Hi guys! Well I'm pretty psyched for this game! Am I the only non-caster in the group? Seems like it.
Hi all. Thanks for the selection. I’m excited for this game!
Ben is a Necroccultist, meaning he starts off with some debuffing abilities and an occasional skeleton minion. My plan was to round him out with some healing and some powerful divination abilities, but by lvl 10, he’ll be a pretty darn powerful necromancer with plenty of undead minions.
I think we have two others going down the necromancy path? If it feels like there’s too much overlap, I can pick another archetype that focuses more on healing/divination. Occultists are pretty flexible, and the divination abilities are pretty great, and will come in handy in a more investigation heavy campaign.
That would take a major rewrite of his story and character though, so let me know.
Also, a heads up; I will be traveling and visiting family in Hawaii for 10 days starting next Monday. I hope to still be able to get at least a post a day in, but some days I may not be able to. I know the timing’s bad, but after that I should be back to normal.
I haven’t been able to read everyone’s character stories, but I’ve tied Ben in with the Church, Booktown, the Seminary, and the Fetch. If I drop the necromancy angle, that’d drop the ties with the Fetch, likely. Maybe.
Heya. Rain's plan is to be a healer with some necromantic gifts, too, as she operates that life and death are pretty much the same thing when you think about it hard enough (with your brain melted by the bleakness of the city lots of things look the same. And different.) and her archetype requires at least one Necromancy spell.
Rain won't be using stuff that directly raises or controls the undead, and will be using Necromancy more for debuffs and destruction. I don't imagine Rain will do huge amounts of damage...until after the right, where she might occasionally eat someone's life energy.
As for personal connections, she has ties to the Theatre, and Grog the trapper. She probably has some connection to the more artistically and magically inclined folks. And I imagine everyone in Wicken has some idea who Rain is, since she's not...subtle, and someone wearing men's evening dress, no shoes with gleaming black eyes and too much money tends to be noticed.
Touch here! ......Man, on second thought, there could be so many jokes with this name. XD Well, that's fine.
As a Mesmerist, Touch is primarily a support character. She can use her Hypnotic Stare to increase the damage a foe takes, and she can implant tricks in martial characters to let you gain a flanking buddy for a turn during combat. (This will get better later.) Don't expect her to do a whole lot of damage herself - though in a group this size, that shouldn't matter too much anyway. XD
She's especially familiar with the Artist's Quarter and Booktown districts of the city.
As a sixth-level caster, she can't throw around magic all day, but she is able to conjure up an obscuring mist to hide an escape - or mess with someone's head and distract them for a bit while the rest of the group smacks them around.
Skill-wise, she's great at dancing and singing, as well as diplomacy and bluffing. She should be able to help the party as a face, especially if anyone decides to aid her already-decent numbers. XD
Oh, and she's a cultist of what's basically Shub-Niggurath. I mean what? Nothing to worry about, really! (No, seriously. XD She may be CN, but she likes her friends - the rest of the party, unless someone objects - and only does animal sacrifices.)
Also, if anyone's using Oladon's browser extension, I have an avatar for Touch in her profile. o wo/
I think I might go vanilla Occultist and just focus on divination. I’ll rewrite his connections with the undead and up his bookwormishness. I think it’ll round the group out more, and he can serve as the researcher/info guy. He’ll have some healingish powers with his background skills allowing him to make herbal remedies.
Oh dear. I've already told the GM that there was about a 50% chance that Rain would end up creating some horrifying spell/disease that caused half the city to dance themselves to death (because real life is the best source of horror) so Touch's being here changes that somewhat. Rain is also decent at dancing and being a face, so I may or may not tweek that depending on how many others do so.
How many people do we have that focus on damage?
Kapenia is a seducer witch, so she's also face character but focused more on bluff than diplomacy. She uses CHA instead of INT, and has a bunch of different bonuses based on whether or not a target is capable of being attracted to her (they don't have to be, just have to be able to). Besides the social aspect, she's a debuffer and could do either ranged or backup melee with her natural claw attack and touch spells. Her focus isn't on damage but she's not completely useless in a fight.
I haven't bought her any gear yet, but she'll probably load up on perfumes to boost social skills and some ranged weapons. Not being able to use any armor at all leaves her a lot of gold to buy trinkets :)
In terms of relationships, Kapenia is somewhat familiar with most areas of Blight, as she's been working with the Great Coven to seduce/influence targets all around the city. She doesn't have any specific area that she is more familiar with though. Most of the group would probably know her from Wicken, where she took on the role of devout proper girl next door who helped with sermons and did her best to make herself present but kinda plain and forgettable (except with the boys, who she subtly flirted with but never let them get anywhere)
Hey y’all!
Valeriana is a sorcerer with the infernal bloodline. She’s built to both damage and debuff, but I can focus more heavily on damage since it seems like we’ve got plenty of support. She’s got high charisma and is useful for social skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, with Intimidate as her go-to), and some Kn. skills (Arcana, Local, Linguistics).
