This is a thread for stories of your adventurers antics. Heres one that happened an hour ago. So my party is looking for this sort of unofficial fight club group, they go into the tavern and are talking with the bartender and get their drinks and find out some people in it are at a table in the tavern. So what does one of them do, They throw a drink at one of the guys and proceed to start a mass barfight. Man I love dnd
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P: The Traveling Ward: Natural Napalm Enthusiast. (AURYN: The Hunt For The Last Unicorn.)
It's my DM's first time DMing and he has a homebrew campaign set in space and we are middle earth types that were abducted.
He introduces the grog of substantial whimsy as a free sample at the ships cantina then more is earned by answering riddles, until one of the players becomes a troglodyte that is attacked by every door he walks through. After that the grog becomes sort of infamous on the ship and a running gag for us players.
Later, the party is playing a dice game against some drunk npcs, one of whom is drinking said grog. When we take our eyes off this npc, he is dragged away by some hooded figures. We try to follow, but lose him in the halls, and guard npcs are lying to us about having seen anything. The random effect of that particular sip the npc took was to be indoctrinated into a secret cult. Now we are discovering some of the npcs and enemies have a strange tattoo.
TL;DR, my DM accidentally rolled a cult into existence in his sci-fi homebrew.
When I ran LMoP the group was trying to come up with a way to deal with Venomfang, whether to sneak up or charge right in, etc. One player, a female tiefling glamour bard, proposed she would try to seduce the dragon. The other players were all on board like "yeah, you draw it out with a false sense of security, and then we'll jump it!" I decided yeah, why not, go ahead and try.
The bard plays her song and sure enough the dragon comes out to the noise, only when it made its Wisdom check it got a nat 1! So I figure the dragon is so enthralled by the bard that he is now going to kidnap her and try to protect her. At this the party rushes in to save the bard, weapons drawn, and the whole time the bard keeps rolling Performance to keep the dragon convinced that she's his damsel in distress (for most of the fight to great success). Then as Venomfang is about to fly away, just as he is about to escape with a sliver of health, the bard downs him with a crossbow critical hit.
This is the kind of stuff I look forward to in running more games.
I'm DMing Tomb of Annihilation for my crew and, round about session 2, they crossed paths with a faerie dragon by a riverbank. What follows is my favorite bit of RP from this campaign so far.
Now young faerie dragons are, to put it mildly, total ******bags. This one doubly so. After a few of the more perceptive party members heard some faint giggling near them, the pranks started coming. First, the head swap. How odd to see a tortle, tabaxi, and aarakockra with human heads! How strange to see humans with animal heads! The party knows something is up. Second, the yuan-ti warlock gets a billowy cloud of pink smoke blown in his face, becoming "highly incapacitated". His RP is spot on, and he spends most of the encounter marveling at how beautiful and perfect all the flowers and trees are. Something is definitely up. More giggling is heard, and I dash a quick note onto an index card and pass it to player 1. "Don't give it to player 6," I tell the table. It travels around the table, and the other five party members crack up as they read, "Player 6 has male genitalia drawn on his forehead." Player 6 starts to fume a little. "What is going on?" he asks. Someone lets him in on the joke and, as he wipes the graffiti from his noggin, uproarious laughter is heard and the faerie dragon appears. "Bha ha ha ha! Oh, you guys are fun! You guys are best! I haven't laughed like this in...bha ha ha ha ha!"
Player 6 looks at me. "Did this thing do that?" he asks. "It sure did," I admit. "I'm going to kill it," he tells me. I ask him to hold off for just a bit.
The faerie dragon says they've been really good sports and that it'll help them if it can. They get three questions, whatever they want to ask. The first question is "Where is the Soulmonger?" "Um, I don't know." "YOU SAID WE COULD ASK YOU ANYTHING WE WANTED!" "SURE, BUT I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER TO EVERY QUESTION!" Like I said, total ******bag.
"I'm going to f***ing kill it," says Player 6.
"Boy, you folks must not have been in the jungle very long," says the increasingly endangered faerie dragon. "How about I tell you about some stuff that's in the jungle? Stuff you probably wouldn't find on your own?" This sounds ok to the party, and it buys it a minute to think. "Hmmmm. East of here is a dragon's horde. Only the bones of the dragon are still around." This perks up most of the party a bit. "...Nah, I'm still going to f***ing kill it," says Player 6.
