1) Using Blackrazor (I think that's what it's called) the rogue cut his way out of a purple worm, gaining about 200 temporary hit points and the energy of a squirrel on caffene.
2) We met with an eye tyrant and tried to enlist his help in gaining a beholder's eye (not necessarily his) but something got lost in translation between us, the eye tyrant and his minion. Never rely on minions, man.
3) After straight up murdering the minion, the wizard used his signature fireball, carefully sculpting it around the party...but not the flammable bridge we were standing on.
4) The barbarian and bard flew out of danger, the warlock/fighter and wizard teleported, the rogue managed to throw his grappling hook around one of the eye tyrant's eye stalks and I...kept falling to my doom. Luckily, a well-aimed gust of wind softened my fall and I only lost 30 hit points instead of 60.
5) The barbarian got charmed, but thanks to a misunderstanding of beholders and their beams I used dispel magic and he got back on our side.
6) With my last ounce of strength, I managed to hurl a guiding bolt at the tyrant. Nat. 20. He did a dead.
7) After a long rest, we loaded up our wagon with loot and the eye we had come for and headed out. As we passed an underground lake, we noticed a light. The light got bigger, followed by ripples and then...DEMOGORGON. I've got two weeks of Demogorgon-based anxiety to deal with now.
The party fought some strange half machine, half monsters only to be interrupted by some Gnomes. When the party realized they were from Watford they got rather frustrated. The two Gnomes, Tik and Tak, who've been nothing but walking accidents since they've crossed paths with the party are originally from Watford. The party initially thought the creatures were something the Gnomes invented, only to find out that the creatures were something that escaped from containment. The Gnomes explained that they found these things from meteor impact craters and were trying to figure out what they were.
From there the party ran into a couple Dragonborn who were out hunting for their tribe. They invited the group to visit their shaman since one of the players was a Warlock and the shaman was supposed to have power to remove the connection. The group made friends with the tribe while the Warlock talked with the shaman, the Half-Elf was making a fool of herself trying to learn Draconic. After a long conversation with the shaman, the warlock found herself wondering if it would be a good idea to sever the connection with her patron. A struggle for her since the patron promised to help her find answers, helped her gain power, and assisted the party during a difficult time.
Last session my campaign's party traveled to a deep jungle in search of an old overgrown temple. When they got there, they found a petrified treasure hunter and restored him. He had a map to a treasure in the temple as well as a riddle for gaining entry to it. The riddle told a story of a goddess who intervened to try to resolve a conflict between the Earth and the sea. By following the clues in each line of the poem, the party was able to recreate the story and open an entrance to the temple. Along the way, they activated an earth and water elemental and a handful of gargoyles they had to fight.
Now the battle is over and they are ready to move into the temple itself along with the rescued treasure hunter.
EDIT: Oh, and one party member sold his soul to Baphomet in exchange for the ability to use a cursed sword. We will see how that plays out.
So I'm having my players play in Sword Coast for awhile as I build a new campaign, and they're looking for these great scrolls of power and such. They just miss one, and head towards a lawless city nearby, where they think the thieves' took it. The party gets to the city gates and proceed to be questioned by the guards, and two robed individuals. The party comes forward and a few say their real names as they are recorded, and others say names such as Meatorias Balleroni or ***** Miggy. The two robed individuals, who were Red Wizards of Thay, were not entertained.
This goes on for a bit longer until one of the wizards cast suggestion on one of the members and gets the real names of the others, as well as because of this, one individual was exempt from entering the city, and everyone's toll fee was increased to 500 gold. Now what happened afterwards, was purely fantastic.
The party decided to come "clean" and declare that they were a band of performers, with one of the thieves that they had tied to their horse as their manager. They then begun to play with what instruments the bard had at his disposal. I made everyone roll a separate performance check, (This being the first time in the whole wide world that this ability is used) and to my honest surprise, there were two natural 20's and luckily enough, everyone else rolled above a 20 as well.
And so birth the band that would ripple throughout Faerun, Death Core Hell.
The Monk began to bang upon his drums as if he was battering his foes with his calloused hands, and with that steady tempo came the methodical, yet chaotic, shouts and screams from his trained vocal cords
The Ranger, playing off of the monk, let out bellowing roars that rivaled that of an ancient red dragon as he met with the monk's ferocity tenfold.
The Wizard created illusions of all sensory kinds, as an massive red dragon and an goliath sized ape became intertwined in a duet of death and carnage.
The Bard...who was honestly shocked at the hidden potential of those around him, strummed his harp as an extension of himself. As the bard created a daring harmony and corralled all of the other members into the final throws of the performance.
With this, the Red Wizards dropped the toll, and were surprised of the party's skills, and deemed that the only damage that they could do was take everyone's breath away.
im running a homebrew with light sci fi elements think floating islands and airships winth many robots. i start up a one shot for my entire party and have them use their back up characters with the intent to either kill them all or scare them off (scary final boss time). they are sent to rescue a glowing slave girl from a evil cult of Shar the god of darkness and loss. admittadly i dont know much here and go very literal with a room of magical darkenss and graveyards, but no one talks about it so i think im fine. then they find a grung in a cage, not the target but they free it any ways.
me: fine the grung is free, it reaches up to thank you with a hand shake, telling the party where the target is.
player: i want to crush its hand with my pure strength. rolls a nat 1
me : the grung relises what you are trying to do and crushes your hand instead
player 2: i want to scare it, rolls a nat 20
me: the grung goes back in the cage and tries to fix the lock
after this the party goes to a back room, nothing in there except this 15 foot wide crate. no traps are found, and no clear way the crate got here. one of the party members was using divine sense this whole time and knows that the girl is here somwhere and since the only thing in the room is a massive crate he goes to knock on it.
