Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|24: Death By Healing.

Sorry, this week’s Talking is a little late. Real-life intrudes in the form of… well, take your pick: a teenage son who’s a little behind on his assignments in school and needs a little help getting across the finish line, or sitting in a dark room pouting because my hometown hockey team’s been eliminated from the playoffs. Perhaps a bit of both.

Also, I have to admit I needed multiple listens to figure out exactly what was going on with the Hap and Darius “wish” scene at the end of the episode. I kept getting interrupted by other things and Loren was being a little cagey and leaning into the roleplay in her descriptions, so I couldn’t quite piece together what was happening at first. Just that it was weird and silly and… ok, maybe a little disturbing when Darius cradles Hap like a baby when making his wish.

I think I managed to piece it together, though. Both Vanessa and Loren mention using a 4^th-level spell slot on this project, whatever it is. (The “nah, you don’t need that for healing” joke.) Going through the spell list, the spell creation, which creates a temporary object from eldritch energy, fits the bill. If you need some supporting evidence, I’d point out that since it’s on the primal spell list, the created object must be of vegetable matter – which would explain the detail of the plate being made of wood and the fact that it didn’t really taste like bacon.

Which misses the forest for the trees a bit. The hidden scandal of the episode. Hap tried to foist VEGAN BACON on Darius. That’s just wrong. Friendships have ended over less. If Darius defects to the Celestial Menagerie at some future point… this is the moment time travelers from the future will have to go back and undo.

COME BACK WHEN YOU CAN MAKE REAL BACON FROM A PIG, GENIE-GIRL.

But OK… all of this is me dancing around an uncomfortable conversation. For one of the few times ever for this space, I’m going to put on my Poindexter glasses, go full Rules Lawyer, and blow out the central premise of this week’s episode.

Ateran should not have been in any danger of being killed by their own healing spell.

Sorry. It brings me no joy to say it because it was “great radio” in the moment. As I write this, I feel like I’m telling a bunch of 10-year-olds Santa doesn’t exist. But the rules are pretty clear, and I guess I’m a little surprised both Steve and Vanessa missed it since they both usually know this stuff inside and out. Reading the text of Spirit Link, it’s right there in the last sentence: “You can Dismiss this spell, and if you’re ever at 0 Hit Points, spirit link ends automatically”. “You” in this case, is the caster.

That’s not the least bit ambiguous. It’s true that Spirit Link is a fire-and-forget, rather than a sustain. (Can you imagine if Ateran had to give up one of their actions every turn to let people heal?) But Spirit Link does end if/when the caster gets knocked out. So yeah… there it is, me peeing in the punchbowl. Feel free to boo. Internally, I’m booing myself.

Don’t get me wrong, it was still an exciting fight. It’s good to see the party tested, and anytime someone reaches Dying 3 and has to seriously think about breaking out the Hero Points, it’s an important moment. Personally, I also liked the synergy of going from one babau in the first fight to two babaus the second time around, and now three in the finale (even though one of those was the runner from the previous fight). But I’m afraid the dark-comedy self-inflicted demise underpinning the whole thing was a mistake.

Of course, one side effect of Ateran’s brush with death, however it came about, is that it cuts the exploration a little bit short for the day. We still have unexplored rooms to clear, and the mysteries connected to Ulthadar remain to be untangled for at least another episode. Also, I had to go back and check, but there was that handwritten note that I BET contains a whole lot of plot dump; in the aftermath of making sure Ateran didn’t die, the party forgot to really look at that. Since xulgaths aren’t known for their beautiful penmanship and I’d think anything “original” would’ve been destroyed by age or the xulgaths trashing the place… I’m actually going to put $5 that Mistress Dusklight is either the author or the recipient and it explains more about her role in all of this. That’s my thinking for now, and I stand ready to be proven wrong next episode, or whenever they get back to looking at it.

So yeah… kind of a “short” episode this week – yeah, still an hour-forty, but when you spend most of it fighting, it doesn’t leave as much to write about. I assume the gang will return tomorrow to take another swing at the pinata since we haven’t really heard anything circus-related recently and since this seems to be the main plot focus.

Speaking of which, I thought it was an interesting point Steve made about having the circus itself exist as a ready-made pool of party members ready to go if someone DOES die. The snake-lady could be upgraded to a druid or ranger, you could make a rogue out of a member of the Feather Fall Five or the Dwarven Throwers; we don’t know what the “real” Jellico can do, but maybe he turns out to be a much better mage than he was a clown or something. And then there’s the new characters who just joined – the ysoki alchemist and Aives, the guy who defected from the Celestial Menagerie mid-fight. Of course, one could write in a brand-new character pretty easily – traveler hears about the newly successful circus and wants to join up and use their talents – but they don’t come with the pre-existing awareness of the backstory that those other characters do. Heck, with the new Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, maybe Riley can get a field promotion to Beastkin.

Just not Gibzip. If Gibzip ever joins the party permanently, I’m outta here. (And based on her reaction, I suspect Vanessa would be too. She seems to share my loathing.)

But that’s all speculation. For this week, rest, relax, and… I’m assuming… get ready to go back in next week. As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel 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 Three Ring Adventure S2|23: The Darius 5.

Sorry the column is running a little late this week. NHL playoffs are happening, Mass Effect Legendary came out, and we actually played Edgewatch this Wednesday, which is when I usually write. Sorry about that.

For once, I have to admit I’ve been a little turned around the last few episodes. I thought the temple was pretty much done… that maybe there were one or two more rooms. I completely forgot about the big door with the statue guarding it, and, of course, we find out this week that behind that door is a whole new wing to explore. So I guess our dungeon delve is going to continue for another few weeks. Not a complaint… the fights have been exciting and the action has been moving the story forward as well, so it’s a win-win.

But before we really get into that, it’s time for a brief visit to city hall to meet with the head of the town guard and write another chapter of Darius’ on-again, off-again romance with Kat… this time played by Rob P. (As an aside, it’s almost a little unsettling to hear Rob P. without Ateran’s accent.)

Now, look. The logical part of me wants to quibble and say it hasn’t been THAT many days since their date so Kat shouldn’t be getting that mad. But it’s probably best not to delve too deeply there. First, it would involve going back and doing math, and that’s more work than I want to put in. But also, if you start deconstructing everything that’s illogical or grounded in modern conceptions you eventually have to admit that Hamlin’s Hots and Muscle Fancy magazine don’t make any sense either. If your fancy logic is going to take the fun out of something like Hamlin’s Hots… I don’t want to live in that world. So… OK… we’ll fudge the dates and let Kat be upset. Hey, she got a coupon book out of it.

The conversation with the guard captain was a little weird for me because it almost felt like we’d crossed the streams and wandered into the Edgewatch show. Circumstantial evidence? Not enough to prosecute? Lt. Ollo… is that you? Though… in this case, the plot conceit of having the adventuring party perform the investigation is even more jarring than it is in our game. At least in Edgewatch, our characters are part of the law enforcement; it’s only questionable whether you’d send fresh cadets or more experienced officers. Here we have the fantasy RPG equivalent of a SWAT team situation, and they’re sending in… random circus performers who rolled into town a week ago? I must’ve missed that lesson in police procedure.

