Classy Quests, Part 1/4
As an agent of both destiny and Quest!Co., Quest Giver does not make mistakes. He might get confused sometimes. He might forget to take his medication (or perhaps take too much), but he’s never wrong.
In the same way, we as players are never wrong when we build characters. The pile of game mechanics and personality that winds up hitting the table may be shifted towards damage output, skill specialization, or a particular school of magic, but it’s not about stats. It’s about what you do with them.
Here’s where I’m coming from. Today’s comic is inspired by an old Monte Cook encounter design called “Soul Storage.” Players who touch a magic mirror get trapped inside a solo encounter. From the character’s perspective it seems as if they’ve been teleported to some distant corner of the dungeon, but in reality they’re just paralyzed and hallucinating. It’s a fun conceit, but the really interesting part is the nature of the solo encounters. According to Cook, these encounters should be “appropriate (which is to say, inappropriate) for the character.” The examples include lock picks for paladins, talking your way out of a hangman’s noose for socially challenged fighters, or heavy armor and melee for squishy casters.
The point isn’t to punish players for building specialists. (As a general rule, the point is never to punish players.) Rather, I think the point of this little encounter comes towards the end of Monte’s write-up:
Creativity should be rewarded. Knowing that he’ll never pick the lock, a character in challenge 1 might use the picks to try to remove the hinges on the door, for example. A good verbal riposte in the repartee that will occur in challenge 2 should grant a large Diplomacy bonus….
These encounters aren’t about build-shaming: “You fool! You should have put more ranks in Disable Device!” After all, Cook’s “appropriately inappropriate” encounters are always wrong for your character. Rather, the “Soul Storage” encounters are all about putting PCs outside of their comfort zone regardless of build choice. In that sense creativity isn’t just encouraged; it’s essential.
So here’s the question of the day. Has your character ever been put into a situation they weren’t equipped to deal with? How did you deal with it? Let’s hear your tales of Gordian knot-cutting down in the comments!
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Bah, Wizard seduced fighter without even trying, he won’t have any trouble with the seduction. All Wizard needs to do is get Cleric to cast “remove fear” before seduction, then cast, “modify memory” after. Oh, and maybe cast “dominate person” on himself first, so he can claim mind control if Thief finds out.
Wait… When did Wizard seduce Fighter? Am I forgetting a comic?
He is referring to this Comic: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/woodelf
I can’t be expected to remember that far! 😛
Given Fighter’s luck with romance and general idiocy, I’m not sure if he’s the best benchmark for these things.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-05
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fade-to-black
Let me get into character for this one…
“All sityationz can be solved by da’ correct combinatin’ ‘f reasonin’, threatz, tactics, n’ smashin’. If yez didn’t solve da’ problem, yez didn’t apply enough, or yez did the wrong combinatin’.”
I’m pretty sure you’re playing the bad guy from Space Jam.
I was 5 when that movie came out, I cannot recall who that was.
Generally speaking, if faced with a challenge that the party as whole felt was impossible* to complete, we just leave the scene and do something else. Oh we are facing demons that are either resistant or immune to all our weapons or spells? Earthglide away. Oh the BBEG is atop this mountain with a shear cliff face, but none of us have ranks in climb? Oh well, we’ll just post a quest on the next inn’s messageboard; what sidequest’s do we have?
However, more often then not, the party has multiple tools at their disposal to resolve any encounter they are thrust upon.
*The party acknowledges that nothing is really impossible (i.e. LG creatures can invoke the name of Pazazu to gain a candle of invocation to gate in effreeti, to gain 3 wishes…).
So here’s a question: How would your current party deal with that damage-resistant demon conundrum?
Well, in our 5e Curse of Strahd group, we would just flee (fleeing is a perfectly acceptable tactic in Ravenloft).
But in my Pathfinder SoMP group, we have a spiritualism hedgewitch and two prodigies, so we always have a tool for the job. In the given example of an damage resistant demon we could resolve the situation by shapeshifting the foe into something that lacks said immunities (w/ Alteration), or flat-out ignore its energy resistance with the Penetrating Blast advanced talent (Destruction).
In terms of the message in today’s comic–when your mechanics don’t work, you’ll have to fall back on creativity–it’s interesting that your solutions are either “retreat from the problem” or “use more and better mechanics.”
How about this? You’re a plucky young lad with no special talents or combat abilities. You are, however, extremely clever. How do you get this damage-resistant demon to leave your town?
