Fun Stuff > CLIKC
D&D Pathfinder
hedgie:
So, we're missing an update. After losing everything last time, I didn't feel
like typing everything all over again. So we'll cut to the current fight,
which is a continuation of the previous session. We're engaged with a
demilich (who the archer awoke by poking it), and due to its high damage
reduction are barely making a scratch on it. The dwarf is keeping its
attention by knocking over the temple statues (and nearly got soul-sucked for
his troubles), and the cleric of Shelyn buffs her with something that'll make
her cut through the thing like a hot knife through butter. Excellent.
Of course, a few of us have other problems. An undead giant came stomping
down the corridor, which I accidentially disturbed earlier when my flesh all
sloughed off to become spiders (because I figured they'd make expendable
scouts). Knowing that it had no weapons, I became incorporeal to be able to
magically attack it without getting squooshed and rush to engage as our evil
cleric's skeleton warrior goes after the floating skull thingy. With the
other cleric smacking it with holy attacks, and the rogue sneak-attacking, it
was only a matter of time before the thing dropped.
Meanwhile, the giant charges through me, but I didn't take into account the
*other* thing I pulled, namely, an invisible mummy lord. It smacked me with a
"slay living", but thankfully the amulet of protection I was wearing kept me
alive and kicking. I tried to glitterbomb it to make it visible, but failed
the concentration check and the spell fizzled. The giant enters into the
room, and the gunslinger hides to "reload", and we're finally making progress
on the lich. In fact, the rogue manages to lay the final blow. As it
shatters, it emits a chilling scream (wail of the banshee), killing four of us
outright (5 if you include my familiar), including both our clerics who apparently were rolling for shit when
it really mattered.
I wish one cleric back to life, depleting my savings almost entirely, and she
immediately brings back the other cleric, who then brings back the rogue so
we're nearly at full compliment to deal with the two remaining foes. The
giant proves easy enough now that attention is focused on it, and the archer
makes the mummy visible so that it can be targeted. I take the opportunity to
throw my big heal on the bastard, killing it instantly.
After combat, I use scrolls to bring back the gunslinger and my familiar, we
collect the belongings of our fallen enemies and start looking for the
MacGuffin, but find nothing save for some rotting and fragile books that'd
take at least a day to go through for anything interesting, and we don't have
the time since the undead in this cursed place get reset every 24 hours.
After several false starts and dead ends, we end up in a chamber with a blue
glowing mist and walls that look as if they were partially organic. This
whole tower is one of the magical pins holding the Ravening Beast imprisoned
beneath the world, and a voice calls out to us that the tower needs a new
caretaker.
Well, specifically, it wants a Zon-Kuthon (god of envy, pain, darkness and
loss) follower, and tries to convert the clerics to its cause, but both refuse
and walk off. I follow them and signal the NPC cleric of Zon-Kuthon, and give
her directions to our current location. She seems interested, first
confirming that the voice isn't secretly the beast, and tempted by a chance
for godlike power and to become closer to her god. But then, the dwarf
decides to shove her into the magic pillar, basically sacrificing her because
she annoys him (I'm sure that his journey to the dark side is nearly complete
is not already. what kind of people am I associating with?).
Trouble is that she'll be back soon in her new role, and probably looking for
revenge. She wasn't the most stable individual to begin with, and being
basically turned into a Hellraiser cenobite is unlikely to help. Thankfully,
we have a little time before she's able to manifest, so we go down falling for
what we perceive as hours before landing in a cavern. And apparently there
are scary clawed things down here.
Neko_Ali:
So... I ran my first Starfinder game tonight and it went quite good. Even my room mate who wasn't into the idea had some fun and was talking about it on the way home. Session setup: A group of five strangers are hired by a starship captain to be his crew on a run to far space and investigate a strange energy reading. A scouting vessel for the Starfinder Society, a large group of intergalatic explorers and adventurers, was scanning plannets in the Vast, looking for interesting finds. They discovered a strange energy reading that had no discernable intelligent life. They logged it and dropped a Drift beacon so it could be found and explored later. Some months later, the Society hired Captain Jim Sparrowhawk to check out this energy reading. Having just had his ship repaired after a close encounter with some pirates, he had to hire a new crew, and there we have it.
