Current mood:

aftermath

More D&D-age
Here is another in my series of brief excerpts Saturday D&D sessions. I am not responsible for any recurring patterns you may notice.

[The following RPG gaming-session account uses character names rather than the names of the actual players in order to protect their identities, so that I don't have to ask their permission.]

Here we go again. It is a good idea to get everybody back in the frame of mind and remind people where we were (and sometimes why), since there is a whole week in between sessions.

GM: Okay, Azheron, please refresh our memories of what happened last week.
Azheron: Well, let's see... We fought naga in that pit - well we mostly didn't fight them so much as tried to run away while they tried to stop us. Fairly effectively. They kept fireballing the rope, and Balcoth actually lost like 150 feet of rope.
Balcoth: [Glares at Azheron and shakes his head as though he is making a grave error in his account.]
Azheron: Okay, he lost about 110 feet of rope.
Balcoth: Sixty.
Azheron: Right. Anyway, after we managed to make it out of that, we fought a Mindflayer plus two crap-guards, but we managed to kill him because Omit had a Mindflayer-Slaying-Arrow.
Verian Seth: It wasn't that specific - it works on any aberation[Ed. Creature classified as the "Aberation" type, including Mindflayers].
GM: When did you buy that anyway, Omit?
Omit: Level 7. [Ed. We are currently Level 11] At the time I thought it might come in handy.
Verian Seth: This is the difference between a normal PC and Bruce Wayne.
Omit: I figured I should use it soon, since that DC 20 saving throw won't be good much longer.
GM: DC 20 is pretty good for an item saving throw.
Azheron: Yeah, not like that a Third Eye: Dominate with the DC 12 save, and the item still costs like 120,000.

[Ed: Before doing this writeup I did some fact-checking to make sure, and it turns out that the Third Eye (an item from the Expanded Psionics Handbook) has a more respectable saving throw difficulty of 18 to negate its effect. However, by the time you can afford 120k gp items, most enemies are unlikely to be affected by DC 18 saves, and worse, this overpriced piece of junk only gets to try ONCE per day! Omit's Arrow of Slaying, though only a one-shot item, costs only around 2000 gold.]

Azheron: [Continues] Actually, you can buy a Solar's Bow for 120,000 now. It makes whatever kind of Slaying Arrow you need for each shot. But they're still only DC 20.
Verian Seth: That's not so bad. You're still getting a +5 bow for that price, and that's a pretty good power. DC 20 isn't bad when you get that chance on every shot.
Azheron: Well, a +5 bow would cost 50 thousand...
GM: PLUS the costs of a Masterwork, Composite bow.
Azheron: Yeah, IF you they even bother to keep track of that.
GM: They'd BETTER keep track of that!
Azheron: Well yeah. But you have to figure, at most, a Masterwork bow, with a composite rating of 5 or so would only be like 1000 gold.
GM: That's like TWO PERCENT of the purchase price!!!

[Ed: Apparently 2% of the cost of a magic item sounds like A LOT to some people, and yet seems trivial to others. Nobody argues with GM on this point though, and certainly nobody makes any comment (or stealthily-scribbled changes to their character sheet) on whether they had been properly accounting for the mundane cost of such items, or lazily (and cheatingly) only paying the larger enchantment cost. I know that I certainly paid for my masterwork armor and stuff before paying for their enchantments.]

GM: Alright. Balcoth: could you tell us about your character?
Balcoth: [Surly dwarven tones already kicking in]Why?... Why every week, man?
GM: It helps to set the tone.
Balcoth: I thought we voted this off the island.
GM: ...To get everyone into the game...
Balcoth: ...something about "not swimming back".
GM: Regardless, could you describe your character to us?
Balcoth: I don't know how to say this interestingly. I have 6 levels of Fighter, 1 level of Ranger, and 4 levels of Dwarven Defender.
GM: Well, as a ranger, you have prodigious skills in dealing with a particular type of foe. Which type of creatures do you excel at hunting?
Balcoth: Huh?
GM: You have a 'Favored Enemy' type, against which you receive bonuses to detect their presence, to follow their tracks, to discern their truthfullness, etc.
Verian Seth: And you get a bonus to damage against them.
Balcoth: Yeah, it's Aberations.
GM: But you also get bonuses to all sort of skill checks relating to them, tracking them and stuff, right?
Balcoth: No.
Verian Seth: Mostly +2 damage. [Ed: the ranger's favored enemy power does give all those other bonuses...]
Balcoth: Yeah, +2 damage. [Ed: ...but really, its all about the damage.]
Verian Seth: Because he comes here to smash.
Balcoth: Seriously, this is like being interrogated.
GM: Very much like being interrogated.
Balcoth: Asked the same questions again, and again...
Verian Seth: The difference is that he can't stop you from sleeping during the intervening week.
GM: Well, could you tell us then: what is the most powerful foe you ever faced. [Ed: This is another very common introductory-phase question, though it didn't make the previous posts here.]
Balcoth: Uh...
Azheron: Don't say city guards. [Ed: Some players have expressed annoyance at the way guards have been roleplayed, but they were certainly not powerful. Anyway, Azheron proceeds to take over, and starts listing many of the fights we've gone through over time. This is just the small sampling I remember:] ...the Yuan-Ti Abomination, the Babau, the Vrock, the Dread Wraith, the Hell Wasp Swarm...

