The party is trying to find a way to fly up the sky city, when it reaches the closest point to the island's highest mountain.  They have twelve days left.

The bard could not be there and was played by her husband, the druid, and the monk did not turn up.

When we last left our heroes, they had just arrived at the Druid Zoo, only to be surrounded and attacked by escaped velociraptors! There were only three, and seeing as they are much less scary in D&D than in the movies, the party had little trouble in subduing them and returning them to the druids. Grateful, the druids allowed the party (even the non-druid members) into their bramble fortress to see their project in construction: building a series of magical portals that would allow druids and rangers to travel instantly to study and observe all kinds of wild beasts roaming free in their own habitats.

The party was reunited with Kibble the gnome ranger, who was limping on a crutch...having run afoul of the evil wizard Jasper Featherstone, she now had one zebra leg, and it was a little long for her. Since she could not run in this condition, she suggested that the party do the job she had been planning to do for the druids...in exchange for a tame griffon.  Cloudsong's ranger master had died, and he had left her with the druids.  She was too gentle and domesticated to be returned to the wild, and the druids did not have much to keep her occupied, so they were quite eager to make the exchange for...dinosaur eggs.

Making a permanent portal to dinosaur territory was fraught with technical, ecological and safety problems, so the druids had made a pocket dimension to act as a dino preserve. They now want to raise inhabitants for their Jurassic Pocket. The party agreed to steal dinosaur eggs, and spent the night in the druids' hammock tree.

We broke out the map and miniatures! (First time since the big pirate battle before the shipweck!)

The first target was a nest of Hadrosaur eggs in a canyon. Hadrosaurs are only 1/4 CR, so the druid was able to wildshape into one.  The thief decided to use all three of his Bag of Tricks fuzzballs at once, and ended up with (of all the luck) a giant badger, a panther, and a giant rat. The hadrosaurs were distracted by a strange Hadrosaur lurking nearby...a little TOO distracted.  A fight ensued between two hadrosaurs and the druid, with the bard for backup.  Meanwhile, the thief's giant badger tunneled to the nests, and the thief made off with all six eggs as the other two members of the flock were too distracted by the fight to notice. (two Nat 20 stealth rolls in a row, low perception rolls.)  They left two dead Hadros behind them.

Kibble scolded them for killing the dinos and taking too many of the eggs. They were meant to do as little harm as possible on this mission.

The next target was a nest of pteranodons on a cliff...with two of the five lizard-birds actually setting on the eggs.  Once again, the druid and bard acted as a distraction, while the thief climbed the cliff and approached from the side with another Nat 20 stealth. The thief managed to knock out one of the setting dinos with non-lethal force, and took the five eggs in the nest.The bard and druid were mobbed by three angry pteranodons and viciously mauled.  The druid wildshaped into a panther ans skedaddled, forgetting that the bard had no hope of making a similar escape.  (NPC cleric finally came dashing out of cover to save Bard's bacon with a Healing Word.) The bard cast Thunderwave, killing one pteranodon, knocking one out of the sky, and scaring off the third, before hastily retreating. 

Kibble said they did a little better this time.  Thief gave her four of the eggs, secretly keeping the fifth for himself.

Next week might not happen: Bard and Druid will be at an anime convention, Thief may have a birthday party to attend. Monk can not do this alone...not with plesiosaurs and T-rex coming up. >:)

11 days left...

The campaign I DM had an interesting session today.

The party has been trying to find a cure for a plague/curse/bioweapon, which is probably held by an enemy country, Borundria. They've narrowed down the suspect to the king's mage there. Last time they attempted to find it at the castle, they were all captured and held in a dungeon, and three sessions passed before they were finally released (most of them having their memories wiped). One character died.

