Reckonings: The Overlook

[Nathan of the FoS]

Nathan's characters appear to be waiting as well--Peregrine for me to advance the plot, and Sariel for...who is Sariel waiting for?

Well, I had been waiting for the fight to end so we could talk, but I just remembered that we have a Brief Hiatus preceding the fight in which to discuss what Sariel has learned (and it's a lulu, believe me).

If you mean, waiting for what in the fight, I had the idea that Sariel had acted, or was in the middle of acting, and that other things needed to be resolved before my input became useful again. I'll read the thread again to see if my memory's correct on that point.

Are people lost, confused, disappointed?

No! Yes! No! (in that order)

I'll get Peregrine's plot back on track ASAP.

Yippee! Squishy talk about feelings for the ultimate "can't express his emotions" d00d!

[Le Noir Faineant]

I am obviously still here, though I keep silent since I still think I am into the game for too short to push the action into any direction... I am still busy rebuilding my character...

[Le Noir Faineant]

Is the last message at Umberlee's Belly part of the earlier conversation, or is it taking place when Anders already bashed Harrin?

[Nathan of the FoS]

Is the last message at Umberlee's Belly part of the earlier conversation, or is it taking place when Anders already bashed Harrin?

It's taking place at roughly the same time as your fight with Harrin, but several miles away, on a different ship.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Ah, well, then I'll keep silent until the situation changes...

[Le Noir Faineant]

I'll be basically offline for the next two weeks, in order to prepare an exam.

Afterwards, I'll return to play Anders, though!

*Come out, other players, wherever you are!*

[Nathan of the FoS]

Wow.

I guess Peregrine has failed more than two powers checks after all--either that or there are alternate rules for the appearance of the Furies (DoDarkness says they only appear when someone at the third or fourth rank of failed powers checks seems about to "leave the path").

I was trying to figure out what IC knowledge Peregrine would reasonably have, and I settled on: their existence, their names, and a (slightly garbled) idea of why they appear--he believes when an evildoer repents, they appear to test the sincerity of his repentance, and if he fails their tests they destroy him. Peregrine believes them to be semi-divine, and that it would be wicked (and stupid) to attack them unless they attack him first. (They're evil, but they're a necessary evil--which is how Peregrine often thinks of himself.)

[Nathan of the FoS]

In the future, may I recommend using a chainable energy power instead of energy bolt? Energy bolt can't be chained because it doesn't affect a single target, and the chain power feat allows you to attack other 10'ft sections of the same object as separate targets. For the small cost of expending your psionic focus, that could easily quadruple your damage.

I was looking at the 3.5 Psionics Handbook the other day, and now I'm confused...according to the Chain Power feat, you can chain any "energy" power with a single target, but there are no "energy" powers with single targets. They're all area-effect powers, two-target powers (energy current, energy retort), "up to five target" powers (energy missile), or rays (energy push, energy missile). So now I have no idea what this feat means--has it been errata'd somewhere?

FWIW, it was energy missile that DeepShadow used earlier. But, as I read the feat description, this power shouldn't be chainable either, since it can already choose more than one target.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I originally planned to post here about saving the game, but I decided to make it another thread entirely. Please check it out and offer your ideas.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I'm prepping for my next post, but I can't find one important detail: did Cortez ever heal Shadross's Cha damage from the original fight with Harrin? If anyone can find this for me, I'd be most grateful.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Mattias is the one who would know, obviously, but I don't think he did. I don't find any mention of it in the Umberlee's Belly thread, and I'm pretty sure it didn't happen later (after our move here).

[Nathan of the FoS]

[Okay, I'm playing things a little loose here, but I feel pretty safe in my assumptions. Harrin is taking no chances of giving Shadross the swimming advantage: he's flying horizontally overhead--where Shadross can only hit him while standing up--and he's got using readied actions to take cover in the solid bulkheads every time Shadross takes a swing. Even when lower, Harrin is uninhibited by the water because his charisma is high enough to ignore lesser ranks of ethereal resonance. That puts Shadross at a severe disadvantage, because the waist-deep water is not deep enough to swim and use his cloak effectively, but deep enough to give him penalties to attack and halve all his damage. On top of that, the water is deep enough to force Shadross into manta ray form for the fight, giving him additional penalties as his wings slosh uselessly behind him.

