Kingmaker is still enticing and I like this party.
But it's starting to feel that we are trying to reanimate a dead horse too many times here.
Though I'm not going to decide which way I lean until Riku had a chance to weight in
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Congratulations - both on surviving your trip - but more importantly a smooth launch : )
That sounds rough. I hope the Niagra Falls was nice at least!
"Come forth from beyond!" Khal raised his hands to beckon the outer Planes calling a creation of magic into the world. In the shape of a black and white eagle crackling with energy in the middle of the bandits. The eagle attempts to latch onto the bandit facing Corwin but mostly succeeds in tearing at his hair.
Eagle; stats:
Hp 5/5
Init +2 AC 14/13/12 Fort +3 Ref +4 Will +2 CMD 11 Fly +8 Attacks: 2x +3 Talon (1d4) and +3 Bite (1d4)
Alluria, Kahl and Riku acted once. Then the bandits acted. Now Alluria, Kahl and Riku has acted once more. I do belive you want to take an action Corwin :P
Hearing the *twings* of bow and crossbows Khal opens his eyes and let the spell he was concentration on fade. With a soft mumble to Ellyn grabbed his quarterstaff firmly and stepped around the corner. "It seems to be time." He raised his free hand as glyphs danced around it. A simple conjuration to create unstable ground - hopefully that would unbalance the horses.
Corwin + Khal actually, it seems : ) I'll get on it this evening! It will probably be a grease underneath the horses, which could prove amusing. Also means our little pit-trap will be unveiled.
Seeing as he didn't hear people falling nor fighting Khal whispered a quick prayer to Nethys and maintained his spell.
Khal continues to wait at his vantage point blissfully unaware of any sort of trouble!
Heads up: I'm going away for four days tomorrow (back on sunday!). There should be wifi and my laptop is sorta working at the moment so I should still be able to post - but if I don't you know why : ) So from my end, no worries mdt :P
I uh spotted your new comment for a while. I also tactically reordered all the boxes so the colours were in the old arrangement, since I'm good at timing :P
Random guess; something screwed up when the file went public?
I can only see the comment I just created it seems. Odd!
Hmm I knew I saw something about it earlier, but I didn't notice them just now. You want me to switch around? (And also, the comment appears gone by now so maybe not .P)
I also did assume Fort Oleg does not have four fully functional catapults - correct? If they actually do, I don't think we need to bother about fleeing bandits ... :P And Khal would be up next to one with some sidekicks!
All right, I went with Blue=Guards. They were placed mostly out of sight but with quick access to the gate. The one with the longbow was placed in one of the towers, just so she can also try and pick off escapees if there are any. Khal was placed somewhere out of sight. He should be able to do Move->Grease after he drops concentration. Most of the commoners were placed somewhere out of sight. I cold-bloodedly used a pair as bait however; the one with the rabbit and the one seeking revenge. Their job is simply to run away in panic once the bandits come :P (Assuming they cooperate of course! Otherwise just shelter them somewhere safe-ish!) I also placed the adept one a tiny bit closer. If we could nicely ask him to prepare Cure Light Wounds having an emergency medic would be handy. Hopefully we won't need it, but it could be handy in case something goes south! Thoughts?
I'd suggest we place some sneaky people right by the gate, on the walkway, so they can close the gate/cut off the bandits without being seen. Khal will probably place a Grease Spell near the entrance, so we don't need it completely closed. @Riku - may I suggest the wall for you too? That way you can also shoot anyone trying to escape. But I admit that it might provide a bit less cover...
Could you add which letter corresponds to which guard in the favour doc? Also which equipment they had would be handy, I know only one carries a "real" ranged weapon.
A pit doesn't have to be that big to provide us with an advantage. I mean simply missing the last step can make you stumble down the stairs - and in this case that could mean stepping into something really nasty! Additional random thought: Isn't there plenty of trappers frequenting this area? Oleg will probably have some nasty bear-traps handy if we ask kindly ...
