[OOC] Graveyard Shift

Well, it's unfortunate but probably for the best in this case.

By the way, happy September! Everyone gets +5 XP for the monthly award. As before, you're free to bank it, or to spend it on something. Please drop a line here to let me know what you do with it.

I think I'll bank it, if noting else because I won't have much time to check stuff :D

Using it and the 5 I already had banked and taking 2 x R1 Talents - 'Grit' and 'Desperate Recovery'

A quick note about social combat: Don't forget your full range of options. If your character specializes in Deception, lie away! If you are good at Leadership, appeal to authority (E.g., "We are licensed inquisitors from Argus Inquiries. Now if you'll kindly just answer a few questions, we'll be on our way.") You have more options than Charm, Coercion, and Negotiation (although those are sound choices, too.)

I'll bank my 5 for now. Looking at Know Somebody though.

Banking my 5

I'll spend my 10 to acquire knack for it in deception, stealth, and perception.

You'll need to buy the 5-point rank first before you can get the 10-point rank. You select one skill the first time, 2 more the second. (Or did you already have the 5-point rank and I'm overlooking it?)

I'm misinterpreting the price, I assumed it was 5xp per rank. In that case I'll just have the first rank for deception.

Ranked Talents get upgraded each time, a T2 Ranked talent would be T3 for the next rank, Rank III of Knack for it would be T3.

It is 5 XP per rank, but it gets a bit better at Rank 2 and up. Rank 1 (5 XP) gives you one skill, while Rank 2 (10 XP) and up give you 2 additional skills each time. So, yeah, if you never bought Rank 1, you'll need that first.

Okay, my understanding is now much clearer, thanks.

As a couple of you are headed back to the dog pens, I wanted to remind you about the X-Card. That is, please let me know (either here or in private) if animal endangerment or harm is something you'd rather avoid in the game. I'll keep any unpleasantness PG-13, but the dogs can fit into the mystery in many different ways, so you won't ruin the mystery by stepping in.

I should be fine with most stuff ;)

Thanks for the heads up Savagebob, I'm not personally worried but will let you know if things start veering in that direction.

Thought I'd pull this out of the IC thread to avoid cluttering things:
Right, on this point my understanding is once I give them an order they will just keep doing it. So in this case on my last turn I spent a manoeuvre and told them to engage the dogs so I'm assuming I don't need to spend another manoeuvre unless I want to change their orders (still need to spend the manoeuvre to maintain them in play though), is that how you read it?
No, I'm happy to keep it as an option to spend a single Threat to 'dispel' them. Didn't occur to me that was an option but it seems to balance things quite a bit better in my head :)
Well the conjure action says "This action represents the ability of a spellcaster to animate objects or create items (or even allies) out of thin air and the aether." so I'd say the option to have them be 'borrowed' from somewhere might be a good option for a Despair or high number of Threats on a roll (that said if you want to say it works differently in your game I'm cool with that, just wanting to get the potential consequences down of summon-spam lol).

Last thing I want to check is did you want me to 'drive' and track the status of anything I summon or did you want to do it? I'm assuming it's me to keep things manageable for you but wanted to double check before I start posting their actions

I looked around, and there seems to be disagreement on this in the community. The lenient option is that a Summon Ally effect only requires one command, and the creatures keep doing that command so long as it remains possible. The more strict interpretation is that the creatures need that command to be repeated each round; if not, the default summon rules come into play: "the creature behaves in the best approximation of its natural instincts (as determined by the GM)." Because there is a lot of concern out there that Conjure is overpowered, I think I'm going to go with the more severe interpretation for now. We may relax this if we find it too onerous.

I know that's kind of limiting in this encounter, since Hildar can't really see what's going on due to the thick forest, etc. But on a more "normal" battlefield, he'd still be able to spend both maneuvers to maintain his summons and cast another spell each turn if he wanted. In fact, there may be things he can do from his position just at the edge of the woods that I haven't thought of.
I agree. Having someone get mad about missing Ironbound is something I as GM would generally reserve for threats or despairs on the casting roll. Let's leave it ambiguous now; maybe Hildar isn't quite sure where these things come from. That leaves this door open without pinning us down to anything. (But I won't default to this option for a standard, passed roll like you made this combat.)
I'm cool to let you handle it for now. The Conjure rules seem to imply that the GM does this, but there are already so many moving parts in this encounter that I'm happy to let you play the two Ironbound (and future summoned creatures, too).