A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

[Crake]

...gotta be honest, while maybe a very IC thing to do, I just wanted a massive slaughterfest, not "turn 2-3 outta 5 enemy cities onto the others" :/

Lest of all, I can see one city being "eh, they won't matter whatever happens, even if they stay Undead".
Can't say that about 2-3 cities.

We've to actually invest into keeping this place stable if we grab any of the others.
Ugh.

[X] Crake

Regardless of my feelings and wanting to kill lots and lots of Undead with no impunity, I'm not really seeing a way forward with this U!Queen-lady we've met, without being as diplomatic/reasonable as possible with the other cities.

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I agree with Tarrangar, mostly. It's a big investment, but it greatly reduces our losses, losses I don't really think we can afford to take given the scale of the threat in Sarnath. In addition, the region will be at least somewhat productive and protected against intrusion in the aftermath, and greatly disposed toward us. And in a pinch, for the big apocalyptic threats, we get some more really tough PCs to throw at the problem since it is in their best interest to help us with those.

 

[tarrangar]

I agree with Tarrangar, mostly. It's a big investment, but it greatly reduces our losses, losses I don't really think we can afford to take given the scale of the threat in Sarnath. In addition, the region will be at least somewhat productive and protected against intrusion in the aftermath, and greatly disposed toward us. And in a pinch, for the big apocalyptic threats, we get some more really tough PCs to throw at the problem since it is in their best interest to help us with those.

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How big the investment will be also depend on things, if we're lucky my sacrifice plan can pay a good deal of the material costs, and we don't know how many administrators are amongst the undead, so the manpower cost might not be too dire either.

 

[Tomcost]

I personally love the idea of not only getting rid of the undead threat, but gaining some provinces in one fell swoop. It also helps us to build the theme of diversity in our Imperium.

Anyone has a chance to join us. If you haven't joined us then it is your fault.

 

[BronzeTongue]

As an aside, my latest spell trawling run ten face first into some ridiculous bullshit today that I'm not sure has come up in the thread before. Spell Scourge: will save or lose all harmless spells currently effecting you. If you don't have at least one, eat 1d4 rounds of confusion. So I guess we need something to protect us from that now, because losing all buffs mid combat would suck.

 

[Duesal]

...gotta be honest, while maybe a very IC thing to do, I just wanted a massive slaughterfest, not "turn 2-3 outta 5 enemy cities onto the others" :/

Lest of all, I can see one city being "eh, they won't matter whatever happens, even if they stay Undead".
Can't say that about 2-3 cities.

We've to actually invest into keeping this place stable if we grab any of the others.
Ugh.

[X] Crake

Regardless of my feelings and wanting to kill lots and lots of Undead with no impunity, I'm not really seeing a way forward with this U!Queen-lady we've met, without being as diplomatic/reasonable as possible with the other cities.

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I am also a bit sad about it, but this queen is very neat and she'll be amazing as a vassal if we can convince her. Also fingers crossed for Sarnath, there'll be a lot of XP there.

 

[egoo]

As an aside, my latest spell trawling run ten face first into some ridiculous bullshit today that I'm not sure has come up in the thread before. Spell Scourge: will save or lose all harmless spells currently effecting you. If you don't have at least one, eat 1d4 rounds of confusion. So I guess we need something to protect us from that now, because losing all buffs mid combat would suck.

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Viserys.
Losing a Willsave.


[/jk]

 

[BronzeTongue]

Even if we get most of the cities I was under the impression that there were a lot of more or less sub-sapient undead running around across the region. That should be plenty of slaughter.

 

[Goldfish]

So I've been looking over some stuff for permanency purposes. Viserys should have 2-3 HD left to use, so I've put together some options.

Spoiler: Viserys

Level 3 picks:
Dragon Turtle Shell - natural weapon attacks shifted down a size category every 5 CL
Detect Desires -detect thoughts, but for what they want at the moment and not what they're thinking
Shining Scales - +5 AC, attacks act like good/silver weapons , and a breath weapon modifier
Reflexive Barrier - half our CL in defection bonus to AC

Reverse Arrows - protection from Arrows, but it shoots back ranged attacks when they get soaked completely by DR. The spell text is unclear on if this is just DR from the spell or our total amount.

Level 2 picks:
Seducer's Eyes - not sure on this one. It gives us +6 to any charisma based check, but it requires the target to be conceivably find Viserys physically attractive.
Divine Presence - an intimidation bonus that ranged from +5 to +15 based on how opposed their alignment is to Viserys'.
Perceive Cues - +5 competence on sense motive and perception
Protective Spirit - tries to shoot down attacks of opportunity.
Investigative Mind - advantage on all appraise, knowledge, linguistics, and spellcraft checks.

