We left the PCs in a room with an unconscious half-orc and a young human. Since Duane was out of town and unable to make that session, Skomba decided to escort the half-orc and the boy to the surface. The party then followed the last path they hadn't taken yet: a door in the room with the petrified dwarf.
The door opened into a corridor. The only occupant was an old human: one of the Believers, the cult running Red Larch, named Baragustas. This was a role-playing encounter with a cowardly old man. The PCs learned more about the Believer's faith, and the fear that Larrakh, the "Earth Priest" waiting in the next room engendered in them. Without further ado, they kicked open the next door.
This was the main chamber of the Tomb of Moving Stones. It was filled with megaliths (big rocks), with damaged skeletons arranged on stone biers along the walls. These stones have a tendency to move, and the Believer's think it is the work of the spirits of the dead bodies in the room, whom the Believers referred to as the Delvers. Also waiting in the chamber was the Earth Priest Larrakh.
Running spellcasters is always a bit of a chore. Larrakh was no different. Larrakh is part of the Earth cult of the Elemental Evil group, and there are a few things that show it. First, he is very tanky, wearing armor made of magically shaped rock that is the equivalent of Splint (an AC of 17). Most of his spells are geared toward de-buffs. His most potent one being slow, which managed to hit Ander at one point. He also had an effective one called earth tremor, which is a new spell added for Elemental Evil. It does a small amount of bludgeoning damage, knocks targets prone, and creates a small area of difficult terrain. It saw the most use in the battle, helping him retreat. In reality, Larrakh would have benefited from having compatriots to keep the players away from him and to take advantage of the de-buffs he inflicted. As it was, his AC made the battle a little long, but ultimately the PCs overwhelmed him.
In the aftermath, they were able to located a secret passage leading to the quarry and figure out how the stones moved--by firmly stamping the floor the stones float above the floor and can be moved easily. They used a sort-of trap the cultists had set up to block the passage back to the quarry. Having cracked the Believers and ended the influence of the Earth Cult on Red Larch, the heroes earned a well deserved two weeks (or Tendays, as they use in the Realms) of downtime, plus sufficient quest Xp for Derek, Ander, and Darwin to reach level 3.
However, after the two Tendays passed, the heroes found themselves pressed into service again, this time to locate the missing delegation sent from Mirabar. Brother Eardon mentioned that the last place they had been seen was the town of Beliard. Further, Endrith Vallivoe showed Derek a dwarven book he had recently been sold, tracing its origins to Womford, south and east of Red Larch. Lastly, a shepherd named Larmon Greenboot mentioned some strange graves that had recently appeared near the Sumber Hills.
The PCs resolved to follow Derek's curiosity and set out for Womford. Next time we'll learn what happened on the journey, and what they found in Womford.
As always, visit gofundme.com/xchh98g and help me out with my medical bills. If you enjoy my writing, think of it as paying for it, instead of me selling ad space on my blog.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Triumphant Return
I was able to run the game again last week. My friend Joseph ran the game in my stead. Here is what happened based on what I've heard from him and other players:
The next featured two zombies waiting in ambush on a ledge over the entrance. They dump a box of rocks then jump down to engage the party. While they rolled low on the falling rock damage, but managed to make a few good attack rolls, and, thanks to Undead Resilience, managed to take a lot of punishment before going down.
Then, there was a side room filled with corpses. Darwin went to explore and touched one of the corpses, triggering an encounter with three skeletons hidden among the corpses. Naturally, he called for help, and the party dropped them.
The next room in the cave featured three zombies in outrageous costumes. During this encounter, the zombies managed to score some critical hits and even managed to drop Skomba before the encounter ended. Lastly, they explored another side room ending at a treasure chest. This room was watched by Orieth, the necromancer and self-proclaimed Lord of Lance Rock. He triggered a trap on the PCs exploring the chest. However, Joseph had him spring the trip on the party a bit early, only hitting some of the party. Unfortunately, the chest was empty.
For the next encounter, the party swelled to 9 members. Which was probably fortunate, since it is a fairly hefty encounter in a large room: featuring a zombie, crawling claw (zombie hands, basically), and four skeletons. The Lord of Lance Rock also began the encounter in the room, hiding behind the skeletons. Seeing such a large party of adventurers, he ran. One of the players captured and kept and crawling claw for some reason.
Next week, the party shrank back down to four. They confronted the necromancer, and opted to take him prisoner to be questioned back in town. They then returned to town and began looking into the Believers, a cabal of citizens controlling Red Larch from the shadows, and the Tomb of Moving Stone, a place where they hold their meetings. I'm not quite sure on the particulars, but it involved birthday cake and trying to get the members drunk, but it ended with members of the party getting drunk instead. In any case, they learned the location of the Tomb, and that it contains mysterious moving stones that the Believers use to try to divine the future. They managed to spot a trap consisting of cages mounted on the ceiling and rigged to fall and trap them, and took another corridor. They ran into some corpses and giant rats.
This is where I returned. I ran the battle with the rats with a party of six. After dispatching the rats, they examined the corpses and found a mysterious symbol cut into their skulls and learned that they had been murdered.
They proceeded to the next room to discover a floating stone. After some experimentation they discovered a cylindrical magical effect causing objects to levitate in that room. After playing with it a bit, they moved on.
The next room had a petrified and long dead dwarf in it, and was inhabited by a group of mercenaries called the Bringers of Woe sent to stop the PCs. They dispatched these foes and looted some coins, gems, and a magic dagger from a plinth in front of the dwarf.
They then back-tracked to the room just past the cage corridor, discovering Grund, a half-orc simpleton set to guard the room and set off the cages, and Braelan, a youngster being punished for failing to deliver a message by being pinned under rocks. After a short confrontation, they knocked out Grund and freed Braelan.
Now they'll go further into the Tomb.
As a reminder, I went in for surgery. I've had a rocky recovery, and medical and related bills are still kicking my ass. Readers, I'd deeply appreciate it if you visited my GoFundMe and donated and spread the word to your connections. I'm at 20% of my goal already!
The next featured two zombies waiting in ambush on a ledge over the entrance. They dump a box of rocks then jump down to engage the party. While they rolled low on the falling rock damage, but managed to make a few good attack rolls, and, thanks to Undead Resilience, managed to take a lot of punishment before going down.
Then, there was a side room filled with corpses. Darwin went to explore and touched one of the corpses, triggering an encounter with three skeletons hidden among the corpses. Naturally, he called for help, and the party dropped them.
The next room in the cave featured three zombies in outrageous costumes. During this encounter, the zombies managed to score some critical hits and even managed to drop Skomba before the encounter ended. Lastly, they explored another side room ending at a treasure chest. This room was watched by Orieth, the necromancer and self-proclaimed Lord of Lance Rock. He triggered a trap on the PCs exploring the chest. However, Joseph had him spring the trip on the party a bit early, only hitting some of the party. Unfortunately, the chest was empty.
For the next encounter, the party swelled to 9 members. Which was probably fortunate, since it is a fairly hefty encounter in a large room: featuring a zombie, crawling claw (zombie hands, basically), and four skeletons. The Lord of Lance Rock also began the encounter in the room, hiding behind the skeletons. Seeing such a large party of adventurers, he ran. One of the players captured and kept and crawling claw for some reason.
Next week, the party shrank back down to four. They confronted the necromancer, and opted to take him prisoner to be questioned back in town. They then returned to town and began looking into the Believers, a cabal of citizens controlling Red Larch from the shadows, and the Tomb of Moving Stone, a place where they hold their meetings. I'm not quite sure on the particulars, but it involved birthday cake and trying to get the members drunk, but it ended with members of the party getting drunk instead. In any case, they learned the location of the Tomb, and that it contains mysterious moving stones that the Believers use to try to divine the future. They managed to spot a trap consisting of cages mounted on the ceiling and rigged to fall and trap them, and took another corridor. They ran into some corpses and giant rats.
This is where I returned. I ran the battle with the rats with a party of six. After dispatching the rats, they examined the corpses and found a mysterious symbol cut into their skulls and learned that they had been murdered.
They proceeded to the next room to discover a floating stone. After some experimentation they discovered a cylindrical magical effect causing objects to levitate in that room. After playing with it a bit, they moved on.
The next room had a petrified and long dead dwarf in it, and was inhabited by a group of mercenaries called the Bringers of Woe sent to stop the PCs. They dispatched these foes and looted some coins, gems, and a magic dagger from a plinth in front of the dwarf.
They then back-tracked to the room just past the cage corridor, discovering Grund, a half-orc simpleton set to guard the room and set off the cages, and Braelan, a youngster being punished for failing to deliver a message by being pinned under rocks. After a short confrontation, they knocked out Grund and freed Braelan.
Now they'll go further into the Tomb.
As a reminder, I went in for surgery. I've had a rocky recovery, and medical and related bills are still kicking my ass. Readers, I'd deeply appreciate it if you visited my GoFundMe and donated and spread the word to your connections. I'm at 20% of my goal already!
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Bloodsuckers and Undead
When the group gathered, we were short three players: Rick, Joseph, and Nathan, but we welcomed two new players: Adam, who played a Dragonborn Sorcerer named Medrash, and Michael, who played a Dwarf Cleric named Eric.
Dragonborn are a race of dragon-descended humanoids added in 4e. They get bonuses to Charisma and Strength and have breath weapons based on their draconic heritage. They are similar to, but not evil or as magically powerful as draconians from the Dragonlance setting.
So we back-tracked a bit to insert the new characters. Varis, Hos Kadeem and Eric opted to hang back and act as a rear guard while the rest went into Tricklerock Cave. There, they found Eric and Medrash already looking for treasure. T hen the stirges attacked. Unfortunately, my dice had it in for the poor cleric that day, so two striges managed to drop the party's healer on their first turn. The rest had less success. The original encounter called for 4 stirges, but at d4 hit points each, I figured they would have one turn to act, so I upped the total to equal part size +1 (in the case 7).
I was correct in my estimation: one their turns, the players managed to drop the stirges rapidly and Ander stabilized and healed Eric using the Paladin's Lay on Hands feature.
Once the characters defeated the monsters, they had a chance to comb the cave for treasure, and found none. A group Insight check revealed that the PCs had been duped and sent on a fool's errand. They returned to town, arriving late in the evening, so they had no opportunities to investigate until the next day. Still, the innkeeper suggested they investigate the plague, and even offered a reward if they did so.
The opted to speak with Minnie Mhandyvver the poulterer. She confided that yes, Mhelliko the stoneworker and Waelvur might be dangerous, and mentioned a group called the believers. However, she suggested the PCs investigate the "plague" out at Lance Rock first to further earn the trust of the townsfolk. They accepted with trepidation.
They arrived at Lance Rock, a slab of gray granite dropped by a dragon in the region in the distant past. The found a sign warning of a plague at the head of a trail. The sign claimed to be written by "the Lord of Lance Rock." So Intelligence (history) checks revealed that the rock itself was featured in nothing more than usual local folktales. So they followed the trail to a cave.
Inside the cave, they found a corpse on the floor. Eric investigated it using Wisdom (medicine), and was able to determine that it was in fact dead, but had been affected by necromantic magic. Kerial decided to slit its throat, causing the corpse to animate and reveal itself as a zombie.
In this edition zombies have a nasty little feature called undead resistance. When brought down to zero hit points by anything other than radiant damage or damage from a critical hit, they make a Constitution saving throw with a DC of 5 + the damage taken. If they succeed, they go to 1 hit point instead. The party quickly dropped it down to 1 hit point, and its attack bonus was low enough that it wasn't having much affect, but it took a lot of attacks to bring it down. Once again, my dice had it in for poor Eric. The zombie needed to roll a 15 or better to dodge his sacred flame with a Dexterity save. I rolled an 18. Finally, Skomba rolled a critical hit and decapitated it with his axe.
It was break time, and the party now realized that a necromancer had taken up residence in this cave.
Next week my buddy Joseph will be running the game since I'll be in the hospital recovering from a colonostomy. He'll probably be running for at least the week after that as well.
One last thing before I close, faithful readers: this surgery and the illness preceding it are taking some tolls. Please visit my GoFundMe and donate. If you're unable to donate, then please spread the word. Every small step helps.
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Dragonborn are a race of dragon-descended humanoids added in 4e. They get bonuses to Charisma and Strength and have breath weapons based on their draconic heritage. They are similar to, but not evil or as magically powerful as draconians from the Dragonlance setting.
So we back-tracked a bit to insert the new characters. Varis, Hos Kadeem and Eric opted to hang back and act as a rear guard while the rest went into Tricklerock Cave. There, they found Eric and Medrash already looking for treasure. T hen the stirges attacked. Unfortunately, my dice had it in for the poor cleric that day, so two striges managed to drop the party's healer on their first turn. The rest had less success. The original encounter called for 4 stirges, but at d4 hit points each, I figured they would have one turn to act, so I upped the total to equal part size +1 (in the case 7).
I was correct in my estimation: one their turns, the players managed to drop the stirges rapidly and Ander stabilized and healed Eric using the Paladin's Lay on Hands feature.
Once the characters defeated the monsters, they had a chance to comb the cave for treasure, and found none. A group Insight check revealed that the PCs had been duped and sent on a fool's errand. They returned to town, arriving late in the evening, so they had no opportunities to investigate until the next day. Still, the innkeeper suggested they investigate the plague, and even offered a reward if they did so.
The opted to speak with Minnie Mhandyvver the poulterer. She confided that yes, Mhelliko the stoneworker and Waelvur might be dangerous, and mentioned a group called the believers. However, she suggested the PCs investigate the "plague" out at Lance Rock first to further earn the trust of the townsfolk. They accepted with trepidation.
They arrived at Lance Rock, a slab of gray granite dropped by a dragon in the region in the distant past. The found a sign warning of a plague at the head of a trail. The sign claimed to be written by "the Lord of Lance Rock." So Intelligence (history) checks revealed that the rock itself was featured in nothing more than usual local folktales. So they followed the trail to a cave.
Inside the cave, they found a corpse on the floor. Eric investigated it using Wisdom (medicine), and was able to determine that it was in fact dead, but had been affected by necromantic magic. Kerial decided to slit its throat, causing the corpse to animate and reveal itself as a zombie.
In this edition zombies have a nasty little feature called undead resistance. When brought down to zero hit points by anything other than radiant damage or damage from a critical hit, they make a Constitution saving throw with a DC of 5 + the damage taken. If they succeed, they go to 1 hit point instead. The party quickly dropped it down to 1 hit point, and its attack bonus was low enough that it wasn't having much affect, but it took a lot of attacks to bring it down. Once again, my dice had it in for poor Eric. The zombie needed to roll a 15 or better to dodge his sacred flame with a Dexterity save. I rolled an 18. Finally, Skomba rolled a critical hit and decapitated it with his axe.
It was break time, and the party now realized that a necromancer had taken up residence in this cave.
Next week my buddy Joseph will be running the game since I'll be in the hospital recovering from a colonostomy. He'll probably be running for at least the week after that as well.
One last thing before I close, faithful readers: this surgery and the illness preceding it are taking some tolls. Please visit my GoFundMe and donate. If you're unable to donate, then please spread the word. Every small step helps.
