D&D: Fighting gods

[schneefink]

Many exciting things happened since my last post about our D&D campaign :D
One of the best: for Christmas, our DM got all of us custom-made minis. They are amazing. (I would post a picture but I forgot to take one and I left the mini at his place because I didn't have something to carry it with me.) He also got one of an NPC for himself but then we almost immediately killed that NPC. Sorry not sorry.

Our session summary titles are usually some of the best quotes of the evening that somehow thematically fit. A few titles since October:
- Have you tried turning your god off and on again?
- You should set yourself on fire more often
- Your porn won't save you
- Welcome to the dark side, we have candied almonds
- How many people can she bone at the same time?
- Des-pa-nish Inquisition
- The descent into madness begins
I'm sure that anyone who ever played an RPG would confirm that none of these are particularly unusual. Explanations on request xD

Since October, 9 of our sessions took place in 24 hours in-game. Quite a dramatic day! We:

- accidentally ran into a trap set by a potential mass-murderer and made a deal with her to get something we wanted that ended up in her escaping without the mental restrictions that had stopped her from actually committing mass murder

- escaped the trap and landed in a nearby prison, where we freed mostly-innocent allied civilians, high-level potential allies, and said mass-murderer's equally murderous sister, who also ended up escaping

- ran across a god (Heironeous, currently our enemy) and escaped

- gained the trust of the high-level potential allies by reviving one of them after accidentally killing them
(Long story, but they are the former party of another former-enemy-turned-ally who centuries ago betrayed them and was brainwashed (not sure if before or after) and turned into an insane lich until we healed her. From insanity, not from being undead, and she has many conflicted feelings about being undead and is now a student of our druid. Her former party thinks undead = evil. We barely managed to stop them from an all-out fight, but we tried to stop her former party from fleeing because they had no idea what was going on and in the process, uh, slightly overdid it.)

- ran across a §$(%/?§"$ fiend of possession who we last saw in the old timeline fifty-five sessions ago. Unbeknown to us, she also time-travelled eighty years into the past, and there possessed a fricking god (Heironeous) and infiltrated his entire church with the goal of eventually ruling this world. She also hates my character personally: my character was the one who accidentally freed her from the Abyss, was then possessed by her, made deals with her (…I know) and then decided she wanted to end the association. We all figured we were pretty much screwed.

- We, uh… killed her. In one fight. It was pretty crazy and we had an insane amount of luck, but my character decapitated her. That was… yeah. So much luck. Highlights of the fight include when our atheist rogue prayed to our allied goddess and when our DM/druid found pretty much the only spell that would actually drive the fiend out of her and it's called "Rain of Roses." Perfect.

- We'd sent our new high-level allies plus our lich friend to fight the fiend's right-hand were-bird and they all died. Oops. At least the lich will come back.
We defeated and captured the were-bird, and here is where that long day ended. Well, in the evening two of the PCs also semi-accidentally started an Inquisition with the goal of identifying POWs to sentence to death to use in a necromancy ritual to get the lich back faster, and I had a fight with my undead cat familiar which almost ended in her leaving me, details.

- The next day the were-bird was interrogated by an inquisitor of Heironeous we'd met, enemy of my enemy and all (a new PC), and then I raised her as an undead minion. Yess.
I have a new level 17 undead minion (our DM house-ruled that I can raise Dread Warriors of higher level than me but they lose all their higher levels) and so far we "only" used her for information-gathering and to send a ton of orders to the entire army with the goal of fucking up their positions and supplies. Fuck yeah logistics.

- Heironeous is now free of possession, but in the past near eighty years the fiend drove him insane. So… fun. The inquisitor asked an allied god, Pelor, the "Big Bad" of the campaign, to heal him. Our DM rolled to see how that encounter would go, with 100 being hostile, and he rolled a 97. Fight of the gods! He kept rerolling the hostility rating every few minutes and with one or two exceptions they were all 80+. The dice were on our side last night. Always fun when our enemies fight each other.

- So that was already pretty great… and then our rogue remembered that waaaay back he got a high-level magic item that our DM rolled higher than he wanted on and he ended up with an item to cast the level 9 spell Ice Assassin. It creates a near-perfect duplicate of a creature whose sole goal it is to destroy the original. So what if you use it on a god? :D
Long story short, there is now an Ice Assassin of fucking (fake) Pelor running around. Amazing. (Contrary to everyone's expectations, our rogue even survived his suicide mission.)