Use Bluff, Craft, Diplomacy, Perform, Profession, Sleight of Hand, or Survival to acquire money, and use said money to hire NPC’s who are higher level (or better equipped) to handle the problem.
Summon bigger fish usually works, but if you’ve got no magic and a bit more time you can find the biggest dragon or the most trapped dungeon you can find, scout it out a bit then kite the demons there so they can get themselves killed. If you’re really in a pinch you just find a tall mostly empty structure and get them to drop it on themselves.
I’ve mentioned it before, but this totally reminds me of the homebrew campaign I’m a player in. We’re soldiers of a warmongering nation, now living in a recently occupied country. Our job is to go around and employ the art of diplomacy to make people like us and reduce unrest.
Thing is, we didn’t know that part of the premise when we made characters – everyone just went ahead and made some kind of specialist soldier, most of us dumping/ignoring Charisma. It was kind of like “Oh, you made these combat and tactics experts? Great, now go be peaceful and talk to people!”. It’s pretty great, honestly, it has really contributed to bringing our character quirks out. My Small cat-like character tends to hide in a backpack whenever there’s talking going on.
The only charismatic party member is our Summoner, but she’s more of the quiet artistic type. That doesn’t stop us from shoving her into any kind of social encounter we stumble over, though. And it turns out that people, very reasonably, change their opinions on us based on what we do, instead of how much the party face optimized diplomancy.
So hit me with the examples! How does your group of grizzled soldiers go about making the people love you?
There has been lots of going around and doing errants – we’ve escorted caravans, cleared out monsters, retrieved artifacts, all that jazz.
The difficult part is trying to please everyone at the same time; spoiler alert, it’s highly unlikely!
For one, there’s this undead community taking a good 1/3rd of the region we’re assigned to – we kinda need to please them. But at the same time there’s people who don’t like the undead and want them out of sight and contained.
And they might not be entirely wrong… There’s this undead Wizard guy who we did an errant for – retrieved a legendary spellbook from a tower infested with demons. I won’t get into the whole story, but after doing that, one of the more paranoid party members felt it might have been a bad idea.
The guy seemed chill and scientific at first, but then showed some hints of being power-hungry and ambitious… Definitely not reassuring qualities on a Necromancer. However, we’re soldiers, and our schtick is following orders. We’re not exactly used to second-guessing things, but we’re learning…
Other times our choice of words does affect others’ opinions of us, sadly. Recently, our nation has decided to declare war on all neighbouring countries (at the same time to get it over with), and we kinda had to break the news to the local authorities/people of renown. As expected, they did not react well to the idea of more war and destruction coming their way. We were kinda… there, delivering the message, so we took the brunt of their dissatisfaction.
Because of that, it sometimes feels like a fool’s errand – we’re trying to convince these people that our occupation is a good change, while our nation is actively taking actions they’re against. In the end, all we can do is take care of their problems and look unthreatening.
Yeesh. You guys need to spend some gold on a ministry of propaganda or something. That is a rough details for a bunch of soldiers!
If I’m ever able to actually get a campaign in my Shadowfire setting, it’ll probably be something like that. Counterinsurgency/public relations. Though for a generally benevolent government, so that’s a plus your party doesn’t seem to have.
I was reading Axel’s story and wondering if it was your setting, lol.
I’m totally just imagining the Chinese soldiers from “Mulan” here.
Shushers, man! Spoilers and stuff. 😉
How you deal with any kind of problem, FFR. Fireball, Finger of death, Raise dead. I am not the kind person that makes a min-max pc, i try to have more round stat to don’t have this problems. I suppose that if i cant use violence, scheming or chaos to resolve a problem my pc is really screw. Lucky me i never am the first one to touch something, and i will never accept a quest from Questgiver, never trust a man you cant see his eyes.
By the way, is Wizard bi? I mean, lets start with the point that he is an elf, he has a girlfriend and that, but can he do…, lets say, both schools at the same time if you get what i mean. Or is this a thing for the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy?
The real question isn’t whether Wizard is bi. It’s whether Lord Cragchin is.
So… is he? Can i know or i will need to “Classy Quests, Part 4/4” an original crossover with Handbook of Erotic Fantasy?
Yes… yes… Wallow in the suspense!
Schattensturm, given that previous comics have established that Questgiver is literally on drugs most of the time, that is probably a wise policy.
Even then my group has this policy: “Never, ever, trust an NPC who you cant see its eyes”. It has helped my group in some occasions, even more since our GM learned to stop giving us quest from blind characters.
