Back to Basic/Expert DND and the Sycrawl addon: The cleric made a speech at the religious festival to followers of Celestian (his diety), and got a follower out of it (level zero 5HP torchbearer, she wants to become a cleric). We also picked up 3 mercenaries and a drug dealer/guide, and still had the scientist who needed something from Hawksring (Psionic smile for a quest of ours) with us...and all are level zero with 1HP. We decided on the radiation world (Hawksring) to find a psionic slime for Matteo (scientist).
We set off between worlds and avoided a cable car (in space but it was pointed in the wrong direction) and a port nearly in a hurricane (dangerous). My character for the 2nd time was hit in the head with flying debris...last time it was a ring that sheds light (3 charges) and this time a wrapped ax of hurling which did 5 points of damage (still working on identifying all its properties). As we approached hawksring, a black death cloud of some sort passed right through the ship doing 3 damage on everyone but the robot handyman...killing the 3 mercs, scientist, and guide. So, now do we even need Hawksring without Matteo and his scientific theory? Kind of a moot point since on approach, we rolled badly and wound up at a random world instead...DM rolled 13, so world 11 clockwise is...Emperor's end, the gladiatorial combat world.
Ok, EE is a world we had no interest in previously, but if we don't get killed by solar flares (we need to but protective equipment for the ship and crew), they might have a contact for psychic slimes (they use monsters in the arena). Plus, I've wasted about a dozen identify spells on an elemental amulet with a ton of properties which is also kind of dangerous for us to transport--I'm going to try and sell it an emperor's end to whoever runs the arena. Maybe they want to be able to make the arena super cold and summon an ice elemental for the gladiators to fight? The amulet is currently in cold mode because fire mode would have destroyed the ship, but the cold may eventually damage the ship.
So, in our previous session, the party stormed a frost giant fortress-factory like a 5-man army, and released some Treant slaves. This session, they foght through 4 more frost giants, and the now infamous cursed gems came out of the bag.
The Frost Giant General was hit by one and immediately all of his armour became a jesters outfit which he couldn't remove. His huge hammer became a giant squaky hammer as well.
The Frost Giant Summoner (homebrew) was hit by another and immediately became a Duergar instead of a Frost Giant. Then the corrupting magic within him turned him into a terrifying ice monster.
After the fight, the party managed to destroy a Frost Giant Sky Dreadnaught ( a 1000ft. long sky-ship) by cutting into one of the engines and then activating it, tipping the ship over and onto the next in the assembly line (there were 6!).
They then word-of-recalled themselves back to their skyship, which was flying South (the Cleric spent time making a shrine to Bahamut in his room, for this purpose).
Next up they are aiming to fly north to a monastic city hidden in the wilds, to try and recruit them to fight the Giants!
So, in our previous session, the party stormed a frost giant fortress-factory like a 5-man army, and released some Treant slaves. This session, they foght through 4 more frost giants, and the now infamous cursed gems came out of the bag.
The Frost Giant General was hit by one and immediately all of his armour became a jesters outfit which he couldn't remove. His huge hammer became a giant squaky hammer as well.
The Frost Giant Summoner (homebrew) was hit by another and immediately became a Duergar instead of a Frost Giant. Then the corrupting magic within him turned him into a terrifying ice monster.
After the fight, the party managed to destroy a Frost Giant Sky Dreadnaught ( a 1000ft. long sky-ship) by cutting into one of the engines and then activating it, tipping the ship over and onto the next in the assembly line (there were 6!).
They then word-of-recalled themselves back to their skyship, which was flying South (the Cleric spent time making a shrine to Bahamut in his room, for this purpose).
Next up they are aiming to fly north to a monastic city hidden in the wilds, to try and recruit them to fight the Giants!
This is spelljammer? I play Spelljammer and Skycrawl.
So, in our previous session, the party stormed a frost giant fortress-factory like a 5-man army, and released some Treant slaves. This session, they foght through 4 more frost giants, and the now infamous cursed gems came out of the bag.
The Frost Giant General was hit by one and immediately all of his armour became a jesters outfit which he couldn't remove. His huge hammer became a giant squaky hammer as well.
The Frost Giant Summoner (homebrew) was hit by another and immediately became a Duergar instead of a Frost Giant. Then the corrupting magic within him turned him into a terrifying ice monster.
After the fight, the party managed to destroy a Frost Giant Sky Dreadnaught ( a 1000ft. long sky-ship) by cutting into one of the engines and then activating it, tipping the ship over and onto the next in the assembly line (there were 6!).
They then word-of-recalled themselves back to their skyship, which was flying South (the Cleric spent time making a shrine to Bahamut in his room, for this purpose).
Next up they are aiming to fly north to a monastic city hidden in the wilds, to try and recruit them to fight the Giants!
This is spelljammer? I play Spelljammer and Skycrawl.
This is set in a world where Spelljamming has not yet become commonplace. So far, one person has used it in a side-quest oneshot for other characters, where he stole their tavern to fly to the moon. The skyships are powered by a magical rock called Flyorite which responds to the presence of magic by floating upwards. The party recently completed a quest to find a single boulder of Flyorite, which allowed them to make an unparalleled ship for speed and maneuvrability. They are now facing off against Giants who have their own, ponderous, sky-dreadnaughts!
My Gnome Artificer, Kal, and the party Goliath Barbarian, Koldur, hitched a ride into a city with a group that had a Goliath Wizard. They were called the Ill Omen but the Goliath wanted to name the group the Peace Keepers. He turned out to be a lovable guy and Stone Goliath like Koldur who asked if he had gotten his first tattoo yet to which he replied, "No." We made it to town and found an awesome shop where we got great deals on some magic items and discovered the shop keep also does tattoos. We came up with a plan and went to the inn the Ill Omen were staying at, kicked in the Goliath's door, black bagged him, and managed to roll well enough that we snuck him to the shop and we all got "Peace Keepers" tattoos (Koldur and mine were magical that allowed our stats to go above 20, he went with Con and I chose Int).
Continuing to the next session of old school D&D with Skycrawl:
There was a lot that went on, much of which was factors just lining up. Last session, we were traveling with a scientist who wanted to study a psionic slime at a radiation soaked world (Hawkring) with mutated monsters to find a way to talk to sols (sentient suns that provide heat and air), which is one of out missions. we traveled a few days between worlds and two things happened on approach, a random encounter of a death cloud of some sort hit the ship...and anything organic (not the robot) took 3 points of damage (it rolled its minimum)...but that killed 5 NPCs who had rolled 1 on a d6 (level 0)...the scientist, and the guide and three mercs we had just hired. Then on approach, we rolled badly and got lost, winding up instead at Emperor's End, a gladiator world with an overactive sol and occasional solar flares and toxic gas.
Idea 1. Now, we never had interest in Emperor's end before...but it seemed to me like it might work for us...so I came up with a speech/sales pitch for a magic item we are about fed up with...The Elemental Amulet that my magic user has wasted 10 days identifying (you get one property at a time and it takes a full day plus there is a lot of duplication (2 properties per element and a lot of elements). We stopped it form burning up our ship by hitting it with a cold admixture (think alchemy) but it's still a lot of cold for the ship and eventually it might damage the ship but the other elemental options (fire, water, electricity, etc.) seem more dangerous. BUT., a gladiator world would want to summon elementals for the arena and would have the funds to buy it.
Idea 2. We need info on psionic slimes and a world that buy monsters might have one or info on where we could get one.
Idea 3. We are looking for 2 scientists in particular (especially now that we lost ours) and a busy world like this might have seen them. One might be able to help with the slimes and we have a use for the other.
Idea 4. Hire mercenaries (hopefully tougher ones) and a gladiator world is the right place for it.
Idea 5. They should have rations for sale.
idea 6: Look for protective equipment for the solar flares and toxic gases here. Cleric needs a short bow and arrows for his new henchman (form his recent speaking engagement on the festival world.
