The Adventure Zone - Ep. 24. Petals to the Metal - Chapter Seven

Episode Date: September 24, 2015

BWAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! That's the sound of a horn, meaning it's time for the Battlewagon Races we've been building up to for six episodes to begin. BUCKLE UP. Taako holds a coronation. Magnus leaps before looking. Merle gets a face hug. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointaz

Previously on the Adventure Zone, we're going to be the best racers ever. We're going to have the best racing team ever. Magnus, you're going to be in charge of security. We're probably going to have a lot of borders. I'm going to need you to keep them off the wagon. We're going to have some hop-ons. You win a battle wagon race by either finishing first or being the only surviving wagon by the end of the race. So we're going to need somebody who can assault the other wagons.

I just want you up there flinging your magic missiles. Merle, I actually have something I want to give you. It's a large black metal wrench. It's called the adamant spanner. And you're going to need to use that out on the course if we take too much damage or, you know, a wheel falls off or something like that. She hands you through the harnesses. If you fall off the wagon, these will automatically deploy a bubble around you. And she drives into the crate and the door behind you lifts up and closes.

Remember, we got 15 opponents, but all we have to do is beat Sloan. Get out of my dreams and into my battle. wagon. Up in the Patsy, baby, it's the adventure zone. You hear another horn come from outside and Hurley kicks the engine in the gear even before the crate door drops. And suddenly you are blinded by the sun pouring into the crate in which your battle wagon was hiding. And even as your eyes adjust, you can't really see much. But you do hear a lot. You hear engines roaring, even louder now. You hear a dust storm sort of whipping up around the starting line here. And then you start to see bright flashes of light moving between

the different battle wagons. And before you can really fully ascertain the situation, the three of you are deafened by an explosion, about 20 meters to your left. and after that explosion, you hear another horn, which seem to be emanating from these big black pylons. And then as soon as, like, while you're trying to figure that out, two magic missiles fly over the car and nearly missing taco, and a spear flies just directly in front of the car. And then Hurley shifts gears, and you are sort of pushed back in your seats by the acceleration. and you seem to be moving away from the pack.

And then as you sort of pull away a little bit, you hear four more horns sound from the pylons. And Hurley says, every time you hear one of those, it means that we've knocked somebody out. She was like, we're already five down. So we're looking good. What?

Why are you yelling? She's yelling because it's super duper loud. Then you hear her yell Damn it! And as you look forward you see that just a single vehicle a tri-wheeled almost long boat

with these two large black wings sort of splaying off the back with a single racer, the raven is really far ahead of you guys. And Hurley shouts, I'll catch up, just keep everyone else off our tail. What? I'll catch up.

Just keep everyone else off our tail. What about ketchup? No sooner has she said that. Do you see a large vehicle approaching from the dust clouds behind you? It is a long bobsled propelled by a single huge rocket thruster, and it's manned by four goblins, and they're all wearing velociraptor masks.

And three of them are clutching these large, rugged-looking spears. And on the front of this bobsled is a large-pronged spear that is currently rocketing toward you. So let's roll initiative, and I'm going to use your guys' rolls for the rest of the race and just sort of drop other stuff in as we go. I got 17. Pretty good roll. Thank you. Can I ask a question, Gryphora rolling? A lot of my spells in the descriptions are specific to, like, they specifically talk about creatures without mentioning, like, it's not really specific to, like, vehicles or, like, we're doing right now.

Would my spells still work the same? We'll just take it as it goes. Like, I would say, yeah, you can fire a magic missile at a car. Can you charm a car? No. Well. Can you put a car to sleep? No, you can't.

Unless it's Knight Rider, in which case you probably could. He probably just has a button for that. Yeah, a sleepy time button. The sleep button. 16 is tacos. Oh, by the way, I should have mentioned this before. Merle in front of you is a single big button. That last night during the montage, Hurley warned you not to touch.

It's sort of built into the dashboard directly in front of you. Oh, man. And it's just right there, right? Just right there, yeah. Don't think about pushing that button. What did everyone get on their rolls? I got 18, 16. 17.

Wow. We're just like super good at rolling. Okay. Merle, you're up first. One thing I'll tell you guys that may come in handy is that you can delay your turn and sort of drop yourself into the order however you want. Not that you have to do that, Merle. It's just an option. So this car is about 20 feet behind your guy's wagon.

And by car, I mean bobsled. Holy shit. I'm going to have to be really good about that. Okay. So we got to stop. Team Jamaica. Okay. All right.

I am going to cast enhanceability. Interesting. Yeah. I'm going to cast it on Magnus. What does this do? You touch a creature

and bestow upon it a magical enhancement. You get to choose bear's endurance, bull's strength. I'm going to actually cast bull's strength. I bet you just Magnus' basis

you're casting Bears Endurance because he is a bear. I'll take Bear's strength. That's what I'm going with in my head. Okay, I'll go with Bears Endurance. No, no, you can do what do you do to do it? Wait, what do they do? Yeah. I have to look on page 237 to tell me that.

