As long as you're still alive, who cares? XD

I guess so, not for long but I guess so

Good luck next session!

still slugging it out with about half a dozen servings of ochre jelly, the two dwarf prospectors just jumped in and made things worse. Total knock outs: 4 methinks. Someone did say "it's was too good to be true."

Well, we just had our second session.

Wolf lady-blood hunter

Dwarf lady- paliden

Undead-ranger

Tabaxi-wizard

I just ran them through a combat encounter, they breased through the two cultists, and then had to deal with some animated armor the cultists where animating.

It was two of the players first combat ever. One of them kept trying to do anything but directly attack it. She threw holy water on it(wich I let it deal damage) wanted to set it in fire with an oil flask.

And the other wanted to rebuke it with her holy symbol, and kept missing her attacks.

New players are great, they have so many idea that older players might not think of.

Well, after that they took the armor to the metal worker that it was stolen from, got paid, and purused a book store. Realising how expensive books are, they only bought one.

Afterwards they took a long rest, and plan to go looking for two missing persons.

Finaly, i taught them about leveling up, because they are level 2 now. And are introduced to spellcasting....oh boy, I hope that goes well.

I'm really annoyed about our last session. We spent the session fighting a red dragon and almost died. We killed it and the DM deicides to leave on a cliff hanger with us about to find the dragons treasure. Then my DM can't make it to the next few sessions. Then it December so we don't meet then. Then Covid hits and we haven't had a session in like 10 months and I will probably never find out what the Dragon had. 

Quote from CrocodileDeathspeed1 >>

I'm really annoyed about our last session. We spent the session fighting a red dragon and almost died. We killed it and the DM deicides to leave on a cliff hanger with us about to find the dragons treasure. Then my DM can't make it to the next few sessions. Then it December so we don't meet then. Then Covid hits and we haven't had a session in like 10 months and I will probably never find out what the Dragon had. 

 :| I don't know how to react to this

Last night was the groups second but my first. My Minotaur Sorcerer woke up tied up outside the Sunless Citadel alongside an Eladrin Cleric who had taken a long rest there. Cleric told me what happened in the previous session so I was caught up (our other group members couldn’t join us) and I decided to join them. We enter the Citadel after falling half a dozen times, explore probably about half of it and nearly die several times. I do have a 4 pint water skin of potion of fire breathing though.

Quote from JumpierPoet >>

Last night was the groups second but my first. My Minotaur Sorcerer woke up tied up outside the Sunless Citadel alongside an Eladrin Cleric who had taken a long rest there. Cleric told me what happened in the previous session so I was caught up (our other group members couldn’t join us) and I decided to join them. We enter the Citadel after falling half a dozen times, explore probably about half of it and nearly die several times. I do have a 4 pint water skin of potion of fire breathing though.

 If I saw this bulky half-bull, half-man creature breathing fire, I'd crap my pants!

Well, last session we saved Sildar Hallwinter. The session before that we crushed our mage Harold's ribs with a crowbar and a flaming wolf.

Let me back up.

We found the goblin hideout in LMOP and went in, encountering the guard wolves. We put most of them to sleep, and then voted. We decided to kill the barely conscious one.

I approached the wolf, raised my warhammer... and it snapped alert and grappled my arm. I then rolled my strength check to shake it off. Well, it came off... along with my arm, and the chain holding it back.

The wolf then proceeded to bite our halfling rogue, Robin around the head, dealing a good amount of damage. We stabbed it through the head just at the other wolves woke up, saw what had happened, and proceeded to attack. So we threw oil on them and used Burning Hands to set the wolves alight, then backed down the stairs.

That hurt them a lot, so they broke free of their chains and rushed us. The first one died before it could reach us. Then second landed right on top of Harold and bit him, reducing him to zero points and causing him to start making death saves. 

Harold failed the first save, and we failed the strength check to get the burning wolf off. Harold failed the second save. Then, I rolled a 25 on the medicine check, stablilizing Harold.

So we rolled to get the wolf off again, and we did!

Crushing Harold's ribs in the process.

We're just lucky the DM didn't make him take damage.

just talked to one of my players who finally found out that ochre jellies can't be hurt with slashing damage so she asked how could she beat them (her PC is a dragonborn fighter with no magic and out of fire power) and whether a book would work

I am running LMoP/DoIP/homebrew campaign for a party of three. I had a good bit of the campaign planned before session zero where my original two players decided to be evil. I fixed some of it to work better for an evil party, but for the most part I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

So now it has been about 10 sessions and one of the players left because of real life reasons, and he was replaced by two more players playing ravnican characters. There is a planar rift of sorts making this possible.