How did it work out? Infor we already had on 2. Good info on 3 (more recent that what we had) on one scientist (the one the bounty hunters are after). 4 worked out well. 5 was a no brainer so yes. 6 worked somewhat--2 really good magic gas masks but only those 2 but we left so quickly it didn't matter and were careful with the ship position. We did find the bow and arrows.
What about #1? Halifax (my PC) needed a win for that amulet...casting identify every day for 10 days was a running joke at this point. He found a high level wizard/fighter to buy 2 scrolls off of (web and hold person) and told her about the amulet to see if she knew a buyer (she does, the woman who manages an arena). She wanted to see it before bringing her friend in, so we brought her and 6 guards to the ship where a few of hundred + lbs of huge stone coffin and sand (for insulation) were the resting place of the amulet. She ID'd it to make sure it was what we said it is. It is. Ok...she left to contact her friend and said it might take a day before we heard back.
We did the above errands (and checked market for rumors) and also watched a match where fighters on ropes above water tried to make each other fall. We hired three of the winners (mercs) who rolled 1, 3, 3 on d6 for HP, A little Better than the three 1HP mercs we hired recently (that died). We also checked the arena crowd for rumors. Got back to the ship and the arena manager was there.
I had a prewritten sales pitch ready (the cleric had one last week for a religious festival at a festival world which I used). She wanted to see us conjure an elemental (we haven't done it but Halifax was expecting the request). Halifax chanted for a round and summoned an ice elemental into the air away from the ship. Its probably still floating by somewhere (this setting is like that). She said she was interested. H asked how much. She said she wasn't sure yet. H said "ok, just wanted to make sure you weren't thinking 10k or something like that." She said, 10K is a lot of money" H said, if the amulet only did one element, it would be worth 8K, but this one does many. That was Halifax managing expectations. She asked what we are interested in (cash, gems, magic items, heavy elements (for orcery which is basically alchemy) and left. This was her offer: 26K, a figurine of wonderous power (Golden lions), 4 Candles of truth, a nasty looking gauntlet (the metal is flaking) we need to identify, and 2 Vitra (heavy element we need that is worth 5k each). We took the offer and she set me up with a henchman (level 1 fighter instead of 0 like the hirelings) with a unique fighting style (machete, flint, and burning powder attacks).
PLUS Halifax (thanks to the rumor mechanic) finally got the last 100XP needed to catch up to the rest of the party at level 4. Ols school Magic users have slower XP progression.
The party had a heavy roleplay session, where the Monk had a shared dream with the Life Cleric of Bahamut, about Bahamut, after dissing him inside of one of his temples, which explained why Bahamut had "let the dragons die" (this is lore in my world, the dragons were slain by an ancient hero, and Bahamut tried to get them to hide but they refused, and were slain). In the dream, they learnt of the heroes weapon - the Dragoneater - and that the weapon is now in the possession of the BBEG.
The Warlock had a visit from the Raven queen, her patron, who offered her a drink to protect her from her magic, which was previously controlled by a curse she put on her, and has since been removed by the cleric. This is represented by her starting to multiclass as a wild-magic sorcerer. There was a lot of emotional manipulation.
The Monk, who had not learnt his lesson, then insulted the Raven Queen, and got a visit of his own, in which she accused him of poisoning the Warlock's mind with Hope and Love (there is a romance arc blooming here, with redemption for the warlock who was just a killing machine).
The Artificer-Paladin had a vision in his dreams about the magic item he carries. The visions are always a visitation from an elf who attempts to teach them about what makes a hero, which is a roleplay route for attuning to the item, which is extremely powerful.
After the visions played out, the Artificer and Cleric did some scrying, invented a new spell (6th level, Shared Scrying - include others in the vision) and discovered that the Ettin they had half-killed (they killed one head) is still alive, and is trapped in his artificer armour (it replaces lost limbs - in this case, the half controlled by the dead head), and has degenerated into insanity in the last 6 months (the party died for 6 months, so the world progressed). He is obsessed with bringing his brother back. They moved the scrying orb in front of the dead head and saw a skull leaning against the inside of the helmet.
Then they scryed on the lower BBEG of the campaign, and saw him working on a desk, with a mirror of utter darkness on the desk. Something moved behind the mirror, they failed wisdom saves, and panicking, ended scrying. They then used a magic item of truesight to see an orb watching them back, which they dispelled. It fell into a foul ooze on the floor.
Then they discussed their next moves, the Barbarian was turned into a Mudskipper for continually discussing weaponising fish. The game ended with the appearance on the horizon of a house on a mountain, above a waterfall.
I just DM-ed the session 0 for the final game of D&D I'll be able to play for 2 years. Here's how it went...
After discussing the Homebrew rules and reading the Lore document out loud for that one player who didn't read it, we started the game off in a village square. The players were free to walk around the city, in the week beforehand we had established why every player was there so everyone had a goal. The Fighter was trying to find a boat to travel to an island off the coast where a medicinal herb could be found that could cure a sickness that had afflicted his daughter. Similarly, the Paladin happened to follow my homebrewed goddess Alexis that in legend touched that very same island and all of her followers were required to visit there at least once. Beyond that we had three Bards who all came to the village to compete in a music competition that was being held in town the next day as well as a sorcerer who just had a voice in his head tell him to come here or else. They're all level 13.
They all went about doing their own thing until I had a thief steal from the stand the fighter was buying goods from. The fighter tackled him and bound him in rope then the Paladin and the Rouge/Bard ran over to see what was happening. They argued for a minute with the thief who claimed he was only stealing so he could feed his tribe. Then, because DM, the Thief cut through the rope with a knife and ran off. The Bird Race (Aaracokra is how I think you spell it) Bard tried to intercept but got stabbed in the knee. He then doubled back and recollected all of his food and pulled out his Voidblade (basically the inverse of a Sunblade.) revealing himself to be a Sith Lo- I mean Picem. He then attempted to Force push the PCs away but they all got above 25 on strength. He tried to run but then the ENTIRE TABLE called out "I HAVE THE SENTINAL FEAT!" so they all used it and the Paladin blew him up with a crit smite dealing almost 200 damage to the thief's measly 163.
After the battle the Sorcerer's eyes started glowing and out of them projected a Armor-clad King and a Githzerai Wizard. They were characters from a previous campaign with the King being a beloved NPC and the Wizard being my PC. He was a divination wizard who just gave them exposition via "I had a prophecy!" where the non-descript BBEG was taken down by the adventurers and if they failed the BBEG would gather a bunch of Mcguffins and conquer not just this Universal Sphere (see D&D lore) but all of them. This night a sign would appear in the sky revealing the location of one of these Mcguffins and the players had to race to grab it.
That night amid late night partying an earthquake struck and a giant purple beam blasted into the sky coming from the Island that both the Fighter and Paladin were going to (Called Mitzi Island). The following morning the players found a ship captain by the name of Ronald and that's where we left off.
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Hello There. I am a worldbuilder and proud DM that is creating a huge world called Eldredom. I'm pouring many hours into it and I may make some things later...
Over the last 2 sessions my party (level 13) stopped off at a sinister tower to investigate. After the barbarian communed with nature and was given a vision from the snow and wind of a wizard raising the tower and putting a chest inside, they decided to go get it. They were confronted by two sentient statues which they fought off, though they took some lumps doing so, and they went to go inside, and were confronted by a ghost-like spirit who bid them leave using a fear aura which only caught the Barbarian, who was forced to run. Then the Cleric popped Banishment on them, and they disappeared.
The party elected to surround the point where the spirit had disappeared and hold actions to whale on the thing, so when it reappeared (it was native to this plane) they murdered the death out of it. However, when they all stepped inside, the doors slammed shut and the whole tower seemed to drop 10ft. They then elected to climb the stairs, which seemed to continue for far longer than the tower, so they marked the wall and concluded that they were in a loop. Doubling back, they immediately emerged on the floor the entered on, and they went downstairs.
The first room downstairs was a riddle-puzzle, with 12 knights with different colours and heraldry, and a dead king with 12 swords stuck through him, and a riddle asking which of the knights should now be king. They solved the riddle incredibly quickly - turns out two of the players are knowledgable of coats of arms and how they work, so they didn't even need the hints - and they crowned the correct knight and were allowed to move on.
