Nerd Pride Radio

The reason for flying, at least for Eldthor, was to get him close enough in the surprise round of combat to be able to use some of his archery feats on Tinnitus, since I expected him to be the most difficult opponent. And I expected him to take some hits, just not a crit followed by several additional strong hits from one of the giants on consecutive rounds. But having to disengage for a round or two for healing wasn't completely unexpected.

Where I think our biggest mistake lie is in letting the members on the ground to get too spread out. Having Sam and Anna within easy range of the combat, separated and unprotected, that's not how you handle your squishy spellcasters. It would have been better to have them closer to Dwyn and Illian, so Dwyn and Illian were interposed between the spellcasters and giants. Instead, when sam was targeted, Dwyn had to move to protect her, and that exposed Illian to being flanked, which led to the beating he took.

Certainly some good lessons to learn if we are going to end up assaulting Jorgenfist and a whole tribe of giants...

Damn. I would have sworn someone said "at least three" from the giants and then someone else said, "it was actually six". I misinterpreted.

In that case... we bit off more than we could chew and/or didn't prepare adequately for the task. We should have listened to the paladin. This is all Dothan's fault.

Hubris.

Hindsight being what it is: Illian had reservations about going after the giants but he seemed to be the only one so he didn't speak up. The thing that Illian learned is that next time he /will/ speak up.

I'm the one who said "at least three" because those were the three I knew of. The bright green 20 sears them into the mind!

I still think we could have been okay if we had planned it out a little more carefully and stuck together. We do a LOT better with a paladin and a bard though! The only question is whether we are being foolish for tracking down the fleeing giants. Let's put it this way: if all three of them converge and gang up on one of us, we're likely toast. On the other hand, all three of us (with a little ranged support) should be able to pick them off if we tackle them one at a time.

Mike, I'm pretty sure that I'm the one who said six. I think I was counting both sides.

I owe an apology for being out of position. I positioned Anna where I did to get visibility to the back row of baddies. I had a plan in mind to fireball, invis up, fly over, and fireball again. Circumstances dictated that this not occur, and it led to Illian having to run over to try to protect Anna when he saw her in base to base combat against 2 stone giants.

That being said, ultimately I think we did pretty well. We soaked some damage, but there was a mountain of hit points to chew through on their side, and I think that we're lucky we got away with only 1 near death.

TL;DR, Sorry I got out of position. Will work better on positioning in the future.

Okay, problem solved. Everything is Anna's fault. *Whew* That sure is a load off my mind.

No, it's all still Dothan's fault for wanting to stay back in Sandpoint with Oshar while her uncle/father, Illian, nearly died.

But if blaming it on Anna helps Dothan sleep at night, you go ahead and keep telling yourself that story. If we've learned anything from a Trump candidacy, it's that repeating lies over and over helps them to eventually become the truth as far as the liar is concerned...

Whoa! So somehow it's MY fault for choosing sex with a hot girl over traipsing through the muddy landscape to fight giants? Like any of you wouldn't have made the same choice.

Hypocrites!

Hey, it's not Eldthor's or Kay's fault that they get to have their cake and eat it, too!

"Mmm, cake."

I think part of the lack of salience on the crit thing is that Kay's crits are rarely 20s. (Though, once again, she has YET to get a crit with her Keen Rapier that would not have been a crit with a regular rapier. The one she got this time around was a 19. No 15-17 crits have happened! I trust that they will eventually, right? That is the point of the thing... Maybe I should take up two weapon fighting next and use the Keen dagger in the off-hand... Illian, you don't have a desire for a Keen dagger, do you? I would think you could use it... Or does it have to be small sized...)

While we were frightened for a bit, Kay would like to point out that we DID win! Illian is NOT dead (though whether that is a gift of the gods or pure luck it is hard to say), and we WILL kill the other three before returning to Sandpoint. No need to lay blame. Yes, it would have been easier with our full compliment, but there was no way we could have left our captive in Sandpoint unguarded and bringing him along would have likely lead to another combatant, since we would have had to heal him enough to allow him to travel and I can't imagine he wouldn't have found a way to intervene in the fight once it started.

Keen doesn't stack with improved critical, so -- while my threat rating would be ridiculous if they did stack -- it doesn't actually help me all that much at the moment.

Dwyn's a liar. She totally would.