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Also, a spell cast by an incorporeal creature would be a regular touch attack. Only an incorporeal creatures natural attacks like a slam or shadow's touch are incorporeal touch attacks. Against a shocking grasp cast by a shadow, you would not get the bonus from bracers of armor.

Bracers of armor add an armor bonus. This only improves your AC, not your touch AC. Force effects have special rules that any AC bonus that is also a force effect also adds to that AC. So bracers of armor add only to your regular AC, flat-footed AC like any bonus to armor does and incorporeal touch attack AC because bracers of armor are a force effect.

I’ve been meaning to relate to you all the “safe” story. It’s the reason for the title of this thread and one of the more interesting stories from the previous D&D game I ran. The three characters important to the story are Ian, Barbara and Rechinda. Ian was a wizard being played by the player of Da Fighter from Turin’s campaign and had been with the group for most of the campaign. Rechinda was a nymph who was being played by the same player as Corinia. The player had been with the group from the beginning and this story is actually the story of how Corinia was conceived. Barbara was being played by the player of Sandra and was very new to the setting and game.

The party decided to go to a bar called The Glory Hole, which was on Ysgard. They had been there several times before and usually had fun. Barbara had never gone there before, and the player knew nothing about it. When asked about it Ian simply said “It’s safe there”. Unfortunately he was referring to the fact that you come back to life if you die, but Barbara (player and character) knew nothing about that.

As they’re there at the bar Rechinda gets very, very drunk very rapidly. Seeing their friend completely incapacitated although not yet unconscious, Barbara rents a room and takes Rechinda upstairs to let her sleep it off. Rechinda is thrashing around a lot, so Barbara ties her up to make sure that she doesn’t hurt herself before she passes out.

Now here is where just telling her it’s “safe” came back to bite everyone in the butt. After tying her friend up, Barbara goes back down stairs and goes back to drinking. Unfortunately it turns out not everyone at the bar is purely good. Someone goes upstairs to their way with Rechinda’s drunk and possibly unconscious body. The fallout from this is immense and takes quite a while. This is how the god (and player) Ian developed and dislike and distrust of the word “safe”, so hopefully he’ll be more accurate in the future.

This almost ended being a very bad story instead of a funny story. I had...

Here is how it almost went VERY bad in and out of game.

Rechinda got impregnated via that not so good aligned creature that took advantage of her in the Glory Hole. Because Barbara tied her up upstairs, with the reasonable logic for a niave character that her Fey instincts to be frisky should be contained, hence the tieing up away from other people. Well, that backfired, but was completely innocent as far as the characters mindset went. She decided to blame my characters wife and myself for her honestly most unfortunatue event. We had a horrible arguement, the only reason that she didn't die was because she has been part of the party for almost a decade [I believe] at this point, not that I cared for Rechinda personally, but she has been a companion for so long none the less. It ended in an agreement to appoligize for the miscommunication and help with the child. Rechinda initially felt that we should be executed or punished or something outragious for this, but that would have ended poorly for the character and another lawful character that had similar ideas. For player reasons of disliking the player and the character not letting his wife be killed, I made sure that we came out alive. The worse that would have happened would have been both of the other players getting melted via 300+ acid damage, then miracled to stay dead or something else equally permanent in nature.

Captain Da Fighter of Kraken wrote:

Allen Stewart wrote:

Turin the Mad wrote:

I think Freedom of Movement needs clarification - as it stands, once you have a 7th or 8th level party, grappling ceases to be a routine concern, while ever-increasing numbers of high CR critters rely on grappling to actually DO anything as foes.

The critter's SR for its CR is low - it's DR probably should have been 5/- (unless an Epic weapon was inserted in Age of Worms at an earlier point) or perhaps 10/-. The SR normally is gauged at CR+10, typically capping at 25-30 until you hit really "high end" critters.

Again I agree with Turin, many monsters at higher CR's make use of grapple attacks. The idea that a 4th level spell totally negates any of that is a problem. More clarification is needed.

