DM Voomer's Age of Ashes

Game Master Voomer

Are we all in favor of having the pups follow us? Lisi will be out of combat all day, in all likelihood, and can watch them.

Personally, I think it would be cool to have them grow into NPC companions. They wouldn't be animal companions as they have an Int score and are magical beasts. Providing they stick with us (hard to say what happens when we meet Momma), are y'all up for this? Hench-wargs, basically.

I'm not opposed. We will have to run that past the GM, obviously.

But yeah, for a Druid such as yourself having some wargs that you are trying to rehabilitate sounds like something interesting to do during downtime.

Fern, just so ya know, Lisi is using a few words from Isgeri, which is a poorly attested extinct dialect of Kellid, not that he knows Kellid. (I'm stealing from Bulgarian.)

Whoops, that was my bad, my smooth brain just filled it in as "elf man speaking elvish". XD

Are we all in favor of having the pups follow us? Lisi will be out of combat all day, in all likelihood, and can watch them.

Personally, I think it would be cool to have them grow into NPC companions. They wouldn't be animal companions as they have an Int score and are magical beasts. Providing they stick with us (hard to say what happens when we meet Momma), are y'all up for this? Hench-wargs, basically.

Ok, I picture Lisi using a few Hero Points for this activity. Maybe someone can help with some Aid as well. :)

Lisitsei Nagorát wrote:

Fern, just so ya know, Lisi is using a few words from Isgeri, which is a poorly attested extinct dialect of Kellid, not that he knows Kellid. (I'm stealing from Bulgarian.)

Whoops, that was my bad, my smooth brain just filled it in as "elf man speaking elvish". XD

No worries; it was just my own wee bit of mythologizing. :)

I would love to help, but I'm pretty sure you don't want me helping with Diplomacy checks.

Whew! Crit success!

Are we all in favor of having the pups follow us? Lisi will be out of combat all day, in all likelihood, and can watch them.

Personally, I think it would be cool to have them grow into NPC companions. They wouldn't be animal companions as they have an Int score and are magical beasts. Providing they stick with us (hard to say what happens when we meet Momma), are y'all up for this? Hench-wargs, basically.

I mean, it would be cool. But like you say, what happens when the mother shows up and her pups are gone?

Plus, you are talking about a 16 Diplomacy check once a day. I mean, it's a long shot ultimately.

Personally, it's all good to me. But we do have the mother to consider. Do we resort to killing her when we confront her? And if we do wind up killing her, how do the pups take that? If we don't kill her, what do we do? How do we approach that? Say we knock her out at worst, how do the pups handle THAT?

On the other hand, how often do you get the opportunity to potentially have wargs as possible pets?! Pretty crazy if you think about it. I've been in a ton of games in my time on these boards and this kind of situation has NEVER come up in any of them. Never. Of course it was all PF1.

Just throwing out both sides of the equation for you. But I'll leave this one up to you, bud. :)

If nothing else, it'll be mighty interesting how this all plays out one way or another.

My dad has a German Shorthaired Pointer that learned to smile. Creepiest looking thing you ever saw - big dog, wagging tail, teeth bared, hoping for getting petted.

If that southern door is locked in the small room then he'll just go around. If the southern door blows up on him, then that'll teach him. :P

Figure we might as well take advantage of the "open"(aka collapsed) door. Unless I'm completely reading the picture on the map wrong.

Also, if anyone prefers to go through some other door, then that's fine too. Just say so. It's all good to me. I totally forgot about that collapsed door and just now remembered after seeing it on the map. Again, this is assuming it actually is a collapsed door.

I've already got him moved on the map to the location.

Lisitsei Nagorát wrote:

Are we all in favor of having the pups follow us? Lisi will be out of combat all day, in all likelihood, and can watch them.

Personally, I think it would be cool to have them grow into NPC companions. They wouldn't be animal companions as they have an Int score and are magical beasts. Providing they stick with us (hard to say what happens when we meet Momma), are y'all up for this? Hench-wargs, basically.

