Protectors of Golarion (Wrath of the Righteous AP)

Game Master Sensen

You’ve got 6 minutes of protection from evil, Elliot! I swapped out my 1st level domain spell for that, so you got the one person version. Merixia’s little way of showing she cares. ;)

Lol- I can't wait til Wulfric learns some more buff spells so I can join in the buffing bonanza. For now, I'll activate my agility badge when we see the incubus, and Wulfric will cast lucky number on himself and Azira.

lucky number (W): 1d20 ⇒ 8
lucky number (A): 1d20 ⇒ 6

Here's the list of buffs and their total durations we have declared, in the format of your status spoiler, GM. I put names in alphabetical order and buffs in order of duration from shortest to longest. Feel free to edit as needed, or correct things that are wrong, everyone. And I copied the text, with formatting markup included, to this Google doc if it saves you any time.

All: haste 8 rounds; air bubble 6 minutes; invisibility sphere 8 minutes; ashen path 10 minutes; tears to wine 60 minutes
Azira: HP 61/61; AC 29 (30 v. evil), touch 19 (20), flat-footed 21 (22); glitterdust 1/1, smite evil 2/2, lay on hands 6/6, panache 4/4, Mythic Power 5/5, Radiance Legendary Power 2/2; communal protection from evil 3 minutes; fly 6 minutes; lucky number 24 hours/until discharged
Elliot: HP 58/58; AC 29 (30 v. evil), touch 21 (22), flat-footed 21 (22), Arcane Pool 4/5, Righteous Eclipse Arcane Pool 1/1, pyrotechnics 1/1, Mythic Power 3/5; Arcane Pool keen +1 weapon 1 minute; flight hex 1 minute of 6; blade tutor's spirit 6 minutes, cat's grace 6 minutes, protection from evil 6 minutes, weaponwand 6 minutes; blur 8 minutes, shield 8 minutes; alter self (Small grippli? Kobold?) 19 minutes
Merixia: HP 54/54; AC 26 (28 v. evil), touch 12 (14), flat-footed 20 (22); pyrotechnics 1/1, true strike 1/1, protection from evil 0/1, Touch of Good 7/7, Destructive Smite 7/7, Channel 3/3, Mythic Power 5/5; archon's aura 6 minutes, bull's strength 6 minutes, ironskin 6 minutes, protection from evil 6 minutes, shield of wings 6 minutes
Thesius: HP 48/48; AC 19 (21 v. evil), touch 13 (15), flat-footed 16 (18), uncanny dodge; Archeologist’s Luck 12/12, Lore Master 1/1, Mythic Power 5/5; communal protection from evil 3 minutes; fly 6 minutes; heightened awareness 60 minutes, heroism 60 minutes
Verene: HP 40/40; AC 23 (25 v. evil), touch 15 (17), flat-footed 19 (21); Prescience 8/8, Mythic Power 3/5; shield 10 rounds; communal protection from evil 3 minutes; anticipate peril 6 minutes/until discharged; fly 6 minutes, mirror image 3/3 images 6 minutes, alter self (Small kobold) 19 minutes, heightened awareness 60 minutes, longstrider 60 minutes, mage armor 60 minutes | Thamyris HP 20/20; AC 20, touch 17, flat-footed 17
Wulfric: HP 24/24; AC 17 (19 v. evil), touch 11 (14), flat-footed 15 (17); bardic performance 11/11; communal protection from evil 3 minutes, cloudwalking scale (levitate) 19 minutes, lucky number 24 hours/until discharged

It takes them about ten minutes by foot over the relatively rough and uneven terrain to arrive at an outcropping sufficient for the purposes of the archers, to wait in ambush near the main force.

Thamyris bobs his head at Verene's request, and flies off. After about a minute, he returns, and the champions see a small force of the Knights - about fifteen, begin to ride forwards at a cautious pace, as though a simple scouting force.

Another five minutes go by, before they hear the beat of hooves and the shouts and screams of their tiefling pursuers.

I'd say that the minutes/rounds ones would have... probably five rounds to cast them from the time you catch wind of the fleeing group and the time they arrive and the ambush hits, so how you want to order those is up to you.

