So, what'd your group do tonight?

[mikeejimbo]

Mine robbed a magic shop. No, it wasn't an evil magic shop. Nor are we chaotic good rogues who steal from the rich and give to the poor. We're not thieves at all, really. We're just evil jerks.

So how about you?

[DaMullet]

My group rolled characters and tried to explain the concept of a d20 to a complete n00b. His only experience with RPGs is Knights of the Old Republic on computer, which hardly counts, considering it's star wars.

[mikeejimbo]

My group rolled characters and tried to explain the concept of a d20 to a complete n00b. His only experience with RPGs is Knights of the Old Republic on computer, which hardly counts, considering it's star wars.

And also, on a computer.

[DaMullet]

Some computer DnD games are fairly true to life, and tell you what you 'rolled.' KotOR is not one of them.

[mikeejimbo]

Some computer DnD games are fairly true to life, and tell you what you 'rolled.' KotOR is not one of them.

Yeah, I didn't think it was D&D based, at least.

[DaMullet]

It's d20 Star Wars on computer. If you've ever played that, you know what I mean. It's got d6 and d10 flavored damage dice, it's got all 6 major ability scores, but you can't see what you rolled, and the skills and feats are handled differently.

[MrNexx]

I've been talking on another forum about how to get set up for running a 1st edition game over the Christmas break, until everyone can get back for the finale... a Priest of Heironeous (who's been working for Vecna for the past umpteen years) riding in on a Tarterian dragon, intent on causing a fair amount of destruction, while the rest of the cells of Vecna (priests of Ehlonna, Obad-hai, Kord, etc.; several merchant houses, those thieves who escaped the purges, etc.) rise up throughout the city to make the streets run red.

Then the demi-gods are going to battle it out over the city.

[Magnus_Samma]

My party is breaking into the home of a being who is capable of killing all of them by thinking about it really hard.

:D

[Emperor Tippy]

Actually my group played last night and we managed to *accidentally* start a religious war between 15 different deities (its a home brew Parthenon)

[Seatbelt]

I havent played in so long. :(

[reorith]

my party was about to defeat a hydra until we opted to go get drunk irl

[RoboticSheeple]

Nothing will happen for awhile. it's finals week and then j-term

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

In mine a character got raped by Graz'zt, became impregnated with his baby and found a demiplane where a year passes in 6 seconds and got a 26 year old half-graz'zt minion in 2 and a half minutes.

Well that didn't happen tonight, but that's the most recent thing that happened.

[Were-Sandwich]

We kicked the crap out of some monsters attacking the lightning rail, then got attacked by a Babau for no apparent reason. My DM needs to work on his plots.

[Falrin]

We hired 3 servants/hirelings to cary our loot. They got drunk before we started and got to knock one down to keep him still.

[OzymandiasVolt]

We were mentally assaulted by a goatman who was being remotely dominated by some other entity. Also I found out that Forcewave is a crappy spell and that the party telepath thinks bacon is the greatest thing ever.

[TSGames]

I havent played in so long. :(
*sigh* me 2.
last time though my party was looking for a magical device that created fears and we ended up killing a phrenblahblah(from Xpsi) and that's about it.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Last weekend, my players got to experience the fun of Vampire-dominated city watchmen, airship travel, a tacked-on whodunnit trying to find the McGuffin-toting bad guy, and finally, an assault on their ship by the worst-disguised not-really-pirates in history, cullminating in a dramatic crash sequence. Fortunately, the bard took Feather Fall. In case you're wondering, we were doing part 3 (I believe, may have been 4) of the published Eberron adventure "Whisper of the Vampire's Blade."

They also ran away from a crazy sorceress and her fearsome 1st-level spells, missed all the mini-plothooks that would have lead to exposition, or at least monologuing, and skipped some of the free samples of Magic of Eberron weaponry I threw in there. And somehow, all the named NPC's and the bad guy's ship survived the segment, although the latter was only because I'm not playing the bad guys as freaking idiots. Well, not their commander. The mooks were dumb enough to go and smash the good-guy-ship's Dragonshard because they were ordered to.

[PMDM]

Mine got run out of Sigil, trying to instigate a Culeless rebellion, by the Lady of Pain. They're currently hiding out in Xoas with Rilmani who promise to keep them safe.

[Nahal]

Well I play again tomorrow night, but last week we:

-Killed a doctor with a heroin overdose
-Strapped him to the master bed in the house in which we were staying (we're in 1947 in a time-travel campaign, so fingerprinting isn't a problem)
-Escaped from the cannibal cult that owned said house, after discovering that the doctor was a member
-Found the time-traveller safehouse, discovered our contact was dead in the kitchen
-Were visited by Germans pretending to be federal agents who wanted to bring us in
-Refused, and quickly found the escape route when the germans started dumping chlorine cannisters in through the windows
-Unearthed a child's skull, whose ghost is now an NPC in the party
-Were directed through the sewers by a sentient cat who is also a party NPC
-Oh, and at some point we had 1 round of combat where I shot a hole through the hand of a large cannibal woman brandishing a meat cleaver.

My GM's campaigns are screwy.

[Skyserpent]

um... we studied for final exams.

[Folie]

We hung out at our respective hometowns and/or vacation locales. Hooray for Winter Break!

[Vance_Nevada]

Some computer DnD games are fairly true to life, and tell you what you 'rolled.' KotOR is not one of them.

KotoR IS d20, and it does tell you what you rolled. It's in the Messages/Feedback screen. You can analyse every hit you take, and it helpfully lays out all the modifiers. It's very well explained, but put in the background because most players don't need to bother.

[BCOVertigo]

*sigh* me 2.
last time though my party was looking for a magical device that created fears and we ended up killing a phrenblahblah(from Xpsi) and that's about it.

It was a Phthisic, it's not that hard! Say it with me, Pfth...hmm, never mind then.

My group captured a wyvern and the ninja with craft:poison was quite happy. That and I did a short stint in the plane of earth trading spells and witty banterings with an npc. Eventually we agreed that he could have the plot item if I could have his plane skipping amulet and a means of contacting him for protection if our current employer caught on to me. Next session we'll be explaining to our employer (a king) that we failed to get him the plot item but we want a second chance to find the thief and correct the problem.

A few well placed bluff checks and I'll have so many factions tied up in this conflict I'll have that entire kingdom under my control, PH33R TEH BEGUILERZ LAWL.

[Dark]

KotoR IS d20, and it does tell you what you rolled. It's in the Messages/Feedback screen. You can analyse every hit you take, and it helpfully lays out all the modifiers. It's very well explained, but put in the background because most players don't need to bother.
I actually went and bought the Star Wars D20 book because I was so impressed with KOTOR 2, but I was disappointed that Jedi weren't nearly as badass as they are in the computer game. From some of the notes in the book, I gathered that this was a deliberate change from an earlier edition, but it didn't appeal to me at all. I don't want seven levels of "how does this thing work", I want flying lightsabers!

[JadedDM]

My group is currently working on their characters for our next 2E campaign, which probably won't start until after the holidays. It's a monster slayer theme, where all the PCs are a group of slayers who basically kill monsters for fun and profit.

So far only one player has actually finished her character, a human fighter who is also an exotic dancer. She incorporates her dance moves into her sword play for extra flair.

[BnF95]

Some members of one of my groups decided that robbing the Temple of St. Cuthbert would be fun. Unfortunately, that was the group which included a Priest of St. Cuthbert and a Paladin of St. Cuthbert (both also PCs) who happened to stay at the temple (instead of the inn ... it is cheaper and they tithe anyway). Needless to say, the Cleric (FTR1/CLR4) and Paladin (FTR4/PAL1) attacked the hooded mystery men (FTR4/BRB1; FTR1/ROG4; SOR1/WIZ4) inflicting major damage ... enough that they were caught by the NPC priests ... and hung. End of session while the PCs bickered.

[purepolarpanzer]

One of my fellow PC's thought it would be funny to shove me out towards the door we were sneaking up on. A few crappy reflex saves later, I fall over the edge and have to make a new PC.

[Ravyn]

Haven't played with them for a bit, but the last time I saw 'em my manipulator-character tried to get a particularly pushy NPC off of her teammate's back by implying to a mob of random people that said NPC was working with servants of demons. The good news is, it ticked them off. The bad news is, the long-term effect, and the long-term consequences, didn't work out so well. Lighter hand next time, I think.

The one I'm running's on hold, more's the pity. But I think one of the players is about to try to addict the gods to his cooking. (The scary part is that for him, this is a perfectly reasonable ambition.)

[Leon]

I learnt how to make a M&M 2nd Ed Super hero and then our lil team was sent on a training mission to see if we had the stuff to join the cities Defense team - we passed the attack bots easy and were well into a game of Hold the ball for 30sec's to win in a room full of objects when i had to leave so i dont know how it turned out

But upto that point it was much fun - Kineticist Ftw

[clarkvalentine]

Half the party blunted an attack on Lannisport (blunted it, they didn't stop it completely) by a fleet of ironborn raiders.

The other half were betrayed by their hosts and barely escaped being imprisoned in the fortress the first half was defending.

Every once in a while I'm an evil GM. ;)

[Jades]

My Warlock 1/Cleric 4 was given an item that grants him the ability to cast like a sorcerer with a level equal to my HD. (We had no arcane support other than my one level in warlock, and I worship a god of magic. Somehow, it makes sense to give me that item...)

The group that I run destroyed a city by summoning two great wyrm dragons to it. That is to say that one of them invoked the wrath of Tiamat who sent two great wyrm dragons to destroy the last standing freeborn city. The group escaped by plane hopping, accidentially, and were captured by Litorians.

[ghost_warlock]

Well I play again tomorrow night, but last week we:

-Killed a doctor with a heroin overdose
-Strapped him to the master bed in the house in which we were staying (we're in 1947 in a time-travel campaign, so fingerprinting isn't a problem)
-Escaped from the cannibal cult that owned said house, after discovering that the doctor was a member
-Found the time-traveller safehouse, discovered our contact was dead in the kitchen
-Were visited by Germans pretending to be federal agents who wanted to bring us in
-Refused, and quickly found the escape route when the germans started dumping chlorine cannisters in through the windows
-Unearthed a child's skull, whose ghost is now an NPC in the party
-Were directed through the sewers by a sentient cat who is also a party NPC
-Oh, and at some point we had 1 round of combat where I shot a hole through the hand of a large cannibal woman brandishing a meat cleaver.

My GM's campaigns are screwy.
That actually sounds like a lot of fun to me! :smallbiggrin:

My campaigns: Nothing, nadda. I dissolved my actual gaming group last weekend because I'm tired of the players being disgusting, immature, uwnwashed (literally), mooches!

I'm getting ready to start playing a solo PbP game a friend of mine from work is going to run for me. We were originally going to have 2 PCs but the DM and I think that a month is more than enough time for the other guy to have created his character, which he hasn't done, so we're just going to play without him. :smallmad:

My character: CN draconic human, gestalt hexblade/shadowmage (homebrew class). Campaign World: Mystara/Greyhawk (in the DM's cosmology, Greyhawk is Mystara 3,000 years in the past - yes, this is weird but it's all based around a weird bit about Blackmoor).

The basic premise is that my character has to travel back in time (from Mystara to Greyhawk) to stop his time-travelling dragon progenitor/ancestor, Eribonyxtaliff, from destroying it's "dissappointing" offspring; which would end up destroying my character before he's even born. The dragon is a Great Wyrm black dragon with all 12 levels of the Disciple of Ashardalon PrC from Draconomicon. Needless to say, this isn't going to be easy!

[Nahal]

That actually sounds like a lot of fun to me! :smallbiggrin:

They're a blast when we know what the Almighty Bob is going on, or can see some sort of path from cool plot twist A to cool plot twist B. But prior to this campaign the plots were set out in such a way as to make this type of situation occasional at best. Intricate and well-thought-out, but too complicated and unforgiving for the party to navigate successfully. Since learning a bit more about how my GM thinks (and him understanding the limits of his players' ability to follow his plotlines with the very limited information we have available) it's become easier for sessions like the one I described to take place. It's still early yet though; there's plenty of time for one (or more) of us to seriously screw up space-time.

[ghost_warlock]

It's still early yet though; there's plenty of time for one (or more) of us to seriously screw up space-time.

Given the campaign I'm gearing up to play in (post above), I'd say that's a problem I'll be facing soon, too! And I could definitely end up accidentally erasing myself from the continuum in the process... :smalltongue:

"Wait...but if I go back in time and prevent my own birth, how did I exist to go back in time in the first place? Arrrrgh!"

Hello, Mr. Paradox! :smallbiggrin:

My Character: "OK. Well, this all seems in order, so I guess I'll - oh! Wait. You seem to have made a mistake right here."
Auditor of Reality: "Aw man! What's the mistake?"
My Character: "I'm Chaotic." :belkar:

[Wagadodo]

Well mine did this Saturday.

Set up a lens to purify a well spring of rejunviantion to cleanse a healing magical artifact that was curropted by the god of undeath. Saved a black dragon in the said same spring that turned this black dragon into an Iron Dragon.

Got betrayed by the Kobold Wizard NPC that was with them by setting up a magical nail in the ground to spring forth grasping skeletal hands.

Was attacked by a Undead army as they escaped into a partial ruins partial etheral ghost citidal.

Was saved from the same Undead army by a mercenary NPC's and Draconian army so they could be lead to safety, as they now are going to be running for their collective lives.

[chrek]

The game I run on Friday: (Post apocalyptic D&D, d20 modern & Star Wars world)
The players were confronted by local law enforcement as they returned to their base of operations, given some vague information about the background story to the campaign, as well as sent on a quest that will allow them to adventure in town without fines/jail time.

The best part of this was when everyone stepped out of the SUV we were traveling in, they made sure all their weapons were visible. I had my NPCs do nothing in retaliation (4 NPC minions, and 1 insanely high level NPC to make sure the players behave themselves). I got impression that the players were thinking about jumping the NPCs, right up until one of them started running his mouth a bit, and I used Jedi Mind trick to force him to quiet. Here's how that went between me and the player:

Me: Make a Will save.

Player: (Impressed with himself) 28!

Me: You feel totally uninterested in speaking.

Player: ...I failed on a 28? Crap...

Mind you I rolled very high on the NPC's check, but everyone else behaved themselves :)

Saturday Night, A game that I play in with the character that is my avatar and namesake:

We unleashed the summoned incarnation of Murder and Carnage on Graz'zit's home plane...that'll teach the bastard to send us personal death threats, right?

[Shisumo]

We wrapped up Shadows of the Last War, in a series of fights which utterly failed to threaten the PCs until we got to the elementals at the end (even after I added HD to basically all the encounters to try to balance out the two extra PCs). I almost managed to kill the barbarian in the climax, though, so it's all good.

I'm trying to figure out how to make Whispers of the Vampire's Blade make sense, though. I added some spyish overtones to a couple of the encounters in Shadows, but I'm still not sure how to make the adventure work as a coherent followup. Anybody got any suggestions?

[Mr_Teatime]

Well, I introduced a new PC today as our two existing PC's sleeping cellmate (They're in prison for multiple homicide and treason. A surefire recipe for madcap adventure!). The bard tried to pick the sleeping guy's pockets and was promptly punched in the nose by his now very much awake cellmate.

Good times.

[Nahal]

Well our session last night was good fun, aside from the very end. The rundown:
-We met the person inhabiting our cat, along with another mysterious individual, in what amounts to a temporal safehouse.
-The strange man gave us two artifacts styled like Nazi regalia, an old metal blade on a shiny, immaculate nazi hilt that heals people when you stab them (we deduced it's the remnants of the Spear of Destiny, and didn't discover this power until combat much later) and a ring that is supposedly very powerful but all it did when I tried to put it on was try to turn me into hitler (I'm actually serious).
-The police caught up with us and we got bundled onto the back of an army truck. About 45 minutes out of town the truck got a flat, and the commanding officer made us get off and change the tire (the inner tire on the back axle of an army deuce from 1947, so it was a couple hundred pounds). While this was going on he covertly either killed or sent off the escort troops then tried to get me to give him the Ring of Hitler. Well technically he asked for the box, so I slipped the ring on when another party member broke for cover (bugger made it too, and wound up being key in the resulting combat) and gave the captain the box. He didn't see the humor, and shot me in the leg. Mind you he'd shot everyone but the guy who got to cover.
-During combat the captain got shot, and when I went to CDG him I discovered the knife's power. Needless to say combat went on for longer than it should. We're lucky to have survived the grenades.

[Nerd-o-rama]

We wrapped up Shadows of the Last War, in a series of fights which utterly failed to threaten the PCs until we got to the elementals at the end (even after I added HD to basically all the encounters to try to balance out the two extra PCs). I almost managed to kill the barbarian in the climax, though, so it's all good.

I'm trying to figure out how to make Whispers of the Vampire's Blade make sense, though. I added some spyish overtones to a couple of the encounters in Shadows, but I'm still not sure how to make the adventure work as a coherent followup. Anybody got any suggestions?
Well, the way I set up the introduction is that Lady Elaydrin recommended the PC's to Mr. Maelak as "people who can get a dirty job done." Plot-hook generating NPCs, in my mind, tend to communicate about whom they've hired, much like real employers.

As far as making the plot make sense within WotVB, though...I've tried, and I think I've failed.

[Thrawn183]

Well the group I play in Friday nights: we killed a sleeping troll, delivered a message to the head of the church in a foreign country to initiate an invasion and some of the party won some weird battle of the wits.

The group I DM on saturdays: we finished a set of arena combats where the pc's killed a group of four barbarians and then in the second fight were tpk'd by a single cleric (who entered with 17 active self buffs :smallbiggrin: ) why god why don't they prepare dispel magic? He had nothing left to cast... well ok, other than the firestorm he started off with. Then they all got a free true res. but its the only one they're getting.

The group I play with on friday nights is currently not meeting (one day of finals left counting tomorrow) and is drawing up characters for an Arcana Evolved campaign next semester when the current one comes to a close.

[its_all_ogre]

they split up and the half dragon monk/fighter that was following them appeared and killed two of them.
the other two came back with 'rubbish npc' and then he killed them too.
TPK!
now i have a week to write up new adventure/world/setting etc.
damn them!

[RandomNPC]

we play tomorrow, one of two things will happen. the meat shield without weapon or armor will stand back and be a bow fighter untill the end of the session where he finds a dead adventurer with a greatsword for treasure, or the meat shield will be just that, a medium sized object used to protect others from harm, untill its purpose can no longer be served.

thing is he has five cursed arrows that come back for him. and 48 other arrows, all mixed together. what can i say, he's a collector of things he doesn't plan on having a use for.

either way i see much fun to be had by all, except the meat shield, i give him a 50/50 chance to have fun, but im trying.

[MrNexx]

Monday, my group did not show up, despite me having a 1st edition adventure ready for them.

[Falconsflight]

My freinds were playing an evil campaign, they burned down a house with two children and an adult inside. They left town as quick as possible, where they were stopped by 3 lvl 25 gaurds (They were only lvl 10) And they stopped them for their crime. One member(who put the children in the building, killed the owner and stole all his merchendise) accused the guy who started the fire of burning down the building, and thus killing everybody inside. The point of doing this? So that member goes to jail. Then they can level up by breaking him out. But he decided to cast darkness, the lvl 25 gaurds attacked him, needless to say, he died.

The funny/wierd part? They were all scared good and the rest of the campaign was a good campaign

[Hallavast]

Ok. Last night, my group explored a cave. In this cave we found...salt. And pools of water. And dead ends. Yep. And the DM kept saying "well, what do you guys expect? It's a cave!".

:smallfurious:

Oh, and when we finally found a room that wasn't just another part of a natural cavern... the room exploded when we walked in. The whole session took no less than 5 hours. :smallannoyed:

[Artanis]

I'm not actually in a DnD campaign at the moment, but in the last session of the Exalted game I'm part of, we had the first session (of two) of the final showdown of the story arc. The Circle is trying to take an immobile superweapon of sorts away from the Realm, and the last battle is against four Immaculates and an absurdly heavily-armored veteran Dragonblood.That session one ran out of time right after my Dawn pinged the veteran with the Grand Daiklave that she's one-shotted an Abyssal with.

[Dan_Hemmens]

Most recent session: Mountaintop Martial Arts battle with the Unrighteous Warrior who destroyed the city of Six Strong Gates.

Then again, I'm running Weapons of the Gods.

[Poison_Fish]

I'm not actually in a DnD campaign at the moment, but in the last session of the Exalted game I'm part of, we had the first session (of two) of the final showdown of the story arc. The Circle is trying to take an immobile superweapon of sorts away from the Realm, and the last battle is against four Immaculates and an absurdly heavily-armored veteran Dragonblood.That session one ran out of time right after my Dawn pinged the veteran with the Grand Daiklave that she's one-shotted an Abyssal with.

Someone must have a buff artifact and be running Defense from Anathema Method.

[Artanis]

Someone must have a buff artifact and be running Defense from Anathema Method.
The veteran, you mean? AFAIK, the only charm he's actually running at the moment is Elemental Battlefield, but that caused plenty of problems since I had to blow my charm use on an Excellency just to hit him in the first place instead of using my "kill anything really really fast" combo (which, I'm sure, was a big part of why the storyteller pulled out EB). And then his armor had something like 30 lethal soak...:smalltongue:

[Shisumo]

Well, the way I set up the introduction is that Lady Elaydrin recommended the PC's to Mr. Maelak as "people who can get a dirty job done." Plot-hook generating NPCs, in my mind, tend to communicate about whom they've hired, much like real employers.

As far as making the plot make sense within WotVB, though...I've tried, and I think I've failed.

I took a slightly different route: I added Lucan to the group traveling with Garrow at Rose Quarry and then later at Whitehearth (dominated, not undead yet), and decided that Failin is actually a Dark Lantern, recruited after being thrown out of House Orien - the battle with the bugbears took on a different slant when the PCs searched their unconscious bodies and found IDs suggesting that they were members of the Darguuni intelligence agency. I also have shifted Lucan's allegiance from the Dark Lanterns to House Thuranni, on the assumption that the entire "hire outsiders to deal with this problem" plotline makes a great deal more sense if it's not an in-house problem to begin with.

So the idea is this: the PCs start with a bit of history with Lucan before the game even begins - they'll remember him from the last encounter particularly, because he was holding a knife to Failin's throat when the party emerged from Whitehearth - and Failin provides the report to Maelak that gets the PCs hired, both because they proved themselves in front of Failin and because Failin knows that the PCs have dealt with Lucan in the past.

Now, however, the tricky part begins. I need to a) find a way to explain what's going on to the PCs before the adventure ends, b) make the Whispers plotline integrated into the larger battle against the Order of the Emerald Claw and the Lord of Blades somehow, and c) figure out how to adjudicate XP awards when every major battle says "(EL variable)" next to it.

[Valairn]

I haven't played in like a year, it makes me sad

[Poison_Fish]

The veteran, you mean? AFAIK, the only charm he's actually running at the moment is Elemental Battlefield, but that caused plenty of problems since I had to blow my charm use on an Excellency just to hit him in the first place instead of using my "kill anything really really fast" combo (which, I'm sure, was a big part of why the storyteller pulled out EB). And then his armor had something like 30 lethal soak...:smalltongue:

Ah, 2E, hehe. Yeah, best to watch out for DB soak monkeys. Though, 30 soak is pretty impressive. Best of luck GrandDaiklaving him

[Brianish]

a home brew Parthenon)

Dude... really?

[Matthew]

Monday, my group did not show up, despite me having a 1st edition adventure ready for them.

That sucks, but I suppose it is the run up to Christmas...


Dude... really?

I would say it is a safe bet he meant pantheon... but a homebrewed Parthenon would be pretty cool!

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Last I DMed, the group sorcerer put her toad familiar in what appeared to be a mine cart, pulled a lever and sent it careening away at some insanely fast speed (and far outside of her one mile radius for control), and spent two days going down the tunnel trying to get to it. After a harrowing journey down a dark, dank track that more then once almost killed her and the other PC accompanying, they got to the end just to find two hobgoblins enjoying some fresh toad stew.

Meanwhile, another PC was out in the city trying to lie his way to meeting the Lady of the castle. He failed, but used a nearby inn as his base of operations in the meanwhile. One day he woke up to find half his gold missing, then the next he was missing it all. He went to go ask some guards to look into it, and then was jumped by the innkeeper and a group of assassins when he discovered, almost too late, that they were the ones who took his money. He and two guards almost died fighting these guys until he finally managed to get his gold back and decide that this city sucked and he was never coming back again, as he failed to do anything of importance and almost got killed and/or robbed blind.

Then he lit a werebear on fire to escape it, thinking it was one of the many grizzly bears that seem to attack him all the time out in those forests, since he travels with over 100 lbs. of salted meat at any given time. They're used to convince another PC, who wasn't even with him that time, to do anything he demands. Because that PC's entire life revolves around obtaining and eating meat, you see.

That PC basically just went around acting like an idiot in the fort they'd taken over last adventure. He managed to do nothing of any importance the entire time.

The final PC started a tour of the nearby villages/cities to ply her various trades and gain a little easy gold, since she wasn't up to following the others to certain death down below and she didn't believe the plan to weasel into a high court was a very good idea.

My PC's refuse to stay together much of the time. But it's kind of fun that way :)

[Nerd-o-rama]

<snip>

Now, however, the tricky part begins. I need to a) find a way to explain what's going on to the PCs before the adventure ends, b) make the Whispers plotline integrated into the larger battle against the Order of the Emerald Claw and the Lord of Blades somehow, and c) figure out how to adjudicate XP awards when every major battle says "(EL variable)" next to it.
That's an interesting, and far better thought-out route than I used. Then again, I wasn't DMing when we did SotLW, so I didn't really have that option.

(Spoilers for my group. That means you, K.)

Heh. I actually did have Garrow dominating Lucan during the airship battle in Whispers. I mean, what else is Control Undead for? Of course, the Soul Blade was also trying to control Lucan (I decided it was pro-Karrnath but was politically knowledgeable enough to be anti-Emerald Claw), so they ended up locked in a battle of wills that, to the party, looked like Lucan and the "pirate captain" having a staring contest. By the way, they figured out the enemies were Emerald Claw goons, but not that the captain is Garrow. Or that Garrow isn't a vampire.

