GM Abraham's Emerald Spire

Game Master Abraham Z.

Hi guys, I will be on vacation until August 22 so please bot me if I do not react withing 24 hours! Thanks!!

Thanks for letting us know and have a good and safe time!

Incidentally, finding the desecrated statues in the previous room earns you all the Den of Serpents quest: "Quest: Bring ruin to the serpentfolk factions by destroying them or getting them to destroy each other. Reward: 2,000 XP." Although these have no mechanical impact in PFS, they are interesting to know about - they're basically a (very modest) effort to create some kind of story-telling continuity between the 16 levels of the dungeon, each of which was written by a different author and can sometimes seem a bit disconnected from each other.

Interesting! Thanks for sharing! :-)

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that worklife is a little hectic at the moment and my daughter is with me through Tuesday so I may not get the next fight (which is gonna be a doozy) rolling until next week some time. Just didn't want you to think I've abandoned you.

Also, re the next fight, this may be a good one to flip through your various chronicle boons to remind yourself of any special help you may have access to. Just in case. ;-)

Thanks for everything GM! We will check boons! ;-)

The ominous warning from the GM will be heeded.

Kala, daughter of Krokum wrote:

@GM Abraham: What type of action does it take to activate a boon? (Standard, free, etc?)

It depends on the boon. Usually if it doesn't say then you presume it's a standard action but if you tell me the exact boon wording I'll give you a ruling.

Here are the two boons I'm considering:

☐ Celestial Lycanthropy: You have received a blessing from the azata Luvyire that has imbued you with a spark of celestial energy, which will transform you into a celestial werewolf when the time is right. You can check the box that precedes this boon to gain a portion of that power, gaining resistance 5 to acid, cold, and electricity for 1 hour. This boon will provide additional benefits in a future scenario.

☐ Werewolf's Resilience: Ashava has granted you the ability to call upon a lesser form of her blessing again in the future. You can check the box that precedes this boon to gain DR5/silver for a number of rounds equal to your character level. If you also have the Celestial Lycanthropy boon, checking the box that precedes this boon also grants the benefits of Celestial Lycanthropy.

Yep, it'll be a standard action to activate either of these (though the second one seems to also give you the benefits of the first). Right now you'll have to wait until we roll initiative to do so.

Fair enough. Yeah, the second one gives more but only would last 5 rounds; the first one lasts an hour. Pity I don't have boons for fire, poison, or negative energy resistance, as those seem the most likely threats right now. But that DR5/silver might help against the snake.

In the Godhome chronicle, there's this boon:

Troglodyte Friend: ... You gain a +1 on all saving throws against the extraordinary abilities of humanoids with the reptilian subtype, and you gain a +2 bonus on Diplomacy checks against such creatures. You may cross this boon off your Chronicle sheet to double these bonuses for 5 minutes.

Seems would be relevant here? The +1/+2 bonuses seem to be always on. What action would it be though to double these bonuses?

Ahh sorry, stopped getting notification for this. Maybe I pushed the X accidentally.

Let us go into initiative!

In the Godhome chronicle, there's this boon:

Troglodyte Friend: ... You gain a +1 on all saving throws against the extraordinary abilities of humanoids with the reptilian subtype, and you gain a +2 bonus on Diplomacy checks against such creatures. You may cross this boon off your Chronicle sheet to double these bonuses for 5 minutes.

Seems would be relevant here? The +1/+2 bonuses seem to be always on. What action would it be though to double these bonuses?

Technically, serpentfolk are monstrous humanoids (without any subtype) but it seems dumb not to allow this boon to apply so I'll say that it does (the priest is very clearly a snake-like humanoid). Incidentally, the only one of you who attempted the Knowledge check to ID these creatures was Kala, back in the jail, and she missed the check. So in-game none of you really know that this is a serpentfolk (even though I've been using the term for ease of use). If anyone besides Kala has Knowledge (Nature) you are welcome to make a check for the priest. Also, anyone, including Kala, can make (both) Knowledge (nature) and Knowledge (planes) checks for the snake.

As for Uhvat's boon, I'm not quite sure why this seems like a different rules situation than the boons that Kala was asking about - I guess because this seems like it's an 'always-on' benefit that you are simply using a one time boon to make a little better, as opposed to Kala's boons, which seem to be about activating an ability. In any case, unless someone thinks I'm being unfair I'm inclined to say that Uhvat can (freely) cross off the boon to give himself the doubled boons for 5 minutes. Let me know if you wish to do that.

Since it seems like half of you are ready to fight and the other half are open to further discussion, and combat is basically inevitable here anyway, I'll go ahead and roll initiative but feel free to continue the dialogue with the priest as you (hopefully) beat him down.

Yeah, Uhvat will use that boon. Thanks.

Hey everyone, just a quick heads up that I'll be playing a bunch of online GenCon games starting tomorrow night through Sunday so my posting may be quite minimal during that period.

Hi guys, just for your information: I will be on vacation from Oct 9 to Oct 23 with limited access to internet and reduced posting.

I'll try to pull together the chronicles in the next few days. I'm going to try to use this chronicle generating webpage that I recently heard about so hopefully that will make it pretty easy.

