Reltzik
2012-02-18, 03:00 PM
No rules comments here, just sharing wackiness from last night's Pathfinder session and the most awesome diplomacy checks ever.... and we left the bard at home.
We're on a ship from point A to point B when a storm causes damage lays us up in a cove we need rope to repair rigging go to that nearby village to get some oh look they're under attack by sea monsters yada yada yada. Typical adventure hook.
Except that the DM, via the captain, sends along a 1st level commoner sailor to help us with the portage. His name is Ensign Ricky, it's his first voyage, and he's eager as a kid in a candy store. He's wearing a red shirt.
Me, jokingly: Okay, forget the rails and forget the plot. The REAL quest is to KEEP THIS GUY ALIVE!
We make our way to the village (having an encounter which Ensign Ricky miraculously survives), investigate it, and find most of the surviving villagers holed up in the nearby lighthouse. We're initially mistaken for some rather nasty overlord types who've been extorting taxes and enforcing devil worship, and the town is hostile and just short of violent. We set about trying to improve their attitude with a series of rebuffed diplomacy attempts. The paladin has a robe of useful items (I think that's what it was), and seeing most of the town cold and shivering produces hot tea for them to drink. (Yes, the fact it's tea is important.) The arcane trickster uses message to whisper into the townsfolks' ears that it's poison, and everyone except one deaf guy refuses to drink it, no matter how much the paladin tries to get them to.
After a few hours of diplomacy RP attempts, the DM gives us a straight-up roll, with various bonuses for the RP, offers of healing so forth. He also rules that two of us can aid-another. After all the bonuses and some very good rolls, we've scored a 37. The DM boggles, and then shows us half a page of typed module, saying, "Here's the table of what I read off to you based on how good you roll for diplomacy. It goes up to a 35." It takes five minutes for him to rattle it all off.
Not long after, magically high tides trap the entire village in the lighthouse, which is attacked by a tentacle horror. The encounter consists of us on the middle floor of the lighthouse attacking a series of tentacles as they crash in through the windows and snake up the stairs, trying to grab party members or villagers at random and drag them into the drink (and likely to their deaths). The villagers panic at the rising water, and before the tentacles even attack we're in the middle of a mob of three dozen commoners stampeding to get up the thin flight of stairs to the top level. Ensign Ricky is one of the ones panicked and, in the first round (which was mostly a buff spell, trying to identify the monster, and the ranger shooting a few arrows out the window) was generally useless and incoherent. The DM illustrates this by putting his mini on the side, spinning it in a circle, and making 3-stooges sounds.
The paladin, not yet having a melee target, attempts a diplomacy check to calm the villagers and get them to proceed up the stairs in a calm, orderly manner. He gets a 28.
DM: "... WOW. Okay, no more *3-stooges sounds*. They're all *British accent* hup-hup, stiff upper lip, queue up roit nicely." Then he sips his pepsi with an outstretched pinky.
Us: "So they're all sipping tea now!"
DM: "Yeah, you made the diplomacy check so they're finally drinking the paladin's tea as they file up in a neat orderly manner."
Us: "And Ricky's fine too?"
DM: "Oh, yup, he's magically got a monocle and top-hat now and is ushering them up the stairs, tip-tip-cheerio."
Then the tentacles attack, panic sets in again. The cleric pops a bless to give EVERYONE a morale bonus against fear, the others kill the first wave of tentacles, and the paladin once again has no target. Another diplomacy check, this time for a 30, and all the villagers are British again. We only have a mini for Ricky, so he's the one the DM illustrates as going up the stairs while making random, nonsensical British-sounding turns of phrases and offering the villagers scones.
(It was about this point we realized that the session was turning silly.)
Fastforward through the encounter, in which the tentacles manage to grab lots of villagers but don't survive until the next round to drag them out of the lighthouse. The DM rolls freakishly bad and the ranger freakishly well, and we end with a flawless victory: Every last villager saved, and no damage to anyone. The DM glances down at the module notes, does a double-take, and reveals the mechanics involved to us: The fight was to last until we destroyed 10 tentacles, or 10 villagers were taken. We are now entitled to another diplomacy check to improve the attitude of the town, with a +1 for every villager (out of 10) saved.
Us: "But we already got it all!" "So, wait, a +10 bonus on top of everything else we had before?" "That buff's still in play, it gives +2 to skill checks too." "And the DC has to be lower because they're already Friendly, right?" "Guys, I just rolled a nat 20." "Whoa, we're like their messiah figures right now."
The adventure's far from over, but the town's already drawing up plans for our statues.
As we took a break, the DM declared that Ricky was now permanently British, that he would advance in level as we did, eventually rising to captain and then admiral, and found the British Navy. If any of our PCs died, we'd get to play Ricky until we'd finished rolling new characters. If Ricky ever died, he'd score a resurrection somehow. Even if we started a new campaign in an entirely different setting, Ricky would appear in it.