As for your tricky part...well, for part c) I just use the Encounter Calculator (http://www.d20srd.org/encounterCalculator.htm) for the literal number of enemies they defeat. I think I gave them bonus XP for getting a few hits in on Lucan and Grilsha during encounters when the latter two ran away.

For part b)
well, the Emerald Claw's part is obvious. They and the party are now going after two of the same McGuffins, although I hope to end this module with the Soul Blade firmly back in Citadel custody so we can get back to the schema/creation pattern story. As for involving the Lord of Blades' goons (and I do want to, since they haven't been seen since the Forgotten Forge)...well, I'm having trouble with that. I'm trying to figure out why the hell the Whispers writers thought the 'Forged operatives could or would track the party to the lightning rail. I mean, they just fell out of the damn sky. I think I've got a handle on it though: one of the party was stalked and briefly spoke to a Warforged goon in Trolanport before the masquerade, who tried (and failed) to talk her into a back alley so he could beat the schemas' locations out of her. The 'Forged figured out they skipped town on an airship that would be stopping in Starilaskur and Flamekeep, so they're headed in that direction. Some on horses, with a couple spies taking the lightning rail. When the latter fortuitously find the party on the same train (hey, I like using Deus ex Machina with Lord of Blades minions. The LoBster thinks he is a Deus ex Machina), they call their buddies, and the next setpiece encounter happens.)

And as for a)...I like villainous monologues, is all I'm saying. Even from guys that are more victims of circumstance than villains.

[goat]

On Tuesday night, my L5R group fought an Oni. It was about 16 feet tall, and seemed to take immense hilarity in calling out our party for duels.

Our primary Duellist, who was a secondary character being run by the DM (and was also the champion of our shenjuga), was the only person to fail their honour check, and ended up accepting their challenge. She died from his dishonourable counter-blow after taking about 1/4 of his (130) HP in one strike, and then the other three of us in the party managed to just about finish it off by the time it had laid out our shenjuga and stolen the souls of me and the other Bushi.

Needless to say, we're pretty pissed off by this fact, especially as we only just lost a different character two sessions ago. But it's not the GM's fault. He was amazed when I rolled 49 off two exploding D10's, and we were amazed when he managed to hit the obsecenely duel optimised DMNPC. He seems to be quite happy about the fact we now have a side-quest to get our souls back...

This leaves two of us out of our original party of four to complete our mission, and one of us survived the battle by two HP. I was very happy to recieve his ludicrously high Christmas XP handout.

[illyrus]

Last game session our party(lvl 9 to 11) finished off a max HD gargantuan fiendish bulette we thought to be the great maneater of the south. In the end we realised it was his mother/mate/something else.

After that we sought out an old enemy that was currently holed up with a troll tribe. We were ambushed in the night by the troll leaders, killing one and capturing the other. We realised who they were after questioning the captive one and modified his memory to make it believe it has won the fight with us and sent him off towards the troll camp. We then ambushed a troll warband coming back from a successful haul to the camp and killed them before the first round of combat was over. This was a pleasant turn of events because A) The warband wasn't an EL 4 to 5 levels above our party level like 95% of the encounters we fight and B) We almost never get a surprise round.

The old enemy is Dunrat from the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign. We're playing that module with alot of custom content thrown in. We've just started clearing the creatures of the outer fane, but Dunrat has just be an elusive bugger, choosing to run instead of fight several times before in mass battles where we can't hope to pursue and where there are bigger fish to fry. In this case we're devoting our time to just him.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I just began a new session as a PC tonight. I'm playing a changeling rogue (as per the discussions I've had with the other fine forum members here), but my DM, who hates my love of min/maxing, refused to let me just play like that. So I came up with an... interesting compromise.

It was partially based on the name I chose from a completely random list- Ethan. It somehow crossed my mind that it resembled "Elan" (I'm allowed to mention that I read this comic religiously here, right? Right?) and that his evil twin brother's name was just that name backwards. So I got to thinking- I'm a changeling, right? I'm sure I'd have some identity issues.

In the end, I randomly roll every few hours in game time to determine one of three completely seperate personalities:
1-2: Ethan, chaotic good. He's upbeat, loves helping others, and is unbelievably naive, sometimes to the point of annoyance. He'll do anything in his power to do the right thing, even putting himself in danger.
3-4: Hante, chaotic neutral. He's a pessimist who's sole joy appears to be playing (mostly) harmless pranks on others and sticking one to the local authority whenever he gets the chance. On ocassion he'll do something mean spirited for the hell of it, but he'll just as often help someone out for no reason other then it was very easy to do so.
5-6: Thane, chaotic evil. This guy's a huge jerk off. He derives immense pleasure from causing others pain and getting away with it. He loves nothing more then finding the limits he can push people to without creating a backlash.

All in all, between my changes, I helped the party gain entrance to a lord about a quest and get passage on a ship. Then I robbed a PC of his gold when he wasn't looking and used sleight of hand tricks on the street to gain even more gold, then went to the slums and climbed up a roof. From there I proceeded to destroy a chimney, throw a brick at (and kill) a pig, change into a dwarf that was also on the roof by coincidence, blame everything on him with two clever uses of disguise self, then calmly walk back to the local tavern.

At the tavern, I started a drinking game where I was cheating very heavily. I almost got away with it, too. Then I slipped up and the other patrons attacked me. I got away and used disguise self to evade capture, but I was seen. I bribed that guy to shut up. Some guards showed up and my compatriot PC, whom I robbed earlier (he doesn't know about that, and he also doesn't know I'm actually a changeling), almost got arrested for trying to save me from the fight I ditched on. The guards questioned everyone, and ended up pressing the guy I bribed until he cracked and said what I was masquerading as (halfling). There were two halflings. I said I was the real halfling, but because I was drunken, my bluffing ended up equal to the real halfling's diplomacy. So we were both dragged off to prison for a night for creating a disturbance. Before I went to bed, I drank all the water I was given to sober up, took a long pee in the chamber pot afforded me, tossed it at that damnable halfling tattletale, and went to sleep.

All in all... I can see why some DM's have trouble with me :D

[Indoril]

Tonight, my PC's continued trekking through the sewers of the capitol city of the country in which they are in. They are here to root out and crush the local thieve's guild, and have been hired as members of the local guild of mercenaries by the King himself.

Notable events were the cleric nearly falling victim to a Bodak's death gaze, and the cleric nearly having his brain eaten by a mind flayer.

The party has managed to fight its way into the actual guild area itself, and is currently searching through the halls of the guildhouse.

[Leon]

Our newly appointed super hero team was given a large underground base and set to begin life as the "backup" team for the city

Police radio picked up a bank robbery that we sped off to intercept, arriving just as the crooks were leaving in a stolen cop car - order of procedings: Nightshade blew a wheel off the car, the Robot tore a door off it, my character paralysed 1 and slowed 2 of the crims who we then beat into submission. Job well done and off to see the mayor and be informed that we were to escort a outspoken public figure on a march through the city.

Day of the March, meet up and prep for escort etc
Nightshade drifts off in his cloud form to check for snipers and finds one, breaks his gun and subdues him

Meanwhile the march goes on with mounting tension climaxing with a group of anti march protestors blocking the road, with whom intimidation and Diplomatic means failed (ie our rolls sucked) so Nightsade tried to manhandle them out of the way while Inertia try again to talk them away.
shortly after a Large dude got out of the van that was following the parade and began to act hostile toward the crowd - to the point of firing blue flame into it. this brought onto several rounds of inefectual combat from the team as the bad guy was too damm tough, till Megabite managed to swallow him whole and Inertia went to talk to the man we were escorting to make him call his goon off - he claimed to have no control over him and went back to hiding in his car.

Inertia walked back toward the rest of them team amid the noise and chaos of angry/panicking people, rather pissed of with the whole dealings (largley in part due to my power being foiled everytime) and decided to Stop it all - Everything within 200ft (aside from the Law enforcement, Overwatch and the man we were escorting [passed his save]) was paralysed. this allowed the trouble makers to be subdued without struggle and to take the escourtee back to the saftey of city hall, Inertia released the effect a few mins after it was all sorted

The Overwatch Team
Nightshade - Weapons program escapee turned super Hero, has spooky powers and a big gun

Megabite - Man/Shark mutation, is Very strong and can swallow people whole

The Ranger - Animal rights activist exposed to mutant DNA, can shape shift into any Normal animal

(Me) Inertia - Former Sidekick now Super Hero, controls Kinetic energy

Manirve - Robot from a different dimension, strong fast and ineed of learning human history to rebuild there own

[Khantalas]

My parry killed an elder brain. At level 1.

Yeah, don't ask how.

[Arbitrarity]

Recent games...

A spirit hijacked my wizard, who is now disembodied. (mind you, he broke the RWT by some insane amount. He had 3600000 gold. At level 8. Let's just say things excreting diamonds are bad.)

Our level 7 party got ambushed by five enemies, one of which is something like an arch-nemesis. (3 monk, 3 rogue, 7 assasin). My rogue hates improved uncanny dodge. At the beginning of a fight, that enemy got a 20 on initiative, ran up, kicked our artificer. Hard. The artificer now has 15 hp. The psion whipped up an energy wall around, so we can try to take out that guy. Though he apparently runs a lot. Then, we had to go :).

Earlier in that one, we were ambushing caravans. My rogue kept rolling 2's on his hide check :/. He still hid. And the druid whipped up a few call lightning.

[Winter_Wolf]

The same thing we do every night. Try to take over the world!

What? You never watched Pinky and the Brain?

The last time I played, we met up with a group of well meaning but rather dim folks who traded us some snazzy magic for some cheap junk, then went on to mutilate a mutual enemy via any means that involved lots of area effect and blowinng things up. Maybe it wasn't very ethical to kill them all after they tried to call surrender, but you know, leaving the job half done is just a half assed way of doing things. Better to crush the enemy completely, rather than let him stab us in the back later.

[Indoril]

Last Night:

Tonight, my PC's continued trekking through the sewers of the capitol city of the country in which they are in. They are here to root out and crush the local thieve's guild, and have been hired as members of the local guild of mercenaries by the King himself.

Notable events were the cleric nearly falling victim to a Bodak's death gaze, and the cleric nearly having his brain eaten by a mind flayer.

The party has managed to fight its way into the actual guild area itself, and is currently searching through the halls of the guildhouse.

My PC's continued their search of the halls of the theive's guild and ran across the guildmaster. After a short parley the party's archer decided it was time to kill her. After an exhausting battle, the party removed her head and took it back to the captain of the guard as proof of the deed. He took them before the king, who was disturbed to find that the city from which the party hails in his kingdom was completely destroyed by a spire of black onyx that rose from beneath it. He has summoned Narran, the leader of an organization that serves St. Cuthbert called the Red Knights, who is going to take the party to their headquarters.

The one notable event was the party's barbarian, Darrik (played by SHAZZBAA), being dealt 4d8+3d6+77 damage by the guildmaster of the theive's guild (Fighter 9/Tempest 5), dropping him to -36 hp and killing him instantly.

[Shazzbaa]

The one notable event was the party's barbarian, Darrik (played by SHAZZBAA), being dealt 4d8+3d6+77 damage by the guildmaster of the theive's guild (Fighter 9/Tempest 5), dropping him to -36 hp and killing him instantly.

-34. I have DR now. :smalltongue:

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I'd just like to say that you're an excellent artist, Shazzbaa. I might have some work for you later. Tell me when you're accepting full-on commissions again.

[pyrefiend]

Well, since our DM, known as Torpeto Ted on this forum, had his first DMing session in his new campain, our characters met up in a local resturaunt. The bard was trying to get drunk, but kept making 20s on his Fortitude. Our wizard was asleep in an inn. My character, Ailo the telepath, was making sandwhichis. Unfortunately, I have a low wisdom and the unattentive flaw, so I absentmindedly made something... that wasn't a sandwhich. I messed that up too, and when I remembered what I was supposed to be making, I just stuffed the whole thing between two slices of bread. Incidently, the whole place was raided by kobolds, and the food I'd just made served as my weapon of choice. Oh yeah, and I stole some stuff from the wizard. Move Silently + Bluff = free access to party's loot.

[Indoril]

-34. I have DR now. :smalltongue:

Oh, as if that's any less dead. :smalltongue:

[Ravyn]

It was actually a few nights ago (darn lack of connection!), but...

The group I'd recently latched onto was chasing some enemies into a reef nobody's ever gotten out of; after nearly losing our ship to coral golems, we arrive, figure out they're teamed up with the BBEG, sneak up to the hanging tower in the center of the island where they're (presumably) hiding.... and things get interesting.

First, we weaken the supports on the hanging tower one by one until it falls. Then one of their redshirts heads out a door halfway up the tower, and our tinkergnome has one of the fighters chuck his latest invention, the Bomb to End All Bombs, in. With one heck of a satisfying explosion, might I add. The BBEG shouts from below "THIS HAS CEASED TO BE AMUSING!!!" ...and we find ourselves facing all seven major game opponents. Including the BBEG, who takes one look at my character and goes "You!" To which she bravely responds:

"Where have you been?! You vanish into that place without a word, come back after three months and start setting fire to people, then disappear without a trace, go working with zombiemakers and crazies and who knows what all else, ten years you wander off causing trouble and you don't even bother to write! You have some explaining to do, buddy!"

(Don't look at me. Being the BBEG's ex wasn't my idea. I just ran with it. The looks on the faces of the other players were priceless...)

And then we erode the ground under them so they (hopefully--only half actually did) fall into the pit and run. Half of us one way, taking advantage of the druid wildshaping to a dire wolf and my absurd Ride modifier, half of us the other (though we nearly lost them to a badly timed Dictum), end up stealing the opposition's ship, during which our gothy cleric has a bit of a run-in with her old mentor and we're saved by having planted bombs on the thing beforehand... not bad for six 11th-levels going up against four fifteenths and a twentieth.

[fireinthedust]

I actually went and bought the Star Wars D20 book because I was so impressed with KOTOR 2, but I was disappointed that Jedi weren't nearly as badass as they are in the computer game. From some of the notes in the book, I gathered that this was a deliberate change from an earlier edition, but it didn't appeal to me at all. I don't want seven levels of "how does this thing work", I want flying lightsabers!

Um, how badass are they in the game? Wow. In d20 SW they rock: at 1st level you can do 2d8+str damage, ignoring all hardness and armour class for wounds (imagine the criticals)! And you get force skills out the wazoo. Nerfing low-level Jedi is so easy, too.

[Indoril]

Last Night:
My PC's continued their search of the halls of the theive's guild and ran across the guildmaster. After a short parley the party's archer decided it was time to kill her. After an exhausting battle, the party removed her head and took it back to the captain of the guard as proof of the deed. He took them before the king, who was disturbed to find that the city from which the party hails in his kingdom was completely destroyed by a spire of black onyx that rose from beneath it. He has summoned Narran, the leader of an organization that serves St. Cuthbert called the Red Knights, who is going to take the party to their headquarters.

The one notable event was the party's barbarian, Darrik (played by SHAZZBAA), being dealt 4d8+3d6+77 damage by the guildmaster of the theive's guild (Fighter 9/Tempest 5), dropping him to -36 hp and killing him instantly.

The party met with Narran, who after taking the players to Almaden revealed that he is more than a member of the Red Knights, he is their leader. He also revealded the fact that he is a Solar, whose true name is Narranaeleshinas, the right hand of St. Cuthbert himself. Narran explained that there was an area below the sewers of Kahlsbrad in which existed an Illithid city. It has been overrun by demons, the same demons that destroyed the town the PC's began their adventure in. The PC's must rout the demons. Destroying the Illithids is not necessary.

Narran will be locating and bringing to Almaden a powerful magi well learned in demonic and diabolic lore, for advice on the current situation with the demons. The players have three weeks to report back on the situation in the Kahlsbrad sewers.

The PC's used their free time to enter a forest neighboring the capitol city and slay both an adult green dragon and a powerful werewolf lord who showed dominion over wolves and other werewolves alike. This was the werewolf that turned the party's barbarian Darrik (played by SHAZZBAA) into a werewolf. They are currently taking care of several mundane tasks in town before descending again into the sewers of Kahlsbrad.

[MeklorIlavator]

This was a while ago, but my group had the following happen with a 1 time DM

It was the Fallen Angel one shot, and our characters worked out like this:
L5 grey elf Wu Gen(me)
L5 human cleric
L4 drow rogue (this was a mistake on the player/DM part)
L1 fighter (1/2 celestial) this was supposed to be our tank:smallconfused:

Now we come up on the cave, and I tell the rogue to scout it out. HE goes in and roll a 20 for MS, and a 17 for hide.
He gets raped by 2 large javbelins, the two monsters go first with a 23, and he gets hit again. At his turn he runs, and then I launch my fireball.


It turns out that the cleric had to tank, and our fighter was useless(it was his second time playing, so it is somewhat excusable, and he is much better now). We only made it out because of loose spell interpretation and rule definition, and durring the last fight, by breaking the rules altogether(the DM had 12 opponents attack us at the same time, with CR's of 3). It was not a good game.


This same Dm later went on to run a modified campaign of dragonlance for us(it was level 8, we were 3rd level). By modified, he took out a few creatures here or there, but no DC's were changes(poison that took out our tank, a glyph of warding that brought everyone but one person who had hung back to critical condition,even though the rouge had rooled a 19) and he ignored wealth by level, or even experience. He said when we completed the adventure, we went up a level. Also, when we finished the adventure and had gone up a level, one person got a 10,000gp item(that he kept because it was awsome for the level we were at), and the other 3 had a total of 2,600 gp(3000 more if we sold a cursed item as if it wasn't cursed).:smallfurious:

[pita]

I misread the Cancer Mage's ability and infected the king, and then afterwards, I read it right and took control over the king.
The game ended because the other player got annoyed at me.
A should have.

[blackout]

This was a couple of weeks ago. My team's breaking into the lair of a big-time demon. No intent to kill the demon, just loot the first floor of his base, and gain some XP. Anyways, we're busy fighting a pair of fire elementals, nothing too fancy, but there's a half-dozen hellhounds in the next room. The team wizard is in the doorway to that room, and casts an area of effect spell on that room. The Hell Hounds were leaving us alone, but that brought them down on our heads. Everyone got out ok, but the wizard got some serious thwackage from the whole party.

[blackout]

Ok, last night's little adventure. We were hired by a lord to go investigate some complaints from the village of Fogray. We head over to the village, and along the way fight a couple of bandit groups and an orc party. We get there, the town is overrun by trolls, and everyone's dead. Next thing we know, the trolls are bowing down before my party and offering us gifts in the form of money and minor magic items, chanting something in a language that nobody in the whole party knows anything about. Don't ask me why. At that point, we had to stop and everyone went home.

[MrNexx]

Last night our group ran through the beginning of the moathouse in T1 "The The Village of Hommlet."

1st edition AD&D!

[Muz]

Mine found out where a vampire was sleeping, disarmed the traps around it, levitated its (wooden) coffin up enough to be able to pull it out of the crypt into the sunlight, then flung the lid off and let the poor guy burn to death.

...That particular NPC (the vampire) has now twice been defeated in exceedingly embarassing ways. :amused:

[Skyserpent]

Hm... we're doing a Vampire thing too... Now the party is trying to get through to his inner sanctum and finish her off at the coffin...

[Muz]

Hm... we're doing a Vampire thing too... Now the party is trying to get through to his inner sanctum and finish her off at the coffin...

So...it's a hermaphroditic vampire? :smallsmile:

[Ryuuk]

MY PC had a run through AEG's "The Crypt of Saint Bethesta" as a launchpad for a new campaign. They blasted though a few skeletons with a greater turning. Then they slaughtered the Carrion Crawler only inciting 4 saves against paralysis and making them all. Then they broke down the door to the ghouls and killed half of them before they got to act, making the other 2 flee. They made their way to the Giant Spider where one of them got dropped to 3 STR and the decided to call it a night, thinking that the crawler had killed the man in the alley.

They came back escorted by some members of the town guard to find the Wormwraith dead, and arrested the bandits instead. Now they're gonna try to find the order of St. Bethesta to give them back the Chest of Preservation and the Statue. I'll have them run into the second wormwraith when they come back to town.

[NEO|Phyte]

We hired a high-level wizard to Shapechange into a chimera so we could remove its horns for the construction of some Artifact-quality bows.

[Ravyn]

Well, technically it's the last six days, but:

The Demon War crowd: Against all odds, managed to prevent a city from being overrun by demons--and caused two simultaneous sightings of one of their old famous generals (the actual general, our paladin--and one of the other PCs, pretending to be him with a hat of disguise. The group, with the exception of said paladin, has agreed that we are going to make sure nobody hears who the second one was. It's far better for his reputation this way.) I'm told we practically destroyed the plot; our poor GM was still trying to pick up the pieces the better part of a week later.

The Alliance: Well.... we chased a mass murderer, tried to prevent a war, captured two airships and destroyed three, ruined a pass in front of an oncoming army, finally gave our group a name and standard, invented popcorn, our cleric nearly turned into an avatar of the death god, and then we were captured by the BBEG and gave him the ultimate headache before being chucked into some sort of magical prison (taking one of his flunkies with us) and separated.

[Dausuul]

My party neatly avoided all my plans for the evening, and in the process created their own BBEG.

I had them travelling through a forest ruled by the fey. There were two powerful fey monarchs in the forest, the Lady of the Moon and the Horned Lord. (I run Iron Heroes, so there are no alignments, but if there were, the Lady would be CN and the Horned Lord would be CE. They're the very rough equivalents of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts.)

First I planned a complicated intrigue at the Lady's court. The party skipped right past that by refusing the Lady's invitation to visit... not really an unreasonable decision on their part, so I wasn't too thrown off by it.

Then they moved on through the Lord's territory. A bit of background here: There are a couple of evil artifacts in my world, the Iron Crown (thank you, Silmarillion) and the Scrolls of Skelos (thank you, Conan the Destroyer). The Crown is immensely powerful if you know how to use it, but if you don't know how to use it, it slowly destroys you. The Scrolls contain, among other things, instructions on how to use the Crown. Hence, either one apart is dangerous, but if somebody gets hold of both and decides to use them, you have an instant Evil Overlord.

There are three copies of the Scrolls, two of which are in unknown hands. The party has the third copy, and they also got their hands on the Crown. The Scrolls can only be destroyed by dragonfire and nobody knows how to destroy the Crown, so the PCs are off to find a dragon and burn their set of the Scrolls. They left the Crown behind in a sturdy fortress, figuring it was best not to have the two artifacts together.

So, back to last night's adventure: The Horned Lord himself turns up and announces that he knows the PCs are carrying the Scrolls. He will give them safe passage through the forest if they will tell him where the Crown is. I figured there wasn't a chance in hell they'd do so, since they had so far been bloody paranoid about the Scrolls they had with them. I had a nice little fight scene planned out, wherein the PCs would be captured and taken back to the Lord's fortress, then have to escape from his dungeons, and so on and so forth...

...and they shrugged, broke out a map, and said, "It's in this fort over here."

I sat there blinking for a few moments. Then I said (paraphrasing here) "Okay. The Horned Lord grins, thanks you, gives you a couple of giants to escort you to the edge of the forest, and leaves, tossing off a comment to the effect that he's quite sure you'll meet again."

They justified their decision by saying that because a troll army had failed to take the fort, they were confident that the Horned Lord wouldn't be able to get at the Crown before they returned. I was both amused and appalled at their assumption that "able to hold off the attack of a bunch of crazed trolls without a battle plan" equals "able to keep a powerful and cunning fey lord out when he wants to get in." They also mentioned that if the Lord had demanded the Scrolls, they would have refused immediately.

So off they go to burn their copy of the Scrolls... without ever once asking themselves why the Horned Lord was interested in the Crown but didn't care about the Scrolls they were actually carrying... or worrying about the fact that their copy of the Scrolls is only one out of three, and the whereabouts of the other two are as yet unknown... or what would happen if an already-powerful evil fey got his hands on both Crown and Scrolls...

And behold, there was BBEG.

[Muz]

Dragons. There's never one around when you need one, is there? :smallbiggrin:

[Shazzbaa]

I freaking died again. That's the third time this campaign.

Because, you know, sending a party of four mostly melee-oriented humans into the CITY OF THE MINDFLAYERS is a good idea. Thanks, Narran. :smallannoyed: I always wondered how it felt to have my brain sucked out.

But the most interesting thing that happened was out of game. As the five of us were sitting around the table, our cleric/sorcerer (Aphelion) made off-handed mention of his raven familiar, and a friend who was watching us play asked, "Hey! Can I be the raven?"

For the rest of the night, he was responsible for the bad-mouthed, sarcastic, insulting fowl that our LG cleric has somehow ended up with.

The raven's name is Archibald.

[Saph]

I freaking died again. That's the third time this campaign.Because, you know, sending a party of four mostly melee-oriented humans into the CITY OF THE MINDFLAYERS is a good idea.

Your character doesn't have much luck, does he?

- Saph

[Shiver]

Since only three of my PC's were able to make it tonight, and I need at least four or five of them there to properly do the next major part, I quickly threw together a sort of side-adventure thing.

The previous few sessions, the group has been stuck in this reverse wizard's spire (goes down into the ground as opposed to upwards into the sky), owned by a wizard who specializes in magical traps and puzzles. At the end of the previous session, they made it to the final level of the tower, and I knew they were getting bored with room after room of nothing, with the occasional monster. So, in the first room of the final level, they encountered the Wizard's personal library. Among the many books were one that was out and on the table. They started reading it, quickly realizing it was yet another trap.

The book brought them into the story itself, with the only way out being to complete the story as it was written. This required periodic knowledge checks to see if they remembered what was to happen next. The story, I should mention, is an actual account of an event two thousand years in the past of the world, where the legendary paladin Nalintyre (and current BBEG) began his esteemed career in the service of good, defending a small village from a horde of orcs.

In the course of the session, the elvin wizard made friends with a gnome and slept with a village girl, the rogue overpaid for way more arrows than he needed, and the female human fighter managed to seduce the legendary paladin himself. During the battle, the aforementioned gnome managed to blow himself up twice, the wizard summoned a celestial monkey named Chim-Chim as he does every battle, and the legendary paladin rolled a natural 20 while attacking a whole group of orcs, then confirmed the crit, automatically killing 15 orcs at once.

