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Hello everyone! I'm looking forward to playing this one with you all, fellow Scarab Sages and everyone else!
Now, a bit about Katswiri.
Katswiri is a Lore Oracle, and a member of the Scarab Sages. She's a Seer, and has a lot of Divination/Skill Boosting abilities; her most stand out ability is to more or less automatically succeed at three out of combat Int based skill checks each day using her Focused Trance revelation. She spends standard actions for 1d6 rounds (which usually precludes combat use), then gets to make a check with a +20 circumstance bonus. Her natural divination ability also usually is used to get three skill checks with a +10 competence bonus, for helping to guarantee a few important non-int skill checks. She can also effectively cast Divination 1/day with a 1 minute cast time to get general advice on the adventure and Commune 1/day with a 1 hour cast time using her Gift of Prophecy and Automatic Writing revelations. I usually flavor all these abilities as either omens or visions of the past or future, as Katswiri is a seer.
In addition to her limited use abilities, she can act as a face with a good diplomacy and reasonable bluff check, and is trained in every int based skill, so can handle a lot of skill checks even once her limited use abilities run out.
In combat, she's less exciting, mostly acting as support with buffing and healing. She's got a -3 initiative modifier (though it can get up to +1 with Heightened Awareness), so is often later in the initiative order. She usually casts sound burst or heals people depending on the situation, though can also do mediocre melee damage with her mace. She gets CHA to AC and Reflex saves in place of dex, so does have a pretty good AC though, especially when fully buffed. She can do a good amount of buffing as well, handing out Shield of Faith, Delay Poison, Eagle's Splendor, Bless, Magic Vestment, Communal Resist Energy, and Blessing of Fervor for combat. She can cast Silence to mess with enemy spellcasters (and isn't impeded by it), and carries an extensive scroll collection of 45+ spells to use with Menumonic Vestments or in a pinch to fix various problems.
Katswiri has the deaf oracle curse, so she cannot hear. Mechanically, deafness:
--Causes her to automatically fail all perception checks based on sound
--Gives her a -4 penalty to initiative checks [Reduced to -2 by her curse's level 5 ability].
--Gives her a -4 penalty to opposed perception checks
--Makes her immune to language dependent spells and abilities, audible bardic performances, and some specific spells or situations (like the stun on sound burst)
--Would give her a 20% spell failure chance for casting spells with verbal components, but her curse gives her the silent spell metamagic on all her spells for free with no level or cast time increase.
To help understand the people around her, she took read lips as a language with linguistics as noted in the PFS faq: http://paizo.com/organizedplay/faq#v5748eaic9vhs
More recently, she has purchased magical Spectacles of Lip Reading, which have made it much easier for her to understand those around her without needing ideal conditions (she just needs to pass a DC 0 perception check, modified by distance and conditions as appropriate to understand someone as long as she speaks the language they are using). Most of the time, lip reading is sufficient to allow her to function pretty well, but occasionally events will require some help with someone repeating information or explaining things, like when she runs into intelligent talking objects or there are loud noises out of sight that need to be responded to.
Katswiri keeps a visual journal of her adventures, where if she has the opportunity, she will paint pictures of various important events or interesting people/scenery/objects that occur during the mission. Its mostly fluff, but it's fun, and its how she does her reporting for the society.
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"Hi all and blessings of Desna for this troupe. I seem to be the odd duck here, having nothing to do with Scarab Sages and all, but since I was around, someone decided to foist me on you in case you need to find the wonderful ancient Osirian traps on this outing." The talker is a robust-looking Varisian man with well-groomed moustachios and a practiced cheer on his face. His dark hair, usually well-tended, is suffering a bit from the heat. "I'm Taresh. Meladronai is my family name, though I answer to Taresh Mel. I'm a magician by trade, specializing in transmutation, courtesy of the bunch of gnomes who I traveled with while young. If you need something blown up or charmed, I'm not helpful. Otherwise, tell me what you need and I'll try to accommodate."
Taresh is wearing a plain old rucksack that has been overstuffed with all sorts of odds and ends, and has a well-worn sheath for a rapier on his left hip and a shortbow hanging from the rucksack. A brace of wands is dangling from his right hip. He's wearing no armor. Most of the colorful Varisian scarves and belts have been stuck into the bag because of the heat, except for the white one around his head.
While Taresh might seem cheerful almost to the point of annoyance, the creature sitting on his left shoulder is not. It appears to be a dragon made of shadows and darkness, with scales so fine it glistens. It has its tail coiled protectively around Taresh's neck, and occasionally the man flicks it with a finger, making the dragon narrow its eyes and poke him in the ear or cheek with a spine. Taresh continues, "This precious little cutie is Daosvaria. I found her on an earlier outing, and since her previous employer was no longer capable of taking care of her needs, I adopted her. She looks fierce, but is very helpful if you treat her well. Aren't you, Daosvaria?"
