So, did we win?

End of game!

We played the finale. Big, complicated fight with some cool stuff tying it back to previous adventures: some of the mooks exploded into candy (from the haloween plane).

And Brus got to kill Limen, just like he told Dimfuzz he would. “I am going to kill him with this”, he said, “unless I find something bigger”. In the end – he did find something bigger: Shub-Liminel with an Enlarge Person spell. Limen had an Anti-life Shell up, but with a reach of 15′ Brus was able to get him.

Did we win? The ending was just a shade ambiguous. Perhaps the whole thing – Coin included – was all just a big game put up by Limen himself. But, our characters ended the adventure levelled up and with bags of loot. All’s well that ends well.

Thoughts?

Well – inquisitor is ok as a class. The specific picks I made to get travel domain made it quite a bit better. There was some rules adjudication needed for some of the teamwork feats, and the Surmount Affliction spell is useless without the rule that it’s the one spell that you can drop even when you are under the effect of one of the conditions it addresses.

It’s a bit monk-y: fighter with kick-butt will saves, so can deal with things that a fighter can’t. But really: can’t heal like a cleric, can’t fight like a fighter, can’t cast like a bard, and the sucky reflex save is crippling. The class would come into its own in urban adventures, I think.

Brus was a hell of a lot of fun as a character, but the class was complicated to play and not good enough at the things that it did do. The main reason Brus was as good as he was was that the DM gave him a weapon with book value completely off the scale.

As always, Brus will be shredded. I levelled him up to 15, just to see how the story ends – spells Ghostbane Dirge, Mass, and Instrument of Agony. Like Fallback Strategy, it sits there waiting to be used for 1 minute a level. Will save, but a free action in combat and the effect (nauseated) is very, very worthwhile. For his feat, I drew on his human heritage and took Defiant Luck.

And with the money from Limen, Shub-Liminel will be upgraded to being Cruel as well as Vicious, because it just has to be done 🙂 .

Bye Brus! It was awesome. For the record, here’s how he looks at level 15:

Brus Reckoner #15
Male half-orc fighter 1/inquisitor of Yog-Sothoth 14 (Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide 38)
N Medium humanoid (human, orc)
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., scent; Perception +12

---

Defense

---

AC 26, touch 13, flat-footed 26 (+9 armor, +2 deflection, +1 insight, +2 natural, +2 shield)
hp 154 (15 HD; 14d8+1d10+32)
Fort +13, Ref +4, Will +12; -4 penalty vs. odor-related effects
Defensive Abilities stalwart

---

Offense

---

Speed 40 ft. (30 ft. in armor)
Melee shub liminel +16/+11/+6 (1d8+20/×4 plus 2d6) or
   bite +10 (1d4+6)
Ranged composite shortbow +11/+6/+1 (1d6/×3)
Special Attacks exploit weakness, greater bane (19 rounds/day), judgment 5/day (2 simultaneous)
Domain Spell-Like Abilities (CL 14th; concentration +17)
   At will—dimensional hop (140 feet/day)
Inquisitor Spell-Like Abilities (CL 14th; concentration +17)
   At will—detect alignment, discern lies (14 rounds/day)
Inquisitor Spells Known (CL 14th; concentration +17)
   5th (2/day)—divine pursuit^UM, mass ghostbane dirge^APG (DC 18), unwilling shield^APG (DC 18)
   4th (4/day)—find quarry^UC, judgment light^UC, leashed shackles^UM (DC 17), stoneskin
   3rd (5/day)—coordinated effort^APG, cure serious wounds, deadly juggernaut^UC, dimensional anchor, fester^APG (DC 16)
   2nd (6/day)—blistering invective^UC (DC 15), bloodhound^APG, instrument of agony^UC, remove paralysis, see invisibility, surmount affliction^UM
   1st (6/day)—deadeye’s lore^UC, divine favor, expeditious retreat, fallback strategy, lend judgment^UM (DC 14), wrath^APG
   0 (at will)—brand^APG (DC 13), create water, detect magic, guidance, read magic, resistance, virtue
   Domain Travel

