Topic: D&D Pathfinder (Read 101340 times)

Neko_Ali · « **Reply #100 on:** 10 Oct 2018, 22:40 »

So my players wrapped up the hunt for the Cult of Asmodeus they had been after for a while, and it was a pretty fun fight of PCs vs anti-PCs... Surprising that my players didn't understand the lead bad guy, a warlock, casting Armor of Agathys on himself right before the barbarian laid into him. Double surprising since the barbarian usually plays a warlock/monk/rouge hybrid class.... Those who don't play 5e, Armor of Agathys is a pretty standard Warlock spell that gives them temporary hit points and anybody who attacks them in melee is hurt for the same amount... So all the barbarian succeeded in doing was hurting himself.

Still, fun fight, they saved the kids that were kidnapped and in general it was a success all around. So they head off to the next city, the capital of the region to talk to the Baron about the brewing war and other issues. I had planned that while travelling they were going to be interrupted by my special Halloween scenario on the road. However I made the mistake of including airship travel in the game. When the players complained that it would take a week to get to Edelsburg, I reminded them they could just fly there... so they did, effectively skipping the entire adventure.

But that's okay, I've got a plan in place to get them involved in it anyway. I'm not going to let such a little thing get me down.

Gyrre · « **Reply #101 on:** 11 Oct 2018, 20:53 »

"ALL ABOARD!"
*CHOO-CHOO*

jk jk
Absolutely nnothing wrong with a bit of railroading now and again. Lord knows my group needs it from time to time.

Neko_Ali · « **Reply #102 on:** 12 Oct 2018, 03:45 »

I present my players with opportunity. If they choose not to take them, that's fine.... I just move those opportunities around or reuse them for later.

In this case though I want to use this adventure right now since it's a ghost story I wrote specifically for Halloween. So I really only have one more session I can do it in. And honestly it's my own fault for opening my mouth and bringing up airship travel when they were already planning on walking/riding there.

I try to avoid railroading my players when possible and especially making it so obvious. Instead I set up several potential plot threads and see which one the players are following, to develop that further. Then I decide what happened in the thread they didn't follow. Case in point: The campaign started off with the players chasing down a bounty on goblins who had been raiding a nearby farming village. They discovered that the goblins were a lot more organized than usual, and that it was a distraction from a larger planned attack to the north. So they could have chosen to go north to try and head that off.

But there was also issues to the south, towards the capital. A cult of Asmodeus that tied into a couple players backstories, and another player who was hunting a thief who had made off with her clan's (dragonborn) eggs. As well as there was some suspicion that the Baron might be behind the goblin attacks some how. After a lot of argument and threatening to split the party up, they decided to go south and send a messenger north. Having finally dealt with the cult this week, they continued on to the capitol chasing after the wizard the egg-stealing rogue claims to have been working for. Once there they found a large force of soldiers flying north and were informed that a small army of goblinoids attacked a village to the north. Thanks to warnings they got, they were barely able to withstand the initial attack. The troops were going to reinforce the north. But there is also an army of undead coming over the mountains to the south. Sending the troops north leaves the capitol of Edelsburg undermanned.....

Gyrre · « **Reply #103 on:** 14 Oct 2018, 19:55 »

I'm writing that down. Railroading can be pretty unfun (especially with certain types of players).

Gyrre · « **Reply #104 on:** 14 Oct 2018, 20:01 »

Guess who's got two thumbs and totally forgot to have his character buy rations before the party headed off into the desert? This guy *kicks self*

The DM was even nice enough to let me roll a straight Wisdom check to see if Po would think of it. I got a 2. I can get nat20s for Po to determine that his ditchweed is cut with hay, but he forgets to bring friggin rations into the desert! Thankfully we just hit level 4, so I'm taking the Survivalist feat. I guess if the caravan gets attacked by giant scorpions or whatever, he'll be making jerky with it.

hedgie · « **Reply #105 on:** 21 Oct 2018, 09:42 »

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 · « **Reply #106 on:** 24 Oct 2018, 07:26 »

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 · « **Reply #107 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.

Gyrre · « **Reply #108 on:** 24 Oct 2018, 17:31 »

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.

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 · « **Reply #109 on:** 24 Oct 2018, 17:40 »

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.

(click to show/hide)

Neko_Ali · « **Reply #110 on:** 24 Oct 2018, 21:08 »

Well, I ran my Halloween Special tonight and it was glorious and well loved by the party. A hunter reported being attacked by a ghost in the woods nearby and the local baron asked them to investigate and put a stop to this. Loading up on ghost hunting gear (cold iron weapons, bags of salt, vials of holy water) they set off. Finding the abandoned campsite, the bedded down for the night. One the first watch, the dragonborn ranger drifted off as the Alarm spell set up rings out. The ranger started to walk off towards the south, acting strangely. They restrain her and ghostly smoke starts to pour out of her, forming up into a translucent blue woman with no legs and no mouth. She points southward and looks at the group pleadingly before fading away.

Travelling south, the group comes across a small, run down but still occupied house, deep in the woods, dozens of miles from the nearest town. Half the party scouts forward quietly... until the barbarian who can't see in the dark stumbles on a pile of clay tiles in the yard that was being used to patch the roof. From inside the house an old man appears. Spotting the Barbarian and Bard while the elf Ranger hides they get invited inside. This old hermit, Alec Tanner, kindly offers them tea and tells them a tale of how the ghost woman would lure people to their doom, drawing them to a graveyard further south of his house. But his house is protected thanks to warding stones he's set out.

Thanking him and taking their leave, the two return to the group. After a little discussion they decide to head south at near midnight. They pass through the ruins of an old and long abandoned town, nothing but foundations and overgrowth left. Coming on a large cemetery that held the remains of generations of townsfolk. In the center of the cemetery is a small structure, and within it they see a flicker of blue light. Coming closer they find it not to be a mausoleum as they suspected at first, but a gazebo. A gazebo made of the bones of dozens of people and creatures. Inside, the flicker of blue. Approaching closer, they attack the gazebo but miss! It responds by shooting razor sharp bone shards in all directions as it's arms start to unfold, claws outstretched.....

The fight begins in earnest! Spells fly and blades sing as they strike against the unholy abomination. It screams out and dozens of zombies start to rise from nearby graves, shambling towards the group. The warforged fighter gets grabbed and stuffed inside the gazebo, bars of bone slamming shut as it pierces him again and again with sharp spurs of bone. The party hacks from without and within as most try to back away from the animated bonezebo to escape the ring of zombies. As it looks like they are going to be overwhelmed, several party members in the single digit hit points and moments from being swarmed and torn apart by the zombies the bard strikes a final blow, causing the monstrosity to shake apart and the zombies drop in place, like puppets with their strings cut.

