SKT Episode 35: In Your Faaaaaace!

– The second session of the Fireshear ~~ice~~ frost giant fight and where magic items get upgraded!

Starring Avengers Anonymoose:

Matt as Clay the Fighter – Michael Jackson’s Earth Song!
Jake as Abelas the Wizard – Oh no, he’s going to cast some druidic shit!
Kraj as Celdar the Rogue – Cunts.
Mike as Regulus the Artificer – Benjamin, we’re coming!
Adam as Joffrey the Druid – My ring is vibrating!
With:
Gary as the DM (eventually) – It is never too early for a Jake’s mum joke!

Author’s Note: It’s been so long now that the reason for the title has been forgotten; the previous episode was called The Ice Giants Cometh. Hopefully that now makes it funny!

Also, I threw up up halfway checking the web posting of this. Make of that what you will.

That Which Must Be Repeated: This campaign contains hard encounters. It is often not required for all of you to kill all of them in order to succeed!

Season Recap: Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have saved the fortified village of Nightstone from goblins following an attack by Cloud Giants from a floating castle (that went east).

– The characters travelled to Triboar and on the way met a cloud giant called Zephyros who travels in a floating tower. He explained that the Ordning (which regulates giant society) is broken and the players are destined to fix it.

– They helped defend the town of Triboar from a fire giant attack and travelled to Everlund to bring word of the attack to the Harpers there. They were given access to the Harper’s teleportation network.

– They arrived at Goldenfields to find it under attack by Ogres, Bugbears and Goblins. Having fought off the attack they proceeded to seek allies against the giants and ended up (eventually) in Bryn Shander where they fought off a ice frost giant attack.

Pre-session Guff

<This is where Adam starts skimming and reads nothing of importance because he simply doesn’t have time to read the write ups>

The DM was having a pretty good day having done nearly all of his prep earlier and only having a quick note to write and a few lines of dialogue. About 45 minutes before the start he noticed a small error in Kraj’s magic weapons but one that could be easily corrected in a few minutes, leaving loads of time to spare.

Absolutely nothing could go wrong, right?

Kraj joined.

It immediately went wrong, obviously.

Fucking Kraj <sigh>

It turns out the DM’s microphone is not working on Discord. It took the DM (who has 35 years experience in IT) rather a lot of head scratching and 45 minutes to discover that under Security and Privacy settings, Microsoft had added a button called ‘Allow apps to access your microphone’ and this was set ‘off’. Seriously.

Yes, the Microsoft troubleshooter can’t troubleshoot something it doesn’t have access to. Now you might think hat having your troubleshooter check if it has access to something be part of the troubleshooting procedure… actually that that should be the very first thing that it checks, but Microsoft would disagree with you.

<sigh>

So at 19:01 and thus 31 minutes late, the DM finally gets into chat. Even Adam got there before him:

Jake> …Stellaris I’m on 807..
DM> <loud belch>
<silence>
Kraj> WEEEEEEEEEEEYYYY!
Jake> Oh my <heathen deity> did we just hear Gary?!
DM> Good evening everybody!
<cheers>
Matt> Right, I’ve got to shoot off now!

Hmm, upgrades.

DM> Before we go off and finish cleansing this area, and I have no idea how that’s going to turn out… I’m just going to go with the Matt Colville adage of ‘let your players sort out the problem, it’s not your job as DM’. Anyway, before that happens, let’s get to what I forgot to do last week. Harshnag says “There is a tent over there that I think you should look inside.”

The tent is more like a mini pavilion with purple and yellow stripes, about 20ft across and 10ft high. A sign just above the entrance flap displays a rearing, flaming stallion.

Regulus> Benjamin, we’re coming!
DM> Joffrey, you have the Ring of Demonic Horse Detection and you think you felt a very faint vibration on that finger.
Joffrey> My ring is vibrating!
DM> <sigh>. Okay, what do you want to do?
Regulus> I’m already at the tent!
Abelas> I’m just behind him!
DM> As you enter the tent, it is substantially larger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Abelas> Classic Benjamin!

And this is what happens when the DM doesn’t have time to write his exposition properly:

DM> The only thing in the tent is a sturdy looking bench and on it is a large, flat chest.
Matt> I had a girlfriend like that once!
Adam> I was going to make a joke about Jake’s mum but its too early.
DM> It is never too early for a Jake’s mum joke… its never too early for Jake’s mum! Bwahahahhahaaaa! Sorry! Not sorry…

It took a few seconds for everyone to regain composure and then we continued. The note invites them to put their magical items in the chest one at a time to enhance their abilities.

