I understand about searching the wreckers island but this is also important for future scenarios. We should have a system that we as players all understand what our characters can do in a situation as this if our sails get destroyed.
Indeed once the mechanics is decided then the island is the first stop to search for the relic and then the sunken ships as well.
I agree completely.
I'm still in favor of using things like wands or scrolls for that; it maybe a little expensive at first, but if it means that our casters don't need to waste spell slots for stuff like that, I'm all for it.
Amazon should be able to fix their error and deliver via drone, lol
Have a safe and fun cruise, Jiro. :)
Okay. I post, and bam...87 posts to catch up on. I am definitely the weak link on this team :o
Possible gear for the ship –
Wand of Prestidigitation – 375
Negates need to clean the ship; including scrubbing decks
Wand of Unseen Servant – 750
It can be used to row boats to ferry us back and forth, as well as pump bilges if necessary
Skeleton Crew – 11,250
Negates need of Plunder and most Infamy Checks; we just raid morgues and will have a crew ready to go on a general basis if we need any.
NOTE: This may seem extreme, but each casting of Skeleton Crew lasts 1 day a level and a wand has 50 charges.
At this stage Amen-set could create 10 Skeleton Sailors with a Profession: Sailor of 6. This would last us 5 days.
Adular could create 14 sailors with a Profession: Sailor of 7 to sail for a week.
With 50 charges that means that if only Amen-set used it we could be sailing for 250 days; that’s nearly 3 Times the amount of days that we’ve sailed together so far.
Our ship needs a crew of 20 sailors to sail her; between PC’s and the wand we could sail her alone right now.
With the other 2 wands the ship would be clean all the time and we’d have plenty of aid to move boats around.
There’s plenty of other wand options out there, too.
As it stands the cost of three wands is less then 13,000 GP and we’ll be able to negate the need of most of our supplies; rum costs; need for Plunder and Infamy and basically be completely free to go where we want to and the relative cheapness of the wands would negate the overall cost ratio of all the other supplies needed to take care of the NPC’s.
We could even have corpses stored in brine below decks if we lose the skeletons/sailors in the above example, and corpses are easy to find.
The only issue we’d need to worry about is “artillery” vs. other ships; but that’s easily negated if we have two Wands of Magic Missile used to “Snipe” enemy officers at range. That could be a cheap/easy solution to negating those threats (a wand of Magic Missile only costs 750 GP and multiple players can use them).
Anyone else with ideas for supplies?
I approve!
I approve!
Outstanding!
the crew would have issue if we tried to have a ship of the dead, so we'd have a crew-less ship with no fighters. Moral is tough enough to deal with, but finding a fighting crew to man a dead-ship ain't gonna be a piece of cake.
Although gimme a few levels and I can bind a pretty host of devils to handle that for us... But I'm not sure that's where we want to go with that. I do like having a crew and stuff. Kinda built for that.
and we do need to worry about infamy, there's a lot of perks you get from higher infamy, and abilities that we can use
the crew would have issue if we tried to have a ship of the dead, so we'd have a crew-less ship with no fighters. Moral is tough enough to deal with, but finding a fighting crew to man a dead-ship ain't gonna be a piece of cake.
Although gimme a few levels and I can bind a pretty host of devils to handle that for us... But I'm not sure that's where we want to go with that. I do like having a crew and stuff. Kinda built for that.
and we do need to worry about infamy, there's a lot of perks you get from higher infamy, and abilities that we can use
On level 8 if Adular elected to cast it we'd have 16 NPC sailors to man the ship and we'd have 6 PC's to man the ship - not counting Ana and Amen-set. That takes us to 22 crew members at least - easily enough to take care of business.
There was a time Amen-set would have protested an undead crew - that was when I had been playing her LG, though. However, I've been informed that time has passed.
As she's not allowed to have that alignment, she is certainly less interested in such vagueries as having an army of undead or demons on board and will even happily cast the spells herself, if required.
Now, as for fighters; our crew doesn't really fight, they typically are below decks.
But if we need fighters, I'm sure that we can find men who don't care about fighting next to undead and think of the savings that gives us in the long run :)
I suppose Infamy can be useful later, too; but the point is - I haven't been thinking of a high powered magic game.
For example - Jack has a Fly Speed of roughly 50 feet. If we assume he can do a standard Double Move and use Perception as an active Skill Check then we can have him fly close to the trees and use Vanish on him - which lasts 5 rounds; but 5 Rounds is more than enough time for Jack to move 200 feet in 2 rounds and 200 feet back the next two and on round 3 use his perception check while vanished over the middle of the island.
