GM: in selecting my spells for the day, I've had to do a little research on a spell casting situation I have not had to deal with yet. It is important to be sure we both have the same interpretation of the rules, as Gitana will be using spells that are delivered by touch to unwilling targets a lot in melee.
The following link deals with an interpretation of the spell Chill Touch.
Holding charges on touch attacks with multiple targets
There are two other spells in Gitana's spellbook that have similar wordings:
Let me know if you agree with the author's interpretation of the rules for spells like Chill Touch which allow multiple touches per casting. Specifically, the following:
"Round 1: Take a standard action to cast the spell chill touch. Afterward, take a free action to make a melee touch attack against a foe. Alternatively, take a move action to do something (like move up to your speed) then take a free action to make a melee touch attack against a foe. If the melee touch attack is successful, one chill touch charge is expended and the foe's dealt damage as per the description of the spell chill touch.
"Round 2+: Take either a standard action to make one melee touch attack or a full-round action to make multiple melee touch attacks as your base attack bonus and other game elements permit. Each successful melee touch attack expends one of your remaining chill touch charges and deals the foe damage as per the description of the spell chill touch."
Note: In Gitana's case, since she has the Deadly Dealer feat, she is able to deliver the touch with a ranged touch attack using a card her Harrow deck. After the attack attempt, the card used is not destroyed but returns to the deck.
So if the interpretation is correct, Gitana would cast the spell (Chill Touch, Frostbite, or Touch of Blindness) and then each round, including the round the spell was cast, she can make one ranged touch attack per round for a total of four attacks.
My other question is about the Cartomancer's use of the Deadly Dealer/Arcane Strike feats. It's a bit complicated because Cartomancer modifies the Deadly Dealer Feat, which in turn uses a modified version of Arcane Strike.
The primary use of the feat for the Cartomancer is, to me, clear: Gitana can use a card as a ranged touch attack to deliver a touch spell. The only effect is to deliver the spell. The card does no damage of its own.
But the deadly dealer feat itself gives any card used as a ranged attack the same damage as a dart (1d4 for a medium creature). One thing that is not clear to me is whether the normal +1 to damage that comes with the Arcane Strike feat gets added to this 1d4 damage. I assume the attack counts as magic for the purposes of overcoming DR/Magic.
Here are links to the various rules referenced:
Cartomancer
Deadly Dealer
Arcane Strike
Dart
Another question on the Deadly Dealer feat. The Cartomancer description says that cards can deliver touch spells with a ranged touch attack. Would it also be able to deliver effects from a hex that require a touch to deliver? This would be used to deliver the healing hex effect via a thrown card.
That usage seems fine to me.
Responding to a question from Zordt in the discord about what your timeline looks like.
When you left, you had 29 days before the solstice. You've been on the road one day, leaving you with 28 more days. On your first day, you traveled 26 miles. At that pace, you will get to Burkesville in roughly 6 more days, and will get to Khel Zhad two to three days after that, for a total of around 8-9 days, leaving you around 20 days to spare.
However, you have already run into a delay, and there are sure to be more. And the current pace is based on Gitana burning two 1st level and one 2nd level spells each day, which she might not want to do if things seem more dangerous. If she wanted that 2nd level slot back, you'd lose 8 miles per day. You might also travel more slowly on some days, for example, if it snowed while you were in the White Downs and you weren't on the road, you would slow down a lot (.5x speed vs your current .75x speed). This timeline also gives you no extra time to rest in Burkesville. Realistically, I expect you to get there with more than ten days to spare.
Importantly, while the solstice is the absolute final deadline, you probably want to try getting there sooner, given that you can expect Will's condition to deteriorate more and more as time goes on. A delay also gives more time for any pursuit to catch up to you. My philosophy when designing this adventure was that I really didn't want you to outright lose because you were too slow, but that things should get more difficult for you if you moved more slowly.
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On a related note, I forgot to ask for the first day because it didn't really matter, but it's going to start mattering just a little bit. Are you lighting a fire each night? You don't *have* to for warmth under most conditions. However, not lighting a fire is bad for morale, which doesn't really matter for a bunch of hardened adventurers but could be extremely relevant for Will. A fire is less visible than many seem to think; the main way of spotting someone's fire outside is by observing the column of smoke, which isn't really visible at night. This equation changes if, say, you're in a region of bare hills where there isn't much cover, where a poorly placed fire could make it easy to spot you from a longer way off.
