So my group made new characters and I had a few ideas about what they were going to do
The players Red Dragonborn, Barbarian: Path of the Berserker, An Phaskolar ( Stitch ) Monk way of the Ki Thief, and a Miqo'te ( FF14) Seeker of the Sun Druid. The group meets up to go on a few adventures and travel meet a few NPCs that joined up with them A Merfoak Claric of Posiden, and a Yan Ti Pureblood, Bloodhunter and on their journey find an Elf who the players recognize as Ifrit one of the bad guys from the last campaign that left with a deal to not bother them if they don't bother him. He leads them to a massive black box. The Box ends up being Pandora's Box and they unleash the 7 sins into the world The Sins being monsters that corrupt towns and cities with their presence. They have so far defeated Greed A Chimera that was hoarding all the cities goods and causing everyone to attack anyone who would dare walk close to their property, Gluttony a Night hag that was turning townsfolk into Meat pies and feeding it to the reaming people, and Lust A Drider who turned a town into a massive brothel so she can breed and raise an army.
The party is currently split as the Druid is going to meet a friend and get some intel on her personal quest and the rest of the team is going to the next town to face off with Sloth a Cyclops who has corrupted a fortified city into not really caring that Ifrit has taken over the town and is just waiting for the party to show up.
My group has completed a multi month adventure in the campaign that was a major milestone for one of the players. It tied into his backstory a lot, as well as a few other players stories, and they're all grateful to have survived and "won". We're moving into the final bit of this campaign (they're level 15) and I had another check in after the most recent game to see if there were any storylines people were antsy to cover, quests to go on, things to explore, as we're moving to the last major part of the campaign I've been running for years.
It's a bit daunting to be looking at the end of this campaign. But exciting to see what happens next!
In one of my last sessions my party had just killed there fist boss a demon spell caster that had been masquerading as the local innkeepers pet cat it had eaten a tenant of the inn, and summoned small groups of undead from the local cemetery hiding its actions through manipulation the coastal fog surrounding the town. When they finally beat it 1of the characters was knocked out, one of the two remaining part members my brother a tie-fling decided it would be a good idea to snuff the ashes the deacon left behind, he was immediately downed by the force and fire-damage from trying to snort demon remains leaving only one party member not rolling death saves at the end of the session.
My lot ended up playing Water Polo against a group of Sea Elves during the Iroan games. ... They won. I have no idea why the dice gods were on their side but they won!
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Hadgar Greystone, Lv 10 Duergar Death Cleric. Call of Cantraxis campaign, Moonshae.
DM: Imperia Regnum Ancient Rome Theros Homebrew.
Gri'im the Red, LV 7 Orc Druid Rime of the Frost Maiden Campaign.
My group has completed a multi month adventure in the campaign that was a major milestone for one of the players. It tied into his backstory a lot, as well as a few other players stories, and they're all grateful to have survived and "won". We're moving into the final bit of this campaign (they're level 15) and I had another check in after the most recent game to see if there were any storylines people were antsy to cover, quests to go on, things to explore, as we're moving to the last major part of the campaign I've been running for years.
It's a bit daunting to be looking at the end of this campaign. But exciting to see what happens next!
Congratulations on bringing the party all the way to level 15 so far!
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Maximilian "Mad Max" Oceanus, transmutation wizard, best known for being on the team that saved the universe from Kozelak's infinite hunger, and also an avenger of the Unspoken. Olaf Ericsson, a jolly ranger with a bit of an anger problem. Also likes to sing. Yaethel Akeelan, a druid with a plan; a very, very big plan. Damien Rook, full time author, part time adventurer. Plays god on Saturdays.
When we last left off, the heroes of the Dawn Shark had agreed to investigate the assassination attempt against Captain Billy McGee, the unofficial pirate king of the Starkarrow Isles.There's really not much to say other than that, so let's get to it:
The Players: Giovanni Durrade: A young, cocky tiefling rogue/bloodhunter. Believed to have been murdered by his sister 10 years ago. Lori Afki: A tiefling tempest cleric. Actually Meredith Beaumont, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who ran away from her engagement to Captain Joseph W. Terrence of the Wellbyrn Royal Navy. Karc: An aaracockra arcane trickster rogue. Sold into slavery by his parents as a baby, Karc was rescued by a half-orc pirate captain, herself a former slave, at the age of 12. The sole survivor of his crew, most of whom were killed by a rival ship. Baruuq: An aasimar monk of the four elements. Compelled by his angel to travel the world in search of his destiny. Received a letter from E.S., but was unable to attend the meeting as his ship was delayed. Mariz: An Air Genasi hexlock whom Gio met at the open air market in Port Montgomery. Did not receive a letter from E.S. Sir Not Appearing in This Session: Our human fighter was again not present at this session, as he had to work today. I decided that his character had wandered off on his own sidequest offscreen. Me: The Dungeon Master. A noob with high ambitions and absolutely no idea how to achieve them. Let's resume.
We open the session not quite where we left off, but a few hours before it. The characters are asleep. Let's peek in on their dreams: Mariz finds himself in a realm of shadowy fog, alone. Suddenly, his pact weapon appears in his hand, before floating out of his hand, reshaping into a strange, shadowy figure. The figure speaks: "Mariz." "What do you want from me? Who are you?" "*chuckles* I am the voice in your head. Beyond that, well, you will learn in due time. All in due time. But not yet. For now, I simply wish to congratulate you on a job well done. Keep up the fine work." And then, as quickly as he came, he dissipates. Lori finds herself on a ship out at sea, the only person on board. The sky is clear, when suddenly, it fills with stormclouds, and a blue-cloaked figure appears in a flash of lightning. The Emperor of the Storms has come to pay her a visit. In actuality, this is more of a check-in than anything else. Just a "continue with your destiny and watch out for Joseph" sort of thing. Finally, Baruuq sees nothing, and doesn't really hear anything. It's more of a sense. A sense with which he is quite familiar. His celestial guide: Steve (don't ask). Steve has been talking to Baruuq about achieving some sort of destiny for years, but Steve has never known what it was. Now, he believes it might be to destroy Nereus. He says he knows nothing of the Emperor of the Storms, but that, if E.S. is a foe of Nereus, well, at least they've got that in common.
The party wakes up. Actually, Lori wakes up first (we did a roll off to determine this). She breaks into the captain's quarters, sneaks up to Giovanni, and quietly shaves his goatee while he's asleep. She then goes into town with Smith and Wesson (the pair of half-orc security guards with which she was provided by Billy) to shop for a new set of clothes (which she finds) as well as a way to disguise herself (to a small extent), which she does by dyeing her hair, and by reshaping and painting her horns. Giovanni wakes up, distraught by his loss, and hunts Lori for vengeance. He attempts to tackle her but is himself tackled by Smith, who mistakes him for Joseph. Gio sulks away to buy materials to craft some healing potions.
The group then decides to begin actually solving the mystery. They start by interrogating Billy's crew. Billy gives them a few possibilities for people who would want him dead. His half-orc first mate tells them that the arrow came from land, not sea. The quartermaster gives them a specific range of city blocks where the shot could have come from. The bosun gives them nothing, as he was blackout drunk at the time of the assassination attempt. The surgeon informs them that the poison used was extremely rare and expensive, and also gives them the arrow, which is black with green fletchlings. Finally, they interrogate the chef, who runs away screaming. They chase him down to an alley, and he reveals that he is actually a navy informant. He panicked because, even though he has no clue whether his organization was responsible, he thinks they might have been. The chef is also their first hint that Captain Terrence's reputation among the rest of the navy is awful, and that no one likes him.
They decide to go to the navy outpost next. Not because they suspect the navy, but to report Captain Terrence for his attempted kidnapping of Lori. As it turns out, the admiral on duty, Lucas Watson (a half-elf), is actually the older brother of Lori's childhood friend Amari. He once again proves that everyone in the navy knows that Joseph is an a**hole, and tells them that the navy will investigate the party's charges and that, until further notice, Joseph's title and privileges will be suspended.
The group moves on, now searching on land. They run into a former associate of Gio, a wererat named Tony. Tony tells them that there's a pirate who's in deep debt with the wererats, but he doesn't know who. The party decides to pay a visit to the wererats in the catacombs beneath the city. On the way there, they discover a page from the journal of Reysatra, the wizard who created the eight artifacts. The journal reveals that the artifacts cannot function without a power source. While they're in their hiding places, they are powered by the world itself. If removed, they quickly become inert. She has devised a sort of battery to allow users to charge the artifacts for limited amounts of time.
The group makes it to the wererat chambers. A quick look around the room shows that the wererats' arrows are all brown with white fletchlings. In other words, they don't match the murder weapon. The wererats give them an address where a man was arrested last night who they believe may have been the assassin. On the way to the address, the party makes a quick stop at the royal guard outpost, where they learn that a) The man escaped guard custody that morning and b) The police still have his quiver, which matches the poisoned arrows. Karc takes the quiver.