Gathering their breath the party examines the remains of the bonezebo, finding the capstone skull still pulsing with necromantic energy. Inside they find and destroy the animating crystal, the work of a necromancer. With the destruction of the crystal, the ghostly woman re-appears, along with two others that are just faces, similarly without mouths. The woman points towards the north, back to the hermit's house. Suspecting he may be the necromancer they return in the early, pre dawn hours. They kick over one of the warding stones protecting the house from spirits and a dozen ghosts rush in. The party follows, but too late. When they find the hermit her is held by the ghosts, burning alive with their cold fire until nothing is left by a charred body.

Searching his house, they find a secret door leading to a hidden basement. Inside, they find a shrine to the god of undeath, Vecna. Mounted above the shrine and the shrunken heads of twelve women, their mouths sewn shut. The party takes the heads outside to cremate them as the heads burn, the women are released. Their long silence undone, they thank the party as they disappear, until finally the full ghostly form is the last to go. As she ascends into the dawning sky with the smoke, a single raven feather floats down, as the Raven Queen whisks them away to their proper home in the afterlife.

Searching the home the party discover the necromancer's spellbook and journal. He was far older than he seemed, over a thousand years old. Every century or so he would use his magic to charm some poor girl in a village or city, whisking her away and marrying her, only to later kill her in a ritual so that he could absorb her life, extending his own. He spoke of being annoyed by their screams, so he would sew the women's mouths shut before the ritual. A dozen times he has done this, and he wrote of needing to find a new wife soon. He also wrote that though he lived far away from other people, sometimes the ghosts would draw the curious here, but he would send them to the old graveyard where his creation would kill them, giving him more material to work with.

And so it went, the heroes heading off, after allowing the Brides of the Necromancer their revenge, knowing evil has been destroyed, and their spirits freed. I found it an interesting and fun twist of the idea of a ghost of a jilted lover, and my party had fun. My custom made monster worked out really well and I was pleased that it was able to provide a serious and credible threat to the party. Though I think I should have increased the damage it does when it grabs someone and stuffs them inside. That just came off as weaker than it's normal bashing attacks. And besides that, I've wanted for literally decades to throw a gazebo monster at a party. And it so happens that I had a Halloween decoration that was a gazebo made of skulls and bones...

Gyrre · « **Reply #111 on:** 25 Oct 2018, 04:37 »

I don't suppose you've shared the Bonzebo's statblock anywhere?

Neko_Ali · « **Reply #112 on:** 25 Oct 2018, 09:11 »

Here it is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rriFoY4GDW3zZoyp1u3ARX5Zor55b5Xt/view?usp=sharing

I made the page using this resource: http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/ and roughly based it around mimics, the House Hunter monster and skeletons.

To go over it again I'd probably reduce the slam damage to 2d6 and increase the piercing damage of a creature trapped inside to 2d6. While playing it I realize it actually made little sense for the monster to use it's Grab and Stuff attack when it could just do way more damage with four slams. Ironically two of the players were trying to get inside the creature before willingly before it got one with a grab and stuff. Also, not reflected in the stat block but I decided spur of the moment last night that the creature was immune to being flanked. My group loves to use and abuse the flanking rules, but that made no sense in this case because it had arms coming out of all sides and could 'see' all around it with it's blindsight (soul vision).

My party that night was 5 level 3 characters. Fighter, Barbarian, Melee Ranger, Archer Ranger and Bard. I also threw them up against about 20 Shambling Zombies... Like regular zombies but with a move of 15' and 12 HP instead of 22. They were summoned up from the graveyard as a bonus action by the Bonezebo and once it was destroyed they collapsed, like puppets with cut strings.

Gyrre · « **Reply #113 on:** 25 Oct 2018, 21:07 »

A list of suggested restrictions to pick and choose from to help keep the insanity cap in place while allowing spells like Enlarge Reduce to stack on the same creature:

Require multiple spell casters to stack the spell. Pretty much the only one that's mandatory.
Require the spell to be cast at higher levels per level of stacking. Each casting would be done at double the previous casting’s spell level. Level 2 slot for the 1st casting, level 4 slot for the 2nd, and capped at a level 8 slot for the 3rd. This helps prevent abusing the stacking.
Require harder to aquire additional material components. Maybe rare earth metals, meteoritic dust, or specific monster parts. For example, the Enlarge Reduce spell might require the pituitary gland of a lycanthrope or a Spriggan.
Require an intelligence check to cast the stacked spells. They’re messing with someone else’s spell afterall.
Disadvantage (or some sort of penalty) on concentration checks for the spellcaster(s) Complex/unstable magic is hard to maintain. I'd even go further and suggest that wild magic users would automatically surge if failing this check or the previously suggested Int check.
if my DM allows this, I can make Po a kaiju (43'4"). He already looks like one.

hedgie · « **Reply #114 on:** 04 Nov 2018, 21:33 »

Ninety percent of last night's game ended up being the fight that we were starting at the end of the previous session, but this time with the gunslinger and rogue flying down from the top, and our archer stranded outside[1], as we get attacked by four barbed devils. As per usual, my initiative as the second-strongest healer is middling at best, and our strongest healer is dead last. Immediately after entering the room we're all[2] assaulted by magic, forcing a pair of will saves which my pet imp and I easily make, but the rogue predictably fails leaving her useless for the first round. I felt quite sanguine about our prospects, since even without the NPCs or pets, we had a 2:1 numerical advantage[3]. That first round, the gunslinger knocked one of the flying devils out of the air with some sort of trick shot to the wing, and the skeleton pet, the summoner NPC's eidolon and the dwarf all engaged the foes on the ground in a rather painful fashion, as they impaled anything engaging them in melee. It is also discovered by a couple of party members that a fifth devil, the one we're supposed to try and get information from was sneaking up behind the gunslinger in his perch under an invisibility spell. Once she's pointed out, I shout for him to come to me as I prepare a bullet with her name on it[5] and the tank/healy cleric steps up beside me so I can safely hide behind her tower shield as the devil being attacked by the eidelon advances on us.

Now, due to the vast amounts of booze, some of the details are a little bit fuzzy as to in what order the ensuing events occured, but I shall endeavour to do my best. Overall, things are going reasonably well in terms of control over the fight, as two of the devils are getting punished, and the one approaching me suddenly "decided" that it was time for a nap. The only snags were that the evil cleric NPC is getting hit by invisidevil's scythe, our gunslinger gets held on his way to me, and has failed to break out of it for a few consecutive rounds, and both other people with pets are burning some serious magic/abilities to keep said pets from taking a dirt nap.[6]

Of course, all good things must come to an end. As the NPC cleric flies away, depriving invisidevil of an immediate target, flying enough to try to "talk" to the held gunslinger and demand his head if he dies, it all starts going sideways.