"And in the West. In the west is a biiiig statue. But it's not a statue! And if you wear the right piece of jewelry, it'll be your friend and keep you safe."
"Ooooh, okay. Can I roll an Arcana check on that?" says the inebriated warlock. "Roll at disadvantage," I tell him. He gets a helluva good roll so I tell him, "Yeah, what it's describing sounds very much like a shield guardian." The party perks up a bit more. Player 6 wavers.
"<sigh> Ok...I'm not going to kill it."
And the faerie dragon thanked the party for playing it's game, wished them luck, promised to see them again ("O please god no!" said player 6), and bamf'd the heck out of there.
I love the randomness of what PC's can do. I recently ran my first session and it was home-brew. In it the players had to find a missing ranger that unbeknownst to them had been captured by an Evil druid reincarnated as Gulthias Tree. The PC's fight their way through the lair, defeat the blights infesting the tomb and burn down the tree to stop the nearby town from being overrun. The last fight was pretty bad for Level 2's and the Half-Orc paladin has 3 hit points left but they managed it.
He decides on his way to take out one of the supporting pillars. Great idea when your almost dead. I had him roll for attack NATURAL 20! He took out the pillar no problem, of course now the roof comes down....Ok make a dexterity check! NATURAL 1. Of course with a collapsing tunnel rolling 3d6 at 3 hit points he was knocked unconscious and almost died had it not been for the Aarakocra Druid saving him last minute!
This all happened right in the last 5 minutes of our session. Way to end it with a bang...Crash!
Playing Curse of Strahd, I'm the most experience player at the table (the forever DM gets to play!!!) so of course I'm playing a character that is RP-centric but has a fun build that makes him a little annoying: Ranger(Hunter)/Rogue(Swashbuckler). He's an NPC turned character, at the request of my friends, who was a bit of an information broker, a bit of a tavern owner, and had an idle habit of cleaning a mug out every time they saw him. He also has a problem explaining his plans before acting on them, being that information is power he tends to keep his mouth shut. So my character, Aerik, is whisked away by the Baron of Barovia, and things get interesting.
We're standing in front of a pack of wolves we thought were werewolves, Strahd has just loosed a vampire spawn on us, and all my attempts to talk to Strahd are shrugged off with sadistic laughter and taunts. I watch as one of my party charges the wolves, the squishiest of our party, so I call out to our Eldritch Knight to back her up. The Paladin has taken to standing guard over Ireena and Ismark while they're on the holy ground of a graveyard. I see the vampire spawn and start to kite this thing around, taunting it and firing arrows at it. I hear my Eldritch Knight call out that we've lost our Warlock so he's going to bring them to the Paladin for healing. The other fighter, our Champion, is doing an okay job at keeping the wolves at bay. As I hear this I do everything I can to keep the vampire spawn's attention, managing to avoid any major damage so far, but not really doing any significant damage to it. Soon after I hear the Champion fall, now I know we're in trouble, I have to think fast and get a hold of this situation.
I back up so that I'm standing at the gate of the cemetery and taunt the vampire spawn to attack me. I stand my ground as I let the creature grab me and sink it's fangs into me, I know I have one chance to make this work. I then grab the creature's ratty clothing and suplex the creep behind me, on to the hallowed ground of the cemetery. I then proceed to drag the creature deeper into the cemetery, bringing it near the Paladin. As the creature and I struggle, I manage to maintain my hold on it and bring it within range of the Paladin's magic and we proceed to thrash it. We unloaded everything we had on the creature only to watch it rise up and retreat out of the cemetery. I grabbed my trusty bow and launched an arrow, it flew true as a ray of light, but struck mist as the holy energies of the cemetery vanquished our foe for us.
I then proceeded to mount the walls of the cemetery, and from that vantage started to pick off the wolves. Fortunately for us they were merely dire wolves, so it may have been a difficult fight, but it was no where near as bad as it could have been. With a number of well placed shots, and some fine defensive feats from the Eldritch Knight, we dropped the creatures and retreated to a place where we could patch up our wounds.