I think that making it a bonus to resist on any check that FoM normally makes you immune to, a bonus along the lines of +10/5 levels, so +10 at level 7 and only a +40 at level 20 (although high, there are a lot of near epic monsters with +70 or high grapple bonuses). Maybe not that level of a bonus, but something equally nasty like this. That gives a mage the ability to not always need a nat 20 to make a grapple check or powerful fort save vs. parylsis. This would also give the High BAB and ST characters an excellent chance to not be grappled by a dragon or equally nasty grappling monster, but still have to worry about it.

Da Fighter has a most excellent suggestion.

Perhaps this should be playtested ?

The only problem I forsee is that the unfamous ring of freedom of movement will become very expensive due to making them at higher caster levels to get the higher bonus from this suggested alteration. The simplest fix I see would as follows to the spell, the bonus is not based off the caster but off the affected target's HD to determine the bonus. This solves the problem with the ring so it could still be CL 7 like the minimum is, but a high level character would still recieve the bonus to at least equal out the grappling playing field, but doesn't change much the bonus from the caster's caster level and the target HD.

Good point Sir Fighter - but how often is a typical party taxed to the point of depleting their Freedom of Movement capabilities ? As a general rule of thumb from what I've seen, once FoM is up and in operation, healing capabilities permitting, parties tend to press as far along as they possibly can to maximize their benefit from this spell.

My case in point is our very own STAP group - for all practical purposes, grappling / improved grab has long since completely ceased to be a factor in combat for a variety of reasons. (Like, since the group hit the shores of the Isle of Dread some 10 or 11 levels ago...)

Very true. But, Savage tides has a pattern on how the monsters attack. At first, there were a lot of oozes and grappling monsters. Oozes might have left, for now at least, but grappling has always been a major problem. We have seen very few bull rushing creatures for instance, so we don't worry about that with mountain stances at the ready. We have simply noticed the pattern and have adjusted to overcome it. If there were basically no grappling monsters but everything had poison, we would all have immunity to poison one way or another. One thing I have always wanted to see was a monster with a natural attack that had a greater dispelling attack that triggered when grappling against at least freedom of movement effects on the target; there are poisons that no spell or even palidin class ability prevents against, but nothing to negate FoM effects.

I think Freedom of Movement needs clarification - as it stands, once you have a 7th or 8th level party, grappling ceases to be a routine concern, while ever-increasing numbers of high CR critters rely on grappling to actually DO anything as foes.

I don't completely agree that a 7th-8th level party completely negates grappling and the like for only 70-80 minutes is over powered. By giving up most or all of their 4th level spells at these levels, that is a heavy cost for a party with normal spells availability. Having your highest level spells available, completely negate grappling and the like for an hour or so. At lower levels, the expense is huge. At higher levels when you have "extra" 4th level spells, the effects "can" become overpowering I guess, but it still only works easily when you know ahead of time or can get into touch reach to provide the immunity.

Turin:

I have no idea what a Spirit Wall does, but right now I a wondering if a Wall of Force, with hindsight, might have been more effective for the purpose for which the Spirit Wall was intended?
Thank you for slaving away to get the report out so promptly though, and enjoy your break next weekend.
Would it be possible to have some sort of list in terms of XP & gold of all the resources the PCs burned through in that fight, and how fast they can recover them? I'm suspecting that replacing/resurrecting that titan is going to prove expensive.

I myself burned through the following goodies for that fight.

There would have been another 10,500 if bite of the werebear didn't negate your ability to use a sword.

Grand total: 25,825 gp for Da fighter alone.

Our treasure haul from this fight : 678,928 gp effective treasure at market price. We each recieved 42,433 gp for this fight, after halfing for sell prices and dividing eight ways.

As for the titan, a miracle will restore the body if we plane shift to his home plane, a resurrect outsider spell will only cost us the material component of 5,000 gp; not even 1k if we all chip in. His equipment is the expensive thing, 37,000 if memory serve me to replace, an active volcano does a bit of damage to his equipment when he falls it in with him.

