Way of the Wicked (Inactive)

Game Master Aku Warashi

Got back from Guardians of the Galaxy. So just think of Drax when you want to imagine what Hound looks like.

Ok, looking at the dwarven map, the white squares is where known guards are stationed, correct?

And, the Rookery is at the very top of the main tower (which we are currently in the basement of)?

Yes.

I've add some arrows to indicate the moviment you saw that day.

But you are not sure if that's their actual route.

Ok, the 'sniff sniff' on the map made me laugh. : )

@Nahia: Yeah, I was working and went to check things, and ended up bursting in laughter. Damn, it was embarrassing.

Moving downstairs as fast as possible while still maintaining stealth. I'll grab a chair or something on the way to jam underneath the door latch leading out to the rest of the keep.

Rose, there are two doors with access to the keep: The one in the area 32 and the one in the area 2. The only place where you can find something that might serve your purpose, is at the armory (2) or at the vault (1), how are you pulling this off?

Edit: I'll continue the things in gameplay after Rose answer. :)

5 hour Dramatic pause....Damn you, I'm sure you're sitting there with a solid DM cackle going on. Evil.

Yep I am.

MWUAHAHAHAHA

-Posted with Wayfinder

Hmm. Are the doors designed to be locked/barred from the inside to prevent invaders to gain access?

Tell me a little more about them please.

They are Strong wooden doors. The door on room 32, was designed to be barred from inside, but there’s nothing to be used there to block it. The door in room 2 is just a strong door.

How big of a bar is needed? Three feet? Six feet?

I'm thinking I can bar the door with one of the quivers from the arrow room. A leather quiver packed full of wooden arrows would be pretty hard to break.

I'm assuming both doors open inward (hinges on the inside).

The second door I'll have to wedge with arrows also, by jamming the arrows head first into the crack on the hinge side. (If you're familiar with "penny-jamming" this is the same concept. It's extremely effective at preventing a door from opening. Basically, until the obstruction is pulled out, the only way to open the door will be to batter the door until the frame cracks enough to widen the gap the arrow heads are jammed into, letting them fall out. Using coins for this used to be a common college prank for doing things like locking people in their rooms. It can be done surprisingly quickly, and makes no signifigant noise).

How's that sound?

Ah yes, the good old act of spiking a door. : )

Quietly. That's the real trick.

I have actual brass spikes just for this sort of thing, but that's loud and permanently damaging.

Later I'll pick up Stubborn Nails and a wand of Arcane Lock.

note to self- build robin's door jamming devices in this game. They are always handy.

3 feet.

Yep you can do that.

Please, roll for me an INT check dc 10 to remember the door layout before heading back. Because when you passed there earlier, you did not mentioned observing how the door was made.

-Posted with Wayfinder

Int: 1d20 ⇒ 17

I've been refreshing the game thread every few minutes for the last three hours! I'm on the edge of my seat!

C'mon team! Get 'im! Then toss him out a window and run!

/cheerleader

I have been too. : )

At least Hound can smash his head in with a hammer now that he is asleep. That's a dwarfy thing to do, right?

He was delaying for just this moment. I wish he'd sundered the horn, but oh well. He'll have to make up for it in sheer bloodshed.

Is he close enough to coup de grace sleeping beauty?

That is a full round action

don't worry Seren is close enough to Coup de grace.... just waiting on my turn.... Assuming you came out of delay prior to Nahia casting Sleep Hound? Or after?

After

Smoke bomb didnt take care of him. oh well hopefully the birds are dealt with.
Mysty regrets nothing

Well, his DC to resist the poison is very high now.
Gets higher every time he breaths inside the poisoned smoke.

However, that particular poison has 10 minutes onset.

Neither he nor the birds are feeling anything yet.

Fair enough, I thought it would be faster. Ordinary smoke is quite dangerous anyway, especially to avians.

Oh well it was fun to think up.

Hey guys, just thought I'd say hi. It's been really interesting reading the game progress. Glad to see Nahia and Seren are still in and Aku you've been doing a stellar job!

