Things My Character/I Can No Longer Do In RPGs

[Dlover]

Eh, I manage just fine. The trick is to use your tongue. Which is why I never borrow dice. Euck.

[Amara]

My rolls continue.

It's gotten to the point where people no longer complain when I just roll things for them ahead of time (so that I can give a nice, continuous narrative instead of stopping and starting every time someone pipes up "KNowledge (X!)") I roll better than they do.

They still have to roll for more specific things of course, but general things like a quick survival or perception or whatever to recognize something quickly? Sure.

I roll a lot of 20s, it seems.

(Why does this only not apply to Rian? I dooooooo not know.)

[edit]
...somehow a lower cr encounter wound up (almost) being more lethal.
Okay then.

► Show Spoiler

I was just rolling random encounters, and assassin vines came up. I figured screw it, they need another encounter anyway (but not another one as hard as the leucrotta yet) and I had a plot element I knew would be easy to work in using the vines. (Lovely thing about them is you can easily shove remnants inside for some armor or body or whatever you want players to find~)

Until the dwarf decided the best response to a shambling, mindless, 'you are food and I'm going to grapple you' enemy was...to light it on fire.
Now, the paladin npc, as a human paladin, thankfully
1) is a grappler (...I make a lot of grappler paladins. Oops. Well. My last paladin NPC was a scary angry lady of justice following Heironeous, so I guess I can justify another grappler at this point.)
2) has fire resistance 5.
So while he was promptly engaged with the FLAMING ASSASSIN VINE against his will, he took absolutely no fire damage at all each turn due to lucky low dice and some good rolls. Still, had the paladin not been there, assuming for the same rolls and luck on part of the plant...
1) the dwarven artificer has a lower ac than the paladin and a FAR lower cmd.
2) and less hp.
3) and lacks fire resistance.
4) and would have been very screwed.

Now, I'm assuming of course, that had the plant grabbed anyone that would be very likely to die horribly, that the players would have focused that specific plant, and everything wouldn't have been AS BAD as it could have been...but still.

[Amara]

I AM NO LONGER ALLOWED TO HALFLING.

I gave the players a heads up that they'd have a 2-3 day period between sessions in-game to pursue whatever they wanted. The kitsune ranger wanted to spend one of the days with a small hunting party going after leucrotta. I had a few pre-made NPCs, so I just grabbed the nearest one (a halfling,) since he was the ranger's level, and Freja (a half orc pre-established NPC) since she was close friends with the ranger.
They actually managed to ambush a crocotta, and the halfling won initiative.
And rolls a 20.
...and rolls a 20 to confirm.
With a halfling sling staff. Which does x3 on crit. THIS HALFLING JUST DAVID AND GOLIATH'D A CROCOTTA. LITERALLY ONE-SHOT IT.
The turns continue, and Freja winds up critfailing on an attack roll, I roll my random "WHAT HAPPEN" table...and her scimitar goes flying out of her hand. I roll where it lands and...beneath the leucrotta she was fighting. Freja proceeds to miss for three turns of combat. Meanwhile, the halfling crits again with the sling staff, and only misses a single attack out of all his turns. When he misses? He decides to switch to melee... proceeds to crit again, and then rolls a 20 when performing a heal check on the ranger to deal with his wounds, post combat.
I can't remember all of the checks involved, but I do remember that halfling alone rolling over 6 20s from that one mini-session. By the end of it the ranger's player was literally just chanting HALFLING HALFLING HALFLING every time his turn came up.



HALFLINGS ARE AMAZING OKAY. THEIR LUCK BONUSES ARE REAL.
(I have been forbidden from ever making a halfling villain, which naturally means I must now.)

[Godbot]

Amara, I'm starting to suspect you have one of those dice.

- If we're being chased by monsters, an NPC is on the verge of death, the closest thing we've got to medical attention isn't working, and we're running out of time, under no circumstances am I to convince the character who's carrying our piece of a mysterious and immensely powerful artifact to "just try something."

