RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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Just wanted to share the events of last nights game. Instead of interrogating the nasty animal-stuffer or jumping into the well, my sneaky players found a different way in.
They'd had a run in with the ixits and went scouting around the canals near the hideout, spotting the secret boat entrance. They then devised a cunning plan.
The water genasi barbarian swam around near the place to attract attention, hoping to get one of the ixits out. I sent four after him and he raced off underwater towards the park (south east corner). With a swim speed of 40 he could have easily lost them but he developed frequent 'tired' spells to keep them following. Once in the narrow canals near the park entrance the rest of the party dropped nets in front and behind the team while he climbed out.
One was killed immediately by the other barbarian while Sleep spells knocked two more out. They fished them out and 'rolled them up' stuffing them in rain barrels full of water. The last one was then persuaded to let them in the water entrance if he wanted to see his mates/ fellow soldiers again. So there he was, in the bloody water beside two halves of an ixit, being harangued in Aquan while the other two members of his squad were rolled out of sight.
Yeah, whaddya do? He let them in and swore to stay away for a few hours.
(Depending on how battered they are when they come out he might keep the bargain, or be back with reinforcements. We'll see.)
Sounds like your group had a much better time than mine with the ixitxachitl. My group wanted the bounty offered by Urol, who I inserted a little early as a researcher from Morgrave University. He wanted to study the fascinating specimens, so he was willing to pay well for fairly undamaged ones.
The PCs first tried to deafen them by dropping some Thunderstones in the water, but it mostly ended up attracting the attention of all of them at once. The ixitxachitl wouldn't come close to the shore unless somebody came into the water, so the PCs decided to have the fighter/rogue act as live bait. Bam! Two of them skirmish Live Bait, one hitting. Another PC piles into the water to get at the one the party manages to drop. Bam! Bam! Bam! Four more come in, and Live Bait is starting to get seriously worried. He manages to get out of the water, but only because they didn't get their skirmish damage on the AoO. Live Bait got out of the water with about 3hp left.
But hey, Urol got a specimen, and that's what really mattered, right?
But hey, Urol got a specimen, and that's what really mattered, right?
My players made friends with the poor taxidermist, who, after a crazy good diplomacy roll made while he was invisible (the cat telepath in the party pinpointed his exact location by scent), agreed to wait for them at a local tavern while the PCs went down to slaughter the Lotus Dragons under the condition that he would get to preserve and stuff "the boss-lady's pet dragon."
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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They're all about the gather info and weird demands!
I'm winging it half the night, no matter how much I prepare!
"I go to the Council and try to check the records. I want to see who has the deeds to all the buildings round Dead Dog Alley."
"Who are the head administrators at the docks? I'm disguising myself as an tax inspector - I want the names of all the people working on the docks who started in the last six months. Then I want to find out who's working there but not officially on the payroll. If I can't persuade him or bribe him, I'll try a Charm Person."
"I'm going to try and find out who owns Parrot Island."
"I go round all the alchemists and find out if they have something that will put fish to sleep. Those ray things are fish, right?"
They're all about the gather info and weird demands!
I'm winging it half the night, no matter how much I prepare!"I go to the Council and try to check the records. I want to see who has the deeds to all the buildings round Dead Dog Alley."
"Who are the head administrators at the docks? I'm disguising myself as an tax inspector - I want the names of all the people working on the docks who started in the last six months. Then I want to find out who's working there but not officially on the payroll. If I can't persuade him or bribe him, I'll try a Charm Person."
"I'm going to try and find out who owns Parrot Island."
"I go round all the alchemists and find out if they have something that will put fish to sleep. Those ray things are fish, right?"
DUDE! I want to DM for your group! They'd fit right into my campaigns... these are my kind of players! I've designed whole adventures around the kinds of things they like to do.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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DUDE! I want to DM for your group! They'd fit right into my campaigns... these are my kind of players! I've designed whole adventures around the kinds of things they like to do.
Did I mention how they tried to find Vanthus and avoid Parrot Island completely - that really threw me :)
When they heard he had Lavinia's mum's ring, they examined hers, bought scrolls of locate object and went triangulating on horseback at midnight. I had to have it found in a jewellers where it had been pawned by Shefton who got it from V instead of pay for some job. Sheesh!
Didn't want them to miss out on zombie pirates and getting mad at Vanthus!
They're fun!
Huh. You guys are lucky. My group, they are a fine bunch of roleplayers and all that, but for the Savage Tide, when they heard it featured pirates, they decided to play, for the most part, retired pirates and similar minded individuals. To quote one of them: "Pirates? Oh no, lad. We are business men here, see? Entrepreneurs. Now be a good lad and start singing us a right song about the Lotus, aye."
