For those who prefer going down to going up, is there a reason that you're seeing that you think that would be advantageous? We've been tasked with taking care of both, but up is where enemies have broken through defenses already. If something's going to overwhelm our sanctuary unexpectedly, that's where I expect it to come from.
I don't have a huge preference and am willing to go down instead, but I'm curious of there was something you saw that I missed.
Grey has a vendetta against the Goat Priests, and he knows that's where they are. They might also be in the spire, but he knows for sure they are below.
So far we have,
Down - Grey
Up - Kaillum
Either - Victor, Regulus
Unless you guys want to roleplay and decide further, we could let Yutin be the deciding vote?
When the voice spoke, it didn't seem to care which way you decided to go first.
Yutin is interested in going up for reasons that he won't explain IC. When Kaillum explains her reasoning he will just band wagon on to it.
Ooc you guys can know, his vision stated the item he sought for his master is in the tower. Nothing about underworks was mentioned before now. He reasons the shortest path to his goal is up.
Up sounds good!
Victor may say he doesn't care, but he would prefer to go down. He won't argue if the party chooses to go up, though.
Right, seems like we're pretty evenly split for preference. We'll get to both eventually, so how about we just roll for it for now and get this party started!
1 for up and 2 for down!
Looks like down to start with unless anyone really cares.
Down is fine...let's get the ball rolling.
Indeed! Itching for some action. ;)
Sounds good.
Does anyone happen to have comprehend languages packed in their magical spell kits? It would let us read the epitaphs, the key to the puzzle might be there.
I really should. I'll pick it up next level or if we get a scroll. A GM I play with a lot bans that spell as OP so I don't tend to think about it.
As a sphere caster, there are a couple tricks I do well (telekinesis, teleporting, invisibility,) but I don't have a breadth of spells at all.
Failing a magical solution we could attempt a linguistics check to decipher the writing.
You are skilled at working with language, in both its spoken and written forms. You can speak multiple languages, and can decipher nearly any tongue given enough time. Your skill in writing allows you to create and detect forgeries as well.
You can decipher writing in an unfamiliar language or a message written in an incomplete or archaic form. The base DC is 20 for the simplest messages, 25 for standard texts, and 30 or higher for intricate, exotic, or very old writing. If the check succeeds, you understand the general content of a piece of writing about one page long (or the equivalent). If the check fails, make a DC 5 Wisdom check to see if you avoid drawing a false conclusion about the text. (Success means that you do not draw a false conclusion; failure means that you do.)
Both the Linguistics check and (if necessary) the Wisdom check are made secretly by the GM, so that you can’t tell whether the conclusion you draw is true or false.
Epitaphs on tombstones are generally fairly simple writing...so if we take 20 we could spend some time to do it maybe? Probably a GM ruling.
I happen to have Comprehend Languages known AND an unused extract slot. Can ready one right quick.
I will allow you to try comprehend languages or linguistics for that. Hoping to give Grey a chance to post before i update.
I am suddenly realizing that if we encounter a monster whose soul I want to add to my reservoir, I can’t do that if my reservoir is full, and I have no way of dumping souls during combat until much higher levels and only then if I take specific feats.
Going to edit my post to add eating the rat soul. Will lose the spell casting, but I think that has a lower opportunity cost than having no available reservoir slots.
Dang. Okay. Let me close this file drawer labeled player knowledge then. I will ignore what I as a player already know about this particular baddie.
I thought you gain half your level in consumption points when you consume a soul in your reservoir?
I thought you gain half your level in consumption points when you consume a soul in your reservoir?
*Checks page* oh, you’re right. Sorry. Misremembered. Weird to me that it is based on VK level instead of the souls hd or CR or something. Okay, adjusting the cp counter down to 1.
To me the Consume Soul ability is not amazingly written or thought out fully and is a bit confusing regarding spending the consumption points.
Can Victor attempt the Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft checks? Or is that specifically for Yutin?
I agree...The dangers of running a 3pp class right?
I think I would probably get rid of all of the souls granting aspects piece, make the consumption pool bigger and a little more versatile as you level, and add in other class features instead of the aspects that are static but based on how many HD of souls you currently have in your reservoir. Kind of like how Infernal Constitution is...although I think I would change that to an Natural Armor bonus instead of an Insight bonus...what about having extra souls in your possession makes you extra insightful?
