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unseenlibrarian posted:Ex-Special Forces is another good 'Cop' archetype, because how many TV police procedurals have that one dude who was a sniper in the military? (A lot, if not literally "All of them") Yeah, had I given myself more than like half an hour to prep, I probably would've put that one in the Cop-Adjacent pile rather than the I Don't Care What This Booklet Says, Have Fun pile. 
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Jun 20, 2016 02:00
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unseenlibrarian posted:Ex-Special Forces is another good 'Cop' archetype, because how many TV police procedurals have that one dude who was a sniper in the military? (A lot, if not literally "All of them") I think some of this is because Donald P. Bellisario is a really active producer with a long career.
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Jun 20, 2016 02:04
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Samizdata posted:Especially as you have the whole "Man, I have seen poo poo that would turn your hair WHITE! And I have done things I can't forgive myself for." sub themes to work with for character development. Despite not being a cop show, Leverage has this in the character Elliot, who is the best. It just shows that it's a great theme for any show, and you are correct
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Jun 20, 2016 16:37
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Railing Kill posted:awesome orky stuff this is so great, b'uth barb is gonna be the best
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Jun 20, 2016 17:01
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During our last exciting session, our intrepid heroes were doing some rudimentary dungeon diving before suddenly coming across a large, vaulted chamber. Scattered on the floor before us were the bodies of another hapless party, flattened and forgotten. Looking up, we spied an ornate throne seemingly bolted to the ceiling upside down. There sat an imposing, colossal skeleton wrapped in chains, but unrestrained. A few feet in front of him stood a small pedestal with a beautiful gemstone embedded in the top. Everyone in our group who'd ever played Zelda immediately had the same first thought: gravity switch. We had a few scrolls of Spider Climb, but not quite enough for everybody. "No worries," my wizard said, "I'll just cast Levitate on myself while everyone else is trudging up the walls and across the ceiling." Our monk reached the central pedestal and, figuring we needed to defeat this beast to progress, touched the gemstone. Sure enough, the gravity of the room reversed, and the giant skeleton - an undead minotaur it turned out - sprang to life, bathed in the sinister glow of the myriad mythic runes etched into his chains. Standing up from his throne he cried out in fury and the battle commenced. While the mere mortals engaged the beast directly below, or I guess technically up above, my wizard floated over/under the minotaur and did his best impression of an air raid, dropping flasks of alchemist's fire from overhead. The creature burst into flames and howled in pain, and our paladin took the opportunity to call down the wrath of his god to deliver a righteous blow. The minotaur howled again, and his chains burst and evaporated into shards of light. Then our monk had a brilliant idea. Surely those chains had some property allowing the minotaur to remain on the ceiling even when the gravity wasn't reversed (he wasn't chained to the throne, remember). With the chains gone and everyone else blessed with some manner of magic, if she were to hit the pedestal again and switch the gravity back, the beast would topple up/down and smash against the floor, doing ample damage. She promptly spun around and struck the pedestal. Her guess was right; the beast fell down. Straight down. 40 feet, 300 lbs, and on fire. Into my wizard. 
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Jun 21, 2016 05:43
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I'm fairly new (couple years) to tabletop gaming and have only played in a handful of games. So most of my catpiss stories involve bad online RPers and secondhand stories about White Wolf LARPs. (As well as some of the embarrassing stuff I myself have done.  ) But most of my personal experiences have been good ones.The last game I played in was a D&D 4th Ed game that was homeruled to turn it into a computer-themed Kamen Rider game. (More specifically, a Heisei Rider one.) All of the characters were hackers in an experimental near-future city in southern California that had widespread implementation of quantum entanglement energy generators and Hard Light projectors. This technology was used to create the characters' suits, which were given to them in the form of a cell phone app, which we dubbed the "Rider App", and a HL-projecting phone charm by a mysterious benefactor. (The enemies' powers were also HL constructs, keeping with the theme of Kamen Riders having the same power source as the villains.) The characters' class determined the abilities they had in their Rider forms, which had separate abilities and stats from their normal human forms. The group consisted of: Eryka Eszes/Kamen Rider Trojan - My character. A Youtube celebrity who did various series on urban exploration (which in this city meant exploring glitches and hidden caches in the projector system) and video game stuff. Due to the Internet and fandoms being full of idiots and the usual poo poo women get online, she developed a love-hate relationship with her career and fanbase and an obvious online persona that was separate from her own. (Think about all of the Youtube personalities who put way too many jump cuts in their videos to get rid of dead air and are just always SUPER EXCITED ABOUT WHATEVER THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT OMG YOU GUIZE  and you've got a good idea of what she's like in her videos.) Spent her free time digging through databases and shutting off ad boards that annoyed her. (Which I admittedly didn't play up as much as I should have.) Her major goal most of the time was finding out who made the Rider App and why they were doing it. Was a Human Wizard with an emphasis on Illusion and Enchantment spells. (I had the odd title out because I didn't ask the tech guy of the group to help come up with one.)Ron Sochi/Kamen Rider Gate - A network security specialist for the city's major hotel. Was pretty much the only HL tech guy working there and had a boss who is one of those people who has to be asked if he's tried restarting the computer when something goes wrong. Apparently wasn't one of the Rider App creator's first choices to get one, since he got his on accident. Was Human Two-Blade Ranger. Joseph Hayak/Kamen Rider Thread - A super rich tech investor who spent his days mostly throwing money at all of the tech companies in the city. Was led to believe that the Rider App and the people/things we were fighting were part of some elaborate game/ARG, and the way things were going, he might have been right. Went around being a solo vigilante during downtime. Was basically Batman. I don't remember what his class was. Albert Flowers/Kamen Rider Access - A rough guy who presumably had underworld dealings and connections. Might have been involved in some martial arts after school program? I don't think his player said much about his character in game. Ditto on not remembering his class. Highlights included: 1: Eryka standing in an incredibly glitchy HL area of the hotel Ron worked at while trying to download her Rider App. She ended up crashing the entire system on accident. The event trended on Twitter. (This allowed Ron to get his as part of her code was still left in the system.) 