[Retired] The Scales

Recent Event: Black-scaled kobolds from the Sewer have been captured.

Meta-knowledge:
Number of kobolds collected: 26
Number of kobolds alive at arrival: 13

Statistical spread of living kobolds:
1 Alchemist (Status: Imprisoned)
1 Sorcerer (Status: Imprisoned)
6 Rangers (Status: 6/6 Imprisoned)
5 Fighters (Status: Secured-Habitat 5 (EF))

Kobolds have had all equipment (armor, weapons, tools) removed. Imprisoned kobolds are kept within separate, walled 10x10 square rooms with 1 cot, 1 toilet (metal). Cell doors are iron (hardness 10), so elemental attacks must exceed 21 to deal damage. Door to Habitat 5 is made of strong wood (with bar), along with 2 Fortifying Stones attached (Hardness 18, HP 20+40, Break DC 35). Small creatures receive a -4 penalty to break checks on top of penalties accrued by strength. Strength checks are not a skill check, meaning RAW they cannot aid another to break down the door. One cannot use disable device to unlock a barred door from the other side.

In-character:

The kobold alchemist feels the rush of life return as he drinks an off-tasting potion of healing (Infusion of CLW). As his senses return, he finds himself in an unknown, small room. There is a metallic toilet nearby and he is seated on what can only be a "bed" by virtue of its shape. He tries to get off the bed, but then feels the crushing presence of a large creature sitting directly adjacent to him.

Next to him is a horrific amalgamation of kobold and some sort of humanoid race (Ben is not wearing his leather wraps). It has many recognizable draconic features, but they're all muted or warped in some way. Its legs are out of proportion. Its snout is receded into its skull. It is about two times too large. The creature is taking up a large majority of the bed, its wings nearly reaching from one wall to the opposite.

It is upon seeing those wings that he realizes what this creature is: one of the adventurers he had fought! It was brief, but there was a winged figure down the corridor before...

He had no time to think of such things. He quickly weasels out of the abomination's grasp, but the room is too small to escape its reach. He reaches toward his pockets, but these aren't his clothes.  

The monster speaks up, in Draconic.  "Welcome back to the land of the livin'.  I feel like we may have got off on the wrong foot, which is why I saved your life three times.  Y'see, I stabilized ya and a few of yer friends between fights, so that's one savin'.  Then I made sure the rats didn't gut ya when they was takin' yer stuff, so that a second savin'.  Finally, I brought ya outta there, because yer other koboldy-friends decided that ya black-scaled ones was legal murder targets."

"I think ya ought to know that most've your friends are dead.  The ones I brought back are the only ones that wasn't killed. Yer fancy drummerboys are dead.  Most of your magicky friends are dead.  Yer spiritual leader is dead.  Now I didn't kill them blokes, mostly because I ain't got the ability to wade through you lot, but I did try to save who I could when I wasn't gettin' stabbed.  Couldn't save yer leader-guy because them other non-black kobolds were pretty keen on gutting him when they saw 'im unconscious."

The creature shifts in place.  "Enough of the grim-talk.  I been looking for things what look like me, and you lot have been the closest things that fit me description so far.  I'd like to believe you 'n your friends are willin' to stay here, what with your old home wantin' to kill ya.  I have every intention of lettin' you outta these boxes, if you can prove ta me you can play nice with others.  In fact, I decided to speak with ya first because I know a cookbook when I see one.

"All I want from ya is cooperation.  I want to know everythin' about yer society and religion.  Every myth, diet choices, you name it, I want it wrote into a book.  If I get consistent answers from you all, I'll let ya out where you'd like:  Rook, the wilds, the sewers, you name it.  Alternatively, if you can't convince your friends or are unwilling to divulge information, then I'm going to find other ways for you lot to benefit me, and most of those results're rather dark.  I liked your beastie, but as you can see, I do most of my testing on me self.  I've got all the tools I need to keep you all alive and healthy, but I've also got all the tools I need to have ya as test subjects or worse."

