Who wants to play D&D online again?

24th looks good here, too.

Just your reminder that we're supposed to be playing the first session of module 2 on Saturday.

Nudeviking patbat Baron von Costume Celebith

Shit I guess I have to level too, I haven't looked at it yet.

Season 2 Episode 1: A King Ralph Situation (October 24, 2020)
Players: Bomo Frugglemop (Nudeviking ), Cosgrove Ashmore (Baron von Costume ), Goha (patbat ), Peak Dartbox (Celebith )
Location: Oppara

As they departed from tea with the Princess, Martella told the party that she would likely have to call them for more pranks, murder, and antics in the near future so while they were free to go about their business they shouldn't leave Oppara, talk to loudly about the fact that they were now working for the Princess to help bring her to power, or get in dumb fights and bleed out in the gutter. 

The party, who three days ago (though it felt like a year) had not really known each other, went back to lives from before their adventures had begun though things had changed. Word of the foursomes' heroics had already started to spread and each of the heroes had started to attract an entourage of lackys and hangers-on. During their downtime the party engaged in the following pursuits:

* Cosgrove returned home to inform his mother that the dickish General Maxillar Prysthareus was responsible for the death of his father. He also had his lackys research alchemical formulae.

* Goha, being a merchant by trade, took a giant sack of RPG treasures unneeded by the party to the pawn shop and using her mercantile skills was able to get a better price for the sack of +1 axes and magical hobbit-sized chainmail than any of the other party members would have possibly gotten on their own. With that bit of admin taken care of Goha spent several days at the Oppara Junior College of Magic and Liberal Arts giving T.E.D. Talks about Arcane Mercantilism for Fun & Profit.

* Peak Dartbox returned to his theater and set to work on a play recounting the party's exploits in an effort to increase their renown and notoriety in Opparan high society.

* Bomo, with coin in her pocket, decided to actually learn MMA in a proper gym instead of just copying stuff she saw in pro wrestling matches and kung fu movies and hit the gym. She also hired an old drunk halfling ranger known by residents of the Narrows as Ol' Scruddy to teach her how to walk faster and further then the average hobbit's legs can generally carry them.

After several days Martella reached out to the various party members and requested to meet them at a fancypants tea house for a light lunch, but also had them pack all their important possessions since they would be leaving for the sticks immediately afterwards. She told them it was important that they bring with them a suit of clothes that would impress rich fucks, an outfit for hunting, and an Eyes Wide Shut orgy mask.

In The Narrows, Bomo stepped out of her hovel, dressed to the nines in the same prom dress she'd worn to the coup d'etat ball several days earlier. She'd managed to get most of the blood splatter out. As she stepped out into the muck covered street she placed atop her head for the first time the really cool magical hat she'd found in the panic room beneath the Senate that she and her comrades had been teleported to when assassins started merking everyone. In an instance something began trying to choke her out.

"Oh shit this really cool hat is actually a really cursed hat!" she thought as she readied herself to fight a hat.

Luckily Bomo was able to use some of her new Opparan Jiu Jitsu skills to toss the hat from her head and as she did she realized that it wasn't actually the hat that was trying to murder her, but rather some weird hair monster that had made it's home instead the really cool hat like a hermit crab.


Bomo unloaded on the hair monster with fists until it was totally dead, and shivered at the realization that she'd been carrying that nasty-ass thing in her L.L. Bean backpack for a couple days and worse still that it had been chilling in her hovel for the past week. She then dusted herself off and made her way to the fancypants to meet her party members and speak with Martella as she was already running late. They were all waiting outside for her. Together the party entered the tea house and sat down at Martella's table they suddenly heard a commotion.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DICKS LEFT ME FOR DEAD IN THAT PANIC ROOM!" a vaguely familiar voice yelled as a chair hit the wall behind the party and shattered in a bajillion pieces, "I WAS JUST UNCONSCIOUS YOU ASSHOLES!"

They looked up and saw Pessimo, the rogue that had ended up in the panic room beneath the Senate building with them. They'd all honestly thought that he'd been murdered by Bernie the Murder Halfling, but the fact that he was standing there throwing chairs at them and screaming about them being douchebags led the party to reevaluate wheather or not that was actually the case.

