NobodysHome's Silly Serpent's Skull Moments [***Spoilers***]

Better?

At least you were able to fix it before that cursed 10th post says the guy that forgot caps:-D

Of course the sad part is i spent all the time i had at the computer today guessing movies i knew had no chance, it wasn't The S****s was it:-p

The best part of it all is that Turin got it on his first try, and you're still guessing!

I'm not a movie person so much, i know titles but thats about it, unless its comedy or epic s@!~ (like pirates of the caribbean or LotR or those old 60s stop motion s%!! about Greek myths)

Now T.V. shows, i know:-)

But right now i'm murder hobo-ing my way thru an Alien Ship, i lose Karma overtime i kill an alien worker, yet they're always around my launched missiles and Plasma Grenades, what are ya gonna do:-D

NobodysHome wrote:

Izran, level 7 undine gunslinger. The most useless 7th-level character I've ever seen. He gets off one shot for 1d8 every other round. I need help on how you optimize a gunslinger to be at least somewhat effective. At the moment, he's just a joke of deadweight.

The nastiest gunslinger I've put together is a high-level concept, but the basic shtick is as follows:

Now that my players have mowed her down in a hail of sneak attack Small holy arrows, this post contains "Naschii", the wyvaren (however you spell it) Unchained Rogue 3/Gunslinger 5/Inquisitor 12 that didn't even get a shot off. The first 8 levels are key, I went with Inquisitor for Stalwart, but if offense is the primary concern, anything else with full BAB (Slayer, whatever, doesn't matter much) comes into play after 8th level. As a combination of hand axe and pistol, the axe-pistols are the light weapon/one-handed pistol version of the axe-musket. It gets supremely nasty when they are axe-pistols of the infinite sky, as they can now fire at will without risk of misfire. Pay up the extra (100x ammo cost) per pistol, the bullets themselves get all kinds of entertaining. It's an "all eggs in two baskets" kind of thing, but terrifyingly effective.

Considering I haven't even cracked Unchained, it'll take a bit of research, but I'll look into it for him. He needs to do SOMETHING to do more than 1d8 every other round.

Considering I haven't even cracked Unchained, it'll take a bit of research, but I'll look into it for him. He needs to do SOMETHING to do more than 1d8 every other round.

It's the best I can suggest for him to be able to blow things away in a fashion that I think is fun for a gunslinger, especially given the environment of Serpent's Skull (principally CQC, so axe-pistols are far better than the musket) *and* gives him melee fun without having to carry four primary weapons. I hope that he likes the idea.

Considering I haven't even cracked Unchained, it'll take a bit of research, but I'll look into it for him. He needs to do SOMETHING to do more than 1d8 every other round.

Uch, even a simple Vital Strike should increase the damage to 2d8...

EDIT: At 5th level gunlslinger gets gun training that adds Dex bonus to damage with one specific kind of firearm...

What about Rapid Reload, that should get him acting in every round, or am i missing something, in case you can't tell I'm not the most rules versed person :-)

Is the gunslinger's build around here somewhere? Rapid Reload and alchemical cartridges are the key here, and Deadly Aim and Vital Strike are a big help, as is the Dex to damage, and depending on your archetype the weapon you use. With rapid reload and the cartridges, for a pistol it goes down to a free action to reload, which may be worth it despite the higher misfire chance (gunslinger deeds to the rescue).

The touch AC attacks are important, and if you can get a good range (like guns with the Distance enhancement) you can take down most targets before they get to you. If your gunslinger's into the pistols, then use two double-barreled pistols so there are more shots available before having to reload?

Well, I'm going to push him hard to get Deadly Aim. Rapid Reload and Vital Strike are great ideas as well. 2d8+8 with a touch attack actually will feel like a contribution instead of a joke. And the axe-pistols are great since ammo is so rare.

Thanks for the ideas so far! I'll work with him.

Tonight should be entertaining -- they're going in for a rematch...

Ah, ammo limitation and probably no time to craft alchemical cartridges. Yeah, melee pistols are good then.

