Gendal
1642
What they?? Man, sorry I missed it!
We missed ya Gendal! Poor Alonso being held under house arrest in the temple. But we did find a rather intimidating helmet that seems to fit Alonsos “lead with the spearpoint” style.
So given how dangerous it is to fire in to melee…and the way we tend to roll dice…is there much point in being a ranged character? (I am thinking of having my luck 18 hunter becoming either a warrior with a “favored” weapon of the bow, or a thief who uses a bow).
I just feel like the risk just doesn’t outweigh the benefit. Perhaps keep the bow as a backup, or initial strike before melee begins.
Hard to say. In the fight with the beastmen at the end of the first adventure, someone with a bow would have been great. But in the fights with one or two critters it becomes dicey with shooting into combat. I think someone with a ranged specialty would help with those mass critter type situations or when we need an alpha strike of some sort.
We do not have a thief however, so I am now leaning towards that route, although being able to use mighty deeds with a bow sounds like a lot of fun.
Random chiming in (I’ve been following you guys’s adventures a bit):
In my gaming experiences it’s usually up to the GM to make sure everyone has a role in combat, esp. in combat-based RPGs.
This is definitely the way I went about about running 4E D&D. I always wanted to make sure there were minions for the controller to control and brutes for the strikers to strike, and so forth.
That isn’t a concern of mine when running DCC. I just want my adventures to be interesting and dangerous. I’ve run two Goodman Games modules so far, both of which I enjoyed, and there wasn’t any emphasis on encounter composition. The world is dangerous, deal with it as best you can. And I do my best to reward dynamic thinking, rather than populating my dungeon with the proper mix of mooks.
Now, I like that kind of balanced combat game, but for me it is the miniatures game Warmachine. I love, love, love that game. It isn’t a roleplaying game, but every session is a perfectly balanced combat encounter with all the tactics and abilities you could ever want (building an army is roughly like choosing a class and selecting all the at-will, encounter, and daily powers).
About the bow, I think the bow should be a vital part of the party’s arsenal. This is a game where playing a Legolas style archer is possible, thanks to the Mighty Deed mechanic. Need to slow down the charge of the beastmen? How about pinning one of their hands to the wall? Or how about foiling the evil wizard’s scheme by shooting him in the hand that holds the nefarious wand? Hey, when the armor fell down the well and the orcs came to kill the Fellowship, didn’t the fighters nail the door shut and pull out their bows? Any time you’re killing bad guys from beyond melee range is a moment to be relished.
But the archers should also have melee weapons. I agree that shooting into melee is a big mistake. If that becomes a common practice it is only a matter of time before someone rolls a 20 on a friend in melee.
I’m sorry you missed it too Gendal. The party ended up killing the Hound twice, largely thanks to really good Color Spray rolls by Oloorin. We decided that the Jarl and the people of Hirot would put you on trial for the murder of Sylle Ru, although there is a lot of support for your release. And to keep the peace between the party and the Jarl, they only put you under house arrest in the Temple of Justicia.
XP time!
I’m awarding for the following encounters: 2 xp for the encounter with Iraco, 3 xp for the awesome town square fiasco, 3 xp for killing the hound, and repeat. So, I have totals as:
Oloorin: 20xp
Penchus: 18xp
Gundabar: 17xp
Bill: 19xp
Panza: 11xp
Bronson: 6 xp
Humphrey: 6 xp.
You need 50 xp to reach 2nd level. The zero levels need 10 xp for 1st level, so they both need 4 more xp.
Ok, well that leaves me time to think more about Humphrey…provided he survives whatever comes next!
So if anyone reading is interested in trying out DCC, or if any of our current group would like to play more, I am going to try my hand at DMing a few sessions. I put the main post Over here. I am hoping to get one more person to play, going to try running the sessions on Wednesday nights.
Well, tonight is my first foray into running my own session…wish me luck. Are we on for tomorrow?
Good luck Arkon! I’m in for tomorrow.
I can play tonight. We should be joined by the demonic spider monkey this evening.
Yay, I am going to name my demonic spider monkey…George!
Very fun session last night. I can’t believe I had forgotten about the word on the stone, yet amazed we came through that combat relatively unscathed.
So Patrons, not that I expect Oloorin to be able to invoke his patrons very often, but I should probably “connect up” with one at some point.
I had a really good time playing last night. Thanks guys!
Where’s Gendal!?!?
It was an interesting night for me in the adventure design department. You guys faced two encounters that I thought had the potential to seriously harm the party, but thanks to some poor rolls on damage, you all escaped with just a few small wounds. But I am proud to say that I built both encounters with definite ways to avoid all conflict. The party either missed those ways or entirely ignored explicit warnings. As you get deeper into the adventure I feel less responsibility to hard code those “safe paths” into my game world. I’m not saying there won’t be alternative ways to deal with every encounter, but I’ll leave it up to you guys to brainstorm. Best of luck!
What was up with the plethora of fumbles???
Also, on the invoke patron front, even though you’re weak in that department due to your daylight side effect (I mean, really, you are safer doing these things in broad daylight), you can bond your willing companions to your patron and if you roll well they will gain benefits. Every tool in your toolkit is important in DCC! Don’t forget any of them. For example, don’t you have some black oil from Starless Sea? Who knows what that might do…
Hrmm I believe it is Patron Bond that can use to impart a benefit to a companion, where as invoke patron is for me to ask for assistance, I don’t believe invoke patron can bond a party member to the patron.
I do feel like I have a lot of really bad habits that I need to unlearn after playing 4th edition D&D for the past few years. It really is amazing we didn’t all die in that last session.
Given how well I need to roll, just to keep from loosing my spells, I think Oloorin is going to pass the golden chainmail off to Humphrey.
Just checking to make sure we are still on for tomorrow, and reminding folks that we are playing on Tuesday instead of Thursday this week.
I’ll be there, and I appreciate folks being willing to shift it this week. Now to have a sit down chat with Sailfish Bill and see if I can get him to stop being so reckless. This is DCC after all and halfling luck will only get him so far.
