“
thief makes barbarian punch cleric”
The party entered the dungeon this week, which is
The Incandescent Grottoes. It’s a trippy dungeon with a nice helping of traps. Inside, they found the ooze cult’s template and started exploring it. There’s one part with a stuck door that reveals a room with some shelving, strange eyes on the ceiling, and a mysterious switch. Naturally, having no sense of self-preservation, the party wants to flip the switch. The cleric and the retainers‡ retreat far back while the barbarian pokes it with her spear and the thief peaks around next to her to watch. The switch activates the eyes, which requires them to make a saving throw or go berserk. Naturally, they both fail.
The cleric hears the commotion and goes to help with the problem: the barbarian and thief are wresting and biting and punching each other. I run with mostly table-facing information, so they know it will be over soon, but the cleric wants to help anyway. She casts
cleanse* on the thief, which removes the berserk effect (her
cleanse is at +3 and can remove paralysis, fear, poison, and curses; so I figured it was probably something like a curse). With the thief back to normal, he yells at the barbarian, who was still beating him up, “Look, there’s a magic user†!” Which is true. Clerics are in the mage group in my system, so they are magic users. So the barbarian goes over and punches the cleric.
* I’m working on a modification to magic for my system that converts traditional D&D spells into a system that uses magic points and treats spells as a form of magical speciality you can acquire like other specialties. I’ve combined similar spells together in places and made their rank determine what effects you get.
† The barbarian class in my homebrew system takes cues from classic AD&D barbarians in not liking magic, but it doesn’t require they smash magic items or restrict who they can have as a companion. Instead, they have 0 mp no matter what (making them incapable of using magic) and gain extra stress from most beneficial effects.
‡ It is ironic that the group who disliked retainers in Old-School Essentials now has three retainers in a system designed with the expectation they wouldn’t be necessary.
