I think I interpreted the sense motive result properly. If someone thinks differently, please let me know.
Isn't this a friendly place?
Nice Kirsdrake, Nice :)
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The poor spirits are just dying to give you a warm welcome;-)
Too busy to post today, but I promise to move things along tomorrow... the room is not quite as devoid of life as it seemed at first, but you have been suitably cautious, so...
TEASE!
The chokepoint strategy and enemies limited to single melee attacks makes this encounter a bit of a moot point. I think I will wait for Erix's and Alua's last actions and then do a bit of rolling to finish the fight in one post - this is not exactly the height of entertainment ;^)
Given how often we've ended up in a terrible tactical position, I'm not actually embarrassed it is working for us this time!
Well, yeah... the enemies here are your average mostly-mindless undead. Charge right at the nearest target and attack until killed is about what you can expect from them. And with one high-AC character blocking the door and up to 2+2+1+1+1 attacks coming at the lucky sod each round... an enemy might get lucky once and hit Erix before going down, and I think you have more HP than the encounter has enemies ;^)
I almost always play a rogue or spellcaster. Being the tank feels weird.
Tank playstyle has its perks, too... although with the lack of proper aggro mechanisms in every d20 edition other than 4ed (that I know of), actually forcing enemies to attack you and you alone is almost entirely dependent on terrain and that enemies are all melee types and can't just ignore the lone fortress blocking the single usable path to the squishies hiding in the back lines ;^)
Too true.
There are a couple of tricks, but this Bodygyuard thing is about as close as I've been able to come; essentially the ability to load AC if nearby allies are attacked.
I almost always play a rogue or spellcaster. Being the tank feels weird.
I play a healer or a tank, being wizard is weird... When I GM with them they never run out of spells :).
Erix's plan was to erect a couple dozen lashed-together poles in a way the enemy would have to spend a few rounds getting past.
To be fair though, that was on the understanding that the room beyond was about the size of the other 'rooms' and could be run through in a couple of rounds.
In addition, the longer Bozo is gone, the longer we probably have until he comes back; there's no way to know if he's gone for help 200m, 2000m or 20000m away.
Long term he very much wants a barrier built and guards posted by the camp. Even if they dig through it as fast as it is built, it still means people are building rather than being attacked.
Bozo ;^) Cute, you gave it a name.
Anyways, a bit busy today and likely tomorrow, so you might need to wait for an update for a bit. Traps there are not to be found, but the body does have some items near it that you might be interested in - the stuff on it has become part of the stalagmite and hacking anything off in a single piece (considering just how old the items are in general) is pretty much a fool's errand.
Wouldn’t prestidigitation clean off the cobwebs? And maybe Baran and Lupi should look at the carvings on it to see if they can glean more info.
Phin will pick it up when the time comes. That way she only has herself to blame if there were traps when she thought there were none
Wouldn’t prestidigitation clean off the cobwebs? And maybe Batam and Lupi should look at the carvings to see if they can glean more info.
Phin will pick it up when the time comes. That way she only has herself to blame if there were traps when she thought there were none
Prestidigitation would certainly work - really, a good sneeze at point-plank range would blast most of the stuff covering the item into dust.
Very cool artifact!
So it does have a blade, correct? But the blade is wrapped? I want to picture it properly which is why I'm asking :)
The carvings at the bottom sound absolutely amazing
Yes, blade is wrapped and thus blunt... I assume one of you will pick it up, so might as well mention its most basic property. It is a shortspear but blunted, and while you could also use it as a quarterstaff it is balanced slightly wrong for that. It is a magical weapon, and grants +1 to attack, but the blunt spearhead and bad balance as a staff negate the enchantment bonus it would otherwise have to damage. And it's damage type is B, obviously enough.
My only concern is Phin has about half of Erix's HP.
Well, and that if we unearth an artefact that will justify this entire expedition and then snap it stabbing someone our employer might throttle us...
:-) Well, it's not like the spearhead is glued to Phin's hands, another may always end up wielding it (or will they?).
Anyway, day ended up being spent doing gardening. Will post tomorrow, as the midden is about to hit the windmill...
Now, while you are not in combat, you might want to limit your actions to approximately what can be accomplished in a single round. I'm not going to quite count standard and move and free actions, but we are close to it.
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Right… busy today, but will try to get the ball rolling tomorrow. We are entering a chase scene of a sort – your objective – get out of the ruins before the Reality Storm collapses them on you or does something even worse. Like many GMs, I have my own way of handling these scenes, as Alua, Erix and Phin will recall from the previous try… this time with the exception that this is a group effort, and I assume you will not leave no-one behind (unlike the previous time when it was the game of “will anyone catch the killer before she makes her getaway?”.
Anyway, we will do it like this. Each “round” (that may take much more time than a single combat round but we have to call it something), you will have an objective (in this case, reach the next checkpoint on the map), and there will be some challenges that prevent you from just easily jogging up to it. It is largely up to you how you want to make your way past said obstacles – you will need to do a roll, but what skill/ability you roll for is largely up to you, depending on how you intend to resolve the current issue, but the thing I do is… the DC is entirely dependent on the quality of your post.
For example, if Alua were to write that she “runs as fast as she can and jump over the ravine”, end of story, the DC for Alua’s Acrobatics check will be around 40. But if you give me a proper post, about one A4 in length, that is entertaining, makes sense and perhaps resolves the issue in a quirky way I didn’t expect, the DC might go down closer to 10.
