![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothSunday we played some D+D. Eric did an *especially* half-assed job this time, and made it clear that he's sick of running the game and intends to let someone else take over once we're done with this module. That someone is probably going to be Shawn, because he was less unenthusiastic about running a game.
Having lost the dead bodies they'd been planning to use as a ruse to get inside the gnoll lair, the party was forced to explore the place and kill everyone. Which they'd have to do anyway, since it turned out the gnolls had an entire magical obstacle course as a front door.
There were several branching tunnels, so the party went left first, and spotted a bunch of caged hyenas at the end of the hall. They charged down the hall to try to get to the lever which would free them before they could be freed, but... they didn't. Doh. The hyenas swarmed out of the cage, and a pair of gnolls came out of a side room, pinning the party in an intersection in the hallway, with Vex cur off from everyone else and surrounded by hyenas.
Riya: "You resist fire, right Vexx?"
Vexx: "Yeah, a little."
So Riya breathed two huge gouts of fire onto the hyenas... and Vexx. Sam followed up with his own burning hands, which toasted the hyenas nicely and thanks to his fire resistance, only *half* killed Vexx.
[annoying aside:
Me: "Hey, looking at the firebreath Riya was using, the 4 damage to the next melee attacker is tacked on as a sub-effect of a hit. That means she does 4 damage for each target she hits, right? A total of 9 hits for those two breaths, so 36 damage if anyone attacks her?"
Eric: "That's stupid. What makes you think it happens for each hit?"
Me: "...because it's tacked on as a sub effect of the 'hit' line instead of saying something like 'if you hit at least one target, X happens'."
Eric: "Well, it doesn'y say it stacks, so it doesn't stack."
Me: "Why would it have to stack? It'd load up a bunch of 'next attacker takes 4 damage' effects on her and they'd all go off. Or, well, at least two of them, one for each breath, since she did it twice, if you think it only goes off once for the whole power even though it's worded as a side effect of hitting an enemy."
Eric: "No! It doesn't stack AT ALL! Not even from the two uses of the breath! Otherwise it's overpowered!"
Me: "...um, the enemies could just attack someone *else* that round. It's not really overpowered. Besides, she's a striker. She's supposed to be able to do lots of damage to people."
Eric: "It doesn't say it stacks, and I believe in using the rules as written."
GOD, I FUCKING HATE IT when he pulls that crap. He house-rules something -- for no good reason, generally -- going clearly against both the spirit and letter of the rules, and then tries to claim that he's following the rules strictly and that I'm trying to add something to them because it doesn't specifically state that this effect works the same as every other fucking power in the game.
He did that *twice* this session -- later on we had both cover and concealment from some enemies, and he tried to say it didn't stack because it didn't say it stacked... even though they were unnamed penalties and unnamed penalties always stack. It's not like it even MATTERED since the enemies attacked someone else instead, but he'll still argue the stupidest things in the most aggravating way possible, every time.
I mean, really -- Tom and Shawn both just break the rules 'because I say so', which is annoying and I don't think GMs should do that, but it isn't a 10th as annoying as when Eric pretends that the rules are on his side.]
At any rate, with the hyenas dead the gnolls were easy meat -- their 'pack attacks' depended on the existance of a pack. Vexx and Bore took care of the two from the kitchen, while the rest of the party swarmed the guy who'd let the dogs out.
The next door they decided to check had loud snarling noises behind it, so they arranged themselves appropriately, and Bore kicked open the door so that the mages could flame the people inside. Unfortunately, the people inside were not in flaming formation -- right through the door was a massive cage with a boar in it, being menaced by four hyenas, while on the far side of the room to the left, four gnoll archers used the boar for target practice.
So, while Vexx and Bore kept the hyenas busy, Riya, Morgan and Sam raced down the hallway to spew fire at the archers from close range, since there was another door down the hall opening directly onto the archers, completely ruining their defensive position. Riya took a pounding, and so did Sam, though, since Morgan was a little slower to charge than they were and Bore was otherwise occupied.
After finishing off the second group of gnolls, the party took a short rest, and were approached by a spectral quasit, who offered to answer any 3 questions for them for 100gp or a healing surge each.
"Any questions?" Riya asked immediately. Fortunately, the quasit answered that one for free. "Any question I know the answer to. I want you to destroy this temple to Baphomet and the followers of Yeenoghu -- they're competition we don't need."
Riya: "We should ask him if he could draw us a map."
Bore: "He'll just say 'yes'."
