[Greyhawk] The Best Laid Plans

Stories about games that you run and/or have played in.

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

[Greyhawk] The Best Laid Plans

Post by Prak »

A Dwarf Dualblade Ranger3, Wood Elf Archer Ranger2/Bard1, Half Giant Soulknife 3, and Feral Wood Elf Shapeshifter Druid 3 walk into an adventure....

The GM tosses his planned adventure and laments his life over a hard cider.
Seriously, this is the party my group is fielding. A not-quite tank, an archer who wants to be a lumberjackmusician, a not-quite skillmonkey*, and a gimped druid.

*we're going with an implied rule from Soulbow that Soulknives are supposed to have full BAB with their mindblades, so while that doesn't help the skillmonkeying, it does help the combat.

I had been planning an adventure with a thieves guild and an etheral filcher, but I'm seriously concerned about their ability to take on challenges.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
Avoraciopoctules
Overlord
Posts: 8624
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:48 pm
Location: Oakland, CA

Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Looking for ideas, Prak?

Thief Guild and Ethereal Filcher, low combat desired, level 3 party of suboptimal characters.

4 adventurers receive letters from their old friend, the Guildmaster. He needs them to help him with a matter of discretion and urgency. You see, a horrifying many-handed monster from the land of ghosts has taken his "King of Krime" medallion, and he is worried that he will lose precious Respect Points at the next board meeting if he doesn't get it back quietly before then.

The party needs to get into the Ethereal plane, then search the washed out ghosty version of the town for the ethereal filcher's lair. Thankfully, there's a haunted house where if you stay there until midnight you'll be in the ethereal plane when you leave. The haunting is spooky and mischief-loving, not outright malevolent.

Once in Ethereal Town, crotchety old spectres will wave their claws and shout at the mortals to get off their ghost lawns. Spirits of the recently departed cling to their routines from life, only a few lucid enough to really interact with. Somewhere, there's a building the Filcher is holed up. But it isn't as scary when you're both ethereal, and 4 PCs can probably drive it off.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

the original plan for the first adventure was that they would be asked by a tearful woman who lost a gaudy, not particularly valuable heirloom (not that she knows this, she thinks it's priceless), and suspects it was stolen by the thieves' guild, but it was actually taken by an etheral filcher. The idea is for the adventure to be a red herring about fighting the guild, before learning about the filcher.

While your idea might actually be better, Etheral Filchers don't actually work that way, because the stats were written by an idiot. An etheral filcher can seriously only spend one round on the etheral plane and actually resides on the material.

Hell, for that matter, I'm rethinking the EF altogether because it's written so poorly.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
Avoraciopoctules
Overlord
Posts: 8624
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:48 pm
Location: Oakland, CA

Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Darn, maybe I should have actually looked the monster statblock over beyond the CR and natural attacks.

If you've got a bunch of mediocre level 3 people, that means you could throw like twice their number in goblins or kobolds at them and they'd probably survive if the mooks don't do anything smart. Get 2-3 fights the PCs could probably sweep, and then string them together with some funny sets and NPCs I guess?

Do the PCs have any articulated preferences for what they want to see in a campaign?
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Nope, no articulated preferences. One player had to be asked to play their character less "stand around bullshitting and getting on people's nerves," another's idea of articulated preference is "I want to take a certain prestige class,"and another has previously said they're into story. And none of them have put forth the bare minimum in writing up a background, description, goals or motivations.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
Avoraciopoctules
Overlord
Posts: 8624
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:48 pm
Location: Oakland, CA

Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Okay, the lack of direction is both annoying and liberating. Our only restriction is the fact that the PCs can't handle serious combat.

You could send them against a monastery, with a terrifying level 4 leader who spends his combat rounds using flurry of blows with shuriken.

