I had a lot of fun with my last session though i'm a bit disappointed that things didn't go how i wanted it to.
To understand my story here's a bit of some background as to what lead up to this point.
First, we are playing the Tomb of Annihilation and we are at the very end of the campaign (WARNING, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR TOMB OF ANNIHILATION)
second, my character is a 6:5 Paladin:Sorcerer who is equipped with the Helm of Telepathy, Flametongue Longsword, and an Efreeti Chain (how i got the efreeti chain is a different story altogether but just know i have it cause it's integral to the story.
So, we had just killed the Atropal that was feeding off of the Soulmonger and i was on one of the ledges that was closest to the back end of the room where Acererak spawns in, while one of my team-mates tries negotiating with Acererak, my cousin, and i quote "tries to sneakily use shatter to destroy the soulmonger", this obviously fail to be the least bit sneaky and so we roll for initiative, the turn order being our Sorcerer:Bard first, Me second, My cousin the decaf Coffee-lock, our Hunter/Druid, and finally Acererak last (he rolled a 4). So our Sorcbard goes first and he attacks the soulmonger first because Acererak is really far away and a bit out of his range, all goes as normal, but while he's getting his turn sorted out, i notice something fun that i can do if i combine a bunch of my skills, so i get it all sorted in my head and then start my turn saying "check this sh#@ out...". First, i use up to Sorcery points and quicken the spell "misty step" and shoot up right beside Acererak, Next I go for a grapple which succeeds because i dumped a ton into my athletics and i figure a Lich isn't super athletic. Now, if you don't know the layout of this particular room, it contains a gigantic pit of Lava that Tentacles try and grapple and try to throw you into, the platform that Acererak spawns on is also overseeing this giant pool of lava, I have an Efreeti chain that makes me invulnerable to Fire damage...
"After grappling Acererak, I give him a kissy face and suplex him off the edge while still holding onto him!" and my group loses it. Basically i move off the platform with Acererak to fall into the lava with him where i planned on keeping him there for as long as needed to kill him off. unfortunately my GM wasn't keen on this happening and used up one of Acererak's legendary actions to teleport himself and me while we were falling to the platform closer to where the entrance we came from was, which was also fine because it brought him closer to everyone else as a whole where we could just start wailing on him as soon as possible. My GM gave me inspiration for that.
My group finally came to the end of Lost Mine of Phandelver, and we had a very interesting final battle.
SPOILERS FOR LOST MINE OF PHANDELVER!
The party consists of Eldorio, Hill Dwarf cleric; Croc Dundee (dont ask) High Elven Monk; and Dwayne, Halfling Rogue
This particular group are all new players, and are slight murderhobos, big treasure hoarders and metagamers. Sigh. I have been making some headway though. Anyway
Over the past few sessions they had found theentrance to wave echo cave, started exploring the mine, found Thardens body, fought the ochre jelly, managed to bypass a lot of the monsters and found their way to the room of bugbears, managed to defeat them with a number of shenanigans involving hanging from a doorframe by a pickaxe, and defeated the flameskull.
Now to the last session.
They investigated every inch of tue smelter room, decided to go on, broke into the forge of spells and saw the thimgs it contained, saw the spectator, ran out of the room, ran back in to parlay with it, ran back out of the room when the spectator had had enough of their various and contradictory explanations of why they were there and who they were, changed their minds and ran back in to fight it, and managed to defeat it easily with some high rolls on saves against its eye rays. They figured out what the brazier was for and then proceeded to bathe anything they could thjnk of in the flames, weapons, grappling hooks, pitons, hammers etc. (So now they are running around with +1 grappling hooks and crowbars)
Then they heal up a bit, and go on to the quarters of Mormesk the Wraith. The monk and manage the rogue manage to break the doors down with the help of the +1 crowbar and the Croc Dundee (monk) runs in and is confronted by Mormesk. He drinks aninvisibility potion and the others distract the wraith and fight him whilst Croc is busy rifling Mormesk's possessions. Gundren falls unconscious, and Eldorio (cleric) hets reduced to 9hp but they manage to defeat Mormesk. They also completely miss the scroll of Revivify that Mormesk kept although they had been saving all the diamonds they found for spells.
Croc (still invisible) decides to go explore before the potion wears off while the others are resting. (They go to sleep in Mormesk's room leaving the still unconscious Gundren in front of the door in case monsters come while they are asleep). Croc runs through the fungus cavern, through the room with all the ghouls and ends up at the room where the Black Spider stays. Opens the door and sees the Black Spider, the Spider tells his bugbear minion to close it, Croc (still invisible)opens it and that continues for a while, then Croc goes into the room and starts trying to open other doors. The Black Spider sees that and Croc runs. He runs back to where the others are resting and then insists that they immediately go to tackle the Black Spider. So the party goes to take on the boss monster of the dungeon without taking a long rest or anything like that.
They all drink potions of invisiblity and burst through the door, all shouting in about 5 different voices to make the black spider think there are many of them. TheBlack Spider is standing by the table flanked by his bugbears who are unsuccessfully trying to hide behind pillars. They run in, taking web attacks from the four Giant Spiders hiding above the door, only one of them gets entangled. Croc and Dwayne then try damaging their opponents without actually attacking because of the invisibility. They get one round of pouring oil on the floor and then lighting it in, when Eldorio decides to try and take the emerald eye of the statue (dwarven cleric defaces the statue of a dwarven god) and triggers the trap, and the ceilingfalls in. Everyone exept the Rogue and one spider fails their save, I roll 4d10 for a total of 27 damage, and everyone, exept for the one spider that saved is unconscious or dead. (The party were all low on hp so even the rogue who made the save was KOed).
So now they were all on death saves, Croc the monk two points away from being dead outright failed two saves in a row, Dwayne failed some succeeded some, Eldorio who was to blame for the whole thing succeeded three failed one and was stable, the other two were now sitting at two save two fails each, with one roll deciding. Both succeeded and Croc rolled a natural 20 so he regained one hit point and came to consciousness just in time to smash the life out of the remaining Giant Spider moving in on them with another natural 20.
Then Croc, who has been the most disruptive player, seing Gundren dead, took the emerald from he still unconscious Eldorio's hand and smashed it in tribute to Gundren. He then revived Eldorio and Dwayne and together they (after heavily chastising Eldorio) they found Nundro unconscious, rescued him, missed all the treasure the black spider had on him save for the coinon the table, and exited through the top of the cave, which had fallen in, collected their mounts, and set out for Neverwinter.
It was a very enjoyable and surprising session, I did not think it would go that way, although the ceiling collapsing probably saved them, cause they were up against a lot of enemies withouta lot of hp or resources.
"Then Croc, who has been the most disruptive player, seing Gundren dead, took the emerald from he still unconscious Eldorio's hand and smashed it in tribute to Gundren."
I don't know why, but this sentence made me laugh. Quite honestly, your entire recollection of the session made me laugh. I'm about to get my table into WEC, but I'm not sticking to the book. I look forward to it, that's for sure.
Hey ! Who remembers people saying that players do what they want? Well mine have no common sense!
They wind up in the shadowfell. Somehow. That’s currently unexplained. They follow the sound of a waterfall out due to a failed stealth check, and see signs repeatedly saying follow North, Knife was here. They wind up seeing a war forged and a scared water elemental. Now 3 people fail stealth, and the warforged slowly creeps over, saying he’s going to impale them. He introduces himself as Knife, the corrects and says its dagger. 2 fiends come over, and the party has to choose sides.
