Official ICE Forums
Iron Crown Enterprises => Order of the Iron Crown => Topic started by: Thom @ ICE on September 11, 2012, 10:09:02 PM
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Post your story submittals here.
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Edit: Removed, was an essence story, will wait for essence week.
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You can post stories any time you want - they just can't win until the right week... and any story can win during the last week.
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Good luck everyone, I do not have a good enough experience to post but I know you all do.
MDC
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Nothing is more fun and satisfying than having a barbarian horde (well 10 badly armored, heavily armed ruffians) charge in wildly and have the healer open a barrier pit, after waiting with an opportunity action, right before their feet. About 15 fall/ crush attacks later, the party could easily overpower the ruffians and talk them into leaving the party and their friends alone!
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Around level 24, we are defending a ruined tower from an oncoming army of goblins and orcs. The tower is in a large valley, dubbed Dinosaur valley due to it's primary inhabitants being all kinds of dinosaurs that can't make it out of the valley.
I cast Ranger Nature Summons - Mass Summons to get 20+ nearby triceratops as Guardians. I then proceed to fly above and through the oncoming army, trailing several tons of stampeding death through the ranks.
Considering this was a long, drawn out battle, power conservation was the name of the game. I killed countless mooks for a little more than the cost of a single Fireball.
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It has been so long ago that I don't remember who they were or what the scenarios were. It may have been RM1.
Religious Healers don't just heal wounds, they transfer them. If the Healer touches you in transfer he doesn't just heal X amount of damage, the entire wound goes away.
The major effects this had in my game were twofold, one that become common among Healers and one that was specific to a particular sect.
In general, players of Healers tended to learn MA Sweeps and Throws, and Tumbling skills. They didn't wait for the battle to be over before healing people, they'd grab a fallen comrade from the middle of a melee and attempt to roll out from under with him. If they succeeded in transferring his wounds, the guy your foes had just worked so hard to put down suddenly goes from hors de combat to 'fresh'. This has nice effects on enemy morale.
"Did you see those guys? They just popped up out of the snow! Like daisies!" - Mushu
In specific... well, the followers of the War God are not allowed to heal, not under any circumstances. However they still have a 'Healer' class, even though they do not actually heal, they only transfer.... and hold for opportunity fire.
It takes a real fanatic to be a Healer of the War God, because transfer is solely by touch, and of course if you haven't managed to transfer that wound away within 1 rd/level, it's yours to keep. And you can't learn magical healing, no one of your religion can.
:o
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RM fumble tables are fun, but rarely lethal. The spell funble tables are far more hazardous to PC's than the arms. This story is about a player who clearly saw this fact and proceeded to weaponize the spell law fumble rules in his favor.
Typical fantasy setting, middle ages like, with a big bad evil empire in the north ruled by some sorcerous villian intent on conquering everyone. The party had an encounter with the Vile King and His Vile: it went bad, and Chuck lost his PC.
It turns out this disgruntled Chuck. Maybe in our post game discussion me telling him that his PC was not meant to ever be able to beat the Vile King and the ending was all but obvious when he took him on. Well, Chuck is a Vietnam vet/retired Marine and just didn't buy that. Everyone can be taken. So he asked to borrow ALL my character creation books to make his new PC. I had no problem with that, though I was surprised he wanted Spell Law and the spell companions, as Chuck always played a fighter type.
Chuck came back with a neat Mage. One of his talents was a spell list to level 50, and as always, a very good background story to explain his orgin, all talents and flaws, how he got into magic and training as a mage, my requested family information, etc. All was in order, and we all were a bit curious about how the Hammer Chuck would play his mage. Oh I was oblivious.
Time passes. Soon the mage is around level 8 and just hitting his stride. Chuck convinced everyone to travel to the north kingdom and seek rewards hunting villians, in the guise they could save those villians, and rescue captured soldiers and civilians now slaves in the north. Most of the party was mid teen or better in levels, with very good shifting magic and the like, so off they went.
Now the mage was around level 12, and Chuck accepted an invite to a party at the Kings Castle. At this party, Chuck gave a speech...and fireballed the guest, many family and VIP's of King. It was a slaughter, but enter the Vile and the King, and things looked like teleport time, if ya know what I mean GM's.
