Fun Stuff > CLIKC
D&D Pathfinder
hedgie:
So the previous session had ended with the start of combat with super-sp00ky chained undead thing (the GM loves to end things on a cliffhanger like that), and hilariously, the "oh shit, we're fucked" was over quickly. There was all this build up to this fast as fuck undead thing attacking with (5?) chains, trying to possess the necromancer,[1] and after that failed, he started lashing out at anything that looked like a threat. Thankfully, it was over before I cast anything, so I was being ignored. But as soon as the necromancer acts she attempts to control it (she has had amazing luck so far with these big nasties). I'm pretty sure the GM only needed to roll above a "1" in order to successfully save…
So yeah, next thing we know, we're interrogating the "final boss" of the castle. Obviously, he's furious about being controlled and being as evasive as fuck, so even with the unholy compulsion controlling him, he was being as evasive as fuck, hoping to lead us to our doom by omission or ambiguity. Doesn't help that he repeatedly pointed out that he'd probably break free the next day, and make our lives miserable and quite a bit shorter if we were still in the castle. This whole process takes about two hours, both in real life and in-game time, but we're able to get quite a bit of information. I had surmised that he was bound specifically to the fireplace he was hanging on chains over, but had knowledge of other goings on in the castle, and could BRIEFLY (like maybe for a round or so) move from his fixture to fuck things up.
He was the lieutenant of a historical villain whose stuff we were there to pinch (as well as the weapon that killed his master)[2], as well as the nature and location of the beings (rather than items) that we'd have to destroy within 24 hours of each other[3] to have a chance of killing him. He seemed to not mind us planning on killing the devil, since it was looting the place of his master's stuff. Only problem is due to bad knowledge roles, even my hell-spawned (before being redeemed) imp could only surmise that it must be from one of the really deep pits, since it had never heard of that type before. The devil was almost certain to have knowledge of the weapon's location, although the latter is probably in the dragon's hoard. Reason why we decided to go after the devil is that it'd be easier to get to the dragon without having to deal (much) with chain-boy if we had to leave the castle to rest and then return.
Since only the necromancer can ask the questions, the rest of us are either shouting to her what to ask (and she often rolls her eyes at this), or engaging in a bit of side-RP. At which point, the /other/ cleric decides to spill the beans as to what exactly was in the stew that the orcs gave us, namely zug-zug (or whatever the orc leader's gf's name was. My character would be racist enough to not care about her name). Thank the gods for the decanter of endless whisky and drinking to forget.
So onward and upward in the tower, we encounter a nightmare while checking out some of the rooms (it wasn't in them, but it was running through the corridor). With this group, even down two players, it was nothing but an inconvenience that quickly dropped dead to the ground.[4] Proceeding, we get lavish descriptions of rooms picked clean of anything, save some old wine that is probably vinegar by now, and an infernal glaive, both of which went into bags of holding. We step out onto the balcony and 4-armed gargoyles are swooping down screeching. The damned dwarf decides to throw the door open to engage them. Thankfully, he and the other tank are able to form a wall pretty quickly, and between my black tentacles and sleep ability, they're effectively crowd-controlled. 3/8 are killed, and the other 5 fly off to avoid the tentacles. Wrong door in any event. We finally make it to the proper one, and there's a causeway to the tower. We're pretty damned sure that the remaining gargoyles would try to knock down anyone walking across off so that they'd take a nasty fall and have to try to climb back up. So we come up with a cunning plan (or so we think). Even worse, on the other side were quite a imps lurking invisibly.
Plan: I summon as many vulpinals[5] as I could in one casting (3), so they can run across invisibly and start indiscriminately start smiting, while the good cleric has illusions of vulpinals go right ahead of them. at the same time, everyone with a ranged attack would have readied actions to deal with the gargoyles. So far, so good. The vulpinals run across, and the gargoyles dive at the decoys, only for one to fall asleep on the job and the another to end up with some new ventilation in its body. The fox-men do their smiting together, and all the imps fall to the ground dead. At which point, one of the vulpinals points out that the imps fell dead instead of disappearing as they returned to their home plane.
