Current mood:

Levelled!

D&D Excerpts #6 (continued from #5): Growing Pains
Here is another in my series of brief excerpts Saturday D&D sessions. This particular installment is the second part of the session started in Excerpt #5 (this past Monday). Once again, you'll have to forgive a certain added level of paraphrasing due to the EXTREMELY POOR quality of my notetaking last Saturday. This part is mostly a Battle Report, so alas there is a lot more narrative and somewhat less of the funny dialogue stuff. I still think it is good for a laugh though!

[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.]


The Glabrezu, already growing frustrated at our lack of enthusiasm, decides to take this as an insult. Beings of infinite self-confidence and massive pride, Glabrezu enjoy making deals with mortals and getting others to do their bidding (a trait more befitting of Devils), but they are still Demons at heart, (not Devils; in D&D there is a strict distinction) meaning they relish havoc, destruction, and above all physical combat. And so it starts combat by backing up and casting one of our favorite spells: Mirror Image.

Azheron: I'll cast Expansion to psionically enlarge myself, increasing my size by two classes up to Huge. Then I'll attack it with my spiked chain.
GM: Um, Azheron, we changed psionic Expansion. You can't do that anymore...
Verian Seth: He means you can only increase by one size class, just like the magic spell Enlargement from the PHB.
GM: Actually, both powers now only work up to a maximum size of Large in any case, so creatures already Large or bigger now gain no benefit.
Azheron: Hmm. It would be nice if anyone told me. Considering last week [Ed: when he was building his new character named Malevaune, but remember I am still using the name Azheron in these reports for consistency.] I asked if Expansion had been changed and nobody said anything.
GM: I'm sorry, I thought everyone knew. Was your character all built around becoming Huge? [...He asks with some trepidation, as though the prospect is appaling].
Azheron: Well, not enough that she can't function like this. [Azheron is calculating to himself that, while he will be noticeably less deadly, he will be far more mana efficient, spending only 1/3 as much energy each time he Expands himself...] Okay, I'll Whirlwind-attack it with my spiked chain...
GM: You're twenty feet away.
Azheron: The rules for "reach" weapons indicate that the weapon's reach doubles for each category of size increase. So I'll Whirlwind-attack him...

[Ed: we previously ruled that Whirlwind attack and Cleave feats should work on Mirror Images, which makes sense, but is still a house rule, because strictly speaking the images, being illusions, do not count as seperate opponents, and as such would not be affected.]

GM: [Less interested in processing the attack, more aghast at (A) a bad game rule (geometric increases in weapon reach can't be a good thing) and (B) the grand design of what Azheron had built his character to do]

I just can't believe that you tried to make a character with a 30' radius Whirlwind attack.

[Ed: I highlight "make a character" because while those were the actual words, it sure came out sounding like "destroy my game". FUN EXERCISE: Try the sentence again, making the substitution yourself...]

Azheron: It just lets me make ONE attack per enemy, in place of a normal 2-attack full-attack action. How often do we even fight more than 2 or 3 enemies?
GM: That's not the point! ...and... with the strength bonus from Huge size... ANYWAY, regardless, we can't have the goemetric reach increase. Imagine how much you guys would be complaining if I had Giants attacking you with 40 foot reach spears. Reach weapons will just gain 5' reach per size category, same as natural reach.
Azheron: Okay. Well, I would have placed myself 5 feet closer then. [Moves figure on battlemap] I miss... and miss.

[Azheron takes this okay, and is generally quite good natured about such reasonable changes, but is experiencing some reasonable frustration about "compound nerfs" right about now. And so combat begins for real. Azheron's dice rolls are abominable, resulting in a statistically unlikely streak of misses for his chain attacks (this persists over the course of the entire battle). The gnomish gimp-cleric makes himself useful by casting Prayer to buff the party. GM spends a good minute carefully examining the positioning of the players' models, and trying to plot points on the squares of the map. It should be noted that the demon allowed us to position ourselves however we wanted while talking, due to its supreme overconfidence. After a minute, GM seems a little frustrated but says nothing, continuing to think about the demon's next action.]

