Greil9's page

Just happened to me in the game that just ended. We were attacking a bandit lair, but the bandits kicked over a table to get in better cover against ranged attacks. However I realize this is a chance, not a hindrance.

Me: "I charge at the table, trying to slam it on them."

*Rolls 18+4 STR check*
*1d6+STR damage with max roll and they're all prone*

Me: "You didn't provide yourselves cover, you provided me a bigger weapon to hit you with"

I tend to make a character of any concept I think of. Whenever an inspiration hits, I have to make a new sheet and backstory.

Suplex a train!
Succesfully grapple a creature at least 2 size categories larger than you.

Suplex the world!
Succesfully grapple a creature at least 3 size categories larger than you.

Ain't no kill like overkill
Deal damage to creature equal to or greater than twice it's maximum hitpoints. The creature must have at least 4 hit dice.

Princes of the Universe
Attain immortality

There can be only one!
Kill a supposedly immortal being

I tend to make a three structure backstory: youth, call to action and their current situation.

One thing that tends to happen in all my character backstories is the major event that turns them into adventuring. For one it was being imprisoned on false charges and quest for justice/vengeance. For another it was being tasked by his monk master to travel the world to find the answer to a question given to him as a final test. For my latest one it was finding out his father, presumed to be dead at seas, had been seen recently.

I also tend to somewhat define their moral standing with one question: how readily would they kill another sapient non-evil being (non-evil as in demon, devil etc)? Some have no qualms about it, others do it in self-defense and one wouldn't do it even in self-defense.

This form can easily swift if the GM has the backstories revolve around the campaign story, like when all our characters were adoptive brothers from the same village.

This is a recent one from Skulls & Shackles.

We had just cleared a town of it's guard with our crew with the intention of robbing the town of it's reserves of hat I think was deep platinum. Afterwards we went over the town to make sure we didn't miss anything.

Once we got to the church, we saw something huge covered by a cloth. We fogired it wouldn't attack us as long as the cloth was on it and started discussing whether or not we should engage and what our plan was if we did. During this discussion, our witch uses her extending spear with a large range to lift the cloth, beginning the fight before we were prepared.

In the end we almost died and 3 of our crew was mind controlled and left behind when we made our escape. The witch in question was whipped for it later. Had it been someone in a lower position of power, he/she would have probably been executed.

Was the singing really necessary?
Help your party members get 50 succesful rolls that succeed by the margin of your bardic performance.

"Don't press me"? I'm pressing it.
Activate a trap by activating a switch or lever in plain sight.

Leeroyyyy...
Start combat while the rest of the party is discussing strategy or buffing up.

Morphing time!
Have the entire party use some form of shapeshifting ability or spell at the same time.

"Ok. Let's dance!"
Defeat a long-time rival NPC in single combat.

"This yours?"
Defeat an enemy with his own weapon.

"In my defense, it did kill him."
Kill an enemy with a spell that also damages an ally.

"Well, when you put it that way"
Talk the BBEG out of his evil ways.

"We'll double it"
Get a mercenary off your party by paying him more than the one who sent him.

"Pick a card, any card"
Obtain the Deck of Many Things.

"Round two"
Defeat an opponent who has already defeated you once before.

"Wait, where's the **** is the Serpent Ring?!"
Lose a critical plot McGuffin and don't realize it until the very end.

"Ever heard of Murphy's law?"
Fail 5 successive saving throws, skill checks or attack rolls by rolling a 5 or lower.

"Sexy shoeless god of war"
Kill 150 hostile NPCs in a single encounter with no healing items or any form of help from other party members or NPCs.

"Found a trap. It's in my spleen now."
Fall victim to 5 different traps in the same dungeon after a failed perception check.

"Style is everything"
Spend at least 300 gold on items meant just for the looks.

"Run? Run. Run!!!"
Succesfully escape a creature whose CR is at least double your party's average level (minimum CR7).

"Jack-of-all-trades, master of none"
Put levels into at least 4 different classes.

"Get away from he you B****!"
Deffeat an enemy with an attack of opporturnity triggered by it trying to coup de grace a member of your party.

"Just this once, everybody lives!"
Have no player character or non-evil NPC die at any point during the course of the campaign.

"Finishing move"
Defeat the BBEG with a critical hit while using either a feat or class ability for the attack or with a spell critical.

"Fair play is overrated"
Defeat a boss character at least partially with trickery.

36. The universe explodes. Just goes boom. And it's all your fault. Nice job idiot.

37. Your sword flies from your hands and goes missing. No you can't find it by rolling perception. I don't care if it's got Returning. No, using Locate Object won't work.

Just go along with it and stop metagaming!!!

38. Brain decides to remind you of every mistake nd stupid thing you ever made, distracting you while also destroying your self-esteem.

An undiscovered continent might do well. Won't force me to create a new pantheon of gods (even though I had some ideas for that too), but allows creating a setting unaffected by most of the continuity or such.

