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

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Goldfish said:
I still need to write that up. Not sure exactly how high she can reasonably push the threat up, but CR 10 should be manageable given the spells and resources she has available. If that's the case, people could benefit from it at least through 10th or 11th level, though I wouldn't expect it to be used as much past 7th or 8th level.
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You could also include some undead. The snatcher line got a lot of debilitating attacks that are mostly harmless when you got healers on standby, so they can fight at their full capacity without too much risk for life and limb.
 
cool that will really help our baby adventurers. so Kyla, Ysilla and Ysandrix are like 1 team that will be training in there together. any other people we want to team up to train there

could probebly add Jon to their team to
 
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Azel said:
You could also include some undead. The snatcher line got a lot of debilitating attacks that are mostly harmless when you got healers on standby, so they can fight at their full capacity without too much risk for life and limb.
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Good idea. That'll really add the authenticity to the Undead dungeon scenarios.

Teana needs to level up ASAP so she can learn the Shadow Guardians and Shadow Terrain spells, then the Battle School will be ready to kick into high gear.
Goldfish said:
Speaking of Teana, to alleviate boredom I've been searching out new spells for her next level up. Just one more fight to go!

I've found a couple of really good ones for her. Shadow Guardians will let her create one Shadow Construct per caster level (she'll be able to make 19 of them next level up) that persist for up to one hour per caster level (except all of her Illusion spells are automatically Extended, so double that). Admittedly, each Construct is pretty weak, roughly CR 2 or so, but as the saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own. 19 of them for 38 hours per casting is amazing. Whenever she uses her Shadow Traces, she can assign 5 or 6 Shadow Guardians to each of them as extra muscle or meat shields or just use them as a swarm. Since it's a Shadow Illusion spell, any time Teana casts it there is only a 50% chance the spell slot is actually consumed. As a Sorcerer, she is flush with spell slots, so she could cast it four or five times per day and only use two or three spell slot and hardly be hurting for magic later on.

Teana can even change their size and shape to make them look like just about anything of Medium size or smaller, which would make them perfect for the Scholarium Battle School (write-up still pending). So in addition to specialty Summons, her Shadow Guardians can fill any number of mook rolls, act as innocent bystanders, dangerous animals, etc.

And mentioning Battle School brings us to the next spell, Shadow Terrain. It's like Mirage Arcana, but the structures it creates are actually solid unless successfully disbelieved (good luck beating a DC 33 Will save). A casting of Shadow Terrain will also last for at least 38 hours and can cover up to 19 20-foot cubes, or 152,000 cubic feet. Imagine how large a scenario she could create with 5 or 6 castings of the spell? Every session of Battle School can take place in a different dungeon, castle, swamp, forest, cave, overrun government building, etc. Shadow Terrain structures could also be used for training Inquisition agents and Praetorians for operations in different scenarios.

Shadow Terrain isn't the most amazing combat spell ever, but I can imagine a lot of uses for it out in the field, too. Temporary housing for people, holding cells, obstacles to hinder enemies, emergency bridges, walls, etc.

Another spell I was looking at for her which would fit perfectly in her role as an educator of young mages is Enduring Scrutiny. Teana can cast it on a student and tell them not to do something, like leave the Shadow Tower, cast a spell, get drunk, knowingly get within 20 feet of someone, etc., and if they disobey her command she will instantly know about it. I think this one deserves a renaming, perhaps Headmistress' Eye?
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Winning Vote
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Jan 14, 2021 at 8:18 AM, finished with 81 posts and 11 votes.
  • [X]
    -[X] There's creatures already ordered in the Forge to restore this month's damage to the local battlegroup. Once @Goldfish is awake ready and we add it to an actual vote, or something.
    -[X] Next, have Asha and Theon sacrifice the Seastone chair to the Ferryman.
    -[X] Meanwhile, have Vee look into what it takes to un-desecrate the Naga's Bones - be it by copious sacrifice to Old Gods (later), or straight up moving the thing down, roots-deep if need be.
    -[X] The rest of the group unpacks the Mind-Eater for a moment (go to Mindblanked location) and identifies the items, and DP calculates the XP.
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Interlude CMLXXIX: Broken Heritage
  • Threadmarks
    • Broken Heritage ​