All this means that Shadross is set up for a world of hurt, and Harrin's giving it to him. His first attack didn't work, and Shadross closed his eyes, but Harrin simply switched to deliberate distractions. Shadross's second save failed and he lost another 2 points of Charisma. By my count, that puts him at 1, which IMO is enough to have him nearly hopeless for the interrogation by Harrin. Then comes the final burst of aggression which prompted the next two saves in one round, and the next round Shadross failed both saves and lost seven points, which should put him at 0 even if my math was severely off. Once Shadross is comatose, Harrin owns him but good.]

Yeesh. Fate worse than death, indeed.

What I don't get is, why doesn't Shadross retreat and call in the cavalry, or just go underwater entirely (since it's waist deep) and force Harrin to deal with him down there? Harrin can avoid him at will in this scenario, so he gets no advantage at all from conducting the battle here. He can't do any lasting damage to the troll, either, and it's incredibly stupid to fight two enemies you can't hurt in close quarters...surely this would occur to him? He's not taking Int or Wis damage, after all! Surely he feels responsible for his men, but getting himself killed (much less possessed by Harrin) doesn't do them any good either.

Also, it seems really unfair that Harrin gets both to treat the ethereal as physical (the water drowning the sailors) and ethereal (popping in and out of the bulkheads), whichever is more to his advantage at the moment. Is that really how the phantom shift ability works?

EDIT: Well, I guess that really is how it works, which is a monstrous pain in the neck. BTW, what happened to Ander's astral construct? Surely all this peekaboo has given it time to arrive on the scene?

[DeepShadow of FoS]

What I don't get is, why doesn't Shadross retreat and call in the cavalry, or just go underwater entirely (since it's waist deep) and force Harrin to deal with him down there?

I'll admit that it was with Shadross's motivation that I was taking the most liberties. This is why I wanted a player! Nevertheless, I still have some backing:

* Shadross has gone out on a limb defensively before, despite Cortez's repeated urgings not to. I'm thinking he thought he could handle things abovedeck, and when the troll washed downstairs, he realized his mistake but it was too late. This brings us to...
* Shadross can't pull the unconscious troll up the stairs while maintaining a defense, and he can't leave it down there to hurt his men. Thus, he wanted to get rid of Harrin before lugging the troll back up.
* Shadross knows that that killing Harrin will fix the domination, and he has a clue that the sinking ship problem will go, too, based on what they saw with the other phantom ship.
* Going underwater fully was an option I didn't consider: that would block LoS. Looks like I'm gearing up for a rewrite! Still, Shadross would be doing half damage to Harrin after several penalties.

Harrin can avoid him at will in this scenario, so he gets no advantage at all from conducting the battle here. He can't do any lasting damage to the troll, either, and it's incredibly stupid to fight two enemies you can't hurt in close quarters...surely this would occur to him? He's not taking Int or Wis damage, after all!

True, but he's undergone a Malign Paradigm Shift upon realizing that this is his nightmare that's killing his men. Adding modifiers for being inadvertantly responsible (-4), being alone (-1) in close quarters (-1), and of good alignment (-1), he has a DC 32 Will save, which would require a natural 20. Some of his men are safe and participating (-4) while others are clearly endangered (+4), so I could argue that these cancel out...but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he's got to realize that his "safe" men are endangered in the long run.

So that's a DC 28 save. He needs a 17 or above. He rolled an 8. That's a failure by 9 points, a moderate effect, and Rage seems appropriate. But I might as well roll...hey, Revulsion! That could be interesting as well. More fodder for the rewrite!

Surely he feels responsible for his men, but getting himself killed (much less possessed by Harrin) doesn't do them any good either.

And yet he's been foolhardy this way before. I'm thinking he was foolhardy up on deck, and after that, it was too late, and he had to follow through.

Also, it seems really unfair that Harrin gets both to treat the ethereal as physical (the water drowning the sailors) and ethereal (popping in and out of the bulkheads), whichever is more to his advantage at the moment. Is that really how the phantom shift ability works?

EDIT: Well, I guess that really is how it works, which is a monstrous pain in the neck.

Perhaps it's unfair, but that's the way the rules read: in a phantom shift, everyone interacts with the ethereal resonance of the ship. Harrin can pass through lower ranks of ER, thus he can pick whether or not he's affected.

