Two actions.
Grum,
Your first hit will drop the barghest. After that, you can use your move action to get on the dragon figurine. It'll be able to fly over, pick you up, and fly back over the wall. You'll both take troop damage, but you'll survive. But the griffon/dragon doesn't have Grab or Flyby Attack, so it has to spend a standard action to grab ahold of you. Which then means you both take more troop damage next round.
So, what do you wish to do? Because I understand wanting that epic final stand for your character, but there's a chance for Grum to survive.
If the Dragon makes it, it can carry Grum away.
Not sure how it is two rounds of damage.
Dragon moves in and Grum mounts; troop does damage.
Dragon moves out (carrying unconscious Grum if needed) and gets beyond the wall before troop gets to act again.
Seems like this is possible.
Am I missing something?
I thought you took swarm damage when they end their turn in your space. Not when you begin your turn in their space.
Round 1: Benedict summons drake. It uses a standard to pick him up and a move to fly over. Swarm does it's ranged attack.
Round 2: Drake moves back over the wall and uses a standard to pick Grum up. Swarm does it's ranged attack.
Round 3: Drake moves over the wall. Swarm has no targets to attack.
That's how I read what happened.
Between the Dragon figurine, the Necklaces of Fireballs, the Feather Tokens, and the Marvelous Pigments, I do enjoy part of Benedict's job being "See if this random stuff we found is of any use."
Will post my turn tomorrow and get my movement squared away. I have a move from last round that is not reflected on the map yet.
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If someone can get Grum back to positive HP, he can use barroom brawler for curative mastery. With base fort of +6 he has 3x cure light wounds (3d8+15 over 3 rounds) or 1x cure serious wounds (3d8+9 in one round).
Either way it’ll do wonders for getting back back into fighting shape.
You're at zero, meaning you're conscious and staggered. You can take a move action no problem, but you take a damage if you make a standard action (that's not healing).
So we don't have Wind Wall, or Fog Cloud. Or Evasion and +15 Reflex. But you know what fighters could do against this Troop's ranged attack?
Tower Shields.
I've played a number of PFS fighters but never used a Tower Shield, and there are some things in Armor Master's Handbook that make it more viable.
But, given the AP, traipsing around in the woods with such an item seems rather incongruous. And it would apply a huge ACP on Climb/Swim/Acrobatics unless you really specialize in it and take the feats.
Ugh... fighting this damn troop is going to be a slog.
We can't advance on them without taking a couple of rounds of their auto-hit ranged attack. 4d6 at a time does add up.
Arrows might work, but they have either a very good AC, or Missile Shield/Deflect Arrows, or both (Benedict hit AC 26 with an arrow but it did no damage).
Grum finally does have the HP to fight them for a bit, as does Amkarang, but they are pretty far away now.
Wait until they go within the wall, then approach again and lob Necklace beads over at them?
Heal up and try sneaking up on them? We do have a scroll of Invisibility (which actually isn't on William's spell list so needs to be UMD'd)?
Give up on this site, count ourselves lucky for surviving it, loot the 2 outside overseers and go back to Longshadow?
I'm leaning towards the last one but am open to ideas.
Or a combination approach. Let them retreat into the wall, then our armored fighters lob fireball beads over the wall at them until they open the gate and the archers fire on them from range.
I don't want to leave them be available to bring their alchemy to bear on the town now that we have found them.
But I only have 3 hp, so this might be a fever dream speaking, too.
Sounds good.
We've got some healing. Aerel has the Party Loot in his Haversack which includes several potions.
I feel like we were granted a reprieve by some GM judgment calls that could have gone either way. Not that it was softballed, but that it was not particularly harsh either. So pushing our luck feels... unsporting?
Still, this fight has already cost us a lot of resources (Fireball wand charges, CSW wand charges, a use of the Dragon Figurine) so maybe we should press on and finish it.
(Which, I know, is Sunk Cost Fallacy, but we have also made some progress towards eliminating their defenses.)
If Aerel was in better shape, I would offer to sneak in through a river gate to scout while they are watching the front door. But I won’t.
I have updated the loot list.
We had initially found a Wand of CSW from the hunter in the beast camp (14 charges) and a Wand of CMW from the priest (10 charges).
That was my error; I thought they were both CSW and recorded as such on the loot sheet.
Grum is keeping track of the 14-charge Wand of CSW which is now down to 4 charges and locked out for the day.
And there's a 10-charge Wand of CMW, also locked out for the day for Grum. Benedict will put a rank into UMD next level just because he has +4 Cha.
