The Ballista Bat - D&December Tales 

"And make a joke" more like "and make the best Rules of Nature moment to ever exist"

Viewtiful Z okay yeah that deserves a, "Getting close to it's last breath *Beat revs up as the Ballista shot gets closer and as it's caught...* RULES OF NATURE!

strive to be more like josh

@@InstaTechGaming For only Josh can prevent wildfires.

Nowadays if one reaches a certain level in Barbarian they could reach the same levels of strength required to catch the Ballista shot (but still need a chancy die roll or...well insta-die)

I once some how had a wizard with 18 strength.

+Ryan Watts I don't even play D&D but even I know that's BS

+Ryan Watts Fist Wizards!

Spoon Fox Care to rephrase that?

+Cody Hines have you heard of the rare muscle wizard he waves his stick chants nonsense all while approaching you while you are frightened by what kind of spell he could be casting hebonks you over the head with his club he has been waving this whole time. and no it isn't BS for a wizard to have 18 it just is comically ineffective in most ways

That... is the most ballin' story I have ever heard! `I'm just imagining the steam coming out of the former GM's ears as this was all happening.

I feel so sorry for that GM…

TVlord5 that is so rad

TVlord5 I somewhat doubt if that is true or not. Still an excellent story though.

nope had somebody do a similar thing with a wish became god of dnd world and the dm became a glorified narrator

Lazysupermutant *Knocked into the stratosphere after leaving a Dwarf shaped hole in the cave.*

So he was an alcoholic.

+Chris Smith The best kind of defense. I surprised nobody in the Ace Attorney series tries to do that because they love to throw shit a Phoenix.

Amazingly!

+Orenjiboy135 No just a dwarf. There's a difference you know.

+Chris Smith All I'm imagining is, "And I bequeath to you...A boot to the head."

+Adrian .C THAT'S D&D!

***** if I get a chance to play some D&D for the first time I'll gladly accept and probably accidentally drop the dice on the floor while my party members look at me in shame

+Adrian .C dnd.chromesphere.com/Index.html Here you can play alone or with a 2nd party member :) Me and my gf have been REALLY EXCITED with this :) It's not the same, but it's better than nothing.

I wish I had mental imagery. QQ

+Adrian .C Check out Critical Role. It's a bunch of professional voice actors playing D&D so the mental imagery is so good. A half-giant literally headbutts a full giant into submission with a natural 20 at one point.

If this were a video game, he just speed ran that shit...

You can play online through the pathfinder society

+Nick Carbaugh Or get a Steam group together and play in Tabletop Simulator.

+Mister Bones What what?

+Kalimdori if you wanna play some dnd and only too boot, try roll20.net. i am also looking for session when i found this app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/36334/the-radiant-flame and they are looking for players. its a 3.5 system so use only 3.5 im already a paladin so please choose any spellcaster, we need it.

+Kalimdori Me too!

+Firehazard14 That'd be amazing!

+ProJared I know right! Could Egoraptor help?

+Firehazard14 For the love of god, yes!

We have one. It's called Dynasty Warriors.

+Snaketooth 09 Egoraptor animate. That's the funniest thing I've heard in months.

or did he? dun dun duuuun xD sorry, buddy

Bruno C Tydra's boat arc when?

+EODM07 Which is why Guts suddenly replaced Tydra in my mental animation.

+EODM07 At least Guts is on land again... to chew fairy dust and kick druids asses... and he's all out of fairy dust

He's off the boat!~ He's off the boat baby!~ He's off the Boat!~ Seriously, if he got any more attached to the damn thing I'm pretty sure Griffith would have found a way to rape it.

And as it turns out, he found a secret tunnel.

I was thinking the same thing someone please animate the tale of the Op as fuck warrior

+Boredness I agree with this statement a million percent

+Boredness I was also thinking about someone animating this!

I think it would actually get a lot of views

He's doing a whole series of them all month. Also he has a playthrough with some of his friends on his gaming channel.

Same here, this is the epitome of what d&d is.

+dusknoir64 D&D 5th edition has the basic rules online to learn the basics, then just try and find a game on Roll20 or some local friends and get started. It is a great experience for me as a DM when my players do something to just completely annihilate a group of enemies with no effort and ruin my encounters.

