Do you like demon girls? Do you like bondage? Do you like dark skinned, trouble prone shortstacks? Do you like balloons? If you don't, the hell brought you to MY profile??!! If SO, however, Saunterwing did for me an art! Go check it out and give him all the attention and lovely praise he deserves!
So, recently my pal Trev (TheTrevor here on DA) and I had a chat. Well, a series of long notes. I have been getting worn out on fantasy gaming and the like for a decade and every once in a while I need to be reminded why it's still worth digging into. A recent Pathfinder game with my friends and gaming group run by Achast and fellow player Whiteravenlord did a lot to remind me why I had fun with things, but also this discussion brought up an important thing about Classes..... namely that they don't actually work how many people think they do. Let's look over a couple revelations about what classes, in our old school experience, are ACTUALLY meant to do, shall we? Let's look at the staples.... weird wacky stuff tends to change a lot.
So first off, the classic default for many players: the Thief. Thieves, or Rogues as people prefer now because thief is 'bad' I guess, are there to do two things: get stuff everyone else can't, and introduce peoples' insides to their outsides in very efficient ways. The former they do with theft, grifts, cons, cracking safes, disarming traps, and spotting things others miss, being the good skill monkeys they are. If you're not constantly enriching your party a little SOMEhow you're clearly not this kind of thief. The other thing is flanking someone and shoving six inches of sharp steel through something vital, and since they gained the ability to do this over and over they have become bloodstained buzzsaws. NOBODY is killier than a properly supported thief.... sorry, 'rogue'. Friggin' ASSASSINS tend to be less killy because you can't save vs. death being reduced to -40hp by raw damage, but you CAN vs. a death attack. So if you aren't making the party's coffers heavier with stolen gold and evidence for blackmail, you'd better be dripping fresh kidney blood and standing over what used to be an enemy, or else angling to do one or the other!
Paladins get a bum rap, but that's because people forget what they are: Paladins should be the unwavering heart of the party. Why are you on this quest? What does it matter if you're good or evil? When you get questions like that, look to the five foot ten guy with four HP left force-feeding his shield to a twenty foot tall demon because his sword broke. Paladins are there to inspire the party and answer the tough question: Why should we? Because a Paladin should know it's not enough to see no evil, you have to go find it and you have to deal with it. Should you let the orc prisoners go? Ask the Paladin. Should you go after the fleeing evil wizard or stop his rampaging golem? See what the Paladin is doing. Being the Paladin means tackling the hard decisions. And any moron who plays one as a lawful stupid thief-botherer trying to constantly harass the rogue for doing his job should be fired from a catapult. Paladins are good guys who utilize their party's skills for good goals, not imbeciles dictated entirely by lawful behaviour only!
See that building? Don't want to anymore? Talk to your arcane caster. They'll fix you up. Arcane casters are there to explode shit, confuse enemies, dump untold game breaking utility on your team, and STILL have a staff full of even more kaboom up their long sleeves. Armed with scrolls, staves, and wands, a single sorcerer or mage can, and will, flatten entire battlefields in a handful of rounds. Invisible enemies? No problem, nuke the whole region. Swarms? Psh, boom. Can't get up that cliff? Look, I can fly! Need someone to tag along in case the rogue gets into a pickle? Silence+invisibility=no problem. Arcane casters are there to come in after everything else has failed and say 'Hey, no problem.... I have a scroll, spell, wand, and/or staff for that!'. However, never let them go first. You want to solve problems without them so they don't burn out. Never empty your handgun on the first enemy you see. In the rare moments you don't want to be blowing stuff up as a wizard, you want to know all of the things ever... and you can! Easily.
Clerics are there to be cheese-mongering overpowered jackknives. Heal, explode, buff, take a punch, dish out melee hurt, it slices, it dices, it fixes your car and does your taxes! They also get on the hook for knowing some stuff. If you can't decide what to be, play a cleric, heal your team, buff yourself up until you're untouchable, and go punch dragons in the gut until they vomit up the party member they ate. Just remember, for all the stuff you can do, someone else can undo it just as fast. Healing someone just means a few more flails to the chest, buffing can be counterbuffed or anti-magiced, and while you can be tankier than many you are only so good at powering through a fight. Your job is to do everything a little to help others do it when they falter, and for the love of whatever god you serve HAVE SOME GODDAMN HEALS READY. You are the party's only REAL source of health outside of blowing the entire party's worth of treasure gulping down potions.... and if you're not healing them at all, it should be YOUR share they're spending.
