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Anias
Jun 3, 2010

It really is a lovely hat

A ghastly fate.

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cambrian obelus
Sep 14, 2010

I've never seen a French woman before!
Soiled Meat

DGM_2 posted:

We could always go back to making undeath puns while Chokes is away.

...Or would that be considered thread necromancy?

Preemptive,

FeyerbrandX
Oct 9, 2012

I think threads are like snakes, and have no necks to be amorous at.

Anias
Jun 3, 2010

It really is a lovely hat


Pictured: a rogue trying to use magic device his wand of animate dead.

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.
Writing is done. Content extraction will probably start tonight. We even get some ~character development~ so buckle up!

Lady Jaybird
Jan 23, 2014

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022



Oh, I am buckled up, friend.

achtungnight
Oct 5, 2014
I get my fun here. Enjoy!
Character development? In this LP? Until I see it I shall not believe in the possibility!

I’m eager of course. Just kidding around.

taiyoko
Jan 10, 2008



My body is ready

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.
Curse of the Azure Bonds, Chapter 13: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?







...

Welp.












Earlier...







Welcome back to the Gold Box Adventures! Today, we'll be roaming the land as freelance rebels, ever ready to take up arms against evil.






















...











Welcome back to the Gold Box Adventures! Today, we'll be going to one specific place because it's interesting and probably won't kill us. this is a lie

One thing we haven't explored much is the ability to do side quests. In some cities, you can poke around in the outskirts. This'll lead to an area specific dungeon, usually with a minor quest objective and some rewards for completing it. Here's your options:


  • A graveyard stuffed full of Phase Spiders, which poison you and then disappear until next round. Some pirates are looking for a treasure. The location is completely random. The treasure sucks.
  • A cave stuffed full of dragons, as seen above. You kick the poo poo out of a summoner's monsters, and then they turn on him and kill him. The end, no moral.
  • A damsel in distress rescue mission. It's so generic, I don't even remember what happens.
  • The ruins of Old Phlan, which is a tiny map that doesn't resemble anything from PoR and literally has nothing in it.


As you can see, it's not very exciting stuff. On the outskirts of Dagger Falls, however, we find...







Well. I didn't expect to find a tower out here.

Ehn ehn ehn, doot doot doo~

No

BAH DAH DAH DAHT DAH~

No

Anybody know what's goin' on?

Didn't before, won't start now.




Here, we have Oxam's Tower. If a side quest gets an official name and its own map, your bullshit radar should be a-pingin'.











The contents of the tower itself are by and large unimpressive: a couple of easy monster fights and some hidden treasure caches. It's a good way to pick up Plate Mail +1 early if you need it, but otherwise not very impressive.







What the—god dammit, I just sprayed for adventurers!








Here, deal with these things.

lol they eat they own poop

:hmmyes:




This cleric is nominally in charge of things. He sics some otyughs on us and runs upstairs. Early on, they're threshing machines, but at this point we're either at or very close to level caps. We shred them and continue the chase.










Whew. Lotta stairs.

This is nothing. We climbed stairs down to, like, the center of a entire nacelle. From the sky.

Sounds like a long hike.

Try shuttling around a bunch of literal children through a hellish system of planatary failsafes while you're doing it, too.

I'm starting to think we got off pretty easy with Trebor.

And all it cost was 20% of your brother's soul!

His problem, not mine.










What the—you again?

You know what they say about adventurers! If you have them once, you never get rid of them.




After climbing straight up four flights of stairs, we arrive at this fight. It's so easy, I'm not going to bother to talk about it. We do get some Plate Mail +2 at the end, which is pretty swanky. It's worth the trip just to kit your fighters out with top gear.

However! That's not what we're here for. The adventure continues!







Saaaaay. What's down these stairs?

Death.

You don't know that.

The hell I don't. When has going below ground level ever resulted in anything good for us? Have we found towns? Treasure caches? Alternate paradise dimensions?

Omigod, they have those?!

Shut up. My point is, there's nothing down there but making GBS threads ourselves in fear and dying alone. There is absolutely no way we aaaaaaand off they go.

It's incredible how little self-preservation we have.

What's this "we" business?

We're following the rest of them, aren't we?

...sometimes I hate that you're the logical one.

Sometimes I do, too.










Take me down, six underground, the ground beneath your feet~

You got a good voice, short stuff. Where'd you learn to sing like that?

My mom!