"I'd be hesitant to employ tripwire - they'll know something is up. But on the other hand, once they see it it might already be too late ... Baring the gate is an excellent idea, if we can. Hmm. We could just dig a very shallow pit and line it with sharp sticks or caltrops to save time?"
"A simple illusion should provide something to hide behind or inside, but other then that our options are limited. We could also place caltrops and hide them - or dig pit-traps if we had the time." Khal offers.
A bit distracted today, sorry! I'll get a post up tomorrow evening.
So we just have to convince them that "standing infront of fort" would result in "twelve bandits attack at once" instead of their envisioned "zero bandits attack". This way our proposed scenario of "four-six bandits attack then gets slaughtered" sounds more appealing :P
Aye, we have guards. And we are currently going to guard a trading post, although I suppose the degree of proactivity can be discussed :P But having the guards stand on/in the trading post and us hiding outside can work too, just a shame to waste all those mounts.
@Tomorrows battle - Anyone has any ideas? I'm mainly thinking our cavalry would be really handy in cutting off the retreat of any pesky bandits, but beyond that I don't have much thoughts on the issue at the moment. edit: Silent Image has the duration of concentration. Since we have a reasonable estimate of their arrival time I'd figure Khal could keep that up for maybe an hour or so, simply to hide parts of our forces from our foes. Might need some sort of noise just to mask the sounds of bored soldiers though. But not noisy enough to distract Khal :P
If anyone has anything they wish to bring up during the trip, feel free to poke me and do so. I just added mine to annoy mdt a bit and perhaps get to know the NPCs a little bit :P
Khal jumped down from the cart and looked around at the barely complete keep/trading post. Home! And it seemed as if they had arrived just in time; with the regularly scheduled bandit attack occurring tomorrow. "Make sure to put the cart and such out of sight, we do not want any bandits to suspect the situation has changed." Khal ordered the grunts then joined the conversation he had simply been eavesdropping. With a nod of greeting first to the woman then the man on the roof he introduced himself. Once the pleasantries was quickly concluded he looked around and started to plan for the morning to come. "It would be a shame if any of them were to slip from our grasp tomorrow. Do you know which route they take? We might want to hide our riders somewhere to cut off their escape."
During the trip towards the trading post Ridder did his best to get to know his companions - the wagon could hardly fit them all and reading a good book while walking was dreadfully inefficient. Luckily one could learn a bit or two from ones fellow man, even if some seemed a bit simple. Among the guards that typically meant Ridrga as the horses otherwise made the endeavour somewhat annoying. The dwarf struck him as competent but ultimately not really sharing many of the same interests as him. But if he had to pick between disinterest and an almost dangerous ignorance of the basic metaphysics of magic (and trolls. He was fairly sure they were *not* running Brevoy from the shadows. Nor "taking honest dwarves jobs"...) he knew his choice. Ridrga was firmly on the top of his likeable dwarf list. The labourers did seem to have some more interesting conversations in them. While not really appreciative of the deeper philosophical questions of magic either Epoch did have the redeeming feature of humour. Among those gathered, that seemed dreadfully rare! The most interesting of the bunch was of course Guilador - the fellow practiser of magic. Now, his technique seemed a bit unpolished, but there were still things that could be learned. Initially he dismissed both the drivers as somewhat dimwitted, but his perception of Prosta changed once she was given a chance to speak her mind without interruption. Towards the end of the short journey, he found himself conversing more and more with her and even trying to include her in the discussions with Guilador. As the other members of the party were either riding or frequently scouting ahead he didn't spend as much time as he liked getting to know them. A shame, seeing as they all seemed a bit more interesting then the rest. Ah well, there will be plenty of opportunity for that. Occasionally he also conjured (and as a practitioner of the one true Art, he did not need to stuff or retrieve it from his cleavage!) a black and white eagle to scout the intermediate surroundings from the air and report back, mostly to make *some* use of his talents.
No worries just checking : )
Only thing I'd like to poke at is the gold + Goods cost; teams (and buildings) typically only cost Goods. The gold price listed is just what it would cost to purchase those goods directly (like we just did, having no Goods). Are you planning on changing this or am I reading too much into it : )? Also leveling NPCs sounds nice - we just have to avoid having them eaten by trolls in the meanwhile!