"Don't worry, it's safe here." Said by a character to his wife while heading to a bar for epic level characters to enjoy on ysguard (sp)

We have proved the infamous statement of vrocks fall everybody dies to be incorrect. Ok maybe not exactly the statement, but close enough. In the middle of the fight with the 16 vrocks, they got hit with 2 firestorms, reducing their HP to less than half, making them unable to sustain winged flight. Since 6-7 of them were flying, vrocks fell and nobody died; well at least not in the party; they were all slaughtered horribly.

I can't wait for the Vow of Poverty druid in my campaign to bite the dust so they can get all morally dubious!

Hehe, Vow of Poverty. Very awesome, very fine line to walk, and you never can get that back from atonement either as written.

*large rasberry*...fine be that way! LOL...it's not like you are headed that direction anyway! OH WAIT!...YOU ARE! :)

We won't sell your stuff. We'll just put it on your tab. :)

1) Just beause a monster can hit you 80% of the time or better doesn't mean there is a problem with the DM and his monsters; and should one of them get a lucky string and flat out kill you, yeah, it sucks, but it happens. I've died twice, one of them was to a demon that was invisible with scout levels that took me flat footed and killed me in 1 round.

2) You are willingly playing in a high powered game with a bunch of nasty fights. You can't expect to win every time. Sometimes you just get unlucky. You all have 150,000 over your normal wealth so there are going to be fights that are extemely hard and down right lethal. It's a game, you weren't killed with your soul destroyed and told that you make a new character, so you can come back and keep playing. I have learned that this campaign likes to use the same tactics over and over again so you can prepare for them somewhat.

3) I know you are a skilled player so I there is no reason you can't make or alter your character to something you will enjoy and that will be a formidable challenge in this campaign. You know the tricks to a nasty powerful character on par with this campaign. If what you currently have isn't working, they change the character to fit better with the campaign.

I will say that I do sympathize with you if you were running around taking care of personal issues only to come back and hear that you needed to roll one die to see if you noticed something and then die because your odds were 1/20 and you didn't break them.

Kassil wrote:

Turin the Mad wrote:

I wonder how much XP 15,650 CR 1/2s (even CR 1/3rds) are worth to Lavinia ... hrm ...

Don't forget the wild animals of the city - all those stray dogs, cats, vermin, and exotic pets are gonna have to add up to something eventually. ;)

Although, since the savage ones killed one another, do they count for XP purposes? Or is it just the transformation she'd get XP for? Hmm. Perhaps a bit of both. Conquest XP or somesuch. (To war, lads! Stomp 'eir heads inna ground an' we all level!)

I'd say just the transformation she'd get the XP for. She didn't direct the mutated ones to whack everything else - but that's why she'd get the entire city population. Let's call it ... oh, 25k CR 1/2's when all is said and done.

Lavinia's gonna be awesome from all that XP...

I don't know what level Lavinia is in this instance, but if she was level 4 and if you continue the formulas for figuring out XP to the extremes these require, she would get over 2.5 million XP just for 15,650 CR 1/2 people I believe

Quoting" It is also a website that in previous conversion on this page has proved to be wrong. " What were you refering to, I do not remember there being an issue with this site before.

Personally, I find making belittling comments about anyones character to be irrating, and NOT good for party health, everyone in the party is guilty of that, Muckamuch and everyone in the party makes fun of Hexen and the Journalist, no one says anything, but, when Hexen expresses an opinion about Muckamuck, you rises to Muckamuck defense what gives?

We all poke fun at everybody. Whether it's about the dwarf being stable and having no beard or the journalist and all the time she is spending with her mysterious fiend friend (jk), it's all just poking fun. I'm sorry it you take offense but none intended by my joking around.

I do not thing that that would be a problem for me. I would like to not wait three weeks between the last and next game if possible. Just let me know what people want to do.

I know most of them personally. I'm sure that they will either play towards one of the following goals.
1) Mess with an old character in which this current campaign is modified from for the fun of it.
2) Kill each other or have one player do something that will let my old character destroy them (I personally hope for this one, I have told the GM that when my character would intervene, I would be more than happy to show up and play my character out for them; note, it will probably not end well for at least one of them.)
3) They will survive for another day.