It was 4 dire wolves and a Vampire Spawn, we were level 3 at the time. I have never had so much fun trying not to kill myself while doing something so absolutely stupid. Our DM was shocked when we finished the fight, but she had a new respect for our group. We were, in her words, supposed to realize how difficult the fight was and retreat into the sanctuary and get aid from the priest inside. We thought the guy was too scared of Strahd to be of any help...
A few short moments that have happened in my first handful of sessions as DM.
In the first session I ever ran there was a dwarven bard with a pet mouse named Elton, and was himself named Reginald.
During this session Reginald arrived in town and immediately stated he "gets blind drunk and passes out in a gutter somewhere", so next day and a failed con save later I gave him disadvantage on skill checks from the hangover (I know, poison immunity so he probably should have been ok, but first session and I forgot). The party lacked any particularly stealthy characters, so upon seeing a zombie stood guard outside a cave, it was Reginald who crept up to bash it with his hammer. He passed the stealth check, a moment later I remembered he had disadvantage. He rolls a 1, throwing up down the back of the zombies legs. Something that even a zombie notices.
A few sessions later, Reginald is in town and tries to pickpocket someone. He rolls badly so the intended victim immediately starts shouting for the guards, one starts heading over. Reginald starts playing his bagpipes (badly, this dwarf being an especially unskilled bard) making a very good roll to get himself out of trouble. So the guard gives him a warning to stop making noise but otherwise chalks it up to a misunderstanding.
A different party was traveling with some merchants when an individual stood by a tree suggested it was a good place to leave the cart, since the road ahead was damaged and the cart would not make it to town. The druid transforms into a squirrel, dashes up the tree and and loudly greets the two bandits hiding there. Soon combat breaks out and the druid squirrel spends a turn trying to gnaw a bandits bow string but fails, the bandit also fails to dislodge him. Next turn, because circle of the moon, the druid transforms into a giant spider and immediately bites a large hole out of the poor bandit he was now towering over. The other bandit in the tree promptly flees for his life, leaving the rest to deal with the now seriously botched holdup.
Later, this second party get into town and the barman of the tavern they are staying at notices they seem capable individuals so asks them to clear the giant rats from the cellar. They achieve this by using speak with animals to persuade the rats to leave quietly, the barman goes along with this because the rats will be gone with less mess to clean up, so they get loaded into an empty barrel and carried out of town. The rats had been driven into the cellar from underground by goblins who had set up a small outpost in a long abandoned cave that was attached to this cellar by an abandoned tunnel. Exploring this tunnel, the party come across a couple of goblins standing guard who (because I decided they do not speak common) were able to communicate little more than an aggravated demand that the party leave. They do... and come back with a translator, eventually opening up the possibility of trade negotiations between the goblins and the town above, I will need to use my sneaky goblin combat tricks another time.
In the homebrew campaign I'm running, one of my players (the paladin) requisitioned a communication mirror from the queen they serve, with the caveat that he should only contact her directly when it's very important. After managing to convince the faeries in a forest that their interests would be well served by making a treaty with the queen, the paladin's player proceeded to call my cell phone IRL. We then had a conversation, in character, over the phone, while in the same room.
This week, that same paladin convinced a CR 9 monster to fight him one-on-one - lawful good to lawful neutral, maybe we can work something out by pummeling each other, etc - and persuaded the other players to abstain from intervening until he went down. He did manage to take it down to 1/3 of its health before his friends mistook him falling prone for him falling unconscious and they made short work of the monster. They're maybe 30% of the way through the dungeon currently, and their tank has no more spell slots, hit dice, or Lay on Hands mojo (though they took a short rest and he got back to full health).
He's one of my favorite players to DM for and the other players thought it was awesome, but uh. Let's just say I hope I don't roll too well next week.
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"Can we please stop debating philosophy with the dapper crab?"
This past Sunday was the closest a session I've run has come to ending in a TPK.
From the beginning of the campaign, the players had noted several kidnappings occurring in towns. The individual responsible was interested in kidnapping anyone with magical powers for his experiments and studies. Recently, the party's sorceress was kidnapped by this man, leading the rest of the party on a determined rescue. Not knowing where to begin looking, they followed rumors of a woman named Granny Olga outside a small farming village, who seemed to excel at locating things people needed found, among other services.
