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Agrikk posted:One of the grosser things I can imagine with these spells is to transform a horizontal section of a building wall into flesh. I mean how gross is a cylinder of an “inert fleshy substance” anyway? Sure I've told this story before, but in a Dungeon World game the party came across a big bag of unlabelled, almost-used-up wands. The rule was that when they waved one at a problem and hoped it was something useful, on a 10+ it was a type of wand that was directly helpful to their situation, on a 6- it was directly harmful or created a new problem, and on a 7-9 it helped their situation but created a new problem in the process. When they tried the Bag Of Wands to help them get past a passage which had collapsed and filled with rubble and got a 7-9, it turned out to be a wand of Stone to Flesh: the passage was now packed tight with butchered joints of meat, but they were at least a bit easier than squeeze past than boulders. All fine, until they met a vampire lord on the other side who cast Mass Raise Dead and their exit route turned out to be filled with twitching, lurching animal carcasses.
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Jan 19, 2020 19:05
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One of the Pathfinder 2e adventure paths includes an encounter in which the main bad guy opens a sluice in the wall, causing water to rush out across the room and into a series of chutes which direct the water to drown their innocent captives. Our all-purpose magic guy cast Wall Of Stone across the corner of the room with the sluice. In PF2e, Wall Of Stone doesn’t have to be anchored, fits between grid squares, and is instantly mundane and permanent once created. So the bad guy and two of his minions were isolated from the sluice control and trapped in a 20’ square area with rapidly rising water. Two of them were OK but the one wearing the big suit of armor was kinda screwed.
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Jan 20, 2020 22:54
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Remember a couple weeks ago when I posted about the self-insert DnD game I'm playing in. We were off for the past two weeks while the DM was celebrating his wedding anniversary with his husband, but we finally played again last night. That was a mixed bag. Just to recap the first session: The plot, we're told, is that all the electrical power and all communications has been knocked out and mysterious towers have appeared all over the world. These towers were created by aliens as a test for humanity: reach the top and they won't destroy Earth. We are also told that our party's first instinct when the world's about to end is to go straight to the DM's house, who left a note on his door that he's gone to one of the towers, because the towers "also have healing powers." Somehow. Our party enters the nearby tower to find him, and the game begins. The Party again, is: Me, playing a Druid, soon to be Circle of the Moon Druid who turns into a Giant Hyena and doesn't give a poo poo because he's a big rear end hyena. My Friend (F), playing a Wild Magic Sorceror solely for the ability to sometimes self-destruct based on a table I've never seen. Sneaky Guy (SG), was a Warlock. True to his name, his first action no matter what was to Stealth. He was better about actually contributing than the New Year's game. We start out in a big lobby; there's 3 doors and a sign in the middle telling us "Fire burns away lies." Me: Produce Flame at the north door. DM: The door is noticeably scorched but nothing else. F: I'm gonna go through this other door. We go through the door and the DM says that it's pitch black and that the floor feels earthy. Based on the map the DM drew (sidenote: he hand drew the entire dungeon from scratch and it took up like 8 feet of a roll of paper; it was legitimately impressive) the entire area was a maze with thin corridors. F pulled out a torch, I made a magic light, and SG stealthed. Taking point, F eventually came across several giant ants of varying colors in a row. At this, F used a spell that I found out in the second session was hombrewed, and let him move up to his movement, dealing his choice of elemental damage to every creature he passed through unless they succeeded on a Dex save. The ants didn't, and all died in one hit. DM: Make *counts in his head* 3 Dex saves. F:  What for?DM: The ants explode when they die. Take 14 damage total.F: Well, I'm at 1hp. Yep, every ant there would explode on death unless we killed them from range. In a maze with narrow corridors and a lot of turns. That was completely dark. We tanked through the damage and killed all the ants we found, so we continued to explore the maze (made easier because F continued to run off on his own). F: I found a switch. SG: I found a note. DM: Ah! Wait one sec. The DM produced a piece a paper with a lot of scribbles and handed it to SG. After looking at it for about half a minute, SG asked if anyone had a lighter. F and I didn't, so the DM had to go dig one up. Running the lighter over the paper burnt away some of the ink and left us with the message "TRAP." SG: Yeah, maybe don't pull that switch. F: Imma pull it. Me: Don't. F: What if I tie it to 30 feet of rope and pull it from a distance? Me: That seems better. F: I pull the switch. DM: When you pull the switch, more ants appear. Me: Oh for gently caress's sake. We start killing the new ants when I get an idea. Me: I want to use Speak with Animals on one of the ants, offer it a crunch berry (I took the Goodberry spell, which I was told is the best healing spell), and ask it to be my friend. DM: You can't talk to it. It's a magical construct, not a beast. Me: Well. Guess I'll just kill it then. We got beat hard enough that after that mob we went back to the lobby for a long rest, and to level up because we killed enough ants to hit level 2. Since I only chose to play Druid because I saw the phrase Circle of the Moon in the book and liked that Castlevania, I actually read what it did. Me: This seems really cool, but I don't think I can even make use of Wild Shape. The book says "beasts I've seen" and there haven't been any beasts in the tower so far. DM: Yeah but you're still playing you. You would've seen animals in your life before entering the tower. Me: ...Hand me the bestiary.  I settled on Tiger and Giant Hyena, later just Hyena unless I needed Darkvision because constant turns don't synergize with pouncing. Meanwhile, F was struggling with a chest that he found in the Anthell and carried back to the lobby. Me: You sure you don't want me to try heating the lock up so it melts off? F: Nah, I got this. It should open if I just hit it hard enough. 19 Str check.DM: The chest breaks open, along with the glass orb inside. An Arcana check would have told you the orb was magical in some way but you don't know what it could do because it's broken now. F: I want to use Mending to fix it. DM: You can can, but it will just be an ordinary glass orb. And Mending would take hours with how badly damaged it is. F: I'm just going to pocket the shards. The rest of the session was us going through another of the 3 doors (the first door locked for 12 hours because we failed to answer the riddle it gave us), and killing kobolds, while F looted like 16 dagger off them until we were beat down enough to go take another long rest and level up to 3. This was a longer post than I was expecting. I'm going to make a second post for Session 2. MelvinBison fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jan 25, 2020 |
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Jan 25, 2020 16:34
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MelvinBison posted:Me: You sure you don't want me to try heating the lock up so it melts off?
