I really should have looked into the Innate Spells rules a bit more. I'm now regretting my choice of the Arcane Tattoo given it requires CHA, Tibold's weakest stat...
Feel free to sub it out for something better Tibold :-)
Wednesday we will have you looking for trouble again as you are all good now!! Tons of hidden rolls made to speed up gameplay -- searches and recall knowledge (society and thievery for Black Tear info).
It is reasonable what you put in your room can be recovered later, so the location of any loot not carried is Room A1 Aldori Manor.
We can add a familiar token if you like Brightberry, but familiars tend to be noncombatants. Some do use them for exploration, but I do not thing your familiar is that kind. A favorite familiar ability of my home group is recover a focus point, and for alchemists to get reagents.
I think the party composition is quite good, and now that you are in armor, things will go more smoothly. Remember armor confers some resistances (breastplate some slashing resistance, chain some critical protection) -- these are easily overlooked. And, if you meet the armor strength requirement, no skill penalty and ignore first 5' of move penalty.
I really should have stabilized Iradyiel with an orizon, and then used medicine do heal instead of using a first level spell right off the bat. Lesson learned.
I'll leave Redleaf off the table then. Np.
Lyra does not take 1 fire damage. For those new to 2e, stealth and search all resolved together in the initiative round. Those using stealth have to beat what used to be passive perception 10+perception in stealth to be concealed. The lucky roll of the cutthroats achieved this.
The cutthroats have taken cover and used the hide action. They get to roll stealth and I forgot to add their 4 cover bonus to their stealth rolls, so Lyra cant see any token greater than 7 token. Anyone with a perceptions DC (10+perception) of the stealth check can see the hider. Rather than put the stealth roll on the token I put stealth-10 on them to make it easier.
Seek single action
Concentrate Secret
Source Core Rulebook pg. 471 4.0
You scan an area for signs of creatures or objects. If you're looking for creatures, choose an area you're scanning. If precision is necessary, the GM can have you select a 30-foot cone or a 15-foot burst within line of sight. You might take a penalty if you choose an area that's far away.
If you're using Seek to search for objects (including secret doors and hazards), you search up to a 10-foot square adjacent to you. The GM might determine you need to Seek as an activity, taking more actions or even minutes or hours if you're searching a particularly cluttered area.
The GM attempts a single secret Perception check for you and compares the result to the Stealth DCs of any undetected or hidden creatures in the area or the DC to detect each object in the area (as determined by the GM or by someone Concealing the Object). A creature you detect might remain hidden, rather than becoming observed, if you're using an imprecise sense or if an effect (such as invisibility) prevents the subject from being observed.
Critical Success If you were searching for creatures, any undetected or hidden creature you critically succeeded against becomes observed by you. If you were searching for an object, you learn its location.
Success If you were searching for creatures, any undetected creature you succeeded against becomes hidden from you instead of undetected, and any hidden creature you succeeded against becomes observed by you. If you were searching for an object, you learn its location or get a clue to its whereabouts, as determined by the GM.
Hidden
Source Core Rulebook pg. 466 4.0
A creature that’s hidden is only barely perceptible. You know what space a hidden creature occupies, but little else. Perhaps the creature just moved behind cover and successfully used the Hide action. Your target might be in a deep fogbank or behind a waterfall, where you can see some movement but can’t determine an exact location. Maybe you’ve been blinded or the creature is under the effects of invisibility, but you used the Seek basic action to determine its general location based on hearing alone. Regardless of the specifics, you’re flat-footed to a hidden creature.
When targeting a hidden creature, before you roll to determine your effect, you must attempt a DC 11 flat check. If you fail, you don’t affect the creature, though the actions you used are still expended—as well as any spell slots, costs, and other resources. You remain flat-footed to the creature, whether you successfully target it or not.
Assume any seek actions give you all five assassins as targets.
It sounds like if we make perception, we may attack as normal.
If not, we can still attack, but only if we make a flat 11 check.
Except for the guy with a 17 stealth roll that BB and Lyra see without having to make a seek action.
Hide:
You huddle behind cover or greater cover or deeper into concealment to become hidden, rather than observed. The GM rolls your Stealth check in secret and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature you’re observed by but that you have cover or greater cover against or are concealed from.
Lyra and BB's perception DC is 17 (10+perception modifier)
I messed up before describing seek as a 15ft cone -- seek is a 30 foot cone or 15 ft burst in LOS, so assume a seek gets all baddies.
Your seek will target reveal all baddies with a number equal to or less than your perception check (I put their stealth roll on them).
If you know where someone is (in this case you do as they havent moved) you can target them hidden and roll the flat 11 or higher for anything that targets (area of effect spells like burning hands are exempt -- things with burst and cone and line in the descriptor)
This isn't my first run with 2E stealth/perception rules, but each one gets better than the last. Just note you can ◆{hide} with cover and ◆{take cover} with cover too as players.