They found the old woman, and her two granddaughters, and despite mistrusting everything about the woman, made a deal with her. The bard-barian of the group, madly in love with the sorceress, was willing to take the risk. The grandmother held on to her end of the deal, locating their kidnapped friend (and incidentally alerting the wizard that took her since the party didn't ask her to discreetly find out). Fast forward to this past Sunday, the party was successful in rescuing their missing companion, killing the wizard (or did they) and destroying his lair/research, but learned from a newcomer to the group, that a young boy in the nearby town had murdered 3 men, claiming that 'Granny told him it was ok."
The party went to investigate, and after some back and forth, discovered that Granny was in fact a Grandmother Annis hag, in a coven with her 'granddaughters', a night and green hag. Unfortunately for them, they didn't try to separate the trio before making an attack. This resulted in them fighting the 3 sisters, and their minions, within their lair. The newly rescued sorceress quickly ended up outside the house alone with the green hag, but couldn't cause her any harm or get back inside to her friends due to a series of counter spells that thwarted her efforts. Inside, the other 4 members were locked in battle with the remaining 2 hags, 2 helmed horrors, and 5 wererats. The cleric was surrounded and battered, isolated from her allies while the totem of the bear barbarian was left going toe to toe with the Grandmother, whittling her life away, but also taking serious damage and eventually being knocked unconscious for the first time all campaign. Thankfully for him, right before he died, the bard-barian got a healing word off to bring him back, and then later managed to incapacitate the grandmother long enough for the barbarian to get pay back. With her down, they were able to turn the tide back in their favor, saving the cleric and rogue before they fell.
As the minions began to drop, with the coven broken, the severely wounded night hag desperately plane shifted away before she could be killed, leaving only the green hag who remained outside. Seeing the other 2 gone, she also managed to escape with her life. From there, the party managed to wipe out the other minions and take a much needed rest. It was a stressful evening for much of the night, but man did it feel good when they managed to turn it all around and get out alive. Plus, there's still 2 hags out there for me to play with and that's fun.
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This is a thread for stories of your adventurers antics. Heres one that happened an hour ago. So my party is looking for this sort of unofficial fight club group, they go into the tavern and are talking with the bartender and get their drinks and find out some people in it are at a table in the tavern. So what does one of them do, They throw a drink at one of the guys and proceed to start a mass barfight. Man I love dnd
P: The Traveling Ward: Natural Napalm Enthusiast. (AURYN: The Hunt For The Last Unicorn.)
DM:
It's my DM's first time DMing and he has a homebrew campaign set in space and we are middle earth types that were abducted.
He introduces the grog of substantial whimsy as a free sample at the ships cantina then more is earned by answering riddles, until one of the players becomes a troglodyte that is attacked by every door he walks through. After that the grog becomes sort of infamous on the ship and a running gag for us players.
Later, the party is playing a dice game against some drunk npcs, one of whom is drinking said grog. When we take our eyes off this npc, he is dragged away by some hooded figures. We try to follow, but lose him in the halls, and guard npcs are lying to us about having seen anything. The random effect of that particular sip the npc took was to be indoctrinated into a secret cult. Now we are discovering some of the npcs and enemies have a strange tattoo.
TL;DR, my DM accidentally rolled a cult into existence in his sci-fi homebrew.
When I ran LMoP the group was trying to come up with a way to deal with Venomfang, whether to sneak up or charge right in, etc. One player, a female tiefling glamour bard, proposed she would try to seduce the dragon. The other players were all on board like "yeah, you draw it out with a false sense of security, and then we'll jump it!" I decided yeah, why not, go ahead and try.
The bard plays her song and sure enough the dragon comes out to the noise, only when it made its Wisdom check it got a nat 1! So I figure the dragon is so enthralled by the bard that he is now going to kidnap her and try to protect her. At this the party rushes in to save the bard, weapons drawn, and the whole time the bard keeps rolling Performance to keep the dragon convinced that she's his damsel in distress (for most of the fight to great success). Then as Venomfang is about to fly away, just as he is about to escape with a sliver of health, the bard downs him with a crossbow critical hit.