RP-wise, she’s spent a lot of time in the Artist’s Quarter and might have connections with people through there (theatres, galleries, and much sleazier establishments), or through her mostly happy childhood as an orphan in Wicken. She’s charming and charismatic, and easily makes friends and falls in love, but her vanity and excessive indulgence can be off-putting for those who spend a lot of time with her. She’s also weak-willed and impressionable, though, and can be influenced or manipulated by people she likes and admires.
I couldn’t find an icon to fit her appearance perfectly. She looks more like this.
I’m looking forward to this chaotic, charisma, caster-heavy party.
Pietro focuses on damage. He's a two-handed power attack paladin. He's got some support healing, but it's mostly about wreckin' shit. I went with a spellless archetype to further emphasize his intent to wreck.
But with no real backup melee'r, it is up to you guys to keep his foot planted, in the words of Piccolo on DBZ Abridged, "planted firmly somewhere between their lungs and colon".
He's also really, really intimidating. Like "a paladin shouldn't be so scary" intimidating. Should be fun to figure how to scare people while remaining lawful good. He can be diplomatic, too, but it isn't even close, numbers wise, compared to intimidating.
Good is not Nice.
And heck, with four caster pouring buffs into you and debuffs into the enemy you should go through them like they're paper people.
Oh I know. As I said in discussion, this character is based on Sam Vimes from the Discworld (with a little of Captain Carrot thrown in). He's most certainly not nice.
But you can't really threaten to rip someone's kidneys out slowly and painfully and still be super good. I mean, not if you follow through. Especially if the law is "don't slowly rip kidneys out".
Sounds like Pietro will be getting a great deal of my tricks. XD Alas, I can only implant one at a time for now, but still.
..........
That said, I should probably figure out how to get a lawful good Paladin to trust a chaotic neutral artist who wants to implant psychic powers in his head........
o vo;
Try lying. I'm sure even with max sense motive you'll be better at bluffing. My wisdom isn't exactly excessive.
Of course should he catch you lying it will be counterproductive to future relationships, as it were.
I assume we all know each reasonably well. Maybe Pietro has a reason to trust Touch, some bit of backstory to explain why he lets her put brain muckery in his skull?
Backstories solve everything! 8D ...What's your relationship to the town of Wicken?
Ben is a longer lived species, he is 66 yrs old currently. He was adopted and raised by Father Gromwell’s predecessor (i’ll come up with a name unless GM wants to provide one) and left Wicken before Father Gromwell took over, which was 20 years ago, I believe. He returns home every year for the summer harvest festival, and helps out around the church, AND he’s a disturbingly freakish looking daemonic tiefling, so he should be at least recognizable in such a small community. He is, however, a socially clumsy, nervous, extremely private, intellectual loner.
In Castorhage, I’m going to rewrite him as a librarian in the Seminary, with ties and history to Booktown.
I’ll have new stats and backstory written up tomorrow.
In terms of mechanics, Ralleck is built for two-handed damage as well, though he has some spells for healing and buffing, as well as some useful social skills and utility, which should improve as well level. Of course, he also suffers from being a ⅔ bab class. Additionally, he has standard action summon monsters, for area control and additional melee and utility support. Backstory, personality, and such is in the Alias, though I’m always open to adjusting things to include relations with other PCs. Needless to say, even though he's not really the most terrible person, he likely has fewer issues with the forceful removal of kidneys and such. For the greater good :P
As far as his backstory in Wicken, he grew up there as a child. His mother was saved by a guard in a larger city, though not necessarily The Blight. He's been a guard in Castorhage since.
An easy reason to trust someone is a childhood friend, perhaps a past love interest that never came to fruition, etc.
Hmm..... well, you two know your builds better than me. o wo Who do you think would benefit more from what's basically an on-demand flanking partner? Got any special powers that trigger from that?
I mean, +2 to attack is +2 to attack, but I don't have sneak attack or anything like that, so...
(I ask because I can only implant one trick at a time. This stops being a problem at Level 5, when I can help both of you at once. XD)
Well, Pietro is likely better in melee than Ralleck ever will be, so odds are it is best to buff Pietro,as he is actually meant for this sort of role. Additionally, Ralleck can make flanking partners for himself or others as well(Standard action summons are great for that sort of thing, and he can eventually give them teamwork feats.) But yeah, ultimately, I don't think either of us get anything special from flanks, beyond the attack bonus, which is nice.
@GM: Incidentally, feel free to make the gameplay thread sooner instead of later. Once it's up, we can do a quick post there and have this game added to our campaigns for quick reference. ^^
It is helpful and lets me keep a tab on things without keeping this window open.
Agreed on the gameplay thread. It's so much nicer to just have one tab open to check on all the games.
In terms of crunch though, we should look at skills. We've got a bluffer, an intimidator, and a lot of diplomats. How are we doing on knowledges and the sneaky skills?
I don't get a lot of skill points, so I'll be pretty much just doing bluff, diplomacy, knowledge planes, sense motive and spellcraft. Background skills are knowledge history and profession courtesan. We should make sure the other knowledges are covered and someone has disable device at the very least.
