Related Information to Daishain's 5e D&D Rules, Q&A, And Support

Daishain's 5e D&D Rules, Q&A, And Support - Page 902

A few things…

If we are watching the pets/familiars from the castle, are we visible and known to the enemy? Wasn't sure on the status of that in general.

Can we try the Sending spell? I'm fearing it will also fail to something to do with the feline. I forget, but I guess we've already established that we can't say "We don't know the bloody password but we're here to save you so talk to us"?

Should a mapmaking roll be attempted? Perhaps the trouble Trammet and Amabalis had is getting in the way of that effort.

Can an arcana roll be attempted, ideally by someone other than Velon, to see what magic might exist to threaten the castle? Our out of character knowledge of all spells is nice but, as Daishain said, he makes stuff up so perhaps trying for a nat 20 roll would reveal something someone has seen or heard of?

Lastly, Amabalis got cut off from the weave but there are mages further into these grounds casting spells. Can an Arcana check be attempted to understand this? Perhaps we need to have Amabalis poke and prod around a bit more? Perhaps magic is allowed once again near the tower, and there is an anti-magic zone just over the maze?

Edited: Cinder on 4th Sep, 2018 - 1:25am

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I assumed you'd keep hidden for now up in the clouds. Somebody with a spyglass could be watching the pair from there. So no, you are not yet known.

The trouble had is definitely interfering with mapping efforts.

An arcana check to identify possible threats would be largely meaningless. There are many things that could pose a threat, and you could start compiling a list, the problem lies in that you don't know what they have access to.

You'll need to do some more poking to confirm what is going on with the magic disturbance.

Daishain's 5e D&D Rules, Q&A, And Support Archive Pathfinder / D&D

Sending also requires that we have a fairly good knowledge or familiarity of the target. We can't just randomly contact him without knowing a lot about him. There are higher level spells that could have a chance at it, but we don't have them.

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Well, since Poljen obviously would be of no help determining what the magic issue is, let alone how to overcome it, he will instead focus on the layout of the troops and the terrain. Despite what some have said, he thinks that they will need to have some sort of ground force when the bombing raid starts. Maybe not to attack… maybe we could make it look as though we are a bigger threat than we actually muster, to help herd the enemy for a minute or so, to help keep them clustered for the bombing… spitballing here… can anyone put up walls (Of wind, stone, force, flame, etc.)? A couple of those might help. If we can force them into an area with natural boundaries as well, like canyon walls, or if there is a river or lake…

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The Protector. says...

My original plan with the familiar was to identify where the cultist troops were congregating the most. Layout of terrain, and the cultist army.

To aid any bombing raids. Amount of cultist troops, and placement, should've been a simple enough task.

Well, it looks like some cultist magic, or is it the unknown feline character, who wanted a bloody password? That has interfered with this plan?

Instead, for plan B, will try hovering around the fortress, in a non-threatening manner, and see what that brings?

But I like your idea of herding the cultists into a confined area, Paul. For maximum damage effect.
How can we do that from above, out of sight?

Daishain's 5e D&D Rules, Q&A, And Support

Well, that is another reason to have someone on the ground, or at a minimum flying on the broom, maybe invisible. Now, to really meta-game this, I broke out my old-school, Newtonian mechanics and did some calculations. We want to be high enough for things dropped to achieve terminal velocity. Any higher gains you nothing and decreases accuracy. I am not sure what terminal velocity is for a boulder, but for a skydiver with arms and legs spread it is about 120 mph, and while head down about 180 mph. I split the difference figuring our ammo is not perfectly aerodynamic and used 150 mph, which is 220 ft/sec. With acceleration at 32 ft/sec2, that means it takes about 6.875 seconds to hit terminal velocity. And with distance=0.5*acceleration*time2, about 756 feet. So not even 1000 feet and we are getting our maximum impact. Well out of range of most combat magic, yes?

And depending on the terrain, since I know we have several folks who love to throws them fireballs, how about the castle drop off the ground team and give us a couple of hours to get into position while they gently float into position? Then we can start casting fireballs as the signal to start dropping boulders and such. Fireballs can help herd the enemy, and whatever else people come up with. I am even thinking that the anti-magic barrier might keep the mages inside the maze from helping unless the come out. And with that same possibility we should NOT fly the castle over the maze and tower. Poljen and Morgaine (If she desires) can defend our ground forces if the enemy gets too close to our artillery.

Daishain's 5e D&D Rules Q&A Support - Page 902

Ultimately I feel like we just don't have any information here so it's hard to come up with an intelligent plan that isn't just taking a random stab at an action.

- Sure, we can bombard, but as Paul and others have pointed out, they'll just scatter and what have we accomplished? Unfortunately I don't think we have enough magic, whether it be fireballs or wall spells, etc., to corral 800 men that are probably spread out in like a mile or more circumference around this tower.

- Sure, sneaking into the maze sounds like an ok idea if we want to try to take out Cyanwrath during some confusion, but we need to at least confirm that 3/4 of our PC's won't be rendered useless by anti-magic zones. If we stumble into too many soldiers or the 50 mages, we're also dead. Additionally, we don't know of the dangers of the maze, such as it changing all of the time or traps, etc.

Heck, we don't even know why we are here other than to do some damage to Cyanwrath and his group along with going on the notion that something important must be in this tower.

We really need more info or this is just shooting from the hip in a dark room here, but unfortunately we get blocked at every attempt. Perhaps the familiar's can fly some patterns around the tower and find out where this anti magic zone is? Is it high, low, both? Is it only over the maze but not next to the tower, thus allowing the mages to attack the entrance?

Edited: Cinder on 4th Sep, 2018 - 1:45pm

Daishain's 5e D&D Rules Q&A Support D&D / Pathfinder Archive - Page 902

To put it simply, we as a high level group, could not face an army of 800 warrior-types and 50-odd mages and have a hope to do any significant damage from the ground. We have a nasty weapon in the kinetic energy of falling objects, that would do for plenty of the opponents, but not accurate enough to take out small groups. We have no known way of communicating with the gnome in the tower (Although I am tempted to offer skywriting in some fashion), and we need to get a message to him that explains our position. I was thinking about a Magic Mouth spell on a lump of silver or something, dropped on his doorstep. Or even a (Gasp!) written letter.
With enough time, we could also use Animate Objects on some smaller stones, and command them to drop first, then aim for targets and keep hitting others once it lands. Dai would have to decide how long it takes a Wizard to change spells for that, though. Short Rest, maybe? A single terminal velocity boulder would likely only take out five or six targets, best case, since they are not explosive and would shatter. There will be some AoE effect, but it's not likely to be as deadly. That versus 800+ soldiers and we'd be dropping a lot of rocks to do anything significant. What about calling for help through the Hoop to the dragons?