Kingmaker

Game Master Rackal28

OMG oops

Well, great job everyone! He's now officially 'Dovan of Hiddleston' I hope you all are proud of yourselves >.>'

Oooh! 'Casting for the Movie Version' is fun!

I want Sophie Thatcher for Signy's role.

She's great as Young Natalie in Yellowjackets so she'd kill as Signy.

I AM proud of myself.

I have no idea who I would cast to play Brental, but I'll keep my eye out as I catch up on my stories.

Morof would be played by Hugo Weaving early in his career.

Oooh, luckily, I stumbled across something that lets me actually answer this one!

I would cast the folk singer NAVKA to play Lina, based entirely on her version of this song. I am bound to say that if they had taught us stuff like that, I might have kept up Saturday school and actually had a bit of Ukrainian left in my head in these latter days. :/

Lina's very definitely the obliging sort of witch who tries to have a potion for every occasion. ;)

On our side of things, I was waiting for Morof to make his climb check but actually it looks like it's not needed. Signy has a knotted rope for him to climb down with and a look at climb check DCs shows this: "A slope too steep to walk up, or a knotted rope with a wall to brace against" is a DC 0 check. This fits our situation I believe?

Signy also has a plan for securing the rope. The last time she looked she found using pitons would be difficult since they would need to be secured in the fort's wall. It's easy for her to bring her own brace though. All she needs is a study piece of wood that's a little longer than the tunnel opening. She lays the branch or spear or whatever across the entrance lengthwise and ties the rope to it.

After Morof is down she comes down, closing the trapdoor behind her. It won't go perfectly flush to the surface (if it ever did) with the piece of wood in the way, but as long as she's not using a giant long for this, the difference the offset causes shouldn't be particularly noticeable from above and at a remove where the lookouts in tower are.

Lina: That song is a mood, though I also want to go up to the three people in the love triangle and say "have you considered open relationship structures instead of murder?"

I have not sung in Ukrainian, but a lot of the sounds sounded familiar to Russian and Czech (which I have sung, but not for many years). Very cool!

The DC 0 knotted rope check seems appropriate! Even with a -1 to Climb, taking 10 is quite feasible to make that happen. Vod has a +2 to Stealth and a +2 to Climb, though he obviously can't use the rope. He's taking directions from whichever of Morof and Signy volunteered to be his handler (probably whoever has more spare move actions).

Wait, Vod is with us? I thought Brental could shrink him down and put him in his pocket?

I've no idea how we're supposed to get a mini-elephant down through a trap door to a 5' wide tunnel, through the tunnel, then sneak with him across the fort's interior to link up with you?

He was going to shrink him down, but that requires magic that we didn't have time to prepare. So we abandoned that plan.

Vod is still a medium creature, so size isn't an issue. I passed the Handle Animal DC to get him to Serve one of you temporarily.

So he'll follow your orders, and you can use my +5 bonus as a move action to give him commands (DC 10). The Heel command will get him to follow you to the best of his ability. The post where this happened is here.

His Stealth is the same as Morof's, so that's less of a problem. He has high AC and strong attacks, so he'll be a good melee fighter with you two.

Ugh, my son and I are sick with covid. Not a bad case case but still not feeling well at all. I'll probably be posting slower than usual for a couple of days.

I don't have the energy to figure anything clever out concerning Vod. If it works it works, if not oh well.

No, a +2 to stealth isn't terrible, it's just bad. Signy's +7 is only moderate, easy enough to fail. Now we're saddled with an extra check that can easily fail when we're the ones needing to make checks. Vod could have gone in the front door like Veil for free. We were supposed to be coming to you before any fighting started, not fighting our way to you.

Glad I don't have to roll for climb.

I hope you feel better! Drink lots of liquid.

Sorry to hear about the Covid, Signy >_<

When this all started two years ago, I had a feeling of "when, not if" I would get sick. Even vaccinated and boosted, so many people in my circles have tested positive, especially with the current surge, even if they're not necessarily showing symptoms. It sucks, and I'm sorry. I hope you and your son feel better soon!

If we would rather retcon that Vod and Veil came in together, we can. But even with the additional stealth roll requirement, and hoping that you don't have to fight your way to us, I would rather have another melee option between the bandits and Morof.

