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D&D: Stretching Our Wings (11/28/2006)
The session on Tuesday was a good one.
The drive itself was better than I expected. There wasn't much traffic; I did get stuck behind a couple of slow drivers, but that's pretty much inevitable. For the first time, I made the drive without referring to the directions at all. So now I know that the route is definitely well ensconced in my brain, which is reassuring.
I'd expected to play in Matt's game (the one where I play a paladin), but when I got there, it turned out that we were playing in Steve's game instead. Which meant that all the pondering I'd done on how to react to simultaneously losing an eye, 20 years, lots of characteristic points, my world, and my god, was...not wasted, but it could have waited.
So it goes.
Anyway, I was looking forward to the game. I'd just leveled - as had most of the other characters - and had gained a Fly spell.
I should explain that my cleric chose the Luck and Travel domains, and as a result gets Fly as a third-level spell choice. Unfortunately I can only take it once (until I get a fourth-level domain slot, anyway), but it lasts for fifty minutes. I figured it would change things quite a lot.
Incidentally, everything else about the level was surprisingly lame. No increase in saving throws, attack bonuses, or any other spell slots (i.e., I didn't get any more 1st or 2nd level spells). For hit points in this group you roll a regular die for your character type, and simultaneously roll a die of the next lower range, taking whichever result is higher. Clerics use a d8 for hit points, so I rolled a d8 and a d6...getting a 1 and a 2. So I gained two hit points.
Actually, I did the hit point roll the last time we played.
The session opened with the party on a mission: we had to clean out a bunch of bandits or face prosecution for adventuring without a charter. So we started out in a horse-drawn covered wagon towards the area where the bandits were operating.
Soon we ran across a group of about fourteen bodies. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they'd encountered the bandits. I checked around, and found one that was still alive - barely. Some quick healing, and we had a new member of the party (a new player named Gene). He was a monk, and wasn't able to give us much information. But the tracks of the bandits were fresh, less than an hour old. So we followed them.
Before long we spotted the bandits, five of them, under some trees. They didn't seem to have spotted us yet, so the party immediately got into a lengthy discussion about what to do. It seemed to me that the conversation was going on way too long, so I told the DM that I was casting Fly on myself; it seemed like a good time to try it. Unfortunately the sound of my voice casting the spell alerted one of the group's leaders.
Several people also pointed out that it was probably not a good idea to cast the Fly spell for that encounter. At the time I thought that they were probably right. But as it turned out, the spell was extremely useful - more useful than I'd expected.
The ranger had just gained spellcasting ability, and cast an Entangle spell on the bandits. It had a huge area of effect, getting all five of the bandits that we'd originally seen. The leader was able to make a save and resist the effect, but the four others - generic bandits with bows - weren't so lucky.
The ranger charged into battle. So did the monk. The conjurer summoned a lemure (a smallish devil resembling an evil lump of flesh) and sent it in to fight the enemy leader. The archer cast a Shield spell and started shooting at the entangled enemy archers. I flew 30 feet straight up and started shooting at them as well.
Before long the monk was badly injured, so I flew down and cast a Cure Moderate Wounds on him. It was a lot easier to get to him quickly while flying. After that there was more combat, during which the archers and leader were taken out. An enemy wizard in the distance summoned his own lemure and set it on us, after which we lost track of him (the wizard, not the lemure). And an enemy monk, and a number of other bandits came up from further away to attack us.
The enemy monk was beaten down pretty quickly. But we noticed her opening her mouth and apparently swallowing something. When she healed up it didn't take much intelligence to realize that someone invisible had poured a healing potion in her mouth.
I was 30 feet up in the air, so I did something that I'm rather proud of: I targeted an area-effect Dispel Magic burst (with a 30-foot radius) twenty feet back from the enemy monk, towards the enemy camp. And dispelled the invisibility of a rather terrified wizard, who immediately started running like hell.
