The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => General Chat => Topic started by: Luther Lansfeld on October 17, 2009, 12:28:14 AM
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This is a D&D campaign I am playing IRL.
Cast of Characters:
Rachelle, Human Invoker
Richard, Gnome Bard
Alexander of Pellor, Deva Avenger
Feth, Elven(?) Druid
Desmond, Half-Elven Paladin
Marza, Eladrin Sorcerer (replaced Richard)
Rachelle is the Voice of Reason, Richard was a jovial, self-worshipping bard, Alexander is a dead serious defender of justice (and the environment), Feth is constantly shape-shifting, never to be seen as a regular ol’ elf. Desmond is a passionate, drunk servant of the church, and Marza is a pyromaniac.
The concept behind Desmond was basically that I saw the party of Avenger/Bard/Invoker/Druid and I was like “Wow, this party is terrible at tanking anything.” And so I decided to make a paladin who serves Cuthbert. Valiant and ready to lead into any battle, Desmond will fight for his friends. He’s very naïve and sincere, and really loves drinking, partying, and having lots of gratuitous sex with all that surround him. I wanted to make him distinctly not Lawful Goodish super-prude, but Lawful feels pretty vital to his personality, but intelligent lawfulness (sort of, he’s not terribly intelligent).
Not too much happened before my character joined. Basically, the four travelers were put together by the church of Erathis to go on a mission at Elk Bend to help the church find a missing war priest, Brother Antonio. Rats were fought in the basement, and then I, the great DESMOND, was sent to assist these adventurers.
Once Desmond joined, more rats were fought, including the rat king. There were four totems scattered in the basement of the temple that were set up by someone worshipping druidic gods. This rat scratched poor Feth and he was poisoned and fell sick. We talk to Father Malkaey and get told the various details of our mission, and we go back down in the basement with Father Gregory to investigate further where a body may have been taken. There is access all the way several hours north to a river bend where we investigate.
Once we head back to the village, Richard the Gnome and Desmond had a drinking contest, which did not end well for the gnome. In the morning, he had many gongs ran in his face and he was thrown in water by the priests, who were experienced in dealing with Desmond. Desmond hits on Rachelle gratuitously but is ignored. :(:(
Next, the party visited the mayor because they needed some help with tracking. However, he couldn’t lend any help. Desmond convinced him that he was serious about helping the city, so despite the mayor’s misgivings with Desmond, he gave him his blessing. Next, Richard disappeared because the world blinked. Demons appeared, including a fake beholder. Marza the Sorcerer started fighting on our side for no apparent reason. We fought some worms and stuff as well here. This was in the mayor’s complex. The mayor gave us a Healing Word scroll (thanks DM!!)
Then we were sent on our mission. During the mission we met a band of lizardfolk, who needed our help killing the bullywugs, who stole their sacred idol. There was a grave inside the bullywug condominium that the lizardmen advised that we investigate. In addition, the lizardfolk saw Antonio consorting with someone evil looking, which makes all the non-Desmond party suspicious and Desmond really freaking pissed off.
Alexander of Pellor announced his intention to whip some bullywug ass, since they ruin the environment and that is NOT cool with Alex. We then whipped some bullywug ass twice, one time which we almost died at the hands of the bullywug chief because our rather… rash sorcerer decided to burn down the wall instead of securing our corners and we got flanked. By fucking bullywugs. Are you kidding me?
Anyway, this is when things get weird. After that, we go to open up the grave, and inside is… Father Malkaey in Antonio’s armor. An imp appears, sics OCTOMAMMOTH on us, and disappears. We fight the tentacles, which have Rachelle and Desmond locked in their hold. Alexander and Feth try to ward them all off, while Marza rather foolishly aims straight for the octomammoth head, despite being a weak mage. The battle is won despite the mishaps, and life is good.
We’ve had some pretty tough battles so far, especially the second bullywug chief battle. He had some pretty nasty magic. But Alexander of Pellor declared that he was his oath of enmity, took several blows through the round, and then VALIANTLY attacked the foul creature. And criticalled. For 48 damage. More than his max HP. Yeaaaah, it was crazy. Alex for Godlike and such. Desmond always feels useful but never really the MVP, although him being able to challenge people and having them take seven damage and take penalties for attacking others is neat. Most of the terrain traversed also hasn’t really hurt Desmond’s pretty awful move score. Rachelle is crowd-control, Marza is massive death (when he hits… hee hee), and Feth is utility (and not always around, the person playing Feth is busy).
This is basically the background information over about 10 sessions that we played. Someone else would have to post the pre-Desmond chronicle.
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... you're telling we we'll have MORE chronicles? so fucking in.
EDIT:
Desmond hits on Rachelle gratuitously but is ignored. :(:(
This made me giggle and I dunno why.
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I believe the plan is for chronicles in-between sessions, from here-on-in. As for what happened before Desmond the... Something joined up, well...
Rachelle, Richard, Alexander, and Feth were brought together in the town of Thranton, in the church of Erathis, and sent on a mission by some important priest dude to go to Elk's Bend and discover what's up, as apparently Antonio went kaput, but without the body that's usually left behind when someone does so. It's a week's travel on horse (Or pony, for the Gnome)back.
On the way through the countryside, our four brave adventurers come upon an abandoned caravan, and upon discovering the fates of these poor souls, are assaulted by tentacle-things from another plane, that appear when the world blinks. Alexander and the Gnome eventually go down to a combination of fog-spewing, laser-blasting, and tentacle-thwapping Outsiders, and are barely saved by the Action-savvy (But not exactly medically-savvy) Rachelle while Feth continues to take out the last of the beasts.
The adventurers rest up for the night, after burning the bodies and searching the caravan, and then head off to Elk's Bend. Upon arrival, they head straight to the church, and talk with Brother Gregory and Father Mulkaey, and are sent on a mission to explore the unexplorable First Dungeon Basement!
On their first exploration, they come upon the gaze of dozens of dozens of rats! And so, with a single swoop of his arms, Richard throws a glowstick into the middle of the battlefield, and the rats attack! It's an epic battle that only the Bard could possibly tell, and with it comes our brave adventurers (and the Gnome) huddling up in the doorway to where the rat corpses are, preparing to take another go at this. And with this second attempt comes the very, very, very large and tanky Desmond!
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I'm pretty sure Desmond also hit on Alexander, who has no gender. He's the opposite of picky.
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Oh, I thought that was just a dream Desmond had that he shared with Alexander. But no, Desmond is not picky. Not. At. All.
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I'm pretty sure Desmond also hit on Alexander, who has no gender. He's the opposite of picky.
/me begins the "Amount of people Desmond hits on" tally for safekeeping purposes.
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Desmond actually fantasized about giving Father Mulkaey a sensual backrub or something. I don't remember for sure but it was disturbing.
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Where do you people pick up those ideas? That vaguely sounds like FFX-2 and Dragons. >_>
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Don't try to keep count. I'm pretty sure the number had gone beyond anything countable before Desmond joined the party.
As for where we come up with this stuff, well... We're just 'creative.' >_>;
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Well, the king perfect of the DL is our DM.
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... suddenly, everything makes perfect sense.
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If it helps Ciato, I'm just assuming your backstory has that count starting at (d6+2)(100)+d100. As for where they come up with it... no clue. But if I knew I could probably devise a coping strategy better than drinking until I forget.
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October 11th Session
As mentioned in the previous post, we just got done fighting the octomammoth and we discovered the body of the Father, which had been in this grave for two weeks or so, upon Feth’s investigation, which means that… DUN DUN DUN the one we met was a fake!!! Feth had gotten the idol back from the foul son-of-a-bitch, and after investigating the area and stealing the armor from the dead body (and Desmond equips it! And it raises his AC from 19 to 22 as well as +2 to any one saving throw per battle, so it’s pretty badass armor.) In addition, there was a letter planted on the Bullywug Chief. Rachelle uses an enchantment to read the letter, which outlines a plan for the bullywugs to enact, and it is signed by head of the Order of the Eighth Circle or something, which is apparently some type of evil cult. Meanwhile, Desmond and Marza have a manly talk, and Desmond gets over the fact that Marza appeared to be hitting on ‘his’ woman Rachelle. Desmond promised to introduce the youngster to alcohol and ladies. (This may have been the week before, but it was a very manly talk!) The body is taken with them for proof
The sun is starting to rise, and we promised the lizard men we’d visit them at dawn, and then we brought the idol back to them. They were very grateful, and their people were ransacking the remains of the bullywug village and they killed off the remains of the bullywug villagers. The lizardfolk give the party a Bag of Holding, which they throw Father Mulkaey’s body in.
So we headed back to Elk’s Bend to see what the fuck is going on with the fake Father Mulkaey. Then a birdie~~~ appeared. Brother Gregory, who is a close friend of Desmond’s and a longtime, high-standing member of the church in Elk’s Bend, sent along a message in his voice to appear at this certain grove nearish to the city, and to appear alone because my companions are untrustworthy. This message breaks Desmond; between the sights of his mentor Antonio doing bad things, Father Mulkaey doing bad things, and Gregory telling him that his companions (who he has seen do good even if they distrust his mentor) are evil and not trustable, this is all Desmond can take. He reveals the contents of the message to his allies, and all the allies band together. Rachelle tries to affirm their alliance with Marza, who is moderately untrusted because of his newbie status, and she scolds him on his questionable, non-ally oriented strategies in the previous battles. Marza promises to be an ally worthy of their trust.
We then decide to go to the grove where Gregory is. On our way, we hear militia in the distance. They are talking of traitors who have compromised the safety of the town, and after our realization that doppelganger Father may be controlling the public opinion; we decided to hide from the idiots. Desmond very cleverly disguised himself as a cactus, while Rachelle narrowly used her (bad) hiding skills to not have to fight the militia.
Night begins to fall and the party approaches the grove. Feth turns into a spider and sneaks over to try to spy on Gregory, who has some tengu (kengu, whatever) ready to assault the party. He tells them specifically not to kill Desmond. Feth relays the information, and the party goes ahead to Gregory’s position. They try to make their case, but Gregory will not listen, and he accuses them of stealing the idol which protects the city. Desmond tries to reason with him, but he will not listen, so Desmond beings yelling at him, calling him a fool and thickheaded (and when DESMOND calls you thickheaded, you ride the special bus). Desmond also shows him the body, which Gregory calls a fake. The mood begins getting tense and the party prepares for a fight with Gregory and the tengu, but Feth quickly gets to talking to Gregory. They analyze the body together and Feth ends up proving that the body is real, and Gregory is confused.
They head back to Elk’s Bend via the tunnel that they traversed all those sessions ago. They get back to the top of the tunnel and... a lot of Desmond and Gregory’s former allies are trying to hang them for treason. FIGHT IT OUT!!!
The fight had us stuck in a hallway while we were flanked on both sides. There were four NPC troops plus Gregory. The four troops were positioned at the beginning of the hallway, Gregory was at the end and the party was in the middle. As the battle started, we realized there were two primary targets that were threatening; a mage, positioned before the beginning of the hall, fired a shot of magic down the hall, hitting most of the PCs. He was subsequently eliminated by Alexander and the allies, as well as a finishing blow from Rachelle from a distance. The second main target was a berserker, who hit incredibly hard and kept wailing on Rachelle until Desmond wised up and CHALLENGED HIM TO A DUEL. The Halberdiers were semi-competent and they hit Rachelle, who was in the second line, a lot. Rachelle is pretty durable for a mage so she took the hits (and she healed herself a couple times with healing word), so she was fine.
The fight was pretty well-controlled by Alexander at the top and Desmond and Feth at the bottom, with Rachelle doing a little bit on both sides. Marza had a pretty bad spell of bad luck and didn’t really hit with many of his attacks. He used two separate MT attacks which didn’t hit anyone. His luck was laughably bad. After the fight, the remaining troops were taken prisoner and our allies guarded them. The party gets a sense of a SHOWDOWN afoot.
This was a pretty serious plot session, and the fight was really fun although not as hard as the bullywugs. Boss should be tougher though!!!
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Oh also; Desmond feels vindicated because he was probably right about Antonio not being evil but rather being set up by whoever the fuck this doppleganger is.
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You forgot the part where a likely reason that Marza wasn't trusted was the part where, in the mop up of the first Bullywug battle, he'd gleefully knock down their homes before striking down the fleeing children with his eldrich might. And when he heard the popping sounds coming from the clutch of bullywug eggs sizzling in his arcane fires, he wondered if anyone else was getting hungry.
That did seem to come up prominently in the "Are you sure you're trustworthy" conversation.
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Hey! Show respect you two! He is "Grand High Chieftain Marza," now. And you shall address him as such. Although he may drop that title now that the rock is broken. (It was cozy)
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Yes, Grand High Chieftain of the Bullywug tribe that... doesn't seem to exist anymore nor was it really around to have a chance to acknowledge your claim. And I notice you weren't really forthcoming about that title in front of folks likely to kill you on sight for being an honourary Wug.
Just sayin is all.
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Marza likes titles. Marza also likes being alive. Take a guess at which one he likes better.
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Sounds like Marza also likes being this campaign's butt monkey.
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He is a bigger butt-monkey than Desmond, which is kind of impressive.
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I have to wonder if the character dynamics in your game consist entirely of the universe applying layered quantum boots to all the PCs' hineys, which, by their turn, apply distinct boots to each other's hineys in a complex hierarchic ritual.
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Rachelle and Alex are fine! Aside from Alex's obsessive concern about the environment to NPCs who don't care, but that's just the player talking there. >_> Rachelle just keeps us all sane.
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How does she manage to settle down a party that has two of the world's biggest butt monkeys and elven Captain Planet? I want that Diplomacy rank.
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Desmond very cleverly disguised himself as a cactus
This made my day.
Marza had a pretty bad spell of bad luck and didn’t really hit with many of his attacks. He used two separate MT attacks which didn’t hit anyone. His luck was laughably bad.
It could always be worse. Try letting Hatbot handle your rolls sometime. Actually, don't.
You forgot the part where a likely reason that Marza wasn't trusted was the part where, in the mop up of the first Bullywug battle, he'd gleefully knock down their homes before striking down the fleeing children with his eldrich might. And when he heard the popping sounds coming from the clutch of bullywug eggs sizzling in his arcane fires, he wondered if anyone else was getting hungry.
I am totally thinking of District 9 right now.
So, who all is in this game? Ciato/NEB/Mage/Excal and...?
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The other two are IRL friends, though one has posted here in the politics topic as Just Another Day.
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Excal - Evil-Diced Dungeon Master
Elfboy- Rachelle, Token Sane Girl
Mage- Marza, Pyromaniac
Ciato- Desmond, Being of Great Silliness
JAD- Feth, Creature of Weirdness
Other dude- Alexander, Environmentalist Deva
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I sense a pattern in the sanity tiers here.
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Hatbot says Desmond has fucked 423 women before the adventure. The priests at the temple have been very glad for his help in learning how to heal STDs.
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Hatbot says Desmond has fucked 423 women before the adventure. The priests at the temple have been very glad for his help in learning how to heal STDs.
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Was this your idea? I mean, I could see just about any of you picking the idea up, because it's just too funny, but just blaming it on Excal would be too easy. <_<
Regardless, I think I've laughed more with these chronicles so far in a day than I've laughed in the last month. And I laughed a -lot- in the last month.
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I think it was Excal. I am good at being a butt monkey, Excal just mocks me.
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And once again, Occam's Razor eludes me by proving its righteous ruthlessness.
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Hatbot says Desmond has fucked 423 women before the adventure. The priests at the temple have been very glad for his help in learning how to heal STDs.
He's still got a ways to go if he wants to beat Wilt Chamberlain.
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Hatbot says Desmond has fucked 423 women before the adventure. The priests at the temple have been very glad for his help in learning how to heal STDs.
He's still got a ways to go if he wants to beat Wilt Chamberlain.
Elaborate this egregious, yet thoroughly fascinating non-sequitur, please.
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Wilt Chamberlain was a basketball player who claimed to have slept with over a thousand women.
(Hence why, in the Seinfeld episode where Kramer mistakenly receives someone's "ASSMAN" vanity plates, George wonders if they were supposed to be Wilt Chamberlain's.)
EDIT: Consulting Wikipedia to check this reminds me that the stated number was actually 20k. Which is still ridiculous, of course.
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Ciato would have to roll an epic d9999 for that, though, and Excal might be saving that for the big bad's bedtime story count.
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To be fair, I'm still trying to work out a character for Marza. And at first I figured I'd let his Wild Soul do that, but that didn't mesh so well. Also, no matter what character I make, I am going to be a butt monkey, as a special "Thank You" gift from my relation to the DM.
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It could be worse. You could be the DM's girl/boyfriend in a case where the GM is intent on that not meaning favoritism. >_>
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No, that's all you, man. I haven't actually been doing, well, anything to make Marza a butt monkey. The other players and the dice have been doing all the work for me.
As for Ciato's statement. I would like to state that from what I can tell, Desmond's definition of have sex with is "Hit on while I'm too drunk to remember how they shot me down, so I assume the best happened."
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You made Richard one. >_>
Though I guess that's more "He's a Gnome, he deserves it. And more."
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He's a gnomish bard that worships himself and wants to become a God. He is hanging out with the party in order to learn the secrets of Cuthbert that he might apply them to himself and become an unstoppable divine power. He's gonna be so much more fun now that he's not a PC.
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I have to wonder if the character dynamics in your game consist entirely of the universe applying layered quantum boots to all the PCs' hineys, which, by their turn, apply distinct boots to each other's hineys in a complex hierarchic ritual.
Well, someone's worked in retail before.
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I have to wonder if the character dynamics in your game consist entirely of the universe applying layered quantum boots to all the PCs' hineys, which, by their turn, apply distinct boots to each other's hineys in a complex hierarchic ritual.
Well, someone's worked in retail before.
Or watched the Three Stooges.
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I have to wonder if the character dynamics in your game consist entirely of the universe applying layered quantum boots to all the PCs' hineys, which, by their turn, apply distinct boots to each other's hineys in a complex hierarchic ritual.
Well, someone's worked in retail before.
Or watched the Three Stooges.
Or both.
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Does the Ciato wish to update, or shall I be given the privilege?
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I will at some point today, I'm being lazy at the moment.
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Mmk. I shall wait on baited breath, then.
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/me baits the butt-monkey.
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October 17th Session
This session involves minimal plot. Basically the temple has defenses that cover most of the temple and does some sort of evil things to whoever is in the way. So the party, minus Gregory and Alexander who took off with Gregory, is sent off to try to break into Antonio’s room and go through a secret passage to get to the control room of these defenses. So we sneak around to get to Antonio’s room, and we get into the room. Desmond makes a roll for stalking Antonio and gets a 20, of course, so he knows all about the room.
