PDA

View Full Version : Elemental Orbs: A campaign Journal



Mr.Fuzzy
2010-05-08, 11:22 PM
Introductions: Ok. this is the first documentation of my Psychotic D&D group’s campaign. I decided to make a campaign journal for our campaign about a fifth of the way through, so this post is mainly to help everyone catch up.
Players: We have our D&D prodigy: he is all knowing when it comes to this game; for example, if you need a specific feat that you’re not sure even exists, he WILL find it. His characters can rarely be considered "run of the mill". Unfortunately, he almost always builds his characters defensively, like his level 20 barbarian that dealt 1d2+1 of damage…disappointing right? Anyway, for this campaign, he is playing as a Duskling incarnate. To put it simply he’s the incarnation of chaos. He is surrounded with a Mantel of Flames which deals A LOT of damage in contact with enemies. He also has sandals that walk on air, as well as the ability to spit acid. Our closest source of healing for this campaign is a bard…. :smallannoyed: He shoots a crossbow and has a watermellon-sized pet frog. Fortunately, our bard is intelligent and has rather ingenious ways to circumvent problems. For this campaign I am playing as a Scout. Can anyone say Skirmish bonus? I armed myself with a Glaive and the four adventure necessities: Caltrops, Rope, Chalk, and Oil. Our DM... well….He’s evil. He likes to make us squirm by throwing things our way that we thought were in no way connected to the plot, but he always finds a way to connect them to the story in some way.
Back-story: The Kingdom of Man has been constantly at war with the stereotypical Goblin and Orc horde for about 15 years. We’re playing as a small mercenary group working for the Humans on a reconnaissance mission. The DM decided to give us a little help for the first few levels by giving us a NPC named Bulver. He’s just a generic fighter but I have a feeling that he’s plot-important… My character struck sparks with Bulver almost immediately and, by the time we had been playing for about an hour, we were up to full blown hatred. So the adventure continues. Obviously, we couldn’t just have a normal mission; after all this is D&D. So we’re going through the woods when we see a fortress a few miles away. Being the inquisitive adventurer’s we are, we investigate…

Mr.Fuzzy
2010-05-09, 12:25 AM
We made it to the fortress at Dusk. Fortunately there were only two guards at the gate. Unfortunately, they had a nice alarm system (boxes with rope attached to bells). I sneak up to the guards being the Scout and make a little noise so that one of them goes to check it out. While he’s gone the Duskling attacks the remaining guard while I ambush the other one. We were in…until the Duskling decides to do the Chaotic thing. He tries to disarm the alarm he says it as a joke…

DM: Roll…

The Duskling had an ok Dex for level 1. So he rolls….. and gets a 1. So the alarm goes off and we hear noise coming from inside. We ask the DM if we can tell how many goblins are inside and he just smiles and says “A lot”….great :smallannoyed: We’ve killed two goblins and we’re already going to die. We consider hauling out of there and bringing back help. But we’re all chaotic so I take up a defensive position with my Glaive in front of the door. The Duskling gets ready to bear hug whatever comes through that door ( Mantel of Fire) and Bulver and our Bard take up positions behind us to prevent flanking. The doors creak open and we see a goblin stick his head out. We immediately cut it off :smallamused: so the rest of the Goblins decide to rush out ….Mr. Duskling took down four with a flaming Bear hug then he retreated behind me . I had the entire door covered with my glaive but the goblins had javelins. Bulver and the Duskling rush in and start killing while I slowly made my way into what looked to be an armory. We took down the remaining goblins 6 in all and stopped to down health potions (no healer :smallannoyed:) We saw two doors in front of us and before deciding which one to open our Bard had an idea. We counted the remaining armor and equipment left in the armory and figured out that there were 34 goblins left.

I crept up to the first door and made a listen check. I heard snoring. Then I moved up to the other door … more snoring. We decided to enter the first door…quietly. We saw a bunch of sleeping goblins and a few empty bunks. So we went to the other door and opened it. We saw a sleeping goblin shaman and a few bigger bunks with hobgoblins in them. At the end of the barrack, we saw another door. So instead of killing the obvious heavy hitters while they slept we crept through the room and went into the other door. We came into what looked like a kitchen there was a ladder at one wall that went both up and down. There was also a door leading into another room. This is when things got bad.

