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I don't have the skill to do full session write-ups the way you guys do, but I want to give a shout-out to my man Yawgmoth for a deeply interesting game. It's D&D 3rd Ed set in Eberron, but I've already been disturbed enough by the things we've had to go through and the thing's we've had to do to jokingly make a Call of Cthulhu Sanity roll twice. The first because getting injured by a Vivisector and trying to heal its supernatural wounds was really body-horror-ish (I tried to cut out the crystal it left on my abdomen and the loving things moved to avoid the the knife), and the second because we uncovered a demon child that had charmed a town and had to kill her/it. So now we either have to make ourselves very scarce, or find a way to convince the town that we're not literal baby-killers.
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Aug 25, 2016 11:53
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I love putting players in morally ambiguous situations facing difficult choices. It always makes for great RP opportunities. Sometime I'll have to make an effort-post about one of the sub-arcs of my long-running Shadowrun/Call of Cthulhu/In Nomine crossover game.
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Aug 25, 2016 23:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:I don't have the skill to do full session write-ups the way you guys do, but I want to give a shout-out to my man Yawgmoth for a deeply interesting game.  I'll take a crack at the story so far:So as mentioned, it's 3.5 Eberron. The PCs work for House Tarkanan for spending money, and Thora calls them up a simple info gathering job: Go to this auction being held in the upper wards for an artifact from Xendrik. It's being advertised like nuts and all the big players who have both money and magic will be there. Find out who wins, for how much, and who is saltiest about losing. Then we can offer Mr. Salt a way to get it for a considerable pile of coin. PCs go to the auction, mingle with assorted NPCs, then come to the auction to watch the show. They wait, artifact and its owners never show up. Players investigate their airship to find out the whole crew has been murdered and the artifact stolen! There's also cryptic messages written in blood and using Detect Magic turns up strange magic that is difficult to place. Then the Sharn Watch's laziest corrupt official shows up and accuses them, then voluntold them to solve the case for him if they're so keen on not being accused. They investigate and believe it to be the work of a vivisector, then head to the cogs. After clearing a path through several kinds of magical bugs and a horrid toad, they hear the vivisector talking to a person. They round the corner to find it and some clockroaches and clockwork dragonflies, and get ambushed from darkness+invisibility by the vivisector. It is also different than any previous reports of such a thing because its horrible claws are made of a sickly green-grey crystal instead of chitin. They fight it, make an embarrassment out of the clockworks but have trouble with the vivisector. It ends up using a disgusting breath weapon of black ichor, then goes invisible and makes a mad dash for the exit. The PCs, already beat to poo poo and not really in a level of health to withstand another ambush, decide to loot the cavern and head back up. They spend some time healing up, and find that some of the wounds just won't heal! Worse, one of them seems to have an infection of nasty green-grey crystals in the wound that, when the attempt to cut them out is made, actively avoid the knife. After a bit of research and experimentation, they find that the secret ingredient is sunlight. Their next move is to update the cops on the goings on, but neglect to tell their underworld employer. So when they get on a midnight train going The party rolls up to the farmhouse and barn and have a conversation with the widow and notice her daughter is a rather precocious toddler. They go have a look in the barn and find a ghost! Fortunately, they chose to talk to him and he shared his story: that his wife had become possessed and was pregnant with a demon, and that before he could fix the problem the town watch "accidentally" killed him because he was "resisting arrest". Now the only solution is to kill the demon child who has Charmed the whole town and is no doubt planning something nefarious! Detect Magic turns up a couple of magical books and an unsettling feeling below the earth. Upon going down into the cellar and navigating some winding tunnels, they find an old, bloody altar to some sort of dark god. Bone sculptures, summoning circle, the works. Having found this, they decide to go to the sheriff. Only the little girl has gotten there first. She claims that the PCs stole from them and threatened them if she told anyone. The sheriff tells them to kindly gently caress off before things get messy, and the little girl smugs her best  at the group before going full-on "innocent little crying girl" begging the sheriff to "make the bad men go away!" Roll initiative.You ever see someone shoot a little girl with Darkbolt? I have. Very effective in keeping her from running away! In what was a fantastically hectic fight between 3 murderhobos, a man who was sheriff for all of 12 hours, and a little girl with fast healing 4, SR 12, and outsider HD, we ended with one body and one guy tied up while babbling incoherently thanks to Lesser Confusion. The group picked up the body and ran for it, back to the barn. And that's where we ended the last session. quote:So now we either have to make ourselves very scarce, or find a way to convince the town that we're not literal baby-killers. 
