Slain by Elf

I quite enjoyed playing a Bard, even though the use of the class features was limited and my spell list was pretty much useless against plants. Having a high Charisma was certainly different, and the skills used could be put to good effect.

To get myself in to the role I practised my Sleight of Hand first, by palming Bert's new, large D20 without him noticing. It took a few minutes before he missed it, and then he looked around for a short while before someone gave me up. When I gave it back I nicked his new D12, which he noticed a bit quicker, but not straight away. I took this as a good sign for my Bard.

During the adventure, I managed to use Diplomacy and Bluff quite effectively, but the bit I most enjoyed was when we found a skeletal figure wearing two nice rings, one magical and one not, but still ornate and expensive-looking. The Barbarian went in to the room and plucked the two rings off the body, bringing them back. I managed to persuade the others to let me wear the magical ring, so the Barbarian held out the rings in the palm of his hand.

As I picked the magical ring up, I told the DM I would use Sleight of Hand to palm the other, expensive ring out of his hand at the same time. Even though he was paying attention, I rolled so well against his miserable failure that he had no idea where the ring had gone. A successful Bluff check on my part made him think that he must have dropped it in the room, so he had a quick look but couldn't find it before we had to move on.

I thought this was great, as I had myself a nice gift and no one could prove that the Barbarian hadn't dropped the ring in the room, particularly as he was convinced he had dropped it. Sure, a Rogue could have done that, but not with as much charm. I'll be keeping the Bard around, ready for further adventures.

I'm sure many parties can relate to the characters and situations in the Order of the Stick comic strip series, which is why it is so popular, and our party is no exception. This, along with my lack of imagination for names, is why I named my Bard 'Elan'. Nevertheless, sometimes we are too much like them to take things seriously.

Searching for the source of the vines of doom, we find ourselves in a hedge maze of twisty passages, all alike. Whilst wandering through these, after my Bard saves the party, once again, through his cunning and guile by leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in the maze, we come across some clearings. In one of them, the Barbarian steps forwards and, strangely enough, fails a Will Saving Throw and is mesmerised.

Suddenly remembering from earlier that his dog was by his side when he was first attacked by the vines, and thinking that maybe it would be affected by this too, I ask, 'Where's your dog, by the way?'

Barry replies for him: 'BING!'

And there was his trusted dog, right by his side, as it had been the entire time.

It's never easy picking a weapon for a fighter-type character. One can either go for the standard weapons, like a longsword, or pick something a bit more exotic. A longsword, or the like, has the disadvantage of being rather 'normal', lending little character to the fighter, but at least you are likely to find them lying about as loot, even magical ones, because they are so common. And while a more exotic weapon lends more character to the fighter, you can pretty much bet that all the Feats you take to enhance your to-hit and damage bonuses will be for nothing when you switch to the +3 longsword of spleen-removal, knowing full well that you are never going to find anything better in your chosen weapon.

As such, Bert was conflicted when creating the Barbarian for this one-off adventure. He was tempted by the scythe and its x4 critical hit multiplier, particularly as it was a two-handed weapon, but knew that it seemed a bit specialised as a weapon, even in a character that would probably only be used the once. Thinking this way, he eschewed the scythe and went for the good old Greataxe for his Barbarian instead.

It was a shame that when he was violated, knocked out, and controlled by the vines of doom his Barbarian dropped the Greataxe right in the middle of the vines, and we dragged him out of there without it. It was also a shame that this was the only slashing weapon we had in the party. But the biggest shame was that we found, in a nearby shed in this farming village, a large selection of scythes, ready for us to use.

Oh well, that will teach him not to pick a favoured weapon that can be found just about anywhere.

The party, including Elan the Elven Bard, a Cleric, a Mage and a Barbarian with his pet dog, are hired by a village to find out what's happened to the food convoy that is late and is thus causing consternation amongst the public as supplies run out. We head off on the five-day trek to where the food is harvested and find that this farming village has been overrun by vines. With the Mage thinking that these are simply normal vines, the Barbarian decides to wander in to see if he can find any of the villagers, with us fairly close behind.