Regulus is reading the note and sees a small smudge at the bottom. Examination with the Eyes of Minute Seeing reveal it to be some very small print that can’t quite be read clearly but he can make out the words ‘unstable’, ‘time’ and ‘settle’. This is the DM’s get out of jail card in case he ballsed these things up and made them too powerful.

This is what the upgrades do:

Regulus – Utility Belt – This item gains Gnomish X-Ray Spectacles, Rocket Boots (Expeditious Retreat) and a deployable Micro Turret that mounts a light crossbow that fires on a bonus action.

Celdar – The Devil & The Debt – The Devil is now a +2 weapon and the wielder gains the Lucky feat (can basically re-roll an attack, save or check 3 times a day). The Debt is also now +2 and the wielder’s Con is set to 19.

Lucky is the subtle way of correcting Celdar’s deficiencies. The Con change is a bit more of a brute-force solution but we are heading into a part of the campaign where big AoEs may become prevalent and the DM doesn’t need to be planning around a sometimes-melee rogue that only has one HP more than the wizard. The wizard that has more AC and escape options.

Abelas – Circlet of Faetriss – Abelas gains +2 to Spell Attack and Save DC.

That’s by far the shortest description of any of the upgrades but it is quite powerful. It does not stack with any other effects of the same type, which frees up an attunement slot from his Wand of the War Mage. He might need that slot free for something later.

Abelas has gone from a spell save of fourteen to seventeen in two sessions. Farewell ‘Only fourteen?!’ troll, we will all remember you fondly 🙁

Joffrey – Hide of the Feral Guardian – Gains +1AC. When shape-shifted, Joffrey gains an additional +1 to damage and attack rolls (+2 total). Joffrey can now transform into a cave bear. Raawr!

Clay – Legana – Legana is now a +2 greatsword with a crit range of 19-20. The DM may regret that. The tremorsense may be extended to 60ft by touching the tip of the blade to the ground. Clay gains the ability to cast Stone Shape three times a day.

Elvira – Stormsong – Stormsong is now a +2 longbow and it gains the Thunderstrike ability:

Once per short or long rest, as an action, you can fire an arrow to a location you can see. Lightning strikes where the arrow lands causing a thunderous explosion and each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centred on that point must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 6d6 thunder damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

Anthems

The DM explains that if the players want their recently assigned anthems changed they must tell the DM why they want it changed (‘I don’t like it!’ is actually a perfectly fine reason) and must propose something which is A) an anthem, B) something that the DM likes and C) is appropriate to their character.

DM> So, purely as an examp…
Matt> Michael Jackson’s Earth Song!
DM> … purely.. eh… <sigh>
<mucho laughter>
DM> <resignedly> That is not a fucking anthem is it? It’s a fucking dirge.

To the DM an anthem means rock or metal or punk. Yes, I’m old and like proper music and now sound like my dad.

The example that the DM was about to give before being so rudely (and funnily) interrupted was that Jake may wish to change his anthem (Run to the Hills) because the lyrics are about the Native Americans getting raped and killed. Bat Out of Hell might be better, for example.

Have a think about it, I’ll be trying to incorporate the proper ones into something at some point. I’m looking at getting a Discord soundboard so we can have a clip of them play when you do something fabulous but tis a lot of work for something that will barely get used.

Lolz

You first tank boy!

Kraj, who only has an AC of 17, announced his new 75 hit point total and Mr 27AC complained that was more than he had <sigh>. For further context, even the ‘gimpy’ wizard has 20AC just from Bladesong.

Clay> That’s only one less than me!
Celdar> I’m going full meelee spec!
DM> <sigh>

Joffrey then finds out that Celdar has the same AC as he does and also complains that the rogue is now more tanky than the druid, conveniently forgetting the extra 120 hit points he gets from two Panic Snakes per short rest.

I don’t have a ‘roll eyes’ emoji but if I did, this is where it would go.

Harshnag asks if they are ready to go cause some trouble. They were fairly enthusiastic about it.

Mike made Jake jizz in his pants by mentioning that Hero Forge integration with Talespire was coming ‘soon’. i suspect Jake’s chances of getting a moderately decent graphics card just diminished even more given how much money he is about to spend on minis.

How Many?! How Low?!

Dasharra goes for a scout and reports that there are at least another 7 frost giants in the village area.

The setting is a bit awkward with visibility limited by the snow. This is to the players benefit because the DM doesn’t want 7 boulders being thrown at one unlucky player from 300ft away. Well, unless that player is Joffrey obviously, but there’s no way to guarantee that so… eh. The deputies (and Mike) manage to approach to within 30ft of the nearest giant before it all kicks off; roll initiative!