Verian Seth: No matter how you draw it, you can't catch more than 3 of us in a 20 foot radius for your Chaos Hammer spell. [Ed: Chaos Hammer is an alignment-based damage spell (hurts Lawful beings more than others). It's not a bad spell, overall, but it isn't reliable enough to be really worth it against heroes of our level unless he could catch a lot of us.]
GM: [Seems even more frustrated, enough so to prove the comment to be precisely right.]
Verian Seth: You could try a Fireball, but it has a 20 foot radius. Or you could cast Word of Chaos, except it's banned... and has a 20' radius.

Well, that may have been funny to Azheron and probably Omit (although he certainly showed no sign of laughing), but the Glabrezu was not an opponent to be trifled with and began demonstrating this immediately. It flew up and back to get out of the reach of the (now Large-sized) Azheron, and overwhelming physics itself with brute force of magic, it entrapped Balcoth in a column of Reversed Gravity - an effect invisible except for the fact that the hardy dwarf began falling upward off the ground. Omit backed off (very far, very fast), and prepared himself to react to things as they happened. In other words, he did nothing.

The next round, Azheron used his innate levitation (a feature of the Elocator psionic prestige class, which he and Omit both have, and which GM momentarily forgot) and his much reduced and yet still significant reach to continue to attack (and miss) the monster. Balcoth struggled to find a way to escape the rapid (and seemingly endless) upwards falling effect - fortunately, his Ring of Feather Falling was ironically slowing his ascent. Verian Seth (who had been holding back a little) Dispelled the magic that was allowing the Demon to fly (it plummetted, suffering trivial and yet embarassing falling damage), and finally revealing himself to be the Demon's preferred target. It used its strongest power (only 1 use per day) to Stun him with an unresistable Power Word, and Verian Seth, who expected this ever since we first sighted the Glabrezu, threw up a powerful psionic shield in response, knowing that it had no effect on the PowerWord, but apparently hoping it would help protect the party against damage spells while he stood helpless for the rest of the battle.

Omit: How badly do you want to play your backup character?
Verian Seth: I'd rather survive.
Omit: Okay. Just trying to decide how much it is worth in items to keep you alive. 'Cause this is going to get expensive.
GM: You saw it coming, eh? Well, after casting it will move around here.

[It gets as close as it can to the helpless form of Verian Seth while avoiding the Reverse Gravity spell]
Omit: I cast Wall of Force from a scroll. [He positions the 20 foot high indestructible plane of energy directly between Verian Seth and the demon, extending at least 40 feet to either side.]
GM: A Wall of Force eh? I was going to start whipping out walls on you guys later...

Azheron moves over to protect Verian Seth, then hovers up 20 feet to attack overtop of the wall. Lifesaver (the gimp cleric) attempted to place himself in the line of fire, saving his spells for healing, not even bothering to attack.

Verian Seth: Cleric will cast Shield-Other on Azheron.
GM: Does he have the platinum ring? [Both the caster and recipiant of that spell must wear a platinum ring worth 50 gp]
Verian Seth: Yep.
GM: Who else has one?
Verian Seth: Nobody. Lifesaver only had enough money left for one set. We can get more later. Do you have any Deflection bonus to AC?
Azheron: Um, no, actually.
Verian Seth: Bonus, then you can actually USE the +1 armor class bonus from Shield Other. [The ACTUAL purpose of the spell is that the caster (in this case the Gimp cleric) suffers half of all damage directed at the subject. Gimp cleric might be two levels lower than the party members, but he is built to be tough.]
GM: You couldn't afford another 50 gp?
Verian Seth: He spent ALL his money.
GM: On what?
Verian Seth: [Looks at the cleric's character sheet] Better stuff. And enough diamond dust for 2 castings of Restoration, apparently.

