It looks like we need to catch up with someone who is moving. Any suggestions? I can cast any 5th or lower wizard spell, if anyone has an idea that helps us accomplish our task.
This shaman spell may work
forest sense, but only within 9 miles, and a will save negates, although that is also true of scrying and they’d get a plus 3 on scrying from the modifiers.
Another suggestion, not limited by range, but with other complications is to cast scrying the following day, assuming we are willing to (and can) convert 1000gp of party gold into the focus for that spell. Immediately before scrying I could prepare a teleport spell via spirit talker and arcane enlightenment. I could then scry and immediately teleport all but one of us there with a 75% chance of success... There must be a better plan.
Another possibility from spirit talker is the wind spirit hex, wind sight, for 9 clairvoyance spells. I’m not immediately sure how we’d use these.
Wind Sight (Su): The shaman ignores the penalties on Perception checks caused by wind and the first 100 feet of distance. At 7th level she can, as a standard action, hear or see into any area—as clairaudience or clairvoyance, using that spell’s range—provided that there’s an unobstructed path for air to travel between the shaman and the target area. This doesn’t require line of effect, meaning the path can turn corners and go through spaces as narrow as 1 inch in diameter. The shaman can use this ability a number of rounds per day equal to her shaman level, but these rounds do not need to be consecutive.
I can imagine suggesting these things in character and Delroy making a derogatory comment about magic rather than good ole’ tracking.
Thanks to the card we played we have Woodland Stride, so at least we're not being slowed down. I suppose we'll wanna look at any spell that will speed us up. Would the card's effect work with Communal Mounts? That would let us move pretty fast for a pretty extended period.
Yes, the card would work with Communal Mounts. As is, currently the party move speed is 20ft.
How many hours of daylight do we have?
I can probably switch most of my third level slots (and one 5th) to phantom steed, since 5 of those gets our speed up to 80. I’ll prepare spells once we’ve decided on that. Math (15 minutes to prep spells after spirit talker, 10 minutes per casting, and they are gone after 60 minutes) makes this take 3 phantom steeds and 1 communal (I’ll extend the communal so we get 9 hours of fast movement.
That does mean that I won’t have magic vestment, or other useful things, but we need to catch him.
I will also prepare and cast forest sense. I’ll prep 2, casting one when we start and one at the end of the day.
The food from yesterday will sustain the 4 of us that need to eat today , with one serving left over for tomorrow.
If no one disagrees I’ll get a post up in the thread later tonight.
You have 12 hours of daylight: from 7am to 7pm.
That all sounds good to me!
Just wouldn't be Yattle if Plan B wasn't coming up every so often... ;-)
It looks to me like a phantom chariot each day would substantially decrease our travel time throughout the module, so I'll do that assuming no one has a better suggestion.
I never post on Paizo's website anymore without at least copying my text. For longer posts I frequently use a text editor, because the time it takes to select all and copy is way less frustrating than losing even a single post.
Yeah. I should know by now. Lost so much...and typed it up on all iPhone. Don’t have it in me to do it again now. Will try again later.
There is only sadness and pain.
This is the way.
Between meetings this morning and a team offsite this afternoon, I probably won't have a chance to post anything until after work tonight. I believe the party still needs to decide where it wants to head next as well.
I'm looking forward to reading the stories posted tonight!
We’ll go to whatever is closest tomorrow (based on our map, Brambleson’s knowledge, and our survival rolls) I assume we’re still doing the phantom chariot.
The closest two are Smith's Caldera and the Demon's Fen. You're not discernably closer to one than the other.
Smith’s sounds better to me
Flip a coin
Smiths' works for me - sure to be plenty of things vulnerable to fire in a caldera, right?
We're going to hit both eventually, so we might as well do the Smith's first. Anyone got a card that's smithy related?
I'm guessing 'The Forge' will end up being useful ;-)
For alignment, I tend to play characters as they feel. If you think he would be better suited as a different alignment, I’m ok with that. Would CN work?
I believe that alignment is meant to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, so ultimately it depends on what you think accurately describes Lokhir. Thus far, I don't think he has been acting in a particularly LN manner. Since he's not my character, I simply don't know if this is because of the circumstances or because a different alignment has started to emerge since you've been playing him. Either is fine (and why I removed my original comment about his alignment), I just thought I'd point it out. My preference is just for his alignment to feel like an accurate description. There's nothing in this module that has particular alignment restrictions, and if you recall, before they left, ArchLich's vigilante had a NE persona.
My original LN was the idea that he had his own code which he won’t break. But I tend to play characters how they feel, so that can change. As is I’ll just delete the alignment then, as I prefer his alignment to be “Lokhir” and for people to judge him by his actions. If anything alignment comes up he is whatever you feel appropriate without complaints from me.
Alignment can be nuanced, which is why I asked people to describe their alignments to me rather than just asking for a flat alignment. For example, with Bernaditi, my default expectation would have been for a Lawful character to either want to keep his word, feel like he should keep his word, or have some justification about why it's okay not to keep his word. None of that is to say anything about whether or not he ultimately does keep his word, but that's why I was surprised when Lokhir very easily agreed to his deal with zero intention of following through. Bernaditi himself is a Lawful NPC, and it would have felt weird to me if he tried to strike up a bargain with no intention of keeping it.
