LoFP report

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

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erik
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LoFP report

Post by erik »

One of my buds helped kickstart Lamentations of the Flame Princess and he had the itch to do some DMing so he ran a session last night.

We made characters, everybody just independently choosing what to be, and as it turned out there was zero overlap.

We were all level 1. *sigh*. Cleric, Magic User, Specialist, Fighter and Dwarf.
I was rather hoping we'd wind up having like 3-5 people with the same class. Having 5 halfings would be handy since then you'd have a stealth-capable party. Or 5 magic users and you might have enough magic to handle an encounter between the lot.

I chose Dwarf because I decided that they were probably the worst class overall and figured it didn't matter for a one-shot. I had already decided to be claiming to be an ice princess so that I could contrast myself to whomever the lamenting flame princess might be. Upon reading the Dwarf flavor text of their non-procreating race, I decided that I was a princess looking for a prince, some worthy non-retarded, virile Dwarf and my main weapon would be a Mancatcher. Thus Princess Schwarzenegger was forged.

Rules for rolling up characters is 3d6 in stat order and you can swap two stats. If your net bonus is worse than -1 then you can reroll. I wound up having to reroll 3 times to wind up with two +1's, for a thoroughly meh layout. I didn't bother shifting stats since I had my highest stat in strength already. Other than our fighter, Pri-Pri-Prisoner, having an Intelligence of 5, nobody had particularly low or high stats.

Meaningful stat bonuses are hard to come by. A 15 gets you +1. 91% of the bell curve is -1 to +1.

All the classes are disappointing, especially starting at level 1. Classes are made doubly-disappointing due to the skill system where almost everyone has a 1 in 6 chance at succeeding at stuff like stealth or climbing or anything there are skills for. If we started at a higher level then there might be something worth looking forward to as a caster since they eventually get meaningful choices, but at level 1 with 1 spell a day... not so much. By far the most interesting part of character building was deciding what equipment to buy with your starting pittance.

I think we all rolled pitifully for HP but thankfully the system has a minimum HP for first level which is a kindness. Too bad they didn't just get rid of all rolling for HP. Too much to hope for I guess.

There was some confusion due to the text formatting of equipment. Italicized equipment doesn't add to encumbrance, unless it is bolded and italicized in which case it acts as a heavy item which gives you extra encumbrance. And my wife misread the weapons list due to their formatting choices and thought she had a Great Small Weapon (because Great Weapons are italic-bolded and then the smaller sizes are indented beneath it as though it was a list with Great Weapon as the header).

We had a jolly good time. The majority of our session did not rely upon the system at all. Gathered together by mysterious notices that we each received as heirs to the fortune of some guy who died that we had never heard of. We had passage provided to the mysterious estate of said dead dude. I think only 3 or 4 of us got the heir hook, the Specialist got some other reason to be there possibly related to his claim of being an attorney.

Most interestingly as we have learned further details, the guy who died began plowing for daisies 400+ years ago and had us named in his will to be executed at the proscribed date, long before any of us were born. The plot thickens! The year is 1630 and the setting is England but with demihumans, haughty clerics and unsavory magic users who are viewed as kind of cultists. We were called to gather in London and from there were traveling down to some rural village by carriage.

I guess we were eager to get our swerve on; rather than resting at the inn where we had lodging provided we decided to venture into the woods at night in the rain heading towards the estate of the mysterious corpse. As it turned out only one of us bothered to buy a lantern and proclaiming you have Dwarf-vision doesn't get you far. So with no Bushcraft to speak of we wandered the forest at night along a game trail and stumbled upon a pack of wolves chowing down on a kill.

Four of us decided to back away slowly since we had not been noticed yet, but our Magic User, played by my friend who believes he knows just enough about animals to make him be a liability decided that his hunchback wizard would yell at the wolves and whack his staff on a nearby tree to scare them off. He says he recalled hearing somewhere that this was a smart way to scare off wolves. This is a guy who in a totally different campaign upon seeing a poisonous snake near a path decided he would walk past it but pretend that he didn't see it so that the snake would not bite him. He didn't make his save vs poison with that snake.

So yeah, pack of 6 wolves descended upon the noisy hunchback and put him to -3 damage in the first round. Having -3 damage means that you are going to die in 1d10 minutes and no sort of healing magical or otherwise can save you. Good times! I gleefully rubbed my palms together as one of my competitor heirs was out of the picture leaving us with his spellbook to loot. I mean, I mourned his passing, but expected we'd all be joining him shortly.

Our Specialist with the lantern tried climbing the tree but failed miserably.
The rest of us drew weapons and tried to defend ourselves as best we could.

I had an 18 AC when parrying but against 4 wolves that still meant I took 6 damage, putting me at down to 1 HP thanks to my minimum HP roll at character creation. Our cleric nicked one wolf for a few damage and incurred some wrath. Next round our Cleric took 10 damage and that put her well beyond death's door. The specialist made it up the tree ensuring that at least one of us may live through the night, and I think the Fighter missed.

We'd all have been screwed except some deus ex machina of a monster in the distance howling caused the wolves to run off. We got a rush of brains to the head and the Specialist extinguished the lantern. With 2 heirs down it seemed a good place to stop for the evening as this was not planned as a one shot but instead a taste for a continued adventure if found palatable.

I think I managed to have the second most EXP of the night with 35 pts. I'm not expecting any of us to ever level up though. In fact I expect more fatalities to come next session, me being the likely next since we have no healing any more and the rate of healing is made worse if you are below half max HP. A good 3-4 solid days of constant bedrest back at the inn should get me back in shape.


[edit: My first typing of this was a mad flurry while tired and I've since tidied it up a wee bit to make slightly less atrocious. I think I used "actually" over a dozen times, when the proper amount to ever use that word when writing is actually zero. It's my cross to bear.]
Last edited by erik on Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Schleiermacher
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Post by Schleiermacher »

Okay, that Magic-user deserves a sound thrashing. But still, those were some oddly aggressive wolves.
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Post by Ikeren »

What is this aside from "low powered 1st level D&D"?
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Post by Whipstitch »

It's hilarious.

On a more helpful note, it's a horror themed OSR by a dude who loves shlock and doom metal enough to move to Finland and sell a "Grindhouse Edition" of his game. Here's the "about" page from the lotfp site:
LotFP's role-playing activities were conceived under the dread gloom of Finnish winter and consummated during the darkless summer by a displaced American on a steady diet of Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, HG Wells, HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Hammer Horror, Dario Argento, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and the traditional Nordic doom metal scene, filtered through over a quarter of a century of gaming experience. Through use of forbidden rites and mystical incantations remembered in fevered dreams, LotFP founder James Edward Raggi IV seeks to recreate the past by remolding the present and conquering the future.