We now have in Party Loot 5 potions of CSW and 5 potions of CMW. Benedict will take 1 of each (moving them off of Party Loot and onto my sheet).
There's a Ring of Protection +2 in "To Sell," but I believe Amkarang took that. I am putting his Ring +1 in "To Sell."
The MW Siege Engine Tools could be useful for Longshadow's forces.
The Fuse Grenades give us a potential weapon against any more Troops (in addition to the remaining Necklaces of Fireballs).
@GM - we tried something like this tactic a long time ago, during the attack on Phaendar, when Shisumo was GM.
PF (or really any RPG that I am aware of) does not handle the transition from "out of combat" to "in combat" very well. Depending on GM rulings, it could be that when I open the door, we then roll initiative, so Benedict could end up flat-footed in front of the enemy.
Or, it could be that I get a surprise round, so can open the door and 5' step aside (can you 5' step out of Grease?) and be out of the line of sight.
I am wondering how you would adjudicate this, and what I need to do in order to be able to open the door and move out of the way.
Would it depend on our relative levels of awareness?
Maybe we can have Sir Kingston go listen at the door (or Benedict if he is feeling brave).
Or we set a fuse grenade in front of the door and move away.
I'm going to have to roll this back. Sorry. I was at work all day without the book and knew I would have to figure out the remaining forces' next moves. So... there's no chance for you to get all the way up to the gutted temple without encountering more of the hobgoblin forces.
I'll set the scene for when you reach the gates.
Benedict, I don't have a ring of protection and think the last time we talked about it, I waited for confirmation that one was available before I claimed on. I see that there are either two or three in the loot, so I am claiming one. I'm not sure what the difference is between the two up top with prices and one down below without? I have changed neither count as I'm not sure if those are divided intentionally.
I also updated the necklaces of fireballs to reflect I have one.
@Aerel, there is a ring available, feel free to claim it.
The stuff below without prices is just new additions, should be combined.
And wow, this AP is getting really tough for us. The all-fighter party is very solid at low levels, but now we have Invisible alchemists popping out of nowhere, beating us on initiative, and escaping... I am not sure of the best way to adjust our tactics to deal with stuff like this.
William can get See Invisibility as a spell known, which may help. But maybe we should have had a more clever plan for approaching the buildings?
Every time we take damage I feel that I have screwed up.
I claimed a ring, but I did not update the spreadsheet. I will just remove the one from the bottom of the list that hadn't been added to the collection with pricing.
I think you've done a masterful job of keeping the thread of the campaign and keep us moving forward. You certainly haven't screwed anything up.
It's tough. Some of these encounters you steamroll, then others put up a real challenge. But I want to play them as smart as they are, and alchemists are Int-based. They'll use what advantages they've got.
XP so far in the munitions camp:
4,800 for the morlocks
3,200 for the overseers
6,400 for the barghests
9,600 for the troop
Oh, I'm not blaming you, or even complaining, GM.
This is an awesome game.
And I like a challenge. It should be tough. It has just been a revelation at this location with so many things that are hard for us to deal with.
High-level games include many novel challenges, like incorporeal foes playing hit-and-run through walls, invisible combatants (possibly with Greater Invisibility), no-save spells, and so on. There's a pretty good list out there of what kinds of challenges you should be prepared to handle in PFS scenarios at various levels. I may dig it out.
I do think we have 'real challenge' much more often than 'steamroll', which is really a refreshing change for 9th-level PCs in an AP. Usually by this point the PCs are so strong that the GM has to buff up everything to provide a challenge.
I am down with the plan to blow them up inside their building. Will get a Gameplay post up in a while.
May I claim the amulet of natural armor from the loot?
May I claim the amulet of natural armor from the loot?
Go for it.
I think that this is also a pretty good AP for the pure fighter experiment. The enemies, generally at least, are just about what they look like on the tin and magic doesn’t seem like the focus of the plot.
Lots of kudos to Benedict for his consistent strategizing!
One great way for fighters to deal with unusual challenges is the Warrior Spirit Advanced Weapon Training option.
Ghost Touch for incorporeal foes; Phase-Locking for teleporting foes; Heartseeker and Limning for invisible foes; Sharding for flying foes; and a lot of other abilities.
You can even use it to add Training, thereby getting a feat like Rat Catcher (for swarms), Soulblade (for haunts), or Cut from the Air (for alchemist bombs).
