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Raid a small village

3 (27.3%)

Act like highwaymen

1 (9.1%)

Attack a weak caravan

5 (45.5%)

Loiter at our tower

1 (9.1%)

Other (specify in post

1 (9.1%)

Total Members Voted: 11

[choobakka]

I wont be able to play on Thursday. (this Thursday)

[Lord Braindead]

A bridge will give us also a constant supply of the local brand of guards who try to kill us because we are a danger to the caravan routes. To have enough room for 9 persons we would need a rather large bridge and large bridges tend to be important for the locals and thus are at least patrolled if not outright garrisoned.

Getting a secluded log cabin in the woods would be both easier and safer since we are some distance away from the rest of the civilized world. We can survive rather good on an all-meat diet, provided Hreeka knows how to hunt and the previous owners can tell us where to find fresh water and settlements where we can trade for crops. This would take care of our need of shelter and food and we can maybe get a modest income by selling excess meat. Otherwise we can get stuff by raiding our surroundings but we should make sure to not give away our position or we might get visitors. Jehovas witnesses are annoying enough but at least they don't kick your door in and kill you in the name of lawful good.

At level 3 we can start to expand. With Frelocks zombie minions we can either move and take over a larger home or start to build one on our own. Since the zombies aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, they will need constant supervision but we then have essentially a workforce that needs nothing and can do the heavy lifting for us like digging out a dungeon beneath that unsuspicious little cabin. Bonus points for planing and simulating that part of the game with dwarffortress.
Since Araph will probably not allow us to trade metric tons of rock crafts we should consider to build defenses at this stage. A nice little wall offers quite a lot of protection as longs as you keep the door closed and we can then start to worry about getting some followers to start our own settlement.

tl;dr

1. get log cabin
2. kill people to get stuff and XP
3. raise zombie minions
4. build dungeon/fortress
5. attract followers
6.
7. world domination!

[Grek]

Possible alternatives that are cooler than a log cabin, but less of a bad idea than a bridge:

- Most excellent tree house of ultimate destiny. Find one of the biggest trees in the forest and construct a veritable tree-fortress within.
- Ruined castle, or possibly an old guardpost leftover from ye olden days before the current kingdom existed. Also saves on building a stronghold later.
- A wizard's hermitage tower. Probably full of books, magical loot and weird things in jars, but possibly dangerous to attempt to overthrow. So, yeah.
- A cave that may or may not contain a bear. Also may include bats, giant olms and kobold warrens. Kinda lame, but better than starting a farm.
- A mobile tent camp out in the forest. Tents are 10gp each, but hold at least 2 people. I'm willing to pony up if we go this route.
- A graveyard. Yes, there might be undead, and yes, it's not exactly the most comfortable place to live, but come on. It's awsome.

As an aside, can I get some bardic knowledge checks prior to us starting up?

[Araph]

I'll say one thing about whichever location we start at: I'm going to try to avoid killing anyone at the first session. That means a cabin will have wimps there, a wizard's tower will have an apprentice, bridge will be fairly unimportant (by which I mean unguarded), and so on. When I voted for going the our former master's ruined lair, I was thinking we could sneak by any paladins that were too powerful and pick off the weak ones, but that probably wouldn't work.

EDIT: Does anyone have high charisma?

[Grek]

The Warlock Di'rac has a charisma of 20. Grail is a Beguiler and therefore excellent at talky things. I have Skill Focus(diplomacy) and access to charm person.

[Atomicdremora]

And I'm a mind reader.

[Lord Braindead]

Treehouse - 0/5
A torch or an axe and our home is gone. We would also need to build the whole thing from scratch and it hasn't really any benefits beside owning a cool treehouse. Beside that it just wouldn't feel appropriate for our group. A group of elven rangers and druids would fit in there nicely but one beast and 8 monsters not so much.

Ruins - 4/5
The main problems with this is that we need to find it and kill the previous owners. Defense could be problematic at the first few levels but it offers much more space then any of the alternatives and saves us a lot of work later. If Araph pops us a appropriate ruin this would probably be the best option.

Cave - 3/5
Better then a farm but yes, kinda lame at first. Depending on the size of the caverns we could end up with a backdoor directly into the underdark. However, later on we could build a little cavern-city inside if its big enough and this would boost the whole thing from lame to awesome in my book. The more spacious the easier to build something inside later, but a narrow cave would be better to defend especially early on.
Everything considered it depends largely on the layout of the cave but I think it would be a nice piece of property with some potential.