Once in the room, the party investigates, and we find a shield and a cudgel for Desmond to use, and we find a light shield for Rachelle, as well as lots of potions and rituals and things. All of this stuff is shoved in the Bag of Holding, Marza pockets the potions, and we head down the stairwell….
And we open the door with Feth, who does not open the door stealthily enough and gets attacked by an archer! In a strategy to try to get to the boss quickly, Feth rushes ahead. He is quickly downed by the array of Halberdiers, archers, and mages. There is also a Warlord in the back, barking orders at the enemies. Feth falls and is captured by enemy troops.
As for the rest of the battle, the party is all blocked in a stairwell and we are all pretty badly injured, as well as Feared and dazed by the enemies. At this point we feel thoroughly overwhelmed, so the squisheys hide in the end of the stairwell while DESMOND tanks, because, with all his new armor, he can. We tank for another 5 or 6 rounds before Desmond gets critted a couple of times and falls. We were severely outmatched in this battle, and it showed. Fortunately for us, Gregory and Alexander came to save the day, and the enemies surrender.
So the party discusses what to do next, and there’s only one real option; kill the doppelganger Mulkaey. He accuses the Deva of being a Deva of Asmodeus, and this really pisses Alexander off, who is an honest lad. Along with the troops we just defeated, as well as some of our own, we have them stay back and tell people of the doppelganger, who shows his dirty face after a powder of enlightenment or whatever is poured on him. He closes the door so no other troops can get in, and thus the party (minus Feth) and Gregory ready themselves for battle. Rachelle and Marza hid behind pillars, whereas the valiant fighters were in the front, ready to rush to victory!!
He uses rituals to summon two wind elementals and two fire elementals, as well as summoning the skeleton of Antonio. Desmond is horrified and screams “BURN, TRAITOR!!” at him, and the battle begins.
The wind elementals start by severely crippling the party. The first of the evil foes came in and Proned Gregory, Alexander, and Desmond, whereas the second foe came in and attacked Desmond, Mazra, and Alexander, hitting each of them for 17 (out of 44, 37, and 41 HP respectively.) and blinding them. Owwie! Those guys need to die. All of the melee fighters attacked them a bit, and then the fire elementals charged forward with the skeleton. Rachelle came in and did some major crowd control, using Astral Terror and an action point to use some more attacks on the wind elementals. Marza also came in and did attacks. One died, the other Proned us again. Desmond and Alexander charged forward.
Mulkaey finally showed his dirty face to attack Gregory, eventually getting him close to death. Marza used his daily to throw an orb at him, he misses and uses an area of effect fire attack instead, killing Gregory. Mulkaey then finishes him off, cackling evilly and saying his work was done and he started running away. Desmond uses an action point to use Paladin’s Judgment on him, which ended up doing 26 points of damage, which was kickass. The rest of the enemies were killed off by Marza and company when Mulkaey ran way under the desk and he started a new ritual, either to run away or to summon more enemies, and Rachelle runs through the smoke and flames to attack him one more time…
1d10 hits 1! 6 damage! NOOO!
And then he died. Awesome.
So yeah, we win even though Gregory is dead, and we all get to Level 4.
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I decided to increase my Cha and my Dex because it raises my Reflex and my Will. Cha also runs basically all my attack stats.
So, in the last day of the actual game, I gained:
-AC from 19 to 25
-Fortitude from 15 to 16 (just the half-level bonus)
-Reflex from 13 to 17
-Will from 16 to 18
-Basic damage increased from 1d8 + 5 to 1d10 + 7, +2 accuracy
Desmond’s new stats:
16 STR
17 CON
14 DEX
9 INT
11 WIS
20 CHA
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Godly Int.
EDIT:
This little demonstration -does- highlight how awesome levelling up in DnD is, though.
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Eh, a lot of that is because she got this arc's plot equipment. The full set of War Priest's Equipment, which is all about Lvl 8 gear. The funny thing is, that shield they looted ended up blocking about a dozen attacks over the course of the night despite it being just a +2 bonus to AC and Reflex. It was a very popular two numbers for my dice to land on.
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Don't forget the other popular number for your dice. 4.
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Well, to be fair, the shiny new armor + shield + weapon is a big part of that.
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Yeah, those are definitely bigger boosts than I'm used to seeing for one level. The equipment is just badass.
I guess this is 4th edition? I'm used to only seeing one stat get raised at level 4.
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This is 4E, yes. The Shield is the big bonus there, and it is a big bonus mostly because Desmond did not carry one before, in spite of having a free hand. Amazing what +2 to Def/Ref can do for a tank.
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Desmond lost his in a barfight when he tried to use it as a projectile weapon, what can I say.
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Surely there needs to be a feat for shield-throwing. How is one to stat out Captain America?
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I was thinking about the optimum paladin with the stat distribution given (17/16/15/13/11/9) and I was reflecting on how STR/CON feel like the weakest stats. You need one of them to ensure that your Fort is good enough, but at the same time, having both feels like a waste if one of them isn't your primary stat.
My issue with Con is that I feel like its effect on HP is overnerfed; just 1 point per stat point period is really bad and, considering that very few if any class powers run off Con, and it only deals with one skill, it seems pretty terrible. It seems like they should try to strike a truce between the hax of Con in 3e and the crappiness of Con in 4e. I designed my character fundamentally based off the rules I remembered about 2e, and Con was much better in that as well IIRC. STR is seems pretty gimpy as well; 1 skill and determines your basic attack (for attacks of opp primarily), except there is a feat that allows you to run it off of your base stat. Which means that, if you do that, STR is pretty strictly worse than Con to raise unless your powers are based on it. As a Paladin I find STR borderline useless (unless my ability to use badass armor depends on it) despite being a clearly physical class, and, if I were trying to play optimized, I would not dump 15/16 into them. Ever.
If I were designing my character optimally, I would do the following distribution, with a human character to add to my saves:
11 STR
15 CON
9 INT
13 DEX
16 WIS
17 CHA (+2)
Invest one of my feats in Melee Proficiency or whatever it is. And bam, STR is basically useless to me.
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Were Paladins always this CHA-heavy?
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Well, they used to need STR for melee damage, but CHA was always the god stat. It buffed all their saving throws, boosted attack rolls for Smite Evil, increased healing for Lay On Hands, gave them more Turn Undead shots...
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I just didn't know much about that, since most of my admittedly scarce DnD knowledge is second-hand and I never played a physical class in DnD to boot (let alone Paladins >_>).
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Were Paladins always this CHA-heavy?
Let's see, 2e Pallies needed a minimum of 17 Charisma for whatever reason, 3e had it apply to a bunch of stuff. Dunno about 4e, but Pallies needing Charisma there doesn't sound shocking.
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In 4e, Paladins main attack stat is CHA. You hurt people more by being more appealing/intimidating/whatever.
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Basically, in 4E everybody gets to use their primary stat for damage. Barring a bad build, nobody has a low damage mod.
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Paladins have gone from...
AD&D: Must have a CHA of 17+ to enter. But, it does very little for you. STR primary, WIS/CON tied for secondary. Pally spells are actually okay... ish... when the power curve isn't quite so steep. Also, you have to be human, because...?
D&D 3e: CHA primary, CON secondary, STR tertiary. And you get crappy spells based off of WIS, but seriously, if you wanted spells you'd be a cleric so you could godmode at higher levels.
D&D 4e: CHA or STR primary, CON secondary for CHA-prime, CHA secondary for STR-prime, with CON tertiary, then either INT or DEX. The reason CON is still important is Healing Surges, not HP.
EDIT: Stopped to eat dinner while I was posting, so I forgot to mention how much I'm enjoying these Actual Play reports. :)
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3e Paladins...get +CHA to all saves. It's like a better version of the Hexblade's Arcane Resistance, really. (But then again, Hexblade+Blackguard = lol saves). That aside, they're...not much better than fighters, frankly. Who in turn are not very good without PrCs.
...welcome to 3e melee.
4e Paladins...well, CHA isn't the main attack stat. It dovetails as Cranbud states, with CHA or STR being the primary stat depending on your build (and only STR/CHA races can manage a Balanced build easily enough). CON's importance is...a few things for Paladins.
1: Earlygame HP. The spread is still quite narrow, though nowhere near as bad as 3e.
2: Healing Surges. They get an assload to start with. They typically need that assload. That aside, they do have powers that burn Surges for extra offense, should they go that route.
3: Axe/Hammer specialization feats. These tend to be the big weapons one goes for, and as a result, CON is important here, doubly as a HP/surge booster, and for direct access (Hammer more than Axe).
Other classes like extra CON for reasons 1 and 2, but also for armor availability--to be precise, armor heavier than Leather requires 13 STR and CON for proficiency, and don't even look at Plate without either autoprof or 15 in both stats--and you typically want the heaviest you can get without getting in the way of class features; the extra AC matters a decent bit.
...no, armor doesn't get in the way of casting classes' abilities for once. So if you can manage the stat distribution, go ahead and get a suit of full plate for your Infernal Warlock. You won't regret it.
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The CHA abilities on Paladin just seem straight-up better though.
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From my understanding (I haven't actually done a close comparison) you are correct, pre-Divine Power. Strength based Paladins are pretty bad in core. That branch (and Paladins on the whole, really) get a pretty beautiful mechanical booster from Divine Power, though.
4[W] + Str Mod Daily with the drawback of taking a meager 5 damage? Stack on Ardent Vow? Thank you very much.
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I play with a (Dragonborn, but he essentially dumped CHA before racial mods) STRaladin in one campaign, and he was definitely suffering as we advanced in levels... before Divine Power. STRaladin was definitely one of the setups WotC realized needed a boost from core, and it got one of the biggest boosts out there.
Paladins in general got one of the larger boosts from core, actually. Most of the classes gained versatility from their respective Power books, without necessarily growing stronger at their core schtick. Paladins became much, much better at being Defenders.
I suspect that both the Paladin and the Warlock suffered from being tanky classes for their role; their above-the-curve resilience was originally expected to be more important than it turned out to be in actual play, so they needed more help to bring them up to par with the more fragile PHB1 classes and PHB2 classes.
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Maybe it depends on the battles your DM throws at you, but our Paladin's tankiness (no Divine Power here) has been really, really valuable.
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Well, you guys are also still at a level where a vast majority of things target AC, and have few options otherwise. Those halberdiers Desmond was casually mocking had both more damage and accuracy than the magic missiles the mages were lobbing. But because they didn't target AC, the mages had you guys panicking.
Higher levels also means more means to attack defenses besides AC, which means Desmond's absurd tankiness also starts to decline a bit.
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This is why I am making efforts to raising non-AC saves. And raising my HP. I wanna tank tank tank.
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The main issue with Paladin was that Divine Challenge was pretty mediocre, especially for Strength Paladins. It can be mitigated by DM and party obviously, but, overall, the mark kinda sucked. The addition of the Divine Sanction (as well as a couple options to make Paladins simultaneously offensive/defensive/healer threats) really evened the class out, overall.
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I might have to look at the Divine Power book a little bit then. I do want something that makes my mark better. =)
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Divine Sanction is, essentially, a secondary mark attached to a bunch of Paladin powers. It functions pretty much identically to Divine Challenge but without the same limitations, which allows you to set up multiple marks and be more effective in a general melee since now several people are getting pings in the FACE whenever they opt to not mess with you.
Mighty Challenge also rocks all sorts of socks for Strength Paladins.
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Huh, yeah. It's definately been worthwhile to do a reread on the old Paladin stuff and give Divine Power a bit of a once over, especially since I had managed to forget one key quirk of the Divine Challenge which is actually kinda important (aka, standing next to the target also counts) and the Divine Sanction just looks badass.
Ciato, in honour of reading this sucker, you get to retrain twice this level, but only so long as one of them is into something with Divine Sanction. Looks like I'm eventually going to be getting a copy of this book too, which... isn't actually so bad considering three of the four classes this thing covers are in the party.
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What is Mighty Challenge?
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Add your Str Mod to your Divine Mark Damage
It would bump you from 8 to 11.
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Oooh, that's a Feat?
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*digs up about half a dozen cool skills to retrain*
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Excal or Magetastic: PM me on IRC at some point today.
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October 25th Session – Desmond’s a Poet and He Didn’t Know It
(and neither did anyone else)
The PCs drag the body of the doppelganger out in the room for all to see, as the door is propped up and the second-in-command of the temple, Joshua, appears. Desmond wants to be released in order to go enjoy himself with a keg and some ladies, but no such luck. The party is put on house arrest, and Desmond despairs.
While on house arrest, Feth memorizes rituals, Rachelle writes letters to the church that she was sent from back in Thronton, Alexander is comatose, and Marza is locked up in a jail cell for asking for a local cat. Meanwhile, Desmond works on his mean faces in order to become more intimidating. Though many laugh at his faces, he finally found a really scary one, and he was happy :). Then he decided he would also train in poetry and send the beautiful Rachelle a poem declaring his love for her.
Roses are red
Violets are green
I love you so much
But you are so mean :(
Desmond DEMANDED that his poem be sent IMMEDIATELY, and the guards snickered as they took the poem to Rachelle. Eyes were rolled as Rachelle received it. (As the player giggled incessantly, but Rachelle would do no such thing!) After being let out of house arrest, Desmond continued to try to woo Rachelle, who said that there were many men like him in Thronton.
MEN AS HANDSOME? MEN AS CHARMING? MEN AS STRONG?!! This was just unbelievable, so Desmond cried, and sent off to drown his tears in excessive booze. He ended up fabricating ever-so-slightly the stories of the adventure, which ended in, after Marza, that foolish fool, tried to attack enemies and FAILED because he is a WEAKLING, Desmond saved Rachelle from the impending doom of tentacle rape and yet SHE COURTS WITH MARZA. ARRRGH.
Life is pain.
Marza and Feth find a kitty for Marza’s familiar. The poor kitty seems frazzled but begins talking. Marza transforms him into a cat that changes properties based on his element for the day.
Later:
Desmond comes back from the bar, spreading his exploits and singing bar songs. Marza’s kitty disappears at Marza’s command, confusing a drunken Desmond. I can forsee that most of the cat’s uses involve tricking Desmond, but Desmond can also choke Marza pretty easily so he’d better watch his ass.
In the morning, not too much happens. Marza abuses his cat to electrocute people since he is lightning elemental that day, and Desmond tries to pet the kitty. This does… not… end… well…
The party decides to visit the druid. They first go to a trader who was alleged of trading with said druid, who was rather rude to them, saying that the church had sent men to kill him (which is like lies!!) until Desmond used his charm to woo the guy and talk him into taking us to him.
We then encounter a douchey (stereotypically tree hugging fantasy) elf who blathers about nature and hating cities and civilization and other bullshit. Being a strict follower of Erathis, Desmond is EXTREMELY insulted, so much that he can’t even speak or else he might scream in anger/choke a bitch. As the air gets tense, the druid appears, and talks with the party. The party is told that the druid was also attacked by supposed followers of Erathis, and he hands a sigil with chains around it. (In the letter we got off the bullywug, it was signed by the Lord of the Chains.)
The party agrees to help him with eradicating the hobgoblins that are attacking them and to try to get to the bottom of the people who are trying to both disrupt cities and disrupt nature.
I CAN FEEL A FIGHT COMING ON but the session ends because we are all falling asleep.
---
So I’ve decided to at least partially multiclass Desmond. At level 4 I decided to pick up the base Warlord multiclassing feat, which gives me 1/day Inspiring Word. At the very least I am going to pick up the Level 5 Daily from Warlord at Level 10 when I can, since it is healing surge + CHA bonus healing within 10 squares and including me, and it ALSO hits for 3d10 + STR mod damage. This is really cool for keeping the party alive in a pinch. I haven’t decided if I want to become a full multiclasser (Excal told me he would houserule a couple extra abilities if I did decide to full multiclass, like being able to use the healing as much as Warlord as well as giving me Warlord class features.) We’ll see what happens there, but it’s a pretty interesting option and it makes me STR much more useful (although I can’t be a INT Warlord since my mod is -1. Haha.)
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Roses are red
Violets are green
I love you so much
But you are so mean :(
Desmond DEMANDED that his poem be sent IMMEDIATELY, and the guards snickered as they took the poem to Rachelle. Eyes were rolled as Rachelle received it.
although I can’t be a INT Warlord since my mod is -1. Haha.)
Those two particular instances made me incessantly giggle. I can't explain why for the latter.
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It broke Excal for about 30 seconds.
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I can see -both- of those breaking Excal for a prolonged interval.
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Warlords have this ability called Commanding Strike. Basically, the Warlord tells an ally to physically attack someone who is next to them with a bonus of their INT modifier.
Desmond's INT bonus is -1 AND he's the best base physical fighter in the party, so this is tentatively the worst idea ever.
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...
/me breaks for 30 seconds.
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Hey, their healing is CHA-based! I will just never do anything INT-offensive with the Warlord part ever~
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Given my experiences with earlier DnD, I sorta went into a "you're a fighter, eventually you're going to just exist to take hits for the squishy mages as they slaughter the universe with that skillset of doom" tangent, but I gather 4E evolved past -that-. >_>
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Yeah, 4E gives the physical classes a distinct advantage for single-target attacks. Spellcasters are still great at utility and crowd control, but fighters get their own nifty tricks like smashing something's face in for six times normal weapon damage with added silence.
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That's pretty much my job. Right now I am twinking so I can maximize the people who want to attack me over squishies.
I have a once per Encounter skill which makes everyone within 3 squares of me able to attack only me or take 11 points of damage for a round. Which is :)
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That's really nifty for tankadining.
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October 25th Session – Desmond’s a Poet and He Didn’t Know It
(and neither did anyone else)
And we still don't. Just sayin'.
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October 25th Session – Desmond’s a Poet and He Didn’t Know It
(and neither did anyone else)
And we still don't. Just sayin'.
*sniffles LOUDLY*
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That's really nifty for tankadining.
Snow, I highly recommend you check out 4th Ed rules, get your hands on PHB1 and then get PHB2. I swear I am still in love with Zealot's. I thought the Rogue class was pretty cool, but Zealots take it to a whole other level of neato cool. You get the mechanics they have in place for the tanks to make things attack them and invert them and use it for what is essentially assassination.
Edit - This is actually Avengers, not Zealots. So yeah mixing up a paragon path Adjective with the base class name.
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Avengers are a highly interesting class, though reportedly amazingly hard to play really well--not due to any fault of their own. The mechanics are just tricky (Unity aside, that's just a "gang up on the boss" sort of thing, and that's easy for them.)
