[Farol / PF2] Prey for death

Game Master Farol

3 sounds fun to role play.
4 sounds less likely to draw the wrong kind of scrutiny than the other two.

Hey folks sorry, but I need to take a break till tuesday, we are traveling back on our famous 12 h car drive, due ot illnesses in the family (both among canine and humanoids) we are delaying, controling the pandemic and all that. After we do the trip, things will go back to norm => In the meantime, feel free to respond to the barkeeper, So far we have 2 votes for 3 and 4, I am guessing that your bard will be primary bull-shitter ;)

Moonlight is more than happy to hide behind the bard's egregious lies, yes.

Sorry to hear about the sickness. I hope your family heals up quickly and the car trip is uneventful.

Watery Soup - looks like Ketsu-kiba is officially in charge of our cover story.

Hope that's good to go!

Sounded like there wasn't any objections to my silly plan.

Am happy to at some point go "oh that Ketsi-kiba is such a joker, here's why we're really here" and stick to that I have no objections.

Your cover story works for me. Thumbs up!

Watery Soup - looks like Ketsu-kiba is officially in charge of our cover story.

Hope that's good to go!

Yep!

Ok and we are moving on ...

I arrived, and turned out to be sick ;) We will see how severe it is ...

The activities are described in here: Slides

GM,
How can Moonlight make use of his two special skill feats, Underground Network and Leverage Connections?

Boo to the sickness! I hope it passes quickly.

GM,

How can Moonlight make use of his two special skill feats, Underground Network and Leverage Connections?

Yeah, I was thinking about that,

This is a port with focus on merchants and hunters, so we would have to focus on characters around those. I can imagine, having hunters would also mean that some of them would be poachers, not always reporting the hunt that they made and selling the meat/skin on the side, using poisons in the hunt instead of honorable fights etc. You could use it (Leverage Connections) for any actions that you can imagine could be useful in that sense:
- Getting closer to the castle with having a hunter guide to avoid the guards
- Preparing a distraction for when the action happens etc.

For Underground network, I will let you 'build it' after you spend some time with 'key figures' that could have access to the things that you need (any social/gather information activity with result of success or higher), the dwarf prospector who we would count as mercantile elite, and later you could request them to aid you in any way, transport you to the castle to help unload the goods, share some information about Ordulf or Castle etc. Or with Vid the Wise to get access to hunters/poachers network

Make sense? We could treat this check (Underground Network favor) as an 'extra preparation'

Yes, makes sense.

He keeps his "Request" tucked into his proverbial back pocket, in case they need to escape quick!

If you are amenable, I'd like to "bank" this for our eventual (and likely fraught) exit, who knows, maybe irl in a year from now, perhaps only days for Hammid!

=)

I think Architecture Lore is a subset of Crafting.

Does it makes sense that the same skill for masonry is the same skill for culinary is the same skill for alchemy? Well, that is a different question...

GM, can we mark a map with our keep observations?

GM, can we mark a map with our keep observations?

Let me try to assemble something, the books are missing any reasonable map of the outside of the keep :(

Ok, I have put the slides of the keep, trying to stick to US numbering of the floors, if I mess things in writtne text or speak about ground floor and not first floor, for what is a ground floor :P bare with me ;)

Slides are here with the green giant, with the snow rock, and with the soldiers that you have spotted.

Alright gang, we already got one Awareness Point! I’d like to make some minor changes to my spell prep going into our big day, which I expect to be a marathon.

I’m going to prepare a full-heightened Vanishing Tracks or maybe two (do we need more than 8 hours?).

Any other long-buff ideas?

Random potentially useful spells from the Divine list:

Air Walk or Fly
Safe Passage
Scouting Eye
Speak with Stones

I will update the table tomorrow as I will be traveling closer to the equator (actually to the other side), due to that today was set on packing, and since tomorrow will be journey time, I will have time to post, just letting you know

Safe travels!

…however, Moonlight’s player is down to get into a scruff, because GM described the walls as being insulated from sound.

My question is: is this the way we have to go out? If so, meaning a fight with these uber bears is inevitable, might as well strike while we have the advantage?

Or sneak by them and find a different exit?

Sneaking by them would be tricky. One completely blocks the only interior door. The other is blocking the top of the stairs, though we might be able to go along the side and jump down the stairwell (per slide 9). Or we could go outside and try a different exterior door.

I'm not keen on these things joining the battle while we're fighting someone/thing else.

So that's 1.5 votes for fighting them now (since Moonlight/rainzax are split).

You've convinced me!

With multiple Opportune Backstabbers, may look into delaying strategically now and again...

Conservative estimate that Opportune Backstab is about 30% of our damage output…

Love it!

Conservative estimate that Opportune Backstab is about 30% of our damage output…

If this is true, and Moonlight missed his attack, it would be advantageous for Sien to attempt a Strike rather than shield himself. If it's okay with the GM, I'd like to change the last action to a simple Strike.

My experience in PF2 has shown me that the game highly prioritizes defenses.