You could introduce some kind of antagonist the PCs have a really strong incentive to mess up. The game starts with him messing with them for no reason and sniggering evilly, then escaping. Maybe make it a wizard who took terrible spells and summons lots of chaffy monsters before Dimension Dooring away. Level 7, give him some awful direct damage spells like Flaming Sphere and Acid Arrow, a bunch of defensive stuff so he can survive a few rounds of taunting, and Summon Monster IV and III for waves of badger minions.
Red_Rob
Prince
Posts: 2594
Joined: Fri Jul 17, 2009 10:07 pm

Post by Red_Rob »

Prak_Anima wrote:Nope, no articulated preferences. One player had to be asked to play their character less "stand around bullshitting and getting on people's nerves," another's idea of articulated preference is "I want to take a certain prestige class,"and another has previously said they're into story. And none of them have put forth the bare minimum in writing up a background, description, goals or motivations.
Sounds like these players aren't particularly interested in driving the story, more in seeing what cool story happens to them. This isn't really that uncommon, due to the fact that most people have grown up on a diet of traditional media and are much more used to watching a story than creating one. The good thing here is they are likely to follow any and all plot hooks rather than immediately gonzoing off to do some crazy scheme someone thinks would be funny. So just make sure your scenario includes clear goals and they should be fine.

Regarding their combat ability, it isn't actually a problem if the entire party is sub-par. In fact, it actually makes things easier for the MC than if the party has wildly divergent abilities. I know we wank on about "level appropriate characters" here, but the reality is that as long as all the players walk in with a roughly equivalent set of abilities you can throw in challenges appropriate to those abilities and things will be fine.

Look, the point of an RPG session is for all the players to have fun and feel like they contributed something to the proceedings. And because you as the MC are generating the challenges you can just send lower level challenges if the characters are effectively lower level. If the party dies to a level appropriate group of Shadows don't send them against a level appropriate group of Shadows. The real problem comes when one character can cakewalk challenges and others can't. This leads to "why am I here?" syndrome, and kills the fun. But from the looks of things your group shouldn't have that problem.

So seriously, don't get depressed if your group aren't into optimising. Basically, don't be Roy.
Simplified Tome Armor.

Tome item system and expanded Wish Economy rules.

Try our fantasy card game Clash of Nations! Available via Print on Demand.

“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities” - Voltaire
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

No, it's weird, two of them usually are into optimizing. But one randomly decided to be a soulknife and go into soulbow, and the other is, I don't know, scratching his shapeshifter itch and being a kind of gimped druid.

I actually had a thought. The problem I'm having is that I have no clue what to expect here. It's possible that they all made mechanically subpar characters, and it's possible that two or three are actually fairly optimized for subpar classes/builds. I don't want to undershoot their ability and make sessions cakewalks, and I don't want to overshoot their ability and kill them all.

So the thought I had was to make the first adventure a calibration test that I can look at when putting together other challenges.

So what is a good assortment of monsters and challenges for third level that range from "a bit easy for an average third level party" to "difficult for an average third level party?" I can string them together with a good narrative, I'm just not sure what to use.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
TiaC
Knight-Baron
Posts: 968
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 7:09 am

Post by TiaC »

Soulbow is much stronger than soulknife. It's still pretty bad, but it has a number of nice tricks. E.g. it can dual-wield, get a free reroll on every attack and manage to be WIS SAD. Even a shapeshifter druid is quite able to pass a SGT. It sounds like these characters have quite the potential to pull ahead of the rangers. Your lack of real magical options does cut out a bunch of challenges.
virgil wrote:Lovecraft didn't later add a love triangle between Dagon, Chtulhu, & the Colour-Out-of-Space; only to have it broken up through cyber-bullying by the King in Yellow.
FrankTrollman wrote:If your enemy is fucking Gravity, are you helping or hindering it by putting things on high shelves? I don't fucking know! That's not even a thing. Your enemy can't be Gravity, because that's stupid.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

The soulknife isn't a soulbow yet, but the "Full BAB with mind blades" thing should help (and after seeing 47 Ronin, the player asked about using Iaijutsu Focus, which I'm allowing provisionally). The Druid is a Feral Wood Elf Druid 2 with Spontaneous Rejuventation (sac spells to give allies FH[spell level], lose spontaneous SNA) who plans on preping all his spells as healing.

The melee ranger took Favored Enemy (Arcane Casters) (PHB2 option).

The Ranger/Bard is... honestly, I didn't actually want to invite her to play because she willfully has negative system mastery. But Soulknife guy brought up my desire to run Greyhawk in the chat we had been using for his Matrix game, which she was a part of.

Edit: I did actually get a new adventure idea while eating dinner, though. I didn't realize Dryads were CR 3, so I'm thinking of writing up an adventure centering on a dryad having taken over an orchard that supplies Greyhawk with most of it's fruit, and the PCs being sent out to check on it because they're the new guys. I can put assassin vines and such in, and possibly reskin an otyugh as the plant monster I mistakenly thought it was.
Last edited by Prak on Sun Feb 23, 2014 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Ikeren
Knight-Baron
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:07 pm

Post by Ikeren »

I totally thought Otyugh's were plant monsters as well.

