[PbP GD VIII] PFS Mod: Ruby Phoenix Tournament (levels 10-12) [GM Uktar] (Inactive)

Game Master Uktar

@GM - was Risha able to Sneak Attack Daathiel? He was Blinking, and I think that counts as concealment for purposes of thwarting Sneak Attack.

Unless she is an Unchained Rogue.

Also, does the dragon appear to be wounded? We did 95 damage to it earlier in the day.

@GM - was Risha able to Sneak Attack Daathiel? He was Blinking, and I think that counts as concealment for purposes of thwarting Sneak Attack.

Unless she is an Unchained Rogue.

Also, does the dragon appear to be wounded? We did 95 damage to it earlier in the day.

Good catch. She's NOT unchained. my bad. Will fix

THe dragon does not appear to be injured at the moment.
Daathiel knows the half-orc praising Gorum does seem to be casting divine spells...

This is a challenging fight. Your point that aid is needed with the dragon is well taken Daathiel, but we also have a sorcerer freely casting. I tried to deal with that threat and all I can do is hope that Red stays on me. I was a little surprised that no one tried to help green who by now must be drowning in the water.

Indeed a lot more challenging when they are prepared for a fight and we are not. It is also late in the day, with many combats, and Daathiel is quite low on spells.

Wish we hadn't split up.
Wish we had ground out that fight against the dragon in the water earlier no matter how tedious.

Jeras, I would suggest your best option is to use Acrobatics to move away, not Withdraw. You have a very good Acrobatics and Daathiel can use Gallant Inspiration if needed. That way, you can take a single move away and use Total Defense. Withdraw will not get you out of the dragon's range for move+attack. Double move or single move is no significant difference in that regard. But single move + Total Defense is +6 AC, which might make the difference. Especially if you move to within 30' of Daathiel and benefit from the additional +3 AC he provides.

Mal Just double-checking. When you're fighting defensively, your AC is 36, but it's 40 v melee attacks, correct?

Yes, if an attack is within 4, Crane Wing drops (which provokes a second aoo on that miss from crane riposte ), and then it’s just 36.

Flora, I have a plan. If you could hold off posting until after me.
I will post as soon as I am at my laptop.

@Mal, don't forget, you got a CL15 potion of Stoneskin for breaking those things in that challenge earlier.

@Daathiel, It’d take a standard and a move to do so, which would probably lead to me dropping. I think I have to keep up the offense and hope. If the half-elf goes down, and Risha gets stunned, I may just pull through, particularly with bane.

The prebuffing is making the difference here. We should have buffed more, because we sort of knew this was a trap, but it wasn’t clear when they’d arrive.

That potion would be more an option if you had time to gain some distance and regroup. That may be possible if you have dropped the arcane caster. I doubt the cleric or rogue are particularly effective at range, especially if the cleric has had to burn a ton of spell slots healing the dragon.

I am almost certain that 99 damage (after Stoneskin) will drop an arcane caster who maxes out at 4th-level spells (Black Tentacles). Wiz8 or Sor9. Doing lethal damage rather than NL might have impaired the cleric's ability to get her up again, but even so she should be out of the fight for a bit.

I do wonder how much diamond dust the module gave the NPCs. Particularly wondering if the dragon has Stoneskin also. But I have a plan there.

If the cleric is Clr8/9 and fully buffed... figure maybe +6 BAB, +4 Str (base), +2 Righteous Might, +2 Bull's Strength, -1 Size, +2-3 Divine Power, +1 Weapon, +1 WF, we are looking at around +17-18 to hit. Those are the Core buffs that I am familiar with. Mal's 40 AC vs melee should mean they only hit on a 20. Which could happen, true. But hopefully with Bane active, Mal would drop them with Panther Style AOOs before that happens. Their damage would be around 3d6+16 before PA (which they would not be inclined to use seeing that he is hard to hit), so Mal could take one more hit and stay up.

I totally agree with you on the pre-buffing. And we should have stuck together. Daathiel can help others a lot if they are close by. Not so much when they are 150' apart.

The main thing is Mal’s AC will get lower if he doesn’t keep fighting defensively. I guess we’ll have to see how this round goes.

@Jeras, Flora - of course I am not telling you how to play your PCs. I have offered suggestions that I think give us the best possible chance of victory. Do as you wish.

We can probably down the dragon this round, depending on dice. If all attacks hit that is 200-ish damage. It fled at 95 damage before. If it gets to go again, it might drop either Jeras or Flora, but not both, and the other will finish him off. Jeras has Resiliency and also his Talisman. Flora has an exceptional AC right now. I will chip in for any Raise Dead needed, of course.

Dice roller is determined for me to die. I failed my DC 10 Con check with a +7 Con modifier, so I die next round unless someone pulls me out of the water.

Assuming Jeras kills the dragon, which of these options works for Daathiel to save Flora next round?

1) Move and fish her out of the water? Would he need a Swim check or a Drag maneuver?
2) Move while drawing CLW wand and use it on Flora?
3) Move and cast Jester's Jaunt on her? It is not marked Harmless so she would make a Will save, at +8 vs DC 19.

Assuming Jeras kills the dragon, which of these options works for Daathiel to save Flora next round?

1) Move and fish her out of the water? Would he need a Swim check or a Drag maneuver?
2) Move while drawing CLW wand and use it on Flora?
3) Move and cast Jester's Jaunt on her? It is not marked Harmless so she would make a Will save, at +8 vs DC 19.

1) It would be both a swim and drag...

2) I'm not certain CLW would help, but that's immaterial, because:

3) the relevant quote from the magic section is:
“Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing,”

And since Jester's Jaunt is a touch spell, Daathiel can cast it, then dive in and touch Flora and bamf, she'll be on shore...which is just within the 30' limit. Daathiel will need to make a swim check for himself, but touch will happen regardless, because he'll be in space above/adjacent to Flora...or start sinking past her.

