LoFP report
Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 2:33 am
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.]
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.]