DM Fang Dragon's: War for the Crown

Game Master FangDragon

Are there rules for jumping onto larger creatures to attack it? Seems like something the giant badger that is Triphylla might try. I'm seeing house rules but that's all.

Nothing official as far as I know, but you are going to be requested for an Acrobatics (jump) skill check I guess at the very least.

Then, depending on what you want to do, you probably want to toss also an attack roll.

From there on, it will depend a lot on each GM. But if you want to stay "hanged" from the creature I guess things like grapple checks and riding checks are probably going to happen.

Waiting my turn, but just wanted to say I am around.

Don't get afraid by the ugly undead people :)

The good choice from a tactical point of view is to wait on the door.

That said, if it was me, I would advance to hit with Lope, as he is a bit daring for danger (or maybe I am).

Perhaps the best option is to move forward in a way you cannot be surrounded without obtaining an attack of opportunity (so you can get the readied attack and an extra attack if they try to flank you).

Sorry, posted without due regard to the map.

Happy with the move and readied action.

A couple questions:

Does Lope's flaming blade help anything with the light here?

How deep is the water? Just enough to count as difficult terrain or we need Swim/Acrobatics checks here?

I guess your sword sheds enough light to raise the illumination level to normal in a 10' radius.

The water should be five feet deep but due to a build up of silt and filth it's more like 1 foot deep. It's just difficult terrain in terms of game mechanics.

Et I would recommend standing in it, you might catch something.

Incredible symmetry from dicebot.

Yay! There's some beautiful perfection in there! :D

That second attack damage is in your count Diana, not mine! Thanks a lot for the haste.

Now that I think, I forgot to add the +1 to AC from haste, Lope's AC is 23 at the moment.

I was going to tell Valeria it seems there is enough space in the wall's hole for her to try stepping back diagonally to be out of danger as she expressed to wish.

But maybe there is no need to say saw after Triphilla's hasted onslaught xD

The Honey Badger strikes again! Considering Triphylla was a non-factor in both the Manticore and Otyugh fights, she was due for a good round.

Yup, this was her moment to shine :)

That second attack damage is in your count Diana, not mine! Thanks a lot for the haste.

That damage is at least as much yours as it is mine, though. Sure, I was the one who gave you the extra attack, but the ability to make good use of it is all on you. For comparison, an extra attack from me for 1d4-2 won't impress anyone :).

Speaking of impressive attacks, those were definitely nice rolls all around. You've been tearing through these undead things extremely fast!

It's gotten late here, I'll update tomorrow.

I'm traveling for the next seven days and will have limited time to post. Please bot me when appropriate. Cheers.

Have a good trip. Btw your hasted claw from the previous round hit, I missed that.

Cyrene won't leave good loot behind if she can help it, but I'll leave it to GM decision.

You got the loot! It was just more difficult than expected.

Agreeing with you DM Fang, let's move together to the palace! :)

Do we have any interest in trying to win over the Count and avoid a violent end?

Every ally we can sum up is good I guess, even if he is a snob :)

I've tried a couple times but he's so antagonistic that it seems impossible. And except for Triphylla's late attempts the group did not spend any time wooing him during the first part when we had greatest access. Part of me thinks we should just murder accidentally kill him now and be done with it.

Edit: thinking on this more, the Count is an irredeemable character, and I doubt the people of Merratt County would be too broken up about it. Since there's no staff at the palace except for the senaschel, we would have to kill him too but then no one would be the wiser and the Black Swan would be blamed anyway. I'm not sure our characters are evil enough to do that but it would simplify things for us.

Note it is possible albeit hard to win the count over. Lope is going in the right direction with this duel as long as it doesn't get out of hand.

Is it worth trying? Does he deserve to live? That's something you'll have to figure out, he's certainly not easy to like... Rest assured the AP is fine with whatever decision you make here (except for killing him today).

Since there's no staff at the palace except for the senaschel.

Sorry I may have given you the wrong impression, there's actually still a good number of household staff and there's family guards too. Granted most of these have been shooed away, so you possibly could kill him but getting away with it is going to be rather hard.

That's helpful. I have no insight as I have not played this AP before as others have. I would prefer to like the Count but he's such a tool.

