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WereJace posted:so while he was tending to the horses, and the party was drinking, I dropped a note to the DM detailing how my thief used her ill-gotten gains to buy enough pitch, poison and nails to make sure not a single one of them would escape their rooms when my character burned the inn to the ground. I'm not gonna lie: this is kinda awesome. I would have been angry had I been there, I think, but as far as TPKs go, this one is cool.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:31
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Yeah they earned that basically. 
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Oct 13, 2015 04:59
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Pretty sure that's the sort of thing that prompted the rename to Rogue in later editions.
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Oct 13, 2015 05:59
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I think I want to start a band called, "pitch, poison and nails" :metal:
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Oct 13, 2015 07:29
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WereJace posted:I'm fully aware that I was a jerk then, but thirteen year old me was frustrated and upset and bad at social skills. I think most people would like to go back in time and beat their thirteen year old selves silly. Or at least give them a good slap and some life lessons.
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Oct 13, 2015 09:15
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WereJace posted:First game of anything I ever played was AD&D with some friends from high school and my brother, with their dad DMing. I was playing a CN thief, and my brother was playing a Paladin. What the rest of the party was doesn't really matter-there was a single Cleric. I think we were playing Temple of Elemental Evil-all I remember was that we left Hommlet, hiked out to a ruin and were immediately set upon by giant toads. Mine and my brothers were the only characters who jumped in to fight them, and as a result my character got mangled. A great deal of discussion erupted at the table over whether or not the Cleric should waste a healing spell on a Thief. (I should note that I hadn't actually done anything to any of them at that point. I picked Thief with the notion of playing Catwoman in mind, not 'steal from the party and ruin everyone's fun'. They literally did not want to help a party member because it said 'Thief' on my character sheet.) After half an hour, the Cleric was coaxed into healing me by the Paladin, and the game continued. We didn't get very far, because the pattern kept repeating itself-trouble showed up, only the Paladin and the Thief would enter into combat, and there would be another protracted discussion about whether or not my character should be healed while I tried not to look too furious at my friends. Nah. This is totally justified. 13yo or not, they were dicks and had multiple chances to get their poo poo right. the_steve posted:Pretty sure that's the sort of thing that prompted the rename to Rogue in later editions. I like "rogue" better because it's more open-ended. The last rogue I played wasn't a thief at all. He was a fixer. He investigated things, kept things quiet, and sniped bad guys with a crossbow. I do have a meta-PVP story. I've played in a couple of game where PVP happened for in-character reasons, but I did run a game in college where PVP just had to happen because the player was a dink and no other reason. I have no regrets, nor do any of the other players. It was my third year of college, and we had a good core group of players by then, most of whom I still play with now, over ten years later. WE had gotten past that rough freshman year, when everyone is new and you don't know who will or won't jive with your play style. Our group played fast and loose with 3.0 D&D's rules, we had a fairly serious game with some comedy sprinkled in, and no one was a munchkin. We played gamer for about two years like this, and everything was fine. Then one of my players met some freshman in one of his classes. It was still the first couple of weeks of the semester, so he didn't know the guy all that well, but he figured out he played D&D. I also happened to be starting a campaign soon, so my friend asked if he could invite this new guy to play. I said yes. This guy showed up and immediately and constantly did tons of poo poo that pissed everyone off:  He insisted on making a character to ape Final Fantasy's dragoon class, which would have been alright if that didn't also come with an anime flavor that didn't mesh with anything else in the game. He was on his phone constantly. This was right before texting became more the norm than calling, which would have been bad in and of itself, but the phone calls were way more obtrusive. He was on the phone with women in hilariously futile attempts to mack on them. He was a big, stupid goon who was trying to reinvent himself as a lady killer, and it wasn't going well. He would get mad when he missed parts of scenes for being on the phone. He blamed me mainly, but also held it against the other players that he wasn't being included. Someone less polite than me pointed out that he was just lucky we were letting him sat at the goddamn table while he was on the phone. He was a horrible womanizer. It was worse than just some goon trying in vain to make booty calls to three different chicks in one evening. We only heard his end of the calls, but from that we could all tell that he was dismissive, domineering, and rude to the women he was trying to pick up. Typical PUA bullshit