- The new PC is a paladin/inquisitor of an enemy god. Oops. Our DM thought it wouldn't be a problem for long because he thought we would kill that god, but that hasn't happened yet, so we'll have to see how far "enemy of my enemy" will take us.

In summary, I love playing D&D.

Comments

[dhampyresa]

PLEASE EXPLAIN ALL OF THE THINGS

[schneefink]

Gladly :D

- Have you tried turning your god off and on again?
Said after we disrupted Pelor's connection to his followers and we found the notes of one high priest on how he wanted to attempt to fix it, which somehow included a resurrection ritual

- You should set yourself on fire more often
Our druid fought as a bear on fire, dealing additional fire damage with every hit. It was awesome. I don't remember what the spell is called though.

- Your porn won't save you
Our rogue was locked in a room where acid was raining from the ceiling. He remembered that he had a dwarf porn magazine with permanent Prestidigitation with him, but our DM said that holding that over his head wouldn't protect him from the acid.

- Welcome to the dark side, we have candied almonds
My character's alignment is kind of an ongoing argument: she thinks she's good, I think she's neutral, my DM thinks she's evil. Our rogue is evil, and the player was looking forward to another evil party member. The candied almonds are a party in-joke: he bought two bags of them once while interrogating a merchant, and they prove incredibly helpful when making friends.

- How many people can she bone at the same time?
We were fighting an enemy who literally used her bones, which she could shape as she liked, to fight, which included stabbing people.

- Des-pa-nish Inquisition
Nobody expects the (Spanish) Inquisition, least of all our players who accidentally founded one.

- The descent into madness begins
When our rogue started the freefall from several kilometers up into the hurricane around where Pelor and Heironeous were fighting.

[dhampyresa]

Thank you so much! That sounds like a super fun time.

[schneefink]

You're very welcome :D It was. (Though we found out that Ice Assassin might have been a very bad idea... But what's done is done...)

[dhampyresa]

we found out that Ice Assassin might have been a very bad idea

You can't say that and not give details!

[schneefink]

Weeell, two things. One, if you cast the spell then the Ice Assassin is under your command. Except our rogue used a magical item to cast the spell, meaning he didn't originally cast it, meaning he has no power over it. Oops. And second, I was under the impression that the double would disappear once it killed the original, which is however not the case, soo the double could kill the original and then just step into its place, and apart from the killing urge we have no idea what its mindset is. Fingers crossed and hope for the best...

[dhampyresa]

HAHAHAHAHAHA OMG Y'ALL DONE FUCKED UP WOW

[schneefink]

I KNOW. And we were so excited about it too! The Lady Rose is pissed, and though she didn't even shout at us, we are now basically under house arrest and only allowed to do exactly what she tells us.

[dhampyresa]

Between this and the rest, the Lady Rose must be so frustrated with you.

[schneefink]

I'm sure she is xD In theory she could take away our sainthood, but not only would that be bad for her followers' morale, we're also her most powerful fighters.

[dhampyresa]

You have a sainthood? :O I don't remember this. Tell! Tell!

[schneefink]

For a while now! Lady Rose offered all of us a sainthood right after she became a goddess. All of us accepted except the rogue. It's extremely useful because the Saint template is great: +2 to spell save DC, you get a protective aura that protects you from mind control among other things, you get a few extra cantrips etc. As saints we also automatically have a high position in her church, authority and reputation - which our second sorcerer already (ab)used to open a massage salon...

[dhampyresa]

Please explain why the rogue refused and also MASSAGE SALON WHAT

[schneefink]

The rogue refused because he's not a big fan of a) gods, b) the Lady Rose (he thinks she's incompetent), also he's technically evil and thought sainthood doesn't go with that. Hilariously he's also the one who has successfully prayed to the Lady Rose for aid twice now.

There was a session with few players, among them our sorcerer, so he went and opened a massage salon at the secret outpost xD Just for fun, and without shame about using his reputation as a saint and hero to attract customers. He also supported a spy network.

[dhampyresa]

AMAZING.

[sallymn]

Welcome to the dark side, we have candied almonds... I love that, it is going in my Memorandum Book :)

[schneefink]

The original quote was an English/Viennese-German mix: "Welcome to the dark side, mia ham gebrannte Mandeln" ^^

[nonesensed]

Man, sounds like you're having a lot of fun! But it's hard to avoid fun in D&D ;)

What kind of character are you playing and how long have you been at this campaign? And yes, all those summary titles sound very true to regular D&D sessions (Examples from my own groups are "STOP SHOOTING THINGS!", "That door was evil" and "Time to smell ourselves out of trouble").

