Players:
[*]Githzerai Transmuter (very experienced, a denner infact)
[*]Elf Fighter/Thief (not new, but less experienced)
[*]Dwarf Thief [Swashbuckler]
[*]Half-Elf Ranger
[*]Half-Elf Bard
[*]Human Evoker
Playing ADnD 2e using:
[*]Ascending AC / Attack Bonus
[*]No stat minimums for race, class, or dual class
[*]More generous hp rolling system
[*]Infravision split into Darkvision and Low-Light Vision.
Region Map:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11833524/Fairhaven.jpg
So the Gith, having a memory crystal of an old Alterran outpost (the last "Great Magic Empire", and totally not related to stargate in any way), is leading this band of hobos off into the wilderness in hopes of finding riches. They need to travel up a river, into a forest, up some hills, into some mountains. From there they'll search about to find the exact spot, and then sack the place for goodies.
Such was the plan.
On the first night they camp near the river and a random encounter comes up. "Mongrelmen" it says, "1d100" says the monster manual. 30 comes up, so they wait for the party to camp and decide to steal their booze (the dwarf has like 15 gallons of booze in jugs). They rush the party and manage to snatch most of the booze, using their claws to break the ropes and running off with the jugs. The watch gets surprised, so the mongrelmen have a free round to grab some and run off before the rest of the party is woken up. They begin to attack the mongrelmen and manage to down several, even one of the ones who had made off with a booze jug, but in the end they lose all but 3 gallons of booze. Nothing life threatening, but a blow to morale for the dwarf. He keeps one of the mongrelmen corpses in his backpack for later.
They travel up the river and then through the forest up the hills. Before dawn an encounter is rolled. This time it's an elven cat. The party has some mysterious eyes staring at them for a bit, but then they decide to offer it some food and then back off, which the cat took and then left.
Making camp as they get up into the mountains they stop by a stream and the dwarf pulls out his mongrelman corpse to slice it up and put it into a (now empty) jug (having drank the booze in the day it took them to get into the hills) mixed with some water. To firment it I guess. I roll another random encounter and it's Mongrelmen again. 27 this time. They see a dwarf who's pulling a corpse out of a bag and slicing it into a jug. Naturally, they charge as a big horde. The dwarf player counter-charges while the elf shoots his bow. Battle and such ensues but with the odds so absurdly against them the party is quickly overrun. The Evoker is the farthest back so he starts to run before they even get to him, and he gets away (speed 12 vs speed 9). The Ranger battles for a round before seeing everyone else go down and manages to get away with some nasty wounds (2/10hp). She and the evoker wander south out of the hills and back to the town. On the way they pass by a pond of giant frogs, but wisely avoid the whole thing. Having gotten back to town in defeat the night was over.
They got some people to rejoin them next time, but they've lost the memory crystal that was going to lead the way to treasures, so they'll have to look about for some new places to loot.
[2e] DMing for some folks that are mostly new to gaming.
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Hieronymous Rex
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On the stat minimums: it was too my understanding that classes with higher/multiple minima were slightly stronger (or are they supposed to be balanced by higher XP requirements?). I'm in a 2e game right now:
On Infravision: It was to my understanding that neither of the things you've "split" are actually contained in thermal imaging; both are essentially a kind of light intensification. Or would you rather not deal with the ramifications of thermal vision?
- *Awakened Baboon Thief: Me; uses slightly modified halfling stats.
*Human Paladin of Slaughter: Based on 3e UA.
*Human Magic-User
*Half-Elf Bard: Not always there.
On Infravision: It was to my understanding that neither of the things you've "split" are actually contained in thermal imaging; both are essentially a kind of light intensification. Or would you rather not deal with the ramifications of thermal vision?
Short answer: There is no game balance in 2e.Hieronymous Rex wrote:On the stat minimums: it was too my understanding that classes with higher/multiple minima were slightly stronger (or are they supposed to be balanced by higher XP requirements?).