Tents - 1/5
Easy, yes. Annoying, yes. In my other DnD group we do this to and the logistics of the camping trip and the livestock needed to haul our stuff, paired with our DM constantly trying to steal our stuff or animals make it the worst kind of "home" I can think of. For a very, very short time we can do this but we should switch to something with walls at the first opportunity.

Graveyard - 3/5
Considering we have a necromancer in the group a graveyard is more or less a resource rather then a place. We will probably dig up all corpses sooner or later to get mooks and workers. Underground crypts would be a nice home of course but we should be sure that people don't rise without our permission. One of the biggest pros I can see is that we won't get visited by everyone and their mother since the peasants will know to stay away from the evil graveyard even before we move in.

Edit: I'm currently at +10 on bluff and +11 on diplomacy checks. I could convince someone that he is his own grandfather...

[Atomicdremora]

Could we not just knock out the orc and use the worm to get a shit ton of resources? slp him on the innkeeper, and we got ourselves a free inn.

[Lord Braindead]

I could just convince him that we are a members of a highly secret order of [GOD] and that he would help our goals greatly by giving us a free stay for the night. On the other hand, explaining a mindflayer away could be complicated...

[Grek]

@Lord Braindead: Your diplomacy modifer is only a +9 when dealing with humans; the +2 to diplomacy from the Mark feat only applies to devils from the layer of hell you're aligned with. Likewise with bluff. You also appear to not be listing your 3/day command SLA, for whatever reason.

@Atomicdremora: I can willingly leave the orc. It's not even difficult. Managing to dominate the innkeeper is difficult, time consuming, risky (for me, anyways) and only gets the innkeeper dominated. Unless I make some crazy-good buff checks to play it cool, everyone will be able to tell that he's dominated and nobody is going to trust him. And there's still the matter of convincing the town to be OK with a mindflayer, a trio of devils and a choker living in the inn.

[Lord Braindead]

The +2 of the mark are not included in the +10/+11. I get +5 from charisma, +4 from ranks and +1/+2 as racial bonus.
Forgot to note the command ability separately, added it now.

Well, I can look like a normal human thanks to disguise self but if someone bumps into me he might notice the horns, tail and hooves.
Staying at a inn is probably flat out impossible for the whole group unless we find a lawful-evil society that doesn't care about us.

I think your abilities are better suited to impersonate persons with official offices like a priest or a guard. This way you can get some authority over other people while not needing to act like a close friend or relative.

[Atomicdremora]

I plan on wrapping my face most of the time anyway, so I won't be too much of a bother for K-O-S. once I start growing into my psionic abilities, I'll be able to control almost anything.

EDIT: Am I still playing? I'm not in the player list...

[Lord Braindead]

Guess Araph forgot to add you. If all else fails send him a PM with a link to your charsheet. He sometimes misses the important stuff between our mad ramblings.

[King_of_the_weasels]

Anything that guards wouldn't willingly destroy if it ment getting rid of us, hence why I suggest a bridge,  They take a long time to build and cost resources and are necessary for trade, if guards come we just scamper off, the bridge will still be there and it's not like were not capable of killing guards or at least *does a magic thing with his hands* trick them... somehow.  Grail was a spy so I would assume I know which towns have the worst defenses, so whatever we find near them would be best.

[Lord Braindead]

You make a good point for camping at a bridge to raid there but we still need some other hideout where we keep prisoners, spare equipment and loot or do you plan to scamper off with 200 pounds on your back while chased by the guards? That is, if we are able to run. My top priority as a guard would be to cut off our escape routes and since they know where to find us they have ample time to plan their attack.
This is basically the same reason why you don't sell drugs from your home unless you are sure nobody cares. Once the police gets interested in your business they get your home address for free and its highly likely that they also get you. Considering that our business model will involve a pile of corpses, we will spend more time running from then sleeping under the bridge.

The other problem is that bad defense = low traffic. Its unimportant if the former leads to the latter or vice versa but i think most of our first targets will be farmer John and his flock of sheep's or his buddies with their various animals. Banditry has the issue that risk equals potential gain so if we play safe we get nearly nothing and when we want the jackpot we will get the high level guards and mercenaries for free. Thats fine when you can just call off the ambush and call it a day but when we live directly in the way of those guys we only have the option to flee from our home or kill them and then we are back at the pile of corpses and the heat that it generates.