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Fun & Games
Diablo: I haven't had much free time lately, but I've managed to catch up a little with Diablo 2. One nice thing: since I upgraded to Windows XP, my system can now play all the cinematics. On the down side, when I start the game it freezes solid about half the time, requiring a full manual system shut-down. Once it has started, though, it's good to go.
I'd played a barbarian up to level 22; he was at Tal-Rasha's Tomb, but I suddenly found myself having real problems. When that happens it's usually time to drop back down to an easier area and level up a few times, and/or get some better equipment. But no equipment was available, and somehow I didn't feel like wandering around the Arcane Sanctuary for days on end. So I started up a new character, a sorceress.
It was more fun than the barbarian, so I stuck with it. On the old system the barbarian had been much easier to play than the sorceress, but this time the sorc was much easier than I expected. This may have been because I was playing smarter this time.
For example, in the old days my sorc had a HELL of a time with Duriel in Tal-Rasha's Tomb. I must have died thirty or forty times before I managed to kill him, at least. I remember running around with Blaze up for what felt like hours...it sucked.
This time, though, I stood there and cast Static Field over and over. It's already up to level 12 or so, so it has a nice range - and it wipes out 25% of the current hit points of all enemies in reach. Meanwhile my henchman kept firing arrows. I died twice, and then finally killed Duriel.
Another odd thing: my new sorceress is having a much easier time finding magic items than the barbarian did. The annoying thing is that they're items which would be great for the barbarian - and since I'm in single-player mode, I can't switch the items between characters. I've found the Barbarian Hauberk, Cleglaw's Pincers, and Cleglaw's Brace...all of which aren't much use to a sorceress, unfortunately.
The sorceress is up to level 26 now, and is in the jungle looking for Kurast.
D&D: Everyone else in my Thursday night D&D game is in the SCA, so they're all off for Pennsic this week...therefore no game last night. But last week (or was it the week before?) I came up with what I think was a pretty clever idea.
We needed to find someone who had been kidnapped. We didn't know who had kidnapped her, or where she was. She was completely blocked from scrying. There were virtually no clues at the kidnap site, and no witnesses. It seemed to be a total dead end.
And it was probably meant to be, but I found myself interested. I found myself pacing back and forth, trying to figure out some way to get more information.
Eureka! The Sending spell is not the same as scrying. It lets the caster send a 25-word verbal message and get a reply. I wasn't sure it would work, but it seemed worth a try. But now we had a new problem: you can only Send to someone you know personally, and none of us had known the kidnappee. In fact, NO cleric had ever met the victim.
I was thinking pretty furiously at this point. I'm not all that familiar with the D&D 3.5 system, but I remembered that spells can be placed in scrolls, which can be read by non-spellcasters with the appropriate skills. And one of the victim's servants, it turned out, could read magic scrolls.
The odds weren't good for success on the first try, but the DM rolled well and the message went through. The reply was a bit disconcerting; it seemed that the victim had chosen to leave, and her reply was either threatening, a prophecy of doom, or (possibly) a warning.
I don't know if we'll be following up this thread any time soon, but it was nice to have a chance to use my brain.
Currently Reading: Touched By the Gods by Lawrence Watt-Evans. A lengthy non-Ethsharic fantasy novel. Not bad, but not his best work; it's longer than his older novels, and somehow that doesn't seem like a good thing. One flaw, I think (at least as far as commercial success goes) is that the hero seems a bit dumber than LW-E's usual, and (spoiler, invisible ink - click and drag from here to the end to read) that he insists on rejecting his role as champion. If you want to appeal to teen-aged boys (which I suspect is the majority of the modern fantasy-readers demographic), you want to write something that those boys can identify with - and boys generally aren't into demanding a life of anonymity and non-recognition as a reward for feats of incredible heroism.
I'd played a barbarian up to level 22; he was at Tal-Rasha's Tomb, but I suddenly found myself having real problems. When that happens it's usually time to drop back down to an easier area and level up a few times, and/or get some better equipment. But no equipment was available, and somehow I didn't feel like wandering around the Arcane Sanctuary for days on end. So I started up a new character, a sorceress.
It was more fun than the barbarian, so I stuck with it. On the old system the barbarian had been much easier to play than the sorceress, but this time the sorc was much easier than I expected. This may have been because I was playing smarter this time.
For example, in the old days my sorc had a HELL of a time with Duriel in Tal-Rasha's Tomb. I must have died thirty or forty times before I managed to kill him, at least. I remember running around with Blaze up for what felt like hours...it sucked.
This time, though, I stood there and cast Static Field over and over. It's already up to level 12 or so, so it has a nice range - and it wipes out 25% of the current hit points of all enemies in reach. Meanwhile my henchman kept firing arrows. I died twice, and then finally killed Duriel.
