Another Crunch Time Evening

Yes, thanks to the videos we watched with dinner running longer than I anticipated; me once again taking WAAAY too much time to sum up what I watched with my workout in the daily write-up (below); me getting distracted during that process by my tumblr friend Weird Kev informing me of his desires for his birthday fic in the form of a shared Google Doc (which, okay, kudos for telling me what you want early sir, but could you have just done it in the form of a DM on tumblr itself?); and me struggling a bit with my writing today (also below), I was once again rushing to get everything done so I had a chance in hell of going to bed at a reasonable hour. Didn't really work, but -- eh. Here's how my day went for your perusal:

Work – Very quiet day at work overall – we had two calls to update credit cards on pledges (well, one to update a card, and one to ADD a card) early in the day; I left a message with some donors to clarify what gift type they wanted after my coworker got a note from their parish saying they’d made a pledge, but the gift we found online was an ongoing gift (which is different in that it’s a perpetual series of one-time gifts, instead of a fixed series of payments on a specified amount – more than one donor’s got them confused) nearer lunch; I had the Useless Check-In Call with the credit card people (which, naturally, provided no updates on any of the open issues) in the afternoon; and that was pretty much it. The rest of my time was spent trying to find maintenance stuff to do (mostly related to the obituaries) and working on a crossword puzzle (which I solved worryingly fast). *sigh* Still, as I keep reminding myself, bored is better than stressed… Hopefully tomorrow will be a short day, though!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike for midweek, pedaling my way through:

A) The end of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 1: Folkmoot!” With this final chunk of the first episode mostly focusing on our heroes having to fight a monstrous abomination created from the flesh of an unfortunate fellow traveler and folkmoot attendee who didn’t see any harm in abusing magic to light his fingers on fire – at least, until his wrist snapped back and his body twisted horribly and all his organs ripped out of his insides to form a new head growing out of his chest. *grimace* Anyway, at the end of yesterday’s chunklet, Lug (Mike) had FINALLY managed to actually hit something with his hammer...for a whole nine damage – today, we saw:

I. The rest of the fight between our heroes and the abomination, which involved:

a. Happen (Luke), deprived of eye sockets to fire arrows into as the creature they were facing had no proper face, instead firing one into one of the creature’s legs (helped by his sprites, as he once again broke out the Luck Goddess “5 nat 20s, 5 crit 1s” die and got a nat 20) – didn’t do much damage, but it did very neatly separate a couple of muscles in the thigh (the description of which made Jane cringe)

b. The monster attacking Lug and inflicting 30 points of bludgeoning damage by smashing him over the head – EXCEPT, because Lug was passive-aggressively raging, he had resistance to the damage, so he only took 15 points. Like, that’s still “ow,” but it’s not “nearly dead” ow. Everyone cheered. :P

c. Willowfine (Jane), seeing this, hitting the monster with some Guiding Bolt, cast from the tip of her staff – didn’t do MUCH damage, but it was more than she managed against the bandits! And it gave the next person to attack Advantage, so, nice

d. Cressida (Ellen) not arriving this round because she was in her private quarters and had to shove the pallet blocking the door out of the way and take the cucumbers off her eyes and all that XD

e. Robin (Andy) choosing smartly to call for help from the order that looks after the city – and then less-smartly choosing to fling his soft bread at the creature (sailed right over its head and hit someone else on the other side)

f. Lug attacking again and getting a chance to take advantage of that Advantage – which is good, because he got another crit 1 on one of his rolls. *facepalm* Mike, you either have to get rid of that D20, because it’s cursed, or stop sitting next to Luke, because apparently the universe thinks his “luck pervert” thing regarding nat 20s and crit 1s is funny enough to ruin your rolls. XD Anyway, he whiffed the first swing because even with Advantage he couldn’t beat the monster’s armor class, but managed to bonk it again with his second attack, yay~

g. Happen breaking out the arrows again, and Luke rolling the Luck Goddess die one more time...and getting a crit 1. (“Praise Cadence!”) Johnny rolled their own die and had poor Robin take the arrow in the leg, and given that, as a commoner, he only has 4 hit points, he quickly went down…

