When Guinea Pigs Fly [OOC]

[Matt Teishu]

Original Background:

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Burning pain. Screams of death. The smell of blood. Then brightness floods your vision until everything goes black. You struggle to piece together a thought, something, anything. But all you can do is shudder as your mind now seems intent on destroying itself. Your entire being is throbbing, you feel your mind stretching to the limit and then compressing down into a spec of dust. Senses rush forward only to be submerged back under the tide of confusion and pain. You writhe in the agony of never ending torment.

Until suddenly, the pain stops. Slowly your head starts to clear, and your senses tentatively begin to return. Then the smell hits you. The stench of decay. The absolute obliteration of life, rotting, festering, putridity. You vomit. Then the ringing in your ears begins phasing in and out, revealing the sounds of moaning and shrieking around you. You attempt to stand and find yourself closed in. Bars? Sinking back down your vision slowly clears, though you begin to wish it hadn’t.

You see that you are in a cage, one of many that seems crammed into a far too small chamber, stacked three high and little more than the size of a dog house. The chamber seems illuminated only by a single flickering torch somewhere above your field of vision. Looking first upon your downstairs neighbor you see what once must have been a human but has long since been altered into a twisted perversion of the natural form. Additional arms have been grafted onto the chest, and the back of the skull has been removed to expose the deformed brain beneath. Crudely stitched up incisions cover the torso, while the legs seem to have been completely shattered and twisted. In what must have been divine intervention, this disgusting creature seems to have already been released from the mortal coil. Then looking up, you realize that you’re being covered in pus as it drips out of the unrecognizable hunk of flesh festering in the cage above you.

Reflexively you lash out at the cage door to escape the disgusting rain of filth. The door gives way and you tumble naked out onto the stone floor. Looking about the rest of the chamber, you see a cornucopia of other desecrated life forms. Most seem dead, while many more seem to be dying. Yet there seem to be a few who are also coming to their senses.

As you rise to your feet and stumble forward, you fall to the ground on still trembling legs, your body clenched tight. Opening your eyes yet again you find yourself face to face with what looks like a deformed purple octopus. You instinctively push away as your mind is still spinning. Not an octopus… is that… the head of a mind flayer? That would explain the headless robed body you now notice in the center of the room. As your mind tries to process what this all means, the sound of a crash and the unmistakable thud of a body hitting the floor draws your attention to the struggling individual who also seems to have just escaped his cage…


So you’re a bunch of illithid lab rats who just found themselves set loose. You have no idea how or why. Your only goal right now is to escape and live. Overcoming thralldom somehow, you don’t have any real recollection of the past at the moment as your mind is still kind of freaking out. (This memory issue won’t affect powers or spells or anything, it’s just for the story.)

Final Party:
{table]Name|Plan|Done
Keld Denar|Totemist|Sheet
Daggaz|Ogre Barbarian|Sheet
Celtic8824|Engineer|Sheet
Tyrael|Rogue Archer|Sheet
[/table]

So now that the party is set, let me know if there are any slight changes you want to make. You'll notice there are no spell casters, we do have an engineer who can UMD like a champ (constant 24s w/ take 10) so there is some magic stuff that will be available.

Don't worry about any of that mechanical stuff too muchthough, I took you all because I liked your writing and overall character vibe. The challenges presented will be tailored for the group make up to be able to deal with and the rules will be somewhat fast and loose.

Rule zero will be in full effect. Generally speaking unless you feel like you got totally shafted in some major way, don't bother arguing rules or anything. I'm going to follow the rules, but they might bend a little here and there in service to the enjoyment of a good story. If you want to do something but aren't sure if you can per the rules, try it and worst case it might not work in some new interesting way. Creativity will be rewarded and not punished, so don't expect to get killed for trying something wild (within reason).

I'll give everyone a couple days to get settled on fully final sheets and work out any more questions/details and then get the IC thread going. From then on I'm looking for daily posts at the minimum. There will of course be slower days and faster days and if you're going to be busy for a few, just let me know so we can keep things moving.

Feel free to offer direction after a few encounters (like, ok we've had enough of the Illithid lair, lets get moving to further escape adventures), I want to run the game you guys want to play. Also, short of directly screwing with each other, do whatever you want.

I think that about covers it?

IC THREAD

[Keld Denar]

Mmmmm, new thread! /subscribed

Just so you all know, I'm pretty excited about this game. If it dies, just know that firey retribution shall rain down from the skies!!!!

And yea, I don't have any major modifications to make. Can I start with melds bound? Normally it takes 8 hours of rest and 1 hour of mojo to rebind binds, but unless they become unbound (via Dispels targeted specifically at the meld) they don't become unmelded. So technically, I should have my 6+1 melds melded, and my chakra's bound, unless you want to say that the trauma was too traumatic and caused them to be unbound.

Yer call.

[Celtic8824]

I'm extremely psyched for this. I can't wait for it to start. I already know how I want to play my engineer, and I'm looking forward to the interactions.

I've been making all of my friends jealous when I tell them the basic background of the campaign.

Let's get out of this place.