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Jan 25, 2020 16:54
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Yawgmoth posted:This is an absolute rear end in a top hat move and is worth a smack upside the head. Guaranteed that melting the lock would have melted the glass orb too, or some other dumb bullshit because "that's not how I wanted you to do it!" Also apparently Mending taking that long was RAW, since my friend conceded the point after reading it. e. vv Fair point. None of the ants even dropped a key or anything so hell if I know what would've happened. MelvinBison fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jan 25, 2020 |
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Jan 25, 2020 17:00
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MelvinBison posted:Also apparently Mending taking that long was RAW, since my friend conceded the point after reading it.
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Jan 25, 2020 17:24
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Yawgmoth posted:Yeah but it shouldn't have to be mended in the first place. The "you rolled too well so you actually fail!" is garbage-tier DM punishment for not reading his mind. This. A high roll indicates a masterful application of whatever was being attempted. Not “You are so strong you pull down the tower around you.” I’d love to know what success looked like in the DM’s mind.
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Jan 25, 2020 18:13
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Going into the second session, the DM informed us that the appearance of the lobby was now closer to that of an office building, and that 2 of the doors resembled that of plain office doors. The third was now an elevator. F: I say we head back towards the ants. Me: Yeah, if we're in a corporate setting, that seems appropriate. We enter back into Anthell and are told that the walls now resemble cubicles and are covered in sticky notes from "Karen, in Accounting." These range from "there will be no more water in the cooler," to "no outside food or drink allowed" (Me: Well guess I can't make more crunch berries.  ), and deeper in the dungeon would become messages like "unallowed outsiders are food and drink," written in blood. F rounds a corner in the maze (we all made stealth checks and I turned back into a Giant Hyena), and finds a crazed office worker butchering someone. F casts scorching ray on him and hits him 2 out of the 3 attacks which kills him. DM: When you hit the first time he yells out as a reaction, and you hear a lot of footsteps coming your way. I'd like to go ahead and stress that I'm still inexperienced with 5e and DnD in general, but this caused an argument later because killing that one guy "not in one hit" caused 10 more enemies to hone in on our location. In my head the enemy shouldn't have been able to yell in the first place because I see a difference in attacking one enemy multiple times in one action means you do so in quick succession, whereas if you were attacking multiple enemies, you'd have to stop and aim at the next enemy before attacking again. Other friends of mine who are experienced with DnD agreed that this enemy should have been able to yell after the first hit, but in no way should that have aggro'd every enemy in the area. The enemies, by the way, were actually interesting, since they were all office workers using improvised weapons (dual-wielding scissors, telephone cord to grapple and strangle you with, etc. Oh and one guy who had explosives strapped to his chest.  This guy was basically a ramped up version of the ants from the last post but thankfully we only had to deal with one. F had used that homebrewed dash spell again and so ended up on the other side of enemies away from SG and I, which was assaulted by enemies on all sides. Or rather, I was assaulted on all sides because SG rolled so well on Stealth that he decided to pass his turn to let the enemies he was holding back walk right to me. I was having a streak of bad luck so I was beaten down from both max hp as a hyena and later in normal form (I love CotM Druids). I disengaged and headed back down the hall where I came from so I could only be attacked from one direction. This didn't work though, because two of the enemies that were called came from a completely different section of the dungeon, and in fact had to travel through the lobby to get to us. Through two sets of closed doors, a large room, and a winding maze. The first dude screamed that loud. About this time SG started helping out, killing one guy and using Dissonant Whispers to send a higher level cleric (apparently named Vanessa) running. This is good, as I'm now down from being attacked from this new group (the other two groups were being dealt with by F and SG. DM: Do you yell out? Me: Why? SG can tell I'm down. He's telepathic. (He was; SG could telecommunicate with us from 30 ft. away through walls and was the go between for me and the party since I can't speak in shifted form yet.) DM: Yeah but F doesn't know that. He's too far away for SG to contact. Me: Okay, I guess I'll yell out. F: Right, just going to ignore that and go over here. F ran off to a farther section of the maze while SG was a bit more helpful, dropping Darkness in our vicinity so the enemies couldn't see us (Stealth and Darkvision are pretty much a staple of every character he makes). DM: Alright, this one's going to loot you, Melvin. What do you have on you? Me: What? Um, just my quarterstaff and leather armor? DM: Oh. ...He steals your shoes. SG: I'm making an opportunity attack since he's fumbling in the dark. *narrowly misses*DM: He hears a noise and drops the shoes. While SG nurses me back to health with crunch berries, F has found a shop. The shop, the DM explained, would cycle between items, armor, weapons, and a general store where we could sell items back. We found this out because F spent his turn opening the door over and over until he found someone who would buy his 16 kobold daggers, in addition to buying 2 healing potions from "an 8-year-old catgirl" (which thankfully was just a sendup of "Khajit has wares for you;" All the shops had a weird merchant running them). It's my turn before the guys who knocked me out, so I ask SG to move him and his darkness away so I can see and go on a hyena rampage. SG does and while I'm killing the last two guys near us, SG sees Vanessa and one other enemy move away from us into another room. We are told she has cast a spell but don't know what. SG investigates and we find out two things: First, Vanessa has cast "Spirit Guardians," which I was told would deal 3d8 damage for entering, exiting, or