before there was a term for that, basically. He was a munchkin who played more against his fellow party members than with them. He did a munchkiny thing to the party in the first session, and I made a light-hearted comment like, "Haha. You don't need to screw them over. That's my job." He didn't get it, or care, apparently. He kept doing it. He was also just plain dumb as hell. The tactical decisions he made were awful, and they hosed over the group as much as his deliberate attempts to gently caress them over. He was playing a "Dragoon," who he used a Fighter to build. Basically, he specialized in spears and had a magic item that let him use the Jump spell. But he was the best front-liner in the party. He was a fighter, and otherwise there was a cleric, a wizard, a (bow) ranger, and a bard. He would jump into combats far from the party, thereby abandoning them to whatever melee he left behind. Then he had the gall to complain that the cleric wasn't healing him, when he was routinely far away from the cleric, with a bunch of monsters between the two of them.So I killed him. Well, his character at least. I engineered an encounter that would catch as many of his weaknesses as possible, solely to kill his character and get him the gently caress out of the game. The party, still at level 4 or so, was at a political conference in some castle. Things went tits-up and the party had to flee the castle with a horde of undead swarming into the place. They got caught by a huge group of zombies meant to provoke the Fighter into jumping into them. He did, and found himself in the middle of 30 zombies with no allies within 40 feet of him. His character died while he was yelling out-of-character at the cleric's player for not moving to heal him. He asked to make another character. I told him "everyone gets one. You'll have to wait until I start up another game." That was a lie, but the campaign lasted another six months, so by then he had bugged off entirely. PVP is a necessary evil.
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Oct 13, 2015 13:28
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I realize this was the halcyon days of your youth, and obviously the solution worked, but it really must be reiterated for newer people joining the thread: talk to your players. And if one of them is an asshat ruining the game for everyone else and can't understand that, kick them out, it's your game. I just imagine the most hilariously over-the-top goony gently caress reading that story, and then I get sad remembering that I went to a college once and I remember that those people actually exist.
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Oct 13, 2015 14:20
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Shady Amish Terror posted:I realize this was the halcyon days of your youth, and obviously the solution worked, but it really must be reiterated for newer people joining the thread: talk to your players. And if one of them is an asshat ruining the game for everyone else and can't understand that, kick them out, it's your game. Definitely. I should have just bounced him after the first game, but kicking someone out of a game they're already started in is sometimes easier said than done. Nowadays, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but then again I don't have to play with random people anymore. I have had a solid group for a decade now. To folks in college trying to find a good game: take your time. Find a group that works with your play style. College is a big place, and your group is out there somewhere. Don't invite random PUA goonlords into your game. You don't need to.
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Oct 13, 2015 14:35
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Railing Kill posted:I like "rogue" better because it's more open-ended. The last rogue I played wasn't a thief at all. He was a fixer. He investigated things, kept things quiet, and sniped bad guys with a crossbow. Amen to this. I was scolded once by a DM for not trying to steal everything that was nailed down, in the only town in the campaign region. In the dungeon? Hell, yeah. At the only moneychanger's in the game? I'd rather not poo poo where I eat. Favourite rogue was a dwarven box-man. He could crack a lock and bypass a trap with the best of them, and probably read the instructions written in ancient script over the trap chamber. Total loss for loving around in the quiet and dark, but he wasn't a skulker. Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 17:31
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ellbent posted:Anyone have any stories about the bad kind of 'PvP,' you know, where it's not just interesting character enmity but actually a concerted metagamey effort to kill another character? I was going over a bad gaming story with friends where another player went waaaay out of their way make sure my dude died and just wondered who else had similar tales. I was playing a guy with 6 arms in shadowrun 4E that ran a cult to Kali and thought he was Shiva reincarnated and just wanted to sacrifice people and cause destruction to purify a world he perceived as corrupted. a member of the party didn't like that and tried to get into a theological arguement, and also called me a racist for wanting to kill all humans and cleanse the world (in character). I gave a level headed reply and also told him that it was specism he meant, and that he was actually the specist because he eats meat and insert veganism argument here. he short circuited and tried to murder me in character and burned all the edge points he could on the effort, but it ended up not working. hi akibear!!!
