Monday, October 03, 2005
D&D was funny, and not so much. I take for granted how fun it was playing with people that can differenciate between player knowledge and character knowledge. I mention that I'm bluffing a Planeshift spell instead of a Cure Critical to get rid of the dangerous, uncontrollable beserker in our group, and for the first time in the existance of our D&D group, he decides to resist that spell and roll a saving throw.
See, I could understand if they had distrusted me at previous points in my character's history. My obviously-dragon-worshipping cultist cleric has been healing, ressurecting, and buffing them since we were level 1. I've prevented them from fighting dragons previously using my massive diplomacy and no one complained. But the second that a dragon horde comes into play, they all turn on me. Fearing for my life (and the dragon's) I try to planeshift the most unruly (that's kind of pun-y because his character was a Frankenstein of the Monk, Fighter, Barbarian classes) player character away. I could have tried to kill him, turn the other PCs against him...instead? I make a bluff roll modified to 44 after he asks me to heal him and when I declare to the DM that its a planeshift not a heal, he decides to resist.
Now, the DM was nice, but only because this particular player complained. This particular player likes to brag how his level 10 character has killed gods in other campaigns he's played in, meanwhile a Young Adult Green is reaming our 7 person party of level 10s. So the DM lets him roll a saving throw.
Player perspective: The cleric just tried to planeshift me because he's a dragon worshipper and obviously not going to just let the rest of the party kill his 'god' without even allowing him to talk to it first to bargain. Maybe we should have tied him up before we started the fight?
Twisted Psycho player perspective: Josh tried to kill my character and KRUG SMASH PUNY CLERIC WITH D20!!!!
Character perspective: My loyal healer fellow that I've been travelling with for over a year did as I asked and attempted to heal me, however the attempt failed because I strangely don't trust him...despite asking him to heal me just a second ago.
Twisted Psycho character perspective: I somehow know that he made an attempt to kill me for some mysterious reason mysteriously with a magical sensation despite my sense motive modifier being half of what the bluff check was if I were to roll a 20 on it. Mysterious!
So he starts beating the crap out of me. I mentioned that his character was abusive? He crit me with one punch (out of 4 attacks that he has in a round) for 60 damage. Fortunately, I was buffed at the time and the other 3 didn't land because my AC was 28 (that was 3 cleric spells, plus my magic tower shield, plus my magic breastplate...the beserkers AC is normally 25 FYI).
At that point I was pissed. I had failed to planeshift him because he was using player knowledge (and I will NEVER make the mistake of announcing anything ever again with this group...but read on muahaha). Even though he had to roll a save (DC 20!) he had a +12 to it because his mish-mash character class uses the best saving throws in the game. I was aware that this 148HP, AC25, +19 to hit on 4 attacks, 4d6 damage per punch, +12 to all saves, UNBUFFED brawler was standing in my face alone with me (the dragon trapped 3 of us in the cave while he pummled the rest of the party outside).
I stepped into the corner and dropped my massive-assed (animated!) towershield between me and him for some nice total cover and healed myself for 60hp...healing which the rest of the party was now not getting.
Mr. RAWRANGRY green dragon found his way back in the secondary entrance in the illusionary ceiling and dropped a globe of darkness on us. Safety! Surely my god would rend the blinded humans inside and then I would be free of the pests and ready to worship! The 3rd person in the room was a caster. He dropped a dispel magic in the room, removing the darkness, my resistance to energy (acid!) spell, and allowing us all to view the huge dragon. I was sad - I had true seeing cast on myself prior to the fight and could have had my way with both characters in the cave.
He jumped down on the big brawler and grappled him. The DM is an excellent story teller, but not so sharp on the rules. A huge dragon could have easily grappled, pinned, and then ripped any one of the party to ribbons in one round, but he felt the need to give the beserker a fighting chance...he managed to forget that this Munchkin ignores natural armour on his attacks and simply needs to hit AC 8 against the dragon. So the dragon gets pummled in a situation in which it would be immune to harm from that particular character....
The DM was a bit embarrased and had the dragon skyrocket straight up to 300'...and drop the grappled beserker.
20d6 would surely kill him right?
...
I, in no way, thought that he was going to die. While he was bending our inventory list to scam a potion out of the party pile which he "would have obviously grabbed before fighting a dragon!", the DM caster NPC in our group was trying to finish a polymorph other spell to turn him into a bird. At this point, the beserker said he was going to fail the save. Mysteriously resists mine when he thought I was healing him, yet doesn't resist an odd tingle coming at him from somewhere while he's dropping 300 feet in 6 seconds...
The DM ruled that he had to save since he was obviously paranoid of being magically attacked. He rolled a 20 on his save...critical success! He was not a bird, but I was still sure he was going to survive. He quaffed the potion, healed another 20hp and then impacted the cold, rocky lair floor for a whopping 73 damage.
