This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic byVitaly S Alexius
Well, it's not my last session as a player, persay, but the last time I DM'd a one shot (two sessions long) was fun as hell.
The party consisted of a Shifter Sun Soul Monk, an Aasimar Lockadin, a Variant Human Monk with some Sorceror flavor, a Goliath Rogue, and a Half-elf Bard. The plot involved one of their guildmates, a hill dwarf artificer named Skye, having her dreamscape hijacked by a vindictive, puckish Archfey who'd been stirring trouble in the city before. They were sent into her dreams to rescue her from whatever scheme the archfey, the self-styled Prince Spriggan, had hatched, and learned upon entering the dilapidated castle that Skye was to be married to this Archfey, allowing him a bridge to the material realm. To that end, he'd charmed her with a magical tiara to become his 'fiery fairy queen', and spirited her away to his keep in preparation for the ceremony. Through the first session, they learned from the Fomorian butler, Giles, that there were magical invitations sent to all expected guests for the wedding. Those without an invitation would, rather than being sent to the venue upon stepping into the Circle, would instead be sent to the gaols. One of their party, having had run in earlier than the rest to stealthily scout the castle, had run afoul of this teleportation. The party hadn't found this out until they'd already gathered three invitations, one from the Darkling captain of the guard after a cunning hit-and-run skirmish in a grabby hedge maze, one from an Eladrin bartender testing a polymorphic 'trueself shot', and another from a Marid and his elemental bodyguards after a harrowing fight against their lung capacity.
Upon locating the gaols towards the start of the second session, the party warily approached the cage that their ally, the Sorceror-Monk, had been imprisoned in. Once everyone was in the sprawling, high-ceiling chamber though, the doors all sealed shut, and a magical darkness field expanded outwards. Thus began their fight with the gaoler, an Orthon (my favorite DnD monster, I'll admit), with him getting the drop on one of them with a nasty stab before slinking back out of reach. The Lockadin, having taken Devil's Sight as an invocation, could see the Orthon when it became visible, regardless of the darkness, and used his turns to fire Eldritch Blasts in his general direction, attracting his attention as the most pressing threat when the Orthon next attacked. The Bard, who'd come into the fight with Detect Magic active, discerned after a good perception roll that the teleportation circle in the gaol was masking the source glyphs of the darkness spell, and would be able to dispel it next turn. Even without sight, the Monks joined the action, the uncaptured Shifter rousing the captured human and helping him bend the bars of his cage open enough to escape. Then it became a deadly game of cat and mouse, as the Orthon successfully blinded the Lockadin, before the Bard shut down his Darkness field. Beginning to show some wear and tear, and narrowly avoiding the monks as they moved to support the Lockadin, the gaoler took to the chains and cages hanging from above, staying out of immediate melee to fire on them from above. Until the Monks deftly climbed up and fought him there, with the Bard, Rogue and Lockadin casting spells and firing bolts from below. From there, it was a matter of time until the devil exploded amongst them, though with little effect given Evasion's presence amongst three of the party.
The human monk, being Skye's paramour in the material realm, was later crucial in convincing the archfey's father, Oberon, not to intervene on his son's behalf when they go to rescue Skye and stop the wedding, on the condition that they not visit mortal injuries on him. In agreement, they received the last invitations, written for both Oberon and his one-night stand, the very archdruid who'd brought them to the dreamscape, Penny. Thus equipped, they stormed the venue, a thorn-thicket island in the sky, a tall tower, and the wedding dais. Confronting Spriggan's wedding official, a crow-crone who commanded avian swarms to harry the party, they chased her off back into the keep before challenging Spriggan to battle. The beginning of the combat had them at something of a disadvantage; the fairy prince was powerful, cunning, difficult to pin down even without flight, and possessed a mystical brooch that protected and empowered him with elemental shrouds. He also had support from on high, as Skye, bearing the tiara of charming, was raining down spells of her own as the 'firesprite queen'. In the chaos, though, the Monk had slipped into the tower unnoticed, and spent two rounds of combat scaling the structure in its entirety with step of the wind. As soon as he removed the tiara from her, the spell was broken, and the dreamscape was once again hers to command. Stripping Spriggan of his artifacts of power and raiments of finery, she humiliated him by revealing his true form, that of the gangly, mischievous and troublesome young Archfey, Puck.
The party saw their foe off, dragged by the ears for meddling in mortal affairs, and Penny gratefully sent them back to the Material Realm. Where they all awoke, in Skye's room, ending the one-shot with a humorous parting shot of an embarrassed Skye, in her nightgown, red-faced and chasing the lot of them out of her quarters with crackles of lightning and sparks of fire.
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Working on a supplement for the adventure-minded. A project including (and crediting) homebrew subclasses from the community, a world of my own design, premade characters, magic items, and even a prologue adventure to start things off!
Past and Current Characters: Morgann 'Duskspear' Solbeard, Hill Dwarf Paladin/Fighter/Warlock; Ephemeral 'Skye' Solbeard, Hill Dwarf Artificer; Zaldrick Lawscrip of Orzhov, Hobgoblin Wizard; Eremys Spydrun, Shadar'kai Monk; Cuchulainn, Wood Elf Blood Hunter.
Last night was a side quest, since one of my players had to be absent. A merchant sent them a letter offering them a job, and begging them to come as quickly as possible. It turned out that his daughter’s abusive ex-husband had kidnapped her a few days ago, and the town guard had been unable to find them. The party found them, killed the ex (who had become a warlock to get the power he needed to “fix” his already defunct marriage), and brought her safely home.
It was short and sweet. I, and three of my five players, have suffered severe abuse in the past, so I thought it would be fun to slaughter a symbol of that abuse with all the deadly force that a fantasy adventuring party could command! Plus, it was interesting to make a villain with a normal, real-life motivation, and mix it with magic. George Allen didn’t want to destroy the world; he wanted to dominate his ex!
My players were fighting an archer boss I loaded with tricks - he teleported around, filled the battlefield with smoke bombs (which he ignored due to blind sight), and fired trick arrows tipped with blast disks with some nasty spells. Thief managed to be the first one to get close. Instead of attacking him with disadvantage and no sneak attack she stole his quiver. I was so proud of her...
At the start of the session the party of 4 level 9's found a monster lair full of chewed bones of beasts and humanoids and decided "This'll be a good place to have a long rest". Of course the monster comes back and attacks them, but some lucky crits and a lucky tripping attack allow them to kill the beast without taking any damage.
They later arrive at the Fire Giant Stronghold, they use the invisibility spell to sneak inside without alerting anyone. Once inside they encounter '1' enemy which they dispatch with ease and without taking damage.
Now I assume they must be getting cocky by this point, because what they do next is they locate where the BBEFG (Big, Bad, Evil, Fire Giant) is, on a lower floor roughly 50ft down. They decide the plan of action for the next session is to abseil down by rope and proceed to kill him.
Now as the DM, I know what their dealing with. In my version of SKT, the giant lords are all given class levels to make them more threatening, in this case the BBEFG has 9 levels of Artillerist (Artificer subclass) and 3 levels of Rune Knight (Fighter Subclass, literally only there so he can use the chains of binding ability). For those who aren't aware, Artillerists have a cannon that they can fire as a bonus action, the cannon can also grow legs and move about. The class levels gives the BBEFG a CR of 12. He is also joined by 2 Hellhounds and the adjacent rooms and corridors have enough enemies to make a deadly encounter for 15 level 20's (Going by encounter builder, in reality 15 level 20's would annihilate everyone) over the next few rounds. Because they are abseiling down a 50ft rope prior to the fight, this means this rope is also their only escape route. So we're reaching the end of the session, they start discussing the plan they'll undertake next session, whilst I have to keep a straight face as they proceed straight into, what is almost certainly, a TPK. Occasionally I say "Perhaps you'd like to scout around a bit first" or "You could make a check to estimate how strong the giant is or listen out for any additional enemies", but my advice is only politely acknowledged.
What's worse is I have to now work out the logistics of how the >100 npc's (Non-Hostile and Hostile) across 4 different floors would react, should an alert go out, in the same space of time it takes for the Warlock to decide that this turn they'll cast Eldritch Blast (A lot longer than you'd expect...).
