harlequinbliss's page

PC: Allen Walker, warmage/fighter 5, son of a noble family in Sasserine
Adventure: Sea Wyvern's Wake
Location of Death: River Menace
Catalyst: The hydra.

Long Description:
So my group decided that during this stop they would all go for a swim! One member of the party has Called full plate armor, so being naked was all well and good. Another member wears her elven chainmail basically at all times after being caught on Parrot's Island without it. Another player wears none regularly (our bard/druid) so no big loss swimming without it.

Then we come to Simon, our soulknife/fighter (Des) and David, our warmage/fighter (Mr. Allen Walker.. the third..). These two separated from the pack (ie on the other side of our massive waterfall) and were without armor as well as weapons (not that it mattered much for Simon).

The hydra appeared on the side with the bulk of the group, our two girls and Mr. I'm an agro and a half (aka my husband). Well, David is first in the initiative and casts whirling blade.. which worked a little too well. He was in the water to cast it, and ended up a fair distance away, just a little farther than the girls. So the hydra turned and went at it. It moved just far enough that it couldn't attack, the girls turned on their heels and ran, as did our aggro (shoulda known that spelled disaster).

Our soulknife went to the back of the hydra and whipped a mind blade at it, with little effect (he's kind of a wuss). David realizes there are alot of heads right next to him, so running will provoke attacks of opportunity, but he knows that hydra will kill him. So he casts a spell (I forget what now) on the defensive (smart boy). It's not enough.

The hydra takes it's full attack on David, and sadly, he's dead dead dead with the hydra doing a full 73 points of damage (I rolled too well).

This was our first non-stupid PC death (the first being my husband acting like a moron with Harliss). It was sadness all around, but I love when my players take a death well and move on to the next character. He'll be joining the game again this week, since that was how we ended our game :)

I'm not exactly sure of the dates but it seems to me Farshore is at least a couple of years old and if the player need proof of it's continued survival perhaps amongst Lavinia's parent's paper work there are some letters from Farshore reporting progress and asking for supplies and provisions. Just a thought.

I already ran the scene and from what I had understood from the AP it was a new colony but it seemed well stocked and well fortified. Nothing I say tends to get through to them though.

Their other issue with even going was that they're afraid Vanthus will be there, not that they have any reason to be afraid of him (not to their knowledge anyway).

I can't stand at least one of my players.

The background to this is that I'm new to DM'ing. My husband ran our game for close to two years. He was burnt out and since no one else stepped up, I did. I figured, we'd play the Savage Tide Adventure Path and that would be simple enough. Except being the OCD overly organized person that I am, I still had to put hours upon hours of work into a single game session.

We have six players. One is my husband, Jason. He's an amazing player, someone who knows all the rules and helps me work things out ahead of time without ever metagaming during the game. We have David, who is a bit soft spoken, but at least he always enjoys the game and never gets smarmy with me. The other four are my rant.

George. George is as new to the game as I am to DM'ing. Which would be fine.. if he wasn't just so damn obnoxious. 'I want to do this! RIGHT NOW!' in the loudest voice possible, while someone else is doing something. He just doesn't get it and I have no idea how to explain it to him. And he has hissy fits.

AJ. Aj is more of a past problem than a current one. Her husband is the bigger issue. She just refuses to stand up for herself with him and it bugs the hell out of me.

Simon. Ah, Simon. He gets pissed when he feels he's right, but he's not. He's occasionally argumentative. He undermines my authority. Case in point, when starting our game there was a question about a level adjustment. I wanted to ask my husband for clarification before making a choice. Before Jason showed up, there was another question from another player. Simon turns and says there's no point in asking you. You don't even know about the level adjustment thing. There have been other incidents but that PISSED me off to no end.

And finally, my problem child, Justin. Justin is Aj's husband. Justin is a rules nazi. Justin is a badly played neutral character with neutral filling. Justin is beyond argumentative, Justin is just simply a *$%&$%(. And god forbid I don't know something. There should be a give and take. Players remind me about negatives they take and I'll remind them about positives they take. Everyone has to learn. And since no one else even wanted to try controlling this group, I did. And he just spits on me week after week. During a conversation with my husband while I was outside discussing something with Dave's character, Simon said it's ok, she's new. Justin's reply? That's not an excuse.