The trip out to the Vast takes a fairly long time, so the crew mostly occupied themselves with repair work, or playing games. There was a close encounter with a pirate ship who wanted to board and loot them, but their ship, the Lakota, was faster. And when the pirates scanned them and discovered they had no cargo, they had little interest in persuing. Some days after that, the ship ran into a Drift Storm, a dangerous surge of electromagic energy that seemed drawn to the ship, trying to envelop them. Worse yet though where what was riding along... Space vermin that could burrow though hull plating and intended to make a snack of the ship. Queue up a tense fight as both engine pods, the cockpit and the cargo bay are invaded by this giant space lice. Some injuries are sustained as the captain and pilot try to fight them off and get the ship out of the storm. The rest of the crew is running around trying to kill the beasties, but not before one chews through some power conduits to the starboard engine. Eventually though, the vermin are killed and the ship is patched up so it's operating at full capacity again.
A little later they arrive at the alien planet designating LV-426 by the scout ship. Doing some planetary scans they find no signs of living intelligences, but numerous structures made by something intelligent. However those structures are buried under layers of silt and dust. The atmosphere is not breathable, with little oxygen and high concentrations of methane. It's also slightly corrosive. So packing into space suits, they fashion silt shoes and go walking the five kilometers from the nearest safe landing spot. Spotting some manta ray like creatures burrowing through the silt, then leaping into the air to catch flying creatures for food, the team operative decides to shoot at one, declaring he wants to eat it. Queue a bit of an arguement as most everyone tries to stop him, then runs away after he shoots one and several turn towards him to attack. After killing two of the sand rays, the rest flee. The ysoki (rat person) operative declares the meat gamey and chewy.... consistancy like jerky but raw. The shirren (bug person) takes a bite and finds the meat dry and unpalatable. The others decline.
Continuing the journey they find an area between two rock outcroppings where the silt is somewhat compacted and pocked with dozens of very large holes, 4 meters in diameter each. The captain approaches a hole and turns to the others, calling for caution as the ground beneath them rumbles. A giant purple sand worm lunges out of the hole, biting the captain in half and disappearing back into it's hole. Grabbing the computer with directions to the energy signature from what's left of the captain, the crew runs at full speed through the field of holes, with the sand worm trying to snap at them, but failing. On the other side of the valley of holes, they find they are near the signal. After doing some searching, they find part of the silt here has compacted and collapsed, creating a tunnel leading downwards. At first a bit wary after the recent encounter with a hole in the sand, they realize it's far to small for the worm, so they risk it.
Crawling and digging a bit downwards they come across an underground corridor make of a glowing blue material. The tunnel is built on a large scale though, reaching more than twice the size of a similar structure made for human-sized races. They do a bit of exploring, and discover a few things. First, there is writing on the walls that can only be seen by those who can see into the ultraviolet spectrum. They discover the remains of some very long dead people here. Twelve feet tall with four arms and conical heads with four eyes. Their dried and mummified bodies all showing sings of having died by violence, most of it by surprise. They find living quarters and similar areas for eight people, a laboratory and a reactor room, where they are attacked by radiation eating animals that look like three foot tall hairless kangaroos with large sharp teeth. They had been munching on the decayed remains of a radioactive crystal in the room, the former power supply of this building. They discover a storage room with a number of large and small crystals that they eventually discover act as storage devices. The larger ones being essentially hard drives that can store data, and the smaller ones recording devices. They also find a number of tablet comptuer like devices and batteries to power them, though only one party can read the ultraviolet characters, and nobody understands the language.
