Different Experience Tables

Side effect of waking up at 4:15... now 8:43 and I'm drooping. Getting ready for bed very soon and sleeping until whenever. Considering I've spent most of 2 years thinking it was great to get to sleep by 2 (with 3 common, and 4 not unheard of- for a 7am wakeup), going to be around 9 might do me some good. Overcorrecting, but at least it's a start point for balancing things out.

Was feeling tired around 9 last night. Thought about taking a nap, or my usual route of pushing through the tired. Instead, got into bed and went to sleep- the cats approved of the idea.

Woke up around 4:15. Stayed in bed for a bit, but up now, feeling awake, refreshed, and maybe able to get to sleep before 3 tonight.

Right now, looking into some video games, might make some chocolate chip muffins, maybe attack my backlog of dishes, and look forward to epic fun with D&D at 11.

Current Mood: rejuvenated

We'll kick off Sword and Dragon for real on a later date. Today... did not go well.

I had the Fox's Teeth as my team and decided to start with a recon mission. Run up, scan four mechs, and get out. Simple, right?

Opposition- four light mechs, militia grade. Spider, two jenners, and a cicada. I brought in my recon lance, fairly equal match on weight, with my guys being better pilots and gunners (including a Gunner 1- with no modifiers, he needed a 1 on 2d6 to hit a target).

What went wrong? Although the defenders started with just a jenner and a spider on the board, I had to close the distance to them. They used some hills to screen me. I got close, scanned the spider with one mech and moved another to flank it. My other group was displaying more caution because I didn't want the jenner to use its speed to get behind me- four medium lasers in the rear arc is bad even with militia pilots.

Start of turn three, the remaining defenders appeared. The cicada practically WALKED up to my assassin (walk speed 7, run 11), got behind it and blew through the light rear armor- hitting my LRM-5 ammo. 5 damage x 24 shots tore the 40 tonner apart.

A series of bad initiative rolls followed, leaving me open to the fast moving defenders (sure, my mechs were fast, but they weren't cicada fast). The superior skill of my pilots was keeping me ahead, but just barely. I managed to destroy the leg of one jenner, but it was still functional enough to fire off a few shots. I put up quite a bit of damage, but no kills.

Then things went bad. I had been firing just about everything I could to try to take out the enemy mechs. This meant a lot of heat build up in my lance commander's wolfhound. After shooting up to 21 (on a 30 point scale), I was trying to get clear with him to cool off- besides other risks, the heat was killing my movement. I'd avoided back hits but eventually the odds were going to catch up on me. I did cool down a bit, then blew a shutdown roll. The spider moved in for the kill, but lousy shot placement kept me alive.

An ammo hit destroyed the jenner that wasn't on the ground. I could see pulling out a win of this disaster. Then the cicada nailed my commando, hitting one of the SRM ammo bins, which would totally destroy that mech.

Although my best pilot was basically unharmed and might have been able to fight off the defenders, we decided to call it off- a victory would probably follow the loss of the wolfhound, and three causalities seemed too much to start a campaign on.

We headed off for dinner, and switched to Hero Quest (brought by a former player who had moved away and was visiting, and might be back for good soon). A fun little game, like Descent-lite.

It was a good day, despite my disaster. We'll probably give Battletech a try later on. But, for next Saturday or Sunday, we'll be back to our epic D&D 4e game.

With our regular Saturday host home for Thanksgiving, our regular D&D game is on hold. Instead, we're breaking out the 'mechs and starting the Sword and Dragon campaign for Battletech.

I've been a fan of Battletech since my preteen years. Unfortunately, it was rare that I'd see much play time- we might fight a skirmish here or there, but the game seemed to lack structure for long term play. Sword and Dragon helps that, presenting a border war between two units aligned with Davion and Kurita. Although the book has several errors (and no errata document to date), there's enough there that merricb has managed to have a long running campaign. I figure my housemate and I can hash out any problems and have some fun hours of giant mechs blowing each other into scrap.