Based on these two statements, it will have been 16 minutes since Verene's hour-long buffs were applied, six minutes since alter self was applied, five minutes since invisibility sphere and anticipate peril were applied, 5 rounds since fly was applied to Azira, 4 rounds since fly was applied to Thesius, 3 rounds since fly was applied to Verene, 2 rounds since mirror image was applied, 1 round since shield was applied, and 0 rounds since haste was applied, when we see the enemy and the ambush (hopefully) begins. Verene will apply haste last. Ideally, that will be in the first round we actually see the enemy, but she will ask through message that everyone hold in place at least until she has done so. So, for Verene-applied spells only, the following could be the right remaining durations:

@Elliot - I think Worldwound GM doesn't track initiative or saves in the status spoiler, but just uses the values in our own status lines. So if you want your Init and Reflex to be correct based on active buffs, they probably need to be correct up there. Also, just a reminder that this is vanilla haste, so affected creatures only get the extra attack per turn on a full attack action.
@Everyone - Haste provides a +1 untyped bonus to all attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves. I have incorporated this into everyone's AC values as listed above (dodge bonuses do stack with each other but deflection bonuses don't). But as discussed, Reflex saves are not included in the GM's usual status spoiler information, so you'll have to change those in your own status line. With haste up, most of the PCs should have a speed of 60 on land and a fly speed of 90. Merixia, as the only person in medium or heavy armor, should be land speed 40 / fly 80. (Unlike fly, shield of wings doesn't specify that encumbrance affects the base granted movement speed at all. Lucky Merixia!)
@Thesius - Is this AC right for Thesius? I wasn't sure.

I'll have a post up a bit later. I'll provide updated numbers. At a glance the HP looks too low for sure. AC may need to be adjusted as well.

@Merixia Thanks, you never know when those extra minutes might help :) Especially since we have 200+ enemies to go through!

@Azira Haha, yeah. These once per day fights where we see the fight coming and have full incentive not to hold back do really favor having buffs. Is divine bond still a thing for your archetype? Maybe you could Keen the sword in advance or such if so?

@Verene thanks for the bookkeeping; I had already factored in the haste bonus on hit and AC though so the values in my own post were correct. His normal ac should be 10+ 6 dex (Though he has a +7 mod, mithral light armor limits to +6), +5 armor, +4 shield, +1 small size, +1 deflection, +1 dodge from haste = 28 (29 vs evil as prot vs evil makes the deflection +2). Afaik Elliot doesn't have a natural armor bonus yet; he doesn't quite have the gold to have an amulet crafted. Losing the dex/dodge bonus makes FF 21/22 and Touch should be 20/21).

I'll have Elliot stay in Grippli form as his shapeshift unless otherwise specified for ease of use.

Regarding this seperate stat block, as we are using that anyway, I'd like to suggest adding in all the relevant values for our buffed stats and not just the updated AC. So that the header is the unbuffed stats and the spoiler contains the buffed ones? That seems easiest to use with the minimal amount of bookkeeping, not having to constantly alter the profile and header to account for buffs.

Unrelated, tears to wine is pretty interesing for the redemption scenes; with that, Elliot actually can become quite decent at both diplomacy and sense motive. If he took the extra traits feat to get sense motive as a class skill and the trait to use intelligence for diplomacy checks, that should work well enough. And he can learn the spell itself through a magus arcane he was already going to take.

Reviewing Verene's numbers, those look correct. Unfortunately Thesius' AC does seem a bit behind the rest of the group. I've contemplated him snagging Enduring Armor for this reason, but that's a later thing.

Verene got the extra hit points in hers as well. Worldwound GMs appears to be based on the character sheet which I'm updating. It looks to be missing the +5 from the blessing they received before.

I think the only other change I noted is that Thesius' spells should be 50 minutes. He lost a caster level with Evangelist. It will start advancing again next level.

@Verene thanks for the bookkeeping; I had already factored in the haste bonus on hit and AC though so the values in my own post were correct. His normal ac should be 10+ 6 dex (Though he has a +7 mod, mithral light armor limits to +6), +5 armor, +4 shield, +1 small size, +1 deflection, +1 dodge from haste = 28 (29 vs evil as prot vs evil makes the deflection +2). Afaik Elliot doesn't have a natural armor bonus yet; he doesn't quite have the gold to have an amulet crafted. Losing the dex/dodge bonus makes FF 21/22 and Touch should be 20/21).