Like, level 3 you get Infernal Resilience - You gain Acid, Cold, Electricity, and Fire Resistance resistance 1 for each 5 HD of souls currently in your reservoir.
This caps the elemental resistances at an unearthly number if you min/max your souls at level 20 (95 points if you have 20 CR c23 souls), but at level 3 the best you could do is 3 6hd souls, so Energy resistance 3, hardly worth talking about.
Level 5 maybe you get another ability that bases DR/Magic...or DR/Good...on a division of the souls you have in your reservoir
Somewhere along the way I would also include the ability to use consumption points to shake off debuffs...like heal ability damage and get bonus saves on other things...something like that.
Maybe take some of the allowed immunites from the aspect restrictions table and spread them out across the levels too...so long as you have so many HD of souls you become immune to x, y, and z...not all of them obviously. Immune to spells, magic, and weapon damage just should not exist on a player character period.
In general the idea would be to move the character to resemble a fiend more and more as he levels...taking inspiration from actual demons and devils as well as the Half-Fiend templates.
Gives the DM some breathing room about not having to worry that the monsters he is pitting against the player are going to be used against him too much, but still gives that flavor of capturing your enemies and putting that energy to work making you stronger.
Anyways, this is me just spit balling. If I were to take a serious stab at rewritting the class there would need to be a lot more work put into the draft and then a whole lot of balancing tests.
Can Victor attempt the Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft checks? Or is that specifically for Yutin?
IIRC, you have to be able to see some kind of arcane "device" to attempt the checks. So if there is arcane righting then know arcane and spellcraft might come up, but in this case these checks all seem to be based on my detect magic, so I think only people with det mag running can make the checks.
Of course, GM has final say.
Pretty sure you need detect magic or identify to be able to identify magic items.
Our party happens to have a net alignment of True Neutral (with no identical alignments.) That might or might not end up solving this puzzle with no understanding why on the part of our characters.
Hey guys. Real life delayed me from updating today. Will be able to do it tomorrow.
Thanks for the heads up!
Gotcha boss.
RL gets busy. I know I wouldn't have been able to do anything much today myself either. Thanks for the heads up though!
Thanks guys.
Did I make the opening of the door too boring/difficult/unintuitive?
I thought it was interesting and intuitive. I think we just expected something far more complicated and were very slow and careful because of it.
Regarding passage, I say we just pick something. We're all itching to break in our fancy characters with a good fight. :)
I was kind of unsure what was the deal with the candles, but the others handled it, so no big.
I also agree with just picking a path and going for it. We've got some heads to smash!
Yutin will be running Trémaux's algorithm manually as they navigate to keep us from getting lost. Yay 16 intelligence.
It's a bit hard to judge that challenge given that I'm not sure exactly the criteria needed to meet it. If we lucked into the solution because of our alignment distribution then I guess it would have depended on how obviously wrong the wrong answer might have been and what their consequences were.
I think it was handled just fine, but without knowing how it would have gone trying other things (opening the sarcophagus, putting in unbalanced candles, or candles that weren't linked to us, etc ...) it's hard to get a read on the difficulty.
I mean, what makes you think alignment was involved at all? It seems like you're probably overthinking it, and it was just "put candles in alcove to open door."
If that is the case then we unknowingly left some pretty nice loot behind back there. add a +2 morale bonus on Attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks until the candle burns out in 4 hours.
Unfortunately known of us have high enough spellcraft results to know that. Sucks.
Well, it is possible that I'm overthinking things, but here's the evidence I'm working with.
By Yutin's ooc in the game thread the spoiler for the candles other than the center were almost certainly Candles of Invocation which are tied to alignments. The one in the center, with the necromantic aura was something different, but I expect somehow to be the True Neutral equivalent. The standard grid of alignments in Pathfinder is, of coure
LG NG CG
LN TN CN
LE NE CE
The candles that reacted to us matched our alignments in that grid exactly (CG for Kaillum, CN for Yutin, TN for Regulus (well, I don't see an alignment listed in the character sheet, so I'm making assumptions there,) LN for Grey, LE for Victor,) so it seems really likely that that's how the candles were attuned as well. We do know that the 5 candles that we picked worked with the TN (different one) going last, but it's not clear how other tries might have gone. The obvious thing about those alignments to me (I enjoy patterns) is that we've got a perfect balance of Good vs. Evil and Law vs. Chaos in the party, so we happened to be attuned to candles whose alignments canceled each other out. That might or might not be a thing. I also don't know what would have happened with the candles had we had, say, a second LE member of the party, but presumably, the same candle would have been attuned to both of them (though in that case maybe we just would have needed four candles to go into slots.)
