The Eye of Anubis: OOC Thread

[The Whistler]

Want a few pistols? And some silver shot, perhaps?

Yes please! One pistol and a couple of bullets should do it.

Plan sounds awesome to me--I'm with you on having our melee folks sweep in from the West with the Devourer's crew. Hopefully we should be able to sweep the hostages into the monastery soon after we release them, if we get the timing right.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

One question: what's our policy on Cavendish? Once he figures out where the damage is coming from, he's going to be a serious pain in our rear.

Might it be better for me to replace Force Missiles with Lesser Sphere of Invulnerability?

[Kaitou Kage]

Might it be better for me to replace Force Missiles with Lesser Sphere of Invulnerability?

And force Cavvy to use his higher level spells to hit you? No.

Cavendish is going to flee the scene when this situation becomes too much for him. Don't get me wrong, he'll stick around for a few rounds. Our "policy," though is to just make things so difficult for him that he does take off, not actually attack him directly. The point isn't to kill the guy.

We know he's going to figure out where the damage is coming from. That's unavoidable. It's also not something to worry about. Deal with the blows as they come and stay moderately spread out after establishing your position so it's harder to hit everyone with one shot and we'll do fine.

EDIT: I can give Charles a hide from undead before the fight. It lasts in 10 minute increments and makes him completely undetectable to undead, even to tremorsense, blindsense, blindsight, and scent. Unintelligent undead are automatically affected, with no save (hence my question about the Smilers). Intelligent undead can get a Will save if they have reason to believe the subject is there. The spell works more or less like invisibility where if you attack, it ends. However, it would keep a lot more heat off Chaz's back since zombies and potentially Smilers just won't know he's there, period.

So don't bother attacking Cavvy unless he happens to be in an area of effect. Short of focused fire, we aren't going to be able to hurt him enough to really dent him, so we have to just make the situation bad enough that he has to flee.

[NeoTiamat]

Smilers are intelligent, but not sentient. They have the intellect of living smilodons, so they're basically great, big, predatory cats.

Also, just so it's clear, firing the cannon requires full-round actions from all four people involved. So the fact that Ianthe or Dieter or Kuzan are good at ranged isn't too relevant since they'll be spending their time picking stuff up and carrying it, not casting or shooting.

[Kaitou Kage]

Smilers are intelligent, but not sentient. They have the intellect of living smilodons, so they're basically great, big, predatory cats.

Also, just so it's clear, firing the cannon requires full-round actions from all four people involved. So the fact that Ianthe or Dieter or Kuzan are good at ranged isn't too relevant since they'll be spending their time picking stuff up and carrying it, not casting or shooting.

Uh, I thought the cannon firing required four full-round actions total, not all four people at once since Kuzan and Ianthe don't have the necessary skills to make the checks. I was planning on cannon fire every other round.

[NeoTiamat]

Ah, my bad. The above assumed you are firing the light cannon (6d10) every round or the heavy cannon (12d10) every two rounds. (Max rate, it seems)

You can of course sacrifice rate of fire for the ability to use your actions in other ways.

[Kaitou Kage]

I think every-other-round would be more effective since we can't guarantee every round even with all four people working on it. It's a what? DC 15 or something? For Kuzan at least, that's a 13 or higher on the die. No idea where Ianthe stands. It seems like those two will be more effective guaranteeing extra damage via holy smites, rifle shots, and called lightning while Otto and Dieter mostly guarantee every other round. If one of them slips up on a roll, then Ianthe and/or Kuzan can break off ranged attack to help get the cannon fired on its second round.

And now I'm off to meet with a professor. I'll return in a while to see how plans have progressed.

[NeoTiamat]

You only need one person to make the check to actually fire the cannon. The other three are doing loading and all that fun stuff.

[Kaitou Kage]

Oh, okay, that makes things a little different. Hmm. Maybe we will focus on cannon-fire before we teleport away.

[Kaitou Kage]

Working on some spell ideas for Kuzan's list. If anyone has any suggestions (besides crawling darkness, thank you, Lia), feel free to throw them in.

Level 1

Blessed Aim - +2 morale bonus to all ranged attack rolls. Needless to say this will be highly useful for Kuzan's group since we'll be firing with ranged attacks galore. Duration is in minutes.

Hide from Undead - As noted above, gives a chance to be "invisible" to undead. Thinking one for Charles, maybe another spare for my group. Save DC is Will 16, which will hopefully get past most of the Smilers even though Will is an undead's good save. Also guarantees protection against the zombies as long as you don't attack. Duration is in 10 minutes.

