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I just noticed that even though Mandoo has the Incredible Initiative feat, I forgot to include the extra +2 in his Initiative roll template on the slides. I have rectified this omission, but if anyone made a copy, they should update it to match.
Dancing Sunbeam, I believe that the damage from Acid Splash is 1d6 acid +1 splash acid damage, so even if you miss with your attack, you should still get the splash damage to everyone within 5ft of the target (including the target itself). Interestingly, it appears that the base acid damage (and splash) is not doubled on a crit!... all you get is +1 persistent acid damage. Weird.
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When everything is settled he asks around if someone would be ok fixing a potency crystal on his musket.
I always thought (and have always played it) that hanging a talisman to an object was basically an Interact action, so your question seemed odd. I then double-checked the Talismans rules, and it turns out that there is a special Affix a Talisman activity that takes 10 minutes... and that it requires a repair kit!
Whaaaaat!
I guess you learn something new every day, but that repair kit requirement means that we're screwed. I checked all our profiles and there isn't a repair kit listed anywhere. So much for using those Potency Crystals in this scenario, not unless we can convince the GM that they were actually affixed to our weapons by a friendly blacksmith while we were back in camp.
I have no problem with having an NPC Pathfinder from the base camp affixing talismans for you.
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Scouring the profiles, I come up with:
Bina Sevencloaks: Thievery +7
Isaku Beru: Thievery +6
Dancing Sunbeam: Thievery +3 (untrained)
Libitina: Thievery +2 (untrained)
Kornel: Thievery +0 (untrained)
Mandoo: Thievery +0 (untrained)
Ace Malaluna: Thievery ? (you seem to be missing a profile)
If Ace is trained in Thievery, then he would be at Thievery +7. So it seems that Bina (and possibly Ace), followed closely by Isaku, are our best bets to disable the trap and collect the gold.
Isaku, I noticed that you have a +3 next to your Dex of 14; it should only be +2.
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Hero Point for part 1 goes to Libitina, for putting up with Mandoo.
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[Kornel is definitely a little on the odd side]
Curious whether a psychompomp like Libitina can actually tell Kornel's sorcerous bloodline by glance and just politely isn't making a big deal out of it to Mandoo.
Mandoo: "That guy's a bit weird, huh."
Libitina, caught in an existential dilemma, forced to cooperate with an antithesis to her very being, holding back her divine anger against an affront to nature: "Yep."
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Libitina is not quite sure about Kornel. She senses that he is alive and his soul is where it should be, but she also senses a general taint of death/undeath about him that she finds disconcerting. She's suspicious of him and watching him like a hawk, but doesn't feel that he is any immediate danger to herself or Mandoo.
As long as Kornel doesn't act in any obviously questionable manner, Libitina won't act against him. I might suggest though that he keep his Whispering Way affiliations to himself, as neither Libitina nor Mandoo are likely to find this bit of news to their liking (to say the least).
"Antithesis to her very being," is about right though. If I'd set out to design a PC that was the polar opposite of Kornel, I'm not sure that I could have come up with anything better than Mandoo and Libitina.
Does anyone have a problem with me fudging initiative in future encounters to make as few blocks of player actions as possible? I will try to make sure that at least as many PCs go up as down in the order.
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I had Libitina go after Dancing Sunbeam's Blue 3 "zombie" rather than Bina's Red 1 because I wasn't sure if the square directly east of Bina (and north of Red 1) was icy rubble. What exactly does past the arena mean? Should we follow the perimeter of the broken circle in the collapsed area to determine the boundary or should we take the squares with rubble in them to be included in the darker brown squares. If the arena perimeter is the boundary, should we consider the rubble strewn squares in the arena to be regular or difficult terrain?
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On Libitina's successful last strike, did she notice if the creature she was attacking was particularly susceptible to her slashing and/or positive damage? Given the lack of weakness to positive damage experienced by Kornel, Libitina is beginning to suspect that these are not plague zombies as Kornel stated. A lack of weakness to slashing damage would confirm this.
Ace - The enemy is currently unaware of your presence
Isaku - You have LOS to Red and Yellow. They are technically above you, but not enough to matter mechanically.
Libitina - Yes, you can tell that they did not take extra damage from your scythe.
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...and yells at the creature attacking Libitina.
Reminds me of my favorite video game spell.
Video is full of awesome incantations, massive overkill and pixely goodness.
Hey there ! Unless I'm mistaken Ace's turn is the same as Mandoo and Isaku ?
And I was wondering : does sneaking in difficult terrain cost extra squares of movement ?
Copy/paste error on the GM's part. If you are willing to take Mandoo's actual slot in the second batch - which is basically what you accomplish by delay - I think all will be well.
Sneak is half your speed. Difficult terrain would lower that to one-quarter.
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Copy/paste error on the GM's part. If you are willing to take Mandoo's actual slot in the second batch - which is basically what you accomplish by delay - I think all will be well.
Aaand here I was, thinking that you used my Diplomacy roll for Initiative, thus explaining my fast reaction.
And I was wondering : does sneaking in difficult terrain cost extra squares of movement ?
