Monday, March 30, 2009

Order of the Mithril Dolphin #10

Well I’ve more or less read the PHB2 and it certainly has some interesting ideas.

Really I just did a skimming to get the basic ideas of the classes and races with an eye towards what will work in my next campaign.

First off, the price was too high. If any book that isn’t a true core book, anything over $30 is ridiculous. Cut out artwork or superfluous fluff to get the price down.

I know I’ve read the complaints when there isn’t enough art in a book, but whatever. If I have to pay $5 for crap that does little to nothing to improve my game I’m allowed to tell the whiny bitches in the fluff and artwork crowd to kiss my hairy armpit.

Now as for the content of the PHB2…

Avenger – He sounds like a paladin, but isn’t.
Barbarian – Expect to see a lot of these guys added to your game.
Bard – Since we’ve seen one in action, we knew the free temps would be nerfed, but they gave him better combat abilities. If you didn’t like the 3E bard, give this one a chance.
Invoker – a wizard for the divine crowd.
Sorcerer – I like the core set up of the sorcerer, especially the wild magic version.
Warden, Druid, Shaman – meh, didn’t read them much but found nothing all that compelling.
Deva – meh, but not totally worthless.
Gnome – I would’ve rather seen more of a tinker gnome type than a fey gnome.
Goliath – Good riddance
Half-orc – Glad to have them back
Shifter – While I do not like their beginnings from Eberron (I think), they may have a place in the Valley.
Racial paragons – Nice, though I think with all the paragon options I’m seeing people are going to be wanting to try more than they’ll be able to play.
Feats – As expected, play-tested to virtual blandness, though some work really well for various “builds”.

If you’ll remember, or read the previous entry, Dale nearly slaughtered us with 5 ghouls and a pale reaver. Since we complained at him, he posted a “Did I goof?” question on the WotC boards. Their response was a resounding “Yes!”, and that we shouldn’t have survived at all. So Dale gave us an extra 200xp.

As for the session all of us made it (levels 3-4 I think).
Ergot (Justin), dwarf druid, controller (kind of)
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader/striker
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Jezzail (NPC), halfling sorcerer, striker

I’ll be out the next couple of weeks and they’ll probably play w/o me, which is rare.

Tuck the fairy dragon is now with us effectively as a “magic item” that Renald can use once per day to cast a level 3 wizard spell. Even if he can only do it once per day, that is pretty strong, especially if the level of the spell Tuck memorizes increase with Renald’s level.

We were soon back on our boat with Tuck giving us directions (I think, I’m not sure anymore) down the river taking us in the general direction of Growlgretch, the black dragon who has the magic gem that Jezzail is looking for.

At some point not far from our destination, in a somewhat shallow part of the river, we were ambushed by some lizardfolk and their pets (several lizardmen skirmishers, 3 crocs, and a vine horror).

The battleground was slightly dynamic as the boat moved forward 1 square after every round. That actually was more of an irritation to our opponents than a problem for us, though the crocs did a decent job of pulling us off the boat with their grabbing bite attacks.

Overall the fight was a easy to moderate fight, with the number of opponents and the terrain being the biggest issue. It would have been worse, but Dale was rolling like Dale.

After that fight it wasn’t much farther down the river when Kal noticed a large disturbance in the water in front of us, and that when Growlgretch burst out of the water.

We were up against one young black dragon, two lizardmen lurkers (hiding), and one lizardman marsh mystic (hiding).

By the end of the first round we were upset at Dale again, because he did it again. Just like the ghouls last week, we were in a fight where the monsters had free reign over us while several of our turns consisted of taking ongoing damage, being stunned, being dazed, and/or being slowed all while in 4’ deep water (which cut your speed in half).

On his 3rd round, Ergot dropped due to ongoing damage, then made his saves that removed all of his afflictions, and then rolled a nat20 on his death save. And that was the first thing that went right for him this combat.

