Session 6: 2/27/2021
We jumped right into the remainder of the dragon battle. After the artificer went, I had Bahadural give his little speech and then cast Wall of Thorns. Hit two characters, both saved, 23 damage. The party did some moderate damage that round, but not a lot (ok, maybe 70 out of ~200hp left); the barbarian had to get closer and the paladin lost his turn due to losing Haste. At the end of the round (his initiative), I had the dragon land so that he could use his Stone of Earth Elemental Control to summon an earth elemental. This hurt more than it helped, as he took more attacks from everyone. The life cleric mass-cured everyone for 19hp each, and the Paladin Hasted himself and headed over to get towards the fight.
The (zealot) barbarian got right up in the dragon’s face and attacked him, doing damage. Tail slap for damage. Bite for damage. Claw for damage... down to 3hp. Crown of Stars zap to 0hp, DC 10 CON save and the barbarian is still at 1hp. Claw for damage to 0hp, CON save, barbarian is still at 1hp.
At this point, Bahadural was down to less than 150hp; his next legendary action was to use the wing attack/move half speed effect. Two of the three PCs next to him saved, and he took about 65 points of damage from OAs provoked by the movement. At this point, he was really low, and I was going to have him completely fly away... but the paladin, hasted, used his move action and hasted action to move and dash up the tree next to him, then try to jump on the dragon’s back. He’s jumping upwards while climbing to land on a dragon – Athletics DC 20 – fail. “Ok, when I see that my jump isn’t working, I misty step.” Bonus action used.
What’s left? The regular full attack action...on a paladin. Smite. Dragon has 20hp left. “STOP!”
The party earned the sword after all.
Ssword
Artifact, requires attunement
This +3 mithril short sword’s surface has a snake-scale pattern on the surface, and is tinged green. The crossguard is made from a pair of giant fangs, and the pommel is an emerald set in gold.
True Poison. When you strike a target, it takes 2d12 poison damage or acid damage, whichever it is less resistant or more vulnerable to.
Divinity Sense. While you hold the weapon, you are aware of the location and position of all deities and divine spellcasters within 120’. At a range of 30’ or less, your awareness becomes perfect, granting you Blindsense against such creatures and thus the ability to attack without being hindered by Blindness or Illusion-based defenses.
Godslayer. When making an attack with this weapon against a divine creature or spellcaster whose spells come from a deity, your critical hit range is increased by 2.
Mind Shield. The wielder benefits from the effects of a Mind Blank spell, becoming immune to psychic damage, charm & domination effects, divination spells, and anything that would sense its emotions or thoughts, even when cast with the power of a Wish spell.
Sentience. Ssword is a sentient lawful evil weapon with an Intelligence of 10, a Wisdom of 12, and a Charisma of 14. It has hearing and Darkvision out to a distance of 60’.
The weapon can speak, read, and understand all languages spoken within the region, and can telepathically communicate with its wielder in a sibilant, snake-like voice. Once per day, it can cast See Invisibility on itself and its wielder.
This weapon is the legacy of a last attempt to stop the Aarakocra, and he’s been guarding it. There’s more plot stuff associated with it, which hasn’t come up yet.
So guess who gets the short sword? The barbarian! He thinks the 2d12 will balance out the loss of Great Weapon Master and will let him hit more consistently. There are two other candidates in line in case he ends up not using it. Interestingly, the bonus attack from GWM (on a crit or kill) applies even if not wielding a big weapon.
Dmitri introduces himself to the sword as Kingslayer; in the discussion of killing gods and priests, the sword asks if he’ll do it intelligently. “More with noise and extreme violence and enthusiasm” is the answer.
We now introduce (via convenient timing and Sending) the new party member, a Goliath Hunter Ranger. Magic items of note are the +1 quiver just like the others got, a +2 Bow of the Woodlands (the staff but converted – and oops, free Pass Without Trace always), and the two Shark Panoply items so far. He also gets handed the Bracers of Archery by the artificer, and inherits the Mirrored Helm from the barbarian, who no longer needs it. At level 13 with Dex 20, Archery Fighting Style, and gear, he’s got +15 to hit and +10 to damage. I wouldn’t be surprised if he takes Sharpshooter later.
