Vin Robinson
2010-09-17, 01:10 AM
Hello playground. I thought I'd start a campaign journal. It will give me something to do while I'm at work.
First a little bit about the campaign. My DM is very tough but fair, and believes in low-powered, slow leveling, gritty games. We have the standard array for stats (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8) and we are using the races and skill system from Pathfinder. Also using the at-will cantrips from Pathfinder. He also said it's going to be E6, and when we get there we get to make our own custom capstone feat. We're also using some variant where if you ever get hit for more damage than your current constitution score, you need to make a fortitude save equal to 15+ the damage dealt / 5 or be reduced to bleeding at -1 hitpoints. For books we have whatever is on the SRD, plus any three other books. (The party actually talked the DM up from 1)
The setting is a large coastal city with foggy, crappy weather (think England or Seattle) The DM does a great job of setting the mood for us, plus all that fog makes for lots of fun with concealment! The cities' name is Newhaven. Okay. Now to the party.
Silus Beaumont. My character I have fluffed as a Thieve's guild footpad and enforcer, and I didn't really like the whole "master thief" vibe that a Rogue has, so I instead wanted a Thug variant fighter. After clearing it with my DM, I also talked him into letting me take Dungeoncrasher from Dungeonscape, and Zhentarim Fighter from Champions of Valor. So I guess that makes me a Dungeoncrashing Zhentarim Thug? Quite a mouthful. I also think I only get one fighter bonus feat in my six levels. My DM is letting me take my capstone as the "intimidate as a swift action" ability. It should be mentioned that I'm human. Silus is tall, all flat hard muscle, dirty, and hairy.
Lulie Peronell. Woo boy, this one is a doozy. She's being played by our best roleplayer, who is an aspiring writer, never metagames, and is just downright -creepy.- She literally scares me a lot of the time. She is playing a Gray Jester, and taking levels in the monster class set out on these very forums. She had a long complicated novel of a backstory set out for us, and it almost made me cry. After her four levels of Gray Jester, she plans on going Binder, and her capstone is going to be an improved improved binding, or something. She looks like your standard Gray Jester. (She really just grey-scaled some old fan art of Harle from Chrono-Cross)
Glitch. A Warforged with low mental stats, Glitch is a monk who just wants to hug things to death. I have been unable to figure out this player's motivations, but it seems like he has fun. Glitch's backstory is that he was Baron's nursemaid when he was a child. Also talks like HK-47.
Baron Hyland. Sorceror. He likes having relations with NPCs and flashy spells. Just because of the optimization level here, he's actually our hardest hitter most of the time. He also comes from old money, and is a noble in the city we're starting in. He described himself as very pretty, well dressed, naive, and arrogant.
Session I
The first evening was mostly about character creation. Lulie was already done, so her and the DM played through some backstory stuff while the rest of us made characters.
Lulie was staying in a tavern outside of the major city, and when she went to return the butcher's knife to the kitchen after black widowing some traveler (Erm.. Seduced, Charisma Damaged, Executed) she overheard a noble talking to a trusted friend of his in the common room. Apparently the noble was a deposed duke whose brother had exiled him. The noble also had no way to prove he was who he said he was, because the way their family bloodline was verified was through possession of a large, fist-sized gem, and the noble's brother had them both. He we on talking about what a bastard his brother Monty was, and him and the trusted friend (also the inn keeper) talked about a plan to get into the estate, slaughter everyone inside, and take back his family jewels. The noble was to give the signal of putting out a torch in a certain sconce, and then the innkeeper who worked in the kitchen sometimes would open a side-door for him.
Lulie then waited very patiently for the noble to come back up, blackjacked him, dragged him back to her room with the cooling corpse, and spent a good half an hour arranging the place so it looked like a lovers quarrel gone awry. All the while singing a diddy about "the gray lady" and how she eats children. All very creepy.
She took the information to her fence who is a member of the Crimson Hand, one of the many thieve's guild in Newhaven. She said she wanted some muscle for a "special job" and if the fence knew of anyone. I of course, was conveniently not doing anything at the moment, and was hired to go with her, for a cut of 20% of whatever she pulled in. Fair enough. I'm just a sword, anyway.
She sang me a song about the job as we were walking around the city. I made some good gather information checks to figure out where the estate was, and as soon as it hit dark we headed off in that direction. Lulie actually made some good perform checks to earn a little extra coin while we waited. Of course, she completely ignored the money and I was left to scoop it all up.