In the following session, they proceeded downwards again and found a room in which stood an obsidian obelisk shaped like a key, beneath a keyhole. There was a table and chair with a few things on it, and two pieces of paper on the ceiling. After some investigation they worked out that the two lightest things in the room would float to the ceiling, and so they pushed everything out and managed to levitate the key, which the barbarian turned. This changed to corridor outside into a different flight of stairs, which they climbed.
The next room was a room full of junk, with another riddle - this time with two potential answers. They found both and spent some time working out how to use them (you place them on a pedestal and it changes where the door leads to - but it does so silently!), and eventually worked out that one opened the door to outside and the other opened the door to more stairs. They went for the stairs, and they encountered 4 canoloths, which they fought off easily (the canoloths rolled appallingly and the paladin picked up the ambush with divine sense). Then the second of the 2 spirits (Eidolons) manifested inside a statue (the room was ringed in them). I asked the Cleric to roll damage for their Spirit Guardians, and then it got a critical hit on them. The animated statue does 6d12 damage (!) so 12d12 damage (101 total) later the cleric drops like a stone, and the party starts to panic as they were their way out using Word of Recall.
The paladin smites the everloving crap out of the statue and the Eidolon appears. Everyone swings at it and it disappates into the aether, and the Warlock force-feeds the cleric a healing potion. They finally approached the chest, and open it to find some cool loot - a helm of brilliance, 1,800gp, an Anchor feather token (this is terrifying as they are fighting skyships, I shouldn't have let them roll for it!!!), and a bag of Dust of Invisibility. They then word-o'-recalled themselves back to their skyship, and they began to rest, so ending the session!
Last skycrawl session, some weird creature in a sky shark drawn carriage tried to extort 2000 form our skyshio and we said no. he kept staling and chasing us and had some sort of magical attack that messed up our navigation (we needed to make 3 of the 4 PC saving throws and only made 2) and we crashed into the world we were approaching. we are wedged into the side of a mountain and about to lose the ship and abandon it. hopefully we can grab some our look while we jump away. the ship is cracked in half.
Last Storm Lord's Wrath session I ran, we ran into an unexpected interaction between a world event and me giving the party something I had not considered.
So they had to go through a storm to reach the place the Cult of Talos was enacting a ritual to take control of all the weather in the Sword Coast. You see, I allowed them to have a travelling mobile base, basically a car, that is pretty much exclusively used for out of combat transport and a place to stay. I had not considered one thing:
While travelling to Wayside Inn to confront the Cult of Talos, there's a world event where they have to roll a d6 and that decides how many times they risk getting struck by lightning. Well, two problems:
One, they're all in the mobile base together.
And two, the mobile base can't make the proper saving throw NOT to get hit.
Cue ALL the lightning that would've hit the party, including the two NPCs driving with them, hitting the mobile base AT ONCE.
How many dice?
126d6.
We literally struggled to find a dice roller that could ROLL that many dice.
End result?
493 lightning damage to their vehicle.
By some miracle of engineering and me probably being too nice of a DM, the base SOMEHOW survived that, but the entire party was shaken like a martini and understandably NOT in the mood to stick around for Talos to try again.
Yeah, Talos was bringing his A-Game that night.
Oh, and then they fought the Statue of Talos boss fight and might've died if they hadn't thought 'wait, this is made of bronze' and decided to attempt to kill it with temperature shock. I thought that was extremely creative, so I rolled with it and they won. Then the cultist that was magically connected to it exploded after nearly killing the wizard.
The detectives of the Elevenleytown Detective Agency arrested an incel wizard bent on destroying the world to make his father proud, escaped his demiplane, turned him in to their boss, got Fudge the bullywug (a servant of the wizard) hired at their agency, and returned to the woods to collect cruelty-free unicorn tears from the unicorn whose horn the wizard had ripped out of his head for a world-destroying ritual.
The unicorn granted each of them a wish: the Warlock received the cruelty-free tears that the forensic chemist had requested the party go find, as well as a raise. The Ranger received peace (very powerful magical barriers around the Canal Street and Coral Street signs he can see out his window, so that the local children can't cross out the C's on them anymore), and the Barbarian received knowledge of the entire history of the fallen worlds before Elevenleytown, hoping to learn information about the father of the wizard they had just captured.
I got to play the most theatrical and annoying NPCs in this world so far, and it was so much fun, and I got to bring two other beloved NPCs together into blossoming relationship. I love the strange little world we've built for this campaign, and we've got one more session to go!
In spell jammer tonight, we took on a false hydra (we are level 15) and two failed the save on the charm song but another member cats silence on the hydra, stopping the song, and we thrashed the thing. -------------------------------------------------- Old school D&D a few nights ago with the skycrawl addon, we crashed the ship into a world which is basically a shell with a world inside a crack, and a separate floating port. Treasure hunters go there and bandits go to pick off the treasure hunters for loot. The ship was wedged into the crack and splitting into 2. I used web to hold the pieces together long enough to load out stuff into a flying dinghy (the other one was destroyed in the crash) with 2 party members and everyone else started climbing down (on roots and rope). A ship of bandits showed up to look the wreck and started climbing down the other side of the crack. We used shadows (we had 3 one use throwable potions basically) to keep climbing down without them seeing us and when enough of them were in our ship, we used another throwable potion to set it on fire. They send men down, but we picked most of them off and kept going down to the city. we killed 7 of them. eventually it got so dry that the roots were gone and we ferried the crew down with the dinghy, including our giant.
Turns out the city below is a dead city that dehydrates you quickly (DM is using an hourglass for when we need to drink). There is a weird humanoid splashing water from his body onto walls and running off so we are following him right now. We need to find whatever treasure quickly, get out of that dead city by climbing up somehow, and get past the remaining bandit crew and somehow take over the ship (currently at the floating port). Doesn't sound easy.
Last night was an amazing session. The party had just returned to their skyship after raiding an old wizards tower, fighting past the guardians, and taking the treasure.
The session opened with the Monk talking to the Barbarian, to ask him more about his family and his goals. The barbarian started talking about his mother being shot by a hunter and his quest for revenge, and the Monk questioned his motives (this was an interesting one as the Barbarian player hasn't involved himself too heavily in roleplay moments).
Flying north, they were suddenly aware of a flock of birds emerging from a huge tree and directly approaching them. They steered away, but the birds caught them up, and were revealed to be Starlings. The starlings immediately started chirping goods and prices, and the party realised that this was some sort of trade offer, which they refused, as they are travelling with urgency to their destination, and do not intend to stop unless they have to.
Continuing north, they spot a Giant on the ridge of the mountain ahead, watching them. Their main conflict has been with frost giants, and they immediately were wary, and the Warlock sent her familiar out to see what it was. The Giant offered the raven a finger to land on, and spoke to it in Sylvan (though the Warlock didn't recognise the language), and the party waved as they sailed past.
Minutes later, they are discussing their plans - about trying to reclaim the dwarves homeland from the giants, and trying to establish a cooperative cohabitation instead of perpetuating the cycle, when I did something I almost never do - I interrupted the roleplay. I had good reason though - for the wind had whipped away the bellowed warnings from the giant behind, and a Roc swooped down from above and snatched Grizz from the side of the ship, carrying him off toward the mountain to the West.
The party jumped to action (and into initiative), with the Paladin-artificer giving the Monk Fly, and the Monk casting invisibility on himself and flying after the Roc, carrying with him the Leapstones (when one comes to rest, the other teleports to it, alongside anyone carrying it). The Warlock steered the ship to pursuit, and the Roc started flying fast. The Barbarian started attacking the feet, slowing the Roc down as it clamped down on him and started biting to stop this prey from biting back. The monk caught up and handed the Barbarian one of the leapstones, and dropped it! The Barbarian JUST managed a dex save to catch it.
