Levelling

In our Council of Thieves game last night, our party finally hit 8th level.  This is somewhat of a milestone, because I don't think I've been in a campaign that lasted this long.  I think it's a milestone for GM Jared (KnightErrantJR) Rascher too. 

So I'm trying to pick out what my bard (Chesterfield Agincourt Smythe - the "t" is not silent, but it is diminished.  Pretend you are going to pronounce the "t", but then don't.  It's an affectation.)  is going to do.  At this point, I really can't see him hitting any prestige class.  I briefly thought about harrower, because it looks so durn fun, but the bard is so much a secondary caster that losing all of the bard class advancement and only gaining new spells would really hurt.  (Sometime in the future, I'd love to play a Sorcerer or Wizard slash Harrower.  Maybe even a cleric.  But not my Bard.)

So he's Bard 8.  At 8th level, he gets one stat increase.  He's got a 24 Charisma (including a +2 headband).  All of his other stats are even numbers, so nothing is going to mean an increase to a modifier.  I'm probably just going to put the +1 into Charisma, bringing it to 25.  Either the campaign will last until 12th level when he'll hit 26, or I'll buy a Tome and bring it up magically.

He gets 9 skill points, which I'll used to bump Linguistics, Spellcraft, Use Magical Device, and three different Perform skills to keep them maxed out.  Then I'll distribute the other three points into maybe perception.  At 10th level, he's going to get to use another perform check to substitute for a skill, and I'm thinking Dance will give him Acrobatics and Fly, so it might be good to start putting ranks into Dance.  So I'll go 2 points perception, one point dance.

Spells:  Here's where I'm having trouble deciding.  Chesterfield gets one more 3rd level spell, and one 2nd level spell.  He can also retrain one spell.

Leading candidates for 3rd level spell: Charm Monster,  Haste, Major Image, or Slow.

Charm Monster plays into my having Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (Enchantment).  Haste is a huge party buff (that doesn't help me at all).  Major Image is the big big brother to Silent Image, and Slow is a huge de-buff for all the bad guys.  Chesterfield already has Scrying and Confusion (which did awesome work against a gang of rogues last night!!!).  I'm thinking that I'll take Slow at 8th level, Charm Monster at 9th level, and then Haste/Silent image for my extra spells at later levels.

Candidates for 2nd level spell: Actually, Calm Emotions looks to be really good.  It could potentially end a fight before it begins.  I've seldom used Chesterfield's Enthrall or Ghostbane Dirge spell, so I might trade one out for Gallant Inspiration (+2d4 applied retroactively to a failed attack or skill check!!) 

Other choices?  Hmm.  I think that's it.  I get some hit points.  I get more rounds of bardic performance per day.  I get another +1 to all my knowledge checks (8th level/2=+4 to knowlege checks).  The will save versus my music goes up.

The only problem with this character is that I don't have any idea what he's going to be when he grows up.  I mean he just slowly accumulates these abilities, and spells that he knows.  But there's no goal for him.  No "when he hits 10th level, he's going to have this feat chain, or this combination, or whatever".  Maybe this is a good thing.  As a bard goes, he's top notch in party support.  He can buff party members, screw over the enemy, and make skill checks like nobody's business.  (Other than failing a DC43 Diplomacy roll last night.  He would have succeeded if I had remembered that I had Timely Inspiration that would have retroactively added +2 to his skill check.  Argh!!)

I'm having fun playing this character, and hopefully we'll actually get to finish this campaign.  (Hoping Jared has no immediate family/personal/professional troubles that cause the campaign to end!)

Virii

Yep.  It's that time of year.  At least once a year, I get sick with something.  Tuesday, I had a tickle in my throat that I just put down to an maybe having scraped the back of my throat with a popcorn bit.  (You know, those little bits of the covering of the popcorn kernel...).  Wednesday morning, I woke up, and instantly knew that I wasn't that lucky.  Yesterday I was mostly miserable.  Today is about the same.  Following my lovely and brilliant wife's advice, I took Advil, which helped.  (I know that "Take Advil" doesn't seem like particularly brilliant advice, but she knew enough to know that I wouldn't have thought of it myself.) 

Today, I've taken Advil, Aspirin, and my usual daily assortment of blood pressure/heart meds.  I still have this headache that feels like a combination of high stress (muscles around neck and skull pulled tight) and high blood pressure (kind of like my left eyeball wants to pop itself), but it's down to a dull stabbing pain.