[Amara]

Haha, if I was rolling physical dice I'd check them. I swear. This is all craziness that's happened in roll20.
The best part is before this incident, the group had been joking about halfling barbarians when I'd casually commented they weren't uncommon. ("Why would you even make a halfling barbarian, they get a racial strength hit.")
I think I've officially made them terrified of halfling barbarians.
And this was just a little level 4 pre-statted npc I yoinked for short notice. Dear lord. ...I'm so tempted to just fill the area with halfling npcs now.


Also that is the best time to do that, are you kidding? It's only...gotten me sucked in to a book world and incinerated or planar transported me before. What's the worst that could happen?

[Godbot]

Well, that depends on whether you consider saving someone's life by turning them into a weird soulless ice lich to be an improvement or not. Turns out the power to transmute life doesn't work so well on someone who's been dead for a few minutes. She doesn't seem to mind, though.

Actually, she doesn't pay much attention to anything now.

And speaking of barbarians, I have the best pathfinder barbarian build of all time. I haven't actually had a chance to try it out, but I'm still very pleased with it.

► Show Spoiler

It revolves around a barbarian archetype called elemental kin. In exchange for your trap sense, your rage extends when you take energy damage. You can combine it with other rage powers, like energy absorption, for an anti-mage build that punishes enemies for attacking you with magic.

That's the idea, at least. See, in D&D, energy damage can mean a lot of things. Specifically, it refers to any effect that deals fire, cold, electricity, acid, or sonic damage, as opposed to physical or force damage.

For instance, suppose you were to set yourself on fire.

I think you see where I'm going with this: a barbarian who actively goes out of his way to take energy damage, to the point of lighting himself on fire, smashing open tanks of acid, and generally causing as much collateral damage as possible, in hopes of getting caught in it. Because it makes him stronger. Like the dude from Crank, only it makes even less sense.

[Zathyr]

Not barred from doing this yet but I'll soon find out how my gm feels about me getting a tiny exotic military saddle made for my character's owl familiar, for when he shrinks himself down to diminutive size. If I use the same rules for scaling down armor, it'll weigh 3 pounds, nearly as much as the character himself at that size. Considering picking up Improved Familiar for a pseudodragon, then he could be a dragon rider!

as for the barbarian idea there:

► Show Spoiler

That sounds perfect paired up with an arcanist who likes to throw around area damage. The elemental resistance/absorption powers might make it a little to tough to take enough damage to fuel the elemental kin power though.

[Amara]

...yeah, I jokingly threw the aforementioned halfling in an eating contest against the players, and somehow he rolled three 20s and managed to beat all of the PCs. I am officially no longer allowed to halfling.
(Note to self, things halflings are not allowed to participate in... festival games.)

Well, the soulless part is a bit of a drag, but being an ice lich could be pretty cool, I guess. :V


Haha, I say go for the pseudodragon! They're awesome, and don't get enough use.

[Amara]

- In retrospect, even though it worked, the appropriate way to save a friendly vampire is probably not to light him on fire so that his attackers cannot hurt him.
- Similarly, the appropriate response to having captives is NOT to barter with them, and then subsequently let them go once the rest of the party runs off to handle various diplomatic things. (oops.)
- Even if said former attackers/captives had worked out a diplomatic resolution with the vampire they'd been attacking.
- And even if we'd have had to let them go regardless to avoid war.

- It is a bad sign when the wizard is the only party member not terrified of the vampire archivist.
- Considering he was just trying to kill us, my response after talking to our captives should not be to immediately start making repairs and improvements on their warforged, even if his joints continuously and painfully lock up due to bad design.

