I too, hope this thread doesn't degenerate into me defending our group's playstyle. I find that those who try to pick apart my stories often do so because they don't have fun games like mine and are secretly envious.
Now, RD, be fair. You frequently start threads asking for people's opinions on something that happened in your game. You shouldn't then criticize them for giving opinions, even if some of those opinions might be a little aggressive and offensive. In fact, fairly often you start a thread questioning a decision made by your GM. It's good to hear that despite all those posts you feel you are in a fun game.
In this thread, you aren't asking for opinions. You're just sharing a fun gaming story. So, we all should respect that and not offer opinions that aren't requested.
Hmm... last I checked this was still "the internets" and as such any post submitted is by default asking for opinions, because the poster does, or should anyway, know that just putting it out there is making it a target. That's just the mechanics of the internet game.
A army with enough discipline to march by night going to pieces because the only light is extinguished?
As I explained above, it wasn't at all because of the lack of light. It was because of the sounds of their dying companions and not knowing what was causing it.
Shatter by a 10th level caster breaking a siege engine main trunk? I think it will weight more than 100 pounds.
I could just as easily have targeted smaller components like gears and such, so this doesn't concern me a great deal. Also, they weren't big siege engines like you use on castles, but smaller ones you use on villages.
The different army groups starting an internecine war while the black tentacles are killing them (as soon as they have lighted the torches they became visible)?
I can only assume they suspected each other of having evil magic users in their ranks (which is an important clue as they obviously didn't know each other very well). If I'm not mistaken, evil clerics still existed during this time period.
RD taking the form of the chieftain with Alter self? Sorry, you the form of a generic exemplar of the race, and keep your gear. A minotaur with a wizard red robe is not a war chieftain with an armor.
Either way it's a +20 bonus to my disguise checks (of which I do have ranks in) along with maybe a circumstance bonus for the distinctive trademark axe.
Even if the GM applied circumstance penalties for "being of a generic form" (which I don't know if he did or didn't), they still didn't stand a chance.
RD did a great job and there is no doubt that he would have weakened the army and slowed them down with little risk for himself, but the GM was way too lenient (or there is something going behind the scenes as RD suggest and the whole army was mentally influenced and so more susceptible to being confused by RD attack).
I strongly suspect they were influenced in some way. There was no reason for the attack, no history of (extreme) violence, and their are plenty of clues pointing to this conclusion.
That's why I'm remaining cautious, even though we haven't yet used the village defensive line, even though I now have new powerful allies in the newly created PCs.
I am fully expecting a host of enemy draconians, spellcasters, and even a white dragon to come upon this village within the next day or two (along with the remaining thanoi).
And the lack of familiarity with spellcasting explain the rest.
What a nice thing to say.
I assure you that as a veteran roleplayer of about 15 years I am quite familiar with how spellcasting works.
EDIT: Oh wait, were you referring to the campaign setting? So sorry if you were!
I just get so many negative comments with threads like this that I guess I've become rather jaded. :(
RD, ah, so spell casters are almost unheard of by design in this setting. Interesting. Such a setting should make a level 10 wizard a virtual god.
They aren't unheard of, but various TYPES of spellcasters are very narrow. I'm sure there are plenty of wizards about, but the vast majority of them are wizards of high sorcery.
Excellent setup and preparation. If you and I were in the same group, I think we'd kick some serious butt.
I hope to see that some day.
Don't like the pits from the marvelous pigments. To me that's just way overpowered without crazy rules about when you can and can't cause real materials to vanish from the world. If I could use the pigments that way I'd have a huge stash of them just to tunnel through obstacles at will, for a measly 4K g a pop. Still, a minor point in a much larger story.
Yeah, I can see the potential for abuse, still, the paints are limited by space AND value. Are you really going to spend 4,000gp just so you can create a 10x10x10 opening in a wall in ten minutes? I'm sure there are far more efficient means of making passage.
Just to satisfy my curiousity, when you teleported, did your GM treat that as teleporting to an unfamiliar location?
No. It was treated as "seen once" due to scrying in advance.
Regardless of your tactics, a tenth level wizard going against a ground-based army in the dark with no magical ability of their own, you should rout them easily.
