A Swordsage's Journal: The Gladiator Arena

[Greenish]

I suggest the fighter to pick Extra Rage as the 3rd level feat if he decides to dip barbarian. 1/day is a bit sparse, 3/day and it'll cover for most needs.

Speaking of "Handsome Dan", I wonder if his character was relieved when it turned out that the wagonload of hobgoblin chicks who picked him up weren't really hobgoblin chicks, or bummed that the wagonload of hobgoblin chicks who picked him up weren't really hobgoblin chicks.

[BeholderSlayer]

This thread is awesome. Sounds like a fun campaign, wish I could participate.

[Dralnu]

The bugbear that captured him actually did the courtesy of knocking him out before giving him to us. He woke up on the ground with three cross-dressing men telling him that they were going on an epic quest. He wasn't happy, but it was that or get captured by goblins again.

Extra Rage sounds good, I'll tell him about it.

[NineThePuma]

Subscribing to the awesome before it blows my mind.

[Master_Rahl22]

Yeah, taking away/changing the deity requirement for RKV is one of the most common homebrews around.

LOL the idea of Dave v.2, Dave v.3, etc is even funnier than the original Dave was. I think you might need to continually thrust Dave into dangerous situations just to make sure you have a continuing need for more Daves.

[Kaeso]

Subscribing to the awesome before it blows my mind.

Call me a noob but how does one subscribe to a threaD?

[Snake-Aes]

Call me a noob but how does one subscribe to a threaD?

Thread Tools, just under the Top Right paginator.

[Kaeso]

Thread Tools, just under the Top Right paginator.

Ah, many thanks

[DragonOfUndeath]

Call me a noob but how does one subscribe to a threaD?

you can also set your options to auto-subscribe whatever you post into. subscribed

[Torvon]

He was shocked that we lived too! He built the encounters with a party of 4 in mind, and he also assumed that I would've been a cleric

Why the heck did he not change it?

[Dralnu]

Why the heck did he not change it?

Well, he did give us a hobgoblin, ogre, and dwarf to help us out. I don't think we would've had that much help if we had 4 players.

EDIT: Next session is tentatively posted as Dec 4th by the way. Surely another 12+ hour session. I have this strange infatuation with playing a Master of Nine after watching Avatar. Considering how slow we level this is a very longterm goal but I still want to try entering the PrC as early as possible. I think the most optimal way would be at level 3 to take a Monk2 dip if the Sleeping Tiger variant is allowed. That should get me into Mo9 by level 7. Variants should be okay since the DM is easygoing with sources, but justifying taking monk out of the blue might be hard.

[Elfin]

Hm. Master of Nine is commonly regarded as a trap PrC, but there's no denying that it's cool - perhaps you could persuade your DM to retroactively allow you flaws to help qualify? It shouldn't be any balance issue at all: if anything, they'll make the Mo9 a more balanced PrC by not making you waste nearly all of your feat slots on (pretty awful) prereqs for a class that's sadly mediocre mechanics-wise.

[Kaeso]

Hm. Master of Nine is commonly regarded as a trap PrC, but there's no denying that it's cool - perhaps you could persuade your DM to retroactively allow you flaws to help qualify? It shouldn't be any balance issue at all: if anything, they'll make the Mo9 a more balanced PrC by not making you waste nearly all of your feat slots on (pretty awful) prereqs for a class that's sadly mediocre mechanics-wise.

A trap, why? It can access all the schools.

[Elfin]

It gains lots of maneuvers and has lots of disciplines available, but it also has 3/4 BAB, pretty weak class features, and requires a ton of feats to enter - most of them weak.

[Dralnu]

Yeah, the pre-reqs are pretty awful, but the PrC itself looks solid to me. Better progression than a swordsage and the new maneuvers are from any school. The abilities look sweet too.

If I do go straight swordsage I take Weapon Finesse for level 3 but I don't have a clue what to take for level 6.

[Master_Rahl22]

Gloom Razor, the Shadow Hand tactical feat, is actually pretty cool. I think it should be accessible at 6 IIRC.

[Elfin]

Yeah, Gloom Razor is pretty neat. And you could do worse than to grab Improved TWFing and go that route, even if you aren't going to enter Bloodclaw Master.

[Girshtop]

Honestly, that's an awful house rule (falling down on a 1). The other DM in my group started with a house rule that if you rolled a natural 1, you dropped your weapon, and we thought THAT was unfair. He quickly agreed with us after several monsters dropped their weapons in back-to-back combats.

As Tyn pointed out, the rule makes even less sense as you gain levels. When you start gaining iterative attacks, your chance to fall down increases. A level 20 full BAB character with a two handed weapon will fall down 20% of the rounds that he swings. A character with two weapons will suffer an even HIGHER rate of falling down, something like a 35-40% chance EVERY ROUND (I don't feel like doing the math, so I threw a guess at it).

