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Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
Cross posting from the Good Experiences thread since for some reason which one the forum is actually using keeps changing.

I just had a new best experience tonight! (DnD4e)

Our party was tasked with hunting down and capturing an elusive "Lady of the Lake" by the empire in which we were all born, Roshar. This empire has, for the last twenty-odd years, been ruled by a megalomaniac Empress bent on dominating the world. Our party has come into conflict because we're a mix of generally good people who buy into the propaganda out of ignorance or stupidity, people who just like to kill stuff and don't question why, and my character, Damakos. Damakos a joint-smoking tiefling rogue who has lived for the past fifteen years in a monastery of Pelor with monks who generally oppose the war and the Empress' harsh methods. He only joined the army because he wanted to spread the word of Pelor to the troops, and maybe ease their pain with some cannabis. Unfortunately (because the plot says so) he was sent on this mission with the rest of the party.

Now he tried and failed to convince the party to run away because he thinks the Empress is a megalomaniac. So instead he went with them with one goal: kill the Lady and send her secrets to the grave with her. When the fight finally commensed, the first two thirds of it involved the hapless tiefling getting tossed about by golems. On one round when I thought there was nothing I could do without spending an action point or violating a mark, my second at-will that I had basically forgotten about got me a critical hit (plus sneak attack) damage on my first shot, bloodying the golem in one hit. Later, I charged that same golem and managed an improbable hit on a MBA (as I'm a dex-based class) and killed off the golem (another party member had dazed it so I got sneak attack there too.)

I also killed the second golem on the next round with an immediate inerrupt, and on my turn, I had a chance to take down the Lady of the Lake too.

That second at-will gave me enough distance to get close enough to use an actual Dexterity attack, and I rolled good (the dice were kind to me)... So I drove my sword into the mage's heart. She made her first death saving throw and I forced her to make another by using the daily power on my sword.

The d20 came up 1. Ding dong, the witch was dead! (And my character was promptly wasted by our party's Hexblade)

(Just to be clear, I told the DM ahead of time I would be doing this and he said he has plans for either scenario. I didn't intentionally just dick over the entire game.)

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Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Male Man posted:

If you give people rewards for stuff, then it reduces the perceived inherent value in the action. For example, kids are less likely to find schoolwork engaging if their parents pay them for letter grades.

Achievements encourage people to do certain stuff, but they lessen the enjoyment of the action in favor of the short-lived rush of getting an award. Choke-slamming Satan is reward enough on its own. Just let it happen.
Is this actually true or are you making it up?

Because I've read things that say just the opposite.

Edit: Rewarding people for just doing stuff is what lowers their intrinsic motivation. Rewarding them for doing things WELL is a good motivator.

Chaltab fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Feb 27, 2012

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
Players in my game are awesome sometimes. Saturday I ran the finale of a short adventure where the PCs were hired to recover an ancient idol containing the essence of an evil god. The shrine it was in had a Djinn guardian who gave them all Zelda-style Hookshots before the boss fight, so they had fun swinging around fighting the boss. When that was over, they got the idol, and the genie also granted them a wish. They wished for two wishes, then used the first to find out who wanted the idol (a collector who had lots of evil idols for purposes unknown).

They used the second to wish all the currently extant-evil idols teleported into the sun, which they then watched on the HD scrying pool from the first wish.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
Tell the player of the dead cleric to make their next character that Goblin after he clawed his way out of hell.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Verdugo posted:

That cop story about 4e is hilarious. A cop, and a grognard! Should have told him to make a perception check to see if J was there.
You mean a Spot check, 4rry swine :reject:

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Vander posted:

Can you imagine only having a turn 3 or four times in an hour? That would be tiring.
That happens to my group with six players!

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
There's a pacifist cleric build one of my players is using. She's a healing and debuff machine.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
DCB, your Star Wars campaign is truly amazing and I only wish someday that I could be involved in a game that awesome.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
So, a story from my Zelda D&D Game:

The Time our Ranger murdered a bunch of Bronies

The game is set about 30 years after the events of Skyward Sword when the kingdom of Hyrule is first being established.