Benedict will likely get that option eventually, but not until level 12 (Ftr9/Chv3, using the Manual of War to retrain an existing bonus feat for AWT). Grum or Benedict could get it sooner - or Aerel, if the GM's ruling on Amkarang's archetype qualifying for AWT options also applies to the Archer archetype.
Heads up, I'm going to be on a mini-vacation this weekend, so my posting will be slower. I won't be able to update the map either.
William has been slower to post as of late due to some tech issues.
I don't know if he has seen the info about clearing cookies - but as I think he has been using his wife's laptop, that may not be an option.
Can we bot him for now?
I think I have his email address.
If we have lost William - as seems increasingly likely, as it has been 2 weeks - what should we do?
1) Bot him for a while and hope he comes back?
2) Replace him?
3) Continue with 4 PCs?
If we continue with 4, we are definitely under-leveled for the challenges we will face. I might suggest just switching to milestone XP (which would probably put us at 10th) and reducing random encounter frequency. Had we been a party of 4, completing the encounters that we have done, we'd be 10th level. So, it seems reasonable that 10th level is where a party of 4 should be at.
I also might have Benedict take Leadership at 11th, if that were permissible, with the cohort sticking to our build rules (Fighter as primary class, VMC and PrCs allowed). Someone focused on survivability and support, to provide capabilities that we are missing without overshadowing us.
Alternatively, a non-fighter cohort that is not out of line might be one of the NPCs in the Hemlock Militia (Aubrin, Rhyna, Cirieo, etc.).
We have really struggled with 5; I think if we are 4, even if we were a level higher, we would struggle even more. One or more of us making non-abusive use of Leadership might be reasonable.
I think I would prefer to continue with 4 rather than add a new PC, although if we did want to bring on a new player I would say ask for recommendations rather than do an open recruitment.
With four, will we be missing arcane support? Grum already has a full-time job as the front-line.
Same as Grum, I'd say, though the concern that we'll lack arcane support is a valid one.
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Even with 4 we can get by. I think that investing in Boots of the Earth will handle out of combat healing for us. Grum can handle some spells. Benedict will take leadership which can fill in a lot of gaps.
And while Grum uses these a lot, I also highly recommend others taking these. Either from Advanced Weapon Training or as a feat.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/item-mastery-feats/
As fighters we get a lot of feats. Having a few spells each day could save us. Dispel magic, for example, cast as an SLA could turn a fight around really quickly. As an elf, Aerel could theoretically take these and still very much be an elven archer.
I’m also thinking that advanced weapon training and warrior spirit could be really helpful for any of us. Being able to, as a standard action, take “bane” and “heartseeker” can make a fight go in our favor. Ignoring enemy blur and mirror image makes fighters smile.
So yeah…even with 4 we have lots of options to cover our weaknesses. Especially if we hit Lvls faster. :)
In terms of arcane capability, Dimension Door has proven to be very tactically useful, from the Teleportation Mastery feat. Flickering Step is another way to gain that ability; it has some restrictions (shorter range and need line of sight) and some benefits (more uses, treat the Dimensional Agility feats as combat feats).
If I were to take a cohort, yes, I might do a Child of Acavna and Amaznen with some Conduit feats. Or maybe a Relic Master. One of the "casty fighter" options. CoAaA is hated by some of the more hardcore optimizer contingent on the forums, but William seemed quite solid with it, and the 4+Int skills (with a good skill list) can cover a lot of our Knowledges.
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Another idea…please tell me if this might work. I could take improved familiar at lvl11. Something with hands, so Sir Kingston can use wands.
A pooka, for example, has at-will detect magic and see invisibility. It would share Grum’s ranks in UMD. Or maybe a Lyrakien Azata, who has constant detect evil and detect magic. With CHA 20 and UMD it would even be better than Grum with wands, letting it handle those while he fights. Or a faerie dragon? It casts spells as a lvl3 sorcerer. That alone is quite useful, even if it just is lvl1 spells.
I think that this might be worth a feat. Just have to decide on which one!
We even met a Pooka before!
Although Grum doesn't get a general feat at level 11, does he? Due to VMC? Maybe he could retrain something.
I think we'll figure it out.
If you folks think we can cover the necessary bases with four, I will not argue.
Perhaps it would be simpler if Aerel was rebuilt to use the same rules as your characters. It seems like some of the options you have looked at in the past were not available to me.
I'll DMPC William for the rest of this fight, following your suggestions for his actions if you want him to do anything other than shoot arrows. That'll give his player a chance to come back if they're able. After that, we've got the invasion of Longshadow, where you'll have other NPCs available to recruit and assist you if you wish.