[Celtic8824]

Pretty sure this goes in the OOC Forums...

[Tyrael]

I'm not exactly familliar with Engineer and Totemist. What do they do?

[Keld Denar]

Totemists are meldshapers, from Magic of Incarnum. They are kinda feral like a barbarian (and illiterate to boot!) except instead of relying on weapons, they can generally manifest natural weapons. With his typical Chakra binds, Ogava has 4 claws that can rend and grapple. From his race, he has 2 arm spines that he slashes with, and from his Illithid experiments, he's got 2 tentacles that are just plain awesome.

So yea, hes a rather unorthodox melee character. Likes to charge stuff with Pounce and an ability that gives him +2d4 damage per hit when he charges. Also grapples fairly competantly.

Meldshapers have a pool of points called Essentia which they can channel into their various melds. Essentia does stuff like bonus to hit and damage with natural weapons, +skill checks with different skills, +ability checks, and other misc stuff.

[Tyrael]

Hmmm. That almost makes me envision something like this.

[Keld Denar]

More the 2nd one, except with more claws and tentacles!

[Matt Teishu]

Engineer can be found here

Additionally he has a custom vocation that lets him take 10 on UMD.

For the binds, I'm gonna say that you're pretty much garbage when you come out of the cage. Part of the initial fun is how totally terrible you're all gonna be! Perhaps finding a broom closet to reorganize and rest up in will be a priority?

If everyone gives me the thumbs up and is ready I can get things moving tomorrow. I too am very excited for the campaign.

[Keld Denar]

/thumbs up

[Celtic8824]

I are ready!

[Tyrael]

I really can't think of anything I should be changing on my sheet.

You guys have any idea? My stats are so crappy that rogue-sniping is about all I can do effectively. I'd really like to request finding a Small-sized Shortbow at some point or other.

I've got my natural weapons, but at 1d3-2 damage....yeeeaaah, not too useful.

[Keld Denar]

WOW! Holy crap, I just realized your stats are that low...You have a -4 net ability modifier! I wonder if Matt'll let you reroll those or something...dang!

With those stats, though, I think a slightly better archer might be some kind of Swift Hunter build. That way you aren't reliant on SA for your bonus damage. Scout3/Ranger7/Scout+1 would be about as close to ideal as you could get. With that, you could get Greater Multishot at level 9 exactly, the same level you get regular Multishot from Ranger6, and you'd get 3 arrows per attack with I think 4d6 skirmish each as a standard action. Greater Multishot, unlike normal Multishot, DOES allow precision damage on a volley. Swift Hunter also allows you to get precision damage against things that are normally immune, like Constructs and Undead and Oozes and Elementals, so long as they are your Favored Enemy. You'd get 3 Favored Enemies at level 11, so you could pick up any 3 of those.

Swift Hunter really fits the whole Tucker's Kobolds motif with the mobile sniper gig.

My only other suggestion would be a complete overhaul by swapping Dex and Cha, if possible, and being a Kobald Sorcerer. Get the spells False Life for temp HP and Greater Mirror Image and Wings of Cover for miss chance, and maybe the feat Minor Shapeshift for even more Temp HP, and your resiliance will go way up. Then get a couple of good debuffs and a nuke and you'll be pretty well rounded even as a straight class Sorcerer11. Matt might even let you take the Greater Draconic Rite of Passage, which means you'll effectively be a 12th level Sorcerer with all the extra spell slots that come with it!

Just a couple ideas...

[Matt Teishu]

I wouldn't worry about it too much, though you can feel free to make some changes if you like to your archer build. As I said, I took you for the character vibe and your writing, not so much because of the mechanical awesomeness. No matter what, you'll have plenty to do and contribute just as much as anyone else even if you don't have 400 flashy tentacles haha. I'll just have to sub in some eating contest encounters.

[Tyrael]

WOW! Holy crap, I just realized your stats are that low...You have a -4 net ability modifier! I wonder if Matt'll let you reroll those or something...dang!

With those stats, though, I think a slightly better archer might be some kind of Swift Hunter build. That way you aren't reliant on SA for your bonus damage. Scout3/Ranger7/Scout+1 would be about as close to ideal as you could get. With that, you could get Greater Multishot at level 9 exactly, the same level you get regular Multishot from Ranger6, and you'd get 3 arrows per attack with I think 4d6 skirmish each as a standard action. Greater Multishot, unlike normal Multishot, DOES allow precision damage on a volley. Swift Hunter also allows you to get precision damage against things that are normally immune, like Constructs and Undead and Oozes and Elementals, so long as they are your Favored Enemy. You'd get 3 Favored Enemies at level 11, so you could pick up any 3 of those.

Swift Hunter really fits the whole Tucker's Kobolds motif with the mobile sniper gig.

My only other suggestion would be a complete overhaul by swapping Dex and Cha, if possible, and being a Kobald Sorcerer. Get the spells False Life for temp HP and Greater Mirror Image and Wings of Cover for miss chance, and maybe the feat Minor Shapeshift for even more Temp HP, and your resiliance will go way up. Then get a couple of good debuffs and a nuke and you'll be pretty well rounded even as a straight class Sorcerer11. Matt might even let you take the Greater Draconic Rite of Passage, which means you'll effectively be a 12th level Sorcerer with all the extra spell slots that come with it!

