Role-playing games

After TWO BLOODY MONTHS an acquaintance of mine has... once again pushed the date further away at which we will next play D&D. He comes across as genial and enthusiastic and "definitely wanting to get together soon" but then he has this infuriating habit of just not responding for weeks. He has admitted over texting that he has a problem with getting back to people, so as soon as his mom leaves again (she was visiting, hence the busy-ness) next week I have resolved to contact him daily until we get the game going again.
Wish me luck!

So, after nearly a year of hopefulness, boring crap, bitter betrayal, and reawakened interest I will finally, hopefully, be joining a D&D group tomorrow night that I will be able to enjoy.

Wish me luck!

Glad to hear you finally got a game and a new group Forest- hope it all goes well.
Do let us know how it goes and what the game is about.

Thanks!
I can tell you what it's going to be about right now though, as we already met two months ago and will be continuing the same story. It's called "The Lost Mines of Phandelever" and is the adventure included in the 5e Starter Kit. This is the same one that Norc played with her group actually. So far it hasn't been terribly exciting or interesting, but we'll see how things go.

Basically this stupid dwarf is all like "hey guys guard this cart of supplies and bring it to this outpost thing near these ancient magical mines. I'll go ahead alone, nothing can possibly go wrong." But of course

Spoiler:

That's as far as we got last time, as character creation took quite a while. As I mentioned before, the other player (there were only three of us last time, although I think his brother is joining us now) turned out to be a bit violent, so to speak. He exploded this frozen goblin in front of one of his compatriots to get him to talk. But whatever, all's fair in D&D.

Edit:
I can't decide between bringing lefse or just apples and peanut-butter.

Ah dwarves, so stubborn!
Not played that one- me being a crabbit bastard who refuses to play anything beyond 3.5!

Oh my FUCKING FUCK.


"hi my name is Sam, i am interested in D&D"

"Hi my name is Forest, let's play on such and such a day."

"Sounds good, but actually three days later ok?"

"Ok."

"Wow that was fun let's meet again this week."

"Sorry I am Sam and cannot do that."

"Hey how about this week."

"Sorry I am Sam and cannot do that because blah-bleh-blah"

"Hello it's been three weeks let's get together."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Oh hi yeah I am Sam and am out of town for three more weeks sorry byeeee"

"Hello dirtbag let us play this week now that you are back and since I am leaving next week."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Oh sorry I am Sam and did not get your message therefore I am too late oops lol"

"Hi idiot I am back in town and now we can finally play let us play."

"No sorry my mom is in town and I am too busy next week maybe byeee"

"OK let us meet this week I can tie you down and be the DM and invent fictitious friends to fill out the group but FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY LET'S PLAY SOME DAMN D&D!!"

"Hi I am Sam okay that sounds good I have a DM coming all is well."

"Thank God. You toad-licker."

"Haha I am Sam that describes me perfectly."

"..."

"..."

"Oh sorry I am Sam and I cannot play tonight I AM TELLING YOU THREE HOURS BEFORE YOU WERE COMING OVER and so let's do it tomorrow night k? byeeee"

"FUCK MY LIIIIIIIFE!!!"

At what point are you allowed to just straight-up slap someone?

Ugh, excuse the outburst. I just really hate it here sometimes. And not having any friends that do social things with me really really blows. And there's this constant bitey little anxiety that flitters around my every day and that has lingered from my breakdown or whatever it was last winter. That and just general angst about the direction I need to take my life and school and work just drives me into a trough of apathy and negligence.

I'm quite glad to have vented my frustration in such a harmless manner actually.

Good times. Updates to come tomorrow when Sam postpones the game again.

Nothing worse than being let down and getting the feeling your being brushed off- we've all been there at some point Forest dont sweat it. Usually the person isn't worth it anyway.
And good to see you using some old fashioned crabbit to blow it off- very healthy I approve.
Being stuck somewhere away from friends is always tricky too, meeting new ones is always a bugger, just relax and let it happen, don't go looking for friends and you'll probably meet some.