Long answer: because things were just put randomly on a table by a crazy guy and his friends who thought that the players were being munchkins if they asked what the rules for something really were instead of bowing down to the DM's mighty power, there is no game balance in 2e.
Remember that among the groups the classes are:
[*]Cleric / Druid = About the same really. Cleric is actually a little better I'd say.
[*]Thief / Bard = Not even a fair comparison, they get wildly different abilities.
[*]Wizard / Specialist = Since specialists have a forced list of banned schools, it works out. Except transmuters, who are totally boss in 2e.
[*]Fighter / Ranger / Paladin = Paladins get awesome powers but they have to follow a code (using the Tome code), Rangers get the TWF and nature skills (kinda cool), and Fighters get specialization (we're using weapon groups for that, like in Baldur's Gate). Fighter Specialization is the best direct combat boost, and they get faster levels, but oh well.
Yeah, 2e would sometimes treat Infravision as thermal vision, and sometimes treat it as magical "you can just see perfectly in the dark" vision. I don't want to deal with any of that so I'm just using the 3e vision system instead. I suspect as we go on I'll convert more things to 3e style as well.Hieronymous Rex wrote:On Infravision:
Last edited by Lokathor on Tue May 24, 2011 1:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Before I get started on the next summary, Greg (being an elf and not a dwarf) was unhappy with my splitting of infravision into Low-Light Vision and Darkvision, so he looked it up in the book:
Party This Week:
William: Elf Ftr/thi (bows)
Michael: Dwarf Ftr (throwing axes)
Canis: Human Evoker
Katheryn: Half-Elf Ranger
Zach: Human Ranger
Greg: Elf Ftr (darts)
Events:
They began their travel to a keep out on the borderlands that had some nearby dangerous caves they'd heard of. It was past the nearby coal mine so that was their first stop.
On the way they bumbled into an Ankheg according to my random encounter charts, but after a quick glance at their stats I noticed that 3 of the buggers would kill the party for sure, so I went with a single 4HD (20hp) weakened down Ankheg (the bite did "highest in 3d6" damage instead of 3d6+1d4acid). They got some treasure stuck to the shell, and then thought to keep the shell too.
They got to the mining camp and went inside without much trouble. They talked to a blacksmith there and paid 1000gp for him to turn the 150lb shell into a super awesome suit of Ankheg Plate (AC +8, 30lbs, allowed to druids). They also messed about with hookers and such because I have a PNG of the "random harlot table", and it's a hilarious table.
From there they made their way over to the keep and announced their presence in the area, but didn't stop inside. They moved on towards the caves and met with The Bee Man as they approached the forest path around the washed out road. The dwarf went with the bee man and kept some bees for a while before running off with a free bee-keeper's hat. Since the rest of the party was screwing about trying to make their way to the caves I said that he was able to catch up with them because I didn't want to split up the party.
The first cave they went into was the goblin cave. They had a bunch of free language slots, so I let some of them put one in Goblin and then they talked to the goblins a bit. The dwarf won a tug-of-war match with the strongest of the goblins and won the 50gp grog sapphire. He also traded his bee-keeping hat for a barrel of grog, then traded 5 handaxes to get the hat back. They talked to the bugbears who came out of the back and were explained the general makeup of the various caves. The goblins agreed that the party could stay in their main area as long as they were fighting the other caves.
They got to the bugbear caves and set off a warning bell trap. The party decided to rush inside and they saw 3 bugbears. The bugbears also wanted to talk, but the party had done quite enough talking at that point so they stabbed the bugbears in the face instead. Then they kicked in another door and saw 22 bugbears eating dinner, so they ran off back to the goblin cave. The dwarf stayed there and all the taller folk went back to the keep.
On their way back to the caves the next day they got attacked by 4 Stirges and did pretty well against them, which was good for group morale.
