Wow, That Was a Slog 0.o

Every once in a while, a game session grinds like a car that can't get into gear, which is alas what we had tonight in jamesbarrett's game. A baddy that's been floating around since the game began forced a confrontation, which baddies are prone to do occasionally, but it was done in such a way that it took us the better part of the night just to get to him, and then the actual fight started.

"We" being nine 10th level characters, "he" being a 15th level fighter/rogue, his lackey who I'm guessing is probably another rogue or possibly fighter/rogue around 6th-10th level, an ally who is at least a 7th level druid ... and a summoned vrock (CR 9). Yeeks. We broke up at midnight because, y'know, camstone goes to church in the morning, and the fight was still going on. At least the main baddie (with his ring of invisibility and cloak of displacement and so on) got taken out.

I knew things were going to be trouble when the baddie started the fight by coming this close to one-punching camstone's paladin ... whereas none of us could land a significant hit on him. It's frustrating enough to hear "Your hit does no damage, his evasion negates your spell," but combined with somebody doing insane huge amounts of damage, you have a recipe for players going "WTF?"

There was also dispute about a heal / cure potion, marked on our records as a "potion of healing." My theory is that when we found it, we were told, "You don't know exactly what it is, but it looks like some kind of healing potion," which covers anything from cure light wounds to resurrection. But later, we had "healing potion" written down, and didn't get it identified because we all just assuming it was heal. In this particular case, since he'd just been almost-one-punched, camstone was really relieved to have a heal, only to find out that it was actually a cure critical wounds, which when you're down to 14 hit points from 75, is considerably less useful. I think this was about the point where the session really turned sour ... it was sorta like one negation right after another for several turns in a row.

Oh well, shit happens. I had a session that I thought would be a cool and exciting combat turn into a slog because the characters did precisely the opposite of what I thought they would. Ya just roll with it and try to do better next time.

The good news is, we've taken out one of the major baddies; we're also staring with serious intent at a minor-but-significant baddie, and things are coming to a head with another of the group's NPCs. As handy as it's been to have nine characters, I suspect that at least one and maybe two NPCs will be leaving soon, which will be a relief. With three PCs, three player-controlled-NPCs (if that makes sense), and four full-blown NPCs -- with several characters doing two or three attacks per round -- doing a single round of combat takes about an hour and a half. -.-

-The Gneech

Escaping From Escapism

Alas, Cam and Frisk are both questioning the continuation of D&D after last night, which sorta leaves me feeling a bit stuck. 0.o If the one game goes, mine is likely to as well, and I've put a lot of work into making that fun and entertaining for everybody. But I certainly can't make people play if they don't want to. :(

Anyway, there's nothing I can do about that except wait for feathers to unruffle and hope for the best, so now it's on to other topics.

For Valentine's Day, lythandra gave me the second volume of the complete Peanuts reprints, which contains 1953-1954. This one has some that I've read before, which the first volume didn't, but there are still plenty that are new to me (including some that apparently have not been reprinted before). The characters are starting to shape into something recognizable as their future selves, as opposed to being five variations on the same personality. It isn't quite brilliant yet ... but it's still mighty good. I'm definitely going to savor reading these over the next decade or so that it'll take to get them all out!

I was supposed to have a newsbox on Keenspot this weekend, but it didn't run. I don't know if it's been moved to another date or what, I'll have to go investigating. After the big ugly flap over the message boards, I sorta feel like a persona non grata over there, so I try not to bother them.

Anyway, the weekend's over and it's back to the grind tomorrow, le sigh. codyfrost has asked me to do a little piece of art for him, maybe I can do that tomorrow to help cheer me up.

G'nite, all, and have a wonderful tomorrow!

-The Gneech