Just finished binge reading the comment section. Sadly I don’t have many story’s yet but I hope to see more of them in the comments in the future.
Well I hope you enjoyed your binge. Be of good cheer! No doubt you shall venture forth and build your own legend in due course.
Well, I’m not exactly sure if this counts but its as close as I can recall anyway.
In a Cyberpunk game I played the manager of a punk musician and her entourage, this was the “party”. Now my guy was just basically your run of the mill suit, with a bone dry wit, aside from two things.
The first was that had cybernetic cat ears (thus his moniker of “Fluffy”) and a single cybernetic eye with a few modest enhancements.
The second… the party discovered in a most amusing way.
We’d holed up in a house for the night. Bad guys smashed in while the party was all over the house due to us all having been asleep. So the combat involved people being pretty spread out.
Fluffy wound up on an upper floor right above some stairs, overlooking a lower floor. Up there with him was the talent. Below, too far away to help face down the two baddies up there with them and tied up with their own foes, was our cybersamurai. I think another party member was down there too and another was on the upper floor with sight, but way too far away to help.
This was the first time Fluffy himself had had to enter combat. Everyone was thinking “aw man, we’re screwed”. Then Fluffy pulled out his two hand cannons, because that’s what they were. In lieu of any other fancy equipment, he’d purchased the heaviest pistols he could….. with grenade launcher attachments.
In a very quick turnaround, he immediately took out the two baddies that were the immediate threat with twin grenades (because Fluffy being a businessman is all business and doesn’t screw around) and when one peeled off from the cybersam, he shot holes in them and dramatically kicked the body down the stairs.
Of course mechanically speaking he wasn’t a secret combat badass. This really was outside of his area of expertise. I just rolled exceptionally well and knew going in when I made the character that combat was a certainty and knew that if you can’t fight with precision or speed, the second best thing is to fight with excessive force. =P
Not quite what I was going for today, but I do think it’s related in a way. When your main schtick wasn’t an option, you had to make do with a backup plan. It wasn’t optimized, but that made it all the better when it actually worked.
Our typical strategy has been bloody-minded persistence, or rarely running away. Resistant to all of our attacks? Just hit it twice as much! Occasionally a party member or two will die, but usually we have enough diamonds, spell scrolls, and favors to get them back.
“Brute Force Encounter” is the name of my thrash metal band.
The golem was immune to magic and damage-resistant to the degree that our non-magical people were going to have a lot of trouble harming it, save for me. People were looking to me to provide the victory on that one, but I knew it’s be a hard encounter to handle by myself, and might not turn our okay.
…I took a chance. We’d heard it declare us to be intruders, so I blurted out that we were allowed to be there. That we were Lord Longdead’s new dungeon guardians.
The Golem demanded to know our employee registry numbers. Suddenly, we went from being a creek, to our historian managing to rattle off a few numbers that he’d read in a text describing the ancient dungeon in its heyday, and our arcanist improvising a magical signature realistic enough to fill this guardian.
I was referred to as “Talking Mount” for the rest of that adventure, because apparently I was given the fake ID number of someone’s magic horse. Good thing the golem wasn’t smart enough to notice any discrepancies there. It just remarked that we were three millennia late for work, and that our supervisors would be informed.
This! When there’s no way forward, you try a desperate gambit and (with a bit of luck) it may pay off. That is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. Well done that man!
Logic and Reason. It’s amazing how many Social Encounters you can get through with crappy Charisma and no Points in diplomacy.
If you calmly explain why somehting is in the Other Partys best Interest. (and this is True.) You can get a lot. Other than that, find somehting the other Party REALLY wants, and then Strike a Deal.
If you are the only Sane Guy on the Party, you can be the one who handles Social Encounters ,even,as a big ugly Fighter.
Sir. Greenhilt? Is that you? 😛
Yeah: one of my friends played a wood elf druid with a caring and gentle way to go about things. He helped a maid out of a forest once and after joining the party we came across a city that was said to be ruled by a cruel woman.
The guards refused us entry, what with us being bloodthirsty mercenaries with no allegiance to their Liege and so on. Thankfully, said Liege happened to be passing by and let us in, under the condition that the druid stop by her office later that day, alone. He went and got promptly ambushed by the ruler’s elite guards who pummelled him and put him in jail: the ruler was Cambion who liked to torture and eat good people and thought elves were a delicacy.
Thankfully, the druid was a druid so he wildshaped out of his bindings, into a spider and got the heck out of dodge before dinner time and warned the rest of us.