Cyrene can absolutely kill Bartelby quietly if we want. Just let me pick up an extra level or so first. ;)

I had been trying to approach him on the arcane field before, and I know we got some influence points from him, but other things got in the middle and the efforts were thrown away, specially after his vent for dancing with his aunt :O

Now, I do not know exactly how the duel thing happened, but being an Aldori, it would had been out of character for him to reject the chance of sword crossing :)

Can we get a running tally on how much influence we have accrued with the various npcs?

Yes it's in the campaign info tab.

I would prefer to avoid violence, mostly because he's family and because of the possible political implications if we're in any way linked to his death. I'm fine if you want to go that way, though (he IS an unlikable snob), but in that case I would prefer if he is the one to resort to violence after he realizes he is out of options, rather than us going after him. Can't really see Diana agreeing to a plan to murder her cousin (not that you would need to include her on the plan, of course).

Not enough to pop an image DM Fang Dragon? Mmmm... that means at least 24 AC, Lope is going to need be a bit more reckless if he wants to leave an impression of capability on the Count :)

You loose dex bonus which puts you at AC 21 unless I'm mistaken.

Dodge bonuses are also lost when Dex is denied, so Lope only has his +1 armor, +1 deflection and +1 natural. The shield spell raises that to 17, but there is a -2 penalty for not seeing your attacker (similarly you get a +2 when attacking from invisibility), so actually it seems the Count got the first hit by the barely minimum :)

It's getting late for me, I'll update us in the morning.

I am done with my stuff for now, we can proceed to the next quest.

Thanks a lot for everyone's patience and help :)

DM, not sure if you're waiting for a post. Unless you would caution against it for AP story reasons, gameplay considerations, or we're walking into certain death, Triphylla and Cyrene make their way to the tower at the scheduled time, invisible and stealthy.

The AP assumes you do this later at higher level, so if you accidentally start a fight with just the two of you, there's a good chance you'll die or get arrested. That said I can see this little scouting exercise working if you're super discrete and dice bot is kind.

Since we're talking about splitting the party here, I think I'll run the Dame Crabbe meeting in parallel.

I'll get a post up later to set things up.

Atm I'm for giving it a shot. It's an in-character thing to do but putting my fate in dicebot makes me nervous. I wouldn't be opposed to Cyrene being the voice of wisdom. I also don't want to break some future encounter.

As I've said in the past, I have no foreknowledge of events; this is my first time playing this AP.

As it sets up we have 4 minutes of invisibility so it's more of an exploratory mission, keeping a keen eye but moving quickly.

I have all the foreknowledge, I'm just keeping it shackled right now. :)

Sorry feeling under the weather, taking an early night tonight. Will try to post tomorrow.

No worries. Take care.

I'll get a post up tomorrow. You can blame baldur's gate for this...

That's better than my typical excuse: bourbon.

Damned be the gate! :D

No worries, I had a tough long day myself, good thing to safe some minutes here!

I really don't know how Essence of Independence is supposed to work. If you're already mind-controlled you likely don't have the will to use it on yourself, and how would you force someone else to ingest it?

Pretend its a nice cup of tea?

Do try that with Triphylla.

Yes, I am more busy than I expected, but I hope to be able to post more regularly from the weekend on.

Thanks for keeping things moving!

Sorry bout that, it has been a busy few days.

No worries, glad everyone's still here.

I'm traveling for work all week. Triphylla goes with the flow.

You'll need to figure out what to do next - as a reminder you have a number of quests active in the campaign tab:

Main quest: Win hearts and minds of local nobles and commons alike, to legitimise in their minds the eviction of Count Bartleby. NB legally it's legitimate anyway.

Side quest: Establish Lope and party as the tribunes of Stachys, and take on certain duties, the most notable of which is judging criminal cases.

Side quest: Renovate the Betony Estate

Side quest: Deal with the Night Swan

Side quest: Investigate Baron Telus, his behaviour radically changed. He stopped tending to his duties and drove most of his servants away.

Side quest: Find Lope's family Blackblade, apparently this is in the Telus Estate Vault.

For personal reasons, I am most interested in the Telus quest first.

I am also interested to discover more about the Night Swan.

Is the Night Swan the quest with the lake?