While there's one main Kobold Smith, she's got lots of apprentices, which is good because the Smithy is for some reason NOT scaled to their size. Perhaps they inherited it or apprenticed there and took over when the previous master died.
But this means that the Kobolds are very adept at quickly forming pyramids/standing on shoulders and walking/working together to use big tongs, etc. Think three Kobolds standing on eachothers shoulders in a trench coat only they don't bother with the trench coat.
Over the years they've added some refits to the shop, shorter forge, smaller tools, etc, that a single Kobold can use with no problem, but they keep the bigger stuff around because it's way easier to do the shoulder standing and walking routine when they're making stuff for medium or larger people rather than trying to do it in smaller pieces with the smaller equipment.
a couple of other places (Shh, pretend Bold Coal is new)
Bold Coal Forges:
20 years ago, Bold Coal was a decrepit and abandoned forge on Serenity's waterfront. Then the kobold Kulupu and her daughters made landfall in a falling apart dinghy, packed to the brim with treasure, smiths tools, and strange silver scales. . A few deals later, and they'd bought themselves both a home and a means of employment.
Nowadays, Bold Coal is known as one of the finest forges in Serenity, and perhaps on the terra continent. The majority of the smithy is still run by the kobolds. The fact that most of the forge was built for use by much larger creatures hasn't deterred them - They simply learnt how to work as a group, stacked ontop of one another, to wield the tools. These days, of course, the forge has been refitted to include more kobold sized tools, but they still use the old methods for larger commissions.
During Festivals, Kulpu and her brood are known to make a show of their ability to forge things as a team. It's a popular act!
Bold Coal Forges is one of the only places outside of Monferrina with the skill and know how to make Ogre-sized armor.
--
Fun side note: There are no dragons on terra incognita. Phoenix fill the niche of "Giant flying firebreathing monster", but there's just flat out, no dragons. I have no idea for the watsonian reason for this, but doylist: It's just a point of distinction that there's no such thing. Also that big ol wurms feel like the sort of thing that would or could warp a setting around them. Maybe the watsonian reson is they do arrive, and promptly end up dead to the Phoenixs or roaming gargutan grand beasts.
I still like the idea of a dragon killing a colossal phoenix, only for it to promptly go up like a fuel air bomb as it resurrects into a slightly smaller phoenix.
--
Song of Pleasure
The highest class brothel in Serenity, this sprawling building is the metaphorical heart of the comfort district. No matter what your taste is, you can find some to fill it here. There's even a demon on staff - Mountain Erasing River. Of note, there is no set madam or owner - The brothel is owned by the workers, each with a share (there's probably some sort of system for passing your share on to someone when you step down from actively working there - i need to figure that out!).
By tradition, the Comforters Guild's council representative is works here. The comfort district itself covers bars, theater, sex work, resturants - If yoi need to relax, let off some steam, or just have a really good feed this is the place to do it. Humorously, the bounders between it and the rest of the city are fairly clearly delinted by a bunch of noise muffling runes, ensuring that even the rowdiest parties dont disturb the peace of the rest of the city. (There are of course eateries etc out side of the district, but these are quiet, low key places. Serenity favors being a quiet place given how many of it's citizens are kinda guaranteed to have ptsd around loud sudden noises or similar! Arrival by shipwreck will do that to you!)
(Still working this out - i know sex workers have a big presence in Serenity, and i want it to be a postie representation, and also fuck this a fraught topic and i need to do way more research to make sure i dont mangle it)
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The Vaults
Scattered around the city (and it's outskirts), these are the domain of the Historians Guild. Some are simply archives serving to help them put together the history of the place, and make sure knowledge isnt lost. others act as storage for memory pearls or other dangerous artifacts - there's one vault way out at sea, for instance, that holds a lot of nastie things and definitely isnt out there so they can just drop the entire thing into the ocean if things go wrong, why would you suggest that.
Open for suggestions to other fun! or gameamble stuff that might be in the city.or just points of interest.
Some thoughts, what if dragons are stuck between Terra Incognita and their original homes? You could see their shadows on clouds or drifting waves when you get far enough from the shore. They're trapped in an actual limbo for some reason.
Secondarily, is Firefly some of the inspiration for the Comforters Guild? I think it'd be easy to mine for some inspiration of tasteful sex work or at least the idea of how it could fit into society as a jumping off point.
Honestly be the inspiration was there is going to be sex workers, because...*gestures at world and history*
Given that, and given the theme that Serenity in particular has of being a genuinely nice place with people working together, it made sense to make sure sex workers were a: front and center and b: a respected profession
Also the comfort part is not innuendo (well, not just innuendo). The city as a whole is meant to have a big theme of care and looking after people. Part of that is going to be pleasures of the flesh. Bread and water can help you survive, but that's more to life than just survival.
I remembered the theme of hospice and memory massaging. I figured there'd be more elaboration than just a name. I feel like it could encompass a lot of things. Health care could include sexual care, to an extent.
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
So I've been playing in a Discord Curse of Strahd game with some old college friends, and had a really cool organic moment happen for my character, Malcer. He's a cleric of Kelemvor, God of the Dead (like judge of the dead, Lawful neutral), and has been pretty adamant about taking down Strahd. He's been very open at trying to bring joy to the land, and help all those he comes across. When we met Madam Eva, after Malcer left to console one of the party members (who Madam Eva revealed that party member's husband was dead), she predicted to the rest of the party that Malcer would save one more life before he met his end.
So fast forward a couple of sessions, the party made it to Vallaki and we parted ways with Ireena and Ismark, who we escorted to the town. Me and another player, a fighter named Eldon, had collected a bunch of orphans after slaying a bunch of hags. The DM had created a whole orphanage for the town to bring the children to, and a subplot involving a child whose family was killed after they opened a locket that had a demon sealed inside of it. The two of us and the party sorcerer Zirrai ended up on our own investigating this, and ended up being attacked by the demon in the attic of the orphanage. Zirrai, rushed to get the locket and picked it up with a scrap of cloth while Eldon and Malcer fought off the demon, who ended up retreating back into the child and holding a knife to his throat. I looked at my character sheet and his motivations, did a skill check on the demon, and then told Zirrai to give Malcer the locket. He mage handed it to Malcer.
As it slipped out of the cloth, and landed in Malcer's hand, he said "If the worst happens, save the child."
The demon, sensing the moment, flew from the child to Malcer.
I failed my saving throw.
My character turned to face the rest of the party, and the DM ended the session.
It was then I revealed to the party that my character's bond was "He would sacrifice his life and soul to save an innocent", and that the next session would most likely be my last session because my work schedule was changing (not even the DM knew). At the very least I will not be able to make most sessions.
I'm very pumped to fight my party as a demonic monster, and feed into the horror world of Barovia.
First the campaign I'm playing in. Our Storyteller commissioned an artist to draw our characters:
Clockwise from the top:
Brock Johnson, our resident Life/Forces Mage who is about BEING POSITIVE and BEING SWOLE.
Jarret, our Time/Mind Cult of Ecstasy member who is a druggie chemist.
Mordecai Switkowski (meee), our Prime/Forces/Matter/Entropy physics professor.
Jay... something....?? He has a new name every session that starts with J due to a few too many dots in Arcane, our Mind/Entropy street magician mage.
and Wilber Dixon, our Correspondence/Forces Virtual Adept, who tragically is afflicted with severe ALS (Zero dots in Strength).
We'd just finished mucking around with three Wyrm-touched Rokea who were interfering in Brock Johnson's SUPER POSITIVE SWOLE PERSON COMPETITION which he uses to 1: garner sponsorships for his Cult, the SWOLE PATROL and 2: to try to subtly shift Consensus such that he can get away with BEING SWOLE more often in public. After we'd successfully kept the dark nastiness from the Rokea from infecting the SUPER POSITIVITY with their weird self-serving message of trashing other people to elevate yourself.
(As an aside, the capstone event to the SUPER POSITIVE SWOLE PERSON COMPETITION is each of the strongpeople lifting each other up, then Brock Johnson lifting all of them simultaneously in a tall pillar of swole with the POWER OF POSITIVITY aka Strength getting pumped up to ridiculous degrees with some Life 3 and general power-lifting from Forces 3.)
