"Break the door, or try the open path first?"
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"Almost doesn't matter how much more fight we have in us. If we can't take more than one scuffle like this a day, we'll run out of food before we figure out what's going on."
"Do we want to try to lift that sucker, or try the other ways first?
"Do we want to try to lift that sucker, or try the other ways first?
"Do we want to try to lift that sucker, or try the other ways first?
The judgmental fighter sits cowering in a corner, unwilling to interact with any of you, while he's curled into a ball.
Perri glances at the water, as it is hard not to, before freezing and staring at the surface for a second, and then he breaks and runs for the last room.
Perri will also simply try to bring this last THING down, ineffectively.
Okay, I guess I try from here, then . . .. Why does everyone want to be up front, anyway? Perri grumbles in his head before trying to strike the dead thing in reach . . ..
Moving up between his companions, Perri prepares to work against the new targets.
"We don't know what's down there at this point. But that does appear to be towards our goal."
"Okay, everybody's admiring the murals . . .. Is there something special about them?" Perri takes a moment to look at them more closely himself.
"Let's gather our things, and hope that whatever's wrong doesn't lead to our funerals." He waves a hand in the direction of the stairs down.
Perri returns to consciousness, then gathers his things and stands. This is why you don't ring civilians to a fight. Twice their ideas of what to do have effectively killed me! While his thoughts are private, the expression of rage is visible around his eyes, which is about all you can see through his visor.
Perri steps back and attempts to whack the one he just hit a few seconds ago.
"Fall back into the corridor. Conrad can stand in the opening and turtle up, while I reach around him. It could take a while, but we are far less likely to end up with anyone seriously hurt."
Perri moves forward and attempts to trip the bloody skeleton in front of him.
"Well, that part seems done. Just in case, we should go into this next corridor with a tower shield in front and a tower shield to the rear. Place seems designed to make paranoia feel healthy. What do you guys think?"
Low stress on waiting for the game when life requires attention.
"Ready to give it a go, then?" Perri will take cover behind the shield (relative to the pillar) and start moving slowly across the floor, unless someone tells him to wait a bit longer.
Perri shrugs. "Should work if we can find the triggers. That's the part I'm worried about. Losing focus while trying to step on the right spot, and letting the shield drift from where it should be . . .. But we can try it, sure."
"Almost. We overlap the edges a bit, like this, keep the face of the shields turned towards the arrows, and keep ourselves and a third person behind the shields as we scoot them across the room. Who wants to make the first trip?"
"Yes. Let's get the shields. Brandark and I can be a mobile shield wall, and one of you at a time can hidebehind the shields as we ferry back and forth through the room. Maybe we won't need them, but we don't need to risk assuming we won't."
"Blocking the door seems much simpler. If it can't close, it can't trap us inside, right?"
"Hunh. Interesting." Perri moves closer to the mural, trying to get a better look at the medallions. Is the difference an artistic angle? Can he tell what is supposed to be engraved or carved on either?
"More and more I'm convinced this is NOT how our lantern lighting was expected to go. I'm almost ready to grab out panicked friend and head home. But one locked door suggests we've nearly finished or basic task, despite the situation." He looks down, and kicks at a buried stone. "I've been thinking. We shouldn't panic the town. The story of what we've found, what needs to be done here, should be given to the leaders, not the masses. The town may be better off without a panic."
It should have been -3, taking the worse of either your encumbrance, or the combination of your armor and shield penalties.
"That," Perri begins as he sits down next to his pack, "was actually frightening. I've been scared both before and in a fight. I've not been frightened like that, and I didn't even get engaged. Yes. Thank you, Roya. Thank you very much." Then he puts his vial of oil away, the pack on his back, and prepares to move (with the others) back to find a door for the key.
Magic weapons?!? How in the name o . . . "The OIL!" Remembering the Oil of Magic Weapon that he had been gifted, Perri drops his pack and retrieves it from within. (Full round, IIRC)
Specific rules over-ride general rules. Under the Knowledge skill it specifically adds the exception allowing the use of untrained Knowledge checks for DCs of 10 or less. Your rule quote is accurate, but it is the generic rule for all skills compared to the specific rule for knowledge skills.