Yawgmoth fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Aug 26, 2016 |
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Aug 26, 2016 00:34
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After our adventures on the island prison of Catra’Zal, the party and rescued captives (ahem…pardoned prisoners, as NO ONE ESCAPES FROM CATRA’ZAL!) make it back to shore thanks to a little trick our Monk had up her sleeve – a magic feather given to her by Swansea, the slightly-touched Druid who told us how to break into Catra’Zal in the first place. When dropped into the water, the feather turned into a massive self-propelled swan-shaped boat that got us back to shore in less than a day (visions of that one part of Fallout 4 danced in my head as I waited for the GM to put a Super Mutant down on the table). At this point in time, our party had two immediate goals… 1 – Head to the city of Highspire to meet an “immortal” Bard named Saegen Pennywhistle who would be able to tell us the codeword to get past the Iron Golem in an ancient temple to a departed god. 2 – Head to a set of standing stones in the Danaan Empire of Ancellyon (aka the land of the Dark Sidh/evil elves) in order to summon a Fae army to stop the Ancellyn from forming an army dedicated to our Eldritch Knight’s aunt. X X X X X With regards to the first goal, a few months ago our party was wandering through the Sidh capital of Summertide. In the Temple District, we noticed an ancient and shuttered temple down a narrow alleyway, blocked off and hidden from the much larger temples surrounding it. The temple belonged to Io, who was one of the original three Gods who created the “existence” that eventually became the pre-history Tanicus. Io had left long before Kaos, the Father of the Gods, had birthed his children, but the Sidh respected Io (who represented the basic concepts of justice, law, and civilization) and built a temple to her. It was shuttered and closed because no one had worshipped Io…ever…however the Sidh figured “just in case.” Well, the temple’s doors were busted open. From the inside. Of course, we go to take a look. Standing guard outside were two activated guardian statues who immediately tried to murder us. Once we defeated them we entered the temple. Floating in front of the altar was an archangel who bid us welcome and thanked us for defeating the guardians who were designed specifically to keep her inside. The daeva spun us a tale about how she had been bound to the temple by the forces of Az (an evil archdemon masquerading as a god) and had spent eons and eons trying to free herself so she could warn Tanicus about his evil plans, only for her to be thwarted by the warded statues outside who were specifically spellbound to hurt daevas. So we’re all happy, thinking we finally have someone on our side, and right when the archangels tasks us to go take out a priest in another temple who’s secretly an agent of Az… …then our Eldritch Knight, our Religion/Arcana/History expert, who had been dead quiet the entire time, speaks up. “Io didn’t have archangels. There wasn’t a Heaven to have a Heavenly Host when she was around.” This is when we found out that Az had convinced several members of the Heavenly and Infernal Hosts to come to his side by masquerading as daevas for OTHER gods… The Eldritch Knight had been waiting to find out the archangel's plan before blowing its cover. We beat back the archangel and explore the temple. We come to find out that there’s an Iron Golem guarding the way to the temple’s back rooms, and he’s powerful enough that there’s NO WAY our party could have taken him. All the Iron Golem will tell us is that only the bard known as Saegen Pennywhistle knows the codeword to make him move. Saegen Pennywhistle is a legendary figure around Tanicus – a Johnny Appleseed/Pecos Bill/Molly Pitcher type who has been around forever and has numerous tall tales about their exploits…except in this case, Pennywhistle IS real and IS immortal. We come to find out that Pennywhistle was last seen in the city of Highspire, performing at a tavern known as the Cranky Owlbear. With regards to the second goal, I’ve mentioned before that our Eldritch Knight’s grandmother is one of our campaign’s main villains. The Ancellyn are Sidh (elves) who felt abandoned after the Worldquake cut them off from their fellow elves and dedicated themselves to Catira, Lady of Pain, Lawful Evil goddess of pain, vengeance, and suffering. The grandmother (whose allied with the Lich King, the villain of the first Tanicus campaign ALLLLLL the way back in the late 1980’s and the world’s most powerful necromancer) has vowed to exterminate the rest of the Sidh and has convinced the Ancellyn to bring their forces together into one huge army in order to bring chaos and conflict the rest of the world, starting with the Sidh. My GM created Tanicus for a campaign back in the 1980’s and the actions of his players have shaped the world’s history, geography, and pantheon ever since. He’s updated the world based upon the released editions, adding new classes and new races along the way. The fall of the Cabal (Wizard’s Guild) in one campaign and with it a lack of formalized