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Tales of Fantastical Daring and Whimsy

Jennywocky

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Figured if anyone had any interesting or amusing gaming experiences and felt like sharing them, this thread could be the "pub" of ridiculously bawdry tales.
 

Jennywocky

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I think I shared about my Weds night group (Pathfinder, currently), where in order to prevent a dead god from coming back to the material plane we've had to do a lot of exploration and historical detective work to piece together the details, try to somehow forge alliances with various cultures/cities across the land, and then organize them for a climactic battle for the celestial equinox that is now about two years away.

This party is the most non-good aligned I've been in, we've had a lot of neutrals... and due to some incidents, two of us (a strix cleric and my character, a tengu cryptic/thrallherd) ended up drifting into evil alignments. Sumiko, my tengu, is very smart but very caustic, with a chip on her shoulder -- a histrionic narcissist who still believes she will "save the world" and everyone will revere her.

In the process of studying ancient books to understand how the cultists were going to summon the god (by merging his soul with that of a captured boy), Sumiko fell into the use of soulstones and mental-shaping powers.

We had some adventures where she ended up acquiring a few very potent soulstones... including ones containing a shadow demon, a dragon, and a balor. Probably in the most climactic session this story, we tried to ally with a city populated by orc paladins and good angels, who got too "holier and lawfuller than thou" with us, threatened some of our party, and Sumiko was so angry and scared that she retreated to a safe place and released the balor's energy; the balor promptly cast a Blasphemy through her that completely destroyed a number of angels and soldiers threatening our group.

The experience left Sumiko temporarily unresponsive on the ship deck; the rest of the group tossed Tristan (the evil party member the angels were threatening simply because of his alignment scan) along with the balor stone out on the dock, and our airship took off so we could get away. Tristan was very Chaotic, so when he woke up he decided it would be fun to smash the balor stone, inadvertently releasing a demon prince upon the city and leaving it in ruins.

After a heated OOC argument (based on this incident and others), the GM was forced to make a command decision and suggest that the guy playing Tristan had to roll up a new character in order to keep the party intact. Another person swapped in a less-rigid character they had. Sumiko also underwent a voluntary atonement at the time, shaken at the time by her experience with the balor (although it's a running joke that her decline back into evil is inevitable).

The new character that joined our group (played by Tristan's player) was a ratfolk cleric (LG) named Schnitzel. He was Tristan's opposite in terms of personality. He also started hitting on Sumiko, hanging around her, giving her sentimental presents that a ratfolk imagined a tengu might like, etc. (Of course Sumiko is the last person who likes getting sentimental gifts, so it's been hilarious when the ratfolk keeps asking her out for drinks and hanging around her and offering her platitudes, not noticing that she kind of despises it all or at least did at first....)

The cleric's powers seemed a bit off to her, and SUmiko overestimates her own intelligence, so recently she has gotten the idea that Schnitzel is actually Tristan polymorphed into a ratfolk by Tristan's god (the Demon Lord of Magic) with his alignment and identity masked, for the god's own purposes and to spy on our group. She is very very convinced of this without any real evidence whatsoever, simply because it is something she would do if she were Tristan's patron. She thinks Tristan has perhaps even been brainwashed to forget who he was before. She has been dropping hints for awhile but has now all but come out and revealed her suspicions to Schnitzel, in a plea to have him beg her to free him from being imprisoned in the body of a ratfolk.

Our roleplay at the moment is here:

Sumiko brings Schnitzel gently to the ground, then alights next to him; and they both stare at the dragon for long moments afterwards, its corpse rising above them, still generating body heat but otherwise lifeless and unmoving.

"Did you have fun flying? It's wonderful, isn't it?" she says eventually. "It makes me wonder, you know... sometimes... what it would be like to be able to fly for much of your life... then to need to ask for help just to leave the ground. What a miserable existence that would be.

"I don't know how someone would be able to stand that. Especially if it was something they were being told to do. Even forced to do.

"It's why one must have power, I think. To prevent others from having power over you.

She glances over at the priest warily. "Then again, what would you know about any of that? You're just a ratfolk, after all."

A single tear slowly rolls down Schnitzel's face as he looks up at Sumiko.

The tengu shakes her head. "What has that monster done to you?" she whispers.

Her beak sets grimly as she turns to face Schnitzel. "Don't you want to fight? Are you -that- weak? I can help you... but I need to know it's worth my time. I need to know you want to be put right again! Give me a sign... anything."
 
I talked it over with the other player a bit today in e-mail and he thinks it's amusing [damn, I guess he really isn't Tristan, I actually thought he could be!], and so we're working on how we want to play this out.

Sumiko can actually alter souls, or at least has the potential to; and she might be able to slowly change Schnitzel over time into a strix or some hybrid creature who really thinks he is Tristan, except of course she thinks she's just "freeing Tristan" where in reality she might be screwing up Schnitzel, who of course is so in love with the beautiful tengu [no, she's not that beautiful .... no one likes Sumiko] that he is willing to do anything to make her happy. It's kind of a sick twisted dysfuntional relationship.

I'm not sure what the group will do if Sumiko brings Tristan back into the group by mentally changing one of them into Tristan. That's kind of awkward... not as awkward as coming back as a lich at level 12, but still pretty odd.
 

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300px-CP_Gullywash_3.png


As I, Medic, a German scientist, who happens to be INTP, traversed the sun-scorched terrain of the Gullywash former apartment complex in Teufort, New Mexico, I found myself with a full meter on one of my contraptions, allowing me to super-pump a patient's heart, thus activating full invincibility for the whole of 8 seconds. However, I stumbled across quite the predicament. I was out, nearing the front lines of battle, looking for land to conquer and claim under the flag of RED Team. Not a single one of my comrades was around, save for a Texan man by the name of Dell Conagher, who, like me, builds strange contraptions. On the other hand, he builds ridiculously overpowered guns and provisions dispensers that really don't belong in heavy fire. Pretty much all this guy could do was use a tiny pistol that didn't stand a chance or punch people with his robotic hand. What an idiot.

