Yuuuup
Search Posts
Saw that, good work. I personally don't know if I want a GM to come in to just finish the first book though. It might be better to just let it end so I can run it in full someday down the road and not have to try to sneak into an existing campaign. If there was a GM who wanted to take over and run the whole thing, I would be a lot more interested in that.
I'm fine with waiting for GM Poblano to post, see where we go after that. The below quote is the response Bumble got in Flaxseed discussion when asking about our GM. I heard back from him right away, and he said he'd check in. So I know he's okay, but don't know if he's been able to get back to his games. I do know he's got a small baby, so his time may not be his own.Let me know if you hear anything back.I believe he is - I just pinged him on FB to let him know someone is asking. From that response Saturday, I at least take away that we should wait a short bit before looking for another GM and filling up the group again or calling it completely. Twas good playing with ya Tristan and Dragox, I'm sure we'll get another chance some other day!
Blaze sighs and tosses three silver into the tin as well, "Alright buddy, simple enough. We have coin, no wasting of your time. More if you help us. Might be able to turn your luck around."
Great job tracking stuff and splitting it all up. It worked great to let me know my options!
Blaze, about to pull a few coins out from his pocket to toss down watches as Bumble supplies exactly what was offered, on the cheap. He goes to say something, but thinks better of it and just watches to see what happens.
Blaze looks at the two, "Food? Sleep? What is this, do you not want to seek your Destiny as the Greatest Of All Time? There will be sacrifices, but there will be rewards too. Let's just grab a bite to eat and a few useful items then head to the warehouse. We don't want to show up an hour after our enemies start cutting up our payday... er the innocents we are out to protect."
Good deal, that leaves the CMW for Tristan. If we give Merry the silvered dagger (and tell him not to trade it for a round of drinks... or any form of drink related deal) and sell the MW dagger, that will give Blaze enough for his two planned purchases. Sell thieve’s tools (15g), lantern and oil (1s).
Fair point. Also, we could sell the daggers instead I expect unless one of you changed their mind about a close-quarters backup or silver option. So far no one has shown interest in them and they don't fit my build (short-swords) so I'd rather just get some money towards gear. GM, could we do a shopping trip between now and the warehouse if we wish to?
Are the Potions of CLW and Potion of CMW good to go to front-liners Dragox, Merry, & Tristan? I was thinking the two potions of Invisibility would be good to go to Bumble (due to his ability to use ghost sound effectively). We might also want to consider selling one or both of them, at low levels the money might be worth it. In that same vein, do we want to do a short shopping trip for a few upgrades? MW Thieve's Tools or MW Studded Leather Armor are in the purchasing range for Blaze with his current share, not sure what you all have planned to buy next.
Grabbing the rope and deftly returning it to its owner, Blaze smiles as the Aspis is lead away. Ah, capturing a known criminal. A good start. Not worthy of great tales, but will start getting the word out of our competence.
Blaze consults a city map... also known as his mind, "I can get us there, no problem! That's just down in the warehouse district by all the other warehouses, easy-peasy."
Blaze slips over towards Dragox and relieves him of his rope, "Now you can carry more ale. Don't worry, I'll bring it back soon." He keeps his blade pointed at the Aspis and orders him to turn around, hands behind his back, guards always do this when they bust the parties at school, makes sense here. Better search him too. Assuming Pluto complies, he slips his sword into its sheath and attempts to tie the agent up to make it a bit more binding of a capture. He does a quick search and attempts to remove any other weapons and useful items. He looks at Merry, "Here, escort our friend to the city guard. Hack him in two if he resists."
At the confession, Blaze points at the two doors and a couple of his strapping and tough allies, "Cover the doors, might be an ambush." He looks closely at the thug and then steps forward to kick away the dagger, "Spare your life we certainly shall, you are quite valuable to us... aren't you, Mr. Plutivarch Dremis." He taps his chin a bit, "Got a nice bounty on your head, don't ya. But then again, maybe it isn't worth our time to waste dealing with you. Maybe if you could provide some information about why you lured us here and who is setting us up?"
Thanks GM! So as most of you have noticed, Blaze tends to jump into action. Which is good, he's the scout and social skill support staff. Ain't gonna be useful hiding in the back afraid to talk! Anyway, you'll probably see a lot of Aid Another attempts posted pretty quickly when we have social encounters. He will try to do his best to 'read the room' when choosing between Diplomacy, Bluff or even Intimidate. But that doesn't mean I nor he wishes to prevent alternate options from coming to play. Skill progression wise, he is planning to get Diplomacy up to an Auto-Aid. He will eventually do the same for Bluff and get at least a point into Intimidate, though won't ever have Auto-Aid for that due to size penalties.
Blaze grins at the man, "Clearly you can see you are outnumbered, drop that little joke of a weapon and surrender. When our allies get through the door I doubt they will take it as easy on you."
Oh mighty Poblano, may I use some of your SOP slide stuff for some of my games? That is a nice little setup you have formatted there.
