my DM smote my character for wanting to do pvp to see who got the magic item...

Oof. That sounds like a fail.

I’m a new player and this was my third session. We did a boss fight (my first) against 2 large spiders. Long story short I missed every attack, two party members went down, and my character got outvoted in trying to split the reward gold evenly. Still made for a fun and interesting session though :)

Alright, so..
Kellan - Undying Warlock
Bea - Hexblade Warlock
Torfas - Mastermind Rogue
Dextera - Fire Sorcerer (homebrewed flame variant of Storm Sorcery)

The session before this one, the party accepted a gig from one of their less reputable associates. Essentially, Torfas would be fighting in an "underground" tournament of the city's best fighters. (It's actually well known among the various circles of warriors, thugs, and people who like to gamble, but officially it's in a legal gray area). They went to an abandoned carnival that was seemingly rebuilt by making the concrete and iron rubble regrow itself organically, making the entire place look like a dilapidated forest of metal and eerie faded advertisements of whimsy. 
Immediately after entering they notice a decent sized crowd towards the end of the boardwalk, swarming a particular bugbear who seemed to be bookkeeping and organizing the bets. Bea and Dextera went to buy some junk food before the fight, got scammed once, almost got scammed twice, pulled a gun on the shopkeeper, and then took all of his sweets (I was trying to intentionally make it seem as if the people who run the carnival shouldn't be trusted, which seemed to have worked). Kellan went over to the Bookkeeper Bugbear (he was shirtless and wearing a top hat with stripes, lmao) and placed a few bets for Torfas. The odds of Torfas (who was a newcomer) winning were fairly low according to the bugbear, so he gave Kellan an estimate of him getting a 7x return if Torfas won. Afterwards they went to the prep area and mingled amongst the other contestants, who were discussing strategies with their entourages and getting their gear ready. Dextera opted to go over to an elven woman throwing daggers with impressive accuracy and odd rebounding angles, and rolled a natural 20 in his attempt to openly use magic to intimidate her (Magic is one of the three bannable offenses in the tournament). She freaked out a little and decided to offer him her card, as she was apparently an instructor at the military academy in the rich part of town. 
The first fight started, and it was the previous champion, a goliath with a mouth and teeth stained silver from drug use versus another human woman with an impressive trident and net made out of an odd greenish metal. He promptly grabbed her net, drug her over to him, and bashed her into the cage floor until she conceded. Nobody really applauded his show of force until he raised his quarterstaff in the air. I'm not going to go through describing all of the fights, but Torfas had an easy fight against a Tabaxi brawler, and in the mean time the party noticed a bunch of the contestant's entourages using magic to cheat and help their friends. Naturally, the players start cheating too. During the rogue's second fight, he might've gotten 2-shot by a war paladin had Kellan not cast Hold Person on him. With the paladin paralyzed, it only took two sneak attacks to knock him out cold. 
Eventually, the fights whittled down the contestants to Torfas and the Champion. It was a pretty impressive looking fight at first, and it seemed like Torfas might've had the advantage in terms of actual combat skill. After a while, the champ got tired of holding back and unleashed a whirlwind of chaotic ice that took the entire arena by surprise. It might've hit some of the contestants had the host not intervened, but eventually the champion had to shift his focus to surviving the attacks from the host and his weird artifice work. Kellan used the opportunity to shoot at the champion with an Eldritch Blast, but it was deflected and the host promptly tied up the goliath with tightrope draped lazily around the arena, then tossed him into a large cistern below the cage in the center without much care.
Unfortunately for the party, however, the host deemed that Kellan's open use of magic, while heroic, was still technically cheating since their fight wasn't over yet. He then rounded the party up and tossed them into the sewer as well. That's where I ended the session.  

Now they're in a large sewer decorated like a mirror room/house of horrors and are being used as entertainment in lieu of a formal finish to the tournament, so yea they got that going for them. 