The Party:
Ash, Swordmage who fell from another world where the Zelda games actually exist, though have since been lost after a magical apocalypse of sorts

Cheren, the titular Ranger, a fugitive from Calatia

Khashana, a dreamperson Cleric from Koholint Island given life somehow by the Wind Fish

Houndaer, a Subrosian (Drow) magic user who came to the surface to escape the Matriarchy

Kavone, a Minotaur Warden, whose player was unfortunately absent this session

---

Previously in the game, the characters had come across a faceless, naked man sitting in a pool at the estate of one Goichi Kakariko--future founder of Kakariko village. Khashana had performed a ritual on him and discerned that his identity had been forcibly stolen by a man, who she got a glimpse of via the ritual--a red-beared man in a Russian hat. After finishing a major quest in Death Mountain, the party opted to track this bearded man down and find a way to heal the Naked Man. So after doing some leg work, speaking with an adventuring party that had gone and searched for the tower and found nothing, and stealing a Lens of Truth, they went after the Tower itself, which was secreted away in the Mountains between Hyrule and Calatia.

Cheren and Houndaer went in first and saw that there were numerous magic-wielding acolytes as well as hired thugs. They also noticed that there was a giant bell--an alarm, they determined, considering the howling winds that swept through the valley kept shouts from carrying very far. Instead of hiding when the first guard spotted them, Cheren immediately drops him with her bow. When a second guard finds the body and runs to the bell to ring it, Houndaer murders him and stuffs his body under the bell to hide it--and then uses a spell to freeze the dongle and keep the bell from ringing. So now, the Ranger has basically free reign to snipe every acolyte and merc within range. One of the mercs makes a charge against a prone hound and does some damage, but a lucky roll on his next turn sees the merc turned into a Popsicle.

Now nobody knows what this tower was built for, who the acolytes worship, or anything of the sort, but after they murder literally every guard without alerting the rest of security, the swordmage sees , previously obscured by the Tower, a statue of an enormous winged unicorn, on which is written "The Radiant Celestia".

And being from a world that was once like the real world, Ash gets an uncomfortable feeling. So the five enter the tower and discovered that it's full of neckbeards and geeks who seem far more interested in the entertainment shows on their Crystal balls than in defending the tower, and after a few questions, Ash realizes the truth: Cheren had just murdered a bunch of Bronies.

Still a bit confused, they head to the top of the tower, deal with some Bokoblins, and then speak to the bearded man, Balian. Balian tells them that the acolytes are all fools. They promised him a path to get to Celestia, but all they really seem to care about is watching cartoons. He has lived for thousands of years thanks to a curse Hylia put on him before the days of Demise, and now wants his life on the mortal coil to end. He shows the party an ancient stone tablet that contains secret knowledge of the cosmos and points out a passage about 'The Benevloent Celestia', though he also admits that there's a legend the passage can only be understood by one who has slain a god.

Ash has done this in his back-story (he had help) so he realizes that the tablet actually reads 'Celestia of the Benevolent', referring to a place in the Astral Sea where the just are rewarded in death. Disappointed and on the verge of hopelessness, the party manages to convince Balian to return the identities he's stolen and see Zelda to see if she can rescind his immortality.

(And the Naked Man turned out to be Goichi Kakariko's son, Shigeru.)

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
As a side note, CoffeeBinge, what system are you running this game in? You mentioned in your email a supplement from the West End game, but I also though I saw a mention of Force Points which I think are from Saga Edition.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
There's precedent in the films: Obi-Wan's search for Kamina, where he pointed out that the gravity patterns indicated a star that wasn't there on a map, and couldn't figure out the obvious explanation that someone erased it until a kid brought it up.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Coward posted:

I have a couple more Stan stories.
I scrolled up from the Last Post and saw this and thought, "Oh god, 50 Foot Ant, here we go again."

But it was actually cool! Given how he rejected your offer arrange a way for Skumm's return, I kind of wonder if he intentionally did something stupid to have an excuse to make another guy.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
I know what to do about the Death Star: attack it from behind!

Seriously, think about it. Most of its defenses are turbolasers with relatively small arcs of fire. It doesn't have a shield because it's not orbiting the Endor moon. Park a few dozen Mon Cal ships right below its rear end and fire into the superstructure. When it starts to turn, have the crusiers broadside it and jet out. Harry it until the SSDs have no choice but to reveal themselves.