Daosvaria lifts her tiny head and looks at the rest of the group like she's evaluating their net worth or nutritional value. She speaks with a voice that's too precise and sharp for a creature that small. "I will help those who need help from the Master, but be aware that I am keeping track of your performance, soft humanoids." The dragon has a sash, and Taresh whistles atonally as he picks a few wands from her brace and sticks them to the sash.
"Pleased to be traveling with you, and so is Daosvaria, believe it or not!"
Cantrips detect magic, mage hand, open/close, read magic
1 liberating command, long arm, shield, 4 open slots
2 bull's strength, mirror image, see invisibility, 2 open slots
3 haste, slow, 3 open slots
4 enchantment foil, monstrous physique II, 2 open slots
If you'd like something specific, like enlarge for a frontliner, tell me, and I'll see if I can accommodate you. Otherwise I'll pick a couple more spells later on or just leave some slots empty for improvising.
Spellbook
Level 1 air bubble, ant haul, color spray, comprehend languages, disguise self, endure elements, enlarge person, erase, expeditious retreat, feather fall, gravity bow, grease, heightened awareness, keep watch, kreighton's perusal, liberating command +20, long arm, mage armor, magic aura, magic missile, magic weapon, monkey fish, mount, petulengro's validation, protection from evil, reduce person, shield, silent image, touch of gracelessness, touch of the sea, true strike, vanish
Level 2 acid arrow, adhesive blood, alter self, aram zey's focus, arcane lock, bear's endurance, bestow insight (+4), blindness/deafness, boneshaker (8d6), bull's strength, carry companion, cat's grace, command undead, communal mount, communal protection from evil, create pit, darkvision, disguise other, eagle's splendor, false life, fog cloud, fox's cunning, glitterdust, invisibility, lipstitch, locate object, make whole, merge with familiar, minor image, mirror image (1d4+3), raven's flight, resist energy, retrieve item, scare, see invisibility, sense vitals (+3d6), share language, slipstream, spider climb, stone call, stricken heart, suppress charms & compulsions, web
Level 3 burrow, clairaudience/clairvoyance, communal darkvision, communal protection from arrows, communal share language, communal resist energy, communal spider climb, disable construct, dispel magic, displacement, fireball, fly (60/40 ft., +9), force anchor, gaseous form, gentle repose, greater magic weapon, haste, monstrous physique I, necrostasis, nondetection, pierce disguise, protection from energy, shrink item, slow, spiked pit, tiny hut, tongues, water breathing
Level 4 arcane eye, beast shape II, bestow curse, conjure deadfall, conjuration foil, dimension door, dimensional anchor, enervation, enchantment foil, eyes of the void, monstrous physique II, phantasmal killer, rainbow pattern, remove curse, ride the waves, secure shelter, stone shape, stoneskin, telekinetic maneuver, undeath inversion
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Originally we had two more people signed up, do we want to message them to ask if they're still interested?
If we go with our current party, we don't have a dedicated melee character, so we'll want to make sure we work out who will be doing damage and frontlining and what buffs/spells we'll need to make it work. Katswiri can buff herself up to 32 AC, 35 while fighting defensively, but has very low damage output without external buffs for +damage and a fairly low HP pool. If she ends up frontlining, she would probably need enlarge person and Greater Magic Weapon at least to do any significant damage at all.
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I don't know the protocol for pbp games well enough to judge that, but it's been almost a week now.
Taresh can sub for frontline with sufficient buffing, but with mage armor, shield, and dex boosts he still has an AC of only 22. Some deflection bonus from shield of faith would be welcome. Any flanking buddy triggers Taresh's sneak attack, which boosts damage from 1d6 to 3d6, so if you have great defenses but no hitting power, you can still be a great help.
Taresh can supply enlarge and greater magic weapon, but the latter's only +2 at this caster level (though every bonus counts even in 1E games).
If you are engaged against your will, Taresh can remove you from being adjacent to an enemy with Friendly Switch.
Actually, Gurgle is strictly better in melee than Taresh. If we can flank a foe and survive, we can probably take them down.
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I think the biggest dangers for us would be things with sneak attack immunity, fire immunity, or DR we can't penetrate. An Elder Fire Elemental would be one of the worst possible matchups for us with our default loadout, since even with buffs all of us could barely hurt it in melee and its immune or resistant to a lot of Guy's potential blasting.
Incorporeal undead would tick a number of those boxes, but we have a lot of positive energy to help handle that, as well as some specific tricks (Katswiri has a scroll of Anti-Incorporeal Shell). We might have some problems with certain types of outsiders.