Anyhow, are there any other spells/gear we can use to improve the ship? For right now I'm just curious on what can be done.
I'm with Dhaavan on the no to the Skeleton Crew or even a Devils Crew. I don't think Rain or Neko would take too well to either of them. ;)
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Dead men tell no tales but its takes a living crew to get things done properly around here. We talked about this before with the plague but I am still going with a no for an undead crew.
Prestidigitation is a cantrip that Variel has prepared usually but it gives the crew something to do. We don't want them getting soft on us.
Is an unseen servant even strong enough to row considering they have an effective strength score of what 2?
Dead men tell no tales but its takes a living crew to get things done properly around here. We talked about this before with the plague but I am still going with a no for an undead crew.
Prestidigitation is a cantrip that Variel has prepared usually but it gives the crew something to do. We don't want them getting soft on us.
Is an unseen servant even strong enough to row considering they have an effective strength score of what 2?
Yeah - I checked on the Unseen Servant; a 2 is enough to pull 100 lbs - think we can get something done by having them do things.
And Rain - I do understand your concerns about having Devils, but I'm not sure about the Undead thing - I mean; in a normal world setting, sure, I'd be opposed to it, yes. But in a high magic world where magic is so commonplace I kind of feel like things like that might need to be reconsidered as it literally redefines things.
For example, I've always been a fan of sending a Familiar to scout things out because I figured that even if someone could even spot a Familiar on an island they'd say (at best) - "Hey, there's a bird flying by" - and that would be it.
The GM pointed out to me that in a High Magic world every animal is suspect because any animal could be a Familiar so that means I have to readjust my entire thinking/strategy when dealing with the natural world. If we see a seagull it's not likely to be "just a seagull" then, but very likely it could be a witch's Familiar following and spying on us, or something equally insidious.
Plus, in a high magic world it seems to me that it completely adjusts things like flavor and "feel" to the game. That's not the end of the world, but it's certainly worth considering when we plan out tactics.
So Variel - while Horatio would never get something like Prestidigitation that's always because I kind of like a character with muddy boots and weather-stained clothes with a little scruff and and dirt on his face rather than having my boots always gleaming and my clothes always looking fabulous and every hair in place; but really, in a high magic world if a character actually had a gritty face or somewhat dirty clothes he wouldn't just look like a person who's been in the wild for a while, he'd look like a freak for not using the spell - because, why not use it? I mean; take this as an example -
So like - Guy who forgot to use prestidigitation and has hair in place and a nicely pressed suit
The same guy who didn't use the spell and needs to shave, shower and take his clothes to the cleaner.
So far Horatio's been Choice 2 for flavor; but considering how easy it is to always look like Choice 1 with the use of a Zero Level that almost every caster would have, then that might be something I ought to reconsider taking in the future (especially considering that it seems all the ladies prefer Choice 1 to Choice 2 in this game and Horatio really needs to find himself a girlfriend ;)
Anyhow, the point is since we got these mythic things it's really forced me to reconsider my entire thinking of both the way to plan strategies but also the way to even understand the flavor of the game and how to figure things out.
High Magic world's aren't really my field of expertise so right now I'm just trying to learn the ropes and try to help. I understand that these ideas aren't quite what everyone is looking for yet (although I did get at least one supporting vote) but I'll keep trying :)
Seijiro is with rain re: no skeleton or demon crew... normal humanoid crew is fine with Seijiro
If I recall, Adular had mentioned the spell a while back and the general consensus was the same then too, no skeleton crew unless we had to
Umm I never said "Every animal is suspect" but if one flies from one ship, directly towards another ship and starts circling it...that's suspicious and people will take note because there are familiars in this world. If someone doesn't have any reason to suspect the bird because it is just flying by or flitting about at random that is different.
Undead are a perversion of life in general, even in a high magic world it is something almost universally viewed as evil with a few exceptions.
If you want a way to get your ship to run without a crew, a permanent Animate Objects would be the way to go.
Umm I never said "Every animal is suspect" but if one flies from one ship, directly towards another ship and starts circling it...that's suspicious and people will take note because there are familiars in this world. If someone doesn't have any reason to suspect the bird because it is just flying by or flitting about at random that is different.
Fair enough; but given that is the case it's occurred to me that Horatio has been far too cavalier with his opinions to wandering animals. Sometimes a bird is just a bird - but it's also possible that it's demonic presence possessing a beast to inspire it to great evil.
That being the case, he's going to be more cautious in the future, just in case :)
Undead are a perversion of life in general, even in a high magic world it is something almost universally viewed as evil with a few exceptions.