Regarding the fight that just concluded, some general information that may be of interest to you:

* The module is written to suggest that if you have been very stealthy coming into the level then you find Sartoss and his pet snake in his bedroom (the empty room with the books just before the shrine) and the dark naga and the snake swarm is potentially a separate encounter (though the module also says that Sartoss tries to leave the bedroom and join his ally in the shrine). Obviously having them combined makes for a crazy fight - the pet snake that you one-shot before he ever acted is a CR 3 advanced fiendish constrictor snake; Sartoss is CR 6, an advanced serpentfolk with 4 levels of cleric; Sanaz is CR 8 (just a regular dark naga, though with slightly reduced hit points); and the snake swarm is CR 5 (but of course only comes into play if someone gets knocked into the pit). Both Sartoss and Sanaz are prebuffed, with bull's strength and shield of faith on Sartoss, protection from good on his pet snake, and displacement, shield, and cat's grace on Sanaz.

* In addition, Sanaz uses Detect Thoughts on you before you ever arrived in the shrine (none of you made your save) which helps account for why their tactics were as strong as they were.

* Some things are kind of strangely written. For example, per her tactics Sanaz is supposed to try to get people into the pit but she's not given any good way to do that, no Improved Bull Rush or anything. She doesn't even have a very good CMB - the best I could come up with was for her to turn invisible and then try to push people flat-footed. The pit is also odd - the map as written doesn't really include room for it and the author also doesn't say how deep it is or how hard to climb, just that there is a swarm of snakes at the bottom that stays there (despite its 20' climb speed). It's also strange that Sartoss is given two magical rapiers, Two Weapon Fighting, Weapon Finesse, but these are almost useless since he'll only do 1d6+3 dmg with them; he can't even cast his spells if he's wielding both weapons.

* The module tactics have Sartoss using dominate person/hold person/suggestion. Obviously hold person had a strong impact, but the rest of his tactics were ineffective (esp due to dominate person having a 1 round casting time). I tried to buy him time to cast it either by getting a bunch of mirror images up (his one extra image that he had that never did him any good at all came from his domain - copycat) or by casting Suggestion but none of that worked due to his failing his concentration checks once Uhvat was in his face. The power of 10' reach to prevent a caster from just stepping 5' away had a huge impact here. If he had managed to land dominate person on any of you, well it's hard to see how that doesn't turn out as a TPK.

In any case, I hope you all enjoyed this. Feel free to ask any questions you may have.

I'll get chronicles to you all in a few days. Please each let me know if you would like to continue on to level 8.

Also, in light of Tofang being on vacation from Oct. 9 to 23, perhaps we should wait to start the next level until after that? I'm feeling a little busy with my gameday games and work and it might be good to have a little pause before we resume. Curious what others think though - a month might be a little long and I don't want us to lose our momentum.

Incidentally, Level 8 (The Circle of Vissk-Thar) is tier 6-8.

The level you've just completed will give (like other levels of the Spire), 3 xp and 4 prestige. The gold for this level is 8712.

In spite of the anti-alchemist tendencies of this superdungeion I am having a blast. I fully expect incorporeals that are immune to her bombs on the next level :) The RP potentials of being stuck in a swarm of snakes for - what was it? 4 rounds? intrigues me. And the fact that her high fort vs. poison allowed her to survive when her pathetic Will got her into the problem is also interesting.

Looking forward to the next level. I also enjoy levelling up so fast.

In the chronicle for Godhome, shown here, it lists the XP gain at 1. Shouldn't that be 1.5?

Thanks so much GM for all the detailed explanations!

I really loved the challenge!

That is exactly the excitement that makes adventuring interesting!! :-)

Thanks, GM! I'm good to pause until Tofang can join us again. Good to do it with the whole party.

Yeah, I was a bit worried about this last battle. But finally, Uhvat's built to tie down spellcaster finally came into play. :)

Yeah, thank god you were able to nullify the spellcaster! That could've gone way worse.

I'm good to wait until after Tofang is back. It'll be more fun with everyone.

Thanks a lot everyone! :-)

In the chronicle for Godhome, shown here, it lists the XP gain at 1. Shouldn't that be 1.5?

Unfortunately no. That's not because you played the level for slow progression but because the party only achieved 1 of the four goals (as noted on the chronicle sheet). This is really annoying (especially because the Spire already has a somewhat complex balance of playing normal and slow progression that is required to stay on track) and there have been lots of complaints about it, especially since for most groups getting the full complement of xp means going full murder hobo. This is why Godhome is disliked by so many people (the same thing happened to my group when I played it and, combined with a disastrous near TPK on the Drowned Level, I had to take some side tours with my character to be able to resume the Spire at the correct level.

In short, nope, 1 xp is correct. :-(

Great. I should probably make a note of that or I will end up asking again.

Updated my char sheet to level 6.

@Yanda: Can we exchange formulas?

Of course. Looks like Yanda can copy the following:

1st level: Adhesive Spittle, Expeditious Retreat, Identify, See Alignment, Touch of Sea
2nd level: Alchemical Allocation, Ablative Barrier, Investigative Mind, Resist Energy, Lesser restoration, See Invisibility, Invisibility, Alter Self

Though she spent all her cash so it will have to wait until the end of the next level except for Ablative Barrier. Gotta have that one!