And to be clear, none of this is to say that my idea of "Lawful" is the only way to do it. But I'm also not in your head. This is the first time I've heard you mention Lokhir's personal code, and I still have no idea what kind of behavior this code dictates. As I said, his alignment isn't really an issue for me, especially since there are no mechanics saying that he needs to be a specific alignment; it's just far enough from what I would have expected to cause me to tilt my head and wonder what's going on. You should absolutely play what feels right for him, and I hope none of my comments have suggested otherwise. I've just been thinking more about alignment since watching Matthew Colville's video on the subject.
To better explain...that was the original concept. Which never translated. Anyways, I’ll go check out the video :)
I thought I'd check in with people to see how things are going. You're spending longer talking to the azers than I would have expected. If that's because y'all are busy or just want to talk to them, that's totally fine. I just want to make sure you're not feeling stuck/at a loss about what to do next. Or did I just scare people with alignment talk? :-x
It seems like this forge help runs the whole place and the Azers work to make that happen. Makes you wonder the consequences for destroying them, even if death is only a temporary setback for storykin.
Entertaining lot, either way.
I forgot that we're doing ABP. As such, please pretend the cyclops asked for 480gp instead of 960gp.
@Lokhir, most games I've been in treat spellcasting (when it isn't abundently clear/declared or NPCs have the spellcraft to understand), particularly when harsh words are being exchanged, as a potentially hostile actions. I don't know how the GM adjudicates this, but I thought it might be worth mentioning since you're suggesting caution.
Do you guys think the Moutain Man card or Yattle's the Forge might be usable here?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm sure The Forge is usable, but we seem to have this area under control, so I was planning to use it once we got inside the caldera in case it has a narrow scope.
Neither one of those feels right at this point.
I just remembered Yattle is impatient and can’t delay or ready.
I somehow remembered the drawback and the "can't delay" and forgot the "can't ready". *facepalm* Oops. Oh well, hopefully we remember next time.
Crap! I forgot the can't ready too! Well, luckily all it amounted to was skipping my turn :-|
I didn’t realize being a thug meant paying for your mistakes :)
Anyone of us could have tried to talk Yattle out of blowing the door down. I tried diplomacy, but maybe intimidate and no gold was the better play. I leave it to Delroy to decide, but I thought I’d say what I’m thinking.
I mean, I gave a slow count of 8 for more than just gathering power ;-D
I really wanted to just punch him.
But I can't decide if killing these things is an evil act or what the rules are in this place.
I'm not ready to just go psycho on them like an episode of Westworld.
Generally killing someone for being inhospitable is frowned upon, at least in my experience, but how will they ever learn if no examples are made!
Its one of the strange things about adventuring, because NPCs often have goals that conflict with our own, and we can solve things violently or disadvantage ourselves. One PFS scenario had a rather powerful good aligned creature sit out of a fight and be a general dick to us afterwards, and one PC proceeds to intentionally tank like 4 social interaction checks just to provoke it into attacking us so he could claim self defense. This is the way...
I would have backed your play either way, I certainly didn’t stop Yattle from blowing up the door.
And Lokhir is being pretty CN. He sees all of this as being something like spring break. He’s on a path of finding himself and is road tripping to do so. Whatever you decided to do here he’d likely have gone along, so long as it wasn’t anything too distasteful.
Delroy can't decide yet if these are people or things.
Yattle's from the First World where death is an inconvenience to its inhabitants.
Doesn't make it polite, but it does make them a little more willing to ascribe the same sensibilities to the storykin.
I will admit, part of the reason why I picked ArchLich's character is because I thought having an evil PC who self-described as a sadist might produce some interesting conflict in the question of "is it evil to kill Storykin." Because you're right in that you're in a somewhat morally gray area, and it is unclear to what extent Storykin are truly "alive" or "sentient." And it is pretty much entirely up to your characters to decide what you think is right, especially since nobody's a cleric or a paladin with a god trying to force what they believe is the correct course of action on you. Neither decision with Voricose would have crippled you but which approach you took would/will affect a few things. Either way, I was curious to see what option you'd choose to take. :-)
Delroy doesn't have enough info to decide yet, so he figured he would cool things down with the cyclops.
So, did you want to head to the Manmolds? Head somewhere else? Ask more questions? Just attack and try to get the token? Something else entirely?
Our time crunch is overall, not for the individual mission. I don’t particularly want to attack if there is a diplomatic route. I say we do C or H next, as they appear closest. If we want to be thugs we can just take it by force, but thats my vote.
I can support that plan.
Also, love the map. It is very well done.
Let's stop off at the Demon's Fen on the way to the Man Molds.
There is also the option of just paying the guy, but we should probably hold that one in reserve in case something cool happens when we do the grub section that we might miss otherwise. We can always come back and pay him if all else fails.
Ended up getting distracted. Will update tomorrow, probably early afternoon with everybody heading towards the Demon's Fen.
So it sounds like you're leaning towards finding someone and asking them about the bird. Any idea who you want to ask or where you want to look for someone? You're currently about 2 miles from the edge of the Demon's Fen and about 18 miles from the Smith's Caldera, which are the two nearest locations.
Asking around at the Demon's Fen seems like a reasonable twofer :-)