If you're a druid, face it, you're just a variant Cleric. Just shut up and accept you'll never actually be unique, turn into a bear instead of using Bear's Strength, and carry on. With your summoned animal who never unsummons. Probably a bear. Because hurling bears at your opponent is awesome.
Rangers come in two flavours traditionally: the ranged support, and the discount fighter. If you're an archer, congrats! You know that you're one of the ONLY things threatening a dragon doing fly-by attacks with any serious hope of threatening it once your mage is reduced to charcoal. If you're a two sword fighter, well.... pair up with your thief and let him use you as a distraction to turn some poor sap into cole-slaw. HOWEVER, whichever variety you are, Rangers have a task that is theirs and theirs alone: you will be the ONLY guy who can set and watch a camp effectively. Oh, sure, others will try, they'll make the rolls, yadda yadda. But you're the guy that will keep it safe. You have your own nature skills, you have a secondary set of senses in your animal companion (invisible enemies can't sneak past bat-sonar!), and you've got a bow to pencil intruders with a dozen shafts before they realize they're spotted. It doesn't matter if you're five miles underground, in a city, or in the clouds, you're the team's security. While the rogue is out thieving and making black market purchases and everyone else is on down time, you'll be the one raking in magic items assassinating assassins and selling pelts of intruding beasts by the bundle.
Bards are there to make social contacts, bump up the team slightly, and of course most importantly, come up with the WEIRD ways of doing things. Want to get into the masquerade? The bard probably already has an invite. Need to talk to the king? The bard can doll you up for it, and probably has a third cousin on his mother's side as one of the local advisory committee to set up the meeting. Need the dragon not to kill you but you're beaten to hell? The bard's probably got tales of it's exploits in mind and will gladly start the ego-stroking with a good old 'Wait, are you THE Embercrane?! The one who melted the WHOLE town of Bethas to slag in only three hours?!'. If you need evidence gotten but people would notice the break-in, a bard will find someone to talk to to overhear it. And they will find you work.... NOBODY attracts trouble and quests like a bard.
Barbarians have one job, and it's a doozy: be the grenade. When you get thrown into the fray take out EVERYTHING. Go berserk and chop until there's no chopping left to do. Make everything afraid of you with intimidate checks. Hit things that should be making you run away. Don't stop attacking until you're on the other side of the nearest wall and there's chunks of former enemy raining down around you, if even then. When you're involved, things should be either tarpitted on you wondering why you won't just DIE already, or they should be dying in droves and running for the hills. And in spite of that your job isn't to kill.... your job is to draw as much attention as possible and sow as much disorder as can be had so your party can take on the scattered extras and then help you burn down the big threat. You ARE the supernova distraction, and if the distraction happens to also be doling out hits that make the actual DM's teeth rattle it's all the better. And the deader everything is the less they can take advantage of your low AC, it's true. But make a habit of being the target, and let others worry about how to keep you alive.
Monks are a funny duck. They do a lot of things, some of them well, others not, but the biggest thing is: monks are the ultimate trump card. Weapons taken? I can kill you with head butts. Tight quarters? My elbows are as dangerous as my fists! Narrow bridge? Well it's hard NOT to fall off if you've been stunned! Monks are there to back up frontliners or protect spellcasters.... think of your monk as a CIA guy protecting President Explodesalot and First Lady Healyou. Nothing derails a monster on a breakthrough past the front line like taking a kidney punch that paralyzes it for a round AND does as much damage as a warhammer to the skull. If you're a monk, you ARE the interference, and your abilities will make sure you can always get to where you need to be to pull off your job.
