dwarven bravado
Jan. 18th, 2010 02:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothToday we played some D+D, after a very very long gap. After a somewhat silly but not entirely unsatisfying battle, we were faced with an insurmountable foe -- but fortunately, we'd been given a one-use weapon to destroy her. Unfortunately, it had been given to Ed who forgot to write it down on his sheet and thus was deleted from the space-time continuum.
But the GM let us use it anyway since we hadn't used it on anyone else, so all was well.
The dwarven leader warned the party that after opening the door, all the magic of his Mythal would drain away -- the souls would be freed, the connection to the feywild shattered, and the responsibility to find the Root of Silvanis would be entirely on the party's head. But he'd try to help them -- he'd implant his spirit into the holy mordenkrad (that Heyyou was using) and it would help them heal dwarves. Which the party had zero of. But they *were* looking for some dwarves, for their friend in the guild, so maybe it would come in handy.
In fact, it came in handy almost immediately, after the door was opened and the mythal released -- the dwarves were being kept prisoner in the cave just outside the door to the former mythal, in terrible shape, some of them dead, and one slam of the hammer into the ground not only fully healed them all, but equipped them with armor and weapons and a berzerk attitude that made them eager to fight the orcs. "We would have gotten them the first time, if they hadn't had that damn giant controlling our minds!"
So the party's plan was simple -- they'd pop their damage auras and charge out with Heyyou, Varnix, and Beware in the vanguard and the dwarves spreading out to either side to hold back the orcish horde. Celeste and Arial would then use their AoE to rape the orcs while the three meleers took down the mind-controlling giant.
And it more or less worked, although the orcs stopped their spearhead from getting very far, and were more than a match for the dwarves in combat one on one (and the dwarves were outnumbered 15 to one). The giant also had lots of AoE, damaging the party and reducing the orcs' numbers. Luckily, the party was basically immune to the rank and file orcs -- they'd all used some safety salve (despite the warning of side effects -- it was a strong aphrodesiac) and took 1 point of damage from each hit.
So the giant was the only real threat, but the orcs were in the way and ate up lots of the wizards' spells. The giant got dominated, and hit with a rune of peace, and forced to flee from three overlapping damage fields that would have killed him quickly, but still, by the time he finally, finally went down the party was out of dailies and most encounters, and Heyyou and Ariel had come close to dying. They'd also lost every single dwarf, and taken out 288 of the 300 orcs, with the last few clustered helplessly around Celeste's vision of avarice. Beware had six orc souls and nothing to do with them, since he'd never really been hurt.
But when he went down, a gargantuan woman appeared -- Celeste recognized it as her mother! "You can't kill her! Normal attacks won't work!"
Beware: "So... nothing I do will work?"
Celeste: "Go ahead and try."
Beware: "Nah. I'll activate my ebony fly and run away."
Fortunately, after a good deal of GM prompting, we 'remembered' that we'd been given a single-use superweapon in some random fight against ghosts near the beginning of the dungeon. We'd given it to either Varnix or Heyyou, but whoever it was had never written it down and didn't remember they had it. Since the enemy was *actually* invincible in the sense of 'totally immune to damage' and not just mostly invincible, the bolo was literally the only thing that could defeat he -- which it did instantly. It had never been intended as an actual fight.
Celeste was pretty sure that they'd merely driven her mother off and not killed her, despite the exploding head and the falling, headless body that nearly crushed them. "She said 'we know everything you know' -- that means they know about the root now!"
Heyyou: "Um... so? It's not like we got any actual information about its location that wasn't 1000 years out of date."
Still, just in case, they decided their next task would be to find a sage to help them locate the root before Shar's evil minions could get their hands on it and destroy the world.
last session | next session
Afterwards, I headed over to Jurann's for gaming night, missed out on a game of Dominion, but got to play two games of Battlestar Galactica, which is... interesting. It starts out as a cooperative game, but maybe from the beginning and certainly halfway through half the players turn traitor. Interestingly, the 'cylon sympathizer' is either a cylon sympathizing with the humans, or a human sympathizing with the cylons, depending on how badly the humans were doing before you got to the halfway point. So there's some incentive for an early cylon to avoid weakening the fleet *too* much... two cylons vs two humans is a much closer match than three humans vs one cylon!
It also does a good job of giving the cylons overwhelming military force (occasionally) without actually destroying Galactica too quickly -- usually, you can jump out before you're destroyed, clearing the board.
In the first game, I took Gaius Baltar and was an extremely ineffective president of the colonies -- we were almost overwhelmed before even leaving Caprica (you start in combat), losing half our viper fleet to little effect, and my shining moment as president was when I gave an inspirational speech (that only worked because Starbuck encouraged me) that lifted morale juuuust high enough for the 'cylon sympathizer' to make me a human fighting ineffectually on the cylon side. The cylons won when the replacement president -- a cylon -- got to decide three times in a row to let the fleet's food run down instead of discarding a few cards from his hand, and everyone starved to death.
In the second game, I was playing Chief Tyrol. We warped out of Caprica almost instantly, taking no damage of any sort, and... I was put in the brig, accused of treason. I rotted in the brig for a few turns, then (with the help of LOTS OF LUCK) managed to free myself just in time to... become a cylon sympathizer. AGAIN! This time, the other cylon revealed himself, and together we tried VERY VERY HARD to destroy the galactica. At one point we'd destroyed all the vipers, and the ship was 66% dead, with eight raiders and two basestars firing at it unopposed after blowing up the majority of the civilian fleet, and two centurion squads on board, when Tigh managed to repair the FTL drive and jump out -- only to have the humans lose from a lack of morale due to failing a 'low supplies' crisis.
