I'm a fan of the "races" of vampires in Masquerade; seems a lot more simple, but I only ever see Requiem on the shelves. All of the White Wolf games look interesting, and I thought I saw something about a faerie game that was either just out or in the making. It would be cool to have a game that includes all of the races that White Wolf has done so far.
Serenity seems really simple compared to other RPGs, but I love the character attributes/flaws and the fact that you can buy a ship or build one from scratch. =3 If ever I stop being a hermit and step out into the sun, I'd like to find a group of Firefly fans to play with.
I know they cross over each other. For instance, Vampires and Werewolves are enemies and something is said about it in each manual. The editions are all compatable with each other and I've seen different settings around, like Werewolf: Dark ages or Western.
Off the top of my head there is Werewolf, Mage, Vampire, Changeling, and a few more that I can't think of right now. They use a D10 success failure system. Role a number of d10s, beat a specific number, like 6 or so, a certain number of times to succeed at whatever you are doing.
Changeling must have been what I was thinking about with the faerie thing. I didn't like D&D's version of the changeling race, so I might have to check that one out. It would be interesting to get all of the books together and have a huge campaign that crosses over into all of them.
*plans excursion to Hobby Town to gather recruits* >D
I've done White Wolf a few times, and there's a bunch of races I can never recall the names of...which is ironic since I usually played them just to torque off the GM...he was a jerk. But yeah there's also cat-shifters and reptilian-shifters in there...and of course NO ONE gets along.
I've gone to look for myself, if I should return before I get back keep me here.
We were playing a short campaign at level 100 (I believe I mentioned the Immortals rules we used above) and the party was fighting a particularly nasty god who managed to wipe out two of the three PCs, leaving only the fighter-type alive... whom he promptly cast Imprisonment on, sealing him in the center of the planet. And we all assumed that was the end of that.
But said fighter's player, after being quiet for a minute, checks over his character sheet, opens up the rulebook, then jumps out of his chair and exclaims "I sunder the planet!".
Looking it up, an Earth-sized planet has roughly 100,000 hp apparently, and with his orichalcum warhammer and all the crazy divine abilities he had, he was... actually able to do it.
So, he split open the planet they were on and came charging back into the god's temple and promptly caved his skull in and finished the adventure.
High-epic play is weird.
Cold silence has a tendency
to atrophy any sense of compassion
between supposed lovers.
Between supposed brothers.
I was solo playing with my sister as DM. I was playing a four character party and wandered into a rather ill fated battle. One of the bad guys managed to cast "Tasha's Hideous Laughter" on my stoic pyromanical cleric (fine! Fire worshipping cleric). I failed the save miserably. My main fighter guy was also disarmed via whip, his weapon nabbed by said whip wielder, and promptly smacked with his own sword. Seeing as the DM only rolled an attack and disarm check for that I insisted on the nad guy making a dex check or something to catch and use the sword. It works. Ow. On the plus side, once my cleric stopped laughing he set the mage on fire with his enchanted spiked chain. :)
The whole adventure was fairly interesting, now that I think on it, actually.
At one point, they fought a Void Dragon who could circle the planet 4 times with one move action (His move speed per round was something like 50,000 miles) and had the Strafing Breath feat, so he would nuke the party four times and then fly to the other side of the planet and wait out their turns.
Later on, they fought a paragon Storm Giant with 80 levels of Godslayer who would have made mincemeat of the gods in the party, so the fighter character above (the only one without any Divine Rank) ran to grapple him, threw him into the earth creating a massive pit, then dove in after him and pounded him to pulp. Godslayers aren't too tough against mortals of the same level. :p
Then, in a complete anticlimax, I had 5 really powerful (or so I thought) demons come shrieking out of the sky at them, only for the wizard-god to calmly raise his hand, cast a 4-times-split-rayed, 10-times-empowered, maximized, unbound Disintegrate and reduce them all to ash.
Cold silence has a tendency
to atrophy any sense of compassion
between supposed lovers.
Between supposed brothers.
Gee. That's definately a bit beyond what my groups are usually capable off. Generally, we seem to be investigating how many things can be inadvertantly set on fire and the uses of a walking corpse. Those are surprisingly many, among them stepladder, mode of transportation, ventriloquism, and trap fodder.
One of our favorite spells was Unliving Weapon from the Book of Vile Darkness. Makes an animated undead explode when killed. Endless possibilities.
As for traps, one of my worst (best) was a teleportation circle into the bottom of an underground lake of acid covered in permanent antimagic fields, with a clan of Black Slaad living on the shore to pick off any survivors. This was in another epic dungeon we ran, have to be tough on players at that level.
Cold silence has a tendency
to atrophy any sense of compassion
between supposed lovers.
Between supposed brothers.
Ouch. The most annoying trap I ever devised was the hallway with needle traps in the walls and poison gas triggers on the floor, both of which were spent long ago. Of course, the PC's didn't know that. Took them half an hour to get across the hallway and in to the actual crypt.
I was always fond of the "room of death" from 1st ed. that made it onto the stupidest monsters ever list.
