(no subject)
This one was actually painful to transcribe, involving as it does a sincerely unpleasant and awkward moment not in character for the group.
Our story begins with the DM singing a merry song as he adjusts the mic settings for this game report.
DM: Balancin’ Sargassas, ‘cuz he’s a douche. Balancin’ Sargassas, ‘cuz he’s a douche. Better turn this down a little more, ‘cuz when Sargassas gets worked up, this shit takes off! Hey Sargassas, you take five points of damage for reasons which you find inadequately explained!
Sargassas: SON OF A BITCH!
DM: All right, I think we’re in the happy land. (beat) Triangle Man, Triangle Man, Triangle Man hates Particle Man…
The DM ascertains he’s remembered the dungeon. Ralth renames the game to Dungeons and Doughnuts. The group mostly ignores the DM’s demands that they clear off the play mat. Iglar is quickly handwaved out of the group, since the player is on hiatus. Now the group stands in front of the door they’d fought so hard to reach. Ralth goes for cider.
Ralth: Let us quaff it.
Dian: Ha! All you can quaff!
DM: (lifting his wooden mug) Can’t quaff without a mug, dude.
Ralth: (lifting his own plastic cup) Trust me, I can make this a mug.
DM: Why are you taping a handle made of peppermint patty wrappers onto it?!
Dian: (fairly randomly) David Bowie will be my bard. He will be named, Bavid Dowie.
The group discovers that the Star Crunch boxes appear to be multiplying. Dian partakes of Tostitos, then quickly pushes the bag away.
Dian: I was not ready for that. Like “hint of lime”… SHOVED DOWN YOUR THROAT!
Ralth: They should rename it “blast of lime”.
Dian: It’s like you go to take a swig of the Corona and all of a sudden, choking on lime.
Khoriane: Limesplosion!
DM: In Soviet Union, lime hints at you!
Dian: (collapses to the table with a thud)
Sargassas: That’s why I don’t EAT those things! Their hint of lime is about as ‘hint’ as a punch to the face!
The group passes some time abusing Tostitos. The DM makes a show of rubbing his hands together in glee.
Dian: Just kill us already! Stop anticipating!
DM: I can’t, you won’t act!
Sargassas: ….you’re waiting on US?!
Dian: We need a dungeon!
DM: I told you where the effing door was, I told you I wasn’t going to be drawing this out…
Dian attempts to return to town to recover his hit points, but discovers he’s at full hit points. The group vetoes this.
Sargassas: Let’s open this door and see what’s inside.
DM: All right, you’re going to open the door?
Ralth: (dives for a d20 to roll)
Dian: Reflex save!
DM: And Ralth’s like, “I’d better check for traps!”
Ralth finds a scythe trap. The DM curses, thinking he would have caught them with this one at least. The DM discovers the DMG has fallen into a hole in space-time. Dian and Sargassas use this as an excuse to discuss racism, sexism, and xenophobia in Star Wars, out of literally nowhere. The DM shrugs, declares that Ralth has disarmed the trap quite successfully, and then leaves to let Ashta in the door. The conversation wanders all over the place, then falls quiet coincidentally as Khoriane is warning Ashta that she’d spilled a bag of mixed nuts onto his chair.
Khoriane: I wiped my nuts all over your seat.
A pregnant pause leads to the group collapsing. Ashta snickers.
Ashta: The delayed reactions was the best…
Dian: That was the most awesome part of the conversation to drop into, out of nowhere…
Ashta gets settle as the DM harasses the group to continue. Ralth picks the locks on the door. Sargassas makes up some crap about an awesome spell he allegedly has. Thirty minutes after the start of play, the group gets in the door. Ashta partakes of Tostitos.
Ashta: No! Hint of Lime, why?! (who, recall, got there not that long ago) Goddamn “hint of lime”.
Dian: Pressure washer full of lime…
Khoriane berates the DM for buying Hint of Lime. A horrible analogy is made with fire ants. The DM points out that the doors open outward, making them very awkward to deal with on the narrow ledge. The PCs ignore this and ask what’s in the room.
DM: All right. With a great deal of maneuvering and awkwardness you manage to swing the doors open. The sunlight is no longer effectively penetrating in here. Who has low-light vision, you guys can see fine.
Sargassas: The harsh bright light of Sargassas hitting the sunrod and tossing it in front of their low-light vision, they’re blinded, but Surgaroth sees fine!
DM: The radius on a sunrod is 30 feet?
Sargassas: I wrote 120.
DM: That doesn’t sound right.
Sargassas: It probably isn’t! I didn’t write down anything, I just wrote ‘sunrods.’
Ashta: 120 feet. Costs 13 hot dogs.
The DM, grumbling, looks up sunrods and determines it’s 30 bright, 60 shadowy. The DM describes another door on the far side (Ralth curses); those with low-light vision can see immense statues in the corner. Dian makes an ‘entering the room’ motion and noise.
DM: Which side of the doors did you enter in, the left, the right, or the center?
Sargassas: WE OPENED BOTH DOORS?!
DM: I’d assumed so.
Sargassas: HOW?! How did we open both doors?!
Ashta: We grasped them firmly, and-
Sargassas: I’m assuming both doors are larger than the platform itself, so when we swung them open, it took out the platform and anyone standing on it, so that means we both to all had to fit on one side of the door, like this-
DM: Which if you’d been paying attention to me, I clarified when I described you as doing some awkward maneuvering to get the doors open.
Sargassas: I have no idea what kind of awkward maneuvering we pulled off …
DM: You went back onto the sticky webs, it was annoying.
Ashta: We opened both of them by default, you said doors.
DM: The question still stands, even if only one is open.
Sargassas: (hysterical with rage) We still go through the ONE door.
Ashta: We opened them both and walked in through the center like civilized people.
Sargassas: I snuck in through the side.
Ashta: Someone climbed in through the window…
Dian: Are you - just deciding which weapon is going to fall on me?
DM: I need you to make Reflex saving throw.
Dian: No matter which side I walked in on.
DM: (a pause, as he tries to figure out where he went wrong) He said center, so I’m going with that. Because you guys can’t make an effing decision!
Ashta: You made it FOR us when you pluralized the word “door!”
DM: You could have walked in - IT’S DOUBLE DOORS! You could have walked in on THIS side, you could’ve walked in on that side,-
Dian: Right.
DM: You could’ve walked in the center!
Dian: Right. Right. Right.
DM: All right, you’re on the right side.
Sargassas: Still the Reflex saving throw!
Dian: What would you have told me if I said ‘left’?
DM: I didn’t said you needed a Reflex saving throw, I was going with the center. All right, you step in, on the right side-
Dian: 24.
DM: (voice shooting up an octave) Why are you rolling?!
Dian: You told me to make a Reflex saving throw!
DM: No I didn’t!
Dian: You’ve lost control of this game!
Ralth: You DID say Reflex saving throw.
Khoriane: You did.
DM:(sputtering) No I totally - you didn’t need it! He said center! So I gave him a Reflex saving throw in the center!
Dian: As you wish. Okay, so I made the save which didn’t actually happen because the trap didn’t spring. So what else is happening.
Sargassas: We watch as he walks in and does a cartwheel.
DM: First of all, clear me off a space, you’re going to need it. Second of all, as you step in you hear a harsh grinding sound, both from in front of you and behind you. The two dwarven statues you can see in front of you lower their weapons swiftly. The ground beneath you shoots upward! Next to you, the ground shoots downward.
Dian: I made my Reflex saving throw.
DM: (up an octave again) You didn’t need it!
The DM draws the map. The group decides to give him shit for some reason.
Sargassas: (poking the single line the DM has drawn) Is this the door?
DM: NO!
Ashta: Is this the door?
Dian: It’s a stop sign!
DM: Let me just finish effing drawing the effing -- (a horrified pause as he looks where Sargassas had poked the map) LOOK AT THAT you got your fucking finger grease all over the fucking map! Clean it up!
A pause.
Sargassas: (pointing to where the DM had accidentally smudged a line) Is that a secret passage?
DM: You remember how you guys said - you remember how I said I would adjust it for Iglar not being here? I didn’t necessarily mean I would adjust it downwards…
Dian: As if I expected anything less.
The DM draws the door, to the group’s delight. The fat-octagonal room has a high spot, where Dian is standing, a low stop, directly next to him, and a part of the floor still the same height as it began, but with all the individual bricks up or down to create rough terrain. After much mini-squabbling, initiative is rolled. The DM accidentally flubs the word ‘compose’ as ‘compose’.
Ralth: Complose.
Ashta: Complose!
DM: You wanna get up here and run this game? I’ll turn this game around right now.
Sargassas: (prophetically) This game has already crashed into a wall.