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Tuesday, June 23, 2015
A Ghost and A Goblin
As the 3rd session of began the party returned to town with bandit and treasure in tow. Harburk seemed surprised to have a prisoner, but figured that he could get some useful information from an interrogation. Harburk thanked the party and told them he'd make sure they got a good deal on the spoils. He also put the party up for a tenday (a week in the Forgotten Realms) in the inn, the Swinging Sword. He figured they'd sort out lots of troubles in the area if they stuck around for 10 day.
While entering the Swinging Sword (whose sign is shaped like a scimitar), the party received the evil eye from the one-eyed stable-master. Once inside, the party had a nice meal. Well most of the party. Skomba is very big and has an equally big appetite and was a little underwhelmed with the size of his plate. Whilst eating a priest approached the party and asked if they'd seen any dwarves elves or humans in their travels. He was waiting on some diplomats from a city called Mirabar, and they were a day late to their appointment. The party hadn't seen them, but would keep on the look out for them.
The next morning over breakfast the party heard a rumor the poulterer's granddaughter had seen a ghost. They thought that'd be as good an issue to work on as any, and Varis in particular was keen on helping put the spirit to rest.
They went to the poulterer's and met Minthra, or "Minnie" Mhandyvver who was accommodating and took the time to speak with the the adventurers about the ghost. She only knew it was on old tomb somewhere in the surrounding countryside. They asked to speak with her granddaughter. Pell. She was in her mid teens and had the look of a budding adventurer. She even had a sword at her hip. She explained she was exploring the area and saw a flash of light and heard a loud noise and got spooked and left. Hos Kadeem asked if she could show them where the tomb was, but Pell missed or ignored the invitation for adventure and opted to draw them a map (a clever trick by the DM to keep the NPC from dying needlessly).
After a long walk the party easily found the the tomb. As they arrayed themselves to enter the tomb Skomba noticed some bits of metal sitting on the top of the ajar door. The party asked Kariel to carefully remove them because she has the fastest fingers. She handily disabled the trap and carefully placed the metal bits on the floor. As the party entered the tomb there was only an alter and a door leading to the right.
Skomba went to quietly listen at the door to the next room and as he approached a ghost phased through the door and ordered them leave. Varis asked why he was still a spirit. The ghost said to protect his liege in death due to failing to protect him in life. Still wanting to help Varis asked what he needed to be at rest. The ghost wanted the tomb sealed.
As the party lacked any means to accomplish this at hand Derek decided to ask about the trap. He gathered the metal bits and brought them over to the ghost to see if he'd set it. In response the ghost thrust his hand though the bits and waved it around ineffectually. He wearily stated he can't interact with most matter, and much more menacingly told the party to leave. (I was quite proud of my Jacob Marley routine, actually.)
While the talking had been happening Skomba went back outside to watch the rear. While watching for danger he noticed a campfire's smoke rising from the center of a ring of boulders. The party made their way the short distance over to the ring & Kariel had even managed to sneak quite close to the campfire.
The occupants, a goblin and half-ogre, were in the process of eating dinner. The half-ogre was complaining the he was sick of eating rats. The goblin exasperatedly explained that they just had to wait for some adventurers to trigger their noisy trap, and wait a bit for the ghost to soften them up and go over and finish them off, and take their loot. Then they'd eat like kings!
The would-be waylayers never got a chance to put that plan into action as the party then began their assault of the camp. Outnumbered nearly 2 to 1 the party was able to soundly smash them in about 2 rounds. The pair hadn't managed to get any adventurer yet so they had nothing of value to loot.
After the fight the party decided to roll a boulder in front of the tomb to help put the ghost a little at ease. Skomba ended up starting to push the most irregularly shaped one toward the tomb and was having great trouble. The rest of the party could easily see that it'd be easier to roll a rounder on to the tomb, and suggested a different one. Skomba was pretty perplexed by the sudden ease of pushing this second boulder. His bafflement was amusing. Curiously, when the party retold the story to Minnie, they told the story of the "lighter boulder" to her with a straight face.
A long trek later the party made it back to Red Larch and settled in for a nice supper at the inn. This evening the kitchen had prepared a larger meal for Skomba so he was satiated. While dining the party heard a couple more rumors from the innkeeper and others. One was about gold faced or masked spooky figures sighted in the quarry and the other was about potential bandits at a small cave complex named Tricklerock. They also heard another reminder about the plague out by Lance Rock.
The next morning they decided to investigate the nearby quarry sightings. The foreman was somewhat belligerent when they arrived and was unwilling to miss work for some rumors. He told them to get lost, telling them to go look for treasure out at Tricklerock Cave like good greedy little adventurers. Those weren't his his exact words, but you get the gist.
With no shortage of strange occurrences the party collectively shrugged their shoulders and considered their options. They discussed some of the things their contacts had mentioned like a creepy black arrow stuck into a tree or the plague the butchers children said they were warned about at Lance rock. They also considered going to Tricklerock.
Derek was the only one excited about the prospect of investigating the plague. The arrow though interesting wasn't in and of itself enough to warrant a party day trip to investigate. The party eventually settled on going to Tricklerock and having a look around
Because Darwin was from the area he actually knew a direct route to the caves, and was able to save them a little time. Tricklerock was a locally famous location and situated in the same hills that had the monster that ate the herd of the goatherd turned bandit.
The name of the place was apt as there was a trickle of water flowing out of it and there was a sheen of moisture on every surface while many of the walls had an assortment of (non-dangerous!) slimes growing on them. Inside the party noticed some swiftly approaching stirges: bloodsucking bat-mosquito hybrids.
The game was called for the evening before the fight as it was 8PM. During the next session the party will begin with their fight against the stirges.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Starting a New Campaign!
The first session and a half or so of Princes of the Apocalypse (Princes) was spent on character creation. Four new players were added to the group: Art, Kit, Rick and David. This will make for a large party. Most of the players arrived with a strong idea of a character they wanted to play. Dwayne had actually completed his character beforehand.
Part of the character creation process was to have each player describe a portion of their characters' back-story & have the group brainstorm a possible personality trait, ideal, bond or flaw. This started building a strong group dynamic right away. Be warned though, it was a bit time consuming and we unintentionally went over time on the first session. But it was worth the time, especially with a newly formed group.
The cast:
Ander, a half-elf soldier paladin of Tyr from Waterdeep. He is looking to root out evil and lawbreakers across the northwest. Played by Art.
Darwin, a young, blue haired human fighter and local hero in the Dessarin Valley. He knows he can do it all and bring down anyone causing trouble in the Valley. Played by David. David originally wanted to base his character off of Legolas (the movie version). Since he joined the group a session late, he started with the Human Fighter Folk Hero form the starter set to get him in quickly (previously known as Lakeo in Tyranny of Dragons). Later, I helped him adjust the character to be a High Elf Fighter Folk Hero being built towards the Eldritch Knight archetype. This will give the team a LOT of arcane magic.
Derek Eventide, an intelligent, human sage and wizard from a merchant family in Waterdeep. He is always delving deeper into how things work, even if it puts himself in danger. Played by Joseph.
Hos Kadeem ibn Solak, a charismatic, tall, green-skinned Genasi, water sorcerer, and sailor from a well to do merchant family in Calimshan. He is always looking for ways to increase his family's trading network, but he knows that people come first, be it family, crew mates or trade relations. Played by Rick.
Kariel Ilphelkir, a charismatic wood-elf, rogue and criminal from the High Forest. If she's bored she'll disappear. And we all know she'll be up to some mischief. Played by Kit.
Skomba Shieldbender, a tall, strong Goliath street urchin, fighter and former slave, from Waterdeep. He's always looking for ways to help the outcasts, slaves and underprivileged. Played by Dwayne.
Varis Nailo, a half-elf druid from Waterdeep. Money is of little concern when judged against the lives of animals. Played by Nathan.
To expedite the second session of Princes some character-to-character connections were thought of ahead of time. Even with these verbalized connections the party acted more like a bunch of individuals than a party. Each character individually or as a pair, in the case of Skomba & Hos Kadeem, made their way to their faction's contact in the town of Red Larch. Nearly every contact mentioned strange goings on and then directed the characters to Constable Haburk Tuthmarillar, who lived and worked at the butchers.
When every one arrived at the butchery the constable was explaining to Darwin that he couldn't handle the 4 bandits on his own. The constable recognized an adventuring party when he saw one. He offered the ill gotten gains of the bandits in exchange for their removal. The party accepted and set out for the suspected location of the bandit camp.
The group tried to sneak up on the bandits. Darwin was the only one to succeed and get a surprise round. Due to the party outnumbering the bandits nearly 2 to 1 the battle was swift and one sided.
The first round a volley of ranged attacks dropped one bandit and injured another. Then Derek the wizard cast sleep and put 2 of the bandits into a supernatural slumber. On the second round the third bandit spent his action waking one of his fellows. They couldn't counter attack the party the second round.
The bandits also had a bear caged in a wagon that began trying to escape once the fighting broke out. Varis the druid cast animal friend on the bear to try and calm it. It mostly only made the bear think of Varis as a friend so it continued to try and escape the violence. As the fight was obviously going in favor of the party he let the bear out of the cage and with a successful Wisdom (animal handling) roll, Varis convinced it to flee the area.
As the fighting concluded 3 bandits lay dead and the 4th asleep & wounded. The last bandit was bound for questioning by Hos Kadeem who was a sailor and knew knots well.
While this was happening Kariel the rogue was poking through the treasure in the nearby cave. Ander the paladin noticed her in the cave and loudly thanked her for gathering the loot. One of the character connections was Ander caught Kariel in one of her larcenous endeavors in the past and had reason to think she may not be on the level. As a side note in Encounters and other Adventurer's League events you have to split the loot evenly anyway.
After the bandit awoke the party questioned him and discovered he had been a goat herder in the mountains before he became a bandit. He stopped doing that and turned to crime after monsters, specifically ankhegs (giant acid-spitting ant-lions) ate his herd. After the interrogation the party put the bandit into the cage on the wagon took the loot and set off toward the town with Skomba the very large goliath fighter and Ander the very strong half elf paladin primarily pulling the wagon. The ramifications of taking him to town will have to be discovered next session.
Since Rick and Joseph are AWESOME and helping with chronicling, the next post is forth-coming, but we're already a session ahead. Being back in the DMing saddle after a long absence has been satisfying and challenging. I'm glad I got a chance to play this system before running it. These early encounters have so far been a bit too easy. None of the monsters have pack tactics, and the numbers have been a bit low. So no kobolding. I'll probably have to adjust some numbers up to keep the challenge up.
I'm also hoping to be a bit freer with the Inspiration.
Also, anyone looking to try this, visit the Isle of Games this Saturday. the 20th (Free RPG Day, guys!) From 12-4. I'll be running a Goodman Games licensed module for 12th level characters. Find out if you can slay the dragon!
Also, anyone looking to try this, visit the Isle of Games this Saturday. the 20th (Free RPG Day, guys!) From 12-4. I'll be running a Goodman Games licensed module for 12th level characters. Find out if you can slay the dragon!
Friday, May 29, 2015
Look Back: Hoard of the Dragon Queen
We concluded the first adventure in the Tyranny of Dragons line the other day. It provided a trial run of D&D 5e and Adventurer's League. Here's some thoughts on the adventure, the new edition, and Adventurer's League.
First, some good things. The new edition has done a few things right. Unlike 4e the classes aren't built homogenously. But the proficiency bonus and short and long rests keep some of the balance that 4e achieved. Although I liked the addition of the personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws along with inspiration, we rarely used them, or at least it rarely seemed to come up. Certainly Duane was a bit stingy with inspiration, at least compared with the suggestion on page 240 of the DMG that each player earn it once per session. Considering the value of inspiration-gaining advantage on a roll of the player's choice-I plan on trying to stick closer to that when I run. Of course the advice on inspiration overall in the DMG from pages 240-41 suggests using inspiration to encourage a more narrative play style. As a fan of narrativist gaming myself, I plan on encouraging narrative play. That will come up more when we sit down at the table. This introduction of narrative elements to play is move in the right direction for D&D. Especially the advantage and disadvantage system, removing the old fashioned simulationist screens filled with tables and tables of modifiers and modifiers, represents another move toward narrativist play that I approve of.
Of course, 5e still manages to do classical gamist. Duane used the old fashioned minis and grids. It worked fairly well. I wish that the guides for using grids in the DMG also included better templates for spell areas. Duane ultimately adopted the 4e method that squares/hexes are circles. I think I'll use something closer to the 3.5 method for spherical and cylindrical areas. Despite my love of narrativist play, I also enjoy using grids and minis for combat, mainly because it eliminates ambiguities I've had come up when running combat more "in the mind's eye." Even in more narrative systems I often find that rough maps help visualize combat or other tactical situations.
The main issue that kept coming up again and again were ones of balance. As I said, the 5e classes are no longer homogenous. But their abilities don't always balance, either against each other or against the provided challenge ratings for Monsters or NPCs. We weren't alone in this; I found a thread on the RPG.net forums discussing them. Damning with faint praise: 5e's system is better than 3.5's. Specifically, the 3.5 system was "eye-ball it" for self-made monsters or based off of class levels for NPCs. This meant a 1st level NPC Wizard was CR 1; it was supposed to expend about a quarter of their resources fighting that Wizard. That CR 1 Wizard, if it won initiative, maybe got off a magic missile before being swarmed. The CR 1 Fighter, with a higher AC probably got off more hits. Then at level 10, the CR 10 Wizard burned up half the party with a fireball, then used controlling spells on the Fighter and Cleric to finish the job, while that CR 10 Fighter got swarmed right away.
In the new edition, Challenge is derived from the combat stats: offensive-attack bonus and damage per round and defensive-AC and HP. Those values are read off a table, found on page 274 of the DMG, to determine Challenge. There's a strange caveat, though-the Challenge for a monster or NPC also acts as its "Level" when calculating its proficiency bonus. Although unlikely, this could then affect those stats, mostly attack modifier, which could potentially change its Challenge. Its a strange amalgam of the 3.5 method and the 4e method.
Of course, as I looked back through the adventure, I found that Duane had adjusted encounter numbers and creature types. Sometimes, he even pointed out the changes he made. While it gives us a look at the failure of the CR system, it also seems to suggest that the adventure designers either did a bad job of balancing, or had the balance of monster stats changed on them as they were designing the adventure. The truth is probably somewhere between all those extremes, but Duane gave the designers the benefit of the doubt a laid it at the base of the latter.
Aside from the balance issues, the adventure offered plenty of opportunities for role-playing, investigation, and exploration as it unfolded. Unfortunately, probably as a side effect of the early design, it didn't tie in with the Adventurer's League factions. Duane was able to improvise some good tie-ins, but it was still a disappointment. Fortunately, having read through Princes of the Apocalypse for Elemental Evil, I already know that better tie-ins have been put in for the various factions.