Apparently though, these Rokea are not particularly well liked on land, because a Garou heckin abducted Mordecai as he walked by an alley-way, and in Crinos form explained that, no, we were going to help him fucking kill these corrupted monsters, lest that corruption spread, and if he even THOUGHT we were going to try to double cross him, he was going to fucking ruin Mordecai. Who, at this point, has been wrecked by prior adventures to the degree that he now has to walk with a cane because of a nasty encounter with a HIT Mark. Also explained that the only reason he hadn't already murdered us is because we were actively fucking with the Rokea.
So now we're gonna be fighting a trio of Rokea in this upcoming session and hopefully we won't fucking die.
Then in the campaign I'm running, the cabal (consisting of an Euthanatos, a too-out-there-for-the-Etherites mechanic, and an Orphan Time/Mind fortune teller) are investigating the mystery of an Obol from the Shadowlands (which is somehow on the Earthly Realm instead of in the Lower Umbra, which also has another comatose soul riding in it and seemingly tied to a much larger ritual of some kind) that was in a shack that showed up just now but has been there for 40 years and they all remember it being there for 40 years but only in the last few seconds do they ever remember it because Time is fucky and whoooo boy do they feel a shitton of Paradox woven into that Time distortion.
Some Mage someplace clearly fucked something up when they were doing some Time shit, but there's also weird links to all sorts of other places in the city, so some portion of the grand ritual actually went off.
So that's gonna be fun for them to figure out the "who" and "why".
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
Damn one of the creators of a kickstarter I backed passed away. Now the executors of the estate are trying to finish it up. It's some specialty D4s for use in D&D 5e healing potions. The guy apparently mingled the kickstarter and his personal finances so it is a real pain in the but for them to sort everything out. Lesson for everyone, set up a LLC if you're going to do business.
The really rough thing is he apparently passed away like 8 days after posting an update to the kickstarter. Surreal.
I backed a kickstarter a while back whose creator has a terminal heart condition (this was disclosed, along with assurances that plans were in place to fulfill the rewards). There was silence for a long time, then someone else took over posting updates. Between the kickstarter and health problems he is bankrupt, but they still manage to ship a handful of books out every few months. I appreciate their efforts, a couple of others that have fallen through just get radio silence.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited September 2020
My best RL friends have been shuffling their feet and making grumbles about wanting to play something, but the problem is, our traditional Friday night hangout time is just an awful time for it. There are three or four of us who turn up every Friday, but up to four others who turn up sometimes, and often just kind of at random. And you don't want to like, exclude those people like "sorry bruh we were in the middle of a dungeon," but it's hard to just...roll them up a character and work them into a story ad hoc, on a whim, and by the time you've done that the evening's half over anyway.
And even when that doesn't happen, we often spend so long catching up and relating the tale of the week that it's 8:30 before we start thinking about sitting down to do any sort of gaming. So every time we start a game, it goes okay for a few weeks but then Joe turns up and is like HEY GUYS I BROUGHT THIS NEW BOARDGAME so we do that instead. And then the next week one of us has had a bad breakup and we spend the whole night commiserating and maybe playing some light Jackbox or something. Et cetera et cetera, until suddenly it's been two months and nobody can remember what was happening in the game.
I could make some kind of special effort to plan around this, run some sort of West Marches-y dungeon-crawly thing where it's very drop-in/drop-out but the truth is that I have almost no enthusiasm for that kind of thing and I'm thoroughly burnt out on D&D for the next few years anyway.
So I told them okay guys, I'm down to run something but a) I want to run something that I actually want to run and b) I think we should carve out another night of the week for this and make it the roleplaying-exclusive night. Just show up, be ready, and get three or four solid hours in. Even if we do it only once every two weeks I think we'd still come out ahead versus this chaotic trying-to-make-Friday-happen thing. To my relief, everyone was really enthused by this idea and in fact want to get started right away! Which is excellent.
So as a result, I'm finally going to be getting to run Fantasy Flight's Legend of the Five Rings, and I'm very excited. The system, which has a ton of crunch and meaningful choices but also puts a big emphasis on character personality and emotions, is right up my alley. The setting is...daunting, as even if I confine myself entirely to the FFG reboot there's hundreds of pages of material to get lost in, but I think I'm starting to get a handle on at least the broad outlines of the thing.
We rolled up characters last night and it went really well and my friends seem to have very clear ideas of both their individual characters and how their PCs will relate to each other, which is a really welcome change of pace. The game asks tough, probing questions that kind of force you to spend more time thinking about your character's inner life than usual, and it really seems to have paid off. Instead of kind of jokey, half-assed D&D characters, they really seem to have a legit pair of samurai. I'm impressed.
Jacobkosh on
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
The Sunday group of MOUNT GHIDORAH caught their first true glimpse of the Tuesday night party. As I said before, the Tuesday group intentionally sabotaged the bridge system to trap any stragglers on the sinking islands in the lava.
The Sunday group's response? "Wow, those guys are dicks!" Accurate.
The Sunday group instead struck a deal with the rotund Arenamaster , granting him exclusive broadcast rights to their fight with Rodan (pay per view!), and he Tenser's Flying Disk'd them to the next island. Of course, he then put up a massive magical board with (1) their intent to fight Rodan and (2) their fighting statistics and party tactics. After all, it'll be a better fight if Rodan can prepare some showy counters.
Really, between devils and a fight promoter, I think we can agree which is more evil.
My best RL friends have been shuffling their feet and making grumbles about wanting to play something, but the problem is, our traditional Friday night hangout time is just an awful time for it. There are three or four of us who turn up every Friday, but up to four others who turn up sometimes, and often just kind of at random. And you don't want to like, exclude those people like "sorry bruh we were in the middle of a dungeon," but it's hard to just...roll them up a character and work them into a story ad hoc, on a whim, and by the time you've done that the evening's half over anyway.
And even when that doesn't happen, we often spend so long catching up and relating the tale of the week that it's 8:30 before we start thinking about sitting down to do any sort of gaming. So every time we start a game, it goes okay for a few weeks but then Joe turns up and is like HEY GUYS I BROUGHT THIS NEW BOARDGAME so we do that instead. And then the next week one of us has had a bad breakup and we spend the whole night commiserating and maybe playing some light Jackbox or something. Et cetera et cetera, until suddenly it's been two months and nobody can remember what was happening in the game.
I could make some kind of special effort to plan around this, run some sort of West Marches-y dungeon-crawly thing where it's very drop-in/drop-out but the truth is that I have almost no enthusiasm for that kind of thing and I'm thoroughly burnt out on D&D for the next few years anyway.
So I told them okay guys, I'm down to run something but a) I want to run something that I actually want to run and b) I think we should carve out another night of the week for this and make it the roleplaying-exclusive night. Just show up, be ready, and get three or four solid hours in. Even if we do it only once every two weeks I think we'd still come out ahead versus this chaotic trying-to-make-Friday-happen thing. To my relief, everyone was really enthused by this idea and in fact want to get started right away! Which is excellent.
So as a result, I'm finally going to be getting to run Fantasy Flight's Legend of the Five Rings, and I'm very excited. The system, which has a ton of crunch and meaningful choices but also puts a big emphasis on character personality and emotions, is right up my alley. The setting is...daunting, as even if I confine myself entirely to the FFG reboot there's hundreds of pages of material to get lost in, but I think I'm starting to get a handle on at least the broad outlines of the thing.
We rolled up characters last night and it went really well and my friends seem to have very clear ideas of both their individual characters and how their PCs will relate to each other, which is a really welcome change of pace. The game asks tough, probing questions that kind of force you to spend more time thinking about your character's inner life than usual, and it really seems to have paid off. Instead of kind of jokey, half-assed D&D characters, they really seem to have a legit pair of samurai. I'm impressed.
Jealous! I have owned multiple editions of L5R, but never been able to play it. If I were ever to run it, I’d probably steal a lot of the setup from the fourth edition’s Naishou Province mini-setting. Basically a secluded valley with all sorts of mystical mysteries that belongs to the Imperial Family, but has historically been governed by a on of the Great Clans. The last Clan governor did a poor job leading up to his death, so Hantei has sent in a noble from one of his client families to take over temporarily until a new Clan governor is named. So the PCs show up having either been tasked with winning the governorship for their Major or Minor Clan(s) or as the retinue of an Emerald Magistrate. That way I could get the meat of the different modes the game offers, while not having to know every tidbit about the setting in the way I might if they were wandering Magistrates or something.
Oofd. Attempting to improv your way through a session when you've been awake for 20 hours: Not the best plan.
i did okay though! The party got more clues as to the mystery of the pirate ship they're on, and discovered an adorable mimic that only bit one of them.
