Forum: Public Forum

Adam,

This is a post on the Paizo forums that gives the answer to our problem: PF Spring Attack Questions.

As for smarty pants remarks about fencing. Have you ever fenced with?:

• an Ogre
• a Lamia Matriarch

If you have merely fenced against puny human opponents, you are not entitled to use your life experience to second guess some RPG rules!

Laurent,

I have seen fencing between people where there is a great mismatch in size.... not sure exactly how tall ogres are, but it can't have been far short in terms of height difference. As for Lamia Matriarchs, I'm too much of a gentleman to comment. What goes on tour, stays on tour and all that. I only mentioned real life parallels because that's what some of the discussion seemed to be about on Wednesday...

If we have time tonight I can show you the manoeuvre I've got in mind... but from your previous post I think we're in agreement. It *is* somewhat "ninjy", but it's a feat with requisites that aren't cheap.

Nick, Owen & Alex, I am so sorry to have to spin you this sorry tale of this week’s game but I drew the proverbial short straw.

It starts at where we left it last time getting back in to the secret tunnels behind the keep at the fort after taking apart the lamia matriarch V2.0. We managed to infiltrate the keep stealthily taking out the few ogre guards before alarms could be raised. The shocker lizard distraction was working (yeah us). We made it to the big bad’s inner sanctum and that’s where the fickle dice gods gaze shifted from the players to the GM (Boo! Hiss!). From this point on Laurent seemed to crit on just about every 4th roll or so and hit with almost every other roll. When each player was rolling damage that was always almost up at maximum. The Paladin then was grappled as ogre reinforcements turned up and the group’s combat potential went downwards rapidly with me losing my sword on a fumble. So with little option of victory the group decided on the only thing left to us was a not so heroic retreat. So we ran away like the screaming big girl’s blouses we were at that point back to the secret tunnels with the ogres in hot pursuit. With the ogres trying to hack a large enough tunnel to chase us we ran through the cave system. When getting to the trapped bridge nick’s wizard fumbled crossing setting off the trap and due to being out of spells, he fell to his demise with only having about 7-8 HPs left. Once the trap was reset by pulling the lever the rest crossed cautiously, luckily Adam’s rogue was on the bridge and passed his reflex save and managed to jump clear so he could reset the trap after the wizards unfortunate accident. This is the point where we then ran in to the remaining shocker lizards who had escaped being stamped on by ogres and were not too friendly anymore to us for herding them that way. A few electrocutions later and a few dead lizards later we found ourselves down one sorcerer. The last few of the group fled thought the forests back to Turtleback Ferry to send word of our defeat to Magnimar. During the mad rush Ginga’s cleric slipped and impaled himself on a broken tree branch. Doing a crit and going beyond his con stat in negatives. Once we got back to the town we were informed that another adventuring party had been sent out from Magnimar and would be with us shortly within a day or so, so we would have the reinforcements we wanted for the fort.

So you guys just need to decide on what you guys are going to be to make up with this new band of heroes.

Ian

Ok .. I'm going to have a look to see what I'd like to play.
Laurent.. is the Advanced Players Guide ok to use for a new character (either classes/feats/alternative racial traits?)

Hi Guys,

As you will probably have noticed from my recent absences, Real Life has been getting in the way of more important gaming

I'm not sure when I will be able to return to a regular game, and as my character met an untimely end, I would rather you found a replacement for me than I keep missing sessions.

Till next time,

Alex

alex, owen & nick, my previous post was a joke we did not infact play on wednesday but instead had a fun game of cuba, due to us as a group thought it would be unfair for 3 out of 4 players running 2 characters. so fear not your characters still live and may they live till the end of the adventure path and beyond. alex it's a shame that real life is getting in the way of the game but thats life hope to see you around the table soon. sorry about the tall tale but i alone can not claim all the glory for its concoction as all the others had input i just brought it to life on here. see you all soon guys

ian

Alex, Owen (and Nick but you already know),

With hindsight it had become half-expected the post would not be as funny as intended, what with people getting genuinely freaked out about losing their beloved sheet of paper.

Ian was not alone on this, we all worked out the silly story together.

If there is only one person to be responsible, this would be Adam, he was the one who forced us to come up with a story!

Note that the fact that Adam is away for three weeks, thus cannot defend himself against these accusations is merely a pure coincidence.

Laurent,

Dear Players,

Event

I should indeed post an event on the calendar before moaning that people do not sign up, so I have just added the one for this week.
I will prepare for the game but will bring a board game like last week just in case there are not enough players.

Player rota

It seems that the more we recruit the more likely we are to skip a game. Well, this would not be the end of the world if we had to miss a couple of sessions in a row. Remember also that we have so far managed to play nearly without interruption through the holiday season of July-August.