A man who just wanted to impale them, or 2 flying heads. They chose the Impaler. Of course they did. Of course. I made the encounter so that they would fight against the warfirged, but now I have to hit them with a CR5 monster and some imps. And my whole plan is messed up.
My best friend used to play D&D in high school and I currently play in a few games. Recently she suggested playing a game of D&D with me as the DM to them and they loved the idea. So I set up a campaign on a VTT, write a story that makes it look like they are at Jurassic Park, build the NPCs, and run to the store to buy them snacks for their adventuring packs. Their mom gave me two sticks and two of her scarves, and we tied up their juices and crackers etc, into the scarves and onto the sticks. Her children are an eight-year-old boy playing Ben (half-orc ranger) and a ten-year-old girl playing Merina (half-elf rogue).
I didn't want the first game they played to be too overwhelming, so I gave them magic bears in their packs. They each had about fifteen gummy bears that they could eat any time they wanted, and when they did they could roll 1d20 and add those hit points back. I tried to ensure that the encounters weren't too frightening or difficult. Little did I know I was playing with absolute maniacs.
We started playing through the campaign two nights ago and continued last night. Ben's answer to every situation, every new NPC, every chance at a stealth check, was, "I stab him/it." Bear in mind, his back story is that he lives on his own in the forest and goes into town when he needs to save people from bad guys. So here's this half-orc running amok while Merina does her best to remain neutral in every situation. Eventually, Ben and Merina learn that the game world is truly imaginary, and they are able to try anything they want. So Ben sets out immediately to test the boundaries.
At one point, after surviving several encounters and being well on the way to successfully completing the campaign without any extra help from the NPC they had met or the adventure bears, Ben walks past a bottomless chasm. He asks how far down it goes. Endless. He decides to jump down the chasm. He is warned repeatedly that he will most likely die if he does so. While giggling like a tyrant with his hand on a guillotine, he jumps. I make him roll a 1d20. I swear on every diety that kid rolled a nat20.
So Ben, somehow, manages to land on the one branch that was growing out into the chasm, too far down to be seen. Merina hears the strained cracking of wood and a sudden SWOOSH as Ben, laughing all the way, is catapulted back out of the chasm, landing quite unharmed at her feet. The kids couldn't stop laughing and neither could we. Good times.
In my last session I had to deal with one who got increasingly mad at me that the dice weren't rolling in the best way possible for them. This was despite that particular player being the most effective fighter for that combat encounter. After this I was informed that the NPC they'd rescued and I hadn't fully described yet was a girl no matter what I might think about it. Easier just to roll with it on that one. From here my wife's character sat down with the rescued NPC and proceeded to use her cartography skill to map out the entire hideout with special care to find out and mark each secret passage and trap. At this point I'm quite impressed with them.
They got one more combat encounter in before we decided to end the session due to restless children. I cracked up as a missed Ice Knife slipped past the foremost enemy and hit the table behind them. The table sitting directly between all the enemies. One very impressive explosion of ice later, the last standing enemy surrendered. If the ice knife had hit the lead enemy it would have exploded on several members of the party who were standing next to him. I've explained this to my son several times now, but I'm pretty sure that spell's his favorite action now aside from Wild Shape.
From a Play-by-Post so session is taken loosely. It's Western Themed and the Party started on a Train, things were pretty slow to begin with. The Gambler caught some marks to bet money out of, which the Preacher decided he needed to watch over to make sure no cheating happened, and the Cowboy slept. Now during the beginning of the second round of Hold 'Em Poker a Blue Dragon burrows out of the ground and attacks the Train. Suddenly, frantic action. The desposable Goblin guards get up on top of the Train and begin shooting at the Dragon. As the Party gets up to help, 2 Goblins are knocked off the Train and are eaten by the Bulettes following behind. The Gambler gets on and loads the now free Cannon, the Preacher gives the Party a Blessing and readies his Rifle, and the Cowboy Dashes on top of the Train Cars to get the Gatling Gun Ammo. The Dragon fires its Lighting Breath at the left side wheels, 79 Damage. The wheels break and the whole Train begins to tip sideways as sparks fly due to the friction. 2 more Goblins are knocked off and eaten by the Bulettes. The Preacher loses balance and rolls towards the damaged side, but is stopped by the other Cannon. The Gambler fires his Cannon and causes massive damage to the Dragon's Right Leg. The Cowboy gets the ammo back to the Gatling Gun as the Preacher stands up and readies the other Cannon. The Dragon draws closer to attack the Cowboy as he unleashes a full barrage of bullets. The Preacher just barely misses both of them with his Cannonball. The Dragon decides it's out of there, but not before its leg tendon is severed. Party just survived an Adult Dragon Attack at level 1. Everyone levels up, Train is waylaid.
Characters: Level 2 Human Fighter and level 2 Human Rogue
- On a way back to town characters found a boat on the beach and two giant frogs attacked. Fighter was cutting down a tree and fighter's main weapon was stuck on tree so he fought unarmed. (Don't ask why)
- Characters had quick visit in town, sold some stuff and got new quest.
- Characters went to quest location that was six room natural cave with 3 bandits, 1 Thug, 1 Lizardfolk and 1 Orc. There was some natural obstacles that required climbing, jumping and balance.
- Characters made combat encounters fun by using improvised weapons again.
I had my party find an important place, which will be their new home, the Jailkeep, a giant tower with a bowl of darkness on top. Then, 2 players leave. Without saying anything. And one has been on a business trip since the 1st session.
They found a teenager, which is supposed to show them the difference between people and people from the shadowfell, but I’m sacred they will kill him. Excellent. Just excellent.
Last session was slow, but solid. The party decided to abandon the main plot line and instead are trying to track down a young dragon's horde that they feel could be in a swamp. They already know a more powerful being views the swamp as its domain, and is in control, and have seen evidence of their disruptions already.
I started the session with a dream sequence, where the characters got to see the "swamp" as it was without the aforementioned influence. Along the way, I gave the players sets of scrabble tiles (with letters) forming a puzzle. Once they figured out the words, they would break "free" from the dream/plane they were on. I let them use google translate when they got close to the right word, but apparently alphabetic tiles (word at a time) with the letters out of order is really tough in latin :)
Regardless, with the foreshadowing they saw in "the dream", once they awoke.... They chose to go deeper into the swamp. Due to the evil being's influence and the tormented dream, the characters also didn't get the benefit of a long rest during that.... Yet in the swamp they go!
So fun for a DM !