Khal's post was mostly an invitation for idle chit-chat if anyone is feeling up for it, otherwise I think we are ready to move out right? (After Alluria secures the supplies of course!)
Khal takes the opportunity in Restov to top off his scribing supplies, just in case they need something written later. And it was comforting to spend one last day in civilization proper before heading out in the rough. [i]But all gems start out as uncut rocks.[/ooc] he reminded himself. It was a thought he had to repeat once he met the hirelings acquired. Most of them even seemed to avoid eye contact! On the very least, the guards seemed properly armed and armoured. That was good. He paced back and forth a few times to inspect them a bit more, but realized that it was hard to gauge anything when he barely had an idea what he was looking for. Eventually he gave up and introduced himself instead. "I am Khal Ridder, disciple of Nethys. I will be the arcanist on this expidition; if you have any concerns regarding the works of magic you are more then welcome to seek me out." He stopped to see if they had any questions then continued on to see if he could get the others thoughts on the hirelings.
A detail, I assume, that will greatly impact our options on recruiting grunts : )
Khal follows the path traced on the map, nodding as their guide explains the choices. "This seems reasonable." he concludes. "Should be see to it to recruit extra hands in the morning? More eyes watching improves our chances to make the trip safely. But finding people willing to move down there might take some time; the untamed frontier is not for everyone."
The three first teams sounds reasonable, although I am not sure if we can splash for Lackeys just yet. That would be 260 gp. Toss in a single Cure Light Wounds potion to get a "real" healer up and running again comes out at 310gp. Stick to that for now? (We probably should pick up the potion while we are in civilization proper though!)
Fine by me! I'd suggest to leave one of them with the wagon though, just so we don't lose it :P Also, any ideas as what to invest our gold in? We could hire some hirelings, like a chef lookouts or someone to drive the wagon and care for the horses, so it becomes a bit more of a proper expedition. But we could probably pick that up at Oleg's too and then we don't have to convince anyone to move that far. Is there anything we can't get out on the frontier we want to bring? (Healing potions and stuff? Khal got a little bit of that, but it might not hurt! Or perhaps just scroll supplies, then he can make some CLW scrolls.)
I suppose our first course of action would be simply travelling to Oleg's wouldn't it?
3 points more then last time though :P Also I realized half of us have horses and the others not. Which makes riding doable but a bit of a hassle! (I also realized how nice a Cavalier/Magus would be in Kingmaker. Charging shocking grasp lance crits - imagine that!)
With the introduction and ceremonies completed Khal sighs in delight. He wasn't much for parties in general, especially not when he itched to get moving. But the actual moving would probably have to wait; they had *some* planning to do after all! "May I suggest we retire somewhere a bit more quiet? It would be good to know ones companions a bit better - and perhaps discuss our approach to this wonderful expedition of ours." he suggests.
Corwin's got a -5 because he's a Paladin, and that makes the Swordlords a bit nervous. They are LN, not LG, and the idea of a potential Theocracy to the south is about as bad as the chaos that's there now. Uhum... So they are not going to like the giant statue to the glory of Nethys that I'm going to build then! (Luckily it animates as a doomsday weapon so their opinion won't matter :P)
I could always ask some outsiders nicely. I mean something like an relentless servant of justice could probably make a good marshal or something :P?
One can learn as much from your enemies as your friends, perhaps even more. Khal echoes his mentors words to himself as Varn rejected his table company. But he doesn't really sound like someone interested in learning. So this Maeger Varn to the east, Grey as well as the Iron Wraiths to our west. Hmm; our flanks should be heavily guarded then - or they'll serve to funnel all undesirables to us. We shall see. Speculating about their future as the charters were handed out Khal barely noticed his own group until talk of routes and such surfaced. With a blink he slipped back to the world of the waking and looked down and around. "Yes, I suppose the guide should plot our path..."
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