TBC DND - The Story Thus Far

I considered writing it that way, but explaining how Anders got back out of the hole intact would have been challenging.

Bit Immy doesn't sleep, and has ranged attacks.

Doesn't mean I can't sneak up on Rav....it wouldn't be the first time. 

That you know of.

Generally, rolls to detect stealth are done secretly by the DM so players don't alter their behavior because of out of character knowledge.

That's...sorta the point of stealth though.  Telling you that you have a chance to roll perception is essentially announcing SOMEONE IS SNEAKING UP ON YOU.

As wiki said, you don't get a chance to make an active perception check versus a sneak attempt because that defeats the purpose.  That's what your passive perception score is for.  From an RP perspective, Rav isn't constantly looking over her shoulder and searching her environment, nobody is.  Your passive perception score is your baseline awareness of the world around you without actively looking around.  Most people who don't have a REASON to suspect they're being snuck up on don't actually use their active rolls, and instead use their passive ability.  Any attempt to sneak up on you (or any player, by a pc or npc) will be against your passive perception unless you're explicitly hunting the area.

Your passive perception is equal to rolling a 10 on your perception check.  Which amusingly means that about 45% of the time, someone ACTIVELY searching will do a WORSE job of noticing someone sneaking up behind them than they would if they were just standing around not paying particular attention.  I've sorta interpreted that to mean that if you're actively looking for SOMETHING, you may be distracted not knowing where the something is.  Rolling a 1-9 on a perception check basically means you're so busy looking, you're searching the wrong area/looking the wrong way

This reads brilliantly and sounds pretty amazing.

When we last saw the party, they had just finished fighting a group of huge ankhegs that emerged from a hole in the ground. Having successfully defeated them, the party continued uneventfully on their way, making camp for the night half a day's journey or so north of the city of Polthill. When the caravan master Borrin checked the wagons, however, he discovered that the horses' food had been ruined, and asked if half the party could walk a mile or so back the way they had come to a nearby farm to purchase fresh oats, while the others stayed behind to continue guarding the caravan. After a bit of their usual grumbling, Anders, Immarel, Edric and Ravariel agreed to make the trip while the others remained. The four of them set off north, and were attacked by a party of undead on the road. They made quick work of them, and headed on to the farm. When they got there, though, the farmer yelled at them to flee, for the farm had recently been attacked by a gnoll necromancer leading forces of undead, and she feared they would return at any time. The party tried to purchase oats, but she continued yelling at them to leave. Suddenly, a large number of undead did indeed attack, led by the gnoll in question. During the fight, Ravariel changed form once again and became a giant cat, which tore out the throat of the zombie that had just hit her. Not long after, Anders killed another zombie, and his eyes seemed to change color for a moment as it died, though the party had little time to make note of it. All four of them fought bravely, and despite a long and arduous battle, they won the day in the end. Bemused but grateful, the farmer willingly gave them all the oats they could carry, along with a note to bring to her cousin, a merchant in Polthill whom she promised would reward them further for saving her family's farm.

A brief interlude, with dialogue (these interludes are scripted bits of story NA and/or I occasionally create in order to fill in little gaps, foreshadow future developments, and bring the story up to date between sessions):



Next week: Will Ravariel ever stop being cryptic? Will Anders turn into a Mary Sue and develop curves in all the right places to go with his color-changing eyes? And seriously, will Edric ever not smell of pee? Stay tuned to find out!

He said "the wood elf." I don't know what YOU read. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

(Also, that line made me giggle, hehe.)