The ship, in pursuit, suddenly noticed what looks like a net floating in the path ahead. As they pull up, they still hit it, revealing that it was a net made of giant spiders, drifting upwards to snag prey. The party on the ship starts fighting the spiders off, and the cleric starts screaming, and fires up spirit guardians.
For 2 turns, the Roc continues flying away, and the party fights off the spiders. The Monk returns to the ship (crazy fast, that one) and drops the stone. Nothing happens, and they realise that the ship is moving, so the stone won't work. They stop the ship, but the wind keeps it drifting.
The Roc drops the Barbarian into it's nest, and the Barbarian drops the stone, causing the Monk to teleport to the nest with him. The Monk tries to attack but is teleported back to the stone that was dropped as soon as he moves away, so he drops the other stone and stuns 2 of the 4 roc chicks, using Strength for the unarmed strike and opting not to use his martial arts dice, thus dealing 0 damage.
The barbarian picks up the stones and throws one off the cliff. Anticipating that he will teleport away, the Monk flies away. The Barbarian's turn comes back around, and the Chicks are no longer stunned, and he hasn't teleported away, so he takes a running leap off the side of the nest.
The party witness the barbarian jumping off the edge, and the Roc launching itself from the mountain again, and I ended the session!
Note: This level of cliffhanger is an excellent way to immediately trigger the group scheduling the next session!
Last session (this time last week-ish) the players hopped aboard a ship and plowed through two whole sessions worth of content in our two hour playtime. Firstly after interacting with the crew and spending half an hour arguing about who get what troops and whether or not to throw some poor NPC overboard to make the numbers "even" I had two pirate ships attack with a third staying close behind that flew no flag. Naturally, I thought that the ship combat would take them forever to do since I wasn't using any improved rules from YouTube. Of course I was stupid enough to plan for this combat to take 2 hours and it seemed so over the course of the first couple round. I had 4 assassins pelt the Paladin with poison tipped crossbow bolts and downed him moving on to the fighter next. When it was his turn, the fighter was like "by the way, I cast Fireball on the enemy ship straight into their gunpowder stores." This is where all my planning fell apart.
After the player blew up the 2 enemy ships with fireball, they killed the assassins and took prisoners hostage aboard the ship. By the way, the ship is a tamed mimic named Sally. After beating them, they remembered there was a third ship following from behind. This was supposed to be utilized at the end of the session as a cliffhanger but I had to pull it out of my butt now. Black Guards who serve the BBEG jump from the ship and kill the priest the players had to protect in order to give them "safe passage on the waters". The second the priest died storms began to swirl around the sky as the Blackguards sailed as far as possible away, a Kracken popped out of the water and combat once again started. Or at least it would have had the sorcerer not immeadietly cast Polymorph on the Kracken followed by speak with animals to to talk to the now rabbit and explain the situation. We were all laughing at the absurdity. The kracken then just kinda swam away and we ended the session early.
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Hello There. I am a worldbuilder and proud DM that is creating a huge world called Eldredom. I'm pouring many hours into it and I may make some things later...
level 4 party. Ok, still in the dead city underground (only one way in/out) that dehydrates you. We would out that if hit with slashing damage, we take an extra 1.2 damage (dehydration) next turn. So, we figured we'd treasure hunt quickly and try to climb and fight out way past the only exit up top (bandits). our ship was destroyed, so out whole crew is with us. We found a building with the hum of machinery so our party of 2 mercs (3Hp) and a level 1 fighter (8HP) and a level 0 NPC henchman working towards being a cleric, went and left the rest of the crew outside the building. we left them with some water. we found a forcefield and used a dispel magic scroll to get past it (there better be another way out). Found a bunch of skeletons of dead treasure hunters with loot (including possible magic items). found a stone garden (all the plants are stone). some of it counts as treasure (stone lilies). We avoided some sort of moving stone creature.
some of us were treasure hunting (including me) while some explored a nearby room with drawn magic circles and a stone carnivorous plant (with some sort of gem in its mouth) in the middle. They called us to look at it. I would have left it alone, but the fighter broke the cycle and not only did the plant turn back to normal, but it also happened with the garden...and all the plants started dehydrating. yellow slime exited from where the plant is and came at us...we retreated, had the two mercs distract it (its slow) and the rest found another route. we called to the mercs to join us, but they didn't. we heard stone breaking in that direction and left. we found a magic book of some sortand treasure ap and were able to free the book, but about 20% of it was destroyed (its plant based and dehydrated a bit). we found a shaft going up with broken platforms and found a way to climb up to the next platform on ropes. then we heard screeching, and a flying reptile came at us and turned the level 1 fighter to stone. We injured it, found a door to open, went in, and closed it. That was the creature that killed the mercs. we will keep working our way up and out hopefully.
we did lose 3 of the 4 NPCs with us. the 4th has the XP to be a lev 1 cleric if we can rest. The cleric and rogue will go up to 5 if thye can rest. Th level 1 fighter had XP to get to lev 2 but died.
The detectives returned from Kelek's father's pocket dimension to find that over the weekend the world has been experiencing apocalyptic omens, rains of frogs, blood, shampoo, and other unnatural substances. They arrived at the agency to find that Angela, the forensic chemist, was being secretive about why she was using the unicorn tears she asked them to supply, and Susan, the chief, told the party that Kelek was being detained in Enemy Valley Correctional Facility under maximum security, and also that the apocalyptic omens were really hindering business and that they needed to find other ways of bringing in money. Also thousands and thousands of crows appeared in the sky, dropping upon the city an absurd amount of bird crap.
With that information, two detectives went to investigate what Angela was up to, and two of them went about taking and selling feet pics to keep the agency from going under. Those who confronted Angela discovered that she was using the unicorn tears to create a potion that would allow her to see into the future in order to determine whether these strange events were actually harbingers of the end times or not.
The party traveled together, guarding themselves from the crow poop rain with desks, binders, umbrellas, and a body bag, to the Jujubee Temple of the Holy Miss Mood to ask Miss Mood if there was any divine reason for the strange weather events. Together they prayed to the gardening goddess Jujubee, who realized that this stuff is actually important and maybe she should have been paying more attention to her domain over the last couple of days instead of going on a weekend trip. They all sent in their requests to her and asked to her see if Santa (this world's name/concept of satan) was involved in these evil occurrences.
They formulated a plan to steal a MetroHorse and ride to Enemy Valley to make sure Kelek isn't causing any trouble in prison, and that's where we'll pick up next time. yeehaw.
In Elevenleytown, the detectives made their way to the Morse (MetroHorse) stables to attempt to steal a horse and carriage to take them to Enemy Valley. After a quick and somewhat pathetic confrontation with the security guard, they managed to commandeer the Magenta Line horse and go on their way.
Arriving at Enemy Valley, they dodged crime solicitors and went straight into the Enemy Valley Correctional Facility, hoping to speak to Kelek and find out why all of these apocalyptic omens were occurring. Arriving at his cell, they discovered that it consisted of a transparent magical barrier permeable only to smells. With this knowledge, they tortured him with farts until he gave them the information they wanted. He spoke of sleeper agents set up by his father during the last war, who were set to awaken once Kelek was freed from the demiplane he was trapped in. Rock, the Barbarian gifted with near-complete knowledge of the previous versions of Elevenleytown by a unicorn, knew that something was inconsistent with Kelek's story, because Kelek's father was killed during the war, before Kelek could have been born, and he had no children. Unsatisfied, the detectives returned to the agency to figure out what to do with this information, and to speak to Angela, who they thought was acting suspicious earlier.
In her lab, they found Angela still hard at work brewing various potions and other magical looking things. They convinced her to leave her lab for a bit while they could investigate what she was making, and discovered that she was brewing up basically every potion imaginable, as well as makeshift shrapnel grenades, alchemist's fire, and other alchemical weapons. What she was working on before she left was a barrier spell to block Undead from entering the Agency. As they realized that, the Druid and the Ranger both got attacked by ghosts who had surprised them and entered the lab.