The address is an abandoned residential building. As the party suspects, there is something of a sniper's nest set up on the roof. There, they also find a red domino mask on the floor. Stamped on the back is the name and address of a store: Harlequin Costume Co. At the store they learn that they sell that exact mask in ridiculously large quantities every couple weeks, but always to a different customer. The most recent one is a company called Cardinal Shipping. They go to the warehouse, which they soon find is a front for the infamous pirate Josephina Dorian, the Blood Raven. Giovanni realizes after hearing her speak that Captain Dorian is actually his older sister, Ursula Durrade, who attempted to kill him ten years ago. The party makes themselves known, and a battle ensues between the party and Ursula's bandits. They destroy the bandits relatively quickly, and then Ursula returns. Due to a combination of great luck from the players and terrible luck from me, Ursula is weakened pretty bad and only survives because I use deus ex machina to have her teleport back to the ship (yes, I know, that's bad, but I was not going to let my players kill the second most important villain in my campaign during their first meeting with her.)
They return to Billy, who gives them each a magic item as a reward, they level up to level four, and that's where the session ends.
In case anyone's wondering what happened exactly with Ursula, she had 75 HP to start. Then Mariz got a crit hit with eldritch blast. Then she got a crit fail on her eldritch blast (she's a roguelock). Then Baruuq did Fist of Unbroken Air and did really good damage. Then Lori did a little damage through a combination of spiritual weapon and a warhammer. Finally, Karc got a crit hit on a poisoned arrow attack, bringing her to 10 HP. And this was all in a single round of combat, before Gio even took his turn. At this point I decided, "You know what, she has legendary actions that she can use to teleport onto her ship. Because AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
After a long fight with 3 harpies. The party of five consisting of 2 pc (hogar the human Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, and Themenor the wood elf scout rogue)2 DMPCs (jezzara the drow valor bard, and droop the goblin conjuration wizard), and the PCs pet mimic Grogger; they decided to take long rest to recuperate. During that time, droop stat down with Hogar, to teach him about magic. Through an arcana roll of 18, hogar is now able to use burning hands once from the spellbook he was rewarded in session one.
My Baldur's Gate Descent into Avernus group just provided me with my first TPK experience. Or almost full TPK
Our group of 7 composed of a Paladin (who has the shield of the Hidden Lord), Ranger/Fighter, Warlock/Sorcerer, Rouge, Druid, Cleric, and Lulu the Hollyphant had reached the River Styx in our Demon Grinder infernal war machine. Specifically to the refueling station. We manage to convince the patrols of Barbed Devils and their leader, the Horned Devil Basilstein that we were some sort of mercenary group working for Zariel, looking for something for her. However the Devil is still keen on getting us to pay for the ability to cross. So we agree to help with his experiments. He takes us to a barge where a bathysphere is hanging.
A bathysphere is a submersible device that relies on an exterior chain to rise in and out of the water. Basilstein wants 4 of out to enter the Bathysphere, be lowered 40 feet into the River Styx, and start trying to collect souls that had become stuck to the bottom. If we did a good enough job then not only would we get passage but our Demon Grinder would get an upgrade. Of the group it was decided that our Paladin, Sor-lock, Druid, and Cleric would be the ones to go down. The Ranger would stay up as he can speak infernal while the Rouge was simply last one standing.
At first it seems everything is going well. Then at the 10 minute mark, 5 minutes before the bathysphere would run out of air, demons attack. The Devils all take off to fight, leaving the Rouge and Ranger on their own. At least until the Glabrezu showed up. That began several rounds of the 2 players alternating between trying to damage the Glabrezu and activating the device to get the bathysphere up. They make great headway on the former, not so much on the latter. Neither is proficient in arcana and just can't make the DC 17 arcana check, though they come close. Mean while the Glabrezu is grappling us with its claws and trying to cut the chain.
By round 4 the Glabrezu is looking pretty hurt and that's when Basilstein shows up to give us a hand. Unfortunately that's also when the DM rolled high enough for the Glabrezu to cut the chain. The Bathysphere sinks to the bottom of the River Styx.
We tell Basilstein to bring them up since that was part of the deal. He claims unforeseen circumstances prevent him from being able to complete his end, the deal is void. We start trying to think of ways to get the Bathysphere up, but none of our spells or abilities would be able to reach the 50ft to the bottom and attach a new chain.
That's when 2 of the players became heroic. The Sor-Lock used mist step to go outside the bathysphere into the river in an attempt to reattach the chain.
Fails the DC 20 INT saving throw. His INT and CHA are 1. He completely forgets what he is doing and swims to the top of the river. Breaching the surface the Rouge and Ranger see him.
The Ranger is next. He has enough rope and the Rouge's grappling hook. He dives in.
Fails the DC 20 INT saving throw. His INT and CHA are 1. He completely forgets what he is doing and swims to the top of the river.
Seeing this the Rouge knows trying to swim is hopeless and motions for them to come back. Though they no longer understand language they can understand that.
In the bathysphere the Paladin is urging the pit fiend in the shield to call other devils for help, only to learn it already has and only received "No" as an answer. The cleric is praying to his god for intervention, and the druid is considering wild shape options. But in the end they have nothing. The final five minutes pass and they Asphyxiate to death.
Back on the surface Lulu explains that losing memories in the River Styx is a difficult thin, and they will have a chance to restore their intelligence in 30 days. The players discuss and we realize that without a proficiency in INT saving throws it was literally impossible for them to make it with their current negative scores. Not unless the DM decided he wanted a Natural 20 to represent a Critical success on a skill throw. So the decision is made, the rouge would mercy kill the 2 characters.
Basilstein offers to trade some of our soul coins for passage for the Rouge, though not the Demon Grinder. It was his now because their was nothing the Rouge could do to stop the Devil from taking it.
And so we ended with the Rouge and Lulu on the other side of the river, with the Rouge bawling her eyes out at the loss of all her friends.
All the players agreed that it was one of the most emotional and turbulent sessions he had yet in this campaign.
Funny thing is, the cleric player had looked at spells later and discovered that there was a way to get out. If he had prepared the spell Shape Water he could have created an area large enough for everyone to get out and climb some rope.
Funny thing is, the cleric player had looked at spells later and discovered that there was a way to get out. If he had prepared the spell Shape Water he could have created an area large enough for everyone to get out and climb some rope.
I read the adventure and saw that side quest. I can't wait to run it!
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
On Saturday it was the finale of our year-long campaign, and it was pretty dang epic. It was very much the Avengers: Endgame of our DnD group.
Backstory:
When we started the campaign, we were privateers who took on odd jobs rescuing people lost at sea, recovering sunken treasures, etc. Eventually we were commissioned by the Admiralty of the gnomish city G-Rash Bay to help defend against an invasion from the orcish navy, who were lead by the Mal'Shakar clan. In our setting, orcs are normally insular and prefer to keep to themselves on their archipelago, so this invasion was incredibly unusual. In addition, G-Rash Bay saw an influx of orcish refugees from one particular clan that the Mal'Shakar were persecuting; we had to balance keeping G-Rash safe while also ensuring the refugees weren't persecuted. Eventually, through conversations and collaboration with various orcish refugees, we learned that the Mal'Shakar chieftain was apparently receiving visions/instructions from an otherworldly being - that was why he felt the need to persecute this particular clan, and that was why he was leading the orcs to war.
Turns out the otherworldly puppetmaster was an aboleth; the aboleths had been waging war against the mindflayers for millennia, each side using various mortal communities as proxies for their maneuvering. What's more, they both had access to time travel magic, so they'd been ******* with our timeline during their war. Eventually we made contact with a mindflayer deserter, Thorn, who no longer wanted any part of this eternal war; however, he still had his time ship, which he allowed us to use as we attempted to put a stop to the war and save G-Rash bay - and the rest of the world!
But then! The Mal'Shakar chief managed to steal the time ship! Oh no! We tracked him down to his island hideout and found that it - and everyone on it - appeared to be stuck in a time loop because the chief kept hopping back in time over and over again in an attempt to alter the timeline to his liking. When we stepped foot on the island, we were caught in the time loop as well, and so when the chief activated the time ship once again, we were pulled along with him.
And so the final session began.
We first landed in... the Tomb of Horrors! Specifically, we landed in the hallway that is patrolled by the elephant behemoth that squishes anyone who fails their dex save. Most of us managed all right and managed to climb up onto the time ship, which was wedged in the hallway. Even those of us who took that 100 points of damage were relatively fine because we're all level 20 by this point. Then the chieftain activated the time ship again - but the wings of the ship had been damaged when we landed in that narrow corridor, so as we zipped through the temporal wormhole the ship rocked terribly and a couple of us were almost thrown off the ship. Simply touching the temporal vortex that surrounded us did terrible damage; there was no doubt that anyone who fell off would be killed instantly.
Next, we landed in a graveyard outside a small chapel. And there were zombies everywhere! We'd landed in the campaign that the DM ran last year! As the zombies swarmed the ship, we fought them off - our cleric used Destroy Undead to vaporize most of them. Meanwhile, our warlock and our bard were disguised as orcish guards, and the chieftain explained to them that the ship wouldn't travel through time correctly as long as the wings were still damaged; he ordered them to begin repairing the wings. Our artificer, who also spoke orcish, relayed the information to the rest of the party, and so we split our attention between fending off the zombies, attacking the chieftain, and repairing the wings. (We're a large party so we could afford to delegate.)