They got a new scar out of having the tiny robot girl shove her fingers into the neck wound!
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Small little side project i'm doing: Creating Grand Beasts using my generator, and then figuring out magical items made from them
Here's a couple! Formatting may be suspect.
Krilaktoraka’s Fist
+2, Martial, Heavy, Attunement, Two Handed
2d4 Bludgeoning +1d6 fire if attuned.
This massive club has been carved out of the remnants of one Krilaktoraka’s incandescent crushing bludgeons, and is imbued with a portion of the gargutan’s beast natural power. When it’s bearer attunes to it, ghostly flames dance around the club, imbuing it’s strikes with additional potency.
In addition to this, it’s bearer gains the following abilities:
As an Attack action you create three glowing bolts of magical fire. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4+2 fire damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously and you can direct them to hit one creature or several. You must finish a short rest before you can use this ability again
As a reaction, you can attempt to interrupt a spell of 3rd level or lower. Constitution is your spell casting modifier for this ability, and it functions as per the counterspell spell. You must finish a short rest before you can use this ability again.
Trynach's Hide
Cloak, Legendary, Attunement
Cut from the carcass of Trynach, Glacierbane this thick furred cloak is still studded with the spectral remnants of weapons that failed to claim Trynach's life. It's wearer gains resistance to cold damage.
If attuned to it, the wearer gains 10 temporary hp. This refreshes when you roll for initiative or after a short/long rest (5e writing style is hard arrgh). If you are proficient with shields, you loose this proficiency for as long as you're attuned to Trynach's hide.
Finally, if you are are attuned you may use a bonus action draw a spectral weapon from Trynach's hide. If both your hands are free you may draw two spectral weapons. Any weapon drawn in such a fashion has the following properties:
Light, Thrown, Finesse. 1d6 slashing. 20/60
If you release the weapons, they vanish after impacting something. (So throw em or drop em and they'll go poof the moment they hit something)
I ran a pretty long L5R campaign a couple of times back in The Day, 4th ed roll and keep, and I really enjoyed it. Great game.
That said, it had some flaws. Not hugely balanced in places, and the mechanics didn't necessarily work too well with the actual social system of the setting. The setting is great... apart from everything that has anything to do with the metaplot which is entirely absolute dogshit (there, I said it, it was dogshit).
Fortunately the new edition 1) shows you the social mores of the setting way more clearly, and then has social rules which really mesh with that and in fact assume straight off the bat that most of this honour and politeness and face stuff is entirely that, face, you don't necessarily believe it and in fact most of the times you don't, you're just going along with the rules, and eventually you probably will break face if life gets too stressful. I love that. I like that "your Lord is coming to visit" means that you probably are going to get worried because, like, shit, the boss is coming and it's going to be stressful and everything needs to go right and I have to make a good impression, and the mechanics actually back that up.
And 2) it chucks the metaplot out the window. Good! Fuck off forever and don't come back! If it was good enough for John Wick (not the assassin, the guy who wrote 1st ed L5R) it was good enough for you!
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
My favorite bit of L5R lore is that on one of the Bayushi Kachiko cards art, the artist wrote "John Wick is an idiot" or "John Wick is an asshole" or something like that in Japanese in the art, and it got printed and I'm pretty sure he got blacklisted but it's one of my favorite L5R cards
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
My favorite bit of L5R lore is that on one of the Bayushi Kachiko cards art, the artist wrote "John Wick is an idiot" or "John Wick is an asshole" or something like that in Japanese in the art, and it got printed and I'm pretty sure he got blacklisted but it's one of my favorite L5R cards
Yes. Matt Wilson, who later founded Privateer Press, had a contentious relationship with John Wick.
Picking up from the week before, they had discovered a dwarven shrine to Dumathoin. They managed to crack the vault door to a mausoleum contained within and descended stairs deeper into the mine until they found some split masonry. The paladin pried some loose until they were able to make a gap wide enough to push themselves into a tunnel beyond it. This eventually lead to them stumbling into a den full of feyspitter spiders and a couple of hundred small spiders that swarmed over them. I had a lot of fun describing them scuttling up the walls, their movement and just generally gross spider stuff. In particular they really disliked the use of the word scuttle. Which, hey, they're spiders, they're gonna scuttle.
They were particularly peturbed when after they'd dispatched them all that the spiders shrank, as spiders do when you kill them, because they're jerks. Anyway! They slew the spiders and waded through knee deep piles of dead spiders until they decided to descend into the pit the spiders had swarmed out of using the webbing for ladder rungs.
This went fairly uneventfully, the alchemist in the group indentified a substance on many of the walls as niter and gathered a vial of it.
After exploring and backtracking through several passes they eventually came upon a vast open cave full of crystal formations. The wizard cast a light spell on one of the crystals, which refracted to other crystals and lit the space up in a riot of colours. Which also scared off the particularly large and predatory cloaker than has made the mine it's lair. After making their way around the room they crawled their way through another tunnel (shrinking the minotaur to make things easier for him) and fighting off a few centipedes that boiled out of the rock around them.
This tunnel opened up into a small cave that had filled up partially with water and a stone obelisk with a metal capstone was standing out in the middle of it and this actually worked out far better than I planned it. The rogue wades out into the water with the wizard (a pixie) in his hood and they both attempted to scale the obelisk. Arriving at the base of the obelisk, both get hit with a wave of drowsiness, but begin the climb. Half way up, the rogue falls asleep/unconcious and topples off down into the pool of water below. As the rogue splashes into the water he realises that what he thought were rocks his feet were catching on underwater are actually the bones and skeletons of other people who have perished under the muddy waters.
The paladin rushes into the pool to rescue their companion and also eventually topples into the water asleep. The bard whisks the rogue out of the water just as he is about to start drowning, and the pixie wizard remembered they could fly and flew to the top of the obelisk.
Brushing the mud caked around the capstone, she finds a metal eyelid. The bard suggests that forcing the eye open may end the sleeping spell and an arcana check by the wizard confirms that it is the origin of the sleeping spell and the bard's theory is correct. Several failed athletics checks follow trying to force the eye open but to no effect, and the wizard stacks attacking the mechanism but misses. Just as the paladin is about to drown the rogue finally wakes up from his slumber, pulls out a dagger and throws a dagger at the obelisk and crits! The dagger strikes the eyelid dead on, shattering the muddy crust around the mechanism and saving their party member.
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
For MOUNT GHIDORAH, I'm slowly building up a number of time discrepancies and dimensional oddities to hint at the terrible truth of the mountain: that it is an interdimensional fold exacting tribute from untold infinite worlds! That Lord Ghidorah has filled his coffers, and now he only desires to scour the multiverse clean with the final Great Eruption to end all life outside his mountain!
So naturally, two lapras -- err, I mean, plesiosauri! - fell out of the portal to the plane of elemental water that fed the 'cold springs' inside the volcano's great, seething magma chamber. Combine this with a Naruto-themed salazzle doing jutsu to shift the battlefield, and the "fight without armor" trope almost wiped the party.
At one point the dragonborn samurai attempted to kick a ninja through the portal back into the plane of elemental water. Fantastic idea, and I felt bad when he failed the contested strength check.
Still, the bard did land a Suggestion of "Tell us your evil plan!", so the party has now learned about Rodan's unbeatable mangekyou sharingan. One of the players is not super familiar with weeb culture and asked "What does that mean?"
Ok I had forgotten I got the bundle of the Star Trek Rpg on humble bundle or such
I knew I had X but it's been my soul crushing summer is why i forgot what I got
They got a new scar out of having the tiny robot girl shove her fingers into the neck wound!
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Small little side project i'm doing: Creating Grand Beasts using my generator, and then figuring out magical items made from them
Here's a couple! Formatting may be suspect.
Krilaktoraka’s Fist
+2, Martial, Heavy, Attunement, Two Handed
2d4 Bludgeoning +1d6 fire if attuned.
This massive club has been carved out of the remnants of one Krilaktoraka’s incandescent crushing bludgeons, and is imbued with a portion of the gargutan’s beast natural power. When it’s bearer attunes to it, ghostly flames dance around the club, imbuing it’s strikes with additional potency.
In addition to this, it’s bearer gains the following abilities:
As an Attack action you create three glowing bolts of magical fire. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4+2 fire damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously and you can direct them to hit one creature or several. You must finish a short rest before you can use this ability again
As a reaction, you can attempt to interrupt a spell of 3rd level or lower. Constitution is your spell casting modifier for this ability, and it functions as per the counterspell spell. You must finish a short rest before you can use this ability again.