I mean, it would be cool. But like you say, what happens when the mother shows up and her pups are gone?

Plus, you are talking about a 16 Diplomacy check once a day. I mean, it's a long shot ultimately.

Personally, it's all good to me. But we do have the mother to consider. Do we resort to killing her when we confront her? And if we do wind up killing her, how do the pups take that? If we don't kill her, what do we do? How do we approach that? Say we knock her out at worst, how do the pups handle THAT?

On the other hand, how often do you get the opportunity to potentially have wargs as possible pets?! Pretty crazy if you think about it. I've been in a ton of games in my time on these boards and this kind of situation has NEVER come up in any of them. Never. Of course it was all PF1.

Just throwing out both sides of the equation for you. But I'll leave this one up to you, bud. :)

If nothing else, it'll be mighty interesting how this all plays out one way or another.

What is the whole thing with "the mother" showing up? Why do we think that will happen? We found 2 starving puppies. It's a big bad world out there ... and with any luck if she did show up, we will be long gone.

LOL but we haven't mentioned at ALL going back to civilization with wild animals in tow ... and not being animal trainers. We actually CAN reasonably wonder what the Town Council and normal people would think of us having wild pets into Breachill.

There is also NO time limit in what Fern copied to us: it is an accrual of 10 successes, like it says. For SURE we can get 10 successes: could be 10 days, could be 3 weeks, but for sure we can do that, especially with focus and Hero Points.

I would have to respectfully disagree. And for the record, all that I'm writing is in an even and respectful tone. I promise you. Wanted to make that clear due to being the written word. It can easily be misunderstood.

What is the whole thing with "the mother" showing up? Why do we think that will happen? We found 2 starving puppies. It's a big bad world out there ... and with any luck if she did show up, we will be long gone.

Question of curiosity here: So why do you think it to be impossible? I mean, why WOULDN'T we think that would happen? Hey, if you can convince me beyond the shadow of a doubt it won't happen then I'd love to hear your reasons. Truly.

First you put: "Why do we think that will happen?" And then you put: "...with any luck if she did show up..." in there. There's no reason to put the latter statement in there if you are 100% behind the former question.

And then there's the gamble of us being "long gone". Confidence? Sure I'll buy that. But I surely ain't about to hold my breath on it.

LOL but we haven't mentioned at ALL going back to civilization with wild animals in tow ... and not being animal trainers. We actually CAN reasonably wonder what the Town Council and normal people would think of us having wild pets into Breachill.

There is also NO time limit in what Fern copied to us: it is an accrual of 10 successes, like it says. For SURE we can get 10 successes: could be 10 days, could be 3 weeks, but for sure we can do that, especially with focus and Hero Points.

It doesn't appear that way to me. "This requires a successful DC 16 Diplomacy check each day, and does not count as a downtime activity. After 10 successful checks..."

So what happens after an unsuccessful check? Nothing? We just wait until the next day to see if we succeed?

If that's the case, then it's a piece of cake and you would be right. I would then see it as pointless to even roll if we can just keep rolling day after day until we finally get 10 successes no matter how long it takes. You could pretty much handwave it.

It seems like to me if you fail said check, then that would be that. While that does sound pretty extreme, that actually makes more sense to me due to the fact that it shouldn't be a piece of cake to tame a couple of warg pups or whatever type creature.

But, again, this is nothing more than my 2 cents. I'd say keep the change but I'm having a hard enough time scrounging up the 2 cents. :P

Ultimately however Fern wants to roll with it works for me. It's all good. I just enjoy playing the game. :)

I think we get the pups after doing the rolls because it is cool. If the Mama come back, we offer her a choice to change her way perhaps. She likely won't and we'll get into a fight. Pups are sad, we explain why, still have awesome warg pups.

I definitely want the pups with us.

I would have to respectfully disagree. And for the record, all that I'm writing is in an even and respectful tone. I promise you. Wanted to make that clear due to being the written word. It can easily be misunderstood ...