knock once, crate knocks twice
Player 1: knock twice if you can hear us, knocks 3 times
player 2: same thing if your a assimar girl, (assuming the glowing girl is assimar) knocks 5 times
at this time the party is trying to determine why the thing in the box isnt listening, and the first 2 players are still trying to do knock question. the third player rolls to listen to the crate, his ear to the box. rolls a 16 hears scratching along with the knocking, and tells the party.
the party gets into battle stations, they tell me that they are going to mess up whatever is inside the box, no questions asked while the paladin goes to break it open.
i smile a evil smile, inside the box is a huge black dragon, somwhat friendly (not the true bad but still has the target with him, was gonna have them fight some cultists to bargain with the dragon but this works too). rolls initiatives it is now a party of 3 versus a mature black dragon.
it opens with its breath attack and frightfull presence followed up with a claw attack. everyone is still standing and mostly unafraid paladin takes 44 damage
paladin does nat 20 doing 53 points of damage in a single turn after tanking all that damage, swashbulcker does 25 points, and gunslinger home brew misses
dragon lost a third of its hp in a turn so it starts fighting tooth and nail, literally. but that paladin is a tanky boy (34 damage and 5 remaining) and continues to practcally solo the poor beast
paladin does another nat 20 doing 61 points of damage, swashbuckler climbs on its back and attempts to poison it with grung juice (he wants a pet dragon) and fails, gunslinger goes for the kill does 25 damage
dragon on its last 5 hp is desperate with no escape (the door out is too small and the room is made of strong metals) it tries to to a power move to back everyone off, rolls a nat one and knocks self out, gunslinger finishes it off.
over the course of 3 turns the party did indeed mess up that dragon brutally and rescued the target. mission success
The biggest thing that happened in our last session was our sorcerer (me) finally learned her lesson about using AOE spells when she dropped a fireball on the long death monk we were fighting and caught the rest of the party in the blast, fully killing our only healer. Maybe now Raksha will think before she explodes. Maybe.
DMing some new players through LMOP. I'm a new DM to D&D myself. Absolutely fantastic session last night. We currently do Tuesday nights, so we only have about 2 hours max per session. The moment it ended, the players started checking their calendars to see when we could make a longer session! I'm really happy and raring to go for the next one. :)
This was the 4th session and the group have just reached Phandalin for the first time. Quick(ish) summary and a few DM things I tried out.
Last session, they managed to kill Klarg, and interrogated him as he lay dying. So far, they only know the Black Spider ordered Klarg send Gundren to him. As he breathed his last, he smiled, a trickle of blood appearing at the corner of his mouth and whispered: "You don't stand a chance against the Black Spider."
We picked up on them standing around Klarg's corpse. After finding his stash (their goblin companion, Oogion looked at the jade frog statuette and found it was some sort of key), they headed straight to Barthen's Provisions to drop off the wagon supplies. Having noticed that the townspeople were acting strangely, they asked Barthen about it. He ushered them into the backroom of his shop and told them about the Redbrand bandit threat.
Tired from their encounter with Klarg and the Cragmaw goblins, they met with Sildar in the Stonehill Inn. Sildar told them about the Alliance's interest in the Lost Mine of Phandelver and that he was there to establish an Alliance presence in the territory. He also let them know that his old Alliance contact, Iarno Albrek was nowhere to be found, asking them to look into the matter.
The paladin in the group tried to persuade Sildar to help them defeat the Redbrands, saying that this will surely turn up a lead on the whereabouts of Gundren Rockseeker. In my head, Sildar wasn't about to mess around with some bandits whilst there was Alliance business to take care of, so I set the DC pretty high. Paladin rolls a natural 20. Cue me just laughing behind my DM screen and my players all saying "... that wasn't supposed to happen, was it?" They offered to "rewind" and not persuade Sildar but I told them no, it's their story and I can roll with it, I just really wasn't expecting a natural 20.
So, Sildar agreed to help them once they had rested for the night. It was then that the rogue noticed a woman in the corner of the inn staring at her. It turned out to be Halia Thornton (who Barthen had warned them to leave well alone). When Halia was dismissive of the paladin when the party asked why she was watching them, he drew his sword and screamed "Give me the information if you value your life!". Possibly one for the tavern of stupidity. Nevertheless, Halia calmly asked them to buy her a mead and went on to tell them of a secret entrance into the Redbrand hideout and that she would pay well for them to dispose of the leader, Glass Staff.
The rogue noticed Halia tapping her glass, seemingly absentmindedly to the rest, but speaking to her in thieves' cant. I wrote the message and handed the player a piece of paper, because she's the only one who can speak it. The message: "Bring me the Black Spider. Alive."
So, no combat in this one but instead using the module to get everyone used to social encounters. A few things that worked, and some I think didn't:
- Playing around with thieves' cant is really fun! I like the idea of one PC being able to interact in this way with NPCs, especially when she is playing a shadowy thief character. Will she attempt to take the Black Spider alive and bring her to Halia? Will she share this message with the other PCs? The player enjoyed using one of her skills and having a secret mission available, and has also not shared the message with the others. The other two players were both intrigued too. I won't be passing notes at every session, but I'm happy with how this turned out.
- Cause and effect.
I'm trying to teach the players that actions have consequences. Drawing your sword in a tavern full of bandit-plagued townspeople isn't going to go over so well. I did explain after the session had wrapped up that they should consider how actions like this, and walking around town with a goblin in tow could change how they are received by certain NPCs.
- Breadcrumbs and "save for later" plot devices.
I played around with giving out hints from NPCs and throwing in potential plot devices I can use later on. They received different stories about the Redbrands from different NPCs, which has seen the players keen to deal with them. I am using Sildar's talks with the party to take stock of where we are and what we know about the well of spells, Gundren's whereabouts and the Black Spider. It is allowing the party to bounce ideas off him and formulate a plan for what to do next, without me having to railroad them.
Halia Thornton is a great character to play, she's beautiful, mysterious and has her own ulterior motives for asking the party to deal with the Redbrands.
