Actually... The DM declared gunpowder is a 'lost technology' and no one has cannons in that sense.  I think everyone uses magic or psionics.

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EPSC: She's crazy, lazy and oh-so-lovable!


"The deific powers I emit will surely burn your retinas!!!"

EPSC's World of Art!
GHE Art Department

Man, I have a lot of humerous stories related to roleplaying...I've been playing with the same group for years now, and our first two GMs were crazy!
Although I had had experience with some basic edition DND and some 2nd edition DND (I found my aunt's basic DND edition box when I was around 9, and she sent me some 2nd edition books because she wanted to corrupt me more), I first started really gaming with 3rd edition, at a local game store. My first experience with this was in a starter group run by the gamestore's owner, based out of the 3rd edition starter box (the one with Lidda, Regdar, Tordek, etc.). I came into the game late, and ended up playing Regdar (mighty warrior!) in the last adventure from the box. We were supposed to clear out a dwarven complex that had been overrun. After several rooms, and numerous dead goblins, we came across a locked door. Neither of our rogues could pick the door, so we went back and picked up a goblin body and used it to batter down the door (I don't know why). A couple of doors later, we came across another locked door. Same situation, and we even used the same goblin. The goblin body by now is pretty trashed, but we decide to carry it around (actually, I decide to carry it around...who knows when a mashed up goblin body might be useful?). A little while later we open another door, into some sort of bedroom with several ghouls. The ghouls look at us and groan, "OOOOh, fresh meat!" at which point I chuck the goblin in and shut the door. We never went back to that room.

After that adventure, we started a real campaign. First mission: the Sunless Citadel (those of you who know what that is are probably wincing...although...MEEPO!). This campaign actually ate up almost two complete sets of adventurers. Our first run to it featured myself as an elven ranger (3rd edition, but still focusing on archery over swordplay), a dwarven fighter (also a drunk), a sorcerer named Garret (who had a ferret familiar and went by Garret the Ferret...he was evil, but we all loved his mother, an awesome sandwich maker), and a human priest. On our way to the citadel, we notice that it's getting pretty late, and decide to spend the night in an old abandoned farmhouse. As we head to the farmhouse (through thick grass), we see what seems to be two beedy red eyes glaring at us, from a short ways away. We all decide to shoot at it, and so the DM calls for initiative. I ended up being the only person to hit it, but did not manage to kill whatever I hit...it ran off, screaming. Our dwarven fighter (also a newbie) decides to chase after it by himself. By this point it's getting really late, and so there is no real light...but as a dwarf he can see in darkness. Unfortunatly, he has trouble seeing over the grass he starts running through, and gets jumped on two sides by a pair of twig blights (angry animated thornbushes, pretty much). In the surprise round, he almost dies, and so when it finally gets to his turn (after a few more nasty hits) he turns tail and runs. He gets back to the party, covered in slashes and nasty thorns, screaming about plant demons. We, knowing he's been secretly hitting the bottle, decide that he chased after whatever was running and ran into a couple of rose bushes or something. That night, we set watches, and for some reason he ends up with a watch all by himself. The DM rolls for random encounters...nothing on my watch, or the priest's watch...but when it gets to the fighter, he hears scritch...scritch...scritch at the wall. He wakes us up, and we investigate...but find nothing. Complaining about his inability to stay off the hootch, we go back to sleep. Still his watch, something starts at the door...scritch...scritch...scritch. He wakes us up again...and again, we find nothing. We tell him that UNLESS THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE, not to wake us up. After we go back to sleep, the DM tells him "You see shadows at the crack under the door. Something is right outside the room, moving." The fighter's response? "**** it. **** it and **** the party." So saying, he nods off to sleep, cradling his alcohol. The next morning we head outside. The sorcerer goes through the brush where the fighter was attacked and shouts "OH NO! IT'S THE MONSTERS!" and stabs his spear into a set of...rosebushes. During this, I track down what I shot and find a dead rabbit.
We finally make it to the Sunless Citadel. If you have read the Sunless Citadel, you know that there are two ways to climb down into the chasm: By a rope left by previous adventurers, or by a ladder carved into the cliff. I chose to go down first, but refused to use the rope. The human priest goes down second, via the rope, and passes me up. He goes out of my sight and gets mauled by a dire rat...I hear his screams suddenly cut off (critical hit, and one dead priest) and climb down faster. At this point, the dwarven fighter climbs down the rope and also passes me up. He gets attacked by the rat as well, but manages a couple of rounds with it. I get within viewing range of him in time to see the rat crit him, leaving us with a dead dwarf. I shout out to the sorcerer something like "MY GOD! THEY'RE ALL DEAD!" and start climbing up the rope (speed over safety, at this point...). The sorcerer, seeing the moving rope, decides that whatever killed us is climbing up the rope and cuts it. End of my first character, and most of the party. Gerret makes it back to town and starts up another group of people. My ranger in that group ends up being obsessed with rope and dies shortly after creation: the sorcerer hides my rope, and when I shout out "WHERE DID YOU PUT MY ROPE!" an ogre in the building we're investigating (we decided to avoid the Sunless Citadel) opens the door and crits me. 26 points of damage (yes, I still remember it...) to my first level ranger ends with one dead ranger in two dead pieces. The ogre then goes on a rampage and knocks the new dwarven priest into unconsciousness (and negative numbers), as well as the new dwarven fighter. The sorcerer gets in the killing blow, and the sorcerer tells the rest of the party (we had a couple of new players join) to head on, while he tends to the dying party members. The priest had previously insulted Garret, so Garret finishes the ogre's work by bashing the priest in the head with a mace. The fighter had tried to kill Garret's familiar (a practical joke, IIRC) so Garret poured acid down the fighter's throat. Oops...that wasn't a healing potion? Silly me!
After that adventure, we got ourselves a new sorcerer.