This is the kind of stuff I look forward to in running more games.
I'm DMing Tomb of Annihilation for my crew and, round about session 2, they crossed paths with a faerie dragon by a riverbank. What follows is my favorite bit of RP from this campaign so far.
Now young faerie dragons are, to put it mildly, total ******bags. This one doubly so. After a few of the more perceptive party members heard some faint giggling near them, the pranks started coming. First, the head swap. How odd to see a tortle, tabaxi, and aarakockra with human heads! How strange to see humans with animal heads! The party knows something is up. Second, the yuan-ti warlock gets a billowy cloud of pink smoke blown in his face, becoming "highly incapacitated". His RP is spot on, and he spends most of the encounter marveling at how beautiful and perfect all the flowers and trees are. Something is definitely up. More giggling is heard, and I dash a quick note onto an index card and pass it to player 1. "Don't give it to player 6," I tell the table. It travels around the table, and the other five party members crack up as they read, "Player 6 has male genitalia drawn on his forehead." Player 6 starts to fume a little. "What is going on?" he asks. Someone lets him in on the joke and, as he wipes the graffiti from his noggin, uproarious laughter is heard and the faerie dragon appears. "Bha ha ha ha! Oh, you guys are fun! You guys are best! I haven't laughed like this in...bha ha ha ha ha!"
Player 6 looks at me. "Did this thing do that?" he asks. "It sure did," I admit. "I'm going to kill it," he tells me. I ask him to hold off for just a bit.
The faerie dragon says they've been really good sports and that it'll help them if it can. They get three questions, whatever they want to ask. The first question is "Where is the Soulmonger?" "Um, I don't know." "YOU SAID WE COULD ASK YOU ANYTHING WE WANTED!" "SURE, BUT I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER TO EVERY QUESTION!" Like I said, total ******bag.
"I'm going to f***ing kill it," says Player 6.
"Boy, you folks must not have been in the jungle very long," says the increasingly endangered faerie dragon. "How about I tell you about some stuff that's in the jungle? Stuff you probably wouldn't find on your own?" This sounds ok to the party, and it buys it a minute to think. "Hmmmm. East of here is a dragon's horde. Only the bones of the dragon are still around." This perks up most of the party a bit. "...Nah, I'm still going to f***ing kill it," says Player 6.
"And in the West. In the west is a biiiig statue. But it's not a statue! And if you wear the right piece of jewelry, it'll be your friend and keep you safe."
"Ooooh, okay. Can I roll an Arcana check on that?" says the inebriated warlock. "Roll at disadvantage," I tell him. He gets a helluva good roll so I tell him, "Yeah, what it's describing sounds very much like a shield guardian." The party perks up a bit more. Player 6 wavers.
"<sigh> Ok...I'm not going to kill it."
And the faerie dragon thanked the party for playing it's game, wished them luck, promised to see them again ("O please god no!" said player 6), and bamf'd the heck out of there.
I love the randomness of what PC's can do. I recently ran my first session and it was home-brew. In it the players had to find a missing ranger that unbeknownst to them had been captured by an Evil druid reincarnated as Gulthias Tree. The PC's fight their way through the lair, defeat the blights infesting the tomb and burn down the tree to stop the nearby town from being overrun. The last fight was pretty bad for Level 2's and the Half-Orc paladin has 3 hit points left but they managed it.
He decides on his way to take out one of the supporting pillars. Great idea when your almost dead. I had him roll for attack NATURAL 20! He took out the pillar no problem, of course now the roof comes down....Ok make a dexterity check! NATURAL 1. Of course with a collapsing tunnel rolling 3d6 at 3 hit points he was knocked unconscious and almost died had it not been for the Aarakocra Druid saving him last minute!
This all happened right in the last 5 minutes of our session. Way to end it with a bang...Crash!
Playing Curse of Strahd, I'm the most experience player at the table (the forever DM gets to play!!!) so of course I'm playing a character that is RP-centric but has a fun build that makes him a little annoying: Ranger(Hunter)/Rogue(Swashbuckler). He's an NPC turned character, at the request of my friends, who was a bit of an information broker, a bit of a tavern owner, and had an idle habit of cleaning a mug out every time they saw him. He also has a problem explaining his plans before acting on them, being that information is power he tends to keep his mouth shut. So my character, Aerik, is whisked away by the Baron of Barovia, and things get interesting.
