Pirate Wishes PaizoCon 2022 (Inactive)

Game Master Pirate Rob

Yarr

For play we'll be using these love Gameplay and Discussion threads as well as Google Slides. You can also find the link in the header of this campaign and in my "character" header as Wishes.

There are a couple slides there I would like you to fill out before we get started for ease of play. Also the RPG chronicles link in the campaign header should be filled out so I can easily provide chronicle sheets.

Hey Rob! Indeed it's been a long while. Will I see you this weekend in Seattle?

Before I make her intro in Gameplay, will we be starting in Qadira already? She has  Ancestral Linguistics , so would have "remembered" her Kelish during her daily preparations if so.

Nope, I'm at home taking care of the little one while the Wife is at a different convention.

The adventure begins as you arrive in Sedeq, however you have a letter summoning you there so you'll have known where you are going and why and could make preparations appropriately.

Also, if anybody has the Legacy Boon from Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-21: Slaver’s End please let me know.

For simplicity and planning I went ahead and added the letter to the slides, feel free to read and pick consumables and make preparations as desired based on that info.

I do indeed have one of the two Legacy Boons from that scenario.

I have played that scenario, but do not have the legacy boon from it.

Any preference which hireling I bring?

Murabara (Medicine +10, Theatre Lore +10, Absalom Lore +10, Inoculation)
Sneezewort (Survival +10, Games Lore +10, Hunting Lore +10, Experienced Tracker)
The 79th Magi (Crafting +10, Shelyn Lore +10, Engineering Lore +10, Quick Repair)

Secret checks for things like in combat where you need to know the result to continue your turn please just roll those yourself and especially as combat goes on I'll try and provide DCs to be helpful once the surprise and mystery at the beginning of an encounter has worn off.

Having access to your bonuses in pbp makes a lot of non-combat secret checks a lot easier. There doesn't need to be a back and forth, I can just roll them as needed. Please do feel free to note them in posts as appropriate and when in doubt go ahead and roll, it's better to keep a good pace than get everything exactly right and If I really need the check to be secret I can always roll it myself later.

Feel free to also message me on Discord Pirate Rob#5266 for anything more urgent than discussion here. (I know Swashbucklers frequently need to know how mid turn rolls have turned out)

Related to this I am happy to ping folks in discord if desired to help let you know when you're up. I'm also aware of the fact that the preferences for being pinged vary greatly.

I'll assume option #1 unless I hear otherwise.

Option 1: I hate discord notifications, please don't make it bling at me.

Option 2: I prefer to keep up with the game normally but would prefer a reminder if enough time (20+ hours) has gone by that I'm in danger of being botted.

Option 3: Ding! Ding! Ding! Let me know as soon as I'm up!

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Also, I've (perhaps foolishly) assumed that y'all are familiar with Play by Posts on Paizo.com. If that's actually true I'll skip going over the basics on how things work. If that's not true please speak up and I'll go over (at least as much as I can remember of) everything you need to know.

Also Jiki, don't forget to sign in on the slides when you get a chance.

Done. I also have a hero point from a glyph, which I will give to Maldlethu for suffering through my first PF2 PBP.

Maldlethu will return the favor and give Jiki another hero point because he only gives his Glyph hero point to characters who can cast spells. I'm sorry Vanetta and Doc! XD

Then I guess I'll give mine to Vanetta. ;)

Well, I certainly won't say no to that! Thanks, Doc! Sorry I don't have to to reciprocate.

Is it too late to join in?

Actually, I forgot that I have a boon that gives me an extra starting hero point in conventions ... so I'm at 2 hero points as well.

We'll make it work Durg, welcome aboard.

Also, go ahead and add those hero points to the slides with your info.

Fan boy moment: I ran into Jessica Redekop at PaizoCon on Sunday evening. She was actually sitting at a table that was playing her own scenario! I then had a brain fart when she asked if I'd played it. I said yes, and my mind blanked on when or where, since we'd only just started this game and by that point in the con I was fried. Doh!

Meranthi/Durg when you get a chance can you please update your header with things like HP and defensive stats, also if you could either paste your character sheet into your profile or at least provide a link to it in your profile, that would be great.

Sorry, I'm way behind on updating my stuff. Durg is up to date now. (She's actually 7th not 8th, which I'll update in rpgchronicles)

I think Concealed probably doesn't affect Tumble Though but it's a weird case.

Lets assume no check needed for tumble through for the rest of this.

you forgot to roll or post the results from Jiki's Recall Knowledge checks.

Apologies for not checking with folks about being affected by faerie fire. Since the enemies seem to be ignoring the concealment, my thought was to also make it unnecessary to roll a flat check if we wanted to do something like cast heal on an ally in the fog.

Missed the knowledge check completely, I seem to be having a little trouble keeping up with everything here, my apologies for the mistakes and thanks for helping keep me on my toes

As for the handwraps my understanding is they don't stack with wild shape.

Wildhape uses Animal Form which has the Polymorph trait and calls itself out as a battle form.

Polymorph says "If you take on a battle form with a polymorph spell, the special statistics can be adjusted only by circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties."

So you can't add the item bonus from handwraps.

I think you could potentially use your own bonus instead (including the handwraps) but I'm pretty sure that's lower (level 7 + expert 4 + strength 3 + item 1 + status 1) = 16 total instead of 17 (16 from wildshape + 1 status)

No apologies needed, I'm not even sure it counts as pvp I just prefer to error on the side of caution with these things, especially with a table where I don't know the players were well and every once in awhile you run into character with weird deity anathema like, being the willing subject of a light spell or something equally weird.