So they returned to their "home base" country, called Amilex. (although most are foreigners even there). They were commended for their efforts, and offered a reward if they tried again and succeeded. Then the party found out that Amilex was going to kill some hostages taken from Borundria (in an effort to force Borundria to give them the cure or return the king of Amilex, who was kidnapped by Borundria). So the party was upset, but they convinced a baron to buy the hostages a little time (three days) so they could try again. They set out that very night. 

They reached the capital of Borundria by morning. One of the bards tried to negotiate with the king there again, but failed. So they tried Plan B. This is where it gets good. They successfully disguised a half-elf pirate monk, female, as a middle-aged male mage, and the rest of the party disguised as Borundrian Royal Guards, except the druids, who hid as spiders. They snuck into the mage's room. He was sleeping. Then they grappled him, the monk bashing him on the head and reducing his HP total. Then the bard cast Charm Person, and the mage thought he had a nightmare and they were friends. 

So he showed them around his house and lab (during which time the players were laughing hysterically) and gave them the antidote for the memory wipe potion he'd given them previously. Then they talked him into coming with them, claiming their mutual mage friend (who didn't exist) had new magic research to show him. After he locked the door, he realized that the tiefling druid wasn't with them (because he'd turned into a spider and stayed inside). So they claimed the druid preferred to be a spider in public so people wouldn't harass him for being a tiefling. And he bought it (thanks to lucky rolls). 

So the druid could stay to rob the mage of magic items and hopefully find the cure, while the rest of the party kidnapped the charmed mage. Now the druid is stuck in the safe room for an hour, though, because it's locked and can't be opened from the inside.

Overall, a very fun and successful session. :)

My last campaign was like.......

2 Fighters lvl 9 and 11 ( Humans variant ), 1 Cleric Halfling lvl 8 ( Circle of Tempest ), and me a Human Wizard lvl 10( evocation school ) went in on a hut in the middle of a forest. We found there an ugly old female Druid cooking a random something with a big wooden spoon and a metal marmite. Then the DM said to us:  GUYS, roll a Constitution saving dice.

Everyone there rolled a decent saving dice but, 1 of those fighters rolled a NAT 2. Then the DM said, OK, you start regurgitating your last food & drink you've eated and, you start PUKING at the marmite !!!!!! . The old Druid argued over us, using some un-understoodable words ( druidric language ), and began to cast a Curse spell. We had to kill her, loosing the opportunity to recall information about the lore of the main quest we were involved into.

Geez, sometimes I hate that......... just sometimes.

We started a side campaign last night because the DM for our main in-person campaign has a lot of availability issues.  So, we're running some of the adventure league material (spoilers follow) because it's easy to prepare for.  We go through the first part of the adventure pretty easily.  Then we get to the last battle and it got weird.  Part of it was a DM mistake I think, but part of it was a deal of WTF kind of encounter is this supposed to be anyways?

 The DM opens with a 2nd level inflict wounds on my 14 hp sorlock.  Rolls 28 damage for an insta-gib, right off the bat (but I didn't find that out until later).  He very smoothly demotes the spell to a first level inflict wounds by tossing out one of the dice because he was trying to make the BBEG FEEL deadly, not insta-gib someone permanently from full health, on round 1. So, I was unconscious rather than dead.  The fighter and ranger both attacked and the ranger got an ensnaring strike on the BBEG.  The life cleric heals me to nearly full health with a cure wounds.  The BBEG drops a second level 2 inflict wounds on the ranger and she goes down like a sack of potatoes too, legit unconscious this time.  I tried to end the encounter with sleep.  That was a massive derp on my part because I knew the BBEG hadn't taken a lot of damage.  I ALSO knew that the BBEG was a half-elf and I totally forgot that half-elves can't be magically put to sleep.  As someone who /usually/ plays elves and half-elves, I felt shame as a free action.  As a throwaway, I dropped hex as my bonus action.  Ranger rolled her death save, got a nat 20 and revived with 1hp.  The fighter hit the BBEG, lifecleric dropped a heal on the ranger.  BBEG goes for another inflict wounds on the fighter, and misses.