I think when is the more realistic way of thinking about covid really, increasingly so as time goes on. I got my booster the week before I got covid. The real point of the the vax isn't to 'prevent' covid, like so many people seem to think. It's to make it innocuous to barely noticeable when you do.

My symptoms aren't so bad all things considered, it's like a bad cold.

Now that I have a confirmed starting location, which is ballpark where I expected, it's possible to see why I kept saying "across the whole fort" to link up with you.

I put some purple blobs on the Roll20 map to mark our starting location. To get to the rest of you, we can take three possible routes. The shortest route, but not possible, is for us to climb over the wall of the central stone building you're inside and drop down inside. Too risky evene if we could though, we'd almost certainly be seen.

Otherwise we have to go all the way around to the opposite side of the building and through the way the rest of you went in. Going around to the left takes us directly under 2 watch towers, which might not be so bad. But at the end we have to cross open ground right between the two top towers. I don't think we can make it.

If we go around to the right we have a wall for cover from the 2 towers on the left side of the fort. We have to go directly under the right side fort, but only have to expose ourselves briefly while going around the end of the wall before we'd be under the wooden platforms again, which should shield us from view from the towers. This one seems the best.

Having to make just 2 stealth checks along the way means 6 stealth rolls, and 4 of those will be at +2. Stealth is one of the hardest skills to use because one failure tends to screw everyone, regardless of how great the other rolls are. Every extra dice roll we have to make is just another chance to fail, and that only has to happen once.

Signy has a decent chance at making a couple of rolls. Morof can make himself invisible, almost removing his need to roll. We could have managed that with a pretty high probability of success.

This will almost certainly result in us being found. Then we will be fighting as two separate and separated groups, with the watch towers immediately aware of us. Maybe that works out. I like the odds of an attack launched from inside, where you are, eliminating anyone we can take by surprise in there first, while we don't have to worry about the towers at all.

To compound all the problems, we can no longer alter plans because we can no longer communicate. You're supposed to be waiting for us, and we're supposed to be coming for you.

*My description of the routes supposes I'mm reading the map correctly. If what I'm thinking are platforms are actually buildings, things are worse. We have to go around them rather than under.

Could we inside folk try to fight our way to you, and then once we group up we can pivot to wherever the fight's left?

I mean, I'm guessing if we stab a few dudes on the way to the front door, they're not just going to stand and take it, and depending on the details of the interior layout, we might not have to worry about them barricading themselves in too too effectively. If they're relying on doors, they can't shoot through those, and so on.

Basically, annoy them into giving chase, until they blunder into a circle of more highly-trained adventurers than they expected fighting back-to-back? :)

Maybe, but communicating ideas and changes back and forth isn't something we can do.

It's awfully tight inside the stone building, and with the group of sleepers I'm not seeing a way to link up with you. One decent possibility would be to bring us up to hide underneath the northeastern tower. It seems to be a fairly dark and untraveled corner.

I doubt y'all would wait until sunrise without doing anything if you didn't hear from us. When we hear your disturbance, we hurry up and capture the tower we're under. It's the only one with any line of sight under the stone building's remaining roof, so the best single tower to take away from their archers. Also a good place for Signy to be positioned.

We really should've gagged him when we had the chance...

Maybe he'll die before he can raise too much of a ruckus!

Oh! Nice! I still had time to add the crit roll to the original post.

Thanks Brental!

X3 crit for longbows, right?

Ha! Oh, right! And I was still able to edit the original.

Mhm. *Makes happy little elf noises in confirmation.*

I'm at work so my attention is very divided. :)

God we're scary. 47 damage if that all went through.

On one hand it was a lucky round with 2 crits. But on the other, Signy isn't buffed yet so her damage was at its weakest. Wish she had a nice +2 Str compound bow.

I think Meneas has one of those... I forget why we didn't give it to you. Oh, because you only have 12 Str. That's why.

It's 13 but Signy will be raising it to 14 at 4th level. She could use a +2 bow now but would only get +1 damage with it.

I'm sort of assuming we'll level up after this big fight (should we survive it).

Probably. I never remember how the compound bow damage bonus works, but I do recall that being the main reason Meneas got it. Assuming survival, he can give it to Signy when time permits.

@Morof: I think the Silent Image was two nights ago. And we rested, so if you had your spellbook and an hour, you may have been able to prepare new stuff. Lina may be stuck with the previous day's list, though.