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Oct 13, 2015 17:33
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ellbent posted:Anyone have any stories about the bad kind of 'PvP,' you know, where it's not just interesting character enmity but actually a concerted metagamey effort to kill another character? I was going over a bad gaming story with friends where another player went waaaay out of their way make sure my dude died and just wondered who else had similar tales. Yeah, a really dumb Star Wars d20 one shot I participated in, full story's behind the link but I'll quote the dumb PVP stuff. Kurieg posted:The players were
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Oct 13, 2015 17:48
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ellbent posted:Anyone have any stories about the bad kind of 'PvP,' you know, where it's not just interesting character enmity but actually a concerted metagamey effort to kill another character? Rob ruined his own plan by appearing at Raf's house and taunting him with the diary. While Raf tried to cut a check ("Yes, yes, we've all done blackmail before"), Rob taunted him; he'd tell the whole school. Raf counter-plotted and the next day, had his family's lawyer put a gag order on the school's biggest gossip. It failed, so Raf hit on her and they came to an agreement; Raf would hang out with two hangers-on, generously sponsor the homecoming dance, and all would be forgiven. In homeroom, Rafael had flowers delivered to Rob's crush. They made out, giving Rob the condition Beta'd. All typical PVP stuff. Later, Rob called on the Trickster to magically throw Raf down the stairs, nearly killing him. Raf's flunkies held him up. Rob got in Raf's face. "If you think you can just" Rafael Torez Moncada de Fries posted:I headbutt him. A 10! Plus one damage, plus another for acting with a gang...it filled up Rob's harm clock. Normally, Rob could lose all his strings (he only had one) or go into darkest self. Robert posted:I die. Robert took the headbutt, tumbled down the stairs, and broke his skull in front of 20 witnesses. Rob's player left the game after that and Raef, now facing manslaughter charges, was unplayable. Heck of a result for a single roll.
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Oct 13, 2015 18:03
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Does anyone remember or have a link to the post about the "one person who may or may not be a goon" who was in a battletech tabletop group? If i remember right he basically ruined everything, all the time for them, played as a young plucky 16 year old girl from clan space who somehow finds and pilots a clan mech but hooks up with Innersphere mercenaries.
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Oct 14, 2015 03:16
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Speaking of the PvP stories, I remember one of the older versions of this thread had a good VtM one. Basically, they had some sort of Munchkin in the group who was constantly trying to wreck the game for everyone, but kept getting outsmarted and killed. I distinctly recall one of his characters had a poo poo ton of mental powers, and they managed to get him up to a stage 3 blood bond without him ever realizing it. Does anyone else remember that one?
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Oct 14, 2015 06:42
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the_steve posted:Speaking of the PvP stories, I remember one of the older versions of this thread had a good VtM one. Yeah, I don't have a link to it but that story was magical. It's one of my favorites from these types of threads. I remember the last stage of the blood bond involved him flinging his blood into the guy's mouth from a cut when he was doing the villain monologue + evil laugh and a moment where he had a bunch of assassins with crossbows designed to kill a vampire interrupting some public spectacle of a beheading. I think one of the quotes also became a thread title for a while.
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Oct 14, 2015 07:02
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Setup is here, story with the blood is here. (the new forum search is actually pretty great if you use threadid:[numbers] and a single good keyword!)
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Oct 14, 2015 14:52
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biosterous posted:Setup is here, story with the blood is here. Oh yeah, that's the good stuff. I will never not love the Nosferatu strike team.
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Oct 14, 2015 15:21
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the_steve posted:Speaking of the PvP stories, I remember one of the older versions of this thread had a good VtM one. The group was a mixed bag of ages, but the important players in this were myself playing a ~2000 year old Tzimisce koldun who was accidentally pulled out of torpor by a victorian hellfire club, and a relatively newly embraced Ravnos who was sort of a "gently caress you, I embrace when I want" to the prince by his sire. Ravnos's player picked the clan because he had heard that they were super powerful and that Chimerstry was practically broken, so of course he used all his starting xp to buy Chim 5 first. Unfortunately, he couldn't really wrap his head around the whole "you have to use this creatively" part of things so he kept on trying to use the paintbrush as a sword and getting mad when he produced neither art nor blood. He also kept trying to do the usual "build a political power base" thing, but in the most incompetent ways possible. We're talking poo poo like trying to threaten one of the primogen into just giving him full control over the police when he had absolutely nothing to back his threats up, then getting pissy when it didn't work. And so it went, with him trying some half-baked plan to gain something and going off half-cocked to try to get it right now instead of any manner of planning, while we tried in vain to explain to him basic concepts like planning, gathering information, and making any friends in any places. All told we were way friendlier than any vampire would have actually been because we are a good group who will metagame a bit to avoid being lovely to another player. He was having none of