[Ed: Because a different player will be controlling him every week, and I didn't want them to be tempted to do dumb things with him, like make hand-to-hand attacks, I had taken care NOT to give him any weapons, and had gone so far as to spend every penny of his starting money so that GM couldn't just force him to buy one... However, in his infinite generosity, GM had given him a free mace and crossbow, describing it as ridiculous for him to be unarmed, despite his demonstrable lack of physical prowess. Fortunately, though, for this week, Verian Seth was controlling him and he had no inclination to waste any effort attacking (with Lifesaver's pitiful strength of 6...).]

Balcoth: So, if the Reversed Gravity is only 10 x 10, I should be able to jettison my pack to get out.
GM: Why? I think I missed something...
Balcoth: By tossing my heavy backpack in one direction, it should create a force that would propel me in the other direction. Like astronauts.
GM: Astronauts move really slowly. Besides, your pack doesn't weigh that much, it wouldn't create much of a force.
Balcoth: It weighs over 200 lbs! [Ed: It really does. Dwarves move slower than other "Medium" size races, but to compensate, they handle encumbrance very well. In fact, a Dwarf moves just as fast carrying the maximum possible load that his Strength can handle as he moves carrying nothing.]
GM: What the heck's in there?
Balcoth: Everything. [It should be noted that although a bunch of his rope was destroyed by annoying Naga tossing fireballs at Azheron and Verian Seth in a long shaft, Balcoth has a massive length of chain (he's going to phase out rope entirely in favor of it). He also has a half-dozen "backup" weapons, not to mention an impressive aray of situationally useful items - he is a glowing example of the adventurer's mantra: "Be as prepared as your maximum carrying capacity allows."]
Verian Seth: It's Newton's Third Law. Equal and opposite reaction and stuff. The speed is based on the relative mass of the two objects...

Wisely trying to avoid letting too much physics (especially with big arguments over the calculations involved) overtake magic in the game, GM rules that Balcoth cannot free himself from the 10'x10' column of Reverse Gravity just by jettisoning his ludicrously heavy pack and letting Newton's Third Law do the rest. And it is true that the area is not a vaccuum or true zero-G environment, but rather experiences precisely Earth-normal (1 G) acceleration due to gravity, only severed and redirected AWAY from the planet. But GM does rules that by securing his pack to himself with a rope and hurling it out side the scope of the reversal, it could act as an anchor and yank Balcoth out (and thus Featherfall back down to the ground, angry and anxious to chop himself up some demon). He isn't there yet though, and the demon spends its action attacking Azheron. Azheron strikes back and misses.

Verian Seth: [Still stunned for another 5 rounds or so, unable to act and utterly dependant on the party to prevent the Glabrezu from going over the top of Omit's Wall of Force and shredding him...] Um, Omit? Shouldn't you hover up high and shoot it or something?
Omit: My arrows can barely penetrate its damage reduction, and I used my last Align Weapon potion on Balcoth's Axe. [Demon-boy is harmed only by Good-Aligned a.k.a. "blessed" weapons - or more accurately, he ignores 10 damage per hit from any other weapons. Azheron's prodigious damage can still inflict reasonable harm overtop of the protection, but Omit's arrows would have to roll really well to inflict 2 or 3 damage on the Glabrezu.]
Verian Seth: Well if you'd come to within 60' of the cleric, he has a Feat from the "Divine book" that lets him align all allies weapons to 'Good' for one round.
Omit: I don't think it would do that much.

The others seem a little baffled at why Omit doesn't think he can do much when his weapon is blessed... the Demon has a high armor class, but Omit's to-hit bonus with his bow is monstrous, since it is based on his insanely high Dexterity score. Omit relents and comes over, hovering right on top of the Wall of Force, but he came from so far away that it took his entire turn to get back.