The devil hits us all with "horrid wilting", described in loving detail by the GM, and if the devil had "detect invisibility" or "true seeing", I would have had to contend with having a dying familiar who needed healing, and being both squishy and seriously hurt, myself. The whole party has just taken some serious damage, moderated only by a relatively poor roll on the GM's part. *Almost* everyone who can heal themselves does, and the rogue (who is rather squishy herself) starts floating over to myself and the cleric, who decides to buff herself so that she could actually hit the enemy.[7] Due to their damage reduction, the barbed devils are taking a while to kill, especially since one ranged character is missing and the other is frozen in place in the air. Compounding our woes, the next round, a "chain lightening" hits the group, which thankfully, the rogue and my pet manage to avoid entirely. The necromancer of course, continues to spam a channel to heal herself (she's dhampir) and her pet, I have to drop what I'm doing to cast "heal" on the seriously wounded cleric (who really needs some better dice), and prepare heal the rogue the next round (triage and all), complicating my plans to bring this combat together. Tired of her one-sided conversation with the gunslinger, the NPC cleric decides to hit the floating gunslinger with a dispel that knocked away the hold, but *also* the magic keeping him aloft, but thanks to the failsafe with that spell, he started drifting slowly to the ground.

I patch up the rogue the next round, and both the dwarf and skeleton have finally dispatched their respective targets, while the eidelon finally succumbs to the fatal embrace of the barbed devil. But, now, things are starting to come together as the gunslinger manages to take the special bullet out of my waiting hand. He chambers a round, focused all his attacks into one nasty shot, which, due to the "named bullet" resulted in an x4 crit and doing what I believe is properly called "a metric fuckton of damage". I put the other barbed devil to sleep, the summoner casts "haste" on the group, and we begin to focus on the primary target, who our necromancer weakens with a successful enervation. The flying rogue starts to make her ascent, while those of us who are land-bound begin running up the "stairs" to the top of this tower to engage, while the skeleton starts dispatching the sleeping devils.

At this point, we're officially in the mop-up stage. Not only is our primary target weakened, and I ensure that she is blinded too. Unfortunately, she gets off one final "fuck you" to the one directly responsible for her sucking chest wound by imprisoning the gunslinger inside a force cage. Although our goal was to get information from her regarding the McGuffin, she goes down furiously trying to fight.

Well, I suppose with *that* goal thwarted, we start looting, netting a scarab of protection, an icy burst mace, a rod of splendour, and a circlet with the soul of someone trapped inside. The dwarf (of course), also discovers that the mattress to the bed large enough for Golarion's biggest orgy on record[8] is full of mixed coinage, estimated to value some 30k gp in total value. He immediately starts making money angels in the pile, and we all discuss the logistics of hauling it out, ending with the conclusion that it is impossible to do so with our current means. Sorting through the coins to only take the gold and platinum would also take a prohibitively long time. The rogue starts stuffing her pockets, and the dwarf calls for me to put her to sleep. I indulge him, primarily because my character has a strong dislike for thieves, but she's quickly nudged awake by the necromancer, who wants none of dealing with gold fever and goes back down to the still controlled big bad to have another conversation. One other person follows her as the rest of us desperately attempt to quickly sort the coins. The futility of this exercise is shown by how in an hour, we get a relative pittance. Even with my pet's help, I'm only able to net about 300gp worth of money, which is more than the others were able to get. We then retreat to the cave we were hiding in to identify items and plan our next step.

[1] A necessary contrivance to cater to their respective players' abilities to make it. Since we have such a large group, we don't have to postpone sessions due to absences.

[2] well, aside from our token evil teammate, her pet, and the evil NPCs

[3] I think that the quantity of beer and soju[4] that we had been consuming as we ate dinner probably helped in regards to confidence

[4] Of which, we unfortunately either had too much, or not enough. Still not sure which.

[5] Well, strictly speaking, and quite thankfully, an actual name isn't needed, one just has to remove all ambiguity as to who it is for.

[6] Although, I suppose that the skeleton is dirt sleep-walking already.

[7] Using a two-handed weapon with one hand is not generally recommended, even when one has the feats to do so, if one wants to hit their target.

[8] Or more likely, one big fucking dragon, considering that some scales were also found on the bed

hedgie · « **Reply #115 on:** 05 Dec 2018, 14:31 »

Well, I feel bad for not having posted updates for the last two sessions, but the one before last was rather anticlimactic. We go in to break the second spirit anchor, which turns out to be a big scary dragon… or was rather, prior to it dying rather unceremoniously midway through the first round. Now, we *were* well-prepared, and spent about half an hour in real time making sure that we had the optimal buffs, it was a little over the top. That night after I got home, the GM and I agreed to start strictly enforcing the material components of the spell I used, even though they didn't have a GP cost associated with them. Otherwise, every boss fight will involve me handing a magic bullet to the gunslinger, causing him to deal 7d10+lots damage.

Last week, as the gunslinger and dwarf start cutting up the dragon carcass,[1] the new cleric decided to explore a little before her multitude of buffs wore off. So she flies up to the next level of the very structurally unsound building, and triggers a fight with a bunch of (mostly) skeletal archers that are able to rip tatters of their rotting flesh from their backs to turn them into paralytic arrows, which quickly incapacitate the rogue. I catch her with my magic hair, which I then decide to use to lift myself up to the next level so that I can go heal people and deal with this shit that said cleric, and the archer are dealing with. The boys, of course, keep on cutting up the dragon, which is pining for the fjords.

The cleric is doing admirably as a tank, holding the undead away from the squishy people and smiting while the archer peppers the bastards with arrows. As I don't want to get myself shot and facing a fort save, my character ducks away and proceeds to vomit up a swarm of army ants, which she directs through an arrow slit to come up after the dead from behind. The ants do little enough damage themselves (only about 6d6 to each) before achieving the effect of crowd-controlling the undead to fly out of the swarm (chasing my imp back down inside), and spend the next round picking themselves clean of ravenous bugs.

And the dwarf's spell ended up to do fuck all. The dragon's hoard was in the next room. The actual ladies in the group were slapping hands with me 'cos I play a girl character who thinks that boys are stupid. Well, they are. Thankfully, the gunslinger was smart enough to realise that the whole building was about to crash down on everybody and used the immoviable rods that the dwarf had to shore the things up.

So we go for finding the lich. The strange thing is that he is behind two spells that keep others out. We need our necromancer to get in, and get my character, who is one of two people who is actually of a good alignment to get out. Thing is that to escape this shit, one of us has to remain behind. My character has to exit to allow others out, so she's safe, but the others... I just hope that it's one of the boys who has to get left out, 'cos boys are stupid.

[1] The former to take all the pieces that are worth money, the latter to use its hide to create a magical treasure map to its hoard

Gyrre · « **Reply #116 on:** 09 Dec 2018, 17:10 »

So....my barbarian suggested that the party go to the Oasis to try to get some relaxation sonce he's been downed multiple times in the last two in game weeks. He's just been killed by the travelocity travel gnome wielding Bad News (621 damage). Our sorcerer revivfied him and now it's our rogoue vs him in the in.

