Don't you hate it when your comments just don't get through.
For today's poll:
Scootaloo and Sweetie Bell's mark.
No Scootaloo/chiken jokes(there's been too many of them going around), and no blank flank jokes (I don't want another daimond/spoon here)
Scoot:a flaming wheel
Sweetie:a jewel like mic.
Well, I have a few ideas for Scootaloo baed on what does and doesn't happen in her life, but based on JUST what's been shown in the show, I'd say a half-pipe to represent her talent for tricks.
For Sweetie Belle, I'd say a Treble/Clef symbol to represent her musical talent.
Appleblooms would likely be a hammer and nails or some other carpenting based symbol, Sweetie Belle would have stylised notes with hearts incorporated somewhere and Scootaloo would have a flaming tyre
I always picture the three of them having matching marks- like, say, the same stick with a hammer head, microphone ball-thing, or handlebars on top. Though one idea I had is that they'd just have an apple-and-a-half (to show she's more than just another farmer), standard bell-highlighted-by-music-note (name puns, name puns and singing), and butterfly (mythology gag!) highlighted by magnifying glasses based on the Powerpuff Girl's colors.
Congratulations, Rainbow Dash. You're becoming an effective roleplayer. I mean, some hack-and-slash players would be tempted to use OOC knowledge to metagame, but nope! You stuck with the info that only your character knew, even if it would be to your ultimate detriment. Good for you!
I was wondering if you would have the dm be a mare-hole and have the grand galloping galla and have them all roll to stay sane and fluttershy fails miserably.
I'm pretty sure they'd manage to create chaos without the help.
I'd view that episode as a social-and-skill-challenge puzzle adventure, more or less an open-ended opportunity to further their goals by schmoozing and impressing people.
And then the dice decide they hate them. And Fluttershy gets a Cutie-Mark Critical Failure (the mechanic I'd mentioned from one of the other pony RPG homebrews).
There might originally have been a subplot planned for them to detect and foil, but the "Darths and Droids" maxim applies ("Oh, I gave up on having a plot weeks ago. You guys have been great for my improvisational skills.").
That, and rainbow dash curling up into a little ball at the best young fliers competition, were literally the examples used in the RPG sourcedocument, so I think they beat you to it.
Alright, my turn for story time! This is a story about how the simplest plans are sometimes the most AWESOME!
At the end of the last campaign I was in (an all magic-users 3.5 campaign), the boss was this gigantic, ancient mind-flayer-type-thing. While we were trying to figure out the best way to go about trying to fight it, our wizard made an Arcana check of the room and discovered that the boss was giving off a magic field that caused illusions to become real. Naturally, the party immediately decided that the best course of action would be for our beguiler to conjure up a few illusions to take on the boss. We threw a few ideas around, but knowing our DM, we figured that most of the really powerful things we could think of - demons and the like - would probably be impossible to control if they became real, and the DM would just make them go after us. But then, I thought of something: what is the most powerful things we could make real-illusions of which we could control?
How about a bunch of level 18 magic users?
Yep, our beguiler made dozens of reallusory (real-illusory) copies of the entire party (a beguiler, a wizard, a sorcerer, a warmage, a bard, and a cleric), who proceeded to spam spell after spell at the boss. Each round, the beguiler (and his copies) would just make more copies, so by the second round there were hundreds of each of us. By the end of the third round, the battle was over.
now, I understand that this boss was probably really bad and really evil, but lets just say that I come in to existence, full memories, feeling like a real person, and someone tells me, hey, you need to kill this guy because he's evil. Now, if he dies you'll die too, but it will all be worth it.
Well, it might be worth it for you, and I won't want this boss to be around, but I don't want to die, ok? Can you at least try to save me? Maybe if I create more copies they can work together to maintain this illusion and travel back in time to create the spell that allows illusions to become reality? Maybe this spell corrupts, and the boss is created in the first place? Maybe the only reason for the boss is to allow the clones you created a place to live, did you ever think of that?
