Runelords Flashbacks

[virgil]

I got lots of ranting from my DM for playing a Fighter that took archery feats, taking Skill Focus (Perception), animating a corpse with a necromancer, and bringing clubs to use for telekinesis instead of small rocks on the ground. Because the monk in the party got hasted in my campaign, everyone lost their iterative attacks in the next campaign that wasn't run by me.

This wasn't even a narrative focused group.

This sounds like it deserves an In the Trenches post.

By popular request, I shall regale you with remembrances of an old campaign.

We played through the entirety of the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, and I went through three separate characters. Only two of the original party survived from start to finish.

The two that survived were a human TWF ranger with giants as their favored enemy and a house-ruled ability to drop his animal companion for fighter bonus feats, and a dwarven fighter who specialized in AC and shield using (especially TWF with a shield).

I wanted to be a pantheistic cleric, but after nearly a week of trying to convince them that it should be allowed, I gave up. I started as a dwarven cleric of Pharasma. This was back when Golarion was so new, that we didn't even know the deity's opinion on necromancy. Since Death was part of her domain, it was deemed permissible for my character to be able to channel negative energy and be allowed to animate the dead.

There was also a halfling thief, who acted as if he were a master thief named the Red Hand. There was also a human monk.

The initial stuff was good as we fought off the various goblins, went into an underground dungeon to find Thassilonian runes everywhere. The goblin lair was frustrating, as the front entrance was covered with thorns with just enough room for all Medium creatures to be squeezing and a goblin druid literally walking through the thorn bush walls (woodland stride) and being nearly impossible to hurt because of this. Nobody listened to my suggestion of just setting the hedge maze on fire and waiting for the goblins to die, come out on fire to attack us, or sit inside to wait for us to safely enter.

We survived enough to go in and kill them all, except for the nursery, which we found last. It took a bit to make them not stab the goblin younglings, and the only way I could get them to not kill them when my back was turned was to adopt and raise the little snots; in-game, fairly frustrating since it's apparently goblin nature to be psychotic, but the DM eventually let them be conceptually acceptable. The other players are still considered good-aligned, and my character was considered borderline because of the skeleton animating.

Speaking of animation, we fought a barghest (which we thought was a demon by how the DM described it) just barely within my cleric's ability to animate in another level, so I contemplated storing it for use in a level. That was when the DM decided that it would be OP, so he banned outsiders from being targettable by animate dead.

More next time.

[virgil]

My apologies, the Red Hand hadn't joined the party yet, but the player was playing a wizard at the time. That wizard had switched to hitting with his staff and casting direct damage spells because he felt guilty for casting sleep in our first major fight against a pile of goblins (half of them failed the save). There was also a dwarven rogue, but he was reasonable for a time before the player went on hiatus; he couldn't use flasks for sneak attack, as this was house ruled away the moment the DM even knew it was possible (this was before Pathfinder removed it).

The haunted house was meh. We were almost never given warning, and all but me and the dwarf rogue wanted to search every nook and cranny, essentially activating every freakin' trap/haunt in the place. It was by this point that the wizard got replaced with the Red Hand, making me the only spellcaster.

It was at the docks, when we dealt with cultists working undercover in a lumberyard, that I finally got something to animate that wouldn't offend the sensibilities of the rest of the party; a giant crab. Not the infamous one of SKR's design. By the by, the cultists didn't know of us, so I'm still not terribly sure why they were so violent to us walking into the mill, as it was in the middle of a bustling city (no city guard either).

We climbed a tower and got to fight Xanesha, a lamia that was too much for us. Her AC was in the "roll a 20" range, her SR was high, her melee attacks Wisdom drain (1d6, I believe), and her dominate monster spell-like had a rather high DC for our level. It didn't matter too much whether we could actually kill her, because she instantly mind-controlled the Red Hand and flew away invisibly.

It was a rather memorable moment afterwards, as the DM decided that the tower was going to collapse then and there while the ranger and fighter were at the top. They jumped onto the bell and rode it on the way down.

The Red Hand disappeared after getting his command of "attack your friends", with his stupid high Stealth skill, there wasn't a chance of tracking him. He then proceeded to go to the temple where my goblin kids were being babysitted, killed them, and mailed their heads to me. He also killed a vague romantic interest of the ranger's and a couple random people.

The others decided to collect their money and hire the setting's super assassin (Mantis Assassin, I think) for the purpose of killing the Red Hand. A bit on the high end, but they promised/guaranteed results, for entirely too much money (50k, non-refundable, we're level 6 or 7 by this point). We never got results.

[Hieronymous Rex]

I wanted to be a pantheistic cleric, but after nearly a week of trying to convince them that it should be allowed, I gave up. I started as a dwarven cleric of Pharasma.

Would that be a animist, or a worshiper of a pantheon?

Speaking of animation, we fought a barghest (which we thought was a demon by how the DM described it) just barely within my cleric's ability to animate in another level, so I contemplated storing it for use in a level. That was when the DM decided that it would be OP, so he banned outsiders from being targettable by animate dead.

Oh no, you mustn't animate the dread a dog.

[Chamomile]

So your GM went ahead and let you sink a huge amount of party resources into hiring an assassin who was supposed to be virtually guaranteed to bring results and then, without warning, just decided that the assassin thing wouldn't work out? Seriously?

[CapnTthePirateG]

That sucks.

[virgil]

Some stuff happened, nothing of note for the most part.

We begin our travels to the mountains, we run into a family of inbred rape ogres and fight them for awhile. The DM had modified the mother ogre to be particularly bad to fight (fly), nobody but me had ranged capability worth a damn, and she hit me with the wrack spell so I was quite blind for awhile; as was the monk. The monk managed to crit her with a throwing star once, and most of his attacks hit (always beat that 50% miss chance).

My cleric died afterwards when we explored the basement to a tendriculous surprise round and full attack.

I threatened to make a wizard, so they acquiesced and let me play a warlock, which is normally frowned upon because of the OP that is casting at-will. I chose to be a gnome feylock, and the info released about the setting gave the implication that they're immortal until they finally get bored and get hit by the Bleaching; so I chose to be a female gnome of 400, occasionally flirting with the males (not heavily, character remained borderline Mary Poppins proper).

We go inside one mountain and fight some more giants, which is where the near-deaths from full HP start happening because so many of them wield polearms that are 20/x3. When we go to fight the final boss, we get interrupted by that damn lamia from earlier. However, she starts getting worried about damage from us by this point because I dispelled alot of her buffs, so she starts trying to run away; but I can fly, see the invisible, and had the long-range eldritch blast feature.

The ranger's Track skill was good enough that he could actually track her through the air, but the DM ruled that away because he thought it was stupid. He wasn't terribly happy that my presence turned the fight from a near slaughter to her barely running away; mostly due to dispelling, but being able to see her all the time and cast faerie fire didn't help.

Just as the ranger tries to open the door to find the final boss, he gets hit by a readied action that crits and insta-gibs him. We eventually figure out a buffing plan and charge in with real tactics and kill them all, letting the fighter carry the ranger to town to be raised.

This is the point that the DM is trying to figure out how to handle critical hits because of the danger they're causing us. Ignore the fact that it's an adventure filled with two-handing giants with x3 crit weapons. He didn't like my suggestion of giving everyone a magic item that allowed the bearer to make a critical do half damage twice (or thrice?) per day, which felt like the easiest and least game changing. He instated instead what the group to this day calls "soft crits", where critical hits only multiply the base weapon die, leaving all of the damage bonuses untouched.