ERARAT: The Last Age's page

The hike gets steeper, requiring two free hands to clutch at trees and rocks as the two groups of adventurers wind an S-shaped path up the steep incline, there in the distance among the pines, a flattened spot can be made out, the glow of several small bonfires at it's edges silhuetting a number of figures standing guard, behind them is the squarish bulk, tilted on one side--the shadow outline of a downed ornithopter. Rainbow hued motes of residuum are now falling from the sky, like a prismatic fog that's drifting down in eddies dusting the rocks and woody brush and ferny plants.

"The Grim Portent. At last" grunts out Maborg. "And it only took all night slogging through the dark getting attacked by monsters--if only we'd had some faster method of travel. So glad we paid such a premium for your help." Maborg pulls something silver from his pack and puts it to his lips and whistles. A very distinctive noice--sort of a metallic slicing sound comes out. Some of the guards at camp light torches and begin picking their way downhill toward you.

What mass of feline shaped corpse is left crumbles into ash at Kai's touch--the fire seems to have consumed it from the inside out leaving some bits of blackened bone, teeth and claws as the only reminders that this was once an animal and not a campfire. One thing can be learned forensically from this mess. Best not to cross Edie.

That said, a pouch of displacer beast ash would make an outstanding ritual component--and there's plenty here 120 gold worth toward ritual component costs.

Edie's crit alone would have bloodied it. As it was, she took it from bloodied to barbecued...awesome!

The fiery hawk perches on the face of the feline monstrocity, digging beak and talons into it's eyes and face. Vengeance indeed. It makes a nice distracted target for Edie's witchfire, which immolates the cat creature in silver flame, burning not only it's body--but it's spirit as well down to fine silver dust. Kendall arrives chugging onto the scene just as the body of the creature collapses into a pile of ash.

"Good. Now that that's dealt with," says Maborg joylessly. "We've wasted enough time here. Let's get up to the camp."

His formation of crewmen resume their marching order and as he passes the battle weary party he addresses them in passing. "Displacer beast. Fey creatures, use nasty illusions to hide themselves. You should salve those wounds. They look angry." He gives an amused half smile and continues his hike.

You'll do fine. Just don't let it eat you.

Wary of the armored dwarf and the circle of Maborg's crew, the beast leaps out again, apparently beside Aleena. Kai-Sovis brings down a plume of golden fire which lights the darkness between the trees and rocks like a flash of daylight. He watches the point of impact, the direction the impact knocks Aleena, rather than where the beast appears to be standing and the spell successfully hits--though unfortunately, it seems Aleena is caught up in the blast as well. Roll damage!

The first assault of the creature impacts on Aleena's armor, it's first tentacle slamming into her guard, battered harmlessly away. The second tentacle strikes true, her guard thrown off in the blast, giving her a set of nasty scratches in a whipping toothy upswing 4 damage.

Well there's some funkiness in the book stats. The premise behind the ability is that if you miss the 50% miss chance you weren't attacking the real monster--that it was a displacement effect and the real creature is actually in an adjacent space. That should effectively work like a teleport (it was never really there) and thus really shouldn't trigger your ability.

Awesome. That's what I love to hear!

That should have hit--the craghammer was swinging directly in line with the monsters' grotesquely grinning feline skull, but as the hammer follows through, some trickery is at play--the monster was nowhere near there, five feet out of range and well clear of your defensive positioning.

Edie suffers no such misapprehension, the beast had its claws in her. She rolls her shoulder back and blasts the creature with scalding hate. It hisses, skin bubbling, and lopes into the darkness out of sight. That eerie hunting yowl starts up again. It is circling.

Before anyone freaks out that you're fighting a level 9 creature, I should probably mention how much I love the DMs Toolkit in the DMG and how I use it ALL the time. Most enemies you face will end up being tailored to an appropriate level and most will have custom abilities, so they don't all fight like every other monster of the same type you'll ever see. I love that. Every badguy can have unique powers and fighting styles which hopefully keeps everyone on their toes, because you can never know for sure what to expect--but I think also helps embue even NPC monsters with a little character flavor.

Maborg shakes his head. He holds up his hand and gives a gesture to his crew and they immediately close up into a tight circle, back to back with weapons out, every eye scanning the maze of timber and stone.