****
I have several more stories, involving different characters, and I'll write some of those later...

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Rawr

Sounds like everything went well on that adventure. A complete massacre of just about everyone

---

Scratchit: But he's a cripple!
Blackadder: He's not a cripple, Mrs Scratchit. Occasionally saying "Phew! My leg hurts!" when he remembers to wouldn't fool Baldrick!

I don't know if the following event was nearly as hilarious to my group, as it was to me (in that I was DMing at the time).

The group, consisting of a cleric, a dual wielding fighter, a pixie (don't ask), a wizard, and one bitchy psion, all of whom are ECL 1 are entering a long lost tomb in an effort to recover an artifact that will supposedly aid in thier new mission to hunt down an undead army, as well as to discover the fates of a previous expedition of priests and acolytes.  Much to their expectation, they are ambushed by a small squad of skeletons just inside the first main chamber, and they defeat them quite easily.  A little cocky from this early and quick victory, they get a little slack in the "don't-trust-anything-in-the-anciet-tomb" department, and upon finding the garments of the preists and acolytes they are looking for laid out quite neatly on the floor, they think nothing of it.

The first to pick up something was the cleric (something about paying honor to the fallen, and to the symbol of his faith, blah, blah, blah....), at which point all four of the clothing articles on the ground leap up and begin to attack the group (they're called 'Raiments'). The fighter quickly dispatches her target, the cleric meanwhile is in a wrestling match with his foe, and the poor wizard and psion are immediately engulfed and entangled by possessed garments. 

So envision if you will: An elderly wizard, and a beautiful psion, rolling around on the floor trying to pull robes off their heads so they can breathe, a middle aged cleric holding a dress shirt at bay whilst trying to hit with a mace, and the fighter standing by watching dumbfounded, mouth agape.   And this went on for several minutes.  Priceless

The group managed to survive though, and went on to have great adventures confroting all manner of undead creatures.  However, no one ever touched a piece of loose clothing again, without having a weapon in hand and back up at the ready.

But what of the pixie, you might ask?  Where was he during this horrible fray?  Well believe it or not, an ECL 1 pixie is a little, how you say, weak.  He was invisible and floating near the ceiling, waiting to see who would win. BWAHA!

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"Apparently getting your ass kicked is now part of a complete breakfast." - Roy Greenhilt, Order Of The Stick


- An Answerer of questions, and Questioner of answers.

My cousin once had a pixie attack our group (I forget the other enemies given how rememberable the pixie was).  She came out of invisability and disintergrated the group's sorcerer,  Sure it was scary fighting then (I remember that much) but in hindsight, there's nothing funnier than inviso-death of doom from above.

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EPSC: She's crazy, lazy and oh-so-lovable!


"The deific powers I emit will surely burn your retinas!!!"

EPSC's World of Art!
GHE Art Department

FireSpark:

The first to pick up something was the cleric (something about paying honor to the fallen, and to the symbol of his faith, blah, blah, blah....), at which point all four of the clothing articles on the ground leap up and begin to attack the group (they're called 'Raiments'). The fighter quickly dispatches her target, the cleric meanwhile is in a wrestling match with his foe, and the poor wizard and psion are immediately engulfed and entangled by possessed garments. 