Making the jade frog a key was a spur of the moment decision. I don't actually know what it unlocks, but it won't have anything to do with the mines. I quite like the Humblewood setting, so it could be one of several keys to open a portal to that world for a later campaign ... whatever I use it for, the party are keeping it for later.
- Helping the players settle in
I'm keen to involve everyone, and want to provide plenty of chances for them to use their skills. Each session I introduce new rules, so this time we also used inspiration for the first time. I find this approach is helping them understand the game, and it's not putting too much pressure on me to memorize the PHB. It also meant that the players are using their traits and flaws etc. and getting to know their characters better.
And the things to improve upon:
- I'm crap at box text.
I like reading ahead and knowing the module's story, but I found that breaking off and reading the box text when they entered Phandalin was clunky. I need to get better at reading the box text as I can see that it's useful.
- Making sure every player is engaged.
Everyone had a great session and most importantly, had fun. I do however need to be careful to engage everyone equally, as the dwarf fighter wanted to talk to more NPCs in the tavern, only for the paladin to clear the place out by drawing his sword. I won't overcompensate, but I can do better to make sure everyone is involved.
Next week, I think we'll start by them waking up to a molotov being thrown through the tavern window. There's a group of Redbrands outside ...
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Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
This was a pretty fun session. The players just hit level seven at the end of last session. They are in the underdark and to the north is a duergar city. To the south is a hobgoblin outpost on the shore of a massive underground lake. The party has determined that the hobgoblins are fairly recent additions to the area and they are trading slaves and drugs with the duergar in exchange for military equipment. The party decided they have had enough of the hobgoblins.
This entire four hour session was a single battle, which is extremely unusual for this group. Probably half an hour of planning and then three and a half hours of straight-up fighting. They attacked the outpost cleverly and when it was all said and done, the outpost was a smoking wreck with 27 dead hobgoblin corpses, two of which were hobgoblin captains, two hobgoblin devastators, and a hobgoblin warlord. The party's tank was hurt bad enough that he had to be evacuated via dimension door and the party's rogue, who was caught out by himself, was knocked unconscious and failed two death saves before someone was able to get to him to heal him.
All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon of dice and beers.
I just ran a 45-minute introductory one-shot for my kids. They're 11 and 5 years old respectively, neither have ever done any role-playing games, though they've played the odd board game.
I sit here stunned and proud beyond belief at how well they took to it - particularly my 5-year-old boy, who went from killing a panther while yelling "You got rekt!" with a gleeful expression on his face to then trying to befriend the evil wizard and promise to be his friend...literal tears in my eyes as he did all of this completely in-character with voice and everything.
Of course his older sister was the classic paranoid, distrust-everything player and kept coming up with wild conspiracy theories about everything that was going-on!
So, I'm playing a 1st Level Drow Fighter, and in a huge group of atleast 8 players. Our group has been tasked with clearing out some old decrepit mansion by the City Watch, and our second fighter moves up to the door to scout things out.
He's immediately attacked by two sets of animated armor, which both take surprise multi - attacks, knocking him down almost instantly. The rest of the party descends into the entrance hall and a flurry of spells and sword ensues as more enchanted armor appears to the fray. Our Bard was a doctor, and luckily was able to stabilize the Fighter and the Cleric got him up with healing word. You'd think 8 - 10 people wouldn't have much trouble fighting 4 sets of animated armor, but it took us about an hour to kill all of them, thanks to some really bad rolls. As the fight was wrapping up, I decided to run past into the next room. I took an opportunity attack, but sustained some minor damage so I kept going.
I came into this large dining room, with ornate chairs and chandeliers and everything. There are some doors, but mainly just a large archway leading into a darkened hallway. Past that, in an almost entirely dark room, I saw a glittering glass eye - an item we had been tasked with retreating. So, I come into the room, and I fail on a Wisdom save, and subsequently stunned. I then 'feel a sharp pain in my neck, everything goes black, and I die.'
Keep in mind, I was a greedy, socially inept chaotic neutral drow.
No death saves, no damage rolls, just instantly killed.
Was I in the wrong here?
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CHARACTERS
Bakreag Ingotheart [Lvl. 1] Mountain Dwarf Paladin [Out of The Abyss PbP]
Well, it depends. How did you die? Do you know? Maybe there was an enemy in there, and you weren’t supposed to be in there yet. You were supposed to be fighting the armor, so you go in there, something casts a spell (ghost! Spooky!) and kills you, since you’re all alone, incapacitated, and stunned. It’s not a matter of why, (probably because you ran into a separate room while your team was fighting for their lives), but how.
For some elaboration, the rest of the group ended up finding a couple of Cultist Fanatics in there and began battling it out with them. But even then, I was never told to mark off death throws, and to my knowledge, no damage was ever rolled. I'm not mad that I died, as that character wasn't even developed, I'm just perplexed as to how. I didn't want to argue with the DM and hold up the session, but I won't even have a chance to discuss it because he's not going to be present this week and I'm probably just going to roll up a new character with a new DM. (I play in some public run sessions at my local library, so they have multiple people to run the game on hand.)
Also, I rushed into the other room because my character was missing longbow shots left and right, and the combat had grinder to a halt, and I was just generally curious. Again, I don't think my character (considering race traits and alignments) would have any qualms leaving such a large group. Keep in mind, we were winning the fight by a large margin, but it was going very slowly.
And he said to me afterwards: "Well, I don't usually like killing off PCs, but you rushed in, so..."
If the wisdom save was for a paralyzation effect, and a melee opponent had two attacks on you, the two attacks would crit and so do 2 failed death saves each, killing you. Much more likely it was a cult leader, the save was for paralyzation then they hit you with cause wounds, it dealt 3d10, doubled for the crit, average being 33, instant death no death saves, and with no rolls the encounter isnt given away and the party are now going to be more cautious about how they proceed. The neck thing is a worry. If the wisdom save was for a vampirespawns charm, and the neck pain was it biting then, once again the damage will likely automatically kill a first level character due to exceeding max hits. The concern over this is even a nine man party is likely to die like cattle to the slaughter attacking a spawn if they are level 1.