(Then again… Commissioner Gordon had Batman; these guys have the Darius 5.)

Our party returns to Moonstone Hall and bypasses the door. While I like Hap’s idea of just blowing out the lock with the fireball and would’ve liked to see that play out, I guess I do have a question: who locked the door behind the people on the inside? Mistress Dusklight, maybe? Did they lock it from the inside? Granted, this may all be overthinking it – Paizo may have just included a locked door to let people use skills – but it’s a little odd that they would take such care to seal themselves in.

Before we get back to the fighting, we have the encounter with the restless spirit, Ulthadar. It’s hard to know what to make of him. I guess if he’s a servant of Aroden, he’s one of the good guys overall, but there’s something that doesn’t add up about him just letting the xulgaths and Mistress Dusklight waltz on in. Especially when it seemed like he was going to go nuclear when he found out Aroden was dead-I-mean-missing. You’d think defilers would get merit more of a reaction. And what was the deal with the trio of ghostly sidekick ladies that disappeared? Put a cautionary fiver on “maybe he’s really been corrupted and is actually evil and is going to attack the party later.” As part of that encounter, I do have to give Vanessa credit for firing off her Aroden blessing to draw the ghost back from the brink of a meltdown. Of course, it would suck if she needed that healing later, wouldn’t it?

So the party resumes their exploration and finds another batch of enemies. And this time, it’s a bit of a greatest-hits of previous fights, as we’ve got a babau, a xulgath caster, and a random powered-up stegosaurus. (OK, he’s new.)

My first reaction was “what a difference a level makes” as it seemed like the babau alone was a tough fight just a few episodes back, and now it’s just another piece of cannon-fodder. And it seemed like the party was rolling along, until the bad guys landed a one-two punch to even the odds a little. The stegosaurus charge was impressive, but the big story here was the caster’s lightning bolt… and Alhara’s heroic decision to take the hit for Hap.

Among other things, this is one of those moments that struck me as a “Rule of Cool” moment. I don’t know if it’s strictly legal to jump in front of a magic spell that was targeted at someone else. I mean… lightning moves REALLY fast and follows magnetic charge; I’m not sure dodging lightning is a thing you can actually do. But as a storytelling thing… heroic moments like that are the backbone of good storytelling, so if Alhara wants to do that, you figure out a way to let her do that. Though I think part of what makes it work is the difference between “moving the badness around” vs. “getting out of the badness entirely”. I think if the party is trying to do something that offers an appropriate TRADE of risk and reward, that’s one thing – in this case, SOMEONE was going to take some damage, it was just a question of who. I think if a party is trying to use “Rule of Cool” to get out consequences entirely (or if it’s a trade, but the motivations are transparently metagamey), then the GM would be right to shut it down.

Since neither was the case here… good job Alhara. Though I’m sure Vanessa felt a twinge of regret when the damage turned out to be 80 points. Ouch.

Luckily, the party used that act of heroism as a bit of a rallying point and managed to finish off the fight, and the day is saved. They’re pretty beat up at the moment, and Ateran blew heals on both Darius and Alhara, so we’re back to wondering how their resources are holding up, but since they JUST went back in, they’ve got to have a FEW more rooms in them, right?

Guess we’ll find out next week. As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel 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 Three Ring Adventure S2|22: Geniealogy.

I’d like to start with a quick re-visit of last week’s episode. In last week’s column, I mentioned how impressed I was that Vanessa was so calm in the face of Alhara’s possible demise. Well… turns out I spoke a little too soon. Vanessa actually reached out and burst my bubble a bit: it turns out her demeanor was not so much “cool and collected”, but rather that she’d resigned herself to dying, and was chatting with our Patreon live listeners about what kind of character she might make if she had to re-roll. Well… calm is still calm, no matter what kind of calm it is.

Steve then asked how he sounded, and my glib answer was “disturbingly gleeful”, but I thought about that, and felt like clarifying a little bit. Sometimes we grumble about Steve being a little too excited during combat episodes, but having played with him for well over a decade, I don’t think his excitement is malicious as much as he appreciates a good story moment. If he lands two crits in a row, OK, maybe there’s an initial excitement that he got such good die rolls, but I think his REAL excitement is to see how this changes the dynamic of the fight, and how the party responds to it. If anything, I think it’s a backwards way of believing in us players and wanting to see how we’re going to pull the situation out of the fire.

Believe me, I’ve played with adversarial GMs who just wanted to “beat” the party. You can tell the difference.

As a player, none of this means it’s not INFURIATING in the moment when Steve gets two crits in a row and he starts cackling like a maniac. But if you take a moment to understand where it’s coming from, you can usually get through it. Or… that’s why we have push-to-talk. Take a few seconds to get the profanity out of the system and move on.

This week, the main storyline and discussion topic is the revelation of Hap’s ancestry. Those of you who had “ifrit” can stop by the window and pick up your winnings.

I have to admit, the minute I saw the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, I assumed this is the way Steve was going to go with it. At the risk of oversimplifying, heritages are a way of injecting “half-X” into a character, so the ifrit as “half-fire-elemental” really fit Hap like a glove. I just didn’t know how complete of a retcon it was going to be – whether Steve was going to rebuild Hap from Level 1 as an ifrit to clean things up and make her RAW-compliant, or whether he was just going to drop Ifrit in moving forward.

There’s also the general question of whether you’d be willing to surrender control of your character to the GM like that. I have to admit, my attitude toward that has traditionally been one of reluctance. It’s not that I have some great master plan for most of my characters or that I plan them out from Level 1 through Level 20 in advance. But I do like the flexibility and control to write my own story. Look at Plaguestone: I was pretty much locked in on the Blade Ally as Brixley’s champion boon, and the story dropped the coolest steed in the world into my lap. If I had Steve controlling part of my character, would I have had the flexibility to make that choice?

That said, I have to admit Hap’s development has opened my eyes to the possibilities a little bit. Now I find myself at least a little intrigued about the idea of having things you don’t know about your own character and may give it a try in a future campaign. If nothing else, it’s more. We all start out wanting to be star athletes or astronauts, and then life has a way of telling you what you’d actually be good at. Why wouldn’t it be that way in a fantasy world as well?

Now, I do think this ought to have some boundaries. I think core class abilities ought to always be chosen by the player. I think it’s one thing to add “flavor” to a character; I think it’s another to just give someone else control of how your character functions in the core game. (By which I mean combat, mostly.) When it comes to feats… maybe. Ancestry feats are a solid choice because those are things you got from your parents and it really isn’t under your control. General and skill feats are more hit-and-miss because a lot of feats are learned as you go, and it would be weird to add a feat you LITERALLY never worked on or thought about taking. “We’ve literally NEVER been near a body of water, but I decided your character became an Olympic swimmer”.