One of the players took a whole bunch of those Aberration feats from Lords of Madness and his pc has a pair of tentacles. Well, when the taxidermist went invisible, the tentacled pirate attacked him and got extremely lucky to have successfully attacked the right square and beat the total concealment miss chance. So ensues a grapple check. The wizard never had a chance. So, what does the former pirate do? Knocks out the taxidermist. Then he proceeds to *stuff* the poor fellow. No need to be explicit here.
Quote for that day: "The day the invisible taxidermist got stuffed!"
True, we all laughed at it because it was not expected. However, that alone pretty much set the tone of the game for a long while until most of the original party members died out.
The point is that my group are a bunch of ruthless cut-throats: "You best tell us what you know, boyo, or we will leave you with the Fish here to play with you....and he got a very vivid imagination and knows how to use those tentacles. Think hard about that for a second. Think real h.a.r.d., yar!"
I need to find more subtle players, methinks.
Cheers
CB
Canadian Bakka: your players may not be particularly subtle, but they sure sound enthusiastic.
And of course 'Da Fish' is a unique fellow for sure - mayhap does he still draw breath in your STAP, or has he gone the way of amphibian excreta in the ocean ?
They're fun!
Awesome! They remind me of the player I had who ALWAYS put a monkey wrench in the works. At one point the party needed to go to a great library to research a dungeon's location; after bribing the head archivist to help them search old records for 2 weeks, the old guy finds the place for them. This player's character then assassinates the old gink and stuffs him in a filing cabinet! I ground my teeth, because, unbeknownst the players, one of the main points in the adventure was that a rival NPC group would interrogate the archivist later and then follow the party to the dungeon, ambushing them when they came out.
Canadian Bakka: your players may not be particularly subtle, but they sure sound enthusiastic.
And of course 'Da Fish' is a unique fellow for sure - mayhap does he still draw breath in your STAP, or has he gone the way of amphibian excreta in the ocean ?
Alas, Dick "The Bloodfish" McJizzim draws breath no longer, for he was ultimately laid low by two fiendish centipedes summoned by Bua Gorg. Although not officially dead (i.e., -10 hp or lower), Drevoraz left no chance to Fish's survival as he finished him off with a devasting slash from the scimitar. Drevoraz considered it insufficient payback for what Fish had done earlier...successfully doing "grappling" damage with his tentacles. For you see, in his life as a pirate, Fish was no mere pirate. He was the legendary infamous dread pirate known as the Bloodfish who pillaged and mercilessly violated his enemies. Of course, that was more than 3 decades ago for Fish.
Yes, the player decided on an 60 year old former pirate that nobody recognized him anymore due to the changes brought on by the aberration feats (the physical aspect of the curse laid upon him by his dying wife) and he started gameplay as 1st level due to the 15 years or so of abusing his body with drugs and alcohol.
The player's second pc was Fish's son (who was denied the chance to kill his father), who oddly enough fell not long after to Bua Gorg again! I had changed one of Bua Gorg's domain to Entropy (as that is one of the domains offered by Dagon) and Bua Gorg had successfully criticalled with the domain power (6d8 becomes 12d8 points of half unholy and half sonic damage!). However, in the end the Father and Son were avenged, ;)
Cheers
CB
They're fun!Awesome! They remind me of the player I had who ALWAYS put a monkey wrench in the works. At one point the party needed to go to a great library to research a dungeon's location; after bribing the head archivist to help them search old records for 2 weeks, the old guy finds the place for them. This player's character then assassinates the old gink and stuffs him in a filing cabinet! I ground my teeth, because, unbeknownst the players, one of the main points in the adventure was that a rival NPC group would interrogate the archivist later and then follow the party to the dungeon, ambushing them when they came out.
Kirth, unless they thought to rip the man's jaw off, Speak with Dead should be sufficient for the task at hand. And suitably inform the pursuing NPCs of just how ruthless thier quarry is to boot...
Canadian Bakka: your players may not be particularly subtle, but they sure sound enthusiastic.
And of course 'Da Fish' is a unique fellow for sure - mayhap does he still draw breath in your STAP, or has he gone the way of amphibian excreta in the ocean ?
Alas, Dick "The Bloodfish" McJizzim draws breath no longer, for he was ultimately laid low by two fiendish centipedes summoned by Bua Gorg. Although not officially dead (i.e., -10 hp or lower), Drevoraz left no chance to Fish's survival as he finished him off with a devasting slash from the scimitar. Drevoraz considered it insufficient payback for what Fish had done earlier...successfully doing "grappling" damage with his tentacles. For you see, in his life as a pirate, Fish was no mere pirate. He was the legendary infamous dread pirate known as the Bloodfish who pillaged and mercilessly violated his enemies. Of course, that was more than 3 decades ago for Fish.
