Ruins of Azlant: Strangers in a Strange Land

Game Master AJM4885

Thank you all for submitting your characters for consideration and I hope that I won't disappoint.

Greetings! Thanks for running, and I likewise hope not to disappoint. :) Looking forward to seeing what happens under the sea!

Hello. Thank you for taking this on. I hope this can be a fun and helpful character for the campaign.

Wow, I actually got picked! There were so many good submissions, the odds on this one were pretty long. Thanks for taking on the mantle of GM, AJM, I look forward to seeing what you have in store for us.

@Ommerra: I noticed that you also have Knowledge: religion. What do you think about swapping that for Knowledge: planes? Tiye is a religious person (as religious as Nethysians get, anyway) so I’m reluctant to do the swap on my end. In my experience, Knowledge: planes comes up often enough to be useful.

@Ommerra: I noticed that you also have Knowledge: religion. What do you think about swapping that for Knowledge: planes? Tiye is a religious person (as religious as Nethysians get, anyway) so I’m reluctant to do the swap on my end. In my experience, Knowledge: planes comes up often enough to be useful.

Hi there, Tiye! I'm totally willing to make changes to my character to make us more compatible with each other. My plan is to eventually take all Knowledges, since as an investigator I can use inspiration with the ones I have at least 1 rank in. I could switch my initial point in religion to planes, but I figure that religion is more likely to come up as something needing a roll before planes does, so I put it off until level 2. Perhaps that's overly metagamey? What do you think? I could easily justify a point in whatever knowledges we want because Ommerra is very well-read.

I was thinking I will probably take at least a point in most knowledge skills, but just because I can retake a failed test at night using my Geography skill if I can see the stars.

Smart, Petre!

@Tiye, I agree. I did a count of the applicants and just thought 'Well, I'll be the spider of the wall to see how it goes. Maybe someone will drop and my character might be a possible replacement.'

But.... While I've never played this one I have heard that the party is remote from civilization. So replacements would be hard to work in to the narrative!

@AJM4885, Don't worry about disappointing unless you ghost the game. It's your game first and foremost. And we're all hear to have fun! I'm just happy to have been selected and ready to get posting in the game!

So we have:
Allece - Witch, focused on protective magics
Ma'oa - Skinwalker, Ranger
Ommerra - Investigator (Questioner)
Petre Costu - Cleric (Varisian Pilgrim)
Tiye Soumral - Psychic

Interesting party. Should be fun!

I hope Ma'oa can dish out some damage, otherwise we're going to be pretty light in that department. The psychic spell list has a lot more buffs, debuffs, and utility spells than direct damage.

@Ommerra: Ah, I see! I like to have all the bases covered as soon as possible, but that's just a personal preference. And yeah, investigators are The Best at Knowledge checks. I'm playing one in Rise of the Runelords and she absolutely crushes Knowledge checks, it's great.

Agreed, damage is a concern. Ommerra's longspear might be second place for damage dealt, which is funny because she's built to be helping others attack better, not to attack herself. Studied Target will also boost her damage, but that takes a while to come online.

Aleece's crossbow and Tiye's telekinetic projectiles will do some damage too, but those are harder to buff.

I can't think of many good spells that increase damage from the bard, cleric, psychic, or witch spell lists. There's enlarge person (1st) for the psychic and the witch, and weapon of awe (2nd) for the cleric, but that's all that comes to mind. Well, and good hope (3rd) for the bard and haste (3rd) for the psychic, but those are a long way off.

Love the additional d6 for any of the rolls where you can use inspiration. When it’s free you always add it. When it’s not free you can decide whether or not you want to add it after the roll but before you know if the roll is enough, or if the d6 bonus can make it enough.

I love the questioner options.

Divine Favor is good for one person. Lasts as long as any battle is likely to and gives +1 to hit and damage.
Stacks with Bless.

I think I'll swap out ill omen for color spray. If I can't dish out a lot of damage, I can at least take an enemy or two out of the fight. (For the first couple levels, anyway. I can always swap it for something more useful against stronger foes when I level up.)

Divine Favor is good for one person. Lasts as long as any battle is likely to and gives +1 to hit and damage.

I love divine favor, but it's Personal range, which means that only Petre can benefit from it. That reminds me though, there's also the vigor orison, which is like guidance for melee weapon damage.

Good one. Can it stack with guidance? Since more than just the cleric can cast it.