The DM explains that the opposing frost giants come with dire wolf companions which act as a single unit for initiative purposes. This is also a test anti-cheese for Regulus’ “can’t touch this!” combat tactics. There’s a longer explanation of the reasoning for this in post session guff to reduce the amount of stuff in the main write-up that Adam has to skim through without actually reading it.

The players mange to roll spectacularly low initiative scores, even Elvira only got a ten, so well done all for that. The DM congratulated Kraj on rolling a higher initiative than Clay, Abelas and Regulus combined.

Abelas> He has Lucky now so we should give him a Wand of Magic Missiles.
Regulus> Well he can’t hit with a bow, so…
DM> Celdar is going first.
Celdar> Woah!
DM> Where are you? I can’t see you on the map?
Abelas> <instantly> He’s next to Regulus.
<a slight pause occurs while everyone else tries to a) find Celdar and b) figure out how Jake managed it so fast>
Celdar> Oh yeah, next to Regoolas!
Abelas> I happened to be looking at him.
Celdar> He was like “I’m so jealous of that!”
<general laughter>
Abelas> In your dreams!
Regulus> Jealous of his dexterity…
Abelas> <laughing> You’ve got double my hit points but it’s fine, I’m just watching him from the corner thinking “I can deal with him…”
Regulus> Yeah, actually, you’re tanking this one. You have as many hit points as Elvira’s got!
Celdar> I’ve never seem Elvira actually get hit.
Regulus> Yeah, she did because I almost got her killed!
Celdar> <testily> Oh yes! That was when you left me on my own, yes!
DM> <sigh> Right, on with it, the wolves alert the frost giant to your presence.
Regulus> I look at the wolf and say “Snitches get stitches!”
Joffrey> How did you know its name was Stitches?
<group sigh>

Oh Kraj

The adventurers (and Jake) engage the first frost giant:

Celdar> I bonus action hide…
Regulus> Brilliant!
Abelas> That’s it Kraj!
<Kraj rolls>
Regulus> Oooh! Look at you wasting a 20!
Celdar> Twenty nine!
DM> <sigh> Yeah, you are hidden.
Regulus> Ooh, there are two wolves…
Celdar> I will shoot at the closest wolf…
Regulus> <incredulously> You’re going to shoot at a wolf?!
Joffrey> Can you leave a wolf for me please?
DM> You have a 138 hit point giant to take care of that does 50 damage a go and you’re attacking wolves?
Regulus> And also you’re getting your sneak attack bonus and you’re going to waste it on a wolf?
Celdar> I just wanted to be a dick! Ok, I’ll shoot the giant instead, if that’s ok?
Regulus> Are you mad?!
DM> Really?! You think THAT is the best target?!
Celdar> <sigh>

Eventually, Kraj shoots the giant for only 16 damage which caused some amusement for the rest of us and few comments along the lines of “Should have shot the wolf!”.

DM> Joffrey?
<16 seconds of silence>
Mike> Is he alive?
<9 seconds of silence>
Kraj> Has he broke his microphone?
<2 seconds of silence, Adam figures out where the mute button is>
Adam> Goddamnit!
<long, loud laughter>

Joffrey casts Dominate Beast on one of the Dire Wolves, or ‘Druidic shit’ as Abelas put it.

Joffrey> Can it make a wisdemic save please? Sixteen is the target.
<wait for it…>
Abelas> <smugly> Only sixteen?
Regulus> Weheey! You’ve waited for a year to say that.
Abelas> <laughing> I have waited for so long!
Joffrey> <scathingly> Yeah, mine didn’t have to be propped up!

Ooh, touché sir!

The Dire Wolf fails the save and is now under Joffrey’s command. We now have a break in the proceedings because the DM is not convinced that Joffrey can convince the CR1 Wolf to attack a CR8 Frost Giant. Joffrey disagrees.

The DM reluctantly relents, mainly because he hates to see high level spell slots wasted, and the wolf did ten damage to the giant.

Much to the amusement of everyone except the druid, the DM decides the giant is rather pissed off at Joffrey for having stolen his dog and he moves 40ft towards the offender and then throws a boulder the rest of the way. The DM rolled a 19. Sooo close to a wonderful crit. Joffrey takes 28 damage but due to his War Caster cheese he maintains concentration.

DM> As his bonus action, the giant pulls a war horn out and blows it loudly!
Regulus> <resignedly> Of course he does.
Abelas> Well, good luck everybody!