Cheers,

Zerik

Hey Zerik :)

Good thinking Seren!

GM, I'm confused about something.

In your recap post that moved things along you moved the party downstairs after Martin was killed.

There was clearly more to be done, but suddenly the group was in the wrong place to do it. So now we're spending 2 rounds running back up to finish the job, and another two to get back down.

The thing that is nagging me is why the party went back down stairs in the first place. Why did that happen?

I believe Hound was the only one who announced he was leaving right away to where Rose is.

Oh, well. Shame on me.

I was aiming for some dramatic narrative style, where you all need to run and do what you wanted and in the end, decide to face the captain or flee.

Well, that will not work anymore, since the mood was broken.

Let’s wrap things up and move along.

Mood isn't broken for me. Just need to know where everyone is and what they are doing.

Mood was totally not broken. You've done a great job of heightening the tension. Narratively it was fantastic.

You could have had the captain arrive any time you wanted. In actuality the time isn't an issue. Its only a problem because when I reflected on it I realized that based on the way things played out we could have had a 24 second head start that we could have used to get away clean.

Now we are in a pinch. My character isn't thrilled. As a player, I think its great. There's serious drama going on right now.

I think the mood and tension is still high. : )

I'm really wondering if we were successful in taking out the Rookery, and if we will be discovered. >_<

Seren, here are the old man status:

Middle-aged Human commoner 8
Str 10, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 12, Cha 10

Do you need something more than this to convert it?

nah, frankly I'm not even planning on using the skeleton. it's going to be destroyed when we get back into the tunnel, this was just an easy way of the body to despose of itself. I don't want to tip our hand even in combat at this point that there is a necromancer in their midst. If we get away super clean, they may know something foul is afoot but it will be hard to figure out exactly what happened. Who knows maybe we even get lucky and they just thing that Mad Martin finally went full on crazy.

I'm assuming you are returning to the Inn, right?

Anyway, I have very bad news for you all...

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Gz, you may level up to level 5 :)

Edit: Hound included.

Please, for those new, read the house rules at the campaign tab. if you have any doubt, ask me.

You must roll for hp.

HP: 1d12 ⇒ 4+1 FCB,+3 CON=8
BaB +1
Feat:Combat Reflexes(3 AoOs a round, even when flatfooted) Hound will keep the Mitrians away from the group by esablishing a kill zone.
Special Ability:Improved Uncanny Dodge Can no longer be flanked unless target is 4 levels higher Hound will know you are there long before you can sneak up on him
Skills:
All +1 except Linguistics Hound keeps honing his physical skills

HP: 1d8 ⇒ 4
Favoured class bonus goes to undead Servitude. Treated as oracle +2 levels now.

Skills: 7 points gained

Intimidate +1: +13 Seren is always intimidating, no reason that should stop now
Stealth +1: +1 Curse all this sneaking
Spellcraft +1: +11 Via Seren's continued learning of her necromatic ways.
Disguise +1: +9 Seren is always in disguise. Always. And they just get better with time.
Bluff +1: +9 and she's always lying too...
Perception +1: +3 She's trying to be more aware of her surroundings.
Knowledge(Religion) +1: +11 Curse these damn Mitrans and their perpetual talk of religion.

Additional 1st level spell known. - Protection from Good. Around all these goody goodies Seren would seek a way to protect herself.
Addition 2nd level spell known and spell per day. - Desecrate. More powerful minions. Obvious thing for Seren to be researching

Curse Level Up!
At 5th level, you are immune to the sickened condition (but not nauseated) Muwhahaha just try and get me drunk now DM. AKU!

Feat: Craft Magic Arms and Armor. She's watched Nahia create some amazing items, now it's Seren's turn to try her hand at it.

HP: 1d10 ⇒ 8

Favored Class goes to Energy Resistance. Fire Resist 6. Rose is now immune to normal fire.

Skill Points: 2 (UMD and Stealth).

Spells: 1 1st level slot.

1 more Smite Good
Channel Negative Energy

Feat: Angelic Blood. Might as well be lighting a feat on fire.

