Post by lasersniper on Aug 9, 2015 7:42:51 GMT
Hooooly crap, I have to write this all again because Chrome crashed. *Sigh* whatever it is a good story.
Soooo I was GMing a group of new players through a 4e campaign. They weren't the best communicators so not letting people know how badly they were hurt in battle usually got them in trouble.
Their campaign revolved around collecting magical artifacts and items for an eccentric collector. Lets call him Mr. Eccentric. This is the story of their first "retrieval". The party consisted of Erion(Elf Cleric), Tirion(Human Paladin), Rogue, and Ranger. Their first mission involved finding a magical artifact of a snake charmer that had helped a nearby town decades ago. They find out it is inside this guys tomb so off they went, into a world of hurt.
The Rogue was having a bad night, so they had spent an hour crawling through this dungeon hitting EVERY.SINGLE.TRAP. Most of the traps revolved around getting into encounters with snake swarms. Bad rolls kept on coming and they HP kept on dropping. Finally they make it to the final chamber, in the center their is a coffin infront of a statue of what they assumed was the snake charmer. Oh yeah and his giant pet albino boa constrictor was in the room as well guarding the coffin. So after being bitten halfway to dead and back what do they decide to do? LETS ATTACK IT!!!! Yep that went well.
A few rounds in they figured they weren't going to beat this thing, so they had Tirion (Paladin/Tank), Erion (Cleric), and Rogue distract it while Ranger runs by and loots the coffin. While Tirion was being squeezed to death, Ranger managed to open the coffin and find the only interesting thing inside, ashing gold bracer that looked like a snake. He decided to put it on and the constrictor IMMEDIATELY drops Tirion and scoops up Ranger. Ranger hears the snake hiss "Put the Massssterssss thingssssss back NOW!" So Ranger wants his payday from Mr. Eccentric so he throws the bracer with is free arm to Erion, who at this point is at 5 hp, and tells him to run. He books it.
Que Benny Hill Music, Erion takes off, with the snake close behind. Erion dodges every trap, sprints through the thick forest, makes every endurance check, and BARELY makes it to the camp Mr. Eccentric is with his guards. They kill the badly damaged snake (Because of the traps the snake couldn't dodge on the way out) and they have snake stew for a week.
Thought this was done? Oh nononono we just have begun.
The next night, they had just settled down after a hard day of travel through the forest on the way to a city. Erion has watch when I rolled a random encounter. STIRGES!!! I love Stirges
. Anyway, Erion gets ambushed and nearly drained ,because of crappy rolls, to near death before the party comes in to clean them up. However, part of this clean up process apparently meant throwing alchemists fire while in the midst of summer dry trees. Yep, my party started a forest fire over bugs.
Thankfully everyone got aboard the wagon as Mr.Eccentric started driving it away. Well everyone except Erion. As the fire blazed around him everyone else starting making "Reroll" jokes, but Erion's player didn't give up.
Erion "I am running out of the forest"
Lasersniper "I don't know dude, it is like 4-5 miles, and your trying to outrun a fire"
Erion "just let me roll"
Lasersniper "Alright, roll me Endurance"
All. Night. Long. He ran. 5 endurance rolls. 18, 19, 20, 20, 20. He had decent Endurance as well. The next morning, as the party was watching the forest burn a good distance away, through the flames they see Erion, still running, still beating the flames. I could not believe it.
Oh but wait there is more
Then, TWO NIGHTS after that. They where a single day from the city now, but they had to travel through the Moon Hills. They didn't know what that meant so they decided to camp the night. Well apparently it meant that on a full moon, ghosts of a long forgotten battle rise up in the hills. The Ranger was on watch and when he saw a couple of these things come out for the ground, he decided to go and take a swipe at them before they could attack the party. So he yells the party awake as he is attacking one, too late for Mr. Eccentrics shouts of warning to be heeded.
One swipe of the sword and this thing SCREAMED bloody murder. In response THOUSANDS of these things started flying at them from over the hills. Mr. Eccentric yells for them to run to the rising sun, the light would dispel them, so they take off running with a good head start. Well almost everyone. You remember when I said the Ranger yelled to wake everyone up? Well everyone did, except Erion. He was stumbling awake when the ghost screeched and got started late, that and he botched his initiative roll.
So the party makes it to risings suns rays, and they turn around to see Erion making another Olympian sprint for his life. They were all cheering and yelling for him. ERION RUN. HURRY UP. Behind him Erion heard a scream of a man. One of the Mr. Eccentrics slower guards just got over whelmed. HURRY ERION YOU ARE ALMOST THERE. He is rolling Athletic rolls like a champ. 100 ft, rolls 17. 60 ft, rolls 19. 20 ft, rolls.....a 1. Erion trips and falls as ghost converge on him. Erion ran his last.
But wait a minute. The party saw a glowing from the ghosts? What was that? Was that sunlight? Oh yeah, ERION IS A CLERIC BABY
! TURN UNDEAD! So I created the ghosts to be overwhelm but pretty weak, so they had 10 hit points. Turn Undead in 4e does 1d10+Wis, so for Erion 1d10+3. Rolls 13. KAABOOOOOOM! He eradicates the 20+ ghosts around him and rolls into the sunlight which was 5 feet from him at this point.
To this day, they say when you are running away from dire danger yourself, if you listen closely, you can hear a 2nd pair of boots running with you, as you scream for your life.