Which brings us around to the fighter. Probably the most misunderstood class, really. Fighters have a complicated job: survive. Oh, it seems simple enough, but it isn't. Your job is to come out the other side and bring as many as can come with you there. Or, maybe sometimes, to go down making sure OTHERS get to the other side. Taking hits is the fighter's job. While everyone else is warping around, or blowing things up, or ripping into the horde, or healing the Barbarian, or turning into a bear to go riptearcrazy, the Fighter has to face down everything with an axe and armour that, by midgame, probably isn't worth the time it took you to find it since everything will be bypassing it. When things are at range and even your ranger can't hit them, your skills let you. When things are in your face you have to eat the charge and keep coming. A good fighter can take on a hundred foes, but a great one doesn't even count them, he just carves through them without flinching and comes out the other side looking for more. Fighters don't kill things like thieves or wipe out swarms and hordes like wizards or dive into the enemy like barbarians, they outlast everything and outfight everything and keep coming long past the point when everything else has run out of spells, HP, usable goods, whatever. Where the Paladin will inspire the party and challenge the big lad, the Fighter will slowly but surely mulch everything in his way, laughing off any attempt to stop him, no matter if it's the big guy or the small guys. Speed and agility, smarts and tactics, or maybe just sheer balls out toughness, whatever you use, you will use it to the limits and beyond because you're the fighter and you only have one goddamn job, to survive everything thrown at you. You're the party's damage sponge, shield, and battering ram, and your job is to be unbreakable.... because if you go down, the rest of the party suddenly has to start dealing with risky things.
So yeah... a lot of this is nothing new, but a lot of people don't know it. People think of rogues as back liners, when they're actually murder machines. They don't know monks are there to foil the enemy, or that rangers are your home security system. Barbarians aren't front line fighters, they're flash-bang grenades breaking up the enemy formation so they can be picked off without support, and Paladins are there to handle leadership duties and give people someone to rally on. Bards are there to handle social issues and odd approaches while arcane casters break the game making everyone better and many things deader, and Clerics and Druids are there to back up everyone in their jobs. And of course the poor old Fighter is there to catch axes with his teeth and flails with his skull and keep on trucking like a '67 chevy nova with a well kept engine and laugh as everyone else withers.
Sometimes thinking about stuff like this reminds me why I still play the game. After a while I too get into the trap of thinking 'Fighter = swing sword over and over and Bard = buff and then read between turns'. Sometimes I just like to sit down and remember what it is my character should probably be doing that isn't what I think it is. Sure the wizard may be stereotypical, but I like to think a lot of people don't realize what some classes are actually good at even after decades. After all, each new edition brings a whole new group of players who read things different.
Anyways. Keep things safe, sane, and consensual and happy gaming! Hopefully there's some food for thought in this ramble!
Nacha
Well, Octant Squad has done it again. After securing enemy supply drops and wiping out a force sent to get them AND discovering an old Imperial base, they returned home hale and hearty... and were rejoined by Operator Torque (Achast), paired up again with his old troublemaker pal/arsonist precog Echo (WhiteRavenLord)! They are joined by Karadoc, a largely insomniac trooper, and Commissar Streik, a very loud woman, replacing their losses.
And while everyone else closed in on the Severan Dominate forces in their fortress, these lucky fellows got to go investigate a series of canyons deep in the mountains where odd activity had been seen on orbital scans. With standard gear and a voxcaster in hand.... wait, what's this? They went to get a voxcaster, and also got a weird box! Lyndon, the NPC who lucked out on the roll, came to the Psyker, Echo, to see if he could help figure it out (he's proven to be fairly insightful at times).
Meanwhile as this happened (technically just before), Torque gave his Sentinel a once over and discovered someone had rigged the ignition to the fuel cells! He brought this to the attention of his Commissar (a new one named Streik, who they were leery of at first but gave the benefit of the doubt to when she admitted she'd never be a patch on the heroic Commissar Bergman!). They quickly moved to neutralize any saboteurs while Torque bawled out the techpriests for the lack of oversight! Then Echo and Lyndon showed up asking for tools to open the box, via the simple method of popping the pins out of the hinges!
Inside was a hand crossbow (best quality) and six silvered bolts covered in microetching. Doing some lore checking Echo realized they were meant for anti-psychic work, such as daemons and rogue psykers. Not wanting much to do with that and not being crossbow proficient, Lyndon and Torque left him to it.... who needs psychic killing crossbow bolts when you have an Emperor-blessed AUTOCANNON?
