That sounds like tremendous fun! I would have loved to play in a game like that!
That might have worked…if any of the uber-characters could agree on anything long enough to do it. The balance of power prevented it. Besides, the sheer numbers we would have had to cut through would have made it a losing proposition. Never forget: Under AD&D rules, an army can throw down their weapons and kill anything (except maybe a psionic lich) by grappling!
Anything that specifically protects against death magic should stop it. Likewise, undeath or shapechanging into anything that doesn’t have a heart should provides some protection (IIRC, the Arrow is a heart-seeker). Tenser’s Transformation should protect a mage from a mage-slayer (not that it doesn’t carry its own risks). Still, it’s a seriously overpowered weapon.
My thief’s favorite death-weapon was a hypo he got from Aurora’s (picture Bugs Bunny mailing off for a weapon) filled with a sweetwater potion. When your blood turns to pure spring water, it just ruins your day. 
<—Evil Thief Grin
Heh…they sure had fun, but not as fun as I had coming up with these seriously involved and complete plots, subplots, and tertiary plots on the fly. It was a great creative exercise.
One thing the players sure got to know well was paranoia. In a city that was in open revolt with no less than 7 main warring factions, and the ever present random and semi-random events, they got so they didn’t trust anyone, or anything. Which helped to keep them alive.
After a couple months in the city, one disgruntled player said “Can’t we just go do something easy like kill a den of trolls or Storm Giants?” But everyone else was having too much fun, so he left and was replaced. By a player I talked into becoming one of “my agents”. I made him a double agent, sent by a hidden group of sorcerer-assassins, and his ultimate goal was to report back on the actions and plans of the group, and eventually try to kill them when ordered.
A group of IRL players really have no expectation that one of them is actually following orders from NPC’s, and the DM by proxy. Unfortunatly, the gaming ended before anyone found out what was happening.
The thing that really gave flavor to the World were the many random events - especially ones that seemed ominous, but were just random. It put them on edge. Like them being awakened to a scream, a bloody axe left embedded in the front door of the house they were operating out of, strange notes to meet at places where no one shows up, random threats, or just that prickling feeling that “someone is watching you”.
One of the funniest things was a gift of 15 gold pieces in a bag, sent to one player, with no reason or name given. Internally, I knew it was from a half-orc street gang leader who appreciated the players absolutely wiping out a rival gang. But the houseboy who delivered the bag forgot the letter (and stole 3 of the coins), and left it for them on a tray that contained some leftover chicken bones from dinner. They wondered for weeks who sent them that, and what it meant - for some reason it really bothered them. The houseboy, of course, didn’t say anything because he thought they would punish him for the theft. Their minds worked feverishly trying to determine what this mysterious symbolism of the 12 gold coins and bones meant. I had an NPC joke that it was probably a Voodoo Death Curse of some sort, and I swear I saw their hair turn white in front of me.
(BTW - the lesbian sorcereses were only lesbian because they belonged to a cult, and because I was getting really tired of the players trying to hit on them. They certainly weren’t the first women to pretend to be gay to get men to stop bothering them…)
Two major rules changes we did to speed up and make the game more fun, or more realistic:
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One thing I did not like were 1-minute melee rounds. So we changed the rules to be “speed D&D”. All actions - spells, battles, preparation, etc. were moved to the next lower time level. That is, a round became 6 seconds, a segment became 1 second (yes, I know that’s not even, since there are 10 segments per round, so sue me), and a turn became 1 minute. It really seemed to give more of a “Movie-quality realism” to the battles and actions, as opposed to a “Real Life, SCA-battle realism”. And the players loved it.
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Encumberance became an issue, especially as players started to get more treasure. So I made the world operate on the silver standard. All prices that were in gold were now in silver, and all treasure was shifted down one. That is, an Ogre with 12 gp, 24 sp, and 300 cp, now had 12 sp, 24 cp, and 300 ip (iron pieces). Gold actually became worth something, and it was easier to carry treasure from town-to-town, as a single platinum piece had enormous value (also, knowing that platinum is rare without technology for high-temp melting, I made 1pp = 100 gp. So 1pp was worth a lot!)
