Chaos in Korvosa-GMKoolKobold's Curse of the Crimson Throne

Game Master KoolKobold

Dotting

Hello hello! Thanks for selecting Prax GMKK!

Hello hello

had to change her name to be able to make a profile

Note that my mental health has been down the drain last week, but I’ll try to get the campaign rolling by no later than tomorrow.

Hi everyone, and thanks for selecting me GM!

@GM: Take your time, I’ve been there. I still need to make a stat sheet for my spirit animal anyway.

Hooray, I got chosen! :-D

@GM: Thanks for selecting Romli! I'm excited to play my very first AP. ^_^ Also, please take your time to take care about your (mental) health - that's really important! I still have some writing to do about Romli's past...

Yep, take the time you need GMKK.

2 sorcerers!! Hello Trebelle my fellow troublemaker.

And hello to everyone else.

Hmm, a quick look through equipment and so forth shows several slings and a couple of shorter range options. Maybe I should switch out Prax's sling for a short bow? I could move a few things around to afford one I think.

Ideally we won't be engaged in any sniper warfare at long range in a city. Ballista hurt! A crossbow might be a good pick for those limited to common weapons. In case we end up in the water somehow.

I’ve got Str 8 and I’m wearing armor, I can’t carry anything bigger than a sling and dagger. :P That’s what magic is for.

Ah, wonderful to hear you won't be using me as a pack mule then. That's what magic is for.

Kind of wowed by the level of detail in Amadine and Praxedis' background. Definitely more than you normally get for a submission.

That said Divo is a former Chell noble who isn't used to dealing with rats and Varesians much yet. Not that he has anything against them. This is Korvosa after all.

I'm curious how aware he would be of each member of the party given his history in the guard.

Aww, thank you! I was inspired, what can I say. Sometimes I sit down to write a reasonably concise character bio and two hours later, I emerge from the writing fugue to discover a small novel on the screen.

Divo has probably heard of the Steleanu family in the context of horses. I figure the guard has a cavalry unit for crowd control. Amadine’s extended family can sell you absolutely anything having to do with horses or travel, and they all take pride in quality products and services. (Some cousin tried cheaping out once… it didn’t end well for them. The Steleanus take their reputation very seriously.) So Divo might not be aware of Amadine personally, but he would recognize her family name.

Thanks! If that's a good thing... I never really plan for my character BAP stuff to be so long. But I like having them worked out well enough to be somewhat three-dimensional. I also like to have a feel for what a character would do or how they would react in different situations or circumstances so they have a consistent core to them. BTW, Prax is a Myers-Briggs ISTP. :p

If Divo has been around for a while, he probably would have heard of Prax's family. He certainly won't know she has any connection to the Duvanti family though.

I might pick up a short bow. I've been in too many situations where my party thought we could get by without this or that because of some reason, only to sorely miss it when it (always) became needed. It can't hurt to have it handy.

I misspelt the priestess' name in my post, and now it's too late to edit. It's supposed to be Marcinia.

Oh, and I decided to make Kyki afraid of horses rather than dogs, just for you, Amadine. :P

Oh, and if anyone wants to have met Kyki previously, she has lived in the Sarenrae temple in the Heights District for a few years now. She would definitely stick out in such a posh neighbourhood, though she would spend most of her time in the temple or elsewhere in the city.

@Amandine I had a character named Amandine, a psychic detective investigator in War for the Crown. WftC is a great AP maybe my favorite out of the ones I've played.

It's an unusual name. How did you find it? I tend to go to baby name lists that are a off the beaten track so I must have found it one of those but I don't remember which at this point. Praxedis is a late Roman name with a slightly changed spelling.

I went looking for Romani names, since Varisians are a shameless expy of the Romani. The website didn’t say, but given that many Romani names are variations on names from other languages, I think Amadine (only one N) might be their version of the French Amandine. Amandine, in turn, is derived from the same Latin root as the English Amanda.

I've always wanted to play an intrigue AP like WftC. I played like the first book of it with an in-person group a few years back.

Only one left is Romli

I actually have the physical books for War for the Crown, need to look more into it before running it. Same with Ironfang Invasion, Ruins of Azlant, Reign of Winter, Iron Gods, Hell's Rebels and Hell's Vengeance

I was in a WftC campaign for a bit before the DM went MIA. It was certainly entertaining. My character was not much for intrigue though. Bit of a preening himbo.

I think shamelessly plundering Romani culture is an oddly fitting move by Paizo.

I expect Divo to be endlessly puzzled by Kyki. Though he is certainly going to feel out of his element in this group, so he might be guarded to start.

