Sonic Sorcerer

[danielxcutter]

I'd say you're doing fairly well!

[Mordaedil]

Been a while since I had anything to progress on here. Things have happened, but I didn't feel right about updating it until we had gained at least another level for some reason.

Spoiler

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Since last session here, we've had a few weekends where we played and some we didn't play, and only a couple where we actually got experience.

The DM had imagined we'd be a bit more sleuths than we were, but I don't think our party was quite cut out for the kind of campaign he had imagined for this city. We didn't ask around much at all and we barely visited the plot NPC's he had ready and we didn't even speak with the wizards that were harassed by this cult.

But we all learn and move on to more familiar territory.

The ranger returns to the cult hideout now with information about his dead "friends" and this mysterious wizard lady (named "Red" from now on)

Turns out she was there ahead of him and was using the cult for her own ends, but curiously she doesn't implicate our ranger or attack him, instead putting her frustration out by making them aware of our bard as an agent.

After explaining what happened at the tomb to the leader of the cult, he's taken there by the cult leader who doesn't quite believe our ranger with his ridiculous claims that Red is a wizard without proof. At the graveyard, the cult leader instead suspects "certain adventurers that the queen has hired", namely us rather than the less likely story that his lover is a wizard. He orders our ranger to go home and rest, but the ranger wants to stay behind and watch for clues, but butches his stealth roll really badly and the cult leader just finds his squatting behind a tombstone where he's dragging a corpse to. He makes a bad excuse and he urges him again to go home to cool things off.

The awkwardness is very palpable.

Our ranger later learns where Red lives and follows her to her home which is a 1-story shabby building with a fence and poorly tended garden and there are no people around, where he spies on her through her window, watching her eat dinner and then states "I hide in the crowd". We're all a bit confused and the DM cries out loudly "Where are you hiding?!" and determines he hides awkwardly in a bush. As she moves to the back of her house, he moves in and attempts to pick the lock. He rolls a decent roll, but even the weakest lock in D&D has a ridiculous DC, so he still fails, since he doesn't have ranks or anything. And instead of trying anything else, he just gives up and goes home.

I dunno how to call this kind of bad luck, but it's made him into sort of a comedic foil for our group, wherein he tries to do something and just can't do it well.

Later we're clued into Red's plans, albeit seeing as she invited us there herself, knowing we are who we are, we all suspect a trap and try our best to prepare for it, but our guess is off by a few miles.

We meet at the graveyard again, all in a group this time and we quickly notice something is wrong: There's blood all over the gravestones. Our wizard recognizes a ritual is connected with the pattern of the blood and quickly cleans it up by summoning a tiny water elemental that sucks up all the blood. Red appears before us, taunts us, vanishes and runs into the upper district, before a large explosion blows a hole in the wall and several zombies rise from the ground; there was more than one ritual circle painted down.

Instead of a combat encounter, we got a 4th edition style skill challenge, where we all rolled to participate to attempt to get a number of successes before a number of failures. This also marks the first time I actually hit with my lesser Orb of Sound! We drawed (drew?) twice before we got enough successes, so we failed to stop her plans, but we were able to catch her at the last second, when she just teleported away from inside of a repulsion field. We were clearly dealing with quite the high level wizard (at least 7th level, I determined by an earlier check). Aaand then we discovered she also hit the palace way deeper inside of the upper district where she stole a certain macguffin (genesis relic, if that tells you anything about how bad it'd be)

Since we had predicted she would strike at the necromancer tower as a backup, that kinda meant we misled the guards there, so I feel we kinda messed up.

The queen's counciler certainly wasn't too happy with our performance as we let the palace get hit without a warning.

