Tag: d&d

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Oh hey what’s going on in that dnd session of yours?

Well, a couple days ago, we finished the first arc of the campaign. Here’s a recap of what’s happened so far:

Our characters got hired (except for Icarus, who was there against his will because he got caught in a scam) by the Outermoor Abbey to travel to the nearby village of Starkmoor to gather intel on a supposed demon cult in the village. On the way there, we got attacked by bandits, one of whom told us afterwards that the bandits were afraid to go into Starkmoor because of the cult.

As we arrived in Starkmoor, we were welcomed by the cult leader, Farrengold, who allowed us to stay for the night provided we left in the morning. So naturally we went sneaking around town at night to find some proof of demonic cult activity to bring back to the abbey. Three of us, including Icarus, went to a small mine next to an isolated, dilapidated house, and the remaining two went into the larger mine that used to be the town’s source of income.

Keegan (half-elf ranger) and Nikolai (human bard), in the larger mine, found some crystals imbued with divination magic, and runes that didn’t make much sense when read.

Meanwhile, Icarus (my tiefling warlock), Venus (elf wizard) and Allura (dwarf barbarian) ended up finding Farrengold’s personal chamber down in the small mine, but got caught by Farrengold. After a short match of showing off magic powers (turned out Farrengold was a wizard), Icarus charmed him.

Thanks to the charm, Farrengold was willing to tell Icarus the truth about Starkmoor: The demon cult was all a ruse to keep the bandits out. (Icarus, being a charlatan himself, loved this, and became a lot more invested in the town than before.) After the charm wore off, Icarus told Farrengold the truth: That the party had been sent to Starkmoor to find out whether their unspecified employer should attack it, and it was in the town’s interests to let us go back and tell the truth.

Problem was, when we did, the bandits happened to be within earshot. Whoops.

So the party went on a lengthy chase after the bandits, fighting them on the way and disabling the carriage they’d stolen from us at the abbey, but Tremor Sun, the bandit leader, made it to Starkmoor (though with us right behind him). He grabbed Farrengold and brought him into the larger mine.

Icarus came into Starkmoor in the back, and as the rest of the party pursued Tremor down the mine, Icarus saw something in the town’s bonfire that told him there was an actual demon.

Icarus turned and rode backwards as fast as he could. He really didn’t want to deal with another actual demon.

Meanwhile, in the mine, the rest of the party learned that a) the crystals were keeping a demon shrine in check, b) Tremor Sun had once lived in Starkmoor, until the influence of demons on his skin (in the form of burning rashes) had caused Farrengold to make him leave. Now, after learning that the demon cult was fake, he believed the town was safe for him all along and Farrengold had tricked him. He also wanted to take the crystals, which of course was bad news.

Icarus was met along the way by the abbot, a group of paladins, the remaining bandits, and the “riders of the falling star”, a group the arrival of whom we had heard of in intro and outro segments that our characters didn’t know about. This group, with the help of a mental nudge from Icarus’ patron, successfully convinced Icarus to join them in defending Starkmoor from the demon he told them about.

When Icarus returned to Starkmoor and the rest of the party came out of the mines, the bonfire had been replaced by the burning Demon Lord Halsuupreon.

We were tasked with distracting the demon while the abbot, paladins and riders of the falling star set to work on banishing Halsuupreon back to where he belongs. We also had to deal with getting the crystals Tremor had stolen back where they needed to be.

During this boss enconter, Icarus decided to turn Halsuupreon’s flames blue, Venus got in the line “Hey! Tall, dark and ashy!” and Nikolai did some cool knife-juggling, among other things that happened. 😛

Afterwards, we learned that the riders of the falling star were agents for a sort of organization similar to Interpol, tasked with protecting the world of the Firmament, and the Falling Star was the name of their spaceship. As these things go, we got hired by them, and we were on our way to their mountain base in the Feywild at the end of the last session. 🙂

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

“Better to terrorize and inflict light wounds than to maim or murder.” Rachel dogs confirmed as D&D 3e Clerics with Inflict Light Wounds prepared

Pfft, sure. 😛

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Was he lying?  She couldn’t tell.  She’d grown up with so many good liars, it felt like everything that sounded honest was a lie.

Which helps to explain why she’s so quick to distrust.

This is kind of how it is for my D&D character, Icarus, too, except the good liar was himself.

