D&D come Thursday

[deadly7]

Yeah, Thursday a group of my friends and I are getting together to play D&D.  I was at a friend's house today and we started our characters.  I'm an Elven Cleric who goes by the name of Zah'Rul (those of you that know me will also know that that was my BG2 character's name).  17/16/15/14/14/7 were my rolls (4d6, pick highest 3).  Should be interesting.  The guy that's DMing is awesome.  If he realizes that we're way too buff, he's going to just send in packs of trolls and throw away his gameplan.  Heh. (he's also a friend of mine and not some creepy twenty five year old guy)

[Newby]

The guy that's DMing is awesome.  If he realizes that we're way too buff, he's going to just send in packs of trolls and throw away his gameplan.

Those sentences juxtapose eachother. An awesome DM would not do that.

[Towelie]

The guy that's DMing is awesome.  If he realizes that we're way too buff, he's going to just send in packs of trolls and throw away his gameplan.

Those sentences juxtapose eachother. An awesome DM would not do that.

Obviously your opinion juxtaposes deadly's

[Newby]

Obviously your opinion juxtaposes deadly's

I juxtaposed your mom's legs apart so I could juxtapose in her vagina. You head fuck.

[BigAznDaddy]

Obviously your opinion juxtaposes deadly's

I juxtaposed your mom's legs apart so I could juxtapose in her vagina. You head fuck.

That made my day....

[kalaka]

Ah... D&D, those were the days. I stopped playing a couple of years ago but its a good game. I was usually DM or a Elf Sorceror.

[deadly7]

Those sentences juxtapose eachother. An awesome DM would not do that.

What the hell's the point of playing D&D if you're too buff and you fly through everything?

[Newby]

Those sentences juxtapose eachother. An awesome DM would not do that.

What the hell's the point of playing D&D if you're too buff and you fly through everything?

You scale the opposition up accordingly.

[deadly7]

You scale the opposition up accordingly.

It's more fun fighting hordes of monsters.

[Newby]

You scale the opposition up accordingly.

It's more fun fighting hordes of monsters.

You'll find out quite the opposite.

[deadly7]

oh, newby, just so you know... I was exaggerating when I said he would discard his entire gameplan.  He would probably just have another monster or two enter the fight and scale up the rest of the opponents, like you said.  He was probably joking around Sunday when he said "ok, if you guys end up being really strong (because we had killer rolls), then I'm just going to throw in more monsters."

[deadly7]

So, first day.  It was rather interesting.  After the remaining two people made their characters (and I picked my Spells and my Feat.. Power Attack ftw!) we all played for a good forty-five minutes to an hour.  It was fun.  The DM, for it being his first game, made it fun.  He actually knocked out two people, despite the fact that he rolled less than 5 on his hit rolls probably three-quarters of the time. :\

[kalaka]

You chose power attack for a cleric? I'd like to see those stats... dont you have a tank?

[Newby]

You chose power attack for a cleric? I'd like to see those stats... dont you have a tank?

Me too. What the hell, deadly?

[deadly7]

You chose power attack for a cleric? I'd like to see those stats... dont you have a tank?

Yes, we have a tank.  The only spell (seeing as to how I'm level two) that I can use and actually do something with is Cure Light Wounds.  I didn't find any other feat that I really wanted that was useful or that I met a prereq for.

I don't have my sheet with me but I think I am:
Wisdom: 17
Constitution: 16
Charisma: 16
Dexterity: 9 (lol at my -1 reflex save.. so awesome)
Strength: 14
Intelligence: 14

Those are close to what I have, I think.  I asked the veteran player there what feat to get and he told me, "You know, you're probably just more useful attacking with a weapon than you are with using spells for a while, because your spells suck."  However, I don't know why he recommended I get Power Attack.  My BAB is +1.

[Newby]

Seems useless IMO, but ok.

[deadly7]

Seems useless IMO, but ok.

Yeah..  What would you have me get when I can get my second feat?  I saw a couple things I liked, but they required dex, which I don't have.

[Newby]

I'd have to look through my D&D players handbook, which I have not done in eons. :|

[deadly7]

Get cracking *snaps whip*

Oh, I bought dice.
4 d6
1 d8
1 d4
1 d20
1 d10
1 d12
1 Percentile die

[kalaka]

Seems useless IMO, but ok.

Yeah..  What would you have me get when I can get my second feat?  I saw a couple things I liked, but they required dex, which I don't have.

Well that depends, what Domain did you chose? You might wanna get a metamagic feat or Combat Casting, maybe. Power Attack was an OK choice, if you ask me, but it really depends on what kinda cleric you wanna be.

[deadly7]

Well that depends, what Domain did you chose? You might wanna get a metamagic feat or Combat Casting, maybe. Power Attack was an OK choice, if you ask me, but it really depends on what kinda cleric you wanna be.

My domains are Healing and Sun.  I looked at the metamagic feats but none of them appealed to me.  I want to be a mostly tanking, partially casting cleric.

[iago]

Yeah, I'm late on this, but whatever.