When we last saw the party, they had just spent a night in camp after four of them battled undead the day before. When they woke up the next morning, the caravan master, Borrin, told them that they would make it to Polthill by the afternoon, but he planned to stop for lunch in Fairfield, a small farming village just outside the city, since he knew the local innkeeper. The party agreed to this plan and traveled to Fairfield uneventfully. Upon their arrival, the innkeeper greeted Borrin warmly and gave the party the lunch they were promised - carrot soup (which Ravariel seemed less than thrilled with). As they were finishing their meal, the party heard a commotion out in the town square. They left the inn to find out what was going on, and found a gathering of angry townsfolk yelling about some kind of menace to the town and berating a teenage boy while his young brother sobbed. The party questioned the townsfolk, and eventually learned that the menace in question was a rabbit that was destroying everyone's farms - the teenager, a would-be mage, had attempted to test a spell to make his family's livestock larger and heartier on his brother's pet bunny, Mr. Wiggles, and the spell hadn't gone quite as intended. Many of the townsfolk wanted to kill the marauding rabbit, while the small boy and his family begged them to show mercy and find some way of protecting the town while sparing the bunny's life. Just as the party had pieced most of this story together, the party saw the pet bunny in question pass by, and were shocked to see that it was roughly the size of a house. Sera, witnessing this, got very excited, and then, despite the language barrier, pieced together why the townsfolk were waving swords and pitchforks, and began to panic and pull on Tellig's sleeve. A local who happened to speak Old Tyrian informed Tellig that the girl was saying, "Don't let them kill the bunny! You have to help the bunny!" The party begrudgingly agreed that helping the bunny would be the right thing to do, and, with the help of a local wizard, concocted a plan to restore the bunny to his natural size. Leaving Borrin, Emmy, Maelyn, and Sera at the inn to rest and enjoy good company, the party headed out to save Mr. Wiggles.


Pictured: the REAL real Mr. Wiggles

Tellig followed the bunny's tracks and located him in a large field, surrounded by trees the massive rabbit had knocked or chewed down. The party slowly attempted to approach the bunny, but this served only to make him agitated. As Ravariel watched the fat, quivering bunny, the party noticed an odd expression on her face, and then she abruptly excused herself, suggesting that the others could handle this task alone and that she should go to the forest to "gather herbs." As she left, she appeared to be licking her lips. Continuing without her, the party again attempted to approach the bunny, but the frightened, fuzzy behemoth began bouncing around seemingly at random, nearly landing on members of the party several times. After some effort, they managed to tie the bunny to some of the felled trees, holding him in place long enough for Gannadir to sing him soothing lullabies and make him stop bouncing. The bunny was too strong for the ropes to hold him long enough to perform the ritual of restoration, though, so the party realized they would need to sedate him somehow. Anders and Gannadir quickly returned to town, where Gannadir charmed the innkeeper into giving him the remaining barrel of carrot soup - and served as a distraction while Anders raided the back room and stuffed as many bottles as he could of the inn's most potent liquor down his trousers. Returning to the field where the bunny was tied up, the two of them combined their acquisitions and offered the extremely alcoholic carrot soup to Mr. Wiggles, who happily consumed it and then quickly fell unconscious. Now ready to perform the ritual, the local wizard whom they had enlisted realized he had smudged his ritual book and could not remember the catalyst he needed to complete the task, and asked the party if any of them knew enough of the arcane arts to deduce what sort of object he should use. Immarel and Edric both thought it over and declared, respectively, that the wizard should use a round, smooth rock and "a herring!" Luckily, the wizard opted to trust Immarel, and the ritual was completed successfully. Anders managed to catch the bunny, now bunny-sized and sobered up, before he could escape, and safely stashed him in his pack.

Night had fallen by the time the party members (minus Ravariel) trudged back towards Fairfield. They arrived to witness a shocking sight - the town was on fire, and besieged by goblins. Townsfolk were being murdered even as they watched. The party leapt into action, and killed the invading goblins, but did not even have time to rest before an even larger group of reinforcements arrived - orcs, goblins, and humans, all under the command of a bugbear who instructed them to raze the city to the ground. Edric, Immarel, Evelyn, Anders, and Gannadir did their best to fight off the invading horde, while Tellig smashed out some of the windows of the inn and tried to crawl inside to find Sera, but quickly found that the smoke and flames in the room he had entered were too intense and he could not see or hear her. Realizing he would be of more use there, he rejoined the fight with the others (after briefly getting stuck climbing out of a window). With the help of a pair of brave townsfolk, the party managed to defeat the second wave of attackers, although both townsfolk gave their lives in the process, and Edric was gravely wounded in the process and nearly perished.

