The Order of the Mithril Dolphin #14
Well Brian won’t be joining us any longer.
His wife is due to have a baby soon so his Friday night gaming has come to an end with us.
Last week we had a session with Scott as DM for another one-shot session.
Dale couldn’t make the game on time but when he showed he had a nasty elf bow ranger modeled for ranged attacks while avoiding melee. His crits with his +3 vicious greatbow were disgusting.
Scott’s combats were tough yet good. His only flaw was giving us a tough fight but not giving us an opportunity to rest before the next, even tougher fight. The result was a horribly tough fight that made every decision and roll of the dice incredibly crucial where more than one PC dropped and recovered in some way or another.
In the end Ergot died.
Scott tried to flub a few things once he realized how bad things were going. I told him not to. The fight was tough, but not un-winnable. If he obviously threw the fight, then any victory we had would be a hollow one. But if we won on our own merit, that victory would have been considered an awesome fight where we were challenged to our limits.
Here’s a little secret when you find out you’ve gone over the top with a combat – cheat in secret, only in little bits, and only when it’s your fault. If you have a DM’s screen, then you only hit half the time and you only crit on someone you know can take the hit to keep the illusion of legitimacy. If you aren’t using a screen then shave a few points off of your to hit roll. If your players know the monsters too well and catch your “mistakes”, then oh well, slaughter them for not running and call it a “too smart for your own good tax”.
You must maintain the illusion that you’re not cheating 100%. And the best way of maintaining the illusion is to rarely do it, so only cheat when you’ve made a mistake.
I believe this session we were all level 8.
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Gorak (Mike), human barbarian, striker
Stout (Justin), dwarf fighter, defender (his original 4E PC)
Oh um, right, I forgot to criticize 4E.
Screw the new rust monster!
If it eats a magic item, you can raid its stomach for 100% of its value in residuum.
I smell an exploit there.
“Let’s see – we can disenchant that sword we’ve been using since level 2 and get 20% of its value or we can feed it to Rusty and then make him vomit up the full 100% of its value.”
For this final session of this campaign before its hiatus Dale used the death of Ergot as the MacGuffin to get us to travel back to Hillside after talking to Sammath Narr one more time, while saying that Stout was brother to Ergot to get him included quickly enough.
But before that we started off with a mook fight against some galeb duhrs first. The only things interesting about the fight was that Dale hates the ranger daily utility power that allows you pick people in your party that get to act in a surprise round and that Wildeyes was beaten up pretty bad by the galeb duhrs special area attack. Anywhere Wildeyes went, he was almost guaranteed to take some damage.
Soon we were back and talking to Sammath Narr. Due to my poor recollection of the events (and it didn’t help I’ve missed 2 sessions involving this storyline) I was unaware that we were about to talk to an oracle.
Mike had notes that reminded us of our goals and such. One storyline, centered on Brian’s PC, will either be abandoned or rewritten. The two other storylines right now are getting more information about the Cult of the Ebony Obelisk and the heavy bandit activity around Hillside.
Sammath had the oracle answer two questions rather than one, since one of our group had fallen.
The Cult of the Ebony Obelisk turned out to be followers of a demon known as Orcus (who apparently is not well known in this world).
The whole Oceanside/Hillside issue is about taxes. Oceanside has a large army and pays for it with high taxes from surrounding regions. Recently the roads have become bandit heavy and Oceanside has done nothing to stop it. This has lead to many in Hillside to demand secession from Oceanside’s power, but the mayor will not do so as the count of Oceanside will send its armies to crush such a rebellion.
The oracle shed a little more light on that – the count of Oceanside is undead. Hopefully that information will be enough to get the mayor to do something.
After that Wildeyes upgraded his weapons.
Now this is where dual-wielders get shafted. Bow rangers really only need one magical weapon while dual-wielders need 2. Yeah, I figure that two different magic items could have two separate special powers, and you don’t need ammunition, but I still feel there’s an issue.
Here’s a blatant example: Dale gave his bow ranger the previous session a +3 vicious greatbow while Wildeyes this week got two +2 vicious short swords. Now we’re ignoring that Dale has a greatbow itself as that’s costs a feat, and we’re ignoring that I’m using mere short swords as the halfling benefits of small size have paid off. Dale will get the same number of attacks as Wildeyes, but will consistently do more damage and hit more often thanks to the +1 bonus difference and the extra 1d12 rolled on a crit. Am I whining – probably, but it’s something for me to remember in the future – DM’s need to make sure that strikers have consistently equal or better weapons than the rest of the group.
In other words, don’t give your cleric a +3 vicious flail if your rogue is using a +1 dagger.
