Story Time – Chicken Mage

In a discussion of encumbrance rules, we got onto how chalk is weightless according to D&D (and I will often buy 200 pieces of chalk at chargen just to wipe out my starting gold and mock the encumbrance system while I’m at it).

And from there, buying senseless cheap animals (guinnea hen, mongoose) in 2e was mentioned.

Well, along those lines is my Chicken Mage.

Essentially the first character I ever made in 3e, using that character builder program from WotC, I decided to make an elf wizard.

And after buying the tiny amount of gear I needed, I had about 10 gp left.

So I tried to find something else to buy, and came across the trade goods tab.  I bought a goat, and spent the rest on chickens.

But these were not useless, pointless chickens.  Oh no.

These chickens were to be used as spell components.

Chicken Mage: “Magic Missile!”

Chicken, being thrown: “Buckaw?” *whap*

CM: “Fireball!”

Chicken: “BUCKAAWWW!!!” *FWOOMF!*

I never got a chance to use the character, however.  We’re still not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

I’ll post more of my insanity in the future, for sure.  How about any of you?  Any crazy character concepts you never got to play and wish you had?  Or did you play them?

There are comments!  Use them!

Whoa…

…they’re rereleasing the Dark Sun novels?

Could this be a sign of what the next WotC campaign setting will be, after Eberron?

We’ll see, I suppose.

Scales of War 4 & 5 – Catching up!

Session 4 – Finding Prisoners

Present:

• Alabaster, Tiefling Cleric
• Ralia, Elf Druid
• Rouge, Half-Elf Rogue
• Porth-OS, Warforged Swordmage

Upon returning to the dungeon, the players make their way to the next room, once again choosing the left option. This is a crypt, with skeletons in alcoves along the walls. There is some concern among the group that they will animate and attack, but they don’t. Instead, as the group reach the centre of the room, the door to the north swings open for no apparent reason. Nothing comes through them, but 2 magma claws appear and attack. Apparently, I was unclear in my description here, because there was some confusion about whether the claws or the gnome skulk that also attacked came from the passage. (The gnome was hiding beside the door, and he was the one who opened it.) This fight wasn’t too difficult, for one thing the tiefling cleric was reminded that he has resistance 5 to fire damage.

After the battle, we take a short break to level. Normally, I’d wait until before or after a session, but I knew they had enough XP now, and we all wanted to be out of level 1.

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Scales of War 2 & 3 – My god, she’s actually writing!

So, yeah… sorry for the delays everybody. As Graham mentioned earlier, real life kinda got away from us for a while. Therefore the goal here is to get caught up before I run yet another session tomorrow.

Session 2 – Getting to the Dungeon

Present: everyone

This session started after the fight with the ogre. The characters got a chance to rest and the next day were invited to speak to a town councilman, Eoffram Troyas. He introduced himself and told the five of them that he summoned the “four of them” (with a look of disgust at the Gully Dwarf ) to ask them a favour. It turned out that during the raid, several townspeople were kidnapped and several of the town’s treasures were stolen (nothing of any monetary value – they were trophies of the Red Hand’s defeat ten years ago and therefore important to both the town and the raiders).

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Starting a new game, new system & new DM… back in September…

So I guess the first thing you’ve learned about me is that I’m a terrible procrastinator. So players, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hassle me if I’m taking too long to post anything.

So I’m the new and fairly novice DM. I played Nox in Graham’s campaign and am his fiancée. Hi. We’re playing the “Scales of War” Adventure Path from Dungeon magazine.

Our tale begins in the Antler & Thistle tavern (of course) in the small town of Brindol. About 10 years ago, this was the site of an attack by a goblin army known as the Red Hand. They were attacked and sent into retreat by adventurers, and the area has known relative peace since then.

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Meet the Aghar

So what do you do after you save the world in 3.5e D&D?

Why, start all over in 4e, of course!