I can only respectfully agree at this point: we know what we know and we don't know what we don't know. Never said anything about the mother could never possibly show up though, so I'm not sure where the whole 100% thing comes from. She could. For sure she could. But if she did come back and no one is within the "kennel" area of the keep, it isn't like she can just wander around opening doors and find everyone. That's why there's a doggy-door on the bathroom area ...

Again, I'm all good with your take too, but I'm not sure it's a hand wave. This is meant to take a while, this is a longitudinal task that clearly isn't meant to be sequential: why else would a 3rd level capability be mentioned? This process is meant to possibly become easier over time. Yes, I know Train Animal isn't '3rd level' ... you just cannot get it until your character's first General Feat allotment, which is, at 3rd Level. And yes, certainly these characters could be 3rd level in less than a week and a half, but it could also take longer than that.

This wasn't meant to be some big attack on the party's leadership, I really just didn't understand all the concern. She's gone and the kids are starving and we can close the doors behind us AND the rules appear to be written in favor of the party engaging in a repetative long term non-downtime task if they want to acquire the dogs as companions.

I am sorry I said anything, really.

So IF we take the dogs with us, who is taking beastmaster archetype to have them as companions? They are Worgs, after all. Dangerous beasts.

Options:

Druid with Order Explorer(Animal) and Beastmaster archetype could have both of them as Animal Companions at level 2. Then Order Magic at level 4 to get Heal Animal and Mature Beastmaster Companion also at level 4.

A couple of us could each take Beastmaster archetype and have one each as a companion at level 2.

Any one of us could take Beastmaster at level 2 and Additional Companion at level 4.

I don't think anyone should be pressured into it, but those are the best options that I see.

I am interpreting the "check each day" thing as you do NOT have to do it in a row without ever missing a day. Maybe a crit fail would cancel one success out. Realistically, it'd be pretty rude to put love and care into the pups and then one bad roll ruins all your chances.

There are some gray areas here, since they aren't animals. They are somewhere between an animal, a minion, and an NPC follower. Personally, I am fine with however you guys want to handle it. If you want to take a bunch of animal companion feats and the like, control of little Shadow and Rocco can pass over to the person who invests in that. If you'd rather they be NPCs, we can roll that way and I'll keep steering them. Either way, they are pretty young and it'll be a bit before they reach adulthood.

Fern: Speaking of learning spells from party members... How do you want to handle paying the costs involved in that? Paying the cost to the other player is one option, but it doesn't reduce total party wealth.

Unless the AP says "they need to be adopted as animal companions", I am not in favor of adopting them as animal companions. I find it hard to believe that the AP would state that as it's pretty limiting. Again, they have an Int score and can speak--I say they're NPCs and I think we should nip all this talk of archetypes in the bud.

Fern: Speaking of learning spells from party members... How do you want to handle paying the costs involved in that? Paying the cost to the other player is one option, but it doesn't reduce total party wealth.

I view the price as being the price for the material components, since here it says "Have materials with the Price indicated in Table 4–3." So it's not that you're paying the teacher, it's the components needed to perform some ritual to learn the spell (whether you're scribing it in a book or just doing some RP stuff to 'learn' it).

Sounds great.

I'll need to bring the materials with me then if I want to learn spells mid-adventure.

I just want to make it clear that I'm listening to everyone and it's a little funky that the module has placed with the ol' "do you kill the goblin babies?" (Keep on the Borderlands 30+ year spoiler) conundrum early in the adventure--it's bound to make some people uncomfortable. And it does appear that the discussion is making the party feel a little split. That sucks.

However, since there's a mechanic in the AP, clearly the writers wanted this to be a possibility. This would be far more black and white if Momma was there, dead, with a goblin spear in her, but I guess the writers wanted us to fret a bit.