Of course this session it didn’t matter; I didn’t crit the whole night.
Next it was time to leave the Underdark and return to Hillside.
And once again we were ambushed in a “mushroom forest”. That place and King’s Road seems to pretty dangerous.
We were surrounded by a pair of sword spiders, some nasty spider swarms, led by a drow. All of these things were fast (+9 to initiative minimum) and they had a surprise round, once again mitigated by Wildeye’s level 6 daily utility power that allowed Gorak and Sephira to act.
In addition to these things being fast, they were also hard to hit. But it was an egg-shell type of AC: high AC + low to moderate hit points.
We ended up ignoring the near 30 AC drow while pounding the spiders. Eventually the drow fled.
Eventually we made it back to Hillside and Ergot was raised. He then went out for a night of drinking and fun, but disappeared.
We were eventually given a note to meet some people who had him at one of the many inns of Hillside.
We knew it was a trap, but we triggered it, though Aaron brought up a good point:
Dale either overestimates how much we care about Ergot, or he underestimates how much we’re willing to get into fights.
Answer: a little from column A and a little from column B.
So we went to the inn and along the way were dead people scattered everywhere just outside the place.
The bloody mess led right up to the inn and inside, ready to attack, and in no mood to talk with us:
3 Battle Wights
1 Battle Wight Commander
4 Vampire Spawn
1 Vampire Lord
After the first round we realized we in bad shape.
We had somewhat scattered in the room, attempting to do our usual “defender up front, strikers surround” tactics going after better tactical targets. That ended fast when we found out their attacks immobilize, slow, and/or weaken you and they have high AC’s.
On round 2 we switched to “target that explosion and fire”. In other words we took risks to get ourselves into positions where we would all focus our attacks against one target, regardless of reasonable risks because we had to take these guys down one at a time.
First the spawn died, as minions tend to do.
Then we focused on the commander until he dropped.
Then we focused on the vampire lord until he slipped away from melee.
Then the battle wights dropped one at a time.
What started off as a tough fight quickly turned into a somewhat easy one.
Finally the vampire lord ran.
I’m guessing he’s off to tell his Strahd-like boss that we’re not as easy as he’d hoped.
And thus ends our time in Hillside for a little while.
Our next session will come in two weeks in the Valley, or as Dale calls it “Severe World”.
His wife is due to have a baby soon so his Friday night gaming has come to an end with us.
Last week we had a session with Scott as DM for another one-shot session.
Dale couldn’t make the game on time but when he showed he had a nasty elf bow ranger modeled for ranged attacks while avoiding melee. His crits with his +3 vicious greatbow were disgusting.
Scott’s combats were tough yet good. His only flaw was giving us a tough fight but not giving us an opportunity to rest before the next, even tougher fight. The result was a horribly tough fight that made every decision and roll of the dice incredibly crucial where more than one PC dropped and recovered in some way or another.
In the end Ergot died.
Scott tried to flub a few things once he realized how bad things were going. I told him not to. The fight was tough, but not un-winnable. If he obviously threw the fight, then any victory we had would be a hollow one. But if we won on our own merit, that victory would have been considered an awesome fight where we were challenged to our limits.
Here’s a little secret when you find out you’ve gone over the top with a combat – cheat in secret, only in little bits, and only when it’s your fault. If you have a DM’s screen, then you only hit half the time and you only crit on someone you know can take the hit to keep the illusion of legitimacy. If you aren’t using a screen then shave a few points off of your to hit roll. If your players know the monsters too well and catch your “mistakes”, then oh well, slaughter them for not running and call it a “too smart for your own good tax”.
You must maintain the illusion that you’re not cheating 100%. And the best way of maintaining the illusion is to rarely do it, so only cheat when you’ve made a mistake.
I believe this session we were all level 8.
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Gorak (Mike), human barbarian, striker
Stout (Justin), dwarf fighter, defender (his original 4E PC)
Oh um, right, I forgot to criticize 4E.
Screw the new rust monster!
If it eats a magic item, you can raid its stomach for 100% of its value in residuum.
I smell an exploit there.
“Let’s see – we can disenchant that sword we’ve been using since level 2 and get 20% of its value or we can feed it to Rusty and then make him vomit up the full 100% of its value.”
For this final session of this campaign before its hiatus Dale used the death of Ergot as the MacGuffin to get us to travel back to Hillside after talking to Sammath Narr one more time, while saying that Stout was brother to Ergot to get him included quickly enough.