Gunsmith gives the character some ability to do so in the field fortunately, specifically if the Gunslinger has access to a respectable Craft (alchemy) bonus. It's not much, but it can keep him with some ammunition on-hand fairly reliably.

Hooken has Arrived
Wow... just... wow...

I may have to rename this thread.

So, after reading my compliments on this thread, Impus Minor said, "I'm NOT going to be quiet any more! I'm NOT going to let them do stupid things! I'm going to make sure they use proper tactics!"

Mr. Stereotype proceeded to amaze me by ALSO coming up with sound tactics.

So after having their tails handed to them in Tazion, I checked my calendar and two things were happening the next day:
(1) The remaining population of Tazion was waiting in ambush for the party, and
(2) The Aspis Consortium caravan was scheduled to arrive.

I chose a time for the Consortium to arrive (11:00 am), chose a time that the party was up and ready to roll (8:30 am), and let the kids play.

And they scouted. And they were unbelievably careful. And they looked for vulnerabilities in the perimeter. And, though they learned nothing useful, they DID see that the defenses had been reinforced with loose rocks on the eastern side of Tazion, making a stealthy entry nearly impossible. As they planned, and waited, and pondered, and were patient, the Aspis Consortium arrived.

As is becoming all too familiar a pattern, Talky McTalktalk acted without thinking, having the group walk right up to the caravan.

Now captives, I introduced Athyra, Dhampir flame oracle and Mr. Stereotype's next, "Please oh please kill me because I can't help but play OP races" character. On the other hand, I don't think he understands just how limiting that negative energy affinity is, so we'll see how that goes.

So my plan was that the Tazion forces were currently too much for the PCs (8 charou-ka, the girallon, Issilar, Rogru, and Chu-Tok), so those forces would spend some resources annihilating the Aspis Consortium, giving the PCs an "in".

It was utterly amazing. Talky just wanted to run away. Far away. All the way back to the Pathfinder caravan. After the last few sessions where his constant refrain has been, "That's too powerful, we should run away," I want to rename him Cowardly McYellow. He Who Has Not Yet Been Named agreed wholeheartedly. Impus Minor yelled them down. He pointed out that the Tazion army had used up precious resources, and the time to strike was now.

They Stealthed in the back, learned that the Tazion army was looting the burned caravan wagons (Protection from Energy has SO many uses), and then starting to celebrate in front of the zigguraut.

And then it started.

Hooken had the party gather around the corner from the celebrating charou-ka, buffed everyone to the gills, including both a Protection from Evil and a Magic Circle against Evil on Malek, plus Draconic Reservoir so they could nuke him at will. As Voren Hasted the party, Hooken stealthed into position, with the signal to everyone else to start in the moment Hooken started firing.

Oh, lordy, it was ugly. The girallon got a full-round attack from a Hasted ranger before it knew what was happening. It got in a single charge attack on Malek before being brought down in a hail of arrows and gunfire. The charou-ka charged and were met by a fireball. Issilar, hearing the commotion, came out and Dominated Malek, only to have the spell slide off this time.

And then I learned just how bad a Hasted barbarian is. Malek just took a full move. 24 squares of pain, including a Climb speed so he just went straight up the side of the zigguraut and into Issilar's face.

Take a look at Issilar's stat sheet. Go ahead. And now put Protection from Evil on a barbarian right in his face.

It isn't good.

He did the best he could -- he used his wand of Web to try to slow Malek down (yeah, good luck against that CMB), he Scorching Rayed him, he tried tactical withdrawals, but Malek could outrun him, could outclimb him, wasn't affected by the fire, had a flaming weapon thanks to the draconic reservoir so the web meant very little, and basically just chased him down and beat him to death with extreme prejudice. Oh, and Hooken climbed up as well and laid waste to his poor Protection from Arrows spell.

Not fun for Issilar.

So the kids were ECSTATIC last night. Impus Minor gave them a sound tactical plan, and they utterly annihilated their foes.