With one of the wings repaired, the chieftain tried again - but this time we landed outside the magical Ixidor Academy, where we were spotted by a half-orc carrying a spellbook. We'd landed in our DM's 2018 game, and it was one of our player's previous characters, Corgan! "Asphinctersayswhat?" Corgan said. (His catchphrase.) "What?" said the artificer. Corgan snickered and summoned a dozen flying butts to harass us. Fortunately, shortly afterwards the chieftain activated the ship again, and the butts were all thrown off by the turbulence and destroyed.
This time we landed in the engine room of a massive floating city - it was the water elf capital of Essenequa, and we had landed at the critical point in our 2017 campaign when our previous party had decided to overload the generators and destroy the city to prevent an apocalyptic cult from taking over and destroying the whole world. On the other side of the room, we could see our old characters debating what to do. Now, my character in THIS game is one of the few water elves left in the world; he'd survived simply because he wasn't in Essenequa when it blew. And here he had the opportunity to stop the genocide of his people - but he'd have to leave the time ship. Obviously, our previous party noticed our arrival; assuming that we were members of the apocalyptic cult they were trying to stop, they set the generators to blow and fled. Now I was faced with a moral conundrum: try to save my people, or help my party members repair the ship and defeat the chieftain? My teammates managed to convince me to stay and keep the chieftain busy as they repaired the final wing on the ship.
It was a pitched battle - even outnumbered, the chieftain was a dangerous opponent. He managed to launch the ship again, before the final wing was repaired. When we landed this time we were somewhere... not of our world. There was only one moon in the sky. (Avalon, our campaign world, has about a half-dozen.) We were in a deciduous forest. The chieftain was very badly wounded - almost dead. Suddenly, a crossbow bolt ripped from the trees and plugged him in the back of the head, and he fell. A human man emerged from the forest and introduced himself: he was Edward Cavington. Now, before we'd started playing our games in Avalon, we'd played d20 modern games on Earth as members of the Cavington Institute, which was an international group that specialized in dealing with magical and paranormal issues - specifically any magic that bled over from Avalon. We asked him where and when it was; we were in England (on Earth) and it was the middle of the 12th century. So! Here he was, the founder of the Cavington Institute, and it was because he met us that he founded it in the first place. We talked to him for a bit; he asked if he could take the body of the chieftain for further examination, and we said go ahead (after we removed his valuables). Then we managed to take a short rest while we repaired the final wing of the ship. Time to go home.
The time ship was piloted by music, so our bard sang the melody we'd previously learned to get us to our present-day time and location. But the input was rejected; the chieftain had reprogrammed the controls to accept only his input. Ah-hah! But we had the flute he'd been using to pilot the ship; the bard tried playing the flute instead of singing. "Error. Too many incorrect attempts. Failsafe procedures activated," said the ship. Oh crap.
The ship launched back into the timestream, though fortunately without turbulence this time. As it zoomed through time, the chieftain reappeared - not once, not twice, but three times! That's why he had created the time loops on his island - so that, if the present him died, the ship could recall multiple versions of him from the slight past! The battle began again, but we had a strategy - we knew that pushing them off the ship would kill them instantly, so that is what the barbarian and I focused our energies on. We pushed one of them off right away, and after some struggle we managed to push off a second chieftain. As we battled the final chieftain, the ship landed... somewhere.
The sky was black, with no stars or moons; the land was featureless, flat, black volcanic rock. In front of us was a river of what appeared to be lava, but it glowed and sparkled with some kind of magical energy. After some more rounds of battle, we finally killed the chieftain (again). But... where were we?
Then a glowing, featureless figure emerged from the river of lava. "Ah, so you've come to the beginning of it all," it said. Apparently the chieftain had gone back to the beginning - the very beginning of everything, to when this... god? something more than a god? had first created all the worlds. He had wanted to remake the world to his own desires. And now we had the same opportunity. I considered the tragedy that had befallen my people. I could undo it. All I had to do was ask. I turned to the wizard, who was also a water elf. "We could fix everything," I said. "We could have our families back. You could have your husband back." However, he shook his head. "Trying to change the timeline is what got us into this mess in the first place," he said. "Instead of trying to undo the past, let's work towards a better future."
Very well. We agreed we just wanted to go back to our original time, no changes in the timeline up to then. And so the glowing entity sent us back.
In the epilogue, the wizard, the artificer, and I set off on a ship together to explore Avalon; we found other water elf survivors during our travels and eventually we created a flotilla community for the water elf diaspora. The barbarian became the new admiral of G-Rash Bay; our cleric founded a new religion based on his god, which he made up, Yeezus. The bard founded an orphanage for children whose parents were lost at sea. The warlock returned to his home on the Shadowfell and discovered, through some ****y time shit, that he was actually his own patron. The druid (a warforged) founded a community of other warforged who became one with the trees. The monk finally sobered up.
The end!
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"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
My most recent session was last Thursday, and I've been meaning to post a recap, but I forgot to do it until now, so here we go: When we last left off the voyagers of the Dawn Shark had learned of a conspiracy involving the Blood Hunter's sister after solving the attempted murder of Billy McGee, the Pirate King of the Starkarrow Isles. Quick Note: The fighter has missed three sessions in a row, so I will stop listing him until he's able to make it to another session. That's about it, and the last session's recap is on this same page, so let's get on with it.
The Players: Giovanni Durrade: A young, cocky tiefling rogue/bloodhunter. Believed to have been murdered by his sister 10 years ago. Lori Afki: A tiefling tempest cleric. Actually Meredith Beaumont, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who ran away from her engagement to Captain Joseph W. Terrence of the Wellbyrn Royal Navy. Karc (Absent for this session): An aaracockra arcane trickster rogue. Sold into slavery by his parents as a baby, Karc was rescued by a half-orc pirate captain, herself a former slave, at the age of 12. The sole survivor of his crew, most of whom were killed by a rival ship. Baruuq: An aasimar monk of the four elements. Compelled by his angel to travel the world in search of his destiny. Received a letter from E.S., but was unable to attend the meeting as his ship was delayed. Mariz: An Air Genasi hexlock whom Gio met at the open air market in Port Montgomery. Did not receive a letter from E.S. Me: The Dungeon Master. In my fourth session, finally beginning to get something of a grip on this, but still scared out of my mind. Let's resume
We open in Port Montgomery. Before docking, Lori hides the Heart of Mechanus, as well as her diary, in the ship's smuggler's compartment. She also finds Joseph's eyeball, which, and throws it overboard. As she throws it away, she gets the sense that the eye is somehow watching her. The ship also gets a new name: The Drunken Revenge.
The party spends the day at the open air market, shopping for armor and tea, among other things. Lori is followed by Smith and Wesson, her half-orc security detail (provided by Billy). As the sun goes down, Giovanni and Lori go take a walk on their own. After a little exchange of conversation, the two of them go on top of a building to watch the sunset. Everything seems perfectly set up... THEN Giovanni mentions how he plucked out Joseph's eyeball, to which Lori casually mentions that she threw it overboard. Giovanni is annoyed, and the two sit there in awkward silence until Lori decides to go back to the ship, and Gio follows her.
The crew of the Drunken Revenge decides to go looking for information on the Artifacts of Reysatra, so they set out for Murnig University on the gnomish island of Garrick, renowned for its library. On the way there, they are attacked by pirate, whom they soon realize have been hired by the Blood Raven. Lori creates a massive cloud of fog in order to more easily escape the ship. Then, when the crew sees a storm on the horizon, they are forced to dock on a mysterious island, in the tiny port village of New Harbor. They purchase a pet, a blink cat, from a water genasi salesman. Then they go to the village's inn, the Lonesome Goat for the night. That night however, they learn that the island is run by a powerful, evil mage who imposes very heavy taxes on the villages under threat of ruining their livelihoods.
The group sets out on the road, soon coming across an old friend, a royal guard by the name of Dave. Dave, however, seems to have lost his memory, and decides to come with them in hopes of finding a way to regain it. The party soon comes to a large, creepy castle. The door swings open as they approach, hitting Giovanni in the face. As they enter, they see two sets of armor, one on either side of the entryway. As Lori steps in front of one of them, its axe swings down at her. The party knocks over the suits of armor to ensure it doesn't happen again, realizing that it was actually a pretty simple tripwire system. At this point, I'm just going to go through the rooms they enter one by one:
In the parlor, they find several pieces of comfortable furniture, a massive, roaring fireplace, and a harpsichord. Gio begins poking around the room, and the fireplace glows a furious green, and speaks, enraged that they have violated his hospitality. He orders them to leave, shooting a firebolt at Gio who, as a tiefling, is able to reduce the fire damage down to zero. Gio is able to talk the fireplace into letting them stay in the parlor for one hour, at which point they will leave. Lori tries playing the harpsichord, but before she can put her fingers down, the keys begin playing themselves. She waits for the song to finish and then plays anyway.
Next, the players find themselves in the library, where they find a skeleton key. Then the books start flying at them, and they quickly leave.