Although part of the Old School Renaissance, it is not LotFP's goal to recreate the old feeling with our books, either in look or content. Playing classic games is not an exercise in nostalgia or a longing for a different time - these games are vibrant and alive and continue to provide true gaming excitement today, and on their own terms. LotFP's game offerings treat these games with the respect they deserve while giving their referees and players innovative and fresh material for those games.
TLDR version: It's the kind of game where someone is probably going to get their boobs cut off.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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erik
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Post by erik »

Schleiermacher wrote:Okay, that Magic-user deserves a sound thrashing. But still, those were some oddly aggressive wolves.
We were warned to expert gore and dread kinda ravenlofty. It was suggested that making backup chars was not a bad idea. In that context I would not trust animals to be passive.

We are planning another session next week. I should get on building my 2nd char now

[editry] Oh, I just remembered. I think the DM even did roll a morale check to see if the wolves would run away. So that was pretty charitable I'm thinking.
Last edited by erik on Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by erik »

[edit: Disclaimer: I was sleepy when I wrote this]

My wife says she wants to play a cleric again since she didn't get a chance to do anything clerical. As an aside, I did get to enjoy when she was announced as an heir for the starting adventure hooks. Clerical heir... aw yeah!

I think my next character after I inevitably die is going to be a magic user. I want to cast the spell Summon. It's a level one spell that has 9 fucking pages of explanation for how it works. I'm pretty sure the tl;dr version of Summon is Bears fall. You die, but I will try and unravel its mysteries.


Breaking down the level 1 Magic User spell, Summon:
Once the Summon spell is cast, there are a number of steps to resolve:
1. The caster chooses the intended Power of the Summoned Entity
2. The caster makes a saving throw versus Magic
3. Determine the Entity’s Form
4. Determine the Entity’s Powers
5. Resolve the Domination Roll
Ho-kay, we got a 5 step process.

• Step the first, you pick power level and you cannot pick something more than twice HD to your caster level. Unless modified by sacrifices or blood circle magic something or other. I won't bother fucking with that, I have a feeling this spell will be skinny dipping in liquid oxygen already.

• Two stepping. Make a saving throw vs. Magic. Fail and a more powerful entity gets summoned. How much more powerful? Um. *scrolls through rules*. Oh fine, I'll find that out at Step Four. Okay. I still think it's kind of rude to say "To find out how this is done, see rule below" and said rule below is 4 pages later. It only wound up to be true because I was using the free pdf and I scrolled down to see it. Hopefully the actual text in the book reads "This cannot be more than two times the caster's level, but this effective level for this purpose can be modified by Thaumaturgic Circles and Sacrifices—turn the page a few times."

• Step Step Step. Here we find out what flavor of Bear has been summoned. Roll a random table to determine the form of your summoned abomination. Choices run the gamut. Like the entire fucking gamut. Amoeba, Anti-matter (don't touch it, it's evil!), "Pure energy", Squid, Excrement, Eyeball, Seaweed, Frog (leap 150'... A hundred and fifty feet!), Collective Unconscious Desire for Suicide, Disruption of the Universal Order. This is a sampling of maybe 1/8th of the list. It's fucking bizarre. I don't even know what half of these. I don't even know. Space between ticks of the clock. What fucking form is this?

OH. Abstract Forms have their own special entries several pages later. Okay. I guess we'll get to that lay-terrrrr.

For the um, many varied non-abstract shit... you know, normal stuff like Flowing Colors, it is now time to roll what appendages come on your summoned ride.

This process in itself is convoluted. Based upon HD of your summoned entity you roll a die type (more HD, bigger die type). This sets your base number. If you roll under that base number with that die type you add an appendage and roll again. Stop adding appendages when you roll a number that is not less than your previous roll. So it gets harder and harder to add em on. Typically I think this works out to something like 0.8 appendages on average. Fuck me if I actually run the math on that though.

If you score an appendage, time to do some more rolling for the random table. Roll for adjective. Roll for noun! Yes, Genitals and Teats are on the list. Everyone who was surprised raise their hand. Nobody? Moving on.

What do appendages do? Nothing I think, other than gross people out.

• Step Four! Yes, time to get down to business and figure out how bad it is to summon an extra powerful critter. In this section you roll up powers. Oh... I was thinking it was like extra HD, but they went full literal on me. More powerful as in, getting extra powers. Okay. Good one game.

Oh fuck. They're using a similar process to appendage delivery. Who mathed this shit?
To determine the number of powers that a creature has, use the base Hit Dice of the creature that the caster wished to summon to determine which die type to use according to the following table:
Image

Derp. Wrong one.


Hit dice die type 6 1 Slimy Tail
0 (1d6 hp) 1d2 2 Smoking Teats
1 1d4 3 Stalked Teeth
2-4 1d6 4 Thorned Tentacles
5-7 1d8 5 Throbbing Wings
8 - 10 1d10 6 Transparent Wrapping
11 - 13 1d12
14 + 1d20

Good reader, I leave it to your judgment whether I miscopied this out of the PDF, or if the chart is actually this fucked up.
Roll the indicated die type... This is the Base Number. Roll that die again. If the initial saving throw in Step Two was successful, the entity has a special power if the second roll is less than the Base Number. Roll again and keep adding special powers until a new roll greater than, or equal to, the previ- ous roll is made.
However, if the initial saving throw was failed, a new power is gained on a roll less than, or equal to, the Base Number, so the creature will have a greater chance to have more powers than if the casting was more controlled. If a 1 is rolled, however, no further rolls can be made.
The possible powers of a summoned entity can be randomly determined on the following table. Reroll any duplicate results.
I feel like a fucking elder horror is going to kill me before I finish reading the goddamn spell description. I still have a few pages to go.

There are 100 powers.
I assume you roll percentile to determine what ya gets, but it doesn't explicitly say. Powers run the gamut again. Yes, the fucking dreaded gamut returns. You could get +1d4 AC, ESP (always on), Cloud Kill, Explosion (this is not a spell, it is not italicized like other spells... I don't even fucking know), Immune to Wood (hurr hurr), Vulnerability to Wood, Phantasmal Supergoria at will (one at a time), Radioactive, or Ranged Attack.

• Step 5. The end approaches.
Domination. Do you control it or do you create a new character?
Opposed d20s.
Mage gets +CL, +Sacrifice mods, +Thaumaturgic Circle Mods
Entity gets +HD, +1 per power

Hunh, maybe I want to be doing bloody circle jerking afterall. I haven't seen the rules on how to do that or sacrifice yet... probably not a part of this spell, but instead a more general rule.

If you win control, roll a bunch of d10's for how many rounds you get to be in control. If you win by a great margin (5+creature HD+# of creature powers) then you can command the critter to do extra-durational services without you concentrating to direct it.

Normally you will just sit there concentrating to command/direct the creature and pray that nobody hits and hurts you causing you to have to reroll your domination again (and this cannot be used to extend it... damn that was about to be my plan).

