Bacchanalian
2014-10-22, 04:42 PM
TL;DR: Due to a rather hilarious encounter with an undead troll and some firebreathing liquid of some kind in very close quarters, my dwarf cleric has managed to burn his own beard off. How do I play this? The fighter in the group is partially to blame for my dwarf being in that situation to begin with, or so my character has decided. Either way, help me start sketching out the character from here--this is a fairly new campaign and so our characters are still developing, so this feels to me like a defining moment in his adventuring career.
Long, funny version:
I've been playing a 3.5 campaign with some friends and a DM I actually met on Reddit, and last night things took a turn for the hilarious.
My character is a dwarf cleric who happens to be exceptionally strong, exceptionally clumsy, and not terribly bright. Other key characters in this anecdote include the fighter who's a big game hunter of sorts and thus interested mostly in skinning/beheading anything we kill as a trophy, and the dwarf rogue who recently joined our party and seems to have a solution for everything.
So we're fighting a quasit we find in a room with a massive sarcophagus. The door to the room has a pit in front of it with spikes at the bottom, maybe 10 feet deep. Easy enough to hop the corner and get over if you're careful.
The fight with the quasit got to be a pain in the butt, we had the thing pinned but people were waffling on whether or not to kill it (just because it talks doesn't mean it's not CE and about to eat my face). It inevitably almost escapes and we then kill it, but the indecision and delay which imperiled my dwarf's life as he was one of the two holding it made him grumpy. Amusingly enough, after hacking it nearly in half with my greatsword, I summoned a celestial monkey on it to cast smite evil and nuke that last 1 hp it probably had left. The party were quite amused by the extent of overkill I threw at it.
While the team discusses turning the little thing into a trophy, I march over to the sarcophagus, cast bull's strength on myself, and attempt to tear it open. I manage to disturb it and bust the clasps holding it shut, but can't lift it. Moments later, something enormous inside of it lifts it for me, and out comes an enormous undead troll. We have time to back off before combat starts.
It starts by smacking our fighter upside the head for quite a bit of damage. The solution-for-everything dwarf rogue produces an acid flask that he throws at the troll, so it's now covered and dripping acid. I try to turn it, since I'm a cleric and all and have never used my turn undead ability before, and succeed smashingly. I then yell for everyone to run for it, because frankly the thing is going to slaughter us, and I turn and excitedly run to leap the pit. 8 dex, scale armor, and a bastard of a d20 later, I'm at the bottom of the pit, having only slightly impaled myself on the spikes, wondering how the hell I'm going to get out.
Our fighter didn't notice this development, but when he sees the troll booking it towards the door, he comes up with the genius idea of tripping it into the pit to neutralize it. At this point I'm starting to sketch out an idea for a new character in my head.
Massive undead troll plummets into the pit, miraculously not landing on top of me and squashing me, but now I'm 6 inches from the thing and barely able to move. With acid dripping on me. Only thing I can reach is my wineskin, which I had filled with some fancy liquid earlier in the dungeon that apparently allows you to breathe fire if ingested. So lacking for any other ideas, I take a giant mouthful of the stuff and unleash hell on the troll. Of course, given the close quarters, this turns out to not be the brightest idea in the world, and while I miraculously don't burn myself, I burn the beard right off my own face. On the bright side, I hurt the troll pretty badly, and my party is able to finish it off.
Now of course, the problem becomes I'm a 4'6" dwarf at the bottom of a 10' pit wearing scale armor and carrying a greatsword. Partially underneath the corpse of an undead troll that probably weighs as much as a Ford F2-50 turbo diesel. But never fear, I have Enlarge Person, so I make myself 9 feet tall or so, and with some help from my party, I manage to climb out.
So here I am, a beardless dwarf. How does one play a dwarf who is pissed off that his fighter dropped an undead troll on his head and fully blames him for his beardlessness? Ashamed to go out in public? Do I wear a wrap around my head? How do I bear the shame, and more importantly how do I RP this? Finally, how long will it take to grow back?
Long, funny version:
I've been playing a 3.5 campaign with some friends and a DM I actually met on Reddit, and last night things took a turn for the hilarious.
My character is a dwarf cleric who happens to be exceptionally strong, exceptionally clumsy, and not terribly bright. Other key characters in this anecdote include the fighter who's a big game hunter of sorts and thus interested mostly in skinning/beheading anything we kill as a trophy, and the dwarf rogue who recently joined our party and seems to have a solution for everything.
So we're fighting a quasit we find in a room with a massive sarcophagus. The door to the room has a pit in front of it with spikes at the bottom, maybe 10 feet deep. Easy enough to hop the corner and get over if you're careful.
The fight with the quasit got to be a pain in the butt, we had the thing pinned but people were waffling on whether or not to kill it (just because it talks doesn't mean it's not CE and about to eat my face). It inevitably almost escapes and we then kill it, but the indecision and delay which imperiled my dwarf's life as he was one of the two holding it made him grumpy. Amusingly enough, after hacking it nearly in half with my greatsword, I summoned a celestial monkey on it to cast smite evil and nuke that last 1 hp it probably had left. The party were quite amused by the extent of overkill I threw at it.
While the team discusses turning the little thing into a trophy, I march over to the sarcophagus, cast bull's strength on myself, and attempt to tear it open. I manage to disturb it and bust the clasps holding it shut, but can't lift it. Moments later, something enormous inside of it lifts it for me, and out comes an enormous undead troll. We have time to back off before combat starts.
It starts by smacking our fighter upside the head for quite a bit of damage. The solution-for-everything dwarf rogue produces an acid flask that he throws at the troll, so it's now covered and dripping acid. I try to turn it, since I'm a cleric and all and have never used my turn undead ability before, and succeed smashingly. I then yell for everyone to run for it, because frankly the thing is going to slaughter us, and I turn and excitedly run to leap the pit. 8 dex, scale armor, and a bastard of a d20 later, I'm at the bottom of the pit, having only slightly impaled myself on the spikes, wondering how the hell I'm going to get out.
Our fighter didn't notice this development, but when he sees the troll booking it towards the door, he comes up with the genius idea of tripping it into the pit to neutralize it. At this point I'm starting to sketch out an idea for a new character in my head.
Massive undead troll plummets into the pit, miraculously not landing on top of me and squashing me, but now I'm 6 inches from the thing and barely able to move. With acid dripping on me. Only thing I can reach is my wineskin, which I had filled with some fancy liquid earlier in the dungeon that apparently allows you to breathe fire if ingested. So lacking for any other ideas, I take a giant mouthful of the stuff and unleash hell on the troll. Of course, given the close quarters, this turns out to not be the brightest idea in the world, and while I miraculously don't burn myself, I burn the beard right off my own face. On the bright side, I hurt the troll pretty badly, and my party is able to finish it off.
Now of course, the problem becomes I'm a 4'6" dwarf at the bottom of a 10' pit wearing scale armor and carrying a greatsword. Partially underneath the corpse of an undead troll that probably weighs as much as a Ford F2-50 turbo diesel. But never fear, I have Enlarge Person, so I make myself 9 feet tall or so, and with some help from my party, I manage to climb out.
So here I am, a beardless dwarf. How does one play a dwarf who is pissed off that his fighter dropped an undead troll on his head and fully blames him for his beardlessness? Ashamed to go out in public? Do I wear a wrap around my head? How do I bear the shame, and more importantly how do I RP this? Finally, how long will it take to grow back?