XCrawl Planning Room

[O4rfish]

Level 11: http://pastebin.com/MPUjaMCp

loadout upgrades: purchased Sunglasses of the Eagle (+5 percep), applied Lens Film of Gaze Aversion to them; enchanted Cloak of the Condor with Resistance +2; upgraded V-shaped Earring of Charisma to +4.  Purchased a few assorted scrolls.
At this point, Brock's saving throws are reliable enough for a MLB bullpen. 

Feat: Discordant Voice
Brock has learned to combine the vibrancy of music with the FoF-recognition of magic.  Whenever he is using a supernatural bardic performance (such as Inspire Courage), he and his allies within 30 feet deal additional damage to targets within 30 feet of him: 1d6 sonic damage on natural and manufactured weapon attacks. 

Spells learned:  Dispel Magic and Calm Emotions (from Human Bard FCB). 

[Amraphenson]

Level up.

As she tends to, Maya disappears for a day or two sometime after everyone returns from McCarthy's mansion. When you see her again, it seems she's made more alterations! But this time around it feels more like a clean up job. Her grafts and bits look cleaner and better integrated with her body.

Of course the real changes aren't obvious. Better integration with Evelynn has bumped up her bite and claw weapons by a dice. She's also retrained one of her older feats, losing Weapon Focus (Bomb) for Two Weapon Fighting, and has picked up Holy Bomb as a new bomb variant. Holy Bombs deal good aligned divine damage, and evil creatures hit by them must save or be staggered.

She's also learned 4th level extracts, and has a fun new preferred form for when she uses her usual transformation extracts. On top of that, she's picked up a cloak of resistance and a Bloodrock, identical to Dot's. Easier to maintain when you can make your own restoration pots.

[Hello Purvis]

95% chance I won't be around, due to sleep issues.

[Amraphenson]

TEXAS BABY.
edit: for real synopsis
We wrapped up the Samuels Mansion and went back to our base, where we contacted Senator Frisk and recuperated. After further research in Dot's bunker, Maya and Dot's magical girl troupe came to the conclusion none of us were happy to hear:

by using the same method Ebondread used to bind himself to a blade, we concluded that McCarthy had become a lich and that his public assassination was definitely not the last we'd see of him. After reporting this to Frisk, we put our allies into action and prepared for the Crawl Semi-finals...

which were rescheduled to Texas. We and our npcs flew over, mingled with the local teams, and were pulled into a happy circus crawl curtesy of (the asshole) DJ Faces. It remains to see whether or not we'll make it out in one piece...

[Iced Fairy]

A reminder there's no game this Saturday.

[PX]

I leveled up
I got a Tiger

[Iced Fairy]

Five of the other semifinals have already been completed.  Most required judges to decide the winners, as casualties have been generally light.  Faces is fixing the average it seems.  The teams that are in are:

Firestorm
The New York Marauders
Might and Magic
Faceroll
Gaea's Sworn

There are four more teams to be chosen after yours.

Also - You need to think of things to do over your 3 day break.  You've got the lovely city of... okay you're in Texas and it sucks but you've got three days and bored monmusu/magical girls.  You better think of something.

[Hello Purvis]

Grand Theft Auto

[PX]

Out for Otakon

[O4rfish]

Over our break, we avoided getting food poisoning. Room service delivered wine and cake, which Maya discovered was frosted with malobacterial icing. We investigated the local bakery, and discovered the baker's corpse and an explosive rune.

Brock received a message from Scarlett Belle asking him to meet her in the park. Due to a misunderstanding the party was there way too early to meet, but just in time to see a hired mage make some preparations which Annie disarmed.

At the appointed time, we only met a vampire (Faces' uncle) and an undead jester. Maira's sunfire arrows were able to dust the vampire.
The police later informed us that Faces' uncle still unlived. Perhaps an impostor was involved.

[Iced Fairy]

So yeah!  The finals are slowly approaching. 

So, first question - Do you want me to drop sideplot bombshells on the side?  Or do you want to wait for Saturday.  All of this will be more bookkeeping challenges, and we'll do the RP portions during game, but I wanted to check to see if you wanted the shocks then in character or now with repeats in character.

Second - A warning, I'm not gonna be able to juggle a huge number of characters effectively, and you're going into the finale with like 20 NPCs, so a lot of the other teams are gonna be backgrounded.