Yeah? Who's she?

Oh, y'know. Esper manifestation of the spirit of love that exists throughout my home reality. Standard stuff.

...huh.

Sometimes I wonder why you guys even need us in the first place.

Yeah. The Provin' Grounds were rough, but they weren't anything like this.

Trust me, I know what I'm doing. You guys are here for a reason.

Hey! What happens when I push this brick?

*rumble*








...

You know what you're doing, huh?

Ish. Know what I'm doing ish.




Secret passage! This is a small and extremely manageable—





...this is a small and extremely manageable fight, so long as you have your mirrors ready. We get some random treasure for it, which we don't really need right now. I'm just showing off that it's here.










Doesn't this place seem totally freaky?

?

Like, why is there a dungeon down here? That tower was tiny. This basement is huge. What's going on?

Huh. I'll be goddamned if she isn't right.

Had to happen eventually.








...

Oh that's bad.

Yeaaaaah. We should probably peace out aaaaand there goes Heather.

This is my dungeon! It was made for me!

This is a very bad idea. Out of all the bad ideas we've had—and we've had quite a few—this is possibly the worst.

Sure, but we either follow her or headband dies alone down here.

...

Shanna. You're the voice of reason. You shouldn't be taking this long to consider.

You're all very bad influences on me.










Last chance to leave, lil' lady.

Not one step backwards. :black101:

Do you even know who Stalin is?

:black101:

Oh, never mind.





I'm sure there's just been some sort of mixup.

Fine, whatever. Name?

THE DESTROYER INCARNATE, REAPER OF SOULS





Yeaaaaah. Definitely not on the list.

We never get invited to important shindigs like this!

Think we got more pressin' concerns right now.




Oh, a beholder guarding the door. Yes, this is fine. Everything is fine.





Since it's "just" one beholder, we can bum rush without Haste and hope one of our guys stands up to the zappy. I think it took two tries, but we got through without too much drama. Hitch up your pants, though, because it gets worse from here.










Oof. We need to patch up after that.

Doing it out in the open probably isn't a great idea...

We can steal one of these rooms!

Is there anything you won't steal?

Nah.

Hmm.





Git! This is our room now.








You see? Crime doesn't pay.

Says you.




Meet the Rakshakas. Don't be fooled by their dapper fezes and smoking jackets, these guys are seriously bad news. They're shapeshifting Hindu-esqe spirits known for their trickery, trechery, and all-out skullduggery. Think Sternn turned up to 11, but without his vague sense of commeraderie and personal codes.





Their abilities include lightning bolts and immunity to both spells and any weapon below +2. Fortunately, all our gear is top of the line, and their lightning bolts are really weak. We just need to spread out, close the distance, and get our murder on.





Piece of cake.





Well, this would've been helpful at the door. :mad: Rakshakas are top ticket foes, by the way, at least in this game. They haven't even been introduced in the main quest line. What the hell is going on down here?










No. This is bad. We are not doing this.

Justine?

I don't know how. I don't know why. But I know we need to leave this place right now and never come back.

It'll be fine. I mean, what could—

Lincoln. Please. I'm asking you, just this once, to not be glib about our fates. We. Need. To. Leave.

All right, Justine. All right. If it means that much to you, we can just—

HEY WHAT'S IN HERE





*record scratch*





...

...

I'm... I'm sorry. This must be the wrong room.

...

So, we'll just... be going. Then.

...

Heather?

...

Heather. What are you doing, Heather.

...

Heather, do not do this thing that you're thinking of right now. Do not do it.

...

Don't you dare. DON'T YOU DO THIS. DON'T YOU—

:crackping:











...

Welp.




This? This right here? This is what's going on. All the high level bad guys are spooked enough that they're calling a conference. These are the Mulmaster Beholder Corps, and they have made the tactical error of assuming no one would attack them while they're all in one place.

To be fair, it's not entirely unreasonable. Their front line consists of fifteen beholders casting three instadeath spells every turn, and that's just the first wave. It's an instant game over, most especially because our levels are capped far, far below what we'd need to stand a chance. If you're a humongous enough idiot to go through with the fight, there's only one way to survive...







JESUS GODDAMN CHRIST

we are going to die we are going to die WE ARE GOING TO DIE

*toss*





Where did you even get those from?

I DON'T CARE JUST START SWINGING

I AM HOME! I AM WHERE I'M MEANT TO BE!

