GM Jhaeman's "Dawn of Flame, Chapter 3: Sun Divers" (Inactive)

Game Master Jhaeman

Ref: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (6) + 10 = 16

Initiative (Round 3)

Xylian (need save vs entangle)
Jin (grappled, bleed)
Grinders
Hani (grappled, two bleeds)
Tulgram
Zharis (need save vs entangle)

Bold should go!

@Hani: Unless the bleed effect is ended, when you begin your turn you'll take 2 damage.

** spoiler omitted **

Fort save: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (14) + 9 = 23

Hani lashes out at the grinder who is trying to eat him.

to hit with grappled penalty: 1d20 + 6 - 2 ⇒ (17) + 6 - 2 = 21
damage, E: 1d6 + 7 ⇒ (5) + 7 = 12

Sparks and chunks of metal fly as Hani lands another haymaker on the reclaimer trying to turn him into scrap!

Hani hit. Xylian made the Reflex save vs the entanglement risk.

Zharis & Tulgram are up.

Reflex Save: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (1) + 7 = 8 (Fail: 4 B/entangled 3 rounds)

Zharis takes a hit, and she stumbles away at half speed, still managing to try an attack on yellow.

Attack (Tactical Semi-Auto): 1d20 + 6 - 2 ⇒ (8) + 6 - 2 = 12 (entangled)
Piercing Damage: 1d6 + 2 ⇒ (5) + 2 = 7

Unfortunately, the hit throws her timing off and she misses.

Called Caustojectl: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (2) + 5 = 71d4 + 4 ⇒ (2) + 4 = 6 (acid vs EAC)

Tulgram shoots the one who holds (recycles?) Hani, planning to deliver the biohack to it, but misses.

Bullets and darts fly all over the manufactory as the explorers struggle against the determined recycling constructs!

Zharis and Tulgram missed.

Initiative (Round 4)

Xylian
Jin (grappled, bleed)
Grinders
Hani (grappled, two bleeds)
Tulgram
Zharis (entangled)

Bold should go!

Jin, at the beginning of your turn you'll take 3 damage from the bleed.

Fortitude save vs. grinding DC 12: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (13) + 6 = 19

Jin full attacks the yellow grinder:

Sopranino singing disk vs. Yellow's EAC: 1d20 + 11 - 4 - 2 ⇒ (17) + 11 - 4 - 2 = 22
Sonic damage: 1d4 + 12 ⇒ (3) + 12 = 15

Sopranino singing disk vs. Yellow's EAC: 1d20 + 11 - 4 - 2 ⇒ (16) + 11 - 4 - 2 = 21
Sonic damage: 1d4 + 12 ⇒ (3) + 12 = 15

Robot parts fly everywhere as Jin's singing disk literally vibrates it apart!

Yellow is destroyed!

Xylian is up.

Xylian turns his attention to the recycler recycling Hani, the turtleoid's shell no longer an obstacle to Xylian's laser-sighted carbine.

Move action to move; Standard action to Overcharge and shoot White.
Ice Carbine vs KAC (Ignores up to 4 points of AC from cover): 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (8) + 8 = 16
P + C Damage: 1d8 + 1d6 + 5 ⇒ (7) + (4) + 5 = 16

Ka-thunk! The dense chunk of ice from Xylian's carbine smashes into the side of the construct menacing Hani, leaving a huge dent in its side.

That attack hit, and White is *almost* destroyed.

The mobile reclamation unit in the center of the manufactory floor zooms over to its fallen kin and promptly consumes it!

But the unit on Hani, although severely damaged, has finished its job yet! It begins trying to grind the telia's leg into pulp!

Hani, you take 21 S (DC 12 For for half damage). You also need to attempt a separate DC 12 Fort save to avoid the Severed Limb (Leg) effect on the Wound critical hit table.

Initiative (Round 4)

Xylian
Jin (grappled, bleed)
Grinders
Hani (grappled, two bleeds)
Tulgram
Zharis (entangled)

Bold should go!

Hani, at the beginning of your turn you'll take 4 damage from Bleed.

It's recycling Hani into turtle soup D:

Tulgram frowns at what is happening. Xin, great shot! Zharis, get it done. And I'll distract the damn other one. With these words, he jumps down from the railing, points his little pistol at the (blue) robot and shoots. Come on! Hey! Piece of metal s#&!! I'm here. Try to recycle me. I'm bloody harder than a rock! I'm too much fer ye!