Trynach's Hide
Cloak, Legendary, Attunement
Cut from the carcass of Trynach, Glacierbane this thick furred cloak is still studded with the spectral remnants of weapons that failed to claim Trynach's life. It's wearer gains resistance to cold damage.
If attuned to it, the wearer gains 10 temporary hp. This refreshes when you roll for initiative or after a short/long rest (5e writing style is hard arrgh). If you are proficient with shields, you loose this proficiency for as long as you're attuned to Trynach's hide.
Finally, if you are are attuned you may use a bonus action draw a spectral weapon from Trynach's hide. If both your hands are free you may draw two spectral weapons. Any weapon drawn in such a fashion has the following properties:
Light, Thrown, Finesse. 1d6 slashing. 20/60
If you release the weapons, they vanish after impacting something. (So throw em or drop em and they'll go poof the moment they hit something)
All great stuff!
The first one is really fun, and that’s the main thing.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Sunday group of MOUNT GHIDORAH went up against Rodan first, and they got their faces just completely caved in.
Rodan's stats:
HP 155
AC 50
2x Katana cut +10 for 10 damage each round
Special charged attack, "Blade of Thousand Final Cuts", to do 100 damage.
His gimmick? Empowered by fiery blazers, each of which supports one of his overpowered stats. Players were supposed to disable the brazers to knock him down to regular stats. Merely attacking the brazers temporarily disabled them. Fully disabling the braziers required use of the Stick of Portal Closing (conveniently stolen from the preceding village). For the sake of everyone's sanity, I declared that the stick could be tossed freely between players in a 30 foot range so that everyone could take a try on the braziers.
Three freaking rounds, nine tries, and not one success. The party didn't roll above a six!
Pretty soon, most of them near dead, Rodan at full HP, the boss preparing his ultimate attack, I had to pull the GM escape parachute for them. Thus one of the party's NPC contacts leaped in to save their bacon, eat the Blade of Thousand Final Cuts for them, and teleport them to a different zone with his dying breath.
We balance encounters as best we can, but sometimes the dice just laugh.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
We had a character death in my Dungeon World game last night!
The last several sessions, we've been doing a series of bizarre errands for the god of chaos - preventing a marriage, finding a secret grave in the woods, having long arguments about the merits of pre-crime, that sort of thing. These were, as my character figured out with assistance from his Faerie Frenemies, an attempt to get the attention of the god of order to try and prevent a coming (or possibly already here) apocalypse.
Our last task was to steal a particular painting from a rich man's house. We had our druid scout it out in advance, and then while our bard distracted all of the guards/servants with a ridiculous undercover boss stunt, the ranger and druid played cat burglar and got the painting to toss it down to the waiting arms of our barbarian and my fighter, two distinctly not cat burglar people. This was going well until the ranger looked at said painting, and immediately disappeared. We managed to escape before we got into too much trouble with the guards, and, after a quick conversation with the god of chaos, took a look at the painting ourselves and were teleported into the liminal space where our friend had recently disappeared.
Inside the painting (which was a sort of snowy landscape piece), we found that it was not actually snow that we were walking on, but thick mounds of muddy oils paints. Luckily this made it easy for us to track down the person who is good at tracking, and we found him already in the middle of a pitched battle with a group of shadowy figures. These shadowy figures turned out to be made out of charcoal, and we started smashing them into clouds of dust (which over time, did start being a problem thanks to the toxicity of old fashioned art materials). However, during the fight, one of them got a hold of our bard and transported him into a weird altered reality, where he had to make a moral choice (and shocking us all, he took the moral option). This seemed overall fine, he shook it off, and we made it down to just one of the shadows left, which then got a hold of our ranger and did the same thing to him. He was found wanting by the shadow, and our bard's reality shifted, pushing him to sing his damage buff songs on the shadows instead, which immediately was able to lash out again and drop our ranger down to zero hit points.
We killed the last shadow and violently restrained the bard, who snapped out of it pretty quickly. My character force fed the ranger one of the healing potions he has been holding on to for just such an occasion, and we brought him back.
Well, sort of. He failed his death save, in actuality, although how much our characters realize it is a bit up in the air (mine is very aware, as the person who directly brought him back and someone who has been dead before). We're going with a fairly liberal interpretation of "will die soon", largely because we're just like one adventure away from the end of the campaign, but he's just barely held on by the light of his god, and is currently receiving half healing and taking double damage from all attacks (the GM also gave him an option to roll up a new character and retire peacefully, but he opted not to).
The rest of the session was mostly just serious conversations - the barbarian and the bard are old friends, and had a talk about his behavior; my character and the ranger had a classic barely restrained masculine emotions conversation about death; and the druid ran off to the woods, because he took a vow to destroy any unnatural abominations that he came across and he isn't quite sure what's going on with his old friend.
Mostly everyone's just surprised that my character wasn't the one to bite it, as I tend to play RPGs with a low-key death wish.
That sounds fantastic. I'm totally stealing the crazy painting idea!
Meanwhile, in TERRA INCOGNITA:
The Drunken Mimics (they finally managed to suss out a team name, i'm so proud) successfully cleared their first dungeon. When we left off, they'd had an... incident with the ghostly first mate and ended up in the crows nest of this weird not-ship. Climbing down, they found the deck of the ship was in horrible shape - both battle damage, and damage that made no sense. Like something big had punched it. Weird. Also that the door to the captain;s cabin was blown open - apparently, the bombs had done their job, just time displaced.
Inside the captain's cabin they managed to find a few more details: Broken chains that had been clearly used to keep something sentient locked up, a letter of marquee that the party managed to translate. between those two they were able to figure out that this was a slave-taking Privateer ship that had run into trouble during that fleet battle.
They also managed to find and befriend soothing very important: A domesticated Mimic! Well, most of the party managed to befriend it. @Romantic Undead's Roy attempted to feed it a torch, which it spat back at him. After a bit more effort, they discovered that Chester likes both gold coins and meaty rations, and has apparently adopted the party.
Oh, also, they had a persuasion off to name it - @Darmak character Zardioz won this handily, continuing his ability to roll high on unimportant things and never ever roll high in fights, and thus Chester became Chester.
Chester proceeded to open up and give them some loot - Zardioz got a amulet that had a vial with a phoenix feather inside it. Now he's attuned to it, whenever he heals someone, they get +1 hp for each die rolled. @PirateQueen character Mallys meanwhile acquired one half of a set of magical items - This one a badly damage magical flintlock rifle. Sure is a good thing the party met someone who knows how gunpowder works before this adventure, huh? They were also able to identify that Phoebe's spy glass could be used to see magic - letting them understand that the Flintlock does Conjuration and Evocation (It can summon it's own ammo! And then relocate that ammo at speed into a target. Hooray!). Also it's got a bayonet on it, so Mallys can use it as a two-hander finesse weapon (it's still just a d8 for stabbing, but hey, it's neat!)
Moving on, they foolishly let Roy take the lead out the door again. It turns out that not only is Roy bad at Stairs, he's bad at Doors too, and they found themselves in the flooded hold of the ship. Thankfully, Mallys, being of a mermaid persuasion was able to help everyone through the under water tunnel without incident.
Well, except for roy, who somehow failed the athletics despite having advantage... and then failed the con check for managing their breath. and then i rolled max damage.
So you know, the skeleton nearly drowned and we were all very impressed at this. Very realistic to how swimming can go bad in seconds and why cave swimming is generally a terrible idea.
Beyond the incident of Skeleton man fails at swimming, nearly drowns, they discovered something horrible: Multiple chained corpses, that had clearly drowned. A bit of work from Roy revealed the worst: these were Ogre corpses. Ogre corpses that were too pale for the Ogres they knew, and missing the tattoos that are central part of Ogre culture. But clearly the same type of ogre as lived on the continent - Roy in particular entered the world in an Ogre village and could speak ogre. So now they new this was a slave taking ship, run by Aeterni elves, with enslaved Ogres. Worse still - Ogres are capable of holding their breath for a long time. To have drowned? It was not a good death.
All stuff from terra incongita, but all stuff that shouldn't BE on terra incongita - the Aeterni and Ogre are both free peoples, and ones who support each other. Aeterni are possibly the only people who hate slavery more than ogres, given all of the Aeterni on TI are descendants of freed or escaped slaves.