Then they headed off, vehicles safe and primed. They began their long trek in the heat of summer (suits them, being desert dwellers), and hiked deep into the valleys. They were iron rich rock so the valley looked like it was weeping... irony check on that later. They got lost in some loops and whorls in the terrain, and then came across some man-sized reptiles that decided they looked tasty! Battle was joined but it was pretty one sided, the reptiles managing a couple hits on the Missionary, Ashpetut (whose refractor field shrugged it off) and Medic Doleson (who patched himself up after anyways), but they lost three of the four of them with the last running away. Mostly it was stomp and shoot, with a firebreath at the first failing to kill anything and then a second one roasting the second and third lizards into extra crispy. Interestingly the lizards had crystal claws, but previous reptilians on world had borne crystal growths.
From there they detected a human life form, and advanced to find a Severan Dominate soldier shackled by rusty manacles to the crevasse wall.... and PILES of gnawed and bloody bones all around her! After breaking her loose and securing her as a prisoner, she explained to them that she'd seen weird runes in a barracks and brought it to her superiors' attention... only to be beaten shortly after and dragged out here as lizard food! She was thankful for the rescue now even if it was just to be shot later. Shooting is quick.
The party had to camp out at one point to avoid the heat of the day. This was made easier as they advanced and the Psyker found a spring in the wall to cool off with. This was good, fatigue was creeping in...
Then they scoped out the area they'd arrived for. And found a problem: An altar, covered in offal and rot, many many heretics, and a Plague Marine!
Plan of action? Did they report it for others to deal with? Call in artillery? NO! They sent in the Sentinel first, threw the Missionary and his heavy flamer to the altar to get that sorted, and engaged! The first round the Missionary went to with gusto, torching the diseased altar and everyone near it. The Heavy, Michaels, sealed off the other end of the canyon with a missile that went wide and got lucky, and the group moved in in force... though Torque was having problems aiming at a single smallish target. Echo the Psyker screwed with his armour some though.
The second round brought retaliation, and I won't lie.... it kinda devolved into the heretics vs the NPC squad, and the PCs versus the Marine, with Ashpetut pouring fire onto the altar like a madman smack in the middle. The NPCs of Octant Squad fared well, taking on twice their number of foes with vigor and massed lascarbines, while the Sentinel had troubles... it got shot up pretty well by the Marine's cursed bolter, and suffered a jam in it's autocannon! Though it should be noted he soaked up a lot of lasgun fire from the enemy nevertheless! The Psyker hit the plague marine with some impressive flames, but the armour and toughness of a Space Marine is not to be scoffed at. While Torque used his mechanical prowess to clear the jam and his companion raced up to slap in a reload for him, the Space Marine decided to unleash some hurt on the Psyker.... who only evaded with one of his precognitive powers and a stupidly lucky roll on one of his WORST stats! The psyker returned fire literally, hammering the marine with enough fire to put him in a danger zone, while causing psychic phenomena to make the rusty, crying cliffsides ACTUALLY cry blood! Then the massed fire ruptured Ashpetut's flamer tank, killing several heretics in close range and the Missionary himself, though the altar was little more than an oozing, molten slab of stone by this point.
Then the top of the order came around, Echo felt the sweat beading on his forehead as he had only JUST avoided an explosive tipped bout of dying last time and wasn't about to gamble on repeating that roll.... and BOOM! The marine's torso blew apart like an overripe melon hit with a hammer! Torque, reloaded and rearmed, had sniped him cleanly. And then things got weird. The heretics started to blow apart, like overfull baloons full of maggots and rot. Sick green-yellow light shone brightly for a moment before vanishing. Across the planet the hundreds or thousands of wounded infected with brain-fungus and swarming like zombies dropped in their tracks, their bodies unable to stay alive with such infections without the blessings of Papa Nurgle. With the death of his last true follower here (the Techpriests later revealing they had cleansed the Titan hangar bay before of SIX of the reported SEVEN remaining marines), Nurgle's toehold was shattered and he was banished from the world... even his anchor from before, the Daemon in the Swamps, was gone now.