Thanks Petty.

Anyway, the evening sort of sucked. Pretty hard.

Things were going fine, I brought a shake I made to share and the DM wasn't too late and we started playing again. Sam, the guy who is the only other party member, is new to D&D and is not very good at roleplay. That is to say, he's pretty bad at it. But that comes with time I suppose. In the meantime it's hard to engage with that aspect of the game, so I try and have fun with the combat, which is something Sam enjoys quite a lot.

He changed his character from a wizard to a fighter, anyway, since last we met. I have a nagging suspicion this is because he thought my Paladin was bad-ass and wanted to share in the physical combat joy. Well anyway, he was doing all kinds of weird and violent things (stabbing at wolves' heads with arrows when he has a perfectly good sword at his side??? Film-Legolas ruined it for the rest of us I swear.) and the evening was fine, and then I made a mistake by not taking a rest in-game to heal up after a combat. Instead we woke up these stupid wolves with my character only at half-health and, of course, one of them one-shots him to unconsciousness. So Sam the Slayer () keeps on killing wolves while I bleed out and roll death saves. It comes down to two successes and two fails by the time Sam finally gets around to trying to stabilize my paladin and, of course, I roll poorly and I have my first dead character. And then we stopped for the evening.

Two months for an hour and a half of OKish D&D and then my hours of prep-time with character creation is wasted. I mean, I literally spent more time making the guy then ever playing with him.

So next week we'll get another person to join us and in the meantime I've rerolled a barbarian of all silly things. C'est la vie.

What do you mean by "death saves"?

They brought those in in 4th edition I believe and have heavily modified them again for 5- from what I gather you make your rolls every round you are unconscious and still wounded- in Forest's case bleeding out- if you make 3 successive saves you are stable but unconscious, if you make 3 fails you die.
At least I think thats how it works- Forest can correct me if I am wrong.

Oh, that. Interest.

Indeed, Petty is correct. Except that the saves do not need to be consecutive, but are additive. A fail-success-success-fail-success would still result in stabilizing the dying body.

If you are brought to 0 hitpoints or less by an attack and the remaining damage from that single attack after it brings you to 0 hp is still less than your total possible hp, then you are unconscious and begin making Death Saving Throws next round.

It is a flat d20 roll, 10 and higher is a success. Three fails will result in death, three successes mean you have stabilized but remain unconscious. A 1 on the die amounts to two fails, and a 20 means you gain one hitpoint and immediately wake up.

Any single attack that is done to you while you are in this state counts as a fail on the Death Save. Healing an unconscious target immediately brings it back.

So, say you have 20 HP as a lvl 2 fighter. An ogre or something belts you with 29 damage in one attack. This brings you below 0, but there are only 9 points of damage left over after bringing you to 0, and so you are not killed outright. If the same ogre has three goblin buddies who hit you once each that round, then you die immediately. If the ogre has a mate who hits you for 20 or more damage, you die immediately. If the first ogre had hit you for 40 damage, you would also die immediately.

''Instead we woke up these stupid wolves''

don't do that

Yeah I got cocky or something. I mean, it was a series of caverns and it's impossible to see what's in the next cavern without using a torch to look around said cavern. And of course a burning torch and the jingle of chain-mail will awaken wolves in the dark. They were stupidly OP wolves too, doing 2d4+2 damage on a successful bite attack. I mean my paladin only had 6 hitpoint at the time because of an earlier wound.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Indeed, Petty is correct. Except that the saves do not need to be consecutive, but are additive. A fail-success-success-fail-success would still result in stabilizing the dying body.

If you are brought to 0 hitpoints or less by an attack and the remaining damage from that single attack after it brings you to 0 hp is still less than your total possible hp, then you are unconscious and begin making Death Saving Throws next round.