But in the case of this team specifically, I feel like "attack" is actually our best defense!

rainzax wrote:

Conservative estimate that Opportune Backstab is about 30% of our damage output…

If this is true, and Moonlight missed his attack, it would be advantageous for Sien to attempt a Strike rather than shield himself. If it's okay with the GM, I'd like to change the last action to a simple Strike.

Sure, done!

I think Ketsu-Kiba has some potent healing, will await.

Players - Do we want to spend 20 minutes in each room? 30? An hour? We have 16 hours of being trackless...

GM - does Hammid have a way to gauge how much time spent eliminating the bodies (bury in snow outside?) or disguising them as fighting eachother would take? And what skills?

=)

Ann is of the opinion that sweeping through quickly is the best way to take our target by surprise. Of course, she's the least intelligent party member, so take that with a grain of salt.

She would like 10 minutes to Refocus if we can spare it, though.

Sien has an aeon stone which heals him slowly, and the ability to make a few elixirs of life. He's not going to care about bleeding a little, though, so he's not going to wait until full before moving on.

I think it'd be in character for him to take one elixir (7d6+18 = 42.5 average) at this point, but to leave the rest (24.5 average) for the aeon stone as we move about. This means he would be full after 25 minutes of Exploration, if we get into another scruff before then, he'll start not full.

I've got more slots than I'm ever going to go through in a day, so added a soothe to Chi Sien in case trouble comes before expected.

It sounds like we're interested in at least a short break to refocus.

Ketsu-kiba is bossy, but I'm more than happy to come to a consensus in discussion etc.

Also Ketsu-kiba has a spell that's going to help cover our tracks here for an hour but does take 10 minutes to cast.

We could spend longer here than that if people particurally wanted, but pushing forward seems more prudent.

(If I'm wrong about people wanting to spend the 10 minutes happy to do elsewise if desired)

Also my apologies again for the constant slow posting, tax season is kicking my ass notably more than expected.

Also I realized there was one other daily prep bit I missed, leading us in Morning Prayer so I can potentially inspire as a free action at some point. If the GM doesn't mind I'd like to have done that as part of my prep.

I think Ketsu-Kiba has some potent healing, will await.

Players - Do we want to spend 20 minutes in each room? 30? An hour? We have 16 hours of being trackless...

GM - does Hammid have a way to gauge how much time spent eliminating the bodies (bury in snow outside?) or disguising them as fighting eachother would take? And what skills?

=)

the most obvious would be deception (commonly used for disguises) for fighting each other, for burrying, I would take Survival/Crafting/Deception eventually you can try and sell me on another one.

Ok let me think about it, I’d like to cover our trail.

I’m thinking no more than 20 minutes per room unless emergency!

No big AoE-explosions from Ketsu-kiba.

I am not seeing a description of actual soldiers, just their training grounds...

EDIT: I think GM inferred it with his last sentence!

...I think I prepped on AoE spell...

I would love for Sien and Ketsu-Kiba to voice where they want to go + decision on what do you do with 12 bodies, do you put them back to beds? hide them? DC 28 Athletics (to quickly and efficiently haul bodies away to a hiding spot) or DC 25 Stealth (to clean up and obscure evidence) - one check would be enough

I'll wait to post until tomorrow, but I have Atheltics +25 and Stealth +24, so a crit success on hiding/cleaning up the bodies is very likely.

Sien has Athletics +20 and Stealth +26, so I think him doing Stealth is the best option. I'm going to roll in Gameplay, because Stealth has a lower DC, and I think it was established Sien has the highest Stealth.

I finally got to creating loot sheet (before it will be to late ;)), I put the link on the top, the approach that we would take is:
1. I would assume you pick up everything,
2. You will sell everything for half the price - when you have an option (after the job)
3. Each and every one of you can buy the item from the loot for half-the price (since this would be the market value that you will get), which splits-four ways
4. During the mission you can use the items that you found
5. Nothing else comes to my mind ;)

Sounds good. Thanks! :)

From a Heist perspective, the more enemies are present or "close", the higher the risk of having to deal with consecutive threats.

I am okay blowing spell slots here to hedge that gamble!

(I think we get "eyes" on other enemies on the map due to early scouting rolls - very cool!)

Now that the fight is over:

Bean Panic: Oni are curiously afraid of beans, especially as the seasons begin to change. If a creature Interacts to throw a handful of beans at the oni, the oni becomes frightened 2. While frightened this way, their weakness to spirit damage is increased by 5. The oni then becomes immune to bean panic for 24 hours.

That was actually a real piece of knowledge and not crit fail piece of false intel that I gave you :) That weakness made me smile

Oh my gosh, that's so funny! Yeah, I totally assumed it was a crit fail. Haha!

Thanks for the boot GM.

+1 to Sien's plan!

GM - any way to detect magic on the watching birds without raising alarm?

Sien has a greater invisibility rune on his armor chest, and he has a wall of force spell prepared if we want to just run for it.