+dusknoir64 It'll be the best thing you ever do

+dusknoir64 I urge you to. D&D with friends is a magical thing.

+dusknoir64 There's an app called 'Fifth Edition Character Sheet' which is perfect beginners. I'd still recommend keeping the Player's Handbook at your side but it certainly helps. There's a lot to it when it comes to creating a character and this app does a good job of helping you with that.

If they were using experience, anyway. I know the people I've played with, we haven't really thought that hard about experience distribution. The whole team would level up when a certain accomplishment was achieved, be it an advancement in the story or just impressing the DM. Granted, we were playing for the first time, so the DMs were trying to help cut complications at every corner they saw fit. Still, I can see why someone would prefer making it that way. As far as I can tell, D&D retains the idea of rewarding exp mostly or only by battle. This sorta puts players in a position where some players will fall behind. I remember when we played, our team's Warlock almost never dealt a kill, shining more often than not when it was time to Role-play, interacting with the team and NPCs. That, and we have moments like with Tydra here, where he'd get massive leverage above the rest of the team, padding him out and potentially de-balancing the party. Especially if this kind of shit is common practice. I know that as my Barbarian, I'd be pretty dominant sweeper of the field.

"you advance a level once you reach Fort Placeholder of Duke Whatshisname through the jungle of Death" Actually a good way to increase the PCs powers without focusing to hard on combat or the need to grind exp. I would actually give a bigger reward for intresting and deep roleplaying than simple battling.

Went up to level 9 million

Ender41948 It was an instant level 20, obviously

7

Especially the crazy ones.

The hard part's coming up with these things, and making it into a viable adventure

AHeroAlmost Good if you can imagine this that's a good start to being a DM or even a player!

how do you think a human even invented dungeons and dragons if you couldn't do that? Art would be totally fucked too.

Same here, I was almost crying from laughing so hard

what's the anime pope doing in a place like this? love your videos

not only are you a weeb but you're also a DnD nerd, I have been blessed

I miss Spoony.

Apologise to Jared. This is what happens when you believe people with no evidence and immediately demonize people

This comment somehow took me back ten thirteen years despite it being four years old.

This is amazing.

Cast it into the asphault!

+ProJared do a crossover with spoony please!

what would you say to someone who has no experience with d&d and no understanding with its systems,but wants to get into it? and what version would be best to start with

Please, do this for the entirety of 2016. This is so enjoyable to hear,

+ProJared Cool, I enjoyed that.

+Robby C. i would say 4th edition, its not great comparatively, but the concepts are easy and the rules are straightforward, but as you get very comfortable go into 5th or even Pathfinder because 4th unfortunately focuses mostly on combat and not enough on role playing, honestly 5th might be your best bet though to start it streamlined a lot of things from 3.5 and still has enough role playing in the classes

Not just you, buddy

+donuts82 lets be honest, this was better XD

+donuts82 I imagined a ballista *launching* a bat.

+donuts82 +anothga So I wasn't the only one

+donuts82 That was the first thing to pop in my head as well :)

Omg same

This needs to fucking happen

+Raze DarkFur Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

... ha ha

omg save him ... oh waith o.o

dammit leroy.

At least I have chicken.

+Edwin Chuni That is definitely a RULES OF NATURE moment if I've ever heard one.

+Edwin Chuni the Ballista Bat: a weapon to surpass metal gear.

AND THEY RUN WHEN THE SUN COMES UP

WITH THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE

MatCD ALIIIIIIIVE

Liam hahaha this made my night 🤣 what a crafty DM 😂

Amazing wonder what the wizard felt during all that

plbster Probably something like "Ow fuck! Did I roast a leprechaun or something? What's with this bullshit bad luck to fight the Hawkeye of Goblins!?"

Wizard appears. Rolls down into a fire and gets shot. Immediately taken out of the game. New Player is now playing the Hawkeye Goblin. #HowItShouldHaveEnded

My god that sounds glorious XD

+Deku Scrublord I often add items of randomness to my serious settings. I tend to rationalize them as the creations of mad and eccentric wizards. The craziest set of items I ever gave to my party was likely a set of wishing rings. They had so many wishes that they ended up abusing them straight away as I had intended. They caused a huge amount of chaos and almost got themselves killed by a molten gold hydra one of them had managed to create. It can really lighten up the mood to have those moments.

