OOC Alhallor's mana secret

[WindStruck]

Actually, if it's not too late, maybe we should try a sense motive roll? Though I guess that's hard if they're covered in layers and layers of cloth...

(1d20+1)[4]

[Alhallor]

Definitely not to late. I'll wait for Jahn till the big post. You can of course interrupt him anytime you deem appropiate to ask questions/whatever.

[Aegis013]

Knowledge History (1d20+2)[14]
Knowledge Nobility (untrained) (1d20+4)[11]
Bardic Knowledge (1d20+6)[11]

Mediocre results. Let's see what Jahn knows.

[Alhallor]

Finally posted. I know it's not that long but I did struggle a bit with it. I also included a TL;DR should it be to long. (or confusing)

[Toliudar]

Cool turn of events!

[Alhallor]

Cool turn of events!

Thanks! But to be honest you did exactly the right thing to make him able to surrender. Defeat Fanha and then don't attack him.

@Ridai: I'm gonna assume a remove curse/remove disease? Tell me if you try anything else.

Everyone who sees Thaum try his spells (that includes Thaum) roll a spellcraft and knowledge:arcana. This will be personalized information. (meaning if both Larimar and Ken roll a 20 they will get different info). I will then write some PMs and then you can decide in and/or out of character how to proceed. (Jahn can also roll another bardic knowledge).

This should open up the world a bit more and you can decide what if anything you share with the rest of the group if you decide if your info sounds more like a dead end to you personally. You will still have the possibility to throw all that aside and follow another route, it's all up to you.

I also realize that I could have done that with Jahn but frankly I needed a lot more time to think about what Mr Interview with a vampire would tell you.

[WindStruck]

Ok, one rank I think.

(1d20+2)[20]

[kinem]

Ken spellcraft (1d20+16)[33]
Kn Arcana (1d20+16)[32]

[Ridai]

I will start with the big guns, break enchantment, since that affects transmutations (which seems to be what happened here) and curses (because evil tar?). Caster level check (1d20+9)[27]

Should that not work, Thaum will try remove disease. Can't use panacea, as should both of them actually count as undead, it does nothing but damage the target, and we don't want that.

Knowledge (arcana) (1d20+6)[26] INFINITE
Spellcraft (1d20+10)[26] KNOWLEDGE

I really need to set up some sort of current tally of still dangling plot hooks, as well as what villains we met, defeated, or are still out there. This is eventually going to become a hero management sim where Thaum sends adventurer diplo-or-kill teams after known villains.

[Aegis013]

Jahn
Bardic Knowledge (1d20+6)[14]
Kn Arcana (1d20+15)[21]
Spellcraft (1d20+8)[24]

[Ridai]

I have added a table of plot threads, a rough description of what it started out at, the current status of it, and what other plot threads it led to to my first post. I am not sure I managed to get everything on there, but I hope I did. I direly needed something like that, I have trouble remembering every plot hook that was thrown our way thus far.

[Toliudar]

Great idea, Ridai!

[Alhallor]

If you wanna find out more about Alrik this may be the right moment to roll a Sense Motive.

[WindStruck]

Yeah.. I'm thinking some of our characters that actually have extremely good modifiers should have been trying sense motive this whole time.

[Ridai]

WindStruck, in the future, please just ask people to make a check if you feel that is warranted, instead of going "but you should have done x or y yesterday". Detecting deception of any kind is automatic in D&D 3.5 and so far, I have received absolutely zero indication of anything like that happening, on top of now learning they have been transformed, tortured, and had a direct mental connection forced onto them by a Shade-obsessed tar woman out to corrupt and consume. So Thaum, speaking to what are to him essentially victims of physical and mental torture, and magic-induced slavery, recounting their experiences, is not keen on digging into the boy to find out if he is indeed glad his parents are dead.

So here, Sense Motive (1d20+23)[26]

[Alhallor]

Yeah.. I'm thinking some of our characters that actually have extremely good modifiers should have been trying sense motive this whole time.

Not necesarrily. I may do this way different than other GM's but if someone just openly talks to you without any deception I don't think it's warranted to let you use Sense Motive to "see" that. (If you're not an unfeeling robot or something.)

