Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Kholai 05-21-07, 07:19 AM	I recently joined, about a month ago, a brand new D&D group in my area, and all was, for the most part, pretty good. For your amusement/commentary, a day by day of the FR campaign to its epic conclusion. Day 1: So.... For some reason that eludes me at the moment, I, Telios Arienson, a sellsword spellsword, am stuck in an organic cavern beneath a desert with my wife's character, a chaotic good Eldritch Disciple of Labelas Enoreth. We're both level 6, having bought off our level adjustment, I'm a draconic sun elf, she's an aasimar. We have 6600 gp worth of stuff and money each, so we're pretty light on the ol' equipment front. Find our way through some kind of maze, and meet up with a party of oddballs. Two dwarves, twins whose combat style consists of charging people whilst wearing spiked armour, who are never, ever quiet, always charge everything, including traps, and are stubborn as muck, constantly refer to their drunken adventures.... In other words, Dwarves. A ranger, who's pretty handy in a fight, but otherwise he rarely says a word. An evil cleric of some deity or other. I don't know. A chaotic evil rogue, who's just picked up a level of shadow dancer and it shows. He's always hiding and attacking from the shadows with his crossbow. A bit shady, but not a bad sort once you get to know him. An evil paladin of Umberlee. Go figure, he's followed around by a walking frog guy or something, the stench of fish is appalling. During the wary introductions, four sword spiders, infested with some manner of fungus, charge forth from the tunnels. The dwarves waste no time in charging like crazy men, veritably atomising one of the spiders with one hit. I, wanting to assist my newfound comrades, cast Haste. DM: *Reading the PHB.* Hmm.... I think I'm going to go with the novels on this, Haste ages you a year. Kholai: Whuh? *Blink blink.* Offset: Apparently this wasn't all bad, it actually gives you an extra standard action each turn, like 3.0, but I'm not planning on using it, a year is pretty bad for my human companions. Nevermind though, let's continue with combat. I move into the centre of the room, ready to loose a few spells next turn. Spider #2 charges from the same corridor as the one the dwarf killed, ignoring the dwarf completely, and jumps, pointy legs forward, straight into me, a healthy twenty points of damage, I'm left with about half health. I really ought to remember to cast my mage armour spell when I start adventuring in the morning. Chie, my helpful Aasimar cleric buddy, blasts away at the spiders from the ceiling with her eldritch blast. Shadowdancer's turn: He shoots at the spider attacking me..... Rolls an 8, after modifiers. DM: *Rolls* Okay, that hits Telios, roll sneak attack damage. Kholai: Wait, how is he sneak attacking me by mistake? DM: You're not aware of him, so it makes sense. At this point I'm having flashbacks to my first campaign, where a completely different DM ruled that my sorceror buddy who rolled about fifteen under my AC and the skeleton's AC that he was aiming at managed to shoot me in the leg, dealing more damage than the skeleton ever did. But I got lucky, he rolled low on the bonus dice, and I was left with all of 3 HP. Ranger: The only person with a flaming weapon, which is pretty much the only element that works well against these beasties, kills off spider #4. Seeing as we started off with 6k gp, don't ask me where the +2 weapon came from. Spider #3: Kills cleric. The DM attempted to fudge the roll by reducing the number of times it attacked, but the player calls them on it, somewhat unusually, and they die, horribly as fate intended. Finally, I'm up. Wraithstrike, full attack, the spider takes both hits, and I coup de grace it next turn out of spite, then wander off. Thankfully, the ring of sustenance (one of the few magic items I could afford) paid off as the party rested in a safe spot for eight hours, giving plenty of time to heal, memorise spells, and cast all those buffs and armour spells life had neglected to grant me the opportunity to cast beforehand. Then we continued downwards, to a new part of the underground complex where a convenient pit trap (Heart of Air is an excellent level 2 spell), deposited us into darkness. In the darkness, those of us lucky enough to have darkvision (oddly enough, all of us except the ranger and the monk/cleric who turned up mysteriously when the evil cleric died) spotted two stone tablets, which I ganked before anyone else had the chance to move. Turns out they're the entire goal of the quest. The tablets of Imaskari they're called, and they apparently are the only way to save the Realms from a race of diabolical creatures that somehow emerged from a Sphere of Destruction. A swift search later, and a secret door opened to reveal a glowing jewel atop an organic mound of fungus. Waves of mental energy struck several of us down. "Welcome to your doooooom." End of session. Hey, pretty good. Funny ol' house rules about haste, sneak attacks, firing into melee and stuff, but nothing I can't handle, and my semi-optimised gish is doing pretty well. Day 2: By the time Telios recovers from the stun, the fight's almost over, but he charges in anyway, casting his second wraithstrike of the day (he memorised wraithstrike in his level 3 slots too - see the haste ruling) and swinging his magical self-made rapier.... Natural 1, critical fumble. Bugger. DM: That's an attack of opportunity. The mound casts fireball as its final hurrah, you all get reamed, and less exp because you didn't kill the mound yourself. Kholai: Bugger. Oh well. With the experience from the boss and last week's session, that's enough for us who bought off our level adjustment to hit level 7, and I take the opportunity to pick up some level 3 attack spells, sound lance and shatterfloor. Now we're cooking. Despite being informed by the DM that nobody spoke Netherese or anything to understand the tablets, one comprehend languages spell later, and Telios happily perused their mind-bending contents. Apparently they contained spells