The worst thing about Dark Sun coming back as a new setting is reading posts from a percentage of people who need to prove how Hard their Dark Sun was, and that WotC will fumble this aspect and we'll get Candyland instead of their Dark Sun where you spend half the day dying from lack of water and half the day being oppressed by agents of the Sorcerer Kings.


Although I appreciate the popularity of 4E, I am damn glad many of  the regulars will NOT be designing 5E.


WTF is up with people wanting a martial controller?

A little $1 cup of Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake. The first ice cream I've had in months. It's 50 degrees outside right now, the temp having rebounded from the "blizzard" that hit the area Wednesday and Thursday (the predicted 6 to 12 inches... well, I think someone didn't shift the decimal to the left. Still very cold). So, I'm enjoying a cool treat on this brief respite before winter comes knocking again. It's also a guilty little pleasure as I've shifted to healthier eating habits and started exercising again.

It's also a little test. Tomorrow will finish out 3 weeks of a probiotic my GI doc gave to see if it would help my lactose intolerance. Combined with a lactaid, I'm hoping this little cup will go down smoothly.

I may regret this in a few hours, but right now, the little bits of graham cracker mixed with the ice cream are heavenly.

Current Mood: yum

Started a new campaign Friday night(it seems like I use this phrase more than I should, but hey- two gaming days allows for more campaigns, and it lets our new player try out another character before she leaves us for a return to college).

For this game, Tosha, one of my housemates, was taking the DM chair for the first time outside of some delves she's run. I suggested she try running the Chaos Scar, a new project in Dungeon that is a spiritual descendant of the Caves of Chaos. In short, each month a couple of adventures will be published in Dungeon, each one representing about 4-5 encounters found within the Chaos Scar Valley (created when an evil meteor crashed centuries before). Although tied together by location and with an overall go of defeating the meteor, there isn't a set plot line- more of, here's what's availalbe, what do you guys want to look into?

I think this marks both our most humanocentric party and one of our lightest armored groups.

Barry has an eladrin fighter (whose name I can't recall), a soldier of fortune who stands as the steel wall in front of the light armor group.

Jason is playing Hydrus, elf monk, our cloth wearer. Jason's played around with the monk in delves and has been looking forward to campaign play with one (and looking for the full release in PHB3).

Diane is Torrian, human rogue, who befriended a druid on a quest and ended up here.

I'm pulling double duty to bring us up to fighting weight of five. Artan, human shaman, is our first dedicated use of the class (we'd seen one in a delve). His homeland cursed centuries ago by the passage of the meteor, he comes seeking the source of corruption to heal the land. His spirit companion is a bear spirit he refers to as Little Brother. The spirit reflects the land and is diseased and haggard, but each victory helps restore it.

My other character is Vexia, human swarm druid. Cast out of her tribe/sent on a quest (she's got nifty powers, but I figure she makes people uncomfortable with the way she shifts into a mass of insects- the one to one wild shape of regular druids is normal enough, but someone who goes from one to many...) she adopted Artan as a father figure and also wants to root out the corruption.

First adventure pit us up against bullywugs infesting a ruined keep. I have a fondness for bullywugs, as I recall them showing up as antagonists in the old D&D cartoon. I'm happy with their 4e story, where they provide a first level monster grouping that isn't goblins or kobolds. They're also nasty environmental hazards and taint the area around them so badly that spending a healing surge around them weakens you.

The 'wugs got off to a good start, with two brutes charging our rogue and (in part due to one hit and one crit) putting her in single digits. We were able to move in and save her, but it was a sign of things to come.  Most fights had one or more characters dropping into bloodied. I recall another encounter that pitted us against some giant frogs- something I associate with low level AD&D adventures, and I'm always happy to see in new editions. Not so happy this time- the green bastards swallowed Hydrus and Vexia (who, to be fair, was a mass of bugs at the time), stunning them and inflicting ongoing damage.