But Chuck did not run or flee or teleport. He anounced he was closing on the King. Well, ok, and as he advanced the Lich reveals itself and laughs at this puny mortal. Chuck though, he just says, rather quietly, he is casting a snap spell (I use snap, normal and deliberate actions, not phases, and the asctions recieve init mods of +10, +0 and -10).
Now, if you look at the old RM2 ESF rules, a failed ESF mnv adds the ESF mod to the fumble roll. Likewise, a failed SCSM in RMFRP can triple mods from the table and add those to the fumble roll. Otherwise, spell fumbles are normally not open ended, but modified. Chucks total mods were in excess of +300, which means he would max the fumble at 251+ on the Arcane Elemental Funble Column. This results in a 50' glass hole in the ground with everything in the area of effect vaporized. Chuck then stands up and points at me, with a now very red face says with glee, "I GOT HIM!"
And he had. The Lich Kings phylactary was inside the now also vaporized Vile...along with several party members (it was a group of five). None of that mattered. The terrible evil of the north had just been vanquished, Marine Style. They all became legends, and in one shot, ended one of my home brewed game worlds. As Chuck said to me later, in the hands of a Marine, everything is a potential weapon.
(Chuck ended his tour in nam and was a drill instructor sergeant for many years. He was the stereotypical jar head, and proud of it, hurah)
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The basics of understanding a Marine are simple: They run toward the screaming, not away from it.
;)
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That reminds me of a truly great line in one of Terry Pratchett's earlier works.
"Yes, [a significant portion of the world would have been reduced to glowing slag] but we would have WON!"
Rochndil, who knows there's no such thing as "unkillable" to a determined player...
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There's a post somewhere around here about a PCs suicidal use of the arcane spell failure table to destroy the ultimate villains of his world, if I could recall the original poster, I'd poke them to submit it, as that one was great.
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That was me. I submitted it down below lol. I guess I told it better the first time.
;D
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That might be one of the best meta gaming stories I've ever heard. . .and done in a perfectly explicable in character way. . .I didn't read the new version, so I can't cross critique the versioning.
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the Arcane Elemental Funble Column.
This cracked me up :)
In a related story, but not good enough for a submission, since its about magic rituals: in a long gone game, we devised the ultimate doomsday device: a scroll with the first paragraph of some lvl 50 magic ritual: hand it to a red shirt peasant and RUN! Reading it, he would fail his magic ritual skill (naturally!) and tear a hole in reality, only repairable by a god... or to that effect... We never got around to using it, though...
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...hand it to a red shirt peasant...
That would be Crewman #6. 8)
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Ahhh.. Channeling.. the ability to wield your god's power to heal or harm..
In a new adventure we had started, I was convinced to roll.. an evil healer who quietly infiltrated the party..
Dominick was a fresh acolyte of Zatar, champion of Charon! He wielded some healing magics, but also chose to learn some offensive spells as well, notable the list known as Dark Channels.
In his first foray with his new traveling companions, Dominick followed his fellows into a mine that they had scouted earlier. having found the nest of greater spiders, we adroitly dodged them and were able to get into the lower levels.
We were assailed by numerous goblins, which all swiftly fell to our blades. As we entered the final cavern where the villagers felt the pests had penetrated into their mine, we found that the goblins were being led by none other than a troll!
Being so low in power, we felt that this might not be a battle we could win. However, we had also taken some wounds in getting to this point which would greatly hamper our abilities to leave, such as a broke arm carried by myself, and a sprained ankle on one of the fighters.
As we were bemoaning the fact that the situation seemed hopeless, the GM said we "thought" this was a forest troll, which could be stunned. Being somewhat hesitant to reveal my abilities, we fought on, taking even more damage. Reluctantly, I said, I raise my arm, ball my fist, and release Dark Stunning. Luckily, the dice rolled well, not only overcoming the ESF (given that I was level 1 and this was a 2nd level spell), but almost a maximum hit on the BAR table.
A beam of pure black energy flew from my fist and squarely hit the troll in the chest. The troll rolls his RR... and fumbles, followed by an open ended roll. The amount of stunning that took place knocked the troll unconscious.
The goblins, seeing their leader felled in one shot, begin a retreat, leaving us the victors on the field. The rest of the party were somewhat impressed by the felling of the troll and decided that traveling with a healer that followed an evil god might not be as bad as it had been made out to be.