sitting in a 15 foot radius of her for the next 10 minutes. Second, she and the other mook are in a small enclosed room with only an one square opening in or out, and the one casting the spell is behind a 15 foot long wall inside the room, meaning we have no line of sight to her. The ghosts surrounding her can go through walls, so an attempt to explore a hallway deeper into the maze is met with threats of damage because it's in range of her. SG scouts another direction and finds a hall where the office building motif ends and medieval castle begins. I say screw that nonsense and beeline it in the direction of the shop. I'm accused of metagaming at this point, but I counter that I'm trying to track down F, none of the other two directions show signs of him, so I'm heading in another. They still fuss at me, but I let them know that after the Ghost Wall of gently caress You, I don't care. I'm told on the way to the shop, there's a janitor mopping with earbuds on who isn't aware of what's happening. I leave him to his business and enter the shop. Me: Which shop is it now? DM: The sign says "Clothing Store." Me: Excellent. I open the door with my teeth. (We had an earlier argument whether I could open doors since as a counter to my "metagaming," they suggested I could head back to the lobby. I said I couldn't open doors, and the DM ruled I could. DM: The elf woman behind the counter is screaming at the giant dog that's entered her shop. Me: Undeterred, I softly cackle and gesture in the direction of her finest vests with my front paw. 23 for Persuasion.DM: Okay, she's still panicking because she can't understand you. Me: Fine. I growl that I'll be speaking with her manager and slam the door behind me. Bloody racist. Meanwhile, F found a normal-looking restroom and has spent the last 2 turns investigating it. The first turn and a poor roll only reveals toilet paper, but the second and a critical finds "a loving gun." (That we cannot use because none of us are proficient in martial weapons.) F decides to get in one of the bathroom stalls. I'm stymied by the GWoFY so I go in the bathroom too. DM: Melvin, you can see F's shoes in one of the stalls. F, you can hear the heavy patter of dog feet. Me: I'll climb into the stall next to him. (A botched Str check to force my way in results in me getting stuck in the doorframe. DM: F, you see the wall next to you push in and the bolts holding the stall together groan. F: I pop out and point my gun at the dog. Me: I'm use a reaction to poo poo myself in fear. While F and I are laughing our heads off, SG decides to be productive and interrogates the janitor. We find that Vanessa has a keycard that's needed to get to the 3rd floor from the lobby elevator and find Karen, the one supposedly in charge and leaving all the stick notes around. You remember Vanessa, the one who conjured up the GWoFY in an unassailable room? She's now a mandatory enemy apparently. Now in range, SG informs us of this telepathically. F was unaware there was a janitor and uses his turn (we're still considered in combat because nevermind you're not actively going after enemies going out of their way to avoid you, you're not allowed a short rest) to hold the janitor at gunpoint for the same information and his mop, which F gave back because "I've been in the restroom, he'll need it more than me." I had the idea to say screw it and position myself at the door to the room Vanessa was holed up in since I was at full hp with a move of 50 ft. as a hyena, so I could theoretically go in, tank the damage, and kill her. This didn't pan out because SG said he already left for the lobby because he was out of spell slots, and F was right behind him. I'd later learn that the ghost zone counted as difficult terrain anyway, so my plan would never have worked. So I headed back to the lobby too (after specifying that I was picking up my shoes on the way. Jackass.). I should spell out right now the dungeon's big gimmick: you know how the ants from my previous post were magical constructs? That applies to every enemy in the dungeon. So while we got XP and gold for killing each enemy, "video game style," this also meant that every time we go back to the lobby or safe zone, every enemy in the dungeon respawns. Yes. So after a short rest and heals, we decided to go in the opposite door, despite the DM complaining that we never finished Vanessa. Since he admitted that again, every enemy we killed would come back and that she would be fully healed, we were confident in telling him "Screw that nonsense." Through the other door, SG stealths again and scouts as far as he can in the maze. The DM goes ahead and positions enemies on the map (about 9 of them; including 7 all holed up in one corner where a circle was drawn on one of the squares; "they're guarding something," the DM tells us) all brandishing actual weapons, including one who dual wielded swords, and two gun users. SG: Fuuuuck that, those guys have guns. DM: They're just regular ranged weapons. This isn't GURPS. SG: Okay, I'm still not going near them. SG finds a room labelled "Tavern" and tells us to head towards him, leading us away from the enemies. We head in and find an extra-dimensional space where other dungeongoers, regardless of what floor they're on, can congregate and rest. We're pretty much at the end of the session so we talk to some of the other people there, share a "Complex Meal" for the passive ability to regain 1hp every five rounds (including out-of-combat and when downed, if that ever lines up), and I buy an expensive one use token that teleports the party back to the tavern from anywhere when used. I decline the discount healing potions with side effects (ooo) and we call it a night. So this is the part of the story where y'all call me a dumbass because I'm probably going to go back next week, considering a) I don't have anything better to do on Friday night atm, and b) the parts where we're not fighting and just bullshit in the dungeon are wonderful. There was a period after the GWoFY incident where everyone at the table called bullshit on the DM for how he handled the encounter (though the other players stopped after I kept arguing for a couple minutes longer) so I believe there's the possibility his bullshit will be toned down later. I know as far as this group goes I'm still an outsider, but apparently for all my faults I'm still better than some of the people they've played with so it might be worth it to speak up more often. I don't know; I'm reimagining this game as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. set in Tartarus and it sounds amazing. I might play with the concept later after seeing how the game turns out.
