As you recall, when last we left our heroes, two of them were unconscious, and one was dead. That's not a good recipe for successful dungeon crawling.
So the lead huntress, Tarzi, and her child, Roku, offered to let us stay in the camp overnight. This allowed Corrin and Censura to recover. But I was still slightly dead.
My buddy, Joseph, joined our game with a half-orc fighter that uses the Protection fighting style. He ended up giving his half-orc, Thok, a high Charisma. He currently plans to have Thok take the Battle Master archetype. It turns out, in a case of DM ex Machina, Thok was working for the huntresses as a porter, and (because I helped him make the character) he served in the same mercenary company I did.
In another case of DM ex machina, Reese, Lokeo's player, was absent, so Lokeo went a little moon brained and stayed with the huntresses to participate in a ritual to their god. Corrin offered 4 gold pieces to the huntresses as a sacrifice and Censura gave them a hunting trap.
So, with Corrin and Censura in shape, and with a new half-orc in the party, we hauled my corpse back to town to be raised from the dead by the Lord Alliance. I was given some homework: determine why the Lords Alliance felt compelled to raise me. Of course, that raise dead did have a cost: I lost out on the experience for the previous session.
Once we were back up to full strength, we went back to the cave. Along the way, we had some role-playing, as character shared little details from their background. Sandi's mother, a human, originally wanted him to be named Sandy, but his dad, being an elf, demanded it be Sandi. Sandi's mom said that was fine, as long as his middle name was Beaches. He should be glad it wasn't Cheeks. Corrin, who was trained as a spy, still intones prayers to Cyric, the Forgotten Realms god of lies. Censura mentioned his brother, Talon, whom we're to seek out and inform if something should ever happen to Censura. Thok talked about he got kicked by a cow when he tried to go cow-tipping back on the farm. Alek was mysteriously silent. I ended up cooking up an idea, but never got to share it.
When we reached the cave, we found that the door guards had been replaced, but not with other Dragonclaws (Yes!), but more mundane guards. We managed to drop two of them almost immediately. The third fled down a side passage. We heard him alerting other guards at the bottom of the passage. With clever use of minor illusion and thaumaturgy, we created the image of a rock slide blocking the passage. We heard the guards down the passage going back to drinking. So we moved on.
We moved deeper into the cave, and ran into the remaining immature guard drakes and some urds in the cave with the bats. Corrin, once again, used minor illusion creatively, using it to imitate the noise the huntresses made to scare the drakes, making it seem to come from Thok. That hampered one of the drakes, inflicting the frightened condition, which imposes disadvantage on attack rolls. Between that and Thok's protection ability, we managed to pin the drakes effectively while we cleared the Urd.
What does the Protection feature do? As long as the character with that fighting style has a shield, they can use their reaction to impose disadvantage on an attack roll against an adjacent friendly character. That is handy.
Sandi ended up playing a bit of a damage sponge, and ended up dropping. I ended up using my healing to keep Thok up and blocking the drakes.
An example of good strategy and planning and party building helping to make a tough fight much more bearable.
Next time, I'll talk about my shiny new toy: the DMG!
Sandi screwed up by not hanging back, away from danger like he normally does so he can use his range weapons more effectively. Paul screwed up by allowing his figure to be placed with the others. And never, ever, Sandi's middle name. He was a little tipsy when he told that story. And using Cheeks would put anyone in immediate danger from an arrow!!!!
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