I've been designing a campaign so I'll have one ready when my groups current one ends, allowing me to have a good amount of headway and not write something new every week.

Problem is that while we usually play in Golarion setting, I mostly prefer the things I write with no connection to that setting. Like cities that don't exist in it, tombs for civilizations that never were etc. Originally I just created one island nation so it would be separate from the main setting and have geography and cities dictated by me, but still be connected to the main settign without changing a lot. In time I got more ideas and it grew to become a much larger setting.

Is it better to make a whole new setting (something I've considered and planned a little bit) or just ask players to accept these new places are now part of an established setting. I just don't like writing with an established setting as it forces me to study up on the material and only plan around what already exists.

My group recently finished a high-level adventure where by the end we were pawning off +3 items since it was worse than what anyone had on. High level loot was taken for granted.

No we started Skulls & Shackles, starting from low level of course. Suddenly my context has changed quite a bit. Since we basically lost all our equipment (asides our primary weapons we were given back), everyone is really excited over getting a bag with 21 gold pieces or a regular leather armor and holy water is considered worth saving since it may come in handy.

Really weird when one session we're throwing anything below +4 to a vendor and next we're glad to have a few gold pieces on us.

I've been thinking about it and can barely find any reason.

The exact wording is: "At 12th level, a monk of the four winds can use his ki to slow time or quicken his movements, depending on the observer. As a swift action, the monk can expend 6 ki points to gain three standard actions during his turn instead of just one. The monk can use these actions to do the following: take a melee attack action, use a skill, use an extraordinary ability, or take a move action. The monk cannot use these actions to cast spells or use spell-like abilities, and cannot combine them to take full-attack actions. Any move actions the monk makes this turn do not provoke attacks of opportunity. "

-If I want it for attacks or combat maneuvers that are attack actions, I'm far better off using flurry of blows with a Ki point. Gives me more attacks with a better bonus.
-If I want to move fast, I can move just as fast by running.
-I can't use supernatural abilities so I can't use Efreeti Touch three times.
-I can't use standard actions like normal so I can't grapple the opponent and pin him down in one turn.
-As a monk I don't have any extraordinary abilities to use as a stndard action.
-I can think of very few scenarios where I'd need to use a skill several times in one round, even fewer with the monk skillset.

What is this ability actually good for?

Depends quite a bit. Out of the ones that could be considered good:

One character hunts evildoers with little concern for much else, he's doing it mostly for his own self-satisfaction and the bounty money.

One fight for good to redeem his sinful past. Would have made him avoid violence, but the campaign he's in is just a dungeon romp with little to do asides combat and difficult combat at that (one character already died, twice) so... hands tied.

One wants to be a hero for the recognition hand getting stories written out of himself, though he also does it just to help people. He helps, but isn't 100% altruistic and tries talk rather than violence (asides one time the main villain had just killed his father, so he was pissed and was then tricked to also killing his best friend)

One robs people blind and always reserves the biggest share of the treasure, but also helps the downtrodden since he used to be one and knows how it feels.

Does it count if the character was resurrected afterwards? Saying it anyways.

We were in combat with 2 Dark Stalkers, level was low but can't remember exactly. One had advanced, so I ran past it to engage the other one. I was planning to take it out alone or at least hold it while the other Stalker got beaten by the 3 other members of the party. If it used Darkness, I would just retreat outside of it. However seems GM gave it the ability to use Darkness as a quickened spell-like ability via a magic item. So in one turn it can use the darkness and then do two backstab attacks on me, taking me down from 2/3 of my HP to dead in one turn. And no, we couldn't use the item for quickening spell-like abilities ourselves or sell it, it was arbitrarily darkfolk only and worth 50GP at best. He also had another magic item, forgot which, but that was also "Darkfolk only, worth nothing to you"

To this day I resent him for it and plan on getting even once I'm running my own camapign. Maybe not death, that's too uncreative.

I'm a male and tend to play male characters since it's the default in my mind. I do occasionally take a female if I feel it better suits the character I have in my head.

For race I go with human around 65% of the time since I'm too lazy to read anything beyond the core races and they tend to fit all settings. I do ocasionally take other races and my first character ever was an elf.

My necromancer (actually a wizard specializing in necromancy), Sigmund Blackskull, was turned into a vampire before the campaign began, as were all players. Throughout the campaign, we prepared for taking over a city. At first it was the order of our master, but later on I used an elixir to gain free will for an hour and kill him, taking the city for myself. We could do it whatever way we wanted, so my plan was to amass undead in secret while covertly weakening the city's defences and pinning the blame on something else.

In the end, the whole town was massacred in a single night along with a platoon of Toothbreakers, guys specialized in killing vampires. I had created huge necrocrafts, allied myself with two more vampires and turned the powerful town cleric into a vampire under my control.