that. As I mentioned, my character is a koldun. A blood sorcerer with a pretty impressive host of powers thanks to me spending all my xp on magic & devotions and getting a pretty pile of stuff from diablerie. And since my character had zero reason to trust the Ravnos along with numerous reasons to distrust him, whenever he'd go off on his own I would surreptitiously tag him with the power that let me effectively scry on him. Through that, I learned that he was trying to sell us out to pretty much anyone who might listen to him; other vampires, a pack of werewolves, even a rank 4 spirit that lived in the city and fed off the various emotions vampires are most likely to cause. So we have an elder Tzimisce find out that the new kid in town that he has graciously allowed to live in his haven and given the benefit of the doubt to several times is without a doubt trying to sell him to the first bidder; anyone who knows VtM clans will tell you that you that Tzimisce hospitality is wonderful up until you spit on it. We let him return to the haven and, as soon as he got through the doorway, I give him a poke with a power that stuns for 1 turn per net success. My dice explode, he rolls nothing higher than a 6 and collapses in a spasming heap. I take the opportunity to perform some expert bonecrafting, removing his limbs and using them to pin his torso to the floor while asking why in the blue flaming gently caress he thought he was going to get away with this cockamamie attempt at backstabbing the vampires who house him and keep his rear end from getting staked?! Well, he throws a huge tantrum. Demands that despite having no idea that I was about to shank him with magic, that we should roll init. (We rolled it, I won handily.) And that despite not having any dots in Occult and a 2 int, that he should know about ancient bloodlines, old magic, basically demanding to have retroactive knowledge of my entire character sheet with no other reasoning beyond "well if I knew what you can do OOC I could have planned to avoid all that IC!". Starts demanding to see my sheet and pitching a fit because I had a cohesive concept that I had built towards, with abilities that I knew I could use effectively, and whinging on about how he had been "lied to" about Chimerstry because he had the idea that useful/powerful == biggest numbers firmly lodged in his brain. We offered to help him make a new character, something that would be more fitting towards his play style and interests, but he was having none of that. Told us that we were all terrible people, that he would never play anything WoD again, and that this was all our fault. He ragequit the channel, we diablerized his character as a group, the game continued on for another year or so.
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Oct 14, 2015 16:21
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Some people just don't have a lot of empathy and seem to have difficulty understanding that just because they're playing in a fantasy world doesn't mean they suddenly get to win at everything and gently caress everyone else over all the time, other players included. Some people are just not very bright. It's kind of pitiable.  It's especially weird to hear about in roleplaying because, c'mon, there's tons of videogames both single-player and multi-player that allow you to be that overbearing control freak rear end in a top hat without consequences; why do people think that poo poo will fly with actual for-real people meeting with them face-to-face (or at least online in an environment where you can't control the situation that way)?
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Oct 14, 2015 18:58
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Shady Amish Terror posted:Some people just don't have a lot of empathy and seem to have difficulty understanding that just because they're playing in a fantasy world doesn't mean they suddenly get to win at everything and gently caress everyone else over all the time, other players included. Some people are just not very bright. It's kind of pitiable. Probably because of all the video games that let them do that.
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Oct 14, 2015 20:49
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Yawgmoth posted:That reminds me of a VtR chronicle that used the VtM -> VtR translation guide I was in. This port triggered me with Camarilla LARP flashbacks. gently caress. Gotta go drink until I can't see anymore.
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Oct 14, 2015 21:00
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Shady Amish Terror posted:It's especially weird to hear about in roleplaying because, c'mon, there's tons of videogames both single-player and multi-player that allow you to be that overbearing control freak rear end in a top hat without consequences; why do people think that poo poo will fly with actual for-real people meeting with them face-to-face (or at least online in an environment where you can't control the situation that way)?
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Oct 14, 2015 23:36
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Yawgmoth posted:Because a lot of people can't seem to grasp that they aren't the main character of the world we live in and for whatever reason just can't process that other people aren't just there to amuse them. It's really unfortunate, but sometimes it leads to a good story. Yeah. It's more understandable (but still a problem) when players don't understand that their character isn't the main character of a story. But it's so much worse when that narcissism extends into reality. I just try not to play with folks like that. There are some games that have mechanics that help the GM make individual PCs the "star of the show" for periods of time. 7th Sea, for example, has character backgrounds that are basically personal plots. Skilled GMs in 7th Sea can thread those into the main plot(s) and use them to highlight individual characters one at a time without throwing off the whole campaign. That just helps spread the field of focus a bit. It doesn't do anything to slow down rear end in a top hat players that are really self absorbed OOC, but it can breaks things up when "alpha gamers" are running off with all the plots in-character.
