PFS2: Breaking the Storm by GM Redeux (Inactive)

Game Master redeux

@Greezgux. For the familiar, I hadn't considered the construct trait but I think in fairness between familiars it makes sense to still let the poppet go into dying. Otherwise anytime there is an AoE effect in a scenario you're going to have a chance of needing to spend a week downtime to get the familiar back which doesn't seem very fair or fun when other familiars don't have this issue. I can see GM variance on that though since undead are explicitly called out as not using dying rules and the construct trait is phrased similarly.

Quinoline should be -24 hp (Battle Medicine).

Yup, i was just ninja editing that! lol

I realized Ro was +15 elevation while Dragon -10 elevation, so his single action should be to Fly towards it, not Strike, sorry!

Thanks, will have it reflected in the next update if it ends up mattering.

Just finished back to back sessions for gencon. Will give Amada some more time, otherwise in morning I'll put amada in delay and take brimoraks turn (then amada /greezgux would be up)

I saw you in discord. I would have hopped in and said hello before game start but your channel looked pretty full and I didn't want to interrupt anything if you had already started.

Apologies for the delay, I've also been somewhat distracted with Gen Con goings-on. If that doesn't kill the Ravener, I'll do a second strike instead of the Hunt Prey.

No worries! I tend to slow down on big con weekends, just wasn't sure if it was gen-con or otherwise here.

@Astrid if you happen to see me before/after a slot by all means jump in if you want. Just two more sessions for me though (sat/sun morning EST)

So the multi-character post was an experiment to see which is funnier. The earlier story type post or the back and forth multipost. I think I'm leaning towards finding the multipost funnier for some reason. Any thoughts?

I always find Meadow's antics hilarious, and her (and Silence's) character traits aren't as prominent when she's not making the posts.

Quinoline Silicate wrote:

Quinoline holds up a bottle labeled "mistform elixir". "You want one of these, too?"

"Perhaps our goblin friend would better benefit from that as he is without shield and armor."

Both Astrid and Greezgux are welcome to take one. Quinoline has 2.

It's an action to drink, but it's a 20% miss chance regardless of their attack modifier and stackable with all armor, so it's the equivalent of +2 or +3 AC (precisely, it's 4 multiplied by their hit percentage, so if they hit on a nat 6 it's a +3 equivalent and if they hit on a nat 11 it's a +2 equivalent).

In that case I'll take one.

@GM Redeux In light of this change can we say that Astrid's second strike this turn was with her shield boss instead of the shortsword? That way I can draw and drink without having to drop or sheathe the sword.

Alternatively can we say that Astrid drank the potion just before the fight?

You wouldn't have known exactly when combat was breaking out so before the fight wouldn't work unless you were prepared to lose it all if it took more than 1 minute to get to the clearing. But2nd strike being shield boss sounds like a reasonable fix for what you would've done so let's go with that.

Sounds good Greezgux will take the other one.

My fault for not double-checking too.

How to move forward?

No worries, my apologies for not catching it sooner. The actions/related rolls can be deleted in case you choose new actions in Round 2.

Sounds good. Let me know if you want me to re-roll saving throws too or keep those as is.

No need to reroll the saving throws-- those are valid/legit. Thanks!

Is there seriously no Thievery check to disable these? My thievery is +4 higher than my other viable skills; if it had an easier DC I'd have passed the first check rolling Thievery. Just wanted to confirm it in either case.

Also I'm still invisible so hopefully that'll prevent me from getting clobbered to some extent.

There is no thievery check unfortunately. I questioned the lack of it and the inclusion of Acrobatics but that's what is written.

Um, so since the troll are chained, what is to prevent people from using ranged attacks to take them out? Seems like nothing can hurt us if we are all at range.

There doesn't seem to be anything preventing that, no. Though you also can tell that the runes can be disrupted without defeating the trolls so the question is whether or not the group thinks the trolls should be defeated or avoided

Three cheers for Cryptid Scholar!

It's from my second (ever) PFS2 scenario. I don't think I had even played Quinoline - I played Fumbus or Seelah.

Shouldn't Astrid have taken 40 damage instead of 20 from the mental attack since she critically failed her saving throw?

Got it, thanks!

Three cheers for Cryptid Scholar!

It's from my second (ever) PFS2 scenario. I don't think I had even played Quinoline - I played Fumbus or Seelah.

There's an interesting note on this too but I will have to wait until the end of the scenario to share (cuz meta)

Depending on how helpful disabling the rune is, Quinoline may focus on attacking the spirit after this, and let those without ghost touch ranged weapons focus on the runes. Hopefully this guy is weak to positive.

Luckily, Zac also has aoo, so if troll stands up, it provokes, then I get to hit it again, and if I crit again, it goes back down. So the troll could potentially spend 2 actions just standing up.

Hi all, I thought a small recap might be beneficial since there are a lot of moving parts -

3 runes have been disabled. One of them clearly made the spirit fall from the sky and it no longer seems to be flying. One rune seemed to make some kind of barrier dissipate, though you only got the slightest look at this and it really isnt clear w hat that barrier did. The other rune was observed having some relation to the mental attacks fom earlier. You haven't seen the other two rune connections light up yet so their use is a mystery.

The trolls seem to have a lot of HP. It isn't clear whether or not killing the trolls is necessary. That is, disabling the runes seems to have been enough to sever connections though it isn't clear if the trolls have any other purpose or use to the Spirit. They are chained to the ground which at least means they could potentially be ignored if you think they don't have any other purpose.

