An Opalline Tide

Game Master Patrick Curtin

cool! safe travels!
I stuck in Oklahoma, was gonna go home Sat, but my house has been with no power for almost 3 hours now, and some roads are flooding, probably wait til Sunday :P

Stay safe.

OK, So I'm driving home Sunday.
My house has power, but Im getting a lot of reports that peeps who have power still dont have their cable/interwebs services. So,...

If I 'vanish', thats why. :)

What service provider do you have for internet?

Sorry I have been incognito this last week. Have been preparing the house for a refinance and doing a lot of work around the house in our "free" time. When not working and caring for the grand kids and helping them with their school from ZOOM.

'FREE TIME'???

There is time that you have to do,... stuff that YOU want to?!? O_o

Where can I find some of this magical time?!? IS it expensive? ;P

Refinance is both wonderful and a major pain. (I've only done it once. Maybe two years after I bought my first and only home. ;P)
Good luck! :)

I have LUS internet/TV/phone (Lafayette Utilities Service, is a separate branch of our local utility company)

Yeah, a few years ago, the city/parish
(that's 'county' to you non-Lousy-Anna folk)
Of Lafayette got tired of trying to deal with COX cable and AT&T (who at teh time had no wired systems in town, only the via-satellite services)So they built their OWN fiber-based hi-speed provider company from the ground up.
Apparently, they did SO good a job at it, that since then OTHER companies have come to LUS and paid them to SHOW them what they did and how, so they can duplicate their efforts. ;P

FYI- Clearly, When I got home, my interwebs is working. ;P
But there are still areas nearby with no power, or power but no TV/Internet services. But they are working on it.

That's cool.

"free time" that time when you should be sleeping or doing other things .

Oh is THAT what that time is?!?

I thought it was just ordinary 'get-work-done' time ;P

FYI- Sorry I vanished for a day. Went to DR yesterday because after 2 weeks ear was bugging me to no end. Yep. Ear infection.
Apparently anti-biotics make me sleepy? :P more likely my body just wanted rest from fighting this infection.

So... we're supposed to assume character knowledge of these monsters to solve the puzzle?

Ri Ront Row Raggie :P

Im TRYING not to assume too much PC knowledge without a skill roll, But SOME of these are 'common' monsters, (Or at least 'commonly talked about' even if never seen, yes?)

Sorry folks. I actually have a bit of a beef with how this puzzle was constructed, which is why I jumped in with 13 Spider. I think it was written poorly, the code should have been clearer, Using different monsters to hide the combination was a little too confusing/cutesy, with all the various monsters with two eyes, JJ picks a medusa to represent ‘2’ , and the sunrise/sunset thing means nothing if you don’t know where North is.

That and something this massive always makes veteran gamers très paranoid.

But, anyway, you figured it out.

LOL,

yeah theres NO trap like an OLD-SCHOOL 1st Ed trap! :P

(No concept of 'challenge rating'. And those 3rd pp books? Death Traps, no saves, etc. Shudder) ;)

Thank you! :)

Looks like you guys weren’t the first to have issues

Yeah even James Jacobs pointed out "Yeah... the fact that the puzzle requires player knowledge of monsters is a flaw. Using Knowledge checks to figure out how many eyes the monsters have is a perfect solution, as is seeking out the answers in libraries or from sages in Sasserine.

As for the Knowledge check, make it a DC 15 or DC 20 check. The whole "DC = 10 + monster's HD" is kind of goofy anyway, since that means that no one would ever know about super famous monsters. Like a great wyrm dragon. Or the Tarrasque."

Yeah, the options people mentioned would be good in a table setting , but in a PbP, it can take a while to move along, and I didn’t want to be puzzling this until Thanksgiving

Plus you and Taishe figured out mist of them with your two Knowledge checks

Yeah, it's a little weird. I deliberately didn't go look up the monsters to see the eye numbers because that's not in the spirit of the game and all, and tried to encourage knowledge checks, but we're 1st level and don't have a lot of knowledge skills! The puzzle wasn't hard out of character, just pretty strange to swap the monsters.

And technically a Medusa throws everything out of whack if you factor the snakes having eyes.

LOL, yeah that twist confused me, but once you figure it out its a facepalm moment. ;P

Good to know it not just ME having issues with that puzzle. :)

STill, better than most first ed puzzles, which were just another word for 'DEATH TRAP!!!'
Usually,...

