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Chantif stabs, and Umash slashes, but the cougar doesn't go down. Rhona breaks free of the creature's hold. The creature looks back briefly, as if contemplating an escape, but attacks Rhona again. It connects with its teeth and one of its claws; Rhona falls unconscious.

My math is the same as yours, Rhona. The 9 damage from this turn puts you at -2. Party up.

I don't see anything that says they have to be sharing the same space, although I can see where you're coming from, logic-wise. I'm picturing it as the cougar rearing up on its hind legs and more or less pinning her arms to her sides with its arms as it reaches around her. You can attack from where you are, but Rhona's still providing it cover.

In order to tide you over, though, each character receives temporary HP equal to the HP you will receive at level 2.

Just a reminder, since I think Rhona's going to need those temp HP :).

The cougar maneuvers to get a better hold on Rhona as its claws slash into her.

Rhona takes 12 damage and is now pinned. Party up.

Umash's swing decapitates the poor baby cougar.

Umash, I moved you back onto the road because the trees are difficult terrain. You don't have enough movement to go farther. Chantif, you have a standard action left, since the AoOs killed the small cougar.

Chantif and Umash both miss the nimble baby cougar. Rhona hears another MRRROW! behind her as she beats through the bushes, and she barely gets her shield around in time to fend off teeth and one claw belonging to another, larger cougar. She isn't as lucky with the other claw, however, and it slices the side of her sword arm and pins it against her chest. Sal quits bleeding. The baby cougar tries to run towards its mother. It tries to bite Rhona, but its jaws close on empty air.
Rhona takes 4 damage and is grappled. Sal is stable at -9. Chantif and Umash are both entitled to AoOs, and the party is up.

Sal turns around and starts to obey Chantif, but as soon as it moves away you all hear a low moaning sound and then a "MRRROWWWW! as a feline creature explodes out of the bushes that Sal had been nosing around. The creature attacks Sal, grazing him with its teeth. The creature immediately redoubles its attack. It bites down on Sal and then manages to savage him with both its claws. Sal falls unconscious as he bleeds profusely.

Sal is almost dead-dead; almost max damage on the attacks, plus a crit :(. There's a map up on Roll20. The green circles are trees, and the odd dark green shapes represent heavy undergrowth. The black squiggly marks on the road indicate that the road is sloping. The section that most of the party is on is level, but the section that Rhona and the two rearmost mules are on is uphill. The squiggly mark NW of Chantif marks where the slope starts heading down. The ground off to the north and east is a slope up, and the ground off to the south and west is a slope down. The party is up.

Sal begins sniffing around and starts trying to wander off the path and up the slope that is off to the right.

Your choices for going around are NE and SW. Since Mattock suggested S or W, I'm going to have you go SW until somebody says differently.

Making their way towards the rock wall, the party winds up descending into a small valley between the ridge on which they camped and the taller ridge that dominates the skyline. By lunchtime the party has traveled several miles along this valley with no sign of an easier climb.

And the animals?

The night passes uneventfully, and the party sets out early the next morning for the last leg of the journey into Meston. You hear the pitter-patter of a light rain hitting the forest canopy above you as you make your way up the trail, but not much of the rain makes it through the canopy, so you remain fairly dry. All of a sudden, Sal begins barking loudly. None of you notice anything untoward immediately.

Marching order?

Actually, 12/20. Everybody healed 2 HP for a night's rest.

The night passes uneventfully. The next morning, after packing up, the party discusses their next course of action.

Mark off a day of rations. Do y'all want to try climbing the rock face or try finding a way around?

Drexel collapses against a log while the rest of the party sets up camp, grabbing a meal out of his pack and eating it there, rather than waiting for the party to finish setting up; he heads to bed as soon as the tent is up. Having finished supper and the various camp chores, there are a couple of hours left before dark, so Umash begins working on a potion.

Umash already declared that she'd make potions whenever she had the chance. Is there anything Rhona or Chantif would like to do before dark?

EDIT: Forgot to roll for the potion.

potion: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (6) + 8 = 14

I subtracted the raw materials and added the potion to the spreadsheet. This makes a total of 4 CLW potions.

The party is about to reach Meston. Please let me know if you're still interested. New submissions are still welcome, provided you can get the character together quickly; the entire point of opening recruitment up early was so that the character would be ready to go when I was ready to introduce him or her.

The party continues for another hour. The trek is up a steep grade, and Drexel is short of breath and about to fall over from exhaustion by the time the party finds a convenient campsite.