Before they could get too into things though, a pitter patter was heard on the stairs, and mimics burst into the room! Just a whole swarm of tiny ones that i described as being basically gaping open chests filled with teeth, with long spindly human legs and arms poking out. Mallys proceeded to shiskebab a bunch, and Chester demonstrated that he was going to brook no eating of his party and instead started eating the tiny mimics. Turns out mimics will scream a bit just before being eaten by a furry chest-dog mimic. Oh and Phoebe managed to terrify a bunch with a roll of 7 (I thought the idea of a tiny monkey person attempting to scare the mimics was so hilarious i made them roll against her roll of 7, and they failed).
Zardioz proceeded to miss (again. At this point in two levels he has never ever hit anything in combat). Roy stepped up to show the goatman how it was done and crushed some with such abandon he accidentally smashed his oar into the hull and through it a bit... which resutled in his weapon getting mixed together with Mimic-flesh and the strange not-wood of the dungeon. Net result: Roy's staff can now transform. It's gained one form so far which allows it to become a 10ft reach weapon, and continues to be able to maintain shillelagh. So that's cool! Wonder what happens if he finds more rare and mystical woods to combine with it?
This time, the party sent Zardioz up the stairs. Zardioz cant do stairs either! Rather than heading up the stairs, they found themselves in an underwater... well they weren't sure what. Below them was paved stone and smooth marble, above them was water -just hanging their, suspended. At the fair end of the corridor was the door to the captain's cabin again - Intact and in good shape. Progressing down the corridor, they found themselves accosted by a ghostly ogre - one who was just as pale as the other ogre corpses they'd found, likewise without tattoos. This one however had scars around it's neck where a collar had clearly been, and manacles still on it's wrists. Also hands covered in blood nad splinters, and a bloody wound where it's heart would be.
Discussion ensued where they managed to communicate with the Ogre (juuuust!), the Ogre called them a liar about Monferrina, and also laughed at them (They claimed they'd killed the elves on teh ship. The ogre replies that no, it had). But still, they madei t clear they were friends to the Ogre, and no friends of the slavers on the ship, so the Ogre helped them out.
By using the last of it's ghostly energy shoulder checking the captain's door open. Time for a boss fight!
The boss was a fancily dressed Aeternum elf, partly over taken by strange crystals growing from him, and surrounded by his ghostly crew. Quick thinking and bomb from Phoebe blew the crew up, and battle was joined! Things went back and forth as the party discovered to their horror the captain kept summoning more ghostly crew - and then weaponizing them. Some he absorbed into his weapon (and very nearly downed Roy with). Others he absorbed to heal him, and one broke the captain free from a spell. In all of this Zardioz managed to miss BOTH his guiding bolts... but eventually the party started targeting the crystals on the captain, chipping away at them and making the ghosts stagger out of existence. And finally, Zardioz redeemed himself - landing his first ever hit in the campaign, his eldritch blast shattered the crystals and killed the captain.
Also the dungeon, as the Captain had been the heart of it. Reality tore around them, and they found themselves back on the beach, standing around a dinghy on the sands, the captain's corpse lying across a treasure chest. Welcome to level 3, Drunken Mimics!
I ended the session right as they opened the chest, as is right and proper.
Penguin, I'm sure you noticed, but I was pretty shitfaced last night and barely remember any of that past the Roy nearly drowning bit. Except for the constant missing, that I can't forget lol 😂
I did have a lot of fun though! You're a good DM and TI is a rad setting and I'm enjoying getting to explore!
Ha! I did not actually notice you were shitfaced, but hey! It's in character
I felt so bad about you missing alll the shots. I mean, i made the boss semi-hard to hit on purpose, but still! You came through with the hero moment though.
Real proud of the mechanics of that little healing trinket you've got though - i like how it scales and is immediately useful without being overpowdered. Gonna be fun seeing how you all sort out the mystery and explain things to the guild though
Posts
Well that's cannon now (Also is that a reference or any reason for that? Other than Kobolds being cowards usually)
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Oh it's just a pun
Ko-bold / Bold-Co(al)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt
But this means that the Kobolds are very adept at quickly forming pyramids/standing on shoulders and walking/working together to use big tongs, etc. Think three Kobolds standing on eachothers shoulders in a trench coat only they don't bother with the trench coat.
Over the years they've added some refits to the shop, shorter forge, smaller tools, etc, that a single Kobold can use with no problem, but they keep the bigger stuff around because it's way easier to do the shoulder standing and walking routine when they're making stuff for medium or larger people rather than trying to do it in smaller pieces with the smaller equipment.
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Bold Coal Forges:
20 years ago, Bold Coal was a decrepit and abandoned forge on Serenity's waterfront. Then the kobold Kulupu and her daughters made landfall in a falling apart dinghy, packed to the brim with treasure, smiths tools, and strange silver scales. . A few deals later, and they'd bought themselves both a home and a means of employment.
Nowadays, Bold Coal is known as one of the finest forges in Serenity, and perhaps on the terra continent. The majority of the smithy is still run by the kobolds. The fact that most of the forge was built for use by much larger creatures hasn't deterred them - They simply learnt how to work as a group, stacked ontop of one another, to wield the tools. These days, of course, the forge has been refitted to include more kobold sized tools, but they still use the old methods for larger commissions.
During Festivals, Kulpu and her brood are known to make a show of their ability to forge things as a team. It's a popular act!
Bold Coal Forges is one of the only places outside of Monferrina with the skill and know how to make Ogre-sized armor.
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Fun side note: There are no dragons on terra incognita. Phoenix fill the niche of "Giant flying firebreathing monster", but there's just flat out, no dragons. I have no idea for the watsonian reason for this, but doylist: It's just a point of distinction that there's no such thing. Also that big ol wurms feel like the sort of thing that would or could warp a setting around them. Maybe the watsonian reson is they do arrive, and promptly end up dead to the Phoenixs or roaming gargutan grand beasts.
I still like the idea of a dragon killing a colossal phoenix, only for it to promptly go up like a fuel air bomb as it resurrects into a slightly smaller phoenix.
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Song of Pleasure
The highest class brothel in Serenity, this sprawling building is the metaphorical heart of the comfort district. No matter what your taste is, you can find some to fill it here. There's even a demon on staff - Mountain Erasing River. Of note, there is no set madam or owner - The brothel is owned by the workers, each with a share (there's probably some sort of system for passing your share on to someone when you step down from actively working there - i need to figure that out!).
By tradition, the Comforters Guild's council representative is works here. The comfort district itself covers bars, theater, sex work, resturants - If yoi need to relax, let off some steam, or just have a really good feed this is the place to do it. Humorously, the bounders between it and the rest of the city are fairly clearly delinted by a bunch of noise muffling runes, ensuring that even the rowdiest parties dont disturb the peace of the rest of the city. (There are of course eateries etc out side of the district, but these are quiet, low key places. Serenity favors being a quiet place given how many of it's citizens are kinda guaranteed to have ptsd around loud sudden noises or similar! Arrival by shipwreck will do that to you!)
(Still working this out - i know sex workers have a big presence in Serenity, and i want it to be a postie representation, and also fuck this a fraught topic and i need to do way more research to make sure i dont mangle it)
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The Vaults
Scattered around the city (and it's outskirts), these are the domain of the Historians Guild. Some are simply archives serving to help them put together the history of the place, and make sure knowledge isnt lost. others act as storage for memory pearls or other dangerous artifacts - there's one vault way out at sea, for instance, that holds a lot of nastie things and definitely isnt out there so they can just drop the entire thing into the ocean if things go wrong, why would you suggest that.
Open for suggestions to other fun! or gameamble stuff that might be in the city.or just points of interest.
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Secondarily, is Firefly some of the inspiration for the Comforters Guild? I think it'd be easy to mine for some inspiration of tasteful sex work or at least the idea of how it could fit into society as a jumping off point.
Given that, and given the theme that Serenity in particular has of being a genuinely nice place with people working together, it made sense to make sure sex workers were a: front and center and b: a respected profession
Also the comfort part is not innuendo (well, not just innuendo). The city as a whole is meant to have a big theme of care and looking after people. Part of that is going to be pleasures of the flesh. Bread and water can help you survive, but that's more to life than just survival.
