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.
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.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 6:46 AM
7 Comments:
I posted this one the WotC board and they said to use my common sense on the monsters and marking.It should be honnored but the monsters should not be getting abused-as you correctly pointed out, this is "right around the next corner" in your post. So yeah I am going to have to break this a little when it makes sense.
D
Yay! Dale listened to reason...after checking with the WotC board...
Should I be offended?
Darwin? Is that the other name?
Underwater combat would be a nice change from the other two scenarios you describe. Perhaps that is in your future...
Jay
Jay wins the no-prize!
That reminds me, we haven't done a fun XP quiz lately. In fact, we haven't done one since Sean became a dad. I miss those... Brian
Well it has nothing to do with me being a parent.
It's more of a "why spend game time doing trivia?".
But if requested I'll prep something once I run again.
Oh, I know it has nothing to do with you being a dad, that's just the time reference- the last one I remember doing was at your house and we haven't been back there since the babies were born. They were fun, that's all; the Darwin reference reminded me of it.
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