I'm tired of being treated like I don't know anything. I'm trying really really hard to make this fun and all the players do is complain. We hand out experience points for RP, and that's a fight every time. Someone thinks they should get XP for doing this or that. Someone thinks another person shouldn't have gotten more. They as players suck. They have no tactics. They often get into stupid combat. They never search for anything. They expect everything handed to them. They're decent as individuals but Aj and Justin are clerics. Justin has never cast a cure spell except on himself! How does that work? AJ avoids combat at all costs...

I've been running this game for two months. We're just finishing the second magazine. We game once a week, about 8 hours at a time, if not more on occasion.. it's just tooooo slow.

I hadn't thought about finding survivors. That's probably how we'll do it.

I'm not entirely sure on why they are all anti-colonists. They're afraid that Farshore will have failed in the whole month or so it's been on it's own, not including their time to get there. And for some reason it's a bad idea to bring new ones if they aren't sure what shape the colony is in?

What's weirder is they said no colonists, but they want to bring a blacksmith and some clerics to build a temple. Even though we have two clerics in the group.. They're all just insane.

harlequinbliss wrote:

Which is of course always something absurd or pink.

Wow. Cool. You really need to select yourself a forum avatar. Something absurd or pink?

8)

(While this is a little tounge-in-cheek, I'm not being sarcastic - I really think pink guard symbols a cool if odd idea, and I really think you could pick an avatar to bring out this side of yourself, just as your forum name does. Just as my impish satyr does for my impudence.)

New to the forum, so how do I set an avatar?

My players are accustomed to my.. odd sense of humor. One of the perks of having a female DM I think is that I get away with stranger things. Our favorite magic shop owner goes from valley girl to ghetto within the blink of an eye (in my mind, he's completely out of his mind.. his name is Poof.)

I'm big into preplanning for problems since my set of players never tends to do anything 'by the book'.

My group is about to begin their voyage on the Sea Wyvern. After a fight about not taking colonists, I have no idea what to do if someone dies along the way. I've tested the combat and it seems likely we'll lose at least one character (I don't have the smartest group of players). Given the lack of other characters to take over, what has anyone else done when someone dies and has to make a new character?

The ideas I'm tossing around are giving my players the option of becoming one of the non-essential NPC's on the crew, like Skald or Lirith. Another idea is having the new character at one of the ports. Problem with that is when they're past the ports. Any other ideas or suggestions?

i've noticed, that only once in the bullywugs gambit do they even make mention of sasserine's guard. and even then they dont give em any stats. what do you guys think, for some reason i think they'd look like muskateers. i dunno what do you think?

I made my guards the same for each district, because my players tend to get in a lot of trouble. The only difference is that they report to different people, have different attitudes, and refuse to work together. I just took the NPC fighter from the DM's Guide, making them the same level as my PC's.

I love the full plate mail because no one in our game ever takes it, so it helps them stand out, and they just have a district symbol painted on them. Which is of course always something absurd or pink.

PC: Rob N. Steel
Adventure: Bullywug Gambit
Location of Death: Harliss Javell's Room
Catalyst: A dagger to the forehead

Background: My husband was our group's DM for almost two full years. He decided he'd had enough and someone else had to take over. So I, being his loving wife, decided I would run the STAP, my first DM'ing experience. He now has what I call Character ADD, meaning he feels the need to make a new character every half a game. So this was his second character, a halfling who murdered his first character (who had severely pissed off a black market weapons dealer in Shadowshore, and a magic shop owner).

The rest of the party had their talk with Harliss and literally bolted once they found out about Drevoraz. My darling husband, with the cleric, decided it would be more fun to kill Harliss and take her stuff. He capped her knees, she threw a lucky dagger into his forehead. Oops, but hilarious.

Also, my first player kill :)

He'll be coming back as a Goliath barbarian/fighter gestault (we always gestault).