The group agrees that the terrain is rough. Ashta acts, but elects to hold his action. Khoriane does the same. Dian decides to punch a statue for no apparent reason.
Dian: It’s attacking, right?
DM: No, the statue is motionless, it just lowered its weapon.
Sargassas: Oh. Ha ha.
Dian: So… why did we roll for initiative if nothing is attacking us?
DM: From up there, you see a door in this wall is beginning to open.
Dian: Oh, the rancor’s coming.
Sargassas: I didn’t know ‘Stein’ was a Jedi’s name.
DM: It’s a small door, only about yea high, fairly wide though.
Sargassas: Oh, the venomous midget rancor.
Khoriane: The midget dwarven rancor.
DM: Nothing is coming out yet.
Ashta: There’s a door in this wall?
DM: Yes.
Dian: That wall. That’s the only way out of the room.
DM: (redrawing it) Right there.
Ashta: Is this room a dead end?
DM: No, you saw a door over here.
Ralth: Why didn’t you DRAW it?!
Sargassas: And you know what happens when we see an opening, right Ralth? We throw a sound-uh - what was it?
Ralth: AN OPENING? (making a throwing motion)
Ashta: Thunderstone!
Dian: Yeah, I’ll wait for you to do that.
Ralth: I know what my action is gonna be!
Ashta: (giggling helplessly)
Sargassas: We’re gonna find a bag of endless thunderstones so we can throw one into every entrance in the world. “Why’d you throw it into the baby nursery?!” “There was an opening…” We’re walking through town, someone opens a door. “Oh my god!” Boom!
Dian expects to be shot with arrows, but is not. He attempts to peer in, holding a sunrod.
DM: As you look in, as if in response to your light, two twin cones of light stab out, illuminating the area.
Dian: Headlights?!
DM: Almost but much closer together.
Dian: What monster makes light with his eyes?
The players work themselves into a bit of a frenzy, believing they’re facing a demon. Dian chucks a rock into the hole. Ralth hops down to the 10-foot-down floor, succeeding on a Jump check to take no damage.
DM: Even as you hear Ralth behind you, making that light jump, whatever you pissed off bursts through the door -- (plopping a wolf mini down) itlookslikeawolfbut actually it’s a massive, powerful lion. The beams that you saw are coming from its eyes, which it turns on you - and then pounces!
Dian takes a moment to find his AC on his sheet, but at last does.
DM: Its claws rip out, slashing through your robes, dealing 8 points of damage as it carves deep furrows through your scaly flesh.
Sargassas: The fuck’s a ‘furrow’?
Dian: Like a rut. Have some Stunning Fist!
The DM liberally allows Dian to act. The group insists that throwing a stone is a free action. Dian punches the lion, but it makes its save. Sargassas clambers up to the ledge on his action, just in time to see a snake drop down from the ceiling to chomp on Dian.
DM: It bites you for four points of damage and you need to give me a Fortitude saving throw for its poison.
Sargassas: How is the snake alive?
Dian: Why am I rolling this die?! Modified 20.
Sargassas: Modified 20’s enough! If a modified 20’s not enough to resist off the poison we’re dead.
Dian: Whose campaign are we IN?
DM: You shake off the poison like Rasputin shakes off the frickin’ Bud Light. The snake continues to dangle down, hissing in your face, flecks of poison spraying into your eyes, it’snotreallypainful’cuzit’sonlycinematic but nevertheless!
Ashta: House of horrors.
Ashta blows a Spot check to get LOS on the monsters from his far-down position at an angle. A debate erupts over whether Ashta’s levitate is still active; the DM allows it to be. Now everyone is piling up onto the top ledge except for Ralth. Dian complains about the crappiness of the monk power Purity of Body, which makes monks immune to diseases no one cares about. Ashta casts Flare on the lion.
DM: …would you like the good news or the bad news?
Ashta: Let’s take the bad news first.
DM: Well, the bad news is that this particular lion, as you might have judged by its glowing eyes, has a specific template that gives it blindsense. …on the upside, blindsense is not as good as blindsight, and it did fail the save, so you HAVE blinded it… It can still sense things in nearby squares, it doesn’t need Listen or Spot checks to detect where someone is. It will still suffer blindness penalties to hit, however… or at least it would if it didn’t have Blind-fight.
A pause.
Ralth: God dammit,
DM: I never thought in a million years you guys would actually blind it!
Sargassas: Look, he’s over here going… “this tiger WOULD be affected by the blindness if I hadn’t written this…”
DM: I’m serious, I swear to God, I wrote this thing off a template in the Dungeoncraft book, not because I thought you would care about its abilities, but because it made sense.
Ralth: Why would something that’s almost immune to blindness… have Blind-fight?
DM: (A pause)…I…. don’t know the reason, honestly. I think lions have it baseline, but I could be wrong.
Sargassas: You’re swallowing a lot of bullshit…
Dian: Turn that last punch I threw into an eye-gouge!
DM: Anyway, Khori, you activated your robes. Dian!
Dian: HiiiiiiiiYAH!
DM: You punching the snake or the cat?
Ralth: (as a claw-y kitty leaps onto him) OW!
DM: Punch the cat! Save Ralth!
Sargassas realizes he can cast speak with animals as a domain spell and prepares to cast it. Dian punches the lion once, then misses horribly. The lion blows two of its three attacks.
Dian: Is it a dragon-type lion?
DM: No.
Sargassas: (laughs his ass off)
Dian: Well, he doesn’t even know what the creature he made was, so maybe it’s a dragon-type lion. It has glowing eyes!
DM: It’s a sentinel lion, I just don’t remember where the template came from!
Dian: Yeah, I remember where it came from, I’ve just never seen it before.
DM: It’s in the Dungeoncraft book, which I have never printed out, thanks!
Dian: I know you back up all your BS, if I made you go to the trouble you would show me the proof.
Sargassas: I’m sorry we lost trust in you, Mr. Vampire Monk.
DM: Hey I -- I admitted I was wrong on that, and I only found out afterwards! It required a specific rule clarification in Dragon magazine, thank you very much. I - I would - I’d never have found out I was wrong if I hadn’t specifically looked it UP!
Dian: You were in the middle of telling me how many hit points I lost, right?
DM: You lost seven, and then it leans forward! “Drawwwhhh!” You reflexively throw up your hands, catching its jaws and hurling it backwards so it cannot bite you!
Dian: That’s theatrical?
DM: YES.
Dian: That’s cool, I like that, keep it up.
Ashta: You want a chair and a whip while you’re at it?
Dian: He’s a master at this. Like 2 points of damage, he turned it into this epic maneuver.
DM: I put some effort into this for you guys. ‘Cuz I love ya.
Ralth is all alone and useless in the bottom, till with a Spot check he discovers that he can fiddle with some of the trap machinery in the statue nearest to him.
DM: You begin tinkering with it. This is going to take you…
Sargassas: A million rounds.
Ashta: Everyone’s dead by then.
Ralth: “Hey guys, you doin’ okay? ….guys?”
Ashta: No news is good news, right?
Ralth: “Hey can ya give me a light? Oh thanks, it’s really nice and bright. What’s it from? ….Fucking lion, AAAAAH!”
Sargassas and the snake go at the same time. A debate erupts over the idea of casting defensively. He succeeds at his Concentration check, and the DM even allows him to do a rushed diplomacy (normally a full-round action) as part of his round. He rolls a 20, raising the snake from Hostile to Unfriendly.
Ashta: It doesn’t hate you, it just… thinks less of you.
Dian: In other words, don’t crowd its space and it might not poison you.
DM: The snake, which is about to bite you, venom dripping off its fangs and onto the floor, hisses. “You mussst leave, or I will be forced to destroy you!”
Dian: That’s quite a confident snake.
DM: However, it wastes its action waiting to see what you will do. Back around to Ashta.
Sargassas: Ooh. It must speak for the druid. Okay listen, guys, you fight the cat, and I will talk with this hear snake, and we will find out-
DM: “I heard that. No, you must leave, and not destroy the guardian.”
Sargassas: “No, uh, we’re not going to destroy the guardian, we just want to talk. He - they’re looking for him, his home wants him, they want to talk to him. Do you speak for the guardian?”
DM: “The cat has lived here since time immemorial.”
Sargassas: “Why is the cat attacking us? The guardian-“
DM: “WE are guardians.”
Sargassas: “Oh, I see.”
DM: “We have been set here by the dwarven lords to destroy all who would enter. You must leave or we must slay you!”
Sargassas: “Did someone else come in?”
DM: “No one.”
Sargassas: (pausing) He didn’t come this way, guys!
Dian: Little busy!
DM: (resisting the urge to facepalm, stage-whispering) Roll a Knowledge(nature) check.
Sargassas: He’s lying! Only a 14.
