Traffic, D&D

[kingandy]

Traffic this morning was bad. I tried taking a different route through Manchester - through Reddish, to avoid the turning onto the A57 (?) - but found it took a lot longer on account of all the people turning left onto the A57 (to go into Manchester). Won't be doing that again...

Last night's D&D was a lot of fun, and mostly one big combat. Trap rules are interesting. You get XP if you spot the trap, if you disarm the trap or if you survive being hit by the trap. In theory this means one person - your rogue - should get all the XP from them, if he's doing his job properly, because he should be moving ahead and disarming them all. Our rogue is not really geared up for traps, though, which is fair enough, if unfortunate in this particular situation. There were something like five or six CR5 traps in all, so he should have gone up about six levels... of course he only actually disarmed one, spotted a couple and stepped back for everybody else to take the damage, and survived one other. I'm not sure how the trap rules interact with finding somebody who works in the building and asking them to switch the traps off - I didn't see the traps, I didn't get caught in them (except one fireball), I didn't disarm them, but I did theoretically get rid of the trap (which would apparently have gone off again despite already attacking us). I'm not fishing for more XP, just interested...

Woodrun (me) is now quite good with a bow. At the start of the session I was rolling at +10 to hit with the bow (+5 base, +4 dex, +1 Size bonus); I could drop this by two and fire two arrows in a turn using the Rapid Shot feat. Then I levelled. Suddenly I get an extra attack per round (+6/+1 base attack) and have a +4 bonus against humans (favoured enemy - we're in a human city so that's pretty much all I've been fighting, so it seemed to make sense. Also humans are stupid, living in houses, should be free in the wilderness like proper people, grrrr). So, if I'm shooting at a human less than 30 feet away (+1 Point Blank Shot) and our Bard is singing at the time (likely), I fire three arrows at +15/+15/+10.

That's just stupid.

Still, my aim is to get a base attack of +11 and a dex of 19 so that I can buy Improved Precise Shot, and have no penalties at all from firing into melee. Should be possible by 12th level ... if we get that far.

I thought we hadn't slept since the last time we levelled, but remember sleeping now (in the marketplace). On reflection I think I just forgot to memorise my single 1st-level Ranger spell. Curses. None of them would have been particularly useful but it's annoying to not get the benefit, if you see what I mean. ... Actually, Magic Fang would have been great to cast on Lammo (our Monk), assuming it's actually in the rulebook.

Comments

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Heh. Your attack totals are bad, but they get worse and worse and worse. Trust me on this. I've run third edition as high as 11th in the past, and the specialized fighter in the party regularly managed +18/+13/+8 with his bastard sword, and that was before bard-song got so much better. The damage he did was also quite atrocious.

One justification (and a good one) for not giving "personal" XP for things like traps is simply that the entire party is contributing to finding the trap, even if it's just by casting cure moderate wounds on the rogue so he feels confident enough to go and scout for traps.

I don't know why but I'm cursed with rogues who disarm traps by either being overconfident, setting them off and making their Reflex saves, or not noticing them, setting them off, and making their Reflex saves. Ask nattydreadi about Tylaris some time.

[kingandy]

Luckily, as a halfling, I'm doing piss-all damage. 1d6+2 (+3 if bard is singing). But then, three times a round and that's 9-24 damage... and arwel's character, Dorn the Dwarven Cleric, is constantly talking about knocking up some better weapons to do more damage.

Next level I get Multishot for being an archery-based Ranger. I'm not sure if it can be used with Rapid Shot or not ... I'm guessing no, since Rapid Shot is a Full Attack and Manyshot is a Standard Action. So Manyshot doesn't simply double the arrows you're firing. Which is good, because it would be stupid...

Hmm. You have to have +6/+1 (plus Rapidshot) before you can get Manyshot ... I think the way it works is, instead of getting 1 shot at your base attack and 1x at -5 (or 2x-2 and 1x-7) you get 2x -4, with the real advantage being that you can move more that 5 feet or take some other move equivalent action and still fire your raining death. Wow, once you've got that there's no reason to ever fire less than two arrows ... thank goodness for my Quiver Of Holding.

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

You're right on Multishot. It's useful for moving and then firing two arrows, basically, a sort of cut-price shot on the run. Whatchoo want, right, watchoo want is either an energy damage weapon (+1d6 damage per shot) or, if you're confident you'll meet em a lot, a Human Bane weapon (+2 extra enhancement bonus against humans, +2d6 extra damage against humans). It's doubtful your Cleric mate will be able to make an energy weapon yet, but I think the requirements on Bane weapons are ludicrously low (Summon Monster I and maybe 8th level off the top of my head).

As you have foehunter, check out Masters of the Wild, which has several good anti-favoured-enemy feats (Favoured Critical is nice, giving you Improved Critical with any weapon used against your favoured enemy type) and the Foe Hunter prestige class.

How muppety are we, by the way, discussing D&D at our age?

[kingandy]

Don't have Foehunter. I'm not really planning to make hunting down humans my lifelong vendetta, I just put all my Favoured Enemy points into them because we've been fighting them almost exclusively. Certainy more than Vermin (which I took thinking it was rats, turns out it's spiders - not that we've fought any more rats than we have spiders).

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Did *not* take Foehunter. I should learn to read all the words in a sentence.