Just remembered Druid Wildshape in particular gives you +2 status bonus if using your own stats so that actually gets you to a total of 17 either way. (But you can hit that 17 even without an outside status bonus).

Realized this was a bit of a blind spot in the rules to me and spent some time today reading up on wild shape further and I don't think the handwraps give you an extra die with the cat claw either since

If you take on a battle form with a polymorph spell, the special statistics can be adjusted only by circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties.

and the extra die from the striking rune is none of those.

(Also if you look at the available attacks it seems weird that bears/cats only would get access to a notably better attack than any other form since they happen to have a secondary attack that's a single die instead of all the other forms that have a 2 die attack.)

If there's specific clarification somewhere or something I'm missing, I'm happy to be proven wrong, I love learning new things about the rules.

I think you're right. It's been a while since I've played Durg and I forgot that the 2 dice have been coming from magic fang. What can and can't be used with wild shape still confuses me. :) My apologies for getting that wrong. The bite is 2d6 (though not agile) so I would use that for the first attack and the claws for the second. Let me know if you need me to go back and fix my last attack.

Did the math from your l;ast attack based on what I thought was correct, went ahead and botted your final attack here as well, happy to move up with the adventure from here.

Go ahead and roll your PaizoCon d20 for fabulous prizes.

PaizoCon: 1d20 ⇒ 19

Fabulous Prize?: 1d20 ⇒ 10

What's Behind Door #2?: 1d20 ⇒ 13

A goat.

1d20 ⇒ 7

Well, it's normally a lucky number, just not today.

Prize roll: 1d20 ⇒ 6

I feel like we're in a Kobayashi Maru situation. We were sent to find out what happened and rescue the staff and guests.

Perizia has made it clear she'll only free the guests if we kill Corvius. But we have a suspicion that even then she won't free them.

Corvius can't free them on his own, and even if he could, it's not his priority. Killing him is understandably against our general mores, especially as he's "done nothing wrong" except host a party where things got out of hand.

Personally I doubt we could banish or kill Perizia. I think we could kill Corvius. However, if we don't, Perizia will absolutely not honor her deal, and we'll be back to the stalemate that they're currently already in.

Someone mentioned imprisoning him, but he's done nothing illegal. Genie-slavery-binding is perfectly legal here, and he's an important and wealthy man in this city.

So, like I said, I feel like there's no "right answer."

In character, Vanetta is CG with a heart of gold. She feels bad for the torment that the guests have been put through. But she has absolutely no sympathy for Corvius and applauds Perizia's goal of freeing the other genies, even if she disapproves of her methods re: the guests.

I vote to just kill him and hope she follows thru on her promise.

I’ve run this scenario before, so I’ll abstain from voting. This also works out in-character because Maldlethu is disheartened at the reality that he’ll have to oppose one (or both) of these talented magic-users. XD

It's definitely designed to be an uncomfortable situation and there's not a clear easy/right answer.

That said I think Vanetta has ascribed too much power to Perizia. Both her and Corvius are powerful but they are both constantly spending nearly all their power stalemated against each other.

There are definitely fewer "go place, kill things, take loot" scenarios than there used to be.

Although Jiki is CN, he is also former Aspis and does not want to do the things they do when possible, so kill 'em all is not his preferred method. Still, it does seem like our options are narrowing to that.

As a note there's some question on do verbal spells have the auditory trait? (Requiring a flat check from deafened)

I used to be in the definitely no camp.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=281 says Verbal: "Spell gains the concentrate trait" No mention of Auditory etc.

Arguments on why it does have auditory:

You must speak them in a strong voice

All speech has the auditory trait.

Deaf characters who either can’t or choose not to remove their deafness gain additional benefits. They have enough practice to supply verbal components for casting spells and command components for activating magic items, but if they perform an action they are not accustomed to that involves auditory elements, they must succeed at a DC 5 flat check or the action is lost.

I still think it's probably no check required but there's a reasonable argument that a check could be required so I'll apply it to monsters here, I think GMs could reasonably rule either way.

This is today's overly detailed rules sidebar. Thank you for listening.

The strongest arguement against verbal components having the Auditory trait that I’ve found is that if they did, a bard would be able to use Counter Performance on almost every spell ever.

I now have this sneaking suspicion that we'd need to fight both of them either way.

Corvius shakes his head "This would have been so much easier if you do-gooders had weakened yourselves on that savage Marid first."

Meaning, if we'd fought her first, we were still gonna have to fight him.

And which also means we may still need to fight her next anyway.

Maldlethu would be happy to use magic to get Vanetta back on her feet, but we might want to see if Doc wants to use more sustainable methods to get her back in fighting shape. XD

Do spell-like abilities use the manipulate action? I know spells don't unless they are somatic.

There's no such thing as spell-like abilities in PF2. Creatures may get Innate spells that follow the same rules as normal spells.

“Spell-like abilities” seem to have turned into “Innate spells“ in this edition. They are cast just like any other spell (though I don’t know if they count as being cast “from a spell slot” as some abilities require - but that doesn’t seem like something we need to worry about here).

20,12,14,12.

Eventually I have to miss a hydraulic push, right?

Just to double check: from the description, the spiritual weapon strike was a success - but I don’t see the 5 points of damage reflected in the end-of-round Status Tracker. Did it hit, miss, or something else happened?

Thank you! I'd forgotten that the innate spell thing was how they did it now.

The 5 damage happened, I just didn't update the tracker properly, thanks.