Forgot 1 thing-

Rose is taking the Variant Channel ability associated with Asmodeus' Fire domain. When she channels people spontaneously combust.

She also does bonus channel damage against Cold based creatures. In addition, any undead that happen to have the Fire subtype (like flaming skeletons) are healed extra when Rose channels.

I'm really looking forward to lighting people on fire. :)

Level 5 ya!

Tell me when I can move things foward.

Leveled up and ready to run at his mistress' feet.

I'm leveled and ready to move on. I think the only decision left to be made is if Seren wants to destroy the skeleton or not.

hp: 1d8 ⇒ 4

feats are combat expertise and two weapon feint (combat trick rogue talent)

Leveled and ready to go

How about a little After action Report?

Anytime things go badly, I like to try to break down what happened and how we could keep it from happening again later.

Please don't take the following criticisms personally. They came together to create a harrowing and memorable scene, which is the most important thing. I'm going to approach this from a purely mechanical perspective, not any sort of reflection of character choices.

1) The Approach
We need a quiet,temporary way of rendering doors useless. A wand of Hold Portal springs to mind. I also have some ideas for mundane items with similar effects. We shouldn't have left ways for the guards to approach us behind us. I would prefer not to spend an entire fight scrambling to block the doors again. I feel like I cost us at least one round that could have been taken off the fight by ditching you guys. I'm glad I did, but I don't want to have to make that choice again in the future.

2) The Poison Bomb
Clearly not the best solution for the problem. In real life Aerosolized Arsenic is really, really deadly. In Pathfinder, it used the poison rules, which are widely regarded as weak and not terribly realistic. We have to work under the mechanics though. Given that, Poison is one of those things that works great in large doses when we aren't around. The poisoned stew was a perfect way to use poison in pathfinder. It makes a fantastic distraction and softens people up well. It isn't very good at killing people outright, which is what we were really going for in this scene. In the future, lets rely on stealth/coup de grace for assassinations.

3) The Surprise Round/Dealing With The Horn
Hound, this one is on you, and was really the turning point in the whole encounter. You had the drop on Martin, but you delayed for Nehia's Slumber Hex. Normally a great idea, but in this case, the horn was our highest priority. There's a good chance you could have sundered it, or disarmed it, or just yanked it out of his hands. In the future, when we face people who can alert others, stopping that should take precedence over pretty much everything.

4) The Slumber Hex
Hound, this was the other half of the mistake regarding your first action. We had him unconscious on the ground. The fight was over. Seren was actually in position to Coup de Grace him, but you woke him up by taking the attack you had Delayed for. I think it would have been better to continue to delay. In situations like that, I think the best thing we could do is to let Mysty do what she does best. Coup de Grace from a rogue is pretty much a death sentence.

5) The Swarm
I'm pretty sure most of those weapon attacks against the swarm didn't actually do any/much damage. Swarms are generally immune/resistant to weapon attacks. We are pretty limited in our ability to deal with that sort of threat. In the future when we face a threat like that, the best thing to do is spread out so it can't effect more than one of us at a time, and have the weapon folks concentrate on normal foes rather than trying to stab at the swarm. Also, as soon as possible we need to look into getting ahold of some mundane AoE stuff for everyone. Alchemist's Fire goes a long way against Swarms.

I think that pretty much covers it. Anyone have any other thoughts on the situation?

I have to admit I expected the poison bomb to be much more effective than it was, but if that's the way if flies, coup de grace it is. Ten minutes to have effect was a real shock to be sure, and it would have been nice to have known that. Even ordinary smoke is faster than that, according to the rules.
Still the rules define the game, so I won't be making more smoke bombs.

Eh, it happens to the best of us. The poison rules are really... disappointing. : /

I agree with your points on Hound's actions. I didn't have my weapon in hand and forgot about the draw as part of a free-action rule which would allow me to sunder with my greatsword.

As part of a Move action, actually. I don't think you could have used your great sword, but you would probably have been able to rage-claw-sunder, or just disarm it. He was flat footed and didn't have a very high strength. His CMD was probably crap.

Oh, if it wasn't obvious enough, I'm ready.