---

Statistics

---

Str 25, Dex 11, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 7
Base Atk +11; CMB +15; CMD 31
Feats Brutal Grappler, Cornugon Smash, Defiant Luck^ARG, Divine Interference^UM, Escape Route^UC, Intimidating Prowess, Judgment Surge^UM, Outflank^APG, Power Attack, Quicken Spell-Like Ability (dimensional hop), Shake It Off^UC, Shared Judgment^UC, Swap Places^APG
Traits armor expert, brute (orc)
Skills Climb +10, Handle Animal +2, Heal +10, Intimidate +36, Knowledge (arcana) +3, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +3, Knowledge (local) +3, Knowledge (nature) +3, Knowledge (planes) +3, Knowledge (religion) +3, Linguistics +3, Perception +12 (+20 vs. smells), Ride +2, Sense Motive +25, Spellcraft +3, Stealth +3, Survival +25 (+29 to track using scent, You do not have to move at half your speed while tracking.), Swim +9; Racial Modifiers +2 Intimidate, +4 to survival when tracking by scent
Languages Abyssal, Common, Custom Language, Infernal, Orc, Undercommon
SQ agile feet (6/day), monster lore +7, orc blood, solo tactics, stern gaze +7, track +7
Combat Gear potion of cure serious wounds (2), potion of shield of faith +2 (2), snapleaf, wand of cure light wounds; Other Gear +3 breastplate, shub liminel, arrows (20), composite shortbow, dusty rose prism ioun stone, amulet of natural armor +2, bane baldric, belt of giant strength +4, ring of force shield, ring of protection +2, backpack, bedroll, belt pouch, flint and steel, hemp rope (100 ft.), iron spike (2), iron unholy symbol, piton (2), torch (10), waterskin, material components for stoneskin * 3 (worth 250 gp), 137 gp, 7 sp, 4 cp

---

Special Abilities

---

+4 to Survival when tracking by Scent +4 to Survival when tracking by Scent.
Agile Feet (6/day) (Su) For 1 rd, you ignore difficult terrain.
Armor Expert -1 Armor check penalty.
Brutal Grappler When you and an ally with this feat have grappled the same creature, you may attempt to damage the opponent on your turn (whether you were the one who first initiated the grapple or were assisting your ally in doing so).
Brute (Orc) Whenever you score a critical threat, you add (but not multiply, in the case of a confirmed critical hit) an amount of damage equal to your weapon’s critical modifier.
Cornugon Smash When you damage an opponent with a Power Attack, you may make an immediate Intimidate check as a free action to attempt to demoralize your opponent.
Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white vision only).
Defiant Luck (1/day) Reroll a natural 1 on a save, or force a reroll of a critical hit confirmation roll.
Detect Alignment (At will) (Sp) Detect chaos, evil, good, or law at will.
Dimensional Hop (28 5-ft inc/day) (Sp) As a move action, teleport with no AoO to seen destination. Spend an equal distance to carry others.
Discern Lies (14 rounds/day) (Sp) Discern Lies at will
Divine Interference Sacrifice a spell to force an enemy to reroll a successful attack against your ally
Escape Route You do not provoke attacks of opportunity when moving through spaces adjacent to allies
Exploit Weakness (Ex) With a crit, ignore DR, suppress Regen, and take advantage of vulnerability.
Greater Bane (+2 / 4d6, 19 rounds/day) (Su) Make the weapon you are holding a bane weapon.
Inquisitor Domain (Travel) Granted Powers: You are an explorer and find enlightenment in the simple joy of travel, be it by foot or conveyance or magic. Increase your base speed by 10 feet.
Judgment Surge (1/day) Gain improved versions of your judgments
Monster Lore +7 (Ex) +7 to Knowledge checks when identifying the weaknessess of creatures.
Orc Blood Half-orcs count as both humans and orcs for any effect related to race.
Outflank Increase flank bonus by +2 if flanking ally has same feat. If you crit, ally gets an AoO.
Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Quicken Spell-Like Ability (Dimensional Hop [28 5-ft inc/day] [Sp], 3/day) Spell-like ability is cast as a swift action up to 3/day.
Ring of force shield An iron band, this simple ring generates a shield-sized (and shield-shaped) wall of force that stays with the ring and can be wielded by the wearer as if it were a heavy shield (+2 AC). This special creation has no armor check penalty or arcane spell failure chance since it is weightless and encumbrance-free. It can be activated and deactivated at will as a free action.
Note: In order to get the AC bonus from this, it must be equipped and then activated on the in-play tab.
Construction
Requirements: Forge Ring, wall of force; Cost 4,250 gp
Scent (Ex) Detect opponents within 15+ feet by sense of smell.
Second Judgment (5/day) (Su) Variable bonuses increase as the combat continues.
Shake It Off Gain +1 to all saving throws per adjacent ally
Shared Judgment Extend a judgment to an adjacent ally instead of enacting a second judgment.
Solo Tactics (Ex) Count Teamwork feats as if your allies had the same ones.
Stalwart (Ex) If you succeed at a Fort or Will save for reduced effect, you take none instead.
Swap Places You can trade places with an ally with this feat during your movement.
Track +7 Add the listed bonus to survival checks made to track.

