[PGRiS] Night of the Walking Dead PF1 (closed)

Game Master djpika

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Hello all, Yours is mined, here!

With PaleDim bringing an arcane caster who dabbles in white necromancy(?) I have decided on a sword-and-board melee ranger to help Bam on the frontline.

Manfri is a straightforward melee concept with favored enemy = undead.

He is a late teen/early 20’s Varisian caravan-traveller, still working out what to do with his life.

I’m interested to see whether this game pushes him into a ‘WTF is going on/It’s all too hard’ Tail Spin, or whether he finds his mature-britches and follows a Desna-inspired ‘torches and pitchforks’ underground resistance path …

Perhaps a little of both?

@DM rel20, I have built Manfri on the cheap, assuming 1000gp starting gold for level 2 Wealth by Level.

One concern I have is for healing at level 2.

Normally in PFS many of us would have a wand of CLW purchased with Prestige, which would be useable by Bam, Manfri and prolly c c’s PC.

Is it reasonable for whoever wants to, to pool some gold together for a CLW wand. I have 500+gp left, but am hoping to find some weapon and armor upgrades during the game ;)

PS: really looking forward to this game!

I haven't spent any of my character's gold yet, but I'd be willing to throw in for that wand, which I presume we'd leave with the resident cleric.

Sebastian can do some healing too in a pinch, but obviously the wand would leave us feeling ready upkeep from many wounds.

One concern I have is for healing at level 2.

Normally in PFS many of us would have a wand of CLW purchased with Prestige, which would be useable by Bam, Manfri and prolly c c’s PC.

Is it reasonable for whoever wants to, to pool some gold together for a CLW wand. I have 500+gp left, but am hoping to find some weapon and armor upgrades during the game ;)

Unfortunately, Chuufa- although Use Magic Device is a class skill for the Malefex- simply isn't able to use any wands at all... that would've been more of Praxis's Forte. And, since he has to make use of his Cap of Human Disguise, he won't be able to contribute to the party healing pool. :(

While I'm not privy to how DM rel20 wishes to handle things on that front, mebbe it could be something that the lodge might throw in one as an adventuring bonus?

There's also the possibility of having 'fake prestige points' that's only spendable on a 1st level wand?

Another possible avenue might be to allow partially charged wands since they'd be much more affordable, coin wise.

Of course, there'd always be the possibility of there being found treasure; mebbe healing potions since healing wands weren't really a thing until 3rd edition D&D?

It's under 200 a piece to get that full wand. All we need is the cleric to be able to use it.

On fake/equivalent prestige points: when a PFS character levels up they generally would have obtained 6 prestige points (twice the amount of XP they'd have needed to level up - 3). A wand of cure light wounds cost 2 prestige points. So by virtue of us leveling up, in PFS terms it's very likely that every character would have gotten their own wand by now (if the GM wishes to port in any PFS equivalency).

I'll be out of town and unable to post from Monday through Thursday afternoon. Please bot me if we get started.

Bam will gladly chip in for a wand of CLW if needed and be the one to carry it around. She's spent years patching up boo-boos, so she's pretty used to it by now.

The party can start with a Wand of CLW (10 charges). This will be in addition to the 1,000 GP starting gold for each character. That should be enough to allow for resting without it breaking pace, but not enough to allow for reckless risks. Resource consideration causing tension plays into the fear/horror theme of the setting, and having a virtual unlimited cure station between battles with a full charge of 50 removes a lot of the fear from prolonged combat. A Resident Evil level of healing should provide the right feel...

That's my thought process, anyway...

*We can revisit this if needed. I'm guesstimating the number here based on intuition, but I reserve the right to be completely wrong :)

I'll be out of town and unable to post from Monday through Thursday afternoon. Please bot me if we get started.

Bam will gladly chip in for a wand of CLW if needed and be the one to carry it around. She's spent years patching up boo-boos, so she's pretty used to it by now.

Hmm.., given that we're just getting started, I think it's best to allow you to do the introductions and set the tone and voice of your character. I was planning on getting the initial post or two up to allow introductions while people finalize characters; I might still do that, allowing people to interact, but not progressing further until you're able to do so. Timing-wise, I don't think this will be that big of a deal.

@DM rel20, I have built Manfri on the cheap, assuming 1000gp starting gold for level 2 Wealth by Level.

One concern I have is for healing at level 2.

Normally in PFS many of us would have a wand of CLW purchased with Prestige, which would be useable by Bam, Manfri and prolly c c’s PC.