A snarling black shape leaps from the rocks, it lands nearly on top of Edie, placing her between it and the rest of the defenders. It's jaws tear into her dress and armor skirting 6 damage while whirling fur covered tenticles lash about it's head, darting like cobras, one flicks past her eye, missing by an inch, nearly plucking it out in a blur of tooth-claw things clustered on the undersides of the pads. Just as fast another tenticle digs into her shoulder meat, tenticle claws snapping down like snake fangs and ripping free again 4 damage. It doesn't leap clear. It just stands there, on its six skinny razor-clawed panther legs, hissing and snarling over her as if claiming her--daring anyone to challenge it.

Everyone gets (or regains) an Action Point

It's a long walk straight into the mountains before Maborg realizes he's been had, that having hired the party for their ship that they have no intention of letting him use it or even see it. He's furious and feels betrayed, eyes glowering hatefully. The trip takes hours longer than it would--it's nighttime travelling into the mountains by torchlight. Everyone is exhausted, from the late hour as well as from various injuries and exertions. It's all that can be done to keep some members of Maborg's crew moving over the uneven ground and thick brush. The burn blackened crewmember and the one with the broken ribs hobble along bitterly.

Around midnight the elevation of the hike starts to get more strenuous--not quite time for the ropes and climbing kits, but it's a definite uphill chug, even for the uninjured, through a field of stones and dense trees that litter the lower slopes of the mountains. Visibility drops to a dozen feet between mossy boulders and slanted treetrunks. There's a feline yowl out in the distance and some heavy scrabbling in the underbrush. Maborg's complaining cuts out, his eyes go big, and he unlimbers the big spiked club from his back.

I'm cool with both. Go ahead and make the swap. As far as rituals, I like them quite a bit and use them a lot, and I don't mind the idea (certainly with the Arcane training your guy has) that he knows how to use them.

Maborg spits on his palm. It sizzles. He takes Edie's hand and shakes. His eyes flash. His hand is uncommonly warm to the touch, but not painful--just suprising, like a sun warmed stone.

"Done. So we'll need to get crew first. They should still be camped at the closest crash site. The ship seemed fairly entact from the look we had at it. If it's close enough we may even be able to pull it free. Then we need to see if we can figure out how to unclog the engines using that one to experiment with. If we can, we go back in on foot, fix the engines of the other two and limp them out. A lot of this rests with our artificers and other arcane sorts to figure out what's going on and how to fix it--but I've got faith you can figure it out. If not that, then we're going to have to find some way to get a hold of some big ox-team drawn wagons big enough to haul an ornithopter and try to drive it up into and around that big mountain there. So that's my plan. What's your take?"

"We came across the edge of the mountain range and as we passed into the storm, it seemed as if that weird glowing snow passed right through our ship. It seemed to muck up our engines, because no sooner did we enter than the havok began. Our ships to the left and right peeled away and went down near the slopes. Ours was able to drift a little further and ended up on the far side of the first mountain, about halfway up. I gathered the crew and we went around the side of the mountain and down to gather all our people in one camp, it took us a day--but it was a deathmarch with magical monsters hounding us over every inch. We were able to camp the night, but all of us got tore up plenty by attacks that night. I ordered most of our folks to stay and protect each other and have our most arcane leaning crewmen to study out what was wrong, while a few of our strongest would head out of the mountains and get ox-wagons to pull our craft clear. Our thought was outside of the storm, the effects on our engines might clear up on their own--or at least we'd have a spot of civilization, some tools, food and rooms at the inn. Thing is, folks in town got problems with folks from the mountains--so they know you've come from there, they'd as soon spit on you as offer to sell you anything, or even offer you a room. So, here we are. You with a ship, and us needing to go back for men and ships, and with salvage to do--in a town that sees us as cursed by something in their mountains."

All the ways and methods for figuring out the ins and outs of magic items have one thing in common. They take time. The examination of all of these, as well as the fight before, seem to point toward something interesting. They seem to have lost significant charge, as though their dwomers, the magic bound within them, had been diminished--drained by something. Not much else that can be discovered without taking the required hours of downtime fiddling with each one.

Maborg notes the discovery, "It's that storm. Scrambled them or something. Did the same to our ships too, which caused our mess. There's thousands of gold there in your hands if you can get them straightened out. Thousands. Should be worth your help. If not, we'll be happy to take them back and be on our way."

Maborg frowns thoughtfully, turning from his preparations to leave to study the other salvage crew and their two offers.

"I have to say, I agree we should settle our accounts up front. Who knows what we'll run into in the tower. No saying. I'd rather you knew what you were agreeing to." He turns and takes a step toward his crew. "As it turns out though, big pouches of gold weren't our priority heading out from the crash. That said, we could probably pool together a nice collection of magic items to repay your contributions?"

