I was playing a human monk with really good ability rolls. He had a fantastic story and was one of my favorite personalities I'd ever roleplayed. He was pretty much the heart and soul and brains of our operation.
I'd gradually been becoming the leader of our rag tag group. The overall party alignment is Chaotic Neutral, but my Lawful Good morals and high mental stats all around made me the only person left in the party with a big sense of what was really going on and how to save the world. Everyone was starting to respect and follow me.
I'd just solved the puzzle in the water temple our DM designed, and I was leading us through the rest of the rooms. As usual, when I moved my token along through the dungeon, most of the rest of the party members just stayed where they were waiting for something to happen.
I ended up getting attacked by two monsters who were each a level below our characters. But they rolled high in combat and knocked out the one other party member who'd come with me, our druid.
So I stand over his square and go with total defense until our cleric or bard can show up. But I get knocked out anyway due to an absurdly high attack roll.
I'd bought enough time, both of us got small cures, and I was attacked and knocked out yet again before I got to take my next turn.
The other enemy cast Stinking Cloud. Everyone failed their save and was nauseated except the cleric. I was the only unconscious character because the bard and ranger had just been messing around elsewhere and still hadn't joined in.
Everyone's action is to exit the stinking cloud. Including the cleric, who saw me fall unconscious and would have been allowed and able to cure me while I was at -7 HP. Everyone just scattered in all directions.
Miraculously I stabilized myself. But since I was abandoned, I couldn't do anything else.
One of the two low-level monsters closed the door, leaving the druid and my unconscious body alone with them. Nobody even attempted to reopen the door. Instead, the rest of the party spent several rounds messing with another puzzle to sail a rowboat in through the aide entrance to the room the fight was taking place in. It was time consuming, and as I said, they hadn't even seen if they could just open the main door first. (They don't lock.)
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
The DM decided not to kill me outright for something I had no control over. The monsters dragged me through the room slowly, giving the druid a chance to do something about it. He tried fighting them off but rolled poorly and had no backup while the others were rowing a freaking boat or something.
The baddies threw me on a sacrificial altar in the next room over, visible to everyone through an open doorway. Finally the party showed up and started fighting again. They killed the stronger enemy, and the weak guy was standing just in front of the doorway to the altar room where I lay. It said something about sacrificing me to their king.
A good five rounds of combat later, nobody had managed to kill the thing, and nobody had tried to get past it. No tumbles, no grapples, no bull rushes. Someone could've just walked past it - it was primarily a caster, and its attack of opportunity would have been pitifully weak.
So the troll king shows up. He's a huge badass, looks deadly, and is clearly intelligent and wildly evil. He picks me up and tells the party to stop and give him their treasures or he kills me.
The ranger shoots one of the other bad guys, and I get coup de gras'd.
Nobody. Knows. What. They're. Doing.
I think I was sitting there for a good hour not being able to participate. The DM tried everything to save me because he kew things would fall apart without me. But I was just left for dead. After that, everyone fled the temple without finishing it to get its treasures or fulfill the quest we were there for. Leaving my body there.
tl;dr - the party split up, I was injured, the cleric saw me but ran away, the DM tried to save me, but the party made zero effort to get to me, preferring puzzles and combat to healing their knocked out leader. Then the ranger fails to acknowledge diplomacy from a troll, and I died.
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
The DM is pretty pissed at the party, especially the cleric (she never pays attention and doesn't seem to really like D&D. Also she plays the character like a rogue). I think he's more pissed than I am, and I had very high hopes for my char.
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
Eh, they're good people... Most come from a theater or improv background. They just are historically bad at D&D, and this campaign was specifically designed to be the first one we played together that wasn't all "hand-holding".
The DM is my good friend, he's brilliant and experienced as player and DM. I'm almost as good, though I'm not as charismatic and have normally been too shy to DM well. I play good characters though, and he and I typically alternate with each other who is party leader when we play campaigns.
Two of the others were a little green before we started playing together a a group a handful of campaigns ago. They're better now but not perfect. They have good moments.
The other two are girlfriends of other members of our group. One is honestly learning. The other just doesn't seem to care.
Whatever the case...... Worst party.
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
From: Bokonon_Lives | #008 Eh, they're good people... Most come from a theater or improv background. They just are historically bad at D&D, and this campaign was specifically designed to be the first one we played together that wasn't all "hand-holding".
The DM is my good friend, he's brilliant and experienced as player and DM. I'm almost as good, though I'm not as charismatic and have normally been too shy to DM well. I play good characters though, and he and I typically alternate with each other who is party leader when we play campaigns.
Two of the others were a little green before we started playing together a a group a handful of campaigns ago. They're better now but not perfect. They have good moments.
The other two are girlfriends of other members of our group. One is honestly learning. The other just doesn't seem to care.
Whatever the case...... Worst party.
This sounds like a group more suited to FATE than D&D. Have you considered pitching a more narrativist system?
The guy playing the ranger claimed he misinterpreted what the troll said. The troll was speaking in broken English. The clearest command I heard was "You give me you treasures, or I SMASH him" - but apparently he also said something about "You boomsticks down"? Which was supposed to mean "put your weapons down" but was interpreted as "kill the other things in the dungeon for me"?