None of us did much of anything the first couple of rounds. If we could move, we went after the lizardfolk or the dragon, given who was nearest. Eventually the lizardfolk were run off due to damage or waiting for their powers to recharge.

I even had Jezzail make herself an easy target so the dragon would go after her rather than anyone who may not survive the combat.

This combat Dale was rolling much better than usual, rarely missing with any of his attacks.

Aaron continued his streak of hitting with his daily attacks once every ten tries.

Of all the things going bad, Wildeyes and Jezzail (whose combat decisions and rolls were made by me) were pounded the least.

When we finally started beating on the dragon (some time around round 7) it went better than the last dragon fight we had.

One thing I did was hold off using my big attacks until the dragon was bloodied, in an attempt to keep him from running away too soon. Then when Growlgretch was bloodied I “went nova” as Dale put it, throwing everything I had on both characters at the dragon.

The results were less than spectacular considering the dragon had 224 hit points over all. But everyone was able to consistently pound on him and hit reasonably well.

After we did some treasure splitting, we called it a night.

Jezzail will probably be out of the group when I return unless I reverse my personal disdain of role-playing anything remotely that looks like romance or “gettin’ some”.

See ya in a few weeks.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Order of the Mithril Dolphin #9

At the time of me writing this the PHB2 has been released, but I do not yet have a copy. Next session expect some ret-conning of some PC’s, specifically Renald who I believe will turn into a half-elf.

After this next session I will be out for 2 weeks as I’m going on vacation.

All but Justin made it this session (all level 4 I think).
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader/striker
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Jessail (NPC), halfling sorcerer, striker

Justin was out for his wisdom teeth being removed and he was medicated.
A phone call verified that he was indeed medicated.
I doubt he even remembers we called him.

We’ve been cruising through the combats recently, but that changed this session.

We were also reminded of a lesson that I learned a while ago when I put 12 goblins and 12 worgs together against the party in 3E. I learned then that tripping can make an easy fight a very tough one. Had there been only a few trippers it would not have been so bad, but every PC had two creatures around them that could virtually negate their turns.

It didn’t help that last week we blew our dailies and action points because we thought a fight was the last one for the night. But that’s a discussion for later…

Last week we had finished off some strong zombified dogs, and found out that the three crypts nearby were 200 years old and contained some evil inside of them that called undead to it or even raised the dead to unlife because they were once part of a temple to Orcus.

In the first crypt we checked, the one with the most damage from weather and time, we found no creatures of any kind, though we did detect evil and magic coming from within.

The only object of note and the obvious source of the evil was a half-sized human skull made of onyx. Wildeyes evaluated the skull to be worth at least 250gp intact, or 90gp in pieces (though one could argue that anything that could spontaneously bring the dead to unlife to be worth much more). It also appeared to be part of something else, such as the head to a staff.

Wildeyes kept the information of its value to himself and the group smashed the thing to dust. This action got Wildeyes a free “DM favor” for following his alignment.

When smashed, the skull emitted a psychic scream.

Rather than rest like we should have, we pressed on as several of us had action points and a couple people had a daily or two left.

The next crypt had several zombies and skeletons cornering a frightened yet armed and armored old man. That screamed trap, but on the offhand chance that we were wrong we had to spring the trap; in this case by giving free attacks to the monsters while the “old man” gave flanking.

The skeletons were mostly standard (normal soldiers and a boneshard) and your normal non-minion zombies, but the old man turned out to be something from Open Grave called a pale reaver. When he actually joined combat he turned insubstantial (or phased or whatever) - it takes half damage, can’t be slowed by terrain, and can move through walls.

Our response was to use a power that actually knocked it through the wall and prone (supplied by Renald I think), thus giving us a round to work on the other undead before he came back to attack.

The normal undead were easy to deal with, but the pale reaver was a pain. He ended up running away from us (through a wall) once it was obvious we would take him down.

Unfortunately he would return later.