He gets about twenty feet in to the vines before some different-looking vines start attacking him and his pet dog, who follows faithfully by his side. The dog gets attacked and runs back away from the vines, panicked somewhat, so the Barbarian, who shrugged off a couple of attacks, goes to try to calm it down. This provokes Attacks of Opportunity from the vines, which violate the Barbarian, sticking in to various crevices, and he falls to the ground, under some mind-affecting influence. His dog is now in the same state.

The rest of us decide that this isn't a good thing and we start to try to get the bodies out of the area where the vines can attack, as well as getting the vines out from the bodies. In dragging them out, the Mage gets attacked and violated, leaving just myself and the Cleric conscious and unmolested. Well, until the dog wakes up and starts attacking us. And by 'us', I mean 'me'. My poetry isn't that bad, stupid mongrel. But I didn't want to attack it back, so whilst the Cleric went to get the Mage I tried to get the vine out of the dog, after I'd successfully managed to get it out of the Barbarian before he woke up and started attacking us. He was probably a bigger threat than his dog. Or, at least, he had better be.

The vines, it appeared, were in control of the bodies of their victims, although not the minds. This became clearer when the Mage awoke and started trying to club the Cleric with a rock he picked up from the floor, shouting out that he was sorry but was no longer in control of his body. As such, when I went to remove the vine from the dog, it dodged out of my way and I couldn't grab it. As the mutt had all ready hurt me and I, sadly, couldn't take another couple of hits from it, I decided to fall-back behind the Cleric, who was now fighting the Mage, in a move I had learnt from a certain Paladin.

The Cleric managed to strike the Mage with a hefty blow that sent him to the ground, bleeding, after he missed attacking the vine sticking out of the Mage. I guess whatever doesn't kill him makes him stronger, and it's easier to get the vine out of something stationary. Flush from this near-death blow, the Cleric makes an Attack of Opportunity at the dog that's hounding me as it tries to attack me once more.

The DM asks if he's attacking the vine with the Attack of Opportunity. 'No', he replies, 'the dog.' I suppose he either learnt something from missing the vine in the Mage, or he just didn't like the dog much. Either way, he sends the dog in to the land of nod, blood oozing from it as it lay still.

After the Cleric finished laying the smack-down on most of our party members it was left to the responsible member of the party, i.e. me, to get the vines out of them and return them control of their bodies. I guess that makes me the hero. It's all in a day's work for a Bard.

With the current DM absent, it's time for another one-off adventure to play, which means another character to create! Probably because it would be for one week only, I decided to try out the Bard class. Often thought to be too general to be of any use, and frequently mocked and derided, the Bard does not have the best of reputations as a character class, but they couldn't be all bad, could they?

I made him an Elf, because the race seems a little more dignified than others and more befitting the type of Bard I wanted to play, and I didn't really want to play a Gnome. Mind you, the amount of Bluffing and Sleight of Hand I used in the game, mostly on my own party, probably meant I should have been a Gnome after all.

I gave him the name Elan straight from the Order of the Stick comic strip, which has a mostly useless Bard of the same name. I took Improved Initiative as my 1st level Feat, so that with luck his average armour class and low hit points would be offset by being able to act, and thus disengage, from melee as quickly as possible, and Weapon Finesse with the Rapier as my 3rd level Feat simply because he's a Bard. That's what Bards do. I maxed out several Charisma- and Dexterity-based skills, as those were my highest ability scores, including Perform (Poetry), to be pretentious. A few pieces of equipment and a handful of spells later and I had myself a character.

Elan the Bard.

Faust grew up the son of a Paladin. Intrigued by the divine power his father could evoke Faust started to follow in his father's footsteps, trying to learn how to evoke the same powers of protection and defence. When coming of age, Faust saw his first battle; although only a skirmish, he was repelled yet compelled by the violence, the mayhem, the power. The lure of the dark path of shadow magic was too tempting to resist, and Faust secretly started studying it, learning new ways that were orthogonal to those of his father's.

