Handouts for RB's VTRPG

[redbaron]

Well you're level 6 and 3320gold richer than you were before. Hope you're feeling better too.

Here's some cliff notes. Hopefully it covers most of the important things that happened.

Spoiler

- party starts exploring cavern and runs into some fire-breathing drakes
- party almost gets killed in a crossfire of fire-breathing drakes
- Edam saves at least two people from almost certain death with a timely heal

- After the fight the party finds a 10 foot tall, 500kg statue of a dragon rigged to shoot fire when tampered with
- Klaus disabled the trap and Greg tried to pick up the statue. In a display of strength not seen before in the history of the world (he rolled a natural 20 on his strength check), Greg picked up the 10 foot tall giant statue. Oh and Klaus re-armed it. So Greg was lugging around a gigantic fire-breathing trap.
- Greg used said statute to plug a gap in the lava flow and let the party climb across

- However this wasn't before Klaus, the nimble and acrobatic Rogue attempted to jump across what would seem a small gap for a man of such athletic prowess...if only he didn't slip on a dragon scale and almost plunge head-first into the lava.
- His Rogueish reflexes managed to save him as he reached out and grabbed the cliff where he clung for dear life (he maintains that this all went exactly as planned, he was just doing his best Rake impersonation)
- As nimble-footed as he seems, he apparently doesn't lift. His pathetic attempts to haul himself up onto the ledge proved fruitless (much to the amusement of Greg who just lifted a 500kg statue)
- A quick-thinking party member threw him a rope, his only way of reaching it to leap from the cliff edge and grab onto it - if he missed he'd have been dead. He grabbed it and was hauled back to the side he started on.
-After almost losing his life and with the rest of the party taking the statue-bridge, Klaus decided that just to prove he could make the jump himself and it was all just a joke, that he'd try and jump across the gap again again
-He made it this time and gave thanks to 'Coash' for 'puthing him in da' game' ; other party members chalk up his strange dialect to a side effect of near-death experience

- In the second of the never before seen displays of awesome might, Greg once again managed to lift and reposition the statue so that the party could do this to cross yet another lava flow
- Party runs into scary dragon as they cross the statue-bridge

- Dragon breathed fire at everyone, cheese saved everyone again
- Grim, on a cameo appearance, put on a never before seen display of awesome coordination and skill, managing to throw his 6kg hammer 30feet (he rolled a natural 20 - twice in a row) with so much force that he nearly killed a dragon in one blow (throw)
- Party finished off the dragon,
- looted the dragon hoard. Klaus got a magical sword and starting telling 'coash' about how he's 'gonna play gud now'. No one actually knows who 'coash' is supposed to be
- group decided to take a nap and buff themselves before heading through a teleporter

- the party was instantly hit by a glitterdust spell from opponents they couldn't see
- the party moves into the darkness to face the unseen assailants, running into a trio of deadly enemies
- wizard reduces Greg to a giggling schoolgirl for a while
- Hobgoblin archer hits the party with a dozen or more arrows, everyone is hurting
- a big guy in black armor gets locked in a titanic struggle, trading blows with Grim for the duration of the fight

- Klaus, in a never before seen display of stealth and guile, sneaked up on the enemy wizard and gave her a serious beating with the help of Edam
- still she managed to get away, also paralyzing Klaus with a spell for the rest of the fight
- at this point the party is severely weakened,
- Cacia leaves Grim to deal with big armored guy and chases down the Wizard
- Greg stops laughing for long enough to trap her in a Web spell
- Cacia stabs her into submission while she's caught and then chases after the Hobgoblin archer
- Klaus shakes off the paralyze spell and helps Cacia take him down, he turns out to be surprisingly skilled with a blade, but he surrenders and drops his weapons when he realizes he's outnumbered and can't possibly win
- Edam smacks around the already unconscious wizard for good measure, almost killing her in the process

- party restrains their would-be assailants
- raids their persons and stash for loot
- Rake turns up to 'question' them for information
- party currently trying to convince Edam why he should heal the wizard. Edam apparently having a crisis of consciousness and unsure whether or not he wants to.