Third - make plans for your gear and whatnot.  And if you're bringing illegal gear for a "demon apocalypse" scenario how are you getting it there?

[Hello Purvis]

I think I prefer them on Saturday, we can gawk at the others that way.

[Amraphenson]

We also need to vote on who gets the Con +2 Manual.

Loot list:
Cash: 125000gp (So 21000gp each)
Potions:

• 2 CMW
  4 Cure Disease
  3 Fox's Cunning
  3 Invisibility
  4 CSW
  3 Bear's Endurance
  3 Restoration
  Lesser Restoration
  3 Cat's Grace
  Delay Poison
  Jump
  Fire Resistance
  ?+1 Water Breathing
  

Equipment:

• Ring of protection +3 (Annie'd)
  Manual of Bodily Health +2 (!!!)
  Omniweapon +4 (Annie'd)
  30 +3 arrows (Brock 10/Maira 20)
  Bracers of Armor +6 (Annie'd)
  wand of csw (12 charges)
  +3 Composite Bow, matches strength, true strike 1/day
  Cloak of Elvenkind
  +3 Keen longsword
  Darkvision Goggles (one each)
  Ring/Gauntlets/Belt/evil shovel/potion from undertaker ripoff
  +4 Omniarmor
  Adamantine Bastard Sword +3
  Shield of Lightning Protection (Light/Heavy?)

Fun Prizes:

• Year's worth of car wax
  "Cyclone" Motorbikes
  Custom Sword coupon
  Kitchen sets
  Trophies
  Regalia
  Year's worth of anti-pest products
  Arlington Cemetery plots

[O4rfish]

Level up: http://pastebin.com/VMkHvv1n
FCB: skill point

Out of the loot list, Brock calls dibs on a Cure Disease potion and a Restoration potion.
If the +3 Composite bow is a Shortbow, he might switch to it from the +1 Sonic-while-speaking shortbow, but it's not a straight upgrade.
I looked at how magic bows and arrows work in Pathfinder, and it looks like arrows can only overwrite quantities or add qualities the bow lacks.  Since Maira's bow is already +3, it might be useful for her to give the arrows to Brock.  (he wouldn't ask for them back, but OOC it makes more sense for him to use them)
He could possibly make use of the Omniarmor.  If it can become special materials such as Mithril, and if it can form armor spikes as well, it would be an upgrade from his current armor.

I WOULD say we should use the Adamantine sword as a digging and wall-breaking tool, but we're in an Xcrawl campaign where that's forbidden.

With gear upgrades: http://pastebin.com/rCLeixNk
Belt of Physical Perfection
Gloves of Reconnaissance

[Hello Purvis]

What's this evil shovel? I like shovels and evil.

[Stuffman]

The manual should either go to Annie because she comes closest to dying the most often, or to Maya because she's our medic and she goes down it's bad times for everyone. I'm leaning Maya.

I'd like to have the Omniarmor, it would free up a lot of WBL for me. (While I would seriously benefit from an improved ranged option, Dot is not proficient with bows.)

[Amraphenson]

Level Up

Nothing on the loot list particularly matters to Maya, beyond the potions. She'll take and store anything you guys don't want specifically since she can use them multiple times with Alchemical Allocation; meanwhile, she'll pick up a wand of Heart of the Metal (12500) because she can see needing the ability to turn things cold iron. Extract wise she's learned Breath of Life and Echolocation. If anyone on the team bites it she can raise them within one round.

Personally she's upgraded to Greater Mutagen by further developing her internal energy reserves, allowing her to create a more drastic and effective transformation whenever she activates mutagen; apparently giving her the Manual gave her the last bit of inspiration needed to make this breakthrough.

The rest of her money and whatever WBL Annie is throwing at her is going to expanding her menagerie of bosom buddies, which should be the rest of Lily's old handler's group (besides the evil parrot lady.)

[Stuffman]

Dot realizes that Face's shenanigans in Texas may make for a good opportunity to push the party's agenda, and writes the following BLOG POST upon returning home:

Faces, that fucker! (╯?□?）╯︵ ┻━┻

We knew he was pulling all kinds of shady shit, but we had to power through it because the Silver Snakes were absolutely committed to getting into (and winning!) the Grand Finals. I can't talk about the specifics right now because the investigation is ongoing but I definitely would've walked if this weren't the qualifier. He was crazy to attack us, luckily the team noticed he wasn't wearing his noncom badge when he approached us. It must've been a big shock to the audience... (ﾟｰﾟ;)

The Harbingers didn't even get to do their run. I think they're getting a new venue for their qualifier, I don't know if they'll have to start from the beginning though.