If he keeps it up, this thread is going to become awfully boring...

And so Strike Team Nobodysforce was born!

I wonder how long until you start sounding as jaded as Magnuskn :-)

At least this gives you time to work on a grumpy German accent, I have my wife's grumpy German family for a baseline at least, to say nothing of the decades spent in the upper midwest :-)

And so Strike Team Nobodysforce was born!

I wonder how long until you start sounding as jaded as Magnuskn :-)

At least this gives you time to work on a grumpy German accent, I have my wife's grumpy German family for a baseline at least, to say nothing of the decades spent in the upper midwest :-)

LOL. As you well know from the RotRL campaign, I really delight when my players come up with clever plans that make fights pushovers.

It's the horrific under-CR'ing in WotR that makes all of us GMs jaded.

Challenge rating be damned, Sword of Valor is one of my favorite adventures for a few reasons, Soltengrebbe, Nurah and Staunton Vhane primarily (for fun look at the stat block for the sewers on page 44 of Magnimar, City of Monuments, you might recognize something familiar:-D)

Anyway as a fan of halflings, dwarves and cliche villainy that adventure really speaks to me:-D

captain yesterday wrote:

And so Strike Team Nobodysforce was born!

I wonder how long until you start sounding as jaded as Magnuskn :-)

At least this gives you time to work on a grumpy German accent, I have my wife's grumpy German family for a baseline at least, to say nothing of the decades spent in the upper midwest :-)

LOL. As you well know from the RotRL campaign, I really delight when my players come up with clever plans that make fights pushovers.

It's the horrific under-CR'ing in WotR that makes all of us GMs jaded.

** spoiler omitted **

My PCs had the same trusting flaw there.

All Hail the Basidirond!
So with Issilar and almost all of the charou-ka dead, I figured last night was going to be a cake-walk for my intrepid group. Little did I know that simple things like listening at doors before opening them, scanning rooms before entering them, and the like were still foreign concepts to my wacky adventurers... leading to wacky misadventures! Woo hoo!

The group started off by doing the usual "stuff" -- searching Issilar, finding and analyzing the three keystones, concluding the fourth had to be somewhere else in the building, and determining to search the building from top to bottom, starting in Issilar's room. So they found the rooftop garden, the pillars of light, yada yada yada and faced no resistance, seeing as to how they'd already exterminated everything that lived on the top two floors of the ziggurat. Perhaps that led them to a false sense of security as they saw the long elevated staircase passing over the overgrown garden... or perhaps they weren't thinking of hostile plants...

In any case, once the single-file group was all in range, the basidirond lurking among the foliage let loose with its hallucination cloud. To my utter delight, both Malek and Hooken failed their initial saves; otherwise the fight would have been over in just a round or two. Instead, Hooken believed that his bow was a viper, dropped it, and fled screaming out of the room. Malek decided he was sinking in quicksand and dropped to try to swim. Athyra was similarly afflicted, rolled the viper hallucination as well, threw her glove on the ground and followed Hooken out of the room.

That left Narmina, Voren, Izran, and Hooken's wolf Heron to clean up. No problem, right?

In a spectacular bit of hilarity, Narmina failed her next save, spend a round thinking she was suffocating, and then fled the room as well. The horrifically hit-point-challenged Izran chose to move in and go toe-to-toe with the basidirond to help Heron, and... Voren failed his save and rolled a 2: Spiders on the floor!

Being a tiefling alchemist with fire resistance, I absolutely *had* to rule that he'd use a firebomb to get rid of the spiders. Trouble was, he was right next to Izran and Heron. BOOM! Splash damage for everyone!

Over the next 3 rounds, as everyone except Izran and Heron were afflicted, the basidirond only hit Izran once, then managed to roll a consecutive 3 and a 4 on its next two attacks, leaving Izran miraculously alive. Why was it miraculous? Because Voren proceeded to roll a 2 EVERY SINGLE ROUND!

