RangerWickett
Legend
Last night my 4e GM (not the same as the Rogue Trader DM who is a lunatic genius) was running an 11th level dungeon crawl. This was our third session in the dungeon, and we got to kind of a late start last night, so we weren't expecting to get through more than a single combat.
I'm Surprised This Doesn't Happen More Often
The first encounter was going nice and bloody against some shadar-kai and dark creepers, but then the GM (as the shadar-kai) cursed and said, "We're not getting paid enough for this!"
To which one of my fellow players (who is the aforementioned lunatic genius) responded, "Holy crap, you're the first people we've run into in this damned place that aren't just insane cultists. If you're here for the money, we'll just pay you more, okay?"
Fast forward through a bit of negotiation ("We demand one treasure parcel, plus Karrnathi citizenship, and to be hired as guards, and north-facing bedrooms in the manor."), and we trade some magic items in exchange for the guys giving us a map of the facility. They also promise to stick around and lie if anyone comes around looking for surface-dwellers who might be trying to slaughter them all.
Our Vampire's Name is Leeroy
We look at the map. There are a ton of guards in barracks, and there's some sort of cult shrine, and a mad surgeon who stitches people and animals together, and nasty monsters. But we just want to kill the mind flayer who's running the place ("Dude, you were working for a mind flayer, and you expected him to pay you and not flay your minds? Man, you are so lucky we broke in here and tried to kill you for a few rounds.")
So we decide to screw all the proper room-by-room clearing, and just rush headlong toward the mind flayer's chambers. In the real world we only spent about a half hour on the first encounter, so we're pretty sure we can wrap this whole adventure up before the end of the session.
The shadar-kai warns us, though, that there's some sort of strange monster guarding the entrance to the mind-flayer's chamber. We'll have to get past that first. With incredible restraint, we decide to spend 5 minutes formulating a plan. Said plan consists of our party's halfling vampire scouting ahead and telling us what the monster looks like before we rush in and kill it.
He sneaks through a trap door into a storage room adjacent to the guardian monster's foyer, while the rest of us prepare to flank down the main hallway. The storage room is full of sheep pelts, wool, pitch, and grains -- various supplies stolen from the townsfolk on the surface, who raise a lot of sheep and burn lots of torches to scare away the zombies. (Our GM has been playing a lot of Minecraft lately.)
Then the vampire turns to misform and gets a look at the guardian monster. Now, statswise we figure out that it's a familiar monster, but we're all thrilled at how the GM has reskinned it. Because this thing, which has been stitched together from the heads of a dozen sheep and the horrified eyes of a handful of shepherds, bleats in a constant drone, and shuffles across the floor like a fleshy ooze. Yes my friends, this is a gibbering mouther made of sheep.
The Silence of the Lambs
We decide to quickly plug our ears with wax, until the GM points out that two of us are dragonborn, and we don't have ears. So we figure out another way to muffle the sounds reaching our, um, earhole thingies. Solution? Take some of those sheep pelts from the storage room and wrap them around our heads.
(There's a slight problem because all our hands are full with weapons or shields, and we didn't bring enough sunrods, so we also jury-rig a torch, which our dragonborn knight just lights and holds in his teeth. He hopes it won't set his nice sheepskin hat on fire.)
Then, on our mark, we rush into combat. The thing starts bleating, but we're okay. It starts spewing acid, and we're irked, but okay. Then we spend two rounds hacking into it, and realize, ugh, this thing has a ton of hit points, and it's just going to be a grind to kill.
Simultaneously, the lunatic genius and I both get the same idea.
"Does this thing have hands?" the lunatic genius asks.
"And how sturdy is the door to the storage room?" I ask.
Round three of combat consists of a lot of gesticulating to convey our plan while we're all deafened, but the vampire gets the gist of it, and he sprints away and opens the door, then lures the sheepball closer with his captivating gaze (cue Settlers of Catan jokes).
The dragonborn knight changes stances, charges the bleater, and wallops it into the storage room. The human blackguard runs up, snatches the torch from his mouth and chucks it into the storage room, setting the place ablaze. My dragonborn bard heaves himself into the door and slams it shut, and we just hold our weight against it as, in the next room over, we cook some nice lambchops.
