Brothers Fizz the Whisper Gnome Rogue and Bang the Whisper Gnome Wizard will be joining Dinendal the Elven Fighter on his adventure, along with Percival the Human Paladin and Hadara the Human Cleric.
Who will be the first pushing up the daisies?
Edit: Bang now has a familiar, Codo the ferret.
My gaming group finished the adventure we were playing the last time we met. We have retired the characters for now and are starting on a new campaign, with new characters and a different player as the DM. The adventure is supposed to be an old-school dungeon crawl, so we were asked to create characters from the core classes, rather than the less-focussed classes like Bard and Druid. I have chosen to be the party's main Fighter, protecting the party shoulder-to-shoulder with the Paladin. Mind you, the Paladin is being played by the same player behind the Black Mage, which should be interesting.
For this adventure we have been given the opportunity to roll up some characters more powerful than normal, with overall starting ability modifiers not below +10. I managed to roll something pretty decent, and this is reflected in my abilities. Finding my previous character, Touched By Death, to be interesting in a fight, by tripping, disarming and grappling opponents, I decided to carry some of those abilities across to the Fighter, hoping to make him more effective in combat than merely standing toe-to-toe with the enemy and hitting away until one of us goes down. To this effect, I looked at what weapons were available and ended up choosing the Spiked Chain.
The Spiked Chain is interesting, as it offers a character 10' reach with the weapon. Unlike other reach weapons though, it also allows the character to threaten adjacent squares as well. The drawback is that it requires an Exotic Weapon Proficiency Feat, although Fighters get quite a few more Feats than other classes. It is a two-handed weapon, which deals more damage on a successful hit, 1.5 times Strength instead of just the character's Strength modifier, but doesn't allow the use of a shield. As for my armour, I have chosen to wear a Chain Shirt because of my high Dexterity ability score of 18, giving me a +4 ability modifier. The only suit of armour that would give me a better overall Armour Class is Full Plate Armour, and that is only by an extra one point. Other armours could give me a similar Armour Class as the Chain Shirt but at the cost of reducing my speed to 20', whereas the Chain Shirt keeps it at 30'.
Also, with the Combat Expertise and Improved Trip Feats I should be able to trip people up before they can get to me, because of the Spiked Chain's reach, and several times in a round because of my Dexterity of 18 and taking the Combat Reflexes Feat. I am hoping that this will make the slightly lower Armour Class less of a threat, particularly as being an Elf gives me a -2 Constitution penalty and the resulting reduction in Hit Points. The Spiked Chain can also be used to Disarm an opponent, which may come in useful even though I haven't taken the Improved Disarm Feat.
My Elf has two Longswords and a Shield to complement the Spiked Chain, with one Longsword made of Cold Iron and the other of Alchemical Silver to get past different Damage Reductions that some monsters have. The Spiked Chain is a +1 Magical Weapon partly to get past Magic Damage Reduction and partly because we are unlikely ever to find a Magically Enhanced Spiked Chain as loot. Just to complete my offensive capabilties, I have a Mighty Composite Longbow, with +4 Strength adjustment, for any ranged attacks I may need to do. I am a walking weapons locker.
Finally, I have given the character a few ranks in Craft (Weaponsmithing) and the Weapon Focus Feat for the Spiked Chain so that I can take the Exotic Weapon Master prestige class should I want to. And, yes, I made the character an Elf mostly so that this web site would be more 'on-topic'.
I present Dinendal the Elven Fighter.
Occasionally, we find ourselves having to use a skill like Diplomacy to achieve something. While it is good to be able to solve something without fighting, as a party full of Dwarves with a combined Charisma modifier of -5 and no ranks in the skill we don't find ourselves confident of succeeding. It is times like these where we look to take advantage of the Aid Another option, where each player can make a DC10 skill check, with success giving another player a +2 modifier to his roll. In some situations several people can Aid Another, and the easier-to-make DC10 check to add several +2 modifiers looks attractive.
In trying to convince a powerful wizard that he is being hoodwinked, rather than fighting him and his partner, who is also a high-level wizard, we used Diplomacy and the excellent tactic of Aiding the Cleric, who boldly stepped up to try to convince this misguided fellow. This meant that rather than all of us having a pathetically low chance of persuading him, we could help the Cleric in his attempt. Of course, it was only natural that amongst us we rolled 16, 18, 19 and 19 on our DC10 checks, all being quite convincing when helping our Cleric, and that the Cleric should act like a bumbling buffoon with precious few persuasive skills by rolling a 1. Gah.
Luckily, we gave enough help and had enough circumstantial evidence to convince this chap that we could help him, thus saving ourselves a lot of bother, even though anyone but the Cleric would have clearly succeeded if we had made the Diplomacy checks individually.
When the Rogue finally makes his way back out of the Maze in which he was lost for a while, he gets back to the room that he left. When the spell was cast on him, he left the room as he was surrounded, as were the rest of the party, by a dozen Trolls. He returned to find, as the DM told him, 'an empty room, full of dead troll bodies and foul-smelling smoke'.
That's an empty room, full of dead troll bodies and foul-smelling smoke.
Still in the Maze, our Rogue finds himself having to make an Intelligence check of DC20 to find his way out and back to the party. This is a bit tricky for someone with an Intelligence modifier of +1, needing a 19 or 20 on a D20 to succeed. To keep the player occupied while his character continues to stumble around the maze, the Rogue's player takes on the role of the party's Fighter, whose player is absent for the session.
