Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Other TTRPGs

[Totenkindly]

So we're playing through the packaged book "The Slumbering Tsar" (Frog God Games) after leveling up to 6 in Pathfinder in another game package. My Oracle/Pally is level 9 right now and I spent the last week realizing we were stuck fighting a lich, 21 zombies, a few wights, and a handful of vampire spawn. (The only thing worried me was the lich, the others are just falchion-fodder for me with a Holy-affixed sword and smite/power attack, etc.) But our group only has four people, none of them wizards or sorcerers.

We were there helping a group of dwarves we found searching for the long-lost body of their king, who had disappeared centuries before. They've been under nightly attacks by skeleton swarms that have slowly whittled their numbers from 30 to 9, and since we helped them the prior night, they had dropped to 6. Well, after a few waves the final night, we realized it was driven by a lich (our investigator has able to perceive him watching the proceedings out in the sand, she's stellar with perception and we knew SOMETHING was guiding this).

I went into the session expecting this would be Suun's final hurrah. She's pretty badass, but has no mitigation for failed saves against lich permanent paralysis and I know none of the others can take on the lich. The group wanted to try to get the dwarves to flee, but I doubted that would work despite them only have six left -- the raising of their dead brothers would inflame them and they'd die fighting most likely. And Suun wouldn't be about to abandon them. (Also, fleeing into the darkness of the wastes with an army of zombies, clusters of wights, and a lich and maybe running into more stuff before we can escape would just get us wiped too.) So I was like, "Okay, if the dwarves fight, Suun will fight and die with them." And we got committed to this fight, because the dwarves did exactly what I thought they would. In character, too, Suun almost died at 2nd level for not backing down trying to free a cursed paladin from his curse; she always listens to the voices of her gods in her mind and trusts they will see her through, if her cause is just.

Anyway, we found this gem recently in-game that allows you to summon a large air elemental when you break it. I thought it was rather weak, but I didn't understand the whirlwind power... but we gave it to the newish player running our former-NPC bard to use as a "shit hits the fan" last resort... and he knew exactly what to do with it. He named it Hoover and sent it through the peons to suck them all up into the whirlwind. It is perfect for immobilizing and slowly damaging low-level mobs. It even grabbed some of the wights and vampire spawn. All the dwarves survived the zombie assault and we had it down to the lich -- and then the bard dropped the elemental on the lich and moved it with him to create a concealment condition on the lich that made it hard for him to concentrate on spells and/or target people.... and we all swarmed him. Suun tossed a smite on him and did a full-out charge hasted across the battlefield. it got one good round of physical attacks on her (3 attacks)... and rolled a 1 on the roll to touch her potentially causing paralysis, so she didn't have a save to make. (At her level and charisma, Suun has + 14's in all her saves... but I am guessing the paralysis DC would have been in the low/mid 20's.) The dwarves who weren't feared and other party members mobbed the lich, and Suun finished him off. (She's a terror against evil creatures, when hasted, Keen feat on her falchion, power attack, and Smite mode. With all of those boosts, if she pulls off a crit and has good damage rolls, I think my peak blow was 92 damage. Without the buffs and smite and no crit, her normal range is about 25 dmg per hit.)

I think the GM might have misplayed him slightly because he didn't realize how atrocious the air elemental would be, but I don't have the lich's stats.

This ended up being the exact ideal use for that air elemental -- lots of low level creatures you need to negate quickly, and you need some kind of "annoyance" interference to hinder a bad enemy's strategy. As a pure monster, it can't really stand up to hits from multiple mid-level creatures.

 

[Totenkindly]

Was kind of happy BOTH of my games avoided a TPK this week. One is the ongoing 5e campaign involving chaos magic, the other is the mentioned Pathfinder game with my 10th level pally I've been running since 2015 or something crazy.

