Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Order of the Mithril Dolphin #6

As I’ve mentioned several times before on this blog, Dale loves undead.

He has a soft spot for gothic horror as well, but undead are his preferred adversaries by far.

In previous campaigns, he would run almost 50/50 undead to everything else.

In one particular 2E campaign where we were using the options and powers system, one player went so far as to have a ridiculous AC at level 1 while sacrificing hit points to get it.

In 2E terms his PC had a -6 AC (equivalent to AC26 now), but only had 5 hit points, and would only get about 3 more per level (average) having just barely over 30 at level 9.

The reason for this was because Dale had no qualms about throwing level-draining undead at us and fully using the level drains.

Eventually I had to ask Dale to cool it a bit with the undead. And he did, of sorts.

He kept himself limited to 15% undead. So he made the non-undead minor opponents while he made his undead “babies” the prized jewels in his collection.

After we pointed that out to Dale, he has done his best to make sure he’s not overpowering us with his beloved undead.

And he’s kept a good balance ever since, well excluding the Return to Castle Ravenloft.

He still gets a little “giddy” when running some special undead against us, but you can’t fault him for having fun on game night.

He tries to keep the variety going, which is essential when you’ve played D&D as long as some of us have.

Here’s some random notes I have from the game:
Jelly Belly jelly beans can really disrupt a game.
Dale names his encounters.
Dale dislikes minions to point of rarely using them.
If you expect only one encounter in a day, make it tougher so the players can use their PC’s abilities.

And, as noted in the comments of the previous entry, Dale has finally listened to reason in the whole “marking” ideal.

Granted that’s probably bad for my PC, but I’m ok with that. It wouldn’t be the first PC I lost to Dale’s encounters.

Since most of us were close to level 3, we picked our new encounter powers before the game began. It was a time-saving measure for once the game actually began.

This is when I found out that some ranger encounter powers aren’t really that much better than their at-will powers.

Cut-and-Run = No. It’s similar to my 2 at-wills and my encounter powers (Twin Strike, Hit & Run, and Evasive Strike)
Disruptive Strike = Maybe. The best of the 4 in the PHB, but stops the flow of combat when resolving it.
Shadow Wasp Strike = No. It’s Twin Strike with one attack roll and a minor bonus to damage (3 in this case).
Thundertusk Boar Strike = Maybe. It’s Twin Strike with damage added to each attack and a push effect. It’s alright, but pushing isn’t really something I need just yet.

So looked into the Martial Powers book to see if there was something better; hoping that one of the 6 new powers might be to my liking.

There I found Ruffling Sting. It’s an attack using your off-hand weapon as a minor action. It only does 1-die of damage, but a hit means you get combat advantage against the target for your next attack.

Now I’m not 100% sold on this power, but it allows me the possibility to do more “all-in-one” damage against a target, and helps get me the opportunity for sneak attack without a flanking ally.

If it doesn’t work out I can still pick Thundertusk Boar Strike.

Now on to the game…

All of us made this week (levels 1-2 at the start, 2-3 by the end of the night):
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader/striker
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender
Ergot (Justin), dward druid, controller

We had just finished off the necromancer from last session, so we rested in the hamlet before moving on in search of the white dragon Itselschnitz.

We thought we had made some progress in finding the dragon when we happened upon a kobold encampment and managed to even surprise the skittish little lizards and their trained pets (spitting drakes and fire beetles).

Thanks to us having to avoid clumping up in groups, it took us longer to take out kobolds that it usually would have, but we won none-the-less and took less damage overall.

Then we hit a big snag. Instead of a white dragon the shields of the kobolds, there was a green one.

A successful history check informed us that these just might be the servants of Rasputin, and ancient green dragon that is considered THE dragon of this continent.

That turned an overnight rest into a “get the hell out of Dodge” and we were back on the river quite quickly.

In the distance we saw a goblin playing lookout on the river. It ran off before we even tried to do anything.

We followed it to a cave complex where we found some goblins and hobgoblins waiting for us.

After that tough combat while we were resting, Wildeyes scouting the only other passage in the room. He found several more goblins, hobgoblins, and a bugbear with their bows readied to shoot the moment they found a suitable target. He also saw a blockaded passage.

There was no way we could win that combat, so of the options to flee or parlay, we chose the latter.

In an obvious case of meta-gaming, I knew there were undead behind that blockade. So we negotiated a deal with the goblins.

With an excellent diplomacy roll for Renald’s negotiations we were able to get the goblins to agree to leave the caves the next morning and we’d clear out everything from behind their blockade, and they would pay us 50gold.

Luckily it was just one fight, but it was a very tough fight with a few undead from Open Grave sprinkled in.

In the first round of combat, two of us were bloodied by the powerful encounter powers of a couple of undead archers (2 shots at 2 targets for 2d10+4 damage).

