Shattered Honor – Part Seventeen
Chapter: Season Ten
Scheduling Note:
No new page on Friday, September 13 2019, as I am doing some adulting and wrapping up a few freelance projects.
Do not despair. I will be rolling out new pages on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday next week to make up for the skipped day.
Also: The 5e Magebound rules drop on Monday, September 16, 2019!
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Merch update: I have a new design in the store that speaks to me and content creators everywhere. If you dig it, consider a purchase.
Oh snap!
“Hey, boo, where the hell is your character?”
*shrug*
Dammit, Brian!
HOLY MOLLY
also, the only one who saw it coming was the blind guy, i find it ironic
Nice!
Okay. I did not see that coming, and I should have.
Well played, Sir. Well played.
What an awesome character concept. I would love to see the template for it…might want to try that myself.
mercer did a build calle a restless spirit i think thats what this is. it’s on dmguild
Thank you Xero. I found what you were referring to. Here’s a link in case anyone else is looking for it: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/226513/The-Lingering-Soul–Class-PostDeath-Option
3.5E had the “Ghostwalk” campaign option book, that included templates for incorporeal “ghosts”. The template was fairly light on the ECL, too.
Whaaat?!? Brett is killing it as a DM btw
The new shirt is awesome!!!
Yeah! He is pretty amazing right now! WTG Brett!!
OHHH MY GAWDS! CHARLIE AND BRENT WELL DONE!
Hot DAMN, that was a great twist. I’m even more excited for this now.
Cool! Is it common in games for someone at a table to spring out as a surprise character? I hope so.
I have done it as a player and a DM.
I’ve seen bringing in players with ‘surprise’ characters from time to time. Usually, the player will know about it and be in on it, but sometimes it’ll be done with new people coming to the table, or situations where one player’s character could not be included, such as unable to accompany or splitting the party for some reason. Think of it like a video game, where you can add in a new member of the party to keep the challenges at a consistent power rating. The Final Fantasy 3 US (FF6) game did it a few times, like the splitting of the party after the Rafting Scene. Sabin finds Shadow and Cyan, Locke finds Celes. FF7 when Cloud falls into the garden and meets Arieth/Aeris, I’ve done it sometimes due to OOC reasons like a player can’t make it or they forgot their sheet, but usually it happens for IC reasons.
For a Shadowrun campaign, good lord some twenty years ago, played on AOL, my character – a Troll (think “godawful huge guy”) legbreaker / thug / mob-loan-enforcer type, built to be as unkillable as possible – was introduced as _opposition_ for the party at first. Fun. As. Hell. No-one but the GM and I knew, at that point, how tough I was … or that the character made it a point to use nonlethal “gel” rounds in his guns. (Dead people can’t make their next loan payment, after all …).
Well, one of the party members opens up with an LMG, and worse, it’s firing APDS – “Armor Piercing, Discarding Sabot”, basically they’ll go through an engine block. Hits my troll square in the chest with a concentrated long burst – and the player sends me a tell apologizing for “killing my character in the first ten minutes”.
I rolled dice to soak. Then I rolled MORE dice (AOL’s chatrooms couldn’t roll enough of them at once). As a result, I brought it down to a flesh wound … which an implant turned into _mere bruises_ (in gamespeak: I soaked that deadly-plus-three-steps lethal hit, into a light stun).
In-character, my troll got pushed back a step with an “oof” … then looked up at the window the LMG had fired from, pointed at the gunner, and said “Son, you and me are going to have WORDS”, before walking across the street and into the building, unholstering a huge revolver on the way.
I would have paid good money to see the looks on the other players’ faces when that happened. 😀 😀 😀
Dang man, I want to RP with you if that’s the kind of fun you have on a regular basis. Always wanted to try Shadowrun, but the closest I’ve gotten is the HBS cRPGs and buying the sourcebook (3.0?) c.1999/2000.
A huge revolver? His knickname wasn’t “Hellboy” by chance, was it? 😀
Nah. His street name was Trojan – real name was Troy something-or-other. He was born human, and turned into a great big hulking troll around age 13 (which used to be a thing in that setting), getting thrown out by his very, very racist parents. He was around 19 by the time of the game, IIRC.
The revolver was a standard Ruger Warhawk. Not an oversized monstrosity like The Samaritan. 😀
And, around ’99 or 2,000 …. yeah, 3E or maybe even late 2E. Right around the time of that game, actually … 😀
One time I was in this game on an RPG forum, but just as an observer rather than a player. Then the GM said they were taking on new players, so I signed up and worked out over PM a good place for my character to enter the game.
At this point, the existing players were travelling towards a villain’s lair with the intent to infiltrate it to figure out what said villain was up to.
My character was known to the other PCs (long story short, they were all in the same role, kind of like an Order of medieval fantasy Jedi-esque defenders of the world). However, one of my character’s skills was the ability to camouflage herself by psychically clouding the minds of those around her, unknown to them. So something like the Perception Filter in Doctor Who, except rather than only make you unnoticeable, it can also make you look and sound like someone completely different as far as anyone watching you is concerned. So the other PCs wouldn’t have recognised her.
Agreed with the GM that she had already been ordered some months before the game started to infiltrate this villain’s hideout (also unknown to the others, as the one who had given the orders didn’t trust the other leaders of the Order). And she had also been told to protect the villain (as, spoiler alert, he wasn’t actually a villain!) without revealing herself. No matter who or what tried to interfere with his plans.
I’d have started out relaying my character’s actions through an anonymous NPC controlled by the GM (to represent the psychic camouflage effect disguising her), so the others wouldn’t have known it was another player who was potentially interfering with their plans, until circumstances forced my character to unmask herself.
Was a role I would have loved to play, but unfortunately the GM running that game, while imaginative, had a bad habit of leaving games unfinished. Occupational hazard of online forum gaming. So the game stalled out before they got to the place where my character would have been introduced.
Ah well, maybe someday I’ll get to try out the disguised friend/foe trick in another game. I live in hope 😀
That was completely unexpected and really cool. I can’t think of the last time a plot twist was both of those, in ANY medium. Congrats, Brian.
I would LOVE a flashback scene showing that pre-game conversation. As a DM it’s a really cool moment when you have a player approach with an idea like this, or who is trusting enough to let you help introduce it.
Even better, they just had a scary trap, nervous trapfinder, and NOW they have someone who can be incorporeal and knows the dungeon. Almost like someone planned it that way…
I legit cackled.
Ohohoho! Well done – that is quite the surprise. With all the stuff the GM is springing on them, they’ll be adding an annex to the dungeon – cause of all the bricks they’re … well, *hitting.
Nice Diplomacy check from Burg there 😉
Also, wow, didn’t see that coming (no pun intended!)
Flashbacks to Charlie’s attempt at a robotic drone guide character in the aborted Barrier Peaks game before. Seems he has a knack for more unusual and more interesting character builds. Definitely like it! 😀
I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming…I mean, the ghost didn’t look like Brett, so he shouldn’t have been an NPC. We had the visual clue right there in front of us. XD
Nice catch, that!
Yup. Figured Charlie was just waiting in the wings. A player at the table with no character in the game and a coy shrug when asked about it means a surprise somewhere down the line.
Congratulations on coming out with a shirt that I’m buying. Reminds me that one of my favorite follows on Twitter is @forexposure_txt
Charlie finally gets to live his dream of playing a glowy, floating dungeon guide. Let’s hope this one lasts longer!
The shirt speaks to me. Also, where can we find the magebound rules for 5e? I’m not really into buying shirts, but today’s my birthday so I definitely could justify springing for some game content.