So I wrote up a summary of this week's session for the player who missed it on our campaign's Discord and another player asked "Can you write my memoir when I die" so I want to just copy that but first I need to set it from the previous session and write that one up...adding that to my to do list for my day off tomorrow.
Having just restored the magical lantern to the Northern Light Inn in Caer Koenig, the party took a free night’s rest before they set off for Easthaven, to investigate a lead involving grey dwarves.
During the night, however, several party members had bizarre dreams…the Storm Sorcerer, a Midwinter Child, was visited by the owlish aspect of Auril, who whispered his name as though beckoning to him.
Our Warlock & Rogue, meanwhile, we’re visited by the Goddess of Joy, Llirra, who they found ice-skating on the frozen lake. Llirra thanked the party for their recent good deeds…but we’re interrupted by an old enemy, seemingly possessed now by Loviatar, Goddess of Suffering. The two goddesses clashed; but in that instant, both the Warlock and the Rogue were snapped back to the waking world.
The party went to Easthaven, where they arrived just in time to witness a Wizard being burned at the stake. Apparently, the man had been accused of murder, and so was sentenced to be a sacrifice to Auril. The Sorcerer, a native to Easthaven, looked up his old flame, the captain of the militia, who informed him of missing fishermen. Thinking the duregar responsible, the party offered to help…but not before starting a huge party at the local tavern.
Then arriving at the inn, they take part in a seance with another old friend of the Sorcerer; who accidentally summons a ghostly woman. The ghost divulges several interesting facts; stating that the duregar are hiding aboard the abandoned ferry in town, and the missing fishermen have actually been taken by a hag, whose lair is in some nearby caves…
I set beholder on my players. They're level 11 in some impressive gear, so I added few Gauth and Deathkiss minions and played Beholder like a proper bastard, flying high in his lair, using walls for full cover and dropping flying players of the air and walls by nullifying their flying/climbing spells and magic items, then staring down casters so they can't do shit. All while spewing conspiracy theory nonsense about the imaginary enemies he things send the players on him (players stumbled on him by accident). Also gave the beholder some nasty magic items too, because why wouldn't he have them. Almost petrified rogue and cleric with eye beams (doubly funny since I introduced cleric into the party when they found him petrified and restored him). Figher had some truly cursed dice, rolling 6 critical misses in just three turns. Although everyone killed it on saving throws with barely aney aye beams landing. Unfortunately we had to stop mid-fight, and so far everyone but two death kisses are above 50% HP.
We were playing Tomb of Horrors, because my players are sadists. They checked the misty opening by sending through a specter. Nothing happened, so one of the players followed, carrying the fancy new magic item they just retrieved. Immediately, he was teleported out of the dungeon, having lost all his equipment, including the magic item. Because the trap affected living and dead materials differently, and a specter is neither living nor dead.
So, the rogue kept trying to threaten/kill the barkeep, so I decided that the barkeep rigged the tavern to explode if he died. So then he went to hide out in an attic, and convinced the people living in the house that he was a ghost. He then told them to give him their money, which revealed that he wasn't a ghost, but he still had a shotgun, so they were still willing to give him their money. But then he let them keep their money. After that, he looked around in the attic and found a haunted doll, which he stabbed before going to sleep. The doll gave him nightmares, so he threw it (and the knife imbedded in it) out the window, where a little girl picked it up and probably became a murderer. So that was fun.
So, the rogue kept trying to threaten/kill the barkeep, so I decided that the barkeep rigged the tavern to explode if he died. So then he went to hide out in an attic, and convinced the people living in the house that he was a ghost. He then told them to give him their money, which revealed that he wasn't a ghost, but he still had a shotgun, so they were still willing to give him their money. But then he let them keep their money. After that, he looked around in the attic and found a haunted doll, which he stabbed before going to sleep. The doll gave him nightmares, so he threw it (and the knife imbedded in it) out the window, where a little girl picked it up and probably became a murderer. So that was fun.
And yes, I am aware that my campaign is very random. That's what makes it so fun.
Kick started a game which I hope will develop into a campaign this weekend! It's been very exciting to see how the players enjoy what I've put together!
Party of 5 is an Orc Artificer obsessed with becoming powerful,, his Ooze companion (using the Ooze Cohort rules for Ooze PC's) who hands around with the Orc becuase they are friends, a Drow Druid who was largely raised in daylight (swapped 60ft. of darkvision out for not having sunlight sensitivity any more), a half-drow wizard (who was a magician who blagged their way into wizarding school using tricks) and a half-sun-elf Monk who is possibly involved in a prophesy to resurrect an ancient gold dragon that his monastary worships.
They have been summoned to Greyhold, a village in the mountains, where it has been raining for over 230 years. The quarry is almost full of water, and the drainage simply cannot cope any more. There they met a drunken dwarf who regaled them about how the town had once, many years ago, been raided by pirates. They also met a half-elf called Rolan who told them that he lost his cart and all his possessions on the trail from the north, where he met something in the fog that made his horse bolt. He remembered seeing a skull, and hearing the slap of a rope in the wind.
The party successfully determined the way to go was north, after meeting the town elders (one of which is a shriveled, ancient halfling called Reed, who is mostly deaf and has lost a lot of his marbles - he is obsessed with seeing a rainbow again, something that hasn't happened since the rains started), and they struck out northward.
They had a battle with some Bugbears and a trained bloodhawk, and won without too much fuss (it should have been a hard encounter, though it did knock all the ki points out of the monk!). I'll have to be sure to throw a few more encounters there way so they have to think about managing their resources!
They found the wagon, and proceeded to first try and repair it (it was missing a wheel) and then to simply take everything from the back - including 400lbs of strange, ever-so-slightly magical rocks, which they poured into a sleeping bag and are now carrying around on a floating disc.
They then proceeded further up the trail, and there they found an anchor in the fog, in the middle of the road, with a chain stretching upwards into the cloud. Visibility was 15ft. They left the rocks just off the path, and they climbed up to find a rotting hull of a ship; peeling paint, broken masts, spongey wood, floating in the clouds.
And that's where we got to! They are all stood on the deck of this ship!
greatly looking forward to continuing this adventure!
Session 2 was scheduled, and due to real life work commitments Draco the Monk has mysteriously disappeared, which fits reasonably well with the way things went and hopefully they can re-join seamlessly when time permits them!
The session opened with the party on the deck of the rotting ship they found floating in the clouds. They performed a systematic search of the ship and found a good deal of old rotting barrels and whatnot, but nothing of note. The artificer settled down on deck to detect magic as a 10-minute ritual, and the wizard was checking the upper decks. The Druid and the Ooze were below ships, and they found the crew - a load of skeletons in their hammocks. Happily for me, they assumed that the skeletons were the dead crew, and the druid attempted to remove a gold ring from one of them. As she did so, the skeleton woke up with a start and grabbed her wrist. Time to roll initiative!
The skeletons all woke up, acting startled and scrabbling for their weapons. I gave the party a round of surprise over 5 of the skeletons, the 6th being the one which was already grappling the druid so not surprised. The Druid shouted for help and the Ooze came running (well, oozing) and managed to dash into the room. The Skeleton managed to land a cut on the druid’s arm, and the Artificer (in heavy armour) decided the fastest way down was to smash through the rotting deck he was stood on. He succeeded and dropped down, landing on the same floor as the skeletons, and I rolled a constitution save for the floor, and got a 2, so he continued through to the bottom floor (I wasn't going to have him drop right out, that's a "rocks fall, you die" scenario!), and passed his athletics check to stay standing. He then started thundering back up the stairs to get to the fight!