So envision if you will: An elderly wizard, and a beautiful psion, rolling around on the floor trying to pull robes off their heads so they can breathe, a middle aged cleric holding a dress shirt at bay whilst trying to hit with a mace, and the fighter standing by watching dumbfounded, mouth agape.   And this went on for several minutes.  Priceless

The group managed to survive though, and went on to have great adventures confroting all manner of undead creatures.  However, no one ever touched a piece of loose clothing again, without having a weapon in hand and back up at the ready.

But what of the pixie, you might ask?  Where was he during this horrible fray?  Well believe it or not, an ECL 1 pixie is a little, how you say, weak.  He was invisible and floating near the ceiling, waiting to see who would win. BWAHA!

Very funny. I found it easy to envision a beautiful psion trying to pull her robes off

---

Scratchit: But he's a cripple!
Blackadder: He's not a cripple, Mrs Scratchit. Occasionally saying "Phew! My leg hurts!" when he remembers to wouldn't fool Baldrick!

FireSpark:

A

n ECL 1 pixie is a little, how you say, weak.  He was invisible and floating near the ceiling, waiting to see who would win. BWAHA!

Hehe I once played a faerie named Mab (yeah, after Queen Mab) Dread Necromancer in an evil campaign. She rode around on her fox familiar (yeah, I know she should have had a smaller familiar...but the DM was cool with it :D ) and kept her skeletal minion around mostly to get things off of tall shelves for her. At one point our party's anti-paladin (like a paladin, but evil...in case you couldn't figure that out...) threatened to shoot Mab down a hallway if Mab didn't agree to scout out the dungeon. I ended up scouting out the dungeon, and stole a good deal of loot (I carried the party's bag of holding, but secretly had my own...mine was faerie size, while the party bag was shrunk down for me). Later on, I had an even better chance at getting back at the Anti-paladin: we came across some giants who killed the anti-paladin and our fighter, and scared off the rest of us. The giants chased after our rogue, and I snuck back around to steal some items from the anti-paladin, who we then resurrected. After changing around the shape and image of his magic shield (one of the only magic items he had), I gave it to my skeleton to use. Later on, we attacked the giants' castle. By attack, I mean that we got near it, decided that it wasn't worth attacking, and the party sent me into the castle to steal stuff (my character ended up doing more thievery than spellcasting : ). I came back with some loot (kept a few pieces to myself, but split most of it) and claimed that I overheard the giants had sold some of the loot (especially the anti-paladin's shield) to some dwarves in the area. The DM thought the entire event was hillarious, and gave me extra experience for the trickery and roleplay. Piss of a chaotic evil 6 inch tall faerie, and see what you get!

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Rawr

Must be fun being an evil faerie; you can be naughty but cute all at the same time.

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Scratchit: But he's a cripple!
Blackadder: He's not a cripple, Mrs Scratchit. Occasionally saying "Phew! My leg hurts!" when he remembers to wouldn't fool Baldrick!

Lol yeah, it's a blast. I have two different groups of people I game with: some people I met at a local game store, and a group of people from my old school. The group from the game store is a group I've been playing with for several years now, practically every Saturday, whereas the group from school that I play with plays off and on, whenever we feel like getting together (and have some place to go...not a lot of room where I'm staying at, so we have to rely on someone with a house). The Saturday group sticks to dungeons and dragons, although our DM tends to shift. The way we have it set up, is that everyone has a character, and anyone who wants to run something can DM. We keep the same characters, and the same general world/setting. So far, we've gone through several different campaigns, ending around level 13 in each campaign (except the one I'm currently playing in now, which has actually gotten up to epic levels...I'm a 23 wizard now!). The other group I play with, I tend to DM at and I run different games. I mainly run GURPS (GURPS Ravenloft, actually), D20 BESM (setting based off of Shadowrun, but with more mind flayers...), and ran a DnD Ravenloft game until that party broke up (for hillarious reasons, which I will get to in a second).
We have the epic characters in our Saturday game, but they are in fact un-retired characters. We stopped playing them at level 17ish, and switched over to a new campaign when one of our players said he wanted to run a game as the only DM. In his campaign (which uses Middle Earth Role Playing System percentile rolls for crits and fumbles, but everything else is standard DnD) our party is a group of family members, with a twist: Each of us is adopted as orphins (though we didn't know this until a few sessions in...we had no idea why we weren't all the same species). Apparently, our old parents (and the parents who adopted us) belong to a society which is trying to bring back many of the gods. Apparently, most of the standard gods have been captured and imprisoned by something, and it is our job to free them. At the start of play, only a few gods (randomly selected) are free...by random chance, Olidimmara (sp?) was one of the free ones (he's kinda been the mascot god for most of our campaigns...at least two party members worship him, since we all tend to be chaotic). The DM let us be any race (as long as it has no ECL penalty) and any class (which actually means that we ended up with no healer...nobody set up a cleric as a character). I play a Hengeyokai (oriental shapechanger, with human form, animal form, and a hybrid form...I chose fox) Warlock, and we also have a human monk, human sorcerer, human bard, half-elven rogue, elven ranger, elven knight, and dwarven fighter. After setting up characters, we rolled randomly to determine age. My character ended up being the youngest character, with an age of 13. At the time of creation, I decided my character was going to be a humerous one, and decided that his warlock powers came from fey power rather than demonic influence.
Think of it...a half-human, half-fox kid with a charisma of 18 (warlock abilities are based off of charisma). On top of that, my first warlock power I chose was a bonus to bluff, which I already have max ranks in. Although I constantly get in trouble (I pull a lot of pranks, and almost never listen to any of my older siblings...especially the knight, because he's soooo boring!) I almost never get punished for it...I'm toooo cute! My character's oldest sister (the half-elven rogue) is often my partner in crime, as well as my main support.
On top of all the normal pranks I pull, I have a special task: make life for the sorcerer a living hell. The sorcerer believes himself to be awesomely powerful, and is super-egotistic. As such, I take every effort I can to take him down a notch. I just recently picked up the Animal Empathy warlock power (so the sorcerer almost never has ungnawed shoes when he wakes up in the morning...and often, I don't even have to do the gnawing! Thanks, rat friends!) and will soon be picking up flight and invisibility. Hehehe. I also have the charm power, so I can make one person an instant friend. The sorcerer never knows what's gonna hit him!