So we got ambushed by ten bandits in a canyon. three were on either side of the canyon and the other four were in front of us, blocking our way. I managed to survive by spamming hide every turn, but the other rogue nearly died. It would have been strategically better for me to shoot at the remaining bandit on the right hand side of the canyon but there was one guy on the other side who kept shooting at me and I absolutely disagreed with that. We won though and nobody died, thanks to one of our npcs performing a good medicine check on the unconscious rogue.

DMing this time in our somewhat weekly CoS campaign.

The Party is lvl 8 and as accepted to go to the Castle on the Count's invitation.

After the dinner and some bantering and intimidation from the Count, he Leave to "attend" to other matters.

Rahadin shows the party the door and bid them good evening, before leaving...

They off course back track once Rahadin is out of sight and start exploring the castle, and they go down to the catacombs...

Fast forward the 3-4 last sessions where they are just opening the Crypts one by one , like an Advent Calendar, either getting loot or ambushed by nasties.

Get to the Crypt of Dolorn hellborn SPOILER for thos that din't allready play this.

In the Crypt there's an Imp who was contracted by the one in the crypt, and his contract is still valid for a century or 2, so the Imp watches over the Crypt, but he's more like doing mischieve or lying than anything else.

He's invisible, and off course one of the lies that he tells is that it would be a Bad idea to open the sarcophagus cause there's a Pit Fiend bound in it that would escape.

I'm having a blast... spend an hour mocking them and giving mixed messages and confusing the heck out of them, i had to try to not burst out laughing when they where making plans, and 2 of the spellcasters made succesfull enough Knowledge rolls that ,they know HOW BAD a Pit Fiend right now at their current level would be...(seeing that one of them is our DM for Avernus, HE KNOWS, how bad it is, and i could hear the cogs in his head turn, thinking on ways to leave and escape)

Off course the rogue, is curious and try to see if the Imp is truthfull or telling straight BS, does a good Insight check, 21, but the Imp rolls a 24...(nat20 +4), so yeah they can't tell.

The Sorceror, who found the Staff of Power in the archmage crypt, was ready to cast the Force Wall on the Crypt to prevent the "Pit Fiend" to get out, even tho the rogue was inside, trying to negotiate with the "Voice".

WIch after that kinda changed the dynamic of the group, since now the Rogue doesn't trust the Sorceror that much anymore, since he was ready to imprison Her with a Pit Fiend, wich will eb even more funnier for Strahd to play with their shaky loyalty...

In the end they gave up on the idea of opening the Sarcophagus (there is actually nothing in it, the thing is just gilded with gold, and the part could scrape the gold off of it to get like 500gp worth of gold flakes...)

Alos they found the Luck Blade...,that as 1 Wish still in it.

Off course the party is kinda reluctant on letting the rogue with the Wish spell, cause they are sure she's onna misuse it.

But till now most of the magic items they've found had gone for the cleric, the sorceror or the Figther (Mace of Terror, Ravenloft Icon, Staff of Power, Sunsword and Sergei's +2plate armor), with the ogue only having a Silvered rapier.

So yeah in the end i decided that it would be best to give him the luck blade (who turned to be a Luck Rapier), the Luck ability will be a welcoming boon for him, since the guy's rolls are abysmall most of the times.

Off course when discussing what the Wish spell can do, one of them then says,"well we could Wish for Strahd to be destroyed?"

*Concerned Pickachu Face*

See in the module it says that if anyone use the Wish from the blade to "Destroy Strahd", instead Strahd is summoned within 5ft of the weapon...

So i was like "Oooh shit...", but in the end they decided to wait and keep the Wish for later...

Today was the first session of a new campaign that I'm the DM for. It was only around 2 hours long, so not that much happened.