On the other hand, you CAN throw it all to the wind. Let me briefly tell you about Nim, Bob Markee’s character in the Iron Gods campaign (pre-podcast days). Nim was some sort of techno-magical construct – humanoid in appearance, but an empty vessel when we found him. When Chris and I found his… pod, I guess… NIM decided our characters were his “parents” so he literally took his cues for developing his character – feats, spells, EVERYTHING – from things Chris and I expressed as we played. It started with alignment, choice of god, etc., and just snowballed from there. So if we said we needed more healing, he’d take a healing spell at his next level. If we expressed concern about his social skills, he’d train in Diplomacy. He pretty much let the party drive almost his ENTIRE character build and played the character that resulted. He chose the class (Sorcerer) and there were a few times where if we didn’t express a preference, he chose something for himself, but it was one of the more impressive displays of “committing to the bit” I’ve ever seen.

Now, I realize the Hap reveal kinda dominated the episode this week, but I did want to briefly tip the cap to Vanessa’s roleplaying of Alhara’s confidence crisis. We’re so used to Alhara as the ultra-competitive “oh yeah, not if I kill him first!” attitude that it was an interesting change of pace to hear her sound discouraged and even aware of her mortality. It’ll be interesting to see if this is going to be “short-term pep talk” territory or if Vanessa will play around with that and make Alhara more cautious in future battles.

Also, I’d like to go on record as being with Team “Hat Or No Hat, Gibzip Can Die In A Fire”. There’s NO circus act that’s worth continuing to put up with that whiny little…

Sorry, where was I?

Next week… it feels like confronting Mistress Dusklight before the Celestial Menagerie skips town might be the next thing to do, especially now that we know all these new truths about Hap. Although there is still that one room in the temple they didn’t go into. Do we go back for one more round?  Or is it time to get back to circus-ing? I guess we’ll find out next week. While you wait, feel free to drop by our Discord channel and let us know what you think of the show. As always, thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|21: We’re Fine With Being Stupid.

In this week’s visit to the circus, we have a bit of a rarity for our show. I’m not going to say a “unique” situation, because it’s PROBABLY happened before; I just can’t remember the last time. What I’m speaking of, of course, is Alhara’s brush with death due to multiple stacking damage-over-time effects and cutting the healing so close that they had to stay in rounds while the party put together enough healing resources to keep Alhara on her feet. How close was it? If it was the NFL, we were this close to a 20-minute replay review.

Over the last few months/years, both of our shows have gotten kinda cozy with the Handwave Heal. The battle ends, assume healing occurs, move on. And that model works 80, 90 percent of the time. But a situation like this has always been a possibility that’s been lurking just over the horizon. Poisons and diseases in Second Edition have some teeth to them, so it’s always been a statistical possibility that someone might end a combat with multiple DOTs on them and close to death’s door. (And in this case, we had the added dimension that Alhara had already used her Hero Point, so Dying 4 would’ve been a one-way ticket.)

I can certainly remember people dropping without a Hero Point, but without extra damage sources ticking: heck, that’s our bread and butter. We’ve even had some messy poisons and diseases to deal with across our various games; Darius, in particular, seems to be a magnet for them. But this was legit “brush with death” territory – I didn’t sit down and map out every die roll, but there was a window there where high damage rolls and low heal rolls could have very easily spelled the end of poor Alhara.

(And OK… I was surprised by how calm Vanessa was about the whole thing. I’d have been freaking out, but Vanessa was either unmoved or doing a VERY good job of hiding it.)

The first knee-jerk reaction would be to blame the decision to push through one more room with limited resources, but I don’t think that’s particularly fair. Or at least it’s certainly not the whole story. It is true that when you go for one more room like that, it’s easier to sustain party damage (cantrips still go boom) whereas healing and support resources can’t be replenished as easily. So if you’re looking for a reason there wasn’t more healing available… yeah, I guess you can point to that. But if we’re being honest, MOST of the team’s struggles against the spiders came from rolling like crap for the first 2/3rds of the fight… for attack rolls AND saving throws against the various effects. This could’ve been the first fight of a new day, with a brand new stock of spells and consumables, and if you roll a bunch of single-digit rolls, it’s gonna be a bad day at the office. And it wasn’t like they had ZERO healing at the end; they collectively had some potions, and there was the option to push the wand past its limit.

I think the worst I can say on the tactics front is that they should’ve initially approached the body more carefully, but even that’s one of those things that’s easy to say with 20/20 hindsight. And heck, if we’re doing this same scenario in Edgewatch, you KNOW Dougie’s grabbing that body too.

Speaking of the spiders… like Ateran, I did remember that these were the same sorts of spiders they fought in the original Aroden temple at the end of Book 1. One thing I noticed is that the spiders from Book 1 didn’t seem to have the crystal effect; I find myself wondering if it was just dumb luck that they didn’t land it, or if those were less mature versions of the creature that didn’t have that power in their stat block yet. I suppose it could’ve been a “lesser” vs. “adult” spider thing because I don’t even especially remember Steve asking people to make saves. On the other hand, I also vaguely recall that battle being the reverse of this one, where the party front-loaded a bunch of crits and took them out quickly. So we may not have seen that ability just because they weren’t alive long enough to use it.

(Also, were these the same spiders we fought in the bank vault in Edgewatch? Those were babies, and were further prevented from phasing by a magic barrier, so they were almost just regular spiders, but still… I guess those spiders are pretty popular back at the Paizo mothership.)

It’s actually that phasing ability that intrigues me more. Theoretically, those spiders can grab a victim and phase back to their home plane with them. How do you deal with THAT? It’s a pretty powerful “divide and conquer” move to begin with, and as Vanessa points out, even if you win on their home turf, how do you get home again? So even as beat-to-crap as Alhara got, it’s actually not that hard to envision a scenario where this fight goes a lot worse.

Luckily for our heroes, the dice luck finally comes around in the final third of the fight, as Darius performs some of his trademark destructions, and even good old Riley lands a crit. GOOD BOI! And then it’s the race against time to keep Alhara from dropping. Like I said earlier, a forensic reconstruction of the individual die rolls is more effort than I care to put into things, but if those crystals had the potential to hit for 2d10… she HAD to be right on the edge for a round or two.

Through a combination of dumb luck and skillful use of their remaining resources, Alhara survives and is reunited with her bo staff (and OK, Ateran as well), but she’s beat to a pulp (my go-to imagery here is Dark Helmet after performing the emergency stop from Ludicrous Speed) and now the party is really-REALLY out of resources for the day. So time to go back to the tents and heal up for next week, I assume. I’m a little fuzzy on the next steps here. Confront Mistress Dusklight? Go back to the sages? Another visit to Hamlin’s Hots? (PLEASE… yes.) I guess we’ll find out next time. While you’re waiting, feel free to drop by our Discord channel 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 Three Ring Adventure S2|20: Lizard Wizard!