Attacking does remove hidden, and moving at half speed is required when hidden to stay hidden (and ending up in no cover and light usually ends hidden)
And, if you are planning on meeting lots of hidden creatures this is the elf ancestry for you
Whisper Elf
Source Core Rulebook pg. 40 4.0
Your ears are finely tuned, able to detect even the slightest whispers of sound. As long as you can hear normally, you can use the Seek action to sense undetected creatures in a 60-foot cone instead of a 30-foot cone. You also gain a +2 circumstance bonus to locate undetected creatures that you could hear within 30 feet with a Seek action
Hiding needs to beat the targets perception DC to be hidden. So one assassin visible to only Lyra and BB the others visible to no one at the moment.
Hidden
Source Core Rulebook pg. 620 4.0
While you're hidden from a creature, that creature knows the space you're in but can't tell precisely where you are. You typically become hidden by using Stealth to Hide. When Seeking a creature using only imprecise senses, it remains hidden, rather than observed. A creature you're hidden from is flat-footed to you, and it must succeed at a DC 11 flat check when targeting you with an attack, spell, or other effect or it fails to affect you. Area effects aren't subject to this flat check.
A creature might be able to use the Seek action to try to observe you.
Seek needs to beat the stealth roll to find the hidden character and is typically a hardish one as the steath roll already beat what would have been a 10 roll on a perception check. Make more sense or more confusing?
Anything not an area attack needs a flat check vs hidden. Target is my wording.
GM Tribute, I noticed that you do not list a stat block with current hit points/conditions with your updates. Do you see it as the responsibility of the players to keep their headers up to date during the battle. It's tough for me to always know who is wounded or unconscious. Just looking for some guidance. Something I do for my players looks like this:
Hero's turn!
Iradyiel (0 Dying 1)
Brighberry (10)
Tibold (6)
Lyra (10)
Edoom (17)
Bad Guy #1 (-5)
They have so little that I included this -- The assassin to the left was singed from electricity
But I will probably add hp damage and status effects to the tokens on the map as I did last combat for bad guys.
I will probably add player hp and staus effects as I know a GM who does this and it is convenient. So much so that I often get lazy about updating my player status.
Is there any way to indicate places we can take cover? I feel like this ruleset is too deadly to have my fragile Alchemist just standing there while the enemies are taking cover and hiding. Should I just assume appearance of foliage on the map are traversable and Tibold can pull a Homer Simpson meme?
Iradyiel is inactive. I will bot iradyiel till encounter end.
I will try to designate cover if it is relevant.
Are you guys wanting to grab up all the armor/weapons/gear we have found and try to sell it later, or just get the good stuff? We can likely store the piles of gear in our room, but not sure how we carry it all out of here later.
Right now, I will make a loot spreadsheet with both sets.
Also, if you want/need/greed something that we find, just call it out, and we can decide how best to distribute. Don't be shy, there's enough to go around at this point.
I feel like we will sell the rest at some point and take equal shares of coins and sale profits, unless we decide to invest in a party item, like bag of holding, etc.
Thank for volunteering to keep up with the loot sheet.
I guess this is as good a time as any to discuss strategy.
As this is a Kingdom building game we're going to need more citizens in order to make a kingdom. Does sparing this guy's life give him the motivation to join us in this endeavor. I don't expect him to adventure with us, but perhaps we could provide a small stipend for him to be available for future use.
I agree we should find out who sent him, and why, but perhaps he can be of more use to us as an ally.
Also, do we want to keep mundane armor, and weapons for when we will need to outfit a militia? It's cheap right now, and having to buy it in the future could get expensive.
Just throwing things out there for thought...
Brightberry squints his eyes, clutches his fist, and gives a little grunt.
So many questions...my imagination will be the death of me one day.
@Edoom: My knowledge of Kingmaker is largely from an aborted game of Book 1 PF1 version I ran, but unless things have been significantly changed, we're hundreds if not thousands of miles from our potential kingdom and we still have to go there and deal with what exists before our claims to power have any merit.
I'm all for trying to flip the bad guys, but I have a feeling just based on the dinner scene to influence/coerce this guy is going to take a much longer amount of time then we have unless the combat in the manor is 100% completed (this whole section of the dinner/night raid doesn't exist in the PF1 KM, so no clue if there is more or not). In the scheme of things, it may not be worth investing time and actions into, but again purely speculative suggestion based on meta PF1 KM knowledge.
I would imagine that we would set aside the bulk of the weapons and armor, thinking to come back for them later. I like the want/need/ greed. Takes me back to the days of wow.
I like the idea of flipping bad guys as well. Let's plant a seed and see what happens.
Assume 20 minutes of healing and refocusing before you hear the voices in behing the manor door.
I will be tied up for Father's Day things tomorrow, and unlikely to post a daily. Feel free to bot Lyra if needed.
In the 20 minutes the only thing sure was the assassin wasn’t surrendering given the circumstances (and die rolls) — so one loose end tied up.
Seems we're losing our melee character and are pretty ranged weapon heavy. Should I rebuild Edoom as a melee Magus, or create someone new with more heavy combat abilities?
