Samuel Cabot's page

You're potentially setting things up for some pretty major intra party conflict since the Pathfinder Society is pretty much guaranteed to decide (with pretty good reason, for once :-)) that the Following aren't capable of defending the artifact so it should be taken away for "The Greater Good"

Depending on the players and the group "contract" I could see this trivially ending the campaign when they finally get the artifact as 1/2 the group fight (quite possibly literally) the other half. Or 1/2 steal the artifact, etc.

You know your group. Maybe they like this kind of thing, maybe they won't have their characters escalate things quite so far. But I know that this WOULD be an absolute disaster in at least 2 of the groups that I regularly play in as an intra party civil war would be all but guaranteed.

Edit : Oh, and if some of the players have regular access to the Society Resources via things like sending spells or the like there is all sorts of information that would logically be available to them that the AP expects to NOT be available. Not to mention that the Society would logically be able to just get ahead of the PCs and get the artifact themselves (a Level 5-8 PFS Scenario :-) :-) :-)). Another problem if the players are the kind of players to notice things like that (many groups are more willing to suspend disbelief on such things than others)

To be clear - I'm NOT saying don't do this. You know your group. I'm just pointing out potential problems

I appreciate the advice, your words are not falling on deaf ears. quite frankly, I'm not sure how the group will handle it. but suffice to say I would do my best to guide the civil war to the end of the adventure. The pathfinder Society will have very little input or control of the situation.

Anyhow, we just did the character creation so there's still time to consider.

I as well was considering that this might create a civil war. So I thought there might be a solution that the agent(s) the players will be working with might actually turn out to be Aspis agents in disguise. but I think this might derail and over complicate the whole thing too much.

this whole thing started with as a way to allow me to drop in extra stuff in a treasure starved adventure.

most likely I will just introduce the Pathfinders without any revelation of ulterior motives other than an interest in a primitive tribe, and then play it by ear.

I am just about to start QftFF and am thinking of having a subplot where the party is split between characters who are part of the following from the beginning (born into it) and characters who are imports from other societies.

Those who from somewhere else are approached by the Pathfinder Society who have interest in tracking what is going on with this conflict and ask the characters to secretly work for them and to send weekly updates of what's going on.

Eventually there could be an inter party conflict of what is to be done with the frozen flame artifact.

In essence, there may be a question of whether the Broken Tusks can be trusted with such a powerful artifact, or should it be turned over to the Society's vaults for safe keeping (the Tusks will be compensated of course).

what do you think?

well, that WAS what i was missing.

thank you logsig for that timely and succinct answer.

I love Pathbuilder for their great program, but this seems not a very intuitive way to handle it.

thanks once again for your time and effort logsig

cheers,

I was on Pathbuilder 2 trying to create a Spellshot gunslinger. It shows the dedication as possible but requires "Way of the Spellshot" as a prerequisite. But since Way of the Spellshot is not an option, I don't know to pick the Spellshot Dedication.

Am I missing something?

update: someone in the group did just that. But if i had done one too it would have been chaos. I still think it is dumb to have it this way but i guess if the feature is one its way (not complete yet) I cannot complain other than it should be made clear that the feature is pending.

thanks to all who responded

He did, but I'm not wanting to do an event. I'm just wanting to run a single game. Is there no way of doing that?

ok, now it is asking me to schedule a game. To me, the event IS the game.

now I'm confused.

no, the VC has not created an event. i started to create an event but it seemed i was creating an event with multiple games like a convention. so basically it is an event with only one game associated with it?

that seems weird

thanks, I'll try it.

I have started running games at the local game store. The Venture Captain told me that Pathfinder Society wants us to set up the game to be offered on the Warhorn website.

i have volunteered to run a scenario next week but I have gone over the Warhorn website and it pretty easy to find a game to play but I am completely flummoxed on how to post a game for me to run.

Can someone please help me figure out Warhorn?

On page 49 in Emaliza's Gambit it talks about the 13 possible shards. I suppose I I read it to mean that those are the totality of the orb rather than the remainder of the pieces the players can get (even though there is still 14 pieces by my count). It is made a little clearer by Emaliza's stat block ( list the the "flawed Orb of Gold Dragonkind".

I'm not thrilled at the scavenger hunt to find information these folks put me through but it is clearer with TomParker's comment, thank you Tom.

Still not clear that if the 14 pieces are added to the existing represents a whole orb or not.

But that does not bother me in the least. I'm just going to assume it does, not that It matters one way or the other.

Funny this is being discussed now...

So my party met Emaliza and went along with her plan (albeit non-committal). Side note, I let them see that Rinnarv was silently not thrilled at what was going on (crit perception check while trying to get a read on him). Then they met Inizra who gave them a whole different story. They also found out the relationship between Emaliza and Uri so I think they are going to give her a good grilling when they see her again.

