GM Hawthwile - Forged in Flame Series (Inactive)

Game Master Hawthwile

Please discuss amongst yourselves here which characters you would like to bring. Once you decide on which character you will be playing, post the following information here:

Player’s Name:
Character’s Name:
PFS #:
Faction:
Slow Tracking? (Y/N):
Day Job (Please roll now):
Special Notes/Abilities: Please describe anything unusual about your character here, such as “I always deal non-lethal damage and use the Enforcer feat to demoralize as a free action” or “I ride a Huge serpent mount, but it’s got both the Narrow Frame feat and a Belt of the Weasel so it can fit through a 5-ft hallway easily.” This will help both you as a player not have to type the same thing over and over again and me as the GM prepare so the game runs more smoothly.

Please have your entire character sheet available in your character’s profile page and basic statistics next to your name in your posts. Feel free to ask me for more details or assistance.

If your post is entirely OOC, let’s put it here instead of in the Gameplay thread.

About Me: I’ve done some GMing, but this is my first second time doing so in a PbP setting. If you have ideas for how I could do something better, a disagreement with a decision, or confusion over what I’m saying, please let me know via the Discussion thread or PM.

Howdy, everyone. I have four open characters in tier.

Inquisitor 7
Sorcerer 7
Brawler 8
Witch 9.

I’m happy to run any of those depending on party need!

Thanks a lot for GMing! Really great that you picked up this game!

Player’s Name: noral
Character’s Name: Enora, Arcanist level 7 (will play her through the whole series as I do not have my level 5 available currently)
PFS #: 314670-10
Faction: Dark Archive
Slow Tracking? (Y/N): NO
Day Job (Please roll now): NO
Special Notes/Abilities: Enora is very versatile due to the Arcanist's great action economy. She usually casts HASTE in the first round of combat.

Here is Enora's profile. Arcanist 7.

Another Enora Noral?

The characters in tier who I have available (and are suitable for PbP play) are:
Summoning diplomat (Wizard 6)
Axe-beak riding gnome with lance (Druid / Hunter 6)
Nagaji with claws (Bloodrager / Draconic Disciple 7)

I love Enora! ;-)

She almost feels like my own character.

Would you like me to play another character? I could also play Oloch, the warpriest or Shardra, the shaman!

Oh no, feel free to play whoever you want, I was just teasing.

Just a heads up - Part I has a faction mission for the Exchange and Part II has faction missions for both the Exchange and Liberty's Edge.

Looks like we are pointed toward low tier. Maybe my melee Inquisitor of Gorum might be the best fit here.

All I have is a level 8 Magus. I don't mind playing out of tier.

Player’s Name: Chadius
Character’s Name: Cirri Merryweather
PFS #: 133608-3
Faction: Grade Lodge
Slow Tracking? (Y/N): No
Day Job (Please roll now): Perform(Dance): 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (4) + 2 = 6
Special Notes/Abilities: I have the Ward Hex. This provides a +3 deflection bonus to AC and a +3 Resistance bonus to saves. I can't apply it to myself. It fades away as soon as the Warded person is hit or fails a saving throw, but I can reapply it as a standard action.

Cirri also has an Improved Familiar - a dragon faerie named Riddywhipple. Thanks to his UMD bonus and fly bonus, he can zip around anywhere.

Looking good so far! I've opened up recruitment to the general public now and we might have our last two players (pending confirmation by posting here).

As far as tier goes, we're hovering right around 7 at the moment. Depending on our last two players, we might end up going high tier with or without the 4-player adjustment. Does anyone have reservations about doing so? I completely understand not wanting to lose a character, but moar money moar better, as the sages say.

Hey all! Planning on joining up!

My options currently are a Dhampir necromancer 9 of Dark Archives, an aasimar cleric 8 of the Sovereign Court, and a tengu magus 5 of the Exchange.

I want to take my magus for faction reasons, but he had to pay off dying from a TPK and he REALLY isn’t that optimized.

Low tier would be ok for me.

Hi! Thanks for opening things up to us rascals from the general population!

Character
My first choice is Ninlil of Dilmun, who worships Ranginori and would desperately like to free him from his imprisonment. She's a level 7 sylph arcanist who's not terribly optimized, but is an arcanist, so... y'know. She enjoys fog, wind, and lightning spells.

GM! One last thing I forgot to mention--I have GMed this before but have not played it. I'd like to think that I'm good at separating out metagame knowledge from what the character would know (also, it's been two years), but let me know if you're not comfortable with this and someone else can take my spot.

