EDIT header: Yeah, formating sucks. At least i got this stuff out of my head. EDIT also, don't misunderstand. We had a lot of fun. GM's good, there's good amount of roleplaying compared to mechanics and there's crazy fun stuff.
So, yeah.
That's how our session left me feeling. Oh, it was fun but it was also kinda disturbing. Player antics that is.
Might be long. Will be long. I want to get this out of my head. Might be a bit hard to follow but i write this more for myself. Hopefully someone gets a laugh out of it or something.
Some backround:
Our current campaign has run for over 10 sessions (closer to 15?), 10 is about how long our previous games have lasted. No idea why we've stuck with this so long. Hell, i've made only two characters, in the previous campaign i burned through 3 or 4 characters. Group is 4 players and the GM.
Our GM is studying to be a priest (though he is very relaxed about religion really), which can be seen in the game world, which is dominated by religions. We, the players, are all atheists... and that too can be seen in the game. Actually pretty funny and interesting setting, my friends really try to play more religious characters (atheism in-universe is punishable by death). Try.
The setting is somewhat inspired by Gothic video-game series. Our GM's a fan of the first two entries.
Our enemies are a faction of "Templars", who want to return old nearly extinct proto-humans back to power. Jerkasses all of them, proto-humans and templars both, we gladly kill them. Templars have some positive traits when it comes to governing conquered territories but the masters they serve are beyond redemption. Quite black-and-white though the world is other was full of gray-and-gray-morality.
The world is homebrewn high fantasy though it lacks demi-human races (there were orcs in the past though). Unfortunately our characters interests do not go along with the larger epic plot happening in the backround, we cross roads with powerful mages and leaders often but mostly we try to survive. And somehow get lost in adventures that have no point whatsoever.
Game system is also homebrewn. Uses d20 die as primary die, no relation to d20 system though. There are some issues with the system i think are inherent in it, while our GM has tweaked the system, we aren't going to switch to another (developing another system takes too much time and testing). Primary problems are that our characters have too much horizontal growth (more powers and abilities) but not so much vertical growth: our skills, powers and abilities don't get better really, instead enemies get weaker compared to ours. Ironically we have easier time dealing with "bosses" than with weak mooks, today my character almost died in a 4 versus 1 fight (well, from friendly fire (literally fire) but that's beside the point, one of us had to use a powerful attack to deal with one shitty guard)...
Characters are (using DnD moral alignments though we don't use them in-game):
-Lawful-good fire mage (in-universe priest of largest religion) who has been declared a saint (prestige class, so to speak), has some jerkass tendencies but really tries to be good priest. I'll shorten him to T.
-Another mage, a priest of another religion whose element is water/frost. Started as archealogist and a mage but somehow he managed to become a "death mage", essentially someone delivering souls from the world to afterlife. Too complex to explain here. His alignment? Chaotic-jerkass would be closest. He is not evil BUT he is rather self-serving and has constantly insult and jape about things. And do other questionable things. Let's call him A.
Oh and A is quite surely a sociopath. I'll explain later. The character, not the player.
-Good rogue archer and smuggler, who insists on melee fighting too often. Serves the water religion, underworld connections are supposedly useful. She's called C for this.
-My characters: First one is (currently not with party) is a mercenary barbarian (Ch), chaotic evil would describe him well though he rarely does anything outright evil than killing for money. Second one, currently in party, neutral-good melee-oriented "mage" using spirit-magic. Freelancer, artifact hunter. (H)
We're currently "mid-level" characters i'd say, seems like our GM has planned one more step for us in the future but i doubt we get there.
So, the session more or less begins with A dying. And soon after again. Good thing we've got powerful mages (our GM likes magic and mages) around and A gets returned to life. Not a resurrection strictly speaking, just getting returned to life.
I reckon our GM was trying to punish A for his past... transgressions but not sure.
We get some magic items. Our GM is pretty open handed with those though they're also rather pointless most of the time, being too powerful for simple situations, and in more dangerous situations we get through by blind luck usually, before anyone is willing to use carefully hoarded magic items, which usually don't suit the situation anyway.
First combat: T gets lucky and absorbs additional energy to his holy war axe. This bites us in the ass later on. While our wounded enemy templar is crawling away, i decide to finish him off, despite T, being a saint, having judged the enemy to live BUT forcing him to repent by running but the enemy crawls due to leg wounds.
What happens?
Well, a few sessions earlier my character H had drunk a strange potion, made with blood magic. We got the potion from a powerful blood mage who challenged us to a practice duel, which ended up with mopping floor with him (the guy was really powerful), but repeated hits to left thigh (location roll 13) immobilized him and apparently killed him due to blood loss (ironic isn't it, blood mage dead from blood loss). Anyway, what we didn't know the potion was a phylactery.
Yeah, H drank a phylactery, and became one himself. And there being a suitable body just in front of me, the... essence expels itself from H's body (H vomited blood on the body) to our defeated enemy, healing it and taking control of it. Instead of fighting, he offers us a deal which we take, not wanting to fight him since H is near-death and weak from losing so much blood, and there being common enemy around still.
That's not quite the high point for me. I almost died later, as i noted above.