Sure, but even a 10th-level wizard has only so many spell slots. One must be creative with those limited slots if he is to wipe out even a fraction of a sizeable force.
That, or carry a crap ton of scrolls (I only had about a half dozen buff scrolls).
I wasn't expecting to cause so much damage. I merely wanted to crush their morale in some way prior to their arrival.
Did it occur to your character at all to show them any mercy whatsoever once it was clear that you were wielding god-like power they could not hope to counteract?
No. None at all. They had come for war and I so brought war upon them.
To bestow mercy would have been to leave myself vulnerable.
Very good then. I noted you cast a great deal of AoE spells, which can be placed into concealment, so I just assumed you were far, far above for a majority of the encounter.
Again, well played.
Great stuff, especially for that setting. Now, once you've rested, venture forth and see if you can back-track that minotaur torch-bearer ... or whomever survived. :)
Crap! They moved it out of General Discussion!
Are they TRYING to kill my thread? This place is a graveyard. I'll never get a lot views here, much less replies.
PUT IT BACK!
LULZCrap! They moved it out of General Discussion!
Are they TRYING to kill my thread? This place is a graveyard. I'll never get a lot views here, much less replies.
PUT IT BACK!
That's right! I aught to burn their house down! :P
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And the lack of familiarity with spellcasting explain the rest.What a nice thing to say.
I assure you that as a veteran roleplayer of about 15 years I am quite familiar with how spellcasting works.
EDIT: Oh wait, were you referring to the campaign setting? So sorry if you were!
I just get so many negative comments with threads like this that I guess I've become rather jaded. :(
Yes, I was referring to the lack of knowledge about spellcastin on your targets part.
When you haven't ever meet a spellcaster and someone start to lob fireball your first thought (at least in a world where divine intervention is scarce) is that someone is using some monstrous siege engine throwing bombs or there is some monstrous creature (and the black tentacles would support that) working against you.
A high level illusion would have completed the scenography. Great fire giant throwing flaming boulders. :D
I still have some doubt about the minotaur chieftain impersonation.
The spell don't change your gear so you were a minotaur chieftain in a red robe wizard and not in a armour. The spell give you a +20 in impersonating a generic minotaur, not a specific one.
But still, at night (so grey robe for those seeing you with infravision), under a high stress situation and probably partially concealed by other people between you and the viewers I would probably have let it work with a good disguise roll.
Crap! They moved it out of General Discussion!
Are they TRYING to kill my thread? This place is a graveyard. I'll never get a lot views here, much less replies.
Yes, I would not have noticed it here. I should visit a bit more often.
BTW, have you thought about looting the army remains? There should be a good number of steel pieces on the bodies.
I hope the axe is something nice.
Having played this campaign (both original AD&D and now converted to 3.5) it all revolves around the GM. The conversions by WOTC are, well, dodgy for sure, especially the first one. (Your comment in your previous thread about "the GM is not to blame, the module says it's an 'old' red dragon" - our GM laughed like a drain at the statting and re-statted Ember as 'adult' (and it still nearly ate us all)).
Bear in mind your character is WAY overpowered for tenth level - 28 int would be respectable for a 20th level wizard. Having said that, your GM let you off fairly easy and obviously supports a heroic style of play. Were my GM in charge, you would have found the white dragon wing making an aerial patrol.
Wizards with time to prepare against unprepared enemies are rock, probably game-unbalancingly rock, but everything depends on your GM. If they don't want your cunning plan to succeed, it won't, if they're suitably impressed at your ingenuity, then it will. As a GM I hate characters having too easy a time of it, and your plan would have run afoul of all sorts of judgements and sudden things you hadn't thought of (e.g. your darkvision is only 60' - that means you're combing the battlefield backwards and forwards looking for targets and you can't target anything outside of that distance - and Thanoi DO have low light vision). Which isn't to say that that is the right thing to do, you put a hell of a lot of preparation into it.
Short answer, by my style of play, yes, you most definitely got away with something you shouldn't have been allowed to. By your own GMs, no, not at all. Enjoy Silvanesti!