Since we're exploring an ancient, sealed off area, we're most likely to encounter enemies that could survive in such an environment for an extended period of time, which makes undead and summoned outsiders more likely I think.
Katswiri has an oracle revelation that can give her the effect of Commune daily, so we can potentially check to see if there are specific types of creatures in the sealed area we're going to explore, as well as gather other information we might want to know. Katswiri will get a scroll of Dismissal that she can cast off her Mnemonic Vestment; its a good tool to have in the toolbox anyway. If her Automatic Writing discovers that there are outsiders present, it might be good for Guy to have one memorized too.
I do think having a monster summoning V slot for Guy would be good flexibility for surprises that we might have trouble handling another way. Something on the monster summoning list is usually a good counter for most things, especially if we heal it/back it up, but it probably needs to be one of the higher slots to be strong enough to be useful.
Commune gives her 8 yes or no questions per day. I'm thinking as an initial set:
-Is anything planning to ambush the caravan during our trip to the pillars of the sun?
-Is anyone trying to follow us in an attempt to find the sanctum of the sages?
-Are there any extraplanar creatures in the recently unsealed section of the Sanctum of the Sages mentioned in the letter?
-Are there any undead in the unsealed section?
-If yes, are there any incorporeal undead?
-Is there a Sage Jewel in the unsealed section?
Two more questions, if anyone has things they would like to ask. Any suggestions?
If there's a multi-day caravan ride, Katswiri will use this ability each morning and we potentially get to ask quite a few. She always starts off with "Is anything planning to ambush the caravan in the next 24 hours?" and "Is anyone trying to follow us in an attempt to find the sanctum of the sages?", then asks questions her companions suggest or tries to refine earlier answers with more specific questions.
Each night, she will also use Blessing of Fervor to cast Extended Ant Haul, Extended Endure Elements, and Extended Delay Poison on everyone. Ant Haul and Endure Elements last more than a day, while Delay Poison will wear off the following afternoon (16 hour duration).
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High-level summon could be useful for both damage and flanking.
Katswiri had lots of slots for resist energy. Do you see a need for me to pick it, or communal version?
I can slap communal darkvision to anyone who needs it when we get there.
Shapechange spells might grant me heavier damage output (Monstrous Physique II and Beast Shape II are available, I'll need to read up on options). Stoneskin can give us or a summon durability (I'll stock up for two extra castings by paying 500 gp right now for a total of three). I'm further concentrating on defensive spells like displacement or mirror image.
Commune might gives us a "no" answer on "are there extraplanars" if they are summoned by a trap or another effect when we trigger it. Optimally those would be noticed and disarmed by Gurgle or me.
Swarms are another annoyance. I'll check chronicles for partially-loaded wands or other things against them.
EDIT Swarmbane clasp! Finally I remember thee. Buying one now.
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Katswiri can handle communal resist energy. I think she'll Magic vestment Gurgle's shield and her own armor/shield, which will leave 3 slots for communal resist energy. She can also blank sonic damage with Silence, though that does cause problems with everyone else's spellcasting. She has a scroll of Oracle's Vessel which could possibly give 1 or 2 people the ability to cast their spells without verbal components though, something that could be a situationally strong tactic.
Katswiri is pretty low on HP relative to the other members of the group, and has a terrible fort save. I want to start saving for a set of Prayer Beads for her, but I need to live long enough to get to it; I think she's going to get a +2 Con Belt and the Dismissal scroll.
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Keep your distance from golems and elementals and don't get flattened. Also, don't be first in line. Let me and Gurgle compete on who finds the most traps with our faces. Your mind affecting save is good, so we probably don't have to worry about you getting incapacitated. Taresh is probably going to slap enchantment foil on himself.
Taresh has a lesser reach metamagic rod. I can hand it to Katswiri or Guy to let either use level 1-3 touch spells to range.
I thought about lending Daosvaria to Katswiri, but Taresh needs the dragon close for Alertness to work. When fighting starts, she'll fly to roost on someone else's shoulder, preferably in the back lines, and can do minor heals and buffs with UMD.
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Guy has a bonded item so he has the flexibility of being able to cast ANY cleric spell 5th level or lower, so that is nice. He also took Dismissal since at high levels there are often outsiders. What he needs is to know the enemy type to use for his hunter's blessing, which needs to be more specific than just 'outsider' if that is what we are facing. I could trade that in for monster summoning V since we are light on folks that will benefit from the hunter's blessing. If ‘Eκάτη's Nikita Volkov or grimdog73's Nykel Therinor shows, though, we should be OK though.
I've GMed a game with Nikita in it so I took the liberty of PMing him.
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Its funny, I don't think I've met Daosvaria before this gameday (well, other than when Katswiri played her mission), and now all three of the games I am running/in have her.
