Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 14: Brix It Up.

Shhhh! I have to type quietly tonight. Don’t want any trick-or-treaters to notice I’m home, as I have no candy to give out. Not a big Halloween guy – I did costumes for a few years when the kids were the right age for it, but these days, I figure part of living in the adult world is the freedom to go to the grocery store and buy a bag of mini-Snickers when you like. They’re an anytime food!

BUT I DIGRESS!

This week, there’s a bit of a logical disconnect at work here. Going by the numbers, this is something like the fourth or fifth episode where the main storyline has been tucked away in a drawer while we work on side-quests. And with not a lot of fighting, either – yeah, there was the ghost from Sir Kent’s storyline, but that’s about it. It’s like Adventuring Dim Sum, and we’re loading up on appetizers! On some level, I ought to find that burdensome and annoying – that’s basically a month we’re talking about, and I’m generally someone who wants to keep things moving and I find combat to be the most interesting part of the game.

And yet, I haven’t really minded that much. Well, that’s not entirely true. As the official stenographer of Roll For Combat, it’s been a little tough to WRITE about side-quests for four straight weeks. But playing it and listening it has actually been kinda fun. Relaxing even.

I feel like a lot of that can be chalked up to the chemistry of different groups and playstyles. If this was the Dead Suns group, I feel like we’d have moved on more quickly or perhaps even blown off the side quests entirely. (I can imagine an exasperated John saying “nah, that’s stupid, we’re not doing this”.) Those guys tend to be fairly goal-oriented and tend to want to keep things moving. This group… I don’t know if it’s the personalities, the increased focus on roleplaying, or the fact that Second Edition is a new game system and we want to slow down and process things a little more, but there’s more of a “stop and smell the roses” vibe to the whole thing. Of course, some of it may also be simple impatience at work: the difference between a campaign that’s been going for two years versus one that’s been going for two months.

So, let’s take stock of where we are – basically I’d call it one-and-a-half complete. Prue seems like she’s DONE-done. The ghost was killed and put to rest, she got a magic sword, Sir Kent seems to be on the path to recovery – it’s hard to see anything left to do with that storyline. Celes is the “half”. Her story is largely wrapped up as well, but there’s still that ceremony that involves talking to the demon – is that the start of a whole other chapter or just epilogue (light roleplay, maybe unlocking the medallion)? Gut says the latter is more likely, just because to keep it going too much longer would threaten to overshadow the main mission.

Then there’s Brixley and Cade. We’ve established what we’re supposed to be doing – he’s teaching the next generation of remorseless teenage assassins, and I’m founding an alehouse masquerading as a church – but there doesn’t seem to be a firm resolution in either story yet, and OK… no PHAT LEWTZ. (I guess Metamon is going to do some crafting for us, but if “enchantments for everyone else’s gear” is the extent of MY reward, you’re gonna hear me get a little salty and break out the big-boy swears.)

What does resolution look like for those two quests? For Cade, he got the swords to his pupil (Peri?) and taught her some moves, so I assume there would be some sort of final test of her skills. Either she has reason to fight alongside us, or maybe there’s some sort of non-lethal duel against Cade as her teacher. For Brixley, I assume I have to get the church up and running to the point where they can hold a service there, and then maybe… I get a boon from Cayden Cailean or something.

Or, given the ribbing Brixley is taking about his fashion sense, maybe I should be hoping for a wardrobe of muted tones. Rhinestones? Disco Brixley? Come on… it’s not THAT bad. I figured he was fey-adjacent and a former noble, so he should dress the part. If I’d known it would become A Thing, perhaps I should’ve put him in a burlap sack and been done with it.

Meanwhile, in the main quest, whenever we do get that going again, it sounds like the ranger is going to feed us a lead on the source of the corruption where I assume we find the mysterious V. (No, not Hugo Weaving.) And in the process, we get to learn cool ranger tricks. Well, Cade sounds like he’s going to – not sure about the rest of us.

And that’s where we’ll pick it up next week. Sorry, this week’s column is a little short, but it’s been a bit of a week. Next week, we’ll hopefully get back to the main story and things will pick up a little. Until then, feel free to drop by Discord and join the ongoing merriment and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 13: The Spirit’s Spirits.

For me personally, this week was a bit of a change of pace. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it the Brixley Show, but this week’s action was more in my wheelhouse after a few weeks of mostly riding the bench. Brixley finally gets his side quest, and the main plot starts to come back into focus. If it sounds like I’m complaining, it’s not meant to be that – we each got a side quest, and it just happened that Brixley’s ended up being the last to come together. I figure if we had prioritized the enchantment runes and gone to visit Metamon earlier in the proceedings, I’d have been done and someone else would be batting last; it’s just a byproduct of the order we chose to tackle tasks in.

Specifically, Brixley has an opportunity to convert some portion of the town to followers of Cayden Cailean if he plays his cards right. It’s totally a seller’s market – the town’s dreary and run-down so it could use some divine inspiration, but religion’s been getting the stink-eye since the “curse” started, so there are no other churches in town at the moment. There’s even an abandoned church ready to be claimed and re-purposed for the task. And, OK… getting ahead of myself and/or metagaming, could there be a boon in the works as a reward for doing this? It seems like starting a new branch and converting an entire town might curry some favor with the Big Drunk In The Sky. At the very least, maybe Metamon would be willing to give us a home-team discount on moving those runes around. One can only hope.

We also get to move a little further in the main storyline as we meet a ranger, Noala, who had already been investigating the rise of the Crazy Critters from her end and wants to compare notes with us. Not gonna lie – when she first rolled up with a cart full of dead wolves, I thought she wanted to fight us for killing the poor fluffy animals. It sounds like she has a lead on where the corruption is coming from, and going a step further, she also offers to teach us ranger-ly ways if we want to learn them. Cade seems the most immediately intrigued by her offer, but we’re all considering it to some degree.