WftC really hits its pace in book 2. Oddly it's very much a sandbox book, which doesn't usually work well for PbP. I am proud to say that under Amandine's insightful and steady guidance we barely drew weapons in the course of completing the book. :p

Aside from Reign of Winter, I've played at least a little in all of those AP's GMKK. They're all at least decent to good, but Iron Gods and Hell's Rebels are the great ones.

Ruins of Azlant is hard for everyone due to the underwater rules involved. Ironfang Invasion meanders a lot in book 1 after the opening scene, which is very good. I hear it gets better in the later books. I'm biased against Hell's Vengeance because I don't like playing evil.

If you don't know about it, there's a guide to the AP's that isn't full of spoilers and does a pretty good job of ranking them.

Tarondor’s 2025 Guide to Pathfinder Adventure Paths

EDIT: I want to learn 2e just so I can play Season of Ghosts.

Only one left is Romli

Sorry, had a busy day at work. I'm also in a different time zone (Europe) so I might be posting late - or early, depending on the point of view.

GM KoolKobold wrote:

Only one left is Romli

Sorry, had a busy day at work. I'm also in a different time zone (Europe) so I might be posting late - or early, depending on the point of view.

same (well, roughly 1 hour ahead of you) South Africa (GMT+2)

That’s the beauty of PbP. You all post whenever you can.

Kyki if you want, you can delay your start to join the others with Amadine or Divo if your character is worried about walking alone

Going to take advantage of being dead last to let others post and get all the juicy details Divo will walk in on.

Apologies for the silence, still letting the players meet each other while my mental health is going through it (thanks to someone who is unfortunately in my life)

Yeah, Divo couldn't hit either DC on a 20 so Prax can do whatever.

Romli cannot beat Prax's 28 stealth either.

Yeah, sorry, got sick over the weekend. Thanks for keeping us going.

had 0 power for over 24hr, ill post proper tomorrow, too much to catch up on to post atm

Can we get an update DM?

Apologies for the silence, some chaos is happening with me setting boundaries. I can absolutely move the scene along if you're all ready (and have Prax and Kyki come in)

Yup, let's keep this a rollin.

Apologies again, I caught something that upset my stomach. If I don’t post anything today I will post something tomorrow.

I’m trying to see how harrowing works in PbP

First roll 19 let's go!

Okay that card rolling works. I’m gonna jump on the computer to determine your card results

I'll assume at least one of the players, in character, will know where to go. I'll get a map up either later today or tomorrow

Not trying to be short with everyone. Divo is just rather anxious about the situation they are all in.

Lot of overwhelming things happening; will get the map up by tomorrow, I promise

We will be doing group initiative, though I’m not sure how we do that. I’m gonna be looking into it, unless someone in here knows how it’s done.

rather easy

its an US vs THEM scenario

determine how each group init will be worked out, roll for each group

=^^=

hope that helps

I just need to know what dice to roll

Well, we could all roll and average the result. Or go with the highest modifier when you roll. Or go with the lowest. There's not a set way it HAS to be done.

Yeah I’ll have you all roll and we’ll average the results.

Group initiative can create balance problems sometimes. The group that goes first almost always has a huge advantage by moving and attacking before any response can be mounted by the group going second.

Block initiative solves some of that problem by using smaller groupings, which means it's still faster than individual initiative. It works like this:

Say there is a group of bandits attacking the party. The bandits all get one initiative roll. All the characters are rolled individually (it's better if the GM goes ahead and rolls all initiatives). Characters are split into two groups, those with initiatives higher than the bandits and those with initiatives lower than the bandits. 1. Highest init characters, 2. Bandits, 3. Lowest init characters.

There may be cases where enemies are not homogenous and shouldn't act on a single roll. Let's say an evil wizard and some minions. In that case the wizard could act on their own initiative roll while the minions act on a single initiative roll.

Of course depending on the specific rolls involved its still possible to have all of one side acting before any of the other side but that can happen even if every init is rolled individually.

Anyway, block init tends to weaken the big advantage going first provides if using group initiative.

I guess we’ll do that instead. I’ll roll everyone’s initiative in a bit.

So I don't know if I did that right; at least it's a learning process.

If initiative is going to be averaged, I'd like to rebuild my character using another class. A rogue absolutely must have a high initiative because they're so dependent on sneak attack.

I may only be in Rogue for 3 or so levels, but it's hard enough to make a rogue work to good effect as it is. Gimping rogue further by reducing the likelihood they will go first in a combat while enemies are flat-footed is more than I'm willing to try to work around.