Doug M's Way of the Wicked (Inactive)

Game Master Douglas Muir 406

If a player was using it, I'd argue more but..eh. However, as it is, the errata made the feat pretty useless. A moderate bonus to AC once per round chosen before the attack is rolled is..worthless. If you're not a human, you have to be level 5 and have spent 30% of your total feat resources (not including bonus feats from class features). All of that for..the chance of maybe an attack missing you that maybe would have hit you before.

It's a good, strong feat. But like a lot of good, strong spells, there are plenty of ways to go around it. If we faced that thing, between haste, high damage touch spells and invisibility, Jax could probably hit him for a huge chunk of hp without his ability triggering. Consistent use of Vanish, Obscuring Mist, Darkness, Morsum's natural attacks, Xen's new character's ranged attacks, Edmin's multiple attacks, Dren's SoD's and debuffs and Cimu's spells would make it a challenging fight where we'd simply have had to use different tactics.

we'd simply have had to use different tactics.

So we take a break from our overall tactic of Bref/Xen/Character du jour taking the fall as Edmin gets a crit?

Why change if its not broken.

:P

Hey we haven't done that bad in combats so far! I mean, sure, we almost lost TWO members during that boss fight..and lost one against the last paladin we faced..but against the evil, water-regenerating guy we rocked! And the cleric died in the surprise round!

...Xen's characters just make good fodder :D

Against Captain Odenkirk you had Nimpy's help. Of course, you're paying for that now.

I'm on a day-long hike tomorrow (Sunday), leaving early in the morning, getting back around dinner time. So, limited posting.

That is why my next char is a coward and ranged lol that way dmdm has to really try to kill me

With Cуровую 'gift' of prophecy, I foresee many varied and rather compelling assortment of ranged attacks directed at us in our future.

For no reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cnm0tdkJEU (much funnier if you've heard the original)

Back. Summitted at about 5500 feet, which is not very high as mountains go but involved climbing 3000 feet up in six miles through snow. Was pretty interesting -- these are the Shar Mountains, not terribly high but very rugged peaks on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo. We hiked along the side of a canyon with a 400 foot drop a few yards away, and every few minutes big waves of cloud would came up out of the canyon on updrafts, slosh over the edge, and bury us in freezing fog for a while, dropping visibility to "two guys in front of you, two behind". That was interesting. The guy at the front had an MP3 player with an endless supply of classic rock, so Dire Straits kept us on the trail.

Anyway. Back!

Quick question: do any of you guys have a google account and use Google docs? I have a google account but it's my work account, and I don't really want to be using it to upload "And Hell Followed With Him: DMDM's Guide To The Diabolist". Anyone?

I have one I set up for us a few months ago. Will send the link when I am back home.

Hi I am here I have to read about 20 posts, but exhausted and going to work.

I have tomorrow off work but have school but will post and go through all the posts. Please Time Stop Cуровую for 1 day.

DM I'll ask about your trip when I get back here.

Part of this weekends job description was playing host/tour guide/arm candy but no gentlemen your not my type to the Denver Broncos which is fun but very tiring.

I am actually taking them to Sapphire which is a high end 'gentleman's club' tonight, NOT my idea, I hope to find a (clean and quiet) corner to sleep in.

Be sure to tell them you prefer geeks that play DnD...lol...jocks hate that!

Did Peyton have fun at the gentelman's club last last? :].
I don't see him being that type, but you never know.

...

oops! sorry wrong tab, I had several open!

Raisa of course would no doubt be up for that.

Angel Lust!

I am actually taking them to Sapphire which is a high end 'gentleman's club' tonight, NOT my idea, I hope to find a (clean and quiet) corner to sleep in.

Oddly enough, I had to do something like this, many years ago.

Back in the 1990s, I was legal counsel to the governor of a small Pacific island commonwealth. (I was much too young and underqualified for this job, and fell into it entirely by accident.) Part of the job description included dealing with investors. Since most investors were Japanese, this involved squiring them around the local bars and strip clubs, because you can't do business with the Japanese until you've all gotten drunk together.

This was the sort of thing that was "Gosh, Wow!" the first time, "Gosh" the second time, and Tylenol thereafter. -- Have I mentioned that I've always been a very light drinker? Yeah, trying to keep up with the sararimen was no fun at all. But after six months I was well enough known at Club Scorpio that they knew to slip me "drinkies", i.e. the fake drinks that the girls themselves were drinking.

Complete tangent: one of the girls was an absolutely murderous Scrabble player -- they were all Filipinas, and Scrabble is really popular in the Philippines -- and she got most of the others hooked, and the bouncer too. So when things were slow, there was usually a Scrabble game running behind the bar or in the back room. One night when my GF was out of town and I was bored, I found myself driving down to Club Scorpio and going inside in order to... drink soda water and play Scrabble. Yeah, it was an odd time in my life.

Doug M.

That's..a pretty awesome story, Doug.

On a random note..after about four months my Kingmaker group has finally started the Adventure Path..I didn't realize my prologue would take so long haha.

You do realize that the late Commander qualified as a 10 HD creature for purposes of upgrading your blade, right? (No, he didn't have 10 paladin levels. Quite. But he did have 10 HD -- something like an Aristocrat 2/Ftr 1/Paladin 7, or some such.)