I came away pretty happy with my characters, although considering how better to play them. With Artan, how to make best use of the spirit and his own powers is something I'll have to work on. I found rather than using a move action to move the spirit, it was quicker to use a minor to dismiss the spirit, then another minor to re-conjure it in a better location (close burst 20 provides lots of options). However, doing so meant Artan wasn't getting move action, so the battle would drift out of his ranged attacks. I see Primal Powers now has a feat to make the summoning a free action. I think I know where my second level feat is going. I found in Spirit Cacade one of my favorite first level daily powers. It's pretty potent in its own right, doing 2d10 on a single target. Hit or miss, it adds damage to the next three attacks that allies make when the targets are adjacent to my spirit companion; 1d6 is added on the first hit, 2d6 on the second, and 3d6 for the third.

Vexia, I was concerned about friendly fire- most of her attacks are close bursts or blasts. For the most part, I was able to avoid hitting anyone on my team... and thankfully Hydrus has a high reflex for when he was caught in the effect. I look forward to best using my swarm damage resist, which coupled with the highest HP in the party (toughness helps) gives her a lot of staying power.

First disc of Mad Men season 1 is in the mail ready to make its way back to Netflix.

(as an aside- thank goodness Netflix will soon be supporting the PS3 for streaming- I like being able to have a movie on while I'm doing stuff on the computer, but can't really do that if I'm streaming in the computer.)

For those unfamiliar, Mad Men revolves around an ad agency in 1960s New York. It is an unabashedly period piece- everyone is smoking like a chimney, racist comments flow freely and women are second class citizens.

I liked it. Scummy protagonists, but I can deal with that. Probably helped that with the first episode dealing with advertising of cigarettes, it felt like Thank You for Smoking: The Beginning, which is a good thing in my book. There's also a lot of subtlety to the episodes; a lot can be revealed in little actions and glances.

Two article queries to Dragon, one adventure to Dungeon. Now to wait, and think up more proposals.

Current Mood: anxious

Inspired by tfbretz in his RP blog.
I'm keeping busy in the RPworld- Fridays alternate between playing in the Scales of War adventure path and running my own homebrew dealing with an unending winter, artifacts misused, and the legacies of those who came before. Saturdays, I play in a homebrew and a newly started Eberron game, and I'm running Death's Reach (part 7 of WotC's HPE line) and started my Primordial's Victorious/Pre-PoLand game.

And there's still more I want to do.

For a couple months or more, I've had the idea (built up by a RPG.net thread, largely topherscott 's contributions) of converting the Dragonlance adventures into 4E. I've picked up the first two collections of the 3E adventures as my basis (and I'll need to get Dragons of Spring at some point before getting into it). Draconomicon: Metallic is out next month with draconnian stats, which will make things easier (although I thought converting them would actually go pretty well- 4E feels well designed to handle things like their death effects).

Another conversion project would be drawing on 1E modules: Trial by Fire, an old Judge's Guild adventure, pretty simple starter dungeon; Against the Cult of the Reptile God, my first RPG purchase; Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Danger at Dunwater, and The Final Enemy, modules U1-3- starting with a haunted house, leading into a slaughter and hopeful diplomacy with a group of lizard men, and a scouting mission against a sauhaugin fortress. My dad had the first two parts, and I was able to find the third part in a used bookstore a long time ago. I've run all of these at least twice (think I was going into a third time on some of them with a 3E conversion). Redone in 4E style and sensibility, I think there's a lot of potential fun, even if two of my players have gone through them in the past.

Revenge of the Giants, I'm not sure which side of the screen I'd like to be on. I ran Against the Giants for a 1E/2E hybrid game, for a solid 2E game of dwarves and a drow (mostly pulling from the Complete Book of Dwarves... at least, I think I did- the game might have died before we got this far), and an on the fly conversion of it was the sequel to my on the fly 3E conversion of Temple of Elemental Evil, so I've got some nolstagia for the original. Skimming through this, I'd love to play it, but I also fear it might not be done justice if I don't run it.

It's still almost a year off, but I'm pretty sure I'll be running a Dark Sun game. My first and second long running campaigns were done using the modules and it has been a favorite of mine since its first release.

For playing, every new class or build WotC posts gives me a new character idea (and there's plenty of old ones- earlier I was contemplating a halfling fighter). One that has really caught my attention is the swarm druid from a Primal Power preview. Ever since Tome of Magic had a murder of crows, I've wanted to play a druid that wildshapes into a swarm or group. I don't know if I'd stick with the flavor text of swarms of insects (which would work pretty well with the lamia mini) or reflavor into a flock of birds, but I like the idea.

