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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[sjm9876]

Aye.

If you were willing to sacrifice some points for a couple feats you could grab moderately armoured and war caster instead of mountain dwarf, which'd let you use shields as well and cast somatic spells even with weapons & shields, as well as a few other nice bonuses. Increase survivability a nice amount.

[BlackFlyme]

Siege ended, after hours of non-stop combat. Picking up where we last left off, and adding in some missing bits:

Across two sessions, we've cleared an angry mob of citizens, a tavern, the smithy, four different houses full of orcs, the town park (which was set ablaze so we couldn't see and had to make checks to avoid suffocating), the tower with the Skald and his 'roid-raging minions, and three waves of orcs with the help of the NPC at a gatehouse. In those waves were bombardiers, and we had little room to maneuver from behind the barricades. 10ft radius bombs, too.

Fuckers all have Ferocity, so they take forever to go down.

We just finished defending the gatehouse, when the captain of the town guard tells us to go take out the catapult outside of town. According to the book, one person is supposed to go alone while the town guard distracts the orcish army. Supposedly there are about 80 orcs or so, and the militia can't distract them all. If anyone is spotted on the way to or from the catapults, they will draw the entire army onto the players. It is a fail-state in the book, apparently.

Of course, you never split the party, so the two Paladins and the Barbarian tagged along, and got spotted. Those of us who were not spotted got the chance to continue on to the catapult. Apparently each round after being spotted, several d6 of orcs appear to enter the fight against the players until the players are dead or manage to escape.

So we had to split the game into two ongoing encounters, with the spotted holding off orcs while us saboteurs disable the catapult. We got there and sneaked past the cannon crew easily enough. There we found out that there's two ways to disable the catapult. The first is to simply sabotage it so that it breaks, by having the chain that pulls back the basket fall off, creating a bit of breathing time for the militia, but not being a permanent solution. The other option is to blow the ammunition up. Doing this takes 1d4 rounds of using Disable Device, and giving you up to 1d4 rounds to run more than 40 feet away. We lit the fuse.

Rolled a 1. We had no choice but to run, since we can't clear 40ft and still be in stealth. We caught up to the martials holding off the orcs, and were fairly wounded at this point. Except the orc army knew we were all there now, and the book considers this a fail state. The orc army is supposed to come down and kill us all, and the city stills falls even though we took out the catapult. Fuck that.

We ran to a natural choke-point on the map, in a small canyon that narrowed to only 10 feet wide at one point. The martials stood next to our shotgunner as he blasted away a 30ft cone of orcs each round. We were all spent at that point, with no spells, bombs, Lay on Hands, and other resource-driven crap at this point. All we had was our metal, gunpowder, and a refusal to accept a bullshit adventure.

Then a few waves in, about forty orcs laying dead, the DM threw us a bone and had about a half-dozen militia come in and sweep the orcs. Anti-climactic, but a godsend. According to the book, if you are spotted, the militia leave you to die.

In the end a Paladin lay dead, another mortally wounded, the Barbarian exhausted, the shotgunner barely holding consciousness, and me standing at the top of the rocks praying that none of the orcs realizing they can climb.

Yet the adventure didn't stop here. We haven't earned any rest, even though we went way the fuck off the rails. There were still a handful of orcs, giants, and trolls in town. The water supply was being assaulted by a cave giant, who gets stronger as you complete more side-objectives. At the end, when fully powered, the giant deals more than 30 damage per hit. By the way, we're still level three. Apparently if you didn't do well earlier, you fight the giant with his handlers trying to hold him down, which severely limits his strength. In addition, his lack of handlers somehow grants him nine levels of Barbarian.

There was more minor combat after this, and some kind of water troll that's basically immortal so long as it's wet. Did I mention we're in the well?

So yeah, as I said before, fuck Giantslayer.

[My Name is Immaterial]

By the way, we're still level three.

What did you do to your DM to make them hate you so much that they'd run this?

[BlackFlyme]

It gets better later, I've been told. I don't know when this 'later' is though. I'm guessing it's when the adventure is finally over.

But the beginning book is just awful. Monster of a meat grinder.

He wants to run it because he's never been able to complete it before.

[My Name is Immaterial]

It gets better later, I've been told.

Is it worth it?

[Egan_BW]

Whoever wrote that campaign must expect every player to read the whole book before starting and metagame like a bastard, because that's the only way someone could be expected to complete it without dying horribly.

[BlackFlyme]

It gets better later, I've been told.

Is it worth it?

I have serious, serious doubts.

[Kadzar]

Aye.

If you were willing to sacrifice some points for a couple feats you could grab moderately armoured and war caster instead of mountain dwarf, which'd let you use shields as well and cast somatic spells even with weapons & shields, as well as a few other nice bonuses. Increase survivability a nice amount.