Anyhow, if something happens so that the pups run off/die/lure Momma to attack us...uh, well, I'll try to make it, personally, within my degree of agency, to not have that occur based on Lisitsei being stubborn or dumb.

tl;dr I don't mean to try to shut down anyone's concerns nor make this a game of "ha, GM Fern said it was ok, so nyah!"

Here's my take on the situation. I am absolutely not attempting to split the party here. And I am aware, that I will might the person doing a "That's what my character would do." move, but here goes.

I believe the reason this is in the module is just that - to gauge what the PCs can expect from each other, morality-wise. Yasamina being a chaotic ( thus an advocate of free will ) good ( against taking a life just like that, unless attacked ), she is trying to find out whether the warg pups actually want to go with us - whether it is as pets, friendly npcs, whatever you want to name it - and then making a decision.

Now, with what Fern put down a bit earlier "eat your sibling to see who of you is stronger, or momma will come and turn you into dinner", that pretty much solves it for my character.

If I made anyone of you think I (as a player) am uncomfortable with slitting the wargs' throats here and now, that is definitely not the case.

I just feel like moments like this really allow people to showcase the morals of their characters. If I were playing lawful neutral character here, the decision would have been very simple. Wargs? Kill on sight. Babies? Babies grow up, and I prefer to not give them the chance to find their own territory, and organise a wolf pack to attack some settlement a few dozen kilometers away.

So yes, with that said, these kind of situations are when you can really showcase your CHARACTER. Not the mechanics of your build, but the mindset/moral compass they have. And that is why I like them, especially in play by post, where you can dive deep and show other PCs what's happening inside their heads.

However - as stated before, with that "eat your sister or I'll eat you both" bomb dropped earlier, I feel this is pretty much resolved now.

"Wait 'til I tell you about fish eggs, Caiten," says Lisi with a tired smile.

Some of you guys' one liners kill me, lol.

Lisi wrote:

"Wait 'til I tell you about fish eggs, Caiten," says Lisi with a tired smile.

Some of you guys' one liners kill me, lol.

Yeah, I thought that was pretty good too.

Now, about that door...

Before I open Joran's doors, for no reason at all, if everyone could take the time to put tokens where they'd be as he's doing so...we're a little spread out at the moment. I'll post once the group is mostly situated. >.> Giving Lisi control of the pup tokens for now.

Cev may have commented on this warg thing again ... apologies where needed but O M G

I have updated my tokens on the map.

"At some point it may be beneficial for us spellcasters to rest and recharge our more powerful spells. But for now, I am willing to continue on with you."

Caiten walks into the room behind Joran. Hoping to find more scrolls or spellbooks, he casts Detect Magic on the area around the bookshelves.

"Sulee, continue helping Joran with the light, and anyone else who looks like they need it."

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo K10, no rest.

No need to worry about rest
No need to worry about caution
No need to worry about discussing courses of action
The next door, whatever might be behind it ... NO concern whatsoever ... the Warg Mom tho
Just the Warg Mom
Charge through doors = GOOD
THE WARG MOM = BAD

WAIT!!!

Maybe I missed a post!
Maybe Fern told us the Warg Mom is MYTHIC!!!
Maybe that's it!

We don't talk about Warg Mom, no no no

We don't talk about Warg Mom, no no no

Ah ...

So you mean it's time to talk about spliting the party!
GOOD CALL LISI!
;)

You're sneaky, wow.

Hey, I'm just pointing out that some of these sluggers may appreciate going into at least one of these battles with a Magic Weapon enchant.

Taking a rest or something along those lines is fine by me. Dario really knows almost nothing about magic and will be hungrily absorbing whatever knowledge he can. Stuff doesn't work in the Mana Wastes reliably.

tbh, the current room only has 2 doors.

we could do exactly what the warg did in their toilet room: take some of this furniture, brace these doors really well, and stay here. If that's part of the non-rest thing, not leaving. the reality is, Breachill is close. the team could go back and do a LOT more replenishment now that they have the lay of the land and killed those goblin dogs, and hit it hard after they reclaim their energy a little.