I’d prefer to play low tier, honestly. Playing up and 4 player adjustment has been a disaster for me overall, lol.

Gerald’s inquisitor. I’ll put in relevant info for you later this evening, DM.

I'm fine either way. Also if you guys decide to play super arcane party I'll just give Cirri more frontline spells.

@Terminalmancer - You're fine, and thanks for the heads up. If I get suspicious I'll PM you, but I like to think you're here for a good time and don't want to spoil it.

And that is everyone! Let's figure out who's who and get this show on the road!

Expectations
- I will post every day. I hope everyone can post every weekday and at least once over the weekend, but stuff happens - which leads me to:
- I will bot you if we haven't heard from you in 24 hours. Please include botting instructions in your character profile, or I will have to get creative in the most entertaining (for me) way possible. Please also let me know if you are expecting an extended period of absence so I can PM you and preemptively hash out major decision points to keep the story moving. On a related note:
- I will make "reactive" rolls to keep the story moving along. If you want to make a roll as part of an action/decision/etc, please do so. I might modify the skill used or add circumstantial bonuses/penalties based on circumstances. Which brings me to my final point:
- I will happily add circumstantial bonuses (or penalties) for roleplaying. I hope, for example, that you will accompany your diplomacy check with what your character is actually saying. It makes it so much easier for me to respond if you give me material, and we make such a more fulfilling and exciting story together.

If you're worried or concerned about something, post it here or PM me. We can figure something out so you have a good time.

Once you have your characters chosen, fill out the form from the first post on this thread, then hop over to the Gameplay thread and start introducing yourselves. We begin tomorrow!

Player’s Name: Gerald
Character’s Name: Hagrym PFs
PFS #: 12445-1
Faction: Grand Lodge
Slow Tracking? (Y/N): No
Day Job (Please roll now): None.
Special Notes/Abilities: None other than hitting things with a wicked sword. Rage domain and occasional use of judgments and bane weapon ability.

Uh oh, bad news bears for Gerald - if Terminalmancer plays their lvl 7 arcanist, it is mandatory for us to play high tier (with or without 4-player adjustments), even if everyone else plays their lowest level character.

Total Character Levels (excluding pregens): 7 + 6 + 8 + 5 + 7 = 33

Whereas this gives us an APL of 6.6,
Whereas 6.6 rounds up to 7,
Whereas we have 5-7 players,
Whereas we have at least one character at level 8 or higher,
Therefore, we would be required to play high-tier with 4-player adjustment.

I'm not trying to influence your choices - just putting this information out there. Please correct me if I'm wrong or the math is incorrect, but I can't find anything that says otherwise in the PFS Guide or the PbP GM Kit.

You're correct in your math. I'm currently stuck between my magus and my cleric, so if we're DEFINITELY going high-tier then I'd rather play as my cleric. Gonna wait to see Terminalmancer's thoughts before I finalize anything.

BTW, if I did play as the magus he would level up after Part 1.

Welp, if we are playing up, I’ll either bring my level 8 Brawler or level 9 witch. What would the party prefer?

Ohh! Ooo! Go Brawler!

Brawler it is!

Player’s Name: Gerald
Character’s Name: Fahd bin Stavain PFS
PFS #: 12445-11
Faction: Scarab Sages
Slow Tracking? (Y/N): No
Day Job (Please roll now): Professsion (Bouncer) 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (3) + 8 = 11
Special Notes/Abilities: None other than hitting things with his Mutagen-ed up fists!

Player’s Name: Trey
Character’s Name: Masayoshi Kahlvet
PFS #: 229573-9
Faction: Sovereign Court
Slow Tracking? (Y/N): YES!
Day Job (Please roll now): None, but am instead using my downtime to build connections in the Taldan nobility (boon from another chronicle sheet): Knowledge (nobility) w/Faction Pin bonus: 1d20 + 14 + 1d4 ⇒ (1) + 14 + (4) = 19
Special Notes/Abilities: Purchasing a partially-charged wand of Cure Moderate from off of a chronicle before the scenario.
The Innocent trait in general.
Ale/Wine Variant Channeling combined with (Improved) Channel Force makes for some serious ridiculousness (and yes, I have Selective Channeling).

