Way of the Wicked (Group 2) (Inactive)

Game Master Whack-a-Rogue

I'm guessing it'll be part Skyrim skill trees and part combo moves (like Dreadfox Games' Swordmaster and Interjection Games' Assassin). In case you haven't seen the product discussion thread, here's a few highlights that have been announced:

Armiger base class focuses on rapid weapon-cycling. Let's you shank someone, throw the weapon at another enemy, then whip out a hand crossbow and shoot someone else - and actually be effective at all of this.

Blacksmith base class focuses on nonmagical buffing. Should fulfill the "humble blacksmith who's unstoppable despite only wearing his leather forge apron" trope.

Several spheres are Mobility, Scouting, Traps, Shields, Wrestling, and Sniping.

Apparently, with the system, you'll be able to do things like grapple the enemy caster, tumble with him through your party (provoking AoOs), then slam a dagger into your victim's chest - creating a pool of blood that functions like a grease spell.

Also, with the system, a T-Rex can grab someone in its jaws, throw him into the air, and then tail-slap him across the room. ;-)

I'm here - no thanks to the Paizo servers. Grrr.

Thinking that we acquire a donkey/horse whatever with the least possible fuss. No sense causing alarm - plenty of time to do that later ^_^

I agree.

I'll leave you to do the actual talking. Haha.
Also, I checked our Loot Tracker in case we had any armors left.

Either we are significantly overlevelled or woefully underequipped :)
Our total Loot is around 3k Gold plus the Wares from the Yuntak.
A regular party of 4 people would have a WBL of 6k per, or 24k total.

So right now, I'm uncertain: Should we feel somewhat confident, because we're about 1.5-2 levels higher than we would regularily be at this time in the story, or should I feel afraid because we missed quite a bit of potential loot?
(We are both not heavily equipment-dependent classes, but I believe we'll still want the big 6...)

You're currently very under-equipped, but that'll change once you get into Aldencross. Sameen's war chest includes the loot you would have received from killing Kargeld. :-)

SoM Update: a rough draft document's been revealed that highlights one class and two spheres.

The Armiger infuses weapons with sphere talents and gets to make AoOs when cycling through them. It gets Quick Draw that eventually becomes a free action. Looks pretty cool.

The Athletics sphere deals with running, jumping, climbing, and swimming. Investment can give you a climb and/or swim speed, the ability to wall jump, wall running (a la Prince of Persia), and the ability to climb on enemies.

The Sniping sphere is (obviously) focused on making a single powerful ranged attack each round. Range penalties are reduced, and you roll extra damage dice that stack with Vital Strike. Investment lets you ignore partial cover/concealment, perform ranged combat maneuvers, and designate a location as your threatened area.

I've added a map of Aldencross and a floorplan of the "Lord's Dalliance." Pick any room/s (up to two) you'd like (except for the proprieter's, of course). It's editable, so feel free to add a label or whatever.

In regards to the Aldencross map, market day is three times a week in the central hub. As it turns out, that's today. :-) In case you're curious, since Aldencross is shaped like a wheel, the "Lord's Dalliance" inn is the big L-shaped building at the far end of the right spoke - just across the street from the "To Balentyne" label.

I took the liberty of picking out rooms. The corner room for me and Hecate, and the one opposite, next to the stairs, for Sameen.

Split room: It's not that Robin wants to keep Sameen at a distance, but she hopes for some privacy with Hecate. They are, after all, in a safe place. By themselves. With a hot tub.(even if it's the Barhold family tub because that service is not regularily offered...enough money thrown at the proprietors face will get the idea across that it's demanded in the corner room.)

Room location: Being next to/opposite the stairs should make it easy(/ier) to come and go without anybody taking notice. If we mean to sneak out at night, for example.
We cannot "sneak" onto the roof of the main hall, but honestly, if we're exiting via windows, then we're in a hurry anyway, and jumping from a roof will be worse than to exit via a knotted rope tied to the bed, thrown out of the window.

Vanity&Practicality: It's a corner room. Now, the floor plan is massive, but chances are these rooms actually have windows. As such, our room should have windows on two sides, making it more luxurious than the others. With the proposed split and location, we also can look out at 3 sides of the building(Sameen towards north, we towards south and west, on the Aldencross map) to keep some track on what's happening outside. The best room for that would have been the proprietors, but it will do.