They decided to enter the Kobold cave this time. They went in and a party member fell into a 10ft pit. They went left of that and saw a bunch of webs, which they set on fire thinking to kill the spiders inside. The webs were instead filled with oil as a black smoke trap, and they had to flee out of the cave into the open air for a clear breath.
Having had enough of kobold trap nonsesne, they went back to the bugbear cave. This time they went right instead of left and found the bugbear's jail. Killing the jailors they looked inside to find many prisoners to free, including one guy who wanted to become a permanent henchman (Cob the Woodcutter). They took the prisoners out of the caves area and back to the keep, however the secretly-evil priest that they'd rescued in the process managed to slip away and back to his evil temple.
All in all it was 6 hours of pretty good stuff, and they kept an alright pace most of the time in terms of not getting distracted by side things and out of game chatter. They managed to avoid getting in way over their head with anything, but they didn't get a big haul or anything either.
I had forgotten this little paragraph, and now feel far less guilty about making elves a little less cool and dwarves a little more cool. DORFS!PHB pg155 (TSR 2159) wrote: Infravision
Some characters and monsters have the power of infravision. This can mean one of two things, depending on whether the standard or optional rule is used (this is discussed in detail in the Dungeon Master Guide). The choice is lever to the DM and he must tell the players hot he wants infravision to work. Regardless of how the power functions, the range of infravision is at most 60 feet unless otherwise noted.
Party This Week:
William: Elf Ftr/thi (bows)
Michael: Dwarf Ftr (throwing axes)
Canis: Human Evoker
Katheryn: Half-Elf Ranger
Zach: Human Ranger
Greg: Elf Ftr (darts)
Events:
They began their travel to a keep out on the borderlands that had some nearby dangerous caves they'd heard of. It was past the nearby coal mine so that was their first stop.
On the way they bumbled into an Ankheg according to my random encounter charts, but after a quick glance at their stats I noticed that 3 of the buggers would kill the party for sure, so I went with a single 4HD (20hp) weakened down Ankheg (the bite did "highest in 3d6" damage instead of 3d6+1d4acid). They got some treasure stuck to the shell, and then thought to keep the shell too.
They got to the mining camp and went inside without much trouble. They talked to a blacksmith there and paid 1000gp for him to turn the 150lb shell into a super awesome suit of Ankheg Plate (AC +8, 30lbs, allowed to druids). They also messed about with hookers and such because I have a PNG of the "random harlot table", and it's a hilarious table.
From there they made their way over to the keep and announced their presence in the area, but didn't stop inside. They moved on towards the caves and met with The Bee Man as they approached the forest path around the washed out road. The dwarf went with the bee man and kept some bees for a while before running off with a free bee-keeper's hat. Since the rest of the party was screwing about trying to make their way to the caves I said that he was able to catch up with them because I didn't want to split up the party.
The first cave they went into was the goblin cave. They had a bunch of free language slots, so I let some of them put one in Goblin and then they talked to the goblins a bit. The dwarf won a tug-of-war match with the strongest of the goblins and won the 50gp grog sapphire. He also traded his bee-keeping hat for a barrel of grog, then traded 5 handaxes to get the hat back. They talked to the bugbears who came out of the back and were explained the general makeup of the various caves. The goblins agreed that the party could stay in their main area as long as they were fighting the other caves.
They got to the bugbear caves and set off a warning bell trap. The party decided to rush inside and they saw 3 bugbears. The bugbears also wanted to talk, but the party had done quite enough talking at that point so they stabbed the bugbears in the face instead. Then they kicked in another door and saw 22 bugbears eating dinner, so they ran off back to the goblin cave. The dwarf stayed there and all the taller folk went back to the keep.
On their way back to the caves the next day they got attacked by 4 Stirges and did pretty well against them, which was good for group morale.
They decided to enter the Kobold cave this time. They went in and a party member fell into a 10ft pit. They went left of that and saw a bunch of webs, which they set on fire thinking to kill the spiders inside. The webs were instead filled with oil as a black smoke trap, and they had to flee out of the cave into the open air for a clear breath.