training schools led to the introduction of Sorcerers in third edition while an alliance Korvis made with some demons and devils led to the introducing of Tieflings in fith edition, for example. No Half-Orcs, sadly, as they’re a fungal based raced and regardless of how much I want to play one in our next campaign, in Tanicus no one’s getting freaky with a plant… For the introduction of Warlocks, our GM did something a bit different. Normally, Eldritch Knights pick their spells from the Abjuration/Evocation schools, but instead our Eldritch Knight is pulling from the Warlock list as she’s been tasked by one of the Faewild (The Queen of Air and Darkness specifically) to stop the Ancellyn. She’s wicked powerful as a Fighter with Chill Touch and Eldritch Blast is just NASTY. At the moment, the Queen of Air and Darkness is serving as the Faewild’s Queen of Winter. If our group can get to a specific set of standing stones before the end of winter, she’ll send us a Fae army to attack the Ancellyn and remove them from the equation entirely. The problem? Getting into Ancellyn is a BITCH. It’s a peninsula that was once part of the main continent as a vast highland steppe, only for the valley between it and the nation of Korvis to flood during the Worldquake. It’s cut off from the rest of the continent by a set of steep, impassible mountains. The dwarves live in the mountains…under the mountains, really…but all the mountain passes and city gates are besieged by the Orc and Bugbear tribes who are “privileged” to live in Ancellyon in return for their service. Going across the water is an option, but the sea is patrolled by corsairs and their merman allies, plus there’s a lack of landing sites that aren’t under Ancellyn control. Luckily for us, one of the prisoners we rescued was an Ancellyn, who made his living smuggling people in and out of the country. He had been arrested for failing to pay the proper bribes on the Kovin end of a trip, and in return for rescuing him he promised to smuggle us into Ancellyon once he managed to establish his smuggling route once again. We were wary of course, since the smuggler WAS an Ancellyn and could sell us out, but we were running short on options… X X X X X After some discussion, our plan is this. We tell the smuggler we would meet him in Redfall, a town on the Korvin side of the sea separating Ancellyn from Korvis, in two weeks time. It would allow us a chance to travel to Highspire, find Pennywhistle, and ask him what the Iron Golem was guarding in the temple to Io. The trip to Highspire would involve a three day ride through the Lawful Good kingdom of Kaeryn, followed by a three day ride through the Lawful Evil kingdom of Korvis and a one-day ride through the lands surrounding Highspire, which is four-city states that make up the Kaeryn-allied Grand Duchy of Seawyn. Now, here’s the kicker. The border between Kaeryn and Korvis is a wide, deep, fast-moving river. The only way to cross the river is by a bridge built centuries ago. Kaeryn holds a keep on the south end that’s constantly manned and occupied. The northern end of the bridge doesn’t have keep, but usually has a Korvin army encampment depending on how relations are between the two countries at the time. Sometimes it’s just a small scout garrison, sometimes it’s a considerable force, and when things get really heated it’s a full-blown war camp complete with siege weapons zeroed in on the keep. Beyond the river is a vast grassland that both Kaeryn and Korvis claim as their own. Sometimes the Kaeryn hold sway, sometimes the Korvins are collecting taxes, and every now and again Seawyn will send their armies down to occupy it and give Kaeryn a chance to catch its breath. News of our rescue of Prince Dragonhall from Catra’Zal reached the garrison before our group did. We were welcomed by the commander and given permission to spend the night before attempting to cross in the morning. On the other side of the river was a large war camp as this was one of those times where Kaeryn was involved in several border skirmishes and Korvis decided to flex its might. The commander simply asked that we not interfere with the actual military operations of the garrison and in return she would send a morning cavalry push to cover our crossing by distracting the Korvins. It was a nice bit of role-playing – our Paladin talked military matters with the commander, our Bard talked up my Sorcerer’s exploits while my Sorcerer met with several soldiers who hailed from his hometown (Dale isn’t part of Kaeryn but has an alliance with them in return for a small outpost and occasional border patrol) and my pseudodragon familiar assisted by cleaning out the storeroom of several large rats. Of course, nothing goes as planned…   In the middle of the night, the garrison alarm goes off. The soldiers all snap to, as do all of us, though it takes me a bit longer (Natural 1 on my roll to wake up) as my pseudodragon is lying on my chest and can’t quite remove itself thanks to being overstuffed with rats. From the outside comes a loud gibbering voice in a language that our Eldritch Knight recognizes as Infernal. Smack dab in the middle of the bridge are two huge