+Deku Scrublord Hell, if I was a wizard, the magic teacup would totally be my first goal! :L

Also this is just the best thing

+LennyPerson I played D&D, also play another RPG (Ironclaw, yesh we're furries deal with it), and I can confirm in all professional knowledge that this is the best thing.

Never played D&D, barely understand the rules, but damn if it isn't fun listening to stories and sometimes play sessions like these.

+LennyPerson It's a fun game that's hard to get into. You have to really like and be comfortable saying things that can be uncomfortable to say, like this one time we were trying to get information about a coup and we had to sneak into the kings room to get it and we were stopped and questioned ny themto get past the guards I decided I would gross them out and embarrass them so I decided to invite them to an "orgy" we were throwing (we were disquised as royal ambassadors),I then followed it by saying the guards had nice broad chests perfect for soiling on. They turned red polietly declined the offer and then ran off embarrassed. Needless to say had I been playing with strangers I would have been hesitant to try such a bold strategy.

+Fons the Magnificient eey bro wanna jiff?

darkblade190 YES. ALL OF MY YES.

darkblade190 Pfft!! I imagine his victims laighed before death.

I can imagine this being something my friends and I would do in a game (i.o.w. i'm borrowing this)

: I

Jesus! That must have been pure mayhem for your party!

You can't see it, but my Barbarian who had only JUST RECENTLY got a magic weapon (A Scythe) (after losing the prior one (A +2 Trident) to fucking WEREWOLVES) is making strangling motions at that Paladin... *Mung.png*

Kinda late, but a couple years ago I was in a campaign that we ALSO nuked an enemy encampment. But we PLANNED it. Our D&D group was doing the Elemental Evil campaign (for those who know of it), and we had just defeated a group of cultists in the cemetery of a northern city known as Yartar, and in the mausoleum we fought them in front of there was a stash of loot...and a big ol' box. This box had magical seals around every single potential opening...and in the fight, one of those seals was broken. My character, a Dragonborn Sorcerer, had pretty massive bonuses to investigation and arcana, as well as other tools to investigate without opening the box, and was able to deduce that the box contained an orb...with a trapped Fire Elemental inside. One that was PISSED. And ready to break out...explosively. And they now had 8 hours before the rest of the seals were breached. The party (my sorcerer, a ranger, a Barbarian and a cleric and Paladin duo) needed to get pretty far South of Yartar to get to a Paladin order temple, but there was an entire mountain range or two between Yartar and the temple...as well as a bandit camp we learned was absolutely filled with cultists of the water elemental. So we could either raft down the river from Yartar, through that bandit camp, and potentially get caught, or spend like an extra month we didn't really have trekking around the mountains for a less dangerous route but waste whatever time we had to halt these cult activities. The party took the time to calculate how far everything was, and how fast the raft could get down the river. It took about an hour of discussion and planning, which meant 7 hours until the seals were breached. The bandit camp was about a six and a half hours or so trip down this river. So we rented the services of a large river boat, tied the box to trail behind the boat and use the cold water to help potentially extend the time before breach, and during the trip (which was just after a level-up), my Sorcerer was spending time learning how to use Phantom Steed (long story, but essentially finding the spell scroll the DM allowed it to be learned after 5 successful attempts in a row) and made the Steed conjured as a Kelpie to pull the boat faster along the river. This helped as mermen water cultists attacked the boat, which cost a lot of time, but the boost of the Phantom Steed helped get close enough to the encampment. Our party hid any chance their identity would be seen to result in an attack (learning from the mermen attack earlier), and the rope holding the box was cut free, which allowed the box to drift to the bottom of the river right in the middle of the encampment. It was a tense ten minutes, but once the boat rounded the river and was out of sight...paddling and the horse were used to get as far away from the encampment as possible. We were barely out of range when an explosion LITERALLY as powerful as a nuclear blast went off. The rush of wind and water nearly capsized the boat three times but successful rolls kept the boat upright as everyone recovered their hearing over time. The crew running the boat were semi-aware of what was going on, but the SECOND we were out of the mountain range, they pulled the boat over to the shore and ordered every single one of us off the boat. I remember the Captain's words still: "You paid us for a full trip, and so you have our trust to not report your actions to any authority or potentially dangerous parties. But you people are INSANE, get the hell off my boat!" It's been a couple years but I do hope to find a way to continue that campaign soon, I love this shit.