--- 5e, "Eldritch Horror"

For the 5e game, this was our third and final encounter with an "eldritch horror" style creature that had escaped its centuries old confinement below the city and laid waste to the area, killing all of the Keepers (the folks imprisoning it) one by one aside from a few. Our first encounter, we encountered the beast coming after the final three keepers (and they need five to do the chants) in its prison chamber. After almost killing our group and a suspicious member stealing the ritual book the keepers needed to confine it, the monster grabbed one of the keepers and disappeared. We were told it would find a place to hide to absorb the life energy of the keeper it stole, then come back to kill the others, and we no longer had the book -- so the remainder of our team tracked it to a network of watery tunnels outside of town and finally tracked it to its location, where we somehow again managed to survive the encounter, retrieve the book, and verify the thief had been eaten by the creature. We took the book back where only one Keeper remained (the other had fled and would no doubt be tracked down and eaten by the monster), plus three underlings he was training to become Keepers, and prepared for the monsters return.

The GM misgauged the difficulty of keeping the monster contained, plus rolled really badly repeatedly for the three underlings, so what was supposed to be one round of fighting the beast and one round to contain it instead became five rounds of fighting and 2-3 rounds to contain it, with one actual character death, 1-2 players unconscious, and the last two PCs almost out of resources (spells, class abilities, etc.) and only a round or two from death as well. But we finally pulled it off.

(The permanent PC death, when we searched her body, we discovered tattoos and materials clarifying that she actually served the chaos lords and had been lying to us about her origin -- so good riddance!)

--- Pathfinder, Giant Mother Spider

For the Pathfinder game, this week was the second part of an ongoing fight against a huge spider we discovered in a pit (or, rather, an underground temple with a hole in the ceiling of the cavern) that was just insanely hard. My paladin is the main DPS and we don't have a mage / hardcore spellcaster. (It's a paladin, a monk, a bard, and an investigator -- along with a war cleric NPC we rescued at one point.) My pally excels at fighting evil creatures (with all the smite abilities, etc) but fades to merely decent normal DPS against regular creatures... and the spider wasn't evil, it's just a huge magical beast. No one could hit the things (it had an AC of 31, and even being the best fighter in the group, I only had a +17/+14/+11 or something ridiculous (which is normally enough to crush most encounters) when hasted, so I had to roll pretty high to hit at all. The monster also had 2 claw attacks and a bite attack at +25, so that means even with a 29 AC I was getting hit on a 4 or higher on d20, and the bite attack injected a poison with a DC 26 that would have caused STR damage for six rounds once it affects you. I took a full round of hits against it down in the cavern and even saving against the poison I took 40+ damage (out of about 120 hps) in that one round.

We all managed to get out of the hole and buff up a bit more on the surface of the desert -- but the spider was pissed off enough to chase us outside, pinning down half the group although the investigator and I were flying. I kind of resigned myself to having to go toe to toe with this thing and intercepting all the damage I could so my friends could live, dying bravely if needed because no one else could hit it and even the lightning blasts from the investigator seemed to be absorbed by the creature's hide.

The investigator had turned herself into a small air elemental and proceeded to do the only thing she could -- she parked herself on the spider's head and the ground to stir up debris, offering 20% concealment against all of its attacks. The monk had been tanking it but taking substantial damage, and had trouble hitting it. I did one flyby and tried to knock it back in the pit -- it was a crit but I just couldn't move the thing, it was so large and dexterous -- and the attack of opportunity failed due to concealment. ROFL.

next round I swooped in to flank, trading blows, using what swift actions I could (most of my pally spells that buff my damage for a single round), laying on hands as i could to remove partial damage, and then just went toe to toe with it... it's three attacks against mine.

The first round the spider went after me, it somehow rolled a 1 on the bite (missing), and while both claws hit me, the DM rolled under the 20% so concealment made the attacks miss. It was incredible that I did not get hit that round. I think the next round I got hit three times but made my poison save with some buffer. I missed a few attacks, but also got 2 crits + a few regular attacks in and the spider actually finally died.

I think it was the scariest moment of my pally career (aside from a level 2 scare), even more so than the lich, I mentioned earlier; but there wasn't much to be done. We were not equipped for this fight, but my friends would have died and I would die protecting them so they could escape. I then used Lay on Hands (and the investigator used Lesser Restorations) to repair the monk's STR.

Usually we pick our fights better but this one kind of surprised us.

