Forum: Public Forum

Fellow players,

Tough fights last night, it seems that poisoned arrow are the bane of our Ranger.
Because of the flow of monsters, Makoa has had to fight while fatigued, but this turned out relatively well all things being equal.

Game complexity.

Playing a Barbarian with the following options or conditions can be quite intensive on one's brains:

• Rage.
• Power attack.
• Being fatigued.
• Being enlarged for a sweet 3D6 instead of 1D12.
• The odd STR damage that messes-up all the pre-calculated two-handed damage values!

So, yes, Barbarians are counter-intuitively relatively complex to run depending on standard party tactics.

Top tactics.

The First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence should go to James for his Witch's use of an obscure spell from Ultimate Magic.
His use of Burning Blood was timely. The weird bit was to remember that it existed in the first place. At times it is good to be a Half-Orc as they count as Orcs too!

Laurent,

hopefully you guys will finish this current book in the next 3 sessions before the xmas break then start book 3 in the new year. have put the next 4 sessions up on the calander (yes this includes the first one of the new year). hope to see all on wednesday and everyone has gotten over the colds they have had

legacy game will be on this wednesday 30/11

Sorry can't make Wednesday 30th. Have previous plans and Rach is working

ok no problems game is off then, missing 3 combat characters could be a large problem

Fellow players,

Thanks to Ian for running the first LoF game of the year. Allegedly we yick-yacked for quite some time before getting into the action, but I guess we all enjoyed it.
Socialising is the bane of RPGs! People should just shut-up and get on with the game I say!

The room with slime and pillars.

I think we all got captivated by the "jump on a pillar" thing. Wading through the sludge - or the swimming pool full of gold pieces as some of us believed - may not have been that awful. Sure, one of us might have caught a disease or something, but that would have been only a successful heal check and remove disease away instead of getting slowly drained of HP, and for some CON, by the incorporeal undeads.

That big Cthulhu thing.

As you all expect, yes there is a pedantic thesis to be written and posted here.
However, lucky you, it has been written already!

Back in the days when I was able (allowed? ) to play on Friday evenings, I was running a PC in Nick's Kingmaker campaign. Nick had a problem with his modified Owlbear and basically he missed the possibility of grappling with one claw only.

The Sand Kraken with all its appendages should indeed have taken of the CMB-20 rule. This would have been indeed realistic; i.e. one tentacle would have held our "combat" Druid, while all the rest could have happily carried on with hitting my Half-Orc Barbarian or Rachael's Fighter.

The thread is there, and the post is sort of halfway down.

What I talked about yesterday was not right, well did not apply anyway. Technically Ian was using too many tentacles on poor, and grappled, Fauda. What Shari and Makoa missed on was the fact that the Sand Kraken was considered grappled too: its AC should have been lower.
Now, after reading my old post on the Kingmaker thread, I realised that I should have mentioned the CMB-20 option to Ian, which was the thing at the back of my mind I failed to express.

I vaguely remember, so I shall assume that the Sand Kraken has eight tentacles and one bite, with Grab (ex) on tentacles only.

A purely "by the rules" fight could have gone like this:
Fauda lands on Sand Kraken
Initiative is called.
Sand Kraken goes fast and mauls Fauda.
Sand Kraken sees Fauda as small bird, chooses to use his -20 on CMB to grapple so as to not being considered "grappled".
We do whatever we do best, like raging, power-attacking, charging and rolling a 2.
Fauda comes back to human form, but is still likely grappled (even on a CMB-20 for the monster) after failing a grapple check.
Next turn, Sand Kraken chooses to attack Shari (who would have likely hit it and damaged it the round before).
Sand Kraken now has only seven tentacles and a bite to choose from. If it hits with at least one tentacle, it can grapple Shari, but could choose to become grappled itself this time and not risking missing the grapple on Shari.
Assuming it has used only three tentacles and its bite on Shari it can attack Makoa (at -2 for being considered grappled itself) with four tentacles only.
We then all do what we do. Note that at this point, the rest of the party can safely move around the Sand Kraken as it no longer threaten within its reach as far as attacks of opportunity are concerned (it is grappling Shari, thus is himself grappled).
Combat carries on.

Ian's decision to "Let's get on with it" was fine by the way as the result would have been the same. Fauda would have used his feather token (tree) and messed up the all fight!

Special mention.

Matt saying in character: "I am a desert Druid! I HATE TREES!"
That was just ace.

Laurent,

yes the encounter was nasty but all you had to do was recite a prayer of rovagug and you could have walked straight passed it as ginga did. it had 10 tentacles not 8 but thats not much different really but was fun and now i have a couple of weeks to work out what to throw at you as you make your escape with the scroll.

Ian,

Makoa follows Lamashtu the "Mother of Monsters", there is no way he will utter a prayer to Rovagug which is one of her sworn enemies.

That Sand Kraken had to be defeated!

Laurent,

Yep, same for Tariq. I take Abadar to be a reasonably pragmatic god who wouldn't mind too much if one of his clerics recited some information about a evil deity of unpleasantness in order not to get tentacled, but praying to it is a different matter entirely. There's laws against that sort of thing, you know...

On a rules point, I'm a bit surprised that using a Feather Token or other expanding magic item as a weapon. I didn't say anything at the time because it was a great idea, and the first rule of every game should be "is it fun?" and the second "is it cool?". And it was certainly both of those. But in terms of cost to effectiveness, I'd have thought that perhaps they're not meant to be used in that way, and would stop rather than explode when meeting spacial resistance... or something...

I totally agree that feather tokens (and other expanding items) should not be abused. It just happened to be a situation where I spontaneously came up with the idea.