- I should not leave the powerful extra-planar trickster being alone with the party for any length of time.
- I should not be surprised when the powerful extra-planar trickster being uses this alone time to rig mind effecting illusion traps all over the party members' rooms.
- I should not be surprised when I am the only individual who's room the powerful extra-planar trickster being does NOT screw with.
- Standing there and staring while holding a bouquet of wildflowers is not the appropriate reaction to the rest of the party running around in circles, screaming and flailing at things I cannot see.
- Jabbing the powerful extra-planar trickster being repeatedly in the arm so that he laughs uncontrollably and cannot stop to breathe* is not an appropriate punishment for his actions, and in fact, the other party members find his laugh horrifying and unnerving.

(* As per the Pathfinder fae sorcerer bloodline's level 1 ability.)

- If a group of people has never seen an elf before, due to a war 20 years ago that wiped out a MAJORITY OF THE ELVEN POPULATION ON THIS CONTINENT, it is in no way appropriate to attempt to convince them that elves as a whole are otherworldly powerful beings with strange and terrifying powers.
- Even if I am, as a whole, now a strange otherworldly powerful being with strange and terrifying powers.
- ESPECIALLY because I am, as a whole, now a strange otherworldly powerful being with strange and terrifying powers.
- My attempts to do so do not amuse the vampire archivist, who has not only has lived more than long enough to see through my bullshit, but who also was at the academy while I was enrolled there.

- The appropriate response to meeting yourself from another reality is not to immediately engage in a snarky elf catfight. ...with myself.
- No, really. This only confuses (and horrifies) the party.
- No matter how much our somewhat lecherous knight may wish it, there being TWO of Elevar, (and consequently two of his girlfriend/wife, Lani) does not mean what he wants it to mean.

[Theonewhoisodd]

-snip-
- No matter how much our somewhat lecherous knight may wish it, there being TWO of Elevar, (and consequently two of his girlfriend/wife, Lani) does not mean what he wants it to mean.

Except when it does?

[Amara]

Ahaha, with another character, perhaps. With possibly the youngest and least... adenturous elf I've played yet, noooot so much.

Lets see... From my game the other night.

- I don't care how much he likes it, you cannot use black tea as a 'bat signal' for Elevar.
- Quorren is not the party's money machine.
- Quorren is not the party's money machine.
- ELEVAR'S SON IS NOT THE PARTY'S MONEY MACHINE.
(Subsequently he rolled two 20s in a row when the party persuaded him to go do things for them, as if in an effort to prove me wrong.)
- If I hear one more bear joke about the paladin being a beekeeper...
- And yet no one blinks at the half Orc ranger working as a butcher.


Then there were more...frustrating things I had to genuinely say no to.
- you cannot abstract an investigative portion.
- I am not just going to accept rolls and thus solve all my own puzzles for you.
- in an investigation you actually have to investigate. I am not going to abstract and assume you talked to everyone you needed to. That's your job, not mine.
- the reason your character 'isn't invested' is BECAUSE you expect everything to be abstracted, and thus never have context when the rest of the party DOES.

[Arch Lich Burns]

When they give you abstracts, give them vague clues or non clues. Or lead them to traps

[Amara]

I've hit that point. I try to be patient with him, because I know he's not TRYING to be frustrating, he's just...augh. He always wants to play skill based characters, but he's soooo terrible at it. But I really don't want to stifle a player's creativity and attempts to play the type of character they want to.

I've found with him I often have to be blatant and outright say "this is an investigation puzzle, you can't abstract it." And then he's like OH and suddenly starts asking NPCs questions and such. Or before when he was all "...but I have no reason to talk to _NPC_, so my character really isn't involved." (In this case it was Elevar,) and I had to point out, "you were outright told you needed to find a mage to ask about the crystal... aaand you know he's a high leveled mage." "Ohhhhhhh. Right."

Etc.
.-. I still hit a point where I feel like I'm being forced to solve my own puzzles. It's frustrating because I like the guy, he's a good friend, and I want everyone to have fun, but I can really only do so much for him.

[Godbot]

Just out of curiosity, what do you consider being a good job of playing a skill-based character?