The Wizard made his way downstairs via a hatch (DC7 to open it, he only just managed it with a 9!) but was out of actions by then and was standing in the corridor. The Druid swung with her hand-axe and missed the skeleton with a 3. Then the Wizard gave her a reroll (chronomancy) and she still missed with a 3. Everyone was joking that the dice were fixed and that she should appeal for a reroll from the DM, so I said if she rolled a third 3 in a row it would be a hit, and she rolled... a 1. We all agreed she just wasn't hitting at that point. Amoe the Ooze dealt some decent whacking damage and grappled one of the skeletons, ready to deal some acid damage next turn. The Artificer thundered up the stairs and barged the wizard out of the way to get through the corridor, smashing him through a rotten wall in the process (prone, but I rolled low so no damage) and got into the thick of the fight. Then the wizard got up, brushed himself off, picked up a piece of wood and cast catapult on it to shatter a skeleton into a multitude of small pieces (28 bludgeoning damage!).
From there the fight went well for the players - a second catapult destroyed a second skeleton, and Amoe killed another outright (that vulnerability to bludgeoning is a killer!). The druid turned into a wolf and ripped a femur out of a skeleton, causing it to collapse into pieces. The last skeleton was felled easily, and the fight won!
Now, throughout this fight I had been describing some non-average skeleton behaviour - acting surprised, staggering back in alarm, putting their arms up to shield from the blows - and one of the players asked me after the battle with a note of concern "on a scale of 1-10, how sentient did these skeletons seem?". They rolled (extremely) low on Insight, however, so they didn't learn anything. Nobody else seemed concerned - the Wizard hung around in the room to try and take anything of interest from the skeletons, and the Artificer settled down for another attempt to detect magic. Amoe and Morgana (the druid) went downstairs to investigate the rest of the ship. They found a locked door at the back, and Amoe decided to break it down. Behind the door they found a pile of loot, well-rotted where applicable, and a chest. At about the same time as the Artificer finished his ritual and detected an incredibly powerful magic from directly below him (where the chest happened to be) and went downstairs to have a look. As he got there, Amoe opened the chest.
As soon as the chest was opened, the players felt a sudden swooping sensation, like the floor had dropped away from them for an instant, and the ship suddenly felt as though it were rocking gently. All around them, the rotten and split wood is seen to be re-knitting together, becoming whole. In a few short moments, the ship has healed to a beautiful and well-made craft, with good paint on the walls and no signs of rot anywhere. The skeletons - including a skull which Amoe had decided to carry and an arm which the druid was carrying - quickly transform into a somewhat grisly scene of recently slain crewmembers. The wizard, who was rooting around in the cabin, passed his constitution save to keep lunch down after finding himself knee-deep in people-chum.
A brief discussion followed about the importance of the gem. I told the Artificer that the gem was magical and was of the Conjuration school. There was also an amulet in the loot, which was mildly magical, and held an Enchantment school spell in it. They briefly conjectured that they might be at sea, but considered it unlikely, and then they wondered if they had gone back in time. The wizard was excited by this, being Chronurgy, so he went to look outside - and found that they were at sea!
They emerged on deck to see where they were and saw a large island off one side of the ship, with 3 more behind it, and are then accosted by the captain.
The captain demands who they are and how they got onto the ship. He also asks them where his crew is. After some discussion he tells them of the Shades which appeared and attacked his crew - and the players realise that this was them! He also tells them that it's 230 years before their time (at least, that's what he thinks). They decide to tell him that they are time-travellers who have come back in time, and that they killed the shades after the shades killed his crew. He is sceptical about this, not really understanding time-travel (though the players took the time to explain it in ship terms - as if your ship were not moving but all the others were - and he sort of got the gist). He then explained to them his story:
The captain and his crew had sailed upriver to find an abandoned temple which was supposed to have a priceless treasure in it. They followed a map which the quartermaster had won in a game of cards and found the temple. It was full of skeletons, and they managed to fight their way out of there with the chest and make their way back to the ship, recalling the pirates which were raiding Greyhold on the way. They got to the ship, and once on-board, they opened the chest, revealing the gem. But, suddenly, they were at sea! They found themselves here, and they have not been able to find their way back. There are 4 islands, and if you sail to the horizon, they appear before you as surely as they disappear behind you. He explains that there is no sailing away from here.
The players asked about the islands and he says that he has been on two of the four – one to collect food, and one where he and his crew were attacked by strange creatures in the mist, which stole his satchel containing the map to the temple.
Once the party had found out all of this from the captain, they had a discussion and decided that they should go to the island of steam and see if they can find the map which the captain lost. Then the Artificer distracted the captain whilst the Wizard tried to clean up the mess in the crews quarters. The captain is still seeming in some form of shock, and has resigned himself fairly smoothly to being stuck here with the PC’s instead of stuck here with his crew. He has agreed to take them to the island of steam, and has told them it will take some hours to get there, as there is never much wind, so they have settled down for a long rest and have levelled up to level 3!
That’s where the session got to! Looking forward to running a third session!
Well it was months since my group last played, but after cancelling and rescheduling and cancelling multiple times, (and one of us STILL cancelling at the last minute ) we managed to get together again. It obscenely hot right now in Western Washington, so our original plan to play outside was a no-go, just like I new it would be, but whatever. Joining us for this session was the mother of one of my players, whose character was a dragonborn paladin.
First was a minor encounter with a wood nymph who covertly tried to lure one of the players away from night watch duty, but she easily passed the creature's wisdom save (I knew she probably would, fey ancestry), and then it was off to pick flowers. Specifically, they need a flower called a tawnygold as an ingredient to cure lycanthropy, and a decanter belonging to the elderly apothecary back in town, that last one is just a favor to a friend though.
Last session, the party met a squad of sprite soldiers who just had their asses handed to them by corrupted pixies. Six of their men were taken captive, and their siege engine, Danny the Awakened Tree, got separated while trying to find them.
The first almost encounter was with a predatory drake, which normally has pretty high stealth, but it rolled a natural 1 so it fell out of the tree screaming and then bonked its head. Since it was an ambush predator, and it had completely bungled its ambush, I just had it run away in shame.
Underneath a boat house, they found an underwater cave which leads into another dungeon that they are trying to access for a side quest, and then in the building across the street, they found two more of the sprite prisoners and their corrupted pixie captors. These pixies actually have a lot of tricks up their sleeve, if they survive long enough to use them. Anyway the first one goes down when the half-orc Kool-Aid Mans through the barred door, and the paladin, our new player, is right behind her. The paladin swings at the other pixie. Nat 1. So the pixie sees the swing coming from a mile away, and the paladin's momentum carries her blade careening toward one of the hostages.
Nat 20 on the prisoner! That poor sprite was beyond saving. They spend a couple more rounds trying to find the other pixie since she turned invisible, but was able to get away through a hole in the roof. Well the other prisoner wanted nothing to do with them now, and none of the players wanted to roll charisma, so they left him tied up after I assured them that he could eventually cut himself loose.
Next, they finally find Danny the Tree, who I establish a capable combatant by annihilating a pair of leshens, creatures the players have been fighting for the past two sessions, but he is utterly terrified of herbivores. Danny explains that the flower they are looking for and the decanter are in a garden in the north of the of the ruins, a garden maintained by celestials. To get inside, they have to prove themselves worthy, but the players aren't quite sure how, though the celestials aren't overly fond of the leshens. The players agreed it was worth a shot to try and get rid of the lords of the forest, so as they're hiking back to the sprites' hideout, I set up the big climactic encounter for the session. The big rematch with the lords of the forest.
Two players managed to get off a surprise round (but only dealing 3 damage between the two of them) the leshens make their move by cordoning the battlefield into four quadrants. Two swarms of ravens appear to attack the flying elf, a couple of deer centaurs called alseids start taking pot shots at Danny and the Warforged, the paladin engages one of the leshens in a duel, and the half-orc runs off to tackle the other leshen and a displacer beast.
Even raging, the half orc was outnumbered, but I had planned for this, so after a round, a dryad appears (the same one they encountered in the early morning who tried to lure one of them away) and engages the displacer beast. The cleric meanwhile has nobody even interested in attacking him, so he spends two whole rounds trying to get through the hedge that the leshens had created.
The paladin meanwhile is having no luck in her duel, and for that matter neither is her opponent. God I don't even know how many rounds they spent just swinging at eachother.