We searched the crypt and found a trap door leading down. It was a narrow passage so we had to enter the next room while in a line. When the room opened up there were several columns making maneuvering difficult.

There were also 5 ghouls.

Notes for reference:
1 claw hit from a ghoul means damage plus you’re immobilized until you make a save.
1 bite from a ghoul means damage plus you’re stunned until you make a save.
This means that 1 ghoul on you is an irritation, 2 ghouls on you is painfully irritating, 3 ghouls on you means your turns will usually consist of making saves only.

We knew we were in bad shape, yet we had no clue how much worse it was for us as we didn’t know the above at the time. In all previous versions of the game you weren’t automatically paralyzed by the ghouls, you made a save at the time of the attack. The 4E change to ghouls makes them very tough, and that toughness can make them a real challenge for many levels beyond previous versions.

Then, as we were realizing how poorly off we were, the pale reaver returned.

5 ghouls + limited space + overcrowded hallway + limited movement = our front line is surrounded with no way out

This is one of those fights that proves that controllers do have a legitimate place in a group as a wizard could have places a Burning Sphere somewhere and limited the ghouls’ options against us.

The only person in our group that was consistently hurting the ghouls was Jessail, and her involvement ended when the reaver returned and went after our backline.

Wildeyes was reduced to negative hit points first while in the ghoul room, so I turned in the DM favor to be placed in the hallway. He was then healed up and moved to take on the reaver.

Kal was dropped as well, but Brian rolled a nat20 on the death save so he also moved to face the reaver.

This allowed Jessail to resume blasting the ghouls. Her first attack was a natural 1. I’m not sure about the released PHB2, but the information we had was that a sorcerer rolling a nat 1 on an attack = everyone in 5 squares of the sorcerer gets pushed back a square – friend or foe.

By that time the party was steadily pulling back into the hallway, and Jessail’s nat 1 actually helped that a little by clearing out some space and limiting opportunity attacks from ghouls.

Her second nat 1, 1 round later, was not appreciated, but the group recovered and was able to “plug up the stopper” that was the hallway, only permitting only 1 ghoul to face our front line at a time.

While all that was going on Wildeyes announced “We are leaving!”, as there was some confusion on what we needed to do at the time.
Then the reaver returned to material form and asked if we were actually leaving.
I said yes and rolled a nat 20 with a bluff check.

The next round I stabbed him and got a crit. It didn’t kill him, but it did bloody him and he was dead by Ian’s sword before he could go “ghosty” again.

By then our side had stabilized while the undead were on the ropes. When they were all dead we immediately returned to town, utterly exhausted (read “out of healing surges”).

We rested up then talked to the townsfolk, informing them of what had gone on. They sent a messenger to get a priest that could consecrate the area to remove the evil.

We couldn’t wait around for the priest, so we returned to check out the third crypt to find it empty. If there was something there it had left during the night.

So now we’re back on track to find the black dragon (Growlgretch – yes Dale reuses names) that has the gem Jessail is looking for.

That’s when we met Tuck…the fairy dragon.

That’s also when Aaron, Brian, and I shuddered.

Scott and Mike were concerned about our sudden attitude change.

You see Dale likes to play a few iconic characters that travel from campaign to campaign.

One character is a cleric named Elvis. He talks in a deep wavering voice and thinks highly of himself.

He also likes to plays very playful, and incredibly irritating, fairy dragons who like to impose their sense of humor on the party – especially the most cynical members of the group.

Granted, that’s how fairy dragons are supposed to be. But don’t judge our disdain of Dale’s special NPC’s until you’ve met them.

Dale made Tuck useful to the party and is now a companion of sorts to Renald (who Tuck took a quick liking to). Every day Dale will give Tuck a special power, based on a die roll from a chart.

I’m not sure the trade-off is worth the cost.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Order of the Mithril Dolphin #8

I’m really on the fence about a dragonborn’s Dragon’s Breath power.