250px-EngyGrinder.png


As the Engineer made his way through the lower part of an enemy building, he stumbled upon a drunken Scot with countless ways to blow your face off and an insane, jingoistic patriot with another way to blow your face off, a rocket launcher.

demoman_and_soldier_weather_by_robbingraves-d38kt2c.jpg


You'd think we'd just die at this point. But lo, I activated my experimental supercharge, turning him into a god (temporarily). With the blessing of Gabe Newell and the force of a thousand suns, he punched his way through both of the maniacs, allowing us to move on. We neared the final plot of land of our enemies, and found that they weren't as heavily guarded as we thought. Seriously, all these guys did was get another Engineer to practically throw a provisions dispenser onto the metal floor. We took him out by murdering him with a minuscule pistol, and, while still under the effects of mad science, we beat his dispenser to death. We found the point necessary to capture their land, and hoisted the RED flag. We would live another day and we gained admiration from our other fellow mercenaries.

190343616_814348.gif


And then the robots came.

mvm_fb.jpg
 

Jennywocky

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... it's always the damn robots that think they own the place, after it was won with blood and heart.
 

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Soon I'll post a recollection of the events with the robots, this time from the point of view of the Engineer. Stay tuned.
 

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Engineer present, reporting from the territory of Bigrock.

Mvm_bigrock.png


During our valiant siege against these monstrosities, their developer, our main adversary (and an INTJ), constructed a new form of robot; the Mecha-Engineer. This number can build spot-on Sentry Guns, fortifying Provisions Dispensers, and tide-turning Teleporters, just like I do.

zhvi1.jpg


This man wants to replace us. The main goal of the robots is to deploy a huge bomb right at our base. This means that we have been forced to team up with our former enemies, the BLU team. But I think I've developed the right thing, partner. I call it the Rescue Ranger.

250px-RED_Rescue_Ranger.png


This alteration of a shotgun can heal all of my buildings from a long range, and, at the cost of some ammunition, it can haul the building all the way back to me. This helps me avoid Sentry Busters, demonic robots also designed to take me out.

SentryBuster.png


Medic, our INTP genius, has also developed something to bring us back from the dead. The drawback is that he has to be there just in time to save us. I'm going to try to be optimistic, but I'm not sure what'll go down. I'll tell you how things go.
 

Cognisant

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Pesky mercenaries, alas my plans continue unabated, albeit slower than I had hoped, but still it's not like once I've conquered the world I'll have anything else to do so perhaps it is fortunate that the inexorable demise of my enemies is drawn out, yes I shall savor their dying wails until the very end, hah ha haa.
 

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Phew, that was gettin' heavy. So it's me, Engineer, and I'm back. That was a lot of trial and error. We kept having to send people back and get them replaced for better fighters. Our team had to try over and over again to get results. We've progressed well through the waves of robots. About two or three left to go until Bigrock is safe and we get some payoff. One time, we had a guy who would insist upon using a training weapon that does no damage and is meant to practice explosive jumps, a parachute that serves him no use, and a shovel. We kicked him right out.

250px-Zipperface.png


Looking back on it, I think he might be homeless now. We also had a crazed ISTP gunman from Australia with a sniper rifle who insisted he was professional. The most he could have done was short circuit a few bots with the jars of urine he keeps around. Our crazed, schizophrenic pyromaniac who sees a happy, rainbow-filled world as he burns things to death actually helped out, and I commend him for that.

real_vs_pyroland_by_gian_s-d8df27f.jpg


But the others haven't been able to cooperate. Medic is gonna sit things out for now, because we can do a lot more damage with someone else in our party. I think I'll send in Spy, our INTJ rogue from France.

TF2_Spy_by_JayAxer.jpg


latest


He has little firepower, but he uses an Electro-Sapper to immobilize the robots and destroy them. I'll report on it soon.
 

Jennywocky

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Well, I guess I should note I kind of meant "RPG experiences" like tabletop RPGs -- this thread is in the "RPG Table" forum after all -- but I guess this is interesting in itself.
 

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I'll finish this story soon.
 

AniOmega

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in a pyre of personas, yah that elicits positive m
Get together, not a "party". "Kickback" is what Cog called it (and since he called it that and I'm describing it with different words I must not know what I'm talking about unless I'm secretly an XXXX). "Hahaha."

Cog smiled and turned to him, at the contagion of the elation. He tilted his head forward and made the slightest furrowing of his brow for a matter of milliseconds. Oh.

Oh they thought I... "You're both wearing red! The last two I saw wearing the same color ended up wearing each other's clothes to breakfast the next morning."

Is that a thing, rubbing the space between the center-most part of the eye and the nose? He didn't just wake up. Hrm I'm being again. Heh, she's obviously flattered. He grinned and added an addendum, walking away to mingle elsewhere. "I wish I was an engineer, they know where to look to get things done, and they won't stop until their customer is satisfied."

Group over there, those girls over there, that guy on the sofa... alone! Why doesn't, hrm. I'll go talk--

.

.

.

It was an uncommon circumstance; the patrons of his "kickback" noticed him to be standing in place with a blank expression on his face, while he was unaware. Transfixed by something, it may be said that it was an internal experience that enveloped his consciousness. His expression, or lack thereof, remained as he walked towards the piano and sat down to express through it. All the words and visual gestures, they could not compare to what was to come. This expression was beyond seemingly even his own comprehension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tr0otuiQuU


In the beginning, some were verbose in their evaluation of the song as not conducive to an enjoyable "kickback". The feedback went unheeded, he seemed to have become completely detached from his surroundings, save the piano. Cog's female interest began talking to him, grasping his attention from the curious longing that the piano player instilled in him, that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Eventually, only Prox remained seemingly expressionless, but occupied internally. He nodded his head, as if to himself, then asked his sofa-mate, "So how do you feel about Keynesian economics?"