WOLOLO

+Ty Drac That's awesome.

+Ty Drac That would explain how Legolas defied gravity in the last Hobbit movie. He rolled three 20's

+Ty Drac That happened to me once XD We were in enemy lands and we were being questioned by the captain of a patrol squad and I kept making smart-ass comments to my party members and the GM kept making me roll bluff checks as though my character had said them. Guard: What are you doing here? Me: Trespassing! G: What? M: I mean....(rolls 20) Exploring... G: And why would you come to OUR lands to "explore" M: To assassinate your queen! (big smile). I mean (rolls 20)...to...give cake to your queen... I decided not to push my luck past that XD

That is the most stupid fucking thing I have heard XD

That is the best thing ever

+Michael Shannon "Rocks fall, everyone dies, Rodrigo escapes and levels up."

I was playing as a dwarf in the original dnd, and I got hit by some random ass thug. Being the study dwarf I was, I attack back. I roll a 1. The DM informs me that my dwarf, named Grodd, jumps off the bench he was on, yelling "I AM GRODD, WATCH ME FLY!!!", landing flat on his face. Then my party's cleric jumps from the second floor. He has, like, 8 dexterity or something, so he also falls on his face, right next to my thug. Now he's got a dwarf and a cleric lying next to him. That's why I love dnd.

+Michael Shannon At the time of me replying to this, your story has 69 likes. Makes the entire story even funnier unintentionally. XD

Have you kept up with the manga?

Goes to push Orc of ledge *rolls one* "you lightly caress his back. He is now uncomfortable"

Xmenspy 11 Goes to shoot an arrow against an enemy engaged in melee combat. *rolls one* "You shoot your friend in the back of the arm. He now can't attack."

+aaronman4772 The power of Taliesin Jaffe must be countered by the power of Will Weaton.

+aaronman4772 There was a time when Josh as a monk was the only one out of a fairly large party with a paladin in full plate armor and an unathletic cleric to fail jumping over a pit. It was more like he got a running start, then tripped and fell into the pit.

TWOxACROSS I ran into that scenario once, as a Paladin player myself facing a large bottomless pit. I just let the rest of the part go on ahead, thinking that it was just a side area and we could recon later. Turns out it was where the boss of the area was. Whoops.

+Discord Kantus It makes anyone's strength instantly 22.

+ProJared So then anybody could've potentially caught the ballista shot with a 20?

+Mash Ketchum yea

+Mash Ketchum But only Tydra had it ;>

+Mash Ketchum I think it would have been funnier if the cleric or ranger did it.

Welcome to the rewatch, my comrade.

Ingenuity? Is that what we're calling it?

+NatsuhikoMiroku that's what D&D is all about mate :D

+NatsuhikoMiroku The GM acts as a sort of referee and storyteller. Typically the players have a lot of freedom in how/what they do. There are rules, but they're typically general stuff, like how you resolve hitting something with a sword, etc.

+NatsuhikoMiroku In my head, it played out like a scene in an anime like Bleach or a game like Dynasty Warriors. But with Guts.

+NatsuhikoMiroku The rules aren't strictly limiting in most cases, and the DM can bypass them for expedience or flavor, and much of what you can do in gray areas is up to the DM. So for instance, there's a thing called the Peasant Railgun, where you essentially get someone on a ladder, and then in the span of one turn, pass the peasant on a ladder from person to person. Since one turn is six seconds, depending on how many times you passed the peasant, you launch them at the distance traveled divided by six seconds, which essentially makes it a railgun that has infinite launching power. Once my party had to figure out how to kill an unconscious flameskull, so we ground it up into powder and stuffed the powder in various ghoul stomachs hoping the digestive acids would dissolve it at a molecular level. IRL, it would have, but the flameskull could only be killed permanently by holy water. But the point is, we were allowed to try.

+NatsuhikoMiroku A good GM knows when to leave the rules behind and tell a good story instead.

I thought improvised weapon just made it easier to use random shit as weapons.

+CAMSLAYER13 Yeah, I figured using a massive ballista spear as a makeshift bat would qualify as random shit.

+Eshy Feats appeared with 3e. 2e just didn't bother with writing rules for that sort of stuff and pretty much advised the DM to wing it.

