Previously in Phil’s game…
Our heroes investigate a series of Drow raids on Elven interests in Ptolus. Re-visiting familiar (under)grounds again, they meet and vanquish numerous Dark Elves and recover interesting documents. Meeting with Rule of Three again leads our heroes to obtain a cryptic Prophecy that talks of Demon slaying weapons, gates, keys and a Goddess Queen…
This week, our pal Math couldn’t make it, I think we haven’t had a complete group in 3 sessions now… ah the joys of intruding Real Life®.
However, since Math has the craziest, most corporate job of us all (he’s a patent agent) and is almost always the last one to arrive, we were all ready to start at 5h00 pm! For a minute there I feared I might run out of material and… gulp… improvise…
We started the evening with a review of Lillee’s letter to Cruguer and the fact that there was a gift with the letter. An onyx sphere featuring Oak trees in bas-relief, found earlier in the campaign and kept by Lille.
While Cruguer pondered the meaning of this gift, we switched the camera toward Yan’s new PC.
Introducing new character Aside: Meet Don Inigo Firenze!. A Swordsage (Book of 9 Swords)/Scout (Complete Adventurer) whose mastery of various maneuvers of the Desert Wind martial school makes him quite the pyroclastic rogue-like. Expert in the art of disguise, stealth and forgery our spy has everything of James Bond, including exploding gimmicks, expect one thing. He’s got the charisma of a toothless orc! He also happens to be a mercenary and Nogard’s cousin.
We played a short scene where Inigo was faced with the challenge of trying to enter Ptolus as it was being besieged by thousands upon thousands of refugees fleeing the region-wide fiend-fueled violence and destruction.
The overtaxed leaders of Ptolus, having had a little trouble itself lately, what with Drow raids, high ranking clerics slain (with no possibility of resurrection), Noble House turning inwards for self preservation and some pretty spectacular real estate demolition, decided to close the city’s gates until further notice.
Being a level 10 character, I allowed Yan to just describe his plan of entry into the city and made it so. For the record, he climbed the cliff on the south face of Oldtown at dusk and made his way to the Tavern where Nogard stayed and spent the rest of the night in the stable’s Hayloft.
The next morning, he joined Nogard for breakfast and Yan and Stef started playing the scene of a cousin sent by his village leaders to investigate the strange rumors about an unnatural transformation and some politically worrying interest in dragon worship.
At this point, I realized my attention was not necessary and let them play it out. I turned to Franky, who was starting to show signs of annoyance. We had ribbed him pretty hard before we started playing (and some players continued to do so early in the game) about his Magic the Gathering decks and some of Cixi’s former feats of battle.
Player psychology aside: Earlier in the campaign, we had some serious balance issues. Franky’s character oftent found dominating combat because of a miscalculated crit range (she used to crit on a 15 or more with a large Composite longbow whose crit multiplier was X4… imagine the damage output). While this has been resolved before the others players rebelled openly, I think some pent up resentment was still being expelled. More on this later.
So I had Cixi play out a short scene where she was summoned by Dorant Khatru, the head of her Noble House. He was mobilizing his private militia and all the members of the city’s fighter’s guild (The Order of the Iron Fist), which he controls, to defend Dalenguard, the city’s fortress that protects the Noble’s Quarters.
When Cixi arrived, interrupting a meeting of a few of the city’s commanders (the ones in militant organizations), he took her aside and told her that while she would be very useful as a defender, she had always been loyal and true to Ptolus since she joined the house.
Having heard of the prophecy (but not wanting to have anyone believe he believed in any of that ‘demon-worshiping/ religious crap’), he told her she was free to pursue any set of actions she believed were best for Ptolus.
In return Cixi asked for help in that ‘wanted’ business and Dorant promised dismissively that as long as she stayed out of the Necropolis, he’d make everything he could so that she remained okay. (I missed a very important clue from Franky at that point, and miss a few others later).
Aside: I’m playing Dorant Khatru as a complete bastard that really does care about the city’s well-being. He’s also going to be the one organization the players will always be able to turn to when the going gets tougher. While he hates magic and distrusts clerics, he provided the party with a divine healer to help them (D&D Mini’s Combat Medic, a level 7 cleric-like character).