Having had enough of kobold trap nonsesne, they went back to the bugbear cave. This time they went right instead of left and found the bugbear's jail. Killing the jailors they looked inside to find many prisoners to free, including one guy who wanted to become a permanent henchman (Cob the Woodcutter). They took the prisoners out of the caves area and back to the keep, however the secretly-evil priest that they'd rescued in the process managed to slip away and back to his evil temple.
All in all it was 6 hours of pretty good stuff, and they kept an alright pace most of the time in terms of not getting distracted by side things and out of game chatter. They managed to avoid getting in way over their head with anything, but they didn't get a big haul or anything either.
Last night was atrocious and i'm just going to write the summary quick to get it over with:
- They explored deeper into the kobold cave
- They found some kobolds who were painting copper coins golden colored and resizing them to be the size of gold coins.
- The kobolds gave them a bunch of this fake gold for them to use to buy weapons with, and in exchange the kobolds would give the players real gold
- They went to the mining camp and got some weapons, then they went to the keep on their way back and got some weapons, then they traded the weapons to the kobolds for some real gold.
- They broke into a side room the kobolds had and found a bunch of worthless glass, 6,000cp painted gold (still worthwhile as copper), and a copper dragon egg.
- While wandering to the keep and the caves and back and such they encountered some zombies, so they investigated a worn path back to a big stone spooky place, so they opened the door and saw some skeletons. They killed all the skeletons and then went into the spooky place.
- They followed the secret tunnel to the back of the caves canyon and began to explore that cave.
- They killed a Lurker Above which attacked them, and avoided the Permanent Image of an evil goddess that's so beautiful that you instantly decide to worship her until you die if you fail a save against it.
Higher stat minimums mean your class is more specialer (paladins are more rare and awesome than fighters, evokers are more rarer and awesomer than general wizards). In a low stat game, there are no paladins barring crazy-good rolls.Hieronymous Rex wrote:On the stat minimums: it was too my understanding that classes with higher/multiple minima were slightly stronger (or are they supposed to be balanced by higher XP requirements?).
In a high stat game, it will be harder to get exceptional Str/exceptional HPs for a paladin or ranger than it would for the fighter, so in effect the fighter's main 'class features' are kinda limited to fighter by the class minimums, probably. Sorta.
Multiple stat minimums usually also means multiple Prime Requisites, so its harder to get the +10% xp.
Also I like mongrelfolk, killing lots of them makes me sad...
Last edited by CCarter on Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
I didn't want to get behind on this, but I did, so here's two sessions, one good and then one that dragged on for far too long again.
This Segment's Players:
They decided to get out of the cultist cave and explore a new cave. This one has two Necromancers who died and became undead with the ability to create undead. They stole a bunch of treasure and then bumbled into the Necromancers and played it cool. One of the characters mentioned having drunk some of the poisonous embalming fluids and lived, so the necromancer decided to discet him in front of everyone to get a better understanding of thy guy's abnormal stomach. They slip to the back of the room and note a secret escape route, fiddle to get it open, and manage to Cure Light Wounds the party member out of surgery based death and they all escape.
In the labyrinth they wander around and find a Medusa who has been trapped by the Minotaurs. She plays the part of an old cursed woman and they grab all the Minotaur treasure (including a Two-Handed Sword +3 and a Large Shield +1, +4 against Missiles) and escape with the Medusa, who then runs off. Returning to the keep with all of their giant treasure pile they end up going from level 2 all around to mostly level 4 on average (wizard still level 3). I ignore the part about only 1 level per excursion because that's stupid and I like them being a little tougher anyways.
Having considered the cave complex and general area to be well looted, they travel back to Fairhaven. A strange gnome passes a note to the party dwarf while they're waiting in town with a map to a nearby abandoned complex. The party, with oodles of gold and nothing to spend it on, asks if there is anything in terms of magic ot buy, so I roll a random roll and tell them there's some Gauntlets of Heat for 10k, which they have to pool money to get but they buy.