Mr. Da Fighter, I understand your pain and despair about not having the ability to pass your name on, especially with doom looming not far away...just two short months.

Perhaps you'll just have to find yourself a nice Dwarf lass!
Or just be satisfied that Dwarves are not cross-fertile and let the good times roll.

They are not "normally" cross-fertile. However, there is a D&D book with rules, spells and the like related to this issue and getting around this temporary issue. I intend to see if I can use any of them for flavor and game background in a while. Also, I "was" human, I could eventually go back at a higher level when the spells become available. Finally, I will not be the one dieing, that is the other side's job, I hope.

And now the Player Conspiracy begins ... ^_^

Now the conspiracies begin? Where have you been? They have been going on for a long time and now are just going to step up a noch. Don't worry it won't hurt, hurt us that is.

I did not enjoy this fight. I understand that there are going to be fights that are harder than others. This fight was under horrible conditions for us in addition to being a brutal fight. I also might be bitter consider I rolled above an 8 only once against him when I needed a 13 for my best available attack, and that attack bounced off his DR. And I didn’t get a knowledge check so my “character” would know that he is vulnerable to cold iron. It started challenging, but by the end, it was more of an irritation.

Ok, I'm calm now; I was having a bad day yesterday and the luck in my game did not help. It was a hard fight, but we messed up; I forgot to mention that we might want to think, aka make knowledge rolls to remember that an align weapon spell or two would have been great. Oh well. Basically, I'm retracting that it was a horrible fight and making the far more accurate statement that it was brutal and luck and preparation were not on our side at all. I guess I knew as a player exactly what to do but my character didn't know jack about it and that really made me mad.

What happened? O.o
I must know!

Am I starting to sense a Han Solo-Princess Leia sort of Love-Hate relationship between Sir Ineptus and Lady Torsin? Hmm...it might be a bit premature to say so...but perhaps after going through so much together and being so valiantly protected by our favorite former Hexblade cum Whirling Barbarian she will eventually come to appreciate his hairless manliness.

No, you have to see her face to understand the players joy of burning Sir inetpus. Also, she is now flavoring Sir Ineptus with all of her fire (due to a house rule skill trick, all of her fire spells automatically flavor whatever she burns, aka the now flavored meat shield of the party). It will probably lead to him getting eaten by a very hungry creature that has never had the honor of eating cooked human with sage seasoning. And on top of that, he needs some more energy resistance.

I do NOT cook you, you always get in the way of my spells, but, luckly for you I had the spare chain and weapons, poor thing, you are having alot of bad luck, however, you are cleaner now, with better armour, but, guys he needs more clothing one outfit will NOT cut it. Unless, you want to see his bare a--- again. He is washing his clothes

and hisself!!

Are you volinteering to learn some acid spells and start on his acid resistance... I mean acid bath... I mean bath sooner? If so, I would be more than happy to get him some fireproof clothing and get some acid resistance too. Get back to me when you get to ice. Just wait till we get to a town that is not destroyed.

Gee thanks, I never thought of you as such a passive aggressive individual. Like I wanted to be caught off guard... I would have thought that if anything the ooze would have gone after the rod BEFORE it went after me, thus was the entire point of my using the rod instead of going down their my self. I just don't see why the very stupid thing didn't go after the rod. The ooze couldn't smell anything in the water, it had an inelegance of (-), and the only thing moving close to it was the rock at the end of the string... While I see the GM's decision on it attacking me, I would have run it differently.

Being completely serious, we all know that there was nothing you really could have done about it. Had you not remembered that you still had your fishing rod, it would have been the Captain getting mauled(at least in theory, it would have been able to hit his brokenly high AC). It's just ironic how often you appear to be the one getting to find things the hard way.

Why yes. Happy turkey eating and other tasty foods day. Working on my third day of thanksgiving feats. Ugg. I hope that terror birds taste NOTHING like turkey; I've had quite enough of that turkey taste for at least a year to come.