A better way to handle critical fumbles is rolling twice. If you roll a natural 1, roll a d20 again. If you roll below, say, 3 or 4, you fall down. If I were to actually do this as a DM (I wouldn't) I would actually rule it as a DEX check vs. a DC of 5.

I actually play the crusader/cleric in this campaign, and we look at the falling down on a 1 not as "your character swings and falls to the ground", but more as an interaction with your opponent. Combat isn't just two guys standing around waiting for their turn to attack each other, it's two characters locked in epic combat and our hero swings his great sword but the hobgoblin deftly parries and counters with a punch to the face, knocking the off-balance hero prone.

And besides, where's the fun in being awesome all the time?


Forgot to mention, we're finally continuing the campaign again either this or next weekend!

[Dralnu]

Session 3:

The Journey Continues:

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(The sorcerer player couldn't make it for this session so the DM took control of him when necessary. And by that I mean the sorcerer doesn't have an enjoyable experience this session.

Keep in mind that the sorcerer and crusader are good, while the fighter and I are neutral. With the sorcerer missing, the alignment balance has shifted.. And there will be repercussions to that.)

The necromancer gone and the surviving villagers attended to, we have a moment to bask in some well-deserved glory. Since we're the heroes of the day, we're treated to drinks and just about anything we want to take from the place. While the crusader preaches to them the virtues of his god and all that jazz, the fighter and I start looting the place for anything that seems valuable. There isn't much, but we grab some mundane weapons from the blacksmith. The villagers collectively decide that they should pack their things and go, as too many of them have been killed and the place is too damaged to maintain. The crusader, using knowledge religion, knows that there once was a temple of Pelor in the mountains to the west, so he convinces them to go there for shelter. With my knowledge local and history, however, I know that area to be under the rule of a tyrannical giant king who enslaves humanoids to work in his mines. I keep this knowledge to myself though. Save innocent lives or make the crusader look dumb? I choose the latter. The crusader bids them farewell and we go our seperate ways.

We continue down the road when suddenly we stop to get some things straight.

Me: Wait, so where are going again?
DM: You're going to the hobgoblin city of (blank) to deliver a sealed letter that was given to you by the people who saved you from the arena.
Fighter: Are they paying us for this?
DM: Well, no, not that you know of.
Fighter: So why are we going?
Crusader: Because they saved us from the arena.
Fighter: I say screw 'em and let's go somewhere else! Somewhere with adventure where we can kill and loot!
*DM looks concerned*
Crusader: No, we're delivering the letter.
Me: We can make them pay us later anyway.
Fighter: Okay.
Crusader: ...

Once we've re-established what we're doing, we move out. The sorcerer never was fully cured of the disease from the wight incident and has been slipping in and out of consciousness, so he's effectively useless and he rides on the back of the crusader's horse.

Days pass uneventfully. Then one night as we sleep with the crusader on watch, we get ambushed by three bugbears. The sorcerer immediately gets booted in the face and knocked unconscious before they focus on the crusader. The rest of us wake up and join the fight. During this surprisingly long and embarrassing battle, the fighter and I are knocked out along with two dead bugbears and the third flees from the crusader. We assume the arena administration still wants us brought back and these are yet more goons to fetch us. After some recovery (aka crusader/cleric heal battery) we move on.

The Hobgoblin City:

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Along the road we come across a large imposing tower draped in banners. I recognize these banners are symbols of hobgoblin nobility and happily inform the group that the inhabitants are probably very wealthy and lootable. I also know that, unfortunately, the inhabitant is an exceedingly old and powerful hobgoblin wizard. There's a guard outpost in front of the gated entrance and we decide against messing with them, so we leave.

Finally, we arrive at the hobgoblin city. The massive city is enclosed by an equally massive wall and ornately armored bugbears flank the opened gate, observing the constant bustle of people moving in and out. When we enter, the DM describes it as basically a hobgoblin equivalent of golden age Rome in terms of city layout, staggeringly modern for the times and brutally orderly and efficient.

We come across a problem. None of us speak hobgoblin and we're struggling to find people speaking common. The crusader spots some elves wearing purple uniforms and tries some elven, but they look at us confused and respond in hobgoblin as well. After some searching we convince a human farmer who speaks common to help us out by buying his wares for the day and hiring him as a guide. He tells us about the customs of the city. Everyone is welcome here as long as you abide by the rules. If you break the rules, the punishments are very harsh. One big rule is no violence in public. We also find out that all the elves roaming around in purple uniforms are domesticated slaves to hobgoblins. They've been broken decades ago and seem content with their lives now and are treated fairly well. The crusader was heartbroken by the news. I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to start a revolt.