The unit, mostly wounded, called in a pickup and walked their way back to the valley entrance as artillery pounded the Severan fortress and the rest of the regiment prepared to breach the line. Octant Squad was sent to rest and recover in the medical bays of their troopship to recover from any diseases they may have contracted, and victory is theirs as the mop-up continues! Soon though, they will be sent to another war zone.... one, most likely, where the enemy will know they're coming!
For now, though, this gm is on a break as Achast gets to take over Tuesday gaming for a bit!
Octant Squad's final roll of honoured dead, official confirmed kill count, and achievements for this campaign!
Medic Addams - deceased by ambush reptile
Trooper Kale - Deceased by Severan lasguns
Heavy Heskel - Deceased by Valkyrie multilaser flyby
Trooper Tobee - Deceased pulling the pin on a Nurgle Marine's grenade and killing both
Heavy Birkes - Killed by Lascannon while manning a Chimera heavy bolter
Sgt. Krinkolv - Killed in a mine-flipped Chimera
Trooper Jayne - Killed in a mine-flipped Chimera
Trooper Jessee - Killed in a mine-flipped Chimera
Chimera - Lost to a land mine
Trooper Nakamura - Eaten by cave lizard
Trooper Eylan - Vomited on by a greater Nurgle Daemon
Trooper Rasoul - Squashed by greater Nurgle Daemon
Commissar Bergman - Slain holding off a greater Daemon of Nurgle while vomitting blood
Trooper Karank - Killed in a Valkyrie Crash
Trooper Azym - Severan Dominate Grenade Launcher to the chest
Missionary Ashpetut - Gunned down by massed infantry while incinerating a Nurgle altar
Kill Counter!
35 Severan troopers
1 Severan chimera
1 Severan Dominate Valkyrie Skytalon
4 Nurgle Marines
33 Chaos Heretics
3 large Predatory Lizards
1 mob of Nurgle Zombies
1 Greater Daemon of Nurgle
1 Automated Turret
3 medium Predatory Lizards
Capture Counter!
4 Severan Dominate troops
1 Severan Tank
3600 XP
Regimental Logistics 22 (up from 13)
Triple Skull medal: +5 to Dodge and Parry rolls (Permanent, Squad Wide)
Snappy's Pals: +5 bonus to all interactions with reptilians (Permanent, Squad Wide)
Crossvalley Fortress Campaign medal: +10 to interaction tests with people from this campaign or who serve on that world
Well, some interesting events and crap rolls on my part! Let's have a look see.... Players are WhiteRavenLord, and Achast, playing respectively Echo the Diviner/Pyrmomancer psyker and Roland the Armsman today (Operator Torque, Achast's usual character, is still out with sudden onset horror-plague). The party, geared up with a demo charge and a melta bomb, were sent out to find and either destroy or claim a stash of Severan Dominate gear in an effort to ensure that, after the fall of their enemy's fortress, they won't have supplies for any survivors to make trouble with!
The party marched for DAYS, noting a lack of saurian herds and wondering what that meant, but also noting it was a lot more dry thanks to the ending of the deluge of rain they'd been dealing with for days on end. It made for a long march with not a lot to see.... and Roland, a rather enthusiastic fellow, was happy to sing marching songs, making poor Echo lament the loss of their first heavy Heskel and his angelic voice.
Upon arriving at the coordinates given, they searched around. The cache was unearthed... literally.... buried in the side of a hill. Roland, somewhat fatigued, and Echo helped get it open and found inside a stash of gear just like the last cargo pod they'd opened.... and then one more thing: a cylinder at the back full of oily yellow fluid and red, lawn tractor wheel sized ovoids. The eggs, they discovered, gave off a powerful psychic push, one that caused Roland to hemorrhage 2 wounds!
Echo, when asked, decided this is the kind of thing it's better to be rid of than trust to the tech priests of any level, so Sgt. Reeve set a melta charge on it while the group moved the rest of the material outside for easy pickup. While they were waiting for the cargo pickup, Roland was busy digging foxholes... a reasonable precaution in coverless terrain! However he ended up falling through the ground into an abandoned imperial bunker!