The group heads back to their little buried bunker, enlarges it a bit, and decides what to do. After considering and dismissing the idea of going back to the “are you worthy?” wizard and rubbing in her face that they were, in fact, worthy, and look at the shiny sword...they decide to instead head north to check out the slightly more isolated Aarakocra city near the Cursed Forest. This is, in fact, the least-populated one, although they don’t realize it.
They don’t explore in transit, just moving.
Random encounter: Tendriculous; they see it first and avoid
Random encounter: Small rust monster nest; “I’m bored, let’s kill them.” They have no non-magical gear at this point. It’s an extremely one-sided stomp.
They continue traveling north, randomly not encountering the Tortle Ranger Vampire whose territory they pass through the edge of.
Random encounter: Bee tree (large) – oddly enough, not 10 minutes after a discussion of using beeswax to make carbon fiber.
Random encounter: Two swarms of bugs carrying a disease; the bugs fail to hit. They are immune to weapon damage, but 2d12 acid/poison damage is surprisingly effective, as is the paladin’s radiant damage + thunder axe. The artificer was also a bug-zapper for this.
Random encounter near their destination: Aarakocra patrol flying above the forest. There’s debate about what to do, and I end up setting a 2 minute timer for them to decide (the patrol is moving). Ultimately, they’re too close to the Aarakocra city and don’t want escapees to give away their position or existence. It was a hard choice.
They don’t even know the name of the god whose temple they are going to (didn’t ask/didn’t stop to ask Yuan-ti). Tezcatlipoca is the god of night, cold, and death/undeath. Hold the night bit in your head, it’ll be relevant soon.
They approach the map hex, which is mostly farms surrounding the village, garrison, and temple. After some discussion, the monk uses his Silver Raven figurine to do some aerial scouting to get the lay of the land and general locations (garrison 100-400, spots for 8-10 air-skiffs, temple away from city, etc.).
There’s a discussion here (not very serious) about plucking some Aarakocra, making disguises, and then “I’ll introduce myself as Aarakocra.”
The artificer has Arcane Eye (max range 18,000ft/1 hr) and wants to get close.
For some reason, they feel like they have to capture a structure to do recon from, and decide to capture a farmhouse reasonably close to town. The party’s stealth (with Pass Without Trace) ranges from 18 to 40 so they of course manage to sneak close in the dark; most of the patrols, and the air-skiffs, are daytime events anyway.
They burst into the house; I have them roll initiative, and one of the commoners inside wins; the commoner goes, flips something around on the wall so that the mirror facing the wall now faces the room, and then surrenders. I rolled randomly and there were 2 adults and 2 kids in the house, all Aarakocra.
Inspired by some stuff I read including a short story, Tezcatlipoca is served by mirror-walking Shadow Cats (kind of similar to Shadow Fiends, but more dangerous) and has a general “mirror use” theme going on.
We have the only and biggest alignment discussion I’ve ever seen, lasting 10-15 minutes and relating to whether or not they will kill the captives. There were a couple of dares back and forth in character like “go ahead, stab me!”
Ultimately, they decide to not kill the captives. The LG paladin and life cleric probably would have stopped it anyway.
They discuss doing commerce-raiding, food-supply/supply chain disruptions, and being land pirates – no, privateers, as a king sent them on this mission.
The artificer sends in his Arcane Eye. I pretty much say “I haven’t gotten all of the details worked out, so just ask questions.” Garrison is verified at 200. He sends the eye into the temple and sees decorations of stars, big cats, lots of mirrors, and some undead. Then one of the shadow cats walks out of a mirror next to the invisible sensor and eats it.
It’s late, and I push for what the party is going to do. I have rolled while they weren’t paying attention, and after they got spotted in the mirror, they were scried. If they stayed put, 3 shadow cats would be moving towards them.
The current plan is they are going to try to raid the temple or town, and the monk (fast) is going to get hasted and then break off to start some fires in the fields elsewhere as a diversion. Since their presence is already somewhat known and shadow cats are en route, he’s probably going to have to fight one by himself between sessions. It’s CR 10 but best indoors and with allies, so he’ll likely win but get hurt badly.