Pursuit Avengers are tricky on the basis that you want the enemies to run from you. However, you're a striker. Therefore, you are a juicy target (High defenses aside. Avenger defenses are generally nice, and easy to build up.) due to sub-defender/leader durability. Therefore, they'll WANT to attack you on that basis. That...is not exactly easy. As for Retributive Avengers...well, that's the durability issue all over again. Minions are fun to exploit for that, but...you're still going to be taking hits that you likely can't afford to take many of.
Of course, Oath of Vengeance is fucking awesome. Especially for critwhoring or people who hate their luck with dice.
Given, they're an officially-designated striker that is able to use a Mordenkrad (4-12 damage after Brutal 1, on top of the bell curve benefits. The only thing the Executioner's Axe gets on it is High Crit and easier feat access.) effectively. The only other class that gets that claim is Barbarians. But really, Barbarian is the most straightforward class in the game, just about.
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Pursuit Avengers are tricky on the basis that you want the enemies to run from you. However, you're a striker. Therefore, you are a juicy target (High defenses aside. Avenger defenses are generally nice, and easy to build up.) due to sub-defender/leader durability. Therefore, they'll WANT to attack you on that basis. That...is not exactly easy. As for Retributive Avengers...well, that's the durability issue all over again. Minions are fun to exploit for that, but...you're still going to be taking hits that you likely can't afford to take many of.
I think that is the point where the GM has to stop war gaming against the player party a bit. There is more to balance than just the rulebooks there. You don't have to hand the players the game, but no point totally shutting down all their abilities as well if you can fudge it a bit.
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I dunno what the Avenger we have is, but he's an invaluable boss-killer. He racks up crazy damage by taking attacks of opp from people and then SMASHES a leader. A couple of the leaders we've faced have either been really badass or ended the fight ala RPGs. 48 damage to a guy who had less than 48 HP at Level 3 was ridiculous o.o
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Retributive. So very, very retributive. You can tell, because of the +4 to damage everytime someone besides his oath target takes a swing at him. It's also why it is being suggested that he tool his character in order to trawl for AoOs (Attacks of Opportunity) while he charges the big bad.
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Pursuit Avengers are tricky on the basis that you want the enemies to run from you. However, you're a striker. Therefore, you are a juicy target (High defenses aside. Avenger defenses are generally nice, and easy to build up.) due to sub-defender/leader durability. Therefore, they'll WANT to attack you on that basis. That...is not exactly easy. As for Retributive Avengers...well, that's the durability issue all over again. Minions are fun to exploit for that, but...you're still going to be taking hits that you likely can't afford to take many of.
I think that is the point where the GM has to stop war gaming against the player party a bit. There is more to balance than just the rulebooks there. You don't have to hand the players the game, but no point totally shutting down all their abilities as well if you can fudge it a bit.
I'll admit it's a problem on my part. I have a problem of assuming that the enemy is going to pick the best tactical option every time given the PCs available. In essence, assuming the enemy will be too smart.
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Sounds more like you're assuming the DM is TRYING to kill the party. Which, from my experiences, is a bad thing for the DM to do.
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Given that I've had a couple of problematic games where my character specifically keeps getting shut down, abilitywise (as well as one where the only other person who had a good idea of what he was doing was as well), I guess I've started towards the 'assume the worst' mindset.
...in retrospect, this may have some to do with my damage obsession.
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Sounds more like you're assuming the DM is TRYING to kill the party. Which, from my experiences, is a bad thing for the DM to do.
On the other hand, this is the entire point of Call of Cthulu. Though having a game built around doing so reasonably and creatively helps.
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Having a game built with the expectation of such also helps.
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See also: Paranoia. Although the fact that they players are also trying to TPK makes things a bit more even.
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It actually isn't all that weird for classes to want to get out of the Pursuit Avenger's face. For example, by hunting down ranged damage or teaming up with the Defender to take on opposing Strikers together.
There are a lot of classes and individuals that don't want to stand toe-to-toe with the Avenger, and you can also teamwork up similar situations. Hell, it can even allow for some psuedo-Defender shenanigans by diverting from your other squishies. It isn't an ideal, long term solution, but Avengers can take hits if they need to.
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Also they are teleporting Jesus assassins. Just had to like get that shit out there.
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Conceptually, Avengers are one of my favorite classes for what they are able to represent. That is to say, a dark side to just about any in-universe religious organization (Okay, so it was easily possible before with Swordsages or Rogue/Clerics or whatnot). But the notion of church-employed assassins is always amusing, and something that conceptually entertains me.
...of course, I'm the guy who frankly never cared for Pelor, Bland Sun God of Blandness and "I AM TEH SUN GOD THAT HATES TEH UNDEADS AND LIKES TEH HEALINGS!".
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/me prepares for the epic retelling
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November 1st Session
Douchey douchebag leads us through the forest and dumps us off at some point. Desmond decides that the best way to approach a stealth mission is to sing loudly and badly as we walk through the plains, annoying Feth mightily, who is trying to spy on the enemy. Feth tries to spy on the hobgoblin scout with their wolves, but the wolves spot him and chase him like hell. Poor Feth.
The next thing that happens is that we gather, the squisheys hide in the bushes, while Desmond stands tall and CHALLENGES THE HOBGOBLINS. Feth rushes to the front to beat on some hobgobbys, Marza attacks the wolves from range. Bad idea, since they have range too, and they come and chomp on him and make him prone and hit him with extra attacks. DESMOND comes to save the day (and no, this isn’t Desmond just bolstering himself). He challenges both wolves TO A D-D-DUEL, so if they attack lovely young Marza, they take 11 damage.
The party overall gets pretty unlucky; Desmond hits two 1s in a fight and Rachelle hits one (not that this means too much) whereas the enemies hit like 3 20’s. Feth died while attacking the hobgoblins, but not before making them very unhappy.
We then wander into the hobgoblin villages after taking a rest (and Excal making us paranoid about using Dailies in the last battle, oh well :p) Time to kick some hobby ASS!
Not too much happened here, it was a fairly short session that was mostly battle.
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So, how much of a commodity is revival in your current campaign?
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We don't really use reviving, it's sort of weird. You can just heal people with regular healing as long as they don't have their FFT counter go down to 0. Counter goes down every turn but only if your rolls are 1-9.
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So, it's kinda like SaGa Fantasy Tactics and Dragons in that sense - is that canon for 4E or is it a houserule? 3E had a -10 below HP threshold before the character hit the bucket for good, IIRC.
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It's canon. You roll a d20 every turn you're at negative hit points, and if you fail three times, or if some jerk brings you down to -50% of your HP, you die.
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I may need to double check the specific rules, however, it's mostly just for how it handles negative HP and healing effects (for example, I may, or may not, institute a rule along the effects of getting hit forces an immeadiate save, or that it adds a penalty to future saves, or something similar, just to make it so that degree of damage matters).
However, the basic mechanic is a three strikes system running off of your saving throw, which means that a bleeding human often lasts longer than a bleeding anything else. Also, rolling a 20 means you stop bleeding (but don't get up) And yeah, it was pretty similar in 3.X, except that negative HP mattered, and the mechanic was that you'd roll a d10 and you'd lose 1 HP each time you didn't roll a 10. Of course, if you did roll a 10, you were home free until you got hit again.
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I think I'd be down for house-ruling that when you get hit by an attack, you can choose to either make an immediate save, or take a -1 to your saving throws. (Bide your time and make things increasingly difficult, or take a chance)
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Well, house ruling will depend on my double checking, which will happen now that I've seen Shale's answer (which I think is correct). If he's right, I'm going to implement that. Note that so far, it has only mattered for poor old Gregory (still got better).
As for raising of the dead and the like, it does exist. If you're in a major centre. Just, they need a fresh corpse and access to the proper ritual, and for most folks, a substantial fee to cover the materials. This guy got brought back because he was an important NPC, and the NPC organization he works for needed him back in order to avoid a lot of work. The PCs, on the other hand, would have had to pay, in diamonds, a fair chunk in order to cover the fee.
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Well, we do have a lot of money stored in that Bag of Holding. So I'm not overly worried unless it costs, like, 3000 gold worth. But yeah. -50% mHP = Death sounds fair enough to me, I guess. Especially considering how protective we get when one of us gets downed. (Mostly Desmond, the
Insufferable Incredibly Tanky)
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Being insufferable and a total tank are mutually exclusive?
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In a title they are. Also: Marza doesn't want to be choked. He likes the use of his neck. Makes breathing much easier.
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I'm sure Marza will have his neck choked anyway. Just not fatally because Desmond is sweet like that.
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Look, it's not Desmond's fault that sometimes he needs to choke a bitch. I mean, Marza's just begging for it.
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Doesn't the saying go "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me," not "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, and say goodbye to your neck." ?
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Choking necks takes priority over dusty adages.
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Desmond is this close to choking a bitch. Thiiiis close. At least I didn't touch acid kitty.
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And I believe this means it's time Marza shaped up, before Desmond decides what shape he'll be in. >_>
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But it's so much funnier if he doesn't shape up :D
STOP DATING MY WOMAN
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Well, Marza is only lacking in Strength, so...
SHE'S NOT YOUR WOMAN IF YOU CAN'T GET HER IN THE FIRST PLACE.
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What's the rule? Oh, right. The ones with Charisma are the ones who need it to avoid getting lynched.
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Our campaign seems to determine Charisma pretty much purely as force of personality. What of it?
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What's the rule? Oh, right. The ones with Charisma are the ones who need it to avoid getting lynched.
It's the truth. I'm surprised Marza hasn't been lynched anyway.
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What's the rule? Oh, right. The ones with Charisma are the ones who need it to avoid getting lynched.
It's the truth. I'm surprised Marza hasn't been lynched anyway.
So am I. I think the DM is trying very, very hard to keep PCs alive, though.
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Well, mostly the PCs would have choked him.
:D
:D
Watch yer ass.
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Okay, now I keep imagining this D&D party having Mana Khemia character quests. I have to wonder if Desmond would be unbalanced enough to turn himself into a Puni, though.
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Hmm... y'know...
Desmond = Lily's tainted love + Ulrika's intelligence.
Marza = Lily's cruelty to familiars + Ulrika's intelligence.
Rachelle = Yun (I would say Raze, but less snarky and more enduring)
Alexander = Pepperoni - Goto.
...
Oh God... this is Mana Khemia 2, the D&D Campaign.
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Success.
EDIT: Although Rachelle as Raze makes more sense: she has a Lilyman humping her legs.
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Well, yes. Rachelle has the harem, but doesn't have the sarcasm. More a dry stoic mask to try and survive the madness.
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Well, Raze is stoic and blunt rather than crisply sarcastic anyhow. It's just that he's sort of a jerk.
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True. I guess it's just that Rachelle isn't anywhere near as blunt. But yeah, somewhere between the two.
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ZOMBIE INVASION
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ELABORATE
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I don't think there's much to elaborate on, honestly. >_>
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You say that like I care. Summaries, summaries! <_<
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Allow me to attempt to summarize.
Zombies. They invaded.
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/me gnaws on Andrew.
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Dude, how rude is that! First you bust into their home, and then you say they invaded? Man, some good guys you are.
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Considering the sanity spread in your party, I'm surprised they didn't give the zombies wedgies, dunk their heads into the toilet and flush their faces in while at it.
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Mostly because the zombies did it to the party first.
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That surprises me a lot less.
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Zombies are total dicks.
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Zombies are total dicks.
QFT. (See also: Skeletons)
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Ryan, just a heads up. I took a look at your feat and noticed that it requires training in Religion, which Feth does not have. If you want to change your feat, or retrain one of your skills to Religion, I'm happy to oblige.
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December 2nd Session – The Day From Hell
The title is a misnomer since this day has been going on for like four sessions and had a lot of battles in it.
The first thing that happened in this very eventful day was deciding to wake up bright and early in order to sneak into the city. Alex spotted a convenient sneak-in point in a cave and we successful got in! Until we were attacked by zombies which were being run by a ritual in a graveyard. Unfortunately our party was like rawr fight instead of rawr mess with the ritual in the middle of the graveyard, and zombies spawned much faster than we could kill them. Eventually we figured the battle out and Rachelle went over to the ritual to prevent it! …and rolled a 1, so she activated the five turn alarm and started getting chomped on. Feth, who was almost dead, was revived by Desmond to help her. Marza spent most of the battle on his ass as usual.
So we managed to deactivate the zombie ritual and we snuck into the city via the sewers. Marza detected a strange power from the city and we followed it to the castle which the hobgobbys have invaded. We set their orchard on fire. We sneak into the castle and fortunately murder the guard before he moves or else he would have alerted his buddies. Then we MEET GRALLAX and Richard who both summon shit, presumably using the relic to assist. Grallax puts us to sleep and slows us and all kinds of crazy shit, but we get the relic stolen from the city by Richard, who is around but runs away. We also try to hightail it as well. We were pretty close to losing Alex – he fell behind due to being slowed and was sleeped. Desmond used his SAVING THROW GIVING POWER! to make him less sweepy though. Marza was also slept (the sleep kicked in after Marza’s turn); he teleported backwards to the stairwell. He proceeded to fail his check and tumble down said stairwell and took seven damage or so. Tentacle Demons tried to rape Rachelle and failed. Party narrowly gets away from the evil druid.
After that, we run down the hallway and Feth is separated from us by falling pillars and such (the player is busy right now!). We find an illusionary wall and go into it to hide; we find some sweet stuff for Alexander (new weapon and armor) and run across some mysterious fountain full of shiny holy water of Pellor (Alex’s god).
Next, we find a path back into the sewers. Since we want to escape back from which we came, we try to send Marza’s kitty to try to find a better route. Bad idea, since the hobs figure us out and lead an attack against us. They hit hard. Oww. So once again we flee.
No time to rest, no time to rest! So we don’t gain our HP back from the last fight, not that we took a ton of damage. We then run into some enemies who meet us outside the cave. Desmond decides to charge forward, Divine Challenge the mage who is rather unhappy with having to use his abilities on Desmond or take 11 damage. This is a pattern you will notice in enemies. These guys are pretty easy compared to previous battles, and we clean up pretty fast after Desmond’s initial charge.
After that, we take our short rest. About time! But nothing could quite prepare us for what was to come…
Dun dun dun!
We try to sneak past a series of hobgob forts and all of us are weary. Desmond is tired from running in heavy armor and we get caught by a sentry who follows us and alerts people to our existence. We approach Fort #2 and a lot of hobgobs (17 I think; three archers and 14 regulars) and we decided to avoid them since they didn’t spot us too well. We went to the side to try to attack them; we were being closed in on from more than one side. It was pretty tense; we felt like we were surrounded on all sides and caught in a deathtrap. One fun moment was when Marza’s player asks the DM if he could try to summon demons with the relic or have the relic save us. The DM smiles evilly and says “Yes, yes, yes you can…. but if you roll a one…. MWAHAHAHA!!!” I thought that was pretty hilarious.
So we go to the side, and fight! 10 ROUND TIME LIMIT OR ENEMIES ADVANCE ON US.
We spot a mage so we all spread out, which ended up being a really foolish decision. The enemies all charge Marza and they down him in their first round of attacks to -14 HP. His death is -22, so this is a BAD THING. Desmond uses his one shot of Lay on Hands to revive the little bastard as well DIVINE CHALLENGING EVERYONE and attacking the mage, who will likely use nasties on us next round. Marza actually thought that reviving him was a bad idea and didn’t want us to do it; the DM told us that he would have basically died if we had listened to him, which is kind of interesting. We end up murdering the mage with a combination of invoker hax and Marza along with Desmond’s attack. Desmond also took a hit for barely alive Marza, and he ended up living at least one more round. Rachelle killed a lot of stuff with her MT as well as injuring peoples.
Battle continues, Marza dies again, Desmond tries to defend him with Divine Challenges as much as possible, Rachelle heals him and flings her magic, and Marza pops up and flings magic again. I am imagining Marza prone on the ground firing spells. Alex doesn’t really get to do his thing too well this battle; didn’t really play to his strengths and he picked a really bad target for his Oath since there was a hobbie riding a wolf. Desmond abuses positioning to Challenge people (this is what Desmond is all about really.)
Marza ends up being downed three times and ends the battle with 2 HP and no healing surges left, but he is still alive to see another day. Somehow. We (finally!) get to rest after fighting three real battles and two pseudo-battles in a game day. (I still had my daily though, just in case Marza died again. >_>;;)
Next time, we will hopefully meet Feth again!
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Yay for Richard having the Holy Relic that the town uses to protect itself. I'm... kinda not looking forward to explaining that one. Not sure if we're still in pretty shaky terms with the church or not.
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It seems like we are on pretty good terms with the church actually -- we were sent to investigate things that were going on around said church. Now the real question is... is Elk's Bend even safe anymore? We've been gone for a few days and some bad shit has happened there lately.
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True. We also know for a fact that the thing keeping the town safe is gone, and has had some bad mumbo jumbo done to it in the meanwhile. Luckily, I think the Druid is going to be at least a little more friendly with the church and Elk's Bend, and hopefully that'll add up to something.
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So we went over Alexander's character sheet with the player yesterday and we discovered a few things:
-Alexander has a once-an-ENCOUNTER ability to make allies reroll a hit roll on his oath.
-Radiant Vengeance, the at-will he seems to ignore, works beautifully with taking an opp attack from range; his censure of retribution adds four damage and he gains 5 HP back from any attack he takes.
-Alexander has Avenger's Resolve, which lets him for one turn resist 5 to all damage taken, which is an immediate interrupt. This would be great for racking up damage as well and let him take a few attacks of opp pretty safely.
-Avenger Level 5 Dailies suck balls. So much balls that the three of us together decided that getting a second Level 1 Daily was a better idea; we found one that does 3W + Wis with weapon bonuses and increases his damage and speed by 2 and his Athletics by 5 (useful for scaling things for sure).
-Avengers are cooler than I thought.
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So, you're thwacking him upside the head?
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He is pretty confused with all the number bookkeeping that DnD provides and I think he's a little overwhelmed by all his options. But yes, we thwack him.
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Think of it as disciplining love.
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One thing that is interesting is that.. basically, every time you get hit by someone who isn't your Oath of Enmity in the round, he gets +4 to his damage. I always thought it was a melee-only effect when it's not. .-.
DESMOND has a new ability though which gives all allies +1 all defense within three panels on all sides of Desmond and it hits all enemies in the three square radius for 2d6 + 5?6? damage. Pretty sweet, and it finally gives Desmond some MT stuff.
Also I am retraining an at-will which lets me challenge TWO PEOPLE A ROUND!!!
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So, Alexander and Desmond will now destroy worlds with the mighty powers of character quests. I approve.
(Granted, the CQ happened in real life rather than in the game, but.)
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Yesss. We rule!
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Just for clarification: the divine challenge thingy, mechanically speaking, is like a taunt that forces enemies you targetted to go for your throat instead of aiming at other people, right?