The adventure also had some rather poor editing, again probably due to being rushed. For example, the caverns under Castle Naerytar featured no read aloud text. Other easily caught issues-most typoes plagued the book itself. However, Wizards's willingness to work with a third party publisher-in this case Kobold Press and Sasquatch Games for Princes of the Apocalypse is a good sign for future licensing, which is what helped make 3.0 and 3.5 what they were and what is keeping Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, Apocalypse World, and FATE in the industry. Why is licensing so good? Because it means that designers don't have to reinvent the wheel, just build the chassis with their preferred kind of wheel. Also, players don't need to learn a new engine. Granted, for a system junkie like myself, this means fewer original systems, but for learning curves for new players, it is fantastic.
But this brings us to another unfolding issue with 5e: the line is slow in coming. So far, aside from the core books, the starter set, and the DM screen, only adventures tied into the Adventurer's League have been released. Those adventures were licensed, and Wizards worked with a licensee to produce spell cards and condition markers (with Gale Force Nine, who also produced similar products for Privateer Press's Iron Kingdoms, War Machine, and Hordes games). They also licensed with WizKids to produce minis for both the Tyranny of Dragons and Elemental Evil lines. Last, they released a custom screen for Elemental Evil. The most important thing to distinguish it from the standard screen, which featured a delightful table for a DM to roll on entitled: Something Happens!, is the random encounter table for Princes of the Apocalypse.
Adventures are a good thing, but the line will need more support: I'm waiting for some setting books and splat books. So far the only splatbook release is the Elemental Evil Player's Guide, which is free 25 page PDF at dungeonsanddragons.com. I think periodicals would not be amiss either, even if it is just new digital issues of Dragon and Dungeon supporting the new edition. I suspect some delays at this point have more to do with working with licensees. But an updated Forgotten Realms book will be due soon.
Again, having read through Princes of the Apocalypse it seems free of the typoes and other evidence of rush jobs in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. However, from some eyeballing I've already done, I suspect balance issues will still come up.
Last, but not least, Adventurer's League. It's a good idea, particularly getting players into the FLGS. But some of the structure leaves a bit to be desired. For example, it only covers the first three "Episodes" of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but you need to reach 5th level before moving on to the next "Phase" of the League, Expeditions. Of course, Expeditions are based in the Moonsea, while Encounters are based in the Sword Coast. So to stay official, you'd need to break off the narrative thread and transplant your characters from one end from the Realms to another. Which is why our group opted to go "unofficial" and stick with the adventure after 5th level.
Also, the rigid structure for downtime in League play is problematic. We only got ten "days" of downtime per episode completed. This meant that at most we could accumulate for downtime days was 70 or 80 for the one adventure. However, in order to accomplish anything useful-I thought it would be a good idea to learn Draconic and Thok would have liked to have made a suit of armor, would require hundreds of downtime days under official 5e rules, which we had to use with Adventurer's League.
Lastly, the official experience rules, where you only get experience for defeating monsters, stunted advancement after a certain point, especially if encounters are being adjusted in numbers and types of creatures on the fly by the DM to maintain playability and balance. Duane adopted a compromise with the milestone system: giving more experience for quests. It gave him more control over advancement pacing, which helped in the final chapters. I have come to find that we were one of the few table sticking as close as possible to the official Adventurer's League rules in our venue-the Isle of Games in Tucson, AZ. This is definitely not an accident. I have a feeling as a DM I'll be straying even further than Duane did.
Overall, though, the game has passed the most important test-the fun one. We had fun playing, and we're ready for more.
First, some good things. The new edition has done a few things right. Unlike 4e the classes aren't built homogenously. But the proficiency bonus and short and long rests keep some of the balance that 4e achieved. Although I liked the addition of the personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws along with inspiration, we rarely used them, or at least it rarely seemed to come up. Certainly Duane was a bit stingy with inspiration, at least compared with the suggestion on page 240 of the DMG that each player earn it once per session. Considering the value of inspiration-gaining advantage on a roll of the player's choice-I plan on trying to stick closer to that when I run. Of course the advice on inspiration overall in the DMG from pages 240-41 suggests using inspiration to encourage a more narrative play style. As a fan of narrativist gaming myself, I plan on encouraging narrative play. That will come up more when we sit down at the table. This introduction of narrative elements to play is move in the right direction for D&D. Especially the advantage and disadvantage system, removing the old fashioned simulationist screens filled with tables and tables of modifiers and modifiers, represents another move toward narrativist play that I approve of.
Of course, 5e still manages to do classical gamist. Duane used the old fashioned minis and grids. It worked fairly well. I wish that the guides for using grids in the DMG also included better templates for spell areas. Duane ultimately adopted the 4e method that squares/hexes are circles. I think I'll use something closer to the 3.5 method for spherical and cylindrical areas. Despite my love of narrativist play, I also enjoy using grids and minis for combat, mainly because it eliminates ambiguities I've had come up when running combat more "in the mind's eye." Even in more narrative systems I often find that rough maps help visualize combat or other tactical situations.
The main issue that kept coming up again and again were ones of balance. As I said, the 5e classes are no longer homogenous. But their abilities don't always balance, either against each other or against the provided challenge ratings for Monsters or NPCs. We weren't alone in this; I found a thread on the RPG.net forums discussing them. Damning with faint praise: 5e's system is better than 3.5's. Specifically, the 3.5 system was "eye-ball it" for self-made monsters or based off of class levels for NPCs. This meant a 1st level NPC Wizard was CR 1; it was supposed to expend about a quarter of their resources fighting that Wizard. That CR 1 Wizard, if it won initiative, maybe got off a magic missile before being swarmed. The CR 1 Fighter, with a higher AC probably got off more hits. Then at level 10, the CR 10 Wizard burned up half the party with a fireball, then used controlling spells on the Fighter and Cleric to finish the job, while that CR 10 Fighter got swarmed right away.
In the new edition, Challenge is derived from the combat stats: offensive-attack bonus and damage per round and defensive-AC and HP. Those values are read off a table, found on page 274 of the DMG, to determine Challenge. There's a strange caveat, though-the Challenge for a monster or NPC also acts as its "Level" when calculating its proficiency bonus. Although unlikely, this could then affect those stats, mostly attack modifier, which could potentially change its Challenge. Its a strange amalgam of the 3.5 method and the 4e method.
Of course, as I looked back through the adventure, I found that Duane had adjusted encounter numbers and creature types. Sometimes, he even pointed out the changes he made. While it gives us a look at the failure of the CR system, it also seems to suggest that the adventure designers either did a bad job of balancing, or had the balance of monster stats changed on them as they were designing the adventure. The truth is probably somewhere between all those extremes, but Duane gave the designers the benefit of the doubt a laid it at the base of the latter.
Aside from the balance issues, the adventure offered plenty of opportunities for role-playing, investigation, and exploration as it unfolded. Unfortunately, probably as a side effect of the early design, it didn't tie in with the Adventurer's League factions. Duane was able to improvise some good tie-ins, but it was still a disappointment. Fortunately, having read through Princes of the Apocalypse for Elemental Evil, I already know that better tie-ins have been put in for the various factions.
The adventure also had some rather poor editing, again probably due to being rushed. For example, the caverns under Castle Naerytar featured no read aloud text. Other easily caught issues-most typoes plagued the book itself. However, Wizards's willingness to work with a third party publisher-in this case Kobold Press and Sasquatch Games for Princes of the Apocalypse is a good sign for future licensing, which is what helped make 3.0 and 3.5 what they were and what is keeping Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, Apocalypse World, and FATE in the industry. Why is licensing so good? Because it means that designers don't have to reinvent the wheel, just build the chassis with their preferred kind of wheel. Also, players don't need to learn a new engine. Granted, for a system junkie like myself, this means fewer original systems, but for learning curves for new players, it is fantastic.
But this brings us to another unfolding issue with 5e: the line is slow in coming. So far, aside from the core books, the starter set, and the DM screen, only adventures tied into the Adventurer's League have been released. Those adventures were licensed, and Wizards worked with a licensee to produce spell cards and condition markers (with Gale Force Nine, who also produced similar products for Privateer Press's Iron Kingdoms, War Machine, and Hordes games). They also licensed with WizKids to produce minis for both the Tyranny of Dragons and Elemental Evil lines. Last, they released a custom screen for Elemental Evil. The most important thing to distinguish it from the standard screen, which featured a delightful table for a DM to roll on entitled: Something Happens!, is the random encounter table for Princes of the Apocalypse.
Adventures are a good thing, but the line will need more support: I'm waiting for some setting books and splat books. So far the only splatbook release is the Elemental Evil Player's Guide, which is free 25 page PDF at dungeonsanddragons.com. I think periodicals would not be amiss either, even if it is just new digital issues of Dragon and Dungeon supporting the new edition. I suspect some delays at this point have more to do with working with licensees. But an updated Forgotten Realms book will be due soon.
Again, having read through Princes of the Apocalypse it seems free of the typoes and other evidence of rush jobs in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. However, from some eyeballing I've already done, I suspect balance issues will still come up.
Last, but not least, Adventurer's League. It's a good idea, particularly getting players into the FLGS. But some of the structure leaves a bit to be desired. For example, it only covers the first three "Episodes" of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but you need to reach 5th level before moving on to the next "Phase" of the League, Expeditions. Of course, Expeditions are based in the Moonsea, while Encounters are based in the Sword Coast. So to stay official, you'd need to break off the narrative thread and transplant your characters from one end from the Realms to another. Which is why our group opted to go "unofficial" and stick with the adventure after 5th level.
Also, the rigid structure for downtime in League play is problematic. We only got ten "days" of downtime per episode completed. This meant that at most we could accumulate for downtime days was 70 or 80 for the one adventure. However, in order to accomplish anything useful-I thought it would be a good idea to learn Draconic and Thok would have liked to have made a suit of armor, would require hundreds of downtime days under official 5e rules, which we had to use with Adventurer's League.
Lastly, the official experience rules, where you only get experience for defeating monsters, stunted advancement after a certain point, especially if encounters are being adjusted in numbers and types of creatures on the fly by the DM to maintain playability and balance. Duane adopted a compromise with the milestone system: giving more experience for quests. It gave him more control over advancement pacing, which helped in the final chapters. I have come to find that we were one of the few table sticking as close as possible to the official Adventurer's League rules in our venue-the Isle of Games in Tucson, AZ. This is definitely not an accident. I have a feeling as a DM I'll be straying even further than Duane did.
Overall, though, the game has passed the most important test-the fun one. We had fun playing, and we're ready for more.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
So It Ends: In a Dungeon With A Dragon
We received the benefits of a long rest: full hit points, spell slots, and up to half our total hit dice restored. I made a blunder at this point: I forgot to drop a spell and prepare protection from energy. We'll come back to that later. The giants sketched out a map of the interior of the giant ice block holding up Skyreach Castle. They pointed out where the white dragon Glazhael kept his hoard, a large cavern on a ledge nearby, a network of smaller side passages, and a opening to the air the dragon could try to escape through. Although I had planned on giving Kaskoo a message to send to Leosin, it turns out the winged kobold stuck around; he wanted to help with our lair assault. He did have one bit of information: Glazhael would be celebrating his 101st birthday tomorrow. Sandi realized the significance of that: Glazhael was still a "young" dragon rather than an adult. In D&D, dragons' power levels are broken up by age categories. And from "young" to "adult" is a big upgrade.
So we had to make our attack that day. We planned an entrance into the large cavern over-looking the hoard, and planned to use the wall of fire spell in Censura's newly acquired staff of fire to block off a set of stair guarded by a pair of cultists. Sandi sneaked into the cavern and found the dragon resting on its bed of treasure and heard the guards nearby.. After he returned and before we could begin our assault, we heard other voices-kobolds. A party was taking birthday cake-ice cream cake specifically-to Glazhael to try, while another group was planning on decorating the cavern.
Kaskoo confronted the kobolds coming down the corridor we were skulking in, and convinced them to come back later. We moved into the cavern, but my clinking armor alerted the dragon. We spotted the dragon sampling his ice cream cake-apparently he eats like a pig.
The plan to wall off a portion of the cavern with wall of fire worked swimmingly. The dragonwings, tougher, meaner bigger brothers of the blender machines dragonclaws, had their stairs blocked. The wall is long enough that we decided to have it just follow the stair well. So they were forced to climb a steep wall into the cavern along with the kobolds. This delay turned out to be awesome.
I mentioned I forgot to prepare protection from energy. Glazhael opened by using his breath weapon, a cone of freezing air for white dragons. This bloodied me in one hit and nearly put Thok out of commission. I spent the rest of the battle healing Thok, and rolling very poorly on the healing. Fortunately, the dragon's breath weapon didn't recharge. Unlike 3.5 and earlier, where the DM rolls the duration until a dragon can use its breath weapon again, in 4 & 5, at the beginning of a monster's turn the DM rolls a d6 to determine of the breath weapon recharges. It buts back on book-keeping, and adds a nice little dramatic element. Especially when you make the recharge roll player facing, which Duane did. Fortunately for us, Glazhael never recharged his breath weapon. Thok also managed to taunt the dragon using Charisma (intimidate). So it focused its bite and claws on him. Between his high AC and my healing, he was able to survive.
While I focused on healing, Sandi focused on killing the dragon. Censura used fireballs to clear the kobolds before the could reach us, and also burn the dragon. Thok used a new maneuver: distracting strike which causes the next attack against the target to gain advantage. This made Sandi's job of hitting the dragon easier, but it didn't lead to any critical hits, which was the secondary goal.
At one point, the dragon tried to use an innate spell (an optional ability of dragons in this edition) to levitate Thok. Fortunately, Thok made his saving throw. So Thok kept smashing it with his hammer. At one point, taking advantage of the usefulness of scrolls in this edition, I used a scroll of fireball to injure the climbing dragonwings and hit Glazhael with more fire. I also repositioned so that in case the dragon's breath did recharge, he would have to move to catch both Thok and I in the cone.
In the end, trusty fireball brought down the dragon. The damage roll was low, and the dragon made its save, but it had lost just enough hit points that it was all it took. That last fireball also blooded the dragonwings. The big bad out of the way, we mopped the floor with the remaining enemies-including an urd that had been helping serve the cake to Glazhael and harrying Sandi with falling rocks.
Kaskoo, who had been circling around a side corridor to attack from the rear, never got a blow in. On the other hand, no attacks were made against him either.
The giants thanked us for our service and let us keep the treasure. We had them drop us off at Waterdeep. We made sure the bulk of it got returned to the original owners-minus a reasonable finders' fee of course. Leosin and Onthar Frume, our contacts from earlier in the adventure, mentioned that the Cult of the Dragon was still trying to summon Tiamat. With the black dragon mask in their possession to squirrel away or (preferably) destroy, we had earned a break, but danger still lurked out there. Sandi decided to return to the Duffington's lodge. But Censura, Thok, and I reasoned that we would need to continue the fight to stop the Cult from summoning the Queen of Evil Dragons to the Realms. It is hard to live in the world when its been destroyed, after all.
We decided not to continue with Rise of Tiamat, the concluding adventure in the Tyranny of Dragons line. Duane, the DM, has had some burn out from running encounters and Friday night 4e game. As I mentioned previously, I'll be taking over the DM chair for Princes of the Apocalypse, the adventure for the Elemental Evil line. If your in Tucson, AZ and free on Wednesdays, stop by next week for character creation.