Blaze moves to the door, waves at his colleagues and rips the door open while yelling at them to get their butts in gear, "GO GO GO, EXPLORE, REPORT, COOPERATE AND SUBDUE! WE NEED ANSWERS!!!"
Blaze puts his finger to his lips and then points at himself, at the building and then mouths a word to the group. It looks like he says... staple? Or was it sting? That doesn't make sense, maybe it was stay? That makes more sense, but why would the sneaky frail gnome tell everyone not to rush at building screaming, does he actually have a plan? Hmm... that is up for interpretation! He slips off quietly to peer in through a window.
Blaze scouts the area and returns, "I've found a good place to hole up and keep an eye out. If you gotta take a leak, do so now cause we can't be getting up and clanking around or we'll scare off the slavers."
Blaze taps his foot, obviously unimpressed with the answers for the cost. He blurts out, "or maybe something useful like an actual lead on the vanishings?"
+1 vs. Traps Blaze leads the way confidently straight to the run down area of town and then straight into the tent. With a flourish he introduces the boss man (JPdS), "Oh mighty wise and all-seeing Amazing Zograthy, my patron wishes to know some of the secrets of the multiverse. Please see to it in your wisdom to share your knowledge of what he asks. His favor is wide and well known and his questions are simple and to the point."
Blaze pipes up when Amazing Z-Man is mentioned, "Ah yeah, I know that dude. Sorta a middle man between Sczarni and outsiders like us, gonna be useful to get him on our side... but he expects gold in payment so I guess it's good we have some!" He tosses the bag to JP, "You might need to use some of this when you deal with the guy so better hold onto it, I'll try to smooth stuff over and set you up as someone of importance when we meet the guy." He looks around at the possibly greedy eyes watching the bag, "But if anyone needs their portion of the advance, I'm sure that would be fine too." As they head out, he checks over the job board, "OOOH! Perfect, free money for something we woulda done anyway for the reputation boost. That's a win-win!"
Blaze shrugs, "Well it might save my butt if I miss a trap or fail to disarm it, but that won't ever happen. I guess I could jump off buildings to stab people, that could be fun at least once." He slips the ring on his finger and asks the VC, "So I've heard about the Sczarni, but only in passing. What is their deal? Good allies or just useful at times? They have any enemies we need to watch out for?"
Thanks for the info about gear stuff!
Thanks JP! A lot of times that kind of stuff gets lost in the shuffle of the game. Blaze will likely be handing a lot of stuff out to whomever he thinks will use it best, though none of that is stuck in stone and I'm all for discussion about who is best to get what. I do think the stuff that is actually money should be tracked as a group pool for now (even though I RP'd it going to Bumble) until at least each mission ends then maybe split up among us to spend on items.
Blaze flips the box upside down and dumps out the items. He watches as Bumble and Merry eye the precious stones. Collecting them, he looks back and forth between the two and then hands them to Bumble, "These are probably spell components, I've heard of stuff like that." And he is less likely to spend his shiney's on drink. He pulls the dagger out of its sheath and appraises the heft and balance, "This is well made and is simple enough to match any of our outfits, anyone need a silver weapon? I've got one already. Might be a good backup if you only have big weapons too." And lastly looks over the ring and simply shrugs, "should I do einie meenie miney moe? I think this would be useful for all of us."
____________________________________________________ Blaze confidently adds, "Should be easy enough, city is big but lotta people know things. Just gotta dig hard enough. To make someone like her disappear, it's gotta be something big. This is an excellent first mission."
Blaze gives it another go, quite confident he completely disables the trap, "should be good to go! Hard part is done, now to just figure out these easy clues and get it open." Disable Check hidden so everyone else is as confident as Blaze:
The gnome thinks for a bit, "does it have to be one word? Can it be two, or three words? Like 'er' and 'cul'?" He turns and challenges the obvious question that follows, "What do you mean those aren't words, if you had listened to any of my materials science lectures you'd bet your butt 'er' was the professors favorite word!"
Hmm... I'm getting an inkling about something I should know. Bah, whatever. Probably not important. Blaze steps up, "Blaze Darkstone, you won't regret your choice to trust in me. Darklands you say, Thassilonian stuff? Cool." When the box is presented he practically jumps on top of the table to inspect it and right before he starts working with it, JP mentions traps, "Of course yes, that is what I was looking for first." +1 vs. Traps If there is one, he immediately attempts to disarm it. If there aren't any, he simply starts fiddling with catches and latches and locks and fiddly bits, trying to pop the box open.
Blaze nods to the gnome, "excellent! There will be plenty of that for sure." He turns to the rest of the group. Looking over JP first, "oooh yes, I was hoping for this. Excellent cheekbones, smart and a smooth talker. Tough enough to be relatable to most and also likely to not say something harmful to our image. Definitely a front man when the talking is needed. Looks a lot more trustworthy than a thief-looking gnome like myself for sure." He turns to Merry and Tristan, sizing up their heavily armored and weaponized images. "Hmm... well a group can't have everyone be outgoing, someone has to do the heavy lifting in combat. Twin towers of might could just work. Yes, yes that may just do! One studious and professional, one careless and lazy but together as a team they make quite the odd couple of fighting fiends!" He wrings his hands together, "oh this is shaping up excellently. Now we just have to get through a couple missions and start cementing our legacies! I made a good decision dropping out of school to join up now."