I’m not running the game, this time.  Christine (Nox) has volunteered to do so.  Wish her luck, as she’s got quite a party to contend with.

Christine has tried to run 3.5e games in the past, but we always switched back after a few sessions.  She can give her own reasons why, but it tended to center around not being comfortable enough with her own rules knowledge to make rulings.  (I have always been the rules whore for the group, so I had an easy time coming up with consistant rulings that were fairly in line with the actual rules.  I think that she was trying to do the same, which was probably a mistake.  My style of GMing doesn’t have to be hers, by any means.  But I digress.)

Anyways, her general feeling is that she will be a lot more comfortable running 4e than 3.5e.  And I believe her.  In the few short test sessions we played before the campaign started, she was already as familiar and comfortable with the 4e rules as I had ever seen her with 3.5e.

This is one of the reasons I love 4e.

But I’ll let her tell you all about the game, and how she’s doing (well, by the way).  But right now?

You wanna hear about my Paladin?

Well, some of you may have noticed the site layout change.  If not, go look.  I’ll wait.

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Pathfinder 26 – One month after the fact.

First some news!

I will be out at Game Knight DMing for (or playing in) Weekend in the Realms this Saturday. As in tomorrow, Oct 25. This is despite the fact that this is supposedly an RPGA event, and I have no idea how RPGA events are supposed to work. But if you’re free, come on down. There are definitely some people around her I’d love to game with again. The event starts around 10:00 am, and is supposed to last up to 8 hours (6 pm), but you can probably come/leave as you need.

Oh, and there are no real pregens for this game. They expect people to bring their own level 1 characters. But I’m going to bring a stack of pregen sheets anyways, just so we can get started faster if we want to.

Alrighty.

So, about a month ago, we finished the Pathfinder game. It was one session after the last post, but then university decided to kick my ass for a while, so I’m just posting about it now.

We shortened the final dungeon for three reasons.

1. We didn’t want the characters to be too drained going into the final battle.
2. A fair amount of the final dungeon battles were repetitive “hey, look, more giants” battles (seriously, like 30-40 storm and cloud giants). Which would have pleased Thorbar and his Giantbane axe, but even still.
3. I wanted to finish the game before school kicked my ass. It seems I got it done just in time.

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Pathfinder 24-25 – Speed Run!

Alright, not much time to write this stuff up, so we’re going at turbo speed today!

Session 24:

Started book 6.  Needed to figure out how to get to Mhar Massif, where Karzoug is in the city of Xin Shalast.  Went back to Sandpoint, talked to the historian dude (Brodert Quink/Gune) to get more info.  Apparently it’s fucking impossible to reach, but two dwarf brothers may have.  Went to find them up near the mountains.

Both Dwarves are dead, one a cannibal ghost.  Yeah.  Creepy house, haunts, missing notebook pages, beat up a ghost.  Get the lost notes from the brothers.

Battle in book: Wendigo

Not ran.

Wendigo has 1 or 2 actual interesting abilities, all of which are 100% negated by the party’s nice new weapons.  Wendigo becomes a flying bite/claw/claw monster.  Yawn.

Session 25:

Followed directions in notes.  Followed river up to icy lake.  Found naked ice chick (nymph) who just happens to be the cousin of the nymph we saved before.  Yay coincidence!  Naked ice chick gives the party a safe haven in her little ice lake.  Warns against going north, but casts spells to help group anyways.

According to directions, party fasts and takes starvation damage, and halucinates a ghostly river.  The dwarves really never should have found this out, if they weren’t retarded.  Yay starvation!

Following halucinations!  Seems like as good idea as any.

Hey look, a city!  Fought some birdy men, helped a creepy, ugly dude to free his people, beat up an invisible demon to do so.  Found a ring with the Sihedron rune (seven pointed star).

Original creature they were supposed to fight:

Advanced dread vampire decapus sorcerer 10

Ring of invisibility, plus Greater Invisibility spell.  Plus reach, and 10 tentacle attacks each round.  Oh yeah, and energy drain!