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It has been quite a while since I played a spell caster, but I this has brought back memories of one of the first characters I had, way, way back in the 80s.
She was a high elf magician, and I had always played her as very inquisitive, impulsive and full of energy. She had a good AG and I spent some DP in some physical skills - and she used them a lot to get the best tactical use out of her spells.
But not without incident. There were times where in her need to do a ball spell to catch a particular foe, she caught one or more of the party in the blast - and for the most part they got away without serious injury, although there was one moment where she caught herself in a fireball having poorly estimated the volume of the room she was casting it into, and took a D heat critical, which resulted in her clothes catching fire and her having to do most of the adventure in the buff (much to the amusement of the other players and I'm sure the enjoyment of their characters, - for myself I was happy to get off lightly from a D crit).
That character's end came against an enemy caster (just a minion, not even the big bad), who used some kind of spell reflection (not sure what it was, too long ago to recall now), and things went downhill fast. It was like a catalogue of "How things can go wrong in RoleMaster" - the RR was failed and the fire bolt reflected, the zero-modified attack open ended high, an E c ritical was delivered, and 66 rolled. Which means that your head gets vaporised. Even now I can remember the dice falling - reading the 6 on the tens and thinking that's not so bed... and then seeing the other 6...
Well, live by the flame, die by the flame. It's what she would have wanted :)
That character had reached the mid teens in level and was a lot of fun to play. She got on well with pretty much everyone, and the sudden death was a bit of a shock to the other players. I created another character, but it was like the heart had gone out of the campaign - eventually our group left that campaign behind unfinished and started on something new. But after that I pretty much stopped playing spell casters in D&D - 1st to 2nd ed it would have been at that time, although I did try and recreate her as a 2nd edition Wild Mage, it just didn't have the same ring - it was all just a bit too anodyne for me - as so many characters are once you've tasted the richness that is RoleMaster.
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Essence submissions, finally!
This fond memory of my players (of old) should be here.
I had spent a lot of time on carefully crafting the end boss of my adventure. A demon of pure darkness, sitting on a throne, like a statue, surrounded by lieutenant demons (pale 3) and a bunch of pale 2's and 1's below the main protagonist on a throne, cloaked in utter darkness. The throne room was full of pillars, to support the massive structure above, and the demon was ready to be awakened from some slumber period, after a cult had done a lot of the leg work.
Simply place the last artefact on a giant table in front of the throne and go! In the previous sessions I had given out a wand of light bolts: shock bolt table; but like a laser: shooting pure light. It was held by the monk character, who happened to have some attunement and really high Agility.
So the part enters my set piece, cautiously and were assailed by darting Pale 3 demons (bat winged, two hander wielding echo location demons), so they had to defend themselves, and also wanted to place the artefact on the table, assuming to CLOSE a gate.
As they rushed to the altar table, they managed to climb it and even had dealt with half the pale 3 demons, they failed to see the deep darkness, partially hiding a throne, but they did see a new batch of lesser demons, so one of the party (the thief I think) threw the artefact on the altar, saying something to the effect of: " There, now we will send you back to the underworld from which you came!"
Adding to the drama I described a shudder going through the building and a pair of huge red eyes opening and a thundering demonic voice from a utter darkness saying: " Wrong! Now is the time for Demons!"
The monk then looked up and asked: "is it my turn yet?" , which it was. He proceeded to take aim with the wand; stating: "I aim for between those eyes" He then rolled a good attunement and then at least one time open ended for his directed spells; clearly hitting for maximum damage and then rolled his Super large spell critical and rolled 100+98+99+something; looking up the result on the slaying column for "Blast goes in through foe's eye and comes out ugly. Foe dies instantly. His terrible bulk comes crashing down." because the wand being a light spell and the demon being of utter darkness...
The demon then squished his underlings that were gearing up below his throne and a few more lucky hits dispatched the remaining pale 3's.
The 4 round combat and untimely demise of the main protagonist was not what I had in mind, but it has always stood out as a great example of how things can turn out with RM!
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Another essence example, but now of the other side:
After a long hiatus playing another RPG system, my group decided it was time to move on and, at my urging, went to try RMFRP.