The Warforged and Awakened tree put up a decent defense, except the two alseids are much faster than the tree and smart enough not to let it get too close. However they haven't even managed to hit the player or the awakened tree (tree takes half damage from piercing IE arrows, and the player had half cover hiding in the tree branches) so they shout "They're too strong! Send out the BEAST!"
And the moment I had been waiting for for months finally arrived!
The warforged sees a puddle start rippling Jurassic Park style, then a long neck emerges from the forest and a Brontosaurus appears! Before the players could put 2 and 2 together, the Brontosaurus starts viciously attacking Danny the Tree! On his turn the warforged tries to push the Brontosaurus away from Danny, but it's a contest of strength, and it's an artificer against a huge ******* dinosaur, so he ends up hanging onto its neck for dear life while the flying elf moves in to assist. The thing is so damn big that they don't even do a dent in its health. So right before his death, Danny shouts "Tell my platoon... it was an honor to fight at their side!" and Sarge, the sprite commander, brings in the cavalry and says "Tell them yourself Danny!" A couple more rounds and warforged falls off the dinosaur, taking fall damage of course, and of the sprites kamikaze's down the dinosaur's throat with a lit grenade. This painful burp convinces the dinosaur to go find lunch somewhere else.
Meanwhile the paladin and the leshen be like:
So finally the leshen decides he's had enough and casts entanglement to cover his escape. He's cut off by the half orc who had just finished her own fight with the help of the dryad, and the party gangs up on him to finally end this ******* encounter!
The dryad introduces herself as Lorne and she explains that the other sprite prisoners have been taken up into the mountain by fiends. The players figure that getting rid of the fiends will be a lot better and easier to gain favor with the celestials than trying to root out all the leshens and their minions, so they agree to follow her and that's where we ended our session.
Oh shit how do I put this. Strap your seatbelts in and hold on for this ride.
My character being the ****ed up individual that he is chose to say **** it and went half cocked on his own trying his damnedest to try and save the only people besides the people back under his wife's wings, so to say, and went off to make a deal with Bregan D'aerthe to pull back the Greenlight on our merry band of idiots that we are. So he goes to the tavern that he promised to meet the people of Bregan D'aerthe with a plan that would sound most advantageous for a mercenary company.
Rewind a little to my character's wife. She is a very well loved member of Neverwinter's people, having been in the city for well over 50 years she has of course become one of the many peers Dagult Neverember looks upon to help him in his Lordship over the city. That being said she is well integrated with the Lord's Alliance and helps play friend to many on the Sword Coast and the Lord's Alliance. My character, being her Husband has also learned the dirty parts of politics and has A LOT of knowledge and dirt on some people that are large and in charge.
Well this being his strong suit, my character would offer his knowledge on people and their secrets to broker a deal with Bregan D'aerthe for the Greenlight to be snuffed. While this plan was going on my Party try spying on a man, failing to do so gets the eyes of the city guard on them, so they knock him out and ruin his ******* career as he knows it by pouring water on his groin and summoning a Godly entity known as a Pegasus to fly away from the guard after being spotted by a few citizens of Waterdeep. Oh boy.
My meeting goes well, I am told to screw over a snobby rich kid by stealing from him, I get a scroll of knock on a bombing Persuasion check, set up a plan where I frame Xanathar's guild in attacking me by having my familiar beat the ever living crap out of me, then steal from the rich kid literally out from under his nose. One person did that, I am thoroughly proud of my boy for orchestrating this all on my own with no help of the two rogues in my party.
Well ladies and gentlemen of the council I bet you are wondering, "What part of this is the ride?" Well my fine ladies and gentlemen, here is were we go lopsided FAST.
Back with the Renegades who had it made but ever more to go astray, they get home, get naked and drunk, party rock is in that house to night and it's time for us to make you loose your mind. Our Barbarian goes out the front door stark naked for a time around the town, dick floppin in the wind and a spring in his step with two keggers. Our rogues go to sleep and our final boy, the sweetest boy, talks to Oghma and has the god teleport the item to our salvation into the drunk little boy's hands, the very item I worked so ******* hard to get, was teleported into the kid's hands like it was nothing.
Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem, if I hadn't just landed at their doorstep with 45 minutes to their time limit left and fear racing up my body as everything I was just trying to do had just been derailed in a flash.
This Sunday shall be one hell of a doozie as holy gibberwacks my character is gonna have a rough/hard time surviving this. But I have confidence in him as he has still yet to fail me on his survival rate.
We searched a derelict castle for a missing friend.
The Dhapmire warlock had an idea to look like a bounty hunter and use our rich high elf sorceress as the bounty and key to getting in and seeing our target. So the rouge and myself(monk) waited outside for a signal if anything went wrong and they needed help, so we waited and waited, and waited some more until I had a bad feeling.
We decided to try and follow them in although we didn't know what path they took, we got lucky and found the right door the first try although it did trigger a trap which then alerted a group of goblins in the nearby rooms. I took an arrow in the leg but we both made it through the door. We found our friends already in battle with something hanging from the ceiling and some goblins.
Our rouge was shot in the back because we forgot to close the door behind us as we came in and the goblins were closing in so we regrouped in a little room with nobody there.
After peeking out of the door we saw we were outnumbered 4 to 10 because the leader had found us and brought his crew, and that is where we'll pick up again next week.
We played on Tuesday instead of Monday this week, due to the worst heat wave in Oregon history that slammed us over the weekend. We were an hour late getting started (miscommunication), and I had already agreed to cut it short for one player who had other obligations. We only got to play for an hour and a half.
I had designed a side quest for the week before, when one player would have been absent; I got sick, though, so we skipped that week altogether. I intended to start back on the main story this week, but returned to the side quest when I agreed to shorten the session. The objective was to fetch a lock of hair from a green hag, with extra rewards if they bring back her heart as well.
They began on their journey fifteen miles south towards the hag’s newly established lair, and right off the bat, I rolled a random encounter (the first time it’s happened in almost two real months!). In an attempt to keep the pace up, I chose a non-combat encounter with a farmer wearing a cursed ring that forced him to walk backwards. The PCs were more interested in hunting down the hag than trying to help the farmer get the ring off (nobody has Remove Curse yet), since it can’t be removed by the wearer, and forcibly attunes to the new bearer immediately. The farmer yelled at them for a minute, and then went on his way, and the party continued on theirs.
So naturally I rolled another random encounter. I was starting to realize that we weren’t going to get to the hag by the end of the session, so I tossed a couple of Death Dogs at them. Cue a long argument between players and characters, because the warlock didn’t want to kill them, “because they’re still creatures!“ I mentioned that they were pretty obviously demonic (because in my world, they are) several times, but she stuck to her point, and actually chose to go into melee so that she could try to get the final blow in, and make it non-lethal! The paladin and monster hunter fighter, in the meantime, began working together to ensure that the Death Dogs actually died. Between them they managed to kill the wretched things, and the party moved on. I need to remember to talk privately to the warlock about her character choices.
They managed to get most of the rest of the way to the lair, when I rolled (yet again) another random encounter! I decided to make use of this one to set the stage for the hag’s growing control over the forest; this time a quickling attacks them, while its companion rushes off to warn her about the intruders. I don’t think the party has realized that they are minions of the hag yet.
At this point, they decided to take a long rest, much to my delight. They decided to try to find a defensible place to sleep. They rolled pretty high, so I let them find a nice little gully. I ended the session there, because they started arguing over who took which shift!
I don’t know what got into my players this week. They’re normally a great group! I’m not sure whether I should talk to them all about it, or whether to try to let it blow over. An hour and a half never felt so long!
Our last two sessions were combat heavy and we had a player out this week, so today they went to sell loot and do some shopping. They also had a NPC with them that needed to have an incriminating tattoo removed, so they ended up in a place I came up with on the fly called "Brand's".
The sorceress used her DM Inspiration to get a success on a a suggestion for getting everyone magical tattoos so I gave them a deep discount and they got a cool story out of it, although it's too bad the bard was "off at college."
Now I assume they must be getting cocky by this point, because what they do next is they locate where the BBEFG (Big, Bad, Evil, Fire Giant) is, on a lower floor roughly 50ft down. They decide the plan of action for the next session is to abseil down by rope and proceed to kill him.