Also, all this is cover for the real plan, which is to get a decent sized chunk of Alderaan, fit it with some hyperdrives, and steer it right into the path of the DSII.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Adelheid posted:

I know very little about Star Wars, but it was always my impression that lightsabers are only used by force-sensitives because other people have blasters and guns and you need to have force powers to do the deflect-the-bullet thing, without which you basically have a normal sword against a normal gun? Not that they were hard to use but that they were stupid to use if you did not explicitly have magic powers. Is this not true?
Basically, this. You have to be force sensitive to some degree to use a Lightsaber effectively (well, or be a cyborg or droid).

Even if you were skilled enough to avoid the risk burning or maiming yourself, there's not much you can do about a blaster.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
Considering it was with Luke's lightsaber that Han cut open the Tauntaun, they really have no excuse to be such jackasses.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
I've always thought you could incapacitate a Jedi easily enough if you just had a slugthrower of any sort. Tommygun, revolver, semi-auto... as long as you shoot before he realizes it's not a blaster, he's likely to get a face full of molten metal.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
"Don't play Shadowrun with Stan and Jacob"?

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
In my most recent game, the big encounter was a couple of giant sand worms against the party riding on Loftwings. So naturally our Swordmage kept making bird jokes and awful puns.

Ash: I guess [my bird] Pit and I are early.
Everyone: ????
Ash: You know, cause we got the worm.

Eventually it got so bad an NPC declared that she was going to make it illegal to speak Common in their city.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
So this happened in the latest session of the D&D game I’m a player in:
The game is based on Castlevania, specifically taking place parallel to the events of Symphony of the Night. We’re a group comprised of three first responders to Dracula’s advances, and two demon ambassadors from hell sent to put Dracula on notice for getting too big for his britches.

The Paladin, a righteous defender who also likes to dance

The Wizard, canon character Maria Reinart, who is surprisingly foul mouthed for a 17 year old girl in the 18th century.

The Warlord, my character, whose specialty is having ridiculous athletics skills despite being like 50-something.

The Rogue, a peasant from hell who likes to stab things. Her player wasn’t here for this game.

The Warlock, a hellish noble who likes to curse things. The Warlord doesn’t like him much for being a demon and all. His player wasn’t here for this game.

So we took a few wrong turns and have been lost in the catacombs beneath Dracula’s castle for a while, and we decided to take some boats down an underground river without considering that we might need a way back UP river. We also ran into Abaddon, the Angel of Destruction, but he got eaten trying to help us escape aberrant horrors.

Eventually, we followed the underground river to a rather large underground lake with a pillar in the middle. While Maria is probing it with her magic senses… it wakes up. Turns out it was a sixty-foot tall Earth elemental. Fortunately, he’s pretty nice. He tends to the fish that swim in his lake. After debating a few options, we ask the Elemental for directions out of the underground lake. He points us on, but just then… Death shows up. Death is usually one of the higher level bosses in the Castlevania games, but our party is almost suicidally reckless, so we’re not exactly quaking in our boots to fight him. (After all, if the Belmonts can take him alone, surely we can do it as a group of five! :v: )

But for some reason, Death has only been using underlings against us to the point that the party has been taunting Death and calling him a wimp and a coward. Death reminds the Elemental that he was supposed to protect the lake from intruders.

:) Oh, they’re intruders? I thought they were humans.
:bang: Kill them or I’ll kick you out of your room and kill your fish.

We taunt Death once more as he flies away, but the party gets its wires crossed. Paladin, who is rowing the boat with Rogue, is trying to run away.
The Wizard, who is in the boat I’m rowing along with the Warlock, casts an ice zone spell that minimally damages the Elemental, but starts freezing the lake around the Elemental to give us a place to stand if we have to fight.

On my first turn I leap out of the boat (which only I have the Athletics to effectively maneuver) and grab on to the Elememental’s arm. My plan is to climb up to his head and apply blunt force trauma. I’m not sure what I thought this would accomplish on an elemental, but after round two, I failed to hold on to the giant’s arm. So failing that, I drove my spear into the elemetnal’s belly and did a heavy amount of damage.
Meanwhile the Wizard hit it with magic missile repeatedly, and after the second time the Elemetnal observed that we were actually starting to hurt it.