Hero Lab and the Hero Lab logo are Registered Trademarks of LWD Technology, Inc. Free download at http://www.wolflair.com
Pathfinder® and associated marks and logos are trademarks of Paizo Inc.®, and are used under license.

He’s our buoy!

So, everything has gone to shit, Coin is probably dead, Limen was probably in the holy-of-holies – the tesseract – and has kinda stolen our plan. The dimensional anchor is imbedded in Coin’s portrait, and the rope extends off to … somewhere.

We had a bit of a chat to these kinda godlike dudes, who are Coin’s “children”. Maybe. We were going to want to catch up with Limen at the other end of this rope thing. We could follow that rope (which no doubt let through the Plane of Infinite Rats), or maybe take a shortcut.

We opted for the shortcut. We were waned that it might get a little damp.

Now, there’s a bit of history there. One of the doorways opened out onto a ship, which we sank a while ago and which “now” probably lies on the bottom of an ocean.

Checkov’s Gun was mentioned.

Oh, and we needed to find a wizard who was not very good (at being a wizard), but who was going to help in some unspecified way.

And they gave us a little thingy which would stop time while we all had a full nights rest and levelled up. Nice. And a second one. For later. Because we are going to need it.

In the “morning”, John gives everyone a Water Breathing spell, which will last for a while, ditto a Wind Walk.

---

First door. Opened out into a sewer. There were all these skeletons that had had the flesh sucked off them, but it was ok because they were fully dead. Nice.

Our key/compass pointed “thataway” to the next door, so we went thataway. Tied up in the middle of the fetor was some dude calling for help. “Please help!”, he yelled, “He’s coming back!”. A brief interrogation during which Brus for the first time ever used his “Detect Lies” class ability determined that he was lying his ass off. We ignored him and went for the door. Oh, and I think Picklick shot him a bit just to see what would happen, because even though Morgs was not at the table that’s just how he rolls.

Anyway. As soon as we got close the dude, of course, attacked and a couple more emerged out of the scenery (it was a sewer – lot’s of scenery). We managed to get them down without too much trouble, because it turns out they were flesh-suckers. Every sucked cooked flesh off a chicken bone? Well, they did that. Faugh has taken 3 points of Charisma drain, which – well – doesn’t really do much to him. I think Will took some as well, which does affect him. But, he’s rocking about 20 normally, so he’s ok for the moment.

