Sunday Demon Game

[terrycloth]

We had a session of Tom's demon game again today. It was kind of boring -- just a long combat, with lots of rules lawyering and other arguments, and for most of it I was running away, not that I would have had anything useful to do anyway.

It's really hard (and frustrating) to fight a bunch of people your level with no equipment and basically random demon powers, especially when you don't want to hurt them -- don't *dare* hurt them, in fact.

The group in general has been incredibly touchy lately -- me, Eric, Dave, Michelle, and Tom were all acting snappish and immature.

So the party of demons, with more demons in tow, dimension doored out of the mine to a forest clearing one of them remembered well enough to visualize. [this took about a half hour of arguing, because Tom wanted to know, in great detail, who was dimension dooring with who and in what order. Then he found out we weren't teleporting directly into the druid's sanctum -- not wanting a teleport traced right to his door -- and didn't need to know after all.] While in transit, the ones that cast the spells had visions of their bodies again, although none of the visions were especially useful.

One of them saw a caravan with a cage, and recognized the area as being nearby -- with their new demon army, they could ambush it! Right? How many of you demons can fight, anyway? Five, eh. Eheh.

Well, that left them with a gaggle of civilians in demons' clothing that needed to be left somewhere safe, perhaps in the druid's hideout, which was even closer than the caravan, and sort of on the way? Of course, they should go along to make sure the druid was actually still staying there. [HINT HINT HINT from the DM] They soon came to the bramble wall surrounding the hidden cabin, and spoke the password to get inside.

They didn't see the druid -- instead, they saw some fighters -- some *evil* fighters -- who yelled, 'they're here!' and drew their weapons. The battle was on!

The harpy-bard sung a quick inspiring stanza, and flew up into the air, planning to snipe with his crossbow, as his useless harpy body was weak and useless and pathetic -- only to get feathered by about twenty million arrows from several trees that contained hidden archers! [some of them behind the party, with the DM not even bothering to give us a spot check -- I guess they'd all used their potions of invisibility when they saw us coming?] He quickly switched to his harpy-song, captivating the hapless treebound archers, but someone he never saw suggested he stop singing and leave the area before anyone fell to their death, so that was the end of the fight for him. [I spent the rest of the session playing game boy, except for occasional interludes of rules-lawyering]

The melee demons rushed into combat, but found they couldn't actually approach within 10 feet of any of the important targets, letting the enemies focus on one of them at a time while the others stood there looking stupid. Walls of ice and blades and fire went up, with limited effect -- no one was trapped for more than a round, on either side. A wizard and druid joined the fight on the other side, and one of the rescued demon wizards turned herself into a whirlwind to keep the real wizard distracted.

Lassitus, the actual court wizard, fled, of course, along with most of the demon 'army'. Including the ones who'd said they'd fight. The party was alone, except for the aformentioned basically-powerless wizardess, the duke himself, and the captain of the guard who'd been with them all along.

The succubus turned ethereal to scout out the cabin. Inside were only a few useless underlings, who cowered instead of fighting -- apparently, none of the mooks on either side had any fight in them today! She also checked out the basement, and found a cleric casting spells into a crystal ball, then never bothered to tell anyone else about it ever. Some would say reporting back the results is the entire *point* of scouting, but maybe the telepathy-block confused her -- the party *had* just spent about two days straight awake and active and communicating only mentally. [There were also Tom's rules about hearing people trying to talk to you -- twenty feet of open air is a total barrier to all sound]

Eventually, someone managed to pull a dispel magic out of their... repetoire, and took down the protection-from-good-10'-radiuses. Shortly afterwards, the fighter who'd been handing the entire melee contingent their asses was dominated, and the wizard was put to sleep. The wizard still had his protection, though, so although he was helpless and out of the fight, no one could do anything to keep him that way that wasn't likely to wake him up.

The spiky-demon-who-used-to-be-a-druid's body was captured alive by the Duke himself. This was good for two reasons -- one, they'd be able to switch him back as soon as they found the machine, and two, party members had better loot than anyone else in the kingdom.

