Category: Gaming

Wait, that was number 100? I should have had a cake. Darn.

Anyway, I got all enthusiastic and played Where Dragons Die right after running The Fardrop Incident. Tsriel ran; Xalcairn, Jay Ibero, Dareus, Elden, Genolen, and I played. There are, for the spoiler-ish record, a lot of dragons in this adventure. I like killing dragons when I’m playing Collin, so I have nothing bad to say at all.

Although the module does need to be fixed because some of the dragons use the preview stats instead of the final Monster Manual 3 stats. They’re a bit weak as is. But that’s not something bad, that’s just a handy tip!

I ran The Fardrop Incident as a favor for Eltherian, so that he could get his barbarian to P2. I think the clever plan was to make sure he’d be available to play High Infidelity with us later on, and that worked out.The other players were Jay Ibero, Darklord, Elden, Knight4612, and Blackmantle.

Since this was a reasonably skilled party, and since they agreed to be experimental subjects, I adjusted all the monsters to the summer 2010 damage expressions. It worked really well; while I didn’t challenge them a ton, they found it much more fun. I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re pretty sure your group can handle it, but it’s a great tool when used with care. And I did almost manage to get myself a perma-dominated barbarian, which would have been awesome. (“Fardiz. Go kill the cleric.”)

After, let’s see, 18 months, Alesk finally got the chance to finish off the Byar’s Seven quest with Hunters’ Down. Matt J. kindly volunteered to run it for me; eladar, Kazordan, jredgiant, AussieScum, and Dareus were the other players. I think a few of them were also on the quest, so that was nice.

I had fun, although it was kind of a bittersweet run. Alesk is not a stellar character and Essentials did not give me the rebuild potentials I’d been hoping for – he’s a Strength-based cleric, and Essentials is all about Wisdom-based melee clerics. I may yet rebuild him as a Wisdom-oriented character, but that sort of breaks some of the concept.

For now, he’s just hit level 8, so I can stick him on the back burner with a rebuild in my pocket in case I ever make up my mind. I suppose the really wacky idea is to bring him out again as a paladin…

I needed to run something to get my slot score down a bit, and I always like running for Matt, so I asked him if he wanted an H2 and he said how about How To Hunt A Demon? Easy for me to run since I’d run it once before, so I said sure and that was that. I ran it on 10/7, with Matt, logopolis, Oskar581, Kazordan, Zalarian, and Gadunge.

We did not come close to a TPK this time. Good wizards, as always, make all the difference. Also, the third fight is easier if the PCs can maintain range – I think my earlier party had trouble because they engaged the enemy in the middle of the field. This meant the bad guys spent less time charging and got to do stuff other than basic melee attacks. On the other hand, I got to get off most of my sneaky gnoll tricks, which is always fun.

My first LFR game in October was Curse of the Queen of Thorns, on 10/3. I think I signed up for this because there was an open slot and they needed a defender, if I recall correctly. Martyr2 ran; my fellow players were Jay Ibero, Eltherian, logopolis, Blackmantle, and Trident. We had a balanced party and enough offensive firepower so that I got to pretty much slack off and relax as a defender. Fun game, and now Collin is a Knight of Cormyr, which is a bit perplexing for him.

Woo-hoo, more Nixie Queen! Peter ran; Susan, David D., Stacey, Justin K., and Nick S. played. Oh, and me, of course. Kevin rides again! Despite being level 3 and finally getting to use his treasured Vicious +2 Talenta Sharrash, he did not crit all night. So sad! But he made good use of his daily to finish off a very nasty quasit, and he set up the daily with Roar of Triumph, and I action pointed specifically so I could trigger Roar of Triumph with the quasit in mind. So I feel good about that.

Sometimes I think too much while I’m playing, yeah.

Cool stuff: Peter is running this big old four level dungeon as a living My Realms dealy-bopper. There are potentially multiple parties in the dungeon. Each of the first three levels has a touchstone; you can use the touchstone to teleport further as necessary. We poked a little bit into the second level, did not find the touchstone there, but will look more next time. Bits of the dungeon that get cleared out are clear for the next party who comes along, unless there’s been restocking, which will also happen sometimes. This is why the teleport is important.

Also cool: getting to play with Susan, which actually hasn’t happened in way too long. Like, all month. So that was awesome.

Raven Knights one! more! time!

This finished up my run of the Raven’s Bluff campaign. Susan, Hudson, Mark B., Jason B., and Colin played. I think everyone had a good time; I certainly did, despite being rather thrashed. This cold is sucking, let me tell you. 

The PCs were quite clever and came up with an idea unanticipated by either the module or by me. It didn’t work, due to factors beyond their knowledge, but the failure of the idea did reveal certain other things and before you could blink they were avoiding a certain unfortunate event. It worked out really well, and I was pleased to be able to reward cleverness without handing them everything on a silver platter. 

Yep, again! I think that makes the third time I’ve run and/or played What Storms May Come. Both times playing have been because I had a character who wanted to complete the quest, and I ran it by request, so hey.

This time was online, with Tsriel running. Matt, Jay Ibero, Dareus, Zalarian, Shamballa, and I played. We did something I really hadn’t expected: namely, took the baby into combat. Well. But given that we did a 1.5 round crush of the final encounter, I guess that was a reasonable choice. Also it means Collin has golden eyes, which fits nicely with the bear thing.

Cool/funny stuff that happened: Collin did 0 damage in the first fight. He spent a bunch of the second fight working his way down to the monsters, since Tsriel altered the map somewhat and removed the ice slides. In the third fight, he caused over 100 points of damage in a round for the first time ever, thanks to a couple of damaging zones provided by Matt’s character Luminos. And he hit level 12, so that’s satisfying.