Now, as to my DnD Ravenloft campaign: some of my most favorite character fumbles have come from that game. A key note of Ravenloft, to any of you who have never played it, is that no one can detect good and evil. Paladins can only detect law and chaos. Now, our first party consisted of a paladin, a warlock, a rogue, and an evil ranger. The game starts with the paladin wandering into a fortified town stuck out in the middle of a goblin-filled forest. The ranger follows the paladin in. Both characters are new to the area, and neither has any real plans, so they both decide to head to the local inn. The local inn, not very large, only has one room left: the paladin sees the ranger and offers to share the room (nobody but the player's character and I knew that the ranger was evil...and I don't think the paladin ever found out). They pay the innkeeper, and the paladin heads outside to look around the area, see if there is anything he can do to help people out. As he wanders around outside, the PC rogue tries to pick his pocket, but fumbles. The paladin catches the rogue, stips him of weaponry, and then takes him into the inn to get him a good meal (poor rogue looks half-starved!) Shortly thereafter, goblins raid the town. The paladin and ranger have a good time killing goblins (turns out goblins are the ranger's favorite enemy) and the rogue spends a bit of time raiding the local police building (he saw that some goblins had attacked the jail, and figured he could take any loot the jail might have...he killed a couple of the goblins, and then knocked out a policeman from behind...the policeman never found out who it was, and just believed it to be a goblin...). Before he can crack open the safe, more goblins arrive and one of the policemen returns from unconsciousness. The policeman thanks the rogue, and the rogue scampers off, already planning a way to sneak into the jail later. During the fight, the paladin runs across a young man throwing fire at some goblins (the PC warlock is introduced) and saves him from a mob of the villagers looking to burn the guy for "demon magic." The paladin manages to save the man, but the party is forced to spend the night outside the town walls. The paladin and rogue take first watch, and the ranger and priest take second. The rogue wakes up, and starts to sneak into town: the ranger catches him doing so, and decides to help the rogue with the raid on the jail. The warlock offers to keep watch and (more importantly) keep silent for a cut of the profits. The rogue sneaks off, and breaks into the jail area, and makes off with a couple of masterwork daggers (confiscated from someone) and some gold. He splits the gold with the ranger, and gives one of the daggers to the warlock, and then the paladin catches him out and about. What makes me laugh about the entire adventure is that, when the paladin asks what the rogue's been up to, the rogue replies: "Well, I just snuck into town and broke into the jail cell, and removed a couple of hundred gold and this dagger (he forgot to mention the other dagger he had given to the warlock) from the vault and...Oh ****, you're a paladin."
The paladin took him into town and made him give back the gold and a dagger (the guards who had confiscated most of this were dead, and so nobody really had a good idea of what was in the cell) and all of the rest of his money as a fine. He then ratted on the ranger, who managed to bluff everyone that no, he wasn't a bad ranger and would NEVER steal from people. The rogue failed every bluff check he rolled for, the ranger passed every bluff check he tried for, and the town mayor and paladin succeeded on every sense motive check against the rogue, and failed against the ranger. This rogue had HORRIBLE luck on his rolls. He later fumbled a balance check when running across a bridge to kill the orc sawing on the bridge's rope supports, and tumbled into the water and died. To die, he had to fail his balance check (to stay on the bridge), his reflex roll (to catch the bridge supports), and then a swim check: He rolled less than five on all three of those.
Later on, the paladin and ranger got into a fight and the ranger bluffed some ogres into attacking the party...he told the ogres that the paladin simply loves killing ogres, and then managed to sneak away after the ogres decided to just bash everyone. The ranger and warlock made it out alive, nobody else did (at this point the warlock had flight, saw what was going on, and got the **** out of dodge).

