TOZ's Passing the Torch (Inactive)

Game Master TriOmegaZero

I understand it’s a powerful spell, but I personally don’t care for it. It reduces the stakes of the game.

Let me tell you, it becomes a lot less powerful when death effects hit the field. *looks at high tier Gallowspire*

Indeed. That is why my Divine casters always have Death Ward prepared. I really do not like energy drain/death effects.

Still overall death by hit point loss is probably the most common way to die. BOL remains a solid spell or scroll.

Edit - @Kasimir - If you do not like the spell you do not have to prepare it. 90% of the time it is a spell that never gets used.

Assuming no one has any more adjustments to be made, I will update again tonight. As I understand it, Rokgurn is following the trail and the party is following on the eagles?

Yep, that's my understanding.

Aren't the eagles summoned, I'd have thought we were long past the minute and a bit duration...

Eagle Aerie has some nice utility as a cross between Summon Monster and Mount. As long as they don't attack, they last 1 hour/level. Once they attack, the remaining duration is rounds. I'm definitely taking notes for my own druids, even if they are not likely to see much more play.

Assuming no one has any more adjustments to be made, I will update again tonight. As I understand it, Rokgurn is following the trail and the party is following on the eagles?

That is the plan. :)

Eagle Aerie has some nice utility as a cross between Summon Monster and Mount. As long as they don't attack, they last 1 hour/level. Once they attack, the remaining duration is rounds. I'm definitely taking notes for my own druids, even if they are not likely to see much more play.

I get this spell as a domain spell pickup. I would not routinely prepare it for another Druid character but if I can afford to keep a 6th level slot open then I could fill it during the day as needed. Generally if your character is spending hours travelling cross-country then a 15 minute break to save hours makes sense. Also if you cast this spell the day before with an extend rod you essentially have free party transport all of the next day. Now that is nice.

Posting early to give the party time to decide how to approach the temple.

Resist Energy (Fire), Communal should be down by now as roughly 50 minutes has passed in game since the combat.

Not a lot of good images for giant eagles it seems. Please arrange the party on the map as you proceed across the field. Edit: Flipped it the wrong way. North is to the right hand side of the map.

I am looking for the temple and I am not finding it on the map.

It would make sense to fly together within 10' of the Eidolon to gain a +2 bonus to saves and AC and as far away from the tar pits as possible.

I am not sure what you want. Do you need a flight path or just for us to dump our characters on the map before an event happens.

Yes, an event is about to happen. The dark patches are the tar pits.

I think everyone is either flying under their own power or benefiting from Kasimir's communal air walk. At this point in time this is probably the safest bet as the giant eagles only have 26 hit points.

Edit - My character is leading the giant eagles on map. We are all at an altitude of 50 feet. If anyone wants to ride one please choose a number.

Edit 2 - Are we still technically in Jungle terrain in regards to the Hunter Blessing spell? If not then Perception and Initiative bonuses will drop by 2 for everyone assuming that they already added it in.

I would still count this as jungle, it's a clearing around the temple. Once inside the temple, it would not be jungle terrain.

Um... which way is the temple? I'm going to assume to the right somewhere?

Correct

I will ride Eagle #3. I did not adjust for hunter’s blessing in my stats,

@Kasimir - You can control Eagle 3 in combat and he will act on your initiative in combat. I did not think of it until now but they should benefit from my character's Augment Summoning Feat. This bumps their hit points to 34 and helps their attacks out a bit as their strength is bumped up to 22. They also have Flyby Attack which is sort of neat.

Unlike Rideby Attack, Flyby attack does allow attacks of opportunity, so unless they have superior reach, it's a risky proposition.

I don't think Yuri can use the Handle Animal or Ride skills while raging, so he will just stick with Air Walking and won't ride on an eagle.

The eidolon is the ship, right? In which case I've moved Yuri on the map to be within 10' to take advantage of the bonus.

Yuri's init bonus (with hunter's blessing) will be +8

@Yuri - You can ride a mount and be raging. It is one of the few skills that you can always use.

I think that Crazy can really benefit from a mount as he will be able to move and full attack at range with no penalty. Alchemists are great but can suffer under these large battle mats especially when there are unusual environmental conditions like the last battle and possibly this one as well. We will see.

Good point - I forgot that Ride is called out as an exception. It's Handle Animal that is not excused (presumably HA would not be needed for these summoned eagles). I remember looking into this when I was thinking about building a rager with an animal companion and deciding that although RAW it wouldn't work (to Handle Animal while raging), in practice I suspect few GMs would prevent it, especially when there are barbarian archetypes specifically built around animal companions.

You could ride the Gull. =)
It has the mount evolution... but you'd have to go wherever it went.

And you'd need the proper hat!

@Yuri - If I was the judge, I would rule that riding the mount was a normal activity, and therefore, Handle animal was not needed. The exceptions come up when you want to, say, ride the mount across the ceiling because someone cast spider climb on it.