DM: That is good enough. If the druid came in here, he was probably not in a form which the snake or cat would have registered as hostile.
Dian: A dwarven lord!
Sargassas: “Did ANYthing come in here? Creature, mouse, tiny, come in here? Something that wasn’t here before?”
DM: “Spiders, rats, vermin, All come in here often. I feed on what I can.”
Dian: The snake ate the druid! Let’s just leave and tell them the job is done.
Sargassas continues to interrogate the snake. The DM finally forces them to acknowledge sensible turn order, despite their complaints.
Ralth: It’s a free action!
Ashta: Free!
Dian: Free actions aren’t free!
DM: It’s like Daredevil and Spider-Man fighting. One panel of them in the fight and the rest of the panel is word balloons.
Ashta hesitates over options. Sargassas proposes having a bag of d20s and a furnace. Ashta considers hucking an ice dagger, but the splash damage would do more party damage than direct, so settles on hucking an orb of electricity.
DM: Let’s see if the crappy wizard can crappy hit a crappy lion.
Ashta: Crappy wizard?!
DM: Well your base attack bonus sure is.
Ashta proves the point by missing. Khoriane also blows her attack. Dian pummels the lion into the ground. Sargassas notices Ashta’s sketchbook and asks to see it.
Ashta: There’s porn in there.
Sargassas: THERE’S PORN IN THERE?!
Ashta: It’s gay porn!
Sargassas: I don’t CARE!
DM: And thus we learned more about Sargassas than we ever wanted to.
Ashta: It’s full of dicks!
Sargassas: Are you serious? Do you just draw dick all the time? That’s kind of creepy!
Ashta: No, that’s just my friend.
Sargassas: Is it a girl?
Ashta: Yes.
Sargassas: Oh thank god.
DM: So she draws them, but in your notebook?
Ashta: Yes.
DM: So your main purpose here is to take dicktation.
Sargassas regales a horrible story of a party with… horrible things. The snake turns on Sargassas. Sargassas claims he had no time to warn the others to stop. He takes little damage and passes the save. Dian begs for the kill, but Sargassas clubs it with his mace anyway. Ashta attempts to stab the snake, while passing the notebook to Khoriane.
DM: You wanna look in the dicktionary?
Ashta appreciates the joke, oddly, but gets no bonus to the attack roll and misses. Critically.
DM: You stab at the snake, which reflexively bites at your arm as you strike it. You’re not certain what happens but a moment later you’re withdrawing your hand empty and the snake’s standing there with the dagger of shocking grasp in its mouth going ‘hmm?!’
Sargassas: That was a wasted action on its part!
DM: No it wasn’t!
Sargassas: Yes it was!
DM: I’m going to start reducing things to the most basic level possible. ‘You miss.’ ‘You hit.’ ‘You miss.’ ‘Fuck you.’
Khoriane crits the head off the snake. Ashta demands they save the head for the poison. Ralth disengages the mechanism, shifting the room back to its initial state. Three new doors are revealed. In a amusing little side detail, Sargassas determines that the snake has the proportions of a much larger snake. The panel to the lion room is also still open, so Dian immediately springs up there. He finds a small altar with a tray and fountain of water. The group goes dead silent trying to figure this one out.
Khoriane: Is there anything in there? Yes, if I have to, I’ll go look.
Dian: Well yeah, you can just - why did I jump up here? You could have just floated.
DM: Because you wanted to show off your jumping skills.
Still baffled, Khoriane drinks the water to no obvious effect. Ashta surveys the doors, and discovers each has a motif, as is usual for this dungeon. One has weapons and armor; one has an anvil being struck by a hammer, which causes sparks to touch lava below where hands are rising; one has a dwarf smashing a rock with a pick, and a ‘virtual rainbow’ of ore and minerals is pouring out.
Dian: Should we go into the Skittles room, or should we go into the armory? Or shall I desecrate this altar?
Khoriane: Dian needs to cop a squat on top of the altar.
Ralth starts searching and picking locks. The DM takes over rolling for Ralth, and begins with the ‘you believe there are no traps on this door’ line. However, Ralth discovers some sort of pressure device on the rainbow room and elects to disable it.
DM: You swiftly and hurriedly work at disabling the device. After a few moments of work, the massive rings that opens the door falls off into your hands.
Ashta: Ya broke it!
Ralth:: (in a very small voice) Is it still locked…?
DM: It’s still locked, you just successfully disabled the latch.
Ralth: Huh. Guess I’ve been beat by this door…
DM: Don’t admit it. Tell ‘em you successfully defeated the trap.
Ralth: “The trap’s gone, guys, but this… diabolical little bastard of a trap really fucked us over!”
Dian crowbars open the door anyway. Behind it: a mine shaft.
DM: Not ten feet ahead, stretching across this mine shaft, is a massive wall of insects.
Sargassas: (horrible strangled noise)
DM: Each of them buzzing furiously as-
Ashta: Oh god, shut the door!
DM: As they crawl and writhe over--
Ashta: Oh god shut the door!
Ralth: (makes a shutting gesture)
Dian: Shut it. Shut it. Shut it.
Ralth: I know, I already made the motions.
Dian: What sort of insects?
DM: You don’t know, the door is shut.
Ralth: Next door!
Dian: Throw a thunderstone in there, quick!
Ralth fails to open the lock on the anvil door; it proves to be of higher quality than the other locks. Ralth also discovers the door is barred from the other side. The group moves onto the armory door, and discovers it’s a barracks. They thoroughly plunder it and gain treasure and loot! Potions and wands are unlabeled, however. Sargassas complains and demands his Pocket Deckard Cain. Dian guesses that the mysterious metal spikes they found are giant magic caltrops. The group ponders going through the wall of insects, to the DM’s amusement.
Ralth: How do you get through a barred door?!
Khoriane: Tell Iglar there’s Kool-Aid on the other side of it.
Dian: I cast Summon Iglar.
The DM explains that the door has actually separated enough that they can see and possibly affect the bar. The PCs do an inventory check to determine what they could use to lift the bar.
Ralth: I got chalk, I could draw a new door…
Ashta: I don’t think it works like that.
Ralth: I got two sacks.
DM: Khori, Ralth invites you to have sacks.
Ralth: What?
Ashta: That’s awkward.
Ralth: I’ve got a disguise kit, I could try to trick the door.
DM: “I’m a dwarf, lad!”
Sargassas attempts to produce a blowtorch, obviously fails, and then proposes a spell-restoring nap. Dian produces a sai, which is the most useful long-and-narrow prying object they have for this circumstance. Ralth promptly passes it to Dian. Dian wussily rolls a 10; Khoriane snags it, rolls much better, but isn’t tall enough to do it.
Ashta: 26?
DM: Good god, how did you roll that high?
Ashta: Oh, I’m sorry, I was looking at the wrong thing…
Sargassas: He added his actual strength!
Ashta: I did…
DM: Jesus Christ.
Ralth: Strongest mage EVER.
Dian tosses out a natural 20, which solves everything. Ralth picks the lock even with the retry penalty, and the doors are open….able.
Ralth: Are we opening both doors?
DM: I don’t know what you’re doing, don’t fucking ask me!
Sargassas: We will open both doors, because we have plenty of room to DO so.
Dian: Make two Reflex saving throws.
Sargassas: That’s okay, because my Reflex save is now a whopping TWO.
DM: All right, you look ahead. A fifteen foot hallway leads to more doors.
Ashta: One does not simply walk into more doors.
Khoriane: That’s a HIM-worthy pun. (indicating the DM)
Ralth: That was a terrible pun!
Ralth attempts to unlock the door, but discovers it is already unlocked, just stuck. Dian crowbars it open and spies a glint of metal at the end of the room, moving slightly. Inexplicably the players give the DM grief over this description. The DM goes to draw the room, but in the process of squeezing between Ashta and Khoriane to reach the table, nearly falls on Ashta.
DM: Whoop! Woop! Balance! BALANCE!
Dian: Waaargh!
Ashta: My life flashed before my eyes…
Sargassas AOE-heals, then goes off on this long, inexplicable rant about WoW holidays. The DM points out there’s a game going on. Ralth sneaks forward into the room, and in doing so sneaks up on a weapon-bearing goblin! Obligingly, he shanks the goblin for 19. Initiative rolls are tossed down. The DM complains about how the players always seem to roll ludicrously high on initiative. Ralth shanks the goblin yet again, though the goblin is somehow still alive. Ralth retreats back, promptly running into a goblin hidden in the shadows.
DM: This goblin drops his halberd, draws his greatsword, attacks!
Sargassas: How did he…?
DM: Quick-draw. He didn’t Power Attack though. You take 8 points of damage, and as his strike lands he lets out a howl and you see some of his wounds heal before your very eyes.
Khoriane: Fucking barbarian.