2: The group, led by Joseph, infiltrated an after school program that we later learned was using the kids as nodes in a human botnet run by one of the heads of the company. Things went fine until the guy they were talking to recognized Eryka from her videos. She admitted who she was and claimed that she was following Joseph around to film a video series on him. As he led us further in, the guy started urging Eryka to leave for her own sake. Albert panicked and literally pocket sanded the guy, getting us into combat. 3: As I mentioned, Eryka spent her time trying to track down the person who made the Rider app. The only thing she had to go by was the name of the wifi network she downloaded hers from: "Sawada". After looking around herself, she put out a call for any info anyone had. This led a fan of hers to change the name of the wifi network at the coffee shop he worked at to help her.  4: The last few sessions dealt with the fallout of Ron's attempt to create an app that allowed people in the city to inform the group of whenever an enemy appeared. (The group had developed an online fanbase at that point.) Eryka was put in charge of promoting it, which led to an enemy, Malware, and his cronies targeting her. The coffee guy showed up again and gave her useless information on where all of the negative comments on her videos were coming from. Eventually, Malware hacked into the city's ad boards and announced that anyone who brought her to him would be rewarded with more power. This led to all hell breaking loose. Eryka's NPC best friend found out she was a Rider, Joseph destroyed the sliding glass door to her apartment while trying to get at an enemy, Ron lost nearly all of his health surges by jumping off a 5 story balcony (and proceeded to kick rear end in every fight afterwards), and the group got into what I like to imagine was a scene similar to the massive cop car pile-up from Blues Brothers 2000, except with a motorcycle gang of minions that were after them on the highway and the giant worm monster that was going to eat them. Nearly all of this happened within the span of an evening in game.That last evening ended with the group taking down Malware at the cost of most of the group going down themselves. Eryka was the only one who was able to get away. (With very little HP left.) She eventually met up with an NPC Rider, Shooter, who refused to give her his real name and had an earlier version of the Rider program, and, unlike the rest of the group, just killed the enemies instead of healing them. (Our app had a program that allowed us to remove the "virus" that gave the enemies their powers after we downed them.) The last time we played, him and her were tracking Malware's minions, who had taken the rest of the group prisoner for interrogation, and had fought their way through the neighborhood their hideout was in while talking about the morality of letting the mooks live in-between encounters. (Shooter's reasoning was that most of them were criminals who would just try to regain their abilities anyway, since they had been given a taste of power. He himself implied that if the group tried to stop him or take away his, he would fight them.) Shooter also implied that the number of "kills" everyone got was being tracked and rewarded with more power, possibly proving Joseph's (who Shooter seemed to know) theory about the whole thing being a game of sorts right. (This was portrayed by us leveling up. We did it separately, though the DM made sure we all stayed at roughly the same levels.) Unfortunately, the game died there due to peoples' work schedules and/or half the group losing interest.  I and Ron's player were usually the ones who did most of the roleplaying, which is why I don't really have stories of the other two characters and probably why the rest of the group lost interest.
Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Jun 27, 2016 |
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Jun 25, 2016 22:32
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So we played a Bardworld game. It's Westworld but in the year 300,000 when people assume Shakespeare wrote everything. I could pull a thousand quotes but this is all you need: Puck: It appears that Ophelia is on the wrong Asteroid, as is the Imperial Commander. Ben Kenobi: There's an old Huttese saying. drat, VADER STOLE YOUR HO. Hamlet: I must verify this information.
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Jun 26, 2016 01:18
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I'm in a 13th Age game with some other goons, in the Ravenloft setting. I'm using the Sword of Humakt class from the Glorantha splatbook. It's re-tooled -- my character isn't a literal follower of a death god, but she does hate undead, and she loves swords. Her One Unique Thing is that she is a half-orc who led a warband that got lost in the mists and taken by undead. She found herself in Ravenloft and is one of two people around with Orcish blood (the other being an actual Ravenloft NPC). For someone who covets their swords so much, she hasn't had a lot of luck with them. I don't remember the exact circumstances of the first time. I remember we were headed to a city which ended up being full of werewolves, and we had an encounter on the way. Just some regular wolves, I believe. GM calls me up for my roll. I have the worst luck with dice ever. For every 20 I roll, I've probably rolled at least 4 or 5 1's. I roll to hit. A 1 this time, of course. The GM went to his table of catastrophes and then informed me that my half-orc had managed to snap her prized greatsword in half. After finishing the fight with half a greatsword, we went to a werewolf bar and upset everyone there and had to flee. On the way out, I gave my sword a proper burial and mourned, much to the annoyance of the bard. Someone in the party (pretty sure this was also the bard) lent me a spare sword that they had, because they had just obtained a magical one. Cut to next week. We have an encounter with some goblins, and I'm doing pretty well for myself. I rolled a 1 early in the fight but I rerolled it into a hit with my racial ability. I took out a pretty good amount of the goblins, and when the GM calls me to my next roll, I go in to hit one of the last ones. Roll to hit -- is a 1 again. The GM asked if my weapon was magical, and I confirmed that it was not. After rolling on the catastrophe chart, he then informed me that I had succeeded in breaking my second sword in two weeks. After combat the bard took back their broken sword to toss it. "What are you doing?" snaps my half-orc. "A weapon like that needs a proper burial!" The bard then informed me as to where I could bury the sword in a rather colorful manner. Electric Lady fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Jun 26, 2016 |
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Jun 26, 2016 09:23
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Yet another object lesson of why critical failure charts are bad and dumb.
