Gaming day!

Session two, and I’m settling into being a paladin. The function of a paladin, in virtually all RPG combat, is to function as a wall (as evidenced by the dialogue in various on-line RPGs, i.e. “I’m going to fight trolls!” “Need a wall?”) The paladin stands in front, takes the headlong charge from the monster, and tries to hold its attention, secure in the knowledge that she’s got more armor, more health, and almost certainly more inherent altruism than anybody else in the party. Then everybody else tries to whack it.

This is almost like being a samurai, except you get a shield and the headlong berserker rush is discouraged unless you’re throwing yourself in front of the innocent. Also, you get to yell “Drop your weapons and you won’t be hurt!” whenever you see anybody, which worked on the new PC, if not any of the monsters. Yet. (I’m gonna keep trying until it does, damnit.)

In a charmingly hentai-esque scene, we were set upon by nasty aberrations with flailing tentacles and screaming eyesockets, which mostly shrugged off our puny unmagical weapons. Our rogue, thinking quickly, set one on fire. Unfortunately, fire was not the answer, but it did cook me nicely when, in my function as party wall, I was picked up and grappled by a burning tentacle monster. Having botched my breaking free rolls badly, I decided that my none-too-bright paladin was trying to bear-hug a flaming tentacle to death. There was a lot more thumping and flailing and draining of constitution, and very un-paladinly obscenities from the heart of the tentacly inferno, but all’s well that ends with nobody dead.

Since in the Eberron campaign, there is a feat that allows paladins to multi-class without penalty, my dream of a paladin/rogue is still alive in full force. (I might not even have to become a fallen paladin! I may anyway, simply because of my questionable grasp of morality, but y’know.) Our current rogue, alas, is not too great at finding traps or picking locks yet, which meant that the whole session was basically an endless march of breaking down doors with either the Paladin’s Lockpick* or the psionic warrior’s shoulder. (She’s a little impatient.) Together, paladin and psionic are the Sisterhood of Stupidity, which means that they burst through every door together with courage in their hearts and vacuum between their ears. We fell in two pit traps and walked through razor wire. We are thuggin’.

Also, we got to dangle the dwarf from a rope for hours on end. Really, who can ask for more?

*A crowbar. Never go anywhere in an RPG without a crowbar.

Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.