GM Harrow’s Curse of the Crimson Throne - AE

Game Master GM Harrow

Good luck on tracking down the cause of your sleep disturbance, Abella. Our youngest has another of his waking episodes, which means I’m sitting on the couch at 4:30 am with a cranky autistic 5-year old. So, I can sympathize on the importance of healthy, uninterrupted sleep.

I’m fine with Shrike taking the ring until Galewing is strong enough to carry Elric in flight (which won’t be until level 8).

Works for me. :)

So sorry to hear that Abella

Good luck with your health issues, Abella. I hope they manage to find something actionable soon.

Same, Abella. I hope there is something they can do for you soon.

@Elric, I was thinking you would want the ring more over time, so you should take it. I'll buy a talisman for Shrike instead.

Apologies for slow post today. Got a bit swamped.

GM, does Barvasi's outfit for shiver and etc. have an official name? If not, are you okay with naming it the Dream Spiders? I made that name up, but I was kind of thinking it would fit with him being the King of Spiders and running a lot of shiver, but I forgot to ask about this earlier. Now it makes even more sense with his whole spider theme.

The outfit as in the gang? It does not have a name, and I think that would be intentional as Barvasi wouldn't want a group identity to potentially supersede their loyalty to him.

Yes, I meant the gang. Okay, got it.

(Just since they're not there. Pava would be getting slyly rowdy at Elric's lil striptease)

What, you’ve never seen a muscular, tattooed marine strip down to the waist and then rub his upper body with soap and hot water?

Hey, sorry for going radio silent this weekend. I've been dealing with a recruitment (trying to narrow down 32 submissions to 6 and there are a lot of really, really good ones in there) and a bout of depression-induced apathy. I'll try catching up tomorrow.

No worries Audria. Good to hear from you. I hope you're pulling through and that your recruitment and new RotRL campaign goes great!

I've been a little absent as well, apologies for that. I fell into the Pit of Despair™ for a bit and also been busy looking for work so I can feed my cats.

I will move us on and people can tie up any loose threads in the watchtower later.

Hope you get a good cat feeding money making opportunity soon, GM Harrow.

I did post a summary of Shane settling in, but while folks are free to add to it, it's not meant to be a major RP thing so much as documenting that Shane didn't just go in there, use the chamberpot, and flip the ghost off ;)

Quick note Elric, Pava's planning on meeting up with y'all after this, so they're not here with you at this time.

Quick note Elric, Pava's planning on meeting up with y'all after this, so they're not here with you at this time.

Noted. In that case, Elric just looks around and wonders where Pava is.

Any answer from Majenko about the healing, GM? If he says yes, she'll lead him there (a townhouse in the University district) before taking Shane to Zellara's house. I'll try to get a moving-on post up by tomorrow morning, regardless.

Sorry, it slipped my mind! Majenko absolutely agrees to it, he's happy to help and express his gratitude.

No worries, thanks GM. Cool, so I'll assume that happened in my next post, or maybe write up a little paragraph for it if I feel up to it.

Speaking of healing, did Majenko allow Audria to do a LoH on him?

Yup. He's starting to enjoy the attention, I think. :)

Hope the 1 HP of healing was of some help to the poor guy.

It's the miraculous divine mending of flesh thought that counts!

And the fact that it was such a bad roll is just going to add to Audria's anxiety about being a chosen one. Gotta love it when the dice decide that they really want to bring out a particular trait.

Well i finally got a letter from my doctor to get me out of having to commute for the next month while we figure out my pain issues, so the problem is not resolved but I should not be stretched as thin on my energy for a bit.

Well, it sounds like things are at least going in the right direction, if slowly.

Sounds like we know we're going to be facing undead and some kind of magic user in Rolth. If we have a consumables budget (250 gp total?), I'd go for a couple of holy weapon balms (30 gp) first, and then maybe oil of bless weapon (30 gp) as well as the holy water (25 gp), perhaps a smog pellet (40 gp), a few scrolls of protection from evil (25 gp), maybe a soothe syrup (25 gp) or stillgut (50 gp).

Good shopping list. Elric already has some oil of bless weapon and a potion of protection against evil, but more can’t hurt.

I'll pitch in whatever I have left after picking up something that can smash skeletons. Audria's going to tell Brother Theolan and Sister Jenelyn why they need to holy water, and I'm sure they are both knowledgeable enough to know that she'll need something besides her Halberd. Besides, she's got to go back there to pick up her gear anyway.

Oh, good call about bludgeoning weapons. I'll look for some blunt arrows (2 gp) and a cestus (5 gp), since the cestus is a light (finessable) weapon that doesn't appreciably add to weight, and you can wield another weapon while wearing it (so no need to spend actions switching between weapons.)

I've got gauntlets, but I'd like to get something that hits harder than a 1d3.

And if I'm being honest, I've been running Crypt of the Everflame and throwing a lot of skeletons at my party. That's probably why it was top of mind for me.

Definitely good to go for the bigger damage if you reasonably can. I'm a bit limited by the limited choices for finessable bludgeoning weapons. I guess you can also finesse-wield a light mace, but the difference between 1d4 and 1d6 doesn't feel worth the extra weight and having to switch between weapons.

It also occurs to me that zombified creatures are DR/slashing instead of bludgeoning. This isn't a problem for Audria or Abella, but it might be for Shrike, Elric and Pava. The difference between a 1d4 dagger and the best slashing weapon Shrike can finesse-wield (the 1d10 elven curve blade) is big enough that it might be worth buying one if she can do so at 80 gp. A big expense for a foe we might not face, but it might come up later too.

