We were continuing a dungeon from the last session, and this time we stumbled upon a kobold who was apparently cleaning the place. We succeeded on sneaking up on him and threatened him with death if he didn't show us the way out. As we followed him, we entered a hallway with a steel floor, that when we stepped on it, the floor split in half revealing a tank of water and 3 reef sharks. The kobold managed to jump to the ledge on the sides of the hole, I did not... I fell into the tank as the kobold started screaming "I told you to watch your step!!" The druid who happens to have a strength of 19 was able to pull me up, and we started making our way across the ledge, when the kobold failed his dex save and fell into the tank. He was instantly dragged under by one of the reef sharks and the druid jumped into the tank to save him. As we had already killed one of the sharks, the other one who was feeding on the dead shark started rushing our druid, and I made a very risky move casing Witch Bolt on the shark that was almost on him, it finished off the injured shark, and then was conducted through the water and hit both the druid and the shark that was attacking him. My DM made me roll 2d12s to determine who got the full blast, the fist was a 3, and the second was a very lucky 12. The current fried both sharks and the druid got off with just taking 3 points of damage. He proceeded to resurface for a moment to flip me off and the went to harvest the meat from the sharks. Sadly the kobold's body was never recovered and is still down there with about 4 other kobold corpses from when his buddies decided to show up. We miss him dearly.
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"Never walk away from home ahead of your axe and sword.
You can't feel a battle in your bones or foresee a fight."
My party had a quest where they had to clear some bandits out of a place called Jorhedd Mine (Pronounced Yor-Hed) as they were about to head out to deal with the mine, a scout returns in a panic to the chief of the town the party are in.
Scout: Chief... I... I... In Jor... Zuh
Chief: Take a breath man, what are you talking about?
Scout: In Jorhedd... In Jorhedd... Zombies... Zombies...
The whole party groaned (Except one who'd never heard the song before) while I laughed at the joke I had set up 30 weeks ago, waiting for the moment they decided to head into the mines.
Hoard of the Dragon Queen Chapter 2, so spoiler alert.
Last session the party failed to take any prisoners and walked into the Rearguard Ambush. They burned some spell slots and a couple of Channel Divinities, but no serious injuries. They made it to the main camp and took the smart route, brazenly walking in and making themselves at home. Unfortunately one of them failed the DC5 charisma check and triggered the recognition event at the point where they try to go to bed and take a long rest in the enemy camp. While securing a tent that was empty by virtue of the fact that the party had killed its former occupants during Chapter 1, the PC who'd failed the charisma check was spoken to by their recogniser and, although allowed a deception check that's not explicitly stated in the module, rolled a 12 (when I'd set the DC at 15).
The face character attempted to sneak around the back of the camp to find the prisoners, but a series of horrible sub-10 rolls for stealth and deception (this is a 20 CHA Bard btw), resulted in returning to their tent and giving up for the night, while posting someone on watch inside the tent. The NPC who'd recognised them attempted to sneak into the tent, intending to try to find incriminating evidence. The ranger on watch yelled at him, causing him to simply run away and come back with guards. By this time the tent was surrounded, the PCs were out of their armour because they'd decided to long rest and were questioned by Mondath. The Deception vs Wisdom roll was failed, the PCs were captured and will begin next session tied to a stake with the NPC they were supposed to rescue in naught but their sleeping clothes.
So, in our main game, the next session is a key moment for the wizard, who wasn't going to be able to make it this week. So instead the DM ran a one shot for the rest of us.
The party was level 12. I played an oath of ancients paladin half elf. The other party members were a human hexblade warlock 9/echo knight fighter 3. And a battle smith armororer playing a reskinned halfing as a short race with bunny ears/feet/tail.
Our three characters are all unconscious in cells. And are each waken up by entities related to our characters. For my half elf Faelyn, her power doesn't come from a 'god' but a more abtract 'Old Force' called the Voice in the Green. It has a will but isn't as personified as the actual gods in the setting.
So we all wake up try to figure out what to do. My paladin attempts to grab her chamber pot and use it as an improvised weapon to attack and eldritch smite the door to her cell but after a nat 1 on the attempt only ended up shattering it and cutting herself on it. (Thank god for divine health so she didn't get an infection lol.)
We annoy the guards and combat ends up starting. Though full on spells weren't working, the warlock/fighter was able to summon her echo and attack through it to draw some attention. Faelyn goaded one of the guards into opening her cell to attack her, and she was able to shove him back and grab a small statue in the room to use as an improvised weapon. The artificer eventually got out of her cell and we killed the guards. Getting my paladin a proper weapon by taking a club off of one of the guards.
A monk npc who was also a prisoner being put to work on menial labor also slipped her bonds during the breakout and joined us. We then made our way to the chamber where our items were taken after our capture. We had to fight a mini boss, the assistant to the warden, but on the first round of combat a lucky crit combined with me throwing a third level slot at a divine smite lead to some crazy burst damage and then someone else finished her off before the enemy got to even do anything lol.
We got our stuff back plus some other loot taken from other prisoners, including a neat warhammer called Duskbreaker for my paladin.
Making our way back to the courtyard, we encountered the Warden, a giant multiheaded demon thing. (Did I mention this prison is in the Abyss? If not I should have lol.) The artificer cast enlarge on my paladin, who charged to the warden for what the party described as a kaiju battle as they traded blows, backed up by the warlock and artificer. After a few rounds, and one more less exciting encoutner against a buffed slime cube, we found a way out.
Outside we saw a black ship approaching on the river stix, and we had enough clues from dialog from the guards etc that a demon prince was coming, and our characters were going to be offerings/sacrifices to it. At this point, we were low on or out of spell slots, hurt, not in great shape. We figured we did not want to be here when that ship arrived, so we went to the last unexplored room and found a portal room. None of us spoke abyssal, but we managed to open up a portal. We didn't know where to.
