The Eye of Anubis: OOC Thread

[lostboy]

Seeing as we're fighting vampires, Khalil has a spare dose of Silversheen available if anyone asks nicely (that goes for npc's too).

Also if any of the casters who cant wear armour want an extra bit of AC, theres also some Ironthorn extract available. I dont think you can stack it with armour youre already wearing (is that right NT?) althogh we could give Loup a wicked spiked hair-do....

[NeoTiamat]

There are, at present, no other groups or tactical aims on the table. Is this correct? Do we want any more groups and/or aims? Is it important to get more information on cleansing the Ruse or what Cavendish is doing here before we start?

[Primary Goal] Cleanse the Pit = In order to fulfill the contract made with Thorianefaless, the Faerie Lord, you must reach the Pit of Nightmares/Birthing Pit/Tainted Pit/Source of Colorless Aetheric Entities and carry out whatever action necessary to stop the spreading Taint. Couple of ways you can do this:

• -3 Disable Device checks at DC 25
  OR
  -3 Dispel Magic checks at DC 20
  OR
  -Any combination of the above. 2 Dispels at 20 and a Disable Device at 25, for example.

[Primary Goal] Escape to the Monastery = At the moment, it seems that the Monastery remains a safe haven. After the Pit is ‘cleansed’, you have to somehow reach the Monastery gates and get inside, before every undead in a fifteen mile radius converges upon you. Chances are fair-to-good that Cavendish will just write the Ruse off as a bad job in that case.

[Alternative Primary Goal] Chase off Cavendish = John Lancaster Cavendish is a lethally powerful necromancer. He is, however, not the stuff of martyrs. If presented with an overwhelming threat, and/or sufficiently wounded, then he will most likely retreat to fight another day and try and figure out why his Detection spells aren’t working the way they should. Obviously, if Cavendish departs and orders a retreat of his undead, everything else becomes very easy.

[Secondary Goal] Save the Monks = There are over a dozen monks in the impromptu prison, kept as living snacks for his vampire servitors. If not rescued, it is quite likely that they will soon end up on the wrong side of a rampaging vampire or a pack of ghouls.

[Tertiary Goal] Destroy the Smilers = Revived Fossil Smilodons, for Cavendish, are not a renewable resource. Every one of the massive skeletal cats you can destroy now, when you hold so many cards, is one that you will not have to face later.

[Tertiary Goal] Sever Cavendish’s Control over the Vampires = Vampires are dangerous undead, but also very strong-willed ones. Cavendish controls this group through raw magic and will, but if confronted with sufficient stresses, they may get out of control. For a vampire to slip Cavendish’s control requires three factors.

• 1. Cavendish must be rattled. This will likely take care of itself once things start blowing up.
  2. The vampires must be at least 20% wounded.
  3. There must be at least 10 hp worth of fresh, gooey blood within 30 ft.

If the vampire is more heavily wounded or there is more blood, then the likelihood of loss of control increases.

[NeoTiamat]

Seeing as we're fighting vampires, Khalil has a spare dose of Silversheen available if anyone asks nicely (that goes for npc's too).

Also if any of the casters who cant wear armour want an extra bit of AC, theres also some Ironthorn extract available. I dont think you can stack it with armour youre already wearing (is that right NT?) althogh we could give Loup a wicked spiked hair-do....

It basically turns your clothing into armor granting a +1 Armor bonus, which doesn't stack with anything else that gives Armor bonus (off the top of my head, regular armor, Bracers of Armor, or Mage Armor/Greater Mage Armor).

Jervis would like to take you up on that Silversheen dosage, since he's going to be a primary melee.

===============================================

Another question: Where do you put Professor Devereux?

[NeoTiamat]

Oh and the more buffs we can give the tanks the better (haste, dark knowledge etc) because with smilers and vampires around we dont want to get bogged down with zombies that we take three rounds to kill, we need the tanks to concentrate on the bigger stuff and take them out of the equation, and quickly.

I will allow you guys to buff all as a group before the fight starts, but I'll limit it to buffs of minute/level duration or longer. Round/Level buffs will simply run out by the time you get into position.

If someone in your group casts round/level buffs right before the fight, that is allowed.

Lia, Kuzan, and Andre might want to chime in with their respective longer-duration buffs.

[Nathan of the FoS]

OK...Charles has a +15 for Disable Device, which means once the balloon goes up he should probably become invisible, head for the Eye, and start disabling things.