We're standing in front of a pack of wolves we thought were werewolves, Strahd has just loosed a vampire spawn on us, and all my attempts to talk to Strahd are shrugged off with sadistic laughter and taunts. I watch as one of my party charges the wolves, the squishiest of our party, so I call out to our Eldritch Knight to back her up. The Paladin has taken to standing guard over Ireena and Ismark while they're on the holy ground of a graveyard. I see the vampire spawn and start to kite this thing around, taunting it and firing arrows at it. I hear my Eldritch Knight call out that we've lost our Warlock so he's going to bring them to the Paladin for healing. The other fighter, our Champion, is doing an okay job at keeping the wolves at bay. As I hear this I do everything I can to keep the vampire spawn's attention, managing to avoid any major damage so far, but not really doing any significant damage to it. Soon after I hear the Champion fall, now I know we're in trouble, I have to think fast and get a hold of this situation.
I back up so that I'm standing at the gate of the cemetery and taunt the vampire spawn to attack me. I stand my ground as I let the creature grab me and sink it's fangs into me, I know I have one chance to make this work. I then grab the creature's ratty clothing and suplex the creep behind me, on to the hallowed ground of the cemetery. I then proceed to drag the creature deeper into the cemetery, bringing it near the Paladin. As the creature and I struggle, I manage to maintain my hold on it and bring it within range of the Paladin's magic and we proceed to thrash it. We unloaded everything we had on the creature only to watch it rise up and retreat out of the cemetery. I grabbed my trusty bow and launched an arrow, it flew true as a ray of light, but struck mist as the holy energies of the cemetery vanquished our foe for us.
I then proceeded to mount the walls of the cemetery, and from that vantage started to pick off the wolves. Fortunately for us they were merely dire wolves, so it may have been a difficult fight, but it was no where near as bad as it could have been. With a number of well placed shots, and some fine defensive feats from the Eldritch Knight, we dropped the creatures and retreated to a place where we could patch up our wounds.
It was 4 dire wolves and a Vampire Spawn, we were level 3 at the time. I have never had so much fun trying not to kill myself while doing something so absolutely stupid. Our DM was shocked when we finished the fight, but she had a new respect for our group. We were, in her words, supposed to realize how difficult the fight was and retreat into the sanctuary and get aid from the priest inside. We thought the guy was too scared of Strahd to be of any help...
A few short moments that have happened in my first handful of sessions as DM.
In the first session I ever ran there was a dwarven bard with a pet mouse named Elton, and was himself named Reginald.
During this session Reginald arrived in town and immediately stated he "gets blind drunk and passes out in a gutter somewhere", so next day and a failed con save later I gave him disadvantage on skill checks from the hangover (I know, poison immunity so he probably should have been ok, but first session and I forgot). The party lacked any particularly stealthy characters, so upon seeing a zombie stood guard outside a cave, it was Reginald who crept up to bash it with his hammer. He passed the stealth check, a moment later I remembered he had disadvantage. He rolls a 1, throwing up down the back of the zombies legs. Something that even a zombie notices.
A few sessions later, Reginald is in town and tries to pickpocket someone. He rolls badly so the intended victim immediately starts shouting for the guards, one starts heading over. Reginald starts playing his bagpipes (badly, this dwarf being an especially unskilled bard) making a very good roll to get himself out of trouble. So the guard gives him a warning to stop making noise but otherwise chalks it up to a misunderstanding.
A different party was traveling with some merchants when an individual stood by a tree suggested it was a good place to leave the cart, since the road ahead was damaged and the cart would not make it to town. The druid transforms into a squirrel, dashes up the tree and and loudly greets the two bandits hiding there. Soon combat breaks out and the druid squirrel spends a turn trying to gnaw a bandits bow string but fails, the bandit also fails to dislodge him. Next turn, because circle of the moon, the druid transforms into a giant spider and immediately bites a large hole out of the poor bandit he was now towering over. The other bandit in the tree promptly flees for his life, leaving the rest to deal with the now seriously botched holdup.
