#fun fact i got critted on the first combat and was downed immediately and we the superman for the rest of the combat

[maliro-t]

nat 20, crit fail, prep and tpk!

nat 20: What's the most memorable RP scene you've been a part of?

I know this is technically a question for me as a player but as a DM, there was an exchange with one of my players (in blue) as this little kid NPC (in red) after they'd saved him from a pretty horrible massacre that just went:

"Have you seen people die?"

"Yeah."

"Did you like them too?"

"Yeah. But there's nothing I could do for them. And they're happier where they are now."

"I wish you could be happy too."

"Yeah."

Which just got me real in my feelings about Mr. Mumford and made me real proud of his player :)

crit fail: Have you ever had a character death? What happened?

I personally have not! I think that's in part because the longest campaigns I've been in as a player were only over about 7 or eight months, so I haven't had a ton of opportunity to be thrust into mortal peril. Although I guess you never know lol, especially at lower levels.

prep: How much prep work do you do? How far out do you prep?

I would say it varies session to session, which is probably normal. I've played around with completely homebrewing some shorter sessions, but there honestly isn't a place for that in my work life balance, so I've turned to running published material (namely Curse of Strahd). That takes a lot of the burden of prep off, since I more rarely am designing things from scratch-- although I do my fair share of modification, and there still is plenty of stuff that I have to figure out myself! For most games I will make sure I have the sections that I will need from the book marked out and available, and especially if looks like it's gonna be a sort of open-ended RP game, I'll write out certain guidelines for myself into my campaign notebook so it's easier for me to keep track of things (I also do this for combat, in that I'll usually write a few lines about major figures' goals, if they're relevant, and maybe their first move or two). I try not to prep much beyond what I think will fit in a session (because I frankly don't have time), but sometimes I overestimate, and will end up with notes that last me three sessions. But beyond sort of vague notions of bigger picture building blocks that are moving in the background, I try to only prep stuff I think will be immediately pertinent. And I do trust my improv skills enough where a lot of that will be vague sketching! For example, in CoS there's a festival that's upcoming in one of the major cities, but the book has truly no information about what the festival itself entails beyond sort of a morbid procession, so I went into that game with an opening scene, a vague thought about ring toss, and a vague thought about local card sharks, and just kind of played it by ear from there. And it was one of our most fun games! I do prep a LOT for combat though-- we play on roll20 so I'm cobbling together maps (which usually will take an hour or so depending) and will often times write out entire stat blocks so I don't have to be looking for them. I do use the dnd beyond encounter tracker some of the time, but in big, complicated encounters, I find that can actually make my life extra confusing, so I do a lot of handwriting shit out on paper.

tpk: Have you ever had a game go completely off the rails? TPK? How did you adjust?

I did in fact facilitate a TPK in my current campaign which was !!!! yeah I would say off the rails is putting it mildly! The entire party was slaughtered by dire wolves, which was a random encounter on the way to a completely different objective so. very unexpected. It was one of those games that truly makes you feel insane, and it was almost entirely down to rolls-- I was rolling very well for these wolves (I think I crit 3 or 4 times?) and they were rolling extremely poorly. It was honestly easier for me that everyone went out than just a few people, because it meant that I could make on the fly decisions for the group and no one had to sit out the rest of the session. So, once the last person went down I gave everyone a kind of solo limbo vignette where we zeroed in on some character/backstory stuff for each of them, just to kind of settle everyone (which was really fun to do, especially since there's a lot they don't know about each other's histories, some more than others), and took a five minute recess to figure out what to do next-- I was lucky that unbeknownst to the party, they were on their way to knock on the door of a hag coven, who had their own reasons to want them alive, so I ended up having them all wake up as their captives. Congrats, you made it to where you were going! Sorry, you're still fucked! And THAT ended up being one of the most fun, intense encounters we've run. And I certainly am weaving some threads in the background about how exactly they survived and what the long-term consequences of that are.

[lucidmagic]

DnD Session 1 without context and in no particular order

[clockworklozenges]

So, a good five or so years back, I played in one of the best worst DnD games I have ever been in. The DM had bought the Libris Mortis book, which, if you were unaware, was a 3.5 splatbook adding in a lot of undead stuff, including some monsters and undead player races and stuff. Wanting to try it out, me and my gaming group decided to play things from it, our then DM deciding to run a completely homebrewed session. This proved to be a...

Terrible Idea™

(for the uninitiated, never homebrew something you do not fully understand unless it's just cosmetic. If you want to make all elves worship the god of garlic bread, Ultimo-Metatron-Omega, go ahead, but unless you know how the game works, don't make mechanical changes). So we all picked stuff from the books-one player played a skeleton Sorcerer who in life was a tribal shaman, but an attempt at healing went wrong, turning him undead as his life energy was replaced with negative energy, explaining why most of his spells were necromancy and suchlike.

Another player played Krug, an antipaladin in very spiky full plate. He was a zombie made by a necromancer of a paladin who was fighting him, but his allies killed his would-be master before he could assert control, and not wanting to just off him, his allies just...yeeted his body into a portal and hoped it'd re-kill him. It did not kill him hard enough. It did, however, explain his stats which...oof. He had already got debuffs to some stats due to being a zombie, and rolled abysmally. Fortunately for the player, he played mostly to socialise, so didn't much care.

I played... Count Nox Feratu, the Campire. As in, a vampire with a very camp German accent, which I did not break for the whole time I was playing him. To the point where "ach, nein, I haf bin heet! Heal me, meine freunde!" was par for the course. My overly camp vamp was a wizard, but due to level adjustment was a bit of a shoddy one. For backstory, he'd been ousted from his clan for ineptitude, and had sworn revenge. I was going for a swordmage build but never got there. All his spells were utility or just necromancy spells.

Our last player played...sigh...Damien Bloodmoon, cleric of Nerull, God of murder and undeath. He was one of the clerics from the book's murder Domain, meaning that he got buffs to damage. He was a vicious arse both in character and out of it, and was so dripping with edge compared to the paladin with the same IQ as a horse after its trip to the glue factory, the shaman who thought killing fixed people and the Campire that if you gave him a pat on the back you'd have finely diced your hand into a red mist. Not going too outlandish with his backstory of wanting to dominate the world as his undead thralls, Damien F***ing Bloodmoon had only taken spells which either charmed live people, dealt negative energy damage or messed with ability drain and suchlike, which he used with aplomb on townsfolk on our way to our objective. He was also, importantly, playing an elf of some sort, I forget which kind. Meaning that of the party, only one was alive.

So, just as an aside, for those of you that haven't played 3.5e DnD or have only played 5e, in Libris Mortis, undeath was gone over in detail, and had a litany of pros and cons. For one thing, undead had only the HP they had-folks like Damien F***ing Bloodmoon could be 'dying', and had some time to be stabilised before meeting the reckoning of Papa John and dying proper. Undead did not, it was just how much you had and if you ran out, poof, you're dust, bones and fertiliser again. You were also harmed by positive energy, so healing spells hurt you, as did potions of healing. However, undead were kind of hardy - poison immunity, some had resistance to non-magical melee damage, stuff that drained your ability scores and levels didn't work on them, some crits wouldn't do extra damage, and the best part- negative energy healed undead. Meaning all the spells our party had which damaged others like the living Damien Bloodmoon were curative ones for us. Keep this in mind.

So, we began our quest, learning of a necromancer a nearby town was plagued by. After using our skills (to whit: Damien Bloodmoon charming and drawing the life force out of random villagers and the only potion seller in the town whilst we went shopping. Krug got a snazzy hat, which we put on top of his helmet, and we chatted to townsfolk as I looked alive enough to pass as human and the shaman had a fake beard and toupee that people were too awkward to point out was fake so went along with it) we learn that the necromancer has a base of operations in the cemetery. "Oh ja, zo original, dahlink. Ve vill need to educate zis guy on vhat is chic and vhat is just shabby!"

So we head there and the nightmare begins. Damien Leads the charge, using all of his knowledge to deduce that the shambling horde moving towards us were stronger-than-your-average-bear undead, and he was right. These were powerful armoured zombie mages of some sort, casting ability draining spells, negative energy ray spells and even having auras of negative energy that dealt damage on a failed Fortitude save. Even their punch and quarterstaves did negative energy damage as well as the usual bludgeoning or unarmed. However...only one of us was really in danger and the DM's face fell when the squishy casters walked up and began shanking their super-special homebrew zombie wizards, being healed by the damage of their attacks as we cut them down.