That works, but remember we're only here for a couple days as traders, before we leave and come back in as our "real" fake identities.

EDIT: My guess is that we're selling ALL the ivory, including the narwhal horn

Oh, no worries. But maybe my middle-aged male soldier Fake-Me should, in that case, commit some sort of heineous crime?

Say, slit some drunk Dwarven Engineers throat? If we don't plan on re-using our trader fake ID's, it would be a waste not to dispose of them with an action that would raise eyebrows and have people looking for someone responsible...this way, they KNOW who is responsible, and can even send out search parties looking for a male middle-aged silent northlander.
*smile*

Hum...the information tidbits:

The one about a bard coming to down seems only moderately useful. Unless we mean to try and pretend Hecate is a male bard.
Soldiers lazy is good. It makes sense, as long as there is no trouble. We may manage to use it to our advantage, to scout out our target.
The ugly captain with the pretty young wife: should definitely look into that. Maybe we could kidnap her and force him to betray Balentyne. Or there's something fishy to begin with and we can blackmail him...either way it could be worth picking up if it's not just gossip.
Finally, the monday food service. Definitely should try and get in on a monday and poison that stuff, before calling in Sakkharot. I would prefer something deadly, but Pathfinder is not good with Poison. But a generous helping of "Oil of Taggit" may be just as well, if not for the short onset time. Maybe Hecate can work something out there that works as ingested poison and gives us an advantage via generous application to the garrison food?

Poison, you say? ;-) Perhaps we should give me some gold to spend at one specific shop that I mentioned in a previous info-dump. They probably won't have anything stronger than rat poison, but it's a start.

Just as a quick FYI, poisoning on a large scale uses different rules for simplicity's sake. I certainly don't want to make 100+ Fort saves. ;-)

Oh, I expected that.
What I mean is that in pathfinder most poisons are not lethal, but only inflict some ability damage. Even most Con-damaging ones seem to be hard-pressed to kill a victim.

As a whole, in pathfinder, I find Poisons overpriced and underperforming.
Just looking at the first entry: Arsenic...even if I ate a double dose of PURE arsenic(for a price of 120 GP per dose), that would push the DC to 15 and time to 6 minutes, meaning if I fail 6 saves in a row(with about a 40% chance each to make it), I will have between 6 and 12 Con Damage. Meaning I am certainly still alive, even in the worst case scenario.
Best case? 1 Con damage, and I make the Save...why, give me another double-dose of arsenic and I still survive.
Considering: An ACUTE FATAL DOSE of Arsenic is in the range of 2-20mg/kg body weight/day. Thus, a relatively healthy person who weight 160lbs, about 72.6kg, may die if he ingests between 0.145gm and 1.45gm Arsenic in the form of Arsenic Trioxide, As2O3. i.e. 0.192gm to 1.92gm of Arsenic Trioxide. (Arsenic Trioxide is probably the most commonly available Arsenic compound). Considering the high density of the oxide, less than 1/8 of a tea spoon can be fatal.
It's doubly interesting because Arsenic was one variant of Rat Poison compounds for a good time in history.

So...if mass poisoning uses different rules...are them rules more lethal? Could we aim to permanently take soldiers out of the rotation? OR would we be better off trying to knock them out and time it with the attack?

Heh. Arsenic is one of the example poisons used in the "what if the PCs decide to poison the garrison?" section of this Book. ;-) Obviously, I can't tell you exactly what'll happen, but I CAN mention that dosing the stew (if done well) has the potential to incapacitate guards for anywhere from a couple days to permanently.

I like this book. It thinks like me.

*pokes Hecate*

What do you think about the information we learned? Before we plot in-game, we should probably consider how we want to proceed.
I mean, we can wing it, of course, but right now, there's only a couple things that come to mind...

• Slaughter the dwarfs, and hope they have some plans including structural weaknesses they were supposed to fix
  
• Kidnap that woman and try to blackmail her captain-husband.
  
• Murder the patrol.
  
• Before the attack, try and poison the garrison

Of course, gathering more info could pay off. But out of that, one will need to happen before attacking. The patrol is on a schedule we have to wait for, so, kidnapping the woman could work right now.
Or, possibly, getting into a drunk fight with the dwarfs, leading to a lethal tavern brawl, then quickly making an exit with our current cover identitys.