I suppose the big development of this week’s episode is that Mistress Dusklight just graduated from lower-case “evil” to “Evil With A Capital E”. I mean, don’t get me wrong… she was always kind of an asshole and a recurring thorn in the collective paw of our group, but our major revelation of the week is that Mistress Dusklight was not only at the temple but was even working in league with the xulgaths. I mean… dude… they’re doing sacrifice rituals and infesting the pool with gibbering mouthers, and she’s breaking out the damn Chex Mix and playing cards with them.

The missing link – at least for the moment – is how deep this possible alliance runs. Is she literally working with the xulgaths insofar as she also wants to sabotage the protective stones? Or was she pursuing some other goal and working with the xulgaths happened to align with her short-term goals? Based on Givzib’s statement that she “tricked” the xulgaths, it doesn’t sound like they’re truly arm-in-arm, so was it something as banal as raising extra money? Or maybe the artifacts she took from the temple had some OTHER relevance that we have yet to figure out.

It’s a lot to think about. Meanwhile, we still have a couple of fights to plow through in this episode. First up, we have the rare caster opponent, with one of the brutes from the previous xulgath battle serving as a bodyguard and a quasit doing… well… nothing, really. This fight ends up being fairly easy for everyone except poor Hap (HAP GOES ZAP!): a crit on a 5d12 lightning bolt coupled with Hap’s own status as a squishy caster-type provides for a close call with a one-shot. (Feel free to imagine Hap’s skeleton lighting up like in a classic Warner Bros cartoon.) So Hap’s gotta play it safe for a while, but the rest of the team is still in good enough shape to go beat the tar out of the remaining enemies.

At the end of the fight, the quasit sees which way the wind is blowing and surrenders. First, we learn its name is Givzib. Repeatedly. It’s got the annoying habit of referring to itself in the third person. Givzib then provides us with the revelation about Mistress Dusklight – that she provided the xulgaths with humanoids for their demon-summoning. Toward the end of the exchange, we raise the possibility that Givzib may also end up as part of the circus act, and we go on a bit of a deep-dive on the evils of capitalism. (Mark Givzib down for the $15 minimum wage, clearly.)

We also have a new entry from our Department of Bespoke Magical Items… the Ringmaster Staff. Basically, it’s a staff where the spells have a common theme of showmanship. Its passive effect is to amplify the user’s voice, but it also has spells like dancing lights and feather fall that can be used as a budget CGI kit for enhancing circus performances. The spell mix isn’t exactly A-list for combat – no direct damage – but the schedule so far hasn’t really suggested that’ll be a problem. Attune to the Ringmaster Staff on performance day; attune to your combat staff other days.

(As an aside: I assume the voice effect can be turned off and on, right? It would really suck if it always amplified the user’s voice and monsters 300 feet away could hear Ateran whispering tactical plans. GET READY, TEAM, WE’LL KICK OPEN THIS DOOR AND SURPRISE THEM!)

After this brief interlude and some Handwave Healing, the party resumes their search of the temple and finds the second fight of the session. Four xulgaths: three grunts and a caster type, and Givzib’s inability to shut up costs them any chance at surprise. This time, the overall challenge was a little rougher, and it was Alhara’s turn in the grinder since most of the early attacks focused on her. You didn’t get a sense of fear exactly, but our heroes did get pretty loose with the hero points and even broke out a few big-gun spells, so it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park either.

That does have its benefits, though. I suppose part of what made this fight fun is it wasn’t just another direct-damage beatdown: we saw some stuff we either hadn’t seen at all before or hadn’t seen in a while. This batch of xulgaths have an added ability where they can inject their stink as a poison, Ateran shows us what a heightened cast of magic missile can accomplish, both sides try to slip some blindness into the mix, and we get a (re)-appearance the old Karvasilon family favorite, Spiritual Weapon. It’s good to see the challenges growing and evolving, as opposed to fighting the same cannon-fodder for four levels, only now they get green helmets.

We also get an uncomfortably detailed description of Darius’ thighs, for some reason. HENCEFORTH ALL SHALL KNOW HIM AS THE THIGHMASTER. Beyond that, let us never speak of it again.

So the party emerges from the second fight fairly unscathed and gets a little more treasure and a little more lore dump. On the good side, we get another bespoke circus-themed magic item: a handkerchief that can transform into an invisible safety net. OK… circus aside, that one’s kinda cool. If Basil didn’t already have wings, I’d have to pick me up one of those. On the more ominous side, there was a human sacrifice in the room that had some sort of mark on it that dissipated on death, but it suggests that it was in the process of transforming into something worse. So the captain will be turning on the THAT CAN’T BE GOOD sign for the remainder of the temple exploration.

Next week… it seemed like there’s still more temple complex to explore, and Givzib’s headcount suggests there are still more xulgaths to find as well. And those spiders he mentioned. But I guess we’ll tackle all of that next time. As always, feel free to stop by our Discord channel 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 Three Ring Adventure S2|19: Puff the Magic Krooth.

OK, I’m gonna start this Talking with a note of personal bragging. By the time you read this (like, literally… my appointment is today), I should probably have a second dose of Moderna in my arm. One step closer to whatever normal looks like, right? I suppose it’s at least show-related in the sense that it’s a step closer to getting back to in-person conventions and maybe restarting my in-person home game and all that goodness. I don’t know. Progress feels good and I’m excited, so I hope you aren’t rolling your eyes too much that I feel like shouting it from the rooftops a little.

While we’re talking about in-person conventions, the president of GenCon posted an update regarding how they’re planning to handle things so far. With the caveat “there’s still five months for things to change”, you can read it here. Cliff’s Notes: capped attendance, more spaces between exhibits, halls closed for 24-hour gaming so they can do overnight cleaning, but still planning on holding it. Also, they lose the Lucas Oil Stadium space just because moving to September conflicts with football season.

I’m going to actually start with the end of the episode because it was mentioned FIRST in the show notes, and Loren’s been low-key fretting in our group chat about what my reaction is likely to be… the “fight”. We’re calling that a fight? Really? I mean, if one person doesn’t threaten to quit, it hardly even counts, does it?

First, as Steve alluded to in the show notes, “our” group (the original Dead Suns/Edgewatch group) has had MUCH bigger blow-ups than that. Now, I tend to not be the center of many of our dust-ups – I’m the quiet Beatle, after all – but even I have gotten salty once or twice. I’ll just say my big personal red-line is people being too aggressive about telling me what to do. I don’t mind a suggestion like “delay until after me so I can buff” but if you’re basically playing my character for me, that’s when I get a little ornery.

When it comes to the Bag of Holding “fight”, I think there were two different arguments here, but the first was mostly just a rules clarification. At one point it SOUNDED like Steve was saying some spells cast into the bag affected everyone and other spells only affected one pocket dimension, but that wasn’t really what he was saying. First, at least when it came to the fireballs, I think he was just generally joking. But even for the other spells, it was more like “if you buff yourself before you enter, yeah, that buff stays with you, but if you cast a spell on someone already inside, it’s a crapshoot whether you can actually target them”. So I think that one cleared itself up once Steve explained it better.