Good one. Can it stack with guidance? Since more than just the cleric can cast it.

Yes, it's a competence bonus to damage, so it stacks with pretty much everything. At least early on, that's a pretty useful buff! Also, the person who gets the vigor doesn't have to use it until they hit.

Happy to be here! Thanks for choosing me.

A little something useful for everyone: Underwater Goggles 5 gp and you can see underwater!

I can always change up my spell list to be more focused on offense if others have support covered.

Good find with the goggles. Diving suit is a relatively cheap equipment bonus to swimming.

As for spell selection, we need to see how well we work together and make any changes then. Is this a combat focused AP? Or mainly exploration? Or??

Probably both. I'm built for both combat and exploration, and some of my class features give buffs to the whole party with a few skills. As far as combat decent damage to start with, have a progressive way to do more damage to big enemies a few times a day, fight well online and even better underwater.

I switched Ommerra's point in Knowledge (religion) to Knowledge (planes). :)

Petre has religion covered for the moment (needs to know enough to successfully obfuscate about which deity has granted him their blessing).

Given Nethys' nature, Tiye has no business criticizing others for their choice of deity. ;) (As long as it's not, like, Rovagug or something.)

Ma'oa worships Gozreh

Everything okay, GM? I assume something has come up to delay starting the game. Maybe you can activate the Gameplay tab and we can roleplay meeting each other on the ship before the game commences?

Worship? What's that?
Aleece honors and respects Jaidi. But the closest she gets to worship is her connection with her Patron....
She doesn't disrespect or bother anyone that does worship a Deity. but would only shrug if asked.

I want to apologize to everyone. Yes, I'm still here it's just work is very hectic right now. I'm going on vacation next week and I took Friday off as well so I have to compress five days worth of work into four.

I was going to take tonight to craft an intro because I don't want 1/2 A++ something but, unfortunately, one of my colleagues 90 year old mother had a medical emergency and was taken to the hospital, so he turned around and went home. Long story short they asked me to stay an extra six hours tonight to cover his duties (hey, it's overtime so I said yes).

I'll have time tomorrow night to post up before I leave for a long weekend with my girlfriend. As for vacation next week, no need to worry as it's mostly a "honey-do" week so I'll be around to post.

Glad to hear you're all right, GM! Take your time, RL always has priority.

If you don't mind, I'm going to shuffle some gold around so I can buy a prismatic crystal. I kind of forgot to check Occult Adventures for adventuring gear when I was shopping originally.

Also, I'm going to put the background skill point I originally had in Knowledge (geography) into Craft (sewing). I plan to make magic items ASAP, and between Tiye's Craft (sewing) and Aleece's Craft (jewelry), we should be able to cover the mundane aspects of the more popular wondrous items. Both Petre and Ma'oa have Knowledge (geography) already.

What she said! RL beats the game every time.

Sounds good Tiye. If we make it to 5th level Aleece will take craft Wand. I figure the 'stick' is easy. Just need to figure out something for the rest of the material components. Some how I have trouble seeing that you pile gold coins around an item, cast the spells, the gold disappears and the item becomes whatever you were crafting.... But we'll just have to figure that out as we go.

Thanks for the update, GM! No worries, we'll be here. :)

Glad to hear you're alright!

What she said! RL beats the game every time.

Sounds good Tiye. If we make it to 5th level Aleece will take craft Wand. I figure the 'stick' is easy. Just need to figure out something for the rest of the material components. Some how I have trouble seeing that you pile gold coins around an item, cast the spells, the gold disappears and the item becomes whatever you were crafting.... But we'll just have to figure that out as we go.

The way I looked at it when crafting wands as a druid (even less likely to just gather gold to make stuff) is that the wand has a weird crystal on the end of it, or is made of a wood that's rare and valuable to the lumber industry, or made of a sliver of a rare metal. The GP representing the value someone would assign to the work you put in to obtain it, though for each crafter, that could mean something different.

Sorry for the delay, everyone. The Gameplay thread is up, so let's kick this pig.

Will get a post up shortly.

I can easily heal myself, so the four potions can go to the rest of the party.

Added a description

Since this is going to come up quite a bit in this adventure I've added a link to the underwater combat rules on the Campaign Info tab.

I bookmarked a link summarizing lots of underwater rules a while ago that we all might find useful. It looks like the original page has gone away, but fortunately it's still on archive.org: Underwater Rules

What kind of roll would I make to help Ommerra back into the boat?