Players:
Orion the Traitor: A human rogue that has a habit for betraying the organizations he's part once they are no longer useful to him. He currently works for a network of assassins and spies called the Black Mask.
Sylran Greyhope: A wood elf druid that was frozen in time for 90 years. He's hoping to find atonement after accidentally causing the destruction of his village.
Clerania Clearwater: A half-elf storm sorcerer from the quaint town of Goldenfield. After she unintentionally caused the death of her younger brother, she set out to seek answers about why the kingdom of Galoron invaded her village.
Melanie Boylen: A half-elf bard that was exiled from her village because of her differences. She was taken in by a halfling named Jarvis, who owned a small tavern. After Jarvis fell ill, she took on jobs to acquire enough money to pay for medicine.

Each of the four adventurers received a letter from a man named Mark Ranson. He told them that he had a job offer for them, and that the payment would be great, but that he wouldn't tell them any more until they met in person. He chose the meeting place to be at an inn called the Wandering Warden, in the small village of Rushreed. Once all four travelers had arrived, he told them of the job: they had to venture into the heart of the twisted Forest of Shadows, a forsaken realm full of terror and death. In the center of the forest, he said, there was a spacious grove. Their job was to detail any signs of magic they found in the grove.

After completing this, they would go to Lady Orela of the city of Scarfall where they would receive their payment: 500 gold pieces each. All accepted, even though they knew the risk would be great. They introduced themselves to each other, though all made certain to keep specific parts of their past hidden. None of them trusted one another, even if they had to cooperate to complete their mission.

After purchasing horses, they set out on the Verdant Road, which led across the vast expanse of the Gilded Plains to the town of Romreath. From there, they would travel to the city of Adranax, which stood on the edge of the Blood Plains, a hellscape of acid and flame that had been corrupted by a demonic incursion more than a hundred years before. This same invasion had changed the primeval Forest of Mists into the dark and sinister Forest of Shadows. Mark Ranson had supplied them each with a healing potion, telling them that those lands were not to be traveled without some means of recuperation.

As they traveled down they Verdant Road, which was named so for the trees that lined either side of the path, Orion and Clerania conversed, though neither revealed much about themselves, even as they attempted to discern the other's intentions. As they road down the gravel path, they were ambushed by a bandit who ordered them to surrender their valuables. After they refused, the bandit blew a horn, though no noise came from it. Sylran chose to engage in melee combat with the bandit, while Clerania held back and unsuccessfully attempted to hit the brigand with a firebolt.

Soon enough, it was revealed that the horn had signaled three other crooks who had waited on horseback beyond a nearby hill. Two more bandits fired on the party with their crossbows from the trees. It began to seem as if the thieves would defeat the travelers until Orion managed to slay the bandit leader, who had originally order them to surrender their possessions. After that, the battle soon turned against the marauders. Two died in combat to Sylran's magic, two more fled on horses, and the last was slain by Melanie's vicious mockery after he tried to flee. However, Clerania was upset at Orion, who had used her as a living shield against the bandit snipers.

Sylran decided to take the bandit leader's horn, thinking it might be useful. The party continued to travel onward until nightfall, when they stopped to rest. However, in the middle of the night, their sleep was disturbed when Sylran woke from a nightmare screaming. When Clerania asked what troubled him, he simply walked off. Clerania and Orion attempted to follow the elf, but he told them that it wasn't their business. Orion insisted that Sylran tell them, but Clerania berated him for using her as a shield and refused to support him. Orion apologized, recognizing that they couldn't accomplish their mission if they fought amongst themselves. Clerania reluctantly accepted his apology, though she warned him she would not be so lenient if such a thing happened again. Eventually, the four managed to fall asleep. The next morning, they awoke early, ready to set off towards the town of Romreath.

Hey! I just finished my first session of DnD with my friends and I loved it!

Jomin Stonebridge the monk and his cleric companion, Chandler Gershin, were members of the Natural Life Order, an ancient organization of priests and warrior monks dedicated to keeping the realm free from the undead monsters that plagued the land. They had set out in a caravan to Cherisburg on a pilgrimage to a holy site. Right outside the gates of the town, the caravan was ambushed by the Cherisburg Rogue Goblins and two wolves. With the help of Tazzire and his Cherisburg guards, they defeated the goblins and scared the wolves away.