Lots of ways to die after failing a wisdom save. They are one of the ‘Big Three’ - most common saves-, Constitution, Wisdom, Dexterity. Wisdom is usually most powerful, as it can knock you unconscious instantly, depending on what it is.
The Sharp Pain could be anything from Mind Flayers, Magic Spells, Cultist Stabbing, Zombies, Vampires, etc. There’s no way to tell until you continue the campaign. It probably had a reason, and you just don’t know it yet.
From what I can tell, it was a Cultist stabbing. It's just the DM never communicated to me how I died, even after the session. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Revealing how you died when the demise was unobserved and the party would explore the area later is impossible if your DM wants to keep the suspense. Splitting the party into groups that cant support each other is often a dangerous or out right bad idea. Unfortunately this appears to have been one of those times for you. Try not to take umbrage with the DM keeping the mystery alive, after all they are your story teller and theater director all rolled into one.
Have fun next time, however and whatever you play :)
#edit - overkill damage is a fact of life at low levels, and each time it happens, yup its automatic death, sucks but its part of the game.
Well, we had our final session of the campaign over the weekend. It was something!
Backstory: Hundreds of years ago, a god of death named Ruedi tried to, essentially, obliterate the distinction between life and death and keep the whole world in an eternal stasis. He was killed, but it turns out he was only mostly dead, and so he (with his cultists) tried to reanimate himself so he could finish what he started. We intrepid adventurers needed to stop him!
Ruedi needed his Obsidian Regalia to fully reanimate: the Orchid, the Crown, the Scythe, and the Horns. He got ahold of the Orchid, but we were able to collect the rest. My necromancer, Morrigan Devlin, had the Scythe; her partner, the vampire-hunting ranger Hector Diversey, had the Horns; the paladin of Pelor, Sir Lowell Lestrange, had the Crown. We entered the realm of Ruedi; he was trying to use the Orchid to open a portal to the material realm, and we had to stop him. An NPC cleric who was allied with us, Maester Weimar, explained that we needed to use the Regalia to stop him; he also would use a powerful magic item to cause Ruedi's realm to collapse on itself, thus killing him for good. Ideally we'd get out before that happened.
Before we confronted Ruedi, I summoned a Phantom Steed to ride, and cast Tenser's Transformation so I'd be able to wield the Scythe effectively. ("And I beheld a rider on a pale horse, and the rider's name was Death.") We confronted Ruedi as he was opening the portal, attacking him before he was able to go through. As we attacked, Maester Weimar began his ritual to destroy Ruedi's realm.
My party members moved in to melee range and started whaling on Ruedi - however, he could perform a melee attack against them at the end of their turn as a legendary action. To avoid his fearsome blows, I used my phantom steed to perform ride-by attacks - and got a few critical hits on him in the process! Who knew a wizard could be such a bruiser. Ruedi released a cloud of noxious gas (I think it was Cloudkill, but I'm not positive) that proved to be a big problem, as most of the party had Concentration spells going and none of us had a spell to blow the cloud away. (Whoops.) Fortunately, Torgga Ironfist, our cleric, pulled out a Mass Heal that kept us all running at full steam.
We managed to distract Ruedi long enough for Maester Weimar to complete his ritual, sacrificing himself in the process. We were all wracked with pain as the realm started collapsing, rending us apart on the molecular level. But Ruedi still had the opportunity to escape through his portal, so we couldn't flee yet. We needed to somehow ensure he stayed put as his realm collapsed. At this point, our regular weapons were no longer affecting Ruedi - only the Obsidian Regalia was effective. Hector gored Ruedi with the Horns and grappled him to keep him in place; Sir Lowell used the spiked tines of the Crown to stab Ruedi as well; finally, I swooped in with the Scythe and dug it into Ruedi's flesh. The whole party dogpiled on the god to keep him from escaping. He tried to shake us off; at this point I'd lost Concentration on Tenser's Transformation, meaning my Strength save was literally +0, but I got a critical success and managed to hang on!
At the last minute, as the realm fell apart, I pulled out my trump card: Wish. I told the DM I wanted to use Wish to get us back to the material plane. In response, the DM explained that we all had a choice: either we could have our characters die heroically and be remembered as heroes, or we could escape the dying realm... at a cost. Most of the players chose to die heroically, but Morrigan and Hector had each promised the other that they wouldn't die, no matter what, so Hector's player and I chose to escape at a cost.
And so, by tapping into the power of the Obsidian Regalia, Morrigan and Hector were able to return to the material plane, but they had been forever changed by the necrotic energies that allowed them to escape. They now needed to feast on the living - Morrigan needed to feast on magic-users in particular to sustain her arcane energies; while their comrades were hailed as heroes and spoken of with reverence, Morrigan and Hector's names were spoken only in nervous whispers, or as a curse.
I am very excited to have them come back as villains in the next game we do.
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"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
I ran a quick one-on-one with a nephew who plays a lizardman druid. The chief druid is preparing him to study the higher mysteries by sending him on a series of short quests based on the different druidic circles. He climbed a mountain, talked to an old hermit, met Sobek the Crocodile God and fought a vampire mist. It was all loosely based on "The Strange High House in the Mists." That was the Dream circle. For the Land circle, I was going to run the U series from Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I think it probably plays a lot different with a lizardman PC.
I think it was a little trippy/talky/boring for him, so I guess it's back to the raging gang war in the city.
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So um, some things happened this session.
1) Using Blackrazor (I think that's what it's called) the rogue cut his way out of a purple worm, gaining about 200 temporary hit points and the energy of a squirrel on caffene.
2) We met with an eye tyrant and tried to enlist his help in gaining a beholder's eye (not necessarily his) but something got lost in translation between us, the eye tyrant and his minion. Never rely on minions, man.