I'll be continuing this blog, but now from the perspective of a DM. Any players wanting to earn extra inspiration are welcome to help keep notes on the sessions so I can focus on running the game.
Tomorrow I'll do a wrap up for this adventure.
So we had to make our attack that day. We planned an entrance into the large cavern over-looking the hoard, and planned to use the wall of fire spell in Censura's newly acquired staff of fire to block off a set of stair guarded by a pair of cultists. Sandi sneaked into the cavern and found the dragon resting on its bed of treasure and heard the guards nearby.. After he returned and before we could begin our assault, we heard other voices-kobolds. A party was taking birthday cake-ice cream cake specifically-to Glazhael to try, while another group was planning on decorating the cavern.
Kaskoo confronted the kobolds coming down the corridor we were skulking in, and convinced them to come back later. We moved into the cavern, but my clinking armor alerted the dragon. We spotted the dragon sampling his ice cream cake-apparently he eats like a pig.
The plan to wall off a portion of the cavern with wall of fire worked swimmingly. The dragonwings, tougher, meaner bigger brothers of the blender machines dragonclaws, had their stairs blocked. The wall is long enough that we decided to have it just follow the stair well. So they were forced to climb a steep wall into the cavern along with the kobolds. This delay turned out to be awesome.
I mentioned I forgot to prepare protection from energy. Glazhael opened by using his breath weapon, a cone of freezing air for white dragons. This bloodied me in one hit and nearly put Thok out of commission. I spent the rest of the battle healing Thok, and rolling very poorly on the healing. Fortunately, the dragon's breath weapon didn't recharge. Unlike 3.5 and earlier, where the DM rolls the duration until a dragon can use its breath weapon again, in 4 & 5, at the beginning of a monster's turn the DM rolls a d6 to determine of the breath weapon recharges. It buts back on book-keeping, and adds a nice little dramatic element. Especially when you make the recharge roll player facing, which Duane did. Fortunately for us, Glazhael never recharged his breath weapon. Thok also managed to taunt the dragon using Charisma (intimidate). So it focused its bite and claws on him. Between his high AC and my healing, he was able to survive.
While I focused on healing, Sandi focused on killing the dragon. Censura used fireballs to clear the kobolds before the could reach us, and also burn the dragon. Thok used a new maneuver: distracting strike which causes the next attack against the target to gain advantage. This made Sandi's job of hitting the dragon easier, but it didn't lead to any critical hits, which was the secondary goal.
At one point, the dragon tried to use an innate spell (an optional ability of dragons in this edition) to levitate Thok. Fortunately, Thok made his saving throw. So Thok kept smashing it with his hammer. At one point, taking advantage of the usefulness of scrolls in this edition, I used a scroll of fireball to injure the climbing dragonwings and hit Glazhael with more fire. I also repositioned so that in case the dragon's breath did recharge, he would have to move to catch both Thok and I in the cone.
In the end, trusty fireball brought down the dragon. The damage roll was low, and the dragon made its save, but it had lost just enough hit points that it was all it took. That last fireball also blooded the dragonwings. The big bad out of the way, we mopped the floor with the remaining enemies-including an urd that had been helping serve the cake to Glazhael and harrying Sandi with falling rocks.
Kaskoo, who had been circling around a side corridor to attack from the rear, never got a blow in. On the other hand, no attacks were made against him either.
The giants thanked us for our service and let us keep the treasure. We had them drop us off at Waterdeep. We made sure the bulk of it got returned to the original owners-minus a reasonable finders' fee of course. Leosin and Onthar Frume, our contacts from earlier in the adventure, mentioned that the Cult of the Dragon was still trying to summon Tiamat. With the black dragon mask in their possession to squirrel away or (preferably) destroy, we had earned a break, but danger still lurked out there. Sandi decided to return to the Duffington's lodge. But Censura, Thok, and I reasoned that we would need to continue the fight to stop the Cult from summoning the Queen of Evil Dragons to the Realms. It is hard to live in the world when its been destroyed, after all.
We decided not to continue with Rise of Tiamat, the concluding adventure in the Tyranny of Dragons line. Duane, the DM, has had some burn out from running encounters and Friday night 4e game. As I mentioned previously, I'll be taking over the DM chair for Princes of the Apocalypse, the adventure for the Elemental Evil line. If your in Tucson, AZ and free on Wednesdays, stop by next week for character creation.
I'll be continuing this blog, but now from the perspective of a DM. Any players wanting to earn extra inspiration are welcome to help keep notes on the sessions so I can focus on running the game.
Tomorrow I'll do a wrap up for this adventure.
Friday, May 22, 2015
Rezmir: 0, Us: Won!
The battle continued!
Sandi spotted the door to Rezmir's chamber opening, and heard a voice speak a few words in draconic: "Fang...claws...go check!" followed by "Smell smoke...heard noise...check for intruders." He spotted a guard drake approaching. Sandi took a shot, causing the drake to alert the speaker, Resmir, who ordered it to get the other cultists. They spent their first couple of turns trying to open one of the giant-sized doors. This proved difficult for the two dog-like dragons lacking an upright posture and oppose-able thumbs.
We heard another voice coming from the chamber, this one claiming to be Lord Duffington. He called out for help before being slapped and told to quiet down. Afterwards, Rezmir emerged and engaged us with her black dragon mask donned and carrying a black-bladed greatsword that she addressed as "Hazirawn" before engaging us.
Rezmir's mask gave her a monstrous feature new to this edition: legendary actions. Legendary creatures, which is to say, creatures with access to legendary actions, fill a niche similar to solos from 4e. The legendary actions let them take extra actions, usually attacks, but sometimes other options, at the end of other creature's turns. They also gain access to a feature called Legendary Resistance, which allows them to declare a failed saving throw to be successful. She only managed to use one during the engagement, reducing the damage from a spirit guardians hit.
Not long after Rezmir appeared, a female stone giant, Hulda, appeared. She asked why we were fighting the drakes. Censura managed to bluff her into believing that the drakes were diseased and needed to be put down before spreading the plague. Hulda offered to help in return for magic items. On my turn I offered my wand of winter and Rezmir's sword as payment. It turns out Hulda's husband Wigluf always wanted a wand and she always wanted Rezmir's sword. She agreed that she and her husband would attack anything attacking us.
This was fortunate. Just about them a drake managed to open the door enough to slip out. The stone giants intercepted it in the courtyard and put it down.
In the meantime, we focused fire on Rezmir. Thok managed to keep her attacks focused on him using maneuvers like goading attack and his protection fighting style. I kept her in range of spirit guardians and managed to make my Constitution save whenever an attack managed to hit me. Sandi, of course, used his bow. And Censura blasted away. We managed to drop Rezmir and the other guard drake.
Before the battle truly ended-the other drake was still being intercepted by the giants-I peaked into Rezmir's chamber and spotted Lord Duffington. I went in to help him, only to be attacked by a rug of smothering right inside the door. This particular cursed item is actually statted out as a creature in the Monster Manual along with animated armor and flying swords. They are fairly low level, though, so it ended up being more of a speed bump than a challenge. I still asked Lord Duffington why he failed to warn me about it. He said he just had not seen it attack before.
Afterwards, we had a short conversation with Hulda and Wigluf as we gathered the items to give them from Rezmir's corpse. Censura was the first to pick up the greatsword Hazirawn. It started talking to him telepathically. It did not seem to mind being given to the stone giants. Thok kept the black dragon mask. Wigluf and Hilda offered to let us rest in their chamber and set to making stew while we finished looting Rezmir's chamber and the Red Wizards' chamber. Rezmir had a chest in her chamber, but like the one in Castle Naerytar, it was trapped. First, there was a needle trap that hit Thok hard enough to knock him unconscious. It also had magic teleportation effect on it that whisked away the valuables within.
Fortunately, the Red Wizards and their chamber had more than enough to make up for it: several scrolls and a staff of fire. We also found letters from Rath Modar to Severin, the leader of the Cult of the Dragon. We also found letters from other Red Wizards back in Thay. We learned about the alliance between the Red Wizards and the cult. We also learned that not all of the Red Wizards were happy with the alliance and its goals. Last, we found a tome of devil lore, including various rituals to summon devils. It contained a description of a powerful ritual to summon Tiamat, the Queen of Evil Dragon herself, from the Nine Hells. It required a lot of sacrifices, including a large amount of treasure. However, the book did not have any further details or specifics on how the ritual is performed.
Hulda and Wiglaf got us an audience with Blagothkus. We took a short rest and met with the cloud giant. Some excellent role-playing and good rolls from Thok and myself managed to earn us an alliance with the giants contingent on us defeating the white dragon. Blagothkus agreed to offer us save haven to take a long rest, and a chance to recover Kaskoo from the kitchens.
We were fortunate, discovering that Kaskoo was a winged kobold. I used him to deliver a message of our impending success for Leosin back in Parnast.
Next time we'll be entering the dragon's lair.
That will conclude our play of Tyranny of Dragons. The week after that we'll be started Elemental Evil. I'll be taking over DM duties so DJ can get a chance to create a PC and play. Any readers out there in Tucson are welcome to come join. The table will be open to new players and will need them.
Sandi spotted the door to Rezmir's chamber opening, and heard a voice speak a few words in draconic: "Fang...claws...go check!" followed by "Smell smoke...heard noise...check for intruders." He spotted a guard drake approaching. Sandi took a shot, causing the drake to alert the speaker, Resmir, who ordered it to get the other cultists. They spent their first couple of turns trying to open one of the giant-sized doors. This proved difficult for the two dog-like dragons lacking an upright posture and oppose-able thumbs.
We heard another voice coming from the chamber, this one claiming to be Lord Duffington. He called out for help before being slapped and told to quiet down. Afterwards, Rezmir emerged and engaged us with her black dragon mask donned and carrying a black-bladed greatsword that she addressed as "Hazirawn" before engaging us.
Rezmir's mask gave her a monstrous feature new to this edition: legendary actions. Legendary creatures, which is to say, creatures with access to legendary actions, fill a niche similar to solos from 4e. The legendary actions let them take extra actions, usually attacks, but sometimes other options, at the end of other creature's turns. They also gain access to a feature called Legendary Resistance, which allows them to declare a failed saving throw to be successful. She only managed to use one during the engagement, reducing the damage from a spirit guardians hit.
Not long after Rezmir appeared, a female stone giant, Hulda, appeared. She asked why we were fighting the drakes. Censura managed to bluff her into believing that the drakes were diseased and needed to be put down before spreading the plague. Hulda offered to help in return for magic items. On my turn I offered my wand of winter and Rezmir's sword as payment. It turns out Hulda's husband Wigluf always wanted a wand and she always wanted Rezmir's sword. She agreed that she and her husband would attack anything attacking us.
This was fortunate. Just about them a drake managed to open the door enough to slip out. The stone giants intercepted it in the courtyard and put it down.
In the meantime, we focused fire on Rezmir. Thok managed to keep her attacks focused on him using maneuvers like goading attack and his protection fighting style. I kept her in range of spirit guardians and managed to make my Constitution save whenever an attack managed to hit me. Sandi, of course, used his bow. And Censura blasted away. We managed to drop Rezmir and the other guard drake.
Before the battle truly ended-the other drake was still being intercepted by the giants-I peaked into Rezmir's chamber and spotted Lord Duffington. I went in to help him, only to be attacked by a rug of smothering right inside the door. This particular cursed item is actually statted out as a creature in the Monster Manual along with animated armor and flying swords. They are fairly low level, though, so it ended up being more of a speed bump than a challenge. I still asked Lord Duffington why he failed to warn me about it. He said he just had not seen it attack before.
Afterwards, we had a short conversation with Hulda and Wigluf as we gathered the items to give them from Rezmir's corpse. Censura was the first to pick up the greatsword Hazirawn. It started talking to him telepathically. It did not seem to mind being given to the stone giants. Thok kept the black dragon mask. Wigluf and Hilda offered to let us rest in their chamber and set to making stew while we finished looting Rezmir's chamber and the Red Wizards' chamber. Rezmir had a chest in her chamber, but like the one in Castle Naerytar, it was trapped. First, there was a needle trap that hit Thok hard enough to knock him unconscious. It also had magic teleportation effect on it that whisked away the valuables within.
Fortunately, the Red Wizards and their chamber had more than enough to make up for it: several scrolls and a staff of fire. We also found letters from Rath Modar to Severin, the leader of the Cult of the Dragon. We also found letters from other Red Wizards back in Thay. We learned about the alliance between the Red Wizards and the cult. We also learned that not all of the Red Wizards were happy with the alliance and its goals. Last, we found a tome of devil lore, including various rituals to summon devils. It contained a description of a powerful ritual to summon Tiamat, the Queen of Evil Dragon herself, from the Nine Hells. It required a lot of sacrifices, including a large amount of treasure. However, the book did not have any further details or specifics on how the ritual is performed.
Hulda and Wiglaf got us an audience with Blagothkus. We took a short rest and met with the cloud giant. Some excellent role-playing and good rolls from Thok and myself managed to earn us an alliance with the giants contingent on us defeating the white dragon. Blagothkus agreed to offer us save haven to take a long rest, and a chance to recover Kaskoo from the kitchens.
We were fortunate, discovering that Kaskoo was a winged kobold. I used him to deliver a message of our impending success for Leosin back in Parnast.
Next time we'll be entering the dragon's lair.
That will conclude our play of Tyranny of Dragons. The week after that we'll be started Elemental Evil. I'll be taking over DM duties so DJ can get a chance to create a PC and play. Any readers out there in Tucson are welcome to come join. The table will be open to new players and will need them.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Into the Castle in the Sky
Gundalin the wainwright pulled us aside, helped us dispose of the bodies, and gave us advice on how to plan our entrance in Skyreach Castle. It turned out that Gunadlin was Leosin Erlanthar in disguise. He had been able to infiltrate the town and gather some information in the months since we had seen him. We were able to relax enough to get a short rest in while we discussed his intelligence to formulate a plan.
The castle belonged to cloud giants led by a giant called Blagothkus. Apparently, the ghost of his wife is the force that helps keep the castle a-float and the giants commune with it to steer it. The giants are cooperating with, but not overly fond of, the Cult of the Dragon. We also learned that the dragons used ogres as foot soldiers, and he advised us not to antagonize them. Later, he mentioned that one of the denizens of the castle is a vampire that helps guard it at night. He mentioned that the vampire fed off the ogres, so taking it out might ingratiate ourselves with the ogre. He also mentioned that Blagothkus kept a pet griffin, and advised us not to attack it. Blagothkus also had a pair of stone giants, a male and female, in the castle, and Leosin let us know that it would be inadvisable to attack them. He let us know that we might need perform a service for Blagothkus to earn his favor-such as taking out the cultists or killing the dragon.
Yes, this flying castle built of magic ice enchanted to be as hard as stone has a dragon. An adult white dragon called Glazhael. For those not familiar with D&D's iconic dragons, white dragons dwell in arctic places and breath cold. They're generally the weakest and least intelligent of the dragons. That said, they're still powerful and dangerous. He mentioned that Glazhael is a prideful monster, and we might be able to convince it to not try and turn us into adventurer-cicles by flattering it. He mentioned that it lived in caves in the glacial ice serving as the castle's flying foundation.