After a couple rounds of being on the defensive, we turned it around.

It helps to have an undead hunting combat cleric who has no problems with charging into the middle of the undead to turn them.

We stopped after the fight was over.

No game on Valentine’s Day weekend. If you don’t know why, you’re probably single.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Order of the Mithril Dolphin #5

Well I have a variety of small things to mention for this session.

In no particular order:

No Justin again, which is getting old.
Everyone else made it no problem.

While Dale has many good ideas for a variety plot hooks, he lacks in setting up a variety of combat setups

He has the two basic setups down pretty handily; a wide open area set up for skirmishers to get flanking and a closed in area set up to force line vs. line fighting while casters and archers shoot at us from safety. Those are fine, but I’d like a little more variety.

To Dale’s credit, he did prepare for many different directions we might head; a combination of his plots and the ones we’ve added (Mithril River dolphin). He even prepared the white dragon fight for us in the event we find it, although he had reservations about our survival.

That is no small feat, even in 4E.

Dale maintained his poor rolling, though not as spectacularly bad as last session. It was more average hitting while rolling 1’s and 2’s for damage dice.

My next PC’s name will be Golobulous because it will irritate Brian and many fans of G.I. Joe comics. “Why?” you ask.
I say “Why not?”
Apparently the 80's cartoon G.I. Joe's was hated once they introduced Cobra-la.

Dale is sticking with the ideal of "a marked monster must make all reasonable efforts to attack the marking PC".
I still very much disagree with that concept, but it’s Dale’s call.
In fact, Brian and Aaron have begun to exploit that ideal. Shamash marks monster A and Ian marks monster B, then Ian and Shamash switch places, thus forcing the monsters to move around to get at their marking PC.
I imagine it won’t be too long before Dale changes his mind. I’m betting right after a fight that involves him only moving monsters around the battlemap while getting limited attacks and we slaughter them.

This session had (all level 2):
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader/striker
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender

We last stopped while we had cleared out some areas of the nearby Underdark that had become infested with goblins.

We were heading back to Riverside when we heard some voices speaking in Goblin. Renald translated it to some goblins talking about what they were going to do to us in their ambush.

Those goblins don’t move no more.

We probably should have ignored the fight, but we wanted the easy XP.

We then returned to town, but had no leads for where to go next, and had a couple days to kill. So we decided to reconnoiter the river and see if we could find a river dolphin or find some potential poacher hideouts.

We indeed found some dolphin fishers, but since it’s not illegal yet, we couldn’t do anything to them…for now.

Somehow, in some way, the news of our intent to aid the Mithril River dolphins made its way to the mer-king of the river.

He sent a dolphin to find us and bring us to his king.

The talking dolphin’s name was Flipper.

That was one of only 2 possible names for a dolphin. Guess what the other is for a no-prize.

Several merfolk holding a giant shell led us to see their king (we grew gills from a ritual that involved Flipper spitting on us).

Ian, being the spokesperson for the whole saving-the-dolphins thing had to represent the group, while Renald translated for him. This made the diplomacy checks harder, but Ian impressed him enough to help us (and we'll help him later i bet).

All of us received a pearl, but Ian received something more.

One cool thing about this world is Dale’s naming of magic weapons.
A simple +1 warhammer will be named “Slammer” while a more powerful weapon will have a much longer name.

So Ian received a +1 thundering broadsword that can become stronger.
The sword’s name is “The Voice of the Thundering Waves as They Break Upon the Enemies of the Sea King’s Might”.
I think I’ll just call it “Brian’s sword”.

He received the sword due to some prophecy that an outsider from the land will be their champion. The sword also means that anything that Ian does while wearing or wielding the sword also represents the king.

I see no good coming from that.

Beyond that the king is not happy about how his fish are being taken by the river men, but he has a larger concern of a war under the waters. He did not elaborate, but I’m sure we’ll find out more at a later date.

Soon enough we were back in town to have another dinner with Captain Dathry of the Knights of Saint Michael, although we really just needed to check out their library to get more information about the white dragon.

The library gave us the dragon’s name; Itselschnits (I wondered if his cousin’s name was Mxyzptlc or possibly Alex Trebek).

We also found out that he is a young dragon, but he has a tribe of kobolds at his command. So we won’t expect to find him alone when it becomes time.

While leaving the library, Ian made the mistake about asking about his sword. The librarian seemed a bit surprised, but would get back with us about it later. That could be really good, or really bad. Guess which side I'm betting on.

The rest of the time in the city was used spending money on buying simple magic items, which Dale is making us wait several days to several weeks getting.

With a lucky streetwise skill check by me, we finally learned that Riverside has a potential upheaval going on. Many of its residents wish to secede from the control of the city of Oceanside due to perceived excessive taxation. Those taxes go to the support of Oceanside’s large military.