[Emperor Tippy]

This week the group I DM play tested BearsWithLasers fighter fix quite extensively and found it very balanced.

[RandomNPC]

my group survived a bowl shaped room being filled with oil, the destroyed two seige macchines. If it wasnt for a warmage with cold and fire spells, respective to the situations, everyone would be dead, or out of ranged amunition and hiding.

[Eggman]

In a homebrew campaign setting (several adventures in, mostly based around a small town on the outskirts of the empire called Nissel) we were contacted by the Mayor, he informed us of a strange disappearance and that the best fighters from every city were to be sent to the capital. En route we managed to get lost in a strange forest and uncovered a strange story about a small thorp. Murder, mystery and paranoia. Good times. (and a bastard of an end fight....)

[Magnus_Samma]

My one-eyed dual wielding stinky drow fighter charged what I assumed was an owlbear screaming "Meat for the meat god!"

That was some good owlbear stew, I tell you what.

[oriong]

Well, my two most recent games went thusly:

In a Truth and Justice Supers game: for the last couple of sessions the PCs have been chasing a supervillian and his giant sumo-wrestler henchman, who has been stealing martial arts videos and cheap japanese imports to create instant ninjas (just add water). whenever the villian whipped out a few ninja-pills it invariably led to a long, drawn-out battle where the PCs did almost ridiculously bad against the much weaker ninjas (apparently the dice-roller we used is very pro-ninja).
So, by the time the showdown at the villians lair came around the party was heartily sick of the ninjas...and then they learn the villian's plan is to seed the clouds with a mass amount of instant ninja material, causing it to literally rain ninjas under his command. they very much wanted to avoid this.
In the showdown, Ham Sandwich Man (a super with the power to create sandwiches, some with special powers) was knocked through a window by the sumo wrestler and into a health food store exposing him to his vulnerability: healthy food. The other two used a 'fastball' style combo attack that was powerful enough that it sent the party's tank and the sumo both flying through the roof of the lair.
The remaining member (a catgirl with anger issues) beat up on the now guard-less supervillian (he had HORRIBLE luck), while the tank duked it out with the sumo wrestler on the roof, before smashing him back down through several floors and knocking him out.
They averted ninja catastrophe (which would have actually gone horribly wrong for the villian, since i was enforcing the inverse ninja law).


A d20 modern urban arcana game: the PCs are members of a secret group dedicated to eliminating forces 'too dangerous to be made public' such as demons, undead and other unnatural beasts. They're in a city hunting what they believe to be the a demonic serial killer attacking local crime lords. Their investigation was mostly fruitless but they realized that they were being followed eventually and they caught someone tailing them: it turned out ot be what appeared to be a homeless man with a toy walky talky, which he would mutter into periodically. The man was incredibly irrational and unintelligible and very fun to play. his favorite line was screaming the words "CHICKEN EGGS!" at random times. they eventually let him go, but he had grabbed someone's head at one point and pulled out a few strands of their hair.
the next morning the victim of the hairpulling finds weird symbols marked on his doorway and his car, and they're beginning to suspect someone might be onto them.

[Ninja Chocobo]

Note: The game isn't exactly serious.
Note2: This wasn't exactly last night, but actually a fair while ago.
Players:
Me (DM)
Jesus {told you we're not serious} (Gnome Rogue), Koriab (Dwarf Fighter), Delfir (Human Ranger), and Black Mage (Human Warlock)
Setting: typical forest maze.
Plot hook: Druid has been "upsetting the balance of nature" by Awakening squirrels, and equipping them in Sorceror/Cleric/Barbarian gear.
Story:
Ok. First, the PCs try to walk the maze. They get bored of this pretty quick, though, and decide to burn through the trees (expected). Now. At the other end, there's a Cleric, and mighty pissed off at the PCs.
Now, the rolls start going bad for me.
First, Delfir decides he wants to Bluff the Cleric into believing that they're actually conservationists, and friends of the Druid. Fairly high roll, like 18+mods. Cleric rolls natural 1 on Sense Motive, though, and believes him. The Cleric leads them through the maze, on the way convincing his comrades that the PCs are friendly. The Cleric finally leaves them at the entrance to the Druids clearing. The PCs spread out along the edge, retaining cover of trees. Black Mage decides he's gonna use his insanely high Disguise bonus. He says he wants to disguise himself as a cardboard box, Solid Snake style. I reminded him of the impossibility and the fact it was self-defeating, as cardboard boxes hadn't been invented yet, and would attract the attention of the Druid and the two squirrel Clerics he had with him. He persisted in wanting to do it. The conversation went like this:
Me: You realise you're trying to disguise yourself as something you have no idea as to what it will look like, and won't be invented for...ever?
Him: Yep!
Me: And that such an unusual thing would attract the curiosity of everyone who can see it, making such a disguise self-defeating?
Him: Yep!
Me: And you still want to try it?
Him: Yep!
Me: *sigh* Roll the dice, then.
He rolled a Natural 20.
Meanwhile, Delfir was sneaking in the long grass around the Druid. He failed eventually. Massive Hide check result, abysmal Move Silently. Now, as the Druid's confounded at both the effectively invisible thing that's making a lot of noise, as well as the previously nonexistent cardboard box, the Fighter busts out of hiding and charges, and the rogue Sneak Attacks with his crossbow. They end up taking the Druid and his companions out in, like 3 rounds.

Next adventure, Black Mage has taken the Leadership feat, Delfir has prepared all his spells to be Summon Natures Ally, and will acquire a Bag of Tricks. Can someone say "Zerg Rush"?

Wow, Wall 'o' text. Sorry.

[El Jaspero, the Pirate King]

Our last session (which was actually over a week ago) featured one of those moments that both frustrated and impressed our DM. The setup:

We're a party of 11th level, walking through these mountain passes, trying to find the secret lair of this secret band of secret assassins. We meet and befriend a druid, who tells us she drove a pair of horrible trolls away from her grove a day ago, and offers to help us find the secret lair if we dispach the trolls. Sure thing, deal's made. We eventually find this big gnarly cave with troll tracks leading into and out of it.

Now clearly we could just stomp in and the fight would be on. But our wizard, bless is heart, is a Diviner, so he casts arcane eye and scopes out the cave; as it's daytime still, he finds the two Huge mountain trolls, but they're still asleep.

*key El Jaspero flipping through PHB "Special Attacks" section*

So my rogue, the ranger, and the duergar fighter who's been buffing his Move Silently skill all sneak in and Coup de Grace these two CR 13 mountain trolls. The DM just sits there in sort of stunned awe as we walk up and force DC 45+ Fort saves on them both, then set them on fire. Apparently they each had like 217 HP and could power attack for 3d8+24 or some crap like that. It was supposed to be a tough, horrible encounter and we just waltzed through it.

Like I said, both frustrated and impressed. Though I think he reduced the treasure find just to stick it to us.

[Hannes]

We IMW'ed some guy in a bar who called us uniforms. He fell unconscious.

[Indoril]

The party met with Narran, who after taking the players to Almaden revealed that he is more than a member of the Red Knights, he is their leader. He also revealded the fact that he is a Solar, whose true name is Narranaeleshinas, the right hand of St. Cuthbert himself. Narran explained that there was an area below the sewers of Kahlsbrad in which existed an Illithid city. It has been overrun by demons, the same demons that destroyed the town the PC's began their adventure in. The PC's must rout the demons. Destroying the Illithids is not necessary.

Narran will be locating and bringing to Almaden a powerful magi well learned in demonic and diabolic lore, for advice on the current situation with the demons. The players have three weeks to report back on the situation in the Kahlsbrad sewers.

The PC's used their free time to enter a forest neighboring the capitol city and slay both an adult green dragon and a powerful werewolf lord who showed dominion over wolves and other werewolves alike. This was the werewolf that turned the party's barbarian Darrik (played by SHAZZBAA) into a werewolf. They are currently taking care of several mundane tasks in town before descending again into the sewers of Kahlsbrad.

After a week of rest and honing skills and pumping gold into the local economy, the PC's decended again into the sewers of Kahlsbrad. They quickly found the spot marked on their map by Narran as the entrance to the Mind Flayer Tunnels. It was guarded of course, by a flayer and two umber hulks, of which the flayer managed to latch its tentacles on to Darrik's head and devour his brain. After a petition from the party's cleric Aphelion, the High Preist of St. Cuthbert saw fit to grant the party a free ressurection, one time only. Darrik was perfectly fine if quite shaken, and the party descended again.

In their second attempt, the party was much more successful. Several of the flayers and umber hulks they encountered have been rather odd, looking as if some manner of fire were burning in their eyes. The party slayed several of these and three Vrock demons, before coming to a stop in what appears to be an Umber Hulk hatchery.


Your character doesn't have much luck, does he?

- Saph

It's not a matter of her lack of luck as such, but my luck. She rolled great on her grapple checks against the flayer. I just crit like three times in a row and got to eat her tasty brain meats.

[Saph]

Well, we just started a new Forgotten Realms campaign, starting level 4. Opening scenario: we were captured by orcs and woke up in chains an hour or so away from being sacrificed. There followed a series of extremely nasty battles, the highlights being:

• Fighting off the priestess and a guard with half the party still chained up and without any of our equipment (no weapons for the fighter, no spell components for my enchanter, no lockpicks for the rogue, no holy symbol for the cleric).

• Fighting four outsider-demon-orcs, each of which had greataxes, a bite attack, and spell resistance. At least we had our equipment by this point. We still nearly got TPKed, and the fighter was on -9 when he was stabilised.

• Another bunch of orcs with a pet winter wolf. One of the orcs was a sorcerer and used his spells to chuck the fighter and the cleric off a 60 foot drop. Luckily I had a feather fall scroll.

• A big leader orc with several feats, a magic double axe, and 12 orc warriors backing him up. I don't care if they're 1st-level, twelve enemies with a high Strength are freaking scary, especially all attacking at once. We nearly got TPKed again, but I managed to blind them all with a pair of Glitterdust spells. In the confusion they attacked each other and the dwarf fighter with Great Cleave charged into the middle of them and had a field day.

Nerve-racking but really exciting, especially since I'm very attached to my character. I hope the campaign gets slightly less lethal from this point on, but at least we earned a vast amount of XP.

- Saph

[BCOVertigo]

My parties warlock and I single handedly took out 3 huge sharks while riding a swimming ogre, invented a new species of fish, survived shifting to a plane filled with nothing but con draining incorporeal undead and dirt(twice), solved a riddle in the most utterly backwards way imaginable and completely bypassed the BBEG's army who was waiting to ambush the party after retrieving a bizarre version of a ring of Gate.
My DM tells me I have ranks in Disable Plot Device.

[Ninja Chocobo]

Most backwards way possible? Please define.
Is it something like the Gordian Knot?

[Grim Greyscale]

Jesus (Halfling Rogue), Koriab (Human Fighter), Delfir (Human Ranger), and Black Mage (Human Warlock)

Fixed it for you. You should know your own players better :O

[Ninja Chocobo]

Bah! You've got the character sheets, and it's been what, two months since we've played?

[Meynolds]

This wasn't recent, but on new years eve.

I was DM for a group including Druid_lord (a CG Duel wielding Drow Ranger (no, not a Drizz't clone, he used long and short swords) and an CG elven wizard (Blaster)), and two other friends (a LG warforged fighter and an NE elven Barbarian Blackguard). Can the potential for wierdness be seen right off the bat?

Two of my friends are at least partly psychotic (Druid_lord and the Brb/Blk). This was a one off campaign in the Matters of Vengeance WotC adventure. It was interesting.

They met the hirer, and accepted the job. They proceeded out immediately, and were attacked by some shades. This is where things became odd.

They held back and had the Wizard cast Fireball. Then the Ranger and Fighter charged. The Brb/Blk stayed back, and threw the Wizard. His dex modifyer was low and yet he still hit. The Wizard hit (CRUNCH) and I ruled falling object damage would do. 3d6 to both the Wizard and Shade. Ended up as a 10 to each. The Wizard was next on initiative and hit the shade with everything he could (not much apparently) and killed the shade. Mop up form there.

They moved down the path and were ambushed by Mercs! They tried the same tactic again, with a twist. The Wizard hit the mercs with a Fireball in mid air. And succeded. Did 10d6 damage. To each merc. But thats not all! He hit with a critical hit when thrown doing 3d6X2 damage, killing a merc. Not much else special that combat.

Next they approached the mansion. They fought the guards, didn't throw the wizard this time. They had the Brb/Blk and Rng sneak behind the enemy while the Wiz and Fgt distracted them. They attacked, and the wizard Fireballed. The first went down! The Brb/Blk grabbed the dead body and flung it at an enemy. CRITICAL HIT! Good range too, something like 4d6X2... Totaled to over 30, and the guy had to make a morale save, and failed thanks to the modifier of being hit by a commrades dead body. The enemy wizard died to the Warforged doing 1d8+10 without a power attack.

Next they entered the mansion and pulled the trick again, but failed for two rounds and were forced to fight close range. They slaughtered Shade and Merc alike. I made all of the chars so I shouldn't be surprised.

They moved on and slaughtered many foes and stole body parts, especially ribs...

They also entered the Trophy room and stole some body parts. One discoved the secret of the painting and the Warforged tried to touch it. The Rng dragged him out (opposed grapple checks all the way) and the Brb/Blk "locked" the door with a flaming corpse and some ribs.

They reached the stables eventually and killed the fiendish warhorse in one round. They took his body to the ceremonial chamber which they had found earlier and not entered. They fought the BBEG and threw his horse at him, and did some serious damage. At most they took 30 dmg, and that was from an ally's Fireball (yes he is a pyromaniac). They won and brought the Hirer to the main room (They left him in the stable). The Brb/Blk tried to kill him and was stopped by a grapple by the Rng.

The Rng got an attack, a Coup de Grace actually. Auto critical, 9 dmg, DC 28 Fort save, failed, instant death. The adventure ended there.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Continuing the adventures of my gestalt campaign-

My DM avatar introduced himself finally, as he was part of a small army that was occupying the goblin village that the PC's had saved/were using as a loveably incompetent army. The PC that more or less leads the goblins (half-dragon) met with him and related some of the events he'd witnessed recently, which led to my character's suspicions that there was something more to the fortress he'd left earlier. It was my attempt at getting the PC's back together again. My attempt was a failure...

They got to the fortress together and found the hidden underground passage in it, leading into a large dwarven city. They met up with and passed the two PC's (mega caster and CoDzilla) that had found the secret tunnel earlier, but they tricked them by luring the hobgoblin guards at the end to them and skipping past. Sigh.

Meanwhile, the PC left back at the goblin village (cat girl), after plying her trade some more, decided to follow after the one that left with the DM avatar. She found the secret tunnel on her own and found that there was a special transportation method in it and got to the other end quickly, but not fast enough to meet with the other PC and DM avatar, and she outright passed by the two PC's left in the tunnel fighting hobgoblins. The PC with the DMA got out and found large carts filled with various human body parts in a warehouse. They hid from some hobgoblins that passed by, then followed them out in the open. They eventually lost track of them, but figured from conversations the two had that they were headed towards one of four wizards' towers in the city. These towers were used to send messages to an elven city, whom they traded with regularly. See, the dwarves sent dwarf-crafted goods, and the elves enchanted them.

Meanwhile, the cat girl made her way up into the world, saw the crates, and figured from looking closely at them that there was something magical about the body parts contained therein. She deduced that the wizards towers might have something to do with them, and decided to sneak into one. The half-dragon and DMA got the same idea, but both groups picked different towers. The cat girl snuck in, but was immediately caught. In order to avoid any repurcussions, she immediately seduced the guard that found her, then had that guard guide her around as she searched for answers. Meanwhile, the half-dragon and DMA snuck in, knocked out several guards, and intimidated several wizards (after binding their hands with a kind of glue and holding them at sword point) into telling them about the hobgoblins in the dwarven city. They learned that there were a lot of hobgoblins moving in and out of the basement of the central tower. The cat girl learned the same in her search.

Both groups made their way to the central tower, but they still failed to meet up. The half-dragon caused a huge ruckus in town to draw guards from the tower, then snuck in. The cat girl, afterwards, seduced the guards into letting her help them search the inside of the basement, where they found dead hobgoblins from the breaking and entering prior. Both groups found the secret passage there, and both managed to get into it without alerting any nearby guards to it.

Meanwhile, the PC's in the tunnel finally got out and found their way up top. They saw the body parts and cast read magic on them, finding that they actually supressed and countered magic. They figured they'd get on it the next morning and decided to find the nearest tavern and inn.

Another PC (barbarian), who had pretty much done nothing of value this whole time, finally found the secret passage in the fortress. He used it to get to the dwarven city and managed to completely ignore all the body parts. He ended up being hired to wander around town spreading the word of some god he didn't actually believe in. He got neat pamplets to hand out.

The half-dragon and DMA find a special passage deeper inside the secret passage. The DMA thinks it's risky and doesn't want to go further down without finding some sort of backup, as he knows information that he never explained to the half-dragon, but the half-dragon presses on anyway. He manages to find an underground army numbering in the thousands, and is immediately caught and thrown in prison. Meanwhile, the cat girl finds the DMA and asks what's up ahead. From watching in the shadows he knows what happened to the half-dragon and relates this. The cat girl, who secretly has some affection for the half-dragon, rushes in without thinking. She's immediately caught as well and sent to a special prison for immediate interrogation.

The half-dragon finds out that the only other prisoner in his area is, in fact, a skeleton. He used to be a guard, and the necromancy used to ressurect him actually let him keep his memories and free will, and he could speak. He was also more or less immortal unless something dispelled him. However, he was much weaker then an ordinary skeleton and was being kept entirely to get information on the dwarves up above. The skeleton let himself be ressurected like this because he still thinks he can ruin their plans. Upon seing the half-dragon, he lends him one of his bones to sharpen and use as a lockpick. He does so using his teeth, and after the skeleton creates a distraction, the half-dragon pops out and grapples with the prison guard until he knocks him out. He gets his stuff back from a nearby chest, lets the skeleton loose, disguises himself as the guard, and disguises the guard as himself, then puts him in the prison.

Meanwhile, the cat girl finds a way to escape by liberal use of magic, especially obscuring mist. She manages to find the way she came in and meets up with the DMA, who decides he's seen enough and goes out to find some help. The cat girl waits there. The half-dragon is met by a bunch of soldiers who're asking around about the cat girl, which is when they notice the missing skeleton. He says the skeleton ran off further down into the prison, which apparently leads to some magical furnace that could be very bad if he starts throwing those anti-magic body parts into it. A few of them rush out to find him as the half-dragon leaves the prison to try and look for the girl. He figures to look for the entrance, where he's incidentally paired with two other soldiers to check it out. When they see the cat girl, he turns on them and takes them out. Then he uses his disguise kits and the dead guards to make her look like a human male soldier.

They walk back in and go to the prison, where a soldier hauls back the broken up skeleton. When he goes to put the parts back in the cell, the two PC's take him out, then reassemble the skeleton and agree to help him finish his job. The cat girl remains behind as look out while the half-dragon and skeleton go to put an end to all this. They find the furnace, which is being used to power an immense gate, transporting thousands of strange soldiers somewhere. The two of them get into a huge fight where the half-dragon defends the skeleton as he chucks the anti-magic into the furnace. When there's finally enough, there's an enormous explosion that wipes out all traces of magic for many miles. The skeleton is the first to go, his bones collapsing down as his mission finally succeeds.

The half-dragon starts running out of the building as the guards start chasing them in the confusion. They cause a few fires to try and escape, but it's only a temporary fix- their entrance caved in, and they're stuck. They enter a small room and lock the door, praying that it'll be enough. They hear a few explosions, then metal clashing. They open the door to find the DMA and an army of city guards, entering the underground lair from a newly exploded giant hole in the ceiling. The DMA helps them out of the hole and gives them information on where that teleport gate likely led, the elven city somewhere, that the army looks to belong to the dangerous local warlord, and left.

Eventually the group managed to get back together as they all left for the goblin village, hearing that the warlord in the area was attacking small settlements, and they feared for them. They found the homes burned to the ground, but the mines were safe. The goblins apparently all hid there, as well as the remnants of the human army that was hiding there. The PC's, finally together, decide to start regrouping to march directly against the warlord's forces in the elven city.

Finally, I can stop running five different campaigns at once.

[Shadows]

Last Saturday, our 9-10 level group was busy exploring a set of islands on the other side of 'the barrier' - some sort of magical between-worlds sort of thing. We arrived at an island at the beginning of the adventure, where we quickly discovered that the islanders hated us, despite us having never visited the island. Apparently, one of the BBEG's henchmen had been ahead spreading lies about us attacking another island and looting, pilaging and the other ing... (as I had been absent for the last few sessions, I immediately refuted the claims, then turned to the group and asked 'you didn't do any of that stuff, did you?'

Anyway, it turned out that the henchman was still on the island, in the tavern, so we went there to confront him, but on the way, our ship was attacked and most of the docks set on fire (the ship being magically fireproof, we just ignored this) and we discovered that a number of items of far future technology which we were carrying had been stolen, along with the necromancer/pirate PC's 'children' - who had hatched from eggs some time in the last month, and grown very quickly due to some sort of magical effect which has us all staying as far away from the water as we can get...

Anyway, we headed to the tavern once again to confront the henchman, who was busy playing three dragon ante. As we needed to keep him busy while the rest of the crew searched the island, we joined in the card game. By the end of the game, I, the group's warforged ninja, had cleaned out my own teammate, with the henchman only making a 9gp loss, without even having to use sleight of hand :P. Anyway, by this time we had recovered one of the blocks, and quickly tracked down the remainder, along with a native of the planet from whence these blocks came... after the use of a comprehend language spell allowed us to understand him, we were left trying to work out enough of the language to have a conversation, when we realised that the wizard had tongues, which we cast on him. It turns out that the guy is seriously annoying, and is likely to end up being killed by one of the group by the end of the month. So we sailed on, leaving the presumably burnt, but definitely not-our-fault harbour behind us...

[DominatiaMalum]

Last week we were hired to kill a large group of ghost pirates who were invading the city and kill them, ended up switching to help the pirates because the guys that hired us ended up refusing to pay. Killed the head of the guard, got chased by lots of angry guards then once we escaped the city we got jumped by a group of goblins.
It was just a big sidetrack because we ended up going in the opposite direction we had intended. whee.

[volrathxp]

We um... slaughtered one of the leaders of the Church of Tal (homebrew campaign based in the Magic: The Gathering Coldsnap timeline universe) and freed a bunch of mages from the Conclave of Mages.

The mages brought down one of the towers in the city we were attacking, and then the a wail of the banshee killed two of our party members (of which one was resurrected and the other was raised as an Undead, who promptly uses his Heal spell to kill himself, he was a cleric and he opted to make a new character).

Now we're leaving the mages to rebuild the city, and we're headed to Keld so my character can get his groove on at the Arena Plateau and gain my warlord status (I'm a Keldon Warblade/Bloodstorm Blade)

[clarkvalentine]

King Arthur Pendragon: Our group fought at the Battle of Mearcred's Creek, fighting a huge army of Saxons to a standstill in the name of King Uther. My own PC knight, all of 21 years old and newly knighted, survived the opening charge, took an enemy warrior captive, then beheaded a Saxon thane (much more powerful warrior than my PC) in single combat with one stroke of the sword. I was rolling some serious critical hits. Unfortunately, the battle itself ended in a draw, with both sides bloodied and exhausted.

But that winter my PC became a father - too bad he wasn't married... Yeah, this is going to make inheritance interesting. :)

[Matthew]

Sounds cool. I like Pendragon (which apparently means or was thought to mean in the twelfth century Dragon Head - bit of useless trivia for you there)

[Artanis]

Finally, the Exalted campaign has restarted!

This session was the finale of the story arc we were on, fighting against an absurdly heavily-armored DB to try and shut down a superweapon. We won the fight, but found out the hard way that the DB had just been stalling us until a Thousand Forged Dragon could be woken up and sicced on Port Calin. We were the natural ones to take the blame ("uh...****...no, we didn't use nukes, I swear! It was...uh...anathema! Yeah, the anathema who attacked the superweapon!"). Now, after six months' ingame downtime, we're headed southwards towards a Direction that doesn't universally hate us :smalltongue:

[Muz]

That was some good owlbear stew, I tell you what.

Blech! :eek: Everyone in my campaign knows owlbear meat tastes TERRIBLE. :smallbiggrin:

[Viscount Einstrauss]

This seems like as good a time as any to mention that in the campaign I'm running right now, over half the party has resorted to cannibalism at least once, usually by accident. The best was certainly by the barbarian who couldn't honestly tell the difference, except that he liked the human meat best.

[Starbuck_II]

Played last friday:

I decided to try an majority Psionic campaign:
I decided to try out the WotC adventure: Dark and Stormy Knight.

Party included:
NPC Bard Duergar (wanted to round out party to 4 for this adventure only, plus Bards always helpful)
Male Gith Lurk
Male Maenad Soulknife
Female Elan Psion (she went telepath, but chose 2 all mind affecting powers and 1 buff power she never used...not best since there are 2 undead, boss and a lesser vargoul in one room in this adventure)

We all had reasons to go to the Tor.
Psion was a herbalist and she was looking to recover some flowers she broke before the boss returns in a few days.
Lurk waiting for heat to die down. He pickpocket wrong guy (failed hiding it) and so ran out of town. Rained so he searched for cover.
Maenad had mentor killed by bugbear near tor and wants revenge.
Bard looking for ancient secrets.

They have a storm peace and working together temporarily. Worked good they trust each other now. The bard left, they may meet again.
The Dark Knight was tougher than I expected.
Took 2 sessions (real time) of playing to beat it.

Still level 1 (700 exp though).

[The_Cowinator]

We attempted to find the Primeal God of Insanity and kill her, thus stopping Iuz the Old from absorbing her power and conquering the other half of Furyondy he hadn't already invaded, as well as fighting off Vecna's forces, who seem to have some other interest we don't know about yet.

And we're doing it all in a mile-wide stonehenge with active ley-lines. And the last time we teleported in we landed on one, thus causing an über-big battle with creatures that could change shape and heal 10-60% of the damage they had taken when they did.

