Getting Out of the House

We last left our heroes reeling from a long, tough battle. So they took a short rest.

Alec returned with a new player: Jose. He made a human fighter called Simon. He took the Duelist fighting style against my suggestion to take the protection style. The duelist style really works the best with an Eldritch Knight, since you need the free hand to cast spells. It was a quick and dirty creation job, but getting new players into the game sooner rather than later is better. Joseph and Nathan couldn't make it, so they were down two of their four arcane casters. However, Andrew and Ethan made it, so they had an extra off-tank caster and a tank. Being down the arcane casters, however, may have been a benefit. To novice DMs: when designing and running encounters party composition is an important thing to remember.

As they finished their short rest, they finished looting the footlocker in the bad chamber. They found a cloak of protection, which went to Tathora. There was also a chain shirt, a once amazing piece of armor nerfed a fair bit with edition changes. They also found a spellbook that will be useful to Cugel and Lop once they have a chance to copy spells.

They finished exploring the first basement level, finding cultist and initiate quarters and a well. They found treasure, the most useful of which was a silvered short sword. I reminded the party that Ravenloft, being a gothic horror setting, werewolves and the like are likely in the offing. Amrus ended up keeping the sword.

They finally reached level B2. The first room was a reliquary filled with grisly, but otherwise worthless trophies: a mummified goblin hand, a nothic's eye, an aspergillum made from bone, a cloak made of stitched ghoul skin, among others. Cugel took the cloak, Alec's reasoning being that as a Necromancer, he might as well look as metal as possible (he's not wrong; all the best necromancers look like they walked off the cover of a death metal album).

They went down a short corridor that descended into a flooded chamber blocked by a rusty portcullis. Lop squeezed himself through the bars enough to spot a wheel to raise the portcullis. But, without mage hand, he didn't have a way to work the wheel. Ultimately, Tarkir lifted it up with brute force. The room beyond was the source of the chanting, which the party could now make out as "He is the Ancient. He is the Land,": a flooded room with a five-foot high ledge around the outer wall, a raised dais with an alter in the middle, and a hole in the wall filled with a pile of refuse.

The adventure assumed the PCs would examine the altar on the dais. Adventure writers aren't always correct. This party avoided the dais and searched the refuse pile. They found nothing of value, so Rolan cast produce flame and threw the fire into the pile. The adventure writers did figure something like this might happen.

The refuse pile turned out to be a shambling mound the cultists had dubbed Lorghoth. If the party had gone up on the dais, the chanting would have switched to "One must die!" and when the (presumably) mostly good-aligned party backed down without taking a life, Lorghoth would have awakened and attacked. Instead it woke up when the other triggering event occurred: someone attacking the pile. I still hand the chant switch to "One must die!" as the battle started. I figured that they would need to kite the shambling mound. When you have an eight person party, however, they tend to take the third option: swarm it.

Shambling mounds are Challenge 5. Most of this is in the hit points: it has 16d10+48 hit die (averaging 136 hp). It has an AC of 15, so assuming a +5 attack modifier, the 2nd level PCs are hitting it around 55% of the time. Then there's its attack: +7 to hit with 2d8+4 damage, which it can use twice on the same target and follow-up with an engulf if both attacks hit, which does an extra 2d8+4 a round until the engulfed target escapes. It's also resistant to fire and cold damage and absorbs lightning damage (this last part would have made Ap cry, since he's so reliant on it).

I was expecting to kill a party member a round until they started kiting the monster (it's Move is only 20ft). Instead, it missed with its second slam attack against Sarra, then failed a pair of saves against Cugel's new favorite spell: Tasha's hideous laughter. Thus they managed to kill the "boss" with a minimum of resources.

Which was good. This adventure was set-up like a rogue-like. First you get in, then you need to get out. A party of mostly evil PCs willing to sacrifice a member on the altar would have gotten out scott-free. Those kind of parties are, thankfully, rare. So on returning to the attic of the house, they found things had changed. The windows were bricked up, the inner walls had become rotted, brittle, and filled with rats, and all the doors were replace with a platform gaming classic: scything blades of death. The blades require either a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check or an Intelligence check (both DC 15) to navigate without taking 2d10 damage. Technically, it took 1 minute to make the Intelligence check, but since the game called for going round by round at this point, and I didn't want a player sitting doing nothing for 10 turns to use a better ability to accomplishing their goals. The walls are easy to break: AC 5 with 5 hit points, but each 5-foot section broken through unleashes a swarm of rats (these resulted in a near TPK for the first level Tyranny of Dragons party before I joined). This party had less trouble with the rat swarms. I'm guessing being level 2 (and being a little more durable and having a few more options) and there being 8 people helped. Actually, only 6 people. Andrew and Ethan had to meet a curfew, so they left after the shambling mound was killed.

The last discovery awaited them on the lower floors: chambers with fire places were now filled with poisonous smoke. Jose, being a new player, wanted to test the boundaries of the "you can explore everywhere" in a table-top as opposed to a CRPG, and went into these rooms. He failed a DC 10 Con save and took 1d10 poison damage. He learned that sometimes, description tells you to not explore places for a reason.

All in all, they managed to escape the house with only one casualty: poor Tathora was reduced to 0 hp by the last set of scything blades on the way out the house. Fortunately, escaping the house was a milestone, so the party reached third level. I helped level-up everyone before we broke for the night, with the last "shot" being the battered party back on the streets of the village of Barovia and spotting a group of villagers exchanging money and muttering to each other.

In helping the new players level-up, Alec and I suggested that Hillary and Jose take the Champion fighter archetype. It's the simplest archetype, making it good for new players. But it lacks something veteran players often enjoy: a wide range of options, and a change in the power curve. I'll pause to examine the fighter archetypes before concluding.

The Champion increases the critical threat range to 19-20 at 3rd level and then 18-20 at 15th. It then enhances Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution checks at 7th level, combined with a bonus to jumping distance. Then at 10th level, you pick an additional fighting style. Lastly, at 18th level, you can regain hit points at the start of each of your turns if you're between 0 and half your total hp. It's a very "power" oriented path, but it lacks subtlety or adaptability. The only real choice: the new fighting style, isn't much of a choice. Your initial fighting style guides so many choices right away: what kind of weapons and equipment you'll take and how you'll contribute in combat. As previously said, the Duelist style: +2 to damage when wielding a one handed weapon and nothing in the off-hand, is best for an Eldritch Knight; you need the empty hand to cast spells. The Archery one (+2 to attack with ranged weapons) is good for the Eldritch Knight as well: casting enhances your ranged attack options, making you a better sniper. The Protection style (spending a reaction to inflict disadvantage on an attack on an adjacent target as long as you have a shield), Great Weapon Fighting (re-roll damage dice that come up 1 or 2, accepting the re-roll while using a weapon in two-hands) and the Two-Weapon Fighting (adding your ability modifier to the off-hand weapon when two-weapon fighting) are okay for Champion. Two-Weapon Fighting doubles critical chance, but with the Battle Master Archetype, its two chances for your maneuvers to hit. The only good second choice for a fighting style is Defense: +1 to AC as long as you're wearing armor. Few warm blooded players will take a turtle option for their initial style, but at higher levels a chance to be hit a little less in combat will be a good choice. It's also the only option that wouldn't force a character to change their weapon load-out mid-fight, something a bit easier in this edition, but still a bit problematic.

Well, the adventure has opened up into Sandbox mode starting next week. It will be interesting to see where the PCs go.