Then we'll decide if you all want to go ahead with four or see about adding a fifth.
@Aerel, to what options are you referring?
You've got a pretty cool and useful build between VMC Rogue and Darkvision.
Neither you nor I are full-on fighters like Grum or Amkarang, but I think we still contribute quite a lot of value with our skills.
Just got an email from William that he is trying to get things set up again and get back online.
Don't know how long it will be, so I suggest we bot him to regain momentum.
Edit: even if we do get William back, I think it still may be reasonable to take Leadership at 11th to get a fighter cohort with that Healer's Hands feat and some other options. Grum's build for a healer Fighter was pretty compelling and you could also throw in some more support/survival abilities at the expense of damage output.
@GM, I think we are waiting to see if the Fireball cleared away the fog or not; it notes that it does so under the spell description for Obscuring Mist but not under Fog Cloud, and Stinking Cloud references the latter. If it does, then William and Amkarang would probably come out of Delay. If it doesn't, then I think we are waiting for the bad guys to go.
@Aerel, to what options are you referring?
You've got a pretty cool and useful build between VMC Rogue and Darkvision.Neither you nor I are full-on fighters like Grum or Amkarang, but I think we still contribute quite a lot of value with our skills.
Oh, I like my build. But the VMC build takes away some options that you guys have as dedicated fighters, so if I need to make adjustments to carry my weight as a fourth member of the team, I'm willing.
If I don't have to, I like what I have going and won't change course.
Sorry for disappearing guys. Things have been a bit hectic here and I still don't have a desktop up. That means sharing the laptop and I am currently not the "preferred" user of it. I didn't realize it had been so long. I had been reading on my phone an posting as posting on the phone is a pain in the ass. I'm going to try and do better and keep my games and a select few as primary and the others as I can get to them, hopefully I can.
Thanks for hanging in there with me.
Just glad to know the issue is technical. Take your time.
As best as I can tell by his posts, Amkarang has only used 1 CMW potion in this whole campaign.
He should have, I think, 1 CLW and 3 CMW in his own stash.
Plus there are currently 4 CMW and 4 CSW in Party Loot.
And, he can use Unbreakable Survivor to regain 12 HP (Con mod + level).
But I had no idea he was down that far.
Also, looking back at the posts when this fight began, I see that Benedict drank a potion of Resist Fire that he had Rhyna make him way back. That would be Resist Fire 10, and would mean he took 9 less damage.
I will keep the HP as they are if retconning at this point is inappropriate, but it may matter against the golem.
After we defeated the phalanx troop I suggested we heal up and press on. At the time I thought Amkarang was down between 15 and 32 depending on saves, but I didn't realize that he hadn't healed up after the earlier alchemist troop random encounter.
As Grum pointed out, Boots of the Earth would be a really good item to heal to full between fights. That would cut down on the inventory tracking aspect. Benedict will craft a set as soon as possible.
Agh, really sorry. In between my various absences and the heavy use of consumables for healing, tracking HP has been hard for me. I figured in between sections of fighting we’d be able to heal up as needed without explicitly saying it. I’ll mark off however many potions I need to and count my use of unbreakable survivor as used.
I’ll do my best to get better at it in the future.
I'd been assuming that you've been healing between fights as well, but given the "grittier" nature of the game I still want all those limited healing resources to be tracked. I've been trusting the players to monitor their own health bars and respond accordingly -- falling back when necessary and using those healing resources as needed. I know some GMs do things differently and keep close tabs on those kind of stats, but that always felt sort of patronizing. Plus, it's a lot of extra work to not only maintain a watch on the bad guys' hp, but the players as well.
The problem with this particular fight is that the enemy hasn't been allowing the party to easily fall back and bring themselves back up to full before pushing on again. Add in the fact that Amkarang's stat line showing his current HP has never been adjusted during either of the two recent fights (and the forgetting of making Reflex saves) led me to go back and reread the thread to see if there was any mention of Amkarang healing at all.
I don't mind assuming healing is taking place, but since healing is currently a finite resource, it still has to be tracked.
One thought I had to make things more streamlined would be to set a number to the cure spells, rather than have them be rolled out. So, for example, a charge or potion of cure light wounds is 5, while a charge or potion of cure moderate wounds is 10, and so on, always in increments of five.
That way, you can announce you're drinking three potions of CLW and one CMW (or spending that number of charges), and then just add 25 HP rather than roll all of that. I think it's roughly the average of what you'd roll. At least it cuts out the variance.
Let me know your thoughts on that.