I'm hoping one of group decides to run with the Chaos Scar project, Dungeon's new continuing project which seems to be a spiritual descendent of the Caves of Chaos. I skimmed the first adventure and it looks decent, with more on the way. (psst to tfbretz : if you still have an active DDI account, this might be a good place to look for your youngling group).

Sheesh. And that's just 4E. Another Hope, my alt-universe Star Wars Saga game continues to bounce in my head, and eventually I'll return to Pendragon- maybe after I get my actual play thread current again.

When DMing, if I'm on the ball I like to make sure there's moments for everyone to be awesome during the adventure. Undead tossed at the cleric who demolishes them; minions for the wizard to crush; stupid monsters that swing and miss the rogue's astronomical AC vs. opportunity attacks, opening said monster up to the fighter's combat challenge free swing.

So, when I'm on the other side of the screen, I like to have chances to be awesome myself. With Friday's Scales of War session bringing us to the end of Heroic, there were some good moments in there. Like my wizard zigzagging a Wall of Fire to catch a downed war troll, a two headed troll, and a spitting troll.

Or my fighter, making good on what I declared last session, when the DM knocked me unconscious, that that was the last time he'd get to do that. It required my comeback strike, my victorious surge, my defensive resurgence, and my second wind, but I stayed up through the last fight. And now I've taken Dreadnaught as my paragon path and my HP have jumped to 115, so I think I'll continue to stay up.

Our new warlord also got her moments of awesome. While dealing with a flying opponent, she threw her +1 javelin, critting three times. In the final battle, she nailed the boss with Lead the Attack, granting us all +6 to hit and saving the day.

In Eberron Saturday, we found ourselves in this scene: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/downloads/galleries/EberronCampaignGuide_art/img/122606_CN_GL.jpg

My avenger and the barbarian were able to steal the floating platforms from some of our attackers, but it's my artificer who took the helm of the sky coach after our driver was knocked out. Things were looking bad- our swordmage had failed in her own attempt to steal a platform and was pushed off. She'd survive, but was out of the fight. HP were dropping faster than our foes, and we couldn't out run them. Then two of the cocky bastards floated in off port. I examined my options.

"Can I drive the skycoach into them and smash them against a building?"

Thank god for Sharn highrises :) Two smeared goblins later, the fight was much easier.

My revenant's own moment of awesome came earlier when I exploded a bad guy. Critical hit with an encounter power, with my dark reaping, bonus damage from the artificer's at will, and my great axe's high crit property. With a normal weapon at first level, I did 52 points of damage- enough to outright kill anyone in the party, and more than enough to destroy the changing I attacked.

I'm looking forward to the next session, as Rook is now using a Great hunger great axe; whenever I crit, I get additional dice for each critical hit I've done in that fight. Thanks to my avenger power, I don't think a fight has gone by where I haven't scored at least one crit.

Current Mood: cheerful

Caught episode 2 of The Cleveland Show on Hulu. I think it's growing on me. There's a lot of the same humor as with Family Guy, which is to be expected- the cutaways could fit in either show. Cleveland comes across as a lot more likeable than Peter, probably because he's trying to do the right thing and actually learning along the way ("And what did we learn from this?" Peter: "Not a thing")

The talking toaster cracked me up. I'll keep watching.

Then I see the credits. "Also Starring: Kristen Bell." Damn, that's low. I already said I'd keep watching, you don't need to pull out the big guns like that.


Now off to finish watching Citizen Kane. Turns out it's a pretty decent flick. Who knew?

Saturday saw the start of my housemate's much delayed first D&D4e game, set in Eberron. He's starting out with the book adventure, going on to the Free RPG Day adventure, and then Seekers of the Ashen Crown, and whatever he comes up with after that.

