[Retrocon] GM Blazej Cosmic Captive 1-2 CORE (Inactive)

Game Master Zynete

Ironshanks: Thank you. I do hope that that I'm able to keep on track doing that for the rest of this. If you or anyone else are find that I'm making something confusing or hard to follow, let me know. I do want to make sure that I'm not making an extra challenge to follow encounters or the larger adventure.

Agon: Thank you for compiling that. I took a quick skim of the thread and that is largely accurate. For "Adventuring Gear" I want to make sure it is clear that each one of you have a set those items [air crystals, a potion of endure elements, and one snapleaf.]

While these are of not immediate use, in addition to what you listed, you have one potion of remove disease and four potions of endure elements from the crashed ship with the pair of undead.

Ironshanks still has the lightning gun (which has 4 shots left).

Khargrom picked up a potion of cure light wounds during the adventure and I don't think he has used it yet. This doesn't change your potion totals though. The he took isn't in your accounting.

Sounds like we're at a crossroads, here. We can continue in the earth plane or move on to the water realm.

GM, how is the overall progress going? Does the earth path need more successes? If not we can go to the watery realms.

If we're still ahead of schedule, we might actually want to "rest."

...and boy, this is already twice as many encounters as I had last time. Getting to see all the encounters I missed. :)

EDIT: Looking at the success board linked above, everything is complete and we're just waiting out the clock for the Vault to open.

Been away all weekend. I'm back and catching up now.

If there aren't further things to do to support the campaign, I would agree with resting. We have done a ton of encounters, so I don't feel bad taking a breather before the next section.

Khargrom of course, wouldn't know this in game and would push to go knock some more heads around. "Can't ever soften up the enemy forces to much!"

Nahko will use one of the potions from the skeleton to heal Kuti.

clw: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (6) + 1 = 7

If additional successes don't help the special, I vote to conserve resources until a new area is open.

Yeah, as you have noticed we have met all the conditions for the next part which which will start somewhere around this upcoming weekend. To that end I've been a bit less aggressive starting new encounters just to not exhaust your resources before we hit the midway point. Your encounters alone made up half the successes necessary to claim the fire areas.

That said, you have been still accruing meaningful points of progression to the next part even though all the areas have been claimed. As information and allies you gain will count toward your later progress.

There are still a number of these types of successes you can gain in the earth and water aligned areas. I don't mind resting if most of you would like that, but I would like to not completely stop (especially at the end of this week) as I don't want to be slow to get into the next part whenever that happens.

Earth areas are filled with combats throughout. Water areas have a more varied mix of encounter types. In any case I think there are a number of encounters on both ends that I believe people might enjoy.

I guess we have enough time and we'd probably be bored doing nothing until the weekend. Maybe go run a thing (or two) over in water? I do enjoy working with this group.

I would say to tee up more encounters of some such. I have a nearly full CLW wand that is free to be used by all. Healing damage is cheap and I'm finally playing a combat character in a special instead of rationing arcanist spells!

Just save your resources for later on and contribute with renewable/unlimited ones. We don't want to have things fail down the line because we were nervous here.

Hah yeah, I'm with you completely. I don't have many pure combat characters either. Most have a lot of limited resources (low level pure casters are so rough) and it's nice to be like 'I go hit things' and next turn 'I hit things again' lol.

One of the reasons that I like Nahko is, as a melee-focused druid, he still brings value outside of his limited spells. Let's do it then!

My vote is also water, then, so it's not purely combat focused.

As you can tell from the thread, I'll take this going forward. I'll continue into the water (Frozen City) for now since it can be short. But overall I can change areas and I do think any direction to be at least somewhat interesting.

Since healing doesn't seem to be an issue I'll press forward and a reasonable rate. Feel free to let me know any way you like if the rate is uncomfortable one way or another.

Mayhaps we don't need 2x inspire courages up at the same time? :P

I've played before as one of two bards in a party, and it's pretty crappy, tbh. Inspire Courage is the major tool in a bard's arsenal, and it kind of sucks to ever not be using it.

Yeah, that sucked Zin Z'arin. I'm glad the other bard bowed out after those first few sessions, we had a really solid group after that.

But at least in this special we will probably use up every single round of I.C. by the end, if not then we aren't FIGHTING ENOUGH YAR!!!

Haha, well said!

(Also, you're Kaya! Cool! We all seem to play so many different PCs, it always surprises me when I find out I'm playing with players I've gamed with before.)

In that two-bard game, I'm pretty sure that the other bard just brought a different PC to the next session, though I could be misremembering. I tried to look up those earlier sessions from that group, but they're not even shown as inactive anymore. I guess at a certain point inactive threads must just drop off the boards completely? Edit: nope, I just can't read, haha. That player is still with us, in fact. Durvak and now Liet-Gar!

Ya the game isn't balanced for much class redundancy. Although of course with the absurd number of archetypes you can really shift characters considerably from their original class, but double inspiring bards would be hard without one having an archetype that changes their inspire, that is assuming it isn't core. Two core bards fighting it out in a regular game would leave something to be desired.

Now two fighters.. now we're talkin! Ha! Not.

What in the who now? Oh, I can always stop signing.

Multiple bards work well once Song of Greatness and Dirge of Doom are online. Then the other one can Inspire Courage. But at low levels it stinks if they don't specialize.

@GM You stated that some of the Pathfinders were helping Kuti, but mentioned nothing of the mechanics of getting her down the ropes. Does she have the same DCs and methods of getting down?

Yes. I just wanted to acknowledge that Kuti was not expected to be left behind.

Argh! When did they change my rapier to Piercing? (I know they didn't change, I've just been living under a mistaken belief for this entire scenario).