Oh, no, you ran into the Yeti in the cave. Start over. This has been the D&D Players Handbook Audio Book, hosted by Clint McElroy. What's the spell called that? It's called Enhanceability. It's called Enhanceability. and what it does is it takes your member

and it stretches it out like taffy. Don't put your member in someone's hands? No, it's like a taffy stretching machine. Oh. Okay. Okay, bears endurance the target has advantage on constitution checks. That's probably not going to happen.

All right. Then the target has advantage on strength checks. Yep. That probably. And his or her carrying capacity doubles. Okay. So you can carry a shit. I pick up the car.

So I give him advantage. I give him advantage on strength. Okay. Cool. You grab onto Magnus's ankle, who I'm actually... I'm really getting this cleric shit, aren't I? Yeah, you're doing good. You grab onto Magnus's ankle.

He seems somewhat startled, but then he seems energized. His muscles just glisten in the hot Gold Cliff's sun. I fully rock out. What do you mean by that? Like the rock. He's a big... Oh, I see, I see, I see, I see. I see, yes, okay.

Yes, his eyebrows grow three sizes and move upwards on his face, about a half a foot. He's got a lot of face. Okay, next in the order are the goblins. The first goblin, the driver goblin's not going to do anything. He's just sort of driving the car, and he is not really moving fast enough to catch up to ram, you guys, with that big gnarly-looking spear on the front of the bobsled. The goblin behind him is going to run up the front of the car and try to leap onto the back of your guy's battle wagon.

He made a 24 athletics, so he effortlessly jumps. And as he is coming down, he is going to make an attack roll against Magnus. Okay. He rolls a 15. versus AC. That is not good enough, and I am going to use... Oh, shit. When a creature misses you with a melee attack,

you can use your reaction and expend one superiority die to make a melee weapon attack against the creature. If you hit, you add superiority dice to the attack's damage. I'm going to use phantom fist and push him backwards. Okay. Pushing back. Pushing back. Way back.

So that's 19 plus 7, 26. Okay. This guy leaps off the front of his bobsled. with a pretty enormous horizontal leap and just brings this spear down on you with one hand but you effortlessly like the water just sort of move out of the way of it and greet his jump with a Shorukin uppercut

that sends him flying backwards and underneath of the bobsled that he just jumped out of. And everyone on the goblin card just kind of starts growing. They look a little bit grim. The two goblins behind him are going to throw spears at you. Okay. First one rolls a 19.

Oh, shit. It just hits. And the second one rolls a 12th. Not going to do it. Not going to do it. And I also just remembered I have Fletcher's fist. It's still a miss, but I'm very excited about my Fletcher's bit.

Oh, yeah. I forget what that does. Plus 1 AC versus ranged. Oh, yeah. You take 5. Five, ten, fourteen points of damage from that spear. Is it worth it to use another one and use my... I'm going to say just in the interest of moving things forward?

No. No? Okay. So I take 14? 14 points of damage. Okay. And that is it for the gurglins. Next up is Magnus.

Cool. You are strapped into this railing, these two railings going across the top of the car. You've just offed one gurb. Okay, I'm going to aim an arrow at another gurb one. Okay, which one? The driver or one of the two spears? The driver. Okay.

That's probably not going to hit. That's a 12. Yeah, that's not going to do it. You fire an arrow at the driver of the car, but it sort of just bounces off the, he's got like a little windshield and just kind of glances off of. Next in the order is Taco. Something that's unclear to me. Are these like encounters that we need to?

like defeat these people or is there a chance we can just like go faster than them like what because we're not involved you're not involved at this yeah don't worry about the speed part of it unless you can like figure out a way to slow their car down like you could affect it that way but you're not going to be able to make your car go faster okay got it um what what are the wheels of this thing looking like uh there are no wheels it's just got these two sort of rails underneath it and it has this gigantic engine thruster behind it. Okay. It's almost like a rocket, like a, like a, one of those like land speed setting rockets.

And it's got a big old spear on the front of it. Oh, it's like a rocket? Kind of, yeah. Is it a bobsled shape? Yeah, it's a bobsled like there, there was a row of four dudes inside of it, like a bobsled. Okay. Yeah. How much would you guess it weighs?

I don't know, Justin, maybe a, like a ton? Like, no, not like half a ton. Half a time? Maybe half that. Maybe even half that. You think about it. Yeah, I would say 500. Probably 400. Probably $499, maybe even.

Because they have to be light for the speed. Yeah. Well, that's my point. In the chicane. I guess it would be fiberglass. We'll say $4.99. $4.99. Okay, I cast levitate.

Okay. On the bobsled. Okay. So what is the, okay. All right. So what does that mean? Well, no, no, no. Because you can, they have to resist.

An enemy resists being levitated, right? I'm not levitating them. I'm levitating their sled. Okay. You got me there. If you can tell me how a sled resists levitation. No, you got a great point. So what does that mean?

Okay, so you don't know what levitate means? No, the spell. What does it mean? I'm trying to figure out what this is going to do to this bobsled. Okay, right. So one creature or object of my choice that I can see within range rises vertically up to 20 feet and remains suspended there for the duration. The spell can levitate a target that weighs up to 500 pounds.