Now, this is pure speculation, but people are smart and they find ways to survive. How many times has The Doctor killed off the last Dalek now? Your clones are now the Daleks, you created them and they're going to be unkillable from now on. Good luck with that!
I'm tired. I have no idea what I just said. Good night!
I've always had the understanding that illusions you can magically create with scratch can come with a "hey, you're not real" part. Sometimes causes Cloning Blues like heck, but you'd think there wouldn't be a spell that prone to plot issues that good-aligned characters can get.
Alternatively, if they think they're real then they think they're the ones who won't vanish when the boss dies; crueller but still functional.
I'll accept the first possibility as a possibility, after all, I have no idea how this worked at all.
For the second one, I was under the assumption that they felt real, even though they knew they were created at that time. I guess it could work if they really thought they were the original, but that opens up a whole new flood of possibilities that I don't feel like getting into. If everyone thinks they are the original, then you're just as likely a copy as everyone else. Will you risk killing the boss in that scenario? It's a tough question.
I think what the DM decided was that, since they were, in fact, perfect copies of the same individual, they were quite literally the same person, so each person and his/her copies worked together as a sort of hive mind. It's been a little while, so I'm not sure I'm remembering right, but I believe that is what was decided.
Messed up the name on my previous post. Sorry about that. One time I was DMing a paladin, rouge, and wizard and the player's where mad at each other out of game so the rouge stole the wizard's spell components and the wizard asked for it back and the rouge shanked him and killed him ( They where already low on health) and then because the path ahead was so narrow the wizards body clogged up that passage and they could not go forward, then the wizard's player laughed at the rouge's and they ended up throwing soda cans at each other.
Hehehe... this reminds me of how I used to play Baldur's Gate. Instead of disarming traps, I would often just send one of the beefy characters (probably Minsc) rushing headlong into them.
One time my Rouge/Barbarian used a grappling hook to open a door at a distance. but of course the sm made daggers fly out of the door and no they could not be normal daggers so they could not get pat my AC that had to be ENCHANTED daggers!
The only problem is that at this point they weren't sure if she was or wasn't a high level magic user that would come outside and thoroughly trounce them. So, they wanted to be stealthy and try to catch her by surprise.
Ah, yes,the other "go to" solution for every problem: "Set <bad guy stronghold> on fire, ‼Fun‼ Ensues™." (For those not familiar with Dwarf Fortress, "‼thing‼" means "thing on fire". The definition of "Fun" used here is also borrowed from DF:s unofficial motto: "Losing is Fun".)
Too bad any magical loot has the unfortunate tendency to catch fire as well...
So this strip's story theme: Bypassing an otherwise complex challenge in a rather simple method, or finding an easy, very silly/simple solution, or general use of fighters as trap springers.
For Pony Team Bravo, it would have to be the method used to break an enchantment on a door (the door was actually part of a bigger illusion). After a few failed attempts at lock-picking or magic-dispelling, my character opted for the next best thing: Charging into it, headfirst (endurance is his best stats). When that didn't work, we then improved on the plan, having my character be used as a battering ram. Then our gardener rolls a nat20, prompting him to throw me like Shining Armor throws his wife.
Another story would be how we dealt with one of the big bad's henchmares: Charging into her, headfirst, which actually worked at first, before she struck back.
*sigh* That awkward moment when not only do your HTML tags not work, but you realise that you haven't been logged in for the entire time you've been commenting on these comics...
The best way to disarm traps is with a rogue. If you don't have time, or lack a sufficiently qualified rogue, a barbarian is a close second. Remember, folks: tanks aren't just for monsters.
This, incidentally, is why I love playing characters with high Constitution scores. It's amazing how many challenges can be overcome/ignored with enough hp and a high Fort save.
I like summoners for handling traps, nothing beats the sound of a 10,000 GP trap wasting itself on a creature that would have stopped existing in 30 seconds even without the trap.
I prefer rangers for setting off traps. They can make a lot of their equipment themselves. Behold!