That's all I can remember. If I missed anything hopefully someone else can fill in the details. Next session will continue from Rake questioning the two that are conscious and party debating what to do with the unconscious one.

 

[Cognisant]

Wow.

 

[Jennywocky]

Wow.

Cacia was barely hurt in that second fight.

But she doesn't want to murder surrendered captives in cold blood even if she doesn't like them much. Meanwhile mysterious accidents have happened around Klaus; evil captives seem to have the worst strokes of bad luck.

 

[Absurdity]

Other things that happened:

Jenny learned the difference between a prostate exam and a testicular exam
Hado strongly considered teabagging me
Cheese likes bedsheets in his coffee
I do a great Aussie accent
RB played a good song for once

 

[Jennywocky]

I'm not sure how we overlooked all that.

I also didn't know people could fist dragons with their heads. Although then I guess it's not really fisting anymore.





EDIT: Oh, since I get extra attacks at level six (at a -5), I redid all my roll macros. So now my damage rolls aren't mixed in with my attack rolls; I'll roll attacks first, then roll damage only when necessary.

 

[Cognisant]

Is there anything Greg can't do? Goddamn

And what was Grim doing there?

 

[Jennywocky]

The Rake wasn't there, so Grim came along to babysit.

 

[redbaron]

To be honest Greg couldn't actually have lifted the statue but before I could even suggest the impossibility Hado had already rolled the natural 20 and everyone got so excited I just didn't have the heart to say it wasn't possible.

Plus it was certainly a creative way of getting across the lava and this game is supposed to encourage that, so I allowed it. I just had people help him move it the second time.

Grim was there because the magus decided that the party was taking too long, so she implored trusty Dwarven tunnel fighter to go find out what was going on.

I do a great Aussie accent

...

 

[Hadoblado]

7 strangth 2 stronk

RB told me it was 500 pounds, which is only like 220 kg or so. A little more than Greg's body weight XD

I really would have needed help moving it though, even if my strength is magically augmented.

 

[cheese]

I also didn't know people could fist dragons with their heads. Although then I guess it's not really fisting anymore.

It's a headbutt. For realsies.

Also thanks for the write up RB - I hadn't realised all that had happened. It's good to get an overview.

Abs does pretty good random Cockney. The occasional Australian sneaking furtively out his mouth was pretty good! Just a bit of a shapeshifter.

 

[redbaron]

Uh, also forgot to add that the big armored guy was in possession of the second piece of the Planestone...the entire reason you were sent there in the first place...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Jennywocky]

Uh, also forgot to add that the big armored guy was in possession of the second piece of the Planestone...the entire reason you were sent there in the first place...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Where was he hiding THAT thing? (Or don't I want to know?) Was he the human? And the wizard the elf? Why was an elf running around with a half-hobgoblin? She must be kind of shady.

 

[Absurdity]

See this is why we need to kill people. Easier to search when they're dead.

Jesus, I sound like Cog

 

[Jennywocky]

Cacia's not much for murdering prisoners in cold blood, unarmed and defenseless or mutilating them. She's fine with killing them in the heat of combat, though; or handing them to the authorities or to someone else for punishment.

Also, if a captive pisses her off or she thinks he's loathsome, she'd be fine with handing him a weapon, untying him, then having him come at her so she can gut him with a clean conscience.

She feels no need to tell the truth, however, to an evil critter. They don't deserve truth. if she has to lie to one to get what she needs, that's fine; she can't trust him either.

 

[Cognisant]

See this is why we need to kill people. Easier to search when they're dead.

Jesus, I sound like Cog

Rake prefers live captives because you can loot their brains for information, use them as bait/entertainment/trap-finders and still loot their inventories when they're dead.

He grew up in the sea and merfolk society is ruthlessly practical, for instance you can't really bury people underwater because crabs & such will just sniff it out and dig it back up again so bodies are used to bait traps, put simply if the crabs are going to get it one way or another then why not use it to get the crabs? Likewise using captured enemies to lure monsters towards an enemy camp is a time proven strategy, it's not a matter of good or evil, the morality of it isn't even considered, it works so you do it.