Zac is currently downed next to a troll, which frankly isnt very good considering the troll has AoO and it can't move so chasing someone else isn't likely.

The Spirit has been relatively unharmed. Getting near the spirit will require going through the flame circle which did hurt Ro somewhat when he passed through. The Spirit has Resist All (Except ghost touch, force, or positive). It is currently on ground level, after having fallen 20ft from the sky when one of the rune connections was severed.

The trolls have regeneration 20? That's a lot. White troll had 37 on it. I crit for 26. 37+26=63. It regenerated and it is at 43.

Yes, a side effect of some of the tracking is you could determine the amount of regeneration. But regardless of the exact number you would see it is --a lot--

If we're going to get rid of the trolls - I'm neutral to the suggestion that we may not need to - we should focus fire, and wait for Quinoline to get persistent acid on them.

I think we should disable all the runes for sure. Since the spirit's not weak to positive (dammit), Quinoline will just save her ghost charges until we can all focus on the spirit.

Or if the trolls can't move then maybe just disable the runes and take on the Spirit. I can try to get Zac back up with enough HP to survive an AoO.

If the trolls do nothing, then why would the scenario have them in the first place? In theory they must do something if we don't get rid of them fast enough like power up the spirit, or they break free of their chains on round X. If they did nothing, then we can all just archer all 6 of them, one by one, and that seems to easy to be true.

The trolls can AoO those that try to disable the runes, right?

They seem to be chained to the ground to protect the runes from being disabled. And doing quite well from the looks of it.

They seem to be chained to the ground to protect the runes from being disabled. And doing quite well from the looks of it.

True enough. Regen +20 means they take a decent amount of focus fire to remove from the field efficiently and otherwise they can try to block disable attempts with AoOs (imagine getting Crit and losing the 2-action attempt) or just getting a free round of attacks off against anyone who had to stick around next to them. Since you can't disable from Ranged, it wouldn't get you any closer to disabling them outside of removing a hazard from the field.

Either case, if the party thinks it's time to rush the boss, Amada can opt to either do that next round or continue trying to disable runes. Let me know what the preferred strategy is; Amada has a 50% success rate vs the runes so it's literally a coinflip each attempt and my luck has admittedly been remarkably bad so far. That said, I am Invisible, so the trolls don't seem to be able to disrupt my attempts, so there is that at least.

I think it's best to finish all the runes, it seems like the spirit's power is tied to the runes.

We're all pretty much 50-50 to disable. Maybe 60-40 at best, 40-60 at worst.

Disabling could provoke. The trolls haven't seemed to pick up on Amada's presence, and the other trolls have AoO'ed other actions.

Kind of wondering. Unconscious condition says I take a -4 to AC, but says I'm also flatfooted. So I have -6 to AC, or is the -4 to AC already included in the flatfooted condition?

unconscious is -4 status penalty. and flatfooted is -2 circumstance penalty. Since these are different types of penalties they do stack for a total of -6 AC. And why generally attacking a downed player is very bad.

Fortunately most monsters have some sort of self preservation and would focus on new threats but for instance some undead or other mindless creatures may not.

Sounds like Greezgux has plans to get Zac up though, so don't fret too much

To be clear, when the persistent acid wears off, is the troll's regeneration is still deactivated?

This was not the case with the trolls (or whatever regenerated) at the end of 2-20, was it? But the tracker seems to indicate so now.

Regeneration deactivates until the end of its next turn when it takes the listed type of damage. Since the persist damage activated at the end of it's turn then it would remain in effect until the end of it's next turn.

So in short, it is still deactivated.

For 2-20 its possible that the persist damage didn't carry over because it wasn't persist damage (a regular attack without persist dmg, for instance, would just last until the monster's next turn which may seem like half a round, rather than a full round), or that I made a mistake. I did double check it for this combat though and again just now :)

So I remember the DM saying the troll dies if it reaches dying 4. I thought that was true regardless if the troll regenerates or not. You just have to hit it with 4 attacks or 2 crits when it is that close to 0 hit points.

Regeneration explicitly prevents a monster from going above dying 3 as long as regen is active. so based on the prior combat with regeneration Zac would believe the troll needs both the regen deactivated, and to hit it with 4 attacks or 2 crits

We did this pretty effectively in 2-20. Quinoline deals acid even on a miss, so we just need to coordinate an acid flash with a prison-style shivving.

How well chained to the ground are these trolls, if I move them forced movement, say ring of the ram, can I push them into the fire?

So what you've seen is the trolls are secured by heavy chains that prevent the trolls from moving themselves even 5 feet. If you were to try to force the trolls to be moved you would feel like not only are you trying to force the troll (their normal save) you'd also be needing to deal with the strength of chains that are capable of preventing a large troll from moving.

I suspect your character wouldn't think the chances of success to be very likely.

Every now and then I'll burn like, an hour or two just flipping through Archives of Nethys deities. There's some wild stuff in there; Ydajisk, the CN Protean god of language preservation, evolution and slang is definitely a highlight.

I wish there were more "fun' gods. Slang is definitely a pretty cool domain to have.

---

Years ago my friends and I were at a blackjack table in Vegas and we invented the patron goddess of blackjack, to whom we made "sacrifices" in the form of ridiculous bets.