So, give me oneliner after oneliner and your characters need to roll god-tier each and every single time or they might go splat. Write well and you will have more leeway, and good writing is what is kind of the point of a PBeM game anyway ;^)
But since this is a group thing (I will assume you won’t just leave a straggler behind and continue running) I will be counting overall progress on by how many points the group as a whole makes or fails their checks. So, if Erix’s post gets him a DC 30 check and he rolls 29, that -1 for the party, and if Lupi’s post drops her DC to 15 and she rolls 20, that’s a +5 for you. The higher the total, the further from the boundary of the Storm you get.
In a case of truly terrible timing my 2 major assessments are all due between now and Monday, and I'm pulling very long days trying to get them done.
I'll try to find time to post something longer, but I don't want to hold up the group.
No worries, Baran also had a lot on his plate at the moment. We'll play at the pace fates will allow us to.
Shifted the map around in an effort to illustrate how things are going... can be a bit confusing since the map is 2D, but hopefully we are all on the same page.
And this time, the "down" on the map is literally DOWN, not south ;^)
Considering Lupi's track record on Climb, there is a rather good chance of getting lethal damage from 130' drop. So looking for ways to avoid the Climb skill check :).
Knowledge(Dungeoneering) has a "determine slope" DC 15 check. Succeeding that might help further climb checks? It would be to find the best route for climbing...
As long as the skill you choose makes some sense in the situation and the post reinforces the logic I'm good with it.
Should also add the following: reusing the same single skill check after check is not exactly intended and I will be penalizing overuse. Also, you can help each other - Lupi's Dungeoneering skill to determine the best route of descent was a great example.
Just presented, will make multiple rolls tonight?
Tim
Nah, don't bother rolling for the first obstacle, but if you have time to at least refer to the start of the run in passing, I'll be happy.
Work is very crazy right now, I'm hoping to post tomorrow during the day. Sorry for the delay.
No worries, mere games can wait for life to find room for them.
Also... since one adventure is over I'd like to offer you a chance to ask questions ooc if you wish. I know many things are unclear, some of them quite intentionally so, but some stuff I no doubt just didn't explain as well as I believed I did.
So, if something I'd bugging you, something didn't seem to make any sense, something was left too vague, feel free to ask and, depending on the topic, I may shed some light on the matter.
Lupi's main concern is still an upcoming Foulspawn invasion.
Did the group see any collapses on the caves after they passed through?
Nope, but that's not really your problem, nor did anything you did here make it worse. The foulspawn have a major settlement underground. One of their lords sensed some unusual magics in the ruins and they have been tunneling up to there for quite some time to locate the source, a task made more difficult by the massive Dhakaani complex (of which you saw but a tiny part) that's partially collapsed, which has made the ground trickier to tunnel through (digging up, at any moment you might hit an old tunnel that's structurally unsound and have it collpase on you) and the ruins still have some functioning traps, mundane and magical and some nasty guardians ready to bonk anything non-goblin that turns up. If the cratures were ready for an invasion into Draguun, they would have done it already.
Is it the effects of the reality storm that we're seeing here?
Yup, stone in this world wasn't really much of an obstacle to it. And if you had trouble with the gravity shifts... well, out here, the "roof" was a bit higher up, and even if the fall towards the new "down" started slow, it did pick up speed.
Sorry Kirsdrake, that was a great twist and a great scene. Incredibly bleak.
Felt like the end of a horror-survival movie, where it looks like they've made it, only to discover it hasn't worked.
I was trying to work out how it'd interact with Erix's issues. Couldn't seem to get it to gel. I figure he's supposed to be practical, and never give up, but also he really, really, really does not like the bad guys they just fought.
Up to you, of course. Erix has seem some serious stuff before, during his spec ops days, so training might help him to push feelings aside and focus on the mission for now. He can always have a nice mental breakdown later once things calm down for a bit and he can come out of pure survival mode.
One of you will need to physically wake Phin up if she’s sleeping less than 8hrs...which I think would probably be the case here.
I'll be camping for a week starting June 1. I've heard that cell coverage is very spotty where I'll be so I wouldn't expect any posts from me, especially anything long. Please bot Phin as necessary starting Tuesday.
Righto, have fun, Phin. And as far as your character goes, 8 hours isn't exactly the magic number - the trick is that she wakes up naturally when her body believes she has had a good, nice sleep, which takes generally around 8 hours, give or take an hour or so.
Hoping to post today, but it might not happen until Wed.
Kirsdrake: Before setting on foot in the middle of nowhere, how closely do we need to count food and water? Water is heavy and it would take us days to get to the nearest settlement. Lupi is also at the edge of her carrying limit, taking more weight just means the travelling gets slower and more supplies are needed.
Well, if you take your suggested route and head for Zilargo it's not bad - perhaps 80 miles or so. Terrain is rough and it's not like you are taking the most optimal route... you weren't really the best survivalists. But if you take, say, one day to cook some spoilable foods into a form that keeps and is more compact (bake bread, for example), you can carry what you need to survive for that journey without any special trickery needed.
There is one potential issue with the Darguun/Zilargo border that no-one's touched yet, but I'll leave that for you to figure out ;^)
Lupi will be voting for going to Zilargo, how about others? :)
Sounds... well, not good. Less bad?
Phin, thank ye for the lovely dream scenes!
Erix pushed for day time in the theory that light sensitive creatures would hate it. Everyone seemed to be going along.