It was one helluva night.

[BCOVertigo]

Most backwards way possible? Please define.
Is it something like the Gordian Knot?

Hehe, sorta. The DM appoligized for it being his first time making a riddle, then the only two people who were in the room and didn't make the will save to avoid the planeshift were pulled into a pocket plane to solve a puzzle. We basically misinterpreted everything that wasn't necessary to solve it and discarded the part that was meant to help, then solved the puzzle in the exact right order anyways.

[Deus Mortus]

I had my first D&D experience, I rolled my first char in advance, but too be honest the story and the whole mission was kind of crap, just us doing battle for no reason at all and getting ridiculous amount of powerfull loot (I may not be an expert, but a 2nd lvl character shouldn't be equipped with 4 artifacts, right?), so I think I won't return to that group, however it was fun to play it for my first time...

[Mike_Lemmer]

just us doing battle for no reason at all and getting ridiculous amount of powerfull loot (I may not be an expert, but a 2nd lvl character shouldn't be equipped with 4 artifacts, right?)

Most 2nd-level PCs would be smote by the gods for daring to touch one artifact...

Unless it's a Deck of Many Cards, in which case the artifact does the hosing for them.

Take heart in knowing 90% of D&D groups are better than that.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Last time, on Dungeons and Dragons-

Time skipped ahead by a month. The PC's, minus the barbarian who had gone to the elven city (and also missed this particular meeting) had all assembled for the first time in quite a while in the fortress they'd won over quite a while ago. Together with their fresh new army, they began training and preparing for any conflicts that might come their way, as the group had managed to anger a powerful warlord in that nation by pressing his actions early. The PC's don't know exactly what his activities have been recently, since their army superiors decided to send a different contingent in to handle the problem, but have been preparing for their inevitable call to arms.

Thing is, with all the battles that had been fought around this fortress as of late, there were an awful lot of bodies sitting just outside the fortress walls in a huge pile. It was getting so bad that by the end of the month, the smell was overwhelming (and forcing a daily fortitude check to not be nauseated by it). The half-dragon and catgirl decided to finally do something about it, and took the 30-some non-combat goblin NPC's that follow them to go dig a giant grave about a mile away to bury all those bodies. They left for what was to be a good full day's excursion.

Meanwhile, the bard/sorcerer was left the highest ranking officer in the fortress. He decided to get some extra sleep after using his spells for simple pranks that morning (especially arcane mark. He just had to put that on every PC's forehead...), and so went to his chambers. Some time afterwards, he was awoken by knocking at his door. The goblins were in a panic. Outside, there were hundreds of dead ravens all over the ground, shot down by the goblin army over the course of several hours. The goblins, being extremely stupid, didn't think to alert him until just then. Checking the bodies, the bard realized that these weren't ordinary ravens- they were all magical familiars. The bard sent up some spells to alert the half-dragon to get back immediately.

He told the goblins to start cleaning them up while he went to his quarters to start studying one of the ravens. Shortly, the goblins come knocking for him again. Turns out there's another bird outside now, hovering about. A very big one.

The bard goes to the roof to have a chat with what turns out to be a half-fiend griffon. It wants to know who was killing the familiars. The bard blames the goblins. The griffon then demands the heads of everyone responsible. Instead, the bard decides to fight it alone. He held his own for a good while using clever illusions, but the griffon was horribly overpowering. He was about to bite it when the half-dragon returned and came to his defense. It was a hard battle, but the two of them ultimately defeat it. The bard and half-dragon then start discussing the events that just transpired.

Upon hearing about it all, the half-dragon decides to consult his "magic box". This was given to him by his general, and magically transported goods, funds, armaments and messages straight to him about once a week. Inside was a bunch of trail rations instead of the usual regular foods, and a hastily scrawled note- "Run. Straight East. Now.".

He sends two goblin rangers ahead to go inform the catgirl, and the bard finds the druid/monk who'd been travelling around performing magical services for civilians. The rest of the army was told to march East immediately. The half-dragon himself decides to go check the direction from which the ravens and griffon appeared to find out what's happening.

The army, along with all the goblin civilians, the druid, the bard, and the catgirl, all meet up and start going East over some flat plains towards the ocean. Halfway across it, a group of Lamias assault them from the South. The caravan starts marching northeast with the soldiers at the back while the PC's turn to deal with the Lamia's. Eventually, the Lamias let up and run off before the first one's about to die. Suddenly, the ground started shaking. A dozen purple worms popped up out of the ground to the north, and ended up eating about 2/3's of the goblin civilians. The army got away from them and managed to save their necks, but the commotion awoke the very territorial ancient wyrm blue dragon that lived there. He wanted to know why there were purple worms all over the place, and why humanoids were trying to cross his home. Through some quick negotiating, the blue dragon agreed to let them all cross if they could find a way to remove every purple worm from the plains. Mind you, the highest level among that group was level 5- that would have been an impossible task. However, they came to realize that purple worms aren't actually that fast, and are quite stupid. With a couple clever uses of the summon spell, they managed to drive the purple worms out of the plains and into the northern grasslands. The blue dragon, not quite satisfied with how easily it was done, demanded an additional 100 gold from each PC. He also threatened them, saying that if they ever walk across his home like that and wake him up again, he'll be very ill tempered.

The half-dragon, meanwhile, met up with his werebear friend, protector of the forest. He called him down and warned him of what was ahead- a thick cloud of smoke that smelled like burning flesh, and an army. Satisfied, the half-dragon was about ready to fly off again, but the werebear insisted he didn't- something else was in the forest, hunting. Their leader appeared to be another half-dragon that he mistakened for the PC, right down to a very similar smell. The major difference was that he was in hiding and searching around for something, appeared more powerful, and was wearing an odd mask of a sad face. The werebear then offered to carry the half-dragon out of the forest, since he was protected by a god and the denizens of the forest.

The werebear and half-dragon were halfway back through the forest when he suddenly stepped on a gas trap that put the werebear to sleep. The half-dragon and a group of other hunters had been waiting to ambush him all that time. After an intense struggle, they manage to hit the half-dragon with enough sleep poisons to bring him down. The last thing the half-dragon remembered seeing before he was knocked out cold was the other half-dragon dragging him back South.

I'm gonna meet up with the half-dragon PC alone soon to play out a very special solo-quest. He's alone in enemy territory, and that other half-dragon is a very significant character (the PC wanted me to make him a cool backstory myself and introduce it whenever, so here it comes :D). Let's just say he has a case of amnesia that he doesn't know about and a few familial issues.

[blackout]

Ok, funny thing. My all-monster party's travelling through the Silver Marches, approaching the village of Hilltop. Those familiar with NWN's expansion 'Shadows of Undrentide' will know the village well. We end up running into a certain Kobold bard and he says that he needs help 'convincing' the other kobolds in the Nether Mountains to come down to Hilltop. Tymofarrar, the dragon master had been killed(completely optional in SoU.) awhile back and the kobolds were basically on their own. With wild animals, bandits, human hunting parties, and multiple cases of Gnoll-Attack Syndrome in the region, it's a wonder the tribe's still around. Anyways, we get up there and start shoving gold into the tribe leader's hands to get them down to Hilltop. They agree, and the minute we all exit the cave with 50 or so kobolds with us, we get jumped by at least 30 wyrmlings. The entire tribe got decimated. Needless to say, Deekin was upset.

[John_D]

Last night my computerised notes did not work and the index card with one of my encounters on disappeared into thin air. So what did I do? I made up all of the enemys' stats on the fly and it was still loads of fun. Hooray!

[El Jaspero, the Pirate King]

So, as it turns out...party structure does make a difference!

Our wizard was out, so the team was (all ECL 11)
-duergar fighter/some PrC
-ranger 1/cleric 10
-rogue 11 (me)
-ranger 9/order of the bow 2

First encounter was a tangle with I think 6 goomahs on a battlefield split by a ravine. 2 rogues, 2 rangers, 2 red wizards: levels varied, but total CR was 13. The ranger on her flying carpet pretty much mopped up the field and the only person that took much damage was the fighter, who got toasted by a couple spells for about 50 damage. The ranger and I didn't even get hit.

So we're feeling pretty buff, and march on towards this fortress of evil mercenary ninjas. Hey, the tower's up there on the mountain, right? Teleport and away we go, not wanting to walk all the way up there potentially under fire all the way.

Smart, right?

Not so much. Due to distance and whatnot, even though we didn't miss he rolls to see exactly where we land. Naturally, it's right in the area of the battlemap that's trapped and guarded by two swarms of hell wasps. CR 8? Screw that, man! Immunity to weapon damage and sneak attacks, and we basically can't hurt them at all. The cleric has two scrolls of flame strike but is of course pounced upon by some cold-templated undead thing as she tries to get away from the swarms. We end up retreating, and luckily our DM is nice enough to decide the swarms give up after a bit of chasing and return to their hives.

So yeah...next time, bring the wizard.

[Jack_of_Spades]

I started running a 15th level campaign where the PCs are going to go the the Abyss and stop an evil plan that Orcus is going to launch to destroy the material plane.

There is a cleric, a warforged barbarian, a monk/rogue, and a cleric.

The first encounter was a Mature adult Black Dragon CR 14 and a Wizard Level 12.

The wizard stayed hidden on a ledge above the PC while they PCs dealt with the dragon. The PCs found a pool of Acid about 20feet deep where the dragon kept it's hoard of gold.
The first Cleric cast Resist Energy and jumped into the pool of acid. He died.
The next cleric healed the warforged and cast resist energy on him.
The warforged jumped in, took a lot fo damage, and came out with three magic rings (water walkiing, force shield, and spider climb) and a Rod of Lordly Might.
The wizard who is still out of sight thanks to good hide checks and a couple invisibilty spells makes his move.
He uses telekinesis to bull rush the warforged into the acid. The warforged (who claimed the ring of water walking) falls prone, but hovers above the surface.
The monk/rogue runs over and helps the warforged get out of prone.
The cleric casts see invisibility and scans the ground around him. The player specifically said he didn't care about looking up; he only wanted to check the ground.
The warforged double moves away from the acid pool so the wizard can't dispel his ring's effect.
The wizard dispells the Monk/rogue's ring.
Monk/rogue falls in and takes a lot of damage; he emerges badly damaged, but alive.
Cleric runs over to heal the Monk/rogue.
Warforged looks for any enemy. Fails.
Wizard casts dominate person on the warforged and commands hm to attack his friends.
Warforged fails his save.
He kills the other party members.
he commands warforged to walk onto acid pool.
Commands him to take off ring.
Warforged fails his save again.


Was I fair in this encounter? The players insist that I wasn't, but I think it was okay.

[Hallavast]

I don't remember what the rule is for obviously suicidal commands given to dominated creatures, but I thought they ignored them. The party should have been able to overcome the lone wizard with the right spells, but if they were weakened enough by the dragon, and they rolled poorly on saving throws and such, then I can see where they might hit some trouble.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I dunno, there's some ways to incidentally kill with dominate creature. Like handing them a bottle full of a deadly poison, telling them it's a strong ale, then making them drink it.

[Hallavast]

I dunno, there's some ways to incidentally kill with dominate creature. Like handing them a bottle full of a deadly poison, telling them it's a strong ale, then making them drink it.
Right, but walking into an acid pit that nearly killed them isn't one of them.

[Bears With Lasers]

Well, once it became apparent that you were slaughtering them, you should probably have been less than as-effective-as-possible. Because it doesn't really sound like they had fun.

[blackout]

I agree with Bears. That just doesn't sound fun, being ordered to kill friends because the nice-man told me so.

[Bears With Lasers]

That's not to say that you should never use dominate or good tactics, but it'd've been pretty easy to use less-than-optimal tactics to avoid a TPK but still be scary, there.

[Fizban]

I'm wondering how the first cleric died. At that level, resist energy stops 30 per round, and submersion in acid is only 10d6. Unless the cleric drowned or you rolled really high damage every round, he shouldn't have died. The second cleric was just being stupid, you specifically asked if he was going to look up, that's enough of a hint for anyone, and he still just stared at the ground.

[Tor the Fallen]

TPK. Well, just the two of them. Not a terribly large party.

Actually, it's a little ironic. I was going to have them go down in their first battle against an orc raiding party, then wake up in the orc warrens. So I had my encounters all planned out.

There was going to be a battle of the PCs and a handful of NPC militiamen against a troop of orc raiders and their worg allies. They were out numbered 2 to 1. Should have gone down, right?

The lvl 3 orc barbarian rolled, I kid you not, 15 consecutive misses. In a rage. Against commoners.

The PCs won, just barely. They went down one turn before the two or three remaining militiamen finished off the last of the worgs. And the NPCs who I had fleshed out, given backstory to, and spent all night working on, died.

So from there, it was adventuring on the fly. Finish that session, I spend the next week figuring out how to get them back on track while I keep 'em busy with a side quest.
Now tonight. Figured out how to get them back on track, plausible explanations for everything, why the orc warrens they're exploring aren't crawling with orcs, etc.

The two of them (level 3 by now, with lots of loot, gestalt monk/cleric and rogue/wizard), run into an orc patrol of 3 lvl 1 orc warriors. The monk goes charging in. "They only have a CR of like, 1/2," and "they're just three orcs." The monk is two whole turns ahead of the cautiously approaching wizard/rogue. (I have the orcs play intelligently, staying out of the light cast by the wizard/rogue's torch, so only the half orc monk/cleric can see them).

Monk moves in, a round of attacks and misses.
Monk attacks and drops one. Both orcs attack him. One criticals with his falchion. Drops the monk to exactly -10.
I say he can be at -8. It's our third or fourth session. No reason to role up a new character.
The rogue/wizard, having just arrived, pours a potion down his comrades throat (taking a bunch of AoO's while doing so). This fails to bring the monk out of the negatives. The orcs attack on their turn. Both proceed to critical him, dropping him into the negative teens. I said he was down to negative six.

I had them wake up in the dungeon they were supposed to be in three sessions ago, but now I have to rework everything if I don't want them to end up 'dead' again. Goddamn unlucky roles.

[Ryuuk]

We played through the west wing of the Burning Plague adventure found on WotC's site. The party of 2 is making it's way to a town up north, carrying a few relics that an order forgot in another town and seeing if they can return them. They pass by Duvik's Pass and are prompted to help out the town by one of the guards.

So they make their way to the mine and the Warblade is deafened by the thunderstone trap. We laugh and have some fun with this, saying that he can only understand half of what he hears. Then they make it to the room with the tables and get peppered by crossbow fire, taking a few hits each but nothing major. The paladin decides to try to capture one so he throws his sunrod at one of them to dazzle the group. I consider all the penalties and let him do it, he proceeds to roll a 20 an assured hit, so I let him roll for damage on a d4 and he rolls max, which is plenty to kill one of these disease ridden kobolds. Again we laugh at the idea and decide that it's nonleathal.

The other 3 decide to retreat to the storage room and start panicking in draconic, the warblade points out that he knows draconic and I point out that he's deaf. So they follow them, and I somehow have to cram 8 kobolds, 2 humans and a dire weasel in a 10 by 60 room.

Again, they get peppered by crossbow bolts, but in the end the kill everything except for 1 of them which they hogtie and interrogate. He tells them about the rest of the kobolds and of the demon that's farther down. The Paladin doesn't quite know what to do with him so he decides to carry him around since he's immune to disease anyway. As a result, they easily avoid the pit trap and we stop as they're entering the main mining area.

Overall, it was a pretty fun session. The paladin took the spotlight a bit more then the warblade this time, but I think he needed it since the warblade outplayed him the past 2 sessions. I'll take this as a sign that I should read the adventure just before the session, not over 2 months before.

[Matthew]

Heh. Good Adventure The Burning Plague. The next Area is where the first party I ran through it got killed. The second party managed it no problem, though.

[illyrus]

Little bit of setup:
We had recently fought an advanced(26 HD) fiendish bulette at lvl 11 and killed it. It seemed to be a near unstoppable killing machine so we decided to make our own. So we created a simulacrum(13HD still with the fiendish template and power attack as it's 12th HD feat) of it. My wizard also had his own tower in the mountains where a small kobold tribe was. Also I'd just like to state that we constantly fight foes more powerful than us so this was a nice switchup.

The story:
Our cleric casts air walk on the huge bulette and my wizard stands on its head and it "flys" down to the kobold camp.

DM: By the time the bulette is hovering over the encampment the kobolds have all gone to their knees, many afraid.
me: "Greetings neighbors."
DM: "Oh great robed one, we have seen your works, did you build the great tower to the east?"
me: "Yes, I created that as well as that which I now stand on."
DM: Some of them begin scooting away, looking like they are about to run.
me: "I have come to you in peace, but it would displease me greatly if you were to run."
DM: "Oh great lord, are you a god?"
me(OOC to group): "Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes!" - Ghostbusters
me: "Yes, you may call me Lord Mordrik... the Magnificient. I have two commandments, only those invited by me will be allowed entrance to the tower. For those of who are talented in magic, I will teach them to become powerful, they may enter the tower.(this was a commandment as well even though it was weakly worded)"
DM: "Yes Lord Mordrik, the Magnificient. We will bring out your tribute now."
DM: After a few minutes they bring out gold, silver, and copper as well as various other precious gems, the total worth about 2000 gold and pile it at your feet.
me: "This is a good tribute, but I only have use of the copper, the rest you may keep. I wish for you to prosper."
DM: "He wants copper!"
DM: They begin taking off copper necklaces and jewelry and throwing them into a pile.
me: I command them to load the copper onto the back of the bulette and lift off, flying away. I tell them I will call for their magically inclined in 1 to 2 weeks.
DM: You arrive back at the tower.
Rest of the party: "What is all that?"
me: Tribute.
them: "We're not going to ask."

This entire exchange was unplanned. The DM had no prior idea I was going to visit the kobold camp and my plan had been more along the lines of appearing there and telling them to "Stay off my property" with a bulette acting as my shotgun for fear effect. To be at the table, it was a hilarous moment and masterfully DMed that I've probably poorly transcribed to here. As to the reason my wizard wanted copper, he has a few rust monsters that need to be fed at the top of his tower in case anyone decided to teleport to the top instead of walking thru the bottom levels. While copper isn't exactly a rust monster's favorite metal, neither are gold and silver. We did other stuff in the adventure of course that was well DMed and RPed out by the other PCs, but this was the highlight for me.

[blackout]

Ok, well, last night's information: we're travelling on over to Luskan and end up getting attacked by city mercenaries. We barricade ourselves inside a house and they start throwing alchemists fire bottles into the windows. So we all leap out the window in the back. We make it out of the city, and camp in the wilderness...and get attacked by dire bears. Our ranger and druid HIDE, so we can't communicate with them. We kill them, but our Giant Sorcerer is at -7 HP by now. So, our cleric heals him...and then drops to -2 from a poisoned arrow fired by a pair of Luskan mercs that tracked us. And then the session ended.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Last night, in a marathon late night gaming session to start the new semester, my group finished (for all intents and purposes) Whispers of the Vampire's Blade.

This post may contain both spoilers, assumption of knowledge, and heavy alterations of said module. In fact, I'm going to put it in spoiler boxes because it's becoming extremely long as I write it.

When we'd last left our heroes, they'd escaped the crash of the Cloud's Destiny. Long story short, they went north to Sterngate, figured out that Lucan and Grilsha were aboard the lightning rail, got assaulted, tied up, and successfully interrogated by Garrow, and got aboard the train while being stalked by Warforged Scouts. After far too much time spent gathering information from the conductor and porters, the Artificer had the clever idea of infusing two characters' armors with the Etherealness enhancement, with which they a) met the ghost of my dead former PC very briefly, and b) got the drop on Grilsha and completely murdered her in the surprise round. Fortunately, she wasn't dumb enough to be in the same compartment as Lucan, and the now-split party was ambushed by an upgraded (Ftr 4/Art 2) Scimitar and his quartet of Warforged Scout Rogues, who were on the train through a combination of luck and stalking. After the party tank and DMNPC (I only have three players, sue me) got bull-rushed off the back of the train, things looked grim for the players. Especially since the Warforged had cleverly trapped most of the train's NPC guard in the cargo cars and disconnected them. My Warforged are a lot smarter than the module's Warforged. Anyway, the party manages to barely beat scimitar off with a very good Inflict Moderate Damage from the Artificer. He dives ungracefully from the back of the train, and barely fends off a summoned Hippogriff, my party's last ditch attempt to make him a non-recurring villain.

Anyway, after some talking down of the very confused and angry Orien guards, the train went back and picked up the lost cargo cars and NPC. After that, the party decided to get some rest. Of course, that night, a very pissed-off Lucan misted under their door and nearly one-shotted the (awake, 'cause he's Warforged) Artificer. He rolled a critical, and I had to "forget" that he was flatfooted, or the sneak attack damage would've finished him. They'd have probably been finished anyway, if I didn't make the compartment unnaturally large, and the Druid hadn't thoughtfully picked up and explicitly written in her inventory a bag of rocks for Magic Stone spells/infusions. Anyway, a couple of thrown rocks and a whiff from the tank's silver halberd later, Lucan goes mist form up to the roof.

They pursue him, and proceed to get royally owned. I was rolling incredibly well for Lucan. Of course, when they realized this, they decided to try diplomacy, since Lucan was obviously being controlled by the Soul Blade. I allowed this to trigger a Will Save for poor Lucan against the sword's power, and he continues his trend of ludicrous rolls with a natural 20 (he needed a 16). Lucan gives a dramatic, if emo, speech, chucks the sword over the side of the train, says he won't kill the PCs as long as they leave him alone, and bats off. The party seems to have elected to let him go. A Feather Fall spell and a hop off the train later, they've acquired the Soul Blade...and are now in the middle of Nowhere, Breland with their mission half-finished and abandoned, little health, and a megalomaniacal talking sword.

Next week promises to be fun.

Cool moments for me:
*Surprise attack from the ethereal plane by the players
*Getting my villains to actually give exposition for once. I had to hold a PC at knifepoint to get the chance.
*Making Scimitar talk like HK-47, even though none of my players have played Knights of the Old Republic.
*Scimitar gets trapped in a Grease spell, uses an alchemist's fire to ignite the grease, and then walks through the flame, just taking the six damage or so from the fire. I had fun describing that.
*The sheer number of crit successes gotten by Lucan, both good and bad for the party.

Things I should have done:
*Given Scimitar more mooks, like he has in the actual module.
*Used, "Hello. My name is Lucan Stellos. You killed my sister. Prepare to die."
*Quoted Metal Gear Solid for Lucan's parting speech.
*Used less awesome dice during the Lucan fight.

[Ali]

What my group did tonight - well, all of yesterday rather, was actually an awful lot of things. (Before I start, the game I am running takes place in Greyhawk and when we started this session the party consisted of three dwarves - a barbarian, a druid, and a cleric of Heironeous, and a tiefling wizard, and they were also accompanied by two NPC's - a tiefling warrior and a human paladin.)

Firstly, (After having ventured into a newly discovered dungeon after having answered the call for adventurers by the village) the brave group of adventurers fought their arch-enemy on a rickety wooden bridge above lava. In the battle, several of the villain's mercenaries were bull-rushed off the edge by the party's barbarian, but sadly the cleric was bull rushed off the edge as well. Things were looking grim, but the barbarian bull-rushed the villain off the edge, sadly, before he fell into the lava, he used his amulet of teleportation to escape, so things didn't get any less grim.

They then proceeded across the bridge and answered the riddles necessary to open the large door. Inside, the room was filled with mist, looking similar to a snow-storm. They looked behind them, but the door was gone, and they had other things to worry about, like the strange naked person running towards them with a broken sword. He looked like an easy enemy to defeat at first, but it turned out the broken sword was actually very powerful, somehow providing a powerful defense for the naked mad-man. When they did defeat him, however, the party's wizard saw that what was left of the sword was powerful, and tried to pick it up - after feeling a horrible sensation in his arm, he exploded, spraying the party with blood. Despite this, the barbarian STILL thought it would be a good idea to pick it up, so he put a cloth round his left hand and grabs the blade. He starts feeling the sensation, and the paladin chops off his left hand to save his life. The tiefling warrior didn't seem to care about the welfare of his party member, and was still trying to figure out how they could get the blade. That pissed off the paladin, who ripped off the tiefling's amulet (Which, unknown to the paladin, was hiding his evil alignment. The paladin had finally figured this out!). The druid (who had discovered the tiefling going through his pack earlier on) was also pissed off, and the situation ended with the tiefling's head being chopped off by the paladin.

Now only the one handed barbarian, the druid, and the paladin remained. A strange hag appeared in the mist, surrounded by magical energy. She explained how she had the power in this realm, and she needed help to stop an evil sorceress trying to take over (the tiefling warrior and the paladin were in the same party as the evil sorceress to begin with but were betrayed). Before the druid and barbarian could answer, the paladin told her to send them to the sorceress using whatever power she had left.

When they got to the sorceress, the paladin charged forward, slashing her gnome assistant in two and trying to destroy the magical wards surrounding her. As the druid and barbarian tried to follow, the stone bride underneath them collapsed and they plummeted into the pit below. The druid's fall was cushioned by several spider webs, but sadly the portly barbarian landed on him. The disgruntled druid felt something hard under his behind, and discovered it was a stone with a runic marking on it. When he held his hand against the runic marking on the stone, a celestial dire ape was summoned. Appropriately, because a huge monstrous fiendish bloated dire spider had started crawling towards them. After defeating the hideous beast, they held on to the ape’s back as he climbed back up to the sorceress, where they discovered that the paladin had managed to get past the wards, and they saw him disrupt her ritual – killing himself in the process (his last words were “destroy it…”), and the sorceress was furious. The two dwarves promptly fought the sorceress, and after defeating her, they were brought back to the hag, who told them the dungeon was soon to collapse. She used the last of her power to send them as near to the dungeon exit (which was also the entrance, of course) as she could.

Who awaited them at the dungeon exit? None other then their villainous arch-nemesis that they had fought earlier on the crooked bridge. He demanded all their treasure, but since they had found hardly any, he stomped off, swearing revenge.

The two dwarves received a warm welcome back at the tavern, where they spent a few days. They couldn’t help but be saddened about their companions’ deaths though. The dwarven cleric’s son arrived, and asked to join the party to avenge his father’s death. The town alchemist marks a location on the party’s map that he didn’t have a chance to explore in his own career.

