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"I think there's more to do here than mining or looking for purple wood," Emilian pipes up. "An evil force is kidnapping folks, including children. The lot of us seem like a well-armed and competent bunch. Tomorrow morning, we should prepare to head out for this Cadaverwood, or wherever these disappearances happened, and investigate. Who's with me?"
"Children," Emilian mumbles around some stew. "That is, there are nasties taking children, not children taking people. That would be weird."
Emilian, seeing the group's attentions divert from his fictitious origins to the newcomers, sighs with relief and smiles up at the dwarf and sneaky fellow. "Emilian," he says with a simple nod.
Emilian shudders. "Sounds like the haunted jungles back home. In Absalom. Skeletal...uh...monkeys are always climbing down out of the trees to carry away small children and...um...halflings."
Phase 2
"A, uh, coliseum? No, never been in one of those. Nasty places where men kill each other for no reason. No good."
"I'm from the south. Far south, like Absalom or something," Emilian says. Bluff:
Phase 2
Once he's gone, Emilian comes out of his shell. He only picks at his remaining food. "I don't like the sounds of evil cultists doing bad things to children," he says to nobody in particular.
Phase 2
He shakes his head. "Nope, but I'm not from around here. What did he...it do?"
Phase 2 "Around here? No, definitely not. I'm ..." He pauses, glancing over at the soldiers, then lowering his voice slightly, "Emilian, and I agree on the whole 'not liking to kill people for no reason thing'. Of course, if you have a very good reason, I mean, a really good reason..." He trails off as the man starts choking on his food.
PHASE 2
As the cheap ale settles in, Emilian lets himself laugh along with the other men at the crude songs.
Flagging a passing serving girl, he asks her, "Excuse me, miss. I'm new to the area, what other towns or villages are around these parts?" Her haggard look shows the stress she's feeling with the increased customer load, and she looks around for anybody else, staff or patron, on whom she could foist the question.
PHASE 2 The door leading to the smallest, quietest side street opens at a measured pace, and a young human with spiked armour enters the pub non-chalantly--almost too non-chalantly. He's very clearly looking about himself while trying to appear like he's doing nothing of the sort, checking the attire of every patron and barmaid. Whatever he was looking for, he seems to have not found it, and relaxes...slightly. He finds a table very near the far door from where he entered, and sits down, unslung hung his heavy shield from his back and leaning it against his chair. When a barmaid arrives at his table, he orders cheap ale and some stew. As the song comes to its inappropriate conclusion, the young man's face flushes, bringing an amused chuckle from the serving wench who drops off his food. He ignores her, eating his food and avoiding all eye contact.
Most of those things fixed. Will do equipment very soon. +2 racial stat went into Str (or Dex, doesn't really matter).
@Emilian/Nazard - He's level 1, should be level 2. AC mismatches between Race entry and build crunch. Equipment is for first level cash, not 2nd level (1000gp). No favored class listed, no favored class bonus selection listed. Please specify where the racial +2 was applied on stats. Yep, I just wanted to put interest in. I'll get him updated and cleaned up this evening.
Since you need melee and support, here is Emilian, once a gladiator in Riddleport, now on the run from the authorities he believes are hot on his tail (though probably aren't). He isn't very bright, but he means well. He will eventually multiclass into a thug/scout rogue, and use the sap master line of feats and intimidation to impose the shaken penalties on as many bad guys as possible. With this many spellcasters, getting made large should be no problem on a fairly regular basis, allowing him to fulfill his function as a mobile speedbump on the battlefield. By the way, this is Nazard.
Dotting interest with Emilian here. I'm in the process of updating him to your specifications, but in case I don't finish tonight, I wanted to at least give you an idea about him. Emilian was a gladiator (though I will remove the Performance Combat aspect to him) who escaped the life. He's a gentle soul trapped inside a brawling, thuggish brute of a physique. Originally, I made him hoping to get into a Shattered Star game, so the part about him joining the Pathfinder Society is also easily removed (or kept if you prefer). His background and description are in the profile. As I update and level him up, he'll be multiclassing into scout/thug rogue, and focusing on the Sap Master line of feats, which synergizes nicely with the Brawler fighter archetype.
Checking in...
Third trait added and rank in Dance moved to Survival. Originally, he was going to use the gladiator archetype and Performance combat rules, but it was so feat intensive, I abandoned it.
You missed me, post #7. Emilian, human fighter ex-gladiator.
Interested. Emilian is a nonstandard fighter, ex-gladiator, and Pathfinder, eagerly awaiting his first assignment.
Emilian breathes in protest as his weapons and shield are stolen.
Stabilization: No dice.
Emilian stows his sling and readies his shield on his arm as he advances with Quain to P9.
Ignoring the pointless jeers of the crowd, Emilian feeds another stone into the sling, ready to try again.
Fire away! Sling attack:
Emilian nods and grimaces as he readies the sling, carefully counting out his five remaining stones. He has a sharp metal spike from somewhere stuck under his arm.