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Well both a lot and not a lot happened all at once (it was great), our DM is leaving after next session as is one of our players (better jobs). One of our other players is taking over as DM and we are halfway through Waterdeep. We had just found Maxine (our Rogue decided to flirt with her and if we hadn't have left to pass the information to Mirt, probably would've needed a room!) So we go to find Mirt who is frequenting the Pixie Inn, at the location to the Inn all we find is a water fountain, Dwarf Barbarian (who has shoes that make him taller than our Goliath) drinks the water and shrinks down to the size of a pixie. Turns out this is the only way to get into the Pixie Inn, so we all have a drink and enter what can only be described as a trendy cocktail bar. Find Mirt give him information, he tells us about Blue Alley and treats us all to rooms for the night. My Warlock retires as ritual find familiar takes time and need sleep. The rest of the party discover the "back room" and enter at the cost of 5GP each, a save is required (wis or con, can't remember) everyone passes except for our Dwarf, who is then transformed into a pixie in an undressed state (magically appearing as whichever gender the spectator prefers) a pole appears and he has to dance for the crowd. They then retire to their rooms with partners that like money and proceed to have fun, they all wake up in the morning naked, alone, well rested and covered in glitter! We head to Blue Alley, get attacked by a ceiling and face a Minotaur, who our rogue tries to flirt with (I think he has a problem!)
Next session sees us completing Blue Alley (hopefully) and saying goodbye to our Dwarf and our DM!
I had a case of perfect timing last session. I don't want to put in too many details of the plot and situation in case my players read this forum as they haven't figured out much of what is going on yet.
The party comes into the small village where they have hard something strange is going on. They end up going straight to the inn they have been warned seems to be at the center of the problem. They book the cheapest shared room, deposit their packs, and go to the bar for drinks. One of the makes a bet that he can drink a gallon of ale in an hour. You guessed it, the ale is drugged. He passes out and the party put him to bed in the room. While he sleeps it off they go out to get the lay of the land.
The remaining party walk around about half the village checking out what the various buildings are. One of them starts to feel woozy from the drugs in the ale. The plain lays on hands to neutralize poison, the wooziness goes away. Drugs in the ale now confirmed the party rushes back to the inn where they left their friend. When they get to the room he is gone!
What made this such great timing is that the passed out player had to leave the session early, just about the time the drugs in the ale took hold. This spared him half a session of sitting around twiddling his thumbs while he was unconscious and the rest of the party got to do stuff.
I am not quite sure how I am going to handle this next session. I may give him another character to run temporarily so as to keep him in the game. We often have at least one player miss a session, so that is a possibility.
I was concerned about how I was going to hook the players into what is going on in the village, but tis well and truly sets the hook. They aren't really the type to spend a lot of time taking to NPCs and such, so drawing them into a mystery was, I thought, going to be a challenge. Now they have a straightforward problem to confront that should pull them right in. And the best art is they put themselves in to it.
My table just finished driving off Venomfang from Thundertree. Let me premise this by saying that I had swapped out Reidoth for an Order of the Gauntlet spy who was infiltrating the Cult of the Dragon, and she assisted my table during the "zombie apocalypse" that Thundertree was experiencing. When my table encountered Venomfang, she didn't want anything to do with him, and fled. So, when we sat back down to continue, I had Venomfang flying off, but then swoop down below the tree line, and after a cloud of green poison was observed, the young dragon went airborne again, carrying the unconscious spy in his claws. Since I had a player out, I opted to have his character pursue the dragon and would later meet up with the crew back in Phandulin. So, the troupe traipse back to town, and are ambushed by 8 orcs (6 archers, a captain, and a commander from Revenge of the Horde). The 5 lvl 4 PCs and lvl 6 Glasstaff had no problems dispatching the group.
Once they arrive in Phandulin, Sildar takes Glasstaff in for interrogation. Last he had heard, Glasstaff had ambushed the previous group (which were the pregens for LMoP). The rest of the table try to vouch for Glasstaff that he's a changed man and helped them fight off zombies and a dragon. Additionally, in the party's absence, Gundren Rockseeker managed to find his way into Phandulin, having escaped from Nezznar the Black Spider, who had his map. Going against his gut, Sildar agrees to let Glasstaff accompany the party to WEC, but he himself will also come along.
The next morning, the party set out for the mine. As they get closer, they come across some abandoned houses and ruins from several hundred years prior when the mine was in full operation. The structures were draped in massive spider webs, but no spiders were visible. The group hears a muffled cry from inside a building, and begin to cut their way towards it. After seeing a large webbed ball on the wall, the dwarf fighter frees Tharden Rockseeker, but then 5 large spiders drop from the trees overhead, biting 4 of the group, but felling Sildar because of a Crit roll. This ended up being a more difficult fight for the team. The dwarf fighter proceeded to jump onto the back of a spider, which instinctively scraped him off into the thick funnel of webbing it had made, therefore restraining him. But the table's Ranger was in "beast mode" as he has ridiculous to-hit and damage at lvl 4 b/c of the Colossus Slayer skill.
So, we ended there, and will dive into the Lost Mine of Phandulin for our next session, and hopefully end our inaugural campaign!
My friends and I recently started played D&D only a couple of weeks ago. I DM'd for 3 people, including my GF, and they all loved it! My party consists of my friend, let's call him R, a Halfling Wizard with multiple personalities I change with a d4 roll called Bilbo Baggins/Laggins/Shaggins/Faggins, my other friend, let's call him J, a Homonculus Slave Trader, a homebrew class and race called Ao Winterhold, as well as my GF who is playing a Tiefling Rogue called Larissa Bracken. I'd started my own campaign for them with a general plot line and a goal they as adventurers are aiming for, but I just let them do what they want more or less.
In my last session, we had our other friend/my roommate join us and he'd created a Gnome Bard called Mr. Frug G-Nome and wrote up this really funny backstory mocking the EDL (which he named the GDL, Gnome Defense League). They'd gone to clear out a dungeon, an old abandoned gold factory on the edge of town. They confronted some bandits inside and my roommate took them out in one move. I knew this was too easy so I rolled for a random hard encounter using Goblinist Tools which came up with a Black Pudding. Everyone was a level 3 apart from my roommate who was level 2. They quickly realised that their steel blades would corrode when they hit the slime, and the wizard wasn't doing enough damage to kill it swiftly, purely through his spells. They noticed how the floor was made of stone and it wasn't being corroded by the slime. For 10 minutes, they talked together to figure out how they were going to fashion a makeshift catapult to fling rocks at the slime and the Wizard would use mage hand to lift rocks and throw them at it too. The slime was on very slow health after their turns had passed, but I rolled to decide who it would target and it landed on my roommate. The damage completely annihilated him, leaving him incapacitated and unfortunately he was next in initiative order.
He made his death saving throws: 2 fails, 2 successes. It came down to one last throw. Everyone was hunched round the table holding their head and pulling their hair. Even I as the DM was shitting it. He rolled the dice... 2. Everyone just sat in shock. My GF turned round to me and said, "Is he dead??". I just stared at the dice knowing one of my players had now died. I knew I couldn't change the outcome, but perhaps I had already preemptively done so when we first started playing. I had given my roommate inspiration for roleplaying well when we started, and he hadn't used it since. R turned round to him and said, you have inspiration, can you use it for advantage? Everyone turned to me. I wasn't sure to be honest. I thought it gave a +1 to dice rolls but I'd always thought that was a bit shit in comparison anyway. I just made a decision and said, "Yeah you can use it for advantage."
Hope was restored to the party, but now everyone was even more on edge. I looked around at their faces and I saw genuine terror. My friend rolled the dice one last time... 19!! He'd managed to save himself when all hope had been lost! The entire party roared with happiness and cheers. Everyone was nearly shaking at the death of Mr. Frug G-Nome, and that's when I realised this might possibly be the best game ever. The Wizard finished off the slime and the Homonculus stabilsed my roommate.
