Welcome to my Tyrant's Grasp game! I fell in love with the AP immediate from the excellent book one, and while not every volume of the AP is as stellar as its introduction it is overall a great adventure and breaks with some of tropes of high fantasy TTRPGs.
I know I've mentioned this before, but I just want to reiterate for everyone: in this AP your characters will die, and short of abandoning the main story there's no real way to prevent this. This triggered a lot of criticism from some corners of the fanbase, and while I think much of that was bleed-over from people unhappy about PF1e ending I'd still like to emphasize that the ending is very much not "and then Tar-Baphon wins and nothing you did matters."
This is ultimately a story about doing practical good where you can and sacrificing to protect others--even giving up everything for what you know is an incomplete victory. I just wanted to be clear about this upfront so no one feels caught out that your character that you've shepherded through a PBP for the past...ten years or something is going to perish.
A quick note on my expectations: I'd like to keep up a strong posting rate, preferably at least one post per day or a round of combat a day. Obviously real life can and does intrude, but to the best of your ability please let me know in advance if you won't be able to post for a few days. Please add a spoiler note with botting instructions for your character in case I need to reference it. We'll also be using Roll20 for our mapping needs, though all roles and conversations will be done on the boards here. Please let me know if that doesn't work for you and we'll figure something else out!
I've played with all of you in various other campaigns so I know everyone is familiar with the posting format on these boards, nothing new here. We'll be using a 15pt buy for stats, and I'm not going to place any race or class restrictions as long as you have an interesting and compelling reason for why a gripli is in Rostler's Coffer. Undead are prevalent throughout the campaign, of course, but outsiders, plants, and constructs are also not infrequent if that helps.
I do have a handful of small house rules that I use (e.g. light shields give +2AC and -2ACP, while heavy shields give +3AC and -3ACP) that I'll post in a link up above. Since this is an AP as opposed to a home game a lot of those options won't be particularly relevant, please feel free to PM me or ask in this thread if you have questions about anything!
Last note: this campaign won't be starting in earnest until sometime in August, since I have a home game where the party is high-level so the encounter design takes a lot of work. I'll need a few weeks to iron all that out and also get the prepwork for this campaign going. In the meantime feel free to discuss your character ideas here and we can all be ready to roll by the early-to-mid August!
Very excited to be on the other side of the screen with all of you! :)
Testing out my tagline here.
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Tagline for Sanduro. I’m not totally happy with the sylph avatar, but it’s as close as I could get to a duskwalker, and the tattoos could be Varisian, so I’ll probably stick with it for a while.
Tagline for Zsofia. Why are the pirates the only female avatars with eyepatches? And why are there no female ghost pirates (not sure there are any male ghost pirates, either)?
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I’ve been consistently disappointed with avatar selection on the site. Iirc, they are all pictures from books/games they’ve published, but some are missing and/or impossible to find, especially after they got rid of the search feature! GM, I saw your discussion post about the animal companion, I’ll put the Horse’s defensive info in a spoiler and the remaining information on Wallace’s profile.
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Garret has joined the party...Kind of a bare-bones tagline, but the embedded link should take you directly to a pdf of his character sheet.
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Testing testing 1,2,3...
YAY!
Should we put up our own introductory posts or wait for a prompt?
Please feel free to introduce yourself :) I set a scene at the Sagely Goat because multiple characters indicated a connection of some sort to the Driscoll family, but you could be anywhere in or around town, or at Cofferkeep, as long as the group gets into more or less the same spot soon.
ha, without fail whenever I see a sentence start with "Oi!" everything that follows is Cockney in my head
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Power is finally back (26 hours later)! I like to pretend to live in a pre-technological society, I don't actually want to live in one.
Garret follows the others upstairs (assuming someone is familiar with this fort and knows where the stairs are located given Sunstone’s directions). Rage and frustration threaten to overwhelm him, but lend power to the spell on the tip of his tongue.
@Garrett - The fog of war will lift and you'll see the rest of us if you move your token into the room at the lower right on the map. This is the first time I've played a game using FoW, and I'm just beginning to get the hang of it myself. I'm just glad I figured out that I have to switch browsers to be able to move my token on the map when I'm on my iPad.
Thanks Sanduro...I am at work right now, so if someone can move my token that would be great...otherwise I will get to it this evening.
Maybe CW can, but not another player - I just tried.
Thanks for the heads up, I just made all the character tokens movable by all players!
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Since it seems like I post during y'all's off hours (and vice-versa), please feel free to assume Wallace takes point! In his perfect world, he stands in front of a door, goes into total defense, and someone opens the door for him to step through. Even if something horrific happens to him, neither I nor Wallace will feel bad if it does! We'd rather it him than y'all.