The party SOMEHOW survived this encounter, 3 of the party got captured by Fire Giants, but they killed the BBEFG. I actually added boss music for this fight and a cool title card for the BBEFG, however they killed it in 2 rounds thanks to 3 crits and the BBEFG missing every attack. However the arrival of 10 more fire giants caused 3 of them to get downed before being captured and sent into the mines to perform forced labour and eventually be interrogated. Meanwhile the Rogue turned invisible and looted 15,000gp worth of stuff from the BBEFG's bedroom before escaping the dungeon and taking the party's airship to Everlund. I assumed the Rogue would try rescue the party, but instead he's going to be making a yakfolk child character (Minotaur with possession ability) to help the party escape their predicament.
Why did you not expect the rogue with 1500 gp! To not ditch the group ?
And three
This sounds like you and your group are amazing.
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This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic byVitaly S Alexius
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Ah. That makes sense.
This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic by Vitaly S Alexius
Well, it's not my last session as a player, persay, but the last time I DM'd a one shot (two sessions long) was fun as hell.
The party consisted of a Shifter Sun Soul Monk, an Aasimar Lockadin, a Variant Human Monk with some Sorceror flavor, a Goliath Rogue, and a Half-elf Bard. The plot involved one of their guildmates, a hill dwarf artificer named Skye, having her dreamscape hijacked by a vindictive, puckish Archfey who'd been stirring trouble in the city before. They were sent into her dreams to rescue her from whatever scheme the archfey, the self-styled Prince Spriggan, had hatched, and learned upon entering the dilapidated castle that Skye was to be married to this Archfey, allowing him a bridge to the material realm. To that end, he'd charmed her with a magical tiara to become his 'fiery fairy queen', and spirited her away to his keep in preparation for the ceremony. Through the first session, they learned from the Fomorian butler, Giles, that there were magical invitations sent to all expected guests for the wedding. Those without an invitation would, rather than being sent to the venue upon stepping into the Circle, would instead be sent to the gaols. One of their party, having had run in earlier than the rest to stealthily scout the castle, had run afoul of this teleportation. The party hadn't found this out until they'd already gathered three invitations, one from the Darkling captain of the guard after a cunning hit-and-run skirmish in a grabby hedge maze, one from an Eladrin bartender testing a polymorphic 'trueself shot', and another from a Marid and his elemental bodyguards after a harrowing fight against their lung capacity.
Upon locating the gaols towards the start of the second session, the party warily approached the cage that their ally, the Sorceror-Monk, had been imprisoned in. Once everyone was in the sprawling, high-ceiling chamber though, the doors all sealed shut, and a magical darkness field expanded outwards. Thus began their fight with the gaoler, an Orthon (my favorite DnD monster, I'll admit), with him getting the drop on one of them with a nasty stab before slinking back out of reach. The Lockadin, having taken Devil's Sight as an invocation, could see the Orthon when it became visible, regardless of the darkness, and used his turns to fire Eldritch Blasts in his general direction, attracting his attention as the most pressing threat when the Orthon next attacked. The Bard, who'd come into the fight with Detect Magic active, discerned after a good perception roll that the teleportation circle in the gaol was masking the source glyphs of the darkness spell, and would be able to dispel it next turn. Even without sight, the Monks joined the action, the uncaptured Shifter rousing the captured human and helping him bend the bars of his cage open enough to escape. Then it became a deadly game of cat and mouse, as the Orthon successfully blinded the Lockadin, before the Bard shut down his Darkness field. Beginning to show some wear and tear, and narrowly avoiding the monks as they moved to support the Lockadin, the gaoler took to the chains and cages hanging from above, staying out of immediate melee to fire on them from above. Until the Monks deftly climbed up and fought him there, with the Bard, Rogue and Lockadin casting spells and firing bolts from below. From there, it was a matter of time until the devil exploded amongst them, though with little effect given Evasion's presence amongst three of the party.
The human monk, being Skye's paramour in the material realm, was later crucial in convincing the archfey's father, Oberon, not to intervene on his son's behalf when they go to rescue Skye and stop the wedding, on the condition that they not visit mortal injuries on him. In agreement, they received the last invitations, written for both Oberon and his one-night stand, the very archdruid who'd brought them to the dreamscape, Penny. Thus equipped, they stormed the venue, a thorn-thicket island in the sky, a tall tower, and the wedding dais. Confronting Spriggan's wedding official, a crow-crone who commanded avian swarms to harry the party, they chased her off back into the keep before challenging Spriggan to battle. The beginning of the combat had them at something of a disadvantage; the fairy prince was powerful, cunning, difficult to pin down even without flight, and possessed a mystical brooch that protected and empowered him with elemental shrouds. He also had support from on high, as Skye, bearing the tiara of charming, was raining down spells of her own as the 'firesprite queen'. In the chaos, though, the Monk had slipped into the tower unnoticed, and spent two rounds of combat scaling the structure in its entirety with step of the wind. As soon as he removed the tiara from her, the spell was broken, and the dreamscape was once again hers to command. Stripping Spriggan of his artifacts of power and raiments of finery, she humiliated him by revealing his true form, that of the gangly, mischievous and troublesome young Archfey, Puck.
The party saw their foe off, dragged by the ears for meddling in mortal affairs, and Penny gratefully sent them back to the Material Realm. Where they all awoke, in Skye's room, ending the one-shot with a humorous parting shot of an embarrassed Skye, in her nightgown, red-faced and chasing the lot of them out of her quarters with crackles of lightning and sparks of fire.
Working on a supplement for the adventure-minded. A project including (and crediting) homebrew subclasses from the community, a world of my own design, premade characters, magic items, and even a prologue adventure to start things off!
Past and Current Characters: Morgann 'Duskspear' Solbeard, Hill Dwarf Paladin/Fighter/Warlock; Ephemeral 'Skye' Solbeard, Hill Dwarf Artificer; Zaldrick Lawscrip of Orzhov, Hobgoblin Wizard; Eremys Spydrun, Shadar'kai Monk; Cuchulainn, Wood Elf Blood Hunter.
Last night was a side quest, since one of my players had to be absent. A merchant sent them a letter offering them a job, and begging them to come as quickly as possible. It turned out that his daughter’s abusive ex-husband had kidnapped her a few days ago, and the town guard had been unable to find them. The party found them, killed the ex (who had become a warlock to get the power he needed to “fix” his already defunct marriage), and brought her safely home.
It was short and sweet. I, and three of my five players, have suffered severe abuse in the past, so I thought it would be fun to slaughter a symbol of that abuse with all the deadly force that a fantasy adventuring party could command! Plus, it was interesting to make a villain with a normal, real-life motivation, and mix it with magic. George Allen didn’t want to destroy the world; he wanted to dominate his ex!
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
My players were fighting an archer boss I loaded with tricks - he teleported around, filled the battlefield with smoke bombs (which he ignored due to blind sight), and fired trick arrows tipped with blast disks with some nasty spells. Thief managed to be the first one to get close. Instead of attacking him with disadvantage and no sneak attack she stole his quiver. I was so proud of her...
(Very minor spoilers for Storm King's Thunder)
At the start of the session the party of 4 level 9's found a monster lair full of chewed bones of beasts and humanoids and decided "This'll be a good place to have a long rest". Of course the monster comes back and attacks them, but some lucky crits and a lucky tripping attack allow them to kill the beast without taking any damage.
They later arrive at the Fire Giant Stronghold, they use the invisibility spell to sneak inside without alerting anyone. Once inside they encounter '1' enemy which they dispatch with ease and without taking damage.
Now I assume they must be getting cocky by this point, because what they do next is they locate where the BBEFG (Big, Bad, Evil, Fire Giant) is, on a lower floor roughly 50ft down. They decide the plan of action for the next session is to abseil down by rope and proceed to kill him.