Po has his shield on one side of the sorcerer and himself on the other to keep her safe.

EDIT: BTW, when Po came back up, he shouted "This was supposed to be a relaxing vacation!"

hedgie · « **Reply #117 on:** 09 Dec 2018, 19:26 »

It was very relaxing. He was taking a dirt nap after all.

Gyrre · « **Reply #118 on:** 10 Dec 2018, 17:30 »

So I was talking to my DM about my backup character, an arcana domain cleric, and I mentioned that the only official D&D deity/god I could find that said anything specifically about arcana or arcane knowledge was Boccob. When I asked if I should pick one of the other gods of magic, he was about to say 'yes' when he got that DM sparkle in his eye. Apparently, Boccob got the title of The Uncaring from those few that would be his clerics because of the crap Boccob has put them through.

Arkin Icewind, an Aasimar of Illuskan descent. He's got silver skin, crystal blue eyes, perfect white teeth, speckled marking all over his body, and his presence calms animals. I decided he'd have a thick Russian/Finnish accent, and a putupon attitude.

EDIT: whoops. Looks like I named him Icewind instead of Frostwind.

Quote from: hedgie on 09 Dec 2018, 19:26

It was very relaxing. He was taking a dirt nap after all.

He was taking a regular nap and got sniped. And now he doesn't have a tail again. Stupid critical injury table.

hedgie · « **Reply #119 on:** 10 Dec 2018, 18:53 »

At least it wasn't a result of the Deck of Many More Things… That thing raised the terror level of one gaming group I was in more than anything else.

Gyrre · « **Reply #120 on:** 11 Dec 2018, 21:52 »

Since most of the loot locations have been visited and I'm coming in at lvl 7, the DM offered me 8 points to spend on magic items. Common 1pt, uncommon 2pts, rare 3 pts, legendary 4 pts.

If it weren't for the fact that Arkin hops around timelines and planes at Boccob's discretion, it'd probably be a Bad Idea to blow it all on a Sphere of Annihilation and a Talisman of the Sphere. He offered to remove my DIC (diabolically invented concept, effectively unremovable curse) if I sacrificed 3pts on a Rod of Security to put toward part of his specific mission for Boccob (protecting and assisting an NPC). Which would leave me with 5 points. I need to find the rarity of the Necrotic Resistance armors before deciding. I want a Mace of Disruption after all.

Quote from: hedgie on 10 Dec 2018, 18:53

At least it wasn't a result of the Deck of Many More Things… That thing raised the terror level of one gaming group I was in more than anything else.

Very true.

Also, I had a horrifying thought. Boccob is basically The Doctor and Arkin is simultaneously a companion and the sonic screwdriver.

hedgie · « **Reply #121 on:** 11 Dec 2018, 20:02 »

Quote from: Gyrre on 10 Dec 2018, 17:30

He was taking a regular nap and got sniped. And now he doesn't have a tail again. Stupid critical injury table.

Is he blue and think that the tail is "delightful"?

Gyrre · « **Reply #122 on:** 11 Dec 2018, 20:51 »

Quote from: hedgie on 11 Dec 2018, 20:02

Quote from: Gyrre on 10 Dec 2018, 17:30
He was taking a regular nap and got sniped. And now he doesn't have a tail again. Stupid critical injury table.

Is he blue and think that the tail is "delightful"?

Sadly, not blue. Greenish brown with orange striping (like an ornate box turtle).

hedgie · « **Reply #123 on:** 16 Dec 2018, 12:53 »

Oh fuck. I had typed about six paragraphs and the page crashed. I really wish that there was a "save" feature here.

Gyrre · « **Reply #124 on:** 17 Dec 2018, 17:26 »

Quote from: hedgie on 16 Dec 2018, 12:53

Oh fuck. I had typed about six paragraphs and the page crashed. I really wish that there was a "save" feature here.

Ditto.

I managed to actually think to record last night's session as it was getting crazy again. Only 4min 35 sec, though. The game shop was closing so we had to wrap it up midfight against 3 lvl 20s. Turns out we started in a different timeline this time. We're fighting an evil version of our Eldritch knight from before the reset, along with two of our DMs PCs from other games max leveled and evil.

I'll try to remember to convert the sound file and get it posted to soundcloud when I get off work this morning.

hedgie · « **Reply #125 on:** 17 Dec 2018, 17:43 »

I'm re-writing in a proper text editor, so I should have something up tonight (it's on my other computer, otherwise I'd be working on it now). The teaser is that two brilliant plans went horribly wrong, and someone booped the wrong thing on the nose (or where its nose *should* be).

Neko_Ali · « **Reply #126 on:** 18 Dec 2018, 07:11 »

So.... I'm getting ready to start a Starfinder campaign with my group next month, once our Shadowrun campaign comes to a close. Which is just as well, since the three who had never played Shadowrun before found the setting pretty dark and depressing. Which in all honesty, it is. And I've been running the light, 'pink mowhawk' version where they haven't had to deal with betrayal and revenge at every corner... The new game I have planned to be more light hearted. Basically borrowing in tone from shows like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop. The players are going to be owners/crew of a beat up starship with no particular faction affiliation and a desire to keep it that way. Taking jobs where and from whom they can in the interests of staying flying and ahead from those that might be chasing them.

For those that don't know, Starfinder is Pathfinder, in space. Kind of obvious when you think about it.

It is set in the same multiverse as the Pathfinder one, complete with magic, monsters gods and planes. But time and technology have advanced into the space travel era. So besides elves and goblins you have aliens and ray guns. The classes are all different, and there are new alien races, but the classic races are there as well. It's very much a fantasy game, set in space. System wise, it's something of a bridge between Pathfinder 1 and 2. For those who have seen the playtest stuff for Pathfinder 2, the fingerprints are definitely there showing where some ideas presented in Starfinder have been refined. I imagine a little while after Pathfinder 2 is released, we'll see a Starfinder 1.5 or 2 update.

I'm using the standard Starfinder setting with a few twists, and incorporating things from other games and shows into this. I am going to avoid the 'big two' of Star Trek and Star Wars. But other things like Mass Effect is fair game for mining or straight up lifting.

Gyrre · « **Reply #127 on:** 18 Dec 2018, 23:29 »

Maybe a touch of Outlaw Star comes from the magic users?

Sounds fun!

Gyrre · « **Reply #128 on:** 19 Dec 2018, 03:35 »

The dreaded DOUBLE POST!

Anyways.... As promised, that snippet from out last session.

BTW, turns out I wasted 45min before work waiting on Convertfiles's lagging because my current phone's voice recordings can be loaded straight to SoundCloud.

Gyrre · « **Reply #129 on:** 02 Jan 2019, 17:26 »

Oh boy, triple post. Sorry. Just excited.

I'm actually making progress on the G'do campaign. My brother expressed interest in playing, but is hesitant to join either of the campaigns I'm already in since 1) he's a beginner, and 2) we're pretty far in on both.