Which is not to say Rake doesn't find the surface world's notions of morality appealing, he would love to righteously fight for a good cause which is why he's come along to participate in this quest.

 

[Jennywocky]

Do merpeople lay their eggs inside the bodies of captures enemies and/or animals, to hide and nourish their offspring?

 

[Cognisant]

No that's an insect thing.

Mermen stay home and care for the kids while mermaids are out all night drinking and fucking sailors.

 

[redbaron]

Macros for everyone to use to avoid last minute rolling and to cleanup the input end result in the chat window on Roll20. Instead of showing a great long breakdown, this format will just show the end result, with the ability to hover over to see a breakdown.

It's hard to explain how much more comprehensible it is without demonstrating in client.

For all the macros, you can just copy paste all of these yourself to create macros out of them. Just replace the zeros (0) with whatever modifier your character has.

Also you can replace the "/me" parts to whatever you want to describe what you're doing. It's just there for some flavour. If you just want the numbers to come up without any of that, just take out the first line when you copy paste them.

Saving Throws

/me steels himself
Fort: [[1d20+0]]
Reflex: [[1d20+0]]
Will: [[1d20+0]]

Attack & Damage

/me bludgeons the enemy
Attack: [[1d20+0]]
Damage [[1d20+0]]

Skills

/me looks and listens carefully
Perception: [[1d20+0]]

Multiple Skills.

/me contemplates ancient knowledge
Knowledge Arcana: [[1d20+0]]
Knowledge Religion: [[1d20+0]]
Knowledge Planes: [[1d20+0]]
Knowledge History: [[1d20+0]]

You can lump all conversation skills together too, which is probably worth doing.

/me recalls conversation skills
Intimidate: [[1d20+0]]
Diplomacy: [[1d20+0]]
Bluff/*Feint* [[1d20+0]]
Sense Motive: [[1d20+0]]

Initiative. The tracker automatically sorts everyone's turns by what they rolled - so I don't have to track it manually anymore.

/me leaps into action
[[1d20+{0}&{tracker}]]

Enjoy

 

[Jennywocky]

We still will have to check the attack rolls to determine crits + some damage is mixed into one number and will have to be reviewed in case there is resistance or vulnerability to that portion of damage. But it does clear up some of the screen clutter at least.

 

[redbaron]

Good point, maybe split the damage into separate values.

Damage: Slashing [[1d8+4]] + Frost [[1d6]]

Trying to find a way to show the separate values and then a total afterwards as well. Not exactly hard to use mental math. Worst case you can just type the two values into the chat window and it calculates for you.

There's more info in this link where you might find the solution, just wanted to get the important ones like Saves/Initiative out of the way.

 

[Jennywocky]

There's more info in this link where you might find the solution, just wanted to get the important ones like Saves/Initiative out of the way.

Oh nice. now I'm geeking out.

 

[Jennywocky]

Did all my macros. Wow. Read about more macros on there, but it's too bad you need scripts to do complex stuff.

Are we playing next week?

 

[redbaron]

We'll probably be taking a few weeks off as Hadoblado and cheese will both be unavailable.

 

[Jennywocky]

We'll probably be taking a few weeks off as Hadoblado and cheese will both be unavailable.

 

[Jennywocky]

Well, tonight my other group is playing. (It's a weekly game.)


Last week was nuts.

Our group was threatened by an angel and a bunch of monk guards in an angelic-styled city. (They were being kind of Lawful Jerky.) We had gone there for help in a two-year quest to build up forces to prevent the invasion of a reincarnated evil god.

One of our group had been turned to chaotic evil at some point (long story) and although we had kept him in the brig of our ship when we went traveling, the angels figured out he was there and wanted to take him into custody. So they actually surrounded our group, the angel Smote us a few times, and they were manhandling two of our members who didn't do anything just for speaking up.