On the road again! The party set off, only to find a pair of bounty hunters with a troglodyte and a githyanki in cages. They talked, but of course it ended in conflict, with the bounty hunters getting killed and the githyanki getting released, joining the party. Later along the road, they encountered a woman in distress, and as she told them what had happened an enormous troll walked out of the forest, and they had to battle him to the death. Luckily, they defeated him, and kept going into the forest with the woman along with them (she happened to be a healer). They soon found the cave they were looking for, but inside there seemed to be nothing but a few kobolds. However, when the tiefling archer fired his bow at them, one successfully ran away. The party followed the direction in which he ran. They later heard a rumbling growl, and a green dragon emerged from the darkness, surrounded by kobolds. The party started firing arrows and spells at the dragon, but when it got close, they realized how terrifying it really was. After most of them had been slashed a couple of times, they ran for their lives, but when they got to the exit, who awaited them, yet again? Their arch-nemesis. He had freed the troglodyte they left behind, and teamed up with him, digging a pit at the exit of the cave. The adventurers, all running as fast as they could, fell into the pit. The villain and the troglodyte stood looking into the pit, and as they did, the dragon breathed acid out of the cave exit and melted the troglodyte – but the villain survived and managed to escape (again). The party lay very still, and the dragon and all the kobolds went back into the cave. The druid cast spider climb on the githyanki, who climbed out and tied a rope around a tree. Once the whole party was out, they found a clearing and rested, then left the forest and traveled to Ekbir.

So the party now consists of the dwarven barbarian, the dwarven druid, the dwarven defender (previously the dwarven cleric), the githyanki archer (previously the tiefling wizard) and the NPC half orc lass, who the barbarian constantly tries to seduce, despite his charisma of 6. When they reached Ekbir, he rolled a check to see if he seduced her…

It was a natural 20.

[CrazedGoblin]

heheh that was funny when i picked up the sword and went boom!

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Continuing the saga of my PC's-

I arrived early so that the half-dragon could have a little solo adventure and pick up his super prestige class. He found out that the group that ambushed him and imprisoned him in a hidden army camp wasn't actually with the warlord- they simply agreed to find and capture the half-dragon because he was integral to fixing up their half-dragon, who seemed to be connected. The other half-dragon was under a powerful geas that prevented him from harming another living being until he could kill his next of kin. Taking pity on him, they decided to find this next of kin and see if, instead of making him kill them, they could figure out how to remove the mask that was warping his morality. Unfortunately, the PC half-dragon had divinely induced amnesia, and the only way to see some of his missing memories was to use an orb at the top of a nearby tower. He was set under his own unique geas to go obtain the orb and set out with bare-bones equipment.

He entered and noticed two stairs- one set leading down, one leading up. He went down first, and met a lich. The lich asked him what good allies were to him. He gave an evil answer, and one of three statues in the back produced a black orb for him. The lich then said that he had to properly utilize the orb he was given to escape that level, as the stairs ascended and sealed off the exit. After realizing that the orb contained nothing but negative energy, he decided to destroy it. It proved to be the lich's phylactery, and as it cracked the lich dissipated, allowing him access to the stairs again, but without anything to show for it (the purpose of these exercises were to confirm his own beliefs as a chaotic neutral character. Answering evil meant he didn't get an item of use, though he still retrieved a means of moving on). The next level up contained a wight. He asked him how best to enter a locked room. The half-dragon picked the most chaotic answer, and a statue produced a shining blue sword. With it, he faced the wight and destroyed it, and moved on up. A voice told him that a lost soul was wandering in the room above, and he could either try to help it, kill it, or sneak past it. He snuck, and thus earned himself some magic armor near the end of the room. At the next floor, he met a flesh golem, his final trial. He had to defeat it in single combat, no easy feat for a level 6. Inevitably, he did it, and barely alive crawled to the top. There he found the orb and viewed the memories he needed most, seeing that the mask was from a god and would remove itself when it found a more powerful host. It also turns out that other half-dragon is his brother, who took the mask for himself to save the PC from a life of miserable servitude to a mad god. Remembering that they were about to show it to a powerful wizard to try and have it removed, he huried back out of the tower as fast as he could. His magical gear all disappeared the moment he left, but his wounds instantly healed as well. He found the enemy camp in ruins, but arrived just in time to heal his wounded and dying brother, who was now free of the mask. He learned of the location of the now posessed wizard and went off after him. When he got there, he decided to use his cunning to execute a variety of guerilla attacks to wear him down, then finished him with a good sneak attack. The body, however, quickly regenerated, and so the next time he finished him, the PC hacked his head off. The head was still alive, so he took it with him to see the nearby werebear, who had ressurected thanks to the holy power of the forest goddess. He took the head and purified the mask, finally ending the nightmare. Returning to the burnt away camp, he found that his brother had left behind a note and manual for him, explaining that he was going to start travelling the world and wanted the PC to have a book detailing special fighting arts handed down by a half-dragon lineage for generations. Thus, he obtained his new super prestige class and I deus ex machina'd him back to the other PC's by having an NPC from his mercenary army appear and use a scroll of teleport other. I dislike doing that, but it would have been a pain otherwise.

The rest of the army managed to make it all the way east, where they found a large fleet. The merc army was about to go north to try and flank the enemy by land and sea, entrenched in the elven city. The PC's were given three stocked ships for them and their armies. They split themselves up and started off on their way, after a good hour and a half of pure shenanigans and practice duels. Not far into it, something horrifying was destroying the fleet quickly. The bard did a lore check, and lo and behold, it was something to be truly feared- a specially made aquatic variant of the Tarrasque. As the PC's scampered to try and help aid the futile fight against the mythical monster, they learned that the capital ship in the center had a powerful magical device that could get them out of there, but it was risky. The PC's fought their way there to help set it up. It was an enormous teleportation spell that could encompass the entire fleet, but wasn't without it's issues, such as directing it appropriately and the precise targets. They decide to teleport into their allies' encampment south of the captured elven city. They set it up, and away they go. They arrive their still in their ships, and a lot of seawater also comes with them and floods the area a bit. But worst of all? They caught the aquatic Tarrasque in the spell too.

It wasn't very quick on land, and it was having dehydration problems, but the aquatic Tarrasque's regeneration kept it going on it's rampage. The whole army started running with that beast behind them, which had now alerted the enemy army. The PC's had a dangerous plan- they could run the Tarrasque into the opposing army and let it wipe them out. But first, they had to get there. On their way, they found the frontline and found themselves in a massive battle. It raged on for a good little while, the PC's playing to their finest. They smashed their way through the thick outer defensive line, and right into the city itself- right as the Tarrasque caught up with them.

So, I now have five PC's at an average level of 6, rushing through an enemy-controlled city in the middle of a heated battle, being chased by a slightly depowered Tarrasque. The barbarian, shortly after making his own entrance into the city by bashing a giant hole in the wall with a raged critical on a warhammer, commented with "This is the best war ever".

I feel accomplished.

[Nahal]

Wow, your barbarian's comment sums it up nicely

[mikeejimbo]

I seriously rolled a 4 on a Move Silently Check last night.

[Mattarias, King.]

my party spent hours ending our xmas campaign (we haven't played in a while), where the leader of this town of.. well, gnome.. elf.. things, was kidnapped by a vampire. a vampire snowman. who was awakened and turned vampiric by this magic hat that an NPC elf girl.. thing put on it. after finding a bunch of caves (infested by stirges.. *shudder*) we left the caves, only to realize later that THOSE were where the vampire took the mayor. the vampire appeared to be a silmularcum. which was kinda creepy. what was sillier, though, was that the mayor was dressed in red robes and a pointed, red hat. sound familliar? XD anyways, after along battle, (where i forgot to use that wand of daylight- dah..) where our cleric got nearly completely con-drained, we saved santa, and all was merry.

.. then, on the way home, our sleigh was attacked by a WHITE DRAGON. o.o; .. not we had just went up to level three. it was a wyrmling though, and was dispatched pretty quick with a volley of arrows from the barbarian and a couple of (houseruled-in, kinda) burning hands from me, the bard. XD i was actually useful today! -and i have a maximum of 20 HP now! whoo!

[Brauron]

My group didn't play tonight, we accompanied our DM to Walmart to help him with buying a TV.

[TSGames]

My group didn't play tonight, we accompanied our DM to Walmart to help him with buying a TV.
Ahh..The most important and dangerous quest of all. Braving the economic tribulations of a fluctuating technology market to emerge victorious with many inches of artificial image generating goodness. You deserve bonus XP.

[Enoch_6211]

my group hasn't played in three weeks because of winter break, but the night before break we had a heck of a night...

background... we're in (what i believe to be) a homebrew setting. its a new continent that the Empire has colonized. the continent has 10-14 deeply established races and cultures, of which we've met 5. our party is: human cleric lvl 7, Raptoran fighter lvl 6, human fighter lvl 6 (who missed that night... stupid exams), Catfolk Bard lvl 6, and human Battle Sorceror 5, Figter 1 (me). we are acting as diplomats from the emerging human settlements to the elven capitol trying to seek a peaceful solution to attacks that have been occuring on our smallest town.

Things to Consider:
Elves ar jerks
Arcane spellcasting has been banned on this continent, so if i cast any spells, i will be discovered and considered an outlaw.
There is a class heirarchy with the elves High Elf, Wood Elf, Grey Elf, Wild Elf (top down).
our party is mostly new to D&D.

So we are taking a prisoner (long story) to the elven capitol. He is a wild elf who was attacking our city. We stop on the way at this really amazing elven town where we get treated like kings because most of these people have never seen humans before. two of our members (including myself) buy bamf new weapons and celebrate by getting drunk and roudy. next day, we travel on to the capitol. it takes us like... days to get there. our DM rolled a d8 to see how long it took... no random encounters. we get to the city and we ask the prefect of the city (who is pretty much the "president" of the elven community) where we can find this seer to learn more about a certain "dark one" (the final boss for our campaign. he is sending people to attack our towns. we don't know why).

he 'ports us to a road in front of the seer's house. we follow it, and run into a wild elf who is the self-proclaimed leader of the guard that protects the seer, who ironically doesn't need it (we're talking epic level). our catfolk friend uses his fantastic bluff abilities, helped along by his fancy ring, to convince the guy we're supposed to be there. he takes off, but we can hear him following us. we round a bend and see the seer's house... blocked by the same wild elf and 5 of his buddies. the cat tries to lie... the guy gets pissed. my character is not the most level headed spellcaster you've ever met. i exchange words with the elf, most of them explitives, and basically tell him to move or i'll bury him where he stands. this prompts us all to roll initiative... "us all" including the 8 other wild elves we failed to spot check. before the first attack can be declared, the seer steps out of his door, uses hold person mass, tells off the guard, and lets them go. we are forzen there while he chastens us for our forwardness and then beckons us inside.

we ask him about the dark one... he's all vague. partly because he's an elf, partly because he can see the future, and those types are always mysterious. he sends us farther down the road and tells us to ask the guy ourselves. we go along and find this hooded figure standing there, with two other hooded figures flanking him. he pulls down his hood to reveal... he's human! wowzers. he gives us an evil monologue, gives us a plot item, and then disappears into the forest on the side of the road. his final instructions to his hooded companions is, of course. to kill us. they remove their cloaks to reveal...

ferral drow (our dm is amazing). they are at least level 8 or 9. we fight for awhile. both drow roll to attack me. the both crit. my dm says, "i'm gonna be nice. one of them is attacking AJ (our Cleric)." he turns to look at me for appreciation. i flipped him off... twice. so he recended that remark and had them both crit me (20, 20, 18, 19 right in a row). i take 30 damage. being a 5th level spellcaster, my hit dice are for crap, so i'm down to 9 hp. we fight some more. my dm looks at me and goes, "ya know, these are FERRAL drow. i doubt they'll prosecute you under law for using arcane magic." so i launched scorching ray as a touch attack. toasted the closest drow to me into the negative 'teens. the other one finally fell to a nice arrow crit from the raptoran.

more plot movers rounded out the evening.. oh yea, and we went to a tavern. i played a drinking game with a dwarf. lets just say he won. at the end of the night, the dwarf set me up with 2 of his companions. to me they looked like an elf carisma 18 and a human carisma 17, but what do i know? i'm drunk. i woke up in the morning with a monster hangover and the servant staff treating me very funny. my dm told the whole group after the game was over that it was an elf corisma 11 and a goliath corisma 9. yeah... i still don't know IC. next monday we're on our way to the capitol of the entire continent. Think "United Nations." we will finally have the main plot unveiled to us. plus hopefully get some $$$.

btw... for experience that week, our dm realized that the dark one we will be fighting at the end of semester could kill us rediculously easy if he didn't do something drastic. therefore, he bumped us all up to level 9... heck yes. three levels at once. i finally get to take my frist level of Elemental Savant.

[JimmyDPawn]

Oh gods... we got three people in the party killed off tonight. It was ridiculous.

Just to give a brief idea, we're do a zombie infestation game, to WOD rules, although not the setting.

Death one: Joe, NPC. He's been sick, and people are paranoid about zombies, so when we arrived at a fortified area, they wouldn't let him in. We left him at the entrance with our dog. We go around, kill some zombies from the roof, decide we can't win this fight, so it's time to go.

As we leave, the red-neck shotgun wielding trick driver and one other member both botch spot checks coming down the later. DM says "You two, see a zombie, with your dog." Our red neck, on the spot, whips out his gun, shoots the 'zombie' in the head form about 10 feet away. Ya, a 'zombie.' Me, and Stan (the other npc) we had picked up just saw him blast Joe's head off.

Death Two: We decide to attempt to break past the quarentine by sneaking thorugh the woods. Our DM roles encounter, and we get the one thing that both we and he hoped we wouldn't get; Military patrol. It was the least likely encounter we could have had.

A few spot and hiding rolls later, we're sneaking away... except for Stan. Stan, who had been opposed to sneaking out in the first place, said it was too dangerous, but got convinced anyways, has time to say "What, you mean me?" before being gunned down. The guys approach, shot him in the head, and then proceed to spot us as we fail our attempts to stealtily sneak away. Our DM, not wanting a total party wipe, decides to give us one chance; the dog flips out, and attack their leader. We stand our ground, somehow win initiative, and start kicking some butt.

Down to one guy, and he's on the ground, with a gun to his head. My character, feeling vengeful and having seen his friend gunned downed without a chance to even explain, decided he's going to stab this last soldier in the throat.

I botch the roll. The DM rolls some dice, and informs me that he reversed my attack, and is now holding the knife to MY throat. Double hostage situation.

Then the redneck tries to bully him down, fails, resulting in shooting the man and getting my thoat opened.



To finish this all off, all the deaths so far of non-zombies in our campaign, have been directly, or indirectly(through his ideas) been cause by our redneck.

Jeebs. What a mess.

[Nahal]

We discovered that two artifacts we possess are pieces of a whole, an ancient device that amounts to an experiment gone awry by the gods and is directly or indirectly responsible for every atrocity commited by humanity throughout its history. We have a ring that contains the very essence of evil (and the souls of its previous owners) and a dagger that can heal you in our timeline by tranferring the damage to another of yourselves in an alternate timeline.

We've decided to leave the ring with the being that told us all of this (and who is supposed to retrieve these items and take them outside our universe, and thus is better able to resist their corrupting influence) and bring the dagger, both as a potentially useful artifact (if only for a little while) and as a means of drawing other people in this intertemporal chess game to us. This will (hopefully) allow us to play out some combat, and loot the bodies of our attackers for some interesting high-tech gear. This gives a double positive; we get to kill Nazis and acquire treasure. Of course, the old saying "power corrupts" applies here, so we're going to take turns with who has to hold onto the dagger.

Currently our quest is: journey through time and across earth to locate an unspecified number of weapons with bizarre powers and return them to the ghost of an alien/angel, as well as those few tools that are empowered by good (the ark of the covenant, the holy grail, buddha's bowl, and other non-weapon items of legend) to both allow us to fight the forces of evil without being corrupted and (in the end) prevent the alien from being overwhelmed by the presence of so much evil.

[Brauron]

Ahh..The most important and dangerous quest of all. Braving the economic tribulations of a fluctuating technology market to emerge victorious with many inches of artificial image generating goodness. You deserve bonus XP.

We should get Bonus XP for getting it in his (quite small) car...he was driving, his girlfriend and I were crammed in the backseat, and the box containing a 24" color television set was riding shotgun...we're really lucky we didn't get pulled over or anything, the box was partially obscuring the gearshift...and it's probably illegal to drive like that.

[JadedDM]

We should get Bonus XP for getting it in his (quite small) car...he was driving, his girlfriend and I were crammed in the backseat, and the box containing a 24" color television set was riding shotgun...we're really lucky we didn't get pulled over or anything, the box was partially obscuring the gearshift...and it's probably illegal to drive like that.

I can see that quest in my head now.

The party steps into the dank, dark caves of Wal-Mart. They see many television sets displayed on a table of various shapes, colors and sizes. An old man stands nearby a burning brazier. "You may choose one," he intones.

The youngest and most rash player steps forward, heedless of the warnings of his wiser companions. He quickly grabs up the fanciest, most expensive set he can find--it is gold plated, even. He then turns it on and watches it for a few seconds before his skin melts away, leaving nothing but bones behind.

"You have chosen poorly," the old man informs them.

[mikeejimbo]

I can see that quest in my head now.

The party steps into the dank, dark caves of Wal-Mart. They see many television sets displayed on a table of various shapes, colors and sizes. An old man stands nearby a burning brazier. "You may choose one," he intones.

The youngest and most rash player steps forward, heedless of the warnings of his wiser companions. He quickly grabs up the fanciest, most expensive set he can find--it is gold plated, even. He then turns it on and watches it for a few seconds before his skin melts away, leaving nothing but bones behind.

"You have chosen poorly," the old man informs them.

I pick the one made of stone.

[Shatenjager]

We got an email from our DM saying he was giving up D+D. Then we played the World of Warcraft boardgame. I was a druid.

:frown:

[Viscount Einstrauss]

This is much like every time I enter a Wal-Mart.

[Artanis]

This is much like every time I enter a Wal-Mart.
The dark, dank caves or the skin melting off?

[Mattarias, King.]

oh, something else that was silly in our last game- i made 3 DC30 perform checks in a row, and, according to the "you may attract extraplanar beings" quip in the description of performs, a GENIE appeared out of nowhere, shook my hand, and disappeared. XD i tried to get my DM to have it grant me a wish, but she didn't want to get into that quite yet, apparently. ^^;

[Fat Daddy]

Half the party got tossed over the side of an Airship at 800 feet. After the Wile E. Coyote POOF they rolled up new characters.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I'd say it's word for word exactly like every trip to Wal-Mart, except for a few parts that got missed. Like the orc horde shoppers, the sales ogres, and the checkout trolls.

[Brauron]

There was no facemelting -- and technically, the DM is the youngest among us, his girlfriend is a couple months older and I'm a year older.

Instead, his girlfriend (who I, personally, am not particularly fond of) decided to try and flirt with me, and then got mad at me when I did not react favorably.

[Matthew]

We got an email from our DM saying he was giving up D+D. Then we played the World of Warcraft boardgame. I was a druid.

:frown:

That sounds troubling.

[MrCab]

Tonight I lamented the loss of my DM to Warcraft. CURSE YOU BLIZZARD!!!

[The Great Skenardo]

My group's latest adventure was an interesting excercise in homebrow character generation. our DM had us roll stats, then roll 3d6 to determine character level (I rolled a 17 :smalltongue:) and then pass our sheets to the person on the left. That person chose a class and allotted the stats, as well as feats and skills. Pass to the left again. The next person chose inventory. Pass again. This next person chose a flaw and a bonus, as well as a backstory of sorts. one final pass returned the 17th-level character to me as an elven sorceror who "always casts the right spell at the wrong time and the wrong spell at the right time" in exchange for +3 Caster Level.

my compatriots were levels 8,10, and 11.
So! I concocted the character idea of Albert Wooster, bane of every serious-minded DM. The idea was that Albert Wooster is a cheerful sort of insane, with the kind of bantering that can only come from 24 CHA.
The plot was something like venturing into the dark forest to assist the elves in driving back a great unknown evil.
At the outset:
DM: All right, you've congregated to the tavern, and are enjoying a quiet drink when-
Me: Detect Thoughts!
DM: ...what?
Me: Crap! The right spell at the wrong time again!
it turned out all right, because a duo of battered and wounded elves entered the inn, and I managed to get a reading on one of them before they went upstairs.
DM: You detect a maddening mixture of a bunch of images and emotions: blood, pain, death, tortue, madness, murder, desecration. It causes you significant mental pain.
my party members noticed my discomfort, and I explained
Me:I sensed...oh, let me see...that was (Begins listing on fingers) Death, blood, pain, torture, madness and...hangnails?
(DM cracks up first time)
We made our way to an elven military encampment along the fringes of the dark wood.
DM: You approach the elven encampment. You can see armed sentries and flags flying high, and beyond that, the ominous mirk of the dark woods.
Me: "Ah, stalwart friends! What new adventures await us here in this camp? What marvels? What dangers? What...hangnails?"
DM: The elven sentry, catching sight of you, gathers a troupe of elves and comes to accost you, saying "Who are you, and what business have you here?"
Me:"Not now! I'm in the middle of a soliloquy! What-"(A pause.)"No, I guess I was done. Albert Wooster is my name, my good sir, and it is a pleasure to make your acquaintence. But not your Bed. Dancing Lights! Oh, Damn."
(DM and rest of party cracks up, disrupting play for about two minutes)

It was a good session, but ultimately we never finished. The DM just couldn't go on after I accidentally dropped a fireball into the midst of the party while trying to cast haste.

[Nahal]

Reminds me of the insanity chart I put together in one of my campaigns.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I had a fun one once. It didn't last a whole campaign just because it was too deep, with a variety of different mental stats. But I did use it to make some awesome bad guys.

Nowadays I just base the ocassional BBEG off of a famous criminal of some sort.

[Ravyn]

Well.... it started with the Anathema in the warehouse.

Actually, it started at the teashop, with rumors about Suspicious Activity at the warehouse. And a sneaking suspicion that somebody's corrupted the captain of the guard. And reference to some spirit or other. What's a Wyld Hunt to do? Investigate!

So we do. Discover we're in over our heads again--an old enemy of ours, incompetent fellow, quick with his firewands but not so much with his mind, and far too easy to egg on into a rage, named Seven Steel Viper--Half Dozen Pincushion to us--some random priest-guy; and a Water Aspect with near-legendary history. Bad enough Pincushion deludes people right and left, but how someone that effective can follow someone that stupid... anyway, them and a few mortal guards. So we decide we're going to grab some help--and that help ends up being first, a visiting barbarian merc at the local seedy dive, and second, stirring up a mob and convincing them the place is giving away free booze so we can draw off the guards. Works like a Charm. Then we get in. The barbarian draws off the Water like we'd hoped, and we run into Pincushion and the priest. The former, having long since sworn revenge on the party's two Immaculates, starts shouting for them to die and pulling out his firewands, the other attempts to get him to stop, coming across as this complete pacifist. Would you believe we believe him? Surrenders, even. At least, until he gets close enough for staff-reach, at which point... well, let me tell you, being used as a shield isn't too much fun. (My group has a tradition of getting dice-mechanic headaches in hostage situations. The one I ran... well, I think at one point I needed a flow chart to figure out who was attacking whom, since one party member wanted to take out the hostage taker, one didn't want to antagonize her and was thus getting in the way, and one just didn't want to see the second guy hurt. THIS time... well, when the human shield is only being held by the neck on the end of a staff-thing, no other restraints, has an auto-dodge thing going from Air Dragon Form, and isn't too interested in being a shield, thank you very much... I admire the ST's ability to pull a dice mechanic out of nowhere.) He kinda regretted it, though. Thing about using me as a shield.... well, when I gave him a couple volley of chakram to the face, he didn't exactly have anything to parry with. And I hit harder than I thought I was capable of. (Good old Air Immaculates and their chakram flurries.) He should've died. I don't know why he didn't. Heck, I'm not entirely sure what he was. Anathema 101 never covered anything like him. All signs said deathknight, but he certainly didn't seem to think so... creepy. Not to mention somewhere near the middle of this, the barbarian and the deluded Water come crashing through the wall... or rather, the deluded Water and a big sort of bear-thing. ...after all this, I don't think anything could surprise me anymore. Anyhow, he gets back up, me still stuck on the end of his staff--darn whiplash. If there's a next time and he makes the same mistake, I'm definitely bracing myself for when he keels over--breaks the staff, he and Pincushion vanish in a cloud of black smoke. At least he left the pieces of that thing....

(From the logs of Niev Tuyet, Air Immaculate shikari)

....yeah. That was session last night with my Exalted group. I have far too much fun playing Tuyet.

[Jack_of_Spades]

The party was fighting a Digester, a sad underused freak found right between Devourer and Dinosaur.
round one
The fighter got hit by a line of acid; The bard used inspire courage; The fighter charged and hit for 15; The ranger shot and missed.
Round Two
The Fighter gets hit by a claw attack; The bard draws a shortbow and misses his attack; the fighter misses; the ranger fire and hits for 10.
Round Three
The Fighter is knocked out by another claw; the Bard casts Mirror Image and says, "Ha! Just try and hit the real me!" The Ranger shoots and hits for 11.
Round Four
The Digester shoots a cone of acid; the bard fails his saving throw, his mirror images dissapear, and he falls unconscious. The ranger uses Rapid Shot and hits for a hit and a crit to finally kill the digester.

The ranger takes most of the other characters gold and leaves a couple coins at the edge of a puddle of acid. He uses potion on the other two. When asked where their missing gold is, the ranger says the acid dissolved it.
The ranger used their gold to get a nice +2 Composite Longbow +3Str bonus.

[mikeejimbo]

My group's latest adventure was an interesting excercise in homebrow character generation. our DM had us roll stats, then roll 3d6 to determine character level (I rolled a 17 :smalltongue:) and then pass our sheets to the person on the left. That person chose a class and allotted the stats, as well as feats and skills. Pass to the left again. The next person chose inventory. Pass again. This next person chose a flaw and a bonus, as well as a backstory of sorts. one final pass returned the 17th-level character to me as an elven sorceror who "always casts the right spell at the wrong time and the wrong spell at the right time" in exchange for +3 Caster Level.