Hello everyone, so I’m back from vacation. :-D

Hey. I'm still hanging around.

Ditto.

Hi everyone - I still need to get your chronicles to you for the last level and we can get started for the next level. The next couple days are a bit busy for me so it may not be until Wednesday or Thursday. Looking forward to getting going again!

All good!! Thanks GM!

That would be great.

Hi everyone, I just went to fill out your chronicles for level 7 (sorry for the long delay - I guess I'm not much of a Hellknight when it comes to a love of paperwork!) and I thought I would use the new (to me) rpgchronicles.net site to auto-generate the chronicles. Apparently the Spire chronicles are not in the system yet, but the developer told me he plans to upload them in a day or two, so if you don't mind waiting a bit longer, I'm very curious to give that a try. If he hasn't done it in a couple more days then I'll just go ahead and do it the old fashioned way.

In the meantime, for our next game (level 8), would you mind filling in your data here. For those of you who haven't used this before, it's basically a site that will auto-generate the chronicles (even automatically emailing them to you) when the game is over. I used it several times now as a player and it's worked great but this is my first time trying it out as a GM. I don't think it presents any privacy concerns but if anyone is uncomfortable with it just let me know and I'll send you a sheet the old way (with my bad handwriting).

Also, although you haven't received your sheets for level 7 yet, I think I already told you the xp, prestige, and gold, so if you are ok with it we can just get started with level 8 while we wait for the paperwork.

I've added the new map slide and also copies of the sign in slide and the saves slide. Please:

a) add your level and day job rolls to the sign-in slide (I think this will eventually be superceded by the rpg chronicles site but it seems like a good idea to keep the old style for now as well).

b) update your saves/Perception on the saves slide (it currently has your old date from the previous level so it's presumably out of date now)

c) add your token to the map - this will let me know that you are "here."

Thanks and good luck! Looking forward to resuming this game with all of you. (Btw, I should mention that the next month or so is fairly busy for me - end of the semester and a lot of childcare responsibilities - so I doubt I will be able to post every day until around Dec. 8 or so, at which point I should have a lot more free time).

I'll get Kala leveled up by Wednesday and add her new info.

Entered into RPG chronicles

day job roll (craft alchemy): 1d20 + 25 ⇒ (8) + 25 = 33
day job roll (craft alchemy) reroll: 1d20 + 25 ⇒ (15) + 25 = 40

slides updated

Profession (trapper): 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (12) + 8 = 20

I have Kala's leveling up all ready to be copy/pasted into her character sheet, amazingly. My kiddo has been listening to one song on repeat for so long that I actually had time!

Haha. What song?

"All Time" by Imagine Dragons

I've written to Uhvat to give him a heads up that we are resuming play.

Hey everyone, two things:

First, I went ahead and entered the data for your chronicles for level 7 Shrine of the Awakener into the RPGchronicles site but when I tried to generate the chronicles themselves I got an error message. I'm not sure what the issue is - likely user error on my part as it's the first time I'm trying to use this service - but I've written to the developer and will hopefully get it sorted out soon. As I mentioned before, if I'm not able to get it to work I'll just fill them out by hand and scan them for you the old-fashioned way. Incidentally, if you would like to check the data on your sheets before they are sent to you, you can edit them here.

Also, while waiting for that to get sorted out, I went ahead and reported the game on the paizo site so it should now show up in your list of sessions. Sorry again for the delay.

Second, I haven't heard anything back from Uhvat. Hopefully he is just busy and nothing too serious in real life but I'm going to go ahead and post in Recruitment to see if anyone wants to join us. If we get someone and then Uhvat returns we can just move forward with a party of 5.

I always liked a party of 5 :)

No stress. :-)

Tofang just buried his loyal dog and purchased another riding dog.

Hey everyone, I’ve got a 7th level psychic open. I know that probably isn’t the best choice for this party, but I’ll throw his hat in the ring. Id be open to continuing if we all don’t die terribly at some point!

A psychic would be fine. We have a front liner and Yanda, though a ranged combatant, has an impressive AC so she can provide some shielding. You have some decent offensive as well as defensive spells too, though, oddly, no offensive level 2 spells. Or can you also cast Mind Thrust II when you know Mind Thrust III? I forget how that works.

A psychic would be fine. We have a front liner and Yanda, though a ranged combatant, has an impressive AC so she can provide some shielding. You have some decent offensive as well as defensive spells too, though, oddly, no offensive level 2 spells. Or can you also cast Mind Thrust II when you know Mind Thrust III? I forget how that works.

Yep, you can undercast Mind Thrust 3 if needed.

Welcome aboard, Ashwell! I actually think adding a full caster will be a very good fit for the party.

Please go ahead and dot into the gameplay thread, add your info to the slides, and also fill in your info for your chronicle on the rpgchronicles link. I think we'll be ready to start whenever you are ready (in fact the other players have already posted their entries into the first room so feel free to do the same when you are ready).

Welcome, Ashwell!