But before that we started off with a mook fight against some galeb duhrs first. The only things interesting about the fight was that Dale hates the ranger daily utility power that allows you pick people in your party that get to act in a surprise round and that Wildeyes was beaten up pretty bad by the galeb duhrs special area attack. Anywhere Wildeyes went, he was almost guaranteed to take some damage.
Soon we were back and talking to Sammath Narr. Due to my poor recollection of the events (and it didn’t help I’ve missed 2 sessions involving this storyline) I was unaware that we were about to talk to an oracle.
Mike had notes that reminded us of our goals and such. One storyline, centered on Brian’s PC, will either be abandoned or rewritten. The two other storylines right now are getting more information about the Cult of the Ebony Obelisk and the heavy bandit activity around Hillside.
Sammath had the oracle answer two questions rather than one, since one of our group had fallen.
The Cult of the Ebony Obelisk turned out to be followers of a demon known as Orcus (who apparently is not well known in this world).
The whole Oceanside/Hillside issue is about taxes. Oceanside has a large army and pays for it with high taxes from surrounding regions. Recently the roads have become bandit heavy and Oceanside has done nothing to stop it. This has lead to many in Hillside to demand secession from Oceanside’s power, but the mayor will not do so as the count of Oceanside will send its armies to crush such a rebellion.
The oracle shed a little more light on that – the count of Oceanside is undead. Hopefully that information will be enough to get the mayor to do something.
After that Wildeyes upgraded his weapons.
Now this is where dual-wielders get shafted. Bow rangers really only need one magical weapon while dual-wielders need 2. Yeah, I figure that two different magic items could have two separate special powers, and you don’t need ammunition, but I still feel there’s an issue.
Here’s a blatant example: Dale gave his bow ranger the previous session a +3 vicious greatbow while Wildeyes this week got two +2 vicious short swords. Now we’re ignoring that Dale has a greatbow itself as that’s costs a feat, and we’re ignoring that I’m using mere short swords as the halfling benefits of small size have paid off. Dale will get the same number of attacks as Wildeyes, but will consistently do more damage and hit more often thanks to the +1 bonus difference and the extra 1d12 rolled on a crit. Am I whining – probably, but it’s something for me to remember in the future – DM’s need to make sure that strikers have consistently equal or better weapons than the rest of the group.
In other words, don’t give your cleric a +3 vicious flail if your rogue is using a +1 dagger.
Of course this session it didn’t matter; I didn’t crit the whole night.
Next it was time to leave the Underdark and return to Hillside.
And once again we were ambushed in a “mushroom forest”. That place and King’s Road seems to pretty dangerous.
We were surrounded by a pair of sword spiders, some nasty spider swarms, led by a drow. All of these things were fast (+9 to initiative minimum) and they had a surprise round, once again mitigated by Wildeye’s level 6 daily utility power that allowed Gorak and Sephira to act.
In addition to these things being fast, they were also hard to hit. But it was an egg-shell type of AC: high AC + low to moderate hit points.
We ended up ignoring the near 30 AC drow while pounding the spiders. Eventually the drow fled.
Eventually we made it back to Hillside and Ergot was raised. He then went out for a night of drinking and fun, but disappeared.
We were eventually given a note to meet some people who had him at one of the many inns of Hillside.
We knew it was a trap, but we triggered it, though Aaron brought up a good point:
Dale either overestimates how much we care about Ergot, or he underestimates how much we’re willing to get into fights.
Answer: a little from column A and a little from column B.
So we went to the inn and along the way were dead people scattered everywhere just outside the place.
The bloody mess led right up to the inn and inside, ready to attack, and in no mood to talk with us:
3 Battle Wights
1 Battle Wight Commander
4 Vampire Spawn
1 Vampire Lord
After the first round we realized we in bad shape.
We had somewhat scattered in the room, attempting to do our usual “defender up front, strikers surround” tactics going after better tactical targets. That ended fast when we found out their attacks immobilize, slow, and/or weaken you and they have high AC’s.
On round 2 we switched to “target that explosion and fire”. In other words we took risks to get ourselves into positions where we would all focus our attacks against one target, regardless of reasonable risks because we had to take these guys down one at a time.
First the spawn died, as minions tend to do.
Then we focused on the commander until he dropped.
Then we focused on the vampire lord until he slipped away from melee.
Then the battle wights dropped one at a time.
What started off as a tough fight quickly turned into a somewhat easy one.
Finally the vampire lord ran.
I’m guessing he’s off to tell his Strahd-like boss that we’re not as easy as he’d hoped.
And thus ends our time in Hillside for a little while.
Our next session will come in two weeks in the Valley, or as Dale calls it “Severe World”.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 12:38 PM
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