Called Caustojectl: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (17) + 5 = 221d4 + 4 ⇒ (1) + 4 = 5 (acid vs EAC)

Meanwhile, the mold virus that got into the mechanism along with the acid creates a vulnerability for this robot too (+2 electric damage; I hope this time at least it will be useful).

fort save: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (16) + 9 = 25
fort save vs. severed limb: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (12) + 9 = 21

Hani attempts to finish off the one who is trying to eat him.

to hit with grappled penalty vs. EAC: 1d20 + 6 - 2 ⇒ (14) + 6 - 2 = 18
damage, E: 1d6 + 7 ⇒ (4) + 7 = 11

Still not 100%, Zharis is nevertheless cheered at Jin's triumph, and with a little more hope, she moves out from behind Jin and shoots at Blue.

Attack (Tactical Semi-Auto): 1d20 + 6 - 2 ⇒ (8) + 6 - 2 = 12 (entangled 2/3)
Piercing Damage: 1d6 + 2 ⇒ (5) + 2 = 7

She lets the team down with another miss though. She hoped they could still pull it out, and also had a stray thought, wondering if there was anyone sentient actually in charge of all of these bots, or whether they were just running wild.

Tulgram takes a spectacular leap from the catwalk! He lands hard on the ground--ooh, that must have hurt! But he still has the wherewithal to blast one of the constructs with his pistol.

At the same time, Hani isn't going down without a fight: he punches right through the center mass of the construct that's trying to bite his leg off, and destroys the robot instantly!

Zharis, although usually the most dramatic member of the expedition team, can't quite match her allies' performance as her shot misses.

Tulgram, you take 2 damage from jumping from the catwalk to the manufactory floor and land prone. But your shot hits. Good cinematics!

Hani's attack hit, and White is destroyed. Hani, you're still bleeding but you no longer have the grappled condition. (and please don't forget to update your tagline even from the half damage you took this round and the bleed)

Zharis missed.

Initiative (Round 5)

Xylian
Jin (bleed)
Grinder
Hani (two bleeds)
Tulgram (prone)
Zharis (entangled)

Bold should go!

Jin, at the beginning of your turn, you'll take 6 points of damage from the bleed.

Move action to Target remaining recycler; Standard action to Overcharge and shoot.
Ice Carbine vs KAC (Ignored up to 4 points of AC from cover: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (13) + 10 = 23
P + C Damage: 1d8 + 1d6 + 5 ⇒ (3) + (2) + 5 = 10

Jin moves down the stairs (hoping the cover from guard rails will prevent the AoO) and gets next to the robot. He drops his singing disk, grabs the doshko with both hands and smacks the construct:

Static Storm Doshko vs. EAC: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (20) + 11 = 31

Electricity damage: 1d8 + 12 + 2 ⇒ (3) + 12 + 2 = 17
Critical electricity damage: 1d8 + 12 + 2 ⇒ (4) + 12 + 2 = 18

Fortitude DC 16 or staggered for 1 round (unless it has construct immunities)

- - - - - - - - - - -

In case he provokes the AoO and is grappled again, he'll toss the singing disk at the monsters instead:
Sonic damage: 1d4 + 12 ⇒ (2) + 12 = 14
Critical sonic damage: 1d4 + 12 ⇒ (2) + 12 = 14

Will save DC 15 or confused for 1 round

Leaving over the catwalk railing, Xylian sends another accurate freezing blast into the carapace of the robot just as Jin brings down a devastating blow with this doshko. Weakened already by nanobots Tulgram introduced into its system, the reclaimer collapses into exactly the type of scrap metal it was meant to consume.

Xylian hit, and Jin's crit was enough to take Blue out. Good work! We technically need to stay on Initiative though because of the Bleed effects in play.

Initiative (Round 5)

Xylian
Jin (bleed)
Hani (two bleeds)
Tulgram (prone)
Zharis (entangled)

Bold should go!

Hani, at the beginning of your turn, you take 5 damage from bleed.

Hani assesses these robots, delving into his memory and attempting to parse out what their nature may be.

engineering to identify: 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (5) + 16 = 21

Yes, I know it's kind of late to do this, but this may help Hani's special XP conditions.

Realizing he's still bleeding, Hani grabs his medkit and patches himself up.

medicine: 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (16) + 12 = 28

Will stabilize stop bleeding? If so, I have a stabilize spell gem I can use on Jin.

Zharis recovers, and moves to keep watch while the rest of the group takes a 10 minute rest, if they want to.

