[Gameday XIV] GM 7thGate's The Hao Jin Cataclysm (Subtier 10-11)

Game Master 7thGate

Yeah, CMB can be pretty rare if you don't do combat maneuvers. CMD shows up more though with stuff that can grab or trip especially.

Thanks!

Dekantas and 29 Steps, do you have your CMB/CMD information? I don't see it in your tag line or profile.

Lunnette, I was curious, how did El Yama get to 3 int? I was looking up vermin companions since I was wondering if Krella could wild empathy them, and they're usually mindless until they get an int increase. Do you have an ability or item that is boosting him? His stats look right for having his two ability boosts at Str/Int with another +2 Int from something.

You forced me to go look at my stuff from 5 years ago xDDD

I bought a blue and scarlett sphere ioun stone to him, gives +2 int, slotless

Litterally waiting for the start of the next part. It's like keeping warm to a speedrun ha.

But probably unlikely we could have scored another encounter on time unless it's a social one.

Yeah, we might have been able to do it actually, it was a social. I was not entirely sure how close everyone was to scoring another success, just that all the other tables were active on a mission and only needed two more successes to proceed when we finished.

The 7-8 tier did mission 5, which is where you would have gone next if you want to read it. They started around post 95 in their gameplay thread.

how much time passed since last event?

About 40 minutes, the buff sheet is up to date with the current time/active buffs.

So, 7th gate, YAMA has 5 targets on range, but, 3 are closest, so, do I roll a 3 sided dice and see who gets the stings?

Closest targets are Lunnette, Oasis and Eskar

Yes, go ahead and roll 1d3 for Lunnette, Oasis and Eskar.

Though Lunnette can go first and move, then it would be 1d2 between Eskar and Oasis.

Reminder that you have these boosts from the tasks in part 1; you can activate up to 2 of these in a single combat. You may want to activate the Burst of Healing now, or soon (5d6 healing for everyone; if anyone asks for it, I'll go ahead and apply it since Lunnette is in moderate danger).

Muckmouth Secured: The lizardfolk lend their newfound magic to the Society. The group gains one free use of the Aid Token’s Burst of Healing benefit that the PCs can activate at their discretion.

Slave Mountain Secured: The freed slaves join the Pathfinders in battling the malevolent forces in the tapestry. At the beginning of one encounter, the PCs can activate this benefit to gain 33 temporary hit points; these last until the end of the encounter.

Eternal Lake Secured: The kappas of the lake profess eternal gratitude and heap praise upon the Pathfinders. The group gains one free use of the Aid Token’s Timely Inspiration benefit that the PCs can activate at their discretion.

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Also, apologies that these slipped through the cracks, as they came in around the time we were finishing up part 2:

Temple Secured: Once during the adventure, the PCs can activate this benefit to instantly cure every PC of the following conidtions fatigued, shaken, sickened, dazed and staggered.

Patchwork Allies Secured: The group gains one free use of the Aid token's Allied Offensive.

Round Mountain Secured: The group can activate this at the beginning of an encounter to gain +10 ft land speed movement.

For some reason I missed this. Does activating the Burst of Healing cost any action? Because we might as well use that to heal everyone at least before the encounter

No, its free. The only limit is that you can only use 2 per encounter, so if you want to use the Healing in your prep time, you can use Slave Mountain Secured and one of the other ones in the final fight.

Pfft the undead encounter, pain <_< :p

It did end up being a bit dangerous, though you guys got somewhat unlucky with it. Is good Lunnette made it through.

3 of the 4 encounters for that section had some potentially dangerous things going on, the Astral Giants one was way easier just because it doesn't have anything to it other than a bunch of hit points and melee damage. That just is not very dangerous to a high tier party unless its an absolutely huge amount of both.

No, its free. The only limit is that you can only use 2 per encounter, so if you want to use the Healing in your prep time, you can use Slave Mountain Secured and one of the other ones in the final fight.