An unwilling creature, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. A target can move only by pushing or pulling against a fixed object or surface within reach, which allows it to move as if it were climbing. You can change the target type of altitude by up to 20 feet in other direction on your turn. If you're the target, you can move up or down as part of your move. So I am going to levitate it, but I'm going to change the direction of the front of the vehicle. so it's just going up.

You can do that. You can choose which part. Well, I can change the target's altitude, but I have to 24th. So I guess it's out of altitude. Okay, here's how we're going to resolve this because I love it. You levitate this bobsled with its three riders inside of it. And it comes off the ground. And you see the drivers start to like try and twist the wheel around,

but it's just sort of changing the sort of slant of the rails underneath of the car. and everybody inside starts to panic. One of the spear thrower Raptors just jumps off the back, and you see his bubble, this bright blue bubble sort of surround him as he disappears into the dust. And the bobsled is actually picking up speed because it doesn't have any friction sort of stopping it anymore. And the spear on the front of the car sort of leaves a superficial gash,

in the rear of your battle wagon, very narrowly missing Magnus. As it sort of digs into that pivot point, though, the car just starts flipping and spinning wildly, and you see it disappear into the dust throwing both of its riders into the storm. Cool. That was pretty hot. So the whole killing embargo is more or less over. Hey, no holds bar on the racetrack. No, they have the safety harnesses, just like us, right? Yeah, everyone's got safety harnesses.

It's game day. It's game day, son. Hurley looks backwards at this scene when she hears the car get run into and goes, That was tight! And switches, shifts gears and moves forward even faster. You handle that in a very unexpected way. You guys get about 30 seconds. sort of silence as you're moving faster.

Not complete silence. You hear a horn blast as you send the rocket bobsled spinning off into the air. That was the sixth horn. And you get a little bit of dead time until you hear this grinding, roaring sound coming to sort of back and to the right of you. and out of the dust storm behind you, you see another vehicle come through. And before you actually see it, you see its shadow and it's towering.

It's gigantic. It's like 40 feet tall. And as it sort of makes its way out of the dust storm, you see it almost like a single giant wheel, like a giant wooden water wheel almost with these big iron rivets in it. And inside of the wheel is this static circular chamber. And inside of that chamber are two pilots. They're these really stout-looking dwarves, and they're wearing gerbil masks.

And they... They're running like crazy. No, they're not running. They're just sort of driving it. But you do get the right idea, and I appreciate that. And they pull up. alongside of. It's made out of wood and these big iron rivets. Great. Not tree wood. Ah, damn it. I've explained this to you before. It only works on trees, not all wood forever.

All wood was trees. That's, I can't argue with that. And they are going to roll in this way. Who's the last person to go? The goblin. This was me. Oh, yeah, taco. Okay. Cool. First in the order is Merle. Murrell, so far the car is roughly undamaged. There's a bit of a gash in the back of the car. But I guess just licks his thumb and rubs it out. You've got four charges left on your adamant spanner that you can use to heal the car. Okay.

But you don't have to do that. You can do whatever you want. Okay. The wheel is to your right, and it's actually a pretty good distance away. It's about 30 yards away. I'm going to cast Healing Word on Magnus. Okay. Cool.

So I roll a D4 and I add my spell casting. Do you have your D4? To the pyramid. All right, okay. Four. Nice. And I add six to that, so that gives Trav ten points of healing. I love that.

And I do it with a sage look in my eye and a little glint, and then I give him a Wothers. Okay. This is a level of competent and responsible play I'm not used to from this group. I know. Oh, don't worry. We're doing like, good? We'll work our way out of it.

Don't change sense. Next in the order is Magnus. Okay. So at this point, I think I'm just going to ready an action and just be ready to, like, repel borders. So just like ready a phantom fist attack. Okay. If somebody jumps on. Yeah, you can do that.

Next in the order is the pilots of the wheel. The wheel, sounds like a Robert Jordan book. It does kind of. You guys see the wheels start to change directions, and it changes directions much faster than you thought something of that size could possibly do. And it rolls directly toward your battle wagon, and then it rolls over it.

So Magnus and Taco It sort of rolls directly over the sort of Back of the The roof so you two are going to need to make dexterity saving throws Okay Oh, 20 20, okay Taco you duck down in the back seat Okay, I rolled an 18

And 18, okay, you leap backwards And the straps on your harness catch you on the back of the rails, you're sort of leaning at like a 45 degree angle over the open road as this wheel rolls over the battle wagon and just sort of crumples the roof right down. Okay. And I'm, I'm serious. Help me visualize this.

They're rolling across us in the middle of over the over the, over the, like vertically or. Yeah. Oh, they're sort of cutting a line sort of horizontally across the middle of a car, sort of crumpling the almost exactly where Taco's little Heidi hole was. It just sort of rolls right over that. I would like to use my readyed action. Okay. This is a gigantic wheel.

It's not going to do very much. No, I know. I got you. Okay. Can I switch out my readyed action and use like a different action? No, once you can't, yeah. So Taco, you are going to have, Taco, you're going to have disadvantage on any range attacks you make while your little Heidi hole is crumpled down.

You're not going to be able to really get out of it. Okay. Okay. And the wheel rolls completely over your car. You hear Hurley yell an expletive from the front seat. And now it sort of steadies itself about 30 meters to your left. Or no, it's actually a little bit closer. It's about...