Oh yeah, Erion leveled 2 times that day. THAT was when I started to think about not using xp from the monster manual....and to not nerf ghosts.
Soooo I was GMing a group of new players through a 4e campaign. They weren't the best communicators so not letting people know how badly they were hurt in battle usually got them in trouble.
Their campaign revolved around collecting magical artifacts and items for an eccentric collector. Lets call him Mr. Eccentric. This is the story of their first "retrieval". The party consisted of Erion(Elf Cleric), Tirion(Human Paladin), Rogue, and Ranger. Their first mission involved finding a magical artifact of a snake charmer that had helped a nearby town decades ago. They find out it is inside this guys tomb so off they went, into a world of hurt.
The Rogue was having a bad night, so they had spent an hour crawling through this dungeon hitting EVERY.SINGLE.TRAP. Most of the traps revolved around getting into encounters with snake swarms. Bad rolls kept on coming and they HP kept on dropping. Finally they make it to the final chamber, in the center their is a coffin infront of a statue of what they assumed was the snake charmer. Oh yeah and his giant pet albino boa constrictor was in the room as well guarding the coffin. So after being bitten halfway to dead and back what do they decide to do? LETS ATTACK IT!!!! Yep that went well.
A few rounds in they figured they weren't going to beat this thing, so they had Tirion (Paladin/Tank), Erion (Cleric), and Rogue distract it while Ranger runs by and loots the coffin. While Tirion was being squeezed to death, Ranger managed to open the coffin and find the only interesting thing inside, ashing gold bracer that looked like a snake. He decided to put it on and the constrictor IMMEDIATELY drops Tirion and scoops up Ranger. Ranger hears the snake hiss "Put the Massssterssss thingssssss back NOW!" So Ranger wants his payday from Mr. Eccentric so he throws the bracer with is free arm to Erion, who at this point is at 5 hp, and tells him to run. He books it.
Que Benny Hill Music, Erion takes off, with the snake close behind. Erion dodges every trap, sprints through the thick forest, makes every endurance check, and BARELY makes it to the camp Mr. Eccentric is with his guards. They kill the badly damaged snake (Because of the traps the snake couldn't dodge on the way out) and they have snake stew for a week.
Thought this was done? Oh nononono we just have begun.
The next night, they had just settled down after a hard day of travel through the forest on the way to a city. Erion has watch when I rolled a random encounter. STIRGES!!! I love Stirges
. Anyway, Erion gets ambushed and nearly drained ,because of crappy rolls, to near death before the party comes in to clean them up. However, part of this clean up process apparently meant throwing alchemists fire while in the midst of summer dry trees. Yep, my party started a forest fire over bugs.Thankfully everyone got aboard the wagon as Mr.Eccentric started driving it away. Well everyone except Erion. As the fire blazed around him everyone else starting making "Reroll" jokes, but Erion's player didn't give up.
Erion "I am running out of the forest"
Lasersniper "I don't know dude, it is like 4-5 miles, and your trying to outrun a fire"
Erion "just let me roll"
Lasersniper "Alright, roll me Endurance"
All. Night. Long. He ran. 5 endurance rolls. 18, 19, 20, 20, 20. He had decent Endurance as well. The next morning, as the party was watching the forest burn a good distance away, through the flames they see Erion, still running, still beating the flames. I could not believe it.
Oh but wait there is more
Then, TWO NIGHTS after that. They where a single day from the city now, but they had to travel through the Moon Hills. They didn't know what that meant so they decided to camp the night. Well apparently it meant that on a full moon, ghosts of a long forgotten battle rise up in the hills. The Ranger was on watch and when he saw a couple of these things come out for the ground, he decided to go and take a swipe at them before they could attack the party. So he yells the party awake as he is attacking one, too late for Mr. Eccentrics shouts of warning to be heeded.
One swipe of the sword and this thing SCREAMED bloody murder. In response THOUSANDS of these things started flying at them from over the hills. Mr. Eccentric yells for them to run to the rising sun, the light would dispel them, so they take off running with a good head start. Well almost everyone. You remember when I said the Ranger yelled to wake everyone up? Well everyone did, except Erion. He was stumbling awake when the ghost screeched and got started late, that and he botched his initiative roll.
So the party makes it to risings suns rays, and they turn around to see Erion making another Olympian sprint for his life. They were all cheering and yelling for him. ERION RUN. HURRY UP. Behind him Erion heard a scream of a man. One of the Mr. Eccentrics slower guards just got over whelmed. HURRY ERION YOU ARE ALMOST THERE. He is rolling Athletic rolls like a champ. 100 ft, rolls 17. 60 ft, rolls 19. 20 ft, rolls.....a 1. Erion trips and falls as ghost converge on him. Erion ran his last.
But wait a minute. The party saw a glowing from the ghosts? What was that? Was that sunlight? Oh yeah, ERION IS A CLERIC BABY
! TURN UNDEAD! So I created the ghosts to be overwhelm but pretty weak, so they had 10 hit points. Turn Undead in 4e does 1d10+Wis, so for Erion 1d10+3. Rolls 13. KAABOOOOOOM! He eradicates the 20+ ghosts around him and rolls into the sunlight which was 5 feet from him at this point.To this day, they say when you are running away from dire danger yourself, if you listen closely, you can hear a 2nd pair of boots running with you, as you scream for your life.
Oh yeah, Erion leveled 2 times that day. THAT was when I started to think about not using xp from the monster manual....and to not nerf ghosts.