Though obviously it was dangerous, Faelyn didn't think they had any better alternatives so went through. The party followed.
We ended up on what was described as an advanced luxury cruise ship sort of place, like the gold saucer from final fantasy XIV but on a boat, and with devil theming. The ship called Tartarus, and owned by Belial, a son of Asmodeous who has fallen out of favor with his father. There, the party was basically coerced into signing contracts to work on the ship for a time or else Belial would send us back where we came from.
And that's where the one shot ended, but we're all excited to do something more with these characters and continue their story some time.
Kick started a game which I hope will develop into a campaign this weekend! It's been very exciting to see how the players enjoy what I've put together!
Party of 5 is an Orc Artificer obsessed with becoming powerful,, his Ooze companion (using the Ooze Cohort rules for Ooze PC's) who hands around with the Orc becuase they are friends, a Drow Druid who was largely raised in daylight (swapped 60ft. of darkvision out for not having sunlight sensitivity any more), a half-drow wizard (who was a magician who blagged their way into wizarding school using tricks) and a half-sun-elf Monk who is possibly involved in a prophesy to resurrect an ancient gold dragon that his monastary worships.
They have been summoned to Greyhold, a village in the mountains, where it has been raining for over 230 years. The quarry is almost full of water, and the drainage simply cannot cope any more. There they met a drunken dwarf who regaled them about how the town had once, many years ago, been raided by pirates. They also met a half-elf called Rolan who told them that he lost his cart and all his possessions on the trail from the north, where he met something in the fog that made his horse bolt. He remembered seeing a skull, and hearing the slap of a rope in the wind.
The party successfully determined the way to go was north, after meeting the town elders (one of which is a shriveled, ancient halfling called Reed, who is mostly deaf and has lost a lot of his marbles - he is obsessed with seeing a rainbow again, something that hasn't happened since the rains started), and they struck out northward.
They had a battle with some Bugbears and a trained bloodhawk, and won without too much fuss (it should have been a hard encounter, though it did knock all the ki points out of the monk!). I'll have to be sure to throw a few more encounters there way so they have to think about managing their resources!
They found the wagon, and proceeded to first try and repair it (it was missing a wheel) and then to simply take everything from the back - including 400lbs of strange, ever-so-slightly magical rocks, which they poured into a sleeping bag and are now carrying around on a floating disc.
They then proceeded further up the trail, and there they found an anchor in the fog, in the middle of the road, with a chain stretching upwards into the cloud. Visibility was 15ft. They left the rocks just off the path, and they climbed up to find a rotting hull of a ship; peeling paint, broken masts, spongey wood, floating in the clouds.
And that's where we got to! They are all stood on the deck of this ship!
greatly looking forward to continuing this adventure!
Session 2 was scheduled, and due to real life work commitments Draco the Monk has mysteriously disappeared, which fits reasonably well with the way things went and hopefully they can re-join seamlessly when time permits them!
The session opened with the party on the deck of the rotting ship they found floating in the clouds. They performed a systematic search of the ship and found a good deal of old rotting barrels and whatnot, but nothing of note. The artificer settled down on deck to detect magic as a 10-minute ritual, and the wizard was checking the upper decks. The Druid and the Ooze were below ships, and they found the crew - a load of skeletons in their hammocks. Happily for me, they assumed that the skeletons were the dead crew, and the druid attempted to remove a gold ring from one of them. As she did so, the skeleton woke up with a start and grabbed her wrist. Time to roll initiative!
The skeletons all woke up, acting startled and scrabbling for their weapons. I gave the party a round of surprise over 5 of the skeletons, the 6th being the one which was already grappling the druid so not surprised. The Druid shouted for help and the Ooze came running (well, oozing) and managed to dash into the room. The Skeleton managed to land a cut on the druid’s arm, and the Artificer (in heavy armour) decided the fastest way down was to smash through the rotting deck he was stood on. He succeeded and dropped down, landing on the same floor as the skeletons, and I rolled a constitution save for the floor, and got a 2, so he continued through to the bottom floor (I wasn't going to have him drop right out, that's a "rocks fall, you die" scenario!), and passed his athletics check to stay standing. He then started thundering back up the stairs to get to the fight!
The Wizard made his way downstairs via a hatch (DC7 to open it, he only just managed it with a 9!) but was out of actions by then and was standing in the corridor. The Druid swung with her hand-axe and missed the skeleton with a 3. Then the Wizard gave her a reroll (chronomancy) and she still missed with a 3. Everyone was joking that the dice were fixed and that she should appeal for a reroll from the DM, so I said if she rolled a third 3 in a row it would be a hit, and she rolled... a 1. We all agreed she just wasn't hitting at that point. Amoe the Ooze dealt some decent whacking damage and grappled one of the skeletons, ready to deal some acid damage next turn. The Artificer thundered up the stairs and barged the wizard out of the way to get through the corridor, smashing him through a rotten wall in the process (prone, but I rolled low so no damage) and got into the thick of the fight. Then the wizard got up, brushed himself off, picked up a piece of wood and cast catapult on it to shatter a skeleton into a multitude of small pieces (28 bludgeoning damage!).
From there the fight went well for the players - a second catapult destroyed a second skeleton, and Amoe killed another outright (that vulnerability to bludgeoning is a killer!). The druid turned into a wolf and ripped a femur out of a skeleton, causing it to collapse into pieces. The last skeleton was felled easily, and the fight won!