Now as the DM, I know what their dealing with. In my version of SKT, the giant lords are all given class levels to make them more threatening, in this case the BBEFG has 9 levels of Artillerist (Artificer subclass) and 3 levels of Rune Knight (Fighter Subclass, literally only there so he can use the chains of binding ability). For those who aren't aware, Artillerists have a cannon that they can fire as a bonus action, the cannon can also grow legs and move about. The class levels gives the BBEFG a CR of 12. He is also joined by 2 Hellhounds and the adjacent rooms and corridors have enough enemies to make a deadly encounter for 15 level 20's (Going by encounter builder, in reality 15 level 20's would annihilate everyone) over the next few rounds. Because they are abseiling down a 50ft rope prior to the fight, this means this rope is also their only escape route. So we're reaching the end of the session, they start discussing the plan they'll undertake next session, whilst I have to keep a straight face as they proceed straight into, what is almost certainly, a TPK. Occasionally I say "Perhaps you'd like to scout around a bit first" or "You could make a check to estimate how strong the giant is or listen out for any additional enemies", but my advice is only politely acknowledged.
What's worse is I have to now work out the logistics of how the >100 npc's (Non-Hostile and Hostile) across 4 different floors would react, should an alert go out, in the same space of time it takes for the Warlock to decide that this turn they'll cast Eldritch Blast (A lot longer than you'd expect...).
So I wrote up a summary of this week's session for the player who missed it on our campaign's Discord and another player asked "Can you write my memoir when I die" so I want to just copy that but first I need to set it from the previous session and write that one up...adding that to my to do list for my day off tomorrow.
(Short spoilers from “Rime of the Frostmaiden”)
Having just restored the magical lantern to the Northern Light Inn in Caer Koenig, the party took a free night’s rest before they set off for Easthaven, to investigate a lead involving grey dwarves.
During the night, however, several party members had bizarre dreams…the Storm Sorcerer, a Midwinter Child, was visited by the owlish aspect of Auril, who whispered his name as though beckoning to him.
Our Warlock & Rogue, meanwhile, we’re visited by the Goddess of Joy, Llirra, who they found ice-skating on the frozen lake. Llirra thanked the party for their recent good deeds…but we’re interrupted by an old enemy, seemingly possessed now by Loviatar, Goddess of Suffering. The two goddesses clashed; but in that instant, both the Warlock and the Rogue were snapped back to the waking world.
The party went to Easthaven, where they arrived just in time to witness a Wizard being burned at the stake. Apparently, the man had been accused of murder, and so was sentenced to be a sacrifice to Auril. The Sorcerer, a native to Easthaven, looked up his old flame, the captain of the militia, who informed him of missing fishermen. Thinking the duregar responsible, the party offered to help…but not before starting a huge party at the local tavern.
Then arriving at the inn, they take part in a seance with another old friend of the Sorcerer; who accidentally summons a ghostly woman. The ghost divulges several interesting facts; stating that the duregar are hiding aboard the abandoned ferry in town, and the missing fishermen have actually been taken by a hag, whose lair is in some nearby caves…
I set beholder on my players. They're level 11 in some impressive gear, so I added few Gauth and Deathkiss minions and played Beholder like a proper bastard, flying high in his lair, using walls for full cover and dropping flying players of the air and walls by nullifying their flying/climbing spells and magic items, then staring down casters so they can't do shit. All while spewing conspiracy theory nonsense about the imaginary enemies he things send the players on him (players stumbled on him by accident). Also gave the beholder some nasty magic items too, because why wouldn't he have them. Almost petrified rogue and cleric with eye beams (doubly funny since I introduced cleric into the party when they found him petrified and restored him). Figher had some truly cursed dice, rolling 6 critical misses in just three turns. Although everyone killed it on saving throws with barely aney aye beams landing. Unfortunately we had to stop mid-fight, and so far everyone but two death kisses are above 50% HP.
Our last session ended with a Massive Demon King Approaching our whole party and basically spilling all of one of our party members dirty secrets xD
Our whole group broke into chaos and yelling. xD
(We also just recently met a cleric that joined our party, this all happened his third night with us.)
We were playing Tomb of Horrors, because my players are sadists. They checked the misty opening by sending through a specter. Nothing happened, so one of the players followed, carrying the fancy new magic item they just retrieved. Immediately, he was teleported out of the dungeon, having lost all his equipment, including the magic item. Because the trap affected living and dead materials differently, and a specter is neither living nor dead.
So, the rogue kept trying to threaten/kill the barkeep, so I decided that the barkeep rigged the tavern to explode if he died. So then he went to hide out in an attic, and convinced the people living in the house that he was a ghost. He then told them to give him their money, which revealed that he wasn't a ghost, but he still had a shotgun, so they were still willing to give him their money. But then he let them keep their money. After that, he looked around in the attic and found a haunted doll, which he stabbed before going to sleep. The doll gave him nightmares, so he threw it (and the knife imbedded in it) out the window, where a little girl picked it up and probably became a murderer. So that was fun.
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Ducks are just geese lite. Focus on the future. It'll become the past soon enough.
Istari and White Counsel in Club. Not the wish-granter of a thread.
Become a Plague Doctor today!
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Homebrew: Artifact, Dungeon
May be offline due to school
And yes, I am aware that my campaign is very random. That's what makes it so fun.
Looking for a campaign? Or, perhaps, trying to start one? Come join Rolegate! Just send me a friend request (same name as here) and I'll help you get started!
Ducks are just geese lite. Focus on the future. It'll become the past soon enough.
Istari and White Counsel in Club. Not the wish-granter of a thread.
Become a Plague Doctor today!
Join the Knights of the Random Table and Calius and Kothar Industries!
Homebrew: Artifact, Dungeon
May be offline due to school
Continuation on from this post:
Session 2 was scheduled, and due to real life work commitments Draco the Monk has mysteriously disappeared, which fits reasonably well with the way things went and hopefully they can re-join seamlessly when time permits them!
The session opened with the party on the deck of the rotting ship they found floating in the clouds. They performed a systematic search of the ship and found a good deal of old rotting barrels and whatnot, but nothing of note. The artificer settled down on deck to detect magic as a 10-minute ritual, and the wizard was checking the upper decks. The Druid and the Ooze were below ships, and they found the crew - a load of skeletons in their hammocks. Happily for me, they assumed that the skeletons were the dead crew, and the druid attempted to remove a gold ring from one of them. As she did so, the skeleton woke up with a start and grabbed her wrist. Time to roll initiative!
The skeletons all woke up, acting startled and scrabbling for their weapons. I gave the party a round of surprise over 5 of the skeletons, the 6th being the one which was already grappling the druid so not surprised. The Druid shouted for help and the Ooze came running (well, oozing) and managed to dash into the room. The Skeleton managed to land a cut on the druid’s arm, and the Artificer (in heavy armour) decided the fastest way down was to smash through the rotting deck he was stood on. He succeeded and dropped down, landing on the same floor as the skeletons, and I rolled a constitution save for the floor, and got a 2, so he continued through to the bottom floor (I wasn't going to have him drop right out, that's a "rocks fall, you die" scenario!), and passed his athletics check to stay standing. He then started thundering back up the stairs to get to the fight!
The Wizard made his way downstairs via a hatch (DC7 to open it, he only just managed it with a 9!) but was out of actions by then and was standing in the corridor. The Druid swung with her hand-axe and missed the skeleton with a 3. Then the Wizard gave her a reroll (chronomancy) and she still missed with a 3. Everyone was joking that the dice were fixed and that she should appeal for a reroll from the DM, so I said if she rolled a third 3 in a row it would be a hit, and she rolled... a 1. We all agreed she just wasn't hitting at that point. Amoe the Ooze dealt some decent whacking damage and grappled one of the skeletons, ready to deal some acid damage next turn. The Artificer thundered up the stairs and barged the wizard out of the way to get through the corridor, smashing him through a rotten wall in the process (prone, but I rolled low so no damage) and got into the thick of the fight. Then the wizard got up, brushed himself off, picked up a piece of wood and cast catapult on it to shatter a skeleton into a multitude of small pieces (28 bludgeoning damage!).
From there the fight went well for the players - a second catapult destroyed a second skeleton, and Amoe killed another outright (that vulnerability to bludgeoning is a killer!). The druid turned into a wolf and ripped a femur out of a skeleton, causing it to collapse into pieces. The last skeleton was felled easily, and the fight won!