Then, the dining room. They see a long table set with a lavish feast, a chandelier hanging overhead. Gio proves that the food is safe, but Lori's not convinced. The rest of the party eats while Lori looks on, suspicious. Nothing goes wrong until the end of the meal. The ground starts shaking. Baruuq uses his elemental powers to stop it. Then they hear a sinister cackle, and the chandelier comes crashing down. The party runs like crazy.
They then find themselves in a hallway with four rooms, which prove to be bedrooms for the castle's residents. The rooms are locked, but opened by the skeleton key, and the party loots all four rooms.
On their way to the throne room, they are confronted by the castle's guards, but manage to very quickly rush past them into the throne room.
Finally, they come to the throne room. They see a throne with a large green flame sitting on it, in front of a massive black curtain. The players immediately attempt to pull back the curtain, but though Gio is hit by a blast of arcane energy, he pulls it back to reveal a nervous tiefling bard. He reveals that he and his cronies were once part of a theater troupe who crashed on the island, discovering a castle full of ancient secrets and an easily duped village, so they began pretending to be a lich, using the magic in the castle as well as a few tricks of their own to support the facade. He gives Dave a potion to cure his memory, gives the party a map to Reysatra's lost library, and is then arrested along with the rest of the group.
The party is hailed as heroes in New Harbor, and a feast is thrown in their honor. After getting very, very drunk, the party goes to bed.
The next morning, they set back off in their ship, but soon a naval ship comes with a message from Admiral Lucas Watson. The navy was set to begin a more thorough investigation of the claims against former captain, Joseph W. Terrence, only to discover that Terrence had disappeared, along with several of his most loyal crew members and his personal ship, the New Victory. And that is where this session ended.
Then for this morning's campaign (a homebrew that uses the Lost Mine of Phandelver as the hook to form the group and get us going into the main adventure, so more spoiler warnings for adventure materials), I had one of those legendary paladin damage dealing experiences that you hear whispered around d&d circles from time to time.
So for those familiar with LMoP, our party had just reached Thundertree in search of the druid Reidoth. At this point we were level 4, and our party consisted of a goliath battle master fighter (3)/barbarian(1), human moon druid, dwarf knowledge cleric, halfling trickster rouge, my half-orc vengeance paladin, and a human drunken master monk who our DM just introduced to our group today.
We had a number of troubles moving forward largely due to poor rolls: first half the party got hit by the ash zombie's cloud, giving them disadvantages that wrecked every roll they made. Then we all failed our perception checks for the giant spider webs, causing our cleric and rogue to get trapped and almost die before my paladin, the barbarian, and the druid (wild shaped into a giant spider to fight fire with fire) ran in to rescue them. All things considered, we probably should have been more cautious moving forward; well, I guess to be fair the rest of my party was from then on out; I was not.
When we finally found Reidoth after all our suffering, taking 2 short rests to get to that point, he told us about the green dragon Venomfang (which we knew of from the cultists we encountered early, but not the exact location where he could be found). Now considering our previous experiences, and knowing that this dragon was much more difficult than our level 4 party could handle, we decided we should try getting the jump on him and scaring him off. Having already looked through this session during my own run through of it as a one-shot in the past, I knew that Venomfang would attempt to flee once it hit half health, but I was determined that we would kill him this day; something my vengeance paladin Grunug (a merciless hunter of all evil in the world which I've partially modeled off of the Punisher) proclaimed loudly to the druid and the rest of the party.
After taking a long rest to shore up our strength, we approached the ruined tower where the green dragon makes its nest, and went about setting up our trap. Our halfling rouge drank a potion of flying we got off the cult from earlier in the session to fly up to one of the arrow slits in the tower, using it as a reverse arrow slit to fire into the tower without the dragon being able to hit him back with its breath weapon. Meanwhile, our barbarian tied up one of the cultists we had taken prisoner earlier and swung him down in from of the dragon, in an attempt to spook him and provoke him to waste his breath weapon on the cultist rather than us. This worked well, and we did around 30 damage to him in our surprise attack round before actual combat began.
Then things got real fun. After our endless terrible rolls earlier that session, I started things off right; nat 20 for my initiative, taking me straight to the top of combat. Although our surprise round had been a roaring success, we hadn't provoked a breath weapon attack since the dragon hadn't even been given a turn yet. Despite this, I sent my paladin charging in to face the dragon directly! I swung my halberd and... nat 20 to hit him (my second in a row). Now as a vengeance paladin, I have access to hunter's mark, which I always cast before combat. I'm also playing a half-orc, which benefits from the savage attacks racial trait, so I can roll an additional die of my choice following a crit; of course I chose the d10 from my halberd. I also used a divine smite, as any true paladin would facing such a situation. So altogether I was rolling 3d10, 4d8, 2d6, and adding my +4 strength modifier, dealing 60 damage to this poor green dragon.
This single hit, along with our initial sneak attack damage, was enough to set the dragon below half health and in a panic. In desperation, on it's very first turn of combat it attempted to flee. I immediately told the DM I was using my opportunity attack to swing again; another nat 20 (my third in a row). I used up my last spell slot, casting a second divine smite and rolling the same die as before. Another 41 points of damage came down on this dragon, taking his head off and plummeting it to the ground as it tried to take off. To add insult to injury, the cultist we had used as bait earlier (who was still very much alive), was crushed under the weight of the dragon when it felt back to earth. Despite the druid, rogue, and cleric trying to pull him out, the dragon's weight was just too much, and my paladin decided to end his misery by gutting him.
Our DM decided to call the session there, since we had already been going for 3.5 hours, and he just didn't know how to respond to us actually killing the dragon, since the adventure (and he himself) very much expected us to be no match for the dragon and for it to flee. Not only did we manage to slay it in a matter of 1 surprise round a 1 standard round of combat, the dragon never made any attacks on our party; it's single, final action was to flee.
Next session our party will be heading off to Castle Cragmaw to take on King Grol and end the goblin threat in the area. It's unlikely to be as spectacular as this session, as I in particular have been rolling garbage for the majority of this campaign up to this point, but being known as the Dragon Slayer at level 4 is enough for me to be satisfied if Grunug never does anything impressive again for the rest of his life.
Yeah, paladins really are something else in 5E. I've seen Joe Manganiello do 100-200 damage criticals with Arkhan before, but with my history of crap attack rolls, I never imagined my paladin would ever get his time to shine. I hadn't even used divine smite before this session, since I only had 3 spell slots and I was always saving them for boss fights. I had planned on using them for this epic fight before I knew rnjesus would bless me, but this just made it that much better. People fear monsters; monsters fear paladins.
our party was a eladrin soulknofe rogue 3 wizard 2 a dwarf cleric 5 and a arrackockra moon druid
th rogue snuck up the outside of the tower and stealthed on the roof
cleric wlked out in front o the tower and called the dragon a tiny lizard with bad breath
dragon flewout trying to gain hight and destroy cleric
druid casts call lightning and deals almost max damage
rogue uses soulknife ability and crits on both
cleric hurls javelin and hits dragon
dragon uses poison breath on druid and cleric druid succeds and takes half damage and cleric failes and takes half damage
druid uses another bolt of lightning
eladrin misty steps onto dragon and uses net
dragon falls out of scy and is knocked to 1 hit point
cleric prepares spare the dying
dragon misses with attacks on druid
druid hits dragon with sickle
cleric uses spare the dying on dragon
rogue ties up dragon
when dragon wakes up we forced him to make a soulbinding oath to aid us when we are in need
dragon and pcs were healed by cleric and we left the dragon its hoard exept for the axe and the spell scrolls
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This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic byVitaly S Alexius
So, my local game store had a gauntlet D&D session, wherein a bunch of people sign up to try and beat a dungeon in the shortest amount of time. My group consisted of a warlock, a paladin, a sorcerer, two others who I don't quite remember and myself, an arcane trickster rogue.
Our quest was to enter a dungeon created by a mad wizard and find other adventurers who had gotten lost. As the groups (five tables in total) travelled through the icy snow, we were magically separated and shrunk into a mysterious house. Our weapons had been turned into toys or candy and we were in a hallway full of pictures of a sullen child, one devoid of joy.
So, we walk down the hallway. I have my mage hand out, tapping the ground for any secret traps, but I find nothing. The hallway eventually opened up to a room with five pedestals. On each pedestal was a gold ring. Everyone was wary, but the paladin said, 'I PICK UP ONE OF THE RINGS!'
She was great.
Anyway, as the paladin (either a paladin or a barbarian, I can't remember what she was) picked up the ring, five creatures appeared. They looked like Christmas puddings, but with legs and eyes and they were basically mimics.
Our party was six. There were five of them. Once I killed one of the puddings, I was feeling pretty good. So, to attack the next pudding, I climbed up on a pedestal and leapt on the next, short swords bared. In one attack, I turned it to mush. With my remaining movement, I rushed over to another pudding and cut right through it, felling my third pudding. For my efforts that turn, I gained inspiration.
We never did find out what happened to the previous adventuring group, but we survived, that's a thing!
