Everyone. Including Richard. I'm trusting Lyas work, Aife can get us a hotline to a god and Viserys and Qyburn are not exactly rubes either. But this calls for the inclusion of someone who has absolutely no idea about these things.
[X] Buff everyone to the gills and have them brainstorm a way to tap into the power gathered by the Illithid for their "Drowned God" persona.
-[X] Minimum Goal: Introduce a weakness that prevents the Doom of Wyk by harmlessly discharging all power invested into the ritual into the Ley lines.
-[X] Lesser Goal: Discharge it in a way that the power becomes available for us by the Ferryman and / or the Old Gods.
-[X] Regular Goal: Introduce a backdoor in their construct so that you can take the power of the ritual for yourself, storing it in some fashion to be later used to empower the Stillborn God of the Imperium.
-[X] Power Goal: Make the backdoor big enough that you can not only grab the ritual power, but as much other power, knowledge, souls or whatever else you can get.
-[X] S-Rank Goal: Wrest control of the whole construct from the Illithid to use it as you see fit.
-[X] God-Tier Goal: Also urinate into the Elder Brains brine pool while you are at it.
Everyone. Including Richard. I'm trusting Lyas work, Aife can get us a hotline to a god and Viserys and Qyburn are not exactly rubes either. But this calls for the inclusion of someone who has absolutely no idea about these things.
I think we shouldn't have too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. Richard and the Myrkdreki Twins would be better watching our backs while VIserys, Lya, Qyburn, and Aife confer over the runes and how to alter them to our advantage. The Twins are hardly intellectual lightweights, but there skills, Spellcraft specifically, lag far behind the others, and Richard's even further than that.
Here's what I'm thinking we should do:
1) Viserys, Lya, and Aife can all cast Divine Insight spells, but only Viserys can do it easily multiple times. So Viserys should use his Quick Potion PoSK to create at least seven temporary Divine Insight potions, three for Qyburn and two each for Lya and Aife to supplement their own spells. That's enough for everyone to make at least three leaps of insight with a +15 Insight bonus during their collaboration.
2) Next Viserys uses Ancestral Awakening to learn Investigative Mind and Heroism spells. He would then make a temporary potion of Investigative Mind for Lya, Qyburn, and Aife, then cast it on himself, plus casting Heroism on all four of them as well. Investigative Mind is perfect for this, letting the members of the group reroll their Knowledge and Spellcraft, and Linguistics/Decipher Script checks and take the higher result up to 20 times. Heroism adds a further +2 Morale bonus to the skill checks.
3) Lya uses one of her Uncanny Forethought spell slots to cast a Tears to Wine spell and casts it on a flask of whatever eligible liquid Viserys pulls out of his cloak. This will give everyone a +10 Enhancement bonus on their Intelligence and Wisdom checks. Richard and the Twins would also take a drink from the enhanced liquid so they benefit from the bonuses.
4) Everyone in the group sets their Channel Vigor buffs to the Mind aspect for a +4 Competence bonus to Knowledge skill checks.
5) Viserys uses Wild Arcana to cast a Telepathic Bond spell between everyone in the group, Richard and the Twins included, so that they can confer with one another silently and at the speed of thought.
6) At some point when they deem it necessary, Viserys (using Blood Wish), Lya (using Wild Arcana), and Aife (using Miracle) will each cast a Surge of Fortune spell to add a +2 Luck bonus to their skill checks for a short time, culminating in a Natural 20 on a skill check of their choice before the spell's duration elapses.
7) Viserys and Lya will each, if necessary, use Mythic Power (no more than twice each) to add their Mythic Surge bonus to a skill check (+1d8 for Viserys, +1d6 for Lya).
8) If the timing is right and the situation calls for it, should he fail a Knowledge check, Qyburn will manifest the Call to Mind power augmented to provide a +10 Competence bonus on a followup Knowledge check at a cost of 10 Power Points per use (13 PP - 1(Ring) - 2(Ring) = 10 PP), but no more than three times. The +10 Competence bonus will supersede the bonus provided by Channel Vigor, for an effective gain of +6 on the check compared to the previous attempt.
All told, everyone would have a constant +12 (+10 Enhancement, +2 Morale) bonus to their Spellcraft and Knowledge checks (Channel Vigor bonus, if applicable, is already included in their skills listed below), increasing both of those by +2 (Luck via Surge of Fortune when needed), increasing up to three separate checks by +15 (Insight via Divine Insight), and allowing each of them to make 20 re-rolls on those checks that will let them take the better result. Plus Viserys and Lya's Mythic Surge bonuses. Lya can also use her Moment of Prescience spell in place of Divine Insight, to gain a +17 Insight bonus rather than a +15 bonus.
Relevant skills prior to these bonuses being applied.
@Azel, I'm stealing your plan basically wholesale, but including my buffing plan as outlined above. If we're going to do this, it needs to be done to the maximum level of reasonable cheese.
[X] Use the above outlined buffing scheme and have everyone Telepathically brainstorm a way to tap into the power gathered by the Illithid for their "Drowned God" persona.
-[X] Minimum Goal: Introduce a weakness that prevents the Doom of Wyk by harmlessly discharging all power invested into the ritual into the Ley lines.
-[X] Lesser Goal: Discharge it in a way that the power becomes available for us by the Ferryman and / or the Old Gods.
-[X] Regular Goal: Introduce a backdoor in their construct so that you can take the power of the ritual for yourself, storing it in some fashion to be later used to empower the Stillborn God of the Imperium.
-[X] Power Goal: Make the backdoor big enough that you can not only grab the ritual power, but as much other power, knowledge, souls or whatever else you can get.
-[X] S-Rank Goal: Wrest control of the whole construct from the Illithid to use it as you see fit.
-[X] God-Tier Goal: Also urinate into the Elder Brains brine pool while you are at it.
I think the idea for including Richard is basically like the evil overlord list. Having someone in inexperienced so they might notice something the experts don't.
I think the idea for including Richard is basically like the evil overlord list. Having someone in inexperienced so they might notice something the experts don't.
My version of the plan includes him and the twins in the Telepathic Bond, it just doesn't call for using limited time and resources to buff them further.
EDIT: I added in having them drink some of the Tears to Wine booze, since that's all the product of a single spell and it's a nice bonus that everyone can benefit from.
@Azel, I'm stealing your plan basically wholesale, but including my buffing plan as outlined above. If we're going to do this, it needs to be done to the maximum level of reasonable cheese.
Don't get too hyped, fams.
It was only one fight, across a pretty wide party.
While Shoggoths overlevel us all, we still have a very unfair advantage in gear, so it was a less than equal one in our favor.
From it alone there won't be that much XP.
Had we taken the "trap"-path or fought with the Undead, well...
While we'll still fight one more encounter at the very least, I don't think this is a "Viserys/Lya/Richard levels!"-territory regardless.
Oops, my bad. I was looking at the 3.0 version which didn't specify who you reached out to, and flipped over to the 3.5 version without checking if the fluff changed.
Has Viserys cast a divination spell personally yet today? If not using Path of the Exalted to get the dragon dreams to weigh in on the entire discussion would be useful.
After that using the special intelligence effect of Visualization of the Mind would be helpful. 1 minute's worth of the caster's HD in ranks for something they previously had none in is a hell of a buff.
And as a maximum cheese suggestion: using Army Across Time to summon alt!Viserys and alt!Lyas to contribute to the discussion.
I mean, given how fucked time is here summoning alternative versions of ourselves might just make the whole place explode, but honestly this place would probably be improved by a sudden temporal collapse so I'd still call that a win.
This is going to be fantastic.