Our guide leads us towards the address in the letter when the fighter notices that we're being stalked by a bugbear. We turn a corner and find ourselves trapped inside a ring of bugbears moving in on us. Luckily, a hobgoblin official intervenes just in time and shoo's them off before things turned ugly. The guide is a bit spooked by this and leaves immediately after taking us to our destination, a nice looking house in the residential district. We're received by an elf servant and sent in to meet with the elderly hobgoblin owner, whom I affectionally refer to as Whatshisface.

After opening and reading the letter, Whatshisface treats us warmly, though the jerk won't tell us what the letter said. He explains that he's affiliated with a group of people looking to get the deceased hobgoblin prince (Grax I think?) back in power. And he wants us to help. We're tasked with delivering another letter, this time to the old wizard in the tower we passed by earlier. This time, however, we put our foot down. As the Fighter put it, "WE WANT MONEY!" Whatshisface promises that the wizard will pay us on delivery. Score! We head out for the tower.

The Kindly Old Wizard:

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We ride back to the tower and approach the guard post. Inside is a bearded devil. The crusader recognizes it as evil and immediately wants to kill it. I recognize it as a devil and I'm immediately impressed by this badass wizard and his entourage. We show the devil our letter and it grudgingly escorts us into the tower, where we meet the shriveled up old wizard. Before we even show him the letter, we immediately bombard him with questions and demands.

Me: You command the infernal legions? That's awesome!
Fighter: Wealth! Power! Want!
Crusader: You're clearly evil and I don't want to associate with you.
Fighter: RGJHLDFKMONEYNOW!

Amidst our random banter, our handsomely intelligent fighter decides, without any provocation, to tell this wizard we just met all about the Book of the Dead that we gave to a necromancer about a week ago. You know, as smalltalk. Unsurprisingly, the wizard is incredibly interested in this artifact, but eventually gets around to reading our damn letter. He tells us that he's going to resurrect the dead hobgoblin prince but he'll need our help. We'll need to bring him crushed diamonds, a piece of the dead prince, aaaaaaaand the Book of the Dead. He'll give us sweet loot if we do. The fighter and I think it's a good deal, and the sorcerer is having a seizure so that's basically a yes too.

The crusader snaps.

Crusader: No, screw that. I'm not bringing you the Book of the Dead. You're clearly evil.
Fighter: Come on! He's promising us sweet loot!
Crusader: No, we can do other things to get treasure.
Me: So giving the book to a necromancer of nerull is fine, but giving it to a kindly old hobgoblin crosses a line?
Crusader: He associates with devils! He's evil! The necromancer wasn't evil!
Me: You mean the necromancer who worships the god of DEATH and EVIL isn't EVIL?
Crusader: Screw this I'm leaving.

The crusader heads towards the door while me and the fighter look at each other confused. The sorcerer is passed out on the floor. The wizard calls out and tries to propose an offer he couldn't refoose -- a Hold Person spell, but the crusader's unbreakable will fights off the effect and he yells saying he won't take none of that crap. Finally, all of us give in. We can't get the crusader to stay. We take the offer and bid the crusader farewell. He heads for the door... And the wizard casts another Hold Person, this time being successful. The crusader is stuck in place and very pissed.

Then a true test of morality is placed on us neutrals. The wizard turns to us and kindly asks for one of us to knock out the crusader before he breaks free of the spell. To turn on our friend and fellow adventurer, betray his trust and knock him out cold? Is our friendship worth a mere handful of fancy trinkets?! The fighter and I lock gazes and instinctively we knew what must be done. At the same moment, we struck.

Rock.
Paper.
Scissors.

Fighter won and lined up a home-run hit on the helpless crusader, knocking him out cold. We don't leave friends behind.

The wizard has a plan to make the crusader more "agreeable" to this mission. He instructs us to all hold hands, including himself, and casts a spell. He tells us that we are all now magically bonded to our contract agreement. We must bring him the diamonds, piece of dead prince and the Book, while he must give us shinies. If we don't carry out our contract in a timely manner, the magic will kill us. Details, details.

The wizard has a devil servant bring us our shinies. We're all given magical rings of protection and magical armor, some health potions, and a bonus sword for the Fighter. We'll be given the rest of our reward once we carry out the mission. The wizard carries out some divinations and locates The Book, then gives us an updated map and compass. We revive the crusader, who for the time being seems to have mentally repressed the memory of HORRIBLE BETRAYAL and is in a more agreeable mood. Since we're back as a functioning group, we set out for adventure once more!

