The Eye of Anubis: OOC Thread

[Kaitou Kage]

Just a thought:

If you all are really adamant about not using the ritual given to us (which, btw, does NOT require one of us to sacrifice ourselves), it may be best to post any options you consider viable. This party has suffered from a chronic lack of communication that's bitten us in the butt multiple times.

I'm quite confident that whatever we do, it's not going to come without risks or confrontation with the bad guy(s). If you guys are looking for a sure-fire, no-fail way to win this, I'd bet an awful lot on one not existing at all. We're going to come down to a fight with someone.

We can always sacrifice Cavendish to Beherit. He's of proper lineage and he'd certainly eat up the chance to pact with the demon. We just kill him and we get, what, four birds with one stone?

[NeoTiamat]

Rock, perhaps you would like to post up the Vistani's Tarokka reading in the Cutscene thread, edited for format? (You don't need the whole thing, just the actual reading).

[NeoTiamat]

That preliminary research into rituals shows that re-sealing the gemstone is the only thing remotely doable: killing the fiend is not. If the thing gets out of the gem, we're screwed. No ritual we can devise would work without giving the fiend a chance to attack us, and even one strike would in all likelihood spell our doom. Re-sealing the gem is not really a winning idea, seeing as so many people want the wretched thing.

To clarify, any ritual you craft to destroy Beherit basically does it the old fashioned way.

1. It deals tons of HP damage to him.
2. It creates a Save-or-Die effect (just "Save or Die" or "Save or be turned into a tree" or some variation thereof).

Each case, no matter how well crafted the ritual, has a slight element of uncertainty. In the first case, you don't know Beherit's HP, and you might always roll minimum damage on the ritual. In the second case, you don't know Beherit's saves, and even if he has no chance of normal success he might roll a 20.

[Kaitou Kage]

Thoughts:

- Can someone talk to the FoS, maybe through Vedarrak? He knows what Cavendish can do and how he operates. Maybe he can help root out the doppelganger or bring allies to the fight when we have our showdown with the madman. I'm sure Vedarrak has no love for Cavendish and would be willing to put him down if he became a serious threat.

- Can someone with more influence than Kuzan (someone like Andre?) talk to Lily and try to get the Conspiracy willing to fight with us once we have to take on Cavendish?

- I'm planning to talk to Carter to see what the Guardians can offer, but SOMEONE is not letting me know he's available for RP.

- I suspect Chaz made the connection IC that Adrian Ramsey is Cavendish. Sharing that information with the group IC would be wonderful.

- On that note, is it possible to get the Dementlieuse intelligence keeping tabs on AdRam? The more we know of where he's going the better if he turns out to be Cavendish.

[yalenusveler]

I can go through the Ambassador, and can chat up Lily. How much good the first will do thanks to the delightful Dementlieuse superiority complex..i don't know. As for Lily...won't exactly hurt.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Charles has kind of a lot of stuff to do here, and more institutional support to call on than most (maybe all) of the other PCs now that they are back in Dementlieu--although it may come with strings attached.

I'll do my best to get into details tomorrow. For one thing...I may need some of you guys to give depositions to the Legal Authorities about what has happened on the Expedition.

[Kaitou Kage]

1. What did you think of the Tomb from the point of view of the rooms you played through? The PC rooms, if you will.

Most of them were fun and gave intriguing insights into the characters -- we got to see a lot that we don't get to see. It took me a while to figure some things out, though. Kuzan's room, for example, took me a while to realize that I was actually supposed to go head-to-head with my demon in a battle of wills. There are also a couple rooms I never really understood. Andre's is the foremost of these -- I just didn't get it and I still really don't. Charles's had me confused but this was later explained to me. My confusion there mostly came from a general lack of Ravenloft knowledge. Tomas's room was the most fun, I think. It was neat to see all the little snippets of people's pasts reflected in Tomas's mind.

2. What did you think of the Tomb and the Conspiracy as seen via the cutscenes?

I was actually looking forward to finishing each of our rooms because I was more interested in seeing the Conspiracy's trials than making progress in the tomb. Maybe I am just that sadistic. It was almost good to see some of them like Samael get "just desserts." I do agree that it would've been nice to see some details about Lily's trial instead of just the aftermath. Seems like she may have a whole lotta secrets and the room laid most of them bare. And yet, she seemed largely unphased by it. What I found more interesting, actually, was how Lily seems to have become the Conspiracy leader.

3. What did you think of the Combats? (Grousing about Wild Magic will get you snarky responses, fair warning).

Combat 1: Surprisingly fast and direct, actually kind of a relief. I had NO idea how I was going to manage getting to everyone in that fight. Also, like Nathan, I was a little confused at how the exploding dolls worked in general. At first it seemed like they attacked if you did something to them but one blew up at me and I never touched it so I couldn't figure it out.

Combat 2: Had an odd play with the wild magic. Almost ended up healing the scorpion to full again, which would've been Very Bad. This fight felt just right for me, though. No complaints.