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Jun 26, 2016 16:02
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In general I would agree, but I don't really see how that applies to this story. Nobody cares about losing mundane weapons and in this case he came out of it with a memorable story.
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Jun 26, 2016 17:48
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Mondian posted:In general I would agree, but I don't really see how that applies to this story. Nobody cares about losing mundane weapons and in this case he came out of it with a memorable story. Really it's just that stories involving crit fail tables/charts/dickery make my eye twitch on reflex since for every "I kept getting hosed over and it was funny" anecdote there's a hundred "I got hosed over by dice rolls and the DM decided that I should get extra hosed over, which put me off of gaming in general for 10+ years" stories.
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Jun 26, 2016 19:36
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I think the primary problem is that (with d20) it means 5% of the time EVERYBODY 'catastrophically' fails that's pretty much outright stupid. I prefer to consider it a critical fail and blend that with what was happening as well as the character's general competence at what they are attempting. For instance a hardened warrior using their chosen weapon rolling a one means they simply miss spectacularly enough for someone to comment on how out of the usual that was for them. If it made sense or was amusing for some reason dropping a weapon in these circumstances would be on the extreme end of the matrix. I finished up a long running Play by Post game recently and after rereading the wrap up post I thought it might be worth sharing: quote:OK So now that everyone has had the chance to say what they needed to say (etc.) Let's move to the text that rolls while we play the end credits.
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Jun 27, 2016 01:14
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Golden Bee posted:So we played a Bardworld game. It's Westworld but in the year 300,000 when people assume Shakespeare wrote everything. I need to hear more about this campaign.
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Jun 27, 2016 04:04
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I give comedic, non-harmful effects to natural 1's- the rogue's arrows regularly land in her friend's armor and once killed a passing seagull. One player didn't like them so I stopped doing them for her. No harm, no foul.
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Jun 27, 2016 07:46
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Yawgmoth posted:Clearly not the case. Reminds me of the computer game Rimworld, where (at least at one point in development, not sure if this is still the case), in a grid-based combat system, every missed projectile scattered randomly to one of the eight adjacent spaces. Shots that landed in those spaces automatically hit whoever or whatever was standing there. This meant that sometimes it was actually easier to hit an enemy by shooting the ally next to the enemy, instead of directly at the enemy.
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Jun 27, 2016 08:07
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One time a player brought in a ~special~ critical hit table and asked to use it. The DM said 'fine, but if you get it, so do the monsters'. We stopped using it at about the time one player's character lost an eye to goblin archers for the second time. I straight up refused to use it, because AD&D combat was cumbersome enough already. The same DM has used the same critical fumble rule for many years, which is both simple and loving terrible. You fumble your attack, you drop your weapon or your bowstring breaks, forfeiting any other attacks you have for the round. It may sound fair to the untrained ear, but it was a real kick in the privates when you muffed your first attack as a character with a handful.
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Jun 27, 2016 12:37
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^^^ That sounds awful. I typically make botched attack rolls just miss, unless it would lead to something enjoyable like a funny moment for the party or heighten drama in a climactic fight. That's why I didn't see the problem with the breaking greatswords... they were just mundane weapons and the guy was able to finish his battles with the broken end anyway. But I suppose I forgot I was posting in the catpiss thread and insufferable poo poo like the above happens with bad DMs.
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Jun 27, 2016 12:59
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I'm doing a FATE game based on the Jormungand anime (which ends up playing kinda like an Armored Warfare roleplay with the PCs as a mercenary tank unit), playing as the loader for a Centurion tank that's had a Russian automatic grenade launcher mounted in my hatch. During the first fight (an ambush on the road in Serbia), the first action I decide to take is firing the grenade launcher at some infantry in the hills. I rolled the FATE equivalent of a critical miss, so I wrote it as the first grenade discharging and the case of the crappy black market ammo splitting, causing the ammo belt to break off and jamming the gun with bits of metal and the damaged case. Totally harmless all things considered, but it kept me from doing anything for a bit.
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Jun 27, 2016 14:22
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Mondian posted:^^^ That sounds awful. I typically make botched attack rolls just miss, unless it would lead to something enjoyable like a funny moment for the party or heighten drama in a climactic fight. That's why I didn't see the problem with the breaking greatswords... they were just mundane weapons and the guy was able to finish his battles with the broken end anyway. But I suppose I forgot I was posting in the catpiss thread and insufferable poo poo like the above happens with bad DMs. I don't think there's anything wrong with that kind of approach either. You missed, something colourful and non-mechanical happens (or not, if it frustrates the player, it's cool) and you move on with the rest of your round. It's just a matter of keeping ~verisimilitude~ from sneaking in and taking a whiz in the corner, which can be easier said than done. Sadly for us, that weapon-dropping rule developed very early in our gaming careers, back at the beginning of 2E when multiple attacks were relatively uncommon and long before we knew any better. It's cemented so deeply now, he's as unlikely to abandon it now as he is to move away from his hill of 3.X books.