But they went through the Archives and I noticed that the adventure says that there are 12 pieces of the Orb in the Vault. The players have found 2 pieces already (one in Kyrion's chest, one inside the Dragonshard Gaurdian) that's 14 pieces. But then the previous adventure makes a huge point of saying that the Scarlet Brotherhood has a bunch of pieces that they have been joining together and sending them to Emaliza.

So wait a minute, how does that work out? Does Emaliza have any pieces? What happened to the pieces that Uro sent her? Anre there only supposed to be only 13 pieces?

This seems to be a plot hole

What am I missing?

If your talking about E5. Citizen Archives, those are only copies.

I'm pretty sure the adventure is using the term 'copy' to mean the 'only copy', not that Mengkare has a copy machine, has the originals stashed somewhere and has just made copies for his files. There is no mention of 'originals'.

So my player got the the archives and they discovered all the contracts that the residents of Promise had to sign and they decided to burn all the magical contracts. Of course the adventure does not say anything in regards to this course of action. Personally am delighted at the ingenuity and sheer hutzpah of the action but I am not sure what the effect of the act will be. Fortunately it was late, and I was able to call it for the evening (and buy myself time to consider what will happen).

Anyone want to venture an opinion, point out something I missed, etc?

I really doubt my players will do it either, I just bring it up as a curiosity.

Per the adventure, You are supposed to bring up the Victory Points so the players know to 'spend' them to get an edge in the battle. I just got to thinking that my group is severely lacking in ranged attack and have already used their means of flying in previous fights that day. Frankly, I think they're going to get their collective asses kicked in the Dahak Jr. battle. It just got me thinking that its reasonable (if not cowardly) to figure that cutting and running might be the best option. Especially when they figure out that they need 18's (or in one of he player's cases nat 20's to hit this thing). Weirdly, it's just best to run earlier than later.

I fully expect them to blow through their VP's in the course of the battle. I have already decide it might actually be ok for them to get their asses kicked. It will make the final battle with him more personal. I also decided that it is reasonable to have those PC's who are dropped in the battle to be revived after the battle by the towns folk who are present at the castle. The rest of the adventure will be payback

Here's an interesting thing about the final wave of the 1st chapter. The Dragon battle potentially wont matter at all.

By my reading of the scenario, if the players have enough victory points going in they can just walk away from the Dahak battle all together with no consequences. They do not lose any victory points for not fighting the dragon, they just don't get the 2 extra victory points for defeating it. in fact, the worst thing they could do is start the fight, spend all their victory points in fighting it and then get their ass kicked.

So,if they just walk away apparently Dahak just sits there and pouts or something then eventually gets bored and leaves.

can someone cast the Magic Weapon spell on a bomb and have it work?

Alchemical Bombs

An alchemical bomb combines volatile alchemical components that explode when the bomb hits a creature or object. Most alchemical bombs deal damage, though some produce other effects. Bombs have the bomb trait.

Bombs are martial thrown weapons with a range increment of 20 feet. When you throw a bomb, you make a weapon attack roll against the target’s AC, as you would for any other weapon. It takes one hand to draw, prepare, and throw a bomb. Due to the complexity involved in preparing bombs, Strikes to throw alchemical bombs gain the manipulate trait. The bomb is activated when thrown as a Strike—you don’t have to activate it separately.

Magic WeaponSpell 1

Transmutation
Traditions arcane, divine, occult
Patron Theme rune
Cast Two Actions somatic, verbal
Range touch; Targets 1 non-magical weapon that is unattended or wielded by you or a willing ally
Duration 1 minute
The weapon glimmers with magic and energy. The target becomes a +1 striking weapon, gaining a +1 item bonus to attack rolls and increasing the number of weapon damage dice to two.

Cool, did not read the spell closely enough. glad you pointed that out to me, that could have been devastating. ya' i probably should educate myself on cleric a little better.

thanks again

I was reading the stat block for ILSSRAH EMBERMEAD, i noticed that she appears to have Harm prepared 6 times at 8th level! Even at 15th level that seems kinda off to me. I realize that NPCs don't have to follow the same rules as PCs, but that seems to be a bit extreme. At 8d8+64 why would she do anything else?

getting prepared to run a battle between PC's and Greater Shadows.

the Greater Shadow has an ability called Shadow Spawn (see below)

When a creature’s shadow is pulled free by Steal Shadow, it becomes a shadow spawn under the command of the greater shadow that created it. This shadow spawn doesn’t have Steal Shadow. If the creature the shadow spawn was pulled from dies, the shadow spawn becomes a full-fledged, autonomous shadow. If the creature recovers from its enfeeblement, its shadow returns to it and the shadow spawn is extinguished.

I cannot for the life of me find the stat's for "shadow spawn" (there are stats for vampire spawn). i am caught between just using vanilla Shadow stats and expect the spawn to not have a big effect on the battle and using Greater Shadow stats and expect it to have a sizable impact on the battle.

anyone know which way it is suppose to be?