My solution for poorly optimized/not clearly thinking parties is lots and lots of cool magic items. Because people also like cool magical items. Especially fighters/rogues.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Adventure 1: The Dryad's Orchard
So we started the new campaign tonight. After a couple hours of bullshitting and the DM (Me) running to get food from a Chilis he thought was in the same lot as the game store, but was actually a couple blocks away (note: I am an idiot), we got down to business.

Our intrepid adventures are:
Stormblade: Half Giant Soulknife. He was the result of a mysterious experiment by cruel masters who used him for labor when not scarring and probing his head. When not adventuring, he works as a bouncer and errand runner at a tavern in exchange for room and board. He is motivated by a desire to bring liberation to those who are enslaved.
Dru: Feral Elf Shapeshifter Druid. The child of an elven couple who committed some unnameable crime punishable by exile by elven settlements. His daily routine consists of pleasuring himself in the form of a large cat, hunting in the wilderness near Greyhawk, selling kills to butchers, and checking the posting boards in taverns for quests before turning in for more self-love in cat form and some sleep. Owns only a pair of Eyes of the Eagle.
Hrethic: Dwarf Ranger (melee). Like most rangers, his clan was killed at the hands of an easily classified enemy while he was away. He was never at home in town or the mines, and much preferred the forests. He is motivated by wanderlust, and primarily wishes to see as much of Oerth as he can, and to oppose mad arcanists drunk on their own magics. Han to Dru's Chewbacca.
Arturus "Mimsy" (of the Poor Life Choices): Elf Ranger (Ranged)/Bard (Oratory). An elf ranger whose family was killed by orcs at a young age, was captured by the same orcs, and then sold to pirates to be a cabin boy. Eventually made a pirate for his skill with a bow, and won his freedom. Now spends most non-adventuring days plying his trade as a first level adventurer babysitterguide for new adventurers who come to Greyhawk, including leading them into the sewers for Dire Rat training routines.

With their daily routines established, Stormblade, Mimsy and Hrethric realize that the market has had a steadily dwindling supply of fruit for the last few days. This is unusual, because normally fruit arrives daily. What little fruit is in the market is several days old, and more expensive than usual, which Dru finds when a shopkeeper wants more dead squirrels than usual in exchange for his daily scurvy-staving orange.

The party interrogates the merchant, who says that he hasn't had fruit arrive in the last few days--the drayman just hasn't had any. If they want to talk to the drayman, they can meet up with him the next morning, but the merchant has no clue what's going on. Mimsy has to get back to guiding the day's new adventurers, so the others go to Stormblade's tavern to check the QuestBoard (present in the taverns of every adventurer's guild in Greyhawk, all linked to a central board in City Hall, where a posted message is magically conveyed to the linked boards. Proudly crowdfunded by the adventurers, because it's cool). Sure enough, a guy named Moren has posted a quest:
Riches and Renown await a troupe of brave adventurers!
Trebor Orchard has been besieged by dark and unknown magic. The village folk have been put out of work and ten of the regional lord's men were lost when the cause was investigated!
Please see Moren to accept quest
City Hall--Office O3
Dru takes the form of a wolverine for no reason, and the three head off to talk to Moren and are directed to a tacked on office around the back of City Hall, where a sign hangs above a door: "Moren, Magister of Agriculture and Food"
Inside a harried man pokes his head above one of many peaks of the pile of papers, crates and take out wrappings which span much of the floor and space between there and ceiling. He marks on the party's map where Trebor Orchards is, and tells them that he posted the quest as a function of his office, rather than going through the council, so he can't offer much reward, just a couple hundred gold and defrayment of any consumed magic items. The council's been made aware of the situation, but he knew something was wrong three days ago, and only posted today after receiving definite word. If he went through the council, nothing would be done until the food riots start, and "Magister of Agriculture and Food" is not a very popular person in those sorts of things. The adventurers suggest he start the process of getting the quest sanctioned by the council while they're away, but accept the quest and head off.

