::A Geek in Korea::

Plot Wise:

In our reoccuring adventures of our D&D group in the town of Loudwater, we last left our party defeated, having run from a group of goblins that we had gotten caught surprised by in an ambush. We had run from that encounter. We made a deal with the goblins that we’d leave their place alone if they didn’t bother the city of Loudwater, in exchange for giving them an item we had prevented them from stealing earlier.

We ended up being asked by a gang of thieves to help them recover “a shipment” from the docks as the right of initiation. We were only joining the gang to bust their intimidation ring by taking them from the inside. While we were killing time for the shipment they asked us to report on, one of the goblins from the last adventure ran into town and asked us for help.

Their barrow had been overrun by a Kruthik hive. Kruthiks are something like “The Zerg” from Starcraft, insect like reptilians that communicate and work intelligently, full of spikes, poison, and hate. We had to honor our promise to the Goblins by helping them out. Besides, we had a few days to kill before the other quest started.

We returned, our party now boosted by the Goblin Warrior that we kept as an ally. He was our guide through the barrow, so we weren’t getting surprised by random traps. We did get ambushed, twiced, by infant Kruthiks in small hallways. Things that can burrow through walls, pin us down, then use a spike aura to do damage were tough to deal with in close quarters. We had one easy, and one hard encounter according to the DM.

I got nailed twice, was always struggling to keep up my health, and got put down to near death once. I passed my death saving throws, but we were always fighting from behind, even with the extra NPC ally. Even eliminating lower level minions right away weren’t helping us punch through the damage on the tougher creatures when we could focus on them. During one of the battles we had we even gained a second ally, a goblin Hexer who was two levels above us. Without the Hexer throwing around debuffs to our enemies, we would have been toast. I had freed him from some sort of interdimensional portal by hoping into a fire. Yes. I jumped into a fire to AVOID damage.

Our final encounter was what the DM described as “Very Hard”. We had experience points in our eyes and were trying to level up by the end of the day. The giant hive mother Kruthik beat us down viciously. She had a better breath weapon that a dragon we had killed in a previous encounter. It was brutal. The difficulty was off the charts. We were throwing status effects on it. There wasn’t a round it wasn’t blind, immobilized, or slowed, but it didn’t matter. We couldn’t put it down. By the end of the encounter it had more than half it’s health left and wasn’t in danger from us any time soon since we had expended everything trying to kill it.

The minions in this battle also went down quickly, but the two other kruthic adults in addition to the hive mother who buffed them were too much for us. The aura on the hive mother boosted their attack and killed our Warlock striker in a single shot! BAM! DEAD! The DM basically said, “Oops, you’re dead. My bad.”

I was lucky enough to escape death, but it was very close. I was cornered and was about to be eaten alive by the hive mother. One miss and a quick retreat saved me. I just turned to water and got the hell away. I was as effective as a child wielding a nerf bat in combat. I don’t have the buffed stats to do “put them down” sorts of damage, and without a melee based martial character to buff, I’m clearly just support for the party. I’m not good enough to last out a big battle on the front line. The wizard tried his best, but the Goblin Warrior went down to near death, while the Goblin Hexer was just enough to keep us from all dying. We ran from the encounter with a casualty.

Party wise:

Our Warlock is throwing in the towel. He won’t be reraising his character. He’ll be rolling a Cleric healer and we’re reconfiguring the party. It’s a real shame, becuase the Warlock had a really fantastic back story. However, the new Cleric will be his brother, and they’ll have a twisted dramatic sort of “As the World Turns” sort of back story going on. As good as his last character’s actions out of combat were, I hope he keeps up the dramatic interest.

The player who controls the Wizard making a Fighter character that someone will take turns controlling whenever there is a free place. The wizard in a big encounter is “Fire and forget”. He doesn’t move, he only sustains his power and sits around damaging people and knocking off minions with fireballs that float around the room. This will let that player run someone to make me more effective in combat, and give us more “meat” to put in front of our more squishy characters.

I also might be rerolling my statistics and reviewing my build. They asked me if I wanted to run something magical, but I want to keep it something Martial based. I didn’t like the Fighter, becuase it’s so similar to what I did with my old character in 3.5 edition.

The stat choices I made might be contributing to my squishiness and lack of combat effectiveness. I might need to rethink my approach to combat. Hopefully with a fighter helping me out I’ll be able to pull my weight. Either that or I’ll throw in the towel next time around if I die and roll a Rogue or something. Our DM told us that even if we all make secondary characters he wants us to keep these first sets of characters around too, possibly for story reasons.

I really like my character’s backstory, so I don’t want to switch to something else. I also heavily favor Monster and exotic class/race choices, while everyone in the party is much more traditional. Right now we’re just trying to scope out what we need to fix. It might be next year before we get to play again, and we’re looking for another player to join us to round out the party. Hopefully we’ll find someone.