Door!
I'm Surprised This Doesn't Happen More Often
The first encounter was going nice and bloody against some shadar-kai and dark creepers, but then the GM (as the shadar-kai) cursed and said, "We're not getting paid enough for this!"
To which one of my fellow players (who is the aforementioned lunatic genius) responded, "Holy crap, you're the first people we've run into in this damned place that aren't just insane cultists. If you're here for the money, we'll just pay you more, okay?"
Fast forward through a bit of negotiation ("We demand one treasure parcel, plus Karrnathi citizenship, and to be hired as guards, and north-facing bedrooms in the manor."), and we trade some magic items in exchange for the guys giving us a map of the facility. They also promise to stick around and lie if anyone comes around looking for surface-dwellers who might be trying to slaughter them all.
Our Vampire's Name is Leeroy
We look at the map. There are a ton of guards in barracks, and there's some sort of cult shrine, and a mad surgeon who stitches people and animals together, and nasty monsters. But we just want to kill the mind flayer who's running the place ("Dude, you were working for a mind flayer, and you expected him to pay you and not flay your minds? Man, you are so lucky we broke in here and tried to kill you for a few rounds.")
So we decide to screw all the proper room-by-room clearing, and just rush headlong toward the mind flayer's chambers. In the real world we only spent about a half hour on the first encounter, so we're pretty sure we can wrap this whole adventure up before the end of the session.
The shadar-kai warns us, though, that there's some sort of strange monster guarding the entrance to the mind-flayer's chamber. We'll have to get past that first. With incredible restraint, we decide to spend 5 minutes formulating a plan. Said plan consists of our party's halfling vampire scouting ahead and telling us what the monster looks like before we rush in and kill it.
He sneaks through a trap door into a storage room adjacent to the guardian monster's foyer, while the rest of us prepare to flank down the main hallway. The storage room is full of sheep pelts, wool, pitch, and grains -- various supplies stolen from the townsfolk on the surface, who raise a lot of sheep and burn lots of torches to scare away the zombies. (Our GM has been playing a lot of Minecraft lately.)
Then the vampire turns to misform and gets a look at the guardian monster. Now, statswise we figure out that it's a familiar monster, but we're all thrilled at how the GM has reskinned it. Because this thing, which has been stitched together from the heads of a dozen sheep and the horrified eyes of a handful of shepherds, bleats in a constant drone, and shuffles across the floor like a fleshy ooze. Yes my friends, this is a gibbering mouther made of sheep.
The Silence of the Lambs
We decide to quickly plug our ears with wax, until the GM points out that two of us are dragonborn, and we don't have ears. So we figure out another way to muffle the sounds reaching our, um, earhole thingies. Solution? Take some of those sheep pelts from the storage room and wrap them around our heads.
(There's a slight problem because all our hands are full with weapons or shields, and we didn't bring enough sunrods, so we also jury-rig a torch, which our dragonborn knight just lights and holds in his teeth. He hopes it won't set his nice sheepskin hat on fire.)
Then, on our mark, we rush into combat. The thing starts bleating, but we're okay. It starts spewing acid, and we're irked, but okay. Then we spend two rounds hacking into it, and realize, ugh, this thing has a ton of hit points, and it's just going to be a grind to kill.
Simultaneously, the lunatic genius and I both get the same idea.
"Does this thing have hands?" the lunatic genius asks.
"And how sturdy is the door to the storage room?" I ask.
Round three of combat consists of a lot of gesticulating to convey our plan while we're all deafened, but the vampire gets the gist of it, and he sprints away and opens the door, then lures the sheepball closer with his captivating gaze (cue Settlers of Catan jokes).
The dragonborn knight changes stances, charges the bleater, and wallops it into the storage room. The human blackguard runs up, snatches the torch from his mouth and chucks it into the storage room, setting the place ablaze. My dragonborn bard heaves himself into the door and slams it shut, and we just hold our weight against it as, in the next room over, we cook some nice lambchops.
Door!
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