Acting quickly, Blaze goes with the slap and tumbles forwards, down and then back up to his feet, before twirling around and giving a quick bow to the group. He looks up at the big half-orc, "Drunken Hero of Cayden, hmm. Yeah, I can work with that. Everyone has to be able to relate with the story and who better to relate to then a big guy just wanting to have a bit of fun?" Blaze catches Bumble's eye and steps aside with him, speaking in their native tongue. Gnomish: "Ah hello there my friend, I was going to jest about your magician comment to ask if you could make a coin appear behind my ear, but I can easily tell that you are much more powerful than those little stage tricks." He seems to look up into the sky, envisioning something massive, "I can see it now, the Mighty Mage Rumbleberry, scourge of evil, bender of wills, controller of minds! What do you think about that? Are you ready for the next chapter in your life? The chapter of awesome?!?"
A tall-for-a-gnome dressed in all black quickly snatches up the note from Bumble and skims through it, looking for subtext... Oooh, I see. It isn't even the note that matters, pay attention to the other details. Yes this will work for us. He nods to the footman and waves the others over to follow the magician to the barracks. He puts his finger to his lips in the hopefully universal sign of shut up right now. As you follow you can tell that his outfit has many buckles and clasps. Way too many to actually serve a purpose. Once at the stables he hands the note off to one of the tall persons and takes a deep breath. Speak confidently and excitedly he lays it out, "as I'm sure all of you figured out already, we are being pulled to the side for an obvious secret mission. This is excellent. We can cut our teeth on it, get to know each other and then work up our level of recognition and fame without any missteps. Are you all ready to be the coolest adventuring group in the world? Bards will sing of our tales for centuries!" He flips his hair out away from his face and it quickly settles back in place, covering his eye. From what one might know about gnomes, you have no idea if it grows naturally like that or has been woven into thick dreadlocks. He seems to be sizing up the group one by one and adds, "Blaze Darkstone at your service."
Looks like we have a decently wide range of skills covered and I thank everyone for not going 'Lawful-Strict'. I think Blaze is as ready as much as he can be.
It looks like the GM is very nicely setting up a dossier for us, which includes the SOP. I'll agree with the 'when in doubt, go left' procedure. Merry, I like the concept and also having a very heavily armored large target up front near me. Looks like we are just waiting for our 6th to show up and figure out what they wish to play.
Currently, we don't have the following 'core' skills covered: Handle Animal
I'm guessing Merry won't be able to grab much, but maybe Intimidate, Handle Animal or even Sense Motive. Regardless I see a couple obvious ways to cover a good chunk of those skills. 1) Bard, 2) GM somehow allowing the Breadth of Experience Feat, 3) Just work together to get them filled in as we level. Blaze'll be grabbing S.o.H. & K: Dungeoneering at some point but probably won't specialize in either (also, my K: Local is really low). And I'm definitely not pushing for #6 to play a bard. We would easily benefit from a ranger or druid or monk that could cover a chunk of those wisdom based skills. I'd much rather have a PC that fits with the group than a forced one that constantly clashes with what appears to be a very fun & interesting group. :)
It was an error on transferring from my creation sheet to here. I use a Pre-formatted section that doesn’t include some of the trained skills and I got the UMD added but missed the Disable Device.
I have Disable Device covered. Through a series of errors though, it appears it isn’t on my PbP profile. I’ll get that fixed. Thank you for doing the skill breakdown, it helped catch that before we got started!
I could have sworn I dotted and deleted my Pete H. in gameplay, whoops!
I'm 100% behind establishing an SOP. I'm thinking something along the lines of this for Blaze's SOP actions. 1) Take 10 Perception for areas as he moves through 20 ft ahead of the group, taking 10 for stealth as well. 2) Take 20 Perception for doors/chests/etc... when encountered, then stand to the side and open the thing while Character(s) stand ready with (X) action(s). ________________________________________________________________ Does everyone have a light source (if necessary) and some ways to try to fight off swarms or any DR enemies we might encounter? What about other very basic equipment stuffs that high level PC's take for granted? _________________________________________________________________ Also, for the two added PC's what do we still need? My only thoughts would be a front-liner that can soak up attacks (High AC or High HP or both) and maybe something that can cover all our missing Knowledge Skills.
Introducing... BLAZE DARKSTONE!!! (to ooc chat) GM, how do you prefer to handle skill checks that can take Aid Another? I've seen a lot more variability in PbP on how those things are handled due to gaps of time between players posting. Methods like using spoilers on rolls to prevent result bias, designate primary rollers with everyone else aiding, everyone rolling the skill and the highest roll being used and the others over 10 turning into aids, etc... Bumble, it looks good. The main thing in my mind is that you can get wands and scrolls and staves to diversify yourself down the road so whatever your known spells are should be ones you plan to use a lot for that PC. Also, I'm glad to note my PC does not have the lowest CMD! YAY!!! |