He waves up the members of his crew and begins to shake them down for a few items each. By the end there's a decent-sized pile: A belt, several different shaped potion bottles, some necklaces, a pair of bracers, and a few small throwing-sized weapons. He bundles them up and hands them over for you all to look over, his face all business, stony serious. "What do you think of the offer? We comrades?"

The rumblings subside. The creature seems disuaded, for now at least. Maborg and his people, sweaty and exhausted from the fight and then the workout that followed, begin milling around, making their preparations to depart. Some crewmembers tend to their fallen, splinting broken bones, bandaging wounds.

It's gone from evening to a warm and pleasant nighttime, insects are buzzing, the stars and moons are bright silver blue. The rainbow aurora over the mountains is even brighter and more spectacular against the deep black sky.

Fair enough. It's hard to know how transparent to make the mechanics in a game like this one. You want it to feel like a story, and a lot of times all the gamey jargon can get in the way. But yeah the range they gave for challenges was between 4 successes to 12 successes. Eight seemed right, but like I said I'm fine calling it early if people are getting bored.

[Ooc]It can be. I had 8 set as the number of successes...but if it's killing people we can call it[/ooc)

Edie and Aleena's work with B.B. takes her awkward flailings and focuses them into precise and effective amplification of the rest of the group's efforts. The rumbling (and strange disturbing noise from B.B.) subside and people can concentrate enough for tasks requiring fine coordination again. (-2 to Dex goes away)

5 Successes/1 Failure

Sorry to freak you out. That's not what I meant. You don't have to beat the number every time you use the same skill. You only have to beat the number if you want to use the same skill to do the same thing.

The intent is to make the skill challenge more interesting. Let's take the one we're in. What if you'd said: I use Athletics to pound my hammer into the ground and stomp around. The next person had said, I use Athletics to pount my hammer into the ground and stomp around. Next person, says me too. We get around to you and you do it again. Not terribly exciting or fun.

The idea is to scramble and find ways for different skills to be of use, or a variety of uses for the same skill. Now if you were to say: Buildings and stuff are falling from the quakes, right? I use Athletics to see if I can shake down a section of wall to cause a big crash. New use for the skill, so if you get a success, you add one to the pool.

Now that said, if you have a skill that's rolled that's low hanging fruit--Kai rolled a 16 to use his Dungeoneering to figure out better accoustics by moving people to different positions--and as a dwarf you figure you can do better, so you roll and get an 18. That's a new success for the pool, and someone can try and top that for another success. Now if you succeed, but don't best the number, it's not counted as a failure--it just doesn't add to the success pool. It's just lost as duplicated effort.

Hopefully that helps. If it's still weird I might revisit my ruling. I just want folks trying a variety of different things.

Here's my take: Different people can try the same skill to do the same thing, but they'll need to beat the previous high roll[ (25 to beat your best use of Intimidate to get performance out of Maborg's crew) to squeeze another success out of the same action.
But that's with a different person--the same person doing the same action using the same skill, once they've already succeeded is probably not going to be able contribute another success to the challenge, even with a higher roll.

No there's a higher difficulty than that. I was congratulating the two successes from last post. It's still out there.

The lowest listed complexity is 4/3 for an easy easy skill challenge and it goes up from there based on how hard what you're trying to do is. What you've got going is going to be a toughie, so yeah, you've got a ways to go.

Kendall, never to be one to do things halfway, and not altogether unversed in the ways of stone and steel puts boots and hammer and booming voice to good work pounding out some truly awesome levels of sound...that and Aleena's, whateveritis, seemed to be eyeballing him.

Kai-Sovis' knowledge of the accustics of sound in dungeons allows him to spread out Mabog's men into optimal positions so the soundwaves amplify downward instead of negating or bouncing outward. Just a few repositionings and the increased output is impressive.

(3 Successes/1 Failure) Good work so far! Keep it up!

Aleena's strange daughter assumes the form of some great metallic contraption, squalking out strange noises, her myriad black eyespots searching around uncertainly for approval. While the sound is indeed obnoxious, it seems to do more to lure the monster than repel it--thinking it the death throes of some tasty farm animal perhaps. The ground begins to shake violently, causing those in the streets to lose their footing as they are peppered with debris falling from the buildings around them. (inflicting 3 points of damage to everyone and granting a -2 to future Dex based rolls)

Edie is tremendously effective, her wand enforced threats whipping Maborg and his team into a noisemaking machine, their blows ringing loud and perfectly synchronized. They are cowed enough that further requests made of them will gain a +2 bonus as they pitch in to do whatever is requested. It's not enough racket yet to drive off the creature, but more of this kind of effort seems to be just the thing!

