Hello all, congratulations on being selected and hope we can all have some fun.
Hello! Thanks again for the select.
Do you have any specific format you'd like our stat bars in?
Thanks for the invite. I've never jumped into an AP at book 5 before!
Hello! Thanks again for the select.
Do you have any specific format you'd like our stat bars in?
The way you have the stat bar works for me.
Okay, great.
Might it be possible to open Gameplay, so we can dot in?
Thanks for having me. I think this is gonna be a lot of fun!
Glad to be selected along with all of you. GM, is it all right if we tweak things like our spell selection, skills, and items now that we know who we will be playing with?
Looks like I'm party medic then! :) Although I think everyone can amass some HP healing. I can only do ability healing 1/day but at least its better than nothing!
I'll get a free Greater Restoration 1/day at level 15, but until then, yeah, I can do a hefty amount of HP healing, but not a ton for status effects.
Well at least I can resurrect people, almost everything else can be dealt with over time! :)
While we're waiting for things to get up and running, I want to recommend Paizo's Ustalav sourcebook, Rule of Fear. A GM from my last Carrion Crown game suggested that I read it, saying it didn't have any spoilers for the adventure path. I loved the setting--if you are, like me, someone who reads game books just for fun, you're in for a treat--but was disappointed to discover apparent spoilers for the second Carrion Crown adventure, Trial of the Beast. As it turned out, though, what it actually had was red herrings for Trial of the Beast! So that was a nifty bonus.
Anyway, if you want to flesh out your backgrounds with more connections to Ustalav, it's a great resource. Also, if this next adventure is at all sandboxy, it'll be a solid guidebook to possible plot points.
I enjoyed it too - although at the time I wasn't invested in any of the AP's so some of it was a bit of a slog. The one I liked best was Qadira - so evocative and full of flavour. The influencing rules are kinda ridiculous - but genie-touched horses - beyond cool!
Now, I don't know how this part of the AP opens or how the GM wants to handle it, but I'm guessing that it's written assuming a party that's been together for a while, through the earlier books. There probably isn't a hook to draw us all together the way Professor Lorrimor's funeral does in the first part of the AP. Presumably we don't all just meet up in a tavern brawl.
So should we players collaborate on some pregame history? I could see us doing it a number of different ways. We might play out the scenes when we met individually in a series of flashbacks, or we might come up with one formative event where we connected for the first time and write about it from our different points of view. I'm up for anything, really.
My character's background might be useful in setting it all up. Sour Heck's been travelling all over Ustalav, subtly recruiting troops into a force--the Hawthorn Society--dedicated to opposing the hidden evils of the setting. Certainly he could have made contact with your characters and tried to enlist you. Our characters need to belong to some common group if my character is going to give you bonuses from the Flagbearer feat, so there's some mechanical benefits too.
Zolaire has been associated with the Knights of Ozem for some time, so he could have easily been one of your potential recruits, Sour. So long as it's really clear who the bad guys are that you're fighting, he'd serve as a pretty effective hammer against undead, abberations, orcs, and so on. He's not much for subtlety.
I think Natalya and Batoh were both invited to Professor Lorrimor's funeral in our backstories. If Natalya is up for it, Batoh could have met her there either in passing or as a companion from the start of the adventure.
After that though I'm sure Batoh would have been wandering around Ustalav (possibly trying to find a way back home to Taldor). If he had encountered Sour Heck on his travels, Batoh would have definitely offered his sword in the fight to oppose evil.
Still fighting flu symptoms, will update thread soon
I'm fine with meeting Batoh, but Natalya was late for the funeral so we'd have to work that in somehow. Batoh was late too, or was still in town when Natalya arrived? Her long term goal is to return to Thuvia and the desert, but if there's an undead threat she can be persuaded to stay so if Batoh tells her about Sour and the dangers of undead in Ustalav then she'll make common cause at least for a while :)
Batoh would have stuck around Ravengro for awhile to before heading south. Caliphas is a good meeting point if you're heading south. If you need a travel companion, Batoh would be willing to travel south. Our path would probably take us down through Andoran and then we could find boats leading to Cassomir and Merab out of the port in Almas. At least that would be Batoh's travel route.
I'm sure there would be plenty of places for Natalya and Batoh to encounter Sour Heck while travelling from Ravengro to Caliphas. Maybe through one of the passes through the Hungry Mountains? Or we could have all met up in Caliphas and Sour could have changed our minds before we left on the boats? So many posibilities....
The last one might be best - we met somewhere between Ravensgro and Caliphas, fell into company and then met Sour who managed to convince us that the pressing need is here rather than further south.
That works for me. Sour and Zolaire, what do you guys think?