Ashta: He IS Super-Goblin.
A long pause.
Dian: Barbarian can’t self-heal…
Ashta: It’s the T-9000 of goblins.
Dian: (groaning in disgust)
Sargassas: It’s another CRAZY class combination.
Dian: A make-believe class.
Ashta: 1000. T-1000 goblin.
Dian: G-1000. Liquid bullshit.
Ralth: It’s actually made out of liquid bullshit…
Dian: I’m calling bullshit on this, it’s like a warrior class that heals itself.
Sargassas: We might as well be fighting a troll!
DM: (sarcastically) Yeah, where have you seen THAT before.
Dian: Goblin spellsword-huh?
DM: Where have you seen that before?
Dian: What, a troll?
Ralth: Crusader.
Dian: Oh-crusader?
Khoriane: Goblin crusader?
Dian: Which is definitely a BS class. Does he have gay stances, too?
DM: Yes. None of them apply against Ralth. They give him an AC bonus against foes that are larger than him.
Ralth: Woohoo!
Ashta wonders if he should daze the goblin. The DM allows that it would work, even though he shouldn’t reveal that. Another goblin steps out and attempts to ventilate the monk with a halberd. The players complain that the DM doesn’t keep track of their AC, instead choosing to ask each time.
DM: He stabs at you! You slap aside the blade with the flat of your palm and he misses!
Ralth: “Get outta heeeeeeere.”
Dian: That’s a first.
Sargassas impales his own inner nostril with tweezers. WHY? WHY? WHY? After laughing at his pain, Dian pummels the new goblin violently. Khoriane eldritch-blast-crits it to death. Sargassas wallops the crusader with his mace. The goblins trigger a flimsy portcullis that traps everyone in the room but Khoriane, and then two rogues appear from the shadows. One shivs Ralth; the other uses Tumble to avoid AoOs as it moves. Ralth takes 8 points of damage. Sargassas is almost impossible to hit, so takes no damage. Ralth Tumbles to better position. A chair falls on the DM.
DM: OW!
Sargassas: Ha ha! Vengeance for breaking its legs, it went for YOURS!
Dian: It’s a MIMIC!
Ralth backstabs a rogue for 15 damage.
DM: I shouldn’t have nerfed this encounter for you guys. You nail that rogue in its ass, dropping him to exactly 0 health.
Ashta: There’s a lot of nailing from behind going on here.
Ralth: I don’t enjoy it.
DM: You nail him from behind with your massive Sausage +5.
The crusader moves to attack Ralth.
DM: He’s pissed at you, Ralth. Mainly ‘cuz of all the backstabbing. Go figure.
Ralth: I stabbed him in BOTH kidneys, what can I say?
DM: “I needed those kidneys! They were very IMPORTANT!”
Ashta: Not gonna need ‘em where you’re going!
Dian: Didn’t-
Sargassas: (in his usual ‘thinkin’ it’s bullshit’ tone) No, it’s the MAGIC of the five foot step.
Dian: It helped me just now…
Khoriane: Dian, spread your legs! And pray to your gods that I roll high.
DM: Your AC’s 19, right?
Sargassas: No, it went up, ‘cuz you keep asking the question.
Ralth: Is he Foehammering me?
DM: No. (beat) He’s Mountain Hammering you. You take 15 points of damage.
Ralth: I am down. -3.
DM: However, even as he hits you, he too collapses and begins to bleed out on the floor, as his delayed damage pool empties into his hit points.
Ralth: You can finish this up, I got seven rounds.
DM: One of them kicks your body.
Ralth: D’oh!
Ashta, short on options, breaks down the portcullis.
DM: This cheap goblin balsa wood couldn’t withstand your feeble mage-fists.
Ashta: NERD RAAAAAGE!
The goblin taunts Dian with some choice words about his momma. A kitty takes out the microphone and scrambles the game report recording program; this entire game report was almost lost in its entirety, thank you effing kitty. Dian takes out the last goblin with a brutal punch. After a moment of celebration, the players remember Ralth, and Sargassas uses his wussiest spell to heal one point and stabilize him.
Sargassas: I want to move to a room where things won’t come back to life if I burst-heal.
DM: Or you could, you know, finish their corpses.
Dian: COUP DE GRAS!
Sargassas: Oh yeah, let’s coup de gras these goblins as we loot them.
Khoriane: Me and my masterwork light mace.
DM: All right, you mercilessly bash in their heads of the bleeding, helpless goblins as they lie prostrate before you -
Khoriane: I’m cha-
DM: -unable to defend themselves.
Khoriane: I’m chaotic-
DM: You slaughter them mercilessly!
Khoriane: I’m chaotic -
DM: You offer them no quarter and no surrender.
Khoriane: These guys are evil-
DM: You pummel their skulls in while they’re WEAK and HELPLESS!
Khoriane: (giving up) No remorse, no regret.
The game report is super-loud. It hurts. It gets fixed. The PCs loot the hell out of the goblins. The DM points out that they searched the corpses before healing Ralth. Sargassas wakes him with alcohol and curing.
Khoriane: Ralth, you better get up before you start looking tasty to Sargassas.
Sargassas: That’d be hilarious. They’d be like, “Sargassas, go ahead and heal him!” And you see, like, his halfling body sort of resting in my lower jaw, and top teeth closing in.. “Oh, HEAL him.”
Somehow it segues into Princess Bride references. The DM turns to Sargassas.
DM: So are you gonna heal Ralth, or you gonna leave him be?
Sargassas: I’m gonna heal him, I’m just waiting, I don’t have worry about bursting…
DM: THEY WERE CLUBBED TO DEATH! I DESCRIBED IT IN GREAT DETAIL!
Sargassas is persuaded to roll for his healing at long last, and Ralth gets up. They loot the corpses. After gathering their stuff, they discover a blocked-and-walled over door, a door with a defaced motif and three immense locks, and a door with a massive treasury motif and a sign that says, in goblin, DO NOT TOUCH. Ralth searches and believes there are no traps.
DM: Gimme a Reflex save.
Ralth: 19.
DM: All right, you touch it and see the door begin to glow in an ominous glyph. Moving on overdrive you hurl yourself to the side just as a massive burst of acid shoots out the door and then slops to the ground below where it dissipates, where it dissipates.
Khoriane: Yaay.
Dian: Should’ve trusted the goblins. So we’d have to dispel to get in?
Ashta: No, it’s done.
Ralth: 23 to disable.
DM: Give me a Reflex saving throw!
Dian: How much acid could be stored up in a door?
Ralth: That’s a 29.
DM: Boom! “Waah!:” Pssssh. You’re so fucking lucky you have Evasion, you ass.
Ralth: And a high Reflex save. I can do this all day. Till it empties out.
Getting past the door, the group spies narrow mazelike corridors ahead. Sargassas randomly decides to adventure on ahead. His wanderings finally cause him to trigger, and plummet into, a pit trap just as Ralth joins him. Ralth saves; Sargassas does not.
Sargassas: (annoyed) Why can’t I get a Jump check on that?
DM: Because it’s not a Jump check, it’s a saving throw. The floor abruptly fell out from underneath you. There’s no way you can Jump in midair.
Sargassas: I can catch myself on the walls!
DM: That’s what the Reflex saving throw would have covered!
Sargassas: No, it would have covered me jumping out of the hole!
DM: You fall about 40 feet down. You take 21 points of damage as you slam hard onto the ground-
Sargassas: (snapping) Well I’m fucking useless because I’m not gonna get out of the damn hole!
Ralth: …I lower fifty feet of rope down to him.
DM: And now you can climb out.
Sargassas: (seriously, unlike his usual complaints) I don’t know why you asked me to roll a saving throw, jackass. Just cause me damage. How did he get caught in the same shit, it’s a five foot square!
DM: Actually no, this is ten.
Sargassas: Wait, so I set the trap off after he somehow got in the same squares.
DM: He’s going on forward, you’re behind him - or the other way around. One of you is in one square, one of you is in the other. Floor drops out, Ralth leaps to safety with his roguelike reflexes, you attempt to leap, plate mail slows you down, and you drop.
Sargassas: I’m not in plate mail.
DM: Whatever you’re wearing, it weighs you down. I thought you had plate mail.
Sargassas: I wear chain mail because it’s lighter.
DM: …all right, I’m calling the game for tonight, since the tone has gone from amused hostile to hostile hostile.
Sargassas: I’m not hostile, I’m just …
The game ends in dead silence.
After a little bit more arguing a bit later about how traps ruin campaigns, the DM abruptly declares he’s putting the campaign on indefinite hiatus because he needs a break from the constant snarking. With Ashta out of town for the next few weeks, Iglar on permanent hiatus, and no real certainty as to what events will come up next, the group finds itself in awkward limbo. Only one thing can save this mess: EXALTED! We hope.