So I had myself a city, the Daemonic Book of Damned and was planning to turn myself into a Lich to rid myself of need to feed and near immortality. Everyone was dead, so all I had to do was raise every single one of them as an undead. It would be his first step on creating a nation all for undead. Though the campaign ended there so whether he succeeded or was deffeated along the way was left unanswered.

So I'm making a monk for our next campaign. We start at level 12 so I got a good amount to work with. I'm making a Monk of Four Winds and taking all 3 feats of Efreeti Style.

I usually prefer characters theme over the effectiveness. Thereofre I made him the guy who probably could kick your ass, but prefers not doing that. Therefore he has vows of truth and peace. He will only use Elemental Fists as a last resort against an opponent so far from redemption the only solution is to completely annihilate him/her.

First off, few questions about vow of peace:
1) Can I attack opponents who have not attacked me, but have attacked my friends or companion, or are attacking innocents?
2) Can I do the first attack on opponents that are not going to go down without violence no matter what (such as sentient undead, evil outsiders or straight up monsters who just eat people)
3) Even though the vow says I must use Fight Defensively or full defense for the first 2 rounds, can I still forgo these by using non-harming means of combat like disarm, grapple or sunder?

Due to being unable to use my full power of offence, I also went for combat feats so I can grapple or disarm opponents. One question I have is about disarm: The description says if I do the disarm without the use of a weapon, I can pick up the dropped item. Does this include if I do it unarmed, but as a monk I'm considered armed even with only my fists. Do I need to take the -4 to be able to pick up the weapon? Being able to take away enemy weapons would be massively useful.

Rogue: What's yours is mine.

Wizard: Kings make laws. I make laws of physics.

Monk: Don't bring swords to a fistfight.

134. Dragons make awesome mounts, but most of them are against the idea and enchantment spells grant them saving throws. Skeletal/zombie dragons don't say no to the idea.

125. Unlike meatsacks, the undead don't complain about minium wages and have really poor unions.

This one happened in our last session of Cyberpunk 2020. We had tracked a guy who sells some certain combat drugs to an apartment and secured other exits while one of our big musclemen went to the frotn door. After knocking, conversation went as follows

"Would you like to let Jesus into your house?"

"No, go away."

"Well then, would you like to let your door into your house*

Then he proceeded to kick the door in with his cyberlegs.

To me, archetypical rogue is the thief.

He stays in the shadows and prefers never fighting, only resorting to it as a last option. He rather keeps ways to escape, like smokesticks, caltrops or setting traps along his escape route. Sleep in a place where guards won't look for you. Plan every heist and plan what you do if something goes wrong. Social skills are also useful, especially Knowledge (Local) since you want to have a way to find out everything about your character.

That's how I played my character. He had a good relations with the party so he never stole from his friends and was the (sorta) honorable thief. NPCs rarely had any reaction since I made damn sure to hide my identity whenever I went out on burgalries. Every time there was an incoming fight, my first reaction was to find a way to avoid fighting altogether or cheat and turn the odds in my favor.

Of course this is assuming you have urban adventure. In dungeons I think the thief goes around sneaking and steal the treasure without ever being seen.

Depends on if the character would name the weapon. My rogue did name his custom-order short swords into Fang of Ice and Fang of Thunder. And the bow to Frosted Lightning. Also my gunslinger named his pistol after his wife.

True Neutral mostly. I like having some moral leeway, but also generally being the good guy. and being able to get good-aligned results through some more questionable non-chaotic means.

"By the power of the light, burn!"
or alternatively
"In the name of *your deity*, burn!"

"Lay down your blades or die holding on to them"

"Begone, spawn of darkness"

"My honor is my blade, my spirit is my shield"

(Yes, I copy some stuff from Warcraft 3)

I've yet to face a really memorable villain. The 2 DMs I've had have a problem in that there are too many villains so I don't really get invested in any of them and often forget their names. In fact, one joke towards the end of last campaign started being "Who were you again? We got so many enemies it's hard to remember them all". Only one campaign had a main villan and there was very little memorable about him.

I've also only GMed one campaign which was never finished since I realized it's pretty bad and the players didn't seem all that into it. Though I'm oping the main "villain" for the next campaign I'm playing is more memorable.

I'm a heterosexual guy myself

Characters are

Greil:
Male elf of 40 years. I know rules state that elves are at minium aroun 110 years to be of age, but the conflicts in his backstory and timeline forced us to make him young. Due to being beginners with limited background info, we judged him to be a teenager or pre-teen, having mentally grown up faster since he was raised in a human society and forced to grow up quicker than elves usually are. Due to his age, I didn't play out any sexuality, judging he had not yet taken interest to those matters.