Personally, I'm curious as to whether the GM has some hook that brings us all together. Zolaire hasn't been around much (and would have never heard of Professor Lorrimor), but could have been roped in quite easily for any sort of undead-slaying adventure. Otherwise, it's possible that they've met, but Zolaire wouldn't be along for the ride, so to speak.
Ok, all, feeling better so I am back. Actually, I was going to pose that question in the thread as to if you wanted to know each other peripherally or as a band who's been together for years. It seems you've been discussing it so that is cool. After all, you are 11th level so you have a good deal of renown in the game world so anyone with Knowledge (local) ranks would know about each of you. If the players wanted to be strangers, my idea was to have the players contacted by a member of the Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye, who would direct you to Caliphas. Let me know your thoughts.
And yes, you can definitely tweak things like our spell selection, skills, and items.
It's probably been months or maybe years since the Professor's funeral. The first part of this AP took a little more than a month, and was followed by a week of travel. If that pattern continued, this chapter might start half a year afterwards. Perhaps you two folks who were at the funeral got sidetracked on heroics on your journey through Ustalav, which led Heck to you?
If Zolaire spent most of his time fighting for Lastwall against the orcs of Belkzen, perhaps he could have been on an extended mission against the Rotten Tongue tribe in the Hungry Mountains--that would have put him in Ustalav, probably in the soaring, sparsely populated mountain county of Ulzcar. Heck could have run into him there--at a tavern, one suspects--and recruited him.
Sounds like the Hungry Mountains is a likely place where all of our characters could have come in contact with each other. If that's the case, Sour Heck could be the one that collected all of us on that mountain pass. That background and the call to arms makes it an easy way to get the 4 of us together for a common cause.
I'm fine with that - although its worth nothing that Natalya gained all her levels a long way to the south, so Know Local would probably only have noticed her as someone with really fancy stuff! :)
And yes, you can definitely tweak things like our spell selection, skills, and items.
Probably the biggest concern is we have exactly zero team members with Disable Device. Also, our Knowledges aren't great--we only have about a 25% chance of knowing anything about appropriate-challenge-level aberrations, oozes, humanoids, animals, fey, monstrous humanoids, plants, vermin, and outsiders. We're better with undead, dragons, constructs, and magical beasts, but still will only know anything about them around 50% of the time.
Our perception, survival, use magic device, spellcraft and social skills are solid, nothing extraordinary. Sense motive isn't too good.
I can move Heck's skill ranks around some, make him less of a jack of all trades to shore up some of those weaknesses. But it looks like we're going to be stumbling around in the dark fairly often.
Game thread is up for you to dot and post.
And yes, you can definitely tweak things like our spell selection, skills, and items.Probably the biggest concern is we have exactly zero team members with Disable Device. Also, our Knowledges aren't great--we only have about a 25% chance of knowing anything about appropriate-challenge-level aberrations, oozes, humanoids, animals, fey, monstrous humanoids, plants, vermin, and outsiders. We're better with undead, dragons, constructs, and magical beasts, but still will only know anything about them around 50% of the time.
Our perception, survival, use magic device, spellcraft and social skills are solid, nothing extraordinary. Sense motive isn't too good.
I can move Heck's skill ranks around some, make him less of a jack of all trades to shore up some of those weaknesses. But it looks like we're going to be stumbling around in the dark fairly often.
I don't have much in my skills that I can switch around. Right now I have points split between two of my knowledge skills, should I push them all toward one knowledge skill instead?
I have almost no flexibility at all since I need all of my first 7 levels of skill points to qualify for one of my major feats. Then again I'm the paladin - I was never going to provide much in the way of skill monkey-ness!
Wow. That is... quite the buffing routine.
Interestingly, because of the way my Blood Intensity works (+1 damage per dice rolled on evocation spells), the extra 1d6 of sonic damage that my rays get actually becomes 1d6+1 damage.
I think I'll be using Scorching Ray a lot more than I initially thought I would.
You might also consider adding a summon spell to your spell list next level--the more attackers, the better the buffs become.
I'm a bit confused about that last combat. The creature won initiative so I assumed that when we had posted it had already taken its action (busting through the wall etc). But then AFTER we'd all posted it seemed to act and to take account of what we were doing/had declared. Maybe I'm just reading the posts wrong but colour me confused!
Also may I suggest block initiative? If there's just one monster then let the whole party act then the monster/vice versa then we don't end up being stuck around if one person can't post.
I assume that the monster, having won initiative, delayed its first round actions until after Sour Heck acted.
Will update thread tonight
Do we just want to assume that we got the scroll with Zolaire and we are teleporting to the location? The game thread has slowed a bit
How are we doing?
Still being patient but not checking as frequently as before
Still around, checking it with all my other games, waiting to see if it survives.
Not looking good certainly, which is a shame.
Hey everyone.
After the slow death this thread seems to be dying I'm going to withdraw. Best of luck.