Our story begins with the DM singing a merry song as he adjusts the mic settings for this game report.
DM: Balancin’ Sargassas, ‘cuz he’s a douche. Balancin’ Sargassas, ‘cuz he’s a douche. Better turn this down a little more, ‘cuz when Sargassas gets worked up, this shit takes off! Hey Sargassas, you take five points of damage for reasons which you find inadequately explained!
Sargassas: SON OF A BITCH!
DM: All right, I think we’re in the happy land. (beat) Triangle Man, Triangle Man, Triangle Man hates Particle Man…
The DM ascertains he’s remembered the dungeon. Ralth renames the game to Dungeons and Doughnuts. The group mostly ignores the DM’s demands that they clear off the play mat. Iglar is quickly handwaved out of the group, since the player is on hiatus. Now the group stands in front of the door they’d fought so hard to reach. Ralth goes for cider.
Ralth: Let us quaff it.
Dian: Ha! All you can quaff!
DM: (lifting his wooden mug) Can’t quaff without a mug, dude.
Ralth: (lifting his own plastic cup) Trust me, I can make this a mug.
DM: Why are you taping a handle made of peppermint patty wrappers onto it?!
Dian: (fairly randomly) David Bowie will be my bard. He will be named, Bavid Dowie.
The group discovers that the Star Crunch boxes appear to be multiplying. Dian partakes of Tostitos, then quickly pushes the bag away.
Dian: I was not ready for that. Like “hint of lime”… SHOVED DOWN YOUR THROAT!
Ralth: They should rename it “blast of lime”.
Dian: It’s like you go to take a swig of the Corona and all of a sudden, choking on lime.
Khoriane: Limesplosion!
DM: In Soviet Union, lime hints at you!
Dian: (collapses to the table with a thud)
Sargassas: That’s why I don’t EAT those things! Their hint of lime is about as ‘hint’ as a punch to the face!
The group passes some time abusing Tostitos. The DM makes a show of rubbing his hands together in glee.
Dian: Just kill us already! Stop anticipating!
DM: I can’t, you won’t act!
Sargassas: ….you’re waiting on US?!
Dian: We need a dungeon!
DM: I told you where the effing door was, I told you I wasn’t going to be drawing this out…
Dian attempts to return to town to recover his hit points, but discovers he’s at full hit points. The group vetoes this.
Sargassas: Let’s open this door and see what’s inside.
DM: All right, you’re going to open the door?
Ralth: (dives for a d20 to roll)
Dian: Reflex save!
DM: And Ralth’s like, “I’d better check for traps!”
Ralth finds a scythe trap. The DM curses, thinking he would have caught them with this one at least. The DM discovers the DMG has fallen into a hole in space-time. Dian and Sargassas use this as an excuse to discuss racism, sexism, and xenophobia in Star Wars, out of literally nowhere. The DM shrugs, declares that Ralth has disarmed the trap quite successfully, and then leaves to let Ashta in the door. The conversation wanders all over the place, then falls quiet coincidentally as Khoriane is warning Ashta that she’d spilled a bag of mixed nuts onto his chair.
Khoriane: I wiped my nuts all over your seat.
A pregnant pause leads to the group collapsing. Ashta snickers.
Ashta: The delayed reactions was the best…
Dian: That was the most awesome part of the conversation to drop into, out of nowhere…
Ashta gets settle as the DM harasses the group to continue. Ralth picks the locks on the door. Sargassas makes up some crap about an awesome spell he allegedly has. Thirty minutes after the start of play, the group gets in the door. Ashta partakes of Tostitos.
Ashta: No! Hint of Lime, why?! (who, recall, got there not that long ago) Goddamn “hint of lime”.
Dian: Pressure washer full of lime…
Khoriane berates the DM for buying Hint of Lime. A horrible analogy is made with fire ants. The DM points out that the doors open outward, making them very awkward to deal with on the narrow ledge. The PCs ignore this and ask what’s in the room.
DM: All right. With a great deal of maneuvering and awkwardness you manage to swing the doors open. The sunlight is no longer effectively penetrating in here. Who has low-light vision, you guys can see fine.
Sargassas: The harsh bright light of Sargassas hitting the sunrod and tossing it in front of their low-light vision, they’re blinded, but Surgaroth sees fine!
DM: The radius on a sunrod is 30 feet?
Sargassas: I wrote 120.
DM: That doesn’t sound right.
Sargassas: It probably isn’t! I didn’t write down anything, I just wrote ‘sunrods.’
Ashta: 120 feet. Costs 13 hot dogs.
The DM, grumbling, looks up sunrods and determines it’s 30 bright, 60 shadowy. The DM describes another door on the far side (Ralth curses); those with low-light vision can see immense statues in the corner. Dian makes an ‘entering the room’ motion and noise.
DM: Which side of the doors did you enter in, the left, the right, or the center?
Sargassas: WE OPENED BOTH DOORS?!
DM: I’d assumed so.
Sargassas: HOW?! How did we open both doors?!
Ashta: We grasped them firmly, and-
Sargassas: I’m assuming both doors are larger than the platform itself, so when we swung them open, it took out the platform and anyone standing on it, so that means we both to all had to fit on one side of the door, like this-
DM: Which if you’d been paying attention to me, I clarified when I described you as doing some awkward maneuvering to get the doors open.
Sargassas: I have no idea what kind of awkward maneuvering we pulled off …
DM: You went back onto the sticky webs, it was annoying.
Ashta: We opened both of them by default, you said doors.
DM: The question still stands, even if only one is open.
Sargassas: (hysterical with rage) We still go through the ONE door.
Ashta: We opened them both and walked in through the center like civilized people.
Sargassas: I snuck in through the side.
Ashta: Someone climbed in through the window…
Dian: Are you - just deciding which weapon is going to fall on me?
DM: I need you to make Reflex saving throw.
Dian: No matter which side I walked in on.
DM: (a pause, as he tries to figure out where he went wrong) He said center, so I’m going with that. Because you guys can’t make an effing decision!
Ashta: You made it FOR us when you pluralized the word “door!”
DM: You could have walked in - IT’S DOUBLE DOORS! You could have walked in on THIS side, you could’ve walked in on that side,-
Dian: Right.
DM: You could’ve walked in the center!
Dian: Right. Right. Right.
DM: All right, you’re on the right side.
Sargassas: Still the Reflex saving throw!
Dian: What would you have told me if I said ‘left’?
DM: I didn’t said you needed a Reflex saving throw, I was going with the center. All right, you step in, on the right side-
Dian: 24.
DM: (voice shooting up an octave) Why are you rolling?!
Dian: You told me to make a Reflex saving throw!
DM: No I didn’t!
Dian: You’ve lost control of this game!
Ralth: You DID say Reflex saving throw.
Khoriane: You did.
DM:(sputtering) No I totally - you didn’t need it! He said center! So I gave him a Reflex saving throw in the center!
Dian: As you wish. Okay, so I made the save which didn’t actually happen because the trap didn’t spring. So what else is happening.
Sargassas: We watch as he walks in and does a cartwheel.
DM: First of all, clear me off a space, you’re going to need it. Second of all, as you step in you hear a harsh grinding sound, both from in front of you and behind you. The two dwarven statues you can see in front of you lower their weapons swiftly. The ground beneath you shoots upward! Next to you, the ground shoots downward.
Dian: I made my Reflex saving throw.
DM: (up an octave again) You didn’t need it!
The DM draws the map. The group decides to give him shit for some reason.
Sargassas: (poking the single line the DM has drawn) Is this the door?
DM: NO!
Ashta: Is this the door?
Dian: It’s a stop sign!
DM: Let me just finish effing drawing the effing -- (a horrified pause as he looks where Sargassas had poked the map) LOOK AT THAT you got your fucking finger grease all over the fucking map! Clean it up!
A pause.
Sargassas: (pointing to where the DM had accidentally smudged a line) Is that a secret passage?
DM: You remember how you guys said - you remember how I said I would adjust it for Iglar not being here? I didn’t necessarily mean I would adjust it downwards…
Dian: As if I expected anything less.
The DM draws the door, to the group’s delight. The fat-octagonal room has a high spot, where Dian is standing, a low stop, directly next to him, and a part of the floor still the same height as it began, but with all the individual bricks up or down to create rough terrain. After much mini-squabbling, initiative is rolled. The DM accidentally flubs the word ‘compose’ as ‘compose’.
Ralth: Complose.
Ashta: Complose!
DM: You wanna get up here and run this game? I’ll turn this game around right now.
Sargassas: (prophetically) This game has already crashed into a wall.
The group agrees that the terrain is rough. Ashta acts, but elects to hold his action. Khoriane does the same. Dian decides to punch a statue for no apparent reason.
