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Sorry for disappearing for a bit there. Work was brutal last week and this week looks to be the same, plus we closed on the house on Thursday and started moving stuff over. I was wiped and sort of checked out all weekend, my bad.
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Congrats on the house closing!
Congrats!
Also, I got it backwards on the bead of healing. I can use it for remove blindness/deafness, but remove disease is not a paladin spell, for some reason.
No worries CW! Enjoy the new place once you can.
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Apologies all but I am probably going to be quiet for the next couple of days. We're about to get slammed with awful weather over the weekend and we still have to get the furniture moved over.
I should be able to start posting normally on Tuesday and I'll do my best between now and then but no promises, sorry again. Thanks for your patience!
Thanks for the heads up, and good luck with the move and the storm.
Grr, the dangers of copy/paste. It released Wallace and is now Invisible.
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On the topic of invisible zombies, I see no reason why a higher level caster or two couldn't just try and screw around with a party of PC's...
You could have a 5th level wizard be a total troll, turning easy fights into more serious (but not necessarily lethal) fights. Flies invisibly above the fight, drops a crowd control spell here, a buff on the enemies there. Flees once the PC's catch on. Talk about building up your primary antagonist XD
I literally trolled a party that way many years ago. The party encountered a group of trolls in a forest clearing, and their leader was getting extra attacks and casting spells at the same time.
The nearby mage hiding invisibly in the tree with ventriloquism and mage hand was manipulating the troll, and my PC’s were totally confused...Until they reduced the troll to a pile of ashes and it was still talking to them...
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You could have a 5th level wizard be a total troll, turning easy fights into more serious (but not necessarily lethal) fights. Flies invisibly above the fight, drops a crowd control spell here, a buff on the enemies there. Flees once the PC's catch on. Talk about building up your primary antagonist XD
Hey, if you're NOT doing this with your high level caster antagonists, are you really even GMing :)
Sanduro brings up a good point: ammunition. I have not actually been counting shots fired by the party and had not been intending to require you to either. Fun > verisimilitude etc etc.
However, for books 1 and 2 there's an argument to be made that low ammunition stores could add an element of tension and RP potential--avoid or talking your way through confrontations takes on a tactical element as well, as you try to conserve resource against enemies who could possibly realize that you're low on ammo.
On the other hand, that puts our ranged combatants at a disadvantage that the melee characters don't really have an analogue for, and is another bit of bookkeeping. Thoughts?
As one of the ranged characters in question, I have no problem being resource-constrained in the low and early mid-levels; that's part of the gig. I suppose if there were no way to replenish supplies for two full books of the AP, that would pose a problem, but if I have to, Sanduro can put two ranks in Craft (bows) next level and craft something like 280 arrows a week, taking 10 (assuming improvised tools).
It's not a hill I'd die on, but I also don't know when or where we'll be able to spend the downtime making stuff. With a bow we can at least scavenge arrows off some enemies, but I doubt we'll encounter many people carrying black powder and bullets. With my current amount of gold, I can make 12 alchemical cartridges.
I had talked with CW about tracking ammunition prior to us beginning (and the handwaving thereof), so I have not been doing it, just making sure to actually spend my actions reloading.
It's not a hill I'd die on, but I also don't know when or where we'll be able to spend the downtime making stuff. With a bow we can at least scavenge arrows off some enemies, but I doubt we'll encounter many people carrying black powder and bullets. With my current amount of gold, I can make 12 alchemical cartridges.
I had talked with CW about tracking ammunition prior to us beginning (and the handwaving thereof), so I have not been doing it, just making sure to actually spend my actions reloading.
That’s fair - I’m happy to handwave it. I had not discussed it earlier and so didn’t want to assume anything. Also, you make a good point about the lack of downtime, given that we’re being chased.
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Sorry about missing the last few days, I'm attempting to wrangle a promotion of sorts. I'll get the post up tomorrow, pinky promise!
No worries CW. If you get that promotion though, I hope you'll treat our characters with a nice dinner as celebration :)
Good luck!
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So OOC discussion time:
Knowing what we know about Uspid and the other faeries downstairs, I think we should be fine with fighting them as an option. Like, I don't think its an impossible fight unless Uspid's hiding a whole pile of class levels. I think if we're trying to satisfy the queen, we're basically locked into fighting them. It doesn't look like either side is willing to bow to diplomacy.
But in character I think Ketra's not a mercenary sort and would sooner try to trick the queen and steal the seal. This would probably have a high chance of messing up somehow, sticking the party in a fight against the queen and her bodyguards, which may actually be the harder one of the two.
I wanted discuss with folks before I went ahead and caused a bunch of trouble with bluff and/or sleight of hand checks!
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Sorry, I don't think I can discuss strategy until we address the elephant in the room:
One of the queen's allies is a mimic? Named Chester? Who decided they were no longer going to be a container that one might use to hold a large number of pilfered teeth? What could it have been - a crate? A trunk? Hmmm, let me think...
And Chester is now a dressing screen?
Seriously, Paizo? After the tooth fairy names, you give us this?
OK, rant over. This is why I subscribe to the APs.
The plan: as a player (and as Sanduro), I think fighting Uspid is fine, if that's what it takes. I'd prefer not to have to take on all of the other tooth fairies downstairs; I suspect that fighting the stained glass construct angel will be tough enough (and I'm sure that it will end up joining the combat somehow).
If we take on the queen, is anyone concerned about drawing the ire of more of the Boneyard’s bureaucracy? We’re already being chased by Mictena, maybe she’s the only one who would try to do anything if we killed or stole the seal from her appointed watcher.
The three way stations and their watchers
Zsofia, of course, is always up for a brawl and doesn't much care who’s on the other side, but if we do decide to try to steal or con the seal away from the queen, her Bluff modifier is +9.