If you win by a super great margin (19+creature HD+# of creature powers) or by double the "Great Margin" it becomes your permanent special friend. You just won the game. But that's fucking hard to do unless you summoned a total chump *and* rolled awesome. I think. I still have to investigate the bonuses for extra curricular activities.

If the creature wins the contest then it lashes out and starts killing everyone. no surprise there.

If the creature wins by a great margin (5+ Magic-User's Hit Dice + Sacri- fice +Thaumaturgic Circle modifiers), the caster is, I quote "completely at the mercy of the creature, mind, body, and soul". Roll on the "Dominating Table" to determine how fucked you just got.

Wow. There are 6 possibilities. #6 is what I like to call, "Thanks asshole"
6. The creature is not at all interested in being in “reality,” nor does it care about anyone present. It is however supremely vexed at being called through the veil by a piece of meat. It will take one of the caster's comrades as compensation. The caster must choose one of his fellow player characters, and then that character will simply cease to be. If the caster delays, or chooses any- one else than a player character, then all the player characters in the area will be winked out of existence... and the caster will be left alone.
That is probably the 3rd best result.

If the creature wins a by 19+all those mods, or by double the great margin... um, actually. Hunh. It's not nearly so bad as winning just by 5+variousmods.
Roll a d20. 1-19 the creature is a bit stronger- multiplies its own HD by 1d4+1 and rerolls to get extra powers using that HD. And then of course it commences the killing rampage. Sure, getting 5x HD might be bad, but as things go... I'll take it. On a 20 roll however. Um. Well time to quote block again.
If this extra roll is a 20, the barrier between reali- ties is sundered, and innumerable monstrosities begin dropping through. Hundreds of them will come through in the first hour, then about a hundred a day for the next week, then just a few each day. All will be hostile, as their passage to this world is accidental and our reality will be unfamiliar and unpleasant to their sensibilities.
I guess on a 20, the campaign world loses.

On a tied domination roll the caster loses. Usually. You redo the domination process but in your opposed roll you get a d12 to their d20 just to make things sporting since you couldn't beat them off your d20 roll.


Reading on. Oh good, now I find the rules for Thaumaturgic Circles and Sacrifices.
• Step zero.
Killing shit apparently makes summoned creatures numbed and appeased. Who would have guessed?
For every 2HD of stuff you kill you get +1 to your domination roll.
+1 for every 1 HD if it is the same race as you! Victims must be helpless, killing in combat doesn't count.

The magic circles are basically ways to turn coins into bonuses. You spend 500 silver pieces worth of special sauce for every +1 bonus to your domination roll.

So beware rich magic users with a herd of cattle. They can get permanent giant monsters. I'm actually kind of tempted to do this!

It is stated multiple times that you can also summon bigger monsters with these methods, but no rules are given for how to accomplish this. Sad face.

The last 3 pages are explanations of the Abstract Forms. The forms that made less than any sense. Upon rolling any of them back in step 3 when determining forms you just skip to the appropriate entry and see how you just fucked up the game.

Disruption of the Universal Order is the most amusing. The DM has to step down and randomly selects their replacement DM to run the rest of the session responsibly. The ex-DM has to create a brand new level 1 character. If the ref can level up his character in that session then he returns as the DM, if not then the new Ref levels up his temporarily-NPC'd character as a reward for running the session and a new random player becomes the next DM. The crazy train of easy levels for taking on DM duties stops either when the first DM gets to level 2 with his character or he randomly is selected to get back in the head chair.... Oooor if the first ex-DM's level 1 character dies. On that unhappy event everyone loses a level and all your magic items lose their magic. Fuck.


Now to dry run this muthafucka with a practice summoning!

[bbcode that makes your screen do a barrel roll]SUMMON[/bbcode]

Gimlet the level 1 Magic User gets 3d6x10 starting silver pieces.
I rolled 8, so that gets me enough to buy 80 dogs in the city. Sorry dogs. How do I kill 80 helpless puppies? I leave that to your imagination, I won't dwell on it beyond assuming it to be possible.

So in the spirit of overkill. Gimlet floods puppy heaven with new arrivals for a +40 bonus to his Domination roll. Victory is assured.

Time to see what monster we get.

Step 1. I pick a 2HD creature, because I cannot pick anything bigger. I trust that I will fail my saving throw and get something better than average anyway.

Step 2. Roll the save vs. better monster! Magic User starts with a save vs. Magic of 14. I need to roll at least this on a d20 to save.
I rolled an 8 again. Fail!

Step 3. I now roll d20 to see the form of my winning creature
I rolled a 5. Now I roll 1d3 to get the subset of these forms. I rolled a 1. It is a crystal (+4 AC!)
Appendage time. I roll a d6. 5. Then I roll a 2. I get 1 appendage for sure. Roll again. 1! The gods love me. That's 2 appendages and I cannot possibly get a 3rd.
Some rapid rolls... 3. 5. Immaterial. 1. 3. Branches. 2. 2. Fanged. 6. 1. Tail.
Okay, so after how many fucking rolls? 11 rolls to determine appendages, I get immaterial branches and a fanged tail on my crystal.

Now to determine my powers. Since I failed my save I get an extra power even if I tie the base number. I don't have to just roll under. I only get no powers if I roll a 1 as my first roll for the base roll.
I roll a 1. Well fuck. No powers.

Step 5. Time for the domination roll. Yay, I am about to become the proud owner of a fucking pet rock.

I rolled a 6 (+1 for CL, +40 for depraved use of man's best friend), it rolled a 1 (+2 for HD). 47 vs 3, that's a lock.

I now have a crystal with immaterial branches and a fanged tail. His stats are:
2 HD
AC 16
1d6 damage attack
Move 120' Ground
ML 10

What type of dice are the HD? I don't know. What is the attack bonus? What are the stats? What are the saves? Fuck you. Fuck you. And fuck you for asking.
What is ML? I looked into the glossary, and while there is no ML, Morale seems a reasonable assumption. Of course I went to read the section on Morale and that abbreviation is never used there. Nebulous.
Oh, I learned d8s are the HD of choice for creatures under the HD entry in the glossary. Neat.

I have determined that this spell should not be cast in combat unless you want to send everyone else out to get dinner or something, and they'll probably come back to a new game or something after the TPK since without preparation to get ungodly bonuses, you probably just fucked the party in the back of a volkswagon beetle.

[edit]
I may have oversold the danger of super-failing your domination where the entity gets a 20 rolled and floods the area with hundreds of them coming through. I'm now imagining a forest flooded with hundreds of stupid angry crystals with ghost branches and spiky tails. It would mostly be a cultural curiosity rather than an existential threat to humanity. In fact, if I ran a game I'd probably have some region where a similar thing happened. Minorly threatening entities of a similar nature roam the area because someone mad-fucked-up their summon roll once. Wizards may even go there occasionally in the hopes of catching one to dominate as their pet pokemon.
Last edited by erik on Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by fbmf »

Erik, that was quality. Thank you for sharing. The summoning run through better than the game session, but I'm still lookng forward to the next session recap.

