Welcome, both of you!
GM West wrote: "First, a figure sits in the small room to the right. Clad seemingly head to toe with dark silks (a style of dress that is common to a few cultures of Osirion), the stranger has a small pile of books stacked upon the desk at which they are sitting. Their back is to the door, but they do not stir as the party stops outside the short hall leading into the tiny chamber."
Q: There is someone sitting in the C3 room?
'they' are sitting, who/what are 'they'? The mentioned books? Or are there more than one creature in C3?
Yes, there is someone sitting in there, back to the door. I used 'they' as you can't tell who it is, though they appear to be dressed head to toe in black silks. Only one person that you can see.
If we 'Take 10' on the Acrobatics check does that mean we suffer the -2 to research or not, i.e. does it mean we rolled or not? I guess you mean that and that there is no alternative that is 'safe', i.e. not even needing to Take 10?
Would a rope be considered too much a hindrance if we'd tie two and two?
If you 'Take 10', your simply nimble enough to deal with the bridges without worrying about falling off the side. No penalties if you are able to 'Take 10', in other words.
Basically, we don't want an overwhelming threat of folks falling 160' to their doom unless there's really good cause. For instance, DEX being a dump stat (or an RP stat!) that the character is quite clumsy and is simply going to run the risk of falling 'unless' they move around really slowly - probably crawling along those bridges, I'd imagine.. A character that can't 'Take 10' for an auto success and doesn't want to risk a roll is simply penalized on their research roll.
OK, let’s see what the DC is for the research. With the changed odds from the GM, it looks a little better for individual searches next time.
Soumral: Knowledge [History]: = +14 +3 = +17
Francis: Knowledge [Religion]: = +9 +3 = +12
Elliander: Knowledge [Religion]: = +10 +3 = +13
Amenhep: Knowledge [Religion]: = +11 +3 = +14
If my sudden change in the skills causes anyone to consider conducting their own research instead of aiding another, please make the Research roll for yourself and drop your 'Assist' roll! It was my bad for posting the wrong Knowledge skills involved, so you shouldn't be penalized for posting an action you might not otherwise have taken.
Hi!
I’m going on vacation Feb 12-20 with limited access to play. Please NPC me if necessary.
Elliander can Take 10 on the Acrobatics check and will do his own Research check with +13 next time, if we learn from the first day/attempt that the DC isn’t higher than 20. Else he will continue to help Soumral (like if the test is DC 25 or 30).
In a fight he will favor using The Biter (and channeling a proper spell if a tough opponent).
Have a great trip!
Have a great trip, Elliander!
I've PM'd Soumral and will bot her tomorrow if she doesn't post before then so we can move things along.
I owe you all a post, will get to it today or tonight!
Hello everyone, I'm very sorry for the long period without posting for the game. Work - life balance since after the holidays has been really bad. I think things are starting to improve, at least a little. I'll get a gameplay post in this weekend, or sooner if i can manage it.
No problem at all, Soumral. Glad to hear things are getting better and I hope all is well in your life! Take your time, and we'll be here when things are a bit calmer for you.
Apologies for delay. I'm here, just very busy at work of late with no time/energy to post. Hoping to get something up by this weekend. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience!
Thanks for letting us know.
The player for Francis will not likely be back with us for another 4-6 weeks or so as he recovers from a serious infection. I'm definitely keeping his spot open during that time and I will go ahead and bot the character in the meantime. As this is tax season for me here at the office, the next 4-6 weeks will likely be slow going anyway. I'm going to work at getting the next post up very soon though, so we can kick off this combat.
Combat?!? Who's starting combat? I have lies to tell...
LOL! Sorry, I cut/pasted from another adventure thread I'm running.
Lying bastard for the win!
...
[smartass]Do we get XP for that?[/smartass]
Definitely! Though as I'm using the Milestone method for gaining levels, it doesn't really mean much... ;)
OK, the tax deadline is coming up soon and I've just been drained. I promise to have a post soon, like by next weekend. Thanks for your patience, everyone.
OK, someone jump in and correct me if I am wrong. We've heard from Eliander, Devin, Amenhep and Nevitash. Sourmal is not available (and botted?). I'd like to hear from Francis...
WRT the chariot race, as I understand it, we get 1 chariot and team, which can carry 2 people (presumably we want to win it for the reward promised by Muminofrah. We currently have 3 volunteers to race (Amenhep, Eliander and Nevitash); can you three pick 2 from you?