My turn comes up, eldritch blast, crit.  26 points of damage myself, and the BBEG drops.

When the DM told me later that it was /supposed/ to be 28 points of damage and I should have been dead outright, I felt bad.  I didn't want my character to die, but having to get kid gloved kind of sucked too.  I think there was a DM mistake though, I don't think he made the attack roll to hit me, he just says <BBEG> put her hand on you and you feel necrotic energy flow into you as you take 20 points of damage.  If he'd phrased that like he normally does indicating an attack roll was made (which I think he forgot to do), I could have used shield to potentially avoid the attack.  The fact that I feel that mistakes were made kind of cancels out my shame on needing the kid gloves.

That said, WTF kind of encounter is that for potentially first time players coming into a game shop and experiencing D&D for the first time?  While DM's had the option to level people up mid adventure, I've never played at a table that levels up in the middle of a session.  So, there's a strong possibility that first time players would be facing this thing with first level characters.  The BBEG is supposed to surprise the party if she can (which my DM did)...and why would she /not/ open with her strongest attack...a 4D10 inflict wounds.  She had THREE second level spell slots, and let's be reasonable, she can insta-gib level 1's with her first level spell slots.  Who the heck thought this was a good intro to NEW players?  As a veteran, I can take getting instagibbed.  if I am a new player and the BBEG touches my wizard on round 1 and I am just dead, permanently, game over...am I going to come back?  Did I really have a lot of fun with that encounter?  The rest of the session was pretty boring too with not much action...if this was my intro to D&D, I'd have left very unhappy.  Horribly written module for a wide variety of reasons.

So, I missed last session, but here's what I've been told:

1) The bard is in a box and is either dead or alive, further study is required.

2) The rogue has been completely possessed by an evil sword that we've been trying to get him to throw away.

3) With the bard out of commission and me gone, there wasn't enough healing potions to go around.

Seriously, I leave these dinguses alone for FIVE MINUTES and everything's on fire.

Some of the cliff notes from the last session I DM'd 

-The group started the day with casting zone of truth and speak with dead to interrogate a severed head to find out information on a violent and dangerous cult they are working to take down.

-The group then met the king's illegitimate half goliath/half elf son (lvl 8 Goliath Fighter I built) to get some further help in taking down the cult (the group met this goliath looking man 5 sessions ago, but thought he was just a dumb barbarian) 

-The group broke into the captial city's diplomatic office to find if the ambassador is in cahoots with this nasty cult.

- The group not only found out he is a higher ranking member of the cult, but proceeded to use hypnotic pattern to incapacitate him, bind him, gag him, blindfold him, use enlarge/reduce to reduce him small enough to fit in their pocket and takeoff with him...essentially they really just kidnapped the highest diplomatic officer in the city...

-The group bought a crap load of mystery potions, then the lvl 8 Tiefling cleric proceeded to drink all of them in a row, eventually leading to his death as he turned into a cabbage with a mouth and eyes, then later caught on fire, then accidentally drank a poison that killed him outright. 

Well I'm a bit annoyed with myself. Last night was my groups first boss fight. I didn't expect to win because the boss was hopelessly outnumbered, but I was going to try to fight like a cornered rat all the same. I had whole strategy in mind to deal with the players and then like a moron I didn't even use it. Let my dragon take six players worth of damage in one round, and used an area of effect concentration spell too early when I should have been dealing damage every round instead. Oh well nothing I can do about it now.  I did remove one of my players pretty early by punishing for trying to seduce the boss. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, and it was built into the villains backstory anyway that she froze her first and only lover to death so I didn't have to just pull it out of my ass either. 

Schrodinger's Bard. XD

Wonderful! We went up against a dragon and possibly did everything wrong that it was possible to do wrong but it was still heaps of fun. We’re doing the castle of strahd now and that’s also been amazing 

My party had split into 3. For varying reasons, the fighter and the ranger were staying in a different Inn to the rest of the party (Druid, Warlock, Wizard).