Dian: It’s attacking, right?
DM: No, the statue is motionless, it just lowered its weapon.
Sargassas: Oh. Ha ha.
Dian: So… why did we roll for initiative if nothing is attacking us?
DM: From up there, you see a door in this wall is beginning to open.
Dian: Oh, the rancor’s coming.
Sargassas: I didn’t know ‘Stein’ was a Jedi’s name.
DM: It’s a small door, only about yea high, fairly wide though.
Sargassas: Oh, the venomous midget rancor.
Khoriane: The midget dwarven rancor.
DM: Nothing is coming out yet.
Ashta: There’s a door in this wall?
DM: Yes.
Dian: That wall. That’s the only way out of the room.
DM: (redrawing it) Right there.
Ashta: Is this room a dead end?
DM: No, you saw a door over here.
Ralth: Why didn’t you DRAW it?!
Sargassas: And you know what happens when we see an opening, right Ralth? We throw a sound-uh - what was it?
Ralth: AN OPENING? (making a throwing motion)
Ashta: Thunderstone!
Dian: Yeah, I’ll wait for you to do that.
Ralth: I know what my action is gonna be!
Ashta: (giggling helplessly)
Sargassas: We’re gonna find a bag of endless thunderstones so we can throw one into every entrance in the world. “Why’d you throw it into the baby nursery?!” “There was an opening…” We’re walking through town, someone opens a door. “Oh my god!” Boom!
Dian expects to be shot with arrows, but is not. He attempts to peer in, holding a sunrod.
DM: As you look in, as if in response to your light, two twin cones of light stab out, illuminating the area.
Dian: Headlights?!
DM: Almost but much closer together.
Dian: What monster makes light with his eyes?
The players work themselves into a bit of a frenzy, believing they’re facing a demon. Dian chucks a rock into the hole. Ralth hops down to the 10-foot-down floor, succeeding on a Jump check to take no damage.
DM: Even as you hear Ralth behind you, making that light jump, whatever you pissed off bursts through the door -- (plopping a wolf mini down) itlookslikeawolfbut actually it’s a massive, powerful lion. The beams that you saw are coming from its eyes, which it turns on you - and then pounces!
Dian takes a moment to find his AC on his sheet, but at last does.
DM: Its claws rip out, slashing through your robes, dealing 8 points of damage as it carves deep furrows through your scaly flesh.
Sargassas: The fuck’s a ‘furrow’?
Dian: Like a rut. Have some Stunning Fist!
The DM liberally allows Dian to act. The group insists that throwing a stone is a free action. Dian punches the lion, but it makes its save. Sargassas clambers up to the ledge on his action, just in time to see a snake drop down from the ceiling to chomp on Dian.
DM: It bites you for four points of damage and you need to give me a Fortitude saving throw for its poison.
Sargassas: How is the snake alive?
Dian: Why am I rolling this die?! Modified 20.
Sargassas: Modified 20’s enough! If a modified 20’s not enough to resist off the poison we’re dead.
Dian: Whose campaign are we IN?
DM: You shake off the poison like Rasputin shakes off the frickin’ Bud Light. The snake continues to dangle down, hissing in your face, flecks of poison spraying into your eyes, it’snotreallypainful’cuzit’sonlycinematic but nevertheless!
Ashta: House of horrors.
Ashta blows a Spot check to get LOS on the monsters from his far-down position at an angle. A debate erupts over whether Ashta’s levitate is still active; the DM allows it to be. Now everyone is piling up onto the top ledge except for Ralth. Dian complains about the crappiness of the monk power Purity of Body, which makes monks immune to diseases no one cares about. Ashta casts Flare on the lion.
DM: …would you like the good news or the bad news?
Ashta: Let’s take the bad news first.
DM: Well, the bad news is that this particular lion, as you might have judged by its glowing eyes, has a specific template that gives it blindsense. …on the upside, blindsense is not as good as blindsight, and it did fail the save, so you HAVE blinded it… It can still sense things in nearby squares, it doesn’t need Listen or Spot checks to detect where someone is. It will still suffer blindness penalties to hit, however… or at least it would if it didn’t have Blind-fight.
A pause.
Ralth: God dammit,
DM: I never thought in a million years you guys would actually blind it!
Sargassas: Look, he’s over here going… “this tiger WOULD be affected by the blindness if I hadn’t written this…”
DM: I’m serious, I swear to God, I wrote this thing off a template in the Dungeoncraft book, not because I thought you would care about its abilities, but because it made sense.
Ralth: Why would something that’s almost immune to blindness… have Blind-fight?
DM: (A pause)…I…. don’t know the reason, honestly. I think lions have it baseline, but I could be wrong.
Sargassas: You’re swallowing a lot of bullshit…
Dian: Turn that last punch I threw into an eye-gouge!
DM: Anyway, Khori, you activated your robes. Dian!
Dian: HiiiiiiiiYAH!
DM: You punching the snake or the cat?
Ralth: (as a claw-y kitty leaps onto him) OW!
DM: Punch the cat! Save Ralth!
Sargassas realizes he can cast speak with animals as a domain spell and prepares to cast it. Dian punches the lion once, then misses horribly. The lion blows two of its three attacks.
Dian: Is it a dragon-type lion?
DM: No.
Sargassas: (laughs his ass off)
Dian: Well, he doesn’t even know what the creature he made was, so maybe it’s a dragon-type lion. It has glowing eyes!
DM: It’s a sentinel lion, I just don’t remember where the template came from!
Dian: Yeah, I remember where it came from, I’ve just never seen it before.
DM: It’s in the Dungeoncraft book, which I have never printed out, thanks!
Dian: I know you back up all your BS, if I made you go to the trouble you would show me the proof.
Sargassas: I’m sorry we lost trust in you, Mr. Vampire Monk.
DM: Hey I -- I admitted I was wrong on that, and I only found out afterwards! It required a specific rule clarification in Dragon magazine, thank you very much. I - I would - I’d never have found out I was wrong if I hadn’t specifically looked it UP!
Dian: You were in the middle of telling me how many hit points I lost, right?
DM: You lost seven, and then it leans forward! “Drawwwhhh!” You reflexively throw up your hands, catching its jaws and hurling it backwards so it cannot bite you!
Dian: That’s theatrical?
DM: YES.
Dian: That’s cool, I like that, keep it up.
Ashta: You want a chair and a whip while you’re at it?
Dian: He’s a master at this. Like 2 points of damage, he turned it into this epic maneuver.
DM: I put some effort into this for you guys. ‘Cuz I love ya.
Ralth is all alone and useless in the bottom, till with a Spot check he discovers that he can fiddle with some of the trap machinery in the statue nearest to him.
DM: You begin tinkering with it. This is going to take you…
Sargassas: A million rounds.
Ashta: Everyone’s dead by then.
Ralth: “Hey guys, you doin’ okay? ….guys?”
Ashta: No news is good news, right?
Ralth: “Hey can ya give me a light? Oh thanks, it’s really nice and bright. What’s it from? ….Fucking lion, AAAAAH!”
Sargassas and the snake go at the same time. A debate erupts over the idea of casting defensively. He succeeds at his Concentration check, and the DM even allows him to do a rushed diplomacy (normally a full-round action) as part of his round. He rolls a 20, raising the snake from Hostile to Unfriendly.
Ashta: It doesn’t hate you, it just… thinks less of you.
Dian: In other words, don’t crowd its space and it might not poison you.
DM: The snake, which is about to bite you, venom dripping off its fangs and onto the floor, hisses. “You mussst leave, or I will be forced to destroy you!”
Dian: That’s quite a confident snake.
DM: However, it wastes its action waiting to see what you will do. Back around to Ashta.
Sargassas: Ooh. It must speak for the druid. Okay listen, guys, you fight the cat, and I will talk with this hear snake, and we will find out-
DM: “I heard that. No, you must leave, and not destroy the guardian.”
Sargassas: “No, uh, we’re not going to destroy the guardian, we just want to talk. He - they’re looking for him, his home wants him, they want to talk to him. Do you speak for the guardian?”
DM: “The cat has lived here since time immemorial.”
Sargassas: “Why is the cat attacking us? The guardian-“
DM: “WE are guardians.”
Sargassas: “Oh, I see.”
DM: “We have been set here by the dwarven lords to destroy all who would enter. You must leave or we must slay you!”
Sargassas: “Did someone else come in?”
DM: “No one.”
Sargassas: (pausing) He didn’t come this way, guys!
Dian: Little busy!
DM: (resisting the urge to facepalm, stage-whispering) Roll a Knowledge(nature) check.
Sargassas: He’s lying! Only a 14.
DM: That is good enough. If the druid came in here, he was probably not in a form which the snake or cat would have registered as hostile.
