Wednesday 9 January 2008

Oh, that petard!

Shamus asked about bad gaming stories. I submitted one, but thought I might expand on it here.

This was back in my school days, when I was playing 2nd ed AD&D(*). I had a cleric(*), I think, and a friend of mine, Derek, was... um, something. There were about three other people in the party, various things. From memory, we were in a castle that was being invaded by some group of guards from a powerful church, where 'invaded' meant that they had some forces in the main part of the castle and were saying 'what's up with you?'

We had ourselves an NPC source of information, and he wasn't to be captured by the invading forces. So Derek and I decided we had to get him out by going over a castle wall. (Apparently if we waited a while we could have walked out, but either we didn't understand that, didn't trust that, or didn't care.)

So, rope down, and climb rolls. Two of them were needed. From memory, I failed my first one, so fell from the top. And landed. Hard. And hurtful. And didn't have much hit points and took a lot of damage. Less than minus ten. Dead.

Derek, I think, failed his second roll, and also fell. Landed hard. Died.

Everyone else - fine. Of course. The bastards.

So, Derek and I, with the plan... and we are the only ones who died. Sigh. Oh well, just as well I had a few backup characters ready...

(*)Never play a cleric in that system. Never.

[END]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why should you never play a cleric in 2nd ed?

Jamas Enright said...

You can only get XP if you cast a spell in the service of your god (especially painful if you haven't taken a healing god and the main use a cleric serves is...).

Compare with a thief, who gets XP for every piece of gold collected. Not kept, just gotted...