Necropolitans, episode 62: Nice, big, warm dwarf

The winter hag is finally defeated and we can move onto comparative theology, in Episode 062: Nice, big, warm dwarf.

I enjoyed the Winter Toad, one of the little NPCs I had fun devising. He is his tribe's priest responsible for appeasing Brrr'korprrr't, a minor god of bad luck and catastrophe, and propitiates Brrr'korprrr't by ensuring enough of those things happen somewhere that it doesn't feel inclined to inflict them on the boggarts. He's not a bad person.

I commented last session that this is the longest combat I'd been in to that point, and it continues. It might still be the longest combat of the entire campaign. While I don't actually want combats to last for hours of real time (genuinely, I tend to find the combat the least interesting part of the game, which raises enormous questions about my choice of system - but then it was my first time running a campaign, or Pathfinder! It's just carried on for a long time!) on this occasion the combination of planning, luck, and the PCs having a still relatively limited list of absolute bullshit they could pull made it possible to keep the major antagonist alive for an extended period and to significantly hinder Iris' ability to transform everything into a fine paste.

Obviously, this doesn't last. This particular option (and a very large list of other control options) only existed because the PCs were still mostly restricted to travelling on the ground. Once they reach the point of being able to fly constantly, and do so, this spell and many others become irrelevant and the GM's options to block or otherwise inconveience them dwindle yet further.

You'll notice in this session the players asking what spell exactly the hag is using to get out of Iris' reach. This happens a lot; I think it's a feature of the "system mastery" that Pathfinder emphasizes. Whenever I use a mildly interesting ability, I know full well the players are jumping onto the Archives of Nethys to read up on exactly what it does and how it might interact with other abilities, and indeed, planning ways to overcome it. At times this can be annoying, and perhaps I should ask them to stop. It sometimes plays into a behaviour I've noticed where the PCs instantly use the optimal counter to anything the opposition does, because the players have just read up on the exact mechanics and spent the time until their turn cross-referencing against all their own abilities to find what works best, rather than just trying to react naturally. We are too far into the campaign to feel like it's reasonable to ask for a change of tack, though. They enjoy the mechanics and the tacticality.

"I just need some... clarification." About 60ccs of nice, fresh clarification...

Direct Links

1. RSS feed for all episodes
2. Episode 001: Character Generation
3. Master list of episodes
4. Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
5. Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
6. Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
7. Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)