Then I realize… we can both win this. I tell him to pull his punches but make it look good, make it look like he’s killed us. In round three, I ask the elemental to smash me through the ice, which he does easily. The rest of the party retreats in our boats while I swim to the shore—and for good measure the elemental makes a vast wave that smashes our boats into the rest of the party—Maria using Ghost Sound to provide some Wilhelm Screams of our demise. The Elemental thunders about how he has defeated us, and we sneak away in the ruckus, hearing, down the hall, some Fishmen crowing about how the Elemental destroyed the intruders.

Tl;dr: we fooled Death into thinking we were dead.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

JAssassin posted:

I get what you're saying. This is the same player who ran an incredibly racist luchador wrestler character named "El Tigre" in a medieval fantasy setting, but that was years ago. I'm hoping he's changed, but we'll see. Like you said, worse come to worse, he just doesn't show up next week.
So was El Tigre racist in the sense that he hated dwarves or black people, or whatever... or was he racist in the sense that he was a stereotype of Mexicans? Either way sounds like it could be a story for this thread.

Chaltab fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jan 9, 2013

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
Today, while DMing I uttered the following sentence.

"Sir Isaac Newton spends an Action Point to gain a move action and then leaps from Pinkie Pie's face to the Statue of Liberty's armpit."

I'm not sure if this counts as The Good, the Bad, or the Cat Piss, but it did make me question what I'm doing with my life.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Yawgmoth posted:

I want context, but I am afraid that context would somehow lessen the absurdity.
The context:

The campaign is set in the Legend of Zelda universe. One of the PCs is a character who got warped into it from a post-magipocalypse reality that was once like the real world. They've also met several NPCs who've fallen into the Zelda universe from worlds similar to the real world, all of which is part of a plot hook for Epic Tier.

In the immediate context of Heroic Tier, though, they were investigating the actions of a villain called Chancellor Cole, and stumbled upon the fact that he'd captured the God of Dreams and was using his power for nefarious purposes. The party was pulled into a dream world where they were attacked by Freddy Kruger--someone 'brought' to this world's dream realm by the PC and those like him.

So basically it was a dream-scape encounter in which they fought Freddy Kruger, plus dream versions of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, and Jacob Marley. Pinkie Pie and the Statue of Liberty were both parts of the background.


Basically it was an elaborate excuse for me to do a session where I could just go crazy with the backdrops and enemies.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Picayune posted:

This brings me to Anakin.
By giving him that name your party cursed him towards the path of becoming Darth Vader.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Kulebri posted:

The PCs and the bad guys are left in stunned silence, and Shaolin calmly lowers his bow, and says: "It's bad manners to point at people."
That's pretty amazing. It does suck though that it takes six rounds to activate. Most combats don't last that long.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
It could be that, perhaps, there's a reasonable middle ground between 'You're not allowed to roll skill checks' and 'roll skill checks in lieu of RPing and decision making'.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
DMs who consider their own plot inviolable against the choices of the PCs annoy the piss out of me. If you're going to force your storyline to stick to the rails then you might as well be playing a tactical skirmish game.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Yawgmoth posted:

I avoid everyone who says this because it is a clear and obvious signal that they don't actually want to run a game; they want to write a book but suck at writing characters or dialogue and so want victims players to write it for them. Of course, they also tend to suck at writing setting and creating a mood and anything else you'd want in a book and/or an RPG, but that doesn't stop their ego.
Not to mention that 1) it will likely never happen, Record of the Lodoss War is an anomaly, and 2) Unless you're all on the same page and grant consent, swiping your characters for his novel is dickish and somewhat illegal.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

MadScientistWorking posted:

You know. I've always been curious as to the Replay material that gets published in Japan because even though Record of the Lodoss War is an anomaly its only an anomaly in how popular it became. According to Wikipedia RPG replays are actually more popular than novels based off of the RPGs.
Right, but that's a bit different in that it's essentially an account of a 'performance' of sorts, and that, presumably, all interested parties have agreed to release it. Also Japan is weird about copyright law to begin with, given the nonchalance about doujinshi.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Chickenfrogman posted:

I has a good feeling about this campaign.
Nothing in D&D is more fun than ridiculously improbable bluff checks.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Barudak posted:

You can join if you want, ;)
God in heaven!