Unfortunately on our travels the crusader remembers the incident and becomes all snappy and mopy again, not wanting to help us but is obligated to because he doesn't want to die to magical lightning bolts and whatnot. He's a grouch all the way to our next destination, which is a cave where the necromancer of Nerull is chilling at with the Book. We get jumped at night again by five bugbears, led by the one who got away last time. Again the crusader sucked at spotting them. We barely hold them off, with the crusader knocked out and both me and the fighter on the verge of falling over. We kill all the bugbears this time, heal up with some potions and cleric healing, and are left unmolested all the way to the necromancer's cave. We call it here.

Closing Thoughts:

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We obviously had some alignment debate after the, uh, incident. The crusader says I'm clearly evil and maybe the Fighter too, but the DM agrees with me that I'm neutral and borderline evil. Honestly, I wouldn't mind being evil at some point. I tried convincing the wizard to replace my share of the loot with infernal contacts but he said no. Having an imp familiar or something would've been badass.

We had two fights with bugbears and both turned out to be almost deadly. This was mostly due to terrible rolls on our part, but especially by me. I literally rolled an average of 5. Even with Shadow Blade Technique and Sapphire Nightmare Blade I couldn't hit and all my +8 Tumbles provoked attacks. It got to the point that the DM was yelling at me to roll better!

The loot: All of us got a ring of protection +1 and +1 armor. I'm not sure what the fighter's greatsword is but I think it's just a +1 greatsword. The fighter is also holding on to all of our health potions, forgot what they are.

We didn't level yet. Still level 2. Still +2 attack with my daggers. Next level it'll be +6. One can dream, right?

[Warlawk]

It gains lots of maneuvers and has lots of disciplines available, but it also has 3/4 BAB, pretty weak class features, and requires a ton of feats to enter - most of them weak.

Master of the 9 maneuver selection and progression thrown on top of the crusader recharge mechanic gives you a huge selection of abilities that automatically recharge every 3 rounds (assuming extra granted maneuver). Yeah, you're still a T3 class and you might miss some of the feat based tricks but you have a huge bag of tools from your maneuvers that recharge with no action needed on your part. It's pretty solid depending on what you used to get there (Having a DM that allows unarmed variant swordsage for imp unarmed strike helps).

Will have to take some time tonight and skim the campaign notes, the responses you've gotten makes it sound like you've got a cool game going.

[Sith_Happens]

Honestly, that's an awful house rule (falling down on a 1). The other DM in my group started with a house rule that if you rolled a natural 1, you dropped your weapon, and we thought THAT was unfair. He quickly agreed with us after several monsters dropped their weapons in back-to-back combats.

That's nothing. Most of the DM's in my dorm rule that if you roll a 1 you hit yourself (or a random ally if it's a ranged attack). A Warblade Ruby Nightmare Blade'ing himself with a -10 Power Attack = not good for character longevity.

[Torvon]

Please keep the journal going. I love the way you write, fun fun.

ta-ta
T.

[true_shinken]

Both the Swordsage and the Fighter are clearly evil. You attacked your friend just for money, for crying out loud.

[Girshtop]

Both the Swordsage and the Fighter are clearly evil. You attacked your friend just for money, for crying out loud.

THANK YOU. The friend who happened to save their lives with magical healing the last battle we fought, no less.

[Dralnu]

I'd like to think that we knocked out the crusader because he was being a snobby party pooper. We also attacked with nonlethal damage. That's basically just intense playfighting.

He was a total hardass about it after too. We literally saved his life in the last bugbear ambush (which he failed to spot) and he didn't even want to heal us after. Lawful jerk alignment, am I right?

[NineThePuma]

Eh, honestly, if you attacked him I don't think him withholding healing is that big a deal.

But I do believe that the error is with the Crusader. There's a personal code of conduct for good (which can amount to 'be nice and merciful') and freaking out over association isn't part of them.

Pelor's beef is with the Undead, not devils. While he would be annoyed, remember that conversion is a very easy thing to do.

[true_shinken]

I'd like to think that we knocked out the crusader because he was being a snobby party pooper. We also attacked with nonlethal damage. That's basically just intense playfighting.

Suppose two of your friends want to play Pro Evolution Soccer. You don't - you want to play Street Fighter IV. So your friends beat you until you faint. Would you find that acceptable? Would you say that's a reasonable course of action?

[NineThePuma]

That's not a very good analogy. They ARE working at a higher stakes.

[true_shinken]

That's not a very good analogy. They ARE working at a higher stakes.

SO let's say two of your friends want to rob a bank. You don't want to rob a bank. So they beat you senseless. Is that good enough?

[NineThePuma]

No, cause that's STILL wrong.

Lets say you're asked to steal a package. Said package is being held by someone who doesn't want to give it up, obviously. The person who's asking you to do it is a rebel against a corrupt and tyrannical government, but is no better than the government. Now, there's no Good way to deal with this. Because every angle is bad. The best way is to go with the Lawful way and intentionally sabotage the rebellion.