Game On,
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erik
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Post by erik »

Yah. It's hard to recap our typical session because it was mostly just random chatter and sophomoric word play. We only used dice/rules like two rounds of combat, plus some failed Bushcraft rolls by the guy leading us through the forest at night.

The Specialists's character name was Dick something or other. So everyone tried their hand "That was a Dick move"... "You don't know Dick" etc. etc. etc.
More entertaining than his name was that he spoke like a 1930's gangster since the year was initially sold as "the 30's" (of the 1600s).
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Post by Schleiermacher »

Monsters, which most certainly includes Summoned critters, all attack and save as Fighters of their HD. They don't generally have ability scores, in typical OSR style. (Or I suppose you could say they have straight 10s.)

Also, the way we interpreted it at our table was that the sacrifice bonus also applies to increasing the cap on HD you can summon. It's not clear in the text, but it's pretty heavily implied.

My GM required the sacrifices to be sentient beings though, spesifically to prevent the kind of dogpocalypse that you demonstrate above.
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Post by erik »

I'm guessing these details are in the DM guide. I actually made an honest effort to try and find them searching the PDF and what not.

And yeah, I assumed that they intended that you could increase the HD cap, just there's no rules for doing so. Maybe you can do that instead of increasing your bonus. Maybe you can do it in addition to raising your bonus. Maybe you can increase it 2HD for every +1 bonus. Nobody knows.

For the evil folk, sacrificing slaves is just 20x more expensive than dogs. Unless there are other costs for hopelessly evil acts. Really a rich person can set fire to 10,000 sp (a 1-2 sailboats) and be nearly guaranteed to own their own critter (+20 bonus).

Incidentally the way to make outrageous profits apparently is to buy something in either the city or a rural area, and sell it to the opposite.

A sailboat costs 6,000 sp in the city, 12,000 in a rural area.
A cart is 50 sp in the city and 25 sp in rural areas. And so on.

It is a frequent theme in pricing. Objets are double-cost in one type of area vs. another. I think my next character will call himself "The Invisible Hand" and go about buying things cheaply and selling them to the markets that pay well for them in order to normalize prices across the land. Later on when I have enough retainers to just sit back and let them do this work for me, that will become the name of my organization as well.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

If I recall correctly, Fighters (not Dwarves, that's a different class) are the only class that gets better at hitting enemies as they advance in level. A level 10 elf is as likely to hit a guy in platemail as a level 1 elf. You know what that means? A mob of angry hobos with rocks is more likely to inflict damage to a monster than half as many elite dwarven soldiers in a single round.
Last edited by Avoraciopoctules on Sat Apr 05, 2014 10:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by erik »

That sounds exactly right. The only advantage the Elite Dwarves have is not dying as quickly as commoners.

Dwarf is the most useless of all classes. They are more durable on their face thanks to a slight edge on saves, HP and AC (via combat maneuvers limited to Fighter, Dwarf, Elf), but that is it. Halflings are runner up for most fail classed, but I figure the Halfling's Bushcraft and Stealth skills edge out the Dwarf's Architecture skill.

Elves, Clerics and Magic Users get spells so they can escape futility of non-advancing base attack and no new abilities. The Specialist and Fighter have the opportunity to be more useful with greater damage (sneak attack multiplier) or greater attack bonus but those are weak tea.

More than many editions, LoFP is caster or GTFO. Casters have a potential to survive to be useful, but that opportunity is never even implied for a non-caster. A high level Dwarf is nominally equivalent to an unskilled retainer.

Now life as a caster is still shitty. I mean at the end of the session both the casters were dead from a single round of being bitten by dogs each. An Elf starts with Read Magic as their only spell. A Magic User starts with Read Magic and then 3 randomly rolled spells. So if you have your heart set on a particular spell that's only a 16ish% chance on level 1 of fulfillment. You're basically a peasant with a rock and one cute trick per day starting out.

Case in point, I rolled up a backup mage and my starting spells are Read Magic, Faerie Fire, Feather Fall and Shield. I get to pick one of those to cast per day. I guess I would get to read the spellbooks of our other fallen Magic User(s), but I think his spell selection was shite as well. No Sleep, no Charm Person, no Magic Missile and most sadly of all, no Summon.

You don't get a level 2 spell until you hit level 4, and you can't really trust a d20's chance of getting you something worthwhile for that level either.

A Magic User with downtime and money can research spells tho, so that's something.

Most entertaining for mages is that other than needing a 7+ Int to be literate, the only casting benefit for having a decent intelligence is the modifier is subtracted from how many days it takes to research/scribe spells. That 1 extra day that a moron mage needs to research is essentially meaningless in the context of a formula that is (Spell level X 3d6 days)-Int Mod to research a already existing spell. I suppose it would be cute to automatically take 1 day to scribe from spellbook to spellbook starting out (1d3 x Spell Level)-Int Mod if you had a +2 Int mod.
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Post by Ikeren »

Collective Unconscious Desire for Suicide, Disruption of the Universal Order. This is a sampling of maybe 1/8th of the list. It's fucking bizarre. I don't even know what half of these. I don't even know. Space between ticks of the clock. What fucking form is this?
Disruption of the Universal Order is the most amusing. The DM has to step down and randomly selects their replacement DM to run the rest of the session responsibly. The ex-DM has to create a brand new level 1 character. If the ref can level up his character in that session then he returns as the DM, if not then the new Ref levels up his temporarily-NPC'd character as a reward for running the session and a new random player becomes the next DM. The crazy train of easy levels for taking on DM duties stops either when the first DM gets to level 2 with his character or he randomly is selected to get back in the head chair.... Oooor if the first ex-DM's level 1 character dies. On that unhappy event everyone loses a level and all your magic items lose their magic. Fuck.
This is so hilarious, if I ever played this game I would do nothing but play a combat summoner and just try to accidentally ruin all the things. It's like embedding a Deck of Many Things in Summon Monster 1.
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Post by erik »

Summon Monster 1 shuffled with a black-card-only Deck of Many Things. Yep.

I don't know if DoMT is nearly as campaign wrecking as Summon can be. Can DoMT make land-based civilization extinct?

If you fail your casting save (and if casting drunk as a 7 Int level 1 Magic User that's 80% of the time) then there is a 1/200 chance of getting any specific Abstract Form, including this bad boy.
Casting spells on a mountain? Oops. wrote:10. World Under Water
Instead of summoning a creature, a portal was opened to a dimension of infinite liquid. Whether this liquid is something mundane like water or something more exotic is up to the Referee. The sea level will begin to rise immediately, worldwide, at a rate of 10' per Turn until the water reaches a level 50' higher than the caster was when the spell was cast. Once it reaches this level, it will drain away at a rate of 1d10 feet per day.

