How did I last die? I got reincarnated as a gnome infant, executed, then reincarnated as a practically immortal destroyer of all things.
Last week, my character died a permanent death. So after much deliberation and book scouring, I made two neat characters for this week's session. A support-optimized bard obsessed with witnessing battles, and his mute dual-wielding ranger-dervish cohort obsessed with proving herself against deadly foes.
Every time any of my characters enters melee, they get their ass kicked. No amount of armor class, concealment, or hit points is ever enough. Lesson apparently not learned, and I definitely did not expect what happened...
My new characters intercept the party and ask to join the spectacle and violence. Sirona the ranger challenges our barbearian to a duel to help prove our worth. He just politely declines and ignores all her taunts, until eventually our party wizard accepts the challenge of melee combat.
Our wizard turns into a 12-headed hydra. My ranger does decent damage but goes down in the second round. Just unconscious, though. Everyone's satisfied and we retire for the night.
We're woken up the next morning by a recurring boss fight, Lahlm the rage mage lich, shooting lightning at us indiscriminately. My bard recites a scathing poem about Lahlm's many embarrassing defeats at the party's hands. Lahlm retorts with more lightning, and also stops our wizard's heart with a spell from the Book of Vile Darkness.
No problem, I thought. My bard will just run over and cast a healing spell, saving and reviving the wizard (who otherwise will die next turn). This will definitely ingratiate the wizard to him. But, no... right before my turn, two more bolts of lightning knock both my characters into bleedout. The bard at -9, death one turn away.
Here's where roll20 started getting weird.
I needed to roll a 10 or less on a 1d100 to stabilize. I rolled 100, the first 100/100 roll in a 2-year campaign. It didn't do anything special, my fresh bard character just died mere hours after being introduced. My suicidally-adventurous melee ranger was fine, relatively, though still unconscious.
The wizard also failed to stabilize, bleeding out. Leaving just the melee barbearian to fight off the flying evocation lich. He had to protect the dead and dying... and our horse. "Music". I don't know where to start with this horse, but let's just say she's blessed by Roll20. She survived some incredibly deadly situations with absurd luck, including some embarrassing negligence on our part. The DM had eventually given her class levels. She put her skill points in bluff, to convince the crew to feed her more. One day we came back from a dungeon crawl to find the crew worshiping her as a god.
Well, for this battle she was (somehow) up in the crow's nest. And she looked at the lich with those big sad eyes, and the lich... lost his rage. (Rather than make it a total party wipe, I suppose, though she did roll really well)
So the barbearian set about reviving the dead. First he brought back the wizard with an extremely cursed yet self-recharging scroll of raise dead. It does something to the resurrected, but it hasn't been used on my characters yet. It seems to involve a sinister personality change of some kind, though.
Then for the bard, he pulled out one of the greatest scrolls ever made: the "discount" reincarnation scrolls we bought in Elysium. Products of some twisted Fae genius, they use an amazing table with four separate rolls.
My boisterous world-traveller elf came back as a 9-year-old gnome baby restricted to only fight in overalls and a nailbat. And 9 gnome years is about 2 human years, so she (yes, gender changed) could only crawl.
The party wizard, under some unexplained compulsion probably tied to the cursed scroll which brought him back, coup-de-graced her.
We had one reincarnation scroll left. At this point I was kinda hinting that it was fine, I'd just continue play as my sword-dancing ranger. Well, apparently Roll20 sure as hell heard me.
The barbearian critfailed reading the scroll, unleashing the energies on himself. Except he wasn't dead so that did nothing, but he couldn't use the scroll again for 24 hours (I'm pretty sure the scroll should have expended there, but we houserule some things). The wizard rolled a 2, also failing to cast the spell. My ranger eagerly took the scroll, stared at it a little, then laughed and handed it back. Being mute, and absolutely untrained in the use of magic items.
Then the lich took the scroll, mimed an exasperated sigh, and single-handedly doomed the world.
You see, there's a 5% chance of the first roll sending you to a special table of outsiders and special races. Then, there's a 5% chance of "Tarrasque, INT drops to 1, attacks party". Yeah, that's what finally happened.
Roll20 did everything in its power to keep me from playing that bard. I'm honestly honored, and I hope this means I've finally built a melee character who'll be allowed to live.
Nist Lathom, world traveler, enjoying his first day of immortality
Though that's not necessarily true. It's technically possible to kill a tarrasque. And a certain dual-wielding ranger is gleeful at the prospect of one day felling her former companion, now the most famous of magical beasts.
D&D 3.5e wooo sleepy. BTW, I name my elven characters using DF's dwarven language.
Adil - Wall - Reused the name of the dwarf in my profile image
Akur Neth - Champion Balance - Neutral cleric of nature
Sirona Matul - Sirona Dance - Ranger and dervish who dance-fights. Couldn't find a good female first name in the language file.
Nist Lathon - Fear Myth - Bard who wanted to watch people die saga-worthy deaths. And received an ironic death, and truly earned his name.
Edit: Tried to spoiler the more rambly bits, I know it's long anyway.