Along the way one of my players caught the attention of Orcus and started a horde of undead. They also recently vanquished a dybbuk that was impersonating Orcus and siphoning his power.

They've started a brothel/rope-making/mercenary business and are trying to take over Phandalin through wealth, influence, and power. They have set up a headquarters in the old rebrand hideout that they cleared out.

They are level five. 

But anyways, last session they decided they are leaving on a planar quest but they didn't want to leave Cryovain about and come back to no town. So they first decide to travel to the Dragon Barrow to collect the dragon slayer sword to help with their upcoming dragon fight. They arrive at the barrow, fight some will-o-wisps, and descend into the dungeon below. One of my players(the worshiper of Orcus) quickly found and claimed the skeletal riding horse there. They then fell in multiple pit traps and looted some coffins. I decided they had not found many magic items previously and were relatively low on healing magic, so I gave them a lot of minor magic items and healing potions. I included some cantrip scrolls because I rolled them on Magic Item Table A, and I have two wizards who proceeded to add them to their spells books, one of them reaching something like 7 cantrips. Do you guys know if this is intentional or if their is specific rules for wizards/spellbooks/cantrips/scrolls? 

Anyways, they reached the main room, immediately picked up the dragon slayer sword, which causes a invisible stalker to appear. They are already pretty beat up from the willow-wisps and it isn't looking good. The druid drops to zero hit points twice, and only survives because of the healing potions from the graves and the artificer's healing magic. Luckily, just when things are going the wrong way, the artificer's quick thinking saves them. He uses his alchemy jug to spray honey on the invisible stalker, making it visible and easier to hit. After that, they easily win the fight. 

Later, I am looking threw my notes for the next session and see something strange. The young white dragon stat block(Cryovain) which I thought was Challenge 7, is actually Challenge 6. I quickly look back to the Invisible stalker stat block, which is also challenge 6. So DoIP includes a sword that they specifically state could be used to help with the dragon fight, that is protected by a monster just as hard as the FINAL BOSS. I get that the challenge rating system is far from perfect, and that while Cryovain is the name and big scary threat in DoIP, Cryovain is only a small piece of the bigger puzzle(the anchorites of talos). But this seems weird.

Anyways, I planned extra interesting components to the boss fight so it won't feel as easy as the invisible stalker fight did after a previous combat with will-o-wisps. I just hope that I didn't mis-judge the power of Cryovain, and accidentally TPK because of my extra added elements.

I feel that. I planned a dungeon with a series of three combat encounters that should not have been very difficult. I almost killed an NPC and a PC on the second fight. So yeah; the CR system is ... definitely not perfect. Sometimes bad luck can even screw up something that should have been easy.

Campaign 1, 12th session:

Characters: Level 5 Human Fighter (Champion), Level 5 Human Rogue (Assassin) and Level 5 Half-Orc Barbarian

- New player joined the party. (Half-Orc Barbarian)

- Characters were spending time in tavern eating pork and drinking ale and learned location of a pig farm. Barbarian went sleep to inn but Fighter and Rogue decided to go to nearby pig farm. They stole two pigs and carried them to their ship in harbor of town and slept rest of the night in ship.

- Characters decided to travel towards last known location of pirate captain who was responsible of destruction of the Barbarian's homevillage. On a way they decided to rest on island on the way. When they were anchoring their ship on shore the Fighter decided to throw a pig to the sea. This lured a shark (Challenge rating 5) and combat began. Fighter dropped to 0 HP but survived.

- They found the the ship of the pirate captain and decided to approach it by a rowboat and were able to board the ship without notice. Rogue used "Potion of Invisibility" and throwed two burning torches, one to hammock and one to table with papers. This caused confusion and soon one of the pirates decided to wake up rest three of the pirates. During that time Rogue built a trap to stairs of the ship. At the same time Fighter and Rogue were walking to deck of the ship and two pirates decided to go up the stairs to deck of the ship, triggering the trap. This triggered a combat event. (Four challenge rating 1 pirates)

- When combat was finished with four pirates captain of the ship arrived. There was converstation about destruction of the Barbarian's homevillage. Barbarian was angry and decided to kill the pirate captain. Combat against pirate. (Challenge rating 5)

- Characters found a map with X mark on it from body of the pirate captain.