We make it to Monty's estate, stow away in a cart on it's way in, and wait for a few guard patrols to go by. We spot the sconce we were supposed to put out, and we climbed the Battlements and walk right into a guard.
We roll initiative, and the fight goes like this:
DM: Okay Lulie, you won initiative.
Lulie: I don't want him to yell out, so I guess I'm going to grapple him.
DM: Roll.
Rolls are made, Lulie successfully grapples him.
DM: Your turn Silus.
Me: I suppose I'll join in, and try to cover his mouth.
And another round of rolls.
We go on like this, him never escaping, mouth covered, slowly taking damage. The whole time, Lulie is whisper-singing in his ear. A new song, too. About a boy named Boval who fell in love with a certain gray lady...
I had to sit through three rounds of this.. Actual singing, mind you, Silus becoming more and more freaked out.
The guard finally passes out, and Lulie starts petting his face. I put on my sketched-out face, scoop up the guard, and dump him off the battlements onto the ground outside the estate.
We procceed along the wall to the section that's above the sconce we were supposed to put out.. And it was too far for us to reach and we would have to go down and all the way to round, through guards in order to get there.
What I did is kind of a shameful moment for me. I... urinated on it. I was really embarassed, but it seemed like the best idea I had at the time. We hadn't bothered with any adventuring gear because we are in a city.
The worst part is, the DM made me roll a dex check. >_<
The torch goes out, and a few minutes later we see a side door in the courtyard slide open. We make our way down to it, barely sneaking past some guards. (I threw a stone off into the distance to distract them.) and we steal inside.
The hallways in the castle were mostly dark, with the odd torch or guard with a lightsource. Lots of alcoves and side rooms. We stole through the kitchen to get some information from the inn keeper. He started screaming and making a ruckus, so.. I bullrushed him into a large, open oven. :)
Luckily we found his journal/diary in a servant's room off of the kitchen. Apparently noble1 had a wife, who is now Monty's beau, and still living in the castle, and not very happy about it.
Neat.
So off we go, further into the castle. There was another courtyard outside the royal bedchambers, and we had to do some complicated Prince of Persia parkour stuff, but we are both pretty spry and it wasn't too much of a problem.
We go in through a window into absolute oppulence. A giant bedchamber that was filled with so much expensive looking crap that I wish I had brought a few more sacks. I giggle with glee (in character) and start greedy-grabbing everything I can. Lulie steels off further into the chamber. Half of a minute later I hear some yelling and loud crash, and Lulie with her 50 foot move speed comes hurdling by and goes out the window. I follow suit, seeing several guards start running towards me. I make it out the window onto the mini-balcony.. But pursuit was close on my heels.
Lulie was already climb/balancing her way across the face of the building, and most of the way there. I didn't really have a choice, So I just jumped.
It was 20 feet down, I passed my jump check to intentionally jump down and passed it and... Failed the tumble check. I take a fat 1D6 and ouch... Five points of damage. I'm suddenly running at half of my HP.
I start booking it, trying to stay to the shadows and avoid as many guards as I can, but the alarm is going up all around me, guards rushing my way at every turn. I duck into a bathroom and into the commode, tear up the toilet-hole thing, and down the chute I go.
This part scared me. I skittered and grabbed and groped and tried to slow my fall and ended up slamming down and taking a mean 2D6. The DM rolls the dice, and I hold my breath... Three. :-D
I dust my self off, and strut my way back to the base for a bath and to fence the stuff I still had in my sack. I just hope the smell will come out of my leathers.
On Lulie's end, she literally just outran everyone else and went out the front door with two nice big fist-sized gems in her mitts. She hid outside for awhile and waited to see if I showed up, then gave up and went back to her fence.
At this point it was getting late and Baron hadn't finished picking his spells, so we called it a night.
The DM said that we wouldn't be responsible for how Lulie and I know Baron and Glitch, so I think he has something cool planned. I don't know. We'll see.
More next week when we play again.
What do you guys think?
My build is kind of convoluted and silly, and having low stats kinda sucks.. So is there anything that might overcome this?
I'm going to pick up a heavy crossbow for an "ace in the hole" big damage weapon since theoretically anything more than 8-13 damage should just one-shot someone.. Which is a scary thought on my end.. I don't know.
Dungeoncrashing people in to things is going to be devastating and fun, and eventually I'll be able to intimidate a little.
Any other ideas about how to improve my build?