It is a flat d20 roll, 10 and higher is a success. Three fails will result in death, three successes mean you have stabilized but remain unconscious. A 1 on the die amounts to two fails, and a 20 means you gain one hitpoint and immediately wake up.

Any single attack that is done to you while you are in this state counts as a fail on the Death Save. Healing an unconscious target immediately brings it back.

So, say you have 20 HP as a lvl 2 fighter. An ogre or something belts you with 29 damage in one attack. This brings you below 0, but there are only 9 points of damage left over after bringing you to 0, and so you are not killed outright. If the same ogre has three goblin buddies who hit you once each that round, then you die immediately. If the ogre has a mate who hits you for 20 or more damage, you die immediately. If the first ogre had hit you for 40 damage, you would also die immediately.

Hm. Seems somewhat complex.

In one of the campaigns I play in, you get 10 rounds to either roll a 20 to stabilize or for someone to come do a successful Heal check to stabilize you, which I think is either 3.0 or 3.5. In my other campaign, you get three strikes. Anything below a 10 is a strike, anything above is no change, unless you roll a 20 in which case you stabilize. If an enemy wants to make sure you're dead they can take a full round to do a coup de grace. If they just want to hit you they can do so without getting through your Dex bonus to AC plus getting a + for being higher than you. We normally don't have to worry about this because the enemies have to worry about your teammates before they deal with characters who've lost consciousness.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Yeah I got cocky or something. I mean, it was a series of caverns and it's impossible to see what's in the next cavern without using a torch to look around said cavern. And of course a burning torch and the jingle of chain-mail will awaken wolves in the dark. They were stupidly OP wolves too, doing 2d4+2 damage on a successful bite attack. I mean my paladin only had 6 hitpoint at the time because of an earlier wound.

OP?

OP= over powered.

And they are for wolves in a low lvl game- were they dire wolves? (off the top of my head I thought the wolf attack was a 1d6)

Thanks, PT.

Were they also a random encounter?

These wolves were chained inside the entrance to series of tunnels being used by goblins. It's all part of the Lost Mines of Phandelever Starter Kit adventure for 5th Edition.

I just checked the Monster Manual entry and yes, in fact, it is 2d4+2 (average of 7) damage per attack. They are listed as only 1/4 CR (25 XP), so if there had been three adventurers instead of two it would have been a fairly standard encounter for us to fight three of them.
But there were only two of us, and these creatures are real beasts, gaining advantage (2d20 and take the better result) on their bite attack if they have an ally next to them and the target must pass a DC 11 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone! They're not wolves, they're hero-banes!

For those interested:
Wolf

Medium creature
Speed of 40, AC 13, 11 HP.
+3 to Perception and +4 to Stealth checks

Pack Tactics:
Advantage on attacks if they are within 5 feet of an ally

Keen Hearing and Smell:
Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks related to smell or hearing.

Actions:
Bite: +4 to hit, reach of 5 feet, on a hit deals 2d4+2 damage (7)

And an adorable wolf-pup to counter that nightmarish adult up there:

Are those 4E or 5E stats?

Is the Monster Manual for 5 even out yet? (I thought it was really weird they released the player handbook significantly before the DM's for 5- whats the point of that?- you cant play if the DM doesn't have the rules!)

Well all the rules required to play the game were included in the PHB. It's just that stat blocks for monsters were hard to come by, although there were a few in said book at the end (skeleton, quasit, various animals, sprite).

So I agree the MM was needed, but I've actually read through the DMG myself and while it is very useful and interesting and very good-looking it's not really mandatory for playing the game.

But anyway, that is beside the point! As the DMG and the MM have both been out since last December or so.

P.S.
Yes, 5th edition stats. I do not have access to 4th edition stats myself as I can't seem to find them online and don't have my own copies of the books.

