April 23, 2009

Easily distracted from problem solving.

When we last left our heroes, Lord Captain Alluishous had jumped directly into a slime and got his ass devoured. Luckily, since then, we got another party member… who was with us the whole time! Of course! Originally, I thought it quite unfortunate that he didn’t go Barbarian as I was expecting, but instead went Cleric. Yes, this brings our party to THREE healers and 0 tanks. But, it worked out well. He built him up as muscular, beefy, and hit-stuff-style as was possible, basically. It worked out well, with him on the front lines next to Spaeth, I think. With two melee-style people, we were looking a lot better.

This temple-thingy was the first actual “dungeon” I’ve probably ever been in while playing this stuff. We’ve been doing it wrong all along! Sort of. There was a fairly solid fight with some slimes and some rats, and a small little interlude with a Mimic of all things. It was good times. Still, I was OVERWHELMED by how badass Alena’s healing is. Man, I used my Spirits of Battle, and suddenly, healing the entire group was effortless thanks to my paragon path, since everyone was always in a zone of conjuration I made. It was kind of obscene. If I wasn’t so fragile, I’d say Shaman was kind of broken. As it is, I know if I was focused on fully, I’d go down like nothing.

I got to try out my Spirit of Shielding Flame, and it was as excitingly neat and as frustratingly situational as I expected! Still, I love the flavor. Setting up a protective barrier around a person that lets me burn anyone who hits them is fun, fun, fun for a healing/defense-oriented person like myself.

Mainly, though, there was problem-solving in this dungeon. And I amaze myself in how I work. Maybe it’s just because I was so tired, but man, the first thing I thought of to do was the solution, and then, suddenly, everyone starts coming up with humorous, silly ideas, and I get so caught up in playing along that I forget to even suggest what I knew, from the very first moment, we were supposed to do. I suppose it’s a good thing that we’re having such a good time and messing around so much. Fun is fun! Having fun is good! But goodness, it’s almost frustrating when I realize I’ve been sitting on the answer the whole time and I just forgot to say it while we were cracking jokes about my character stripping in front of everyone (to change armor, of course!) and people screaming at walls to create avalanches.
It’s also kind of amazing how wrapped up we can get in our own bullshit narrative around what the real narrative is. Every time I have to recap to explain what we’re doing (although I never remember any names or anything, so there’s a lot of “that dude” and “that one guy”) everyone is kind of amazed and finding it odd that that’s what we’re actually doing. Such bullshit we are spinning, let me tell you!

Still, our planar adventures are continuing. It looks like we won’t be able to play again for awhile, but hopefully this one doesn’t drop off and disappear. I’m having a really great time, to be sure, and I would like it to continue. Here’s to hoping scheduling prevails! Yay scheduling! I think!

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