The three meet up with Mimsy at The Unlidded Eye and explain. Rather than traveling an entire day, they wait till morning to talk to the drayman and hitch a ride up river on his barge. They try to get out of his attempt to pick up a bit of money by saying that if they save the orchard, he gets paid more in the long run, to which he replies that he's paid for the trip, not the cargo. Given that he's only asking 5 silver per passenger (the dwarf and the half giant even out to two average people), the party pays it and are off up the river.

As they near Trebor Orchard, an unusual tree is spotted in the distance. ...an unusually large tree. Hrethric identifies it as being natural, but an ideal tree for a dryad to be tied too. Hrethric and Dru start to consider if perhaps the matter can be solved peacefully.

The drayman lets the party off at the dock a few minutes down the road from Trebor Orchard. Once in the village, they see a large number of villagers who are busying themselves with minor chores, but compared to the activity they'd normally be occupied with, essentially sitting around doing nothing.
A nearby commoner is asked what's going on, and immediately recognizes the bizarre group as adventurers there to solve the village's woes. They're told about the large tree appearing overnight, along with a vast thicket surrounding the orchard. The villager tells them about the regional lord sending in a group of ten soldiers (War1s) and a knight (War3), with only the knight returning, and explains, when asked if they tried fire, 1) Orchard, 2) "Me: Villager. Half a day thataway: Lord. He's the one who deals with this stuff."

Walking up to the thicket, Dru decides to see if he can walk in unimpeded. He indeed can, and starts moving through in puma form when he spots a suspiciously active melon. The melon is moving, but otherwise appears to be a normal, if overripe, melon ...which then charges him, and latches onto his arm with a thorny vine. With Dru's innate healing ability, the watermelon can do nothing but valiantly attempt to gnaw on his arm at a rate of 1 hp/round (Dru fast heals 2). Dru turns into an ape form and walks out of the thicket to show the party the neat thing he found. Attempting to hand the melon to Hrethric, the dwarf notices that the melon is gouging some pretty nasty scratches into the druid's arm, which are healing immediately, and politely declines, instead telling Dru to go put it back where he found it.
Dru shrugs and turns to walk back into the thicket unimpeded, where he narrowly spots a group of seven more hungry melons attempting to sneak up on him, and proceeds to quickly smash the eight melons in just a few rounds.

Back outside the thicket, the party starts looking for a way through, and the rangers and half giant manage to spot a path they can pick through, and start following Dru.
Dru, however, has neared the dryad's tree, and spots what he believes to be the dryad, before noticing it's green skin and minimal height. He doesn't know what it is, but he does know it's not a dryad. He tries to get it to let him talk to the dryad, learning her name is Nicotiana, and is basically told "I can't do that, Dave" right before the Thorn attacks him.

Fortunately, Dru can effortlessly move through the walls of the maze, and the thorn cannot. Having lost the fae and decided to rejoin the party, the session ends for the week.

Next week: The DM is hopefully more prepared, the players hopefully bullshits less, and the party begins moving through an actual maze, rather than a vague 4-500' thick sea of thorns and brambles.
Last edited by Prak on Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Ikeren
Knight-Baron
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:07 pm

Post by Ikeren »

I'm confused, I thought you were the DM?

If so, good job on the melons, that's hilarious.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

I am. Thank you, eventually they'll run into a Greater Vampire Melon (ie, a Dire Weasel retyped to plant).
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Ikeren
Knight-Baron
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:07 pm

Post by Ikeren »

After a couple hours of bullshitting and the DM (Me) running to get food from a Chilis he thought was in the same lot as the game store, but was actually a couple blocks away (note: I am an idiot), we got down to business.

Next week: The DM is hopefully more prepared, the players hopefully bullshits less, and the party begins moving through an actual maze, rather than a vague 4-500' thick sea of thorns and brambles.
Ah, okay. I was sort of thinking "Wow, the DM is a little incompetent", and then was like "wait, what?"
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Yeah, I'm not the best dm. I actually haven't had a ton of experience running games, and could probably count on one, or nearly one, hand the number of games I've run since I started playing TTRPGs when 3.0 came out.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Ikeren
Knight-Baron
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:07 pm

Post by Ikeren »

Fair enough. I was just confused. No judgement, just confusion.