The sarcophagus shaped hole in the ceiling and whatever was inside that sarcophagus with it's two short swords indicate that things could have gone much more poorly/interestingly in the room. The DR on whatever the undead thing was was going to give me fits at this level, though the rest of you are probably better equipped to deal with it. It's just not clear to me how exactly our actions had to be what they were to get through the door, and, as I say, how lucky we were just based on party alignment distribution.
The thing about Rappan Athuk is that some of the things you can find yourself facing are way above your CR. Including loot. Don't worry there will be plenty more to come.
I didn't make the alignment connection until you pointed it out. Good thinking.
Im on a trip until Wednesday. I'll try to post, but it will be sporadic
I promise Victor will be less of an a##&&$~ as time goes on. He's just really interested in his own needs and wants atm, and doesn't realize that he needs all of you probably more than you need him.
No worries Doomed Hero, have a safe trip.
That's ok Victor. You guys don't know each other and have very different goals and plans. Teamwork should develop eventually. That's actually one of the points of the first locked door puzzle, that you are all needed to get through this.
So next level I'll get the ability to control things with my telekinesis much more delicately. Once I do we might want to come back here and harvest some vials of the slime for the alchemists in the party as it would be a safe way to do so. I imagine it might be a useful material at some point. Perhaps we could even make slime bombs (not as true alchemists bombs, but which anyone could use to get some free con damage in on enemies to start fights) in the future. If anyone wants to try to harvest it now if you can think of a good method I'd support that as well.
As far as teamwork goes right now, Kaillum sees the rest of the party as mostly tools that she's going to have to work to get to do what she wants. Regulus is the one that's shown the most interest in cooperation, so he's the one she'll have the most trust in so far as doing helpful things on his own, but as the rest of the party demonstrates their skills Kaillum's trust in them should grow.
I have vials and mage hand so may try to harvest.
Also, that was totally K dung that I labeled K eng...
Willing to use a bomb if we want to go this way.
My bombs are more of an afterthought than anything else, so I don't mind blowing them here. They kind of suck, though (1d4+4 fire damage on a direct hit, assuming I'm not using my Mutagen) but it's better than nothing.
So as a disclaimer, I don't actually know that alchemist's bombs will clear the green slime out, that's just a guess. It's a fire splash attack and they don't really seem to have listed HP, so I figure it's got a good chance to clearing a path. If someone has alchemist's fire or other flammable resources they wanted to use that would likely work as well?
I am carrying around torches and flint and steel...no other use for it since I have dark and lowlight vision...
If all it needs is some fire damage, but the amount is immaterial then the torch may be sufficient.
"If a torch is used in combat, treat it as a one-handed improvised weapon that deals bludgeoning damage equal to that of a gauntlet of its size, plus 1 point of fire damage."
Been sick and so has GF so have been slow to update. Apologies guys!!
Hi there everyone! Sorry for the lack of Kaillum last week. It was busy. Hopefully everyone's doing well (feeling better, having time, all that fun stuff!) and we can get back to some adventuring!
Hey GM, if your are using children of the night for that wolf summon by RAW they wouldn’t show up yet.
Children of the Night (Su)Once per day, a vampire can call forth 1d6+1 rat swarms, 1d4+1 bat swarms, or 2d6 wolves as a standard action. (If the base creature is not terrestrial, this power might summon other creatures of similar power.) These creatures arrive in 2d6 rounds and serve the vampire for up to 1 hour.
It’s cool if you want them to show up immediately, just wanted to make sure that was intentional and not an oversight.
If the wolves aren’t apparating right now, Yutin would recommend retreat. A vampire is serious business, I don’t know if we are equipped to handle it.
I will post that IC once I know if the wolves are staying for now or not.