devils, one heading north towards the Korvin camp and one coming south right for the keep. The devil uses its powers to summon several minions…   …and the fight is on. The minions themselves are a cakewalk. It’s the Shadow Devils that are the problem. The fight…well, the melee fighters tear through the minions and Shadow Devils thanks to magical and silver weapons. The casters, however…our Cleric/Favored Soul decided to drop an Ice Storm on the largest group of little demons. However she miscalculated the area-of-effect and caught one of the Kaeryn soldiers right on the edge of the storm. Everything under the Ice Storm died. Including the soldier. Considering our Favored Soul is as optimistic as a kender on Aderall, this CRUSHED her that she accidentally killed someone and she ended up spending the next few days in a depressive funk that we had to work her out of. My Sorcerer? Well…the big devil crashed into the courtyard and I had an inspiration. I stepped out of the tower I was hiding in, pointed toward him, and yelled “BACK TO THE ABYSS WITH YOU!” I blew my inspiration to give him disadvantage on the Banish. The GM rolled two natural 20’s. I ducked back into the tower, only for the devil to peer inside, whisper “I see you, little Sorcrerer,” and cast Shatter on the tower. Between the flying masonry and falling damage from rolling another freaking Natural 1 on my Dexterity save, I got knocked down to 1 HP and spent the rest of the fight trying to dig my way out of the hole I was in since I couldn’t see out of it to Misty Step. Eventually the PC’s and the Kaeryn soldiers get the devil down, and in the confusion of the other devil tearing the Korvin camp apart, we quickly heal up and charge across the bridge. While the Kaeryn help take down the devil in a “the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy and man it’s great to watch my enemy get their rear end kicked” sort of manner, our party slips into the night… X X X X X The Cranky Owlbear was a lot more high-end then we expected. How high-end?  Yeah, the GM actually wrote up and printed out a full menu and had us order off of it while tavern music played in the background. It was a nice place in the noble district of Highspire, complete with an owlbear head for a sign, a stuffed and mounted owlbear threatening patrons as they entered, and an actual hostess to show us to our seats. Oh, and two trained baby owlbears who would dash around the floor picking up any dropped food (we were told NOT to fee the owlbears. Everyone did anyway). My pseudodragon familiar spent the entire time wrapped up against my chest since owlbears are natural predator to pseudodragons, while our Favored Soul got her groove back by being introduced to ice cubes…which she didn’t use for her drink, but for dumping down the back of my robes, which causes my Sorcerer’s entire body to flinch, which caused my pseudodragon to flinch, which causes me to barely make a save against being poisoned by its stinger. When asked about Pennywhistle, our waitress asked us to wait until the end of her shift. In the meantime, Skeever decided it was time to tell another tale of the Lightning Lord that the player himself had penned in the 60 minutes or so between the fight at the bridge and arriving at the Cranky Owlbear… quote:
Admist much applause, I quietly whispered “Skeever, I was under the tower most of that fight.” “I didn’t specify the order of events!” The waitress sit down and explains to us that Saegan went missing about three weeks previous. Highspire sits on the west coast of Seawn, which is bordered on the east by a series of mountains. Those mountains were once home to an ancient civilization, so ancient that the tombs, caves, and dungeons had been picked clean centuries ago by other adventurers. A few weeks ago however, a group of dungeon crawlers came back loaded with enough loot to set them up for life. Other adventurers had piled them with enough drink to find out that a landslide had revealed an old road that wound up into the mountains and that there were plenty of tombs up there ripe for the plucking. Pennywhistle himself decided to go check it out, but hadn’t returned after nearly three weeks. Armed with a map from Pennywhistle’s room, we loaded up and set out for the mountains. Seawyn’s pretty peaceful, so we made it to the mountains without any problem. The only problem we experienced was…  …a group of Xorn who smelled all the gems in the Bag of Holding my Sorcerer had…and all the gems that the Rogue had palmed during the last few adventures and hadn’t had a chance to pawn off yet. Turns out the poor things had taken a wrong turn from the Elemental Plane of Earth and were starving. I handed over some of my personal cut of gems to allay their hunger while the Paladin “convinced” the Rogue to give them all of the gems he had taken. In return, they told us about the path heading up the mountain and where we could take a short-cut while also warning us about something very big and very nasty further up the trail. They couldn’t be more specific (“it was very big and very nasty, we didn’t stick around to see what it was!”), my Sorcerer Banished them back to the Elemental Plane of Earth, where they promised to spread about how nice and generous with the gems my PC was (of their own volition and accord, I should point out! The GM says "dude, 18 Charisma, you're memorable without even trying." So what was further up the trail, you ask? Following their advice and Pennywhistle’s trail, we soon came to a small alcove sitting off the path (which continued up the mountain) that faced the western approach, giving us a good view of the Grand Duchy and the setting sun. Inside the alcove were three doors, each with a symbol carved above it. And sitting above the door? An Androsphinx.  