Out of curiosity, not that anything would make this acceptable, but what was the gender make-up of this group? Was everyone over 18? I'm trying to wrap my brain around what kind of creep-rear end thinks his behavior isn't grounds for sexual harassment charges.

Also it's technically impossible to join a threesome because your presence makes it a foursome. But that's a minor complaint.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Night10194 posted:

What do you do when you find out something like that?
Pass the DM a note that you've spiked That Guy's food with all sorts of nasty poisons. As soon as the DM declares him dead, excuse yourself from the table and delete the group's contact information from your phone and computer.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
This, this is metal. :black101: indeed.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
Does anybody remember who ran a game with an Owlbear attorney called Beaks Grizzly? I could have sworn I read about that here but google turned up nothing and I don't have platinum to search myself.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
Wait, how did covering themselves in meat make them less likely to be mauled to death by werewolves.

Yeah, that's my game. I ripped off the name and occupation but I wanted to actually credit who I got the idea from.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
So, DMing my 4E game last week, my players have been trapped in a dystopian future by an evil god and now need to get home. The natives have found a Time Gate, but it needs some parts and a ritual song to activate it--and the bard who was composing said song hasn't been heard from in days. The party mounts up--

Back up a bit. I always like to have a bit of fanservice for my players--I don't mean T&A/sexual, I mean jokes, characters from previous campaigns, guest bosses, etc. They previously fought Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. So in this context, since at least two of my players are huge Buffy fans, I decided to have them fight Sweet. This demon is a Music Meister-esque villain that induces musicals in his victims, leading them to admit secrets and be merciless with their feelings. Also, if they can't resolve their feelings, they'll eventually dance until they spontaneously combust. And in the actual show, the heroes don't really defeat him--he leaves because of a mix-up that basically amounts to the demon declaring "I'm not gay."

Anyway, the party has just reached level 11 and they're full of all sorts of new Paragon toys. The fight begins, Sweet and three evil puppets versus the party. Round one, the puppets get some good hits in, as does the party against the puppets. Sweet dances through the middle of the party and uses a close burst dominate attack, which gets three party members.

I'm thinking, hell yeah, this fight is going to be interesting.

Then the Pacifist Cleric's turn comes up. She's dominated, but she's also Kalshatar, so she gets to save against the domination at the start of her turn. So naturally, the dice come up Natural 20.

She turns to Sweet and drops Dismissal. It hits despite his high will, and he's suddenly in a pocket dimension, save ends, -5 to the save. Oh, and he spends a round dazed when he finally pops out.

The fight progresses, and the dice are coming up really high across the board. Not many crits, but lots of 17s, 18s, 19s.

Except. Every time it comes around to Sweet's turn and he gets to save?

I roll a 0, a 9, a 2, and a -1. Four rounds go by and all the puppets are taken down. Sweet still hasn't saved. There's no more enemies, so I go ahead and roll more saves to see how long he's still out of the fight. He finally saves on round eight, (and then only with an 11).

But the party? They've all surrounded the space he was dismissed from and readied actions. And Sweet is dazed. They haven't hit him this entire fight, but in one round they bring him down to 3 HP, not to mention hit him with an attack that will make any attack roll he makes stun him. His only shot is to recharge his domination power, hit with it in spite of huge attack penalties, and hope the party stays dominated until he can flee.

I roll a d6. It comes up 1.

Nothing else to do, Sweet tries to flee over a banister, but that violates the Warden's mark. He's having none of that, and hits him with his melee basic that does, minimum 11 damage.

So Sweet, cleaved nearly in half with a war-hammer, tumbles to his death. His performance was cancelled when a religious leader dismissed him as a bad influence on her friends, you see.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Manofmanusernames posted:

If you read this in super boy prime's voice it makes it so much funnier.
Not to be all :spergin: myself but what do you mean by this? Superboy-Prime has never been adapted to the screen!

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
Spoony and Bennet together in a Counter Monkey episode sounds like the exact opposite of amazing. Plus I refuse to give Bennet any ad money after his collaboration with rape-porn flash animator Zone-Sama.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!
So when I was an undergrad I joined the campus anime club's D&D 3.5 game. That was a mistake.