"Hello adventurer. You walk into the room. That's when the floor starts to fight with the ceiling about who gets to eat you. While they fight you sneak along the wall, hoping to escape...only to find out the wall's already starting to digest you the moment you touch it. Adventurer, I hope you've enjoyed your stay in the Room of Death. Remember to fill out your comment card."
Cold silence has a tendency
to atrophy any sense of compassion
between supposed lovers.
Between supposed brothers.
The list, in case anyone interested in other hilariously stupid monsters. There's a second part linked somewhere in there, as well. My favorite is the Duckbunny, it's just fun to say. Duckbunny!
Cold silence has a tendency
to atrophy any sense of compassion
between supposed lovers.
Between supposed brothers.
I think this is the last story I have that's really worth sharing, but it's probably the most memorable one to me.
This is a pretty long story, so I'm spoiling it.
So, it was a bit of a reverse of the one I described above, a friend had designed a one-off gauntlet type dungeon and wanted to see how far I could get with a party I designed, so I went ahead with it, and ended up with a Cavalier, a Frenzied Berserker, a Fighter specialized in dual wielding picks, and a War Mage. They were level 18 or 20, I think.
And to start things off, as I drew close to the fortress I was supposed to be exploring, two Pyroclastic Dragons flew out of the totally generic lava moat, but a couple well-placed Disintegrate from the War Mage took care of them. Easy enough.
Then I get to the front door... which is sealed with a good 50 Immovable Rods preventing it from opening. And, while my berserker is warming up to try and move them, someone chucks a massive chunk of ice at his head from the roof of the castle, and it hurts.
So, I immediately have the mage telelort us up there to see what the hell is going on, and, lo and behold, it's a hurricane-force blizzard up there, can't see a thing. After a few rounds of struggling against the wind and slipping on the ice, we suddenly emerge into the center of the roof... which is apparently a desert. :|
And in said patch of desert is our nefarious adversary, a Sand Giant decked out in enchanted gear. Before I can do anything, he raises his Sand Blaster (patent pending) and belts the party with sand doing 2d6 + his Constitution modifier, which was apparently 50 or something, because that sand did serious damage.
So, having had enough of this nonsense, my Cavalier charges him on his warhorse (we're far out of the realm of physics here, just bear with me). So, he charges, getting x5 damage for using a lance, and rolls a natural 20, besides, meaning he does x15!! damage, which equates to something like 700 damage.
The Sand Giant doesn't even flinch. :|
So, we fight him for a few rounds, us generally getting the worst of it, but my fighter and berserker nick him for a few hundred more damage, at which point he dives off the 300 ft. castle roof into the moat of lava.
And whilst swimming in lava, he begins quaffing Potions of Intensified Heal, getting back 300 hp from each. And, lacking any range weapons, we can't really do anything about it, not that we'd be able to do 2,000 damage or whatever his max hp was. So, we wait him out.
When he's done, he decides to come back up to the roof and finish us, and he does so by climbing the ice-covered, sheer adamantine wall by punching holes in it. Yeah...
So, he gets back up there, we fight a bit more, he wrecks us and we barely do any damage to him. At one point I recall him burrowing through said frozen adamantine, just... because he could, I guess. Somehow.
Anyway, we eventually retreated with Feather Fall, withdrew beyond the moat to regroup. My Cavalier eventually went forward and issued a challenge, to the death, if he'd come down and fight us, the Cavalier gave his knight's vow that he wouldn't interfere. (The Cavalier was the only PC the giant was really afraid of)
So, he agrees and comes down to square off against the rest of the group. My berserker wins initiative, goes nuts and rushes in Power Attacking, landa a bunch of criticals, does like 600 damage. My fighter goes next, crits a couple times with his picks, does like another 400. Giant goes next and kills the fighter. War Mage throws a Disintegrate for another 150ish damage and a Quickened Cone of Cold for another 50ish.
Berserker goes again, doesn't crit, deals maybe 200 damage. I'm thinking the thing has to be almost dead. Well, fast-forward a round or two, he's still going, my mage is dead, and my Berserker (who is in Deathless Frenzy and can't die until it wears off) is being grappled by this giant and is completely helpless.
So... mr. Calavier decides the hell with this, breaks his oath and charges in to avenge his comrades, again getting x5 damage for charging.
Rolls another natural 20.
800 damage. Dead.
But wait! Heat Mirage! Oh, yes, the DM forgot to mention, the giant has a Heat Mirage that gives him 20% miss chance against physical attacks, despite it not coming into play at all in the rest of the fight.
So... out comes the d100, I call high, anything above a roll of 20 and I win.
19.
And that, my friends, is what you call a TPK, six hours in the making no less.
Oh, and this is the last time he was allowed to run a game, by the way. I honestly think he was just making up half of his numbers, unless that giant had d100s for hit dice...
Cold silence has a tendency
to atrophy any sense of compassion
between supposed lovers.
Between supposed brothers.
Trisphee
#65
Posted 05-12-201110:52 PM