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Oct 15, 2015 00:26
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Really enjoyed a 13th Age one-shot tonight. We were a party sent to pan-dimensional fantasy Wal-Mart/Cost-Co/Whatever to get a list of ingredients for a wizard to continue their highly experimental magic. I was the only Half-Orc (Commander) to have been produced by an Arch-Mage project designed to artificially create human soldiers. Had a lot of fun with this character, was really gruff and Australian (More-so than usual), but surprisingly conscientious and concerned with my teammates self-esteem. Joining me were: A half-Orc Ranger who was raised by wolves Steve T. Fighter- The platonic ideal of the generic human fighter (Through some great roleplay decisions and some great roles eventually evolved through Steve The Fighter, to Steven T. Fighter, To Steven T. Hero.) Another human fighter who was an unwilling magnet for 'Chosen One' prophecies but desperately wanted a normal life. The Occultist who unlocked their powers by surviving a Lovecraftian experience. Highlights included: Getting into a screaming match/ fight with a Jorogumo over a potion in "Potent Potions & Potables" Finding the treasures of our wildest dreams in a bargain bin, but realising that we had to leave something of equal personal-value if we wanted them. Fighting a Chimera for a slab of fresh Chimera flank from the store "Unfamiliar Familiars" Half the party getting into a staredown with some Chuul who were trying to force their parasitic equipment onto us, while the other half watched one of us be suckered into buying a potion that would turn him into a bear. Long story short, we retrieved the items, checked out and returned to the wizard, only to learn that he had sent us out to get the ingredients he needed to make a new, experimental sandwich. Roach Warehouse fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 17:45
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ellbent posted:Anyone have any stories about the bad kind of 'PvP,' you know, where it's not just interesting character enmity but actually a concerted metagamey effort to kill another character? I was going over a bad gaming story with friends where another player went waaaay out of their way make sure my dude died and just wondered who else had similar tales. A friend (Shelby) and I joined a D&D 2nd ed game in high school with some new friends that had apparently been going on since they were 12. There were tons of house rules regarding multiclassing and you gained experience based on what you did that session, so you could gain a level in Wizard for doing wizardy things and a level in fighter for doing fightman things in the same session, leading to crazy powerful ersatz characters with every class. One of the players (John) had been at every session for 4 years and had just a novel of a character sheet that he never let anyone see. All we really knew is that he was a dragonslayer who had killed a ton of dragons and was super powerful, but he was actually really nice about letting other people shine and rarely hogged the spotlight for anything except RP. The other new player, Shelby, started getting really powerful as we kept playing for a few months, mostly through custom magic items that the GM allowed him to have made. Like armor that gave the quality of needing a +2 or better weapon to harm him and sentient gauntlets made of shrunken dragon heads he had taken as trophies that could cast spells and take extra actions on each of his turns. He wasn't quite so nice about letting other people shine and about half the party wanted to kill him for being an rear end in a top hat about how strong he was. Shelby and John butted heads constantly but never got into a real in-character fight because Shelby was apprehensive about John's abilities. Eventually John the Dragonslayer decided his character was settling down to live his life, and was RPing building a cabin and discarding all the tokens of his old life, including all of his magical items, but Bahamut was mad about all the dragons he had slain and wanted revenge. Shelby was trying to gain favor with him, so Bahamut tasked him to go kill John and he would grant him the tools to do it. One of these was a bubble that locked down the area around them so that no one could interfere in their battle. All this took place as an aside in another room, so when Shelby came back and convinced me to scry to find John's new home, I did it for him and teleported him there. So Shelby calls John out and I'm not sure what is happening and John comes out without armor, just simple farmer clothes. Shelby activates the bubble and says that he's been sent to kill John, I try to interfere but dragon-god magic just says I can't do anything. John says he has no weapon to fight with, he's given up that life, so Shelby offers him a short sword +1 and they roll initiative. John wins and doesn't stop rolling to hit for literally 10 minutes. He finally adds it all up and announces: John: "4,810 damage." Shelby: "Okay, my turn?" John: "...you survived that?" Shelby: "Yeah, you need weapons that are +2 or better to hurt me. So my turn?"  At that point John just conceded and let himself get murdered.