I mean, not counting war caster, that's two feats to start just to get what mountain dwarf has at level 1 plus 2 more AC. And even with Variant Human, you'll be stuck with just light armor until level 4. And if you want to use melee weapons, you're stuck with simple weapons, whereas the dwarf has access to battleaxes and warhammers (granted, weapon attacks lose effectiveness past level 5 unless you have Extra Attack (which, among Wizards, only Bladesingers get, and they can't use medium armor and/or shields without interfering with Bladesong anyway), have some sort of damage boosting ability, or are using one of the weapon-based cantrips from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide).

And at level 4, the mountain dwarf could pick up Heavily Armored to be able to have as much AC as someone with the maximum Dexterity modifier holding a shield, granted that the armor is more expensive and they'll have disadvantage on Stealth checks. And wearing half plate with a shield can net you 1 more AC than just full plate. If need be, you can still pick up Moderately Armored and still come out on top. The only reason I could see buying up both Lightly Armored and Moderately Armored is if you want to boost Dexterity and have no use for Strength, which I guess is fair enough.

I'm curious, in 5e just how unfeasible is a melee wizard?

If I ever play a game I'm sorely tempted to give it a go for laughs.

As to the question of what subclass to use for a melee wizard, I'd say Abjuration is pretty good. It lets you effectively have the hitpoints of a more combat-focused class, and you get to replenish those pseudo-hitpoints whenever you cast an Abjuration spell, such as the very useful Shield spell (+5 AC for the rest of the round; triggers if an attack would hit you, which you can block if you needed no more than 5 more AC, and completely negates Magic Missile). Later on you become very good at just noping enemy spellcasters with counterspell, or just being able to take a spell head-on.

For damage, you'll want to pick up one or two of the Sword Coast weapon cantrips eventually.

[highmax28]

Party camped out for the night and I rolled for an ambush on a d100

Got a 100, and I thought of the worst possible thing to ambush them..

... So I sent the final boss after them, knowing full well he won't die here and the party had some cronies to deal with before him.

I didn't use all of his abilities but it got nasty. Knew he would be ok as a final boss when I used al of his attacks.

Well, the party gets to the dungeon and I FORGOT ABOUT THEIR FLYING SLEIGH and they end up skipping the entire dungeon, and upon seeing enemies, it was then I realized I messed up as DM.

CR14 encounter with lots of environmental stuff to help. Wizard and cleric cast fireball using scrolls they prepared on the trip. They find the treasure room first and get some gear to ready for the boss.

I knew if I didn't send the party in there without some problems, it would go exactly the same as before...

... So I had them set off a fireball trap, which almost kills half of the party and the boss, who's in this room with his coffin, breaks out and attacks the party, who throws a bunch of daggers in a cone at them, and drops a party member to unconscious.

He then moves to a party member who teleported away and knocks him out because low HP and every attack hit.

Cleric goes on overtime and heals everyone and does so every round when someone goes down.

I made a mistake by having him take double damage from one of the party member due to an item that they had on them. That party member was a monk and they pretty much dropped him by at least 50hp per turn MINIMUM.

He drops his greatest power and the party has two more droppers and he goes invisible. The cleric does her job again and the boss is revealed by the wizard who casts faerie fire and they proceed to kick the snot out of him.

Party goes down save the cleric and the monk as he punches them all unconcious and tries to flee. Monk gives chase and throws his only weapon to kill the guy AND CRITS. Vampire dies screaming as he falls off the balcony and the party goes over the edge to see and are greeted with every enemy plus about several hundred or more  they left behind inside the castle (because they skipped it) and watched as they leapt off a 10mile high castle on a mountain and try to escape, landing on bodies of their own and fleeing.

So because the party skipped dealing with the apparent breakout of vampires, now they have an epidemic of vampires plaguing the world now.

[Jimmy]

Yeah, it's good that a DM considers a player's actions and the consequences thereof. I know that if my players do decide to pull out of the necropolis they're exploring, it's not gonna end well for the world.

[highmax28]

I'm now starting curse of Strahd, and I'm hoping that I don't screw up again. I didn't get the chance to read the whole thing and... Well... It didn't go as well as I had hoped

[miauw62]

Vampire dies screaming as he falls off the balcony

JOJOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Oneir]

Vampire dies screaming as he falls off the balcony

JOJOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Personally, I got suspicious with "the boss, who's in this room with his coffin, breaks out and attacks the party, who throws a bunch of daggers in a cone at them".

[highmax28]

Vampire dies screaming as he falls off the balcony

JOJOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Personally, I got suspicious with "the boss, who's in this room with his coffin, breaks out and attacks the party, who throws a bunch of daggers in a cone at them".

I already said a few posts earlier this campaign was based on the first arc of Jojo.

And yes, I took the knives thing from part 3, but its too cool to pass up

[miauw62]

I dont thoroughly read every post here

Still pretty cool, though.