EDIT: Figured it out. When I quick scan my sheet, I was seeing the whip's damage type. *sigh*

Are those black lines (that look like walls?) on the map anything that matters?

I'll be treating those black lines as low walls that offer cover, but do not impede movement (besides being difficult terrain to cross any given section).

Man, Agon has not been rolling well during this special. Makes up for some of my other PCs and their good luck.

Yup, if Ironshanks handed out grade sheets for effectiveness then Agon wouldn't score really high. (Being an Elf certainly doesn't help there.) But since they've worked together in the past he'll let it slide.

I just wanted to give some kudos to the GM and my fellow players. The pace of play is incredible and everyone is doing a great job of adding a bit of personality into each post. This has been a great game.

I can't hit, so hopefully you like my engaging personality! :)

You can't help the dice rolls, but you can give them something fun to read. Well done. The pace has been pretty damn nuts.

Based on my last two attacks, I think I leeched Agon's luck.

"Put it to good use. Elves don't need any more luck than they already got at birth! Ha!"

I feel confident that Agon's luck will return before the end of this special. We still have a bit left before the end but hopefully that return to proper luck will be sooner than later.

I've had a general pace in mind to try to make sure that everyone has something to act on or respond to everyday. There are a few days I had a hiccup on but I hope that this has been working well for all of you.

Generally I do avoid talking about exact mechanical details of an adventure as I'm running it, even if some (if not most) of you know what is going on. For this section you are doing your part as a table perfectly and I feel lucky to be running for you all. As we are going through this part I will note that I won't be penalizing people who go off the standard path for this section. I may have hinted at it in my post in gameplay but I did want to state it more clearly. This section might last a while so I don't want to discourage anything that makes this less interesting.

Did Pavo's disable device do anything last round?

I don't see a success reported and I didn't see it acknowledged in the narative.

Yes it absolutely did. Sorry for omitting my acknowledgement of that in my post.

I had not reported a success at the time because Nahko's check could have affected what sort of success I reported.

I'll make sure to more clearly note the successes you gain here on your end.

Passing this message on. Tomorrow, February 16th, there will be scheduled downtime on the site starting around Noon PST and continuing for 2-4 hours.

I'll try to have a post up beforehand so there would be time before or after the maintenance for anyone who wants to post.

If there are any updates or notes on it they will be posted in this thread.

I'll be fishing most of the weekend so my posts will be limited to mornings and evenings.

Sorry, I was away for an extended weekend and forgot to notify my tables. Catching up in here now.

Thanks Blazej. Unfortunate timing between next round and start of my long evening shift. I have two overnight in a row starting tonight, so I might be off-set again for the next couple of days.

That is no problem, I'll try to make sure that I keep that in mind next few days as I try to manage my posting better to account for that.

--

I'm now looking at reporting notes and I want to double check that all the information (Player Name, PC Name, PFS#, Level, Faction) in the Map slides is accurate. If you have a day job roll it.

In addition, everyone needs to roll 1d20 to see if they win a boon.

Boon: 1d20 ⇒ 3

Boon-dogglin': 1d20 ⇒ 121d4 ⇒ 4

Info looks correct to me Sir.

Boon?: 1d20 ⇒ 16

The information on the slide looks good.

Bemmer Boon: 1d20 ⇒ 8

Boon: 1d20 ⇒ 14

Boon: 1d20 ⇒ 13

Chronicle info looks good.

Profession: Soldier + MW Tool: 1d20 + 6 + 2 ⇒ (7) + 6 + 2 = 15

Oh! I forgot my day job.

Perform(Oratory): 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (5) + 7 = 12

Perform (Oratory): 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (4) + 8 = 12

Profession (herbalist), day job: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (5) + 8 = 13

Boon?: 1d20 ⇒ 11d4 ⇒ 4

Shirt reroll?: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (13) + 8 = 21 Only use this for the day job if I don't end up using it in-game

I don't see any 19s or 20s for boons this time, but better luck for next run.

As for the ongoing game we are coming to the end and I hope you have had fun throughout this event.

I suspect you will complete this fight in the next day or so and I wanted to present the options early for the next encounter. If a majority of the party wishes, you can choose to fight one of harder challenges (one of the combats for the 3-4 tier) in place of combats more like the last two. If you do so, and beat the fight, you would put more successes for this stage of the event, but I wouldn't recommend you put much value in the successes if you would rather not for any reason.

Since this is a significant jump I want a solid yes or no from the majority of the party, rather than increasing the difficult on the request just two or three players.

I do believe that the encounters are within the capabilities of the party, but are obvious more dangerous.

My vote is 'No.'

I'm not a fan of taking on more risk for no benefit, even if it isn't as dramatic an increase as Starfinder.

Based on my hit rate so far, I will also say "No."

By the way, here are our remaining supples, as far as I can tell:

Adventuring gear EACH of us has air crystals, a potion of endure elements, and one snapleaf.

From the Gnome and Akiton Woman: 1 potion of Cure Light Wounds

From the dedicated skeleton two potions of endure elements, 2 potions of cure light wounds, and a potion of remove disease.

GM Gear Reminder post says one potion of remove disease and four potions of endure elements from the crashed ship with the pair of undead.

Ironshanks still has the lightning gun (which has 4 shots left).

I also concur with no on jumping tiers. Any combat, even appropriate ones, have a risk of a crit string wiping out a player or two. And while we could win a harder fight, we also greatly increase the chance of our luck catching up with us.

I'm happy to go with the majority, which seems to be no. Ironshanks is higher level and well armored, and it wouldn't be fair for him to push others into a harder fight.

On another note, I'll be away from now until Sunday afternoon so bot away.