nib_'s page

Here's an attempt.

IF( STR < 10 ; STR*10 ; expformula )

expformula = QUOTIENT( 100*POWER(4;0,1*( STR -10)) + 0,2 * MULTIP ; MULTIP ) * MULTIP

MULTIP = POWER(2;QUOTIENT((E32-10);5))*5

This starts from Vod Canockers comment which supposes that Horselords formula comes close, but the numbers need to be made look nice. I've just come up with a way to make them look nice based on the MULTIP variable, which increases also with a power law to reflect the roundoff magnitude, which starts at 5, then 10, then 20, then 40. This also conveniently explains why 1040 and not 1050. It's the power of 2.

All in one line:

expformula = QUOTIENT( 100*POWER(4;0,1*(E32-10)) + 0,5 * POWER(2;QUOTIENT((E32-10);5))*5 ; POWER(2;QUOTIENT((E32-10);5))*5) * POWER(2;QUOTIENT((E32-10);5))*5

Happy encumbrance everyone!

We continued last night and as usual I completely underestimated the party.

Happens all the time :-)

What was a pretty freaking killer combo in my campaign (although it was classic 3.5, not pathfinder) was the combination of Mangh-Micto's Deeper Darkness and Aushanna's True Seeing. If you are intent on still humbling them, you could have those two team up in that manner. Aushanna's bow firing 3-4 times per round into a party that can't move fast due to the darkness, will be looking under pressure.

In my campaign, I would have completely controlled them to the point of TPK, if I wanted to. However, I also ruled that Aushanna started feeling overconfident and entered melee, when the group discovered a way (detect magic with search for the deeper darknesses origin, which I ruled was a small pebble) to find and eventually dispel or discard their main problem (don't remember how exactly they removed the darkness). As soon as that problem was solved, Aushanna was toast by means of multiple melee attacks...

Still, easily one of the most memorable and exciting parts of the campaign.

Nib.

hey guys,

not sure who is still reading, but you (especially Eduardo) just helped my 2nd installment of the SCAP to a vast improvement.

Having Shebeleth as the mastermind behind the CW's actions to open the portal for connecting the plot with Adimarchus is very workable as he is the only cagewright with the means to resurrect other CWs and thus, essentially controls the whole group, guided by his god directly or indirectly, but in any case, like necessary (for the path :)

But moving "Strike on Shatterhorn" between LoO and FoF makes so much more sense to me. Let me explain:

Having SoS so early means, the PCs are likely heavily outclassed, which comes to me as a great option to show them their limits. There can be plenty of reasons to let them live, one being the fact that half of the group is about to leave for the Volcano, the rest wants to keep the PCs around and busy, playing with them. (If they quickly kill one or two, teh rest might flee and return to Cauldron where they are most likely a hindrance). Maybe, especially when the Smoking Eye character is along for the ride, (s)he being a goal to freeing Adimarchus could be intentionally spared by Shebeleth, who might even intervene to save that character, if things get rough under Shatterhorn. I'm sure I would find other reasons for a group of mad, insane cultists to suddenly ignore an adventuring group.

All that the PCs need from Shatterhorn is the ACTUAL location for the ritual, which makes it not quite into a strike, but more into a stealth mission. It's something my 3-4 roguish characters will love.

They don't need to mop the antagonists, they need to avoid them and just get the info they need. On leaving, they indeed encounter the burning city and should start hurrying towards the tree.

Whether I skip the roleplaying opportunity of chosing the new mayor or use it together with Kravichak to give them the possibility to follow (e.g. scry) the guy back to Shatterhorn, I'll leave to fate at this point, however, the possiblities seem endless and finally with this twist, for me at least, the whole story makes even more sense than before...

Thanks.

Nib

I am starting the tax riot next time we play. I have a PC who is a town guard. I was thinking of having him be the one to try and make the arrest on Maarvu...I also have a rogue who is trying to get in good with the Last Laugh, so I was thinking of letting him in on the plat to try and incite things, but not that they are going to try and whack his frend...

How did it go in the end ?

