Team Spode

Team Spode plot with Dr. Fate Until Kaptain KY returns from his long sabbatical in the wilds of Canada, his spot in Team Spode is being kept warm by Stingheal’s wife, Stingharm. Sting’s original character was named Stingite. When he re-rolled as a healer to fill that necessary spot in our group, the new name was Stingheal. Spode joked a couple weeks back that Sting’s wife should roll a DPS and name her Stingharm. Fast forward to last night, where Stingharm exists and was CR 70. The combat rating it took me months to achieve, she managed in a couple weeks. ...

Teal Lantern hits 70 -- FINALLY! What if there was a popular MMO where it wasn’t clear how to level? Completing quests wouldn’t do the trick. Defeating enemies would not bring you one bit further. Even collecting gear upgrades would, most of the time, not fill the till. What if you were stuck at level 65 in a level 100 game and nothing you did seemed to make any difference at all? ...

Helpless! What I want to know is, if the Spinner of Shadows could “hold person” everyone in the party instantly, with no saving throw, for as long as she wanted, anytime she wanted – how did we win the fight? Not to say that it wasn’t a fun fight – it was. The whole Web of Chaos arc was a lot of fun, for all that the last adventure turned into an extended advertisement for the expansion, giving some reason for the sudden merger of the world of Eberron and the world of Forgotten Realms. ...

I have a bad feeling about that floor After last week’s mass dragon death in Gianthold Tor, we were back in the Cornfields of Catastrophe Greenhouse of Gore Tidepools of Terror Orchard of the Macabre. These civic leaders really need to work on coming up with better names for their neighborhoods or nobody’s gonna want to move there. The module failed to impress last time we went and this time was no different. We had our choice of beholders or vampires. Spode really wanted to get his vorpal freak on with vampires because, the problem with beholders is you can’t really cut off their heads! But after dispatching some nameds in the Orchard, it was at Doomsphere’s doors we found ourselves. ...

Is something ... missing? Having spent the last month or so running errands for lazy journalists in the Harbingers of Madness module, we all felt it was time for a little change. Thus we were soon returning to our old haunts (heh heh) in the Necropolis, looking for a little adventure in the Orchards of the Macabre. I can just imagine what the Stormreach zoning board thought when they got the property proposal for review. “So, you wish to build an orchard along the northern border of the city? Well, I see no reason to object… Hold on. An orchard of the macabre?” “Well, yes. Don’t you think apple trees look really scary? I know I do.” ...

Auraxyllon None of Team Spode much liked working so hard on In The Flesh and failing it Sunday. We were so close, but we were just out of time. We decided to meet mid-week and try it again – on normal mode – to finish the quest series and get the rewards. We grouped up on time, went into the instance, summoned the clerics, and thrashed the instance – Yaulthoon for sure, and even the undead beholder that thrashed us again and again a few weeks back. First try. My respec definitely helped, but these instances have raised our level of gear, and they’ve also taught us how better to work as a team. It’s a lesson we desperately need – because there’s no reason we can’t win every instance we come across on normal mode. Losing a normal mode instance means we failed. ...

In the Flesh? All we wanted to do last night was finish The Harbingers of Madness quest for the second time, this time on Hard mode. The quest on Normal mode the week before last had kicked our butts; the Ghost of Pyzjyn slaughtered us, and Yaulthoon the Mind Flayer walloped us several times until we found out his trick. In the time between then and now, though, I’d respecced into a damage build instead of a fairly useless trap-focused build (though I am still able to find and disarm traps). I wondered if this new focus on damage would let the group take on the hard content we really should be doing when we can. Normal mode is for solo and small groups; we head in with four PCs and two dedicated cleric hirelings. And Gleek and Spode have devoted a lot of time outside of our weekly gaming toward making their characters utterly uber. ...

Drow in Spaaaaace My first Dungeons and Dragons character, I had no idea about. She was a dwarf cleric, a Hobbesian cleric – solitary, poor, brutish, nasty and short. Healing was more fun when hirelings would do it, so I picked up a fighter level and made her into a melee cleric. I put points into whatever stats seemed good at the time. I had fun, but she was a horrid healer. No idea what I was doing. ...

Yaulthoon, in the flesh? In the flesh, indeed. After crawling through the luxurious Harborview Lofts – entirely transformed into upscale accommodations for twisted monsters – we finally met Yaulthoon… in his mind. Nothing seemed quite real. We didn’t get to him right away, though. First, we had front row tickets to a fashion show. Fashion Forward Yaulthoon isn’t your garden variety boss. No. As the architect of the Harbinger of Madness, the creator of the Taken, the gardener of horrors, he’s proud of his works. Proud. “How wonderful it must feel,” he shouted at us. “Knowing that one of your old Stormreach friends might be a small piece of flesh within one of my artworks. I am envious!” ...

Evil is in the eye of the... Ulan was back from Mexico last night. How we missed your blade barriers so very, very much. Those little mechanized sawblades of suffering just tear through groups of mobs. We fed many mobs to the magico-metallic maw last night. We’ve taken a step back from Gianthold to focus on some easier adventures that grant actual xp. Gleek, our manager, thought that the Harbinger of Madness module would be just the thing to celebrate the group being all together again. ...