Desmond & Dragons - A DnD Chronicle

[Excal]

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.

[Luther Lansfeld]

What is Mighty Challenge?

[Excal]

Add your Str Mod to your Divine Mark Damage

It would bump you from 8 to 11.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Oooh, that's a Feat?

[Luther Lansfeld]

*digs up about half a dozen cool skills to retrain*

[Luther Lansfeld]

Excal or Magetastic: PM me on IRC at some point today.

[Luther Lansfeld]

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.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

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.

[Luther Lansfeld]

It broke Excal for about 30 seconds.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I can see -both- of those breaking Excal for a prolonged interval.

[Luther Lansfeld]

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.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

...

* Jo'ou Ranbu breaks for 30 seconds.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Hey, their healing is CHA-based! I will just never do anything INT-offensive with the Warlord part ever~

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

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-. >_>

[Shale]

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.

[Luther Lansfeld]

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

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

That's really nifty for tankadining.

[Magetastic]

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'.

[Luther Lansfeld]

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*

[Grefter]

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.

[074]

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.

[Grefter]

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.

[Luther Lansfeld]

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

[Excal]

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.

[074]

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.