DM: Everyone roll a D20

Everyone rolls

We all pass apparently because he just says aloud that we all hear footsteps coming toward the door. We scatter….. I go up the ladder the bard goes down…. Duskling goes through the door. Bulver goes up the ladder but he is too slow. He’s halfway up the ladder when the Goblin Shaman comes into the kitchen grumbling about a sandwich …. Next thing we know Hobgoblins are crashing through the door cursing and shouting. The bard scrambled up the ladder so it was three of us up stairs and one human fireball the other room. As soon as he can, the Duskling comes up the stairs too with Hobgoblins right behind him. I almost skewered him in the face thanks to the DM being very vague about what was coming up the ladder. As soon as the Duskling is up I throw caltrops down the ladder. The first hobgoblin comes up and we all unload on him he’s still on the ladder so he’s flat footed :smallamused: We had just found a choke point that actually would make this a really simple battle. So for a while goblins come up the ladder and we kill them. Soon they get smart…really smart. Goblins stop coming up the ladder and we hear noise underneath us.

Needless to say we have no clue as to what’s going on below. Then part of the floor we’re standing on give way and we realize that the goblins are COLLAPSING the floor underneath us. So the Duskling having no idea what self preservation is throws his flaming body into the fray. (in retrospect it was a good move he didn’t take falling damage since it was only a 10 foot drop and he landed on the goblin shaman. You must keep in mind that he’s on fire… magic fire. That’s 4d6 of damage on goblins). The NPC follows him through the whole in the floor while I stab into the masses with my Glaive you gotta love the reach weapons :smallamused: So combat progresses the floor collapses some more and we kill goblins some more. The bard is getting a little paranoid because if he falls into the goblins he’s toast so he asks the DM “does the ladder go up any higher?” the DM says yes, so he goes up the ladder to the next floor and...waits?...We continue killing Goblins until our Duskling and Bulver have gotten pretty beat up and I’m running out of floor space so I call down to them that there’s another lever above us and I head up myself. The Duskling and Bulver follow shortly. Once up top we take turns watching the ladder and healing up (potions again). Bulver decides to make a crack about how he was braver than me and that I needed to toughen up if I was gonna be in HIS group. Being chaotic like I am I kicked him in the face…that’s when we had more goblin problems.


While we were licking our wounds the goblins got their armor on… :smallannoyed: so the Hobgoblin who came up actually survived…. :smallannoyed: we killed him in two rounds but he cleared the way for the rest of the swarm. So we retreated into a hallway. Having a reach weapon I turned to Bulver and said “watch this” he smirked and charged straight into the oncoming horde… :smallannoyed: they got him down into the negatives pretty quickly protected the group with my Glaive while the Duskling threw javelins and the Bard shot his crossbow. We put the fear of…death into the goblins and they ran away. The Duskling and Bard go down stairs to finish the goblins and leave me to tend to my nemesis :smallbiggrin: What I did was completely in the spirit of roleplaying. Coup De Grace on on the NPC:smallamused:
When my teammates came back up they say Bulver dead and asked what happened… I just shrugged and said “I guess there was nothing I could do”. So we made our way out looting all the way as all good adventurers do.
That’s all for now I still have a lot of catching up to do but I should get it done….eventualy


We looted all the bodies and continued on unfazed by Bulver’s death and in fact he had some heavy duty magic items because he was the DM’s pc. It’s worth pointing out that we didn’t actually kill all of the goblins but just knocked half them out. We're chaotic so it doesn't matter to us and we needed money….Slaves are good money. We spent our time tying up the unconscious goblin slaves. After all that was finished we decided to go down the latter. Just below was a cattle pen where the goblins stored their “fresh meat” It composed of 2 horses and 3 cows and a dozen chickens. Guarding the animals were two goblins, two more prisoners… We easily took them down with a skirmish attack and a flaming bear hug. We took the animals too. In the room was a door way to a training room. It had a fighting ring and a rack of weapons. More loot I guess…:smallamused: On the other wall were two doors. We crept up to both doors and listened closely. We chose the quieter room. In it was a Goblin of obvious rank sitting behind a desk. He only had time to look up before we put a bolt in his chest and a Glaive in his throat. We looted his corpse and looked around the room. Nothing was in the room except the desk and some papers written in goblin. After a group discussion we decided a person with the actual search skill should look for loot in the room. Bard to the rescue! He was the only one with skill points in search. So he checked and found a jar of marbles of various colors under all the papers. OK looks important… he also found a map. We looked closer at the map and determined it to be an attack strategy for an invasion…:smalleek: Really important and can be sold back to the government for high prices… What? We're chaotic. We go where the money is. The marbles looked interesting enough…. So we threw an orange one. As soon as it hit a hard surface, WOOSH! A ball of flame erupted. Cool... now we have some magic orbs to back us up.