I agree completely - from an out-of-game concept; but in our party I'm not entirely sure that makes sense. For example; Dhaavan is one of our chief diplomats and for the good part of the game he was a Tiefling; a creature belched from the womb of a dark and hideous merger between man and demon.
In short, he was almost like Damien from the Omen and no one seemed to mind. Besides; we've summoned "Fiendish" creatures time and time again to aid us in dealing with simple humans - but a "Fiend" is a being from lowest reaches of hell - yet we not only have them in our employ to do our bidding, but our own crew seems more troubled about getting beers on shore leave rather than being troubled by the presence of some dark fiend when they appear and rend flesh from bone in a sick, savage orgy of chaos and violence.
Between you and me, I'd rather have the Undead girl from iZombie helping us rather than deal with the demonic force of something like a Balrog on our ship; but I don't protest the matter because magic is a tool to get the job done and it's effective.
In any case; the Skeleton Crew thing seems to be out and that's cool.
Here's a follow-up question, though; costs for wands are broken down by "spell level" which is not the same as "Caster Level". In short, being able to cast a 3rd Level spell requires a level 5 Caster - hence the price difference. But what if I had a 1st level spell cast by a 5th level caster such as Cure Light Wounds?
The healing power of Cure Light Wounds - if cast by a 5th Level Caster - would be 1d8+5.
So does that mean that if we bought a wand that had 1d8+5 we'd have to pay for a wand that has a "Fifth Level Power Level" or only a "Third Level Power Level" as the caster of a third level spell would actually be 5th Level in real life?
Just a note, Dhaavan was never a tiefling. He was pure-blood human until he was reincarnated as an aasimar. And as to demons, Dhaavan does, always has and will continue to hate them with the fiery passion of the nine hells.
He does use devils, but they are lawful, and do not seek only destruction and havoc. };)
Just a note, Dhaavan was never a tiefling. He was pure-blood human until he was reincarnated as an aasimar. And as to demons, Dhaavan does, always has and will continue to hate them with the fiery passion of the nine hells.
He does use devils, but they are lawful, and do not seek only destruction and havoc. };)
Ah, touche via the Tiefling thing. I don't know why I thought you were, but in any case, aren't Aasimar's generally supposed to be good guys, mister summoning devils ;)
On the other hand, I played a game when one of the players was a Summoner who had a Lawful Good Succubus, so I guess anything's possible :)
In this case my point is mainly esoteric as I'm not really pushing to have Undead workers on our ship anyway, I was just trying to offer some ways that magic could augment things. But it does raise an interesting question about perception/"racism" though - especially in a fantasy world.
If NPC's see Undead as naturally evil via necromantic magic being "naturally" evil, how do they see races that are "naturally" evil or good? In other words - would they judge a half-orc more cruelly than a half-elf because of racism; or - being that we're in The Shackles, would it go the other way? As in - "We're blood-thirsty pirates and damned if we're having any fancy-pants, goody-two-shoes Aasimar sail with us!"
I don't honestly know either way, but I'm interested to learn more about how things are viewed that way in this game world.
Anyhow, I'm off to work but I'm kind of curious. I'll guess I'll learn more later. Meantime, have a great day! :)
Discussion re sails.
Rain rolled a high Craft: Sails roll to adjust/alter the sails we found on the island ... When I asked Immortal about this, he said the following upon their alteration, "The sails just weren't designed for the ship. They work but they're not as good as if they had been designed for the ship."
So, that's why in a thought bubble I had Rain mention about getting custom sails fitted for the Lady. So to answer any further query - no amount of adjustment/alteration will benefit the ship -- we must get custom made sails.
I'll rp the silk sails comment from Variel shortly.
btw Flynn, I can't see Craft: Sails on Piper's skills on her profile page ... She will need that to make or adjust sails.
Hey, it's finals week, so posting will be really sporatic.
Sorry bout the law of notice
Good luck with finals, Dhaavan.
So regarding the Crafting stuff, I'm tossing this up after what I was told from the GM since it seems that there might have been some conflicting answers.
GM: If you could confirm the stuff below one way or the other, so that there is no confusion in the future, that would be great.
Thanks!
During this time, Rain could stay on the ship and fix sails as the others went to explore the sunken vessels for any loot etc ... and so I had her roll to help fix with the Wheel and get the sails ready and in place, as that is all part of her skills and talents as per her backstory. I thought why not have her utilise that part of her life in game because there was time.
As to the Craft rolls, I was advised to have them separate, so Rain has Craft: Ships and Craft: Sails. If this is unnecessary, then Immortal can advise further and I will allocate the 1 rank in Craft: Sails to another skill.