The more big-picture question is whether the idea of using the bag as transportation itself was tactically sound or cheesy. Setting aside the “Did That Ever Happen On T.J. Hooker?” test, I can see why Loren felt it was sketchy, but I do ultimately side with Steve.

The game has a pretty rich history of using extra-dimensional space in weird ways. It was only a month ago Ateran made a magical freakin’ candy house, and we didn’t hear any complaints about that. Heck, for a more apples-to-apples comparison, I’d point to the spell Rope Trick. It’s a 4^th level spell (2^nd-level back in First Edition) that creates an extradimensional space at the top of a rope. You climb up the rope and there’s a little space you can hang out in and take your long rest in safety. So other than the fact that the bag of holding is a smaller space, there’s ample precedent that people can live in extra-dimensional space for short periods of time. If the GM wants to say there’s only a certain amount of air, so you can’t stay in there for long, that’s fair. But the tactic as a whole seems sound.

That said, when I was listening, my concerns were more related to the inconsistent definition of bulk. On one hand, the “general” rules on bulk start by saying one unit of bulk is 5-10 pounds. So that would put a 200-pound human at 20 bulk. On the other hand, there’s a later table that specifies that a Medium creature (aka most humanoids) are explicitly listed as 6 bulk. That’s a pretty large difference. And the bag’s capacity is 25 bulk.

So you see the problem. If you use the “humanoid = Medium creature = 6 Bulk” definition, it’s tight but everyone fits. If you use the “1 Bulk = 10lb” definition, there’s no way all three of those characters fit at the same time. Alhara and Ateran are each probably 1-something, and Darius is built like an NFL linebacker, and those guys are north of 200 pounds/20 Bulk. So it’s either a flat 18 bulk or “anywhere from 40-50”, depending on how you interpret the rule. So I can at least see why it might’ve made Loren’s Spider-Sense go off. Of course, you could also get around that by making multiple trips, but nobody mentioned that option at the time.

And OK… maybe the size of the aperture matters too. Is the Bag Of Holding a big ol’ potato sack, or is it more like a designer backpack? If the former… yeah, jump on in. If the latter… good luck entering and exiting through an aperture that’s probably narrower than the average set of humanoid shoulders.

I think at the end of the day, I’m OK with this as a tactic, as long as it doesn’t turn into a Get Out Of Circumstances Free card… that there’s SOME sort of cost or risk associated with it. If you’re putting your team in the bag and throwing them past hazards willy-nilly, yeah, it does start to get a little stupid. Which is why there should be SOME sort of downside to keep it in check. In this case, the cost was that Hap had to use a fairly powerful magical resource (the flight spell) to make the tactic work. If you’re going to put your friends in a bag and throw it to the other side of an uncrossable chasm, there ought to be a chance (even if it’s small) you short the throw and they fall in. Or maybe the consequence is that there’s an N percent chance the bag can’t handle the strain and permanently breaks. Things like that. I think it only becomes a problem if it becomes an “I Win” button with zero drawbacks or consequences.

Circling back around to the beginning of the episode, that fight with the krooth was kind of interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, I was a LITTLE surprised they bailed on the fight SO quickly. I thought they’d give it a few rounds before retreating. But to be fair, I guess it wasn’t so much a full Sir Robin “Run Away!” retreat as it was luring it to a place where the fight would be on more even terms, and then they happened to switch over to blocking the door when it was proving to be a nastier customer than expected. It’s totally valid that they wouldn’t don’t want to deal with the krooth and the effects of the extra-planar gas at the same time.

The other thing I wrestled with a little is “was it too meta-gamey on their part to let the summon spell expire”? And I’m going to say no for two reasons. First, they seemed relieved and surprised it worked. So either they didn’t realize it was going to expire and it was a surprise to them anyway, or they had the idea but weren’t quite sure it was going to work. In either case, it didn’t seem like they built their entire plan around surviving 10 rounds; they just lucked out. I’ll also give it to them BECAUSE you’ve got two casters in the party, and didn’t Hap used to have a summon spell at one point? (I seem to recall her summoning some useless creature that immediately got one-shotted.) It seems legit that if you can use something, you’d recognize it when it’s used against you.

The other major moving part in this episode is the guardian statue and the door. Based on another campaign with a similar puzzle, I kind of half-expected that one could disarm the statue by posing as a follower of Aroden. So other than some damage from unfortunate turn order, that part of the puzzle is solved. But how do they get past the door? Based on the broken door pieces scattered throughout the room, it looks like somehow breaking the door is the answer, but how do you do that without pissing off the statue again? Giving the statue a command to open the door didn’t seem to accomplish much, but maybe it’s a matter of having the right command. Or… to borrow from video games… is this a thing where you have to make the statue mad, stand in front of the door and taunt the statue, and then dodge the punch so he breaks the door for you? X, X, Triangle, Circle… win!

I guess we’ll find out the answer to all these questions next week, won’t we? As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel 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 Three Ring Adventure S2|18: Ateran’s Pantheon.

Well… we got a whole truckload of lore on the loading docks this week, and we now have a sketch of the main conflict underlying the whole adventure path. Aroden “stole” the xulgaths’ magic rocks (according to them… though even the sages corroborate parts of that story) and gave them to the surface-dwellers, and the xulgaths are now using Aroden’s absence to extract some revenge. Which means the meta-adventure (when our crew is not circus-ing) will be to find the remaining towers and protect the aeon-stones-on-steroids.

First, the whole thing is just such a jarring change coming so close on the heels of Hamlin’s Hots. Let’s just put that out there. I mean, a week ago, and even briefly at the start of this episode, we were joking around about business models so preposterously rigid and family relationships so dysfunctional that no sane person would ever eat at ANY of these restaurants; this week, we’re talking about everyone’s favorite god possibly being kind of a dick and betraying underworld creatures for the benefit of humans and other surface-dwellers.

In fact, that’s one of the single most interesting dynamics of this week’s episode: the opportunity to consider things from the monsters’ perspective is a pretty rare thing. We tend to fall into the mode where adventurers represent good and monsters represent evil, and ne’er the twain shall meet. SOME adventure paths traffic in moral ambiguity, but not many. Certainly in the Edgewatch game, we didn’t stop to consider WHY the hotel manager was murdering his patrons; we just put a stop to it. And that’s USUALLY the default mode these games operate in.

In this case, we have to consider the possibility that “our” side might be in the wrong. If you think about Aroden, two important things to remember are that a) he was/is a man elevated to the status of godhood by his contact with the Starstone, so humanity is his “home team” and b) per alignment, he’s Lawful Neutral… so he’s not automatically “good”. So of course he’s going to use his powers for the benefit of his people and it’s entirely possible that grinding a bunch of under-dwellers between the gears is just part of the cost of doing business to him. So there may be more than a little truth to the xulgaths’ side of the story.

To quote Mitchell and Ness… “are we the baddies?” And if so, how will our party navigate those waters when they get there?