Right now I'm working on the mountains that encircle the desert since that's where his PC is starting. It's funny, I figured he'd go full orc or half-orc, but the first thing he did was ask me for the updated player race crossbreeding chart I did for 5E. He went with a half-orc half-ogre. That was weird to do, but necessary practice since some of the resident half-elves are half drow.

hedgie · « **Reply #130 on:** 02 Jan 2019, 18:40 »

Jumping in for newbies is a mixed bag. Our new player (who I brought in) decided to roll cleric, and it was her first time playing Pathfinder, and her first tabletop game since high school. She basically decided to jump into the deep end, when our other newb players avoided the spellcasting classes. She's actually doing great (thankfully, the GM helped her min-max her character properly) and is quickly learning how to choose spells. Then again, she's a science nerd by profession, so she's taking to it rather quickly.

Gyrre · « **Reply #131 on:** 03 Jan 2019, 21:33 »

My brother is a complete newbie. But, he knows I enjoy so he wants to give it a try.

Being that his character is basically a fantasy trucker (caravan specialist) and he's a fan of the Transporter movies, I'm going to mess with him a bit with the introduction of a potential "goldfish poop gang" (I think that's the term). I still need to decided whether the Al Cassava gang[1] are kobolds or goblins. Either way, they'll have smuggled themselves in by hiding in one of the crates.

EDIT [1] Oka, Ta'pi, Pu'u, and Ding. 100% intentional pun.

Pilchard123 · « **Reply #132 on:** 04 Jan 2019, 07:14 »

Quote from: Gyrre on 03 Jan 2019, 21:33

goldfish poop gang

Rather useless recurring adversaries?

Quote

EDIT [1] Oka, Ta'pi, Pu'u, and Ding. 100% intentional pun.

You're a terrible person.

Akima · « **Reply #133 on:** 05 Jan 2019, 01:08 »

Quote from: hedgie on 16 Dec 2018, 12:53

Oh fuck. I had typed about six paragraphs and the page crashed. I really wish that there was a "save" feature here.

Yeah... Ever since losing a minor essay in the Discuss sub-forum when I clicked Preview, I draft anything more than a one or two line posting in a text-editor with a BBCode plug-in and copy-paste it in. Even for short posts I hit Cmd-A Cmd-C to copy it to my Clipboard before hitting Preview.

Blue Kitty · « **Reply #134 on:** 05 Jan 2019, 15:32 »

I got a sweet, sweet taste of D&D last year after listening to a lot of Actual Play podcasts....and then it went no where. We did the D&D 5th Edition starter kit and beat it, then created our own characters, but then we hung out more infrequently. Last time we got together we just played other board games, even with all the people there to play D&D.

I'm thinking about suggesting we do D&D or something like it for our own game night and I can DM

hedgie · « **Reply #135 on:** 06 Jan 2019, 14:47 »

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 · « **Reply #136 on:** 06 Jan 2019, 20:49 »

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 · « **Reply #137 on:** 07 Jan 2019, 06:58 »

Quote from: Pilchard123 on 04 Jan 2019, 07:14

Quote from: Gyrre on 03 Jan 2019, 21:33
goldfish poop gang

Rather useless recurring adversaries?

Quote
EDIT [1] Oka, Ta'pi, Pu'u, and Ding. 100% intentional pun.

You're a terrible person.

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 · « **Reply #138 on:** 20 Jan 2019, 20:02 »

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 · « **Reply #139 on:** 24 Jan 2019, 23:02 »

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.

Gyrre · « **Reply #140 on:** 26 Jan 2019, 08:37 »

Okay, looks like we've got Ms. Caswell mostly sorted out.

She's one of a handful of children born into the Dancing Flesh cult[1], along with Tomelise (deceased boyfriend) and one other I don't know the name or whereabouts of yet. Her duties within the cult were to throw corpses into the necrotic biomass and shoot[2] anyone who got too close to the compound[3]. Her parents were fanatical loonies to the point where they sacrificed themselves to the biomass in an effort to help boost Excellence's standing/rank in the cult. Either shortly after or shortly before, Tomelise is caught trying to sabotage the biomass. So he gets made an example of[4]. About 3 days after all of that, she overhears some of the higher-ups discussing just throwing her in the biomass instead of promoting her.

Naturally this broke Excellence a bit. With all of the messed up stuff she's seen and the recent loss, Excellence has an epiphany that she should leave the cult and seek redemption. She changed her name[5] and alignment from chaotic evil to chaotic neutral. She made a pact with a newly formed celestial[6], stole a Cloak of Arachnida and a pair of Winged Boots, and snuck off into the desert in the middle of the night with the only piece of Tomelise she had left. An orb made from one of his heel bones that she made as a spell focus.

Did I mention that she broke a bit? She has full on stress induced hallucinations of being able to see and hear Tom's spirit. Each day she pricks her left ring finger with a hairpin and drips 3 drops of blood on her bone spell focus and polishes it. She believes that if she doesn't do this every day, Tom's spirit will leave her all alone. Not sure how that'll all play out with Arkin being her patron. He was a very good man. Even for an Aasimar (hence the full angel promotion). If he finds out, I'm sure he'll try to help her work through the trauma. Maybe even become a sort of second father figure, making the pact more than just a job.

BTW, I should probably mention that since she's seeking redemption and has a pact of the blade with a celestial, there's a bunch of sells my DM and I figured were off limits for her to pick up. They're mostly necromancy and evocation spells. But, since she was a worshipper of the eldritch horror that is Sovarez, she does get access to Eldritch Blast. I've got agonizing blast and eldritch spear as invocations already, but I'm still depating on repelling blast. I also need to decide between Flesh to Stone and Investiture of Ice for my first arcanum since we're about to ding to lvl 11.

[1] Despite being 1000 strong, they've got a staggeringly low birth rate for having existed 2 decades. Granted, birth is kind of the exact opposite of their goals.
[2]Weapon Master feat; shotgun, LMG, halberd, and battleaxe
[3] the aforementioned City of Ruins
[4] Flayed and acid poured in the wounds. "Traitors are unworthy of the dancing flesh and we dare not sully it with their blood or bones."
[5] Formerly 'Theophania'. She never liked it anyway.
[6] Arkin Icewind became a full-fledged angel upon being disintegrated and wound up working in the pacts department due to his background in arcana.
EDIT: fixing typos

Gyrre · « **Reply #141 on:** 12 Feb 2019, 16:50 »

Oh boy.....
A few things from a few sessions.

1) Upon learning of the cultists' plan, our paladin got all gung ho about storming the City of Ruin[1]. After some persuation checks and reminding him that the cult hada A LOT of warlock members, a compromise was made to pick off patrols some ways outside the City of Ruins. I forget who, but someone suggested an uneasy alliance with HQ. So, we used the magic chest we had to send a message to them[2]. They agreed that the Cult of the Dancing Flesh was especially dangerous and needed to be stopped[3]. They sent out their elite sniping squad to pick off patrols from the other side of the city.