On one hand it is really good for clearing out minions, it can be used by some classes to mark multiple opponents, and when multiple dragonborns use it on the same targets the damage adds up.

On the other hand it’s a minor action that does minor damage when used singly (1d6+modifier), but takes the amount of time that a daily takes and can be used every single combat.

Then there’s sneak preview of the sorcerer that I got to personally experience this session.

To my Valley campaign, sorcerers are kind of ingrained into the whole campaign, so seeing them in action matters to me.

When I first saw the sneak preview I was surprised in neither a good nor bad way. They had a lot of power, and plenty of randomness, which I liked except that the randomness was taken a step too far. But since most of that randomness is kept internal to the player, it’s ok.

And man can they do damage. Granted, it’s all a matter of making the right decisions while building the PC, but you have an at-will that does 1d10+8 damage from range at level 1. Unless they get nerfed you can probably kiss bow-rangers and warlocks goodbye.

Mike has been playing the bard sneak preview and Justin is doing the same with druids. Both of those classes do not seem to be broken as we’ve seen so far.

In fact the 4E bard is similar to the 3E bard; they’re the class that helps everyone else with various buffs (like temporary hit points). While the druid so far is not all that much like the previous druid, and that’s a good thing.

Oh, and Dale is sick of kobolds and fire beetles too, so no more of them. Yay!

Everyone made it this session (levels 3-4).
Ergot (Justin), dwarf druid, controller
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender (late due to death in family)
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader/striker
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker

Since we had made it back to the city the previous semi-session, Dale had prepped for the multiple potential directions we could head.

We started with everyone receiving the various magic items they had ordered several sessions back.

During the midst of that, a runner from Mayor Ironfist found us and told us we were being summoned to the Mayor’s office.

Someone with some power had moved up our position in his docket about setting up the Mithril River Dolphin Protection Society thing…or whatever we’re calling it now.

Although Brian was not able to be around for this (his PC is kind of the whole linchpin for this) we were able to convince the mayor that our intent is genuine and there is need to control excessive fishing in the river.

We did have to mention the merfolk, which got a skeptical eyebrow response, but once we show him Ian’s sword he’ll give us what we need (more or less).

The mayor is also pushing for us to chat with the Fisherman’s Guild. They’re not happy with us at all.

Afterwards Wildeyes decided to check out a request for adventurers in the latest Hillside Gazette – Jessail, the Jade Sorceress was looking for some adventurers to aid her in a task.

She needed the final gem to be added to her magic staff, and that gem just happened to currently be in the possession of a black dragon.

She also would be joining us on this adventure. Dale was being nice, allowing me to get familiar with sorcerers as a kind of test run. So once again I’d be running a second PC while Dale would be doing the role-playing.

In the end she only wanted the gem, while we would get 400gp and the remainder of the dragon’s hoard.

So yet again we were on our eyesore of a boat (we have sponsors akin to Nascar) traveling along the river.

Our first encounter occurred when we found a small farming village in flames. The moment we set foot on the shore we were attacked by orcs and dire boars.

The orcs didn’t put a big hurting on us, but they were hard to kill.

Once they were dead we help douse any salvageable building and told the farmers to head to Hillside to warn them that the orcs were raiding as early as they had expected. For a bit of PR, we told them to say the Order of the Mithril Dolphin saved them and sent them to town.

The leader of that group did mention that another village was having trouble with their graveyard.

And in the blink of an eye we made it to the village of Cul Fin (no clue on the spelling).

Note: In this campaign Dale doesn’t seem to worry too much about traveling in between encounters. Yes it’s not exactly realistic, but I’m kind of ok with that. Considering how long a random encounter would take, and how pointless it would be as part of a plotline, random encounters are not as random as they used to be.

We talked to the villagers and got some information with some various skill checks.

First off, the undead are corporeal. That made us feel a little better.