Reiger Graves:
31 year old human male. Heterosexual and married, though couldn't be with his wife as prior to campaign he had been wrongly imprisoned for several years. Even after being freed he was still thought guilty. He was not handosme as he had a rugged look,tons of scars from both prison and his job as a freelance lawman (basically a bounty hunter) and a very grim look on his face whenever he was sober. Though I guess some find that attractive.

Sarah Vain:
27 year old (Started at 26, was later youthened to be physically 24 by fountain of youth) female human. She was lesbian and married with an adopted son, though the adventures took place far from her home so she didn't get any time with them in the campaigns and not too much outside them either. While she was moderately attractive, she often had to cover that behind armor because she was an inquisitor and had to protect herself. She could also keep her looks without being weak and was among partys physically strongest members.

Edvin Mortis:
20 year old human male. Heterosexual. I made him the archetypical swashbuckler so he was a ladies man. He was very attractive, not only due to his well kept body (for the time period at least), slightly more slender build than most swordsmen, but especially his talents of speech.

Greil9 wrote:

...I got into a duel with an Aldori swordlord who ... considered me too weak to kill, but saw the potential in me and told me to get stronger before challenging him again.

... when we finally crossed paths again ... it made me feel like an utter badass when I landed the killing blow ...

Did your character think about sparing the guy who'd let him live when first they'd met?

My intention was to leave him alive since my character wanted to face him again someday and bore no grudge. However, I dealt too much damage with my final blow (Think I critted for the finisher) and he fell with no chance to heal him. Also the Swordlord was getting old and wanted to die in a battle, even having left a letter in his coat for me in case he lost. Both men went into battle as equals knowing the risk of death.

Also he left me alive back then since he could do it without any danger. He only hit me with the pommel and was never under any risk since my sword was already in pieces. Even if it wasn't I could only hit him with a nat 20 at the time. In the last battle either side taking it easy would insure a loss. I even tried just disarming him several times as a nonlethal way to end the battle, but his CMD was clearly too high since I never succeeded.

So while I wanted to leave him alive, GM had pretty much planned he'd die there.

If it's a long campaign, I want to start beign relatively good, but shown that it's a big world out there and I'm a big fish in a small pond. Over the course of the game, I'll rise up to be at or above the levels of those who I once feared/admired.

Like last campaign my character was one of the best swordsmen in his town and he was confident in his skills, but maybe 2 or 3 sessions in I got into a duel with an Aldori swordlord who completely wiped the floor with me. I couldn't even land one blow before he shattered my scimitar. I did manage one lucky 20 on a trip attempt to the surprise of everyone, even the swordlord, but he still beat me without taking even a single point of damage. He considered me too weak to kill, but saw the potential in me and told me to get stronger before challenging him again.

It was 2nd to last session when we finally crossed paths again. There was another boss with him him, but both me and the swordlord agreed to not get involved in that fight so we could have a fair duel at full strength (I was confident the rest of my party could take the boss on and likely would have sprung at the fight if any of them were in mortal danger). After a fairly lengthy duel, it made me feel like an utter badass when I landed the killing blow to him and nicely capped off my characters arc for that story. It didn't feel awesome since I was stronger than him, it felt awesome since I had grown enough to deffeat the one who previously took me out with no effort.

Here unspoken rule refers to something that is not outright banned in the table, but everyone or at least most people have voiced a distaste to something and it's usually frowned upon. People might want to do it, but they usually don't to respect the rest of the table.

Ours is the use of "save or die" effects, both for players and GM. Only once can I remember them being used. Even then no one expected it to work when our Magus won initiative and used Phantasmal Killer on one of the bosses. The saves weren't too bad and this boss had good saves on both fort and will. And he rolled incredibly bad for both of them, dying instantly. That was the most anticlimactic fight we had, which really got us all to laugh.

I'd also say summoners are banned, but at least 2 GMs have outright banned them from their games (we tend to rotate who is the GM).

61. Someone accuses you of cheating in a card game (which I totally did though)
62. Epic bardic lute-off turns into a lute fight.

We're in a 20 foot wide hallway leading to the big bad sorceress who has mind controlled one of our allies. In between us stand several mooks (forgot if they were undead, kobolds or other mind controlled humans) forming a wall with tower shields and the MCed ally. The boss is also standing on a loft at the end of the hallway, height around 10 feet.

I'm playing rogue with 22 dex at the time, boots that double my movement speed and a lot of points in acrobatics so I decide to do the impossible: I tumble past the MCed ally to avoid AoO, leap to the shield wall and use it as a springboard (while also rolling to avoid AoO as I launch myself forward) to jump right at the sorceress with both weapons drawn and ready to occupy the place her neck used to be in. Goes off without a hitch and I hit both strikes as I land. Too bad I didn't crit and oneshot her, would have been even cooler.

I like to run a 1 or 2 session games of Cyberpunk 2020 in between the longer games. I love cyberpunk settings and everyone always loves making a character with all the options it gives.

Wow, reading this I'm glad I was never this unlucky.