that would give these outsiders from the Sphere of Annihilation souls, either destroying them, or rendering them harmless. That explained quite a bit. Escaping the dungeon with a horde of loot (sadly still not enough to get a +2 weapon when divvied up), we found ourselves back in the desert. A quick augury as to which way to go later, (and a resultant Weal and Woe result being our best bet) we find ourselves captured, interrogated, and incarcerated by some Netherese shades or something. Spellbook and weapons confiscated, poor ol' Telios is left with only the spells he memorised before they set out, the various spell component pouches hidden about his person (three of them, in fact), and a bad attitude. Session cut short here, but yeah, things are looking pretty bad for the group, we're pretty much trapped in a pocket dimension by a bunch of grumpy archmages, and the dwarves have been taken somewhere separate from the rest of us. Day 3: Thankfully, Chie the Eldritch Disciple picked up the shatter invocation last level, and we make a daring escape with the help of the shadow dancer's shadow companion, fighting off guards with stolen weapons and my limitted spells. Rescuing the dwarves and recovering not only our equipment, but a third tablet of Imaskari! Things are going pretty well. We traipse merrily off towards the exit.... Unfortunately, that exit lead into an arena, with a large, angry troll on the other side. Members of the audience cast long range cure spells on the creature from the stands as the dwarf twins (who had been enlarged earlier by Telios) tried their best to hurt it, only for one of them to be batted onto the balcony by an angry troll. Resisting the urge to AoE the stands to take out the healers, Telios, in possibly his finest moment in the entire campaign, raised a finger and shot the Ray of Stupidity he'd prepared before they got captured into the troll's thick cranium. Max roll, the troll dropped instantly, and, when the group stopped laughing, was beaten to death by the dwarf's angry brother. The first "one spell victory" of the campaign. But it didn't stop there, a shade guardsman leapt from the balcony, and once more, the party, already injured and tired from their fight against the guards and the troll, had to fight for their lives against the swordsman. It was fun, it was close, and we finally managed to take him down thanks to a summon of a pack of celestial dogs by Chie. We managed to escape the city without any casualties. End of session. Interestingly, the DM ruled that since you could take a double move, you could take two standard actions too. Score for the spellcasters and the warlock. Kind of made up for the SR that every single enemy had. Day 4 Our rest was disturbed by a red wizard lich, who had a necklace of spell absorption which ruined Telios' sound lancing fun. To further violate the party, he summoned a massive 21HD undead monstrosity, which promptly ate him. I dunno, maybe he botched his incantation? The dwarves, who had no magic weapons, had absolutely no impact on the beasty whatsoever. The ranger managed to roll two twenties in a row for Criticalling, which apparently, had the beast not been undead, would have meant instant death thanks to another house rule. No problem thinks I, just avoid melee like the plague. The beast, unfortunately, has SR, and Telios' second soundlance and shatterfloor were wasted. Thank Mystra for orb spells. At least, so I thought. As one of the few people to successfully damage the beast, it charged Telios, once again the mage found himself the sole target of the enemy's attack. On low HP, he pegged it to safety. Thankfully, Chie cast the campaign's final one spell victory, Dispel Magic, banishing the summon and saved the party. Huzzah! We levelled up, now everyone's at level 8, and we're feeling pretty confident. DM tells us we should conquer the BBEMs next session. We made it to a town, where we were hailed as the promised ones, and sold fresh gear at half price. Telios was now nicely kitted out with a +1 Shocking Elven Courtblade, magic armour, and a fresh supply of awesome. Here's where disaster struck. A fellow in Black robes handed one of our stupider party members.... A deck of cards. What could be the harm? They asked. Telios, who knows exactly what a Deck of Many things does, agreed, warily, to cast auguries for people to determine what the cards might hold in store. First person draws, after a false reading, and suffers heavily, the wrath of an outsider is upon them, their mind is shattered and they become a drooling halfwit, and all the magic gear they shared out was disintegrated instantly. Telios, relying on his spells once more, drew, averting permanent imprisonment with the fates card, then drawing two more, the comet, the knight, and the rogue... The monk/cleric turned on him following a delusion caused by his own drawing, believing Telios to be a dread wraith. Telios, confused, felled him with two spells, gaining a level putting him finally into the part where he becomes an effective gish rather than a semi-mage. Finally, the paladin of Umberlee drew his cards, declining Telios' offer of an augery. He lost everything, even his alignment became lawful neutral, and he lost all powers of his goddess. Thankfully, salvation! His last card granted him one wish: "I wish everything was back to normal." The entire party found themselves in their homes, doing their normal everyday activities, with no memory of their comrades or their quest. The outsiders had never existed. See you next week for a Mutants and Masterminds game. WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUU? Talk about anticlimactic, one week away from finishing the campaign and rocks fall, everyone dies. No closure, no closure at all. My wife is pretty miffed. Should we prevail on the DM to undo this unduly harsh wish ruling, and get our long anticipated final battle or just chalk it up as a lost cause, shelve our now higher level characters for a few campaigns, and start learning mutants and masterminds? Anyone elses' campaign been raped by the deck of many things/wish malfunction?