Suddenly, the unconscious fighter and the dominated fighter both vanished in a flash of light. The hydra who'd dominated the one tried to see through his eyes, and failed -- he was inside another damned circle of protection! But where? [answer: in the basement. The DM told us this, then told us that none of us knew it. Um, thanks.]

About this time, the harpy wandered back, having come to his senses once he left the area (and completed the suggestion), and the succubus saw fit to mention the cleric holed up in the basement. Someone -- they weren't sure who -- cast a wall of iron over the basement entrance. [Here, we argued for a half hour or so about whether it was reasonable for it to require a DC 40 strength check to make a perfectly balanced wall of iron fall the way you want it. I was on the side of 'since the rules say it's a DC 40 check to make it fall the other direction, it must not be perfectly balanced', but I lost, and so the spell was entirely wasted and useless. Yay.] Luckily, it was perfectly balanced on the slanted sloping door to the basement, and hovered there until someone could move over and tip it safely against the house, whose fragile wooden wall it failed to crush with its multi-ton weight.

It took the marilith less than 10 seconds to break through the doors, which *were* pinned shut by the iron. He dropped into the basement stairs, and somehow didn't notice that a wall of stone was blocking them. ["What do you mean I can't see the cleric to cast a spell? There's a straight line of sight down the stairs to where his figure is, if I move over here." "Well, you can't see anything in the basement." "So it's empty? He already left? HOW did he leave?" "No, you can't see anything. There's a wall in the way." "The hell? You didn't mention a wall." "No one said they were looking down the stairs, so I didn't mention it." "Ed FELL down the stairs. How would he not see it?" "I'm not arguing this, there's a wall there, okay?"]

The spiky-demon-who-used-to-be-a-druid somehow had all his powers back, for no clearly explained reason, and wild-shaped into a super-powerful spiky demon bear, and quickly smashed through the wall of stone, with some help from the marilith's six-sworded power-attacking. They were SO quick doing it, that they managed to smash and destroy the crystal ball the cleric on the other side had been using.

The cleric was nowhere to be seen, though, having melded with the stone. Unfortuantely for him, his circle of protection didn't extend outside the wall while he was melded with it. This is where the game more or less fell apart:

Tom: "You don't see anyone except flunkies and the fighter, who looks ready to fight you, and you're hedged out from entering."

Eric: "Where's the cleric? He couldn't have teleported anywhere with the teleport trap they have set up. I'll cast see invis."

Tom: "Nothing."

Ed: "I'll cast true seeing."

Tom: "Nope, nothing."

Josh: "Wait, you know if he's polymorphed into stone from a meld-with stone spell he'd be able to see him right?"

Tom: "Well, not if he was entirely inside the rock."

Ed: "Well, then, his circle wouldn't have line of effect to anything in the basement, would it?"

Tom: "Er... fine! The fighter's dominated and you're not hedged out, then."

Eric: "I order him to knock the flunkies out and immobilize them."

Tom: "He takes out his sword and cuts them both down. They're dead."

Everyone: "What the hell!?"

Tom: "You told him to take them out!"

Eric: "I told him to KNOCK them out."

Tom: "FINE, they're unconscious, then."

Dave: "Now, the cleric's melded with stone, right? So we have to drill a hole and use the dwarven explosives..."

Tom: "You don't know he's melded with stone!"

Eric: "We ask the dominated fighter what he did and where he went, then we know, and use the dwarven explosives to blow up the wall."

Josh: "If you totally destroy it, it'll kill him outright."

Tom: "You can't 'totally destroy' the wall with these explosives, but you can force him out, and now he's trapped in the basement with all of you staring at him... let's see, is there any spell he could cast to escape?"

Me: "HOw about dismissal? You've been counting us as summoned creatures, so it should send one of us back to Hell. That'd open up a hole in the line for him to try to bolt past us and run away."

Everyone: "SHUT UP, Aaron!"

Tom: "Eh, no... he wouldn't have one of those memorized. Besides, I don't want to just kill off one of you with a random will save. So you beat him unconscious and the fight's over, right?"