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More or less. Basically I can mark one person a round that I am either attacking or I end my turn next to. That person takes 11 points of damage if they attack anyone but me. Considering that a) a large part of defense in DnD isn't HP but the ability to dodge, which they can't do with this and b) 11 HP is about 1/4-1/5 of enemy HP, it makes enemies cry immensely.
One of the at-wills that I am getting is called Ardent Strike. For one round only, it marks someone I attacked. It basically gives me the flexibility to attack one person and have them marked for a round and to mark a second person who is merely adjacent to me.
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Man, that's some neat reverse-engineered tanking synergy.
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Upon closer inspection, Marza has decided to multi-class into Bard. Not only does it give him Ritual Casting for free, but it gives him access to Bard stuff (just in case), and once per day, he can cast a Bard ritual of his level or lower for free. Though I'll need to check with the DM about some of it, it's looking like a good thing to retrain into.
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Thursday Dec. 17th update. (Though I think there's a few days worth of updates in there, somewhere.)
After we left off, the group retreats to the fort they had been going to for a good while now, and are left alone as killing all of the wolves makes us hard to track. We rest up, and begin our march back to Elk's Bend in safety. We decide to go in more of a straight line than the bee-line we had done to get to the Hob-city in the first place. This just so happens to take us by a couple of villages. The first one we go to has people that are very on edge and telling us of rumours of people blinking out of existence, getting attacked, etc. (We also passed by some farms that had been attacked by Hobgoblins, but they left after a bit of struggling because they had been called back to home base for something. Hmm. I wonder what.) They then tell us that a whole bunch of places, especially farms, have been abandoned lately, and that they haven't heard from the messenger they sent to Luttin in far too long. So, being the brave adventurers we are, we offer to make sure that things are A-OK over there.
When we arrive, Alexander notices that something seems rather mechanical about the villagers, Rachelle notices that they're all moving in a pattern, Desmond notices that nobody here is actually from the village, and to top it all off, there were people working on the farms. While we're closer to Elk's Bend than the other town, this still sets off more warning bells than the party did when they left Hob-city. Desmond addresses a nearby farmer, and after about a minute, gets a very... mechanical response. (surprise surprise) We (mostly Alex, Desmond, and Rachelle) go through the motions of the conversation, Marza fingering his daggers very closely, ready to start blasting, and we end it having learned absolutely nothing, and being enticed to stay the night. Multiple times we were enticed. (And good beer was even offered for the Desmonds!) The party moved on, heading to Elk's Bend, not wanting to waste any more time.
When the party arrives at Elk's Bend, they head straight to the church to relax (all save Marza's kitty, whom he puts on a search around town for any sources of magic), and find themselves making a report of everything that has happened to Gregory. They even offer him the Holy Relic to inspect for himself, which he then promptly gives back, giving them a special ritual to perform their newest mission. To contact St. Cuthbert's 1000 year old dead buddy and have him fix up the Holy Relic. As the meeting finishes, Marza's kitty comes in with a frozen squid thing attached to it, which Marza detaches and puts into the bag of holding for SCIENCE!... which empties the bag and the contents fall on Marza's head 5 minutes later, minus the squid-thing. It is recommended he not do that again. On the bright side, the cat found a magic item shop. Go it.
The party goes shopping, finding many shiny things, but only having the money to buy themselves some cloaks (of resistance), and boots (of acrobatics). Sadly, Gregory bought all of the ritual scrolls, so none of those. Marza also buys himself a ritual book with most of his personal cash. They go back to the church to rest up and wait for Feth. Luckily, the next day, he shows up, and spends a couple hours shopping, while everyone else packs their stuff and gets ready to head off. Oh, and everyone has leveled, too, so yay for extra dailies!
On the way to the Alefin Downs, Desmond strikes up a conversation with the party about parents. Alex is a Deva, so... no parents to speak of, except possibly Pelor, but ehh. Desmond is, of course, a freak of nature with an elven daddy and a dead human mother, and his elven daddy abandoned him to a monastery of Erathis. Marza was exiled from his town of Eladrin Wizards because he is, evidently, not a wizard, and is not allowed back to his Feywild hometown until he becomes a great wizard able to bend the very fabric of space and time at his every whim. Feth is... not so open about his family, and Rachelle is, of course, aggressively boring, in that she has two very much alive human parents that wanted her to become a great Invoker someday, blah blah blah.
As they get closer to the Downs, they meet up with some of those people that have randomly blinked out of existence. They're like the Luttin people, only different. We speak with them for a while, being told by the crazy leader (whom Desmond owes a few silver) that we can't pass, and not giving any reasons or anything. We just can't. He also freaks out when the outsiders and their dimension are mentioned, and is inconsistent with his escape story. Nobody else from his party of 5 (including him) speak. Marza spends the time with his daggers out, desperately clinging to the hope that, hey, maybe these guys WON'T attack us. Desmond says "We're gonna keep going," they transform, Marza throws some chaos their way, and the fight begins.
This is a very odd fight. First off, the silent dudes grow claws and the like, and the guy who spoke is actually a Large four-legged creature that is made of the various remains of more people than can be counted. Next, as soon as Marza gets a turn, he walks up next to Rachelle, snaps his fingers, and they both have Resist 5 Psychic. Guess what the mooks did? If they hit, they do an automatic 5 Psychic damage. (If you were bloodied, it was 7, which meant they could break the defense!... if the two near-invincible tanks ever got bloodied. >_>; ) Oh yeah. So. We begin by doing that, and taking out as many of the mooks as we can. Marza hit one in the surprise round, and he was still around, so we figured there were some sort of revival shenanigans. Also, somebody targets the big baddy with psychic damage. Guess who completely and utterly immunes psychic damage (It's just a really high resist, but holy crap). So, after the first round, we have Desmond, Feth, and Alexander all running into Melee to start blasting at things, we figured out that it takes a Move action for the mooks to get up, Marza and Rachelle have their Mook Protection up, Feth is in Beast Form, Alexander has the Big Bad oathed, and Marza has activated his dagger of "You have no resistances against me. Suck it." The Big Bad also hits Desmond and Rachelle with Stun, and throws out some Slow + Damage. Everything he has but his swoop attack is MT, and to a large degree, too. The battle continues, with Desmond and Alexander eventually getting to the brink of death around the time we bloody the Big Bad. Which is around 150 damage in, so not bad. Our damage output then begins slowing down, and Feth and Desmond bring out a couple of their own dailies to play around with as we get to the last few rounds of the fight. (Mostly so we can focus on just damaging the damn guy, though Marza's natural rolls of 16, 16, 16, 16, 12 in one round, and his multiple max damage rolls against the Big Bad was kinda a good foretelling of how the battle went) The guy eventually falls, and we then get to the job of "Hey, these guys lost their ability to revive!"
Afterwards, we pick up a bracelet of WHAT THE SHIT, THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE, AND SHOULD NOT EXIST, and put it into the Bag of Holding for further inspection. (But not until after warding the bag appropriately) The party then heads off, and talks to the dead guy, and is told to meet him in the Shadowfell. They say "sure" and begin thinking of possible places to get said ritual. They agree that Kingston is a good place to check, or at least the church of Erathis in Elk's Bend, because Gregory has a load of rituals now. They then pitch camp, and rest. End of session.
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/me performs a Desmond call~
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Aw man! I have an XF post to write up too! I shall work on this today!!
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And then, we never saw Reneeman again.
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Many eons ago was when the last update occurred. In the meantime DESMOND has found many ladies and OWNED many evil doers!!
…maybe not…
As a solar eclipse appears, Feth disappears. All the followers of the Raven Queen go a little batty during those; Alexander the Deva of the sun god is not pleased.
As we approached the city of Kingston, a vast tower appeared in the distance. Marza uses DETECT MAGIC and DETECTS MAGIC. He is immediately distracted and wanders off. We try to visit with the crazy Raven Queen folks who hang out here, but since the solar eclipse they’ve been a little … looney. Uh, anyway, we decide that the Erathian temple is a better idea. Alexander declares that we have saved Elk’s Bend from danger (which is wrong, Alex got confused) so we get an audience with the governor. Pretty good trick, but we have to dig ourselves out of that particular hole. Desmond works his charm, though, and saves the day again! She tells us that we should go to the wizard, which is where Marza already is…
…
Marza wanders around the wizard’s tower in an attempt to find the entrance, but to no avail. In fact, the wizard goes out of his way to mock Sorcerers; he has instructions including “hop on one foot while rubbing your stomach and patting your head” while declaring you are the banana king. Once this is done, the wizard mocks you for being a fool and trying to get in that way. ONLY WIZARDS CAN ENTER THROUGH THE WIZARD DOOR!
So Marza comes back, dejected, to the inn. He gets a drink at the rather seedy place and is immediately knocked on his pansy ass. Sigh. Incompetent fool. Anyway, the three of us venture to go investigate the wizard’s tower.
We find the adventure’s entrance pretty easily and explore inside the magically-made tunnels. We eventually get to a portion which is like a platformer; the blocks appear and disappear. We are a little weirded out by this so we decide to turn back; we hypothesize on the nature of the pit. Alexander thinks it’s a test of our bravery; Desmond thinks anyone to jump in it would be a fool. Rachelle simply recognizes a pattern.
We go back and fetch Marza and take him with us. We head back into the adventure’s entrance and find another type of patterned platformer. Marza decides to throw his kitty down the well (rather cruelly), Rachelle TRIED to find the new pattern and failed miserably. The kitty was nowhere to be seen. Alexander declares that….. DUN DUN DUN! THIS IS A TEST OF OUR BRAVERY!!! So he jumped down the well. Hilarity ensued. The DM handed him PHP1/2 to create a new character. Everyone but Alex’s player is giggling hysterically; he is horrified at the prospect of creating a new character. The DM rubbed it in pretty hard, he kept telling him that he needed to look for new abilities~
So the three of us sane people *cough cough* get to the next stage of the tower. There is a puzzle map made out of some old board game called Labyrinth which we played on. Doppleganger Alexander appears as well as the kitty to assist us in the fight; we devise a swift plan of action to get to the end of the road. Things go pretty well; we get statused a bit but nothing major. And then… we meet the wizard.
The wizard pops Alexander and kitty back into existence. Alex’s player is very relieved. The DM smiles evilly as he tends to do, and Alexander starts yelling at the wizard, calling him a wretched old troll who does nothing to help others and just sits in his tower. The wizard just smiles and sends Alexander back into un-existence because it’s funny. We ask the wizard for help getting to the Shadowfell; he says he will send us if we find some precious shadow silk for him. We agree, Alexander curses the wizard. Rachelle takes the side of the wizard; she believes he is an agent of civilization. Marza just wants to steal his shit.
After being transported to the Shadowfell, Alexander and Rachelle continue their philosophical discussion on the role of a person in society to help others as opposed to primarily benefitting themselves. Alexander vows vengeance on the wizard for his folly and non-good-heartedness; the neutrally-aligned Rachelle just shakes her head and smirks.
More next time! There’s a whole ‘nother session left!
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Marza through a kitty down a bottomless pit? Remind me to defenestrate Mage the next time I see him.
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Well, it was a magical kitty, so he was testing to see if he could get it to reappear on his hilt.
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It was a magical cat that had a pretty awesome ability to reduce falling damage. I wasn't around when they found out it was bottomless. Therefore, sending my magical kitty down the possibly not!bottomless pit made perfect sense. (That way, I could always pop it back into existence and find out what it saw) Besides. It can't actually die. >_>
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What are you talking about. You tossing your cat down there was how they discovered it was bottomless. And technically, it's not even bottomless. It's only about 15ft or so deep and then you hit the bottom. Of course, given that the bottom is the cessation of Time/Space such as non-wizards understand the stuff, I suppose it does technically count as bottomless to you guys.
Finally, technically it's not a cat. Well... not any more at least. I mean, it used to be a cat, until it got molested by overly friendly abberrants, and then it got taken in by Marza who kept it from dissolving into a shapeless bit of ooze harmful to all Euclidean based life by giving it a bit of his soul, and has since adapted it into a part of himself. I personally think he's using the cat to give the part of himself that he hates form that he might abuse it more effectively. Very efficient that.
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So, Marza CQ4 involves a cat falling forever?
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Nah. It came back the very next day.
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I'm still utterly amazed at the brilliant show of foresight Alexander had, though. It's like the third story about players willingly jumping into their falling death in DnD that drops by my ears.
EDIT: I mean, it ended up being sorta bait-and-switch, but it's still utterly hysterical.
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Yeah, he was kinda lucky that I had prepared for the party failing on the platforming (they eventually had the third member roll really well on their perception check, and I didn't make it a skill challenge like I should have) because some of them have invested in neither Athletics or Acrobatics. Well, that, and it's a Good aligned guild, and not an evil one.
I don't think he'd have liked his choice much if it had been an evil aligned guild.
But yeah... the fact that he stated that he was going to jump, right after I finished describing how Marza's cat had dissapeared, and was in the middle of describing the fact that it was not coming back, and his usual tricks weren't working boggles the mind. Even a quick, 'you sure' got hearty confirmation. So... yeah.
Then again, knowing he wasn't going to get hurt, I didn't feel any great need to stop him.
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Yes. This just reminded me of one particular story: one of my friends GMed a game where his PCs were walking on the clouds and found a floating castle. The immediate action of one of his players was to jump off the clouds for no discernible reason. Ten seconds later, he was handed a new character sheet.
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Nah. It came back the very next day.
Win, Excal. So much win.
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Cats have nine lives and all. You should have waited until the third day so they could call the kitten medieval fantasy Jesuscat, though. That would give material for icanhascheezburger.com for centuries.
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January 9th Session
The Shadowfell and All Within
Desmond and crew walk into Shadowfell Kingston to try to get to the Elfin Downs. A skeleton offers to either take 1-5 years off their lives or to give them 20 silver coins per passenger. But he only takes silver specifically, so we went to the church of the Raven Queen to grab some silver coins. We do so and then we ride on the boat.
We get to the Elfin Downs and find Balen. We ask for the ritual to save the city from evil; Balen challenges us to a fight.
This fight was one of the hardest fights we have fought in the campaign so far. We got wailed on by flunkies and Balen and stuff and the mooks revived themselves. It ended up with Marza and Rachelle on their asses, Alexander and Desmond fighting for their lives, and Balen running away and them pursuing him. Alexander ended up dying and Desmond alone fell the foul Balen. Desmond had about 30~ HP left? So it was very close.
After we barely stayed alive, Balen gave us the rituals needed to save the town’s artifact and told us we would need to enter the realm of law in order to break the spell on the artifact. The Realm of Law’s time goes by differently than our own, and the town will be brutally attacked while we are there, so we can’t linger inside the realm. (No sleeping!)
So we decide to go hunting for Ettercap silk while we are in the shadowfell. We wander to a place which presumably has Ettercaps, and then we FAILED the skill challenge horribly. The cat rolled a 1 on his perception. We got webbed by the ettercaps and immobilized. It sucked. So we fought the ettercaps, Marza was perpetually stunned the entire battle because apparently when ettercaps combat advantage you they stun and Marza’s AC sucks. Marza really needs to fail less and get some real armor. >_>
I ended up challenging everyone to a duel and helping chase the head ettercap, who was running away. Marza ended up laying a lot of damage once he was unstunned for a round. Rachelle did a lot of MT and slowed the boss. Alexander dealt some damage to the supporting cast and all that. Overall everyone was pretty productive.
After we win, we take the ettercap silk and head back to the Elfin Downs. On our way we run into Shadar-ki (she was pretty hot) and Desmond charms her. (After trying to intimidate her.) We inform her that we are pursuing otherworldly beasts, who Raven Queen followers hate.
Then we get to the Elfin Downs, sleep, and get teleported back to the Prime Material Plane. Rachelle and Marza visit the wizard since Alexander hates him and Desmond wants to get wasted. Marza finds out that his village may have been attacked by a silver dragon and the wizard wants the silver dragon skin for his experiments. Alexander, meanwhile, babysits Desmond as his gets thrown out of the bar for stripping. Alexander asks guards about mating and they are weirded out.
Marza and Rachelle meet up with the stooges and we sleep to prepare for the next day’s adventure.
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January 24st Session
Headin’ to the Law Realm
This session was pretty short. We went to Elk’s Bend and told Gregory about the events that were about to occur. They pretty much decided to hide all the people and keep them as safe as possible; by the morning all this stuff was done. Greg doesn’t mess around! Gregory took us down to the basement, and we did the ritual which broke the seal on the artifact as well as doing a ritual to get us into the Realm of Law.
Once we arrived, we got into a fight with some lackeys of the head of the law realm. This fight was really interesting because the ground moved in a random direction based off a die roll. There were eight blocks for us to cross and they moved around, sending Rachelle into non-existence, which she rolled out of because of Alexander’s artifact. Yay! So we killed them off and went into another room. We had another Skill Challenge to help us find the room where the Master of Law is.
Not too much else happened other than me sulking over Skill Challenges in general. I actively dislike being retroactively punished for not understanding how to design a character. My character is pretty terrible at things that don’t relate to people skills and I am required to try to think of something to do with my PEOPLE SKILLS in a dungeon with no people. >_> And then I think of something to use and oh well Rachelle should have done that roll~~~
Next time will hopefully be the Law Master fight!
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Rachelle and Dragons
February(ish) updates. Yeah, they're overdue. I don't remember exact dates but I will try to break things up.
I will do March soon enough, too! Be prepared for... interesting times.
The plane of Chaos
Anyway, when we last left off, Rachelle had invoked a ritual which sent the party into the plane of chaos so that they could seal some Law Master (a being of chaos. I'd say this makes no sense, but... y'know. Chaos) back into the Relic of St. Cuthbert, thus stopping the freaky tentacle demons from invading the plane of people who build safe, prosperous societies. Rachelle and her comrades had beaten one round of vile beasts and survived a twisting mass of stairways like something out of an MC Escher painting. But the day was by no means over!
The party once again finds themself on a variety of shifting platforms which Rachelle can control, and once again the enemies are a bunch of floating tentacles demons who don't suffer from them. And try to push us off using some fruity mind control. Bastards! And this time, they have a horrid boss creature with them who has easily the highest HP of anything we have yet faced. Sadly, Rachelle's control over the ritual lets her know that this is NOT the Law Master, but still something that needs a good ol-fashioned killing. So killing ensues.