Drexel takes 4 nonlethal damage.

Det was the one trained in Knowledge (geography), which is why I had been giving that information to him; on that note, somebody is definitely going to want to put a rank in that when you officially level up in Meston. You're from the area, though, so I'll let you make an untrained check in this case.

Having finished the funeral and associated duties, the party resumes the trek towards Meston. As the sun sinks below the trees off to the party's left, they pause in a small meadow to contemplate their next move.

Your eight hours of overland travel are up. Forced march or camp?

The party makes their way towards what they think is the southeast. After two hours, however, they return to the site of their battle; the ground singed by the creature's exit and the remnants of the trap that caught Riuk make it blindingly obvious that the party has been traveling in circles. Taking a moment to regroup, Riuk tries again, and apparently gets it right this time. Five hours later, as the day's travel is winding down, the forest thins out somewhat as they begin to climb a steep grade. About a mile in front of them a sheer rock face rises about 200 feet above their current elevation.

You have one hour of overland movement left for today, if you want to use it.

Ha. No, it wasn't a cap-busting situation...just a time-consuming one.

So, it appears that leaving Det's gear will work weight-wise. In figuring that out, however, I noticed that there are some items that should probably be recorded on individual character sheets in addition to the spreadsheet. Drexel, you have a scroll of true strike and scribing supplies for 5 scrolls. The last I knew, Umash had the belt of tumbling, but it isn't listed on her sheet. She also has 3 potions' worth of raw materials. I have the party at 3 CLW potions, and Umash's sheet lists 1; you should probably figure out who has the other 2. Also, there's a free-floating invisibility potion someone should claim. Finally, there's 17 gp, 5 sp left in the party coffers; somebody should probably keep track of that.

Basically I'm not going to worry about where all the miscellaneous items are as long as the total weight works out, but for things that you're going to want quickly (like potions and scrolls) their location needs to be clear. Although the crafting supplies and left-over gold don't fall into the category of things you'll need in combat, keeping track of them separately may help everyone keep track of what they have available to them; I'm guessing Drexel and Umash may not have realized that they still had raw materials. I'll try to get a post up shortly.

Sorry, guys. I'll try to get a post up tonight or tomorrow. We've run in to a situation in the other campaign I'm running on here, and most of my GM time has been going towards straightening it out.

Yes, we're waiting on me to get things straightened out. There's a proposal on the table to leave Det's gear, which would probably fix the weight issue, but I still need to figure out where y'all are in terms of wealth.

The wand is still with you; I can be evil...but not quite that evil :). I can't remember whether Ulfgar or Trask was carrying it, so I'm not sure who would have wound up with it. Let's just say for now that Rannock has it. Put a wand of CLW w/49 charges on your character sheet.

I'm @ 10/20.

Is that counting the AoO that never actually happened or not? In other news, that last fight has convinced me to allow the fractional BAB rules from Pathfinder Unchained, at least for now. If things get crazy with people dipping all over the place, I may revisit this, but for now everybody should have a BAB of +1.

The only things that changed were Morg's last attack and the AoO it provoked. When Morg said he was willing to provoke an AoO I went ahead and resolved his turn, not realizing he wasn't up.

Mattock casts a minor spell, and his eyes become white, pupil-less orbs.

Rannock, didn't you only have one CLW memorized? If so, the one you just rolled would need to be a charge off the party's wand. I had you use CLW on yourself when I botted you.

Yes, Chantif, it did come up before (well before the date of the FAQ, actually). Now that it has been FAQ'd, I will run it that way. On a different note, could I get you to either update the gear spreadsheet or give me editing rights so I can do it myself? I'm trying to figure out where the party stands with respect to encumbrance without Det.

Speaking of that, I realize that this last encounter may have been frustrating. Unfortunately, given the nature of your mission, writing Det out of the story is more complicated than normal. It doesn't make sense for him to just wander off, or decide to stay in Meston, or whatever. The only rational solution I could come up with was to kill him off in combat, so when the random encounter dice called for an encounter I made it a doozy and targeted him directly. I just want to reassure you that you don't have to worry about me throwing more encounters like this at you any time soon. That said, 300 XP apiece, for a total of 1602 XP.

Umash is correct; it's an aberration.

Shocked by the turn of events, the party mills around in a stupor for a while, collecting their equipment and preparing a pyre for Det's body. None of you are sure exactly what rites are appropriate for a half-orc raised by dwarves, but each of you has an opportunity to say a few words, if you wish.