Now, assuming the average for starting money in 3.5(15 gold), My character starts with the following gear:
Artisan's tools that my father passed down to me(Masterwork if I can get away with it); Free
Small steel mirror that belonged to my mother; Free
Bag of iron scraps the blacksmith was gonna throw out; Free
Two 10-foot poles I made myself; Free
Two 500-yard balls of strong twine I made; Free
Fifty feet of hempen rope I made; Free
Five torches I made from sturdy branches, rags, and sap; Free
Six leather belt pouches I made; Free
Tanned leather waterskin I made; Free
Backpack I made from tanned leather; Free
Twelve sacks made from leather; Free
Homemade ink; Free
Two flasks; 6 copper
Inkpen; 1 silver
Leather bound journal; 2 gold
A piece of flint I foraged, and a leftover chunk of steel from the blacksmith's shop; 2 silver
5lbs of two ounce lead weights; 1 silver three bags of marbles; 2.5 silver
10 square yards of canvas; 1 gold
20 pieces of chalk; 2 silver
10 candles; 1 silver
Fishhook; 1 silver
Whetstone; 2 copper
Grappling hook; 1 gold
Rangers can make a lot of their own gear. This also allows for lots of MacGyvering.
Bonus points to anyone who gets the marbles reference.
Also, please note that I said setting traps off, not disarming them.
ObPedant: some of this will depend on how realistic the campaign is. Scrap-iron _today_ isn't free (unless you get it from the curb). Back in the middle ages, when making iron involved a lot more human labour, it was even more valuable.
The smith would have a scrap-iron bucket, and that bucket's contents would get melted down whenever it got full.
For the stuff that was half rust, a well-off blacksmith would have a foundry to re-smelt it (another name for "rust" is "pure iron ore"). A not-well-off blacksmith would sell/barter it to someone who did have a foundry furnace set up.
In that case, I can skip the iron scraps. They're for use as a disposable weight/counterweight like the sack of sand in raiders of the lost ark.(or maybe that was temple of doom. Holy cow, has it really been over ten years since I've seen one of the classic Indiana Jones movies?) A few pounds of smooth river rocks will do just as well.
The lead weights are for tying to the end of the twine.
The leftover steel would be something like some steel leftover from forging a tool or something. Selling a six ounce lump of leftover steel for 2 silver when a forged steel hammer- Waitaminute... I'm a freaking Ranger! I don't need that chunk of steel! I'd have a nice heavy camp knife on my belt for that!
For that matter, if I'm a pony, I don't even need the knife. I can strike the flint against my horseshoe!
The leatherworking, skinning and metalworking (if the pole is metal and not wooden and thus easily breakable) stuff is a bit dubious, you'd have to invest skills in that specifically to pull off what you just listed. Just because you can kill something with a bow doesn't mean you can forage it's corpse and properly process its hide into leather, and then sew the leather into useable equipment. The metalworking stuff requires actual metalworking equipment (a forge, anvil, coals to burn the fires etc...), for which you'd probably need either a commissioned blacksmith or blacksmith shop access.
As for the marbles, I doubt they're heavy enough to trigger weight-sensitive traps meant for humanoids. Otherwise bugs and rats and other vermin could easily trigger them and make them obvious to any dungeon dweller.
And yes, I would be investing a bunch of points in crafting. Woodcarving, skinning, leatherworking, fletching, tailoring, and... whatever the heck skill is involved in rope making. I don't know about you, but I would assume my ranger should start with such skills. It's a ranger, not a fighter. My character has to survive in the wilderness. That's why he/she would have a bunch of points in survival skills. Ten foot poles are made of wood. I'm sure you can get metal ones, but those would be really heavy. It wouldn't be hard to make a ten foot pole from a good tree branch.
Goblins would probably know where all the traps are if they live in the dungeon. Oh, look at that. Marbles are shiny and pretty, and they fit perfectly in a goblin's or kobold's hand. I'm a bit more clever than I let on. Also, yay! I didn't think anyone would know where that was from without the link. I wasn't sure anyone would remember it even with the link.