First, let’s talk about the mechanic in general. I really like the potential of this, and I am curious to see how it plays out in the wild. It’s always been a little weird that skills advancement is so structured that the ONLY place you could pick up new knowledge is from your level-ups. The idea that knowledge exists out in the world and can be shared and gleaned from actual story interactions is a welcome addition to the game and opens up exciting possibilities. Also, how many times has it happened that you meet some cool NPC that can do all sorts of amazing stuff, and you think to yourself “boy I wish I could learn to do that!”. Well… now – in certain circumstances – you can.

Whether Brixley is going to bother with ranger training… still deciding about that one. On one hand, gnomes have a fey connection to them, so as a roleplaying choice, it wouldn’t be a total immersion breaker to learn some woodland skills. Also, while Brixley isn’t as DEX-based as Cade, he’s not really a hulking tank either. And of course, Lore skills come under the heading of “more is better” – might as well learn everything you can. Never know when it might come in useful.

If there’s a downside, it’s that we might not actually be able to use the skills we learn. My understanding is that the skills we learn might be “ranger-flavored” general skills that anyone can take, or they might be actual class-specific skills. If it’s the latter, it’s fairly unlikely I’m going to make Brixley a paladin-ranger just to get one skill, even a really good one. So I suppose it will come down to what else is going on and how much time the training takes and what the trade-off would be (if any). If it’s truly free time, why not? If it comes down to an either-or of doing the ranger training or working on “my” church, I’ll probably just skip it.

Despite being a little more Brixley-focused episode this week, it was actually a pretty short episode overall and I’m a little under the weather, so I’m gonna call it there. They can’t all be three-volume treatises. We’ll be back next week to keep banging away on sidequests and hopefully move closer to finding a source of the corruption that’s killing the town. While waiting, feel free to drop by Discord or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 12: The Cade & Prue Variety Hour!

We start this week with a dispatch from our Department of Random Weird Stuff. I was running a little behind this week and had a fairly small window in which to listen to the show, so I experimented with listening to the show at 1.5x speed for the first time.

Two observations. First, Manic/Flustered Celes gets even more manic and/or flustered when sped up. I highly recommend it. We really need to find a way to just record Vanessa that way all the time. (Then again… I am also easily amused, so your mileage may vary.) Second, Sped-Up Steve sounds even more gleeful and bloodthirsty when trying to kill us. It’s almost like he’s in a barbarian rage, albeit a weirdly cheerful one. Oddly, Cade, Prue, and myself don’t really sound that much different. Maybe we’re actually slow-talkers in real life and speeding up the playback just gets us to socially-acceptable speeds.

So it’s our second week of Sidequest Spectacular, and basically we’re at the point where everyone now has one but Brixley. Now that Cade gets his quest to teach the teenager to fight, it also retroactively brings a clearer focus to the Sir Kent/undead subplot. When we first met Sir Kent, I thought maybe he was part of the main plot – that the “undead” he saw was going to turn out to be Hallod’s hideout, and he was a breadcrumb for that. Now, it’s clearer to see “oh, hey that’s Prue’s sidequest, and it looks like everyone is getting one”. So selfishly, I’m spending a good chunk of this episode in low-key “what about MEEEEEEE?” mode, but I figure we’ll get there. I give it another episode or two – then I go on strike.

I could pout and point out that Brixley is equally capable of teaching the girl to fight – also short, also uses a finesse weapon – but my combat strategy depends on hiding behind much better armor and a shield (which she doesn’t have), so maybe it’s for the best that she learns from the squishy guy who can dodge a blow. Also, I would’ve been a train wreck at trying to sneak the swords past her mom. HERE ARE YOUR SWORDS, MA’AM (clank-clank-clank).

I enjoyed listening to the middle stanza where we cool back at the inn because it represents a general loosening up of the gaming group. I think the first few episodes, we had to figure out our dynamic and get to know each other a bit. Speaking only for myself, I had never played with Vanessa before, I had done ONE session with Loren (one of our Starfinder Society one-shots), and a few more sessions (plus gaming live at PaizoCon) with Rob. So while there was no directive to act a certain way, I think there’s a natural tendency to dial back a little when joining a new group until you figure out other people’s playstyles. To the extent that making a bunch of Dad Jokes about ghost-themed bar drinks is the official “over the hump” signpost… cool.

And in saying that, I don’t want to abandon quality roleplay and turn this adventure into my tight five at H.P. McChuckles. (NOW HERE’S THE THING ABOUT ORCS… AM I RIGHT, PEOPLE?) I genuinely LIKE that this is something different than the Dead Suns group and we do things a different way. I fully admit I swim in the shallower end of the role-play pool, but I do like giving it a shot. But that ability to get silly for a few minutes is still something I like about the hobby in general, so it was nice to finally hit that level of goofiness in a way we hadn’t before – or at least not for an extended period.

The tail end of the episode revolves around the Sir Kent storyline, and eventually, a fight against a ghost. As I listen to that fight, I’m somewhat struck by how good our luck was on that one. First, we generally had fairly good party composition to deal with an incorporeal creature. We had a melee who could create magical attacks (Prue), and we also had a caster (Celes), though the ghost died before she got a chance to go on the offensive. And if we’d really needed it, we had a talisman available as well, which could’ve given someone a round of magic weapon. But then some of it was also getting lucky with rolls – the creature rolled really low and missed all of its attack rolls, and then Prue rolled close to max-damage to make it a one-hit fight. I don’t get the feeling we would’ve been in danger of a TPK, but that could’ve gone a lot worse than it did.

