Gorsen Cleric of Lathander (update)

So, I'm playing in a game now, rather than running CotMA.  I'm playing a cleric of Lathander in a 2e game, and I'm having a great time.  My cleric isn't really an all-star.  His highest stat is WIS 16.  He has two 10s and two 11s.  His CHA is 15.

He thinks he's awesome though.  Big ego.  It's going to get him into trouble, but I'm going for it!  :)

Here are some pictures from last nights session.  I'll add some commentary below.

We entered Undermountain through the Yawning Portal.  Shortly thereafter, Ceril the elf archer and Odo the monk discovered a party of dangerous looking individuals lying in wait.  I believe they knew we were coming and they were waiting for us.  (Some folks in the Yawning Portal were betting heavily against us and were disappointed when we resurfaced alive)

Here's the group of bad guys.  Turns out they were really bad -- spider queen tattoos on their foreheads.

Here we are.  Ceril and Odo are over by the door.  The rest of the party is hanging back a bit.

The battle begins.  Odo goes medieval on some guy called "Max."  Knocks him back into the tables and benches.  The yellow pipe cleaners represent a Stinking Cloud cast by Tharquinn our MU/C.  You can see that a large part of our party in the hall has "red rings" on them.  This represents some kind of Enthrall or other spell that held us for awhile.  Torn Sunderhelm (with the cape) had to punch Balin the Dwarf and Gorsen to get them to "shake it off."  Balin took 8 points; Gorsen 4.  Ouch!

The battle at the door was intense.  Our side was largely caught on the other side of the wall.  Garron the paladin of Tyr was able to push his way into the room, opening up a lane for the dwarf.

It's not pictured, but the tide turned when Gorsen successfully cast Hold Person on the two fighters on the other side of the door.  The party finished them off quickly after that.

Odo ran through the Stinking Cloud to attack the wizard in the back of the room.  He got the better of Odo with Magic Missiles but Gorsen raced through the Cloud to protect his friend.  He pulped the wizard's head for 20 points with his Mace of Smiting.  :)  Dead wizard.

The evil dwarf cleric cast Hold Person on Gorsen, but Gorsen has an Armband of Free Action and wasn't affected.  :)

... I played possum though and held still, drawing the dwarf cleric closer...

Tharquinn appeared on the scene and paralyzed the dwarf cleric with his wand.

... It was at that point that Gorsen "shook off the Hold"  He popped his neck, rolled his shoulders, reached over and took the dwarf cleric's Rod of Healing and said,

"My god is stronger than your god."  He then finished the dwarf off in the name of Lathander.  :)

Side note: Gorsen is seriously getting on the bad side of the Spider Queen.  He's blessed her emmisaries as they died to send them to the bright shore of Lathander.  At one point, she manifested some kind of "shadow demon" to warn him about his behavior.  Yeah right.  :)

The party got quite a haul of gold and magic from this crew.  Unfortunately, a dwarf fighter was scared away by Fear and escaped.  We don't know where.  :(

 We made short work of a small group of kobolds (due to Tharquinn's Burning Hands) and then we were assaulted by a Fomorian Giant (represented by Red Hulk here).  Gorsen got a quick Command in and caused the Fomorian to drop his club and lose a round of combat.  :)

We bailed out of Undermountain.  Spent about an hour, but we were pretty much out of spells and needed healing.

A day later, we went back in.  Discovered that someone had cast Raised Dead on the Fomorian.  Ugh.  He was tougher as an undead skeleton than alive.  Gorsen was one of the few with blunt weapons, so he guzzled his Potion of Giant Strength and waded in.  One hit for 31 points with his Mace of Striking and the skeleton was reeling.  He actually dealt it the death blow.  We then encountered another group of kobolds...

We finished the kobolds off, barricaded the door behind us with all the furniture, and moved deeper into the unknown.

 A Fire Trap caught us by surprise.  Oops.  Painful lesson.