Sigh. I just loved D&D. Too freaking bad it had to end. I would give anything to run a group around here now, but no one I know IRL is interested.
Note that last one- that “successfully hits my character”- the saving throw against stuff like this is - not being hit with it. Ie, cloak of displacement, great AC, etc. certain items & spells do protect against “death magic”, tho, and this could be included.
Back in college, we would play Marvel Super Heroes just about everyday. Sometimes they would drag me out of bed to run. We had such a group together that the game went along without interruption even while the GM (me) slept behind the GM screen. They’d wake me up once in a while to make a ruling.
Danielinthewolvesden wrote:
I should probably tell you why I’m interested in arrow-of-slaying protection:
I’m in the midst of writing the third installment in the Disgusting Characters trilogy. I wrote the first 2 stories (IUDC and The Sick Kids) over a decade ago, and they acquired a cult following of sorts. Their essential theme was “How can we read between the lines of the AD&D rules to create the most incredibly disgustingly powerful characters imaginable?” The results would make even a hardened munchkin blanch. For example, if you roll the dice just right, a single centaur can be carrying up to 4 million gold pieces worth of gems; and as every power-hungry player knows, every gold piece you acquire by killing something gives you an experience point.
So now my story is populated by characters with billions of experience points. How many hit points would a 50000th level barbarian have? (Barbarians gain 4 hit points per level beyond the 8th, and if you allow constitution bonuses to add after they stop getting hit dice, a 25 constitution would give a barbarian an additional +20 hit points per level.) How much damage would a cone of cold do when cast by a 50000th level magic user? How far would such a cone of cold extend? What is the THAC0 of a 50000th level fighter? And with all those million-gold-piece gems, they can buy any magic item in existence. Including artifacts. Including artifacts pulled out of thin air. Give 'em a scarab of protection and enough magic items to give a +19 or more on their saving throws, and they’ll automatically make saving throws against magic which normally allows no saving throw! Although with enough magic resistance (say, from the “+20% magic resistance” power on an artifact taken 5 times), saving throws versus spells or spell-like powers aren’t even necessary.
But nothing in the 2nd Edition books protects a character against arrows of slaying. Magic resistance won’t do it, because magic resistance doesn’t apply against magic weapons. The scarab of protection won’t do it, because it only gives you a saving throw against “spells” that normally allow no saving throw. (Scarabs of protection also absorb death spells, death rays, and fingers of death, but not arrow-of-slaying effects.) Having a high armor class won’t do it, because a 50000th level fighter will have a THAC0 of -49980 (before bonuses from strength/dexterity and magic), and even a Disgusting Character isn’t going to have an armor class of -50000. (The samurai character class in Oriental Adventures gained +1 to his AC for every 3 levels, with no upper limit listed, but THAC0 still climbs 3 times more rapidly with level than samurai AC bonus does. So that wouldn’t be enough.) Anti-magic shell would work, provided the arrow-of-slaying power wasn’t part of an artifact, as artifacts will function inside an anti-magic shell under 2nd Edition rules.
I can find no magic items or spells that explicitly protect against “death magic” other than piddling little things that give you, say, +2 or +4 on saving throws versus death magic. If the death magic allows no saving throw (as in the case of an arrow of slaying), such plusses will not help.
So: What specific spells or items (in 2nd Edition) did you have in mind that protect against “death magic”?
Oh: And a cloak of displacement won’t help either. Disgusting characters who attack other disgusting characters are always wearing a robe of eyes.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Anthracite *
**
Anth,
Have you considered trying to play in a chat room online? I was trying with some friends, and while we don't have an online dice roller, it hasn't been bad, for some D&D newbies and a relatively inexperineced DM.I wrote:
By which I meant they could essentially make any existing magic item into an artifact (or create a new artifact out of whole cloth) by paying enough gold pieces. BUT, the powers of all such “purchased” artifacts would be limited to the powers listed in the Random Power Generation Tables (Tables 10-33) in Appendix B in the back of the AD&D 2nd Edition Book of Artifacts.