Leosin explained the basic layout of the castle-a lower courtyard where the cultist dwelt and an upper courtyard where the giants lived. The exception being some ogres manning the guard towers at the main gate in the lower courtyard, the stone giants dwelling near the cultist leaders, and Blagothkus's griffin. Rezmir and two Red Wizard emissaries, Azbara Jos and Rath Modar, were living in a building at one corner of the courtyard while the remaining cultists were in a barracks on the opposite corner. The cultists, following their standard operating procedure, kept some kobold servants in another building. This is where Leosin's inside source was staying: a kobold named Kaskoo, distinguished by wearing a yellow and purple striped skull cap. Leosin gave us a code phrase to make contact with Kaskoo: "Hey there purple and yellow fellow."
We had two options for entering the castle: through the front door using pass phrases: either "Hail Blagothkus" or "Tiamat, our mother and strength." The second one required and accompanying gesture: opening the hand and displaying all five fingers, palm up. He mentioned we could also flying in on wyverns, but he advised me might want a cultist banner if we tried that. It turns out that Thok has a torn and muddied banner. He decided to wash it up during our discussion.
Leosin gave us some options for how to approach the castle once inside. His first suggestion was to try and stealthily take out the cult leaders, then seek out Blagothkus for an audience. Leosin also told us we could approach Blagothkus directly, but he might not take kindly to "little folk" just showing up. Leosin also said that we could try and get into the pilot tower by stealth and try communing with the ghost of Escarlotta, Blagothkus's late wife, to try and gain control of the castle.
We finished our short rest our short rest, and ran to catch up to the castle just as it was lifting off. Thok and I needed to give Sandi and Censura a helping hand up. We passed the ogres with the pass phrase and went for Rezmir and the Red Wizards. Despite the over-sized doors, between Thok's athleticism and me being a largish human in full plate armor, we got into the suit of rooms without alerting anyone. We found an unused guest room before running into the Red Wizards. Unfortunately, a bed Stealth roll alerted them as we were opening the door, so we couldn't get in a surprise round.
Spellcasters are tough to fight, especially if they can get a higher initiative, which these two wizards did. Rath Modar managed to drop a fireball, and it took the largest bite out of Sandi and me. Far more annoying was Azbara. He used globe of invulnerability, a notoriously complicated but powerful spell. In this edition it negates spells cast from outside the globe. This seems a bit vague for areas originating outside the globe even if the caster is inside. The DM ruled that the fireball still hit Thok, who was inside the globe, because the caster was in the globe also, even though the point of origin for the area was outside the globe. Fortunately, we managed to disrupt Azbara's concentration, and he lost the globe.
Then Azbara hit us with a more controllery confusion. Unfortunately, through a series of bad rolls, it affected everyone. However, we managed to avoid some of the more terrible effects of the spell before disrupting his concentration on that. After we dropped Rath and bloodied Azbara, he threw up an illusion and tried to run for it. The wizards' room in the castle and a porch open to the air where they could have fled from via fly. Thok spotted his invisible form, and we managed to drop him. However, he screamed for help, and the DM warned us that someone may have heard it.
Looks like we'll have a final confrontation with Rezmir next time.
Since we are coming to a close of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, we'll be starting the elemental evil story line soon. However, I'll be running the game this time. Its been a while since I've had a chance to run a game. I'm looking forward to it.
The castle belonged to cloud giants led by a giant called Blagothkus. Apparently, the ghost of his wife is the force that helps keep the castle a-float and the giants commune with it to steer it. The giants are cooperating with, but not overly fond of, the Cult of the Dragon. We also learned that the dragons used ogres as foot soldiers, and he advised us not to antagonize them. Later, he mentioned that one of the denizens of the castle is a vampire that helps guard it at night. He mentioned that the vampire fed off the ogres, so taking it out might ingratiate ourselves with the ogre. He also mentioned that Blagothkus kept a pet griffin, and advised us not to attack it. Blagothkus also had a pair of stone giants, a male and female, in the castle, and Leosin let us know that it would be inadvisable to attack them. He let us know that we might need perform a service for Blagothkus to earn his favor-such as taking out the cultists or killing the dragon.
Yes, this flying castle built of magic ice enchanted to be as hard as stone has a dragon. An adult white dragon called Glazhael. For those not familiar with D&D's iconic dragons, white dragons dwell in arctic places and breath cold. They're generally the weakest and least intelligent of the dragons. That said, they're still powerful and dangerous. He mentioned that Glazhael is a prideful monster, and we might be able to convince it to not try and turn us into adventurer-cicles by flattering it. He mentioned that it lived in caves in the glacial ice serving as the castle's flying foundation.
Leosin explained the basic layout of the castle-a lower courtyard where the cultist dwelt and an upper courtyard where the giants lived. The exception being some ogres manning the guard towers at the main gate in the lower courtyard, the stone giants dwelling near the cultist leaders, and Blagothkus's griffin. Rezmir and two Red Wizard emissaries, Azbara Jos and Rath Modar, were living in a building at one corner of the courtyard while the remaining cultists were in a barracks on the opposite corner. The cultists, following their standard operating procedure, kept some kobold servants in another building. This is where Leosin's inside source was staying: a kobold named Kaskoo, distinguished by wearing a yellow and purple striped skull cap. Leosin gave us a code phrase to make contact with Kaskoo: "Hey there purple and yellow fellow."
We had two options for entering the castle: through the front door using pass phrases: either "Hail Blagothkus" or "Tiamat, our mother and strength." The second one required and accompanying gesture: opening the hand and displaying all five fingers, palm up. He mentioned we could also flying in on wyverns, but he advised me might want a cultist banner if we tried that. It turns out that Thok has a torn and muddied banner. He decided to wash it up during our discussion.
Leosin gave us some options for how to approach the castle once inside. His first suggestion was to try and stealthily take out the cult leaders, then seek out Blagothkus for an audience. Leosin also told us we could approach Blagothkus directly, but he might not take kindly to "little folk" just showing up. Leosin also said that we could try and get into the pilot tower by stealth and try communing with the ghost of Escarlotta, Blagothkus's late wife, to try and gain control of the castle.
We finished our short rest our short rest, and ran to catch up to the castle just as it was lifting off. Thok and I needed to give Sandi and Censura a helping hand up. We passed the ogres with the pass phrase and went for Rezmir and the Red Wizards. Despite the over-sized doors, between Thok's athleticism and me being a largish human in full plate armor, we got into the suit of rooms without alerting anyone. We found an unused guest room before running into the Red Wizards. Unfortunately, a bed Stealth roll alerted them as we were opening the door, so we couldn't get in a surprise round.
Spellcasters are tough to fight, especially if they can get a higher initiative, which these two wizards did. Rath Modar managed to drop a fireball, and it took the largest bite out of Sandi and me. Far more annoying was Azbara. He used globe of invulnerability, a notoriously complicated but powerful spell. In this edition it negates spells cast from outside the globe. This seems a bit vague for areas originating outside the globe even if the caster is inside. The DM ruled that the fireball still hit Thok, who was inside the globe, because the caster was in the globe also, even though the point of origin for the area was outside the globe. Fortunately, we managed to disrupt Azbara's concentration, and he lost the globe.
Then Azbara hit us with a more controllery confusion. Unfortunately, through a series of bad rolls, it affected everyone. However, we managed to avoid some of the more terrible effects of the spell before disrupting his concentration on that. After we dropped Rath and bloodied Azbara, he threw up an illusion and tried to run for it. The wizards' room in the castle and a porch open to the air where they could have fled from via fly. Thok spotted his invisible form, and we managed to drop him. However, he screamed for help, and the DM warned us that someone may have heard it.
Looks like we'll have a final confrontation with Rezmir next time.
Since we are coming to a close of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, we'll be starting the elemental evil story line soon. However, I'll be running the game this time. Its been a while since I've had a chance to run a game. I'm looking forward to it.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
On to Parnast
We finished our exploration of the second floor of the lodge, along with judicious adventurous looting. We found some gems and valuables, plus a set of chain mail +1. Thok took the armor, even though it was a horizontal upgrade (same AC, but now the armor was shiny and magical) rather than a vertical one. We gave some of the treasure to Madam Duffington for the damages done to her lodge.
Having finished our task, Madam Duffington invited us to supper along with Craggnor and our two other captured cultists. We had the opportunity to wash up prior to the meal, but Craggnor declined the offer. We managed to get Craggnor to offer to take us to the town he had mentioned, Parnast, the next day, but he said we could wait until late in the morning.
Not long after dessert was offered, the servants pinned Craggnor and slit his throat, Red Wedding style. We took the other two cultists outside to finish the job. We tried to bargain with them for directions to Parnast, but the Duffington's master hunter came out to oversee us. Sandi ended up killing one of the cultists while Thok injured the other and let the perytons living on the lodge roof finish him off. The huntsman offered to take us to Parnast the next day, letting us know that the dwarf's offer to take us late meant that we should get started early.
Before heading to bed, we were offered some brandy to help us sleep. Most of us declined to the offer, seeing as how we just saw the NPCs offering it murder some people.
Before we left, Brother Caemon mentioned that he was heading back to Waterdeep. He offered to take Egan's body to arrange for another raise dead, claiming he could get us the spell for 400gp, so we each chipped in 100gp. I also gave him some cash and valuables, asking that he get me some diamonds and diamond dust for some of my spells.
The first is revivify, a third level spell that can bring someone back from the dead provided they've been dead less than a minute. It uses 300gp worth of diamonds every casting. The other was a new spell I had gained access to upon reaching 7th level. One of my domain's granted spells is stoneskin, which uses 100gp in diamong dust per casting and grants resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from non-magical sources. Remember, in this edition resistance just means that all damage is halved. I also gained freedom of movement from my domain. I also added stoneshape with the new slot for spell preparation I gained from leveling-up. My primary hope for that spell is to be able to make doors where there were no doors before.
As we journeyed through the wilderness, we rolled dice to see if Angreth the hunter new various clues to help us while in Parnast. We had a 50% per roll and we got four out of eight clues. We learned that Captain Othelstan was the cultists' main muscle in town along with some town guards. He let us know that many of the villagers had turned to the cult, either through intimidation or bribery. He also let us know that village hosted a stable of wyverns that we would probably need to ride to reach the flying castle. His final clue was that the only trustworthy villager was Gundalin the Wainwright.
We reached the village and bid farewell to Angreth. We began our search for Gunalin, claiming that our wagon had broken down outside of the village, and we needed it repaired to join a caravan travelling along the Black Road to the shades' city of Netheril in the Anauroch desert. The Innkeeper waylaid us and offered us a meal while one of his staff fetched Gundalin. We even included a tip to try and speed up the process. Unfortunately, we ended up sitting around for half and hour. Censura left the tavern and ran into Captain Othalstin and his cronies, who were looking for blood. At about this time the Innkeeper pulled out weapons of his own, and a battle started.
Sandi joined Censura outside while Thok and I fought in the tavern. Censura used his newest spell: fire shield. This classic caster buff grants resistance to either fire or cold damage and inflicts damage on enemies that hit you in melee with the opposite damage that you have resistance to. In this edition, it lasts 10 minutes, does not require concentration, and has a base damage of 2d8. Censura, being Censura, opted for resistance to cold to inflict fire damage. The enemies wisely decided to open with ranged attacks. They also moved into position to get a fireball dropped on them, killing all the guards outside and leaving Othelstan singed. So much for a quiet entrance.
Captain Othelstan had one final trick: after retribution from the fire shield and a casting of hellish rebuke brought him down, he called out to Tiamat had gained some hit points for another round of battle.
At about this time, Thok and I were finishing the Innkeeper and the guards still in the tavern, and some reinforcements, in the form of three dragonclaws, showed up. The dragonclaws stayed outside to handle Sandi and Censura. Thok and I joined the party outside while Sandi and Censura dropped two of the three dragonclaws and bloodied the third. The third tried to flee, but we got it before he could escape and raise an alarm.
As the dust settled, a villager came up and identified himself as Gundalin.
Having finished our task, Madam Duffington invited us to supper along with Craggnor and our two other captured cultists. We had the opportunity to wash up prior to the meal, but Craggnor declined the offer. We managed to get Craggnor to offer to take us to the town he had mentioned, Parnast, the next day, but he said we could wait until late in the morning.
Not long after dessert was offered, the servants pinned Craggnor and slit his throat, Red Wedding style. We took the other two cultists outside to finish the job. We tried to bargain with them for directions to Parnast, but the Duffington's master hunter came out to oversee us. Sandi ended up killing one of the cultists while Thok injured the other and let the perytons living on the lodge roof finish him off. The huntsman offered to take us to Parnast the next day, letting us know that the dwarf's offer to take us late meant that we should get started early.
Before heading to bed, we were offered some brandy to help us sleep. Most of us declined to the offer, seeing as how we just saw the NPCs offering it murder some people.
Before we left, Brother Caemon mentioned that he was heading back to Waterdeep. He offered to take Egan's body to arrange for another raise dead, claiming he could get us the spell for 400gp, so we each chipped in 100gp. I also gave him some cash and valuables, asking that he get me some diamonds and diamond dust for some of my spells.
The first is revivify, a third level spell that can bring someone back from the dead provided they've been dead less than a minute. It uses 300gp worth of diamonds every casting. The other was a new spell I had gained access to upon reaching 7th level. One of my domain's granted spells is stoneskin, which uses 100gp in diamong dust per casting and grants resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from non-magical sources. Remember, in this edition resistance just means that all damage is halved. I also gained freedom of movement from my domain. I also added stoneshape with the new slot for spell preparation I gained from leveling-up. My primary hope for that spell is to be able to make doors where there were no doors before.
As we journeyed through the wilderness, we rolled dice to see if Angreth the hunter new various clues to help us while in Parnast. We had a 50% per roll and we got four out of eight clues. We learned that Captain Othelstan was the cultists' main muscle in town along with some town guards. He let us know that many of the villagers had turned to the cult, either through intimidation or bribery. He also let us know that village hosted a stable of wyverns that we would probably need to ride to reach the flying castle. His final clue was that the only trustworthy villager was Gundalin the Wainwright.
We reached the village and bid farewell to Angreth. We began our search for Gunalin, claiming that our wagon had broken down outside of the village, and we needed it repaired to join a caravan travelling along the Black Road to the shades' city of Netheril in the Anauroch desert. The Innkeeper waylaid us and offered us a meal while one of his staff fetched Gundalin. We even included a tip to try and speed up the process. Unfortunately, we ended up sitting around for half and hour. Censura left the tavern and ran into Captain Othalstin and his cronies, who were looking for blood. At about this time the Innkeeper pulled out weapons of his own, and a battle started.
Sandi joined Censura outside while Thok and I fought in the tavern. Censura used his newest spell: fire shield. This classic caster buff grants resistance to either fire or cold damage and inflicts damage on enemies that hit you in melee with the opposite damage that you have resistance to. In this edition, it lasts 10 minutes, does not require concentration, and has a base damage of 2d8. Censura, being Censura, opted for resistance to cold to inflict fire damage. The enemies wisely decided to open with ranged attacks. They also moved into position to get a fireball dropped on them, killing all the guards outside and leaving Othelstan singed. So much for a quiet entrance.