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Jun 27, 2016 15:28
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Kavak posted:once killed a passing seagull. One player didn't like them so I stopped doing them for her. No harm, no fowl. This is certainly what you meant, and I will not be convinced otherwise 
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Jun 27, 2016 16:48
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I'm the bad DM that deliberately introduced a d100 crit table into a campaign, and was also a big baby that made it only applicable to attacks by the players only. But I wouldn't ever do fumbles unless it was specifically built into the system.
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Jun 27, 2016 16:54
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When I DM, Attack rolls are easy, if you crit, roll again to double your crit, if that's a doublecrit, roll again to kill, and if that's a 20, the enemy is paste. If it's a crit, Roll Damage, multiply by multiplier. If it's a double crit, Max Damage x Multiplier, no roll needed. Monsters don't get doublecrit or Kill. If you roll a 1, the opponent gets an automatic AOO on the player that cannot crit.
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Jun 27, 2016 18:45
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Viola the Mad posted:I need to hear more about this campaign. http://everyworldnews.com/stuff/rvr.pdf Any more writing up would lead to me writing up the entire session, since anytime the party was gathered was a yukfest. Everyone played their character to the hilt and with six well-crafted Pre-Gens, that's a lot of hilt.
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Jun 27, 2016 19:09
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Kavak posted:I give comedic, non-harmful effects to natural 1's- the rogue's arrows regularly land in her friend's armor and once killed a passing seagull. One player didn't like them so I stopped doing them for her. No harm, no foul. You wouldn't say that if you were the seagull. quote:
Also this
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Jun 28, 2016 03:43
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Kavak posted:I give comedic, non-harmful effects to natural 1's- the rogue's arrows regularly land in her friend's armor and once killed a passing seagull. One player didn't like them so I stopped doing them for her. No harm, no foul. This suddenly becomes beneficial if there's a necromancer in the party.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:32
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Starving in the desert? Fire arrows blindly until dinner falls from the sky.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:40
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Final boss? Vengeful flock of dire seagulls. Missed arrows still hit seagulls
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Jun 29, 2016 03:59
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Rockopolis posted:Missed arrows still hit seagulls Not only that, it's the only way to hit them.
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Jun 29, 2016 04:00
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Critically miss and you hit an Albatross.
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Jun 29, 2016 04:05
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what if a critical miss just gave the target advantage on their attack if they attack you their next turn?
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Jun 29, 2016 04:12
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Okay, gently caress talking about crit tables, we're gonna talk about the World's Largest Dungeon! Spoiler warnings for the book, if anyone cares! Characters: Jeff the CN Cleric of Loki Jeff is a wordy bastard who doesn't worship Loki so much as have a business contract with him. He's a broken defeated man (who literally looks like Satan) who has long since given up on actually making it out of the dungeon and is instead just enjoying life in the moment. He's brilliant, and has a very sharp tongue and he's very happy to berate other characters for doing stupid poo poo (which we admittedly do all the time). But, he always does his absolute best when doing his job, and he's drat good at his job of keeping idiots like us alive on top of heavy crowd control when he gets the chance. Camilla Chaotic Chaotic (yes) Wizard/Alienist Camilla is a Wizard. She's a Wizard who is from the village of Ib, which was razed to the ground by adventurers because everything there was a horrible aberrant monster from beyond the stars. Including her and her sister, who she's in the WLD searching for. She was spoken to by the village's god early on in life which led to her violent physical changes. An eye is gone - not put out or anything. Just gone. A black void is there now. Her arms and legs are abnormally long, and she has gills and odd wings. And shockingly, she's actually nice. A bit overly critical, but she always opens up with a parlay when something is trying to attack us and is always the first to try and negotiate. Ra'knalti the Ageless (Ra) the Neutral Good Cleric/Crusader Ra is a Dragonwrought Kobold, meaning he's been around for millenia longer than the rest of the group. He was previously a full Bronze Dragon, and refers to himself as a dragon at all times - which the rest of the group has copied, because he backs it the gently caress up. Ra is a well meaning Kobold who thinks the best of everyone, and who joins Camilla in her negotiations. And he's also wearing fullplate and at least four or five different weapons at all times. He's the physical juggernaut of the group, specializing in getting in there and shutting everything else down while the rest of the crew mops up. We jokingly call him the King of Swords because holy poo poo dude how many do you even have at this point. Juliet, the Chaotic Good Soulknife (Pathfinder version) Juliet is a princess, who wished to be a knight. And lost her kingdom entirely before coming to the WLD. She's searching for her brother to try and take revenge upon her father's killers, but