Searching the rest of the complex they find one room that still has full power, and determine that the larger crystals can be accessed telepathically, thanks to the shirren. In this room they find the one crystal that remained powered, and the energy source that was read by the scout vessel. They also find the final remains of the what they assume to be scientists that were working here... Which begs the question, why were all these people killed, who were they, what race were they and what were they studying here? But that is a matter of more indepth studies to understand the language. For now, the crew took all they could carry back to the ship, so they could return it to the Starfinder Society and get paid. Perhaps the mysteries would reveal themselves another time... But until then, mission accomplished, and the crew find themselves in command of the Lakota.
Gyrre:
--- Quote from: Pilchard123 on 04 Jan 2019, 07:14 ---
--- Quote from: Gyrre on 03 Jan 2019, 21:33 ---goldfish poop gang
--- End quote ---
Rather useless recurring adversaries?
--- Quote ---EDIT [1] Oka, Ta'pi, Pu'u, and Ding. 100% intentional pun.
--- End quote ---
You're a terrible person.
--- End quote ---
Did I mention that they're called the Al Cassava Gang?
Speaking of which, Pu'u and Ding are Mud Kobolds, Oka and Ta'pi are Swamp Goblins. Each pair snuck into a barrel of salted fish thinking it'd be left in the marketplace overnight. They ended up being shipped from the mangroves at the eastern edge of the savanna south of the desert, to the mountain range that surrounds the desert.
The players won't be expected to fight them outright[2]. If a diplomatic approach is taken and is successful, they'll actually join the caravan as NPCs instead of becoming a reoccurring gag villain.
On the note of my brother— he opted to 1) switch his character's background to pirate, and 2) actually jump into the deep end by joining my Sunday gaming group. He's learning but he kind of liked it. Right now we're going through a dungeon that's basically Aliens but with Bone Devils and Cloakers, as well as a few automated defense turrets. If he decides to play the campaign he asked me to run, I'll request that he switch to the Orc-ogre caravan specialist since he's now a pure orc (the Sunday DM decided to make his own life easier and disallow hybrid PCs that don't already have a ruleset). Also, a good chunk of what I churned out for the Spike Rim Mountains was focused around his original character background and things that'd pique his interest.
EDIT [2] I fully acknowledge that many parties either contain or are entirely comprised of murder hobos, so there is that.
Gyrre:
Only half of our party showed up to the fight with a Death Tyrant. Arkin died after getting hit with multiple death and disintegration rays. But, at least he managed to mess up the DT with Dawn and a few level 4 Guiding bolts (I'm going to miss that spell). Our Paladin and bloodhunter managed to finishe him and most of the cloakers off, as well as getting some sweet loot before having to panick flee as the tower was pulled down by one of the children of Sovarez (sp?). We got a minigun, 5 more delayed fireball gernades, a BFG (needs power source), some weird armor, and 10 of the automated defense turrets. Fortunately, our bloodhunter recovered Arkin's bag of holding, cap of disguise self, and breastplate of necrotic resistance.
Unfortunately, an unforeseen major consequence of using Windwalk to fast travel the party everywhere is that the group has only known Arkin for one in-game week and wouldn't be attached enough to him to drop the gold required for True Ressurection or Reincarnate. It was mutually decided that that would be super metagame-y despite how fun he was. So, sadly, Arkin is dead. I am 100% keeping his character sheet in the event I need a backup for the other game (still on hiatus) because he is incredibly fun for me to play.
My new character is a Pact of the Blade warlock tiefling named Excellence Caswell (she changed it from 'Beatrice') with the 'Haunted One' background. She's a former member of the death cult who was only part of it because she was born into it. Her parents were fanatical lunatics who threw themselves into one of the necrotic biomasses to get into paradise and help Excellence get promoted w/i the cult ranks. Between that, her boyfriend getting killed, teenage rebellion and receiving the memories of my previous two characters; she basically said 'eff this, I'm out'. She managed to nab a Cloak of Arachnida and Winged Boots from the cult before sneaking out.