It is a Sandbox, so I we should, together, decide on some priorities and directions. Action economy is not in our favor, even if we have full 4 weeks, so we should probably start doing some things soon. Burning down the rookery is high on my list of priorities, as would be slaying the mage and cleric, but I so far, we heared nothing about them we could use...(a'la "oh, the tower mage likes to go fishing alone on sundays because he enjoys the quiet...")

Sorry, been thinking this one through.

I think random acts of violence are not the way to go. I agree that they'd never find your current character once "he" leaves, but I think they'd become suspicious of new arrivals - and we want to blend in when we arrive in our other identity.

I vote for spending another couple days picking up rumours, and then planning on that basis.

I'll put some more Gather Information rolls up in the gameplay thread.

EDIT: Also, put your Charisma bonus on your Gather Information rolls.

Effect: You do not gain your Charisma bonus to Diplomacy checks, and if you use Diplomacy to make a request of someone, their attitude worsens one step (but no worse than unfriendly) after the request succeeds or fails, in addition, all creatures start with an attitude one step worse towards you.

However, you gain your Charisma bonus to Sense Motive checks and saving throws versus spells and spell-like abilities of the enchantment school, in addition to your Wisdom.

No can do, I'm afraid. Robin's not a social butterfly. She was supposed to be a bit oddish, but reliable once the team got to know her. I tried to show her not really having any pity on others, or even seeing them as proper people - reciproking the worsened starting attitude.

It is unfortunate since Gather Information uses Diplomacy even if you don't intend to actually talk/interact with others, but it's a niche.

@planning: sure, but we SHOULD intercept the patrol as early as we can. Search parties or more patrols are good for us. Even if they become suspicious, it weakens the garrison if they send people out to the hinterlands.
Rumormongering: We could claim that we saw some of the northern natives, who had been wearing branded armors(from the ship we sunk) but kept our distance, wary of seeing them so far south outfit for war or raids.

@GM: Do we(or Sameen) know anything about the patrol route? e.g. does it vary slightly or are there fixed stops? Any place we know they will come through(e.g. a geographical feature along the path forcing them to go a certain way?)

Oops, missed that! My bad, sorry.

Agree on the patrol, if they go missing it'll be a while before anyone even notices. Maybe stay in town till they leave, follow them, kill them, come back into town in our new guises?

Sounds good to me. Alas, "follow them" could be difficult, if that's a group of mounted Rangers traversing the wilderness. I know I suck at tracking ;) So I'd much prefer "waiting for them at some place" over "following them".

Honestly, I feel the main problem is that once people start disappearing in Aldencross or Balentyne, people will become paranoid and cautious.
I was wondering if there would be some forgery you could do to lure the wizard, the cleric or the dwarfs away for a bit. Maybe someone asking for a secret meeting, because they have important information.
I mean, if the wizard TELLS them that he's going to meet someone about something important at a place he can't say, they may be distressed if he does not return...but less so than if he suddenly disappears or they find his body.

"I've seen rangers grabbing drinks at the inn a few times. Same with those dwarves: they're there almost every night."

I'd also like to remind everyone that I can craft alchemical items for 1/3 cost. Give me a list, and I'll stock up.

Targeted information-gathering can answer some of your questions. ;-) Also, the book seems to recommend a gradual thinning of the herd, so as long as there's a plausible explanation, quite a few unfortunate occurrences will be overlooked.

OK, if the alchemist is powerful we aren't going to get rid of him ourselves - but he'd be a threat to the bugbears so we should think of something.

How about this? We forge a letter from the dwarves saying that there's a rat infestation at the castle and they need as much arsenic as he can sell them. We collect it - one of us can be the messenger, as the dwarves are too busy; we can add something in the order about someone coming to get it for them. We then use it to poison the soldiers. At the same time, we get Sameen apprenticed to the alchemist, and after the poisoning she comes forward as "a good citizen" with additional papers she "found" in his belongings which show that the alchemist and the dwarves were conspiring together in aid of... I don't know, we can work on that.

The Lord has no choice but to imprison all concerned - and our fingerprints are nowhere to be found.

Hm...does seem risky...he could have been an upstanding citizen of the community for many years. The dwarfs also worked for a while, there.
Then suddenly they mass-poison the soldiers and his new and unknown apprentice comes forth with papers proving it was their doing.

