Note from the author: I actually do roll die for all the stats of every character and all the die rolls they make in the course of the game. There may be other forms of (amateurish) DM fudgery, but the numbers you see are not one of them.
Also, I want my italics back. =(
-o-o-o-
I hate this stupid game, Meliel thought as she slogged down the dirt road, her cat familiar plodding behind her. And why did my Constitution score have to roll so low?
According to The Book, an average commoner was a "10" in every ability. That meant she was significantly weaker and less...constitution-y than the average person. Admittedly, she was a lot smarter, but when she considered that she only had seven hit points, a quarterstaff she barely knew how to use, and the ability to cast, oh let's see 3 DECENT SPELLS A DAY the idea of traveling by herself seemed awfully stupid.
The alternative, however, was worse. As unwise as traveling alone probably was (and her Wisdom score was only 10), being in a party sounded even worse. Even if it was all the rage to group up in teams of four these days, Meliel decided she would rather die than roll the dice with other PCs.
Admittedly, it would be nice to have someone to ask about how the stupid rules worked. There were too many of them. There were so many options in every round and so many items to buy, spells to cast, feats to use...it all sounded good until you realized that it meant looking through hundreds of pages of small print full of numbers, qualifiers, conditions, and more and more to look up and keep track of.
Not to mention the decisions! She chose her spells, feat, and skills pretty much at random. She knew there were dedicated Munchkins out there who would sob at her haphazard decision-making, but it wasn't her fault the game was so ridiculously overcomplicated that the best even a 17-intelligence beginner could do was close her eyes and see where her finger landed on the page.
Then there were the rules for the familiar. Meliel didn't even want to know. Her cat, which she hadn't even named, could go drown itself for all she cared.
She was terrified an encounter might happen. She wanted to get through to the city Rulesburg without any combat. That's why she had spells like Colour Spray, Silent Image and Summon Monster prepared. It wasn't that she was so skeptical of her own abilities. She was a wizard after all, master of arcane might three times a day. She could bend the very laws of reality to her whim...slightly. But what really worried her was having to apply the rules. Reading them was bad enough. Practicing them sounded like hell.
Meliel was so caught up in her thoughts that it should come as no surprise that she failed her Spot and Listen checks. A stone flew out of nowhere and hit her in the temple. Meliel stumbled back, clutching at her head where the stone had struck for 1 damage. Paltry as it sounded, it was over 14% of her HP. What had happened?
Meliel noticed a small creature duck behind a rock. It had attacked her!
It was Meliel's worst nightmare. An encounter.
She could run, but the surprise attack had done only one damage. The Game wouldn't pit her against a challenge she couldn't handle, right? Not at level one, not by herself. Surely she could defeat this tiny monster. She might gain some XP and add to her pathetic 39 gold.
Besides, she needed to learn the rules.
Meliel decided to engage the enemy. The world seemed to blur as she rolled for initiative. 17! That would almost definitely be enough to go first. She could squash the ugly little thing with Magic Missile...but it was hiding behind the rock. She needed line of sight. Was she allowed to move and attack? ...Yes, she could. The creature had attacked her and then taken a five-foot step behind the rock. She could maneuver to face it and blast it.
She did so, stepping around until she could see behind the rock. The convenience of turn-based combat was that she could get a good look of the monster before she melted its face.
She found herself looking at a short, ugly human-lizard thing with dark scales. It was probably a kobold, she realized. Normally they worked in groups, but this one was all alone. Its clothes were torn, and it looked tired, even hungry. Meliel didn't care. It had attacked her, and it would suffer arcane punishment. She designated it as a target.
This was it...her first time casting a spell. She hoped she had read the rules right.
"Magic Missile!"
Arcane energy flowed through her and out into the form of a magic bullet. It blasted into the center of the kobold's chest for an awesome four damage. The kobold rocked back, clearly hurt, but it kept its footing.
"Four damage isn't enough to kill it?" Meliel complained. "I don't have any more attack spells!"
She didn't have long to complain to the unfair universe. It was the kobold's turn now, and it aimed its sling again, nailing her for another one damage. Now she only had five HP and the pressing question of how to finish it off.
She drew her quarterstaff, which she saw as a walking tool and something to mark her as Wizardly, not a weapon, but when push came to shove it was a thick rod of wood that would put the hurt to any creature who dared cross her after she had cast her Three Spells.
Since the kobold had a ranged weapon, it couldn't get an attack of opportunity in. She closed the distance and ended her turn.
To her surprise, the kobold put away the sling and drew a long, scary-looking spear seemingly from nowhere. But, if Meliel understood the rules, always an uncertain proposition, that was a move action, and a move action in range of a melee weapon provoked an attack of opportunity...right?
Screw it. Meliel attacked. Her jaw dropped in surprise as the quarterstaff clipped the kobold on the chin and knocked it flat on its back. By some miracle she had rolled an 18, overcoming both her own deficiencies in martial combat and the kobold's ridiculous AC. Even though the attack dealt only 1 damage, it was enough to take the kobold out.
She had won the encounter.
Meliel sagged, clutching her quarterstaff for supported. She never wanted to go through another combat again. The excess of rules, items, weapons, and spells, and the way her very life depended on her pathetic knowledge of them plus the fickle roll of the die made encounters uniquely terrifying.
The kobold hefted its spear and threw it at her. Before Meliel could even scream it whistled past her, a pathetic attack roll of 3. Meliel prepared to smash the kobold's brains in, but it appeared to have gone to sleep.
She gripped her staff tightly. It had tried to kill her.
Thwap! "That's for attacking me!" Thwap! "That's for making me waste one of my precious Three Spells!" Thwap! "That's for making me spend an hour trying to figure out the Byzantine combat rules!" Thwap! "And that's for being a kobold, you dirty little newt!"
Several thwaps later, Meliel's low constitution forced her to end the abuse. The kobold was a bloody smear on the ground. Meliel awkwardly wiped the end of her quarterstaff on its clothes and checked for gold. None! She cursed in her Elvish tongue, which if she actually knew Elvish-to-Common might have been written here. At least she got a whopping 75 XP out of the life-or-death encounter.
Meliel sighed. 1000 XP and level two seemed so far away. What she wouldn't give to be a level 20 master of the universe.
She considered taking the kobold's spear, but it looked heavy and she didn't want to have to figure out just how little weight a normal-sized elf with 7 strength could carry according to the stupid load rules. She decided to let it be.
"Come, cat-thing," she said to her familiar, which in the true spirit of cats had laid down and watched while Meliel fought for her life, and they set off for the town.