Nick

Bad news, it looks as if Nick is going to drop off because he cannot really be sure to show up on Wednesday evenings.

As I have mentioned to him by reply, we could try to play another weekday.

Alex and Owen

As indicated in a previous post, Alex is complaining that he cannot really commit to our weekly game anymore. Nobody seems to remember whether or not Owen indicated when he first joined that he would be away for a while. I still sort of remember something like that.

Calling for new players.

I guess this is still a bit premature. It would be better for the game if we could have a constant membership for the group. I have nothing against the concept of "core-players + new guys" as it is friendly enough at the moment, but besides the necessary effort for the GM to bring in new PC (well this is not that difficult really), the idea to have more players signed-in was to create a player-pool to ensure the game would run every week.

PC progression.

So as to allow games to be played without forcing people to play two PCs each, I propose to introduce a new rule so that if someone cannot play for two weeks in a row, their PC is only played once, then "parked". I tend to use XP mainly to scale the encounters, so even if a player comes back after a long absence, they can just adjust the level of their PC and rejoin the game.

Please discuss the issue of playing on a given weekday if it could keep the group together.

See you on Wednesday,

Laurent,

thurdays are out because of shop run events and mondays because of training.

Available days are :

Tuesday
Wedensday
Every other friday (as it will be co-inssiding with Nicks)

Dear Players,

I have sent some PMs to Owen and Alex as mentioned at the last aborted session.
Because it is still holiday season and students have not come back yet, the pool of "players looking for a game" is unlikely to have a lot of fish.
Therefore, again as discussed, I propose to run a lower-punch version of the adventure for three players for a couple of weeks, well, the standard one in fact since Andrew will play Adam's PC.

After this couple of weeks, and depending on the availability of the existing players, we shall decide whether to open the game to new members (two I think for a maximum party of six).

Even though we did not play RotRL, the game of "Cuba/El Presidente expansion" was great fun. Too bad it is too long for two game and a bit short for one only within three hours, but I am pretty happy with the balanced mechanics.

For Saturday, I will bring "River Into Darkness" and if we cannot get at least three players, I shall also bring a couple of boardgames: "Jerusalem" and possibly "The Order of the Stick" and/or "Red Dragon Inn 2".
I like "Pandemic" but I think we all had an overdose of it, so it shall still wait one or two more weeks before being played again!

Laurent,

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the absence, there have been a few signficiant changes in my life so unfortunatly my weekly gaming is out for the forseeable future.

I did have fun though and if I get some time back in the future I'll touch base again and see how everything is going - in the meantime however all the best!

Owen

Dear Players,

Gaming group.

As discussed yesterday, the gaming group falls victim, once again, to the vagaries of life.

• Alex hinted at having to quit.
• After a long silence, Owen is also out.
• Nick's work schedule apparently seriously impairs his gaming.

There is only one solution I am afraid and it is for the owner of "Vague Connections" to start paying people who game at his shop. Providing a place to play with amenities is not enough! I propose a £40K yearly salary for the players and a £85K package, excluding bonuses for GMs.

Recruiting.

This is not the best time to do so as the students are not back yet.
EMRPGG is about to close its old site, this may have a temporary negative impact on the membership, thus the pool of potential players. I have decided some time ago to stop posting RotRL on Meetup.com, as well as my other games, so this leaves us with only the members who have registered on the new site, most of whom already have games.

I shall ask Andrew to trawl for interested players at his shop. In the meantime I will create a recruiting thread, one never knows.
The thread is up.

Next session.

Come what may, we shall strive to have a game next week:
Elswyn, Gideon, Eigan and Marcus (played by Andrew).
No arcane might, nothing beyond Marcus's crappy LV 0 spells from a trait or something, and his ability to activate wands.

Nick, I now know about Elric.

Like many, I thought that you had named your character after Elric of Melniboné.
I now know better.
A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to have a look at "Babylon 5" as I had never really understood the cult status. The first season was a bit lame, with all that schmoozy political correctness and "Eastenders in space" feeling, but it somehow grew enough on me for me to carry on watching. Then... at some point I recognised the character you used to have as your avatar on the old Meetup.com site: "Elric the technomage".

YOUR OBSCURE REFERENCE HAS BEEN DISCOVERED.

I shall see some of you on Saturday for another bout of "River Into Darkness" or a boardgame session.

Laurent,

Hi my name is Paul and after reading about the game I am interested in joining your game if you happy for me join. What classes is everybody playing so I can think of a character before hand.

Paul,

Welcome.