The other thing that set me off down a bit of a rabbit hole was something Hap said when she questioned the purpose of the gods. I realize this is deeper waters than I usually swim in, but it got me thinking about “faith” in the context of these sorts of games. What role does “faith” play when evidence of “miracles” is everywhere around you… possibly even commonplace?

In many religions, there’s this concept of the “leap of faith”. Your logical brain can’t prove something is true, but you give yourself over to it and believe it anyway. But here in Golarion, the most faithful adherents of a faith have almost godlike powers, and the gods themselves (in some cases) walk the mortal world. There’s nothing to “believe” because it’s self-evident. I mean, if we woke up tomorrow here in the real world and Catholic priests could fling fireballs at people… I suspect a lot of people would convert to Catholicism, but then would it be “faith” anymore or just accepting what is evident?

But then again, flip that argument back around on itself. Yeah, the agents of your faith can perform these amazing “miracles”, but then again, so can a lot of other people that DON’T believe in the same god you do. As can dumb monsters that don’t believe in anything. Or you can buy a “miracle” at a store in wand or scroll form. Or have a bunch of people come over and cast a ritual like you were calling a plumber. What sort of effects would that have on people’s faith? What’s the value-add there? “You’re telling me I spent 20 years living this life, and a guy can go buy a freakin’ STICK that can do the same things I can? I’m outta here… at least Cayden Cailean will let me have a beer.”

It’s almost a different flavor of Clarke’s Third Law. Of course, Clarke’s Third Law was (paraphrasing) that advanced technology would appear to be magic to people who didn’t have that level of technology. Similarly, the proof that something is “divine” is their ability to do things that mortals can’t, so how much does their divinity diminish when mortals CAN do the same sorts of things they can? Is there some point at which “gods” risk becoming just the next most powerful listing in the Bestiary? WHAT USE DOES GOD HAVE FOR A STARSHIP?

And, OK, flipping all of that around and coming back to our story, wouldn’t the REAL faithful be the people who are still sticking with Aroden even through his diminishment? In the background lore, Aroden’s power is fading, many of his clerics have lost their ability to use magic, and a lot of his followers have defected to other gods (Iomedae being the main beneficiary). In that context, isn’t that where a true “act of faith” comes in? Sticking with the god whose existence you can no longer prove seems like a braver act than “I’m going with these guys because their Searing Light spells do an extra d6”.

Speaking of which: no, I am not volunteering to play a de-powered cleric of Aroden. At least not as a native class. MAYBE a melee class who USED to be a disciple of Aroden and learned to fight when his magical skills diminished, but a divine caster without spells to cast? Ummm… no. It might be tremendously interesting to roleplay, but the math in Second Edition is just too unforgiving for such a character to be viable. Might as well roll two characters… the low-wattage Aroden worshipper and the character you’ll be playing after that character gets pancaked.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s too deep a rabbit hole to venture into based on one throwaway comment, or maybe I’ll come back to it if PA ever legalizes weed (kidding, kidding… don’t do drugs, kids). But it’s interesting that I found myself thinking about these things that honestly, I’d never really reflected on before.

Or maybe we just need to get back to Hamlin’s Hots. Speaking of which… I’m with Rob. The bit only works if the brothers are 100% committed to the absurdity of their horrible business plans and dysfunctional family dynamics. The minute it becomes a marketing gimmick, it doesn’t have legs anymore, and it’s time to cut to the Terry Gilliam animation.

Anyway, sorry if this week’s entry was a little too esoteric. Next week we’ll get back to our ordinary shenanigans. 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 for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|17: The Gift of Gab.

You know how much I loved the last 10-ish minutes of this week’s episode? Not only did I listen to it twice, to make sure I got as many details as possible, but I’m also gonna break chronological order and talk about it first.

The concept of the RFCCU (Roll For Combat Cinematic Universe) shouldn’t be a stranger to any of you by now – we’ve mentioned it a few times on the shows and in this column. It’s the little pieces of our universe that cross from game to game and show up where you least expect them. Old Woody was probably the first official invention, but others have since taken shape. The Circus crew, in particular, loves restaurants for some reason. And here I was, thinking the most I would get out of this was a joke about how them going out to lunch after almost getting killed felt reminiscent of the shawarma post-credits scene from the Avengers movie.

But no… they gave us SO much more.

First, I did want to give one tip of the cap to Loren for the double dose of Marvel-related sass to Steve. (Sorry, didn’t realize there would be such a Marvel-related theme to this…) Paraphrasing the exchange and condensing the cross-talk:

• S: “You know how Marvel uses alliteration for all their names, right?”
• L: “Yeah, like the Punisher.”
• S: “Shut up, I mean their secret identity names.”
• L: “Yeah, like Frank Castle.”

Gold star. Well played.

As I was listening to this a second time, I think the song is the key moment where things TOTALLY go off the rails. I don’t know if it’s “majority rules” or if it’s because Vanessa had been somewhat reluctantly participating and her jumping in changed the dynamic. But that’s the moment where EVERYONE commits to the bit. At first, you have Rob T. just riffing with Steve as Hamlin, but the rest of the gang is mostly still staying sort of in-character. Rob P. is still playing Ateran, and Loren – while clearly enjoying the mayhem – still attempts to move the game along on a more normal trajectory by having Hap go into Hamlin’s (in-character) to eat. Up to that point, it feels like roleplaying is still nominally in control of the session. But the point at which Vanessa busts out the song… to me, that’s the point at which the scales tip to weirdness for good.

(Can we at least take a second to give Vanessa due credit for coming up with lyrics that both rhymed AND had culinary accuracy? If she’s stumbled, we might have ended up with “broiling milk” or something like that.)

So then Rob starts in with Caleb’s response. For a moment, I thought sanity was starting to re-assert itself. Caleb seemed a little more stoic. Pragmatic, even. He knew his clientele, he’s there for the businessman on the move. Simple no-nonsense food, right? Wrong.

“Go next door to my GARBAGE brother, and sit there with your lazy ass…” First, I should mention that while the phrase “laugh out loud” is generally overused, this actually made me laugh loudly and suddenly enough that it startled my dog. And you can see the remnants of the actual game session dissolve like victims of the Thanos Snap and float away on the wind in favor of the lunacy.

OF COURSE there’s going to be a Larry’s Lukewarms to complete the Trinity. And OF COURSE the one thing Hamlin and Caleb agree on is that they hate Larry. But at the same time… can we at least be honest that Larry’s Lukewarms sounds like the most pleasant restaurant of the three, given the completely wasteful use of magic to keep EVERYTHING room temperature? I’m not sure what FOODS would taste good at room temperature, but it sounds like it has the nicest ambiance. Much better than getting burned by your own plate or your cutlery giving you frostbite. Maybe that’s why Hamlin and Caleb hate him so much. And then the ante is upped again with the fact that Larry is also a disowned sibling of the first two. Simultaneous triplets? I know it’s a world of magic, but… ouch.

