Do you play Dragons in lair, right??

[Rystil Arden]

I've lost my patience, sorry.

I'm at the point now where I think it's a troll.

The follies are just that absurd.

I'd wager 10 gold pieces that you're wrong about him being a troll. The posts I've seen certainly have been filled with crazy foibles, but they have been consistent throughout and showed a certain sort of logic. I would bet that he really is running this party, using a system so complicated that it has put him over his head consistently, causing him to turn here for expert advice (again and again).

Now I could be wrong, and it could be an elaborate ploy, but it is consistent enough that I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he seems legit.

 

[FireLance]

I thought I'd clarify on my "CR means nothing" comment:

I have 3 PCs, a Frenzied Berserker (ECL 18, as he dies a lot), an Azer Cleric (ECL 19), and a Nymph Archmage (ECL 20). They also have NPC friends and cohorts that they sometimes bring along.

They defeated large numbers of CR 28 encounters, some much harder than others. Then the PCs came up against one ECL 14, CR 13 NPC. To this battle, they bring the following allies: the PCs, juvenile silver dragon cohort, ECL 21 human psion, ECL 22 alu-fiend cleric, ECL 27! moon-elf archmage, ECL 22 star-elf Mystic Theurge, ECL 24 human archmage, ECL 22 human archmage, ECL 14 wild-elf shaman, ECL 18 pixie ninja cohort.

Guess what? Every last one of the PCs and their allies died except the azer ran away and the Frenzied Berserker managed to finish off the NPC at negative several hundred HP thanks to Deathless Frenzy, then died.

OT: Good grief. Was it simply a case of terrible luck, or was the ECL 14, CR 13 NPC extremely well tuned? What was it? I want details!

 

[Sejs]

Yeah, I've got to admit, my curiosity is piqued, too. What WAS that CR 13 NPC exactly?

 

[Rystil Arden]

Well since you're curious, sure ^^

The ECL 14 CR 13 encounter was the Frenzied Berserker's Half-Nymph (using my in-house Half-Nymph template which gives the Unearthly Grace ability) daughter, which I had allowed his player to build. He rolled really really well for some reason, si he decided it would be funny to make her a Monk/Cleric/Templar/MysticWanderer/Duelist [back when the AC bonus wasn't level based]. Her AC and saves were astronomical (easily outpaced all the casters' DCs and the melee people's attack bonuses), and she had Mettle, and Evasion. Of course, she couldn't hit worth a damn, at least not until the party left her alone in enemy territory and they captured her, brainwashed her, and stuck her into an in-game item of my making (its basically like a psionic skin item that allows the wearer to invoke spell-like abilities at the expense of their willpower and soul; think FFVI's Terra in Magitek Armour, but its importantly *not* armour). The Level 27 Elf Archmage wasted his weekly charge of the Sceptre of the Sorcerer Kings (x10 spell effect and cuts one god off from the mortal planes) on a well-disguised decoy of the BBEG, and then the unrecognisable (thanks to the skin) figure attacked them. Her AC was something like 61 (10 base + 9 deflection [Unearthly Grace, equal to CHA bonus] + 9 divine [Glory of the Divine, equal to CHA bonus] + 6 INT [Duelist] + 7 WIS [Monk] + 7 DEX + 8 Armour [magic item] + 5 Natural [magic item]). So with the item on, she shot off a 15d6 ray once per round (but the ray is pure magical energy because the party let the BBEG steal a nice pure source last session, think Eldritch Blast, though this was before Complete Arcane came out and she did not have unlimited amounts) and the attached energy source (earth-element based) shot off Gem Missiles at them during its turn (10 missiles which must target different people, 10d6 each, save half).

Anyways, the NPC wizards didn't really die because the human Archmage/ShadowAdept had sent in a Shadow Double, the Elf Archmage/Incantrix with the Sceptre was fighting on his home floating-city (which the battle caused to crash since it sapped out the energy source holding it up), so he sent a Dream-Avatar of himself. The human Archmage/Diviner had a Contingency that let him escape unconscious, lucky to be alive.

So yeah, it was a CR 13 girl pumped up with a magic item made by the Vandolian EldritchKnight/MysticTheurge ECL28 BBEG. The EL of the encounter was more like an ad hoc 19 for the item, but Larina (the enemy girl) still only had like 70 HP, and they did have tons of high-level people. Also, she came with some friends who I'm not considering part of the encounter because all of them were killed by the NPC wizards on the first round before they could do anything.

 

[Rystil Arden]

My players tend to be just a tad odd, as you might see in my sig, perhaps if people are interested in my campaign, I should write all of the crazy stuff that's happened in a story hour (I could tell about the time the PCs gathered all their money together and spent it on a 500-ft-long immovable rod). ^^

And remember, the Frenzied Berserker's player built Larina, not me!

 

[Desdichado]

Well I might as well systematically go down the list and thank everyone for being insulting, thank you

Wow, aren't we the senstive one. :\

 

[hong]

I never said a thing.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I'd wager 10 gold pieces that you're wrong about him being a troll. Now I could be wrong, and it could be an elaborate ploy, but it is consistent enough that I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he seems legit.

Consistent? Yep. Seems like every time someone corrects him on one rule, he has another house rule to muck something else up.

It just... never... ends...

Perhaps it's the eternal optimist in me that nobody could possibly be this clueless.

His posts clearly demonstrate a fluency in the language of the rules, but he still somehow gets everything wrong: Troll.

 

[Ravellion]

Sir Thorncrest, legitimate question...

Are you having fun being the DM?

Rav

 

[Rystil Arden]

Consistent? Yep. Seems like every time someone corrects him on one rule, he has another house rule to muck something else up.

It just... never... ends...

Perhaps it's the eternal optimist in me that nobody could possibly be this clueless.

His posts clearly demonstrate a fluency in the language of the rules, but he still somehow gets everything wrong: Troll.

I guess I'll have to be the eternal pessimist and and disagree. It seems like the same minor house rules and majour permissiveness in character generation are causing similar problems again and again. But his party of PCs is always consistent, so if he is a troll, he was very meticulous in statting out the party of PCs that he would use in his posts and keeping them consistent (though I suppose a dedicated troll could do that). I've just seen far more people similar to this who are not trolls than I have actual trolls.