Other than the journal and the lead weights, everything that goes in the purchased list is listed in the players handbook. I just like the journal because it adds a bit of spice to my character for roleplay. Also, I like to take notes on the campaign from my character's perspective and read the campaign back to everyone at the end of the campaign. It's hilarious, and the others will love you for it.
Since today's comment-story-theme seems to be simple plans working better than complex ones, I actually have a story this time. In the first mission of a new campaign, my party was supposed to be catching some bandits that were robbing a rancher. We staked it out all night, and when they came, I tried to sneak up on them. The others were just waiting in the rancher's barn, and after a good five rounds of me failing to hit or make noise, I eventually do both. After that, we gave up trying to be stealthy, and the rest of the party charged out so we could kick the crap out of the bandits. We almost would have gotten them both to surrender if the knight hadn't gotten a lucky crit and decapitated one. Still, we got one to surrender.
Corpses were actually a bonus, if I remember the scene in question.
Xykon sent enough "hobgoblin wave" attacks against the enemy stronghold that their corpses eventually made a _ramp_ that let the rest reach the top of the battlements.
Xykon is pretty much poster-critter for "For the Evulz".
That gets very expensive, in 3.x/pathfinder. Some of the older versions of Animate Dead may have been free, but the more recent ones are about 50 gp per undead if memory serves.
There's a reason we're not _too_ worried about the evil lich-priest in our campaign making a pop-up army from the corpses of all of the goblin and hobgoblin troops from the war.
In OUR campaign, we don't exactly have that assurance. Our Big Bad lich has created bombs that generate a purple smoke that affects the dead in...interesting ways.
Recently dead corpses? Humanoids that seemed to be made more of blood than flesh.
Recently dead rat thing? Turned into 3 smaller creatures from its appendages, like in Dead Rising.
I believed that this meant that it could only affect the recently dead, and so a bomb that went off in the catacombs would be "safe". Instead, we fought a large bone horror, a T-rex sized monster made up of a collection of bones that could eat mooks with its "head" and essentially run them through a meat grinder of a torso.
We are currently fighting a collection of kobold skeletons some tunnels, who are behaving fairly intelligently even without "living" supervision. And we saw (from a distance) that one of the zombie bombs blew up near a tavern that was hosting a drinking contest for most of the heroes and adventurers in town.
...So, yeah, we have lots of reasons to worry about what our lich can do.
Fell animate metamagic feat, anything killed by the spell automatically raises as undead the next round. Stack on with Arcane thesis and Metamagic school focus and you can have all the undead you want by lv 3
Unless the duration is measured in rounds, that's not something from Pathfinder, and I'd be surprised if it's in 3.x. Free long-term undead are game-breakingly unbalanced.
What sourcebook was this from and what were the constraints on it?
Its From Libris Mortis and it is for 3.5. It has to be applied to a spell that does HP damage it occupies a slot 3 levels higher than the base spell and it cant animate anything with more than twice your HD. Any undead this creates in excess of your control limit are uncontroled and hostile to everything.
Alright, step one, we need to go towards the enemy thief guild, act like turncoats, become double-agents, do a few missions for them, get in the guildmaster's good books, then, when he uses exclusively us as a bodyguards, we get him!
...OR...
We use a Rope Trick to hide the party along the path between his home and the outhouse, and just jump him.
We went with the latter. Six hours of planning, six seconds of execution.
They can get around that by having an in-building latrine ("gaderobe" might have been the word for that?). Which leads to the rather unpleasant option of breaking into the room it deposits waste into and climbing up the shaft (or letting fireball take point).
More conventionally, they'd use chamber pots. Casting Fire Trap on one could get interesting.
Despite popular belief l, swathed have never had a penalty to Intelligence or Wisdom so why do people think they are any worse than humans at recklessness?
Dwarf Fortress goes a long way towards that. This is an accurate example:
A dragon attacks your fort, spewing flames over your livestock pens. You quickly shuffle the survivors inside, and prepare to send your army agains the dragon. All of a sudden, your civilians start dieing of !!fire!! in and around your dining room, deep within the mountain fortress. What?