Rannock moves towards the creature, drawing his silver warhammer and exhorting his comrades all the while. The creature takes a step back and pulls his forearms together in front of his face with a look of complete concentration on his face. After a couple of seconds, he disappears. A burst of flame jets out in all directions from his former location, washing over Falgard, Mattock, Quingrin, and Rannock.
Falgard and Quingrin take 7 fire damage; Mattock and Rannock take 3 fire damage. (Mattock's fire resistance reduces it to 0 damage for him.)

You've forced it off, which counts as victory. 200 XP apiece.

Going back over the posts to check my math, I realized I accidentally let Morg have an extra turn in there somewhere. I think it was this morning with the provoking to get flanking, so I'm backing up the game. Morg's last action (and the AoO it provoked) never happened. I'm about to post an action for Rannock and the enemy. Everything should be al right then, presuming I don't get trigger happy on resolving AoOs again :).

Since I can tell that my attempt to separate IC terminology and OOC terminology is causing confusion, I'll mention that what Quingrin quoted was the IC information I gave him. The OOC clarification was that it meant DR 5/good or silver. Magic Weapon won't--you'll have to pardon the expression--cut it.

It's quickly obvious to Chantif that there's no stabilizing to be done. Det's windpipe is crushed.

Det is at -16, which is more than enough for dead-dead.

No. It lost its grip because it fell unconscious.

I was going to wait for Drexel's attack to resolve in order, but I don't guess there's any point.

Drexel's bolt skewers the creature. It loses its grip on the branch, and it and Det fall to the ground.

As Morg moves past the creature to find its kidneys, it bites him.

Morg takes 5 normal damage and 3 acid damage.

Just to be clear, Morg, you're willing to provoke in order to get flanking?

It's time to move this along. Lore keeper is resolving instead of an attack.

Morg hits the creature twice, and Mattock cleaves into its shoulder with his axe, but the creature is still standing. Quingrin's palm-heel strike into the creature's chest reveals something of the creature's nature.

Rannock begins encouraging his comrades, but even with this assistance Falgard's sweep attempt fails to knock the creature off its feet. In fact, the creature manages to to take advantage of the atttempt to bite Falgard's hand. Riuk's arrows fly by harmlessly.

The creature redoubles its attack on Falgard, lashing out with its maw and talons. One of the talons catches him on the arm. Then the creature moves to place Mattock between him and Falgard.

Falgard takes 4 physical damage and 2 acid damage from the AoO, and the same again from the claw that hit. The repeats on damage rolls are unusual, but I'm not sure what to do about it. Party up.

You're up next after Quingrin decides whether he wants to attack or use lore keeper. Feel free to post whenever you can; the action will take effect whenever your turn comes up.

Mattock, he isn't so much coming at you as trying to move around Falgard, which happened to take him in your direction. Quingrin, you can't use lore keeper and flurry. You either make a touch attack as a standard action OR flurry as a full-round action. You need the feat Domain Strike to combine them (and you would need to specify which hand the Domain Strike attempt applied to because you only get 1 swift action). If you choose lore keeper, it resolves against touch AC. If you choose flurry, it resolves against normal AC.

EDIT: I just realized this isn't phrased very well. The issue isn't just flurry+lore keeper; it's lore keeper+any attack. The beginning of the blessing ability states that they are standard actions, and so you don't have a standard action with which to make a normal attack (much less a flurry) without the feat (which makes lore keeper a swift action to activate.)

Yes.

We'll find out after Mattock and Quingrin post.

Don't hold your breath.

Pay no attention to the man rolling even more extra dice; I'd forgotten something else.

I'm going to go ahead and move this along. As Drexel already noted, there isn't much for him to do but shoot. I'm guessing, however, that Umash doesn't want to fry Det with a bomb, so I'm going to put her on delay. (If you'd rather ready an action, Umash, you can post with a trigger.)

Drexel aims for the spot in between the creature's beady orange eyes, which are directly over the crown of Det's head, but his bolt flies well wide of the tree. Rhona's arrow strikes the trunk of the tree just below Det's dangling feet. Chantif's arrow on the other hand, skewers the leg by which the creature is holding onto the limb on which it is perched. The creature howls in pain and redoubles its attempt to squeeze the life out of Det. The party hears a sickening sound as the creature crushes Det's windpipe.

If brass knuckle don't add to a monk's damage then why use them?

Monks use them to overcome DR; other people use them to be able to do lethal damage with their fists.

Aw man...

No worries.

I had forgotten. Pay no attention to the man rolling extra dice.

You're still hit.