Alternatively, he could first help with hostages and then do this. The first (going directly to the Pit) seems slightly preferable to me, since it will (we may hope) get a primary goal off the table ASAP. Is anyone else focusing on this?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

It might be good for Charles to do the 'lone gunman'-thing again and go for the pit, while the rest of us focus on the bombardment and the rescue of the surviving monks. If nothing else, it'll shock Cav rigid if his precious pit suddenly fizzles and dies, or so I hope. Charles might have the best shot at doing this, while the rest of us bring destructive chaos and freedom.

Sidenote: should Lia, at some point in time, lay down an Evard's Black Tentacles between the monks and the rest of the battlefield? It could prevent or at least delay things without flight capacity from attacking the hostages too quickly.

[Kaitou Kage]

The gunpowder is there now. We loaded that up during our "prep day."

The plan is to start a crossfire from the get go. That puts Cavendish under pressure and makes it so he can't just flame strike the cannon ship and blow up the lot of us in there with the powder kegs. When each position becomes untenable, those in those positions move to the next place and begin attacking again from range.

The plan is not to draw all attention to the cannon ship and then blow it up.

Simply put, we need the chaos right away, no "drawing their fire, then unloading." Even if only half the army goes to the cannon ship, that's still half the army that gets blown up.

Charles heading for the Eye sounds like a plan. Khalil, Tomas and Jervis, I'm not sure what you guys actually want to do on the floor, but do what you want. If my group doesn't have Ianthe, then we have an extra person (My group has to be maximum 4 people because Kuzan can only take three others when he teleports).

My group will also get the benefit of Undead Bane Weapon cast on its ammo, so Dieter, Otto, and probably Ianthe if she goes with us will get extra oomph when shooting bullets or cannonballs at them undeads.

The rest of my buffs I haven't decided on yet.

If we don't take Ianthe, we'll take Devereux. He should go into one of the ranged groups anyway, I think.

As an aside, I was giving you guff about my post with all the big angry letters and whatnot -- totally not serious-angry. I've just been trying to lay down a plan and tactical discussion since we knew we needed one and I haven't been getting much input until just now. Not much has changed, despite the line referenced (which is from when I first made the post and hasn't been edited out since we found out what we found out). That was more to try and get people to pitch in.

[NeoTiamat]

[Repeated here for convenience. Nothing new here, just puts most of the information together. Also edited to remove any extraneous information.]

Barrels of Gunpowder: This is a stout keg that weighs 80 pounds, and you have 64 of them. If lit, you can deal 20d10 damage in a 160 foot radius. Half the damage is fire, half is physical, and there is a DC 20 Reflex Save for half damage.

An individual barrel will ignite if the gunpowder is exposed to 1 point of fire damage. If its with other barrels this promptly leads to a chain reaction and the whole kit and kaboodle blows up.

You can set a fuse, for however many rounds you want to wait. Lighting a fuse is a free action. Stomping it out is a full-round action unless you happen to have access to a lot of water.

===============================================

Explosive Cocktails: Take a bottle of rum from Souragne, insert some sugar, tar, and tie a bit of sailcloth around it, and you have this nifty splash weapon. An Explosive Cocktail deals 2d10 fire damage to what it hits, and a further 2d10 fire damage on every subsequent round. A foe can take a Full Round Action to try and scrape off the sticky, burning mess, necessitating (only then) a DC 15 Reflex save.

===============================================

A light cannon has a range increment of 150 feet and deals 6d10 damage per hit. It requires 4 Full-Round Actions to load, aim, and fire, so the more people there are to help, the faster the rate of fire.

A heavy cannon has a range increment of 200 feet and deals 12d10 damage per hit. It requires 8 Full-Round Actions to load, aim, and fire, so the more people there are to help, the faster the rate of fire.

Firing a cannon requires DC 15 Profession (Siege Engineer) or Craft (Gunsmithing) check, and aiming it requires you to target a square, (AC 10, plus any cover or visual effects blocking). You then aim the cannon using only Attack Bonus + Intelligence - 4 (for it being so big).

The cannon deals damage in an area effect. Grapeshot hits every adjacent square, a cannon ball in a 6-square line behind the target, and a canister shot in a 15-foot cone behind the target. All creatures in the secondary squares get a DC 20 Reflex save for half.