+TidusplZUO Gotcha forgot there was anything before 3e haha

+Eshy Ours is called Eli, and he is basically playing the exact same type of character Josh was in this story.

FaePaints You deserve more likes. This story is amazing.

Oh god XD

+TroySpartan247 spoonys tangets are great. he is easily my favorite internet personality :P

+TroySpartan247 The rambling is kind of why I like Countermonkey more, as Spoonys rambling kind of goes further into detail about several things. Still, The DnDTuesday is worth watching, too.

Most definitely. Projared is one of my other favorite Internet personalities. I'll always watch his stuff

+TroySpartan247 I dunno, this got pretty rambly :p

lol I kind of feel bad for him and other DMs who go through so much planning for these games just for one of the players to throw a monkey wrench in the whole program by thinking far outside the box and getting lucky with the rolls.

Oh my god, I... I feel so sorry for him, that's pretty bad...

"HEY KIDS YOU LIKE VIOLENCE"

Since nobody's replied to this in what RU-vid tells me is 1 year, I'll mention that a friend of mine uses a similar idea called "the Rule of Cool" for his Savage Worlds games. Basically what that means is, "if it would make a cool action scene in a movie, and fits with the setting, it works." He also made a deck of cards, two of which are dealt randomly to players at the start of the game session, and which the players may use at any time. These have effects like "double the damage of any successful melee attack" or "the enemies get reinforcements, but each PC gets another card or a hero point" and other entertaining things.

John Crum I'm going to have to keep that idea in mind. If your friend would not mind me copying him.

Go ahead! My friend would probably be happy somebody else used those ideas.

+gumgrapes Based on this story, that is totally something Josh would do.

ThePCguy17 the giant spindown makes for a better background prop than a normal d20 though.

Berserk has to update with Guts using a ballista bat now

On STEROIDS lets not forget....

Mission accomplished :P

+sascachuhuan Sounds like a shitty DM.

+Pepe Roni She was, she had her own classes with unique spells to chose from, but she was open to the idea of creating your own, but you had a number of stat points to use, every stat had a maximum cap for starting characters and the idea is that from a list of skills and equipment you could sacrifice stat points to start with better skills or equipment, so when i created my own class, decent with a long sword and shooting fireballs using her rules, she nerfed it

sascachuhuan What you just described is basically an Eldritch Knight, so it makes no sense for her to nerf your character the way she did.

What a dick! (Also, that thing exists, it's called an Elderich knight, which is an archetype for the Fighter)

+Sean Shapiro But she was evil so it's okay.

Cody Hines exactly.

+Cody Hines my friend rub his ass up to an ogre as a joke almost got raped his pant got pulled down and everything. would stop was not so far away. he was a guy just so you know.

I laughed so hard reading this.

+Bliced It's one of the sad truths you gotta accept when DMing :P Players are crazy, don't try to predict what they may do. Its better to have a rough idea of the area and such and then run with whatever they throw at you.

It really depends on your party. Ive had parties that adamantly stick to any rails I set for them and usually defy my expectations of what they are capable of. Other times I have planned out entire nations that were pushed out of the way by the PC's ambition. Best thing to do is to roll with the punches and learn to wing and repurpose material.

+Bliced Rule one for DM's: You are not there to control the player's story. You are there to control what happens around the story.

lordlundar Yeah, people are THE X factor of the universe, no one knows how they'll respond.

That's why you write down your campaign plans like a module.

DrPluton wat.

mastrvidman15 It was an independent film you can probably find on the internet (about 45 minutes long) about a group of D&D players going through a campaign, and they end up playing their characters' actions out in live action. The party thief decides to steal from their target and then back stab him. After stealing the guy's wallet and pants, he decides his dagger isn't good enough. He goes out and rolls in a ballista and gets the backstab x3 damage bonus (2nd edition rules). It's a hilarious film.

That's why you should play with good friends :/

+PropaneWP It's been active for over 1 year...

I had no idea either! I'm glad I'm not the only one

What is that profile pic?

Kokiri Kid Sailor Hill, If you're talking about PropaneWP's

+WolfBoy496 ... It's... Beautiful.

Adam Van Der Hoeven I know this is a bad idea because a Terrasque is basically UNKILLABLE. The only way to stop it is to control its mind and tell it to SLEEP