[schneefink]

Indeed :D

We've been at this campaign for 78 sessions and almost two years. I'm playing a halfling-shaped living statue turned Saint, a Generic Spellcaster/Fatespinner. Three characters have been here since the beginning :)

Doors are often evil xD How and what do you play? Do you have a regular campaign(s) too or switch it up more often?

[nonesensed]

Oooh, 78 sessions, that's impressive! I've only ever managed a year (though we did meet almost every weekend for that game). Your character sounds super interesting too :D Are you in any other games than that impressively long one? Got any other systems you like? And do you prefer to play or do you also DM? Oh, and do you prefer more fight/dice roll-focus playing, more roleplay-focus playing, or a mix/balance? ALL THE QUESTIONS! Sorry for the inquisition, I'm terribly curious ;)

I myself am on a D&D 5e binge right now, much thanks to Critical Role. I ended up avoiding the previous editions since I'd heard the rules were overly complicated. But seeing the CR group play 5e it looked really streamlined and I got my hands on the books - and am now DMing two groups in that system XD

I've been rolling dice off and on since my teens, but I got in deep at uni, had a bit of a break once I graduated, and am now back on track again with three active group:
1) Online newbie group of 3-soon-to-be-5 players who I'm DMing through the Curse of Strahd module, with some homebrew stuff. Been only a few sessions, but we're off to a good start (they started out adopting a dragon egg together).
2) D&D group with mixed levels of experience, who I also DM in D&D 5e, homebrew campaign. We meet again next Friday and I'm really hyped, because the holidays meant a big break = more evil DM plotting for me ;) Oh, and this group also started out by adopting a kid together, because that's apparently the sort of players I attract XD
3) The final group basically started out as several "perma-DMs" (aka us people who tend to Always Be The DM in all our groups) coming together to talk about how much we love to DM but how we'd also like to play some time, yanno - one thing led to another and we started a "try out new games + get to actually make your own character" group. We started out just trying our hands at different games (rule: you want to try it, you DM it) and now we've got some loose, short campaigns going on.

Sooo, long story short(er?), besides D&D I'm currently active playing the Necessary Evil part of Savage Worlds, the wonderful wish-fulfillment system Blue Rose, the very funny Fallen Reich - Can Evil Be Stopped In Time For Tea? and a number of other shorter games in other systems (e.g., Götterdämmerung, The End of The World, Mutant). Huzzah for dice rolling!

[schneefink]

Yay dice rolling! You play a lot of different stuff, it sounds very varied and interesting :) How do you have time for so many groups? How often do you meet?

This is the first campaign I've ever played in, and currently the only one. I played a Warhammer one-shot, that was fun, and twice when too many players were missing I tried to DM, that was a lot of fun too. But I don't currently have the energy for more than this one weekly campaign and that's fine with me. After this campaign I'm thinking of maybe trying other stuff, but on the other hand I like this group a lot so who knows.

We're playing 3.5. I don't know how complicated the rules are in comparison but one issue is that there are a lot of sources and so many classes and spells and feats and maneuvers etc. etc. In our group we have three experienced players, two of whom delight in building complicated characters and exploiting not-really-but-kinda-loopholes, and three newbies, and without help we would be hopelessly disadvantaged. If I DM a campaign with a different group, which I think I would like to try one day, I'll probably switch to 5e.

Imo our campaign has a nice mix of roleplay and fights/dice-rolling, but of course ymmv. On average I'd say we have combat encounters every two, maybe three sessions, and I'm hoping for one tomorrow :)
There has been no adopting of any kids in our campaign so far, but we do currently have as many "pets" (familiar/animal companion/mount) as player characters. (One undead cat, a magical beetle, a magical ninja squirrel, a dinosaur, an owl, and a magical wolf.)

[nonesensed]

How do you have time for so many groups? How often do you meet?

...I've stopped sleeping? XD Nah, we just don't meet that often. I haven't seen any of my groups since the end of October due to work/children/holidays/NaNoWriMo/etc. But usually the offline D&D group meets every other week when there isn't anything Big going on in anyone's life (that is the child-less group), while the online D&D group and the try-new-stuff group meet whenever we have time (because of the added time trickiness of people having children).