Headband, we are going to have a long talk if we get out of this!




That's right, we picked up some Dust of Disappearance! It was waaaaaay back in the treasure room of the Thieves' Guild. I didn't say anything about it because I'm a sneaky bastard. :twisted:

The Dust is a prerequisite for this fight. While it (still) prevents the AI from recognizing and attacking anyone that isn't standing next to them, there's another very important effect: Beholders can't use their eyebeams on us. Instead of raining down death every single turn, they're reduced to using their bite attack, which is massively underwhelming. We are officially zap immune for the rest of the battle. On top of that, we've cast Haste, because that is a LOT of damage we're asking our fighters to shell out. Oh, you didn't remember that particular wrinkle? Other than the clerics, everything here is either resistant or flat immune to magic. This is 90% on the shoulders of our front line, so we need them to be lethal meat torpedos from the word go.





Once we've buffed up and gone poof, we come at every enemy from an angle, since you only want one monster attacking a character at a time. That being said, we're still on the clock, so exceptions are occasionally made. Haste does have a time limit, so we have to work through each and every single one of these dickheads before our buffs run out. If we're gasping for air by the end, those rakshakas in the back will happily finish us off. It's a delicate balance between GOESFAST and making sure your HP stays high enough to finish what you started. I mean, we're cloaked, but they can still punch back at us while we're attacking, and they're going to hit sometimes.







I DEDICATE THIS KILL TO LORD ODIN! AND THIS KILL! AND THIS!

I can't believe that, after everything we've been through, the thing that's going to kill us is a psychopath with a California accent.

Who's talking? I still can't see anyone.

*slug*

Oh, hi Justine!




If you've properly prepared, there's nothing fancy to do here. There's no choke points, or kettling, or clever spell usage. It's just our fighters against a humongous wall of bullshit monsters, straight up.





All of this does point out the problem with shadowy organizations: they're always planning and scheming over what you'll do next. Their strength lies in predicting your every action and already having countermeasures prepared. The one thing they leave on the table, the suicidal option that No One Would Ever Take™, has already been dismissed. It's just given how dumb it is to wade into this crowd. It would be automatic death. So, they all huddle up in one location, secure in the knowledge that absolutely no one would be stupid enough to kick down their door and go after them.





And if there's one thing you never, ever bet your life on, it's the All Stars' stupidity. :c00l:





Our reward is a poo poo ton of experience we don't need anymore and a magic jo stick. I've used a jo in real life. They're training weapons for spears. It is not going to be of much use to us.










...

We're still alive. Right? Still alive?

I don't care. It doesn't matter.

Justine?

It doesn't matter whether I'm alive or dead. I'm in hell. I am in hell with the five of you, and whether or not I'm breathing doesn't matter, because I'm already in hell.

Surely it's not—

Shut up. And you. You're a bloodthirsty suicidal lunatic.

:kiddo:

And I am done with this.

Justine—

Leave me alone.

...

Just... give her some space. I'll talk to her once she cools off.







*squish slosh* I'm gonna need new boots now.

I never want to see another beholder again. Ever.

*smokes cigarette*

Heather, you can't keep jumping into fights like that. You'll get us all killed.

It's totally fine! We made it, didn't we?

You're misunderstanding me. I'm saying, don't ever do that again.

Yeah? Or what?

Do not test me.

Both of you, stop it.

Shanna—

I mean it! You're all acting like selfish brats! I already had to play mother once to a sullen teenage girl. I am not doing it for grown adults!

...

Rezen, this is your party. You took us from our homes, whether or not you had good intentions. You are responsible for this. All of this.

...

And Heather. Whatever your beliefs, you are going to get your travelling companions killed if you keep it up. We don't want to die. You might, but we don't!

...

You all need to start thinking of someone other than yourself. We are all in this together, and we all want to go home. So swallow your pride, put on your big boy pants, and work together for once!

Hey! We're back!

...hey.

Good, just in time. I was having a little discussion with everyone.

I heard. Thanks, Shanna.

Don't thank me yet. I'm including the two of you in it as well.

*sigh* Guys, I can't apologize enough for pulling you into this. Seriously. I mean well, but I don't really think things through sometimes.

...honestly? I kind of get it. I mean, I've tolerated Lincoln pulling this poo poo for years, and he doesn't have the excuse of trying to save the world.

That you know of!

Yeah no, can confirm on that one.