"I think you know what the right choice is for your tribe.  I'm offering a very simple deal: a safe place to collect your wits and a fresh start, and the only cost is to dictate accurate stories to me.  I'm capable of providin' just about anything your remaining tribe needs, so long as they're domestic.  As I said at first: we started on bad terms."

Ben peers at the kobold expectantly.  "The name's Ben.  What's yours?"

Response:



As quoted, the kobolds immediately attempt to break free.  Since any captor worth their salt would be around when their captives would awaken for the first time, it can be assumed that Ben is within the same general vicinity when the prison break attempt occurs.  Following along with your statement, the break-out attempt is while Ben is in the same cell as the Alchemist.  The number of rounds to take 20 a lock is 20, or 2 full minutes.  The alchemist's response seems to be an immediate reaction, which means 6 seconds have passed, and that therefore means that Ben is forced to react accordingly, which is to immediately incapacitate and stabilize, which will take 2-3 rounds.  This leaves 15-16 rounds for Ben to open and close a door, then check on any one of the 6 of 7 remaining cells, all of which are within 20 feet of each other.


1) The kobold alchemist has a maximum of 8 health from the infusion, and Ben can deal 7-14 damage per attack. If the kobold attacks or acts aggressively, Ben spends 1 full round action to place the Alchemist back into a state of dying or unconsciousness, and stabilizes him the next round with a 95% chance at +13 Heal check (Cruel Anatomist Class Ability).

2) The sorcerer is indeed bound and gagged (he was second on the list to speak with), but Ben's CMB is +10 (6 from BAB, 4 from strength), meaning he will not be moving or speaking unless he can beat a DC 30.

3) Taking 20 requires 20 times the base duration, which during the time they awaken (at about the same time as the Alchemist), Ben will have sufficient time to notice the attempts and react accordingly: Kill those he cannot contain. At a maximum, they will have gained their class level in HP (3-4?) to pull them out of unconsciousness, meaning Ben needs to only deal 4 damage to a (mechanically) naked kobold with a +13 attack to return it to a state of dying.

4) None of the guards are within this section. Additionally, I have Elite Soldiers, which are listed as: "3rd-level warriors, each wearing a chain shirt or banded mail and using a guisarme, a halberd, or a heavy steel shield and a shortspear." I seriously doubt a warrior can have 13 AC with that equipment or those fighter levels. If you'd like, I can make a 3rd level warrior just as you've made them kobolds to see if they can ever pierce their AC. (Short answer: they won't)

5) The cells do not provide vision for 3-foot-tall kobolds. There is no way to tell if the sorcerer is within a cell to the rangers.

6) The enclosure is barred from the same side and is sufficiently distant to warrant that, even if the kobolds happened to escape, they would not know where to look for their soldier friends or that their friends are even alive. More importantly, they would probably not open a door named "Habitat" with a giant bar and heavy fortifications to keep something in there when looking for an exit.  It'd be like explorers opening a door barricaded from their side with "Hell Portal" etched into the nearby wall.

7) Both doors to either the surface or sewer exit are locked, so the rangers would need to take 20 two more times to get to any exit after taking 20 to unlock the Sorcerer's cell, while Ben is with them and in direct line of sight to the Sorcerer's cell.

8) How do the rangers have +11 to Disable Device?  They don't gain DD as a class skill, and with max dexterity (shouldn't be done with NPCs, but let's assume) and max skill ranks, that's still only +8 or +9.  Unless you also happened to add a specific archetype onto every Ranger, but that seems a little obtuse.

9) How would the Sorcerer's rope get damaged?  I'm assuming the rangers would use unarmed strikes (non-lethal, bludgeoning) or an improvised weapon (Almost all imp. weapons are bludgeoning), but ropes are immune to bludgeoning damage and objects are immune to non-lethal.


Result:

All 6 Kobold Rangers are dead after breaching their cells. The Kobold Alchemist is in negative HP (but stable) and the Kobold Sorcerer is still bound and gagged. The Kobold Fighters are unable to escape.



In-Character:

The Kobold Sorcerer hears the muffled sounds of some gutteral man. "I'll give you all 'til the count o' two to stop what yer doin'. One..." It is at that time he's ecstatic to hear the combined battlecries of his fellow tribesmates. They've already broken free! Surely they'll crush the weak to return us to our true path!