With killing done, the party rests up on the last remaining platforms, then heads into the deepest area of the realm of chaos, which this time has an actual solid, non-shifting platform. Immediately another attack occurs! This fight proves to be possibly the most challenging one yet. The enemies, who are shambling twisted humans have brutal offence, with the most notable one being able to attack 3 or 4 times a turn while shifting between each. There are two such foes (five total) and between the might of their repeated, accurate attacks, they are even able to fell the mighty DESMOND and bring him near death! Healing happens, but definitely a scary moment. Alexander, though, comes to the rescue, realising that, unlike the floating tentacle demons, these guys need to stand on their two feet, and uses Sequestering Strike to teleport one of them off the platforms and into the abyss. Later on, Rachelle is able to do something similar, as an enemy foolishly gets around to flank her from behind, but in doing so puts his own back to the edge of the platform, so she can use her encounter counterattack Armour of Wrath to push HIM off too. This allows the party to gain the upper hand, though it's still quite a slog. The fact that the first of the two foes pushed off fails his saving throws that would allow him to return repeatedly until he finally dies helps quite a lot!
So finally, the Law Master is at hand. The party rests up one last time, with the caveat that Marza is out of healing surges and thus must enter the final battle near death and unhealable. Then the party disrupts a pair of sigils on the ground, causing the Law Master itself to appear, another big bad abomination of a tentacle demon. The Law Master also has two flunkies who prove decidedly not worth attacking, as each time they are hit they summon a 1-HP mook which is nevertheless competent enough to be an issue, so the battle quickly becomes about hitting the Law Master and leaving them alone, braving their offence. Fortunately the Law Master itself gets pelted with all manner of negative effects the party has at its disposal, including Rachelle's turn-robbing stun and the usual challenge by Desmond. Overall it's not as tough as the previous battle by any stretch. The Law Master is defeated, and Rachelle uses a seal to bind it back into the Relic of Cuthbert.
Also the party is now Level 6.
Elk's Bend
And with that, the party finds themselves back in the real world, with a working Relic. They also discover with it a ring which adds 20% to the sexiness (Diplomacy checks, whatever) of its bearer, which naturally is donned by Desmond. The party makes their way out of the basement of Cuthbert's temple, only to be nearly shot by a frightened guard, thinking they are the abominations. The guard runs off to get Gregory, the High Priest of Elk's Bend, and the party meets with him and learns what has happened.
It turns out that Rachelle and her companions had been away for two weeks in real world time, even though it had only seemed like hours to them. During that time, the Elk's Bend militia had successfully withstood a flurry of attacks from the abominations in the real world. A victory for law and civilisation everywhere! Gregory has the relic inspected and reports that everything appears to be back to normal. The only piece of bad news is that, during the attacks of the past two weeks, the druid's forest has been set on fire by hobgoblins (presumably those under the control of Grallax the evil priest), and Greg has been unable to spare the men to go investigate or control it. The fire is still ongoing at this time, but everyone, including the party, is too worn-out to do anything about it. Instead, Rachelle sends a message to the capital, Thranton, and the party waits and recovers.
The blaze eventually dies down, and Gregory sends an expedition out to see what could have caused it. The party, lacking much else to do, agrees to go along and help out. The party explores the forest, reaching the area that had burned, and discovers it was where the druid had lived. Emphasis on "had", because they also find the druid and his apprentices, dead and strung up in trees, showing signs of having been brutally tortured. It would never have happened if they'd lived in the protective embrace of the town walls, obviously.
Before we can give the poor fools a proper burial, though, we are interrupted. By some blue-skinned tall androgynous freak with an eyepatch and a glaive or some similar sort of polearm. He(?) reveals much of what has gone on. It seems the sacrificing of the druid and his apprentices was part of a ritual performed by Grallax in order to summon him/her/it. And s/he claims to be a lesser deity of the Chains order which Grallax worships. The party is skeptical, but the being insists. It also asks for us to return its ring... the one on Desmond's finger which somehow came back with us from the plane of chaos. Rachelle and Desmond attempt to deal with the being diplomatically, trying to gauge if its bite may be able to match its bark, and hoping to deftly maneuver to keep both the ring and their lives from this self-proclaimed enemy of Erathis.
Feth (presumably trying to avoid vomitting from the weasel-wording on both sides) just tells him to fuck off.
Strangely this results in us rolling initiative. Anyway, although alone, the creature is quite a bastard, shifting everywhere and striking twice for some fairly scary damage. Fortunately, we have our own heavy blaster, as Marza sends his winged dagger out to launch a powerful attack from... and as he does so, the being cuts the (magical) dagger in two, destroying it instantly. Well, fuck. The party is able to keep afloat in the battle, though, and although their foe does not appear to take noticeable damage, its polearm does, cracking under its master's strain. Finally, as the weapon continues to look worse and worse, the being uses it to launch one final strike on Desmond's... warhammer, destroying that, too. Fortunately the polearm. itself shatters in the process, and the blade becomes separated from the handle.
At this point, the creature congratulates us on giving it a "good warmup". I guess recently summoned beings need those or something, but it's not exactly polite of it to say so. Unfortunately what happens next is substantially less polite as our blue-skinned freaky friend decides to pull another weapon out of nowhere and attack us for one-hit knockout damage. Repeatedly. With everyone but Desmond lying unconscious, the creature demands the ring again, and Desmond is forced to comply. :( The creature exhaults at having re-obtained its ring of sexiness, and announces something cryptic along the lines of SOON THE CHAINS OF LAW SHALL BE BROKEN and tells us to relay this to our masters. Bloody enemies of Erathis never learn.
Once we recover, we bury the dead and decide to set off. We also pick up the two parts of the polearm, which turn out to be a fairly wicked staff and scimitar respectively, so Rachelle and Desmond have new weapons (particularly handy given what just happened to Antonio's warhammer). It's rather sad that Desmond lost his mentor's keepsake for some filthy scimitar used by some evil being, but such is life. The party makes its way back to Elk's Bend, and fills Gregory in on what has happened. Concerned, he sends us back to Thranton to bring news of what has happened.
Next time: Rachelle attempts to treat Marza's cat for mental trauma! Alexander murders a wizard for refusing to offer free help! Feth is tempted to ride a giant mechanical crab! Marza is turned into pulsing red goo! Desmond has a fling with a crossdressing priest! Scientists debate the merits of asbestos kitties and fire chihuahuas!
Only one of these is made up. Stay tuned~
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Tarvec Must Die.
Desmond also annoys the unannoyable~
I am so pissed that my ring of sexiness was stolen.
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And just think; if the ring hadn't been stolen, you would've been MORE annoying!
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I KNOW!!!
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I am hoping for a character side plot in that it turns out that the Ring of Sexiness was not actually enchanted and the power of Sexiness came from within the whole time.
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Next time: Rachelle attempts to treat Marza's cat for mental trauma! Alexander murders a wizard for refusing to offer free help! Feth is tempted to ride a giant mechanical crab! Marza is turned into pulsing red goo! Desmond has a fling with a crossdressing priest! Scientists debate the merits of asbestos kitties and fire chihuahuas!
Only one of these is made up. Stay tuned~
The true answer is the hidden seventh option. Which probably involves knitting with Cher or something, since it's comparatively normal.
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Thranton :)
The journey to the capital city of Thranton is unremarkable, except that two of the party don't make the journey. Feth decided to take off and report the words of the Chains sub-deity to her church. Marza, meanwhile, decides that there is a chance for him to use RITAULS and ARCANA and decides to control the remnants of the forest fire until it is firmly under control. He sends his cat along with Rachelle, Desmond, and Alexander though so he'll know what is going on.
The journey to Thranton takes a week, and Marza needs a few days to control the fires. Finishing, he decides he needs to catch up, and he doesn't like the idea of riding a horse to death. What he DOES like is paying a visit to the wizard, Tarvec, who is just a short journey away in Kingston. So he does this.
Marza is able to get into see the wizard, and he tries to bargain for passage (i.e. teleportation) to Thranton. Well, "bargain". He tries to offer vague offers of future favours, and bad shadowsilk that the wizard had previously seen and rejected. The only time he even gets close to attracting Tarvec's interest is when Tarvec suggests putting some sort of wizard marking on Marza so he'll be able to summon Marza and demand ANYTHING of him at a later date. Marza refuses this and tries to bargain further (again offering nothing worthy of note) and Tarvec becomes disgusted at what a mooch he is and promptly teleports him out of the tower onto his ass. Marza gives up and decides to ride to Thranton after all.
Meanwhile, the Erathi investigation team makes its triumphant return to Thranton, the largest city in the known world, brilliant centre of all civilisation, commerce, and secure living, and Rachelle's hometown. Rachelle and company return at long last to report to Bishop Charles, the man who gave Rachelle, Alexander, and Feth their mission to investigate Elk's Bend back at the start of this story. The party reports both their success at restoring the Relic of Cuthbert, and their concern over this new enemy. A concerned bishop asks the party to report again the next day to some of Thranton's cardinals, the highest rank in the religious order. They agree to do so.
Meanwhile, the the party members decide to take care of some loose ends. Mainly this means things like shopping; the party buys some cool magical items since Thranton is the centre of all things commerce-related, getting bracers that improve common types of damage, amulets that raise defences, and other such things. This done, Alexander goes to report to his own temple, that of Pelor. Desmond is interested in seeing the sights of the city, so Rachelle fills him in, with maybe a hint of pride in the fact that she lives in the most propsperous, safe, and influential city in the world. Desmond is unconvinced until Rachelle notes that such a large city has something that appeals to everyone. -Everyone-.
And so it was that Desmond asked where one could find a m->f crossdresser looking for a good time. A bemused Rachelle tells him to search after someone named Theodora. Desmond suspects that Rachelle might be trying to make a mockery of him, and remembers a friend of his from Elk's Bend who dropped another name. So Desmond goes to the rougher part of time to track this contact down. Rachelle sends Marza's cat to keep an eye on him so he doesn't get into trouble, and returns to her own home (family sadly all out of town) to rest for the day. Desmond finds and propositions this contact, but something about it doesn't seem right. The man comes off as exceptionally creepy, and this has nothing to do with his tranvestitism. Marza's cat meowls ferociously, and Desmond, after a few moments, backs off, and, despite the overtures of the "man", bids him good day and takes his leave. We aren't sure if the man was after Desmond's flashy new sword or just wanted some rape. The DM did, however, reveal that the "friend" who gave Desmond this advice was in fact someone with an axe to grind with Desmond, and Des of the 11 wisdom just didn't realise it. :(
Marza's cat is clearly scarred by the experience and wants to go home. Desmond however is not so easily deterred. Asking around, he tracks down this "Theodora", who turns out to be a very attractive older woman (except for the detail where she's actually male, but Desmond is allowed his tastes). Marza's cat protests, but a long story short is that Desmond rolls well on his Charisma check and has a place to enjoy an evening AND breakfast.
The next day, the party meets up at the temple of Gareth (sub-deity of commerce) where they met Bishop Charles the next day. Desmond is on top of the world, but Marza's cat has never looked worse. Rachelle takes the cat aside and tries to console him, saying he did a good job and that nothing he saw could be THAT bad... probably. Regardless, the cat relaxes. Anyway, before it is time to meet the cardinals, they do some more shopping, as Rachelle and Desmond both have magical shields to sell. It seems that one can't use both a magical shield and magical bracers at the same time, and while shields are cool, their magical enhancements are less so, so the party has some selling to do. Desmond gets a particularly good deal on his. It turns out that the Cuthbert chapter of the church of Erathis is more than happy to buy the SHIELD OF HIS MENTOR WHICH WAS AN IMPORTANT RELIC OF THE CHURCH. They're not happy with Desmond, just happy he's not selling his shield off to some mook instead of them. Desmond is shamed into not selling his shield after all, so decides not to buy magical bracers and continue using Antonio's keepsake.
And so, the party comes before the cardinals. They go to the high temple of Erathis and, after some time waiting, are met by one cardinal. A older, stately holy man named THEODORE. The look on Desmond's face is priceless. The cardinal warmly greets Rachelle, whom he recognises, as well as Alexander and Desmond. He compliments the latter in particular for being a paladin of the order, and praises him as "a man who knows his place in the chain of command". Rachelle SUCCEEDS on a will check to avoid breaking into laughter.
Regardless, the cardinals inspect the staff and scimitar that the deity held as a single polearm, and listen intently to the party's description. They aren't sure what to make of things, and after grilling the party of the events, they release them. The party has a few more days to kick around in Thranton while they wait for their judgement, though say the party may part with the weapons if they don't wish to wield implements of the Chains creature.
The next day, Marza arrives. As he pops the cat out of existence, his brain is suddenly overwhelmed and he buckles to the floor. Rachelle has to console -him-, too. Desmond, meanwhile, decides he isn't too happy with his scimitar after all, especially since it was used by a being of EVIL. The party looks into selling it. They find a buyer reasonably quickly... a man who is very, very eager to get his hands on the weapon. Suspiciously, Rachelle and Alexander grill him for why he wants it, and the man tries to act as if he were a simple collector. Desmond has a change of heart and despite the man's incredible offers, decides not to sell the weapon. Finally, the man gives up and takes off. Marza sends his cat out to act as a spy.
The cat silently stalks the merchant as he goes about his day, doing nothing suspicious... until late in the day, where, in the shadows of a rougher part of time, the merchant meets with someone who is disguised, but underneath it looks... well, demonic. The merchant reports that despite his efforts they weren't willing to sell "it". The demon, or whatever he is, expresses disappointment, but is overall unconcerned. The cat then attempts to follow the demon, but as it does so, becomes increasingly ill. It is forced to give up and return home. When it does, Marza himself starts to feel unwell.
Marza starts to get feverish, so the party takes him to the best healers Rachelle knows of. The clerics are most concerned, and despite the party's suspicion that it might be connected to the demonic creature Marza spied on, the clerics suggest that the culprit is the RING OF CHAOS AND TWISTEDNESS AND OH MY GOD IT SHOULD NOT EXIST that the party encountered a couple weeks ago and Marza haphazardly handled and inspected. The clerics note that such contact with raw chaos can in rare cases lead to certain death as chaos consumes the afflicted person's body. And already, Marza's body, which has recently fallen unconscious, is starting to... liquify. The clerics promise to inquire, but aren't hopeful.
Later that day, the party hears from a messenger from Charles. He has a new mission for them... to head to Sturmhalten, capital city of the domain of Ioun, goddess of knowledge. There, they will inquire from the most knowledgeable men there for information on this Chains creature they encountered, and will take the broken parts of the deity's weapons to show them (good thing we didn't sell them!). Also, they and they alone may just possess the necessary medical expertise to save Marza, who is rapidly turning for the worse. To illustrate what is meant by "worse", the clerics return Marza to the party... in a bag.
With a new mission in hand, the three heroes and their rapidly liquifying friend decide to head off to Sturmhalten, the capital city of knowledge pure, unadulterated insanity. But more on that next time!
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Theodora was cute. What can I say. I like older men in drag.
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Oh god... Desmond's trip to Wall Street.
DO NOT WANT!!!
DO! NOT! WANT!!!
/me sobs quietly in the corner.
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^_^! You didn't like my beautiful blue dress? I personally thought I was rather hot.
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^_^! You didn't like my beautiful blue dress? I personally thought I was rather hot.
Desmond's CQ4: where Lily only wishes she could be this gloriously unbalanced.
^_^
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Sturmhalten
Still in Thranton, the party heads to the teleportation circle in a temple in the centre of town. Thranton and Sturmhalten are separated by a large, possibly unknown distance, but both cities were built at the focal points of the leylines which bind this world, and as such, both are connected well via a lot of teleportation traffic, as are a few other such major cities in the world. They are teleported to Thranton, liquifying body and all.
Sturmhalten proves to be... different. First of all, whoever designed it is the biggest failure at city planning of ALL TIME, and I don't say that just because Rachelle is a proud Erathi fangirl (though she is, as everyone should be). Like, we need rolls to not get lost here. The party aims first for the hospital. Outside the teleportation centre, a strange man asks the party if they wish to ride a steamcrab, which turns out to be a mechanical, crab-like machine which clambers through the city over buildings. The party is unconvinced of the safety of such a course of action and attempts to walk there instead, although the city planning does cause some difficulty.
Talking to random people on the streets, they learn a fair deal of the city, which appears to be partially populated by "minions", who may or may not be people who have lost their souls in strange mad science, appear to have little to no free will, and serve the bidding of the town's citizens. Speaking of mad science, it is present and obvious everywhere from some of the things the party sights. One man appears to be out harmlessly walking some dogs, until one of them barks at the party and shoots fire. Turns out they are FIRE CHIHUAHUAS and the scientist walking them has great plans for them, oh yes. Soon they will be desired by every military power in the world, and HE WILL SHOW THE ACADEMY WHO IS LAUGHING NOW! The party considers investing some money in this fire chihuahua idea, but shortly after they run into a scientist apparently from the academy itself, and he snorts derisively noting that the academy's asbestos kitties will be more than an ample counter for fire chihuahuas.
Okay then.
Long story short, the party reaches the hospital. The party informs the attendants there of the emergency, and quickly, two doctors appear and announce their intentions to treat him. Unfortunately, both doctors appear substantially LESS sane than the scientists the party has already met. The first talks of saving Marza through toast (no, this doesn't make more sense in context) while the second talks of using a distiller. The only upside is that both doctors appear very knowledgeable of Marza's condition so they are apparently competent, just... batshit crazy. The two doctors get into a heated fight, and although Alexander tries to interject, both immediately team up on him ("And what do YOU know about medicine?") and order him kicked out. The guards take one look at him, and tell him to just pretend that he was kicked out, and pretend to be someone else, named Steve. Steve also attracts the ire of the doctors and is also kicked out, and replaced by Bob, who then proceeds to offer useful advice to the doctors that they thank him for.
Regardless, the doctors are far too overbearing to actually listen to the party on issues such as which treatment sounds more sane. The party was sounding less skeptical of distillation, but of course, the doctor proposing toast wins. He calls for a giant toaster (provided by the minions, of course), in which giant, man-sized toast is prepared. After some debate the doctor decides to add nutmeg instead of cinnamon because apparently eladrin react strangely to cinnamon. Finally, his mad science apparently complete, the doctor takes the giant toast and drops it into the bag where Marza is helped. And somehow, this accomplishes... absolutely nothing! Who would have guessed.
So the second doctor gets to try his own mad plan, pouring Marza into a distiller, which... well, separates him. When his body emerges from the machine, it is... well, no longer what could be considered a body. Instead, it's a mass of crystals. But after some time, the crystals appear to wake up, moving, and forming a cluster in a clearly humanoid shape. Complete with a smaller cluster of crystals in the shape of a cat. Even more strange, this Marza is capable of speech, and announces that he is feeling better. And so it was that Marza the eladrin became Marza the... crystal... thing. And though he had lost his sorcerous powers, he had gained psionic ones. Also traded a lot of Dexterity for Wisdom, like any good mage should. Wisdom changes aside though, the personality was still very much Marza, and the obsession with all things arcana remained. The party compensates the doctor to the tune of his demanded fee of 2000 gold, and moves on to their next mission, tracking down the most knowledgeable scientists (at least on the subject of Chains-related deities) in the city, Baron Klaus Wolfenbach and his son, Gilgamesh. The two are known to spend their days mainly in the baron's castle and in a tower in the centre of the city, respectively. As the tower is closer, the party heads there first.