Like I said, one of the benefits of undeath is that negative energy actually heals you. So the strikes of the magic staves and punches that hit us did some basic damage. Which was then immediately healed by the negative energy their weapon strikes and spells were doing.

However, you'll recall that Damien Bloodmoon was an elf. And not dead. Being a Cleric of a death god doesn't mean that you have the abilities of an undead. That meant that even with the DM being merciful, by the end of the first fight he was covered in blood, mud and withered away to just above half his original strength and constitution. More were patrolling, so we had to run. But that posed a problem.

Remember Krug had heavy armour? And recall his awful stats? He in fact, hadn't got enough strength to wear the armour he'd been given for backstory. He didn't, according to the DM, have enough to remove his own armour. And we attempted to, but also failed our checks according to the DM. And Damien Bloodmoon refused to help, simply blaming Krug and his player. Krug's player thought it was hilarious, and Krug only had enough Intelligence and Wisdom to say his own name, so saw no problem. And Krug, Nox Feratu and Shaman realised that there really...wasn't a problem.

For us, at least.

We slogged through three combats dragging Krug and wading through the mud with him. His speed was so slow that for every step he took, we took about ten. The DM was confused and infuriated that his encounters weren't working, but refused to change them. So we had fun role-playing. Or at least three of us did.

Damien Bloodmoon refused to roleplay, and none of his ranged spells could affect the zombie mages. When he went into melee, he came out wounded as all hell. He went down twice, and it was only the healing supplies of the shaman that saved him.

All the while, he was... Let's say not best pleased. Damien Bloodmoon was getting increasingly wounded, exasperated and longing for the sweet embrace of death as reprieve from the humiliation. His player was getting increasingly redder and rage-filled as time passed. Each fight ended with our characters stronger than ever and his a bloody pulp on the floor, with poor in-character knowledge (and terrible rolls) preventing him from realising why.

Eventually, we reached the final boss, pausing only to paint Krug's armour in contact poison just in case, and to find a stick to help the now-partially-crippled Damien Bloodmoon, cleric of death and murder, walk after being beaten up by angry zombie wizards for hours. And it had, indeed, been hours. Among us, only Damien had a bonus to strength, and we had two swords, a mace and a staff between the four of us. Meaning it was re-death by a thousand cuts for the enemy and a slog and a half for us.

We reach the necromancer and, having taken so long due to dragging the oblivious Krug with us, his big ritual is complete- he raises a fist-sized black onyx egg aloft, crackles with arcane power and causes the bones around him to coalesce into one massive creature - an undead, giant-sized rust monster, radiating an Aura of pure negative energy. Krug opened his arms wide, eager for the metal-eating monster cockroach to free him from his poison-painted metal prison. It ignores him as he's still very far away. Me and the others have our weapons and armour devoured.

Our DM was very much a stickler for note-taking. So because Damien Bloodmoon hadn't written 'clothes' on his sheet, his armour being eaten by the monster left him naked and afraid.

It became clear that the DM had done another f***y-wucky. See, the Aura of negative energy healed me and the Sorcerer by more than its other attacks did. So whilst Damien Bloodmoon was naked, soaked in mud and bleeding to death almost crushed to a pulp in the fetal position, rocking backwards and forwards as his player seethed with hatred, the Shaman and the Campire set about beating the thing to death with our bear hands and a stick.

The session ended once we killed the necromancer, or rather when Krug walked up to him, closed his arms and just crushed the noodle-armed bad guy to death with the weight of his ridiculous armour and poisoned him with its paintwork.

We never revisited the game afterwards. We were told later on that the DM wanted us to use the non-undead races. But at no point had he said as much, even when we asked him about our characters and the restrictions on them. We also learned a valuable lesson. DM for the players who are there, not the ones who you have an idealised mental image of. Tailor your game, otherwise you'll get a sitcom featuring a camp nosferatu, a shaman with no healing, a paladin who could barely move and a Cleric of murder who was ironically the only one at risk of actually dying.

[fatesdeepdive]

Entry 54: Demigod Shit Magnet

Got a lot of stuff to talk about, no time for intro.

Class Profile - Ninja

The Nohrian thief class and base class of Saizo, Kaze, Kagero, and Asugi. Has good speed and skill and that's about it. Wields shurikens, which make them work best for inflicting debuffs. Also oddly good at mage killing. Oddly enough, the game considers them to be the Hoshido version of a Cavalier. Their first skill, Locktouch, is a utility skill that allows them to open chests and doors without a key. Their second skill, Poison Strike, deals 20% damage to enemies after battle but cannot kill, helping establish their niche of injuring enemies from a distance so stronger units can come in and finish them off. Ninjas can promote to Master Ninjas or Mechanists. I like the Ninja design a lot; the light armor fits well and the scarves, headbands, and arm knife thingies look cool.

Class Profile - Oni Savage

This game’s version of the Barbarian class and Hoshidan rival to the Fighter class. Wields axes, can promote into Oni Chieftain or Blacksmith. Weirdly, Rinkah is the only Oni Savage in the game, making the fact that it has two exclusive promotion classes weird. Oni Savages have great strength, hp, and defense, countered by atrocious luck, skill, and resistance. They can do good damage, assuming they can hit anything, or act as a wall, assuming they don’t die instantly to magic or a crit. Their first skill, Seal Resistance, lowers an enemy’s resistance after combat. I do not know why this was given to this class. Their other skill, Shove, is a utility skill that can be used to move a neighboring unit one space away. I actually like the Oni Savage design, despite it being ripe for fanservice, because the male and female designs are similar. My problem isn’t barbarians being shirtless, it’s when the game does stupid shit like have the female version of a class wear a thong while the male wears pants. The mask and beads worn by generic Oni Savages are also a nice touch.

Class Profile - Monk/Shrine Maiden

This game’s version of the Priest and Cleric classes, Hoshidan versions of the Troubadour class. Sakura and Mitama are Shine Maidens, while Azama is a Monk. Oddly enough, despite this game mostly getting rid of gender-locked classes, these two remain separate. They’re basically the same class, though. Both wield staves, have the same skills, and have good speed, luck and resistance, hampered by awful defense and HP. Oddly, Shrine Maiden has 5% better magic, while Monk instead has 10% better skill. Regardless, the job of these classes is to avoid combat and heal allies using staves. These classes can promote into Onmyojis and either Great Masters or Priestesses. Their first skill, Miracle, gives them a luck-based chance to survive a fatal blow with 1 HP. Their second skill, Rally Luck, boosts the Luck of nearby allies for a few turns. They also secretly have a 10% extra crit evade. I enjoy the simple, modest designs, which fit with the class’s aesthetic. 

Conquest Chapter 8: Cold Reception

As Felicia leads the group to her village, Moron and Silas are separated by a blizzard. Moron faints from the cold and is rescued by Kilma, the Ice Tribe’s leader. Moron begins to introduce himself, but Silas reminds him that they’re here to crush a rebellion. Corrin bemoans the fact that everything is so morally grey. Honestly, I wouldn’t call this route morally grey, so much as it’s the same black and white shit as Birthright with Moron being to stupid to understand he’s on the evil side.

Kilma says he only let Moron into the village because he carries Yato, the sword prophecized to save the world. Kilma introduces Moron to his daughter, Flora. The fact that Flora and Felicia are the daughters of the head of a small country colonized by Nohr is kinda weird. Garon conquered the Ice Tribe, took the daughters captive, and forced them to work as servants for his other kidnapped prince.

Felicia and Elise show up and Elise blurts out that they’re there to suppress Kilma’s rebellion. Elis is an idiot. Flora sounds the alarm and the Ice Tribe rushes in to fight the Nohrians. Flora calls Felicia ignorant and says war is the only language Nohr understands.

This chapter uses the same map as Chapter 17 of Birthright. The gimmick of this chapter is centered on five villages spread around the map. A pair of enemy soldiers will try to go to the villages to summon reinforcements, while the player can visit them to get gold. At the start of turn two, Odin and Niles show up to save us, acting on orders from Leo. Moron has to convince them to not kill everyone brutally, because Odin’s a chunibiyo and Niles is genuinely morally grey.

Odin

Owain from Awakening, now a Dark Mage instead of Myrmidon and pretending to be an evil wizard instead of a legendary hero. He also switches his costume to this tight, garish yellow outfit with a v-neck that stretches to his crotch. I’d complain if it was any character other than Odin; for Odin, it fits. I did like Owain in Awakening, but I will admit his schtick can get old. His personal skill gives him a boosted crit rate when using a named weapon with a name more than 12 letters long, something ridiculous that fits perfectly for a guy obsessed with legendary weapons and powerful spells. Also, he can reclass into a Samurai, a Hoshidan class, which makes sense given his class in Awakening.