I flew after him, shooting, but a shield spell protected him. Fortunately the conjurer (I think) took a shot at his back and knocked him down. I flew down and pummelled the wizard into extra-unconsciousness, then picked him up and flew back with him. We'd gotten the whole group of bandits, I think.
The next step was to interrogate them to find the location of their main base, and the boat they'd used to get to and from there. The party started arguing about what to do, so I flew up and started looking around; making a lucky roll on a Spot, I saw a boat just offshore in the distance. At around that time I was called back down, and returned to the party.
The conjurer was suggesting torture on the captives, although I'm pretty sure that he was joking. The bard was about to cast Read Surface Thoughts, which would have allowed him to get the truth from their minds - if they didn't resist, i.e. make their Will saves. It seemed to me that since we had them totally helpless, it shouldn't be too hard to reduce their chance to save; for example, we could tickle them, which would almost certainly make it harder for them to resist.
I suggested tickling, but the bard misheard me and thought that I too was suggesting torture. My response:
"I said tickle, not torture. And you've got a big hat with a feather in it!"
I should explain that the bard has a second persona that he uses for various amusing purposes, a bit of a fop; his hat is a particularly prominent part of his disguise. So that was the quote of the session, earning me 100 additional experience points.
(The DM instituted a policy of rewarding a quote of the session last week.)
It later occurred to me that it would have been even easier to hold a knife to the captives' throats and say "If you resist, you die".
We got the information we needed, got one of the captives to agree to take us to the boat (he'd taken an arrow to the groin on a called shot), and I suggested stripping the cloaks off of the dead and disguising ourselves as bandits - it would make the approach to the boat easier. And that's where we broke for the day.
Incidentally, I've been thinking about the possibilities of the Fly spell, and did a post about it over on rec.games.frp.dnd. I've actually gotten a lot of interesting responses to my posts over there recently, so I'm looking forward to see what people have to say.
Oh,by the way: I seem to have caught something. My sinuses are swollen and bleeding, all the skin on my head feels hot, and everything hurts. So I didn't remember the details of the session as well as I normally might, and I'm not writing as well as I usually would. I'm just not functioning well at all right now.
The drive itself was better than I expected. There wasn't much traffic; I did get stuck behind a couple of slow drivers, but that's pretty much inevitable. For the first time, I made the drive without referring to the directions at all. So now I know that the route is definitely well ensconced in my brain, which is reassuring.
I'd expected to play in Matt's game (the one where I play a paladin), but when I got there, it turned out that we were playing in Steve's game instead. Which meant that all the pondering I'd done on how to react to simultaneously losing an eye, 20 years, lots of characteristic points, my world, and my god, was...not wasted, but it could have waited.
So it goes.
Anyway, I was looking forward to the game. I'd just leveled - as had most of the other characters - and had gained a Fly spell.
I should explain that my cleric chose the Luck and Travel domains, and as a result gets Fly as a third-level spell choice. Unfortunately I can only take it once (until I get a fourth-level domain slot, anyway), but it lasts for fifty minutes. I figured it would change things quite a lot.
Incidentally, everything else about the level was surprisingly lame. No increase in saving throws, attack bonuses, or any other spell slots (i.e., I didn't get any more 1st or 2nd level spells). For hit points in this group you roll a regular die for your character type, and simultaneously roll a die of the next lower range, taking whichever result is higher. Clerics use a d8 for hit points, so I rolled a d8 and a d6...getting a 1 and a 2. So I gained two hit points.
Actually, I did the hit point roll the last time we played.
The session opened with the party on a mission: we had to clean out a bunch of bandits or face prosecution for adventuring without a charter. So we started out in a horse-drawn covered wagon towards the area where the bandits were operating.
Soon we ran across a group of about fourteen bodies. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they'd encountered the bandits. I checked around, and found one that was still alive - barely. Some quick healing, and we had a new member of the party (a new player named Gene). He was a monk, and wasn't able to give us much information. But the tracks of the bandits were fresh, less than an hour old. So we followed them.
