'You're lucky they rolled low on their damage!'
With my character lying on the ground, no allies in sight, almost drowning in a pool of my own blood on -9 hit points, leaving me with one stabilisation roll to survive, if the two rogues that still flank me don't sneeze and drop me to -10 hit points and death anyway, I contemplate what would have been considered 'bad' luck in that situation.
Playing an evil character, as the entire party is, can really show just how devious one can get. When I, Steve the Pirate, find myself in an obvious prayer room to a good deity, inside the temple of a paladin we are trying to corrupt, I seize the opportunity to be as evil as possible.
I grab a quill and some ink from my backpack and deface a painting, depicting the god, hanging on the wall with a moustache, some NHS-rimmed glasses, and black out a few of his teeth. How much more evil can you get?
Our evil party accepts the task of trying to depose a new paladin ruler, by any means. Whether this is by killing him outright, exposing some hitherto-unknown corruption of his, or deceiving him and everyone else in to believing he has committed attrocities is up to us. Our mage has an interesting idea, in that we start a leaflet campaign suggesting that the paladin eats bunnies for lunch. That idea is solid gold, and would work if we had the months it would take to start a grass-roots campaign needed, but perhaps not the best for an evil, cut-throat party that seems intent on storming the palace to kill anything in sight.
And what luck! We leave the meeting room and wander in to an ambush that requires us to kill anything in sight! Of course, the enemies need to be in sight for us to kill them, and spotting the ambush was not straightforward for those of us with an eyepatch, whether we need it or not. Our ranger is first out of the door and, with his keen senses for humans, spots someone trying to hide in the corner of the alley. With a deftness of subtlety that only a pro could muster, he feigns stumbling over the doorway so that I, being behind him, bump in to him, whereupon he whispers that there is an enemy waiting for us in the corner. It was a clever way to alert fellow party members of danger without letting the concealed enemy know they've been spotted.
Sadly, pirates are not known for subtlety and whispering. 'YARR?! WHICH CORNER BE THEY IN?', I ask, pointedly looking at any corner in the alley I can see.
The ranger shakes his head as he shakes his D20 for the called-for initiative roll.
In-between longer adventures, we turn to a short adventure where we play evil characters. I'm not sure what class to play, until Bert mentions off-handedly that I could be a pirate, using the Dread Pirate prestige class that appears in the Complete Adventurer. Yarr, that be a fine idea, matey! Of course, I could have played a pirate without the prestige class, but as we were starting at a high-enough level to allow prestige classes it seeemed the best solution. Never mind that I could have just created a pirate background, actually being a pirate is even better.
In fact, even better than that is being a Halfling Dread Pirate. A Halfling Dread Pirate in an adventure set in a land-locked region some hundred miles from the nearest coastline. If Steve the Pirate doesn't enliven the adventure I'll eat my wooden leg.
Yarr, I be searchin' for this treasure. The map shows X marks the spot, but it just shows the coast and the X, so I be figurin' it be somewhere o'er here in this land. I be lookin' for a while now, but I be getting closer, and when I find it I share it all with you, me hearties! Yarr!
Grimlor, a dwarf paladin, runs with me, a night elf warrior, down from Razorfen Kraul after defeating the humanoid pigs inside, with the help of the druid Cyrancuse. We are heading back to Thalanaar to hand in proof of the demise of the boss of Razorfen Kraul, in the form of her pendant. The journey to Thalanaar meant travelling through Thousand Needles. That itself is hardly problematic, despite the number of beasts that roam there, as there is a fairly decent road running the length of the canyon, which the beasts tend to keep away from. The main problem is getting down in to the canyon in the first place.
To get to the canyon floor from the Southern Barrens there is really only one option, which is to take the Great Lift. This is a tauren construction that has two lifts operating side-by-side traversing the great height from the top of the canyon right down to the ground below. The only problem is that the tauren don't really like enemies using their lift, proabably for fear of sabotage, so they post a couple of guards to protect the top. The best option for travellers wishing to descend is to time the arrival of the lifts, which arrive and drop at different times, and run past the guards at the right time to catch one going down. The guard will then return to his post rather than chase you down.
Grimlor and I are hiding from plain sight, studying the lifts, determing when they come and trying to work out how quickly we could run to get in to one of them. With a glint in his eye Grimlor makes a wager. 'I bet I'll get to the bottom before you do, Tiger', says he. Looking at his short, stubby legs compared to my tall, slender frame, I accept his bet, and make a break for the left-hand lift. Grimlor calls out that I've made a bad choice, a chuckle in his voice, turning to go for the right-hand one instead.