Niles

Leo’s other retainer, a sadistic Outlaw. His personal skill, Kidnap, works the same as Orochi’s capture. Conquest is a bit harder than Birthright, though, so I’m afraid I won’t be grabbing another Kenshi. Fun fact, Niles is the only non-promoted bow user in all of Nohr. Niles’s design isn’t half bad; I like the eyepatch, white hair, and hood, although I’d like to note that it’s a bit odd that the sadistic criminal has a noticeably darker skin tone.

Flora apologizes to Moron for standing by her actions, calls Felicia a moron, and tells Jakob she wishes she was meeting him under better circumstances. Felicia’s battle quote with Jakob is especially interesting, confirming she was a hostage and hinting that she has feelings for him. Kilma prays for forgiveness for fighting Felicia and says Moron deceived him.

Moron spares Kilma. In fact, he wins the battle without killing anyone. Somehow. Moron has Elise treat the enemy wounded. Kilma is shocked by Moron’s kindness. Moron negotiates a deal where the Ice Tribe stops rebelling in return for more autonomy, something he has the authority to do that totally won’t be ignored by the child kidnapping mass murderer Garon. Kilma says that Moron might be the legendary hero after all. Flora apologizes for defending her people from an invading army who kidnapped her and her sister as a child and swears fealty to Moron.

So, here’s my problem with Conquest. Nohr is evil. Garon is evil. But Moron is good. So every chapter has him win battles without violence or negotiate people into working with him. Rather than having Moron struggle with his morality, it has him keep his hands clean, even as he conquers neighboring nations for the glory of a brutal dictatorship. It’s idiotic. And it will only get more idiotic as this game goes on. But first, we have some Supports to read.

Support: Corrin/Odin

C: Corrin finds Odin posing. Odin says his stance needs a unique name. Corrin gets annoyed by Odin and walks away.

B: Odin asks Corrin to name his pose. Corrin says they need tome to think of a name.

A: Corrin tries to hide from Odin. Odin tracks them down and annoys Corrin for a while. Eventually, Odin comes up with a dumb name for his pose: Shadow Glitter. Corrin is relieved that they don't have to talk to Odin anymore.

S: Odin asks Corrin to marry him. Corrin gets tired of his long-winded proposal and demands he get to the point. Odin gives a heartfelt proposal and immediately gets back on his bullshit.

Review: Not bad. Odin toes the line between funny and annoying and seeing Corrin get sick of his bullshit is a good dose of realism. This is also one of the only times Corrin isn’t ridiculously friendly. Also, by marrying Odin, Corrin joins yet another royal family.

Support: Elise/Effie

C: Elise asks Effie to go on a walk with her, but Effie is full from eating and asks Elise to roll her like a barrel.

B: Effie uses Elise as a dumbell. The two of them reminisce about how they met: Elise snuck down to the underground and befriended Effie and, when the guards tried to take Elise back, Effie tried to fight em off.

A: Effie talks about how she trained for years to become a castle guard so she could protect Elise.

Review: This is what Corrin and Silas’s relationship should have been. That is, free from dumb bullshit about Corrin having the memory of a goldfish. Lore is always good in Supports and this does a great job establishing Elise and Effie’s friendship, while also having some great comedy bits.

Support: Felicia/Niles

C: Felicia spills some soup on Niles. Niles begins stripping seductively. Felicia offers to take his clothes to the laundry.

B: Felicia offers to give Felicia a special, heavenly dessert. Niles assumes she's coming on to him. Felicia gives Niles a cookie.

A: Niles mocks Felicia for not understanding his double entendres. After finding out about Felicia's childhood as a hostage, he apologizes.

S: Niles proposes.

Review: A fun, kinda dumb comedic Support.

Support: Arthur/Mozu

C: Arthur finds Mozu analyzing the soil around camp. Mozu rambles about how farming is awesome.

B: Arthur helps Mozu plow a field. Mozu corrects his form. A: While Arthur is plowing, a heard of dragons fly over and shit all over him. Mozu is overjoyed because dragon droppings are great fertilizer. Also, I'd like to note a script error in this Support: dragons and wyverns are not the same thing. Wyverns are the mounts with animal-level intelligence, dragons are ancient magic beings that can transform into humans. Unless a flock of demigods flew by to shit on Arthur, the game means wyverns.

S: Arthur proposes by giving Mozu a special flower that is supposed to be planted by a husband and wife. Mozu accepts because Arthur's bad luck is a good source of fertilizer.

Review: The start of this Support is a bit bland, but Arthur getting covered in shit is great.

[glasscanary]

Okay how bout 1, 3, 5, 8, 17 and 20?

1 - most memorable Crit Fail

We were playing a DnD convention dungeon for when I went down to LA this last month or so and I brought Knells with me, the Arcane Trickster. We were in a room with a bridge connecting each side of the room and there were giant skull shaped bells swinging back and forth on them. To get across and fight a witch you had to make a dex save. I get up to fight the witch, fail the first save, a bell knocks me off into a pit. But I had a plan; I convince the DM that I could misty step back onto the bridge as a bonus action on the way down. I poof back up onto the bridge, make another dex save, and Nat 1 on the save. It was really god damn funny imagining Knells fall off, bamf back up like “A-HA!” only to immediately eat shit on the bell’s backswing.

Needless to say we didn’t beat the dungeon.

3 - what race and class are you itching to play but haven’t yet?

I’ve always wanted to play a Paladin just so I can roll up and sit on monsters with that THICC AC. Races, honestly I think Shifters could be cool? Or a Warforged. I apparently really like Eberron.

5 - fun fact about your character!

I’ll do a quick one for all of the ones I’ve played off the top of my head:

- Knells likes to play pranks on his group like tugging on clothes with mage hand or putting a lizard in people’s bags.

- Persephone loves peach cobbler above all else.

- Cole got his nickname from his lover and his interest in Greek mythology.

- Alice got her love birds from her sister as a welcome home gift.

- Mary hides erotica by putting them into different book jackets so that she won’t be caught so easily. And yes, it’s the cheesy bare chested men ones.

8 - combat, roleplay, exploration. rank them in order of your favorite

Really depends on the system I think. Classic DnD I like Exploration, Roleplay, Combat. CoC I like Roleplay, Combat, Exploration.

17 - describe a near-death experience.

In our Masks game we were in England trying to stop the cult from summoning in these really big slimy dragon monsters to eat our friends. One of our players even rode on one and made friends with it, god bless Jack. Anyway I broke the concentration of the leader cult dude and stopped the ritual but the dude in retaliation just laid into me with everything he had. With the Tough Guy trait (it’s a top tier trait it’s saved my ass loads of times) I was able to hold on with just 1 Hp. I had juuust enough spare luck to keep me going. The next THREE goons came running to bash my head in but all three proceeded to miss their attack rolls! I felt like god damn Neo! Eventually I did go down but that was well after the initial battle. We stopped the ritual, turned the leader into ground beef, and Cole dipped as fast as he could because he was not prepared to fight any demon shit crawling out of a portal after the last one was invincible, invisible, and gave him the bad touch(tm) by choking the bitch out. Long story.

20 - most memorable crit success?

Back to the Masks game, waaaay later after the death of my darling Cole we were in ancient Egypt trying to find our way back I think? We were under a pyramid to get some cursed jewelry and it was completely pitch black down there and we could hear movement. My gal Alice had the Alert trait so I thought I could bait out the surprise attack and still keep some distance from the rest of the group so we wouldn’t get swarmed. Well the evil wizard man makes a grand entrance by lighting up the room and blasting Alice in the face with a breath attack of some sort. I retaliate with a critical success and end up doing I think double his max hp in one go with an absolutely BRUTAL headshot. Or maybe I fanned, can’t remember. But yeah I dropped a chapter boss in one round.

[sepiadice]

DiceJar Campaign 0.3: Holes, Doors, and Blood (2020/03/13)

Finally killed my first PC as a GM!

Yup… Wasn’t intentional but… well, dice made things interesting, so I have to work with it.

We also didn’t have our rogue, which is unfortunate as she’s an enjoyable member, and also there were a lot of traps and locks this time.

The content went through almost the remainder of what was prepared for the previous session. I’d like to get through the content a little faster so the group can move on to actual role-play opportunities, instead of dungeon crawling. It’s an unfortunate result of my experimental Game Mastering a Module, and I’ll likely try and stick to homebrew in the future.