Yeah… that one didn’t stay in the game.

Ugly dude that they helped showed them a faster way through the city, and a tunnel to further up the mountain in thanks.  Fought an evil ice witch (originally ice devil and wights, but this lady (Frostwind Virago) was just too much fun).  Another similar ring, and a +4 icy burst returning spear.

Lessons learned:

• School takes too much time.
• Campaign almost over.
• News about the convergence of those two items will come soon.

My players will hit me for doing this…

…before I put up the latest session writeups, but I have news!

I got fanmail!

Real, legitimate, non-spam fanmail!

I know!  I can’t believe it either.  It even included phrases like:

“Reading your response method was very refreshing… very pleasant.”

“I can’t believe the ease with which you speak of 4e, and haven’t even cracked the core books open!  You write like one of the game designers, and you write much more maturely than a college student…”

“I can’t wait until you have played it a while… I think your intellect and your personality will become a valuable resource for those of us who need a bit of re-set perspective.

It’s nice when someone says, “Did you look at it this way?” in a teaching, sharing sort of way.  And then, with delight, you say, “Oh!  No.. but.. wow!  Cooool!” “

“Your site, and your comments on other blogs, are fresh, witty, and enrich the people who read them, encouraging critical, creative thinking.”

and

“Be careful, because if Mearls reads your posts, they might try to kidnap you and let your vision guide the development of this edition over the next few years. :)”

It was in response to some comments of mine that I left on another blog, rather than this site in particular, but still.  It always surprises me that people read what I write.

In the same email exchange, however, I got asked some questions.  It seems that, despite the fact that I have yet to do a full readthrough of any of the three core 4e books, I have become somewhat of an authority on the subject, specifically character design.  If you disagree that I have become such an authority, shut up, I’m having a moment here!

So he asked me for my advice on converting two of the favourite characters/concepts of his group and players from 3e to 4e.  Well, I’m all too happy to oblige!

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Apparently there’s a carnival in town…

So, Donny began the second edition of an RPG Blog Carnival.  The topic this week: Homebrew.

I read his original post, and then NiTessine’s post on a campaign world I really, really want to play in some day.  And between the two, they inspired me to share my own dip into a homebrew world.

It was when I first started GMing, which was admittedly not that long ago.  I was trying to run the group through the WotC adventure “City of the Spider Queen.”

Now, this wasn’t the first time we had tried to get through this particular adventure, nor was it the last.  Not all that far in we were sick of it again, myself especially.  So we wandered back out of the Underdark, and I switched dimensions on them.

(Note, during this swapping of worlds, before they got to the other one, I also managed to spring a Wight Dragon on them, followed by a Gold Golem.  I also managed to send them through a reality-warping series of hallways on their way.  I realise now that I wasn’t so much bored with CotSQ as bored with standard fantasy tropes in general, and wanted to mix it up a bit.)

This new world had next to nothing written about it, and most of what was written happened after the group arrived there, but I had it all made in my head.  I even made a map within a few weeks.  I dubbed it Generica, since there was nothing specific or extraordinary about it.

But I was wrong.  Looking back now, I see that in my desire to escape from standard fantasy, I had actually created a very different, very unique world.  The portal to this world deposited them in a desert.  As they crossed a dune, they came to an arabian-inspired city… of Dwarves.

The Elves were plainsmen, I believe.  The Halflings, savage jungle-dwellers (if I remember correctly).  I basically took every standard fantasy trope I could think of and turned it on its head.

The main plot was centered around dragons, and could have been quite good with a bit more work.  We stopped playing that game before we got too far, though.

In the time since, whenever musing about where to set the next game, I’ve often gotten had a player suggest Generica.  I always assumed it was in jest, and perhaps it is.  But someday, maybe I should call their bluff, and return them to the land of Generica, where everything is most definitely not generic.