Yes, the player decided on an 60 year old former pirate that nobody recognized him anymore due to the changes brought on by the aberration feats (the physical aspect of the curse laid upon him by his dying wife) and he started gameplay as 1st level due to the 15 years or so of abusing his body with drugs and alcohol.
The player's second pc was Fish's son (who was denied the chance to kill his father), who oddly enough fell not long after to Bua Gorg again! I had changed one of Bua Gorg's domain to Entropy (as that is one of the domains offered by Dagon) and Bua Gorg had successfully criticalled with the domain power (6d8 becomes 12d8 points of half unholy and half sonic damage!). However, in the end the Father and Son were avenged, ;)
Cheers
CB
Dick ... McJizzim ... roflmao, okay, that is several flavors of wrong. I do like it I admit, but it is still not-right. ^_^
A very 'novel' backstory approach I must admit. Although I do wonder if the Dread B-Pirate Bloodfish's player is just one of those oddballs that can't make a 'serious' character, this was his first character or whatever the detail was.
Thanks for the info, I might just steal that too. ^_^
Dick ... McJizzim ... roflmao, okay, that is several flavors of wrong. I do like it I admit, but it is still not-right. ^_^
A very 'novel' backstory approach I must admit. Although I do wonder if the Dread B-Pirate Bloodfish's player is just one of those oddballs...
He is but one player who comes up with really good characters (well, at the very least different from the norm). For example, as a bit of a parody and a different take on the Legends of Captain Bartholomew Robarts (also known as Black Bart), another player makes each of his pc in the Savage Tide a different incarnation of Black Bart to account for all the various stories (including "I swear he was 7 feet tall; he breathed fire; he was a cur; he was a rake!" etc., etc.) about him.
Another player played a female gnome who stole another npc's identity and was a pathological liar (and thief!). Now he plays an old man who is a wizard that believes that the end of the world is nigh and that the elder ones will soon come for humanity. He will eventually become a cataclysm mage (that should be fun). The old man constantly hear voices that he believes are the whispers of the Elder Ones [which explains why he has a -4 penalty to listen, spot, hide, and move silently checks that are caused by 2 flaws he has] and the player plays the old man as confused, possibly insane.
And so forth. I also play a pc but I try to make them as normal as possibly as to balance the group so they won't get side-tracked as often. Still, I find myself having to wing the game often. After all, it is not often that I find myself roleplaying an npc noble who is being courted by a drunk, supposedly former rapist, (Fish), a halfling who likes to grope (Black Bart), and an aventi druid who used to be a prostitute. And yes, the player who played Fish was actually drunk out of his skull and he still managed to roleplay, ;)
Cheers
CB
Dick ... McJizzim ... roflmao, okay, that is several flavors of wrong. I do like it I admit, but it is still not-right. ^_^
A very 'novel' backstory approach I must admit. Although I do wonder if the Dread B-Pirate Bloodfish's player is just one of those oddballs...
He is but one player who comes up with really good characters (well, at the very least different from the norm). For example, as a bit of a parody and a different take on the Legends of Captain Bartholomew Robarts (also known as Black Bart), another player makes each of his pc in the Savage Tide a different incarnation of Black Bart to account for all the various stories (including "I swear he was 7 feet tall; he breathed fire; he was a cur; he was a rake!" etc., etc.) about him.
Another player played a female gnome who stole another npc's identity and was a pathological liar (and thief!). Now he plays an old man who is a wizard that believes that the end of the world is nigh and that the elder ones will soon come for humanity. He will eventually become a cataclysm mage (that should be fun). The old man constantly hear voices that he believes are the whispers of the Elder Ones [which explains why he has a -4 penalty to listen, spot, hide, and move silently checks that are caused by 2 flaws he has] and the player plays the old man as confused, possibly insane.
And so forth. I also play a pc but I try to make them as normal as possibly as to balance the group so they won't get side-tracked as often. Still, I find myself having to wing the game often. After all, it is not often that I find myself roleplaying an npc noble who is being courted by a drunk, supposedly former rapist, (Fish), a halfling who likes to grope (Black Bart), and an aventi druid who used to be a prostitute. And yes, the player who played Fish was actually drunk out of his skull and he still managed to roleplay, ;)
Cheers
CB
Awesome and quite different characters. Give my props to your group. ^_^