”I meant where in final city...” she mutters, but still materializes then all at the front gates of civilization.
Search Posts
"Allow me. Where to, Cro?" Ara says, folding them through the Astral plane, teleporting them back to wherever their guide directs.
Well, it went down yesterday (for me at least) for a bit when I went to post, so...
I can't believe how bad it's been lately. And at such a bat time too.
Sensing the kaiju is on its last legs (so to speak), Ara shoots a ray of cosmic energy at it, fairly certain nothing earthly could resist it.
Ara works her magic, and sends two spheres of light and distortion to either side of the kaiju. When they touch down, massive pillars of rock appear from the ground and rush towards the paralyzed beast, slamming into it.
Before the dust from that even settles, though, she fires a green ray channeled through her staff, wounding the beast even farther.
Ara grits in concentration as the dome slowly weakens, cracks showing after each hit until it finally shattered, and the blow sent her tumbling backwards through the air. Then, she narrows her eyes and outstretches her arm, glowing golden glyphs tracing themselves out and spiraling around her arm, forming long strands of magic. She completes her spell, and they solidify into solid golden chains and fly at the massive beast, threatening to tie it in place.
Sorry. It’s a combination of having limited time to post, each turn being absurdly complex, and generally being exhausted when I do have time to post. Just figuring out what to do alone is tricky enough as it is.
Ara moves up to the Kaiju, sending another powerful necromantic enchantment at the beast.
Once that connects (or fails to), she uses her rod to strike out again, and the beast is either struck by a second curse or a brilliant wall of blinding colors appears to block its path.
I can post tonight; I think I finally figured out what I’m doing (so many options...)
I mean, to be fair. ‘-8 to Saves, attacks, and checks’ is one of the listed options.... I just kept forgetting to actually mention it, because the primary goal was getting the save penalty. I’ll do my best to be comprehensive in the future, sorry.
Ara grins with satisfaction as her spells take hold, and, with barely a moment's notice, she erects a force barrier to protect herself from the torrent of acid. From inside her self-made prison, she quickly casts a teleportation spell to move herself in front of the kaiju, ready for its next attack.
"Corso!" a floating disembodied voice says from somewhere roughly above the kaiju, followed by a powerful necromantic curse.
Almost immediately following, though, is a second curse, this one much faster.
Okay. In that case, I'll just use regular time to refill. I've got 10 minutes after all (ability checks don't auto-succeed with a 20, so anything with an INT penalty can never escape. It's mainly flavor that it all happens in the blink of an eye. Otherwise, I just spend a couple mins while waiting for the kaiju to return off in the corner, invisibly sucking magical energy from my imp.
Ouch. I’m sorry to hear that. And here I thought I was having a rough couple of weeks with Finals and all. Take care of yourself.
Timeless just means the spell doesn't expire- it doesn't stop time outside of the plane. For instance, if it were timeless for aging, and I spent a century inside, then left, a century would have still passed outside, and I would immediately age 100 years as well. Hence the time stop.
*checks* My bad, I should have updated that. I changed it here. As for flowing/timeless, I've seen it ruled both ways.
Ah, right. In the future for time-stop shenanigans, I suppose I'll have to use a Summon spell to get a new proxy.
In the end, it has essentially the same effect (Ara has time to recharge and buff), but with one, it comes with the added flavor of 'jumping across the multiverse to her private demiplane, freezing the progression of time in its tracks, regaining magical energy, and returning to the Material plane, all in the blink of an eye' as opposed to just taking a couple of minutes.
As soon as the alarm is raised, Tessa teleports out to the Kaiju and locks it away within a maze. After a quick stop at her demiplane to recharge, she meets with the others.
"Another day, another monster to slay." she wrinkles her brow, "Why am I rhyming? Anyway, we've got just shy of 10 minutes before ugly comes back. "
I know it's kind of beyond the scope of a 1-shot, but I keep thinking how cool it would be to venture into the wildlands, trying to extinguish the kaiju menace once and for all. That said, it's still blasting giant monsters into oblivion regardless, so maybe that's just me.
I had some spells to cast, but they're easily done off-screen. Everyone gets Astral Projection! Anyway, it's fine. I've been busy too.
Ara stays quiet for most of the trip, letting others fill in what happened with the kaiju.
With no fanfare, Ara suddenly reappears among you. How long she's been there is hard to tell, but she's with you once again. "Okay, that was a nice break. I do not like crowds. Anyway, I'm here now. I asked my familiar to keep an eye on you guys and let me know when people were gone. And they are now, so here I am. Sorry about that. Just needed to do a bit of housekeeping after the attack. You see, with the proper enchantments, I can make time freeze, giving me plenty of time to prepare for.... Okay, never mind. Anyway, Sir Tenet, an Arcanist is never late. Nor is she ever early. She arrives precisely when she means to."
His backstory is something of 'try to corrupt the elf' and is bound to Ara as part of a 'package deal' given to Ara- she doesn't fully understand what happened, but she gained power (namely fiendish proboscis in particular) and a familiar, and hopes she didn't forfeit her soul. Other than that, I didn't give Kiffex too much thought- Ara likes to ignore him, as it reminds her she may not have control of her own soul, but isn't sure- and as such was less relevant in figuring out what makes Ara tick. And at the moment, she's spending three hours of real-time (six in demiplane) giving it the Timeless trait. Though that, strictly speaking, doesn't have to happen now, I'm just not really sure that Ara would be comfortable around big groups of people (I have her pegged as an introvert).
Sure. He'll usually have a few buffs on, but I keep forgetting to play him, and I won't be refilling my reservoir in-combat anyway.