Interesting set of characters:
Genasi swordmage- shielding, so able to knock off 9 damage from an attack by her mark.
Goliath barbarian- tough, high damage, but loads of HP.
Deva psion- looks to be pretty neat in play, should be a decent controller (or a really good controller later on, when apparently a lot of monsters pick up psychic vulnerablity)

I'm pulling double duty for this game to bring our numbers up to five (and will probably keep the two even if we add another player).

Rook- formerly a knight of Thrane, killed in the waning days of the Last War, brought back as a revenant avenger of the Silver Flame. The Flame still has a purpose for him, a purpose that involves him operating outside of the church, since his current undead status doesn't fly with his fellow worshippers.

I went with pursuing avenger, in part because Solomon Kane was the initial inspiration. Dex as a secondary fit well with the revenant when that was released, so I adjusted his origin.

I've started playing another avenger in a Saturday game, so I knew what to expect. Rook ended up being much more fortunate with his oath of enmity rerolls, and I only missed once in the two fights he was in. Critical hits, I ended up with three :D (no magic weapon yet, but a great axe meant 1D12+15 on an at-will crit). I was worried that I wouldn't get my bonus damage much, as that relied on the enemy moving away- and if they know that, why would they? Well, a half-orc archer did for a better attack, and paid for it. I was then able to swear my oath at a distant foe who went after a closer target- activating my bonus damage again.

Kat (formerly Katheryn d'Cannith): Dargonmarked artificer, formerly of Cyre, is my other character. Following the Day of Mounring that destroyed her homeland, she's avoided the factions of House Cannith. She carries around a bastard sword she retrieved from her brother, who is frozen in battle in the Mournlands. She hopes to reverse the Mouning and free her brother, and she believes delving into the Draconic Prophecy will help her do this.

When I picked up the Eberron Player's Guide, I was very excited about the artificer class. The healing infusion ability, while on the weak side of healing, does provide a lot of utility by effectively allowing the party to pool healing surges- I start with two I can use, and I can replace them during a short rest by taking a surge from anyone. If we're able to protect the psion and he isn't using his surges, why not have him give up one or two to help the party?

The at-wills are some of my favorites among the Leader classes. Magic Weapon gives me +1 to hit over a regular attack, and gives any adjacent allies +1 to hit and +3 to damage for the next round. Another provides the next ally to attack my target with a +2 bonus to hit, and the third reduces the target's next damage roll by 3. I've also got some nice ways to boost magic items between battles.

Both characters proved to be a lot of fun as we worked to uncover the mystery of a prophecy we were giving on the Day of Mourning. I've been looking forward to this, and we'll be doing another session this coming Saturday.

Current Mood: excited

Home sick today (and nice coincidence that LJ's Writer's Block question is on how you handle sick). I didn't want to be- I had Friday off since I worked the previous Sunday, and Monday is one of the days I have a student worker, and I know there is lots to get done. But I woke up at 4am with a pain in my stomach, which hadn't fully gone away or allowed me to get back to sleep by the time 7am rolled around. Lacking sleep and hurting, work just wasn't happening. I called in, cuddled up with the cats, and did finally sleep.

I've been awake for about an hour and a half now, after Piro deciced what I needed was to have my belly kneaded. Still not feeling tip-top, but the soup I had seems to be sitting okay. Thankfully nothing fluish about this.

The snow has reached Rapid City. Did look outside this morning and we had a fine white dusting. It had melted by the time I woke up, but it looks like we're done with anything over 55 degrees. Please let this be a mild winter, and not hand out five blizzards.

Current Mood: relaxed

Saw this on my last trip to the library, and Jim Butcher's name on the cover was enough to get me to pick it up. I'm not sure if it's a direct novelization of a Spider-Man storyline, or just inspired by one. In it, Spidey has to deal with three "Ancients", beings of great power who feed on totemic figures. Although they'd like to feed on Spider-Man, they're also here to avenge their brother, who Spidey barely defeated when he fought him.

I really enjoyed it. It's done in a first person style, and I think that helped me see that Peter Parker has a lot in common with Harry Dresden. Both often short on cash, both trying to protect those they care about, both often fighting well outside of their weight class. At least Peter gets to be lucky at love, as this is a pre-Brand New Day story, so he's still married to MJ.

