PS: Not sure how to do the indentation-quotes that seem to be standard here, so i just put it in standard quotes.

Just put a '>' before the quoted line.

I need to get me an invisibility spell, my stealthy character, I believe, finally has enough skill to use one.

"Grand Theft Horse".

With my modded out version of Oblivion, there is less leveling of the world with the character. So with my high level character being level 10, I've had to do a fair amount of running away as I get in over my head in areas that don't level down to my character.

Grand Theft Horse is much more fun once you get your Restoration skill to master level and make a spell of Fortify Speed 100 points on touch for 60 seconds (I named mine Seabiscuit). Although if the terrain is at all hilly, the horse does the Looney Tunes run-out-into-the-air thing and takes fall damage. It is suggested that if you do this, you have Shadowmere, the unkillable horse.

Then again, the shenanigans you can do with maxed Restoration are just generally ridiculous. You can make 3 Fortify Acrobatics 100 points spells for progressively shorter lengths of time (so you can chain-cast them) and have temporarily insane jumping abilities. Or Fortify Speed and Athletics 100 points for 30 seconds (best if combined with 8 Fortify Speed potions. I've had athletics around 250 and Speed in the range of 600).

the other skill that's a lot of fun to Master is Destruction. make two spells with the effect of Weakness to Magic 100% for 10 seconds and Paralyze 1 sec, keep switching between them on a target and then cast pretty much any damage spell for instant death. or (even funnier) make a custom Damage Fatigue spell (i used 60 points for 6 seconds) and use that after the weakness stacking. they recover from the paralysis, come running after you, and then their fatigue hits zero and they pitch forward onto the ground and don't move for a few minutes.

We got that last idea from a friend who decided he was sick of collecting alchemy ingredients because the container he kept them in lagged when he opened it. He hit Take All and then ate everything. Thanks to the Damage Health, and Fire/Frost/Shock damage effects, he would have died if he hadn't drunk some restore health potions. But then the damage fatigue caught up to him and his character collapsed on the floor of his house and didn't get up for 5 minutes.

and then another time, we made Damage Strength potions and used them on the guards. each one damaged for 30 points, so after using 4 on a guard, he would be over-encumbered and never move again. it was like really aggressive statuary. they still turn to face you and scowl, but no longer chase.

I have way too much fun with that game and am looking forward to going back to college and playing it again.

I heard about this on a podcast and checked it out. I found it fairly amusing, I suspect people who actually play World of Warcraft would find it much more amusing.

The Guild

Probably this is old news to a lot of people because of Dr. Horrible.

Tumble checks to get out of the way of the fleeing crowd
Detect magic to figure out what spells are in use
Grapple for catching thieves

I shall be using these. Though I think skill checks for figuring out living spells - Knowledge (Arcana) for the living spells themselves, Spellcraft for their effects. (Still fleshing out the whole catching thieves process. Certainly grappling will be part of it.)

A slightly weirder request: notwithstanding my brothers' opinions, I'm not actually that good at talking crazy. If I have the party run into a babbling madman, any ideas for improvising his monologue of madmaking?

If I have the party run into a babbling madman, any ideas for improvising his monologue of madmaking?

Well, it depends. Is the madman supposed to convey any meaningful information?

If not, just mumble about cheese and lemurs or something.

If so, it's hard, because you have to start thinking in metaphor and allegory and they have to be not really obvious metaphors or allegories. But at the same time they can't be so obscure that the players will never get it. You don't want a situation where later it comes out that "The burning donkeys of the obelisk" represented a town oppressed by a dark wizard or something and the players just glare at you and yell "How the HELL was I supposed to get THAT?!"

If I have the party run into a babbling madman, any ideas for improvising his monologue of madmaking?

Maybe end of days stuff integrating the lore of the setting?

"You, have you seen the signs? The darkness is coming. The darkness. Mothra brings the darkness on wings of night. The signs. In the night he will come drawn by the flame. The fire is the sign. Can't you see the fire? The signs, the fire, don't you see it? He's coming. Mothra is coming and he brings the darkness."

That sort of stuff.

D is really good at the dialogue of madness but he wasn't very helpful with suggestions. The best I got, "take two things that don't go together [eg. lemurs and cheese] and talk about them as if they do."

Well, it depends. Is the madman supposed to convey any meaningful information? If not, just mumble about cheese and lemurs or something.

Not really. He's just foreshadowing. In their first adventure, the PCs came across some guys who'd been partaking liberally of the insanity peppers, this is really just a reminder. He will, however, be insistent that the PCs aren't in as good health as they think.

Maybe end of days stuff integrating the lore of the setting?

If the end of days are really coming, maybe I should have him trying to convince the PCs that everything's fine. "No, really, move along, nothing to see here. Grakhna the Desroyer, Render of Worlds, He Who Sits in the Space between Dreams and Waking? Never heard of him."

D is really good at the dialogue of madness but he wasn't very helpful with suggestions. The best I got, "take two things that don't go together [eg. lemurs and cheese] and talk about them as if they do."

Ok, one thing will be the wasps. I think maybe they've divulged to him that the PCs will be next.

Just got home from our first 4th edition session. Being hard to kill makes risk taking so much more rewarding. We had two players fall into negative hit points and recover in time to rejoin the battle. I was down to one hit point and chose to risk using my daily power instead of a healing surge and unleashed 40 hp of damage on the enemy magic user, reducing him to a stain on the path. It was exhilirating. Our cleric has got some mad skills. The thing where she takes HP away from our enemies and gives them to us is a thing of genius. I used to hate playing the cleric but now I think it would be kind of fun.

The second time we played 4E I played a cleric, and yeah, I completely agree that it's a lot more fun. The cleric actually has a raison d'etre now.

The dragonborn was still totally useless. Each time we've played, the opening salvo from the enemies is a tanglefoot bag at the dragonborn, which always succeeds.

This weekend was Rock Band and Dune.