Posted on September 23, 2014
Echo Wood: The Dungeon level with slightly fewer goblins in it.
Full boat this week, although it seemed like it took us a while to get going. We were also slowed down by players having to wait for the sneakier members to act first. This comes up every once in a while and is an Initiative management problem. I reviewed the Initiative rules and found that the way we’ve been doing Initiative ties is wrong; we’ve been using Dex when it is just supposed to be a roll-off. Dex makes sense, but roll-off might be faster since some people can’t keep their character sheet in front of them for some unknown fucking reason. Thinking about it, anyone who is paying enough attention to notice that their character has tied someone else for initiative can just call it and they choose whether they go before their tied peer. HOUSE RULED. Another thing that will help is writing the initiative order where everyone can see it. That way you know when your time is coming and can plan accordingly, rather than wait until it is your turn to decide what to do or find out what is going on. There are two Special Initiative Actions: Delay and Ready. Ready is a Standard Action that lets you ready either a Standard/Move/Free or Swift action. You can still take a Move action or a 5′ as part of readying and I’m not sure we’ve been doing that properly, but if you didn’t do either, you can include a 5′ adjust in the readied action, which is pretty great. You must specify a trigger to which the Readied Action will be a response. Once the Readied Action is triggered, whenever in the round it happened is your new Initiative. If the Readied Action interrupts another person’s action, that’s fine, but you go just before that person from then on. The other action is Delay, which is probably handy in the “bunch of impatient dudes in a tunnel” scenario. You can voluntarily drop your initiative result either to a lower result of your choosing, or just wait and see and establish a new lower initiative order as it comes up. This is perfect for waiting until just after the guy in the tunnel ahead of you has moved on. You can also clean delay right out of the round, to establish yourself at the head of the initiative order by delaying the action until then, although when you do that, you lose your normal turn that round. So basically, with a short amount of time and conversation, the party can establish the Initiative order it wants.
They stood in the misty room, having wrecked the magical trap and shaken off its nightmarish effects, listening for any sound from the rough-hewn sandstone passageway ahead. Since the chatter of goblins had been curtly silenced by an authoritative goblin voice, there was no further sound. Him and Verne moved forward quickly, but as stealthily as they could manage, while everyone else advanced cautiously up the tunnel. They could see the flickering lights of small fires ahead and it smelled like someone was burning garbage up there. Bam downed a Mutagen potion. Him arrived in the chamber, a large almost cave-like mined out area, supported with rough pillars that had been left in place. He used his Tiefling ability to cast Darkness, but it was barely up when it was suddenly dispelled – a shrill goblin voice barely audible behind one of the pillars. As the others poured into the room, unwilling to all get caught in the passage way, they rounded the pillars, finding goblins ready and waiting for them. Cyrus loosed an arrow off while Mart smashed one goblin with a single blow. The dirty little murder-muppets struck out as the adventurers passed near their hiding-places and the rushed out. Verne slipped aside as one tried to stab him, but Him was caught off guard as an unexpected dogslicer of surprising sharpness caught his hand at the wrist and struck it from his arm. Him ducked, picking up his dropped sword in his left hand and slew the bastard that had removed his right hand, which he then retrieved and stuck in a pocket. Beth had been waiting in the passageway and now she moved up and clobbered a goblin to death too, before curing Him, so at least he wasn’t fountaining blood all over the place with his stump. Bam, all mutagened up, was proving hard to hit bt he had found an opponent who wasn’t fighting with a dogslicer. The little female goblin who had stepped out from behind a pillar cast Burning Hands on those she could hit, scorching a few of the party. She followed up by belching a gout of flame. This was almost too much for Bam, who stood reeling, but somehow found the will to stay up and had enough presence of mind to take a healing potion. Meanwhile Mart and Cyrus had fetched the spellcaster a few telling blows, each of which would have slain a normal goblin twice over. But Tarkus arrived on the scene to back them up, delivering a disfiguring blow to the creature’s face, before teeing her up for an enormous strike that killed her.


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