(1 Success/1 Failure)

SKILL CHALLENGE TIME GUYS! Everyone interested in scaring off what's down there give me skill checks and some prose about how you're using them. I'll tally successes and failures!

Or not! I'll let you guys discuss!

"Ankhegs..." says Maborg, frowning. "Of a sort; the strange snows have...affected them. I didn't think they'd follow us out of the mountains."

He puts an arm around his unconcious shipmate and hefts him up onto his shoulders.

"Stupid mindless beasts chewed us up every time we stopped to rest. Wouldn't have been so bad, but..." His voice trails off, then he looks up as though unsure he'll be taken seriously, "they cast magic."

The ground gives another shudder, some cobblestones wiggle loose of their mortar, exhaling little puffs of dust through the cracks. Maborg gives a concerned look to the ground and sets his jaw, but says nothing.

Maborg nods grimly, slapping down the last remaining gouts of flame on his armor. "True. This fighting is folly. There are crew of mine who await me." he steps toward his fallen crewman and bends to check his injuries "I applaud your restraint. This one should be dead."

"Hey boss!" says the gruff voiced axeman, holstering his axes. "I think that one tha' done run off cursed me or something. Do I gotta' worry 'bout what that's gonna' do if I don't get it taken care of?"

A meaty blackened hand slaps the back of his helmet. "Look at me Olak!" the fire blackened warrior laughs, stowing his warhammer. "If I don't die from all this, you sure won't from what you got..."

From inside the tavern comes the sound of groans and broken glass and furniture. The bartender glares furiously out the broken hole in his shop but scurries away, unwilling to press the matter.

(Before last round is over..)
The crewman with the two shortswords licks his lips and decides to take his chances circling around the dwarf to peel off toward the shepherd girl, but no sooner does he try and slip clear than he is met with a crushing hammer blow to the back of his knee. He yelps and staggers forward, but stops far short of his target.

(Then he gets blown through the window. Man, some guys got no luck at all. Heh.)

Kai Sovis, turns and begins to incant, then turns, he can feel the gears of his powerful mind begin to translate into physical force, which he brings to bear on the two crewmen in front of him. Like ragdolls he lifts them up off their feet and tosses them crumpled through the glass strewn portal they crawled out of.

Before his intonations are done for the first spell, he is already onto the second, flaming rain pounding down upon the two who had been hurting him. They erupt in flames, desperately trying to put themselves out--though with his infernal ancestory, Maborg does not seem to be affected to quite the same degree. The crewman with the hammer however sways to and fro on his last legs--blackened and bleeding.

So combat actually shakes out like this:

Kai: Attacked by Hammer Guy, takes 2. (1d10+1, rolled 1),
Maborg still misses...forgot he'd rolled a 4.

Aleena: Attacked by Axes Guy, take 11 (1d10+1, rolled 10)

Holy crap!

Suddenly things make so much more sense. Okay so you put yourself in the middle of the three guys coming out of the window, not the PCs. That changes some stuff! Yeah. Not for the better though. You still take down Chucks Guy and keep him from hitting Kai, but Maborg and Hammer Guy will end up hitting Kai, triggering a second attack from Hammer Guy. Also Axes Guy will now end up hitting Aleena. Yikes!

THE REAL MAP

Only one Axeman, with two axes, but yeah. Cool.
Kai-Sovis sees Kendall take down the crewman with the nunchaku and immediately darts through the hole standing over the groaning figure. He works his hands, fingers blurring as the magic takes hold, his voice echoing and reverberating with words of magic. From his outstretched hand launches a sphere of crystal that flies like an arrow, lancing out and striking the hammer wielder in the chest, erupting into an explosion of force that looks much like an underwater explosion. He roars in pain and blood flies. The shrapnel, like icicles blow outward, but obeying Kai's precice gestures whip around Aleena and her bizarre progeny, and focus themselves on the axeman attacking Aleena and their leader Maborg. Both men leap clear of the attack which chews up the cobblestones around them and rings off of their armor.

Edie: Kendall moved back to try and get everyone in his aura which took Edie from being on the outskirts and pulled the center of the fight to where she was--and put Kai, who was also back a bit, closest to the heavy hitters as they came tearing out of the tavern. I fudged Aleenas actual position a bit to give Kendall a place where everyone could be adjacent to him, just to keep things moving. Granted as part of her movement she's free to move further back out of the way, she'll just be outside Kendall's Defend the Line effect.