(A subplot in this dungeon was that there were, in fact, two "teams" of native monsters, which were at war with each other, and all also hated us.)
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
I've never heard of FATE, but we do experiment with other play systems. We did a single session of Call of Cthulhu (but it was extraordinarily low on horror and danger). We're gonna give CoC another, longer run at some point. And I know one of the players wants to run one of these Superhero systems, which sounds incredibly fun (similar to Toon or something).
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
From: Bokonon_Lives | #014 I've never heard of FATE, but we do experiment with other play systems. We did a single session of Call of Cthulhu (but it was extraordinarily low on horror and danger). We're gonna give CoC another, longer run at some point. And I know one of the players wants to run one of these Superhero systems, which sounds incredibly fun (similar to Toon or something).
FATE is a system that is all about telling a story, basically. A very key mechanic of it is, surprisingly enough, Fate Points - you can use them to reroll a roll you don't like, or apply a big bonus to your roll, *after* knowing if you failed or not. The interesting thing about Fate Points is that, to get them, you need to make your plot more interesting. For instance, if you get captured by guards (without a chance to get away, in other words it just happens), or beaten soundly by the big bad, you get Fate Point which you can use to even up the score down the line. There's one more way to get Fate Points, though - Aspects. Aspects are little one-sentence descriptions of your character, depicting a facet of his personality. For instance, Link from Legend of Zelda would have the Hero of Time Aspect, which can be used positively (to gain a bonus to his rolls or reroll as above, or to state a fact about a scene), or negatively (to cause some time shenanigans to happen, or to make the decision of helping someone in need when he's really pressed for time). You'd think you wouldn't want to trigger an Aspect negatively, but the opposite is in fact the case - you constantly look for reasons to trigger them, because not only do you get the almighty Fate Points out of the deal, but they make the story more fun. I highly recommend giving it a try, it seems to me that your group is just not the D&D type and would fare much better with a system that isn't as lethal and, honestly, sorta unfun as 3.5.
And here's the SRD for the very, very first version of the current FATE edition, if you want to see what it's about as explained by its authors. It's a bit primitive (and I highly recommend using one of the later versions in its stead), but it's good for understanding the basics behind the system: http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html
Eh, story-telling systems never have really clicked with me since they end up being a ton of rules that basically amount to preventing players from bending reality to favor their character. If that's a problem in your group you're probably not suited for playing a story-telling system anyway.
I tried one last year since my DM found it and was all excited about it (looks like it was a spin-off of FATE), but it ended up being an outrageous amount of rules to do anything. Poisoning people was a full chapter in the rulebook, for instance. Maybe it was just a lousy system we ended up with, but the mechanics were sloppy and the setting itself was rather dull so we only played about three sessions before giving up on it.
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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.
Mutants and Masterminds man, go for that. Most damage is non lethal so they can dick around all day and the GM can just have the villain stick you in a Batman style trap or hold you for ransom or lock you in a room and let you escape. Also you can bribe them with sweet sweet hero points if they actually care about hostages or civilians.
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You know, the number of people on this site who are exactly 13 years old is remarkable. - PSXer
tl;dr - the party split up, I was injured, the cleric saw me but ran away, the DM tried to save me, but the party made zero effort to get to me, preferring puzzles and combat to healing their knocked out leader. Then the ranger fails to acknowledge diplomacy from a troll, and I died.
I will say that I really hate it when someone tries to take on the role of "party leader." Maybe they didn't want you being their leader.
That sucks. Sounds mostly like your party doesn't know what they're doing. I'm not surprised to hear some of them are inexperienced.
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"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." -Vaarsuvius, Order of the Stick
I will say that I really hate it when someone tries to take on the role of "party leader." Maybe they didn't want you being their leader.
That's the thing, I didn't force my way up there. I filled a power void left by other deaths. I was our third "party leader", by process of elimination. I hadn't been making any decisions that ran contrary to what other people wanted. It's not like it was "what I say goes" or anything. In truth I didn't really make any executive decisions whatsoever or step on anyone's toes. In fact, my character mostly kept to the background for the longest time until we had lost all existing leadership, our main quest was taking a turn for the worse, and nobody else was willing to step up. It's a decidedly nonlinear campaign, and at the time nobody had any ideas of what to do next, so I gave my input, and nobody disagreed. The one time I gave a party member any backtalk, the player remarked that that was the first time his hardass character actually felt any respect for me. I'm not trying to give myself an inflated sense of self-importance or anything, but the party is definitely in a funk now and complaining about having lost their leader. Players who played our previous "leaders", when their old characters died, they deliberately decided to come back as meeker characters who would not want to be in charge. In fact, when it came to puzzles and planning, players would frequently say that their characters "didn't have the intelligence or wisdom" for it and would volunteer to leave the thinking to me. Leadership done right isn't one person forcing their hand over the rest of the party; it's more laissez-faire than that, it's being the voice of the party, representing them, not just talking for them.