Next session is tomorrow night.
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Post by erik »

We've had a couple more sessions.

Before we started the MC noted that he learned Dwarves have some random tables to roll for their clans so we decided to do it and retcon it into my character.

My dwarven clan apparently had a knack for kindling fires. Okay. They also did not believe that dwarven women existed. Hrm. This could explain why my character had such a hard time finding a suitable husband. Also they have musical talent with 1 musical instrument. We decided that my blowgun would have a reed attachment and I could use it as a recorder (or plug the holes with fingers and use it as god intended, to blow darts at people).

Our second session was pretty short. My wife brought in another Cleric, this one was a hill-folk Catholic Priest named Jed. He happened upon our party in the middle of a storm when most of the party was hiding up a tree after the wolves had run off from the sound of some unnatural beast. A good portion of the session was everyone trying to hide from this weird guy who may or may not be a werewolf. Eventually we joined up and he healed my Dwarf a bit with a Cure spell. My skeptical dwarf took this to be some sort of human folk remedy.

There was a bit of an argument of what to do with the bodies. I was in favor of calling this venture a loss and returning to town so we could return in daylight. I was outvoted so instead me and the fighter carried the fallen bodies of our comrades as we continued on towards the estate.

We finally found the estate, surrounded by creepy topiary monsters that faced the estate, and a couple lights were lit in the mansion. Eager to use my Architecture skill I failed on my roll and decided place this was probably built by humans. Great.

The fighter, cleric and dwarf made our way into the house, hollering for whoever was there to come meet us. With no response coming we found a lit fire in a foyer and dried off from the storm. The two bodies we carried with us were placed on the sofa in the Foyer for now. We'd have to bury them or something tomorrow.

We had all failed our intelligence checks in the foyer whenever we got near the fire. Probably nothing.

We discovered that our Specialist had either been nabbed or snuck off somewhere else and we heard wolves coming so we called for the Specialist who did not come. We had to shut and lock the door. The fighter had a drill so he drilled a peep hole in the wooden door and we later did in fact spy several wolves milling about right outside waiting for us.

The Specialist as it turned out decided to scope out the perimeter around the house before entering. He found a walled off area and climbed over and onto a tree that had limbs near the wall. Underneath the tree seemed to be a graveyard and in that graveyard a full-plate armored skeleton came to life and stalked underneath him menacing with its glowy sword. The Specialist mostly paid no mind to the skeleton since he was out of reach and he decided to climb around on the tree to see what was going on here.

He quickly discovered a Dryad lady in the tree who tried to do some mind juju on him but he passed his save. She wanted a gift and he tried to offer his manacles to clasp on her. Unfortunately he dropped the manacles around the time the skeleton started chopping at the tree with his magic sword. The dryad begged him to save her tree and he told her he would. Much to my surprise he actually did try to make good on his word, climbing down and jumping down from the tree a bit away from the skeleton. He wouldn't have been heard except that he tripped and ran into a gravestone. He noticed the gravestone had the name "Princess Luna" on it (the name of my wife's first cleric). How convenient since we had a dead Princess Luna!

The specialist narrowly escaped the skeleton by exiting through a gate and then closing it and putting a Lock that he owned on the gate.
"I lock the gate!"
"I already said the gate doesn't have a lock."
"I know, I use my lock from my inventory"

Ah, those sweet moments when your stupid purchases actually pay off!

Our 2nd session ended with the Specialist hidey-holed up in some storage shed or something after the Skeleton remained in the graveyard. And the rest of us getting some rest in the warm foyer. Some more failed intelligence checks in the foyer.



Session 3 began as we decided to start exploring the house some more. Jed the Cleric was getting a bit of sleep while the Fighter and I decided to check out the closest rooms.

I found a washroom with a skeleton in a tub. Also another exterior door which was unlocked so I bolted it shut. Our fighter came over to drill a peep hole here too (and also one out from the foyer). By the end of this adventure I'm sure the house will be doing an passable impression of swiss cheese. My next discovery was a zombie chambermaid in a nearby room. I informer her that I was the new owner of the house and that she should stay put as she appeared to have some sort of wasting disease. Cheeky servant that she was, she attacked me! I fired her and the fighter rushed to my aid and we bashed the zombie to its second death. In the interest of tidiness I took the body and tossed it into the tub with the skeleton.

Another room was across from the chambermaid's quarters and we suspected there was probably a (zombie) butler in there. We decided to go in prepared this time. I went and got my mancatcher that I had left in the foyer (I had swapped it out for a broadsword that was one of a pair on the wall in the foyer previously). The fighter began to drill a peephole into the room and to our surprise the door opened from the inside and there was a zombie butler. He tried to attack the fighter so I and told him he too was fired and mancatchered the hell out of him. He was paralyzed and incidentally I became paralyzed as well because that's how the mechanics work for mancatchers. Sweet. The fighter coup de graced a couple times and the zombie butler was no more. I body pressed him and dumped him into the tub as well.
Image

The Specialist meanwhile had exited the shed and found a window that he used to enter the house. He wandered around some, passing a fountain. He eventually wandered enough that he made it to the front of the house to see my character hauling some cloaks into a room.

I found closet with a dozen black cloaks which I brought back to the foyer to use as sheets.

The Specialist did not immediately join us again. Instead he returned to the fountain and washed he clothes some before joining us. We happily reunited and exchanged tales. I played my recorder for some musical ambiance.

Satisfied at our exploits we returned to the foyer to rest up and drink some liquor from the liquor cabinet. We barricaded the door to the foyer with a couch (and the two bodies on it).

After a bit of sleep we got up and my dwarf drank her breakfast.

The Specialist finally passed an intelligence check in the foyer and he noticed that a face or something was in the fire watching us, kind of like sirius black I suppose. He decided the thing to do was pee on it since he hadn't gone in a while.

I decided that was a good idea since outside the room was dangerous and did the same. I had also decided at this point that due to my dwarven clan's weirdness, my Dwarf Princess was a bit transgender, which made this work a bit better. Or it worked a bit better until the fire creature spat fire at me and reduced me to -3 HP.

As we may recall, -3 HP means you will die in 1d10 minutes no matter what. Nothing can save you. My character wanted a final drink from the liquor cabinet. I was handed one by the fighter, I sipped it hoping to find something strong so I could throw it in the fire and maybe, I dunno do something to him. Instead it wound up being a shrinking potion and my crisped and dying dwarf shrank down to mouse-size. The fighter tried to pour another drink to me and I drowned in alcohol. Battle wounded, burned, shrunken and drowned in liquor. A truly worthy dwarven death.

Not certain what to do with my tiny body, they placed it into the empty bottle of shrinking potion as a suitable final resting place. Jed put me in his backpack.

