Is Aubrin recovered enough to put her Survival skill to use?
Sorry, missed this question. Aubrin won't be able to contribute until she's had a week's worth of rest.
One thing to keep in mind is the "Scout" activity, which basically has a six-mile range if you choose a scout with a 30 ft move speed. That could be used to provide information about Phaendar, the redoubt, or other possible sites of interest elsewhere.
Then perhaps we should move to a point equidistant between Phaendar and the redoubt and camp there. Then we can scout both places.
That sounds good to me.
We may in the future need to move our camp around to explore more of the Fangwood, but that sounds like a good location to start scouting and building up supplies.
Maybe in the course of rounding up livestock our refugees will come across some horses so we will be able to explore a greater distance from our base in day trips.
That sounds good to me also.
If we are only going 5 miles rather than 8, can we spend the rest of the time gathering resources?
Or if it is just a day of light travel and we can't get any work done, can we make it half rations?
I think half rations are a bad idea. It doesn't seem that once we settle down that hunting is going to be that hard. Even adding a +0 on Survival will provide 1.25 Provision points. Meaning that there will be a net gain in Provision points per day equal to a quarter of the people hunting minus the nember of people not hunting, even using this minimal roll. Roleplaywise, if we're not going to be able to do half an action, then it would make sense to gather up all the livestock we can close to the city. Moving away from the city and then gathering livestock seems weird.
I agree with Chang Jie, we have a fair amount of provisions and half rations would just slow us down and make us use more provisions overall.
I don't understand how you arrive at that conclusion, but I'll go along. Full rations it is.
It should get better once we level up and can have better Survival skills among the PCs. And especially once Aubrin can help.
I doubt that we can rely on the math being 100% predictable for resource gathering. Our characters don't know it, and really neither do we. Random events could occur that would apply a penalty to Survival checks or render NPCs unavailable to work (but still needing to be fed). So I hope we can build up more than a two-day reserve to weather any adverse events.
Here is my suggestion. We stay here for the day. I know its close, but it just makes so much more sense from a role playing point of view.
GROUP 1
The 4 Warriors and 11 Commoners will all take the Herd Animal action. One of us should keep an eye on the herders and with Jie's good Handle Animal it would make sense to put her in charge of this group.
GROUP 2
Kining has good Stealth and Survival. She also is obviously very familiar with bridges. Kining should go with two of us and Scout the destroyed Bridge and Phaendar. Try to see how quickly the bridge might be rebuilt and what the status of the village is.
GROUP 3
Clidon and Farrow will scout for a location in the woods that is defensible and about 5 to 6 miles away from our current location. Again one of us should accompany them.
GROUP 4
Jet and Netthias will hunt/gather berries
GROUP 5
The adepts and Rhyna will tend to Aubrin and if time permits build more temporary shelters.
I know this smacks of Scooby Dooish 'Lets split the party' but lets face it the bridge scouting and tomorrow's location scouting are the dangerous ones.
Tomorrow we set off for the location that Clidon and Farrow have hopefully found.
I don't understand how you arrive at that conclusion, but I'll go along. Full rations it is.
It should get better once we level up and can have better Survival skills among the PCs. And especially once Aubrin can help.
I doubt that we can rely on the math being 100% predictable for resource gathering. Our characters don't know it, and really neither do we. Random events could occur that would apply a penalty to Survival checks or render NPCs unavailable to work (but still needing to be fed). So I hope we can build up more than a two-day reserve to weather any adverse events.