3) After straight up murdering the minion, the wizard used his signature fireball, carefully sculpting it around the party...but not the flammable bridge we were standing on.
4) The barbarian and bard flew out of danger, the warlock/fighter and wizard teleported, the rogue managed to throw his grappling hook around one of the eye tyrant's eye stalks and I...kept falling to my doom. Luckily, a well-aimed gust of wind softened my fall and I only lost 30 hit points instead of 60.
5) The barbarian got charmed, but thanks to a misunderstanding of beholders and their beams I used dispel magic and he got back on our side.
6) With my last ounce of strength, I managed to hurl a guiding bolt at the tyrant. Nat. 20. He did a dead.
7) After a long rest, we loaded up our wagon with loot and the eye we had come for and headed out. As we passed an underground lake, we noticed a light. The light got bigger, followed by ripples and then...DEMOGORGON. I've got two weeks of Demogorgon-based anxiety to deal with now.
The party fought some strange half machine, half monsters only to be interrupted by some Gnomes. When the party realized they were from Watford they got rather frustrated. The two Gnomes, Tik and Tak, who've been nothing but walking accidents since they've crossed paths with the party are originally from Watford. The party initially thought the creatures were something the Gnomes invented, only to find out that the creatures were something that escaped from containment. The Gnomes explained that they found these things from meteor impact craters and were trying to figure out what they were.
From there the party ran into a couple Dragonborn who were out hunting for their tribe. They invited the group to visit their shaman since one of the players was a Warlock and the shaman was supposed to have power to remove the connection. The group made friends with the tribe while the Warlock talked with the shaman, the Half-Elf was making a fool of herself trying to learn Draconic. After a long conversation with the shaman, the warlock found herself wondering if it would be a good idea to sever the connection with her patron. A struggle for her since the patron promised to help her find answers, helped her gain power, and assisted the party during a difficult time.
Last session my campaign's party traveled to a deep jungle in search of an old overgrown temple. When they got there, they found a petrified treasure hunter and restored him. He had a map to a treasure in the temple as well as a riddle for gaining entry to it. The riddle told a story of a goddess who intervened to try to resolve a conflict between the Earth and the sea. By following the clues in each line of the poem, the party was able to recreate the story and open an entrance to the temple. Along the way, they activated an earth and water elemental and a handful of gargoyles they had to fight.
Now the battle is over and they are ready to move into the temple itself along with the rescued treasure hunter.
EDIT: Oh, and one party member sold his soul to Baphomet in exchange for the ability to use a cursed sword. We will see how that plays out.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
So I'm having my players play in Sword Coast for awhile as I build a new campaign, and they're looking for these great scrolls of power and such. They just miss one, and head towards a lawless city nearby, where they think the thieves' took it. The party gets to the city gates and proceed to be questioned by the guards, and two robed individuals. The party comes forward and a few say their real names as they are recorded, and others say names such as Meatorias Balleroni or ***** Miggy. The two robed individuals, who were Red Wizards of Thay, were not entertained.
This goes on for a bit longer until one of the wizards cast suggestion on one of the members and gets the real names of the others, as well as because of this, one individual was exempt from entering the city, and everyone's toll fee was increased to 500 gold. Now what happened afterwards, was purely fantastic.
The party decided to come "clean" and declare that they were a band of performers, with one of the thieves that they had tied to their horse as their manager. They then begun to play with what instruments the bard had at his disposal. I made everyone roll a separate performance check, (This being the first time in the whole wide world that this ability is used) and to my honest surprise, there were two natural 20's and luckily enough, everyone else rolled above a 20 as well.
And so birth the band that would ripple throughout Faerun, Death Core Hell.
The Monk began to bang upon his drums as if he was battering his foes with his calloused hands, and with that steady tempo came the methodical, yet chaotic, shouts and screams from his trained vocal cords
The Ranger, playing off of the monk, let out bellowing roars that rivaled that of an ancient red dragon as he met with the monk's ferocity tenfold.
The Wizard created illusions of all sensory kinds, as an massive red dragon and an goliath sized ape became intertwined in a duet of death and carnage.
The Bard...who was honestly shocked at the hidden potential of those around him, strummed his harp as an extension of himself. As the bard created a daring harmony and corralled all of the other members into the final throws of the performance.
With this, the Red Wizards dropped the toll, and were surprised of the party's skills, and deemed that the only damage that they could do was take everyone's breath away.
im running a homebrew with light sci fi elements think floating islands and airships winth many robots. i start up a one shot for my entire party and have them use their back up characters with the intent to either kill them all or scare them off (scary final boss time). they are sent to rescue a glowing slave girl from a evil cult of Shar the god of darkness and loss. admittadly i dont know much here and go very literal with a room of magical darkenss and graveyards, but no one talks about it so i think im fine. then they find a grung in a cage, not the target but they free it any ways.
me: fine the grung is free, it reaches up to thank you with a hand shake, telling the party where the target is.
player: i want to crush its hand with my pure strength. rolls a nat 1
me : the grung relises what you are trying to do and crushes your hand instead
player 2: i want to scare it, rolls a nat 20
me: the grung goes back in the cage and tries to fix the lock
after this the party goes to a back room, nothing in there except this 15 foot wide crate. no traps are found, and no clear way the crate got here. one of the party members was using divine sense this whole time and knows that the girl is here somwhere and since the only thing in the room is a massive crate he goes to knock on it.
knock once, crate knocks twice
Player 1: knock twice if you can hear us, knocks 3 times
player 2: same thing if your a assimar girl, (assuming the glowing girl is assimar) knocks 5 times
at this time the party is trying to determine why the thing in the box isnt listening, and the first 2 players are still trying to do knock question. the third player rolls to listen to the crate, his ear to the box. rolls a 16 hears scratching along with the knocking, and tells the party.
the party gets into battle stations, they tell me that they are going to mess up whatever is inside the box, no questions asked while the paladin goes to break it open.
