Tuesday, September 28, 2010

RIP Memphis Green

So yesterday marked the end of my level 10 Elf Seeker. I had expressed to the DM that I would not be hanging around in this campaign once Heroic Tier was done. Monday night gaming till midnight was just taking a toll on me on Tuesday mornings and at the moment, 4E doesn't have my attention like it did before. Just a case of my mind needing to take a break from it and go do other things.

Kris our DM was itching to kill a PC, so I'm sure that he enjoyed this. Memphis has a thing about riding large monsters and blasting them in the back of the head at point blank with his blunderbuss (we just used the rules for a long bow) with magical insects as ammunition. In the beginning, I found the Seeker to be such a "crappy" controller especially when you compare him to say...a Wizard. I found his powers too situational before all the bells and whistles could go off. Don't get me wrong, when they work, they're terrifying. But they require more finesse.

I've always had a beef with 4E locking up with players not moving around enough when I DM (it's amazing how stupid characters all of a sudden became tactical geniuses). So even though Memphis' attacks are ranged, I played him as a compulsive in your face type warrior who would run all over the place as long as space permitted. If I double move and shift as a minor, it's possible for Memphis to clear 17 squares in one turn when moving closer to an enemy. As I mentioned earlier, I originally found him difficult to use properly as a controller. So instead of being the one to clear minions, I ended up trying to do my "controlling" by engaging the big guy on the battle field and trying to take him out of the equation for a few turns while the rest of the party mopped up the other baddies. Once that was taken care of, the rest of the group would rally around whatever it was that Memphis was riding on (and in most cases he was also half dead by this point) and beat face.

So how did Memphis go? Well, on our dungeon crawl searching for Babagya, we ended up in a tomb where some Zombies rose up along with an Undead Firebat. In the back stood a T-rex made of vines. Seeing as the Zombies and the Firebat had found their fun with the other PC's, Memphis sprints across the hall, and climbs up onto it's back and begins blasting away at this thing. Completely separated from the party, he eventually go down from the poison in the Vine-a-saurus' vine attacks. Having been so attached to Memphis' character, Holly's/Skull's dragon familiar was played up to be freaking out when Memphis finally fell limp.

For fun, I grabbed some Treant minis and dropped them on the table to represent the Primal spirits reacting to his death. The party was in very bad shape between auras, ongoing damage and status effects. Heals had run dry along with a Paladin who had no surges left. To keep me amused (and to give the rest of the group a better chance), towards the end, Kris had me rolling damage on Memphis' turn in the initiative. This representing the primal energies still being hostile towards the creature as magical insects from Lola the blunderbuss were crawling out of it to gnaw on the thing, along with Jiminy Cricket stabbing at it with his umbrella. Fittingly, it was the damaged rolled for the biting swarm that finally took down the Vine-a-Saur.

Memphis will rest in peace and for my last session in this campaign that will take place next week, I'm going to either make a Dragonborn or Thri-Keen. The Dragonborn will represent Huggles the familiar basically Digi-volving and using Memphis' old gear or the Thri-Keen will be Jiminy Cricket being fully fleshed out to avenge Memphis' death. I just want to finally see Babagya go down. Boss battle time!

3 comments:

  1. When you leave the campaign, will you still be able to get in some gaming?

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  2. Yes indeed. I have a friend that wants to do some one shot games who also wants to run Cartoon Action Hour. I'll be looking at GMing Mouse Guard and when I go back to D&D I'd like to try to make something where it'll be fantasy super heroes meets Resident Evil if I can pull that off.

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  3. Oh man it was great when Huggles' reaction was being described. Holly almost cried.

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