We went back down in the cavern and realized it was protecting hundreds of eggs that looked like they would hatch in a few weeks. After collecting what treasure we could find (which really wasn't worth the fight), we took care of that problem with fire. But i guess the XP was pretty good.

 

[Totenkindly]

As counter-balance, a pally can rock pretty hard if it's a battle against actual evil.

A few weeks back, we found a barrow and explored it to the final chamber. The rest of the party took out the various monsters we encountered along the way, but in the last chamber there were about 10 wights, 2 zombie dogs, and a barrow wight all glaring at us.

The rest of the group was like, "oh shit," and Suun was just like the equivalent of, "here, hold my beer." She took out her holy flail and summoned her divine bond spirit into it to make it a Flail of Disruption (undead have to make a save to avoid just disintegrating), then stepped forward into the room by herself while calling out a challenge to all the evil creatures in the room.

it was like a Sam Raimi movie. They all saw her as fresh meat, and she was immediately swarmed by all the wights and zombies so that all nine squares around her were filled, while the rest of the party was like holy f*ck, is she nuts? But Suun had enough game experience, she knew what she was looking at and that they weren't really going to harm her much, if at all.

The first wight she hit with her flail exploded into dust and then she took out another one, while none of the wights could hit her despite their multiple attacks.

The rest of the group was like, "okay, let's help!" and they stepped in to attack the creatures from behind, although I think only one more died.

On the next round, Suun lifts her flail in the air and cries out, "BY THE POWER OF DAE!" (her main god) and brings it down, channeling a large AoE blast of positive energy. The entire frigging room (30' radius) explodes in a blaze of holy light and literally over half of the remaining wights drop screaming as the light tears through them. I think there were only about 3-4 things left aside from the barrow wight at that point.

The final round, she leaves the few remaining critters for the group to mop up and charges across the room at the barrow wight, calling down a smite and critting the monster. it makes its save against disintegrating but she does so much damage to it from the smite that it just keels over, laid to rest at last.

Total of 2.5 rounds, room finished. The whole encounter was perfectly tuned to a mid-level pally. Pretty glorious.


Edit: .... oh I forgot I took the actual notes. Here is what I have from my notes that night:

Curly again returns to the narrow corridor to explore, this time with a rope tied around him so we can pull him back if there’s a further issue. There’s a long pause as he disappears into the dark. About a minute later, feel a strong frantic tug on the rope so we start hauling him back.

Curly is okay when he comes into view, but he’s rattled. His word tumble out: There are MANY zombie things in a room ahead, along with one who looks like a king zombie or worse, and then there were two big zombie dogs each with two heads.

After getting a better description, Suun suggests some of the creatures are probably wights, at the least. She looks over at Argos, who looks back at her silently, then both nod as he starts sharpening his blade and she starts calling a divine spirit into her flail.

“Uh, what are you doing –”

“Ridding this place of evil infesting it,” says Suun, and then enters the passage. The group follows her uncertainly.

"Are you sure --?"

"We're sure," nods Argos, following her into the passage.

“Begone from this sacred place, spawn of evil!” cries Suun as she steps out into the roughly hewn dirt room and holds her glowing flail high. “YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!”

Yup, there are eight wights, two dogs, and a king.

As Suun steps forward, three wights immediately charge her, while the remainder swarm around her so she is completely surrounded. She shouts and whirls the flail around, smacking three of them and one of them explodes into dust that silently settles to the ground, which only seems to madden the rest. One of the dogs darts into the opening, trying to trip her up but failing. She briefly feels the barrow wight try to reach into her mind but she smirks and easily shrugs off his control.

The others all look at each other in shock, then charge into the back of the wight pack, the monk tripping one of them to the ground. Argos takes a hit but it’s not bad.

“BY THE POWER OF DAE!” cries Suun, bringing down the blazing flail. A concussion shocks the room as a brilliant light floods every corner of the chamber. Wights scream, throwing up their limbs, to no avail, and a number of them drop. Even the barrow wight king staggers back from the fierce light. The other two-headed zombie dog charges the paladin but misses. As the light fades, there are only three wights, both dogs, and the barrow wight still standing.

Argos feels the barrow wight try to creep into his own mind but shrugs it off. Sandy the dwarf monk flails at one of the remaining wights, tripping it and then stomping him into the ground until it stops moving.