i smile a evil smile, inside the box is a huge black dragon, somwhat friendly (not the true bad but still has the target with him, was gonna have them fight some cultists to bargain with the dragon but this works too). rolls initiatives it is now a party of 3 versus a mature black dragon.
it opens with its breath attack and frightfull presence followed up with a claw attack. everyone is still standing and mostly unafraid paladin takes 44 damage
paladin does nat 20 doing 53 points of damage in a single turn after tanking all that damage, swashbulcker does 25 points, and gunslinger home brew misses
dragon lost a third of its hp in a turn so it starts fighting tooth and nail, literally. but that paladin is a tanky boy (34 damage and 5 remaining) and continues to practcally solo the poor beast
paladin does another nat 20 doing 61 points of damage, swashbuckler climbs on its back and attempts to poison it with grung juice (he wants a pet dragon) and fails, gunslinger goes for the kill does 25 damage
dragon on its last 5 hp is desperate with no escape (the door out is too small and the room is made of strong metals) it tries to to a power move to back everyone off, rolls a nat one and knocks self out, gunslinger finishes it off.
over the course of 3 turns the party did indeed mess up that dragon brutally and rescued the target. mission success
Thanks for making me smile, dude! :)
The biggest thing that happened in our last session was our sorcerer (me) finally learned her lesson about using AOE spells when she dropped a fireball on the long death monk we were fighting and caught the rest of the party in the blast, fully killing our only healer. Maybe now Raksha will think before she explodes. Maybe.
DMing some new players through LMOP. I'm a new DM to D&D myself. Absolutely fantastic session last night. We currently do Tuesday nights, so we only have about 2 hours max per session. The moment it ended, the players started checking their calendars to see when we could make a longer session! I'm really happy and raring to go for the next one. :)
This was the 4th session and the group have just reached Phandalin for the first time. Quick(ish) summary and a few DM things I tried out.
Last session, they managed to kill Klarg, and interrogated him as he lay dying. So far, they only know the Black Spider ordered Klarg send Gundren to him. As he breathed his last, he smiled, a trickle of blood appearing at the corner of his mouth and whispered: "You don't stand a chance against the Black Spider."
We picked up on them standing around Klarg's corpse. After finding his stash (their goblin companion, Oogion looked at the jade frog statuette and found it was some sort of key), they headed straight to Barthen's Provisions to drop off the wagon supplies. Having noticed that the townspeople were acting strangely, they asked Barthen about it. He ushered them into the backroom of his shop and told them about the Redbrand bandit threat.
Tired from their encounter with Klarg and the Cragmaw goblins, they met with Sildar in the Stonehill Inn. Sildar told them about the Alliance's interest in the Lost Mine of Phandelver and that he was there to establish an Alliance presence in the territory. He also let them know that his old Alliance contact, Iarno Albrek was nowhere to be found, asking them to look into the matter.
The paladin in the group tried to persuade Sildar to help them defeat the Redbrands, saying that this will surely turn up a lead on the whereabouts of Gundren Rockseeker. In my head, Sildar wasn't about to mess around with some bandits whilst there was Alliance business to take care of, so I set the DC pretty high. Paladin rolls a natural 20. Cue me just laughing behind my DM screen and my players all saying "... that wasn't supposed to happen, was it?" They offered to "rewind" and not persuade Sildar but I told them no, it's their story and I can roll with it, I just really wasn't expecting a natural 20.
So, Sildar agreed to help them once they had rested for the night. It was then that the rogue noticed a woman in the corner of the inn staring at her. It turned out to be Halia Thornton (who Barthen had warned them to leave well alone). When Halia was dismissive of the paladin when the party asked why she was watching them, he drew his sword and screamed "Give me the information if you value your life!". Possibly one for the tavern of stupidity. Nevertheless, Halia calmly asked them to buy her a mead and went on to tell them of a secret entrance into the Redbrand hideout and that she would pay well for them to dispose of the leader, Glass Staff.
The rogue noticed Halia tapping her glass, seemingly absentmindedly to the rest, but speaking to her in thieves' cant. I wrote the message and handed the player a piece of paper, because she's the only one who can speak it. The message: "Bring me the Black Spider. Alive."
So, no combat in this one but instead using the module to get everyone used to social encounters. A few things that worked, and some I think didn't:
- Playing around with thieves' cant is really fun! I like the idea of one PC being able to interact in this way with NPCs, especially when she is playing a shadowy thief character. Will she attempt to take the Black Spider alive and bring her to Halia? Will she share this message with the other PCs? The player enjoyed using one of her skills and having a secret mission available, and has also not shared the message with the others. The other two players were both intrigued too. I won't be passing notes at every session, but I'm happy with how this turned out.
- Cause and effect.
I'm trying to teach the players that actions have consequences. Drawing your sword in a tavern full of bandit-plagued townspeople isn't going to go over so well. I did explain after the session had wrapped up that they should consider how actions like this, and walking around town with a goblin in tow could change how they are received by certain NPCs.
- Breadcrumbs and "save for later" plot devices.
I played around with giving out hints from NPCs and throwing in potential plot devices I can use later on. They received different stories about the Redbrands from different NPCs, which has seen the players keen to deal with them. I am using Sildar's talks with the party to take stock of where we are and what we know about the well of spells, Gundren's whereabouts and the Black Spider. It is allowing the party to bounce ideas off him and formulate a plan for what to do next, without me having to railroad them.
Halia Thornton is a great character to play, she's beautiful, mysterious and has her own ulterior motives for asking the party to deal with the Redbrands.
Making the jade frog a key was a spur of the moment decision. I don't actually know what it unlocks, but it won't have anything to do with the mines. I quite like the Humblewood setting, so it could be one of several keys to open a portal to that world for a later campaign ... whatever I use it for, the party are keeping it for later.