she's trapped in there with the rest of us with no foreseeable way out and so far, no leads as to where he might be beyond somewhere in here. She's probably the kindest person of the group, and the most idealistic, and there's a mutual attraction between her and River, which Jeff mocks in disgust quite a bit. In combat, she's a dual wielding spinning top of pain. Her entire job is to attach herself to someone and set to puree. And River, the NE/TN (it changed as the game went on) Spellthief/Incantatrix River's backstory is that she was kidnapped by another spellthief from a young age, and taught to steal magic by him. He brought her to a city run purely by mages, hidden in a spot only reachable by crossing through the Plane of Shadows, and it was a horrible corrupt shithole that I based heavily off Sigil. She eventually got out from under him by killing him with his own spell, and spent a while raiding the city and skulking around, while being tormented by the memories that he had implanted in her of generations of other spellthieves and their blind utter hatred for the city and other casters in particular. So she's got an odd ancestral memory type deal going on that doesn't do her much good, and a blind searing hatred of the city and almost every other caster on sight. She eventually heard of a source of great power hidden within the earth somewhere, so she traveled there and ended up falling into the WLD in her search - which is where she wanted to go anyway, but she quickly realized how hosed up everything was. I play her as very much a product of her environment, and given how nice the group in general is (minus Jeff) she had no reason to gently caress them over or mess with them in any way, so her alignment steadily shifted towards neutral. She's still by far the most vicious of the group, but she isn't actively evil anymore. In combat, River was an absolute beast who used metamagic upon metamagic to boost the party into the stratosphere, or just lay down layers upon layers of destruction by herself. She was by far the most powerful member of the group and this was acknowledged both in and out of character. Part of this was due to her Item Familiar, which she made with a fragment of her own soul to have a better method of controlling her power. Mechanically, it gave her a massive Spellcraft bonus and was utterly ridiculous since Incantatrix's bullshit relies on ludicrously high Spellcraft DCs. So, some context. This is a 3.5 game that I got invited to by a friend and have been playing for a while. It's the one that Podima actually talked about earlier in the thread! I am/was playing a character named River, who was an Incantatrix who is now a Swordsage. Because we discussed out of game that Incantatrix was way too loving strong and was going to be nullifying most normal encounters soon, and making most of the party invalid. I agreed with this and we worked out that I'd be changing to a Swordsage (basically a magic using monk) but the DM wanted to do something first to actually have it make sense. So we're in region I, which was a region that was covered entirely by flesh. Like. We're talking every single wall was skin, muscle, and organs. We found various actual organs throughout it - put it plainly, place was gross as poo poo. This is where my character got introduced via being dropped into a room by a bunch of Drow who captured here, where she met the party. And it's also here where we met what we thought was just a normal chimera that the Drow were going to feed her to. We fight it, it dies, group moves on. It did get noticeably stronger partway through but we just figured that was the DM going "poo poo they're wiping it too fast" and giving it a mid-fight buff. Hoo boy, were we wrong. So the group is working for a bunch of Celestials that I haven't met much yet, and they're trying to figure out why the gently caress this region is so hosed up. That's basically our entire mission. So there's a lot of wandering around, some mutual flirting between River and Juliet, and just general getting to know each other since I was just kind of dropped in the group. We fight some poo poo, explore, and keep finding mention of a Drider, Mahir and his disciples. Well, eventually, we piece together that Mahir is dead and gone. Like, long gone. Centuries ago when the flesh first started to grow in the region - which by the way, could feel. To prove a point early on, Jeff stabbed a wall with his dagger and it shrieked. So we explore a bit more and find a room. We have to open it by using these special icicles kept in an illusory pillar made out of frozen Drider poison, to stab a lock. That has an eye. It also screamed. Region I is very much about body horror. We enter the room and we find out that a single Drow that must have pissed all over Mahir's cornflakes is woven through the walls, and various parts of his body have to be stabbed to open the doors hidden and otherwise. So we experiment with that for a while after finding -no- other way of getting through, and later on we try to give him a permanent rest - but no such luck. Mahir's basically made the fucker immortal at this point. But, behind the door, we do find something. Mahir's spellbook. The Wizards had a mutual Christmas. Because I'm just going to copy paste this thing because jesus loving christ. Mahir's Spellbook posted:0th - arcane mark, dancing lights, daze, detect magic, detect poison, disrupt undead, flare, ghost sound, light, mage hand, mending, open/close, prestidigitation, ray of frost, read magic, resistance Mahir, as you can see, was some serious poo poo. Now then, you may notice that 10th level spell there. Those do not exist normally. 