"Looks like we backtrack, looking for another door."
Perri will see what he can, move into the room slowly, signaling the others to follow, until he has scanned the entire room. He will point at the hole with this bill, and avoid going directly underneath it. "It looks safe enough. 'Ware the hole, though. It bodes ill."
"We came with a goal: light the lantern. We stumbled onto an arguably more important goal, figure out what's happened and stop whatever is wrong. We can't make the girl our priority for multiple reasons, but let's look at the simplest one: We don't know where she is." He gets up and moves about the room for a moment before continuing. "We can't let curiosity lead to any more harm. The goal is to keep everybody alive, and poking in random corners and picking fights we can avoid lead to avoidable harm and even death. You say you saw a key, Joras? Okay, let's go get that if it is still there. Then we need to continue into the tomb carefully, and try to solve this puzzle without dying over it. That work for everybody?"
"Take your two hours. Conrad's inability to wait almost got me killed once. I'm not going to let his impatience bully me to death."
HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH! Wait. Didn't these two messages just happen somewhere else?
"No. NO. Just, NO! How many more 'but what about this' are we going to run our faces into before one of us DIES? Get the rest. Recover." Perri just walks past the group and back into the "safe room," where he sits down and starts really eating instead of just the bite or two he had before they left again.
"I think I understand being afraid. I don't understand paralyzing fear. That's what he has. I don't know how to get through to the man behind that fear. Very frustrating. I'm tempted to just go knock him out and drag him over here, but that would just reinforce his fear and extend it to include us." He sighs, obviously upset and having no idea how to deal with the situation.
"Joras isn't telling you the best part. There's a lot of GOOD FOOD, and a door which actually completely secures! We can all have a really good meal and manage to get some honest rest. Or you can stay here where the door doesn't secure anymore, and there's still nothing to eat. C'mon! I'm hungry! But we came back for you before I ate anything. Wanted to share properly."
"That's why I'm here." Perri goes along with Joras, prodding the floor with the butt of his bill as he did before.
"He didn't want to leave his illusion of security with no promise of anything better. We now absolutely have better. Not that people always make choices based on sense."
"The main reason we came out of that 'safe room' was to try to help our panicked friend in the other room. I suggest we do that. Go get him and bring him back to the safe room, where he will be far better situated than he is now. Reduce risk. Try to keep other people from getting hurt.
Low stress. Perri has the feats he does specifically to prevent lethal interactions with other people from home. The guy charged with keeping the peace would rather disarm, stop, and embarrass you than kill you. <grin> But, you know, other than the unlucky save dropping Perri, there was no chance this was going to go anywhere but where it has.
As Perri returns to consciousness, he looks up into Joras' face. "Okay, so we won. I told you this was a bad idea, didn't I?" He sits up and looks about, getting his bearings before trying to return to his feet. Then he turns to Conrad. "Get what you wanted out of this?"
As his bill skitters against the armor of the beetle, Perri frowns and grunts in frustration, remaining still for just a moment too long, as the beetle's spray of digestive juices squirts through Perri's visor and manages to do real harm to the young man before he collapses next to the creature.
"Okay, this is as good as real armor. Got it. " Perri takes the bill and tries to find a weak point where the legs come out of the main body . . ..
Sometimes these discussion channels seem to exist only to remind me how relatively calm my life is at this point. Remember this old statement is a Chinese CURSE: May you live in interesting times. I'm sorry your current life is an interesting story.
Perri sighs, already resigned that he's not going to be able to stop them from picking this fight, and forces himself to close with the bug alongside Conrad. Since the things looks like a big beetle, Perri doesn't think tripping it is likely to prove very useful, and there's nothing in particular to disarm from it, so he just goes for a basic 'whack' with the bill.
"If it sees the body as food, we would have to offer it enough food to make it give up what it has. Even if this table produces that much food, it isn't going to sit still while we shuttle foodstuffs out there. And it doesn't matter how much sense my position makes if you're all going to try to get yourselves dead despite it! I have to come along and try to protect you from your own stupidity."
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