Things FINALLY start to peter out as they attempt to expand the Luke-Warm family tree to include sisters fizzles. (Probably for the best. Or at least save it until next time someone in the group needs an armor upgrade. ALWAYS LEAVE ‘EM WANTING MORE.) And then, one of our Patreon live listeners (“AJ”) puts the final cherry on the sundae with his… interesting… T-shirt design proposal. Two things there: first, I ABSOLUTELY believe Rob would wear that shirt, and second, if we meet up at GenCon, I may need to commission a “Caleb’s Colds” shirt with “You know what else is warm? Shit.” on the back.

Meanwhile… oh hey, we also had a fight this week. Ah… gibbering mouthers. For the discerning GM who decided that regular slimes were neither horrific nor difficult enough to fight. And not just one, because that might actually be a fair fight. Let’s do three.

As the party themselves remark at a few points, this fight was a rollercoaster. I don’t want to generalize too much, but a lot of combats in Second Edition tend to be either unidirectional squash matches where the party was ALWAYS going to win, or they tend to have a single inflection point where the party starts slow while they figure out the mechanics of the enemy and stage a comeback after they get their tactics in order.

This fight is one of those rarities that has true ebbs and flows. Right when you think the heroes are up against it, they’d get a really good outcome; then right when you think things were starting to look like they were going their way, things would swing back toward the mouthers. I forget who – Steve, maybe – but someone used the word “cinematic” and that’s probably the word I’d apply here. This was one of the more cinematic fights we’ve seen in a while.

You had Rob getting swallowed early, but you kinda felt like it was early enough in the fight that he’d escape before things got too bad. And sure enough, he did. You had Riley getting swallowed but receiving a Nat-20 bailout to escape at the last possible second. And then you had Ateran – without a Hero Point – getting engulfed and Alhara saving them just before perma-death found its way onto the table. (Even though Alhara herself didn’t have that many hit points left either.)

And OK, it was also a fight with at least one moment of levity – it cracked me up that Vanessa was rolling so much better under the influence of multiple status effects than she did at full strength. So the takeaway is that Alhara needs to keep a stash of poisons around and blind or confuse herself before each fight? That’ll make things more interesting.

So the party does eventually win, they take their lunch break, and we’re at the end of the episode. It doesn’t feel like the mystery of the temple has totally revealed itself, though it’s unclear whether that means a second trip back in, or just having someone more scholarly make sense of the information they already gathered. I guess that’s the part we’ll pick up with next week. As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Also… be sure to stop by Lukewarm Larry’s, home of the endless room-temperature breadbasket.

Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|16: This is Fine.

Oh hey, it’s April Fool’s Day.

We’ve all been through too much this past year to do any crappy pranks, so we’re not doing “X is leaving the show” or “we’re starting over and converting the show to 4E” shenanigans. I’m just too tired for that and I suspect some of you are too. Having said that, I start this week with a confession of a missed opportunity that would’ve been more on the fun side of the coin.

About a week ago, we very briefly kicked around (in our group chat) the idea of an April Fool’s joke: recording an “episode zero” of a new show where we would just use the weirdest character builds we could possibly come up with. The plan never quite achieved escape velocity – there was some enthusiasm, but I think we just came up with the idea too late and people were too busy to slap it together on short notice. (And the lack of artwork or its own theme song probably would’ve given the game away anyhow.) But one side effect of the idea is that in Hero Lab, I’ve now got a cigar-smoking sprite barbarian just waiting for an adventure to come calling. (Runner-up was an azerketi with ifrit heritage who would have a really conflicted relationship with water.)

Alas… someday.

Back in our REAL story, I feel vaguely robbed. When Alhara decided to just throw open the doors to the main temple, I thought we were headed toward, if not TPK territory, at least a hairy fight along the lines of the demon fight in the church that went down to Ateran’s last hitpoint. Steve’s anticipatory glee certainly made it sound that way. But a funny thing happened on the way to the TPK, and we ended up with kind of a “squash match” episode.

Part of that is a built-in issue with “brute”-type monsters. They tend to be big and powerful and hit hard… but they also are easy to hit, and also can’t dodge for crap because Dexterity is something the writers dumped to make them a little more manageable. Easy to hit, easy to crit.

And that actually dove-tails with the second benefit: our heroes rolled into the best possible initiative. Any time your casters can put up almost 150 damage and your melees can set up a defensive position on a chokepoint before the bad guys have even laced up their shoes… that’s a recipe for victory. So now we’ve got half-dead enemies charging through Alhara and Darius to get at well-protected casters. Granted, “well-protected” only lasts until the babau re-appears, but to START the fight, it’s a good position to be in.

And that chokepoint… man. Let’s just dub that The Varus Family Killbox, shall we? Alhara gets to make use of her new attack of opportunity; Darius uses a readied flurry of blows almost as a second attack of opportunity, and it’s good night to the poor unsuspecting dope who decided to test them. This is definitely a tactic we’re going to need to see more of going forward.

So, in light of all of this, do we have to give Vanessa some “crazy like a fox” credit for throwing open the doors at the end of last episode? Thinking about it, if the babau managed to raise some sort of alarm about the party’s impending attack, the spinebreakers had a chance to finish their ceremony and get ready… they may have even gone first… could’ve been a whole different fight. So did Alhara’s impulsiveness last episode actually… (GULP)… help?

Not that the fight was entirely risk-free. The xulgath priestess had the potential to be a formidable opponent, and there’s also the re-emergence of the babau, who shows up behind the casters RIGHT when we were beginning to think it had just fled entirely. Oops. But a caster without meat-shield support isn’t long for the 2E world, and it turns out the babau pretty much only had one hit left in it.

I still wonder what the babau’s relationship was with the xulgaths. Was it there independently, or was it maybe a summoned creature? If it was a summon, that would explain why it used its “big” dimension door to retreat one room instead of getting out of Dodge entirely. But on the other hand, if it was a summoned minion, shouldn’t it have done more to raise an alarm to its master… in which case, shouldn’t the xulgaths have been more ready for the party? If it was independent… maybe it just hoped to hide out there and let the xulgaths take care of the party? Though if it was independent, why didn’t it attack the xulgaths on the way in? Or is it a generic “evil respects evil” thing? I dunno. No sense in over-thinking it. (And yes, I know some of you are already muttering “too late”.)

So the party actually makes quick work of the fight, and there’s this general sense of anti-climax about the whole thing. Yeah, there’s a little bit of loot, but there’s no big treasure trove, nor any bold revelation… what was the point of coming here again? Surely not the joke loot being shoved up people’s butts, I hope. I’m glad we spent two minutes on that, just in case your 93-year-old Aunt Agnes from Tucson didn’t get the joke the first time. “Did that young man just say he put money in his bottom? Gracious! Paul Harvey never used to talk that way on the wireless!”

And JUST when we thought this whole visit to the temple was a waste of time, Alhara stirs the pot again, in a way that would even give Mister Peepers a run for his money. Remember that “crazy like a fox” stuff I was saying earlier? Yeah, forget I said all that. Did you not watch any of the Indiana Jones movies as a kid? Don’t touch anything, Short Round! (We’ll leave how poorly the stereotypes in that whole movie aged for another time.)