9th is the cap for almost anyone. Mahir is some serious poo poo. The ritual is a clusterfuck that speaks of eradicating the Twins - one of which we learned was that chimera that we killed. Because they're immortal, along with the rest of the region, unless we kill them both with this ritual. Their names are Anguish the Chimera, and Madness the Clusterfuck. A session or two later, we find Madness. It's in his own part of the region, with rooms that shift and twist chaotically to its whim. Madness can only be described as The Cage from Binding of Isaac but covered in eyes, mouths, and teeth. It screams constantly as we fight it, and Ra gets swallowed whole during the fight while its room just lays down constant layers of status effects. We eventually manage to put down, the DM quoteth: Podima posted:One of the single most bullshit bosses in the book. We got it primarily because our Cleric managed to cast Heart's Ease upon it, which is basically "Give it back its sanity, temporarily" and it asked us repeatedly to kill it permanently. So we struck it down and managed to scoop some of its melting flesh into a jar for the ritual. We then go in search of Anguish, and meet a bunch of shithead Drow. No one in the party likes them. At all.They don't like us either because these were the shithead Drow who tried to feed River to Anguish, which made it get back up a day or two later pissed off, hungry, and even bigger than before. So it's been ripping through their part of the region and right now it's fighting something called The Green Death. We talk to them a little bit and their leader mentions how we need a special weapon to actually complete the ritual - he's slightly less of a dick than the others. But, of course, he's not giving it to us for free even though this could rid him of a huge chunk of his problems. He wants a specific Drider killed first. So he leads us there and we end up in a room covered in weird vines that constantly secrete a poison that gives us a huge amount of con damage. Camilla was in single digit con when we left after killing his rear end. So he tells us where the thing is - it's a weapon called Three Strike Fang - and we go get it. And it's a loving double blade. AKA the most impractical piece of poo poo there is. It's a really good double blade too, but no one knows how to loving use one so the party is generally annoyed as hell in character. Out of character we're just loving bewildered that this super important plot thing is a weapon that realistically almost no character can use. The DM agreed with us. So, we rest for the night because jesus christ that was a lot of con damage, and the next day, something is calling to River. She knows that she can perform the ritual with only one of the components. She's been studying the spellbook intently for days now, and even though the words and letters have been shifting into taunts and mocking jokes beneath her gaze, she's finally reached an epiphany. So we go to the laboratory where it's meant to be, and the party does their prep. River drops a literal loving cottage in front of one of the entrances. Desks and lab tables block two of the others, while Jeff, bastard that he is, decides to outdo us all and just drop a permanencied Wall of Magma on the biggest entrance. So River begins her casting. And then a voice echoes through the chamber. Mahir posted:Well, you're a bit pathetic-looking, aren't you? I suppose I'll take what I can get. See, Mahir wasn't just a wizard. He was -that- Wizard. He's the type of Wizard who had contingencies prepped for his contingencie's contingencies. A fragment of him was still alive in that spellbook, and upon the ritual beginning, it was drawn out and implanted into River's mind. He takes full control of her body. She drifts up to the center of the room, the book flapping before her, until its pages settle upon the ritual's. And then all hell breaks loose. River is a very powerful Wizard. So much so that he's able to draw out more power from her, and begin to turbo charge the ritual to make it go from a several hour long affair to a minute. At most. But, it's going to be an absolutely hellish minute. Small copies of Madness flood the room - previously the only non-flesh covered room in the region, but now it was flooded with it. They're using the flesh like a fish would use water, a property that made it incredibly aggravating to fight in its own chambers. And now there were dozens of the fuckers, all about the size of a soccer ball and made of gnashing teeth and tortured screams. The rest of the group is forced to defend River while she casts, and they do a loving fantastic job of it. Juliet is able to julienne any blob that gets near her, Ra is able to control multiple at once, and Camilla can eradicate any of them at any given time. Jeff is stuck in healbot mode though, because this battle is difficult. And then it gets worse. A giant flesh ball is gathering in the ceiling, and then we hear a roar. And then Anguish busts through the wall of magma, burnt as hell and pissed off, but very much alive. And even bigger. Eight Strike Fang starts glowing through this and Ra, given that he is the King of Swords, whips it out and starts going to town on the bastard. It takes on the Vicious quality on top of its other assorted nonsense that made it do something like 40+ an attack on this bastard, so Ra was steadily cutting through himself while he fought it. It died no less than four loving times in that fight, only to resurrect even stronger each time. River was seeping power due to what Mahir was doing, and eventually he started throwing out spells on her direction to try and get her to control her poo poo better. A few buffs here and there, and at one point a Finger of Death to rekill Anguish and give Ra a moment of breathing room. Things were getting bad. So naturally, they got even worse. Mahir shattered River's Item Familiar, a chunk of her soul, to empower the ritual further. It was probably the most painful experience of her life, and her Spellcraft checks to maintain the ritual suddenly went from 40-50 a check to in the 20-30 range. And the DCs were only getting harder. And then, the ritual was almost done. The group had their backs against the wall and things were looking grim. And then Mahir gave us a lifeline. Mahir posted:Yes! Excellent! We're almost there! Mahir posted:T͢҉̥̺̘̠̦͍̱͇̙̖ị̸̢̢̟̝̼̥̣̗̗̩͓̳͔̜̥̯̤͍͞͝m̛̹̹̦̙̤̦̹̘͚̱̺̫̣̲͙̲̖͚̩͞e҉̵̰͎͓͓̻͉͈̣̥̲̣̤̜̲̟͞ͅ ̷̳̤̪͉͓̼̳̰̮̘̺̘̼̪͇̦̀S̶̸͔̙͉͇̯͕̬͔͖̥̝̣̠̘̭t̷̢̳̤̦̲̱͍͜͡o͏͏̧̣̘̜͉̳͍̲̮̘̟̘̞̱̖̬ṕ̢̣̬̜͕̤͇̦̖̰̠̪̰̖̲̞̲̱ Everyone was stopped that wasn't us. Everything. We all had a moment to regroup, recover, and catch our breath. We