I'm hoping that I'll be all better by Monday.

I also found out last night that the meeting that I was traveling to week after next has been moved to next week instead.  And I've already got my plane tickets, and my equipment won't be there nearly in time for me to do anything worthwhile next week.  So I'm keeping my original travel date, and just missing the meeting.  (I need to do experimenting and self-educating, which was the secondary reason for the trip).

Naming...

Someone suggested that since we don't have a good way to travel together, we should get a Zeppelin.  This is such a cool idea.  (Okay, it would be filled with ordinary air (or even have the whole interior spaces be usable space!), and have anti-grav generators to lift it.  But still!!!!) Oh, and it would need to have a teleport pad in it.


I was thinking about names, and trying to get ideas.

I come up with

The Jimmy Page
SwanSong
Sarcastic's Folly (goes over like a lead baloon...?)
The Fifth Dimension ("up up and away, in my beautiful balloon...")
The 100th Luftballon (Maybe Dr. Strasser would like that name.)
New Cap City (from the show)

Any ideas?

How many build points would a Zeppelin Base be?

Hmmm...

Mister Sarcastic takes an Inopportune Nap

The reorganization of Team Falcon is still shaking itself out.  Bureaucracy moves slowly, and even Mister Sarcastic can't seem to speed it up.

As the team takes a couple of days without strife to get back to what they might consider normal, Mister S attempts, but fails to get an approving nod from his newly hired boss Agent Randall to "stir the pot" by giving information about the Dreamcatcher taking the souls of the Auntie Agony clones to either Usurper, or Auntie Agony.

Strobe, while walking between classes witnesses a rather large explosion in the physics lab at her college.  She contacts the team, and Mister Sarcastic attempts to coordinate the response before teleporting himself on scene.  He and Strobe enter the lab, which is filled with smoke, and a very loud banging noise.  Strobe is shot at by a centaur-like creature outside of the lab, and while Mister S offers to assist her, she states that she can handle the shooter while S goes to investigate.

Sarcastic continues into the lab, and calls out through the smoke, attracting the attention of two rather large rather strong goons.  (Later identified as The Hatchet, and Sun Burst).  These guys quickly take Mister S from completely healthy to knocked out.  To add insult to injury, they throw him onto the approaching HURT van, completely taking him out of combat.

The rest of the team arrives, along with a bunch of agents from ACME, intent on stealing a superweapon that was being developed at the lab.

Team Falcon (minus Mister Sarcastic) then proceeds to take apart the acme gang one villain at a time (including a very fun segment where Strobe essentially flirted with Sun Devil into taking out ACME agents for her).  Doctor Strasser used his entropy field to great effect destroying or damaging whatever came in contact with him.  Even Max did some work as a UAV battlefield eye in the sky.

Eventually, once all the enemy were bugging out, Stephanie roused Mister Sarcastic.  The centaur, now found to be named "Sagitarii" had loaded the van, but it was found to have been disabled in its collision with Stephanie.  (Somehow she needs "Weapon Proficiency:Van").  A short negotiation ensued, some cash changed hands, and the weapon was saved.

Thus ended the battle.

Storyline wise - this seemed like a great way to introduce our newest PC, Sagitarii - Mercenary Centaur-Archer with bills to pay.

Random Pointed Question

Why is it that since Josh Frost left Paizo, and his role as OP Campaign Manager was filled by not one, but two people, that the rules of that game have become even less clear, and that every single rule now appears to be up for grabs?

Shackled City Photo

We had our bi-weekly Shackled City game tonight.  We've been underground for 3+ sessions now, without any end in sight!

Here's one scene from tonight's festivities:

The party has just barged in on a lovely tiefling woman wielding some ugly axe-type thing.

I thought the photo looked very action-oriented when taken at the very low angle. 

We defeated her handily, but shortly thereafter lost a party member who wandered away to explore on his own.  His brother in the party appeared to take it quite hard, and my character, the old halfling cleric named Nathaniel Pennywhistle has taken it upon himself to counsel the young man back to mental health.

Random Thoughts

Realization:

I'm very comfortable putting up with all kinds of nuisances as long as I know that I'm not expected to do anything about them.

also:

The key to happiness is low expectations.

and from my son:


I try not to let things bother me.  (If there's an entire philosophy, or way of life that you can sum up in eight words, this is it.)