H is weak and stays behind while the rest hunt the final enemy around.
Oh they kill him but T almost kills C with a powerful attack, which triggered a special power from his holy war axe. The attack misses both the enemy and C very slightly but blinds them both temporarily. He managed to split also three big threes neatly.
The enemy panics and self-destructs (magical overload of his weapons, not the first time this happened...), nearly killing C and T.
So, next we travel to a town. Bridge guards don't want let us cross a bridge to the town (something about a rebellion) but our rogue is persuasive and the guards let us to walk over the damn long bridge, where two petty guards won't let us in and our rogue can't persuade them. So we throw one guard over to water below and start killing the other one.
All of us fail a couple of round but the guard being a mook doesn't damage us either really.
So, T gets annoyed and attacks with the same strong "wave" (ranged) attack from his holy war axe... and my character H is within the firing lane. Guess what T rolls? He triggers the special power of the weapon in addition to the strong attack. He also misses the guard.
In fact, he misses very badly. He rolled 1. He has tendency to do that.
T rolls again. Not good. The axe slips from his hand... towards H. I face wrong way and get only 1d6 chance to dodge... versus T's 17 or something like that.
At this point my brother saves me once again with his female rogue's fate manipulation roll (H once nearly lost an arm before, saved by the same trick), and the axe flies through the gate, dealing a lot of damage.
The gate-guards claimed a plague in the city but we went there anyway... and found there was really a plague there. We also figured out that templars controlling the town had healing crystals that we could steal, force them out of the town, and the plague's creator would likely cure it from the surviving town's people.
Unfortunately by this time it starts to be late and we're tired.
What actually happens? While we're waiting for an oppoturnity for something i don't think we even knew, someone gets this genius idea of flipping a magical coin. A coin that opens a portal to a magical item should it land twice in row on its edge (two 20s in a row, though via boosts 17-20 are viable numbers if our rogue flips it). A coin that spawns skeletons if lands the wrong side up.
T who holds the coin objects as skeletons might draw unwanted attention and questions. Wise, no?
A is impatient though, and decides to take the coin to flip it. So, when T is sleeping, A starts searching him... and T wakes up. This doesn't stop A... who continues, eh, groping T.
Yeah, the "searching" looks quite a bit like A groping T, indeed it looks like A (both the player and his character) look like they're enjoying that.
T retaliates with magic that draws A's mind into T's, to a "virtual reality". (Previously he has tried to challenge us to a duel in his mind, noting that there we don't have to hold back. We've refused before because we don't trust him not having home-field advantage).
Bad idea, for T succeeds.
They both are in T's mind. T intends to teach a lesson to A by beating him to death (it is virtual afterall). What does A do? He shits. He understood it is a "dream", and that he is in T's mind. He shits. Unlimitedly, for it is not reality as such. T does beat A to death... which means A is in coma. T got nightmares, he still hasn't managed to roll a successful forgeting spell.
Did i mention that somewhat earlier A had managed to piss off a dragon.
The dragon's messenger comes back, nearly drowns A and sends him crashing through a window and to a door. Inkeeper wasn't happy. Luckily this woke up A... and he gets away with being jerkass to T and to the dragon. And got a crafting item for an artifact.
So, sexual assault, attemtept thievery, sort-of mind rape, and pissing off an ancient, powerful dragon. A is a lucky bastard to get away with that. Despite being a priest of sorts.
And this is not the first time he has done something crazy.
A began as sort of Indiana Jones, if IJ were a mage and a priest. At some point he began to transform to a jerkass. Hell, he even attracted an attention from Joker-like independend chaos mage whose origins are a mystery, he nearly became his apprentive, BUT A PISSED HIM OFF AS WELL!
First time we saw the Big Bad? A mooned at him. This left a rather large crater to where we were.. luckily "Joker" saved us for he wanted A alive.
Second time? He mouthed off at the big bad... and got his balls chopped off and fed to rats. And then get transformed into a dragon temporarily and got raped by another dragon. A laughed it off. I reckon A is a masochist in addition to being a sociopath.
He later got his balls back from "Joker", as a result of a bet (we had to hit Joker despite GM deciding the rolls for him, and we managed that because GM chose him to roll 25 in total or so, and our rogue got a critical hit (with no damage but all we had to do was to hit "Joker"). The party could have chosen a favor or item or something but they went with A's balls. I hope we get to chop them off later again.
And this is merely the tip of the iceberg... so many crazy things we've done...
So, yeah. Player antics are crazy, fun but also kinda disturbing. A's player is a nice guy really, and he is faithful to his character's personalities. This character is just kinda crazy. I don't think A is really a human, way too sociapathic to be one. "Joker" and the Big Bad are more human than him, despite being demi-gods in power.
At least A doesn't like player versus player fights. I dislike PVP in PnP RPGs a lot. I don't like intra-party conflict either really, tension is okay but anything more is too distracting. Like sexual assaults.
A few weeks till next session.
Luckily there isn't much A can do anymore to top himself... OTOH, he doesn't care. Hopefully our GM has cooked something dramatic with loot and monsters, that would keep A from mischief.
Suggestions would be appreciated, but no rogues as that's already been done in our group.