Aha, right you are. I did add things up, but I should have realized the armor was decreasing his Dex bonus to AC slightly. Changed this in the Google doc.

I think the only other change I noted is that Thesius' spells should be 50 minutes. He lost a caster level with Evangelist. It will start advancing again next level.

Missed this too, changed now in the doc! As always, Thesius is welcome to use the shield wand if his AC is lagging behind a little bit. And we can work on enchanting his buckler and/or getting him a natural armor amulet or ring of deflection at the next opportunity for crafting if you like.

Oof. Okay, so sorry about the delay in posting. Yesterday was a bit busy and my mind's still a bit foggy. Let me get to the responding to stuff here.

Once again, I must thank Verene for pretty much doing my administrative job for me, because yes, this was getting messy. xD

I'll update the status with Verene's document and then set up everything before posting and kicking off our biggest battle yet.

Sure thing, GM! And yes, those initiative mods were right as far as I know.

Looking at the spell again, you're right and that movement is not boosted by movement speed enhancing effects. Apparently the 30 ft stuck with me as a move action. Though in that case i dont think it is at all worth it to move in and attack by himself. And thereby open himself to like 8 full attacks.

His retcon action would be to cast glitterdust dc 16 on red green orange and purple, then he would make a knowledge check to see if this incubus or dredges rmtypically have lunge or reach. If not, he uses his flight speed of 90 ft to end 10 ft above the incubus, out of normal reach, to full attack it downward through the air next turn.

Nice hit, Merixia! To your question: Elliot was using the 2nd-level magus spell bladed dash in combination with Spell Combat. So as a full-round action, he can move 30 feet and attack (from the spell), then take his normal two attacks that he would get from making a full attack with haste up. If we were within 30 feet, it would work to give essentially a move + attack + full attack for the cost of a 2nd-level spell slot. (And being hasted.)

I may need to adjust the encounter difficulties for these demonic war battles upwards, because holy crap just those two attacks nearly knocked the guy unconscious.

Divine bond! Thank you, Elliot. Yes, I'll activate divine bond also when Verene is casting fly to add keen to Radiance. Now, lets go see if I can finish the guy off.

The poor guy (well. The maximally evil guy) even rolled super well on the two dice he got to roll, and it didn't help him.

I do know that the Mythic system is renowned for being pretty broken, such that characters with Mythic tiers can become hard for normal monsters to challenge at all, and monsters with Mythic tiers vs characters with them can feel like Rocket Tag. And we are a 5-person party plus a soon-to-be cohort, rather than the standard 4-PC party. But most importantly, this situation of the ambush also favored us in every way, with plenty of time to make a plan, apply all our buffs, and so on. Nothing that happened with the incubus here really directly depended on the mythic rules except a few points of damage either way (Mythic Arcane Strike/Mythic Power Attack.) It was almost all the power granted by standard Pathfinder spells and class abilities, which we burned through all at once because we had no reason to hold back for what we knew would be the one big fight of the day.

Basically, I don't think it would hurt to up the difficulty on kind of "standard" monsters and fights like this quite a bit from how they are as-written, but I might be careful about doing the same thing with Mythic enemies until we're all somewhat more comfortable with that system. What do others think?

I think you’re right about the circumstances, Verene. Any time a party has a chance to fully buff up for what they expect to be the one big fight of the day they’re going to put a serious beating on it. With our approach of letting the armies fight off camera while we deal with the big bad, it might not be a bad idea to beef up the bbeg some or give us an encounter or two to fight through first so we can’t completely nova. Tweaking mythic enemies can be tricky though; I’m running a mythic game and almost killed off at least one of the PC in the last fight because of a seemingly minor adjustment.

Yeah, I think I'll adjust upwards in some way when I have that chance, but I don't think there're too many army battles left. Maybe. I'd have to double check. Regardless, it'd definitely be a good idea to kick things upwards.

And yeah, both of these battles have definitely been in your favor.