Tulgram gets up, and another pistol (with needles) is teleported into his hand. He points it at Jin and shoots. The needle, once in the skin, instantly stops the bleeding.

Minor Biohacks - Minor Booster - auto-check on First Aid

It's impressive. I still intend to explore this city completely, but! It is really worth taking great care. This is a truly dangerous place. It's like we're at the crucible of Father Droskar himself. It is dangerous, but persistent hard work and ruthlessness towards ourselves will bring us success.

After this speech, he begins to bypass "his patients" in order to examine their wounds and apply special organic patches that dissolve themselves within 5 minutes.

Medicine: 1d20 + 16 + 2 ⇒ (4) + 16 + 2 = 22 5 hp for everyone who didn't get them previous time (it can be used once a day per creature)

Hani takes a close look at the destroyed reclaimers, absent-mindedly patching himself up in the meantime.

And like magic, Jin's wounds stop bleeding when Tulgram applies a dart-delivered coagulant.

That does it--we can now go off Initiative.

Jin nods at Tulgram, sits down on the stairs for a 10 minutes rest to recover stamina.

"No offense, but if this is the kind of security we will face at every point of the exploration, we might need a strike team instead of a group of scientists."

Hani chimes in "Wait just a minute! These things are producing a polyfluid that can be used as UPB's. In fact, if we find the right facilities, we can refine this stuff into siccatite! Someone help me remove their tanks. We'll want to keep this stuff."

Everyone can read the spoiler to Hani up above.

Agreed, Jin. Thank you for getting us out of that mess. Unfortunately, we are the only ones here, and have a stunningly unique opportunity... and are unlikely to be able to return. What can we do to move forward, but in a safer way, do you think?

When Hani speaks up, Zharis moves to help, but also looks at Jin as if to say "...see? We have little choice but to try."

She gets to work removing one of the tanks.

"As I suspected." Xylian says of the recyclers. "Storing UBP's in solid form would be more efficient, but liquid is more practical. We should see if the recycling mechanism can be repurposed. Later." Carbine ever ready due to the heavy mounting arm on his armor, Xylian pulls the three fallen bots into a corner for future disassembly while the others rest.

"No offense, but if this is the kind of security we will face at every point of the exploration, we might need a strike team instead of a group of scientists."

One of our first combats was won by a lucky crit on an AOO...

"No backup, no easy escape... we can lockdown each building as we move forward, guaranteeing we will have some place to bunker down, or at least that we will not be ambushed by the natives as we return. But if we do not find a benign AI willingly to negotiate, we might have to rush out, just like the ship before ours.”

Jin searches around the room for anything of interest or plot-worthy.

Perception: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (5) + 9 = 14

Or maybe we should take 20 on Perception to sweep the entire building...

As Jin rests and talks over strategy, Xylian and Zharis go to work on the reclaimers by extracting the tanks of "polyfluid" that Hani identified.

If anyone wants to take a 10 minute rest to regain all your stamina, you can spend 1 RP to do so.

Ok, whoever's keeping the inventory can add the three bulk of polyfluid.

Hani will take this opportunity to rest.

Spending an RP.

Hani rests up after the harrowing battle.

Ok folks, what happens next? To recap, you're on the ground floor of a scorch-topped manufactory located in a wide plaza on the edge of a small bubble-city.

Are there other rooms in the manufactory? If so, I think we continue here (carefully). If not, I think we will venture outside, but super carefully, waiting for Jin to give the go ahead at every step, trying to not get into an open shooting match with robots without some sort of advantage... cover, a controlled entrance where we might be able to get the chance to face them one at a time, etc. In other words, cautious exploration... trying to find someone to talk to or to discover more about this city. Collect samples, etc.

Jin points out to the engineers that the factory's consoles have been powered down.

"I would advise against powering up the whole facility, but perhaps we can gain access to a local computer”.

Did we search for a local infosphere? Or a grounded one even? Try to do some hackery, download maps, intel, etc

Otherwise, we might as well go outside and start moving towards a central area, or the tallest building

The group's engineers manage to restore power to some of the manufactory's machinery. Afterwards, Jin leads the group cautiously outside into a plaza.

Here, a large, dark, irregular column stands amidst debris suggesting numerous small robots were destroyed. Part of the column is also blackened as if struck with fire.