Hello my blooming friends. I am having a blast with this game so far! I feel like things are getting a bit tense in here, though, over something that would be be easily resolved if we were in person. In person, we'd be able to hear each other's tone and read body language and have a quick, friendly discussion about the ups and downs of warg ownership. In text, in a place where some people post 3-5 times a day and others only once, the chat can last a longer time and be less clear in its resolution.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo K10, no rest.

We have to worry about the Warg Mom
the Warg Mom
the Warg Mom
the Warg Mom
the Warg Mom
the Warg Mom
No need to worry about rest
No need to worry about caution
No need to worry about discussing courses of action
The next door, whatever might be behind it ... NO concern whatsoever ... the Warg Mom tho
Just the Warg Mom
Charge through doors = GOOD
THE WARG MOM = BAD

Cev, my dude, I think you need to take a deep breath. Perhaps it was written in a frustrated but joking manner, but it comes off a bit unhinged. (And for clarity, Lisi's response right afterwards was a joking movie reference to Encanto, which from your reply it felt like you may have misinterpreted as an argument.)

I get it, it can be less than ideal when folks go round and round and you come back hoping for progress and find none -- believe me, the game I'm a player in has fallen into that hole for a couple months at this point.

I think it is valid to have concerns over an angry warg hunting you while you sleep, or following your trail and murdering some villager if you head back to town. And Yasami made an excellent point regarding the purpose of the authors putting these pups in front of us -- it's a character building opportunity. So folks are keen to feel it out in character and linger on the morality part (which let me be biased a moment, Momma is awful, you take those puppies and you love them and give them their best lives.)

Now, doors. Joran loves them! Will it lead to his early demise? Almost certainly, eventually! But he is staying 100% in character while also doing his damnedest to keep the plot moving. If folks want him to slow down I think an intervention will need to be staged in game, so far people have done the Willy Wonka half hearted "no, wait, stop..." And, oaf that he is, he has ignored it and moved on.

Anyway, I love all of you and want us to have fun. So if we disagree on things, let's air our problems clearly, respectfully, and calmly! And let's play some gorram Pathfinder! ^_^

I am fully for something inevitably bad happening to the big, lovable lug and Dario will gently scold him. Dwarves are exceptional at the disappointed, gentle scolding.

I am okay with frustrated,
and joking manner,
AND unhinged.
All good.
If it takes crazy to highlight crazy, I am totally okay with that.

Point taken tho: Cev can do a better job of combating Joran's idiotic endangerment of the whole party as an excellent counterpoint to the superfluous hand wringing about speculative danger. GOT IT.

Not sure what the Encanto problem was though; Cev was agreeing with Dario, and helping everyone speculate in a different way, kinda like I typed it.

and yeah, Team Paizo LOVES this stuff. I get that doors aren't moral conundrums, so maybe that is why the group isn't discussing them, but stealing kids, killing moms, yeah, that has James Jacobs written all over it. Kinda like killing the Troll kids in front of their father in Kingmaker. But I'm not sure the team has an issue with the moral problem; and maybe they should. Kids should be rescued from bad homes; and this is that. I don't mean to be a dork (I do tho), but the puppy rescue is just as iconic a redemption story as ANYTHING from Wrath of the Righteous. This is "lend a hand up" make a new future life-giving goodness. So again, maybe we just need to look at how we operate a little better, because this 1 warg parent cannot be more dangerous than undiscovered rat swarms behind doors (when no one has fire or magic).

Pace ... um, you are YOU Lady Fern. You are actually the hardest working GM in the GM business, and I hold myself up to that light a lot since we started this (like for real tho "Fern would have responded already, get to it Cev"). So is this campaign 'there', already? We need to keep you going? Keep you honest? Write nested IF/THEN/ELSE posts to project actions against possible outcomes? I'm not even debating it ... I guess I just thought you were doing great.