Before anyone was hit by a chair, a noble looking dude stood up from a table and quietly escorted Pessimo out of the tea house. Martella explained that the noble was Pessimo's uncle and would probably not look upon the party members favorably any longer on account of them dicking his nephew over in the panic room beneath the Senate.

Pessimo's appearance reminded the party of other previous party members and they asked after, Aloysius, the half-orc cleric that had been arrested after a street fight with guys selling their mixtapes on a street corner. The cops had later tried to pin a number of murders on him. Martella explained that the actual serial killer was likely Wyssilka the Fantabulous, the Halfling Juggalo that Bomo had tried to seduce on multiple occasions. Unfortunately for poor Aloysius, the Opparan criminal justice system was fucked so he was still jammed up for a litany of other bullshit offenses: resisting arrest and shit like that.

Martella told the party that she couldn't go into great detail about where they were going until they were on the road other than it being of great importance, so after they finished their finger sandwiches and tea everyone got into a really nice carriage and headed off out of the city.

When Oppara was behind them, Martella finally revealed where they were going and why. Taldor had fallen into disarray after the slaughter in the Senate with various regions throwing their support behind individuals they thought should rightly rule Taldor. Princess Martella, though not without her supporters, lacked a base of operation and thus needed the party's help in regaining the royal family's summer palace in Meratt or some place up north. While it should have been a relatively simple procedure to get the palace back, the steward, one Bartleby Lotheed, was being a dick about it so the party needed to undermine his authority and wrest control of the palace from him.

Martella explained that when Eutropia asked Bartleby to vacate the palace he simply replied that he'd "prefer not to."

Martella explained that because Bartleby was related to her she wouldn't be accompanying them to Meratt but had gone through the trouble of buying a noble estate in the area for the party to use as a base of operations. She'd also had documents forged so that one of the party members could claim to be the rightful heir of the estate they'd purchased in a fraudulent King Ralph type situation.

Since only two of the party members had human ancestry the party discussed whether Peak or Cosgrove should pretend to be a long lost descendant of some dead rich lady. As Peak was also related to the Lotheeds it was decided that Cosgrove would probably be the safer choice and so he signed some documents and became the fake rightful heir to a random noblewoman's estate out in the Taldoran boondocks. Martella explained that before they could go to their new estate though the party would be attending a Founders' Day shindig at the Summer Palace to make their official debut in Meratt and make connections that they can use to undermine Bartleby's authority in the region and get him to stop squatting in Martella's castle.

The party continued towards their destination but before they got into the province, Martella parted company with them and headed off to a city somewhere else. She told the party that their cellphone badges wouldn't work so she'd contact them by messenger if she needed to contact them. When asked how they could contact her, Martella told the party that they couldn't and that she'd contact them. She then bid them farewell and wished them luck as she rode off in the other direction.

The carriage continued on towards the Stavian Summer Palace and overall the journey was fairly uneventful save for one moment when a group of panhandlers and farmers blocked the road with wagons and wouldn't allow anyone to pass unless they bought something. Bomo hopped out of the carriage and went to look at the wares one of the beggars was selling. She tried to score some dope but the dice were not in her favor and the woman thought she was a cop and insisted that all she was selling was turnips and rope and iron rations and ten foot poles and junk like that.

The party had no need for any of her wares but Bomo, who up until a week ago had been as destitute as the quartet of panhandlers blocking the way took pity on them and handed the woman four gold coins to divvy up among the other beggars. Bomo asked if there were other beggars hiding in the bushes to ambush them if they hadn't bought anything because if there were she would give them some coins too but the woman said that four gold coins was more than enough and had the wagoner move the wagon so the party could continue onward toward the summer palace.

They arrived sometime later and as they stepped out of their carriage they were greeted by a gregarious nobleman who introduced himself as Bartleby Lotheed. Cosgrove spoke with him, introducing himself as well and after some small talk Bartleby excused himself as there were many other guests still arriving.

Almost as soon as Bartleby departed a bubbly middle aged lady rushed over and began chatting with Cosgrove, introducing herself as Dame Crabbe. She was a bit of a gossip, talking Cosgrove's ear off about the various nobles and officials that were attending the party. She mentioned that Idris Elba was also attending and Cosgrove used that as his excuse to sneak off, as he and Idris had hit it off at the Slaughter at the Senate.