And it being your first campaign is very impressive that it's lasted for two years! You must have a lot of fun together :) I've heard good things about D&D 3.5, it's 4e that scared me off (though I didn't know that at the time, because no one was on hand to educate me on the fact that there were different editions). I like how easy D&D 5e is to introduce to new players and how smoothly the combat flows - but I'm big on homebrew and additions, so I'm always open to adding stuff to their characters! Definitely rec it as a first-time DM game as well!

Pets are great! Magical ninja squirrels are always helpful ;) Our online group's ranger is about to get her companion animal, and I've allowed her to homebrew a wolf-moose experiment creature XD

Keeping a balance between the rp-ing and the dice-rolling is what I tend to aim for too. Many of my friends are very into the rp-ing, which is cool, but I'm glad I've also found people who enjoy combat to DM because I do so love combat (and other skill checks) too!

What classes and species are your current party? And what's the epic story you're playing your way through? (I am hopelessly curious)

[schneefink]

I'm always happy to talk about our campaign ^^ As my little brother and flatmates can attest. You can find more details in my d&d tag, but an overview:

Our campaign started when five of us woke up as living statues with no memories in a burning temple. We found out that the gods had been killed and we were sort-of considering to try and bring them back, but then we decided to send an NPC 80 years into the past to stop the gods from being killed, and we entered a new timeline. Eventually we learned that our "world" is inside of a special kind of dimension bubble, and that the "gods" are fake and get their powers through mass sacrifice of sentient beings, with the goal of becoming strong enough to one day destroy this world and go conquer others. We joined forces with the NPC we sent back, Rose, who had already started to raise an army to kill the evil fake gods. Other "allies", in order to help her, turned Rose into a goddess herself. Rose in turn made (most of) our party her saints, and we went on missions to destroy the other gods' weapons and their saints. We've made decent progress, and the next step is to kill the fake gods themselves...

Our party currently consists of:
- Me, a halfling-shaped living statue, Generic Spellcaster/Fatespinner
- a human-shaped living statue, Cleric/Crusader/Rubyknight Vindicator
- a half-elf-shaped living statue, Druid
- a human Rogue/Shadowlord/Warblade
- a gnome Sorcerer/Incantatrix
- and then there is the gnoll Paladin/Inquisitor PC who has not officially joined our party yet.

Good luck with the wolf-moose! That sounds like a terrifying animal :D
Pity that your groups don't manage to meet up more often, but of course life interferes, especially when there's children. In our group we have two people with children and they are the ones who miss the most sessions, but we also play if most of us are there because otherwise it would be so difficult to find the time.

[nonesensed]

That sounds like such an epic campaign! I'd love to hear how it turns out for your characters and am keeping my fingers crossed that your dear halfling-shaped living statue lasts to the very end! Have your characters discovered their own origins yet? Like, why they are statues, who made them, and how they ended up being sentient?

And wolf-moose was completed! I've tweaked the Beastmaster rules for the D&D 5e Rangers because the current rules are rather unbalanced, so I've also made the wolf-moose (aka välg in singular, välger in plural, which is a Swedish stupid bun about moose and wolves) grow stronger as it grows older + added in some surprises on later levels, if the dear creature survives that long (though I suspect my sister will let her character die before her bond-beast XD).

Btw, the new DnDBeyond site is really good for making stylish and quick creature stats, so I rec it for anyone who wants to make their own new or tweaked creatures :)

[schneefink]

DnDBeyond looks cool; its for 5e but I'll keep it in mind for if I DM that one day :)

Now I'm curious about the developments of an advanced wolf-moose! ...and what it looks like. Do you have a pic?

Our characters have indeed found out our origins: complicated rituals by high priests of a dead god, created to bring those gods back. Which we did, kind of - and now we're trying to kill them again ^^

[nonesensed]

Best of luck on your DM plans! It's so much fun to play around with the characters' faiths~ *cue evil DM laughter* You'll have to practice smirking evilly ;)

The välg aka wolf-moose I created because my sister (who plays a ranger/beast master) couldn't decide on her beast companion and jokingly said she wanted a moose or a wolf or both. I've played around with the beast master rules in 5e because...they kinda suck XD... so now the välger basically have four "levels" and I can't wait for my sister's character to one day get to level 15 so I can show everyone what an "awoken" välg does~! Sadly there are no pictures yet, only stats, but my sister is working on one (she's a great artist, I am definitely not) - I'll share as soon as she's finished it :)

And that is such cool origins! Do you keep your journal updated on what happens in your game? I'm super curious about what happens next!