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We gathered at the same Bat-Time (5:30 to 6) at the same Bat-Places (Isle of Games in Tucson, AZ). We had a new player join with a human barbarian named Beld. It turned out he was one of the prisoners we rescued.

We sneaked away from the raiders' camp with the prisoners we had rescued, taking back routes to avoid confrontation that would endanger the lives of our charges. We got everyone back to Greenest in one piece and managed to get a few days of rest. We received our reward of 250 gp each, and acquired some healing potions. Rather than carry any (being a cleric and all) I gave mine to Beld and earned Inspiration.

Inspiration is a special reward DMs can give out. Its tied to role-playing and making good strategic choices. A player can spend their Inspiration to gain advantage on a roll, or they can give it to another player. A handy new reward feature, all things considered.

As we were shopping and getting some briefing on the next mission, I helped the new player build his character. He had played D&D before, but not 5e, so it was mostly just briefing him on the rules changes and how to build a character using the Encounters rules.

We were assigned to return to the camp and try to get into the dragon hatchery cave we had learned about on our previous visit. We were offered another 150 gp each, and we were to meet our new contact, Leosin Erlanthar, in Elturel.

We set off after being presented with "Heroes of Greenest" medals, and arrived in the camp to find it abandoned. We encountered some hunters that were gathering food to give to the inhabitants in the cave. We learned that they were stockpiling meat to give to whelps.

Learning all we could from the hunters, we approached the entrance to the cave, and tried to do some stealthy exploring. Unfortunately, the guards, ranking cultists called Dragonclaws, out-stealthed used. They ambushed us and managed to surround Corrin and take out poor Erevan. On our first turn, Sandi, Beld, and Lokeo started the offensive. I did my cleric thing and healed Erevan. Erevan did his sorcerer thing and dropped one of the weakened Dragonclaws. Unfortunately, an already weakened Corrin was taken out and Beld, being a level behind, also got dropped.

On the next turn, the Dragonclaws swarmed at Lokeo, Sandi, Erevan, and myself. I went in and used inflict wounds to deliver a blistering 3d10 necrotic damage to a Dragonclaw. Since an attack I had made earlier was unsuccessful, and not wanting to spend a spell slot in vain, I used my inspiration on the spell attack. A good thing, too. I rolled fairly well on damage - 23! Inflict wounds has become one of the more potent single target damage spells available to clerics. Once we outnumbered the Dragonclaws, we managed to drop the last one. Although Beld managed to stabilize on his own, I had to stabilize Corrin, Sandi, and Erevan (yeah, he got dropped again).

Once again, it seems low-level enemies provide a glass cannon feel. Those Dragonclaws shared the pack tactics feature with kobolds, and the DMs dice were white glowing hot that night. Further, once a turn, when they have advantage on attack rolls, the Dragonclaws could inflict 2d6 extra damage on a hit. To top it all off, they had a feature called Multiattack, which allowed them to make two attacks. Fortunately, monsters and NPCs with multiattack can't use it on opportunity attacks.

Later on, the DM let me know that the original encounter called for two Dragonclaws, but since we had a party of six instead of four, he added a third. I think it upgraded the difficulty more than he had expected. The Pack Tactics ability combined with Fanatic Damage is a particularly brutal combination. Although we survived, we used a large chunk of our healing reserves.

I'll return with more random 5e observations.