The rest of us need to figure out how/where we are going to watch the race? (Do we want to be able to move around to keep up with the action? If so, any ideas how?) Any action we will try to take to influence the race in our favor (again, ideas welcome)... For one thing, I could chuck a Haste on the chariot team... It won't last the whole race, but 7 rounds is 7*30*4 =840 ft ahead.
@GM West, eyeballing it gives me a course that's about 1.5 miles? So mechanically, running camels can do 200 ft/melee (speed 50), so a 45 round course (assuming no fancy tricks). But you can only Run that long with magical help: "You can run for a number of rounds equal to your Constitution score, but after that you must make a DC 10 Constitution check to continue running. You must check again each round in which you continue to run, and the DC of this check increases by 1 for each check you have made. When you fail this check, you must stop running. A character who has run to his limit must rest for 1 minute (10 rounds) before running again. During a rest period, a character can move no faster than a normal move action."
Francis will hopefully be joining us in a few more weeks, as his RL issues are taking all of his attention for the time being. So we will carry on for the time being with the four of you. Don't worry about distance, speed, or any other details along those lines. This is going to be a skills test, for the most part. There are only a few things I need to know in order to get things started:
Are you riding a chariot? If so, alone or with another PC? You can all six ride your own chariots, or three of you could double up, or any combination thereof. Now, since two players aren't currently posting, I'd consider them to be either 'riding double' with someone else so they aren't making the driving skill checks, or perhaps simply waiting at the end of the race. That's up to you all.
What gear are you carrying? If your chariot seems 'overloaded' to me, your skill checks will be made at a penalty in many circumstances. Again, I'll warn you if your chariot seems overloaded before the race so that you can make any alterations you need.
Are you using any magical spells prior to the race? Either right at the start or do you plan to use them during? Obviously, if you plan to use spells during, you'll have ample time to post it as these skills test events occur.
You know the route of the race, and so party members can try and take actions along the route should they choose to do so. But know that keeping up with the chariots will be pretty much impossible. You COULD, however, cut through the neighborhoods (as noted on the map) to move from one location along the route to another, if you'd like. Again though, figure that means you could probably only take actions twice, at the most, along the route. That is, somewhere around the 1/3 mark, and again somewhere along the 2/3 mark or thereabouts, for instance. Just let me know your Point A and Point B on the map I've provided.
That's pretty much all I need to get us started.
By the way, it has been a couple months since we've heard from Soumral, I think. I've sent the player a PM to see if they're still around. Will keep you all posted.
Ok, unless we are entering 2 chariots and someone needs me to be their 2nd person, I plan on watching the race (not participating), starting at the starting line (point A on the map, in pink, and then rushing down the street to point B, also in pink, just short of the finish line...). I'll rent a horse to a) make the trip faster (just in case) and b) to let me see over whatever crowd there is.
Then I can interfere (with magic or whatever) at the start and on the final stretch...
Anybody besides me and GM West out there?
Still here, just in the midst of finals. Hopefully by next week things will calm down a bit. I’ll do my best to get a post up tomorrow sometime.
I'm still here. Was waiting for a response from Amenhep. He is a candidate driver. Anyone else? Elliander doesn't know how to drive. Either we only enter one chariot, or the GM would have to be kind to us for lacking skills (e.g. Handle Animal).
You can definitely make untrained checks for Handle Animal, if that's the concern. Other skills will come into play as well.
Bottom line, feel free to drive a chariot on your own or with a partner, if you'd rather! I definitely don't want anyone left out because they feel like they're lacking in a particular skill. Again, in this Skill Check event, there will be a good number of skills you can use, and most of them can be made untrained.
Nevitash can go alone. He wears medium armor and so weight will start to be an issue.
Hello everyone, thank you for your extreme patience with my absence for more or less this year so far. Mostly overload at work was behind that.
I think I'm in a better position now and I'm ready to jump back in. Give me a day or maybe two to read and digest the backlog of gameplay posts and I'll get a post in after that.
I know the feeling well, Soumral. Welcome back!!
Giving folks a chance to finalize their plans. Remember:
1) Several skills will come into play here, and though Handle Animal OR Profession (Driver) will indeed be one that is most often used, you CAN make these rolls without any ranks (i.e. untrained), using your base CHA stat OR your base WIS stat.
2) Those not riding a chariot will have a very limited amount of actions available to them, given the length of the course and how fast the chariots will be moving. For those that want to do this, I'm allowing you to 'start' the race at one point along the track (somewhere in the first 1/3 of the route, as indicated on the city map) and then, once your allies ride past, you can run like hell through the streets to meet them somewhere along the final 2/3 or so of the route by cutting through the streets. If you do this, show me your first position and your second position on the map, and a rough 'route' between the two on the map.
