D+D not cancelled
Jun. 23rd, 2008 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothEven though he'd told us not to come, everyone showed up at Tom's house to play D+D anyway. So we did.
It was a really short session, though, because Eric refuses to stay past 6 and Shawn was *two hours late*. We chatted about CoH and played a little Carcassonne waiting for Shawn.
The new guy wasn't there -- apparently, he was supposed to rendezvous with Eric and Josh and carpool, and they only gave him 5 minutes past the agreed on time before assuming he wasn't going to show up. Even though he was coming from Everett.
New party roster:
Buradin "Bore" Sonn: dwarven fighter
Alaric: Infernal pact warlock, human I think?
'Shawn' (forgot the name, although I wrote it down): Tiefling Warlord (edit: Name is Vex)
Ariel: human wizard standing in for Ed's human wizard since neither Ed nor his character sheet were present
'Tom' (forgot the name, yada yada): Eladrin Ranger (Shannarea)
The tiefling warlord Shawn built seems much less effective than the pregen warlord, in particular not giving the HUGE bonuses to attacks made with action points. Although he does have some neat tricks. Unfortunately, his 'order a friend to attack' power only works on melee attacks, and the only (other) melee fighter in the group is the dwarf, since the two melee strikers we expected to have (rogue and two-blade ranger) were replaced by two ranged strikers (warlock and bow ranger). Not having the rogue also means that wolf pack tactics is pretty marginal. Maybe he'll retrain?
At any rate, the adjusted party headed back out towards the dragon graveyard where they expected to find their mentor's dead body but hoped to actually find their mentor alive. On the way, they stopped at a graveyard to collect some 'crypt dust' for an alchemist in town, and were of course assaulted by undead.
They'd split up a little to search the graveyard for threats -- not very *far* apart, but when the skeletons attacked the dwarf was out of line of sight of the warlord, who was forced to do a very, very bad approximation of a front line fighter. Eventually Bore smashed the skeleton's foot to slow it down, and ran over to help their struggling leader, although by the time he got there the ranger and warlock had already taken care of most of the enemies. But despite their questionable tactics, the fight wasn't very hard.
When they got to the graveyard, they found it occupied by an excavation team -- humans, a halfling, a gnome, and a couple guard drakes. These bandits tried to lure them in by acting friendly while circling around to surround them, but despite not actually making their insight checks, the GM ruled that since the party's responses were along the lines of "Grr, they're civilized races so we can't just slaughter them all out of hand even though they're obviously evil." and "I'm taking cover up here on the ridge to shoot them if they cause any trouble." "Oh look, they're circling around behind us. That's not suspicious at all." that surprise wasn't actually appropriate.
Unfortunately, the party didn't want to strike first, just in case, which meant letting themselves get surrounded before the enemies pulled out their weapons and attacked. The warlock flung the halfling slinger off a cliff (it wasn't steep enough to do falling damage, but he had to spend his next turn climbing down the slope and then standing up after failing his climb check) but was horribly wounded by the two guard drakes. The humans turned out to be particularly useless minions, at least, and the wizard and ranger (and warlock, after the first turn) focused on the drakes to take them out, while the halfling struggled with the slope and the gnome used pathetic attacks since his strategy relied on someone paying attention to him so that he could use his gnome ability to turn invisible. And no one did.
The most amusing part of the battle was when the warlock used a power on the last guard drake that did extra damage to it if it moved closer... and then the dwarf slammed it from behind with his shield and pushed it towards him, which finished it off. The most annoying part was tracking down the invisible gnome after someone finally attacked him -- he didn't stay invisible after making his own attacks, but he had some special monster abilities that let him stay hidden, and not even the ranger had a good enough spot check.
There were limits to the possible hiding places, though, and eventually they stumbled across him and beat him unconscious, then tied him up and interrogated him at length.
Eric: "There's no take 20 rule in 4e."
Me: "Well, then we'll keep rolling until we get a 20. Failure just makes him hostile and you said he's already hostile, that's why taking 10 didn't work."
TAKEAWAY: Take 10 on intimidate vs. will defense is the same as take 20 on intimidate vs. will defense+10. So if you can take 10 and beat their unmodified will score, you can eventually get someone to talk.
He didn't have a lot to say, but he did have an important thing to say: Calarith was going to do a ritual to unseal the rift to the shadowfell. That... wasn't good. Especially since they had no idea who he was or where the rift was.
Fortunately, Dugan (their mentor) was still alive, in a bag. As a reward for rescuing him, he let them keep the magic amulet they'd looted from the gnome, which was his. Also, he agreed to go home to his wife, since he'd been tied up for a week while the gnome's expedition did its digging and they hadn't found jack, except for a lovely but nonmagical mirror which the party planned to sell.
Back in town, everyone was really gloomy and acting weird, but no one knew why. The seer who'd hired them to get drake scales and crypt dust (they'd skipped the drake cave since they'd run into the guard drakes at the dragon graveyard) didn't know anything about why people would be gloomy, but DID know about the Keep on the Shadowfell near the town, which was almost certainly the rift in question.