Back in the day I remember minimizing a giant boulder, picking it up with my feeble wizard strength and throwing it at some big bad, cancelling the spell mid air thus rushing the poor bad guy under some gigantic boulder. Both cool and fun but very broken. Totally within the spirit of roleplay but outside the scope of D&D (pathfinders) combat simulation mechanics.

Character note, I must spend at least a skill point on religion as Fauda really does have a passing knowledge of every religion to go with his heap of holy symbols.

Laurent, I am glad that I mad you lol by hating trees. That was fun. ^^

Look forward to the next session.

Adam,

The god thing.

Yep, always disturbing when CN-close-to-CE and perfect-LN characters agree on religious matters, but this is the case. As a PC, Makoa is more interested in the C of Lamashtu's CE than the E, but his point of view is that if chaos and destruction are fun, they need something to be around so as to play with it in a chaotic or destructive manner. Makoa is not at all in favour of oblivion. Rovagug is for destruction leading to utter oblivion. Besides, thematically in the setting, all the gods, from CE to LG banded together to bind Rovagug in his prison. This is a bit like the imprisonment of Tharizdun in Greyhawk.

Now, Tariq and Makoa just need to teach a thing or two to that singing Bard about worship...

The feather token as a weapon.

Quall's Feather Token as it used to be called should indeed not be used as a weapon either directly, more or less what we saw, or indirectly, as in "I summon the tree at the top of the rocky mountain and let it roll over those Orcs trying to get to us...".
This should be a no-no, in the same way as an enlarge person spell cast on someone who is in a tight place. The spell description now says it is not possible to do anyway. Also not really "within the spirit of the game" is the case of the Halfling Transmuter (or high level Druid) specialising in getting swallowed by huge or gargantuan opponents to then expand and kill monsters by ripping open their innards.

However, it is indeed down to the GM to make the call in a desperate situation. Fauda's was pretty desperate. I have in the past allowed some actions to count as free actions, or bent the rules on a given DC or re-roll to avoid a not really deserved PC death. Thus, I shall join Adam and say Ian's call was perfectly within limits I see myself as acceptable. I believe our gaming-group to be adult enough not to stack up on 200gp Feather Token (tree) to use on every single goblin and skelly that shows-up on our path.

Laurent,

Timing

My previous post was meant to arrive before Matt's.

But, yep, we all agree.

Laurent,

yes i let it go this time but if things like this keep appearing they will not work. it was as adam has said fun and cool and i am not opposed to those things at a gaming table. now to work out how to kill get that scroll of you for the gnoll cleric who sent you to pick it up for him

Rovagug sounds more like a nihilist, and therefore outside the conventional alignment system. All other alignments are a view on what ought to be and what behaviours should be allowed, but Rovagug's view seems to be that there ought to be nothing. But I guess for game mechanic purposes it needs placing somewhere... and it's either at CE or True Neutral.

More generally, a LN character will take a CN's character's side against good characters who want to stop the CN character exercising his/her legal rights. Even though the CN character cares not one jot for what the law says.... I'm coming to the conclusion that LG characters should actually be quite hard to play in a lot of settings, because of the conflict between what's lawful and what's good. There's not enough of this, I don't think...

On other matters, the shrinking boulder question is an interesting one. I guess my view is that changing the weight would make an item in mid-flight either slow dramatically (if moving very quickly) or drop like... well, like a stone. Timing the size change for the moment of impact might be possible, but would be really difficult to time right and do damage.

But.... if the stone was falling vertically or was already directly above the target, it ought to work. Although... is cancelling a spell a free action, or would it have to be done the round after chucking the rock....

I'm over-thinking this, probably....

Fellow Players,

The philosophical and magic-item usage discussion.

Makoa says "Tariq is nice guy but thinks too much. Beat-up things, killz them things, rape them things, collect slaves to sell, make shinies and spend shinies on better armour and weapons. Life is far simpler than what Tariq says."

Calendar.

I hope our dear GM will post a couple of Legacy of Fire events soon...

Laurent,

done! happy now Laurent?

Ian,

Well, YES.

You do not want to be accused of running an illegal, undercover game do you? With all the crime going on near Vague Connections, surely you want your game to be above the board!

Laurent,

Fellow Genie bashers,

The bluff game.

Our GM can say what he wants, but "We had a plan".
The scroll swap trick could have worked.

The big fight.

We need some armchair general analysis here with a hefty dose of hindsight.

Strategically, we were good:
Try the false scroll trick, then, if it failed, kill the b@st*rds.
The logical statement triggered pretty quickly on an average bluff roll opposed by a very high sense motive check.

Tactically, we started great:

• Sending the big hitters (Big cat and Barbarian) to engage the tough opponents.
• Having our support flying about (Cleric and Witch)
• Our expert-archer-who-hates-Gnolls (Ranger) picking-up all the annoying archer gribblies at the back of the scrum.

Our problem was the devious behaviour of the devious "bad guy". Only traitors and cowards make use of invisibility to kill a poor, innocent, undefended PC like that!

Oh, well, we won in the end, so it is what counts I guess.

Laurent,

i never said you did not have a plan, the plan was sound with the intel you had. if you had the knowledge that the BBEG was a janni rogue then you might have had a different plan. the ranger was just unlucky as the genie hit twice both in crit range and then confirmed, doing more than enough for the kill if it had not been for the party just getting there in time a new character would have been needed. (so close 2 sessions in a row to a party member kill)

just remember kids if only 3 come back out of 6 thats double the loot and exp each just putting that one out there

I thought Akha, was a gonner, so much so that I started thinking about the next character as he laid on the floor trying to stop his guts spilling out into the pit of corpses beside him. (Is it cruel to be so flippent with a characters life?)

I'm going to look for a way to bring Eddie (the eagle) into play more often. Might need to buy him some trinkets or get some wands so he doesn't die instantly and is actually useful. Any suggestions?