PC: Sendo (Halfling Rogue 7 / Shadowdancer 3 3)
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants (during the Sandpoint attack)
Catalyst: Overconfidence in high skill ranks
Story: After trouncing Barl Breakbones in his Hook Mountain lair (though Barl did manage to kill Shalelu and Jakardros with a burst of negative energy, then later raise them as zombies) the party returned to Magnimar, ordered manufacture of some new magical weapons, then headed to Sandpoint to investigate the mysterious note they found in Barl's hold.
During the Sandpoint giant attack the party was somewhat weakened having to rush from location to location, cutting off marauding giants and dire bears.
They followed a small group of giants moving with purpose to the Old Light ruins, and attempted to ambush them as they were digging in the ruins.
At this point, the Shadowdancer attempted to hide in plain sight (rolls a 2 which was still well over 20 with his skill and dexterity scores) but Teraktinus spotted him (rolled a natural 20 for perception) and hurled several chunks of masonry at him during the first round of combat (Teraktinus had the higher initiative, took a Full round action, threw 3 rocks, hit with all 3, critically hitting with one of them) crushing him to death.
The party mourned, but the druid attempted a Reincarnate spell - Sendo was reborn in a new Half-orc body!
Waiting patiently for this (well maybe not all that patiently).
Keith Baker hasn't let anything slip about this so far on his blog.
He was supposed to be working on a huge Eberron article for the DDI before the 2 Eberron books come out...no new news about that either.
It has been said that there will be no advancement of the timeline, although to allow for Tieflings, Devas, Goliaths, Dragonborn, etc. as core races, they might advance it about 1 year, or maybe just retcon it all...
I only just picked up the PHB2, and skimming over the Devas, they look fairly similar to Kalashtar in theme, if not physically.
Speculation abounds about how dragonmarks will be handled. Most likely they will be like the Forgotten Realms spellscarred 'multiclassing' which would be kind of sad, since I'd really like to have multiclassed dragonmarked characters like we did in 3.5.
Well, you could test the theory.. it would involve a heck of a lot of jello, and a flamethrower.. but i don't think it'd be worth the effort and expense just to find out the answer lol.
The interests of science would be advanced by this experiment, I am certain.
I'd imagine id go something like this:
Flame applied to just jello.
Flame applied to just person*.
Flame applied to both jello and person*.
You'd have to test each of these, and record the amount of 'damage' (percentage of burn coverage?), and make a ruling based on the results.
Gelatinous cubes.
We all love them. If I remember correctly, their damage has been eratta'ed on the official WotC site, but one of the weirder rulings has not been addressed yet officially.
They can engulf characters (two at a time, with no apparent limit for number of characters engulfed).
"On a hit, the target is grabbed and pulled into the cube’s space"
The cube is large, and thus takes up 4 spaces.
(We houseruled it to give the cube a maximum capacity of 4 med creatures, and the DM placed the character's miniatures on top of the cube in the corner "slot" they were taking up)
All fine and good, so far, but if the party wizard attacks the cube using Scorching Burst, or anyone uses any AOE attacks, do they hit the characters inside the cube as well? Or are the engulfed characters no longer "on the board" and can't be attacked or afected?
I can see rationalizations for both yes and no answers, and I guess this question could apply to other creatures which swallow/engulf.
As corny as it is, the old D&D cartoon show might be a good way to help introduce the game to younger kids. It's been out on DVD for a while now.
It's got iconic monsters (beholders, orcs, bullywugs) kids as protagonists, emphasizes puzzles and thinking and making allies over combat, but still has some fighting.
The way classes, the DM, encounters, etc. are handled in a TV show VS the way you would do it in a game make good subjects to talk about after or during the show, and could help them realize how different a roleplaying session is from a non-interactive story medium like TV or books.
Ken Marable wrote:
Personally, I started in 6th grade (so I was 11, I think??), and I just dove right in playing about how I play now - with story and personality development, etc. - just with more cliche.
That's one of the good things about younger kids, the cliches are new to them, and you can have a lot of fun introducing them. Sometimes simple works wonders.
A character may only use 'aid another' in a skill challenge using a skill which is trained.
The difficulty for 'aid another' is the same as an easy skill challenge difficulty, instead of 10.
(It's just way too cheesy to have one player who has a great score in a relavant skill be the frontman, and all other players just aid him).
2 - Death and resurrection.
The first time a character dies, they have a 10% chance of a 'Raise Dead' ritual failing. If the ritual fails, the character's spirit has passed on, and can not be raised without serious spiritual intervention (maybe an adventure). Each time that character is successfully raised from the dead, he accrues 10% more chance to be unraisable, so his second raise death has a 20% chance of failure, third has a 30% chance, and so on, until the ritual has no chance of success.
(We find that the raise dead ritual is much too inexpensive and the penalty for being raised is much too low. This rule adds a bit of sting to the death rules at heroic and paragon levels - we haven't decided if we will keep it through epic levels yet.)
I like Fakey's bedpan.
I'd give it a +1 armour bonus if used as a helmet, though.