Another odd thing: my new sorceress is having a much easier time finding magic items than the barbarian did. The annoying thing is that they're items which would be great for the barbarian - and since I'm in single-player mode, I can't switch the items between characters. I've found the Barbarian Hauberk, Cleglaw's Pincers, and Cleglaw's Brace...all of which aren't much use to a sorceress, unfortunately.
The sorceress is up to level 26 now, and is in the jungle looking for Kurast.
D&D: Everyone else in my Thursday night D&D game is in the SCA, so they're all off for Pennsic this week...therefore no game last night. But last week (or was it the week before?) I came up with what I think was a pretty clever idea.
We needed to find someone who had been kidnapped. We didn't know who had kidnapped her, or where she was. She was completely blocked from scrying. There were virtually no clues at the kidnap site, and no witnesses. It seemed to be a total dead end.
And it was probably meant to be, but I found myself interested. I found myself pacing back and forth, trying to figure out some way to get more information.
Eureka! The Sending spell is not the same as scrying. It lets the caster send a 25-word verbal message and get a reply. I wasn't sure it would work, but it seemed worth a try. But now we had a new problem: you can only Send to someone you know personally, and none of us had known the kidnappee. In fact, NO cleric had ever met the victim.
I was thinking pretty furiously at this point. I'm not all that familiar with the D&D 3.5 system, but I remembered that spells can be placed in scrolls, which can be read by non-spellcasters with the appropriate skills. And one of the victim's servants, it turned out, could read magic scrolls.
The odds weren't good for success on the first try, but the DM rolled well and the message went through. The reply was a bit disconcerting; it seemed that the victim had chosen to leave, and her reply was either threatening, a prophecy of doom, or (possibly) a warning.
I don't know if we'll be following up this thread any time soon, but it was nice to have a chance to use my brain.
Currently Reading: Touched By the Gods by Lawrence Watt-Evans. A lengthy non-Ethsharic fantasy novel. Not bad, but not his best work; it's longer than his older novels, and somehow that doesn't seem like a good thing. One flaw, I think (at least as far as commercial success goes) is that the hero seems a bit dumber than LW-E's usual, and (spoiler, invisible ink - click and drag from here to the end to read) that he insists on rejecting his role as champion. If you want to appeal to teen-aged boys (which I suspect is the majority of the modern fantasy-readers demographic), you want to write something that those boys can identify with - and boys generally aren't into demanding a life of anonymity and non-recognition as a reward for feats of incredible heroism.
no subject
Really?
I think that I did try non-Battle.net gaming with a friend (
Are you still on dialup at home? If you get bored and feel like trying a game online again, let me know. Maybe we could get
Incidentally, I found solo play difficult, but (obviously) not forbidding - not in Normal mode, anyway. I'm not all that skilled at fast-twitch games, but I've been able to get through and kill Diablo and Baal with a number of characters. I didn't consciously optimize my characters to kill bosses, either.
On the other hand, it did take a long time to kill Duriel with my first sorceress. That was definitely the worst battle in the entire game for me, ever. It must have taken two or three hours at least of casting Blaze, running around, getting killed, and going back. Man, that sucked!
no subject
Work and personal life have both gotten a lot busier, so I don't do a lot of things on the net that I used to do.
I haven't played D2 in a long time.
However, your role playing story reminded me of an indcident in my last Sunday game. One of the characters had just acquired really gross, large area effect damaging abilities, which was good, but four characters were oplanning to be invisible (improved invisibility, it doesn't drop when you attack) during the major combat this game, which could cause problems, because the big area effect damage doing character couldn't see invisible.
Now, my character had see invisible, and due to my character two othr characters had a permanent see invisible on them, but normally you can't cast see invisible on other people, and, in any case, I had already used my one see invisible spell that I had memorized.
Magic items to the rescue: One character had a 2nd order pearl of power, which allows preparation spellcasters (me) to remember a spell they have already cast so they cn cast it again. In this case it had to be second level (2nd order pearl). My character has a 1st and a 3d order pearl, but no second, but this other character (a Monk/shaman) has a 2nd order one. That still didn't allow us to cast the spell on anyone but me, but fortunately another character had a spell storing crystal which allows up to 6 levels of spells to be stored in there and the user can then cast any of them. I used the pearl to recall see invisibility, and then put it into the spell storing crystal which I then handed to the Shugenja to use.
Kind of neat.
Oh, last Saturday I related the "Head of Vecna" story you sent me in email a long time ago to two people not familiar with it. They found it very funny. However, my recollection may not have been that great. I lost the email at some point during all th computer switchovers since you sent it to me. Could you please resend it to me or put it up here?
no subject
Here's a quick link to the Vecna story: http://www.hut.fi/~vesanto/link.fun/stupid.pcs.html
no subject
putting on another person's head would mean, if it worked, that the other person
would now have your body and you'd still be dead.
Although, hmm, I do have recall a cartoon, "Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys,"
in which a villain (voiced by Malcolm McDowell, of all people) was a sort of cyborg
who swapped brains periodically, usually with bad brain puns. Worked, strangely...