I actually considered adding a pair of shadows as a "fun surprise" for the backline, but I liked the idea of going for just one really solid goon and a support cleric.  I gotta say, it's pretty hard to balance a fight when the numbers are that uneven.  My opinion kept bouncing between "This guy's invincable, he's going to kill the whole party and it won't be fun" and "It's basically six vs one, the party's going to steamroll him and it won't be fun!"

Granted, I tend to bounce between those two extremes while making every fight for this game, but it felt particularly tough finding the middle ground in this one.  I'm a little sad I didn't get to add Puck's head to my trophy wall, but at least it came close!

Oh, and did the party reach a consensus on whether they were handing off the Grave knight armor, or insisting on dealing with it themselves?
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:53, Fri 17 June 2022.

I would want to keep the helmet. After exorcisms and de-magicing it. So it's a trophy not a tool of return for Lord Not-Dead-Enough.

After all, he can always return when it happens that gauntlets of his armor set were secretly hidden elsewhere. Armor-Phylactery have this advantage over Lich's that it have multiple parts that can be separated without damaging the whole.

I believe Uluchi's soulution is to destroy the armor with anti-metal acid. I agree but wanted a favor from the cleric, so the helmet is devoid of it's magic and un-cursed from it's phylactery status.

Because I know that to destroy the Phylactery tool like that? Need to be thorough, very thorough. That is why Puck was talking about melting the armor down in a forge.

EDIT:
As for the newest adventure? My obvious advice is to check with our friendly cleric who hired us three times so far with that suspicious letter. Destroy evidence, as if ! :)
This message was last edited by the player at 06:20, Fri 17 June 2022.

The cleric left town shortly before you received your letter of summons.  Apparently he had been summoned on mysterious official business, much the same way the party is being summoned now.

Most of the lads haven't chipped in yet. For what it is worth, the cleric's speech and Uluchi's lack of specific knowledge about graveknights would be enough to convince her that he is competent enough to take on the task, even if she doesn't like it.

Worry not, Sesa. My Puck will follow your Snake-Witch's advice if only because he learned to trust her. :)


Intrigue, huh?

Props to you Gorum, it's awesome premise. We are now level 6!^^

So, we are 6 yes, but what are we going against?  Bandits or quite possibly the inquisitors?  What do you all think?

Possibly both. Bandits paid by the inquisitors to make it look like a highway robbery instead of an execution.

Anyway, I can probably prepare to drop the Ashen Path on everyone, while someone could set the inn on fire so we have smoke cover? :)

Will have the level-up by evening.

And does it matter? It seems like a trap, so expected foes are two waves:
-Bandits, probably mostly fighter types.
-Inquisition, afterwards.

First part Veana could probably rest easy, bandits tend to be evil, but Inquisition will be troublesome. So with that said? If it'll be inquisition, we need to leave one alive ... if only for RP purposes, to bring the prisoner to our cleric contact.

Unless any of you know of a not-torture/not-mindcontrol method to get info to our friendly clerical employer?

I do, actually. Koyrai knows the spell Share Memory. In my next post I plan to have him share the memory of our entire undead encounter with our employer. It can also be used to extract memories from anyone we capture. Perhaps the memory of when they were hired for the job, for instance?

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic...ells/s/share-memory/

Apologies for the lack of posts from me for the past few days and also if I take some time to finalize the level up. I've hit a busy period outside of the game which leaves me with little free time to spend currently. I'm hoping to get the character done before Monday, but if I can't the worst case is Wednesday which is when my life returns to the regular schedule.

I should have my level up done sometime this weekend. I just have to figure out what to do with my gold and such.

No worries, my work has been pretty busy for me, too.  This upcoming fight is pretty much the last one I've prepped for, so I don't mind a bit of time to plan.

Everything but the new gold is sorted for me, which is always the part that takes me the longest anyways. That being said!

Yeah, I think we'll be up against some variety of humanoid opponents this time. I'd put money down on agents of the Olinescu's showing up to muck things up at some point.

Uluchi has self-generated poison and poison-use so she can apply it to anyone's weapons if they arn't a stick in the mud about poison. (Hello, fellow paladins.)

Vishkanya Sleep Venom,
Type injury; save Fort DC 19; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; initial effect staggered for 1d4 rounds; secondary effect unconsciousness for 1 minute; cure 1 save

I've got around 120 spare doses, which should be enough for all our poisoning needs so annotate any weapons you want with a dose on them. Also, non-lethal so it wont kill your pets who lick your weapons accidentally.

Interesting stuff Sesa. *looks around, sees his elf asleep*
Damn it, Puckie boi.

Apologies, my character took a nap. *totally not sarcastic*

But more seriously, how fast can your character craft those poisons? We could, theoretically speaking, make gas-bombs out of it!

If you or Kyorai have Alchemy. I can craft you sticks to deliver them from shooting, but that's it.

Kyorai, nice. But, as I am slightly cautious, there are chances that we would have to convince hostile interrogator. Who will see testimony from our friendly employer, or us his hired goons, with severe suspicion.

That is why I am so happy Sesa provided that subduing poison! We have your "Pensieve" and just in case? We also have someone clearly hostile to us and our employer to corroborate the evidence.

Taliesin, please remember that you have extra 140 gp that Puck borrowed last time. :)


Ayup, remember that you are great and prepare accordingly first. :)

When Players whine, they misspell that they care. ;P

I have a min-maxing and annoying question! Since we are reaching the RICH territory as of lvl 6 wealth-by-level, can I ... for example, invest my money into Unseen Servant force to help me in mass-manufacture of arrows? Because making one trick arrow per week is, cheaper, but still a pain.

Standard craft rules exist to frustrate people.
For example, I can shoot whole quiver under two minutes and need twenty weeks to remake the arrows.

