![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
D&D - Attack of Competence
Jan. 14th, 2012 07:11 pmAt the end of our last D&D game, our party had been reduced to three after an unfortunate run-in with a will-o-wisp. On the bright side, Jordan had quite a lot of money and no known next of kin, so the survivors did quite well out of it. We also had a mysterious coded message taken from the bandits we'd fought earlier.
During downtime, my half-orc Alessandro managed to crack the code (he's brighter than he looks) and found it had directions to where the bandits had hidden their ill-gotten gains. We decided to stop in town to heal up and resupply before going back for the loot.
On the way to town we ran into a rather poorly-mannered halfling named Indra, and shortly afterwards met a bunch of nixies who asked for a donation towards the costs of maintaining the path through the swamp. Indra was VERY RUDE to the nixies and nearly got into a fight with them. Afterwards she told us that they'd used some sort of a charm spell on us, which was obvious nonsense - they were nice and it seemed entirely reasonable to give them some money.
In town we met Kauri and Drustos, two of the original founding members of the party - sadly due to a couple of deaths, only one of our party members knew them. We decided to go back and loot the treasure together, but first we had to deal with Kauri's embarrassing lunar problem.
The last time we had to deal with this issue, it required a very clever plan that involved putting the dwarf in an old sack smelling of rotting cabbages, whacking him with a stick until he turned into an otter, and then turning into an octopus to tow him across a river.
This time, we discovered that being competent and being liked in a town has advantages (I don't think we've ever been in that situation before). Since our heroes had previously saved the mayor's wife from slavers, he helped us with getting Kauri cured, and we set off back to the treasure.
Last time we'd been that way (before we realised the treasure was there) we'd met a hag, so we were expecting trouble. This time, her two sisters had shown up, all three of them standing around a cauldron stirring it.
Kauri and Meg (the two high-charisma members of the party) flattered the hags and told them we'd brought a gift of mithril... unfortunately we only had one gift, so we'd have to give it to the wisest of the three. They suggested that the hags all tell tales so that we could see who was wisest, and then we'd award the prize.
Kauri and Meg managed to drag this out for several hours while Alessandro excused himself and went off to the nearby riverbank to do a spot of digging. The message wasn't too specific about exactly where to find the treasure, but eventually he managed to unearth a large chest and stash it away in his magical haversack before returning to the group.
At that point we made our apologies to the hags and said we had to be going. Kauri said that we were unable to tell which was the wisest of them - they were all very clever - so we'd have to leave the prize with them and let the three of them agree on who deserved it.
That got us a VERY long head start...
It's a lovely feeling when we actually manage to do something competent and solve things by cunning instead of brute force. Not one I'm used to, alas!
During downtime, my half-orc Alessandro managed to crack the code (he's brighter than he looks) and found it had directions to where the bandits had hidden their ill-gotten gains. We decided to stop in town to heal up and resupply before going back for the loot.
On the way to town we ran into a rather poorly-mannered halfling named Indra, and shortly afterwards met a bunch of nixies who asked for a donation towards the costs of maintaining the path through the swamp. Indra was VERY RUDE to the nixies and nearly got into a fight with them. Afterwards she told us that they'd used some sort of a charm spell on us, which was obvious nonsense - they were nice and it seemed entirely reasonable to give them some money.
In town we met Kauri and Drustos, two of the original founding members of the party - sadly due to a couple of deaths, only one of our party members knew them. We decided to go back and loot the treasure together, but first we had to deal with Kauri's embarrassing lunar problem.
The last time we had to deal with this issue, it required a very clever plan that involved putting the dwarf in an old sack smelling of rotting cabbages, whacking him with a stick until he turned into an otter, and then turning into an octopus to tow him across a river.
This time, we discovered that being competent and being liked in a town has advantages (I don't think we've ever been in that situation before). Since our heroes had previously saved the mayor's wife from slavers, he helped us with getting Kauri cured, and we set off back to the treasure.
Last time we'd been that way (before we realised the treasure was there) we'd met a hag, so we were expecting trouble. This time, her two sisters had shown up, all three of them standing around a cauldron stirring it.
Kauri and Meg (the two high-charisma members of the party) flattered the hags and told them we'd brought a gift of mithril... unfortunately we only had one gift, so we'd have to give it to the wisest of the three. They suggested that the hags all tell tales so that we could see who was wisest, and then we'd award the prize.
Kauri and Meg managed to drag this out for several hours while Alessandro excused himself and went off to the nearby riverbank to do a spot of digging. The message wasn't too specific about exactly where to find the treasure, but eventually he managed to unearth a large chest and stash it away in his magical haversack before returning to the group.
At that point we made our apologies to the hags and said we had to be going. Kauri said that we were unable to tell which was the wisest of them - they were all very clever - so we'd have to leave the prize with them and let the three of them agree on who deserved it.
That got us a VERY long head start...
It's a lovely feeling when we actually manage to do something competent and solve things by cunning instead of brute force. Not one I'm used to, alas!