healed. We buffed. And we got ready for the next onslaught. And god drat did it not disappoint. By this point we're like hour four into this combat. Everything has been an absolute clusterfuck because Anguish won't stay the gently caress down, and there are more Madness fragments every round. And then, after a few more false starts (seriously, the party almost wiped several times and only got through due to good luck) River finally finishes the ritual. And then Mahir suddenly explains why this was a 10th level spell. Mahir posted:̴̧͕̹̖̪̲̘͙̣̹̭̪̟̰̘̠̙͖̲̼T̢͔̟̯͎̥̲͎̘̯̹̘͍̪̤̥̖͖͇̲͢i̸̛͕͎̗̥̜͓̤̫̫̫͚̣̳̝̪̙͙̕͝͞ͅm̨̤͇̠̜͕̤̦͓̞͇͜͠e̵̸͞҉̣̻̮̝͚̺͚͕̲ ̛͎̪̯͓̜̝̹̬̯͙̱̠̗̮͎̠̗̫͡Ŕ̸̦̣̬̥e̸͉̲̪̻̹͠͡ͅͅv̸͔̮̯̤̣̯̳̭̰͎̫͡e̴̡͈̜̱̤͇͈̝̱͓͝r̷͇̻̱̣̭̹͇̺͈͕̗̗̭̺͠s̷̵̸͖̻̬̲͈̥͕ͅe̷͏̢̙̯̪͇̘͎̞͔̥̭̝̪͇̗͕̟ Everything stops again. And then everything is spinning. River feels her magic seeping out of her like a bleeding wound, and nothing she can do stops it. Everything is spinning, spinning, gone. And then we wake up again, on the ground of the laboratory in horrible pain and surrounded by Drider. Including one with a very familiar voice. Mahir posted:...I see the contingency plan had the desired effect, indicating this experiment with the bronze dragon egg will result in failure. Very well, another avenue of experimentation awaits. Minions. Eliminate the unnecessary detritus, and be quick about it. There is no recognition. The Drider around us crackle with magic, and despite our pain, we rise and fight. A happy side effect of the spell was that we all went back in time a bit too - our personal times. Our spells are renewed, and we're somewhat healed. Except for River's magic. So she rises up, the reidue from the ritual still crackling around her, and she launches herself at Mahir along with Juliet. Meanwhile, Ra all but grabs all three other Drider in a chokehold and just slams them against the ground again and again. He seriously solos the entire fight, basically, while Juliet and River fail to make a dent against the real Mahir. He's very bored and focused primarily on the bronze dragon egg in front of him, and only when we actually pose something of a threat does he quickly use an illusion and a delayed blast fireball to make his getaway. Throughout all of this, River is barking insults and curses at him, and early on he said that the remains of the mind fragment he put into that spell were gone. From the northern entrance, come a bunch of Drow as he leaves. The same ones who we got Eight Strike Fang from. It turns out he turned back -local- time, not everything. So they have no clue what just went down, just that all the flesh in the dungeon was gone. They demanded Eight Strike Fang back, which we gave because it was worthless for all of us, and then we all turn to leave. And as we do, River hears a voice in her head. Mahir posted:He was wrong, by the way. I'm still here. And with that wall of loving text, I'm out for the night. Tune in next time for our encounter with a basilisk! And I wish that I could've gone into more detail about what the other characters were doing, but this happened -months- ago and I can't remember fully
Galick fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 05:59
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Razzled posted:this is so great, b'uth barb is gonna be the best So far, the ork baby has:  Foiled an opponent's sneak attempt with a giggle (the barbarian had failed his perception check but the baby hadn't done anything yet in that session) Picked up a dropped weapon (a great sword, somehow.) Noticed some loot that the party missed.Re: critical miss tables-- Critical misses are one of the simplest examples of a thing that happens all the time in games that is better off being resolved by and for drama than by randomization. Not only is there no harm in just choosing what happens, but it probably benefits the scene to do so. Well, at least in the hands of a good GM.
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Jun 29, 2016 11:26
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So the Skull and Shackles Pathfinder campaign I was running ground to a halt, mostly because of Real Life Issues and one of the players probably deciding he didn't like the game. It's hard to tell, since he stopped showing up and refuses to respond to texts or e-mails. A mutual friend says he's not dead, so I assume he's just being pissy that I wouldn't center the entire campaign on him, as he continually pestered me for one-on-one RP sessions to "develop his character." Paizo has this new AP out for an Evil party, so I figure, hey, why not start a new group? It'll either be fun or turn into a PK-fest, but we'll see what happens, so I manage to snare up four players. Oddly enough, this campaign has had the most non-violent run I've seen out of any game. The first encounter has the PCs "recovering taxes" from a tannery, and everyone unanimously agrees that they can't kill the owner. He can't keep paying taxes if he's dead, right? So they bludgeon him into unconsciousness, take the tax money, and leave most of the other valuables behind. Except for a suit of masterwork studded leather that the Rogue took when nobody was looking. The Bard also wound up critting a guard dog, dropping it instantly. In the second encounter, the PCs had to interfere with a speech that a local priestess was giving to try and foment insurrection against the local lord. One of the PCs manages to find a donkey cart laden with barrels of highly flammable pitch, so of course he casts Spark on it, which panics the donkey, who runs down an alley, plows into the stone fence outside the church, exploding and panicking the crowd into tumult, shorting out the speech. All told, the party is really working this whole Lawful Evil thing pretty well. I feel like if this were a standard good-ish campaign, there'd be a lot more blood on the ground, and a lot less interesting play.
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Jun 29, 2016 15:37
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Rockopolis posted:Final boss? Vengeful flock of dire seagulls. When cast, Flock of Dire Seagulls should summon an undead 80's pop band. Save vs. popped collars.