Captain Othelstan had one final trick: after retribution from the fire shield and a casting of hellish rebuke brought him down, he called out to Tiamat had gained some hit points for another round of battle.
At about this time, Thok and I were finishing the Innkeeper and the guards still in the tavern, and some reinforcements, in the form of three dragonclaws, showed up. The dragonclaws stayed outside to handle Sandi and Censura. Thok and I joined the party outside while Sandi and Censura dropped two of the three dragonclaws and bloodied the third. The third tried to flee, but we got it before he could escape and raise an alarm.
As the dust settled, a villager came up and identified himself as Gundalin.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Cleared: One Lodge of Dragon Cultists
We began by searching through the out-buildings. We found a parchment message discarded in the kennels. It was from Rezmir to Talis, letting her know that we were dead (reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated), and she should burn the Duffington's hunting lodge after the next load of treasure comes through. We found nothing of interest in the stable, other than that it stank of wyverns.
We moved onto the next room in the lodge: a dormitory housing three of Madam Duffington's servants. They were Arlenga the head maid, the head butler Gastyn, and the chief hunter Argreth Woodwise. They were all chained up in a line to good old-fashioned iron balls. They warned us about cultists in the kitchen preparing supper.
So we went into the kitchen expecting a fight, and even managed to surprise the cultists and their dragonclaw leader. We managed to drop the dragonclaw and two of the four cultists in a couple of rounds. The last two surrendered. We took them prisoner, and through some interrogation, learned that the remainder of the cultists were upstairs, but that there were some people in the basement. One of the kitchen cultists had the keys for the shackles securing the servants, so we had them switch places before we went down to the basement.
There we found three more prisoners: a beaten dwarf with a beard that had been shorn and burned, a badly whipped young human woman, and a human man in priestly garments. The dwarf was Craggnor, an ally of Varram, a dwarf cultist vying with Talis for position. The woman was Mirasella, a woman who had been kidnapped from a caravan and that Talis had been trying to torture into joining the cult. The priest was Brother Caemon, a visiting priest of Amauntor, a god of legal matters and commerce that had been visiting the Duffingtons when the Cultists attacked. Talis had been trying to convince him to provide legal help for the cult. In addition to the obvious direct harm inflicted on Craggnor and Mirasella, there were plates of food just out of reach of the prisoners.
We had some discussion with Craggnor about offing Talis to help his boss get a leg up with the cult. He let slip that the treasure would be bound for a village called Parnast, where wyvern riders took it up to a place called Skyreach Castle. We failed to convince him to aid us in getting to Parnast, but we decided to be the better people and let him have the food, which he ate with gusto. We freed Mirasella and Brother Caemon, stashed them with the other civilians, and put the two captured cultists in the basement with Craggnor.
We finished exploring the first floor of the lodge: finding a pantry, a pair of bedrooms, and a sitting room filled with trophies of exotic monsters: a griffon, a gorgon (large bull-like monsters), and a giant eagle in addition to more mundane animals such as mountain goats, and even a giant white 10-point stag. The only item of interest we uncovered were two potions of healing hidden in the griffin head.
We moved on to the second floor. We found an armory open to the roof. It contained some rusty spears and a cabinet containing some mundane bows, crossbows, and ammunition. Sandi replenished his arrows. We then found a barracks with a cultist guard passed out on the floor amid several empty wine bottles. He was drunk enough that we were able to gag and restrain him and drag him down to the basement for another round of interrogation. He managed to recover from his hangover rather quickly, refused to answer questions, and challenged Thok to one-on-one combat. Thok, of course, happily agreed. The battle between Thok and Werric the Wizened was short, and Thok was able to recover from the few hits that he took in the fight.
We continued exploring the upper floor, running into Talis, a cultist dressed in white armor. She had a pair of her guards, NPC types called Veterans identical in capabilities to Werric attack us from behind. This was an intense fight. Talis used a rather nasty fifth level spell: insect plague. It creates a damaging area of effect that also slows movement and obscures the terrain. However, like many duration spells in fifth edition, requires concentration. Unfortunately, despite constant attacks we managed to level against her, we failed to break her concentration before dropping her. Censura also an area of effect spell, hunger of hadar. It creates an area of cold darkness, also doing damage. Unfortunately, a lucky hit against Censura managed to drop his concentration, so it was not quite as effective at slowing down the veterans flanking us. I managed to deliver the killing blow in Talis with inflict wounds. However, the insects ate our squire, Egan.
With Talis down, focus fire from Thok, Censura, and Sandi dropped the two veterans. We've cleared the lodge of villains, and the DM has told us to expect to level-up at the next session.
The management of resources we've been adapting makes earlier encounters in the adventure day relatively easy, with plenty of high level spells and potent features being used to quickly end battles. Later battles often see us relying on lower-level features, and often competing against foes with plenty of higher-level features they are more than willing to unleash.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Looting for Fun and Profit
Thok rejoined the party as we got started. It proved to be handy to have our tank later.
It turns out there was a magic trap in the two statues flanking the door to the grand hall of the hunting lodge. It hit Censura and me, doing a little bit of damage and freezing us in place. We managed to break out of the freezing effect pretty quickly. After some experimentation, and little extra damage, we found that it was a constant magical effect on the suits of armor. Of course, these were suits of full plate, the best heavy armor in the game. I used dispel magic to clear the trap from one of the suits and upgraded when we were able to get a long rest in.
As I messed around with the suits of armor, a voice called to us from a nearby guard room bordering the foyer. It was an older woman in fancy, but worn out clothing. She said her name was Madam Duffington and she was the owner of the lodge, recently taken over by the Cult. We agreed to help her clear the cultists out of her house (it was something we were planning on doing anyway). She led us through a parlor, warning us about yet another suit of armor, and into a linen room, where we took a short rest.
While there, she pointed out banners the cultists had brought in: purple and striped with the colors of chromatic dragons. She found them to be ugly. There was some banter between Madam Duffington and Thok over a tapestry depicting a boar hunt in the parlor. After that, she mentioned her husband being taken out to their kennels and being fed to a four-armed troll. We ended up meeting the thing later. Finally, she mentioned some "lizard-dog men" sleeping in a nearby room. This of course meant kobolds. I wanted to kill them all.
I used silence to let us sneak into their room as they slept, giving us a surprise round. While Thok, Sandi, and I have multi-attack options that let us mow down some kobolds quickly, Censura only had spells, which silence shut down. Sandi did manage to use alchemist fire to light up a kobold. He survived the longest. I dropped silence after the surprise round, and Censura cleared most of the little buggers with burning hands. After a couple of rounds of fighting, only the one on fire was left alive, which Sandi took out with a critical hit. This impaled it, through the shuttered window, pinning it to a kennel just outside. It started a small fire in the kennel, which attracted Trepsin, the four-armed troll, who brought a couple of his ambush drakes out to play, too.
For those unfamiliar with D&D, their trolls are green-skinned giants with long noses that have a habit of regenerating unless hit with fire or acid. They also tend to have bricks for hit points and hit like trucks. Veteran players fear them.
Thok, being courageous and willing to tank, stepped out and stood between the broken window and the troll, taunting it, and using the Dodge action. This action imposed disadvantage on every attack against a character for a turn. It did help keep Thok alive. Well, the RNG, being the fickle god that it is, had other ideas. While the troll missed with most of it attacks, it still managed to hit with a bite, one of its four claws, and criticaled with the fourth claw attack when the DM rolled two 20s. The odds of this happening are roughly 1 in 400. This allowed the troll to rend for additional damage. Fortunately, the damage was minimal (the DM actually rolled 1, 2, 3, 4 on four dice--insert Spaceballs quote here).
Censura, with a little guiding from us, used fireball, greatly injuring the troll and killing one of the drakes with it, and bloodying the other. I used a higher level spell slot on a cure wounds spell to keep Thok in the fight. Then Thok and Sandi hit the troll with everything they had and managed to drop it in the same turn it had taken the fire damage, canceling its regeneration, and dropping it.
Trolls used to regenerate everything BUT damage from fire and acid. This edition reworked regeneration so that it doesn't function on a turn in which the creature with it has taken the damage. This makes them significantly easier to kill.
We killed the remaining drake, then put out the small fire we had started, making sure Madam Duffington's house didn't go down along with the cultists and their minions. We then explored the kennel, finding four more guard drakes in a cage, and the troll's loot, including a cloak made of a winter wolf with a mithril clasp in the shape of a claw. Censura was enamored with the cloak, and opted to cash-in his share of it to take it as a personal trophy of the troll battle.
We'll continue our exploration of the lodge next time.
It turns out there was a magic trap in the two statues flanking the door to the grand hall of the hunting lodge. It hit Censura and me, doing a little bit of damage and freezing us in place. We managed to break out of the freezing effect pretty quickly. After some experimentation, and little extra damage, we found that it was a constant magical effect on the suits of armor. Of course, these were suits of full plate, the best heavy armor in the game. I used dispel magic to clear the trap from one of the suits and upgraded when we were able to get a long rest in.
As I messed around with the suits of armor, a voice called to us from a nearby guard room bordering the foyer. It was an older woman in fancy, but worn out clothing. She said her name was Madam Duffington and she was the owner of the lodge, recently taken over by the Cult. We agreed to help her clear the cultists out of her house (it was something we were planning on doing anyway). She led us through a parlor, warning us about yet another suit of armor, and into a linen room, where we took a short rest.
While there, she pointed out banners the cultists had brought in: purple and striped with the colors of chromatic dragons. She found them to be ugly. There was some banter between Madam Duffington and Thok over a tapestry depicting a boar hunt in the parlor. After that, she mentioned her husband being taken out to their kennels and being fed to a four-armed troll. We ended up meeting the thing later. Finally, she mentioned some "lizard-dog men" sleeping in a nearby room. This of course meant kobolds. I wanted to kill them all.
I used silence to let us sneak into their room as they slept, giving us a surprise round. While Thok, Sandi, and I have multi-attack options that let us mow down some kobolds quickly, Censura only had spells, which silence shut down. Sandi did manage to use alchemist fire to light up a kobold. He survived the longest. I dropped silence after the surprise round, and Censura cleared most of the little buggers with burning hands. After a couple of rounds of fighting, only the one on fire was left alive, which Sandi took out with a critical hit. This impaled it, through the shuttered window, pinning it to a kennel just outside. It started a small fire in the kennel, which attracted Trepsin, the four-armed troll, who brought a couple of his ambush drakes out to play, too.
For those unfamiliar with D&D, their trolls are green-skinned giants with long noses that have a habit of regenerating unless hit with fire or acid. They also tend to have bricks for hit points and hit like trucks. Veteran players fear them.
Thok, being courageous and willing to tank, stepped out and stood between the broken window and the troll, taunting it, and using the Dodge action. This action imposed disadvantage on every attack against a character for a turn. It did help keep Thok alive. Well, the RNG, being the fickle god that it is, had other ideas. While the troll missed with most of it attacks, it still managed to hit with a bite, one of its four claws, and criticaled with the fourth claw attack when the DM rolled two 20s. The odds of this happening are roughly 1 in 400. This allowed the troll to rend for additional damage. Fortunately, the damage was minimal (the DM actually rolled 1, 2, 3, 4 on four dice--insert Spaceballs quote here).
Censura, with a little guiding from us, used fireball, greatly injuring the troll and killing one of the drakes with it, and bloodying the other. I used a higher level spell slot on a cure wounds spell to keep Thok in the fight. Then Thok and Sandi hit the troll with everything they had and managed to drop it in the same turn it had taken the fire damage, canceling its regeneration, and dropping it.
Trolls used to regenerate everything BUT damage from fire and acid. This edition reworked regeneration so that it doesn't function on a turn in which the creature with it has taken the damage. This makes them significantly easier to kill.
We killed the remaining drake, then put out the small fire we had started, making sure Madam Duffington's house didn't go down along with the cultists and their minions. We then explored the kennel, finding four more guard drakes in a cage, and the troll's loot, including a cloak made of a winter wolf with a mithril clasp in the shape of a claw. Censura was enamored with the cloak, and opted to cash-in his share of it to take it as a personal trophy of the troll battle.
We'll continue our exploration of the lodge next time.
Friday, April 17, 2015
New Destinations
We have reached level six by now. While not as exciting as reaching a new tier, we still unlocked a few new abilities. First, Thok, as a fighter, got another bump in his stats. I gained an additional use of channel divinity, and a new channel divinity feature that allows me to give another creature +10 on an attack roll.
Slim Eater and Snapjaw had some gifts for us: some potions that they had looted from the lizardfolk's battle with the cultists. It totaled out to 2 potions of healing, a potion of greater healing, and an oil of etherealness. I took the potions of healing, and Censura took the oil of etherealness. We gave the potion of greater healing to Thok, whose player wasn't present for that session.
Borngray invited us to stargaze through the telescope installed at the top of the castle's keep, the Farseer of Illusk. Before we started, he warned us that a new batch of cultists would be arriving at the castle the next morning. He warned us that we should be off by then, and warned us not to return. He gave us the command word for the portal in the caves: "Draezir." He gave us the command word in strict confidence, and we didn't mind not sharing with Jamna Gleamsilver.
To use the Farseer of Illusk we needed to make two checks: Dexterity to work the mechanisms, and Wisdom (perception) to spot anything. I managed to make the first check, but failed the second. Sandi and Censura, however made both checks. Censura spotted first one black dragon, then its twin entering a lair elsewhere in the marsh. He related this information to Sandi, who realized the secret of the dragon in the Mere of Dead Men. Voaraghamanthar, the black dragon that claims the swamp as its territory has a twin Waervaerendor. Its through the help of this twin that it seems able to cross the swamp so fast. Sandi saw hordes of undead wandering the swamp, explaining how it gets its name, and demonstrating how helpful having Snapjaw as a guide through the swamp was.
We settled in to rest for the night before leaving in the morning. Sandi, being Sandi, decided to take some vengeance on Dralmorrar Borngray. He sneaked over to the elf's room and tossed in the remaining clay pot of frog hallucinogen. Not only did the poison have no affect, it woke Dralmorrar, who spotted sandi and was not amused. Sandi fought a running battle with Dralmorrar, escaping out the front door of the keep right after dealing a telling blow. Dralmorrar cursed at him as he slammed the door. Alek elected to have Sandi use his own potions to recover from the damage rather than use any spells.
Snapjaw and Slime Eater saw us off as we activated the portal and traveled to the next stage of our journey. We ended up in an alpine forest in the Graypeak Mountains far to the east. We were between two standing stones with a clearing containing three other sets of standing stones. Not too far away was a mountain lodge. All the outside windows were shuttered, and smoke came out of one of the two chimneys. We noticed a nest for a large bird on the roof. We heard noises in the forest behind us, so we approached to lodge.