I'd think good survival skills would also help keep a fire hidden.
If there is dry wood to burn, fires won't even put up much smoke. That could be covered with a survival roll, I expect.
Yes, a survival roll is somewhat relevant. However, a survival role can only help you choose the best location available to you. If you've on top of a bare hill with no cover, survival can't help you, just as a lack of survival wouldn't make a fire suddenly visible if you lit it inside an abandoned tower that completely blocked all the light. Ultimately, my goal is to make it so that there is a type of out of combat, survival and travel related challenge that depends on player skill, so that some of your decision making is based on these factors.
If this type of decision making doesn't seem interesting to you and you don't want it to be a part of this game, that's fine by me, I can make things simpler. I don't want to make you play this game in a way that isn't fun for you.
Presumably a survival roll could help lower the smoke from a fire. Tending to it carefully with dry wood, keeping it low, knowing how to apply tinder and logs properly to control the smoke. Maybe circumstantial bonuses like a -2 penalty on perception to notice it or something?
The column of smoke from a fire is not usually visible at night. What I meant by saying that you might be more visible on top of a bare hill is that someone might see the light from the fire. You can disguise this to a certain extent by, say, building up an embankment for the fire, but it's still going to make you more visible from far away unless you've got really good cover.
I had computer problems last night and this morning I've got to get to work. Should be able to post this afternoon. 'Bot Gitana as healing anyone with the wand who needs it. She's good to get back on the road to Khel Zhad.
Thanks for letting us know and for the two sentences of instructions, that's more or less exactly what I want in this type of situation.
I just noticed what seems like a discrepancy. The witch's healing hex says it acts as CLW until 5th level, at which point it starts acting as CMW. CLW is 1d8+CL, while CMW is 2d8+Cl. So far, Gitana has been rolling 2d8+4, which seems wrong to me. I'm not sure exactly where this discrepancy is coming from, possibly some feature that increases her effective witch level for certain features like a monk's robe, but I can't find any such feature.
For now I'm going to assume that 1d8+4 is the correct amount, hopefully Gitana is able to post later and explain this discrepancy.
So the question is "to ogre, or not to ogre?" Am I reading this right?
Yeah. I threw up the question in discord but I'll repost it here.
Hmm. So how do we want to proceed? We would undoubtedly be invaluable in helping clear our these raiders, but I don't know how much time we want to commit to it. Plus if there really are that many of the raiders and we don't act carefully, we may be severely overwhelmed.
Perhaps a tactically advantageous assault on the ogre could bring a swift end to things? We could try to gather info on the ogre's location and bring this whole raid to an end by cutting off its head.
Thoughts?
Norde was opposed to anything besides "get boy to Khel Zhad" from the start! Now that we started helping the villagers, Norde is more interested in jerking your chain on the running into innocent people and helping them, and to turning tail and running, etc. "Why even bother helping them, why not just turn tail and get so far away it's "not your problem"?"
Norde is a very complicated guy!
You are correct about the healing hex. My mistake. It is corrected in her dicebot section of magic.
So the earlier castings should have healed the following:
Willie: 8
Dog: 11
Norde: 6
Tom: 12
So.... I haven't been using it because it always feels.... Cheesy.
But Trifty, where do you stand regarding the use of Spell Combat with Cantrips? In the specific case of Hedrak, the Brand cantrip.
I will be traveling this weekend and completely unavailable until Monday. Please DMPC me as needed.
Combat order of priorities:
0) Keep inspire courage active unless 2 comes to pass.
1) If anybody goes down, Zordt will move to them and heal them with cure light wounds for 1d8+4 damage. He will do his best to avoid AoO's but will make acrobatics and concentration checks if forced to.
2) If anybody fails a save against something nasty, he will cast Saving Finale to give them another chance. If this happens he will not use a turn to get inspire courage active again.
3) If neither 1 or 2 is needed, he will continue pumping arrows into the most dangerous targets, focusing on anybody injured and destroying their flanks.
I will probably be on an outing Saturday and won't be posting until evening at the earliest.
