The Road to Adventure? - Whiteleaf Game, take 3

[willpell]

Having not come up with a better idea, Kast and Krue Eileen have met up with their longtime friend and compatriot Khrerrark, the albino Yeenagh ("Gnoll" to the ignorant) whose strange healing powers have saved their lives several times, and are now proceeding by carriage toward the fastness of the dragon-lord Commander Varshyl. Eileen and Khrerrark are riding in the carriage along with Varshyl and his driver, a plain-looking but pleasant young lady by the name of Kimren, who looks at the Yeenagh with some alarm when he first mounts the vehicle, but is silenced by a look from Varshyl. Behind them, at a discreet distance, follow two horse-sized spiders, one ridden by Kast and the other by the dwarf who's managed to win his rather begrudging approval, because of their shared interest in protecting the wilderness - and lack of interest in the prejudices of humans and other conventional-minded folk. Ryritan and his mount Xolenon are taciturn companions, saying and doing little to remind the group of their presence, though they are not as skilled in actively avoiding notice as Kast and Kzri. It remains to be seen whether the mating between the two wolfspiders will bear any fruit, but at least Xolenon got away alive, and Kzri has since had her fill of deer's blood and is now paying no attention whatsoever to him.

With the road through the forest being clear for some distance ahead, Kimren half-turns to speak to the passengers, as she's done several times already during the rather slow ride (in the dark confinement between these trees, and with the road being imperfectly paved, the carriage is unable to make real haste - and after all, your mission to investigate a dragon's assassination is hardly urgent, given that the dragon isn't getting any deader). The aroma of citrus and spearmint wafts gently from a scent jewel that hangs about her neck as she speaks. "So, lemme get this straight, Mr....Khrerrark, was it? You say you can heal the sick with a touch...but you're NOT a cleric. You worship no god in particular, and you don't actually 'cast spells'. Is that what you said a few minutes ago?"

[spiderwrangler]

As he rides along in silence, swaying slightly in his crosslegged position atop Kzri's back, Kast remains alert, scanning the surrounding forest for anything out of place.

Listen: 1D20+16 = [17]+16 = 33 (+ FE if applicable, +2 constructs, +4 humans)
Search: 1D20+16 = [13]+16 = 29 (+ FE if applicable, +2 constructs, +4 humans)

At least this dwarf knows the value of being a silent companion, no need to shush hum to be able to keep his own ears attuned to danger as well as monitoring the conversation between the driver and Khrerrark.

It had been a while since he'd traveled with the Yeenagh, and it was good to see his white snout again. Kast was surprised to find that he missed the rest of their companions, but it had been decided that they should split up to better achieve the ends Varshyl wanted. After Khrerrark joined them, it was decided that Kast, Eileen and Khrer should accompany Varshyl while Cassien took the ghost, savage elf and unicorn of mayhem to investigate other leads. Hopefully in doing so, they would throw of the half-orc tail that had been spotted outside the inn. The dwarf and his spider were a bit of a surprise late addition, but Ryritan explained that Xolenon was currently unwilling to leave Kzri... his continued presence and assistance in hunting would help ensure she remained well fed and protected, as well as deter other potential suitors.


((The above paragraph is my attempt at spinning the story to account for the departure of half the party... I'm assuming that Varshyl is taking us back to his stronghold to be able to investigate the scene of the attack and death of the dragon? The others could have left to look into who might have the resources and technological acumen to build such an airship. I think Amara was a 'might rejoin', if she does so in the future she could be the sole survivor from that half of the party, or was separated from them, etc. Pair bonding as I've described above doesn't really happen in RL spiders, but males of many species do take steps to 'mate guard', through prolonged copulation all the way to snapping off his organ inside the female to prevent other males from mating... ))

[willpell]

(It works well enough as an explanation. Although Amara did suggest she was more likely to make a new character than to bring back Cassien. No problem on the spider stuff; any divergences from IRL biology can easily put down to the size difference and/or the influence of a humanoid "notfood".)

[Quarg]

Eileen opens a single eye and uses it to glower at Kimren. Then closes it again and shifts her body more into the corner of the carriage seat. Her short years in actual warfare had taught her well the value of getting shut eye when one could. Although she would have preferred to cut the young woman's prattling off and tell her to focus on the road, Kimren was was Commander Varshyl's driver. Therefore, it was up to him to train her not to prattle about like some silly school girl. Eileen of course remained silent on the fact that the carriage seemed to be finding every pothole in the road just trying to find a position so her head was not banging every time they did so.