Worst PC: Not really that bad, our wizard who was just a bit reckless with the spells in our first game. Once he threw a fireball into a room with test subjects for some bad guys experiments, hoping to kill the bad guy. Yea, room wasn't that big so he just killed 3-4 innocent guys. (GM rules they were already dead so he could continue, though our characters were pretty sick of her recklesness with magic testified against her).

Another time (took place before the first story) my character won initiative and charged right at a vampire we were fighting, seeing he had a thing for elven blood and I was playing an elf who he had just pissed off. Well, then our wizard decides to tag the vampire with a lightning bolt... with me and one other PC in between him and the vampire. And of course I get unlucky, fail my and take full damage. Had I succeeded and taken no damage (Evasion) I'd have let it go without a word.

After we beat the vampire and another bad guy, I think my character would be pretty pissed about being fried with lightning, so I throw a few unarmed strikes. Hitting only did 1d3+1 nonlethal damage so no harm done, just knocking some sens into his character. So how does he retort? Fry me with another lightning bolt. Yep, 5d6 (I think we were level 5) lethal damage on purpose. This almost escalated into a PVP fight to the death. However, after a few rules hickups, we retcon that the fight never went to lethal damage and our characters just exchanged insults in our native lagnuages so the other didn't understand.

I hold no grudge and he's a regular in my group, just used to be a bit reckless with the arcane magics.

Worst GM: This was my first session outside a convention where I used a premade one. I didn't know any groups in my area so I tried some pick-up group in Roll20 to play online. I had created a character and was really excited to play.

First sign was before the session started. One player had done his character with the GM, but said he wasn't quite finished with his sheet so I decided to assist with my minor experience. I saw several errors in the sheet, though I can't remember what they were. I figured the GM had just misunderstood some rules, so I just helped him fix the sheet and notified the GM about it. He seemed little pissed, but the session got started. There were 3 or 4 players, can't remember, was we played via Skype and the Roll20 online system. GM says we should gather XP and loot in some places before going after the main quest. I had no experience, so I thought this was okay. So we get to our first dungeon. Not too long after, we run into a few skeletons. I had watched Counter Monkey (a web show about roleplaying) so I had some knowledge of this and carried a club just for such case.

This is where things break down. GM thinks DR5/Bludgeoning means the skeleton takes reduced damage from bludgeoning and normal damage form piercing and slashing. This turns into an argument where everyone but him says how the rule is and he just refuses to back down. We link him the rule, argue how it makes more sense to hit a bone with a club instead of a bladed weapon. Here I also learn he has never GMd or even played before this game. Eventually he does back down and I just say "You should just accept help and understand sometimes others know better than you" without sarcasm or insulting tone. This seemed to be the last straw as he quit the game and removed all his planned sessions.

I guess one player knew him since he said the guy had bipolar issues. After 10 minutes or so healos PMs me, yelling and saying it was my fault his game broke down.

Afterwards I never played with random people online again. Good thing I now got a stable group that plays once a week.

I'm pretty sure everyone has that one character they used they always remember fondly and even wish could return to. Mine will alwyas be my first character ever, an elven rogue Greil.

I designed him to be the trickster and an architypical thief. He was good with bows and 2-weapon fighting, but he always preferred non-violent options. He carried alchemical creations like smokesticks and tanglefoot bags, he had a lot of points in stealth, he put some points in diplomacy and he usually spent a lot of time just planning, learning guard patrols or finding alternative ways inside. He also always carried few arrows with sleeping poison in them (usually he disliked using poison, but he considered sleeping poison harmless enough) and he had a lot of magic items that helped him in that job like Hat of Disguise, boots that doubled his movement speed and goggles that gave him nightvision.

He was usually the idea guy, having a plan to avoid combat or at least tip the scales to our favor. Once GM expected us to go bash a guarding golme statue to pieces, but in my reasoning it would make too much noise and someone would call guards on the house. I just gathered info to learn what the guardian statue was, how to bypass it and then the house owners appearance, allowing me to disguise myself with the hat and walk past it with no trouble.

He also formed a really good friendship with another character in the party, our Samurai. Of course they had their differences, him being lawful good and me being true neutral and a big time thief (in fact our emplyer hired me exactly since I was good at that), but they bonded over being the best close-combatants in the group and shared loss of family, seeing my character was orphaned from birth and the samurai having his entire clan killed by his sister. They'd often be bantering outside the combat and seemed to form a good pair in combat. I'd hinder enemy movement so he scored a sure hit with his Iaijutsu.

Best thing was something always kept secret from other players: I always talked this with DM, but my character had a secret identity as the master thief Yatagarasu. When players were occupied or it was sleeping time, I'd private message the DM (we were playing online due to long distances between players) about what I wanted to do. This secret identity was so he could get known for his legendary thieving skills, but still not have every guard everywhere always hunting him. It was intended to be revealed at some point that the master thief hovering over us was me all along, but the campaign was ended prematurely.