Condolences to anyone who lost one of their favorite crawlers in that bullshit dungeon (っ◞‸◟c)

Getting to the point, there's something I want to point out. Check the video at the start of the third day of our run. They dubbed over it with cheering sfx but you can see the audience is really nervous and not half as hype as you'd expect for the last day of a grand finals qualifier. You could make up a lot of reasons for that but I think it's pretty clear it's because of how high the death toll was for Face's crawl.

I know XCrawl is a blood sport but I really don't believe the audience comes to see people die. They want to see great battles and big stunts and escapes from crazy traps. If the DJ is planning on people getting killed something is wrong. There's got to be a better way to punish crawlers for losing. Dunk us in tar, polymorph us into alpacas, destroy our clothes (that one seems pretty popular （;;￣Д￣） ), whatever. I think it would make XCrawl a lot more appealing to the average viewer.

Anyway, I saw enough death in Texas, so I'm going to be bringing a special "no kill" mindblade to the Grand Finals. That doesn't mean I'm going easy! I'll knock out the monsters in one hit!! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ I just want to prove we can put on a great show without body parts flying everywhere. I hope we can get a DJ with good taste, too.

Well that's all for now, we have a lot of work to do to get ready. You probably won't hear from me again until the Grand Finals. The Silver Snakes are gonna take it! Watch and see!

P.S. Did you all like my cosplay outfits? My friend is an anime con veteran and is making them for me. Look forward to the next one!

[Iced Fairy]

And so Dot starts a blog firestorm between XCrawl purists.

[O4rfish]

According to the book, there IS a nonlethal Xcrawl: Division IV, which is mostly fun boffer events for ordinary people to try Xcrawl for themselves. Rich kid's birthday? instead of renting a swim park, host a Crawl!  Generally there aren't many spectators for those aside from family.

The book suggests level breakdowns as follows: 1-3 in Division IV; 4-6 in Division III; 7-10 in Division II; 11-15 in Division I; and 16+ in the Unlimited class of crawls. Divisions 1 2 and 3 all are potentially lethal at about the same rate, assuming players of matched skill. 

The Unlimited class is for Faces's style: lethal to just about everyone.  Those crawls aren't part of the seasonal circuit, and they still don't include things like assassinating Crawlers during off hours (probably).  The book describes a beholder who escaped, took Ronald hostage, got him to promise to make it a DJ, and broadcast the promise over the airwaves.  Quote from it: "Once again this year I promise only this: the most honest portrayal of small-scale genocide that I can muster. With all of my black heart I promise no mercy save that which your gods deem fit to leave you with. And as always, I invite all the families of the adventurers to share my box with me during the game. I'll even supply the tissues."

[Iced Fairy]

The level spread is different in our campaign but yes.  Rank IV crawls also are the college circuit, which gets views out of school pride.  So Dot has a slightly larger backing for her blog post to work with.  But the /xc/ board on 4chan is still gonna rail about SJWs.

[Hello Purvis]

God there actually would be Social Justice Wizards and Social Justice Buffers, wouldn't there?

[O4rfish]

The Xcrawl Season Finals: The Emperor's Cup presented by DJ $plash and Dominos did not fall out as we expected. Turns out, McCarthy dragged the entire finals into the Abyss (or a nearby demiplane) at the very start! 

Now we have to rescue our friends and fans and coCrawlers from demonic clutches, unpuzzle a labyrinth, break a ritual, and gain favor with the gods, all while using nonlethal tactics. 

[Amraphenson]

We had everything protected!...besides the nobles.

[Iced Fairy]

So!  In order to make your navigation easier to understand, I figure I'll explain the maze rules for the Ivory Labyrinth, and the rules for the ritual.

Maze Rules:

So actually walking around a maze in game sucks.  It takes forever and the maze is magical anyway.  To handle that the following rules have been designed to make the maze a challenge while focusing on the actual interesting parts of the journey.

The maze is based around "rooms."  Basically locations of interest.  A "room" might be a massive open cavern, or a small subchunk of the maze with a dozen hidden passages.  Certain "rooms" are linked to each other, which means you can attempt to move between them by traversing the maze.  Or you can just search the maze for points of interest.