In fact, in our gaming past, it HAS gone worse. Back in the pre-podcast days, our Carrion Crown game got seriously waylaid by our inability to hit incorporeal. I think we spent 2 or 3 sessions because we didn’t have the tools for the job. I was a druid but most of my spells were utility spells, Bob was a Pally, but Smite doesn’t bypass incorporeal, Chris was a caster but also mostly utility – one cast of Magic Missile was all that he had to deal with incorporeal. In fairness, it wasn’t “just” incorporeal, there was also an element of phasing through walls to avoid taking hits. But the principle remains: incorporeal can suck if you don’t have the right tools for the job.

But that was then, this is now, and the one big ghost is no match for Prue’s many little ghosts. How it connects to Sir Kent and where we go from there? (And whether Brixley gets a quest of his own?) I guess we’ll have to find out next week. Until then, feel free to drop by our Discord channel and… tell us what you think of the show, share your best ghost-themed mixology ideas… whatever you like. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 11: Gather Information For Old Men.

This is a little bit of a tough episode to write because it’s already a bit of a short one, and then most of the action is the Celes and Uncle Targie Show, and I was mostly reduced to cracking jokes from the wings. Which… that’s fine, it’s what I do, but it also doesn’t leave a lot of fertile material to discuss.

Our progress on the main questline is to find the drop point shown on Hallod’s map. Yep. That’s pretty much it. Uncle Targie is able to point us in the right direction, and we eventually make our way there. The bad news is there’s nothing new to be found there – nothing that really drives the story forward and… channeling my inner Chris Beemer… no loot. I suppose I was hoping his final payment was still there waiting to be found, or that maybe we’d find another bread-crumb to the location of the evil mastermind V, but… nope. Just your average hollow tree you’d find out in the wilderness.

The more interesting plot development was finding out that Celes is actually related to Targen and Dalma somewhere several generations down the family tree. Celes Karvasalon, Mother of Turnips.

Now, I was not sure how I felt about side-quests when the possibility first raised its head. There’s something a little MMO-ey about the whole thing. I DO NOT WISH TO GO COLLECT EIGHT SPIDER LEGS. If we’re being honest, I was worried it might be some combination of immersion-breaking and/or tedious.

As it’s unfolded though, I have to admit I’ve enjoyed this little detour from the main story.

The biggest reason, hands down, is Vanessa’s roleplaying of the situation. She’s KILLING IT with Celes’ reactions to all of this. In another set of hands… OK, I’ll be honest, even in my hands… it might be “OK, I’m the Lost Scion of Turnip-Town, gimme my loot, moving along”. But Vanessa has been really bringing it to life and pulling it off the page. And I admit that’s drawn me further into it as well – if she’s gonna bring her A-game, I figure I ought to at least get in there and work off of it a little as well. My take on Brixley’s reaction so far has been “benevolent troublemaker” – he likes Celes and wouldn’t say anything truly mean, but he also thinks it’s high comedy to watch buttoned-up, aristocratic Celes come to grips with being a distant relative of the Turnip Bumpkins, so he’s going to LIGHTLY push a few buttons for now. Cayden Cailean, Shit-Poster of the Gods.

I think another reason this side quest has come alive has been the sense of personalization. I don’t know how much is written into the adventure path and how much was ad-libbed by Steve, but there’s a difference between generic side quests for the sake of busy-work (oh, hi, Mankrik’s Wife!) and side-quests that are written to be specifically tailored to the party and write their stories deeper into the fabric of the main plot. There’s a difference between “go to the run-down mansion and find a magic item” and “go find proof that Celes may actually be distantly related to all of this”, and I do think that difference draws you in and engages you. You also see shades of that in Prue’s interaction with Sir Kent – since they were both at Lastwall, it’s a little more powerful than “some guy thinks he saw undead, send Car 17 to check it out”.

I also mentioned “immersion-breaking”, but I think that can swing both ways – it can be a positive or a negative. Yeah, there are times where you want to put your head down and plow through the main story to reach the next plot point, and it wouldn’t make much sense to go crawling off into the weeds. Look at our Dead Suns Starfinder game. Most of that game has unfolded on a tight clock chasing the bad guys to a common destination, so it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to go wandering off to investigate someone’s family history in that one. But there are other times where you’re stuck beating your head against the same obstacle or flat-out don’t even KNOW where to go next, and it can be nice to step outside that for a session or two and do something else just to freshen things up. (See also: the “Return of Meats and Lasko” side mission from Istamak.)

This brings me to a little bit of a digression – how to find that balance between the main plot vs. side missions and general completionism. In other words… how much of a hurry to be in. There’s a temptation to be a completionist in games like these – wring every last point of experience and coin of loot out of a section of the story before you move on. And that’s a compulsion that video game RPGs have doubled down on over the years. Be Link! Break every vase! But there are times when that doesn’t make a lot of sense from the roleplaying side of the house. When Pippin knocked the bucket into the well in Moria, Tolkien didn’t have the Fellowship of the Ring clear three or four more rooms before yeeting out of there. Sometimes the plot tells you to move, so you move.

(Yes, “yeeting”. I speak teenager.)

It’s a question we recently wrestled with on the Dead Suns side of the house as well, as we literally bypassed a sub-boss because the story dictates the bad guys are ahead of us and we decided we didn’t have time to waste taking out the trash. But there, we had visible indicators that the bad guys were ahead of us (we could get partial statuses from computer systems and logs, an NPC AI was TELLING us how far ahead they were), and the consequences were truly dire – like “snuff out all the life on multiple planets” dire.

Here in Plaguestone, it’s a little harder to tell. On one hand, Hallod’s note mentions a “final shipment” which is somewhat suggestive of impending badness – it hints that V. has enough corpse blood to complete her plan, whatever that is. On the other hand, all we know about her plan so far is “well, things get progressively more crappy, and the animals around town get a little more aggressive and spit acid”. It’s not exactly Ozymandias dropping a fake space alien into Times Square to murder thousands. (Unless that’s the endgame on all of this: Colour Out of Space in the town square, roll initiative.) And frankly we also don’t really have a firm next step – we have a few soft leads, but no big neon arrow directing us to the next destination.