Later, we found the cult leader already in stockades, clearly having been charmed or dominated by Red. As he got quite agitated as we questioned him, one of the NPC guards knocked his lights out, to our bards dismay. We then decided to go to Red's house and break in if necessary and search for clues. And inside we found... Red, bound and gagged. Turns out our high-level wizard (for ease, I'll call whoever that is Blue from now on) was a using some form of shapeshifting to impersonate this person and cause the havoc. Uncertain what to do, she wanted to serve sentence with the cult leader, because it was quite true that they were close, albeit she wasn't really in the cult herself. Being the only one with a different outlook on things, I offered an alternative path where we break the cult leader out of the stockades and leave the city by carriage to a safe-haven we have outside of the city. That was a bit in the extreme even for my DM though as it'd basically bar the city from us, so she decided to quietly turn herself in, facing whatever justice would take her.

Our bard, ever distrustful of father figures or authority, decided to follow her to make sure she wouldn't be mistreated by the guards. And while following Red and the guards for a bit, the bombshell dropped that Blue (or so we assume) assassinated the cult leader in stockades with a fire spell similar to the ones in the tomb. Red now got rather aggitated, but a calming assurance from our bard settled her back down so they could take her into arrest.

Next, we decided we needed an audience with the queen to update her on the situation, and as we did so, she seemed rather demure and uncertain on what to do, as not giving the citizen blood would likely cause a riot. Her advisor then offered us money in trade for silence on what had transpired in this case behind the scenes and our anonymity would be assured. The other good-aligned party members all rejected this blood-money and some even tossed it to the ground and left the room in turn.

In the end, I was there alone, debating whether to take the gold or...

I warned them that the current course of action will lead to further trouble later on, when it would come to light that they executed an innocent and prioritized the lives of mages over that of their people. I cornered the advisor by talking around him and made him exceedingly mad, and had another opportunity to just take the money and leave with smug self-satisfaction, but...

I decided now to appeal to the queen and her ruling. "What would you have me do?" she asked. "My queen, a ruler does not ask her subjects how she should rule, they rule and the subjects follow."

And then she asked the advisor to leave the room and called back the rest of my party to reward us properly and make us public investigators for the throne.

And that is the story of how my evil-aligned PC stayed the execution of an innocent. We had some alignment discussions here, but this just happened to coincide with one of my characters other goals; seeking prestige and she thought having the ear of a competent queen to be more valuable than a demure queen ruled by shadow agents that weren't herself. It's always kind of vague what attributes fall into an alignment, but sometimes roleplaying the character is more important than roleplaying her alignment.

This also concludes our adventures in this city, and now we're heading for other regions, but we will return to this city regularly as it is "the" magical capital of the campaign setting.

This is also where we gained enough experience to gain our 3rd level (finally) and become half-decent at what we're doing. I picked up Death's Call as my second 1st level spell, which I realize is a subpar choice (5 damage, what?) and I mainly picked because I like the idea of shouting like a super-saiyan and basically pushing people back a bit, which is how I'm going to play it off as, until my sorcerer realizes she's not actually a monk using ki blasts. Also picked up Battle caster as the plan is to go with Mithril Full Plate once I can afford it. The 500 gold I got for this adventure is a tiny drop in the bucket, but it'll add up as we go.

The DM said at a point he has plans, but I am wary of asking too much what that means.

By now, the obvious sticking point for anyone experienced in D&D as most of you reading this are, I take it you've noticed I am lacking an abjuration spell to qualify for Abjurant Champion. I okay'd with the DM in advance that I will be picking that spell as my first level into the class and consider it part of the training to become an abjurant champion, as it will also kind of fall into pattern with when I realize I am using magic, and shield seemed a lot more "obvious magic" to me than the other spells I've set to take until then.

In the meantime, prepare for a lot of shouting.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

If I was good-aligned, I would probably have picked paladin instead of fighter, but alas, evil aligned.

there is an evil Paladin if you still want one.

[Mordaedil]

Were you thinking of the anti-paladin or the paladin of tyranny/slaughter? They aren't quite right either.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Were you thinking of the anti-paladin or the paladin of tyranny/slaughter? They aren't quite right either.

