PDA

View Full Version : X-Crawling with the Battlin' Bros



Waker
2011-02-21, 05:08 PM
Recently a friend of mine decided to run an X-Crawl module and I was invited to play.
For those not familiar with X-Crawl, it's a D&D supplement that takes places in an alternate reality Earth, where magic has provided a slightly different history of the world. One such example is the absence of the United States of America, Canada and Mexico. In their places rests the North American Empire, founded by Emperor George Washington. The most popular sport in this nation is X-Crawl, which is something akin to American Gladiators + Monsters and death.
A great deal of difficulty in X-Crawl comes from limitations imposed on options. You must complete X-Crawl in a reasonable amount of time and there is no leaving the arena. So no camping out after a few battles with a rope trick, that's instant disqualification. A number of divination and necromancy spells are banned and you are not supposed to destroy the studio (so no disintegrating through walls for shortcuts.) The whole thing is an endurance trial.
In any event, for the sake of hilarity we decided that our group was going to hail from a college fraternity. Thus in addition to all the normal aspects of character generation, we also added the character's major and "frat name." At the beginning of this adventure, all characters are level 6.

"Wall"- Dwarf Fighter with Dungeoncrasher. Got into school on a football scholarship. Dumb as a brick, but excellent at tackling. Major: Business.
"Ripper"- Human Bard. Guitar Hero addict, spends most of his time carrying around a plastic guitar. Has a mix of buffing and melee feats. Major: Communications.
"Killbone"- Half-Elf Rogue. Hardcore FPS player, must get the cheevos. Specializes in ranged combat. Major: Engineering.
"Doogie" (Me)- Gnome Cleric. Joining the X-Crawl since it would look good on my resume. Parties second-in-command and The Dude's wingman. Uses Aid Another to assist The Dude whenever he grandstands or asks for a phone number. Specializes in buffing and healing. Major: Pre-med
"Jello"- Human Paladin. Bubbly cheerleader. Has great cleav (age). I helped inspire her RP aspects by having the player listen to "Because I'm A Blonde." Specializes in group melee combat. Major: Veterinary Science
Xanadu "The Dude"- Human Transmuter. Fraternity President. Huge horndog, hits on every celebrity that gives us our prizes. Specializes in buffing and direct damage spells. Major: (forget at the moment).

The following adventure is our run through the Necroamerica module and will be spoilered to avoid giving stuff away.

The adventure starts with us standing in front of a door. At the time, The Dude has yet to arrive, so his character in a state of being/not being there. Because it is literally the first door and most of us are new to X-Crawl, we open it without checking for traps. Wall and myself are blinded for several rounds. The room is revealed to the non-blind characters, the walls are lined with spikes, a large pit lies in it's center and at the far end lies a catapult. Trussed up inside this catapult is an orc, our mission it to fire the catapult at a large bulls-eye (also lined with spikes.) There are also several orcs who don't want to see us succeed.
The battle begins with Killbone making a bold charge to the catapult, believing that the challenge will end as soon as the orc is impaled. While she does succeed in this goal, the combat still continues much to her chagrin and she is knocked unconscious. At the time I am still standing around getting shot at, what with me being blinded and all so I just bide my time. During this time though I note that I have the highest ac in the party (small, full plate, shield) which I mentally note for the future.
Jello and Ripper do a good job of holding off the orcs until Wall and myself can see again. At this time Wall begins power tackling orcs into the spiked walls. I then run through the groups of orcs and get ready to heal Killbone when I realize something. As soon as she stands up, she'll be pummeled by multiple AoO. I devise a cunning solution and begin dancing around to provoke attacks of opportunity. This puzzles the DM and other players alike. All of the orcs miss me, after which I spend my action healing the rogue. She stands up unimpeded and then everyone realizes my intent. After a few more rounds of Jello and Wall laying waste to our opponents we emerge victorious. After searching the room for secret doors we eventually head on to our next puzzle.
A series of paths lie in front of us (five I believe), one of which contains a key and one a door. After a brief discussion about which path to take, I stroll into the middle of the intersection and stand my mace up (represented by a pencil in real life) on it's handle and let it fall. The direction it falls determines our path and my selection does in fact lead us to the key...around the neck of a Huge Beetle. At this time the player for The Dude shows up. The battle is quite easy, as we let a buffed Wall slam the bug against the wall.
After retrieving the key, we try my mace trick again, leading us to a room containing a cow wearing a sombrero. Wall dons the sombrero and we leave victorious.
The mace trick is done once again, leading us to our goal. The door is guarded by a large armored troll. The battle is very one-sided in our favor. Before the final blow can be struck, the troll surrenders and we continue on through the door.
Upon going through the door we are given our next challenge. We must choose amongst us our best dancer. This honor is afforded to Jello, the rest of us are lead down to a lower level. In this room, Jello must make dance checks opposing a female kobold in spandex. For every failed dance check made by Jello, a portion of the floor under us opens up, revealing the cage of a Megaraptor (Huge Velociraptor.) We are allowed to use various means of aiding Jello's dance attempts, but we are prohibited from attacking the other dancer. During this time we are also in combat with 4 raptors.
The battles rage on for several rounds until an unfortunate critical kills Ripper. The Dude does not abide this turn of events and decides now is the time to use his signature move. Carefully lining up the raptors, he unzips his pants utters the command word "Mjolnir" and fires a Sudden Maximized Lightning Bolt from his crotch. This kills or incapacitates the raptors, leaving the wounded easy to dispatch.
As this has been going on for some time, the cage to the Megaraptor has been slowly opening. We decide to be proactive about this and kill it while it is still penned. We take a few potshots but decide it isn't crowd pleasing enough. We buff up Wall and let him ram the raptor into the wall a few times. The beast is felled and we focus all our attention on aiding Jello. Shortly thereafter we are victorious.
Weary and saddened by the death of Ripper, we nonetheless trudge on to our next battle. We are lowered into a large shack lying atop a muddy hill. Surrounding us is a horde of zombies trying to rip apart our meager defenses. Jello and myself expend several of our turning attempts to whittle away at the horde, but once more we are struck with the belief that this isn't going to make us famous. At this time we have an idea that can only be described by using a mishmash of words, "Terrifybulous." The Dude encloses the roof of our ramshackle hut with a web while Killbone proceeds to loosen a few structural supports. Wall is ordered to tip over the building. After doing so we all hop into the now sliding building as we mow down zombies. When all was said and done, we slew 88 zombies without taking any damage or even allowing an attack to be made against us.
Before us now lay our final challenge. We enter a large arena flooded with water containing two boats. We are told that our goal is to slay a man in green armor. Launching our boat we make a beeline for the other vessel and plan to board it. There was a bit of difficulty getting certain members from one boat to the next, but most of the party does get over. Opposing us is a group of lizardmen favoring polearms. After having Jello and Wall fully buffed, they have no trouble slaying all opposition. In one round Jello managed to kill 7 lizardmen.
During this time, Killbone had avoided going topside and instead opted to enter the opponents vessel via their cannon holes (not sure what those are called.) While skulking about she discovers there is a bonus prize awarded if we kill the green-armored man by drowning or feeding him to the shark. Also down there is the green-armored man himself. Fortunately Killbone is invisible from a potion she had drunk, so she goes unnoticed.
Once the final lizardman is slain, our quarry comes to us. He announces that he will slay us all and that we are heathens and some other such nonsense. Killbone yells out to us about this extra victory condition and we all grin like cats with a saucer of milk. In the first round of combat, Wall hurls the man off the boat and into the waiting jaws of a shark.
This was Day One of X-Crawl. Day Two and Three will be typed out later.