Skimmers

Mike, playing Elvira (Mikevira) opens with a pair of arrows into the giant and then Harshnag charges the hapless creature. Harshnag is a size taller than a regular frost giant for reasons that have already been explained:

Adam> Is he a particularly large giant or..?
DM> <sigh> Didn’t read the write up then?
Adam> I… skimmed through the good bits…
<gasps and laughter>
Matthew> <reluctantly> That’s me every week..
DM> <deep sigh> Why do I even bother?
Kraj> Some of us read it!
Adam> <somewhat defensively> I normally do, I just didn’t find time since.. yesterday? Sorry.

Matt rolled high enough to have Harshnag land both meelee attacks for over fifty damage. That’ll make your eyes water. Clay hit one and missed one until he was reminded about the flanking bonus and then he hit twice instead, which was nice.

Abelas, the self proclaimed ‘giant slayer’ <sigh>, finishes off the giant with a Firebolt.

The heavy snow severely limits visibility and the players were worried about what was coming , or as Kraj put it “There’s going to b a fucking army of giants appearing at our rear isn’t there?”.

The players finished off the hostile wolf and regrouped behind the orange igloos waiting for the assault. During this time the subject of graphical settings came up and, rather surprisingly, Mike said something disrespectful about Jake’s current graphics card:

Jake> <sigh> Its a 1080 Ti and you fucking know it!
Adam> <casually> Only a 1080 Ti? Even POLIT have better cards than that.
Jake> Fucking… gggraaah!
Mike> ‘Ten’ eighty Ti?
Jake> You try getting something better!
Adam> Jake, POLIT have eight better than yours…
Jake> Yes, I am aware! I CAN’T FUCKING BUY THEM!
DM> So you bought a brand new supercomputer but still have a crappy graphics card in it? That’s a bit disappointing isn’t it?
Jake> The only thing it can’t do is ray trace! Fucking hell!
DM> That’s not strictly true is it Jake? There’s something else it can’t do. It still can’t render lights in Tabletop Simulator can it?
Jake> That is a game bug, it is NOT a graphics card issue…
DM> Of course it is, yeah.
Jake> I hate you all!

Back in the pretend world where you can make it up, two frost giants approach from the north-west, another from the north, two from the north-east and another from the east. “This is going to be interesting!” said Regulus.

Clay does an ‘Expeditious Charge’ at the lone giant coming from the east and hits it twice, action surges and hits another two times. This takes about two-thirds off its hit points. Impressive, but did he blow his ~~load~~ action surge too early?

… and you’ll miss it!

Abelas wants to cast Lightning Bolt at the unseen approaching giants. He changes his mind when the DM divides up the possible cast angle into a D20 and tells him he will only hit on a 19 or 20.

Abelas> I am going to cast… Blink! On myself!
Joffrey> He’s such a shit wizard he has to cast a spell to blink!
<silence.. Kraj laughs a little bit… more silence>
DM> I just facepalmed, properly, actually, physically in real life.
Regulus> You didn’t want to finish off this wolf then?
Celdar> That’s why he always uses all his spell slots!
Regulus> Because he has to cast ‘Breathe’!
Clay> You should have just cast the Lightning Bolt…
Abelas> <sigh> I have vanished from this plane of existence…
Someone> YES!!
<I think it was Kraj but it may have been Adam or Mike. According to Jake’s mum they all sound the same when they get excited.>
Abelas> …and have appeared in the Ethereal plane.

Regulus summons Anonymoose to come play. Sadly, there is currently no moose mini in Talespire and so we had to make do with a cow; welcome Anonymoo <sigh>. The DM scaled Anonymoo to the correct size for a huge creature and it was a very large cow indeed:

Regulus> That is udderly ridiculous!
<groans>
Celdar> Can you mooove him?
<further groans>
Celdar> How dairy you summon that!
Regulus> Nice one! Cheesy!
<The DM starts looking for the Discord kick button>

This is clearly all too much for Matt who has to leave.

Anonymoose charges, and misses the last wolf but hits with the second attack. At this point they realised it wasn’t the last wolf, it was Joffrey’s charmed wolf and we had to redo the attack on the correct target.

It’s now getting a bit late and the DM asks the players if they want to carry on or stop. During that discussion we had this:

Mike> …or do you want to do half-nine?
Kraj> I’m easy.
<And so is…. YOUR MUM! BWAHAHAHA-hahahaha-haaa-ha. Not sorry.>
Jake> <dubiously> I can do ten, I don’t have work tomorrow…
Kraj> We weren’t asking how high you could count mate.
<gasps… laughter>
DM> That was a good one!
Adam> That’s got to be the best so far.
Kraj> <laughing> That was so cruel, I’m sorry!

Jake took it well for someone who can’t bring a shotgun to work and make us all pay.