Now, throughout this fight I had been describing some non-average skeleton behaviour - acting surprised, staggering back in alarm, putting their arms up to shield from the blows - and one of the players asked me after the battle with a note of concern "on a scale of 1-10, how sentient did these skeletons seem?". They rolled (extremely) low on Insight, however, so they didn't learn anything. Nobody else seemed concerned - the Wizard hung around in the room to try and take anything of interest from the skeletons, and the Artificer settled down for another attempt to detect magic. Amoe and Morgana (the druid) went downstairs to investigate the rest of the ship. They found a locked door at the back, and Amoe decided to break it down. Behind the door they found a pile of loot, well-rotted where applicable, and a chest. At about the same time as the Artificer finished his ritual and detected an incredibly powerful magic from directly below him (where the chest happened to be) and went downstairs to have a look. As he got there, Amoe opened the chest.
As soon as the chest was opened, the players felt a sudden swooping sensation, like the floor had dropped away from them for an instant, and the ship suddenly felt as though it were rocking gently. All around them, the rotten and split wood is seen to be re-knitting together, becoming whole. In a few short moments, the ship has healed to a beautiful and well-made craft, with good paint on the walls and no signs of rot anywhere. The skeletons - including a skull which Amoe had decided to carry and an arm which the druid was carrying - quickly transform into a somewhat grisly scene of recently slain crewmembers. The wizard, who was rooting around in the cabin, passed his constitution save to keep lunch down after finding himself knee-deep in people-chum.
A brief discussion followed about the importance of the gem. I told the Artificer that the gem was magical and was of the Conjuration school. There was also an amulet in the loot, which was mildly magical, and held an Enchantment school spell in it. They briefly conjectured that they might be at sea, but considered it unlikely, and then they wondered if they had gone back in time. The wizard was excited by this, being Chronurgy, so he went to look outside - and found that they were at sea!
They emerged on deck to see where they were and saw a large island off one side of the ship, with 3 more behind it, and are then accosted by the captain.
The captain demands who they are and how they got onto the ship. He also asks them where his crew is. After some discussion he tells them of the Shades which appeared and attacked his crew - and the players realise that this was them! He also tells them that it's 230 years before their time (at least, that's what he thinks). They decide to tell him that they are time-travellers who have come back in time, and that they killed the shades after the shades killed his crew. He is sceptical about this, not really understanding time-travel (though the players took the time to explain it in ship terms - as if your ship were not moving but all the others were - and he sort of got the gist). He then explained to them his story:
The captain and his crew had sailed upriver to find an abandoned temple which was supposed to have a priceless treasure in it. They followed a map which the quartermaster had won in a game of cards and found the temple. It was full of skeletons, and they managed to fight their way out of there with the chest and make their way back to the ship, recalling the pirates which were raiding Greyhold on the way. They got to the ship, and once on-board, they opened the chest, revealing the gem. But, suddenly, they were at sea! They found themselves here, and they have not been able to find their way back. There are 4 islands, and if you sail to the horizon, they appear before you as surely as they disappear behind you. He explains that there is no sailing away from here.
The players asked about the islands and he says that he has been on two of the four – one to collect food, and one where he and his crew were attacked by strange creatures in the mist, which stole his satchel containing the map to the temple.
Once the party had found out all of this from the captain, they had a discussion and decided that they should go to the island of steam and see if they can find the map which the captain lost. Then the Artificer distracted the captain whilst the Wizard tried to clean up the mess in the crews quarters. The captain is still seeming in some form of shock, and has resigned himself fairly smoothly to being stuck here with the PC’s instead of stuck here with his crew. He has agreed to take them to the island of steam, and has told them it will take some hours to get there, as there is never much wind, so they have settled down for a long rest and have levelled up to level 3!
That’s where the session got to! Looking forward to running a third session!
hit session 3 of our campaign this week, me DMing for 5 players. Aside from an instance where a player was perhaps a bit harsh to another (they stayed in character to explain something, and their character is somewhat brash, so it came across badly) it went really well.
The party made their way to the island and followed the river upstream, and then they entered a cave to try and retrieve the satchel from the "monsters in the mist". They went in and they encountered some steam mephits and magma mephits. The tank of the party ended up losing most of his hp, and they decided to take a short rest in the cave, even after I explained that they were on a shelf overlooking a larger cavern which they had not yet explored, and said "are you sure". So naturally, they were attacked by a Mephit. Fortunately the mephit rolled badly for stealth so the lookout spotted it and they destroyed it in one round, then retreated toward the exit of the cave before trying to have a short rest again, which I granted them!
It was a short session so that's all they managed, but they are ready to continue next session!
Last session, the first 2/3 were this big wizard Symposium thing where the party wizard and several npcs were presenting their academic studies. The wizard in the party did well and earned the title of Arcanist.
Then we started doing some other stuff, and an ancient saphire dragon shapeshifted into a humanoid guise walked up to our party and unleashed her dragon breath on us. Then DM says 'and we'll pick up here next time.' My character was left with 1 hp, the monk one hit KOd, the rest of the party up but not looking great.
I dropped a bunch of clues to send them chasing an adventure into the Troglodyte Caves, but a goblin they captured last session mentioned his gang's hideout was in the sewers, and now they want to muck about down there.
So this week I get to make maps for a sewer level, and by the time they get to the Trog Warrens, I can make a lot of jokes about how this 'smells even worse'.
Good News: Your boots don't smell like raw sewage any more!
Bad News: Now they smell like raw sewage wrapped in rotting meat!
Party are fighting in a mine that happens to be placed right at the top of the underdark, there's a few pitfalls that just lead straight into the Underdark.
I've learnt now that the party really like the idea of spartan kicking someone into a deep pit, they tried to do this to a wight but killed it too quickly so they just kicked the corpse down into the pit. They then decided to do it to another enemy who happened to be carrying an important quest item on them and it was only at the last second that the ranger remembered. They took the quest item off them, then kicked them down into the pit.
