Two Cauldron-Born questions/comments

I'm about a third of the way through Cauldron-Born with my group, and two questions have come up.

First, what happens to Luc Jierre if the party captures him alive at the end of Always On Time? My assumption was that he'd be questioned a while and then quietly deported to Danor minus his lantern -- after all, he is the son of a king and Risur can't hold him long-term without risking a diplomatic incident.

Second, during the manhunt-for-Kell minigame, we ran into a slight problem with the wording in the Players' Guide. My group has a prestige of 4 with Risur at this point. If you go by the prestige ranks as written in the Players' Guide, prestige 4 makes it trivially easy for a socially skilled character, like my group's bard, to requisition a hundred soldiers with the snap of a finger. Needless to say, a hundred soldiers would be more than enough to reduce the Theater of Scoundrels to rubble. I had to fall back on "Well, no, you can get soldiers, but just not that many. Why? Because..."

(As a side note, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have allowed the bard. Between rituals and having better skills than most of the group, he tends to heavily dominate the out-of-combat part of the game.)

Lord Shark said:

I wouldn't have allowed the bard.

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Why not? Because the player built a character well-suited to the campaign? I'd go the other way and tell all the other players not to build wholly combat-oriented characters and ensure they invest in at least one social skill.

On the prestige issue I would simply argue that a player could requisition huge amounts of men if they are available and if the powers-that-be deem it necessary - neither of which apply with terrorist bombs going off throughout Flint.

Not sure about Luc. Could his release form part of the treaty negotiations? (Come to think of it, on what grounds could the group have arrested, let alone held, him?)

gideonpepys said:

Why not? Because the player built a character well-suited to the campaign? I'd go the other way and tell all the other players not to build wholly combat-oriented characters and ensure they invest in at least one social skill.

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The other players are not playing mindless combat monsters; they do have a variety of noncombat skills and powers. However, the bard is just so much better at the skills that come up most often and has such a broad palette of skills to draw on that, if I'm not careful, noncombat scenes have a tendency to focus on what the bard is doing while everyone else kind of helps out around the edges. It isn't even a particularly minmaxed character, and the player isn't trying to be a spotlight hog -- but the players naturally want the best chance of success, and that all too often translates to "let the bard do it."

Not sure about Luc. Could his release form part of the treaty negotiations? (Come to think of it, on what grounds could the group have arrested, let alone held, him?)

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At the climax of Always on Time, Delft urges the players (via Sending) to either capture Luc and the lantern or, failing that, kill him (see the sidebar on p. 51). So I think legal concerns have gone out the window at that point.

Yeah, I guess I don't have that problem because the Charisma-based character in my campaign is a Danoran tiefling, so he gets a penalty when interacting with most Risuri. (Forgot that I did that to limit his domination of social scenes.)

I had never considered the implications of Delft's orders before. I am on Always on Time now, so thanks for the heads up. Ordering a group of operatives to assassinate a member of a foreign royal family is quite a big deal! 'Get hold of the lamp' would be a reasonable order, but capture/kill Luc - without any real evidence that his lamp does anything that would endanger Risur is problematic now that I think about it.

Clearly, Luc's release must be central to peace treaty negotiations.

Sorry, I'm American. It seemed perfectly in character (if not actually moral) for a spy chief to say, "Oh, he might be trouble? Eh, go ahead and kill him if you have to."

At the time, consider that the Obscurati has been very dangerous, so any plot someone is involved with must be assumed to be dangerous too.

RangerWickett said:

Sorry, I'm American.

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I'm sure we Brits have been equally guilty of such nefarious activities.

On reflection, I think Delft's call is a reasonable one. Just high-risk.

Would the RHC even admit to Luc's abduction/assassination?

It's pretty standard spy etiquette. If the party is caught, they were acting outside the bounds of their orders, and had fled overseas after an investigation uncovered abuses of their authority. If they just get spotted and manage to escape, the RHC denies the allegations, and reiterates its respect for the sovereignty of nation X, Y, or Z. If they killed Luc and escaped, Risur extends its condolences to the Jierre family but denies that any Risuri assets were involved.

Luc is pretty low-visibility, and not very well-known even in his homeland, so him dying doesn't provoke a nationwide anger against Risur. But it would damned well piss off Lya. Then again, she is rational to a fault, and while she'll always hate the people who killed her brother, she won't act in anger by seeking revenge.



As for Prestige and soldiers,

My group has a prestige of 4 with Risur at this point. If you go by the prestige ranks as written in the Players' Guide, prestige 4 makes it trivially easy for a socially skilled character, like my group's bard, to requisition a hundred soldiers with the snap of a finger.

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Fifty soldiers is listed as Level 5. Getting them for a few hours (you're not just doing one fight; you're storming several city blocks, arranging coordinated tactics, securing a perimeter so people don't flee or ambush you, etc.) raises it to level 6.

Normally that's 2 levels above yours, so it takes a week to get the logistics figured out. If you make your Diplomacy check (DC 33), you can get it in a day. And if the party can pull that off, good for them. (A top-shelf Diplomacy check at 10th level is, what, 5 level + 5 proficient + 6 Cha + 3 skill focus + 2 racial + 2 item? That's +23. If a character invests a ton of resources into Diplomacy, let him have his small army.)

So say at the start of the whole task force, your players (who count at 8 officers apiece or 40 total), their 50 officers, and their 50 soldiers (who count as 200 officers on an assault) attack the Theater of Scoundrels. That's 290 people vs. 100 defenders. If the party hasn't found the mole, Kell gets alerted to the massive attack coming and he pulls in another 50 guys. So it's basically 2 on 1.

You don't have sufficient guys for it to be 'optimal,' so you take a -5 penalty. Kell sneaks out (because f*ck that noise), so the defenders' morale isn't limitless. But still you're going to have to get an Intimidate check (DC 30) to get them to stand down without a blood-bath. If that fails, you're looking at 75 casualties on the party's side in order to topple the theater.

And that's not even considering what sorts of other tricks Kell's people might pull. I'd include at least 3 mishap possibilities that might make things harder.

If they succeed, great job! Kell's still on the run and still has other strongholds, though, and the party likely got 50 soldiers and 25 officers incapacitated or killed.

Actually, in the copy I have, a level 4 favor is a company of 100 soldiers. Getting them for a few hours raises it to 5. Succeeding in a DC 30 diplomacy check brings it back to a 4. So as written they can get them in a few hours and then use them for a few hours more.

Hm, looking back at the player's guide, you're right. I wonder where I got the wrong numbers for the adventure.

Perhaps the assumption should have been that getting the officers counted as a favor in the first place. My bad. That was a whopping adventure.