Yeah, that sounds good. We could use the Healing Burst now and leave the Slave Mountain and the Timely Inspiration's aid token for this last encounter

Regarding this ability Lunnette identified:

Banishing Strike (Su) Once per round, when the Ruby Phoenix Guardian hits a target with a claw or bite attack, it can attempt to eject that target from the Hao Jin Tapestry. This functions as banishment (DC 26 Will negates). A creature who succeeds at a saving throw against this ability is immune for 24 hours.

Its been under some discussion in the GM thread, and I'm going to tweak it to be bite attack only. Its written in the module with a copy+paste error referencing a nonexistant slam attack from a lower subtier version of the enemy, and its not clear if it should be all its physical attacks or one specific one. We're going to go with bite only.

Ok, we'll do as you see fit

I was wondering not long ago about this matter. I usually see companion animals tend to have a N alignment, but are divine mounts any different because of their INT 6? I always thought they might as well be LG like the paladin, but I don't think I've found a ruling that corroborates that.

I’m happy to go with whatever you think is best, i was just curious about this detail

I looked at this a little, and as far as I can tell they're neutral. I would have kind of expected the celestial template paladin mounts get at level 11 to turn them good at least, but as far as I can tell it doesn't seem to have any direct alignment impacts? It is kind of strange, it feels like they should match as intelligent creatures in the service of good.

Yeah, it's a bit weird. I also assumed that maybe with the celestial template at 11 would change, but i guess it's one of the many things that were overlooked because it wasn't emphasized in game that much anyway.

Hi . For the timely inspiration boon, Is that as the bard spell? And would it be usuable from the emamation point of the character or how does it work?

Cheers

Solid Fog *sad angry archer noises*

Solid Fog *sad angry archer noises*

:( Prevented 3 Aoos but was meant to buy time to close. I suspected it was going to be out in a round.

Definitely a double edged sword, but removing it's reach advantage is really strong, as is stopping it from flying all over the battlefield. So is impeding the archery and the movement impairment to your melee though, so mixed.

Agreed - a calculated risk to buy a round.

Sorry I missed the question earlier Saya. Timely inspiration acts as a Bard Inspire Courage that affects everyone for 3 rounds with a +3 bonus (see the Aid Token sheet on the slides). You can activate it at any time; if you want it for this round, I'll retroactively add the damage to Eskar and El Yama's hits.

Wasn't following the topic much because not gonna hide it, while I do understand the logic behind solid fog, this is preventing me from properly acting. Zero-sum game at best ...

In practice I'm only losing a round repositioning myself, it's not the end of the world. I'm just annoyed on a personal level, but nothing that bad.

Yeah, it can be frustrating. Somehow this is the first time I've seen fog deployed as a counter to reach though, but it makes total sense and did stop a lot of active defense from AOOs, even if it messed with the archery a bit. You guys can always talk over tactics here if you want to bring up ideas for things you're planning on going forward.

I am kind of wishing this map was much bigger though now, its going to get really cramped in that corner when there isn't a reason for it to be.

As a heads up, this part does have a time limit that ends on Thursday. I think you're likely to get it cornered and finished by then, but we'll want to make sure we can finish up.

Yes hampered archery for second round a bit but helped three others avoid attacks. So probably a wash. Happy to dispel it instead. Would have been easier to coordinate at a table than PBP but if GM willing will change her summons action to dismiss cloud. Makes map easier.

We're almost done with this round, it impacted a lot of things so not going to try to redo this round's actions. I think the Phoenix is likely to get out of it next round so it will be less impactful in all ways going forward.

Ok, no worries as that is usually how it works - it just took one round longer to escape than expected.

I'm going to go ahead and bot Saya soon unless they are able to go. I'm currently thinking either a double move with air walk to get up over the walls of fire and closer to the combat, or a single move up over the wall of fire, stay on that side of the battlefield and try for glitter dust to fish for a low roll on the save. Any opinions on which you would like, or if there's something else you would want her to do?