This proves to be an even more difficult task than the previous journey, and the party becomes hopelessly lost in a labyrinthine chain of city streets. The party's attempts to find their way out end in miserable failure, and encountering minions who are fearing for their lives and claiming to have been trapped here for days or weeks isn't exactly encouraging. Eventually, though, Marza hits on a clever plan; he has just gained a ritual that lets him lift someone high in the air for effectively as long as he wants, so he uses this totally untested incantation to lift Alexander high in the sky and map out the maze of streets. The Erathi members of the party promptly hatch a plan to map out the maze more fully and sell it to the minions at a price the market will bear (i.e. gouging!) but for now they have more pressing concerns.
The party arrives at Gilgamesh's tower, and a minion directs them to where Master Gilgamesh can be found, on the top floor. The party makes their way up there, and finds him, a young man every bit the picture of a distracted scientist, engrossed in operating some bizarre machinery connected to a pair of mechanical automatons. The party attempts to talk to him, but he makes it clear that his current work is far too important. Well, whatever. Fortunately for us (maybe), after a few moments, the machine flares out of control, bursting into flame, and one automaton starts moving on its own. As he turns to deal with the fires, he calls at us to deal with the automaton, saying he doesn't care what happens to it. Seeing an obvious advantage to having the man in their debt, the party agrees.
The automaton doesn't really prove much of a fight, He has a fair bit of offence, but being a solo enemy, and the only one the party expects to fight this day, he is the brunt of all sorts of horrible debuffs, from defence lowering to plain old stun. And the party now has more healing than ever, as even Marza has picked up some thanks to his transformation, and sixth level has brought Rachelle the Healer's Lore ability which makes her Healing Word quite potent indeed. So yeah, ends up pretty easy. The construct is destroyed while the fires are put out, and when the dust settles, Gilgamesh is much more willing to listen to us.
Gilgamesh ends up being much more lucid than most of the town's scientists we have already talked to, and agrees to examine our artifacts for us, if we do him a favour in return... clearing out some undead who have been roaming around the nearby town of Beetlesburg. Rachelle notes that this isn't exactly a fair trade, since they will be putting their life in danger while he won't be, and the deal gets hashed out into some cash for the party, as well as loaner weapons for Desmond and Rachelle to replace those that Gilgamesh will be borrowing. Rachelle just gets a boring staff, but Desmond gets a very sweet two-handed sword made by Gilgamesh itself which has an electric generator built in (for giving enemies a shocking experience) and can be used to turn him invisible for one round. Only downside is he can't use it with his shield.
Gilgamesh gives the party a letter, and they head over to the baron's castle to pick up their money and Rachelle's new staff. After some difficulty getting past the guards who seem obsessed with the idea of "hats = rank" (solved by Marza assembling his crystalline cat as a hat on his head), they get through to one of Baron Wolfenbach's stewards, who give them what they need. The party heads back to the inn to prepare for the next day's journey to Beetlesburg, where they run into Feth, who had also arrived in the meantime, and also been harassed to ride a steamcrab and had thought the better of it. She's a bit confused by Marza's new change, but shrugs it off quickly enough.
And that's all for today's update! Next one should be the last before we're finally caught up. Stay tuned for tales of Desmond versus the undead in a battle of wits. You don't want to miss it!
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Well, that all sounded perfectly sane and balanced.
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I'm pretty sure it was just you and Marza plotting to sell to people in the maze. >_>
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Well profiting off the disadvantaged seems like something Alexander the uptight Pelorite would object to, and Desmond just isn't good at hatching plans that don't involve Desmond dispensing justice or wooing anything with a pulse.
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Well profiting off the disadvantaged seems like something Alexander the uptight Pelorite would object to, and Desmond just isn't good at hatching plans that don't involve Desmond dispensing justice or wooing anything with a pulse.
You could just sack Alexander while you lob off precious gold off the crippled.
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I was just pointing out that by Erathians, you meant you. :) Marza is too dirty and chaotic to be of the holy order of Erathis!
Desmond features more prominently in the next episode! So write write write~
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Does this mean you get Theodora as a NPC?
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Don't give Excal any ideas~ (says Elfboy)
Desmond woos undead in the next episode~
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Took that "anything with a pulse" line as a challange, did you?
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Yes~
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I don't think "wooing" is quite the right term, Desmond... And what did you mean by "dirty!?" Those crystals shine brighter than your filthy old armour.
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You are a borderline sociopath
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If it helps, the minions don't have gold. And the maps wouldn't have been able to beat the allure of the roasted rat on a stick stands anyways. I mean, at two fer a copper, that's a treat you just can't beat!
As for Theodora, no worries there. I already have no plans... Yes, nothing planned... at all!
Muahahaahahahahagahahahanyahahahahahahaha!!!
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Hey! You take that back! I'm not borderline at all!
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Overly long update. That's what I get for breaking things up by locale. Apologies if the writing suffered as a result, pretty sure it did.
Good news is we're actually alllmost caught up! Like, one session away from being caught up!
Beetlesburg
The next day, the party heads to Beetlesburg, a town a couple days away from Sturmhalten. The journey is an uneventful one, with the most notable thing being the lack of travellers from the town. We start to think maybe things there are worse than we thought. Then, as we approach the town, we see a party in front of us, and surprise, surprise... it's some undead! Time to kick ass.
For a divine-themed party we don't have as much radiant damage we'd like, but we do have three people with anti-undead moves (Alexander and Feth's ST beatdown and Rachelle's brutal crowd control) which doesn't go well for the undead. Most notable is a wight who halves all damage (though a radiant weakness helps for the little radiant damage we have) and inflicts constant unevadable damage whenever we're close to him. Cheater! But overall the undead aren't great enough in number to really threaten us.
Having mopped them up, we decide to scout out the town. Which of course means Feth scouts out the town since the rest of us are useless for things like stealth. Feth turns into a bird and flies around, and sees that the undead are swarming all over the city, apparently being herded by some people in robes. No other living people are spotted. Looks like we have some necromancers or something of that sort on our hands. Pasty-faced losers. The undead also appear to be mainly drawn towards the university in the centre of town, with fewer and fewer undead further out.
After spending an uneventful night (one or two undead mooks wandering around getting fried aside), the party makes its way into the town, choosing a side gate to get in. The group attempts to be stealthy at first. Rachelle attempts to guide them with her knowledge of city planning but this only gets everyone MORE LOST; things get better when she decides to stop thinking of it as a city and start thinking of it a horrible, maze-like dungeon. God Iounians fail. Meanwhile, Desmond isn't too helpful at stealth or city planning, but he is good at just barrelling through undead when we finally do meet some. Alexander spots ways for us to get through and Marza uses his arcana to keep track of where the university and its crazy experiments are.
On the way there, we run into a man who appears to be attempting to direct the undead. Marza, Rachelle, and Desmond question him, and learn that though he had nothing to do with summoning the undead, he is trying to control them. He also reveals that he is a servant of Vecna, i.e. the god of necromancy and the undead. The party continues to try to learn his motivations and gain information on what exactly is going on (and thus, how they can stop it). Alexander also joins in on the diplmacy.
What Alexander wanted to say: "We would like to discuss your research and reach a peaceful solution for the people left in this town."
What Alexander actually says: "DIE, NECROMANCER SCUM! IN THE NAME OF PELOR I WILL SMITE YOU AND ALL YOUR VILE KIND FROM THIS EARTH!"
(He rolled a 2, to go with his untrained Diplomacy and 9 Charisma. It fit.)
So yeah, we get into a battle. This battle is notable and nasty. The necromancer himself isn't too bad, though he does have various area of effect status attacks. The undead are the real problem, though, as this time there are a multitude of wights, some fire and some ice, with the aura of unevadable damage. They also inflict ongoing damage with their attacks on top of this (the ice at melee, the fire at range) and are as such immensely annoying. It's a fairly close battle that costs us a lot of healing, and Alexander even almost dies during it. But we are victorious, and we move on.
Eventually we reach the university itself. It is heavilly guarded with undead everywhere. There is no easy way in. The party comes up with a plan, though: make a distraction to pull some undead away from one of the more weakly defended gates, then sneak in. Feth rigs up some rope to climb over the walls, so all that's left is the distraction. Enter DESMOND! The DM demands Desmond roll to... be annoying. Desmond promptly rolls a 20. For years, scholars had thought the undead could not be annoyed, but Desmond has, in one instant, proved them all wrong.
A ravenous horde of undead chase out the gate after Desmond, who activates the invisibility on his weapon and loses them easily, catching up with the rest of the party at the rope over the wall. We make it in safely. Immediately, we are beset by a few ghouls, but they are of little danger (probably one of the easiest fights that actually involves real combat). Mainly, they show off the fact that they like to inflict immobilise then bite things for big damage. Still, there are only four of them, the party has very nasty attacks against undead, so things go pretty smoothly.
The party's main path through the university grounds is locked, so instead, they head in a side door into the library. They move through it, heading in the direction Marza can still feel the ritual, and eventually come to a room with a strange device shaped to resemble the spheres of known existence, or something like that. Marza notes that it has plenty of arcane power itself, and turns it on. Immediately, an image is projected on the screen of a bedroom. Based on the insignia of the folks working there, we are able to identify it as from the apartments of Baron von Wolfenbach of Sturmhalten, and given the grandeur it is presumably his bedroom. A couple of maids, inhuman creatures with six arms, are both working there. Desmond decides to help with the operation of machine, saying "what's the button do?", and hitting something called "Pull". Suddenly, the two maids are summoned into the room!
The maids are understandably freaked out, and any attempt to call them down only makes the more agitated at being teleported suddenly to a dank library room by a bunch of scary-looking humanoids, and crystal-guy. They rush off. Alexander expresses concern that they are running off into a town filled with ravenous undead, and while the rest of the party is somewhat less concerned, Feth nevertheless offers to keep them safe, and chases after them.
At this point, the party concludes that this is some sort of spying device. Thinking to use it to help us in our current situation, Marza finnicks with the machine's controls, using his arcane knowledge to determine how to direct it at the centre of the university, where the ritual is taking place. He does so, and turns the machine on once again. Nothing appears; in fact, the machine appears to shut down entirely. A voice booms out, "FOOLS! DID YOU THINK I WOULD LET YOU USE MY OWN WORK AGAINST ME?" Immediately, the door to the room slams shut, trapping the party. Additionally, a strange gas starts filling the room. Well, shit.
Fortunately, Alexander examines the wall and finds a secret switch which stops the gas from flowing in. Further examination reveals a second one, which opens a hidden door, and causes the voice to boom once again "NAUGHTY STUDENTS! PREPARE TO RECEIVE YOUR PUNISHMENT!" but nobody is to be found. The party concludes quickly enough that both were recordings in case students tampered with the device. With nowhere to go but through the door, the party heads on... but not before Marza stays behind, tries to get the machine started AGAIN, and gets another dose of poison gas for his troubles. He knows how to turn it off and get out of it, but still loses a healing surge. Hahaha.
Separated from Feth, the party moves onwards. The passage appears to take them deep underground, but eventually surfaces very close to where the ritual is taking place. Opening a door, the party finds itself in what appears to be a very ornate office. Examining a few things reveals that it is the office of one Professor Beetle, and it appears to be in recent use. It seems the good professor is still alive. Inspecting the room, we uncover his diary, and although it is written in an unintelligible language AND warded against rituals to understand it, but we try anyway, and after Rachelle fails to get anything more than a headache, Marza's awesome arcana ability kicks in and he's able to read some snippets. Snippets talking about "soon I will have my invincible army!" and "The baron will fear me!" and stuff like that. Oh dear.
The party pockets the diary and moves on, into the hallways of the academy and towards where the ritual is taking place. As they move on, they hear screams... and then silence. Finally, they reach the room where the ritual is taking place. Entering the room, we see quite a few things. First of all, two large vats of bubbling black liquid towards the back of the room. Second, a huge, humming machine which Marza quickly identifies as the source of the ritual. Third, a strange metallic dome. Fourth, two large tables set up with beer and cheese. And finally, five "people" in the room. Two are up in a gallery, and are dressed like graduate students. The other three appear to be professors. None of them, however, appear to be fully alive, although they don't exactly look like run of the mill undead, either. They all have skin that looks like it has been pulled far too tight, and it is black like a rotted limb, and they have burning red eyes. But they appear to still be sane.
One of the professors, who by dress appears to be the senior one, introduces himself as Professor Beetle. Knew we'd run into the bastard sooner or later. He makes some disparaging comments towards us about interrupting his experiment, and as we watch, cages are lifted out of the vats of black liquid, holding what we can only conclude were the people who we had heard screaming. Unfortunately they aren't exactly people any more, but undead mockeries similar to the professor, only not as bright-seeming. The cage doors open, and they shamble out, directionless at first, but then quickly they gravitate towards the tables set up with beer and cheese. Apparently they are still students. Regardless, they appear to be 16 of them, bringing the total potential enemy count in the room to 21.
Professor Beetle immediately questions if we have been sent by the baron, his tone making it clear that he won't be happy if we were. The party doesn't answer definitively either way, perhaps mildly terrified of the idea of fighting over twenty undead. The professor decides we are too odd a bunch for the baron to have sent. Marza expresses great interest in what the professor is doing, and the two get to talking. The professor reveals that the machine he has set up is harnessing and controlling the overflowing energies of the Shadowfell (rather than creating them) and he is using them to create his undead... his perfect army that will soon make the baron tremble! Marza tries to convince him to shut the machine down, promising that he will give the professor access to similar energies from the Feywild. Beetle is intrigued by this, but further discussion is cut off when Alexander, proud avenger of Pelor, has had enough of this "discussion" with undead filth once again. This time he doesn't even try diplomacy, he just attacks one of the students straight out, lashing out with his ranged attack, Radiant Vengeance. He misses, but instead destroys one of the pitchers of beer. The undead are pissed. With a cry of "destroy the Pelorite!" from Beetle, battle is joined.
This is another pretty tough battle, though perhaps not as tough as it first seemed. The undead swarm in, and their thing is to inflict immobilise and just overpower us by sheer numbers. The grad students from the gallery also lob immobilise-inflicting ranged attacks, while the three professors move in from the back. Beetle's two friends inflict stun (ick) while Beetle himself repeatedly polymorphs one of us a turn (for only one turn, mercifully) into a chipmunk. He also has a multitarget minor action he uses every turn that hexes us, halving the damage we do to him and reducing hit rate against him. Annoying. Fortunately, the students aren't exactly the best-made undead in the world, and after Rachelle hits 7 of them (out of 9 targetted) with Rebuke Undead, OHKOing them all, the battle starts to look a lot more possible. More multitarget attacks take out the rest quickly enough, although all the status piling on makes things tricky. Alexander in particular spends most of the battle stunned. The undead don't really like him.
Marza, on the other hand, continues to try to talk things out even as the fight begins. He shares the undead's disgust at the loss of beer! He promises to bring new beer! He has connections! Can't we all just get along? He even takes up a mug of beer to show where his interest lies (protip, Marza: you can't drink any more, being a construct of crystals) Anyway, his diplomacy works well enough to stop everyone from attacking him, but not well enough to actually stop the fight. A few rounds in he gets fed up, smashes his glass of beer in disgust, and lets loose his magical might on the undead. After that things turn south for them fairly quickly.
Beetle sees this and starts to flee, attacking his own machine as he does so. The combination of Rachelle's slow and Desmond's sword to the face means he doesn't get too far. Meanwhile, Marza tries to desperately stop the machine from going out of control, having concluded that, if it does, the whole area will be flooded with Shadowfell energy, which apparently would be a Very Bad Thing (something about turning anything living nearby into undead). Fortunately he's able to get it under control, with a little help from Rachelle. The remaining grad students flee their posts, and the battle is won.
Feth catches up with the party at this point, and reveals that she had a job here concerning the Shadowfell. Marza uses the machine to create a portal there, and what we see isn't pretty. Something about "fabric of space being ripped apart" and "parts of the plane are missing". The party decides not to go there. Instead, Marza investigates Beetle's diary some more, and this time we learn that he had been approached by a black-cloaked man, who had offered him the energy of the Shadowfell. Beetle had refused, but the man had told him to prepare to receive it anyway. Beetle had then built the machine he did to control the energy, but as time went on he appeared to become corrupted by the Shadowfell energy despite this, and his last entries were the insane ranting about how the baron would fear his army.
Armed with this knowledge, we decide we had better report what had happened here rather than jump straight into the Shadowfell. We head out of town, braving a few more undead minions, with Alexander's HP dropping precipitously low as he is out of healing surges, but we get out nonetheless. As we leave town, we see about a dozen necromancers shepherding about a hundred high-level undead out of town in the opposite direction, away from Sturmhalten. It's a concern, but one we can't deal with at the moment. We head back to civilisation.
Next time: more crazy people! Also the return of a certain scumbag that Desmond wants to kick in the face (and one who is short enough that he can. Easily).
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*GROWLS* HE WILL DIE! I WILL SEE TO IT THAT HIS LIMBS ARE TORN APART!
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Are you talking about Theodora.
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But how can you hate him, Desmond? He has so much raw charisma~~~
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...
hahahahahaha, Girl Genius.
Love, love, -love- it.
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Aw crap! Now my players will know me for the uncreative hack I truly am!
On a side note, Alexander came this close to trying to get Bangladesh DuPree's attention to ask some... personal questions. Sadly, his high wisdom actually kicked in, and they remained unvoiced.
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Yet, his high wisdom doesn't stop him from openly voicing his bloodthirst against your friendly neighborhood necromancer.
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Aw crap! Now my players will know me for the uncreative hack I truly am!
On a side note, Alexander came this close to trying to get Bangladesh DuPree's attention to ask some... personal questions. Sadly, his high wisdom actually kicked in, and they remained unvoiced.
We're not there yet.
And he's an Avenger of Pelor who was trying to diplomatize a necromancer of Vecna. I think the bloodthirst is slightly understandable there. (Though it won't be for much longer, if I have anything to do about it. I mean, he killed the guy who might have been able to help us de-undead the town! Well, ok. Desmond got the kill. But Alexander started it all.)
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You guys do realize that in order to do that, you'd have to a) fix the Shadowfell, and then b) unmake the local Feywild, right?
The folks attempting either would piss off are above your payscale.
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You say this like it should stop us from trying.
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The lovely Rachelle most graciously shared her accounts of the last adventure~ But now… it’s time for Desmond!