What was the expletive? It's about 35, or 30 feet to your left. The expletive was... Shit, dad. Okay, okay. That's kind of her go-to word. It is very good that the two of you dodge that. Next to me order is Taco.

Taco, you are sort of in the back seat. Your hole, your Heidi hole is a bit in a state of disarray, and it is your turn. So you said that, like, ranged attacks, but like... Anything you have to make a ranged attack roll on is going to have disadvantage. Okay. The wheel I'm going to go ahead and tell you is much, much heavier than the bobsled. So if... Like if you had to make a saving throw, but it's just a saving throw...

Yeah, that's not on a time. Okay, great. I'm going to cast Crown of Madness on whichever one is not obviously steering the vehicle. Okay. I mean, they... I don't want to... Are they working in tandem? Yeah.

It's almost like a Pacific Rim style thing. Well, then the one on the layout. Okay. What does that mean? Well, what Crown of Madness does is good. The Crown of Madness does is, first off, it puts a twisted crown of jagged iron. Holy shit. This is some Hellraiser stuff.

Yeah, some brutal stuff. And the charm target must use its action before moving on each of its turns to make a melee attack against a creature other than itself that I mentally choose. So I'm going to cast it on one of them. And have them attack the other one? Yeah. Okay. How dope.

And I rolled to save against this, right? Yeah, it's a wisdom. Wisdom. Okay. Well, let me come up with an image. A little roll it. How smart can gerbils be? I mean, I figured they'd be stoop.

Well, wicked stoops. It's plus one. Okay. Uh, 13. Okay. What's your spell casting saving throw? It's eight plus your spell casting modifier. Um.

And my spell casting modifier is six, right? Plus, yeah, plus higher than mine. With the plus one umbrella, it's plus six, yeah. Okay, yeah. You see the gerbil in the back horrifyingly, because it's a fucking gerbil. You see this barbed wire crown just sort of appear on its head. And the wheel starts to wobble a little bit. The wheel wobbles, but it won't fall down.

Next in the order is Merle. Merle, it is your turn. Yeah, I've got to use one of the charges on the spanner of Adam Ant. Excellent. So. Okay. Goody two, goody-to-goody-to-to shoes. It makes that noise.

I can't believe this. It makes that noise when he used it. You lean out the passenger side window and just sort of bring the mace down on top of the car. Wait. Can I say some exciting dialogue or something? See. Ace is the place of the helpful hardware, man. This week's episode brought to you by Ace.

Apparently. You bring it down on the top of the car, Kabong. And magically, the car just sort of, the roof just kind of pops itself out. It just kind of pops itself back in the place. And weirdly, like, the roof is now waxed. It's like it's shining in the sun. Although that doesn't last very long because you're in a dust storm. Okay, and also what about the little rent in the back?

Did it fix that too? Nope. Just fix the roof. So you get the idea. I've got the idea that maybe it doesn't fix the whole car. It just fixes whatever you are sort of targeting. Okay. Gotcha.

Next in the order is Magnus. Great. So the wheel still hasn't fallen over yet? No, although it's looking a little bit shaky. It's looking a little bit shaky. And how close is it to me? It's about 35 feet to your left. I wouldn't expend any energy on it.

I mean, Yeah, the gerbils are next. Yeah, and it's not going to go great for them. You can also delay your turn, Chabb, if you want to wait. I feel you. So what I'm going to do is not attack that thing, but what I am going to do for future years is tie my rope to my crowbar. and like that's my action.

Wait, what are you doing? I've got a crowbar. I've got a rope. I'm going to tie a rope to that crowbar. You're making like your own sort of makeshift grappling hook? Yeah. And I'm just going to like leave it at that. Okay.

Hell yeah. All right. I'm into it. Yeah. Mad Magnus. Next is the wheels turn. But before the wheel even goes, another vehicle pulls out of the dust storm immediately behind you. Dookie.

And this one almost looks, it looks similar to yours, not nearly as heavily armored or lovingly tuned. But it is driven by two writers, and they are wearing, what are they wearing? Dolphin masks. And you hear them. Wait, they're not actual dolphins, though, right? No, but that's just their war cry. And they pull up behind them. Just like you're not an actual bear.

What? Oh, God. You see two large ship cannons sort of pop out to either side of them, and they get pretty close behind you. But first, the wheel goes, and the rider in the back, the back gerbil, is going to attack the front gerbil, and he grits. He grits. So you see the back gerbil reach down and take a little hammer and just sort of brain. the drive room in front of them. And the wheel to your left starts to wobble.

It starts to lose its balance pretty dramatically. And it starts to turn towards you as it does wobble. And just as it looks like it's about to crush you, it falls entirely on its side, crushing and destroying the Dolphin Mobile that was chasing. And you hear me. Come from the pylons around you. So that's eight. Let me do a count.

That was two, five. Yeah, that's eight. It's only six left. No, there's 16 total including you. Oh, okay. So seven left. All right. Gerbilside.