    Twenty First Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

    Asha remembered her father sitting on that wretched throne, she remembered when she was very young and had not yet learned to hide her fear from the Lord of the Iron Islands about how it frightened her. She could almost hear the thin young voice. "It's like it's eating you, papa..." Later, when she had taken up axe and shield, rudder and oar, she would think it a child's silly fright. Looking at it now, the light of witchfire turned warm orange passing through Aife's rippling fins, she had to wonder if perhaps young eyes did not see the horror that a more jaded gaze failed to grasp.


    The Seastone Chair in all its horror had eaten Balon Greyjoy, as surely as if its stone limbs had sprung to life and torn him apart. Ambition for glories that never were and faith in a monster that deserved naught but death, those had killed her father as sure as Robert Baratheon's hammer. But had there been more, she wondered, reaching out to touch the foul stone. Had there been some whisper back of his mind, pushing him on to recklessness akin to madness...

    She felt nothing but slimy stone beneath her fingers, then a thudding in her ears like the sound of a distant tide... or more like a hangover coming on in the wee hours of the morning.

    "What are you..." Theon began, even more ill at ease than she had ever seen him since he arrived in Pyke.

    "Shh... give me a moment," the new lady of the Iron Islands said. She pushed against the feeling and just like that it was gone, only damp stone beneath her fingers that was no worse than a hunk of polished basalt. It couldn't be that easy... "That's how it gets you I guess," she scoffed, deliberately taking her hand off the bilestone armrest and turning to the King. It would take a dragon to hoist this thing out of here. "Let's carry this to shore and send it into the embrace of a better god than the one who put it here..."

    Such pragmatic concerns were are sadly interrupted when the throne shifted in place as though in the grip of an earthquake, as though the polished stone floor had suddenly become a heaving sea.

    Cold grey eyes opened. ​

    Distantly Asha realized everyone else in the room, the King, the queen-to-be, even Ser Richard bloody Lonmouth was not moving, which the latter would certainly be doing if the room had suddenly decided to start bouncing about. He'd have probably jumped in front of the King, never mind the latter was a dragon and didn't need it. It was all in her head.

    A dream laid on cursed stone a thousand winters and more stirred.​

    There were eyes in the patterns. Why hadn't she seen them before, not the eyes of some strange beast, or eater of minds but a man, and old man with a beard and a robe of seaweed and a crown of weathered weirwood.

    Who brings False Gods in my hall? ​

    The words rang like a great bell of iron in Asha's mind and almost she answered, almost she deferred, as she would have done before her father sitting on this very chair, then she recognized the being in the vision, and far from awe, far from reverence, she was carried up on a tide of red rage. "So you're the squid-sucker who sold us all to the fucking monsters, Grey King. Tell me, were you just an idiot buying their lies or were you fine serving up your kith and kin up so long as you stayed on that bloody chair?"


    "You know... nothing of what we endured, wretched child..." the words scraped on the inside of her mind.

    Asha did not listen. "I don't give a shit! Tell me if you were a fool to forget or a monster that we should remember to hate?" perhaps another might have lingered, might have listened, but the same will that allowed her to spit defiance at the memory of her forebearer made Asha Greyjoy most unsuited to questioning and prodding. The conflict of the mind soon fell to the more familiar rhythm of clashing steel and straining muscles, a metaphor perhaps, but one the young Greyjoy was far more comfortable with. "I'll gut you son of a squid's whore!"

    Her axe was still at her side... her axe was in her hand.... biting deep into false flesh and memory.

    A roiling chaos of a thousand thoughts and more spilled into her mind, then dragon-fire swallowed her vision.