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Ko-bold-cola
Diet Ko-bold-cola
Sparkling Ko-bold-cola
Ko-bold-cola Zero
Ko-bold-cola Original
Ko-bold-cola Turbo
Ko-bold-cola Gamer Fuel
Ko-bold-cola Hot Chips
So fast forward a couple of sessions, the party made it to Vallaki and we parted ways with Ireena and Ismark, who we escorted to the town. Me and another player, a fighter named Eldon, had collected a bunch of orphans after slaying a bunch of hags. The DM had created a whole orphanage for the town to bring the children to, and a subplot involving a child whose family was killed after they opened a locket that had a demon sealed inside of it. The two of us and the party sorcerer Zirrai ended up on our own investigating this, and ended up being attacked by the demon in the attic of the orphanage. Zirrai, rushed to get the locket and picked it up with a scrap of cloth while Eldon and Malcer fought off the demon, who ended up retreating back into the child and holding a knife to his throat. I looked at my character sheet and his motivations, did a skill check on the demon, and then told Zirrai to give Malcer the locket. He mage handed it to Malcer.
As it slipped out of the cloth, and landed in Malcer's hand, he said "If the worst happens, save the child."
The demon, sensing the moment, flew from the child to Malcer.
I failed my saving throw.
My character turned to face the rest of the party, and the DM ended the session.
It was then I revealed to the party that my character's bond was "He would sacrifice his life and soul to save an innocent", and that the next session would most likely be my last session because my work schedule was changing (not even the DM knew). At the very least I will not be able to make most sessions.
I'm very pumped to fight my party as a demonic monster, and feed into the horror world of Barovia.
First the campaign I'm playing in. Our Storyteller commissioned an artist to draw our characters:
Clockwise from the top:
Brock Johnson, our resident Life/Forces Mage who is about BEING POSITIVE and BEING SWOLE.
Jarret, our Time/Mind Cult of Ecstasy member who is a druggie chemist.
Mordecai Switkowski (meee), our Prime/Forces/Matter/Entropy physics professor.
Jay... something....?? He has a new name every session that starts with J due to a few too many dots in Arcane, our Mind/Entropy street magician mage.
and Wilber Dixon, our Correspondence/Forces Virtual Adept, who tragically is afflicted with severe ALS (Zero dots in Strength).
We'd just finished mucking around with three Wyrm-touched Rokea who were interfering in Brock Johnson's SUPER POSITIVE SWOLE PERSON COMPETITION which he uses to 1: garner sponsorships for his Cult, the SWOLE PATROL and 2: to try to subtly shift Consensus such that he can get away with BEING SWOLE more often in public. After we'd successfully kept the dark nastiness from the Rokea from infecting the SUPER POSITIVITY with their weird self-serving message of trashing other people to elevate yourself.
(As an aside, the capstone event to the SUPER POSITIVE SWOLE PERSON COMPETITION is each of the strongpeople lifting each other up, then Brock Johnson lifting all of them simultaneously in a tall pillar of swole with the POWER OF POSITIVITY aka Strength getting pumped up to ridiculous degrees with some Life 3 and general power-lifting from Forces 3.)
Apparently though, these Rokea are not particularly well liked on land, because a Garou heckin abducted Mordecai as he walked by an alley-way, and in Crinos form explained that, no, we were going to help him fucking kill these corrupted monsters, lest that corruption spread, and if he even THOUGHT we were going to try to double cross him, he was going to fucking ruin Mordecai. Who, at this point, has been wrecked by prior adventures to the degree that he now has to walk with a cane because of a nasty encounter with a HIT Mark. Also explained that the only reason he hadn't already murdered us is because we were actively fucking with the Rokea.
So now we're gonna be fighting a trio of Rokea in this upcoming session and hopefully we won't fucking die.
Then in the campaign I'm running, the cabal (consisting of an Euthanatos, a too-out-there-for-the-Etherites mechanic, and an Orphan Time/Mind fortune teller) are investigating the mystery of an Obol from the Shadowlands (which is somehow on the Earthly Realm instead of in the Lower Umbra, which also has another comatose soul riding in it and seemingly tied to a much larger ritual of some kind) that was in a shack that showed up just now but has been there for 40 years and they all remember it being there for 40 years but only in the last few seconds do they ever remember it because Time is fucky and whoooo boy do they feel a shitton of Paradox woven into that Time distortion.
Some Mage someplace clearly fucked something up when they were doing some Time shit, but there's also weird links to all sorts of other places in the city, so some portion of the grand ritual actually went off.
So that's gonna be fun for them to figure out the "who" and "why".
The really rough thing is he apparently passed away like 8 days after posting an update to the kickstarter. Surreal.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
And even when that doesn't happen, we often spend so long catching up and relating the tale of the week that it's 8:30 before we start thinking about sitting down to do any sort of gaming. So every time we start a game, it goes okay for a few weeks but then Joe turns up and is like HEY GUYS I BROUGHT THIS NEW BOARDGAME so we do that instead. And then the next week one of us has had a bad breakup and we spend the whole night commiserating and maybe playing some light Jackbox or something. Et cetera et cetera, until suddenly it's been two months and nobody can remember what was happening in the game.
I could make some kind of special effort to plan around this, run some sort of West Marches-y dungeon-crawly thing where it's very drop-in/drop-out but the truth is that I have almost no enthusiasm for that kind of thing and I'm thoroughly burnt out on D&D for the next few years anyway.
So I told them okay guys, I'm down to run something but a) I want to run something that I actually want to run and b) I think we should carve out another night of the week for this and make it the roleplaying-exclusive night. Just show up, be ready, and get three or four solid hours in. Even if we do it only once every two weeks I think we'd still come out ahead versus this chaotic trying-to-make-Friday-happen thing. To my relief, everyone was really enthused by this idea and in fact want to get started right away! Which is excellent.
So as a result, I'm finally going to be getting to run Fantasy Flight's Legend of the Five Rings, and I'm very excited. The system, which has a ton of crunch and meaningful choices but also puts a big emphasis on character personality and emotions, is right up my alley. The setting is...daunting, as even if I confine myself entirely to the FFG reboot there's hundreds of pages of material to get lost in, but I think I'm starting to get a handle on at least the broad outlines of the thing.
We rolled up characters last night and it went really well and my friends seem to have very clear ideas of both their individual characters and how their PCs will relate to each other, which is a really welcome change of pace. The game asks tough, probing questions that kind of force you to spend more time thinking about your character's inner life than usual, and it really seems to have paid off. Instead of kind of jokey, half-assed D&D characters, they really seem to have a legit pair of samurai. I'm impressed.
The Sunday group's response? "Wow, those guys are dicks!" Accurate.
The Sunday group instead struck a deal with the rotund Arenamaster , granting him exclusive broadcast rights to their fight with Rodan (pay per view!), and he Tenser's Flying Disk'd them to the next island. Of course, he then put up a massive magical board with (1) their intent to fight Rodan and (2) their fighting statistics and party tactics. After all, it'll be a better fight if Rodan can prepare some showy counters.
Really, between devils and a fight promoter, I think we can agree which is more evil.
Jealous! I have owned multiple editions of L5R, but never been able to play it. If I were ever to run it, I’d probably steal a lot of the setup from the fourth edition’s Naishou Province mini-setting. Basically a secluded valley with all sorts of mystical mysteries that belongs to the Imperial Family, but has historically been governed by a on of the Great Clans. The last Clan governor did a poor job leading up to his death, so Hantei has sent in a noble from one of his client families to take over temporarily until a new Clan governor is named. So the PCs show up having either been tasked with winning the governorship for their Major or Minor Clan(s) or as the retinue of an Emerald Magistrate. That way I could get the meat of the different modes the game offers, while not having to know every tidbit about the setting in the way I might if they were wandering Magistrates or something.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
Played a lot of the CCG way back
I can swim
i did okay though! The party got more clues as to the mystery of the pirate ship they're on, and discovered an adorable mimic that only bit one of them.
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The party, right? It's a trick question and it's the party.
This is about the medical expertise my party is demonstrating.
They got a new scar out of having the tiny robot girl shove her fingers into the neck wound!
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Small little side project i'm doing: Creating Grand Beasts using my generator, and then figuring out magical items made from them
Here's a couple! Formatting may be suspect.
Krilaktoraka’s Fist
+2, Martial, Heavy, Attunement, Two Handed
2d4 Bludgeoning +1d6 fire if attuned.
This massive club has been carved out of the remnants of one Krilaktoraka’s incandescent crushing bludgeons, and is imbued with a portion of the gargutan’s beast natural power. When it’s bearer attunes to it, ghostly flames dance around the club, imbuing it’s strikes with additional potency.