So the latter 3 go back to their lodgings and walk in to see the kindly halfling barkeep getting aggressively threatened by some thuggish guys. The biggest guy, the leader, barges the wizard out of the way, knocking him prone, before going to leave. 

From the floor, the wizard casts grease. And the thug fails his DEX save, also falling prone.

Welp, time to roll initiative. It's a tavern fight! 

This is definitely an outcome I saw coming. This is where those guys were gonna be. It's just very unfortunate that the only two martial class players weren't there. So there were some shenanigans. 

Those shenanigans became an escalating panic spiral as the warlock, instead of hitting someone with a chair or bottle, fires an eldritch blast, dealing max damage and blasting one of the assailant's heads off. 

Ah.

General panic ensues, and my players knock out the other two, before locking the tavern door and having a heated discussion with the owner, who now thinks he's screwed because these damned adventurers just murdered a henchman of the guy who's extorting him. The guy who has not only his own band of thugs, but half the town guard in his pocket. 

The players then take the surviving thugs into a back room, bind their hands and feet, and try to intimidate them into silence. The big guy just threatens him, so the Warlock then dissonant whispers's's's him to death. OK CHILL MAN WTF. 

Party now has one thug who is crying his eyes out and begging for his life, two corpses and an extremely distressed halfling family. The remaining thug is VERY successfully intimidated, the tavern is cleaned, and the corpses are wrapped in a tent and bundled into the party's wagon, which was in the tavern's stable. Those 3 then go to another tavern, meet up with a contact and get drunk. The druid has a couple more, and then she sleeps with their contact. 

The next morning, the party reconvenes, nobody tells the fighter or ranger what happened, with the exception of the druid getting lucky. The wizard and warlock take the wagon out of town and dump the bodies, before coming back to meet up with everyone else and the contact once more. The fighter and the ranger, oblivious to all of this, go shopping. 

I had to improvise like 80% of this session, but it was really funny. 

That's D&D, tbh. 

Quote from Giantnerdguy >>

 

2) The rogue has been completely possessed by an evil sword that we've been trying to get him to throw away.

 

I feel like this happens a lot. 

Quote from Lord_Jeeves_Of_The_Assless_Chaps >>

Quote from Giantnerdguy >>

 

2) The rogue has been completely possessed by an evil sword that we've been trying to get him to throw away.

 

 

I feel like this happens a lot. 

 Just another day in a D&D campaign.

In my last session, my party jumped into a volcano..... after crushing an ancient ruby that temporarily protected them all from the lava damage
pretty good session and I’m excited about this volcano dungeon I’m finishing up

Quote from Bamb00z1ed >>

In my last session, my party jumped into a volcano..... after crushing an ancient ruby that temporarily protected them all from the lava damage
pretty good session and I’m excited about this volcano dungeon I’m finishing up

 That sounds very interesting.  :D hope they survive

Quote from PatrickDees >>

Quote from Bamb00z1ed >>

In my last session, my party jumped into a volcano..... after crushing an ancient ruby that temporarily protected them all from the lava damage
pretty good session and I’m excited about this volcano dungeon I’m finishing up

 That sounds very interesting.  :D hope they survive

 Me too lol

The party is on a quest to find a way up to a floating sky city in 11 days: druids have promised them a retired tame griffon if they gather eggs for their Jurassic Pocket Dimension dino preserve. In the last session, they gathered Hadrosaurus and Pteranodon eggs without too much difficulty, which may have made them overconfident going into the next mission...

Everyone showed up! Yay!

Kibble the gnome ranger took the party to a lake with two small islands and a strip of sandy beach against a narrow ridge/cliff. She told them where eggs were buried in the sand, and said, "We want four eggs. Try not to kill anything this time.  The druids are sensitive about that. By the way, these Plesiosaurs are much larger and more dangerous and more carnivorous than anything you've faced before."