Is this fifth trial to be the "bloodbath" where we might exploit the Performance Combat rules, or did you mean the PVP at the end?
Ha! I just had to go back and check because I could have sworn that the third trial called Zon-Kuthon by name instead of Kuthona. I guess it was just all the Kuthonites in the group messing with my brain.
It's hard to make riddle-based tests like those that actually test the characters and not the players, because intelligence and reasoning are the one thing we can't simulate being higher than our own. We can use the rules to simulate swimming through ice water, even if none of us could actually do such a thing, but letting dice rolls decide the outcome for our characters of a reasoning riddle never feels satisfying, so we're back to the players having to figure it out, and some players just aren't good at riddles (which says nothing of those people's intelligence). I'd say the biggest difficulty is that, in order not to give anything away, you right from the beginning shot down so many means by which the plays could get more information, that you gave the impression that there was nothing to do but trust to luck and hope for the 1 in 12 chance. I think this was always going to be the hardest trial to pull off from a design standpoint. I say we don't dwell on could've should'ves and enjoy the rest of the show.
"Gaza. Do you have any more of that healing stuff? If we're gonna fight something, I can keep you alive a lot better by not being dead myself."
I too was enjoying the tests until this one. I realized that there was a riddle to be found, but with a character with a 7 intelligence, I didn't feel it right to try to figure things out too much. As it was, I picked the eighth potion figuring the potion in the eight o'clock position would be the easiest to grab, since he has a heavy shield on his right arm, then the seventh, then a different one as Emilian tried to be random and finally beige. I agree that it was more of a player riddle than a character riddle. It wouldn't have helped Emilian, but you could at least have allowed Knowledge: Religion to help some characters deduce things. There were two solutions to the riddle, but still only one method (thinking) to solve it. Why not allow Fortitude saves to reduce the effects of the potions? At least that would allow the brute strength characters their own approach. I'm thrilled Emilian is still in it, though, and here's hoping Gaza consents to another healing burst before whatever attacks them arrives. By the way, did anything come of the PM I sent you concerning the spikes in the chain room?
Emilian also helps break chains.
Emilian tests all the platform on their side for solidity. He then slips a rock into his captured sling and attempts to hurl it at the section in G-24, where it looked like Kor touched something. Attack: I think hitting a square is AC 10, but I'm not sure.
Actually, I was imagining that the platforms were like sections of a chain link fence. Obviously the one they're on is considerably more stable than that, and the one they're jumping to is much less. How long are the chains hanging in the wall? Do they reach the floor or part way down to the floor? Also, the map makes it look like there are clear patches on the floor, but your description says covered with spikes. Could the party see that Kor's fingers touched something briefly?
How much give is there to the chain-link platforms? Are the chains on the walls free to swing?
"Are you okay, Justified?" Emilian asks. "Other than a bit of extra looseness in my loin cloth, I seem to be relatively unscathed by the water, and the cold has numbed the pain of my burn."
Once at the top, Emilian shivers for awhile then as Justified descends back down to help Menas, he studied the ladder to see if it could easily be smashed loose (once there was nobody on it, of course). Also, he'll move about to find the next plaque, just in case just reaching the top first didn't constitute winning.
Just to point out, unless you're using a house rule, it's taking 20 you can't do when there's a penalty for failure. You just can't take 10 when you're under threat like in combat.
Acrobatics: -
Lucendar, are you okay with players discussing ideas or strategies ooc that their characters probably would never consider ic?
Emilian looks up and around, looking for any clues or help above the pool.
GM, who all got in on the healing burst?
Seeing as how others are getting the same idea as he, he dispenses with subtlety and openly studies the walls on either side of the water to see if there are toe and hand holds for climbing. He unfixes his shield from his arm and stows it somehow in his rags and makes an attempt to climb out along the wall, a foot or two above the level of the floor.
Climb:
A "mighty" 11 on Sense Motive is enough, I hope? ;-) Depends. Are there distance penalties for Sense Motive? Kidding, of course. It's all good now.
Hey, I fully expect somebody to beat the pathetic Bluff roll of 9. Put a Sense Motive in and we're golden. And if you were going to do it anyway, by all means. I don't have a monopoly on it. And I don't think either of us are finding anything with our amazing Perception rolls, anyway.
Haterivet, if you're going to read my GM only spoiler and act on what's inside, please at least attempt a Sense Motive check against the rather meager Bluff score I rolled, as he's specifically trying to be discrete in his study of the walls.
GM: Emilian has a look at the walls to determine if he can turn this Swimming trial into a Climbing trial.
Perception:
I had planned to have Emilian take a pot shot at Cirnos with the sling once he had gotten it, then stepping back on the stones and never leaving again. Might have been enough to take him down with the fire jets, but events moved more quickly that I had hoped and I didn't get the post in in time. So now Emilian and Cirnos can die together in the next challenge. |