Reason for asking:
Exactly what I got in my group. One town guard, one rogue, loosely affiliated with the last laugh, trying to get ahead of his fellow adventurers in the way of knowledge and/or power.

I want to slow him down considerably and force him to make a choice. The "town guard" character will have to accompany Krewis to protect him when he tries to arrest Maavu, while the rogue character and friends will have the task to kill off the accompanying "half-orc" patrol (which in my case will be half and half :) )

If he indeed kills the town guard, he's out of the party for sure. If he spares him (which I expect), he'll be slowed down strongly in his attempt to become a harlequin...

Anyone see a problem with this?

Nib.

And there we go again ...

Found a couple of people willing to go adventuring in a jungle town recently. Restart going to happen in February...

Hope it turns into such an epic again ;-)

Cheers,
Nib

PulpCruciFiction wrote:

Well, he can always impart the information in a cryptic riddle of some kind, though the spell would not allow him to refuse to answer until he's been resurrected. If you want to punish the players for selfishness, have Jared send them to the pit by way of the lair of some nasty creature.

I think the cryohydra is nasty enough, isn't it ? :)

We had the session yesterday. I let them have the way fairly simple, but not without wasting at least one of their questions. Jared was crazy enough to respond exactly as per the book to their expected question: What is the way to the underdark entrance.

He told them to get pen and paper ;-)

Next was to describe the way. he responded with something cryptic: Head towards Kheltos and turn east as the sun sets.

In principle completely useless, but they had their best guess and just assumed that Kheltos would be Jared's name for Hookface and went north only to turn east when they saw the sun in the west descend exactly lined up with a bowl and a peak and a riverbed leading east.

They found the hydra.

I had decided earlier that I will treat each head individually and have it breath/attack on its own timing dealing 3d6 damage with the ice breath. Each jet/head allowing to save, which gave the 2 rogues a good time and everyone else a fair chance.

They met the first volley of rays head on, but were sufficiently spread out that no character received more than 3 jets. Some of them were quick to retreat, the Gnome wizard immediately fireballed away. However, they didn't expect the fast healing, so I tipped them off to this by stating that the fireball damage had almost completely worn off when the hydra came out of the hole again to face the illusionary group of adventurers (major image) and proceeded to attack those for a while (abysmal will save). The rest was doing about as much damage with arrows as the hydra regenerated with its fast healing. Until - the meatshield critted with his +3 composite longbow and dealt a whopping 25+ damage. Meanwhile every player was sort of aware that this thing healed quickly and so the wizard returned to massive damage (lightning bolt). The two most capable melee combatants then decided to charge it. The rogue, on his way quaffed a potion, drawing an AoO having neglected its reach, the fighter/barbarian flew into rage on the way down. Rogue after being hit for more than his potion had healed him, did a 180 while the fighter put the hydra to the test. He figured now or never and went all in. Full power attack, charge, and drama die (house rule, similar to action points), jumped the thing leading to a massive attack with his greatsword. He didn't crit it, but he didn't need to. 36 damage in a single massive blow brought the beast to -22 hp, which I deemed enough despite its impending initiative count when it could have healed up 17 points. I decided that he had cleaved the thing into two pieces. Everyone was breathing a big sigh of relief.

Was a good combat. Later that night a hill giant started raining boulder onto the camp, which was more dangerous to one PC who was particularly reckless.

Anyway, the hydra (with the stats from above) was nasty, but not deadly to a group of 3 7th level and 2 6th level characters, who knows that retreating is sometimes the correct choice. (I've had groups before who always assumed that no matter what they do, the encounters are both level-appropriate and mistake-forgiving)

For future reference:

I think this combat is all about synchronizing damage. If the group can and attempts to deal 77+ points within one or 94+ points in 2 subsequent rounds, the combat is very simple. If they resort to hit and run tactics, the fast healing and recharging breath weapons give the hydra a big edge.

Nib

This is GREAT! Thanks for sharing. I just read the PDF; what do you do if/when the PCs attempt to decipher the greek-looking words???

Robert

I let them. One of them was really keen on getting straight to the task. If they don't want to do the puzzle, they can get clear text with a successful DC30 decipher script.

