
I like the idea of swapping to a group initiative method. Aurelian's suggestion seems like a good method.
I've run a game using Aurelian's method and it works well for streamlining things.