Tenfold Shields (OOC)

Well, I guess Yonah isn't going to be lassoing anything. But maybe Oni will have more luck using his grappling hook.

I'm going to follow a precedent set by the Core rules for an already well-defined application of Use Rope.

SRD: Use Rope wrote:

Secure a Grappling Hook

Securing a grappling hook requires a Use Rope check (DC 10, +2 for every 10 feet of distance the grappling hook is thrown, to a maximum DC of 20 at 50 feet). Failure by 4 or less indicates that the hook fails to catch and falls, allowing you to try again. Failure by 5 or more indicates that the grappling hook initially holds, but comes loose after 1d4 rounds of supporting weight. This check is made secretly, so that you don’t know whether the rope will hold your weight.

We'll say that if Yonah had failed by 4 or less (getting a result of 11 to 14 on his check), it would be obvious that no, the lasso wasn't going to work. He failed by a bit more than that, so I'm ruling that he does NOT know that it won't work. So he's got a rope, and no reason to think that the loop in the end of it isn't going to hold.

I'll be more generous than the precedent I'm using, which waits for 1d4 rounds of use before your grappling hook comes loose and makes you fall. Failure will be evident immediately upon attempting to use the lasso.

I think that at this point we can fairly assume that any "take 20" skill checks you might have attempted have now completed. Grimvaalk's wolf finally got the idea and hid.

I guess Darker should roll Hide/Move Silently checks for goblin and wolf at this point.

I'll wait for you guys to decide what your next play is going to be.

I believe that's correct. I'll be updating along those lines pretty soon.

Roll

Rolls

When Fanax gets to that first fork in the cavern, which branch does he take?

Is he going to try to choke the dragon to death with his enormous, pulsating ballsack?

I am afraid I do not understand the reference.

So, he gave himself this name? Or?

Lemme have a Spot check and a Listen check, for Fanax, please.

I suppose it's possible that Old Man Jenkins had some kind of limited-use magical item that allowed him to make the insta-kills and is now all spent.

But also I have to reflect that the slain spirits have all been 2-3 HD critters with fairly standard attributes for their kind. It's not particularly hard to kill a Small air elemental or a giant bee, especially if you're trying to do it in an environment that the creature would find inherently hostile.

Old Man Jenkins is kind of the generic term for the villain in many episodes of Scooby Doo, Where Are You?. The name derives from the villain of S1E8, an elderly amusement park caretaker by the name of Mr. Jenkins, but at this point it is mostly a trope for a villain who actually is not really very powerful or frightening in his own right, and who gets by on clever deception of some kind until he is captured, and dragged away by the police while he rants about those meddling kids and their dog.

I think the subtext here is that Fixxxer and MinusInnocence believe it's possible that the dragon either isn't real, or is not really a threat.

Sadly, Cha'nek, Zathrus's stupid but adorable pet wolf, has already wandered off to piss on trees or something. Which I don't guess is really a surprise, because you just crossed miles of open steppe and he's probably been holding it so long his eyeballs are floating. But without him, you probably are doomed.

Cronono wrote:

I thought everybody else was still outside the cave?

And I imagine that just now, you also heard "I AM VUMROT!" He was basically shouting again at that point.

I dunno if you would have been able to hear the rest, though. Vumrot was speaking conversationally when discussed his vague plans to hear Fanax out and then eat him and take his stuff, for example.

Anyway, let's have another Spot/Listen check from Fanax.

I remember playing in a game that had a moment kind of like this situation.

Years and years ago, I was playing in a villainous campaign set in the Forgotten Realms. It was set in Thay, if you're familiar with the setting. A sort of magiocracy under a cabal of evil wizards. A couple of the PCs were apprentice wizards, and part of the "educational" process for these guys involves sending apprentices out to do stuff that will probably kill them, so you don't have to waste time training people who aren't going to be absolutely top-notch at their job.

Anyway, Thay runs on slavery, and a big plantation outside the city had an ankheg problem. So we were sent out to deal with the problem. The ankheg had been sighted in a particular field, so we went out to the edge of said field, and argued a little bit about how to approach the issue. Finally, we decided that the thing to do was to use bait. So we commandeered an elderly billy goat, in part because I hate goats the way that is kind of similar to how MinusInnocence's wizard in Ancestral Burdens hates his horse. I actively enjoy the suffering of caprines, even fictitious ones, and this was a good opportunity to exercise my dislike of the bearded monstrosities.

But the goat didn't want to walk around in the field. They're uncooperative creatures at the best of times, so this wasn't really a surprise, and the other wizard decided to tie a length of rope around the goat's neck and lead it back and forth in the field, so that the ankheg would sense the movement around and come up to feed.

His plan was wildly successful. The ankheg erupted to the surface, seized the bait by the legs, and dragged him below the surface into its nest, where it devoured him. Over the sounds of agonized shrieking and the sounds of rending flesh and clacking, chitinous jaws, the goat, my own wizard, and the other two PCs all agreed that this was the best possible outcome, since we had never liked him much anyway.

After the ankheg finished eating, my wizard climbed down into its tunnel and dispatched it with a well-placed spell while it was quiescent and full of half-digested bits of his late rival.

No, but I may change my mind depending on how the current scenario plays out.

But I was referring to a literal goat.