DM Carbide's Core Emerald Spire

Game Master John Woodford

These are goblin commandos, so they are more potent than your basic goblin.

Rethink the wisdom of being in front of the party checking for traps and using a bow. Both aspects are useful to the party but they don't mesh well.

We can change our characters before playing at level 2 so what do we think, Keep the archer aspect and let one of the melee character take over trapfinding or add rogue but focus on melee?

It's not much of a spoiler to say sneak attack won't work on some things here. But some sort of trip build could be good.

At level 1 I'd just focus on an all-melee build. Early traps are inconsequential if you have lots of HP at level 1. You won't be able to pull fancy maneuvers until level 5 or 6, in my experience.

As an half-elf, I could, at level 2, take a level in Rogue (Multitalented Racia trait).

I got decent Dex and Int (14 both), so will have plenty of skills points

With 3 casters who can heal I suspect we could keep Viridian and the companion up while I focus on dealing damage at range.

So I think I'll stick with my original build idea of Fighter with 1-2 levels of Rogue but stay in the second rank.

Trapsense won't work as well but I'll be good at disable and moderately good at perception. I would just skip Rogue but I want the ability to disable magical traps.

I figured Viridian as second rank behind wolf…at least at low levels. So another front liner was assumed. But can be flexible.

If this wasn't core I'd switch to warpriest and take the front rank. However I can switch to a front line dwarf fighter if one of you want to take over healing?

Honestly I think we will be fine with this pc mix. The dicebot is the guilty party here. It sided with the evil green technology of the spire!!!!!
Muhahahaha

Also, your GM has accidentally made things harder on you. I thought all of these goblins were "commando" - but rereading last week, I noticed only 2 were, and the rest are garden variety goblins. You have been in "all commando" mode so far!

Sorry , a bit sick these days, please bot me as needed

Hope you feel better Corbrae! take care!

Yes, plenty of rest and wishing a speedy recovery.

I could not see how long it took us to get to the spire trudging through the woods etc. Was it morning or afternoon when we entered the spire?

Feeling better, and back (but will be on the roads this week end), thankies!

I am swamped with RL issues, and don't see it letting up until June or later. I hate to do this, but I think I am going to have to drop this campaign - it is very combat heavy and I no longer have the bandwidth to keep it moving.

Does anyone know a GM that might want to take over?

I'll ask around! no sweat GM Fuzzfoot: real life happens!

Agreed . It is a large undertaking and would be a lot under best of circumstances. Best wishes RL settles down. That is more important. Thanks for getting us going to a good start. :)

Hello everyone. DM Carbide has agreed to run this in a few weeks. Let me know if this would work for everyone.

Regards,
Tibearius/PDK

works for me!

Fantastic.

Excellent!

Sounds good.

Update: DM Carbide will get the campaign transferred to him and resume the adventure after Outpost wraps up (in a few weeks).

Hi, all. The campaign has been transferred, and I should be able to get started next week. Looking forward to this!

Thank you for taking over DM Carbide! much appreciated! The previous GM intended to start at level 1 and keep going to the other levels, so as to provide a level 1 PC with a steady leveling progression. Whether or not you wish to do this is up to you; I'll be happy with even finishing this scenario.

Regards,
Tibearius/PDK

Thank you!!!

Yea, unexpected and pretty awesome of you.

Many thanks to you!

All hail DM Carbide :)

Just to confirm, Using a reach weapon in this darkness would mean a miss chance due to concealment right?

I think if you put a light spell on the tip, you would be OK.

Yes to both.

Worth doing after this fight then.

Just the tip... though.

Worth doing after this fight then.

Mrs. Book can only do one at a time though, and I think she put it on the tip of someone's spear during the last battle and it should still be there.

I have a longspear with a glowing tip sticking out of my back then- feel free to grab it Cheesecutter! :)

I have a Glaive already. Mrs. Book could simply recast Light on it switching the target.

To make that work, though, the character holding the spear will have to have a light source on or adjacent to them.

This darkness is counterintuitive in that if a light source is more than five feet away from you, you can't see it. I've tried to illustrate this in the slides, presenting three cases (spoiler alert: I copied a map segment from one of the lower levels).

Case 1: Joseph has light on his person. At ten feet distance, the goblin is more than five feet away from him, so he can't see it.

Case 2: Joseph has light on the blade of his glaive. He points it in the general direction of the goblin; at ten feet distance, the light around the glaive illuminates the goblin, but since it's more than five feet away from Joseph he's in darkness and can't see the blade (or the goblin).

Case 3: Joseph has light on the blade of his glaive, and Tibearius is standing next to him with light on his mace. At ten feet distance, the light around the glaive illuminates the goblin, and since Tibearius's light illuminates the area around Joseph he can see the goblin.

I hope this helps illustrate the difficulty of dealing with this environment. When the standard party I'm running through the Spire was on this level, they scattered torches around to create contiguous "islands" of light that they could make ranged attacks through. (They also had two characters with darkvision, so they could keep track of things much more easily.)

Thanks for the explanation. Wow, this situation is certainly tough for a level 1 module! I doubt most GMs can pick up on this...

Thanks. And I also hope this is unique to this level and not all the levels - LOL. :)

Each level has it's own unique flavor and theme so level appropriate planning is difficult. Some of the level names are dead giveaways, though. For example, I have never played the level called 'The Magma Vault' but if I were a meta-gamer I would make sure I had resist fire prepared or in potion form. It would not be a bad idea to take a foray into the first room of each level and then retreat and prepare level appropriate spells or buy level appropriate equipment if you ran into an obviously themed level.

My suggestion is that we go back to town, buy a pack full of torches or sunrods, and scatter them liberally when we enter a room. Since Mrs. Book is pretty much useless at level 1 once her 5 1st level spells run out, she could be the 'official scaterer'.

Yeah; each level was designed by a different writer, so with the exception of some bits of metaplot continuity between levels, the different levels have very different approaches and hazards. Unfortunately, they don't come with convenient title tags.

I'm fine with leaving after this combat. Though things might "Reset." As mentioned before I've played all of these before but I had forgotten how bad the first level darkness was.

As for avoiding metagaming the levels, If our characters plan to check out a level then some of us may have access to divination spells.

A common question our party asked was "hat elemental resistance will be useful?"

Not as handy in core with no communal resist though.

Still a good idea. Scrolls of resist energy are pretty cheap at higher levels and Mrs. Book can get the spell.

FYI - We will be driving cross-country tomorrow and out of town the rest of this coming week. I should have time to post in the evenings, but will be from hotel wifi, so could be spotty.

Check your tagline/header folks; everyone should be at full HP now. Thank you.

PS: can we assume Cheeseman is opening the door? let's please move this along folks... maybe some kind of SOP so that the GM is not left guessing every time we enter a room? thanks!

My suggestion:

1. Viridian checks the door for traps;
2. Cheese Slicer opens the door;
3. Search the room (perception checks);
3. Rinse / lather / repeat, always going to the left first and going clockwise if there are multiple doors in a given room (picking new doors/passageways from left to right).

Fine with me. I'm effectively a fighter with no feats here. May as well tank.

Good idea. Let's plow through these rooms unless interrupted.

Doh! - Sorry about the double post. The Paizo delay got me. I cannot delete the second one - but fortunately the rolls were almost the same.

It's a thing that happens--no worries.