Now I mentioned the platforms over these small pits could only hold one person at a time earlier, the fighter forgot this and charged at a zombie currently standing on one of these platforms. The platform collapses and they both fall down, the fighter still decides to attack the zombie, whilst falling down. The necromancer they're fighting also falls into the pit after it rolled a 1 while trying to cross the gap, it still shoots a spell at the fighter as its falling. Meanwhile the Ranger see's this happening and... jumps in after them. So now we have 2 party members in freefall, the Rogue tries to persuade the Warlock to jump in as well but fails.
Now, the Fighter multiclassed into barbarian, so they were raging at the time and after falling 800ft, take a whole... 37 damage. The Ranger is an Aarakocra so they just fly to safety. The necromancer turns into a messy stain on the ground however. Of course now their in the Underdark the party want to explore it... I did not prepare for this, considering all their quests are on the surface!
After having spent a few session in Waterdeep roleplaying and enjoying the social pillar, the party finally negotiated transport to The spine of the World near Iceland Dale with the gnomish Aeronauts guild. They will travel on the guilds pride and joy, the experimental airship El Gaviota Loco (gnomes in my modded FR is heavily Spanish influenced in culture and language). The party are searching for the tower of Erika Erini, house mage of corrupt noble house Braun. What they don't know yet is that Erika is well on the road to lichdom and in league with undead Illithids with a sinister master plan.
Before departure the party spent a day preparing, buying winter gear etc, and spent a long and wet evening at the dwarven pub The Coppersmith meeting old friends and discussing common problems. Before going to bed, our heavily intoxicated shield dwarf wizard sent a Sending to one of the friends, a female dwarven cleric named Glorna, with as close to a d*ck pic as a proud dwarven noble can compose. Repercussions will of course be dire when they return to Waterdeep :-)
Anyway, they finally boarded the airship. Departure was not free of problems, but after some scary moments and a longwinded speech from guild leader and ship captain Filibuster they took to the air. After a few days they was attacked by two wyverns, which the party murdered by ship ballista, fireballs and the obligatory paladin smite crit. The gnome crew made a celebration of the mighty deed, and lots of alcohol was drunk.
The merry gang at last spotted Erikas tower in a high altitude valley, and left the airship a few kilometers away after donning furs and snow shoes. They carefully made their way to the threatening building when suddenly three frost giant skeletons erupted from a deep snow drift. The skeletons was disposed of, but not before the dwarven draconic sorcerer dropped to a few hp from a nasty frost gaze. Time was up, so the party is standing before a massive pair of oaken doors, wondering what evil dwells within!
We're playing through a Wild West campaign based on the old Mystara is a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. I reskinned the "Savage Baronies" and its turning out well. In the last episode, the PCs explored the local cemetery only to end up being chased by a pack of Hyenas. They took refuge in an old shack until the Hyenas gave up and departed.
You can check out more of the campaign at my blog here.
Wow, I just realized that I’ve missed a couple of weeks here! I’ll make this short.
The session after the last one I posted here was awful. An hour and a half of arguing and refusing to make a decision. Indecision has been a problem for us before, but never that badly. I was starting to think about quitting. I did a lot of research, bought some egg timers, and gritted my teeth.
The next session (last week) went better. I set down a couple of new rules, mentioned that I had the timers as a last resort, and we played. It was actually one of our better sessions! We had another werewolf fight, during which I finally remembered the grappling/dragging rules and nearly killed the party with the exact same number/kind of werewolves they fought last time, and they killed two, captured one, and the fourth got away. After a really fun interrogation scene, my pain got too bad to continue, but it was a good session, and I left it feeling excited and hopeful again!
This week (yesterday) I was too sick to run anything at all, as I’d just had my third COVID booster. I was very disappointed.
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I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
This was a game that we play when not enough players can make it for the main game.
This session was not the best game for those on both sides of the screen.
The party did a lot of investigating the murders that seem to be piling up in the city district-- thirteen to be exact. It got to the point where the party was walking into shops asking about missing people or dead bodies. It became repetitive though there were some good RP moments it balances out.
The problem I ran into was all this investigating was done during daytime hours and the killer seems to be doing his work during the evening. Because the killer uses dretches and itself an undead horse humanoid fiend killing during the daytime would be impossible as they would have stuck out in a mostly human city. I dropped some hints about the evening hours in past games, and even one player suggested that same action but it never took hold for the party to implement. At the end of the game, the players finally noticed the pattern of the killer how he was killing one person from each sub-district a night, and the general location where the killer strikes from.
The game left off with the party setting up a stakeout and waiting for the evening to fall in a location not hit by the killer.
At least the ending was better as pretty much all that I had set up takes place a night so I feel things will get moving. along at a more clipped pace than what has occurred the past few games.
Our party defeated an entire cave of gnolls by the Nieven casting speak with animals and then disabling their hyena guards, leaving the camp defenseless. From there we snucked (it's a word) into the main room and stealth attack killed every gnoll in the caverns before they could raise the alarm. Even my paladin succeeded on his stealth! We got another chamber where we found a shattered idol and altar to Yeenoghu (one of many indications we had gotten that these things were worshiping something else), and in the final room fought a dire troll, which had freakishly combined with a flind. Some wizard guy showed up, did some ooga-booga time magic, rescued us from the big troll thing by freezing it in time, and then we upgraded to level 4 by some more ooga-booga time magic, and the guy disappeared, and left us with "good luck". From there, we punked the now weaker troll-gnoll, and escaped the cavern to return to all the villagers of the small hamlet partying hard and celebrating our return. We danced, claimed our reward of 300 gp each, and returned back to the big city to buy some magic items. Twas quite a session
Wow, I just realized that I’ve missed a couple of weeks here! I’ll make this short.