Ruchka sends a blast of lightning through the room while the bard fires his bow and drops another wight.

The last wight steps but misses Argos. Suun points with her flail, calls down a smite from her gods at the and charges across the room, smacking him with the blazing weapon. He topples to the dirt as the rest of the group finishes off the remaining creatures.

 

[The Cat]

D&D circles are going nuts. I always knew it was going to come to this, when I started hearing them talk about making the hobby more likevideo games and msome of us started crying out in the wilderness, and most of the content creators who got free stuff on the reg refused to see it as a butter up...no the big corporation would never...and all the grognards said: "You'll see..."
Do you see?

Do you see?

Do you see?

You will...

​

 

[The Cat]

ugh first they ruined video games, now they're coming for our ttrpg and wargames. I wish we had more neon in dystopia. Ronnie Cox in the 80's and 90's would have had so much work playing ceos if they still made movies that criticized corporations...without having more corporations being the solution....​

 

[The Cat]

 

[Totenkindly]

Yeah, don't ask me WTF is us with Hasbro WOTC right now. Absolute bullshit.

Recent history, which I don't know whether this is playing into their recent OGL announcement:

During the Hasbro earnings call in February 2020, chief executive officer Brian D. Goldner reported that Wizards of the Coast was delivering positive results and that the company planned to double WotC's revenues between 2018 and 2023.[117] He also reported that Magic: The Gathering's revenues increased over 30%, Magic: The Gathering Arena had a strong first year and Dungeons & Dragons revenues grew for the seventh straight year.[117][118] Also in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual play for Dungeons & Dragons increased 86%.[119]

On June 1, 2020, Wizards released a statement in support of their black fans, employees, and community members after the murder of George Floyd.[120][121] This provoked a backlash as multiple open letters were published criticizing the company for their treatment of people of color and documenting many issues black and brown community members have taken with the company's actions.[120][122][123] The New York Times, Polygon, and Kotaku reported that following this criticism Wizards banned seven Magic: The Gathering cards from tournament sanctioned play which were deemed racially offensive.[124][121][125] The D&D team then announced that it would be making changes to portions of its 5th edition product line that fans had called out for being insensitive (including racist portrayals of a people known as the Vistani, an in-fiction analog for the Romani people) and races characterized as monstrous and evil, such as orcs and drow.[126][127][128] The company also announced plans to be make changes to character creation to broaden the permissible spectrum of character types and added a sensitivity disclaimer to some legacy products that feature cultures inspired by Asia, Mesoamerica, and the Middle East.[129][130][131] The Washington Post reported that the tabletop community has widely approved these changes,[132] although Wired criticized some of the change attempts as often feeling "like lip service".[133]

During the 2021 Investor Event, Hasbro announced a company reorganization with three divisions: Consumer Products, Entertainment, and Wizards & Digital.[4][5] The announcement was paired with a rebrand including a new logo and refreshed website for Wizards of the Coast.[134][135] Wizards opened a new development video game studio in 2021; the first project being a high-budget game based on the G.I. Joe franchise.[136][137] In 2022, Chris Cocks became the CEO of Hasbro; Cynthia Williams replaced him as president of Wizards & Digital.[138][139] In June 2022, Hasbro defeated a board challenge from activist investor Alta Fox Capital Management LLC.[140][141] The hedge fund company, which owns a 2.5% stake of Hasbro, had been pushing to spin out Wizards of the Coast[142][143] "into its own company in an attempt to create what they saw was more value by making a second publicly traded company with a more profitable line of business".[144] In July 2022, Wizards of the Coast announced that they were establishing a new video game studio called Skeleton Key which will focus on AAA games; Christian Dailey, formally of BioWare, will be head of the studio.[145][146]

Hasbro also announced that Wizards would acquire the D&D Beyond digital toolset and game companion from Fandom.[147][148] The official transfer to Wizards occurred in May 2022.[149][150] At the Hasbro Investor Event in October 2022, it was announced that Dan Rawson, former COO of Microsoft Dynamics 365, was appointed to the newly created position of Senior Vice President for the Dungeons & Dragons brand; Rawson will act as the new head of the franchise.[151][152] Dicebreaker highlighted that Rawson's role is "part of Wizards' plans to apply more resources to the digital side of D&D" following the purchase of D&D Beyond by Hasbro earlier in the year.[153]