If they just tried. Just told each other what they were thinking. Mom wouldn't be gone, dad would be a few miles from here...

Someone had been standing by the piano, explicitly.

Why couldn't they just tell each other what would be helpful, and what to avoid, how to be. Together. It could have all been avoided if they just communicated better. I should probably-

"How are you?"
 

Jennywocky

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Okay, this past week's game session was horrible.

While I have it written up in more detail in the spoiler, basically imagine a room constructed by dwarves (BASTARD DWARVES, they piss me off!) that is full of traps and crap, because they just were paranoid weenieheads, protecting one of the large power crystals used to lift their floating city (now in ruins).

So the ninja and the cryptic (essentially the default rogues of the team) carefully unlock the adamantine doors and remove as many traps as we find. (We did miss one. Bastard dwarves!) The room is heavily warded so you can't bypass any locks.

Turns out the entire floor of the room is trapped, the entire ceiling is trapped, and there are teleport circle traps (that send you somewhere Really Bad), and there is poisonous fungi in the air, and it's a room within a room within a room. The ninja can walk on the floor without setting off the trap; the cryptic walks on the walls (one of her psionic powers), so painstakingly round by round they map the room, untrapping what they can and bypassing the rest.

They diligently work their way to the center (door after trap after door) and are shining a mirror around the corner to see what is in the center, unsure of how to proceed, when the cleric (who is bored and has a crush on the cryptic so he wants to impress her) casts Airwalk on himself and scurries past them to go into the room's center, basically setting off a chain reaction of traps and bad luck that ends up temporarily locking the room, getting everyone in the room blasted, knocking holes in the walls and ceiling, setting the air on fire, and contributing almost to an accidental self-destruct that would have blown up everything in a 10-mile radius, including a floating city of tens of thousands of innocent catfolk.

Somehow no one died.

Needless to say, the tengu cryptic wants to throttle the ratfolk cleric.

The antechamber walls were made of stone, but the doors to the foci room were made of adamantine and warded against everything imaginable (teleport, magic, psionics, undead, etc.). Despite the difficulties, Bobby and Sumiko managed to unlock the door and remove some traps, although a chain lightning went off.

When the door was opened, bad air poured out of the sealed chamber; between Air Bubble spells, poison immunity, and Clover changing into a whirlwind and venting the room as much as possible (bad air out, good air in), we were able to make the air in the antechamber breathable again.
 
Bobby observed that the entire floor was trapped with spikes and the ceiling trapped with deadfalls. As a cray ninja elf, he could walk on the floor without setting things off, while Sumiko pursued the road not taken and walked on the walls instead [STILL checking for traps -- dwarves, yeeesh!]. Together the two slowly mapped out the room while sharing the knowledge through the Collective. Along with the realization every square inch of floor was trapped, they both also ran across more "Davy Jones' locker" teleport circles as well as small trays of mushrooms -- no doubt the source of the fungal air contamination from before. IOW, the entire room ended up being double- and triple-trapped.
 
In the room's center was another chamber. After removing the traps on THOSE doorways and noting more teleport traps protecting the yet-unseen center of that room (as well as the entire ceiling being trapped with fire), Sumiko floated a mirror over so they could peak around the corner without going further inside. In the room's center was a giant 20' tall crystal -- the foci. The air crackled with psionic energy.
 
While Bobby and Sumiko were discussing leaving before something bad happened, Shnitzel decided to impress his bird lady by Airwalking in, squeezing past Bobby and Sumiko, and heading right for the crystal. His True Sight revealed pits covered by illusory floor (40' deep with spikes at the bottom, though no corpses or treasure). But as soon as he got close to the crystal, he triggered a huge blast of chain lightning that almost fried him to death and did damage to Bobby and Sumiko and others outside the chamber as it leaped around. Shnitzel healed himself and went to leave, triggering the same trap again.
 
About this time, the door started to swing shut. Carnage got his hands on it, but it was too strong for him to hold open despite his efforts. The doors clicked shut, trapping inside the only two people who could open locks, along with the most impulsive person in the party, and cutting all three of them out of the Collective and breaking Sumiko's communication with The Eye of Psychus due to all the wards.
 
Seeing the door was locked, both Bobby and Sumiko figured there would be a way from inside to open it (as per common sense + the other dwarf city we've explored). They searched for secret doors along all the walls, while still taking care to not set off more traps. Shnitzel on the other hand tried to Stone Shape his way through the wall near the original door and failed twice... and since the spells had verbal components, he ended up inhaling some of the remaining spores. (Sumiko put an Air Bubble on him, to protect him, but too late...) The ratfolk cleric began to hallucinate wildly.
 
Sumiko and Bobby managed to find and untrap (fire rune) a particularly nasty secret door in the room's back. This revealed a small chamber with yet more teleport traps... and a wall of six levers. Once Sumiko entered this area, she realized she could hear her followers again, hence she was outside of the warded area. While Bobby explored the room, she teleported back to the antechamber and untrapped/unlocked the front door from the outside, allowing egress from the room for Bobby and Shnitzel.
 
Trying to leave but still hallucinating, Shnitzel lost his balance and fell, triggering the floor spike trap and impaling himself. Attempts by Clover as an air elemental to grapple him and drag him out failed as Shnitzel thought he was being attacked by a monster, so he cast a Flame Strike that not only did damage to anyone nearby but also ignited the remaining spores in the air, creating an explosion that literally blew the roof off the chamber.
 