A funny thing I noticed looking at Lina and Signy's avatars side by side (vertically). They're remarkably similar but mirrored, like the Queens in a deck of cards. Signy is Spades facing, and Lina is Clubs facing.

And yes, I'm checking in for updates after three whisky sodas because Thursday night is my goddamn Friday night!

Thanks Brental. By the GM's description, we were woken up with practically a jump scare, so that's why it sounded that I didn't have time to prepare spells. The only difference between what I wanted to prepare and what I actually did was that usually I have Detect Thoughts for some non-combat situation.

Morof was able to prepare new spells, yes.

Also >.>' Now I want to drink how dare you Signy?!

Sorry Rackal. It's my weekend now, not that the dogs would deign to let me sleep in or anything.

Wow, nat 20 on the owlbear huh? o.o

This is gonna get interesting.

Let's do this y'all!

I don't think it impacts that roll, but don't forget the penalty to wild empathy for low-Int magical creatures the sort that wild empathy can affect. I think it's -2 or -3?

Signy is going to be waiting for a while, so until then: Git 'em! Git 'em!

Oh yeah, it's -4. But hey, fingers crossed?

This reminds me of a couple years ago when I was playing in a War for the Crown campaign. We were in a big dungeon crawl and my support bard was trying to figure out how help out the two front-liners who were getting clobbered. He had a fire elemental gem sitting in his pocket and threw it on the ground when the party got surrounded. Our GM couldn't find a satisfactory image for a fire elemental on short notice, but had art for an owlbear on hand. Owlbear the Fire Elemental then proceeded to kill everything in our path for the duration of the summon. I have been waiting for Owlbear the Fire Elemental to make another appearance for years.

For strange reasons, I feel like calling our new owlbear (maybe) friend Fire Elemental the Owlbear, or Ifrit the Owlbear, just for a throwback.

I do wonder if we’re going to scare Akiros back onto the straight and narrow with our shenanigans, and what he thinks of all of us chaotic weirdos. :)

Maybe something like this?

Signy: Dangerously perceptive, both about what makes people tick, and lining up a bowshot.
Brental: Alarmingly adept at combining spells to terrifying effect. Full casters, guys, y’know? *Jealous moue.* ;)
Meneas: Tall, dark, and both impressively quick and relentless in getting sharp steel in the face of a bit of honest banditry.
Morof: *Checks quietly to make sure anything around him is actually really there.*
Lina: Just … just say no to witches, kids. Whatever she’s got in those tiny bottles, she should not be as happy about it as she is.

“Tell us again, brother, about the battle that called you back to the path of order?”
*Akiros pales.* “Well…”

Is Akiros the one who's to Meneas' right on the map? If so, that's unfortunate, 'cause he'll have to possibly get into Morof's grease to attack in melee and he won't get the flat-footed sneak attack, which makes me sad.

That is, indeed, good sir Akiros.

Akiros' +10 to hit, unmodified...

I'm glad he's on our side!

He hits decently hard, too. But I think he's probably a level or so higher than us. A handy man to have around.

@Lina: Signy wasn't around when Sneeg was talked about by Keston. She doesn't know there's anything special about the guy. He may have come up in conversation since she's been back, but Signy doesn't pay any attention to what the rest of you are saying most of the time. :p

Wow. I think we might underestimate ourselves quite a bit.

To some degree, yeah. Either that, or we overestimated our enemies. I'm not sure how much stronger the bandits were than the ones we've been fighting since game start, but it's possible that it's "not at all."

That said, surprise has definitely helped us a lot - they haven't been able to pick us off from range at all well. Plus the keen edge is helping. Also, glad my flat-footed AC is somewhat reasonable, because a longbow's no joke.

Signy doesn't pay any attention to what the rest of you are saying most of the time.

Lol.

Surprise has been huge. If we had tried to do the frontal assault, arrows would have been deadly. We're getting lucky so far, too. Knock on wood.

Gonna give Morof a few more hours to post, if not I'll bot him and we can keep moving.

Hey, all! I'm really glad this game's still going strong. I want to say something to those who were around back when I was playing, but I'll spoiler it for those who don't really want to deal with it. I'm basically just dropping this and heading on my way.

Have a most excellent campaign! :)

Signy, bows are x3 crit, aren't they?