Is it reasonable for whoever wants to, to pool some gold together for a CLW wand. I have 500+gp left, but am hoping to find some weapon and armor upgrades during the game ;)

PS: really looking forward to this game!

*cringe* and the pressure mounts :P

The party can start with a Wand of CLW (10 charges). This will be in addition to the 1,000 GP starting gold for each character. That should be enough to allow for resting without it breaking pace, but not enough to allow for reckless risks. Resource consideration causing tension plays into the fear/horror theme of the setting, and having a virtual unlimited cure station between battles with a full charge of 50 removes a lot of the fear from prolonged combat. A Resident Evil level of healing should provide the right feel...

That's my thought process, anyway...

Sounds fair! A 10-charge wand for our cleric it is!

I have done some very basic initial purchases. I might cheat and look at others' profiles to get ideas about things I missed as we start :) (I spent very little).

Also, DM rel20, hit me up about any and all questions about the Spheres of Power system and I'll do my best to make it easy to run with.

The party can start with a Wand of CLW (10 charges)...

Resource consideration causing tension plays into the fear/horror theme of the setting, and having a virtual unlimited cure station between battles with a full charge of 50 removes a lot of the fear from prolonged combat. A Resident Evil level of healing should provide the right feel...

Oh, this sounds better and better :D

I have finished spending all my gold on a mwk weapon upgrade and a minor armor upgrade.

In the spirit of the above, Manfri brings no additional healing magic. (Though he can use Bam's wand of CLW)

@Sebastian, I assume the Spheres of Power (casting?) system still uses the PF 1e action economy?

Bam has inspired me to provide a short backstory for Manfri, so you can get to know him a little better.

@Sebastian, I assume the Spheres of Power (casting?) system still uses the PF 1e action economy?

Yes. The page for each sphere states the cost of the given actions and those gained with additional talents. Similar to core PF spells, most are Standard actions.

I added a link to player slides in the usual spot. Please fill out the information for your character.

Filled out the player slides and such.

While initially I had Chuufa positioned directly to the right of Manfri on the 6 squared topside marching-order, after some consideration for the relative squshiness of the Tengu, I'll probably have both Chuufa tokens placed on the 2nd row to the right... directly below his previous positioning- well, both of the Chuufas for now [so it'd be their, instead?]. ;)

That way, he'll be able to move upfront if scouting and trap-searching is needed. The single-file ,bottom-most marching-order will remain unchanged for now, as far as either Chuufa's positioning goes.

I added some background/behavior stuff to this guy.

Filled out the player slides and such.

While initially I had Chuufa positioned directly to the right of Manfri on the 6 squared topside marching-order, after some consideration for the relative squshiness of the Tengu, I'll probably have both Chuufa tokens placed on the 2nd row to the right... directly below his previous positioning- well, both of the Chuufas for now [so it'd be their, instead?]. ;)

That way, he'll be able to move upfront if scouting and trap-searching is needed. The single-file ,bottom-most marching-order will remain unchanged for now, as far as either Chuufa's positioning goes.

Using just one token in the slides is fine. Moving two might get cumbersome.

I added some background/behavior stuff to this guy.

Have you seen Shaman King?

==SPOILER ALERT==
I may be disclosing some events that occur in #6-23 Darkest Abduction. I haven't played through it nor do I own it, but I get the feeling some of the information I've found researching Karcau may be related to this. Hopefully that's ok. If not, please let me know and I'll try to put certain sections behind spoilers. It's largely irrelevant to the module itself; I just like to present a consistent, canonical world when possible.

I'll wait a day so folks can answer... but please continue with introductions and PC interactions.

*Full Disclosure* I've played but not run #6-23. It was tough.

FYI DM rel20, I honestly don't remember enough about the scenario or city to think I could metagame solutions or spoil info for the others.

Sebastian Amanar wrote:

I added some background/behavior stuff to this guy.

Have you seen Shaman King?

No, but from that clip I see the similarity. Maybe I should check it out in full soon for additional inspiration :)

==SPOILER ALERT==

...

I have not played this scenario, but I can't imagine basic knowledge recalls about a town spoiling it too badly.

Separately: Sebastian has purchased a couple of magical items and used up more of his gold (profile updated). If the team heads into the wilderness, a companion will have to force him to purchase actual gear for surviving outdoors :)

I wasn't worried about the knowledge rolls... but the VC and flavor small talk would. I'd just use it to lend verisimilitude. It looks like there was a transfer of power during this or related scenarios. Just in case, I didn't want to ruin anything for anybody.

I have no experience with 6-23, but I'm pretty good at avoiding metagaming.