"Two." The voice, quiet before, echoed clearly as if the door wasn't even there.  Within mere seconds, the warcries end.  Unable to move, he strains to hear more, only to be met with a grotesque chewing noise.  There is only silence for minutes, then a loud click.  The cell door opens to reveal an abominable creature, the same one that their armies had fought.  Gore covers its hands and face, and within one claw it holds the eviscerated corpse of a late clanmate.

The monster throws it into the room.  "The Chosen of Sassthrilon, eh?"  It rotates, grabbing another slain kobold by the tail and piling it onto the last.  "Your tribe is dead."  Two more corpses are picked up, and thrown in.  "They would have been free in time, I only wanted one thing."  The room is becoming claustrophobic as the dead begin to pile higher than the cot.  The monster throws in a fifth.  "I only wanted to know."

As the last body is picked up, the creature hesitates, looking at it closely.  "This one still lives. Barely."  He shifts one hand to hold the badly wounded kobold by the torso, using its other claw to hold the entirety of the kobold's head.  With a sickening crack, the monster twists the neck of this final kobold until its head appears backwards to its body.  "There. Fixed."  He lays the body on the top of this pile, turning its cruel gaze toward the helpless spellcaster.

"Was gonna ask you, but now I'm mad.  I'm gonna go kill a bear or two t' work off the steam.  I know you love bein' with friends, so you can sleep with these ones tonight.  I'll ask ya tomorrow."  He gets up and begins to close the door, but stops.  "If ya answer good, maybe I'll clear out yer dead friends.  If you answer real good, maybe I won't feed their meat to the dogs!"  Cacophonous laughter echoes as the door shuts and the lock clicks back into place.  Muffled, but still audible, a grim final statement echoes through the small prison slot.  "And if ya answer bad enough, maybe I'll just feed them to you."


((I'd recommend, next time, waiting until the captor wasn't around when breaking out. Probably would've worked if they hadn't done it as soon as they woke up, since that's the poignant time Ben would be around as to gauge their willingness to cooperate.  Also, it's cool to allow a player to have nice things for roleplaying purposes, especially if he goes at length to make sure it's secured. I've not abused any mechanical portions to get an advantage over other players, so I don't see why it's important to not let me have these 'bolds.))

((P.S. Hope you like the metal twist.))

Have you ever been dragged across the ground for 12 hours straight? How about in a sewer? It's for this reason that I had half the kobolds survive the journey; the rest died on transit. While Ben may have stabilized a few along the way back, 26 is hard to deal with.

Additionally, I didn't go to extreme lengths of explaining every prevention because I expected you to just be a cool DM about this. Since you aren't, I was forced to add information relevant to your plan. As I've mentioned in my character thread and in the previous post, the guards aren't down there. As I've shown on the map, there are two locked doors between the sewer entrance and the prison cells. If they're walking out the front door for some unholy reason, they're walking into five guards that have been told to watch that entrance, and if you're going to minmax your kobolds to escape, I'm going to minmax my guards. Your guard stat block is inaccurate anyways (Not the right equipment).  Edit:  I also just noticed this funny little thing.  Turns out your kobold fighters had about 15 too much AC according to this stat block.  Weird how that happens.

As quoted before, they immediately attempt to leave which is going to be while Ben is there. The conversation with the Alchemist goes poorly, and Ben is more than willing to end the conversation by dropping him again as soon as he is accosted by the kobold, which happens in the following quoted section:



No hesitation + show aggression = immediate knockout, then go to another cell/reconsider method. Even if the rangers unlocked their doors, then waited until Ben got in with the alchemist, they'd still be wasting 2 minutes on the door directly in front of him to get the Sorcerer out.