Player’s Name: Terminalmancer (Alex Wreschnig)
Character’s Name: Ninlil of Dilmun
PFS #: 124419-33
Faction: Silver Crusade
Slow Tracking? (Y/N): No (Full Speed Ahead)
Day Job (Please roll now): No
Special Notes/Abilities:
- Goz Mask (sees through fog, smoke, silt/precipitates, etc. Haven't gotten to use this yet. Will try very hard to play nice though. Fog can be disruptive.)
- Weather Savvy (make 100% accurate predictions of natural local weather
- Airy Step (ignore first 30' of any fall)
- Arcanist stuff: full-round to swap spells, teleport during move actions.
- Familiar: Snaggletooth, a Sage/Figment familiar. Snaggletooth has a monster perception score (+20) and winks out of existence if it ever hits 0 hp (9 max hp). Snaggletooth will be playing lookout for Ninlil whenever possible. Consider how you'd like to handle Snaggletooth in combat rounds? (Ninlil's initiative, separate initiatives, etc.)
- Metamagic feat: dazing spell. Only works on cantrips right now.
- Sylph racial spell: windy escape

If you play an Arcanist I will move to a Bloodrager. ;-)

A few notes:

@Noral - Since we're going high-tier, Magabeus is likely to play their bloodrager also. Do you want to be competing for a similar role, or is there another pregen you've been wanting to try out?

@Cirri, Ninlil - Familiars go on their master's turn. This helps us keep things moving by not waiting on a player to post twice for one round of combat. Also, I think your character has spent enough time with their familiar to know how to work effectively as a team.

@Ninlil, or anybody using immediate actions - You will be responsible for your immediate actions and how they change what happens. I'll include DCs for things like saving throws and try to let you know about stuff like magic weapons and whatnot. I trust that players will not metagame and only use abilities when they know they would be successful. If I get suspicious, I'll PM you.

@Everyone - We'll be using block initiative during combat. During conversations, I might unload a huge block of exposition at a time. Feel free to "interject" with things like:

At X point, my character stands up

"Oh, have you though about doing Y instead of Z?" they ask innocently.

And I will be happy to make minor retcons as needed.

@Everyone - Also, please be sure to check out the Maps/Handouts slides and set yourselves up in an "ideal" marching order.

We'll be getting started later today. Magabeus, Noral, feel free to jump in once you finalize your character choices.

A few notes:

@Noral - Since we're going high-tier, Magabeus is likely to play their bloodrager also. Do you want to be competing for a similar role, or is there another pregen you've been wanting to try out?

Thanks a lot for the information! I think similar frontline melees can provide more value than two Arcanists so if you guys do not mind I would stick with Crowe. :-)

Sounds good, Hawthwile. Thanks!

Forgot to mention: Masayoshi casts Longstrider every morning (Travel domain domain spell) which lasts for 8 hours, and when it runs out he uses his 1st level Pearl of Power to regain the spell and casts it again.

This is my bloodrager, currently lvl 7, but 8 after first scenario in the series. My apologies for being late.

Player’s Name: Magabeus / Gerard
Character’s Name: Toctep
PFS #: 24861-
Faction: Scarab Sages
Slow Tracking? (Y/N): No
Day Job (Please roll now): No
Special Notes/Abilities:
- Normally grows large when raging
- Cold and electricity resistance from several chronicles. I can provide scans if the GM wants me to. Please do this through PM, so we don't spoil anything for the others
- Can someone take my scroll of surpress charms and compulsions (5 copies of the spell) I hit hard and have a very low will save

Can someone take my scroll of surpress charms and compulsions (5 copies of the spell) I hit hard and have a very low will save

I'll hold onto a copy. Riddywhipple counts as a level 3 sorcerer, so he can cast it even if he rolls a 1 on his Caster Level check.

Since inscribing spells takes an hour and a DC 15 + spell level Spellcraft check, Cirri would prioritize her time overnight, and then learn the rest inbetween adventures.

GM, how much time does Cirri have to copy?

I'll make some rolls now and you can cut me off when Cirri needs to go to sleep.

Well, I learn every spell Cirri has time for...

Let's see. He's only providing lunch, not dinner, so it's currently afternoon - let's say 14:00. You need 8 hours of sleep, an hour for dinner, and an hour to prepare spells before you depart tomorrow morning at... let's say 8:00 since he said to report first thing in the morning.

14:00 to 8:00 -> 18 hours
18 hours - 10 hours for necessary activities -> 8 hours to scribe spells.

So it looks like you have time for the first block of spells in your list. Yay!