Or, at least, look for modules with more emphasis on socializing.

I did a medium job preparing this session. I got complacent and let the session slip far to the back of my mind leading up. I found my sweet spot session 2, so I need to keep that standard.

Cast

Mogui (IndigoDie): Druid. Does what he’s told by his employer. Indigo has played this module before. Yot (LimeDie): Cleric. Looking to redeem himself for past failures. Lime will commit to bits. Bernard 'Bean' Dipp (NavyDie): Ranger. Trying his best despite being so young. Navy doodles when he’s bored. Delilah Dunford (VermilionDie): Rogue. Searching for an identity beyond her family. Vermilion could not make this session. Game Master (SepiaDie/me): The world (a dusty, dusty world). The walls probably have stories to tell. I’m desperately trying to keep ahead with drawing the map.

Session Three

We reopen in the loot room we ended in the last session. Navy is given his rewards and I expound on the uses of the various items they received.

Now given the opportunity to read his letter, Navy delays long enough to wonder if he’s chosen to make Bean illiterate, but eventually he takes to giving the description: his mother wrote it, opening with a joke, and giving random updates about life in town despite the letter needing to have been placed before the arrival of the party, but it’s an opportunity for the players to expound on their families, so maybe his mother is a little airheaded?

The letter canonizes a High School which has a football team and a glee club. Will anything come of it? Probably not. Did I say with a sigh ‘Guess that’s canon now…’? You bet I did! Always say yes! Improv!

The party headed back into the room with the pool, tested the other door to find it locked, and moved towards the wailing.

The chamber to the East of the entrance contained several walls crisscrossing. A door stood locked to the south. The puzzle of this room is walking around various hidden pit traps while finding three switches that must be held down at the same time to unlock the exit. I originally ruled the switches take a few minutes to reset so the party can run to get to the door, but then I remembered Delilah is technically still there, so I reverted it to operate as written.

Bean and Yot both took turns falling in holes as Mogui moved around cautiously and managed to jump clear of the one pit he did accidentally trigger.

The three maneuvered around the chamber until they found the necessary switches, activated them, and Delilah held open the door so they could get through.

Walking through the next hallway, they finally reached the door for the room from whence the wailing was emitting.

They all decide to ignore it.

Which means they’ve skipped some plot exposition. Oh well, keep rolling and adapt.

Instead, they go down a fork and into an empty room, which formerly held a giant beetle, but I cut that combat as being wholly unnecessary. Instead, our party continues through into the next chamber, which has a fight I did not cut, as I thought it would have narrative value.

A fire pit smolders in the center of the room, a charred corpse within. Upon the arrival of our party, a dark apparition arises and squares up to fight our heroes.

Bean had acquired an Oil of Magic Weapon, granting his bow Plus-One Status, and rendering it a magic attack, so he’s able to harm the shadow.

Yot, meanwhile, uses Holy Flame. Fun fact about our apparition: it was born because a pyrophobic man burned alive in a structure already pretty rife with necromantic energies. That terror and agony was all it took to create the shadow.

So the enemy is real mad at being set on fire, sending out psionic screams for flavor.

Mogui just watches the fight.

After a few rounds of Magic Bow and holy flames, the Shadow perishes. Victory music for everybody!

The party leaves the room, continues to ignore the terrified wails, and enters the last available door.

Within is a round, domed room, with a wooden pillar, standing on an outcrop over a pit at the center of the room, that fires blunted arrows. This is felt to be rather unpleasant, and the party discusses how to deal with it.

Eventually, they check out the door, and find a mechanism built into it.[1] The party attempts to break the mechanism.

Bean then enters, and is pelted by blunt arrows. He walks around and tries to open a southern exit, finding it to be locked, so Bean attempts to approach the trap. Unfortunately, he takes enough nonlethal damage to get knocked out. Whoops.

After waiting for the mechanical whirring to stop, the other two call after Bean, receiving no response. So they cautiously enter.

The trap is now docile. And the southern door is unlocked.

So, what happened here, by the text of the module, is that the trap keeps running for ten rounds, at which time it’ll be exhausted of arrows, and the south exit will automatically unlock. The hope was the party would take the tower shields from the wood golem of last session to block the arrows.

Because of how they broke the activating mechanism (as they snapped off the metal arm in the door hinge that turned the machine off and on), I decided that now once it turned on, it couldn’t turn off. So after Bean was knocked out, the trap kept running until it ran out of rounds.

Don’t ask how the trap’s supposed to keep pelting adventurers inside the chamber after the door closes. Magic I guess.

Stop asking how traps work.

Mogui investigated the south exit while Yot checked on Bean. The door was, of course, unlocked, to the annoyance of Navy, and Yot was taking his sweet time healing Bean, but soon the party was on their feet again and ready for whatever came next.

The final room of the floor widened as it went, the ceiling supported by four columns. Stairs to the south lead to the… basement? Second basement? The crypt’s already underground, so what terminology applies here, I’m not…

Also, there’s two statues in recesses of the south wall. The Module text doesn’t call any attention to them, but they’re probably Kassen.

Our heroes enter this room, get to approximately the middle of the room, and four skeletons, with talon-like clawed fingers and blood dripping from their bones, step out from behind the columns, and menace the heroes.

Combat begins.

As does a series of horrible rolls from both parties. Just a lot of do-nothing turns. Yot tries to bash the skeletons and misses, Bean fires arrows and the closest he got sent the arrow through the ribcage of one skeleton. The skeletons weren’t faring much better, three of them crit fumbling at some point, which I interpreted them as falling prone for a turn.

The rolls were so bad I gently reminded my party that I set up a dice-roll bot in the Discord channel, if they wanted to put Roll20’s die-roller into dice prison. They didn’t go for it.

Back and forth the combat went, the skeletons getting a couple lucky hits on Bean. Eventually, and tragically, those lucky hits added up and Bean hit zero. Navy started making Death Saves, a realm where the exhaustingly low rolls followed and brought him to his death.

NavyDie then spent the rest of the combat doodling an increasingly elaborate death scene, with grave stone, candles, what was either a pentagram or an alchemy circle,[2] and death himself. Whatever self-amusement was needed.

As a narrative-first GM, Player Characters dying in combat is not something I enjoy. I am now in an awkward position of needing to figure out how to proceed and keep Navy involved. If he still wishes to play, of course. A couple options immediately spring to mind: bringing in a new character will be narratively awkward at this point, as we need to justify why the ignorant town would send back up, or why a kid is running so late; there’s an available NPC I could give Navy, but he’d be an odd (but doable) add; or, and this is an idea I like most, I can bring Bean back for a price…[3]

But I need to talk it through with NavyDie first.

Back to those still alive.

Mogui maneuvers to keep a safe distance, eventually coaxing one of the four skeletons back to the previous room, running a circle and returning to the main combat room, closing the door behind him. I rolled a die to determine the nature of the skeletons, and concluded they’re running on animalistic instinct, and thus can’t operate a door.

Also, this cuts down on enemies to delay the fight and rewards IndigoDie for clever problem solving.

Yot, growing tired of not hitting with his Mace, starts using Holy Flame again, forcing the Skeletons to use the horrible dice rolls to avoid damage instead of Yot using the same rolls to cause damage. Progress starts to get made.

Mogui turns into a tiger and starts running about and attempting to hit the skeletons, but still no luck.

There’s also some talk about how the skeletons aren’t taking attacks of opportunity, which had a very elegant explanation: I totally forgot about that mechanic, and I also just plain hate attacks of opportunity. They feel cheap and punish players for not carefully considering every minutiae of their actions.[4]

Eventually, the skeletons are finally either redead, or trapped in another room.

With one dead, the remaining three party members stare towards the stairs to the next floor. As the only escape is to fight the skeleton in the previous room, they mostly consider what difficulty they’re prepared to face.

Of the three sessions played thus far, this one felt of middle quality. I forgot to read my opening crawl text, and I waited until the last minute to write notes for the remainder of the floor (after copying over the leftovers from session two). Neither the combat with the Shadow (where I forgot to implement the smoke in the eyes mechanic the module wanted me to) or the Bloody Skeletons (with horrible dice rolls)[5] felt particularly fun or worthwhile. I’ll probably look to cut more superfluous fights going forward.

I’m also looking forward to moving out of the dungeon. I am learning a lot, as was my goal with running this module, but I’m missing being able to Role-Play as GM.[6] I’m certainly learning to answer questions the text didn’t bother to address, and also how annoying module formatting can be with where it explains things.