Balcoth: Friggin' bug-based immunity to everything. The only one in the entire party who could affect it at all was Verian Seth, and if he'd died we were all gone.
Verian Seth: Or the Cerebrilith on the Astral plane, with its Mindflayer buddy, each blowing away d4 charisma every round.
Balcoth: It was a lot more than d4!
Azheron: Yeah.
Balcoth: Its ridiculous that we could be killed by charisma.
Omit: You can't be killed by charisma loss, only paralyzed.
Balcoth: To die because I'm "not fuzzy enough as a Carebear"? Its a useless stat. It should be ignored... Scratch! Gone. Who cares...
Verian Seth: It is valuable for the classes that use it, for spellcasting and special abilities, but that's all it does. The majority of classes don't have abilities that use it, so for them it's useless.
Balcoth: Spellcasting. Ooh, I'm not attractive enough to screw your mind and drain levels...
GM: Charisma isn't actually your appearance. It represents a poorly defined force of personality.

[From here, I tried to capture a few highlights from later on in the session. My notes are a bit spotty, but I think there are a few bits worth noting. Later on, the topic of Omit's displeasure with certain changes was broached:]

GM: Omit, are you looking forward to the death of your character?
Verian Seth: Actually, I was the one who brought up the subject this time.
GM: But you were looking into backups...
Omit: You'd have to kill me off first.
Azheron: Verian Seth makes more backups than you.
Verian Seth: I just like making characters.
GM: But he refuses to die! I've been so tempted to whip out a Vampire Monk on you, but I restrained myself from doing anything so unfair.
Verian Seth: Well we never fought anything weak...
GM: You f***er!
Azheron: Well, only when "its too weak to be worth XP".
Verian Seth: And whenever we beat something its always "I was robbed, Omit change your character again!"
GM: I so wanted to kill you with a Horn of Valhalla, Verian Seth. [Ed. a mythical magic item which summons barbarians. The 3.5 version summons a greater number than the older ones, but AGC 5-7 and 5-8 feature Joe's Horn]
Verian Seth: I'm unlikely to be killed by any number of non-flying low-level barbarians.
GM: They weren't going to fight you, I was going to drop them on you.
Verian Seth: I'm not sure there are rules for that, I mean, do they have to roll to hit?
GM: I don't know, I'd just drop them all on you in a massive dogpile and have them trip you and yell "It is inevitable!".
Ed:

GM: [cont.] ...but the Horn of Valhalla is too expensive. I don't want to give you guys like 60k.
Azheron: You mean 30k, since you only let us sell items for half.
GM: Besides, I don't want to have to keep track of like 20 barbarians...

[Anyway, we decided that we needed to retreat from the dungeons to rest and regain spells. Technically, Balcoth still had all his hit points (he doesn't cast spells), and Omit, with his extremely limited spellcasting ability, was also fine to keep going, however Azheron had exhausted the majority of his divine spells (meaning he couldn't heal the others much more), and after 4 fights Verian Seth was "running on fumes", psionically speaking.]

GM: So you all head back up the shaft into the temple.
Verian Seth: Yes. I figure the resting spot I picked out should be a good hiding place. If our enemies are going to use Scrying, they'll find us no matter where we go, however I figure that if they do not use strong divinations, we should be well hidden for the purpose of any mundane search.
Balcoth: We could just block off the shaft. Then nobody would follow us.
GM: Block it with what?
Balcoth: I'll use my +2 adamantine axe to chut off a big chunk from the top of the shaft and drop it down so it blocks the whole thing. They won't get past 3 tons of rock.
GM: Probably not.
Balcoth: They'll actually never come up.
Omit: At least, not with Teleport and Dimension Door banned.
GM: They aren't banned, they just don't work on this plane of existance. If you go to other planes you can use them.
Verian Seth: ...with a 3 round casting time.
GM: ANYWAY, if you block the shaft, how will you get back down there after?
Balcoth: I'll just start from the top and cut through it. I could carve a 3 ton rock in half in like 10 minutes.

[Ed: well, I find that funny anyway. In the end, we did go and hide where Verian Seth suggested (right on top of the temple, hidden behind the smaller second storey so that we couldn't be seen from in front where the entrance was), and we didn't cut off a giant chunk of rock to block the shaft (probably because Balcoth sensed it would result in a lot of argument with GM about his adamantine cutting power). And no, naturally we weren't able to rest unmolested. That would make life too easy. More on that in the next installment... I plan on skipping past the "introductory phase" next time, so maybe I'll get more actual GAME notes before getting tired.]