That was the end of our second session, and I think my party now knows that they are not safe from death, and their fate can be decided between a single dice roll.
Our last session was in Waterdeep, one of my friends is trying her hand at DMing for the first time and chose to run us through Dragon Heist.
The game was slow as we had just finished a quest for one of the factions in town and had to head back to our new home and do some renovations. I was training my new pet, Meatball, a gazer familiar to be an epic rat catcher as someone was trying to sabotage out business. One of the other girls was taking some time cleaning up the second floor of the home, and the other two girls were wrapping up their visit to the faction leader. A lot of RP was to be had between the Allesta and Sieravi as they tried to figure out their different walks in life. I spent a lot of time just gathering information from my faction, and figuring out where all the rats were coming from. Eventually Sieravi decided to look at the location I felt was the source of the rats and found out that...well...were-rats are a thing. We ended the game with Sieravi being approached by 3 were-rats and all alone.
The highlight of the day was an improptu singalong....(clip)
I had a unique opportunity in that I was able to run a side mission for a regular who had missed our previous session. Only one other player was available and he played an alternate character.
So the dragon-born Paladin was part of the party that had just fought Venomfang in Thundertree. I had him take off in pursuit of the dragon to explain his absence. So as he is traveling through Neverwinter Woods, he comes across an elf running full-tilt away from something directly at him. He yells to the Paladin “RUN!! Minotaur!!” Guess what emerges from the far tree line? Yup, a Minotaur. And yes, I used the encounter of the week for the Lost Minotaur. Thankfully, the two were able to talk to Gulgarthos after he slipped on a rock he couldn’t see as his eyes were adjusting still to the surface world. The elf -an Arcane Trickster - cast some laughing enchantment on him which helped to settle the large beast to talk to.
The next day, the travelers are beset by a Forest Troll (Ultimate Bestiary Revenge of the Horde). The dragon-born opened up with his fire breath, followed by the Minotaur’s large Great Axe. The Trickster cast fog but it obscured everyone’s vision. Since the troll is as y’all as some trees, he attacked with disadvantage. I used the encounter as a means to instill some knowledge about trolls and their vulnerabilities to acid and fire. It took several rounds but eventually the party was able to overcome the troll’s regeneration with the use of Searing Smite igniting on fire.
Later, the adventurers hear a voice in their heads pleading for help. The trio come across a unicorn that is badly wounded, it’s horn having been broken off. It lays near a body of water where a green dragon - Venomfang - is drinking from. The Paladin confirms that it is his quarry by observing the wounds it has which heal up. Additionally, the dragon seems to grow in size as if he matured (from young to adult). Instead of engaging the dragon, the party heeded the Paladin’s advice as they believed they were outmatched. Thankfully the dragon flies off, allowing for the team to intervene and save the unicorn. Enter the Dying Unicorn encounter of the week :)
I had the waters being tainted by the dragon as he drank from the spring so the characters had to purify it using the puzzle. I allowed the Trickster to create an illusion of an exact replica of the statue of Ehlonna so they could read about the druids, but they still had to cross the water to get to the jugs. The team was able to solve the puzzle in 15 rounds and saved Vassorum. So they were awarded the quiver and instead of the unicorn joining them for a month, she touched her now healed horn to the statue and an Aasimar Warlock of the Celestial appeared, pledging his service to them for a month.
So now, the Paladin is bringing 2 more NPCs to the Phandelver Mine and the Arcana Trickster alt is going to hang out in Phandalin for now.
The party had a great battle where they supported about thirty paladins against several hundred undead and some living mercenaries outside the paladins' mountain temple. This followed a skill challenge that the party did wonderfully on. In the end, the party's minotaur won a cursed sword in battle and is probably going to sell his soul to Baphomet in exchange for power in this world. Not necessarily the direction I was expecting, but I'm going to lean in :)
I had planned our session to dive into one of Haeck's Encounters of the Week, but just as our session started, the group decided to sit down and really consider their course of action. They thought about all the clues they've received, all the locations they have reasons to go to. They began to consider not going where they were directed to, but where they wanted to go, and where they felt they could have the biggest impact.
It made me so happy. It was the first example of them considering what I've put forth and creating their own plans, rather than being reactionary to everything an NPC says or does.
It also meant I didn't get to do that Encounter of the Week, which I was rather looking forward to! lol
Their directed course was to head into the mountains and see if there are some stone giants that could potentially be leveraged into their conflict with a hill giant and hobgoblin army, with the side objective of finding an old artificer's gnomish instructor who can potentially help shore up defenses. What they considered was that there were no more scouts watching this enemy force's movements, and there was some bravado talk about maybe dealing with their leader directly. Additionally, they had a lead to this cult they're looking to thwart, that a major player was working behind the scenes in a mountaintop city-state of the aarakocra. Lot of RP dialogue about that being a major goal of theirs, but would it be worth leaving these local agrarian settlements at the mercy of an enemy? And don't forget, they had two character-driven quests. The zealot barbarian needed to find her hunter-god's raven before others of that god's court did, if she is to ensure that she gets to lead the next wild hunt rather than potentially falling prey to it. The sorceress had relied upon her researcher background to glean the important detail that a trio of wizards at a not-quite-distant port city might know more about the mysterious and evil control-glyph that has bound murdered souls to the warlock warforged's chassis.
The group decided that these other missions, while more important to them, must be sidelined for now. They couldn't just leave the locals to be slaughtered. With that, they decided to head directly toward the threat. Thanks to some cautious movements, acceptable stealth rolls and a druid acting as a wild-shaped scout, they did locate what they believe is the main war-camp, and it shook them. Based off of what they could see, from their ground-based perspective looking in along one side of the camp, they've made assumptions about the size of the army. I'm not saying they're wrong in that assumption, only that they might be soon gaining access to an aerial-based perspective that could affect their findings.
Gaining a new appreciation for the scale of the threat posed, they once again re-evaluate their plans. Due to some competent lore checks, they were reminded that something had occurred that threw the entire giant hierarchy into a state of flux. That the hill giants sit at the bottom, and that the stone giants directly above them might be interested in keeping them in their place.
So the session ended with them confirming that they were to return to the path they were originally on, but it was super cool for me to finally experience players choosing to disregard the rails. I'm still a new DM, started almost exactly a year ago. They asked me afterward, out of game, what kind of consequences would there be if they decided to do things out of order, such as if they had decided to start with one of their other quests rather than continuing to deal with the local threat.
My answer was that there was no consequences per se, but that events would unfold with or without them. If you leave the locals to their fates, when you return you might find the land overrun or maybe you'll find the last surviving, but steadfastly victorious locals. If you pursue this cult in the city-state, perhaps you'll interrupt their plans before they come to fruition. If you wait to deal with the local threat first, perhaps the cult gets further along in their plans.
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I had a lot of fun with my last session though i'm a bit disappointed that things didn't go how i wanted it to.
To understand my story here's a bit of some background as to what lead up to this point.
First, we are playing the Tomb of Annihilation and we are at the very end of the campaign (WARNING, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR TOMB OF ANNIHILATION)
second, my character is a 6:5 Paladin:Sorcerer who is equipped with the Helm of Telepathy, Flametongue Longsword, and an Efreeti Chain (how i got the efreeti chain is a different story altogether but just know i have it cause it's integral to the story.