Balcoth drops his secondary weapon (though it pains him to do so, since it is a Luckblade - a shortsword that grants a bonus to saving throws and lets him reroll a failed die-roll once per day), in order to use his magic Adamantine Dwarven Battleaxe two-handed and capitalize better on the "Align Weapon" potion Omit used on it earlier. He hits the Demon for pretty good damage, but it has barely been touched before now, and has a LOT of hit points left. Donner Lifesaver expends some holy energy to Good-align Azheron's chain and Omit's bow for the round, but Azheron's abominable die-rolls fail him once more. Omit, for his part, activates his Boots of Speed and fires four arrows into the evil extradimensional beast. His rolls aren't so hot either, but he still hits with two arrows for a more-than-respectable 30 or so damage.

Verian Seth: See? If you can do that until the cleric runs out of uses, we can...
Omit: I can't.
Azheron: Why not?
Omit: I only have two normal arrows left.
Balcoth: What? How many arrows did you start with???
Omit: Three hundred normal arrows.
Azheron: You used up three-hundred arrows?
Omit: I haven't had a chance to restock since the last city. It has only been a week or so of "game time", but we have had so many fights... I had 300 arrows because I thought it was enough that I wouldn't have to worry about them. We have to get to a city soon, then I'm buying 1000 arrows.
Verian Seth: Well, how many Cold-Iron arrows do you have? You could use those, I mean, Cold-Iron only costs double what steel weapons cost... [Ed: But Fey creatures and some demons are vulnerable to them]
Omit: No, to make Cold-Iron ammunition it has to be "Masterwork" quality. They cost a fortune - it would actually be cheaper to fire Adamantine arrows.

[Note as he says this that he doesn't consider the use of Adamantine arrows to be an option either. They cost a mint and are the only thing that does full damage to Golems.]

Omit has an array of various other expensive arrows, such as silver tipped or even magical Flaming arrows and such, but such things would also be wasted on this enemy, and the current situation (with Wall still keeping the demon away from defenseless Verian Seth) didn't seem THAT desperate yet, at least to him. The demon, seeing the potential to be beat on by 3-4 (depending on whether or not it counted the gnomish cleric or not) enemies with Good-aligned weapons, chose to recast Mirror Image, which should protect it from most of the next 6 to 8 weapon attacks.

Azheron: I'll 5-foot step over here and whirlwind attack him, knocking off all the images automatically. [Ed: the one saving grace of Mirror Image is that the illusory duplicates are very easy to hit, since they don't benefit from the caster's armor, tough hide, or magical protections.]
GM: Oh right. You hate the spell so much that you built your new character with a Decipher-counter to it.
Balcoth: It's worth it!
Verian Seth: It's also a Decipher-counter to your Horn of Valhalla plan. [The previously alluded to (only semi-serious) conspiracy to dump a horde of summoned barbarians on Verian Seth...]

[At this point, certain players were beginning to complain about the rising physical temperature in the room. The old fan, having been previously shut off in objection to the inappropriate high-pitched noise it had been making, refused to reactivate of its own accord, so with the button set to "Full-On", Omit was attempting to restart it rather like an old biplane - by manually spinning the propeller.]

GM: That's not going to work.
Omit: Sure it is. That's how I got it to start the last time. [This is perhaps the reason that we hadn't turned OFF the fan for months, until someone got annoyed at the sound this very night. However, despite Omit's confidence, he has been spinning the blades for minutes now, without feeling any sign of the decades-old engine picking up.]
Balcoth: Do that enough and it will cool us down eventually.
Azheron: Do you know how to oscillate?

