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.