Having played this campaign (both original AD&D and now converted to 3.5) it all revolves around the GM. The conversions by WOTC are, well, dodgy for sure, especially the first one. (Your comment in your previous thread about "the GM is not to blame, the module says it's an 'old' red dragon" - our GM laughed like a drain at the statting and re-statted Ember as 'adult' (and it still nearly ate us all)).
Our GM is using the Bestiary stats rather than th v3.0 module stats for Ember.
Bear in mind your character is WAY overpowered for tenth level - 28 int would be respectable for a 20th level wizard. Having said that, your GM let you off fairly easy and obviously supports a heroic style of play. Were my GM in charge, you would have found the white dragon wing making an aerial patrol.
Int 20 at 1st-level, +2 points for leveling, and a +6 headband. Seems like what an 11th or 12th-level character might have to me, but I got a higher headband earlier cause I was able to craft it myself.
At this point in the campaign, if there had been a dragon, it would have been WAY overdone. Up to this point nearly every encounter has had a dragon in it. This was a refreshing change of pace.
Wizards with time to prepare against unprepared enemies are rock, probably game-unbalancingly rock, but everything depends on your GM. If they don't want your cunning plan to succeed, it won't, if they're suitably impressed at your ingenuity, then it will.
That's true REGARDLESS of what character class you play or whether or not they are prepared. A GM could simply say "rocks fall, you die." As such, it doesn't mean anything at all to me (other than that I wouldn't play with a GM who regularly kills the fun).
As a GM I hate characters having too easy a time of it, and your plan would have run afoul of all sorts of judgements and sudden things you hadn't thought of (e.g. your darkvision is only 60' - that means you're combing the battlefield backwards and forwards looking for targets and you can't target anything outside of that distance - and Thanoi DO have low light vision). Which isn't to say that that is the right thing to do, you put a hell of a lot of preparation into it.
Just so long as you aren't advocating that PCs should NEVER have an easy time of it. Sometimes, hard encounters become easy due to good planning. Sometimes they are just easy to begin with. And that's perfectly fine. Though you should challenge your players, not every encounter need be a fight for their lives (cause that gets old after a while).
I would never play with a GM who changed his encounter after hearing his players talk of a plan to bypass it, reduce it to a cakewalk. When I GM, if a player or players comes up with a creative means to get through an encounter with little trouble, I REWARD their creativity by letting them do it.
Also, low-light vision wouldn't have helped the thanoi a great deal as the torches didn't go up until after the panic had started and I was invisible nearly the whole time.
Short answer, by my style of play, yes, you most definitely got away with something you shouldn't have been allowed to. By your own GMs, no, not at all. Enjoy Silvanesti!
I wouldn't have got away with it? Why is that? I can certainly see you or another GM making it more difficult on me, but are you implying that I would have outright failed in your game?
Personally, with an army a fraction of that size they'd have been feasting on your corpse with the romantic lighting of a burning village in the background.
Nice that they take it a bit easy, but frankly you'd have been dead well ahead of getting a fraction of all that done.
I guess thats the diff between heroic and gritty realism
Personally, with an army a fraction of that size they'd have been feasting on your corpse with the romantic lighting of a burning village in the background.
Nice that they take it a bit easy, but frankly you'd have been dead well ahead of getting a fraction of all that done.
I guess thats the diff between heroic and gritty realism
Mind going into detail in how they would go about accomplishing that?
How would you have run it differently, given the resources in the encounter?
Sure, I'm at work at the moment, but when I get a break I will detail it up.
If a Platoon of Orcs (With a support Section) can bring grief to a FULL PARTY of 8th levels, a full Company of nasties would be deadly.
I can only imagine the possibilities of a Brigade.
Great Story.
Well, we'll not go into HOW you are over-equipped. being able to keep the loot of the dead can vastly overpower a party. Your resources just confirm it.
Where did you get 10x10 pieces of paper to make your pits with? Are you aware of how heavy paper is, and how much room big canvases like that take up? You are aware that each pot made 1 pit, and each pot of Pigments is 4000 gp? So you blew 60,000 gp on making PITS.
How long was that palisade? Each 10 x 10 section was another 4000 gp of Pigments. 200 feet? 300 feet? That’s another 80k to 120k gp.