Yeah, I agree, and that's how I'd rule it too. The difficulty arises because of the whole system of animal companion tricks and the need to use Handle Animal to have the companion use the trick. For a druid, or someone with a class/feat ability that gives them an animal companion like a druid, using HA for tricks that the companion already knows is a free action (and hence frequently actually just ignored at the table, at least in my experience), but RAW the PC does need to use HA (as a free action) to tell the companion to do the trick (attack, flank, use a combat maneuver, etc.), which technically a raging character can't do, which is weird since there are archetypes that give a companion to a character with rage. You can get around it by burning a rage power, but I highly doubt that was what was intended by the archetype authors. I suspect that the RAW about rage and skills is so rarely enforced that the authors probably didn't even consider it as an issue. (It would have been easy to write the archetype in such a way to give the rager the ability to use Handle Animal while raging, but as far as I know that was never done). Yuri even has 4 skill ranks pretty much wasted in Spellcraft because one GM that I played with a lot told me that he could only use Spell Sunder if he used Spellcraft to ID the spell that he was attempting to sunder (this GM *really* didn't like spell sunder ever since I sundered his vampire's invisibility); it was only much later that I realized that I couldn't even *use* Spellcraft while raging!

Alright. This encounter is turning out way more fun than I imagined. I do think that we can handle them. :)

I relied on life sense a bit too much. This was a very nasty surprise in the first slot of GenCon.

The way the GM described it, I briefly thought Achaekek had arrived to wreck our day.

For the record, Kasimir wears an Unfettered Shirt, so that he can’t be grappled. The attempt will set off his spell-storing armor, currently loaded with a bestow curse: strength loss

Yeah, that will be nasty for them. I believe part 2 has much less finicky setup to its encounters, so we should be able to get through that faster.

The GM is rolling hot today with all those 20s and 19s against me and Crazy. ;)

Vengeance for Rurat!

Minor hiccup with positioning, map should be correct now. Working on getting a screenshot for Bombshell to see what remains on the ethereal.

Question about their being ethereal: so if we can see them (via See Invis or the like) can we attack them with (magical) material plane weapons for half damage, as per incorporeal?

Unfortunately not. They have an ability that lets them attack the Material while ethereal. There is no way to do the reverse. However, two have stepped through to the material now.

So the two on the map are material but still invisible? Or material and visible?

This combat is confusing me as well. I think that you can wack the ones on the game board. They are only invisible when Ethereal. Hence you can see and feel the claw as it shifts into our reality.

They were undetectable because they were on the ethereal plane. They are now on the material, completely visible.

@TOZ - Do you mean ‘with weapons’? On my reading, there are a good number of spells that should work just fine.

Yes, but you will have to be able to see them to target them.

@TOZ - yep, that’s usually the case.

Wait, am I allowed to post my action? Or should I wait for the redo of Rokgurn's turn?

Had it all typed up and everything =)

@Hamish - Just copy and paste it over to the discussion that way you do not lose your work but you are not locked in if something dramatic changes.

I am not convinced that my 'redo' was the right choice. Time will tell.

Now I'm more confused.

What's going on?

Rokgurn interrupted the previous chain of events, invalidating actions. We have reset now in light of that.

The deadly mantis have not stepped out of the ethereal plane yet.
Rokgurn has not be transported back and is now grappled after a full attack from the largest mantis.
Only Bombshell can currently see the monsters.
They appear to be able to attack across planes.

@Grandmaster TOZ - Clearly I made the situation much worse. I am not planning on staying on the Ethereal plane if I can help it. Is not maintaining his Ethereal Jaunt ability a free action/non-action. It says he can use the ability for level rounds/day but they do not have to be consecutive rounds. It is the Empty Body (Menhir Savant) ability in Ultimate Magic.

So ethereal colossal creatures that can attack us, but we can't attack them? Yuck. How is that not a tpk waiting to happen?

So lets see if I got this...

We don't see mantis, so surprise round, in which only Bombshell can act (due to see invis).
Two mantis' (red and green) go first... but don't do anything noticeable.
Bombshell warns us of the critters and drinks an extract, getting AoO'd by ethereal green (crit for 52 damage) (but not grabbed)

Regular rounds:
Rokgurn moved, and get AoO'd (16 damage), and grabbed, by ethereal green (implying green has combat reflexes... which as vermin, it shouldn't have any feats at all). Technically, I suppose red could have done this AoO, but he'd have had to have 55' reach... which seems unlikely... or a 3rd shooter mantis?)
Rokgurn goes ethereal, while still grappled... and remains grappled (implying the claw can be both ethereal and material at the same time)

Red and green go while still on the ethereal plane. Green tosses Rokgurn (13 damage), red takes AoO (hitting for 26 damage) and tries to snatch him up (failing due to another use of Divine Interferance by Rokgurn).
Red tears into Rokgurn, hitting twice (43 damage), and grabbing him proper this time.

(note: assuming the locations where we did see them briefly are roughly where they are on the ethereal side)

That the right of it?
Seems to track pretty well, though the aoo on Rokgurn still seems suspect, as well as whether he'd still be grappled once he ethereal jaunted... though both easily explained by special mantis mojo abilities.

I was coming to the same conclusion. Blue would have had to make the AoO, which got mixed up when my browser stopped updating slides and I had to shift to iPad. So the initial throw damage will have to go away, leaving Rokgurn stuck between blue and red on the ethereal. To explain one point, Bombshell saw them moving in on the surprise round. Yellow/Green was the only one in reach without moving.

there's a blue one too? Ouch. Could you indicate where Rok got AoO'd then, so we have some idea where it might be on the map?

And google slides works like ass on an ipad. I don't even try anymore =)