The thief used his carpentry proficiency and Survival skill to make a crude but surprisingly sturdy boat. He and the bard and the giant badger from his bag of tricks took it toward the sandy beach by the cliff on the far end of the lake. Meanwhile, the wood elf monk used Mask of the Wild to swim to the nearer island disguised as a gathering of flotsam, and the druid wildshaped into a Hadrosaur to try to distract the plesiosaurs from the egg-robbers.

There were five plesiosaurs, and the druid managed to attract the attention of three. One got close enough to engage in combat, and had nearly killed his dino shape in two rounds--he was forced to disengage and run. (Fortunately, Plesiosaurs are slow on land.) 

Monk realized that, with the druid on land, she was swimming with three huge killer lake monsters. Fortunately, stealth was on her side, and she managed to spend a couple of turns digging the eggs out by hand (the party suddenly realized that their only shovel was wild-shaped with the druid) and got to land with the two enormous eggs.

Thief and Bard paddled across the lake, discussing the possibility of putting the dinos to sleep with a lullabye or disguising themselves as vegetables to be unappetizing to carnivores. They managed to get by the middle island while the plesiosaurus on it napped, but the dino on the sandy beach was not happy to see them. They decided to engage in battle. The thief ordered the badger out of the boat to act as an outboard motor, and joined him, apparently with some idea of ramming the dinosaur with the boat. (They...did not have enough speed for that.) The bard was chomped quite badly. Realizing he was in way over his head, the Bard tried to jump off the boat and climb the vertical (but very climbable) cliff. The Plesiosaur got an opportunity attack that came within 3 points of insta-killing the bard, plus he failed the Dex check to grab the cliff.  Gave the bard a separate Dex save to see whether he landed in the boat or the water.  SPLASH!

Thief realized he was in deep doo doo.  He ordered the badger to climb into the boat (done) and to pull the Thief up after him. (Strength check failed!) On his own turn, thief swam to the front of the boat and used cunning action to hide: plesiosaur thinks he is a figurehead, bard is floating harmlessly, so the plesiosaur eats the giant badger. In...one...bite. Thief pulls the bard onto the beach, tries to bury him in sand to hide him.  The Plesiosaur starts attacking the most obvious nearby threat--the boat.  Thief manages to stabilize the bard as the dino destroys their boat (takes three hits) and turns to come after the thief again, who is now trying to dig up a nest of eggs.  The thief runs to the OTHER end of the beach and digs in nest there. Plesiosaur realizes it can't catch him on land, stays in water and swims along beach. When it gets on land, thief runs back to Bard.

Meanwhile, NPC cleric is firing crossbow bolts at the attacking plesiosaur, but failing to distract it...the three swimming ones haven't noticed the fight yet...and the one on the middle island is still napping. Druid drops his wounded Hadrosaur shape and becomes a panther, runs along lake edge to the narrow ridge that forms the cliff, and starts running along the opposite side of the ridge, down a narrow canyon.

"DON'T GO THAT WAY! DON'T GO THAT WAY!" Kibble screams at him, so Panther/Druid climbs up to top of ridge and starts running along the ridge top toward the sandy beach.

Running back and forth, Thief manages to get two eggs and stuff them into the Bard's bag of holding, just as the Plesiosaur gets POed and decides to come at him on land after all. Plesiosaur on Middle Island finally wakes up, and starts swimming over to check out what all the fuss was about. Thief ties one end of rope around bard and starts climbing cliff ONE turn before both plesiosaurs could have reached him. Druid meets him at the top of the cliff.  They pull up the bard together, and successfully rescue their friend from becoming a Bard Piñata.

Druid casts Cure Wounds on the bard, and Very Chaotic Thief says, "Now lets go to the place Kibble told you not to. Going to places I'm not supposed to be is my number one hobby!" I point out that from the cliff top, they can now see down into the end of the canyon...to the large nest there, and the two larger T-Rexes guarding it.