My nephew is a veteran of RM as well, so he was tasked with playing the magician, as it was deemed too hard to play effectively by newbies. Now he has some particular tastes in power playing and he likes getting the max out of his characters, so his mage, at level 6 possessed Light law to level 10 and he was dabbling in casting lightning bolts. Using all he could muster he could pump one out every 3 rounds, which is quite ok, but with some risk.
Now the party, most are 10 year RPG veterans, were using party tactics when they were assailed in a tavern by some rogues. The rogues attempted to escape with some loot and the party was furiously trying to stop them.
In the courtyard of the inn, the party saw the culprit (there was only one left now) running away. The fighter and the party scout were going after him, but the mage, bow wielding ranger, cleric and magent were just out the door, using ranged attacks, hoping to catch the would be thief.
Then disaster struck: as the magician was prepared for casting his lightning bolt; he rolled a 02 for his casting: resulting in an automatic fumble! Overcasting and taking some other spell penalties, he knew this was bad and I was internally laughing, because I knew he had overplayed his hand... The fumble however resulted in a 201 result on the attack fumble chart: 8d10 hits (killing the mage) and 10!!! E electricity criticals, which were dutifully rolled, but there is a catch: The 96-99 result reads: " Bolts streak across the ground seeking new victims." This came up TWICE! as well as the 100 result, blowing away his ashes and chance of revival.
I ruled an E electricity critical rolled on each of the rest of his nearby party members, which also turned out very deadly for all of them!
So the fighter and the scout, after hearing a terrible crackling behind them, looked back to see their crew vaporized and in death throes, from one miserable failure... They did catch the rogue, but the campaign suddenly came to an end.
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Something I've always loved about RM spellcasting is that it rewards innovation.
One of the big problems with fighting a dragon is that it's almost impossible to seriously hurt one without grounding it first. And for a means to injure it badly enough to ground it, usually elemental attacks are not a good first choice.
But if you're the party's magician, what choice do you have? What do you do?
What you do is this: Wait for the dragon to come in on his "attack pass", and when he's as close and as low to the ground as he's going to get.... cast a Vacuum spell just below one wing and steal all his lift on that side.
SLAM! into the ground, at flying speed. Badly injured, stunned for several rounds, one wing broken and useless.
It's not often the fighters get to be annoyed with the spellcaster for getting all the kill value of the monster.
;)
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That actually reminds me of something very similar in Space Master - the party were being strafed by a bad guy in a fast fighter airc raft of some kind - the GM had us pinned down by the guy, until the Teep said that he was going to examine the attack pattern for the moment he started to pull out of his dive. He then proceeded to cast a really low level psion (I forget what it was, some kind of confusion one). The GM said it wasn't line of sight, he was quite high level and the modifiers would be significant, but the Teep calmly rolled a 100 for his psion attack roll, imposing a huge penalty on the target, who only rolled about 16 on his RR in any case.
All good. However, what the Teep, and in fact all the players had failed to take into account was that if the strafer is at the phase of his dive where he's about to pull up, his guns will have been pointing forward, and as he was shooting at the PCs, the craft was heading straight for the group, now out of control. Cue a scene very reminiscent of a certain scene in Aliens. In our case though, not all the group made it. The Teep did though, and had bragging rights thereafter. And that GM never strafed a group again :)
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The party of adventures are travelling along the coast in their boat. As speed is of the essence they start to consider if they can skip making time consuming stops in the harbours. The Alchemist and Illusionst suggest they can use the lvl 2 essence spell Sustain Nutrition from the Sustain Body list to avoid the need to get more food. The fighter of the group is not happy about being in need of others and demand that he be thought how to do it himself.
I am on the way to point out that it might take some time to learn a spell for a fighter, when the Alchemist explain that the fighter need to practice by meditation to learn the spell. The catch is that it will only work if the fighter soaks his clothes with sea water every hour. The fighter agree and soaks his clothes with seawater, while the Alchemist player bring out his dice to cast the spell on the fighter. For the rest of the journey the fighter was very wet, hungry and miserable...we players had to make a break until the laughter died down.