    ***​

    "Stop shouting Theon!" Asha yelled, or at least she thought she yelled as the throne room swam back into view. Her mouth tasted foul and her nostrils were filled with an even worse stink, like rotting fish and tar.

    "I don't think it was a proper ghost, more like a haunt, a fragment of a fragment of a soul," Wisdom Lya was saying, of course she wasn't bloody shouting, so she could dissect spooks all she wanted as far as Asha was concerned.

    "I'm not shouting," Theon said disturbed, and only then did Asha realize his lips had not been moving before.

    Asha has Awakened Psionically from defeating a Haunt of the Grey King in a battle of wills ​

    What path will she follow (Full restructuring of classes possible but not stats)?

    [] Wilder
    -[] Write in Character Sheet

    [] Psychic Warrior
    -[] Write in Character Sheet

    [] Soul Knife
    -[] Write in Character Sheet

    [] Write in

    OOC: Well on one hand this makes the Seastone Chair a somewhat less potent sacrifice without the remnant of its first king, on the other hand you guys have been complaining about Asha's class for a while so seeing as she rolled really well, not just in the fight but the set up to even have a fight on her terms (93 vs 42), here you are.
     
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    • That's a pleasant surprise! As for the rest of the Seastone Chair, anything that helps ward the Iron Islands from the Deep Ones will do.
     
    Well, that was unexpected.

    A bit of a trend emerging for our characters to get Psionic abilities from encounters with Squidshit, eh?
    First Relath, now Asha... :V

    And Jeyne is promptly showed off the pedestal as 'the most promising human psion' :p
    Yey for Asha.
     
    I suggest making her a Psychic Warrior. It's not quite as strong as Wilder, but IMO it's more fitting.

    Actually, I'd be in favour of having her remain a mostly martial PC with a Hidden Talent feat or two, but that doesn't quite seem to be in the cards.
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Asha has Awakened Psionically from defeating a Haunt of the Grey King in a battle of wills ​
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    Goldfish said:
    Asha Greyjoy:
    Eldest living child and only daughter of the late Balon Greyjoy, Asha is a study in contrasts, brash in her words whether in the council chamber or the heat of battle, seeming rashness hiding calculation that is ever ready to take advantage of any opportunity that might be thus stirred up. Though she wears her thirst for glory and acclaim upon her sleeve, there is another side to her, loyal to kith and kin and woe betide he who should miscount this for in her there dwells the ruthlessness which has made seafarers as they looked to the horizon for ages.



    Name: Asha Greyjoy
    Alias: The Kraken's Daughter
    Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
    Age: 18
    Race: Human
    Level: 7
    Class: Mariner 4/Rogue 3
    Feats: Deadly Defense, Weapon Finesse, Allied Defense, Combat Expertise, Riposte, Two-Weapon Fighting, Travel Devotion
    Flaws: Pride of Arms (Ironborn Proficiency)
    Class Features: Bonus Feat (x2); Dirty Strike (1d4); Sailor Lore (+5); Seamanship (+1); Sneak Attack 2d6, Evasion, Penetrating Strike

    HP: 44/44
    AC:     10 + 4 (DEX) + 6 (Reinforced Mithral Chain Shirt +1) +2 (vs Evil) = 20/22
    Initiative: +4 (DEX)
    Movement: 30ft + 30ft (Anklets) = 60ft
    Attack: +4 (BAB) +3 (DEX) + 2 (Enhancement) = +9 [1d6 +1d6 (Cold or Electricity) +1d4 (Dirty Strike) +2d6/1d6 (Sneak Attack)]
    Special: Can take up to -5 to attack and add to AC for self and adjacent allies; 1d6 Damage when fighting defensively; gain a free AoO on the first enemy to miss you while fighting defensively
    Weapon Proficiency: Axe, Boarding Pike, Dagger
    Immunities: Possession/Mental Control, Discern Lies/Detect Thoughts