It was a lot of fun, though. Even though humanity lost both times.
But the GM let us use it anyway since we hadn't used it on anyone else, so all was well.
The dwarven leader warned the party that after opening the door, all the magic of his Mythal would drain away -- the souls would be freed, the connection to the feywild shattered, and the responsibility to find the Root of Silvanis would be entirely on the party's head. But he'd try to help them -- he'd implant his spirit into the holy mordenkrad (that Heyyou was using) and it would help them heal dwarves. Which the party had zero of. But they *were* looking for some dwarves, for their friend in the guild, so maybe it would come in handy.
In fact, it came in handy almost immediately, after the door was opened and the mythal released -- the dwarves were being kept prisoner in the cave just outside the door to the former mythal, in terrible shape, some of them dead, and one slam of the hammer into the ground not only fully healed them all, but equipped them with armor and weapons and a berzerk attitude that made them eager to fight the orcs. "We would have gotten them the first time, if they hadn't had that damn giant controlling our minds!"
So the party's plan was simple -- they'd pop their damage auras and charge out with Heyyou, Varnix, and Beware in the vanguard and the dwarves spreading out to either side to hold back the orcish horde. Celeste and Arial would then use their AoE to rape the orcs while the three meleers took down the mind-controlling giant.
And it more or less worked, although the orcs stopped their spearhead from getting very far, and were more than a match for the dwarves in combat one on one (and the dwarves were outnumbered 15 to one). The giant also had lots of AoE, damaging the party and reducing the orcs' numbers. Luckily, the party was basically immune to the rank and file orcs -- they'd all used some safety salve (despite the warning of side effects -- it was a strong aphrodesiac) and took 1 point of damage from each hit.
So the giant was the only real threat, but the orcs were in the way and ate up lots of the wizards' spells. The giant got dominated, and hit with a rune of peace, and forced to flee from three overlapping damage fields that would have killed him quickly, but still, by the time he finally, finally went down the party was out of dailies and most encounters, and Heyyou and Ariel had come close to dying. They'd also lost every single dwarf, and taken out 288 of the 300 orcs, with the last few clustered helplessly around Celeste's vision of avarice. Beware had six orc souls and nothing to do with them, since he'd never really been hurt.
But when he went down, a gargantuan woman appeared -- Celeste recognized it as her mother! "You can't kill her! Normal attacks won't work!"
Beware: "So... nothing I do will work?"
Celeste: "Go ahead and try."
Beware: "Nah. I'll activate my ebony fly and run away."
Fortunately, after a good deal of GM prompting, we 'remembered' that we'd been given a single-use superweapon in some random fight against ghosts near the beginning of the dungeon. We'd given it to either Varnix or Heyyou, but whoever it was had never written it down and didn't remember they had it. Since the enemy was *actually* invincible in the sense of 'totally immune to damage' and not just mostly invincible, the bolo was literally the only thing that could defeat he -- which it did instantly. It had never been intended as an actual fight.
Celeste was pretty sure that they'd merely driven her mother off and not killed her, despite the exploding head and the falling, headless body that nearly crushed them. "She said 'we know everything you know' -- that means they know about the root now!"
Heyyou: "Um... so? It's not like we got any actual information about its location that wasn't 1000 years out of date."
Still, just in case, they decided their next task would be to find a sage to help them locate the root before Shar's evil minions could get their hands on it and destroy the world.
last session | next session
Afterwards, I headed over to Jurann's for gaming night, missed out on a game of Dominion, but got to play two games of Battlestar Galactica, which is... interesting. It starts out as a cooperative game, but maybe from the beginning and certainly halfway through half the players turn traitor. Interestingly, the 'cylon sympathizer' is either a cylon sympathizing with the humans, or a human sympathizing with the cylons, depending on how badly the humans were doing before you got to the halfway point. So there's some incentive for an early cylon to avoid weakening the fleet *too* much... two cylons vs two humans is a much closer match than three humans vs one cylon!
It also does a good job of giving the cylons overwhelming military force (occasionally) without actually destroying Galactica too quickly -- usually, you can jump out before you're destroyed, clearing the board.
In the first game, I took Gaius Baltar and was an extremely ineffective president of the colonies -- we were almost overwhelmed before even leaving Caprica (you start in combat), losing half our viper fleet to little effect, and my shining moment as president was when I gave an inspirational speech (that only worked because Starbuck encouraged me) that lifted morale juuuust high enough for the 'cylon sympathizer' to make me a human fighting ineffectually on the cylon side. The cylons won when the replacement president -- a cylon -- got to decide three times in a row to let the fleet's food run down instead of discarding a few cards from his hand, and everyone starved to death.
In the second game, I was playing Chief Tyrol. We warped out of Caprica almost instantly, taking no damage of any sort, and... I was put in the brig, accused of treason. I rotted in the brig for a few turns, then (with the help of LOTS OF LUCK) managed to free myself just in time to... become a cylon sympathizer. AGAIN! This time, the other cylon revealed himself, and together we tried VERY VERY HARD to destroy the galactica. At one point we'd destroyed all the vipers, and the ship was 66% dead, with eight raiders and two basestars firing at it unopposed after blowing up the majority of the civilian fleet, and two centurion squads on board, when Tigh managed to repair the FTL drive and jump out -- only to have the humans lose from a lack of morale due to failing a 'low supplies' crisis.
It was a lot of fun, though. Even though humanity lost both times.