Hell of a weapon. Could I borrow that idea?

If you GM allows it. I guess mine did since I basically pad for 2 weapons +100G for the switch being a free action.

What kind of feats, skills, items etc. have people gotten for their characters that weren't in any rulebooks but GM let you have? Also of he demanded a drawback for it, add that too.

Mine was a custom-made bow that I could separate from the middle for 2 shortswords, kinda like Pit from SSBB. I was playing a rogue who could do both dual-wielding and archery, so this gave me even better ability to switch between the two and stay flexible.

The bow was +2 frost shock I called "Frosted Lightning" and the individual parts were +1 shock and +1 frost shortswords called "Fang of Ice" and "Fang of Thunder". As free action I could either combine them or separate them to switch my combat style. The bowstring was magical and appeared/disappeared accordingly. It cost me the price of both weapons plus a little extra and took a good while to make, but I really wanted ot have a cool weapon that fits my character.

I'd do this: Ask each party member something personal about myself they don't know. He reads my thoughts and gets the answer to a question he's not supposed to have it for, I get the answer to who it is.

Wow, people are still here? I've already moved past it and let bygones be bygones.

I mostly got angry at him on the first reaction of him denying the retcon of death and retconning the used spell instead.

Greil9 wrote:

This is where I feel ripped. Apparently these guys had "Gloves of quickened spell-like ability" so it could use Fog Cloud as swift action. This also meant since I was next to it so I could attack, it could do 2 sneak attacks to me right away, both for 3d6 from sneak attack only, which were both most likely to hit since I was a dex-based character fighting flat-footed in darkness and they had +7 to hit, plus I couldn't use parrying in darkness and at no point could I do anything to prevent this sudden death. I was at 17 health at the point and this did a total of 30 to me, killing me right away. Not to mention they also had some magic lenses that prevented them from becoming blind form light earlier, even if it was basically a flashbang we used on them.

Before you ask, I know Fog Cloud wouldn't give him sneak attack. When I confronted him about this alone a few days later, he said my death wouldn't be retconned because he misunderstood the spell and instead it was retconned that the Dark Stalker used Deeper Darkness (spell-like ability which they also have to be fair) so I could stay dead.

OK, so your problem is that you got whacked in 1 round instead of 2? The way things look, without the GM enhancements to the situation, they could have been blinded with light blindness and thrown up the deeper darkness in one round, and recovered their sight, and then taken the next round to sneak attack you into oblivion. Net effect - it basically could have taken 1 more round (maybe 2) than it took to play out. Granted, that would have been more fair, but can you be certain the result would have been different?

I would remind you, in that one turn I could have done one easy thing: run. Get out of darkness and wait there until it ends or he comes at me.

Greil9 wrote:

I get it, I have to ignore it, how many more are going to post saying the same thing?

Well, I was going to suggest talking to him about it... and then, if that doesn't work, having all of your actions represented by a dance. When using diplomacy, dance Gangnam Style. Start as many encounters as possible using diplomacy.

No no, my character is trained Spanish stuff like tango and flamenco, dances that impress the ladies. I'm the dashing swashbuckler, not the bard everyone mocks for being good at nothing.

I get it, I have to ignore it, how many more are going to post saying the same thing?

Just let him get away with it? Might have to consider (seeing the lack of options) it if the mentioned future reprecussions aren't even worse than what happened so far and all players agree to never mention this again at any point, including at the start of next session. Not going take constant reminding of the time I failed even if I didn't fail in any way.

So this happened:

My party was exploring a dungeon. We came across 2 Dark Stalkers, which I recognized OOC, but tried not utilizing this knowledge. Also for reference, all of us were level 4 at this point. One of them rushed us so I told others to deal with it while I dealt with the one behind him. I was playing a swashbuckler so I figured I could hadnle it or at least hold him until rest of the party kills the other in 2 turns max. Not to mention that's how my character would act.

This is where I feel ripped. Apparently these guys had "Gloves of quickened spell-like ability" so it could use Fog Cloud as swift action. This also meant since I was next to it so I could attack, it could do 2 sneak attacks to me right away, both for 3d6 from sneak attack only, which were both most likely to hit since I was a dex-based character fighting flat-footed in darkness and they had +7 to hit, plus I couldn't use parrying in darkness and at no point could I do anything to prevent this sudden death. I was at 17 health at the point and this did a total of 30 to me, killing me right away. Not to mention they also had some magic lenses that prevented them from becoming blind form light earlier, even if it was basically a flashbang we used on them.

Before you ask, I know Fog Cloud wouldn't give him sneak attack. When I confronted him about this alone a few days later, he said my death wouldn't be retconned because he misunderstood the spell and instead it was retconned that the Dark Stalker used Deeper Darkness (spell-like ability which they also have to be fair) so I could stay dead.