[Amara]

It depends on what they're wanting to do. He wants to be a trapmaker and locksmith type. He's taken the tactless flaw (our ...ranger is actually party face, which is odd, but it works!) but the player in question wants his player to be a investigative type.
Theeeee problem is he's not very good at actually looking for things or...investigating, which is where I take issue. I just make up for it by coaxing him in to playing his role, but it is a bit tiring.

I mean, there's tons of skill characters, and tons of skills you can focus a character around, I just wish he'd play the concept he said he wanted...more.


[edit]
...as of today's mini-session, I have been forbidden from jokingly rolling d100's to see if things happen.

There was a thunderstorm. The players joked about being struck by lightning. I decided to roll. Claimed "on a scale to 1 to 100... 1 being the worst that can happen, and 100 being the best..."
And then a 1 came up.
The players stared.
Then the dwarf asks "Wh-what happens?"

On the bright side, this led to an awesome fire rescue scene with the injured being hauled out of the burning temple?

[Godbot]

Stats in Shadowrun go up to, like, six. Eight in special cases.

No one needs to roll sixteen dice for agility.

[Amara]

o.o what on earth was going on in that shadowrun game?

(Granted I don't have much shadowrun experience. My last attempt at playing ended in my character swiftly becoming unplayable as apparently drug addictions have a lovely tendency to go full blown downward spiral of doom.)

[Godbot]

I joined late into a campaign without much of a sense of the other characters, so I made a balanced spellcaster who could do a bit of everything. Turns out the party already had three spellcasters, and my character really felt like a fifth wheel. I didn't show up to a couple of sessions, and then shrugged it off and worked with my DM to respec him into a full support character.

So for my first session with my respecced character, I tried out every one of my new spells that I possibly could. Among other things, I managed to get my spellcasting juuust high enough to cast Increase Agility (+1 agility for every hit, if you can roll enough dice to match the stat you're buffing) on our elven gun freak (7 agility, +4 from enhancements).

So our elf had 11 agility, I rolled 11 dice, and she ended up with 16 agility, more than double what a character should normally be capable of. Because we needed a scout to go slightly ahead of us.

[Amara]

That's...amazing. o_o

My one character (the guy that got...oh god. The drugs. The DRUGS...) was meant to be party face...

It was literally an addiction to prescription pain killers that started it. I couldn't seem to succeed any rolls when I needed them with him haha (The same happened to my last cleric in Pathfinder. He'd roll great, tons of crits...then roll a 1 the one time he needed to succeed a will save.)


I've...been informed by the other players in the 3.5 campaign that I am in that even though I seem to be fond of method acting, forcing myself to listen to any music on an endless loop is a terrible idea. Even if a certain elf was damaged neurologically by being hit by SUDDENLY 20D6 OF LIGHTNING DAMAGE (and surviving) and even if he now seems to hear music no one else can... forcing myself to listen to the drums on and endless loop (yes, THOSE drums,) is a horrid idea.

I reached the point where even me TALKING started to be to the rhythm of the drums when I was told outright I was going to drive myself insane. Oops.

[Godbot]

Yeah, I'm actually really happy with how it turned out. The party decided they had to bring my character (a big cranky troll magiscientist) with them when they snuck into a heavily defended complex, just because it'd be entertaining. I'd made several offers to not come along because my character had absolutely no ability to be stealthy, but they insisted.

Which turned out to be for the best, since I also got to cast Increase Strength on our robot, who broke down half a dozen cell doors by putting her arm through the wall and just running, clotheslining doors out of the way as she went. Like Kenshiro or something.

Supports are fun!

[Amara]

Haha, sounds pretty awesome. I'd have prolly brought in another character if the game I was in hadn't petered out shortly after. Pity.
I'd love to give Shadowrun another shot.

[Godbot]

Admittedly, I was worried about Shadowrun when I found out that you can be, like, a vampire with a trenchcoat and a katana. I was expecting a lot more angsty, grimdark World of Darkness bullshit.