So they can’t just give an artifact a power like “possessor immune to arrows of slaying”, because such a power doesn’t appear in Tables 10-33. 
You know, I’ve always liked D&D, but have never been able to play it. Nuts.
Surgoshan, let me give you a taste of the experience:
Roll 3 six-sided dice (“3d6”) and add them together. Write down this total.
Roll 3d6 again five more times, and write down each total.
If none of the numbers is above 13, throw them away and re-roll all 6 times over again. Keep doing this until you get 6 nice high 3d6 rolls that you like.
Now, put the following words in front of the 6 dice totals you’ve kept: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, Charisma.
Which of these words is in front of the highest number? If it’s Strength, you have just rolled up a fighter character. If it’s Intelligence, you’ve just rolled up a magic-user character who will probably die on his first adventure, so you’d better roll the dice over again. If it’s Wisdom, congratulations, you have a “cleric” – a holy high priest who does not believe in shedding blood (and thus goes around bashing in the skulls of every funny-looking thing he meets. Don’t ask me, I didn’t write this game.) If it’s Dexterity, you have a thief – but don’t worry, everybody likes thieves and will welcome you to go on an adventure with them for some reason. If the highest number is Constitution, make him a fighter anyway, because you’ll get this thing called a “hit point bonus” which means you’ll be able to survive getting hit by FOUR cannon balls per day whereas all the other low-Constitution wimps out there can only survive three. If the highest number is Charisma, and you’re lucky enough for it to be a 17, you are now the proud owner of a “paladin” character, who gets all the advantages of a fighter plus he gets to give away all his wealth.
Now you have to choose your “alignment”. Alignment is a pair of words, such as “lawful good” or “chaotic evil” or “neutral hungry”. Paladins must be lawful good, but everybody else can pretty much pick whichever two words they like. If your “alignment” is different than that of people you meet, it means you will hate each other. Unless these other people are player characters, in which case you’ll pretty much ignore alignment and form together into a party for the purpose of slaughtering kobolds and stealing the money from they freshly-killed corpses. The only true alignment in D&D is “murdering pickpocket.”
When that’s done, you’ll have to use those funny-looking dice that came with your D&D set. They have 4 sides, 8 sides, 12 sides, 20 sides, 800 sides, etc… They are called “polyhedral” dice, and their purpose is to make you sound all smug when talking to your friends by saying words like “polyhedral”. Roll a single polyhedral die (a d4, d6, d8, or d10, depending on whether your character is a magic-user, a thief, a cleric, or a fighter/paladin). The number you roll is called your “hit points”. If you roll a low number, you will probably be killed very early and will have wasted all your hard work up until this point.
After this, roll some more funny dice and add them together. The result is how many “gold pieces” your character has. The gold piece is the standard unit of currency throughout the D&D universe. A single gold piece is an enormous coin, weighing a tenth of a pound. In the real world, one such gold piece would be worth about $400, but in the D&D universe there are so many gold pieces floating around that it’s undergone a kind of hyperinflation. 7 gold pieces will buy you an ordinary lantern. 15 gold pieces will buy you a decent sword. There’s a whole long price list in one of the D&D books if you really want to go to town and blow your whole inheritance buying stuff. You can buy anything you want from those lists, but it seems to be a law of nature that everyone must buy a pair of high hard boots and 50 feet of rope. No one knows why.
You are now ready to sally forth on your first adventure. To do this, you will need some graph paper and a pencil. Each square on the graph paper is 10 feet across in real life. The “Dungeon Master” (a geeky-looking kid sitting behind a DM’s Screen) will tell you how big a room your character is in, and how many doors there are. Draw the room on your graph paper. Now pick a door. All doors in the D&D universe are incredibly sticky. It takes a football linebacker to have a decent chance of opening an unlocked door. You will probably waste several minutes pounding on the door to get it open.