Meanwhile, Ravariel, who had entered the woods for her own reasons, was heading back towards the town when she came upon one of the invaders' camps - and three trained wolves preparing to descend upon the town and join the fray. She easily defeated the wolves, only to discover that they were not the only ones of their kind waiting for the signal to attack. Five more of them set upon her, and though the fight was challenging, she was able to use her healer's skills to keep herself well enough to defeat the entire pack. Bloodied and covered in wolf hair, she ran back towards the burning village, hoping to make it there in time to help her companions.

Once the others had helped Edric, they began the task of putting out the fires. Tellig began to fight his way through the flames at the inn's door, still calling for Sera, while the others worked to rescue people from the nearby shops and homes. In this, they were largely successful. (Edric, apparently still unsteady from his recent brush with death, stumbled while attempting to lift a gravely wounded man and dropped him on his head. Luckily, Gannadir was standing nearby, and managed to heal the man's head wound through...inspirational ocarina-playing, or something?) While Evelyn put out the remaining fires, the others rejoined Tellig and entered the inn. With only the guttering flames to light their way, they managed to find their four companions - Borrin and Emmy clinging together, frightened but conscious, and Maelyn and Sera both unconscious, along with several other similarly unconscious townsfolk. Just as Tellig bent to pick up Sera, the party heard a menacing chuckle from the doorway, and three muscle-bound orcs entered. Emmy screamed, recognizing them as her villainous former employer's chief enforcer, Gravosh the Butcher, and his two bodyguards, here to kill her and anyone who stood in their way. Edric, Gannadir, and Immarel attempted to fight them head-on, but soon found themselves badly outmatched. Tellig and Anders, meanwhile, smuggled Sera out of the inn through a back window, and came around the front, hoping to bring the roof down on the heads of Gravosh and his henchmen. The roof, however, proved harder to topple than they had hoped, and several of the party were near death when Ravariel came running in. With six fighters rather than five, the party slowly but surely gained the upper hand, and finally defeated Gravosh. Hysterical with relief, Emmy informed them that, while her former boss would still be looking for her, she did not know whom he could send after her now that his right-hand man was dead.


Next time: Will Mr. Wiggles be reunited with his owner before Ravariel gets a bit too peckish? Will Edric ever learn to stop charging headfirst into combat and getting knocked out? And how the hell does Gannadir heal grievous head wounds by being inspiring at them, anyway? Stay tuned to find out!

No mention of the intimidate check that, by all rights, should have made the guy crap himself and run for the hills?

I left that out since we retconned it out of existence, heh. It was a pretty awesome roll, though - it's just really freaking hard to convince a guy who's essentially a mob enforcer that you're scarier than his boss.

I dunno. I still feel like the dice shouldn't get to win when it requires that the story cease to make any sense. I just can't see a mob enforcer returning to the boss empty-handed to say, "Well, sure, boss, I left without the girl while I was still doing pretty well in the fight, but you have to understand, there was this guy there who said mean and scary things to me! So I figured it was worth letting you torture me to death and murder my entire family, instead." And, I mean, when I was reading up on skill challenges, one of the examples in the book was explicitly of a guy who could not be intimidated, no matter what you rolled. He would just get offended that you TRIED to intimidate someone as important as him, and it would even count as a failure in the challenge in that case. So it's not like the rules don't account for "some people you can't scare." I didn't realize at the time that it was a specific power rather than a normal skill check for you, which was why I let you retcon it out of existence (and, hell, I'd happily let you use that roll NEXT time you try to intimidate someone, because I get that getting a great roll and having it still be a dud is frustrating).

I am totally cool with keeping the roll for next time. Since NA will be running this time around, I'll leave it up to him as to whether that roll applies to your next intimidate check, your next skill check in general, or something else, but I think I can reasonably promise on his behalf that you'll get to succeed spectacularly at SOMETHING.

(Also, I think part of it is that NA and I are nerdy enough that I think we both tend to develop backstories and personalities and such even for characters whose role in the story is "be scary, get killed." Ergo: he would have gone back to his boss because he would have gone back to his boss. )