GM ZD Breaking the Storm Arc (Inactive)

Game Master Z...D...

Sounds good. Will make the change to the Moderate Acid Flask instead of your blight bomb.

Even better news. The acid flask would be 4d6 persistent acid on a critical hit. Reasoning

So how does Bardyth feel about taking acid damage?

If it means killing giant-kin such as these trolls? Bardyth would have you nuke the room with him in it XD

@pip, you COULD cast fly on Bardyth... but he can also literally leap the flow without a roll along most of it. (35 foot movement, boots of bounding, powerful leap). And has a +19 to athletics checks for longer jumps if he wants to go for it.

Thanks for checking on this, Z.D.! I was looking at this encounter with freelancer brain, and without ways of turning off regeneration an encounter of this size at this level did not make sense.

If Bardyth can leap, Pip will cast fly on herself. Who is our first troll target? I'm assuming it's the one that just got hit with an acid flask!

Hmm

A couple of things:

@GM - what is your interpretation of tumbling through while riding a wolf ;) I found that thread that ends up with my favorite: ask a GM :D So here I am

@Others - do we feel like we should try to shove the creatures into the lava? It deals 8d6 dmg, but I am not sure how easy it would be to shove them :|

Reasoning for "useless" comment: if that cavern wall blocks line of effect from it, (makes perfect sense, so annoyance at author for putting a tree spawn there, not gm once again) then the only area it can heal... is ontop of the lava stones, or lava itself. (Or where blue troll is standing, or the square of herondals tree and the north east corner.) Which means the healing is effectively reduced by 2d6 or more, and by the time people can run around the corner to cross and get in range, I expect the black troll to be long towards the end, and thus no time to stop and get healed, and possible for it not to matter in the slightest, depending on how tough these trolls are. Either way, it will be making zero meaningful contribution to this encounter.

I need to get my booster vaccine today, plan to update after that is done. I am still trying to sort through everything that has happened,

Am I correct that Red has used the AoO it has? Makes a big difference in what I do.

@GM ZD Could we please have some sort of indication which enemies are hurt? I don’t need exact HP amounts, but would appreciate something like Uninjured, barely hurt, hurt, and badly hurt to indicate their status.

I think his statements suggest their regen is sooo high, that unless they take sonic or acid damage, they have regen-ned everything they took so far. (AKA, guessing like 15-30... really hoping it's closer to the 15 range.)

Having reread the gameplay, looks like it depends on Ionic as to if Red has used the AoO.

@Bardyth I am fine with them taking Fire damage, regenerating, and having a status of uninjured. I just would really like something indicating general status so that I don’t have to spend time trying to figure out which are or are not injured and approximately how badly. This is something our characters should know with just a glance.

Re Tree Placement: How locations were determined. Unlike Acts 1 & 2 where it gave you control on the locations of placement, this part did not have that language. They just randomly popped through the roof at the start of combat. So I went with a random generator. I numbered the spots and rolled randomly until all the spot were filled.

Re Useless: Not entirely, if you didn't notice. The two on the far side did not come to meet you.

Re Monster status: I can add some language behind them. I tend to not add damage trackers or not since that could potentially give away hardness/resistance/other things. I will go with some language I am familiar with. Uninjured, Injured, Bloodied, and Death's door.

Re Red's AOO: Correct, it depends on if Ionic stopped short or not.

Re timer: I'll let you know when to panic. I do not break the scenario script, so I am limited to how fast she digs.

Re Monster status: I can add some language behind them. I tend to not add damage trackers or not since that could potentially give away hardness/resistance/other things. I will go with some language I am familiar with. Uninjured, Injured, Bloodied, and Death's door.

I was under the impression that any resistance/weakness/hardness was known if you hit them with the correct/incorrect type of damage. If you hit a standard skeleton with a piercing weapon, you should be told the attack didn’t do as much damage as expected. If you hit a standard zombie with positive damage, you should know it does more than the expected damage.

Thank you for agreeing to put the damage descriptors on the monsters. I’ve heard that bloodied is a D&D 5e term. Are the others?