On the level of power, seeing these last few fights I did a search and I found a few quotes that the paizo developers seemingly expected every mythic tier to be equivalent to about half a class level. If that is true, in my opinion/experience, that is a gross underestimation of the actual power of mythic tiers. Even though Elliot, for instance, only has one tier, the two abilities it grants him boost his damage output by around 50% to 75% while also more or less guaranteeing every spell he casts is never resisted.

If the last two fights are an indication of the rest of this book, I would definitely support adding more and stronger enemies to the encounters as written. Like adding one or two demons to the fights with a CR up to party class level +2 or such depending on how strong the added enemy is/enemies are (while being wary of excess fireballs/aoe effects). But I will admit that scaling encounters has never been a strong suit of mine. And there is definitely also a massive difference in power between a party going into a fight fully buffed and prepared like we have the last two ones vs having no buffs active.

One thing I might be able to offer is that an acquiantaince of mine, Quentin Coldwater on the forums, has ran this AP before using highly upscaled main enemies pulled from a GM thread on the forum (I seem to recall it does add a lot of mythic stuff to the bad guys, yes). I could ask him if he could share that resource if it would help you balance things.

Oh, these previous two combats are entirely my own invention - remember, these are supposed to be war battles, and the AP didn't actually spend very many words on what encounters should look like without using the war system. (It was mostly "eh, figure it out yourself.")

I wouldn't mind getting that resource, though I'd hesitate to add too many mythic enemies. I don't think that's a huge issue, though.

I'll give it a bit for Merixia to post her things.

Did I mostly just want to describe Katamari Damacy-ing the dretches with aqueous orb? Yes.

Hey, I've been super sick the past... I don't even know how long it's been. Time gets funny when you feel like this. :P I'll do my best to catch up quickly, but I'm still not feeling great. Just coherent enough to form sentences and type them. (I always have a ton of seizures when I'm sick, which makes it very difficult to type or speak.)

Oh no! I'm sorry, Merixia. That sucks. As always, take care of yourself and don't worry about this. I hope you feel better soon.

Hey, I've been super sick the past... I don't even know how long it's been. Time gets funny when you feel like this. :P I'll do my best to catch up quickly, but I'm still not feeling great. Just coherent enough to form sentences and type them. (I always have a ton of seizures when I'm sick, which makes it very difficult to type or speak.)

That sucks, Merixia. I hope you feel better soon, and don't worry too much about the game or anything - if you feel bad, don't force yourself to post.

Sorry to hear that, and best wishes from me too of course, Merixia! Take care and rest well. We'll be here when you feel better.

@Worldwound GM you asked me to remind you to do the RP with the one Tiefling who was open to a redemption path. Though in the second post-battle here Elliot would essentially repeat the process of trying to find another one with similar inclinations... again asking his currently more skilled friends at lie-detecting for advice to pinpoint them, if any. Perhaps those scenes could be combined?

Man, finally got the Gencon site to work for me... for some reason it seems to constantly bug or error out, claiming my emailaddress was invalid and such. I've been wanting to go there since forever, maybe this year I'll finally get around to it!

@Worldwound GM you asked me to remind you to do the RP with the one Tiefling who was open to a redemption path. Though in the second post-battle here Elliot would essentially repeat the process of trying to find another one with similar inclinations... again asking his currently more skilled friends at lie-detecting for advice to pinpoint them, if any. Perhaps those scenes could be combined?

Right, thanks for reminding me. I'll try to get it up with my next post.

Speaking of which, sorry about the delay on my posts - it's been a weird weekend, and I forgot that there was a holiday on Friday. I will try to get a post up today, but can't promise it.

My last time at Gencon was... in 2015, I think?

I hope your recovery has continued to go well Azira.

Merixia, I'm hoping you're getting to feeling better.

I'll be up at Gencon this year myself. I've definitely enjoyed it the couple of years I've gone.

No worries Worldwound GM. I've been dealing with stuff myself, so I get it.

@GM no worries, thanks for letting us know.