GM: "Actually, he'd say 'no' because he's incorporeal and can't touch anything."
They finally settled on, "How do we get to the slaves?" The answer was that they had to penetrate the inner sanctum of the temple by performing the trial of worthiness that the pillars in the entry hall had blathered on about.
The followup question was "Where do we find the objects the pillars were talking about?" The answer to that was unhelpful -- the imp named four rooms and said which object was in each room, but without a map... that wasn't very helpful.
They didn't have a third question.
But the next door they searched was a shrine of Baphomet, where the quasit had told them the book of somethingorother was hidden. The shrine had a table at the end of a short hallway, with two rooms behind closed doors. Not wanting the doors at their backs, the party slammed open the first one, revealing a demonic-looking gnoll, who screeched at them loudly!
As they ran in to attack her, a giant air elemental emerged from the other room, so the entire party crammed themselves into the gnoll's bedroom, and Riya used a spike of sealing to arcane-lock the door behind them, so that they could defeat the enemies in detail.
It turned out that the demonic-looking gnoll was extremely wimpy, though, so she died almost instantly, leaving them locked in the room with the elemental battering at the door. So they all readied actions to attack it when it opened the door, and it got blasted in the face with three or four attacks.
Eric: "Okay, since you were all waiting for him, I'll move you down after him in the initiative."
Me: "Before him. We readied actions."
Eric: "This is bullshit. Since he wasted his standard action opening the door, you'll get two attacks before he can go again!"
Me: "Well, otherwise readying an action is totally pointless."
Eric: "It really seems like they didn't think anything through in 4th edition."
Me: "This is exactly the same as 3rd!"
Eric: "Fine, I'll let it work this time, but next time you ready actions I'm not going to let you go twice before the enemies can move, because it's way overpowered."
So much for following the rules as written.
Josh: "You know, he still has his *move* action left. He could not just stand there in front of the door like an idiot. Since he has reach he'll get AoOs on everyone if we come out to attack him."
Which is what happened. And guess what -- he died really quickly anyway! Because the entire encounter was, like, 3 levels below us!
After they were dispatched, the party collected the book, and ran into a couple tieflings who thanked the party for saving them from the evil gnolls.
Bore: "Fine, let's escort you out of this dangerous area then and send you on your way."
Riya: "They're obviously thieves."
Bore: "So? They were stealing from gnolls."
Morgan: "The last tieflings we saw were really assassins sent by whatsisname."
Vexx: "Yes, and everyone knows all tieflings are working together."
So, even though the party knew that the tieflings were obviously evil and working for their enemies, they let them go because they hadn't actually done anything evil or aggressive.
Then they pushed on a little farther, and ran into some ghosts -- followers of various good gods gruesomely murdered, haunting the halls.
Ghost1: "Hey! What are you guys doing here!"
Bore, Riya, Vexx: "We're here to free some slaves, kill gnolls, and destroy the temple."
GM: "Make diplomacy checks... okay, 2 success and 1 failure."
Ghost 2: "What makes you think you can win?"
GM: "Make athletics checks."
Bore, Riya, Morgan: "Watch us pose and show off our muscles!"
GM: "It's DC 25, so you all fail. Oh, wait, I forgot -- this is before the skill challenge errata, so it's really DC 15, you all pass."
Ghost 3 and/or GM: "Um... make some arcana rolls, I'm not really sure what exactly that's supposed to represent."
Sam, Riya, Morgan: "Blah blah blah."
GM: "Okay... it looks like you have 7 successes and 2 failures. You need 12 successes to win the challenge."
Party: "... so what happens then? I mean, we're out of things to do."
GM: "Oh, fuck it. They tell you everything."
The key things to note were: (1) the four items couldn't be removed from the temple. (2) the four items had to be used in their key places simultaneously. (3) After using them, a green dragon would appear and try to eat the party, as a final test.
Bore: "Well, at least the dragon's triggered, so we can rest first."
GM: "Rest where? You can't leave the temple or you lose your items."
Bore: "Oh, right. Well, maybe we can stash them somewhere?"
Sam: "Why aren't we resting right now? I'm out of healing surges."
Rest of party: "WHA!? Why didn't you say anything!"
last session | next session
Despite all the bitching, it was a fairly enjoyable session. I mean, the arguments annoy me, but they generally stop annoying me when we stop arguing, at least.