So, we had just killed the Atropal that was feeding off of the Soulmonger and i was on one of the ledges that was closest to the back end of the room where Acererak spawns in, while one of my team-mates tries negotiating with Acererak, my cousin, and i quote "tries to sneakily use shatter to destroy the soulmonger", this obviously fail to be the least bit sneaky and so we roll for initiative, the turn order being our Sorcerer:Bard first, Me second, My cousin the decaf Coffee-lock, our Hunter/Druid, and finally Acererak last (he rolled a 4). So our Sorcbard goes first and he attacks the soulmonger first because Acererak is really far away and a bit out of his range, all goes as normal, but while he's getting his turn sorted out, i notice something fun that i can do if i combine a bunch of my skills, so i get it all sorted in my head and then start my turn saying "check this sh#@ out...". First, i use up to Sorcery points and quicken the spell "misty step" and shoot up right beside Acererak, Next I go for a grapple which succeeds because i dumped a ton into my athletics and i figure a Lich isn't super athletic. Now, if you don't know the layout of this particular room, it contains a gigantic pit of Lava that Tentacles try and grapple and try to throw you into, the platform that Acererak spawns on is also overseeing this giant pool of lava, I have an Efreeti chain that makes me invulnerable to Fire damage...
"After grappling Acererak, I give him a kissy face and suplex him off the edge while still holding onto him!" and my group loses it. Basically i move off the platform with Acererak to fall into the lava with him where i planned on keeping him there for as long as needed to kill him off. unfortunately my GM wasn't keen on this happening and used up one of Acererak's legendary actions to teleport himself and me while we were falling to the platform closer to where the entrance we came from was, which was also fine because it brought him closer to everyone else as a whole where we could just start wailing on him as soon as possible. My GM gave me inspiration for that.
My group finally came to the end of Lost Mine of Phandelver, and we had a very interesting final battle.
SPOILERS FOR LOST MINE OF PHANDELVER!
The party consists of Eldorio, Hill Dwarf cleric; Croc Dundee (dont ask) High Elven Monk; and Dwayne, Halfling Rogue
This particular group are all new players, and are slight murderhobos, big treasure hoarders and metagamers. Sigh. I have been making some headway though. Anyway
Over the past few sessions they had found theentrance to wave echo cave, started exploring the mine, found Thardens body, fought the ochre jelly, managed to bypass a lot of the monsters and found their way to the room of bugbears, managed to defeat them with a number of shenanigans involving hanging from a doorframe by a pickaxe, and defeated the flameskull.
Now to the last session.
They investigated every inch of tue smelter room, decided to go on, broke into the forge of spells and saw the thimgs it contained, saw the spectator, ran out of the room, ran back in to parlay with it, ran back out of the room when the spectator had had enough of their various and contradictory explanations of why they were there and who they were, changed their minds and ran back in to fight it, and managed to defeat it easily with some high rolls on saves against its eye rays. They figured out what the brazier was for and then proceeded to bathe anything they could thjnk of in the flames, weapons, grappling hooks, pitons, hammers etc. (So now they are running around with +1 grappling hooks and crowbars)
Then they heal up a bit, and go on to the quarters of Mormesk the Wraith. The monk and manage the rogue manage to break the doors down with the help of the +1 crowbar and the Croc Dundee (monk) runs in and is confronted by Mormesk. He drinks aninvisibility potion and the others distract the wraith and fight him whilst Croc is busy rifling Mormesk's possessions. Gundren falls unconscious, and Eldorio (cleric) hets reduced to 9hp but they manage to defeat Mormesk. They also completely miss the scroll of Revivify that Mormesk kept although they had been saving all the diamonds they found for spells.
Croc (still invisible) decides to go explore before the potion wears off while the others are resting. (They go to sleep in Mormesk's room leaving the still unconscious Gundren in front of the door in case monsters come while they are asleep). Croc runs through the fungus cavern, through the room with all the ghouls and ends up at the room where the Black Spider stays. Opens the door and sees the Black Spider, the Spider tells his bugbear minion to close it, Croc (still invisible)opens it and that continues for a while, then Croc goes into the room and starts trying to open other doors. The Black Spider sees that and Croc runs. He runs back to where the others are resting and then insists that they immediately go to tackle the Black Spider. So the party goes to take on the boss monster of the dungeon without taking a long rest or anything like that.
They all drink potions of invisiblity and burst through the door, all shouting in about 5 different voices to make the black spider think there are many of them. TheBlack Spider is standing by the table flanked by his bugbears who are unsuccessfully trying to hide behind pillars. They run in, taking web attacks from the four Giant Spiders hiding above the door, only one of them gets entangled. Croc and Dwayne then try damaging their opponents without actually attacking because of the invisibility. They get one round of pouring oil on the floor and then lighting it in, when Eldorio decides to try and take the emerald eye of the statue (dwarven cleric defaces the statue of a dwarven god) and triggers the trap, and the ceilingfalls in. Everyone exept the Rogue and one spider fails their save, I roll 4d10 for a total of 27 damage, and everyone, exept for the one spider that saved is unconscious or dead. (The party were all low on hp so even the rogue who made the save was KOed).
So now they were all on death saves, Croc the monk two points away from being dead outright failed two saves in a row, Dwayne failed some succeeded some, Eldorio who was to blame for the whole thing succeeded three failed one and was stable, the other two were now sitting at two save two fails each, with one roll deciding. Both succeeded and Croc rolled a natural 20 so he regained one hit point and came to consciousness just in time to smash the life out of the remaining Giant Spider moving in on them with another natural 20.
Then Croc, who has been the most disruptive player, seing Gundren dead, took the emerald from he still unconscious Eldorio's hand and smashed it in tribute to Gundren. He then revived Eldorio and Dwayne and together they (after heavily chastising Eldorio) they found Nundro unconscious, rescued him, missed all the treasure the black spider had on him save for the coinon the table, and exited through the top of the cave, which had fallen in, collected their mounts, and set out for Neverwinter.
It was a very enjoyable and surprising session, I did not think it would go that way, although the ceiling collapsing probably saved them, cause they were up against a lot of enemies withouta lot of hp or resources.
"Then Croc, who has been the most disruptive player, seing Gundren dead, took the emerald from he still unconscious Eldorio's hand and smashed it in tribute to Gundren."
I don't know why, but this sentence made me laugh. Quite honestly, your entire recollection of the session made me laugh. I'm about to get my table into WEC, but I'm not sticking to the book. I look forward to it, that's for sure.
Hey ! Who remembers people saying that players do what they want? Well mine have no common sense!
They wind up in the shadowfell. Somehow. That’s currently unexplained. They follow the sound of a waterfall out due to a failed stealth check, and see signs repeatedly saying follow North, Knife was here. They wind up seeing a war forged and a scared water elemental. Now 3 people fail stealth, and the warforged slowly creeps over, saying he’s going to impale them. He introduces himself as Knife, the corrects and says its dagger. 2 fiends come over, and the party has to choose sides.
A man who just wanted to impale them, or 2 flying heads. They chose the Impaler. Of course they did. Of course. I made the encounter so that they would fight against the warfirged, but now I have to hit them with a CR5 monster and some imps. And my whole plan is messed up.
Extended Signature! Yay! https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/off-topic/adohands-kitchen/3153-extended-signature-thread?page=2#c21
Haven’t used this account in forever. Still a big fan of crawling claws.