In addition to this, it’s bearer gains the following abilities:
As an Attack action you create three glowing bolts of magical fire. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4+2 fire damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously and you can direct them to hit one creature or several. You must finish a short rest before you can use this ability again
As a reaction, you can attempt to interrupt a spell of 3rd level or lower. Constitution is your spell casting modifier for this ability, and it functions as per the counterspell spell. You must finish a short rest before you can use this ability again.
Trynach's Hide
Cloak, Legendary, Attunement
Cut from the carcass of Trynach, Glacierbane this thick furred cloak is still studded with the spectral remnants of weapons that failed to claim Trynach's life. It's wearer gains resistance to cold damage.
If attuned to it, the wearer gains 10 temporary hp. This refreshes when you roll for initiative or after a short/long rest (5e writing style is hard arrgh). If you are proficient with shields, you loose this proficiency for as long as you're attuned to Trynach's hide.
Finally, if you are are attuned you may use a bonus action draw a spectral weapon from Trynach's hide. If both your hands are free you may draw two spectral weapons. Any weapon drawn in such a fashion has the following properties:
Light, Thrown, Finesse. 1d6 slashing. 20/60
If you release the weapons, they vanish after impacting something. (So throw em or drop em and they'll go poof the moment they hit something)
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That said, it had some flaws. Not hugely balanced in places, and the mechanics didn't necessarily work too well with the actual social system of the setting. The setting is great... apart from everything that has anything to do with the metaplot which is entirely absolute dogshit (there, I said it, it was dogshit).
Fortunately the new edition 1) shows you the social mores of the setting way more clearly, and then has social rules which really mesh with that and in fact assume straight off the bat that most of this honour and politeness and face stuff is entirely that, face, you don't necessarily believe it and in fact most of the times you don't, you're just going along with the rules, and eventually you probably will break face if life gets too stressful. I love that. I like that "your Lord is coming to visit" means that you probably are going to get worried because, like, shit, the boss is coming and it's going to be stressful and everything needs to go right and I have to make a good impression, and the mechanics actually back that up.
And 2) it chucks the metaplot out the window. Good! Fuck off forever and don't come back! If it was good enough for John Wick (not the assassin, the guy who wrote 1st ed L5R) it was good enough for you!
Yes. Matt Wilson, who later founded Privateer Press, had a contentious relationship with John Wick.
Also kind of an asshole himself.
And yeah I didn't like him much when I met him myself
"Hey, do any of you know fleshy bag magic? Could you create a corpse so we can, y'know, frame these gangsters?"
As a Moros...
Picking up from the week before, they had discovered a dwarven shrine to Dumathoin. They managed to crack the vault door to a mausoleum contained within and descended stairs deeper into the mine until they found some split masonry. The paladin pried some loose until they were able to make a gap wide enough to push themselves into a tunnel beyond it. This eventually lead to them stumbling into a den full of feyspitter spiders and a couple of hundred small spiders that swarmed over them. I had a lot of fun describing them scuttling up the walls, their movement and just generally gross spider stuff. In particular they really disliked the use of the word scuttle. Which, hey, they're spiders, they're gonna scuttle.
They were particularly peturbed when after they'd dispatched them all that the spiders shrank, as spiders do when you kill them, because they're jerks. Anyway! They slew the spiders and waded through knee deep piles of dead spiders until they decided to descend into the pit the spiders had swarmed out of using the webbing for ladder rungs.
This went fairly uneventfully, the alchemist in the group indentified a substance on many of the walls as niter and gathered a vial of it.
After exploring and backtracking through several passes they eventually came upon a vast open cave full of crystal formations. The wizard cast a light spell on one of the crystals, which refracted to other crystals and lit the space up in a riot of colours. Which also scared off the particularly large and predatory cloaker than has made the mine it's lair. After making their way around the room they crawled their way through another tunnel (shrinking the minotaur to make things easier for him) and fighting off a few centipedes that boiled out of the rock around them.
This tunnel opened up into a small cave that had filled up partially with water and a stone obelisk with a metal capstone was standing out in the middle of it and this actually worked out far better than I planned it. The rogue wades out into the water with the wizard (a pixie) in his hood and they both attempted to scale the obelisk. Arriving at the base of the obelisk, both get hit with a wave of drowsiness, but begin the climb. Half way up, the rogue falls asleep/unconcious and topples off down into the pool of water below. As the rogue splashes into the water he realises that what he thought were rocks his feet were catching on underwater are actually the bones and skeletons of other people who have perished under the muddy waters.
The paladin rushes into the pool to rescue their companion and also eventually topples into the water asleep. The bard whisks the rogue out of the water just as he is about to start drowning, and the pixie wizard remembered they could fly and flew to the top of the obelisk.
Brushing the mud caked around the capstone, she finds a metal eyelid. The bard suggests that forcing the eye open may end the sleeping spell and an arcana check by the wizard confirms that it is the origin of the sleeping spell and the bard's theory is correct. Several failed athletics checks follow trying to force the eye open but to no effect, and the wizard stacks attacking the mechanism but misses. Just as the paladin is about to drown the rogue finally wakes up from his slumber, pulls out a dagger and throws a dagger at the obelisk and crits! The dagger strikes the eyelid dead on, shattering the muddy crust around the mechanism and saving their party member.
So naturally, two lapras -- err, I mean, plesiosauri! - fell out of the portal to the plane of elemental water that fed the 'cold springs' inside the volcano's great, seething magma chamber. Combine this with a Naruto-themed salazzle doing jutsu to shift the battlefield, and the "fight without armor" trope almost wiped the party.
At one point the dragonborn samurai attempted to kick a ninja through the portal back into the plane of elemental water. Fantastic idea, and I felt bad when he failed the contested strength check.
Still, the bard did land a Suggestion of "Tell us your evil plan!", so the party has now learned about Rodan's unbeatable mangekyou sharingan. One of the players is not super familiar with weeb culture and asked "What does that mean?"
Cleric: "It means stab him in the eye first."
I knew I had X but it's been my soul crushing summer is why i forgot what I got
All great stuff!
The first one is really fun, and that’s the main thing.
10/10 will read your next post.
important update from the latest voidheart symphony session
Rodan's stats:
HP 155
AC 50
2x Katana cut +10 for 10 damage each round
Special charged attack, "Blade of Thousand Final Cuts", to do 100 damage.
His gimmick? Empowered by fiery blazers, each of which supports one of his overpowered stats. Players were supposed to disable the brazers to knock him down to regular stats. Merely attacking the brazers temporarily disabled them. Fully disabling the braziers required use of the Stick of Portal Closing (conveniently stolen from the preceding village). For the sake of everyone's sanity, I declared that the stick could be tossed freely between players in a 30 foot range so that everyone could take a try on the braziers.
Three freaking rounds, nine tries, and not one success. The party didn't roll above a six!
Pretty soon, most of them near dead, Rodan at full HP, the boss preparing his ultimate attack, I had to pull the GM escape parachute for them. Thus one of the party's NPC contacts leaped in to save their bacon, eat the Blade of Thousand Final Cuts for them, and teleport them to a different zone with his dying breath.
We balance encounters as best we can, but sometimes the dice just laugh.
The last several sessions, we've been doing a series of bizarre errands for the god of chaos - preventing a marriage, finding a secret grave in the woods, having long arguments about the merits of pre-crime, that sort of thing. These were, as my character figured out with assistance from his Faerie Frenemies, an attempt to get the attention of the god of order to try and prevent a coming (or possibly already here) apocalypse.
Our last task was to steal a particular painting from a rich man's house. We had our druid scout it out in advance, and then while our bard distracted all of the guards/servants with a ridiculous undercover boss stunt, the ranger and druid played cat burglar and got the painting to toss it down to the waiting arms of our barbarian and my fighter, two distinctly not cat burglar people. This was going well until the ranger looked at said painting, and immediately disappeared. We managed to escape before we got into too much trouble with the guards, and, after a quick conversation with the god of chaos, took a look at the painting ourselves and were teleported into the liminal space where our friend had recently disappeared.