Only to get back up again and start acting – different. Standing differently, glaring at everyone, asking who they all were, getting into a combat stance when Happen revealed that he’d shot him – and responding to their “Robin?” with “It’s Morven.” Hmmmmm…

h. The monster rudely interrupting this “wtf” moment for everyone by attacking Lug again – fortunately, he was still raging, so he was once again able to cut the damage down from “you are about to go unconscious/die” to “you are hurt but able to keep your feet.” Barbarians are hench, yo

i. Cressida finally entering the fray to find a horrible flesh-beast trying to kill her new acquaintances, and one of the new acquaintances looking like he wants to kill one of the other ones! She managed to tamp down on the urge to walk straight back out of the dormitory and instead fired three Scorching Rays at the monster –

And MISSED WITH EVERY ONE, instead shooting a hole in the wall and a hole in the ceiling. Ellen said she was so mad at being woken from her beauty sleep that she’d forgotten to take off both cucumber slices and thus had a depth perception issue. XD You know, given what little characterization Cressida’s got so far, I’d believe that

j. And Morven taking her turn (yes, “her” – according to the little stat write-ups that flashed up for every character, she goes by “she/her”) – and absolutely WRECKING the monster with a purple Sorcerous Blast flamethrower of psychic damage (proving sorcerers are ALSO hench). Johnny ruled that, because they knew that everyone else wanted to know what the hell was going on with Robin/Morven, and because that was so cool, the NPC cavalry showed up right afterward to take the thing down once and for all and turn it into a flaming pillar of ichor. Yay!

II. Post-fight, Lug, Happen, and Willowfine learning what Robin/Morven’s full deal was (Cressida, upon realizing the plebs now needed a new place to sleep, ran off to try and barricade her dorm) – turns out that the reason for Robin’s “sleepwalking” is that he’s been possessed by the spirit of Morven Hellwain, an aberrant sorcerer who was killed on trumped-up charges of witchcraft – only to find herself in Robin’s body. The two switch off whenever one goes unconscious, so Robin being knocked out from the pain of being shot brought her out into the fight. (Though Morven revealed that she had SOME vague idea of what was going on when she wasn’t in control of the body – it’s yet to be revealed if Robin gets the same.) Anyway, she’s naturally not happy about the state of affairs, considering Robin to be “the village idiot” and looking for a way to take control of the body full-time. Fortunately, this meant she was willing to travel with the others when Happen told her about the teams and Robin agreeing to travel with them to figure out what was wrong with magic, as she hoped to find answers for herself while on the search. Oh, and that laughing guy Robin didn’t quite recognize before? That was someone connected to Morven’s death, and who she thinks might know something about what’s going on with their whole situation, if they can get to him…

III. And finally, after everyone but Morven (who, wanting to keep control for a while, elected instead to just constantly eat soup all night XD) got a good night’s sleep (once they got into Cressida’s dorm, anyway), the team joining the other seven teams in the morning to receive their “copestones” (magical rocks that would allow them to communicate with two of their fellow teams and the central Folkmoot meeting area) and a direction to go in. Our heroes were assigned Northwest, which Happen happily noted was homeward for him –

Which confused our folkmoot elder Agnes, as the area Happen lives in, Balewood, is supposed to be devoid of all common folk. Because the people there once tried to invade another one of the regions, only to be cut down by their own wild folk for disrepecting the boundaries between regions. (And if you’re wondering “hey, wait a minute, didn’t you mention raiders before?” I did, and everyone is confused and concerned as to how they can actually raid people, given the wild folk are supposed to stop that sort of thing.) But she didn’t press the issue, and the episode ended with the group preparing to set off! Oh, and with the big 100-sided die being nice to everyone and not giving them any “fun” side effects to look forward to the next time they use magic. But Johnny said that it was only a matter of time, as the magic “debt” they racked up with every spell was cumulative… (Though they did say that, upon receiving an envelope, a person’s debt would be halved, so it wasn’t ALL bad. Just MOSTLY bad.) Looking forward to seeing what horrors shall arise in future episodes – but first, tomorrow, we have a short bonus video going over the crew making their new characters for this series…