Or do we want to recruit a melee character?
Seems we're losing our melee character and are pretty ranged weapon heavy. Should I rebuild Edoom as a melee Magus, or create someone new with more heavy combat abilities?
Or do we want to recruit a melee character?
The magus is a very flexible class and the targus subclass allows you to use a shield and have ways to raise a shield and recharge spellstrike at the same time. If you want to respec Edison as a tanky targus magus or melee iron something magus, that would be fine. I don’t plan on recruiting as all encounters are balanced for 4.
Happy Juneteenth ! Was going to make daily update on Wed to allow everyone the holiday weekend.
So just to clarify... the three black cloak assassins are dead bodies as well?
I actually have the Nexus Beta program from demiplane and most of the material, so I'll retool Edoom and see if I come up with something fun. We're still early enough in the adventure to work it out.
All 3 assassins dead.
Did Iradyiel see someone he knows?
Edoom will be "Re-skinning" as a melee Magus, so he would definitely be interested in the barkskin potion.
I'm happy to create another character as well if we need to shore up a hole somewhere. Tibold only joined this game as a PF2e alchemist because he was a PF1e alchemist in the last one (which had like 6 people). What I've read suggests 2E Alchemists aren't as useful as 1E, so it may be better I choose a different class if we're running the bare minimum 4-class team. I'd rather not be the team's weak link if I'm not just a fun silly 5th wheel.
What do we have collectively going? Brightberry's a druid covering our healing needs, Lyra's got Thievery covered, Edoom's 3/4 caster for arcane...maybe Summoner for a tanky Eidolon and some additional Arcane support? Or I could make a straight Fighter to coordinate with our Melee Magus.
We will allow another day for Tibold to change his character. Even Bb if a 2e Druid isn’t what was desired.
Oh, are we a go for that?
I was planning on continuing to RP Tibold until a natural exit appeared, and get a character ready later. Tibold himself will not be "reskinned" as he is what he is, so I will be dreaming up a completely new character concept.
No pressure to reroll. Think we can manage as is, at least for a while.
BB is happy to continue.
I'm assuming the dude has Reach or its equivalent in 2E? Does 2E allow for Acrobatics to dodge that AoO nonsense and what's needed to roll all of that?
It probably has reach but unless the creature specifically states that it has a reaction to perform an AoA they can't perform one. Hopefully he doesn't have this reaction. If he does, or you're not sure you can roll Acrobatics vs his Reflex save DC to tumble through.
You can find this and perhaps other information out by taking an action to "Recall Knowledge" vs his creature type and this data might be revealed.
It's hard to imagine needing to Recall the Knowledge that a giant's arms being as long as Tibold is tall wouldn't obviously indicate the monster's physical ability. :P
When I play basketball, I don't need to stop and think about it, to understand the person taller and lankier than I is going to be able to block my shots easier than someone shorter than me. ;)
And note the step action.
Also, how did the giant hit Lyra when she's outside the room? Or is this encounter not going by the map and we're in theater-of-the-mind space?
The Recall Knowledge is to determine if this beast has the Attack of opportunity ability, not if he has reach.
It's hard for me to wrap my head around how a character would learn of that ability in-game. It makes perfect sense as meta-knowledge for us since it's a rule-based system, but how does one explain that in terms a "person's reality" would understand?
I talked to a guy that fought one of these in the bar one night. He said they were tough could breathe Frost but they didn't react very quickly
Or alternatively they might look big and slow but they can react really quickly
You just described Combat Finesse, Improved Initiative, and Uncanny Dodge in addition to Combat Reflexes if this was PF1.
There's literally no way to distinguish this as an "in-game" ability that would be tangibly verifiable for a person to Recall Knowledge. Especially considering all of those are choices (feat selection), they would not be a commonality across a race or species and therefore "recall knowledge-able."
Edit: I'm a huge fan of immersion, and the idea of being able to quantify this kind of behavior the way we assume birds can fly for example, is hard to appreciate. I guess I just have to accept that if the rules allow this kind of ability to be verifiable as a Bestiary entry in the Encyclopedia Golarianica all Golarianites learn in school, I'll just have to accept it despite how preposterous it feels. The game can't replicate everything perfectly after all.
Also, how did the giant hit Lyra when she's outside the room? Or is this encounter not going by the map and we're in theater-of-the-mind space?
@GM Tribute
Edit: I've been looking at the splash rules, and I'm surprised the PF2 splash doesn't seem to work the same as PF1.
Unless I'm missing an errata or something, hitting a Large target would splash every square surrounding the creature instead of just choosing one of the creature's squares and splashing the 8 squares within 5ft, correct?
I don’t think the intent of recall knowledge is to restate rules, but give clues. You’re right that the description is vague. Perhaps a higher roll might provide more exact detail. It’s still up to the player to interpret the information. Do you want to take the chance that the creature has this ability? To me earlier games where almost everything had the AofO rule were too predictable. I guess we’ll see how it plays out :-).