I'm glad you're liking the plot so far.
In game question: What time of day is it right now?
It's currently late morning. I can start adding in character time stamps when I describe new scenes if that would help
No need. I was just curious if we had enough time to start today, or if we've spent most the day talking and had to sleep before going to a dangerous location.
That's totally up to you guys, and I'll try to get a rough map of the area up soon. Also, what time of day you explore different areas could have an affect on the area, as you would expect normally.
Alright guys, I'll need a bit more time than usual to get at least a general map of the temple worked out for you to explore, and set everything I'll need to in place. Feel free to discuss plans of approach and when you want to leave.
Hopefully it won't take me too long, but I'll want enough detail to map the general outline of the building, and the first few areas in full detail for you to go through.
Also, the additional variants that I quoted earlier are up for discussion. Please talk about which you'd like to use, if any. I'm leaning on tumble the hardest, and the others I'm simply open to. If anyone is totally against any of them without being convinced by the others, we'll do without it.
I am fine with tumble, but the rest are unnecessary, as far as I am concerned.
I can only see the cling rules if you ever plan on putting us up against enemies bigger than large size on a regular basis. This campaign does have the giant feel to it, but I may be wrong. Also, wouldn't really effect me with my puny strength score. :)
Remember, high mortality rate campaign.
Varus, that cracked me up. Love it!
Hope you're all having a great three-day weekend! My wife's parents took the kids last night as a Valentines Day gift for us. As both of us can't stand Valentines Day, we used it as an opportunity to play D&D for longer than usual. Instead of ending around 8 PM, we ended around 1 AM. It was great! Just like back before we had kids. :)
Yeah, to you all too! I'm going to take advantage of my Monday off to get some more dungeon building done!
I vote regular time. For marching order, I say we have this:
Sharla Anders
Galenus Varus
So Sharla and Anders slightly ahead and to the sides, with Galenus and Varus to the back and closer together.
This lets me take advantage of any social situations and a decent stealth score, and Anders being there to tank for me during a fight. I also serve as a controller/buffer for the main melee, (mainly debuffing enemies,) and hopefully sleep any enemies before they can cause any real damage.
Galenus should be kept safe, as he doesn't really have any melee potential, but is a good caster. In the event of him getting harmed, we can rely on Varus with his decent HP, healing and great AC to keep him safe until Anders can arrive.
Enjoy your time off!
You'll need to move slowly if you want to move stealthily. Otherwise, Chances are you'll be heard before you hear others, especially if the other are stealthing.
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On our way going there, it seems that either we should all be stealthy, or none of us, and since only Sharla is good at it, we will probably be okay just going there with normal movement, (especially since she's playing a flute on the way there anyway ;). Then then, yes, when we enter a building, or breech the perimeter, Sharla can stealthily scout ahead.
So on our way there, if we want to put Varus and Anders in the front rank, that might work, then Sharla can take point once we get there, if she wants.
I agree, I think that we approach stealthily in a scouting formation once we close in on the area of the Temple.
Sure, normal for a while, and then I'll stealth.
Ditto...
I'm going to leave these complex combat decision to those with more experience: Anders and Varus. :)
Okay, I'll use that. Added a very rough map to the upper information. This is just to give a general feel for the area, and is rather ugly, and not at all in scale to any realistic degree.
Going through the DMG for the specifics on some adventure building, there's something I discovered that clarified the earlier quotes regarding perception/investigation and hidden objects like traps and doorways.
It appears that they intend Perception to be used to find that something exists (there is a trap there, or a hidden passage, etc), but that in some cases an investigation check needs to be rolled on this found hidden-thing to discover how to manipulate it. So, a perception check finds that there is a door, but a careful investigation can result in discovering the mechanism to open the door if you cannot just push on it to open it.
In some cases, the investigation can lead you to the mechanism, but careful manipulation is required to trigger the opening of the door with a thieves tools check.
They also give the example of a trapped treasure chest. A successful perception check shows that it is trapped, and an investigation reveals that the handles are mechanisms that can be pulled out to disable the trap without the need for a thieves tool check.
Part of me feels like this might be a bit much, trying to give ample room for each of these skills to be used, but at the same time there is a certain charm I like in it. Perception is the work-horse in finding hidden things. Once found, you can either try to find a work around to the problem (investigation), or brute force it with thieves tools/strength check to disable the trap/open the passage if the investigation fails to turn up a simple switch.
Earlier I had rules that investigation AND perception and basically usable in the same way for finding hidden things, but this specificity that the DMG gave makes me want to rule more toward how the book has it.
So long as there are no complaints, I would like to make this change now, before we have in-game precedent.
Very good by me.
I concur. It's fine by me.
Seems good. If that's what the books says. I usually played with it like that.
I like the example that: Perception lets you notice the lack of dust, Investigation tells you that it means there's a door there.
I'm rolling terrible stealth, and decent perception. Kinda the opposite of what I was going for with Sharla.
Dice gods be fickle.
Varus: About Insight checks.
"Insight. Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether
you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such
as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s
next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body
language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms"
So insight is mainly used for reading people. Investigation is checking out an area/object and gleaning more information about it.
You could use a straight wisdom check to ...: "Get a gut feeling about what course of action to follow" though
I feel like every time I've tried to check on this game for the past several days, Paizo has been down. Anyone else getting that?
Are we waiting for a GM update on the effect of the sleep spell from Sharla before initiative?
I'm assuming so. But from what I can see in the MM, that put both of them to sleep, assuming they were normal orcs.
Paizo has been fine for me.