How cool was that? Hey, everyone. It's your main man, Griffin, McElroy, also your dungeon master. I am also that to you. And thank you for listening to episode 24 of the Adventure Zone. I hope you're enjoying our climactic Mad Max meets Fast and Furious Seven meets Wacky Racers Race

because it was a fun thing to record. I want to say thanks to everybody who's been sharing the show, who's been reviewing the show on iTunes, and who's been tweeting about the show using the Zonecast hashtag. If you use the Zonecast hashtag, you could end up as a character in the game. If you want to end up on the show,

just tweet about the show using the Zonecast hashtag. And don't just do it to get on the show. do it because you want to talk to your friends about this thing and talk about the grand mystery that we're all unraveling together as a group of friends and loved ones. Got a personal message here. If you want to get a message on the show, you can go to maximum fun.org slash jumbotron. Tell us what words to read with my mouth, and I'll just do it like this. This is an example of what you can get. This is a message for Pete, and it's from Rob, who says, happy birthday from your big brother.

It's cool that you're curing cancer and shit while I pillage Mother Earth for financial gain. Karma works on a per-family basis, right? Sure it does. Thanks for neutralizing my evil. McElroy's, his birthday is September 14th. Whoops. Ramsham has been his gamer tag for years.

So if he was somehow woven into the battle wagon's lore, well, shit, dude, I'm just now reading this. If you want, you can pretend in your head, canon that Hurley the Ram, that's short for Ramsham. But that's not real canon, but what you do in your brain is up to you and your bedmate. Happy birthday, Pete. Got another message here, and it's for Stacey from James, who says, happy birthday, Stacy, I'm hoping across narrative realms and gift Varyll an item from the fantasy goshapon. The role is an eight, or maybe a blessing from Merle. And even after Varyl's greed slash ill-planned sexual escapades inevitably led to a huge.

humiliating end, the gift will not be wasted, as his party is not above grave robbing. Sounds like a pretty grimring game you're running over there. Also, I need to know the class that Varyel is if I'm going to give you a reward from the fantasy gush upon, because I may have different loot tables. I'm a big fucking nerd. But happy birthday, Stacey. Hey, I want to say a big thanks to everybody who came out to see our first ever live show at LA Povfest.

is a real intimate showing. Also, all the folks who streamed the show. I know that there are some issues with the stream throughout a lot of the weekend, but from what I hear, most of you got in to see the show, which is great. If you did have problems, I'm really sorry about that. You can still watch the show. The archive should be up soon if it's not up already. And if you have no interest in watching it and didn't get a streaming ticket or whatever,

I think we're going to release the episode because there's some, some restrictions on when we can release it in the normal feed. I think we're just going to put it up as a donor bonus in, I don't know, a few weeks or so. We're still trying to figure out the release plans for that. I think the show went pretty well. I think we learned a lot about how to do a live D&D play session. I think the next one we do, whenever that will be, is going to be great, but we need a while to, we need a while to come down, y'all. If I sound super tired right now, it's because it is 1 a.m., and I am.

but it's also because me and my wife, Rachel, just watch the movie that me and Justin and Travis and Dad are going to critique during Max Fun Swap Week. That's going to be the week of October 4th. So the next Adventure Zone episode, the four of us are going to be doing an episode of the Flop House. And the Flop House crew, I'm so profoundly excited because they are doing an episode of the Adventure Zone. I gave them the keys of the kingdom. I said, do whatever you want. I haven't heard the episode yet. I'm fucking psyched.

They are some of the funniest dudes I've ever heard. And I'm really excited to hear what they do on a tabletop. So that's going to be our next episode of the Adventure Zone. It's going to go up on October 8th. And then we are going to get back into the battlewagon races, which I'm psyched about. Also, I had a lot of people ask about the live show. It was not in the battle wagon race, sort of. of arc. It was sort of a one-off episode. So yeah, anyway, I've been chatting your ear off for long

enough. Thank you all so much for listening. Seriously, doing the live show, like, sort of drove home the fact of just how wonderful the listeners of this particular program are and how happy it makes us to make it. So thank you all very much, genuinely, from the bottom of my heart. Like I said, next episode is going to be up October 8th featuring the Flop House. It's going to be so so, so great. Please be excited for that. And you can hear us on the Flop House, where we'll be talking about a heretofore unannounced movie. That was the worst fucking 90 minutes in my life. See you soon. Okay, so you've heard eight horns. You math it out and know that you have seven opponents left. You haven't seen the Ravens car in a while, her longboat wagon. And you are still,

in this dust storm that's sort of whipping up around you. And as you are all sort of waiting at the ready, waiting for the next vehicle to show itself, an odd sort of silence falls around you. And then that silence is broken by a loud thud. And Merle, you look to your right and you realize that this large claw, almost like one of those arcade machines,

like a claw machine, has grabbed on to the passenger side door of the wagon. And Hurley instinctively, like, steers away from where this claw has hit your car. But the claw retracts, and it rips the door completely off of the car. But you don't see, you don't, it disappears into the dust, but you don't really see anything around you. And it's still, like, it's still just sort of oddly silent. And you're just sort of waiting for the next attack. I had a whole cheer wine in the cup holder.

The door. He just opened it. I just opened the cheer wine. And now it's going. Great. How don't even want to finish this stupid race? Just pull over it. I was going to get a pull off of that labor.