We moved back to the training room and moved toward the second door. One listen check told us that 2 people were behind it so we decided to kick in the door and kill all within reach. So I kicked down the door and dashed into the room. Then I back peddled straight out of the room and slammed the door shut. Everyone looked at me as if I was crazy...I had just given away the surprise attack… BOOM! The entire fortress shakes and the door flies off its hinges :smalleek: We peaked into the room and saw a scorched path from a HUGE Orb to a triple reinforced section of wall. Weird… there were only four people in the room, it sure sounded like there where more than just four…
They were chanting and had clothing that covered their entire bodies including their heads. I charged up to one and stabbed him to death... The other three Chanters didn’t react at all… We stopped and pondered over them. We decided to take a peak through all of the clothing to figure out what they were. They weren’t goblins, they weren’t even goblin-ish like orcs or something, They were Drow:smalleek: OK not a problem! Coup De Grace. (they still hadn't moved) and they’re finished. BOOM! We all spun around. The giant sphere just hit the floor which is when we realized…It had been floating?. It started rolling. OK not a problem. Then it meet the first wall… and it goes through. We were all in shock until the DM described the sphere better. The sphere was 15 feet tall and weighed easily over five tons. We looked through the hole in the wall and see another room. The room was extremely large but was slanted a little to one side so the orb ends up hitting another wall. It didn't go through so we reasoned that that’s the outside wall and only leads to dirt. We quickly looted the corpses of the Drow and we found another bag of magic orbs. We hopped through the hole and explored the next room.

It was huge! It must have been the size of a football field. It was filled with prison cells. In all the cells were dead people except for one which had a live goblin in it. We begin our conversation with him. He was friendly at first, then aggressive, then carefree, then happy, then sad, then angry... We quickly figured out that he was mentally unstable. We chained him and brought him up to the ground floor. We tied him to the rest of the goblins. Then we formed a cage out of prison bars to hold the sphere. We tied all the goblins to it and then we ordered them to march. We had to beat them senseless before they started moving…Chaotic, and neutral besides the bard, who objected before kicking one in the head… Next managed to get this monstrous thing out the front gate with a lot of effort. We also moved the Cattle out and put all the equipment the goblins originally had on their backs. Then begin our march back to town. Then I did the scout type thing and shot out ahead to make sure we were not walking into an Ambush and to get some help with handling all fifty goblins.


While I was off doing my thing, the Duskling, the bard, made painfully slow progress through the forest. In the middle of the forest they heard a voice call out. “What are you doing in my forest? Why do you bring these horrible goblins onto such beautiful land?” they immediately respond with combat stances and the Duskling darted into the forest after the voice. Too bad he only made it a foot off the trail before an arrow slammed into his chest. Out of the forest stepped a druid. He’s accompanied by a Trent. A freaking ECL 7 Trent! We were only level two after that big fortress raid. It was obvious the DM wanted us to lose this fight, but we decided to go down swinging. So we had a druid of probably High level and a Trent. The Duskling on the druid and gave him a big fiery hug… It was very effective and almost killed the druid :smalltongue: The rogue hides. The bard pulled out the jar of marbles… The Trent attacked the nearest foe. The big ball of flaming chaos… The Trent lost half his health :smalltongue: and knocked both Chaos and the druid unconscious with a punt to the face. The bard sorted out the orange marbles for his turn and the Rogue just hid some more... The Trent swatted at the Bard and knocked him unconscious. The Rogue Leapt to the rescue at that moment. He picked up the marbles the bard dropped and lobbed them at the Trent. The Trent was blown back to the stone age! and the Rogue went with him…He dropped to the negatives(you gotta hate collateral damage).
OK so the druid was still alive but unconscious(good) and my guys are all unconscious (bad). So naturally it’s up to the only conscious character in the group to save everyone right?...Wrong I’m ten miles away and have no clue as to what’s going on...

They really needed to kill the Druid before another one of his Trents came along. But they can’t do anything. We were scanning our character sheets trying to come up with something! Then the bard reitarates that he has a poisonous pet frog. With a hop, hop, hop he’s our last hope! The frog makes it to the body of the druid and begins gnawing on and poisoning him. He rolls once, he rolls twice! The druid hits -6 HP, -7, -8- And one point to go! Then a hawk snatches it away. :smallannoyed: We forgot the druid’s animal companion!

So to recap we have a bunch of goblins as slaves, and a jar of magic orbs of varying effect, I’m 10 miles away and can’t do anything and everyone else is probably going to be captured by this druid because that’s what the DM wants anyway. So in all likelihood we’re all going to die.
That is all I can do for now. There is still a little catching up to do but I can take care of that with the next few updates…hopefully

evil-frosty
2010-05-09, 12:27 PM
Very interesting, though as of right now the title of the journal makes no sense, but as you said this campaign has been going on for awhile already. And if you are finding writing all this up to be a hard and daunting task(which it is) i suggest you read both of Saphs campaign journals and SilverclawsShift's journals as they are great and may help you in the actual writing process.