My cryptic thrallherd (she was neutral but drifted into neutral evil from use of soul stones while trying to learn how to "undo" soulstone manipulations, as the god entering our dimension was doing so throug a soulmerge with an innocent boy) was so angry that she escaped the proceedings and took out the balor soulstone she had. (She's "pragmatic evil" and also quite the "know it all" narcissist.) It turns out the balor didn't mind helping her, unlike an angel she had in a stone earlier; and she rolled a 39 on her "channel" check.

So the balor cast a Blasphemy through her and the angel and fifteen monks died / were vaporized to sludge, as they failed their checks. Everyone else let us go and ran.

The group was pissed off (we were supposed to be getting the angels' help). My character was shaking and catotonic after that on the deck (and being guarded by her gnome "fear in flesh" dread thrall), so they threw the soulstone on the pier with the CE strix priest and left the two things for the angels to deal with, and our airship took off for greener pastures.

The CE strix saw the soulstone, touched it, and the balor asked to be released and promised him power. So before the angels got there to see what had just happened, he managed to break the protective casing and then shatter the soulstone, unleashing a balor upon the entire city. It was the magical/moral equivalent of a nuke going off.

Of course, the balor turned on him, then proceeded to lay waste to the city -- setting up a zone of desecration and then summoning lots of other crap into the city. By the time the fight ended, the entire city above ground was razed and littered with rubble and corpses.

End result:
We didn't get the angels' help.
That guy is rolling up a new character.*
My character is converting to some kind of Good from the experience and will never be quite the same, even if she's still kind of a jerk sometimes.

We're level 10.

Yes, it was horrific IN-GAME; but OOC -- wow, that was so awesome! I was lugging that damned balor stone around for at least 15 sessions or more.

*His old character got away, miraculously, but no character wants to adventure with him now.

 

[redbaron]

Doodle for the next session. Wanted to do it this weekend coming up but it's Easter and I doubt I'll have time.

http://doodle.com/t6q3r7ap6u2d4b86

Please send me level 6 character sheets. Also this will be the second last session for this particular story arc of the campaign. There'll be a break afterwards while we play in Hado's campaign.

Spoiler

I do intend on running some more campaigns in the future, but they'll likely be smallish story arcs that last for 2-3 sessions, without continuity between the actual story arcs - however your characters will have continuity. So if you play a Druid to level 3 in one arc, you can play them from level 3 with all the same XP and gear in a new arc OR you can roll an entirely new character. I'll give more details on this probably after the next campaign session.

 

[Jennywocky]

Can someone please tell me what RB's time zone is / city, and whether you are on daylight savings time or not at this time? His forum time is marked as only 10 hours ahead of mine, but that is not right at all.

I can't sign up on the doodle until I know what the adjusted times are, and Australia looks like it has weird blends of time zones in it so I have no clue what the hell time the sessions are really scheduled for here, my time.

 

[redbaron]

I'm in Melbourne at GMT+10. Same timezone as Vladivostok.

It's 4:10pm at the time I post this message. Ignore the forum, it's retarded.

 

[Jennywocky]

I'm in Melbourne at GMT+10. Same timezone as Vladivostok.

It's 4:10pm at the time I post this message. Ignore the forum, it's retarded.

Thank you. Yes, this forum is a 'tard.

 

[Jennywocky]

I had fun in my gaming group last night.
Sumiko keeps stirring shit up (in her inevitable shift back to Neutral Evil).

The last time it was the balor stone, which she ended up slaying an angel with and then got broken by the strix cleric, releasing the dark lord balor to destroy the entire city.

Well, she had another smaller stone with her, an umbral dragon. She figured it was at best an adult dragon. So last night she tried to use its shadow breath to attack a cluster of attacking strix and wyverns, being held up by the party barbarian.

The barb was Superstitious and, well a barbarian (!), so she figured he could make his Fort save and not really be badly impacted. hahahahaha!

Turns out that she made the UMD to channel the breath weapon; but the dragon was a Great Wyrm. The DC was 32, the barb rolled a 23, and only two of wyverns made their save. Everyone was blinded for 4 rounds and took 12 STR damage. (Yes, damage, not drain -- it doesn't heal on its own. The barb. STR damage. Dear god. Once he drops out of rage, he'll be as useful as a fish on dry ground.)