After the battle, Tazzire leaped off the walls to meet the two adventurers. The two adventurers introduced themselves to Tazzire and convinced him to join them as a new member of the Order. The party entered Cherisburg and talked to the town leaders. After recounting the events of the battle to the leaders, the leaders were puzzled. The goblins in the area had signed a peace treaty long ago and were usually peaceful. They wanted the two members of the Order and Tazzire to get answers from the nearby goblin tribe. Before they left, the party did some shopping. Chandler bought some onion rings, and Jomin bought four day's rations. They all went to bed at the nearby tavern and set out for the goblin’s cave in the Cherisburg woods.

Upon reaching the cave, the goblin chief explained that there was a horde of zoblins set to arrive at the cave in two days, and that they would be unprepared to resist them. He told the party that they would pay well for the three adventurers to fight to defend of the goblins’ home. He then showed the adventurers around the goblin cave. There was a large main area with a fire in the middle, and a large, painted door at the back. Behind the door there was a series of tunnels that led to different rooms.

*Get my friend to give me sheet of goblin cave to finish description*

 The party prepared for battle, and Tazzire brewed a health potion for everyone. After resting for the night, the group was ready for battle. The goblins resisted the zoblins for a while but were eventually overrun and the zoblins entered the goblin’s cave. Several zoblins were taken out by the traps that the goblins set, but the zoblins quickly came face-to-face with the heroes. After a long and close battle, the team emerged victorious. The whole party leveled up. The goblins made good on their promise and paid each of the three adventurers 100 GP. The goblin chief told the adventurers that if they could find the source of the zoblins, he would give another reward to the adventurers. Tazzire brewed more potions, this time getting lucky and cooking up three greater health potions. After the potions were completed, the party went to sleep in the goblin cave, ready to set out the next day to discover where the zoblins came from.

Went to conyberry. Robin Runfast used their question with Agatha to find the price of horses, much to the dismay of Moragus Rockseeker, who immediately persuaded Agatha to answer Sister Garale's question.

I changed Talon to a magic talking sword, and Harry Backenface got a familiar.

Oh, we got an adamantine meteorite and learned about Cryovain. So that's a thing I'm saving for hoard of the dragon queen.

Session 5: (gained new players after Tresendar Manor, and all at level 3)
Assembler (Warforged Artificer), Salem (Air Genasi Wizard), Waffles (Warforged Cleric), Story (Changeling Monk)
Town master and Sildar dutifully filled in on the manor assault. All the money got, now let's look for the dwarfs.
3 members of party slept well, one spent most of the night in the forge.
"Good Morning Phandalin" starts with free mechanical leopard rides for the kids as MARC is brought to existence. Better than rodeo riding, because at least MARC isn't attempting to throw anyone off.
Stacking up on potions of healing, because we're not completely stupid. :P
First day on the road. Quiet, warm, lack of encounters. Unmolested game of I spy.
First night on the road. Waffles attempts to make friends with an Owlbear. Owlbear swipes left, and then actually swipes left, trying to beat the crap out of the warforged.
Second day on the road: One dead owlbear and sleep later, the never-ending game of I spy is broken by a goblin ambush. Waffles gets a little hit, but the party all pile in some damage. One goblin survives to tell us the location of the castle where Gundren is.
Second night on the road. Orcs from Wyvern Tor attempt an ambush. A musket ball politely tells them they've failed. Petition to rename Assembler to Finisher as he and MARC finish off 4 of the orcs, but everyone got in some good damage. Story took a severe beating, but was healed up.
Conyberry: Assembler talks to Agatha about the spellbook, and through his guild artisan training convinces her to give an answer to who had it last. Session ends in Conyberry, early morning, about to head up to the Well and Wyvern Tor.