They have decided to attack the temple of a god of night, cold, and death at night, in the darkness. It’s going to be pitch black inside and enemies are going to have advantage on a lot of things as a result. This is the one temple (of 5) in which a daytime attack is flat out always the best choice.
They’ll probably get in and out alive, but I’ll be surprised if they manage to kill the high priest and desecrate the altar. If they do, it’ll be a big accomplishment.
They’ll level up at the end of the overall encounter either way.
It was a fun and eventful session.
Session 6a: 3/6/21
At the end of last session, the monk decided to go start some fires as a diversion. He informed me earlier this week that he had a church commitment at the time of our next session, so I did a quick one-on-one with him to resolve what happens and why he’s not with the party when they hit the temple.
The party is approaching the temple from the southeast. They’re about 2 miles away (based on the distance required for Arcane Eye). At a normal travel time (25’ dwarf speed) they will get to the temple in about 45 minutes. After the mirror incident, 3 Shadow Cats were dispatched from the temple towards them, and are en route. Shadow Cats are CR 10 creatures, basically jaguars made of darkness, on-theme for Tezcatlipoca. They’re fast (50’), have 20 Dex, AC 19, a few minor immunities, and have 4d6 sneak attack, pack tactics, and a 30’ range version of the monk Shadow Step feature, plus the ability to travel via mirrors up to 500’ at a time. We started with 10 in the temple. They are substantial threats that can deal good damage, and can maneuver all over the temple basically at will due to the mirrors hanging there.
It is night time, probably around 9pm-11pm.
Knowing the monk player’s general plans, I pre-calculated everyone’s travel speeds to make things easier to track. Here’s what happened:
He started with 10 rounds of Haste from someone (Artificer?), and used that to dash ½ mile in 1 minute (Usain Bolt eat your heart out). He then spent the next 5 minutes running west to cover the next mile, putting him approximately due south of town. 6 minutes elapsed.
We had a short discussion of corn growing height, and I rolled to determine wind speed and direction. Ratel the monk then peeled off some dead corn leaves, made a pile, shortened a candle and put it next to the pile so it’d burn for only about 10 minutes before the fire reached the pile... then used one of his pints of oil to soak a 50’ rope and the pile, and strung the rope along the top of the corn for 50’. Candle was lit at 21 minutes elapsed time, triggering the fire at 31 minutes.
The Aarakocra garrison has a few soldiers fly around at night on patrol over the village, and they have some torches along the walls to make it easy to spot the movement of anyone or anything sneaking in, despite lacking Darkvision. Flying 50-150’ up, at night, how long does it take to spot a 50’ line of fire to the south, possibly with some trees in the way? Not long. Roll 1d4, 3. Fire spotted at 34 minutes. At a fly speed of 1000’/minute, it takes about 8 minutes to reach 1.5 miles south of town... so the very first soldier arrives at the first fire at minute 42... after a 50’ long strip of corn has been burning and spreading fire for 9 minutes.
Meanwhile, the monk runs west one mile, and starts setting up another one, which he ignites immediately at 39 minutes. This one is spotted 1 minute later, but with the greater distance, no Aarakocra can reach it until 50 minutes elapsed.
The Aarakocra don’t have Darkvision, and don’t carry signaling gear (lamps, etc.?) for long-distance signaling at night. Dancing Lights or Light works, but the first responders are generally the guys lower in the power structure who aren’t likely to be casters. They have two fires that are turning into major grass/corn fires, and a round-trip messenger time of 10 minutes and 16 minutes respectively. It’s going to take a lot of time and manpower to get blankets or buckets down there to try to contain the fires. Scrying has a casting time of 10 minutes, so it’s not great for emergency dispatching.
By 55 minutes in, the garrison is all wide awake, and the temple has been notified. They’re starting to move out to contain the fire, and everyone’s on alert. The temple sends 3 more shadow cats out to hunt, heading towards the western end of the western fire (at this point, regional scrying or mirror communication lets them figure out roughly where things are happening faster).