"Ah! Spiders!" BOOM! "Ah! Spiders!" BOOM! And because they were on a narrow staircase, neither Izran nor Heron could move away from Voren's psychotic firebombing, and took far more damage from him than from the basidirond itself!

To cap the fight, once the basidirond had 8 hit points left, Izran hit it 3 times for 3d6 and got... 5 points of damage, prolonging the fight! Post-fight, I told Voren he had to roll one more time... and he got... a 2!!! "Spiders! Ah!" BOOM!

As a final capper for the evening, the party encountered the giant wasps. Malek, being one of the original survivors, had the campaign trait, "Boarded in Mediogalti" and had chosen giant wasp poison as his poison of choice. I asked him what it did, since I didn't have the traits memorized. He responded, "I think it gives me a +2 to my saves against giant wasp poison."
So I had him roll... a 1! And then a 2! And then a 4! And so on...

Poor Malek lost 6 points of DEX to a poison he was immune to and didn't know it.

Apparently Malek is so dim he succumbs to psychosomatic illnesses.

With a seriously dex-drained Malek, the party fled the ruins to lick their wounds for the evening.

I'll have to let the poor player know that knowing his own immunities is an important part of running his character...

So Occult Adventures is Malek's Achilles Heel then :-)

One Psychic to rule them all :-)

So this is where you are instead of finishing out your WotR campaign journal. :(

So this is where you are instead of finishing out your WotR campaign journal. :(

LOL.

It is ENTIRELY Jake/Shiro's fault.

In spite of my insisting that I cannot be allowed near MMORPGs, he insisted on introducing me to Rift, which has been eating up all my otherwise-productive hours.

I'm trying to wean myself to "after 6 pm" to give myself a two-hour buffer to do things like keep up with the budget, write, etc., but I will take your post as a formal prod to do SOMETHING over the next couple of weeks.

Coincidentally, I just found all my notes and put them on my desk, so signs from the gods are that I'm supposed to wrap up those journals...

Complete side note for those who play WotR:

I don't have a video game problem derailing anything, nope I can quit whenever I want, well maybe just one more mission for Moira...

Eh, I know that your WotR kind of imploded and that disincents continued writing, but I was curious to see the post by post devolution of the Tengu Bard and maybe cadge some ideas off you on how you handled some NPCs...especially in Noticula's realm.

We had a really good Jerribeth fight and a horrible Xanthir fight. Stupid one on a saving throw...

By the way, 107 aliases:-)

The last twenty have really flown by, even I'm not sure what some of them are:-D

The End of NarMalek (Title suggested by Impus Minor)

After a session of fairly good tactics, the party decided that winning fights handily was too easy for them. For this session, they decided that it was time to explore the Temple of the Snake, which happened to be the remaining charou-kas' final stronghold. As they approached in stealth, Hooken and Narmina easily spotted the two lookouts on this side of the temple, so they decided to go ahead and drop a fireball right outside the Temple of the Snake, giving Rogru, Chu-Tok, and his two remaining charou-ka time to buff and prepare for them. (Yes, the party really did choose to drop a fireball on the two charou-ka lookouts, then go out of combat to explore the building's perimeter. Subtlety, thy name is NOT my kids!)

The ambush didn't go well for the charou-ka. BOTH "normal" charou-ka fumbled, one blinding himself and the other hitting the now-blind one with a rock. The players started joking about how easy things were going to be. It wasn't until Rogru barely failed to blind Malek that they realized they might be in for a real fight. As Malek scrambled up the wall to engage, the others wondered how they were going to scale the wall to get to the fight, and Rogru climbed down into a large pit and dropped Deeper Darkness around himself, figuring he and Chu-Tok would have the upper hand in the darkness inside the temple.