I also wanted to make an apology @Merixia; I felt bad in retrospect of having Elliot ask Merixia for advice on Irabeth's medical condition when you just posted you were ill OOC and unsure of whether you'd be able to post. My intent was more like having the GM roll for you if needed, not force you to post to give Elliot an answer. So I'm sorry if that came across as such. I did the current post with an assumption so that it doesn't require another response if you're still feeling unwell.

It's okay, Elliot! I'm at the stage now where I'm well enough to be bored but not well enough to go out and do stuff, so it's all good.

Good to hear that!

@Everyone I'm going to be offline the rest of the weekend; taking a mini-vacation to a resort. I probably won't be able to post much, so please don't wait for me.

Oh, for the game, if Meri supports Elliot's idea of following Aron invisibly, he'll spend a mythic point to cast an 80-minute version and follow him to see what happens. I'll roll the stealth here if needed:

stealth (+20 invisibility bonus): 1d20 + 26 ⇒ (18) + 26 = 44

Hmm, thinking about it later, Verene should have said "on your own terms," not "on your own recognizance." I didn't realize that "recognizance" specifically means bail or some other kind of official promise to appear later or suffer some sort of penalty. Not the kind of linguistic mistake she would make! So please assume she said "terms."

Reasonable.

On a somewhat less cheerful note, I don't know if I'll have the energy to post today, I apologize. Bit of a stressful week this past week, and next one's looking to be the same.

Sorry to hear it, GM, but no worries. I hope your stressors ease up after that.

Worldwound gm, does Elliot discover something from his invisible following of Aron?

Verene also tried to detect thoughts on Akravash, back here. Any read on that?

I'd like to give Thesius and Azira the chance for one more post before moving us onwards.

Sorry for the delay. Been dealing with some stuff at home. I'll have a post up later today, but I don't want that to hold anyone up so feel free to continue on in the meantime.

Azira hasn't posted in almost two weeks. I hope everything's okay.

I hope so too... perhaps one of us should try to PM her and ask if everything is well?

I'll try reaching out to them.

Hey everyone, I’m really sorry for falling silent without any notice!

Last week I returned to normal/full-time work and it’s proved a bit more challenging than expected. I continue to recover well, but after being on the computer a lot at work (and all the little ways you use your shoulder throughout the day without really even thinking about it when you're not laid up at home), I haven't been up to getting back on it afterwards to post. I’m getting to the point where I should be able to post during breaks and after work with some regularity again soon. And, I’m actually off tomorrow, so I’ll catch up on reading posts and get a post up in gameplay then.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

Oh, glad to hear you're feeling a bit better, no matter how slight that is. Hope you continue to recover!

Glad to hear you are on the mend Azira. It's definitely easy to not realize just how things are used until you get in a situation like that. My mom messed up her wrist at one point and kept hurting it because she would try to do things she never thought twice about before.

I'm happy to hear that you're recovering without complications, Azira! Yeah, you don't realize how much you use some muscles until they don't work right. I had no idea how much we use our abdominal muscles until I had surgery there.

Welcome back, Azira, good to hear from you. I hope your shoulder continues to improve.

Welcome back, Azira. Good to know things are going well - ish. Take your time and don't push yourself and all.

On the recovery front I just finished a 4-night Marathon running event and could probably use a bit of that myself. Feeling every muscle in my body... but I guess that's what I get for joining on a whim, just to see if I could :')

That sounds an awful lot like exercise, Elliot! Hope you will be able to take it easy this weekend.

Yeah, I definitely had a good weekend. Went to a viking festival which was pretty neat. I forged my own pendant from molten tin which was pretty cool and there were a lot of other highlights. Medieval festivals are pretty popular here in the Netherlands and they seem to be increasing in number. It was cool to see a local small ruin get its first one - and for the very low price of entry, there was A LOT to do. I hope it continues to happen and grow in the furture.

Probably doesn't exactly count as taking it easy as there was a lot of walking, but I'll happily pay that price. I've been working out and training a lot to get back into my pre-COVID 19-era shape in preparation for going back into the dating landscape and being able to run a marathon (even if it's technically in four parts) seemed like a good flex to have. No regrets! :)

Verene doesn't know what an intervention is, but give her half a chance and she'll invent them.

GM, any response from Nurah to Verene's last spoiler earlier, or is that conversation ended?