You can make this roll imperative, if you encode not only the characters with a different font, but the whole section with some sort of encryption scheme.

The encrypted parts are there to draw most attention as they foreshadow events to come. My players (on being given several pages of text) typically put the notes aside for later (and never use them. The fact that some is made extra important by obscuring it slightly was intentional to get them read at least those lines.

That's also the reason why I include the ODT file, so you can work with it yourself.

Nib

Hi everyone,

my group did take on the mission about finding Zenith and encountered Jared while running from the dragon. They decided to wait and see what happens. I chose to have Jared proudly walk back to defend his castle, which prompted Gottrod to catch him and start an interrogation.

The group still didn't want to attack, not being able to scale their enemy properly they didn't want to risk anything.

They snuck up on him and (due to a few bad rolls on listen/spot) the dragon managed to overlook them in the first place. They all had some position, when the Bard finally decided it was time to start singing. And that, of course, found Gottrod's attention. So much, in fact, that he got fascinated and - to add insult to injury - was suggested to follow the Bard, who proceeded to lead Gottrod away from the burning hut to allow the rest of the party to bring Jared to safety. Jared, however, didn't want to let this dragon part, not with his minions finally coming to see him and called out to the dragon, who still followed the suggestion given to him by the Bard.

Group decides to knock Jared out, which takes some time, despite the knock-out master dealing over 10 hp per round and getting help from other party members and the AoO allowed by Jared's attempt to educate his non-behaving minions by use of a spell.

In the meantime, the Bard starts talking to Gottrod and he tells about his motives, trying to find the Underdark, which coincide with the players, so the Bard makes the mistake of admitting that they, too, don't have a clue where to go and want to ask Jared themselves. Gottrod takes the opportunity to break from the suggestion and searches for Jared, as this is exactly what the Bard had told him is the course of action.

He finds him quickly as he (unconcious, ~40 hp subdual damage) is being dragged away from the scene by other PCs. He flies over quickly and talks to the PC who is holding him. After that one responds with draconic (Black half-dragon accent) and admits also not being able to help, he attempts to dispose of him using his breath weapon on him and his friend as well while at it.

Needless to say, Jared was between them and took the full 36 hp fire damage, not being able to save (helpless) and dies right there. The fighter/bbn takes 18 to the head, the fighter/rogue evades. I gave them exactly 1 round to attempt to rescue Jared and would have let them have it, but the fighter/bbn/dragon ancestry decided that curing himself of his flesh wound was more important than stabilizing their only source of information on how to proceed, so Jared died a quick death right then and there.

Gottrod didn't live very long after that as a combination of lightning bolt (7d6), phantasmal killer (3d6), magic missiles (4d4+4) and dispel magic (to make a few more arrow hit due to the dispelled mage armor) plus the Barbarian attack (full power attack and backed by an action point to make it hit nonetheless) had taken its toll on the poor beast.

6 characters (4 7th, 2 6th) do make a CR7 dragon really look puny... (at least it showed in the small chunk of XP they received for that)

They decided to drag the corpse of Jared back to Cauldron and have him interrogated through speak with dead.

What would he be able to tell as a dead person ?

Would he want to be resurrected before giving answers ?

Would he answer sensible ?

How can he reveal the information that he would have put on a piece of paper (map to pit) as a dead guy ?

Any input is appreciated.

Nib

i would love to see it; but I've always had trouble navigating the RPGenius site. I couldn't find the diary entry you speak of. I went to downloads, journals, and homepage - I couldn't find a link for it; could you please provide more direction.

Thanks
Robert

I've put it under chapter 3 (flood season) of the shackled city AP, obviously.

http://therpgenius.com/modules.php?name=File_Repository&op=getit&fi le_id=326

Nib

Here is my version of Skaven's diary. I borrowed the last entry from Jollydoc's journal. Some parts concerning the cagebuilders (Dugobras), Lord Orbius’ visit and the final delivery of the cages are encrypted (DC30 decipher script).

Skaven Umbermead’s diary
...

I've generated a full blown handout of this diary and put it on therpgenius.com website. Maybe someone wants to use it.

Nib