Getting into the complex, they fight some monsters and grab some treasures at a fair rate. Eventually there's a room with "Shadows" noted and I roll the 2d10 as they walk into it, landing a maximum result. The shadows are surprised though, so they light a thing on fire and run off at top speed. The shadows stop to squelch out the fire and don't chase them.
The last thing they find before calling it a night is a very large and dormant teleportation circle in a room with a bunch of skeletons. They look about without stepping into the circle, the skeletons don't react at all, but the wizard can't determine anything about how to turn it on.
This Segment's Players:
Next session they open a room full of stone tables and chairs, and also some floating silver coins surging towards them. They slam the door and try another area without a second thought. The party thief decides to stay at the back and keep a lookout in case the ooze slides under the door. I naturally call for a Wisdom check (at -3 because that's just how Gelatinous Cubes roll), not realizing that he put his 5 into Wisdom. He gets hit by the ooze and paralyzed, and it begins to digest him. The Paladin and Hu-Ranger start swinging Two-Handed Swords (3d6 damage to Large+ creatures) and take it out quickly. They wait for the Thief to be able to move again and go on.
The next area is a set of bedrooms with some treasures. One of them is full of skeletons and they smash them up. The thief slips into the room first as soon as the skeletons are gone and grabs a scroll, pocketing it before anything but the Hu-Rng can see it. He doesn't bring it up right away because he figures he'll bring it up later, though eventually the scroll was covertly sold in town for 1,000gp (the party mage then purchased it for 1,500gp).
Carefully avoiding the shadows area, they begin to explore the final spot of this dungeon floor. There's a large battle room with a huge table that once had models and miniatures on it showing the entire region. There's also a black stone door that's immune to every bit of bashing they can throw at it (Hardness 20). Going back to an locked door that was overlooked because of the cube incident they open up a trove of 1,200 small crystals on shelves. Each crystal fits into the battle mat and makes it display an image, acting as a big set of historical records for the area. Not knowing more about how to work the table that's the most info they can get out of it.
They ask if there's anything else in the room, and having forgotten about how there was supposed to be an encounter in the room i say "yes, a switch, it's upright, you can pull it down flat, like a fire alarm, if you want". They pull it of course, who can resist? 14 zombies are teleported into the room and they begin to tear the players apart. The paladin and half-elf ranger end up going unconscious but the hu-rng eventually saves the day and they're revived, though the party ends up being out of healing.
Then the players proceeded to spend about an hour and a half trying to figure out how to work the table, how to open the door, and just generally bashing their heads against nothing. I explained at one point when one player said it was boring "you don't have to stay here, you could go some other place, I'm not keeping you here," but they would have none of that, and clearly if I put a door in a dungeon then i put in a way for them to open the door (I did not; Knock would have worked, but they didn't have it).
So in summary:
Monty Haul 2e = good.
2e the way the designers seemed to want people to play it = bad.
This Segment's Players:
| Player | Character |
| Michael | Dwarf Fighter (throwing axes) |
| Zach | Human Ranger |
| CJ | Human Evoker |
| Charlie | Gnome Bard |
| William | Elf Cleric |
| Gregory | Stout Halfling Thief |
| Hayden | Dwarf Cleric |
They decided to get out of the cultist cave and explore a new cave. This one has two Necromancers who died and became undead with the ability to create undead. They stole a bunch of treasure and then bumbled into the Necromancers and played it cool. One of the characters mentioned having drunk some of the poisonous embalming fluids and lived, so the necromancer decided to discet him in front of everyone to get a better understanding of thy guy's abnormal stomach. They slip to the back of the room and note a secret escape route, fiddle to get it open, and manage to Cure Light Wounds the party member out of surgery based death and they all escape.