Also point out the uber characters and rules lawyering caused the uber enemies.

I have been playing with this group for a couple of years now. I did not participate in this game however. I used to be a big powergamer too but got bored doing so. This guilty party always power games, appropiate or not to the GM's and players hopes and goals for the game. Killer GM has no qualms about making them pay for there habits. Of the two worst power gamers in my opinion, one of the players likes the challenge of big bad guys but doesn't realize that it hurts the other players who do not power game chances of of surviving and enjoying the game. The other player just like powerful characters and dies, repeatedly, and instead of playing a more reasonable character with a better mindset about it, he makes something more power-gamed and annoyed that yet another character has died, further exagorating the problem. I give our killer GM props for handling well this issue reasonably well. He managed to kill one of the 20+ times out of his 78ish without resorting to TPK's every session to deal with them.

I have been of little help recently. We recently acquired some terror bird eggs that will fetch a high price when we return to civilation. I have been tasked with carrying them around till I create some sort of carrying device to safely transport them in one of our handy haversacks. Until I finish this contraption, I have been carrying them around in my shield. I wish I could help more but we these eggs are worth so much, priorities must be set. I must admit, it is interesting watching us fight. Not having to worry about where I am and who I am figting, it was impressive how easily two monstrous centipedes were traped and slaughtered under a minute by spells and buffing. I didn't get a great view of everything but from what I saw, other than Sir Ineptus getting stung several times any almost loosing all manueverability. I missed the next battle due to the tight corridorse. From what I heard, it was a fierce battle with several mummies. All I saw was the aftermath, Sir Ineptus was infected with a horrible disease; I can keep it as bay for a long while, but I can't cure it, even with time. This disease will be very difficult to cure, even with magic. Hopefully the gods and luck are on our side.

I have sent Sir Ineptus, Tightbutt and appitizer (the newest player to the group) the link to this page so they have no excuse for not making a journal entry. Appitizer is the beguiler. I will refere to her because of her character bad luck casting spells against mother. After the fact, I made the joke that she kept finishing off her spell completion with the word appitizer accidentally. Failing all 4 of her concentration checks for spells due to mother's blabbering.

We got plenty that can crew a ship, I can read part of them, but that dam man must be reading somewhere else; he see's stuff that I would have never found myself.

Ok, this makes no sense, that's what I get for writing when dead tired at work heres what it should have said seeing how I can't edit it anymore

Several hundred years! I'm 19 years old what is this body of knowledge you are talking about. I figured that if i played my cards right, I might live to see 60. Now, thanks to that booger ooze and that scrap toilet paper in my pack, I could live to be several hundred. Awesome.

You have raised a legitimate point Yasha: since my players now have thier own journal, they should not be reading this one any more. So, Cap'n Monkamuck and Owen Da Fighter, consider yourselves notified. ^_^

Appoligizes, I was reading the posts that i missed backwards. I will stop reading this journal so I don't get a glimps of anything.

As for the appearance/comliness, I just like seeing people avoiding Charisma as a dump stat. At least, no without some repercussions.

I disagree with your comment. There is nothing wrong with using your least important mechanical stat, aka fighters "normally" cha. If you use it as your dump stat then don't RP it accordingly, then there should be repercussions. The natural side effects of your extremely low dumpstat will naturally hapeen. For example, a fighter with a cha of 6, can't intimiate or use diplomacy effectivly. A wizard with a Str of 8 can not carry a lot and a single ray of enfeeblment can reduce their strength so low that they can't even carry their staff and clothing.

Greetings all. I am Da fighter from Turin's savage tides game. Other than people power gaming their monster character "cough cough crusader cough cough", I am the reason that Turin has such a low kill count. Our group of players never use that miracle called tactics but I bring it to the table. It's alright, slaughtering NPC's through tactics and earning it is so much better than dieing horribly for being stupid; well, at least for us anyways. Just wanted to say hello to our "fans" and that your interest in our madness is greatly appreciated, enjoy the show.

Da Fighter