james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2009-01-07 11:39 pm

What we learned tonight at gaming

Quinn the Warlock can't stay awake while on watch to save his life, barely can tell a bear from a tree, can't hit worth beans in the dark and has convinced himself that his mental attacks (the things that target versus will) weren't biting because they don't work on animals.

We learned later just how many hit points a bear has so it's just as well Quinn never tagged him.

[identity profile] stevendj.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 05:34 am (UTC)(link)
Considering how many hit points a tree has, it's probably lucky he didn't tag one of those either. (And, as Durkon points out, they have enough limbs to make a dozen or more attacks per round, and so much natural stealth it's nearly impossible to see them move.)

[identity profile] viktor-haag.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 01:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, but the tree won't take the eldritch blast to the branch as an excuse to leap over into the tightly packed mass of player characters and start laying about with its 2D8+5 Forepaws of Doom... of course if it happens to be one of those living trees, well, then that's a different story...

[identity profile] stevendj.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 04:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Most trees in the forest are alive. Which is fortunate; the undead trees are even scarier.

[identity profile] james-nicoll.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 04:19 pm (UTC)(link)
I think it was a Dave Arneson campaign where someone polymorphed a vampire into a rose bush, which then spread. This was bad.

[identity profile] maruad.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I seem to remember an old d&d packaged scenario with vamipiric rose bushes. The bushes had white flowers unless htey had been fed recently in which case they were red.

IIRC it was a french setting with lycanthropes but it has been many years since I saw it.

[identity profile] james-nicoll.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 09:20 pm (UTC)(link)
That may be what I was thinking of: Arneson's Black Morn Manor.

[identity profile] maruad.livejournal.com 2009-01-09 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
Actually I was thinking of Castle Amber but I may be wrong about the rosebushes being in that module. It has been a long time since I saw any of those modules.

[identity profile] tymen.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 06:17 am (UTC)(link)
I shoot an arrow at the Gazebo. :)

[identity profile] martinl-00.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 04:09 pm (UTC)(link)
IDing a bear is a DC15 Nature check, IIRC.

Knowing that it attacks with claws and teeth is DC20.

Your character was behaving appropriately.

[identity profile] burger-eater.livejournal.com 2009-01-08 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd rather attack a tree than a bear, too.