(I'm assuming that Khrerrark's answer earlier on the matter to her long passed the smell test with the world wide dragon knowledge available to her...)

[willpell]

Strangely, your Draconic Knowledge has nothing to say about Khrerrark's abilities.

[Quarg]

Strangely, your Draconic Knowledge has nothing to say about Khrerrark's abilities.

OOC: Well she could just slice the driver's throat and see what he did about keeping her alive...but really it be too messy to be worthwhile...though it would shut her up...

[willpell]

Good thing you don't have any class features dependent on remaining Lawful aligned, if thoughts like that are in the habit of flitting through your mind... (Thoughts alone probably won't change your alignment, but ones like this certainly don't help.)

[Nerre]

"So, lemme get this straight, Mr....Khrerrark, was it? You say you can heal the sick with a touch...but you're NOT a cleric. You worship no god in particular, and you don't actually 'cast spells'. Is that what you said a few minutes ago?"

''I rather believe in stength of own soul than thinking it belongs to somebody else. Instead of trading it for power - as a god would own it in the afterlife - I self use the powers of my soul. Gods do not grant favours and wishes for a soul out of goodwill...well some do, but enough also have their own interrest in mind. Believe me, with a strong soul and the knowledge how to use its powers, you can do a lot of wonders on your own. And it is good energy, not like draining life force like some warlocks or vampires do.''

[willpell]

"Well that's not what the gods do, at least not according to any spiritual authority I've ever talked to. (Granted, you'd expect a priest wouldn't admit to such things, but I've also studied under a few disenfranchised clerics, who had no incentive to lie about their ex-church's closet skeletons anymore.) The gods truly want only the best for us - even the Evil gods fit that claim, according to their twisted definition of 'best' - because without our worship, they would be as nothing. What you're describing sounds kind of more like a Paladin though...empowered by the force of Good itself, without need of any intermediary. But even paladins have to follow the laws of magic, nebulous and ill-understood as they are. They can only summon a few spells a day, and they have to chant and gesture for almost all of them."

[spiderwrangler]

Kast gets bored with listening in on their conversation about what is and isn't derived from gods. With a sigh, he urges Kzri forward while turning to address the dwarf, "Scouting ahead." He moves off the trail before overtaking the main group to avoid the beasts pulling the wagon from being spooked by Kzri. He keeps alert, looking for any one or anything out of place in their surrounding environment. goes to sleep, swaying slightly with Kzri's gait as she ambles along underneath him. Hopefully someone ambushes them soon.

Ride Check
_: 1D20+8 = [12]+8 = 20

[Quarg]

Elieen decides not to make a comment about some minds being like a leaky bucket when knowledge is like water...but now just seems to wonder what Cassien is up to at the moment.

[willpell]

► Show Spoiler

So, once again we are off the rails, and this time I did the math. There is at least a 33 in 50 chance that my encounter is spoiled (possibly more depending on who wins ties; the PHB doesn't appear to clarify). Those are incredibly good odds that you can easily thwart my entire scenario, leaving me with nothing until I can come up with a whole other idea. So are you going to make me roll, or can I just fiat that they got a vastly better roll than you, and move on with the plot as intended?

[spiderwrangler]

► Show Spoiler

Well that didn't take much. If the plot rails are that narrow, just fudge the rolls. I'd rather you use weighted dice in the name of having a game and story than be too afraid to ever do anything for fear of crossing into unknown territories and grinding story progression to a halt. Hell, just tell me Kzri catches the trail of food and wants to go hunting, making Kast miss whatever it is he shouldn't see/hear.

EDIT: This is why I was interested in knowing where we went off the rails before... nothing was obvious to me, (and wouldn't be obvious here if you hadn't said something) and I wanted to avoid it happening again... I've altered my above post.

[willpell]

► Show Spoiler

I've altered my above post.

Well you didn't have to go quite that far; it's probably kind of OOC for him to take a nap while on the move in civilized lands, which he probably considers less safe than the deep wilderness (not that he necessarily considers a locked-from-the-inside inn room any safer, but still he has to sleep sometime...oh wait, no he doesn't, elf...). If this is a passive-aggressive protest, I probably deserve worse, but anyway, I'll leave it up to you, and get things moving.