We decided to bring in my character waiting in the wings since we had time to go that session. Morning brings new blood to the house of Asherak (I think that's the name of the dead guy whose house this was).

Roger, my wandering entrepeneur/magic user with an int of 7 was travelling the countryside with his mule named "Oy" and his dog named "Dag". Happy to find shelter he came up to the front door and used the heavy, loud knocker to ask to be let in. The remaining party unblockaded the foyer, spied me through the peephole and decided it was safe to let me in. My mule was afraid to come inside so I told him to stay put while Dag and I entered. We made our introductions and around that time the dwarf corpse in Jed the cleric's backpack returned to full size, exploding the backpack and making an altogether awkward introduction.

Roger took it in stride, being a superstitious magic user he is naturally used to crazy shit happening. I was able to barter some wolvesbane for the weird book that the last magic user had owned. Suckers! Incidentally we learned that our first magic user actually did have Summon in his spellbook... it is only a matter of time now before the campaign gets stepped up a notch!

With it being morning now the party felt emboldened to see this skeleton thing in the back yard/graveyard. Perhaps as a group we could take it on.

The specialist brought the dwarf's body under the pretense of wanting to bury her in the graveyard.

Sure enough, we opened the door to the back yard and the skeleton guy was there. He noticed us and went to the locked gate and started doing some weird mojo. Whenever he struck the lock with his glowing sword, the lock turned rustier or something. I suspect that sword ages whatever it hits.

We saw another gravestone this one said "Jed" on it. Apparently the headstones have it in for my wife's characters. We all got a chuckle out of that. The MC insists he rolled it randomly but we know.

We also saw a nearby pond that had a giant frog poking its head out of the water. The specialist went over with the dwarf body and tried to make peace with it. The frog wound up snapping the body with its tongue and pulling it into the pond presumably to eat. Meanwhile the fighter and magic user were firing off loads of arrows at the skeleton and learning that in addition to me being horrible at rolling, it would take something like a 20 to hit this skeleton thanks to his full plate and bad-assery. A quick count of arrows told us that we did not have enough to seal the deal so we panicked and ran for it back into the house.

I think we at that point began to split up the party running in different directions in the house (there were 2 stairs, other hallways and back the way we came towards the front with the deadly fireplace creature).

Thus ended session 3.
Last edited by erik on Mon Apr 28, 2014 4:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by erik »

We began the session on the run from the indomitable full-plate armored skeleton with his badass great sword of aging (we assume it ages whatever it hits).

We had locked doors behind us but that only seems to slow the undead seneschal for a short while.

Our specialist ran up the stairs to the floor above that had a balcony overlooking the great room, and the rest of the group ran to the opposite side of the great room finding stairs that led to the basement. Deciding that way was too scary we turned around to go to the other side of the great room to follow the Specialist upstairs.

The specialist discovered a large black stone statue with a weird misshapen face and body. He also found a shackled replacement for the Wizard who died in the first session. Apparently his brother, also a wizard, had been trailing the party and was captured by something and he claimed to have been imprisoned in the house. The Specialist decided that this guy was a "perv" for being chained up with a collar around his neck, but a short examination of our surrounds found a key to free him which we used since we needed more manpower to deal with this skeleton thing.



For the duration of all this exchange my character was doing other things. I had noticed a golden harp sitting at the base of the stair well on a pedestal or something and decided to call dibs on it. Right before ascending the stairs to follow the rest of the party I ran my hand along it to play some notes and discovered to my surprise that it was magical. It was suddenly revealed to me that the world was coming apart as an alternate universe was crashing into us, and I had to stop it. During my psychadelic tripping I wound up wandering around in front of the door way the evil skeleton was bashing his way though, and wrestling with some rubbish on the ground. Rubbish in this case was a piece of a (fake?) dragon skeleton tail that we had knocked down from a complete skeleton that was suspended above the great hall.

The wizard's first act upon being freed was to poke the statue in the eyes since he insisted it was watching him and it was evil. Strangely blood and viscera came out of the sockets of the statue after he poked its eyes out. Creepy. When pressed how he knew the statue was evil and no some prisoner like himself he felt a bit guilty.

But no time to waste. We had a plan. I recovered from my episode, having stopped the universe from exploding, clearly, and joined the party upstairs to meet our new comrade and learn our next move.

When the skeleton entered the doorway into the great room we would push the statue over the ledge to put it out of its blinded misery and crush the skeleton. We tied rope around it and the specialist waited down below holding the other end of the rope, acting as bait for the skeleton and to let us know when it was time to push (and for him to pull).

Much to our surprise the plan actually worked! This of course was a deviation from the system as there are no rules for such things, but ker-smack the statue landed on the unsuspecting skeleton. We ran down to hi-5 and chest bump with the Specialist. Victory jigs commenced!

And then a skeletal hand burst up from the rubble.

Our new comrade freaked out and ran up stairs "to get his staff" he said. Coward.

The skeleton pulled itself from the rubble but was no longer wielding his magic blade. It was time to gang-wrestle this asshole!

Rules time! If you outnumber your opponent, the Wrestling is an easy win in Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Wrestling is resolved as such:
A character may attempt to wrestle another character to either immobilize or take something out of that character’s hands.
The attacker must have both hands free. The defender, if he is armed and has not yet acted during the round, can immediately make an attack against the aggressor before the wrestling attempt is resolved.
Wrestling is resolved with a contested roll. Both parties roll 1d20 and apply both their melee Attack Bonus and Strength modifier. Ties are decided by Dexterity modifier, or a die roll if both are still tied.
The winner decides whether the loser is immobilized, if he will attempt to disarm the loser of the contest, or if he releases the loser.
An immobilized opponent can usually take no action other than attempting to escape on his next action, but can instead attack a grappling opponent with natural or minor weapons. Resolve this with another wrestling roll. Any character immobilized for three successive wrestling contests is considered pinned and helpless—no further attempts to escape can be made.
...
While wrestling, attacks are made against all involved as if they were surprised.
If there are multiple opponents attempting to wrestle a single defender, all attackers make their rolls as normal, but only the best roll is used with a +1 bonus for each additional attacker.
The first round the specialist and fighter tried to wrestle but the skeleton rolled a 20 so they failed and the fighter was disarmed of his garrote, and he wound up getting punched for most of his HP. The cleric healed him.
I grabbed the magic sword to make certain the skeleton didn't get it and proceeded to roll incredibly poorly for the rest of combat.

The cleric joined in the wrestling and after about 3 rounds the skeleton was immobilized and helpless, so now it didn't matter that I couldn't roll above a 5 on a d20, I automatically hit him for maximum damage with the greatsword and slayed his stupid ass. Unfortunately my hitting him messed up his sweet plate armor so that now it was as effective as leather armor, but with the full extra encumberance of full plate. Boo. The skeleton had a death scene where his spectre bubbled out and melted a small hole in the floor into which it was sucked down. Good riddance.