Once you open the door, the Dungeon Master will roll a bunch of dice behind his screen, and announce that 2 kobolds are charging at you from behind the opened door. There are always 2 kobolds. It’s another one of those laws of nature. A “kobold” is a small pile of hit points whose purpose in life is to provide sparring practice for beginning players. Your first job will be to announce that you are trying to kill the kobolds with your sword. Or your mace if you’re a cleric. Or your pathetic little dagger if you’re a magic-user. Did I mention that your magic user will probably die? Anyway, when you make this announcement, the DM will hand you a 20-sided die and tell you to roll it. He will add your “to-hit bonus from strength” to your die roll, compare it to your “THAC0”, and subtract the kobold’s “Armor Class”. After this, he will tell you that you have missed. Your first die roll always misses. It’s like a rite of passage.
Then he will roll some dice and announce how many of the kobolds have hit you. If you’re a magic-user, they will both hit, and considering how few “hit points” you rolled for that magic-user, he will certainly be dead. If you’re not a magic-user, maybe you have a chance. One or both kobolds might miss you. You might have enough “hit points” to survive getting hit by a kobold. In any event, you will probably be able to swing your sword at the kobolds again and miss a second time.
These die-rolls of you missing the kobolds and the kobolds missing you will go back-and-forth for several “melee rounds.” A melee round is a fancy term for one minute. The authors of D&D could have just called it a “minute”, but “minute” just doesn’t sound as D&D-ish. It will take you at least a minute of real time to play a melee round of D&D, anyway. Finally, when the smoke clears, either you or the kobolds will remain standing. If it’s the kobolds, you’re dead, and have to start all over at the beginning again. Tough luck.
If by some miracle you manage to survive and defeat the kobolds, the Dungeon Master will then spend several minutes calculating how many “experience points” this was worth to you. Experience points are little rewards, sort-of like those gold stars you got in first grade, handed out to characters when they behave themselves. (“Behaving yourself” in D&D is defined as “killing things.”) When your character earns enough experience points, he gains a “level.” But don’t worry. It takes more experience points than you could ever hope to earn in a lifetime to gain a level. And by that time your character will have been killed by a kobold anyway.
After you scribble down your experience points somewhere (but not on your character sheet! You’ll be erasing the same spot so many times you’ll wear a hole in the paper!), the DM will take several more minutes to roll up how much “treasure” the kobolds were carrying. To most people, “treasure” means a buried pirate’s chest filled with gold dubloons and pieces of eight and strings of pearls. However, in the case of kobolds, “treasure” means “copper pieces”. As many as 24 copper pieces per kobold. Just sitting there in their pockets.
A “copper piece” is a smaller denomination of currency than a gold piece. Depending on which version of D&D you play, the exchange rate can be 50 copper pieces to the gold piece, 100 copper pieces to the gold piece, or 200 copper pieces to the gold piece. As you can see, you’ll have to go through a lot of kobolds if you want to scrape together enough copper pieces to make a gold piece. And as if that weren’t bad enough, each of these copper pieces weighs just as much as a gold piece does. You’ll need a fork lift just to carry them all out of the “dungeon” with you. (I forgot to mention that this strange room on the sheet of graph paper is part of a “dungeon.” Nobody knows why it’s called a dungeon. There are no prisoners, it’s not in the basement of a castle, and there aren’t even any decent torture-devices left hanging around. Hmph. Some dungeon.)
Now you know what it’s like to play D&D. Aren’t you glad you asked?
Um, tracer, I should modify my statement. I’ve played D&D, just not often, or for long periods of time, or recently.