The real question for me is, could Shadross do the same thing? I keep thinking the solid ship is still there underneath, but that's not necessarily true.

EDIT: Turns out I already considered this. Shadross's original Charisma drain prevented him from doing this. The sailors should figure it out soon.

BTW, what happened to Ander's astral construct? Surely all this peekaboo has given it time to arrive on the scene?

Well, it's got to break through both hulls with its normal attacks. These are pretty tough ships, but I'll check the timing when I do the rewrite.

Whew! Well, if this is how it's going to go--me posting encounters and others commenting on the fairness--that might not be so bad. We'll still get to evaluate the effects of RL on epics on multiple levels.

[Nathan of the FoS]

So that's a DC 28 save. He needs a 17 or above. He rolled an 8. That's a failure by 9 points, a moderate effect, and Rage seems appropriate. But I might as well roll...hey, Revulsion! That could be interesting as well. More fodder for the rewrite!

Ah! Failed Horror check. All is explained. Including that does make Shadross' actions not only explicable, but almost inevitable.

Also, it seems really unfair that Harrin gets both to treat the ethereal as physical (the water drowning the sailors) and ethereal (popping in and out of the bulkheads), whichever is more to his advantage at the moment. Is that really how the phantom shift ability works?

Perhaps it's unfair, but that's the way the rules read: in a phantom shift, everyone interacts with the ethereal resonance of the ship. Harrin can pass through lower ranks of ER, thus he can pick whether or not he's affected.

Ah, but is that exactly how the rules read? According to the RLHB, those non-ethereal beings see and feel the ethereal resonance, but it is NOT explicitly stated that the ethereal becomes material to them. To borrow the language of illusion, it's a figment or a glamer, not a phantasm or shadow magic. (The example given in the book of interaction with ethereal resonance supports this view--the party opens a door in the ethereal while interacting with ethereal resonance which remains closed in the Material.)

Almost everything in the posts up to this point are still consistent with this view; the PCs and NPCs have been acting as if the ghost ship and the water flooding Shadross' ship are real, because they don't know the ghost ship can't ram and the water can't drown. The one question now is, what is the ghost ship interacting with? As a figment/glamer, it can't interact with any real, physical wind, so unless Harrin can generate weather in the ethereal I can't see how he got the ship to move in the first place.

BTW, what happened to Ander's astral construct? Surely all this peekaboo has given it time to arrive on the scene?

Well, it's got to break through both hulls with its normal attacks. These are pretty tough ships, but I'll check the timing when I do the rewrite.

Whew! Well, if this is how it's going to go--me posting encounters and others commenting on the fairness--that might not be so bad. We'll still get to evaluate the effects of RL on epics on multiple levels.

Heh. I guess all of this makes me a sea-lawyer, huh?

But one further question/doubt--if (as seems most logical), the phantom shift is considered a figment/glamer, why does the (mindless) astral construct interact with it at all? Because it was summoned in the ethereal? Is its Cha score sufficient to walk through walls on the ship? It has (checks SRD) Cha 10, which would allow it to go through 1st rank resonance only, IIRC, so I guess it probably can't (this seems more like rank 3-ish). But energy bolt would help...

Oh, and one last question--can Harrin still see when hiding in a bulkhead/wall? If not, could Shadross partially overcome Harrin's peek-a-boo advantage by moving around a lot, readying an action and sticking a sword in his head each time it appears? (Harrin would have to guess where Shadross is, stick his head on and see if he was correct, and someone with Shadross' reflexes could easy use the time it takes for the head to emerge to either stab it or duck below the water if it's too far away to stab.)

[Nathan of the FoS]

Almost everything in the posts up to this point are still consistent with this view; the PCs and NPCs have been acting as if the ghost ship and the water flooding Shadross' ship are real, because they don't know the ghost ship can't ram and the water can't drown. The one question now is, what is the ghost ship interacting with? As a figment/glamer, it can't interact with any real, physical wind, so unless Harrin can generate weather in the ethereal I can't see how he got the ship to move in the first place.

Whoops! One other very important point--the "ethereal resonance" water, being non-physical, couldn't wash the troll down the gangway, so it should have fallen where it stood (if the figment/glamer hypothesis of phantom shift is accepted).