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Sinaryn spends some time away from the group whispering in the ears of disgruntled miners.
"Don't be taken advantage of. You are the backbone of your industry and you should be taken care of...lest you become labor slaves to those above you. Also stay away from the Aspis!" she whispers as she walks through the masses.
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Sorry, it's been a rough week, and I'm kind of slow on posting. This one's a dungeon crawler and I'll move us there in the next post, so make sure you make any final preparations before you go.
Dungeon crawlers can go slow in PbP. I would say, let me know who wants to be ahead checking traps. You guys are heading into a kobold dungeon, so you know to expect traps. I don't want a million Perception checks, soI will do the Perception rolls. If you're a trapspotter let me know if you'd prefer taking 10 or having me roll. We'll just do the checks for the people in front, because if they miss a trap its probably going to be too late for someone else to catch it before they walk into it.
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Sorry, I am working on checking my purchases. My cellphone died so I have to get one shipped from the US (because I hate forced camera shutter noises and its nearly impossible to get a cheap Samsung here).
So the last few days have been super busy as I learned how reliant I am on Google Maps, haha. Got some work due tonight I have to get done but should be good tomorrow onward.
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So, it looks like Bask (+10), Bocke (+8) and Guy (+8) are the best at Perception. If they don’t mind, I recommend Bask and Bocke do the searching.
I think Guy is the only one trained in Disable Device (+15), hopefully there will not be any magical traps since I have no way of dealing with those.
As GM Badblood said, we should come up with a marching order and door procedure. When playing a rogue, my general procedure has been to do three checks on a door, take 10 once and two rolls. That gives a fair chance of finding any traps.
That also means our characters are moving very slowly through here.
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In my experience, the best way to keep things moving is to define a procedure and have the GM roll anything required. In the PbP it would look like:
Guy does Detect Magic.
If magically trapped, stop here.
If trapped or locked:
If was both trapped and locked:
You go through the western door and find....
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Having a defined procedure allows the GM to potentially resolve multiple thinks quickly without having to wait for (in our case) three different people to make their rolls while the rest of the group isn’t doing much.
No idea why but I did not see any updates in this thread. Will post asap!
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Hey, I received a race boon for the last game day that lets me create a triaxus, lashunta or android character. I do have a silly idea for a Transformer themed android barbarian but at the end of the day I already have more characters than I'm ever going to play and I'd have to buy a book or two to make the concept work.
Is there anyone here who would be interested in this boon? I'd be willing to trade it away to someone who thinks they could get more use out of it.
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Bestiary says:
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Averting Eyes: The opponent avoids looking at the creature's face, instead looking at its body, watching its shadow, tracking it in a reflective surface, etc. Each round, the opponent has a 50% chance to avoid having to make a saving throw against the gaze attack. The creature with the gaze attack, however, gains concealment against that opponent.
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Unfortunately it appears I never bought a mirror on this character. There is still the option of scanning for the body — trying to avoid the neck and head — and potentially other things.
If it weren’t for being an archer, I would ask if a silver mace is reflective enough to work.
Just trying to come up with ways to improve my chances since we know what sort of monster we are going to be dealing with.
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Yeah, that applies if you know where the creature is. I don't think it would be a viable tactic while exploring though, because you don't know where the danger is going to come from, so you don't know where to avert your eyes to. I suppose your character could just stare at their feet as they walk around, but this would basically be the same mechanical affect as being blind.
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Just as a sidebar, but when it comes to Knowledge checks, I don't let the players choose what they want to know about a creature. I know the standard way of handling this has been to have players request a "category" of abilities they would know, but I really hate this. And a good example of why is the basilisk from earlier.
Basically the basilisk has one unique, very well known thing about it that any knowledge check should tell them. But if you let the players choose what they know, a player could roll a good knowledge check and somehow not learn about this creature's iconic main power. I've seen this happen quite a lot, especially because players forget to ask about things like Special Qualities, Movement, or Spell like abilities.
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Yeah I originally thought that's HOW it had to be done, because it's so ubiquitous. I even printed off an elaborate chart detailing all the specific categories of knowledge players had to select from.
One thing I'll do is if it's a monster with a well known type, such as a demon, I give ALL the common resistances as the first bit of knowledge that players get. I've seen GMs go the other way, and only disclose 1 element that monster is immune to for a check. So I can see why some players might like the control that the questions approach offers.