I'll not be adding damaged rooms or soldiers as it is going to take your kobold rangers 8-10 minutes (2 to break out of cell, 2 for sorcerer's cell, 2 for first locked door, 2 for second locked door, and 2 if they try to leave through the sewer entrance) to take 20 all the doors. If the kobolds had waited a few weeks to return to full health so I couldn't one-shot them, sure. If the kobolds had deceived me to get out early, sure. If the kobolds had managed to wait until Ben was out adventuring, sure. But none of those things were done, as you were quite clear in the "immediately" department. Therefore, Ben crushes the Rangers, keeps the rest.

The only change that occurs if the Sorcerer is unbound would be that Ben knocks him out, ties him up, and uses his other infusion to wake him up before filling the cell with dead kobolds.  Also, here's the section on being tied up.  He is limited to what that little section says he can do, which is to say, he cannot use his claws to break out of his own ropes.

Edit2:  I do not wish for this thread to get refreshed, so I'm going to use this post to list everything Tkul has done incorrectly here.  As a later post mentions, I don't mind a negative impact toward my character or wealth.  I mind a horribly-told story with a justification that borders on criminal.  I recommend to all that read this to not engage with Tkul in roleplaying outside the table, at least until he learns why what he's done is unacceptably poor GM-work.  But I digress, on to the list:

1) Cheated mechanic: hero-grade stat distribution for NPCs.

These kobolds were 3rd level rangers with hero-level stat distribution and optimization.  It has been confirmed by Tkul that each had 20 Dexterity.  This kind of value tends to require 4-6 racial hit dice on top of the 3-4 class hit dice for balanced NPCs.  

Source for a kobold Ranger NPC with one additional class level. Note the lack of 20 dexterity.
Alternatively, here's a page on what is acceptable for NPC attributes.  Again, no 18's any where in there.

2) Cheated mechanic: Disable Device

It was confirmed by Tkul that the kobolds' Disable Device check was +11 (3 ranks from class level, 3 from class skill because the Rangers apparently all picked the Trapper archetype, and +5 from Dexterity).  A simple lock's DC increases to 30 if no tools are present, and a character's DD check is reduced by 2 without tools available.  This means these kobolds were unable to legally break out of their cell even with a take 20, as the penalties accrued would place their take 20 check at 29, against a 30 DC.

+10 lock DC source.
-2 circumstance without tools source.

3) Cheated mechanic: Taking 20

Taking 20 is an act that takes 20 times as long as a singular check.  This means disabling a device takes 20 full-round actions before a single lock is opened.  The breakout attempt was declared to occur while Ben was actively in the same area as the doors they needed to open, and when all 5 guards were active.  There were 5 doors that needed to be unlocked to accomplish what Tkul desired, and yet all of this take 20 time was handwaved away as non-existent.

Take 20 source.

4) Godmodding: Controlled reaction of player's character

In conjunction with the prior, Tkul forcibly paralyzed my character for a minimum of 8 minutes as doing otherwise would've guaranteed the escape attempt would fail.  In addition, my character was given 0 perception checks to overhear the lockpicking attempts 5 feet away from him.

5) Cheated mechanic: Freeing a creature from bindings

The sorcerer was confirmed as bound when it was questioned.  The rope could not be untied by the rangers (too high of an EA attempt for the sorcerer to be aided), the rope couldn't be broken by the rangers (no source of non-bludgeoning damage), and the sorcerer was helpless while bound.  How fortunate the sorcerer managed to attack while helpless/pinned by the rope, through growing claws that apparently supersede condition effects.

Source for Pinned condition. Note the lack of "can attack."

6) Godmodding: Forcibly retconned events that were mechanical barriers to goal.

When questioned about the validity of the sorcerer breaking his own bindings in such a clearly wrong manner, Tkul then decided that since I didn't state the sorcerer was bound before he asked about it, I must not have bound the sorcerer after all.

7) Godmodding: Kobolds given impossible knowledge of layout.

These kobolds apparently knew which cell had the sorcerer without the sorcerer needing to make noise (would have alerted guards and/or Ben).  They knew that Ben was directly behind the other door, and thus didn't open or unlock that.  They knew exactly where other kobolds were being held, even though it was in the opposite direction of the only exit and was outwardly designed to hold large animals rather than kobolds.  They additionally knew of an exit they never went through (stated kobolds were brought through anterior entrance)

8) Godmodding: Declaring positions of units not under one's control.