The first session was interminable. We all showed up roughly on time, but the building the club used for its meetings was locked. We took the game to a common room only to discover that most of the party hadn't actually finished their characters, so while we walked through that, I had to sit around doing nothing. Also they generated ability scores by rolling 1d10+10, whereas I rolled the standard 3d6. While playing a bard. I did not have enough system mastery at the time to know how gimped I was, not that it really mattered. Thirty minutes, perhaps, after we had set up in the common room, someone came by and told us we were making too much noise and disturbing classes upstairs. We trudged over half the campus and finally found a third room with really uncomfortable desk-chairs, but it was suitably private. And then the game began. Some bullshit about a power outage at a combat arena, and since I cast light on my sword, they put me in jail for using magic. Because apparently using magic was prohibited in this town. I wasn't the only one thrown in jail, so the rest of the session was a clearly unplanned slog of getting the party together through contrivance instead of just getting to the adventure.

Well, the part that I was there for. I had to leave since I (and only I) lived off campus and was hungry for actual food. After I left, the game continued late into the night. The party was set upon by waargs while travelling, apparently a CR9 or more encounter that the DMs thought would kill the party. But, quadratic wizards.

So when I showed up at the next session, I'm informed of all this. The waargs were allegedly worth so much XP that the party went up four levels. Except me, since I wasn't able to stay. I earned half XP because of douchebag DM. So now I'm a level seven bard with RAW ability scores, in a level nine party with all scores 11 minimum.

Session Two. We had two DMs, sort of. There were actually two games run by the anime club; a high level game for people familiar with 3.X and a low level game for newbies. The DM of the high level game was a player in the low level game. Which I thought was odd. Well, in session two, we found out why. We were almost to our destination town when three hill giants ambush us. And these three are definitely above and beyond the party's level, and I'm especially useless because I'm two levels behind the party. But wait! After flailing around for three rounds unable to do a thing, the giants beat to death the level 9 character of the high level DM... and leave. For no apparent reason.

So we just... leave his pasted corpse there and move on in a surreally sociopathic scene, and camp. During the night, a polar bear shows up in the camp, though it's clearly not just an animal. My character hears it, finds it, and then goes to the party leader. "Sir," I say in this mock Confederate General voice, "I do believe there's a bear in our camp."

The only laughs we had that game. By the time everyone else is roused, the bear is gone.

We make it to the city. Everything seems normal. I go looking for a better sword, other party members do their various things. I think the rest of the party did something that triggered an event. Or maybe it just happened, don't remember, but all of the villagers went berserk and started attacking us. My adventurer gets walloped by the damned blacksmith with a forge hammer. We're no match for a bunch of civilians, so we try to flee, though the gates to the town are shut and guarded by crazed watchmen.

And then the DMPC shows up. Specifically, the new character of the high-level DM, who is a druid, and high level enough to be able to shapeshift into a T-Rex and summon fireballs from the sky. He's all "Come with me if you want to live" and we join his party. Of one. I'm already debating on whether or not I should go back when that session is over.

The decision got made for me; I call the DM the following week to let them know I'll be a bit late. He answers the phone half asleep and tells me that they'd rescheduled the game to the day before. "I just thought you'd decided not to show up," he said.

Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

oriongates posted:

There's a bit more of a fuss when Magnus grabs the Soul Blade and fails his roll to avoid being taken over and fights the party until the monk, Nolan, disarms him. Then Magnus says "let me try that again" and picks it back up. This time they just beat him into unconsciousness. They wrap Lucan's body in cloth to keep out the sun and contact the Black Lanterns to arrange for transport back into Breland with their prize. Back in Sharn they turn Lucan and the Soul Blade in and repair Magnus now that there's no temptations.
I sort of zoned out reading this because I don't know the system, but then I got to Magnus, Soul Blade, and Black Lanterns and it piqued my interest.

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Chaltab
Feb 16, 2011

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Achmed Jones posted:

Teachers/TAs should not be hanging out with their students outside of class.
Really? My professors in grad school were always seriously chill. They had lunch and beers with the students during residencies and such. We never played D&D with them, but...

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