Kai: Since "Chucks Guy" is down, you could have shifted into his spot and targeted Maborg with the orb and caught "Hammer Guy" in the blast. Or since the orb (weirdly) only targets enemies with the shrapnal blast, you could target "Hammer Guy" for the primary hit and catch both "Axes Guy" and Maborg with shrapnel. It shouldn't affect Aleena at all. Either way, I'll take your original rolls as your to-hits and damage rolls. Just let me know.

I'll let people look at the new map and see if that changes anyone's posts--then we'll continue.

I'm going to post this just so I don't lose it--then I'll send a map update to pose some questions...and then maybe redo this post. Sorry!

Kendal's shoulder check of the hammer fighter is accompanied by a stiff retributive strike with the handle of his craghammer, but the blow seems to be cushioned by armor. The skinny fellow with the nunchaku isn't so lucky: Kendall fends him off with the shield and then brings the heavy hammer around into his ribs. It takes some finesse to pull back enough not to murder the kid, but it drops him onto his back gasping into unconsciousness. The axe fighter is unreachable, Aleena has gone back to back with Kendall and her opponent is on the opposite side of her, out of range.

The ground begins to rumble faintly. Enough so that with everything going on one might assume they were imagining it--adrenaline shakes or whatnot.

Kendall abruptly withdraws from the doorway and stamps to meet the thugs running in from the left, presenting them with a facefull of steely shield, all his allies arrayed in a half circle around him now. Maborg--suddenly the flanker, the front of the battle now having shifted around him, snarls.

"Courteous offer, 'leave us alive'. Hear that men! Let's respond in kind. Don't kill any of them. Just beat 'em till they beg!" The two men with him laugh, the three facing down Kendall and Edie don't seem as sure.

Maborg takes advantage of the new situation, sending his warhammer fighter forward ahead of him to hit Kai-Sovis. He runs forward, hammer high, but finds Kendall's stance more flexible than he anticipated and shifting his shoulder back the dwarven knight interrupts his downswing causing it to go wide. Maborg charges in next, catching the eye of the hammer weilder. He brings the spiked club around in a stomach high arc to pound Kai in the unarmored gut, but his frustration makes him sloppy--his form is terrible and the mage is able to easily wheel away from it. The hammer fighter looked ready to follow up the blow with a second attack, but the hoped for opening never comes. The twin axe fighter that was opposite Maborg hopes for better luck against Aleena, but again Kendall's stance holds firm and she is able to pull to the side behind the cover he affords, the axes whistling by--a hairsbreadth away!

The more roguish crewmembers on the front look distinctly ill at ease with the big knight between them and the fight. The one with the nunchaku begins to spin them, circling before engaging.

"One of them hexed me, something terrible in her gaze! I can't bear to look at her."

"Steady!" Roars Maborg, "It will pass. The way is clear, attack the others!"

Decided, he sets his jaw and leaps toward Kai. Kendall's shield interposes itself fiercely enough he can almost see his reflection, the end of the nunchaku whizzing away harmlessly.

The dual shortsword fighter sizes up the party and continues pacing, looking for an opening.

Holy cow that Defend the Line power worked out amazing. That was four attacks that it completely shut down that otherwise would have hit! Sweet!

I'd rather it went like this: I run forward to angle my (blast attack] so it hits the two guys coming out of the window and the guy inside if I can reach him.

Or:
I stay close to the leader to be ready in case he needs me to act quickly.

Or:
I pull back from the fight with the kobold, fearing it might take a slice out of me in doing so, so I can sprint across and flank the dragonborn that's savaging our rogue friend.

If you've got questions or something's unclear I'm more than happy to explain, but I don't really see 4e as needing maps any more or less than any other version of the game.

The thug from Maborg's crew locks eyes with Edie, suddenly seeing something fearsome there, his eyes go wide and blood spurts from his nose, temple veins throbbing. He reels back, arms up over his face unable to meet her gaze.

Initiative is tough in play by post gaming since it slows down what is already a pretty pokey medium, while people who are available to post have to wait for others who aren't on yet, but who beat them on initiative. Round after round. If it's all the same to folks I might suspend initiative entirely most of the time--except when there's things one character wants to do that opposes someone else and "who gets there first" becomes a big deal. That work?

So far it's looking like Edie!