An Iron Hero is a character class focused on martial prowess (i.e fighters) that have non magical abilities but can still meet a level-equivalent D&D character with magic loot head on.

It’s great fun!

Here’s a post I did on it:

http://chattydm.net/2008/01/09/mini-link-total-iron-heroes-fanboi-cop-out-from-an-actual-post/

Hitchhiker is one of those classic…

…There’s a quest in Nagrand where you must “dig” some berries that are into talbuk’s manure… only to found out that the quest giver upon their return make them water-breathing berries that you can swallow for another quest implying some deep water creatures… [sigh] Classics

Oh, and Yan…. i’m currently reading “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Restaurant at the End of the Universe” and there is a part where the characters are at that restaurant and they meet the “Plat du jour”, a talking kinda cow who is proposing his best part and is happy to be your next meal… sweet

Comment on comments – Hmm. Chatty entrees bring up an interesting point. I have a simple write-up on the steampunk/fantasy setting I was working on in preparation to making it using the spiral design philosophy (spiral out from where the PCs are and fill in the details as I go). I had a faerie sort of realm with talking animals though and now I’m wondering about meat there. What would the packaging say? “100% grade A meat freshly enchanted off of a voluntary donation from a regenerating cow named Lenny. Stop in at our shop any Saturday, he loves to meet customers!”

chatty, there’s a quest in WoW when you get to outlands that requires you to purify tainted Hellboar meat to make sausages for this goblin cook. The cook’s name is Legassi if you get the referrence.

Yup… but in Zelatar, you can have Devil Meat!

Hmmm. LE Bacon!

Edit: I can just see the scene: ” Sir may I suggest that you eat my left leg. It’s my strong side. Tender muscle you’re gonna love it.”

But that’s a personal preference.

I personally liked when I punt back the ball/head back at the demon.

I could Imagine the head landing saying help me. Inigo kicking it back into the fray with a: “No problem, don’t need to thank me… ”

As for the food I would say that it was not really inviting “literally”…

Finally, you could always handwave a fight. “Four drow spiderguards stand guard at the door. They spot you, and combat ensues. Describe how you defeat them”. Let the players go gonzo on the description and move on to the good stuff.

I did that, only without the Gonzo descriptions by the players. I just said that they mowed down a certain number of Drow patrol… maybe I should have given the players the mike on those ones and let them one up each other with combat fishing stories…

Good tip, thanks..

I’m really looking forward to the minions rules.

I sometimes like to give my players something they can mow down quickly, it gets their ego up so I can smash it later. I don’t do it often, maybe one or two encounters in a set. This is particularly good for the first encounter of the evening, as it helps shake the cobwebs off without too much risk to the PC’s.

I ran a “Wicked Fantasy Factory” adventure a few months ago. This are adventures whose design is to maximize the “Rule of Cool”. They had a mechanic in there called “Mook”. Essentially, these are guys who are meant to be plowed down by the heroes. As I recall, all spells were treated as maximized when used against them, melee attackers get the cleave feat for free when fighting them (if they already have cleave they get the greater cleave), and ranged attackers automatically get the rapid shot feat against them, possibly at no penalty. Players always knew when they were fighting mooks, and would go a bit nuts against them. Anyway, the point being that these guys are cannon fodder, let the heroes look cool slaying them quickly.

Another idea to use bumps, but speed past them, by treating the monsters like “minions” in 4E. The kobold minion stat that was released awhile back showed that they died if they took any damage. That’s something else that is easy enough to do, allowing the players to mow through monsters and get to the good stuff.

Finally, you could always handwave a fight. “Four drow spiderguards stand guard at the door. They spot you, and combat ensues. Describe how you defeat them”. Let the players go gonzo on the description and move on to the good stuff.

Those games usually lead:

Groups fights an angel to keep relics from its clutch

or

Rogues raiding Pelor’s vaults for his church’s most precious relics…

Oh yes that is not the thread of the 10 words contest… Sorry stuck in the 10 word pattern

That being said Mat has had less time of late and even less with the coming birth… So the intense roleplaying group as diminished…

At that point, vacations, kids, parents visiting and general tiredness eats up on game attendance and I usually end up making a call to end the current season.

During the summer, the more ‘intense’ role players meet once or twice to test new systems, new rules or re-visit an old campaign we never finished.

Our season and current campaign should end next Friday or maybe in mid May. Then I break out the new 4e Module and we try it out in an informal game.

Thanks for the kudos jeffx.

jeffxs last blog post..DM Grade: Life and Times in Alkin – Session 1

It’s not like there is that many comment being post… well… beside the last 2 or 3 weeks…

As for this session, the meaningless dungeon crawl was a pain it was either so underpower that it was irrelevant or so overpower (the drow town) that you could not even consider going against it.

It came down to:
Phil: You arrive in room with description Y you have x path leading out
Yan look at map scratching his head
other players look at me with a clear sign of hope that’ll figure something out of this crap.
Yan: The hell this map makes no sense!
Yan throws a dice and choose a path at random for the group.
Rinse & repeat…