'botting info:
The aggressive thundercloud has one more round so if there is anyone still fighting within 20 feet of it at the start of her next turn, she will use a move action to direct it hence.
For her standard action, she can direct her burning gaze on someone within 30' feet if they seem like a threat no one else can deal with; otherwise, she will deliver a healing hex to the most wounded person in reach. She can deliver the healing via a thrown card if she can't move to deliver it by touch of her hand, but would only use that option if someone were dying. Healing hex does 1d8+4. I don't think she's used the hex on anyone this day so far.
So.... I haven't been using it because it always feels.... Cheesy.
But Trifty, where do you stand regarding the use of Spell Combat with Cantrips? In the specific case of Hedrak, the Brand cantrip.
I forgot to answer this, but was reminded of the question because I'm going to bot you. I don't think it's unbalancing or cheesy for a magus to use spell combat to get an extra attack. It's comparable to rapid shot, which is just a feat, on a class that doesn't have a ton of ways to boost damage repeatably at lower levels.
Gotcha!
And thank you for the bot Trifty - the weekend was stock full of trying to get the house sorted after the move, and then the working week started very hard...
I will take this opportunity to remind everyone that this house has a wooden balcony, first noted in a description here.
It could be useful for oration, and as a position for archers. It could also be a liability if enemies are able to climb onto it and attack from multiple areas at once.
One thing which I've glossed over but which is now becoming important and which we need to retcon: where are Will, the dog you saved, and Grik the goblin you captured? I should have asked you what you were doing with these people when you first came to the town, but I forgot, then when I remembered I figured we could just hand wave it. The way I see it there are two options, 1) you left them all at a camp somewhere outside of town, or at the hunting lodge where you found Elaine, Robert, and Jane. 2) You took them with you, and they are all with you now.
It's up to you which you prefer.
Anyone have any feedback they want to give me on my GMing, writing style, posting frequency, mapmaking skills, anything else? If you give me feedback I can use try to use it to make the game better. I feel like I'm doing an ok job but I see lots of room for improvement. This is lining up reasonably well with my expectations, the biggest thing I'm noticing is that I'm having trouble clearly communicating lots of details at once.
Definitely no complaints thus far. You've been fair with rules, interesting with NPC interactions, detailed in your writing, and good with world building. You push enough to keep things moving while not so much that anybody feels left behind.
And no, you have in fact been better than most of my GMs when it comes to details. It's very nice to feel like my tactical decisions are well informed.
I think the best plan would be to leave Will and the dog at the hunting lodge, and to bring Grik with us until we find the encampment at which point we tell him he can scram. Wouldn't force him or trust him to kill his former allies.
You say they are a little under 100 feet away. Are they more than 80 feet away? My orc hornbow has a range of 80 feet, so if they're more than 80 feet I'll take a -2 penalty due to range increment.
Thanks for the kind words Zordt. I will assume Will and the dog are at the lodge.
Earlier I told Gitana that they were 80ft away exactly.
Well guys, Hedrak would have brought the dog with him :P
Also, would Norde and Gitana have left Will all alone out there...?
Only good things to say about your GMing so far Trifty - I like the grittiness of the environment you have created. It conveys the 'feel' of what suffering would be caused by a brutal orc and goblin invasion on a human settlement.
If I had to point out one thing (even if I am not sure how it can be avoided), would be that some of your posts are indeed very long. Sometimes I get a bit lost in them ;)
I have no problem bringing the dog, but how on earth would we keep Will safe during this mission? And he wouldn't be "all alone", there were villagers there.
Thanks for the feedback Hedrak. I will try to make my posts more to the point. If I had to have guessed before you said that, I would've thought the opposite, and would have been trying to include more descriptive language and more superfluous but mood setting content.
The villagers that were at the lodge were Jane, Robert, and Elaine, who you took with you to help fight. Per one of the pregame knowledges, you know that the villages are largely depopulated during the winter, and the few who remain behind are mostly young and know how to fight.
What do the enemy numbers look like?
Six orcs and 18 goblins, split into two groups. The group in the back is two orcs and seven goblins, the one in the front is four orcs and 11 goblins. Two more orcs and six more goblins will arrive from the gatehouse shortly. There are more in other locations who are not immediately mobilized, though you can't be sure how many. The estimates from the villagers ranged substantially, but based on the number you've killed and the number you see before you, the number in the rest of the town can't be much more than five orcs and about twenty goblins, give or take.