SAd part is, I like to play PC's with High Int, but I dont claim to HAVE high Int myself. :) Makes it,... interesting. ;P

And yes, TAishe is the undisputed master of the understatement.
;P

Geez, the 1% feeling sorry for herself...

LOL ;P

Well, she is a noble. She’s not pleased having her bank vault rifled

Level 2: Shaman
HP: 1d8 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (8) + 2 + 1 = 11
+1 BAB
+1 Will save
Hex : Deep Heart (Gain water breathing and swim speed)
+1 o-level/day
+1 1st level/day
4 skill points (Linguistics, Swim,Perception, Spellcraft)
Pick up Aquan

Also, for those interested, I finally have a city map of Opal up in the campaign info tab.

Woot! Opal map! ;)

Now I can see where I'm at when I fail those skill checks. :P

Yay lvl-up! :)

Yay! Will we have a chance to shop with our newfound wealth?

Well, your next mission will take you into Opal proper to look for Vanthus, so yes.

So is there a chance to get new spells? Narl still has free spells available to him for his spell book. How do you normally handle that sort of thing?

Opal has a robust magical economy. You can buy spells for transcription. The only restrictions are inherently evil spells, especially Animate Dead. These will not be available through legitimate channels

Relevant rules: Link

Spells Gained at a New Level: Wizards perform a certain amount of spell research between adventures. Each time a character attains a new wizard level, he gains two spells of his choice to add to his spellbook. The two free spells must be of spell levels he can cast.

Spells Copied from Another’s Spellbook or a Scroll: A wizard can also add a spell to his book whenever he encounters one on a magic scroll or in another wizard’s spellbook. No matter what the spell’s source, the wizard must f irst decipher the magical writing (see Arcane Magical Writings). Next, he must spend 1 hour studying the spell. At the end of the hour, he must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell’s level). A wizard who has specialized in a school of spells gains a +2 bonus on the Spellcraft check if the new spell is from his specialty school. If the check succeeds, the wizard understands the spell and can copy it into his spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). The process leaves a spellbook that was copied from unharmed, but a spell successfully copied from a magic scroll disappears from the parchment.

If the check fails, the wizard cannot understand or copy the spell. He cannot attempt to learn or copy that spell again until one week has passed. If the spell was from a scroll, a failed Spellcraft check does not cause the spell to vanish.

In most cases, wizards charge a fee for the privilege of copying spells from their spellbooks. This fee is usually equal to half the cost to write the spell into a spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). Rare and unique spells might cost significantly more.

Independent Research: A wizard can also research a spell independently, duplicating an existing spell or creating an entirely new one. The cost to research a new spell, and the time required, are left up to GM discretion, but it should probably take at least 1 week and cost at least 1,000 gp per level of the spell to be researched. This should also require a number of Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) checks.

So with the free spells it says research time I was thinking of Animate Dead I as well as sickening ray for my free spells. My thought was Narl's job at the library might allow him access to certain research that might assist his location or figuring out how to cast those spells. But I will leave it up to you to determine if either of these are okay?

Tragon smash.

So with the free spells it says research time I was thinking of Animate Dead I as well as sickening ray for my free spells. My thought was Narl's job at the library might allow him access to certain research that might assist his location or figuring out how to cast those spells. But I will leave it up to you to determine if either of these are okay?

As your free spells I would allow this, but with one caveat: using Animate Dead anywhere within Opal, or its surrounding areas is a Bad Idea. The history of this place means that necromancers are extremely despised.

Did we let the captive go? She was a bound captive, and then Lavinia and her crew showed up and we never discussed what happened to her.

Yeah, we apparently let her go. Or Lavinia's men did? I might have misunderstood and thought we did it, leaving Lavinia's men on the ship.

Thank you - I was missing that. We'll blame Lavinia then.

Agreed!

Now you’ve gone and made Lavinia salty , lol

Oh dear

Moi bad.

Sorry, actually busy this weekend! back to doing shows, Even if they are livestreamed instead of with audiences

Hey folks, just an FYI . I’m in Massachusetts this weekend for the Samhain festivities, so I might be a bit sparse with the postings

Cool, Enjoy the chillax!
(Although my wish is late now, long weekend for me) ;P

The dice are not our friends.

Eh, as long as we can charge some drinks to our expense account, it’s not a total loss.

LOL< Taishe wil be adding K:skilsl to his list of goodies, but he's just not a people lizard. (NO Diplo for you!) :P

Hey guys, sorry I’ve been away. It’s been a busy week.