GM TOP #7-05: School of Spirits (Core) (Inactive)

Game Master Pete H.

Discussion stuff here. I have players fill their info into the slides for the game, so no need to add it here. I also tend to prefer in game questions to just use the OOC tags in the gameplay thread so everything is kept in the same place.

But you all are welcome to use this for non-game related discourse or general chat!

I'll start...

How is everyone doing mentally during the current pandemic? Making enough time for self-care to keep yourself squared away?

Hanging in there. Just finished my 8ft socially distant trick-or-treat system, but wondering if we will have any families wandering by. It was a nice distraction, though.

How are you doing?

I would assume better than most and I'm quite thankful for that.

I'm able to do my normal job from home so no issues with loss of income. Plus with a new baby and toddler I can help my wife out a lot easier. We also have a small circle of immediate family we see regularly and my gaming group is running stuff online.

Plus the last few days the baby has actually slept for longer stretches at night, so the sleep deprivation is fading.

Ah, I remember those days... that sleep deprivation really hurts.

The pandemic has actually increased my duties at work. Some days make me a bit worse for wear, but hanging in there. I too have a new addition to my family. She's just over 2 months now... It's been a time for sure.

As you may all have surmised, my posting abilities are limited on weekends. Hopefully I’ll get the next section up today.

Excellent posts and RP though!

Hrm, odd, Discussion posts weren't lighting up for me.

Glad people are keeping things sane during this time. All is doing ok here too, winter is setting in. First snow of our season is falling as I type!

*Ironshanks will need to do some quick shopping before going down, Dwarves in full plate aren't big fans of undead, so I'll be picking up some holy water and other things most likely related.

Yeah, I’ll give you all an option to shop after the briefing.

Enjoying Durvak's speech. Reminds me of my Luurg. Common is his second language, his orcish is flawless but it can be hard to figure out his Taldane speech.

Looking forward to getting down and dirty with everyone. Ironshanks is a pretty standard Dwarven fighter, axe and shield style. If anyone has any particular fighting tactics he'll be happy to try to participate, so long as he's in the front of the fighting. He used to have sunder, but I swapped it out a bit ago, will be happy to use it untrained though if an obvious situation comes up.

Sorry, I thought holy water was 50g ea. Glad to be wrong. Farlen will take two vials of holy water for 50g total please.

Hi all, I've been a bit under the weather for the past couple of days. Sorry for my absence, but I'm not ready to come back quite yet. Nothing serious; I'll be back soon. If you've been botting me, thanks; if not, please feel free to! Thanks again for your patience!

I'd like to say Luurg had nothing to do with my decision on this characters speech...but I made him after I had encountered the marvelous Luurg. ;-)

Durvok is pretty much a stationary meat shield with spells. He has the knowledge and rune domains. I can touch a creature to learn about it, though I am almost guaranteed to fail and knowledge check (even untrained has a 60% failure chance). I also create 'Blastrunes' by touch the ground. The next creature that steps in the square afterwards gets a blast of elemental damage.

I do channel positive up to 4/day and I do not have selective channel.

I'm not sure what ability allows you to immediately reposition with a grapple attempt, so I just put you squeezed in with J. If you have something special or wish to have stayed in your spot, let me know.

Okay, so it's been a while since I've done this and maybe I misremembered the rules. I was thinking that, since moving the target of the grapple required half speed, and I only moved him at most 2 squares (the hard corner of the building probably negated a diagonal move), that Yangrit would have plenty of movement left to move 5 more feet. In reading the rules again, it looks like she could only initiate the grapple on the first round, but not do anything with it, such as move the target, damage him, etc. It's only after succeeding at subsequent grapple attempt that she can do anything else with it. Am I reading that right?

If so, she's still hanging on to him and will try to move him next round.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Grapple requires that initial check and then another one later to do anything further with it.

If you get Greater Grapple you could grab as a standard and then immediately grapple again as a move. That would allow a chunk of things to happen in the same round.

And now I want to make a Core Grappler. I'm considering a fighter so I can use weapon focus: grapple and weapon specialization: grapple.

Got it. Thanks!

This current game situation is actually pretty interesting to run in Core.

It's ironic as well that I took over another Core game recently and they just ran into an Eidolon. There was an entertaining response to it.

I don't really know anything about that book so its easy to play along with ignorance.

Busy day today, hopefully will get a post up later.

Just a reminder I have played this in regular mode so I'll be letting the others make the decisions as far as who/what/where/how. Ironshanks would be proud.

My experience with CORE games is that this is typically true of most players. It's true for me, also, at least; I truly wouldn't be surprised to find that we've all played it previously, in fact.