Greenish
2010-05-09, 12:42 PM
1d2 can be enough damage for anything, as long as you can keep rolling it enough. :smalltongue:

Pyrotwister
2010-05-09, 08:16 PM
1d2 is enough and thats why I made him that way. Plus he has the ability to make ice appear anywhere. So I just froze my enemies in place and let them die there. (I'm that character by the way)

Mr.Fuzzy
2010-05-14, 06:13 PM
I left off with everyone unconscious and probably taken prisoner by a Druid that over powered my party. With them were our Magic Orbs, A map of a massive goblin invasion plan, a bunch of goblin slaves that are probably dead by now…:smallfrown: They also have with them the Giant Orb that is probably some sort of super weapon. I have safely made it to the nearest town and rented a room at the local inn. After waiting a few hours I realized that something might have happened to my party and my character would never be able to live with himself If He lost….the massive profit that there was to be gained with what they were carrying. So I went down to the common room of the inn and asked if anyone would help me find my friends. Being the naturally kind hearted NPCs that you find in the common room of a stinky little armpit of a town. They all laughed at me and turned back to what they were doing. So I went to plan B which was offer them riches beyond their wildest dreams if they would help me find my friends. The part of plan B that I didn’t tell them was the whole…Kill the minions after they have served their purpose.

The next morning the poor villagers set off to save the noble heroes from almost certain death, Ironic right? We “marched” for a few hours before arriving at the scene of an obvious fight. You know the drill Blood, and guts, and a dead Trent…so I used my tracking skills to follow the path of dead goblins left by the druid… after some more walking we arrived at a rather large tree and a pile of dead goblins… I figured that was the place so I told the villagers that I would climb up and drop a rope down for them to climb up. Then I began climbing. It was a pretty easy roll to make the climb checks. The DM described the branches as “ the tree is so incredibly large that even the smallest limbs are 3 inches in diameter” . I made it to the top when I was ambushed by my own creations.

Here is some required foreknowledge. In our last campaign, I was the DM. It was a pretty nature oriented campaign so I made this tribe of über rangers called Bushmen and I gave them a culture all their own they specialized in stealth and killed people by jumping on their backs and stabbing them in the necks…What can I say... it was hilarious watching people try to fight them.:smallbiggrin:

So anyway, back to the campaign at hand. I guess our DM decided that he could steal my creations and use them against me. It worked… Level 15 VS level 2 in an epic 1 round smack down! And by smack down I mean they smacked me and I went down. I came too tied to my comrades the Duskling muttered something about an ingenious rescue plan.

A little later one of the Bushmen came in and told us that his master wished to speak with us. We were tied up and in no position to argue so we agreed. We came before the Druid. As so as he was in range the Duskling spat acid at the Druid who responded by throwing something that turned in to glass as soon as I hit the Duskling and then it wrapped around his mouth. After the attack he questioned us about various things including our horde of Goblin slaves and our Magic Super Weapon. We explained and he said that the Orb was too dangerous to allow common people to handle it but he sensed that we were honorable in our intents and offered to compensate us for it :smalltongue: The DM was really nice to us and paid us ALOT for the orb. Then the druid sent us along on our way. On our way our I remembered that we had about 30 townsfolk waiting at the bottom for me to throw down a rope… So I did. As soon as most of them were on the rope and there were only one or two, up top, I sliced the rope and we killed the ones with us. Then we climbed down and finished off the few still alive. By this point my purposeful slaughter of innocents was up to around 40 and the party was getting mad at me so I stopped…for a little while.

We went to the capital city where guards stopped us. We told them everything…except the whole murder of their comrade…and they brought us to the king. He “taxed” us for the money we brought back and when we found out we were only going to be able to keep a little of it we took up a combat stance. It was about that time that the DM reminded us that the guards were the king’s personal bodyguard. So that meant all the guards were at least level 3 plus the 4 knights which were obviously more powerful. We backed down before being killed and the king made us a deal. He would give us a refund on some of the money if we would go and do another job…We agreed and he gave us a map to a mining complex that was vital to the war effort but had not sent anything in the way of messages or material in weeks. If we went to the mines he would give back some of our money…we were seriously contemplating assassination.