They had a long combat, which consisted of the Druid falling unconscious several times, the Ranger throwing the grenade and damaging everyone and everything in the lab, Angela returning and getting possessed, and the party trying to trap the last ghost in the fume hood, only for the ghost, being a ghost and all, to just leave it before they could suck it out of the building. Finally, the Barbarian stepped outside of the lab to see if they could get any help from the others at the agency, and saw Samantha Pauline Adams sitting at her desk with her eyes glazed over, chanting rhythmically. They attacked her several times, but she always beat her concentration check, until the final swing, in which she both lost her concentration and fell unconscious.
Rock dragged Samantha, now returned to consciousness, into the lab, where the party interrogated her and realized she had no idea what she was doing, she had just started casting a spell all of a sudden, with no knowledge of it. Further interrogation lead her to realize that she had no memory of her life before getting hired by the Agency. They realized she was one of Kelek's sleeper agents, and he must have been telling the truth, and that's where we ended the session.
Back to Basic/Expert DND and the Sycrawl addon: The cleric made a speech at the religious festival to followers of Celestian (his diety), and got a follower out of it (level zero 5HP torchbearer, she wants to become a cleric). We also picked up 3 mercenaries and a drug dealer/guide, and still had the scientist who needed something from Hawksring (Psionic smile for a quest of ours) with us...and all are level zero with 1HP. We decided on the radiation world (Hawksring) to find a psionic slime for Matteo (scientist).
We set off between worlds and avoided a cable car (in space but it was pointed in the wrong direction) and a port nearly in a hurricane (dangerous). My character for the 2nd time was hit in the head with flying debris...last time it was a ring that sheds light (3 charges) and this time a wrapped ax of hurling which did 5 points of damage (still working on identifying all its properties). As we approached hawksring, a black death cloud of some sort passed right through the ship doing 3 damage on everyone but the robot handyman...killing the 3 mercs, scientist, and guide. So, now do we even need Hawksring without Matteo and his scientific theory? Kind of a moot point since on approach, we rolled badly and wound up at a random world instead...DM rolled 13, so world 11 clockwise is...Emperor's end, the gladiatorial combat world.
Ok, EE is a world we had no interest in previously, but if we don't get killed by solar flares (we need to but protective equipment for the ship and crew), they might have a contact for psychic slimes (they use monsters in the arena). Plus, I've wasted about a dozen identify spells on an elemental amulet with a ton of properties which is also kind of dangerous for us to transport--I'm going to try and sell it an emperor's end to whoever runs the arena. Maybe they want to be able to make the arena super cold and summon an ice elemental for the gladiators to fight? The amulet is currently in cold mode because fire mode would have destroyed the ship, but the cold may eventually damage the ship.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
So, in our previous session, the party stormed a frost giant fortress-factory like a 5-man army, and released some Treant slaves. This session, they foght through 4 more frost giants, and the now infamous cursed gems came out of the bag.
The Frost Giant General was hit by one and immediately all of his armour became a jesters outfit which he couldn't remove. His huge hammer became a giant squaky hammer as well.
The Frost Giant Summoner (homebrew) was hit by another and immediately became a Duergar instead of a Frost Giant. Then the corrupting magic within him turned him into a terrifying ice monster.
After the fight, the party managed to destroy a Frost Giant Sky Dreadnaught ( a 1000ft. long sky-ship) by cutting into one of the engines and then activating it, tipping the ship over and onto the next in the assembly line (there were 6!).
They then word-of-recalled themselves back to their skyship, which was flying South (the Cleric spent time making a shrine to Bahamut in his room, for this purpose).
Next up they are aiming to fly north to a monastic city hidden in the wilds, to try and recruit them to fight the Giants!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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This is spelljammer? I play Spelljammer and Skycrawl.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
This is set in a world where Spelljamming has not yet become commonplace. So far, one person has used it in a side-quest oneshot for other characters, where he stole their tavern to fly to the moon. The skyships are powered by a magical rock called Flyorite which responds to the presence of magic by floating upwards. The party recently completed a quest to find a single boulder of Flyorite, which allowed them to make an unparalleled ship for speed and maneuvrability. They are now facing off against Giants who have their own, ponderous, sky-dreadnaughts!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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My Gnome Artificer, Kal, and the party Goliath Barbarian, Koldur, hitched a ride into a city with a group that had a Goliath Wizard. They were called the Ill Omen but the Goliath wanted to name the group the Peace Keepers. He turned out to be a lovable guy and Stone Goliath like Koldur who asked if he had gotten his first tattoo yet to which he replied, "No." We made it to town and found an awesome shop where we got great deals on some magic items and discovered the shop keep also does tattoos. We came up with a plan and went to the inn the Ill Omen were staying at, kicked in the Goliath's door, black bagged him, and managed to roll well enough that we snuck him to the shop and we all got "Peace Keepers" tattoos (Koldur and mine were magical that allowed our stats to go above 20, he went with Con and I chose Int).
Continuing to the next session of old school D&D with Skycrawl:
There was a lot that went on, much of which was factors just lining up. Last session, we were traveling with a scientist who wanted to study a psionic slime at a radiation soaked world (Hawkring) with mutated monsters to find a way to talk to sols (sentient suns that provide heat and air), which is one of out missions. we traveled a few days between worlds and two things happened on approach, a random encounter of a death cloud of some sort hit the ship...and anything organic (not the robot) took 3 points of damage (it rolled its minimum)...but that killed 5 NPCs who had rolled 1 on a d6 (level 0)...the scientist, and the guide and three mercs we had just hired. Then on approach, we rolled badly and got lost, winding up instead at Emperor's End, a gladiator world with an overactive sol and occasional solar flares and toxic gas.
Idea 1. Now, we never had interest in Emperor's end before...but it seemed to me like it might work for us...so I came up with a speech/sales pitch for a magic item we are about fed up with...The Elemental Amulet that my magic user has wasted 10 days identifying (you get one property at a time and it takes a full day plus there is a lot of duplication (2 properties per element and a lot of elements). We stopped it form burning up our ship by hitting it with a cold admixture (think alchemy) but it's still a lot of cold for the ship and eventually it might damage the ship but the other elemental options (fire, water, electricity, etc.) seem more dangerous. BUT., a gladiator world would want to summon elementals for the arena and would have the funds to buy it.
Idea 2. We need info on psionic slimes and a world that buy monsters might have one or info on where we could get one.
Idea 3. We are looking for 2 scientists in particular (especially now that we lost ours) and a busy world like this might have seen them. One might be able to help with the slimes and we have a use for the other.
Idea 4. Hire mercenaries (hopefully tougher ones) and a gladiator world is the right place for it.
Idea 5. They should have rations for sale.
idea 6: Look for protective equipment for the solar flares and toxic gases here. Cleric needs a short bow and arrows for his new henchman (form his recent speaking engagement on the festival world.
How did it work out? Infor we already had on 2. Good info on 3 (more recent that what we had) on one scientist (the one the bounty hunters are after). 4 worked out well. 5 was a no brainer so yes. 6 worked somewhat--2 really good magic gas masks but only those 2 but we left so quickly it didn't matter and were careful with the ship position. We did find the bow and arrows.
What about #1? Halifax (my PC) needed a win for that amulet...casting identify every day for 10 days was a running joke at this point. He found a high level wizard/fighter to buy 2 scrolls off of (web and hold person) and told her about the amulet to see if she knew a buyer (she does, the woman who manages an arena). She wanted to see it before bringing her friend in, so we brought her and 6 guards to the ship where a few of hundred + lbs of huge stone coffin and sand (for insulation) were the resting place of the amulet. She ID'd it to make sure it was what we said it is. It is. Ok...she left to contact her friend and said it might take a day before we heard back.
We did the above errands (and checked market for rumors) and also watched a match where fighters on ropes above water tried to make each other fall. We hired three of the winners (mercs) who rolled 1, 3, 3 on d6 for HP, A little Better than the three 1HP mercs we hired recently (that died). We also checked the arena crowd for rumors. Got back to the ship and the arena manager was there.