:thumbsup:

I do care about all of you, honest. But, I also picked you for a reason. You're strong, have been through incredible adventures, and have the will to see things through. There are people here who are hurting and suffering and dying under tyrants' fists, and if I don't hunt down that stupid top hat and hack it to tiny little bits, it's only going to get worse. I need your help. I'm sorry I didn't ask before, but I'm asking now. For the sake of everyone in the Realms... will you help me stop the bad guys?

...

...please?

...I mean, we're here already...

And, there is evil...

And profit.

And glory!

So... let's make the best of it. Lead on, Rezen.

:yeah:

:)




Next Time: Shocking Twists

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



D'aaaaaaaaawwwwww, they all learned the meaning of teamwork and frien... okay, when did Sternn steal their wallets this time? Was it before or after giving the thumbs up?

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

Randalor posted:

D'aaaaaaaaawwwwww, they all learned the meaning of teamwork and frien... okay, when did Sternn steal their wallets this time? Was it before or after giving the thumbs up?

Oh that was WAY back before any of this

Slaan
Mar 16, 2009



ASHERAH DEMANDS I FEAST, I VOTE FOR A FEAST OF FLESH
Just to be clear though, she'll ABSOLUTELY undo all of this character development as soon as the party finds a chainsaw, right?

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

Slaan posted:

Just to be clear though, she'll ABSOLUTELY undo all of this character development as soon as the party finds a chainsaw, right?

tbh Rezen doesn't really need character development so much as someone to keep her focused on the task at hand. Elly had that role but well, you're seeing what happens when she doesn't have someone to stop her.

achtungnight
Oct 5, 2014
I get my fun here. Enjoy!
I was hoping you'd do this fight! :D

Realms Lore- The Beholder Corps are some of the most notorious mercenary monsters employed by the previously discussed dictatorship of Mulmaster. Some say they are over a dozen Beholders strong and wonder how so many of the creatures can get along well enough to form such an organization. Others say it's really just three Beholders who argue a lot and their lesser beholder-kin servants known as Spectators and Observers. This game's depiction of it is the only one I know of in a video game, and it probably went with the former rumored Corps depiction to avoid coding the latter one. The result is one of the hardest optional fights in the Golden Box Games series. And yes, there are YouTube videos of people winning without using Dust of Disappearance. They got lucky, is what I say. Throw in some Bits of Moander, and this fight would be even worse.

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

My vague memories of this fight involved using the Dust, turning on autocombat, and then wandering away for an hour and coming back later to see if my party had more xp than they knew what to do with or if they'd died 55 minutes ago.

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

Slaan posted:

Just to be clear though, she'll ABSOLUTELY undo all of this character development as soon as the party finds a chainsaw, right?

Gotta play Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures to get a chainsaw.

There is actually a way to theoretically win this fight without the dust, mainly relying upon the beholders not being especially fast, but it is boring as hell.

Isn't there a stash of treasure in this area in addition to what you get from winning the fight? Or was that what you were referring to when you got the magic staff? (Note that the treasure in the room beyond the beholder corps is random and you can sometimes get something good out of it.)

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

Narsham posted:

Gotta play Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures to get a chainsaw.

There is actually a way to theoretically win this fight without the dust, mainly relying upon the beholders not being especially fast, but it is boring as hell.

Isn't there a stash of treasure in this area in addition to what you get from winning the fight? Or was that what you were referring to when you got the magic staff? (Note that the treasure in the room beyond the beholder corps is random and you can sometimes get something good out of it.)

Jo stick was for the fight itself. The treasure room was so underwhelming it wasn't even worth putting in the update.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Goddamn, if you throw in a ball-bustingly hard optional fight, it should either reward you with a goofy-but-useless badge of honour OR something gamebreakingly rad and powerful. You don't just toss generic gear in there.

Mr. Locke
Jul 28, 2010

PurpleXVI posted:

Goddamn, if you throw in a ball-bustingly hard optional fight, it should either reward you with a goofy-but-useless badge of honour OR something gamebreakingly rad and powerful. You don't just toss generic gear in there.

"I defeated the Beholder Corps and all I got was this lousy +1 Chain Shirt."

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



Chokes McGee posted:

Oh that was WAY back before any of this

Let's be honest, Sternn would steal their wallets every chance he got, just in case he missed some spare change the last time he stole it.