I have Knowledges (Religion and Arcana), Diplomacy, Perception, UMD and Spellcraft.
My lore bonus goes into the Theatre District.
Lore bonus? I thought you could only take lore as one of your background skills but I see you already have two others. I think I missed a mechanic here somewhere.
Besides the big three social skills (Bluff, Dip, Intimidate), I'm focusing on UMD, Kn. Arcana, Kn. Local, and my background skills are Linguistics and Sleight of Hand.
I have Lore of Criminal Underground. As a guard Pietro has gotten to know the seedy underbelly of The Blight. He isn't a fan. It's mostly from watching who bribes whom.
So if someone has knowledge nature, and stealth/disable device we should be pretty well rounded.
BTW I've now finished the profile. Finally got around to buying gear and deciding on spells.
Primitive Elves get a Lore bonus to a city district, and a +1 to knowledge about all the others. We're whacky fun!
And I have four traits total, due to taking Extra Traits as my feat. It isn't the smartest move - I had other plans for that feat - but it was what the character decided was happening.
Ah. I wanted the changeling badly enough that I didn't bother looking at the AP specific races. I was thinking about taking Extra Traits too, since I really wanted extremely fashionable (it would fit really well into Kapenia's personality and background) but I couldn't pass up extra hex, since I was locked into the (great for RP, bad mechanically) charm hex at lvl 1 due to archetype. That's probably the one time mechanical advantage will take priority over character.
I have kn. Arcana, planes, and religion. Occultists get bonuses to umd since we're basically umd users. With divination i can learn detect traps... Disabling them is another issue. Divination has a lot of utility spells like that, right now ive selected detect psychic significance, since it seems more general, and when i get object reading 2nd lvl itll be super handy in an intrigue laden campaign. Ben is NOT a face, but youll want him around for intel. He should be ok in a fight. Def not a frontliner though.
For whatever reason the PBP boards crash every time I try to add anything to the campaign info tab. So until that is fixed here are a few things that might be relevant to your planning
- We arent using XP points. You will just level at the end of each chapter. Assume that this means you will level a bit slower than is standard.
- Crafting. There is plenty of opportunity for downtime and at many points of the adventure it only moves as quickly as you want it to. Even so I usually play with faster crafting. Mundane item crafting I usually just drop everything by one time increment. Week crafting time shortens to day. Day to Hour etc. For crafting magical items I just lump values together. 1-5k in value takes a day. 5-10k takes two days. 10-15k 3 days. Etc.
- I have been thinking about this and because we are playing to a lower level AND leveling will be slower (and no one is playing a fighter) I am thinking I will either give out a couple extra feats or use feat tax rules to help feat dependent builds come online a little sooner. Would everyone be okay with this? I dont want a big power creep but I also dont want someone to have to spend the first 9 months of our game waiting on that one feat that unlocks what they want to play.
I'm always up for getting more feats or using feat tax rules :P
Most of the traditional feat tax rules wouldn't really help me too much, as they are very melee based, but I'd never turn down free feats :)
I don't particularly KNOW the feat tax rules very well. I think more feats would just be simpler.
I would not at all mind a bonus feat or two. I don't think we can break anything...yet.
Are you spending too much time on that tab? It usually times out if you take more than 20-30 minutes to add the info. I find it helps to copy everything you're trying to post before you submit it, just in case.
As for feats, I think bonus feats are inherently a bit better than using feat tax rules - every character can make use of bonus feats, while only some will directly benefit from feat tax stuff.
Admittedly I don’t know the feat tax rules very well, but I think bonus feats are more beneficial, especially for this party.
I too am in favor of extra feats, feat tax rules wouldnt effect me at all.
ABP is another option for low magic games.
Agreed. From what I've seen of them, they are based around martial feats, especially for the Dex based melee and ranged. They just include prerequisite feats into the higher ones so you can go straight to combat skills instead of having to wait til lvl5 or so. Not that useful for the majority of our party.
I suppose Ralleck shall gain Evolved Summon Monster. Being a 2/3 BaB class, he can't access most of the useful melee-related feats at level 1, so, may as well work on being better with the summoning side of the build for now.
Castorhage is low magic for the general population. XD Why, if those uppity commoners start getting healing magic, they'll want it for every bump and scrape. Nobles, on the other hand...
-Goes to check on feats-
Furious Focus or Skill Focus - Intimidate? Planning on getting Cornugun Smash eventually. Or does anyone else have a good suggestion for an intimimancer?
Furious Focus or Skill Focus - Intimidate? Planning on getting Cornugun Smash eventually. Or does anyone else have a good suggestion for an intimimancer?
Well, you've already gotten a fairly high intimidate, and the DC to demoralize is only 10 + the target’s Hit Dice + the target’s Wisdom modifier, which isn't that high for a skill DC even against high WIS enemies. So, dunno whether SF Intimidate is worth it, when there will be other ways to raise your bonus as you level anyways. Furious Focus might be better, the penalty to hit from power attack can be a pain at low levels.