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Oct 16, 2015 18:15
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GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:A friend (Shelby) and I joined a D&D 2nd ed game in high school with some new friends that had apparently been going on since they were 12. There were tons of house rules regarding multiclassing and you gained experience based on what you did that session, so you could gain a level in Wizard for doing wizardy things and a level in fighter for doing fightman things in the same session, leading to crazy powerful ersatz characters with every class. One of the players (John) had been at every session for 4 years and had just a novel of a character sheet that he never let anyone see. All we really knew is that he was a dragonslayer who had killed a ton of dragons and was super powerful, but he was actually really nice about letting other people shine and rarely hogged the spotlight for anything except RP. Attack the armor straps. The armor only protects Shelby, so you should be able to deliberately cut the straps.  (Disclaimer: Not actually sure if that would have been possible.)
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Oct 16, 2015 19:31
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After letting Shelby pull that poo poo, making the dude roll damage for minutes for no reason.. I'd have ruled that John had +1 arms at this point, so the "just quite not enough to hurt me" weapon he was given as a big "ha ha, gently caress you" counted as a +2. Hubris.
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Oct 16, 2015 19:59
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Arx Monolith posted:After letting Shelby pull that poo poo, making the dude roll damage for minutes for no reason.. I'd have ruled that John had +1 arms at this point, so the "just quite not enough to hurt me" weapon he was given as a big "ha ha, gently caress you" counted as a +2. Hubris. For real. That was some high-octane .
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Oct 17, 2015 01:28
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GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:John and Shelby That kinda bums me out. The concept of a character retiring is a neat one and have another player come to kill him is too bad, especially since it sounds like John was a pretty chill player. He should have been rewarded for that kind of play. My earlier post about our expedition to hell and the eventual slaughter of all the monty-haul high-level guys reminded me of one of my favorite characters that came out of that campaign- I'd rolled up a first level rogue as a henchman to one of my players and for whatever reason decided to stat him up and flesh him out, to see if I could keep a first level thief alive in the Hells. Of course I was fully assuming a quick death for the guy as soon as the first fireball was tossed at us, but no matter. So anyways, I kept the character alive by being the sneakiest, stealthiest, hiding-est rogue I could manage, and he stayed alive by not getting involved. He came into his own after the group slew Tiamat. Now the GM ruled that all we'd done was killed her current body and that she'd return in another new body in some indeterminate time. So the group moves quickly into her lair to plunder her horde of all hordes, but my rogue stays behind to salvage some of her blood. As the group starts to squabble over the booty, my thief  says to the collective group  I get first pick of the loot wha...? And you get first pick because...? I'm holding here a couple of flasks of Tiamat's blood. Blood known to be one of the ways artifacts can be destroyed.  yeah, so if you don't let me have first pick, no one gets anything. but we could also kill you. You could try. But others better than you have tried and failed to do so.At this point play stops and the group goes out of character and tries to remember who I am playing (Like I said we were a pretty big group and each of us had a bunch of followers, henchmen and various hangers-on for our assault on the Hells). No one could remember who this guy was and since I was playing him all over the top there was ~no way~ I wouldn't be able to back it up, right? So yeah, they let me have my pick of the loot and gave this first level nobody a wide berth after that.  tl;dr Bluffing can be fun.
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Oct 17, 2015 05:22
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That is pretty amusing, though I hope it didn't get on anybody's toes too much (I think a good GM would probably reward you for the incredible character play without denying anyone else their share). I would say it's not really a bluff if you were being truthful, but then it occurred to me that your party probably killed everything else thrown at them, so yeah, standing between Momma Bear Murderhobo Club and her Literally-A-Dragon's-Horde Cub is about the biggest, highest-risk bluff you could ever pull off.
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Oct 17, 2015 15:26
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Agrikk's story of the low-level rogue bluffing the party reminds me of a character I played once an a 1st Ed AD&D game. I was bringing a new character into an existing campaign, where most of the characters were lvl 10+. I had been warned that PvP was "A Thing" and I knew from past experience with the group that one particular guy was notorious for it. How then to get my 1st level magic user to survive? The answer turned out to be the clever use of cantrips. Essentially, I was able to use cantrips (which you can cast an unlimited number of times per day, at least under the edition of the rules that we were using) to mimic at least the visible effects of spells. Additionally, I used the "Color" cantrip to give my character a "tattoo" of a spider covering my left eye. So during the first session of the game in which my character appeared, I did some stuff and the PvP guy asked me, "Hey, how can you cast that more than once a day as a 1st level character?" I just tapped my left cheek and said, "sold my soul to Lolth." The look on his face was priceless (casting a terrified, sidelong glance at the GM, who just grinned like the Cheshire Cat), and he didn't mess with me after that.