I was thinking of the Paladin of Tyranny/Slaughter.
I do think the Paladin of Tyranny work for your PC from the information you gave in this thread but it is your choice.

There is always the Blackguard but I think the requirements are to high for your build.

[Mordaedil]

I'll keep it on the table, but currently my alignment is Neutral Evil, so I can't do with either of them at the moment. Though we'll see if alignment doesn't change in the coming time.

[Nifft]

Power Word spells might be a good fit for Mr. Sonic, in specific I'm thinking of Power Word: Pain (RotDr).

Now, for optimization, you're a Battle Sorcerer so your spells known are few. That means learning bonus spells is relatively better for you than it would be for a regular Sorcerer.

That leads me to Dragonblood substitution levels.

At level 7 -- which it's unusual for a Sorcerer to reach, due to PrCs, but you're a Battle Sorcerer so you can't PrC out -- you can either learn 1/1/0 new spells (of your choice), or you can learn 1/2/1 new spells (fixed list based on alignment). IMHO the fixed lists are a good deal for you, even with the one gimpy spell (darkness or fog cloud, depending).

The other thing about Dragonblood sub levels is you get Draconic Heritage at level 1 (in trade for your familiar). This is nice because it's one less feat you need to get to Draconic Legacy, which nets you another 3 bonus spells known.

As a Sonic Sorcerer, your choices are Battle, Emerald, Howling, or Pyroclastic. IMHO the good best spell list of those is Howling. You can see all the lists in Races of the Dragon, p.103.

You'll also benefit disproportionately from a [Bloodline] feat, which are all in the Dragon Compendium.

[Mordaedil]

I don't think I have that book, I'd have to read up on it before I'd feel confident in persuing it, especially since I'm only actually taking 4 levels in battle sorcerer and the rest are prestige classes (for now, anyway. Why can't I PRC out of them?).

Spoiler

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After the last session, we decided to leave the capital behind after final negotiations and we advanced to level 3 and got paid by the queen. We did not spend a lot of time, just enough for the wizard to pick up a new eternal wand of mage armor, freeing a few spellslots of his. The ranger also picked up a couple of special arrows as defined in Arms and Equipment Guide.

We took the carriage and traveled south, towards a small town between our next location and the city we came from.

But on our journey we were waylaid by bandits and we had to defend ourselves.

The DM rolled up and determined that the difficulty of the encounter was above our level, so we sat down and mocked his map a little bit and people started drawing on it while he put down the monsters and added their stats. He got a bit grumpy, and in a jovial manner threatened to kill the ranger for this as he was the one mocking it the hardest.

So, we're facing down 9 orcs wielding falchions and packing javelins. We roll initiative. I roll the worst of everyone, a 12, so I go last, while the orcs go first, with a 17 initiative. This is just going to compound, by the way.

The orcs move in first, and then start chucking javelins. The DM rolls openly who they target. 4 is apparently our wizard. They all rolled 4 for target. Our wizard hasn't cast mage armor yet, so he takes two javelins to the chest, bringing him to 0 hit points. At this point, we start to argue what 0 hit points mean, since apparently not everybody knows the rules for being disabled. The rest of the javelins hit the carriage, causing it to dazzle them for a turn. (DM being nice, really)

So we start the combat, the ranger fires a rapid shot at the incoming orcs and misses one so badly he has to spend his move action restringing his bow. The other shot was an alchemist fire arrow, but even base damage of 5 was enough to kill the orc, so he kills the orc, and then it catches on fire, leaving a burnt-flesh smell on the battlefield. Our bard runs out of the carriage and start to attempt to stab the first orc on our left flank, but misses. Our cleric charges out the right flank and starts to fight the upcoming three orcs. The poor wizard uses his belt of healing and heals himself with 1 charge, then retreats to the back of the carriage. I charge out to the left to support our troubled bard, and I use my Death's Call spell, dealing 3 damage and causing one orc to become fatigued.

