#it’s fun to have her in my party for the Ketheric battle but | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lakemojave · 3 days

Text

Tonight at 6pm Pacific: The Direct Actors, a BG3 "Adventure" pt. 12!

Well, last week sure was a blast, huh. Don't worry, coming into this week's session we're gonna have a grand old time and be best friends for sure! Come see @radiofreederry play Dhudlei Durite, elf paladin, my friends Nana and April play Leviathan, Dragonborn Dark Urge Monk, @caputvulpinum play Micah Harper, Tiefling Cleric, and me play Delilah "Mama D" Harper, Halfling Bard!

Art by @terrafey, recap under the cut. See y'all then!

twitch_live

THE STORY SO FAR: On the way to a union rally, Delilah "Mama D" Harper and her grandson Micah were abducted and taken aboard an ilithid nautiloid, which they escaped with mysterious dancer Leviathan and self-proclaimed "Champion of Ilmater and Paladin of Good" Dhudlei Durite. Each infected by a mind flayer tadpole, but so far immune from transforming into mind flayers themselves, The Direct Actors, as the party have come to be known, now turn their attention to the Shadow-Cursed Lands, where Moonrise Towers, the lair of the Cult of the Absolute, awaits them...

LAST TIME: Recuperating from their trek through the Shadow-Cursed Lands, the Direct Actors encountered the devil Raphael at Last Light Inn, who had designs on both Dhudlei's soul and that of the tiefling girl Mol. After a battle of words, the party found the bedridden Flaming Fist Art Cullagh, whom Dhudlei recognized from a century before. After a discussion with the druid Halsin, Dhudlei realized that Cullagh may hold the key to breaking the shadow curse, and immediately guided the party on a quest to do just that.

En route to the House of Healing in the ruins of Reithwin, Dhudlei's temper exploded after Leviathan and Micah pressed him to engage with a group of shadow-cursed Harpers, and he revealed his past with Ketheric Thorm; Dhudlei also revealed that he blamed himself for the state of the land, explaining his single-minded drive to break the curse.

At the House of Healing, the Direct Actors encountered the undead surgeon Malus Thorm and put him down after he attacked the group, and Micah found a lute belonging to Art Cullagh, which he withheld from Dhudlei. Back at camp, Micah and Mama D got into a vicious argument which peaked when Micah, finally done with Mama D, lashed out and attacked her, leaving her to tend to her wounds. Dhudlei made an effort to mend the rift between himself and Micah, answering his questions honestly after Micah expressed the rupture of his trust he felt, although this did not fully restore the trust between them. Finally one of Leviathan's personalities, amused, decided that Micah was fun and declared himself the cleric's friend. As the party settled in for the night, Leviathan was visited by his disgusting corpse-like butler, who commanded him to kill the cleric Isobel Thorm - Dhudlei's goddaughter.

After a lengthy diversion involving a battle in an acid pit and a clash with a horde of shadow-cursed kuo-toa, the Direct Actors returned to camp once again. Mama D and Micah had another argument which seemed to result in a brief truce before Mama D broke down over her own perceived uselessness. Meanwhile, Micah decided to trust Dhudlei again, and Dhudlei extended the same to Leviathan, returning the Bhaalite scroll Leviathan had entrusted to him - but was he right to do so?

Will the party be able to come together as a unit once more? Will the rifts forming between them be able to heal? Will Leviathan follow through on his orders to kill Isobel? Will Mama D be able to rebuild her self-esteem? And will the Direct Actors break the shadow curse? Find out in another exciting installment of Baldur's Gate 3, starring the Direct Actors!

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #twitch #stream #the direct actors #shameless plugging

15 notes · View notes

blackjackkent · 3 months

Text

Orin battle report! Opening state of play:

Hector is VERY VERY UPSET AND ANGRY AND TERRIFIED about Orin and really desperately wants her gone, which doesn't give him any buffs but it does in my heart.

I had planned to take @zenjestrr's advice on starting out this fight with a Giant Owlbear Leap from Jaheira, so I carefully positioned her on a side ledge before sending Hector down to talk, but I think Orin overheard my planning maybe because as soon as the fight started she immediately jumped all the way up to where Jaheira was and pummeled her within an inch of her life. Jaheira is really having a rough time in these fights lol. Luckily she didn't get one-shot, though, so the plan hopefully still stands.