Well, one of the cows that were outside caught fire, and didn't die immediately. So, one of your milkers naturally started milking the !!cow!!. Soon thereafter, the !!milker!! became sad, because most of his !!clothes!! had turned to ash. To soothe his sorrows, he went to the food stockpile and had some rum. Then he died of the fire.
And that's not all. Now all his friends and relatives are sad, so they decide to go for a calming drink of !!rum!!... Soon enough, every dwarf who visits the !!food stockpile!! is dying of horrible burns.
Back in October, I played the D&D Encounters adventure "Council of Spiders". It was a Drow-centric campaign that split the player characters up into factions, encouraging us to complete specific quests for our faction and try to hinder the quests of the other factions while we were all working towards the same end goal. Because of the conflicting goals and lower trust between players, it was harder to coordinate things among people of different factions.
At one point, we had to infiltrate an extreme anti-priestess splinter group of the wizard faction. After a lot of debate and coaxing, we got our priestess to pretend to be a prisoner of our wizards. However, when we tried to get into the splinter group's headquarters with our "prisoner", the splinter group leader demanded that we punch the priestess in the face to show our loyalty to the wizard order. Not wanting the party to fall apart to infighting, the wizard did the only thing he could think of: call out "Change of plans!" and punch the leader in the face instead. It became our table's catchphrase for the entire campaign.
The party wizard played it well. I had several players who could not handle cooperative conflict at all. They could not comprehend that it wasn't necessary to make suicidal attacks on other party members when goals were thwarted by those others goals.
Well done! As long as none of the party members had any vested interest in this faction succeeding there will be no increase in drama due to party abuse AND he showed the priestess that she could trust him not to go out of his way to screw her over, even at minimal risk to himself.
For today's poll:
Scootaloo and Sweetie Bell's mark.
No Scootaloo/chiken jokes(there's been too many of them going around), and no blank flank jokes (I don't want another daimond/spoon here)
Scoot:a flaming wheel
Sweetie:a jewel like mic.
For Sweetie Belle, I'd say a Treble/Clef symbol to represent her musical talent.
Neither would bother worrying about traps when they're a flying brick and it's Leeroy Jenkins time.
I think the time we fed the final boss to a giant, flaming tarrasque is my best example of that one....
Also, the battle took place on the moon.
A pity, because it involved fire.
And of course doesn't point to what it is. :)
It's fine, next page I'll have a good story, assuming the page is about what I predict.
I'd view that episode as a social-and-skill-challenge puzzle adventure, more or less an open-ended opportunity to further their goals by schmoozing and impressing people.
And then the dice decide they hate them. And Fluttershy gets a Cutie-Mark Critical Failure (the mechanic I'd mentioned from one of the other pony RPG homebrews).
There might originally have been a subplot planned for them to detect and foil, but the "Darths and Droids" maxim applies ("Oh, I gave up on having a plot weeks ago. You guys have been great for my improvisational skills.").
At the end of the last campaign I was in (an all magic-users 3.5 campaign), the boss was this gigantic, ancient mind-flayer-type-thing. While we were trying to figure out the best way to go about trying to fight it, our wizard made an Arcana check of the room and discovered that the boss was giving off a magic field that caused illusions to become real. Naturally, the party immediately decided that the best course of action would be for our beguiler to conjure up a few illusions to take on the boss. We threw a few ideas around, but knowing our DM, we figured that most of the really powerful things we could think of - demons and the like - would probably be impossible to control if they became real, and the DM would just make them go after us. But then, I thought of something: what is the most powerful things we could make real-illusions of which we could control?
How about a bunch of level 18 magic users?
Yep, our beguiler made dozens of reallusory (real-illusory) copies of the entire party (a beguiler, a wizard, a sorcerer, a warmage, a bard, and a cleric), who proceeded to spam spell after spell at the boss. Each round, the beguiler (and his copies) would just make more copies, so by the second round there were hundreds of each of us. By the end of the third round, the battle was over.
Bwahahaha...