When I find time, I should sit down and design a dungeon of my own. That would also be a good learning experience, and also let me feel more at ease with making world-based rulings on the fly and implement elements I like and minimize those I don’t.

There’s just so much combat and map-based traps written in this thing. Makes it too difficult to abstract out the traps and rely on theater of the mind.

Most important take away: Attacks of Opportunity are dumb, and I hereby houserule them away.

I’ve already set things in motion for fun plot developments after this session’s events and feedback received, and hopefully the next write-up will come in about two weeks.

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting.[8]

-

[1] The party is really interested in the actual mechanics of these traps, which the module doesn’t explain, forcing their poor GM to try and reverse engineer it, and maybe I need to start shrugging and saying ‘I dunno, magic I guess.’ [2] Which is a good way to lose a sibling. [3] Just sent Navy a text asking if he’d like a level of Warlock. This could be fun. [4] Also, my experience with another player exploiting the mechanic to attempt to kill me. [5] Though based on his recap, IndigoDie enjoyed the combat for the bad rolls? Interesting guy. It felt like a bad joke that kept repeating to me, and I failed to improvise an Out for those involved. [6] Especially since Indigo sidestepped the opportunity I did have![7] [7] Whatever. Gives me time to give the man a less stupid name. [8] Despite working it into the opening, this sign off still doesn’t sit right. Feels too long… Magazines have little icons to mark the end. Maybe I should do the same?

[crystalelemental]

FE Fates Replay - Part 4

Fun facts: I remembered having a difficult time with Chapter 8 when I first played this game, so I went in scared.  My initial attempt, I was severely over-leveled, and it wound up being hysterically easy.  So I tried again with a normal amount of leveling, and it still wasn’t too bad.  I’m not sure what past me was having such a difficult time with?  If I had to guess, I was really salty about not getting all the towns or something.  Flora being able to Freeze your units is rough, but Corrin with her Dragonstone was just so tanky she could take the upper path almost alone, while the rest of the team went straight across the lake.  Anyway, I bring that up because I started over from the decision point and got back here in like half an hour, so that was nice.  On to actual plot.

Chapter 7!  Having betrayed your birth family like the intelligent being you are, you now realize you failed to account for something really important: that your dad is fucking insane.  Garon immediately distrusts you, because you’ve been with the Hoshidans, so obviously you know the truth are consider them enemies.  Honestly, this isn’t too far out of left field yet.  Iago, however, is a putz.  “Ooh, I bet she’s a spy for the Hoshidans!”  Moron, what kind of spy for the enemy side waltzes in to the fucking throne room to chat up the king after knowingly conspiring with said enemy?  Garon’s also a moron though, so he kinda believes Iago, but doesn’t really push the issue.  At least, until Corrin decides to ask about the exploding sword thing.  Garon says he had no idea what it would do, which...okay, the obvious answer is he actually didn’t, but like...I have played this game before.  I know about Revelations, and about the soldiers from Valla, and that guy that exploded the sword seemed to be an invisible soldier from Valla.  So...maybe Garon’s not actually lying here?  We see in a moment that he’s kinda just following orders of his own, so maybe he’s not as on top of events as he lets on.

Anyway, when Corrin presses the issue, Iago goes on about his spy nonsense, and Garon falls for it entirely, ordering Xander to kill Corrin.  Yeah, that’ll go over great.  Xander, of course, refuses.  Everyone starts getting heated, until Garon announces that he’ll ask the great Anankos for guidance on this situation.  Anankos being some ancient dragon that the king apparently communes with, but no one, not even Xander or Iago, seem to know what the hell he’s on about.  Thankfully, Anankos states that Corrin may live, if she proves herself with a test.  She must suppress the Ice Tribe rebellion, and she must do it alone.  Everyone is fearful for Corrin, as a solo mission against an armed rebellion surely can’t go that well, but honestly?  I’m a dragon.  What are they gonna do?  Unless they’ve got Wyrmslayers, their asses are toast.

In order to reach the Ice Tribe, first we must go through the Forest of the Forlorn.  Which is apparently filled with Faceless.  Go figure.  Corrin gets herself immediately surrounded, and announces a problem with the Dragon transformation.  It apparently takes time to transform.  Which is why, you know, you can shift in and out of that form during combat.  It’s fine, don’t worry about it.  Jakob shows up, saves your ass, but is immediately reminded that she had to do this alone or it doesn’t count.  Of course, immediately after this, Garon does his bad guy thing of loudly soliloquizing about how he doesn’t trust Corrin and just wants her to suffer, so Xander, having some ounce of sense within him, takes matters into his own hands and arranges for Corrin to have back-up, in the form of four new units!

Silas is the first, and he’s your childhood friend you initially have no recollection of.  Corrin does eventually remember he exists, but nothing else.  I am really hoping support conversations explain how the hell this happened.  Elise also arrives, which is great because we can pretty much stop here.  For those who don’t know, when I first played the game, I was so sick of it by Revelations that I basically pumped Elise full of stat-enhancing items, turned her into a Dark Flier, gave her a high crit tome, and had her solo the game.  She’s really good, both as a unit, and as a character.  She’s your little ball of sunshine, and she’s hysterical.  Her retainers, Arthur and Effie, also arrive.  I remember not caring about these two first time through, but honestly?  They’re alright.  Arthur’s a bit clownshoes, but he’s a good guy and can be entertaining.  He mostly works by virtue of those around him, though.  Elise worshiping him as her idol makes a lot of sense, given her youth.  His interactions with Effie provide the knowledge that he takes his role seriously, but puts his duty to the common folk before his duty as a retainer.  Supports really drew out the interesting tidbits for him.  Effie, by contrast...is kind of exactly as “okay” as I remember?  I don’t have anything to dislike her by, she’s just not that interesting.  Comically strong and fiercely devoted to Elise, but that’s all she’s got going for her right now.

The chapter is really easy, but more unfortunate, there’s no boss on a throne so there’s no way to level grind yet.  Worse, the boss moves toward you, so you can’t mess around either.  I don’t remember a ton about the different routes, but I remember Conquest getting tough after a bit, so that’s not ideal.

I then went out of my way to get Mozu.  Her paralogue involves a small town being attacked by Faceless.  Everyone buy Mozu in the village is killed, and she’s hiding out in the woods, until Corrin hears the screams and comes running to the rescue.  Jakob advises that the town’s already gone and they shouldn’t waste time, but Corrin’s insistent on looking for survivors, so let’s get the map started.  Based on having only 6 units allowed in Chapter 8, but having 8 allowed in the Paralogue, I’m guessing you’re supposed to get Mozu after Chapter 8, but that’s dumb.  The paralogue is really easy, even with only six characters.  Effie and Arthur are more than capable of plugging the northern bridge, while Silas and Corrin decimate the path to Mozu.  The only difficult part of the map is getting Mozu any experience.  Fortunately, my Corrin was built with Dragon in mind, and dealt just shy of a clean OHKO on the Faceless enemies.  When paired up with Silas, Mozu was just strong enough to get the KO, allowing her to get some surprisingly decent levels.  Aptitude is such a nice skill.  Thank god for cheaters giving that skill out on everyone else, I tell ya.  After clearing out the Faceless, Mozu joins up because really, the hell else is she gonna do?  Everyone’s dead.  So, hooray for new recruits!

Now, Chapter 8.  A chapter that I remembered having an awful, awful time with.  Corrin and Co press forward, into the snowy north where the Ice Tribe is.  Jakob and Elise run ahead because they’re goobers (but they’re our goobers), leaving Silas and Corrin behind.  Corrin presses forward, but inevitably collapses.  She awakens in a bed, with the head of the Ice Tribe tending to her.  Apparently they have a strict “no trespassing” rule and were going to let her die, but they saw her sword and thought hey, that seems important, we should save her.  So, here you are.  Corrin almost spills the beans on her identity, but Silas successfully plays defense, reminding Corrin that there’s a rebellion going on, and they might not take too kindly to Nohrian royalty in their village.  Enter the rest of your bumblefuck party, as well as Flora, who obviously recognizes you instantly.  Elise...dear, sweet, stupid Elise...announced they’re here to suppress a rebellion, commenting that she thought suppress meant to sit down and have a nice meal and talk things over.  Naturally, the Ice Tribe immediately gets ready to throw down, and you’re treated to a pretty interesting, but fairly difficult, map.