The rules on terrain types can be found HERE. With Difficult Terrain, it takes an extra 5 feet of movement to enter such a square (so 10ft of movement in our case). Mandoo and Libitina only have a speed of 25ft, so they can only move 2 squares per Stride action, which is what they did.
There is some question about how many squares of difficult terrain a creature with a speed of 25ft can cover in two consecutive Strides. Some say only 4 squares, others say 5 squares.
If you are Sneaking then you are starting at half speed (so 10ft in your case), which effectively means you can only go one square of difficult terrain per round.
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Ok let's say I delayed after Blue !
Thanks for your answer for the Sneaking question. My plan to use the darkness as a way to start the movement hidden from the raptors won't work then (even though they might have dark vision anyway).
But thanks to Isaku no need to bother since one raptor is FF to Ace now :-D
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Tomorrow (Saturday) morning (Central European Time: UTC+1) I will be leaving Spain and driving to Italy where I will be living for the next several months. If all goes according to plan, the trip should take about 3 days, with me getting there sometime on Monday evening. I will not be totally incommunicado during this time and will try to post at least once a day. But if you find that I am not as responsive as usual, you will at least know why.
Understood. Will bot as needed (but likely without the repartee).
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Hey Isaku, I just noticed you had to use an action to use Devise a Stratagem and wanted to share some info if you didn't know. I've been playing an investigator in a Troubles in Otari pbp for a bit now and only recently learned something very huge about that ability! If the target you're using Devise a Stratagem on is directly involved in one of your two open cases, Devise a Stratagem is a free action instead of taking an action. Under the "Devise A Stratagem" ability from Archives of Nethys:
If you're aware that the creature you choose is the subject of a lead you're pursuing, you can use this ability as a free action.
This can really free up your action economy to do other stuff! (It's especially helpful to my investigator because they use a crossbow; they're already spending an action to load each round, so this makes it so they can actually move around the battlefield.)
Now obviously whether the creature you're attacking is part of your current case is up to GM discretion, but I think it's worth finding out at the start of the combat so you know when DaS will take an action or a free action.
I hope that's helpful and not backseat gaming. Just thought I'd share in case you didn't know. :)
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To get the free Devise, the target has to be the subject of an active investigation. The subject of an investigation is typically a single creature, item, or small location (such as a room or corridor), but the GM might allow a different scope for your investigation. You open an active investigation using the Pursue a Lead activity, which takes 1 minute. This is not something you can do in encounter mode; it has to be done prior to entering encounter mode, which means Ace would have had to use Pursue a Lead a soon as we first spotted the woman and her raptor friends. You can have two active investigations going at the same time, so assuming we had 2 minutes before entering encounter mode, Ace could have opened investigations on up to two of our three new opponents and be getting free Devise rolls on them.
Bina is quite correct though, by not using Pursue a Lead, you are losing out on a good chunk of the advantages of the Investigator class. It would be akin to a ranger not using Hunt Prey or a Summoner deciding not to have an eidolon.
Ace, I moved your token, but I suspect you just blew the raptor’s head right off its shoulders.
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Hey Isaku, I just noticed you had to use an action to use Devise a Stratagem and wanted to share some info if you didn't know. I've been playing an investigator in a Troubles in Otari pbp for a bit now and only recently learned something very huge about that ability! If the target you're using Devise a Stratagem on is directly involved in one of your two open cases, Devise a Stratagem is a free action instead of taking an action. Under the "Devise A Stratagem" ability from Archives of Nethys:
If you're aware that the creature you choose is the subject of a lead you're pursuing, you can use this ability as a free action.This can really free up your action economy to do other stuff! (It's especially helpful to my investigator because they use a crossbow; they're already spending an action to load each round, so this makes it so they can actually move around the battlefield.)
Now obviously whether the creature you're attacking is part of your current case is up to GM discretion, but I think it's worth finding out at the start of the combat so you know when DaS will take an action or a free action.
I hope that's helpful and not backseat gaming. Just thought I'd share in case you didn't know. :)
Oh any advice is welcome -- since Isaku is my first investigator...
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With my investigator, I usually keep at least one and usually both of the active investigations available for short term goals. For example, if we’re about to check out a room, I set the active investigation to be the room; if we’re checking out a door (looking for traps, pick a lock, force open, etc), set it to the door.; if you’re treating a patient medically, then set it to the patient; if you’re forging a document, then set it to the document; and so on. That way the investigator gets +1 to all skill rolls to do with the activities dealing with them. If you’re pretty sure you are about to enter into encounter mode to fight a bad guy (you find tracks, you see a bad guy at a distance, you hear a bad guy behind a door, you suspect the guy you’re talking to is a bad guy, etc.) then you set the investigation to be that bad guy, even if you don’t know exactly who or what it is.
In this case, the purple rift is a good subject for investigation, but it is more of a middle-term subject. The short-term subjects are the woman and her raptors. Before we get to the rift, we need to deal with them first. If you jump the gun and set your subject too early, the you don’t have it available for those shorter-term goals.