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Jan 25, 2020 18:44
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Oh geez that was longer than I expected. Uh, TL; DR: gently caress enemies using Spiritual Guardian against a party of 3 spellcasters whose highest HP is 22. e.: Oh right, missed a small detail. All the above bullshit wasn't even enough for us to level up. MelvinBison fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jan 25, 2020 |
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Jan 25, 2020 18:45
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That all sounds spectacularly dumb as hell and your DM is garbage at making an enjoyable experience. But hell, if you and your fellow players are able to make your own fun then more power to you.
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Jan 25, 2020 18:52
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MelvinBison posted:So this is the part of the story where y'all call me a dumbass because I'm probably going to go back next week, considering a) I don't have anything better to do on Friday night atm, and b) the parts where we're not fighting and just bullshit in the dungeon are wonderful.
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Jan 25, 2020 19:31
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Is your GM trying to run Meikyu Kingdom!?
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Jan 25, 2020 21:32
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Your DM sounds kind of like a prat, y'all need to sit down with him and spell out what parts are just not loving fun and how it feels, and move base on how he acts. If he seems willing to take criticism, then give it a shot, if he seems resistant, sever.
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Jan 25, 2020 22:19
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Yeah your DM definitely seems to have A Plan In His Head for how this game is Meant To Go, and since you're not following along with that plan (you probably can't with your party composition) he's breaking out the gently caress You. It might not be as bad as I'm interpreting it, he might be genuinely trying, but those posts were full of enough Adversarial GMing Bullshit that I have my doubts. I would gently explain to him all the parts that were not actually fun and see how he responds. If he shapes up and at least tries to do better, great! If not, get the gently caress out, is my unsolicited advice.
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Jan 25, 2020 22:33
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Yeah your DM definitely seems to have A Plan In His Head for how this game is Meant To Go, and since you're not following along with that plan (you probably can't with your party composition) he's breaking out the gently caress You. This. Dude is obviously married to his gimmicks.
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Jan 26, 2020 01:35
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Today, our friend who is dipping her toes into DMing ran her second one shot, and we have a party of dwarves that she let us go ahead and use again. We are extremely racist toward elves and are not quiet about that. My character is a bard, who, just for flavor on his backstory, took a series of spells because he wanted to be able to talk to elves, mostly to talk poo poo, but he misunderstood fundamental things about elves. He took Speak With Animals, because he didn't realize elves weren't animals, he just assumed that they were. This didn't work, but he knew that elves like the fey and stuff, so he also took Speak With Plants. Exasperated, he learned Speak With Dead, so that he could just kill elves and speak with them that way. He also has Tongues, but has never even tried to use it. In the first one shot, we had found a whale carcass that was beached because of some corruption that we later solved. We took the time to harvest the blubber and make oil out of it, the oil was made between sessions, and we had quite a lot of it. Like, enough for several barrels, which we had in a small cart. Our cart happens to have "Dead Elf Storage" written on it in our glorious language. I told you that story so I could tell you this one. We learned that some dwarves had been captured by Drow and were being taken to the Underdark through a mysterious forest to a slave market. This is obviously right up our alley, and probably written in response to our silly elf hating party. We traversed through the forest, and found a temple to Lolth, the spider queen! Once inside, we killed a priestess of Lolth, and took her holy symbol and looted the upper temple. There was an important looking door that we couldn't get through, and, attempting to get some help on it, I cast Speak With Dead to consult with the priestess and see if there was any advice I could get. Most of the questions were related to that, however, my fourth question was "How does it feel to get killed by a bunch of dwarves, ya smelly elf?" I only get five questions on this third level spell, but you know. We do some necessary things to get into the chamber beyond. Upon finding a secret stair leading down, we discovered where the dwarves were being held, along with fifty drow soldiers. I think the DM was thinking about us sneaking around and freeing the dwarves, maybe running away with them and escaping. Or perhaps she figured we'd come up with some MacGuyver style disguises or role play to bullshit our way through the encounter without fighting, she's played with us before and is aware of our shenanigans and creativity in the face of adversity. She definitely wasn't planning on us fighting all of those drow. We didn't fight them. But we're still incredibly racist dwarves. We got our oil from the cart, positioned the barrels at a good distance up the spiral stairs. Our archery dwarf took a shot at them to get their attention, and our fighter dwarf stood in the doorway, yelled at them, and stuck the priestess's holy symbol down his pants. They proceeded to run up the stairs, and we poured the oil as fifty drow swarmed up the stairs. Our wizard fireballs the area, collapsing the lower half of the stairs in a giant explosion. The elves not dead to fire were crushed by falling parts of the temple. This cut us off from our dwarven brethren in their cage, but we're dwarves. We just tunneled through because every one of us has proficiency with some sort of mining or digging tools. Took a while, but we got em out. All good.