In the end, we decided to go ahead and look at the mines. It took us a week to get there and when we did, we found nothing. We preceded into the mines where we found an elevator type thing…a we rode the elevator down like good little adventurers we could see the different levels of the mines. In one level we saw some zombies…I am still hoping that this doesn’t turn into a Kill the undead crusade type of campaign.
That’s all I have for now I’m pretty close to catching up now so one or two more posts and I’ll be all caught up

Irreverent Fool
2010-05-14, 08:12 PM
1d2 is enough and thats why I made him that way. Plus he has the ability to make ice appear anywhere. So I just froze my enemies in place and let them die there. (I'm that character by the way)

*calls the cops*

obnoxious
sig

LordShotGun
2010-05-14, 08:30 PM
This is a rather intresting Campain journal. I am certainly gonna keep up on this one.

But please can you break down the HUGE WALL OF TEXT. Just hit enter every so often just to be easier on the eyes.

But, anyway its always intresting to read about a choatic party.

Mr.Fuzzy
2010-05-16, 09:06 PM
So we left off at the mine that the king sent us to go check out, we only went because he is holding our fortune hostage…
Anyway, we were down in the mines, there were no miners… in fact there was nothing… So we left. Outside of the mine, we saw a group of armed people we prepared for a fight. One of the people walked up to us and introduced himself. Apparently the king didn’t think the a group of people who were very mad at him would get the job done…:smallannoyed: The bard ( the only good character) told us to play nice. I played neutral… The Captain told us that we had new orders… Before working on our new orders we went back to the capitol and spent some of the money that we had kept from the King’s tax.

KILLING

SHOPPING SPREE !

With the good bit of money we had left I had my Glaive enchanted…Vaporal+2!!! The Duskling bought Heavy Fortitude Studded Leather Armor +6. He had his Light Wood Shield +2 and last but not least a +6 amulet of constitution. The Bard bought several Compasses that pointed to different things, like invisible people, He also bought a ring with a 5in diameter that doubled everything put into it ( The ring would become invaluable later in the campaign) Being the greedy characters we were we put an orb through the ring but all that came out was a glass marble… apparently it can’t duplicate magic.

Our new orders were to destroy a tower created by the goblins. The tower it’s self was unimportant but what the tower produced was VERY important. That little jar of Orbs we along with the Great big super weapon were created in that tower. So, we were on our way to attack it. After a bit of time-lapsed marching we arrived. The Tower was behind three wooden stockades and two trenches, all of which were filled with goblins, and the Piece De Résistance ? A medieval version of a Gatling gun, 3 heavy repeating crossbows on a mechanism that rotated them allowing the firer to shoot three times in one round... The we rolled initiative and got killing. When It was my turn I began my soon to be famous battle cry
Me: “Forward the Meat Shields!”

The NPCs with us went forward and I followed them using them like a movable shield of…people. When we reached the first stockade I ordered one of my meat shields to break down the wall. He rushed into the wall and rolled a 1 on his strength check…:smallannoyed: so I sent the next NPC. He actually did not fail completely but he didn’t break the wall down. So I sent the third and final of my meat shields. He managed to break down the wall so I followed through. While the Bard and I were heading up the Forward assault, the Duskling flew over everything and dropped down on the people operation the Gatling Crossbow. The Last two ORCS knocked him into the negatives and got back on the crossbow.

While the Duskling was getting himself killed we had gotten over the first two walls and one of the trenches. I was working on getting over the last wall when the Crossbow of doom started shooting at us. I dove into the nearest trench faster than you could say… “Hey the Giant Mounted Crossbow Thing is shooting at us”. After some fancy version of suppressive fire worked out by the Bard and I closed with the gunner and cut him to bits while his buddy tried to get the tower doors to open. When the Bard met up with me he gave the bard and I some healing orbs. The DM told us that we could take the Crossbow thing but that it would drop any of us to medium loads, the bard volunteered he also put his ring of multiplication on the front so that instead of three shots a round it fired six. Then the giant doors opened and the Orc ran inside. We were ready for anything to come through the doors (by ready I mean prepared to turn tail and run the other way) after a while we realized that nothing bad was going to happen so we went inside. Inside there was a room with an iron door. Instead of checking to see if the door was locked, (It wasn’t) The Duskling spit acid on it and melted the door down. Then the Duskling did something that we really were used to by now he ran into the room without any semblance of a plan. The room was dark but the Duskling was on fire so he could see a little way. What he saw was a low stone wall and crossbow bolts heading toward his face. He did a little more probing and came to the conclusion that there was a bigger stone wall with caltrops at its base.