EDIT: Firebolt is cast via the somatic component of finger guns and nobody can tell me otherwise.
why would i want to tell you otherwise, you are absoballylutely correct
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This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic byVitaly S Alexius
The players were having a party in there wagon when and ogre came over and stepped in a bear trap they had set. He then roared and threw his javelin but some how ( THE POWER OF LUCKY ROLLS ) The ranger in the party stopped the ogre from throwing it and made the ogre stab it in his eye. the next day we met and owl bear who was tamed by our healer emma. oh and we also met a stupid rock baby that could only scat like this " SKIBBIDY BOO BA PIPY DO DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO A HABA JO TOGOOD JL "
It was just me 14yo, my little sister 10yo and the DM my younger brother 12yo, we were just about finished OotA and we had gotten up to the bit I had been waiting for and soo excited about, The Rage Of Demons, the DM made this part even better by saying to ease the pressure on him, with him having to play as all the Demon Lords he said WE could control whatever one we wanted. I obviously chose Orcus since he can raise Lich's from the dead, my little sister chose The Demogorgon and the DM played as all the others. We were in the middle of battle when my sister had an idea that scared the sh*t out of me. She said, "Wait, The Demogorgon can cast telekinesis right?" and we replied "Yeah, why", she remained silent until her turn and then, she said, the most scariest thing any Demon Lord could ever dream of. Being lifted up with telekinesis spell and dropped into Juiblex. As soon as she said that she was going to do that I knew Orcus has no hope, it was Orcus' nightmare, being lifted up above a Salivating Juiblex and finally being dropped into him. Anyways Orcus was stuck in Juiblex for at least 2 turns and slowly being engulfed by him and escaping with hardly any HP he was finished by Baphomet and it was probably the best D&D session we have had.
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It was just me 14yo, my little sister 10yo and the DM my younger brother 12yo, we were just about finished OotA and we had gotten up to the bit I had been waiting for and soo excited about, The Rage Of Demons, the DM made this part even better by saying to ease the pressure on him, with him having to play as all the Demon Lords he said WE could control whatever one we wanted. I obviously chose Orcus since he can raise Lich's from the dead, my little sister chose The Demogorgon and the DM played as all the others. We were in the middle of battle when my sister had an idea that scared the sh*t out of me. She said, "Wait, The Demogorgon can cast telekinesis right?" and we replied "Yeah, why", she remained silent until her turn and then, she said, the most scariest thing any Demon Lord could ever dream of. Being lifted up with telekinesis spell and dropped into Juiblex. As soon as she said that she was going to do that I knew Orcus has no hope, it was Orcus' nightmare, being lifted up above a Salivating Juiblex and finally being dropped into him. Anyways Orcus was stuck in Juiblex for at least 2 turns and slowly being engulfed by him and escaping with hardly any HP he was finished by Baphomet and it was probably the best D&D session we have had.
This is one of the most brilliant ideas. I am running OotA and I seriously need to consider something like this.
Haven't posted here in a bit but it's nice to see how everyone's playing.
As for myself, we're nearing the end of our first campaign after a year or so of me DMing with the same group of friends. They've been slowly ascending a large keep that's been occupied by a cult who's MO is to find compatible mortals and force powerful extraplanar entities (ex. , Forcing a Djinn inside of a human child) to use as powerful slave-soldiers. For some reason, after clearing the first floor of the dungeon, they decided to take a long rest and eat some fried chicken outside of the keep, and by that point the cult had succeeded in their summoning, which permanently altered the course of my homebrew world by allowing 4 deity-level beings to become permanent residents of the world.
The forge cleric of the group also left his god and joined one of these beings, who was revealed to be the 9th forgotten god from the world's pantheon, who was murdered by his siblings at the dawn of creation. The god essentially pieced himself back together using the essence between creation, which to mortals appears as pure white nothingness. It's as if someone used an MS paint eraser tool on reality, sort of. He's pretty happy with the change, since it meant that he got to choose a new domain (he chose Order!).
So my group made new characters and I had a few ideas about what they were going to do
The players Red Dragonborn, Barbarian: Path of the Berserker, An Phaskolar ( Stitch ) Monk way of the Ki Thief, and a Miqo'te ( FF14) Seeker of the Sun Druid. The group meets up to go on a few adventures and travel meet a few NPCs that joined up with them A Merfoak Claric of Posiden, and a Yan Ti Pureblood, Bloodhunter and on their journey find an Elf who the players recognize as Ifrit one of the bad guys from the last campaign that left with a deal to not bother them if they don't bother him. He leads them to a massive black box. The Box ends up being Pandora's Box and they unleash the 7 sins into the world The Sins being monsters that corrupt towns and cities with their presence. They have so far defeated Greed A Chimera that was hoarding all the cities goods and causing everyone to attack anyone who would dare walk close to their property, Gluttony a Night hag that was turning townsfolk into Meat pies and feeding it to the reaming people, and Lust A Drider who turned a town into a massive brothel so she can breed and raise an army.
The party is currently split as the Druid is going to meet a friend and get some intel on her personal quest and the rest of the team is going to the next town to face off with Sloth a Cyclops who has corrupted a fortified city into not really caring that Ifrit has taken over the town and is just waiting for the party to show up.
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InsiderMy group has completed a multi month adventure in the campaign that was a major milestone for one of the players. It tied into his backstory a lot, as well as a few other players stories, and they're all grateful to have survived and "won". We're moving into the final bit of this campaign (they're level 15) and I had another check in after the most recent game to see if there were any storylines people were antsy to cover, quests to go on, things to explore, as we're moving to the last major part of the campaign I've been running for years.
It's a bit daunting to be looking at the end of this campaign. But exciting to see what happens next!
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
In one of my last sessions my party had just killed there fist boss a demon spell caster that had been masquerading as the local innkeepers pet cat it had eaten a tenant of the inn, and summoned small groups of undead from the local cemetery hiding its actions through manipulation the coastal fog surrounding the town. When they finally beat it 1of the characters was knocked out, one of the two remaining part members my brother a tie-fling decided it would be a good idea to snuff the ashes the deacon left behind, he was immediately downed by the force and fire-damage from trying to snort demon remains leaving only one party member not rolling death saves at the end of the session.
My lot ended up playing Water Polo against a group of Sea Elves during the Iroan games.
...
They won. I have no idea why the dice gods were on their side but they won!
Hadgar Greystone, Lv 10 Duergar Death Cleric.
Call of Cantraxis campaign, Moonshae.
DM: Imperia Regnum
Ancient Rome Theros Homebrew.
Gri'im the Red, LV 7 Orc Druid
Rime of the Frost Maiden Campaign.
Congratulations on bringing the party all the way to level 15 so far!
Maximilian "Mad Max" Oceanus, transmutation wizard, best known for being on the team that saved the universe from Kozelak's infinite hunger, and also an avenger of the Unspoken.
Olaf Ericsson, a jolly ranger with a bit of an anger problem. Also likes to sing.
Yaethel Akeelan, a druid with a plan; a very, very big plan.
Damien Rook, full time author, part time adventurer.
Plays god on Saturdays.
When we last left off, the heroes of the Dawn Shark had agreed to investigate the assassination attempt against Captain Billy McGee, the unofficial pirate king of the Starkarrow Isles.There's really not much to say other than that, so let's get to it:
The Players:
Giovanni Durrade: A young, cocky tiefling rogue/bloodhunter. Believed to have been murdered by his sister 10 years ago.
Lori Afki: A tiefling tempest cleric. Actually Meredith Beaumont, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who ran away from her engagement to Captain Joseph W. Terrence of the Wellbyrn Royal Navy.
Karc: An aaracockra arcane trickster rogue. Sold into slavery by his parents as a baby, Karc was rescued by a half-orc pirate captain, herself a former slave, at the age of 12. The sole survivor of his crew, most of whom were killed by a rival ship.
Baruuq: An aasimar monk of the four elements. Compelled by his angel to travel the world in search of his destiny. Received a letter from E.S., but was unable to attend the meeting as his ship was delayed.
Mariz: An Air Genasi hexlock whom Gio met at the open air market in Port Montgomery. Did not receive a letter from E.S.
Sir Not Appearing in This Session: Our human fighter was again not present at this session, as he had to work today. I decided that his character had wandered off on his own sidequest offscreen.
Me: The Dungeon Master. A noob with high ambitions and absolutely no idea how to achieve them. Let's resume.
We open the session not quite where we left off, but a few hours before it. The characters are asleep. Let's peek in on their dreams:
Mariz finds himself in a realm of shadowy fog, alone. Suddenly, his pact weapon appears in his hand, before floating out of his hand, reshaping into a strange, shadowy figure. The figure speaks: "Mariz." "What do you want from me? Who are you?" "*chuckles* I am the voice in your head. Beyond that, well, you will learn in due time. All in due time. But not yet. For now, I simply wish to congratulate you on a job well done. Keep up the fine work." And then, as quickly as he came, he dissipates.
Lori finds herself on a ship out at sea, the only person on board. The sky is clear, when suddenly, it fills with stormclouds, and a blue-cloaked figure appears in a flash of lightning. The Emperor of the Storms has come to pay her a visit. In actuality, this is more of a check-in than anything else. Just a "continue with your destiny and watch out for Joseph" sort of thing.