Suddenly, across the plaza, a small robot with a humanoid head, arms, and torso races into the area on the tread that makes up its lower body.
Although its tread is damaged, the creature darts among the rubble and machinery. Other robots, a scorpion-like reclaimers like you just fought, pursue the small construct. Both reclaimers spit gobs at the smaller automaton, anchoring it in place with sticky strands binding it to the ground.

As the bigger robots close in, the smaller one struggles, chirps frantically, and then emits a low drone. The grinding mouth-parts of the reclaimers spin up, drowning out the little robot’s sounds.

CLIFFHANGER!

In order to leave us at a good point, I'm going to assume someone took 10 to restore power to the consoles and then you started moving outside as Jin's suggested. The machinery in the manufactory functions as a large tech workshop capable of being used by multiple people at a time. There is not a computer in the manufactory or signs of an infosphere to access.

As mentioned previously in the Discussion thread, I have to travel overseas sans computer for the next several days. The reclaimers haven't seen you, so it's completely up to you whether you want to intervene in what's happening or not, examine the column, etc. Please feel free to RP in my absence. I'll be back on duty around May 9th. You're making good progress in the adventure!

Tulgram thoughtfully chews dry bread looking at the tragic scene. Something interesting is happening here. Maybe we should look for allies. In any case, these robots are clearly not friendly with each other, and some may be reasonable.

Zharis doesn't say anything, just draws a pistol and starts shooting at the big bully robots.

Attack (Thunderstrike): 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (13) + 7 = 20
Sonic Damage: 1d8 + 3 ⇒ (7) + 3 = 10

Unfortunately subtracting from the story drama, this pistol has a 40 foot range, so if I am farther away from that, that would be at a -2

-2 for each 40 ft, so it could be -10 too. I imagined this scene "somewhere in the distance".

Tulgram looks at Zharis incredulously but does not comment.

He said "across the plaza" and it is as we are exiting, not as we are observing from the roof, plus the idea that we can choose to interfere or not... it can't be hundreds of feet away or we probably wouldn't have the time to interfere, so I assumed that we were closer. I just mentioned the limitation because it is a shorter range than my other pistols.

"Everything we found so far has been hostile, presuming a robot will be benign just because it has a humanoid form would be..." - stops talking when Zharis shoots at the scorpions.

Jin takes cover with his singing disk in hand, ready to supercharge it if the robots charge them.

"Excellent." Xylian says. "Additional sources of the polyfluid." He follows Zharis' lead and shoots at one of the recyclers.

Move action to target one of the recyclers. Standard action to overcharge and shoot.
Ice Carbine vs KAC (Combat Tracking; reduces penalties due to range and AC bonuses from cover by 4: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (7) + 10 = 17
P + C Damage: 1d8 + 5 + 1d6 ⇒ (3) + 5 + (5) = 13

As the scene unfolds in front of them, Tulgram begins to discuss options before Zharis peremptorily opens fire! Her sonic blast creates stress fractures in one of the reclaimers.

Wow, that escalated quickly! :) This scene is on the new Slide # 2. The reclaimers are Yellow and Blue, while the smaller fleeing robot is Red (a picture is on the left margin of the slide). Please ignore representations of plantlife on the grid--I swiped a map from another source, and so far you haven't seen any signs of organic life on Noma.

I'm going to treat your intervention as a Surprise Round (one standard or move action). With range penalties, Zharis has a -4 on the attack roll, but a modified 16 vs EAC still hits Yellow. Xylian, as a move action you can do Combat Tracking on one of the reclaimers. Jin, it sounds like you'll have done a readied action as a standard action.

Hani and Tulgram, please go ahead and take your Surprise Round action, and then I'll roll Initiative for Round 1.

Hani grunts, powers up his weapons, and steps forward.

Moves as shown on map.

Allies is a good idea Tulgram, but I'm not interested in allying with the bad guys. Let's save the little one, and figure out if we can talk to it. Maybe it will be grateful, or at least more flexible than the mindless recyclers.

Bah! - it seems that Tulgram has a lot of dissatisfied comments, but he does not consider it necessary to voice them now. Maybe later, but not during the fight. Duergar raises his small pistol into his hands and shoots at Hani. Hold on. We already know ye're goin' to need it...

Basic Booster: +1 enhancement bonus to AC for 5 rounds

Hani advances toward the inter-robot battle, bolstered by reflex-enhancing serum administered by Tulgram.

INITIATIVE (Round 1)

Xylian
Zharis
Hani
Reclaimers
Jin
Small Robot
Tulgram

Bold should go!