If the town secedes from the control of Oceanside that same military will appear on Riverside’s front doorstep. Nothing good can come from that.

With our new information about the dragon, we set about finding it.

Yet again we were ambushed by bandits, this time during our rest. We found some evidence that they were sent after us.

The next stop on our trek was at a small hamlet that needed us to stop a necromancer that had taken over the graveyard.

We solved their problem pretty quickly and then stopped for the week.

We’re now irritatingly close to level 3, except for Justin.

Monday, February 02, 2009

The Order of the Mithril Dolphin #3-4

Sorry it’s taking so long get a post up. We’ve had a busy few weeks at the homestead.

Check out my wife’s blog to see all the things we’ve done.

This session write up will consist of 2 sessions for the reasons above.

To start off, I’d like to change my complaints of “marking” in 4E being a time sink for combat. I’ll change it to any power or ability that suddenly stops the flow of combat. This includes some aspects of marking, but isn’t limited to marking alone.

I won’t name any specifics because a lot of it is just being prepared, but I don’t believe anyone’s turn should take longer than 30 seconds unless they’re using a daily power at a very crucial moment.

Beyond that just pick your target, pick your power, and roll the dice.

If you find yourself trying to determine the best spot for everyone on the battlemap on your turn, stop it. This is D&D, not chess. Worry about where you are at on your turn and point things out to others when it’s not their turn (such as “move to here so we’ll have flanking”).

Granted it can’t always be that easy, but it should be that easy more often than not.

And finally, don’t use complicated attacks when the combat is almost done and all you’re attacking are mooks. In other words, if the boss is dead and no one on your side is in bad shape, just use simple at-will attacks. That is not the time to use your dailies or even encounters.

Well the last couple of sessions were pretty similar to the first couple; we hired with quest-giver X to go kill a few low level monsters all while making various contacts in the city to go kill more monsters later.

We are now generally pretty friendly with the local Order of Saint Michael (a.k.a. the Michaelines, or the cops), a couple inn owners, a few other business owners, and the local dwarven priesthood of Moradin. So we’re probably making a name for ourselves, though much of it has to do with dolphins.

Our third session had (all level 1):
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, defender/striker
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender
Ergot (Justin), dwarven druid, controller

Our fourth session had all but Ergot (most were level 2 by then).

The first step in PC survival is getting a DM who can’t roll for squat. Dale is perfect for that. He rolls more natural ones on d20’s than all but one other DM I’ve played with.

(If your DM supplies that step for you, no other steps are needed.)

Our third session consisted of a combat in the Underdark against some skeletons (we had good teamwork) to help the dwarves, then later on we killed some kobolds who had a white dragon as their patron (Dale is stonewalling us on finding the dragon though).

Using the gold we received from Mitt Woodweller, Wildeyes was able to buy two short swords +1. And in an awesome display of dice rolling, I had several crits with those swords at the right time. Taking out tough combatants early in a combat with good use of daily and encounter powers may be worth more than the healing surges used later to recover from the damage done by that combatant.

In session 4 Dale was trying to hurt us, but rolled so pathetically he couldn’t do much to hurt us at all. We rolled average, which still wins.

We were stopped by bandits on the road again (I’ve forgotten why we were even on the road). The bandits were this time some wererats aided by some pet giant rats and rat swarms. No one was diseased this time around.

Our “Protect the Mithral River Dolphin” campaign is hitting some legal snags. Apparently seeing the mayor of the town takes several weeks time and several hours waiting in line to even make an appointment. It’s going to take at least 4 more weeks for our campaign to be legit.

Wildeyes did “find” a 40gp opal during the 5 hour wait in line though.

After some discussion our adventuring group will be known as The Order of the Mithril Dolphin.

Though we have yet to actively save a single dolphin, we’re hoping to be more effective than PETA at saving those delicious dolphins. Come to think of it, we’ve never seen a dolphin that wasn’t on a plate in front of us.

Next we were out adventuring again at the behest of Burgoyne to clear out some areas of the nearby Underdark of pests.

Note: the town is partially in a cave with connections to the Underdark, so any monsters from there could wreak havoc.

First we had to eliminate a nest of kruthiks and a lurking stirge. The combat was relatively easy barring that the kruthiks were hiding on the ceiling and waiting for us to walk under them.

Next was a small goblin outpost consisting of a hexer, several brutes, and a pair of needlefang drake swarms.

The room they were in was tactically bad for us as they had us pinned in and it was quite hard just to get flanking. This also gave the goblin hexer ample opportunity to screw with us for a good long time with spells that could blind us.

But once we broke their front line, they were doomed to a slow death.

We stopped there for the session.

We probably won’t rest for the night as we each still have several healing surges.