Dian: A dwarven lord!
Sargassas: “Did ANYthing come in here? Creature, mouse, tiny, come in here? Something that wasn’t here before?”
DM: “Spiders, rats, vermin, All come in here often. I feed on what I can.”
Dian: The snake ate the druid! Let’s just leave and tell them the job is done.
Sargassas continues to interrogate the snake. The DM finally forces them to acknowledge sensible turn order, despite their complaints.
Ralth: It’s a free action!
Ashta: Free!
Dian: Free actions aren’t free!
DM: It’s like Daredevil and Spider-Man fighting. One panel of them in the fight and the rest of the panel is word balloons.
Ashta hesitates over options. Sargassas proposes having a bag of d20s and a furnace. Ashta considers hucking an ice dagger, but the splash damage would do more party damage than direct, so settles on hucking an orb of electricity.
DM: Let’s see if the crappy wizard can crappy hit a crappy lion.
Ashta: Crappy wizard?!
DM: Well your base attack bonus sure is.
Ashta proves the point by missing. Khoriane also blows her attack. Dian pummels the lion into the ground. Sargassas notices Ashta’s sketchbook and asks to see it.
Ashta: There’s porn in there.
Sargassas: THERE’S PORN IN THERE?!
Ashta: It’s gay porn!
Sargassas: I don’t CARE!
DM: And thus we learned more about Sargassas than we ever wanted to.
Ashta: It’s full of dicks!
Sargassas: Are you serious? Do you just draw dick all the time? That’s kind of creepy!
Ashta: No, that’s just my friend.
Sargassas: Is it a girl?
Ashta: Yes.
Sargassas: Oh thank god.
DM: So she draws them, but in your notebook?
Ashta: Yes.
DM: So your main purpose here is to take dicktation.
Sargassas regales a horrible story of a party with… horrible things. The snake turns on Sargassas. Sargassas claims he had no time to warn the others to stop. He takes little damage and passes the save. Dian begs for the kill, but Sargassas clubs it with his mace anyway. Ashta attempts to stab the snake, while passing the notebook to Khoriane.
DM: You wanna look in the dicktionary?
Ashta appreciates the joke, oddly, but gets no bonus to the attack roll and misses. Critically.
DM: You stab at the snake, which reflexively bites at your arm as you strike it. You’re not certain what happens but a moment later you’re withdrawing your hand empty and the snake’s standing there with the dagger of shocking grasp in its mouth going ‘hmm?!’
Sargassas: That was a wasted action on its part!
DM: No it wasn’t!
Sargassas: Yes it was!
DM: I’m going to start reducing things to the most basic level possible. ‘You miss.’ ‘You hit.’ ‘You miss.’ ‘Fuck you.’
Khoriane crits the head off the snake. Ashta demands they save the head for the poison. Ralth disengages the mechanism, shifting the room back to its initial state. Three new doors are revealed. In a amusing little side detail, Sargassas determines that the snake has the proportions of a much larger snake. The panel to the lion room is also still open, so Dian immediately springs up there. He finds a small altar with a tray and fountain of water. The group goes dead silent trying to figure this one out.
Khoriane: Is there anything in there? Yes, if I have to, I’ll go look.
Dian: Well yeah, you can just - why did I jump up here? You could have just floated.
DM: Because you wanted to show off your jumping skills.
Still baffled, Khoriane drinks the water to no obvious effect. Ashta surveys the doors, and discovers each has a motif, as is usual for this dungeon. One has weapons and armor; one has an anvil being struck by a hammer, which causes sparks to touch lava below where hands are rising; one has a dwarf smashing a rock with a pick, and a ‘virtual rainbow’ of ore and minerals is pouring out.
Dian: Should we go into the Skittles room, or should we go into the armory? Or shall I desecrate this altar?
Khoriane: Dian needs to cop a squat on top of the altar.
Ralth starts searching and picking locks. The DM takes over rolling for Ralth, and begins with the ‘you believe there are no traps on this door’ line. However, Ralth discovers some sort of pressure device on the rainbow room and elects to disable it.
DM: You swiftly and hurriedly work at disabling the device. After a few moments of work, the massive rings that opens the door falls off into your hands.
Ashta: Ya broke it!
Ralth:: (in a very small voice) Is it still locked…?
DM: It’s still locked, you just successfully disabled the latch.
Ralth: Huh. Guess I’ve been beat by this door…
DM: Don’t admit it. Tell ‘em you successfully defeated the trap.
Ralth: “The trap’s gone, guys, but this… diabolical little bastard of a trap really fucked us over!”
Dian crowbars open the door anyway. Behind it: a mine shaft.
DM: Not ten feet ahead, stretching across this mine shaft, is a massive wall of insects.
Sargassas: (horrible strangled noise)
DM: Each of them buzzing furiously as-
Ashta: Oh god, shut the door!
DM: As they crawl and writhe over--
Ashta: Oh god shut the door!
Ralth: (makes a shutting gesture)
Dian: Shut it. Shut it. Shut it.
Ralth: I know, I already made the motions.
Dian: What sort of insects?
DM: You don’t know, the door is shut.
Ralth: Next door!
Dian: Throw a thunderstone in there, quick!
Ralth fails to open the lock on the anvil door; it proves to be of higher quality than the other locks. Ralth also discovers the door is barred from the other side. The group moves onto the armory door, and discovers it’s a barracks. They thoroughly plunder it and gain treasure and loot! Potions and wands are unlabeled, however. Sargassas complains and demands his Pocket Deckard Cain. Dian guesses that the mysterious metal spikes they found are giant magic caltrops. The group ponders going through the wall of insects, to the DM’s amusement.
Ralth: How do you get through a barred door?!
Khoriane: Tell Iglar there’s Kool-Aid on the other side of it.
Dian: I cast Summon Iglar.
The DM explains that the door has actually separated enough that they can see and possibly affect the bar. The PCs do an inventory check to determine what they could use to lift the bar.
Ralth: I got chalk, I could draw a new door…
Ashta: I don’t think it works like that.
Ralth: I got two sacks.
DM: Khori, Ralth invites you to have sacks.
Ralth: What?
Ashta: That’s awkward.
Ralth: I’ve got a disguise kit, I could try to trick the door.
DM: “I’m a dwarf, lad!”
Sargassas attempts to produce a blowtorch, obviously fails, and then proposes a spell-restoring nap. Dian produces a sai, which is the most useful long-and-narrow prying object they have for this circumstance. Ralth promptly passes it to Dian. Dian wussily rolls a 10; Khoriane snags it, rolls much better, but isn’t tall enough to do it.
Ashta: 26?
DM: Good god, how did you roll that high?
Ashta: Oh, I’m sorry, I was looking at the wrong thing…
Sargassas: He added his actual strength!
Ashta: I did…
DM: Jesus Christ.
Ralth: Strongest mage EVER.
Dian tosses out a natural 20, which solves everything. Ralth picks the lock even with the retry penalty, and the doors are open….able.
Ralth: Are we opening both doors?
DM: I don’t know what you’re doing, don’t fucking ask me!
Sargassas: We will open both doors, because we have plenty of room to DO so.
Dian: Make two Reflex saving throws.
Sargassas: That’s okay, because my Reflex save is now a whopping TWO.
DM: All right, you look ahead. A fifteen foot hallway leads to more doors.
Ashta: One does not simply walk into more doors.
Khoriane: That’s a HIM-worthy pun. (indicating the DM)
Ralth: That was a terrible pun!
Ralth attempts to unlock the door, but discovers it is already unlocked, just stuck. Dian crowbars it open and spies a glint of metal at the end of the room, moving slightly. Inexplicably the players give the DM grief over this description. The DM goes to draw the room, but in the process of squeezing between Ashta and Khoriane to reach the table, nearly falls on Ashta.
DM: Whoop! Woop! Balance! BALANCE!
Dian: Waaargh!
Ashta: My life flashed before my eyes…
Sargassas AOE-heals, then goes off on this long, inexplicable rant about WoW holidays. The DM points out there’s a game going on. Ralth sneaks forward into the room, and in doing so sneaks up on a weapon-bearing goblin! Obligingly, he shanks the goblin for 19. Initiative rolls are tossed down. The DM complains about how the players always seem to roll ludicrously high on initiative. Ralth shanks the goblin yet again, though the goblin is somehow still alive. Ralth retreats back, promptly running into a goblin hidden in the shadows.
DM: This goblin drops his halberd, draws his greatsword, attacks!
Sargassas: How did he…?
DM: Quick-draw. He didn’t Power Attack though. You take 8 points of damage, and as his strike lands he lets out a howl and you see some of his wounds heal before your very eyes.
Khoriane: Fucking barbarian.
Ashta: He IS Super-Goblin.
A long pause.