On a side note, could you check the url's in your character profile? Most of them are not functional and are creating a lot of extra text that's making it difficult to see what spells Cirri actually knows.

Sorry, Cirri's urls are specifically broken so I can copy-paste them into the thread.

For example, I wrote down:
[/url=http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/burning-hands]Burning Hands[/url]
So it's easy to select the text with the mouse, then copy and paste into the thread.

So if I want to write "Cirri casts Burning Hands at the enemy!" all I have to do is delete the opening slash.

If I wrote the tag correctly, then there's no way to actually copy-paste the link.
Burning Hands

I'd have to write ["url=(PASTE LINK HERE)]Burning Hands[/url]" and that's way more hassle than (PASTE TEXT) (delete /).

Are there any links which are actually broken, even when you extract the http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/burning-hands section from it?

Eh, it's just a hassle to read which spells she knows when I'm looking on mobile and each spell takes multiple lines. Don't worry about it, and thanks for the clarification!

Hmm, I didn't think about mobile. All of that horizontal scrolling is going to be a pain. I'll note that in the future. Maybe I can put my spellbook in one section and the links in another.

Okay, I rearranged my character sheet so my prepared spells and spell book are in separate sections. I also added a section for easy copy-pasting of links and all of my magical consumables.

Awesome! Thanks so much! It really does help me with preparations to have a better idea of what everyone is capable of.

Thanks for the very rich descriptions GM!!

Just one note: I typed the PFS ID wrong it -10 not 11

PFS #: 314670-10

Thanks!

@Noral - Noted.

@Everyone - As we leave the exposition part of the story, it might be a good idea to discuss here how you can best help each other and how you want to approach various types of situations - social and otherwise. Teamwork can be trickier in PbP than F2F, but you've got plenty of time to hash things out beforehand.

@Everyone - Also, please feel free to come up with a plan for tackling a problem before you reach it (if that's what your character would do). Discussing options or having characters trying to do contradictory actions in front of someone could be awkward (depending on circumstances), and I will hold people to what their characters know if others don't share their insights.

@Everyone - Basically, don't make it an arms race to post first so you can force a course of action your companions don't want. Explore, Report, Cooperate, as they say.

About Toctep
I am a melee beast and not that much use in social situations. I can attempt aid in diplomatic (+5) situations and can let my glare intimidate (+10) others when needed. I won't take the lead in social situations, I know what my strengths are, and what they aren't.

In combat I usually rush forward while doubling in size. Then it is a matter of dealing and receiving blows and trusting that I will be the one that remains standing in the end.

So, which scenario do we want to deal with, first? Cirri, in character, would love to talk to water creatures. She has Monkey Fish, Alter Self and Monstrous Physique to help her swim to the naga.

Maybe we want to confer with the Pathfinder Contact about what to expect from this naga.

Fahd previously voted for the first task on the list.

Do we want to adopt the PBP rule of 2? First option that gets two votes wins the day? Makes it run a little quicker.

Whoops, I totally didn't notice you wanted to do the first task, sorry!

Let's just go with the first task then. Do we have a plan besides destroying the inevitable? Maybe someone can use legalese to reason with it?

Masayoshi has an +18 Diplomacy, +16 SM, and +16 (Technically +21) Bluff—he is the social butterfly.

As for combat stuff: he prefers to stay way back and then run up once needed (50 ft. Move speed)—he maintains A LOT of battlefield control with his channels (a failed save=nauseated for one round and [assuming the person failing the save isn’t bigger than Masayoshi] pushed or pulled 10 ft. away/toward me) otherwise, Masayoshi mostly just does basic buffs like Bless or Prayer.

Ninil is definitely not diplomatic and can be a bit awkward (-1 Cha mod, no ranks). She'll be happy to let Masayoshi handle the talking. :)

I'm also fine in not steering the group unless you particularly want my input!

Scheduling notes:

This coming weekend of November 9th, my sister is moving in with us and my parents are driving her in and spending the weekend. I'll make sure to post at least once, but I'm not sure when that'll be. Sorry for not having been more talkative this weekend; we've been trying to get the house ready.

PAX Unplugged--November 30 to December 1st. I'll be driving out, GMing two slots every day, and then driving home. I'll try to post, but no promises.

Heads up - the character I'm applying the credit for Part 1 of this series was just invited to another PbP game, so I'm "reporting" it now to keep things simple for him. Once we finish Part 1, I'll go back and edit the results as needed. Sorry for any confusion this causes.