That said I’ll go back and read your post. 
hehe Is that original? I’ll have to find some D&D fans and give it to them. Of course, that’d mean I was destroying the favorite pastime of a few 13 year old geeks, but at least they might laugh as their souls wither and they turn into bitter old dorks before their time.
Heh. Yeah, I just threw that little description together on-the-fly, from my memories of having played the game in the halcyon days of my youth.
Incidentally, our own Cecil Adams once tried to get a grasp on AD&D: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_309b.html. Apparently, the first book he read was the 1st Edition DMG, which is a pretty hard place to start, thus he came away from it believing that the rules of AD&D are horrendously complicated. (They ARE horrendously complicated, but if he’d started out with the PHB he might have been able to learn enough of them to get a feel for the game.) But worse, his article contains a misprint: it should say that a huge ancient spell-using red dragon is 7758 x.p., not 7758 h.p… That bugs me whenever I re-read that old article. 
A number of months ago, as a last desperate grasp at my fading youth, I became obsessed with playing D&D again. I was really suprised to find so many people who still play it or were interested in learning.
For those of you affiliated with a university, there are often role playing clubs or go to pretty much any computers, math or physical science club and you’ll find interested people. Another option is to go to your local gaming store and ask the employees if they know of any games being run.
After a couple of months my obsession subsided and now I play less frequently but with healthy suppliments of Baldur’s Gate.
Ok, I have absolutely no familiarity with the game, so I have to ask. What property does this arrow have that prevents you from teleporting it into the middle of a boulder, or yourself to safety?
Well, spells take time to cast and a flying arrow moves faster than you can mutter out the words to Teleport.
Oh, and very amusing description of D&D.
They aired Cruel Doubt on Lifetime again. That’s the movie in which some kids butcher some people, and they blame D&D. I didn’t get to see the whole thing, but in the last half hour, they show the 1st edition player’s book, the statue cover, and show the kid having haunting visions of guys in cowls with swords. I was having trouble piecing together exactly what happened, but they clumsily tried to make it sound as though they were neutral on the subject, while at the same time making sure the viewer was left with the impression that in fact D&D was to blame. At one point, the prosecutor says something like, “My client was not an instigator. The instigator was the three-D’s: Dungeons and Dragons and Drugs.”
The movie also contains some of the most abominable attempts at southern accents ever captured on film.
Now, if I were to write an anti-D&D movie, it would be very different. To begin with, just showing the books and having the kids talk about swords and demons in completely patent language is quite unrealistic. The parent’s first sign that something is wrong should be that the kid starts speaking in a cryptic language, and that the other kids understand what they’re saying. e.g.:
“You’re out of your mind. Bahamut is twenty-one hit dice.”
“Yeah, but he’s only got 40 more hit points than Tiamat, with a breath weapon on every head. She does two dee eight, three dee six, two dee ten, three dee eight, three dee ten, one dee six. That’s an average of sixty five damage a round. All Bahamut does is two dee six, two dee six, six dee eight – only fourty-one points a round. Advantage: Tiamat, in three rounds.”
“Bahamut’s A.C. negative three to Tiamat’s zero. Plus, he attacks as a twenty-first level warrior, compared to Tiamat’s feeble sixteenth-level attacks. That makes Tiamat 15 percent more vulnerable and 25% less deadly than the king of dragons. Give it up.”
[Cut to mother overhearing conversation, and spooky music starts playing]
Well, I know from flipping through some D&D DM plot books that spells can be triggered by certain actions. If I was worried about arrows of slaying, which seem to go for the heart, I’d have the trigger be the breaking of an amulet worn over my heart. The arrow would break it, the spell would be activated and I’d be safely away. Maybe make the trigger cast some sort of nasty retribution too.
A correction. Earlier in this thread, I wrote:
Woops, sorry, wrong character class. It’s the kensai that gets +1 to AC for every 3 experience levels, with no apparent upper limit. A samurai gets +1 to the damage he inflicts for evey 3 experience levels, with no apparent upper limit.
(Yeah, like you care. )