PFS 2 GM ZD wrote:

Re Monster status: I can add some language behind them. I tend to not add damage trackers or not since that could potentially give away hardness/resistance/other things. I will go with some language I am familiar with. Uninjured, Injured, Bloodied, and Death's door.

I was under the impression that any resistance/weakness/hardness was known if you hit them with the correct/incorrect type of damage.

I agree. I try my best to describe that certain attacks hurt more than others. I like to keep numbers our of it. With the exception of attack rolls, those are easy enough to figure out due to frequency being made.

For example in the previous combat, I referenced the silver burning the flesh in addition to the damage taken.

Saliss, Hopper's bottled lightning made the troll flat-footed this round!

Great! That makes 24 damage to it! Would be 28 but I suspect the AC is better than that, especially since it likely has cover from the rock wall.

Not that good. Remember flat-footed (circ) and frightened (status) stack.

Just got around to checking all the blog spots today. I noticed something.

Pip aka HMM got recognized for getting her 5th Nova. It takes a lot of time and effort to achieve that milestone. Congrats.

Oh, thank you! I was so excited!

Hmm

Hey, persistent damage took down the troll! Woooohooo!

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I wrote it elsewhere but congrats Hmm! Well done!

Congrats Pip/HMM. You deserve it for more than just putting in the work. Your posts are always a delight to read and your personality makes you a wonderful person to represent what GMs should strive for when representing the Society. :)

Congrats Hmm!

Also, you are right. Not useless afterall, since Red died as quick as it did. Go Hopper. (Them not moving around meant I couldn't leap anywhere of value until red was dead. If they HAD moved, I'd have had a place to go last turn.... so not helpful to me. And them getting free attacks at range is not helpful to the party in my opinion. But may just be me.)

Herondel, do you want to move and sonic blue, or do you want me to do that? I figure that one of us should sonic a troll to leave the others in our party free to do whatever they want to damage it.

Pip has a scroll in her hand, she's not even bothering with bow and arrows this battle.

I can pull and use one on my turn assuming a target in range,

Does sonic stop the regen?

Sonic and acid. I'm being really sparing with the sonic scrolls so far, wanting to make sure that we dole them out to best effect. But Blue has not been hit with acid or sonic yet, so one of us should shut off the regeneration so the rest can take it down.

Sonic and acid. I'm being really sparing with the sonic scrolls so far, wanting to make sure that we dole them out to best effect. But Blue has not been hit with acid or sonic yet, so one of us should shut off the regeneration so the rest can take it down.

Wait to see if he successfully punches Bartdyth on the AoO. If he does, he takes a point of acid. It's only 1 point, but that's all it takes to shut off regen for a turn

travel path added. lightning bolt is square he Leapt from.

Yep, we'll wait to see if you trigger from Blue!

Hmm

Triggered. Have at them/cross however you all want

Moving trees... We can move them wherever we want, right? Does the three action thing allow us to replant them in the same round?

Hmm

Assuming that someone else doesn’t need it more, I wouldn’t mind a heal from Bardyth’s tree when it comes time.

Moving trees... We can move them wherever we want, right? Does the three action thing allow us to replant them in the same round?

Hmm

It doesn't say you can not replant them underground, so I'll allow it. They are are magical trees.

It takes 3 actions to recall and 1 action to plant.

It looks like we are splitting the party... Ionic declared that he is going after Yellow, and Barydeth is going after Black.

So how do we want to handle this? Added to this is that we have not permakilled Blue yet. I was hoping that we could lure Yellow near Blue this round, so that we could get both in a sonic blast.

One other possibility. We could slow down our troll digger by unplanting the seed for three actions this turn and replanting it on top of Black. Get some sunlight going in our favor.

So... What's the plan, Stan? Should we replant the tree to slow the troll? I can attempt to use a spell to slow it, but I'm betting that a troll caster will have excellent Fort and Will Saves. To do that, I need to follow Barydeth in, which means that others will need to take care of Yellow.

Thoughts?

Hmm

I moved into position to kill blue if the lava doesn’t do it for us. I would have done it this round, but someone was adjacent and I didn’t want to hurt them with the acid splash. I needed the healing anyways so not that big a deal.