Well, it might be worth it for you, and I won't want this boss to be around, but I don't want to die, ok? Can you at least try to save me? Maybe if I create more copies they can work together to maintain this illusion and travel back in time to create the spell that allows illusions to become reality? Maybe this spell corrupts, and the boss is created in the first place? Maybe the only reason for the boss is to allow the clones you created a place to live, did you ever think of that?
Now, this is pure speculation, but people are smart and they find ways to survive. How many times has The Doctor killed off the last Dalek now? Your clones are now the Daleks, you created them and they're going to be unkillable from now on. Good luck with that!
I'm tired. I have no idea what I just said. Good night!
Alternatively, if they think they're real then they think they're the ones who won't vanish when the boss dies; crueller but still functional.
For the second one, I was under the assumption that they felt real, even though they knew they were created at that time. I guess it could work if they really thought they were the original, but that opens up a whole new flood of possibilities that I don't feel like getting into. If everyone thinks they are the original, then you're just as likely a copy as everyone else. Will you risk killing the boss in that scenario? It's a tough question.
Too bad any magical loot has the unfortunate tendency to catch fire as well...
For Pony Team Bravo, it would have to be the method used to break an enchantment on a door (the door was actually part of a bigger illusion). After a few failed attempts at lock-picking or magic-dispelling, my character opted for the next best thing: Charging into it, headfirst (endurance is his best stats). When that didn't work, we then improved on the plan, having my character be used as a battering ram. Then our gardener rolls a nat20, prompting him to throw me like Shining Armor throws his wife.
Another story would be how we dealt with one of the big bad's henchmares: Charging into her, headfirst, which actually worked at first, before she struck back.
The running gag has developed that our ranger <b>spots</b> traps, but I "<b>find</b>" them.
This, incidentally, is why I love playing characters with high Constitution scores. It's amazing how many challenges can be overcome/ignored with enough hp and a high Fort save.
Now, assuming the average for starting money in 3.5(15 gold), My character starts with the following gear:
Artisan's tools that my father passed down to me(Masterwork if I can get away with it); Free
Small steel mirror that belonged to my mother; Free
Bag of iron scraps the blacksmith was gonna throw out; Free
Two 10-foot poles I made myself; Free
Two 500-yard balls of strong twine I made; Free
Fifty feet of hempen rope I made; Free
Five torches I made from sturdy branches, rags, and sap; Free
Six leather belt pouches I made; Free
Tanned leather waterskin I made; Free
Backpack I made from tanned leather; Free
Twelve sacks made from leather; Free
Homemade ink; Free
Two flasks; 6 copper
Inkpen; 1 silver
Leather bound journal; 2 gold
A piece of flint I foraged, and a leftover chunk of steel from the blacksmith's shop; 2 silver
5lbs of two ounce lead weights; 1 silver
three bags of marbles; 2.5 silver
10 square yards of canvas; 1 gold
20 pieces of chalk; 2 silver
10 candles; 1 silver
Fishhook; 1 silver
Whetstone; 2 copper
Grappling hook; 1 gold
Rangers can make a lot of their own gear. This also allows for lots of MacGyvering.
Bonus points to anyone who gets the marbles reference.
Also, please note that I said setting traps off, not disarming them.
The smith would have a scrap-iron bucket, and that bucket's contents would get melted down whenever it got full.
For the stuff that was half rust, a well-off blacksmith would have a foundry to re-smelt it (another name for "rust" is "pure iron ore"). A not-well-off blacksmith would sell/barter it to someone who did have a foundry furnace set up.
The lead weights are for tying to the end of the twine.
The leftover steel would be something like some steel leftover from forging a tool or something. Selling a six ounce lump of leftover steel for 2 silver when a forged steel hammer- Waitaminute... I'm a freaking Ranger! I don't need that chunk of steel! I'd have a nice heavy camp knife on my belt for that!
For that matter, if I'm a pony, I don't even need the knife. I can strike the flint against my horseshoe!
As for the marbles, I doubt they're heavy enough to trigger weight-sensitive traps meant for humanoids. Otherwise bugs and rats and other vermin could easily trigger them and make them obvious to any dungeon dweller.
