Thicket II

Still having trouble finding Durak’s “voice”, so I’ll write this OOC.

Not a lot of plot this week, mainly hack-and-slash. We are still fighting our way through a goblin complex.

A couple of fun RP moments. Durak has taken Cleave as a feat, and asked Bevis’ varisian gypsy rogue, since cleave reduces his AC, if he might grab that ring of protection back. Being lawful, Durak sees all treasure as party treasure. The gypsy’s answer was “What? You gave this ring to me, and now you want it back? I do not understand.”

RP aside, Durak has a lot of HP and damage reduction – he’s built to take punishment so it probably is best.

I forgot to play Durak’s fear of water as we crossed the bridge. Problem is – being a 3rd level paladin he’s immune to fear, so where does that leave us?

Anyway. Back to work.

Thicket

I’ve left it a bit late to blog last weeks game, so I’ll summarise.

We foofed around for a bit, ran off to defend a farm from some goblins. This was inserted by the DM, although he ought not to have told us so 🙂 . I had Durak do the defender thing – insert himself bodily between bad guys and party members. All good. There was running. Oh, and Andrew permitted me to order in some lamellar stone armour, which should arrive in two weeks. +8 base AC W00T! Masterwork, of course, so it can be enchanted later.

Then we followed some in-game leads to the island where one of the goblin tribes were located. It turned out not to be an island, but a headland, so Durak’s fear of water (his role-playing weakness) didn’t become a thing.

Combat was interesting, and took place inside a thicket of bramble, with rooms laid out like a cave complex. Cute. The tall members of the party were in difficult terrain, and the SBEG was a goblin druid with entangle. Reflex saves, strength or escape artist checks – all that stuff. Durak is crap at both, but rolled well and was able to get out of the zone. He left a mook goblin alive because it obvious he or she was not the real problem, once the druid appeared.

The real threat was not the druid himself, but his animal companion – a cougar. A serious foe for 2nd level characters.

I’m getting to grips with the capabilities of my character – use of Lay on Hands. Screwed up tactics a bit. Dave summoned a dog to engage the druid. Durak should have left the druid alone and concentrated on the cougar. He wasted a round, while Bevis’ rogue (and everyone else) got hammered by the thing.

Role-playing-wise, Bevis’ rogue attacked the druid after he had surrendered. On the one hand, this is totally unacceptable behaviour. Durak is shocked, shocked, shocked. Outraged. On the other hand – fucking goblins. Let’s face it: it wasn’t going to behave honorably, and it was threat to civilised folk. Realistically, killing it was the only sensible option, and Durak has the wisdom to know this even if he doesn’t like it.

Perhaps a compromise that he can live with is to explicitly declare “no quarter”, to negotiate with the party beforehand that that is the attitude going in, and to spend a round communicating it to the enemy. Nasty, but lawful. They are goblins, and this is war, not a polite skirmish.

SUPERGOD!