These thing are REALLY freaking nasty. Like, “asking the GM for Permission to look in the Monster Manual to see why the other players just took a breath” nasty. Luckily, it was nice, polite, and vowed to destroy us if we passed under its gaze into the mountain. It did confirm that Saegen Pennywhistle had indeed passed this way three weeks earlier and was currently inside the mountain. The three doors underneath the sphinx did lead into the mountain. Specifically, one led to a great treasure and the other two to certain death, in the Androsphinx’s word. In order to get into the mountain without being horribly killed, all we need to do was solve this riddle… quote:
So we’re arguing for a good long while. Could it be the wind, since the alcove was open to the mountain face but might not catch the gusts? Could it be the setting sun, whose rays would illuminate the alcove as it set but may not shine directly on the doors? Could it be the rain, since the alcove was open to the sky but sloped just enough that the rain might miss the door entirely? We have a good half-hour of discussion about the solution to this riddle, some GOOD role-playing, when suddenly the Rogue’s player sits up, snaps his fingers, and says “I got it.” And he got it right.
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Aug 26, 2016 01:42
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CobiWann posted:We have a good half-hour of discussion about the solution to this riddle, some GOOD role-playing, when suddenly the Rogue’s player sits up, snaps his fingers, and says “I got it.” Well!? 
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Aug 26, 2016 02:54
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Is it "a road"?
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Aug 26, 2016 02:57
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is it "people who fail the riddle"
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Aug 26, 2016 04:04
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Snow, because the mountain is a volcano.
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Aug 26, 2016 05:03
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That one guy from that Franz Kafka story about the Law
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Aug 26, 2016 05:18
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a frog in a Cuisinart?
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Aug 26, 2016 05:31
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My offhand guess is something along the lines of plant growth; if the terrain is sufficiently rocky, even with open doors, something like a forest probably wouldn't grow inside. Then again, fantasy world. Alternate answer: if there is one, a staircase. They would travel up and down the mountain, but never go "in" the doors. Lorak fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Aug 26, 2016 |
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Aug 26, 2016 05:34
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No, what you do is you pick a door, then you have one of the less useful party members guess, and run for a door. The sphinx will only let them go through a door that leads to instant death, so you then switch which door you think is the correct one.
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Aug 26, 2016 05:34
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quote:I've travelled up the mountain Dang, you too buddy? That's harsh.
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Aug 26, 2016 05:37
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The road. The answer was the road, the one that led to the top of mountain and the real doorway inside We asked the DM what was inside the three doors. He said he won't tell us because he's saving it for later.
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Aug 26, 2016 10:08
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CobiWann posted:Catra’Zal God dammit, I just got that.
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Aug 27, 2016 01:01
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Senior Woodchuck posted:God dammit, I just got that. ...holy, so did I.
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Aug 27, 2016 01:46
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God drat it, I'm not sure if I want to shake your GM's hand or shake them for it.
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Aug 27, 2016 04:33
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Senior Woodchuck posted:God dammit, I just got that. I didn't. Spell it out?