Leatherworking is not a particularly difficult skill to learn, nor is basic sewing. Skinning, foraging, and cooking are all survival skills. Tannin might not be available, but that's really a moot point since the human body can create its own weak acid to tan the hides with. The party may demand I purchase a second iron pot after they learn that I tan the hides in the cooking pot.
Goblins would probably know where all the traps are if they live in the dungeon. Oh, look at that. Marbles are shiny and pretty, and they fit perfectly in a goblin's or kobold's hand. I'm a bit more clever than I let on. Also, yay! I didn't think anyone would know where that was from without the link. I wasn't sure anyone would remember it even with the link.
Other than the journal and the lead weights, everything that goes in the purchased list is listed in the players handbook. I just like the journal because it adds a bit of spice to my character for roleplay. Also, I like to take notes on the campaign from my character's perspective and read the campaign back to everyone at the end of the campaign. It's hilarious, and the others will love you for it.
1) Hire NPC:s
2) Locate trapped area
3) NPC STAMPEDE!
4) PROFIT!!!
"Sacrificing minions: is there any problem it cannot solve?"
- Xykon the lich
"Too many minion corpses blocking the drains" too.
Xykon sent enough "hobgoblin wave" attacks against the enemy stronghold that their corpses eventually made a _ramp_ that let the rest reach the top of the battlements.
Xykon is pretty much poster-critter for "For the Evulz".
3.5 - have a high level necromancer in the party to raise the dead bodies.
There's a reason we're not _too_ worried about the evil lich-priest in our campaign making a pop-up army from the corpses of all of the goblin and hobgoblin troops from the war.
Recently dead corpses? Humanoids that seemed to be made more of blood than flesh.
Recently dead rat thing? Turned into 3 smaller creatures from its appendages, like in Dead Rising.
I believed that this meant that it could only affect the recently dead, and so a bomb that went off in the catacombs would be "safe". Instead, we fought a large bone horror, a T-rex sized monster made up of a collection of bones that could eat mooks with its "head" and essentially run them through a meat grinder of a torso.
We are currently fighting a collection of kobold skeletons some tunnels, who are behaving fairly intelligently even without "living" supervision. And we saw (from a distance) that one of the zombie bombs blew up near a tavern that was hosting a drinking contest for most of the heroes and adventurers in town.
...So, yeah, we have lots of reasons to worry about what our lich can do.
What sourcebook was this from and what were the constraints on it?
Also, was Dash's player really sleeping in the middle of a game?
...OR...
We use a Rope Trick to hide the party along the path between his home and the outhouse, and just jump him.
We went with the latter. Six hours of planning, six seconds of execution.
More conventionally, they'd use chamber pots. Casting Fire Trap on one could get interesting.
Sweetie - A mic over a record, as she's a singing DJ
Applebloom - Crossed wrench and screwdriver.
A dragon attacks your fort, spewing flames over your livestock pens. You quickly shuffle the survivors inside, and prepare to send your army agains the dragon. All of a sudden, your civilians start dieing of !!fire!! in and around your dining room, deep within the mountain fortress. What?
Well, one of the cows that were outside caught fire, and didn't die immediately. So, one of your milkers naturally started milking the !!cow!!. Soon thereafter, the !!milker!! became sad, because most of his !!clothes!! had turned to ash. To soothe his sorrows, he went to the food stockpile and had some rum. Then he died of the fire.
And that's not all. Now all his friends and relatives are sad, so they decide to go for a calming drink of !!rum!!... Soon enough, every dwarf who visits the !!food stockpile!! is dying of horrible burns.
At one point, we had to infiltrate an extreme anti-priestess splinter group of the wizard faction. After a lot of debate and coaxing, we got our priestess to pretend to be a prisoner of our wizards. However, when we tried to get into the splinter group's headquarters with our "prisoner", the splinter group leader demanded that we punch the priestess in the face to show our loyalty to the wizard order. Not wanting the party to fall apart to infighting, the wizard did the only thing he could think of: call out "Change of plans!" and punch the leader in the face instead. It became our table's catchphrase for the entire campaign.