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"The talisman’s power is hidden within, and it must be unsealed in the beast’s presence. To do so too soon would expend its energy needlessly or even invoke a terrible disaster. We have entrusted you with this relic of our people; use it wisely.”
Yeah, but Laafdahni is scared and desperate to avoid failure. She's not thinking clearly.
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@GM Bad Blood,
It really feels like we are getting into trouble because we aren't understanding the rule mechanics being used. There is also some problems with content, but it feels like it is mostly rules.
What rules are being used for this skill challenge?
Is it a single person makes the check and others can aid? Is it each person makes the check and number of successes is used? Is it everyone rolls and highest is used and others are considered Aid Another Attempts?
I have seen all of the above and more mechanics used in this sort of situation. Although what we say is likely to be somewhat the same, what we do in terms of dice rolls would be considerably different.
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Okay, I will lay out the mechanics of this more explicitly.
The scenario says that if the party answers their questions apologetically, they can use Diplomacy. If they are evasive they must use Bluff. And the party can use Intimidate if they are responding defiantly. It may be possible to use other skills also. The example that the scenario offers is using Handle Animal to explain how the party used Stinkeye's toy to lure the basilisk back to it's cell. Obviously, that would be not be an option for you guys, but there might be chance to try other skills out.
In regards to aiding, the scenario actually says that they ask a single person to answer their question. And if one person tries to answer more than three questions, they will interrupt them and ask someone else to answer. This implies that aiding would NOT be allowed, but I was going to try to be a bit more lenient of an interpretation and allow players to aid (or speak) up to three times during this encounter. The mechanics are very similar to some other scenarios where the party ends up "in court" having to explain themselves.
So the reason why I'm counting that as a failure is that Toral never actually answered their question, acknowledge what Sharrowsmith did (which was causing a cave in that killed at least 3 members of their tribe) and tried to blame Sharrowsmith's actions on the Aspis Consortium instead. So instead of using Diplomacy, Toral used his Bluff bonus, which was not high enough to succeed at that round of questioning.
It's a little bet more behind the curtain than I was hoping to do. I actually think the bigger problem isn't the players not understanding the rules but more having forgotten some elements of the story so far. I do think people are forgetting that Sharrowsmith, acting as a Pathfinder, aggravated this kobold tribe. The Aspis are completely innocent of any wrongdoing against the kobolds, at least up to this point.
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So how about this? I don't want to do any retconning (time traveling), but recognizing his mistake Total (or possibly someone else) may still have a chance to correction the misunderstanding here and possibly salvage that roll. And then someone else can address that next question regarding Stinkeye.
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Some of it is also we don't know who is responsible for what. We don't have the whole story of what Sharrowsmith was or was not responsible for.
I'll put some more stuff in gameplay now, but even with your explanation I'm not sure where we stand.
I think what you said is:
1. We failed the first check because you ruled a player was using a different skill than they thought.
2. We need to watch who answers what and make sure we answer the questions.
3. Each person only has three times they can lead this.
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So far only one skill check in response to the questions, Toral failed.
Guy is now going to lead on a different check.
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So you know from the first scenario that Sharrowsmith did *something* to make the kobolds angry enough to start attacking any outsiders.
You have also found some clues that Sharrowsmith has been here. You have found a bag with some excerpts from his journal. The party has also found a sword marked with the glyph of the open road and engraved with his initials. The party also saw that someone caused a cave-in in two different places. You don't know for sure that Sharrowsmith was the one who caused those cave-ins, but the kobolds seem to believe that that he did and you have found some evidence supporting their claim.
So, the first check was actually Bocke, who failed because the result of his roll was below the DC.
Toral's was the second check. The scenario states that the PC being addressed can use Diplomacy if their response is apologetic. To be clear, what they want addressed is whether the party is allied with Sharrowsmith, who they are alleging caused a cave-in that killed many of their people. That hasn't been addressed by the party, but I would still allow Toral to say something that make it a Diplomacy check instead of a Bluff.
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To be clear to the group, I didn't realize tbere would be a check involved, which is why Bocke, Mr. Zero Diplomacy, spoke up. I kind of assumed the scenario was over and we were wrapping up.
It kind of sucks that it ended up using up one of our failures (if I had known there would be a check I would have at least used Intimidate so I had a positive modifier), but I feel like these things happen.
Bocke probably will take the social cue and be quiet unless he has something specific to add.