I look forward to reading the rest of this.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Session 2
The party met once again, and started playing only an hour late. Progress! Of course part of that was me having to drive myself as my ride, the Half Giant Soulknife, hadn't been online at all today, and didn't pick me up. And then I had to circle the parking lot for fifteen minutes before saying "fuck this," and parking on the other side of the building.

Starting at the entrance to the maze, the party proceeded down a long tunnel in the overgrown, Wall of Thorns shrouded orchard. It was ruled Soulknife got lost in the brambles somewhere to explain his absence. At the end of the entry corridor, a pair of assassin vines attacked them from hiding. Dualblade Ranger and Druid spotted the vines as they reached out to grapple Archer from the middle. A missed slam, and a connecting Slam/Grapple later, and Archer knocked unconscious. Druid wades into the Wall of Thorns, and Dwarf stands around readying an action because he can't do that shit. Archer is constricted, and.... dies.

At which point we stop to try to figure out some way of keeping a character from dying five fucking minutes into the second session. It is shortly discovered that the Archer's player did not do ability scores right (everyone roll two sets, then pick any set rolled by any player--she only rolled a single set and used it, not realizing she could use one of several vastly better sets) nor did she roll hit points correctly (reroll bottom third of each die. Apparently she rolled two 2s for her second Ranger and first Bard HD. ...and she wasn't adding Con Mod at each level).

So a hasty character fix and several minutes later, and Archer is at only -7 hp.

The party continues to despair, and I have to fucking coach Druid into what he should be doing after the second vine grapples Dualblade Ranger and a vine drops an entangle. I read out Druid's Spontaneous Rejuvenation ACF to him and convince him to use it "even if it's just Fast Healing 1, it's healing" and then say "it's not casting, it's expending spell energy" because he thinks Entangle bars casting, and tell him to attack the damned vine and finally pull Archer out of the brambles before he takes damage at end of round because "it doesn't say an action type, and an unconscious elf is an item, you only attacked once anyway because you dropped the vine in the first hit of the round."

Between Dualblade Ranger and Druid's melee attacks, the second vine goes down easily enough, and the party gets the fuck out of the maze to go rest in town.

After some leading questions, Dualblade Ranger says he'd pick some blueberries on the way out if they were there, and I, not wanting the damned party to die, say "yeah, there were blueberry bushes" and roll 2d4, "you got 6 berries from a bush on your way out." Because I'd already decided that the fruit's gone magical, so while I'd written up Good Cherries, what the hell, I'll extend it to all berries.

So Dualblade Ranger's feeling fine and decides to go back in and pick some more berries for Archer while Archer "sleeps" off being choked by angry kudzu. As he works, he comes across seven vampire melons, which are a fuck ton more effective against an opponent who doesn't have FH2 and three attacks per round. He actually gets humped by all seven in the course of the several rounds of battle, but given they have 2 hp, it's not really a difficult fight.

Dualblade Ranger calls it good with something like another 12 berries and starts heading out as Druid is heading in looking for berries to actually cast Goodberry on (doesn't know, as a character, about the magical fruit). He says he'll root around for an hour. Awesome, that's six chances for the Dryad to "spot" the character with no ranks in hide poking around her orchard. In the first ten minutes, a Needlefolk sprays him with completely ineffective needles and gets killed in a single attack. CR 2 my muscular buttocks. This happens about 3 minutes after Dualblade is heading out, so he has to head back in, and the battle's already over. He sticks with Druid, and they next come across--or rather, are lyrically assaulted by a group of 4 petals. ...and consistently beat the 4 DC 14 will saves per turn to resist their Lullaby effect. So after trying to shout up at the hidden faeries, they shrug and walk off, as the petals do the same because they can't even make them drowsy. A Vine Horror is supposed to fight them next, but I didn't have the book with me. Then a Green Warden. Ditto. They wander back, give Archer some Good Berries, and decide to head back in.

Druid once again walks straight into the thicket, leaving the party behind, trying to find the next corridor in the maze. He doesn't, because straight into the maze from the entrance is the Dryad's tree.

The dryad Nicotiana drops an entangle after Druid shouts at her tree for a while, willing-ish to hear him out, but wanting to be damned sure he can't rush her. She makes quite sure that he's aware that she knows exactly where his party is, and implies that she's about to have them attacked. Druid gets back to them right as Nicotiana's Thorn minion misses Dualblade with a +2d6 sneak attack sleep arrow. They go wandering into the maze again, and the thorn tries to plink him again, missing yet again. Druid splits off YET A-FUCKING-GAIN, and is missed YET A-FUCKING-GAIN by the Thorn (I know the sleep wouldn't affect, but the +2d6 sneak attack would suck).