Now, throughout this fight I had been describing some non-average skeleton behaviour - acting surprised, staggering back in alarm, putting their arms up to shield from the blows - and one of the players asked me after the battle with a note of concern "on a scale of 1-10, how sentient did these skeletons seem?". They rolled (extremely) low on Insight, however, so they didn't learn anything. Nobody else seemed concerned - the Wizard hung around in the room to try and take anything of interest from the skeletons, and the Artificer settled down for another attempt to detect magic. Amoe and Morgana (the druid) went downstairs to investigate the rest of the ship. They found a locked door at the back, and Amoe decided to break it down. Behind the door they found a pile of loot, well-rotted where applicable, and a chest. At about the same time as the Artificer finished his ritual and detected an incredibly powerful magic from directly below him (where the chest happened to be) and went downstairs to have a look. As he got there, Amoe opened the chest.
As soon as the chest was opened, the players felt a sudden swooping sensation, like the floor had dropped away from them for an instant, and the ship suddenly felt as though it were rocking gently. All around them, the rotten and split wood is seen to be re-knitting together, becoming whole. In a few short moments, the ship has healed to a beautiful and well-made craft, with good paint on the walls and no signs of rot anywhere. The skeletons - including a skull which Amoe had decided to carry and an arm which the druid was carrying - quickly transform into a somewhat grisly scene of recently slain crewmembers. The wizard, who was rooting around in the cabin, passed his constitution save to keep lunch down after finding himself knee-deep in people-chum.
A brief discussion followed about the importance of the gem. I told the Artificer that the gem was magical and was of the Conjuration school. There was also an amulet in the loot, which was mildly magical, and held an Enchantment school spell in it. They briefly conjectured that they might be at sea, but considered it unlikely, and then they wondered if they had gone back in time. The wizard was excited by this, being Chronurgy, so he went to look outside - and found that they were at sea!
They emerged on deck to see where they were and saw a large island off one side of the ship, with 3 more behind it, and are then accosted by the captain.
The captain demands who they are and how they got onto the ship. He also asks them where his crew is. After some discussion he tells them of the Shades which appeared and attacked his crew - and the players realise that this was them! He also tells them that it's 230 years before their time (at least, that's what he thinks). They decide to tell him that they are time-travellers who have come back in time, and that they killed the shades after the shades killed his crew. He is sceptical about this, not really understanding time-travel (though the players took the time to explain it in ship terms - as if your ship were not moving but all the others were - and he sort of got the gist). He then explained to them his story:
The captain and his crew had sailed upriver to find an abandoned temple which was supposed to have a priceless treasure in it. They followed a map which the quartermaster had won in a game of cards and found the temple. It was full of skeletons, and they managed to fight their way out of there with the chest and make their way back to the ship, recalling the pirates which were raiding Greyhold on the way. They got to the ship, and once on-board, they opened the chest, revealing the gem. But, suddenly, they were at sea! They found themselves here, and they have not been able to find their way back. There are 4 islands, and if you sail to the horizon, they appear before you as surely as they disappear behind you. He explains that there is no sailing away from here.
The players asked about the islands and he says that he has been on two of the four – one to collect food, and one where he and his crew were attacked by strange creatures in the mist, which stole his satchel containing the map to the temple.
Once the party had found out all of this from the captain, they had a discussion and decided that they should go to the island of steam and see if they can find the map which the captain lost. Then the Artificer distracted the captain whilst the Wizard tried to clean up the mess in the crews quarters. The captain is still seeming in some form of shock, and has resigned himself fairly smoothly to being stuck here with the PC’s instead of stuck here with his crew. He has agreed to take them to the island of steam, and has told them it will take some hours to get there, as there is never much wind, so they have settled down for a long rest and have levelled up to level 3!
That’s where the session got to! Looking forward to running a third session!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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Well it was months since my group last played, but after cancelling and rescheduling and cancelling multiple times, (and one of us STILL cancelling at the last minute
) we managed to get together again. It obscenely hot right now in Western Washington, so our original plan to play outside was a no-go, just like I new it would be, but whatever. Joining us for this session was the mother of one of my players, whose character was a dragonborn paladin.
First was a minor encounter with a wood nymph who covertly tried to lure one of the players away from night watch duty, but she easily passed the creature's wisdom save (I knew she probably would, fey ancestry), and then it was off to pick flowers. Specifically, they need a flower called a tawnygold as an ingredient to cure lycanthropy, and a decanter belonging to the elderly apothecary back in town, that last one is just a favor to a friend though.
Last session, the party met a squad of sprite soldiers who just had their asses handed to them by corrupted pixies. Six of their men were taken captive, and their siege engine, Danny the Awakened Tree, got separated while trying to find them.
The first almost encounter was with a predatory drake, which normally has pretty high stealth, but it rolled a natural 1 so it fell out of the tree screaming and then bonked its head. Since it was an ambush predator, and it had completely bungled its ambush, I just had it run away in shame.
Underneath a boat house, they found an underwater cave which leads into another dungeon that they are trying to access for a side quest, and then in the building across the street, they found two more of the sprite prisoners and their corrupted pixie captors. These pixies actually have a lot of tricks up their sleeve, if they survive long enough to use them. Anyway the first one goes down when the half-orc Kool-Aid Mans through the barred door, and the paladin, our new player, is right behind her. The paladin swings at the other pixie. Nat 1. So the pixie sees the swing coming from a mile away, and the paladin's momentum carries her blade careening toward one of the hostages.
Nat 20 on the prisoner! That poor sprite was beyond saving. They spend a couple more rounds trying to find the other pixie since she turned invisible, but was able to get away through a hole in the roof. Well the other prisoner wanted nothing to do with them now, and none of the players wanted to roll charisma, so they left him tied up after I assured them that he could eventually cut himself loose.
Next, they finally find Danny the Tree, who I establish a capable combatant by annihilating a pair of leshens, creatures the players have been fighting for the past two sessions, but he is utterly terrified of herbivores. Danny explains that the flower they are looking for and the decanter are in a garden in the north of the of the ruins, a garden maintained by celestials. To get inside, they have to prove themselves worthy, but the players aren't quite sure how, though the celestials aren't overly fond of the leshens. The players agreed it was worth a shot to try and get rid of the lords of the forest, so as they're hiking back to the sprites' hideout, I set up the big climactic encounter for the session. The big rematch with the lords of the forest.
Two players managed to get off a surprise round (but only dealing 3 damage between the two of them) the leshens make their move by cordoning the battlefield into four quadrants. Two swarms of ravens appear to attack the flying elf, a couple of deer centaurs called alseids start taking pot shots at Danny and the Warforged, the paladin engages one of the leshens in a duel, and the half-orc runs off to tackle the other leshen and a displacer beast.
Even raging, the half orc was outnumbered, but I had planned for this, so after a round, a dryad appears (the same one they encountered in the early morning who tried to lure one of them away) and engages the displacer beast. The cleric meanwhile has nobody even interested in attacking him, so he spends two whole rounds trying to get through the hedge that the leshens had created.
The paladin meanwhile is having no luck in her duel, and for that matter neither is her opponent. God I don't even know how many rounds they spent just swinging at eachother.
The Warforged and Awakened tree put up a decent defense, except the two alseids are much faster than the tree and smart enough not to let it get too close. However they haven't even managed to hit the player or the awakened tree (tree takes half damage from piercing IE arrows, and the player had half cover hiding in the tree branches) so they shout "They're too strong! Send out the BEAST!"
And the moment I had been waiting for for months finally arrived!
The warforged sees a puddle start rippling Jurassic Park style, then a long neck emerges from the forest and a Brontosaurus appears! Before the players could put 2 and 2 together, the Brontosaurus starts viciously attacking Danny the Tree! On his turn the warforged tries to push the Brontosaurus away from Danny, but it's a contest of strength, and it's an artificer against a huge ******* dinosaur, so he ends up hanging onto its neck for dear life while the flying elf moves in to assist. The thing is so damn big that they don't even do a dent in its health. So right before his death, Danny shouts "Tell my platoon... it was an honor to fight at their side!" and Sarge, the sprite commander, brings in the cavalry and says "Tell them yourself Danny!" A couple more rounds and warforged falls off the dinosaur, taking fall damage of course, and of the sprites kamikaze's down the dinosaur's throat with a lit grenade. This painful burp convinces the dinosaur to go find lunch somewhere else.