Man. All right. Okay. Griffin, I would like to, as a free action, use my lens of straight creeping to see where the door went. That's not how it works. It leaves tracks in the ground. Ah, damn it. You could, I mean, you could perception check.

Okay. Can I perception check? Yeah, sure. Zero. So at 12. No, you don't, you don't really see anything. Why don't we do perception checks, Justin? Why?

Would you like to do a perception check? Sure, you know. Do a perception check. 18 plus, uh... Which was perception again? Wisdom? Someone has a perception. Uh, 19.

No, you should have a perception sort of like modifier. No, yeah, plus one. Oh, okay. Yeah, 18 plus one. Merrill, how'd you do? I found it. Oh, let's not worry. Okay.

But Taco, you do kind of see something to your right. And it's so faint that you think that maybe you imagined it, but you see like the dust storm to your right just kind of looks weird. Like it looks like, it looks like something is over there sort of getting in the way of the dust as it's swirling around, but you like can't see it. But you do get the idea that something's there. All of a sudden, that claw that ripped the door off shoots toward your car again. Directly at the spot where it named last time.

Only this time, it grabs onto Merle. And Merle, you are pulled out of the car into the dust to the right of the car, to the right of the wagon. Merle, you see yourself, you see the car getting smaller as you fly away from it. And then you are sort of ripped upward into the air. and then you're pulled downward into some sort of body of water. You feel yourself going underwater, and you manage to catch a short breath as you're pulled under. And then you hear a kachunk. And it's pretty dark.

You can't really see anything, but you're definitely in a body of water. And Hurley goes, shit! And so, yeah. Well Goodbye, Merle Anyways Where were we? It's a great game

I leaned down in the car Should I like go after him? Yeah, I mean it's worth a shot I'm not doing anything I've already used two spells I'm beat And he's still got the wrench right Hurley says Hurley yells do something

Okay cool Shoot at it or something Okay cool I'll be right back and I like hook the crowbar into the handle on the car and I jump over to the other car. Okay. You jump, you can't see the other car. Yeah.

I'm just jumping over. You're just blindly jumping to the right of the car. What does it sound like maggots? Okay. I'm going to, okay. I'm going to make you do an athletics check and I'm going to give you disadvantage on it if you don't see where you're you're jumping too. That's fair.

It sounds fair. It sounds super fair. I've got plus seven. Wait, wait. I'm sorry. I've got plus seven to athletics. So let's do this.

All right. Do it. That's an 18. And this is... Roll it good and I swear... Oh my God. Your rolls are too high. I have plus seven.

I know. I need to bring that down. It's really hard to fuck up. Okay. Yeah, you jump to the right. and give it a shit never mind

I'll get the pole here in a second as you collide with this vehicle I'm going to make you make a reflex check to actually grab onto it because I'll give you that you jumped into it but grabbing onto it is going to be a horse of a different color but as your body sort of collides with this vehicle you feel yourself hit heavy metal

and as soon as you touch it Uh, uh, uh, taco you over... Given fibromyalgia. Okay. Uh, Taco, you from the battle wagon, you can actually see this sort of camouflage drop off of the car. And what you see almost looks like a gumball machine, almost. There's this 10 foot glass spherical tank with a heavy metal hatch on top. And it's built onto this sturdy, six-wheeled base.

Um, and it's built under this sturdy, six-wheeled base. Um, and it's, and it's built under this. In front of the base is another thick glass chamber with these two dark elves wearing octopus masks driving the vehicle. And you see two claws, like the one that came out and grabbed Merle, sort of attached to the bottom of the tank. And inside of the tank, you see a helpless Merle floating alongside a really big, bigger than Merle, blue spotted octopus. Cool. Let's roll for initiative. Oh, you guys used for the same shit. Yeah.

The wheel guys are the last ones to go. So Taco, it is your turn first. Okay, can you, I'm obviously not, what can I see? You can see the whole thing now. The camouflage has sort of dropped. You see Merle floating around. Oh, yeah, Magnus, make a dexterity saving throw. 11?

11. You don't manage to get all the way up onto the car. but you do manage to get a hand on it. Your feet are sort of dragging it across the ground, which is uncomfortable because this car is going very, very fast. But it's big enough and sort of easy enough to get a hand on that you are sort of hanging off the side of the gumball octopus. And I've still got like my rope and crowbar side to the car.

Yeah, yeah, sure. In the retrospect. Not a great idea. Not a great idea. So, you can see everything. Built into the front of the six-wheel heavy metal base is a big glass chamber with the octopus drivers inside. of the tank, you see

Merle about to get hugged by a big, gnarly looking octopus. May I ask a question? Yeah. Are the two octopus mask guys, is their chamber in water too? No. Okay. And how many gallons do you think is in, of water is in

the bulb? I mean, it's like a 10 foot spherical tank, so like a shit ton. It's like a swimming pool. Like a thousand? I don't know. I would embarrass myself if I guess. I know I was. 1100. Okay, 1100, sure.