It's not unreasonable for you to miss this Spot check; the other's Hide is only 4 points lower than your Spot, thanks to my generosity in giving them one class level which is as stupidly optimized as the rest of them. Granted, Kzri probably ought to get a Spot on him too, but...aw heck with it, let's do this.

The road curves around a massive oak whose bulging root bole measures a good fifteen feet across; probably some Imperial surveyor got chewed out something fierce for having put a quarter-turn to the left at a spot JUST on the far right side of the huge old tree, and doubtless some druid or another prohibited its felling, so instead they had to loop the road around in a broad blind curve. Kast sees it coming and realizes that it would make a prime spot for an ambush, but relaxes for a moment after Kzri ambles easily around the turn, and neither of them sees anything amiss in the road ahead. The spider-rider is only a couple yards ahead of the carriage when it too takes the turn - far enough that when a slightly smaller tree (an elm, for the record) topples and crashes across the road, Kast and his mount are well clear. The carriage is not so lucky, and Kimren hauls frantically on the reins in an attempt to stop the panicked horses before the entire vehicle crashes headlong into the sudden obstruction. She barely manages to turn aside and stop before there's a wreck, but in the same instant, arrows shriek out from somewhere above, striking her and Varshyl. Both slump unconscious in their seats, the arrows obviously drugged.

Inish rolls all around please, and a Knowledge: Local check for anyone who has ranks in that.

[spiderwrangler]

► Show Spoiler

Well you didn't have to go quite that far; it's probably kind of OOC for him to take a nap while on the move ... If this is a passive-aggressive protest, I probably deserve worse, but anyway, I'll leave it up to you, and get things moving.

It was passive aggressive. I'm fine with him missing his Spot check for Plot ReasonsÔäó (whether it's him spacing out, etc) if that's what needs to happen, I was just a bit irked that while playing a ranger with very good senses, it seemed I was being told I was ruining the game by trying to use them. If you want to pull one over on him, you could always hide the ambush under a trap door... his Search check is shit.

Kast, Initiative Roll: 1D20+6 = [10]+6 = 16

Know: Local = N/A

((OOC: I see that Invisible Castle is back up, but in the event it goes down again for an extended period of time, I had switched over to CoyoteCode while it was down, so that is an alternate roll site to be able to use and post to the game thread from.

[willpell]

► Show Spoiler

It was passive aggressive.

Oh good. That felt to me like a terrible thing to accuse someone of while being less than entirely certain. (To be explicit, that is NOT me being sarcastic or anything; I really mean I'm glad that my attempt at interpreting the meaning of your text was successful, as I'm often bad at it, and paranoid about false positives.)

I'm fine with him missing his Spot check for Plot ReasonsÔäó (whether it's him spacing out, etc) if that's what needs to happen, I was just a bit irked that while playing a ranger with very good senses, it seemed I was being told I was ruining the game by trying to use them.

What it amounts to is that I'm really not used to dealing with watchful characters (to me a Ranger is someone who wields two weapons or a bow, full stop; I'm used to them Hiding/MovingSilently, but not to them or anyone else Spotting/Listening), and to the rules on combat being vasly more sophisticated than the rules on whether you perceive it or not. My attitude is pretty much "if you don't fall into the trap, I have no plot"; I don't really know how to write plots that involve the players having the option to avoid the trap (or that don't hinge on their being a trap in the first place). It's probably something I ought to figure out - maybe even important enough to devote a Dragon-type article to.

If you want to pull one over on him, you could always hide the ambush under a trap door... his Search check is shit.

My understanding of the two skills is that Spot always governs passive detection, and Search only applies if you actively look for things which are not obvious - I don't know which one a trap buried in the road should use, it still feels like a Spot thing to me, but I haven't read the text of the two skills (I'm just going based on Search being INT-based, and my generally associating INT with careful forethought and WIS with reactive awareness). But this encounter heavily features wilderness-type trapping, which may be a bit mechanical for your guy, even if not completely so - a tree being pushed over on his head is probably not too far from what he's used to, but things like snares and tripwires, especially more sophisticated such arrangements, may well be outside his experience. Still, I won't fiat you into those kinds of things, as they're essentially forms of attack, and denying you a check to avoid them would be no better than denying you Armor Class against a sword swing. Which I might do if the entire encounter revolved around you having to go to the healer because somebody stabbed you, but not otherwise.