Sounds almost like a sealed deck tournament, only more hilarious.

[Saph]

We had half the party turned into werewolves.

There was a werewolf attack overnight while we were resting, and everyone but me got bitten. The cleric made his Knowledge roll, and told us to gather belladonna (which we did) and eat it (which we did). Then he spent the next day casting remove curse. Then the moon rose . . .

The cleric, the fighter, and the bard all changed into werewolves and began tearing each other to pieces.

The cleric was killed. I managed to stabilise the fighter and bard, but they were in the process of turning Chaotic Evil. The rest of the party ran. The second night, I just got as far away as possible and listened to the howling. The bard woke up the next morning next to a campfire, surrounded by the remnants and equipment of a 1st-level fighter, a 1st-level wizard, a 1st-level cleric, and a 1st-level rogue. As for the fighter, I didn't find out what he did as a werewolf until several weeks later, when he showed me a sack containing a unicorn horn . . .

I'm not feeling very comfortable in our group anymore.

- Saph

[Mattarias, King.]

We had half the party turned into werewolves.

I'm not feeling very comfortable in our group anymore.

- Saph

:eek: eep. that's.. disturbing. a lot. .. our cleric of pelor might be turning into a vampire. now i'm paranoid something like that might happen..

[RandomNPC]

my group had their first encounter with dwarven zombies. it went like this

so init rolls, and everyone starts asking what happens when they get bit, do they turn into zombies? will they die? how much damage do zombie bites do?

zombies make slam attacks

party mindset: ok so they don't want to bite yet, throw something, keep them back, lets kill them off.

two zombies down, two left, zombies make more slam attacks

party mindset: im not hitting it, im going to keep using my ranged weapons, they have to die sometime.

personally i love zombies, just because of this.

[Jack_Simth]

The Digester shoots a cone of acid; the bard fails his saving throw, his mirror images dissapear, and he falls unconscious.
That's not exactly RAW; Mirror Image specifically states that the images respond to area affects, rather than vanishing. Nothing in the spell description or the school description indicate they vanish when the mage falls unconscious. RAW, they'd just all mimic you, and look like they're bleeding, dying, and unconscious.

[Brauron]

That's not exactly RAW; Mirror Image specifically states that the images respond to area affects, rather than vanishing. Nothing in the spell description or the school description indicate they vanish when the mage falls unconscious. RAW, they'd just all mimic you, and look like they're bleeding, dying, and unconscious.

Which is hilarious.

Oh man, my friends and I have done nothing but game lately...

Thursday night we started playing a one-shot of Star Frontiers. We didn't finish.

Friday night I ran a one-shot of Call of Cthulhu because one of the Star Frontiers players was unavailable. It went....interestingly. It was my first time running any game, and one of the players...was extremely unpleasant and eventually made me wish I hadn't bothered writing and running the one-shot. She was upset about everything, the pregenerated character was terrible, she was angry I'd asked her to play a female character, calling the INT 16 EDU 18 POW 16 Journalist "a mindless bimbo" and sulking, and then focused her attention on picking knots out of her boyfriend's curly hair instead of on the game.

Saturday night we finished the Star Frontiers game, and the girl who was sulking in my game sulked in this one as well because the DM was her boyfriend, it was taking too long, she wanted to stop, she made herself cry to try and make the DM/boyfriend feel like a horrible person, and then, when I suggested to him that we break for the night because it seemed like she was exhausted to the point where she was unable to function, and then she had the gall to take that idea and run with it -- she pretended to be so exhausted that she didn't know where she was, and started acting like she was hallucinating that she was in her accounting class.

Tonight we're playing D&D. This girl has always been somewhat unpleasant to game with, but she's been getting worse...The DM/Boyfriend has promised to supply me with an alibi if I smother her under a pillow.

[mikeejimbo]

Yeah, that can be one of the problems with trying to get one's girlfriend interested in gaming. It all just leads to needing an alibi.

[Jack_Simth]

Which is hilarious.
Useful, too, provided you have still-active allies. Cuts down on the likelyhood that one of your opponents will hit you with a CdG. Mind you, it also cuts down on the likelyhood that you'll be hit with a CXW from an ally....

[Cocktail Umbrellas]

(a few days ago) I was mazed. Admittedly, I probably deserved it. Trying to break into another individual's maze through the ethereal is probably worthy of mazing (at the very least, it was a pretty good way to piss off the Lady). It's been most unpleasant so far, I just hope my character will get out of it (she's pretty clever, but I don't know how clever is going to get her out of an iron house with a possessed undead chain-beast).

Since my DM knew I was going to try to break into the mazes, he had time to plan. Potential weeks. All I can say is that I am glad I like puzzles. I'll update the next time I play ^^

[Brauron]

Tonight's game went pretty well. Our party shrunk recently, but we have new players coming in. One of them in today, playing a rogue that had been specialized to make him more pirate-y. In game, my character challenged him to a game of Alepong (like beer-pong, but with cp instead of ping-pong balls), which I lost, then I challenged him to a drinking contest - last one conscious wins - which I also lost by a few seconds. We both passed out simultaneously, but he managed to stay vertical a little longer. The girlfriend's character than drew on our characters faces with a quill pen, looted our unconscious bodies and then ran to the other side of town. We spent some time trying to find the elf when we came to (and we were both very amused to be covered in ink). The girlfriend's character, a male elf wizard, then enacted an elaborate scheme to not be seen by us, which involved dressing in women's clothing and pretending to be the cleaning lady at the tavern we were staying at.

We recognized the elf, despite having taken 20 on a disguise check, and he ran again...only this time, I gave chase. I did a diving tackle, grabbed the elf, knocked the elf unconscious, hogtied the elf, and when the elf came to my barbarian explained, quite calmly, that while the inked faces was funny, making us spend an entire day searching for him was not as funny, especially not when the elf had complained that we were taking too long to complete the quest.

[Bosh]

Let's see:
-Considered poisoning a horse but desisted because the horse was already poisoned.
-Gelding an enraged horse.
-Hit the owner of the unexpectedly gelded horse with flying horse genetalia.
-Framing the brother of the owner of the unexpectedly gelded horse with the gelding.
-Goaded the brothers to murder.
-Defrauded a nine-year old of his inheiritance after said murder.
-Attempted to run a 419 scam.
-Enslaved a fellow PC.
-Whipped a fellow PC for insolence.
-Cheated in at field hockey.
-Beat several players unconscious with field hockey sticks (nearly killing one).
-Distributing hallucinogenic drugs.
-Framed various people for participating in black magic.
-Damaged a sheep shed.
-Married a fat girl in order to get their hands on vast tracts of land.
-Horse theft.

[MrNexx]

So, my group wrapped up our game that's been running since August this evening, under our third DM (myself). Vecna had corrupted several temples, first using them to gain a magical artifact in order to bring psionics into the world (and thus be the God of Psionics for the world), and then to use them to leverage political power in this small nation I'd created. When we last played, in early December, the party had escaped from the temple of Olidamarra as it was destroyed, winding up in a secret section of the temple of Heironeous where their head priest was summoning demons and leading the priests of various temples in rites to Vecna. They let the Heironeans in, and then led them around to other temples, convincing them to turn on leaders who had turned to Vecna.

Tonight, the party broke into two parts. Most of the group went first to Ehlonna, accompanied by a large contingent of priests and knights from various temples (Heironeous and several that were known to be good). They made a speech (aided by the satyr charming a good portion of the crowd), and made the high priestess of Ehlonna cry when they confronted her (she failed her save against the charm; she simply crumpled).

The other part of the party was the druid, who went, alone, to the grove of Obad-Hai. He got their attention, and began to tell them a story. He told them of how their political actions, good or bad, didn't really affect what happened in the next life, because politics didnt really affect nature. He told them that they didn't need to they should turn back to nature, because politics was not their sphere. And that, to emphasize his point, there was a small army of priests on their way to burn down their temple if they didn't get rid of those who worshipped Vecna immediately.

He phrased it so perfectly, with such a wonderful tone of voice, even I missed it at first. It was simply the most beautifully delivered speech I've seen since my younger brother slid a Gatetown into Arcadia through force of oratory and the help of a good bard.

[MrNexx]

-Beat several players unconscious with field hockey sticks (nearly killing one).


I hesitate to ask, but is this characters, or players?

[Raxtenko]

One of my player's failed a saving throw against Confusion, while they were the party was gihting in the Smithsonian. He wanders outside and then starts randomly killing cops. The rest of the party fled teh scene, so now the poor guy's looking at destroying millions of dollars worthof proceless antqiues and killing civilians and a few cops.

[Bosh]

I hesitate to ask, but is this characters, or players?
Characters.
Well not exactly field hockey sticks but field hockey is the closest equivalent to the Viking came the characters were playing.

What's kind of interesting is that the players actually acted MORE morally in that instance (and others) than the Icelandic Saga hero whose story this adventure was based on :)

[Brauron]

Yeah, that can be one of the problems with trying to get one's girlfriend interested in gaming. It all just leads to needing an alibi.

It's not that -- she's been playing rpgs for years and years, and she's amazed that I just started last year and only had about four sessions of rp'ing under my belt when I joined the group I'm rolling with now.

She even has more DMing experience then her boyfriend/our DM has. That's a big part of the problem. She doesn't like the way his style of DMing. So she refuses to bide by his DM calls.

Anyway, back on topic, today I ordered the rules for "Macho Women with Guns" because it looks ridiculously weird and fun. I talked to Rob, our DM, because I was absolutely certain he'd be amused enough to play. Dennis, the guy who just joined our D&D group would most likely enjoy playing as well. His character in Star Frontiers started dancing in an attempt to do better on a diplomacy attempt.

We decided that his girlfriend is NOT invited to any gaming we do other than our regularly scheduled D&D game. She was so unpleasant during my Call of Cthulhu game (Rob was super-angry at her for that, because it's just common courtesy not to pull the garbage she did on a person their first time running a game) and she was sulkier than usual during our game of Star Frontiers.

So she's not welcome in any non-D&D game we play. Because we're getting fed up with her nonsense.

[mikeejimbo]

She even has more DMing experience then her boyfriend/our DM has. That's a big part of the problem. She doesn't like the way his style of DMing. So she refuses to bide by his DM calls.

Ooh, that's the problem then? I guess that makes sense. Luckily, our group doesn't have too many problems with other peoples' DMing. I think we still have our favorites, but yet enjoy others.

And last night, wait, two nights ago, I found out how awesome an enlarged Ogre is, so I'm going to buy a scroll of permanency for the party wizard, so that he can learn it and cast it on our party ogres after I cast enlarged person. The DM has an interesting houserule that for spells or creations with an XP cost, someone else can pay it. So the ogres will probably be willing to pay the 500 exp. It'll take that, the cost of the scroll, and two days, but then we're going to have ogres that can flank with each other from over 30ft apart.

I might try to get a scroll of reduce person, too, just in case they need to fit into tight spots sometime.

[Jack_Simth]

And last night, wait, two nights ago, I found out how awesome an enlarged Ogre is, so I'm going to buy a scroll of permanency for the party wizard, so that he can learn it and cast it on our party ogres after I cast enlarged person. The DM has an interesting houserule that for spells or creations with an XP cost, someone else can pay it. So the ogres will probably be willing to pay the 500 exp. It'll take that, the cost of the scroll, and two days, but then we're going to have ogres that can flank with each other from over 30ft apart.

I might try to get a scroll of reduce person, too, just in case they need to fit into tight spots sometime.

Hate to break it to you, but Enlarge Person affects Humanoids only, which are a defined type. Ogres are type Giant. RAW, it doesn't work....

[mikeejimbo]

Hate to break it to you, but Enlarge Person affects Humanoids only, which are a defined type. Ogres are type Giant. RAW, it doesn't work....

Shhh, don't tell that to my DM. He's letting us get away with it.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

The group spent the whole night trying to defeat a Tarrasque and an enemy army within a city while preventing civilian casualties and causing major property damage. Mind you, the group's average level tonight was 7.

They started where they left off a week ago- the Tarrasque was now chasing them straight into an elven city after they crashed through the outer defensive line of the enemy army. They rushed through and fought a huge and complicated battle in the city streets, facing hundreds of troops down and barreling past as the Tarrasque followed after them as a constant, if slow, threat. The PC's were joined with other higher ranking officers of their army, but even they couldn't hold off the entirety of the enemy army. The group now had a much different plan- get the Tarrasque over to the enemy HQ to demolish it, then nail it down with a concert of heavy trebuchet fire from around the city.

The PC's split up into teams. Some of them went after the trebuchets to organize soldiers to work them, some of them drew the Tarrasque closer to the enemy HQ, and one of them went in search of the PC's general, who was in an "imbuing tower" searching for something to finish the Tarrasque after it's slowed down. The first group had to do a lot of sneaking around and back-stabbing, plus they had to track down enough people to work the many trebuchets. The second group had it the toughest, blasting and running through thick swashes of soldiers. The lone PC made it to the tower and met up with the general, who charged him with landing the finishing blow with a luck blade and wishing it gone for good.

Eventually, the Tarrasque found it's way into the enemy HQ and demolished it, eating/killing much of them. After it had nearly finished them all off and was ready to move on, Team B sent up a signal. Upon seeing it, Team A launched dozens of heavy trebuchets straight at the Tarrasque. It eventually buckled under the firepower and fell. The lone PC then swooped down, impaled it, and made his three wishes on the spot- he wished the Tarrasque dead for good, all of the destruction caused that day by the Tarrasque except against the enemy troops to be reversed, and for the remaining enemy troops in the city to be placed right outside the city walls. The latter is a questionable decision, but the players performed well, and were hailed as heroes.

With their immediate threats now over, the PC's are now meeting over what their next move will be. Their mercenary army is in shambles, their general has suddenly gone missing again, and they still don't know what the local warlord wanted with the city. More importantly, didn't the Tarrasque's appearance seem a little too convenient? So many things for the players to consider...

[Ninja Chocobo]

A couple of weeks ago (but I haven't got around to posting it until now, sorry), My party got started on the Main Quest of my campaign, by the epic Wizard, who's fighting a duel against another epic Wizard, and needs the adventurers to retrieve an orb from a cave in the middle of a marsh, and then to use said orb to purify altars that the Wizard's epic enemy has corrupted.
Aanyway, they start traversing the marsh, and almost get killed by the two Giant Crocodiles that they fought at the start. The adventure gets easier from there.
The Warlock in my party (with Leadership, and a 4th-level Cleric cohort), decides to raise the Crocodiles as zombies with his spiffy new Invocation: "The Dead Walk". For those of you unfamiliar with the Warlock class, it allows the Warlock to cast Animate Dead at will, but with the option to not use the material components, but the zombies only last for [caster level] minutes. Now, using the group's new allies, they breeze through the encounter with some Manticores. He proceeds to animate them, and two party members use them as mounts. Attempting to avoid an un-strategically placed tree made one hit it and the other do a barrel roll and fall off.
The rest of the session was easy. They fought some more crocodiles and a Young Adult Black Dragon.

[illyrus]

We're running the RttToEE game. We're currently a 4 man lvl 11 party with 2 cohorts and have just started in on the old/original temple. May contain game spoilers so putting the rest in spoiler text:


While 2 of our party members went ahead to scout (silenced, invisible fighter and ranger/rogue) Falrinth(around lvl 14 would be my guess) and a half-orc assassin ambushes our party. Falrinth(with improved invis, displacement, and fly) hits my lvl 9 cohort with finger of death, cohort saves and loses some temporary hitpoints. Invisible half-orc assassin full attacks our lvl 11 cleric, nearly killing her. Falrinth casts disentigrate on the wizard cohort again, the wizard again makes his save and uses bonded familiar to have his familiar take the damage, so he has yet to lose anything more than temporary hp. Cleric heals herself and cast antimagic field (yay action surge). The fighter's cohort(a cleric) casts invisibility purge and runs after Falrinth to drop his invisibility. My wizard cohort empowers a ray of enfeeblement with a rod and hits the assassin. The fiendish bulette simulacrum(yay scrolls and 26 HD advanced fiendish bulette enemies) turns the assassin into putty. My bard and wizard cohort hop in the field. Meanwhile...

The fighter and ranger/rogue have begun to fight 2-4 stone giants and a bunch of ogres with class levels. The fighter opens her eversmoking bottle and both PCs begin to withdraw. A beholder comes out and uses antimagic field to supress the smoke then disentigrates the ceiling behind the fighter, trapping her in. A short battle between the fighter versus a stone giant and the beholder takes place. In the end the fighter is slept by the beholder after making 3 other saving throws(they wanted to take her prisoner from the beginning). Back to the other group...

We began playing leapfrog with the antimagic field, the cleric moving up, and the my wizard and bard casting spells/singing while outside of it, then moving into it in the same round. My wizard, being too far away from Falrinth to use an enervation, empowered fireballed him for 52 damage, which he failed his save on(oh double damage rules how I miss thee, only destroyed his dagger). The simulacrum bulette charged him(it had air walk from earlier) and hit him for a good 15-25 more damage. Falrinth fireballed then quickened lightning bolted the cohort cleric to negative hp. Next round my bard sung greatness to bring him back to positive(yay temp hp) and he healed himself. Falrinth escaped once he was flame striked(one of the worst rolls I've seen in awhile, all 1s and 2s) with 2 hp remaining.

We went to check on our other comrades and found that one was taken. The bulette took down one of the remaining stone giants and the cleric dropped antimagic field, told us where the fighter was thanks to status, and we dimensional doored(bard and wizard casting it) with the rest of the party and a polymorphed bulette(dire lion) where the fighter and her captors should be. Thus ends our session and I expect will spell our deaths with a TPK next session or the one after that.

[Nahal]

Well I missed my game's last session, but what I heard warrants being posted here.

We continue our epic tale of 4 time-travelling misfit FBI agents on a quest to collect the various pieces of an incredibly ancient and evil device whose fragments posess various bizarre powers and have all been turned into weapons of some sort. When I last left the heroes, we had finally found out that our quest was, in fact, the task I just mentioned. We'd also been told that there were several items of good (or at least neutrality) that we could use without being corrupted if we found them (ark of the covenant, holy grail, buddha's rice bowl, etc). The last thing that happened was that three of us returned from learning all this and entrusting the quest-giver with one of the fragments to find our very own captain moron had charged off and left three of us helpless.

Since I wasn't physically there the details are sketchy, but the gist is as follows:
-An agent of another group who wants these items caught up with us in a jeep (we had been moving through the woods on foot). This was a surprise to us, since we had killed him earlier. Apparently stabbing him with the spear of destiny results in him healing more than once. Long story, that I've mentioned earlier in the thread.
-Capt. Moron proves himself useful in combat, by somehow closing with the enemy soldier and through a miraculous couple of rolls managed to dive by him, pull the pin on one of his own grenades and kill him without getting a scratch.
-Here, unfortunately, Capt. Moron lives up to his namesake. We have a vehicle, some weaponry, and a general idea of what needs to be done. We are also wanted in a murder investigation (we did commit them, but they were going to cook and eat us so I for one don't feel guilty), which can be worked around. Anywho, I would have suggested we do some research into potential items and find a way to split town to look for them (or, failing that, wander aimlessly till someone not intent on killing us tracks us down by the emanations from the artifact we kept with us).
-Instead, Capt. Moron decides our best course of action is to try to infiltrate the Montauk military base, which is nearby and may have some answers. Just to clarify, he thinks it's a good idea for 4 FBI agents armed with pistols, a jeep and a couple frag grenades to try to infiltrate a military base with top-secret research on-site. The GM, knowing I'd see the glaring flaw in this plan and trying to save our butts has my character make numerous reasoned pleas, all of which were for some reason ignored.
-So we take the jeep to the base, and manage to alert them to our approach by shooting an MP and failing to kill him before he alerts the base. They lay down landmines, and Capt. Moron uses a grenade to detonate them after noticing they're there. Shortly after this, the guard towers open up with 50cal machine gun fire, wrecking the jeep and two of the PC's. Capt. Moron avoided damage by using said PC's as a shield.
-So as the session ended, we have a wrecked jeep, two critically injured PC's (I got off easy as well), and a military base aware of our presence, considering us hostile, and has us within weapons range. We are, as previously mentioned, armed with pistols. One is incredibly high-tech, to the point that it carries 50 or so rounds, doesn't require a trigger to fire and is, so far as we can tell, a pistol-sized railgun.

My question is this; if we make it out of this alive, when I hold a pistol to Capt. Moron's head and ask him to justify me not shooting him for wasting precious resources on a ridiculously stupid move, do I actually listen to his arguments?

[volrathxp]

I'd say it's word for word exactly like every trip to Wal-Mart, except for a few parts that got missed. Like the orc horde shoppers, the sales ogres, and the checkout trolls.

I just have to say... yeah.

Some of the guys in my old group used to work for Wal Mart as stockmen. One of their ingame jokes was a fancy little place that could be found in every civilized metropolis town called Al's Furniture Emporium. The joke was that the stockmen all had red afros and were named Al (regardless of race) and that the management all had dreadlocks and regularly beat the stockmen with whips.

Suffice to say we had a few good run ins trying to buy stuff from there.

As far as our party is concerned... my Keld got crushed the last time we played, so I had to make a new character. And we started my online Eberron Murder Mystery campaign this last Friday night. Logs here. (http://www.saveordie.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=110&Itemid=70)

It was pretty fun, good rp. :elan:

[krossbow]

Well, the rouge neglected to tell the rest of the party about seeing alternate future versions of themselves running from a taint elemental; then, the party decided to fight said elemental when it erupted from the stained glass windows. After getting tore up, and winning due to the monster focusing solely on disarming them of vital and expensive equipment (and crushing the items in it's grasp) it's head taunted them about how it's master would ressurect soon to come and destroy their now weakened selves. Heh. Interesting game.



Oh, and they also got ripped off on weapons by a devil trapped in an extra-dimesional space. :smallbiggrin:

[Ryuuk]

Not quite tonight, but last Friday. The Party continued were they left off in "The Burning Plague", the paladin carrying the kobold hostage, since he was immune to the disease anyway, as they were entering the large chamber with Mdok. The Warblade does a Spiderman-style jump with Sudden Leap and an obsene jump score, making it over to the cables ignoring the hail of crossbow fire. He climbs up, sees about 9 kobolds and decides to get the hell out of there. He leaps off the cliff again (same turn), trusting that his featherfall adaptation (Warblade/Dragon Shaman gestalt going for a dragoon like character) would keep him safe. We argue for a bit, but I let it slide since the PHB does say it's a free action.

The hail of fire continues, dealing little to no damage. The Paladin tries to start some negotiations and Mdok agrees after he sees the Warblade take down one of his summoned rats in a single swipe. In the end, they return the kobold hostage and the diseased kobolds agree to leave the mines and let them head towards the "demon".

They make their way to the room with the zombies. A greater turning (Paladin/Cloistered Cleric gestalt) makes quick work of half of them and a few rounds of mop up take care of the rest. They make their way to Jakk, who gets the jump on the Paladin. The Warblade knocks him down to half health before Jakk takes a step closer to him, getting out of his glaive's reach and laughs as he drinks a potion of invisibility. A few rounds pass with Jakk healing, buffing and summoning a wolf, the Paladin buffs himself as well and gives the Warblade an invisibility potion. When he reappears we go through about 5 rounds of constant missing, with no one rolling higher then 10. In the end, the Paladin gets the last hit and crushes him with an enlarged longsword attack.

Not bad for their first real encounter against a caster. Oddly enough though, neither of them caught the plague.

[CharPixie]

The is a bit late, but for the poster on the first page who wanted KotOR style Star Wars, there was a write-up on gameFAQS.com that had most of the rules. Just figure out the equipment (lightsaber is 2d8 and so on), and you are good.

[Brauron]

Sleep is fun. Daze as well. We used both to great effect last night.

We'd been captured by mercenaries after a wizard had told us equipment we needed was in their training camp. We're in a cell, one guard. Our wizard cast Sleep on the guard while the rogue picked the lock. The Barbarian then punched the sleeping guard, ensuring that he wouldn't wake up too soon. The rogue then put on the guard's clothing, we put the rogue's clothing on the guard, and put him in the cell. The rogue then jimmied the lock so the cell couldn't be relocked, and the rest of us sat tight, taking turns punching the unconscious guard.

Rogue went on a solo adventure, found our confiscated weapons as well as the equipment we needed, and stashed them near the exit.

The guard who'd replaced our rogue-pretending-to-be-a-guard on duty was knocked unconscious and stripped. Then we lured another guard in and beat the crap out of him too, looting their possessions, including weapons and armor. +5 Armor that weighs only 8 lbs. and only has a 5% spell failure chance.

The rogue went out the main door, taking our weapons with him, while the rest of us went out a secret door that lead into a tower, where a mercenary sergeant was on guard. We caught him flat-footed, and the barbarian smashed him over the head with the pommel of a looted longsword. This just made him angry, but fortunately our wizard rolled higher for initiative. Wizard casts Daze on him, and the cleric buffs the barbarian. The barbarian rages, hits him again, then the Wizard casts Daze again, sergeant loses his action, cleric kicks him. The barbarian hits him again, the cleric casts Daze again, the cleric kicks him again. He goes down, unconscious. We strip him to his underwear, and the Wizard gets out his pen and ink, and draws mustaches and such on his face.

When the Wizard attempted to roll him over and write "Make All Deliveries in Rear" on the sergeant's backside, the DM spoke and vetoed that action.

So we made off with the equipment we needed, plus four sets of snazzy armor that even the Wizard can wear, four longswords we can sell, plus the barbarian stole a guard's head-wrap/shoufa, thinking it looked cool.

[Dairun Cates]

This was last night, but I wouldn't have posted at 2:00 am when the session finally ended. Anyway, the short version is:

After getting captured and held prisoner from last session, my character, Reginald is constantly tortured on the Astral Plane of existence for the amusement of the demented mind of the final boss in order to feed off his pain. In his typical defense, Reginald uses his apathy to fight back (that and a crazy high will save that assures him that 95% of this is an illusion). Typical astral torture faire. Read his thoughts, subject him to the future where a cardboard box will control the masses, Illusions of his friends and family being tortured and hurt. Using his skills in visions and scrying, he is still able to keep a good idea of what is going on in the real world.