Resurgence - Allows a new save against an ongoing effect, such as dominate person, which vampires are known to have. Touch range so it will only help if my group gets affected, but may be worthwhile. There is also a mass version of this spell at level 3, I believe.

Level 2

Consecrate - Close range, but it lasts FOREVER (by combat standards) and creates a 20' radius zone that weakens all undead in its area, imposing a -1 unnamed penalty to all of their attacks, damage rolls, and saves.

Deific Vengeance - 1d6/level damage against a single undead target, Will save for half. 'nuff said.

Owl's Wisdom - Possibly give someone a buff to their Will save?

Level 3

Magic Circle against Evil - Can't beat this. Centered on me, it'll give everyone within 10 feet of me a +2 bonus to many things that evil baddies can do. Duration is in 10 minutes per level and it has the added benefit of blocking all domination attempts.

Mass Aid - Give you melee folks some temporary hp before we run into the thick of it.

Mass Conviction - Andre, if you would do the honors, that would be lovely. I can if you don't but you have a fondness for this spell, so I think it would do well to fall under your purview. Duration is in 10 minutes per level so it is hardly a factor.

Mass Resurgence - See resurgence, above.

Cloak of Bravery - Allies within 60 feet of me gain a bonus equal to my caster level against saves vs. fear. Duration is in 10 minutes per level.

Call Lightning - My likely domain spell for this level. Will allow me to make repeated single-target strikes for a modest amount of damage, but more than if I were shooting with a crossbow.

Level 4

Undead Bane Weapon - Otto, Ianthe, Dieter, and the cannon will benefit from this spell. I can enchant up to 50 pieces of ammunition with one casting, so a few cannonballs and several bullets for each firearms expert will get the enchants. If there are special bullets you want the enchant on (silver bullets or flaming bullets or the like), please make a note of what you want enchanted. Andre also knows this spell so I will leave it to him to give one or two of the melee the buff before we head in. Duration is in hours.

Holy Smite - I can cast this spontaneously. It deals damage in an area and while the damage doesn't average as high as a fireball, it is still area damage and also carries a chance to blind all evil creatures caught in it for 1 round.

Level 5

Earth Reaver - Seems like a neat spell. The ground explodes in fire and stone in a 20-foot radius dealing 7d6 bludgeoning and fire damage, no save. Anything in the area must also make a Reflex save or be knocked prone by the tremor.

Thoughts?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Rock on, cleric buddy!

[NeoTiamat]

I have two comments to make:

1. Regarding Undead Bane Weapon, I am going to rule that if you want to enchant both the cannon and the bullets for everyone here, that will require two seperate castings.

In other words, you can enchant 50 projectiles, but they have to be all the same type of projectile (all bullets or all cannonballs, but not bullets and cannonballs in the same casting).

On the other hand, you can enchant 50 bullets and then hand them out to six people, and even giving, say, Lia two bullets with Undead Disruption isn't too shabby.

2. Some of the casters may want to consider Dispel, simply as a back-up for Charles. It's on every caster list, and unlike the Disable Device attempts, can be done at a range.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Alright. Given NT's recent info and some doubts sowed in my mind, I'm going to put this to the vote: Haste or Dispel Magic, which one should I take? I can probably squeeze off a dispel before the battle starts, and if it works it might confuse Cav, giving us an opening for the artillery attack. It has - correctly - been pointed out to me that the ones who benefit most from Haste would probably not be in range. Lia needs to be within 30 ft. of them for the spell to keep working, as I recall, and she's going to be up north playing gunner while our tanks are out in the field.

[Kaitou Kage]

If you look at the large picture of haste vs. dispel magic in this situation, dispel magic is superior imo.

Haste will give you and maybe Andre a +30 fly speed. In the grand scheme of things, that's not really anything to write home about. A fly of 60 is already very respectable. For a long-range blaster, 90 is just not going to be terribly necessary. When you can fire a good portion of your spells from a minimum of 200 feet away, extra movement is kind of frivolous.

Then you have dispel magic which has a fair shot at winning this game for us from a distance. It's not a sure-fire thing but it's a decent chance, and that decent chance will pave the way to victory for us more surely than an extra 30 feet of movement will.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Otto, how do the Gloves of Manual Dexterity work again? Kuzan, are there spells you can think of that would give Charles a bonus to his skill checks? (Fox's Cunning would be one, but I don't know if anyone has it...)