B) And the entirety of “Buy One Feat Get Half Free Baldur's Gate 3 Bug” by Casual Veteran Gamer! A short video I stumbled upon while looking for something to help fill out my session talking all about an interesting bug with the “Magic Initiate: Cleric” feat from Baldur’s Gate III. Basically, there’s a number of “Magic Initiate” feats in the game, which allow you to learn two cantrips and one first-level spells from the spell lists for various magic users (Bard, Wizard, Sorcerer, etc). However, the Cleric one ALSO, for unknown reasons, gives those who take it one of the bonuses from the “Medium Armor Master” feat – allowing the Dexterity modifier applied to a character’s armor class to be increased from +2 to +3 (if applicable) when they’re wearing medium armor! If you don’t have this feat or the “Medium Armor Master” one, wearing medium armor caps the bonus at +2. CVG isn’t sure why this is, and notes that it only gives you half the feat (“Medium Armor Master” also removes Disadvantage on Stealth Checks while wearing medium armor), but that it’s still a nifty little bonus. Even if it is a bug. XD

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – though, as I implied above, tonight’s page was a bit of a struggle, as I had to go searching out some Let’s Plays to make sure I was describing Grout’s bizarre maze right. More of the rooms are sideways than I originally thought… *shakehead* Anyway – I managed to get through Alice traversing a good chunk of the maze tonight, complaining about Grout “reusing assets” and how this isn’t even HALF as weird as some of the stuff she’s seen in Wonderland and how annoying it was to keep having to traverse the same sort of room over and over again – and then getting punished for focusing on complaining instead of where she was going by falling through a door in the floor and landing hard in the room below. The Queen of Hearts was very amused. :P Anyway, I left off with her in a near-identical copy of the room she started in – only to find that the door she was hoping to try is locked. Tomorrow, she works her way deeper into the maze, and hopefully I can get back into the writing groove here!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Half check – thanks to getting to my writing way later than I expected, I only had time for a quick video I started watching during the end of my workout, but had to stop and save for after supper because it was unexpectedly longer than I thought it would be: “This Build is Completely Broken in Baldur's Gate 3 Eldritch Blast Sorlock Sorcerer Warlock #bg3 #b” by Toyhouze! I was intrigued by the title and intro, which promised to show off a build where one combined the Sorcerer and Warlock classes to get some insane damage bonuses on Eldritch Blast –

Aaaand then the rest of the video was just him talking about how to get the most out of a starting Warlock if you were looking for pure damage – like taking “The Fiend” subclass to get temporary hit points upon downing enemies to help keep yourself alive in the early stages; adding the Eldritch Invocations “Agonizing Blast” and “Repelling Blast” to Eldritch Blast to make it more powerful and shove enemies away; recommendations on spells to take and at what levels; and what Pact Boon you should go for (Pact of the Chain, apparently, which gives you the ability to summon an imp that can go invisible pretty much whenever it wants and thus surprise enemies before combat). Given the way it ended, I suspect this was a clip of a much longer video, but a lot of people in the comments were unimpressed by the fact that he never actually got to the multiclassed “broken build” he promised in this video. And that he kept picking all “concentration” spells that he couldn’t use together (like “Hunger of Hadar” and “Cloud of Daggers”). It was pretty “meh” in the end – good thing I was only looking for entertainment and not tips on how to do my Bardlock Smiler!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – only Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, thankfully – and even better, I knew exactly what I wanted my Song Saturday to be: “Lights Down Low” by MAX! Because that’s the Valicer Wedding Song, and Saturday IS just two days before the Valicer Wedding Anniversary. :) So I just found the most recent reblog and stuck it back in the queue from there. *nods* Easy-peasy, yay~

*looks at the above* Yeah, I went into WAY too much detail in the fight scene there. I have to go to learn how to curb that impulse. *shakehead* Anyway, that's it for me -- I'm off to bed. Night all!