---

Rawr

The rogue sounds a little bit like Castor in that neither have got very good luck.

Our group found a belt. Having done a Detect Magic spell on it we found that it had magical properties. Not knowing what it did our cleric (not the brightest bulb in the box) decided it would be a great idea to put it around my wizard. It wasn't the hair grow that so much annoyed him but more his suddenly appearing ample breasts and female reproductive organs. Unfortunately not knowing any transformation spells my wizard wasn't capable of turning himself back into...well, himself or even take an ironic revenge upon the cleric. However after it did occur to him to take the belt off and thankfully he became a guy again...that said I reckoned he made a pretty hot, nerd girl.

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Scratchit: But he's a cripple!
Blackadder: He's not a cripple, Mrs Scratchit. Occasionally saying "Phew! My leg hurts!" when he remembers to wouldn't fool Baldrick!

VkmSpouge:

The rogue sounds a little bit like Castor in that neither have got very good luck.

Our group found a belt. Having done a Detect Magic spell on it we found that it had magical properties. Not knowing what it did our cleric (not the brightest bulb in the box) decided it would be a great idea to put it around my wizard... my wizard wasn't capable of turning himself back into...well, himself or even take an ironic revenge upon the cleric...

I dunno, the cleric doesn't sound too dumb to me :D

---

Rawr

Trust me, she makes two short planks of wood look very thin.

---

Scratchit: But he's a cripple!
Blackadder: He's not a cripple, Mrs Scratchit. Occasionally saying "Phew! My leg hurts!" when he remembers to wouldn't fool Baldrick!

here is one of my best stories. if I had not rolled well I so would have died.

Okay so me (Menelanna the elven ranger/wizard, favored enemy drow) and my friend (Eblen the human druid) are trying to stop some drow from bring Naruel (god of undeath from Greyhawk) into Faruen. We need to find their base and get some crucial information from them. Well after beating the snot out of their Zhent allies, we find their base.

It is in a cave with a trap door in the floor. The druid summons a wind elemental. It goes down and finds a common room with 20 napping drow, a pen with 15 zombies, and behind a locked door office with all the info we need. There is NO WAY two 5th lvl players and our paladin henchman can kill all of them. So the druid hands me a potion of Spider Climb and a potion of invisbility. She then summons two fire elementals to go 'hug' to locked wooden door.

I give my friend a look of shock as I get what she wants me to do. After telling her that if I die I am blaming her, I gulp the potions. I crawl invisible down the shaft and into the common room. During this time she dumps a bunch of acid flasks, alchimist fire, and tanglefoot bags to keep the drow from coming up the shaft.

Well now all hell has broken lose as the drow panic trying to put out the fire that has started. I hang onto the wall until the leader comes out and pours water on the door killing the elementals, but not putting out the fire. He then opens the door, and jumps in the room. My cue to get inside. While he pours more water on the fire in his room, I roll a natural 20, hope down from the ceiling clear off his desk and get back on the roof. What I picked up included a box with all our info, a map which marked all their hideouts and other useful infor, and a bunch of nice spells for me to add to my spellbook.

He opens the door again, and I high tail it out of there! As I go up the shaft I hear his scream as he sees his empty desk. Once out I find that my druid friend has taken off. I run off, find her, and we do not stop running until we are miles away and back to the city we had previously stayed in.

Let me also not that by the time I got out of there, I only had 1 minute of invisbility left. If I had be found...well I would be playing as a new character now. That was one fun, crazy night. But I made the druid take the next suicide mission...

That was a very well thought out plan and well carried out

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Scratchit: But he's a cripple!
Blackadder: He's not a cripple, Mrs Scratchit. Occasionally saying "Phew! My leg hurts!" when he remembers to wouldn't fool Baldrick!