Still alive.
I was seething, dropped a deeper darkness, during the fall to cover my dirty deed. I reached out and touched him in the utter dark with a friendly helping Slay Living...only to have him save against yet another of my highest level spells. He had 23HP left. I rolled 22 for the partial damage.
So he screams that I'm killing him. The mage dispels my darkness and I'm standing there calmly attempting to aid him. The dragon, tattered mostly from the 2 or three large hits it took, flies away to recover.
Now here's the stand-off: the uncharismatic, dumb as nails, "punch first, grunt later" tells everyone that I was trying to kill him as he feebly crawls away only to suck down another potion from somewhere. My Cha 18, +21 diplomacy, +17 bluff, +20 intimidate, trusty, long-time bastion of defense and healing cleric, sporting bruises of assault from the pugilist, without any rolls or opportunity to verbally defend himself is delcared the enemy by all the PCs. Except the rogue. He doesn't care because he's improved invisible and packing away as much horde as he can. I hit him with a dominate person, bluffing again that I was casting a healing spell on my injured self. This time I only announced it with a wink to the DM...who was apparently expecting me to waste it on the beserker. No thanks! I'll use it on someone that can actually fail the save due to playing with legitimate rules.....
All the party grab as much loot as they can palm and all suddenly climb out of the pit, removing the rope and leaving my character behind. The party fighter declares that we need to resolve the accusation of intent to kill, and asks me to remove my equipment and toss it up. In turn, the FIST FIGHTER will be disarmed (I suggested cutting of his hands, but the party didn't find it that funny...).
The dragonworshiper (who has not offended the dragon in any way) has the choice of giving up his gear and becoming helpless to the rest of the party who are mysteriously wary of him and being at the mercy of the character that knows that he's out to get him. Or. He can stay in the cave, curse them all and explain plainly that the dragon is going to heal and hunt them all down for the horde they stole. "I feel safer with the dragon" I kept saying.
Eventually the DM stepped in with the NPC wizard and encouraged me to take some of the horde, making me just as guilty in the eyes of the dragon, and thus a comrade again. Figuring that I could just have the rogue assassinate the brawler with a coup-de-grace in the night, gather all the loot taken, return it to the dragon "mysteriously", I agreed. They let me out, and my shoulder-dragon was appeased with adding a bit of 'borrowed' treasure to its horde.
During our desperate run back to the safety of the monnastary that sent us on the quest, the dragon reappeared and nuked half of the party with its recharged, clinging, breathweapon. The rest of the party, heavily injured from the previous part of the battle and unwilling mysteriously(!) to take healing from me, was slaughtered. The brawler failed his reflex save and dropped to -2HP, but stabilized. The ranger's pet lion evapporated. The ranger, rogue, arcane monk were all on the verge of death. The monk provoked an attack from the dragon as he tried to get close enough to whack it, and was staggered at 0HP, but was going to perish the next round from the added clinging breath damage. The rogue, entirely not wanting to melee the dragon, felt compelled to check on the brawler...and then compelled again once he was still breathing to sneak attack his injured comrade.
Even though the rogue was attacking from surprise against the beserker who was prone, 8HP from death, and otherwise beaten senseless...the rogue just barely beat the AC. He dealt a pretty 30 something damage with a sharp, discreet blow, then pocketed the brawelers equipment, the bloodied dagger, and declared to the party that he was dead from the chlorine breath attack.
The rogue was very confused as to his actions...he had tried to resist, but there was an overwhelming compulsion to put his ally out of his misery. He, so far, has no intention of telling anyone in the party about the deed, and has no idea that he's dominated. Hurrah!
I was saddened that we would be slaying a god...but (batman crazy camera angle)...but...what if the gods don't actually die, but their power is absorbed by other nearby gods...yesss! My little shoulder dragon (I call him my "godling") declared that we must slay the very injured dragon, feast on its power and then claim its horde. Being told by a god to do so, my character moved up to help out the dying party.
The fighter managed to avoid most of the damage this second fight and was able to stay in melee long enough to finish off the dragon. Slain, its horde up for grabs, my godling flew off to claim it. My pet (re: rebuked) ghast was already there, seeing as how the rest of the party was not making plans to stick around. He's currently burying as much treasure as he can in some safe spots to prevent the rest of the party from dividing it. My little cat-sized godling gets to play in the rest of the pile.
Currently our characters are limping back to safety...ofcourse, a few weeks ago 3 of our party were bitten by were-tigers and the full moon is about 24 hours away...so that should be a fun time for next session.