Shortly after that, the whole group met up with Cixi to ‘check on her’. I had hinted that a group of planars were hunting her and her former Iron heroes buddies for having escaped their prison world, to which Cixi/Franky scoffed.
Then the players started discussing the prophecy. I’ll reprint it here. It’s taken from WotC’s Expedition to the Demonwebs pits and slightly modified after my hacks to the adventure. It is Copyright material, but since I’m actually promoting this rather ordinary adventure, I claim fair use):
The Eclipsed Sun dissolves the taint of the corrupted
The bitter ice hides a giant’s sword to crack Abyssal Armor
Search the White Angel’s wisdom and the Book of Flesh
Bide your time, and flee when the Goddess shakes her web.
A pair of keys: a blackened tongue, a golden word.
Pass through three gates: serpent, darkness, stone.
Kill the queen in her black pearl, and find
Near the throne a fourth gate – Delivery!
Much was discussed about this prophecy. I had already started marking a few CR 9-equivalent XP rewards for some very good role playing by the gang so far.
It was clear to the players that there was reference to two fiend-slaying weapons and later references to gates and keys…. It was agreed that another visit to Rule of Three in his graveyard-bound Inn was warranted.
Bemused DM aside: As you can see, this session was already the most story-focused one in ages! And it’s only the tip of the iceberg as I’m starting to think I’ll need to split this post in three to cover the good stuff!
Of course, said inn had the famous “Wanted” poster for Cixi, offering a 30 000 gp reward for her capture, which added some extra ribbing of ‘Hey let’s capture her and split the cash’ (a very dangerous drift I caught on and subtly started steering the players away from).
A lot of negotiation was done with Cixi to convince her to disguise herself (with the lecherous and classless offers of help by Inigo). She finally agreed to disguise herself as the Combat Medic hireling.
At the inn, Rule of Three took note of the prophecy and said it hinted at a weapon found on the Beatslands, he told the players that the easiest way to reach this plane was to find the city’s tallest tree and find a portal on it to Yggdrasil, the World Ash. From there, fiding the Beastlands was a rather simple affair if the players remembered to bring sufficient food.
To which my players said: Wha?
To which he answered ‘The guides are voracious, often hungry, gluttons. Oh and I’d go there at night, after Sundown, past dusk for the view. ‘
Oddly enough, the players let that one slide.
Wanting to know more, the players went to the library of the Pale Tower, the Headquarters of all Ptolus-based Celestials, hence the ‘White Angel’s wisdom’ from the prophecy.
There they read that the Eclipsed Sun was a legendary weapon having belonged to an Evil General that fought in the Blood war. The General made a late-life Heel Face Turn when the war briefly broke out in the Beastlands. His change of allegiance to the forces of Good allowed the Celestials to expel the fiends and their eternal war from this savage land of beauty and animal nobility, but he paid for it with his life. His remains and sword were kept in the Beastlands.
At that point Cruguer/Eric started perking up… (My evil plan was starting to unfold)
Further research determined that the tallest tree in Ptolus was an Ash tree situated in the Elven headquarter or Iridithil’s house, home of the NPC Elven leader the players had already dealt with.
As the players made their way to the tree, the surrounding streets became filled with screams and the very worrying sounds of giant chitinous plates rubbing against each other.
As the players, who were trying to climb the portal tree, turned to look, more than 20 Driders and a few Huge Dread Harpoon Spiders (MM III) assaulted the Elven compound… (Did I ever mention I really like spiders?)
See part 2 tomorrow evening…
It’s always amusing how many D&D “heroes” manage to be uncharismatic. Bad design.
@Tommi: true 🙂
it is nice to have _somewhere_ to dump that bad roll though (or to generate a couple of extra points from) no matter what system you’re playing 😀 (and whether you call it a roleplaying challenge, min/maxing, or powergaming 😉 )
It’s true that Charisma gets shafted often when players are allowed to point-buy their ability scores, and the reasons are effectively design driven.
However, I do note that Yan is making the required efforts to be an inefficient communicator and a borderline rude/jerk. Which goes against his natural style of flamboyance and extroversion.