According to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, the term "Decipher-counter" originates from a moderately successful manufacturer of Collectible Card Games best known for its Star Trek and Star Wars licensed games. The Star Trek game was so bad that the rules were more or less irrelevant. It was noted by those few people inclined to care about the game, that in order to even PLAY as the "Borg" faction, which was the primary focus of one expansion, you needed both the Ultra-Rare Borg Queen AND Borg Cube cards, each of which had a distribution such that you needed to purchase at least 3 boxes (retail $80 USD each) to have a good chance of getting either one. Now, the Star Wars game was rather more successful since the game could be played without rares, with the caveat that you would almost certainly lose against anyone who DID have the rare cards. This didn't bother anyone too much because most players acknowledge that Obi Wan Kenobi SHOULD be able to beat up as many Stormtroopers as you can fit in a room with him. However, some game balance issues did arise, particularly when they tried to make cards that did anything other than fight. The vast majority of such cards were garbage, but occasionally Decipher would accidentally print one that was NOT garbage, which industrious players would quickly use to defeat all those regular decks that tried to win the game with silly epic battles between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Now the Decipher corporation had a design philosophy that forbade them from Banning or Restricting any cards they previously printed (because they felt that would negatively impact their integrity in the public eye). This left them with two options: they could either try to improve upon their rules to tighten up the overall design of the game and eliminate this sort of problem, OR they could print a card that "trumped" the problem card so thoroughly that those industrious players would be forced to give up and go back to beating each other with Lightsabers. Most game manufacturers, when engineering a card for such a situation, attempt a degree of subtlety, assuming that clever players will find the new card to be a good solution, and the duller players will see this and copy it until the situation gradually rights itself. Decipher had a rather different view. Thus, if a card called Vader's Tea Party began to dominate the tournament scene by placing your opponent's Vader out of play and making him dress up like a little girl, their response would be a "counter"-card named Earl Gray Side Of The Force, which would probably have 2 powers. The first power would be to Add +1 to something you don't really care about. But the second power of the new Earl Gray card would read something like "If your opponent plays Vader's Tea Party, that card is lost, and Darth Vader returns to play on a planet of your choosing with a permanent +5 bonus to his Lightsaber attacks". However, in rare circumstances, the new Decipher-counter itself becomes a problem card. So if it became such a problem, then in order to rebalance the game-destroying power of Earl Gray Side Of The Force, they would print a new card, entitled Vader Gets Hung-Over, which wouldn't bother even pretending to have a general use, and which would read something a great deal like "If your opponent is so foolish as to play Earl Gray Side Of The Force against you, you may grab his card, tear it up, and then punch your opponent in the face several times for effect while sprinkling his brand-new Earl-Gray-confetti into his cup of tea." Fortunately, the Star Wars license was soon taken away from Decipher and bought-out by the richer (and thus by definition smarter) CCG manufacturer Wizards of the Coast, who promptly ignored the existing product and produced two entirely new and boring games based on Star Wars, while Decipher kept all their old mechanics, used them to produce a brand new unlicensed game, and promptly printed a card called Up Yours You Moronic Monopolistic Bullies which allowed the player to violently mug any WotC employee they encountered. This brutal robbery card is entirely legal because the so-called Golden Rule of collectible cards games, as all police officers know, is that "Whatever the card says you can do takes precedent over any pre-existing rules or laws." This is and has always been true in the United States of America, because otherwise the Declaration of Independance card would be something of an exercise in hypocrisy. And to suggest that is simply madness.

Finally the fan restarts - the blades are moving only slightly, but they are moving on their own with slight acceleration. GM gives up on Mirror Image since it is useless against Azheron's new character. The demon attacks Balcoth ferociously, and that it inflicts reasonable damage despite Balcoth's impressive armor class is a testament to its prodigious attack routine.

GM: "You insignificant insects. You have no hope!"
Omit: [From atop the wall: ]"There is always hope!" I cast Good Hope from my scroll.
Verian Seth: That gives +2 to die rolls and stuff, but does it give +2 AC?
Omit: +2 to all attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, skill checks... everything that you roll, but not armor class.
Balcoth: Good stuff...
Azheron: I'll hold my action until after the cleric blesses the weapons.
Verian Seth: [Feels compelled to do so since Azheron held his action, but obviously would have preferred not to based on the way the dice rolls have been going.] I can't keep doing this all day, I do have a limited number of uses.
Azheron: [Misses AGAIN due to a catastrophic failure of the "Law of Averages"] This would work better if I could roll above a 7 on a d20.