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Pink areas on the map are the possible angles of attack for the Devourer. Green areas are where you guys can set up shop.

[Kaitou Kage]

Oh, hey, you beat me to it.

Anyway, Kuzan will take 5 cocktails and stuff them in his magic bag for safekeeping.

[The Whistler]

Taking 4 cocktails myself.

Also, since Otto likely won't get down to the Pit during this battle, could Charles use his pair of Gloves of Manual Dexterity? Should shore up that device-disabling even further...

[Nathan of the FoS]

Taking 4 cocktails myself.

Also, since Otto likely won't get down to the Pit during this battle, could Charles use his pair of Gloves of Manual Dexterity? Should shore up that device-disabling even further...

YES PLEASE!

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

[lostboy]

OK therefore as I understand it now Khalil, Tomas, Ishaq and Jervis are running diversion for Charles and freeing the hostages?

After they are free we kill anything that groans or shambles?

Anyone want to add anything to that for us tank guys?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

It might be best to run a 'retreating battle', to a safe place, so as not to unduly endanger the hostages. Cavendish might get desperate and try to snatch them back. Also, if the people inside the monastery see you running up the stairs with their liberated friends, they might feel more disposed towards opening the doors.

[NeoTiamat]

It might be best to run a 'retreating battle', to a safe place, so as not to unduly endanger the hostages. Cavendish might get desperate and try to snatch them back. Also, if the people inside the monastery see you running up the stairs with their liberated friends, they might feel more disposed towards opening the doors.

I am going to insist that you stay on the map. You can retreat towards the bottom, you can retreat to the monastery, etc, but unless you can provide me an expanded map, I'm going to ask you to stay in the bounds of the map.

[Kaitou Kage]

Mostly, let the undead allies soak up the damage as much as possible. Kuzan, like Otto, isn't liable to see the floor and will be providing a lot of ranged support. I'll try to manifest this as "zones" of battlefield control. By this I mean I'll attempt to use spells like Holy Storm and Consecrate to provide areas that are moderately better for you living than for the dead.

I will certainly put a Consecrate around the cannon ship, toward the Eye so that all undead charging my ship will suffer a -1 saves penalty when they explode. And actually, may I say I did this while loading barrels? The duration is 2 hours per level, so that is not a factor.

I think our primary targets for killing should be the Smilers. Again, once they're gone, they're gone. Cavendish can always bring back vampires and while I know we'd all LOVE to take him out once and for all, I do not believe that is an option in this sort of battle. We'd need to concentrate our fire. However, we can be pretty assured that when things go sour for him, he'll leave. Smilers probably won't be able to go with him so we can clean them up.

IMPORTANT!!!

The cocktails do FIRE damage. On what I'm presuming is a TOUCH attack. This makes them EXTREMELY effective against Smilers, which have high normal AC and Damage Reduction. They also, on average, have a higher dice rating than most, if not all Medium-sized weapons. Furthermore, they do continuous damage and I'm not sure a Smiler is smart enough to figure out how to put out the fire. Even if he is, that's a full round action he has to take, which means that's one round he's not hitting YOU. I highly recommend the melee take a bunch of cocktails to help deal with Smilers.

Undead Bane Ammo - I'm planning to take one Undead Bane Weapon for use on some cannonballs and some bullets for Dieter, Otto, and Ianthe. Can this be done to cocktails as "ammo?" If so, perhaps I can add a few bane-enhanced cocktails to the melee's repertoire. This spell lasts in hours so the timing is pretty irrelevant.

To recap:

Crossfire on the undead between Lia's group (probably in the northwest) and Kuzan's group.

As the undead get closer to the cannon ship, the Devourer or whatever it is and the melee charge in, probably from the west. The object here is to split the enemy forces between the cannon ship and Lia's group. It's also to get smilers killed, so make good use of cocktails. They're handy against that kind of monster

When the time is right, someone in Kuzan's group lights the fuse and Kuzan teleports his party to the north side of the map, in the corner opposite Lia's group. Fireworks.

Meanwhile, the Devourer's forces and the living melee provide distractions or attempt to rescue hostages while Charles uses his leet invisible rockin' powers to disable the giant honkin' green nasty thing in the middle of the Eye.

Sound good? Anything else to add? Questions? Anything I missed or got wrong?

EDIT - Another question about Smilers. I know zombies are unintelligent and vampires are intelligent. Are smilers also unintelligent?