My best friend used to play D&D in high school and I currently play in a few games. Recently she suggested playing a game of D&D with me as the DM to them and they loved the idea. So I set up a campaign on a VTT, write a story that makes it look like they are at Jurassic Park, build the NPCs, and run to the store to buy them snacks for their adventuring packs. Their mom gave me two sticks and two of her scarves, and we tied up their juices and crackers etc, into the scarves and onto the sticks. Her children are an eight-year-old boy playing Ben (half-orc ranger) and a ten-year-old girl playing Merina (half-elf rogue).
I didn't want the first game they played to be too overwhelming, so I gave them magic bears in their packs. They each had about fifteen gummy bears that they could eat any time they wanted, and when they did they could roll 1d20 and add those hit points back. I tried to ensure that the encounters weren't too frightening or difficult. Little did I know I was playing with absolute maniacs.
We started playing through the campaign two nights ago and continued last night. Ben's answer to every situation, every new NPC, every chance at a stealth check, was, "I stab him/it." Bear in mind, his back story is that he lives on his own in the forest and goes into town when he needs to save people from bad guys. So here's this half-orc running amok while Merina does her best to remain neutral in every situation. Eventually, Ben and Merina learn that the game world is truly imaginary, and they are able to try anything they want. So Ben sets out immediately to test the boundaries.
At one point, after surviving several encounters and being well on the way to successfully completing the campaign without any extra help from the NPC they had met or the adventure bears, Ben walks past a bottomless chasm. He asks how far down it goes. Endless. He decides to jump down the chasm. He is warned repeatedly that he will most likely die if he does so. While giggling like a tyrant with his hand on a guillotine, he jumps. I make him roll a 1d20. I swear on every diety that kid rolled a nat20.
So Ben, somehow, manages to land on the one branch that was growing out into the chasm, too far down to be seen. Merina hears the strained cracking of wood and a sudden SWOOSH as Ben, laughing all the way, is catapulted back out of the chasm, landing quite unharmed at her feet. The kids couldn't stop laughing and neither could we. Good times.
DMing for kids is fun and challenging.
In my last session I had to deal with one who got increasingly mad at me that the dice weren't rolling in the best way possible for them. This was despite that particular player being the most effective fighter for that combat encounter. After this I was informed that the NPC they'd rescued and I hadn't fully described yet was a girl no matter what I might think about it. Easier just to roll with it on that one. From here my wife's character sat down with the rescued NPC and proceeded to use her cartography skill to map out the entire hideout with special care to find out and mark each secret passage and trap. At this point I'm quite impressed with them.
They got one more combat encounter in before we decided to end the session due to restless children. I cracked up as a missed Ice Knife slipped past the foremost enemy and hit the table behind them. The table sitting directly between all the enemies. One very impressive explosion of ice later, the last standing enemy surrendered. If the ice knife had hit the lead enemy it would have exploded on several members of the party who were standing next to him. I've explained this to my son several times now, but I'm pretty sure that spell's his favorite action now aside from Wild Shape.
My game's current Druid uses Ice Knife in every fight. They've used one other spell in the space of 3 sessions, each with combat encounters.
I'm the idiot that decides to make Phil Swift in DnD.
From a Play-by-Post so session is taken loosely. It's Western Themed and the Party started on a Train, things were pretty slow to begin with. The Gambler caught some marks to bet money out of, which the Preacher decided he needed to watch over to make sure no cheating happened, and the Cowboy slept. Now during the beginning of the second round of Hold 'Em Poker a Blue Dragon burrows out of the ground and attacks the Train. Suddenly, frantic action. The desposable Goblin guards get up on top of the Train and begin shooting at the Dragon. As the Party gets up to help, 2 Goblins are knocked off the Train and are eaten by the Bulettes following behind. The Gambler gets on and loads the now free Cannon, the Preacher gives the Party a Blessing and readies his Rifle, and the Cowboy Dashes on top of the Train Cars to get the Gatling Gun Ammo. The Dragon fires its Lighting Breath at the left side wheels, 79 Damage. The wheels break and the whole Train begins to tip sideways as sparks fly due to the friction. 2 more Goblins are knocked off and eaten by the Bulettes. The Preacher loses balance and rolls towards the damaged side, but is stopped by the other Cannon. The Gambler fires his Cannon and causes massive damage to the Dragon's Right Leg. The Cowboy gets the ammo back to the Gatling Gun as the Preacher stands up and readies the other Cannon. The Dragon draws closer to attack the Cowboy as he unleashes a full barrage of bullets. The Preacher just barely misses both of them with his Cannonball. The Dragon decides it's out of there, but not before its leg tendon is severed. Party just survived an Adult Dragon Attack at level 1. Everyone levels up, Train is waylaid.
Great read!!!
3rd session:
Characters: Level 2 Human Fighter and level 2 Human Rogue
- On a way back to town characters found a boat on the beach and two giant frogs attacked. Fighter was cutting down a tree and fighter's main weapon was stuck on tree so he fought unarmed. (Don't ask why)
- Characters had quick visit in town, sold some stuff and got new quest.
- Characters went to quest location that was six room natural cave with 3 bandits, 1 Thug, 1 Lizardfolk and 1 Orc. There was some natural obstacles that required climbing, jumping and balance.
- Characters made combat encounters fun by using improvised weapons again.
- We will start next session from level 3.
My current projects, One click download PDFs:
- Clam Island campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By3s5Uqqf (Levels 1-4)
- Frostglade Tundra campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyZ_4eEyKE (Levels 1-4)
- Goldfish Archipelago campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/-3HajWXM (Sequel to Clam Island, Levels 5-8)
Of course. Why does this happen?
I had my party find an important place, which will be their new home, the Jailkeep, a giant tower with a bowl of darkness on top. Then, 2 players leave. Without saying anything. And one has been on a business trip since the 1st session.
They found a teenager, which is supposed to show them the difference between people and people from the shadowfell, but I’m sacred they will kill him. Excellent. Just excellent.
Extended Signature! Yay! https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/off-topic/adohands-kitchen/3153-extended-signature-thread?page=2#c21
Haven’t used this account in forever. Still a big fan of crawling claws.
Last session was slow, but solid. The party decided to abandon the main plot line and instead are trying to track down a young dragon's horde that they feel could be in a swamp. They already know a more powerful being views the swamp as its domain, and is in control, and have seen evidence of their disruptions already.
I started the session with a dream sequence, where the characters got to see the "swamp" as it was without the aforementioned influence. Along the way, I gave the players sets of scrabble tiles (with letters) forming a puzzle. Once they figured out the words, they would break "free" from the dream/plane they were on. I let them use google translate when they got close to the right word, but apparently alphabetic tiles (word at a time) with the letters out of order is really tough in latin :)
Regardless, with the foreshadowing they saw in "the dream", once they awoke.... They chose to go deeper into the swamp. Due to the evil being's influence and the tormented dream, the characters also didn't get the benefit of a long rest during that.... Yet in the swamp they go!
So fun for a DM !