Dian: Barbarian can’t self-heal…
Ashta: It’s the T-9000 of goblins.
Dian: (groaning in disgust)
Sargassas: It’s another CRAZY class combination.
Dian: A make-believe class.
Ashta: 1000. T-1000 goblin.
Dian: G-1000. Liquid bullshit.
Ralth: It’s actually made out of liquid bullshit…
Dian: I’m calling bullshit on this, it’s like a warrior class that heals itself.
Sargassas: We might as well be fighting a troll!
DM: (sarcastically) Yeah, where have you seen THAT before.
Dian: Goblin spellsword-huh?
DM: Where have you seen that before?
Dian: What, a troll?
Ralth: Crusader.
Dian: Oh-crusader?
Khoriane: Goblin crusader?
Dian: Which is definitely a BS class. Does he have gay stances, too?
DM: Yes. None of them apply against Ralth. They give him an AC bonus against foes that are larger than him.
Ralth: Woohoo!
Ashta wonders if he should daze the goblin. The DM allows that it would work, even though he shouldn’t reveal that. Another goblin steps out and attempts to ventilate the monk with a halberd. The players complain that the DM doesn’t keep track of their AC, instead choosing to ask each time.
DM: He stabs at you! You slap aside the blade with the flat of your palm and he misses!
Ralth: “Get outta heeeeeeere.”
Dian: That’s a first.
Sargassas impales his own inner nostril with tweezers. WHY? WHY? WHY? After laughing at his pain, Dian pummels the new goblin violently. Khoriane eldritch-blast-crits it to death. Sargassas wallops the crusader with his mace. The goblins trigger a flimsy portcullis that traps everyone in the room but Khoriane, and then two rogues appear from the shadows. One shivs Ralth; the other uses Tumble to avoid AoOs as it moves. Ralth takes 8 points of damage. Sargassas is almost impossible to hit, so takes no damage. Ralth Tumbles to better position. A chair falls on the DM.
DM: OW!
Sargassas: Ha ha! Vengeance for breaking its legs, it went for YOURS!
Dian: It’s a MIMIC!
Ralth backstabs a rogue for 15 damage.
DM: I shouldn’t have nerfed this encounter for you guys. You nail that rogue in its ass, dropping him to exactly 0 health.
Ashta: There’s a lot of nailing from behind going on here.
Ralth: I don’t enjoy it.
DM: You nail him from behind with your massive Sausage +5.
The crusader moves to attack Ralth.
DM: He’s pissed at you, Ralth. Mainly ‘cuz of all the backstabbing. Go figure.
Ralth: I stabbed him in BOTH kidneys, what can I say?
DM: “I needed those kidneys! They were very IMPORTANT!”
Ashta: Not gonna need ‘em where you’re going!
Dian: Didn’t-
Sargassas: (in his usual ‘thinkin’ it’s bullshit’ tone) No, it’s the MAGIC of the five foot step.
Dian: It helped me just now…
Khoriane: Dian, spread your legs! And pray to your gods that I roll high.
DM: Your AC’s 19, right?
Sargassas: No, it went up, ‘cuz you keep asking the question.
Ralth: Is he Foehammering me?
DM: No. (beat) He’s Mountain Hammering you. You take 15 points of damage.
Ralth: I am down. -3.
DM: However, even as he hits you, he too collapses and begins to bleed out on the floor, as his delayed damage pool empties into his hit points.
Ralth: You can finish this up, I got seven rounds.
DM: One of them kicks your body.
Ralth: D’oh!
Ashta, short on options, breaks down the portcullis.
DM: This cheap goblin balsa wood couldn’t withstand your feeble mage-fists.
Ashta: NERD RAAAAAGE!
The goblin taunts Dian with some choice words about his momma. A kitty takes out the microphone and scrambles the game report recording program; this entire game report was almost lost in its entirety, thank you effing kitty. Dian takes out the last goblin with a brutal punch. After a moment of celebration, the players remember Ralth, and Sargassas uses his wussiest spell to heal one point and stabilize him.
Sargassas: I want to move to a room where things won’t come back to life if I burst-heal.
DM: Or you could, you know, finish their corpses.
Dian: COUP DE GRAS!
Sargassas: Oh yeah, let’s coup de gras these goblins as we loot them.
Khoriane: Me and my masterwork light mace.
DM: All right, you mercilessly bash in their heads of the bleeding, helpless goblins as they lie prostrate before you -
Khoriane: I’m cha-
DM: -unable to defend themselves.
Khoriane: I’m chaotic-
DM: You slaughter them mercilessly!
Khoriane: I’m chaotic -
DM: You offer them no quarter and no surrender.
Khoriane: These guys are evil-
DM: You pummel their skulls in while they’re WEAK and HELPLESS!
Khoriane: (giving up) No remorse, no regret.
The game report is super-loud. It hurts. It gets fixed. The PCs loot the hell out of the goblins. The DM points out that they searched the corpses before healing Ralth. Sargassas wakes him with alcohol and curing.
Khoriane: Ralth, you better get up before you start looking tasty to Sargassas.
Sargassas: That’d be hilarious. They’d be like, “Sargassas, go ahead and heal him!” And you see, like, his halfling body sort of resting in my lower jaw, and top teeth closing in.. “Oh, HEAL him.”
Somehow it segues into Princess Bride references. The DM turns to Sargassas.
DM: So are you gonna heal Ralth, or you gonna leave him be?
Sargassas: I’m gonna heal him, I’m just waiting, I don’t have worry about bursting…
DM: THEY WERE CLUBBED TO DEATH! I DESCRIBED IT IN GREAT DETAIL!
Sargassas is persuaded to roll for his healing at long last, and Ralth gets up. They loot the corpses. After gathering their stuff, they discover a blocked-and-walled over door, a door with a defaced motif and three immense locks, and a door with a massive treasury motif and a sign that says, in goblin, DO NOT TOUCH. Ralth searches and believes there are no traps.
DM: Gimme a Reflex save.
Ralth: 19.
DM: All right, you touch it and see the door begin to glow in an ominous glyph. Moving on overdrive you hurl yourself to the side just as a massive burst of acid shoots out the door and then slops to the ground below where it dissipates, where it dissipates.
Khoriane: Yaay.
Dian: Should’ve trusted the goblins. So we’d have to dispel to get in?
Ashta: No, it’s done.
Ralth: 23 to disable.
DM: Give me a Reflex saving throw!
Dian: How much acid could be stored up in a door?
Ralth: That’s a 29.
DM: Boom! “Waah!:” Pssssh. You’re so fucking lucky you have Evasion, you ass.
Ralth: And a high Reflex save. I can do this all day. Till it empties out.
Getting past the door, the group spies narrow mazelike corridors ahead. Sargassas randomly decides to adventure on ahead. His wanderings finally cause him to trigger, and plummet into, a pit trap just as Ralth joins him. Ralth saves; Sargassas does not.
Sargassas: (annoyed) Why can’t I get a Jump check on that?
DM: Because it’s not a Jump check, it’s a saving throw. The floor abruptly fell out from underneath you. There’s no way you can Jump in midair.
Sargassas: I can catch myself on the walls!
DM: That’s what the Reflex saving throw would have covered!
Sargassas: No, it would have covered me jumping out of the hole!
DM: You fall about 40 feet down. You take 21 points of damage as you slam hard onto the ground-
Sargassas: (snapping) Well I’m fucking useless because I’m not gonna get out of the damn hole!
Ralth: …I lower fifty feet of rope down to him.
DM: And now you can climb out.
Sargassas: (seriously, unlike his usual complaints) I don’t know why you asked me to roll a saving throw, jackass. Just cause me damage. How did he get caught in the same shit, it’s a five foot square!
DM: Actually no, this is ten.
Sargassas: Wait, so I set the trap off after he somehow got in the same squares.
DM: He’s going on forward, you’re behind him - or the other way around. One of you is in one square, one of you is in the other. Floor drops out, Ralth leaps to safety with his roguelike reflexes, you attempt to leap, plate mail slows you down, and you drop.
Sargassas: I’m not in plate mail.
DM: Whatever you’re wearing, it weighs you down. I thought you had plate mail.
Sargassas: I wear chain mail because it’s lighter.
DM: …all right, I’m calling the game for tonight, since the tone has gone from amused hostile to hostile hostile.
Sargassas: I’m not hostile, I’m just …
The game ends in dead silence.
After a little bit more arguing a bit later about how traps ruin campaigns, the DM abruptly declares he’s putting the campaign on indefinite hiatus because he needs a break from the constant snarking. With Ashta out of town for the next few weeks, Iglar on permanent hiatus, and no real certainty as to what events will come up next, the group finds itself in awkward limbo. Only one thing can save this mess: EXALTED! We hope.