It is incredibly late now and the Briar and Rose is all but closed. Snibby the warforged innkeeper is wiping down tables and chairs. They wave cheerfully at you as you pass by.
Ink, uncharacteristically, lets Astrid and Lae work out what is happening, and pads to the room where he proceeds to get out his Book of Shadows and begins to perform his rituals which are quite late this evening.
The Book of Shadows, which you tucked the dragon scale into earlier, opens by itself. You see the pages shift slightly, the natural materials forming into pictures. It seems like Nathair is attempting to communicate with you.
"We didn't die, though. I didn't even get hurt. Look, if you're not going to wash your cuts then I'll dump the water on you. It'll be nasty if they get infected, and I didn't manage to Cure them away"
Side note: While meditating, Ink is entirely unaware of this conversation. Though he isn't helping Lae by obviously bleeding from a cut on his shoulder that is half his HP.
"Because it is not your responsibility to save me!" Lae stares back down to the ground. He sighs. "Anyhow, I promised I would help you with your recognition of nature?"
Lae picks up the flower, inspecting it. "Hm, this is either a medicinal herb, or a terrible tasting hallucogenic. My memory is a bit faint." Rolls nature
Lae and Astrid have seen Ink perform this meditative ritual before. It's "foreign" but not unexpected... though it does occur to you that normally he does it earlier in the evening.
Ink, you peer into your Book of Shadows, trying to decipher your patron's strange messages.
In the swirling pictures moved by Nathair's magic, you see a man raising a bright glowing sword, with golden strings attached to his arms pulled by a spectral white hand. Next, you see three alien creatures walking through a forest, with a dark shadow growing from beneath their feet. And finally, you make out the image of a huge dragon, with massive wings that seem to cover the world.
Ink stares around wildly a moment before his eyes rest on Astrid and Lae and then he seems to breathe normally again. "Sorry, friends... I had a strange vision..." and he tries to relay it as best he can, while it is fresh in his mind's eye.
I was dying when you guys were asking if you can make nonlethal strikes and/or not kill him with that hit. i was like "i don't think you have to worry about that"
My first instinct was to actually use Fey Presence to charm Lae into not continuing with the combat and being apologetic... but I decided that Ink's "fight on the side of friends regardless" was more important to him than "don't behave weirdly"
Oh of course. Lae was far worse injured for one thing :)
As implied in the original list of "outcomes of the combat", Ink started from the position of being ... somewhat of an assistant to Lae and Astrid. So it wouldn't have entered into his mind that you would have healed him first.
Some of my respect for you as a more experienced player is spilling over into Astrid, so I'll go with it. Astrid feels protected and comforted by Ink, and respects him in that way.
Also - he sees himself as being added to your quest... It's his nature to protect the more important people. He finds it harder to protect Lae, so it is less obvious perhaps. But he was trying to shield Lae from getting in trouble without Lae getting upset about it ;p
(perhaps the coins in the church, or stepping in to stop the guards getting grumbly, etc. he has tried to protect Lae, it's just harder because Lae gets himself into trouble more easily ;p )
though without Lae's forward momentum, we wouldn't be going anywhere - so it's a good thing :)
(and I couldn't think of anything else Ink could do to stop Lae being killed other than being as big a target as possible and hope Astrid could save him)
@Mithical if you want access to my Google Sheet for this game, gimme a Google account, if you've got one you're willing to share. Not that you need access to it AFAIK. It's really for my own benefit.
@Sciborg Huh, it says in the PHB that when you land a crit, you roll an extra damage die rather than doubling it
Doubling the damage seems to be a rogue (subclass Assassin) thing at like... level 17
I mean, doubling the roll in a 1d(anything) is pretty much the same statistically, but you start getting into weird territory if there's more than 1 dice involved
Like cough nerdy math time
A level 5 Gloomstalker / Level 3 Assassin successfully ambushes a monster. If you were to double the entire average, it deals around 68 damage from a single ambush (factoring in double attack, +3 weapon damage, and sneak attack). Adding an extra dice, however, only brings about an average of 49.5 damage per round
Btw, yeesh. Getting critical hit for every hit on a surprised with the Gloomstalker trait... stacks HELLA fast
I can do most nights at that hour. Meaning, either tonight or tomorrow or the next night, etc. But not tonight and tomorrow and the next night, etc. That's too many late nights!
Right - of course!! i wasn't implying that, we would only do one Kith/Johnny session a week maximum. We just happened to do a few for the Bobble/North/Gray group because we were all free multiple times and were bored.
i apologize, it wasn't my intent to have them play more than you - we were all just kinda hanging out in chat and were like "why don't we do another one"
. . . unless there'll be a disparity in, um, class levels, or something?
Like, if they continue their story and therefore level up and we don't and then at some point we meet and together do some mission and it won't be balanced well?