 More kobolds, but they aren't expecting us.  The party charges in and makes short work.  We do manage to cause enough ruckus that other kobolds are alerted.  Odo and Gorsen block the door.  Gorsen reads Fire Trap off of a scroll on the door, but it is not very effective.  8 points.

Three kobolds get into the room, but Tharquinn casts Web down the corridor, trapping 9 kobolds.

Once the imminent thread of three kobolds is taken care of, Gorsen wades into the Webs (Armband of Free Action) and finishes the 9 kobolds off where they are stuck.  Of course, they wail like the little dogs they are and reinforcements arrive at the end of the hall...

That's where we stopped for the night.

Great session!  More excitement to come!!

Dragon Fountain

Bought a cheapo $1 dragon at the dollar store.  Cut off its head.

Made a 4"x4" tile with walls to go with my Dwarven Forge Game Tiles.

Liberal amounts of flexible modeling paste.  Toilet paper roll for fountain.

Painted it black and drybrushed with grey.  The "acid" is white glue mixed with green and yellow paint.

"Maybe the henchman could get us a bottle full?" said the hobbit.

The OGRE has Landed!

Look what showed up at my house yesterday!

Pictured with Warhammer 40k 6th Ed rulebook

It weighs 28 pounds!

Here it is with the original OGRE!

Oh how far we've come...

PHB Cover Idol WIP

So, I want to make a version of this --

To scale for my game table.  I posted about it here.  

I needed to have space for the wiring, so I made an internal structure out of a paint lid and a dog food bowl --

I'm going to build the body around this.  The head (when it is done) will fit on top.  I may mold it as a separate piece to facilitate the wiring.  We'll see...

Here's the body so far.  I decided to build it from the arms up; mostly neglecting the legs.  I may use a tealight for the cauldron once I get there.  We'll see how it turns out. 

Front (incomplete)

Back (mostly complete).  There's a tube that keeps a hole open, in case I want to make any wiring external.  Now that I think about the size of the interior, that's probably not necessary.  :)

More to come!

Gaming With The Boys

The summer campaign picked up again this past Saturday.  The boys found themselves working for an eccentric wizard, rather a "spellweaver," who hides in plain sight as a homeless bum in The City.

He requested that they recover an ancient tapestry from the depths of the Egg of Evad.  He explained that he is prevented from recovering it (as a spellweaver) but that they could find and retrieve it for him.

In exchange, he would grant them each a boon.

As part of the roleplaying, I had the boys request a boon from him.  Here's what they came up with (not a bad list; quite reasonable)

• Boss, hobbit fighter, wants a magical bow
• Deogol, human cleric, wants a powerful cleric scroll
• Yoson, elf wizard, wants a powerful wizard scroll
• Lokir, elf archer, wants elven mail

The spellweaver agreed and they were on their way.  He fed them a magical meal so they wouldn't need food or drink for seven days.  A magical apple provided the same to their mounts.  He also gave each character a healing potion (1d8+1)

Here are some pictures from Saturday's adventure.  I used my Dwarven Forge Game Tiles for the first time.  They were a big hit.  It is amazing how claustrophobic rooms are when the thickness of walls is considered.  :)

The adventurers headed down, down, down using the elevator room and were presented with a locked secret door.  (I provided a math puzzle, which my grandson solved almost instantly...)  :)

 The wizard and the cleric are dithering on the elevator side of the secret door while the rest of the party are surprised by a ghoul!

 This dungeon presents many choices.  They heard the ghoul on the other side of the door and the hireling opened it so the elf could shoot it from a distance.  Success!

The adventurers used the door as a pinch point to control the flow of zombies into the room.

The elf and henchman discover that there are more zombies behind the door.  They are in a lower area and beyond, so they quickly back up and lock the door.  

At one critical moment, the elf managed to roll the d20 through the door to get this 19!  Well done!

The characters encounter a mated pair of blink dogs.  They try to coax them out, but the elf is unsuccessful and they blink away.