Also, I'm a little weirded out by the number of people who think this may have been a conspiracy where everyone tried to get me killed. These are close friends of mine. Case closed; they wouldn't do that. If they didn't want me being their leader, they were more than welcome to challenge my authority; they'd practically shoved me into the position themselves.
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
If you're feeling spiteful, you could make a deal with the GM to come back as a (secretly evil) character. Possibly wanting revenge for their fallen father/brother/etc.
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"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." -Vaarsuvius, Order of the Stick
Make your next character a paladin. He's absurdly truthful, honorable, and all around the greatest guy around. He saves the party multiple times, and they begin to respect, trust, and love him, slowly coming to accept him as their new leader.
Then you slit their throats while they sleep and show them your actual character sheet, which is that of a blackguard.
-- Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig. Started: July 6, 2005
My monk had an intelligent magical sword (yeah, I know, long story) who was screaming at the party for leaving me behind and demanded to be given away to our ship's first mate, an NPC who wasn't involved in our little excursion that got me killed. The first mate's contract was almost up, so he's gone now, left with the sword.
The DM told me in private that he decided that the sword is going to tell the old first mate to come back and kill our cleric. The sword is basically a Paladin and has long had problems with our cleric, who worships an evil deity and was one of the two PC's most responsible for my death. My monk was the sword's disciple; the sword believed I was going to save the world, and he blames the party for my death and wants nothing to do with them.
We ended last session (with the party and my new character) on an island, literally trying to make a deal with a Devil. Next session is when this big showdown is supposed to happen. It's gonna be a game-changer, that's for sure.
The most I can say is my new character won't be defending the cleric. I'm playing a lawful good ex-paladin/fighter, and he's not going to defend an evil cleric he just met versus a good one.
There's very little chance our cleric comes out alive. The ranger is the PC most likely to jump to her aid, so the ranger might die too, but I would have to say that's a lot less likely.
Cleric is Chaotic Neutral "with Evil leanings" (worshipping an Evil deity). Ranger is straight-up Chaotic Neutral.
The rest of us are: Lawful Good; Neutral Good; and Chaotic Neutral "with Good leanings".
If we lose our "troublemaker(s)", all for the better. I have no plans of coming in with a vengeful evil character to kill the party. We'll tear ourselves apart naturally next session - and then we'll be forced to come to a consensus, based on who lives and who dies, as to how we can best form a party that actually gets along for once.
If I had to say, this campaign would have been best played by a decidedly Good-aligned party so far. There were routes we could have taken that would have favored Chaotic Good, and routes that would have favored Lawful Good. At this point, a Chaotic Neutral party that actively abandons the quest to literally save the world is just not going to get anywhere at all. I'm gonna work to bring us back on track with another Good character, and see how it goes.
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
Anyone who tries to play CN, or anyone who tries to play Evil, burn their sheet before it can infect the rest of the group. I'm not super experienced in D&D, but even I have heard far too many stories about characters using these alignments as defense for sabotaging the group and ruining any hopes of progress.
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"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." -Vaarsuvius, Order of the Stick
Well, that's a point too, but the party composition is all kinds of dumb.
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"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." -Vaarsuvius, Order of the Stick
CN or Evil done right can be really cool. The same player who currently plays our CN Ranger, was in one of our previous campaigns a LE Blackguard. And he was on our side through and through, he just had devilish personal motivations that happened to not conflict with our primary goals. He was a really great character. And the last character I played before my monk was a CN Half-Orc Rogue who never messed around and was always a credit to the team; he was just gruff and didn't care much for people.
I still don't think there's any active sabotage. There's just really poor decision making, an inability to accurately assess the situations we get put in (running away when we shouldn't, and sticking around when we shouldn't), and an inexperienced player playing too important of a character archetype. (A party shouldn't have a cleric who, despite having the most HP of anyone in the party, is more likely to run away and use her sling to through rocks, than heal people).
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
A 3.5 Monk fails at life and we're supposed to think something went wrong? I don't understand.
Hilarious, but as you can see from the original post, the death was completely avoidable, and the party had numerous chances to help me out and chose not to.
the party composition is all kinds of dumb.
Another fair point, but one thing I didn't mention. We have a very strict rolling system. This is meant to be a gritty, challenging, very-low-power campaign. Whatever stats we roll, we have to work with them and just pick a race and class that is most likely to succeed with those stats.
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
most games i have been a part of have been point buy, or if there was stat rolling, an allowance to reroll if your overall mod was too low.
i've come to appreciate 4e though, and am having loads more fun with it than i did with 3.5, though some of that is just playing the character concept and being with a good group of people.
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There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out
Yeah we almost always do point buy. A very high point buy, too. We went with a low power campaign for the role playing and tactical challenge of not being superhero-level characters, but underdogs striving to succeed. It's just apparently not the right group for this sort of experience. Too green to take off the training wheels.
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
Anybody who uses their alignment to justify something without giving some sort of good and ridiculously logical (Depending on how much the action hinders the party) explanation (beyond lolCN or lolevil) should just be shot. No questions asked.