Stone Age Sorcery Game Session
So some new characters made and only one person bailed over medical stuff (sniff). Party now includes
Fighter hunter and executioner wields a stone axe and spear (Dallas)
Halfling baker, an expert with throwing rocks and copper hand axe (Matt)
Tattooed cave wizard and healer mostly terrible at fighting (Hugh)
Pterodactyl abhuman warrior fisherman with a copper headed magic spear (Doug)
Elf from faerieland with incredible archery skills and mentalism magic (Richard)
Not everyone together yet but we had 3 out of 5 because getting everyone's schedule even monthly is hard.
So Halfling staying with Gnomes village met pterodactyl and cave wizard also alone among the gnomes. All became friends. Granny, halflings slave and the older hunter were ok with the new friends scouting the mysterious valley of giant trees, dinosaurs, elves and cannibal cave dwellers. So found a good looking cave and had a peek inside disturbing a young spotty sabretooth cat. Drove it off and chased into the cave to finish it off. After butchery, a meal and some animal skinning had a peak around the cave. I'm using a 3fold adventure i did called Cave of Fate. Found a cave gallery of hunter rites and a shamans cave with several items of jewellery, drums, magic antler spear, antler hat (now Mr Pteradactyl), Shamans bag +1 saving throws, ochre and a bunch of awesome drugs (STR, alertness, mild poison and one causes hours of visions about lizard men worshipping Tsathogua.
Halfling sneaked ahead found a tunnel with a well. Went plashing about and a giant eel tried to grab him and pull under. Others rushed in to help, wizard making pterodactyl grow big for a fight. Decided to all go home for the night as sabretooth and eel fight hurt.
Returned and explored several other chambers of art and petty trade goods. Found some destroyed mummies of dead humans from long ago. Found a shrine of a dragon cult with dragon tooth and a smallish two-foot burned dragon skull. A rubble blacked tunnel got them exited. Tried to catch eel with bait but new it went under a rock lip and good current. Halfling experimented with swimming and wizard said try like a frog which somehow works. Found lots of branches and a hidden chamber with a dimly luminous serpent cult healing pool. Swam away as the giant guard smake looked like it would eat a halfling.
Moved the rubble in the dragon shrine and crawled into the tomb of lizardfolk. A stone lidded sarcophagi amazed them with it's unheard of stone excellence. Pushed open lid a bit and decorated serpent mummy inside awoke and tried to open the lid. Gang held the lid down and covered it in rocks from rubble heap. Found stone tablets of a spell in serpent folk script so wizard had to touch it and awoke lizardfolk zombies. Was a tough battle. Wizard lucked out with an elemental blast of sparks and helped friends with first aid. Wizards raven familiar used its cauterise cantrip which was handy, also was able to speak now. Found a wight lizardfolk thankfully using its macuahuitl and managed to beat it. Found some lady serpent folk graves and looted copper armbands and coral necklaces.
Found the other way into snake healing shrine and killed the snake. Were pretty battered so blocked the entry tunnel and waited as they heard cannibals searching for them. Waited two days then fled back home. Chased by four cannibals and managed to wound two who sat back to hurl darts back at wizard and halfling while pterodactyl battled two unharmed ones. One tried to run and halfling chased him down while others did first aid stuff. Managed to find blood trail and exposed hiding cave hooligan and smashed in his brains with rocks.
Back home party celebrated their luxury trade goods and discussed needing wives and considered buying them off the semi-human cave cannibals. Also started getting too comfortable with gnomes who the traded jewellery and drugs for a copper "coin" each. The sharpened copper coin was a fire starter, animal skinner, scraping pocket knife wonder tool every stone-age James Bond wanted. This made them all have social status with gnomes. I was a bit worried here and two games before I had party marry gnomes and being gnome pals and felt a bit over it. So now party accepted, the gnomes let down their hair around guests who helped stopped cannibals hunting gnomes. So gnomes who were all shape-shifters were seen fornicating with their pets in animal form. And party and npc decided to move out of this place fast and didn't even want a miracle domestic pet dog from the gnomes. They couldn't get out fast enough after levelling up.
Then into the next valley which was barren but looked like a canyon had opened and closed in a rubble-filled wasteland. Found friendly tribe with miracle wood wall stockade and were offered delicious gobs of meat to eat.