    STATS:
    10 (+0) Strength
    16 +2 = 18 (+4) Dexterity
    15 +1 = 16 (+3) Constitution
    15 (+2) Charisma
    12 (+1) Intelligence
    14 (+2) Wisdom

    SAVES:
    FORTITUDE: 5 + 3 =8/10
    REFLEX: 7 + 4 = 11/13
    WILL: 2 + 2 = 4/6

    SKILLS
    Balance: 10 + 4 (DEX) + 1 Seamanship - 1 (Armor) = 14
    Bluff: 10 + 2 (CHA) = 12
    Climb: 9 + 4 (DEX) + 1 Seamanship - 1 (Armor) = 13
    Intimidate: 10 + 2 (CHA) = 12
    Knowledge (Geography): 4 + 1 (INT) = 5
    Profession (Sailor): 10 + 2 (WIS) + 1 (Seamanship) = 13
    Sense Motive: 3 + 2 (WIS) = 5
    Spot: 10 + 2 (WIS) = 12
    Swim: 10 - 1 (Armor) = 9
    Tumble: 10 + 4 (DEX) - 1 (Armor) = 13

    Extraordinary Abilities:
    • Sailor Lore: Roll 1d20 +4 to obtain rumors and tales
    • Dirty Strike: Opponent receives a Reflex Save against the Mariner's first modified attack roll each round. On a failure he takes the extra damage on every attack until the next round. (1d4+1d6) [Precision Damage]
    • Travel Devotion: Gain a full move action as a swift action for up to a minute (1/day)
    Pact-Bound Servitor: Mamiwa

    Contingency Spells: Renewal Pact; Stalwart Pact

    Anklets of Rapid Translocation:
    1. Benefit from a +30ft Enhancement bonus to ground movement speed.
    2. 2/Day Instantly teleport up to 10 feet to an unoccupied destination within line of sight and line of effect. The wearer can teleport with objects, up to their maximum load, but cannot bring other creatures.
    Boneward Belt: +1 Constitution
    • Healing (3 charges/day): 1 charge (Heal 2d8 points of damage), 2 charges (Heal 3d8 points of damage), or 3 charges(Heal 4d8 points of damage)
    Earring of Arcane Acuity:
    • 3 Charges/Day: 1 Charge(Darkvision 60 ft., 1 hour), 2 Charges (See Invisibility, 10 minutes), 3 Charges (True Seeing, 1 minute)
    Greater Amulet of Protection from Evil:
    • 3 Charges/Day: 1 Charge (12 Temporary Hit Points), 2 Charges (18 Temporary Hit Points), 3 Charges (24 Temporary Hit Points), Duration: 10 minutes
    Greater Ribbon of Disguise: Alter Self, Magic Aura, Undetectable Alignment (At Will)

    Handy Haversack: This backpack is of high quality but appears otherwise normal.
    1. It has two side pouches, each of which appears large enough to hold about a quart of material. In fact, each is like a Bag of Holding and can actually hold material of as much as 2 cubic feet in volume or 20 pounds in weight. The large central portion of the pack can contain up to 8 cubic feet or 80 pounds of material. Even when so filled, the backpack always weighs only 5 pounds.
    2. While such storage is useful enough, the pack has an even greater power. When the wearer reaches into it for a specific item, that item is always on top. Thus, no digging around and fumbling is ever necessary to find what a haversack contains. Retrieving any specific item from a haversack is a Move Action, but it does not provoke the Attacks of Opportunity that retrieving a stored item usually does.
    Launcher:
    • Somewhat resembling a crossbow where the bow mechanism has been replaced by a two foot long and two inch diameter hollow steel tube, this device allows its wielder to shoot items no larger than Tiny-size or weighing more than 10 pounds using the Launch Item spell up to 440 feet. Where applicable, the wielder must make a Ranged Attack roll to strike a target.
    Ring of Hidden Thoughts: The wearer is continually immune to Detect Thoughts, Discern Lies, and any attempt to magically discern her Alignment.
    Alchemical Substances:
    20x Alchemist's Fire
    60x Alchemist's Kindness
    3x Auran Mask
    20x Fungal Stun Vial
    20x Healing Salve
    100x Sleep-Smoke
    10x Smokestick
    5x Sunrod
    Equipped Magic Items: Anklets of Rapid Translocation, Boneward Belt (+1 CON), Earring of Arcane Acuity, Greater Amulet of Protection from Evil, Greater Ribbon of Disguise, Handy Haversack, Launcher, Ring of Hidden Thoughts, Gloves of Zephyr's Grace (+2 DEX), Reinforced Mithral Chain Shirt (+1), Valyrian Steel Axe (+2)
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    Nice. Seven levels to play with for her new Psionic class. :D
     