I quite agree about depending on the math, I've rolled enough 1's to know you plan for the worst.I just don't think that our situation with the provisions is dire enough to go on half rations. Besides my quick calculation this morning was wrong :(
If they roll a 1-9 they find 0 Provisions - 45% chance of 0
If they roll a 10-11 they find 1 Provision = 10% chance of 1
If they roll a 12-13 they find 2 Provisions = 10% chance of 2
If they roll 14-15 they find 3 Provisions = 10 % chance of 3
If they roll 16-17 they find 4 Provisions = 10% chance of 4
If they roll 18-18 they find 5 Provisions =10% chance of 5
If they rol a 20 they find 6 Provisions = 5% chance of 6
So they Average is (.45x0)+(.1x1)+(.1x2)+(.1x3)+(.1x4)+(.1x5)+(.05x6)
Which equals 1.8 Provisions on average. Since they use up 1 Provision for the day it is a net gain of .8 per day (much better than the .25 I determined earlier)
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I'm not totally opposed to the idea, anyway. When you hit 3rd level, we can talk about it again then.
Following up on this, Grum, it looks like Tribal Scars has been reprinted in Adventurer's Guide without the bonus hit points, and as a rule I tend to apply a "most recent printing" policy to rules elements like this. So that might change your plans.
Jie's plan looks solid, but even if you all agree you still need to assign PCs to the groups as she described. Let's keep this discussion going over here while I bump the action forward just a bit in the gameplay thread...
I generally agree with the tasks, but I don't think we need to split up. Aside from known dangers (the bridge mission) I don't think the NPCs need chaperones on their tasks. The entire lore of Nirmathas is about how self-sufficient the people are.
And metagaming a bit (with the goal of making it easier for the GM and less likely to crash the game):
1) Splitting could really slow down the game. With one person out of 5 unavailable the GM can bot them, but if they are the only one facing an encounter?
2) The "assign tasks" mechanic would be greatly crippled if they needed escorts - I think we are meant to go do PC stuff while they gather resources. They can't grind to a halt if we have a dungeon to explore.
3) If there are random encounters intended for a party of 4-6, they would slaughter a lone PC. If the AP makes level 1 NPC commoner shepherds face random encounters when there are no PCs around, I don't know what to do.
I would put all the PCs on the bridge mission. Leave Kining back to forage.
I'm not sure we need to scout tomorrow's location; we can march in that direction tomorrow and start looking when we get near halfway.
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Won't change my plans. The movement penalty for armor is brutal. As a fighter I should have plenty of combat feats. So no problem using my level feats to be able to move faster. Plus the two feats put together, but lvl5...all it does is give 30ft movement and acrobatics at +0 (-5 ACP with masterwork fullplate, +1 for dex, +4 from feats).
Also because I will be gone on national guard duty, feel free to assign Grum to a task if needed.
I'm up for a little bridge scouting, freeing Kining up for foraging and building up our provisions. Throw Clidon and Farrow into the hunting party and we should be doing OK on Provisions.
So drop Group 3, make the PC's become Group 1 and Group 4 becomes Kining, Jet, Nethias, Clidon and Farrow.
Sounds good to me. Bridge Scouts (PCs), Shepherds (Commoners/Warriors), Foragers (Experts/Aristocrats), and Adepts/Aubrin. The adepts can also work on identifying items, though it shouldn't take long in game time for them to make all of their attempts.
Sounds good to me. Bridge Scouts (PCs), Shepherds (Commoners/Warriors), Foragers (Experts/Aristocrats), and Adepts/Aubrin. The adepts can also work on identifying items, though it shouldn't take long in game time for them to make all of their attempts.
A good, workable plan. Let's go with it.
So that's 9 herd animals recovered.
That gives us Jet 15 (3 pts), Kining 16 (4 pts), Netthias 15 (3 pts), Farrow 14 (3 pts), and Clidon 14 (3 pts), for an additional 16 Provision Points.
Rhyna, Salesi, and Yangvit together can ID any of your magic items with a CL of 4th or lower. That includes:
wand of magic missile (11 charges)
A scroll containing calm animals, cure light wounds, and magic stone
wand of prestidigitation (31 charges)
wand of grease (5 charges)
elm wand of magic missile (12 charges)
aegis of recovery
two potions of cure light wounds
two more potions of cure light wounds
potion of invisibility
belt of tumbling
a pair of bracers or armor +1 marked with the Ironfang Legion symbol and an insignia of rank
oil of magic weapon
a potion of longstrider
potion of cure moderate wounds
Vortiga's shirt is magical, but still unidentified
three more potions of cure light wounds
potion of endure elements
80 XP for getting Edran to calm down and listen to you.
I think the idea is to check out Phaendar.
