Congrats on surviving the move!
I'll be traveling Dec 17 to 25. I expect to still be posting during that time but probably a bit less frequently. Holidays are nearly upon us!
I'm off on travels. Please bot me as needed!
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Yes, I expect we'll have reduced posting for the next two weeks or so as everyone enjoy their holiday season!
I'm planning on posting from now through Thursday, with a break from Friday the 22 through Tuesday the 26th. Hopefully we can keep up a slower pace into January and regain momentum from there.
I'll be unavailable all day Tuesday, driving that day.
I'll be unavailable all day Tuesday,drivinglarping space road trucking adventures that day.
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Yes, fixed. Thank you :)
Merry Christmas everyone!!
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Level 8 Soldier
HP +7
SP +8
BAB +1
Saves Fort +1, Will +1
Combat feat Ricochet Grenade (the bit will not be interrupted :) )
Skills acrobatics +1, athletics +1, culture +1, engineer +1, survival +1
Languages (from culture) Kasatha
Woo, level up! I should be able to get that sorted tomorrow evening.
Not too much exciting on the Akh level up, except that he has a very large number of 8s on this stat line, which should mean that he's extra lucky until he next levels :D
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Level 8 Vanguard
HP, SP, BAB, Saves Up
Secondary Aspect (Momentum): This grants the bull rush improved combat maneuver feat and a small bonus to culture checks.
Aspect Discipline: Entropic Rip: When I'm making a single attack in a turn, I can add bleed damage by spending 1 EP.
Still mulling over which language to take.
Bull Rush!! I don't think there are any Star Wars-esque infinite cliffs inside a station in this book... but one can hope for the next one. Brings to mind the cloud planet in Dead Suns, I really worried a PC would fall off those...
Being moved provokes. I've seen some bad guys get absolutely blended getting knocked through a gauntlet of melee characters. Mind you this group is more ranged...
Ewok and Del, I believe you're the only two from these specific old days, but I just noticed that ShieldBug is back! I like that this game still carries some DNA through long-running campaigns: the Sky Key season campaign, to Dead Suns, to Fly Free and Devastation Ark :)
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Hello and Happy New Year! I took a long and unexpected break from the internet for the holidays but am back and online again. Working on catching up now.
Awesome! I'm glad ShieldBug found some time to pick up the game again. He was great to play alongside. One of the best GMs I've had, honestly.
I have a bad feeling "easy" is not just DC10 at level 8 :D
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Levelled up and updated to the enhanced witchwarper as discussed a while ago. Biggest change is that her infinite worlds no longer drains her spell slots. Instead, she's got a duplicate pool of all the spell slots she has, which are solely used to power her infinite worlds. Her other new abilities are detailed in her profile, but they're unlikely to come into play.
Her new spell for this level is dispel magic.
And her new paradigm shift is flash teleport.
I finally got around to updating Guess? with his level up to 8. He picked up a bump up in a variety of skills, the kasathan language and the trap spotter operative exploit:
Trap Spotter (Ex) You double your operative’s edge bonus to Perception checks to notice traps. Additionally, you automatically receive a Perception check to notice a trap when you pass within 10 feet of it.
We haven't really encountered many traps so far that I recall but I figure this could be helpful now and then.
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As for Estriar ending this book in a far worse place than where he started it... true! Though it could be argued that he ends up much better off than most people who have opposed this little band of space truckers. And that's really where the author's thought process placed us:
1. This is still technically a Chaotic Neutral AP, though most of the situations do reward Chaotic Good behavior. So a very real choice at the beginning of the book was "Murder Estriar for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and shove his body out of an airlock". (They even noted where the airlock was for me...) So the rest of the book doesn't spend too much space on what will happen to Estriar, since he may be dead to begin with.
2. Estriar was super scared of you! He knew that you had outsmarted Eline, raided a secure EJ facility, and stolen an absurdly valuable prototype spacecraft at just the beginning of your rise to power. He knows that you must have survived whatever mercenaries Eline sent after you. And he's just a casual businessman. So he was happy to escape with his life, and deal with the consequences of being a coward later.
3. Estriar does get soemthing from this... the kalistocrat religion rewards those who can attain wealth with more opportunities to get wealth - with the end goal of having so much wealth you gain eternal life. So by winning the auction, Estriar will likely get some sort of Temple Promotion and more doors will open to him in business through his religious associates.
2. Estriar was super scared of you! He knew that you had outsmarted Eline, raided a secure EJ facility, and stolen an absurdly valuable prototype spacecraft at just the beginning of your rise to power. He knows that you must have survived whatever mercenaries Eline sent after you. And he's just a casual businessman. So he was happy to escape with his life, and deal with the consequences of being a coward later.
I'm thinking if it weren't for the rest of the crew keeping Guess? in check, Guess? probably would've turned into an evil-adjacent-ish, super-opportunistic megalomaniac by now...
Or maybe he already is! hehehe
Some evils cannot be contained.
Given the source I was thinking more....What do you want
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Real talk, I can't believe how worthless disarm has been in this AP. The few foes that have been strong enough that disarming makes any sense have either had natural weapons that deal just as much damage or multiple backup weapons. Disarming this guy twice and he's still basically firing on all cylinders is a real bummer.
While the utility and effectiveness has been a let down, gotta admit that it sure looks cool!
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Right, like how many PCs even have three weapons of competitive level on them! I'm curious if it was a writing/editing choice, because it's definitely been a trend to have pretty decked out enemies in this AP. Alternatively, this AP has also been super stingy with credits so maybe they're trying to offset that with a plethora of more useful loot.