    Wilder looks great, honestly.

    And I feel it'd be perfectly IC for Asha to dive headfirst into this as a "fuck you" to anything slimy. Except Qyburn.
     
    Azel said:
    @TalonofAnathrax, @Goldfish, how about Soulknife followed by War Mind? Strong martial focus with some active psionics.
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    The 3.5 Soulknife is a complete trash fire, but I'm looking at the PF version know and it does seem a little better.
    On the other hand, the precedent of using PF classes instead of identically named 3.5 equivalents is odd: why are we using 3.5 Sorcerers and Wizards at all when we could be grabbing their stronger PF equivalents?
     
    TalonofAnathrax said:
    The 3.5 Soulknife is a complete trash fire, but I'm looking at the PF version know and it does seem a little better.
    On the other hand, the precedent of using PF classes instead of identically named 3.5 equivalents is odd: why are we using 3.5 Sorcerers and Wizards at all when we could be grabbing their stronger PF equivalents?
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    Historic reasons? I've genuinely given up on this distinction and am using mostly PF rules these days, with DPs approval at that. Qyburn is entirely PF, with maybe a spell or two from 3.5. Well. And a bunch of equipment.
     
    silvanknight said:
    @DragonParadox 3.5 versions of psychic warrrior/soulknife or the pathfinder versions?
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    Either work

    Azel said:
    Historic reasons? I've genuinely given up on this distinction and am using mostly PF rules these days, with DPs approval at that. Qyburn is entirely PF, with maybe a spell or two from 3.5. Well. And a bunch of equipment.
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    Historical reasons is perfectly right. I wasn't that familiar with Pathfinder when I started the quest.
     
    We're not using PF rules for established 3.5 classes because it'd be too bothersome to re-assign skills/abilities/gear/etc, I think?
    It's not like 'balance' is a thing anymore, so it's really about what we are most comfortable with, and I don't think even Goldfish has an interest in overhauling a bunch of characters from the ground up just for shit and giggles.
     
    Broken Heritage ​

    Twenty First Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

    Asha remembered her father sitting on that wretched throne. She remembered when she was very young, and had not yet learned to hide her fear from the Lord the Iron Islands, how it had frightened her. She could almost hear he r thin young voice. "It's like it's eating you papa..." Later, when she had taken up axe and shield, rudder and oar, she would think it a child's silly fright. Looking at it now in the light of witchfire turned warm orange passing through Aife's rippling fins, she had to wonder if perhaps young eyes did not see the horror that a more jaded gaze failed to grasp.


    The Seastone Chair in all its horror had eaten Balon Greyjoy, as surely as if its stone limbs had sprung to life and torn him apart. Ambition for glories that never were and faith in a monster that deserved naught but death, those had killed her father as sure as Robert Baratheon's hammer. But had there been more, she wondered, reaching out to touch the foul stone. Had there been some whisper in the back of his mind, pushing him on to recklessness akin to madness...

    She felt nothing but slimy stone beneath her fingers, then a thudding in her ears like the sound of a distant tide... or more like a hangover coming on in the wee hours of the morning.

    "What are you..." Theon began, even more ill at ease than she had ever seen him since he arrived in Pyke.