We dispatched the baddies with relative ease, but the cleric has his hands full with the barb, and Sumiko is a little scared to use the stone without more study.

I'm glad she decided to not try to channel the wyrm's real breath weapon: 70-ft. cone, 24d8 neg. energy, DC 32. Yikes. She might have just killed the barb outright.

There are some other nasty spells in there too, that she's scared to touch. The GM said if she blows her UMD roll, they could backfire (like hit someone else or even me).

 

[Jennywocky]

See you guys in what... 19-20 hours?

 

[Cognisant]

Are we doing 10am or 10pm?

And come to think of it where's my character sheet... *goes looking*

Edit: Oh shiiiiit *still looking*

 

[Jennywocky]

Are we doing 10am or 10pm?

And come to think of it where's my character sheet... *goes looking*

10am AEST.

Which is I think 8pm EST the day before for me (I'm on daylight savings now.)

 

[Cognisant]

Found it
http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=73119

It was in this thread, thankfully.

Also I remember joking about Improved Day Job but for an alchemist looking for every Craft (alchemy) bonus possible that's actually worth considering.

There's also Prodigy which is better because it scales, albeit not as well as Skill Focus but still.

10am AEST.

Early mornings, my bane.

 

[redbaron]

Just reminding everyone to check what time 10am AEST is for you, since daylight savings has kicked in. Mostly for Jenny/Cog/Abs who live in different timezones.

 

[Cognisant]

We're all AEST aren't we? (I'm in Brisbane)

http://24timezones.com/au_map/australia_time.htm

 

[redbaron]

DST puts them out of sync sometimes.

Daylight Saving Time in Australia

Daylight Saving Time is the practice of advancing clocks one hour during the summer months of the year. New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia observe DST every year. This has resulted in three time zones becoming five during the daylight-saving period, so Australia has both horizontal and vertical time zones in summer. South Australia time becomes UTC+10:30, called Central Summer Time (CST) or Central Daylight Time (CDT), possibly with "Australia" prefixed (ACST or ACDT). The time in the southeastern states become UTC+11, using "Eastern" in the time zone name rather than "Central", with the abbreviations being EST, EDT, AEST, or AEDT.

I really don't know if we're in the period where QLD and Melb are out of sync or in sync but since I'm the GM I get to be the lazy one. Don't be late

 

[cheese]

We're in sync now. Daylight savings has ended, so we're (Syd, Melb, Tas) back to being the same as the states who don't practise it (eg QLD).

 

[redbaron]

I see. So this means we're all in the same timezone? D:

Get out of my timezone!!! D:

 

[Cognisant]

Ahem, my timezone.

I'm not the one adjusting my clock.

Btw I've got work at 1pm so I've got to leave at 12.
Sorry

 

[cheese]

Cog you selfish cow! I rearranged MY work around D&D! That's real commitment you corporate shill! Btw RB I'll uh, get that shit sheet to you real soon. Working on it right now in fact. (Also, I rearranged my work on it around The Office. Now now Pam, settle down.)

 

[Jennywocky]

Moah cheese, please.

 

[TBerg]

What I want to know is how, when Australia has so few people, there are so many represented on INTPF. It seems like one of those mysteries of life.

 

[Hadoblado]

Loot?

 

[Cognisant]

I got magic in mah belly!

 

[redbaron]

You took the 3rd piece of the stone from the Wizard.

Loot in quote. Split it up however you see fit.

3 Potions of Resist Energy 10
Masterwork Full Plate
Greatsword +1 (large)
3 Javelins (large)
Belt of Mighty Constitution +2
Cloak of Resistance +1
Headband of Alluring Charisma +2
Ring of Protection +1
19,597 gold (and 11 copper pieces found in a wine barrel, lol).
4 Greatswords
4 Greataxes
3 Shortbows
2 Longbows
6 Longspears
5 Light wooden shields
1 Light Steel shield
5 Studded Leather Armor
6 Chain Shirts

I'll put out some cliffs of what transpired in the session by tomorrow night. Was another fun session, hope you liked having some more dialogue-oriented interactions. Still trying to balance out how I deliver the content - the Roll20 format seems to almost imply a concrete world to explore (as opposed to pen&paper) and in some ways limits improvisation because it's obvious if I'm winging something when there's no map for an area.