3) Two to a chariot, so long as you aren't carrying a ridiculous amount of weapons and such. Two folks in heavy armor on the same chariot will probably slow it down, but two in medium armor and/or one in heavy and one in light should be fine - again so long as you aren't carrying more than about 60 lbs or so of weapons and gear between the two of you.
4) If two of you are in a chariot, please designate the 'driver' and the 'passenger'. You can trade the role easily enough, though not actually during a skill check. But trading off in between is just fine.
Alright, well Amenhep's got a decent enough charisma he could probably serve as a driver for one. Anyone want to be his second? Alternatively, someone with a better charisma could drive and he could be a second with a bow and spear.
OK, we're presumably using Light Chariots.
Which means the basic skill for driving is either Handle Animal (Cha) or Profession: Driving (Wis) . No one has skill ranks, I think. That would make Francis our best driver (18 wis), barring magic. Second best are Amenhep (Cha 16), Nevitash (Wis 17) and Devin (Cha 17). Not sure what other skill checks will be needed...
I can buff up to 3 people with Heroism (+2 Morale on skills), and Francis can pull Tears to Wine (Clr 2, +2 enhancement to wis and Int based skill checks). That would make Francis and Nev our best drivers using Prof (Driver) as it is wis based. Francis has other things he could do to buff people (some examples: Owl's Wisdom on himself, Marching Chant to prevent fatigue for the camels...). Sourmal might have stuff to pitch in as well.
So I suggest Francis drives with Amenhep riding shotgun and Nev drives with Eliander riding shotgun. That leaves Devin and Sourmal free to spectate and interfere in the race with magic... (haste spells for one thing).
Works for me. If Francis is not driving and Amenhep instead takes that role, Elliander would likely offer to ride with Amenhep (who he knows) rather than Nevitash. (role-playing choice rather than according to game stats)
Nevitash would be happy to go with Francis. Go team Pharasma!
No one seems to be in heavy armor so we should be good with any split.
Good start here, folks. So we're beginning to see the potential teams:
Francis driving, Nevitash riding shotgun.
Amenhep driving, Elliander riding shotgun.
There are also some ideas of buffing the drivers with Heroism, as well as the stat-boosting array of 2nd level cleric spells (for either WIS or CHA) with Devin running around on the ground.
Will wait a bit to see if Soumral has any desires to drive a chariot singly, or if she wants to back up Devin on the ground.
One thing I dislike about Team Pharasma, is it makes 2 unbalanced teams: both the strongest drivers together, while putting most of the combat power in the other chariot...
Still, currently Devin isn't riding, so if you guys want to do it that way, it's up to you.
I’m good with that arrangement! Mechanically it’s not the absolute strongest but roleplay wise it works well.
I'm still doing catch up reading but if there's a chariot race or contest or whatever coming up, yeah, best Soumral is spectating.
I'll start the race tonight, if I get the chance to post. Otherwise I'm looking at tomorrow.
I thought I had posted that I'd be away.... Sorry. Good thing West knew what was going on from another game where I did post!
I will try to read and catch up tonight, and maybe post!?!
For details on what happened, I got a scratch on my right leg, barely even bled.... There was strep in the house. Everybody other than me had it at least twice, and, the cut got infected. The short of it is that the infection turned into necrotizing fasciitis. 7 surgeries and 6 weeks in the hospital and some interesting/fun physical and occupational therapy later and I'm recovering. The surgeon leading the team told us that if we'd been three hours later in the ER they wouldn't have even tried to save my leg. Six hours later and I'd've been dead. Fun stuff. NOT!!!
From the linked CDC site: "See a doctor right away if your skin becomes red, warm, swollen, or very painful soon after an injury or surgery." Bright red, very warm, very swollen AND very painful is a perfect description of my leg when we went in to the ER.
Glad you're back, man. Jeez that's scary...
Nobody thought to cast Bull's Strength on the camels?
Casting Memory Lapse on a driver might be fun.... Might confuse him since he'd have no idea where he was or how he got there!
Moving into a new place, I'll be back online after this weekend, but then taking a short vacation. My posting will be spotty until Monday, 6/12. Going to try and post once or twice during that time, but if I go radio silent you'll know why. Thanks folks!
Good luck on the move! Those can be stressful days. And for some reason everyone wants to move in June.
Nobody thought to cast Bull's Strength on the camels?
Casting Memory Lapse on a driver might be fun.... Might confuse him since he'd have no idea where he was or how he got there!
I did cast Bull's Strength on our camel. Not sure about the effect though if all skill checks are done by the PCs. (?)
Good luck with your move GM West! :)