So we just arrived back in Sturmhalten and we were going to visit the baron. Naturally, the highly intelligent and wise Alexander decides to mention in front of the baron’s men about the maids which were taken from the castle. That gets us escorted into the baron’s chamber with some mechanical creatures and the person escorting us talking about our doom and destruction and being glad he wasn’t us. Gulp.
We get taken to the baron’s room and things are strangely anticlimactic; no heads are chopped off, we just slyly get out of the situation unscathed. We reported what happened in Beetlesburg and we met a girl named Dupree. She was really crazy and liked to bomb and burn stuff and generally be chaotic. We had to make sure that she didn’t blow up the undead making machine; I suspect that it was rather hard for her to have restraint on her explosions.
Next we wandered to Gilgamesh’s tower to try to find the results of his studies on the weapons that we gave him. He told us about the history of the person who wielded the weapon.
In ancient times, Cuthbert (the sub-deity that Desmond’s sect of the church worships) had two sets of heroes that he worked with, one before the war of the primordials, which included the guy we visited earlier in the game, and one after. The allies he made after were from five different faiths than he; Moradin, Pelor, Raven Queen, Bane, and Asmodeus. Two good, two neutral, and two evil gods (all representing different brands of law and order) banded together to try to seal away the Chains sub-deities (which are chaotic and defy the tenets of a law-abiding society, even an evil one). They succeeded and each of the six have their spirits sealing one evil sub-deity.
We strongly suspect that the Raven Queen’s sub-deity was either killed off or removed because the temple that Feth was supposed to attend in the Shadowfell was gone.
After that sombering bit of news, we decided to take off back to Thranton to report all that we have learned. So Desmond and Marza and Feth decide to take the STEAMCRAB! to get to the ley point. Rachelle and Alexander decide to walk through the city like civilized folk. We get to the point quickly and Marza sips wine as he gloats (he cannot drink liquids) about Rachelle’s misfortune as we knock over a building. (Don’t worry, it only had minions in it anyway.) Rachelle spent hours lost in the city before finding the ley point, and when she returned, she was in a hell of a mood. Ranting, talking about not wanting to talk about it. It was kind of cute to see her all flustered like that. ^_~
So we finally got on a leyline to Thranton and we went and reported things to our respective temples. After all that formal crap was completed, we started getting trailed by a bunch of thugs. We are given a mission to report the Chains activity to people in Bane’s territory. We are given a name of the emperor of the lands and told to watch ourselves, because it’s quite dangerous in this crazy Bane land.
Feth followed them, they tried to ambush us and were thwarted, and then one followed us into the city streets.
Next thing we know, Feth is chewing on one of their legs, viciously attacking him while in beast form. A fight ensues and Alexander immediately stands to attack the evil one… and accidentally hits a townsfolk. Marza uses a burst attack! And hits like 12 townsfolk. Oh god, this isn’t ending well. Quickly, Desmond tries to mediate with the angry townsfolk who are trying to club our allies while healing the wounded on the ground. Marza and Alexander are arrested and taken to a trial. Marza is forced into community service while Alexander is just fined, but we convince the tribunal to let Marza come with us and do his hard labor later. I personally have no idea why going on a MISSION OF THE CHURCH OF ERATHIS does not count as doing service to an obviously Erathi town, but apparently the law exists to interfere with heroes. (We have learned this from RPGs years ago.)
So that didn’t go so well, eh? Meanwhile, Feth is trailing the guy who we attacked who was taken to the hospital, and we eventually figure out the hideout of the thugs. After a while Feth has to come back and the hideout is reported. When the morning comes, Marza is brought and we take off to Bane’s place!
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How many critical botches were involved in the manslaughtering of innocent bystanders?
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None, just the poor judgement of using an area of effect attack in a crowded city street. The DM was mean and didn't give us time to think about our actions. :( (For all that Rachelle was obviously wise enough to hold off and see what happened. As if the future Chosen of Erathis could make such a simple mistake~)
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On the other hand, what was about that noodle incident she doesn't want to talk about? Is this another of Erathis' tenets~?
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You couldn't possibly understand, being from such an uncivilised background. Rachelle will devote her life to making sure that none have to suffer as you have. *sheds a single tear*
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Desmond today: One hit from death on two separate occasions. Godlike. -17 and -26 HP respectively. I was gonna be emooo~
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Marza the same day: Went down to negatives, got up to about... 3/4's maxHP, and then gets knocked down to 1HP in a single shot, the same round.
Luck was very weird.
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Starting a War, Destroying Temples of Holy Worship, and One Almost Lethal Lightning Bug
I’m going to keep the first part short because it was a while ago. So basically we went into Bane’s territory to deliver a letter to the King of the Bane area. In this we encounter a lot of evil tieflings who serve the king’s rival who wants to steal his throne, kicks their asses, steal their banner, and run toward the king’s realm. While doing this we accidentally start a war because due to Desmond’s charming skillz we are thought to be Bane allies and we charge with the banner toward the other kingdom. We sneak into the enemy side and get ambushed. We fight those folks and then we escorted to the king, who we deliver the letter to. He doesn’t seem to question our actions; after all, war is pretty damn common in the realm of a Lawful Evil bunch. He then sends up back to our realm.
We get to Level 7 and we celebrate. After that, we are sent by the church to ransank Richard’s little hideout. We go down there, beat up some lackeys, and then we go down where we get in a second battle in which is really tough. Desmond is almost killed twice and is in fact used as bargaining tool so the enemy can run away! Yay. The third battle is a joke and Excal almost throws the dice across the room.
So we desecrate the temple of Richard which is totally irritating anyway, and we discover something quite interesting. This temple has been here MOCKING ERATHIS FOR YEARS!! CURSE THE NAME OF RICHARD!!
So we sent a SWAT team to destroy it completely and then we are sent to House Ekhard to deal with foul invaders. My daddy’s home! Hooray! I’m sure everyone will be perfectly fine and happy and~
Yeah, right.
So we arrive at Payton, where Father Charles is chillin’ and we talk to him. He tells us my brother Henrik set out for House Ekhard to save my daddy, so we go over there to kick some ass.
And now… for the longest day of our lives so far~
First, we fight some low-levelled scrubs. Feth takes them on alone for a couple of rounds and gets rather severely injured due to this, but the rest showing up allows the party to crush the battle just fine. A messenger sent to talk with us was mauled by the evil bastards. There was a mage that liked to inflict -4 to AC WITH A MINOR. This will prove to be a pain in our asses soon.
We progress to the castle, where the orcs already have the upper hand on us by staking out the defensive areas. Fuckers. Hidden inside of the guard posts are two guys who used their standards to inflicted -5 to defenses or to inflict ongoing 5 to everyone in Burst 1. Across the drawbridge were two more guys who inflicted -4 to AC with a minor. Ouch. Other guys were archers but not tooooo tough. We decided to kill off the mages and Feth killed someone TWICE and was countered and downed. It was hilarious times.
We managed to wipe up the battle pretty quickly after Feth brought down the whoopass; we threw one of the enemies into the water and killed the others.
We then did a Skill Challenge to try to get through the castle. Feth epically failed at leading us through the castle and managed to land us in an orc birthday party. How upsetting. It was supposed to be a surprise, too!
Anyway, we pass the skill challenge after losing a healing surge, and then we use a secret passage in the chapel (after all, Desmond knows his way around this place). We go down into the catacombs and run into an orc chieftain ruling over some ogres. Joy. Fortunately we sneak up on them and we get a surprise round. Also, Rachelle uses her ability which gives a +5 to all initiative rolls (in other words, your speed in battle). So basically we got two rounds to lay some whoopass on the enemies before most of them even moved.
We meet up with my brother, who has a cut on his arm. It seems to prevent any magical healing from being done on him, but it should heal naturally. So we talk to him and we send Feth off to protect him and we are sent off to be a distraction. Anyway, we try to send some servants back to inform people that we are trying to go through the main exit of the catacombs (which we aren’t). We hear people beginning to gather around the door and we decide that’s the time to go upstairs, back into the chapel.
…and this is when things get ugly.
…and we run into behir spawn, little monsters that behirs make. Unfortunately, this means a behir is near, and an adult behir could lay some major whoopass on us, so we try to run back into the catacombs. We hear tons of soldiers gathering, but fortunately we locked the door and hid in the secret entrance. Rachelle realizes that we may be able to kill the behir because it’s just an adolescent, so we go back up to fight it…
Several rounds and lots of spawn-spewing later, our party is almost decimated. The bastard acts three times a round and has decent damage (and MT 1/3 recharge. Die bastard). Alexander and Desmond are downed and Rachelle and Marza are still barely alive. Rachelle needs to crit or else the bastard will kill us almost certainly, and she does! We end up having two people with single-digit HP living and that’s it. >_>
So we are all patched up and we are all down to 0 or 1 healing surge. We try to escape from the town but we are caught by orcs, but fortunately Lord Ekhard saves us. We ride to the bridge where we promised to meet our brother. Lord Ekhard and Henrik embrace, and the next thing you know, ‘Henrik’ is holding the still beating heart of Lord Ekhard. He crushes it in his hands and throws it behind us and makes demon hordes appear to fight the elite cavalry that are coming to assist us. This battle’s gonna be fuuun.
Battle recap later!
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YOU RAT BASTARD! YOU MUST DIE!!!
Desmond’s screams could wake the dead. And they did, as tons of zombies (okay demons) arose to take on the cavalry. An epic battle was about to begin, and there would be no reinforcements nor running away for us. In the first round Desmond charged to the front and attacked the evil demon man (called an Oni). The allies followed suit. Unfortunately, his allies had the ability to drag us into his range, where he dazed three of us.
As you may not know, daze is something that is sometimes inflicted by Oni (and Wizards) before you fall unconscious. If you make your saving throw for the daze (which is the ability to only take one action), nothing happens. But if you don’t… you fall unconscious. So Alexander, Feth, and Desmond were hit by Daze and the bastard boss shifts so we can’t charge him.
Marza to the rescue! He moves Desmond with Telekinetic Lift one square so Desmond can whack the boss. Rachelle uses her super-move that gives every ally in the range +3 to attack and makes all enemies within burst 1 (so nine squares) vulnerable 5 to all damage. So it is action pointing time!!
Desmond goes next and he pours damage into the bastards; ends up doing about 40 damage to the boss and then falls unconscious. It was very upsetting because unconscious is -7 TO ALL DEFENSES. And I had just challenged folks! So bad news for Desmond.
The boss hits Desmond for 48 damage in one hit (he has 68 HP and had already taken damage.) Desmond falls and is in bad shape. Next, the other enemies wail on Marza and Feth. Fortnately, Alex and Feth make their saving throws so they don’t fall unconscious. Yay! Feth also wails on the boss for about 60~ of his HP. Pretty soon, the boss is dead.
Marza then Telekinetically Lifts me closer to him and then revives me with Energizing Strike. I have only 4 HP and I’m still asleep, but I wake up. Downed again, but that’s okay, because Rachelle revives me. I come in, take some more damage, and then Marza starts getting wailed on. He is healed by Rachelle and falls again and is hit with 5 Ongoing Damge even when he is down... so it’s a race against the clock. He has -21 HP (and dies at -24) after his ‘turn’ and he doesn’t make the saving throw. This is when Desmond needs to revive him with Invigorating Smite (which heals 5 HP) and it barely succeeds. Awesome! I then heal his status as well and thus Marza lives.
We then run away from the enemies, doing a skill challenge in the process. We have to succeed in order to be able to sleep. And sleep we need. Marza has 5 HP and no healing surges, I have 20 HP and no healing surges, and Feth has 18 HP and no healing surges. We really don’t want to get run down by orcs so we try to succeed.
Marza, along with 4 of the remaining soldiers who were killing the demons, got hit with Moon Frenzy, which is a disease that makes you go crazy if you fail saving throws for it. Fortunately our party is full of Divine folks and healers, so everyone was fine, but we weren't sure if you could really tell Moon Frenzied Marza from regular Marza anyway.
We do, and we get to sleep. Precious, beautiful sleep.
Next thing we know we are on another skill challenge, this time trying to get back to the fort city. Feth finds Grallax using a wind spell to get to the main stronghold, Greenhelm. Feth sends a message to try to tell Greenhelm, but the asswipes think they are UNSTOPPABLE! Whatever.
So we sneak into Payton after Desmond scares the orcs and Alex leads us through them. We run into Charles, tell him what’s going on, and then we will see where we are sent next~
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It should probably be mentioned that Feth scored two critical hits (action point involved, naturally) on the boss during the turn he was vulnerable 5. That wasn't especially pretty.
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Sooo awesome. Well I said she did 60 damage! Just not the crit part~
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Die in a fire, dead topic warning.
Desmond, you should post more here. Or I suppose I could, but I miss too many sessions and writing makes me angry. But it's been an eventful half year for Desmond & crew. I think there may have been wolves, and probably undead, and presumably civilian casualties, maybe a demon or two?, and lots of hobgoblins, and the sack of at least one city, and a repressive totalitarian utopia that probably isn't nearly as repressive or totalitarian as we keep expecting it to be, and Marza's gone, and didn't big D go through a Peter-Parker's-terrible-hair-in-Spider-Man-3 phase? Did all this happen before or after the steam crab? Clearly my memory is imperfect. But the people need to know!
Rachelle is still perfect and Feth is still grumpy and Alexander is still blue and hilariously tall due to a metric conversion error of a sort I hear are quite common on the supernal planes. How did we lose Marza? I think he may have been possessed by his cat when he jumped into that dimensional distortion to travel to Lezard's Graalax's personal universe shortly before a suspicious-looking monk with a name too embarrassing to print here and a cute comic-relief animal companion started following us around and I don't know if we've figured out how to make him go away or promise to stay with us forever and either way not become another one of the chronicle's Main Villains.
*deep breath*
Although Feth is looking forward to using Marza to salt her driveway back in Thranton. Or maybe turning him into mantelpiece geode display to go next to Richard's preserved eye sockets...
I jest, of course. Feth doesn't have a driveway. Or a mantelpiece.
I think I need to sleep more. And you or at least someone needs to write more! Here!
<3,
JAD
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This thread doesn't even have exploits of punching tiger corpses. Most disappoint.
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I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I will write this weekend. I pwomise.
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This thread doesn't even have exploits of punching tiger corpses. Most disappoint.
It's true! I can't believe I forgot about Pete. Whom I think we left behind in Bane's kingdom in the middle of an endless civil war, but I'm sure he's fine.
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Once you have punched a tiger you know no fear.
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Water Margin, the ~16th century chinese novel upon which, among other things, the Suikoden series is based, agrees. Wu Song punches a tiger to death and he's pretty clearly not afraid of anything. Most of the Water Margin heroes die in an assortment of painful, grisly and ignominious ways, mostly at the hands of imperial soldiers, which is probably a direct consequence of them not punching tigers. Wu Song lives to 80.
Hmmm.. he's the 14th of the heavenly stars of destiny which means (...wikipedia...) that he shares stars with Valeria, Tomo, Hugo, Keneth, and Zegai, which is a decent enough assortment, I suppose.
So, Pete is the 14th star of destiny and will be fine all alone in Bane's kingdom, QED.
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I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I will write this weekend. I pwomise.
Write or I'm forcing you to replay XS3 disc for me.
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Two notes of interestingness.
First off, Pete's last location is not on the Warplane of Bane, but instead in the Erathian Grain Sea. There he has been quite busy since the PCs left, herding the vast herds of Orcs left behind, with nothing to aid him but his trusty Hellmoose steed, Steve, and a dull stick.
Secondly, it has recently been made clear to me that this world is, in fact, Kingdom Hearts, where each solid pocket of the Material Plane not only looks a bit different, but also works a bit differently based on the assumptions and desires of its founding God. This means the main difference is that these worlds are based less on Disney worlds, and more on D&D Gods and random themes I pick up.
Worlds so far, since I don't think these will be real surprises to the players.
Erathis - Rome/London/Eagleland
Ioun - Girl Genius, Zombie Horror
Bane - Grimdark Futures, R/TBS worlds of infinite warfare.
Pelor - Golden Sun, Brave New World, Get Smart
Richard - Motivational Speakers, 80's Sitcoms, Dr. Claw
The rest I am keeping under my hat for now. However, hopefully they will eventually give me a reason to invent a Hong Kong Kung Fu Movie World.
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No Lilianne Valendorf world? 0/10.
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The party would strike if I ever stepped onto their turf. Since they're already revolting, I'm kinda loathe to push the issue.
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I resent that :(
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Worlds so far, since I don't think these will be real surprises to the players.
Erathis - Rome/London/Eagleland
Ioun - Girl Genius, Zombie Horror
Bane - Grimdark Futures, R/TBS worlds of infinite warfare.
Pelor - Golden Sun, Brave New World, Get Smart
Richard - Motivational Speakers, 80's Sitcoms, Dr. Claw
Have we been to Richard's world? It sounds terrible.
I haven't played Golden Sun or [experienced via whatever media it inhabits] Get Smart, but I had always sorta envisioned Pelor's realm, aesthetically, as an idealized Greco-Roman sort of place. I mean, a bit like the super cheesy renditions of Heaven, right? Lots of majestic white columns and wide open atria. Is it higher tech, or were you more getting at the creepy paternalistic totalitarianism of Brave New World?
Erathis' world I've always seen as a bit dirtier. More London less Rome (though I'll happily admit that if I knew as much about Rome historically as I do London, i.e. anything at all, I probably wouldn't think of it as clean). Y'know, a big busy bustling place full of productive social interactions and the awesome power of commerce, but probably also with sewage issues and terrible traffic.
I missed the sessions in Bane's kingdom where we did anything other than fight things or run away, but it seemed pretty low-tech (my mental image of it was something like the Orcish architecture from the Warcraft series).
So from a setting theme standpoint, here've been my perceptions:
Erathis: baroque (17th-18th C)-tech, mid-magic but highly codified, technocratic, everything has a price, and the co-decision of that price leads to civilization. Diverse within certain confines (lots of core races, relatively few of the weird ones).
Ioun: 19th century-tech, magic is prevalent, powerful, but unpredictable, anything is possible, everything is dangerous. Super diverse melting pot of everything.
Bane: ~early medieval-tech, mid-magic, magic is prevalent but carries a toll, not in the Erathian transactional sense but in a more primal, maybe Nordic pieces of your body and soul in exchange for power sense. Segregated races constantly at war. But like I said, I didn't see much of Bane's realm.
Pelor: Roman-tech, high-magic, but only in the hands of the worthy (mean power might be the same as in Ioun, but concentrated in a much smaller portion of the population, while the common people live more or less mundane lives)... Probably reasonable diversity of "good" races, but with a more generally human population than Erathis-land?