The Black Cat played a fairly major role. I've never read much of the character, but I like her. I liked her interactions with Spider-Man, as someone who's been on the wrong side of the law, and with MJ, as a former girlfriend of Peter's. Dr. Strange also showed up, but mostly stayed out of the story; decision by Butcher so he didn't turn it into a Dresden story, perhaps.

The book also gave me a couple reasons to dislike how Marvel is handling Spider-Man's story these days. I don't read comics except in trades, but I do follow along with the major plotlines. So, I know the the Brand New Day thing split up Peter and MJ. Previously, I thought it was a really dumb move, cutting out years of storyline. I remember my comics having ads for the wedding, so I know it must be close to 20 years of marriage. But, if I thought it was a dumb idea before, I've moved to thinking it was just awful after seeing how well Peter and MJ worked in this book. They made a great couple, and cutting that out was just bad.

Another reason- as I understand it, with BND, a new hero was introduced called Jackpot, and there was some suspicion that she was actually MJ- when she and Pete made the deal with the devil, she got super-powers thrown in there. Well, it turns out Jackpot and MJ were not the same person... and in the wake of reading this book, I think that's a great opportunity missed. In regards to MJ and her interaction with Spidey and the Black Cat, a lot of her rivalry with BC seemed born out of frustration that BC could go out in the field and assist Spider-Man. I think it would have been great if MJ could team up with her man, rather than staying home each night, watching the news, wondering if this would be the day he didn't come home. But no, Marvel let that chance slip by.

Anyway, good book from Jim Butcher. I'd be happy if he did more so I have something to snack on between Dresden Files.

Last Friday saw the addition of one of my friends from work to the group. I dropped my tiefling warlord/lock (so now only running two characters for Scales of War, yippie), and she brought in a human warlord as a replacement. Things went pretty well, despite forgetting about half of her feats (the dangers of bringing a newbie into a 10th level game- partly my fault since I helped make the character, so should have known what she could do). This Friday, she'll bring a beastmaster ranger into my Friday game, the first time we've played with that class build.

Saturday was also supposed to see a new player added, but he was burnt out from a rough week. I'd rolled up a character for him which my housemate controlled for the session. This was the start of my "Primordial Victory" game. All characters were attached to the Seventh Legion of Nerath in some way.

E'Lai and Rhogar, dragonborn tempest and bravura warlord, were refugees from Arkhosia. They had left the constant wars of their homeland, finding relative peace in Nerath.
Sofie, human invoker, had been trained to be a foot soldier in the Dawn War and was doing post-grad work with the Seventh Legion up until her future employers went into hiding before they were totally destroyed. She's now the ranking religous figure in the area, following the legion's head priest being engulfed in flame and various other priests commiting suicide when they found themselves cut off from their gods.
Amrathlin, elf ranger, is one of several young elves trading his skills and services for food and medical supplies for the famine stricken elves.
Can't remember the name of the last character, a half-elf sorcerer who wandered into service with the legion.

The game opened with the PCs returning from patrol, having surveyed the area for the destruction unleashed on the world in the wake of the Primordial's victory. Returning to base, they found the garrison in poor shape as their water supply was tainted. Since the PCs were still healthy and considered some of the elite of the legion, they were given purification rituals and sent to eliminate the taint.

This simple quest took them into the swamplands near the river's source. They encountered an elemental monstrosity as well as a tribe of bullywugs.  And inside the ruins of a castle in the swamp (which may or may not have been built on previous ruins), they confronted the mastermind behind the bullywugs and the poisoning of the river, a brown dragon (since this was supposed to have been a new player's first game, I thought including a dragon would be a good introduction, and the level 3 solo lurker from Draconomicon fit the bill). Perhaps not surprisingly, the PCs had an easier time on the dragon then on a prior group of bullywugs, reinforcing my belief that solo monsters should really never be encountered solo.

With dragon defeated, the players purified the river and looted the dragon's horde. Not much at this level, lots of silver and copper, remnants of ritual scrolls of amphibian control, a little bit of residuum, and a bag of gold- the gold coins all coming from the hobgoblin nation to the north, which has been hammering out details of a peace treaty with Nerath.