By the way, it occurs to me to ask: how did your elf end up taking 20d6 electricity damage? What was going on?

[Amara]

Haha, I'm a huge WoD (at least, oWoD) fan, but yeah, I can see that. As for the damage...

The short answer is that a duel went horribly wrong. The longer answer requires a bit of context.

► Show Spoiler

Currently we are in a position where the party effectively has to be in two places at once. Even with Elevar loading up on teleportation spells, it isn't feasible to try. So we were best off with a temp party split. This was to be our last day before we went separate ways, and it was agreed that Jack, our Knight, (Cavalier now, as we've switched to Pathfinder,) would be the best match for Elevar, because he'd be able to keep Elevar safer than our Swashbuckler or Sacred Fist could. (...also because they were heading to a political situation which REQUIRED our Sacred Fist, aaaaand Jack and politics DO NOT MIX.) The problem is that though we've been together for about a year now in character, Elevar doesn't know Jack quite as well as he does Kraden (the Swashbuckler,) and so they honestly didn't really know how best to work WITH one another. So we agreed to spar one another the last day before the party split, both to gauge each other's skill..and figure out where each others' weaknesses lay. Unfortunately the Knight is...ever the boastful sort, rather prideful, and he decided (insisted) we should make this more interesting. He throws in a wager, and before Elevar can so much as say "hey now why don't we just--" Kraden decides to step in and speak in his place. Lovely. So this has already gone from a friendly duel to...two hyper competitive young idiots who don't want to dent their pride.

► Show Spoiler

Unfortunately, Jack has recently required an immensely powerful weapon. Double unfortunately, the prideful git decided to use it.
The weapon? ...a relic from a past war between the Valalani (alternately known as the freakishly powerful quasideity faelike extraplanar beings I have mentioned a few times before) and the Shattered One, who we still know very little about. Other than that he was apparently a mortal who grew powerful enough to challenge the gods and who very nearly brought down the Material Realm all around him in the process.
When we found this thing, it was being guarded in a midpoint between two planes to hide its power...by a thousand year old warforged tasked with hiding it away until someone could defeat the challenges intended to protect said weapon. Heard this schtick before, right? Yeah, it never ends well. Well, we passed with flying colours. Before finally being allowed rest, the warforged warns us that we may not be prepared for the power this relic holds... and that we must be VERY careful. He even goes to the point of directly telling Jack YOU. ARE. NOT. READY. But ultimately? Good luck telling the overly excitable RACCOON KNIGHT that he can't have a shiny. So, at the point the duel started, we still didn't know 100% what this thing could do. We knew it was "shattered" from its original purpose (effectively a stance weapon,) and that this was largely what made it dangerous. "Purpose" should have been a huuuuuuge hint here that we were stepping in to territory where we didn't belong.

► Show Spoiler

We've decided to include power words in this campaign... remnants of the lost, original language of the Valalani. The language is an ancient one, incredibly difficult to understand, let alone speak, and Elevar is endeavoring to learn as much as he can. I've picked up a few words. On their own they do nothing. Use words together in the right combination, and you can make pseudo-magical effects happen...without casting a spell. Unfortunately my vocabulary is incredibly limited, and if you say the WRONG thing, you can cause some pretty...uh...bad things to happen. I know a few words at this point. "Body". "Myself" (Because I know the phrase "to me") and other words like stone, crystal, steel, fire, lightning...and because I once saw Telaki use "air-body-myself" to make it so he wouldn't bleed when sliced open... Well, this becomes relevant in a moment.