Richard: aargh
Some of these are probably a bit off, and all coloured by my terrible memory and spotty attendance.
Anyhow, needless to say, I think this is all really cool.
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Crap, you're right, I totally forgot that most of the architechture in Sol Sanctum is, in my head, looking like what the Victorians thought Ancient Greece was like. That will still be floating around when I get back to that part of the place. So yeah, I was thinking more like the society for the BNW stuff. Mostly, in the populace and less in the government (not actually as bad as you guys think it is, you're just not used to being the outsiders as opposed to Government agents).
As for Bane... I'm thinking mostly of Warhammer's Old World, as well as that Blood God guy.
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Wait, you mean the gnome has actually made progress on the road to godhood?
DETAILS
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If I tell you now, then I don't get to see the look on the party's face when they discover them.
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~ Pete Appears and Punches a Tiger ~
After arriving in Payton, we are assigned to go in the basement to fend off horrors until the guard shows up. We are assigned Pete, a dwarven fighter, to assist us. He doesn’t talk much but he does kick ass. This fight is epically boring.
We, including Pete, were then sent out to kick some bitches’ asses, specifically the orc chieftain. We had one battle that Pete gripped some people by the balls but I don’t remember anything else. Then we are attacked by tigers, owlbears, and a druid. Desmond and Feth beat on the druid and an owlbear. Fuck those owlbears and their AT HALF HP BURST 1 STUN. We got lucky and pushed one away before it could do that, though. (Stun is the status that removes all your turns and makes you -2 defense.) Pete punches tigers. Life is good, but this battle is tough stuff.
After this near death experience (whew!) we continue on our quest. We got attacked by frost birds, some guys who made the world dark near them and grabbed onto people’s heads (dark mantles), and a giant, supposedly chained ogre. Desmond kept the giant guy distracted while the rest of the party deals with the frost birds and the dark mantles (which I imagine as a Dracula Mantle attached to someone’s head). The dark mantles did something nasty if we let them grab on to our heads for too long but we didn’t let that happen often.
The last battle is when dearest Pete leaves us. He solos a bunch of orcs while we take on the orc chieftain, and he kicks lots and lots of ass. This particularly battle isn’t too memorable to me, so I won’t recap it. We are sent to Grainhelm!
~ FIGHT IT OUT! in Grainhelm ~
We visit Rachelle’s parents who are in charge of the operation in Grainhelm. Rachelle’s mother doesn’t seem to particularly like Desmond for sooome reason… even though he was a perfect gentlemen! They offered to send another paladin in his place. ;_; Damn nobility. Always bringin’ a man down.
We fought some scouts who didn’t like Dishearten much (-2 to attacks, -5 if it is augmented). But really, no one does. After that battle we fought a deity and kicked its ass. No sweat, right? Well, it was a pretty nasty fight, but we prevailed thanks to the almighty Desmond.
After that, Marza was possessed by his cat Steve, who apparently has more deductive reasoning than Marza and started looking at the teleportation device that Grallax employed and then he wanders off for some reason! Whatever, Marza is crazy. We fix the ley line and head back to stinky, overpopulated Thranton. (Don’t tell Rachelle I said that.)
On our way back, we encounter undead. AND A LAND SHARK. And earth elementals. And some fucking guy with a hawk named, you guessed it, Hawk Heart, but we just call him Buddy. (Why is he called Buddy?)
Uh anyway, we fight peeps, and after we down the undead foe, the fucking land shark steals him away. The land shark is his loyal transporter or some crap. Desmond wanted to ruin that guy’s shit more but he couldn’t. Oh well. We ask Buddy about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything (or just his name and where he’s going) and he fails to provide good answers but we are caring and loving people so we take him anyway. For some reason.
~ Desmond’s Crisis of Love ~
We head to the church where a very stuck up bishop tells Rachelle very snottily that she will be seeing a tribunal of high-ranking church staff in a few days, which either means very good or very bad things for us. Rachelle is worried, but Desmond tells her everything will be okay and surely we won’t be punished we’ve worked so hard. Cuz Desmond’s a swell guy and he doesn’t like to see ladies gloomy. Maybe that wasn’t his ONLY motivation… Everyone’s a little edgy over maybe being punished by the church; after all, Marza and Alexander were criminals not long ago. >_>
So in our downtime we did retcon work. We found out a few things; everyone in the city is nervous about the variety of crazy shit that’s going on. There have been an increase in undead around the area, there were the incidents in Grainhelm, there have been ambitious anti-Thranton-leadership folks clamoring for different government or something, there has been a volcano eruption in Pelor-land (which is quite unusual since it is controlled be Pelor or something, I don’t know). Lastly, and possibly the most disturbing, the Ioun capital Sturmhalten (the place of the steamcrab) has closed off its ley line from Thranton, making it more difficult to go there than before.
Rachelle and Feth are whisked away to deal with the tribunal while Buddy, Desmond, and Alexander are left to continue retcon work. Instead they buy silly outfits and dress as flaming superheroes, but don’t tell Rachelle.
I mean, Bishop Rachelle. Hoity-toity I must say. Desmond congratulates Rachelle and hugs her.. and then she harshdisses him by saying “Normally bishops don’t hug.” Excuuuuse me, princess. No love for the big D.
Desmond is pretty annoyed by this; he feels like she’s being all haughty and shit (did he really just notice?) and now he wants to join the church of Pelor or something. But fuck Pelor, bunch of prudes. You’d think the god of the sun would be a little more free with the love, but no. They can’t handle Desmond’s sexy vox. So he just sulks like a bitch with a skinned knee instead of confronting Rachelle like a man.
Desmond and Al have heart to hearts and cry a little bit, and then we head out to check out the volcano!
~Why Do Bitches Cry When Desmond Waves Bye Bye Bye~
Pelor is a hella creepy cult, bro. Hawkheart is convinced we’ve stepped into 1984 a crazy cover-up job, but whatever. We go to church and Desmond and Buddy play or something like civilized adults. Rachelle and Alex go to a winery to waste time/because they are forced to, and Alex asserts his authority on all his slaves, including making one lay on the floor. Such a terrible person.
Meanwhile, gah Pelorites. They won’t let us into the volcano but we will go ruin some shit in the Blight. Desmond is still emo but he gets to hit things with a giant ham-
WHAT?! MY GIANT HAMMER IS GONE?!!?
In Pelor world, the rules work a little differently…
… everyone manifests into different parts of themselves. Desmond is now a Cleric, Rachelle is now a Swordvenger with a giant, Emolicious-like sword, Feth is now a Monk and HAWKHEART DISAPPEARS!! Apparently he actually worshipped Richard. Dammit, another sub-boss! Marza comes back though because he is reading runes or something, and he is a WIZARD!
So we ruin some shit in the Blight with tons of crits and hax, and the DM is displeased but life is good.
To be continued… next week!
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Pete's Rules To Survival:
#1 - If it has balls, punch them.
#2 - If it doesn't have balls, punch them anyways.
#3 - If it is a tiger, grab those balls, and slam it against walls for all of eternity.
#4 - Rinse and repeat
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This topic is now awesome again.
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#3 - If it is a tiger, grab those balls, and slam it against walls for all of eternity.
I'm pretty sure that was some sort of hobgoblin or orc, actually. Tigers get punched in the face. You have to think about what is easiest for a dwarf to reach.
Also, while Desmond would like to imagine Rachelle with her hands gripped firmly around an impossibly large phallic object, I feel the need to point out that the type of sword she does wield is listed as only 10 pounds and appears to be quite a lot shorter than she herself is, so she'd be booed out of an Emelious cosplay convention.
It should be noted the winery Alexander visited is one he himself owned in a past lifetime, leading to all the servants worshipping him in a rather creepy manner. Gah, Pelorites. Why focus on worshipping the past when you can focus on what makes you a profit today?
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Because the past has something that the present doesn't have. Far more violence. Why is there talking when there is killing for profit to be had?
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I feel the need to point out that the type of sword she does wield is listed as only 10 pounds and appears to be quite a lot shorter than she herself is, so she'd be booed out of an Emelious cosplay convention.
Who cares about realistic descriptions this is trainwreckland.
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Actually, this is a pretty dang violent present.
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Well, this is Desmond Khemia 2 world.
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~ God Hates Golden Sun ~
While thematically appropriate considering that we are exploring the sun god’s realm, Golden Sun is still terrible and thus should never be part of anything. Anyway, I guess we have to go to the four elemental towers or some shit. So we go into the Blight, some creeper stalks us while we fight and then he wanders off, that was weird but whatevs.
We then go to the Water Tower and we discover that the place is already being flooded which sucks. We could swim underwater to try to undone the bad deeds that have happened here but we’d take 3d10 damage per second or something which is not really ideal given our current HP totals. So we walk off dejected and try to man a boat to the Wind Tower. Desmond promptly gets a terrible roll on something totally inappropriate for the skill challenge and crashes the boat because he’s jut that awesome. Rachelle yells at him but it’s too late. We’ve already landed in a field with a hot, possibly naked half-elven chick and Desmond is turned on, but she doesn’t seem to be interested in his advances but she does seem to want to kill us……. Fudge.
So we arrive at the Wind Tower and meet MIA, GARET, ISAAC, AND uhmm… SOME OTHER GS CHARACTER and we chat with them. They tell us about their friends or whatever, blather. So we guard different sides of the tower or something and we ambush some mooks with Stinking Cloud in a small enclosed space which pisses them all off and they run away. Meanwhile, stinky-head, the mean guy who was stalking us earlier, shows up and owns the hell out of us with his mad defensive skillz and his 900 HP. Rachelle got stunned by this asswipe so Desmond dragged her away from the battlefield so she wouldn’t die. Then the captives are brought with the evil guy and we let them pass peacefully.
NOT!
Feth decides to murder the captives because s/he thinks they are sacrifices and ends up slaughtering an old man mentor guy and for some reason the other one has a stick in her ass and we fight a battle with her but she’s useless and whiny OMG YOU KILLED SOMEONE FOR NO REASON boo fucking hoo. It was necessary for the common good (maybe)!
Then we fight dopplegangers with the Golden Sun crowd. I play as Mia, Elfboy was Ivan, JAD was Garet, and Isaac was played by committee. We may or may not have mocked Golden Sun characters with lines about justice, friendship, and happiness. (Isaac heroically posed and nodded his head meaningfully) and the big mean boss guy didn’t like this. He got split into four by some crazy machine or something and then Alexander appeared to maximize the cheesy Pelor-realm people crowd. This fight was pretty fucking hard because the Invoker was a giant bitch and the Pally had hella AC. Fortunately the Avenger wasn’t as awesome as Al and the Cleric was kinda dumb~
We went back to Pelor-land as heroes and life was wonderful….. until we found out that our beloved home Thranton had been invaded! Fuck! We will have to surf down some leylines or something to try to save the day!
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Also, having Resist 5 to all damage on all allies against an enemy that does tons of ongoing 5 poison damage? Hilarious.
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Feth decides to murder the captives because s/he thinks they are sacrifices and ends up slaughtering an old man mentor guy
Good job, you killed Kraden. I'm sure this won't wind up biting you in the ass in some way like being forced to serve as ENDLESS BARRELS of exposition in the sequel or anything silly like that at all.
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Apparently the bitch who is angry at us for murdering this old coot is Jenna.
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~Shit’s Getting Crazy in Thranton~
As we go back into the comforts of Erathis’s realm, we turn back into our original selves, except Marza who was a Sorcerer and then we forced him to become an Ardent because we are really big jerks (or we needed a healer). So we fight this Guardian guy who tries to prevent us from travelling to beautiful Thranton. Rachelle is all pissy because things immune fear and this makes her less awesome, Desmond is all pissy because he hasn’t gotten laid in weeks (oh sure, the god of fertility, but only after you get married, well booooooo to this place), and Feth is pissy because she’s Feth. A lot of us got knocked off cliffs and Alex and Feth had to save our asses. Unfortunately we ended up pretty far from Thranton herself, even if we landed in Erathi lands. A loyal Erathi merchant took us close to Thranton luckily, and then we got there pretty quickly. There was some Balefire and shit going down in the middle of the city, so we stayed away from there. We fought zombies instead and then tried to storm the front of the castle. Bad idea, generally, although we did get some sweet shit from murdering some Eladrin scum. We had to roll to see if the Eladrin’s smugness was because of his innate Eladrinness or because he was an officer. Considering that we got two +3 items from him, I’d assume the latter (and the former). This fight was a bitch on our resources though; we fought several enemies with BURST 1 FORTITUDE GRAAHH EVERYONE IN OUR PARTY HAS SHIT FORT THIS SUCKS FUCKING GIANTS.
So Rachelle, the bitch queen, realizes that OH I KNOW HOW WE CAN SNEAK INTO THE CITY INSTEAD OF RAMMING HEADFIRST INTO A FORTIFIED AREA. Thanks, why didn’t you inform us sooner. (For the sweet swag, obv.) So we go in and reality shifts or something, we fight some easy enemies and then we saw that the Patriarch may have lost the battle against the evils, we go up to the teleportation room to crush in Grallax’s FACE and run into some creepy guys who use a lot of status. We kill them, step in, and then………………….. the man himself is there. Fuck that guy.
Grallax Must Die. And in a turn of events, Petey saves our ass and comes to help us kill this d-bag!
So the epic battle starts with our friend Gral partially sealing us off with an ice wall and Desmond buffing people cuz that’s what he does. A long battle commences, we get tentacle raped twice, he ice walls us a lot, Feth comes really really close to death because she flew over the wall and got wailed on, and Alexander hits him in the face. He has mad defenses aside from his Fortitude, which is kinda bad. This makes Rachelle happy but me and Feth and Alex and Marza cry like bitches. Eventually, after some hairy situation, we kill the bastard off but unfortunately he has already initiated the murder of Erathis herself. So we have to decide…… the Erathi land or Erathis herself? Rachelle decides to sacrifice the country to save her goddess because she’s a faithful brownnoser and Erathi land would suck without Erathis anyway. We manage to barely get out of the realm before it crackles, and we get thrust into a new place…
And we transform again! Rachelle becomes a stupid Cleric/Ranger and likes ICE CREAM, Desmond is now a psychic MENSA supergenius with horns on his face and a tail to tailwhip bitches. Mind Thrust is his new favorite skill as he cosplays AT main characters. Feth is a Rogue/Warlock (we think), Alex heals people, and Marza defends with his mind. Should be a fun and faaabulous new cast in this new world~~~
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Desmond is now a psychic MENSA supergenius with horns on his face and a tail to tailwhip bitches. Mind Thrust is his new favorite skill as he cosplays AT main characters
What.
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I turned into a Tiefling Psion with 20 INT. And Mind Thrust is my new favorite ability.
Rachelle now has 6 INT. Desmond is going to have fun *smirk*
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I actually kinda went into a oh god why is there a Lyner!Desmond and why is he going around mindraping everyone like they're reyvateils it is not right tangent but really I think I was more shocked that you weren't giving everyone puni-related nightmares.
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Well, we haven't staaaarted yet~~~
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Goddamn it, forgot about the stat penalty. I suppose that means Feth has 6 wisdom now. Guess all the shadow makes it hard to see.
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Last battle was very interesting as we tried to get synergy with our new party. Alexander got wailed on. Desmond, meanwhile, was never targetted with an attack!
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That's because the DM originally thought that Alexander was Desmond, thus reversing the bitch seat accidentally. Also, you forgot to mention the best part of the battle, and I will personally see to it you suffer horrible fates if you don't fix this egregious mistake.
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Do it yourself, ya lazy Mage~
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But I don't have the same pizzazz as Desmond. Or Pete, and his magical ability to punch Jesus in the balls thanks to the god of Bitches~
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I just got emo syphilis from Dark Kain. :( (Healing on me is halved!) If it progresses I may have to start stealing crystals and betraying my friends 3-5 times a day.
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How did that happen, dare I ask.
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Desmond tried to move away from Dark Kain; the latter got clingy. At the end of the battle, Desmond failed a save and it was revealed he had contracted emo syphilis.
Note: The enemy may or may not have been randomly named Dark Kain by the players for no other reason than it was described as "appearing filled with the power of darkness", and what Desmond got may or may not have been a nameless, healing-halving disease.
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This was after I critical Mind Thrusted him. Yeaaaah.
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It may, or may not, have been Liquid Mummy Rot. Honestly, a far better fate than Kainitis.
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And the moral of the story is don't mindrape beings filled with the power of darkness, you don't know where they've been?
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Yeah pretty much. ;_;
Dark Kain is a big jerk.
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Desmond may be too delicate for the psion life. Aren't paladins immune to disease? Or is that an older edition?
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Clearly this means we need to have Feth bluff the enemies into thinking I'm the diseased one, and then MARZA can tank the world.
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FETH BETTER NOT KILL OUR PRIVATEERS OR I WILL BE ANGRY. I NEED MINIONS TO HELP RULE MY COUNTRY.
*imagines Rachelle in a chain bikini*
*drools*
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All talk aside, I'm pretty sure Feth isn't really murder happy so much as profoundly unconcerned about death and willing to inflict it when merited (call it the Raven Queen effect). That said, last I heard your bold company of sailor-entrepreneurs were also a bunch of mass-murdering multiple rapists, and so I don't think it'd be the worst thing ever if Feth was forced (forced) to disembowel them and make a sort of putrid meat sculpture out of their entrails.
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Desmond may be too delicate for the psion life. Aren't paladins immune to disease? Or is that an older edition?
Pretty sure that's a 3e only thing.
That said, last I heard your bold company of sailor-entrepreneurs were also a bunch of mass-murdering multiple rapists
As if cosplaying Lyner wasn't proof enough of Desmond's newfound supervillainy.
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2nd Ed also from memory as well.
I see this is what happens when you don't have Avengers of good judgement (in bitches) on who to Mind Thrust around to point you in the right direction (or to Sequestering Strike you if you choose poorly).
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Speaking of Pete, thank you for the parting gift you gave the DM, Grefter. Yesterday he seemed to be rolling remarkably like you were instead of, uhm, 16 being extremely low. >_>
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;_;
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We have two new members! Myth the Half-Elf Cleric and Viki the randomly disappearing Invoker~
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Now you only need 30 more to expand your stronghold.
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I don't think this plan would make Excal very happy...
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Well no one said they all had to be PCs but the logistics would be fairly nightmarish, I would think.
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We also need a stronghold, first. Our hometown has been taken over and removed from the world map due to the bad guys, so now we need to finish our quest of figuring out where we are, find a stronghold, and then guild our allies!
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Desmond may be too delicate for the psion life. Aren't paladins immune to disease? Or is that an older edition?
They have to burn a feat now, but it is pretty much disease immunity and a sizable amount of poison resistance.