Raiment of Command - +5 untyped bonus to diplomacy and intimidation and any creature with 3 or more int takes a -2 to all opposed checks.

Level one picks:
Strand of the Tangled Knot - -10 penalty to the next attack made against us after casting, and criticals treated as regular hits. Not sure how that works out for a permanent spell, but even if it's only the first hit in some number of hours it'd still be good.
Sure Casting - not sure we can do this one, but we've done stuff not on the permanency list before and +5 CL to piercing spell resistance is nice.
Entropic Shield (if possible with Invisible Spell) - a 20% miss chance is pretty decent, but if it's visible all the time it'd be pretty irritating on the day to day.

Spoiler: Close range PCs

Deadly Juggernaut - get a stacking luck bonus and 2/- DR per enemy reduced to 0 or less HP up to +5 luck 10/- DR so long as the opponents have at least your HD - 4
Cheetah Sprint - move 10x your land speed for one round. Not sure how to balance that as a permanent ability, use per day maybe?
Seed of Life - fast healing 2 in a can.
Litany of Defense - double the enhancement bonus of any armor you're wearing and gain immunity to fear effects.
Body ward - explicitly stacks with itself to soak 10 points of ability damage for each physical attribute. That kind of protection is worth 6 HD.

Edit: can the person subject to a permanent spell suppress their effects? If so Dampen Magic would be nice. It doesn't suppress effects that are cast on the subject before it takes hold, so if it could be turned off to buff and on at all other times it might be viable.

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Some of these would be better on items.

Generally anything with a limited number of uses, like Investigative Mind, or have a limited pool of resources, like Body Ward, should be put on an item or make as a PoSK, especially if it's something we can use without worrying about action economy. Investigative Mind has a long enough duration and enough utility/non-combat application that we could just cast it well beforehand.

Unfortunately, a long while back DP shot down the idea of Permanency'ing spells that only last a single round. I think it was when I asked about the Spell Enhancer spell (hello caster level and spell DC boost!). That rules out neat ones like Cheetah Sprint, Sure Casting, and Reflexive Barrier. Cheetah Spring would be great on a pair of boots, however, and Body Ward would be a great addition to our people's belts.

Deadly Juggernaut would be perfect to render Permanent on Richard, and Invisible Entropic Shield (especially as a 1st level spell) would be great for anyone.

Niiiice.

Here's the SL-to-HD list, for @everyone's ease:

although outdated... but only levels-wise, so it'd only mean more HD to spare
@Goldfish, what Permascrolls we have on hand as of right now?

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After putting Channel Vigor on Aife, we're down to a single 3rd level Permanency scroll and two 4th level scrolls. We've got a commissioned order to pick up in Vialesk on the 8th, though, so we can have our people purchase some more scrolls for us.

 

[egoo]

After putting Channel Vigor on Aife, we're down to a single 3rd level Permanency scroll and two 4th level scrolls. We've got a commissioned order to pick up in Vialesk on the 8th, though, so we can have our people purchase some more scrolls for us.

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Didn't we also order 2nd level scrolls?

...Wait, did we apply the spells we talked about the last month, except the ones DP WOG'd won't work?
I didn't think we did?

 

[Tomcost]

Do we know where on the map are these cities? I'm wondering about which provinces we might soon add to the Imperium after this.

 

[Duesal]

D we know where on the map are these cities? I'm wondering about which provinces we might soon add to the Imperium after this.

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Here you go.

Spoiler: Kingdom of Sarnor

They're clustered next to Sallosh.

Overall this region is going to be rather disconnected from the rest of the Imperium until Qohor is taken and Essaria is resettled.

 

[BronzeTongue]

Some of these would be better on items.

Generally anything with a limited number of uses, like Investigative Mind, or have a limited pool of resources, like Body Ward, should be put on an item or make as a PoSK, especially if it's something we can use without worrying about action economy. Investigative Mind has a long enough duration and enough utility/non-combat application that we could just cast it well beforehand.

Unfortunately, a long while back DP shot down the idea of Permanency'ing spells that only last a single round. I think it was when I asked about the Spell Enhancer spell (hello caster level and spell DC boost!). That rules out neat ones like Cheetah Sprint, Sure Casting, and Reflexive Barrier. Cheetah Spring would be great on a pair of boots, however, and Body Ward would be a great addition to our people's belts.

Deadly Juggernaut would be perfect to render Permanent on Richard, and Invisible Entropic Shield (especially as a 1st level spell) would be great for anyone.

After putting Channel Vigor on Aife, we're down to a single 3rd level Permanency scroll and two 4th level scrolls. We've got a commissioned order to pick up in Vialesk on the 8th, though, so we can have our people purchase some more scrolls for us.