    "Shh... give me a moment," said the new lady of the Iron Islands. She pushed against the feeling, and just like that it was gone, only damp stone beneath her fingers no worse than a hunk of polished basalt. It couldn't be that easy... "That's how it gets you, I guess," she scoffed, deliberately taking her hand off the bilestone arm and turning to the king. It would take a dragon to hoist this thing out of here. "Let's carry this to shore and send it into the embrace of a better god than the one who put it here..."

    Such pragmatic concerns were sadly interrupted when the throne shifted in place as though in the grip of an earthquake, as though the polished stone floor had suddenly become a heaving sea.

    Cold grey eyes opened. ​

    Distantly, Asha realized everyone else in the room, the king, the queen-to-be, even Ser Richard bloody Lonmouth was not moving, which the latter would certainly be doing if the room and suddenly decided to start bouncing about. He'd have probably jumped in front of the king, never mind the latter was a dragon and didn't need it. It was all in her head.

    A dream laid on cursed stone a thousand winters passed and more stirred.​

    There were eyes in the patterns. Why hadn't she seen them before, not the eyes of some strange beast, or eater of minds, but a man, an old man with a beard and a robe of seaweed, and a crown of weathered weirwood.

    Who brings False Gods in my hall. ​

    The words rang like a great bell of iron in Asha's mind and almost she answered, almost she deferred, as she would have done before her father sitting on this very chair, then she recognized the being in the vision, and far from awe, far from reverence, she was carried up on a tide of red rage. "So you're the squid-sucker who sold us all to the fucking monsters, Grey King. Tell me, were you just an idiot buying their lies or were you fine serving up your kith and kin up so long as you stayed on that bloody chair?"


    "You know... nothing of what we endured, wretched child..." the words scraped on the inside of her mind.

    Asha did not listen. "I don't give a shit! Tell me if you were a fool to forget or a monster that we should remember to hate?" Perhaps another might have lingered, might have listened, but the same will that allowed her to spit defiance at the memory of her forebearer made Asha Greyjoy most unsuited to questioning and prodding.

    The conflict of the mind soon fell to the more familiar rhythm of clashing steel and straining muscles, a metaphor perhaps, but one the young Greyjoy was far more comfortable with. "I'll gut you, you son of a squid's whore!"

    Her axe was still at her side... her axe was in her hand.... biting deep into false flesh and memory.

    A roiling chaos of a thousand thoughts and more spilled into her mind, then dragon-fire swallowed her vision.

    ***​

    "Stop shouting, Theon!" Asha yelled, or at least she thought she yelled, as the throne room swam back into view. Her mouth tasted foul and her nostrils were filled with and even worse stink, like rotting fish and tar.

    "I don't think it was a proper ghost, more like a haunt, a fragment of a fragment of a soul," Wisdom Lya was saying, of course she wasn't bloody shouting, so she could dissect spooks all she wanted as far as Asha was concerned.

    "I'm not shouting," Theon said disturbed, and only then did Asha realize his lips had not been moving before.

    Asha has Awakened Psionically from defeating a Haunt of the Grey King in a battle of wills ​

    What path will she follow (Full restructuring of classes possible but not stats)?

    [] Wilder
    -[] Write in Character Sheet

    [] Psychic Warrior
    -[] Write in Character Sheet

    [] Soul Knife
    -[] Write in Character Sheet

    [] Write in

    OOC: Well on one hand this makes the Seastone Chair a somewhat less potent sacrifice without the remnant of its first king, on the other hand you guys have been complaining about Asha's class for a while so seeing as she rolled really well, not just in the fight but the set up to even have a fight on her terms (93 vs 42) here you are. Not yet edited.
    Here's an edited version of the chapter, @DragonParadox.
     
    I would prefer Psychic Warrior for Asha, but she doesn't really have the stats for it, and Soulknife is honestly a better fit for her, IMO, especially since DP have the go ahead to use the Pathfinder version instead of the dumpster fire from 3.5.

    I can put together a build plan for her later today, but I'm too busy at the moment.
     
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