Shit. This is a bit of a spanner in the works. Summoned creatures are trapped in this roach motel by the same magic that keeps me from simply teleporting out. Shoulda thought of that. Also, with a bit of planar knowledge, we realise that their souls would probably be devoured by the place once the spell's duration runs out (in its words, "things would go a bit wonky"). As this is happening, we kill/put to sleep all remaining gargoyles save one, but one of the clerics and two of the vulpinals get knocked off the causeway. The cleric is able to control one long enough to get her back up as the vulpinals climb back up, but it's free right as I'm making a dash across, and knocks off most of my bonus health.
I burn both of my fly spells on vulpinals and instruct them to carry their friend out of the castle's influence so they can go home safely. Only problem now is that I've burnt all my "get me the hell out of here" spells, save for the rather costly limited wish. Still, sending them off to safety was a good RP moment for me.[6] We magic a hole into the tower's wall (the door was locked), and devils attack, end of session.
Despite being down two of our top dps, we came through this pretty well, without wasting many resources like spells or limited-use abilities, and the missing people will be back next session, so we'll be at full strength. Only downside is that now I have 2 prepared summon spells that I dare not use, so my spell list is a bit more limited than I'd prefer. The good thing is that I still have all of my seventh-level spells, and all of my counterspelling ability. In all probability, once things start, I'll buff my AC, then start trying to put things to sleep, since the latter doesn't use any resources.
[1] We'd have been hurt pretty bad if he had, between her spellcasting/cleric abilities and her crit-monster of a pet
[2] The weapon bit might pose a bit of a problem. I believe that Marley's ghost said quite specifically that the pally's holy weapon was a longsword. If you may recall, my squishy caster with combat penalties due to low strength is the only one in the group who can wield the far lesser holy longsword we have now. Either the gunslinger will have to get hit with an atonement and do some penance or something, or the rogue will have to burn a feat to take the proficiency. unless I cast certain buffs on myself, I'm unlikely to hit anything more aggressive than a sleeping cow.
[3] A lich, a dragon, a devil, and some skeleton warrior
[4] And neither of us casters got *that* hint.
[5] Extraplanar little fox people who have a nice AoE smite evil ability, and are happy to charge into combat against things like devils
[6] I wish that they wouldn't have been eaten had the spell run out and just be stuck and uncontrolled. it'd really give me a reason to take the "leadership" feat at next level and keep one as a companion.
Gyrre:
I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Hedgie, you should definitely wwrite a book based on this campaign. Maybe in the style of your character's journal entries or telling the story at a tavern? Just be sure to credit the DM as co-author.
I'm kind of jealous, actually. The things I have a few things to report/recount mostly aren't as exciting.
While riding the cart, Po noticed some vultures flying overhead. Suddenly realizing he hadn't gotten rations before leaving town, he opted to cuck a javelin at one. Turns out they were giant vultures. The party managed to take down all 5 with only poor Dobby[1] getting hurt. Our arcanist, Prof Cerulean, decided to extract as much water as possible from 4 of them, and we roasted the 5th one and split it with the mercs giving us a ride. Dobby made himself a shade/cape by hacking off one of the giant vulture wings.
A ways on down, the blood hunter spotted some poor bastard stumbling along the dunes. He looked pretty far gone and when Prof Cerulean got a good look at him, she actually recognized the bit of nastiness going on [2]. Apparently this guy had been afflicted by some sort of necromantic condition that makes all of one's blood flow along a single path close to the surface of the skin in a fashion that resembles a snake. Upon mercy killing him and everyone deftly avoiding necrotic damage from the AoE blood splatter explosion, Prof Cerulean noticed that the guy's spinal column was still writhing around. She picked it up with a dagger and very narrowly avoided its needle-like stinger being stabbed into her arm. We all ganged up on this thing to kill it safely and to note to kill anyone else with the 'blood snake' contagion from afar. Preferably with fire.