Later, this second party get into town and the barman of the tavern they are staying at notices they seem capable individuals so asks them to clear the giant rats from the cellar. They achieve this by using speak with animals to persuade the rats to leave quietly, the barman goes along with this because the rats will be gone with less mess to clean up, so they get loaded into an empty barrel and carried out of town. The rats had been driven into the cellar from underground by goblins who had set up a small outpost in a long abandoned cave that was attached to this cellar by an abandoned tunnel. Exploring this tunnel, the party come across a couple of goblins standing guard who (because I decided they do not speak common) were able to communicate little more than an aggravated demand that the party leave. They do... and come back with a translator, eventually opening up the possibility of trade negotiations between the goblins and the town above, I will need to use my sneaky goblin combat tricks another time.
In the homebrew campaign I'm running, one of my players (the paladin) requisitioned a communication mirror from the queen they serve, with the caveat that he should only contact her directly when it's very important. After managing to convince the faeries in a forest that their interests would be well served by making a treaty with the queen, the paladin's player proceeded to call my cell phone IRL. We then had a conversation, in character, over the phone, while in the same room.
This week, that same paladin convinced a CR 9 monster to fight him one-on-one - lawful good to lawful neutral, maybe we can work something out by pummeling each other, etc - and persuaded the other players to abstain from intervening until he went down. He did manage to take it down to 1/3 of its health before his friends mistook him falling prone for him falling unconscious and they made short work of the monster. They're maybe 30% of the way through the dungeon currently, and their tank has no more spell slots, hit dice, or Lay on Hands mojo (though they took a short rest and he got back to full health).
He's one of my favorite players to DM for and the other players thought it was awesome, but uh. Let's just say I hope I don't roll too well next week.
"Can we please stop debating philosophy with the dapper crab?"
This past Sunday was the closest a session I've run has come to ending in a TPK.
From the beginning of the campaign, the players had noted several kidnappings occurring in towns. The individual responsible was interested in kidnapping anyone with magical powers for his experiments and studies. Recently, the party's sorceress was kidnapped by this man, leading the rest of the party on a determined rescue. Not knowing where to begin looking, they followed rumors of a woman named Granny Olga outside a small farming village, who seemed to excel at locating things people needed found, among other services.
They found the old woman, and her two granddaughters, and despite mistrusting everything about the woman, made a deal with her. The bard-barian of the group, madly in love with the sorceress, was willing to take the risk. The grandmother held on to her end of the deal, locating their kidnapped friend (and incidentally alerting the wizard that took her since the party didn't ask her to discreetly find out). Fast forward to this past Sunday, the party was successful in rescuing their missing companion, killing the wizard (or did they) and destroying his lair/research, but learned from a newcomer to the group, that a young boy in the nearby town had murdered 3 men, claiming that 'Granny told him it was ok."
The party went to investigate, and after some back and forth, discovered that Granny was in fact a Grandmother Annis hag, in a coven with her 'granddaughters', a night and green hag. Unfortunately for them, they didn't try to separate the trio before making an attack. This resulted in them fighting the 3 sisters, and their minions, within their lair. The newly rescued sorceress quickly ended up outside the house alone with the green hag, but couldn't cause her any harm or get back inside to her friends due to a series of counter spells that thwarted her efforts. Inside, the other 4 members were locked in battle with the remaining 2 hags, 2 helmed horrors, and 5 wererats. The cleric was surrounded and battered, isolated from her allies while the totem of the bear barbarian was left going toe to toe with the Grandmother, whittling her life away, but also taking serious damage and eventually being knocked unconscious for the first time all campaign. Thankfully for him, right before he died, the bard-barian got a healing word off to bring him back, and then later managed to incapacitate the grandmother long enough for the barbarian to get pay back. With her down, they were able to turn the tide back in their favor, saving the cleric and rogue before they fell.
As the minions began to drop, with the coven broken, the severely wounded night hag desperately plane shifted away before she could be killed, leaving only the green hag who remained outside. Seeing the other 2 gone, she also managed to escape with her life. From there, the party managed to wipe out the other minions and take a much needed rest. It was a stressful evening for much of the night, but man did it feel good when they managed to turn it all around and get out alive. Plus, there's still 2 hags out there for me to play with and that's fun.