Yes, scout out Phaendar and the bridge.
How long will it take us to get there, moving in daytime without our followers?
We should also take some our newly-identified items. Probably everybody should have a potion of CLW.
I'd rather scout for a new camp than go look at phaendar. We need a secure shelter or we are in serious trouble if the weather changes (what time of year is it? Rain/Snow likely?) and should focus on moving forward instead of back. The most we're going to learn about phaendar is that they've started setting up fortifications and repairing the bridge. Unless they're magically doing this, it won't be very easy to judge progress after only 10 hours or so, and if they're doing it magically they're already done. Better to scout the bridge area later. Even if we saw something miraculous happening in phaendar itself, we wouldn't be able to get back over the ravine to do anything about it.
I am fine with whatever. Just want to accomplish something. If they are rebuilding the bridge manually, I would guess they are using Phaendar slaves to do it. Would be a chance to rescue a few more. It would also be good to know if they have rebuilt the bridge magically overnight, but I think that unlikely.
I don't know the difference in quality between the temporary shelters we build in 1 hour, the more solid ones we build in 8 hours, and a multi-week project like a longhouse. That last one wasn't explicitly mentioned as a possibility, but could we do it?
For the time being I am fine with going east, looking around halfway to the redoubt for a good campsite, and checking out anything interesting we come across. We can't make it all the way to the redoubt and back in one day without horses.
Yeah - we're going to have a lot of sick and then dead people if we don't get basic shelters set up, especially if we get spring rains, not to mention how hard it's going to be to have night time fire without giving our position away if we don't find some kind of cave or ravine with heavy thicket.
Let's go east, setup our temporary shelters each night and look for someplace more defensible/hidden than 'it's the woods'. If this is anything like Kingmaker, we're going to have plenty of encounters in the wilderness anyways, and exploring the forest is our path forward to 'the next plot'. We can scout phaendar in a few days once we find somewhere to settle our followers that they aren't going to be instantly at risk to a wandering patrol of ~whatever-the-ap-has~ on it's random encounter chart.
As Delmar O'Donnal might say. "I'm with you fellas"
Both locations need to be scouted at some point, but if I had to choose one, I'd choose the 'find a good and safe place to camp' option. So I'm going to vote with Lissa on this one and say we scout for a safe campsite to travel to tomorrow. I think it whatever location we choose should have the following qualities.
1) Be close enough to Aubrin's Redoubt that we can scout the Redoubt from the campsite.
2) Tactically meet Benedict's standards.
3) We are going to have to live there for at least a couple of days so it should be near running water, be on a slight grade so any rain won't pool in the camp or sleeping areas, etc.
DM Shisumo, I have some questions about the NPC actions. First if we travel as a group, can the NPC's at least attempt the 'Care for the animals' action. It seems reasonable that if we assign 1 of the livestock to each commoner to watch while we relocate there shouldn't be any attrition. Second, can the animals be aplit up into groups for caring animals. Ie if we have 9 animals can we split them into groups of 5 and 4 and have 1 commoner with a +5 Handle Animal take 10 with the 5 and a second commoner with a +4 take 10 for the 4. Or do we have to take them as an entire group (DC19( and assign 1 Commoner with a +5, and 2 assistants aiding another (bringing his bonus to +9). And will the Aid Another Actions even stack with each other?
Thanks, am enjoying this very much.
The difference between staying in one place and moving is that the NPCs won't be able to take 10 on their Handle Animal checks. You can still have people make Aid Another checks, and of course you can assign smaller numbers of animals to individuals to keep DCs down, but everyone will have to actually roll. Aid Another, in this context, will stack as far as the dice will allow it to.