I do think this is one of those places – both generally and specific to our group – where the GM can put a subtle hand on the wheel and steer things where he or she wants the story to go. That’s definitely how Steve has handled us over the years. If there’s time to spare, Steve will practically shove side-quests in our faces, but it’s still our choice whether to do them or not. If we’re running behind, Steve will start to sound increasingly incredulous when we want to spend our third day in a row shopping. (He’s particularly fond of the phrase “Now I WILL tell you…” as a doppleganger for “maybe you should be doing something else now”). It doesn’t have to be quite so overt though; one could always have weird atmospheric effects (mild tremors, sudden storm) or an NPC soothsayer proclaiming the end of the world to hint to the players that they need to get things moving again. Or on the other side, the NPC with the side-quest could look progressively more distraught or bounty signs could start popping up around town.

Well, that’s all theory. Here in the actual game, we’ll continue to grind out the side quests and see how things shape up. More turnip jokes for Brixley, more low-grade indignity for Celes, and let the wind in our sails carry us to our next port of call. Until next time, we hope you’re enjoying the show, and you’re welcome to stop by Discord or other social media and let us know what you think. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 10: Shopping Spree!

First, my apologies that this is somewhat late and somewhat short. Hockey season starts tonight, and if there’s one thing I love almost as much as roleplaying games, it’s hockey.

For an episode where not much happens, I had a lot of fun with this episode because it was silly. Even if a good portion of the humor came at Brixley’s expense.

For better, worse, or indifferent, Plaguestone has had a different vibe than Dead Suns. It leans more heavily into roleplaying. It takes itself a little more seriously. I don’t mean to suggest that’s a bad thing, but I’m a goofball by nature, so it’s been a bit of an adjustment.

So to just clown around and trade jokes for a little bit… it was a nice change of pace. Even if the latest indignation is to be compared to beloved videogame characters. (For the record, Rob, Loren, and Vanessa are all funny people in real life when the tape’s not rolling; we just mostly play it straight on this version of the show.)

As far as Brixley’s decision to take Quick Jump, thereby turning him into the third Mario Brother… I went back and took another look at the available choices, and I’m sticking with my guns on this one. The Level 2 skill feats are largely not that powerful anyway, and “things that enhance mobility” seemed like a good way to go with it. At the time, I did briefly consider just going with an extra five feet of foot speed (Fleet), but something about jumping seemed handy. The way it works is that horizontal and vertical leaps usually require a running start – 10 feet of run-up and (perhaps more importantly) an action, making the total leap a two-action move if you do it in combat. Quick Jump doesn’t add any distance to your jump (that’s Powerful Leap) but you can do your normal jump from a standstill; the whole jump takes a single action and you don’t need the extra 10 feet.

If we’re being truly honest, the most practical skill feat choice would’ve been one I couldn’t take: Quick Repair. Quick Repair lets you repair an item by spending one minute working on it (and at later skill levels, you can even do it in combat), which… for a guy who lives and dies by the durability of his shield, it would be a pretty smart thing to be able to do. But alas, I’m not trained in Crafting, so I guess I’ll file that away for some future level. Besides, for the moment, I can always mooch off Prue.

My class feat, Divine Grace, was an easier choice and one that’s more immediately obvious in its uses. At this level, an extra 10% chance to make a save can be huge. If I seemed lukewarm on it, it’s just because I’m an instant gratification guy and get more excited by active abilities than passive ones. Give me flying swords of light, angelic wings… I want my dump-truck full of JRPG special effects, is what I’m saying. Also, it’s not a dealbreaker, but it does take a reaction to use, so it may at times come down to having to choose between the Divine Grace or blocking an attack.

The other Level 2 choices here were more situational – you basically have a choice of “oaths” against dragons, fiends, or the undead that would increase the damage on your Retributive Strike against those enemies. Useful if we knew we’d be facing that particular enemy (dragons at Level 2… boy I hope not!), but this adventure mostly has a “humanoids and corrupted woodland critters” vibe to it so far, so none of those leap out.

Speaking of class abilities and Retributive Strike, in particular, it also dawns on me I probably missed a chance or two to use Retributive Strike in the fight against Hallod. Basically, if an ally within 15 feet takes damage, as a reaction I can give my ally resistance to that type of damage (2 + level, so not a huge amount) and take a melee attack. I’m forgetting how the fight played out without going back and listening, but I suspect I lost a free attack or two. We certainly took the damage, the question is whether I was within 15 feet when it happened. I was probably too far away to help Cade when he got dropped, but I probably missed at least one chance to use that when Hallod hit Prue.

The other main change from leveling – Lay On Hands is a flat six HP per level, so it heals for 12 instead of six. I don’t get a second cast yet – you don’t get to add focus points until higher levels.

There’s not a lot of plot meat to be dispensed this episode, but we do get a little bit, as we learn the likely identity of “V” – the witch who cursed the town all those years ago had a daughter that went missing and was largely forgotten. I don’t know if they mean “witch” figuratively or literally, but either way, that certainly sounds like someone who might know a thing or two about alchemy. And if her daughter learned her tricks and is out for revenge… there you go.

So we’ve got that to follow up on, and we still have a few of our side mysteries – Celes’ possible relation to the mayor and Sir Kent’s haunted house remain on the to-do list. And somewhere in our travels, we have some magic runes that we need to transfer to different equipment if we can find someone capable of doing it. And now we get to do all of that as Level 2 characters!

Buuuuuut we’ll have to save it for next week. While you’re waiting, feel free to drop by our Discord channel to discuss the show, partake of the general frivolity, and of course post your Super Brixley Bros Photoshops! Thanks for listening and we’ll see you back here next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 09: Crit Happens.