How was our first session of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden? Bad. Very, very bad. We got TPKed. :(

How was our second session of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden? Very bad, godawful, we got TPKed again. :(

We entered the 4-th level of dungeon. Found a bunch of undead in medium armour modified revenants as we found later) stationed near the entrance, unmoving.  men and the rogue immediatelly shoot them. Arrows bounce off. No reaction from the undead. We close in to investigate. Still no reaction. Warlock casts Identify at them. Turns out they're frozen in time, totally immovable and invulnerable. Their armour and weapons aren't thiough. Barnarian steals the helmet and sword from one of the revenants. I seed  the ground around them with caltrops just in case. We explore the level, fund out more rooms with time-frozen undead - Revenants, Sword Wraiths, Bodaks, Undead Soldiers, andf a pair of Wraiths each with a retinue of Specters, all scattered around the level in different rooms. In two rooms we found a time-frozen bouquets of flowers. Druid tries to talk to them but they're unresponsive.

Passing thhrough a central camber we found a clump of magical darkness in our way. One daylight later we found out it had an armoured wingless young dragon and it's shadow clone  hiding inside waiting to pounce us (our necromancer antagonist can make shadow clones of things, basically the same monster minus divine magic if it had one plus all the strength and weaknesses of Shadows, including STR damage; we're stocked with potions of hill giant strength to heal STR damage). Our quest giver is an adult silver dragon who got his kids captured, tortured and brainwashed into those armored dragons by the necromancer, and he basically hired us to relieve them of their misery. It's not our first rodeo - Warlock brings out a Sun Blade to debilitate the shadowclone with sunlight, Barbarian wrestles down and pin the dragon. Their breath attacks are focussed on me and Barbarian as we spread out, barely doing any damage as we both pass out saves and have resistance to cold. After we kill them the actual dragon dissolve into goop. My characters NOOOOOOES as the valuable loot harvested from dragons is denied to him. Ther's a giant sarcophaguc in the chamber locked with arcane locks. We know it's boobie trapped against lockpicking and dispell, because we had the same on the previous levels, so we need the key.

Past the central chamber we found a treasure room with two chests. Rogue (who got eaten by Mimics twice by this point) shoots both. One arrow bouncess off the chest, yhe target time-frozen. Another phases into the chest and stars flickering, the chest is also flickering. Warlock identifies the chest and arrow, but before he finishes, Barbarianprods the glowing cheast itwh a sword he stole from the revenant. Swords also stars flickering. Identification result: chest is magical, whn struck it enchants the first thing that strikes it permamnetly, second thing for one day and third thing for 3 hours, if ti's struck the fourth time it explodes, sucking everyone within 10 feet to ethereal plane. The arrow is now permanently enchanted. It phases through anything but flesh and bones counting ingnoring armour, magic armor and natural armor, so everyong but mnks and barbarians have 10+Dex for AC WITH armour penalties to DEX mod. So does the stolen sword. And I stab the chest with my rapier to get the 3-hour version for myself. It pick the arrow and give it back to Rogue.

Inside the chest we found a key and a magic shield with X-ray vision curse, making that the wearer sees through anything but flesh and bone as if it was invisible. It might have been a good ability worth the attunement slot if it os on the on/off switch, but it's always on and we fought ghosts, constructs and plant monsters and other things that would be invisible under the rules for that shield. But he shields is also not attunement and +2. We gave it to the Druid because he needed AC but was also the least likely to be affected by the drawbacks.

We backtrack to the central chamber and open the sarcophagus. All the timestop effect on the level go off. Our barbarian get teleported back to the revenan he robed, the stolen sword in the undead's grip. And the tomb guardian rises from the sarcophagus. Each level before had it's unique one witgh funky mechanics. This one exploded with novas of necrotic damage every time it takes damage from spells, could grow and shrink in size, had multictacks that cannot focusfire and had riposte attacks as reactions, which he somehow get two of. With our tanks gone, ganged up by 6 Revenants, one of them with armour-piercing sword, on the other side of the level it was a tough fight but we won and then run back to save the barbarian (he's tanky as hell and can self-heal, but have no damage, and Revenants can regenerate). As we ran to relieve the Barbarian we picked the atrtention of some Bodaks oand Swoed Wraith on the way, so Druind used Wall of Thorns from his staff to block their path while we dealt with Revenants. We dealt with Revents but after fighting the boss and them were in no shape to take threst of the level, so Walock cast Leomundus Tiny Hut out oyjr scroll (no slots remaining and thord wall wouldn't las for full 11 minutes of ritual casting) for us to have at lest one hour of rest before undead go fetch some deathlocks to dispell it.