The monster Orin turned into was her Slayer form! She gets to do it too, just like Caden did, except Caden always fought against turning into it, while Orin has embraced it. Mechanically, the main improvement this seems to give her is two extra attacks. She also has SEVEN stacks of Unstoppable (the buff that has to be knocked off before she can take damage), which isn't the worst thing in the world but does definitely make the fight slower to get started.

Judging by her Notable Features, she's a rogue, which unfortunately means she also gets evasion and uncanny dodge. She also doesn't have as much health as Gortash and Ketheric did, though, so that's nice.

She has many friends on the map, but not all of them are in the turn order; a number of them have Sanctuary cast on themselves and are just hanging out in a circle around Lae'zel's body on the altar, chanting. Hopefully they stay uninvolved.

The most interesting thing is that the last item in the turn order is the giant Bhaal skull carving on the wall.

Inspecting it shows no features, no AC, and no resistances. I'm sure this is fine and won't provide a negative twist to the fight at all.

Combat:

Hector and Minsc were able to get a number of good shots in on Orin during the first round. We have a LOT of attacks per round now which meant we were able to get through the Unstoppable coating and Hector could get some good damage in.

However, the skull, it turns out, pulses out "Boon of the Unstoppable" once per round, which resets those stacks back to seven, meaning there's only a limited amount of damage time before she gets her defense back.

This is a BIG problem when combined with the fact that one of her buddies, at the same time, cast Slow on the whole party. With only one attack or bonus action apiece, this becomes a VERY different prospect and more than a little concerning.

Translation: our first priority, immediately, is to kill all her buddies so they can't apply that condition, and then we can do whatever we like.

Jaheira, unfortunately, spends the whole first two turns Fearful, meaning she can't take actions and just kind of has to stand there, which means Operation Owlbear is off to a slow start. Once we can jump her down onto the platform, the adds should hopefully not be a problem anymore. I have Minsc waste a turn to toss a healing potion onto her so she won't have to waste her bonus action on that and can jump straight in.

Orin lands a hit on Karlach, who barrels away fearful, loses her turn, and also develops this fun condition:

At this point, the skull pulses again and we get to witness Orin's Slayer multiattack for the first time:

The animation for this is actually terrifying; it's an incredibly rapid scrabbling claw attack that literally seems to rip the target open. This leaves Hector at a tidy one hit point. This is fine.

Jaheira finally gets a turn on round 3!

Finally time for the Leap. Had Jaheira move around a little to proc Orin's reaction first so she could jump safely.

The value here is that all those Bhaalists on the platform are, as mentioned, encased in Sanctuary - but it doesn't protect them from AOE damage, which both the Owlbear's jump and groundpound attacks do. So Jaheira is the main one of us that can clear out the protected cultists, and I'm GUESSING that when they're all gone and not chanting anymore, the skull stops popping a protecc on Orin.

At this point, Hector gets downed, Orin leaps after Jaheira and gives her the Sumptuous Blood Bath treatment and now SHE is at one hit point. Karlach once again misses her turn because she is Fearful, and also loses her rage and hits level 3 contagion. This fight is TOUGH - but I started out worried it was going to be anticlimactically easy when Hector got his initial round of hits in, so I guess this is better.

Hector straight up died when his turn came around so I reset the fight at this point. XD Let's try a second run, hopefully knowing what we're dealing with a bit more.

On the second run, Jaheira gets FIRST in the initiative order, which feels like it opens things up somewhat. Immediate Owlbear is my new rock band name.

She's able to knock down two of the cultists and Orin wastes her turn on shredding the owlbear health bar, which I guess feels like a win. God, she hits like a truck, though.

(From this point on I'm savescumming pretty aggressively because this fight turns on a dime, tbh. XD I want to get on to writing about feels; if I wanted a challenge battle I'd be playing my tactician run.)

I discovered something very important at this point, which is that Cloudkill pokes through Sanctuary. It stretches to two chanting cultists at a time, can be moved, lasts ten turns, and does up to 40 damage a turn. This is actually better than the owlbear attack, which is good, because we only have limited wildshapes to work with. Jaheira can also shroom-zombie up the dead cultists for extra bodies on the field, which is always valuable.

(Blight, I discover, also pokes through Sanctuary, although it's only a one-time hit so less valuable.)

Amusing aside: one of Orin's Piercing Growl attacks hit one of her own cultists in addition to Minsc; they failed their save and went off to hide in a corner for the rest of the fight.