The cats arrive at the western fire area at 63 minutes in (travel speed is 100’ dash + 30’ shadow step per round). I roll perception checks and one of them spots the monk’s tracks. He wasn’t trying to be sneaky, and dashing through cornfields leaves tracks and sign. The shadow cats are somewhat lone operators, so only one pursues him. The others look around for other clues and are out of the picture for now.
Ratel, meanwhile, has moved west 5 miles, watches for aerial enemies, and then ignites a 3rd fire at 77 minutes. He’s now used up all 3 pints of oil.
He heads northwest into the edge of the adjacent hex, which is light jungle, and climbs a tree there. The shadow cat isn’t dashing, and arrives at about minute 95 (I gave it some pauses for tracking). The monk moves tree-to-tree as soon as he spots motion to try to get away (Acrobatics DC 15, 4 successes). It finds his tracks at the base of the first tree and searches...and with a 29 on its Perception score, it does beat his 19 on Hide, but with layers of tree limbs and stuff in the way, it takes time. He barely beats its stealth roll, and hears it coming up the tree he’s in. Instead of shooting at it with his longbow, he jumps 30’ down to land on a branch right next to it, dealing 3d6 damage, dex save half, in a 10’ radius thanks to his Skyfall boots. This doesn’t hurt the cat much, but does break the tree branch. He then falls the remaining 10’ to the ground, taking no damage from either fall due to the boots.
Cue initiative.
The cat shadow steps next to Ratel, biting for 24 damage (getting sneak attack due to advantage), but missing with a claw swipe. He can now see that it’s an unnaturally dark jaguar, seeming to drink in the light around it; there are only a few motes of light on its coat, like from distant, dying stars. Also, it’s trying to eat him. He counters with two swings of his flail and two kicks, connecting with one of each for a total of 26 damage.
The shadow cat then blinks out of sight, reappearing 30’ away and immediately charging him from behind. It hits with its claw attack (advantage/sneak attack), dealing 24 damage, and knocking him prone when he fails a save. It almost bites his leg, but misses. He stands up and counterstrikes, landing one flail strike and one punch for a total of 26 damage. The flail’s paralysis ability triggers, but the shadow cat saves.
On round 3, the shadow cat does the blink/charge thing again, hitting with both claw and bite for 27 damage; Ratel is able to keep on his feet this time, and then counters with two solid flail blows and one unarmed strikes, dealing a total of 46 damage. The shadow cat is now at 26/130hp, and Ratel is barely bloodied. The cat shadow steps away, and then dashes 100’.
With the hunt time involved, we are now at about 2 hours since the party split. It will take 24 more minutes for the badly injured shadow cat to arrive back at the temple... which the party will reach 45-1 hour of elapsed time in – so the cat is now totally irrelevant unless the party delays.
Ratel uses tree-to-tree movement to travel south for a while, trying to leave no tracks, and takes a short rest.
Here’s how this impacts the next session:
10 shadow cats at temple to start with; 3 dispatched toward party's captured house
-3 dispatched towards fire; 1 tracked Ratel
-2 more dispatched to western fire (I actually think I forgot to roll tracking for them, but they are not at the temple either way).
= net 2 Shadow Cats at temple, plus 3 more that may run into party.
Garrison and civilians are completely distracted with three fires to fight out of town.
Subtract 2 guards from prison/jailhouse.
Temple is on alert and will respond quickly. Priests who would previously have been in their rooms on "asleep" status are instead missing from temple, dispatched to fire and issues. The village is there to support the garrison and temple, so the priests aren’t just going to ignore a fire. This removes 4 acolytes and a senior priest from the battlefield.
I’m also going to rejigger enemy placements in the temple to reflect the alert status. They’ll collapse in on the party more quickly, making for a sharper fight.
Session 7: 3/27/21
Not attending: The ranger and the barbarian.
The previous session was cancelled due to a lot of people being busy – I didn’t want to run a 3-person party for this.