Not to mention all the magic items they had: All usable only by Darkfolk for reasons (mostly so we wouldn't get increased treasure to compensate for higher CR, they were apparently worth 100GP total).

I was later resurrected, but it cost us all our money, this death is now a permanent part of my character, and he hinted there'd be some other reprecussions for it in our next game.

So how should I get even with him? I don't want to start jackassing the campaign since my beef is with him only and I don't want to ruin it for other players, so my first plan is to fight fire with fire. I'm most likely to GM our next campaign so I'll split them up (most likely have them chasing severl targets so they have to split up or let some of them go), have one planned enemy use a mask that uses Hold Person as a swift action and then have him slit his characters throat as coup de grace. If he tried calling me out on it, I'll refer back to this event and that it's just as fair as it was here so he can't complain.

In case it fails or takes too long, are there other ways to get back at him for that? Note that it's the only players I know in this city so walking out of the group isn't an option.

This is about sharing your stories of players who are usually nice guys and good players, but just get a major brain fart and do something that has the entire party either laughing or shaking their heads.

First player nominated as "dumbest guy ever" was our samurai. We got into a scuffle with some guys on the street (forgot the exact reason, but they were some major bad guys). Soon after, we see some Hellknights approoaching. Now despite the name, these guys were not evil. They were good extremists who would kill you for your offenses. These particular ones were hellknights of the nail. I'll let your imagination decide why the added part.

I hid before they got to us since I played a rogue who was often stealing things. Never caught on it, but several town had suspicions on him so I figured men and women of law wouldn't like me too much. I can't remember the reason, but our samurai started badmouthing them, eventually picking a fight with one of them. I tried to come out and drag him off, but he insisted fighting. We were around level 3 or 4 so he had no chance of winning and I think everyone realized that but him. We had even heard stories of how strong they were, even if we didn't read on their levels or anything. If DM had been crueler, the samurai would have died. Hard. However, their leader stopped the fight before he died and the samurai left with only low HP and shattered pride.

However, the second player , a wizard, did several stupid things (cast lighting bolt at enemy while 2 of our party were in between him and the enemy, throwing a fireball into a room with people being held as test subjects in it) but this one took the "dumbest thing to do ever" prize and is still something we laugh at over a year later.

We were clearing the laboratory of a guy responsible for releasing some really big monster we never got a name for. Our job was to take him out and get any info on the monter we could. Earlier we had seen some trapdoor on the floor that lead down to darkness. We heard some disturbing noises from down there so we decided "yea, we're not going down there". Later after killing the guy we were looking for, our mage went over to a door with a barred hole in it. Inside we saw some monster none of us could recognize with our skill checks, but we knew it wasn't the monster we were looking for. This was also directly below the hole we saw earlier. The door was heavy steel so there was no way for it to get to us and we didn't see any reason to go fight it ourselves, so we decided to just report it to our employee and let him deal with it.

This is where our wizard gets a brilliant idea. He goes in and says "I poke it with a stick through the door". Well, the monster, surpise surprise, doesn't like it and attacks him through the door since he got close to the door. Since it's a wizard with no AC to speak of, he gets hit. This is where things get fun. DM tells him to roll a fort save, which he fails. Turns out what was in there was a chaost beast.

http://paizo.com/PRD/additionalMonsters/chaosBeast.html

He's instantly turned into basically a pile of goop. We knock him out to save him from further will saves (figuring "mental shock" won't work if he's unconscious) and quickly carry him to be healed before hsi case get's worse. OF course all the healing is taken out of his share of loot.

To this day, "go poke it with a stick" is a running joke in our group.

Thanks for advice.

1. Ran it through payers, they seemed cool with the idea of no leveling up. It'll go on until players decide they're done and have the position they want.

Also I'm hoping to pre-build as much as possible, which is easier with set levels.

2. They take your eyes, they take your tongue, they take your ears. But they don't let you die, they will heal the wounds and stop the bleeding, but won't regenerate what you lost. You will forever have to live without those, trapped in your own body. They will even keep you locked up and under supervision to make sure you can't kill yourself. Your own body will be your prison. "I have no mouth and I must scream". Well, they might be able to scream, but hell if they know that. I don't **** around when it comes to gruesome fates for players or NPCs.

Of course, this isn't made clear to players unless they are in good terms with the guild or break the golden rule.

The guild members are instructed to bite off their tongue if it comes down to that. Though smart players will wise up to that and gag them so they can't do it. And I expect them to gain the info at some point, since it's one of major adventure hooks. I'm just not going to make it easy for them.

3. Might do that. Easy enough since most of the town population is humans. Though I intend to write some personality for the characters too ahead of time, so might stick to my own plan. With the slightly mad alchemist shop keeper who constantly experiments to remove the smell from his garlics or halfling magic shop keeper who is always using a stepladder and throws you out if you call him short. I plan to have enough pre-generated shops, inns etc. so players can go to different places.