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The Cautionary Tale about Why to Avoid Straight Stairs in a Dungeon
The main event of the evening is about to happen with the players gather at the top of the gigantic stair to repel the goblin invaders. Unfortunately the magican is bit creative and uses the spell Stonewall from Earth Mastery at the top of the stairs. The others players point out that the goblins can just exit to the sides since the wall is just 10'x10'. The Magican nods but ask them to topple the stone wall down the stairs. A number of one 1' thick stone slabs rushing down the stairs and maiming all the goblins ended the battle and taught the lesson: Avoid Straight Stairs in a Dungeon
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I should have posted this earlier, since it's mostly Channeling (with some Mentalism), but in the interest of contributing something...
The party is in the heart of the enemy's mountain fortress, where we have found the fabled Tree of Life, stolen ages ago by the fabled sorcerer, Yatic, who appears to be in the process of returning. We were kind of hoping the Tree would be smaller, maybe "tree" is a metaphor and it's actually a nice compact piece of jewelry? No such luck. It's at least 400' tall with enormous roots that extend out over at least a square mile on the ground. Magic reveals the tree is or contains a powerful spirit: definitely what we are looking for. The leaves are of all types, as if it is All Trees. But the outer bark seems to be burned and the leaves all seem to be diseased. The air is thick with red mist: blood. We have to tie damp cloths over our mouths to filter it out. There is blood everywhere, like dew condensing out of the air. All meant to corrupt the tree and change its nature. Obviously we can't move the tree, but we suppose maybe we can get some kind of seed or cutting.
My character Niles, a Nightblade, has boots and gloves of spider-climbing, so I climb the tree looking for seeds or pods (none are visible at ground level). The tree is slippery with blood but that's no problem for the spell so I keep climbing higher, looking for anything promising.
Meanwhile Nilda, the Animist, tries to take a cutting. The first one crumbles to dust in her hand after a second or two. Thinking the corruption is the cause, she tries a disease purification spell as she takes another cutting; it lingers about a minute, then blackens and crumbles to dust. Better, still not a success. Did I mention this is Nilda's player's first Rolemaster game ever? But she's not willing to give up. She uses disease purification followed by a preservation spell on the third cutting: again it lasts about a minute, then crumbles to dust. Almost defeated, she says she will try one more thing. Disease purification, takes the cutting, and then quickly casts a Lifekeeping spell to try to keep the spirit in it. Can't hurt, right?
This time the cutting doesn't turn to dust.
This time the cutting remains and the entire remainder of the 400' tree turns to dust.
At this point, I am about 350’ up the tree which has turned to dust. My Landing spell makes me perfectly safe... for a fall up to 120'. Acrobatics... adrenal landing... add it all up, it's not enough. But the roll is a natural 100 and Niles will live to climb another tree (hopefully with less blood).
After that there are the wyverns and the lesser black reavers, a desperate 100' climb to a platform with a magical circle we use to Gate out just in time... and then what the heck do we do with this cutting anyway?
The GM has no clue either, he never expected us to actually take the tree with us, only to report back where it was. But a clever set of spells (and matching good rolls) and the game has gone somewhere none of us quite expected.
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I came up with an off the wall idea of applying the idea of voice inspired from Dune, together with that everything is measured by wavelength of energy with splashes and waves ofwater as root along with music to make vibrations mastery and related spell lists that would be a bit bardic and also use voice as a weapon. And use waves and vibrations that at the highest level is earth. Since my parents both were geologists and had a friend playing a knowledgble dwarf we had a situation where party was along with innocent people would have been under possible life ending attack by giants.
The dwarf showed my vibrationist the fault and fracture lines of mountain. I seamed a vibration spell over an area to effect a rock face over the giants. My attack roll was openended high and mountain failed open ended low and our desired result occured... dropped a mountain on a group of giants. by by 72 giants. The way this was put together the GM felt my lists fit arcane but the way i made my spells work involved a mental focus, essence and organic earth channelling to work
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It was RM1, and the GM had a houserule that casters of the Mentalist realm required no external flourishes. No hand waving, no words, no fancy dances, just be aware of your target and pay attention.
It's been so long ago I can no longer remember who she was, what the party composition was, or what they were fighting. Only that she was a Mentalist, and that she got an injury during a fight that left her paralyzed from the neck down.
Out of the combat? Not on your life, this was a Mentalist. Any time a bad guy came through her field of vision she'd Mind Store it. After that there wasn't any place it could hide from her.
Whatever we were facing, it was pretty nasty, and wounded a lot more than just her. It probably would have gone very badly had it not been for the effect on enemy morale of an enemy they couldn't see (they could, she was lying right out on the floor with a broken neck, they just didn't realize it was her) and couldn't defend against.