We were going to build a small, innocuous base about 10 miles from the cultist head quarters by combining her Mold Earth with EC's Flaming Sphere But Dr. Cerulean got a nat20 when asked to do a performance check. So she "went all Anna and Elsa" and ended up making a castle of glass and sand. Which, of course, attracted the cultist patrols. So our archanist spent the rest of the session turning it into a layer while the bloodhunter, paladin and barbarian went off to kill said patrols.
My brother learned then learned the hard way that barbarians should always start combat by raging. His barbarian didn't die to either patrol[4]. He died to a few giant vultures when he failed a persuasion check while testing out his ritual only Speak With Animals primal path feature.

2) The next session we got a message from the HQ elite unit requesting immediate backup, as 4 of their members had "disappeared into the sand with only a greenish flash" being seen. By the time we get over there, it's just three of them left; two nameless soldiers and the level 20 paladin. We watched as another one disappeared under the sand just before a friggin' ancient white dragon came out of the ground! The dragon easily took out Soldier B with its breath weapon and knocked Haravor[5] down to 25% health. Then, the DM tells me to make an insight check on the AWD, which EC passes. "It's looking at you funny." Then, each time it surfaces near EC or attacks the rest of the party, the DM tells us that it took care to avoid hitting EC.

At that point I figure it must be Granny Gumgum[6] controlling her familiar (which I failed the roll to remember). We all held our actions waiting for the dragon to surface again and Granny Gumgum failed her Con check for holding True Polymorph. Que Granny's theme and an hour long fight. We nearly got her beat but me, the arcanist, and the sorcerer were out of spells so we couldn't counterspell her 3rd attempt at Dimension door.

After the fight, EC got a message from Granny requesting they "have a talk". The paladin player decides to started acting like a stereotypical paladin and demands to know if EC is with them or against them. I already knew that this was likely how EC was getting the Tome of Leadership as I had guessed exactly why our backup characters were getting our previous character's memories through an off-handed coment[7]. So after a bit of an in character argument (and shooting the tower with EB in frustration) we decided to split the party. Excellence would talk to Granny as a distraction while the work their way through the underground tunnels.

Everyone started from the underground entrance and cloudwalked to their respective destinations. As Granny Mother-Gothel'd it up voicing concernfor EC's decisions and her running off and 'getting involved with a bad group', the rest of the party fought a Rabbit of Caerbannog that was guarding the underground's entrance at the City of Ruin. It lasted 3 rounds [8]. After guilt tripping the hell out of EC and giving a sizable chunk of lore dump, the rest of the party interrupts a big reveal by pretending to be messengers.

Another fight ensued. EC (i.e. I) was uncertain what to do[9], so EC nat20s on pretending to have had Hold Person cast on her on the second or 3rd round. Two more rounds in, she starts firing Eldritch Blast at Granny and shouts "I'm sorry" each time. Zero (the lvl20 monk) shows up and Bastion manages to convince her to help us out. Her minigun jams almost immediately and she just follows for the rest of the fight. Thankfully the paladin and bloodhunter can keep up with her (barely). Me and the sorcerer use Counterspell to stop some nasty attacks while we're still in range, while the archanist gives the paladin and bloodhunter Haste. I hit Granny once and accidentally hit the bloodhunter once (nat1). And the bloodhunter manages to use some bloodright that prevents a specific spell from going off to block Granny's attempts at Dimension Door. We almost have her down[10], when she uses her last arcanum to polymorph into an Ancient White Dragon again and fly off down the underground tunnels. Then, a set of charges went off and the tunnels collapsed behind her.

We leveled up twice for surviving her twice.

Bastion is down, Marius has 5 hit points, the 3 of us who can heal are out of means to do so; so Granny got away. Zero comes up to Excellence and says "I recognize you. You're part of the cult, aren't you?" Bastion's player character accusingly says 'yes', I roll my eyes and have EC say "Formerly." Zero announces that she's going to make sure and the session ends there. The DM and I have a private chat RP chat and EC gets more lore dump. Including that Zero is in fact "The Shadow" Granny mentioned and that she's second in command of the cult. Threats are made, questions are askedb and Zero reveals that she has a crush on Marius. The chat ends with EC having to explain what "girltalk" is to a 300 year old monk and being told "Well enjoy more moments like that as much as you can. Around here those will be rare."

3) Bastion's player didn't show up, so we had an combat free session. Zero tells the rest of the that she is infact the 2nd in command of the cult and mentions their plans for the Drake Eater bones. While being truthful, Marius and the Professor figure out that she's not saying everything. We manage to diplomatically come to a solution. "If Sovarez really just wants to either be free or go back to sleep, then let's just use that transport you mentioned to get to the moon, have the 'gods' put her back to sleep, and then you can kill them."[11][12][13]

After all of that, we search the now abandoned city trying to loot it. I space out on checking for traps and immediately get blasted out of Granny Gumgum's house by the explosion. Thankfully, I'm tanky as hell for a spell caster [14]. I added additional 15 psychic damage since she's hurt by the fact that 'Granny didn't trust her', bring me down to 130HP. The rest of the ccity had pretty much been cleared out. But the Cloak of Arachnida I have came in useful for bypassing a few traps. We got a warhammer, 12 knives, 9 glass vials, 6 vials of strong poison[15], a cart and donkey, and we found out that Prof Cerulean stopped counting birthdays a long time ago and now tracks her age by climate change[16].

After that, we head back to base via cart. We got about halfway before we remembed the minigun with perfectly good battery Zero dropped, and we decided to go back for it. It's a four hour ride to the castle, so EC starts reading the tome. Bastion is dragged inside and left unconscious on the floor of the foyer, and we everyone goes about some personal stuff. EC use Bastion as a chair and finishing reading the Tome of Leadership two days straight using Bastion [17] and her hallucination of Tomelise to practice. I got a 19 on the performance check for practicing, so even when Marius checked in on her and discovered that she's a bit crazy, he thought she was doing pretty well [18].

After zonking out and recovering from 1 of 2 exhaustion points, we headed back to the harbor to report to the info broker. We got paid the offered price, a bonus for helping him save a lot of money with the previous info, and an additional bonus for helping him save further with the new info. He offered us 10K gold if we could stop the ccult grom stage-4ing the Drake Eater bones and stated that it's pretty much a suicide mission since most of the cult was headed that way. Which served as a cut scene to introduce my brother's new monk.
"Offer of 10K GP to those who can succeed. No guarantee of survival."

Once he joined the party, we all hopped back on rthe cart and headed out. The DM had us roll a flat d20 and asked for our results. Then he informed us that it was an encounter roll. My nat1 and the bloodhunter's 4 guaranteed that we encountered the purple worms stirred up by the tunnel's collapse during Granny's escape. And that's where we ended that session.