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

PurpleXVI posted:

Goddamn, if you throw in a ball-bustingly hard optional fight, it should either reward you with a goofy-but-useless badge of honour OR something gamebreakingly rad and powerful. You don't just toss generic gear in there.

These days, they’d definitely have a Steam achievement for doing this. Back then, it was just bragging rights.

I don’t think there’s any items in Bonds good enough to justify this fight anyway. The best they could have done is give you more Dust, but that would mean you didn’t lose anything of value to win the fight.

I will admit that after beating the fight once and seeing the treasure, there really wasn’t much reason to ever do it again.

JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever
I've seen this... interesting fight two or three times, and I find it humorous in that, were this done in normal tabletop rules at the time, the beholders' eye beams would dispel the DoD instantly and the party would be slaughtered. It's unusual for a D&D game to essentially have a maguffin designed for one fight (it can be used anywhere, but let's be honest) so it is notable, but the fact that there is no special reward is unforgivable.

Anias
Jun 3, 2010

It really is a lovely hat

It should kick off a trading quest where you get some beholder specific thing that you trade to another beholder and get a drow thing etc until at the end you get an invitation to the beholder conference...that you already murdered. Then you have the invitation in your inventory forever.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
Should not the Anti Magic from the beholders turn off the dust. Or do they not have it in this game.

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Should not the Anti Magic from the beholders turn off the dust. Or do they not have it in this game.

In Gold Box, it only works to protect them from spells. It's a quirk of the engine, I guess.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

MonsterEnvy posted:

Should not the Anti Magic from the beholders turn off the dust. Or do they not have it in this game.

I think it was said they can't target the party with eye beams when Dusted. :v:

Commander Keene
Dec 21, 2016

Faster than the others



In DND, beholders have an anti-magic cone that emanates from their central eye that can be aimed and is always on. In normal tabletop rules, this would negate, or at least suppress, the invisibility. In 3e, this would also negate the beholder's ability to fire its eye rays at you, and the invisibility would return if you stepped out of the cone, so it wouldn't do too much to the effectiveness of the Dust. In older editions (Gold Box is based off 1e DND, IIRC), it just dispelled the invisibility wholesale, meaning that the beholders could see you even after you left the cone.

Apparently, the developers of the Gold Box decided that coding in an anti-magic cone would be too much :effort:, and instead just made beholders immune to spells, which is... not really the same thing, as you can see here.

KataraniSword
Apr 22, 2008

but at least I don't have
a MLP or MSPA avatar.
I am my own man.

Let's be honest; Beholders are already a creature designed with the Gygaxian "the DM seeks to defeat the players, the players seek to outwit the DM" competitive dungeon hack in mind, they're basically literal balls of hate and murder with no interesting qualities.

If you're putting twelve of them in a room together along with a score of drow and rakshasa (whom, it should be noted, are also quite fond of the flesh of sentient creatures on top of their other monstrous qualities) then you're basically admitting that you just want the party to die instantly.

And no video game player will accept an ultimatum like that, ever.

KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Oct 10, 2020

Keldulas
Mar 18, 2009
Honestly, in general, using one Beholder at all is already in the territory of 'DM hates the players'. They're absolutely boring because there's no real counterplay with them.

Using 12, when D&D writing establishes that even 2 in the same room end up killing each other, is a complete disregard of trying to play the game at all. May as well just say 'Rocks fall, everyone dies'.

Anias
Jun 3, 2010

It really is a lovely hat

Idk, walking in on 100 beholders going at each other yelling about who caught the snitch might be fairly amusing. It’s just not played that way here.

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

Keldulas posted:

Honestly, in general, using one Beholder at all is already in the territory of 'DM hates the players'. They're absolutely boring because there's no real counterplay with them.

Using 12, when D&D writing establishes that even 2 in the same room end up killing each other, is a complete disregard of trying to play the game at all. May as well just say 'Rocks fall, everyone dies'.