► Show Spoiler

So initially, it WAS still a friendly duel. Elevar was honestly being more playful (and...annoying as HELL, but eh, the boy's fae-blooded, so no one should be surprised.) than anything, and Jack was getting increasingly frustrated that he couldn't even HIT the elf. (Mage Armor, Greater + equipment + dex = 23 AC... then add mirror image and chill shield...and not only am I hard to hit, but I've blown 3 spells just to defend myself 8D GO MEEEEEE) He finally puts his sword away...and pulls out the lance.
Okay, now it's getting serious. Jack is frustrated, a bit pissed, and Elevar is admittedly exacerbating this by using such things as Laughing Touchto get away whenever Jack even gets close. He finally lands a good hit and... it's a mirror image. Another hit...mirror image.
I still have 6 images left at this point, since I rolled for max. Elevar has landed a few hits on Jack, Jack's player is still rolling poorly...and he decides to use one of the lance's powers that he'd used before.
Now, unfortunately, the lance is a purposed weapon.
This is the point I realized something was wrong. Then I hear the DM roll dice.
...then I hear a "...shit."
Then I watch Jack's player stare at the DM, confused.

A purposed weapon is in many ways worse than an intelligent weapon. If something is intelligent, it can be reasoned with. If something just has a purpose but no true intelligence, and still HAS an ego... how to you reason with that? And from the relic's point of view... Elevar struck first. Elevar had turned on its master.
This is when we learned the lance had the power to call lightning as a level 20 sorcerer, once a week.
I see this thing charging up.. and out of character, I know I'm not going to make the reflex save. The DC is CHA based...Jack's highest stat. In character, the elf just sees a terrifying bright flash, loud boom and...
I decide to blurt out "stone-body-myself" in the Valalani's language.
Due to situational lightning resistance, I survive 20d6 damage...with 4 HP remaining. The terrified elf VERY quickly retaliates, Jack is incapacitated, and by the time he comes to...confused. Very, very confused.

So, Jack comes to... The Sacred Fist heals them both up and verbally beats the ever loving snot out of the pair... The two are going to be forced to travel together. Alone. They're going to need full and total trust in each other..
Jack just nearly electrocuted Elevar... and Jack has no idea what came over him, WHY he did that, so you have a confused and worried Knight...and a Wizard who is now absolutely terrified of him and doesn't trust him whatsoever.
Other than that, Elevar got a cool scar out of it, I suppose. :b

[Godbot]

► Show Spoiler

I like the system in WoD just fine, and the ideas they throw around are cool, but I'm not big on a) a setting where the world is fucked and nothing you do matters, and b) a party where everyone has a tragic backstory about how they became a vampire and/or transcended humanity. Don't get me wrong, I'm just fine with one character with a sad past that maybe gets revisited during the campaign. But when it's mandatory, it kind of turns into everyone fighting over the spotlight. I played a WoD campaign once, and we ended up devoting like three sessions in a row to one of our more vocal players, and how traumatized her character was over this thing we didn't see and how another player has to comfort her but oh no she's upset. That's kind of why I like Shadowrun - it's similar enough to WoD in premise, but it avoids the issue of everyone fighting over all the sad.

(Counterpoint: When oWoD made the transition to nWoD, they had a huge crazy canon apocalypse that everyone was encouraged to participate in via their own campaigns, and that's the coolest shit in the world.)

Anyway, I am sorry that duel got so out of hand, even though you kiiind of got what you deserved by taunting Jack until he used his other, crazy powerful weapon. It's probably made good roleplaying fuel though, right? Also, in order: that thing about power words sounds really cool, Sacred Fists are a neat idea and I've always wanted to try one, and what ended up happening with the wager?

[Amara]

Mhnmm. I must say I still don't like what nWoD did overall... particularly regarding Vampire and Werewolf. Ah well. As for the MY STORY IS SADDER issue... I never put up with that in my own games, haha. When I got a bunch of sob stories my response was outright, "okay, assuming you weren't ALL mistakes or pity cases, I'm assuming there's a reason your sire chose you. Why?" ...throwing that question at people seemed to straighten out backstories pretty quickly.

As for the wager, we haven't had our next campaign yet, but apparently (thanks to Kraden,) Jack has to put up with being tutored...for a month...by Elevar.
(I don't think that is going to work too well considering Elevar is presently terrified of Jack.)