Did anyone else want the Masterwork Cold Iron Scimitar? Otherwise Benedict will have picked that from the group loot, as well as the composite longbow, the +1 Buckler, an alchemist's fire, tanglefoot bag, and potion of CLW.
Still a lot of other items and we should figure out who has what.
A loot spreadsheet might be good. I can try making one over the weekend.
It looks to me like we have five or more of the following (so one per PC at least):
CLW potions (7, plus Aubrin's)
Bloodblock (5)
Alchemist's Fire (7)
Pints of oil (5)
Potions of Guidance (originally 8, now 7)
So let's assume those are distributed.
Also 4 antiplague and 2 antitoxin. Hopefully won't need them, but best for the healers to have them.
2 Thunderstones, 1 Smokestick remaining, 2 tanglefoot bags (Benedict has 1), 2 defoliant, fire ward gel, 3 scent cloaks, an everburning Torch, and a bunch of scrolls, wands, and miscellaneous potions.
Well since you're offering :)
Jie will take 1 each of the 1st group plus 1 extra Alchemist's Fire.
Who is our combat healer anyway, Jie is adding 0 so its not her
Noone is a combat healer because healing in combat is -terrible-. Out of combat, lissa is capable but not great yet.
Given enough alchemists fire Jie might be able to take the swarm on Feng. Wind up 70' from swarm. Double move on Feng, throwing the alchemist's fire at the 20' spot. She'd be rolling at only a +0 to hit (+4 to hit, but a -4 for the double move). Since she'd wind up being 70' away at the end of her turn, I guess it depends on how fast they fly. Just what is the velocity of an unladen wasp swarm? :)
Website issues keep preventing me from posting. I'll be back as soon as the site starts cooperating.
I had the same problem over the weekend. Three times I tried to log in. Interestingly, I never got the Paizo goblins eating a computer screen, instead it was always my browser telling me that it had timed out trying to access the site.
I did a test. Since her previous post might have required a Survival check, I rolled a Survival roll and the post did seem to stick.
I've been nice and waited for other's to grab what they wanted first off the loot list. Seriously, look at it. There are some nice things on it.
Jie will take the following unless someone wants to dice for it.
MW Dagger
Defoliant
Tanglefoot Bag
Thunderstone
MW Buckler
Scent Cloak
Aegis of Recovery (I think one of the front liners really needs this but its been languishing on the list for long enough. If someone else wants it the Jie will take the Cure Moderate Wounds potion, instead. She's mobile enough that she can administer it if needed.)
Belt of Tumbling
Studded Leather Armor
Small Tent
Hooded Latern
She returns Benedict's Heavy Wooden Shield with a heartfelt 'Thank you'.
Someone with Use Magic Device really needs to pick up the Wand Of Cure Light also.
Scent cloak to our scouts.
I have UMD - going to pick up the following:
Wand of CLW (21 charges)
Potions of cure light wounds (7)
Alchemist's Fire (5)
Healer's Kit
Bloodblock (5)
Antitoxin (2)
Antiplague (4)
Potion of Guidance (7)
wand of magic missile (11 charges)
A scroll containing calm animals, cure light wounds, and magic stone
Some of this she was already marked as carrying, I added L's to the loot list for the stuff she hadn't already picked up.
I've marked as taken everything off the previous post. Jie does not take the Studded Leather or Masterwork buckler however.
You each get another 80 XP for uncovering the spy in your midst.
So close! Level 2 is 49 XP away, by my count.
Do we get any for defeating (or outlasting) the board gremlins?
Those were pretty viscous board gremlins, probably at least CR 2 :)
Were the board gremlins vicious or viscous? Hehe. Although viscous gremlins gives me nightmares of an ooze-based game a friend of mine once ran which I played a crit-focused swashbuckler in.