This session two party members died - one of them needed to be killed off. It had been agreed with the DM previously that he made a mistake in approving the character and he had gone over some changes with the brawler's player. The player, however, didn't like changing the character, declared him gimped and explained he would just play a new one.
The first thing he asked: Can I use a template from the epic level handbook?
See, I could understand if they had distrusted me at previous points in my character's history. My obviously-dragon-worshipping cultist cleric has been healing, ressurecting, and buffing them since we were level 1. I've prevented them from fighting dragons previously using my massive diplomacy and no one complained. But the second that a dragon horde comes into play, they all turn on me. Fearing for my life (and the dragon's) I try to planeshift the most unruly (that's kind of pun-y because his character was a Frankenstein of the Monk, Fighter, Barbarian classes) player character away. I could have tried to kill him, turn the other PCs against him...instead? I make a bluff roll modified to 44 after he asks me to heal him and when I declare to the DM that its a planeshift not a heal, he decides to resist.
Now, the DM was nice, but only because this particular player complained. This particular player likes to brag how his level 10 character has killed gods in other campaigns he's played in, meanwhile a Young Adult Green is reaming our 7 person party of level 10s. So the DM lets him roll a saving throw.
Player perspective: The cleric just tried to planeshift me because he's a dragon worshipper and obviously not going to just let the rest of the party kill his 'god' without even allowing him to talk to it first to bargain. Maybe we should have tied him up before we started the fight?
Twisted Psycho player perspective: Josh tried to kill my character and KRUG SMASH PUNY CLERIC WITH D20!!!!
Character perspective: My loyal healer fellow that I've been travelling with for over a year did as I asked and attempted to heal me, however the attempt failed because I strangely don't trust him...despite asking him to heal me just a second ago.
Twisted Psycho character perspective: I somehow know that he made an attempt to kill me for some mysterious reason mysteriously with a magical sensation despite my sense motive modifier being half of what the bluff check was if I were to roll a 20 on it. Mysterious!
So he starts beating the crap out of me. I mentioned that his character was abusive? He crit me with one punch (out of 4 attacks that he has in a round) for 60 damage. Fortunately, I was buffed at the time and the other 3 didn't land because my AC was 28 (that was 3 cleric spells, plus my magic tower shield, plus my magic breastplate...the beserkers AC is normally 25 FYI).
At that point I was pissed. I had failed to planeshift him because he was using player knowledge (and I will NEVER make the mistake of announcing anything ever again with this group...but read on muahaha). Even though he had to roll a save (DC 20!) he had a +12 to it because his mish-mash character class uses the best saving throws in the game. I was aware that this 148HP, AC25, +19 to hit on 4 attacks, 4d6 damage per punch, +12 to all saves, UNBUFFED brawler was standing in my face alone with me (the dragon trapped 3 of us in the cave while he pummled the rest of the party outside).
I stepped into the corner and dropped my massive-assed (animated!) towershield between me and him for some nice total cover and healed myself for 60hp...healing which the rest of the party was now not getting.
Mr. RAWRANGRY green dragon found his way back in the secondary entrance in the illusionary ceiling and dropped a globe of darkness on us. Safety! Surely my god would rend the blinded humans inside and then I would be free of the pests and ready to worship! The 3rd person in the room was a caster. He dropped a dispel magic in the room, removing the darkness, my resistance to energy (acid!) spell, and allowing us all to view the huge dragon. I was sad - I had true seeing cast on myself prior to the fight and could have had my way with both characters in the cave.
He jumped down on the big brawler and grappled him. The DM is an excellent story teller, but not so sharp on the rules. A huge dragon could have easily grappled, pinned, and then ripped any one of the party to ribbons in one round, but he felt the need to give the beserker a fighting chance...he managed to forget that this Munchkin ignores natural armour on his attacks and simply needs to hit AC 8 against the dragon. So the dragon gets pummled in a situation in which it would be immune to harm from that particular character....
The DM was a bit embarrased and had the dragon skyrocket straight up to 300'...and drop the grappled beserker.
20d6 would surely kill him right?
...
I, in no way, thought that he was going to die. While he was bending our inventory list to scam a potion out of the party pile which he "would have obviously grabbed before fighting a dragon!", the DM caster NPC in our group was trying to finish a polymorph other spell to turn him into a bird. At this point, the beserker said he was going to fail the save. Mysteriously resists mine when he thought I was healing him, yet doesn't resist an odd tingle coming at him from somewhere while he's dropping 300 feet in 6 seconds...
The DM ruled that he had to save since he was obviously paranoid of being magically attacked. He rolled a 20 on his save...critical success! He was not a bird, but I was still sure he was going to survive. He quaffed the potion, healed another 20hp and then impacted the cold, rocky lair floor for a whopping 73 damage.
Still alive.