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What do you think about the raiment of command or seed of life? I really like the wide ranging debuff on the first and fast healing is almost always useful.

 

[Tomcost]

Oh, I see. So we will get all the provinces adjacent to Sallosh. We might need to rename the Sarys province to Mordosh for Clarity's sake.

We might be able to colonize Krazaaj Vishiya from Mantarys and build proper roads and tunnels to the imperium through that way. To the north they still have Morosh as a port.

 

[Goldfish]

As an aside, my latest spell trawling run ten face first into some ridiculous bullshit today that I'm not sure has come up in the thread before. Spell Scourge: will save or lose all harmless spells currently effecting you. If you don't have at least one, eat 1d4 rounds of confusion. So I guess we need something to protect us from that now, because losing all buffs mid combat would suck.

Click to shrink...

That's a neat one to keep in mind for our own use, too.

Seed of Life - fast healing 2 in a can.

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This is another nice one that I forgot to comment on. I'm always a fan of providing Fast Healing to our people, but I'm not sure if Fast Healing 2 is worth using up 4 of a person's available Permanence HD.

Didn't we also order 2nd level scrolls?

...Wait, did we apply the spells we talked about the last month, except the ones DP WOG'd won't work?
I didn't think we did?

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Oh, thanks for the reminder. I forgot to add the two 2nd level Permanency scrolls to the Armory when I was updating it after that order. We still need to add Certain Grip for Waymar and Garin, IIRC.

Fixing that on the Armory page now.

What do you think about the raiment of command or seed of life? I really like the wide ranging debuff on the first and fast healing is almost always useful.

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Raiment of Command is really neat, but I don't think we should Permanency it. With a duration of one hour/level, Viserys could cast it from a PoSK and have it last 20 hours. Actually, after reading your post I went and added it as a PoSK on the crafting schedule for him.

 

[BronzeTongue]

That's a neat one to keep in mind for our own use, too.

This is another nice one that I forgot to comment on. I'm always a fan of providing Fast Healing to our people, but I'm not sure if Fast Healing 2 is worth using up 4 of a person's available Permanence HD.

Oh, thanks for the reminder. I forgot to add the two 2nd level Permanency scrolls to the Armory when I was updating it after that order. We still need to add Certain Grip for Waymar and Garin, IIRC.

Fixing that on the Armory page now.

Raiment of Command is really neat, but I don't think we should Permanency it. With a duration of one hour/level, Viserys could cast it from a PoSK and have it last 20 hours. Actually, after reading your post I went and added it as a PoSK on the crafting schedule for him.

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Back to the drawing board then. I think I have a better idea of the kinds of effects I should be looking for now.

 

[Goldfish]

Back to the drawing board then. I think I have a better idea of the kinds of effects I should be looking for now.

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A better version of Seed of Life are Pathfinder's Celestial Healing and Greater Celestial Healing spells. The first is only 1st level but provides Fast Healing 1, and the second is 4th level and provide Fast Healing 4. The first gives the recipient an aura of a Good-aligned creature and the second give the aura of a Good-aligned Cleric. Normally that might be an issue in some places, but Mind Blank neatly nips that problem in the bud.

EDIT: Oops, my memory was playing tricks on me again. Celestial Healing is only 1st level and provides Fast Healing 1.

 

[Crake]

A better version of Seed of Life are Pathfinder's Celestial Healing and Greater Celestial Healing spells. The first is only 1st level but provides Fast Healing 1, and the second is 4th level and provide Fast Healing 4. The first gives the recipient an aura of a Good-aligned creature and the second give the aura of a Good-aligned Cleric. Normally that might be an issue in some places, but Mind Blank neatly nips that problem in the bud.

EDIT: Oops, my memory was playing tricks on me again. Celestial Healing is only 1st level and provides Fast Healing 1.

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Richard's armor has Fast Healing itself, would that not imply an item with the effect would be better?

To be honest though even before we were aware Permanent spells had a cap based on HD it isn't like we're missing out on too much. It basically constitutes a free buff, the utility is more directed towards spells that give us significantly versatile yet minor benefit for people like Viserys, or declaw and defang some of the primary issues they have, for martial combatants (disarming, tripping, size-advantages in grappling, and so on).

 

[Goldfish]

Richard's armor has Fast Healing itself, would that not imply an item with the effect would be better?

To be honest though even before we were aware Permanent spells had a cap based on HD it isn't like we're missing out on too much. It basically constitutes a free buff, the utility is more directed towards spells that give us significantly versatile yet minor benefit for people like Viserys, or declaw and defang some of the primary issues they have, for martial combatants (disarming, tripping, size-advantages in grappling, and so on).