In the meantime, his twin sister is now locked up in a coffin and going through an existentialist nightmare the like that only the love child of Escher and Dali could make. However, the stick was delicious.

Back to the main party, last hope to save the world from yet another apocalypse. The party opts to keep my character's unihabited body in a coffin on the wagon with some flowers after the third or so person asks about why they're keeping a dead body on a wagon. In the middle of the night, they are all attacked by confusing as all hell enemies. The fighter, Mr. Bear is attacked by demonic PJ's of strangling. Micheal, the rogue/low level wizard is attacked by a ninja that apparently has a good enough hide check to not be noticed intially in broad daylight. Kaitos, the multi-classed like crazy character is eaten by his bed. Mr. Bear escapes by just not caring. The Rogue finally just says to hell with it and blows the place up with a fireball. Kaitos performs improvised dental surgery on the bed with a conjured weapon of force (drill). He also eventually blows the bed up with a fireball. Finally, Kaitos realizes, beds don't eat you usually, and discovers the party is in a pocket dimension. He summons the stick (not the one a certain order is built around, but the one Reginald made inadvertantly magical when used it as a constant channeling device for his vision check), and breaks the barrier to the pocket dimension. The party is confused, but goes back to sleep.

In the morning, town criers are handing out fliers with every single one of Reginald's dark secrets including the story from military school he refuses to tell. Micheal reads it. Reginald makes a note to slap him upside the head when he escapes the astral plane before he gets his hands chopped off for the 100th time in an hour.

The party packs up ready to head towards evil, using the stick as a beacon on where to head. The evil boss has a brilliant idea and starts sealing bits of Reginald's soul into "Emo Reginald Dolls". Reginald finally nat 1's a will save. He is quite annoyed by this, so the boss mass markets them. Bad news for Reginald.

Back to Regina, she's finally woken up from the Escher/Dali nightmare by following the white rabbits. She finds she's in a glass coffin with a magical seal below her (the animal, not the object), with a magical seal on it's back (the object, not the animal). Her worst nightmare has finally come true. The Fish man that is madly in love with her has finally caught her and is going to marry her; noting that fish men are Regina's ONLY fear. She sees a note that reads an ultimatum, "Join me or Marry the Fish" with a pill in her hand to swallow. Reginald assures the boss that Regina would never fall for that 6 seconds before she swallows the pill teleports and becomes the new vessel for Sienna (the boss).

One of the party notices the cool new Reginald dolls and thinks to buy one or two in case there's something important involving this. The rest of the party wants to move on. As a sign irritation, Micheal blows up the toy store with a fireball. This annoys the villagers, they get chased by a mob, Kaitos gets a new horse, and procures some of the dolls. They escape. Kaitos realizes these are voodoo dolls in effect. He tries to test it to see if he can move Reginald's body. Reginald doesn't like being flung about on the astral plane nor invited to tea.

Regina can now hear everything Reginald says, making cursing out the final boss hard to do without ultimately pissing off his twin sister.

Party continues heading towards the castle when they run into a forest on fire. Villagers seem to be running at them with knives. They charge through. Then, they come to realize that they are surrounded by mass clones of the bounty hunting group that's been chasing us the whole campaign. The party keeps going while firing spells and arrows from the wagon to get the pesky buggers away. Looks like they're going to get away. Wait, where's the bounty hunter leader chick? WHAM! 6 of them jump into the cart. 2 steal Reginald, 1 stabs the Priestess NPC, 3 keep the remaining members busy. Quick battle later, they recover the coffin, manage to throw away the exploding bead in the coffin just in time and find a Reginald doll on Reginald's head that has a note that says "tag, you're it." There's also a gem in Reginald's head, Kaitos cuts it out and that's when Reginald finds out he even has a physical connection to his copy bodies.

Kaitos thinks that since the Bounty Hunters disappeared into a dark fog shortly that this isn't the real Reginald. Good news though people. With this doll, he should be able to summon Reginald... So he thinks. He makes a good attempt. The doll glows but nothing happens. In the meantime, Reginald can feel his soul being pulled apart in excrutiating pain. Kaitos feels he almost had it. He tries again and fails bad. The summoning backfires HORRIBLY and the doll remerges with Reginald's soul in the most horrible way possible. Not deterred, Kaitos tries one more time and critically fails. Reginald's soul hurts WAY more, and now his soul vaguely tastes like Quiche.

The party finally gets to the castle. After a case of exploding Reginald's and severe soul pain. Sierra has one more torture for Reginald AND the entire party. Reginald has now taken the place of his Sister at the Fish Man wedding. Where they believe they've found Regina again, only she's been changed into a guy. Reginald's body is turned into a female fish man and prepared for the mating. Disturbing Fish Sex aside. Reginald manages to stay sane. The rest of the party doesn't and tries to blow up the monitor they're watching this on and run screaming in horror. They run to the top of the stairs haphazardly and set off a trap. The stairs turn into a slide and the bottom floor into a meat grinder. Wait... you mean that might be Reginald's ACTUAL REAL body? Oops. Into the grinder it goes. Mmm. Meaty. Pain for Reginald. The party also now thinks he's permadead. Sienna thinks it's funny and reveals that Reginald's soul is being sealed in the doll at her belt, a pullstring doll that says humilitating things.

Thankfully, Mr. Bear (who is mostly loyal to Reginald as a feat) doesn't realize Reginald is dead, and he doesn't go into a blind rage. The party meets up with the boss at the top of the stairs. She starts monologuing behind a magical glass barrier. Mr. Bear, not seeing the glass tries to shoot her mid-monologue, starting the battle. Surprise, time to fight a copy version of the full party, a possessed Regina with crazy arcane power, and two VERY evil Unicorns. The battle starts. The party starts fighting and makes short work of copy Reginald... ouch. Finally, Reginald has the opportunity to do something he's been planning all day. He was just waiting for the bad guy to be distracted. He realizes that the bad guy is feeding off of his pain, which considering his luck, she finds to be the most "delicious and marinated pain she's ever had". Reginald swallows his pride and makes a 25 will save to... start singing and dancing in an effeminate and cheery way that is insanely disturbing. The boss is taken aback. There's no way Reginald could be happy about anything. She's seen his memories, he has nothing to smile about right? She makes the will save to maintain composure. She mind controls Mr. Bear and tells him to stand in the corner. He fails and complies.

Micheal and Kaitos fight valiantly but after the second round are almost dead. They're taken out most of the copy party by now, but Copy Regina and Mr. Bear are still around, and the two Unicorns are hurting Kaitos like crazy in Melee combat. The priest can't keep up with healing. Kaitos takes the defensive. Reginald sings louder. This time the boss nat 1's her save. Reginald deals massive psychological damage (yes, actual damage). Regina manages to break some of Sienna's control and goes to control her copy. She intentionally backfires the hell out of a spell and blows her copy up.

Third round, Kaitos is still hanging on. Micheal is flying and shooting bolts. Mr. Bear is in the corner. Sienna regains her composure and taunts the party about how they destroyed Reginald's real body at the bottom of the stairs and he's never coming back. Oops. Mr. Bear didn't know, did he? That's enough for Mr. Bear to get a will save and break free ready to charge Sienna. Regina and Reginald join together in singing the most saccharine song ever. Sienna can't take it, she picks up the Reginald doll and smashes it against the wall. Reginald wakes up in a glass box. Jumps out naked with tubes coming out of his back, head very fuzzy, and golem marks on his cheek that seem to indicate that he was being turned into a Chimera, and a bad reference (Half Golem/Half Demon Shaman? It'd never work). He busts through the door as best as he can. Sienna, just slightly peeved at him blasts him with a fireball as he enters. Reginald crits the save (only way he'd make it), but Micheal goes down.

Reginald gets hit with another spell, takes 4 negative levels (Turn order's a bit fuzzy. I got off somewhere).

Kaitos sees his last chance. With 8 hp left, he opts to fork his most powerful spell and take lethal damage. He fails the fort save but makes the control check. 8 life with 4d8 damage? He's dead right? Wrong. He survives by two hp. The boss's astral body takes massive damage without hurting Regina. Regina coughs up the pill. Kaitos falls down. A renewed Mr. Bear makes short work of the golems and evil unicorn left.

The room is empty and quiet. The pendant Reginald lost Sienna floats out of Regina's pocket. The unicorn appears to him. Clothes him, arms him, and gives him a bonus to his ability to fight. Everyone else is healed about half their max HP instantly. Everyone prepares. Micheal becomes possessed. The boss appears in full form.

Now here's what I'd consider silly. Kaitos double forks his best spell again, knocks himself out, but not into lethals. Mr. Bear runs up, crits on his vicious great sword with a +9 two handed power attack, crits, and rolls almost max damage to a bad guy that just lost all their magic barrier. The boss falls down. We defeated the final form in two hits. Micheal's semi-evil form remarks, "that was anti-climatic".

The boss, in death throws recites her final speech. "I... hate...you... so...much..." Reginald interrupts her speech, still in his super cheery self (powered by help from the unicorn), plants a kiss right on her lips and says, "Love and Truth will always triumph...B----." She disentegrates.

The castle disappears, everyone falls in a lake. The Grigori reappear and explain that Reginald and Burnadette (human incarnation of the Unicorn we've been protecting) have passed their test with flying colors. The head Grigori removes his hood to reveal that he's Reginald's uncle who was helping him for the longest time. Everyone is confused, but relieved. Happy feelings around. Regina finds out the fish man has stopped coming after her. Reginald is relieved that they the wedding scene was mostly an illusion. Mr. Bear's "copy" which wasn't actually a copy is relieved to be free. Mr. Bear, having not made jokes at Reginald's expense in a month due to being separated opens up. Reginald hits him with the stick. Kaitos wakes up, Reginald's annoying teacher shows up, Kaitos knocks him out to repay Reginald.

The Uncle talks to Reginald, and Reginald reveals that he realized in his imprisonment that he's just too serious. Despite horrible things always happening to him and living his life in his sister's shadow he really just needs to lighten up and take a vacation from being a hero for once. With this Burnadette (who Reginald's a romantic sub-plot with the entire time) asks Reginald to dance. Mr. and Mrs. Bear go out drinking. Regina and Kaitos go to study in a huge library archive that's been opened to them leaving Reginald and Burnadette alone in a meadow.

Reginald, whose "excuse" for doing all of this was to repay a favor, looks at Burnadette and says, "So I guess we're even now."

End Campaign.

Yeah. We're weird, and without the context, half of that makes no sense, but it's a fun group.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I'm tired of writing long posts. Short version, the party talked to their dead former member and got some metaplot expositions, got on a train back to Sharn, solved the mystery of who murdered the Riedran Consul (my first fully-developed sidequest. Yay!), and got chewed out by the guy who gave them their main quest because Lucan got away.

[Mike_Lemmer]

The smarmy ranger that's been harassing us for the past week finally got too cocky for his own good. When he began taunting and shooting us from right outside our camp, he didn't expect the monk to charge him and grapple him to the ground while we beat him to death with blunt objects. Even the casters joined in just to make sure he didn't escape.

The final blow was a charging sword to the back while he fled like a sissy girl.

[MrNexx]

Well, we played a bit further last night in the run of the first edition game of T1, The Village of Hommlet. My group is frickin' SLOW... I'm getting ready to lay the smack-down on them if they don't hurry up.

First, we integrated new characters... a Half-elven Ranger (double specialized in Hand Axe), a Dwarven Fighter (specialized in battle axe) and a halfling fighter/thief (specialized in short bow).

This brings the party up to:
Elf F/M
Human Paladin
Gnome I/T
Dwarf F
Half-Elf Ranger
Halfling F/T

No cleric. No druid. Oh boy.

So, the three new guys are coming from Verbobonc, and run into a trashed caravan. Gnoll tracks everywhere, wheels smashed, most of what wasn't taken away burned. Being a good party, they track after the gnolls, finding their way to the moathouse. Surprisingly, the go OVER; throw the halfling across the river, have him climb the wall, then go up after him, then down the choked stairwell. There's a tense standoff as the parties try to figure out if the other side is bandits, but the preponderance of non-humans in the new guys (every bandit they've fought has been human), and the lack of gnolls in the experienced party leads them to believe that they're ok (the paladin shouting HALT BRIGANDS helped, but she picked up the magic shield last game, so her Cuthbertine shield wasn't out to identify her more readily).

The gnome (who's really pushing hard at that evil button... not quite there, yet, but he wants to be) suggests to the halfling that they take on the snake the group skipped last game, then basically hides while the halfling goes after it... and I start to realize that maybe the specialization rules on bows are a bit overpowered. The rest of the party helps... they come in and carve off good-sized chunks of its tail.. but the halfling is doing significant damage with that bow, and I'm needing a reason why not. The party finds the knife, the halfling and the dwarf estimate its value, and the party, by consensus, give it to the halfling.

They then fight the rats of the stairwell, killing them fairly quickly (as to be expected) and without casualties... except for the dwarf, who decides to DRINK the oil on the shelf, and then FAILS his save vs. poison. He vomits on the ground; he's got about 4 damage until he spends some time taking it easy.

So, they head down the stairs, the ranger bringing up the rear and finding the ring on the stairs. It gets pocketed while the green slime fails to hit the paladin and the dwarf... rolled a hit against AC 10 for the slime, and one came up a 3, the other a 2. The dwarf and the gnome recognized it (the gnome didn't say anything), so the dwarf covered it in oil and set fire to it.

Oil. More handy as a flammable than potable liquid. Who knew?

So, the party splits up. The gnome and the halfling go to investigate the unlocked doors that lead to Lubash, while the Paladin and dwarf try to take down the locked doors. With an axe and a hammer, respectively.

Anyway, Lubash is alerted. The halfling unsuccessfully tries to sweet-talk him, but that mostly results in Lubash getting mad, and the paladin having to run in while the halfling runs around and shoots at the ogre. With a little help from the ranger's dogs, and a lucky crit from the halfling, Lubash hits the floor (Nat 20 + short bow specialist + double sixes).

And that's where we had to break off, because my party is slower than trying to poop out a full grown ankheg,

[Brauron]

Having escaped from the mercenary camp, we made our way through the forest back to civilization. We've been extremely lucky so far in regards to random encounters -- we hadn't seen anything in ages.

Then, as we're camping for the night, during the rogue's watch a bear shows up, and bellows at us, waking up everyone but my character. The wizard casts "Sleep" and knocks the bear unconscious. Our cleric, who is Chaotic Good but played by a girl who is as evil as she is cute, wakes the barbarian up and asks me to "go help that poor bear" wink wink. So I "help" the bear, coup de grace-ing it with my shiny new glaive, which was then christened "Bearslicer."

In the morning, the barbarian set about making this big bear corpse into useful items. I turned it into about 10 days' worth of rations and a cozy blanket. The barbarian then, in true barbarian fashion, ate the bear's heart. The wizard vomited at the sight of my character chowing down on raw organ (it doesn't help that the girl who plays with wizard is a vegetarian) and the DM lost SAN.

Then, later that day...three more bears show up. Slightly smaller than the first, and coming straight towards the barbarian, sniffing the air. The wizard has Boots of Levitation, and takes off, hovering 20 feet in the air, while the barbarian attempts to Intimidate the bears, making himself look big and bellowing at them. It doesn't work. The wizard uses Magic Missile, annoying the lead bear slightly. The wizard then attempts to Intimidate the bears, with no ranks in Intimidate and a negative Charisma modifier. Somehow, it works, the bears soil themselves and flee in terror.

We get back to town, get our XP (our DM doesn't dole out XP until we reach civilization) and the Barbarian, Wizard and Rogue level up -- the cleric is a bit short, but she'll get there.

[Matthew]

... and I start to realize that maybe the specialization rules on bows are a bit overpowered. The rest of the party helps... they come in and carve off good-sized chunks of its tail.. but the halfling is doing significant damage with that bow, and I'm needing a reason why not. The party finds the knife, the halfling and the dwarf estimate its value, and the party, by consensus, give it to the halfling.

Yeah, Bows in (A)D&D 2.x are pretty powerful. Try setting the the base number of Attacks to 1 per round as in melee.

[Lapak]

My group of players -

* spent a lot of money in a large city and had some more stolen from them, which they still haven't realized.

* tried to convince the owner of a menagerie that they weren't going to magic his camel out from under him if he sold them a chunk of its hair

* ignored a conflict between tribal lizardmen and the hunters who are killing their main food source

* on the way back to their point of origin, smashed an illegal toll blockade / extortion racket - or at least knocked out and abducted the leader and then rode away under a hail of arrows

[Shisumo]

Having at last gotten Mnemon into the Imperial Manse and placed her on the throne of the Realm as one group of characters, the other group of characters returned to their desperate attempt to keep the Mask of Winters from flattening Lookshy during Calibration, an event that would violate 6000 years of planned Fate, unravel the Loom of Fate and seriously risk the stability of Creation. Fresh from a stunning and embarassing smackdown at the hands of the Mask himself (so easy that he didn't bother killing them, preferring to gloat for awhile instead in true Evil Villain fashion), the PCs attempted to find some alternate tactics that might work.

First up was an embassy to Walker in Darkness, hoping that one Deathlord might serve to counter another. Apparently warned by his ally the Green Lady, the Walker was waiting for the PCs when they arrived. He listened politely to their request for help, and then promised to offer any assistance Lookshy required - at the cost of the servitude of two Solars, the Circle's Eclipse and Dawn Castes. The PCs, taken somewhat aback, asked for time to consider, and got it - 24 hours. They flew back to Lookshy and started looking for another option.

The option appeared with the discovery that, although Juggernaut was sitting directly on top of the geomantic center of Lookshy's newest and largest shadowland, carefully planned geomancy expressed through sorcerous construction work could realign the center, allowing the PCs access to the Essence flows of the shadowland and thus permitting the Circle's Twilight to cast her painfully acquired Cleansing Solar Flames, destroying the shadowland and massively weakening the Mask's largely-undead army.

This they chose to do, setting the time for the beginning of the ritual exactly 24 hours after leaving the Walker, allowing their actions to speak in lieu of a response. As the Lookshy sorcerer-engineers began to raise the geomantic earthworks, the Mask's army began to ready itself for a charge. The earthworks complete, the Essence flows began to shift, drifting across the landscape, right to where the Twilight was waiting. She began to cast the spell... just as Juggernaut arose and began to lumber toward them!

[Next week, the players of the Zenith and the Eclipse will be gone, forcing a return to Eberron and the frantic carriage chase to capture Lucan Stellos!]

[Nerd-o-rama]

[Next week, the players of the Zenith and the Eclipse will be gone, forcing a return to Eberron and the frantic carriage chase to capture Lucan Stellos!]
Just finished that one. Remember to throw Children of the Night at the party if/when Lucan wakes up.

A dozen or so wolves >> running horses.

[MrNexx]

Yeah, Bows in (A)D&D 2.x are pretty powerful. Try setting the the base number of Attacks to 1 per round as in melee.

Worse. 1st edition specialist. Double damage within 30'. I'm going to have to start enforcing getting the heck out of melee, and the "chance to hit party members" rules more strictly.

[Shisumo]

Just finished that one. Remember to throw Children of the Night at the party if/when Lucan wakes up.

A dozen or so wolves >> running horses.

Oh, I haven't forgotten, and he's already awake - the party's two warforged were able to keep pace with with the carriage, maintaining a fixed 8 hour or so distance behind, so when Lucan wasn't able to get his new horses, they rode into town right afterward. Some careful sabotage forced them to wait long enough for the rest of the party to reappear (after a disastrous attempt to force a confrontation - though at least they know he's a vampire now), but Lucan and his sister have just launched a full-gallop escape for the open road (leaving a large hole in the back on the livery in the process), and the rest of the party is scrambling for their horses to follow suit - sadly, those horses are not long for this world, I fear...

[Matthew]

Worse. 1st edition specialist. Double damage within 30'. I'm going to have to start enforcing getting the heck out of melee, and the "chance to hit party members" rules more strictly.

Oh yeah, well that's what you get for using rules out of (A)D&D 1.x Unearthed Arcana. That thing was apparently thrown together in a *very* short period from early articles. There was little to no play testing and it shows...

[Ravyn]

My group's last session turned my little spy/manipulator Tuyet into a war hero. ...the legitimate way, scarily enough. Fallen war hero, but meh...

So there we are--my Wyld Hunt's just been given bodyguard duty because of the Roseblack's triumphant return to the Blessed Isle. And OH, are we needed. Aside from some bureaucratic mishaps, the first part of our march went pretty well... but then everything went wrong at once. Pirates to the left of us with some hefty-ranged catapults. Mooks with firedust to the right. We take care of the mooks pretty adequately (and our other Air manages to....discourage use of the catapults near us)... but then we discover the pirates have a Solar with them. ...and then, to make matters worse, we get a pair of Abyssals coming in from the other side, with a small army of zombies... and an equal number of black-clad mortal mooks. The Solar decides he'd rather work with us than get caught in the middle of this--a sensible move, given he's closer to us--so we dig in and get ready, and I get an idea. Just before everything had gone to Malfeas in a handbasket, I'd offed a couple of his goons through overkill by massive damage, and we've houseruled that because of the way my Infinite Jade Chakram variant works, when I do that it turns the opponent into a lump of ice. So, since she's run out of enemies in range, Tuyet leaps onto the ice lump and declares,
You have a lot of ghosts on your side, my friends, but let me remind you of something. Unlike them, you are still among the living. Unlike them, you still breathe. Unlike them, you still feel pain. And unlike them... you still have a choice. I suggest you run away before I make a nice pretty ice sculpture out of the lot of you, too. Black and blue go so prettily together... ....it is, after all, breathtaking work. Have you ever been completely surrounded by ice? Wondering whether the hypothermia will sink in before the air runs out? If you don't like that thought... I suggest you leave now.
...and the army stood still. THIS close to fleeing--if the archer-deathknight behind them hadn't been there, they would've skedaddled--and even when they charged forward, she'd managed to get her attention ON her and OFF Ejava, like she'd wanted. It was beautiful. Which rather set the tone for the rest of the session--massive amounts of bravado, tremendously epic--our Fire Immaculate, Itara, at one point used the Dead Mooks With Firedust in a chain reaction as a way of clearing out bodies so that the nemissaries couldn't jump between them (extraordinary uses for everyday Charms) and followed it up with a bout of fire-spitting, the other Air, Keanu, went acrobatic-deadly on Abyssal #2, the non-Immaculate Fire, Rilik, went all heroic a couple times (ironically enough, the arrows would've missed if he hadn't interfered)...

So a round or two later--the second Abyssal, a necromancer, is partially fried. The nemissaries are beginning to run out of bodies--and we've managed to torch a few nemissaries. Tuyet's sick of being arrowed and is charging the archer, Rilik's trying to cover for her and draw the enemy fire onto himself, the two of them hit the main army... Rilik gets hit by a rather unpleasantly enhanced arrow, Tuyet falls under the army (at least I proved that my command of stuntage includes being able to get a three-die while dying), and Ril... goes ballistic in a way that I can only describe as "Going Dragon-Blood Z on everyone." Full anima flare, eyes turning bright red, screaming at the top of his lungs, burning out the arrow--utterly, utterly epic.

...and on that note, we ended session. What a way to go!

[Shisumo]

Much, much later than I originally believed we would, my PCs finally returned to Eberron to continue their chase for the vampire Lucan Stellos (Whispers of the Vampire's Blade). The entire session was taken up by the road battle as the group tried to run down the fleeing coach - mostly because, thanks to excessive PC creativity, we fought it twice.

Things went off track right away. The initial conflict began as the group chased the coach out of town (the group's two warforged had managed to keep pace with Lucan and his sister until the fugitives ran into trouble replacing their horses, and sabotage had delayed them further until the rest of the group could catch up), and Lucan used his Children of the Night ability to summon what turned out to be 15 wolves. Frankly, I didn't think the group had a prayer of catching the coach - by the time they dealt with the wolves, I expected most or all of the horses to be dead or down with broken legs (the default result of a successful trip attack by the wolves, I decided) thanks to swarm and flanking tactics. This expectation didn't allow for the ranger, whose 14-year-old player piped up with, "I"m gonna use entangle on them," as I described the wolf pack rushing out of the forest alongside the road. Even with a relatively decent Reflex save and a relatively low DC 14, half the pack failed the save on the first round, cutting my intimidating charge of 15 wolves down to a much less impressive 8. All those were able to move clear of the spell's area in one round of double moves, but the group took the opportunity to take some potshots that whittled the unaffected wolves down from 8 to 6. I did manage to take down two horses, but they were able to concentrate on one pair of wolves at a time, and the end result was a little time lost and some cure spells spent to heal the horses back up. I pointed out that darkness was fast approaching, and one member of the group suggested calling off pursuit for fear of facing the vampire after dark, but everyone else feared losing the trail too much to stop. So on they went.

The second trip through the encounter went closer to what the adventure suggested - the group got within about 500 ft of the carriage without the sister noticing. Then she kicked the horses into a gallop, and they began to close at a rate of 50 ft per round. The first two rounds she cast shield and mage armor, then on the third, she leaned around the edge of the coach to use her scroll of fireball (taking a 4-point hit from the group's rogue, who had readied an attack action against her casting and managed to make it stick with a natural 20 on the roll) right in the middle of the group. The barbarian and rogue evaded nicely, but everyone else took some damage, and two of the six horses took the full brunt of the damage, putting them down to 4 hp. The artificer, trying to infuse undead bane on her crossbow, managed to hold on to her infusion despite taking 18 points of damage. A few more rounds, and the sorceress leaned around the coach edge with another scroll (the rogue missed this time) and fired off her scroll of lightning bolt at half the group - the rogue saved again, but his horse still took half damage, which was enough to drop it down to 0 hp. The warforged cleric's horse was also at 0 hp, and they immediately began to fall behind.