Balcoth paid back the demon with his axe, and the Glabrezu (possibly put-off by Omit's corny counter-speech) cast an area dispel, removing the Good Hope effect.

Verian Seth: The cleric will ready his action in case anyone needs healing later in the round.
GM: Doesn't his weapon-blessing thing affect himself?
Verian Seth: Yeah, it works on all allies' weapons within 60 feet, and lasts until the end of his next turn, so it is technically still running on him.
GM: Then why not attack?
Verian Seth: Because he sucks at attacking.
GM: He's a cleric. Wouldn't it be better than wasting his action?
Verian Seth: He is Small size, with a strength of 6.
GM: Being small gives him a bonus to hit, so it evens out.
Verian Seth: The demon has an AC of like 30. He can't even hit.
Omit: Level 9 cleric that's +6 base: -2 from Strength... non-magic, not even Masterwork mace. No combat feats. With the Prayer spell... Nope, it isn't actually possible for him to hit that armor class.
Verian Seth: Exactly!
Omit: Wait, a small class Heavy Mace... that's 1d6-2 (minimum 1). Actually, when his power isn't running, he can't even do enough damage to penetrate its DR without scoring a critical. No! Even WITH the double damage from a critical he couldn't penetrate its DR.

[Ed: And you wonder why I didn't give him a weapon.] Then Azheron hits twice, and deals decent damage even at -10 per hit. I think Verian Seth was beginning to suspect that based on Murphy's Law, Azheron would hit much better if his weaponry remained un-blessed. A couple more rounds pass. Azheron and Balcoth inflict harm on the enemy - it is starting to add up, but it had a lot of HP to start with, and it would take a while at this rate. For its part, the Demon found it couldn't harm Balcoth too much, and the cleric had plenty of healing left, so it turned to start fighting Azheron, who was much easier to hit. Then Verian Seth unstunned.

GM: You are de-stunned this round.
Verian Seth: Finally. Okay, as my move action I fly up 40 feet. Then I'll expend the psionic focus stored in my psi-crystal to cast a Quickened power. He's only Huge, right?
GM: He is Huge sized.
Verian Seth: Okay good, because I'm not high enough level to entangle a gargantuan creature AND still quicken the power. Yes, I'll hit him with Entangling Ectoplasm. Roll for his spell resistance... good, I beat it. Okay, then for my regular non-quickened action, I'll shoot him with full power Energy Ray: Fire, and I'll expend my last psionic focus on my Spell Penetration feat, giving me +8, so I more or less automatically beat his Spell Resistance. Take 49 Fire damage, no save. [Ed: That's actually just the average for 11d6+11, I don't recall the exact amount he rolled.]

That was about 1/3 of the monster's hit points, and suddenly all the damage dealt by Balcoth and Azheron (plus 1 round of Omit's firepower) had the enemy desperately drinking healing potions. They finished it off just before it could use its Invisibility potion to escape, although Verian Seth pointed out that the Cleric could have cast Invisibility Purge to help us hunt him down anyway.

GM: And you still managed to survive. I thought I had you.
Verian Seth: I have good allies. See Omit, it wasn't that expensive after all...
Omit: I thought I would have to use more Wall of Force scrolls. I had expected it to just climb over the wall.
GM: [Muttering] ...can't believe you tried to make "the incredible growing character". Trying to turn Huge...
Azheron: You just can't stand to see characters deal any relevant melee damage at all.
GM: [Still muttering, doesn't seem to have heard that...] ...never liked that at all...
Omit: So what was he carrying?
Balcoth: I'll check his sack for my Boots of Flying.
GM: There's nothing in the sack except for the corpses of that Thri-Kreen warparty you bypassed earlier. He has a Ring of Protection +3, some potions... potion of Invisibility, some healing potions...
Balcoth: None of that stuff makes me fly.
GM: [Looks at Verian Seth] Psionics is always the problem.
Omit: Hey, we levelled!