This being a short week, and tomorrow being already Wednesday, I shall say "See you tomorrow."
We meet around 6.30 p.m. and start when the shop closes, as the owner is also a player.
I assume you have played D&D 3rd Edition/3.5 since you did not say anything about the gaming system. Obviously it would be even better if you know about Pathfinder RPG.

Books.

If you do not already own the "Pathfinder RPG core-rulebook" I would appreciate if you equipped yourself at "Vague Connections". There is a rebate for EMRPGG members and Amazon.co.uk does not provide us with a place to play.

If you come to like Rise of the Runelords, I shall encourage you to get books related to the campaign setting itself, the world of Golarion in the Pathfinder Chronicles line from Paizo publishing.

We only play with the base classes and not the "Advanced Player's Guide" at the moment. Although I am running a game, River Into Darkness, that uses only the classes from the APG. Prestige classes can be considered, we can talk about it tomorrow evening.

Character creation.

Prepare your character at home if you want but roll your dice in front of the group.
No need for complicated background, I do not require an essay. I will probably think of something to get your PC in the party anyway.
In fact, unless you are versed in Golarion's lore, I would advise against any prose.

Die rolls as follow:
Once 6D6, twice 5D6 and thrice the standard 4D6, best three dice of every throws of course.

At LV8 you get 33,000 gp worth of gear. I advise one stat boost, magical weapon and armour for martial type. Non-martial PCs can think about rods, better stat boosts and rings. A 5K diamond is also a good investment as a life insurance component for an adventurer's pension scheme.

Starting with you and whoever fills the additional free slot, I intend to limit min-maxing, and propose the following rules:

The highest roll should not be altered by a positive racial modifier, i.e. no stat of "20" before application of the points gained at LV 4 and 8 or magical items.
At LV8, you are entitled to a stat of 20 or more depending on how you spend your cash.
Example:
Rolls of 18, 16, 12, 12, 11, 10.
An Elf cannot have 26 INT at LV8: 18 +2 (racial) + 2 (LV4 +LV8 increases) + 4 (headband of vast intellingence +4) = 26.
The headband of vast intelligence +4 is pricey (16K) but affordable at LV8 (33K wealth by level).

With my new rule on min-maxing, the Elf from the example would have at most an INT of 24 by using the roll of 16.

I am doing this because adventures are designed with a standard party in mind, usually built along the elite array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8). The standard point buy of 15 can give the elite array.
My dice rolling rule potentially leads to more powerful characters. Some have managed an 8 on 6D6 though!

Character class.

After a drastic cull in the party due to real life impacting on the game, the party of intrepid adventurers is now reduced to:

Elswyn, Priest of Pharasma.
He has been around from the very beginning and earned his very first XP point killing Goblins.

Eigan, suicidal Ranger.
A brave man indeed, he has been back from the deads once and enjoyed many a trip beyond the veil of 0 HP.

Marcus, Thief extraordinaire and safety officer.
His owner is currently away in Australia, so it is getting played by others at the moment.
Marcus is now specialising in deadly dancing, always striving for those elusive extra D6s of added damage, on which he manages closer to multiple ones that sixes usually.
Marcus has taken his own life once after a series of bad saving throws.

Guideon, the quiet Fighter.
Pretty good with a bow, deadly with a sword and hard to hit, he is technically again the "new guy" after the departure of the Paladin and Sorcerer.

So, basically the party is short on Arcane might. Marcus can use wands thanks to use magice device but seems to have developed a self-defeating hopelessness with regards to their use: "Why bother? I will roll a 1".

A Bard would be fun, and at LV8 the class has a decent access to Arcane spells.
The Pathfinder RPG Bard has more options than the 3.5 one, thus could be more interesting to play.

Wizard and Sorcerer would be much appreciated by other party members.

However, you can play whatever you want really as lacking Arcane capabilities is not as bad as lacking Divine spells (healing, protection and buffing-up).

See you tomorrow,

Laurent,

Hi Paul, it's nice to have some new blood in the party once again.

As much as I've enjoyed Cuba and the expansion, I'm looking forward to Eigan killing some stuff once again.

Dear Players,

A brand new Gnomish Sorcerer, no family relation to Niskala, has joined the team.
To explain the departure of Elric, Hexagalamere and Variel, I cooked up a difference in strategy, with those staying in deciding to make a push for the upper levels of the keep while the PCs getting retired chose to wait for the Ogres to fight among themselves, after arguing that the Lamia Matriarch was very likely charming the Ogres every day using her racial powers. Therefore they went back to civilisation.

Nagri got a bit too curious and foolish, believing that with the Grauls dead he could go and look at the dam for himself. He had heard rumours of Demonic or Devilish engined powering the sluice gates there. Bad luck he got beaten up and captured by Ogres and sent into a cell, where he was found by the party.
A bit cliché but an easy introduction.