Just a couple ideas...

The condition for rerolls is that all stats must be below 13. I have ONE stat that's a 14, so I can't reroll it.

As far as the swift hunter thing goes, I got the deformity Obese, so this guy is kind of like a little Kobold-shaped blob of blubber. He's 2'4 and 120 lbs. He's not exactly gonna be moving very fast (even though mechanically, he's got the normal 30ft speed as every other Kobold).

If I hadn't gotten crappy stats and the Obesity, I would totally go for those builds, but I found that this was the most mechanically effective build I could justify while still being ICly true to the stats I was given.

And like the DM says, it's more about RP than hacking.

[daggaz]

WOW! Holy crap, I just realized your stats are that low...You have a -4 net ability modifier! I wonder if Matt'll let you reroll those or something...dang!

...

LoL, Krugg has a net 17 pt buy. Krugg smash stuff! Thank god for Ogre racial modifiers...

Tho hmm that is still a tad better than what you rolled, least I started with a net +3 instead of a net -2. It helps to not add a race with net negative mods, kobold is often argued to have an LA of -1 on the charop boards. You know there is a desert kobold variant where you take the -2 hit to wisdom instead of con?

As far as RP vs HacknSlash, unless we are going totally free-form here, he is still going to suck immensly at anything he tries that involves dice and isnt a dex related skill.

[daggaz]

By the way, we are in the wrong forum here, might want to get a mod to move this to the OOC section..

[Matt Teishu]

By the way, we are in the wrong forum here, might want to get a mod to move this to the OOC section..

Crap, I just noticed that now. I'll see if I can get it moved.

[Matt Teishu]

I forgot to add that I'd like everyone to pick a color for speech and use that bolded for when you talk. I'm using olive right now for some someones and plan to use dark orchid for any illithid speech. I might pick up other unused colors as need dictates later on too.

That said, IC thread is up HERE.

I've requested that this thread be moved the the appropriate forum, we'll see how long it takes to happen (if at all).

Also, sorry this is a lot later than I planned to post it up today.

[Tyrael]

I'll get Blue for Zasz.

[daggaz]

Krugg talks in dark blue, just like his intro story. Its a bigger font too, cuz Krugg is special. He's big.

[Celtic8824]

Red is going to talk in Green!


Just kidding. He's gonna take Dark Red

[Celtic8824]

I'm not sure how cloudy our minds are supposed to be. I'm RPing that he is able to think about things... but only things that he knows from random knowledge (due to religion, or the planes) and survival instinct. (Hear voices, find a weapon.) Is that good?

He's practically an Idiot Savant. Due to constant mind probes, he is no good at currently analyzing the situation, but he has banks of knowledge that are not quite useful at all.

Red: "If you carry the three and take it to the PI R Squared plus one..."

Group: "how does that help us in the current situation?"

Red: "What situation???"


Eventually he'll be a tactical genius worthy of pulling his weight... but right now, he's a bit fuzzy.

[Matt Teishu]

Yeah play the fuzzy however you want, you don't need totally gimp yourselves but a little bit of not yet being all there yet would be nice.

[Tyrael]

Yeah play the fuzzy however you want, you don't need totally gimp yourselves but a little bit of not yet being all there yet would be nice.

With 8 INT and 7 WIS, something tells me Zasz is going to be a little fuzzier than everybody else for a little longer than everybody else.

[daggaz]

Krugg runs on pure physical memory. His body is more than willing and able to take up the slack where his mind is weak. Not just in eating a will save using his fort, but for his normal day to day abilities as well. Luckily for him, all of his life skills were physical; fighting is like learning to ride a bike, you might fall off from time to time, but you will never forget how its done.

Still, he has an int and wis of six. Dont expect a tactical genius here, he just hits things until they are dirty stains in the ground, and if that doesnt work, he hits something else harder.

[Matt Teishu]

Red: you can pull off part of a cage for an improvised club.

Krugg: I thoroughly enjoy that you pulled off most of a cage for an improvised great club.

If Keld doesn't act in a couple hours (or if I fall asleep early, by tomorrow morning) then he's just still too dazed to do anything yet and we'll see what happens.

[Keld Denar]

Gah, sorry, I 've been flying and visiting the new gf for the last day. I'll post tonight.

[Matt Teishu]

No worries, I'm off to bed now. Update from me in the morning after you've posted.

Oh also, in case anyone was wondering, I'm on EST (New York) but usually a bum thanks to work and grad school that let me stay up late and sleep in.

[Keld Denar]

I updated. I'm on PST right now, although sometimes I'm on Alaska time which is 1 hour earlier than PST. The reason I didn't post in the last 24 hours was because I was flying home from work and the fact that I was met at the airport by a lovely young lady who promtly drove me back to her place and did very very very fun things to me. Hope my initial post is enough, I didn't know how else to respond quite yet.