I would say this round Pip should move in close enough to Bardyth so she could heal him. Let the others worry about Yellow for the moment.

If you need to splash acid around, Ionic can take it, he's uninjured right now.

Duly noted for next time. You and Bardyth have given permission.

As I said, I needed to heal so it didn’t make a difference here. With the spell taking two actions and striking with my weapon only taking one, doubt I will use it next round unless you want it on yellow.

I tried to connect with an Acid Flask@Black to stop his regen from happening. Then used one of my other bombs on blue.

I think with Cavalier Charge I may attack both trolls in the same round.But I think stopping Black is more important, and that would force Yellow to follow us. At the same time, the AOE spells in that corridor are deadly!

Pip Hip Hooray wrote:

Moving trees... We can move them wherever we want, right? Does the three action thing allow us to replant them in the same round?

Hmm

It doesn't say you can not replant them underground, so I'll allow it. They are are magical trees.

It takes 3 actions to recall and 1 action to plant.

GM, can I do this from anywhere I see, or do I need to be physically there to pick up the feather and then physically there to replant? Because if that is the case, then my replanting my violet tree takes too many actions. But... if I can do this from anywhere I see, I could use 3 actions to recall and then next turn move after Barydeth and 1 action to plant for a guaranteed slow, which might be worth it.

Busy at work, so, real quick. I will say when you recall it, it can move to where you are at.

It never says you have to be adjacent to perform the ritual.

Alrighty! Do I plant from where I am or can I do it where I see?

Where you are. That one does say you have to plant it in soil, so interpreting that as physically doing it yourself. Luckily, its just a single interact action to do so.

Okay so Pip picked up her tree. Next round, she can move 30 and heal Bardyth. And then the round after that I perform and plant... What a plan!

Hmm

I went after Black, cus it seemed to be going somewhere with that digging, which if is like the rest of this module, means it's going for the camp/ritual, putting us on a timer again. and yellow was not wanting to move into the Sunlight of my tree, so was less likely to be able to flank us. I was hoping as a Caster it's melee wouldn't be as good as the others were, and that I'd be able to prevent spells with my AoO....

but a crit and a hit later, I've lost all my rage damage, and ability to move to 15 foot reach... considered going Large first for that advantage, but that meant risking another area spell down the corridor into multiple of us... I took a risk, it didn't pay off... we'll see if I regret it.

(Once this scenario is done, if we don't know prior to then, I'd appreciate if the GM can confirm or deny my suspicions then. Just so I know if my calculated risk was in error.)

Based on the comment Yellow seems to either be immune to sonic or at the very least it isn't stopping the regen.

Yellow got a crit success on the save.

yellow save: 1d20 ⇒ 16 Crit success=no damage

Ah. Pity.

(Once this scenario is done, if we don't know prior to then, I'd appreciate if the GM can confirm or deny my suspicions then. Just so I know if my calculated risk was in error.)

No, they do not want to go into the bright sunlight, unless absolutely necessary.

oh goody. Black isn't just an awesome Caster, but an awesome fighter aswell... whelp. I'm not going to be much use now. Good luck all.

It is a troll with some spellcasting class levels built in. A nasty combination.

I should have taken quick leap instead of powerful leap. It would take me 4 actions to get across the lava. I forget, What are the rules for crossing on that path of stones?

I believe it is just normal movement with all the zig-zags. If not, then I likely did it wrong.

The Pugwampi is worth a shot. I look at like a save or suck spell with the minor upside of possibly doing damage. Inspire Courage is down but I'll Inspire next round.

The Pugwampi is very much worth a shot. I'd like to use that one on Black!

Hmm

Restrictions apply. I can only summon it up to 30ft away. It's aura is 20 ft and can effect allies. So I have to be careful where I put it.

The troll can bring it down easily but better the Pugwampi then Ionic.

So I have a few choices.

I can shut down Yellow’s regen and still move to help Bardyth next round.

I can cast a defensive spell that I will need against Black and move towards it.

I can just move to attack Black and get one attack in.

I think option 1 or 2 are the better actions, but I’m not sure which is best.

Ionic asked for help but Bardyth went down.