The ever-inexplicable Malek chose to move past the hopeless charou-ka and engage Chu-Tok... by jumping onto him. One huge roll later and Chu-Tok had Malek in his coils, crushing the life out of him. (I still love the mental image of the indomitable Malek leaping bravely towards the waiting snake... landing in its jaws, being wrapped in its coils, being pinned to the ground, and thinking, "Well, THAT could have gone better..."). Over the next few rounds the rest of the party dispatched the fumble brothers with little difficulty and even successfully Dispelled the darkness. Hooken was barely behind Malek up the wall, and during the darkness took the time to prepare and lower a rope to the other party members so they could get to the fight. Malek was busy being pinned and constricted, but managed to free himself just before the inevitable coup de grace.

Then the kids' dice went cold. I can't believe how many times Hooken missed. It was on the order of 11 rolls of 7 or less in 16 total rolls. Malek lolled around in Chu-Tok's coils, and later missed Rogru five of six times. Voren had the "truly special" die. It wasn't until after combat, but he rolled three 1's in a row trying to search rooms with Perception checks.

The party finally brought Chu-Tok down, but Narmina had come too close to the edge to try to help Malek, and Rogru introduced her to a rock. The next round was the killer. Narmina, already down a handful of hitpoints, moved adjacent to Rogru to heal the heavily-wounded Malek. Knowing an easy shot when he saw one, Rogru screamed, Hasting himself, and hit Narmina 3 times, including a crit. Narmina was dead before she hit the ground. I did love the mental picture of Narmina, ever the standoffish beauty, seeing her true love in mortal peril, and rushing to his side, only to be struck down the moment she showed her true feelings for him. Of course, her player is going to kill me for writing that claptrap, but I still think it's awesome.

The amazing bad luck allowed Rogru to stay in the fight another 3 rounds, nearly killing Malek as well, before Malek finally brought him low. In another near-fatal decision, with Rogru down to 10 hit points (the kids didn't know that, of course), Malek nearly ran away to try to heal himself instead of finishing the fight. If Rogru had gotten another round of attacks, Malek might have fallen as well.

Instead, Malek adds another finger to his necklace of dead friends...

Link to the obit here.

That. Was. Beautiful!

You truly are a credit to the profession, you deserve this golden box of Petit fours award more then me.

*sniffles*... so tragic...

Who's got two thumbs and just passed Orthos with that alias?

This guy! :-D

Oh, wait! I forgot the best part!

Malek took the grippli alternative racial trait "toxic skin", and while he was pinned used his swift action to attempt to disable the snake. By miracle, the snake biffed its fortitude save and was poisoned... for a grand total of 2 Dex before it made its next save.

You'd have think he'd crit it for 100 points of damage from the way the kids reacted to that 2 Dex.

Ability damage are rather unusual for PCs so that might be the reason.

Don't Shoot!
Last night's session was fairly tame in terms of hilarity, unless you're a cruel GM. In THAT case, their realization that the DC 40 Disable Device roll to activate the Pillars of Light was beyond anyone in their party was entertaining. They determined that there HAD to be a clue SOMEWHERE in Tazion.

Cue random wanderings...

Talky McTalktalk introduced his new PC, Templari Bourne, female nagaji paladin of Iomedae, sent by her temple to investigate the rumors of a demon lord (Zura) rising again. And I have to give him credit: He plays a darned good paladin.

Their first stop was, "We go to S2", proving once and for all that you should NEVER include labels on any maps you show to players. They were rather displeased when I told them that not only was there nothing there, but if I were a better GM I'd hit them for 100 hit points each for such flagrant metagaming.
The next stop was the deep well, and the fun began. The party was unwilling to get too close to the well, so threw a rock in from a distance, hoping to time how long it took to fall to judge the depth of the well. A few moments later, a young girl's voice cried out in Aklo for help, claiming that the charou-ka had thrown her in the well and left her there to die.

Templari sighed, sheathed her sword, put her shield in front of her, and headed for the edge of the well. The other party members said, "You're an idiot! There can't be a little girl in there, so it's a trap."
Templari's response was great; something along the lines of, "We cannot take the chance that we are allowing an innocent to come to harm through inaction."