The map is a frozen lake in the center, and five houses around it.  The soldiers for the Ice Tribe will be going to the villages, and announcing that there are Nohrians present.  If the spear soldiers reach the villages first, more enemies appear.  If you reach them first, no enemies appear.  Now, ordinarily, I’m all about the delicious, delicious experience, but you’re given a free warning about rewards for getting to more houses than they do.  If you get to three of the five, you get the most rewards.  I think it’s three out of five because that’s realistically all you can get to without serious power-leveling through DLC.  One of them is outright impossible.  You can’t cover enough distance, and the soldier is right there, as a demonstration of what happens.  That said, it’s still kind of a high pressure map.  The soldiers that escape the first village they contact are set up in such a way that the soldier is well defended, so you have to be tough enough to punch your way through, or be able to go around and handle everyone that comes after you next turn.  But keep in mind, the other side of the lake has two of the villages as well, and a separate soldier slowly making his way there.  Your force needs to be divided in two: one faction heading north to handle the first guard before he reaches the northern village, and one heading directly west to intercept the far west village before the other solider.

Thankfully, you get two more allies to help!  Niles, who...ugh.  UGH.  And Odin!  Those of you who played Awakening may know Odin better as Owain, Lissa’s son!  How the hell did he get here?  Deeprealms.  No, we would not care to elaborate further.  Odin is a bit more...ridiculous, than he was as Owain.  Like, they’re still very much the same, but there’s some difference I can’t quite put my finger on.  Maybe as I get supports with him I’ll figure it out.  Niles, though?  He annoys me.  Very little is going to sway me out of that.  While Odin’s a goon who wants to show off his power and the usual melodrama he produces, Niles seems actively cruel.  Corrin orders them not to kill anyone, and Niles’ interpretation of that is “So I can hurt them as much as I want, but can’t kill.  That’s a neat challenge.”  He just seems mean-spirited overall.

Now, the map effectively has two bosses.  Flora’s here.  She doesn’t move, but she has the Freeze staff, which locks a unit in place.  So, let’s suppose, for a moment, that Silas tries to run straight to the west village.  As soon as he’s in staff range, Flora locks him down.  Now, you can still beat the soldier to the village, but the problem is...he gets to the one above you as you arrive.  So now Silas is alone, and surrounded.  Odin and Niles help a lot here.  Honestly, I think the reason I had a hard time the first time I played was not using the pair up system correctly.  See, in Awakening, you got all the benefits in one through Pair Up.  But in Fates, they actually did a smart thing and broke it into two types of pair up: offensive, where you occupy adjacent spaces, and defensive where you occupy the same space.  Defensive allows for the stat increases of the main unit, and a gauge fills that allows a guaranteed block from the unit in the back.  Offensive allows for follow-up attacks, guaranteed, as long as the attacking party isn’t defensively paired.  If you have a defensive backup, you can’t get another unit adjacent to you to also attack.  So there’s a give and take.  Knowing me, I probably wanted to be defensive to not immediately die, and defensively paired them up, which led to too little damage in a short amount of time.  Offensive is much better, especially since Niles has surprisingly nice resistance.  In combat, Flora’s fairly tough, but Effie and Corrin, and even Arthur if he’s doing good with levels can handle her easy.  I had Corrin do it.

The boss of the map, though?  He’s what we’ve been waiting for: a fairly frail map on an auto-healing throne, also with a tome that heals him.  Glory be, I thought this day might never come!  Time to farm out those levels, team!  Elise got some excellent levels because she’s a good girl who’s done nothing wrong.  Niles, Effie, Arthur, and Silas got some okay ones, while Odin is basically dead to us now!  Everyone’s level 10 or above, which means it’s go-time.  Really, the boss isn’t hard to handle.  Niles with a pair-up that gives any form of resistance means the boss can’t even hurt him.  So if you need cheese, there you go.

Once suppressed, Corrin tells Elise to go heal up the wounded on both sides.  The Ice Tribe leader, impressed by Corrin’s kindness, agrees to halt the rebellion for the time being, believing that she will be the one to put an end to the hostilities and give the Ice Tribe their autonomy back.  Flora also comments that she would like to renew her vows of servitude to Corrin.  There are hints that Flora never really liked Corrin, and had always planned on some kind of betrayal, but she’s been won over by Corrin’s honest display.  Personally, I think it’s bullshit that Flora doesn’t just join you here, but I guess we have to make My Castle relevant somehow.  The townspeople also thank you for warning them of the conflict, helping to keep them save, and give you what is probably their lifetime earnings in the form of 10,000 gold!  See, everything worked out great!  The Ice Tribe rebellion is over, everyone’s alive and happy, and nothing bad happened at all.  “Garon told you to do it alone and you didn’t so he’s gonna be pissed when you get back.”  AT ALL!

With that, we await the next part where we face Garon’s wrath.  If he’s lucid, anyway.  Hard to tell with that guy.  So far, I’m still not having much to complain about with the game.  The story can be a little heavy-handed.  Mostly I’m talking about Garon and Iago, who are just so transparently evil, and aren’t even really trying to make sense about it.  I can get Garon being suspicious of Corrin coming back after learning the truth, but their explanation for not trusting her and then his insistence on just wanting to make her suffer is just silly for anyone that’s meant to be taken seriously as a villain.  They’re just a bit too ridiculous.  I will mention that the Conquest maps, thus far, are pretty decent.  Chapter 7 and Paralogue 1 are pretty standard “Clear the map” ones, but Chapter 8 is sufficiently inventive.  I actually like how it’s designed to have you not just clear the map, but have little sub-objectives built in that can make the map easier or harder for you.  We’ll see how things keep up.

[rockiesturnrose]

D&D Diaries-October 17

So last night’s D&D session was an Event, the kind of Event that will be forever referenced, and a reminder of just how amazing this game can be?

Since we’re essentially a drop-in campaign (though with 5 constant party members), we occasionally get new blood. This week, it was a baby!Rogue, arcane trickster specialization. Turned out to be a bit of a jerk, but he was also a full elf. Not unexpected, alas.

The other thing? Our healer was missing this week, again. I suspect it’s because he owes Keth money and doesn’t want to pay up. So we’re again relying on potions and just plain not dying.

So, it starts like this: our motley assortment of adventurers was tasked with transporting a mysterious package overseas. We had to take said package from guild HQ down to the docks to actually start the adventure. Doesn’t seem difficult, right? Well, the tanks didn’t think so.

See, our ranger put the package in her bag of holding to keep it safe. And our fighter thought ‘out of sight, out of mind! Package is safe, this will be a breeze!’ So he challenged the barbarian to a race down to the docks. And the barbarian, missing the Voice of Reason that is the healer, readily agreed to the fun. The two took off at high speed, leaving the rest of us (2 rogues, a wizard and a ranger) all alone.

Yeah, they broke the cardinal rule of D&D: DON’T SPLIT THE PARTY.

And that’s not the worst thing they did. No. They tore through a busy market, causing a bit of an uproar there. And then the fighter crashed into a produce stand, causing a huge disturbance. It involved the guards, we’ll get back to it because it is important.

More importantly: us squishies, meandering along at a slower pace, couldn’t get through the square because of the throng of people yelling at something we couldn’t see. So in order to get to the docks before our ship left, we took a side alley.

Turns out, some baddies were waiting for us to leave the crowd so they could steal the package. They dropped some boxes at the entrance of the alleyway, cutting us off. I’m a rogue, I need stealth and surprise. I had neither of these things.

The gnome wizard tried to intimidate the thugs, telling them that if ‘they wanted his package, they’d have to buy him dinner first.’ His charisma is 8—the thugs did not take kindly to him. In fact, they hit him first.

Fun thing about wizards? They aren’t frontline fighters. They aren’t meant to take hits. (To be fair, he was only near the front because he was trying to convince Keth that they should open this mysterious package.)

The wizard tried to hold his own, aiming a fireball at the crotch of the head thug (who was conveniently placed so it would hit all the other dudes too). All the baddies succeeded their saving throws, so they took a grand total of 8 damage. Yeah, the wizard rolled 8d6 and only got 16/48 possible damage. He rolled a lot of ones. It was sad.

So he got knocked out almost instantly. Someone healed him, he got up and tried to cast Hold Person, he failed, he got instantly knocked out again.

(all the while, I was glaring at the two tanks who were either staring at this farce in shock, or doubled over laughing. If the wizard got hit, I’d toss them a middle finger. Keth’s fury is righteous and long lived. I had words for the tanks.)