During this time, Rain could stay on the ship and fix sails as the others went to explore the sunken vessels for any loot etc ... and so I had her roll to help fix with the Wheel and get the sails ready and in place, as that is all part of her skills and talents as per her backstory. I thought why not have her utilise that part of her life in game because there was time.
As to the Craft rolls, I was advised to have them separate, so Rain has Craft: Ships and Craft: Sails. If this is unnecessary, then Immortal can advise further and I will allocate the 1 rank in Craft: Sails to another skill.
I don't that having the Craft: Sails is a bad thing. In this case, if you want to repair sails you might need to get a DC of 12 with Craft Sails while Piper might need to get a DC of 20 with Craft Ships, though I'm not sure about the formal DC's and those are just approximations.
Anyhow, that's what I had been told (I had taken lots of notes on Crafting). If there is a miscommunication somewhere I'd like to know it so that we're all on the same page, though.
Regarding the crafting stuff, craft ships is fine for making sails, however you bought a specific boon for the ship in custom silk sails and as such it is not as easy as just fixing them on the fly. Think like the difference between making a set of clothes out of another set of clothes and making them by a seamstress out of beautiful bolts of cloth. Essentially to get the boon you need to have custom sails made. Piper can do it if you get real materials and don't try to jury rig them from other sets of sails.
Ok so i just looked up the making of silk sails and rapid deploy sails and it requires Craft Sails to make. You can't use craft ships to make those sails.
Rain has Craft Sails, so she can cover it, if need be.
Ok so i just looked up the making of silk sails and rapid deploy sails and it requires Craft Sails to make. You can't use craft ships to make those sails.
Well, as far as I know, no one is making Silk Sails or Rapid Deploy sails - we're just taking the sails off an enemy ship and putting them on our ship.
The silk sails were a suggestion because the sails we found among the wreckers' possessions were already altered by Rain (with Piper's help, if you want that, Flynn) and put up to get them to Bag Island. But those sails were only a stop-gap and weren't good for our ship. So, if we are to purchase some silk to custom make sails for the ship, someone will need Craft: Sails to do such a thing.
The silk sails were a suggestion because the sails we found among the wreckers' possessions were already altered by Rain (with Piper's help, if you want that, Flynn) and put up to get them to Bag Island. But those sails were only a stop-gap and weren't good for our ship. So, if we are to purchase some silk to custom make sails for the ship, someone will need Craft: Sails to do such a thing.
I have no issue with purchasing new sails, except one minor detail: the part of our ship has a negative balance of roughly 2,000 GP so I don't know how we an afford those sails at this point.
If we had the money then I'd be down with it, but I don't know if we can afford them at this point.
If the ship doesn't have the coin for silk sails, Rain will pay for them with her own coin and get reimbursed later when the fund is flush again. Dhaavan could even afford to chip in (or pay for them) as he is quite wealthy going by the loot list. There's ways of getting around the lack of ship's funds in order to have the ship sailing at her proper speed again. We cannot afford to lag on the sea especially since we tend to come across enemies out on the ocean.
Silk Sails: Craft Sails (DC 16), cost 15% of base ship cost (10,000gp)=1500gp
(Benefit: A ship with silk sails gains a +1 bonus on opposed sailing checks to gain the upper hand. The ship's tactical speed in ship-to-ship combat is not affected, but its waterborne speed is increased by 10%.)
Silk Sails: Craft Sails (DC 16), cost 15% of base ship cost (10,000gp)=1500gp
Crafting the sails is, unfortunately, an 8 hour a day duty. We could buy them outright for 3,000 GP, but the ship is already is heavy debt at roughly 2,300 GP.
I think the best plan (for now) is to try to offload most of the stuff we found on that island. I think that a lot of those items could easily offset the cost of the sails at full price (hopefully); then we can try to find out what we need specifically and bargain the price down via some Diplomacy Checks.
To be honest there's not much more we can do in any case right now as we're at the temple; but I think that if we're going to be buying new sails in the first place that it shouldn't be this complicated as the GM indicated that basic spare sails are pretty much "standard issue" for spare parts on any ship in the first place and they really shouldn't be that hard to find or expensive to buy.
[ooc]The sails you had before were silk and gave you bonuses. The sails you have now are not and therefore not as good. If you are good with having normal sails thats fine...thats what you have now but if you want the silk sails that you had before then they will need to be purchased or made (which will take time).
Rain would vote for new silk sails as she wants the Lady to move as before.