We also found a key that was on a thong tied around his waist. This key has been dubbed the Skeleton Key. I'm sure it will be important later. Our fighter wears it now.

The fighter declined the sword as spoils since he prefers to use a shield, so the cleric no wields the super sword. The sword allegedly boosted my strength while I wielded it but it became less powerful after the skeleton got killed. I guess we should have just chained him up somewhere after we subdued him. Oh well.

Having saved the universe from destruction and destroyed a mighty undead warrior I was still feeling pretty good.

We went back to the parlor to show the new wizard the remains of his brother. He had a sad moment and then declared that he was the inheritor of all his brother's stuff. Apparently the dead wizard had 97 silver on his person, but we didn't know this because the character sheet was poorly documented. We hand-waved it and said the coins were secreted away in a hidden pouch in his clothing, presumably rolled up somehow so that they wouldn't jingle. Whatever.

He was surprised to learn that the spellbook of his brother was no longer there. I had bartered during the previous session and bought it off the fighter in exchange for a couple sprigs of wolvesbane. My character was not present in the room during the inquiry about the missing spellbook so I have plausible deniability. The deceased wizard had a blank book and also a story book which the fighter and specialist had looted respectively, and they offered those to the new wizard but apparently that wasn't what he wanted. We'll share spellbooks eventually but for now it was good for a laugh as our friend's replacement wizard's machinations were disrupted.

I keep saying wizard, but of course there are no wizards, only "Magic-Users"; however, that's such a stupid name that my fingers cannot bear to type it with any reliable frequency.

We decided to explore a little bit more and a room upstairs was some sort of beast trophy room, full of taxidermied animal specimen. Gee, I wonder if any of them will attack us? Unsurprising Yes! An albino gorilla hopped down from a perch and approached to wail on our cleric. And by wail on, I mean it had 2 attacks per round and it couldn't score a single hit on an AC of 16 over the course of 2 rounds of attacking. I fired an arrow at it in the first round of combat before it had reached melee range and I once again rolled crap and missed. For my second round I dropped the bow and charged in to begin to wrestle!

Roger the Entrepeneur-Wizard with a strength of 7 vs. Gorilla!

I rolled great and he rolled garbage. The next round the fighter joined the grapple with me and the gorilla failed a morale check and submitted to our dominance. We tried to reason with it and released it. Apparently it didn't understand English, possibly because it is a stupid gorilla, and it ran away exiting the room that it apparently had been trapped in. Our newly acquired wizard cast Sleep on it before it got too far and we made our way down to tie it up again and... well I don't know what we're gonna do with it.

We are low on rations.

Thus ended our session.

XP for the skeleton, 200! (split 5 ways, 40xp apiece!)
XP for the gorilla, 175! (35 xp apiece)
Yeah... given that if we straight up fought either of those enemies then likely one or more of us would have died, we're never going to level up. Or rather, the only way we possibly will level up is by looting this damned mansion.

The way you get XP for loot is 1 XP per silver piece of value that is granted once you get back to a secure location. If the sword is worth like 1000gp or something that would constitute level-uppage. (1gp = 50sp). So we plan to try and return to town and carry as many valuables as we can manage. I have a pack mule that is tethered outside the house, but odds are it got eaten or got loose and ran off in the night.
Last edited by erik on Tue May 06, 2014 3:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Longes
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Post by Longes »

I have a question: how, in your opinion, does the Magic User compares to the Elf? From what I saw, elf seems to be better in every way, except for the starting spells.
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Post by Schleiermacher »

Elf balance in LOFP is totally hilarious.

Elves are indeed just Magic-Users ++ -they get more HP, the Search skill, combat maneuvers, casting while holding a weapon and a handful of stealth class features like immunity to Charm Person (although since those are because they are "magical creatures", a few of them are bad for you, too.)
As such, level for level they're the most powerful class in the game.

However, there are two drawbacks.

1. they get the steepest exp requirements of all classes, so the elf will always be lower level than everyone else.
2. Unlike Magic-Users, they don't start with a free spellbook! :rofl:
And since one costs 100 sp, even an above-average starting cash roll will leave you really hurting if you purchase one at level 1. (With an average or lower roll you can't afford one at all.) Yes, that's seriously part of the class balance.
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Post by Longes »

Schleiermacher wrote:Elf balance in LOFP is totally hilarious.

Elves are indeed just Magic-Users ++ -they get more HP, the Search skill, combat maneuvers, casting while holding a weapon and a handful of stealth class features like immunity to Charm Person (although since those are because they are "magical creatures", a few of them are bad for you, too.)
As such, level for level they're the most powerful class in the game.

However, there are two drawbacks.

1. they get the steepest exp requirements of all classes, so the elf will always be lower level than everyone else.
2. Unlike Magic-Users, they don't start with a free spellbook! :rofl:
And since one costs 100 sp, even an above-average starting cash roll will leave you really hurting if you purchase one at level 1. (With an average or lower roll you can't afford one at all.) Yes, that's seriously part of the class balance.
All characters are assumed to begin play with a decent set of traveling clothes appropriate for the weather conditions in the starting area of play at no cost, and Magic-Users and Elves have a spellbook containing their beginning spells. These items do not have to be paid for.
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Post by Schleiermacher »

Hmm.

Must be something Raggi amended in a later printing, then. The "Grindhouse" edition has the same quote word for word, except it notes only Magic-Users, not Elves as starting with spellbooks.
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Post by erik »

I'm like, way late to the answers here. I dunno how I missed replies to the thread. Apologies.

Elves get slightly worse saves than Magic Users. I guess that's worth something. Still not as bad as Fighters on saves overall. Fighters get boned so hard on saves. Our Fighter only saves vs. Magic on a 20 thanks to INT giving a penalty to the already shitty base save. Damn, magic users have better saves vs. Poison and Paralysis than fighters. Poor fucking fighters.

I'd say Fighters are still meaningful since they are the only class that gets an increasing attack bonus, and their minimum HP rolled is 8... on a 1d8. I guess you just roll for bragging rights. That's right, Fighters are tougher than dwarves on HP despite dwarves getting d10 and +1 bonus HP because dwarf minimum HP is 6. Fuck dwarves! Damn, I've already drifted two steps off of magic users vs. elves. Back on track.

Another drawback of elves over their XP/level costs is that at 1st level their only starting spell is Read Magic. Now, with the magic user I am currently playing that's the only spell I ever prep anyway for my 1/day, so fuck if it matters at level 1. You get 3 random spells and they may all be shit like faerie fire and feather fall.