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Oct 17, 2015 17:02
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I was searching through the forums and I wasn't able to see anything about Edge of the Empire specifically, so I guess I'm gonna ask here: I'm going to play another session in a game with some friends, and I want to make a Force Sensitive character and be a face type character. I already made a politico, but I got the go ahead to re-roll if i need to, does anyone have any advice on how to go about making that? I have 160 xp to work with, and my character cannot openly be a jedi, i'll be playing him as someone who was going through training during the Purge.
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Oct 17, 2015 23:22
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Ilor posted:Agrikk's story of the low-level rogue bluffing the party reminds me of a character I played once an a 1st Ed AD&D game. I was bringing a new character into an existing campaign, where most of the characters were lvl 10+. I had been warned that PvP was "A Thing" and I knew from past experience with the group that one particular guy was notorious for it. How then to get my 1st level magic user to survive? Cantrips were vastly underrated. I had a 1st level campaign start from a one shot adventure where the party stopped some bad guys from killing local young women. It took place at an abandoned winery. After the adventure ended, the part had had so much fun they wanted to continue, so I had them at an auction to buy the winery. There was a rich guy there and the mage used cantrips to keep him off guard, so they could get the place with the smallish amount of money they had. Nothing like standing up to bid and having your trews fall down!
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Oct 18, 2015 03:36
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Samizdata posted:Cantrips were vastly underrated. Ran a pathfinder game and let a player roll up a goblin sorcerer. His whole character was based around using the cantrip Prestidigitation, which is basically "I do a magic trick". Walk into the royal hall? Confetti shoots out my sleeves and I announce "We have arrived!" Impressing an important person? "Hey you have some dirt on you, oh look! A coin ..BEHIND YOUR EAR!" Walking away from a jackass NPC? His shoes make fart sounds when he walks. It lasts.. uh.. let me check.. 2 hours.
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Oct 18, 2015 04:24
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Arx Monolith posted:Ran a pathfinder game and let a player roll up a goblin sorcerer. His whole character was based around using the cantrip Prestidigitation, which is basically "I do a magic trick". Walk into the royal hall? Confetti shoots out my sleeves and I announce "We have arrived!" I will not lie, however. Anytime the players in any of my campaigns start being really clever with their limited resources, I start cutting them slack.
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Oct 18, 2015 07:47
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Arx Monolith posted:Ran a pathfinder game and let a player roll up a goblin sorcerer. His whole character was based around using the cantrip Prestidigitation, which is basically "I do a magic trick". Walk into the royal hall? Confetti shoots out my sleeves and I announce "We have arrived!" Samizdata posted:I will not lie, however. Anytime the players in any of my campaigns start being really clever with their limited resources, I start cutting them slack. Prestidigitation rules and is the best example of players doing the most with the least. Cantrip stories are why low level campaigns are fun. Edit: Back in college, I was running 3.5 D&D and we had a cleric in the party. (This is the same game that had the PUA douche bag playing the "Dragoon," but this was way after his character died and he left the game). The party found themselves in a sort of Seven Samurai scenario: a small town was being regularly raided by a gang of bandits, and someone in the town inadvertently killed the bandit leader's son. So the PCs show up and they're the only thing standing between the town and annihilation at the hands of a very angry bandit leader. To make a long story short, the cleric set up a triage clinic at the center of town, while the rest of the party went off to the front lines to fend off bandits. The bandits outmaneuvered their defenses without them knowing, and a bunch of them got into the town. The cleric took charge and got the villagers in the infiltrated area to his secure clinic. He then left the clinic and stalked the bandits through the town, picking them off one by one. He ended up taking out about a dozen bandits by himself basically by isolating them, using whatever crap was around like barrels and alleyways and literal piles of garbage, and clever uses of low level spells (to save his better ones for healing). I let him incapacitate all but a couple of the bandits without combat because his tactics were clever and his rolls were good. When the rest of the party returned to find a dozen dead or knocked out bandits strewn all over town, they asked the cleric about it.  Did you do all this? Yep. Were you able to heal the townsfolk too? Yep. So you did all this with cantrips? They're called orisons. 
Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Oct 18, 2015 |
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Oct 18, 2015 12:00
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I occasionally play on MUSHes, which are text based online games that frequently have dozens of players, occasionally hundreds, along with built in support for things like rolling dice and character sheets. A few years back there was a fairly popular one set in the Fading Suns universe but using a homebrew system which had a fair quantity of crazy politics going on. Now Fading Suns is a far future neo-feudal setting with strong religious themes and, amongst other things, psychic powers which are highly distrusted by the church, known psychics often being burnt as witches. There was a huge messy council meeting type thing going on that had literally 30+ player characters taking part along with something like a dozen named and active NPCs being played by multiple staff members / GM s, with most of those player characters being various nobles who had land, troops, etc along with generally high degrees of self interest. There was a call for soldiers to aid in an important battle and almost everyone had excellent reasons why everyone else should send troops but they should use their own forces for something else, one of the key people arguing for this was a Count who's lands were not in any way directly threatened by the (genuinely dangerous) enemy and was refusing to send more than a tiny token force to help his allies. My character? Worked directly for the Empire (rather than a particular noble house like most people) and was one of the aforementioned people with psychic powers that tended to lead to witch hunts. The thing is that I was in a room with literally dozens of people and using psychic powers that say, influenced people's emotions, was not obvious. So I forced the Count to suffer a massive, supernaturally intense, wave of guilt immediately after he argued in opposition to the bishop who was the head inquisitor (in charge of witch burnings and trials!) reasoning he should not send more than a token number of soldiers. He then in character believed this was a warning from God and begged forgiveness, completely turning the tide of the debate and leading to people screaming 'Deus Vult!' as they competed to see who could contribute the most. Later the Count in question realized something had been not right about it and voiced his concerns that evil witchery had been behind his behaviour, but the actual church and inquisition had no interest in it being anything other than genuine divine intervention.
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Oct 18, 2015 18:03
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Arx Monolith posted:Ran a pathfinder game and let a player roll up a goblin sorcerer. His whole character was based around using the cantrip Prestidigitation, which is basically "I do a magic trick". Walk into the royal hall? Confetti shoots out my sleeves and I announce "We have arrived!" That's great. It's basically Jim Darkmagic (only he uses doves instead of confetti)
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Oct 18, 2015 20:52
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So my friend Steve just told me a short bit about his campaigns. It owns. He's playing a ranger alcoholic, his friend is playing The Mountain, and his other friend is playing a psycho monk. Now, his plot hook was weakish before, but the Monk, who is a psychotic drunken rear end in a top hat that fights things for fun, just found a grog that has a D1000 table full of random effects. He rolled the first time... And got a re roll, with the next roll taking double effect. He rolled again, and got the same, but triple the effect. So we're talking 6x the next effect, which could be becoming a tree werewolf, switching classes, all kinds of things. He rolled all 0000s on the die app they use. Result: divide by zero. Six times. He went *blip* and disappeared. So, new plot: find the drat monk. But the best part is when that is put in context. See, they had just encountered a village of elves and decided to ransack the place. The monk bumped into the elf leader of the village, his dice exploded, and so did the leader. They scared the crap out of the elves so bad that they let Steve, Monk, and Tank steal everything. Including the elves. As Monk is intimidating all of them, he gets the smart idea to drink this Grog in front of all the elves. He's already beaten a few and exploded their leader, so they think he's some kind of warrior king. When he vanished by dividing by 0 six times, Steve said "oh, he's gone back to the astral planes. You elves better behave. Because he might be gone, but he is always. Watching. So now they have a small gaggle of elves being trained as archers and beast masters who are all worshippers of and completely terrified by the psychotic god-monk alcoholic. During the meantime, the friend playing the monk is rolling a paladin with 4 INT who is a worshipper of the lost god "Airs" and wants to bring the message of Airs to everyone he can. It's Ares. bawk fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Oct 18, 2015 |
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Oct 18, 2015 21:52
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Too bad about that logic/sequence, since the double of (roll again and double the effect) means roll two more times and quadruple each outcome... so depending on order they get resolved he would have still had to make either 3 more rolls with 8x,4x,2x effect (or 4x,4x,4x) or 5 more rerolls with 8x,8x,8x,4x,2x after imploding. edit4: or 7 rolls with 8,8,8,4,4,4,2 since apparently my brain can't function without coffee. DM's ruling of course, but IMO always lean toward maximum fun/craziness when rolling random effects. silentsnack fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Oct 18, 2015 |
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Oct 18, 2015 22:48
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