Hunter's blessing is good, but I think that having the flexibility of Monster Summoning V is not a bad idea in its place. I'm going to have to keep Hunter's Blessing in mind for Katswiri if she gets to Seeker levels, having that as a spell she can extend the night before to carry over to the next day looks awesome.
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And Dao speaks common? I had the impression she only spoke Draconic - my sage sorcerer also has a copy of the familiar.
...odd. I seem to remember from somewhere that familiars know the languages of their masters, but I can't find the reference. Am I remembering something from another game system?
Wyrmling nightmare dragons have no languages listed, and young nightmare dragon (the lowest CR on bestiary 5) has common and draconic.
Familiars do get their master's skill ranks, and Taresh has 7 ranks in linguistics that grant him Aklo, Auran, Infernal, Osiriani, Polyglot, Tengu, and Tien. (initial languages are Common and Varisian, Intelligence languages are Gnome, Draconic, Ignan, and Kelish.) I suppose she could speak Osiriani here to show off for the sages.
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@Katswiri, Taresh
When do your spells renew? I might have to bump the time of the blessing of fervor/life bubble up if your cycle times are different from Guy's. Probably won't matter, but I'd like to get the expire times figured out.
I believe that puts Guy's active spells at the following with the understanding that the blessing of fervors and casting happen 1 hour before sunrise (i.e. 1 hour before his spells are renewed by Sarenrae). I will adjust based on the answers to the question above.
Active spells and expiration times:
mage armor: 17 hours after sunrise
darkvision: 17 hours after sunrise
hunters blessing: 9 hours after heading in
life bubble: 17 hours after sunrise
delay poison: 17 hours after sunrise
ant haul: 17 hours after sunrise
endure elements: 17 hours after sunrise
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I believe oracles use the sorcerer rules, where Katswiri gets her spells back by meditating for 15 minutes after an 8 hour rest; wizards do the same but with a study after 8 hours.
While reviewing this, I noticed there's a clause for recent casting limit for clerics, where they don't regain spells cast in the last 8 hours, probably to keep their ability to overlap effects like this in line with other casters. I think Guy will need to cast at night with Katswiri and Taresh, then we can all wake up at dawn, prepare our spells and then go adventuring.
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Actually, I guess its a generalized limit; for everyone that regains spells, they don't regain any they cast in the last 8 hours when the refresh.
I think given that, we would all cast 8 hours before dawn, then wake up with Guy and do our preparations around dawn, then head on down shortly thereafter. If we assume about an hour of non-spell prep before starting, that would be about 10 hours down on the durations of anything precast.
I think Taresh and Guy are CL 10 and Katswiri is CL 8. That would be:
Extended Endure Elements: 38 hours
Extended Ant Haul: 22 hours
Extended Delay Poison: 6 hours
Extended Mage Armor: 10 hours
Extended Darkvision: 10 hours
Extended False Life: 10 hours
Life Bubble: 10 hours
Magic Vestment: 8 hours
Hunter's Blessing: 10 hours
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I do not anticipate that this table will complete before the end of Gameday XIII, which is November 17, 2024. However, I will need to report the table before then.
To do so, I need the following from each of you:
1) Make Sure Your Reporting Info is Correct:
Please make sure your reporting data is in the Recruitment Thread, including PC Name, PFS No., Faction, and Slow Track (if applicable).
Per below, if you want to be considered for a door prize, make sure there is correct email information. You are free to provide any other missing info, but it is not necessary.
2) Provide/Confirm a Valid Email for Door Prizes/Boons:
Paizo has graciously offered up prize vouchers for Gameday. Winners will be randomly drawn from a pool of all players and GMs for reported games. These vouchers will need to be emailed, so players are encouraged to fill in their emails when signing up so that they can get their prizes when they win.
3) Roll for a PFS1 Boon:
A set of boons is available for winning PFS1 players. Each GM and Player of a PFS1 game has a 10% chance to win one of the lovely boons at random. Everyone at your table may roll a d20 and a roll of 1 or 20 wins. Winners will be asked to select the prize won Winners must fill in their email addresses so the boon can be sent out to them.
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[dice=Revolver + Deadly Aim + Smite + Flaming]1d20 + 16; 1d8 + 1d6+ 19[/dice
[dice=Revolver + Deadly Aim + Smite + Flaming]1d20 + 11; 1d8 + 1d6+ 19[/dice
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Guys, I left for a retreat today. I will do a lot of meditation and a little more yoga there. I'll be there with absolutely no connection (we're giving away phones for the duration of the event). I thought I would have time to do a game post before I left, but I underestimated the number of cases that needed to be closed before that. So I'm saying goodbye to you until January 13-14 (I'm returning to the world on the evening of January 12, but I'm not sure if I'll start playing games before checking my family and business status, hehe). Have a nice New Year, everyone! PS You can bot my character in any way you like .)