Actually, definitely no glitterdust, you IDed the SLAs and know it can cast heal, that won't do anything.

GM 7th Gate : For some reason my turn didn't got posted

I'll repost in a bit. she only pulled out an airwalk scroll and cast it

Reposting now. Sorry

Going to bot 29 steps soon if they're not able to post to keep us moving.

Apologies - and thanks for pushing us along.
Was in flight from AK to AZ yesterday.

That was a memorable encounter, i liked it very much. Quite challenging as well, but fortunately, in the end we all managed to pull through together.

I thought it would last until the very end of the phoenix's pool of hp. Was freaking out quite a bit, but bad things can happen. It could have turned out a billion times worse.

And despite being annoyed as an archer, as a melee player, I say, you do what you need to do to avoid the worst for yourself. It worked and that's what matters

I did really enjoy running that final encounter and writing the tactics for it. It is left very open ended in the tactics description, but it has a lot of really interesting abilities that can lead to a highly mobile caster+reach control fighter type of hybrid. You all did great pinning it down and pulling out all the stops, and it doesn't get a lot closer of a fight than that.

You guys had to do 65 damage that round to take it down and stop it from Healing. El Yama was hitting for ~35, Eskar for ~20, Dekantas for ~8 per arrow plus more if hits 3&4 because of clustered shots. Additionally it needed a pretty high Acro result to avoid all the AOOs, which it got.

But El Yama also could get Banished or killed off an AOO, so that's in your favor but not close to certain. When that 2 got rolled, I was thinking is this actually going to make it? But then the epic reroll into crit happened, which was a pretty awesome way to end the fight.

Great finale ending on the encounter. The firestorm is always painful, but add in the epic/mythic fire and it was very dicey. Good teamwork and end result. Good time indeed. Thanks GM !!’

Just saw that you asked last month for CMB/CMD but I totally missed it. Too late but still :

+12 CMB / 27 CMD

It was very enjoyable , as always 7th gate, its very possibl that we see you on the outpost when that comes next year. it is starting to be trdition . heh .

Thank you all players for the excelent grpup

@29 steps. Very intresting concept and yes this Phoenix just went to the 29th step, ready to start again huh?

Indeed, quite the ending. The song of Dekantas really did a number as well there for the Cold damage. And I want to belive that Hampered debilitation was also a deal changer as it limited the phoenix's movement from getting far away from the party, as well as from the solid fog (I think i never missed so much on a 20% concealment before, but that was just bad luck, and it was that or dealing with the AoOs)

Yeah, it's would seem like it's a tradition, we might see you again next year's outpost with the same characters if they don't get to reach seeker level before that. But in that case, it would have to be another set of character at that point

This mission pushes my gnome to 11th level.

I'm leaning heavily toward another level of Unchained Rogue for the extra Sneak d6.

The hamper was a big swing. If you go open the spoiler tags for the round where I miscalculated CMD and he got hampered off an AOO, he hits El Yama which is very likely a banish, and that shifts the whole fight in a huge way. The hamper stopped him from clearing the fog and negated the AOOs.

Definitely, I like running these and generally prefer high tier adventures so I'm happy I've been able to run the 10-11 slot 2 years in a row. I'll have to see how life goes but there's a decent chance I'll try to be involved in the next outpost and gamedays multi table specials.

Thanks for playing everyone! Go ahead and make your character's Day Job checks, and I'll look at getting the reporting set up soon.

Day Job: Sleight of Hand via Thieves' Guild boon: 1d20 + 22 ⇒ (17) + 22 = 39

That's 100gp

Dayjob Performance: 1d20 + 23 ⇒ (8) + 23 = 31

This will net 75 gps if i am not mistaken

Take 10 for perform oratory, it's +28 so it would be 100 gp I think

No day job… unless can take 10 [+10] for perform -sing ? I do not have guide in front of me if that is a valid day job