After THREE HOURS, we finally had a plan. The Duskling would extinguish his fire and use his acid spit to tunnel underneath the wall. It worked well at first, The Bard and I distracted the Goblins on top of the wall while the Duskling closed in on the base of the wall and began digging/spitting. After a while he was under the wall and began to tunnel upwards. When the Duskling came out of his tunnel on the other side of the wall he saw an Orc with a great ax looking down at him…:smalleek: Needless to say he ducked back into his tunnel and tried to come up with an idea. Which is when he heard someone say in goblin (he could speak goblin)
“bring the oil”

Now like all well seasoned adventurers the Duskling panicked he was moving as fast as he could back through his tunnel. Unfortunately crawling through a jagged tunnel is not the fastest way to move. boiling oil came cascading down the tunnel and FILLED it completely that’s 8d6 of fire damage for several rounds… So we hadn’t even gotten half way through the campaign and the Duskling was dead. He began Rolling up a new even weirder character immediately.

So we now had no way into the tower. The Bard and I retreated to the outer room with the NPCs. We decided to climb the outside of the tower all 300 feet of it. Good thing we had the Bard’s ring. We pulled through a few feet of rope and got climbing with my pitons (also multiplied by the ring) once we got to the top we saw nothing useful except a few old broken Ballistae. So we thought. We came up with a plan (credit to the Bard).

How would you react if you were defending a tower and suddenly the roof blows open and people start dropping little explosive balls of magic on you? The goblins did not react well. We decimated them before realizing that we were low on orbs. The Solution? Drop broken the Ballistae. While we were bombarding the goblins by air, the NPCs charged the wall and climbed up. The Bard and I then climbed down our rope to the wall. After our bombardment, the battle was really a mop up fight. We finished and looked for the Duskling. When we realized that he was dead we wanted to go and get his body (not out of any sense of respect for him but for his gear). The DM told us that we couldn’t because the oil was still too hot.

Suddenly a portal opened behind us and a wagon full of orbs being drawn by undead horses came through. The orc driving turned his wagon around, went back into the portal, and closed it but not before The Bard and I got through with all but four NPCs got through also. We came out in a cave. The Bard took five of the NPCs with him and went to stop the wagon. While he caught up with the wagon and killed the driver, I looked around and saw a little alcove with three goblins and a Drow who was casting into some crystals on the counter in front of him. Naturally, I rushed the Drow while my three meat shields took out the goblins. I took out the Drow too late though because alarms started going off.

I took my meat shields and met up with the Bard. We proceeded out of the cave and stumbled onto a cliff floating on nothing. About then a bunch of goblins, protecting a massive pile of orbs attacked us. But the real eye catcher were the magically chained 20 foot tall elementals… We battled with the goblins and killed them relatively easily. After the battle, we healed up and noticed that the elementals weren’t moving so we left them alone.

Pop quiz!
1.What do you do when fog rolls in and you hear a single goblin laughing?

A .Run and hide C. Run and hide
B. Go hunt down the goblin D. Run and hide


If you answered B then you failed. A,C,D were all correct.
We saw two crossbow bolts fly out of the mist, kill one of our NPCs, and wound another. I thought we should run and the Bard agreed. We ran back to the alcove in the cave and the Bard set up his Crossbow thing on the counter.

DM: make a listen check
US: roll
DM: ok you don’t hear anything.
Duskling(dead): (looks over DM’s shoulder and reads the character sheet) “ You’re using one of my characters!”

That brought audible groans from both the Bard and I. You have to remember that the guy who played the Duskling makes characters that are completely unbeatable. The DM assured us that we could beat this guy so we got back into the game.

DM: make another listen check
US: Roll
DM: Ok you don’t hear anything, until a goblins sitting on the counter stabs you (points at me) in the face.

I attacked the goblin and he jumped off the counter and disappeared. It was around this point that I had an idea. “Forward the meat shields!”. We had the NPCs go out into the cave and look for our little friend. Nothing turned up. We waited… A little later we made listen checks and actually succeeded…sort of… the Bard heard the general area that the goblins was in so he sent he NPCs over. The NPCs found nothing so we waited…then the Bard had a wonderfully perfect epiphany. He had a magic compass that pointed to people with invisibility. So we again knew the direction of the goblin. Then an Orb came flying over the counter and slammed into us setting off the crystals and opening the portal. The Bard stabbed into the space on the other side of the counter and was rewarded for his efforts by an orb in the face. I vaulted over the counter and tried to grapple the little guy I missed by one point.
Cue Duskling’s new character... We saw a bat-fish-thing with chunks of flesh hanging from its mouth come flying through the portal and out the entrance of the cave. Since we didn’t actually know that this was our new ally the Bard opened up with the crossbow thing doing 17 damage. After our brief encounter with the flying thing we took off after our nemesis. We saw him running out of the cave so I sprinted after him with my increased movement speed. Once he saw that I was gaining on him he cast a spell (obscuring mist) and fog rolled in the bard and NPCs caught up with me out side of the cave we made some spot checks and I saw the goblin hanging off the edge of the cliff. I wanted to go over and crush his fingers making him fall to his doom but the Bard stopped me. We figured that the goblin had some good loot so we decided to pull him up on the cliff before brutally murdering him. Bad idea the once goblin realized that we had seen him he climbed onto the edge and threw an orb at the chains holding the Water Elemental :smalleek: The Elemental seemed stunned so the bard and I grappled the Goblin and pinned him. Once pinned it was easy for us to stick him with daggers until he died. :smallamused: Unfortunately the Goblin managed to free the Fire Elemental too. The Fire Elemental did not get along well with the Water Elemental so while we were killing a goblin two massive elementals were hammering each other. Their battle managed to free the other Elementals…:smalleek: I picked up our goblin and took off running for the open portal while the fish-thing shot at me…:smallannoyed:

I was through the portal with the NPCs and bard right behind me. The bard did the smart thin and shot the massive pile of orbs before jumping through the portal…(insert massive explosion)

Well I didn’t think I’d get this much done post so I have maybe half of a regular post left before I’m all caught up

Tune in next time to see a Bard and I try to make friends with a mentally insane bat-fish thing that likes to eat people!

Mr.Fuzzy
2010-05-19, 09:19 PM
We leveled up so we’re all level 3 now I took Dodge as my new feat. The bard got some spells the only really useful one is Silent Image and he chose Iron skin chant (complete adventurer). Fishman took blade proof skin…(unearthed arcana…I think)

I left off with us jumping through a portal as a mass of explosive orbs blew up and some REALLY big elementals were fighting. The Bard and I had killed our mini nemesis and carried his body with us for the loot. In other news, a fish-bat thing flew through the portal with us and we are in a standoff with it inside the tower…

The bard and I have the same charisma…:smallconfused: but my character has killed of… all of our allies so I let the bard negotiate while I had a staring contest with the NPCs and of course I threw in my little tid-bits of information while the bard negotiated. The first thing Fish man did was fly up above us into the rafters and stare at us.

Bard: we don’t want to hurt you

Fishman: (drools and stares at goblin corpse)

The bard picked up on the whole staring and said

Bard: what do you want with that goblin

Fishman: mmmmhhhh meat!

Bard: you can eat the goblin if you want him

Fishman(in really creepy real life voice…Think Golem from lord of the rings): No NO! not fresssshhhh enough

It was kind of funny that he said that because round wise we had killed the

goblin…1minute ago so the bard brought that up

Bard: we just killed him

Fishman: NOT FRESSSHHH ENOUGH!

The bard turned to me and asked what he should say. I told him to say something about there being fresh bodies where we were going. What I said was probably Meta gaming because I don’t like wasting time with party intros. So the bard said what I told him to and as if it couldn’t have gotten any weirder instead of a response Fishman drooled…which wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t done it AT THE TABLE. Long story short we left the tower with our new “friend” and made our way to the nearest city to restock on gear (not rope…:smallwink:) When we arrived, the city looked like an army had been attacking it. The walls had collapsed in places and we saw no one in sight. As we approached the gate we were ambushed by some guards they asked us some questions and we completely failed their test…

Guard: were you followed?

Bard: NO!
Me (at the same time): Probably

Next we tried a good ole’ intimidate check. We even Role played it…

Fishman: (Looks at guards and drools) Can I eat them master? (we decided that I’m in charge of the crazy Fish-bat thing. Maybe not the smartest move on the bard’s part but hey! I get a minion)

Me: (in equally creepy voice. Think The Emperor from Star Wars) No not now my pet… the time is not yet right.

(we roll intimidate check)….(Complete and total failure)

The guards look revolted as they slam the gates shut in our faces. As we walk away Fishman makes a funny.
Me: Ok you can eat them now….

Fishman: Not fresh enough

The captain of the group of NPCs with us walked forward and talked to the guard. The Guard said “come” so the NPCs walked behind him and we followed… as soon as the last NPC was through the gates snapped shut…:smallannoyed: We asked what we had done to be denied access… and a guard called down something about us not respecting the lives of our comrades. I put on a look of pure innocence while everyone looked at me.

Me: what?

Bard: “Forward the meat shields?”

So in an effort to fix our predicament I decided that we should wait till dark to infiltrate the walls. As we were walking around we found a camp of about 2000 goblins and orcs (hence the apparent siege) The DM described another one of his weird game inventions. Imagine a WW I era tank with three ballistae on front and a catapult arm coming out of the back. If the tanks weren’t enough they had Dirigibles and airplanes…:smalleek: We entertained notions of hijacking a dirigible or airplane but our “hey we just lost a party member by doing something stupid” sense kicked in and we decided against it. As we were leaving a sentry saw us an raised the alarm. Being the fastest in the group has it’s bonuses like getting to the walled city first. I banged on the doors as hard as I could and screamed for them to let me in.