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Aug 27, 2016 04:40
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Podima posted:I didn't. Spell it out? It's an anagram of Alcatraz
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Aug 27, 2016 04:43
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Robindaybird posted:It's an anagram of Alcatraz It's literally just the first 2 letters glued to the back, don't know how you guys missed that.
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Aug 27, 2016 11:22
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As I mentioned earlier, the answer to the Androsphinx’s riddle was “The Road.” Our group climbed the rest of the way up the mountain. At the very top was a small opening that had once been covered by a large stone slab, said slab now resting in pieces on the ground. Scratched into the stone next to opening was a symbol that Skeever recognized as a Bardic symbol (kind of Tanicus’ hobo code).quote:
Figuring the symbol had been carved by the man we were looking for, the bard Saegen Pennywhistle, the party entered what appeared to be a small but lavish temple. The stonework was set perfect against each other, tapestries that were JUST too frayed to be worth anything hung on the wall, and a large cistern had been set into the middle of the foyer, one that had been carved from the bottom up as opposed to being dug into the ground. A little further one, we found out just which deity the temple had been dedicated to…  Bilbdoolpoolp. Seems an army of kuo-toa had been living in the depths of the temple and the earthquake opened a pathway to the cistern and back this ancient temple. And they had somehow pissed off whatever had been living in the temple since it was last used and had barricaded the door to keep whatever that thing was locked inside. Sadly, none of us spoke kuo-toa and Skeever’s initial attempt to parlay was to take a swing as one of the obvious magic users. We plow through the kuo-toa (except for our Rogue who got cut off and failed a Death save before we got him back on his feet) except for one monk who manages to slip past me and escape down the cistern. (This adding to a running joke in our group – during big encounters, we’ve sometimes let one enemy them get away. A bullywug, a kuo-toa, and in a few sessions a Frost Giant. We keep expecting one day to find someone kind of “Legion of Doom” of leveled-up NPCs armed with their own magical gear to throw down with us) It takes us a bit to open up the door. Inside is a short corridor and the walls are covered in stone carvings of eyes with their lids closed. As the party crosses through the corridor, some of the eyes open up. If you fail your Wisdom save, you’re entranced for a round. If you make your Wisdom save, you then fail your Dexterity save as stone tentacles whip out of the walls and pin you in place. Only the Rogue manages to make his Wisdom and Dexterity saves (Natural 20 on the Dex save, because ”When you’re covered in your own blood, it’s easy to slip out of a tentacle’s grasp.” We have a harder time getting through the drat corridor than we did with the kuo-toa but eventually make into the room beyond. The room beyond is interesting as there’s a pit of magical darkness sitting right in the middle of the room covering up whatever waits down below. A quick trip to the Astral Plane shows something really disturbing…hundreds and hundreds of eyes just staring at me, whispering over and over again “Katral…Katral…Katral…” The trip reveals though that there is a chamber down below that our group could easily climb down into using our ropes. It’s the tapestries on the wall that are of interest. While they’re just as faded and worthless as the ones in the entryway, the subjects of the tapestries are…us. All of us were represented, even down to the Rogue, our party’s newest member. What was interesting were the titles of the tapestries, which a scroll of Comprehend Languages revealed to be… Skeever, Dragonborn Barbarian – The Lizard Chief Fallinrae, Sidh Paladin – The Last Martyr Tellisyn, Sidh Eldritch Knight – The Prophet of Air and Darkness Aena, Greensidh (half elf/half Halfling) Favored Soul – The Lamp in the Dusk Cullis, Halfling Rogue – The Final Arbiter Varis, Half-Sidh Sorcerer – The Lightning Lord (”Not one word, Skeever”) Ksena, Human Monk – The Rainbringer Now, eyes? Tentacles? Magical darkness? What do you think we discovered once we all made it down the ropes into the chamber below? How about a huge pile of treasure, a golden vortex of swirling magical energy, and six statues of adventurers in various stages of panic, including one with a lute strung over his shoulder (who actually looked nothing more than a tad surprised) and this sight for our eyes?  Yep. A drat BEHOLDER!!!  