In January 2023, Wizards cancelled at least five unnamed video game projects;[154][155][156] "the company also cancelled an internal project code-named Jabberwocky and two other external games that were early in development".[154][157] Jason Schreier, Bloomberg News, highlighted that while fewer than 15 people are slated to lose their jobs at Wizards, "the reorganization will land hard for several independent studios such as Boston-based OtherSide Entertainment and Bellevue, Washington-based Hidden Path Entertainment, both of which were working on games for Wizards of the Coast".[154][157]

It feels like a power play meant to eat profits from other companies and/or ruin them who have built businesses based on the OGL established previously. Those who made the original open source agreement have been actually stating there was never any assumption WOTC would try to renege on the OGL that had been established. D&D 5e has done remarkably well and brought in a lot of new beginner players to TTRPG, so I don't know whether they are now recognizing it as a viable revenue stream and determined that allowing people to capitalize on 3.5 was a bad idea. I'm thinking there will be a lot of lawsuits flying around. But it's also looking shitty to at least some of the player base, especially those still involved in derivatives of 3.5 games.

EDIT: I have a friend (older than me) who was working in the game industry all this time as an artist and creator (some of their work was in the early 1st edition AD&D stuff I own), and she had the following to say:

Positive thoughts on the Open Game License (OGL): I’ve yet to see an IP attorney say Hasbro can shut down the original OGL.

Metaphor: For 22 years has allowed the public to use a defined path through their property, including allowing use of artistic presentation (stat names, armor class , common monsters) and even trade dress for page layouts and done so without Challenge or charging a fee. They have, in land use terms, created and approved the unrestricted use of a public access way. Having established that, they cannot reasonably deny that access.

Bait and Switch laws will also apply.

Yeah, basically I was thinking it was like copyright defending. If you do not establish a defense of your copyright for a prolonged period of time (which 22 years certainly falls into) so that people have been using it all for that long without any complaint on your part, typically it's not really given a lot of credence to suddenly claim infringement. Here, people were actually given overt permission to use for over a score of years, everything spelled out. You can't really go back on it now, legally.

But I guess we'll see. One thing is for sure, this is really creating a lot of ill will towards WOTC and Habro and the D&D property.

 

[Totenkindly]

In other news, our 5e campaign wrapped up two months back. I have to say, Druids in 5e are particularly powerful. Even playing a Moon Druid (where a lot of my resources were wrapped up in shapechange and being restricted since I couldn't cast while in animal form and tanking/attacking), the spells I had were typically gamechangers in terms of particular encounters. I was kind of shocked at how viable druids are and even potentially dominating up through at least level 12... especially if you are outside.

We are still playing our long-term Pathfinder 1 campaign and just dinged level 12 on Friday night, having taken a break from the Tsar 3rd party campaign to veer into a buffed up The Grey Citadel campaign. My pally is devastating against evil/undead/interplanar beings and can do potentially 200 points of damage on a full-round attack with crits (which she is designed to do), I just ended up one-shotting two monsters unexpectedly. However, against non-evil creatures, i do a lot less... and in fact almost died a few sessions again because I got ganked for over 110hps in one round by two rogue types -- so a lesson to me, to NOT let myself get flanked by things that can do precision damage. I was getting a little too cocky and almost paid for it.

This level, I just got Aura of Justice, so I can burn two uses of Smite to give everyone in my party Smite for one minute. They are gonna love this!

 

[The Cat]

WOTC's corpo greed united the gaming community. May WOTC be fucked to failure as a company as a lesson to others if they don't pull their head out of their ass and remember what side their bread is buttered on.​

 

[The Cat]

Get fucked Corpo execs at WOTC.
May your hopes be met with a twilight zone level of irony.
​

 

[Totenkindly]

That was such a stupid fucking move.