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Well both a lot and not a lot happened all at once (it was great), our DM is leaving after next session as is one of our players (better jobs). One of our other players is taking over as DM and we are halfway through Waterdeep. We had just found Maxine (our Rogue decided to flirt with her and if we hadn't have left to pass the information to Mirt, probably would've needed a room!) So we go to find Mirt who is frequenting the Pixie Inn, at the location to the Inn all we find is a water fountain, Dwarf Barbarian (who has shoes that make him taller than our Goliath) drinks the water and shrinks down to the size of a pixie. Turns out this is the only way to get into the Pixie Inn, so we all have a drink and enter what can only be described as a trendy cocktail bar.
Find Mirt give him information, he tells us about Blue Alley and treats us all to rooms for the night.
My Warlock retires as ritual find familiar takes time and need sleep. The rest of the party discover the "back room" and enter at the cost of 5GP each, a save is required (wis or con, can't remember) everyone passes except for our Dwarf, who is then transformed into a pixie in an undressed state (magically appearing as whichever gender the spectator prefers) a pole appears and he has to dance for the crowd. They then retire to their rooms with partners that like money and proceed to have fun, they all wake up in the morning naked, alone, well rested and covered in glitter!
We head to Blue Alley, get attacked by a ceiling and face a Minotaur, who our rogue tries to flirt with (I think he has a problem!)
Next session sees us completing Blue Alley (hopefully) and saying goodbye to our Dwarf and our DM!
From Within Chaos Comes Order!
I had a case of perfect timing last session. I don't want to put in too many details of the plot and situation in case my players read this forum as they haven't figured out much of what is going on yet.
The party comes into the small village where they have hard something strange is going on. They end up going straight to the inn they have been warned seems to be at the center of the problem. They book the cheapest shared room, deposit their packs, and go to the bar for drinks. One of the makes a bet that he can drink a gallon of ale in an hour. You guessed it, the ale is drugged. He passes out and the party put him to bed in the room. While he sleeps it off they go out to get the lay of the land.
The remaining party walk around about half the village checking out what the various buildings are. One of them starts to feel woozy from the drugs in the ale. The plain lays on hands to neutralize poison, the wooziness goes away. Drugs in the ale now confirmed the party rushes back to the inn where they left their friend. When they get to the room he is gone!
What made this such great timing is that the passed out player had to leave the session early, just about the time the drugs in the ale took hold. This spared him half a session of sitting around twiddling his thumbs while he was unconscious and the rest of the party got to do stuff.
I am not quite sure how I am going to handle this next session. I may give him another character to run temporarily so as to keep him in the game. We often have at least one player miss a session, so that is a possibility.
I was concerned about how I was going to hook the players into what is going on in the village, but tis well and truly sets the hook. They aren't really the type to spend a lot of time taking to NPCs and such, so drawing them into a mystery was, I thought, going to be a challenge. Now they have a straightforward problem to confront that should pull them right in. And the best art is they put themselves in to it.
My table just finished driving off Venomfang from Thundertree. Let me premise this by saying that I had swapped out Reidoth for an Order of the Gauntlet spy who was infiltrating the Cult of the Dragon, and she assisted my table during the "zombie apocalypse" that Thundertree was experiencing. When my table encountered Venomfang, she didn't want anything to do with him, and fled. So, when we sat back down to continue, I had Venomfang flying off, but then swoop down below the tree line, and after a cloud of green poison was observed, the young dragon went airborne again, carrying the unconscious spy in his claws. Since I had a player out, I opted to have his character pursue the dragon and would later meet up with the crew back in Phandulin. So, the troupe traipse back to town, and are ambushed by 8 orcs (6 archers, a captain, and a commander from Revenge of the Horde). The 5 lvl 4 PCs and lvl 6 Glasstaff had no problems dispatching the group.
Once they arrive in Phandulin, Sildar takes Glasstaff in for interrogation. Last he had heard, Glasstaff had ambushed the previous group (which were the pregens for LMoP). The rest of the table try to vouch for Glasstaff that he's a changed man and helped them fight off zombies and a dragon. Additionally, in the party's absence, Gundren Rockseeker managed to find his way into Phandulin, having escaped from Nezznar the Black Spider, who had his map. Going against his gut, Sildar agrees to let Glasstaff accompany the party to WEC, but he himself will also come along.
The next morning, the party set out for the mine. As they get closer, they come across some abandoned houses and ruins from several hundred years prior when the mine was in full operation. The structures were draped in massive spider webs, but no spiders were visible. The group hears a muffled cry from inside a building, and begin to cut their way towards it. After seeing a large webbed ball on the wall, the dwarf fighter frees Tharden Rockseeker, but then 5 large spiders drop from the trees overhead, biting 4 of the group, but felling Sildar because of a Crit roll. This ended up being a more difficult fight for the team. The dwarf fighter proceeded to jump onto the back of a spider, which instinctively scraped him off into the thick funnel of webbing it had made, therefore restraining him. But the table's Ranger was in "beast mode" as he has ridiculous to-hit and damage at lvl 4 b/c of the Colossus Slayer skill.
So, we ended there, and will dive into the Lost Mine of Phandulin for our next session, and hopefully end our inaugural campaign!
My friends and I recently started played D&D only a couple of weeks ago. I DM'd for 3 people, including my GF, and they all loved it! My party consists of my friend, let's call him R, a Halfling Wizard with multiple personalities I change with a d4 roll called Bilbo Baggins/Laggins/Shaggins/Faggins, my other friend, let's call him J, a Homonculus Slave Trader, a homebrew class and race called Ao Winterhold, as well as my GF who is playing a Tiefling Rogue called Larissa Bracken. I'd started my own campaign for them with a general plot line and a goal they as adventurers are aiming for, but I just let them do what they want more or less.
In my last session, we had our other friend/my roommate join us and he'd created a Gnome Bard called Mr. Frug G-Nome and wrote up this really funny backstory mocking the EDL (which he named the GDL, Gnome Defense League). They'd gone to clear out a dungeon, an old abandoned gold factory on the edge of town. They confronted some bandits inside and my roommate took them out in one move. I knew this was too easy so I rolled for a random hard encounter using Goblinist Tools which came up with a Black Pudding. Everyone was a level 3 apart from my roommate who was level 2. They quickly realised that their steel blades would corrode when they hit the slime, and the wizard wasn't doing enough damage to kill it swiftly, purely through his spells. They noticed how the floor was made of stone and it wasn't being corroded by the slime. For 10 minutes, they talked together to figure out how they were going to fashion a makeshift catapult to fling rocks at the slime and the Wizard would use mage hand to lift rocks and throw them at it too. The slime was on very slow health after their turns had passed, but I rolled to decide who it would target and it landed on my roommate. The damage completely annihilated him, leaving him incapacitated and unfortunately he was next in initiative order.
He made his death saving throws: 2 fails, 2 successes. It came down to one last throw. Everyone was hunched round the table holding their head and pulling their hair. Even I as the DM was shitting it. He rolled the dice... 2. Everyone just sat in shock. My GF turned round to me and said, "Is he dead??". I just stared at the dice knowing one of my players had now died. I knew I couldn't change the outcome, but perhaps I had already preemptively done so when we first started playing. I had given my roommate inspiration for roleplaying well when we started, and he hadn't used it since. R turned round to him and said, you have inspiration, can you use it for advantage? Everyone turned to me. I wasn't sure to be honest. I thought it gave a +1 to dice rolls but I'd always thought that was a bit shit in comparison anyway. I just made a decision and said, "Yeah you can use it for advantage."