Yep ;)
It mostly translates to me never needing scrolls, though, so that’s nice.
and basically endless spell slots. The long version:
Well, it only works outside of combat, but essentially, the Arcanist capstone allows me to cast spells with my Arcane Reservoir (with a higher DC and CL than normal) instead of spell slots
Now, normally this wouldn't be all that great; Arcane Reservoir points are in something of short supply, and there's only a few ways to recharge them, such as Consume Spells/Consume Magic Items/Counter Drain exploits (of which the former I can only do once/day and the latter two not at all). However, Horror Realms introduced Outer Rift exploits, one of which was the lovely Fiendish Proboscis. The arcanist can spend 1 point from his arcane reservoir as a standard action to grow a long, articulated proboscis covered with small spiky hairs. The appendage grows from the arcanist’s face and houses a highly flexible, muscular tongue tipped with a cartilaginous barbed quill. The proboscis lasts for 1 round per arcanist level, during which time the arcanist cannot speak or use verbal components. The arcanist can end this exploit’s effects early as a swift action. As a standard action, the arcanist can attack a target with the proboscis’s tongue. This is a primary natural weapon with a 10-foot reach. Attacks with the tongue resolve as a touch attack. If the arcanist uses his tongue and hits a creature capable of casting spells or using spell-like abilities, he drains a portion of the target’s magical ability and adds 1 point to his arcane reservoir (points gained in excess of the reservoir’s maximum are lost). If the arcanist hits a creature that cannot cast spells or use spell-like abilities, the tongue instead drains a portion of the target’s life force and heals the arcanist of 1d6 points of damage. Regardless of the target’s ability to use magic, the tongue’s unnerving siphoning of magical or life energy causes the struck creature to become sickened for 1 round. And that's where Xavak comes in. As an imp, he has a couple of SLAs available to him, meaning I can drain him with fiendish proboscis without any lasting damage (well, he's sickened, but he's evil so he deserves it). Basically, whenever Ara is out of combat, she casts using her Arcane Reservoir, and whenever it starts to run low, she activates Fiendish Proboscis and drains magical energy from her imp-battery until it's full again. Using Fiendish Proboscis costs 1 point and I can regain up to 20 using it, meaning that as long as I can get a minute or two to myself, it doesn't matter how many spells I cast; I can just top off. My spell slots, and thus what I can do in combat, stays limited, though. This trick really only works for stuff before and after combat. The short version is that I can cast spells using my Arcane Reservoir, and I can recharge my arcane reservoir pretty much at will, so long as I get a couple minutes to myself.
Ara returns to her demiplane for a couple of hours, opening up a Gate to it in Lastguard headquarters, making it bigger, and making it Timeless in respect to magic.
"Eh. I doubt kaiju tastes that good, but I've never tried it. However, basically anything touched by necromancy is unfit for consumption. Next time, I may try to control a still-living kaiju, but we will have to see. Now, I believe we have an orientation to attend?"
Khar- what about a multiplying skeleton? I love the idea of there being a bunch of little 1HD kaiju skeletons running around. Other than that, I'd say go with Bloody Skeleton or Fast/Relentless Zombie. We'd lose on a bunch of its abilities, but that beats having to make control checks against intelligent undead kaiju all the time. That said, it seemed(?) like the kaiju flew magically to some extent, so a skeleton would retain that ability. But can you even reanimate something with that many HD? The table tops off at 20 HD for a skeleton or 28 for a zombie, and that's after applying a +10 for size. GM, should we post changes to our character/gear in discussion or gameplay? I want to work on my Demiplane a bit.
Ara drops her invisibility, returning to her natural form as the kaiju falls. "That went well. Now that I think of it, I have some ideas for improving our response time, and perhaps we should discuss tactics? There's still plenty of room for improvement, after all."
I mean, it would be nice if they didn't save every time ;) But, besides bad luck, I did like how it worked out. Though I also agree it would be nice if we got a general idea about how wounded the kaiju is. For instance, if I knew it was close to death, I would have spent much less time trying to debuff it and stall it and more time dealing damage.
Ara, undeterred, continues trying to bring the kaiju to its mental knees, weaving two curses of varying potency into practically the same spell. "Oh, come on!
Don't forget everyone is hasted, too. That provides a +1 to AC, attack, and reflex saves in addition to the extra attack and increased move speed.
How many actions did that thing get?
Just to clarify, Ara did move up (she can pass through her own prismatic wall no problem) before casting.
"Oh, come on. Ugh. Fine, let's do it this way then." Rixa continues to work her debilitating magic, weaving a powerful curse and casting it with the remainder of her staff's magical energy, before stowing it in her bag.
With her curse cast, she then summons two enormous pillars of stone, sending them crashing into the kaiju.
Hmm... I guess so? I mean, I would prefer something like the positive energy plane (ironically), to ensure death. But I guess it’s random?
I mean, how big is the kaiju? I wouldn't mind the idea of it taking a move action to get around, as the whole idea at this point is to slow it as much as possible, but I'll defer to your ruling for this. (Besides, so long as it's in antigravity, I don't think it can really move anyway, and I can keep boxing it in)
They are not, but there should be enough room left for them to go around it- i doubt it was enough to even cover the entirety of the kaiju- it was more of a small barrier telling the kaiju "you can't go this way!" than anything. Hmmm.... Though maybe I should invest in a Rod of Selective Spell. That could come in handy in the future.
Yes, Prismatic Wall only affects those that pass through it- in this case, Ara was trying to discourage the kaiju from continuing its advance. Also, I made a mistake when calculating CL:
|