Loot: 1500 gp party reward for the letters and Barvasi's death. Note that this is in addition to the 1000 gp bribe money, which you may also keep.

"And that's how I was able to afford this new bed." ;)

Elric's Lucerne hammer can deal both bludgeoning and piercing dmg and he has a longsword for slashing. And the raw damage output to punch through DR/-

Pava basically gets by at this level on Sneak Attack and +4 damage mod, so for them it's really just a cestus or dagger question, and they've got both.

I've added 1000 gp from the initial bribe-money, an advance of 250 for purchasing equipment for the upcoming mission, and a 1500 gp promissory note to the loot inventory sheet. Are we selling and shopping, or just splitting cash and shopping? Just splitting cash and the note would be around 570 gp per character. A full sell of everything I suspect we won't want (including that dust of appearance, but keeping most of the consumables and the ring of feather fall) would result in around 1200 gp per character.

I'm okay with selling the dust of appearance. I think a wand of glitterdust would be far more cost effective for what it does, but that's just me. I'm not seeing anything that I want on the list.

We may want to see if the guard has a bounty up for poisons. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think any of us can use them safely.

Trying to turn in the poisons is a good idea. We currently don't know what they are or how much they're worth. I think only Abella has both the detect poison cantrip and the Craft (Alchemy) skill necessary to find out, as far as I can tell. It should be a DC 20 Wisdom check or Craft (Alchemy) check.

A wand of glitterdust would be 4500 gp, as a second-level spell, and so perhaps a bit too expensive for now. But a wand of faerie fire should be only 750. It's a first-level druid spell, however, and we don't have anyone for whom it's already on their spell list. I wouldn't mind investing in a faerie fire wand as a party, but Pava is really the only one who can use it, with Use Magic Device, and will make that DC 20 roll a little less than half the time. The 40 gp smog smoke pellet is a stopgap counter for invisibility that anyone can use.

Any other votes for whether to do the quicker split-and-shop (571.5 gp each) or the full sell-split-and-shop (1256.58 gp each plus any poison reward)? Vote on a wand of faerie fire?

I vote full sell and no on the wand, mainly because I think we could find better uses for 750 gp, though having access to spells that make invisible creatures visible would definitely be helpful if we run into imps again.

Another vote for full sell and no wand. No personal purchases for Elric, he's saving up for an adamantium lucerne hammer (aka heavy armor can opener).

Well, like i said, Shane is holding onto that Blur scroll, but as I dont see it mentioned, looks fine by me. :)

I'm not for or against the wand purchase so whatever others decide

We can split the difference and pick up a scroll of glitterdust maybe?

Otherwise full sell

Still need UMD or a Caster Level check (Can't remember which) to use it until Shane and Maybe Abella can cast 2nd level spells. I think we'll be alright without it.

Oh we are both level 3 so we can both cast 2nd level spells.

Regarding the faerie fire wand, I’m actually a big fan of faerie fire, as it also works to cancel out blur and displacement. My Rise of the Runelords character got impressive use from it for the latter purpose. We would have to UMD it though

If Shane can get a scroll of Glitterdust to put in his spellbook, he could add it to his arsenal. Alas, it's not currently in there.

I'm down for getting a glitterdust scroll.

And yeah, I don't know why I thought y'all couldn't yet. Chalk it up to being a bit dumb.

Okay, that sounds like agreement on the full sell and buying one scroll of glitterdust as a party purchase to have in reserve. Shane, as far as I'm concerned, claiming the scroll of blur is fine, to use however you want. If you want to add spells to your spellbook by buying scrolls at full price, though, I think that should be a personal and not a party expense, just like other PCs updating their weapons and armor is a personal and not a party expense.

In places like Korvosa where there are plenty of other wizards around, often a GM will let you use the rules about simply paying to copy spells from another wizard's spellbook, rather than buying a scroll and copying it. Worth asking GM Harrow about this, because it could save you a lot of money over time. Even for a second-level spell, the difference in total cost is 60 gp to copy and write the new spell (20 + 40), vs. 190 gp to buy a scroll of it and write the new spell (150 + 40.)

The new number, not counting anything from the poison, will be 1,231.58 gp per person. In the loot inventory, I'm marking everything from the full list above as sold or split, adding an entry of 1231.58 gp for the cash each PC can add to their personal totals, and adding one scroll of glitterdust, held by Shane. I'd slightly prefer to handwave the selling and buying and move on to the next exciting bit, even if it means skipping to tomorrow in-game, but however you want to handle it is good, GM.

Okay, that sounds like agreement on the full sell and buying one scroll of glitterdust as a party purchase to have in reserve. Shane, as far as I'm concerned, claiming the scroll of blur is fine, to use however you want. If you want to add spells to your spellbook by buying scrolls at full price, though, I think that should be a personal and not a party expense, just like other PCs updating their weapons and armor is a personal and not a party expense.

Oh, that's totally fair. Moochomancy is not supposed to be his specialty ;) But as others were requesting that spell rather than Shane seeking it out himself, I did think it worth mentioning as an option.

He might get it when he hits 4th level and gets his two free spells anyway if folks like, but not sure when that will be.

Good to hear from you, and I hope you feel back to 100% soon, GM. Good luck with the job hunt!