If the scenario mission has a specific end goal (find an object, individual, creature, or location, say), then I sometimes set one of my active investigations to be that goal. That way, any skill rolls made during the scenario that deal with attaining that final goal will get bonuses.
A lot of this is up to the GM though. They can limit the scopes of investigations; they get to decide if a skill roll you’re about to make has something to do with one of your investigations; so you need to work with them. I’ve had really loose GMs where setting a single investigation to be the final goal got me the bonus roll and free devise on everything in the scenario. Other GMs are tighter and limit the bonuses as much as possible. You need to find out what kind of GM you have to figure out the best way to set your investigations.
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I usually set one active investigation as the current mission/quest/job, and leave the second open for specific circumstances. Mandoo is absolutely right, though, it's not something you can do mid-combat, since using Pursue a Lead takes 1 minute. A good rule of thumb is when you enter a new area of interest (say, an ice cave with a temporal rift in it! :) to take a minute to Pursue a Lead, making the subject the room or something notable in it (the woman, the rift, or the cave itself could all be potential subjects). Then if a fight breaks out, anything related to the subject would be fair game for free-action DaS!
On a personal note, my GM in the Troubles game lets me set somewhat broader cases for sake of ease, but that's entirely GM discretion. cmlobue might be willing to let you set "the mystery of the temporal distortions in the maze" as a case, but it's entirely valid for them to say that's too broad and you need to narrow it down. Trying for smaller, more specific subjects is generally best, especially in rules-heavy scenarios like PFS.
Hope that helps! And I hope you're enjoying the investigator; I know I am! I went with the forensic medicine methodology and am the party healer. Getting to use Battle Medicine once per hour instead of once per day, and adding my level as a bonus to healing, is pretty dang awesome.
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My guy’s a forensic medicine guy too. Picked up medic dedication and assurance medicine at 2nd and he’s a healing machine. As an elf with nimble feet, his 35’ speed means he’s all over the battlefield putting guys back in the fight left and right. I second Bina on this one; a great (almost broken) combo of feats and abilities in an Investigator. Once he picks up Ward Medic and Continual Recovery, he’ll have an almost dead party back to full health in well under an hour without using magic or potions.
I would personally pick a middle ground for Pursue a Lead. If you try to say that your lead is "the focus" and you should get a +1 to every roll during the scenario, that won't fly. But I will be generous about what is related to something specific you are investigating.
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Oh, 100% GM! Giving a broad spectrum for your case is not grounds for free +1 on all Perception checks. I usually take 1 minute when entering any room to use Pursue a Lead regardless of what my case is (though that has more to do with me originally misunderstanding how the case/Pursue combo worked; originally I thought you picked your cases, and if you came across something case-related, you spent a minute checking it out and rolled a Perception check with a bonus, which is not quite how it functions).
My investigator also has Ward Medic, though I'm starting to wish I'd taken Continual Recovery first. Speed-healing one person comes up more often than healing multiple people at once, at least with our group. I didn't take Medic Dedication because I took Celebrity. (They're a famous chef on top of everything else, because the idea of a kitsune chefvestigator was just too fun not to play!) Sadly, I haven't had much chance to use the dedication feat yet. Hopefully soon.
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Ace aims at a non vital part of the woman's body and shoots, reloads, and shoots again.
I have to admit to forgetting Ace's call for non-lethal damage when I was putting my last post together. But even if I had, Libitina isn't one to pull her punches when the enemy shows no similar intent. Her job is to put down such mortal threats to Mandoo with extreme prejudice. Having her switch to nonlethal strikes in that situation would definitely go against character. Having said that, I would at least have explored the possibility of Mandoo talking Libitina into nonlethal strikes and could possibly have come up with a way around the problem rather than just cut-and-pasting what seems to be turning into a standard combat turn for Mandoo/Libitina (namely Cast Protect/Stride, Strike, Strike).
I must admit that Libitina is proving a lot more brutal in combat than I was expecting based on her stats on paper. I went back over all of her 17 previous Strike actions and her attack rolls so far have been: 1, 17, 14, 9, 20, 16, 15, 20, 9, 9, 8, 14, 18, 18, 18, 20, and 17, for an average of 14. That's pretty awesome and unsustainable in the long run. At this point, I'm just waiting for the dice gods to start regressing to the norm; things could get ugly when that happens.
If it makes you feel any better, the scenario gives no information about what the humanoid does of captured. Specials are not designed for extensive roleplay.
I have been reminded that we are in the last 36 hours of part 2, so there's a decent chance you will not finish this mission. I wanted to present you with a choice:
* Try to finish this combat in time, with some more vigorous botting to try to fit enough turns in.
* Pretend you never came here and save the bonuses from completed missions for part 3.
Feel free to keep posting your battle rounds until this gets decided.
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I say we give finishing part 2 a shot, but that's mostly the completionist in me. Maybe we'll keep getting lucky on the rolls and it'll be over in a couple rounds! :D
Now you've gone and jinxed everything. We'll be lucky if any of our rolls breaks into double digits now. :)
After that "Intruder alert!" bit I can't help but picture these metal guys as Daleks.