- Helping the players settle in
I'm keen to involve everyone, and want to provide plenty of chances for them to use their skills. Each session I introduce new rules, so this time we also used inspiration for the first time. I find this approach is helping them understand the game, and it's not putting too much pressure on me to memorize the PHB. It also meant that the players are using their traits and flaws etc. and getting to know their characters better.
And the things to improve upon:
- I'm crap at box text.
I like reading ahead and knowing the module's story, but I found that breaking off and reading the box text when they entered Phandalin was clunky. I need to get better at reading the box text as I can see that it's useful.
- Making sure every player is engaged.
Everyone had a great session and most importantly, had fun. I do however need to be careful to engage everyone equally, as the dwarf fighter wanted to talk to more NPCs in the tavern, only for the paladin to clear the place out by drawing his sword. I won't overcompensate, but I can do better to make sure everyone is involved.
Next week, I think we'll start by them waking up to a molotov being thrown through the tavern window. There's a group of Redbrands outside ...
Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
Never tell me the DC.
This was a pretty fun session. The players just hit level seven at the end of last session. They are in the underdark and to the north is a duergar city. To the south is a hobgoblin outpost on the shore of a massive underground lake. The party has determined that the hobgoblins are fairly recent additions to the area and they are trading slaves and drugs with the duergar in exchange for military equipment. The party decided they have had enough of the hobgoblins.This entire four hour session was a single battle, which is extremely unusual for this group. Probably half an hour of planning and then three and a half hours of straight-up fighting. They attacked the outpost cleverly and when it was all said and done, the outpost was a smoking wreck with 27 dead hobgoblin corpses, two of which were hobgoblin captains, two hobgoblin devastators, and a hobgoblin warlord. The party's tank was hurt bad enough that he had to be evacuated via dimension door and the party's rogue, who was caught out by himself, was knocked unconscious and failed two death saves before someone was able to get to him to heal him.
All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon of dice and beers.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I just ran a 45-minute introductory one-shot for my kids. They're 11 and 5 years old respectively, neither have ever done any role-playing games, though they've played the odd board game.
I sit here stunned and proud beyond belief at how well they took to it - particularly my 5-year-old boy, who went from killing a panther while yelling "You got rekt!" with a gleeful expression on his face to then trying to befriend the evil wizard and promise to be his friend...literal tears in my eyes as he did all of this completely in-character with voice and everything.
Of course his older sister was the classic paranoid, distrust-everything player and kept coming up with wild conspiracy theories about everything that was going-on!
They've already asked when we can play again.
I love this game. XD
So, I'm playing a 1st Level Drow Fighter, and in a huge group of atleast 8 players. Our group has been tasked with clearing out some old decrepit mansion by the City Watch, and our second fighter moves up to the door to scout things out.
He's immediately attacked by two sets of animated armor, which both take surprise multi - attacks, knocking him down almost instantly. The rest of the party descends into the entrance hall and a flurry of spells and sword ensues as more enchanted armor appears to the fray. Our Bard was a doctor, and luckily was able to stabilize the Fighter and the Cleric got him up with healing word. You'd think 8 - 10 people wouldn't have much trouble fighting 4 sets of animated armor, but it took us about an hour to kill all of them, thanks to some really bad rolls. As the fight was wrapping up, I decided to run past into the next room. I took an opportunity attack, but sustained some minor damage so I kept going.
I came into this large dining room, with ornate chairs and chandeliers and everything. There are some doors, but mainly just a large archway leading into a darkened hallway. Past that, in an almost entirely dark room, I saw a glittering glass eye - an item we had been tasked with retreating. So, I come into the room, and I fail on a Wisdom save, and subsequently stunned. I then 'feel a sharp pain in my neck, everything goes black, and I die.'
Keep in mind, I was a greedy, socially inept chaotic neutral drow.
No death saves, no damage rolls, just instantly killed.
Was I in the wrong here?
CHARACTERS
Bakreag Ingotheart [Lvl. 1] Mountain Dwarf Paladin [Out of The Abyss PbP]
Dungeon Master - [Druidic Embers PbP]
Well, it depends. How did you die? Do you know? Maybe there was an enemy in there, and you weren’t supposed to be in there yet. You were supposed to be fighting the armor, so you go in there, something casts a spell (ghost! Spooky!) and kills you, since you’re all alone, incapacitated, and stunned. It’s not a matter of why, (probably because you ran into a separate room while your team was fighting for their lives), but how.
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.
For some elaboration, the rest of the group ended up finding a couple of Cultist Fanatics in there and began battling it out with them. But even then, I was never told to mark off death throws, and to my knowledge, no damage was ever rolled. I'm not mad that I died, as that character wasn't even developed, I'm just perplexed as to how. I didn't want to argue with the DM and hold up the session, but I won't even have a chance to discuss it because he's not going to be present this week and I'm probably just going to roll up a new character with a new DM. (I play in some public run sessions at my local library, so they have multiple people to run the game on hand.)
Also, I rushed into the other room because my character was missing longbow shots left and right, and the combat had grinder to a halt, and I was just generally curious. Again, I don't think my character (considering race traits and alignments) would have any qualms leaving such a large group. Keep in mind, we were winning the fight by a large margin, but it was going very slowly.
And he said to me afterwards: "Well, I don't usually like killing off PCs, but you rushed in, so..."
CHARACTERS
Bakreag Ingotheart [Lvl. 1] Mountain Dwarf Paladin [Out of The Abyss PbP]
Dungeon Master - [Druidic Embers PbP]
If the wisdom save was for a paralyzation effect, and a melee opponent had two attacks on you, the two attacks would crit and so do 2 failed death saves each, killing you. Much more likely it was a cult leader, the save was for paralyzation then they hit you with cause wounds, it dealt 3d10, doubled for the crit, average being 33, instant death no death saves, and with no rolls the encounter isnt given away and the party are now going to be more cautious about how they proceed. The neck thing is a worry. If the wisdom save was for a vampirespawns charm, and the neck pain was it biting then, once again the damage will likely automatically kill a first level character due to exceeding max hits. The concern over this is even a nine man party is likely to die like cattle to the slaughter attacking a spawn if they are level 1.