20 bear traps and 20 trespasser boots amount to 240 lbs of gear. In addition to all the huge amounts of paper you somehow had, in addition to all the other stuff, you must have one of the larger bags of holding. Do you have any idea how long it would take you to organize that stuff, let alone find it in a sack that big? A handy haversack only holds 80 lbs, remember.
Dozens of PAPER AIRPLANES? Any DM who let you do that is nuts. Now, Just reams of Explosive Runes is fine. Why he didn’t target you with a Dispel Magic and explode you when those went off, eh. This is classic Explosive Runes abuse.
You cannot Teleport into the air, you must Teleport to a surface…only by ACCIDENT can you arrive higher then the surface you are Teleporting to. There is nothing to differentiate one patch of sky from another.
Also, you cannot SCRY a location. You can only Scry a creature. Thus, you were Teleporting to an unknown location, and your DM let you cheat by coming in impossibly high, so you didn’t have to worry about a misport. That's a direct contravention of the rules, and old, old school Teleport abuse.
Thanoi are monstrous humanoids, and by default should also have darkvision. Just saying. Maybe not in DL.
When the light goes out the first thing everybody should do is just stop. It's what is NATURAL. You don't keep blundering forwards when suddenly you can't see.
Secondly, being invisible does not mean nobody can tell where your spells came from. Every time you cast a spell, there should have been checks being made by 900 sets of eyes to see where it came from, and alarms being called that it was coming out of the sky. Especially if there’s no other source of light. It's only a DC 20 check to pinpoint the square of an invisible creature, remember?
Secondly, night on an open plain under the moons does not mean pitch blackness. It means restricted vision. The sleds towards the rear would effectively have maybe 20- 40’ vision, but enough to see what was going on. They weren’t blind…he handed that to you.
Meaning, the black tentacles would have been obvious to ALL of them, not just the minotaurs. No confusion, except for wondering what was doing this (and more spot/listen checks to locate you.)
Note that minotaurs by default have scent, and I believe so do polar bears. So, they should have smelled you around.
A fireball paints a direct glowing line to the source, invisible or no. Ready actions should have killed you as soon as you cast your next one, from dozens of javelins or arrows being slung at you.
Each magic missile is a brilliant line pointing right to you, and visible to everyone around you. More perception checks. More ready actions to kill you.
A disguise check subsumes you have the time to get disguised. There’s a –20 penalty for 1 rd disguises, canceling your alter self, AND you’re in the wrong clothes. Combine with scent, and you didn’t know the voice of the captain, and your disguise should not have worked…and anyways, it would fail the dozens of automatic perception checks sent your way. Combine with the penalty for imitating a specific individual and race, and you had an auto-fail.
You do know you can only throw one vial at a time, right? And he was dumb enough to sit there and die? A military leader with class levels?
An animal in a blood frenzy is going to have a SUBSTANTIAL penalty on Handle Animal checks (treat as hostile). Likely, the bears would have just fled, or attacked everyone.
================
Now, I’m not saying it’s not all awesome kinds of story. But what you described is absolutely impossible for a character, not only of your level, but any level.
You somehow had over 100k of Nolzur’s marvelous pigments, and enough 10 x 10 sheets of paper to use them all on.
Classic Teleport abuse.
Your DM never targeted you with a Dispel Magic and blew up all your Explosive Runes at once on you. There’s a reason mages don’t DO that. Classic explosive runes abuse, right down to the paper airplanes.
200 lbs of bear traps. Yeah?
No perception checks, which the enemy is automatically entitled to. Including OBVIOUS ones.
You should be dead. Many times over. So, no xp is right! Heh.
==Aelryinth
The fact that I would change my position at an unbelievable speed (40 feet fly + 30 feet haste) each round before blasting him, also made it appear as there were multiple assailants in the crowd.
I love this part.
70' every six seconds. = 11.66 feet per second
1 MPH = 1.4667 feet per second
11.66 fps = 8 miles an hour.
Thats blistering fast.
Dozens of PAPER AIRPLANES? Any DM who let you do that is nuts. Now, Just reams of Explosive Runes is fine. Why he didn’t target you with a Dispel Magic and explode you when those went off, eh. This is classic Explosive Runes abuse.
Explosive runes need to be read to detonate.