The extremely not-really-even-one-quarter-assed skill challenge was a real let down, though. I'm not sure how it was supposed to work, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. I'm not sure who to *blame* for it, though. 12 successes? TWELVE? There were only three ghosts!
Having lost the dead bodies they'd been planning to use as a ruse to get inside the gnoll lair, the party was forced to explore the place and kill everyone. Which they'd have to do anyway, since it turned out the gnolls had an entire magical obstacle course as a front door.
There were several branching tunnels, so the party went left first, and spotted a bunch of caged hyenas at the end of the hall. They charged down the hall to try to get to the lever which would free them before they could be freed, but... they didn't. Doh. The hyenas swarmed out of the cage, and a pair of gnolls came out of a side room, pinning the party in an intersection in the hallway, with Vex cur off from everyone else and surrounded by hyenas.
Riya: "You resist fire, right Vexx?"
Vexx: "Yeah, a little."
So Riya breathed two huge gouts of fire onto the hyenas... and Vexx. Sam followed up with his own burning hands, which toasted the hyenas nicely and thanks to his fire resistance, only *half* killed Vexx.
[annoying aside:
Me: "Hey, looking at the firebreath Riya was using, the 4 damage to the next melee attacker is tacked on as a sub-effect of a hit. That means she does 4 damage for each target she hits, right? A total of 9 hits for those two breaths, so 36 damage if anyone attacks her?"
Eric: "That's stupid. What makes you think it happens for each hit?"
Me: "...because it's tacked on as a sub effect of the 'hit' line instead of saying something like 'if you hit at least one target, X happens'."
Eric: "Well, it doesn'y say it stacks, so it doesn't stack."
Me: "Why would it have to stack? It'd load up a bunch of 'next attacker takes 4 damage' effects on her and they'd all go off. Or, well, at least two of them, one for each breath, since she did it twice, if you think it only goes off once for the whole power even though it's worded as a side effect of hitting an enemy."
Eric: "No! It doesn't stack AT ALL! Not even from the two uses of the breath! Otherwise it's overpowered!"
Me: "...um, the enemies could just attack someone *else* that round. It's not really overpowered. Besides, she's a striker. She's supposed to be able to do lots of damage to people."
Eric: "It doesn't say it stacks, and I believe in using the rules as written."
GOD, I FUCKING HATE IT when he pulls that crap. He house-rules something -- for no good reason, generally -- going clearly against both the spirit and letter of the rules, and then tries to claim that he's following the rules strictly and that I'm trying to add something to them because it doesn't specifically state that this effect works the same as every other fucking power in the game.
He did that *twice* this session -- later on we had both cover and concealment from some enemies, and he tried to say it didn't stack because it didn't say it stacked... even though they were unnamed penalties and unnamed penalties always stack. It's not like it even MATTERED since the enemies attacked someone else instead, but he'll still argue the stupidest things in the most aggravating way possible, every time.
I mean, really -- Tom and Shawn both just break the rules 'because I say so', which is annoying and I don't think GMs should do that, but it isn't a 10th as annoying as when Eric pretends that the rules are on his side.]
At any rate, with the hyenas dead the gnolls were easy meat -- their 'pack attacks' depended on the existance of a pack. Vexx and Bore took care of the two from the kitchen, while the rest of the party swarmed the guy who'd let the dogs out.
The next door they decided to check had loud snarling noises behind it, so they arranged themselves appropriately, and Bore kicked open the door so that the mages could flame the people inside. Unfortunately, the people inside were not in flaming formation -- right through the door was a massive cage with a boar in it, being menaced by four hyenas, while on the far side of the room to the left, four gnoll archers used the boar for target practice.
So, while Vexx and Bore kept the hyenas busy, Riya, Morgan and Sam raced down the hallway to spew fire at the archers from close range, since there was another door down the hall opening directly onto the archers, completely ruining their defensive position. Riya took a pounding, and so did Sam, though, since Morgan was a little slower to charge than they were and Bore was otherwise occupied.
After finishing off the second group of gnolls, the party took a short rest, and were approached by a spectral quasit, who offered to answer any 3 questions for them for 100gp or a healing surge each.
"Any questions?" Riya asked immediately. Fortunately, the quasit answered that one for free. "Any question I know the answer to. I want you to destroy this temple to Baphomet and the followers of Yeenoghu -- they're competition we don't need."
Riya: "We should ask him if he could draw us a map."
Bore: "He'll just say 'yes'."
GM: "Actually, he'd say 'no' because he's incorporeal and can't touch anything."