After that, we got dropped off at the weretiger village by the mercs as we'd arranged. Po (of all characters) got a fair amount of info while sharing some "magically suspicious"[3] "herbs" with a were-tiger herbalist named Shaggy. He found out that those weird homebrew humanguised mimics are called "man-walker mimics" and they were indeed created by the proverbial wizard. This one made them to serve as his raiding party to retrieve supplies and components for him. He's also rumored to be operating out of a 'City of Ruins'. Also, that the glowy blue cube trinket he has may or may not be full of stars (he was pretty high). Interestingly, he rolled a high enough intelligence check to actually remember the view of the planets and the galaxy he got.
And then Po almost died thanks to a nat1 on his next Con save. He started having a bad trip that the cube was eating him. A failed Dex save and two failed strength saves to try to break the grapple, one while raging, followed by 2 failed death saves. Three rounds of damage, 36 24 38, all of it psychic because it was all in his head. Thankfully, the totally baked weretiger got a nat20 on realizing that Po was in a bad way and got him so smelling salts.
After talking to the tribe's alchemist, we trekked over to our first 'oh no' spot and found where most of the missing children were. Dobby decided to hitch a ride on the 'demon child' when it walked over him in the cave we found. Dobby then decided to find out just what the demon child was and peeked under it's robes and rags. After finding out that the metal legs were fused to her spine, Dobby found out that the demon child only had one leg left and was a girl. And then Dobby was flung across the cave and told that if he wanted to continue living he wouldn't ever do that again. Dobby apologized and asked what was at the end of the cave. "Death."
So , Esa[4] and Prof Cerulean decided to disguise themselves aas kids and try to find out what was at the end of the cave. After finding a door, they safely opened it and found most of the missing children. Also, it turns out that the 'demon child's name is Zero. They then found out that (of course) the kid we were hired to find wasn't there. They had run him off "because he was weird". Other than that, Esa and the professor found that the kids were getting survivalist and military training from Zero, along with learning basically how to run their own little society.
[1] Po's other little green friend and our goblin rogue.
[2]Turns out she's way older than she looks. She's met primordial humans.
[3] Our alchemist's own words. BTW, it's called "pot of gold" and the weretiger alchemist helped Shaggy make it.
[4] Our cleric, a fallen Aasimar.
hedgie:
Thing is that the campaign is based off of one of the Pathfinder adventure paths (Curse of the Crimson Throne), so there's quite a bit of Paizo's IP in there. Granted, we've faced quite a bit of custom content (due to our penchant for running things off the rails and to help level/gear us for what we're facing (and we're still under-geared for lvl 14, IMO), but there's still a *lot* of copyrighted stuff. I'm content just sharing the stories here and IRL with other tabletop gamers for their enjoyment.
Gyrre:
--- Quote from: hedgie on 24 Oct 2018, 16:08 ---Thing is that the campaign is based off of one of the Pathfinder adventure paths (Curse of the Crimson Throne), so there's quite a bit of Paizo's IP in there. Granted, we've faced quite a bit of custom content (due to our penchant for running things off the rails and to help level/gear us for what we're facing (and we're still under-geared for lvl 14, IMO), but there's still a *lot* of copyrighted stuff. I'm content just sharing the stories here and IRL with other tabletop gamers for their enjoyment.
--- End quote ---
Oh. Ja, that'd probably cause some problems and complications.
If you really wanted to, you could approach Wizards of the Coast and Paizo about doing a licensed book.
Gyrre:
BTW, I was looking through pics of IRL turtles to try to figure out what Tato Po would look like, when it dawned on me that Po's draconic ancestry would basically make him look like Tokka from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
More specifically, Phill Gonzo's rendition with boardshorts, a dragon tail, nubby horns, and half-lidded eyes.
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