[WindStruck]

I... really disagree, on both accounts. You're assuming the story is true, without considering the possibility that it could all just be cleverly made up. And while I'm not one particularly inclined to be always suspicious no matter what, I still think deception could have been a possibility here. I'm not forgetting how the kid acted before, and a whole sob story where some else made them do it just seems very convenient to try to absolve themselves of all responsibility. This is just why I wanted a sense motive roll: to see if our character's judgment felt they were being sincere, or not.

A good sense motive roll should be able to tell if someone is lying, twisting words, or holding back some key information. Or it could very well indicate that said person seems genuine in every way. A bad roll might indicate false or unhelpful information.

That's really just how the skill should work, by common sense. Think it's too much metagaming? Make the rolls secret. But either way, I don't really care, as long as we're actively or even passively getting some benefit from the skill, and not going to be burned later because "you didn't roll for it".

[Alhallor]

SNIP
But either way, I don't really care, as long as we're actively or even passively getting some benefit from the skill, and not going to be burned later because "you didn't roll for it".

I can assure you that I would definitely not try to do that. (I'm sure I can't catch every possibility where I accidentally may skip over things. Jerry was just an ass with a lot of Ranks in Bluff btw.) But I really try not to be an ass if you forgot to roll something, rolling for you when it's needed.

I can see your other points and have to think about it a bit. Metaknowledge is important as a player to know where you're stand and I will try to include more information of that kind. Seriously I might try to steer you in a certain direction and I wanted to avoid a railroad even if it's just for convenience sake.

Could we, for the existing instance, assume that both seem pretty genuine at the moment and I will try to include more info should it come up next?

[Ridai]

I do assume the story is genuine, yes, because I trust the DM to relate to me what my character perceives that I cannot by simply reading the text of the post, with not catching Miguel trying to trick us indicating that Thaum failed his Sense Motive check behind the scenes. Nothing in this entire game indicated that we have to roll automatic checks that are supposed to be hidden, as defined by the rules, by ourselves. And I do not find it a healthy basis for a game when you basically need to chuck every supposedly automatic perception check at the DM in every situation possible, just so the DM can't pull "you didn't roll for it", unless that is what you agree upon beforehand. Active Sense Motive usage for me would be stuff like additional, optional information that isn't automatic, like "can I get a general read on the crowd's mood?" or "how does this person feel right now?" or "does this person seem like an overindulging tuber closeness enthusiast?".

[WindStruck]

Right, you see, when Alhallor had said that they seemed genuine, I confused that for the result of Larimar's poor sense motive roll. I wasn't immediately jumping to the conclusion that the opposite was true, but I thought it would have been a good idea if other people had rolled for it as well.

So.. moving forward.. these guys seem honest, and we'll be sure to have checks or something done automatically for us in the future? If it's even necessary.


Just trying to catch more trouble before it happens: say Alhallor secretly rolls for us, but one of us decides to actively roll for the same thing, unaware that a roll was already made. What happens then?

[Alhallor]

I would say that your roll counts, not the one that I made, regardless if it's higher or lower.

I mostly catch that when I ask you "please roll this and that before we start the next section of the adventure" so you roll mostly but obviously I can't catch everything.

Or I tell you "you already rolled this and that remember?"

[Aegis013]

Seems like we have a bunch of leads. From Jahn's point of view, going to see the dragon sounds the most fun.

From my point of view, I have no idea which of these is the most promising, though searching all the highest mountain peaks in an entire range for a dragon that could easily be hibernating for the next decade or who knows what sounds like it could be fun, but is probably not the wisest first choice.

Anybody think any particular lead is the one to go with? Perhaps because it ties into another ongoing sub-plot?

[Alhallor]

Just wanted to point out that yes there is a travel cannon option in Valsena that can mitigate the travel problem somewhat.

Also wanted to point out that the different possibilities are just that. Possibilities for you to decide on, there is not really a wrong answer here.

[Ridai]

I usually prioritize by perceived threat level, because that makes sense for Thaum if there is something bad afoot that he could be doing something about. Hence it was Black Rabite ("this stuff is leading to... I don't even know how to call the populations... "humanoids" and "non-humanoids"? attacking each other and it seems there is some sort of actual force behind this, better check this out"), then the cult ("they are going to attack Rabiton! Gotta stop that!"), then the plague ("holy crap it's a mega zombie plague!"), and now it's the beastman ("someone for some reason injected those two with god knows what and is still out there and might still do similarly bad things! And he might still have some of that concoction to reverse-engineer"), followed by the elven forest ("I have no idea what is happening there, but the word worrying came up"). Sadly, this also means that visiting Undine has slipped far, far back on the list of priorities right now. And I have a hard time seeing Thaum say "there are these pressing issues right now, but I want all of us to go there because I wanna".