Today we learned that boss battles are TOUGH in Second Edition.

And for what it’s worth, it’s not just us. We’ve been hearing this from other people who have been playing through this adventure – there are quite a few people who had a tough time or even a TPK on this fight. I’ve been thinking about this battle for a while, and I think this is a byproduct of how the math interacts with the new system.

Think about it. Usually boss battles are set to a CR that’s a little higher than your cannon-fodder creatures. And that usually means they have higher to-hit rolls, right? (NOTE: At the end of the episode, Steve mentions Hallod’s bonuses were +11 unarmed and +12 with his kukri.)

That’s going to create two challenges in the new system. First, the -5 penalty for multiple attacks isn’t as much of a deterrent if it’s a boss who already starts +11 or +12 against the party. His second attack is as good as our first attack, so bosses are probably going to hit on follow-up attacks more frequently than the party will. Second, and more relevant to this fight, a boss that’s at +11 or +12 is going to have a  better chance to crit (at least on the first attack) in Second Edition than in First Edition. PF1 gives you a crit on a 20, so a flat 5% chance. In second edition, even with my AC of 20 (with shield up), Hallod could’ve critted on an 18 with the kukri, and I think Cade and Prue have lower ACs than I do. If I had my shield down, make it a 16 or higher to crit: a whopping 25% chance.

I do get the feeling this fight might’ve been easier if we’d had a stronger ranged component in our arsenal. If you think about the battlefield, it’s got tripwires and difficult terrain to prevent advances but it’s also got crates and barrels to hide behind. It kind of made for a slow initial advance, and Hallod was able to pick us off one-by-one for a few rounds before we got all three melees up in his face. I think of Cade in particular – we lost the strategic advantage of his sneak attack because nobody else could get up there to create flanking for him.

Frankly, it feels like grinding him down from behind cover might have been a good tactic to employ here. Unless he can fast-load his crossbow, he would’ve basically gotten one attack per round and we would’ve had 3 or 4. But we don’t really have a strong ranged element in our party – Celes has her Produce Flame, Cade has his slingstaff, but I don’t have anything and I don’t think I’ve seen Prue use a ranged weapon either.

Speaking of ranged weapons: WHO PUTS TRAPS ON A PERFECTLY GOOD BATTLEFIELD? (Oh wait, a rogue, that’s who.) This whole fight got off to a bad start when Prue sets off a trip-wire and eats a crit from a concealed crossbow. Celes heals her and got her back on her feet, but it kind of threw our tactics out the window from the jump.

And if ALL of that wasn’t enough, Hallod can also do attacks of opportunity, making it even harder to navigate the fight. Poor Cade gets to be the celebrity spokesmodel for Getting Unexpectedly Punched In The Head, and then the rest of us have to tread lightly so we don’t do the same.

On the plus side, we get to really put our hero points to good use, between reviving from death and re-rolling crappy attack rolls. I have to admit I was a little iffy on the Hero Point system at first, but it’s starting to grow on me. Though I find myself wishing there was “anti-hero point” where you could force an enemy to re-roll… hmmm… I don’t know… one of Prue’s two crits, maybe?

We also got to see Brixley’s shield eat a few attacks, and I’m starting to feel a little uneasy about this system. Basically, my shield – a STEEL shield – was able to take all of TWO hits before it was broken. That seems a little… off. I don’t exactly know how you’d change it… more hardness? maybe a save to resist the breakage?… but I’m still concerned about reaching a point (not necessarily this adventure but in general) where I have to carry four or five shields around at all times. (Or maybe I invest a skill train in Crafting so I can fix on the fly.) To be fair though, I got through every battle leading up to the boss fight without taking ANY shield damage, so I don’t know if it’s a general issue or just another wrinkle that specifically comes out in boss-fights.

So Cade gets knocked out on an attack of opportunity, Prue eats her second crit of the fight and is down, and it’s down to Brixley tanking and Celes chucking fire from afar. Even with the shield, Hallod’s first batch of attacks on me took about half my health and broke my shield, so this was basically one round from turning even worse than it already was. I thought about using Lay on Hands to get someone back up (Prue would’ve physically been closest – I would’ve had to eat an AoO to reach Cade), but it did feel like Hallod was close to going down, so I decided to push through, and… whew. Just made it. BOSS DEFEATED.

Well, sub-boss, anyway. After the fight, we get a little more plot, in the form of a letter Hallod was carrying. It turns out Hallod was not the alchemist but was just an errand boy for “V”, whoever that is. We also get some treasure (mostly stuff for Cade, but still… stuff is stuff), and we have enough points to level next time we have a chance to rest. Huzzah!

Next week, we’ll return triumphantly to town, rest and recuperate, hopefully level up, and maybe start to take a further crack at figuring out who “V” might be. We also still have a few side mysteries – finding out whether Celes is really related to the mayor and investigating the house Sir Kent thought was infested with undead. Until next week, feel free to drop by our Discord channel, let us know what you think of the show, and join in the online shenanigans. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 08: Murderous Disco Dancing.

This week’s theme on Roll For Combat is Making Friends With The Dice Gods, as we face a pair of fights that could’ve been difficult but became easy because of fortunate rolls of the dice.

First, let’s talk about the (emotionally manipulative) fight with the dogs. This is a fight that feels like it could’ve been a disaster – four enemies that have a pack attack (mentioned by Steve but never seen), and a slippery section of the floor right in the entrance to create an added challenge. If you believe in quantum realities, there’s an alternate universe where we played Slip-N-Slide while the dogs chewed us to pieces.

But right out of the gate, Cade gets two hits at close to max damage, and now it’s two dogs instead of four. Oops. From there, the fight never gets better for the pups. None of the party members fail the save on the “Slippery When Wet” trap, Prue gets to break out her angry face, and we make astonishingly easy work of the remaining dogs. Steve can throw all the guilt trips he wants at us, but I know he’s enough of a Stephen King fan to be familiar with Cujo. “#SorryNotSorry”, as the Young People say.