Finally, Baruuq sees nothing, and doesn't really hear anything. It's more of a sense. A sense with which he is quite familiar. His celestial guide: Steve (don't ask). Steve has been talking to Baruuq about achieving some sort of destiny for years, but Steve has never known what it was. Now, he believes it might be to destroy Nereus. He says he knows nothing of the Emperor of the Storms, but that, if E.S. is a foe of Nereus, well, at least they've got that in common.
The party wakes up. Actually, Lori wakes up first (we did a roll off to determine this). She breaks into the captain's quarters, sneaks up to Giovanni, and quietly shaves his goatee while he's asleep. She then goes into town with Smith and Wesson (the pair of half-orc security guards with which she was provided by Billy) to shop for a new set of clothes (which she finds) as well as a way to disguise herself (to a small extent), which she does by dyeing her hair, and by reshaping and painting her horns. Giovanni wakes up, distraught by his loss, and hunts Lori for vengeance. He attempts to tackle her but is himself tackled by Smith, who mistakes him for Joseph. Gio sulks away to buy materials to craft some healing potions.
The group then decides to begin actually solving the mystery. They start by interrogating Billy's crew. Billy gives them a few possibilities for people who would want him dead. His half-orc first mate tells them that the arrow came from land, not sea. The quartermaster gives them a specific range of city blocks where the shot could have come from. The bosun gives them nothing, as he was blackout drunk at the time of the assassination attempt. The surgeon informs them that the poison used was extremely rare and expensive, and also gives them the arrow, which is black with green fletchlings. Finally, they interrogate the chef, who runs away screaming. They chase him down to an alley, and he reveals that he is actually a navy informant. He panicked because, even though he has no clue whether his organization was responsible, he thinks they might have been. The chef is also their first hint that Captain Terrence's reputation among the rest of the navy is awful, and that no one likes him.
They decide to go to the navy outpost next. Not because they suspect the navy, but to report Captain Terrence for his attempted kidnapping of Lori. As it turns out, the admiral on duty, Lucas Watson (a half-elf), is actually the older brother of Lori's childhood friend Amari. He once again proves that everyone in the navy knows that Joseph is an a**hole, and tells them that the navy will investigate the party's charges and that, until further notice, Joseph's title and privileges will be suspended.
The group moves on, now searching on land. They run into a former associate of Gio, a wererat named Tony. Tony tells them that there's a pirate who's in deep debt with the wererats, but he doesn't know who. The party decides to pay a visit to the wererats in the catacombs beneath the city. On the way there, they discover a page from the journal of Reysatra, the wizard who created the eight artifacts. The journal reveals that the artifacts cannot function without a power source. While they're in their hiding places, they are powered by the world itself. If removed, they quickly become inert. She has devised a sort of battery to allow users to charge the artifacts for limited amounts of time.
The group makes it to the wererat chambers. A quick look around the room shows that the wererats' arrows are all brown with white fletchlings. In other words, they don't match the murder weapon. The wererats give them an address where a man was arrested last night who they believe may have been the assassin. On the way to the address, the party makes a quick stop at the royal guard outpost, where they learn that a) The man escaped guard custody that morning and b) The police still have his quiver, which matches the poisoned arrows. Karc takes the quiver.
The address is an abandoned residential building. As the party suspects, there is something of a sniper's nest set up on the roof. There, they also find a red domino mask on the floor. Stamped on the back is the name and address of a store: Harlequin Costume Co. At the store they learn that they sell that exact mask in ridiculously large quantities every couple weeks, but always to a different customer. The most recent one is a company called Cardinal Shipping. They go to the warehouse, which they soon find is a front for the infamous pirate Josephina Dorian, the Blood Raven. Giovanni realizes after hearing her speak that Captain Dorian is actually his older sister, Ursula Durrade, who attempted to kill him ten years ago. The party makes themselves known, and a battle ensues between the party and Ursula's bandits. They destroy the bandits relatively quickly, and then Ursula returns. Due to a combination of great luck from the players and terrible luck from me, Ursula is weakened pretty bad and only survives because I use deus ex machina to have her teleport back to the ship (yes, I know, that's bad, but I was not going to let my players kill the second most important villain in my campaign during their first meeting with her.)
They return to Billy, who gives them each a magic item as a reward, they level up to level four, and that's where the session ends.
In case anyone's wondering what happened exactly with Ursula, she had 75 HP to start. Then Mariz got a crit hit with eldritch blast. Then she got a crit fail on her eldritch blast (she's a roguelock). Then Baruuq did Fist of Unbroken Air and did really good damage. Then Lori did a little damage through a combination of spiritual weapon and a warhammer. Finally, Karc got a crit hit on a poisoned arrow attack, bringing her to 10 HP. And this was all in a single round of combat, before Gio even took his turn. At this point I decided, "You know what, she has legendary actions that she can use to teleport onto her ship. Because AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
After a long fight with 3 harpies. The party of five consisting of 2 pc (hogar the human Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, and Themenor the wood elf scout rogue)2 DMPCs (jezzara the drow valor bard, and droop the goblin conjuration wizard), and the PCs pet mimic Grogger; they decided to take long rest to recuperate. During that time, droop stat down with Hogar, to teach him about magic. Through an arcana roll of 18, hogar is now able to use burning hands once from the spellbook he was rewarded in session one.
My Baldur's Gate Descent into Avernus group just provided me with my first TPK experience. Or almost full TPK
Our group of 7 composed of a Paladin (who has the shield of the Hidden Lord), Ranger/Fighter, Warlock/Sorcerer, Rouge, Druid, Cleric, and Lulu the Hollyphant had reached the River Styx in our Demon Grinder infernal war machine. Specifically to the refueling station. We manage to convince the patrols of Barbed Devils and their leader, the Horned Devil Basilstein that we were some sort of mercenary group working for Zariel, looking for something for her. However the Devil is still keen on getting us to pay for the ability to cross. So we agree to help with his experiments. He takes us to a barge where a bathysphere is hanging.
A bathysphere is a submersible device that relies on an exterior chain to rise in and out of the water. Basilstein wants 4 of out to enter the Bathysphere, be lowered 40 feet into the River Styx, and start trying to collect souls that had become stuck to the bottom. If we did a good enough job then not only would we get passage but our Demon Grinder would get an upgrade. Of the group it was decided that our Paladin, Sor-lock, Druid, and Cleric would be the ones to go down. The Ranger would stay up as he can speak infernal while the Rouge was simply last one standing.
At first it seems everything is going well. Then at the 10 minute mark, 5 minutes before the bathysphere would run out of air, demons attack. The Devils all take off to fight, leaving the Rouge and Ranger on their own. At least until the Glabrezu showed up. That began several rounds of the 2 players alternating between trying to damage the Glabrezu and activating the device to get the bathysphere up. They make great headway on the former, not so much on the latter. Neither is proficient in arcana and just can't make the DC 17 arcana check, though they come close. Mean while the Glabrezu is grappling us with its claws and trying to cut the chain.
By round 4 the Glabrezu is looking pretty hurt and that's when Basilstein shows up to give us a hand. Unfortunately that's also when the DM rolled high enough for the Glabrezu to cut the chain. The Bathysphere sinks to the bottom of the River Styx.
We tell Basilstein to bring them up since that was part of the deal. He claims unforeseen circumstances prevent him from being able to complete his end, the deal is void. We start trying to think of ways to get the Bathysphere up, but none of our spells or abilities would be able to reach the 50ft to the bottom and attach a new chain.
That's when 2 of the players became heroic. The Sor-Lock used mist step to go outside the bathysphere into the river in an attempt to reattach the chain.
Fails the DC 20 INT saving throw. His INT and CHA are 1. He completely forgets what he is doing and swims to the top of the river. Breaching the surface the Rouge and Ranger see him.
The Ranger is next. He has enough rope and the Rouge's grappling hook. He dives in.
Fails the DC 20 INT saving throw. His INT and CHA are 1. He completely forgets what he is doing and swims to the top of the river.
Seeing this the Rouge knows trying to swim is hopeless and motions for them to come back. Though they no longer understand language they can understand that.
In the bathysphere the Paladin is urging the pit fiend in the shield to call other devils for help, only to learn it already has and only received "No" as an answer. The cleric is praying to his god for intervention, and the druid is considering wild shape options. But in the end they have nothing. The final five minutes pass and they Asphyxiate to death.
Back on the surface Lulu explains that losing memories in the River Styx is a difficult thin, and they will have a chance to restore their intelligence in 30 days. The players discuss and we realize that without a proficiency in INT saving throws it was literally impossible for them to make it with their current negative scores. Not unless the DM decided he wanted a Natural 20 to represent a Critical success on a skill throw. So the decision is made, the rouge would mercy kill the 2 characters.
Basilstein offers to trade some of our soul coins for passage for the Rouge, though not the Demon Grinder. It was his now because their was nothing the Rouge could do to stop the Devil from taking it.
And so we ended with the Rouge and Lulu on the other side of the river, with the Rouge bawling her eyes out at the loss of all her friends.
All the players agreed that it was one of the most emotional and turbulent sessions he had yet in this campaign.