I am fully for something inevitably bad happening to the big, lovable lug and Dario will gently scold him. Dwarves are exceptional at the disappointed, gentle scolding.

and maybe this is Cev's argument in favor of rest?

tbh, the current room only has 2 doors.

we could do exactly what the warg did in their toilet room: take some of this furniture, brace these doors really well, and stay here. If that's part of the non-rest thing, not leaving. the reality is, Breachill is close. the team could go back and do a LOT more replenishment now that they have the lay of the land and killed those goblin dogs, and hit it hard after they reclaim their energy a little.

Just advocated for exactly that. Except not in a toilet room.

To be clear and say out loud what is obvious to me at least - I am absolutely loving this campaign. I like all of the characters and the players playing them. And I am very impressed with Fern's ability as GM. I would 100% continue playing with all of you - the only reason I would leave the group is if everyone voted me off the island. So keep being awesome.

Fern, some groups chat on Discord, and we might be able to carve out a time to chat on voice there.

Also, thank you for navigating a lot of very intelligent players with big opinions and big feelings (that includes moi). For some reason you've attracted a lot of great players with a lot to say, which is honestly a blessing. Far better than the opposite.

That being said, with a large party, even without wargs, with our mix of personalities, I imagine some folks may feel daunted. (perhaps including our fearless GM Fern.) Fern--you have a LIVELY group here and again, it's a blessing, but dang, it's also a handful.

Not sure how to wrap up my post with a bow; just making some observations. :)

I let Dario interrupt, as there was still some debate about resting, to give people who post less often a chance to weigh in.

Edit: Ha, saw your post so fast it snuck my reply in ahead of your question.

Clarification question: Did the next door open, or was Joran interrupted and the door is still closed?

Chronomancy.

So I did a bit of looking at our Perceptions and figured we should pair up the best eyes with the worst. We don't know about Hornet, since she was our worst perception, so I am making the suggestion with the idea it is just the seven of us. We'd have three watches, with 4 hour shifts for each watch. 1st Watch would be Yasami and Dario, 2nd Watch would be Oren and Joran, and 3rd Watch would be Team Magic. Our rest time would be 12 hours total but it makes it that the chance of someone being taken during the watch and no one noticing is quite low. The pairings also allow for the magic users to be fully rested and prepared for their watch, I think.

What do you all think? Sounds good for a watch order?

Sounds good to me.

So I did a bit of looking at our Perceptions and figured we should pair up the best eyes with the worst. We don't know about Hornet, since she was our worst perception, so I am making the suggestion with the idea it is just the seven of us. We'd have three watches, with 4 hour shifts for each watch. 1st Watch would be Yasami and Dario, 2nd Watch would be Oren and Joran, and 3rd Watch would be Team Magic. Our rest time would be 12 hours total but it makes it that the chance of someone being taken during the watch and no one noticing is quite low. The pairings also allow for the magic users to be fully rested and prepared for their watch, I think.

What do you all think? Sounds good for a watch order?

For the record, "So I did a bit of looking at our Perceptions" should be a t-shirt or something. We would make a fortune.

To be clear and say out loud what is obvious to me at least - I am absolutely loving this campaign. I like all of the characters and the players playing them. And I am very impressed with Fern's ability as GM. I would 100% continue playing with all of you - the only reason I would leave the group is if everyone voted me off the island. So keep being awesome.

I try to sleep for a couple hours and it's like I missed everything ...

I guess I created the term "toilet room"
I guess there's a love fest for Fern
(I wanna be like the co-chairperson for the committee or something)
and
I guess we're voting for who leaves the island?

Well god I hope that's f'in clear at this point:
THE WARG'S MOM

What do you all think? Sounds good for a watch order?

We could get it down to 10 hours if we have 5 shifts of 2 hours each - but that would involve three shifts of someone being alone on watch.

Also, Fern: what is your thought on familiars being in watch rotation? I usually don't allow it (that whole minions needing to be commanded thing), but thought I would get your take on it.