There are crates to loot scattered throughout the room, but with the possibility that the dogs raised the alarm and Hallod could be waiting nearby, we decide to not to waste time searching the room and continue the pursuit. Further exploration reveals that this is definitely Hallod’s base of operations, but so far, Hallod himself is nowhere to be seen.

The exploration is not fruitless, though. First, we find a lockbox that both contains a crap-ton of money and fleshes out the details of the business between Bort and Hallod a little further. We also find a bottle containing something nasty and part of a larger shipment. Since we don’t have anyone with Alchemy skills, it’s hard to say EXACTLY what it’s being used for, but to hazard a layman’s guess, maybe it’s what’s being used to make all the local animals crazy and rabid. For the moment, file it away as a mystery to sort out after we catch up to Hallod.

The main hideout is abandoned – the only other “clue” is discarded vials with the residue of a silvery substance: not the nasty substance, and not the poison used on Bort. Again, without someone with Mad Alchemy Skillz™, we can’t really sort out what it is, but to again speculate: since it’s part of his “normal” trash and there are quite a few of them, maybe some sort of consumable he uses in his work… healing potion, buffs, something like that?

The other thing I’d like to point out: we finally learned from our mistakes and found a trap without setting it off! After a face-full of crossbow bolt and a collapsed roof, we ducked the poisoned dart mechanism on the lockbox. See? You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

After clearing out the main hideout, the pursuit continues. After a long passage, we arrive at our second unintentionally easy fight of the session. (Well, maybe not so much if you’re Celes, but for the rest of us…) ELECTRO-SNAKE! We didn’t get to see a lot of this guy, but it seemed like a pretty cool concept from what little we got to see of it.

Once again, it’s Cade getting us out to a strong start with multiple doses of sneak attack damage. (Not sure how you sneak up on a snake in a pool of water, but we’ll table that for another time.) This time, the dice rolls also help us on defense: the creature actually lands a breath weapon attack, which could’ve been devastating (2d10!), but instead, it does close to minimum damage. (Steve was joking about using a Villain Point. I swear.)

The only time things briefly take a turn for the worse is when Celes enters the room unawares and runs headlong into one of the few creatures in the game with attacks of opportunity. Not only that, but the snake lands a crit, which is enough to one-shot her. If this had happened earlier in the fight, it might have been more of a momentum swing; unfortunately for the snake, Brixley’s next hit is enough to put it down anyway, and Celes’ dying status becomes a moot point.

(As an aside: credit to Vanessa for roleplaying that fairly. It would’ve been easy to just roll into the room, meta-game the snake’s presence, and move around it. Or maybe she just got overconfident that it DIDN’T have an attack of opportunity available.)

After the fight, we get to play around with the new dynamic of Lay On Hands a little bit. As mentioned in a previous Talking, Lay On Hands now run off focus points, which regenerate on a 10-minute rest. So we basically took four 10-minute rests and fully healed up. I’m still getting used to that… it still feels a little cheap around the edges… but can’t argue with the results.

The chase resumes. We follow another long stretch of boring passage, after which we arrive at the end of the chase, both physically (exiting the cave and getting outdoors again) and in terms of finding Hallod. Something tells me this ISN’T going to be the third easy fight of the day, but that’s where we bring the curtain down for today, so we’ll find out next week. We’ll see you back here for that next Tuesday, but in the meantime, feel free to drop by Discord and let us know your thoughts on the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 07: Traps R Us.

It’s time to settle this once and for all.

It’s “Phinick” the goblin. As in “a possible distant relative of the Phillie Phanatic”.

We – ALL of us; I want to be clear I’m not just busting Steve’s chops here – have been going back and forth for three or four episodes now between “Finnick” and Pinnick”, and it’s been giving me a low-grade migraine when writing these wrap-ups. So I can only imagine how you listeners might feel about it. I thought about just wildcarding it as “*innick” or using that symbol Prince used to use, but I finally gave in and threw an impromptu strike – told Steve I wouldn’t write another word until he told me the correct spelling. You’re welcome.

So we begin this episode with a rollicking chase through the streets of Plaguestone, as we spy PHINICK trying to sneak away with some of our hard-fought BBQ. You can kill Bort… hardly knew the guy… but do NOT abscond with my swine! Personally, I thought Steve should’ve ditched the usual fantasy-themed score and pumped in some funky Starsky and Hutch-inspired 70s wah-wah guitar, but that’s just me.

And after all the low-grade humiliations Brixley has suffered up to this point in the adventure (falling mud, getting punched during bar fights, bees), it turns out this is one thing Brixley is built for – he’s a jock at heart. STR 16, DEX and CON 14… this is right in his wheelhouse (helped by some timely rolls, but still). I lucked out insofar as at no point in the chase did Brixley have to read street signs (INT) to continue the chase.

To be fair, it’s Short People Parkour, as Cade also handles the task with aplomb, while Prue and Celes have their share of struggles. Celes was probably to be expected, but I would’ve thought Prue would have the stats and skills to hang in there with us. One lively chase later, we have our leading suspect in custody… except that he’s less of a suspect and more of a bread-crumb. It turns out Hallod was the one who put Phinick up to poisoning Bort, by telling him it was just a practical joke.

Thanks to Phinick’s confession and the documents we found at Bort’s cabin, the picture starts to come into clearer focus. Hallod and Bort were doing side deals no one knew about for weird alchemical goods, and either the deal went bad or Hallod wanted to make sure to leave no witnesses behind (that part’s still a little fuzzy). Cop shows on TV always throw out “means, motive, opportunity” as a trope. We’ve got means and opportunity nailed, and as far as motive, it’s more a question of picking which one rather than not having one at all. And we even have a lead on where to find Hallod, thanks to a now-cooperative Phinick. Abandoned shack at the edge of town. So we’d better hurry up and get after him before he finds out we’re on to him.