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Jan 26, 2020 03:40
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Nucular Carmul posted:We are extremely racist toward elves and are not quiet about that. 
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Jan 26, 2020 03:46
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Quick update: Talking with my friend earlier, apparently after I left after the game the DM asked him if I was upset with the game since he was concerned I didn't have fun. My friend specifically told him that the amount of enemies needs to be cut down, especially since our game was originally supposed to be a one shot. We had a long talk about what was fun and what wasn't and we agreed that a lot of the gimmicks he added weren't well thought out. I'm going tell the DM all my concerns early this week since he seems open to suggestions and give the game one more week to get better. If it doesn't then at least I didn't have to make dinner this Friday.
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Jan 26, 2020 04:52
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EDIT: Question answered!
Nerdlord Actual fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 27, 2020 23:16
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Nucular Carmul posted:Today, our friend who is dipping her toes into DMing ran her second one shot, and we have a party of dwarves that she let us go ahead and use again. Never not post https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjHclWPVij0 It's like total warhams 2, where tyrion's favorite activity is killing as many elfs on elf island as he possibly can, so does that make him a good elf?
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Feb 7, 2020 22:43
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The Greater Caverns We descend a staircase of several hundred yards deeper into the mountain. The air is still very thin from the altitude but closer and more oppressive somehow. The passage is taller but still as narrow and where the taint was loathsome before it is now a physical weight, like a backpack full of heavy stones that threatens to collapse our legs and pull us off balance with every step. Not only does the Taint rot us physically, but it infests our dreams with horrible visions. These nightmares are so terrible that we begin to forego sleep to keep from dreaming. And sleeplessness is its own torture. Yes, the artifacts we have heal sickness of the mind and body and remove the Taint from us when it is our turn to receive the ration of healing magic, but it cannot cure the memories. We remember vomiting so hard that our ribs crack and our rotting teeth fall out only to be regenerated when it is our turn to receive the boon of the Rod of Law. We remember dreams of being drawn and quartered and being torn apart by razor tentacle of nameless demons. Memories which pile up like corpses on the soul leaving us hollow eyed and gaunt. At this point I know that with my tracking skills developed as a boy I can find my way out of the Caves, but only Ospar and his spelunking skills developed in the sewers of Thalos keep us moving forward and not hopelessly lost in circles. He leads us counter clockwise around the perimeter of the caverns to determine the extent of the cave complex, eventually spiraling inwards to map out the complex. Along the way we battle the denizens of the Caverns: troglodytes who attack us from their maze-like warrens, a strange demon with eyes of death that hammered us with necrotic energy, an eight-legged flightless wyrm of onyx black skin that attempted to petrify us with its stony gaze until Severance called down a magical blackness which forced us all to fight blindly blundering about in the dark until we killed it. Its lair included a trove of gems and magic, but also held a long passage that opened up in a sheer cliff face in Iggwilv’s Horn thousands of feet above the valley floor. Here we pause for several hours, however wracked with Taint we were, to take in some sunshine and to feel wind on our faces before turning our backs and diving back into the darkness of the caves. It took several watches to circumnavigate the complex, arriving back at the stairway up to the lesser caverns. We then spiral inwards to explore the middle and it was another winding march before we found the Iron Doors.
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Feb 8, 2020 17:02
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drat, that does not sound like a good time. In character I mean. Out of character, still sounds pretty fuckin' brutal. Legit, any of my characters would definitely be heavily weighing the pros and cons of just bailing out by that point.
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Feb 9, 2020 01:36
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The pause by the ledge of the dracolisk was a serious debate about that very point. Thys for one was tempted to just use his lightning bolt / teleport thing and nope right back to Thalos. But ultimately everyone stayed to see what was at the end of all of this. Grit. Grit I tell ya. 