The rest of the group was close enough to smell blood, though. The artificer gave up on her infusion to aim her wand of magic missile at the sorceress, but got disgusted when it bounced off her shield. The barbarian announced he would be trying to ride in front of the coach and use his essence node of blinding to blind the sorceress and her horses. On the following round, the barbarian pulled side by side with the coach, and Lucan finally entered the situation. Opening the coach door, he leaned out - braced on the coach's doorway - and took a nasty swing at the horse's head. The poor galloping creature, running and therefore denied its Dex bonus to AC, took a total of 30 points of damage from a combination of the soul blade and Lucan's sneak attack damage, and its head went spinning into the dust of the road. I told the barbarian to make a Ride (DC 5) check to avoid taking damage as he fell off his horse, but he wanted to make a Reflex check to jump to the coach instead. I decided this was the perfect situation to apply the "free dismount" Ride action, and had him make it. He did so, and leapt from his decapitated horse into the moving carriage.

Meanwhile, the group's paladin - even with the rear wheels of the carriage - decided that a wheel-less coach would be a lot easier to chase. She drew her nonmagical mace (not wanting to risk her +1 longsword to the sunder attempt I warned her she was risking by sticking her weapon into a carriage's wheel at full gallop) and took a swing at the wheel. Her attack roll made the AC 10 just fine, and her "contested attack roll" against the effective Str 30 of the coach wheel was a natural 20, so no return sunder attempt. The damage was enough to beat the wheel's Hardness of 5, but not to get through its 10 hp. Splinters went flying, and the sorceress leaned around the coach seat again to see what had hit her carriage. Seeing the situation, she fired off a ray of enervation at the paladin, but I rolled poorly on the damage, only causing a total of -4 Str - the Str 18 paladin was not impressed.

Back inside the coach, the barbarian took advantage of the vampire's surprise at having his coach invaded to kick the vampire's coffin out the open door. It tumbled out into the grass and used an alter self spell to perfectly mimic a pile of tinderwood. This displeased the vampire, who attempted to dominate the barbarian, who still had not raged. This was followed by the soul blade, which first attempted to confuse him and then to doom him. The barbarian refused to play along, however, rolling no less than two 19s and a 16 on the dice for his saves. Deciding he'd pushed his luck far enough, he climbed out of the carriage and up to the driver's seat. With no Climb skill, he nevertheless managed a 17 on the dice, hitting the DC 20 I'd given him. Shocked, the sorceress stared at him as he appeared, but he took advantage of the moment to finally get to use his essence node of blinding (which he had already used on her once, in his initial confrontation against the two of them while waiting for the rest of the group to catch up). She blew her save, and would spend the next 3 rounds unable to see.

The barbarian wasn't really able to take advantage of the situation, however, because the paladin chose that moment to take another swing at the carriage wheel. Even with her "mere" 14 Strength, the second swing was enough (even though the attempt also destroyed her mace, ripping the head off the hilt). The wheel exploded, the carriage slewed, skidded, and began to roll. The sorceress, the barbarian and Lucan all attempted DC 18 Reflex saves - only the sorceress failed hers, taking 10 more damage as she was thrown 30 ft from the carriage. The barbarian did the same in another direction, but rolled smoothly into it and came out unharmed, and Lucan braced himself most effectively inside.

The sorceress immediately cast invisibility (one of the few things she could do without her sight) and then, on her next action, fly, proceeding to head straight upward until her vision cleared. Back at the coach, the vampire took to gaseous form (the artificer fired a crossbow bolt at him in sheer frustration), also drifting up into the sky. Once her vision cleared, the sorceress followed, and the two of them headed off to find somewhere secluded so she could use her two scrolls of phantom steed to get them to a town where they could buy or steal a coffin before sunrise.

The group regathered (the cleric having used cure minor wounds on her horse and the rogue's so they were no longer staggered) and decided to burn the coach and coffin to prevent their future use by the two fugitives even after the group moved on. While they were doign this, Areyndee d'Thuranni appeared, and revealed that she knew something of the vampire and his sorceress sister.. but before they could learn more, the session ended!

The crazy, over-the-top nature of the session is exactly in tune with Eberron's feel, and I was greatly pleased by it. Despite how little the session "progressed," everyone seemed to be having a really good time with the unusual fight situation, and I was happy to reward people for their creativity. I have to admit, though, I never expected to have to determine the effective strength of a coach wheel at full gallop...

[alchemy.freak]

My Group managed to find a hidden cult house, kill all 11 cultists inside, Get chainsawed by the mutant cult leader leader, kill the cult leader with a P90, get the injured party member to the hospital before he died. burn down the cult house, kill the 13th cult member after a fruitless interrogation and then explain themselves to the ,very pissed off, director of the FBI's Cult Unit.

[ufo]

Well, the PCs defeated a crazy deamon guy last game, while exitting the dungeon, they had hoped to just need to get home and rest.

As they exitted the dungeon, they found ca. 25 soldiers preparing to search the area. They were from a friendly town. But before they were able to rejoice, they were attacked by a few hundred mountain goblins (that's a custom race somewhere between goblins and hobgoblins).

They escaped via sled from an old dwarf's house, ending in a waterfall. Before being able to rest, the dwarf sent them on a quest to clear the area of a menacing orc tribe.

My gnome got knocked unconsious four times during this session, one time from blood loss.

'Tis was fun :smallbiggrin:

[Fualkner Asiniti]

We started a new campaign. We go into a potion shop to buy stuff. I play a little dice game with the manager... And then the rouge saughters him with a hold person CDG. We take everything from the store and blow it up with fireballs, and collect his bank account money. And the DM Improv'd the whole thing.

[JadedDM]

My group got a TPK when they ran into a squad of 21 skeletons out in the wild. Heh, heh.

[Maxymiuk]

The group I run for spent most of the game (3 hours) fighting a zombie brown bear. It was an encounter I designed for the entire group of 6 players, but only 3 of them showed up for the game...

They won only because of the ranger's Entangle spell and the horrible luck I had rolling the bear's Reflex and Strength checks. Still, they got savaged each time it managed to actually roll attack, and the sorcerer burned through his entire spell allotment chipping away at its HP.

When it was down to 2 HP, the fourth player, a barbarian, finally showed up and rage power attacked with his double axe, hitting twice for total overkill.

[Teloric]

Our characters are all level 2, core game, Eberron in the City of Sharn. My Wizard got to cast his first Grease spell, and it worked nicely, causing the BBEG to slip and fall in 2 consecutive rounds, allowing our Fighters to pound him into a pulp.

Next session we're going into the depths of the city, looking for some part of a lost forge. I'm sure some of you have played it, as it is a published adventure. I'm not looking for hints, as that would ruin the fun. However, I am looking forward to playing again...

[Aidan305]

Went to the Mausaleum of Chronepsis where the party dwarf started smashing houglasses.

Chronepsis wasn't happy.

[ElHugo]

Not tonight, but last session, we were fighting some goblins and company in their warrens (we're low lvls). At some point, we were more or railroaded out of there (You here a lot of footsteps coming down the corridor. - we take up a defensive position - no, you hear a LOT of footsteps coming down the corridor).

So we took several barrels of black powder (it was an excavation-in-progress) and blew the whole thing to kingdom come. It was awesome (although not too smart. We might have needed that cave. Then again, I'm pretty sure that storage room with the black powder was improvised by our DM after we came up with this, and argued that it was not unreasonable to have explosives at a mining site). Yay explosion!

[JadedDM]

The party was captured and enslaved by the local orc tribe. They now plot to escape with their lives (and maybe, if they're lucky, their gear.)

[Shisumo]

(Technically last night.) The party moved forward into Whispers of the Vampire's Blade.

The party had a sit-down chat with Areyndee dThuranni, who revealed herself as an operative for a freelance intelligence service and a former co-worker of Lucan Stellos'. She offered them some background information and magical item assistance in exchange for an agreement to supply her with future data: sepcifically, the end result of the party's attempts to locate and subdue Lucan. She wanted to make sure Lucan couldn't... spread... anything she didn't want getting out. After some discussion, the party agreed and Areyndee gave them a wand of phantom steed with 8 charges left that they could use to catch up with Lucan and his sister. Unfortunately, not all went as it was supposed to with the artificer's Use Magic Device checks, and the paladin was left to catch up while the rest rode on ahead.

The party (minus the paladin) arrived in Trolanport and began to ask around. The rogue determined Lucan had arrived in the city just before sunrise; the artificer and barbarian checked around the docks and found out about shipments arriving for the Aundairian embassy's party the following night, hosted by a woman named "ir'Krell." Since "krell" was the only lead they had, it seemed worth checking into.

They also found a couple of sneaky sahuagin who attempted to ambush them out of a canal. Before they could do more than surface, however, the barbarian had grabbed one and used it as a club to batter the other one - deciding to seek better targets, the second fled, and the first was turned over to the Trolanport city watch.

Several fruitless hours of rumor-hunting and casing the embassy followed on the next day. When the paladin trotted into town, she listened to the story of wasted effort, sighed heavily, went to the central Temple of the Silver Flame in Trolanport, and had an invitation to the ball within a matter of minutes. The party bought costumes (bulky enough to hide daggers) and set off to partake of the cream of Zil diplomacy.

Once inside, the party scattered in various directions. The ranger found herself unexpectedly asked for a dance by a handsome fellow shifter; fortunately, she turned the event to her favor, quizzing her partner about Lucan and his sister and gaining the information she needed to identify them. The warforged cleric of Dol Arrah had a discussion (heated at times, though not on her part) with a cleric of the Silver Flame about whether warforged had souls enough to be priests - the narrow-minded zealot found himself on less certain ground when the paladin, also a follower of the Flame, unexpectedly backed the warforged up. The rogue spotted Lucan's sister and went to speak to her; the history of heartache they shared together seemed to get in the way of communication, and yet she nevertheless almost told him Lucan's plans once the ball ended. Before she could do so, however, Lucan revealed himself violently in the middle of the floor, as an Aundairian wizard attempted - and failed - to charm him on the dance floor.

Abruptly, all was chaos and violence. The barbarian leapt into action, seizing the wizard and dragging her away from Lucan. Lucan raced across the floor and snatched his sister away from her conversation with the rogue; she promptly cast haste on them both. Before they could leave, however, a pair of Aundairian guards, disguised as party guests, appeared from the crowd and tried to grapple with Lucan. The cleric of Dol Arrah used hold person to keep the sister from fleeing; the rescued wizard blasted Lucan with a fireball even as one of the guards managed to grab him. Lucan turned the tables on his attacker and drained his life force, but the delay was costly - it allowed the barbarian to grab him instead. While pinned, Lucan was unable to resist the cleric and paladin's positive energy attacks; after the artificer enchanted the barbarian's slam attack to be undeadbane, the vampire fell to the onslaught. This, of course, was not the end, for he merely transformed into mist (as he would have done had been able to free himself from the grapple anyway) and fled for his coffin.

The party gave chase, all save the rogue, who remained behind to protect/interrogate Lucan's sister. They were confused, however - hadn't they destroyed his coffin already, during the confrontation on the highway? Apparently not, for the mist drifted across the town, then out into the bay onto a ship moored in the middle of the harbor. Abruptly frustrated, most of the group went to find the harbormaster to learn the name of the ship (it was the Harker) and who owned it. A rather violent discussion, involving both money and threats of bodily harm, convinced the harbormaster to find them a boat they could row out to the vessel.

Unwilling to wait for her companions, though, the paladin dove into the harbor and swam out to the boat. Quickly climbing the anchor chain, she found herself under attack by a trio of crew members as she reached the main deck. Armed only with a dagger, she nonetheless managed to overcome all three of her dominated opponents, who were wielding belaying pins with remarkable effectiveness. Having cleared the deck, she grabbed a lantern and waved out toward the darkness, a signal for her friends to come join her...

Naturally, as games always do, this adventure went pretty solidly off the rails. Which was fine, of course - it was neat to see the party be as effective as they were without the usual benefit of their weapons and armor.

On the other hand, I did warn them that Lucan always has a backup plan. And the paladin is about to walk into a trap...

[Jade_Tarem]

The other night, my party explored a natural caverns underneath the dwarven capitol city. They're trying to reach the center of the Earth to retrieve an artifact. How they ended up mail-bombing a drow general still has me slightly puzzled.

[PnP Fan]

On Saturday (okay I'm late with the post ;-)
we stopped a demon that was hunting down innocents in the Cresent City of Brave New World (using MnM rules). Our party found that there is an amazing synergy in the use of a maximized Inspiration (from our Cap knockoff), glue rockets (Ironman knockoff), and drain abilities (our mimic knockoff), that make demons much easier to deal with. Not that other characters didn't participate equally, but that was the combo that removed the demon.

[Nahal]

We engaged in ritual combat with iroquois warriors. Twice. The first time I did it, and decided it would be more efficient to simply shoot the bugger. Shortly after this we come to a settlement on a man-made hill where the women and children are trying to escape the iroquois war party that's been following us, the men are already dead, and the elderly and boys are manning the palisade. Some quick thinking and we realise our only hope is to again engage in ritual combat, but for real. For this we need our party hand-to-hand specialist. He goes up against a much larger man (in more ways than one; the combat was done naked and his opponent had apparently been using weights to stretch it since he was a lad). The fight went something like this:

The iroquois warrior issued the usual challenges and insults, apparently genuinely amused by our man Joe's manhood. Each time these challenges were answered in kind, neither wanting to make the first move. However Joe unwittingly gave the warrior an opening when we kicked dirt up into his face, and the fight began in earnest with Joe on his back and the warrior bearing down on him. Each caught the other's arm, and here Joe's extensive martial arts training gave him the advantage. He managed to free his arm while the warrior, try as he might, remained grappled. Joe buried the knife into the warrior's chest, then twisted and pulled out with a sickening sucking noise that meant the fight was already over. But the warrior had enough left in him for one final attack. He wrenched his arm free of the hold, let out a howl of rage and brought the knife down into... the dirt. A lucky dodge saved our man Joe, who then ended the fight with style by rolling the warrior onto his back, straddilg him and stabbing his heart. He then stood, let out a bellow of triumph, and made his way up to the palisade. We had bought them a day.

After this Joe is lead off to the warrior's tent by five women. Their shaman and I pretty much fail to have a conversation, so he brings me to who I later discover is the late chief's very pregnant wife, who sets me up in her (admittedly large) hut. Two other elders start talking to our paranoid/borderline psychic, and they utterly fail to discuss military strategy so they instead gesture that he can have his pick of the women, which occupies him for a few hours. Our black supremacist sharpshooter is presumed to be our slave and is tossed a hunk of raw meat. He was too confused to be offended.

Later that night we would seek out the shaman to cleanse the spirit of our ghost child companion, who had been somewhat tainted by evil. We would then use this same ritual to cleanse our "spirit guide," who was holding onto one of the evil artifacts we're trying to find to keep it out of enemy hands and losing the battle against its corrupting influence.

The next morning we would be told to take the chief's wife and head out a hidden escape route while the remaining elders and young boys mounted what would appear to be a last-ditch defense but was really a diversion to allow us and many of the women and children to escape to the next village. Our black companion had wandered off during the night, so it wound up being the three of us and the chief's wife who caught up with those who escaped during the night.

[Dairun Cates]

Saturday- Advanced the plot forward because they had nothing else to do, got attacked by 20 creatures at once, won in 6 seconds, rested, attacked the strongest person in about 20 miles, defeated a monster based around counterattacks with non-violent actions, nerfed the rest of the encounter, one character almost exploded in a non-death campaign (90 damage in one hit. Max 40 hp), and finally met Jumping Jack Flash who did not get to turn into a gas because the battle only lasted a short time after he entered.

I swear, I'm guessing the difficultly on these things right, battles just can't last very long in BESM 3e. Next time, I'm capping the weapon damage WAY lower.

[tobian]

Well, not tonight, but last session (Ebberon camapign, Xendrick areaish):

Favorite moment:

We had made it far into the jungle to a pyramid where there was the finding house (name escapes me atm) already there looking for dragon shards-same that we were looking for. We ended up getting into a fight; they had 2 warforged, the leader (think he was a ranger, not totally sure), a caster who had an illusion of plate armor on himself so we initally thought he was a warrior until he counterspelled our warmage. :smalleek: I guessed illusion at that point, others thought he just took the risk of arcane spell failure chance.

So the mage on their side was part way up the pyramid. (All the others were on ground level by second round) He was doing a nice job at counterspelling our wizard and warmage while others of the enemy party attacked. I knocked out, but not completely killed, the leader type figure, then used my (3/day) cloak to dimension door up to the other side of the pyramid on top behind the enemy mage. (It was a step pyramid.) I didn't think the mage noticed me, but apparently he had, because when it hit his turn he put up a wall behind him so I couldnt hit him or see him. It looked like a tall stone wall.

So I got creative. Normally, after a dimension door spell, you can't act after you cast it until next round. But then inspiration hit me-teleport spells work in three dimensions.

I weigh 480ish lbs.

It was one squished caster after I fell on him from 20 feet up. :smallbiggrin:

[Brauron]

Well, we just got back from Spring Break, and we haven't done anything yet in either my Call of Cthulhu campaign or my friend Rob's D&D campaign.

So I just worked on planning out one of the major chapters off my CofC campaign. Hehehe, the players are gonna hate me...basically, they treat CofC as if it were D&D with horror elements. So I'm turning that against them. In the town they're staying in, they wake up to find a naked man nailed upside down to a doorway, his throat and wrists slashed but not a drop of blood to be seen. (Incidentally, the campaign is set in Europe in 1100 AD) The village priest says it is the work of Kzadool-ra, a horrible demon who dwells in the forest, and will beg the Investigators to help them eradicate this demon.

Well.

The villagers are all cultists who worship Kzadool-ra, with the "village priest" actually the head of the cult, who killed the man himself to lure the Investigators to the altar for sacrifice.

Rob, who plays in my game, had complained that a three-session minicampaign I'd ran earlier was "too linear." We'll see what he says once they visit this lovely little village.

[Nahal]

Ugh, I've never played CoC but I hear you die. Often. In gruesome manners.

[Brauron]

Ugh, I've never played CoC but I hear you die. Often. In gruesome manners.

Eh, if you play smart and realize it isn't a superhero game, that you're a crunchy little meatbag who should avoid combat whenever possible, you'll do fine. Also, a good GM is a must, one who doesn't just throw monsters at the PCs. Monsters should be used extremely sparingly.

[Matthew]

Yes indeed.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Ah yes, I forgot about this lovely topic. For once, I agree with it's necromancy. Now to pick back up where I left off-

After the Tarrasque and enemy army was defeated and driven out of the besieged elven city thanks to a heavy boost of Deus Ex Machina (they were level 6 at the time, they NEEDED IT), their commander decides to send the PC's off on a quest down south to a cave where they've heard some remnants are hiding out, and also where they've been getting those necro-bug things that have been empowering their troops. The players pack up, leave their army of about 50 troops (mostly goblins) behind save for a wizard, a ranger, and Sticky the goblin. Sticky was brought along entirely because the half-dragon player wanted to finally get him killed.

Firstly, shortly after starting their journey, the half-dragon decides to send a letter of complaint via magic chest to the commander demanding autonomy of his own troops (another PC had authority over him, though he never once abused this). A little while later, they see an old man on the side of the road who asks for a ride to the next town. The paranoid half-dragon then decides that he must be evil (and that if he's good, who's gonna know?) and tries to attack him. The old man turns out to be a god of travel and condemns the party to wander on random roads until the half-dragon learns his lesson.

The rest of the party's pissed, since they don't seem to ever go anywhere significant. Thus, when they see a random shack near an ocean, they immediately go towards it. The half-dragon finds himself locked in the shack alone, only to be confronted by a ghost that doesn't realize he's dead and is unable to leave. It turns out that vampires frequent this outpost, hiring sailors to bring them in their coffins from one end to another along with a variety of rare magical regents and dead bodies.

The catgirl PC figures out that they're up to some sort of ritual rather quickly and tries to stop them. She and the half-dragon end up fighting several vampires before figuring out how to effectively kill them. They're ultimately too late to stop the rest from casting their millenia-old spell, however- they create a flesh colossus. The rest of the party arrives in time to defeat it before it fully evolves, though, and with it's destruction the spirits kept at the coast are freed. The party boards their wagons and tries to continue their wandering.

After a while, they come upon a weary traveller on the side of the road. The half-dragon offers them a ride and a share of their food and water. A while later, the god of travel reappears to lead their hitchhiker away and lifts the curse from the party. They're transported to right outside the cave they were originally going for.

Waiting for them is the co-commander to their army, and she's pissed. She was dispatched to watch after the party after the half-dragon's little greedy tirade and threats about breaking off of the army from before. The full party rests for a night, then descends into the cave.

The cave was maddening in it's bizarreness. It was also full of demons, frigid cold, and quite random in it's layout (one part might look like an ancient castle, the next like a crypt, then the next like a closet). Traps were many and devious, and more then once did the PC's find themselves skewered, poisoned, drained, and desperately low on health. Towards a spiral stairwell descending into the final sanctum they find a powerful assassin that refuses them entry. The co-commander decides to hold him off while the rest of the party goes further to find out what he's blocking.

Underneath is a meeting between all four of the enemy army's top generals (four knights dressed head to toe in armor: red, green, black, and their leader, white) and a lich. They're discussing strategies for pulling north while simultaneously retaking the elven city down south to protect their rear. The lich is also unveiled as the creator of the necro-bugs. The party tries to ambush the whole lot of them, but the lich quickly enacts a fail-safe and teleports the generals away (he mistakenly thought they had backup), leaving the party to deal with just him.

The lich brought down much in the ways of arcane might, but the party was ultimately triumphant. After collecting some loot, they were surprised by the lich's last attack- a swarm of necro-bugs came after them to possess them. Fortunately, they heard them coming, scooped up a sample, then burned the rest while escaping upwards. The dungeon starts falling apart around them, the lich's magic over the place apparently leaving.

Up top, the assassin managed to take down the co-commander, and was in a bit of a philisophical discussion about the right and wrong of what the party's commander was doing. The party then interrupts them, so the assassin makes a quick escape while the co-commander is freed. They make a hasty exit from the dungeon while pursued by various monsters (and tripping over a variety of fun traps I'd devised), making it out of there with plenty of time to spare. Their horses, however, have apparently been poisoned. Likely by the assassin to slow them down. Sticky the goblin, who was left outside, managed to save one horse. As a reward, the half-dragon actually gave him a piece of loot he found- a +3 light mace. The players are starting to take a liking to Sticky.

The party's march north is painfully slow. In the dead of the night, the green knight appears and takes the co-commander hostage. The half-dragon, who was on guard duty, tried to prevent this, but was caught in a forcecage with a billowing cloud of poisonous gas (cloudkill). The catgirl awoke and managed to save him, though barely, by turning him into gas as well so that he could escape. Their trek ends up taking even longer due to these events.

When they reach the elven city, they find out that their commander went missing shortly after they set out for that cave. The general left in command of the city met them instead, and after hearing their report, decides to send them up north to find and stall whatever invasion force the enemy was planning for the city. The party refreshes themselves, including ressurecting the game's first player kill (I forget which), and then sets off north.

That covers a good 4-5 weeks worth of gameplay sessions there, though I'm hardly caught up on the tale. In the next installment, there shall be betrayal, shocking revelations, and the true epic plot bares it's fangs. Until then!

[Apoc360]

In our last gaming, the PC's were getting ready to be teleported back to the Merchant's Guild for their reward. However, they decide to go to the cemetary before that. The cemetary in which they nearly got killed in the first time around. The one I warned them heavily about, saying that it gives off an extremely powerful amount of evil aura, and how it would probably be best if they stayed out of there untill they were higher leveled. But...no. They decide to go back, and the PC's have 2 Necrosis Carnex and something else attack them. They're battle plan was this: Human Paladin would stay in the back, while the Drow Ranger would toss the Halfling Barbarian at the enemy. Ranger made a poor roll, so the Halfling fell short, and subsequently failed his Balance check, and fell. Things just went downhill when they got into combat, so they decide to high tail it out of there. They return to the town, and see the Sorceror guy who is supposed to teleport them back, and find out that he is a Drow as well. So the Ranger manages to convince the Sorceror to help him kill the Paladin (Said that the Paladin was really a Blackguard in disguise, and thus evil)(the guys are friends in rl, but fight alot). Sorceror helps a little bit, but discovers that the Ranger lied, and so stopped. He teleports them to town, and that's where we ended.

[NEO|Phyte]

Very nearly suffered a TPK.

We'd been fighting towards and up a lighthouse the past few sessions in an effort to stop the big bad wizard guy from getting his hands on the McGuffin Archaic Gem located there. There's 3 elves (Favored Soul, Swashbuckler/rogue/PrC (not sure what, she's a pirate either way), and Diviner/fighter/Eldritch Knight) and the dwarven Barbarian/Bear Warrior (me). I've quite likely got more HP than the rest of the group put together. Anyway, the wizard's mooks are a motley crew of constructs known as officiators, and they come in several color-coded flavors, ranging from spell leech to sunderbot to ranged save vs death as part of regular attacks to Large siege engines to spiked-chain tripbots that explode into caltrop fields.

Anywho, after a couple fights on the way up, we reach the level below the top of the lighthouse, buff up, and join the fray. There we see Albaste the naughty wizard guy and a bunch of his officiators fighting the good mooks lead by Chelston the Good Guy (Paladin/Homebrew PrC, can do some nifty stuff).
Fast Forward a handful of rounds, Albaste stole my Enlarge Person, and turned out to be crazy good at melee combat, with STR bonuses apparently higher than mine (which was +11 at the time). We exchange blows a few times, he teleports to the other side of the lighthouse, and Dominates the Good Guy before I close into melee range again. He teleports out shortly thereafter, and the fight of suck begins. In the ensuing carnage, the wizard drops, the rogue drops, and my rage runs out, so I'm back to my dwarven form, and Fatigued to boot, although my AC is a good deal higher now that I've got actual armor, not that it helped for more than the guy's 3rd and 4th iterative attacks. I end up exchanging full attacks with Mr Mindslave for a few rounds, being healed up from negatives in between turns. Mindslave wises up, and 5' steps up to the healer after dropping me (again). I get one last zap of healing before the healer goes down, but I'm only at 0. I know the dominated pally is badly hurt, but I'm not trusting my last attack to his full AC bonus. So I pull out an Alchemical failure (homebrew item, deals 4d6+4 damage of a random energy type) and smash it against him as he tries (and succeeds) to stomp the life out of me. He died in an acidic explosion, so did I, and we figure out what happens to the others next session.