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Jun 30, 2016 01:55
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Displacer beasts. Well, not quite. More like panthers with snakes grafted onto their backs. Oh, and did I mention they could Shadow Step?  As our party began to make their way through the underwater tunnel towards the island prison my PC’s mother is being incarcerated on, we ran into these creatures. Created by a mad transmuter, they hit like a freight train, could cause the Poisoned condition if one of the snake bit you, and also breathed sleep gas. Half our party gets knocked out in the first round – only those of us with Sidhe/elven blood managed to resist it. One of the panthers grabbed our Rogue, Cullus, and disappeared into the shadows, only to reappear a round later in a different corner, minus sans Rogue. We manage to take out the panthers (our Greensidhe/Halfling Cleric woke up our Dragonborn Barbarian by cannonballing onto his cheat and my pseudodragon familiar slapped the Monk around until she woke up), but Cullus kept failing his Constitution rolls. He remained unconscious as every round, he took 4 points of damage. After finally defeating the panthers, I sent my familiar to sniff him out. Cullus finally woke up with TWO hit points left and discovered why he had kept losing hit points every round. Kittens. Namely, the panthers’ brood, little tiny kittens with miniature snakes whipping around on their backs had been chewing on him and rolling max damage every round. So Cullus wakes up as my familiar gets there… quote:Do I have to make an alignment check for killing a kitten? Cullus ends up snapping the necks of three of the kittens while my familiar dines on the last one. Now, when the rest of the party find Cullus covered in tiny bites slamming a kitten against the cave wall, we all just lose it, both in character and around the table, save for the Cleric PC who is AGHAST at the animal cruelty as my familiar rips the entrails out of one of them. What makes this even funnier was the fact that our GM’s stepdaughter is learning to be a GM herself. She’s been sitting behind the screen with her stepdad for the past few weeks – she’s twelve years old and ADORES cats. Cullus’ player didn’t realize what was happening until he killed the second kitten and looked up to see her completely shocked. We all had a really good laugh (”If I had died, you better have told the story to EVERYONE about how my character died drowning in pussy.” “Dude! Stepdaughter!”) especially as the Eldritch Knight collected the kitten corpses as a gag. ”In my culture, no part of the kitten goes to waste.” X X X X X A little later on, our party comes across a chamber with a deep pool of water. The tip of an obelisk peeks out from the surface. Carved into the walls of the chambers are two sets of runes, one in Tanicus’ version of Latin from one of the first ancient empires, and the other in Infernal. The runes tell the story of a Devil who fell in combat and was banished to an eternity of imprisonment within the obelisk. Our response is “ok, we’re just going to move right along, nothing to see or mess with here WHY IS THE ROGUE DIVING INTO THE WATER?!?” Well, turns out Cullus saw a huge pile of treasure in the bottom of the pool and was entranced to dive right in. Entranced by what? A Naga and her four servants.  This is a NASTY fight. Our party didn’t realize how tough Naga could be and were very thankful that it was one Naga and her lesser servants rather than four or five full blown Naga. Each time we kill one of the creatures, the obelisk flashed and a carving of one of the creatures appeared at the base of the obelisk. We were worried kill all the Naga would summon something evil, but it turned out that it just meant the Naga were imprisoned in the obelisk directly instead of just being bound to the pool of water. They would “respawn” back into the pool in a mere seven years once defeated… And there WAS treasure in the bottom of the pool. 20,000 gold pieces worth. Along with some very nice magical items – a Cloak of Many Colors for one. Right now, it’s indigo which means the wearer is immune to necrotic damage. Once the wearer takes necrotic damage, the color shifts along the rainbow spectrum to violet and they become immune to I believe poison damage. It goes all the way around the spectrum (including white and black). There was also a Coin of Balance – flip it once per day. Heads, gain 20 temporary Hit Points until a long rest. Tails, lose 20 temporary Hit Points until a long rest. X X X X X Sea Lions. Literally.   After managing to use Potions of Water Breathing and Potions of Swimming to sleep past a slow moving shark, our party emerged from the underwater tunnel into the small grotto hidden in the bowels of the prison island itself. Another passage leads down into a tunnel that comes out under the lake’s surface which would allow us to swim to the island’s base and climb to the Morgue/Corpse Disposal entrance. But first, we had to get through these neat looking models. The fight is a bit tricky because we’re underwater. While Potions of Swimming give us a swim speed, we can move normally underwater. However, we only have a handful of piercing weapons that could do full damage, and any attempts to cast spells with a vocal or somatic component require a Constitution check. Oh, and Thunder/Lightning/Force spells are a big no-no as our GM takes a few minutes to explain why explosions underwater are a BAD thing since water can’t compress. This fight actually goes pretty well (it helps to have a Monk whose specialty is the Water Elemental school), except for this one moment from our Paladin when he rolled his Action Surge to take two swings…  The GM checks his Fumble Deck and determines our Paladin has dropped his sword. In the course of swimming down to grab it however, one of the Sea Lions grapples him. By the time the fight is over, the sword is falling into the depths, just barely visible in the dark water thanks to infravision. The Paladin and Barbarian swim down after it while we make sure the Sea Lion corpses don’t bleed out and attract sharks, and the adventure ends with the pair reaching the bottom of the lakebed. The sword has landed on the deck of what looks to be a wrecked prison ship, and as the Paladin goes to grab it… …tentacles.
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Jun 30, 2016 03:41
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CobiWann posted:Sea Lions. 
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Jun 30, 2016 06:32
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Ilor posted:And by literally, you mean figuratively, because according to their spots those are totally sea leopards. Are you implying that he's lyin'?
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Jun 30, 2016 06:46
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*becomes a punamental and kills party*
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Jun 30, 2016 06:49
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Ilor posted:And by literally, you mean figuratively, because according to their spots those are totally sea leopards. Sorry, but to say if it's leopardy you can only answer in the form of a question
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Jun 30, 2016 08:50
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Ilor posted:And by literally, you mean figuratively, because according to their spots those are totally sea leopards. My PC is a Sorcerer, not a Ranger!
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Jun 30, 2016 10:10
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