Right, like how many PCs even have three weapons of competitive level on them!
all the pistols for the characters that use pistol... only operatives use pistols.
only regular operatives use pistols.
The level doesn't matter that much depending on the character.
For my longarm using biohacker , 1d10 +level vs 2d10 + level is a huge deal.
For a vesk o death 1d12 vs 2d12 for level and strength and a half is a nice bonus.
For an operative 1d4+5d8+ 1/2 level vs 2d4+5d8+1/2 level is a rounding error. (For my muscle operative AKA BIG sis aka murdermouse the extra cost was just to put more fusions on it)
Hello, this is an FYI that I'll be away in nature without access to computers this weekend, 2/17-2/18. I will return late Sunday (US/Pacific time) and resume posting. As this is just the weekend, I expect minimal disruption to the games I'm in.
Hi! FYI that I'll be offline for a week. Bot me as needed. See you on the other side!
Melissa would like the persuision thingy. You can't usually stack rerolls Guess had a bucket of them, we do occasionally need to diplomacy things in different places, and her luck is terrible.
Haha! Makes perfect sense to me. Go for it!!
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Putting this here since it will have lots of detail and some out of character questions/discussion:
During an auction, each PC selects one of the six roles described below. The PC impersonating Estriar (Guess?) at the auction must take the bidder role. PCs cannot duplicate roles, but (with the exception of the bidder) they can change roles from round to round. Both time and the number of bids being sent in are abstracted to streamline play.
The auction itself takes place in auction rounds, during which everyone filling a role can attempt a check against the Bid DC for that particular auction group using the skill listed for their role. The PCs can act in any order they choose during an auction round, but the bidder must act last. If PCs other than the bidder are successful, they grant a +2 bonus to the bidder. If the bidder succeeds at their check, the PCs win the auctioned item.
Roles:
Bidder: To bid on an item, the bidder must attempt a check against the item’s Bid DC with a bonus equal to their initiative modifier plus their Wisdom modifier. Any abilities that aid skill checks, such as a biohacker’s basic booster, can be used for this check.
Analyst: The analyst keeps an eye on the competition, figuring out their strategies and forestalling any gambits against the PCs. The analyst uses Sense Motive for their checks.
Distraction: The distraction mingles with the crowd, striking up conversations with rival bidders and using other ploys to prevent bids from being made in time. The distraction uses Bluff for their checks.
Hacker: The hacker can interfere with others’ bids to ensure they arrive at the central auction computer just a bit after the time cutoff. The hacker uses Computers for their checks.
Observer: The observer identifies likely rivals in the crowd, allowing the other members of the group to quickly hone in on their targets. The observer uses Perception for their checks.
Persuader: The persuader approaches other bidders and encourages or threatens them to stop bidding and save their credits for something else. The persuader uses Intimidate for their checks.
In the first half of the auction, things move quickly. Each item is bid on for up to 2 auction rounds, as there are fewer total buyers interested in each individual item. If The Bidder succeeds the first round, you win the item; if not, they have one more chance to bid. Items the PCs win are presented to the buyer at the podium. The PCs still need to buy these items; the base cost is the normal price for the item, but for every 5 by which the bidder beats an item’s Bid DC, the price the PCs pay for the item decreases by 10%.
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Hmmm... the big problem is I elected a bunch of items and I don't have nearly enough credits to actually buy them. Not sure if we'd really get enough even if we retconned that we liquidated all our loot.
I picked items on the assumption that they'd be part of the same scam as the barge.
Hmm, Jaraduk is not looking great for any of these roles.
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We are level 8 and kinda cash strapped (which kind of makes sense in this campaign)
8th Total wbl 33,000
Which is roughly the cost of a level 12 armor upgrade. If we had on level wealth and it was cash. I don't think a linear discount helps with exponential item costs.
....not sure if I'm exhausted or the 1% meta has gone recursive...
I don't think Guess? has enough cash to realistically bid on anything. And nothing is critical for him at the moment either.
But if anyone is truly interested in any auction items, perhaps we can retroactively liquidate our loot and distribute the creds. Then we pray to the dice gods for some good rolls and steep discounts!
So, hypothetically... Guess' Bid modifier is +10 and we can give up to +10 bonus with aid attempts if we all succeed. I assume the base DC isn't going to be like 10. If it's DC20, then the absolute max discount we can get is 30% (Guess gets a 40 on his roll) and we're very likely to get much less.
I certainly either can't afford or don't want any of these items even at 30% off.
I've gone through the loot slide and struck through items that hold no utility and are intended to just give us credits. The amount came out to 26577 credits. I divided that by 5 and that comes out to 5315 credits per person, which I listed on "Book 4 Income Log (Individual)" slide.
So we should each add 5315 credits to our individual sheets.
I didn't touch the rest of the equipment listed on the loot slide in case anyone wants to claim some of that equipment.
Given this bit of extra cash in everyone's pocket, does anyone want to bid on any auction items?
Guess still doesn't really have enough credits to try and bid on any items, so he'll pass.
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That is a good point that some of these items, though nice, are crazy expensive part way through the adventure. Definitely go back and liquidate.
Also I just reread and realized something. These aren't actually sets/bundles of items. They're tiers of items. So the items in Tier 5 are going to have a higher Bid DC than Tier 1. So if you see a Level 10 item in a high tier and one in a lower tier, that lower one could end up with a better discount. So if you win one of these five pre-auctions, you get the opportunity to buy anything (or multiple anythings) from that tier. BUT... if you win a bid you have to buy something. (So no bidding on everything then deciding after you see what the discounts are.)
Melissa_Norveg
Weird Hal
GM Ewok