We decided to continue for a while longer.

Funny AND true!

DM> Celdar?
Celdar> Well…. Shit.
<Celdar ponders, it takes a moment>
DM> Dimension door roughly here? <indicates a point between two oncoming frost giants>
Abelas> You’ve got the hit points for it.
DM> Tank it!
Celdar> I can get there but then I can’t attack it.
Regulus> That’s not going to make a difference because even if you do attack it, you’ll miss.
<gasps… laughter>
Celdar> <sigh> Cunts.
Abelas> That wasn’t even me! I approved of it but…
<more laughter>

Celdar ran away and hid and held his attack for anything which came into view. This was swiftly correctly by everyone else shouting at the Rogue for it to be the first ‘hostile’ thing that came in view. The DM has trained them well!

Joffrey runs towards the NW pair of giants and tidal waves them; “It has never let me down Gary!”. That caused some mirth but the distinctly undextrous giants both failed the save and were knocked prone.

Joffrey> Gary, do you have a Rhino?
DM> That’s a rather personal question! Hang on, let me check…. no.
Joffrey> Aaaw, I was going to turn into Joffrocerous!
<groans>

Joffrey, saying he wanted to try something different, became a Cave Bear instead. It didn’t have a snappy name because it was late and Cave Bear doesn’t give a lot to work with.

Abelas> So you said you wanted to try something different but what you did was cast a spell and then you turned into something, which is what you always do!
Joffrey> <threateningly> Have you seen Revenant?
<laughter>

We lost a chunk of our extra time while Mikevira failed to figure out how the measuring system worked. Like I said, it was getting late. His attempts to work it out, aided by Jake, were accompanied by various unhelpful comments such as “Bear with him” and “Rawrsome” from the Cave Bear and “Oh moo god, hit something!” and “get a moove on!” from Anonymoo.

Look, you have to grow old, you do not have to grow up!

By the time Mikevira was done, to an encore of comments including “Javelin of Lightning was faster than this” our time was up.

End of Session.

I hope Adam enjoyed skimming this.

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

– Will Abelas make Celdar pay for that maths crack?
– Will Mikevira spend another ten minute turn being insulted by a giant cow?
– Just how much of this write up did Adam skim past without reading?

Tune in next week to find out!

Post Session Guff

Bring out the gimp!

The idea of rolling stats was to mix things up a bit and any major deficiencies could be corrected through the course of the campaign. The deficiencies give you character.. er.. well, character and overcoming that gives even more. We might still call Abelas the gimpy wizard but he is rather less gimpy that when we started. Nobody expected Celdar to turn out quite so shit though.

So how do we fix him? Well there’s subtle ways and there’s unsubtle ways. Abelas will get subtly fixed through a few choice items but Celdat is a bit more of an issue. His woefully low but still ‘best’ stat Dex will increase through stat boosts as he is levelling. However, giving him the ‘Lucky’ feat tied to his main weapon will help in the meantime.

For his hit points… well he is probably going to have the lowest AC in the party (tied with Joffrey) for the foreseeable future and rather than mess wit that a simple Con boost item will give him enough HP to survive a coupe of big melee… sorry, big meelee hits at least.

Regulus Counter-Cheese Reasoning

Ok, this is a problem but its a weird problem because of a few reasons. Essentially, Regulus runs up, punches the most dangerous thing/s in play and they then have to attack him or suffer disadvantage. Disadvantage is a huge penalty.

If he does get attacked he can Shield for a total of 27… sorry twenty-fucking-seven AC.

In a normal dungeon crawl this wouldn’t be a problem because you could just wear him down, get him to spend those Shield spell slots over the course of a few fights. Unfortunately, this stage of SKT isn’t written like that.

The second possible approach is to change the make up of the combat encounters. This has happened before when someone became obsessed with ‘level 3 inflict wounds’ and the enemies adapted to that over-used tactic. However, if the DM puts in something that can reliably hit 27AC, anyone who doesn’t have 27AC is totally fucked.

Likewise, adding spellcasters which bypass AC all together is not a viable solution; this campaign features very specific enemies so changing them is harder than you might think and even if I did that, Regulus gets 5 uses per long rest of Flash of Genius – When you or another creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an ability check or a saving throw, you can use your reaction to add +5 to the roll. Cheese piled on cheese <sigh>

We could always nerf the shit out of Regulus’ abilities but, while that would warm the cockles of the DM’s cold, cold heart, it is a tad unfair to Mike who built the cheese bot warforged within the rules and to do specific things. So we’ll have to be a bit more subtle about unfucking this problem. Ironically, this particular fight turned out not to be one where it mattered.