Meanwhile the paladin and the leshen be like:
So finally the leshen decides he's had enough and casts entanglement to cover his escape. He's cut off by the half orc who had just finished her own fight with the help of the dryad, and the party gangs up on him to finally end this ******* encounter!
The dryad introduces herself as Lorne and she explains that the other sprite prisoners have been taken up into the mountain by fiends. The players figure that getting rid of the fiends will be a lot better and easier to gain favor with the celestials than trying to root out all the leshens and their minions, so they agree to follow her and that's where we ended our session.
Oh shit how do I put this. Strap your seatbelts in and hold on for this ride.
My character being the ****ed up individual that he is chose to say **** it and went half cocked on his own trying his damnedest to try and save the only people besides the people back under his wife's wings, so to say, and went off to make a deal with Bregan D'aerthe to pull back the Greenlight on our merry band of idiots that we are. So he goes to the tavern that he promised to meet the people of Bregan D'aerthe with a plan that would sound most advantageous for a mercenary company.
Rewind a little to my character's wife. She is a very well loved member of Neverwinter's people, having been in the city for well over 50 years she has of course become one of the many peers Dagult Neverember looks upon to help him in his Lordship over the city. That being said she is well integrated with the Lord's Alliance and helps play friend to many on the Sword Coast and the Lord's Alliance. My character, being her Husband has also learned the dirty parts of politics and has A LOT of knowledge and dirt on some people that are large and in charge.
Well this being his strong suit, my character would offer his knowledge on people and their secrets to broker a deal with Bregan D'aerthe for the Greenlight to be snuffed. While this plan was going on my Party try spying on a man, failing to do so gets the eyes of the city guard on them, so they knock him out and ruin his ******* career as he knows it by pouring water on his groin and summoning a Godly entity known as a Pegasus to fly away from the guard after being spotted by a few citizens of Waterdeep. Oh boy.
My meeting goes well, I am told to screw over a snobby rich kid by stealing from him, I get a scroll of knock on a bombing Persuasion check, set up a plan where I frame Xanathar's guild in attacking me by having my familiar beat the ever living crap out of me, then steal from the rich kid literally out from under his nose. One person did that, I am thoroughly proud of my boy for orchestrating this all on my own with no help of the two rogues in my party.
Well ladies and gentlemen of the council I bet you are wondering, "What part of this is the ride?" Well my fine ladies and gentlemen, here is were we go lopsided FAST.
Back with the Renegades who had it made but ever more to go astray, they get home, get naked and drunk, party rock is in that house to night and it's time for us to make you loose your mind. Our Barbarian goes out the front door stark naked for a time around the town, dick floppin in the wind and a spring in his step with two keggers. Our rogues go to sleep and our final boy, the sweetest boy, talks to Oghma and has the god teleport the item to our salvation into the drunk little boy's hands, the very item I worked so ******* hard to get, was teleported into the kid's hands like it was nothing.
Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem, if I hadn't just landed at their doorstep with 45 minutes to their time limit left and fear racing up my body as everything I was just trying to do had just been derailed in a flash.
This Sunday shall be one hell of a doozie as holy gibberwacks my character is gonna have a rough/hard time surviving this. But I have confidence in him as he has still yet to fail me on his survival rate.
We searched a derelict castle for a missing friend.
The Dhapmire warlock had an idea to look like a bounty hunter and use our rich high elf sorceress as the bounty and key to getting in and seeing our target. So the rouge and myself(monk) waited outside for a signal if anything went wrong and they needed help, so we waited and waited, and waited some more until I had a bad feeling.
We decided to try and follow them in although we didn't know what path they took, we got lucky and found the right door the first try although it did trigger a trap which then alerted a group of goblins in the nearby rooms. I took an arrow in the leg but we both made it through the door. We found our friends already in battle with something hanging from the ceiling and some goblins.
Our rouge was shot in the back because we forgot to close the door behind us as we came in and the goblins were closing in so we regrouped in a little room with nobody there.
After peeking out of the door we saw we were outnumbered 4 to 10 because the leader had found us and brought his crew, and that is where we'll pick up again next week.
We played on Tuesday instead of Monday this week, due to the worst heat wave in Oregon history that slammed us over the weekend. We were an hour late getting started (miscommunication), and I had already agreed to cut it short for one player who had other obligations. We only got to play for an hour and a half.
I had designed a side quest for the week before, when one player would have been absent; I got sick, though, so we skipped that week altogether. I intended to start back on the main story this week, but returned to the side quest when I agreed to shorten the session. The objective was to fetch a lock of hair from a green hag, with extra rewards if they bring back her heart as well.
They began on their journey fifteen miles south towards the hag’s newly established lair, and right off the bat, I rolled a random encounter (the first time it’s happened in almost two real months!). In an attempt to keep the pace up, I chose a non-combat encounter with a farmer wearing a cursed ring that forced him to walk backwards. The PCs were more interested in hunting down the hag than trying to help the farmer get the ring off (nobody has Remove Curse yet), since it can’t be removed by the wearer, and forcibly attunes to the new bearer immediately. The farmer yelled at them for a minute, and then went on his way, and the party continued on theirs.
So naturally I rolled another random encounter. I was starting to realize that we weren’t going to get to the hag by the end of the session, so I tossed a couple of Death Dogs at them. Cue a long argument between players and characters, because the warlock didn’t want to kill them, “because they’re still creatures!“ I mentioned that they were pretty obviously demonic (because in my world, they are) several times, but she stuck to her point, and actually chose to go into melee so that she could try to get the final blow in, and make it non-lethal! The paladin and monster hunter fighter, in the meantime, began working together to ensure that the Death Dogs actually died. Between them they managed to kill the wretched things, and the party moved on. I need to remember to talk privately to the warlock about her character choices.
They managed to get most of the rest of the way to the lair, when I rolled (yet again) another random encounter! I decided to make use of this one to set the stage for the hag’s growing control over the forest; this time a quickling attacks them, while its companion rushes off to warn her about the intruders. I don’t think the party has realized that they are minions of the hag yet.
At this point, they decided to take a long rest, much to my delight. They decided to try to find a defensible place to sleep. They rolled pretty high, so I let them find a nice little gully. I ended the session there, because they started arguing over who took which shift!
I don’t know what got into my players this week. They’re normally a great group! I’m not sure whether I should talk to them all about it, or whether to try to let it blow over. An hour and a half never felt so long!
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
Our last two sessions were combat heavy and we had a player out this week, so today they went to sell loot and do some shopping. They also had a NPC with them that needed to have an incriminating tattoo removed, so they ended up in a place I came up with on the fly called "Brand's".
The sorceress used her DM Inspiration to get a success on a a suggestion for getting everyone magical tattoos so I gave them a deep discount and they got a cool story out of it, although it's too bad the bard was "off at college."
Then of course they wanted to see about pets...
All generalizations are false.
The party SOMEHOW survived this encounter, 3 of the party got captured by Fire Giants, but they killed the BBEFG. I actually added boss music for this fight and a cool title card for the BBEFG, however they killed it in 2 rounds thanks to 3 crits and the BBEFG missing every attack. However the arrival of 10 more fire giants caused 3 of them to get downed before being captured and sent into the mines to perform forced labour and eventually be interrogated. Meanwhile the Rogue turned invisible and looted 15,000gp worth of stuff from the BBEFG's bedroom before escaping the dungeon and taking the party's airship to Everlund. I assumed the Rogue would try rescue the party, but instead he's going to be making a yakfolk child character (Minotaur with possession ability) to help the party escape their predicament.
Two things
Everytime i see BBEFG i see Big Bad Evil Fat Guy
Why did you not expect the rogue with 1500 gp! To not ditch the group ?
And three
This sounds like you and your group are amazing.
This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic by Vitaly S Alexius