The monk’s player was here, and I gave him the option to go ahead and level up to 14 now and pretend that his one-on-one session didn’t happen; he and the group decided to use Sending (the cleric apparently did have it prepared) to coordinate meeting up. The party (paladin, cleric, artificer) fort up in the farmhouse to pass time. 15 minutes later, 2 Shadow Cats arrive. I had originally planned for 3, but cut to 2 due to party size. These were dispatched by the temple to check out the weird mirror activity (last session) and traveled in a straight line; had the party left, they may have not encountered them, depending on their course.
The artificer is on the roof and has 60’ darkvision. The other two are inside. The artificer barely makes the perception check to see the one of the Shadow Cats. Initiative is rolled, and he has a Shadow Cat next to him pretty suddenly – 50’ move + 30’ Shadow Step. The Shadow Cat has advantage on its next attack after Shadow Stepping, rolls well, and hits with both attacks including 4d6 sneak damage on one and 2d6 necrotic or cold (bite/claw). The Paladin Misty Steps up to the roof, misses with one attack and hits with the other, and then the other Shadow Cat “bamfs” next to him and does something similar. The cleric, down below, does not have any vertical mobility options. She casts Toll the Dead, but her target saves. There’s another round or so of attacks, and the artificer gets knocked down to 20 or 30hp (from max/total of 99). The farmhouse is 30’x30’, and there’s not room for the Shadow Cats to teleport, do a 20’ charge, and get the knockdown opportunity, but that’s okay.
The artificer uses the Stopwatch to activate Time Stop for 3 rounds, and uses the time to fly down into the farmhouse next to the cleric and cast Cure Wounds on himself 3 times. The Shadow Cat hunting him Shadow Steps next to him and attacks both the artificer and cleric. The other cat takes more hits from the Paladin including a smite or two, and ends up Shadow Stepping and dashing away with 15 hp left. The Paladin drops down into the building through the roof door (taking minor fall damage) to attack the remaining Shadow Cat. The artificer decides to fly up to try to spot and shoot the runner, eating a Natural 20 OA for 30-something damage and then not having the movement to get the black shadowy cat on a moonless night into Darkvision range.
The other shadow cat tries to escape the next round, but pursuit and Magic Missile does take off its remaining hit points.
Between Misty Step, smites, and healing, the party spent more than 10 spell slots on this encounter. I subtly reminded them that this was a scouting party.
The party leaves, with the cleric using Pass Without Trace (she has this as a result of stuff in Castle Dracula). They circle around to the north to meet up with the monk, noticing some fires off to the south of town in the process.
After some discussion, they decide that they do not have the levels and gear to take on the temple at this time. They short rest, and travel east into the Cursed Forest area, congratulating themselves on at least inconveniencing the Aarakocra. The Cursed Forest has lots of thick briars and brambles and is 100% difficult terrain. The party has already been adventuring for 4+ hours, and crossing the 12-mile difficult terrain hex will take 8 hours. They long rest.
This hex is a bit unusual, in that instead of “stuff to find” it is “after 2d6 hours, a group of Yuan-ti zombie assassins will attack the group, acting in coordination under Tezcatlipoca’s direction.” These are CR 8 assassins who deal 1d6+4 piercing + 1d6 cold + 5d6 poison damage (Con DC 15 half) + 4d6 sneak damage, with Assassinate, 2 attacks per round, and advantage on Initiative checks.
The monk is on watch and does not roll well on his Perception checks. Everyone is sleeping with their armor off. The monk gets to go (attacking one out of 5 zombie assassins), and then all of the assassins go next. A couple can’t reach the party in melee due to terrain, but others do. The cleric eats two crits, but her dwarven advantage on save vs poison + resistance cuts the 10d6 poison damage (I don’t double the poison damage on a crit; it’s 5d6 per hit) down to a manageable size. The paladin has no such resistance and takes 90-something damage.
This is the cleric’s first time taking a critical hit; since the very first Castle Dracula session (3rd level) she’s been wearing an Adamantine Breastplate.
The artificer wakes up, stands from prone, does the Iron Man 2 thing where his armor unfolds around him, then uses his action to grab the badly damaged cleric and haul her off the ground to a 15’ altitude with him. It was pretty neat.
