Sunday 19 March 2017

Keep on the Borderlands - The Path of Evil - Session 20



SESSION 20: DAY 8 – CRAGMAW CAVES - EVENING 

Upon reaching the caves they check if their roughly made door has been molested since they were away. And it hasn’t. 

The following table provides an overview of character xp to date. 


Summary of current wealth is provided in following table. Note I’ve converted the supplies at Cragmaw Caves to gp just to make it easier and I estimated the cost of the supplies to build the fortifications. Loot from the expedition to the goblin caves is included down the bottom except for the 4gp which was instantly added to the top section as it doesn’t have to get converted to gold. 


Total consumables in inventory is summarised in the following table.


If you don’t see it in the table then I’ve forgotten about it so you need to let me know. 

In terms of obtaining supplies I reckon we just say that if you want some supplies you previously purchased it. So essentially you can buy basic supplies (ie food and inputs to crafting including writing scrolls or crafting a long bow) whist you’re at the Cragmaw Cave. Lucien if you want you can say that you’ve brought the alchemist kit with you to the Cave. 

If you want to procure good though (eg weapons, armour, a cart of a horse) then you need to go back to Burg Liechenstein. 

If you want to cash in loot then you need to go back to Burg Liechenstein. 

An estimate of the value of the current loot that you’ve got is 100gp for the ears and 90gp for the weapons. You’ll probably get ripped off on the sale of the ears so count on only getting about 70% of that. You’ll receive full value on the weapons. Malandir has a look at the status and Appraising it he reckons it’s worth 50gp. 

If you want to re-equip the men they’ll need to all equipped in the same manner. If one of them at some time in the future becomes special somehow then we can talk about equipping him separately but it wains on my sanity a bit trying to keep so many stats in my head so for now they need to be the same. 

It’ll take two days of rest and casting cure light wounds between Lucien and Kord to completely heal up the party, ie they’ll all be healed up by the end of day 10. After that they can start using their 2 spell slots per day to write some new scrolls. 

In terms of crafting Lucien stated that he was spending 8 hours a day resting, 8 hours crafting and 8 hours adventuring and thus was able to be constantly crafting. I reckon that’s fair enough. The crafting rules are quite restrictive as they take a week to do anything, which I think is harsh, so using the spare time a day to craft I think is ok (and it’ll also simplify things a bit for me). Lucien had stated some a while ago (Day 2) that he was crafting 3 Vials of Acid. On Day 9 I’ll roll to see if he’s achieved that and I’ll deduct the cost at the same time. 


DEW

11 comments:

  1. Hmm, crafting rules seem very harsh ... unless I have read them incorrectly.

    A longbow, DC12,value 75GP so 750SP crafting value. So you multiply your Craft roll by the DC for work each week. Malandir has Craft 5 bows, so max result is a 25, average result is 17.5, for 300SP or 210SP work per week. At that rate, it takes 2.5 - 4 weeks work to make a bow.

    A Mastercraft weapon costs an additional 300GP, or 3000SP, so this adds an additional 10-16 weeks to the work for a bow. Therefore a mastercraft longbow will take 12.5-20 weeks to make!

    20 arrows, value 2GP = 20SP crafting value, or 1SP per arrow. So Malandir can make up to 300 arrows in one week, costing 10GP in materials, but as a minimum roll of 12 to meet the DC (roll of 7 plus 5 for Craft bows) = 144 SP worth of crafting, so 144 arrows.

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  2. Yes, for crafting mundane items (includes acid and masterwork) it does take a looong time. Magic is different, as you can craft 1,000gp per day.

    If the DM wants to go "that route" -- in games that I DM, I allow for expeditious crafting if using thematic/talismatic/special/rare materials (like wood taken from a yew tree that had been struck by elemental lightning or a magic storm, and catgut from a manticore or whatnot...)

    It allows for more backstory to go into item(s) and a story-based reasoning the DM can waive some of the time-gap, but it's DM call.

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  3. Also - you can "Take 10" on crafting, which counts as rolling a 10 and adding your bonus for the final result (if your bonus is high enough that the result will meet the DC.)

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  4. Ya... so Talmark will just twirl his sword around and practice twitching his pecs in an alternating pattern... ;)

    Perhaps Talmark needs a bit of a hobby. I'll have to give him a skill for downtime when he levels.

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  5. Oh, the take 10 is good when Malandir wants to craft arrows. Skill 5, +2 for his tools, add 10 = 17 against a DC of 12. So when he is making arrows, that is 204 arrows in a week or 29 in one day. Making a mastercraft longbow with that rate of work is only some 18+ weeks work!

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  7. Pec lifts - nice.

    Yeah I think we simplify Crafting to say that everything just takes a week no matter what it is. That's one less piece of admin I've got to look after.

    As for arrows don't stress about them. I'm not going to keep track of ammo.

    And given that crafting isn't stressful we'll say that in the week you're effectively taking 10 and thus you can choose to either take 10 or chance your hand and roll (which you would do if taking 10 doesn't give you a high enough score to get over the line).

    If the simplification leads to players taking abuse of the simplified system then we'll re-visit it. The most obvious example would be someone crafting for profit. But apart from that it should be ok.

    The legit uses would include Lucien using it to get access to cheap and varied alchemy outputs and Malandir getting a master crafted bow and master crafted arrows. If Malandir wanted both master crafted bow and master crafted arrows that's two weeks of crafting by the way. Lucien can use alchemy on multiple potions at once but just one potion type per week (say that he's set up an extra large batch of the one type for that week). Of course you've got to have the gold for the process but as we've discussed you don't need to go back to the Burg to pick up the supplies.

    DEW

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  8. Hi, thanks for the clarifications, that seems to be a very pragmatic approach for own use items, and is a good house rule that will allow Malandir to keep himself in normal arrows after creating his masterwork longbow, once he has the necessary 125GP for the materials.

    It would also allow Malandir to, over time, equip the men at arms with longbows and arrows. Each longbow would cost 25Gp in material, and 200 arrows would cost about 7GP (2GP for 20, x 10 then divided by 3).

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  9. It's looking like the things we can use the most of are Cure Lt Wounds scrolls. Why doesn't Kord craft those this week while Lucien crafts the Acid (and if there is time left over, he'll make more Shield of Faith scrolls - Kord and Lucien can pass the healing and shield scrolls back and forth.)

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    1. Sorry when I mean crafting items I was talking about mundane items using the crafting skill. Kord and Lucien can still do the scrolls but they'll be limited to the number of spells that they have that day and each scroll takes 2 hours so a max of 4 a day.

      I think the way that'll go down will be on day 9 and every seven days after that there will be the test for mundane crafted items (eg the acid this week and the master crafted bow and whatever next week). For healing the team that'll take 2 days and for crafting some scrolls over anther 2 days Kord and Lucien will pull together 4 cure light wounds scrolls between them.

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  10. So, the question remains, do we just heal up for a couple of days then head vack in to capitalise on the ogre's death and atracj the goblins, or are we making the trip back to the Burg?

    Malandir votes for hitting the goblins as quickly as we can, less time for them to prepare a nasty surprise for us.

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