Manyshot and rapid shot

[arwel.livejournal.com]

You're quite right, they don't stack

[kingandy]

Oh, I feel I should mention that for my 6th-level feat I did not take Weapon Focus (+1 with that weapon) or Far Shot (1.5x range incremement) or Foe hunter (+1 against specific enemy type, from the Forgotten Realms book), as the powergamer inside demanded. Instead I took Treetopper (+2 to climb, no penalties for being attacked while climbing, FR feat), because Woodrun is supposed to be good at that sort of thing. His last name is Treeclimber.

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Check out "Masters of the Wild" for Brachiation which is one of my favourite feats - the ability to swign through the trees tarzan stylee. I fancy it for my Oriental Wu Jen when I hit about 18th level.

Rogues and Traps

[myki.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm fine at getting traps... It's just our Dwarf (who shall remain Arw... sorry nameless) left complaining when I took my time over them...

Oh and I thought it would be funny to let you set off a few... see what happened..

You "disarm the trap" isn't nearly as fun as "KABOOM!! Everybody except Mike roll a fortitude save"

Hmm... Chaotic Evil here we come

Re: Rogues and Traps

[ghostbritain.livejournal.com]

Well, you did want to become an Assassin...

Re: Rogues and Traps

[arwel.livejournal.com]

Of course Dorn was complaining about the time, being a priest of the dwarven god of battle does make him rather eager to get stuck in, especially when Nim demonstrates that even when he is taking his time he's still shit(ok, dishonest, but we don't know that IC). Being a reasonably decent fellow to boot, he'd rather risk a shody search\lock pick attempt than let actual people die because we're not there to help them. If I were GMing I'd have been harsh and killed all the elite guard assaulting the building(or the defenders, doesn't really matter) in the several minutes it took for us to get there and made us suffer the consequences. Of course in the end the outcome of the fight really didn't matter since we managed to blow everyone up with the fireball trap, but that's by the by :)

Re: Rogues and Traps

[myki.livejournal.com]

Hey that wasn't my fault... Nook put lots of inlogical traps in the guard house... Who traps the inside of a guard house?

Don't blame me, blame the builders.

Mikey

Re: Rogues and Traps

[arwel.livejournal.com]

I put it all down to Ellis's obvious madness. He's utterly barking, all the way from his big scary man impression, suprise dummies and mental traps.

Re: Rogues and Traps

[arwel.livejournal.com]

Bit of a shame the not very elite at all really guard didn't mention anything about traps as well.

Re: Rogues and Traps

[kingandy]

No that worked ... they were surprised to see us and said "We weren't expecting you to get past the front door". We were only the diversionary tactic, after all.

Re: Rogues and Traps

[kingandy]

The dummies were a bit odd. They'd make sense if they contained poison gas or hydrochloric acid or a tiny dragon that bites you or magic stars or something.

Trapping the doors was a bit mad though ... barricading them, fine, but if you were planning for a siege you'd build in manually operated death traps rather than the automatic variety. A hole through which you drop rocks is better than a mechanism that causes rocks to fall on account of being reloadable.

Pissing on your parade

[ghostbritain.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the Favoured Enemy wotsit of a Ranger 'only' gives pluses to Bluff, Listen, Sense Motive, Spot & Survival checks, and to Damage. It does not give any bonuses to hit.

So, against a Human foe, you're Full Attack is +9/+9/+6 (you forgot to add in the -2 to the first 2 shots for Rapid Shot), and that's if they're over 30' away. +10/+10/+7 if closer than 30'.
This also means that your damage against Humans is (checks character sheet) 1d6+7! (1d6 small longbow, +2 str [mighty], +1 [under 30' distance], +4 Favoured Enemy Bonus)

Fuck, you're gross. That's a potential damage of 24-39 a round Vs humans.
And chances are you're going to hit, especially if Talindra is singing or Dorn has blessed you...

Re: Pissing on your parade

[arwel.livejournal.com]

I would reccomend prestiege classing into Peerles Archer from Silver Marches for the ranged sneak attack, craft magic arrows, cover negation and ranged power attack. I was bored and sketched out the bow I'd eventually make for him. It's sickening.

Re: Pissing on your parade

[kingandy]

Oh, no bonus to hit? Excellent, that is much less stupid than I thought. :) ... Although, given that AC doesn't climb as you progress through levels, the extra damage is probably more useful than the extra tohit.

And no, I didn't forget the -2 rapidshot, but like I said I was working out a worst case scenario where they were within 30' and bardysong.

Now ... Cat's Dexterity...

Cat's Grace

[arwel.livejournal.com]

Did ajon pick that spell? I can only do the Strength, Con, Wisdom and Charisma varieties.

Re: Cat's Grace

[kingandy]

Don't know...

Mmm, the Eye of the Beholder GBA game still has the n-Hour version of those spells. If you can be bothered navigating the menu structure over and over, the sleep cycle runs like this:

• Decide you're fucked
• cast any remaining spells into scrolls for future use
• sleep
• cast Bull's Strength on all your warriors

Sorted. Of course that way you've got sixty scrolls filled with Fireballs by the end of the game. I gave up before I got to that point (because you have to go select character -> inventory -> scribe scroll -> select spell for each one and it's really not worth it).

TANGENT!