The pool starts to froth and bubble. Loren gives Vanessa an epic out-of-character scolding (“why are you like this?”). In character, even Ateran gives Alhara a bit of a side-eye (I’m imagining the pained expression Boromir gives when Pippen knocks the bucket down the well in Moria), and the setup is complete for our second straight Alhara-induced cliff-hanger. Not one. Not two. THREE gibbering mouthers emerge from the pool. If we don’t get our TPK, it certainly won’t be for a lack of trying.

But that’ll be next week. (And hell… maybe the week after that, the way Vanessa is going.) 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 for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|15: Bad Moon Rising.

Welcome back to Roll For Combat: Now With 30 Percent More Combat! No circus acts, no birthday parties… just a good ol’ fashioned dungeon crawl, the way Pappy used to make ‘em.

There’s something interesting I noticed this week about my listening habits. Fair or not, correct or not, Vanessa tends to serve as something of a “canary in the coal mine” for this group. When she’s calm, I’m calm. When she’s worried, I’m worried.

If I had to hazard a guess, I think it probably has to do with thinking – or at least assuming – she has a better grasp of the rules and of various Pathfinder lore than the other players. That’s no disrespect to Loren and the Robs… I tend to assume they have the knowledge an average long-time player has. But Vanessa has actually written Second Edition content for Paizo, so when she says “oh crap”, my ears perk up because I feel like she’s got reasons. At least that’s what I assume my brain is subconsciously processing in the moment.

Steve? Don’t measure anything by Steve’s reaction. He’s playing to the crowd. EVERYTHING that’s about to happen is the worst news ever. It could be Zon Kuthon himself or a lone Level 1 kobold; either one will get the same “Ohhhhh boy… are you guys ready for this? (cackle) You’re not ready for this.”

As far as my Vanessa Concern Barometer: we had two examples of that in this week’s episode: one positive and one negative.

The first was Hap (very temporarily) getting turned to stone-but-not-really-stone. (And really… nobody came up with “Hapsicle”? COME ON PEOPLE.) At first, I was surprised at how nonchalant everyone was being about it. You do know one of your party members suffered The Thing That’s Basically One Step Short Of Permadeath, right? But then I found the calm – at least Vanessa’s – kinda reassuring, at least partly thinking that she knows enough about basilisks to justify such confidence. If she’s not worried, it’s probably not THAT hard to unfreeze Hap.

Granted, the whole “douse yourself in the blood of the vanquished thing” is a little creepy, but even that got defused by Rob T. describing it as “we’re gonna tauntaun this”. And sure enough, a few minutes later, Hap is up and running again, none the worse for wear. It’s a little surprising, but Hap somehow emerged in better shape from having ACTUALLY been petrified than Darius did from having NOT been petrified by a cockatrice at Level 1. How does THAT work? I guess it’s those Level 6 anti-bodies.

Once Hap is up and running again, the exploration of the shrine continues. Things actually seem like they’re going to settle down a little bit as the group pretty much runs roughshod over a pair of xulgaths like they were a speed bump. The most drama we got out of that fight was whether Alhara was going to turn busting through stained-glass windows into a running bit like Cabbage Man from Avatar. (If nothing else, Alhara crashing through a stained-glass window would make a GREAT T-shirt.)

But then came the revelation of the babau, and the other side of the Vanessa Concern Barometer went off.

No, not a baobab… that’s a tree, or the fruit that grows on it.

No, not Babar. Cartoon elephant. Wears human clothes.

Babau.

It was that rollercoaster NO that goes up in the middle that drew my attention: “Oh nooooOOOOOooooo”. You got the sense Vanessa recognized it and identified it as bad news. Which consequently made my brain go on high alert for the rest of the fight. Again, maybe this isn’t fair to Vanessa to put that on her, but it’s kind of how my mind is wired.

And as I cheat and look at the statblock… she’s right to be concerned. A babau has got all the offensive tricks of a stealthier, including sneak attack damage; there’s that trick where it sprays acid on you if you hit it (technically it’s a coating of acid on its skin), and the whole at-will dimension door that it’s already used multiple times. They also have a signature move called “Grievous Strike” which basically consists of loading up two attacks into a single two-action attack that does extra damage and can also inflict Frightened.

Also, now that I have the statblock in front of me, let me re-explain the healing thing with fog of war turned off. As alluded to, if you heal someone who was the target of the babau’s attacks, it does 4d6 mental damage to the babau. He HATES to see his nasty wounds undone. BUT… two caveats. First, it has to be an attack that caused some sort of bonus damage – a crit, sneak attack damage, bonus damage from Grievous Strike – healing damage from a regular attack won’t do anything. (So in this case, healing Ateran wouldn’t trigger the mental damage because that was just a normal strike.) Also, the heal has to be performed within one round: if you heal two or three rounds later, you lose the window. (Also, the effect can only be triggered once per round.)

As scary as it looks – and the initial attack on Darius hinted at a much worse outcome – I feel like the party got a little lucky here, as the babau rolls a “2” at least twice, keeping them in the game. Given the thing’s attack bonus is clearly north of +15, things could’ve been SO much worse. On the other hand, the dimension door ability is proving to be a bit of an annoyance, especially since it also defies attacks of opportunity.

Speaking of dimension door, you may remember we dealt with this back during the succubus encounter back in the temple, but we’ll review it since it may still be in play next week. The regular 4^th-level version of dimension door is just a line-of-sight thing: essentially, battlefield repositioning or crossing a chasm or something. The 5^th-level heightened spell can take you up to a mile, as long as it’s somewhere you’ve been before, but then you’re also immune for the next hour.

And that gets into the big cliffhanger decision Vanessa makes to go throw open the doors to the next area. And… confession time, I was fully prepared to mock her. But as I’m thinking about how dimension door works, there MAY be some method to her madness. The Level 5 DD spell feels like it’s meant for last-ditch ESCAPE. Going one room over seems like the worst of both worlds – you’re not far enough away to be “safe”, but you can’t actually do it again to GET safe for another hour and you might not be able to do the 4^th-level “bounce around the battlefield” thing anymore either, depending on whether the immunity is JUST for the 5^th-level spell or for ANY version of the spell. So you can talk yourself into the idea that the babau went somewhere else entirely and we’re done with it for the time being.

That said, I can’t totally let her off the hook. There’s SO many unknowns that it still feels pretty risky to just rush into the next room. Obviously first and foremost, the babau might actually be in there; maybe “safety in numbers” is all the escape it wanted. Also, we still don’t know ANYTHING about that weird pool of purple liquid. Is that going to become a factor at some point? And of course, a new door very likely means new bad guys to fight. So I don’t want to sugarcoat the risk: it was PROBABLY worth slowing down a round or two and making sure everyone was ready to move forward.

So what’s behind those doors? I guess we’ll have to see next week. As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.