There was a ping from a pile of scenery, and we uncovered a Ring of Water Walking. We gave it to Faugh, on account of he is a gnome and occasionally gets in over his head.

---

Next door. Wood panelled rooms which smelled awesome with beeswax. Brus drops a Bloodhound spell every day, so was relived to be out of the sewer. Following our compass, we found a wooden shield that had been pierced through with a very odd foot-and-a-half long shortspear, made of a weird material, kinda chitinous and aww shit: is that a bee stinger?

You bet your booty it was.

Anyway. We found this nice room with a boiling kettle, some tea making gear, and no wizard. We opened a door and looked down a corridor to see a dude in a wizard’s hat bolting towards us, pursued by a swarm of unhappy bees. We admit the wizard, slam the door shut, and Picklick proceeds to wedge the door.

Thud!

Them is some big-ass bees. The wizard mentions that he seems to have upset them. Then there’s a knock on the other door. We reason that bees usually don’t knock, so we let the guy in. Wizard looks like he’s seen a ghost.

Guy says “I’m sorry!” and splits open, and a swarm of bees emerge. Then the other swarm breaks through the wedged door.

Fight fight. Will (or Bottom) gets stung, takes Dex damage. We hightail it to the next door, dragging the wizard along.

But there are two doors! One goes to the bottom of the ocean, and one goes – well, somewhere else. We opt for waterworld. But first, a plan is needed. We rope ourselves together – a good start. We will close the other doors, open the portal door and wait for the inrushing water to equalise pressure. Cool. But we have two problems – we have dudes in armour, and we have a wizard who did not get this morning’s Water Breathing.

For the Wizard, we decide to stuff him into a Bag of Holding. He won’t be in there too long, so will probably not suffocate. Rather than try to convince him to to this, Picklick saps him and we stuff his uncoscious body into the bag. We actually have two, but one of them has a few corpses in it (it’s a long story) so we put him in the other one.

Now, our first thought was to use Wind Walk. But after a moment we recall that that spell doesn’t really work well underwater.

But remember that ring of Water Walking? That we gave Faugh?

If the spell is cast underwater (or while the subjects are partially or wholly submerged in whatever liquid they are in), the subjects are borne toward the surface at 60 feet per round until they can stand on it.

We decide that Faugh is our buoy. Problem solved!

So we secure our loos items (ioun stones, in particular) and open the door.

Well Brus, who opened the door, takes damage, people are washed back, there’s pummelling and cold damage and John drops a Resist Energy (cold), Mass. Much damage. The other doors in the room strain to control the pressure, and John’s invisible Fairy Dragon puts up a Wall of Force It won’t last long.

We get through the door and underwater, and far enough away from the portal to not be sucked back in once the WoF goes down. It’s cold, but we are warmed by the thought of what is going to happen to those fucking bees.

Faugh pops us to the top, cork-like. There is a fortuitous boat just nearby, the crew a little startled by people bobbing to the surface of the sea out of absolutely nowhere, and possibly also by the sight of a deep gnome calmly walking on the water like it ain’t no thing.

Aboard the boat, we let our wizard out of the bag. He’s a little bluish, but not too bad. He is also wet, having made the mistake of opening the bag for a moment.

And here we are. Alive, but still racing the clock.

Brus Reckoner – if it ain’t broke …

I’ll do this one OOC, I think, ’cause I’m feeling lazy. Full house again – everyone is back, which is good news.

So, we are in a city that has been conquered by some dudes working for Zon Kuthon. By which I mean, an army. We have kinda decided that rather than immdiately assaulting the scary fortress of evil, we should do some of the other encounters. The rationale is that ZK is getting mana off the bad stuff going down, so we should stop it. It’s very similar to the plot mechanism in the final Age of Worms module – take care of enough of the bad things in the city, and it knocks Kyuss from being a rank 1 god to being a mere demigod.