We're looking into whether or not she has to be hexblade into order to bind with ranged weapons or not. If not, her pact is with a celstial. If so, it's with her crossbow or hand axe.
hedgie:
It seems as though we'll be done with this castle. Just one more spirit anchor ("just a dumb skeleton" who is probably a murder machine and the Big Bad. Also, due to the dwarf being a murder-hobo, a couple of us are conspiring to slap a geas on him preventing him from doing violence to any being that is not actively trying to hurt him or an ally until X condition is fulfilled.[1] We all just hit level 15 as well, and have a bit of downtime to rest, recover the serious ability damage (that everyone but me took), and some of the negative levels that most of the group has. Having to kill a dragon, the demilich and all his friends as well as a creature to be described later, we took a pretty serious beating, and I had to burn scrolls of resurrection as well as limited wish, so we're out of our heavy consumables.
So starting off in the cave, it wasn't long until we found what it was that we were looking for, a sort of beacon in the middle of an underground lake. Problem is that in the way are four sleeping gugs, which are basically 16' tall bipeds with vertical mouths taking up most of their head, and their two arms splitting at the elbow into four forearms each ending in a set of claws. To investigate, we sent our rather stealthy monk, as well as my invisible imp, both of whom had no problem getting to the lake and its small dock (no boat, though) without difficulty. Somewhere in the middle of the lake is a point of light, about as bright as a star in the night sky. Using the imp's telepathy, the monk asked him to fly over the lake. He did, but didn't get any further than about 30 feet before a tentacle lashes up at him, but not before we see that distant point of light glows brighter, and begins looking like a sword. Happily enough for both me and the imp, he not only made his perception check, but beat the thing on initiave, and was out of there like a bat-winged devil out of hell.[3] The thing is faster than the monk, though, who gets a shower of acid from the maw of what looks like a purple worm, albeit with tentacles. She fails her save and takes some serious damage. And the commotion seems to have awakened our semi-four-armed fiends. Thankfully, she is clever enough to use her limited teleportation ability to get back to the group,
The passage is narrow enough that only two of us will be in range of the gugs at any given time. Downside is the bend in the passage doesn't allow us ranged folks to shine, and the narrowness prevents the rogue from getting into a flanking position without exposing her to several tumble checks to avoid AOOs. She wisely decides to stay put for the time being. I find myself mostly popping heals as our two tanks move up to engage (the acid spray went far enough to damage those out in front). After that initial blast, the gugs are celebrating, despite being acidified, and the worm-thing slips back beneath the surface of the water.
I finally get myself into a position where I can hex them without getting hit, the rogue finally gets to flank, but gets clawed a little bit in the process. Unfortunately, my sleep hexes fail to work, which would have made killing them a simple prospect. Eventually, though, we're able to get the right positioning to deal with these things in a rather terminal manner. The worm, however, awaited us. It bit, it spewed acid, it hit things with tentacles, and half the group ended so sickened due to getting hit by its vomit that we could do nothing but seek shelter. Just as the worm was about to die, it knocked the sword into the drink, which was actually beneficial to us as a whole. I rather doubt that we'd have spent time exploring under the surface, but we were forced to. (well, the skeleton and a cleric who cast some form of water breathing). Turns out that there was quite a bit of treasure down there, as well as the MacGuffin, and we were now the proud owners of.
This was about end time, so we teleported out[4] to our hideout in the cave, to rest and patch up. but you knew that part already.
[1] The two of us differ on what X is. The good cleric wants it to be when he has given the campaign Big Bad a chance to be redeemed, me, until he's welcome back in his homeland. Either way, he'd be neutered for a good while.[2]
[2] Part of me is tempted to give him the Ludvico treatment, but I'm not that cruel.
[3] Okay, that's exactly what he is, but I digress
[4] Apparently, the dimensional lock doesn't apply down here.
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