I was seething, dropped a deeper darkness, during the fall to cover my dirty deed. I reached out and touched him in the utter dark with a friendly helping Slay Living...only to have him save against yet another of my highest level spells. He had 23HP left. I rolled 22 for the partial damage.
So he screams that I'm killing him. The mage dispels my darkness and I'm standing there calmly attempting to aid him. The dragon, tattered mostly from the 2 or three large hits it took, flies away to recover.
Now here's the stand-off: the uncharismatic, dumb as nails, "punch first, grunt later" tells everyone that I was trying to kill him as he feebly crawls away only to suck down another potion from somewhere. My Cha 18, +21 diplomacy, +17 bluff, +20 intimidate, trusty, long-time bastion of defense and healing cleric, sporting bruises of assault from the pugilist, without any rolls or opportunity to verbally defend himself is delcared the enemy by all the PCs. Except the rogue. He doesn't care because he's improved invisible and packing away as much horde as he can. I hit him with a dominate person, bluffing again that I was casting a healing spell on my injured self. This time I only announced it with a wink to the DM...who was apparently expecting me to waste it on the beserker. No thanks! I'll use it on someone that can actually fail the save due to playing with legitimate rules.....
All the party grab as much loot as they can palm and all suddenly climb out of the pit, removing the rope and leaving my character behind. The party fighter declares that we need to resolve the accusation of intent to kill, and asks me to remove my equipment and toss it up. In turn, the FIST FIGHTER will be disarmed (I suggested cutting of his hands, but the party didn't find it that funny...).
The dragonworshiper (who has not offended the dragon in any way) has the choice of giving up his gear and becoming helpless to the rest of the party who are mysteriously wary of him and being at the mercy of the character that knows that he's out to get him. Or. He can stay in the cave, curse them all and explain plainly that the dragon is going to heal and hunt them all down for the horde they stole. "I feel safer with the dragon" I kept saying.
Eventually the DM stepped in with the NPC wizard and encouraged me to take some of the horde, making me just as guilty in the eyes of the dragon, and thus a comrade again. Figuring that I could just have the rogue assassinate the brawler with a coup-de-grace in the night, gather all the loot taken, return it to the dragon "mysteriously", I agreed. They let me out, and my shoulder-dragon was appeased with adding a bit of 'borrowed' treasure to its horde.
During our desperate run back to the safety of the monnastary that sent us on the quest, the dragon reappeared and nuked half of the party with its recharged, clinging, breathweapon. The rest of the party, heavily injured from the previous part of the battle and unwilling mysteriously(!) to take healing from me, was slaughtered. The brawler failed his reflex save and dropped to -2HP, but stabilized. The ranger's pet lion evapporated. The ranger, rogue, arcane monk were all on the verge of death. The monk provoked an attack from the dragon as he tried to get close enough to whack it, and was staggered at 0HP, but was going to perish the next round from the added clinging breath damage. The rogue, entirely not wanting to melee the dragon, felt compelled to check on the brawler...and then compelled again once he was still breathing to sneak attack his injured comrade.
Even though the rogue was attacking from surprise against the beserker who was prone, 8HP from death, and otherwise beaten senseless...the rogue just barely beat the AC. He dealt a pretty 30 something damage with a sharp, discreet blow, then pocketed the brawelers equipment, the bloodied dagger, and declared to the party that he was dead from the chlorine breath attack.
The rogue was very confused as to his actions...he had tried to resist, but there was an overwhelming compulsion to put his ally out of his misery. He, so far, has no intention of telling anyone in the party about the deed, and has no idea that he's dominated. Hurrah!
I was saddened that we would be slaying a god...but (batman crazy camera angle)...but...what if the gods don't actually die, but their power is absorbed by other nearby gods...yesss! My little shoulder dragon (I call him my "godling") declared that we must slay the very injured dragon, feast on its power and then claim its horde. Being told by a god to do so, my character moved up to help out the dying party.
The fighter managed to avoid most of the damage this second fight and was able to stay in melee long enough to finish off the dragon. Slain, its horde up for grabs, my godling flew off to claim it. My pet (re: rebuked) ghast was already there, seeing as how the rest of the party was not making plans to stick around. He's currently burying as much treasure as he can in some safe spots to prevent the rest of the party from dividing it. My little cat-sized godling gets to play in the rest of the pile.
Currently our characters are limping back to safety...ofcourse, a few weeks ago 3 of our party were bitten by were-tigers and the full moon is about 24 hours away...so that should be a fun time for next session.
This session two party members died - one of them needed to be killed off. It had been agreed with the DM previously that he made a mistake in approving the character and he had gone over some changes with the brawler's player. The player, however, didn't like changing the character, declared him gimped and explained he would just play a new one.
The first thing he asked: Can I use a template from the epic level handbook?