We call it for the night there.

The biggest problem with the druid wandering off is that everything in the thicket can either get curbstomped by him, or curbstomp him. The fact that he can easily run away means that I should probably just start having assassin vines and shit attack him.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Ikeren
Knight-Baron
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:07 pm

Post by Ikeren »

Your party sounds terriblish, to be honest. Are they super nooblar? It seems like they're using non-core material somewhat liberally, so you think they could have used the 2700gp starting weath in a reasonable way --- masterwork weapon + augment, masterwork armor + augment, healing belt or other trinket of choice...they sound really poorly thought out, characterwise, except the druid.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

The druid is terribly thought out. He spent his entire chunk of money on Eyes of the Eagle. Because we all know that Spot is absolutely critical...

Archer is a perpetual noob machine. I have no clue what the fuck she spent her money on, but I'm guessing "nothing" since I can type up her equipment from memory:
tobacco
pipe
"sword and bow"
40 arrows
studded leather

The bow is a Mighty Composite (+1) bow, but still.

Dualblade bought mithral chain and three masterwork weapons, so at least he's not an idiot.

Soulknife wasn't there, but his equipment is similarly easy to recall:
1700 gold
Cloak of Resistance

I don't know what to do with these people. Maybe I'll baby them until they have to fight the dryad. At least then when they die they feel like it's a legitimate character death.

And Nicotiana's just a Dryad Warlock1. And I'm sure she can fucking roflstomp them.

Ok, it occurs to me there was one legitimate issue last night: my d20 kept rolling 19s for assassin vine grapple checks.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Ikeren
Knight-Baron
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:07 pm

Post by Ikeren »

Well, I was more noting that your druid seemed to be participating, but either way, there is a good chunk of your problem. Make a list of the cheap + cool items in the mic (armor/shield/weapon augs, chronocharms, quickstrike bracers, healing belts, etcetera) and have a merchant having an obnoxiously "spend your gold 25% off going out of business sale" like, right in front of them.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Session 3: Out of the Fucking Orchard
So we convene again for the band of misfits. Soulknife is there this week, and it's decided that he got lost in the brambles outside the maze for a couple days, slowly cutting his way through it.

So Soulknife pops out and joins the party once again. They start moving through the maze. They spot a couple more Assassin Vines which... don't attack. Even when the Archer is picked up and paraded under one, while it's tempted, the inhabitants of the orchard were told to stand down and leave the party alone. ...so that the human warriors that Nicotiana captured and made into plant men (Greenbound) can make one last valiant effort to kill the PCs.

The Greenbound wait for the party in a large clearing, and are spotted easily enough, but stand stock still until the entire party is in the clearing. At which point they seal both ends and the tunnel down from the middle with Wall of Thorns. Druid and Archer try to fight the Greenbound, which have DR 10/Magic and Slashing. The Dualblade fares a bit better, but has to roll close to max damage to do anything. Soulknife, however, pretty much oneshots Greenbounds, since mind blades count as magic for overcoming DR. It's a decent combat of three CR 2 Greenbound Human Warriors against the party. The party prevails because they have a guy who can ignore Greenbound DR, and the rest manage to take out a one by doing enough damage to overcome DR and outpace the Greenbounds' FH3.

After they win, they decide to check out the tunnel. Druid crawls down in wolverine form and finds himself surrounded by cat sized mushroom people. A successful KnNature check later, and he starts talking to the Junior Worker Myconids. One of the myconids gestures to him to wait a moment, and wanders off down further into the tunnel to get a bigger myconid who actually has rapport spores. The party starts getting curious about what's happening, so Dualblade climbs down too and also immediately recognizes the myconids and knows about rapport spores. So he takes a big hit of the magic mushroom dust so he can talk too.

The party finds out that the myconids are a pre-dryad fixture, helping the humans grow fungus underground, and have a giant cart full of mushrooms that haven't been picked up. The myconids tell the party that they were sort of pressed into helping the dryad because of her whole plant solidarity thing, even though they tried to explain to her that fungus and plants are different things. In keeping with Gygax's stoner puzzle monster theme, the myconids don't really give much of a shit, but they have a slight preference for "business as usual" over "no one picks up the harvest and we don't get paid." Dualblade asks for a map, and myconid elder worker casts around a bit, gesturing to the complete lack of paper. He does however pull a plank of wood out of a compost heap and produces a stub of charcoal from a pouch on a belt and sketches out the route to the dryad's tree for them.