Seeing daylight above, Shnitzel ran up towards the ceiling. Bobby, worried about his friend, Vanished and leaped up to grab him -- but the cleric still had True Sight and could see him, so the two ended up failing their grapples and fell back on the ground, with Bobby underneath (right on the spikes). Sumiko cast Inevitable Strike on herself. Shnitzel got away again and started running. Raleigh was shouting, "Just let him go." Bobby pulled out a poisoned dagger and stuck the cleric with it, doing damage + knocking him out. Simultaneously, Sumiko grabbed the ratfolk telekinetically (64 to hit + a confirmed crit) and jerked him literally through the stone wall into the 'safe' antechamber, where Carnage tied him up before he could cause more damage.
 
Clover went to work to "fix" the chamber. Meanwhile, we also wanted to reset the traps and lock the doors. So Sumiko teleported back to the small room with the levers and, without much recourse, telekinetically started pulling them one by one. [I have the order written down elsewhere.] Most of them reset or (de)activated the various traps. One shut any open doors. One lever did nothing.
 
However, Level #2 made the crystal in the center maze grow so bright that the room lit up; Sumiko got a bad feeling and immediately put that lever back. Checking with the king later, she discovered it was the "Self-Destruct" lever [Kronk, why do we even HAVE that lever???], which in 1d4 rounds would blow the crystal sky-high in a 10-mile radius in an unsurvivable earth-shattering kaboom + likely set off the other two crystals. [Note: When we talked to the catfolk later, we discovered that their city had started to plummet over the 5-6 seconds that Sumiko had that lever pulled, since its energy was being rechanneled.]
 

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Reminds me when my team was forced to detonate and half-collapse the desert ruin excavation site because it was littered with traps. It was easier to crush walls or entire floor sections than try to jam or disable every element. It's probably his method, so every GMing from my Friend has to be focused on a central element and at that time it was "traps, treacherous contractors and a geopolitical conflict".
 

Jennywocky

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...sometimes it's really best just to blow up and bury the whole thing and start over.
 

Jennywocky

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Waiting for word back from the GM, but Sumiko finished her soulstone in game time a few weeks back and we just leveled again. The GM and I had discussed only making this change after she leveled again, so any "new abilities" she seemed to show would just seem to be part of the leveling rather than becoming a lich behind closed doors. I made all the rolls I needed to make that he had presented me with via e-mail.

1. Prepare the phylactery (Spellcraft DC5 + ML12) = DC 17
Result: 20 (roll) + 26 (Spellcraft) = 46
Sumiko works with great dedication in the privacy of her shrine, after hours, shaping and oiling and polishing and smoothing the deep orange stone that will hold her essence. When she finally finishes, gazing in its vibrant depths, she finds it in complete honesty one of the greatest works she will ever complete (as it should be), and she actually allows herself a small unadulterated twitter of pleasure.

2. Attune stone (Will DC10 + INT 7 + Highest power 4) = DC 21
Result: 12 (roll) + Will (17) + 4 (Conceal Thoughts bonus) = 33
Sumiko Psychus, her Grand Precipience, walks to the center of the main circle of her shrine. The doors are barred, with guards, so that none might interrupt; and she is surrounded by her minions, humming and chanting as they lend their psychic energy to hers. The air is filled with the aroma of beautiful incense, her body covered with ornate tattoos of brilliant color. Sumiko sits meditating upon the deep sparkling gem in her hands, sending her mind plunging into its core, filling the space, knowing every swirl, filling it with her essence bit by bit. More and more of her might is focused upon it, but her clarity does not waver, the faith and mental acuity of her followers buttresses her. There are fleeting glimpses of her mortal life and what this loss might mean, but slowly those thoughts trickle away. The power crescendos within the stone, minute by minute, hour after hour, until finally even the echoes have no space to move within the gem as she fills it with every ounce of her being.

3. Remove Heart (CON DC10 or Resist Dying DC15) = DC15
Result: 10 (roll) + 20 (Autohypnosis) = 30
The moment is at hand, the silk over her chest reverently drawn back. At the peak of clarity, the high moment when all the wills of her followers are in sync with hers and she is both in body and gem at once, the metallic claws flash. Her breast is rent asunder. The pain should be unbearable as she tears her own heart from her body, but it doesn't hurt -- the flash of fire feels like liberation, not loss. Without faltering, she deftly slips the gem into her chest. It is finished. The moment has passed. She still thrives. She is Sumiko Psychus, Her Grand Precipience, the Unfettered, and she will exist forever.

So there we go. My first "evil" character is now also officially undead. She is also a Tier 2 mythic creature. I happened to ask the GM, "So she's mythic, AND she's a lich... so can I use the mythic lich template instead?" I'm figuring he'll say no, so I asked more as a joke... I loaded it up in Hero Lab for kicks and it's just insanely crazy -- mythic tier level for mythic lich is CR/2 (which for her is 7). It's just insane. She'd get an SR of 31 or something crazy, plus anything that strikes her would have to save (DC 28) against permanent paralyzation, plus a few more stats boosts (with her HPs breaking 200), and that's not everything. IOW, she'd be kind of untouchable.

The only thing that would make her palatable in a campaign is that she actually doesn't have many aggressive powers -- pretty much she's just a skill/knowledge wonk who can't be confined against her will. Her major offensive weapons currently are just the umbral dragon soulgem and the two shadow demon gems (that she uses primarily for Greater Teleport -- she can bamf anywhere within the plane at will, although she can't take her thrall with her).

I never did finish her journal, although we now can't play for three weeks, so I might go back and write up some journal entries for her over the course of the campaign, more as a role-playing exercise. It's something she would do. (Of course it would be in an arcane language that no one except someone with exceptional intelligence could read.) I figured it would be cool for the GM to have, in case he wants to run a similar campaign later or something set centuries later in the world... he could incorporate it into the game, as she has a dark book of soul magic that another mentalist wrote centuries ago...
 