Disclaimer: I can't speak for D&D, since I usually play Shadowrun, where no matter how tough you are, a couple bullets will kill you. Period. I also play Call of Cthulhu, where the monsters can kill you by looking at you, literally.

Anyways, I find that if you have a really good GM (or DM), it doesn't matter how powerful your characters are, you can't get through the entire story with brute force, more diverse skills and actual thinking are required. So the plot doesn't necessarily have to be scaled up. Again, that often applies to Shadowrun.

Also, and this is 100% personal, I don't believe in game plans, they tend to be too restrictive. It's more fun to give the players a fairly open-ended mission and let them work it out themselves. Hell, in the last Shadowrun campaign I played, our GM didn't even give us missions, he'd let us take care of ourself and occasionally throw a wrench in the works. We were all experienced players and had a goal in mind (expanding our corporation that we created), which made it easy and fun to have an extremely dymanic storyline.

[kalaka]

Well that depends, what Domain did you chose? You might wanna get a metamagic feat or Combat Casting, maybe. Power Attack was an OK choice, if you ask me, but it really depends on what kinda cleric you wanna be.

My domains are Healing and Sun.  I looked at the metamagic feats but none of them appealed to me.  I want to be a mostly tanking, partially casting cleric.

If you chose Healing and you want to be mostly tanking, you've got it all wrong, you should've chosen War. A Healing cleric should mostly... well, heal. If you didn't like the core feats on the PHB, you should download Complete Divine (I have it if you want me to upload it), there's some great feats for divine spellcasters there. Here's a screenshot:

[deadly7]

You do realize that I don't meet almost any of those requirements on account of my being level 2?
Also, I do heal... but only when it's required.  I currently only get 3 spells per day, so I'm not going to sit around for turns and not do anything.. especially considering that I've rolled lower turn speeds (forgot the word. ><) than half of the monsters in my last two fights.

Also, were those in the 3.5 rulebook?  I might look at it more closely, if that's the case.  My friend gave me a DVD with a bunch of D&D books on it, so yeah..

[deadly7]

Yeah, I'm late on this, but whatever.

Disclaimer: I can't speak for D&D, since I usually play Shadowrun, where no matter how tough you are, a couple bullets will kill you. Period. I also play Call of Cthulhu, where the monsters can kill you by looking at you, literally.

Anyways, I find that if you have a really good GM (or DM), it doesn't matter how powerful your characters are, you can't get through the entire story with brute force, more diverse skills and actual thinking are required. So the plot doesn't necessarily have to be scaled up. Again, that often applies to Shadowrun.

Also, and this is 100% personal, I don't believe in game plans, they tend to be too restrictive. It's more fun to give the players a fairly open-ended mission and let them work it out themselves. Hell, in the last Shadowrun campaign I played, our GM didn't even give us missions, he'd let us take care of ourself and occasionally throw a wrench in the works. We were all experienced players and had a goal in mind (expanding our corporation that we created), which made it easy and fun to have an extremely dymanic storyline.

The DM that we have is new to DM'ing.  So until he gets comfortable with it, it would be assholeish to ask him to make an open ended story, in my opinion.  Plus, we have no real objectives or goals or anything -- we literally just started playing last Thursday.  We're playing again tomorrow for a few hours.

[Newby]

Also, were those in the 3.5 rulebook?  I might look at it more closely, if that's the case.  My friend gave me a DVD with a bunch of D&D books on it, so yeah..

No. He said that. N00b.

[deadly7]

No. He said that. N00b.

I overlooked it -- I was skimming.
------
The DM basically threw away any storyline after the first little battle.  Right now we're in a dungeon and we're fighting to get back an enchanted dagger that was blessed by my God (Pelor).

[Newby]

The DM basically threw away any storyline after the first little battle.

That sucks.

[iago]

The DM basically threw away any storyline after the first little battle.

That sucks.

Depends. If he threw away a drawn out boring storyline in favour of a real-time dynamic storyline, then it's a good thing.

If he threw away a good storyline in favour is hacking and slewing through a dungeon, there are easier/faster games to do that in (Warhammer Quest!)

[deadly7]

I guess I didn't really specify storyline.  In between last game and this game (we have another tomorrow) he discarded part of what he was going to do (more or less something out of the DM's guide) and made up a plan.  Currently we're in a dungeon getting back something for my God, which will probably have a role in tomorrow's plan.

[Newby]

(more or less something out of the DM's guide)

Yuck. Although the ideas in the DM guide are nice, they're too cliché for my tastes.

[deadly7]

Yeah, he used one to start out with so he could familiarize himself with everything.. That was it.

[iago]

Speaking of D&D, I'm going to be playing it with a guy at work soon, with luck. I went out and bought the Player's Handbook (3rd ed). He needs to find another person to have a decent sized game (we have 1 other guy, and a DM + 2 isn't really enough).

[deadly7]

Speaking of D&D, I'm going to be playing it with a guy at work soon, with luck. I went out and bought the Player's Handbook (3rd ed). He needs to find another person to have a decent sized game (we have 1 other guy, and a DM + 2 isn't really enough).