Now the orcs are getting rough, two of them start hitting me and they both hit and one strikes a critical hit, reducing me to a quarter of my health. The bard takes a nasty hit, the wizard gets cut by a falchion and is his by a third javelin, reducing him to 0hp again. The ranger so far has not been attacked, but the cleric is getting badly beaten.

Our turn again, the ranger fires his bow again, rolling double-critical on a single orc, hitting it in both its eye-sockets so hard his offspring felt it. Our bard again tries to attack, but again misses. The cleric steps back and casts a spell that grants fast healing to all within range, which includes herself, the ranger and the wizard. The wizard uses another charge to heal himself. I 5-foot step so that I can flank the orc the bard is fighting and I try to bring it down, but I miss, which is a huge let-down. The dice just weren't on my side.

The orcs then follow me and strike me down to -2 as they got flank this time. More orcs move in on the two people in the carriage. The cleric gets criticalled and is dropped into negatives.

Things look really dire.

Fast healing brings her back to life, however and she can heal herself. But first the ranger shoots down some more orcs and gives them the finger to provoke them, the wizard throws out orbs of fire and summons tiny fire elementals to occupy the enemies and the bard tries her best, but can't hold off three orcs on her own and she's eventually brought down to -8, but manages to succeed her stabilization roll straight away, so her life isn't in danger, while I lose HP every round at this point. We're eventually down to the cleric, wizard and ranger, the ranger holding the survival ratio here, having not even been hit once. The wizard even managed to kill someone with his quarterstaff and his elemental managed to hit an orc in the groin enough times to kill one of them.

The DM wasn't joking when he said that this encounter would be hard and we really felt it.

After we got healed and put back on our feet, I was planning on doing something to the corpses, but we ended the session before I could make up my mind. I thought of decorating the wagon with their heads, but the cleric shot that down as unsanitary. Stringing the bodies up as a warning seems like a good idea though. These orcs belong to the legion that have stolen something my character is after as part of her private agenda, so it makes sense to send some sort of message back.

I'll take ideas until Friday at any rate.

DM and I have kind agreed to that her source of power is based in aberrations rather than dragons, which is why she has slitted red eyes, albeit she has no direct clue as to how far back that goes or what exact creature it was. My DM seems to think Aboleth have some sort of connection with sonic powers, but I'm not entirely sure on that end. I've so far figured one of her ancestors was once struck by the Aberrate spell and that has sort of carried down, otherwise the only aberration (or heck, creature in general) I've found with a connection to sonic is; the Destrachan.

Ideas, insights, possible feat choices or spell ideas appreciated. It doesn't have to be a big part of the character, but so far I have no clue on feats to take from level 12 and onward. Level 6 is Disguise spell and Level 9 is for Clap of Thunder.

[Calthropstu]

To make a sonic sorcerer is no easy feat... you need to get your base land speed to almost 6k. And be a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog... which is not a playable race so you'll have to make it.

[Mordaedil]

To be fair, timestop cast multiple times can allow you to move to near supersonic speeds, even more if you stack movement spells before stopping time.

We ended up burning the orcs at the urging of the party cleric.

We managed to sell off the masterwork dwarven waraxe and we've now decided to strike at their base camp, where there are 40 orcs or so left. We'll figure it out.

[Mordaedil]

We sadly had a bit of a case of delayed sessions due to some connection issues, so we haven't had time to play until this weekend and we had a new player join us, this one is also a battle-sorcerer, but he's going pretty heavy into dragon disciple and getting as many strength bonuses as possible.

Though for some reason he decided to play as a very awkward social-anxiety nerd, so his character introduction was him weirdly mumbling to himself, mistaking the girls in our group as a bunch of prostitutes.

Okay, the story there is a bit of a long one. I'm playing a female character, the DM is playing a female cleric for us and the wife of one of our players is playing her own gender as an elven aasimar bard.