The fights tonight were a bit on the easy side as my rolls were abysmal at first and the delay between fights were luckily quite substantial. I might add a bit more HP to my monsters to accommodate a party of five, just so that a monster of equal CR to that of the party can last at least two rounds of heroes ganging up on them.

I enjoyed playing with the Ogre Sorcerer 9 though, Sorcerers are cool evil NPC, they have a lot of high level slots!
My melee Ogres were pretty lame though with bad rolls all over.

See you all next week.

Laurent,

Dear Players,

I have updated the game page (Rise of the Runelords|Rise of the Runelords).

Laurent,

James,

Welcome to the game.
Now that we have again six players, I have decided to close the recruitment thread.

There is still an annoying bug when trying to change a recurring event. I will try to document it later and try to pinpoint what goes wrong. In the meantime, ignore the line on the calendar event that says we are looking for players.

James is playing in the "River Into Darkness" Pathfinder-RPG game on Saturday afternoons.

From what he has said, he may be bringing a Fighter/Thief of some sort.

Laurent,

Dear Players,

The Fort Rannick disaster.

Last session was bloodier than usual, with the deaths of Elswyn and Eigan.
As explained after the game, everything had gone perfectly the session prior to this one.
You had indeed a masterful plan, which was to infiltrate as stealthily as possible the fort, go to the upper level, slaughter the big chief, his Sorceress and his lieutenant after having craftily ended the life a someone downstairs who could have called for reinforcements.

Talking about reinforcements, there were all these Ogres arguing around that table in the mess hall that you avoided last time, and another named NPC Ogre, hence a tough one, in the workshop. Therefore, you should have faced another seven additional Ogres, as if the challenge was not hard enough.

All this past strategic mastery got lost though. Dropping/throwing the dead chieftain's head in the courtyard was not too bad. It just brought the brawl ahead of time, instead of waiting for one of the mooks to go upstairs to report to his commanding officer later that day. Why, oh why did you decide to lob fireballs and expensive shocking burst arrows indiscriminately on the horde of Ogres in the courtyard is beyond me.
Barricading yourselves with no real mean of escape beyond going up the tower and jumping/rappelling down the battlements was not the brightest idea either.
True, I should have given you another round or two before breaking the door, but there was no real strategy beyond "Marcus hides for a sneak attack". The slaughter was coming.

Instead of waiting out a sure-fire internecine fight between newly self-proclaimed Ogre chieftains, hence removing about half the Ogre Barbarians and Fighters, your actions united them again for a time of "Kill humans!". The exit strategy plan, although hastily devised, was pretty successful though. Nagri, the Gnome came close to be left for dead but escaped too.

The party will need to go back to Turtleback Ferry to meet with the new recruits, as I have run out of ideas on how to bring new PCs to Fort Rannick.

First Annual Rise of the Runelords Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field Of Player Character Introduction Excellence.

This award shall go to James for his introduction of Telas to the party, happening at the time when Guideon having fallen face down from the rampart turned around to enquire about whom he was. Telas replied: "I am here to save you". Ian nearly died of laughter.

Party hierarchy.

Marcus is now the new party leader, thus is now free to plant as much evidence against Korvosa as he so wishes, once the fort is retaken. I assume that one day, you will retake that fort.

James has managed to evolve from "new guy in the game" to "veteran player three ranks away from leading the party" in merely one session.

Adventure background.

Only Marcus now has a faint idea about the Runelords and Thassilon, all the other PCs are only motivated by killing Ogres and reclaiming Fort Rannick. Everything else: the story about Lucrecia, the gambling barge, the bad weather, the amazingly organised Ogres, etc are mere happenstances.

Next week game.

David will be away, so it will be down to a four player party. Andrew could play Marcus alone unless he desperately wants to introduce his new PC.
You are still at Fort Rannick, there is no real compulsion to go back to town, besides getting some reinforcements. If you wait for too long, one of the Ogre Barbarian will reorganise the tribe and Fort Rannick will host: One Ogre Barbarian, three to six Ogre Fighters and about a dozen mooks within a week.
If you attack again the following day, the Ogres will only recover a couple of HP, they may send one or two scouts to ask local Ogre tribes for reinforcements, hence aiming at the forces gathered again after a week as indicated above.

I have had to remove the event vignette and post it again because I had to change the calendar from being "Nottingham" to "Nottingham FULL". This somehow does not work as expected hence the deletion, so if you had already registered in advance, do it again on the event vignette repost.

Laurent,

I shall morn the loss of Eigan (my first ever PC) for sometime...

... right now that's over I'm working on a Monk character, hopefully he'll be super awesome.

See you all in a couple of weeks.