[willpell]

Inish rolls all around please, and a Knowledge: Local check for anyone who has ranks in that.

Nerre? Quarg? Anyone?

[spiderwrangler]

► Show Spoiler

Nerre has only just returned from his honeymoon, so will likely be getting back into the swing of things soon.

[Quarg]

Had to spend time to figure out if Adepts got an initiative bonus...

Initiative 14
Local Knowledge = N/A

Eileen realizes something is wrong as the wagon suddenly does a slide around on the road. Being completely out of it she is only able to scramble out onto the drawbar and between the horses before considering her next move of either breathing on someone or pulling out her bow.

[Nerre]

Ini 13 (I rolled 1d20 and subtracted 1 since my Dex is so low, is that right? In 2nd edition ADND Ini was 1d10 + weapon mod, so I am not sure if I got this right here. Is it higher = better here? If not, then I would have a 11 instead of the 13 (cause of the -1 from DEX)):
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4761918/

My Knowledge is +2, but I cannot use it since those +2 come from a stat and I am not trained in it.

Khrerak raises his shield to block arrows,to make it harder to hit if somebody decides to aim at him, and runs for a decent cover so he could risk taking a look on what was attacking them. But the attack being most probably being an ambush, he has not high hopes to spot anybody.

[willpell]

(Correct Nerre, Initiative is just your DEX modifier, unless something changes it. There's a soulmeld Incarnates can get a bonus from, and of course the Improved Initiative feat, and a few other things, none of which you have. And higher is always better in this edition, unless it's your opponent's roll of course.)

Init order for the round

Loren: 22
Jaguar: 23 (really, dice?)
Ryritan: 16
Xolenon: 4 (yes, really, the dice say)
Kzri: 16 - let me know, SW, if Kzri's inish mod is anything other than the standard +3 for a hunting spider of Large size.
Brobdag: 14

I'm going to assume Loren had a Ready action to fire the sleep-arrows immediately after the tree dropped, and Jaguar is just being stealthy at the moment, so both of them have had their action for the round. (You can't see any of the enemies until you at least roll a Spot check to do so, but I lack the ambition to write their inish rolls down somewhere out of your sight, so you get to know that there are three of them, just not where they are, what they look like or what they are doing.) The order thereafter proceeds as follows:

16-6: Kast
16-3: Kzri
16-2: Ryritan
14-5: Brobdag
14-0: Eileen
13-N: Khrerrark
04-3: Xolenon
23-3: Jaguar
22-2: Loren

Oh, and unless Kast botches his roll, I'm pretty sure he'll be able to make the Spot, so here's what he sees.

► Show Spoiler

The arrows came from up in the tree, where you can see a brown-cloaked humanoid figure lurking, bow drawn. No sign of any accomplices in view, though you have a nagging suspicion that that tree wasn't just rigged to fall on the ambusher's signal.

[spiderwrangler]

► Show Spoiler

Yes, Kzri has +3 DEX towards her INIT, and that's it.

Kast comes about as close to blowing his spot check as he can...

Kast, Spot: 1D20+16 = [3]+16 = 19 (+4 if human)

The lowest he could get is a 17, so that's a pretty poor roll for him. Let me know if 19 is enough to spot the archer, and if so, how far away is he/she? (I'm assuming by up in the tree you mean the huge ancient oak.)

[Nerre]

Khrerak got a 14 from his spot check (1d20+7 = 7+7 = 14)
http://www.coyotecode.net/roll/lookup.php?rollid=81208

You wrote the tree was not just rigged to fall on us. Can I roll for a spellcraft check to see if I maybe have an idea/knowledge of how it was done?

[willpell]

Nerre OOC:

► Show Spoiler

Spellcraft, no. A Knowledge skill might be applicable, but you probably don't have the right one. Did I give you ranks in either Nature or Local? It'd be a pretty high DC to make an intuitive leap of this size.

[spiderwrangler]

► Show Spoiler

Nerre OOC:
Spellcraft, no. A Knowledge skill might be applicable, but you probably don't have the right one. Did I give you ranks in either Nature or Local? It'd be a pretty high DC to make an intuitive leap of this size.

A Nature check, you say?

Kast, Nature: 1D20+8 = [11]+8 = 19