Hello there. Crazy times, wot?
For the past couple of weeks I've been privileged enough to gather with some friends (virtually) and play some D&D, which I haven't had a chance to do since before The Young Master was born (literally the last time a regular game was suggested was the day I was bringing him home from the hospital. Obviously I wasn't available.)
Anyway it's been desperately good for my soul, and I've been having so much fun playing and writing up little recaps for friends who expressed an interest to live vicariously through me, that I thought I'd share them here. Because it's been a while since I've been around, and I thought I should prove that (to quote a good and right but not nice woman) I aten't ded.
Some context: when my DM suggested this game and told us to create Level Two characters ("Level One is boring and dangerous," he wisely opined), I decided I wanted to play a Druid, which I've never done. And I wanted to be an elf, which I've only ever done one other time (which is... weird, considering my lifelong obsession with that species). And, just for the hell of it, I decided to roll my stats up rather than going with the default numbers. Mostly this worked out to my benefit, except for one glaring exception:
I rolled a 2 for Dexterity. Out of a possible 20.
That's... not good. To put it mildly.
Picture it this way- a "normal" amount of Dexterity (Dex) would give you a 10. Elves, being naturally graceful, get to add +2 to that, so they're generally a 12 or better. And thank goodness for that extra two points, because that means I ended up with a Dex score of 4, which means I only have to subtract -3 from any rolls that require dexterity (like, for example, sneaking), instead of -4. Which, for those of you making the same face I used to make when I was learning how to do RPG math (and still do, some sessions), means that any time I roll that 20-sided die (d20), I have to come up with a 13 (or better) just to not-fail at whatever I'm trying. (Whereas if I had the "normal elf" Dex 12, I'd get a +1 to my roll, and only have to roll 9 or better to succeed. Math!)
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So yeah, Clumsy Elf. And when I decided to run with that rather than re-rolling it (a weird combination of integrity and sheer bloody-minded curiosity), her Backstory leaped into my head, practically fully-formed. I made her young- really young, even by human standards (14 but pretending to be 17 and fooling exactly no one)- as a way to help explain the clumsiness (with the hope that eventually I'll level her up enough to have her "grow out" of some of it). I had her run away from home to prove herself (her twin brother is sort of a hunting prodigy), and I gave her a Bear form (along with wolf and squirrel) because that's what gives her the confidence (hubris) that she can totally handle herself out in the wider world! (The type of Druid I chose for Clumsy Elf can turn into any animal that they see, with certain exceptions. For example, I'm pretty low-level right now, so nothing that flies or swims, and I made my own personal rule that she has to have time to actually study it up close: nothing running away. [Facing it in combat, however, counts.] The DM & I decided to start me off with only three animals, since he was having to create additional tokens/stat sheets for each one, and I love my DM and don't want him to suffer unnecessarily. I mean, not too much. Anyway, my head-canon is that Clumsy Elf can take on plenty of other forms, but these three are her go-to for Adventuring.)
Shall we?
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SESSION ONE (which was cut short by technical difficulties)
Our Merry Band (Druid Elf, Fighter Dwarf, Rogue Human) set off in search of a number of macguffins, the first three of which were to be found at the top of a 75 foot cliff. I took one look at it and knew my clumsy self would fall to my death if I attempted to climb it in my normal elfin form, so I immediately changed into a squirrel and scampered up my allowable 30 feet. DM had me do a stealth check, but since I was a freaking squirrel I passed it easy-peasy. There were a lot of squirrel-sized holes in the cliff face, so as my companions began their respective climbs I stuck my head in one to see what I could perceive (ie smell). I was hoping for something like an internal staircase we could climb, but all I got was a snootful of "something lives in here". I pulled my head back out and made my biggest mistake of the game:
I sneezed to clear my nose.
Then I continued my climb, only to be attacked by flying freaking snakes, who are apparently really sensitive to sound. The others found themselves likewise engaged, and let me tell you those snakes did not get the memo that this was supposed to be a level one adventure. I immediately took enough damage to knock me out of squirrel form, but I miraculously managed to save myself from plummeting 50 feet to my death. My human rogue comrade was less lucky, and ended up decking into unconsciousness (which, if you've never played, is so super annoying because then you just have to keep making "please don't die" rolls while the rest of the party keeps fighting, and even if you manage to "not die", you're only stabilized, not actually up and fighting again). The dwarven fighter clung to the cliff with one hand and smote a stupid snake with the other, as you do when you're a bad ass.
And me? I was so pissed that I turned into a bear, killed one of the two snakes targeting me with a bite, and then scrambled up to a ledge where I let out a "You wanna dance?!" roar that drew most of they other snakes away from my comrades towards my suddenly much higher hit point (HP) self.
And then I got bit a lot, but between me and the dwarf we killed the remaining snakes and I climbed back down, changed forms, and force fed the human some magic berries that healed her up enough to move.
But then I was stuck back at the bottom of the cliff, unable to do any more transforming until I got a four hour rest. Whomp whomp.
The dwarf (who had managed to get to a ledge, herself) threw down some rope to help us climb, which I comically failed to do (imagine That Kid on Rope Climbing Day in Gym Class). But I'm nothing if not determined, so I tried again and just barely made it. So then we were about 35 ft up and thank goodness the hermit we were trying to go see took pity on us and dropped down another rope to help us up the rest of the way. And then he fed us and I tried (and failed) to find a marmot so that I could add that to my "shape library".