I had a prewritten sales pitch ready (the cleric had one last week for a religious festival at a festival world which I used). She wanted to see us conjure an elemental (we haven't done it but Halifax was expecting the request). Halifax chanted for a round and summoned an ice elemental into the air away from the ship. Its probably still floating by somewhere (this setting is like that). She said she was interested. H asked how much. She said she wasn't sure yet. H said "ok, just wanted to make sure you weren't thinking 10k or something like that." She said, 10K is a lot of money" H said, if the amulet only did one element, it would be worth 8K, but this one does many. That was Halifax managing expectations. She asked what we are interested in (cash, gems, magic items, heavy elements (for orcery which is basically alchemy) and left. This was her offer: 26K, a figurine of wonderous power (Golden lions), 4 Candles of truth, a nasty looking gauntlet (the metal is flaking) we need to identify, and 2 Vitra (heavy element we need that is worth 5k each). We took the offer and she set me up with a henchman (level 1 fighter instead of 0 like the hirelings) with a unique fighting style (machete, flint, and burning powder attacks).
PLUS Halifax (thanks to the rumor mechanic) finally got the last 100XP needed to catch up to the rest of the party at level 4. Ols school Magic users have slower XP progression.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Following on from my previous session,
The party had a heavy roleplay session, where the Monk had a shared dream with the Life Cleric of Bahamut, about Bahamut, after dissing him inside of one of his temples, which explained why Bahamut had "let the dragons die" (this is lore in my world, the dragons were slain by an ancient hero, and Bahamut tried to get them to hide but they refused, and were slain). In the dream, they learnt of the heroes weapon - the Dragoneater - and that the weapon is now in the possession of the BBEG.
The Warlock had a visit from the Raven queen, her patron, who offered her a drink to protect her from her magic, which was previously controlled by a curse she put on her, and has since been removed by the cleric. This is represented by her starting to multiclass as a wild-magic sorcerer. There was a lot of emotional manipulation.
The Monk, who had not learnt his lesson, then insulted the Raven Queen, and got a visit of his own, in which she accused him of poisoning the Warlock's mind with Hope and Love (there is a romance arc blooming here, with redemption for the warlock who was just a killing machine).
The Artificer-Paladin had a vision in his dreams about the magic item he carries. The visions are always a visitation from an elf who attempts to teach them about what makes a hero, which is a roleplay route for attuning to the item, which is extremely powerful.
After the visions played out, the Artificer and Cleric did some scrying, invented a new spell (6th level, Shared Scrying - include others in the vision) and discovered that the Ettin they had half-killed (they killed one head) is still alive, and is trapped in his artificer armour (it replaces lost limbs - in this case, the half controlled by the dead head), and has degenerated into insanity in the last 6 months (the party died for 6 months, so the world progressed). He is obsessed with bringing his brother back. They moved the scrying orb in front of the dead head and saw a skull leaning against the inside of the helmet.
Then they scryed on the lower BBEG of the campaign, and saw him working on a desk, with a mirror of utter darkness on the desk. Something moved behind the mirror, they failed wisdom saves, and panicking, ended scrying. They then used a magic item of truesight to see an orb watching them back, which they dispelled. It fell into a foul ooze on the floor.
Then they discussed their next moves, the Barbarian was turned into a Mudskipper for continually discussing weaponising fish. The game ended with the appearance on the horizon of a house on a mountain, above a waterfall.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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I just DM-ed the session 0 for the final game of D&D I'll be able to play for 2 years. Here's how it went...
After discussing the Homebrew rules and reading the Lore document out loud for that one player who didn't read it, we started the game off in a village square. The players were free to walk around the city, in the week beforehand we had established why every player was there so everyone had a goal. The Fighter was trying to find a boat to travel to an island off the coast where a medicinal herb could be found that could cure a sickness that had afflicted his daughter. Similarly, the Paladin happened to follow my homebrewed goddess Alexis that in legend touched that very same island and all of her followers were required to visit there at least once. Beyond that we had three Bards who all came to the village to compete in a music competition that was being held in town the next day as well as a sorcerer who just had a voice in his head tell him to come here or else. They're all level 13.
They all went about doing their own thing until I had a thief steal from the stand the fighter was buying goods from. The fighter tackled him and bound him in rope then the Paladin and the Rouge/Bard ran over to see what was happening. They argued for a minute with the thief who claimed he was only stealing so he could feed his tribe. Then, because DM, the Thief cut through the rope with a knife and ran off. The Bird Race (Aaracokra is how I think you spell it) Bard tried to intercept but got stabbed in the knee. He then doubled back and recollected all of his food and pulled out his Voidblade (basically the inverse of a Sunblade.) revealing himself to be a Sith Lo- I mean Picem. He then attempted to Force push the PCs away but they all got above 25 on strength. He tried to run but then the ENTIRE TABLE called out "I HAVE THE SENTINAL FEAT!" so they all used it and the Paladin blew him up with a crit smite dealing almost 200 damage to the thief's measly 163.
After the battle the Sorcerer's eyes started glowing and out of them projected a Armor-clad King and a Githzerai Wizard. They were characters from a previous campaign with the King being a beloved NPC and the Wizard being my PC. He was a divination wizard who just gave them exposition via "I had a prophecy!" where the non-descript BBEG was taken down by the adventurers and if they failed the BBEG would gather a bunch of Mcguffins and conquer not just this Universal Sphere (see D&D lore) but all of them. This night a sign would appear in the sky revealing the location of one of these Mcguffins and the players had to race to grab it.
That night amid late night partying an earthquake struck and a giant purple beam blasted into the sky coming from the Island that both the Fighter and Paladin were going to (Called Mitzi Island). The following morning the players found a ship captain by the name of Ronald and that's where we left off.
Hello There. I am a worldbuilder and proud DM that is creating a huge world called Eldredom. I'm pouring many hours into it and I may make some things later...
"I HAVE THE SENTINAL FEAT!"
LOL!
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Over the last 2 sessions my party (level 13) stopped off at a sinister tower to investigate. After the barbarian communed with nature and was given a vision from the snow and wind of a wizard raising the tower and putting a chest inside, they decided to go get it. They were confronted by two sentient statues which they fought off, though they took some lumps doing so, and they went to go inside, and were confronted by a ghost-like spirit who bid them leave using a fear aura which only caught the Barbarian, who was forced to run. Then the Cleric popped Banishment on them, and they disappeared.
The party elected to surround the point where the spirit had disappeared and hold actions to whale on the thing, so when it reappeared (it was native to this plane) they murdered the death out of it. However, when they all stepped inside, the doors slammed shut and the whole tower seemed to drop 10ft. They then elected to climb the stairs, which seemed to continue for far longer than the tower, so they marked the wall and concluded that they were in a loop. Doubling back, they immediately emerged on the floor the entered on, and they went downstairs.
The first room downstairs was a riddle-puzzle, with 12 knights with different colours and heraldry, and a dead king with 12 swords stuck through him, and a riddle asking which of the knights should now be king. They solved the riddle incredibly quickly - turns out two of the players are knowledgable of coats of arms and how they work, so they didn't even need the hints - and they crowned the correct knight and were allowed to move on.
In the following session, they proceeded downwards again and found a room in which stood an obsidian obelisk shaped like a key, beneath a keyhole. There was a table and chair with a few things on it, and two pieces of paper on the ceiling. After some investigation they worked out that the two lightest things in the room would float to the ceiling, and so they pushed everything out and managed to levitate the key, which the barbarian turned. This changed to corridor outside into a different flight of stairs, which they climbed.
The next room was a room full of junk, with another riddle - this time with two potential answers. They found both and spent some time working out how to use them (you place them on a pedestal and it changes where the door leads to - but it does so silently!), and eventually worked out that one opened the door to outside and the other opened the door to more stairs. They went for the stairs, and they encountered 4 canoloths, which they fought off easily (the canoloths rolled appallingly and the paladin picked up the ambush with divine sense). Then the second of the 2 spirits (Eidolons) manifested inside a statue (the room was ringed in them). I asked the Cleric to roll damage for their Spirit Guardians, and then it got a critical hit on them. The animated statue does 6d12 damage (!) so 12d12 damage (101 total) later the cleric drops like a stone, and the party starts to panic as they were their way out using Word of Recall.