We entered an empty cloak room before passing into the main room, with a set of grand stairs leading up to a balcony. Suits of armor flanked the door and gargoyle "statues" stood at the base of the stairs. Censura, not trusting statues, hit them with an eldritch blast. The gargoyles did not move until I entered the room. They used their flight feature to keep control of the room. They even managed to bloody Sandi for the second time that day. Between Alek's guardian spirits and Censura's and Sandi's ability to do large amounts of damage in one shot, we managed to drop them.
We'll travel deeper into the lodge next time.
Slim Eater and Snapjaw had some gifts for us: some potions that they had looted from the lizardfolk's battle with the cultists. It totaled out to 2 potions of healing, a potion of greater healing, and an oil of etherealness. I took the potions of healing, and Censura took the oil of etherealness. We gave the potion of greater healing to Thok, whose player wasn't present for that session.
Borngray invited us to stargaze through the telescope installed at the top of the castle's keep, the Farseer of Illusk. Before we started, he warned us that a new batch of cultists would be arriving at the castle the next morning. He warned us that we should be off by then, and warned us not to return. He gave us the command word for the portal in the caves: "Draezir." He gave us the command word in strict confidence, and we didn't mind not sharing with Jamna Gleamsilver.
To use the Farseer of Illusk we needed to make two checks: Dexterity to work the mechanisms, and Wisdom (perception) to spot anything. I managed to make the first check, but failed the second. Sandi and Censura, however made both checks. Censura spotted first one black dragon, then its twin entering a lair elsewhere in the marsh. He related this information to Sandi, who realized the secret of the dragon in the Mere of Dead Men. Voaraghamanthar, the black dragon that claims the swamp as its territory has a twin Waervaerendor. Its through the help of this twin that it seems able to cross the swamp so fast. Sandi saw hordes of undead wandering the swamp, explaining how it gets its name, and demonstrating how helpful having Snapjaw as a guide through the swamp was.
We settled in to rest for the night before leaving in the morning. Sandi, being Sandi, decided to take some vengeance on Dralmorrar Borngray. He sneaked over to the elf's room and tossed in the remaining clay pot of frog hallucinogen. Not only did the poison have no affect, it woke Dralmorrar, who spotted sandi and was not amused. Sandi fought a running battle with Dralmorrar, escaping out the front door of the keep right after dealing a telling blow. Dralmorrar cursed at him as he slammed the door. Alek elected to have Sandi use his own potions to recover from the damage rather than use any spells.
Snapjaw and Slime Eater saw us off as we activated the portal and traveled to the next stage of our journey. We ended up in an alpine forest in the Graypeak Mountains far to the east. We were between two standing stones with a clearing containing three other sets of standing stones. Not too far away was a mountain lodge. All the outside windows were shuttered, and smoke came out of one of the two chimneys. We noticed a nest for a large bird on the roof. We heard noises in the forest behind us, so we approached to lodge.
We entered an empty cloak room before passing into the main room, with a set of grand stairs leading up to a balcony. Suits of armor flanked the door and gargoyle "statues" stood at the base of the stairs. Censura, not trusting statues, hit them with an eldritch blast. The gargoyles did not move until I entered the room. They used their flight feature to keep control of the room. They even managed to bloody Sandi for the second time that day. Between Alek's guardian spirits and Censura's and Sandi's ability to do large amounts of damage in one shot, we managed to drop them.
We'll travel deeper into the lodge next time.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Castle Assault, Part VI
We rejoined our heroes still in the room with the large lake. We spotted some of the bullywugs swimming under the lake and into an underwater passage. After some examination and comments by the lizardfolk, we realized that they were swimming with the current to a point outside of the castle. We decided they were fleeing in defeat, so we continued on.
We reached the room below the crane. The floor was covered in mist up to three-feet deep. Thok managed to waft some away with a few waves of his shield and a successful athletics check. There was nothing of interest under the mist. We crossed the room headed towards the portal room, when Pharblex Spattergoo and his honor guard attacked us. Pharblex was a larger than average bullywug with some spellcasting ability and wearing the jaws of some fanged aquatic creature as a headdress.
Despite the mass of bullywugs, twelve all together plus Pharbles, the fight did not last long. Spirit guardians, my premiere crowd-clearing spell can last up to 10 minutes! So I still had it up for this fight, catching almost half, including Pharblex, in the initial wave. Censura also manged to clear a clump, and do a fair bit of damage to Pharlbex, with a well placed burning hands spell. The positioning of the bullywugs forced an unfortunate splitting of the party. However, they ended up being pushovers. Censura activated his dagger of venom in anticipation of stabbing Pharblex with it, but never managed to make an attack.
We found Pharblexes lair and a chest trapped with a dead fall dropping clay pots filled with a hallucinagenic compound that made the victim think they were a frog. According to the text of the adventure, the chest was otherwise empty. D.J., however, decided that the designers had been too stingy with the magic items, so he rolled to have one randomly be found within: a wand of winter, which looks and feels like an icicle and casts various ice-themed spells: ray of frost, sleet storm, and ice storm.
Wands, and magic items in general, bear some discussion at this point. First, 5e and encounters have returned to the more old school method of magic items where the details are DM-facing. However, D.J. has opted for a model like 4e: just give us the rules for how they work so we can use them without having to refer to him to look it up. I prefer this method, both as player and as DM. It saves me work as a DM, and as a player it shows that the game designers trust me to not abuse the system. Don't get me wrong, there are good reasons to keep the exact mechanics of a magic item obfuscated from players. But those are narrative reasons, so the rules usually amount to "it does what you want it to do, customized for maximum entertainment value." (Or at least that's how they ought to read. Other DMs will argue that there are other reason; none of them are good.)
But back to wands. Some wands, like the wand of magic missile and the wand of winter are available for use by characters regardless of spellcasting capability. In this case, the to-hit rolls and save DCs for the wand are determined by the wand, not the wielder. This being the case, once we had a chance to identify it during a short rest, the wand was given to me.
We took that short rest to identify the wand after returning Pharblex's headdress to Dralmorrar. He then took us up on an offer to take down the otyugh in the ruined tower. He opted to leave the spectres at the top of the same tower alone.
We positioned ourselves at the entrance to the tower and the pile of rubbish housing the otyugh. We sent Egan to find a sturdy board, planning to use it to reach a chest perched precariously on some broken, rotted rafters on the tower's second floor. As Egan ran to fetch the board, however, a straggler band of bullywugs appeared in the outer barbican to flank us.
I was not having any of that shit. I used 4 of the wand of winter's 7 charges to hit them with Ice Storm. Although its damage is a bit lackluster compared to fireball (4d6 cold damage and 2d8 bludgeoning, leaving behind difficult terrain), it still did the job, dropping all the bullywugs in one round, allowing us to focus on the otyugh.
The otyugh even contact Sandi and Thok with telepathy, pointing out how terrible it was of us to come into its lair and start attacking it. My friend Steve S. would pull similar tricks in his game--when looting corpses we would stumble upon cards from children reading, "I miss you, Daddy. I hope your extra hours at guard duty will pay for my operation." In case, through focused fire we managed to deal over 170 points of damage to the otyugh over the course of two rounds. It still managed to get in a few hits on its turn with multiattack. It even managed to hit and poison Thok. However, protection from poison negates poison already in the system, so I cast it on my next turn.
With the otyugh out of the way, we made our way to chest. It was also trapped, this time with an arrow mimicking Melf's acid arrow. It contained mixed coins, and another random magic item: a cloak of elvenkind. We decided to give it to Sandi.
We'll be reaching level 6 at the start of next session and taking a long rest before going through the portal and on to the next stage of our journey.
We reached the room below the crane. The floor was covered in mist up to three-feet deep. Thok managed to waft some away with a few waves of his shield and a successful athletics check. There was nothing of interest under the mist. We crossed the room headed towards the portal room, when Pharblex Spattergoo and his honor guard attacked us. Pharblex was a larger than average bullywug with some spellcasting ability and wearing the jaws of some fanged aquatic creature as a headdress.
Despite the mass of bullywugs, twelve all together plus Pharbles, the fight did not last long. Spirit guardians, my premiere crowd-clearing spell can last up to 10 minutes! So I still had it up for this fight, catching almost half, including Pharblex, in the initial wave. Censura also manged to clear a clump, and do a fair bit of damage to Pharlbex, with a well placed burning hands spell. The positioning of the bullywugs forced an unfortunate splitting of the party. However, they ended up being pushovers. Censura activated his dagger of venom in anticipation of stabbing Pharblex with it, but never managed to make an attack.
We found Pharblexes lair and a chest trapped with a dead fall dropping clay pots filled with a hallucinagenic compound that made the victim think they were a frog. According to the text of the adventure, the chest was otherwise empty. D.J., however, decided that the designers had been too stingy with the magic items, so he rolled to have one randomly be found within: a wand of winter, which looks and feels like an icicle and casts various ice-themed spells: ray of frost, sleet storm, and ice storm.
Wands, and magic items in general, bear some discussion at this point. First, 5e and encounters have returned to the more old school method of magic items where the details are DM-facing. However, D.J. has opted for a model like 4e: just give us the rules for how they work so we can use them without having to refer to him to look it up. I prefer this method, both as player and as DM. It saves me work as a DM, and as a player it shows that the game designers trust me to not abuse the system. Don't get me wrong, there are good reasons to keep the exact mechanics of a magic item obfuscated from players. But those are narrative reasons, so the rules usually amount to "it does what you want it to do, customized for maximum entertainment value." (Or at least that's how they ought to read. Other DMs will argue that there are other reason; none of them are good.)
But back to wands. Some wands, like the wand of magic missile and the wand of winter are available for use by characters regardless of spellcasting capability. In this case, the to-hit rolls and save DCs for the wand are determined by the wand, not the wielder. This being the case, once we had a chance to identify it during a short rest, the wand was given to me.
We took that short rest to identify the wand after returning Pharblex's headdress to Dralmorrar. He then took us up on an offer to take down the otyugh in the ruined tower. He opted to leave the spectres at the top of the same tower alone.
We positioned ourselves at the entrance to the tower and the pile of rubbish housing the otyugh. We sent Egan to find a sturdy board, planning to use it to reach a chest perched precariously on some broken, rotted rafters on the tower's second floor. As Egan ran to fetch the board, however, a straggler band of bullywugs appeared in the outer barbican to flank us.
I was not having any of that shit. I used 4 of the wand of winter's 7 charges to hit them with Ice Storm. Although its damage is a bit lackluster compared to fireball (4d6 cold damage and 2d8 bludgeoning, leaving behind difficult terrain), it still did the job, dropping all the bullywugs in one round, allowing us to focus on the otyugh.
The otyugh even contact Sandi and Thok with telepathy, pointing out how terrible it was of us to come into its lair and start attacking it. My friend Steve S. would pull similar tricks in his game--when looting corpses we would stumble upon cards from children reading, "I miss you, Daddy. I hope your extra hours at guard duty will pay for my operation." In case, through focused fire we managed to deal over 170 points of damage to the otyugh over the course of two rounds. It still managed to get in a few hits on its turn with multiattack. It even managed to hit and poison Thok. However, protection from poison negates poison already in the system, so I cast it on my next turn.
With the otyugh out of the way, we made our way to chest. It was also trapped, this time with an arrow mimicking Melf's acid arrow. It contained mixed coins, and another random magic item: a cloak of elvenkind. We decided to give it to Sandi.
We'll be reaching level 6 at the start of next session and taking a long rest before going through the portal and on to the next stage of our journey.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Castle Assault, Part V
Before we managed to get our long rest, Dralmorrar came to us with another offer. He realized that we would have better luck taking out Pharblex with Sandi alive and well. So he offered to have has leave half the cost of a scroll of raise dead in escrow and allow us to use to bring Sandi back before we tackled the bullywug shaman in his cavern lair. We took the offer, drawing most of the funds from Sandi's treasure and dividing the remainder between Thok, Censura, and myself. After Dralmorrar made it clear that this was alliance of convenience, I decided to do the casting. While I did that, and Sandi was recovering from being brought back to life, Thok and Censura helped the remaining lizardfolk clean up the mess in the castle. Or at least, Thok helped while Censura tried to spend time with Daisy, only to chased off by Mrs. Pattinow.
Towards the end of the day, Green Imsa arrived riding on a hippogriff. She was still green, but she brought along the resurrected boy: Egan. He was now going to be serving as our page. He was an eager, if naive young lad. Thok and I did explain to him that adventuring is dangerous. I also took a moment to let the other party members know that we should not treat him like Nodwick. Imsa had another piece of good news: the elf prince had his curse lifted and had named us lords in his restored kingdom.
Dralmorrar gave us a map of the cavern beneath the castle. The most direct route to Pharlbex's lair involved a treasure crane. We decided to take a round about route before taking another long rest.
We took Egan, and two of our remaining lizardfolk followers: Snapjaw and the newly christened Slime-Eater, along with us. We explored a small side cavern, finding a gray ooze, which Sandi managed to finish off in one turn. The cave was also filled with treasure.
We wound our way through the caves, finding a big pool of mud the bullywugs used for ritual bathing (according to Snapjaw, anyway). We quickly dispatched a pair of bullywug guards stationed there. Past the mud pool, we found a room swarming with centipedes, but we were able to notice that they fled from fire, so we used lit torches to disperse the swarms before they could coalesce.
Finally, we came to a cavern with a large lake. We turned down a side passage toward a smaller body of water, only to find two more bullywug guards that were soon backed up by giant frogs the lake. Lots of giant frogs from the lake. Fortunately, we managed to protect our hirelings from the brunt of the assault. I can't stress enough how good area of effect spells are in these situations. And while our best AOEs represent our most significant investments of resources, they are worth it. None-the-less, the frogs did get some hits in, using bites to grapple and restrain Snapjaw and me. What was amazing, is that we had a grappling creature without having to read a second miniature rule book detailing how it worked.
The time progression certainly proves a key difference in play between 5th and 4th. In 4th, characters were more powerful, but progressed more evenly as they leveled. In 5th, the characters are much weaker at lower levels, but certain points in the progression lead to leaps in capability. The fact that reaching 5th level defines the start of the second tier in this edition has been proven out.
When we return, our heroes will have finally met Pharblex, and killed him.
Towards the end of the day, Green Imsa arrived riding on a hippogriff. She was still green, but she brought along the resurrected boy: Egan. He was now going to be serving as our page. He was an eager, if naive young lad. Thok and I did explain to him that adventuring is dangerous. I also took a moment to let the other party members know that we should not treat him like Nodwick. Imsa had another piece of good news: the elf prince had his curse lifted and had named us lords in his restored kingdom.
Dralmorrar gave us a map of the cavern beneath the castle. The most direct route to Pharlbex's lair involved a treasure crane. We decided to take a round about route before taking another long rest.
We took Egan, and two of our remaining lizardfolk followers: Snapjaw and the newly christened Slime-Eater, along with us. We explored a small side cavern, finding a gray ooze, which Sandi managed to finish off in one turn. The cave was also filled with treasure.
We wound our way through the caves, finding a big pool of mud the bullywugs used for ritual bathing (according to Snapjaw, anyway). We quickly dispatched a pair of bullywug guards stationed there. Past the mud pool, we found a room swarming with centipedes, but we were able to notice that they fled from fire, so we used lit torches to disperse the swarms before they could coalesce.
