Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S3|19: Rat’s the Way I Like It.
Oh, damn! They’re coming for us this week!
I know it’s largely tongue-in-cheek but I was admittedly surprised that the money disparity between the Edgewatch and Three-Ring shows became such a topic of conversation this week, but hey… here we are.
On one hand, it doesn’t really seem like it should be possible. The math is so tight in Pathfinder, and gear contributes so much to that math, that I assumed that every person writing an adventure for Paizo has a laminated chart telling them exactly how much loot should go in every encounter. It’s always been my natural assumption that this is all carefully calculated down to the gold piece.
On the other hand, there’s certainly some anecdotal truth to it. I have a pretty solid recollection that we got our first round of striking runes around the same time they did, despite their group having a 3-4 month head start on us. So I think there’s SOME validity to the fact that we’re walking away with more cash.
Steve makes a good point about our adventure having some different contours to it. First, there’s the fact that we’re in the capital city, while they’re out in the boonies. I don’t know that Paizo formally takes cost-of-living into account, but jobs in New York City pay better than jobs in Boise, Idaho. There’s also the fact that we’re supposed to be cops, so I think some of the traditional opportunities for looting are just converted to cash payouts – either by the writers of the adventures, or it’s something Steve’s adjusting on the fly. Kill a bunch of xulgaths… yeah, you can take their stuff. “Arrest” a burglar and all the property has to either be held as evidence or returned to the people he stole it from.
On the other hand, I think part of it is also how we spend the money we do get. I notice the Three-Ring group tends to go in a bit more with utility items and consumables, whereas in our group, everyone except Seth/Gomez pretty much just saves for the big combat expenditures – weapons, armor, the occasional healing potion. Gomez is the only one who’s going heavy on consumables, and guess what… he’s also broke compared to the rest of us. So maybe it’s not so much that we get more than they do, as much as it is that they spread it around a little more and we hold our coin for the “big” purchases. So when we can afford the big things quicker, it seems like we have more money.
It’s also kind of a sidebar, but I’d actually be interested in seeing the Battlezoo monster parts system in more detail. Full disclosure: we actually started using it in the not-yet-completed Malevolence show (follow-up to the Plaguestone game), so I already HAVE seen it a little bit. But since that’s still in scheduling limbo, maybe the circus show would be a good place to kick the tires. And it would be neat to experience it from the outside as a listener. From what experience I had with it, it seemed like it could be interesting.
I will say, that the monster parts system FITS the circus show a lot better than it would fit ours. The basic premise of the system is that you’re replacing gold and traditional loot with harvested critters that you can turn into upgrades. As a concept, that fits a lot better the further you are from civilization. When you’re a week out into the woods, the idea that there’s a conveniently-placed shop that can buy and sell hundreds or thousands of gold worth of loot is a little contrived. A system that lets that transfer from loot to usable weapons happen organically is a welcome addition. Conversely, if you’re in the big city, there’s lots of shops who can do that work for you. (And also, we’re officers of the law fighting a lot of humanoids… not sure we should be chopping those up for body parts.)
So… I don’t know how serious they are about it, but consider this to be me casting my vote to turn on the monster parts system at the next major milestone.
So, OK, all of that is behind-the-scenes stuff. This week, it’s kind of a short episode, as the team investigates what’s left of the aeon tower.
The first major encounter of the show is a shuln… and yes, if you’ve ever seen a naked mole-rat, that’s a pretty accurate description. (Which is amusing for me on a personal level because of my daughter. She loves almost all animals and wanted to be a vet at one point… but the naked mole-rat is the one animal that creeps her out.) In the context of the game, shuln’s kind of a pain in the ass because they destroy armor. Not quite as bad as a rust monster – which also messes up your metal WEAPONS – but it can be an added cost drain and inconvenience to have your armor damaged or ruined mid-adventure.
For most groups. But since this group is almost all clothies (except Alhara), it ends up not being that big a deal. Except for Darius prancing around in the nude, of course. IT’S THE STANCE WITH NO PANTS.
The negative effects of the shuln are ALSO mitigated by Hap hitting one of her biggest single-target spells ever: she’s done more damage against groups, but I think 104 damage is a new single-target record. It turns out to be about half the shuln’s hit points in one shot, and the team is able to take the rest of them down in a single round. So… so much for the shuln. Thought that was going to be a tougher fight than that.
So the exploration continues. The initial investigation of the aeon stone doesn’t really give any hints as to what’s going on. The machine that was draining the last one doesn’t seem to be here, so clearly something else is happening here. Our team’s investigation takes them into what appears to be a golem workshop, with a bunch of golem hands on a table. THAT CAN’T BE ANYTHING BAD, RIGHT?
And like clockwork, the golem hands start moving and making noise. (I can’t be the only one who thought they should’ve started snapping their fingers in unison like in West Side Story, can I? Stay cool, golems!) So… the captain turns on the “something bad is coming” light, and we’re momentarily given a sneak preview of next week’s fight… a pair of dwarven ghosts.
And that’s where we’ll leave it. Since they didn’t use much resources against the shuln, they end this week around the same place they ended last week: a little low on healing, but otherwise still fit to fight. I strongly suspect Ateran has some tricks up their sleeves for dealing with ghosts, but when in doubt, another of those 100-point blasts from Hap would work too. While you’re waiting for next week’s episode, 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.