The paladin smites the everloving crap out of the statue and the Eidolon appears. Everyone swings at it and it disappates into the aether, and the Warlock force-feeds the cleric a healing potion. They finally approached the chest, and open it to find some cool loot - a helm of brilliance, 1,800gp, an Anchor feather token (this is terrifying as they are fighting skyships, I shouldn't have let them roll for it!!!), and a bag of Dust of Invisibility. They then word-o'-recalled themselves back to their skyship, and they began to rest, so ending the session!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Last skycrawl session, some weird creature in a sky shark drawn carriage tried to extort 2000 form our skyshio and we said no. he kept staling and chasing us and had some sort of magical attack that messed up our navigation (we needed to make 3 of the 4 PC saving throws and only made 2) and we crashed into the world we were approaching. we are wedged into the side of a mountain and about to lose the ship and abandon it. hopefully we can grab some our look while we jump away. the ship is cracked in half.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Last Storm Lord's Wrath session I ran, we ran into an unexpected interaction between a world event and me giving the party something I had not considered.
So they had to go through a storm to reach the place the Cult of Talos was enacting a ritual to take control of all the weather in the Sword Coast. You see, I allowed them to have a travelling mobile base, basically a car, that is pretty much exclusively used for out of combat transport and a place to stay. I had not considered one thing:
While travelling to Wayside Inn to confront the Cult of Talos, there's a world event where they have to roll a d6 and that decides how many times they risk getting struck by lightning. Well, two problems:
One, they're all in the mobile base together.
And two, the mobile base can't make the proper saving throw NOT to get hit.
Cue ALL the lightning that would've hit the party, including the two NPCs driving with them, hitting the mobile base AT ONCE.
How many dice?
126d6.
We literally struggled to find a dice roller that could ROLL that many dice.
End result?
493 lightning damage to their vehicle.
By some miracle of engineering and me probably being too nice of a DM, the base SOMEHOW survived that, but the entire party was shaken like a martini and understandably NOT in the mood to stick around for Talos to try again.
Yeah, Talos was bringing his A-Game that night.
Oh, and then they fought the Statue of Talos boss fight and might've died if they hadn't thought 'wait, this is made of bronze' and decided to attempt to kill it with temperature shock. I thought that was extremely creative, so I rolled with it and they won. Then the cultist that was magically connected to it exploded after nearly killing the wizard.
The detectives of the Elevenleytown Detective Agency arrested an incel wizard bent on destroying the world to make his father proud, escaped his demiplane, turned him in to their boss, got Fudge the bullywug (a servant of the wizard) hired at their agency, and returned to the woods to collect cruelty-free unicorn tears from the unicorn whose horn the wizard had ripped out of his head for a world-destroying ritual.
The unicorn granted each of them a wish: the Warlock received the cruelty-free tears that the forensic chemist had requested the party go find, as well as a raise. The Ranger received peace (very powerful magical barriers around the Canal Street and Coral Street signs he can see out his window, so that the local children can't cross out the C's on them anymore), and the Barbarian received knowledge of the entire history of the fallen worlds before Elevenleytown, hoping to learn information about the father of the wizard they had just captured.
I got to play the most theatrical and annoying NPCs in this world so far, and it was so much fun, and I got to bring two other beloved NPCs together into blossoming relationship. I love the strange little world we've built for this campaign, and we've got one more session to go!
:)
In spell jammer tonight, we took on a false hydra (we are level 15) and two failed the save on the charm song but another member cats silence on the hydra, stopping the song, and we thrashed the thing.
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Old school D&D a few nights ago with the skycrawl addon, we crashed the ship into a world which is basically a shell with a world inside a crack, and a separate floating port. Treasure hunters go there and bandits go to pick off the treasure hunters for loot. The ship was wedged into the crack and splitting into 2. I used web to hold the pieces together long enough to load out stuff into a flying dinghy (the other one was destroyed in the crash) with 2 party members and everyone else started climbing down (on roots and rope). A ship of bandits showed up to look the wreck and started climbing down the other side of the crack. We used shadows (we had 3 one use throwable potions basically) to keep climbing down without them seeing us and when enough of them were in our ship, we used another throwable potion to set it on fire. They send men down, but we picked most of them off and kept going down to the city. we killed 7 of them. eventually it got so dry that the roots were gone and we ferried the crew down with the dinghy, including our giant.
Turns out the city below is a dead city that dehydrates you quickly (DM is using an hourglass for when we need to drink). There is a weird humanoid splashing water from his body onto walls and running off so we are following him right now. We need to find whatever treasure quickly, get out of that dead city by climbing up somehow, and get past the remaining bandit crew and somehow take over the ship (currently at the floating port). Doesn't sound easy.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Last night was an amazing session. The party had just returned to their skyship after raiding an old wizards tower, fighting past the guardians, and taking the treasure.
The session opened with the Monk talking to the Barbarian, to ask him more about his family and his goals. The barbarian started talking about his mother being shot by a hunter and his quest for revenge, and the Monk questioned his motives (this was an interesting one as the Barbarian player hasn't involved himself too heavily in roleplay moments).
Flying north, they were suddenly aware of a flock of birds emerging from a huge tree and directly approaching them. They steered away, but the birds caught them up, and were revealed to be Starlings. The starlings immediately started chirping goods and prices, and the party realised that this was some sort of trade offer, which they refused, as they are travelling with urgency to their destination, and do not intend to stop unless they have to.
Continuing north, they spot a Giant on the ridge of the mountain ahead, watching them. Their main conflict has been with frost giants, and they immediately were wary, and the Warlock sent her familiar out to see what it was. The Giant offered the raven a finger to land on, and spoke to it in Sylvan (though the Warlock didn't recognise the language), and the party waved as they sailed past.
Minutes later, they are discussing their plans - about trying to reclaim the dwarves homeland from the giants, and trying to establish a cooperative cohabitation instead of perpetuating the cycle, when I did something I almost never do - I interrupted the roleplay. I had good reason though - for the wind had whipped away the bellowed warnings from the giant behind, and a Roc swooped down from above and snatched Grizz from the side of the ship, carrying him off toward the mountain to the West.
The party jumped to action (and into initiative), with the Paladin-artificer giving the Monk Fly, and the Monk casting invisibility on himself and flying after the Roc, carrying with him the Leapstones (when one comes to rest, the other teleports to it, alongside anyone carrying it). The Warlock steered the ship to pursuit, and the Roc started flying fast. The Barbarian started attacking the feet, slowing the Roc down as it clamped down on him and started biting to stop this prey from biting back. The monk caught up and handed the Barbarian one of the leapstones, and dropped it! The Barbarian JUST managed a dex save to catch it.
The ship, in pursuit, suddenly noticed what looks like a net floating in the path ahead. As they pull up, they still hit it, revealing that it was a net made of giant spiders, drifting upwards to snag prey. The party on the ship starts fighting the spiders off, and the cleric starts screaming, and fires up spirit guardians.
For 2 turns, the Roc continues flying away, and the party fights off the spiders. The Monk returns to the ship (crazy fast, that one) and drops the stone. Nothing happens, and they realise that the ship is moving, so the stone won't work. They stop the ship, but the wind keeps it drifting.
The Roc drops the Barbarian into it's nest, and the Barbarian drops the stone, causing the Monk to teleport to the nest with him. The Monk tries to attack but is teleported back to the stone that was dropped as soon as he moves away, so he drops the other stone and stuns 2 of the 4 roc chicks, using Strength for the unarmed strike and opting not to use his martial arts dice, thus dealing 0 damage.
The barbarian picks up the stones and throws one off the cliff. Anticipating that he will teleport away, the Monk flies away. The Barbarian's turn comes back around, and the Chicks are no longer stunned, and he hasn't teleported away, so he takes a running leap off the side of the nest.