Sorry about your day. Hope tomorrow is better, Var.
For those not talking in game at present: Anything else you would have Rain ask the Halfling priest? If anyone else wants to speak, they may -- Rain isn't hogging the dialogue. Just started it off as I was on the board. Thanks. :)
Sorry Var. Hope your tomorrow is better.
I'm heading to bed.
Night, Immortal.
Good night, all.
I hope everyone well be okay tomorrow; but for now I need to crash - anyhow, have a great night!
Okay, not sure what the group wants to do at this stage... Do we continue to speak with Slip a little while longer (we haven't formally accepted his terms, yet) ... or do we accept and then leave?
Cool; so at this point I know that Dhaavan is doing Finals and that Seijiro is traveling and (I believe) Rain and Variel aren’t feeling very well.
Adular, if you’d like to RP I’m down with that; but for right now, I figure I’d toss up some ideas on what we could do next. But based on what the GM said I don’t think there’s more we can do with this priest. If you’d like to do some Social RP or something, let me know.
GM – you know what Horatio would like to do next; is there anything else Horatio can do in the meantime?
Okay – that’s pretty much it; I hope you guys are all doing well and I’ll talk to you when I see you!
Yep Need a little direction people. Can't do anything if you don't let me know what you want to do.
It happens Variel. Sorry you've had a bad few days. Hope it gets better.
Hey guys -
I just read the posts and I need to get away for a bit; sorry.
For what it's worth I have made multiple posts on the board with suggestions and ideas for the entire group - including OOC questions to the group that weren't answered.
If people don't know what is going on, I recommend just reading the posts; the information is there and there isn't that many posts. Please believe me when I say that it takes me more time to write/edit/code these posts than it does to read them.
To sum up, Quent is a few hours away, even with crappy sails and a major metropolis. We could just buy new sails there after haggling the price down.
In this case, I've checked the math: if Rain used the House Rules (which is much faster than the Book Rules) and she added in the bonus caveat for Accelerated Crafting with MW tools and had 6 other people with Craft; Sails using an "Aid Check" to adjust her roll and got a Natural 20 it would take her exactly 240 hours to make those sails with Raw Material, because that's how the rules work.
Taking Ready-Made Silk Sails and cutting them to size could be done; but because Beachcomber is a "Small Town" we can't get Silk Sails here as they are above the base purchasing rate.
We could get them at Quent - which is only a few hours away, and where we need to go to get information on the Brine Banshee - but for some reason people want to buy sails here and appears that the rules are being altered to allow that.
I'm sorry for harping on this but this is an issue for me because I've built my entire character concept on specific rules on how things like Crafting Works; including adjustments and codified House Rules from the GM on Crafting and how purchasing works that the GM wrote down and provided.
Normally I don't mind if the rules are going to be altered to allow certain things to happen, but I do not think it is fair that it seems I am the only player in the group who is required to follow those rules when I want to buy/craft things; that's more than a bit frustrating to me.
Finally - GM - I have asked you a question multiple times in PM and recently sent IM's about the PM and I still haven't gotten a response.
For now I need to say that I think it's very frustrating spending hours doing work that is ignored.
I don't think ignoring other players is cool; and I think it's hurtful that people would ignore each other's work and effort. I don't think that's how people should treat each other.
I am sorry if this sounds terse but I had a long day at work and I have to be at work today in about 3 hours and I'm very tired.
As I said, I need to get some space.
I'm sorry about that, and I hope you all have a good evening.
A couple of things: 1. I am the DM and the purchasing rate is typically for magic items. Also anything below the purchasing rate is readily available but that is not to say that there is nothing above it. I said you can get silk sails here and therefor you can.
2. You did not build your "entire character" around crafting. At best you built a cohort, which...and I cannot stress this enough...is not your character, around crafting and even then you didn't build her entirely around crafting. You gave her a couple of skills and an ability related to buying things but that is a small part of the characters overall abilities.
3. My life does not revolve around this game. I had seen your pm and was planning on answering it last night but my mom is in from Florida and I forgot. I am sorry that I forgot but as I said, my life does not revolve around this game.
4. I have been pretty patient with everyone so far in their schedules and such but just "needing some space" especially after that just happened a couple of weeks ago isn't going to work for me. I can't have this yo-yoing back and forth. That said I am going to need a definite answer on if you are quitting or not. If yes, that sucks but ok. If no, then good but I need the complaints about how the game isn't what you want it to be to stop. I am the gm. I decide the pace of the game.
You are my friend and I want you to play and have fun but you need to do what you need to do to make you happy. Whatever your decision is I will support.