Finally, we came to a cavern with a large lake. We turned down a side passage toward a smaller body of water, only to find two more bullywug guards that were soon backed up by giant frogs the lake. Lots of giant frogs from the lake. Fortunately, we managed to protect our hirelings from the brunt of the assault. I can't stress enough how good area of effect spells are in these situations. And while our best AOEs represent our most significant investments of resources, they are worth it. None-the-less, the frogs did get some hits in, using bites to grapple and restrain Snapjaw and me. What was amazing, is that we had a grappling creature without having to read a second miniature rule book detailing how it worked.
The time progression certainly proves a key difference in play between 5th and 4th. In 4th, characters were more powerful, but progressed more evenly as they leveled. In 5th, the characters are much weaker at lower levels, but certain points in the progression lead to leaps in capability. The fact that reaching 5th level defines the start of the second tier in this edition has been proven out.
When we return, our heroes will have finally met Pharblex, and killed him.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Castle Assault, Part IV
Our battle at this session is an object lesson in why you always need a tank. Joseph wasn't feeling well, so Thok was absent.
After we re-grouped following the battle in the cultist barracks, Snapjaw and thirty or so of his lizardfolk emerged from the bullywug barracks victorious. Despite a few being badly injured, they volunteered to assault the cultists' tower while we went into the keep to attack the head of the cult.
It turns out, they came to us. As we approached the door to the central keep, a pair of invisible attackers ambushed us. Fortunately, thanks to his feats Corrin couldn't be surprised, and managed to beat the attackers on initiative. He managed to stun one of the attackers: the red wizard Azbara Jos. Corrin managed to both stun him, and disrupt his concentration. We actually missed the concentration check right after the attack, so Dralmorar, the other attacker, got in a shot he should not have. He ended up attacking me, but I survived the initial assault. Finally, two gargoyles swooped down off the roof and landed behind cover.
We managed to make some progress in the first normal round, doing some more damage to Azbara, maintaining the stun lock on him, and getting an attack in on Dralmorar. Then two more gargoyles flew in Rezmir, who proceeded to use her breath weapon, dropping Sandi and doing quite a bit of damage to Corrin. By this time, I had been knocked out as well.
D.J. Did offer one option for me to take: having Jamna Gleamsilver show up and have me control her. Ultimately, the turn I took with her ended in a futile charm person spell.
Corrin and Censura did manage one thing: they dropped Azbara Jos and injured most of the gargoyles with a fireball and lured Rezmir away. Although this left poor Sandi a charred corpse, I managed to get a Hail Mary 20 on a death saving throw, which meant I was conscious with 1 hp. I stood up and dropped another gargoyle.
Despite having the upper hand, Rezmir grabbed the unconscious Azbara and flew away with her gargoyles. At this point, Dralmorar offered a cease fire and a truce. Apparently, our ability to win over the lizardfolk had impressed him, and he's not a fan of Tiamat.
Sanpjaw and his lizardfolk emerged victorious from the cultists' tower along with Thok. They saw Rezmir flying into the caves below the castle. If we followed her and took out the bullywug leader, Pharblex Spattergoo, Dralmorrar even offered to bring Sandi back to life.
I'm guessing that Paul may end up playing Jamna next session until we can complete Dralmorar's quest.
After we re-grouped following the battle in the cultist barracks, Snapjaw and thirty or so of his lizardfolk emerged from the bullywug barracks victorious. Despite a few being badly injured, they volunteered to assault the cultists' tower while we went into the keep to attack the head of the cult.
It turns out, they came to us. As we approached the door to the central keep, a pair of invisible attackers ambushed us. Fortunately, thanks to his feats Corrin couldn't be surprised, and managed to beat the attackers on initiative. He managed to stun one of the attackers: the red wizard Azbara Jos. Corrin managed to both stun him, and disrupt his concentration. We actually missed the concentration check right after the attack, so Dralmorar, the other attacker, got in a shot he should not have. He ended up attacking me, but I survived the initial assault. Finally, two gargoyles swooped down off the roof and landed behind cover.
We managed to make some progress in the first normal round, doing some more damage to Azbara, maintaining the stun lock on him, and getting an attack in on Dralmorar. Then two more gargoyles flew in Rezmir, who proceeded to use her breath weapon, dropping Sandi and doing quite a bit of damage to Corrin. By this time, I had been knocked out as well.
D.J. Did offer one option for me to take: having Jamna Gleamsilver show up and have me control her. Ultimately, the turn I took with her ended in a futile charm person spell.
Corrin and Censura did manage one thing: they dropped Azbara Jos and injured most of the gargoyles with a fireball and lured Rezmir away. Although this left poor Sandi a charred corpse, I managed to get a Hail Mary 20 on a death saving throw, which meant I was conscious with 1 hp. I stood up and dropped another gargoyle.
Despite having the upper hand, Rezmir grabbed the unconscious Azbara and flew away with her gargoyles. At this point, Dralmorar offered a cease fire and a truce. Apparently, our ability to win over the lizardfolk had impressed him, and he's not a fan of Tiamat.
Sanpjaw and his lizardfolk emerged victorious from the cultists' tower along with Thok. They saw Rezmir flying into the caves below the castle. If we followed her and took out the bullywug leader, Pharblex Spattergoo, Dralmorrar even offered to bring Sandi back to life.
I'm guessing that Paul may end up playing Jamna next session until we can complete Dralmorar's quest.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Castle Assault, Part III
We started off the session by resolving the initial round of the off-screen lizardfolk and bullywug battle. A few Charisma rolls and Perception rolls determined that the lizardfolk out-numbered the bullywugs by a tremendous amount and quickly defeated them without the cult leaders in the main keep realizing what had happened.
The first event that happened to us directly to us was Daisy, the young kitchen maid, arriving to retrieve the slightly lost and scatter-brained Mrs. Pattinow, reminding her that they needed to finish getting food ready down in the kitchen. So a pack of blood-stained and muddy adventurers got to witness the kitchen staff discussing their duties. Sort of a Game of Thrones meets Downton Abbey.
Moving on from there, we climbed to the third floor. We found it to be lavishly decorated with wood paneling, plush carpets, and a pair of onyx dragon statues flanking the stairs. They were valuable, but also 400 pounds each. We moved further into the room and found another pair of statues flanking a passage further into the suit of rooms. These "statues" sprang to life and attacked. These were ambush drakes, critters we had battled back at the dragon hatchery. It was short battle, and in retrospect I probably used more spells than were necessary. Only Censura took any damage.
Beyond the drakes, we found a sitting room and an unused storage room. Despite the morphing he's gone through, Corrin still had a larcenous streak and took a comfy pillow from the sitting room. We also found a lusciously appointed bedroom complete with two wardrobes, one with a painting of Tiamat on the doors. Thok opened the wardrobe, unleashing a spray of acid that filled the room. Our hit points were a bit low, so the acid spray had a good chance of leading to a TPK. Ultimately, we found some now acid damaged treasure in the wardrobe along with a suit of resalable scale armor on a stand in the bedroom. We came to the conclusion we had ruined Rezmir's bedroom. We barricaded ourselves in a passed a short rest. Censura finally identified his dagger of venom and also bonded to it as his pact weapon.
As we left the tower, a lizardfolk reported on their progress, and suggested me move on to taking care of Dralmorrar. We passed the kitchen on our way to the next area, once again meeting Mrs. Pattinow and Daisy along with the dwarf chef as they were bringing food to a meeting of the cult leaders in the observatory.
In our final encounter, we entered the main cultist barracks, finding twelve low-level cultists and four more of those pesky dragonclaws. Thankfully, Thok blocked the door and forced the bulk of the enemies to find an alternate way around through the inner courtyard. Thok also used the Dodge action. In this edition, it inflicts disadvantage on all attack rolls against the character taking it. It would have helped Thok tank against those dragonclaws. Unfortunately, none ever engaged him. When the cultists and dragonclaws clumped at the passage between to outer courtyard and inner courtyard, Censura fireballed them. Of course, they also took the time to grab a guard drake waiting in the inner courtyard, and it entered the fight. It was a longer battle, mostly from the round-about path the cultists took. But we managed to prevent the dragonclaws from doing their gobs of damage. Two cultists survived our counter-assault, and while Thok managed to kill one of them, the other escaped. So it seems we have lost our element of surprise.
The first event that happened to us directly to us was Daisy, the young kitchen maid, arriving to retrieve the slightly lost and scatter-brained Mrs. Pattinow, reminding her that they needed to finish getting food ready down in the kitchen. So a pack of blood-stained and muddy adventurers got to witness the kitchen staff discussing their duties. Sort of a Game of Thrones meets Downton Abbey.
Moving on from there, we climbed to the third floor. We found it to be lavishly decorated with wood paneling, plush carpets, and a pair of onyx dragon statues flanking the stairs. They were valuable, but also 400 pounds each. We moved further into the room and found another pair of statues flanking a passage further into the suit of rooms. These "statues" sprang to life and attacked. These were ambush drakes, critters we had battled back at the dragon hatchery. It was short battle, and in retrospect I probably used more spells than were necessary. Only Censura took any damage.
Beyond the drakes, we found a sitting room and an unused storage room. Despite the morphing he's gone through, Corrin still had a larcenous streak and took a comfy pillow from the sitting room. We also found a lusciously appointed bedroom complete with two wardrobes, one with a painting of Tiamat on the doors. Thok opened the wardrobe, unleashing a spray of acid that filled the room. Our hit points were a bit low, so the acid spray had a good chance of leading to a TPK. Ultimately, we found some now acid damaged treasure in the wardrobe along with a suit of resalable scale armor on a stand in the bedroom. We came to the conclusion we had ruined Rezmir's bedroom. We barricaded ourselves in a passed a short rest. Censura finally identified his dagger of venom and also bonded to it as his pact weapon.
As we left the tower, a lizardfolk reported on their progress, and suggested me move on to taking care of Dralmorrar. We passed the kitchen on our way to the next area, once again meeting Mrs. Pattinow and Daisy along with the dwarf chef as they were bringing food to a meeting of the cult leaders in the observatory.
In our final encounter, we entered the main cultist barracks, finding twelve low-level cultists and four more of those pesky dragonclaws. Thankfully, Thok blocked the door and forced the bulk of the enemies to find an alternate way around through the inner courtyard. Thok also used the Dodge action. In this edition, it inflicts disadvantage on all attack rolls against the character taking it. It would have helped Thok tank against those dragonclaws. Unfortunately, none ever engaged him. When the cultists and dragonclaws clumped at the passage between to outer courtyard and inner courtyard, Censura fireballed them. Of course, they also took the time to grab a guard drake waiting in the inner courtyard, and it entered the fight. It was a longer battle, mostly from the round-about path the cultists took. But we managed to prevent the dragonclaws from doing their gobs of damage. Two cultists survived our counter-assault, and while Thok managed to kill one of them, the other escaped. So it seems we have lost our element of surprise.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Gameplay: Rocket Tag!
After twenty or so sessions of play, I can definitely say that 5e features a lot of rocket tag combat. The term describes combats where the first team to hit generally wins. Of course, as with any format that uses randomization, sometimes a few lucky rolls can turn the tables. But in that absence of that, a DM wishing to avoid a TPK will have to constuct a convincing out to save an unlucky party, particularly at lower levels.
Generally speaking, this makes 5e more like 3e. In 3e, damage values climbed rapidly compared to hit points. In 4e, damage and hit point values scaled closer together. Part of how the damage out-stripped hit points in 3e was the bonus scale, where the attack bonus curve eclipsed the AC curve. However, for saving throws and their DCs, the bonus of saving throws eventually eclipsed the DCs, particularly for spell casters. Also, the way save DCs were calculated meant that most casters wouldn't cast their lower level spells. 4e flattened the bonus curves and normalized them. 5e flattened the curves even further. Barring magical intervention, your attack will cap +11. A character proficient in heavy armor using a shield will cap at AC 20. A spell caster's saving throw DC will cap at 19. The saving throw bonus will cap at +11, like attacks. The highest level monsters released so far are Tiamat and the Tarrasque, both with AC 25.
There a benefits and drawbacks to rocket tagging. Generally, it keeps combat shorter and encourages pro-active tactics, but it heightens the importance of a good initiative score and, failing that, being able to overwhelm your opponents. Non-rocket tag combats, however, allow for longer and more tactical encounters. They also emphasize more defensive strategies.
Ultimately, its more of a subjective preference that an objective statement of value. A more simulationist stance would prefer rocket tag, since most fights really are decided by who hits first. From a gamist perspective, something that allows a more tactical approach offers the players more options. From a narrativist perspective, it really matters how much the combat and narrative are tied together, and whether a shorter or longer fight makes a more interesting narrative.
A good system to illustrate a narrativist take is FATE. FATE's conflict resolution is technically rocket-tag, but you can opt to remain in a conflict by taking consequences that are as much mechanical effects as they are character traits and story hooks.
I've come to find I'm not much a simulationist and more of a gamist, but as time has gone on my preference is increasingly for narrativist. So I find the rocket tag by turns irksome (for example, when I get rocket tagged out of the battle before getting to take a turn) and a boon (for example, when we manage to quickly and efficiently end a combat and get to move onto the next part of the story).
Generally speaking, this makes 5e more like 3e. In 3e, damage values climbed rapidly compared to hit points. In 4e, damage and hit point values scaled closer together. Part of how the damage out-stripped hit points in 3e was the bonus scale, where the attack bonus curve eclipsed the AC curve. However, for saving throws and their DCs, the bonus of saving throws eventually eclipsed the DCs, particularly for spell casters. Also, the way save DCs were calculated meant that most casters wouldn't cast their lower level spells. 4e flattened the bonus curves and normalized them. 5e flattened the curves even further. Barring magical intervention, your attack will cap +11. A character proficient in heavy armor using a shield will cap at AC 20. A spell caster's saving throw DC will cap at 19. The saving throw bonus will cap at +11, like attacks. The highest level monsters released so far are Tiamat and the Tarrasque, both with AC 25.
There a benefits and drawbacks to rocket tagging. Generally, it keeps combat shorter and encourages pro-active tactics, but it heightens the importance of a good initiative score and, failing that, being able to overwhelm your opponents. Non-rocket tag combats, however, allow for longer and more tactical encounters. They also emphasize more defensive strategies.
Ultimately, its more of a subjective preference that an objective statement of value. A more simulationist stance would prefer rocket tag, since most fights really are decided by who hits first. From a gamist perspective, something that allows a more tactical approach offers the players more options. From a narrativist perspective, it really matters how much the combat and narrative are tied together, and whether a shorter or longer fight makes a more interesting narrative.
A good system to illustrate a narrativist take is FATE. FATE's conflict resolution is technically rocket-tag, but you can opt to remain in a conflict by taking consequences that are as much mechanical effects as they are character traits and story hooks.
I've come to find I'm not much a simulationist and more of a gamist, but as time has gone on my preference is increasingly for narrativist. So I find the rocket tag by turns irksome (for example, when I get rocket tagged out of the battle before getting to take a turn) and a boon (for example, when we manage to quickly and efficiently end a combat and get to move onto the next part of the story).
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