Party returns to the shelter, where they can take a long rest and wait for Kibble's blood pressure to return to normal. 10 days left to find a flight to the sky city.

(NOTE: Used glow-in-the-dark rubber duckies for Plesiosaurus miniatures. Gave them to the party as souvenirs afterward.)

That sounds like a fun campaign (given I'm a dinosaur nerd). :)

It was another great session! The party had loads of fun, scored a massive quantity of loot (including things they'd found that had been stolen from them), and found the cure they were looking for. :)

I made my party fight a young red dragon while they were aboard a crashing airship. The young red dragon was a pirate. That's pretty much it. They did a good job of keeping it grounded, and they didn't suffer too much, despite my liberal use of its fire breath.

in a previous one-shot (I sometimes host one-shots when everyone can't be present for our usual session), they accidentally released a sealed dragon from underneath a lighthouse. Their reaction was pretty nice.

A slight detour from our campaign...

Our party came upon a floating skull in Hell; our Oathbreaker Paladin touches it, and is transported to a winter tundra.

Our party follows suit, and as we take shelter from the bitter cold, end up in a forest where we encounter a pack of dire wolves. Our dwarf paladin shares a language with the lead direwolf (!), a great big white wolf, and tries to avoid bloodshed.

Doesn't take...we end up fighting the dire wolves. It goes fairly well...our Oathbreaker takes a nasty bite, but we make short work of the pack...the kobold bard wounds the white wolf, the Oathbreaker kills the wolf that slashed him, the dwarf kills another, and my gnome fighter smashes the third's head with a mallet.

The white world surrenders; tells us of an elven settlement close where we can survive the cold. We let the wolf go, and continue towards the settlement.

We encounter a tribe of gnolls, who pelt us with spears and arrows. My Rune Knight gnome embiggens himself and lumbers over the gnomes while the party returns fire, and they begin to retreat..****y for a giant worm to explodes out from the ground!

The worm kills the surviving gnolls, and our party attacks. The Oathbreaker and my gnome become stunned by noxious fumes exhaled by the worm, but the rest of the party manages to do some damage.

The Oathbreaker and my gnome shake off their poison status, and join the fray. The worm blasts the party with a Cone of Cold, and it nearly kills us...but the kobold bard lands a killing blow, carving the worm in two.

Another group happens upon our party, envoys from the elven village. They take us back to the village, where they reveal that we have travelled through time; we have gone back centuries to some far-off realm.

The elves say that they are awaiting a terrible monstrosity called The Destroyer...and that our coming to their village is a sign of aid.

We talk to the village Elder, a druid who tells us that in order to return to our realm, we must defeat The Destroyer. We agree, and prepare for battle.

Long story short...The Destroyer is a Tarrasque, and we're screwed.

My gnome thinks that in the face of certain death, riding a ballistae bolt fired from the top of the battlements towards the tarrasque seems like a fine idea. He inflates himself to giant size in midair, and attempts to plunge the soaring ballistae bolt into the tarrasque''s eye.

It...doesn't work, but my gnome survives, and god if it wasn't exhilarating. He'd Nat 20'd the ride, but failed the attack roll. It was still sweet.

Meanwhile, the Tarrasque fast approaches the battlements. My party tries to damage the Tarrasque, while my gnome rides atop it.

Suddenly, the druid weaves a powerful spell...and the Tarrasque shrinks in size. We have a chance!

...but the druid starts going nuts, saying he's going to drain the power of the Tarrasque for himself. One of the elves reveals himself to be a silver dragon (a lot of stuff going on!), and tries to stop the druid while we slay the tarrasque.

The dwarf paladin stops the tarrasque, the kobold bard kills the druid, and we save this realm from oblivion. Yay.

The silver dragons returns us to our realm...which is back in Hell, mind you, but having technically survived a Tarrasque, albeit cheaply, we're feeling pretty good.