The session after the last one I posted here was awful. An hour and a half of arguing and refusing to make a decision. Indecision has been a problem for us before, but never that badly. I was starting to think about quitting. I did a lot of research, bought some egg timers, and gritted my teeth.
The next session (last week) went better. I set down a couple of new rules, mentioned that I had the timers as a last resort, and we played. It was actually one of our better sessions! We had another werewolf fight, during which I finally remembered the grappling/dragging rules and nearly killed the party with the exact same number/kind of werewolves they fought last time, and they killed two, captured one, and the fourth got away. After a really fun interrogation scene, my pain got too bad to continue, but it was a good session, and I left it feeling excited and hopeful again!
This week (yesterday) I was too sick to run anything at all, as I’d just had my third COVID booster. I was very disappointed.
Covid shot sickness is no joke. Hope you can feel better to DM
Our last session had ended with the party finding a "Cauldron O' Plenty" to help feed an entire town with stew during an endless winter (it's borrowing heavily from "Rime of the Frostmaiden", but also throwing in some plotlines from a previous one-shot of mine).
The party had agreed to help the Town Speaker of Easthaven with some gray dwarves who were hiding out inside their town's derelict ferry. The party impressively dispatched the gray dwarves with the help of the guard captain; kicking down their door, blinding them with "Color Spray", and then following up with "Thunderwave". The rogue & the warlock then finished them off.
They managed to take their leader, a gray dwarf prince, into custody...the second gray dwarf prince they had managed to take alive (which will have consequences later when they deal with their father).
The rest of the day is spent in celebration with the town. The kobold character in our party encountered the human version of Bahamut outside the town tavern. Bahamut bid the kobold to "step into his office" in an alleyway...and was transported to Bahamut's hoard on another plane of existence.
The kobold...who is obsessed with amassing his own hoard...freaked out.
Bahamut then explained to the kobold that he has travelled many worlds, and has encountered different versions of the kobold.
(each of these kobolds come from different campaigns where the player had used the same character...the reactions from the other players was priceless)
Bahamut told the kobold that he saw something special in him; and wanted to help steer him down the path of becoming a "great dragon".
The kobold agreed, and asked Bahamut to change his scale color. Now, the kobold is the first ever "platinum kobold" in this campaign's recorded history.
The kobold is also switching entirely over to Paladin, which should be interesting.
Anyway, later on, the party discovers that the Cauldron O' Plenty has been stolen in the middle of the night by agents of the Zhentarim, thus putting the town in danger of starvation once again. Taking this as an act of war, the Town Speaker leads a group of militia out of Easthaven to go after them, suspecting that they are bringing the Cauldron back to Targos, another town.
Along the way, the militia stops in Caer Dinveval, yet another town, to liberate their leader from the clutches of a devil cult.
The party had dealings with this devil cult before...our Warlock had been communicating with the archdevil Levistus in his dreams...and so the party had been expecting a fight.
When the militia & the party reached the castle in Caer DIneval, however, they found that the cult had already been slaughtered...their flayed bodies hanging in the courtyard.
The Easthaven militia quickly found the surviving castle staff & the town speaker locked up in the castle dungeons, who said that a crazed woman had assaulted the castle with terrible magic.
The party recognized who this "crazed woman" was...a cleric of Loviatar, goddess of suffering...who wanted revenge against the party, and was seemingly following their trail.
The party then discovered a shrine to Levistus deeper inside the castle; and the Warlock was suddenly stricken by a terrible vision: he saw a handsome man in red robes standing over the shrivelled body of Levistus, mocking him.
As the man in red robes turned to face the warlock, the warlock demanded to know who the hell he was.
Smiling, the man in red robes introduced himself as Asmodeus, and the session ended there.
DEVASTATING, we lost a well loved player-character to a dragon that utterly obliterated us (we're still a pretty low level), and it was very emotionally charged, but I live for it. The roleplaying was AWESOME. Now we've spiraled from following a book campaign to Homebrew, and I'm stoked. It also reminded me I need to be more careful. If I didn't have as much HP as I do, I'd have died, too. And I REALLY...love this character. He doesn't deserve to DIE, I need to do better xD
I'd forgotten how awful fighting zombies was at low levels. We were fighting 5 zombies at level 2, all of the zombies made their con saves on their Undead Fortitude at least twice, one of them made 7 con saves and I could hear the DM audibly sighing as the combat consisted of the zombies not hitting the tank and the zombies not dying due to Undead Fortitude. This lasted 8 rounds!
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Our last session was to say the least chaotic...
We were continuing a dungeon from the last session, and this time we stumbled upon a kobold who was apparently cleaning the place. We succeeded on sneaking up on him and threatened him with death if he didn't show us the way out. As we followed him, we entered a hallway with a steel floor, that when we stepped on it, the floor split in half revealing a tank of water and 3 reef sharks. The kobold managed to jump to the ledge on the sides of the hole, I did not... I fell into the tank as the kobold started screaming "I told you to watch your step!!" The druid who happens to have a strength of 19 was able to pull me up, and we started making our way across the ledge, when the kobold failed his dex save and fell into the tank. He was instantly dragged under by one of the reef sharks and the druid jumped into the tank to save him. As we had already killed one of the sharks, the other one who was feeding on the dead shark started rushing our druid, and I made a very risky move casing Witch Bolt on the shark that was almost on him, it finished off the injured shark, and then was conducted through the water and hit both the druid and the shark that was attacking him. My DM made me roll 2d12s to determine who got the full blast, the fist was a 3, and the second was a very lucky 12. The current fried both sharks and the druid got off with just taking 3 points of damage. He proceeded to resurface for a moment to flip me off and the went to harvest the meat from the sharks. Sadly the kobold's body was never recovered and is still down there with about 4 other kobold corpses from when his buddies decided to show up. We miss him dearly.
