Xavier speaks!

Magic! Ahh, magic! So subtle, mysterious, fragile and yet powerful. She must be wooed, persuaded, tempted!

But forgive me, I must introduce myself.

I am Xavier, the sorcerer, most beautiful man in creation! Who better to move the strands of The Weave?

Forgive me my conceit. And my appearance. Of my family I will not speak, but as for my race – I will satisfy your curiosity. Humans are an adaptive lot, perhaps most adaptive of all the species. We have settled everywhere in the multiverse, on every plane of existence. Including the Plane of Shadow – even there, there are enclaves. And as with the various other races of human, over time we come to adapt. Thus my skin, my hair, my admittedly stunning eyes, and most of all my fabulous beard. Yes, the dwarves pride themselves on their facial extrusions, but they go for mere volume! Can any of them match the luster? The softness? Yes of course you may feel it! Go right ahead, and tell your grandchildren the story of the day you ran your fingers through a beard the like of which you never saw again in this life!

I think Xavier may be channelling Edwin, from the Baldur’s Gate games

Of course, my appearance excludes me from most company. But not all. I speak, of course, of Adventurers! Those whose profession it is to have adventures! Quite the euphemism, I assure you, but neverthless so it is, and I count myself among them. Once you Fireball a pursuing pack of giant wolves, they really don’t care where you come from. I have travelled alone and with companions for many years, and now find myself in the Illustrious company of the Heroes of Sandpoint.

How so? Well, the matter is simple. I made the error of passing through Sandpoint on the day that it was raided by an assortment of giants – a mere scouting party according to them, but dangerous. Being the man of action I am, I saved several of the townsfolk (I will not boast or inflate the tale, they were a mere dozen or so). The most serious part of the fight was dealt with by these aforementioned heroes. Having saved some myself, it was assumed that I was one of their number, and after some confusion they and I were introduced.

It seems they had information to the effect that the giants were massing up in the mountains, above the Storval Stairs. Again, modesty forbids me to say they begged me to join up with them, but they were pleased to have me and I pleased to join. I am not averse to doing good deeds for the mere sake of it, the rigours of travelling rough bother me not a bit, the finger pointing and whisperings of the common people in cities tends to grow tiresome after a bit, and there was sure to be loot and good company. And if that seems to you to not be reason enough, well – it is reason enough for me.

So, to the Storval Stairs!

⁂

The journey was uneventful, as they say. At a guess, every living thing the entire region is hiding underground to avoid being clubbed by giants, or has already been so clubbed. The stairs themselves are not, as one might suppose, a natural scarp or trail but are indeed a literal flight of stairs. Giant-sized, of course. We climbed all day and eventually came into the view of a gatehouse. We were immediately assailed by boulders, thrown and bouncing down the stairs – a sensible way to deal with intruders, in all truth.

Happily, I was able to step briefly into the etheral plane and to bring some of the fighters with me, while Vik Teleported the rest, depositing ourselves on top of the gatehouse. Our combatants charged (one of us has a permanent enlarge on him, and cuts quite the figure), and we spellcasters unleashed our various power. Mine are a ball of fire, and a cone of cold. Vik is a summonner, it seems, and Aeona – is difficult to categorise. Godkin, I think, and quite genuinely beautiful but in a weird nonsexual way and we have none of that sort of roleplaying in our group, thank you very much.

Ahem.

Giants began coming out of the rear of the gatehouse, and so I raised a Wall of Force to deal with boulders from that direction. And there is not much more to tell, aside from that these “Heroes of Sandpoint” do seem to live up to their reputation: cleaning up perhaps a half-dozen giants with really no difficulty at all.

We have six players, rather than four, and bypassing the boulders crashing down the stairs made the encounter far less dangerous.

We proceeded on into the mountains.

⁂

I personally prefer to ride a Phantom Steed when Shadow Walking is not feasible. It is not a spell that comes naturally to me, instead I have a most marvelous (and terribly expensive) ring into which the patterns of it are put. And where from, you may ask? Well – fancy myself something a student of the arcane, even if I do not work the weave by memorising the formulas as some do, and so I keep a book of spells. Mainly the odd and out-of-the-way sorts of things. One of the other spells in my book is one that conjures up a secure shelter from whatever comes to hand. I – foolishly, and keen to demonstrate my skill to my new companions – conjured up a shelter for us to camp in, and they – also foolishly – permitted themselves to be persuaded to sleep in it. After all, we had been untroubled all day.

Of course, the reason we were untroubled is that the entire plateau is currently being patrolled regularly by giants. We were, of course, found (giants and their pet wolves, if you must know). Worse still – one of them got away. There are other spells that permit one to safely camp in hostile territory, I simply must scribe one into my book at earliest opportunity.

Be that as it may, we are discovered. The next few days will prove to be diverting, if nothing else.

Xavier lives!

Just as I reprised Zack Jackson for PFS, I am reprising Xavier the Sorcerer (pronounced Xavier, the Sorcerer, most beautiful man in creation!) for our home game. We are swapping out Father Whatshisname, leaving Brett’s character back in the role of primary healbot.

I built Xavier as a drow, to which the DM – when I brought him to the table – basically said “Fuck, no!”. Ok, then. Rebuilt him as a Fetchling which is almost the same thing, but without that annoying SR.

I’m trying to distance him from being another Switch. That said, it’s pretty hard to beat “Go invisible, fly, and blatt things” as a tactic. I’ve given him AOE spells and Selective Spell metamagic feat. Aside from blasting, his secondary line is counterspelling and getting himself out of trouble.

(Trigger warning: rules lawyering!)

He has the Arcane bloodline, and carries a spellbook. Now, although he cannot prepare the spells in that book, nevertheless he knows and can read them – he has plenty of spellcraft, Read Magic and whatnot. So his bonded item (bloodline feature) will let him cast one of them per day. He is also rocking a mnemonic vestment and two rings of Spell Knowledge. The spellbook contains spells that are situational, rather than things you always need. Unhappily, the description of the Ring of Spell Knowledge does not tell you how often you can teach it a different spell, so I am playing it as a once-per-day thing.

I have tricked him out with 82k of items, standard for a 11th-level character. The rings take up most of it, +3 cloak of resistance, a metamagic rod (reach spell), and sundry crap.

Just the one game night. I might write it up as a separate post.

Treasure Generator

Been a while since I posted anything on wordpress.

A while ago, I used to play in the Die With Honour campaign, which runs at various cons as well as having some home games. 3.5 DnD, with the “Complete” series of splatbooks permitted. Great fun, except for one thing: they were using the Magic Item Compendium treasure generator to dole out loot, and it just took forever.

So I implemented it in JavaScript – a single, stand-alone HTML page that generated loot with a click. You can run it in an iPad, you can run it in an iPhone , if you must. You can save the page and use it without an internet connection. You can see it at GitHub. If you are up against a CR 6 monster, two CR 4 sidekicks, and four CR 1 mooks, just click those buttons. Job done. It speeds play up quite a bit.

“But”, you cry, “What about Pathfinder”? Fear not, the Ultimate Equipment Treasure Generator is here! Same deal. Frankly, I don’t much like their method of doing it, and the generated treasure seems a bit low-value. It all adds up, but it’s still kinda meh. Nevertheless, if you ever looked at those tables in the back of UE and thought “you know, there ought to be an automatic spreadsheet or something for this”, well now you have one.

Go nuts.