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i once stayed on the bus past my stop just to see where it went.

edit: nvm, sorry, wrong thread :storks:
 

Jennywocky

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Did I ever mention the one-shot we did with my group, where we had to hijack and return an airship using level 10 characters? (Pathfinder)

as typical for our group, we ended up winning the fights on deck, but the airship was damaged and started to go down.

One of the characters who had STR 28 (buffed up) said, "I'll catch the airship to cushion its fall." Everyone else in the group was like, "uh, that's a really stupid idea. It's a 400 ton airship [or something that insane]."

But until the bitter end, he thought he could stand there on the rocky bluff and "let the airship down gently" enough to make a difference.

It was more like he left a bloody smear on the rockface.

It would be easy to assume he did this on a lark, since it was just a one-shot session... except he has on occasion done insensible things like this even in the regular campaigns. Then again, I suppose that's what makes it a great story.
 

Jennywocky

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My lich campaign has been ongoing.

Unfortunately, the vitalist in the group realized I wasn't showing up on his LifeSense read, so my secret identity as a lich was soon uncovered, but we rode out that little bump. The vitalist character got pissed and left the group [the player brought in a new character, he's played three during this particular adventure.]

The funny thing is that the whole party has been shifting more "evil" as time has passed. Our only LG character left long ago when that player moved, and the vitalist leaving left everyone else in the "neutralish" range.... and I swear to god that the soulblade has been getting more evil as time passes. Sumiko's "evil" was just more pragmatic, but the soulblade has actually argued for some nasty things that seem to go further than what she sees as sensible. So my lich really was barely worse than anyone else, she was just the only one to embrace officially her "evilosity."

In that time since, a helluvalot has happened. Did you realize a lich can actually be a decent tank? I actually single-handedly tanked a freaking KRAKEN for a round while everyone else got away... and the only reason I got hammered for half my health is that the kraken got two initiatives a round (i.e., two full-attack sequences, versus one) -- so it did little damage to me on the first sequence it got (I soaked almost everything) but grabbed me with 7 out of 8 tentacles... and then on its second turn in the round proceeded to mangle me. I only lost half my health and extricated myself, but anyone else would have likely died in the beginning of the round. Go go lich powers activate! (And if the lich had failed with a "1" on its save against my paralyzing touch, that would have just been amazing. lol.)

I managed to wear the Mask of Abaddon (major artifact) that would have killed anyone else in the group over time because of the accrued curses attached that are mostly ineffectual against undead. (Abaddon is the dead god we're trying to prevent from returning.) Wearing the mask allowed me to outbluff a much more powerful demon at one point, which was a hilarious episode. And at some point, I wore the mask AND put on a halo (minor artifact) that almost killed me because they clashed; I only survived because I took the offer from the angel instead of abaddon to protect me, but it made me lawful good and having a damned shoulder angel to keep me on the straight and narrow.

So now we had a party of neutral characters sliding into evil, with the lich in the party being lawful good. WTF?

I also ended up taking an 11-year-old girl aberration (she has tentacles for legs) under my wing, which especially with my current lawful good mindset has me viewing myself as her mother and taking care of her, except my lich/intellectual mindset has me sharing bedtime stories that seem more Objectivist in nature than child-oriented. It's all really amusing.

I managed to ditch the angel/halo, so I'll probably slowly slide back to Neutral Evil again. This campaign has gone on for 14 months (player time) and will likely last until next summer, but it's been freaking fun. We started at level 6, and we are currently at level 14 w/ 3 mythic ranks apiece.

More interestingly:
The clashes with the artifacts attracted some attention. I'd already used the mask to try to learn what Abaddon feared most, and the vision it gave me left me "Noticed." By something(s) out THERE... somewhere. Kind of like Stephen King's "deadlights." The cosmic burst from my wearing the artifacts attracted more attention from these Elders. And finally after the artifacts were lost in a final burst that took out an enemy of ours and let a temporary rift in reality that almost allowed more Lovecraftian shit to wander through, a visitor started stalking us. I teleported after him blind, to catch up with him. Turns out he's been watching me. Because I do "interesting" things that few dare. (Sumiko's quite a piece of work.) He's offered me some help, in exchange for me doing a few favors for him... he seems to be perpetually bored and likes to muck with stuff, so the more "interesting" I am to him and alleviate his boredom, the more he's willing to tinker on my behalf. I think he might be Hastur or The Yellow King from Lovecraft, but I'm not sure... He's far beyond my power.

---

The coolest part? This week the GM revealed he's been running another group separately from us, playing the game at the same time. Our group comprises the "heroes." The other group plays on a different day and plays the cultists (the faction trying to bring back Abaddon).

Sometimes we get out of time sequence with each other, and we've never actually interacted directly as characters in the game, but basically on the occasion that seemingly random shit has appeared/happened in our session, that's because the other group did something that had a ripple effect on us... and vice versa.

So we're changing the world for each other as we run our own individual sessions. The GM keeps track of in-game time and knows what's happening events-wise and how they sync up.

I just think this is awesome.

Their cultist group is actually very evil. Our heroes group is neutral w/ a bent towards evil. But we're still kind of head-to-head. Scariest part -- I wouldn't put it past our GM to schedule the final session together and we basically go head to head with each other, winner take all.

Current party composition:
Clover: N (formerly NG) human druid who uses a lot of wildshape + smokes/traffics quantities of pot.

Bobby: LN elf ninja assassin who collects ingredients to make poison and has ulterior motives in service to the homeland. He calls himself "The cook" and speaks with some weird redneck cajun accent.

Raleigh: N soulknife who we picked up on retainer and who seems to be becoming more paranoid and twisted as the adventure continues, developing elaborate interpretations of reality based on his own fear.