Wizard rolls a death saving throw, fails. Not good, but not terrible yet. He has two more. We could let him lie there for a bit. Few more rounds of combat, take out a mook or two

The next fun thing to happen? The wizard rolled a Nat 1 on his second death saving throw. The DM looked at him, completely mindboggled. “Okay. If someone heals you like, immediately, you won’t die.”

Thankfully, I went next. Not so thankfully, I had been set up perfectly for flanking and possibly ending this fight. But now I had to heal the wizard or we would legit lose him. Keth sees the wizard spasm and make some terrible sounds, so she decides she needs to heal this small dude she’s fond of. So I used my action to give him a greater healing potion. You know, pretty expensive, 4d4 plus 4 healing? I figured I’d give him at least a fighting chance. 

I rolled 4 1s.

The entire table had a moment of stunned silence, then burst into laughter. The DM stopped the game to take a picture of this spectacular fail.

Whenever someone rolls spectacularly good or bad, the DM gives you a bonus or a penalty (like last campaign, our sorcerer had advantage on this climbing check and rolled 2 nat 20s. So now he can basically spider climb without having to roll). This photo-worthy dice fail deserved something. My permanent new bonus when healing? Everyone I administer a healing potion to gets an extra +1 HP. “That’s…not what I was expecting, but okay,” says I, starting to jot it down.

The DM smiles his terrible smirk. “There’s more,” he says. “Whenever you heal the tanks, they get -2 to whatever you roll.”

Cue more laughter from the table. Keth is so mad at these idiots, and probably will be for a while, that whenever she tries to heal them her absolute fury and loathing is felt in what is supposed to be a life giving substance. And even when she does cool down and they redeem themselves, there will always be that small part of her subconscious that’s still keenly aware that their foolishness almost got their wizard killed three times.

So the wizard gets healed. But by this point he’s just pissed off the head thug so much that the dude instantly attacks him. He’s unconscious again.

(That’s 3 times in 30 seconds, more or less. He wasn’t having a good morning)

Keth originally had plans to keep this last guy alive to ask what’s so important about this package, so I was just going to roll non-lethal damage. Turns out, sneak attack damage isn’t like…the most subtle of damages. Especially when you roll 17/18 possible sneak attack damage. Keth was a combination of very panicked and super pissed off that her assassin training took over and she just wasted the guy. “Oh, oops, meant to have my dagger pointing the other way. Oh, well.”

To top it off, these guys were so nondescript that we couldn’t even tell who sent them. So that was useless.

When the battle was finally over, the fighter’s player looked at us and was like ‘Hey, no, it’s good we’re not there! This would’ve been tougher!!’ The DM just looked at him and shook his head. Apparently, this battle was supposed to be super easy for our entire team. All it was supposed to do was let us know this package was so important that people were after it. He kind of expected the tanks to take care of the big guy while the rest of us picked off the tiny mooks. A 5 minute combat, tops. Not 30 minutes with our wizard getting knocked out three times.

Also, the barbarian, out of character, tried to mitigate my anger by pointing out he had given Keth 100 gold from selling some treasure no one knew he had, and that that should have garnered him some goodwill. Then there was an incredulous ‘you think the wizard’s life is worth 100 gold???’ followed by the squishies pointing out that the value of health potions poured down his throat was more than the 100 gold. The barbarian was thus shamed.

There was also a slightly hilarious moment when we looked at our poor wizard and decided maybe someone should carry him? Except Keth and the ranger are both weak as shit (8), so we looked at the other rogue, who has a whopping 12 points in strength. We labelled him the strongest among us and gave the gnome to him. The tanks only tuned in at the mention of ‘strongest’ and asked what number value that was. Then both started laughing because they’re at 18 and 19.

So how did the footrace turn out? Well, as mentioned, the fighter careened into a vegetable stall and got covered in tomatoes. He attempted to push the stall away and continue, but the town guard was instantly there. Somehow, amazingly, despite a 5 to a persuasion check, he convinced the guards to let him go if he just paid the fine (they crit failed against the persuasion). The merchant demanded 50 gold and made the fighter count it out one piece at a time. He was in such a rush he dropped the 49th piece and had to start again. If the guard hadn’t been there watching, he would not have payed such an exorbitant amount.

The DM’s original plan was for the disturbance that made us take a side alley be a planned thing, something the thugs had started when we left the guild. But because of the fighter’s shitty rolling, the disturbance ended up being caused by him. He was the reason we had to take an alley, and he was the reason we got ambushed. The thugs just took advantage of this handy distraction.

Of course, we squishies didn’t know that until we finally got the docks. The wizard, poor thing, was covered in blood. The fighter was covered in tomatoes. When he tried to ask what happened, Keth scooped up some of the tomatoes and shoved them in his mouth. She did this three times, every time he tried to talk, before storming away. She contemplated slapping the barbarian or kneeing him in the groin, before deciding he wasn’t even worth the effort.

Meanwhile, the ranger (who has the calmest head, apparently) told them what happened to us. The fighter put the pieces together and was like “Oh shit. Oh shit, you guys, I’m so sorry that was totally my fault.”

The wizard, battered, bloody and pissed off, heard this and whirled on the fighter. He cast firebolt at him and crit succeeded on the roll. The fighter, now smelling like burnt tomatoes and missing his beard and mustache, was left with 3 HP and much shame. Their strange détente is…I’m not sure where it is now. The fighter won’t doubt the wizard’s ability to start fires now, at least? The wizard might stay pissed off for a while.

So on the plus side, the idiots have gained some awareness. They have realized that we squishies require someone big with us at all times because none of us are good at sustained close quarters combat. We can’t take the same hits, we will die. We rely on being far away from the combat, or only being close for a maximum of 2 seconds. The barbarian, at least, was suddenly much more attentive of us. It remains to be seen if the fighter will be.

Also Keth learned that the barbarian considers cities ‘safe for adventurers.’ He bases this off the fact that civilians could do little damage to him, while he could do lots of damage to them. Keth was furious and pointed out that she’s an adventurer, more skilled than he is (level 5 vs his level 4 so you know), was raised in this city, and still doesn’t go traipsing about because cities aren’t safe for anyone. Who’s to say the person attacking you isn’t an adventurer themselves?

And then she stopped talking to both of them.

So we finally got on the ship, which was…an experience. The wizard and other rogue were both puking their guts out. The barbarian actually followed through on his awareness by gluing himself to their sides. Keth still glared at the both of them, though only the barbarian really noticed her ire.

Second day into a week long journey, and of course we get attacked. Same nondescript band of assorted humanoids, all after the package. This battle wasn’t necessarily as hilarious as the last one. We had both our tanks actually performing their jobs (the fighter got knocked out and kept asking me if that was redeeming enough. I just responded that he might want someone else to heal him). The wizard took no damage this time, to his relief. I put uncanny dodge to wonderful use. We managed to make short work of the entire pirate crew except one annoying gnome.

Actually there was one beautiful moment, where a guy attempted to stab the ranger, lost grip on his sword, and sent it flying through the air. As the ranger is watching it go by, he stabs her for laughing at him.  

Keth also learned that when jumping fifteen feet down, she needs to be a bit more graceful or she’ll take some damage. She’s blaming it on preparing for the boat to suddenly rock and it staying pretty still. Being over prepared can sometimes hurt.

So there we all were, moving in for the disabling blow on the gnome pirate when a fucking ballista caught him in the stomach and sent him flying over the side of the ship. Cue all of us, staring in surprise, convinced that these guys were so well-organized they didn’t want any of their own taken alive. As the DM revealed, they nat 1ed hitting the barbarian and hit their own guy instead. It was painful.

Then the wizard noticed that the bad guy’s ship was trying to get away, so he sent a fireball at them. It took out everyone on the deck in a glorious blaze of fire. He got a bunch of XP for one shotting seven NPCs.

The tanks boarded the second ship to see if there was anything worth stealing. While headed down into the lower reaches, the fighter kept his halberd at the ready…and ended up spearing a crew member hiding down there. Spearing him so hard, in fact, the halberd got imbedded in the wall. And then he couldn’t dislodge the weapon. The barbarian, meanwhile, found a second guy and attempted to tackle him. Except he kept rolling really badly, and the guy managed to teleport away.

Meanwhile the newbie rogue demanded our crew give us payment for saving their lives. They tied a rope around his waist and dropped him off the side of the boat until he stopped being a jerk. Full elves, you know. 

And then we ended the night standing around in -10 weather discussing concussions?? I love this group so much. I had reservations joining a drop-in group, but we all mesh so well together, everyone’s pretty reasonable, and everyone’s pretty consistent about showing up. It’s great. Even if not every week has an event worth writing about, it never fails to put me in a good mood. 