We split the party so it can’t keep its anti-magic zone on all of us at once. The problem are its eyestalks. It’s randomly generated eye stalks. And its lair actions. I get the concept behind lair actions/legendary actions because they make fighting things like beholders/liches/dragons affairs worth biting your nails over. Put simply, this thing is kicking our asses. It’s floating in the air which makes melee really hard (thank Riva for Jump spells and Monks running up the way), which means it’s the Rogue and Sorcerer who are really doing the most damage to it. Cullis? Petrified. Fallinrae? Paralyzed. Ksena? Slowed. Varis? Killed. Yep. Disintegration Ray. 10d8 Necrotic Damage. He rolls a 72. I have 65 Hit Points. I turn into a pile of fine dust. Along with my Wand of the War Mage, Robe of Stars, Ring of Arcane Might, and our party’s Bag of Holding with all our potions, 27,000 gold pieces, 5,000 gold worth of gems, and one Scroll of Time Stop. And since it’s a beholder’s ray and NOT the actual Disintegration spell, the GM ruled that indeed the magical items were dust as well (we talked about this after game over a beer, and I'm cool with his ruling). Somehow the rest of the party pulls out the victory, barely, as in the Eldritch Knight has 10 hit points, the Monk has 3 hit points and no Chi, and the Favored Soul is sucking on fumes spellwise. Fortunately, the pile of treasure had two scrolls of Flesh to Stone which were used to turn Cullis back to normal and revert Saegen Pennywhistle as well. Pennywhistle snaps back to life, takes a good look at the remainder of the party…  “Fallinrae, Tellisyn, Skeever, Ksena, Cullis, Aena. It is good to finally meet you, I’ve heard so much about you…” Pause. “Wait. Where’s the Lightning Lord?” Ksena just points to the pile of glowing green dust on the floor. “Oh. Oh, boy. The gods aren’t going to like this.” So yeah. RIP Varis Stormglass, 9th level Sorcerer, 2015-2016, died a virgin.
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Aug 27, 2016 20:02
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CobiWann posted:“Oh. Oh, boy. The gods aren’t going to like this.” This is the saddest thing. 
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Aug 27, 2016 20:44
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So in this pathfinder game I'm in, one of our party members is a dwarf with 5 int, named Igvod Duncerock. He's so stupid that the DM makes him roll for certain things like understanding left and right (he failed). It's all in good fun and the player likes playing into it. But sometimes the player gets so fed up he goes on little mini rants about how stupid other characters are, the DM has ruled these as in character. So now he has rants that go like this: "How loving stupid are you? We just need to talk to the loving quest giver and get the job, then he'll give us our money, no need for any illegal poo poo... I mean I'm stupid." So now we as a group have decided that his character has moments of clarity where he suddenly has above average intelligence, but only for one sentence or so. One time he was tricked into handing over all his gold (138 gold pieces, and the pouch they came in) for a potion that would "make him own a high class restaurant." which turned out to be seawater, which he was allergic to. so then for the next while he was playing his character with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, with a newfound culinary appreciation. So he walks out of the store and starts eating grass because he wants to see what tastes good and what doesn't. Then a character asks him what restaurant he now owns, his reply was to the effect of: "I don't know, but whatever restaurant I now own will have great difficulty in attracting clientele because of this tough economy and my relatively rudimentary cooking skills...Does anyone want some of this grass?" All with his tongue hanging out.
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Aug 27, 2016 21:34
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the_steve posted:This is the saddest thing. Indeed. He didn't even make it to double digits.
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Aug 28, 2016 00:29
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Resurrection can bring back Varis but not all that stuff  .
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Aug 28, 2016 02:38
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JustJeff88 posted:Indeed. He didn't even make it to double digits. And he just had all that plot in the prison! That's some Game of Thrones poo poo right there. Well, maybe not. Game of Thrones would have killed Varis off 4 months before they even decided to go to the prison.
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Aug 28, 2016 05:56
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the_steve posted:And he just had all that plot in the prison! I don't watch GoT, but whenever I see precocious deaths in fantasy I always think of the Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman. They are great and very much the stuff of my youth, but bugger me if they don't kill off main characters very quickly for dodgy reasons all the time. I'm fine with a throw-away game like running the Tomb of Horrors with a stack of disposable toons, but Varis had a lot of build-up and he didn't get to die in the heroic sacrifice or at the apogee of fighting the Big Bad. If CobiWann is fine with that then so be it, but it seems very anticlimactic after all of that plot development.