Knowing that his father would not only disapprove but also try to stop him from learning this magic with force, Faust took on his new name, dropping any ties to his family in the process, and effectively disappeared from their view. His skill in the dark arts grew to the extent that he became capable in small fights, at which point he joined the ranks of the Alliance. Faust did this partly to gain more training, partly in a hope to attone for what he saw was letting down his father, but partly just to fight, to kill.

Faust enjoys the battle for the sake of battle, for conjuring up dark spirits to use as his own. Whilst fighting for the Alliance, he secretly hopes that the battle will either last for his lifetime, as he knows his kind won't be tolerated once evil has been defeated. And while he has no bond to the evil creatures he fights, he respects them for their power and wonders if his spirit is strong enough to resist switching sides should the fight go against his Alliance forces.

Only time will tell.

I consider myself lucky enough to have been inspired of late, thanks to a certain Elf. I have written before about a proposed and then real trip to Thunder Bluff, although only snippets. Now I have completed a rather longer account, also in poem form, about the wonderful and exciting trip, and I present myself here to all of you.

The poem (PDF) is quite long and Miltonesque, Milton of course being a famous Stormwind Poet of lore. I hope it pleases at least one person.

After we disposed of some monsters and chased away the leader, who apparently escaped through a mirror, although we didn't specifically see this happen, we were left with sorting through all the loot that they had amassed over the years. Some of it was stored in chests; the sort of treasure-filled chests that one would normally protect with traps.

Our Rogue was happy to search for any traps, and found a couple. After disarming a mechanical trap he was able to open the chest to reveal not only treasure inside but also a fragile, glass sphere that contained some coloured gas. He had broken off the pin that would pierce this sphere, so it seemed obvious that this was part of the trap, and that the gas inside would be dangerous to inhale, if not deadly.

The Paladin, on realising the opportunities to use this glass sphere of toxic gas against others, asked, 'Why don't we keep it?', right before being reprimanded by his god.

The Rogue, on the other hand, wondered if we could use it to throw through the mirror, as if it went through it would give a nasty surprise to the leader that escaped. It was a good plan, except for the single flaw about what would happen if the mirror was, in fact, solid. It turns out that he knew this and was simply making a joke, which I can believe.

If the Paladin had said the same thing I doubt anyone wouldn't have taken him seriously.

We defeated the trolls without further difficulty and continued to explore the dungeon, heading back to check out a room we hadn't yet explored. When we open the door to it we see a table with some torture instruments on it. Getting in to the room lets the Rogue and Paladin, the latter of whom seems remarkably alert, to hear sounds coming from down a corridor leading out of this room. The sounds are of someone being tortured, somone Human. The Rogue suggests that we ought to get to this fellow quickly, so that his suffering may end and his torturers punished for their crime.

'Let's not be hasty', replies the Lawful Good Paladin, 'They've obviously been tortured for some time; another couple of seconds won't matter.'

Attacking some trolls in the dungeon, careful not to get hit by both claws in the same attack, we are starting to deal some heavy damage as we become more organised with our tactics. The Paladin feels particularly envigored and spies a weak spot in the enemy's defences, striking at the critical spot. With a battle cry that would send shivers down the non-existant spine of a purple worm, the Paladin strikes! His sword slashes down, and hits the troll right in the vulnerable spot! Sadly, the troll barely notices what has happened, as it injured itself worse picking its nose.

Still, that's what happens when you roll double 1s on 2D8 for a critical hit.

Nevertheless, this just encouraged the Paladin to want to vanquish these monsters even more, probably so that they couldn't tell their friends how puny he was. With the Mage having failed to give us any information that we hadn't all ready known about trolls, we had yet to find out how to stop these foul creatures from regenerating the damage some of us were dealing. After the Mage had done some fire damage to one of these trolls we had a chance to see if the wounds caused by that were healing.

Well, maybe not 'we', as the Paladin's roll of a 1 on his Intelligence Check for this was barely enough to let him remember which end of his sword to hold.