"Never walk away from home ahead of your axe and sword.
You can't feel a battle in your bones or foresee a fight."
- Havamal, The Sayings of Odin
My party had a quest where they had to clear some bandits out of a place called Jorhedd Mine (Pronounced Yor-Hed) as they were about to head out to deal with the mine, a scout returns in a panic to the chief of the town the party are in.
Scout: Chief... I... I... In Jor... Zuh
Chief: Take a breath man, what are you talking about?
Scout: In Jorhedd... In Jorhedd... Zombies... Zombies...
The whole party groaned (Except one who'd never heard the song before) while I laughed at the joke I had set up 30 weeks ago, waiting for the moment they decided to head into the mines.
This happened when I tried out a non-D&D completely prep-free improvised one-shot.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/off-topic/adohands-kitchen/117618-you-awaken-in-a-strange-place
Hoard of the Dragon Queen Chapter 2, so spoiler alert.
Last session the party failed to take any prisoners and walked into the Rearguard Ambush. They burned some spell slots and a couple of Channel Divinities, but no serious injuries. They made it to the main camp and took the smart route, brazenly walking in and making themselves at home. Unfortunately one of them failed the DC5 charisma check and triggered the recognition event at the point where they try to go to bed and take a long rest in the enemy camp. While securing a tent that was empty by virtue of the fact that the party had killed its former occupants during Chapter 1, the PC who'd failed the charisma check was spoken to by their recogniser and, although allowed a deception check that's not explicitly stated in the module, rolled a 12 (when I'd set the DC at 15).
The face character attempted to sneak around the back of the camp to find the prisoners, but a series of horrible sub-10 rolls for stealth and deception (this is a 20 CHA Bard btw), resulted in returning to their tent and giving up for the night, while posting someone on watch inside the tent. The NPC who'd recognised them attempted to sneak into the tent, intending to try to find incriminating evidence. The ranger on watch yelled at him, causing him to simply run away and come back with guards. By this time the tent was surrounded, the PCs were out of their armour because they'd decided to long rest and were questioned by Mondath. The Deception vs Wisdom roll was failed, the PCs were captured and will begin next session tied to a stake with the NPC they were supposed to rescue in naught but their sleeping clothes.
So, in our main game, the next session is a key moment for the wizard, who wasn't going to be able to make it this week. So instead the DM ran a one shot for the rest of us.
The party was level 12. I played an oath of ancients paladin half elf. The other party members were a human hexblade warlock 9/echo knight fighter 3. And a battle smith armororer playing a reskinned halfing as a short race with bunny ears/feet/tail.
Our three characters are all unconscious in cells. And are each waken up by entities related to our characters. For my half elf Faelyn, her power doesn't come from a 'god' but a more abtract 'Old Force' called the Voice in the Green. It has a will but isn't as personified as the actual gods in the setting.
So we all wake up try to figure out what to do. My paladin attempts to grab her chamber pot and use it as an improvised weapon to attack and eldritch smite the door to her cell but after a nat 1 on the attempt only ended up shattering it and cutting herself on it. (Thank god for divine health so she didn't get an infection lol.)
We annoy the guards and combat ends up starting. Though full on spells weren't working, the warlock/fighter was able to summon her echo and attack through it to draw some attention. Faelyn goaded one of the guards into opening her cell to attack her, and she was able to shove him back and grab a small statue in the room to use as an improvised weapon. The artificer eventually got out of her cell and we killed the guards. Getting my paladin a proper weapon by taking a club off of one of the guards.
A monk npc who was also a prisoner being put to work on menial labor also slipped her bonds during the breakout and joined us. We then made our way to the chamber where our items were taken after our capture. We had to fight a mini boss, the assistant to the warden, but on the first round of combat a lucky crit combined with me throwing a third level slot at a divine smite lead to some crazy burst damage and then someone else finished her off before the enemy got to even do anything lol.
We got our stuff back plus some other loot taken from other prisoners, including a neat warhammer called Duskbreaker for my paladin.
Making our way back to the courtyard, we encountered the Warden, a giant multiheaded demon thing. (Did I mention this prison is in the Abyss? If not I should have lol.) The artificer cast enlarge on my paladin, who charged to the warden for what the party described as a kaiju battle as they traded blows, backed up by the warlock and artificer. After a few rounds, and one more less exciting encoutner against a buffed slime cube, we found a way out.
Outside we saw a black ship approaching on the river stix, and we had enough clues from dialog from the guards etc that a demon prince was coming, and our characters were going to be offerings/sacrifices to it. At this point, we were low on or out of spell slots, hurt, not in great shape. We figured we did not want to be here when that ship arrived, so we went to the last unexplored room and found a portal room. None of us spoke abyssal, but we managed to open up a portal. We didn't know where to.
Though obviously it was dangerous, Faelyn didn't think they had any better alternatives so went through. The party followed.
We ended up on what was described as an advanced luxury cruise ship sort of place, like the gold saucer from final fantasy XIV but on a boat, and with devil theming. The ship called Tartarus, and owned by Belial, a son of Asmodeous who has fallen out of favor with his father. There, the party was basically coerced into signing contracts to work on the ship for a time or else Belial would send us back where we came from.
And that's where the one shot ended, but we're all excited to do something more with these characters and continue their story some time.
Continuation from:
hit session 3 of our campaign this week, me DMing for 5 players. Aside from an instance where a player was perhaps a bit harsh to another (they stayed in character to explain something, and their character is somewhat brash, so it came across badly) it went really well.