Before long we spotted the bandits, five of them, under some trees. They didn't seem to have spotted us yet, so the party immediately got into a lengthy discussion about what to do. It seemed to me that the conversation was going on way too long, so I told the DM that I was casting Fly on myself; it seemed like a good time to try it. Unfortunately the sound of my voice casting the spell alerted one of the group's leaders.
Several people also pointed out that it was probably not a good idea to cast the Fly spell for that encounter. At the time I thought that they were probably right. But as it turned out, the spell was extremely useful - more useful than I'd expected.
The ranger had just gained spellcasting ability, and cast an Entangle spell on the bandits. It had a huge area of effect, getting all five of the bandits that we'd originally seen. The leader was able to make a save and resist the effect, but the four others - generic bandits with bows - weren't so lucky.
The ranger charged into battle. So did the monk. The conjurer summoned a lemure (a smallish devil resembling an evil lump of flesh) and sent it in to fight the enemy leader. The archer cast a Shield spell and started shooting at the entangled enemy archers. I flew 30 feet straight up and started shooting at them as well.
Before long the monk was badly injured, so I flew down and cast a Cure Moderate Wounds on him. It was a lot easier to get to him quickly while flying. After that there was more combat, during which the archers and leader were taken out. An enemy wizard in the distance summoned his own lemure and set it on us, after which we lost track of him (the wizard, not the lemure). And an enemy monk, and a number of other bandits came up from further away to attack us.
The enemy monk was beaten down pretty quickly. But we noticed her opening her mouth and apparently swallowing something. When she healed up it didn't take much intelligence to realize that someone invisible had poured a healing potion in her mouth.
I was 30 feet up in the air, so I did something that I'm rather proud of: I targeted an area-effect Dispel Magic burst (with a 30-foot radius) twenty feet back from the enemy monk, towards the enemy camp. And dispelled the invisibility of a rather terrified wizard, who immediately started running like hell.
I flew after him, shooting, but a shield spell protected him. Fortunately the conjurer (I think) took a shot at his back and knocked him down. I flew down and pummelled the wizard into extra-unconsciousness, then picked him up and flew back with him. We'd gotten the whole group of bandits, I think.
The next step was to interrogate them to find the location of their main base, and the boat they'd used to get to and from there. The party started arguing about what to do, so I flew up and started looking around; making a lucky roll on a Spot, I saw a boat just offshore in the distance. At around that time I was called back down, and returned to the party.
The conjurer was suggesting torture on the captives, although I'm pretty sure that he was joking. The bard was about to cast Read Surface Thoughts, which would have allowed him to get the truth from their minds - if they didn't resist, i.e. make their Will saves. It seemed to me that since we had them totally helpless, it shouldn't be too hard to reduce their chance to save; for example, we could tickle them, which would almost certainly make it harder for them to resist.
I suggested tickling, but the bard misheard me and thought that I too was suggesting torture. My response:
"I said tickle, not torture. And you've got a big hat with a feather in it!"
I should explain that the bard has a second persona that he uses for various amusing purposes, a bit of a fop; his hat is a particularly prominent part of his disguise. So that was the quote of the session, earning me 100 additional experience points.
(The DM instituted a policy of rewarding a quote of the session last week.)
It later occurred to me that it would have been even easier to hold a knife to the captives' throats and say "If you resist, you die".
We got the information we needed, got one of the captives to agree to take us to the boat (he'd taken an arrow to the groin on a called shot), and I suggested stripping the cloaks off of the dead and disguising ourselves as bandits - it would make the approach to the boat easier. And that's where we broke for the day.
Incidentally, I've been thinking about the possibilities of the Fly spell, and did a post about it over on rec.games.frp.dnd. I've actually gotten a lot of interesting responses to my posts over there recently, so I'm looking forward to see what people have to say.
Oh,by the way: I seem to have caught something. My sinuses are swollen and bleeding, all the skin on my head feels hot, and everything hurts. So I didn't remember the details of the session as well as I normally might, and I'm not writing as well as I usually would. I'm just not functioning well at all right now.