We're playing with the 3.5 core rules. Those books are a lot nicer than the 3.0 ones (in that each row is colored so that you can actually tell what something is on quick glance instead of having to trace it with your eyes -- I hate that).

We were originally going to start months ago, but we were all lazy bastards (and none of us had willingly wanted to DM and actually had experience with the game before.).

[iago]

A guy I work with offered to DM, so that's the easy part.

His reasoning for 3.0 rules? Most people are upgrading to 3.5 rules, so getting 3.0 books used is cheap.

[kalaka]

Or you could just download 3.5 books for free
Complete Divine is 3.5, btw. I don't see why a 2nd level Cleric can't have 4 ranks in Heal, Knowledge or Spellcraft. Most of the prerequisites for those feats are core divine spellcaster abilities.

[iago]

I don't like using downloaded books, it's not the same. Plus, I don't want to be sitting around a table staring at a laptop, I'd much rather be paging through a physical book.

Plus, rules aren't all that important, as long as they work and they don't get in the way of gameplay.

I find that games also have "rule creep", so to speak. They keep adding more and more rules and the gameplay gets slower and slower. Some updates also simplify rules, which is good too.

[deadly7]

So, my group totally got its shit handed to it today.

It was the third watch and we were resting because I needed to get back all of my spells and our Sorcerer had run out of all spells - even Orisons.  So we had no spells.  We had the 8 hours of rest, but needed the one hour of meditation or what have you.  Anyways, the DM rolled for wandering monsters.  He rolls a level four bear... easy, right? No.  2 claws, one bite attack, and all of the heavy damage people in the group sleeping.  It was my watch, so I was wearing armor and had an AC of 18.  The bear had a +11 to hit.  A few rounds later, the monk, the fighter, and myself are all lying unconscious and bleeding profusely.  The monk and the fighter manage to roll a stability check and stop bleeding.. with -9 health.  I failed and I died.  I made a new character... a wizard.  Fuck yeah for doing DAMAGE and not being a sissy healer.

[Sidoh]

Lmao, deadly.  That's one badass bear.

[Newby]

Pwned pretty easy, n00b.

Next time I make a D&D char (probably never outside of NWN / BG*) I'm making an archer, and I'm jacking the class description from BG2, because jesus fucking CHRIST archers are badass. My archer in BG2 at level 17 can dish out like ~60 damage a round. Unhacked. deadly, we need to play; I'll import my archer and solo rooms for us like I did an entire room full of fire giants (they couldn't fit through the arches, so I stuck them there and ate them up one by one).

Oh, your stability check @ -9 hp reminds me of another D&D story:

It was ~2am in the morning, our group was doing D&D. We were fighting some giant spider, and it was fucking our shit up good. One kid had to leave, so he left his character for us to play. Unfortunately, he became unconscious. We did -1 hp/round, and the spider was still kicking strong at -5hp on his character.

-7hp rolls around, almost dead, -8hp rolls around, almost dead, he's on -9 hp and I'm the last person to attack in the round. I'm a rogue, and I use a crossbow. If I don't land this shot and kill him (I needed to roll a 5-6 on a 6 sided die) his character is dead. I'm pessimistic, so I give up. I roll the d20. A 19 pops up. That's a hit!

I still have to get a pretty much impossible roll on the damage. I roll. I get a six. The spider got pwned and our pally healed him back to health.

On the subject of a wizard.... go conjurer (I think it's conjurer, whatever school has magic missiles in it) and your best friends = armor / magic missiles. 'specially magic missiles! This is as far as I can remember from my experiences in NWN, BG2, and real D&D. Oh, and familiars suck dick.

[deadly7]

Lmao, deadly.  That's one badass bear.

That's what I said.  Here was what my friend said to me today at lunch (cause I sat with a different group of people), "I killed you and now you're afraid of me, aren't you?"  I respond "Yeah, basically.." and his girlfriend bursts out laughing and goes "That's not possible."

Unhacked. deadly, we need to play; I'll import my archer and solo rooms for us like I did an entire room full of fire giants (they couldn't fit through the arches, so I stuck them there and ate them up one by one).

Yeah, definitely.  I need to install the game, though.  It'll probably have to wait until this summer, especially because I can't update my router's firmware without breaking it, and the current version I have does not support forwarding ranges (i.e. 81-90), and BG2 wants a LOT of forwarded ports.

On the subject of a wizard.... go conjurer (I think it's conjurer, whatever school has magic missiles in it) and your best friends = armor / magic missiles. 'specially magic missiles! This is as far as I can remember from my experiences in NWN, BG2, and real D&D. Oh, and familiars suck dick.

I went universal, but I'm going to learn the obvious spells such as Magic Missile and Melf's Acid Arrow (fucking love this spell. ), among others.

[deadly7]

Being a wizard totally kicks ass, if for nothing else than the fact that I totally own my group's sorcerer in my damage-doing ability (I love my 4d6 spell. )

[Newby]

Sorcerers are jokes. Haha.