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Aug 28, 2016 15:17
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I'm going to reserve my judgment until the next update, though I'm definitely against permanent PC death in principle.
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Aug 28, 2016 16:04
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I'm sure this is just part of the bard's plans, so he can tell the tale of how the Lightning Lord managed to brush off even a disintegration and come back from the dead.
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Aug 28, 2016 16:08
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"Quickly! Pass me a waterskin, and stand back!"
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Aug 28, 2016 16:12
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Bieeardo posted:"Quickly! Pass me a waterskin, and stand back!"
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Aug 28, 2016 16:13
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Bieeardo posted:I'm going to reserve my judgment until the next update, though I'm definitely against permanent PC death in principle. See, I'm exactly the opposite. I embrace PC death both as a player and a DM as an opportunity for an even greater story. Do I go out of my way to kill PCs? Not really. Just recently there was a fight against a guardian demon bound to defend a certain vault in my 13th Age game who knocked one player to -2 and another to 3 HP, and they managed to pull through. The risk of death makes games infinitely more fun for me on the player side of things. In the World's Largest Dungeon game that I play in, I'm fully expecting my character to die within the next four or five sessions at most just because she's entirely out of her depth and flailing around in a panic. If she lives? Well, peachy! She's fun to play. But if she dies, that's fine too, because it could lead to some great storytelling. Not all deaths are glamorous or noble. Quite a few of them are just that bad luck found you at the worst time, or being overconfident. Death is a terribly sad, ignoble event most of the time. I like it the same way in D&D games. I fully admit I may be in the minority here though.
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Aug 28, 2016 17:07
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JustJeff88 posted:I don't watch GoT, but whenever I see precocious deaths in fantasy I always think of the Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman. They are great and very much the stuff of my youth, but bugger me if they don't kill off main characters very quickly for dodgy reasons all the time. I take it you haven't read Dragonlance in a long time - there's only two character deaths in the entire six book set, and both of those are used for specific plot points in the story to further develop their companions and give them a stronger sense of purpose. Game of Thrones (as well as the novels they're based on, you can read those if you don't like TV!) kills people off left and right often for no reason other than to shock the reader. Also doing so frequently after building a character up for an entire novel by making them appear like they're the main protagonist, only for a sudden twist where the author goes 'nope!' and yanks the rug from under your feet. As much as I've been enjoying CobiWann's stories, I was holding my breath just waiting for some grognardy crap like random-character-death-purely-caused-by-a-bad-dice-roll as soon as he started posting pictures of a bunch of minis on the table. Using minis + playing some version of D&D is almost always a bad sign of impending grognardery.
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Aug 28, 2016 17:58
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Galick posted:Death is a terribly sad, ignoble event most of the time. I like it the same way in D&D games.
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Aug 28, 2016 18:05
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Galick posted:See, I'm exactly the opposite. I embrace PC death both as a player and a DM as an opportunity for an even greater story. That's cool! I hope I wasn't coming off all badwrongfun, it's just not an aspect of gaming that I enjoy. I'm definitely curious to see what happens next, one way or another. This DM definitely seems adept at thinking on his feet.
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Aug 28, 2016 18:50
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Bieeardo posted:I'm going to reserve my judgment until the next update, though I'm definitely against permanent PC death in principle. Good point, and you may have something there. My biggest quibble is having so much go into the character and background of Varis but then he is obliterated in a difficult but not epic battle with a beholder. If a character with that much development behind him is going to die, it needs to be a defining moment of a campaign. I don't think that that was it, but we shall see.
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Aug 28, 2016 20:27
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Eh, I feel like everything with Varis's family was reasonably climactic for their character. And dying to a random beholder might seem insignificant, but dying right after you've been prophesied to fulfill some grand role and right before you've met the guy who would start you on that path? It's the kind of twist I'd enjoy, or at least accept, in a book.
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Aug 28, 2016 21:18
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"He's dead, but he was favoured by the gods. Maybe we can make a relic out of his remains." "Like what, Dust of Disappearance?"
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Aug 28, 2016 21:49
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Elven leather armour?
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Aug 28, 2016 22:37
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| # ? May 21, 2024 12:53 |
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Just have him play a ghost.
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Aug 28, 2016 22:51
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