The party witness the barbarian jumping off the edge, and the Roc launching itself from the mountain again, and I ended the session!
Note: This level of cliffhanger is an excellent way to immediately trigger the group scheduling the next session!
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Nice! yeah, cliffhangers can be good for tansion/anticipation.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Last session (this time last week-ish) the players hopped aboard a ship and plowed through two whole sessions worth of content in our two hour playtime. Firstly after interacting with the crew and spending half an hour arguing about who get what troops and whether or not to throw some poor NPC overboard to make the numbers "even" I had two pirate ships attack with a third staying close behind that flew no flag. Naturally, I thought that the ship combat would take them forever to do since I wasn't using any improved rules from YouTube. Of course I was stupid enough to plan for this combat to take 2 hours and it seemed so over the course of the first couple round. I had 4 assassins pelt the Paladin with poison tipped crossbow bolts and downed him moving on to the fighter next. When it was his turn, the fighter was like "by the way, I cast Fireball on the enemy ship straight into their gunpowder stores." This is where all my planning fell apart.
After the player blew up the 2 enemy ships with fireball, they killed the assassins and took prisoners hostage aboard the ship. By the way, the ship is a tamed mimic named Sally. After beating them, they remembered there was a third ship following from behind. This was supposed to be utilized at the end of the session as a cliffhanger but I had to pull it out of my butt now. Black Guards who serve the BBEG jump from the ship and kill the priest the players had to protect in order to give them "safe passage on the waters". The second the priest died storms began to swirl around the sky as the Blackguards sailed as far as possible away, a Kracken popped out of the water and combat once again started. Or at least it would have had the sorcerer not immeadietly cast Polymorph on the Kracken followed by speak with animals to to talk to the now rabbit and explain the situation. We were all laughing at the absurdity. The kracken then just kinda swam away and we ended the session early.
Hello There. I am a worldbuilder and proud DM that is creating a huge world called Eldredom. I'm pouring many hours into it and I may make some things later...
level 4 party. Ok, still in the dead city underground (only one way in/out) that dehydrates you. We would out that if hit with slashing damage, we take an extra 1.2 damage (dehydration) next turn. So, we figured we'd treasure hunt quickly and try to climb and fight out way past the only exit up top (bandits). our ship was destroyed, so out whole crew is with us. We found a building with the hum of machinery so our party of 2 mercs (3Hp) and a level 1 fighter (8HP) and a level 0 NPC henchman working towards being a cleric, went and left the rest of the crew outside the building. we left them with some water. we found a forcefield and used a dispel magic scroll to get past it (there better be another way out). Found a bunch of skeletons of dead treasure hunters with loot (including possible magic items). found a stone garden (all the plants are stone). some of it counts as treasure (stone lilies). We avoided some sort of moving stone creature.
some of us were treasure hunting (including me) while some explored a nearby room with drawn magic circles and a stone carnivorous plant (with some sort of gem in its mouth) in the middle. They called us to look at it. I would have left it alone, but the fighter broke the cycle and not only did the plant turn back to normal, but it also happened with the garden...and all the plants started dehydrating. yellow slime exited from where the plant is and came at us...we retreated, had the two mercs distract it (its slow) and the rest found another route. we called to the mercs to join us, but they didn't. we heard stone breaking in that direction and left. we found a magic book of some sortand treasure ap and were able to free the book, but about 20% of it was destroyed (its plant based and dehydrated a bit). we found a shaft going up with broken platforms and found a way to climb up to the next platform on ropes. then we heard screeching, and a flying reptile came at us and turned the level 1 fighter to stone. We injured it, found a door to open, went in, and closed it. That was the creature that killed the mercs. we will keep working our way up and out hopefully.
we did lose 3 of the 4 NPCs with us. the 4th has the XP to be a lev 1 cleric if we can rest. The cleric and rogue will go up to 5 if thye can rest. Th level 1 fighter had XP to get to lev 2 but died.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
We're back in Elevenleytown after winter break!!
The detectives returned from Kelek's father's pocket dimension to find that over the weekend the world has been experiencing apocalyptic omens, rains of frogs, blood, shampoo, and other unnatural substances. They arrived at the agency to find that Angela, the forensic chemist, was being secretive about why she was using the unicorn tears she asked them to supply, and Susan, the chief, told the party that Kelek was being detained in Enemy Valley Correctional Facility under maximum security, and also that the apocalyptic omens were really hindering business and that they needed to find other ways of bringing in money. Also thousands and thousands of crows appeared in the sky, dropping upon the city an absurd amount of bird crap.
With that information, two detectives went to investigate what Angela was up to, and two of them went about taking and selling feet pics to keep the agency from going under. Those who confronted Angela discovered that she was using the unicorn tears to create a potion that would allow her to see into the future in order to determine whether these strange events were actually harbingers of the end times or not.
The party traveled together, guarding themselves from the crow poop rain with desks, binders, umbrellas, and a body bag, to the Jujubee Temple of the Holy Miss Mood to ask Miss Mood if there was any divine reason for the strange weather events. Together they prayed to the gardening goddess Jujubee, who realized that this stuff is actually important and maybe she should have been paying more attention to her domain over the last couple of days instead of going on a weekend trip. They all sent in their requests to her and asked to her see if Santa (this world's name/concept of satan) was involved in these evil occurrences.
They formulated a plan to steal a MetroHorse and ride to Enemy Valley to make sure Kelek isn't causing any trouble in prison, and that's where we'll pick up next time. yeehaw.
:)
In Elevenleytown, the detectives made their way to the Morse (MetroHorse) stables to attempt to steal a horse and carriage to take them to Enemy Valley. After a quick and somewhat pathetic confrontation with the security guard, they managed to commandeer the Magenta Line horse and go on their way.
Arriving at Enemy Valley, they dodged crime solicitors and went straight into the Enemy Valley Correctional Facility, hoping to speak to Kelek and find out why all of these apocalyptic omens were occurring. Arriving at his cell, they discovered that it consisted of a transparent magical barrier permeable only to smells. With this knowledge, they tortured him with farts until he gave them the information they wanted. He spoke of sleeper agents set up by his father during the last war, who were set to awaken once Kelek was freed from the demiplane he was trapped in. Rock, the Barbarian gifted with near-complete knowledge of the previous versions of Elevenleytown by a unicorn, knew that something was inconsistent with Kelek's story, because Kelek's father was killed during the war, before Kelek could have been born, and he had no children. Unsatisfied, the detectives returned to the agency to figure out what to do with this information, and to speak to Angela, who they thought was acting suspicious earlier.
In her lab, they found Angela still hard at work brewing various potions and other magical looking things. They convinced her to leave her lab for a bit while they could investigate what she was making, and discovered that she was brewing up basically every potion imaginable, as well as makeshift shrapnel grenades, alchemist's fire, and other alchemical weapons. What she was working on before she left was a barrier spell to block Undead from entering the Agency. As they realized that, the Druid and the Ranger both got attacked by ghosts who had surprised them and entered the lab.
They had a long combat, which consisted of the Druid falling unconscious several times, the Ranger throwing the grenade and damaging everyone and everything in the lab, Angela returning and getting possessed, and the party trying to trap the last ghost in the fume hood, only for the ghost, being a ghost and all, to just leave it before they could suck it out of the building. Finally, the Barbarian stepped outside of the lab to see if they could get any help from the others at the agency, and saw Samantha Pauline Adams sitting at her desk with her eyes glazed over, chanting rhythmically. They attacked her several times, but she always beat her concentration check, until the final swing, in which she both lost her concentration and fell unconscious.
Rock dragged Samantha, now returned to consciousness, into the lab, where the party interrogated her and realized she had no idea what she was doing, she had just started casting a spell all of a sudden, with no knowledge of it. Further interrogation lead her to realize that she had no memory of her life before getting hired by the Agency. They realized she was one of Kelek's sleeper agents, and he must have been telling the truth, and that's where we ended the session.
:)