Hope was restored to the party, but now everyone was even more on edge. I looked around at their faces and I saw genuine terror. My friend rolled the dice one last time... 19!! He'd managed to save himself when all hope had been lost! The entire party roared with happiness and cheers. Everyone was nearly shaking at the death of Mr. Frug G-Nome, and that's when I realised this might possibly be the best game ever. The Wizard finished off the slime and the Homonculus stabilsed my roommate.
That was the end of our second session, and I think my party now knows that they are not safe from death, and their fate can be decided between a single dice roll.
Our last session was in Waterdeep, one of my friends is trying her hand at DMing for the first time and chose to run us through Dragon Heist.
The game was slow as we had just finished a quest for one of the factions in town and had to head back to our new home and do some renovations. I was training my new pet, Meatball, a gazer familiar to be an epic rat catcher as someone was trying to sabotage out business. One of the other girls was taking some time cleaning up the second floor of the home, and the other two girls were wrapping up their visit to the faction leader. A lot of RP was to be had between the Allesta and Sieravi as they tried to figure out their different walks in life. I spent a lot of time just gathering information from my faction, and figuring out where all the rats were coming from. Eventually Sieravi decided to look at the location I felt was the source of the rats and found out that...well...were-rats are a thing. We ended the game with Sieravi being approached by 3 were-rats and all alone.
The highlight of the day was an improptu singalong....(clip)
I had a unique opportunity in that I was able to run a side mission for a regular who had missed our previous session. Only one other player was available and he played an alternate character.
So the dragon-born Paladin was part of the party that had just fought Venomfang in Thundertree. I had him take off in pursuit of the dragon to explain his absence. So as he is traveling through Neverwinter Woods, he comes across an elf running full-tilt away from something directly at him. He yells to the Paladin “RUN!! Minotaur!!” Guess what emerges from the far tree line? Yup, a Minotaur. And yes, I used the encounter of the week for the Lost Minotaur. Thankfully, the two were able to talk to Gulgarthos after he slipped on a rock he couldn’t see as his eyes were adjusting still to the surface world. The elf -an Arcane Trickster - cast some laughing enchantment on him which helped to settle the large beast to talk to.
The next day, the travelers are beset by a Forest Troll (Ultimate Bestiary Revenge of the Horde). The dragon-born opened up with his fire breath, followed by the Minotaur’s large Great Axe. The Trickster cast fog but it obscured everyone’s vision. Since the troll is as y’all as some trees, he attacked with disadvantage. I used the encounter as a means to instill some knowledge about trolls and their vulnerabilities to acid and fire. It took several rounds but eventually the party was able to overcome the troll’s regeneration with the use of Searing Smite igniting on fire.
Later, the adventurers hear a voice in their heads pleading for help. The trio come across a unicorn that is badly wounded, it’s horn having been broken off. It lays near a body of water where a green dragon - Venomfang - is drinking from. The Paladin confirms that it is his quarry by observing the wounds it has which heal up. Additionally, the dragon seems to grow in size as if he matured (from young to adult). Instead of engaging the dragon, the party heeded the Paladin’s advice as they believed they were outmatched. Thankfully the dragon flies off, allowing for the team to intervene and save the unicorn. Enter the Dying Unicorn encounter of the week :)
I had the waters being tainted by the dragon as he drank from the spring so the characters had to purify it using the puzzle. I allowed the Trickster to create an illusion of an exact replica of the statue of Ehlonna so they could read about the druids, but they still had to cross the water to get to the jugs. The team was able to solve the puzzle in 15 rounds and saved Vassorum. So they were awarded the quiver and instead of the unicorn joining them for a month, she touched her now healed horn to the statue and an Aasimar Warlock of the Celestial appeared, pledging his service to them for a month.
So now, the Paladin is bringing 2 more NPCs to the Phandelver Mine and the Arcana Trickster alt is going to hang out in Phandalin for now.
The party had a great battle where they supported about thirty paladins against several hundred undead and some living mercenaries outside the paladins' mountain temple. This followed a skill challenge that the party did wonderfully on. In the end, the party's minotaur won a cursed sword in battle and is probably going to sell his soul to Baphomet in exchange for power in this world. Not necessarily the direction I was expecting, but I'm going to lean in :)
Here's what the sword looks like, by the way:
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I had planned our session to dive into one of Haeck's Encounters of the Week, but just as our session started, the group decided to sit down and really consider their course of action. They thought about all the clues they've received, all the locations they have reasons to go to. They began to consider not going where they were directed to, but where they wanted to go, and where they felt they could have the biggest impact.
It made me so happy. It was the first example of them considering what I've put forth and creating their own plans, rather than being reactionary to everything an NPC says or does.
It also meant I didn't get to do that Encounter of the Week, which I was rather looking forward to! lol
Their directed course was to head into the mountains and see if there are some stone giants that could potentially be leveraged into their conflict with a hill giant and hobgoblin army, with the side objective of finding an old artificer's gnomish instructor who can potentially help shore up defenses. What they considered was that there were no more scouts watching this enemy force's movements, and there was some bravado talk about maybe dealing with their leader directly. Additionally, they had a lead to this cult they're looking to thwart, that a major player was working behind the scenes in a mountaintop city-state of the aarakocra. Lot of RP dialogue about that being a major goal of theirs, but would it be worth leaving these local agrarian settlements at the mercy of an enemy? And don't forget, they had two character-driven quests. The zealot barbarian needed to find her hunter-god's raven before others of that god's court did, if she is to ensure that she gets to lead the next wild hunt rather than potentially falling prey to it. The sorceress had relied upon her researcher background to glean the important detail that a trio of wizards at a not-quite-distant port city might know more about the mysterious and evil control-glyph that has bound murdered souls to the warlock warforged's chassis.
The group decided that these other missions, while more important to them, must be sidelined for now. They couldn't just leave the locals to be slaughtered. With that, they decided to head directly toward the threat. Thanks to some cautious movements, acceptable stealth rolls and a druid acting as a wild-shaped scout, they did locate what they believe is the main war-camp, and it shook them. Based off of what they could see, from their ground-based perspective looking in along one side of the camp, they've made assumptions about the size of the army. I'm not saying they're wrong in that assumption, only that they might be soon gaining access to an aerial-based perspective that could affect their findings.
Gaining a new appreciation for the scale of the threat posed, they once again re-evaluate their plans. Due to some competent lore checks, they were reminded that something had occurred that threw the entire giant hierarchy into a state of flux. That the hill giants sit at the bottom, and that the stone giants directly above them might be interested in keeping them in their place.
So the session ended with them confirming that they were to return to the path they were originally on, but it was super cool for me to finally experience players choosing to disregard the rails. I'm still a new DM, started almost exactly a year ago. They asked me afterward, out of game, what kind of consequences would there be if they decided to do things out of order, such as if they had decided to start with one of their other quests rather than continuing to deal with the local threat.
My answer was that there was no consequences per se, but that events would unfold with or without them. If you leave the locals to their fates, when you return you might find the land overrun or maybe you'll find the last surviving, but steadfastly victorious locals. If you pursue this cult in the city-state, perhaps you'll interrupt their plans before they come to fruition. If you wait to deal with the local threat first, perhaps the cult gets further along in their plans.