The guys of the group have fairly decent survival checks, so we decided to split up where the boys (the nature bois as they've taken to calling themselves) decided to head out to scout for the orc encampment, while we would recruit some heads to help us take on the camp. I decided to seek out a tavern and check inside for some able-bodied warriors. I found a couple of dwarves whom I sat down and recruited by appealing to their sense of pride and racism for orcs. We took a drink to their successful recruitment. The elf bard meanwhile, having spotted a group of other elves in the tavern decided to approach them instead to attempt to recruit them. But the way she approached them made them misunderstand her motives and they seemed to be general elven commoners down on their luck and just kind of desparate to get laid. When we eventually left the tavern she just kind of explained she didn't recruit them because they were just interested in taking her body as payment.

Meanwhile, the new guy had been under the caravan-master's wing for a while in this town, seeking employment to escort caravans. There were rumors going around that we had taken down a raiding party of orcs, but the rumor seemed to imply we were prepared for them and that we had no issues doing it. He was kind of interested in this rumor and decided to try to find us, but he was just watching us awkwardly from a distance and followed us to the tavern, where he got kind of stuck due to social anxiety and could only watch from a distance away as the cleric remained outside the tavern. Once we came out, he only had the last sentence of the previous paragraph as context and thus wondered out aloud "Are they prostitutes?"

Our conversation continued between us a bit and suddenly he exclaimed a bit too loudly, alerting us to his prescence. Our bard started chasing him, while me and the cleric decided to figure out how to recruit maybe some cleric to aid our other hires.

The nature boys found the orc encampment easily (he rolled a 32 against a DC of what I can only assume at strictest terms was 17) and they decided having found it and done a casual scouting was about as good as they could do without more backup and without getting closer, so they returned.

The bard and the dragonsorc had an hilarious exchange where some misunderstandings were cleared out and more were made, we all met up and got introduced and we kinda ended up calling the session there.

We discussed several plans for assaulting the encampment, but I reckon we should try to get some more people along before trying to assault it. The cleric (controlled by the DM) seems to encourage we talk to them (which we deem rather risky) and the bard is suggesting we poison them (which involves sneaking into their camp and is really risky) and my and the rangers plan seem to be to survey the camp and take out patrols or raiding parties until we've weakened them before we assault them.

[Mordaedil]

It's going to be three weeks until the next session, so I might as well fill you in what happened last time.

Still going around recruiting new hirelings to deal with the orc encampment, we managed to recruit a few more soldiers, and our bard arranged for throwing a concert to recruit people for the event. Meanwhile our ranger decide to find a tavern and starts to bully some nerd playing dice in there, starting to ask questions about Red from Nova. He makes a run for it, bumping into my character as I was leaving the militia barracks.

We saw he was a necromancer based on an amulet he was wearing and we started questioning if he had a small cult he belonged to, before we figured out he was a certified necromancer wizard from Nova. We then decided to recruit him to help us since he left to get some experience on his own.

Next our bard came with the news about the concert, we only had to get rid of a few squatters at a ruin that would serve as her stage and for some reason, they thought my character would be a good pick for chasing them off. I was going to turn it off coyly before giving in, but then she started demanding getting payment for her services to the recruitment effort and part of the payment was "behave nicely", which just lit a fire in my head. So I instead silently went along with the group to these ruins.

Once we got there, one of the squatters got up to our face asking us to "get outta there" in a rude fashion. Our ranger promptly decked him in the face, leading to the some of the other squatters breaking a few bottles and the like. The dracosorc prepared a club for fighting and the bard tried to use diplomacy to calm everyone. She rolled a 30. And just as she said she did that, I interrupted her with a "I charge the hobo with the broken flask and I deck him in the face!"

Cue hobo fight. There was roughly 12 of them. Two castings of Death's Call reduced them to 3, which the ranger and dracosorc drove off, while the rest of the party refused to participate.

The DM awarded everyone 50xp and some members complained that these were the dirtiest 50xp they ever had gotten.

Good times.

[Mordaedil]

Is there any interest in reading these developments from anyone or should I just let the thread slide into obscurity now that I got most of the answers I need?