I don't think it's a good idea to hold back on contributing to decision-making. I had one table where nobody would make a decision because we'd all played it before. Just play your PC in-character as best as you can with in-character knowledge about the scenario, and we'll be fine. No need to hold back (unless that's truly in-character for you).

I've played it and GMed it in standard.

I'm with Ahmande. Just do your best to not metagame and go with what your character would know/do in the situation.

Fair enough. To be honest it was a while ago and I don't really remember the details, just the overall plot line.

Ironshanks is a simple character: straight forward and to the point. He's relaxing to play. Sometimes playing a skill focused character with oodles of CHA and INT can be overwhelming with possibilities.

I've never played this one before, so I'm enjoying the discoveries. This is my only Core PC, and I haven't gone hog wild with standard PCs, so there are very few times that I've had to pass on offered games due to already having played them (aside from the Confirmation, of course).

I hadn't played or GM’d this one, but played the one Yangrit did so this has been interesting to run and get a lot of follow up info. The direction they went with J and her spirit seems quite fitting.

I believe I played it in n standard but other than the girl, I don’t recall anything else we’ve seen so far!

So yeah, you all have literally skipped the three skippable fights with some timely arguments, agreements and diplomacy rolls.

That means the scenario is almost over. The only thing left is a bit of decision making as to what to do with the documents you found. That will all make more sense with my next gameplay post.

But for now, if you wish to use a Re-Roll on a Dayjob or try to complete a faction journal card mission, go ahead and do so now.

Faction Goal!

(1/2) Participate in an adventure that features Grandmaster Torch, Pasha Muhlia al-Jakri, or Thurl. Faction missions do not fulfill this goal.

One of the notes from the collected information does mention Torch!

As an aside, I'm happy to have actually used a boon for something other than a free spell!

Ironshanks, I'm pretty sure that a single mention of a name on a note from 7 years ago isn't enough to qualify as 'featured'. If you can find me a ruling to the alternative I'll make a note on your chronicle. It was an excellent use of the boon though. Nicely applied.

That said, here are your Chronicles!

Look them over, let me know if you have them and then I'll mark this thread inactive (once any final RP is done).

If you can find me a ruling to the alternative I'll make a note on your chronicle.

I agree that this scenario shouldn't trigger that faction goal, but I would also note that the faction journal card and any associated records are kept by the player alone; with the exception of some specific items on some specific cards that call for GM initials, the GM is never responsible for documenting faction goal progress. (I believe that leadership made that decision when the cards were introduced so as to not put an additional record-keeping burden on GMs; same with the Inventory Tracking Sheet.)

The player has the burden of maintaining the faction journal card under the honor system.

I suppose it doesn't hurt anything to put something on the Chronicles, but it's certainly not required, and the absence of a GM note on a Chronicle doesn't mean that the player didn't achieve that goal during that session. I've personally never had a GM note a faction goal on my Chronicle (that I can recall).

That doesn't surprise me and makes sense, good to know.

I'll continue to add bonus notes for things like that, though it may not be necessary. I'm sure it'll help at least the players who forego a dayjob for something when they look back wondering where their gold went.

Ya that's fine, a stretch for sure. Some GMs stretch the faction stuff and others less so, I'm cool with either decision. I have had numerous GMs make faction notes, as well as other stuff on chronicles. Its a nice personalized touch, and brings back fond memories sometimes when the notes are personalized.

Chronicle looks good, thanks for running GM. A had a great time, even though we only had one combat and I was a fighter!

Chronicle looks good. Thanks for the run GM!

Thanks all for the group. I thoroughly enjoyed it. :-)

You are welcome. I was reading through the comments about this scenario and apparently it was one of the ones in reaction to murder-hobos demolishing content by violence.

Essentially Paizo considered upping the difficulty of things to counter this type of play, but instead wisely decided to just shift more of the encounters over to have optional RP bypass methods. So it rewarded RP and social play and groups that were a bit less violent.

I probably would have had fun making you all hate the last encounter or the one with the plant druid, but alas it didn't go that way.

Thanks much for the game! Chronicle looks good.

Thanks GM Top! Very nicely done. I enjoyed the core run and the chronicle looks good. Farlen does not get as much play as I would like. So thank you very much. I also enjoyed all the great role play from the other players. I hope to see you all on the boards. Until next time...

My Chronicle looks good. Thanks so much for running this for us. It'll provide good character growth for Yangrit, now that she has seen that some undead aren't always purely evil and destructive. At the very least, she'll continue trying to be less grouchy and a better team player in the future. It seemed to make this mission go more smoothly, at least from her perspective.

Thanks all for checking in quickly. I'll be shifting this to inactive in a couple hours, though your chronicles will stay at the link for a while. I'm glad a few of you had some memorable moments that may help guide their development.

See you all out on the old dusty road!