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Yeah, we could slap the effect on a piece of gear. That would actually be my preference. Seems like a fitting upgrade for everyone's belts, IMO.

Placing a constant effect Greater Celestial Healing effect on an item would cost at least 11,200 IM, plus the 50% tax from whatever the next most expensive effect on the belt is, because the 11,200 IM is guaranteed to be the most expensive. For Viserys, that would add another 650 IM from the 1,300 IM his Monk's Belt effect cost to apply. So that would bring the total cost up to 11,850 IM to place Greater Celestial Healing on his belt. Not bad considering that the 4th level Permanency scroll to accomplish the same effect would cost 20,000 IM.

It's good to be rich.

 

[F0lkL0re]

Money is as always the greatest super power.

 

[Tutan0ss]

[X] Crake

 

[BronzeTongue]

Okay Richard's new groove take two:

Spoiler: Build one

Kiss of the First World - fast healing 2, +20 land speed, +2 insight to all charisma. A bit eclectic, but useful stuff (4hd)

Planar Aegis - so much beautiful nonsense here. Anyone hits you in melee without a reached weapon takes 3d6 + CL up to 20 damage in one of a small set of types. The user also takes half damage from attacks of that type. (5hd)

Retribution - after someone attacks the user they can chose to subject them to wracking pain to the tune of a -4 debuff to attack rolls, ability checks, and skill checks.(3hd)

Kinetic Reverberation - whenever someone hits you with a weapon they need to make a fort save for the weapon used, on a fail it takes the same damage it dealt. (2hd)

Spoiler: Build two

Caustic Blood - slashing or piercing damage cause the attacker to take 1d6 per CL up to 15d6 total acid damage, followed by another 1d6 per 2 CL up to 7d6 total acid damage the next round. (5hd)

Rubberskin - converts bludgeoning to nonlethal damage (5hd)

Punishing Armor - half of all nonlethal damage you take is dealt to your attacker. (1hd)

Locate Weakness - roll all extra crit damage twice and take the best result(3hd)

For the second build any spells that can convert damage types other than bludgeoning to nonlethal would be ideal, I just couldn't find any. Depending on how it works out getting the type conversions as items might actually be better. I was concerned about constant protection, but adding to the regular buffs isn't too much less effective.
edit:autocorrect error

 

[Archibald]

I've been rereading the story, and it really stunning to look at just how fast in IC time Viserys and his empire have grown. Quest start with him having almost nothing was only about 4.5 IC years ago, and taking over Torturer's Deep was a bit over 2 years ago. Going from a small pirate port to the preeminent mortal empire in under 2 years is incredible.

[X] Crake

 

[Duesal]

Yeah, we could slap the effect on a piece of gear. That would actually be my preference. Seems like a fitting upgrade for everyone's belts, IMO.

Placing a constant effect Greater Celestial Healing effect on an item would cost at least 11,200 IM, plus the 50% tax from whatever the next most expensive effect on the belt is, because the 11,200 IM is guaranteed to be the most expensive. For Viserys, that would add another 650 IM from the 1,300 IM his Monk's Belt effect cost to apply. So that would bring the total cost up to 11,850 IM to place Greater Celestial Healing on his belt. Not bad considering that the 4th level Permanency scroll to accomplish the same effect would cost 20,000 IM.

It's good to be rich.

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We do need another big influx of cash eventually. We splurge quite a bit on our various Forge orders.

Looking at you, Efreeti. We're coming for the Loot Piñata.

 

[Crake]

We do need another big influx of cash eventually. We splurge quite a bit on our various Forge orders.

Looking at you, Efreeti. We're coming for the Loot Piñata.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, our income is building up, but seemingly so are our expenses racking up too.

With our various combined incomes, after regular upkeep, we make 50+ million IM every year. But we've been spending considerably more than we've been making every turn for the last six months, so it has really just ameliorated the severity with which we've been bleeding coin.

Of course the vast majority of our current treasury was earned over the course of a mere two actions, so power levels economics are bullshit, yeah?

 

[BronzeTongue]

Yeah, our income is building up, but seemingly so are our expenses racking up too.

With our various combined incomes, after regular upkeep, we make 50+ million IM every year. But we've been spending considerably more than we've been making every turn for the last six months, so it has really just ameliorated the severity with which we've been bleeding coin.

Of course the vast majority of our current treasury was earned over the course of a mere two actions, so power levels economics are bullshit, yeah?

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It's really nice that we don't have to publish a budget or anything. Can you imagine if we had to justify our expenses to someone? Even when they're entirely justified the numbers would still make half of the Imperium panic.