Elan: N aegis/engineer who builds constructs (including the airship we're flying on) and makes magic items. Might be the most sane, but currently is trying to develop bombs to drop from the airship, of the Holy Vorpal Bomb + 2 variety. Hello, Little Boy and Fat Man. It's all for science, bitches!

Shnitzel: N ratfolk cleric who seems to go through deities as 'flavors of the month.' His last venture into the "cracks between the worlds" left his fur bleached a mottled white, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused, and without a scent. For some reason, he has been madly taken with Sumiko and continues to try to woo her no matter how badly she disregards or uses him.

Sumiko: LG (soon to drift back to evil) the tengu cryptic/thrallherd lich who is now raising an aberration adopted daughter on ship (like Vicky on LoveBoat). She collects soulstones and leans heavily into pragmatic narcissism. She actually has her own cult of 90 committed followers called "The Eye of Psychus" who she has been sending out to proselytize the continent on her behalf.

Carnage: CN the gnome dread/aegis who is Sumiko's right hand and her bodyguard/enforcer.

Livanya: the aberration octopus girl oracle, born of an act of rape by Echidna mother of monsters (against a paladin who destroyed some of her children), who Sumiko has adopted and taken on the adventure. The 11-year-old girl is actually a very normal 11-year-old girl (positive spirits, affection for her mother, appropriate fears and loves and hates) aside from having tentacles for legs.

... and yeah, we're the "Good Guys."
 

Lonely Soul

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Ah, tabletop RPGs, surely one of the most fun activities in existence. I look forward to playing someday. Until then, listening to other people play via podcasts shall do.
 

Jennywocky

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Well, this thread didn't go anywhere, really, but I thought I'd mention our campaign is FINALLY finishing up after about two years. We'll probably be done by the end of August.

In the end, we're still approaching endgame of deciding what to do with the Dead God's power (and my lich is gonna try to siphon some off for herself if at all possible, even to the degree of reshaping the resonance of her own soul to more mirror the Dead God's making it easier for her -- although the group doesn't know this).

In the meanwhile, we destroyed enough crap and caused enough chaos as the GOOD guys that we triggered the onset of the Chaos Gods returning (with the last step being Sumiko answering "Yes" to the unsettling question of "Are the stars right?" when asked by the blind chaos herald... so I can take full responsibility for what is unfolding).

The wild part is that we pretty much have a broken game at this point -- we're 16th level, mythic level 6, and the power especially for spellcasters/powers folks is off the charts. By using all power at their disposal (i.e., burning everything at once), at least two members of the party can hit the 500 HP damage mark against a single target, and Sumiko is pretty much indestructible / untouchable on her end, with a lot of powerful utility. (Her reasonable power output at best is only around 200hp damage, but she's mainly designed to avoid/survive ANYTHING thrown at her + is highly mobile, very lore-intensive, and can dominate/control/paralyze/curse, etc.)

The only thing that doesn't make it a broken game is that the GM is a guy who regularly knows how to break games as a player, so he's throwing crap at us that is broken in turn and it's just been getting nuts.

A few sessions ago, an old mythic dragon who we promised a particular item to was spied by Sumiko invisibly watching the group (no one else had a high enough perception to notice her), and when Sumiko contacted her mentally, the dragon asked for the stone and Sumiko said, "Fine. If you kill the elf [Sumiko's nemesis in the party], I'll give it to you."

It was a lie, of course, because Sumiko knew the dragon would turn on HER once it got the stone, but this way she could take out either the dragon OR her party nemesis. Sumiko then immediately broadcast through the party collective that she could detect the dragon nearby and that it was coming to kill us, so the group could prepare -- but then the dragon attacked early, so the party couldn't buff. At the least, though, I sounded like I was trying to help the group. Meanwhile, as long as I did not attack the dragon directly myself, it would conveniently "miss" me and I spent the first round or two extracting myself to a safe location (as I normally did) and looking like I was somehow dodging attacks....

Somehow we went three rounds with the thing (which almost wiped half the party in round 1 and then again in round 2) -- it didn't help that it had double initiative each round -- but the party pulled out the stops, and in the end it was so blatantly on the ropes that Sumiko hedged her bet, turned on the dragon out of the blue, and coup de graced it with a maximized coldball (19th level caster). Then was like, "Well, that was unexpected. I'm glad we survived that!" The party doesn't know I set at least one of them up to die.

[To be honest, coming off our Mafia games here, I very much found myself thinking like Mafia. Like, what can I say and do to take out my enemies that I can still justify later as blatantly trying to help the group.]

The fun part -- I shrank and transported the corpse of this crazy dragon that we shouldn't have beat back to my lair, where I reshaped its body, and I'm bringing it back as a red dragon wraith that can switch between incorporeal and corporeal form so that I can ride around on it. And here I was thinking about Doomsday in the most recent Superman movie, or the Mountain Zombie in Game of Thrones... creatures who are killed but some nutjob transforms their body into some unholy monster... so I have this undead THING that you can still recognize as the dragon she used to be but now she's got tentacles hanging off the sides of her jaws and head, and other slimy protuberances all over her body and just... crazy shit that no dragon should ever look like....

... and I want the entire group to see me trot out this thing and have their jaws drop, and say, "My god, Sumiko... what have you DONE???" in harsh surprise.

If that happens, my efforts will have been a success.
 

Cheeseumpuffs

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I'm playing in a pathfinder campaign with a couple of friends right now (most likely doomed to fall apart though, due to our shoddy organization and tight/incompatible schedules).

I don't have any big tales but at our last session the phrase "Run a nature check on that dog! We need to figure out how to kill it!" was shouted. (Also one of our players is named Dale Earnhardt Jr. (no relation) and he joined our party after hurtling through a rift in the planes in a flaming "chariot" and is now discovering latent powers of an ancient sorcerer bloodline.)
 