- Characters learned location of a camp where rest of pirate crew of the dead captain was located. Characters went there and were able to recruit rest them. Characters now own two ships now and have crew of 11 members.

We decided to try and clear out the shrine to Lathander. My character nearly die in a fiery explosion, surrounded by 50 leucrottas. I was actually close to losing hope, but one of the players remembered the NPC can fly, so I used my genie vessel and we flew away before our car.  Where the two of us ran into yeenoghu, and I become permanently driven insane, that I need to be drunk.

On a less dramatic moment, I finally reunited with party and our Paladin got laid. He said he and the other npc were meditating together. And all my character, who is 7, say "I wish I had someone to meditate with".  Everyone remember she's 7 try to explain sex to her, and failed. 

still slugging it out with some bite size jellies but group as a whole is winning

almost killed the group with 2 jellies (not on purpose), they survived it tho

My players went over to the western residential district (AKA, the slums) after investigating some reported gang activity involving kidnappings and brandings. They got pickpocketed by a little girl while wandering the streets, and eventually they met up with someone they met at a repair shop, who explained that her older brother had been kidnapped for not paying his debts and that they were going to kill him if the party didn't intervene. They reluctantly followed her, turned an alley, and got caught in a giant Mirage Arcane that made a burnt down block on the street look like an abandoned series of apartments and warehouses, only to have some Parrot-like bird person named Oskar show up and said that he was going to kill the Undead Warlock (The U. Warlock mugged him earlier). Oskar was almost kicked out of his gang, but was told to go kill the guy who trashed his reputation or else he'd have to make it up another way. 
Eventually, right before Oskar was defeated by the Hexblade Warlock's Eldritch Blast, A giant wall of frozen oil-laced water popped up between most of the party and Oskar, and riding in on a motorcycle was Oskar's gang leader, a Genasi with oxidized copper skin, and his right hand man, a 9 foot tall Goliath sorcerer in full plate mail and a pink hoodie. The Genasi used some sort of holy magic to heal all of Oskar's burns, and told him that the only way to restore his honor was to essentially kamikaze the party. The leader then threatened the party before riding out, and his sorcerer friend made a "W" gang sign before teleporting out and removing the ice wall. The still conscious party members only barely failed to stop the parrot from blowing the building up.
They woke up about 10 minutes after the explosion, with the mirage gone, revealing a huge, dilapidated field of burnt rubble and flames, and an illusory shark gang symbol in the sky. 

 Surprisingly, they didn't die. Two of them got knocked unconscious and the rubble nearly killed one of them, but it worked out alright. They got to level 3 this session as well, so the rogue got their subclass.

Oh also the genasi dude on the motorcycle sounds like a bad John Travolta impression. 

So last game, I almost killed three of my players.

After a short dungeon run through a old castle, repurposed as a safe haven for the local smugglers and highwaymen's guild, looking for a magical lantern that the local kingpin was searching for so he could sell it to one of the main baddies of the campaign. The players do well going through the dungeon; at one point making a horrifiying "breach and clear" and sweeping three drunk bandits in two seconds, before interrogating and making a deal with a thug in the room.

Finally they come to the room where the kingpin, a hulking Goliath called "The Falcon" after his Blood Hawk pets (don't tell him his call-name is wrong), and a couple of envoys from the White Blades, a huge mercenary organization, is debating how to activate the magical lantern. A fight breaks out; the Sun Elf Rogue casts Fog Cloud in the middle of the room so no one can see shit, the Warforged Barbarian begins to get overwhelmed by The Falcon, the Tabaxi Monk grabs the lantern, runs back out of the cloud and gives it to the Hafling Bard, who, in a panic, began using its magical powers before it was really attuned to her. The Human Cleric tried to just shield himself from the chaos, and the Half-Elf Bard/Warlock rages at the Falcon while flinging blasts at him.

In reality, this was a very tough encounter and the characters were all pretty knackered, so first I laid down the Monk (who immediately rolled a 1 on her D20), the Cleric got smashed up by the Falcon's maul (and may now switch to Paladin, something I've talked to him about for some time) and the Warforged Barbarian, my main rival as a DM, actually got overwhelmed and was laid low by the Falcon.

Overall the players and I loved how difficult this boss battle was but dang, it's so difficult to balance difficult battles to be tough but not too swingy. It was fun though; and they got to kill that kingpin who's been at their heels since session 2... And this was Session 12!

Of course they leveled to Level 4 after that!

I'm in Jail again