They should have also had an action plan in case the news leaked early, with their resources. Now, even if they abandon the plan, it's a gaff of Musk-ian proportion and looks extremely clumsy with a backtrack, plus it has shaken faith and no one will trust them in the future. Just dumb, dumb, dumb.

Which is really too bad. They did really do an amazing job with 5e, as an entry level game system, much better than the 4e approach. They've been stirring up controversy lately with feeling political over monster content and how DnD 6 would be handled, and now there is this. Mercer's comment should also unsettle them a bit, he talked around it but it doesn't sound necessarily like they will just stick with DnD if it affects the value of Critical Role.

That being said, they still do have a stranglehold and are the default, including with dice. (Kind of like Microsoft that got to dictate a lot because they were dominant.) Moving to bizarre dice isn't necessarily a great idea either except for niche players.

 

[The Cat]

That was such a stupid fucking move.

They should have also had an action plan in case the news leaked early, with their resources. Now, even if they abandon the plan, it's a gaff of Musk-ian proportion and looks extremely clumsy with a backtrack, plus it has shaken faith and no one will trust them in the future. Just dumb, dumb, dumb.

Which is really too bad. They did really do an amazing job with 5e, as an entry level game system, much better than the 4e approach. They've been stirring up controversy lately with feeling political over monster content and how DnD 6 would be handled, and now there is this. Mercer's comment should also unsettle them a bit, he talked around it but it doesn't sound necessarily like they will just stick with DnD if it affects the value of Critical Role.

That being said, they still do have a stranglehold and are the default, including with dice. (Kind of like Microsoft that got to dictate a lot because they were dominant.) Moving to bizarre dice isn't necessarily a great idea either except for niche players.

Mercer has been slowly replacing D&D stuff and terminology with his own over the course of campaign 2 and Campaign three has it it poised to obliterate the D&D brand named Dieties. A lot of fans are expecting them to go back to Pathfinder, or come up with their own system. They've been working a lot with Dimension 20 who uses other systems. WOTC Execs leaned NOTHING from the monetization gaffe of 4th edition; and worse they did it with the same corpo exectutive sleaze that literally ruined the gaming industry, they literally didnt seem to think that their consumer base would let Tabletop go as easy as "the gamers" let go of video games. Mother Fuckers brought Grognards and 5e players together like Gondor and Rohan. The BBEG of everyone's campaign just became the WOTC executives

 

[The Cat]

Apparently WOTC execs are only listening to outcry in the form of cancellations to D&D beyond subscriptions, even if you cancel your subscription, you keep the content you've purchased, but there's a huge call for folks to cancel their D&D Beyond Subscriptions with #opendnd, and #dndbegone.​

 

[Maou]

I just got into DND (on my 3rd campaign) and its already being corrupted by the same bullshit that killed WoW and everything else like it. Always catering the the casual, and dumbing down everything to the point its just copy and paste, lifeless blobs and nothing means anything anymore. You can't just change the lore to make things less "offensive". That is just stupid. All races DON'T live the same amount of time. Some races mature faster than others. Why make everything age like a human? Its just stupid and takes away the interesting aspects of the game. Go woke, go broke.

Thankfully with DND you can make your own rules. I got a resin printer, and I make my own minis too. Fuck WotC, don't need them.

Have a model I made.

 

[The Cat]

cowards...
WOTC took away the subscription tab in D&D beyond to try to force people to stop cancelling their accounts.​

 

[The Cat]

A Last Alliance of men and elves has assembled at the roots of Mt Doom.
Cant believe they untied the grognards AND the critters.
Twitter, Twitch, Youtube, Discord, and Reddit....A battle of five Armies...​

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[Totenkindly]

Holy shit, Paizo.

I just heard about this from a YouTube vid, might be one of the same guys above.

As I was listening to it being read, I guess I am a total geek because I actually got really choked up and teary. Paizo, you're so fucking heroic and awesome.

No takebacks, fully committed, and totally doubling down on the idea of what an open gaming community actually means -- and basically saying they will bear the cost to make sure everyone will benefit.

paizo.com - Community / Paizo Blog

Wizards can just fuck off at this point.
They had their chance, then made it clear they were only in this for themselves.

 

[The Cat]

WOTC rolled a one all right.
​