I'm getting into GMing in my RP group. We have 5 players, me included, and we take turns GMing the games. Though so far only 3 have done so.

I called quits to my first campaign since I don't think I did a very good job and the players seemed to agree with me. the campaign was a bit too linear, too grand a scope and some occurrences which I didn't account for. No one had hard feelings and we just chucked it up to me being inexperienced.

Once our next long campaign starts (we've been running shorter campaigns recently) I plan to use the time to build an open-ended campaign.

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I'd like some opinions for this:

The game takes place on an island nation of Duranheim. (it's the world of Golarion since it's a world we're all familiar with, but the nation is made up.)

Players start at level 7 and won't advance in level during the campaign, except maybe once, though they will keep gaining magic items throughout the campaign. This way I can keep the whole world open and not tell them "you can't go there yet, you'll be eaten alive." But I also wanted to somewhat control them so I set it on the island nation from which there is only one port out and that one is also guarded heavily.

I won't restrict player actions in any way, whether they want to be good or not. They will suffer consequences from their actions, but if they want to ally themselves with the evil monarch, I got some plans for that too.

Duranheim was taken over three years ago by Gailio Khan. He is a powerful ruler, the strongest fighter on the island and holds the city in an iron grip. Law is strict and naysayers are quickly silenced. However, he's not some barbarian who drinks the blood of his enemies from their skulls, but wants to subjugate others to his will without killing tons of people, saying "Any barbarian can slaughter hundreds and claim to be the king, with no one left to rule over. I will make them realize they need me to rule over them". While law is strict and taxes are high, he makes sure everyone contributes to the country and keeps everyone at job, feeding those who are unable to (not if it's self inflicted to screw the system). Only two crimes carry the death sentence: any dealings with or worship of demons or devils and being part of the revolutionaries on the island. His most trusted assistant are his adviser, a cleric, and his high wizard and the general of his army, all high-level NPCs.

The resistance is lead by Tetrick Regias, the former crown prince. He is an extremist, willing to go to any lengths to free Duranheim from Gailio and return the power to people. He is ready to sacrifice the citizen or make deals with some people even worse than Gailio if he believes that achieves the greater good. In the end, if players ally with Gailio, he will actually sell his soul to a devil to gain the power necessary to overthrow Gailio, becoming the final fight of the campaign.

There is also a Thieves Guild in the town. They all reside in a single section of the town. They tell nothing guards asking around and if they get too nosy, they disappear with no trace. They can elude even Gailio since their golden rule is to never tell anyone about who you're working with/for and to commit suicide if someone tries to magically get the info out of them, knowing betrayal is met with a fate worse than death. There is currently also an inner conflict going on about the next leader of the guild, candidates being a sorcerer, and two rogues, each with their own idea of how the guild should be run.

On the north side of the island there lives a tribe of forest elves, lead by the tribe elder Ra'ziel. Since Gailio took over, they've kept to themselves and held off any intruders. Their tribe forbids all use of magic, save for the village elders and his/her proteges (usually son/daughter) druidic magic and using only natural materials in everything they build. They no longer know why, but the reason is buried within the temples around the island. Basically they used to rule over a country in highly magical cities, but they started warring with each others, eventually ruining their civilization and causing Duranheim to be separated from the main continent (it wasn't an island thousands of years ago). Gailio wants to conquer them too, but again not by marching in, burning the forest and enslaving them. He could do that, but sees no victory in it.

Finally the temples around the island hold a lot of treasure and history of the island. The archeologist guild, under the orders of Gailio, has been researching and clearing these temples. Before Gailios rule, the law forbid entering the temples as the elven tribe wished them to stay sealed and the king wanted to keep good relations with them. Once Gailio was done with getting the city in a good enough order, he ordered the examination of the temples, partly out of curiosity of the history inside and partly for the treasure and magic items. Archeologists will often hire adventurers since all of their members are only researchers, not combatants.

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Who the players wish to ally themselves is up to them, though obviously some alliances will anger other factions if they're not careful about covering their tracks.

I plan to write all character sheets and personalities in advance and I'm good enough at improvising what the character would say in the situation. I will make a crude island map (since I suck at drawing) and write all the shops, what NPCs work there and make the temples ready, along with many points of interest.

Can someone suggest changes or give me advice for this? Biggest challenge will be making character sheets for all the major NPCs who could enter combat for one reason or another (not making sheets for the local blacksmith).

Yea, I thought "Interact" means just talking to me, making it near useless.

Have to ask GM how he interptets it. Makes ti sueful to be someone else during robbery so no one looks for me while I walk away with all the loot. Or if I'm seen I can get into crowd, change unnoticed and walk by.

If it's touch, I will get it. If it's just talking to someone, I wont bother.