I'm not really sure whether to just go find the beastman and cure Migúel and Alrik that way or to try find some faster way to hopefully maybe cure them, but I have a feeling that no matter what we do, we won't just go somewhere and find an instant cure, there is bound to be something to complicate this, otherwise reversing what happened to them (and to Thaum) would be weirdly trivial for something that is supposed to be more or less permanent (as of current knowledge).

[WindStruck]

We might just have too many plot hooks. Seems for every hook we have been trying to solve, we have been getting 1 or 2 back.

Might be nice to just let things resolve at some point, get a chance to actually relax, and then something happens later.

[Alhallor]

We might just have too many plot hooks. Seems for every hook we have been trying to solve, we have been getting 1 or 2 back.

Might be nice to just let things resolve at some point, get a chance to actually relax, and then something happens later.

I will be on that, sorry for throwing so much stuff at you. I'll try to get you some more breathing room if you have decided what do do.

I just had a lot of fun digging out my old notes for this world and presenting you with opportunities. Though I see that I have overshot a bit.

[Ridai]

For me, I think it's more that... let's say the characters are a group of people who get called in case of emergency to go save people. They're on their day off and at an amusement park. They could go to this water slide thing or that dragon cave ride or whatever, but one of the attractions is actively on fire and people are trapped inside. The other attractions cease to exist, something is going down, they need to help. The day's over, no fun diversions, and as they help, they get wind of something else terrible going down in another amusement park, and they need to do something about that, so no jolly free time there either.

Like, the first thing was to pick what extremely vague and nebulous lurking danger to investigate (Claw-birthed lady, eternal devourer, black rabite), that was pretty even, because all of those were bad news and all came up at the same time in the opening quest. But the cultists were also there and planning to attack Rabiton, so whatever else was going on, like Duran's Rest or maybe looking into the Lady or the Devourer, was pretty much irrelevant, because they knew about a cult of murderous non-humanoid haters planning to attack and slaughter an innocent village of rabites and other people. Then at Rabiton, it was relatively even again, because the village was surrounded by bad things that need to be fixed ASAP before the cult arrives. In Valsena, there was the thread about the water temple and looking into the Black Rabite some more and the stuff that resulted from the tournament, but there comes the plague, everything else is trivial in comparison. Now, we could go to some mountains, or visit Undine, or whatever, but all that doesn't matter, because we have one known active danger in an extremely cruel and obviously evil beastman still roaming, possibly having the means to basically turn people into vampires against their will. And maybe potentially trouble in some forest. And we still are not much closer to any of the three mythical threats from the start of the game, and there are still cultists left, and goddamn motherflippin' Jerry is somewhere out there as well.

Even without the not-immediately "this needs to be handled by someone" things, stuff is piling up for us. Thaum has been getting annoyed about the sudden flood of villains and catastrophes and is seriously considering basically sending hero hit teams after those, because there is just so much bad stuff going on that they can't possible get to all of it themselves, and they will only discover more whenever they try to solve something.


tl;dr: If you have a party with several good people in an overall pretty heroic setting, who seek to do good things, they're going to try and prevent harm, instead of just doing what they feel like might be entertaining, or ignoring threats in the pursuit of some nebulous "bigger picture/greater good" thing.

[Toliudar]

*Golf clap.* Bravo for dredging that all back and closer to the surface of my brain, Ridai. That's a great analogy.

[WindStruck]

Hero hit teams... that's brilliant! You understand the solution to this dilemma, don't you?

That just means Alhallor needs to start up more games and recruit players for them.

[kinem]

OOC, I'm sure Alhallor will give us a good adventure regardless of which option we take.

Having several open plot hooks doesn't bother me. We are not the only thing going on in the world.

IC, the beastman seems like an ongoing danger, so we should probably check into that.

Fixing the 'vampires' seems like it would require resurrections. Another possibility though is that Undine might be able to do it, since healing seems to be part of the water magic, so that plot hook is not just for a social call.