In the labyrinth they wander around and find a Medusa who has been trapped by the Minotaurs. She plays the part of an old cursed woman and they grab all the Minotaur treasure (including a Two-Handed Sword +3 and a Large Shield +1, +4 against Missiles) and escape with the Medusa, who then runs off. Returning to the keep with all of their giant treasure pile they end up going from level 2 all around to mostly level 4 on average (wizard still level 3). I ignore the part about only 1 level per excursion because that's stupid and I like them being a little tougher anyways.
Having considered the cave complex and general area to be well looted, they travel back to Fairhaven. A strange gnome passes a note to the party dwarf while they're waiting in town with a map to a nearby abandoned complex. The party, with oodles of gold and nothing to spend it on, asks if there is anything in terms of magic ot buy, so I roll a random roll and tell them there's some Gauntlets of Heat for 10k, which they have to pool money to get but they buy.
Getting into the complex, they fight some monsters and grab some treasures at a fair rate. Eventually there's a room with "Shadows" noted and I roll the 2d10 as they walk into it, landing a maximum result. The shadows are surprised though, so they light a thing on fire and run off at top speed. The shadows stop to squelch out the fire and don't chase them.
The last thing they find before calling it a night is a very large and dormant teleportation circle in a room with a bunch of skeletons. They look about without stepping into the circle, the skeletons don't react at all, but the wizard can't determine anything about how to turn it on.
This Segment's Players:
| Player | Character |
| Michael | Dwarf Fighter (throwing axes) |
| Zach | Human Ranger |
| CJ | Human Evoker |
| Hayden | Dwarf Cleric |
| Jonny | Elf Thief |
| Katheryn | Half-Elf Ranger |
| Alex | Dwarf Paladin |
Next session they open a room full of stone tables and chairs, and also some floating silver coins surging towards them. They slam the door and try another area without a second thought. The party thief decides to stay at the back and keep a lookout in case the ooze slides under the door. I naturally call for a Wisdom check (at -3 because that's just how Gelatinous Cubes roll), not realizing that he put his 5 into Wisdom. He gets hit by the ooze and paralyzed, and it begins to digest him. The Paladin and Hu-Ranger start swinging Two-Handed Swords (3d6 damage to Large+ creatures) and take it out quickly. They wait for the Thief to be able to move again and go on.
The next area is a set of bedrooms with some treasures. One of them is full of skeletons and they smash them up. The thief slips into the room first as soon as the skeletons are gone and grabs a scroll, pocketing it before anything but the Hu-Rng can see it. He doesn't bring it up right away because he figures he'll bring it up later, though eventually the scroll was covertly sold in town for 1,000gp (the party mage then purchased it for 1,500gp).
Carefully avoiding the shadows area, they begin to explore the final spot of this dungeon floor. There's a large battle room with a huge table that once had models and miniatures on it showing the entire region. There's also a black stone door that's immune to every bit of bashing they can throw at it (Hardness 20). Going back to an locked door that was overlooked because of the cube incident they open up a trove of 1,200 small crystals on shelves. Each crystal fits into the battle mat and makes it display an image, acting as a big set of historical records for the area. Not knowing more about how to work the table that's the most info they can get out of it.
They ask if there's anything else in the room, and having forgotten about how there was supposed to be an encounter in the room i say "yes, a switch, it's upright, you can pull it down flat, like a fire alarm, if you want". They pull it of course, who can resist? 14 zombies are teleported into the room and they begin to tear the players apart. The paladin and half-elf ranger end up going unconscious but the hu-rng eventually saves the day and they're revived, though the party ends up being out of healing.
Then the players proceeded to spend about an hour and a half trying to figure out how to work the table, how to open the door, and just generally bashing their heads against nothing. I explained at one point when one player said it was boring "you don't have to stay here, you could go some other place, I'm not keeping you here," but they would have none of that, and clearly if I put a door in a dungeon then i put in a way for them to open the door (I did not; Knock would have worked, but they didn't have it).
So in summary:
Monty Haul 2e = good.
2e the way the designers seemed to want people to play it = bad.