Sorry if this is a little incoherent. I'm writing this very late and I'm still really jazzed up over the campaign. I'll try to be more organized in the next one.
First a little bit about the campaign. My DM is very tough but fair, and believes in low-powered, slow leveling, gritty games. We have the standard array for stats (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8) and we are using the races and skill system from Pathfinder. Also using the at-will cantrips from Pathfinder. He also said it's going to be E6, and when we get there we get to make our own custom capstone feat. We're also using some variant where if you ever get hit for more damage than your current constitution score, you need to make a fortitude save equal to 15+ the damage dealt / 5 or be reduced to bleeding at -1 hitpoints. For books we have whatever is on the SRD, plus any three other books. (The party actually talked the DM up from 1)
The setting is a large coastal city with foggy, crappy weather (think England or Seattle) The DM does a great job of setting the mood for us, plus all that fog makes for lots of fun with concealment! The cities' name is Newhaven. Okay. Now to the party.
Silus Beaumont. My character I have fluffed as a Thieve's guild footpad and enforcer, and I didn't really like the whole "master thief" vibe that a Rogue has, so I instead wanted a Thug variant fighter. After clearing it with my DM, I also talked him into letting me take Dungeoncrasher from Dungeonscape, and Zhentarim Fighter from Champions of Valor. So I guess that makes me a Dungeoncrashing Zhentarim Thug? Quite a mouthful. I also think I only get one fighter bonus feat in my six levels. My DM is letting me take my capstone as the "intimidate as a swift action" ability. It should be mentioned that I'm human. Silus is tall, all flat hard muscle, dirty, and hairy.
Lulie Peronell. Woo boy, this one is a doozy. She's being played by our best roleplayer, who is an aspiring writer, never metagames, and is just downright -creepy.- She literally scares me a lot of the time. She is playing a Gray Jester, and taking levels in the monster class set out on these very forums. She had a long complicated novel of a backstory set out for us, and it almost made me cry. After her four levels of Gray Jester, she plans on going Binder, and her capstone is going to be an improved improved binding, or something. She looks like your standard Gray Jester. (She really just grey-scaled some old fan art of Harle from Chrono-Cross)
Glitch. A Warforged with low mental stats, Glitch is a monk who just wants to hug things to death. I have been unable to figure out this player's motivations, but it seems like he has fun. Glitch's backstory is that he was Baron's nursemaid when he was a child. Also talks like HK-47.
Baron Hyland. Sorceror. He likes having relations with NPCs and flashy spells. Just because of the optimization level here, he's actually our hardest hitter most of the time. He also comes from old money, and is a noble in the city we're starting in. He described himself as very pretty, well dressed, naive, and arrogant.
Session I
The first evening was mostly about character creation. Lulie was already done, so her and the DM played through some backstory stuff while the rest of us made characters.
Lulie was staying in a tavern outside of the major city, and when she went to return the butcher's knife to the kitchen after black widowing some traveler (Erm.. Seduced, Charisma Damaged, Executed) she overheard a noble talking to a trusted friend of his in the common room. Apparently the noble was a deposed duke whose brother had exiled him. The noble also had no way to prove he was who he said he was, because the way their family bloodline was verified was through possession of a large, fist-sized gem, and the noble's brother had them both. He we on talking about what a bastard his brother Monty was, and him and the trusted friend (also the inn keeper) talked about a plan to get into the estate, slaughter everyone inside, and take back his family jewels. The noble was to give the signal of putting out a torch in a certain sconce, and then the innkeeper who worked in the kitchen sometimes would open a side-door for him.
Lulie then waited very patiently for the noble to come back up, blackjacked him, dragged him back to her room with the cooling corpse, and spent a good half an hour arranging the place so it looked like a lovers quarrel gone awry. All the while singing a diddy about "the gray lady" and how she eats children. All very creepy.
She took the information to her fence who is a member of the Crimson Hand, one of the many thieve's guild in Newhaven. She said she wanted some muscle for a "special job" and if the fence knew of anyone. I of course, was conveniently not doing anything at the moment, and was hired to go with her, for a cut of 20% of whatever she pulled in. Fair enough. I'm just a sword, anyway.
She sang me a song about the job as we were walking around the city. I made some good gather information checks to figure out where the estate was, and as soon as it hit dark we headed off in that direction. Lulie actually made some good perform checks to earn a little extra coin while we waited. Of course, she completely ignored the money and I was left to scoop it all up.