The rest of the history isn’t so nice. The graveyard was built on top of an old temple to Orcus and other such evil entities.

Note: force all villagers to watch the movie Poltergeist. Putting anything on top of a graveyard or other such burial ground never results in anything good.

Erosion, weather, and time had done some damage to the crypts, eventually allowing light into them. This gave new unlife to the place, calling undead from all around to the graveyard.

We confirmed this as we neared the graveyard. No living creatures made noise and the vegetation was more withered and decayed the closer we got to the place.

Given Wildeye’s recent aptitude for killing, and Sephira’s skill at hurting undead, they lead the group into the graveyard.

Gravehounds quickly surrounded both the front and rear groups while a pair of large zombie dogs called “Death Dogs” faced off against Sephira and Wildeyes.

The gravehounds were nothing at all to take care of, but the death dogs were tough.

Had Sephira’s Turn Undead not worked on both of them, the combat may have had a drastically different outcome.

The special powers of the death involved an attack tripped you, then another free attack that tripped you when you tried to stand up. Oh and they had an AC of 19 and 178-179 hit points.

Plus we goofed. We foolishly thought this would be the last fight of the night, so we used our dailies.

It was the last fight of the night in the real world, just not of the game world.

And to make things worst, next session just might be one of Dale’s “special” St. Patrick’s day adventures. I shuddered at the horrible thought.

Fairy dragons are evil.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Order of the Mithril Dolphin #7: The Quest for Temps

Well I would have had this one up last week, but I goofed and deleted my draft by accident.
So then I said “Smurf it!” and waited until this week.

Session #7 was one of our standard sessions. Dale had to cancel due to illness for session #8, so we had kind of an ad-hoc setup where Scott got his feet wet for DM’ing with a couple of fights and a storyline setup, then I ran a little something afterwards.

We now have a secondary title for the group: The Order of the Mithril Dolphin – the Hunt for Temps.
This comes from Renald’s bard powers that gives us 4 temporary hit points, or “4 temps”, each time we bloody or drop an opponent.

Random notes/thoughts from session #7:
Lent is here, meaning the stench of cheap, greasy fish will be invading my olfactory senses at game time.
Artillery type opponents are usually the least effective monsters to put against PC’s any more. With the little we’ve played, those are usually the first to drop.
Dale created faux newspaper clippings for us from the “Hillside Gazette”, as reading and foreshadowing. Check out his blog to read them.
If a fight is almost over, use attacks that will end the combat sooner. Sometimes this is a simple at-will attack.
Ian took a beating this session. Luckily he’s a defender and has no shortage of healing available to him.
I am so sick of kobolds and fire beetles.

For session #7, everyone made it (levels 2-3).
Ergot (Justin), dwarf druid, controller
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader/striker
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker

We last stopped after cleaning out some undead for some goblinoids (note for future use – we found a shiny black stone that belonged to the Cult of the Ebony Obelisk).

We then debated going after the dragon, Itzzelschnitz, or double-crossing the goblins for fun and then going after Itchy.

We chose not to kill the goblins, and rather struck a deal with them. For 200gp, they gave us directions to Itchy’s lair, cold weather clothing, and a hobgoblin soldier as a guide and combatant.

I would roll the dice for the soldier and Dale would role-play him. We wanted to name him something like “Standsinfront”, “Target”, “Combatadvantage”, or “Soaksupdamage”, but Dale overruled us and named him “Bonk”.

To replace some of Bonk’s lost powers (from not having any hobgoblin allies nearby), Dale allowed gave him a free attack re-roll every encounter (like the elf special ability), except that Dale would be the one doing the re-roll. So only on guaranteed misses would I do that.

We traveled to and found the cave of Itchy’s lair, but nothing was inside of it except a large disc on the floor with engraved silver runes.

Shamash promptly stepped into the center of the disc, said “Itzzelschnitz”, and then disappeared.

We all quickly followed him and were then in the first fight of the night.