Agrikk fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Feb 9, 2020 |
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Feb 9, 2020 05:06
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The Iron Doors These are a pair of riveted iron doors. From the look of the hinges set into the stone, each of these great doors must be at least one foot thick. On each door are many leering demon visages in bronze. Weird symbols form a crabbed tracery around the border of the great iron portal. In the center is a plaque with the following message in the common tongue: Iggwilv’s treasure rests within Her curse on any who disturb it Seek no further to steal it, nor To free she who is imprisoned here For a fate worse than death is Sure to come to those fools who Violate this circumscribed place. The doors resist any attempts at divination or scrying into their nature, and Ospar gives them a thorough going over but we cannot learn anything about them. It takes the combined strength of Markennon, Snakeeyes and Severance to pull these slabs of iron open, but once moving they move easily on frictionless hinges. Beyond the iron doors is a corridor with walls of red marble. A thick black carpet runs from the entry to an ebony door some eighty feet away. The arched ceiling consists of black marble shot through with bands of scarlet. An eerie red glow from the ceiling pervades the entire passageway. We move down the corridor and my arms tingle with the perceptible twinge of magic in the air. As we approach the far door we can see the glint of silver off of hinges and a door ring hanging in the center of the black door. We take some time at the door without touching it, trying once again to discern the nature of this room, the room beyond and any traps that might lie nearby, but neither Severance’s nor my attempts, nor Ospar’s physical inspection reveal anything. So we wrap ourselves in what protective magical auras, charms, and devices we can and, with a deep breath, pull on the silver ring. With a gonging boom, the two iron doors at the end of the passage slam shut and there is a flash of light and reality warps and twists around us and- We are standing in a massive oval shaped chamber measuring some sixty feet deep and ninety feet wide. The ceiling rises domelike over the area to a height of thirty feet at its apex. On the floor, radiating outward from the center of the room, is a 25-foot diameter etched into the stone. Arcane script is visible along the circle’s perimeter and burned into the circle itself. A human female stands at the edge of the circle, dark and pale, strong and supple and beautiful, chanting and gesturing at the circle as she stands over a book on a pedestal. Swirling tar-like ropes, the physical manifestation of the abyssal taint emerge from the rock and form a shimmering cylinder. There is a flash within the cylinder and a creature winks into existence at the exact center of the summoning circle. The form is human in aspect but stands over nine feet tall, with leathery skin the color of mottled ash. A serpentine tail extends from a knot of muscle at the base of the creature’s spine, tipped with a two pronged barb that drips with a glowing ichor. The form’s limbs gradually darken in hue, ending in spindly talons that appear as though covered in slick pitch. Its eyes, which have no discernible irises, are equally black, as is the steaming tongue that snakes out from between its teeth. The demon stands still for a second as it gets its bearings, then howls as it recognizes its prison and throws itself at the walls of the cylinder. There is an explosion of energy but the woman absorbs the impact with a shudder and continues her chanting of passages from the book at her fingertips. Again and again the demon tests his confines and again and again the woman repels its assault, harnessing the chaotic energy from the Abyss against it. Ages pass in moments as the battle rages until, finally, the demon is spent, acquiescing. The woman smiles -and we appear in a squarish cave with passages leading in each of four directions. From the look of the walls and floor we are still in the caverns, but there are no marks from Ospar to indicate our previous passage here. Snakeeyes rubs his face, evidently feeling the same spinning head that I am. “Did everyone see that?” “The woman and the demon?” asks Ospar. “Six o’ mine gets me five o’ yours tha’ t’woman do be our very own Natasha th’ Dark. Iggwilv herself,” says Severance. “But who do be th’ demon?” “Who cares who the demon is,” says a pale and gaunt Snakeeyes as he packs a bowl of krrf. “I only care if it’s still around.” "Did you see what she did?" I gush. I can't help myself. "How she manipulated the Abyss itself? How she controlled the prison and turned it into a weapon against that demon? Incredible!" Ospar leads us off into the darkness, methodically marking the walls with his spelunking symbols. We are disoriented until our path intersects with a path previously traveled. “Judging by these marks of mine, when we opened the doors we were somehow teleported northeast of where we were,” declares Ospar. “The stairs up to the Lesser Caverns should be almost due south of us.” “So what do we do now?” ask Markennon, picking idly at the skin flaking off his arm. “I don’t know yet,” replies Ospar. “There are many passageways yet to explore. We should continue onwards. Maybe the riddle will unfold to us.”
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Feb 9, 2020 08:15
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According to my DM, a Potion of Haste is not considered a PED and the villain does not earn a 50-round suspension for using one.
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Feb 18, 2020 15:46
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CobiWann posted:According to my DM, a Potion of Haste is not considered a PED and the villain does not earn a 50-round suspension for using one. Look if they let all those
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Feb 18, 2020 15:57
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Even if the villain wins, history will vindicate the clean-living heroes and he will be stripped of his "Best Antagonist 2020" reward in about a decade's time.
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Feb 18, 2020 16:15
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JustJeff88 posted:Even if the villain wins, history will vindicate the clean-living heroes and he will be stripped of his "Best Antagonist 2020" reward in about a decade's time. I don't know about clean-living. What about clean-dead or clean-dead'ish or clean-undead?
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Feb 18, 2020 16:33
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If you wanna talk PED spells, let's talk about Sadism. One of my PCs has it, casts it basically every combat. She uses it to great effect with dual-wielded kukris and a pile of static damage bonuses, plus the bard giving huge piles of bonus damage as well. Last night she did a full attack where she essentially couldn't miss except on a 1 thanks to Dancing Mongoose giving her enough damage for a bonus +16 to hit, where she proceeded to deal just over 650 damage to the linnorm they were fighting. This gave her a +65 to hit, saves, and checks for the following round. "Meat confetti" is I think the appropriate description of the post-Keryth linnorm. High level D&D encounters are hard to design. 