The party made their way to the island and followed the river upstream, and then they entered a cave to try and retrieve the satchel from the "monsters in the mist". They went in and they encountered some steam mephits and magma mephits. The tank of the party ended up losing most of his hp, and they decided to take a short rest in the cave, even after I explained that they were on a shelf overlooking a larger cavern which they had not yet explored, and said "are you sure". So naturally, they were attacked by a Mephit. Fortunately the mephit rolled badly for stealth so the lookout spotted it and they destroyed it in one round, then retreated toward the exit of the cave before trying to have a short rest again, which I granted them!
It was a short session so that's all they managed, but they are ready to continue next session!
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Last session, the first 2/3 were this big wizard Symposium thing where the party wizard and several npcs were presenting their academic studies. The wizard in the party did well and earned the title of Arcanist.
Then we started doing some other stuff, and an ancient saphire dragon shapeshifted into a humanoid guise walked up to our party and unleashed her dragon breath on us. Then DM says 'and we'll pick up here next time.' My character was left with 1 hp, the monk one hit KOd, the rest of the party up but not looking great.
I dropped a bunch of clues to send them chasing an adventure into the Troglodyte Caves, but a goblin they captured last session mentioned his gang's hideout was in the sewers, and now they want to muck about down there.
So this week I get to make maps for a sewer level, and by the time they get to the Trog Warrens, I can make a lot of jokes about how this 'smells even worse'.
Good News: Your boots don't smell like raw sewage any more!
Bad News: Now they smell like raw sewage wrapped in rotting meat!
All generalizations are false.
Party are fighting in a mine that happens to be placed right at the top of the underdark, there's a few pitfalls that just lead straight into the Underdark.
I've learnt now that the party really like the idea of spartan kicking someone into a deep pit, they tried to do this to a wight but killed it too quickly so they just kicked the corpse down into the pit. They then decided to do it to another enemy who happened to be carrying an important quest item on them and it was only at the last second that the ranger remembered. They took the quest item off them, then kicked them down into the pit.
Now I mentioned the platforms over these small pits could only hold one person at a time earlier, the fighter forgot this and charged at a zombie currently standing on one of these platforms. The platform collapses and they both fall down, the fighter still decides to attack the zombie, whilst falling down. The necromancer they're fighting also falls into the pit after it rolled a 1 while trying to cross the gap, it still shoots a spell at the fighter as its falling. Meanwhile the Ranger see's this happening and... jumps in after them. So now we have 2 party members in freefall, the Rogue tries to persuade the Warlock to jump in as well but fails.
Now, the Fighter multiclassed into barbarian, so they were raging at the time and after falling 800ft, take a whole... 37 damage. The Ranger is an Aarakocra so they just fly to safety. The necromancer turns into a messy stain on the ground however. Of course now their in the Underdark the party want to explore it... I did not prepare for this, considering all their quests are on the surface!
After having spent a few session in Waterdeep roleplaying and enjoying the social pillar, the party finally negotiated transport to The spine of the World near Iceland Dale with the gnomish Aeronauts guild. They will travel on the guilds pride and joy, the experimental airship El Gaviota Loco (gnomes in my modded FR is heavily Spanish influenced in culture and language). The party are searching for the tower of Erika Erini, house mage of corrupt noble house Braun. What they don't know yet is that Erika is well on the road to lichdom and in league with undead Illithids with a sinister master plan.
Before departure the party spent a day preparing, buying winter gear etc, and spent a long and wet evening at the dwarven pub The Coppersmith meeting old friends and discussing common problems. Before going to bed, our heavily intoxicated shield dwarf wizard sent a Sending to one of the friends, a female dwarven cleric named Glorna, with as close to a d*ck pic as a proud dwarven noble can compose. Repercussions will of course be dire when they return to Waterdeep :-)
Anyway, they finally boarded the airship. Departure was not free of problems, but after some scary moments and a longwinded speech from guild leader and ship captain Filibuster they took to the air. After a few days they was attacked by two wyverns, which the party murdered by ship ballista, fireballs and the obligatory paladin smite crit. The gnome crew made a celebration of the mighty deed, and lots of alcohol was drunk.
The merry gang at last spotted Erikas tower in a high altitude valley, and left the airship a few kilometers away after donning furs and snow shoes. They carefully made their way to the threatening building when suddenly three frost giant skeletons erupted from a deep snow drift. The skeletons was disposed of, but not before the dwarven draconic sorcerer dropped to a few hp from a nasty frost gaze. Time was up, so the party is standing before a massive pair of oaken doors, wondering what evil dwells within!
We're playing through a Wild West campaign based on the old Mystara is a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. I reskinned the "Savage Baronies" and its turning out well. In the last episode, the PCs explored the local cemetery only to end up being chased by a pack of Hyenas. They took refuge in an old shack until the Hyenas gave up and departed.
You can check out more of the campaign at my blog here.
Wow, I just realized that I’ve missed a couple of weeks here! I’ll make this short.
The session after the last one I posted here was awful. An hour and a half of arguing and refusing to make a decision. Indecision has been a problem for us before, but never that badly. I was starting to think about quitting. I did a lot of research, bought some egg timers, and gritted my teeth.
The next session (last week) went better. I set down a couple of new rules, mentioned that I had the timers as a last resort, and we played. It was actually one of our better sessions! We had another werewolf fight, during which I finally remembered the grappling/dragging rules and nearly killed the party with the exact same number/kind of werewolves they fought last time, and they killed two, captured one, and the fourth got away. After a really fun interrogation scene, my pain got too bad to continue, but it was a good session, and I left it feeling excited and hopeful again!
This week (yesterday) I was too sick to run anything at all, as I’d just had my third COVID booster. I was very disappointed.
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
Warehouse Game
This was a game that we play when not enough players can make it for the main game.
This session was not the best game for those on both sides of the screen.
The party did a lot of investigating the murders that seem to be piling up in the city district-- thirteen to be exact. It got to the point where the party was walking into shops asking about missing people or dead bodies. It became repetitive though there were some good RP moments it balances out.