Declared two of my five guards were within a prime get-killed-by-sneaking kind of spot within the prison.  There's a few things wrong with that:
-I've stated clearly the prison section is off-limits for my soldiers.  While the rooms still provide for the building, the idea is that RP-wise, Ben is the one maintaining that wing.  It's been in my character thread since I posted the sheet to The Scales.
-Within the original post of this thread, I've stated the soldiers remain adjacent to the storefront, within the wall-less common area.  Their primary duty is to guard 2 doors for all hours of the day.
-All five soldiers are together unless one is doing something labor-related.
-EVEN IF two of them were guarding the prison, there's no way they'd be facing away from the only hallway that has prison cells for 2+ minutes so the kobolds could retrieve the sorcerer from a cell.

9) Cheated mechanic: Stealth

Stealth cannot be used in bright light or normal light.  Since this is a building designed for humans, that means the corridors are sufficiently lit to be of normal light.  This essentially means as long as anyone's taking 10 on their perception, they see kobolds waltzing up a corridor or opening a door

Source, note how normal light functions as bright light for the purposes of "unable to use stealth checks without invisibility or cover."  Guards don't stick themselves in corners to give attackers cover, they sit in positions to see something coming.

10) Godmodding: Declaring guards guaranteed to fail saving throws.

The guards were given a DC 15 singular color spray, which Tkul apparently decided meant that's pretty much a 100% chance to fail, even though saves can't exceed a 95% chance of success, ever.  

11) Godmodding: Declaring guards had weapons usable by kobolds.

Based on the NPC block used by Tkul, my guards were all using two-handed weapons and are medium-sized.  That apparently didn't stop the kobolds from growing a size category so they could use those weapons.

12) Cheated mechanic: Purposefully used incorrect NPC stat block

Tkul's linked version of guard is both the weakest iteration of 3rd level warriors and is for a regular guard.  What should have been asked of me was to create the sheet for my 5 guards following the NPC stat block designer linked in part 1, but that clearly didn't happen.  Essentially, I was cheated out of a fair encounter between my NPCs and his because it was mechanically more convenient to further his goals.

I will take partial responsibility for this one, as I should have had the sheets included in the original post (lack of knowledge is not an acceptable excuse, and I prefer to set a standard others are willing to follow).

13) Cheated mechanic: Hit points

The kobolds attempted this escape immediately after awakening from negative hitpoints.  Seeing as the path they took moved them through all five guards (regardless of how many Tkul teleported where), it's very hard to believe every single kobold escaped when each of them had no more than 2-3 hitpoints (depending on how badly Tkul wanted to cheese the travel time) and were against guards that hit on roughly a ten for 2-10 damage.

As to the only counter (more than 24 hours passed, they get 2 days' worth of HP), I'd like to point out their return conditions were horrid.  They were dragged for a full 12 hours through medieval sewers after gaining that 3 health from whatever their negative was.  Chances are none of that passed over into the next day, and while I though 50% mortality was a fair assumption, apparently the other 50% must have done super-well at avoiding injury while still pretending to be unconscious.

Source for health regain from rest.  

14) Worst offense: Played the GM card

When these discrepancies were brought up, the response wasn't to fix the myriad faults in the story.  It was the following:


Yes, that's right.  As a GM, you're allowed to just throw out official Pathfinder rules for a community-controlled game focused in the Pathfinder system.  Heck, maybe you should just scrap the Pathfinder rules set entirely and make your games based off Shadowrun.  Just because your players reference books of the game-type you're running doesn't mean you need to follow them, right?  Surely, other GMs don't mind you changing the rules to fit your wants alone.

Edit3: Apparently, the above sourced information is to be ignored because the statement of facts is "having a tantrum."  I'm actually a bit more riled by Tkul's inability to comprehend the purpose of why I'm listing this: To give him a chance to improve his capacity as a storyteller.  I'm uncertain as to whether he's just immature or truly too brutish to understand what needs to be done to improve, and that bothers me.