green_yawgmoth 05-21-07, 10:27 AM	Your campaign asn't raped by the DoMT, your campaign was raped by an assfaced DM who doesn't know how to not make up stupid houserules mid-session. My gods, there were a good half dozen times in that where I would have stood up, used various bodily functions to desecrate the DM, and walked out. Are there any DMs out there who know how to make a game that's fun for the players and themselves without playing "hey let's see how badly I can screw over the players"? I mean damn, the worst I do is give my players corruption/depravity. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/yawgmoth/kittyjig.gif
Optimized_Commoner 05-21-07, 10:40 AM	Firstly, I don't know about other people, but I can't read big blocks of text off a computer screen so I missed most of what you said. Some paragraph breaks would be appreciated. What I managed to read though, seemed to me like a game where the DM either doesn't have a clue what he's doing, or knows what he's doing and chooses to be a jerk. I wouldn't put it in the ...colourful... terms that green yawgmoth used, but I agree with him in general principle.
HairyApe 05-21-07, 10:44 AM	Unfortunately, I have played with all of those house rules before (yes, in one game). They don't lead to anything good most of the time. I would let it go, as you probably don't want to fight any bad guy that DM made anyway. You might ask to look at it and see what you would have been up against.
DrMorganes 05-21-07, 10:59 AM	Gah! The "haste ages you 1 year" is straight out of AD&D. It was also one of the most ignored rules in the game at the time, as I recall... Pack up your dice and run the next game at your house. I'm sure you wife won't mind the excuse to entertain a few new friends - as long as she still gets her share of the XP for the evening! ;)
VrecknidjX 05-21-07, 11:17 AM	Should we prevail on the DM to undo this unduly harsh wish ruling, and get our long anticipated final battle or just chalk it up as a lost cause, shelve our now higher level characters for a few campaigns, and start learning mutants and masterminds?I'd find a new DM. While I like my characters, I've lost enough that I no longer get attached to any of them. But, that kind of craziness is annoying to be sure, and, I don't know that you could get anything like an assurance that it wouldn't happen again. Dave
Optimized_Commoner 05-21-07, 12:40 PM	The "haste ages you 1 year" is straight out of AD&D. It was also one of the most ignored rules in the game at the time, as I recall... I liked it, personally. I thought magic being dangerous to the user made it seem more of a powerful and mysterious force. Also explained why the world managed to stay pseudo-medieval, mages were cautious about using their powers and so they never became common-place. Mostly flavour reasons, but I enjoyed them.
Azezel 05-21-07, 07:10 PM	chaotic evil rogue At this point, Azezel knows all he needs to know to decide that this is a bad game. The player was bad for creating such a character, the DM was bad for accepting it, and the OP was foolish for gaming with these people. Also - OP - Paragraphs, my friend, paragraphs.
Raveni 05-21-07, 08:04 PM	I'm sure you wife won't mind the excuse to entertain a few new friends - as long as she still gets her share of the XP for the evening! ;) The Mature Topics forum is that way. :devil: | | | v Might as well, though... Your DM is pretty much just :censored: with you, your wife, and your friends anyway.