It's a very tense situation. That's true. It's almost like I've designed it to be like that. Yeah. Magnus yells, Magic Missile the Tank! Yeah, but like, I mean, think about that. Like, really think, for once. Just like, really think about it. I'm Magic Missile the Tank. Action over thought. Yeah, okay, that's fine. But really think about this one, Scraps.

If I'm Magic Missile the Tank, where does that? get us, how does that help us to proceed forward with our life goals? I'm dreaming. Badly. Okay. Yeah. There's another good time to remind you all that every round of combat lasts about six seconds. So, Merle, you're not in immediate danger of drowning, but you definitely didn't get a full,

lung full of air. But he's got those dwarf lungs, you know? Like the constitution. Good for drinking. If he was drowning in beer. He might be alright. What is the liquid? It's salt water.

Ah, poop. Yeah. Do I see a, um, do I see like a pilot of this? Is it just like a big squid driving a ball? No, no, no, there's two, there's two chambers. There's two, two balls. One is sort of built into the front of the car. And that is where these two octopus, these dark elves wearing octopus masks are driving.

It's not being piloted by a blue spotted octopus. How many times does he get to use the harpoon gun? I mean, it's only got the one harpoon in it. It's only got the one harpoon in it. Yeah, I'm going to... I will... And they're in the water, right? Yeah.

I... Okay. I'm going to cast Reduce on the octopus. Okay. I don't have a good... I mean, does it look dangerous, Griffin? Does it look like someone's going to hurt them? I googled the most dangerous octopus last night, and you know what came up?

What? The blue spotted octopus. Perfect. Okay, yeah. I'm going to cast reduce on the, um, the, the, the, it's, the target size is halved in all dimensions. Okay. And its weight is reduced to one eighth of normal. Wow. This increases its size by one category from medium to smaller example. It also has disadvantage on strength checks and strength saving throws. Its weapons shrink to match its new size. And they deal one D4 less damage. Okay. If, if the octopus does have one, weapons on it and you didn't tell me that and I could have been imagining that this whole time. That would have been so cool. How sweet, like a mace in his hand or some shit? Well, eight maces.

Yeah, eight maces. Just like, glor-l-l-l-l-l-oh. Okay. Anyway. Yeah, it's anyway. Do I get to resist it? Yeah, a constitution-saving throw. 11?

Not going to do it. No. Okay. No friend. He is smaller. Taco. He is smaller now. Okay.

Calamar him Nice Callum Let me try again Yeah do it again You can do better at that Put the accent on the second No the third syllable

Calamore him Yeah That's not bad Nice How about octopus off Oh that's good Octopus off Yeah

Cool So the next in the order Is the drivers of the car The octopus drivers they are just going to fire another hook toward the car and it just kind of grabs onto

like it's a good hold on the the hole that they made before and it's sort of just grabbed onto the right side of the car and it's sort of like trying to peel it back and you definitely feel your wagon sort of start to jump and shake because they're trying to pull it sideways

as Hurley's trying to drive it forward, which is not great. Next in the order is the tiny little baby blue spotted octopus. Aw. Which surveys its new, real little tentacles, and it seems kind of dejected.

So it is going to propel itself forward toward you, Merle, and then spin around really quickly and latch onto your face. Oh. And it rolls a, 21 versus AC, which is going to hit. How much less damage does it do?

Taco did it. Right, I know. I think he said 1D4 less. Did Justin leave? In a way. I hear a very loud, watery sound in the room next to ours. Jesus. Is he watering his plants?

No, he might be peeing, but I don't know. one d4 less damage from the weapons it has disadvantage on strength checks okay but it doesn't have weapons well it's tentacles or its weapons no it's actually biting it's like it's attaching itself to your face and it's biting you with its beak with its little tiny beak with its little tiny beak okay so he hit you and he is going to hit you for uh 11 points of uh by the little tiny beak 11 points of biting damage, and then I'm going to need you to make a Constitution saving throw because his beak was covered in delicious, delicious octop poison. We'll count his beak as a weapon, so he'll take 1D4 less damage. Do you roll that D4 or do I?

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I'll roll it. I would think for the listeners at home roll it. Take up your phone and dial one. I roll the three, so he takes eight damage. And then do roll that Constitution saving throw, though. 19?

Yeah, that's going to do it. And dwarves, nice. I think dwarves are really dope at resisting poison anyway. Yeah. If this is, if, okay, well, it doesn't matter because you avoided it. If memory serves. Okay, Merle, you are up. You are, you're starting to feel pretty uncomfortable.

Got an octopus on your face. You are underwater. You just got bit on the nose. Everything kind of sucks. Okay. Is there any room up at the top of this globe? Is there air in this globe of water? No.

You got pulled... How did he get in it? There was a hatch on top that he got pulled into, and then it sort of screwed itself back on. So the water goes all the way to the top? Yes. Okay. Not that you can see that right now, because you've got an octopus all up on your biz. Well, that's a good point.

Bite him back. I'm going to take my Warhammer. and hit myself in the face, thereby striking the octopus, and trusting that my thick, dwarven head will keep me from killing myself. Okay. Okay. Yeah, okay.

Are you using your Warhammer or your Spanner? The Adamant Spanner? I don't know what the Spanner will do. I know what my Warhammer does. Okay. It's up to you. I don't want to hurt the Spanner. That's a good...