They discover that the blink dog room connects to the back side of the huge zombie chamber.

I told the players that they had no way of knowing what the zombies were doing in the big room.  I left them out there in their static positions as a way of reminding them that they are there.  As it turns out, seven zombies pushed their way around one side and five came the other way.  The adventurers are caught in the middle!

They are caught in the hallway!  The cleric tried to turn the first group of zombies, but was unsuccessful.  The two men-at-arms are trying to keep the zombies away from the wizard.  The elf archer and hobbit are taking pot shots at the zombies too...

The zombies get by the fighters (by reducing them to negative HPs!) and they are eyeing the soft and chewy wizard and torchbearer.

The elf and hobbit drop their bows and switch to melee!  They hold the zombies back and kill one.

The wizard, against the advice of the party, decides to throw darts at the last remaining zombie.  

He gets to throw three darts --

He rolls 16, 17 and 18 for his "to hit" rolls!  All hits!  The zombie goes down with darts IN ITS FACE!!  :)

A good time was had by all!

Fountain or Obelisk or Mausoleum (Finished)

Previous post here. 

Here's the finished product --

The adventurers close in on the evil wizard and his goliath henchmen.

The vertical posts are made from plastic straws found here.  The big skull was made from Sculpey pressed into a Halloween ice cube tray.

 Here it is without the flowing water and no minis to distract you.  :)  I used quite a bit of flexible modeling paste to texture the structure and to fill in the gaps in the cardboard.

I can see the adventurers questing to turn the flowing water back on -- maybe activating healing or other properties...

 Here's the flowing water.  It's made from cardboard from a cereal box.  It's textured with hot glue.  I painted the water in two colors of blue (both light) and pearlized white.  The arrow on the bottom left lines up with the big skull so that the water fits on properly.

The pointy toothpicks slide under the central post to hold the waterfalls in place.

Here's the flowing water with a little synthetic snow to make the foam/splashes.

I'm very happy with the way it turned out.  

Spartan Games Rocks!

Just a quick shout out to the good folks at Spartan Games.  I purchased some ships for their Uncharted Seas game and the ships didn't come with dragons!  :(

I contacted them via email.  I sent them a picture of the two ships and a copy of my receipt.  Right away, they said they would mail me the dragons.

They arrived today.

Thank you Spartan Games for the excellent customer service.

Strange Stone Tablet

You never know where you might find your next piece of interesting gaming scenery.  :)

A few years ago, I requested a catalog from Epilog laser.  Inside, as a demo of what their tool could do, was a small, wooden, laser-etched Mayan calendar.

I immediately put it in my bits box.

I recently glued it to a 2" wooden base and I used some flexible modeling paste to make it look like stone.

Here's the result --

Three wizards contemplate the ancient writings... 

"Maybe if I touch it with my chaos staff?!?"

The detail is AMAZING.

Caption This Picture!

Looked up and saw this on my shelf.  Had to laugh out loud.  Seriously, I did not stage this purposefully.

Please share your caption in the comments!

Bargain Spiderman Toys as Monsters!

Dollar Tree has a bunch of Spiderman toys right now.  I don't personally have a lot of use for the old webslinger -- maybe as a giant Bodak? -- but the Lizard looks cool.

Here's a pic --

That's a Bones barbarian for scale.

Maybe a little paint or a drybrush?  I could see him as a slaad or some other demon.  A ridge on his head and down his back would be a nice touch too...  As is, he's OK too...

He looks good and for $1, I can certainly use him for my games.

Giant Statues or Objective Markers 2

Previous post here.

If you are interested in making your own giant statues or objective markers, here's a tip!

I was at Dollar Tree today and they have a bunch of angel statues for the holidays.  Here's a pic --

If you are so inclined, you could get the statues for $1 and the wooden bases at Hobby Lobby for $0.79.  That's super cheap.

A little paint, some styrofoam rubble and a little drybrushing and you could have some cool Imperial objective markers or statues.

Not bad, eh?