They got some men into the bunker, leaving the better part of the squad to mind the cache with Missionary Ashpetut while the Sarge checked the place out. After partly opening a rusted shut door in the largely empty room while Roland got tended to by Medicae Doleson ('Looks like you broke your green foot, Roland! I don't think that'll heal, ho ho ho!'), Roland stuck his head out and found.... an active lasgun turret. Which shot him.... trouble magnet this lad. A well aimed couple grenades took the simple turret down though. the they wandered an abandoned bunker, used once by Elysian drop troopers. They found all the equipment gone save for the armory, in case of future need, and a dataslate explaining there had been a cult here called the Bile Children. They'd been wiped out by the Elysians, right to the last when a rival cult appeared, ruined them, and vanished. This explained the mysterious sealing arch well, and the presence of the daemon the party had scouted out to be blown away from orbit!
Upon finding the armory (after running into some.... damn my dice.... no longer active turrets) the party was a bit stumped until the Psyker realized he had scholastic lore: Cryptography! It was a reasonably simple code to crack and suddenly they had access to an Elysian storehouse. They looted a couple heavy bolters and flamers for the squad, a bullpup lasgun for the psyker, and some grenades for everyone, then worked their way out to report this find as well! Job well done!
Not Quite though. A decent sized troop of Severan Dominate forces were spotted closing on that location, likely to raid the cache, and the group was mobilized to stop them and wipe them out!
Thus was one of the funniest encounter starts I've had in a while.... rounding a copse of the thick trees known to grow on this planet, the only people who weren't startled to find themselves within 30 meters of the enemy were the Sergeant, and the psyker!
Fire Breath chewed into the Severan forces and immolated three right off, and lasbolts flew. The party rallied quicker, probably as they were expecting enemies, and they chewed into the foe. While his side took cover, Sgt. Reeve used a grenade to discourage the foe from managing it and wasted an enemy trooper in the process. Roland, armed with a hellgun, ignored the enemy's armour entirely and blew away a lad. Raven provided a buff, and the party dished out some wounds. But with 25 to 10 odds it looked to be a stiff fight... until Michaels, their chainsmoking heavy, landed a frag missile dead on and wiped out ten troopers in a pop. The enemy's response was slim... a few wounds dished out, a lot of cover shot, Trooper Azym took a grenade launcher round in the chest and was killed, and a lucky hit to the leg proved to Echo that it was wise to grab those carapace grieves earlier! The counter next round saw more foes cut down, by Roland and the rest of the squad. However one tough lad seemed to be shrugging off shots left and right! Echo cursed him with his Misfortune power to lower his armour... which made soaking up a missile to the face rather impossible.
Watching his officer evaporate in a cloud freaked the remaining one trooper out so much he dropped his gun, and while he was fumbling for his pistol the sarge strolled up to him and pistol whipped him into unconsciousness.
The party then spotted a tank, but it proved empty... the crew had been in the troop they had killed off, and the tank was out of gas since they'd wiped out the fuel depot in an earlier mission. Reasoning the group was so large since they'd been out gathering stranded vehicle crews and the like, they marked the position of the tank as spoils. Echo also found a soldier lurking in the long grass and captured her at gunpoint, raising their prisoners taken count to 3 in total plus one tank and God-Emperor knows how many guns...
Then Roland found something moving in his bag and dumped it. Inside was a tiny bright orange lizard not unlike a palm sized velociraptor. Food had been disappearing from their bags and now they knew what kind of local vermin was on offer! It proved fully unafraid of him, and hissed menacingly at him as it clung to the ration bar it was gnawing on. Echo decided to offer it some more food and chin scratches. Eventually it realized these big things around it were basically food vending machines, and so they have adopted a new mascot: Snappy! Being Snappy's pals they now have purchased with xp a permanent squadwide +5% bonus to all attempts to handle reptiles.
Now they're on their way home to prepare for the final push on the fortress... now with a fresh replacement Commissar (Streik, a very loud woman) and a new trooper (Karadoc, an insomniac)!
Alright folks, that's it for me tonight. Keep things safe, sane, and consensual, and God-Emperor protect you! Hee!