Jennywocky

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I'm playing in a pathfinder campaign with a couple of friends right now (most likely doomed to fall apart though, due to our shoddy organization and tight/incompatible schedules).

Yeah, scheduling can be a pain. This group, we've wavered between Thursday and Wednesdays weekly, depending on the teaching schedule of one of the players. Weekends actually seem to be harder; my group there has more trouble meeting.

I don't have any big tales but at our last session the phrase "Run a nature check on that dog! We need to figure out how to kill it!" was shouted.

Arf.

Dear god. Or dear dog. Or something.

Fireball works pretty well on those things. :D
(Or hell, just don't feed and water it in the hot summer months.)

(Also one of our players is named Dale Earnhardt Jr. (no relation) and he joined our party after hurtling through a rift in the planes in a flaming "chariot" and is now discovering latent powers of an ancient sorcerer bloodline.)

I always love character names. Dale Earnhardt Jr. sounds like a classic, honestly. We also had an elf ninja in this game earlier (before he got wiped out) whose name was Bobby Wasabi, who talked with a drawl and also would collect body parts for his cajun cooking experiments along the way.
 

Ex-User (9086)

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What are the ages of players in your group Jenny? I'm kind of curious how the "older" (than me) folks are doing rpg.

Do you meet at a neutral spot or in someone's basement in the evenings :p?

I might feel inspired to contribute a story here, my last attempt failed miserably, maybe one day.
 

Jennywocky

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Someone asked what I was playing.

- Pathfinder system
- Mythic Adventures expansion
- Psionics book (Dreamscarred Press) + Mythic Psionics supplement

We don't have arcane magic in our party (mainly because we started in a dimension with only psionics and divine casting, although we now have ways to generate arcane effects). Psionics and arcane are essentially equivalent in terms of resistance and how they affect each other (transparency rules), versus being entirely different things.


What are the ages of players in your group Jenny? I'm kind of curious how the "older" (than me) folks are doing rpg.

Do you meet at a neutral spot or in someone's basement in the evenings :p?

I might feel inspired to contribute a story here, my last attempt failed miserably, maybe one day.

This group, the ages range from early/mid 30's to early 50's.... I'm the only female and only female character.

I have another group that plays only about half that much, age range is early to late 40's.

With both groups, we meet in someone's house. With the one group, there actually IS a basement where we meet... except now, because it's stinking summer hot and so we meet upstairs where there is more AC.

My other group, we started a new campaign because Paizo's "Legacy of Fire" which we were doing kind of sucks in the last two books. We're actually playing an entirely Lawful Good group, and I'm playing an oracle/paladin; we started from 1st level and are only 2nd level, which is harrowing. But it's demanded some ballsy play.

For example, we ran across a big guy with a 2H sword who seemed to be insane, and after he damaged two other people in the group (almost killing them) I realized through my Detect Evil that the bracers he was wearing had cursed him to madness... so I used my one daily Smite to run up and try to Sunder his bracers... He smacked me for 18 points of damage (I only had 20Hps) and in my last conscious breath I managed to hit the bracers and destroy them, freeing the guy. Turns out he was a paladin who now is helping the group because we freed him and he is trying to repent for his actions and regain his knighthood. I really thought I was gonna die, but it was my character who would do such a faithful/good act to free this guy... and somehow I lived.

The warpriest is playing her LG character as haughty and kind of judgmental/impulsive. My character's the more "I believe that everyone has good" kind of LG, and trying to bring folks together at cost to herself.
 

Jennywocky

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Probably only two more sessions to go in this two-year campaign.

I discovered last night that my character basically blocked off the "normal" conclusion of the campaign when she summoned the Elder Gods to our dimension, since the whole goal of raising the Dead God (and the politics involved) revolved around somehow controlling his power to be powerful and yet to prevent the Elders from arriving. Instead, I summoned them myself, laying waste to everyone's machinations whether friend or foe, and making their force buildups irrelevant.

IOW, I stopped the bad guys! :D

[Equivalent: Blowing up the town and then claiming I prevented the bad guys from taking over said town so I am thus a hero.]

Did I mention we were supposed to be the heroes?

Last night we actually defended the Demon City (Armageddon makes strange bedfellows) by tackling another leviathan. We could have had a party wipe except that we managed to figure out a viable strategy to negate the leviathan before flying the airship down its gaping maw to access the portal in its gullet from where the endless stream of Elder God minions was coming from. There was no way for us to destroy the monster btw; it apparently had 125,000 HPs, although we got it down to 80,000; we could really only damage it as a whole using abilities that would affect TERRAIN; we instead drove it partly insane, and took out all 13 of its eyesstalks which were blasting us.)

However, one teammate was one-shotted by a disintegration eyebeam and was turned to ash; and my lich almost took a crit from one, which would have likely (although just barely) waxed her. Not that it mattered, since she's a lich and would have reformed a week later. But she would have been missing all her gear.

My Dragonstone can cast Wish (I have a great wyrm umbral dragon trapped in the stone, that I can control), so I'm going to bring back the guy with it. But he might bring back his old character with it, the one that got killed at mid-campaign. I don't care which. The concern last time was that it would not be the exact character, it would be my character's perceptions of that character (so everyone was like "NO, Next option?" since they don't trust me at all... Their old standby: Q: "How do you know Sumiko is lying?" A: "Her mouth is moving.") -- but people seem to have forgotten that. I think whichever one I bring back for him, I will remember as having trusted me and not wanting to hurt me. :D i.e., yup, another failsafe so that I won't get backstabbed by the ninja. It's pretty apparent that everyone in the party has contingency plans in place to destroy the other party members and/or negate their ability to hurt them.