Oh my...
Funny thing is, the cleric player had looked at spells later and discovered that there was a way to get out. If he had prepared the spell Shape Water he could have created an area large enough for everyone to get out and climb some rope.
I read the adventure and saw that side quest. I can't wait to run it!
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
On Saturday it was the finale of our year-long campaign, and it was pretty dang epic. It was very much the Avengers: Endgame of our DnD group.
Backstory:
When we started the campaign, we were privateers who took on odd jobs rescuing people lost at sea, recovering sunken treasures, etc. Eventually we were commissioned by the Admiralty of the gnomish city G-Rash Bay to help defend against an invasion from the orcish navy, who were lead by the Mal'Shakar clan. In our setting, orcs are normally insular and prefer to keep to themselves on their archipelago, so this invasion was incredibly unusual. In addition, G-Rash Bay saw an influx of orcish refugees from one particular clan that the Mal'Shakar were persecuting; we had to balance keeping G-Rash safe while also ensuring the refugees weren't persecuted. Eventually, through conversations and collaboration with various orcish refugees, we learned that the Mal'Shakar chieftain was apparently receiving visions/instructions from an otherworldly being - that was why he felt the need to persecute this particular clan, and that was why he was leading the orcs to war.
Turns out the otherworldly puppetmaster was an aboleth; the aboleths had been waging war against the mindflayers for millennia, each side using various mortal communities as proxies for their maneuvering. What's more, they both had access to time travel magic, so they'd been ******* with our timeline during their war. Eventually we made contact with a mindflayer deserter, Thorn, who no longer wanted any part of this eternal war; however, he still had his time ship, which he allowed us to use as we attempted to put a stop to the war and save G-Rash bay - and the rest of the world!
But then! The Mal'Shakar chief managed to steal the time ship! Oh no! We tracked him down to his island hideout and found that it - and everyone on it - appeared to be stuck in a time loop because the chief kept hopping back in time over and over again in an attempt to alter the timeline to his liking. When we stepped foot on the island, we were caught in the time loop as well, and so when the chief activated the time ship once again, we were pulled along with him.
And so the final session began.
We first landed in... the Tomb of Horrors! Specifically, we landed in the hallway that is patrolled by the elephant behemoth that squishes anyone who fails their dex save. Most of us managed all right and managed to climb up onto the time ship, which was wedged in the hallway. Even those of us who took that 100 points of damage were relatively fine because we're all level 20 by this point. Then the chieftain activated the time ship again - but the wings of the ship had been damaged when we landed in that narrow corridor, so as we zipped through the temporal wormhole the ship rocked terribly and a couple of us were almost thrown off the ship. Simply touching the temporal vortex that surrounded us did terrible damage; there was no doubt that anyone who fell off would be killed instantly.
Next, we landed in a graveyard outside a small chapel. And there were zombies everywhere! We'd landed in the campaign that the DM ran last year! As the zombies swarmed the ship, we fought them off - our cleric used Destroy Undead to vaporize most of them. Meanwhile, our warlock and our bard were disguised as orcish guards, and the chieftain explained to them that the ship wouldn't travel through time correctly as long as the wings were still damaged; he ordered them to begin repairing the wings. Our artificer, who also spoke orcish, relayed the information to the rest of the party, and so we split our attention between fending off the zombies, attacking the chieftain, and repairing the wings. (We're a large party so we could afford to delegate.)
With one of the wings repaired, the chieftain tried again - but this time we landed outside the magical Ixidor Academy, where we were spotted by a half-orc carrying a spellbook. We'd landed in our DM's 2018 game, and it was one of our player's previous characters, Corgan! "Asphinctersayswhat?" Corgan said. (His catchphrase.) "What?" said the artificer. Corgan snickered and summoned a dozen flying butts to harass us. Fortunately, shortly afterwards the chieftain activated the ship again, and the butts were all thrown off by the turbulence and destroyed.
This time we landed in the engine room of a massive floating city - it was the water elf capital of Essenequa, and we had landed at the critical point in our 2017 campaign when our previous party had decided to overload the generators and destroy the city to prevent an apocalyptic cult from taking over and destroying the whole world. On the other side of the room, we could see our old characters debating what to do. Now, my character in THIS game is one of the few water elves left in the world; he'd survived simply because he wasn't in Essenequa when it blew. And here he had the opportunity to stop the genocide of his people - but he'd have to leave the time ship. Obviously, our previous party noticed our arrival; assuming that we were members of the apocalyptic cult they were trying to stop, they set the generators to blow and fled. Now I was faced with a moral conundrum: try to save my people, or help my party members repair the ship and defeat the chieftain? My teammates managed to convince me to stay and keep the chieftain busy as they repaired the final wing on the ship.
It was a pitched battle - even outnumbered, the chieftain was a dangerous opponent. He managed to launch the ship again, before the final wing was repaired. When we landed this time we were somewhere... not of our world. There was only one moon in the sky. (Avalon, our campaign world, has about a half-dozen.) We were in a deciduous forest. The chieftain was very badly wounded - almost dead. Suddenly, a crossbow bolt ripped from the trees and plugged him in the back of the head, and he fell. A human man emerged from the forest and introduced himself: he was Edward Cavington. Now, before we'd started playing our games in Avalon, we'd played d20 modern games on Earth as members of the Cavington Institute, which was an international group that specialized in dealing with magical and paranormal issues - specifically any magic that bled over from Avalon. We asked him where and when it was; we were in England (on Earth) and it was the middle of the 12th century. So! Here he was, the founder of the Cavington Institute, and it was because he met us that he founded it in the first place. We talked to him for a bit; he asked if he could take the body of the chieftain for further examination, and we said go ahead (after we removed his valuables). Then we managed to take a short rest while we repaired the final wing of the ship. Time to go home.
The time ship was piloted by music, so our bard sang the melody we'd previously learned to get us to our present-day time and location. But the input was rejected; the chieftain had reprogrammed the controls to accept only his input. Ah-hah! But we had the flute he'd been using to pilot the ship; the bard tried playing the flute instead of singing. "Error. Too many incorrect attempts. Failsafe procedures activated," said the ship. Oh crap.
The ship launched back into the timestream, though fortunately without turbulence this time. As it zoomed through time, the chieftain reappeared - not once, not twice, but three times! That's why he had created the time loops on his island - so that, if the present him died, the ship could recall multiple versions of him from the slight past! The battle began again, but we had a strategy - we knew that pushing them off the ship would kill them instantly, so that is what the barbarian and I focused our energies on. We pushed one of them off right away, and after some struggle we managed to push off a second chieftain. As we battled the final chieftain, the ship landed... somewhere.
The sky was black, with no stars or moons; the land was featureless, flat, black volcanic rock. In front of us was a river of what appeared to be lava, but it glowed and sparkled with some kind of magical energy. After some more rounds of battle, we finally killed the chieftain (again). But... where were we?
Then a glowing, featureless figure emerged from the river of lava. "Ah, so you've come to the beginning of it all," it said. Apparently the chieftain had gone back to the beginning - the very beginning of everything, to when this... god? something more than a god? had first created all the worlds. He had wanted to remake the world to his own desires. And now we had the same opportunity. I considered the tragedy that had befallen my people. I could undo it. All I had to do was ask. I turned to the wizard, who was also a water elf. "We could fix everything," I said. "We could have our families back. You could have your husband back." However, he shook his head. "Trying to change the timeline is what got us into this mess in the first place," he said. "Instead of trying to undo the past, let's work towards a better future."
Very well. We agreed we just wanted to go back to our original time, no changes in the timeline up to then. And so the glowing entity sent us back.
In the epilogue, the wizard, the artificer, and I set off on a ship together to explore Avalon; we found other water elf survivors during our travels and eventually we created a flotilla community for the water elf diaspora. The barbarian became the new admiral of G-Rash Bay; our cleric founded a new religion based on his god, which he made up, Yeezus. The bard founded an orphanage for children whose parents were lost at sea. The warlock returned to his home on the Shadowfell and discovered, through some ****y time shit, that he was actually his own patron. The druid (a warforged) founded a community of other warforged who became one with the trees. The monk finally sobered up.
The end!
"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
My most recent session was last Thursday, and I've been meaning to post a recap, but I forgot to do it until now, so here we go: When we last left off the voyagers of the Dawn Shark had learned of a conspiracy involving the Blood Hunter's sister after solving the attempted murder of Billy McGee, the Pirate King of the Starkarrow Isles. Quick Note: The fighter has missed three sessions in a row, so I will stop listing him until he's able to make it to another session. That's about it, and the last session's recap is on this same page, so let's get on with it.
The Players:
Giovanni Durrade: A young, cocky tiefling rogue/bloodhunter. Believed to have been murdered by his sister 10 years ago.
Lori Afki: A tiefling tempest cleric. Actually Meredith Beaumont, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who ran away from her engagement to Captain Joseph W. Terrence of the Wellbyrn Royal Navy.
Karc (Absent for this session): An aaracockra arcane trickster rogue. Sold into slavery by his parents as a baby, Karc was rescued by a half-orc pirate captain, herself a former slave, at the age of 12. The sole survivor of his crew, most of whom were killed by a rival ship.