While Jaheira is slowly whittling down the cultists, Hector, Jaheira, and Minsc have ended up circled around Orin. She does take a smidgen of damage every time she's hit while she still has an unstoppable attack, so her health bar is VERY slowly draining still, and when all three are able to get hits in, they have enough attacks between them to get rid of all the stacks and actually do some damage.

Crucially, on this round, Hector manages to topple her over AND shred her stacks, which means Minsc and Karlach get a full round of advantage, which is actually huge. (90 damage before the stacks kicked back in.) AND Karlach got in a Pommel Strike and Orin failed her save, meaning she's dazed and misses her next turn, which I think gives us the fight.

YESSSSSSSSS

WHOOOOOOOO

Just had to clean up the rest of the cultists, which was much easier since they stopped bothering to chant and started hitting, which removed Sanctuary. I did have Minsc jump on Jaheira by accident which was mildly amusing.

She made a very sad owlbear noise. :(

--------

The monstrous form of Orin screams as the final blow takes her. As she begins to die, Bhaal's form drips away from her, melting her into a puddle of blood that streaks along the floor towards Hector's boots.

Narrator: A metallic tang fills the air as the Slayer's form is drained of life - ashes to ashes, blood to blood.

Narrator: You have robbed another god of his Chosen.

#bjk plays baldur's gate 3 #hector carlisle #holy mackerel what a fight :D #but victory in the end!

10 notes · View notes

blackjackkent · 2 months

Text

All right, I do after all have a bit of time to kill before GW2 events tonight, so let's finish out this fight with Aradin I guess.

I backed up just slightly because I realized we can tell Aylin about the impending threat of Aradin's kidnapping attempt. She responded with the sort of subtlety and restraint that we have come to expect from her:

"A mercenary, you say. Then I must find who has set a price upon my head and take theirs in kind. I will sleep with both eyes open this night."

>:) Lorroakan better watch his ass.

Anyway, on to the combat:

So here's the thing. I expected that this wouldn't be like trying to fight Aradin's band as we saw them in act 1; we're much more powerful now so that would make for a very stupid fight. And indeed, his companions are a crowd of seven fighters of varying classes, all Level 8 with roughly 70HP.

Aradin himself, however...

Oh. Oh no.

"Poor stupid lad" indeed... :/ I honestly feel bad beating him; this is such an ill-advised, foolish venture on his part. Hector's pretty upset that he wasn't able to talk him down.

As with the previous camp fight that we had (with the vampire spawn), only the active party (plus Aylin) gets to fight here, and I don't get control over Aylin. Hopefully she fights a bit better than she did against Ketheric.

This is not a hard fight - more annoying than anything else. Karlach one-shot poor Aradin right out of the gate and the rest of the fight was spent cleaning up all of his lackeys. My biggest concern ended up being that the whole battle took place around the hookah area and I didn't want to smash it, which reduced some of the AOEs I could use.

I had Jaheira use Confusion and Gale use Slow, which turned most of the group on each other very ineffectually. Aylin cast Moonbeam and rolled around the battlefield causing damage to everyone which was very satisfying to watch. And sooner or later they all fell like dominoes.

Aylin is VERY ANGRY about the whole thing afterward.

"Our camp has been besieged by bribelings. And Dame Aylin is the prize that seduced them. I found a note on one of the foes. It read of the wizard Lorroakan and his designs upon my capture. To Ramazith's Tower they were meant to take me."

"Ho! Won't Lorroakan be surprsied when Dame Aylin trounces him in his own citadel. Let us hie us to his chambers, his lair, when morning breaks. We will see him undone in the style of the dead, unburied Ketheric Thorm!"

Well. Hector was already probably going to go beat him up for the crimes of a) almost killing Hector in the street, b) probably beating up Rolan and also random customers, c) being a general toolbag, but doing it with Aylin's help sounds MUCH more fun. >:)

So that will be something for me to look forward to tomorrow after work. XD

(Also, Aylin then proceeded to start flapping her wings and gliding around the Elfsong rooms repeatedly and GLOWING VERY BRIGHTLY after this conversation, which feels like it must have been REAL annoying for everyone trying to get some sleep afterwards. XD )

Eventually she disappeared so I'm assuming it was just waiting for her Moonlight spell to wear off.

And hey, the hookah survived!

#bjk plays baldur's gate 3 #hector carlisle

5 notes · View notes