It's just the sort of thing that a pompous goblin or kobold chief would want to wear.
Fake Healer wrote:
Tired of all that pesky "where do the badguys in the dungeons go to take a dump?"-type of question?
Bedpan of Cleanliness- this non-descript bedpan is most often found in areas that were not originally outfitted with plumbing that are occupied by some sort of humanoid group that requires waste matter to not build up.
Any organic waste matter deposited into this silvered pan is instantly teleported into a part of the Abyss that using such material in ways too foul to describe. Living items(except for bacteria and other microscopic items usually found in stool) and indigestible items are left behind, unharmed.
Cost 500gp.
(haven't decided what spell to base it on but prestidigitation could work)
Yeah, its actually a pretty amazing group that has defied every expectation I've had in terms of attendance. I've got players who will play on their wife's birthday.
Whoa. Play on the wife's birthday!?
Unless said wife is also part of the gaming group, that's either a very understanding lady or a gaming widow.
I made sure to select a mate that would tolerate my gaming hobby, and would even join in (always plays the druid), but I think she'd draw the line at losing her special day to game night.
Although...my present for her this year was all of the Order of the Stick paperbacks. That turned out to be a pretty big hit, actually.
Good ideas from the pony lord, Sebastian. I think I'll bring some red poker chips to my next game to track bloodied.
We already use pennies or beads to show which enemies are "marked", but having a visual representation on the board to show who is bloodied would save a lot of time asking "which one of these guys is damaged again?"
If you take a look around the Internet, you will find that lots of people have made 4e power "cards" which can be printed out. They can be formatted to print on index cards, or just printed 6 or 8 on a normal sheet of paper. I don't have a link handy at the moment. I remember some discussions on these boards about 4e power cards so with a little searching you should find it. For my group, each player has a sheet or two with the cards printed on (colour coded, which is nice), so that they have a quick and easy way to look at their powers. In my opinion, these are great and save a ton of time.
Hey, I know there are some Canadians near Ottawa who read these boards, who also might be interested in this.
There's going to be a new gaming convention starting this year, at the War Museum.
The event seems to be heavily Games Workshop focused, but there will be lots of D&D, boardgaming, and other stuff.
I'll be one of a bunch of DMs running two D&D 4e modules made just for this convention. One 3rd level, one 15th level, and the second one is a 'sequel' of sorts to the first, so playing both is a viable option.
Depending on how well this event goes, next year I'll probably want to suggest/run a Pathfinder Society module.
If anyone is interested in attending, if you email me (evilturnip at gmail dotcom) I can point you to a secret site where you can print out a coupon for cheaper admission. It'd be cool to see some Paizo-fan Canadians out there. Since it's the first year for this con, I'm not sure how many people will come out.
Hey, hey. TV Christmas specials are a whole other level of guilty pleasure. That one is at least a Jim Henson production, so it's got a bit of cred.
As for movies...every time "The Beastmaster" comes on cable, I tend to end up watching it, although I have only watched the "Portal of Time" movie once.
Also, all of the bad "Planet of the Apes" sequels, including the time-traveling ones.
The Complete Loner
(Your parents were murdered; find out who did it and kill them! Also, the guide to being a tosser who only knows how to fight, and never speaks/interacts with the rest of your party)
I listened to some of these while doing random housework, some during the long drive back and forth with the wife on the recent holiday, and they are a hoot.
As for my experiences, I'm converting Age of Worms to 4e. We started at 4th level in the third adventure, Blackrock Keep, so I think my party managed to bypass a lot of the fragility of lower levels.
Also, we are a group of 6 players instead of 4. I've been scaling encounters as the MM and DMG indicated, but either my players are really smart, or the difficulty scales a bit differently with more PCs. It's been REALLY hard to challenge them. They tend to steamroll over most things that the rules as written say should be appropriate.
The most difficult combat for them was a fight against two level 8 harpies in the lizard man lair. Both of the harpies being controllers, and both rolling remarkably well on their ability recharge checks managed to seriously challenge 6 level 4 characters.
How about the Bard's Tale series of RPGs?
I think I spent a few hundred hours playing the Bard's Tale 3. And I lost my decoder thingy, too, so I never got around to finishing it.
As for fighting games, has anyone else played the old and bizarre Tongue of the Fatman? I remember trying and trying to find a copy of this game like it was some kind of weird legend.
So this was a birthday gift and really the "Gift that keeps on giving." We are only on the second chapter but I can not say enough great things about this.
The layout is fantastic and easy to read. The artwork is wonderful. The NPCs greatly detailed. And the easy to read - but complex - nature of several of the strategies of the antagonist allow for a varied and sometimes hard to predict resolution.
My only complaint is this - so much effort was clearly put in to the creation of these wonderful PC handout. While I didn't pay for this myself, as it was a gift, it would be great if those that paid the extra money to have a physical copy were rewarded with a PDF of the Handouts.
Maybe one exist - and if there is - this baby goes to 5 stars. But that is my only complaint, that my players do not get to enjoy the fantastic art and handouts that I do, and they need to settle for my shoddy imitations.