Aside: I find the “no, not THAT abandoned shack, the OTHER abandoned shack” dynamic amusing. We’re up to like 3 or 4 different quests that involve visiting abandoned properties. Sir Kent’s rumors about undead people. The question of Celes potentially being related to the mayor. Now, finding Hallod’s hideout. “Welcome to Plaguestone: Abandoned Shack Capital of the Inner Sea.”

The second half of this episode is broadly summed up as “What’s the point of having a rogue in your party if you’re not going to use him?” as we manage to set off not one but two different traps. Now, you can probably excuse the first one just based on stereotypes: Hallod has basically been described as a walking side of beef, which is not the physical archetype for a rogue. But you’d think we would’ve taken a bit more caution after the first trap got us. And you would be wrong. Gloriously wrong.

First, after doing a fairly cautious reconnoiter of the house, Prue kicks in a door – a very Prue thing to do – and gets a faceful of crossbow bolt for her troubles. In fairness, Cade did find the (safe) way to get in, but it’s a few seconds too late to help Prue. And for all that trouble, the whole place looks like a bit of a dead-end. Until… footprints leading away in a different direction.

We follow the footprints which lead to the beginnings of a smuggler’s hideout, where we shortly encounter trap #2. This time, it’s Brixley trying to be bold and take the lead, and I end up bringing part of the passage down on our heads because I miss a tripwire. Meanwhile, Cade… I dunno… snacking on beef jerky or something? Whatever halflings do in their spare time.

Now, it’s possible this was all karmic punishment for inflicting my Bee Gees impression on all of you, and if that’s what happened… OK, that’s totally fair. I’ve been trying to behave myself and limit my random outbursts of pop culture minutiae, but that one just got away from me. I totally blame Steve for using the phrase “strut your stuff” – that Travolta strut from the opening of Saturday Night Fever popped into my head… and then right on out of my mouth. I REGRET NOTHING. (OK, I regret missing the trap, no on everything else.)

We shortly get the passage cleared again, and resume our pursuit of Hallod. Eventually, we come out of the passage into a safer and more developed portion of the Bad-Guy Lair. A ladder going down to a lower level of the complex. We descend the ladder (having FINALLY learned our lesson, Cade goes first), find and open a door… and it’s time to defend ourselves against angry dogs. FANNNNTASTIC place for a cliffhanger.

Will the party survive the dogfight (pun fully intended)? Will they bring Hallod to justice? Will they reach Level 2? Come back next week and join us as we explore more of the mysteries of Plaguestone. In the meantime, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you next week!

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 06: Swine Dining.

It’s been a hectic few episodes in the town of Plaguestone – three combat encounters and a fourth that could’ve blown up if Cade hadn’t landed his stealth rolls – so this week we slow it down a little. In fact, we slow it WAAAAAY down, spending half the episode just socializing and relaxing with a good meal. We do still manage to fit in a little movement on the mystery of Bort’s murder, but it’s good to pause and catch our collective breath. Right until the cliffhanger at the end, of course.

It dawns on me: did we roll dice at all this episode? Maybe a Perception roll at Bort’s cabin, but that’s about it, I think.

Our first “duty” of the night was celebrating our victory and restoring a little bit of confidence in the kitchen staff of the Feedmill, courtesy of a good old-fashioned pig roast. Since we found the empty poison vial and there’s no sign of Pinnick skulking about, there are some pretty broad signals that Bort’s murder was a one-time thing. I don’t think we have to worry about any further danger on that front, so I think this is more about generating some goodwill amongst the townspeople. (But you’ll notice I still let Prue take the first bite. Just sayin’.)

During dinner, we actually do a little more (re-)introduction of the team, since if you want to get technical we never really formally got to know each other. Things always seemed to come up, whether it was wolves, bar fights, murder. You know… the usual! I have to admit (out-of-character) that I didn’t really get the memo about tying my backstory into the Whispering Tyrant like the others did. I feel like it’s OK though because I kind of planned on Brixley being a little little bit sheltered and naïve – think of him as “the cop fresh out of the academy”. Having been on the front lines at Lastwall and seen death up close would’ve undermined that a little bit anyway.

Though I’m chuckling a little bit at the general tone – you’ve got three people who’ve Seen Some Serious Shit, and then there’s Brixley bouncing around like a doofus. The Burt Ward Robin of Second Edition. “Aw shucks, fellas! This Whispering Tyrant sounds like a real piece of work!”

The next, unexpectedly light-hearted interlude was watching Celes get all flustered dealing with the idea that the mayor thinks they’re related. As a roleplaying thing, Brixley generally likes Celes and has built some initial rapport with her, but his mischievous side can tell this is a bit of an awkward situation for her and he wants to see how this all plays out. (Coincidentally, my own motivations as a player.) I have to admit I don’t think they’re REALLY related, but this might be a hook to something else – maybe more general information about why the town is the way it is or something.

(It also dawned on me during this interaction – a couple of episodes after the fact – that this feels like the setup to Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom. Plaguestone has that pedestal in the town square that seems to be missing… a magic rock, perhaps?… and they’ve been having bad luck ever since. WE MUST GO TO PANKOT PALACE!)

Similarly, the drunken soldier – I don’t think we’re supposed to take him literally that the undead are invading Plaguestone. Heck, if it were undead, they probably wouldn’t hide in an abandoned house, they’d probably just start attacking people. If it’s good enough for the local wildlife, after all…. But I do think he saw… something. Maybe Pinnick is holed up there. Or perhaps there are other co-conspirators involved that we haven’t been introduced to yet. It’s still a little hard to believe Phinick is some criminal mastermind.