So the decapus in the well got off a surprise round AND a full attack. 10 attacks. Against the paladin's flat-footed AC of 26. Oops. Sorry, Mr. Decapus! Your life is about to suck!
The next round was rather interesting, as the party backed off, no one willing to stand at the edge. Templari issued a Knight's Challenge, which the decapus conveniently ignored, and then she backed up. The decapus sent a minor image of itself up over the lip, and much to my delight, most of the party wasted a round hitting the image with random attacks. Only Malek was hopeless enough to fail his Will save, though, so everyone knew it was only an image.

Figuring things were going really well so far, I had the decapus pop up from its hidden position, grab Malek, and pull him over the edge. Malek, not to be outdone, grappled the decapus right back, rendering it incapable of dropping him. (Grapple rules are so convoluted I just go with a, "Who has the advantage" system to make them make more sense. The decapus initially had advantage, but Malek chose to engage rather than breaking free, making them equally entangled in each other so the decapus couldn't just drop him.)

Then came Hooken. Dear, beloved Hooken. Malek yelled, "Don't shoot!" Hooken totally ignored him and pumped a full round of arrows into the hopelessly hit-point-challenged decapus.

The mental image of Malek and the now-dead decapus plummeting into the blackness of the pit, with echoes of, "I hate you, Hoooooooooken!!!" was easily the best mental image of the night.

Malek completely biffed his Acrobatics roll and took full damage from the fall. Being a barbarian with darkvision, he just shook it off and looked around for loot, then walked up the side of the wall (he LOVES that Climb speed) and dropped potions and loot among the other party members.

Templari continued to prove that Talky had made the right character choice when she insisted on providing proper burials to all the bodies in the pit, costing precious hours and losing the party all of their buffs. But she would NOT be dissuaded; all of the victims in the pit deserved proper burials, and she saw it through.

After healing up and proceeding, Athelya yet again proved why I love Mr. Stereotype by fireballing the Snake Tower to clear out all the snakes. One percentile die roll later and the entire tower collapsed.
Yeah, the snakes were dead, but they had no building to search. Ah, well, live and learn. Fireballs and rickety ruins don't mix well.

Their final fight of the night was in the aqueducts, when the huge water elemental ambushed them and promptly removed over half of Malek's hit points in a single round. In a bit of cruel irony, Izren was the only party member who spoke Aquan. He quickly determined that the water elemental was only there to prevent passage, so he offered to make the rest of the party leave if the elemental would hold off on its attacks for a moment.

It did, and they dutifully ran off.

Then all the other players raised Deady McDeaddead on their shoulders, crying out, "He did it! Izran did something useful! Now he can be a REAL member of the party! Woo hoo!"

Hilarious times, indeed!

No wonder i didn't see it, there was like ten threads started or updated right after it, didn't see it pop up on the feed:-)

Of course i'm too busy right now to read it, but soon, tomorrow probably :-)

"I hate you, Hoooooken!!!"

Best. Line. Ever. =^-^= I out and out giggled. ^^;;

Notice anything different about me :-)

Besides it being my birthday i mean:-)

You have a Stargate vibe going? ;)

Ugh! Don't get me started on Stargates, way more trouble than they're worth.

You have a Stargate vibe going? ;)

Words can't describe how awesome that movie is :-)

You have a Stargate vibe going? ;)

Look under his name.

Happy, happy man!

I'm still cracking up about that name Templari Bourne and a paladin to boot! hilarious!

edit: Also what Tangent said:-D

Paladins with Improved Unarmed Strike are so awesome. ;)

I'm still cracking up about that name Templari Bourne and a paladin to boot! hilarious!

edit: Also what Tangent said:-D

Simon Temple and Jason Bourne had a child that became paladin?

I'm sorry to report that last night's session lacked a great deal of silliness, possibly due to Mr. Stereotype's father, a veteran D&D player, joining in to fill the holes left by Talky McTalktalk and Deady McDeaddead both being absent.
I did love to hear him say, "No, I do NOT do that! Stop saying what I do!" multiple times. The kids were definitely out to get him killed. Unfortunately, he was experienced enough to have sense.