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BTW I want to recruit Chester to our party before we leave.
They're just too pure for this horrible, teef-centric world! :)
BTW I want to recruit Chester to our party before we leave.
They're just too pure for this horrible, teef-centric world! :)
We already recruited an extra phantom, so maybe we should give in to the inevitable and become one of those parties, the kind that recruits half the monsters they encounter so that by the final fight, the party is a small army.
Ha! I was thinking more that Chester could be a member of our entourage. They seemed pretty milquetoast from our brief dialogue. But who knows, maybe they're actually a mimic with 12 levels in wizard, and this is going to be our big break.
I totally forgot about the glass angel. It feels like either side has the chance of being a really dangerous fight.
As for drawing the ire of the bureaucracy, I think we're already on the watchlist. Not sure if more bad deeds will have any effect. Maybe a KN Religion check might help there? But you make a good point about there being more waystations to go.
Believe it or not, Chester's name and backstory were my own invention, along with the Queen's desperate phsychopomp-bribery scheme. I wanted to make the castle a little more interesting and dynamic than how it's presented in the book.
Should take a vote then on attempting to steal the seal versus fighting it out with one of the sides versus isolating/capturing Uspid?
Garret was hoping his nat 20 on Sense Motive would get them some more info...
oh shoot, sorry Garret let me get something for that.
Looks like two soft votes for fighting Uspid+Crew, one for Steal the Seal so far.
Garret is up for confronting Uspid and trying to turn the faeries back toward the Queen (or at least making them indecisive) and defeating Uspid--prefer not to kill him, but, hey, combat happens.
That may change if his sense motive reveals her to be a raving lunatic, however.
Sanduro is willing to take the fight back to Uspid - the queen hasn’t tried to kill the group yet. It may not be much of a distinction, but he isn’t voting that way because he is willing to be an assassin for hire, but because he believes that Uspid has attempted to usurp the role assigned to the queen by the Boneyard, and the psychopomps did tell us that we would have to do a job for each watcher, so...
I'm on board for smashing that horrible glass monster to bits. Also, no offense to the queen, but Uspid has proven himself to be a real son of a b!~$*.
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Lol Garret. The dice want this strategy to happen.
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My copy of Bestiary 3 for 2E just arrived, and you’ll never guess who’s on the cover!
#teef
Oh gosh, they look even uglier than normal :O
Sanduro does, but I didn't think to make a Knowledge (Nature) check because I assumed that the barely competent check I made when we first arrived at the Palace of Teef precluded me from making another. If that isn't the case, of course, I'd be happy to try again!
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Bad attack rolls are so much worse when you roll 1 point shy of max damage.
Wow, everyone's rolls this round were garbage!
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Yippee for Level 3!
Yeah! I think it should help with the healing issue a lot.
I assume the toothy scepter is returned to the Queen? Garret will want to try and identify the magic items, and we were hoping I think for a place to rest and some food for our continuing journey...
Garret - Sanduro can assist with ID, and would be perfectly happy to get back on the road and camp instead of spending the night with his hands clamped firmly over his mouth!
Deciding on Sanduro’s level 3 feat:
Druids don't get any bonus feats or feat-like abilities (talents, etc.), so I have to be a little cautious about my choices, but by giving up wildshape there aren't a lot of feats that Sanduro absolutely has to take. Zsofia gets a feat too, but her choices are more limited and may depend on what Sanduro takes. The feats I'm considering for level 3 are:
Flavor/Character
These are feats I want to take, which make sense to me to take at lower levels. They each provide some tangible, but situational, benefits.
- Deliberate Death (duskwalker)
- Psychic Sensitivity
I'm inclined to take Deliberate Death now and Psychic Sensitivity at level 5 (or possibly the reverse), leaning in to Sanduro's duskwalker heritage and original concept as a spiritualist. But there are a few feats that would have obvious benefits in almost every combat that I feel like I should at least consider:
Mechanical
These provide obvious and immediate mechanical benefits that Sanduro will use regularly, but don't add much to the character. If I don't take them in the next couple of levels, I may or may not take them later.
- Covering Fire (teamwork) {Zsofia would take this if Sanduro does}
- Rapid Shot
- Improved Spell Sharing*
I'm posting this as much to organize my own thoughts as anything, but I'm open to comments and advice - I've never played a druid, or a spiritualist, or any class with a permanent companion (my occultist-archetype arcanist treats his summoned monsters mostly as disposable meat shields, so he definitely doesn't qualify), and I'm still working out how much more I want/need to invest in Sanduro's archery.
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Divine Grace! Lay on Hands! Weapon Focus (Firearms)!
Woo, 3rd level!
Changes:
Dancer 3
HP +7 (+6 base +1 fav class)
Fort +1
BAB +1
6 skill ranks (Acrobatics, Bluff, Intimidate, KN Local, Perception, Stealth)
Feat: Additional Traits (Armor Expert and Spirit Guide)
Trait: Armor Expert (1 less ACP)
Trait: Spirit Guide (KN Religion as a class skill +2trait bonus)
Features:
Nimble Steps (Lets the dancer ignore 5ft of difficult terrain each time she moves in a Routine)
Fascinating Dance (At-will Bardic Fascinate performance)
An additional prepared 1st level Routine, and an additional 1st level routine/day.
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So 3rd level is the first "utility dance", in this case one that works quite similarly to the bard's Fascinate performance. Kinda would have been fun to try it against the tooth faeries, but I'm sure there'll be more opportunities to make use of it at the other waystations. I also picked up additional traits to patch weaknesses - getting KN Religion to match her anti-undead training in her background, and getting Armor expert so she can wear the mithril breastplate without getting penalized.
So I'm pretty happy with this level :)