Shane had his first Scales of War DMing session on Saturday, taking over Vek and bringing the new party (Fubar the Halfling Sorc and Kithen Ralph the Half Orc Ranger are the remnants of the original group) to the city of Overlook.
We had great fun in the city, exploring shops and giving epic chase to a child vandal who had just splashed paint onto the inn the adventurers were staying in. Ralph and Vek- who was playing Pantiless the Elf Avenger, scaled about 2524 buildings , leapt over 4421 obstacles before finally pinning him down with the help of the other members of the party.
Me, Fubar and Daigo (Kat) were chasing, intimidating, bluffing, and percepting the vandal from quite a distance away as we did not have the acrobatics and athletics skills of our two Special Olympians who were trying to outdo each other.
Do not worry guys! Everyone is a winner at the Special Olympics.
Shane was trying out new methods e.g. Players'/Mob Initiative cards to track the battle, post-it notes to confer penalties etc, and colored markings on the mobs to book-keep the various effects on them. All in all, I will have to say that most of it worked, so bravo to the new DM. The set up time was still rather lengthy, but the in-combat time was cut down significantly, especially with Shane rolling his results on his I-Phone instead of using traditional dice.
My gripe about Scales of War is still the lack of atmosphere in the non-town regions. Sometimes, I feel that the encounters are there solely to make up for the action element and encounter quota for the level.
There is this particular encounter we had at the monastery when we were 80 feet up in an indoor cavern of sorts, where we fought several Orcs and a few crossbowmen defending two single-file wooden bridges over a pit which we needed to cross to get further into the monastery.
Our previous encounter just before this occurred in a large lighted hall, where there were many staircases at the sides with Orcs swarming about but after we dispatched them, we discovered that they all led to nothing interesting.
Then boom, the dimly-lit "Cavern" of Single Filed Doom was next. A bit jarring for my taste. I do not see a link joining these particular encounters, just separate action scenes cut out from different movies and made to awkwardly fit.
And with all new parties, I made a new character to join in the fun. This time round, I am playing Sunny, Honey Bunny - the ridiculously charismatic female Halfling Paladin who was a former member of a popular Halfling girl-group (Drunken Tigress).Her moods swings from being painfully cute with winks and pseudo-korean girl-band phrases (Geegeegeegeegee, Job yo?, OH Unnie~!) to being a pain in the opponents' asses, recklessly drawing AoOs so that she can charge into them with lethal momentum.
She is 3 feet 8 inches tall and about 81 pounds, and has a bright cherubic face with a sunny demeanour. Clad in sun-colored plate armor and brandishing a gleaming short sword of Charrrrging, she is a picture of um, stability.
Sunny is contemplating other deity choices besides Pelor, as the God of the Sun and Crops was her industrious parents' natural choice. Her personal shortlist now includes Corellon (Beauty) and Tiamat (Covetous, Wealth) as she is coming to terms with her own character and what she actually needs to fulfil her ambition.
Party-wise, she is slowly trying to find her feet and assume her role as the main tanker, and as her confidence grow, she will be an asset to the party, not to mention the intangibles - her "wholesome" good looks and sunny mood boosting morale for the hot-blooded males in her group.
As it was already fast approaching six in the morning, we stopped for the night after finishing the "Bridge" encounter and advanced to level 4 w/o the extra feat. Sunny swore she heard the other Orcs and what-else deeper in the monastery breathe a collective sigh of relief.
They will survive for another week.
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