[1] cultists base
[2] pair of magic chest that just pass objects/creatures between the two unless a command phrase is spoken; "keep it".
[3] see "Ancient Drake Eater" post from page 1 of this thread. They're trying to get to HQ to steal one's bones.
[4] both a combination of warlocks and gunslingers.
[5] HQ paladin
[6] Leader of the Cult of the Dancing Flesh, lvl 20 pact of the chain hexblade warlock and holder of the warlock specific legendary item.
[7] the DM had thanked me via text for making characters that meshed into the story so well. I said something among the lines of 'I like to think of myself as a nanite swarm taking over another NPC when my character dies."
[8] "SMITE SMITE SMITE AS YOU FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!"
[9] Granny Gumgum is the closest thing to family she has left.
[10] kicking myself for not joining in sooner, but I RP while fighting too
[11] One of the things Zero told EC about was that the gods live on the moon and there's a transportation method being built underground
[12] in this campaign, the gods are actually just people with super advanced and powerful nanites.
[13] said gods killed Zero's mom and tormented Zero for 20 years. She wants to kill them all, hence her joining the cult and working with us.
[14] EC's Con is 20, so her base HP iis 196. Con + Tough feat + Abyssal Fortitude. Also, I get temp HP equal to my warlock lvl + my Char mod thanks to my celestial patron.
[15] set up around a trap that would have triggered a Shatter if the sorcerer hadn't counterspelled it
[16] variant human, Primordial older than many dragons
[17] the player is annoying and be kind of a dick. Upon learning I got the tome, he announced his plans to steal it.
[18] my Char mod was +6, now it's +7

EDIT: delineating paragraphs for an easier read

hedgie · « **Reply #142 on:** 17 Feb 2019, 12:25 »

Well, I missed updating for the session two weeks ago due to kinda blacking-out drunk. This time, we start after having downed the big frightening skeleton, and discovered a room with an awesome looking magic shortbow, and an iron golem standing, frozen between us and the bow. We assume that it'll activate if we make a move to grab the thing, so for the time being, we start trying to explore more.

This leads us into some haunted rooms, filled with ghostly servants, and our door-opening, trap-finding rogue predictably failed her will save and started going Marie Kondo all over the place. While this would generally be amusing, in looking for things to clean, she started heedlessly moving into other rooms, and had to be stopped before she opened the door to something nasty, especially since we were trying to move quickly to the Big Bad. I ended up sleeping her[1] and she fell softly into the gunslinger's arms. He then smacked her with the flat side of an intelligent axe he has that suppresses compulsions for a 10 minutes until we got out of the haunt and made our way to the big bad.

Of course, before we get to the big bad, we encounter some spectres, which were absolutely destroyed by the necromancer's skeleton warrior pet (I got to tag one with a nasty hex using my magic hair, but that was *nothing* compared to what the murder machine can do. I'm sure that the rogue and archer felt rather inadequate as well by comparison.

So now it's just about time for the big fight. We buff, and Charlie (the skeleton) opens the door. The big bad is weaker due to us destroying the spirit anchors that he fed off of, but he still had some nasty prepared for the first thing he saw. Which means that Chas got hit by some significant charisma drain, thereby fucking his hitpoint total and taking him out of the fight. The rest of us charge in, attacking with smites, arrows, blades, and a spell that fizzles.[3] With Chuck out of the way, he starts attacking the gunslinger who ran into melee range to strike with his rapier. More charisma drain. I rush him and smack him with hair charged with a "heal" spell,[4] and even with him saving, he gets hit for 75 damage. The rest of the group is wearing him down (albeit slowly due to him only taking ½ damage from physical attacks). Then the good cleric steps in, fully buffed, and wielding the weapon that the paladin who killed these bastards in the first place used. Smacks the shit out of the fuck with her smite abomination spell running, but he's still up and tags the gunslinger with more drain, making him about as charismatic as the surliest dwarf in the mountain… wait, I lied. It was actually a little bit lower.

So when it gets to me, it's decision time. I could smack the undead thing with a cure critical, but I don't know how much health he has, and one more hit would probably kill the gunslinger. I decide to burn a "limited wish" and the last of my gold to restore him; the rogue promptly knocks off his last 5 hp. Well, there's a waste of a wish.

Now the curse is cleansed, the breeze starts moving again, and I'm almost surprised that there aren't birds landing on us like a Disney film or Bernie Sanders rally. Things do shift to a cutscene though, as the spirit of the one murdered by these arseholes, a young prince or noble, first as we watch him die, and then him giving his speech, answering a few questions, and then become touch the blade used by the good cleric to fully empower it to its proper (minor) artefact status.

Now all that remains is to loot the castle of everything that we had skipped, especially 'cos the undead can be properly destroyed, but there is a slight complication. The nearby orc encampment seems to have gotten the message that the curse is gone, and starts storming the castle to lay claim to everything.

Thus endeth Part One. I'll get to writing the second part later.

[1] My backup plan if that failed, was to try to force a new saving throw against the compulsion by taunting her about finally learning her place in society[2] and congratulating her upon finally finding an honest and suitable profession. That may have been enough to trigger the whole "acting against one's nature" to allow a new save. Thankfully things didn't come to that.

[2] Not as a woman, but as one of the poors

[3] Oops. Forgot that it was mind-effecting, so the undead was immune.

[4] Pathfinder follows the "revive kills zombie" rules

hedgie · « **Reply #143 on:** 22 Feb 2019, 14:18 »

Double post because it appears that I'll be joining a 5^th ed game on Thursday evenings. I'm playing a tiefling bard (path of the blade) who specialises in thrown knives in combat, and impressive displays with blades and/or fire as a performance thing. So basically filling the ranged combat and support caster roles.

I'll hopefully get to part 2 of the Pathfinder recap this weekend.

Pilchard123 · « **Reply #144 on:** 23 Feb 2019, 03:59 »

Do you mean College of Swords or a homebrewed one? Because the closest thing I know of to Path of the Blade is a Warlock's Pact of the Blade, but that's a Warlock thing rather than a bard.

hedgie · « **Reply #145 on:** 23 Feb 2019, 06:26 »

Swords. I am unfamiliar with 5e.

Gyrre · « **Reply #146 on:** 18 Mar 2019, 04:56 »

So, our regular game is on hiatus as our DM deals with closing on his house, thus we're prematurely starting on the next campaign a little.

We made our characters and did introductions, and I created a Svirfneblin (deep gnome) ranger named Umpen Welber. Yes, I rolled for his name from the book. He's got a New Zealander accent because my Australian one is terrible/nigh incomprehensible (especially when I throw in Australian slang). Umpen is a fugitive from the Underdark as he killed the local Duergar queen's favorite giant centipede. In his defense, it was trying to eat him.