The "no counterplay" thing is true in the Gold Box games, but not in actual play. 1E beholders allowed targeting the central (antimagic) eye or the small eyes with attacks, and only 1-4 small eyes could target a given 90 degree arc around the beholder. If your DM hated you, he probably handled these things by insisting that because the small eyestalks kept moving around, you couldn't target the disintegrate or death ray eyes after they get used, and the beholder could just do a 360 degree spin and use all 10 eyes on you on its turn. If not, there were lots of options, and I've seen multiple successful tactics, including:
1. Fighter distracts the anti-magic eye allowing the cleric to land a Cause Blindness.
2. Ambush a beholder from above. In the surprise round, try desperately to take out as many small eyes as possible, because the beholder could use all 10 against enemies above it. Hope to get enough of the deadly eyes to survive a round. Clearing the rest of the small eyes turned the beholder into an easy foe with lots of treasure.
3. Ally with an Underdark local who doesn't get along with the beholder and isn't strong enough to defeat it without help. The bonus here is that those deadly eye rays are more likely to hit these NPCs than PCs. On one especially memorable occasion, we partnered with a small group of Drow and they landed one of their sleepy-poison attacks on the beholder in the second round of combat, turning the main challenge into defeating the surviving Drow when they turned on us.

And I'm not sure I ever got involved in a 1E beholder fight where the PCs didn't talk through whether to take out the antimagic eye, or leave it in place. Fortunately, 1E archers were pretty effective, especially with magical equipment, although of course they didn't benefit from that equipment if the central eye was still operational.

achtungnight
Oct 5, 2014
I get my fun here. Enjoy!
My most memorable Beholder encounter? We saw one from an elevated position, spent nearly two hours of real time debating strategy before leaping to ambush hoping to surprise it, and then on the first successful hit we find out it was a Gas Spore, roll bad saving throws, and the whole party is killed.

Yes, the fact that it was just floating there the whole time we debated, occasionally at high volume, probably should have tipped us off.

This wasn’t the only time we lost a party to a Gas Spore either.

I hate Gas Spores.

achtungnight fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Oct 11, 2020

TheDavies
Mar 27, 2010

Keldulas posted:

Using 12, when D&D writing establishes that even 2 in the same room end up killing each other,

While I don't disagree with you, "two beholders kill each other" is a game element that was established (in the Spelljammer setting, or possibly the Eye Tyrant accessory and adventures) quite some time after the Gold Box games came out, and may have been intended as a response to this encounter.

Anias
Jun 3, 2010

It really is a lovely hat

achtungnight posted:

My most memorable Beholder encounter? We saw one from an elevated position, spent nearly two hours of real time debating strategy before leaping to ambush hoping to surprise it, and then on the first successful hit we find out it was a Gas Spore, roll bad saving throws, and the whole party is killed.

Yes, the fact that it was just floating there the whole time we debated, occasionally at high volume, probably should have tipped us off.

This wasn’t the only time we lost a party to a Gas Spore either.

I hate Gas Spores.

Amazing as always Gas Spore. Well done chap.

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

I'll admit, I did once throw a party I was DMing for into a cave full of beholders.

It was a non-combat encounter, the culmination of a quest where the players were escorting what they thought was a kobold scholar back to his people, but who was actually a disguised juvenile beholder, who amused himself at the end by jumping in and out of his mum's antimagic eye field all "Beholder! Kobold! Beholder! Kobold!"

It was probably not thematically appropriate at all but everyone enjoyed it.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

docbeard posted:

It was probably not thematically appropriate at all but everyone enjoyed it.

If everyone enjoys themselves, you can be using D&D to run a tea party. Who cares about thematic appropriateness? The point of the game is fun.

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

Anias posted:

Amazing as always Gas Spore. Well done chap.

Beholder killing 101: put an arrow or sling bullet into it at range as your first step. If it blows up, it was a gas spore. If it kills half the party, it was a beholder.

I think Spelljammer introduced Hive Mothers, which spawn normal beholders and can control their spawn? They’re bigger and tougher and their small eyes are recessed and thus can’t have their stalks cut off. But that would have been 2nd edition.

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

Anias posted:

Amazing as always Gas Spore. Well done chap.

explodo

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.
Hey, all. As much as I hate to say this, I think the LP's going to end after Curse. I'm basically out of gas at this point, and I've got two more updates to go. If I can push through those, I'm fine with closing this off and calling it a good effort.

Thanks for sticking with me all this time, and I'll see if I can get some Content™ up soon.

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FeyerbrandX
Oct 9, 2012

Chokes McGee posted:

Hey, all. As much as I hate to say this, I think the LP's going to end after Curse. I'm basically out of gas at this point, and I've got two more updates to go. If I can push through those, I'm fine with closing this off and calling it a good effort.

Thanks for sticking with me all this time, and I'll see if I can get some Content™ up soon.

What we've got was great so if the other games weren't being good muses thats fine.

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