The problem I ran into was all this investigating was done during daytime hours and the killer seems to be doing his work during the evening. Because the killer uses dretches and itself an undead horse humanoid fiend killing during the daytime would be impossible as they would have stuck out in a mostly human city. I dropped some hints about the evening hours in past games, and even one player suggested that same action but it never took hold for the party to implement. At the end of the game, the players finally noticed the pattern of the killer how he was killing one person from each sub-district a night, and the general location where the killer strikes from.
The game left off with the party setting up a stakeout and waiting for the evening to fall in a location not hit by the killer.
At least the ending was better as pretty much all that I had set up takes place a night so I feel things will get moving. along at a more clipped pace than what has occurred the past few games.
I played a one-shot. It was my first game and it was pretty fun and also taught me the basics and helped me understand the game alot
The party: Nalan (vengeance paladin aasimar with sentient sword, Winkin, half mad halfling druid, Nieven, wood elf ranger, Azaleia, elf wizard bladesinger, Gunter, dwarf eldritch knight)
Our party defeated an entire cave of gnolls by the Nieven casting speak with animals and then disabling their hyena guards, leaving the camp defenseless. From there we snucked (it's a word) into the main room and stealth attack killed every gnoll in the caverns before they could raise the alarm. Even my paladin succeeded on his stealth! We got another chamber where we found a shattered idol and altar to Yeenoghu (one of many indications we had gotten that these things were worshiping something else), and in the final room fought a dire troll, which had freakishly combined with a flind. Some wizard guy showed up, did some ooga-booga time magic, rescued us from the big troll thing by freezing it in time, and then we upgraded to level 4 by some more ooga-booga time magic, and the guy disappeared, and left us with "good luck". From there, we punked the now weaker troll-gnoll, and escaped the cavern to return to all the villagers of the small hamlet partying hard and celebrating our return. We danced, claimed our reward of 300 gp each, and returned back to the big city to buy some magic items. Twas quite a session
Updog
Covid shot sickness is no joke. Hope you can feel better to DM
Updog
Our last session had ended with the party finding a "Cauldron O' Plenty" to help feed an entire town with stew during an endless winter (it's borrowing heavily from "Rime of the Frostmaiden", but also throwing in some plotlines from a previous one-shot of mine).
The party had agreed to help the Town Speaker of Easthaven with some gray dwarves who were hiding out inside their town's derelict ferry. The party impressively dispatched the gray dwarves with the help of the guard captain; kicking down their door, blinding them with "Color Spray", and then following up with "Thunderwave". The rogue & the warlock then finished them off.
They managed to take their leader, a gray dwarf prince, into custody...the second gray dwarf prince they had managed to take alive (which will have consequences later when they deal with their father).
The rest of the day is spent in celebration with the town. The kobold character in our party encountered the human version of Bahamut outside the town tavern. Bahamut bid the kobold to "step into his office" in an alleyway...and was transported to Bahamut's hoard on another plane of existence.
The kobold...who is obsessed with amassing his own hoard...freaked out.
Bahamut then explained to the kobold that he has travelled many worlds, and has encountered different versions of the kobold.
(each of these kobolds come from different campaigns where the player had used the same character...the reactions from the other players was priceless)
Bahamut told the kobold that he saw something special in him; and wanted to help steer him down the path of becoming a "great dragon".
The kobold agreed, and asked Bahamut to change his scale color. Now, the kobold is the first ever "platinum kobold" in this campaign's recorded history.
The kobold is also switching entirely over to Paladin, which should be interesting.
Anyway, later on, the party discovers that the Cauldron O' Plenty has been stolen in the middle of the night by agents of the Zhentarim, thus putting the town in danger of starvation once again. Taking this as an act of war, the Town Speaker leads a group of militia out of Easthaven to go after them, suspecting that they are bringing the Cauldron back to Targos, another town.
Along the way, the militia stops in Caer Dinveval, yet another town, to liberate their leader from the clutches of a devil cult.
The party had dealings with this devil cult before...our Warlock had been communicating with the archdevil Levistus in his dreams...and so the party had been expecting a fight.
When the militia & the party reached the castle in Caer DIneval, however, they found that the cult had already been slaughtered...their flayed bodies hanging in the courtyard.
The Easthaven militia quickly found the surviving castle staff & the town speaker locked up in the castle dungeons, who said that a crazed woman had assaulted the castle with terrible magic.
The party recognized who this "crazed woman" was...a cleric of Loviatar, goddess of suffering...who wanted revenge against the party, and was seemingly following their trail.
The party then discovered a shrine to Levistus deeper inside the castle; and the Warlock was suddenly stricken by a terrible vision: he saw a handsome man in red robes standing over the shrivelled body of Levistus, mocking him.
As the man in red robes turned to face the warlock, the warlock demanded to know who the hell he was.
Smiling, the man in red robes introduced himself as Asmodeus, and the session ended there.
DEVASTATING, we lost a well loved player-character to a dragon that utterly obliterated us (we're still a pretty low level), and it was very emotionally charged, but I live for it. The roleplaying was AWESOME. Now we've spiraled from following a book campaign to Homebrew, and I'm stoked. It also reminded me I need to be more careful. If I didn't have as much HP as I do, I'd have died, too. And I REALLY...love this character. He doesn't deserve to DIE, I need to do better xD
Me, a paladin, got into a shouting match with Haruman. It looked like that scene from Megamind.
I'd forgotten how awful fighting zombies was at low levels. We were fighting 5 zombies at level 2, all of the zombies made their con saves on their Undead Fortitude at least twice, one of them made 7 con saves and I could hear the DM audibly sighing as the combat consisted of the zombies not hitting the tank and the zombies not dying due to Undead Fortitude. This lasted 8 rounds!