Magic Users in addition to needing less XP/level get more spells per day, eventually. I mean like at level 13 or 14 or somesuch, at which point the XP differential already puts the magic user ahead and nobody fucking cares because if you are still alive you have either summoned outrageous guardian minions, or ruined the entire planet. I wonder how much XP I get for drowning the planet. Hrmmmm.

Schleiermacher nailed most of the advantages of elves over magic users. They're much harder to surprise (only surprised on a 1/6 instead of 4/6).

Search is a very handy thing to have. In this game skills are 1d6 for about everyone, and that means a whole lot of failing. Having a decent search seems quite helpful. Elves only start at 2d6, but when you get to 6d6 at level 13 that's being Sherlock Holmes (1/36 chance of not noticing something important). For now we have just been getting by on hoping that someone in the 4-5 person party manages to roll a 1 before we get screwed in each new room. I don't know exactly what our Specialist has his stuff in, but he has made it known that his plan is to put his next two level's points into Search because that is clearly the best thing for us. Assuming he lives to see level 3 anyway.

It looks like we may actually have some characters making it to level 2 soon. My magic user is about halfway to level 2. Of the original party the only survivors are our Specialist who likes to go roaming off on his own (and this will surely be the death of him soon), and our Fighter who has fell victim to what appears to be feeblemind. He has already planned out his replacement fighter expecting death due to stupidity in the near future.

I am in possession of a spellbook from our fallen first magic user and it is only a matter of time before I spend several days to copy his Summon spell into my spellbook. Then shit will commence with the real getting.

If I make it to level 2 I will buy a ton of animals, return to the mansion where I sacrifice them and get a mad minion. Or a TPK and we all have a good laugh.

Our current list of defeated enemies continues to extend.
- 2 zombies (Butler and maid)
- armored skeleton seneschal with badass great sword
- Ghoul/crazed grounds keeper
- Giant frog (well, we gave the corpse of my dwarf character to it, so we appeased it for a while)
- Albino ape
- Bats (defeated by blowing a whistle that stunned them. probably would have killed a couple party members if not for that)
- Homunculus of super wizard (we grappled him and put him in a cage to carry around as our team mascot).
- Brain in a jar (charmed/dominated players, feebleminded our fighter)

Enemies that we are still scared of and/or have no idea how to deal with them also continues to grow:
- wolves in the forest
- werewolf that howled on first adventure, not yet encountered
- two ghosts (one we ran away from and it got bored of us, the other hasn't noticed us yet)
- fireplace sirius black guy who can throw fire at us

The basement of the mansion is pretty much off-limits to us until we figure out how to deal with the ghost at the bottom of the steps. Our other party magic user is at 0 HP as of last session, but I think we were planning on sleeping the night and the cleric will be able to bring him back to full with a CLW. Probably.
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Post by Schleiermacher »

It looks like your game is using the rules a bit differently from ours, and I'm 99% sure ours is RAW:
- The minimum HP values are only for first level (so you won't be screwed by a roll of 1, a pleasant concession to practicality in an OSR game), so Fighters start with a leg up on dwarves but will eventually be overtaken.
- Additional pips in a skill don't give you more dice, they give you a better TN. By default you only succeed on 1/6, then it goes up to 2/6 and so forth.
At 6/6 you spesifically roll 2d6 and only fail on a roll of boxcars.
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Post by erik »

Schleiermacher wrote:It looks like your game is using the rules a bit differently from ours, and I'm 99% sure ours is RAW:
- The minimum HP values are only for first level (so you won't be screwed by a roll of 1, a pleasant concession to practicality in an OSR game), so Fighters start with a leg up on dwarves but will eventually be overtaken.
It's a combination of my memory being off on HP and me not being clear enough on skills. I shouldn't have used Xd6 when I ought've said X/6.

My memory failed on the minimum HP. I read it back when we first started but never really expected to make it to level 2 ever and memory blurred over time. Still, it is bizarre that fighters get Max HP at level 1.
Schleiermacher wrote: - Additional pips in a skill don't give you more dice, they give you a better TN. By default you only succeed on 1/6, then it goes up to 2/6 and so forth.
At 6/6 you spesifically roll 2d6 and only fail on a roll of boxcars.
Sorry I was using poorly chosen descriptors. We're using skills as you stated. That's what I was meaning when elves get 6/6 Search at level 13, they're a Sherlock Holmes who only misses a crucial detail 1/36 of the time. As far as skills go, I think that's one of the best.

Also, I erred in my recounting of how surprise works when noting Elven superiority. Everyone else is actually surprised on a 2/6 not 4/6. Got confused because a sample character sheet had 4 pips on the surprise notation... but that's the 4/6 chance you have to successfully surprise opponents when you are well hidden/prepared to act on a surprise round.

Just because you have the drop on someone doesn't guarantee that you get to act on a surprise round. :roll:


Now, we do have some minor house rules:
• Strength is added to (or subtracted from) damage.
• Extra XP is given out for various things (helping with mapping, note taking, best player of the night award as voted by all the players, amusing wordplay/puns, entering character background, picture/etc. into the online campaign info thing on obsidian portal)
• Reasonable collections of certain non-encumbering items count as single encumbering item for the purposes of encumbrance (like if you have a dozen candles, despite them being items that don't count towards encumbrance, the group of them will count as 1 encumbering item).

I dunno if this is a house rule, but when we have multiple people wrestling, we declare it at the start of a turn and they all roll at the same time for the combined grapple check. I think that's how it is supposed to be.

So long as we outnumber our opponent and it is corporeal, we've started grappling the shit out of everything (after letting it make its first attack). It's the only way to fight at level 1- maybe at all levels, barring casting.
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Post by Dean »

I am very entertained by this thread. Excited for more.
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Post by erik »

I forgot one of the highlights of our last session at the mansion of Tazimack the Red (capturing the homunculus was the main highlight which overshadowed some guffaws). When exploring hallways I discovered magical runes over a doorway. I was excited that I was going to be able to make use of my single spell per day since I had prepared Read Magic.

The magic runes then were revealed to say "This space left intentionally blank."

We all had a good laugh at that. I'm not sure if it was an error, but I assume it was intentional humor where the runes are left entirely to make you waste a spell deciphering them. Jokes on them, I haven't had anything else to cast it on anyway! I haven't gone through that doorway yet, so I'm hoping there's more magical stuff to decipher and that's why they trick you into blowing your wad on the doorway.

We gotta rest anyway since between being poked by a ghost and stabbed or bitten by the homunculus, or other Magic User is down to 0 HP. He was drunk from testing out potions that were mixed amongst in with the liquor cabinet so we just assumed he passed out since he received his final damage from the homunculus when nobody else was in the room. Our Specialist drank a love potion during that exercise and fell in love with one of the ghosts, so he's probably due to join the afterlife soon.

We are doing the LoFP campaign bi-weekly now, stagger-alternating with an Earthdawn (2e maybe?) campaign that we started back in 2007 or something, and shelved until now.
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