That's fair. Okay, so first of all, your under... water. So you're going to have disadvantage on melee attack. I understand. But then you're going to do a disadvantage melee attack, just one roll, and then you're going to compare it to your AC and the octopus's AC. Okay. I lost track. Where is Magnus? Magnus is hanging on the side. Hanging on the side. Okay. Great. Waiting for his turn.

Thank God he has pants on this time. Yeah. Okay. 16. And then roll it again because you have disadvantage. 15. That includes the modifier? Plus four. So that's 19. Yeah, that's a hit. That's a hit on you and the octopus.

Well. Now, he technically, Griffin, should roll a second time as if he was attacking two different targets. Or get to roll a constitution saving throw on himself. No, because he's sort of just attacking one target. I'm not going to allow that. He's definitely attacking a single target, which is his face and octopus. I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, Fred. So go ahead and roll damage, and they'll both take it.

Three plus two. Five. Okay. Actually, wait, wait, wait. It's 2D8 plus 2. Oh, shit. Plus 2. So it's 6 plus 2, so that's 8.

Okay. On me. On you and the octopus. You clobber yourself in the face? Yeah, you hit both. Yeah, but I hit him first. Well, yeah, it should be padded. Yeah, I'll tell you what.

I'll cut it down. I'll roll a D4 and reduce it by two. So you only take it. six. You got a little bit of octopadding there. It's not enough to kill this octopus, but it does loosen itself off of your face and sort of float backwards a little bit. And now I can still not breathe. You still cannot breathe because you are underwater. Next in the order is Magnus. Am I within reach of the of the grabby arm, like the part that's extended out? Yeah, you're right next to the grabby arm that is on the, the left side of the car facing your, your wagon.

Okay, great. I would like to one-handed axe attack that, please. As you're hanging off? You said I grabbed it with one hand. Yeah, that's true. I'm just... Okay. 15, 22. 22. Yeah, that'll do it. Okay.

And you just start hacking at the wire that it's attached to? Yeah. Okay. Do I have to roll damage, or do I just do it? Yeah, roll damage against it. No, don't do it. Yeah, you hack the thing clean off. Okay. And now I'd like to use my second attack to a time. to attack the tank.

Okay. That's 13 plus 7. 20. 20. Okay, yeah, you attack the tank. This one I will make you roll damage on. Great, and that's one-handed, so it's 1D8. I'm also going to make you make a strength check

to keep holding onto the side of this car if you're not going to pull yourself. That's fair. I got strength of bear, baby. Okay. Ball, strength of bull. Whatever. I got a strength of a big old thing. You know what I mean?

Don't say that either. That's a 5 plus 6, 11 damage. Okay. You don't shatter the tank, but you get rail splitter in there. And as you pull it back, a spray of water just sort of blasts you in the face. And it's refreshing. I feel great. And the water begins to leak out of the tank. So now there is sort of a space up top where there is no water.

Great. I'm going to use action surge and hit it one more time. Oh, okay. Or try to. Oh, that might not do it. I mean, that's only 13, so that's probably not going to do it. No, that hits. It's just glass. Oh, great.

Just barely. Then does like a two hit? Like, what's the AC on glass? I did another five, another 11 damage. Okay, this time, the crack that you put into the glass ball begins to splinter out around, every sort of side of the ball. And then suddenly this ball shatters. And Merle and the octopus

are going to need to make dexterity saving throws to grab onto this car as the deluge of water sort of splashes them off of the same level. And I still need to make a strength, right? Yeah, so we'll resolve that first. Go ahead and Magnus make a string saving throw. Uh, well, that's... Well, I have advantage, right, from the bull?

So that first one was the third. What? No, you don't have it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Drink the bull. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Welcome.

Okay, there we go. That's 24. Yeah. So I probably got it. I wanted you to fall off so bad. Okay, yeah. You're a turd, that's why. You're still holding on to the side of the car.

Now, Merle make a dexterity saving throw as the water sort of washes you off the side of the car. You have let go of the rope at this point, right? Travis, you do not have a third hand that I am not. It's tied to me. Oh, it's. It's tied to you, okay. He tied himself onto the battle wagon in case he fell off. Got it.

Okay, I rolled a 16. You roll a 16? Okay, yeah, you get another hand on. You are basically land right next to Magnus. Hey! So the two of you are now hanging off of the side of the gumball octopus wagon, although the tank on top is shattered. And then the octopus also slips off the side of the car.

and he crits his dexterity saving throw. So right next to Merle, this octopus gets two tentacles on the top of the car and is now also hanging off the side of the car. This is the most adorable scene I've ever imagined. He looks, the octopus has a very worried look in its eyes. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported.

Hey, everyone. We're the flop house. One of the newest additions to the maximum. fun podcasting network. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin. What is the flop house? You may very well ask. We watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. A bad movie podcast. Isn't that like every fifth podcast on the internet? I'd answer that by saying, one, we've been doing this show for over seven years, long before the entire premise of our show was a cliche. And two, shut up. Sick burn. I'd say that our show is more of a comedy podcast, a podcast about words that sound like other words, a podcast about me

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