Cosgrove went to the billiards room and shot some pool with Idris Elba, talking about the succession battle that was heating up. Idris, a military man, was pretty noncommittal about throwing his support behind anyone but would support someone who proved to be a rightful successor to the throne, though with Senate unable to convene such claims would be hard to prove.

Elsewhere, Bomo made more small talk with Dame Crabbe who was going on and on about marrying her daughter off, and so Bomo knew what she was going to have to do: convince Dame Crabbe's daughter to sleep with her. It was for the greater good and so she excused herself.

Peak Dartbox also excused himself to go and speak with the half-elf woman who had been tasked with running the estate Cosgrove had just fraudulently become the fake rightful heir to since Cosgrove's fake relative died. She was rather cold towards Peak when Peak introduced himself on behalf of Cosgrove and thanked her for taking care of things since Cosgroves fake great-aunt or whatever died. 

Goha, meanwhile, went to get drunk. Dame Crabbe followed behind her talking her ear off until she sat down at the bar next to some school marm who looked like Aragon from that weird rotoscoped Lord of the Ring cartoon. She was as serious as her visage.


Suddenly a gong sounded and some weirdo in a puffy shirt walked into the room and explained that they were Violent Birdthing or some shit and they would be the party's Official Fun Guide for the duration of the Founders' Day celebrations. The Official Fun Guide went through some of the various games and activities that would be taking place. Mostly the fun and games sounded like the sort of things one might have to do during a work related mandatory fun event. DUN DUN DUN!

sarapen I just wanted to applaud you for sitting on the hair monster in the hat thing for like probably six months real time until I finally said that I was actually putting the hat on. I probably would have forgotten about it if I was running the show.

Is there a way to train, or pay to magically enhance, stats? I didn't realize how many aasimarii racial feats require a con of 13+

also, can you use diplomacy to haggle?

You can retrain your level 4 ability score increase same as Bomo if you just want to change over what you picked when you were levelling up, though it takes 5 days to do so. What's your CON score right now? Since you just leveled up and haven't used CON yet then we can just take a do-over on your ability scores.

The level 2 Rage spell temporarily increases CON, but unlike for barbarians, bards aren't fatigued when it wears off. It gives +2 morale bonus to Strength and Constitution, a +1 morale bonus on Will saves, and a –2 penalty to AC.

There are also items that can increase CON but they're expensive - the Belt of Mighty Constitution +2 is 4,000 gp and the Manual of Bodily Health +1 is 27,500 gp. Then there's the Belt of Physical Might which gives +2 to two different ability scores at 10,000 gp and the Belt of Physical Perfection which increases STR, DEX, and CON +2 for 16,000 gp.

Then there's the feat Ability Mastery (Item Mastery) where if you have a wondrous transmutation item equipped, you can meditate for 10 minutes and then get a +2 bonus to an ability score. Technically the bonus is temporary and you can only do it every 24 hours, but if you want it permanent then we can just assume you're meditating every day. You do need 3 ranks in Use Magic Device and base FORT saving throw of +4 though.

There might be some other things but that's what I can find just now. As for haggling, I'll have to check the process again.

I don't know when everyone is free to play again. Thanksgiving is coming up for our friends in America which might mean one weekend is out of the question. I was supposed to have something on the weekend of the 14th for work but it's cancelled so I'm good whenever anyone else is.

The 21st is a-okay for me.

sarapen and fellow players - We are moving kick-off for our Saturday / Nov 21 football game to 3:30 p.m. (assuming it isn’t cancelled altogether), so I probably won’t be able to play then, or, if we do, I’ll jump in a few minutes late.  Thanksgiving weekend is pretty open for me, though - between vegetarians and foreigners, it’s not a big holiday for us.

21st probably fine, may be on call for work but it's rare that I get a saturday call.

No worries - we may be back to a noon game again, but at the worst I’ll be a little late.

Per our traffic earlier, I swapped my strength and con around and added my leveling up point to con, and somewhere during the process I made a strength check, so please ignore it.

So December's just around the corner and usually a pretty busy month for people though this year I don't know if that's necessarily the case. I was just wondering when would be a good time for people. I've got something on the 19th but am otherwise free.

That’s fine by me. You’re the one that has to do the lion’s share of the work anyway. Good luck with your move.