I am simply afraid that Sameen would be under very, very close scrutiny, especially if only she is involved(and if she makes her escape, then she will seem guilty -). If one of us(you) acts as messenger from the dwarfs, then there's one more loose end if someone SAW the messenger, or if he keeps papers in a locked place, or decides to deliver large quantities of poison himself to oversee the use against rats.

I do like the idea of getting rid of the alchemist...but we could probably also try to murder him in his sleep. Mostly, I am worried about any plan that needs time AFTER the poisoning. If we get a whole shift eating arsenic, some will die, some will merely be incapacitated...if we don't have the bugbears attack then, I assume they will recover via regular healing, even if we took out the cleric.
So...I would prefer poisoning them directly before the attack if at all possible.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of framing someone for something and getting rid of them that way. Awesome. I just think we should avoid being involved or exposing ourselves in any way, and provide a good enough motive that the deed is not questioned(which seems the hard part, at least to me).

Or create situations that seem self-explaining...how about murdering the alchemist, stealthily in his sleep, then using his books to sample handwriting and forge a letter to the balentyne mage, telling of an important discovery he wants to share, inviting him to visit the cauldron. We lay an ambush and jump the mage. Then we get them both to the basement and rig the place to explode. An accident, clearly...the alchemist messed with powers beyond his understanding, and, showing them off to the scholar, sealed both their fates...

Honestly, no idea and "full of holes" in a different way than your idea. But something I had been pondering and also wanted to share.

Or do some exploring in the right places and find the way to summon an angry lynch mob. ;-) The alchemist comes from Book 7 (optional add-ons) and won't make any meaningful contribution to the AP.

Yeah, or kill and hide 2 or 3 little kids in his basement, then tip off the search parties so they can re-form into a lynch mob. ^_^
Bonus points if my conjured companion then lashes out in defense of him, making it look like he made a deal with extraplanar forces ^_^

The options are endless-

OK, let's watch the alchemist and see if there's a good time to break in - we could steal the poison now, in these guises, and then disappear...

Aye, and the dwarfs, if they get drunk in our inn, anyway. A floor plan of the tower would help, a lot.
Depending on the layout, we may not even need to kill everybody in the tower. If there's only a single entrance/exit, we'll simply have to "block" that, and they will be trapped inside. If there's more entrances/exits, maybe even hidden doors, that could make it easier to get in/out...or, if nothing else, point us towards high-value targets.

Also: I know it's just a small town with a fortress attached, but it's one of the more important locations in the area, right? Since we're on the market anyway, is there anything on sale that could be interesting? We do have quite some cash stocked up, so if there's a some fancy headband, cloak, shoes, etc...

If we intend to get rid/murder the alchemist, we may also place a custom order of items with him that we want...half paid before, half when we pick them up. Only we'll kill him and hopefully even manage to retrieve our money. And the potions/elixirs he custom-made for us ^_^
Could also help Sameen, with Alchemical Allocation, if we order an Elixir or two...

Waiting to see if Hecate wants to RP with Robin before I move on. :-)

Hehe, mostly just probing in Innuendo if she's ready for the "next step" - not in a hurry, but certain interactions or views may be different depending on the level of intimacy we share.

So if Hecate does not feel up to it yet, no worries :)
Robin promised to wait, but not to not try to tempt her. *smug grin*

No sure about the RP here, but assume that Hecate is 'compliant' and let's fade the scene to black :)

well, you could always do a "fade-in" of waking/cuddling up next morning, before pondering the days plans :) I can totally see Hecate get up after a fixed time amount of hugging and inmediately jump to/think about work, considering you didn't get anything done yesterday evening/night.
Just don't expect Robin to do anything but slowly wake up and stare at you with a happy grin until you get dressed *gg*

OK, plan for day 6

Hecate: gathering information

Robin: spy on Kaitlyn Mott

Sameen: spy on alchemist

Evening: kill the dwarves

Sound good?

Oh, and I've swapped out my spells for combat.

Those are both very interesting news...

It would seem Mrs. Kaitlyn may not be a very faithful wife. Maybe we should see how regular this is, and arrange for her husband to come home early? I don't think he would take it very well. If he attempts to ignore it, he may change his mind if Rumors get going about how his wife has been betraying him since their marriage, and him being an old cuckolded fool.
Or we could try and blackmail mrs. mott, but thats putting our hand on the table one-sided, if we can't prove the affair some other way.