My last game night went pretty well overall! At the start, because I got off work early and the DM wasn't there yet, the other player and I took a half-hour walk down to the harbour. The swells coming in were very large and when they hit the rocks they flew up frothily into the air, almost covering the lighthouse.
So that was nice, and then I was pretty good about being creative and not interrupting too much and that went well. Sam is still kind of iffy on that. I don't want to judge too harshly, but "drunkenness" and a propensity for "arrow-stabs" are the two defining characteristics of "Scotchy" thus far. This will improve with time I'm sure (I hope).

Combat was pretty tough, and I nearly died again (!!) before the DM stepped in and lent a hand so to speak. My character was on 3 health for about 5 rounds (a long time in this edition!). Still, level 2 finally, and the health has skyrocketed to 19, which gives the barbarian I'm playing 38 effective hitpoints against the main melee damage types, so that should help with the dying. More to come next week I suppose.

Any news on the front for anyone else?

P.S.
I was going to share these details about how my character is being molded into the role of a grappler, or expert wrestling and battlefield-control type character, but then I figured that said details would be a bit boring and decided not to. This brought about a feeling of self-criticism: spending my time thinking about frivolous pursuits when there are more important things out there (like fixing the stupid oil-leak in my car before work tomorrow, or trying to work out these issues with my future brother-in-law before his bloody wedding on Saturday to my elder sister!)

But then my thoughts were brought back to my time spent in the library yesterday, when I ran into a distant acquaintance from my formative years who still remembered my name. I didn't know his, never having learned it really, but it was such a nice feeling being reminded of the good parts about the person I used to be, and the time when I had a good friend whose house I loved going over to (the same one who tried to introduce me to D&D back in the day actually).

But then my mom called. Her fiance and her are back as of yesterday, and for some frustrating reason I find their combined company devastatingly depressing. There are some good moments here and there when I forget this strange irrationality, but then I'm reminded of all the crap I've dealt with before here on the farm (literally) and the years of stress (and good things too) I've lived through with my mom thanks to my continued status as a still-at-home youth. So that phone-call sent me back into feelings of desperate unhappiness.

Thankfully, my grasping mind reached out and brought to my attention the excellent library books that awaited me in my bedroom, and thoughts of learning more about the tantalizingly-titled The Discovery of Middle-Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts and Del Toro's vampire-thriller The Strain brought me back to a state of easy-going comfortableness.

But now I've spent half-an-hour thinking about those things and it's too dark now to try and espy where the oil is coming from and dinner is probably cold, if there even is any dinner, that is.

They want to watch a movie tonight, but all I have from Netflix is the foreign film The Broken Circle Breakdown. I really want to see this, but it might be inappropriate for shared watching, thanks to some questionable themes or perhaps the simply off-putting-to-the-ignorant qualities of the film-making. It's Not Rated, which I don't think denotes some graphic qualities but is rather related to it being foreign. Tricky sometimes, working out the quality of a film based off of its rating.



What a messy last hour I've spent! Thoughts all over the place and feelings like a roller-coaster. It is not for nothing that my sister teases me about my having an emotional "period" just like she does, except mine is far more often and unpredictable.


P.P.S.
Highlight of last session:
The DM and I had resolved that the bugbear (large version of an orc or goblin) had a pair of horns. This was due to the fact that the miniature figure we were using was a Minotaur and I wanted something to grab for wrestling with the beast.

Anyway, we defeated him by the barest of margins. It was a good battle and well-won. A thought occurred to me afterward, however, and I asked the DM if I could examine the horns of the bugbear, to see if they were actually real. My character knew that bugbears don't actually sprout horns after all. (*winkwink*) This turned into a hilarious turn of events where it was discovered that the bugbear had been puffing up his own appearance by attaching with a belt of leather these horns on his head and calling himself "King Clarg". In exchange for a prisoner these horns went to a large goblin, who put them on and claimed leadership of the others. They looked ridiculous on him of course, and this led to jokes about cuckolding. It was fun.