Charisma is the stats which will have the less in game impact since most of the situation in which it would be used are often roleplayed without rolling result and one person can be the spoke person/leader of the group.
Although I am a min/maxer when it comme to stats for a character concept I do wan’t to role play the result in some way, which is the main reason I’ll never again make a stupid character as it affect my fun in the game.
So here I was wanting to put my bad stats in charisma (I was also tempt by constitution but 10 hp on 44 is a lot). The thing with charisma is the roleplaying pitfall to be a total jerk and alienate everybody else around the table.
So I aimed to be that clueless/jerk guy that would hit on somebody with absolutely not tact like 5 minutes into the discussion. It goes more on the comedy side which makes every body laugh at my expanses instead of being the annoying bastard.
And I must say it turned out beautifully despite my fears that you would take the easy path and just play a jerk. You were indeed very funny…
…but you’ll never get your hands on Cixi’s chest!
😀
@Yan: oh hey, don’t get me wrong, I’ve sacrificed Charisma myself for pretty much those reasons when something had to have the lowest number & I couldn’t justify anything else to myself or the character. I doubt I came up with as good a character personality though! It sounds like you really neatly balanced the potentially annoying aspects with some genuinely amusing ones, which is always impressive. Definite kudos to the roleplaying 😀
(oooo, I can imagine a stupid character would _definitely_ be a pain – I can tell you that one that doesn’t talk certainly is….it seemed like a good idea…. 🙂 )
@ChattyDM: it’s not just with point-buy that Charisma tends to get it – generally speaking unless there’s a specific character concept or a character that _really_ uses it, the charisma-like option gets the low score no matter if you’re rolling, point-buying, or drawing cards. And hey, who’s to say that’s necessarily bad? A roleplaying hook is always nice & heroic characters have generally seen a lot of creepy stuff 🙂
Even arbitrary restrictions do provoke good material, occasionally. It does hurt D&D is one tries to create a tone similar to most fiction, though.
(In my current game, the stat will that is rolled for the social stuff is probably the most used. No player dumped it.)
Thanks Sandrinnad
There is a few typical character concept that are use in fiction that does not translate well in RPG.
The cool guy, is define by is attitude. In an RPG your physical presence is abstract and so his this character main acting ground making him a hard thing to do.
The silent guy, is define by is lack of verbal interaction. This make him difficult to do since you would rely on the physical to convey the information, which is abstract. To make it even harder you’re in a group so either you don’t talk with them and use other props getting annoying to everybody or you talk in the group breaking your character concept.
There are others, but I won’t cover them all… 😉
I tend to like it when a game doesn’t emphasize charisma or physical beauty as the social stat. Still the social stat is usually what gets it in most games. It is usually my lowest stat in any D&D game, unless I’m playing a talky character then I need it to be high because that is my goal in the game.
The thing is, a lot of our characters have had average to decent Charisma scores. Cruguer is currently the group’s ‘face’ with 14 (Crusader).
But the Dump stats are usually Cha/Wis and Dex depending on character archetypes.
I agree completely with cha/wis. But Dex is a pretty rare choices as a dump stats. It affect so many combat aspect…
But like it was said it all depend on what class your character is. It just so happens that cha and wis is required by a lot less classes then the others…
Str: Needed by all melee fighter and to a lesser degree by archer type.
Dex: Needed by all range attacker (spell caster included) and to a lesser extent by melee fighter for better AC.
Con: Needed by most melee fighter that will want to make full attack and to a lesser extent by any one else for extra HP
Wis: Needed by divine caster & classes with monk like ability.
Int: Needed by wizards & rogue and to a lesser extent any character wanting extra skill points/languages. (given the number of skill some classes have this makes it quite a good reason to have a decent score here.)
Cha: Needed by sorcerer & bard and to a lesser extent the character that have turn undead or those wanting a diplomacy concept character.
Unless you’re a heavy-armoured melee fighter, that is.
Even then it will likely be increased to either 10 or 12 through magic, even if it starts lower.
Cha will be dumped before Wis in most cases where both are options, since Wis affects saves.
Very interesting, can’t wait to read part 2.
Thanks Seth… All three parts are up… All 4000 words of them.