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[D&D] We tricked Death into thinking we were Dead

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 10:57 pm
by Krakatoa
This happened in a D&D game I joined last year:

The game is based on Castlevania, specifically taking place parallel to the events of Symphony of the Night. We’re a group comprised of three first responders to Dracula’s advances, and two demon ambassadors from hell sent to put Dracula on notice for getting too big for his britches.

The Paladin, a righteous defender who also likes to dance

The Wizard, canon character Maria Reinart, who is surprisingly foul mouthed for a 17 year old girl in the 18th century.

The Warlord, my character, whose specialty is having ridiculous athletics skills despite being like 50-something.

The Rogue, a peasant from hell who likes to stab things. Her player wasn’t here for this game.

The Warlock, a hellish noble who likes to curse things. The Warlord doesn’t like him much for being a demon and all. His player wasn’t here for this game.

So we took a few wrong turns and have been lost in the catacombs beneath Dracula’s castle for a while, and we decided to take some boats down an underground river without considering that we might need a way back UP river. We also ran into Abaddon, the Angel of Destruction, but he got eaten trying to help us escape aberrant horrors.

Eventually, we followed the underground river to a rather large underground lake with a pillar in the middle. While Maria is probing it with her magic senses… it wakes up. Turns out it was a sixty-foot tall Earth elemental. Fortunately, he’s pretty nice. He tends to the fish that swim in his lake. After debating a few options, we ask the Elemental for directions out of the underground lake. He points us on, but just then… Death shows up. Death is usually one of the higher level bosses in the Castlevania games, but our party is almost suicidally reckless, so we’re not exactly quaking in our boots to fight him. (After all, if the Belmonts can take him alone, surely we can do it as a group of five! )

But for some reason, Death has only been using underlings against us to the point that the party has been taunting Death and calling him a wimp and a coward. Death reminds the Elemental that he was supposed to protect the lake from intruders.

:mrgreen: Oh, they’re intruders? I thought they were humans.
:bash: Kill them or I’ll kick you out of your room and kill your fish.

We taunt Death once more as he flies away, but the party gets its wires crossed. Paladin, who is rowing the boat with Rogue, is trying to run away.
The Wizard, who is in the boat I’m rowing along with the Warlock, casts an ice zone spell that minimally damages the Elemental, but starts freezing the lake around the Elemental to give us a place to stand if we have to fight.

On my first turn I leap out of the boat (which only I have the Athletics to effectively maneuver) and grab on to the Elememental’s arm. My plan is to climb up to his head and apply blunt force trauma. I’m not sure what I thought this would accomplish on an elemental, but after round two, I failed to hold on to the giant’s arm. So failing that, I drove my spear into the elemetnal’s belly and did a heavy amount of damage.
Meanwhile the Wizard hit it with magic missile repeatedly, and after the second time the Elemetnal observed that we were actually starting to hurt it.

Then I realize… we can both win this. I tell him to pull his punches but make it look good, make it look like he’s killed us. In round three, I ask the elemental to smash me through the ice, which he does easily. The rest of the party retreats in our boats while I swim to the shore—and for good measure the elemental makes a vast wave that smashes our boats into the rest of the party—Maria using Ghost Sound to provide some Wilhelm Screams of our demise. The Elemental thunders about how he has defeated us, and we sneak away in the ruckus, hearing, down the hall, some Fishmen crowing about how the Elemental destroyed the intruders.

Tl;dr: we fooled Death into thinking we were dead.

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:00 pm
by Avoraciopoctules
This sounds a little familiar. Did you post it on /tg/ before? I think I read something like this in a screencap collection.

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 12:47 am
by Krakatoa
Nah, I avoid 4chan like the plague. I've posted it on at least one other forum, so you may have seen a shot of it from there?

Re: [D&D] We tricked Death into thinking we were Dead

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 1:29 pm
by RobbyPants
So, what happened next? How did you eventually deal with Death (or has the campaign not gotten that far, yet)?
Krakatoa wrote: We’re a group comprised of three first responders to Dracula’s advances, and two demon ambassadors from hell sent to put Dracula on notice for getting too big for his britches.
It's composed, not comprised. If you use the word comprise, you have to switch the order in the sentence. A whole is composed of its parts. Parts comprise a whole.
[/pet peeve]

Re: [D&D] We tricked Death into thinking we were Dead

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 8:29 pm
by Krakatoa
RobbyPants wrote:So, what happened next? How did you eventually deal with Death (or has the campaign not gotten that far, yet)]
Sadly the campaign fizzled out. The Rogue and Warlock continued to miss sessions. I was looking forward to the confrontation, too.

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 12:20 pm
by RobbyPants
That's lame. I love CSotN, too. I ran a 2E (or early 3E?) session based heavily off of it back in college.

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 3:38 pm
by Avoraciopoctules
Either of you have tips for running a game that rips off Castlevania? What should you avoid or do differently?

4e with some houserules can make for fairly fun boss fights, but in my experience it gets to be a bit of a slog if you don't put major work into making every routine encounter interesting. Any suggestions for other systems that might work?

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:20 pm
by RobbyPants
I only have 2E and 3E D&D experience. You'll want to keep it at a fairly low level if you want it to look anything like a CV game, unless your goal is to use the CV universe and see what would happen when wizards show up and start breaking stuff.

Libris Mortis has some new undead creatures and variants you can rip off if you want to make iconic guys like the red skeletons and skeletons that throw bones.

If your players haven't played CV:SotN, you can rip off as much of the plot as you want wholesale pretty easily. If they have played it, then they will know where to look for everything.

Obviously, you're converting an RP Action Platformer to a straight up RPG, so you'll want areas that look like iconic areas from the game, but the threat will have to shift from platforming to traps and puzzles.

SotN forces you to explore the whole castle by making you go to places to get items to unlock other areas. You can do that in D&D if you're creative, but it might get old/annoying quickly. You may just want to aim to make everything so interesting that they'll explore it on their own. That, or make the quest something like "eradicate all the undead from this castle" so they're forced to explore the whole thing.

Re: [D&D] We tricked Death into thinking we were Dead

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 5:05 pm
by fectin
RobbyPants wrote: It's composed, not comprised. If you use the word comprise, you have to switch the order in the sentence. A whole is composed of its parts. Parts comprise a whole.
[/pet peeve]
Actually, a whole comprises parts. Which sounds incorrect to me too, so I just stopped using that word.