Foind a recent tweet by Paizo; they're having intermittent server problems. Guess I've come to the site everytime they've been down, just by happenstance.
Hey guys, sorry about the delay in posting. Busy Busy. This might happen from time to time which is why I advertised this as a slower posting campaign.
Its fine, we did sign up for a:
Be able to post a couple of times a week.
campaign. All good. I've actually been surprised its been going this fast up until now.
Me too - pleasantly surprised.
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Okay, I just went back and re-read the discussion about Investigation vs. Perception, and that still leaves me with the impression that we should be using Perception to search bodies??
With the phrase for Perception that it "lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something" it seems that this is what we would use to find things on a body?
I mean, yeah, use investigation for the secret doors thing, of course, but an orc body usually doesn't have -too- many secret doors on it (and those that it does have we aught not look in to too closely. :p)
Ya, sorry if I'm being thick about this, just want to be sure. All this PFS and 5E knowledge is still trying to get sorted into their right queues. =)
EDIT: Sorry, let me chime in here. Had to rethink this. I am not having you search the body for missing items or the like, but for finding and understanding clues. You aren't searching for items, but rather qualities about items. I was unclear, I apologize.
I also know that there isn't a lot here that would make you suspect there are clues to be found. Indeed, there might not be any. It isn't as though you are investigating a murder scene. Well, you are, but you made the corpses. I just wanted to set a precedent in the campaign early (since I am certain it will come up), and get you guys used to the possibility that searching the dead for clues might be important.
5e discourages 'taking 10' on checks, and seems to only allow "Passives" regarding inactive perception checks, and routine tasks done over and over again (such as checking every square inch of an area for secret doors). There are NO taking 20 rules that I've found in 5e, which should give some clue to the systems intent.
As far as rolling multiple times on things like perception, investigation knowledge... I've been looking around for rules which would make the systems intent clear of these subjects, and have come up with nothing. So, I think this is how I'm going to roll it.
Most checks in 5e are only made if there is a cost to failure. Having plenty of time to pick a lock, and there is no cost for failing to pick it? Just pick it, no roll required. Need to squeeze through a gap out of combat, and there is nothing pressing that would happen on a failure? Just squeeze through it.
Knowledge checks I am certainly limited to a one-go. You either know a thing or you do not. You do not get to make a reroll for figuring out what an arcane rune means, or what a monster is, etc.
Then rolls like active perceptions and investigations... Your character does not know what the player has rolled. In every case, even where an investigation or perception is a low roll, your characters should feel confident that they did the task. Even stealth to a certain degree. Your character doesn't know the extent of the failure or success, so doing the task again "just to be sure" feels a bit odd to me. I think I will either limit the amount of time these types of checks can be done to 1 per character (assisting counts as a check, as you are actively involved in helping another person with their check), OR create some kind of fail state.
Example: If you spend time investigating bodies again and again I might roll for another random encounter.
What I wish to avoid here are situation where the characters do an action again and again, effectively taking 20, because the player knows what was rolled and is expecting failure or success from it. Success or failure, each roll should -matter-.
That seems reasonable, GM.
Where are we at now? I believe we're waiting to discover what we found on the bodies.
Yes, sorry. I wanted to hear back on this from people first, since there was a double investigate check.
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Mmmrph. I may just not be seeing something here, but the first impression is that it's making Investigation even more powerful than Perception, i.e.: "The bloody knife passed through the man's watch and it's now stuck on 9:07, but you missed your investigation roll, so you don't actually know the time of the murder" or somesuch.
I'm of course willing to go with it and see how things go.
Mind you, this seems like the kind of thing a bard (i.e. replacement of Lore) would have in spades. One might ponder asking Sharla how she felt about swapping it in for something else, since it looks like we might be rolling it for literally every body we search or thing we find.
I would be willing to switch perception out for it, it GM Grey agrees. But even if I don't, I get half proficiency for it at level 2, and full proficiency at level 3. (College of Satire give sleight of hand plus a skill of choice, or choice of 2 if you already have sleight of hand, which I do.)
There a many things perception is great at that investigation can't be used for. I also don't intend for people to roll all the time when searching bodies any more than I intend on people scouring every square inch of a dungeon for secrets. There should hopefully be some kind of reason why such a thing might be worth searching that could be picked up on.
I don't intend on allowing the two skills to become unbalanced, nor do I want you to think you will miss loot by not rolling on a corpse. Maybe just a clue, potentially one you may discover later anyway. We'll have to see about that!
My main concern right now though is about my apprehension about allowing multiple rolls (until the player is satisfied) about things like investigate. If you all agree, I would like to say it is a one-try per thing investigated, and then can move forward soon. If not, please give me a counter argument.
(Sorry this is slowing us down guys!)
5e was not meant to bog the players down with fine tuned rules decisions like these. I think it is fairly straightforward. You go by what the book says, players roll one time, with or without aid (advantage), if prompted by the GM, or they feel it necessary. A low roll is just that, not an opportunity to keep trying - PC fails. The DC is set by the GM, disclosed, or not - GM's call. It all boils down to GM discretion on what check applies, if it is necessary, and what the DC actually is.
Also, not everything requires a roll. The roll is only for when the results are uncertain. If they're certain (auto success or auto fail), then no roll is needed. In this case, you could search them for standard equipment, but the investigation roll was probably for an above-and-beyond thing.
Yep...again, the necessity of a roll is GM discretion.
Alright. Sharla, swapping perception for investigate right now is fine. Any last minute requested changes before we move forward? Last call!