A bit disappointing. They were supposed to plant a fake egg in a phoenix nest. I messed up and had the phoenix get scared off in the first round. They just placed the egg and tried to escape. They did have to withstand several rounds of phoenix attacks before they could get away.

But they were *supposed* to find the magical trigger to raise the depth of the lava and swamp the phoenix's nest - which wouldn't hurt it, just make it feel like leaving.

But oh well, I think it was a hair-raising combat anyway, as several PCs went down, and one was stranded on the wrong side of the lava river and had to dash several rounds to catch up with the raft.

Somehow didn't get arrested this time. Managed to calm a bunch of guards, which probably saved the party. Talked to an Elf. 

Accidently managed to give my DM the idea that having my Clerics God get rid of my Cleric status is a possible consequence of my doing stuff.

How to explain my most recent session:

-Players get a lore dump from an NPC crab captain of a boat named Captain Crytis Clawpincher the red in his ship’s quarters, that makes the entire campaign of mine make sense. Right before that, a player went up to the crab and apologized for “eating his kind”. The captain wasn’t happy.

-Player was given some magic paint.

-Bean from a bag of beans is planted into a pot.

-Players go on the deck to fight, because surprise combat.

- Bean erupts into a geyser of wine. Wine addict character goes down to get the wine mid combat as wine addiction is a thing and also because it’s flooding the ship.

-Player with wine uses the geyser to hit enemies by tilting the pot to make the geyser hit the enemies, meanwhile she drinks the wine. I am considering making the pot go full rocket on a failed strength check next session.

-Combat is going a bit too well for the players. I am considering throwing in a special surprise.

Great!

So, the party fought the orcs at wyvern tor. 

They killed most of the orcs, until it's just the ogre and the orc leader.

Then, this happened.

"The ogre throws his javelin with all of its might. A sonic boom is heard, as it streaks through the air and impales itself through Harold's stomach, and buries itself into the rock."

Which of course took Harold down to zero HP.

But because life clerics, he got healed immediately.

I need to make this harder.

So, I (rogue) found out my dad has a 200 gold bounty on my head for my safe return and bounty hunters were likely on my hide...again. Given the toxic environment my home life was, that encouraged me to get the heckins out of dodge.

We then fought some gnolls. I tried to intimidate them by pointing out how our ranger, who was also a gnoll, was an absolute beast in combat...it didn't go well. The ranger then tried the same thing...which went about as well. It just wasn't our day, I guess. I managed to finish the fight by shooting their leader with my longbow (shopping montages are fun) but since the ranger had said leader targeted as his favoured enemy, he was quite upset. Upset enough to lift me off the ground and shake me. I managed to wheeze out an apology.

Now we're in a ruin, face to face with a djinn. Maybe he's friendly?

Quote of the night: I would like to use my bonus action to hide in shame...and I rolled a ten.

Start of the Session: "We need to deliver this letter to the halfling's sister!"

Middle of the Session: "Guys I just brought a pet shop"

End of the Session: -Party conducts a drive-by shooting by having the wizard launch a fireball through a taverns front doors during its lunch rush before speeding off out of town-

Quote from Doug_Booshaka >>

Start of the Session: "We need to deliver this letter to the halfling's sister!"

Middle of the Session: "Guys I just brought a pet shop"

End of the Session: -Party conducts a drive-by shooting by having the wizard launch a fireball through a taverns front doors during its lunch rush before speeding off out of town-

 That... That changed way too fast.