What meat is it? Oh, that's ground meat we mine.
What? It comes from the flesh of our god the beast beneath, wanna see?
Er sure.
Village in the walls of huts of god bone and god leather tents. Inside a sacred sweat lodge in the centre was a passage to inside the great crack. Here was where ancient gods-ancestors of human tribes arrogantly struck down and imprisoned their sacred behemoth two ages ago. The cult hopes to awaken the behemoth to judge the gods and punish them.
People mined meat from sleeping league long kaiju. Heroes didn't wanna see bum or head end but saw meat chunks hacked out by axe. The tribe used ribs and flesh and sinew for everything and were very welcoming.
Wanna join us forever your welcome to be one with us?
Oh, yea fascinating we gonna leave now.
Sure you don't want to trade for reptilian mutagenic neural peptide juice?
Yeah, we can hang a bit to try some.
Though halfling abstained. Noticed some older people had od features and apparently some fully transform and flee to the dark hill caves to join their hidden kin. So anyway wizard got cool eye membranes that act like goggles and doesn't need to close eyes or blink. Pterry got a dislocating jaw so he could swallow something size of a cat whole. He seemed fine with calling of reptile kin mutations.
Party moved into the valley of mystery a lush foggy highland moor haunted by signs of recent abandonment by tribes. Nobody knows why or where all went.Mechanics Wise
Wizard learned written serpent folk script and learned spell of charm undead which is one of those evil necromancers spells your grandma warns you about. Pterodactyl was a great barbarian maniac with lots of awesome plusses stacked up.
Elf can shoot into melee or shoot at point-blank while in hand to hand so only have a bow and a knife and makes arrows on the road. Elf is using my psionics spell list as "mentalist" caster and has bizarre skills for faerie style grifting humans using illusionary disguises, hypnosis and infiltration skills.
My version of halfling class, I had to tone down a bit since my earlier version. Now makes second rank fighters and skirmishers and have best-saving throws and diplomacy. Halfling is a sneaky rock-throwing ninja machine too. Has baking skills which impress everyone they stay with.Pterodactyl abhuman was able to glide when he hit third Lv in session will be able to fly at 6th. First-person who taken advantages to have no penalties with non-proficient weapons so can snatch any weapon found. Normally abhumans are basicly super barbarians made by ancients for war or by the gods in the begining as animal ancestor guardians. In case of this character his ancient reptilian lore makes him a scholar who can talk to wizards.
Was funny wizard using growth so 7-foot Pterry grew to 10 foot 6 inches but halfling grew from 4 to 6 foot high. Actually, a giant halfling throwing rocks turned out pretty good.
I'm pretty generous with a level per session if I can now as lucky to get three straight games in a row but seems to be happening and new players as well. I prefer longer campaigns and character commitment but more and more in my recent gaming, my dnd has been a bunch of mini-campaigns.
I'm making morale lower and animals and people more willing to run away. The urge to live and survive is the ethos of the setting. Skirmishing and fleeing if injured is normal warfare. Fighting to exterminate is rare the domain of evil tribes and cannibals who prefer to attack enemies at their homes. Most decent enemies fight on borders mostly as skirmishers to wound and insult rather than murder. Accidents do happen and some kind of ceremonial trial where the tribe who kill compensate their enemies and things go back to abuse and throwing stuff at long range till blood is drawn is a normal fight. Players did chase and kill fleeing cannibals and kept following till all dead but I guess with cannibals you know you can never just live with them (chaotic evil).
My oath and gifts system is hilarious alignment-dialled-up-to-11 big fun and player making new character was gonna try live without alignment found self swearing oath to chaos to graffiti lots and deciding wasn't so bad I want more oaths to chaos. Got a magic bow and a fancy bow skill just for becoming a cosmic fanatic to inhuman powers. I had gnomes help produce the magic oath items in play. Normally I assume a temple or a cult would help you get it mostly whatever uses the least of the planar powers own effort. I like the idea of when sufficient level to get a better item the powers just upgrade your old one that is linked to your item. Losing item probably require a quest to recover. If destroyed perform quest to get new one waiting in some terrible place to collect.
Planning to finish the half-page left of my second rulebook shortly (just recovering fonts) then merge them both into one and set up with hardcover on lulu.