If he was lying, and it was obvious, she’d look weak if she fell for it.  Others might not get the message about this being her territory, about her dogs being off-limits.

…which means that the way Rachel thinks, she has to treat him like he’s lying, just in case.

If he wasn’t lying… well, he’d still shot Angelica.

…true.

“Nobody hurts my dogs.”

I’ve been saying “Don’t hurt the doggos” for so long now, but no one ever seems to listen to me.

Coddamn fourth wall.

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D&D player? Nice! What do you play? Also if you enjoy RPGs, there is a Worm RPG, but you shouldn’t look it up until you’ve finished the story because spoilers abound.

I’m currently playing in a D&D 5e campaign as a chaotic neutral (for now) tiefling warlock named Icarus Blackthorn:

This is his true appearance (made with this character creator), but he has a habit of constantly casting disguise self to change how he looks, so you’ll probably only see him like this while he’s sleeping. (In which case he’ll also be wearing a blue nightcap that gives him pleasant dreams.)

Icarus is a charlatan first and a warlock second. He’s spent most of his life tricking people, so he is very aware of the existence of people like himself or worse, and has a hard time trusting anyone at all. Despite this, he’s fairly jovial, and his main goal is usually to have fun, preferably without some demonic teacup breathing down his neck. 🙂

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Charlotte’s eyes widened.  This was apparently her putting the last piece into place.

Yep! I wonder if she’s aware of Skitter? I mean, Skitter’s turned into a much more public figure now, but that’s a pretty new development. As in literally this morning. Charlotte probably doesn’t know about that.

“Ah, Skitter,” he said.  Apparently my having saved his life once and gifting him a paper bag filled with money didn’t do much to ease his wariness.

Eh, it was a truce situation. You guys were working alongside Kaiser too, for example. Granted, saving someone’s life still counts for something under those circumstances.

Though I’ve said it before, having your life saved by someone is less of a sound reason to trust someone blindly than it might seem.

He wasn’t any less guarded when he asked, “Why are you here?”

Besides, either way, Skitter did just interfere with Newter’s goals by catching the papers.

Oh, and yet another reason for Newter not to trust her blindly: He’s working in a Crew that, as a whole, can’t be trusted not to turn on you for the right amount of money. That sort of thing can change how a man feels about trust.

(Relatedly, I’m currently playing a D&D character who doesn’t trust anyone because he himself is a deceptive charlatan and he’s aware of how there are many people like himself.)

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And I couldn’t help her from the outside.  That, more than anything, was why I was here.  I wasn’t strong enough to fight Coil on my own, I couldn’t go to the heroes and rely on them to handle it, not with Coil’s power giving him two attempts to escape,

It occurred to me recently, while I wasn’t blogging (I forgot to make a post about it), that another thing that’s a lot like Coil’s power is the D&D 5e game mechanic for “advantage”, in which you roll twice and use the higher roll.

two attempts to any counterattacks, two attempts to track down the person who’d informed on him and deal with her, and take his pick of the outcomes he wanted.

Yeah, his power is pretty strong. I really like the way Wildbow implemented this, though – he managed to give a character the power to decide outcomes without it being too stupidly overpowered. He’s still limited in that he can only run two realities at a time, and they only vary based on his actions… It’s a strong power, sure, but it’s well balanced.

That wasn’t even getting into the more complex uses of his abilities, only using one of his concurrent realities to try something, doing it over and over again until he got a result he wanted to keep.  I couldn’t beat him in any kind of confrontation.

If his more mundane use of the power is “advantage”, then this is “taking twenty”, where you basically just try, try again until it works. Like in D&D, it’s limited by time – a sane DM might not allow you to take twenty if your character doesn’t reasonably have time to keep trying, and Coil needs to make sure the Coil in the reality where he isn’t trying survives until he knows whether the other one does.

Though to be fair, in both of these analogies, Coil’s power is quite a bit stronger and more versatile than their D&D counterparts.

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Taylor has at least 3 levels of Wizard, because she can cast Mirror Image (Sharks: It’s a D&D spell to create illusionary duplicates)

Sharks: (I’d just like to add: thank you for noting this. This is the sort of stuff I want, even if in this particular case it’s very unneeded.)

Hah, yeah! Or maybe she’s used TM32 to learn Double Team?