We'd not only kept the redshirt alive, we made him completely immortal.
BEST. DIPLOMACY. CHECK. EVER.
We're on a ship from point A to point B when a storm causes damage lays us up in a cove we need rope to repair rigging go to that nearby village to get some oh look they're under attack by sea monsters yada yada yada. Typical adventure hook.
Except that the DM, via the captain, sends along a 1st level commoner sailor to help us with the portage. His name is Ensign Ricky, it's his first voyage, and he's eager as a kid in a candy store. He's wearing a red shirt.
Me, jokingly: Okay, forget the rails and forget the plot. The REAL quest is to KEEP THIS GUY ALIVE!
We make our way to the village (having an encounter which Ensign Ricky miraculously survives), investigate it, and find most of the surviving villagers holed up in the nearby lighthouse. We're initially mistaken for some rather nasty overlord types who've been extorting taxes and enforcing devil worship, and the town is hostile and just short of violent. We set about trying to improve their attitude with a series of rebuffed diplomacy attempts. The paladin has a robe of useful items (I think that's what it was), and seeing most of the town cold and shivering produces hot tea for them to drink. (Yes, the fact it's tea is important.) The arcane trickster uses message to whisper into the townsfolks' ears that it's poison, and everyone except one deaf guy refuses to drink it, no matter how much the paladin tries to get them to.
After a few hours of diplomacy RP attempts, the DM gives us a straight-up roll, with various bonuses for the RP, offers of healing so forth. He also rules that two of us can aid-another. After all the bonuses and some very good rolls, we've scored a 37. The DM boggles, and then shows us half a page of typed module, saying, "Here's the table of what I read off to you based on how good you roll for diplomacy. It goes up to a 35." It takes five minutes for him to rattle it all off.
Not long after, magically high tides trap the entire village in the lighthouse, which is attacked by a tentacle horror. The encounter consists of us on the middle floor of the lighthouse attacking a series of tentacles as they crash in through the windows and snake up the stairs, trying to grab party members or villagers at random and drag them into the drink (and likely to their deaths). The villagers panic at the rising water, and before the tentacles even attack we're in the middle of a mob of three dozen commoners stampeding to get up the thin flight of stairs to the top level. Ensign Ricky is one of the ones panicked and, in the first round (which was mostly a buff spell, trying to identify the monster, and the ranger shooting a few arrows out the window) was generally useless and incoherent. The DM illustrates this by putting his mini on the side, spinning it in a circle, and making 3-stooges sounds.
The paladin, not yet having a melee target, attempts a diplomacy check to calm the villagers and get them to proceed up the stairs in a calm, orderly manner. He gets a 28.
DM: "... WOW. Okay, no more *3-stooges sounds*. They're all *British accent* hup-hup, stiff upper lip, queue up roit nicely." Then he sips his pepsi with an outstretched pinky.
Us: "So they're all sipping tea now!"
DM: "Yeah, you made the diplomacy check so they're finally drinking the paladin's tea as they file up in a neat orderly manner."
Us: "And Ricky's fine too?"
DM: "Oh, yup, he's magically got a monocle and top-hat now and is ushering them up the stairs, tip-tip-cheerio."
Then the tentacles attack, panic sets in again. The cleric pops a bless to give EVERYONE a morale bonus against fear, the others kill the first wave of tentacles, and the paladin once again has no target. Another diplomacy check, this time for a 30, and all the villagers are British again. We only have a mini for Ricky, so he's the one the DM illustrates as going up the stairs while making random, nonsensical British-sounding turns of phrases and offering the villagers scones.
(It was about this point we realized that the session was turning silly.)
Fastforward through the encounter, in which the tentacles manage to grab lots of villagers but don't survive until the next round to drag them out of the lighthouse. The DM rolls freakishly bad and the ranger freakishly well, and we end with a flawless victory: Every last villager saved, and no damage to anyone. The DM glances down at the module notes, does a double-take, and reveals the mechanics involved to us: The fight was to last until we destroyed 10 tentacles, or 10 villagers were taken. We are now entitled to another diplomacy check to improve the attitude of the town, with a +1 for every villager (out of 10) saved.
Us: "But we already got it all!" "So, wait, a +10 bonus on top of everything else we had before?" "That buff's still in play, it gives +2 to skill checks too." "And the DC has to be lower because they're already Friendly, right?" "Guys, I just rolled a nat 20." "Whoa, we're like their messiah figures right now."
The adventure's far from over, but the town's already drawing up plans for our statues.
As we took a break, the DM declared that Ricky was now permanently British, that he would advance in level as we did, eventually rising to captain and then admiral, and found the British Navy. If any of our PCs died, we'd get to play Ricky until we'd finished rolling new characters. If Ricky ever died, he'd score a resurrection somehow. Even if we started a new campaign in an entirely different setting, Ricky would appear in it.
We'd not only kept the redshirt alive, we made him completely immortal.
BEST. DIPLOMACY. CHECK. EVER.