So we are flying down the gullet of a leviathan through a portal into some alien dimension, where the Final Battle For Reality shall commence. Next week, I will be unveiling my monstrosity. No one knows what I've got, but they're expressing concern in character. What did I do with the body of that red dragon we killed a few episodes back? The one that almost caused the party wipe? Answer: I turned it into a Ghast Aberration Red Dragon. This is like so Zod -> Doomsday.

Even better? I might not be able to control it. Heh.
(not that I care, because I'm undead and a lich, and it can't do much to me.)

Life is good.
 

Jennywocky

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So we've been playing 5e (our first 5e campaign after mostly just Pathfinder), and the GM is taking us through the pathfinder series "Curse of the Crimson Throne."

We're level 5. I am playing a Monk of the Long Death -- or, rather, "mechanically" I am a monk but I am referring to her as a thug. Her name is Molly Hatchet, and she's a white-trash halfling who wields a hatchet and a crowbar as her "thug" weapons, and instead of doing fancy Bruce Lee moves, her martial arts is the thug variety (throat punches, foot stomps, backbreakers, ball-kickers, and so on).

The thing with 5e is that monks are actually really great for the first five levels or so versus sucking like they do in 3.5 or Pathfinder until the high levels.

She was always a low-level hoodlum but has been trying to turn over a new leaf because she got knocked up and dumped by another low-life. Her family has taken custody of her baby girl, sweet little Tiffanee Angelwings Madonna, and won't let her come home to be with her until she proves she has straightened up her act and can set a good example. So Molly is trying really hard to better herself versus being Chaotic Neutral all the time, but... yeah, life is hard.

She's fun because she has no real pretensions, not much attention span, doesn't like to plan much, but she has dreams of the "perfect life" kind of like Audrey from "little shop of horrors" -- it's silly and all status quo (perfect husband, perfect children, picket fence house, etc.), and of course the funny thing is that (1) this isn't really the "perfect life", and (2) she would probably never be able to handle it, but hey that's Molly -- gruff and slaphappy on the outside but inside just a very normal, very common, blue collar gal who runs with the wrong crowd.

Oh and because she's a Stout Halfling she is really Lucky and has Advantage*/Resist on Poison saves, which means she can drink more than a half-orc with less chance of getting drunk.

Last adventure, she got completely shitfaced drinking hardcore dwarven ale before we went into the sewers to destroy some renegade wererats. She was so drunk that she didn't make her saves to avoid being drunk, couldn't stop drinking (because she couldn't discern she was drunk), and ended up having to roll Disadvantage on ALL of her rolls while she was down there because she was so wasted.... and she ended up being a drunken master so to speak -- down in the sewers, I was still making all my saves and hitting everything I swung at despite everything being Disadvantage. It was just so great for roleplaying purposes.

Anyway, this past week was what I meant to write about:

Molly has a local fence, and she had swiped a magic dagger from one of the hellknight city guards -- a dagger she thinks was being used to scry on the group due its inherent magic. So she wanted the fence to trade it for something useful. Well, after some false stops and starts on a trade, he finally arranges a sale for her but insists SHE had to be there with him without any friends, late at night, in an abandoned warehouse, and that he would meet her with his goons on the way down.

Well, of course, she sniffed this out as a setup (maybe the hellknights had leaned on him?) so she convinced the party to go to the warehouse early and set themselves up to gank the hellknights if the hellknights showed up to gank her.

So she's almost to the warehouse... and then the fence takes her somewhere else (!). She had a brief communication with the party (through Message) before passing out of range, and then she gets led to a private mansion / greenery where she is expecting to get killed....and turns out a local halfling noble who works with the resistance wants her help to overthrow the queen. The meeting was legit after all. Molly ends up falling head over heels for this wealthy guy (he treats her nicer than anyone else she's met), and ends up drinking wine with him in front of a fire and then he puts her up in a guest room for the night -- fancy room, fancy nightgown, fancy bed -- with breakfast in the morning. [it's pretty clear he is just being a nice person because she's not his type, but Molly is completely swooning over him.]

In the process, thinking about this guy and maybe one day he'll marry her and she'll become a countess, she forgets about her friends who were waiting in the warehouse to help her out.

Turns out the noble apparently DID set a trap to lure the hellknights there to get them off my back, not necessarily knowing her friends were there waiting. So while Molly was wining, dining, and daydreaming a life of squalor and luxury, the party was fighting for their lives against a squad of hellknights who showed up hoping to gank someone. And no one knew what the hell was going on or where Molly was.

It was absolutely hilarious. I'm kinda glad no one died, since Molly would have been on everyone's shitlist after that.

In the morning the noble had his servant escort her home in a fancy carriage, gave her a fruit basket, and she comes flouncing into the inn handing out fruit while everyone else is giving her dirty glares and asking her wtf she was last night.

*
Advantage = You roll 2d20 for every d20 roll and take the BETTER roll.
Disadvantage = You roll 2d20 for every d20 roll and take the WORSE roll.
Resistance = you only take half-damage / half-effect for anything related to that condition or element.

Molly also has Mobile as a feat, and she's a halfling. Usually you can only move through "Friendly" squares in a fight, but Molly as a halfling can move through ANY square as long as the creature is size Medium or bigger (friend or foe) + because she is Mobile, she can leave a threatened square without the enemy getting a free attack on her as long as she took a swing at the opponent on her way through. She can also move about 1.5 as far as everyone else in the group in a round due to monk + Mobile, despite halflings normally having less movement than most races due to having short legs. So she can effectively run through a combat, friend or foe, whack at things as she moves due to the 5e rules, and never be vulnerable to a counter attack, ending up somewhere out of range by the end. Her damage is not super-high, but she basically gets 3-4 attacks per round and as long as she can retreat, she can't be touched.
 
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