So the party troops off to the see dryad following the fungus-sketched route. The dryad is quite impressed with their resilience and persistence and is willing to discuss matters. The party talks things over with her, and convinces her that the humans aren't exploiting the plants and propose a partnership between the humans and the dryad so she can keep an eye on things and protect the plants. Nicotiana's willing, if they can get the humans agree. The party goes to talk to the humans, let out by the Dryad opening a passage straight through the wall of thorns. Given that they didn't have to fight their way out, the villagers assume they've won, or something and run over to find out. Party talks to the humans, they shrug and say "sure, we already work with the myconids."

And that's about where we left off. The party leveled up to level 4.

There's some discussion in the party about what to do with the local lord, but given that it's all part of Greyhawk, if they decided to just kill him and take his land, the powers would be cool with that. Greyhawk's the town that murderhoboing built.

The party is looking solidish, with Archer being the one real concern, and Druid right behind her. Archer is likely to go down because the build is ineffective and the player doesn't know what she's doing really, and Druid might go down, or just flail ineffectually, because his build is gimped. If Druid goes down, suck. His player can make a new character. If Archer goes down, I talked with the player. Her idea for a backup character was a "Lifeleech/Battle Priest." I talked about this in IMHO. I got into the character idea, so I've got a Cleric of Wee Jas npc she can step into when the need arises.
Alesa Gaelildar
LN Human Clr3 of Wee Jas/Warlock1
Str18
Dex14
Con12
Int15
Wis21
Cha16

HP: 31
AC: 18 (+2 dex, +5 armour, +1 shield)
Init: +2
Spd: 30'
BAB+2Fort+4
MAB+6Ref+3
RAB+4Will+9

Skills
Concentration 5r +6
Heal 4r +11
Intimidate 4r +7
Kn. Arcana 4r +6
Kn. the Planes 4r +6
Kn. Religion 7r +9
Spellcraft 5r +7

Feats
DMM (Vampiric Spell*)
Extra Turning
Dreadful Wrath
Profane Lifeleech
Fire Devotion
Charnel Miasma

Special
Rebuke Undead 10/day
Aura of Law
No Chaos spells
Death Domain--Death Touch 1/day (melee touch attack, target dies if hp </= (Cleric Level)d6)
Pride Domain (Drg)--Too pretty to die (Reroll any save, but take second result)
Eldritch Blast 1d6
Flaw: Divine Gestures (subject to Arcane Spell Failure)
Flaw: Death Dealer (Cannot deal nonlethal)

Invocations
-Frightful Blast Will vrs Frightened 1 min

Gear
+1 Longspear of Divine Favour
--Command Word Spell Trigger: Divine Favour CL1 3/day
+1 Mithral Shirt
Paper Golem (Drg. 600 gold, small golem with augmented crit arm blades)
Wand of Cure Light Wounds (40 charges)
Holy Symbol/Dagger
Buckler
Cleric's Vestments and Explorer's Outfit
Hilt of Blade of Pain and Fear (like a potion)
109 gold

Notes
Typically preps Deathknell as 2nd level domain spell to get most benefit from Charnel Miasma.
In combat, uses CM to force save against Shaken, then follows with Doom. With Dreadful Wrath, Doom forces two saves against fear affects.
If the target isn't cornered already, follows with Command ("Fall"). If the target fails save against Command, they fall, and since they can't flee, they cower while prone, for a total of being flat footed, -2 AC, and -4 AC vrs melee attacks. So she walks up and stabs them. Or, you know, they get their head stomped by a party member, or her paper golem.
Let me know if this build isn't as awesome as I think.
Last edited by Prak on Fri Mar 14, 2014 7:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Ikeren
Knight-Baron
Posts: 849
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:07 pm

Post by Ikeren »

Build probably overshadows rest of party for not being wildly incompetent :p ?
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Yeah, but she's being handed to permanewb.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
fectin
Prince
Posts: 3760
Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2010 1:54 am

Post by fectin »

Where does the druid's fast healing come from?
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
Post Reply