Now to my dilemma; I'm trying to decide on a trinket. I rolled from 12 official trinket tables and narrowed it down to the following:

A crystal dagger, it is engraved with the symbol of a flaming skull with a rune-covered ring around it.
A dagger made of folded parchment.
A small comb made of blue coral.
A small hand-sized box covered with numbered buttons.
A walking stick shaped from a gnarled elm root. A small branch is sprouting from it, tipped with several leaves.
The skull of a wolf, peculiar for the rack of antlers sprouting from the top of its head.

Personally, I'm pretty partial to the first and last ones, but they all have the potential for interesting chaos.

sitnspin · « **Reply #147 on:** 18 Mar 2019, 10:57 »

Skulls are always a good choice. Daggers are always a good choice. Go with the option that has both

Gyrre · « **Reply #148 on:** 21 Mar 2019, 05:46 »

Okay, I'm posting Umpen's/Lumpen's[1] backstory here so I can copy it to my phone from the mobile site. I'd rather not type this out on my phone.

Umpen grew up in the subjugated Svirfneblin city of Ontwijken[2]. The current queen is/was slightly kinder than her predecessors in that the non-Duergar citizens of the city were allowed some freedom as serfs instead of being outright slaves. While hunting game for his family one day, Umpen was attacked by a monstrous centipede (huge). He killed it in self defense before realizing it was someone's pet. Quite unfortunately for Umpen, it happened to be the queen's favorite pet, Dollop[3]. A contingent of low-level soldiers happened to finally find the centipede as Umpen realized just how screwed he was. Fearing the queen's wrath[4], Umpen evaded the guards and got the hell out of Ontwijken.

Afraid to stay in the Underdark, Umpen sought a way to the surface. Staying low and only fighting when he had to, Umpen eventually learned the various monstrosities of the Underdark and how to track, attack, and evade them. Whilst fleeing from some umber hulks, Umpen stumbled into a largely destroyed nest with several broken eggs. Once the umber hulks had past, he decided to investigate. Amongst the broken shells and blood stained nest fibers, Umpen found a mysterious egg roughly the size of an American football. Taking pity on the poor unhatched creature, he fashion a makeshift harness from his rope, threw his cloak over top of it, and brought it with him. He eventually happened upon a kobold being attacked by Carrion crawler and doing poorly. Umpen managed to sneak up and Blind it, giving the kobold a lucky shot. Together, they easily killed it. The kobold thanked Umpen and asked him to help carry the carrion crawler back to his warren as the kobold's hunting companion had been killed by the beast.

Having saved whom he later found out was the chieftain's nephew, Umpen was allowed to stay amongst the kobolds for a time. While he taught them what he knew about the monstrosities and helped them hunt them, their druid taught him some spells. But, Umpen knew his time with the kobolds wouldn't last. One day while out with a hunting party, Umpen spotted his brother poorly stealthing around[5] with some hunting beetles[6] in plain view. Umpen returned to the warren, gathered his things and said his farewells, then headed for the tunnels the kobolds had told him lead topside.

[1] My new current dilemma. Either way, the 'u' is pronounced as though it had an umlaut. 'Umpen' just looks weird.
[2] ~~Replace the 'v' with a 'w' and~~ find the poorly stealthed pun.
[3] Suggest twist, Dollop is actually the queen's favored heir cursed into the form of a huge centipede
[4] She was still quite fond of torturing those who displeased her.
[5] deliberately
[6] just giant beetles

EDIT: Apparently the 'w' in Danish isn't said like a 'v'. Oops.

Gyrre · « **Reply #149 on:** 14 Apr 2019, 19:13 »

Bugh!

Thank God for the invocation Tomb of Levistus!! It saved my warlock twice tonight.

Me and a couple others missed the last session, so our characters were still in the Gnome City when the rest of the party crashed the ship into a "brood mother flesh morph" (it makes tons of stage 3s). Upon killing it (and destroying the ship), it released a massive tidal wave of necrotic blood into the tunnels. The 3 of us in the Gnome City had an in-game hour to prepare for the wave. We used a combination of Mold Earth and Firewall to produce the necessary 100ft by 60ft tall wall to protect the entrance. Our arcanist reinforced it with stoneshape just before the wave hit, and our sorcerer had cast Gate on the side facing the wave [1]. The wall was thankfully succeful [2].

While evacuating, an undead tarasque managed to bust through the wall about 4 hours into the evacuation of the city[3]. Some of the blood flooded into the area, but only the party got hit by it. Which triggered EC's Tomb of Levistus. Everyone else took 66 damage. Our gunslinger has an absurd gun called The Penetrator that made short work of the tarasque in four rounds. But not before it pooped out 6 stage 3 fleshmorphs. Two of which flanked each of us[4]. The two flanking EC took out the rest of her ice with 4 crits. Our sorcerer managed to planeshift and banish 3 of them, the gunslinger got 2 more before being downed a second time. Since the last one was about to kill our gunslinger outright[5], so EC had to bust out her Rod of Security and whisk his unconscious ass and herself to a pocket dimension[6]. Esa (sorcerer) was unwilling, so she stayed behind while EC Greater Restorationed Evard (gunslinger) so he could healup.

We made it back on my next turn and the three of us took out the last one. Over the next couple of days the party was doing a few separate things. EC was specifically making a ditch (with Eldritch blast) to get some of the necrotic blood to flow into once we removed the now dead undead tarasque. Which happened to revive itself somehow while she was doing that. It got a surprise round on her that went through pretyy much all of her Tomb of Levistus temp HP[7] and the rest of her temp HP being taken out when the damned thing stepped on her!!! She spent 3 rounds unable to do anything but take damage and have Thunderstep prepared for as soon as she got line of sight on another space. Which she did when the undead tarasque stepped on Esa (knocking out 2/3 of her health). The damned thing proceeded to poop out 9 stage 3s. Eight of which were taken care of thanks to Evard getting more ammo for his crazy gun and action surging.

Once we had killed everything, EC took out her frustration on the deaddead tarasque by Flaming sphering its face and brain to make sure it couldn't do anything even if it somehow revived itself again. Upon using the artificer's legendary to consume it's corpse (once the ditch was sorted), we discovered that it had some sort of revive core inside of it that had a percentile chance of bringing it back to unlife once per day. We destroyed that core. Now we just have to rebuild the ship so we can go kill the god of asshat creeps, Nettle.

[1] To the elemental plane of fire, where the necrotic disease is apparently spreading now. Stupid percentile chances.
[2] The DM rolled a 92, we needed at least a 65.
[3] the elevator to the surface only holds 30 medium creatures at a time
[4] we're down 3 party members and the professor was downloading the ship's schematics in another room so we could rebuild it.
[5] it hadn't been touched yet and Evard is our highest DPS
[6]EC is primarily about healing and field control
[7]200 temp HP thanks to be level 20 + the 30 temp HP from her Celestial pact feature

THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)

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