Also as a bonus: Is the spawn treated as a minion (i.e require actions from the 'master'?

is there something I'm missing?

thanks in advance

i too am using Voz as a returning villain, But in my game when the party had no idea it was her and they captured and imprisoned Calmont. She snuck in and killed him making it look like suicide (hanging). Later when they encountered her in the cave I made the zombie in that encounter an undead Calmont (no stat change). Then when the party captured her I had another player's high powered villain bail her out to spite the party. Then while the party is away in the jungle, she has murdered Alek who the party has grown to like. Now, when the party returns from the jungle victorious they will discover what she has done (it should be a gut punch). They will put Alek in the vault with honors. Later that night, she will animate him and he will deliver a message (via her voice coming out of his slack jaw) telling the party that Alek was just her initiation bid to get into the Scarlet Triad. That should help motivate the party.

cool, got it, thanks again for running

don't know if you mean here but here are the Con checks.

Con save1: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (20) + 7 = 27
Con save2: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (4) + 7 = 11
Con save3: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (1) + 7 = 8
Con save4: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (4) + 7 = 11
Con save5: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (9) + 7 = 16
Con save6: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (1) + 7 = 8

1 star GM reroll on a failed

Con save (GM reroll: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (20) + 8 = 28

Thank you Sapphire Fox for running the game. Thank you for you time and effort in keeping it all straight and the whole thing on track. It was a lot of fun.

Thanks to all the other players (Ikit, Davneiros Enora, Roland, Jing and of course Rex) for playing with us, (my son and I) we made a great team.

Thank you all (players and GM alike) for your patience and help through our growing pains in learning the play by post.

good job everyone, Good hustle. Time to drop all your contriband and head out

Sam will:

(Move action) draw a wand of Telempathic Projection.
(standard action) cast Telempathic Projection on Whisper.
(Free action) Move 5' to the corner.

knowledge planes: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (14) + 11 = 25 to know resistances and immunities, senses

Ikit enchanted Roland's bow on his turn

Sam will listen intently trying to parse out the best way to handle this potential threat

Sense Motive: 1d20 + 19 ⇒ (15) + 19 = 34 

Can Sam rather than make a check draw a wand and cast a spell on Whisper?

Sam and Whisper move out to the hall

Is anyone else coming?

Well, seeing as there appears to be nothing of value and seeing as our friend Davnieros did...something by doing...something to save us from...something. I say we move on with greater caution. Before we move on to the next door, is there anything anyone can do about our new sun tans?[

Well, at least we won't need our light sources now.

GM,could we get a little more information on what appears to be causing the Con drain? Does it seem to be somehow related to the heat? Is it localized, as in we could move out of it? Does it seem to be still occurring (a continuous effect)? How do we feel from it, poisoned?

Sam will use a scroll of Lesser Restoration on himself and cast Detect Undead.

restoration: 1d4 ⇒ 1

Fort save: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (9) + 10 = 19 

Sam says:

Had a thought. Does anyone know what we are doing by "Overclocking" the system?

Sam will go in and attempt a Knowledge Arcana to Overclock

Knowledge Arcana: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (16) + 14 = 30

Sam and Whisper will follow

the gun slinger might want the weapon though he is more specialized in one-handed firearms

On himself
CLWwand: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (8) + 1 = 9
CLWwand: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (3) + 1 = 4
On Whisper
CLWwand: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (1) + 1 = 2
CLWwand: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (2) + 1 = 3
CLWwand: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (4) + 1 = 5
CLWwand: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (7) + 1 = 8

Knowledge Planes: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (15) + 11 = 26

Ref save: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (19) + 8 = 27

Hey Rex, there is a weird box in here you might know something about.

Sam will describe the situation to Roland and ask someone to try and negotiate with the voice.

GM, Is Sam's spell (Detect Undead) pinging at all? If so, Sam has something else he wants to do.

Sam will go in, with the Detect undead still going.

Perception: 1d20 + 44 ⇒ (9) + 44 = 53

Note the bump in perception is due to the Robes of the Xorn

Sam and Whisper follow

sam will also switch out his Mnemonic Vestment for the Xorn Robes

West it is then

Whisper an myself are ready to go. Is everyone else fixed and healed? I'm out of the cheap and long lasting invisibility spells, but I do have couple better but shorter lived ones. Do we want Whisper to try sticking his head through the doors? It's pretty stealthy when it want to be. Also, I think Sam should probably keep a Detect Undead going constantly since we've had so much problems with Haunts.

Sam will cast Detect Undead and will keep it going (as a Standard Action each round) until further notice.

Sam has a Restoration spell that he said he would use on Ikit. I just was looking to be able take back the use of the Lesser Restoration seeing as I was not clear on how badly damaged Ikit is as it would be a waste to use both a lesser and a full Restoration.