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Feb 18, 2020 18:49
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In our 5e game, our monk accepted a cursed ring from an obviously shady demon dude for really no reason other than shenanigans. He tries to take it off and is told that it won't budge from his finger but he can make a strength check to try anyways. The natural 20 follows and off pops the ring, which then ends up in the hands of our wizard for really no reason other than shenanigans. The next session was just the wizard and me (a paladin) rather than the full party, so our DM played out a canonical one-shot of a portal to the demon plane opening and the wizard being abducted with me trying to rescue him. Turns out the transfer of the cursed ring violated demon law and we had to go to demon court to defend ourselves else our souls would be forfeit. What followed was us having some time to learn up on demon law pending our court date because we didn't trust having a demon public defender appointed to us. It was mostly just RPing for a couple of hours with some token rolls thrown in that ended in us having to fight the judge as sort of a mini-boss fight to exonerate ourselves, but it was a really fun diversion for a serious of poorly thought out decisions.
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Feb 18, 2020 20:15
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Yawgmoth posted:If you wanna talk PED spells, let's talk about Sadism. One of my PCs has it, casts it basically every combat. She uses it to great effect with dual-wielded kukris and a pile of static damage bonuses, plus the bard giving huge piles of bonus damage as well. Last night she did a full attack where she essentially couldn't miss except on a 1 thanks to Dancing Mongoose giving her enough damage for a bonus +16 to hit, where she proceeded to deal just over 650 damage to the linnorm they were fighting. This gave her a +65 to hit, saves, and checks for the following round. "Meat confetti" is I think the appropriate description of the post-Keryth linnorm. Did they use that B9S maneuver which lets you do iterative attacks a -4 penalty until you miss?
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Feb 18, 2020 20:38
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Kurieg posted:Did they use that B9S maneuver which lets you do iterative attacks a -4 penalty until you miss? No, that was Piggy, and he only got to murder one of the dragon shade spawns with it. I believe Keryth's was just Dancing Mongoose plus a Hasted TWF Full Attack at level 14.
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Feb 18, 2020 20:52
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CobiWann posted:I don't know about clean-living. What about clean-dead or clean-dead'ish or clean-undead? It's more of a moral position that is not tainted by the presence of decomposition, flesh-based parasites or lack of a pulse. Regardless, around 2030 the villain will be stripped of his title when he is found to have tested positive for antagonism-enhancing drugs.
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Feb 19, 2020 02:01
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The Second Doors We continue to spiral counter-clockwise though the complex but the twisting passages loop back on themselves and make for slow going, though we do manage to fill gaps on Ospar’s crude map. We come across two more of the square-hewn caves before a passage takes us to another set of bronze doors, with the same runes announcing Iggwilv’s treasure within. Our journey since the first doors has been strangely quiet and we have seen no signs of life, so we decide to tackle the doors straight away. Once again, our attempts to scry past the doors or detect any type of trap or charm are repulsed so Markennon, Severance and Snakeeyes pull open the door to reveal a corridor similar to the first. The same red marble, the same immaculate black carpet, the same red glow from the arched ceiling, the same black doors at the end of the corridor. Once again, we pull on the ring and- We are standing in a massive oval shaped chamber measuring some sixty feet deep and ninety feet wide. The ceiling rises domelike over the area to a height of thirty feet at its apex. On the floor, radiating outward from the center of the room, is a 25-foot diameter etched into the stone. Arcane script is visible along the circle’s perimeter and burned into the circle itself. Within the circle an elderly man sits lotus-style. He is clad in plain white robes and, although his face is haggard and his beard is long and unkempt his expression is serene. The beautiful human female stands at the edge of a second circle, chanting and gesturing at the circle as she stands over a book on a pedestal while the old man looks on with clear blue eyes. Swirling tar-like ropes, the physical manifestation of the abyssal taint emerge from the rock and form a shimmering cylinder. There is a flash within the cylinder and a creature winks into existence at the exact center of this new summoning circle. Standing nine feet tall, this creature appears as a lithe, muscular humanoid. His skin shines like polished obsidian, and his eyes glitter with malevolent green light. He has yellowed fangs, pointed ears, and six slender fingers decorating each hand, while standing on the reverse jointed legs of an unguligrate. He is dressed in the most expensive and elegant finery and is wielding an acid-drenched greatsword in one hand. He looks around his prison with detached amusement and takes an indolent swing at the edge of the circle with his sword and is rewarded with a shower of sparks and a surge of black tendrils of Taint. The old man stand up, smiling, and begins to clap as the woman closes the clasps on the large book. She acknowledges the old man and approaches the sword wielding demon with an arrogant and sensual stride -and we appear in a squarish cave with passages leading in each of four directions. “We’ve been here before!” exclaims Ospar excitedly pointing to his marks on a wall. “See? We’ve been transported to the southeast corner.” He mulls over his map with Markennon. Severance nods at me. “Did y’see her pull th’ secon’demon inna her web? She do be a reg’lar black widow. I wonder who do be th’ ol’ man.” “I thought you might recognize the descriptions of either of these. I don’t know myself but he was in the original summoning circle. Do you suppose it was the same creature as the first vision?” “Assumin’ tha’ th’ visions we do be seein’ be in chron’log’cal order, t’would be my bet.” “Two demons…” I muse aloud. “She like to play with fire, that one.”
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Feb 19, 2020 05:51
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JustJeff88 posted:It's more of a moral position that is not tainted by the presence of decomposition, flesh-based parasites or lack of a pulse. Well there's none of that, but there is occasional drowsiness and a rotting smell.