Ace_of_time 05-21-07, 11:12 PM	I laughed so hard at this one. this is the umbist DM I have read on this board.
green_yawgmoth 05-22-07, 06:46 AM	At this point, Azezel knows all he needs to know to decide that this is a bad game. The player was bad for creating such a character, the DM was bad for accepting it, and the OP was foolish for gaming with these people. Also - OP - Paragraphs, my friend, paragraphs.There is nothing wrong with evil alignments, so long as you have a group that can be mature about it. The problem is when players act like a pack of retards and use the "I'm evil HUUURRRRRRRRR" excuse to do really stupid things. The same stupid crap happens with the other alignments, the only thing that changes is the excuse. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/yawgmoth/kittyjig.gif
Kholai 05-22-07, 08:27 AM	Para-what-now? Sorry, I do have a tendency to forget others lack my propensity for text walls. I shall endeavour to refrain from missing out paragraphing in future. See? I did it just then! And again! Seriously though, to defend the DM somewhat, he has shown some willingness towards compromise on the house rules. I was more miffed about the "surprise" factor of it than the actual rules, and that my wife and I were coming in mid-campaign where everyone else had foreknowledge of those rules exacerbated things somewhat. Even the haste ruling, I'd have been okay with, so long as I'd been forewarned so I could choose to skip the spell. As for evil characters.... Well, to be honest, the CE rogue caused less trouble in the long run for the party than the LG dwarven berserkers did. He was cowardly, greedy and pretty morally suspect, but I've no out-of-character complaints against him. To Green Yawgmoth.... Corruption/Depravity? What might those be? By and large, I'm willing to give things another chance. The DM doesn't seem to have as firm a grasp of the rules/balances of the game as I (he thinks that most of the Complete Arcane feats and Psionics are broken, for example), and I think that's why the occassional "odd" house rule. (He does have a penchant for getting wizards in melee though....) But he does some good features, he lets people multiclass without peculiar restrictions, allows LA buyoff, Tome of Battle characters (after I lent him the book to read) and even worked with me to create a few custom spells that fitted my character concept. So long as next time we touch D&D I get a chance to go through some things, I hope we'll be able to work something out. Including threats to glue his dice together if he ever lets a player touch the DoMT, or messes up something that's supposed to be beneficial to the player (such as a level 9 spell), into something campaign killing. Depending how things go in that next campaign though, we may have to go online for our D&D fare, there's not another gaming group within fifty miles of here....
starfire311 05-22-07, 09:06 AM	DoMT, classic campaign ender, last time I had a DM introduce one, I was the party mage, and it quickly ended up at the bottom of my bag of holding to never see the light of day, I refused to acknowledge its existance from that point forward. I think the DM and 1 of the players were quite disappointed by that turn of events.
Prator_the_Legendary 05-22-07, 09:27 AM	The player seems to be having fun. That's enough reason for me not to want to hate this DM. That said, yeah, you should probably talk to him about the "Back to normal" thing. That isn't funny even as a joke, and I'm guessing that the others players won't be too pleased about it either.
Ace_of_time 05-22-07, 05:58 PM	Para-what-now? Sorry, I do have a tendency to forget others lack my propensity for text walls. I shall endeavour to refrain from missing out paragraphing in future. See? I did it just then! And again! Seriously though, to defend the DM somewhat, he has shown some willingness towards compromise on the house rules. I was more miffed about the "surprise" factor of it than the actual rules, and that my wife and I were coming in mid-campaign where everyone else had foreknowledge of those rules exacerbated things somewhat. Even the haste ruling, I'd have been okay with, so long as I'd been forewarned so I could choose to skip the spell. As for evil characters.... Well, to be honest, the CE rogue caused less trouble in the long run for the party than the LG dwarven berserkers did. He was cowardly, greedy and pretty morally suspect, but I've no out-of-character complaints against him. To Green Yawgmoth.... Corruption/Depravity? What might those be? By and large, I'm willing to give things another chance. The DM doesn't seem to have as firm a grasp of the rules/balances of the game as I (he thinks that most of the Complete Arcane feats and Psionics are broken, for example), and I think that's why the occassional "odd" house rule. (He does have a penchant for getting wizards in melee though....) But he does some good features, he lets people multiclass without peculiar restrictions, allows LA buyoff, Tome of Battle characters (after I lent him the book to read) and even worked with me to create a few custom spells that fitted my character concept. So long as next time we touch D&D I get a chance to go through some things, I hope we'll be able to work something out. Including threats to glue his dice together if he ever lets a player touch the DoMT, or messes up something that's supposed to be beneficial to the player (such as a level 9 spell), into something campaign killing. Depending how things go in that next campaign though, we may have to go online for our D&D fare, there's not another gaming group within fifty miles of here.... Just so you know. ( if you didn't already) A DM is suppost to tell new player/s about any house rules in his world before play begins and never as you get hit by your ally with what is not a sneak att because you had already moved and there for not FF anymore. P.S. Combust, 2nd level wizard/sorc spell should keep him from running up on you. Trust me