We make it to Monty's estate, stow away in a cart on it's way in, and wait for a few guard patrols to go by. We spot the sconce we were supposed to put out, and we climbed the Battlements and walk right into a guard.
We roll initiative, and the fight goes like this:
DM: Okay Lulie, you won initiative.
Lulie: I don't want him to yell out, so I guess I'm going to grapple him.
DM: Roll.
Rolls are made, Lulie successfully grapples him.
DM: Your turn Silus.
Me: I suppose I'll join in, and try to cover his mouth.
And another round of rolls.
We go on like this, him never escaping, mouth covered, slowly taking damage. The whole time, Lulie is whisper-singing in his ear. A new song, too. About a boy named Boval who fell in love with a certain gray lady...
I had to sit through three rounds of this.. Actual singing, mind you, Silus becoming more and more freaked out.
The guard finally passes out, and Lulie starts petting his face. I put on my sketched-out face, scoop up the guard, and dump him off the battlements onto the ground outside the estate.
We procceed along the wall to the section that's above the sconce we were supposed to put out.. And it was too far for us to reach and we would have to go down and all the way to round, through guards in order to get there.
What I did is kind of a shameful moment for me. I... urinated on it. I was really embarassed, but it seemed like the best idea I had at the time. We hadn't bothered with any adventuring gear because we are in a city.
The worst part is, the DM made me roll a dex check. >_<
The torch goes out, and a few minutes later we see a side door in the courtyard slide open. We make our way down to it, barely sneaking past some guards. (I threw a stone off into the distance to distract them.) and we steal inside.
The hallways in the castle were mostly dark, with the odd torch or guard with a lightsource. Lots of alcoves and side rooms. We stole through the kitchen to get some information from the inn keeper. He started screaming and making a ruckus, so.. I bullrushed him into a large, open oven. :)
Luckily we found his journal/diary in a servant's room off of the kitchen. Apparently noble1 had a wife, who is now Monty's beau, and still living in the castle, and not very happy about it.
Neat.
So off we go, further into the castle. There was another courtyard outside the royal bedchambers, and we had to do some complicated Prince of Persia parkour stuff, but we are both pretty spry and it wasn't too much of a problem.
We go in through a window into absolute oppulence. A giant bedchamber that was filled with so much expensive looking crap that I wish I had brought a few more sacks. I giggle with glee (in character) and start greedy-grabbing everything I can. Lulie steels off further into the chamber. Half of a minute later I hear some yelling and loud crash, and Lulie with her 50 foot move speed comes hurdling by and goes out the window. I follow suit, seeing several guards start running towards me. I make it out the window onto the mini-balcony.. But pursuit was close on my heels.
Lulie was already climb/balancing her way across the face of the building, and most of the way there. I didn't really have a choice, So I just jumped.
It was 20 feet down, I passed my jump check to intentionally jump down and passed it and... Failed the tumble check. I take a fat 1D6 and ouch... Five points of damage. I'm suddenly running at half of my HP.
I start booking it, trying to stay to the shadows and avoid as many guards as I can, but the alarm is going up all around me, guards rushing my way at every turn. I duck into a bathroom and into the commode, tear up the toilet-hole thing, and down the chute I go.
This part scared me. I skittered and grabbed and groped and tried to slow my fall and ended up slamming down and taking a mean 2D6. The DM rolls the dice, and I hold my breath... Three. :-D
I dust my self off, and strut my way back to the base for a bath and to fence the stuff I still had in my sack. I just hope the smell will come out of my leathers.
On Lulie's end, she literally just outran everyone else and went out the front door with two nice big fist-sized gems in her mitts. She hid outside for awhile and waited to see if I showed up, then gave up and went back to her fence.
At this point it was getting late and Baron hadn't finished picking his spells, so we called it a night.
The DM said that we wouldn't be responsible for how Lulie and I know Baron and Glitch, so I think he has something cool planned. I don't know. We'll see.
More next week when we play again.
What do you guys think?
My build is kind of convoluted and silly, and having low stats kinda sucks.. So is there anything that might overcome this?
I'm going to pick up a heavy crossbow for an "ace in the hole" big damage weapon since theoretically anything more than 8-13 damage should just one-shot someone.. Which is a scary thought on my end.. I don't know.
Dungeoncrashing people in to things is going to be devastating and fun, and eventually I'll be able to intimidate a little.
Any other ideas about how to improve my build?
Sorry if this is a little incoherent. I'm writing this very late and I'm still really jazzed up over the campaign. I'll try to be more organized in the next one.