Three encounters, which makes it a big game night. First, we got a wandering patrol outside the rather nasty undead factory (DM’s: a great way to run a game is just to kick off with a smallish encounter more or less as soon as people sit down. Puts people in game mode.). Multi-legged dog things and some orc mooks. When I say mooks, I mean 100-odd hp mooks, but mooks. We discovered a sweet-ass combo: a Hold Monster from Will and a coup-de-gras from Brus. The naginata is a *4 weapon, so the coup-de-gras means a minimum DC 106 Fort save or die. There’s really not a lot of things that can make that. Maybe we wasted a 4th level spell on someone who was not actually a cleric (thought he had a holy symbol: “Gakk the cleric!”), but we wasted it on making sure that the magic whistle of bringing the entire city down on us like a ton of bricks was not blown, so probably woth it.

We noticed some sort of hamster-wheel-of-pain arrangement over yonder. Barbed wire and spikes, ordinary folks being forced to drive it. Rather nasty and very Zon Kuthon. We decided that the correct approach was to send in someone invisible with decent Stealth and Disable Device. A chance for the rogue to do his thing, which was really great because the player has had to miss a few games. The wheel went rolling off down the hill – unpleasant for the people in it, and people who got in the way. Some collateral civilian fatalities, I’m afraid. But at least the whole “evil green glowing magic stuff” aspect of it has been nullified.

Then we decided to look into the desecrated church. It was – well – pretty thoroughly desecrated. Flayed people hanging from the ceiling beams, corpses propped up in the pews, eeeevil symbols drawn everywhere. We found some clues that had been left carelessly lying about and then fight. Rats and rat swarms, couple of orcs, and chick with crossbow doing sneak attack and serious negative energy damage. She got the drop on us, which was bad.

It transpired she was a vampire using a weapon that lets you do a supernatural effect through it. So she was able to vampire level-drain at range with meatshields. Really bad. And worse, our cleric is phobic about rats.

Neverthless, two really good things happened. First, she rolled a 1 on her save vs Blindness. This pretty much hosed the encounter for the DM. Second, Will had a bunch of low-level creatures to use Rainbow Pattern on (Rats have an Int score, so rat swarms are subject to mind-affecting. Furthermore, they are not immune to weapon damage. They are still a pretty serious problem for this group, however.). This fascinated five or six of them. From there, Brus mopped up some mooks on the floor, and the more acrobatic took to the rafters to kill them some blinded vampire lady. Will moved the Rainbow Pattern outside so that the rats would follow and allow John to come in and start channelling, but John had started his Wind Walk dematerialisation (he really dislikes rats) and was out of the fight. Doesn’t matter – he did the main thing. Picklick tried sneak-attacking with a vial of alchemists fire, but missed. 10′ range increment, meh. Brus rolled some 1s, but mostly had a great old time on the ground, Bottom also cleaning up his share of mooks. Faugh got his pummelling strike in, but mainly had to chase flying blind vampire lady around the rafters. He has a natural climb speed, apparently.

Playing a bard can be a little frustrating at times – you do your bard song (which, btw, is invaluable: +3 to hit makes all the difference) and sometimes it feels like that’s it. But this session we saw what could be done with the bard’s spells. Particularly given that we don’t have an AoE blaster, taking half the combatants out of the fight made a big difference. Some cheese that gives Will a Fireball equivalent might be worthwhile (is there a Greater Sound Burst?).

Anyway. We got some clues – apparently ZK and Limen have some sort of “deal” going. The main issue at the moment is resource management. Some of the undead are light-sensitive, which means this town will become way unfriendly as soon as it gets dark. My character is using a vicious weapon and just chews through HP like crazy – we only have just so much heals.

We saw a side door on the cathederal of badness. We will un-desecrate the church by burning it down (quickest way to go about it, really), and then I’m not sure that there’s anything else needs doing before heading off for the main event. We are down on resources, but not seriously depleted yet AFAIK.