The azlanti idols were remarkably beyond the party's ability to deal with. No one could make the DC 14 Will save to overcome their hypnotic patterns, and Voren almost got coup de graced because he hid his eyes, went into the room, and was promptly hit by a Hold Person. Apparently Will saves are not my group's strong suit.

Once they realized they were going to have to start knocking down walls or otherwise using heavy artillery to deal with a quartet of 12" idols (they are listed as diminutive, which is pretty tiny), they decided that leaving wasps in the wasp's nest right behind them while making huge amounts of noise would be a bad idea. (Did I mention they were depressingly sensible yesterday? They even figured out that burning the wasp's nest would 100% guaranteed kill the wasps, but 90% guaranteed collapse a good section of the building, so they refrained.)

So they started making noise, the first poor wasp that came out was Hookened (yes, that's a real verb. Look it up!), and it looked sad for me... until Mr. Stereotype gloriously stepped up to see what was going on.

The queen was a minor rework by me. A fiendish creature that grapples victims and drags them back to her lair really ought to have the grab ability, because otherwise she's pretty useless.
So she popped out of the top of the nest, as her tactics indicate, grapped Athelya, and started making her way back to her hidey-hole. Even better, Athelya is Lawful Good, so the queen got to Smite Good on her as well.

Everything was going wonderfully, and she even willingly took a group of attacks of opportunity to get back into her cave. Unfortunately, Malek and Kwai Chang, the monk, were the ones taking the attacks and her hit points rapidly diminished.

In my favorite moment of the night, Malek reduced her to 4 hit points, Kwai Chang hit, and I pointed out that all he needed to do was roll a 5 on a d8 to save his son's PC's life. And he rolled... a 1!

She got into her cave, but a certain raging small barbarian with darkvision suffered no penalties whatsoever chasing her down the tiny hole, beat her to death with ease, then carried Athelya out, singing, "I saved your life, now you have to looooooooove me!!!!"

I loves me some Malek.

Malek is awesome.

It might be the right moment to speak with Malek about spawn, tadpoles, and where do the small froggies come from...

Only if she lives past the second date, which if I'm correct doesn't happen often :-)

Of course everyone reading the thread is now going to encourage their party to make a Grippli, then when they screw up at something or miss out on the opportunity to do something cool grumble "why can't you be more like Malek" "stop saying that, who's Malek?"

Of course everyone reading the thread is now going to encourage their party to make a Grippli, then when they screw up at something or miss out on the opportunity to do something cool grumble "why can't you be more like Malek" "stop saying that, who's Malek?"

I am not really seeing my party going out of their way to make a grippli character... Maybe I should assemble a new team and GM for them on other days?

Then came Hooken. Dear, beloved Hooken. Malek yelled, "Don't shoot!" Hooken totally ignored him and pumped a full round of arrows into the hopelessly hit-point-challenged decapus.

Okay lets be fair, how was I supposed to know it only had 39 hit points. Everything else we fought had 60-70 hit points plus dr.

NobodysHome wrote:

Then came Hooken. Dear, beloved Hooken. Malek yelled, "Don't shoot!" Hooken totally ignored him and pumped a full round of arrows into the hopelessly hit-point-challenged decapus.

Okay lets be fair, how was I supposed to know it only had 39 hit points. Everything else we fought had 60-70 hit points plus dr.

Corpses don't stop moving until you stop shooting. *nods sagely*

Friendly Fire

This week's session looked like it was going to be more depressing than silly, as we started with a classic "Short Attention Span Theater" moment. Last week, the kids (and their adult cohort) killed the fiendish queen wasp, and as time ran out, the adult reminded them, "Don't forget to go into the hive and loot it!"

So of course the as-written hive has no loot whatsoever, which I figured would be rather demoralizing for the kids in this relatively low-loot campaign, so I worked up a story of a paladin of Erastil who had come to this city decades ago to prepare it for civilization, only to fall to the fiendish queen. I worked up the loot he'd been carrying.