Anyway if you guys enjoyed it I'll try and throw some more characters into the story and minimize mechanics based encounters. I'm aware that it's been about 85% combat and not a huge amount of wriggle room for doing role-play type stuff, mostly a symptom of the Roll20 delivery. I'll try and aim for more of a 60/40 split.

Also I feel compelled to point out that the party is sort of forgetting about a few of the items I've given.

- Ring of Feather Fall (on Cacia)
- Wand of Hold Person (on Edam)
- Sword of the Planes (I'd be giving it to Edam for the time being since he's invested into a support role, but still heads into melee at times and more hit+damage will help end fights faster)

 

[redbaron]

Session Summary:

Spoiler

-finished interrogating the three people, left them tied up in the cavern
-Rake made one of them cry
-Klaus robbed them of more stuff
-ran across an orc encampment
-killed two thirds of them
-Edam used a goblin skull as a shield
-Cacia killed everyone within reach

-Found a big tent
-Big tent was occupied by a batshit insane wizard named Misha and an inexplicably intelligent and educated ogre named Eduardo
-Greg and Misha exchanged in-jokes about wizard stuff
-Greg and Misha started laughing
-Edam made jokes about how Mischa has really let herself go since starring in the OC
-Misha summoned a huge wall of flame and set the tent on fire
-Eduardo put the fire out by dousing the flame with a big barrel of water
-Misha demanded the two pieces of the Planestone in the party's possession
-Greg's Dretch charged Misha
-Eduardo one-hit K.O'd Greg's Dretch
-Everyone laughed
-No one knew why they were laughing, but Klaus wondered aloud if he was on a bad acid trip
-Rake almost choked himself to death on the two pieces of the Planestone (attempting to swallow them in order to deny them to Misha), but managed to swallow them like a boss
-Rake tried to debuff Eduardo, but buffed him instead
-Everyone laughed, Eduardo the Ogre especially so
-Party was invited to travel through the Maelstrom (plane of pure chaos) as lackey's of Misha and Eduardo
-Payment wasn't enough
-Greg wanted to, but everyone else wanted to kill the batshit insane wizard instead

-Party fought Misha and Eduardo
-Rake unleashed a hydraulic jet of water, pushing Misha off his feet before he could react
-Everyone started curbstomping Misha, he was unconscious in less than 6 seconds
-Eduardo tried to defend his master, put up quite a fight
-Klaus and Cacia took a lot of damage, but bested him eventually
-Greg, Edam and Rake cast some spells, but Eduardo was surprisingly stoic for an ogre
-After subduing them and binding their hands, the party looted the entire campsite
-Greg put everything in a one-mile radius into his magical bag
-Party now has all three pieces of the Planestone in their possession, but they're going to have to wait for Rake to 'pass' two of the pieces...
-Orcs were digging for some reason that the party can't quite figure out
-Party is going to ask Eduardo and Misha why when they wake up

Thanks to all for the fun session

 

[Hadoblado]

Your list seems to be missing a few things, don't worry, I'll fix that for you

One rope bridge (soon to be two)
Six barrels of vodka
An ogre prisoner
A wizard prisoner
Three other prisoners of lesser value to pick up on the way back
One large carpet
Three tents
miscellaneous mining equipment
a book of wizard spells
a map of the planes
one small table - burnt and possessing zero secret compartments thus far
one large greased up ogre hammer (presume? or was he wielding the +1 greatsword?)

 

[redbaron]

Sorry, that Greatsword should be an Earthbreaker +1

Damage is 3d6 since it's a large weapon. Also it's not greased, he made the Reflex save to avoid it.

 

[Hadoblado]

Oo00ooh I thought that I greased the weapon regardless, but he made his reflex save so he managed to keep hold of it. My bad. Makes more sense this way.

Earthbreaker looks badass.