Eric: "Well, we still have the wizard."

Tom: "How long is he asleep for?"

Eric: "Nine minutes. I'll tie his hands up with a mage hand, after stripping his body of all rings and amulets and anything else portable..."

Me: "Er, you can't use mage hand on attended objects. You need an unseen servant."

Tom: "You can't tie knots either."

Eric: "He's unconsious! He can't attend his objects while he's unconscious!"

Dave: "Unconscious people still get reflex saves, so they can still attend their objects. Don't try to be realistic."

Me: "Just because he's unconscious doesn't mean anything to the spell -- it doesn't fail because the person *stops* it, it can't even target."

Eric: "FINE! What about his staff? Did he drop it?"

Tom: "Yes, it's lying next to him."

Me: "So you get that, at least."

Tom: "And you come up with some clever method of tying him up..."

Eric: "I just use mage hand."

Tom: "You can't tie knots with mage hand."

Eric: "Fine, then I'll make a slip knot with a long pull cord, and use the mage hand to position it around his wrists, then pull it tight."

Tom: "See? I told you, some clever method."

Me: "Then we'll tie the loose end of the rope to a tree with our real hands."

Eric: "Then I'll do the same thing with a noose around his neck, throw the rope over the tree branch -- there's a tree marked right next to him here -- and pull him up, hanging him."

Tom: "Well, that wakes him up!"

Eric: "I don't care! He can't cast spells with a noose pulled tight around his throat!"

Tom: "As soon as he wakes up, he uses his fly spell to fly up over the branch, you can't choke him."

Eric: "No he can't, his hands are tied behind his back to the base of the tree -- we have him literally strung up."

Tom: "What? No one said anything about tying off the other end of the rope."

Eric and me: "Yes we did."

Josh: "Yeah, they did."

Tom: "Okay, okay... he still gets enough slack to cast one verbal-only spell though, so he ends up in the box. He walks out the door and --"

Michelle: "Excuse me? The teleport trap I was watching is *open*, and you never told me?"

Tom: "Remember, he teleported behind the house before, and his men let him out -- it got opened then, and no one ever closed it."

Me: "Er, Michelle's been guarding it in case anyone ended up in it for a while now... you probably should have mentioned it was open..."

Tom: "No one asked!"

Michelle: "Fine, then I'll close the door before he can get out."

Josh: "You can't do anything after using dimension door, so she should be able to do that."

Tom: "Okay, okay, he's trapped in the cage."

Dave: "Is the antimagic on?"

Tom: "Er, no. Good catch. You turn it on?"

Dave: "Yep. Then we skewer him with ranged weapons while he can't fight back."

Me: "Wait, you're just going to kill him in cold blood?"

Eric: "He isn't anyone anyone recognizes, so he's just an evil human working for the devils. That means we can kill him."

Me: "You can't kill someone in cold blood just because they were doing mercenary work for an invading demon army!"

Everyone: "..."

Eric: "Let's ask the paladin. Ed?"

Ed: "What would my god think about it?"

Tom: "That's up to you. You never picked a specific god."

Ed: "Er... we should leave it up to the Duke!"

Tom: "The duke says he should be given a fair trial! We should take him and the cleric with us to use as bait, in the meantime, or as a prisoner exchange."

Eric: "He does know that holding spellcasters hostage is really fricking hard, right?"

Me: "Come on, guys. You can't ask for the duke's opinion and then not follow it."

Dave: "I'm sure I can 'convince' the duke to see it my way."

Tom: "Anyway, what do you do next? Are people leaving?"

Josh: "It looks like it... the fight's over, and we don't really have time for anything else..."

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So, the game ended a little early. Thank god. X.X

I don't think this campaign was a good idea. The premise sounded interesting in a vaccuum, but in practice it's just aggravating, and we can't really do anything with the interesting bits of it because we're such a hack-and-slash group. There shouldn't be too many more sessions left in this particular game, though, so we might as well see it out. v.v