So, of course, this week the kids utterly forgot about the nest. I even had all their figures arranged around it to start the session. They moved on. At the end of the session I asked, "So, are you SURE there's nowhere else you want to check for loot, like anything you might have done last week or something?" and they said, "Nah, we're good."

Oh, well.

Fortunately, Malek saved the day again with the single-best line of the campaign so far.

Still searching for the clues to unlock the Pillars of Light, the party set up and slaughtered the mithral snakes. Not a significant fight, and they managed it rather well.

Then came the Azlanti Idols... again. I'll admit, I'd made one minor change to them: So as not to have to bookkeep 4 idols with 3 hypnotic gazes each and 6 PCs making Will saves against all 4 idols' gazes, I just said, "Heck with it," and all they needed was a single DC 14 Will save to ignore the idols' hypnotic gazes.

It was the apocalypse.

Last week every player fell to the gazes, and they ended up having to abandon the room. This week yet again almost every single player failed every single save. I will honestly put the number at approximately 20 failed DC 14 Will saves among the group, including at least two natural 1's by Malek alone.

Fortunately for the group, this week Templari was with them, and she had the absolute opposite effect. She made the Hypnotic Gaze Will save. She made all 3 Will saves against the Hold Persons thrown at her. She made all 3 Fortitude saves against the Reduce Persons thrown at her. And with her AC of 26, the little critters needed a natural 20 to hit her, and managed to never strike a blow.

That doesn't mean that Templari didn't take significant damage, though...

After she'd entered the room, Malek, bless his heart, tried to follow and fell into a daze. Athelya tried to push past Malek, failed her save, and tumbled into the room. Voren, trying to be helpful, looked into the room and failed as well. Templari sighed, strolled through the room, taking all the attacks of opportunity from the desperately-angry, hopelessly-inept teensy statues, picked up Athelya, and carried her out of the room.
In the meantime, Hooken had managed to pull Voren and Malek out of the room, and they had recovered. Hooken even got off some shots, seriously damaging one of the idols, before succumbing to their charms.

So Templari tried to hand Athelya over to Malek so that she could go back in and deal with the statues. With another Herculean effort, Malek rolled another natural 1, and ended up prone on his back, with the dazed Athelya on top of him.

"Oooh, baby! But now's not the time," he muttered.

It took 2-3 minutes to bring the table back to order.

Then came the real fun. Templari was in the doorway fighting all 4 idols. Malek stood up with his eyes closed and took a blind swing.

I'm not a cruel GM. I don't rule, "You automatically hit your friend."
Malek had to:
(a) Hit her AC. Your friend's AC doesn't drop because she's your friend. He rolled a 30.
(b) Roll the miss chance on fighting blind. He rolled a 39 on d100.

So Malek clocked Templari for 20 points... far more than the idols had done to her (0) in the entire combat.

Templari retreated into the room, still covered with idols, so Voren hit one of them with a bomb...
...now, he'd tried to hit them once before and I'd said, "They don't even bother dodging. The fire doesn't seem to affect them."
Apprently Voren didn't care, dropped a bomb on Templari, she rolled a natural 1 on her reflex save, and took another 10 points of fire damage.
Score so far: Her own party: 30 hit points. The idols: 0 hit points.

Unfortunately, Malek finally made his Will save, and that was pretty much all she wrote for the idols. Templari had the knowledge necessary to adjust the moon column, while Malek knew how to set the sun, stars, and void columns.
In a hilarious bit of roleplay, I took Malek and Templari's players aside when I told them what they saw on killing the idols, so Malek suddenly gained a British accent, declared that his mind had been expanded, and he was now a genius and would solve the puzzle of the columns for them.

And Templari spoiled it all by having one of the keys, but Impus Major still had fun with it.

And the session ended with the map of Saventh-Yhi appearing, no one having Knowledge: Geography, everyone biffing their Survival rolls, and then Malek rolling a 26 Survival and saying, "Oh, THAT place! It's just about 20 miles north of here..."

The caravan arrived, and the kids are doing some shopping...