The party agreed that it was probably going to be up to them to stop this Calarith person from opening the rift, but since no one was paying them for that and someone had offered to pay them to get rid of the kobolds, the kobolds were their first priority.
last session | next session
It was a really short session, though, because Eric refuses to stay past 6 and Shawn was *two hours late*. We chatted about CoH and played a little Carcassonne waiting for Shawn.
The new guy wasn't there -- apparently, he was supposed to rendezvous with Eric and Josh and carpool, and they only gave him 5 minutes past the agreed on time before assuming he wasn't going to show up. Even though he was coming from Everett.
New party roster:
Buradin "Bore" Sonn: dwarven fighter
Alaric: Infernal pact warlock, human I think?
'Shawn' (forgot the name, although I wrote it down): Tiefling Warlord (edit: Name is Vex)
Ariel: human wizard standing in for Ed's human wizard since neither Ed nor his character sheet were present
'Tom' (forgot the name, yada yada): Eladrin Ranger (Shannarea)
The tiefling warlord Shawn built seems much less effective than the pregen warlord, in particular not giving the HUGE bonuses to attacks made with action points. Although he does have some neat tricks. Unfortunately, his 'order a friend to attack' power only works on melee attacks, and the only (other) melee fighter in the group is the dwarf, since the two melee strikers we expected to have (rogue and two-blade ranger) were replaced by two ranged strikers (warlock and bow ranger). Not having the rogue also means that wolf pack tactics is pretty marginal. Maybe he'll retrain?
At any rate, the adjusted party headed back out towards the dragon graveyard where they expected to find their mentor's dead body but hoped to actually find their mentor alive. On the way, they stopped at a graveyard to collect some 'crypt dust' for an alchemist in town, and were of course assaulted by undead.
They'd split up a little to search the graveyard for threats -- not very *far* apart, but when the skeletons attacked the dwarf was out of line of sight of the warlord, who was forced to do a very, very bad approximation of a front line fighter. Eventually Bore smashed the skeleton's foot to slow it down, and ran over to help their struggling leader, although by the time he got there the ranger and warlock had already taken care of most of the enemies. But despite their questionable tactics, the fight wasn't very hard.
When they got to the graveyard, they found it occupied by an excavation team -- humans, a halfling, a gnome, and a couple guard drakes. These bandits tried to lure them in by acting friendly while circling around to surround them, but despite not actually making their insight checks, the GM ruled that since the party's responses were along the lines of "Grr, they're civilized races so we can't just slaughter them all out of hand even though they're obviously evil." and "I'm taking cover up here on the ridge to shoot them if they cause any trouble." "Oh look, they're circling around behind us. That's not suspicious at all." that surprise wasn't actually appropriate.
Unfortunately, the party didn't want to strike first, just in case, which meant letting themselves get surrounded before the enemies pulled out their weapons and attacked. The warlock flung the halfling slinger off a cliff (it wasn't steep enough to do falling damage, but he had to spend his next turn climbing down the slope and then standing up after failing his climb check) but was horribly wounded by the two guard drakes. The humans turned out to be particularly useless minions, at least, and the wizard and ranger (and warlock, after the first turn) focused on the drakes to take them out, while the halfling struggled with the slope and the gnome used pathetic attacks since his strategy relied on someone paying attention to him so that he could use his gnome ability to turn invisible. And no one did.
The most amusing part of the battle was when the warlock used a power on the last guard drake that did extra damage to it if it moved closer... and then the dwarf slammed it from behind with his shield and pushed it towards him, which finished it off. The most annoying part was tracking down the invisible gnome after someone finally attacked him -- he didn't stay invisible after making his own attacks, but he had some special monster abilities that let him stay hidden, and not even the ranger had a good enough spot check.
There were limits to the possible hiding places, though, and eventually they stumbled across him and beat him unconscious, then tied him up and interrogated him at length.
Eric: "There's no take 20 rule in 4e."
Me: "Well, then we'll keep rolling until we get a 20. Failure just makes him hostile and you said he's already hostile, that's why taking 10 didn't work."
TAKEAWAY: Take 10 on intimidate vs. will defense is the same as take 20 on intimidate vs. will defense+10. So if you can take 10 and beat their unmodified will score, you can eventually get someone to talk.
He didn't have a lot to say, but he did have an important thing to say: Calarith was going to do a ritual to unseal the rift to the shadowfell. That... wasn't good. Especially since they had no idea who he was or where the rift was.
Fortunately, Dugan (their mentor) was still alive, in a bag. As a reward for rescuing him, he let them keep the magic amulet they'd looted from the gnome, which was his. Also, he agreed to go home to his wife, since he'd been tied up for a week while the gnome's expedition did its digging and they hadn't found jack, except for a lovely but nonmagical mirror which the party planned to sell.
Back in town, everyone was really gloomy and acting weird, but no one knew why. The seer who'd hired them to get drake scales and crypt dust (they'd skipped the drake cave since they'd run into the guard drakes at the dragon graveyard) didn't know anything about why people would be gloomy, but DID know about the Keep on the Shadowfell near the town, which was almost certainly the rift in question.
The party agreed that it was probably going to be up to them to stop this Calarith person from opening the rift, but since no one was paying them for that and someone had offered to pay them to get rid of the kobolds, the kobolds were their first priority.
last session | next session