Inside the painting (which was a sort of snowy landscape piece), we found that it was not actually snow that we were walking on, but thick mounds of muddy oils paints. Luckily this made it easy for us to track down the person who is good at tracking, and we found him already in the middle of a pitched battle with a group of shadowy figures. These shadowy figures turned out to be made out of charcoal, and we started smashing them into clouds of dust (which over time, did start being a problem thanks to the toxicity of old fashioned art materials). However, during the fight, one of them got a hold of our bard and transported him into a weird altered reality, where he had to make a moral choice (and shocking us all, he took the moral option). This seemed overall fine, he shook it off, and we made it down to just one of the shadows left, which then got a hold of our ranger and did the same thing to him. He was found wanting by the shadow, and our bard's reality shifted, pushing him to sing his damage buff songs on the shadows instead, which immediately was able to lash out again and drop our ranger down to zero hit points.
We killed the last shadow and violently restrained the bard, who snapped out of it pretty quickly. My character force fed the ranger one of the healing potions he has been holding on to for just such an occasion, and we brought him back.
Well, sort of. He failed his death save, in actuality, although how much our characters realize it is a bit up in the air (mine is very aware, as the person who directly brought him back and someone who has been dead before). We're going with a fairly liberal interpretation of "will die soon", largely because we're just like one adventure away from the end of the campaign, but he's just barely held on by the light of his god, and is currently receiving half healing and taking double damage from all attacks (the GM also gave him an option to roll up a new character and retire peacefully, but he opted not to).
The rest of the session was mostly just serious conversations - the barbarian and the bard are old friends, and had a talk about his behavior; my character and the ranger had a classic barely restrained masculine emotions conversation about death; and the druid ran off to the woods, because he took a vow to destroy any unnatural abominations that he came across and he isn't quite sure what's going on with his old friend.
Mostly everyone's just surprised that my character wasn't the one to bite it, as I tend to play RPGs with a low-key death wish.
Meanwhile, in TERRA INCOGNITA:
The Drunken Mimics (they finally managed to suss out a team name, i'm so proud) successfully cleared their first dungeon. When we left off, they'd had an... incident with the ghostly first mate and ended up in the crows nest of this weird not-ship. Climbing down, they found the deck of the ship was in horrible shape - both battle damage, and damage that made no sense. Like something big had punched it. Weird. Also that the door to the captain;s cabin was blown open - apparently, the bombs had done their job, just time displaced.
Inside the captain's cabin they managed to find a few more details: Broken chains that had been clearly used to keep something sentient locked up, a letter of marquee that the party managed to translate. between those two they were able to figure out that this was a slave-taking Privateer ship that had run into trouble during that fleet battle.
They also managed to find and befriend soothing very important: A domesticated Mimic! Well, most of the party managed to befriend it. @Romantic Undead's Roy attempted to feed it a torch, which it spat back at him. After a bit more effort, they discovered that Chester likes both gold coins and meaty rations, and has apparently adopted the party.
Oh, also, they had a persuasion off to name it - @Darmak character Zardioz won this handily, continuing his ability to roll high on unimportant things and never ever roll high in fights, and thus Chester became Chester.
Chester proceeded to open up and give them some loot - Zardioz got a amulet that had a vial with a phoenix feather inside it. Now he's attuned to it, whenever he heals someone, they get +1 hp for each die rolled. @PirateQueen character Mallys meanwhile acquired one half of a set of magical items - This one a badly damage magical flintlock rifle. Sure is a good thing the party met someone who knows how gunpowder works before this adventure, huh? They were also able to identify that Phoebe's spy glass could be used to see magic - letting them understand that the Flintlock does Conjuration and Evocation (It can summon it's own ammo! And then relocate that ammo at speed into a target. Hooray!). Also it's got a bayonet on it, so Mallys can use it as a two-hander finesse weapon (it's still just a d8 for stabbing, but hey, it's neat!)
Moving on, they foolishly let Roy take the lead out the door again. It turns out that not only is Roy bad at Stairs, he's bad at Doors too, and they found themselves in the flooded hold of the ship. Thankfully, Mallys, being of a mermaid persuasion was able to help everyone through the under water tunnel without incident.
Well, except for roy, who somehow failed the athletics despite having advantage... and then failed the con check for managing their breath. and then i rolled max damage.
So you know, the skeleton nearly drowned and we were all very impressed at this. Very realistic to how swimming can go bad in seconds and why cave swimming is generally a terrible idea.
Beyond the incident of Skeleton man fails at swimming, nearly drowns, they discovered something horrible: Multiple chained corpses, that had clearly drowned. A bit of work from Roy revealed the worst: these were Ogre corpses. Ogre corpses that were too pale for the Ogres they knew, and missing the tattoos that are central part of Ogre culture. But clearly the same type of ogre as lived on the continent - Roy in particular entered the world in an Ogre village and could speak ogre. So now they new this was a slave taking ship, run by Aeterni elves, with enslaved Ogres. Worse still - Ogres are capable of holding their breath for a long time. To have drowned? It was not a good death.
All stuff from terra incongita, but all stuff that shouldn't BE on terra incongita - the Aeterni and Ogre are both free peoples, and ones who support each other. Aeterni are possibly the only people who hate slavery more than ogres, given all of the Aeterni on TI are descendants of freed or escaped slaves.
Before they could get too into things though, a pitter patter was heard on the stairs, and mimics burst into the room! Just a whole swarm of tiny ones that i described as being basically gaping open chests filled with teeth, with long spindly human legs and arms poking out. Mallys proceeded to shiskebab a bunch, and Chester demonstrated that he was going to brook no eating of his party and instead started eating the tiny mimics. Turns out mimics will scream a bit just before being eaten by a furry chest-dog mimic. Oh and Phoebe managed to terrify a bunch with a roll of 7 (I thought the idea of a tiny monkey person attempting to scare the mimics was so hilarious i made them roll against her roll of 7, and they failed).
Zardioz proceeded to miss (again. At this point in two levels he has never ever hit anything in combat). Roy stepped up to show the goatman how it was done and crushed some with such abandon he accidentally smashed his oar into the hull and through it a bit... which resutled in his weapon getting mixed together with Mimic-flesh and the strange not-wood of the dungeon. Net result: Roy's staff can now transform. It's gained one form so far which allows it to become a 10ft reach weapon, and continues to be able to maintain shillelagh. So that's cool! Wonder what happens if he finds more rare and mystical woods to combine with it?
This time, the party sent Zardioz up the stairs. Zardioz cant do stairs either! Rather than heading up the stairs, they found themselves in an underwater... well they weren't sure what. Below them was paved stone and smooth marble, above them was water -just hanging their, suspended. At the fair end of the corridor was the door to the captain's cabin again - Intact and in good shape. Progressing down the corridor, they found themselves accosted by a ghostly ogre - one who was just as pale as the other ogre corpses they'd found, likewise without tattoos. This one however had scars around it's neck where a collar had clearly been, and manacles still on it's wrists. Also hands covered in blood nad splinters, and a bloody wound where it's heart would be.
Discussion ensued where they managed to communicate with the Ogre (juuuust!), the Ogre called them a liar about Monferrina, and also laughed at them (They claimed they'd killed the elves on teh ship. The ogre replies that no, it had). But still, they madei t clear they were friends to the Ogre, and no friends of the slavers on the ship, so the Ogre helped them out.
By using the last of it's ghostly energy shoulder checking the captain's door open. Time for a boss fight!
The boss was a fancily dressed Aeternum elf, partly over taken by strange crystals growing from him, and surrounded by his ghostly crew. Quick thinking and bomb from Phoebe blew the crew up, and battle was joined! Things went back and forth as the party discovered to their horror the captain kept summoning more ghostly crew - and then weaponizing them. Some he absorbed into his weapon (and very nearly downed Roy with). Others he absorbed to heal him, and one broke the captain free from a spell. In all of this Zardioz managed to miss BOTH his guiding bolts... but eventually the party started targeting the crystals on the captain, chipping away at them and making the ghosts stagger out of existence. And finally, Zardioz redeemed himself - landing his first ever hit in the campaign, his eldritch blast shattered the crystals and killed the captain.
Also the dungeon, as the Captain had been the heart of it. Reality tore around them, and they found themselves back on the beach, standing around a dinghy on the sands, the captain's corpse lying across a treasure chest. Welcome to level 3, Drunken Mimics!
I ended the session right as they opened the chest, as is right and proper.
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I did have a lot of fun though! You're a good DM and TI is a rad setting and I'm enjoying getting to explore!
I felt so bad about you missing alll the shots. I mean, i made the boss semi-hard to hit on purpose, but still! You came through with the hero moment though.
Real proud of the mechanics of that little healing trinket you've got though - i like how it scales and is immediately useful without being overpowdered. Gonna be fun seeing how you all sort out the mystery and explain things to the guild though
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