Baruuq: An aasimar monk of the four elements. Compelled by his angel to travel the world in search of his destiny. Received a letter from E.S., but was unable to attend the meeting as his ship was delayed.
Mariz: An Air Genasi hexlock whom Gio met at the open air market in Port Montgomery. Did not receive a letter from E.S.
Me: The Dungeon Master. In my fourth session, finally beginning to get something of a grip on this, but still scared out of my mind. Let's resume
We open in Port Montgomery. Before docking, Lori hides the Heart of Mechanus, as well as her diary, in the ship's smuggler's compartment. She also finds Joseph's eyeball, which, and throws it overboard. As she throws it away, she gets the sense that the eye is somehow watching her. The ship also gets a new name: The Drunken Revenge.
The party spends the day at the open air market, shopping for armor and tea, among other things. Lori is followed by Smith and Wesson, her half-orc security detail (provided by Billy). As the sun goes down, Giovanni and Lori go take a walk on their own. After a little exchange of conversation, the two of them go on top of a building to watch the sunset. Everything seems perfectly set up... THEN Giovanni mentions how he plucked out Joseph's eyeball, to which Lori casually mentions that she threw it overboard. Giovanni is annoyed, and the two sit there in awkward silence until Lori decides to go back to the ship, and Gio follows her.
The crew of the Drunken Revenge decides to go looking for information on the Artifacts of Reysatra, so they set out for Murnig University on the gnomish island of Garrick, renowned for its library. On the way there, they are attacked by pirate, whom they soon realize have been hired by the Blood Raven. Lori creates a massive cloud of fog in order to more easily escape the ship. Then, when the crew sees a storm on the horizon, they are forced to dock on a mysterious island, in the tiny port village of New Harbor. They purchase a pet, a blink cat, from a water genasi salesman. Then they go to the village's inn, the Lonesome Goat for the night. That night however, they learn that the island is run by a powerful, evil mage who imposes very heavy taxes on the villages under threat of ruining their livelihoods.
The group sets out on the road, soon coming across an old friend, a royal guard by the name of Dave. Dave, however, seems to have lost his memory, and decides to come with them in hopes of finding a way to regain it. The party soon comes to a large, creepy castle. The door swings open as they approach, hitting Giovanni in the face. As they enter, they see two sets of armor, one on either side of the entryway. As Lori steps in front of one of them, its axe swings down at her. The party knocks over the suits of armor to ensure it doesn't happen again, realizing that it was actually a pretty simple tripwire system. At this point, I'm just going to go through the rooms they enter one by one:
In the parlor, they find several pieces of comfortable furniture, a massive, roaring fireplace, and a harpsichord. Gio begins poking around the room, and the fireplace glows a furious green, and speaks, enraged that they have violated his hospitality. He orders them to leave, shooting a firebolt at Gio who, as a tiefling, is able to reduce the fire damage down to zero. Gio is able to talk the fireplace into letting them stay in the parlor for one hour, at which point they will leave. Lori tries playing the harpsichord, but before she can put her fingers down, the keys begin playing themselves. She waits for the song to finish and then plays anyway.
Next, the players find themselves in the library, where they find a skeleton key. Then the books start flying at them, and they quickly leave.
Then, the dining room. They see a long table set with a lavish feast, a chandelier hanging overhead. Gio proves that the food is safe, but Lori's not convinced. The rest of the party eats while Lori looks on, suspicious. Nothing goes wrong until the end of the meal. The ground starts shaking. Baruuq uses his elemental powers to stop it. Then they hear a sinister cackle, and the chandelier comes crashing down. The party runs like crazy.
They then find themselves in a hallway with four rooms, which prove to be bedrooms for the castle's residents. The rooms are locked, but opened by the skeleton key, and the party loots all four rooms.
On their way to the throne room, they are confronted by the castle's guards, but manage to very quickly rush past them into the throne room.
Finally, they come to the throne room. They see a throne with a large green flame sitting on it, in front of a massive black curtain. The players immediately attempt to pull back the curtain, but though Gio is hit by a blast of arcane energy, he pulls it back to reveal a nervous tiefling bard. He reveals that he and his cronies were once part of a theater troupe who crashed on the island, discovering a castle full of ancient secrets and an easily duped village, so they began pretending to be a lich, using the magic in the castle as well as a few tricks of their own to support the facade. He gives Dave a potion to cure his memory, gives the party a map to Reysatra's lost library, and is then arrested along with the rest of the group.
The party is hailed as heroes in New Harbor, and a feast is thrown in their honor. After getting very, very drunk, the party goes to bed.
The next morning, they set back off in their ship, but soon a naval ship comes with a message from Admiral Lucas Watson. The navy was set to begin a more thorough investigation of the claims against former captain, Joseph W. Terrence, only to discover that Terrence had disappeared, along with several of his most loyal crew members and his personal ship, the New Victory. And that is where this session ended.
our party was a eladrin soulknofe rogue 3 wizard 2 a dwarf cleric 5 and a arrackockra moon druid
th rogue snuck up the outside of the tower and stealthed on the roof
cleric wlked out in front o the tower and called the dragon a tiny lizard with bad breath
dragon flewout trying to gain hight and destroy cleric
druid casts call lightning and deals almost max damage
rogue uses soulknife ability and crits on both
cleric hurls javelin and hits dragon
dragon uses poison breath on druid and cleric druid succeds and takes half damage and cleric failes and takes half damage
druid uses another bolt of lightning
eladrin misty steps onto dragon and uses net
dragon falls out of scy and is knocked to 1 hit point
cleric prepares spare the dying
dragon misses with attacks on druid
druid hits dragon with sickle
cleric uses spare the dying on dragon
rogue ties up dragon
when dragon wakes up we forced him to make a soulbinding oath to aid us when we are in need
dragon and pcs were healed by cleric and we left the dragon its hoard exept for the axe and the spell scrolls
This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic by Vitaly S Alexius
why would i want to tell you otherwise, you are absoballylutely correct
This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic by Vitaly S Alexius
The players were having a party in there wagon when and ogre came over and stepped in a bear trap they had set. He then roared and threw his javelin but some how ( THE POWER OF LUCKY ROLLS ) The ranger in the party stopped the ogre from throwing it and made the ogre stab it in his eye. the next day we met and owl bear who was tamed by our healer emma. oh and we also met a stupid rock baby that could only scat like this " SKIBBIDY BOO BA PIPY DO DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO A HABA JO TOGOOD JL "
KNIGHT OF RANDOM
Halike Morgad the Dhampir fist of arlo
Sir strange one of the centaurs
It was just me 14yo, my little sister 10yo and the DM my younger brother 12yo, we were just about finished OotA and we had gotten up to the bit I had been waiting for and soo excited about, The Rage Of Demons, the DM made this part even better by saying to ease the pressure on him, with him having to play as all the Demon Lords he said WE could control whatever one we wanted. I obviously chose Orcus since he can raise Lich's from the dead, my little sister chose The Demogorgon and the DM played as all the others. We were in the middle of battle when my sister had an idea that scared the sh*t out of me. She said, "Wait, The Demogorgon can cast telekinesis right?" and we replied "Yeah, why", she remained silent until her turn and then, she said, the most scariest thing any Demon Lord could ever dream of. Being lifted up with telekinesis spell and dropped into Juiblex. As soon as she said that she was going to do that I knew Orcus has no hope, it was Orcus' nightmare, being lifted up above a Salivating Juiblex and finally being dropped into him. Anyways Orcus was stuck in Juiblex for at least 2 turns and slowly being engulfed by him and escaping with hardly any HP he was finished by Baphomet and it was probably the best D&D session we have had.
REMEMBER: Wizards Of The Coast does not own DDB, they are two different companies. When you buy a physical book, WotC receives the money you bought it for, not DDB and vice versa. If you want a digital key to get an online book for free because you have the hardcopy book then DDB makes no money because you don't buy off DDB you buy off WotC, so please stop making threads about this issue. DDB needs money to continue helping people and servers aren't cheap.
This is one of the most brilliant ideas. I am running OotA and I seriously need to consider something like this.
Haven't posted here in a bit but it's nice to see how everyone's playing.
As for myself, we're nearing the end of our first campaign after a year or so of me DMing with the same group of friends. They've been slowly ascending a large keep that's been occupied by a cult who's MO is to find compatible mortals and force powerful extraplanar entities (ex. , Forcing a Djinn inside of a human child) to use as powerful slave-soldiers. For some reason, after clearing the first floor of the dungeon, they decided to take a long rest and eat some fried chicken outside of the keep, and by that point the cult had succeeded in their summoning, which permanently altered the course of my homebrew world by allowing 4 deity-level beings to become permanent residents of the world.
The forge cleric of the group also left his god and joined one of these beings, who was revealed to be the 9th forgotten god from the world's pantheon, who was murdered by his siblings at the dawn of creation. The god essentially pieced himself back together using the essence between creation, which to mortals appears as pure white nothingness. It's as if someone used an MS paint eraser tool on reality, sort of. He's pretty happy with the change, since it meant that he got to choose a new domain (he chose Order!).
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.