(OOC) Fitz's Folly (ToA PBP)

[FitzTheRuke]

LOL I'll go the acrobatics route. Worth a shot. (Harb absolutely sucks in the Athletics dept. +0)

Wall Parkour: 1d20+6 17

I know he does. I always find it hard to wrap my brain around a monk who sucks at athletics (it's hard to imagine anyone who's good at acrobatics and yet sucks at athletics either, really). Good job on the check, though! I'm glad to see Harb back up on the road! And with an action left, too!

 

[KahlessNestor]

Remember, as DM, you can always switch out what ability is attached to what skill in certain circumstances. So it could be a Dexterity (Athletics) check.

 

[Kobold Stew]

All players: Myrral cannot reach beyond 60' - if archers don't drop G3, Ukee is gone.

I realize that; I leaned into the fumble with the broken bowstring (so the 1 counted for something), and then realized he was 125 feet away. Miss Imogen has range if they stay in sight (600'). The thing is we have no idea if the damage we appear to bre doing is effective, and how far we are from killing any of them.

I am happy to have Imogen run off in chase instead of the attack (60' northeast, maintaining line of sight) and reaching for a bowstring) -- if Fitz doesn't mind.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Okay, here's our dilemma:

1) Imogen (when her bow is strung) can fire arrows 600 feet with no penalties. Only Total Cover will stop her (Good).
2) The gargoyles can dash-fly 120 feet in a round, and Ukee's captor ended round five 215 feet away from Imogen (Bad).
3) The gargoyle with Ukee is at 4/57 HP. A single shot from her ought to do it (Good).
4) The two gargoyles are only 55 feet apart, and they look nearly the same. Worse, they flew into the mists over the river, and are low enough to nearly always have total cover as they fly away. They're flying like that on purpose, with practice. (Bad)
5) I don't like telling my players "no, it's impossible". So there ought to be a way to pull this off. (Good).
6) Even if Imogen shoots the right one down, there's a strong chance that Ukee won't survive the fall (between the height, the potential to drown if she falls in the water, and the 500lb dead stone creature possibly landing on her (bad).

I thought it might be a good time to try out 5e's "Chase" mechanics, but reading them over, I'm not too fond of them. (Frankly, I can see what they're going for, but I can't figure out quite how to do it well.)

Maybe just one of my 3-skill challenges?

Goal: Rescue Ukee. Primary Skills: Perception (keep sight of them between the ruins); Athletics (run like hell - I'd accept constitution saves as well); Investigation/Insight (where are they going? Why?); Others (something you come up with). Finally, I guess we'd need Imogen to take the shot.

What do you think?

 

[gargoyleking]

Seems legit I suppose, though if need be we do have a way to rez her too.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Seems legit I suppose, though if need be we do have a way to rez her too.

Do you? I didn't think she was a familiar. I guess I forgot that she was bonded to Harb, right? So he can bring her back like a familiar? Right, Nanny Pupu did a ritual, I think I vaguely remember.

 

[gargoyleking]

She gave him a few doses of reagents to bring her back if she died.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I started to think about when was the last time we leveled up in this game, and I did a little back-tracking for research:

We started at level 1 in late August of 2017 (!) Hit level 2 in November 2017. Level 3 in April 2018. Level 4 in December 2018 and finally level 5 in March 2020 (when you arrived in Omu).

It's no wonder that it feels so long since you hit level 5 - it's been the pandemic months. It feels (to me at least) like this year has been one of the longest of my life.

Also, I clearly left you a very long time at level 4. I like level 4. It's a good level. I'm not actually a huge fan of the game at high levels (in PBP I found it started to get pretty complicated even at level 8, which was the highest I've played in PBP). So I'm reluctant to do level-ups too quickly.

Also, all we've done since arriving in Omu is two encounters. So probably not yet, but I'm starting to think about it. Level 6 soonish, I think.

I also remember that at the beginning of the game, I promised to do quick level-ups, but then, I also never intended to run Tomb of Annihilation here. I was just going to run the Adventurer's League material, but that stuff didn't do anything at all to solve the Death Curse, and having heard of the plot of the adventure, everyone made characters who would be interested in that plot (good on you) so I felt I had to do right by the characters and switch to the "real" adventure.

Of course, now that puts us 3 years in, and no end in sight. As long as you all keep enjoying yourselves, I'll keep running it.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

While going through I found a picture that Fradak had posted (somewhere around IC#640, IIRC) of Chrysagon that didn't look quite so much like Harb (I've gotten them confused now and again with their cloaked-figure Icons). So on top of giving Dellrak a new Icon, I've given Chrysagon one now too:

EDIT: You may have noticed that I spent some time erasing the backgrounds on all the Icons when I went and added names to them. Easier to see, I think. I also added "glows" to them awhile back, but I've gotten more consistent with my colour-coding: Blue for PCs, Yellow for NPCs, Orange for BGs.

 

[gargoyleking]

Sounds about right. Also, I would like to point out that in Scourge, we started before this and are still only about to hit level 5.

But still, don't get me started on icons. I've been playing Pathfinder Society lately and have started creating my own custom icons for my characters using frames from League of Legends and random images from the interwebs.