Combat 3: This was thoroughly rough and had me biting my nails a few times. I was in a couple situations personally where my continued survival hinged on a single saving throw. Plus, trying to keep some 18 people alive was really, really hard sometimes. All too often, someone was just out of range of a spell and it drove me freaking batty.

On the note of combats, I'm going to double-post after this and make an Important Note™.

4. What did you think of the conclusion? Basically, everything that happened in the Treasure Room, particularly the Profound PC Choice (tm), and to a lesser extent the way various PCs and NPCs snapped under pressure.

I think we did the best we could. Again, I didn't get what was going on with Charles at all until Neo explained to me. As I've mentioned, the extent of my Ravenloft knowledge is really little more than what Kuzan knows, so I probably miss an awful lot of things that you guys get regularly. I think we did the best we could with our Profound PC Choice™ and I'm pretty sure it'll work out well in the very end. I admit I got a little frustrated at how half the party seemed to be crying apocalypse now! IC and OOC when we still had a whole book left to go.

I'm glad we didn't fight the Conspiracy in the end -- I'm pretty sure by that point they would've mopped the floor with us.

[Kaitou Kage]

Important Note™

Kuzan has Improved Counterspell as a feat. That means I don't need specific spells to counter enemy casters, just specific schools. It makes Kuzan a potent anti-caster character.

As a result, I'm going to more heavily encourage spreading the healing duties around some more. We're fighting at least one major spellcaster in the finale, so it could be extremely beneficial if I can devote time to disrupting his efforts instead of having to cast cure every round. I'll probably talk with several of you about it and I am going to try and pull some NPCs into it, too. But spreading the healing duties for this would be very useful to the party on multiple levels.

[Cronax]

I was a little confused at how the exploding dolls worked in general. At first it seemed like they attacked if you did something to them but one blew up at me and I never touched it so I couldn't figure it out.

I believe I can explain. Whenever the red dolls were attacked or someone moved next to them, the 'fuse was lit'. They then aggro on the last person to do one of these things (which was sometimes even other dolls). Then on their turn, they moved 20' toward the aggressor and exploded. I think at least once someone pissed off a red, then ran past you, leaving you to suffer the consequences.

[Isabella]

That's pretty much the gist of it. Lia's fireball didn't really hurt them, just made them mad - they had high Energy Resistance on top of their object resistances, which is why the electric dolls weren't exploding them left and right - at least, from the lightning. In truth, most of them were mowed down by the blue dancers than other PCs - which was half the reason the blue dolls kept switching up every round.

[DocBeard]

THE CLEVER PLAN(As devised by just about everybody this afternoon in an AIM chat.)
-We let Cavendish steal the eye, track him down, and kill him before he can kill someone else pledge worthy and get Beherith's power.
-We will be contacting the gendarme, Vedarrak, Meneshante, the city's wildlife, Lebrecht, and the conspiracy to help us with this.
-The Guardians have provided us with a warehouse and ship in case we need to retreat or regroup.
-Kuzan divined that the ritual is probably going to work, unless he screwed up the spell. It's good enough for me.

Who's doing what.
The Gendarme: Charles.
Meneshante: Kuzan and Lia.
Lebrecht: Kuzan.
The City's Wildlife: Otto.
Vedarrak: Andre.
Lily: Andre.
Samael: Charles and/or Tomas.
Jervis: Tomas.

If anyone needs more details let me know, I'm going for simple is bestu.

[Nathan of the FoS]

FWIW, I am deeply skeptical of the wisdom of letting the Fraternity of Shadows in on this business on any non-superficial level--i.e., letting any of them know we plan to destroy the Eye. They're less likely to use the Eye to do Something Awful than Cavenram is, but it would still be pretty darn lousy if they got a chance to step in and take the Eye for themselves.

[Kaitou Kage]

Some things we know about Cavendish

This will help us coordinate our spell efforts.

- He will probably be immune to fire and highly resistant to sonic. Please don't bring any fire- or sonic-damage spells with you to the battle. It would be 100% counter productive

- He does invisibility tricks. See invisibility, invisibility purge, true seeing, etc., will be useful here.

- He casts spells, many with nasty effects like level drain. Assuming we have time to prepare, I can protect a few key people with death ward. Assuming we don't, I stand a reasonable chance of counterspelling many things he throws at us -- if I do not have to heal people every round. Thus part of why I am pushing the "help with the healing" bit so much.

Please consider these when pursuing your preparations. Those of you that cast spells with spellbooks and use fire/sonic damage as stables in your arsenal should probably spend some of that 30,000gp acquiring alternate powers.

[Nathan of the FoS]

At present I am thinking of spending 20,000 to upgrade from Coat of Cha +4 to Coat of Cha +6, a something of Resistance +3, and 1000 gp on healing scrolls. Is there any awesome bard thing I should consider instead?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Kuzan and Lia have contacted Menetnashte and put the idea of her helping to track down Cavendish, getting us to where he goes and counteracting his works so he can't kill us before we kill him and complete Mennie's ritual.

There was no conclusive reply. She may help, but then again, she may not.

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The bats have been summoned and are on the lookout for ole yellow eyes and Cavendish, provided they can find them.