Why I hung up on Unseen Servant? Because at it's cheapest it's a 2000 gp item, or ring, that lets you spam the summon and get around 600 of those after hour of summoning?
Such workforce could be very useful in hastening any crafting process.

Even in theoretical situation when a wizard did it ... each of those can Aid Another and for each 2 of those we get guaranteed (with DC of 10 that normal Aid Another takes) help to designated crafter. Theoretically speaking, as long as it's a crowd controlled by someone with ENOUGH ranks in the Craft?

In the example we get a guy with kingdom-famous Craft Skill of 10 ranks total. So maximum of 10 unskilled laborers he could guide to craft on his behalf, if I remember the rules right, incidentally multiplying crafting speed by factor of 10. Because ten guys are working simultaneously.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:34, Sat 18 June 2022.

Sesa can produce 6 doses a day; total production in 28 days is 168. 120 is because maybe I don't want to milk my venom every day and I need some doses myself. But yeah, anything you can do with it, go wild. I do have alchemy, currently at +12, I'm considering investing in a +skill item this level but I might just invest in upgrading my Big 6.

Mundane crafting is lulzy bad, it's true. Alchemy specifically has fast crafting rules, they just have huge DCs. Pheromone Arrows have a fast-craft DC of 25, which gets the time down to 10 minutes per arrow; I think it costs more though? Let me see..  (10 myrrh + 10 salt + 14 urea) each of the components is 5 sp, so 17 gp total to craft in this manner as opposed to 5 gp to craft normally or 15 gp to just buy, so yeah, definitely not cost efficient.

Under our specific consumable rules, these numbers double so 32 gp to craft 'fast', 10 gp to craft slow, 30 gp to buy.


As far as collaborative crafting goes; if you want to multiplicative crafting each member needs to be able to hit the DCs on their own, one master crafter and a bunch of assistants gets you the crafting of the master crafter with bonuses for the assistants as per Aid Another, so a +2 per person you can convince the DM can reasonable assist. The impact of +2 varies wildly per project but increments of 10 above base DC are the most useful, since you can use Accelerated crafting to get more out faster. So, assuming your crafter can hit the DC, get assistants in groups of 5 if possible. Of course, by that point your paying for assistants which is going to eat into your profit margin pretty quickly so maybe just buy them :P (System works best when you -have- to use it, e.g: something you cant buy and has a big impact, so its worth working on over time... but those things are generally magic items which has a much better system)

I can borrow you gold on a Crafting aide. Alchemical explosives are every elfs, and man-child's, friend. :)

Why I was asking about your venom? Because paralytic could be used to do Paralyballs, but not-magical version.

Why I was asking about Unseen Servant? Because they can perform unskilled labor and some versions use caster's Skill checks. And as a ... magical forcefields that are mostly shapeless? They can bend in silly ways that no mortal could accomplish. Plus if you can spam them, you can do ridiculous stuff out of combat.



I sincerely doubt we collectively have cash for a third lvl research of a spell that mimicks fireball but with your venom explosion.

Lemme try remembering, takes three weeks minimum, 2k gold per week. Spellcraft DC is on the "No, don't try without +Skillcheck stuff unless you have endless gold".

I can't remember. DC is either 19 or 24. By the Spell-level x3 +10 or +15 formula when researching new magic.

As for the good news? Puck's Attack rose by whoppin' +2. And his AC by +1. ;P
This message was last edited by the player at 22:37, Sat 18 June 2022.

Sorry Puck, I'm not allowing either custom magic items or custom spells.  So no infinite unseen servants and no venom bombs, unless they're something that already exists in pathfinder.

Fair enough. The transfer back of the 140 gp I owed to Taliesin is ok, right?

I'll have to bother Sesa for my "cut fuses" needs.

If Puck wants to give Taliesin 140 gp as payback, go ahead.  I have no problem with sharing/lending possessions, as long as both players keep track of it in their inventory sheets.  Same goes for anyone who wants to make use of Uluchi's poison stockpile.

On that note, I had just a tad bit of extra money left over and Uluchi is carrying a Scroll of Protection from Evil; the intent being to give someone a second save against a mind-control spell. She has a 50% chance of activating it with UMD so if someone who is guaranteed to be able to use it wants to carry it, I'd appreciate it.

I could use it and read it without the UMD check

While everyone works on their level up, I have another question I'd like everyone's inputs on:  Do we want to keep leveling up every fight?

On the one hand, it provides a tangible reward for winning, and everyone gets to try their builds at wider variety of levels faster.  On the other hand, leveling up takes time and effort and having to buy a bunch of new equipment every fight might get a little tiresome.  Also, I originally planned for the fights to be more lethal, with around a 50% chance of victory, which would have meant only levelling up after some of the fights (and I guess making entirely new characters the rest of the time.)

I've been debating slowing it down to two fights per level, with the first victory only providing loot.  What's everyone else's opinion?

I am liking the current pace so far. I feel like we could have easily lost the last two battles if rolls had gone differently. Maybe at level ten or so it might be fun to slow it down a bit, but my preference is to keep things as is for now.

That said, I am fine if others feel differently.

I agree and sorry I've been sorta MIA. Work's picked up quite a bit and also have family visiting from abroad, so my time's been limited to say the least.

I think the pace so far has been good, and I support slowing down once we get to 10th level and later.

I'm of no opinion regarding the level ups. I'm fine with it and would be fine with slower ones as well.

Once every two victories? Can be. Every time we survive? Also fine.

And regarding the Puck's debt for Pheromone Arrows, I just wait for Taliesin to confirm. Other than that? Puck's ready and I'll be willing to borrow money once Gorum confirms I didn't do any oopsie.