Lots of ways to die after failing a wisdom save. They are one of the ‘Big Three’ - most common saves-, Constitution, Wisdom, Dexterity. Wisdom is usually most powerful, as it can knock you unconscious instantly, depending on what it is.
The Sharp Pain could be anything from Mind Flayers, Magic Spells, Cultist Stabbing, Zombies, Vampires, etc. There’s no way to tell until you continue the campaign. It probably had a reason, and you just don’t know it yet.
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.
From what I can tell, it was a Cultist stabbing. It's just the DM never communicated to me how I died, even after the session. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Also, it was basically a one shot.
CHARACTERS
Bakreag Ingotheart [Lvl. 1] Mountain Dwarf Paladin [Out of The Abyss PbP]
Dungeon Master - [Druidic Embers PbP]
Revealing how you died when the demise was unobserved and the party would explore the area later is impossible if your DM wants to keep the suspense. Splitting the party into groups that cant support each other is often a dangerous or out right bad idea. Unfortunately this appears to have been one of those times for you. Try not to take umbrage with the DM keeping the mystery alive, after all they are your story teller and theater director all rolled into one.
Have fun next time, however and whatever you play :)
#edit - overkill damage is a fact of life at low levels, and each time it happens, yup its automatic death, sucks but its part of the game.
Well, we had our final session of the campaign over the weekend. It was something!
Backstory: Hundreds of years ago, a god of death named Ruedi tried to, essentially, obliterate the distinction between life and death and keep the whole world in an eternal stasis. He was killed, but it turns out he was only mostly dead, and so he (with his cultists) tried to reanimate himself so he could finish what he started. We intrepid adventurers needed to stop him!
Ruedi needed his Obsidian Regalia to fully reanimate: the Orchid, the Crown, the Scythe, and the Horns. He got ahold of the Orchid, but we were able to collect the rest. My necromancer, Morrigan Devlin, had the Scythe; her partner, the vampire-hunting ranger Hector Diversey, had the Horns; the paladin of Pelor, Sir Lowell Lestrange, had the Crown. We entered the realm of Ruedi; he was trying to use the Orchid to open a portal to the material realm, and we had to stop him. An NPC cleric who was allied with us, Maester Weimar, explained that we needed to use the Regalia to stop him; he also would use a powerful magic item to cause Ruedi's realm to collapse on itself, thus killing him for good. Ideally we'd get out before that happened.
Before we confronted Ruedi, I summoned a Phantom Steed to ride, and cast Tenser's Transformation so I'd be able to wield the Scythe effectively. ("And I beheld a rider on a pale horse, and the rider's name was Death.") We confronted Ruedi as he was opening the portal, attacking him before he was able to go through. As we attacked, Maester Weimar began his ritual to destroy Ruedi's realm.
My party members moved in to melee range and started whaling on Ruedi - however, he could perform a melee attack against them at the end of their turn as a legendary action. To avoid his fearsome blows, I used my phantom steed to perform ride-by attacks - and got a few critical hits on him in the process! Who knew a wizard could be such a bruiser. Ruedi released a cloud of noxious gas (I think it was Cloudkill, but I'm not positive) that proved to be a big problem, as most of the party had Concentration spells going and none of us had a spell to blow the cloud away. (Whoops.) Fortunately, Torgga Ironfist, our cleric, pulled out a Mass Heal that kept us all running at full steam.
We managed to distract Ruedi long enough for Maester Weimar to complete his ritual, sacrificing himself in the process. We were all wracked with pain as the realm started collapsing, rending us apart on the molecular level. But Ruedi still had the opportunity to escape through his portal, so we couldn't flee yet. We needed to somehow ensure he stayed put as his realm collapsed. At this point, our regular weapons were no longer affecting Ruedi - only the Obsidian Regalia was effective. Hector gored Ruedi with the Horns and grappled him to keep him in place; Sir Lowell used the spiked tines of the Crown to stab Ruedi as well; finally, I swooped in with the Scythe and dug it into Ruedi's flesh. The whole party dogpiled on the god to keep him from escaping. He tried to shake us off; at this point I'd lost Concentration on Tenser's Transformation, meaning my Strength save was literally +0, but I got a critical success and managed to hang on!
At the last minute, as the realm fell apart, I pulled out my trump card: Wish. I told the DM I wanted to use Wish to get us back to the material plane. In response, the DM explained that we all had a choice: either we could have our characters die heroically and be remembered as heroes, or we could escape the dying realm... at a cost. Most of the players chose to die heroically, but Morrigan and Hector had each promised the other that they wouldn't die, no matter what, so Hector's player and I chose to escape at a cost.
And so, by tapping into the power of the Obsidian Regalia, Morrigan and Hector were able to return to the material plane, but they had been forever changed by the necrotic energies that allowed them to escape. They now needed to feast on the living - Morrigan needed to feast on magic-users in particular to sustain her arcane energies; while their comrades were hailed as heroes and spoken of with reverence, Morrigan and Hector's names were spoken only in nervous whispers, or as a curse.
I am very excited to have them come back as villains in the next game we do.
"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
Some comments to recent posts:
- TexasDevin: 4 hours of fighting sounds awesome. That would happen in games of my group.
- Nat_30: Wow, that was very epic large scale ending scene for the campaign!
I ran a quick one-on-one with a nephew who plays a lizardman druid. The chief druid is preparing him to study the higher mysteries by sending him on a series of short quests based on the different druidic circles. He climbed a mountain, talked to an old hermit, met Sobek the Crocodile God and fought a vampire mist. It was all loosely based on "The Strange High House in the Mists." That was the Dream circle. For the Land circle, I was going to run the U series from Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I think it probably plays a lot different with a lizardman PC.
I think it was a little trippy/talky/boring for him, so I guess it's back to the raging gang war in the city.