They could have had us, they really could have, we were bad off. But instead they ran away.
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Players love it when a GM is really inventive. You know? When you design an excellent character or plot hook that the players just grab on too.... As a GM, the most ingenutive players I have met used mentalism (often bards or mentalists of of course) and they cause no end of trouble to me....In my mind, mentalism users are those players that like to make my NPCs dance naked in the streets and bend my plot hooks with their little psychic brains!
This particular player and his party were investigating a mysterious plague that wiped out a small village, and as members of the kings army they were assigned to solve this mystery! Esau, the graduate level intern, was a budding young mentalist who was in charge of contacting base with updated reports, as well as act as a liaison between intelligence and this recon squad. The Intelligence bureau had reason to believe an organization known as "the militia of the wind" had been using forbidden magic to release this plague at choice sites, all under the instruction of Dustin Lance, the exiled necromancer.
Searching through the ruins of the village they came across a group of soldiers wearing hardier travel gear then is standard issue. They said they were passing through when they found the village and were investigating on behalf of the Kings Army...The party was not informed of any other squads in this region and were convinced that these men were not who they say they were....
Esau, the graduate level intern, walked forward and held out his hand cheerfully and said "My name is Esau, nice to meet you, captain....?"
The soldier-who-wasn't-a-soldier reached out and clasped hands with the party mentalist whom responded with some name I can hardly remmeber because the next thing that happens is
Esau: I cast question
Me: ....really?
Esau: Yup, I say "Who do you work for?"
I sigh and pray the dice are in my favor, but to no avail! I drop my head on the table and curse his name! "You dirty bastard! you tricked me into letting you touch him! if it weren't for that touch-penalty I would have made it!"
The soldier shouts out "I work for the militia of the wind.....o damn" and the fight ensues, leading to the slaughter of that enemy squad.
Mentalism users are so dirty!
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First, the setting. We're on a boat. A calm, peaceful ride.
Next, the danger. The moon starts dripping blood. Strange creatures from below the sea begin to emerge from the depths, dripping and oozing their way onto the boat. The first wave of combat goes by. The creatures are repelled from the deck, but much of the party is left exhausted.
The twist. The hull has been torn in many places, and the boat is sinking. Within minutes
The panic. The crew boards the only life boat. A party member falls off the crow's nest, and is saved by an impromptu flight spell by another party member. Someone runs into the invisible pet fire elemental we snuck onto the flammable wooden boat, negating the invisibility. The flying party member thinks that he has spontaneously learned to fly and forgets about the 4 minute limitation. A fumbled Leadership roll convinces the crew members that we are to blame for everything, and they sail off without us.
In retrospect, the crew members are not really that wrong about us, though everything we did was by pure incompetence.
The situation. On a sinking boat nowhere near shore with hungry things in the water and a crew that has left us to die.
The solution? Prayer circle. To the complete and utter disgust of the GM, the party sits down and begins to pray. To the god of the sea, for safe passage? Nope. To the god of the afterlife to have pity, or at least to chuckle at us? Nope. To the Fire God, whose only desire is to engulf the world in flame? It seemed like a good idea at the time. We had two religious members of the party, and it was either the God of Fire, or the God of Chicken.
Now, we roll well. We roll very well. In every GM's heart, there is a number, which when rolled above, can cause anything to happen. We must have rolled above that number on that day, for the prayer circle was transported through a land of fire and lava, onto a deserted island.
Each of us felt a booming voice in our heads, shouting out the reason that we were saved. In all the world, there are those who start fires, those who put out fires, and those who burn. We had been brought through fire because we were those who would always bring more fire to the world.
Thinking back, we realized that we had never left a city without our backs warmed by the soft glow of houses in the distance.
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I had a character that had a ring that could be used to change my apparent class, race and level to what ever I wanted, when some one used an information gathering spell on me. Nice, but not too scary.
I was playing a conjurer with circles of power. We were being hunted by the Enemy and were at a loss on how to win the next battle. So I used a relatively low level illusion spell to make me look like a Black Stalker (high level undead that walks towards its prey and never rests). However I made myself Grey and showed some spell casting capabilities. The enemy commander was over heard saying, "what idiot gave Black Stalkers magic?"