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Feb 19, 2020 15:50
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The Third Doors Ospar’s map is taking shape and we are starting to get a sense of the layout of this complex. We see a great white space in the middle of the map with two of the corridors piercing the center. From the shape, it looks like there are seven, maybe eight passages to the center, though we still aren’t sure what we need to do to open the middle doors or what the visions actually mean. We continue onwards, intent on filling in the blanks on Ospar’s map before our stamina and our will runs out. We gather ourselves and take a passage leading northeast towards the center of the complex, but Ospar stops us suddenly and crouches in the dark. A light stone tossed into the chamber ahead reveals a large cavern with walls and floor covered with a black and mottled vegetation. As we carefully venture in, large tendrils rise up from the ground and lash out at Ospar who dodges one but moves squarely into the path of another which clubs him to the ground. From the far end of the cavern, two rotting piles of vegetation rise up and their vine-like tendrils lash out at us. Severance attempts to leap behind the two creatures but a tendril wraps around his ankle and smashes him to the ground. Snakeeyes and Markennon rush in to help and Snakeeyes slashes a deep weal into one mound as Severance draws his blades to defend himself. Ospar dives into the shadows for a flanking attack and I send a lightning bolt into the one that Snakeeyes has wounded. We trade blows but we are getting battered without making any progress until Markennon realizes our mistake. “Pepper! Stop your lightning!” he yells as he dodges a tendril and stabs at a mound. “Your lightning is healing these infernal things!” Horrified, I realize the truth and switch to bolts of fire. Severance backpedals out of the melee and begins to blast away with his spells of ice and, finally, we begin to inflict damage against these two creatures even as they pummel and entangle us in turn. But numbers and magic are on our side and we manage to overcome these piles of animated vegetation. “So,” quips Snakeeyes as he cleans resin from his katana. “We are gardeners now?” Ospar heals bruised ribs with a quick prayer to Hextor. He toes a smoldering pile of vegi-demon and responds, “The Department of Sanitation Department: no demon weed un-torched.” Snakeeyes laughs. “Demon weed being smoked, you say?” and smugly pulls out his krrf pipe. We regroup and move though the cavern and find ourselves in a roughly T-shaped intersection and take the branch that continues counter-clockwise. A second fork branching to the north takes us to a third set of iron doors. The temptation to push them open and barge right in s great, but I stress that discipline and a methodical approach has served us this far so we wrap ourselves in spells and try to scry for traps and charms. Finding none, we proceed through the doors into an identical red and black corridor that ends in a black door. Pulling on the silver ring- a spacious cavern some thirty feed wide and twice as long. The stone floor is decorated with numerous multicolored murals, some depicting otherworldly beings engaged in various disturbing acts, others depicting images so abstract that they defy definition. In the center of this well-furnished room is a large four poster bed with tossed and rumpled bedding. Lying on top of the bed is a beautiful woman, pale-limbed and dark hair, deep in the throes of childbirth. She is attended by a pair of dark skinned dwarves who scurry back and forth, but towering over all is a nine foot tall lithe and muscular humanoid of skin of polished obsidian, and green eyes, horns and yellowed fangs. This handsome fiend stands off to one side as the woman undergoes her labor. With a silent scream, she delivers the final push and a dwarf reaches between her legs to retrieve a squalling infant as the dwarf backs away and swaddles it, a second dwarf rushes forward and retrieves a second infant. When both infants are safely wrapped, the giant fiend steps forward and takes both babies from the dwarves and backhands the unfortunate dwarves across the room where they slump lifeless against a wall. The demon whispers something into the ear of each babe and then presents the pair to the woman on the bed who smiles as she receives them. He then unclasps a cloak from around his neck, a cloak made from the skin of something fell, and lays it across the woman and her two babies as the babies nurse -and we appear in a squarish cave with passages leading in each of four directions. “Ah knew I recognized him!” says Severance as we orient ourselves. “That demon do be Graz’zt. Makin’ th’ witch Iggwilv. Natasha the Dark! Th’ cloak th’ Graz’zt gave ‘er be the Fiends Embrace- a cloak made from the skin of a Pit Fiend. It do be a powerful an’ evil artifact.” “Iggwilv had two children?” says Ospar looking down one of the passages and trying to get his bearings. “Legends do say many children, but no’ne be sure o’ how many daughters.” “Those were two girls,” says Snakeeyes. “Though which one is the Daughter of the Night and what is her truename? That must have been what Graz’zt whispered into their ears just as they were born.” Markennon says simply, “How many doors to go? I can’t abide this place for much longer.” “We’d better get walking then,” says Ospar pointing to small runes he has left on the wall. “We are just north of the southeast corner of the complex and the center is to the northwest of us.” We head deeper into the complex once again.
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Feb 21, 2020 03:14
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They're gonna get to the middle and find out her True Name is Katie or something.
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Feb 21, 2020 03:43
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Yawgmoth posted:They're gonna get to the middle and find out her True Name is Katie or something. Spoiler that poo poo
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Feb 21, 2020 04:46
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Yawgmoth posted:They're gonna get to the middle and find out her True Name is Katie or something. In a fantasy setting, that would probably be one of the best strategic decisions someone could make. Everyone is going to be assuming it's an elaborate fantasy name with too many apostrophes and vowels, nobody is ever going to suspect that the TrueName of the Big Bad is Katie.
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Feb 21, 2020 05:15
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 17:55 |
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You forget the awesome power that the umlaut has on a fantasy name. That and the little peaked hat thing that also goes over vowels. Edit: the circumflex
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Feb 21, 2020 05:49
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