The party, without the Rogue for now, heads deeper in to the lair and we encounter some minions. Owing to the cramped conditions under which we meet them, the Fighter takes the lead. He swings his weapon, his axe biting deeply in to soldier after soldier, as we cut our way through the narrow corrider. While he is fighting, the player rolls a 19 for one hit, followed by another 19 for the next hit. After this, we need to get down through a trap door, which the Fighter jumps down for speed rather than taking the ladder. He rolls a third, consecutive 19 for his Jump check. Wow, all of those results would have got the Rogue out of the maze!
The player then gets the chance to make an Intelligence check to get his Rogue out of the maze, after spending some time reading a couple of journals he had found earlier in the day. After those three 19s, how hard could it be to get another one? The player rolls his D20 and it lands on an 18. Oh, so close! A couple more Intelligence checks later, both failed, and the player throws his D20 down on the table in frustration. I cannot begin to describe the poetry of seeing it come to rest on a 19 when he did that.
Still, it only took three more Intelligence checks for him to roll yet another 19 and escape the maze, bringing with him some important information he gleaned from the journals. It's a dodgy D20, if you ask me.
We rejoin our characters in the room we left them, which is now filling with smoke.
'Where's the smoke coming from?', asks our Mage, bewildered. The poor chap must be severely disorientated to forget about the bodies of the dozen or so Trolls burning at one end of the room. It's probably because he had to use up a couple of charges on his precious staff to create the Wall of Fire.
After the shenanigans of the Mage stealing some spellbooks from the Rogue, which the Rogue was going to give him anyway, the magic item power struggle was escalated. Our Rogue was heard to mumble something about wanting to take some ranks in Use Magical Device so that he could then use wands and scrolls, thus giving him a good reason to keep some of these items himself as 'back-ups', should something terrible happen to our Mage. And most of us are fairly sure that that last bit wasn't said in hope.
It was fortuitous then that we fought the self-destructing wizard, as the Rogue and I found ourselves out of sight of our Mage, with a Wand of Fireballs tantalisingly in front of us, held in a charred hand. With a playful wink, the Rogue deftly plucked the Wand out of the dead wizard's hand and tucked it in to his clothing, claiming it as his own. It was only fair that he take the spoils of battle, as he had survived the explosion.
How could we have possibly forseen that, within an hour, the whole party would find ourselves in a fairly large room, facing Trolls who numbered double that of our party; Trolls who can only be killed with fire damage, regenerating otherwise. At this point our Rogue was, naturally, the furthest away from our Mage, and I could see he was having an internal ethical dilemma about whether he should have given up the Wand earlier.
Luckily, however, he didn't have to wrestle with his conscience too much, as an enemy spell caster took him out of the battle. Casting Maze on him, the Rogue was trapped in an extra-dimensional labyrinth, far from any harm that almost a dozen Trolls could pose. Well, it may have been lucky for him, but the rest of us were still surrounded by all of those Trolls, now with fewer targets to choose from.
If only we'd had a Wand of Fireballs to help us defeat them.
When the Rogue died, he was off exploring the enemy's lair with me, checking out some chests that we found whilst the others were looking after some Elf the party had rescued. In the chests were some spell books, something the Mage would very much like. As such, the Rogue put them in his backpack so that he could take them back to the Mage. Sadly, it was just after this that the Rogue set off the Phantasmal Killer trap and died. I carried his body back to the rest of the party and told them what I had seen, but the Rogue was stone-cold dead, not to be revived with low-level magic.
We decide to rest for the night so that our Cleric can learn the Raise Dead spell and we can get our friend back. But as we rest for the night, our unscrupulous Mage, making sure he took first watch during the night, baldly goes through the dead Rogue's backpack and steals the spellbooks from him. He then has the gall to admonish the Rogue, after we raise him in the morning, for not presenting him with the books sooner.
The Rogue points out that because he was dead at the time it was quite tricky to delve in to his backpack to get the spellbooks any sooner, and is shocked that the Mage would steal from the party by rifling through someone else's backpack at night. The Mage insists that the Rogue wasn't going to give him the spellbooks, because of some petty rivalry the Mage believes exists. Apparently, being dead is not an excuse.
Having seen our Rogue die earlier from a Phantasmal Killer, I was a little concerned when a similar illusion appeared in front of my face in the midst of a battle. The Phantasmal Killer is an illusion that presents you with your worst nightmare. You make a Will saving throw to disbelieve in the illusion; if you fail that you have to make a Fortitude saving throw or die of fear.
The illusion starts to take shape in front of my Monk's face.
GM: 'Make a Will saving throw.'
I throw the D20 and succeed in saving against the Illusion.
GM: 'Okay, make a Fortitude saving throw.'
Me: 'What?! ...'
GM: 'Oh yeah, you made the Will save. Never mind.'
But it was too late. My body was slumped over the table after I had failed the Will save and thus believed I needed to make the Fortitude save. I was dead from the fear of having my character die instantly.
A Mage that I was Grappling and the Rogue was about to finish off got desperate and set off his wand of Fireball centred on himself, hoping to kill us even at the expense of his own life. Luckily, both myself and the Rogue have Evasion, although the mage and two peasants close by didn't.
After the explosion, impressed by our evasive action, the DM tells us, 'The only person who was hurt in that Fireball was him, him, and him', pointing to the miniatures on the gaming mat.
'The 'only' person?', I ask. I wonder if there was some cloning involved.