They finally settled on, "How do we get to the slaves?" The answer was that they had to penetrate the inner sanctum of the temple by performing the trial of worthiness that the pillars in the entry hall had blathered on about.
The followup question was "Where do we find the objects the pillars were talking about?" The answer to that was unhelpful -- the imp named four rooms and said which object was in each room, but without a map... that wasn't very helpful.
They didn't have a third question.
But the next door they searched was a shrine of Baphomet, where the quasit had told them the book of somethingorother was hidden. The shrine had a table at the end of a short hallway, with two rooms behind closed doors. Not wanting the doors at their backs, the party slammed open the first one, revealing a demonic-looking gnoll, who screeched at them loudly!
As they ran in to attack her, a giant air elemental emerged from the other room, so the entire party crammed themselves into the gnoll's bedroom, and Riya used a spike of sealing to arcane-lock the door behind them, so that they could defeat the enemies in detail.
It turned out that the demonic-looking gnoll was extremely wimpy, though, so she died almost instantly, leaving them locked in the room with the elemental battering at the door. So they all readied actions to attack it when it opened the door, and it got blasted in the face with three or four attacks.
Eric: "Okay, since you were all waiting for him, I'll move you down after him in the initiative."
Me: "Before him. We readied actions."
Eric: "This is bullshit. Since he wasted his standard action opening the door, you'll get two attacks before he can go again!"
Me: "Well, otherwise readying an action is totally pointless."
Eric: "It really seems like they didn't think anything through in 4th edition."
Me: "This is exactly the same as 3rd!"
Eric: "Fine, I'll let it work this time, but next time you ready actions I'm not going to let you go twice before the enemies can move, because it's way overpowered."
So much for following the rules as written.
Josh: "You know, he still has his *move* action left. He could not just stand there in front of the door like an idiot. Since he has reach he'll get AoOs on everyone if we come out to attack him."
Which is what happened. And guess what -- he died really quickly anyway! Because the entire encounter was, like, 3 levels below us!
After they were dispatched, the party collected the book, and ran into a couple tieflings who thanked the party for saving them from the evil gnolls.
Bore: "Fine, let's escort you out of this dangerous area then and send you on your way."
Riya: "They're obviously thieves."
Bore: "So? They were stealing from gnolls."
Morgan: "The last tieflings we saw were really assassins sent by whatsisname."
Vexx: "Yes, and everyone knows all tieflings are working together."
So, even though the party knew that the tieflings were obviously evil and working for their enemies, they let them go because they hadn't actually done anything evil or aggressive.
Then they pushed on a little farther, and ran into some ghosts -- followers of various good gods gruesomely murdered, haunting the halls.
Ghost1: "Hey! What are you guys doing here!"
Bore, Riya, Vexx: "We're here to free some slaves, kill gnolls, and destroy the temple."
GM: "Make diplomacy checks... okay, 2 success and 1 failure."
Ghost 2: "What makes you think you can win?"
GM: "Make athletics checks."
Bore, Riya, Morgan: "Watch us pose and show off our muscles!"
GM: "It's DC 25, so you all fail. Oh, wait, I forgot -- this is before the skill challenge errata, so it's really DC 15, you all pass."
Ghost 3 and/or GM: "Um... make some arcana rolls, I'm not really sure what exactly that's supposed to represent."
Sam, Riya, Morgan: "Blah blah blah."
GM: "Okay... it looks like you have 7 successes and 2 failures. You need 12 successes to win the challenge."
Party: "... so what happens then? I mean, we're out of things to do."
GM: "Oh, fuck it. They tell you everything."
The key things to note were: (1) the four items couldn't be removed from the temple. (2) the four items had to be used in their key places simultaneously. (3) After using them, a green dragon would appear and try to eat the party, as a final test.
Bore: "Well, at least the dragon's triggered, so we can rest first."
GM: "Rest where? You can't leave the temple or you lose your items."
Bore: "Oh, right. Well, maybe we can stash them somewhere?"
Sam: "Why aren't we resting right now? I'm out of healing surges."
Rest of party: "WHA!? Why didn't you say anything!"
last session | next session
Despite all the bitching, it was a fairly enjoyable session. I mean, the arguments annoy me, but they generally stop annoying me when we stop arguing, at least.
The extremely not-really-even-one-quarter-assed skill challenge was a real let down, though. I'm not sure how it was supposed to work, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. I'm not sure who to *blame* for it, though. 12 successes? TWELVE? There were only three ghosts!