After dinner, it’s time to get the mystery going again, and that means a trip to Bort’s cabin to look over his paperwork. There’s not a lot to go on here, but we do learn a few things. In addition to his more innocuous contributions to the turnip-based economy, Bort has been running a side business delivering “reagents” to someone in town. Someone with the initial “H”. I mean… that sounds like Hallod to me, even if he himself doesn’t seem like the magic-using type. He certainly fits the bill as a bad and imposing dude who would make a formidable adversary… much moreso than a fairly meek goblin bar-back. So we’re starting to bring the picture into focus… perhaps Hallod and Phinick are working together, and maybe there’s even someone else of a more magical bent involved. And (taken with the dinner-time revelations) maybe some of them are using that abandoned house Sir Kent saw as a base of operations.

And as we leave Bort’s to head home for the night, answers present themselves in the form of our wayward goblin friend. All that we have to do is catch him!

Buuuut… that’ll be an exercise (figuratively and literally) for next time. Heck of a cliffhanger, huh? We’ll see you back here next week when the chase gets underway. While you’re waiting, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know your thoughts on the show. Until then, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 05: Boars and Bears and Bees! Oh My!

This week’s visit to Plaguestone is brought to you by the letter “B”, apparently.

We return to the investigation of Bort’s murder, with a few decent leads to follow up on. We’ve ruled out the cook, Amora, but there are two people left who handled Bort’s food that night – Phinick the goblin who helped prep the food, and the waitress Trin. It’s also going to be important to check Bort’s body because of the strange floral scent we found in Bort’s bowl.

We start with our first real examination of Bort. We confirm that Bort’s whole body now has the same floral scent that was in the bowl, but initially we strike out on finding anything else. It does dawn on me that we’re not being particularly cautious about this – there’s always a possibility that whatever killed Bort could be communicable, and we’re just sniffing around his orifices like it’s no big deal. It also dawns on me that we haven’t ruled out Bort reanimating as some sort of undead. But for the moment, nothing like that happens, so on to our next clue.

In the barn, things are a little more fruitful, as we find an empty vial with the same floral scent. Since the barn is Finick’s preferred off-hours hangout, that tends to elevate him to the top of the suspect list. Never did trust goblins.

While at the barn we’re approached by the stablehand with a good ol’ fashioned Side Quest! Our horses have fleas so we have to go gather herbs to cure them. And ohbytheway, the bushes we need are guarded by a big nasty (but sleeping) bear. (There’s something almost MMO-ish about this.) We basically decide to handle this as a stealth mission, with Cade sneaking up on the bear, but part of me wonders after the fact if we should’ve eliminated the threat to the townspeople. I mean the next time someone needs rosemary, there’s still a bear out there. But no, we decide to go with the stealth mission. After a few tense rolls, and Cade burning a Hero Point, we successfully get our rosemary. Huzzah!

This is also our first real exposure to Hero Points. Basically, Hero Points are one of those things that used to be a house rule but have been codified in Second Edition. They basically serve as rewards – either for hitting certain progress points in the story, or they can be rewards for good roleplay – but you can only hold up to three at any one time, so there’s no stockpiling 20 or 30 of them. Their two main uses are stabilizing from dying (which we hopefully won’t have to play around with any time soon), or to take take a re-roll. Here Cade takes a re-roll on a stealth roll, and whether it’s actually true or Steve was just humoring us, it saves us from a face full of an angry bear.

With the sidequest out of the way, we now have three main leads left. Trin, Phinick, or visiting Bort’s house and seeing if there are any clues there. To me, Phinick seems like the next most obvious choice, but we don’t actually know where he is at the moment. Bort’s house might be useful, but it’s presumably not going anywhere. So let’s go visit the waitress, Trin. Among other things, she’s reported to have a bruise on her face, and she fled the inn in the immediate aftermath of the bar brawl, so even though the goblin is Suspect One, she’s not totally in the clear.

But before we can talk with her, we have to protect her from being killed by a wild boar. Seriously, between the wolves on the way into town, and now stirges, bees, a bear and this boar, it’s like nature is out to put a foot in this town’s collective ass. This turns out to be a fairly quick fight – the boar hits hard but a four-to-one numbers advantage wins out. To me, Celes was the MVP of this fight, both hitting the boar with her flame attack AND healing Brixley after he took a big hit. Brixley was a mixed bag – he got the eventual kill-stroke, and being able to matador away from the piggie’s charge attack was kinda fun, but he did also take a 15-point thump and was going to have to Lay On Hands until Celes intervened.

Speaking of which, as an aside, I’m very glad that entry-level heals are 1d8+8, given all the 1s we rolled for healing in our Starfinder campaign.

Boar dies. Now it’s time to interrogate Trin, and it becomes quickly obvious she had nothing to do with Bort’s death. She got hit with a flying mug during the fight (hence the bruise) so she got the hell out of Dodge. That might actually make her the most normal person in this town. Furthermore, she hadn’t been back to work yet, so she didn’t even know Bort was dead. Personally I find that a little surprising – you’d think news like that would get around town faster than that – but she does seem genuine in her confusion. So… one more suspect eliminated unless she’s a much better liar than we’re giving her credit for.

By process of elimination (for the moment – there’s still Bort’s house to check), I guess that leaves Phinick the goblin as the center of suspicion. But since we don’t know where he is anyway, we decide to take our slaughtered piggie back to the inn for a celebratory pig roast! A feast fit for kings, and more importantly, not another turnip dish! And as a side benefit, it might get people to start trusting the food at the inn again – not explicitly in our job description, but still a nice thing to do.

We’ll get back on the trail of the killer after we fill our bellies, and that’s a good place to leave it for this week. Hope you’re enjoying the show – feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think. In the meantime, thanks for listening, hope those of you in the US have a nice holiday weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.