Similarly to Bam and Sebastian, I've not played nor judged for 6-23 myself but spoilers don't really bother me much anyhow.

Presuming that there's any change in the personnel at the local lodge level, Chuufa would mostly likely shrug his metaphorical shoulders and chalk things up to people in the lodge being much too busy to stay in the same place or something to that effect. It's not like the local leadership would be a particular favorite of his or anything like that either. ;p

Sigh, Paizo's site went to crap while editing. It's treating my display like my display is 3x the width and I can't access the buttons off screen. I'll try purging cookies in the morning if it's not back to normal.

Update - I had to use my phone to modify it :( Something wasn't informing the browser to set the horizontal scroll to access the stuff off screen...

This site is pretty cool for calculating distances:

https://oznogon.com/golarion/#4/60.07/-17.21

That said, the distance from Magnimar to Karcau is roughly 950 miles and Abasalom to Karcau is 1,334 miles. Location hopping for PFS scenarios are usually ignored AFAIK, but in this case answering the question of "when did he escape?" and the possible travel times for some of the folks seems kind of silly. I'm guessing we can ignore this for now, or just assume folks were a little closer to start with...

No problem, GM.

As far as anyone knows (prolly), the 'Varisian' Pathfinder Agent could have been hanging around in Ustalav for months.

Yeah, let's just assume we were called in from locations a day or two away. We're here to have fun, after all.

Heh, figured all of our respective arrivals to Karcau would've been handwaved away and all. And I got's me the feeling that our pursuit of our prospective quarry more or less starts as soon as our illustrious VC gave us all our marching orders. ;)

FYI this is what google produced for some idioms... "Ce puii mei? [Chay POO-ee May]= What the hell? (literally “What my chickens?)"

Yeah, I suspected that was the case :)

I'll leave it to the reader to decide if Manfri was exploiting an outsider's use of the phrase to draw Leandrie into the scene, for a sheap laugh.

I am in no position to judge your use of Romani idioms, GM ;)

I'll leave it to the reader to decide if Manfri was exploiting an outsider's use of the phrase to draw Leandrie into the scene, for a sheap laugh.

Sheap laughter is (the) best kind of laughter. ;p

Please place your token into the white area on the last slide. If Leandrie is there, please add a token.

Will do. :)

Also, according to the info on sheep, they use the stats for goats... in the event of any combat happening. ;)

PS. And in the case of any untimely death that occurs for Leandrie, Sebastian is more than welcome to test out his 'puppeteering' abilities on the formally expired ewe. ;)

PS. And in the case of any untimely death that occurs for Leandrie, Sebastian is more than welcome to test out his 'puppeteering' abilities on the formally expired ewe. ;)

I will try to not root for his timely death :D

I am in no position to judge your use of Romani idioms, GM ;)

On a serious note, I hope that it does contribute to making NPC's stand out a little more. I'd like to think that doing so shifts sentence structure around at times. Otherwise it's just my usual voice that comes through. This is just theory by the way, so confirming or denying this helps :P

Sheap laughter is (the) best kind of laughter. ;p

Ovinously.

Just in case, these are not swarms. They are Tiny creatures with a 2’ wingspan.

Swarms might just be more a 3rd edition/PF thing then? Luckily for us, it's just stirges. :)

PS. Good job to Leandrie's tanking; best 2 gp that Chuufa spent thus far. ;p

I just wanted to check in and see what everyone is thinking since it's hard to get a pulse via pbp. I know the game is slower than your typical PFS scenario, which is probably because it's a full module and a bit of a slow burn.

Pacing is good for me. I'm pretty flexible, though I can't commit to a faster pace for the next week or so for sure.

RL is busy busy busy this holiday season, so feel free to bot me as needed.

I'm fine with the pacing. We seem to be consistent in forward motion, but I expect further slow-down as the specific holiday's approach. Interested to hear from others though.

Apologies for the slowness on posting on my end of things. Have ended up being busy making preparations for the holidays and will continue to be a bit slow during the next few days or so with family having an extended get-together over those very same days.

Otherwise, I'm fine with the pacing thus far- even with my sparse posting.

Heh, in this case I actually meant dealing with the walls of text.

That said, I will need to put a pause on things for a week after the New Year.

Sorry, I've been holiday-busy this week, but can do daily posting now if required.

I'm OK with the pace :)

My favorite parts are the roleplay banter between the PCs, and Manfri should be ready for any fodder supplied.

Ended up taking an extended break m'self over the holidays and such, so I personally don't mind the break during the new year. :)

PS. Merry Xmas-past and Happy 2023 to all. ;)

Likewise!