@Alchemist, I think your original idea with the alchemist may work...if he's in his hut at fixed times...we could forge a letter to the dwarfs requesting an important meeting at such time - maybe on their drinking day. Sareen meets them, using her Iron Circlet to be disguised as the alchemist, then throws a bomb or two at them, before retreating towards the alchemists cottage. There, Hecate and Robin set fire to the place disguised as Dwarfs, so the alchemist will see us run away when he exits the place...we meet up in the middle, become invisible, and let the two groups meet each other, then take out the winner(s)?

Or something like that. Of course, it's still a murder mystery...but why did the dwarfs go into the woods, and why was the alchemists workshop burned down...? The reasons would be unclear, but nobody would suspect outside meddling, I think.

It's slightly different from Hecate's original plan, which I liked but found too risky! But this may take both pieces off the playing field - (plus we can take all the Arsenic we want, then, too)

I caught a bit of a cold over the weekend. Nothing too bad, but it's left me feebleminded. I should be back to normal in the next day or two.

Good luck fetching a Heal Spell! It seems there's no hurry anyway, Hecate seems busy these days. So take your time recovering!

Apologies for the slow posting - having to clear up (someone else's) mess at work.

Should be back to posting properly tomorrow morning.

Get well soon YBD!

Hu-Hum...could we retcon-keep the Narwhal Horn?

Only recently stumbled on this:

Spherecasting ones have very reasonable pricing, me thinks.
At a max of 200k gold, or 100k gold crafting cost, it could provide a +5 caster level bonus to both Destruction and Conjuration, with 2 fixed "free" form talents for each creature summoned...
As in, no idea yet how exactly, but I think Robin could totally use a (spherecasting) staff later.

Spherecasting staffs are awesome. :-) The question is if you want to wait until Level 11+ as that's when the feat prereq is met.

Honestly, by level 11 a minor discount of whatever it was for the narwhal horn will barely be noticed. I'd rather have the gold now - we might need it.

But I agree, that would be pretty awesome! I might even take a crafting feat, just for you :-)

Ah, did I misremember? I thought it was a percentage-based discount? My mistake...
In that case, do take the gold!

It would warm my heart(literally) if you'd pick up that crafting Feat :)
I mean, I'm prepared to bring death, war, and despair to a whole kingdom, simply to keep you safe...anything that helps me doing that is something I want.

Just saw ambush site go up.

One suggestion: Lets place a lure in form of a little pouch with coins(silvers will do) and a note on the road where we want them to be when we start the ambush. Let them bunch up, so we can open with Glitterdust, an Fire Orb and with a Bomb and cover as many Dwarves as possible.

Also, I placed us in a suggested way - I thought it's easier to explain that way.

Sameen has the best Perception, she is the spotter...starts out next to me to see them enter the area, then moves back a bit so she can see the ambush side from shrubbery cover. From there, she can step forward and throw a bomb.
Robin is completely hidden, but can make a 5-foot step forward and trace a line to the area we lure them towards to blast them.
Hecate is also completely hidden, but can step into Sameens space to see the ambush site and summon something.
My companion would delay and move down to intercept any dwarfs coming for us(most of which cannot reach us, except with a double-move.

We can take it from there...

Oh wow. that was an awful damage roll :P
As in, AWFUL.
Hope you 2 have more luck.

Oh, also, Robin changed her appearance with the Iron Circlet. She looks like a middle-aged Dwarven Woman with Stone Plate and a Greataxe now.

Awful? Not even close to the worst I've seen. That honor goes to the 10d6 fireball that dealt a paltry 13pts damage (Reflex for half). :-(

Honestly, most fireballs I used were as GM. My players feared the D6...they even insisted on trying to test-roll them to make sure they are not rigged.
I think the best I got on a 10d6 was 55, but it was consistently 40+ when I rolled. Them dice loved me. Player wizard wanted to roll with the same dice, claiming they were lucky, Dice didn't agree and gave him below average result :)

Just checking in to see how things are going.

Fine by me. Just waiting for the night to resolve.

Apologies - had to travel unexpectedly. Back tomorrow, will post something then.

Think Sameen and Hecate were going to check out the alchemist's shack, see what he's hiding.

@Hecate: Do you want to do a RP post before I jump ahead to the alchemist's hut stuff?

Btw.: Super stressful time at work. So, actually not mad about having some break time ;)
I'm looking forward to getting back to action, but right now, taking it easy in a few games is actually convenient for me.