[shonikado]

Warning: Contains "Shonikado Does Tabletop: Episode 6"

I waited all week for this, this was basically my experiment with doing D&D fights in a more engaging way (with mixed results, good feedback though)

First up, there's some stuff that the human barbarian went through that wasn't RP'd out, but instead I just sent the player the stuff that happened so we could get to the next session where another player would be joining in. Here's what that all was:

The barbarian and the frogs traveled onwards, reaching the mountain range between them and their destination. But a magic storm hit (those happen this time of year) and they took shelter in a cave to wait it out. She got bored waiting in the cave though and explored, and found a peaceful cult town full of blind cultists and bat-winged beholders. She didn't really care to find out what was going on, although the cultists were niced and offered her the opportunity to trade her standard eyesight for the ability to have a vague psychic sense of the whole continent. But standard eyesight is useful, so she declined

The storm passed and the party continued onwards, a day behind schedule, taking with them an old dwarf cultist who was meaning to go on a supply run later anyway. There was a tribe of orcs-and-miscellaneous that watched the group from afar but they didn't make any moves, they just scared the frogs a bit. But the mountains were left without issue, at which point the party ran into a giant who collects the toll to enter the city. They paid the toll, but the giant saw the merchant frog's amulet and was like "hey gimme that too" and it was reluctantly handed over. And then they went onwards

So then they arrived in the city, at which point the frogs and cultist departed and Ulyana went to the giant-hunters guild. There was a giant who seemed to be helping run the guild, which was confusing, and also he was a bit condescending. Anyway, Ulyana learned that the guild only accepts 100 members total and they're careful about who they pick, and the most convenient way to tell them "hey I'm a good pick" would be to win the Azure Tournament happening in a few days. So Ulyana was like "sure I'll go have fun fighting people to prove I can fight even more people" and went off.

OKAY SO THAT'S WHERE THE SESSION BEGINS

Started off introducing an elf monk, who used to be a sailor but got into boxing. He's very old. He wanted to enter the tournament so he was tasked to fight three little anima (my world's word for animated constructs, pretty much simple robots) and display his fighting prowess. He used flurry of blows or something to destroy them all in a single turn.

Later in the day, the barbarian applied, and smashed one with an axe and had her displacer beast destroy another, and then finally tore the last one apart. Which was maybe excessive but definitely displayed ability.

But since a lot of people had been applying to the tournament and they didn't want to overdo it on applicants, they were both asked if they'd be cool with partnering up, and ended up getting teamed up with each other. So a monk, a barbarian, and a displacer beast all show up to kick some butt

but first they were like "hey let's spar" which gave me an opportunity to do a silly joke regarding the arena I had prepared, and then I sat back and let two players basically drive things for me and get some character development going on. (The monk won because the barbarian forgot to rage and dodge and stuff at first and the monk is GOOD at damage-dealing.)

so at this point I introduced the system where they got double EXP for going into a fight without researching their opponents prior to the fight, the idea being "figure it out on the fly" is more challenging than "know what you're getting into". To start off, the monk went off to try and figure out who they'd be doing their tournament-entry-culling match against (there were too many applicants still so they were being pitted against each other to determine who the public-audience-getting fighters would be), and ended up finding a place where bets were being put on the fights. The person running the betting booth said it wouldn't be fair to divulge that sorta stuff to a fighter but offered to tell in exchange for a bit of gold. As it turns out, the monk is very cheap and immediately walked out of the roleplaying closet. (We went into the closet so the barbarian's player wouldn't know what went down.)

they needed 3 EXP blocks to reach level 4, 7 to reach level 5. Going in blind meant 2 blocks, going in prepared meant 1.

i gave them half a block for their spar since neither of them tried to actually kill the other

Anyway, having failed to research their opponents, they went in blind and encountered a bugbear who seemed dressed for much colder weather than was actually present, wielding a malicious-looking green longsword. The other creature was a new race they didn't learn the name of, that looked somewhere between a lobster, a cockroach, and a fish, with eight arms and totally decked out with weapons. The bugbear was super nice and said hi.

then they proceeded to curbstomp them both, meaning I never got to even show off the bugbear's special abilities and the other combatant just barely got to hint at what their moveset was

ALSO the bugbear looked at Ulyana weirdly but then decided it was probably nothing. That was before the fight. The bugbear was unconscious after the fight. So was the monk, which was fun!

Also, some extra stuff about the arena: there's some height-advantage parts of the arena, also you can only have as many potions as you have team members, also there's these clerics called the "angels" who are there to let you fight lethally because they prevent anyone from dying. The way it works is that they focus protective magic on people, and if they'd die, they instead go into a sort of near-dead state that it takes a few weeks to recover from. So they'd be out of the tournament, but not out of life in general.

anyway, the party won, the monk didn't die so he got to continue fighting (I basically explained the death rule to the barbarian in an effort to convince her to stabilize the monk since he made two death fails)

ANYWAY they went on to the next round, and the barbarian decided to investigate who the opponents were - she ended up interviewing drow twins who had been in the entry-to-actual-tournament fight against two dragonborns (the next opponents) and lost. They explained one was a paladin with healy stuff, and the other was a warlock with spooky spells. The barbarian nodded and half-understood and then left.

when they got to the arena the next day I introduced the fact that the grass in the arena has flowers planted in it to make mosaic ads, the first of which was "Rope! You Can Never Have Enough" which was a reference to a character I made for a campaign that never really happened, in which my char owned I think several miles worth of rope because we were given a lot of starting money and I didn't know what to spend it on.

anyway so the fight happened, the paladin proved to be ridiculously hard to kill, and also made it very hard to target the warlock because of two tiers of protective stuff going on. So the paladin got downed, then was revived by the warlock's potion, then the paladin was downed again and the warlock revived her with her own potion, and then she was downed a third time and the monk was very mad about the whole thing and curbstomped her face. Seeing defeat was already gonna happen, and not wanting her to get dead'd or himself to get curbstomped, the warlock surrendered and the party won.

also the warlock cast a spell that had a bunch of grabby tentacles that was supposed to do damage but when the drow twins were explaining it they were like "oh but it doesn't do damage it just grabs you" SO WHOOPS I FORGOT. WHOOPS. WHOOPS. I don't think it would have been more fun if it did do damage though, maybe just more frustrating

anyway the party was like yaaay we won and then they leveled up and it was too late to move on to the final 8 fighters (so 3 more fights, although the final fight is gonna be a bit weird) so the session was ended, more like paused but basically ended.

~DING~ SO WHAT WENT WRONG

missing happens a lot and it's frustrating for the players. Also I didn't really get to show off what made most of the fighters cool because they immediately got pummeled by the rush-and-deal-all-the-damage team.

My current ideas are this: since everyone begins at the same time, the first round of combat lacks any movement, and is just what you do IMMEDIATELY as the fight begins. This means my enemy characters can set up any fancy interesting fun fight-changing stuff that they've got (for instance, the warlock had a weird spell that would deal a lot of damage but required casting it/some prep time, and the paladin was gonna defend him while that happened, but then the party rushed up and immediately attacked so he was like "I'm getting out of here" which was not the best tactical decision maybe. There are things I could do differently.)

My second idea is that, if you miss, you can choose to automatically hit instead, but this invokes an opportunity attack. I don't know if the attack would happen before or after (so miss -> opportunity -> autohit, or miss -> autohit -> opportunity?) and this would just be a mechanic in the world. I think I'll consider it the "baiting" mechanic, like, you get the opponent to strike at you, giving you a chance to land your own hit.

Maybe I'll make it so the opponent can either opportunity attack, or take half damage. Maybe make it so that you can respond in one of the following ways: 1. Defensive. Take half damage. 2. Neutral. Opportunity attack, then take full damage. 3. Aggressive. Opportunity attack. Take half damage if you land the hit, get critted if you miss.

Both of these ideas are things that ANYBODY can use, player or enemy, making it fair but also making it easier for me to deliver on better experiences overall.

also I think I'm gonna inject a bit more roleplaying into the sessions. I was planning on skipping it to mostly experiment with combat, and it was mentioned this hurt things a bit - the fights were largely just "okay we're fighting these people now". I have ideas on how to make the fights more engaging on a narrative level (basically having the party MEET the other combatants, though learning what they can do is another story entirely and retains the EXP thing).

overall I think it was decent but I'm definitely glad it ended earlier than expected because that gives me time to refine what I have coming next.