Guard: were you followed?

Me: No

DM: roll bluff check

Me:(2…)

Just then a tank rolls out of the forest and a squad of orcs pile out…:smalleek: I’m still alone. Luckily, the group catches up with me before I get brutally murdered… so now it’s sort of a brutal slaughter instead of murder. I contemplate jumping through one of the holes in the wall before the DM points out that the people inside aren’t friendly either.
Somehow we magically escaped as more tanks and some infantry come out of the forest. We decide to go to the next tower since we knew there was one somewhere… (über Meta gaming) The DM punished us for our role-playing sin by making the next tower exponentially harder. We arrived to 4 walls, 3 trenches, several pill boxes, more orcs, less goblins, no meat shields :smallfrown: and no crossbow thing…

I am now completely caught up!!!

Our next meeting is Friday so I should have some juicy details about our failed frontal assault.

Mr.Fuzzy
2010-05-21, 09:43 PM
Here are the juicy details on the frontal assault. Imagine five lines of defenses filled with about seventy-five goblins and 25 orcs being attacked by three adventurers and a frog… If that wasn’t bad enough the “boss” is a troll and we don’t have Pyromaniac anymore, instead we have Bat-Fish-Man-Thing. The bard using his incredible ability to poke holes in the DM’s plans has come up with a solution that should save us from a complete and total massacre at the hands of the Goblins/Orcs . That plan is Silent Image. The bard made a wall of “fog” that the goblins could not see through on the other hand our party could see through it like it wasn’t even there since we already knew that it was an illusion. As the wall of “fog” rolled forward the Goblins began to realize that everyone inside it was dying (mostly my “fault”) so they goblins started avoiding the fog and shooting randomly into it… they missed for the most part. Meanwhile Fishman was flying around being shot at. Fortunately, for him he was really high up so the range increment for the shots at him was a life saver. Out of 57 shots, the goblins hit him 4 times. Again, the bard’s genius saved the group Fishman took the duplicator ring, after the bard did something to it, so now whatever is dropped through it is not only duplicated but also dropped in an unending cycle like a magic machinegun of alchemist’s flasks and oil :smallamused:. While Fishman was doing bombing runs we moved forward in fog. I was killing everything in sight but there was just so many that we didn’t make it very far (only having 2 hours for the session didn’t help either) .

I was feeling bad when I realized that we (excluding flying Fishman) had made less than 100 yards of progress until I counted the rounds and did the math. I took us one and a half minutes to overrun the first three sets of defenses and kill half of the garrison :smallamused: plus thanks to the fog we had taken around 20 points of damage…cumulatively:smallamused:. Then we remembered the other half of the garrison :smallsigh: and the troll :smallsigh: and the fact that we still had to get inside the tower :smallsigh: and destroy the orb factory (which was probably through another portal) :smallsigh:

Fortunately, we did have a rather interesting discussion on terminal velocity when we described the “ring machinegun/bomb”


That’s it for now I have no clue when our next session is maybe sometime in the next week

Pyrotwister
2010-05-23, 05:41 PM
bump :smalltongue:

Mr.Fuzzy
2010-05-31, 11:08 AM
What happens when a level 3 scout and a Troll go head to head? Apparently, the scout incapacitates the troll but then epically fails his first try to set it on fire. That’s what happened in our last session. We pushed through the trenches while Bat-Fish flew over the orcs and dropped flasks of alchemists fire and oil on them. Actually he tried to drop the flasks on them. He failed spectacularly every time. How hard is it to let go of something? Anyway we pushed up the middle. I charged forward and attacked the Orcs in front of us while the rest of the party swept up behind me, right before we made it to the tower a massive door behind us opened up and a troll came out…:smallannoyed: So we were stuck between a troll and another troll. The party fought one troll while I fought the other… I attacked my troll fully expecting to be squashed like a bug but then something wonderful happened. You may recall my vaporal glaive… It didn’t do squat :smallannoyed: I hit the troll for 27 damage because I am in fact awesome. Then the party teamed up and took on the other troll. Next it was the trolls’ turn! Again my awesomeness saved me because I only took 15 damage from the troll (half my health). We fought the trolls a little longer I managed to incapacitate mine while the part killed theirs. While I was having trouble burning my troll ( I rolled a 4 and a 1 on a DC of 5:smallannoyed:) the party learned that they had more than one troll to kill actually several.
Unfortunately my updates are getting smaller because we have spent as much time on this one battle as we have in the rest of the campaign…