Being a huge fan of Family Guy, I gave the Cleveland Show a look on Hulu. Cleveland has never been one of my favorite characters, and I had my doubts if he could anchor a show, but I was pleasantly surprised. Didn't hurt that he had a bear neighbor. Maybe I'm subconsciously sticking with the show in hopes that the bear will wear a jetpack at some point.

Hrm. Should probably add American Dad to my Netflix queue. Never delved into it, but I like everything else Seth Macfarlane touches, so it might be worth it.

Last week, I startled my sleeping cat and she cut open my foot.

Tonight, I was loading the dishwasher with plates that I had soaking. As I turned to put the first plate in, I knocked a glass off the counter top. *crash* I grabbed my brush and dustpan and carefully swept up all the piece, especially the little tiny bits. Once they were disposed of, I decided to get back to loading the dishwasher.

Apparently I had managed to find one more shard. With my foot. Same foot that still has a healing scratch on it. I was able to pull it out with my fingers and dispose of it. Then hobble to the bathroom, wash out with peroxide, put a bandaid on. Rinse, repeat.

Current Mood: sore

Four parts of what I'm enjoying and will be enjoying in my D&D games.

1. Last night's session of Scales of War went very well. We are hating harpies very much. We participated in a three way battle with quicklings and trolls. Very nasty encounter that saw my warlord down to 3 HP and my fighter at 5. Had things gone on any longer, my healing was going to be limited to guzzling potions of healing. My wizard did well with sustained spells, keeping the trolls away for most of the fight with a wall of fire, and inhibiting other monsters with a stinking cloud. The warlock and ranger both provided ranged support, but damn, those were nasty quicklings. Still, we survived, and reached level 10. One more level to paragon :D

2. Today's long session saw the end of Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress. Oddly, the boss fights of this adventure were a little underwhelming, but the inbetween fights were made of awesome. Highlights include shoving the halfling rogue down a 60 foot chasm in the first fight, and then petrifying the cleric. The shadow dragon boss of the place  initially appeared to be a killer- stunning almost the entire party with its dragon fear, causing damage and stealing surges with its breath. Then the party cut loose- disintergrate from the mage, the strikers critting, the cleric finally getting to use her paragon power to redirect the weakness and attack penalty the party was subjected to onto the dragon. The frenzied berserker gleefully used his 20th level power- Final Confrontation, which opens with a huge hit (which he critted), followed by the berserker and dragon trading blows until one decided to stop. I went too far with this, since the berserker was weakened- but I couldn't hit. So many rolls 6 and under. The battle lasted 3 or 4 rounds. Maybe not the most satisfying battle, but the PCs got to do lots of cools stuff, and now they look forward to epic.

3. Eberron gets under way next weekend. I've been looking forward to this. I'll be playing a human artificer, and a revenant avenger to bring the party up to 5. I'm excited about the characters, and it should be a fun game.

4. In two weeks, I'll be starting a new game on Saturday. My roommate's boss is interested in playing, so starting a new game to accomodate him fit well with me having a new campaign idea (the reason not to include him in Eberron? My roommate is running that, and Monday might be very quiet if the boss's introduction to D&D is getting crit by his worker). The game will draw upon the default world that's hinted at in the flavor text of the various books. However, it will be set in a prior time, with the fallen empires still standing. Another change, the Dawn War between the gods and primordials is not prehistoric, but an ongoing battle that has just come to an end- with the gods losing and forced into hiding lest they be destroyed. The primordials now turn their attention to the material world, planning to release their minions upon it.  I'll be developing this one more here.

Current Mood: bouncy

The Empire of Nerrath is the first great empire of man. And it will be the last.

The legions struggle to maintain the borders against foreign invaders. There is a stream of refugees from the war Bael-Turath wages upon  Arkhosia. Hobgoblins have reoccupied forts in the demilitarized zone; rumor has it that negotiations have broken down.

But does it matter? A greater war has been fought. The Gods War is over.

The Primordials won.

Current Mood: artistic