Now either it was light enough to read, and they would have been 'seen' as they were flying down... meaning that the runes all explode harmlessly in the air, or it was so dark they couldn't be seen/read in which case they litter the ground until its light enough to see them.
Explosive runes are made to trap something that gets opened (books/doors etc) so the person triggering them is in close proximity by default. The minute they can be seen they detonate.
RD - nice story, looks like you had fun with a permissive DM that worked with you to allow you to decimate the army.
I would take issue with it if it were meant to be a serious representation of a conflict - but it looks clear that your DM was working with you to enjoy yourself during your solo session and let you kill off the army on your own.
...I was invisible the whole time...
Well, you weren't, Greater invisibility has a 1rd/level duration and you would have used half that getting down from your 800' up. I could go over your whole fisherman's tale and pull it apart like Aelrynth did, but to be honest, after the first couple paragraphs I tuned it out with "that's not how I like to play". I'm glad your group enjoys that kind of maximise powers/minimise problems play, more power to you.
...to allow you to decimate the army
-10
Decimate means to reduce BY a tenth, not reduce TO a tenth. <wink>
Decimate means to reduce BY a tenth, not reduce TO a tenth. <wink>
Dictionary.com disagrees "to destroy a great number or proportion of". Both meanings are fair and valid.
I say good on ya, OP. To you and your DM. You both seemed like you had fun, and you have a fun story to look back on. It's always fun to be the uber-hero for the day.
Whether or not the encounter would have been appreciated by other players shouldn't affect how you feel about it.
Explosive runes need to be read to detonate.
Now either it was light enough to read, and they would have been 'seen' as they were flying down... meaning that the runes all explode harmlessly in the air, or it was so dark they couldn't be seen/read in which case they litter the ground until its light enough to see them.
Explosive runes are made to trap something that gets opened (books/doors etc) so the person triggering them is in close proximity by default. The minute they can be seen they detonate.
Read the spell description. Now, this has changed since a standard dispel magic only affects one thing now, but a greater dispel magic is still an AoE.
Basically, if you try to dispel/erase explosive runes and FAIL, they go off.
I will note that he put them on the ground...where they'll get soggy, covered with stuff, squirrels will set them off, children will try and read them, etc.
So if a mage is carrying, oh, a hundred of them, you cast a Dispel at him, fail, guess what?
Yeah, all of them Explosive Runes detonate at once. It's why you don't do that. You're committing suicide by enemy Dispel.
===Aelryinth
Decimation was the formal practice of punishing a military force for cowardice or dereliction of duty by killing every tenth man.
In modern terms, it basically means 'slaughter and devastation.'
Similar evolution is 'holocaust'. It used to be a religious offering consumed in fire, i.e. a lamb or goat offered to the gods. It was a holy and sacred term.
Now, it means genocide by fire, annihilation in massive numbers, and there's nothing holy about it at all.
==Aelryinth
1 torch in a whole army travelling by night= epic fail.Seriously, whose bright idea was that? How were the polar bears pulling the sleds?
Sure, an army of minotaurs wouldn't need a torch, but what the hell is everyone else doing?
Either they need a torch or they have low-light or better and can see in the moonlight and don't need any torches. This scenario doesn't make sense.
Total Quote.
Was this is in the IceWall Campaign during the War of the Lance?
Hmm... last I checked this was still "the internets" and as such any post submitted is by default asking for opinions, because the poster does, or should anyway, know that just putting it out there is making it a target. That's just the mechanics of the internet game.I too, hope this thread doesn't degenerate into me defending our group's playstyle. I find that those who try to pick apart my stories often do so because they don't have fun games like mine and are secretly envious.
Now, RD, be fair. You frequently start threads asking for people's opinions on something that happened in your game. You shouldn't then criticize them for giving opinions, even if some of those opinions might be a little aggressive and offensive. In fact, fairly often you start a thread questioning a decision made by your GM. It's good to hear that despite all those posts you feel you are in a fun game.
In this thread, you aren't asking for opinions. You're just sharing a fun gaming story. So, we all should respect that and not offer opinions that aren't requested.
Tell me again how the entire internet has one overreaching set of rules. I need my LOLs. :D