We popped into an identical room, but this time surrounded by…kobolds and fire beetles.

The fight was easy and we had it cleared out in no time (figuratively, it still took an hour of real time) and we moved deeper into the caves, where it became colder and icier.

We had another very similar fight that ended similarly.

Then we found ourselves entering a large bowl-shaped cavern with an open ceiling, 3 15’ tall pedestals jutting out of the ground with kobold wyrmpriests on them, ice coating the floor, and a ledge with a young white dragon on it… waiting for us.

The ice hurt us with half movement, but the kobolds on the pedestals weren’t much more than a nuisance since our druid, Ergot, could pull them down with an at-will power.

Itchy flew at us, but remained 30’ above us, intending to rain hell on us from above.

But Renald used one of his powers to pull the dragon down to our level.

We swarmed him and beat the daylights out of him for the next couple of rounds; including dazing him.

We started off rolling really well and had Itchy nearly bloodied by the end of the second round, but then things went south.

My example: I used my best attack, a daily that allows two swings with my dual short swords +1, dealing 2d6+4 if I hit with one of them. Then I add 1d6 for Hunter’s Quarry and 2d6 for sneak attack. My attack bonus, with flanking, was +11 for each attack vs. the dragon’s AC of 18, so I had a good chance of hitting once, which I did.

For my 5d6+4 damage, I did a whopping 14 damage as the 5 d6 rolls were 1, 1, 2, 2, & 4.

To add insult to injury I followed that up with an action point attack that missed entirely.

After the daze wore off he was able to fly away from our melee attacks, which, in spite of not doing as well as we’d have preferred, still put him well into the bloodied state.

We followed up by hitting Itchy with our ranged attacks. He followed with his fear effect, and finally ran off once we got him down to 12 hit points.

And now we’re going to have a recurring villain.

So we eliminated the wyrmpriests that we hadn’t yet killed and then looted his hoard and ran before he could return with friends.

And that was the end of that session.

For session #8, (levels 2-3, 3-4 by the end of it):
Ergot (Justin), dwarf druid, controller
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader/striker
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker

Scott started off as the DM for the night and Aaron ran Sephira.

We more or less ignored finding a way to leave Itchy’s lair and so on and started off heading back towards town and resting for the night on the way.

Undead rose up around us during the night and dire wolves joined them. They attacked us with surprise and hurt us pretty bad early on. Wildeyes was reduced to 7 hit points from 40 in the first round, before he was healed.

Scott had a very nice plot set up, but was totally too much to be used on a one-shot. I’m not sure Dale would run with the plot as is, but it’s possible. Which I think is what Scott was going for; giving something that Dale could work off of.

It turns out he had borrowed the basic idea from an anime movie and I’m not kidding when I say I don’t think I could repeat it well enough to not confuse anyone…possibly including me.

But anyway, we had another fight with more wolves, minions, and a hobgoblin warcaster. It was setup to happen in Hillside while in the midst of several buildings and we were surrounded.

I liked this fight because I had Wildeyes, who won initiative for once, go straight for the warcaster and took him out single-handedly (though I did have to use every single one of my powers and an action point, all by the end of round 2).

Note: wolves are still pretty nasty if used right.

After that fight I took over and threw a couple of simple fights at them that had been set up as a prelude to an orc invasion as foreshadowed by Dale’s Hillside Gazette entries.

The first fight was just a scouting party (orc raider, rage drake, 4 drudges) and wasn’t a problem for the group.

The second and final fight consisted of a cornered family of elves that was being killed off until the party heard their screams and came running to help. An orc berserker was casually killing each male elf that got in his way while 4 drudges goaded him on.

The fight started and the berserker and 3 drudges ran at the party, while one stayed back to kill off the elves. Then a hungry Deathrattle Viper joined in from the cliff above while triggering a minor rockslide.

The snake did more damage than the orcs.

Then we stopped for the night.