I don't think we'll have to do it all the time, but if it keeps things moving, I really have no issue with operating under this assumption :)
Since it seems like I post during y'all's off hours (and vice-versa), please feel free to assume Wallace takes point! In his perfect world, he stands in front of a door, goes into total defense, and someone opens the door for him to step through. Even if something horrific happens to him, neither I nor Wallace will feel bad if it does! We'd rather it him than y'all.
I don't think we'll have to do it all the time, but if it keeps things moving, I really have no issue with operating under this assumption :)
I'm in the Central time zone (US) - to me it seems like there's a decent spread of posting times (although it's still a pretty small sample size). You and I tend to post first thing in the morning (from my perspective, anyway), Silvia posts mid-day, Ketra posts late afternoon and late at night, Garret posts evening and late night, and CW posts mid-day through the evening.
I'm in CST too, I typically post before work, over lunch, or after work so for it's it's just when I can find the time.
Yeah, I'm a US evening poster for the most part. When I post during the day, it's usually to try to get something in for a game I GM for in order to keep a group moving.
GM, please add a character to Roll20 for Zsofia - I don't think I can place her on the map without it.
Added, Sanduro!
Great, thanks!
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I've returned to work today! The first week back is always a doozy, apologies in advance if my posting is sub-par or I miss a day!
EDIT: Welp, this is awkward. GM, I forgot to list background skills and Lore (Shining Crusade) is pretty on point for Wallace... What do you think is the best way for me to resolve this going forward?
I recall you asking me about appropriate Lore skills weeks ago, feel free to add your Background now and roll Lore (Shining Crusade) if you like.
I enjoy expanding/expounding on world lore so by all means please give me more excuses to do so! :)
Loot sheet is updated. Please mark if you’re going to take any of the gear we’ve found by putting your name in the column near the far right and add the number of units to the appropriate column near the left..
GM, would you be able to add the loot sheet to the links at the top of the page?
Wallace, when I opened the loot sheet, the changes you described weren't there. I added your name under "Current Location/Claimed By" and a note that you're carrying the holy symbol, but would you mind trying to edit the sheet again to confirm there isn't a permissions problem? Just put "WALLACE TEST" or something obvious in an empty cell in the Notes column. Thanks.
The changes Wallace mentioned show up for me.
The changes Wallace mentioned show up for me.
Did they show up before I posted, or after? I made them when I went to the sheet to add the CLW potions and saw they weren’t there.
The changes Wallace mentioned show up for me.Did they show up before I posted, or after? I made them when I went to the sheet to add the CLW potions and saw they weren’t there.
Ah I misread that you added Wallace's notes when you posted, so I would have seen them either way :)
@Wallace: Your latest text in E17 shows up for me.
The WALLACE TEST was successful! Not sure what happened before, but the last edit worked fine.
Go ahead and roll a spoilered Bodyguard each round you want to use one, and if anyone gets Parry/Riposte we'll do it the same way.
These ostovites are nifty little things! I've never heard of them before, but I really like their style and the opportunities for some interesting fights at low levels!
I agree! These are very cool. I don't want to look them up on D20 or AON while we're still fighting them, but which Bestiary are they from - or are they unique to this AP?
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They're from Bestiary 5, I believe, and I think they've been on at least one other AP before but I forget which one.
Sanduro raises his bow and knocks an arrow. "You can't have my bow, but I'll be happy to give you an arrow. Just tell me where you want it."
Still working on making Sanduro something other than Zsofia’s straight man.
It's fun to watch!
I apologize for going silent - I have been completely underwater with work the past couple of days. I will try to catch up later tonight (I'm on US Central time, currently UTC -5), but should be mostly back to normal by midday tomorrow.
Aw man, if y'all had XP for every Knowledge check you missed by just 1-2 points you'd be leveled up already :(
As an FYI: a few hours ago, I very suddenly developed several symptoms of covid-19, so I'm getting tested in the morning. I will try to keep posting but, y'know, I don't feel super great right now. I am supposed to have results by the end of the weekend.
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As an FYI: a few hours ago, I very suddenly developed several symptoms of covid-19, so I'm getting tested in the morning. I will try to keep posting but, y'know, I don't feel super great right now. I am supposed to have results by the end of the weekend.
Good luck, and best wishes for a speedy recovery whether it's COVID19 or something else!
Thanks for the kind words, everyone. The test sucks, I do not recommend it, but I am feeling okay at the moment.