Traversing the maze is a survival check.  Each check takes a certain amount of time (1d6x10 minutes for example) and DC (20 for example) based on the part of the labyrinth you're in.  Success means you arrive at the "room" you were hunting for (or a random location of interest if you just were wandering).  Failure means you have to make another check, expending more time (and maybe getting jumped by monsters).

------

The ritual :

At this point the only deaths that matter are ritual deaths.  For example, people who die because of Wrath in the Wrath area, people who are killed by Lust in the Lust area, etc etc.  Obviously it's a bit loosely worded, but the details matter.  Sacrifices must be non demonic humanoids (Maya just barely counts.  Jane does not.)

Each successful sacrifice will boost the final ritual.  Successful sacrifices will be demonstrated by the symbol of Baphomet appearing by the sin rune in the central chamber.  This final stage of the ritual can last 2-4 months before shattering.  While that means you can in theory just hole up in the green room until everything ends, it's likely McCarthy and his minions will start attempting to kidnap/murder/sacrifice civilians if you wait too long.  (Well more civilians...)

[Iced Fairy]

Important things I was too tired to mention yesterday :
The arena is just part of the spectator area, not the full crowd.  There are only about 25,000 people there and alive not the full 2000000 spectators.
Fortunately for sanity one of the clerics in the crowd busted out a lesser planar ally and negotiated prices down to miserable instead of insane.  The place can probably go a week.
Lily will point out to those attempting to hide the truth from Dot's crew that this will be youtubed if any of the audience survives.  Camera phone quality but...
Lisa's looting up magical arrows

Amusing things of note :
DJ $plash was not supposed to be part of that set.  The XCrawl room was a random encounter with a 1% chance of happening.  The fact that you somehow triggered it is proof that Koa is sentient.
Your party was a CR 16 encounter, by the rules.

[Amraphenson]

Status Update:
We got the hell out of the Lust chamber, retrieving half the Red Hots and Might n' Magic along the way. Thanks to said Red Hots the Lust chamber has succeeded, but not much we can do about that.
Along the way back to the 'hub' we retrieve some of our monsters, and once we reach said hub we are not happy to find that the Greed chamber has also succeeded...and the Gluttony chamber has Jubilex's mark shining instead of Baphomet's. That's bad; the Drowning Sorceress' notes tell us that not only does it make the ritual less likely to succeed when there's another Prince getting involved, there's a significant chance of space-time explosion happening if that stays.

We enter the Greed chamber (where the New York Marauders FUCKED UP) to save Dot's magical girl squad, and succeed in doing so. Along with that we also manage to secure a good chunk of the crowd and strike a deal to provide for them while we finish the rest of this bullshit.

[Stuffman]

It may be worthwhile to spend a few hours relocating everyone in the break room to the arena. The entrance is probably easier to guard, and the added amenities means going to the bathroom wouldn't require an armed expedition.

[Amraphenson]

We decided to not move people out of the green room because Dot's Augury said NO

Here's the rundown of the chambers and where people are:

Saferoom:
Inhabitants:
-Jane, Treya, Agamede, Milo, Ichiro, Lisa, Lily
-Gaea's Sworn, The Bold, Faceroll, Might and Magic, half of Red Hot
-Might and Magic + Faceroll are scouting
-Red Hot is recovering and gearless
-Firestorm is recovering
-Lumina and co.
-XCrawl crew

Arena/Greed:
-Status: Baphomet Success
Inhabitants:
-Good chunk of the crowd
-DJ $plash
-Mimiko (variable)
-Ichigo, Sasha, Diana, Cynthia, Mary, Gonzo, Jairia
Victims:
-New York Marauders

Lust:
-Status: Baphomet Success
Inhabitants:
-None
VIctims:
-Other half of Red Hot

Gluttony:
-Status: Thwarted
Inhabitants:
-None
Victims:
-None
Dead:
-Harbingers

Wrath:
-Status: Thwarted
Inhabitants:
-None

Envy:
-Status: Thwarted
Inhabitants:
-None

Pride:
-Status: TBD
Inhabitants:
-Unknown

Sloth:
-Status: Thwarted
Inhabitants:
-None

Unaccounted Teams:
-Kodiak (Were adjacent to McCarthy when shit went down)

[PX]

May (Probably will) be late tonight