But hey- at least now I have flying snake! (if I ever level up enough to take a flying form...)
SESSION TWO
After bearly (::cough::) surviving our encounter with the flying snakes, The Bumble Buddies headed up river to the creepy-creepy spider’s cave hidden behind a waterfall, in search of the next batch of macguffins. I started to blithely enter the cave, then checked myself ‘fore I wrecked myself, and invited the actually-sneaky Human Rogue to go in my stead (but not until I’d made enough Clumsy Elf noise to alert the resident kobolds! Winning at Adventuring!). She went ahead but again- there was no undoing my noisiness, and she found herself faced with a bunch of high-alert kobolds. I told her to be cool and see if we could maybe not fight these guys. After a bit of back and forth (with our Dwarven Fighter sensibly staying out of sight so that there was at least some element of surprise, should we need it) we finally asked, “What would it take for us to just sort of come in, find what we need, and leave, all without having to fight you?”
They gave this some thought, and eventually said that four pieces of gold seemed like a good deal to them. So in my typically-helpful manner I offered them two now, and three when we left safely. This more than satisfied them, so they just “went hunting” to be out of our way. Woo!
The Rogue helpfully pointed out the pit traps in the floor, so we got to skirt those, and then she peeked into the next chamber and reported back that she saw a kobol shaman.
You guys, the shaman was not interested in bargaining.
Instead, like a giant jerk, he attacked and trapped our Fighter in a bone cage. So naturally I hit him with some magical fire. Which pissed him off enough that he called down the creepy-creepy spider we were all wary of, and do you know what that bitch did? She spat web on me, rendering me immobile! Luckily, webbing is flammable, and as soon as I burned it off I popped right back into bear form because giant spider = giant nope. While I was dealing with that, and our Fighter was brute-strengthing her way out of the cage (it put me in mind of an mini caber-toss), our Rogue kept popping up out of cover to shoot at things with her crossbow, for all the good it did her. Oh, did I not mention that the jerk shaman summoned mist to hide him and all but one of the spider’s legs? Because he did that. Jerk.
And then Spider Bitch foolishly left the mist to take a bite out of Grumpy Bear (aka me), and it did some damage. But not nearly as much damage as our Fighter did when she got her axe a’swining! In a series of rolls that had to be seen to be believed (including two nat-20s), she killed it dead. It was a thing of dismembered beauty. And then I, using my superior ursine olfactory receptors, sniffed out the shaman in the mist (lightly scorched as he was) and ripped him apart with my claws. Very satisfying. Jerk should have just taken the money and not put anyone in a cage.
We hunted around for our macguffins, eventually realized they were stuck with webbing to the ceiling, which might have been a problem if we hadn’t already learned that (say it with me!) webbing is flammable! #actuallywinningatadventuring
So I made some more fire and we got our macguffins and headed off to the Ghost-Filled-Forest. Which I did not like, not one bit, because it felt Very Unnatural, if there’s anything a Druid hates, it’s Unnatural Nature. So I helpfully commented on that a lot (“I don’t like it. No sir, I don’t like it.”), as we made our way deeper and deeper, until we came to a little clearing through which ran a river, on the other side of which was something that looked… suspicious.
And then we died.
Not even kidding. Total Party Kill, from a damn wolf pack that popped up out of nowhere. I was taken out in literally two bites, because Clumsy Elf is a Hella Delicate Flower in her default form. It was frustrating as hell, but since we’d already jokingly agreed ahead of time that there was a “save point” outside the forest, our DM benevolently let us "restart". But his grace only went so far, because he did not let us go back to the outskirts of the forest, but instead had us restart from when the wolves began their attack, with their unfortunately-higher-than-ours Initiative (ie turn-order, ie all three of them got to attack before any of us could make a move).
We rolled better this time (or, rather, the wolves rolled worse and I actually had a chance to roll anything) and I managed to survive the initial onslaught and pull my Grumpy Bear trick. And then we were on equal footing, combat wise.
I killed some, the Fighter killed some, the Rogue provided support from the top of a dead tree, like a sensible Rogue. (Rogues are generally pretty squishy. Hence the stabbing-in-the-back thing.) And I felt such goodwill towards the Fighter (Clumsy Elf is developing a bit of a hero-worship crush on her) that I gave her a bear-back ride across the river, to the Suspicious Thing that turned out to be the tomb/sarcophagus we’d come looking for.
The Ghost popped up, lookin’ ruhl annoyed, but damned if our Fighter didn’t turn out to have a Silver Tongue, and said exactly the right thing to get the Ghost to immediately turn over the macguffins! Brawn and Brains! Good job, Fighter!
Now we just need to make it back to town, and use our little macguffins to unlock the Bigger Macguffin!
***
And that's the end of Session Two! We're scheduled to play again next weekend, and I'm planning on writing up that session, as well, so here's to me not having another eight-month blog-radio-silence (without even a secret pregnancy to excuse it!).
In all seriousness, now that TYM is approaching a full year (and TLG will be five what the actual hell...) I'm starting to get a little of my time back, which means more writing. Which is good, because I need it (and art) for good inner-self-hygiene.