Make sense?

CLW won't help. Nothing short of heal will likely help. The nonlethal can't be removed until I rest for the night since it is all due to burn, so you'd have to heal 82 damage to bring me back to consciousness.

Well, Flora is on the shore, out of the water, and now can stabilize. After the fight I'll use my remaining Performance rounds for Soothing Performance and we'll see how much that can do.

He has used 15 rounds today, so has 17 left. That would be 12d8+48 points of healing... actually, maybe that doesn't work. An unconscious target cannot see or hear Daathiel to benefit from the performance.

So it would be a lot of wand charges.

Daathiel's right: since it's audio and visual, won't work on unconscious.
So wands or spells are needed. the rest of the party's healed up, no worries. But need to roll wands/spells--don't know what our Warpriest has for spells, but might help mitigate a little.

FYI: I'll be driving cross-country for a family funeral (driving up on Th, back on Sun), and will be dealing with family stuff, so my posting may be spotty. My apologies in advance.

Since we were resting, we can burn our slots to heal up Flora.

I still had 1 pearl of power, 1 divine favor, and 1 blessed fist, so 3 first level, and 2 second level and 3 fervor I think.

My healing to Flora using all of this
CLW: 3d8 + 12 ⇒ (1, 7, 5) + 12 = 25
CMW: 4d8 + 8 ⇒ (3, 2, 4, 2) + 8 = 19
fervor: 3d6 ⇒ (1, 2, 5) = 8

The emissary's clerics may also be willing to help out if we asked them, since we did suffer this helping Marthysan. Marthysan may also may be willing to help, since I doubt he could have possibly spent all of his healing before he was taken captive.

Sorry to hear about your loss Uktar.

Sorry for your loss, Uktar.

I am sorry for your loss Uktar.

Even though Marthysan is a noncombatant, he is an high level paladin. So even if he used up his healing fighting the bad guys, in the morning he can heal up Flora the rest of the way. no worries, and the least he can do as thanks for rescuing him.

My apologies, I just realized that you may be waiting for me to be placed in the red box. I thought that I had moved myself but for some reason apparently I hadn’t.

Hope everyone had a happy Christmas.

I did here... I expect we will pick this up after the New Year. Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
Almost wrapped up with this! There is a recruitment for Rasping Rebirth that I would have burned a replay on to have Daathiel do that scenario, but as it is, will have to wait until a later opportunity. No problem. I expect that PbP will have support for PF1 for years to come, it seems a vibrant community.

Happy new year, I was thinking the same thing regarding the rasping rebirth, but I haven’t played it before :)

Hi! Will we continue with this game?

I certainly hope so, I suspect we’re near the end. I am hoping people were busy over the holidays and we’ll pick back up soon.

I'm ready.

Ready here as well.

I hope that our GM is OK!

I hope so too. Should we give him a bit more time?
If he doesn't check in by the end of the week I'd try posting in the Flaxseed thread for a replacement GM.

I agree!

I also agree we should probably look for a replacement GM, since this shows no sign of resolving. It is really too bad, since I was really enjoy Uktar's GMing, but i definately still want to finish the module.

I posted a request for a GM in the Flaxseed Lodge recruitment thread.

Hello folks! If you’re still looking to finish this scenario, I can help cover until GM Uktar is able to post again. I’ll need a day (or two) to read through the scenario and the gameplay, and then we’ll get this show on the road!

Thank you GM Hawthwile!

Thank you!

Thank you so much! I’m excited to finish the tournament!

Alright, I've had a chance to read through things. A couple of things I wanted to bring up for discussion:

- I like to roll reactive saving throws (such as a reflex save vs a breath weapon) to keep uncertainties/"delay-action-until-X-is-resolved"/retcons at a minimum. I also like to roll initiative so we're not waiting a day to get an encounter started. These are changes from GM Uktar's style - will this be a problem for any player?

- I couldn't tell if GM Uktar resolved actions based on strict initiative order or in block/group initiative, but I prefer resolving turns based on posting order (block initiative) - again, to try to avoid retcons whenever possible. Is this change acceptable?

Also, do you know if GM Uktar already reported this game (since GameDay ended a while back)?

Let's get this show back on the road!

I think he did and both changes are fine with me. The initiative thing is largely a consequence of arena format letting us buff, I suspect.

The game was reported.

Again, a huge thank you.

Those changes sound fine to me.
Daathiel has a few situational modifiers to saves: +2 vs evil, +7 vs charm/compulsion, +4 vs magic traps, writing, or language-dependent. And he has Saving Finale, but that is used after a save is failed.

I am OK with all changes.

Mal has the feat Combat Style Master, which both allows him to start in a style (snake) and enter a style as a free action (crane) on his first action virtually every combat. He is also a Master of Many Styles monk, which allows him to fuse style crane and snake to use both, which he almost always does.

That works for me! Thanks!

The flavor text was from when I thought I’d confirmed a critical and regained my panache, which didn’t happen. The math was corrected though.

Looking at Jeras' Disable Device modifier, and considering the typical DCs for magic traps, taking -10 to reduce the time to 1 round is probably fairly safe. Even with +32 you are unlikely to fail enough to accidentally trigger even a high level magic trap.

@Jeras we both forgot the perception DC 40

Time between the first match, (10 minutes) the exhibition, (a few minutes for each exhibition?) the riddle, and (???) the final match would be useful for duration tracking.

It seems like the time between all of these was relatively short, as one might expect given 4 teams remained at the start and it seems like the non elimination bouts (e.g. skills challenges, exhibitions) are mostly to keep the crowd entertained.