Soooo it seems they aren't going to surrender. A bit surprising given the conditions, I thought the three tribes would fall apart as soon as Bolg died.
Here's what I'm thinking. Zordt and somebody else makes a mad dash for the southern wall, drawing as many of them as possible. Once distracted the others exit to the north. When we get to the southern wall, between my scroll of invisibility and claws of the ice bear, I should be able to get 2 people out alive. Thoughts?
Your very ambitious to set up such a complicated situation with so many enemies and NPCs. I suspect that is why posts are long and it's likely that it's taking longer than usual to work out all the details.
No complaints about that. You're doing fine but you may want to plan on some simpler encounters if you are feeling overwhelmed or overworked.
I'm feeling a fair amount of angst about our ability to survive, which is good. This situation feels ripe for TPK depending on what we get thrown at us, but that keeps us on our toes.
The only time when the pace seems rushed is when we're in a situation where getting everyone's input is important. If we're in melee, a character can usually be 'botted, but when a group decision is to be made on how to proceed, it's best to wait a day for everyone to have time to post, particularly on weekends, when some people take more time.
I'm going to be busy with work, as usual, so this is my last post until the PM.
Hedrak is always ready for a mad dash Zordt :D
Thanks for the detailed feedback Gitana, that’s exactly what I wanted.
I will remind you that the south wall has a gap covered only by an animal fence, over which you can easily pass. I think odds of TPK are not super high, but there’s a solid chance someone dies, possibly just an NPC though.
I am quite enjoying, but wow, 18 posts!
So is it fight, or flight?
Out of principle, Hedrak would fight... But it may just not be the best option.
I have a follow up question though - if we get the hell out of Dodge, what next?
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Get the kid to Khel Zhad!
Yeah honestly at this point I feel like we've done enough. Get the hell out, go pick up Will, move on.
I vote for my plan with flight, but if anybody disagrees say so now. Hedrak and I can make a mad dash and fire off some ranged attacks to draw their attention while the others escape the opposite direction.
And leave the villagers behind?
We've given the villagers a chance at survival, but only if they flee with us and fight if it comes to that. A distraction sounds good. Gitana is ready to run with no shame. With any luck, the invaders will become fractious and fight among themselves for leadership, which might give any surviving villagers a chance at escape.
We've given the villagers a chance at survival, but only if they flee with us and fight if it comes to that. A distraction sounds good. Gitana is ready to run with no shame. With any luck, the invaders will become fractious and fight among themselves for leadership, which might give any surviving villagers a chance at escape.
She has one casting of Charm Person. If there's any of the orcs or goblins left in the house, she can try to charm one i hopes they will fight with us.
Oh sorry if I was unclear, I was expecting the villagers to flee with the others. If it was just the party that needed to escape I'm confident we could just make a mad dash for it, but as it stands I want to keep the villagers alive, hence the distraction to allow them to retreat in the other direction.
I know this isn't an in character conversation, but the villagers (everyone but Willie and Elizabeth) would strongly object to you sacrificing your lives to give a higher chance for them to save themselves. If you think that sending a couple people one way as a distraction really is the best option, some of the villagers would prefer to go instead of you.
On what you've done, it may not seem like it now, but there's absolutely no chance that the orcs stay together long enough to sell the prisoners. You've personally rescued seven, and you've given those seven the best possible chance to save even more. You are powerful, but you can't save everyone. I think at this juncture you've done all that you could be expected to and more.
Oh it's not a sacrifice, we fully intend to survive. We will run directly for the middle of a stretch of wall with no exit, then use the claws of the ice bear to magically climb over while the other person goes invisible.
Time for some Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid action!
Whoa! I definitely said we're not doing a Butch and Sundance! They got the s%!$ shot out of them in Bolivia!
I'm in the busiest time of my work week, but let me know what part you want Gitana to play in all this. She'll do her best.
She now looks human again. She has a casting of charm person still. If Elizabeth needs a disguise, Gitana can let her use her sleeves of many garments to change her clothing's appearance.
I'll post something tomorrow but it may not be as involved and full of details. Should have more time on Friday.