Sadly, this shout attracts the attention of the tauren guard, and Grimlor is pursued as he stomps along the wooden platform to meet the lift that hasn't arrived. Meanwhile, my timing turns out to be pretty good, and the lift arrives a few seconds before I reach the end of the left-hand platform I have sprinted down. I step in to the lift and turn to see my dwarf friend just about out-running the tauren guard, lift still not close to being at the end of the platform. Yet he still shouts out that he'll beat me to the bottom!
And with that, he jumps.
Well, the tauren does indeed stop pursuing Grimlor, and Grimlor manages to reach the bottom of the canyon before me, by quite a time difference considering the head-start I had. Sadly, he is slowed somewhat by having to wander from the nearby graveyard as a ghost so that he can reinvigorate life in to his still-warm corpse, perhaps not appreciating just how far down the canyon floor was from the top. This allows the lift time to reach the bottom so that I can jog past him casually. He still won the wager, though, even if it took somewhat extreme measures. I don't think I'll ever fully understand dwarves.
Trying to show how a bard should be played, after believing my attempt recently with Dinike was far from impressive, the new party's bard makes good use of her knowledge of everything. Well, except for Nobility and Royalty, and we are meeting lots of nobility and royalty all of a sudden. But never fear, as the bard has Bardic Knowledge to fall back on in times like this. The accumulation of word-of-mouth and subtle investigations over the years combined with an amazing memory rewards the bard with knowledge in many situations that could not be gleaned any other way.
Sadly, Dinike looks like a freaking genius next to our new bard, with Bardic Knowledge check after check failing miserably, as we look to her for inspiration and information; all we get back is the gormless stare more commonly seen on a goldfish. We don't learn about the political machinations of the new city we are in, nor about the relationships between various members of the aristocracy of our home country. However, when we are in a gaol cell waiting to be sold as slaves and two dishes are pushed under a slat, offering us water and salt, BAM!, a natural 20 on the check and she tells us that the salt is a local delicacy.
And that probably would have been more of a revelation before I had tasted it.
A new adventure, a new adventuring party. One member is an oriental fellow, good with dealing damage with an open palm, and any other body part that can be swung effectively. However, he used to have trouble introducing himself, for some reason.
'Greetings, I am loosely hung.'
'... pardon me?'
'CHAN. I have changed my name. I am Lu-Tze CHAN. Is everybody happy now?'
When preparing to attack some miners by surprise, use a heavy pick, regardless of your proficiencies. That way, if you charge in and critically miss your opponent, instead hitting the rock face about three feet away, you can pretend that you are mining with enthusiasm.
The illusion is somewhat lessened when this is done with a spiked chain.
'Okay, so we need to distract those miners. I have the Ghost Sound spell. I could make an illusory sound sort of there-ish to draw their attention.'
'Uh, Xanthia, that's only about five feet away from where we are. We could just say, "Hey, miners! Look at us over here!" and save a you spell slot.'
It's a common problem: how do you sneak up on a guard? It gets more difficult when he has his back up against a cliff, so you can't approach him from behind. The smarter people will realise the answer lies in the third, vertical, dimension. Well, I call it 'smarter', because the plan involved jumping off an 80 foot tall cliff, which doesn't seem that smart to begin with. However, the dwarf involved, Khazgrim, has something of a death wish, and Xanthia the mage sort-of promised to cast Slow Fall on him after he leapt. No one thought that a gag would have helped, to stop the dwarf shouting 'Geronimo' on the way down, though. That kind of ruins the element of surprise.
After floating down to just above head-height, Khazgrim swings his mighty warhammer down upon the guard, at just the same moment as the guard notices a pretty daisy on the ground and bends over to pick it up. This is where the mage spell list seems deficient, and a Bungee Fall spell would be handy, to give suicidal dwarfs a second chance. Still, Kilgore the Rogue hiding behind a tree not too far away, and on the same level as the guard, charged in to help the dwarf out. Kilgore's unerring accuracy with a spiked chain soon sliced through the daisy's stalk, letting the guard pick it with little effort.
Luckily for the two melee fighters in the party, Zefis the druid had taken time to gain himself a good vantage point on the cliff to fire his heavy crossbow, and Xanthia had drawn her wand of Arcane Missile and fired off a round, both hitting and taking down the guard between them. They must have hit only because the guard was so distracted by falling dwarfs and spiked chain gardeners.