Wow so the commander was like a CR 9 plus friends at his side?

And ... Dren's blade ... self upgrades ... !

That is a GREAT story DM!

Did you have killer word scores?

Fun fact number 1.

I've never lost at scrabble

Fun fact number 2.

I have never played scrabble.

I think that they should come up with two new versions of scrabble.

Dyslexic Scrabble - allows you to swap the positions of letters in words
American Scrabble - spell the word however you think it should be spelled

I have never played scrabble.

It has occurred to me that if anyone ever asks me, "Doug, what's the most interesting thing that ever happened to you in a strip club?", I'll kinda have to answer "the time Veronica played PHILATELY on a double-word score for 36 points".

I'm sure that could be taken as code for almost anything in a gentleman's club.

No, someone played AT and someone else changed it to ATE and then I added three letters to make it LATELY, scoring a double word for 18 points and feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Wham.

All I am seeing is "PHIL"'ATE' 'AT' Scrorpio's 'LATELY'.

Code dude.

Oh!

Something like this.

Fill in the blanks.

DM_M lov_es _u_king _p all the p_ayer'_ plans, am_ition_ and _oals and likes it wh_n Bre_ has to _reate new _harac_ers.

And so to bed. More tomorrow.

Don't remember if Xen told the rest of the group Raisa's backstory? There were a couple of spoilers back in the bugbear camp. "We don't betray all our allies, Wolf. Just the ones that deserve it."

This us Ragnar's good twin, watching the fall of Balentyne from the horizon, wondering how his brother fell so low.

Apropos of absolutely nothing: I just had reason to reread W.H. Auden's poem "The Two". It is an absolutely wonderful poem, *and also* is a pretty much perfect evocation of Lawful Evil. If you're into that sort of thing, here it is.

That's pretty good :)

At school right now, I will read the poem and the gameplay thread when I am done, I just wanted to share this.

It appears that in between their take over Talingarde plans, Cardinal Thorn, Jax and the Judge wanted some of that sweet Superbowl cash and did a commercial together.

First Cardinal Thorn getting ready.

Then Jax talking about business associates.

The Judge with absolutes.

Finally the gangs all here.

They were missing Benedict Cumberbatch! But otherwise, very nice.

well the Jade Regent wishes are about to come true, I am dangerously close to wiping my Second Darkness players, and then we are off to the caravan!

Bref is the first to graduate from DMDM's black belt Doctorate in graceful TPKs.

it works out, because my third character I think will be the best yet, very excited about him…i am sure he will get a greataxe crit by a level 1 mook in the first fight…but he will be fun for one turn of combat

I was referring to your TPKs as a DM, not your deaths as a PC.

But one must be useful as fuel for the other.

If your looking for a name for your alchemist I am partial to Dr. Tesla Oppenhiemer Mengele (Dr. TOM for short) or Mr. White (who wears a hat).

Pristina airport, 5 AM. Mother with 6 month old baby, new traveller, little English and no Albanian. She checked the stroller at check-in, so was walking around with 30+ pounds of baby, cradle, and baby stuff on one arm. Then went to the wrong gate down two long flights of stairs and one-way escalators.

I carried her baby back up the stairs and to the other side of the airport. Could tell she was torn between "oh thank God" and "strange guy is carrying my baby makes me anxious twitch twitch".

I was about to say WTF are you doing posting at 5 a.m., but will let it pass if you are stuck in an airport.

Yah, in Germany through Monday. So, slow posting over the weekend.

just killed a player, the cleric was down next to the mini boss, obviously a cleric with channeling and the rogue tumbled to him and started to feed him a potion…so the baddie killed the cleric, rather than let him get up…seems fair, but that just sucks for the player

And killed the rogue the very next turn when he tried to tumble away critted him as well.

I think I just got my first TPK

[thumbs up]

I will never understand people who think healing an unconscious and bleeding character next to a boss is a good idea. We all know the next attack is going to be against the now conscious and prone character with very few hp. I got killed that way in one campaign.

Generally its better to just drop a disable or attack on the baddie and hopefully take him out.

You've probably figured out by now that I think a DM shouldn't pull punches in combat. I'll make an exception if I've misdesigned the encounter, which can happen sometimes. And if it's an overwhelming encounter, fairness dictates that you get the chance to run. But once combat is properly joined, it's my single brain against your six. If I *also* nerf the opposition in order to avoid killing you, I think combat becomes deterministic and non-fun.

The wizard is still up but that won't last long

So it appears I will actually be playing jade regent after all! Lol

Back in Pristina. Single parent for a bit -- 2/4 kids here, while the other two will be in Germany with Claudia another 10 days. Should still be able to post fairly regularly.

Doug, the way you drip details throughout the campaign that we don't catch is ridiculously awesome when they're pointed out. I feel the need to keep better notes!

Edit: Although I can at least point out that I thought a knot was involved in the scandal!

Hi guys!

Brief snow storm after the Superbowl trapped us in the wrong side of New York, i.e. New Jersey, yuck. I just got home after seven hours of trying yesterday, and my phone died so I could not post.

Sorry!

Playing catch up with school now then will catch up with the game in about an hour.

Only 28 posts missed, not bad for 2 days I was expecting 300!