The paladin, meanwhile, has about AC 13 or 14. He gets knocked to 0 and killed, then revivified, then knocked to 0 and nearly killed again. The monk stands over his 0-hp body (I decide this negates the advantage on melee attacks vs prone) and draws some of the fire. The party prevails, but the paladin now has two levels of exhaustion.
They discuss taking the yuan-ti bodies back to the yuan-ti for burial. A religion check informs them that hauling around bodies animated by an abnormally powerful (divine) process could be risky in terms of tracking, so they decide not to.
Long rests can be interrupted for only 1 hour, so they move 1 ½ miles away (the Paladin summons a Griffon to ride since his speed is halved). The monk, who has had 4 hours of elven trance already, keeps watch. It’s now daytime!
Two Aarakocra patrols pass overhead but don’t see them (50’ high creepy jungle trees mean they needed about a 21 to spot the party…close, but not quite). I ran this as “4d6 per hour, on a 1, there’s an Aarakocra patrol.” There’s an active search out for them.
They move on to the east into the next hex, and very quickly (4 hours) find an old abandoned tower (40’ diameter/30’ wide/2 floors) full of phase spiders. The artificer has been looking for something capable of shifting to the ethereal plane or casting plane shift since about the 2nd session to finish his extradimensional crafting workshop – he was happy to see these. With a Gem of True Seeing, Magic Missile, Spiritual Weapon (the cleric can’t see the target so she attacked with disadvantage, but it’s still force damage), and the paladin and monk being willing to invite attacks, they clean out the 8 Phase Spiders pretty quickly.
The party finds an old tablet; the paladin speaks and reads Celestial, so they could interpret them; it’s a short rhyme that is intended as a hint about what Huitzopochtli is doing.
The God-Form devoured the lifeblood of foes,
Gathering unto himself the small powers of those,
Until he shall appear here,
Filling our enemies with fear,
Giving us his power,
Our enemies to devour.
They are contemplating turning this old tower into a secondary base-type area. I’m not quite sure what they will do next.
The party has accumulated about the right amount of XP to level. They have successfully encountered one of the 5 main Aarakocra towns/temples, done some damage, and lived to tell the tale. Everyone levels to 14.
Attacking the temple now could have been a TPK, especially with 1/3 of the party missing. They made the right choice.
There was a lot of spiderweb from Phase Spiders left over. I have been asked about its use in crafting.
Session 8: 4/11/21
The ranger and barbarian’s players couldn’t make it again.
The party decided to do a bit of fortifying on the old tower they found, using Stone Shape to close the roof hole and to (by gathering more rock) make a nice solid door for it. They explore the runes on the outer walls, and determine that they created an Unhallow effect with the Tongues benefit for any inside it. It could be reactivated, but they elect not to spend the time doing so. There’s a good bit of discussion, and the party heads due south and then slightly east. They travel for 3 days to reach their buried base in an abandoned fort. The dice are very in their favor with zero random encounters.
While the artificer, Malamir, works on his pocket-plane workshop door, the monk (Ratel) and paladin (Teador, on griffonback) decide to explore the hex. There’s nothing else of specific interest here, but they are poking around, so I roll a couple of random encounter options. They spot some wyverns flying above the jungle and pop up to shoot at them. The wyverns attack, thinking they have easy prey at first. A round and a half later, one wyvern is dead and the other two flee. A very successful Nature check roll helps them butcher it, salvaging the hide, the skull, and the stinger. The monk later gets (roll) 8 doses of wyvern poison (7d6, Con DC 15 half) and pre-applies them to some arrows.
The group then travels southwest a couple of days (still with no 1s on the random encounter d6s) to reach a Yuan-ti village they had previously visited (hex 12.12). The monk gets his new clothes, sells the wyvern hide, and gets the skull boiled clean while there.
There’s a good bit of discussion and debate I’m skipping here, but they eventually elect to not show off Ssword to the Yuan-ti. They do ask questions, and get a short summary of each of the 5 Aarakocra gods, their city names, and what each god is generally about (domains/alignment) and the general activity known about their city/area. This includes typical garrison sizes (200, or 2000 for the capital city). They decide that they will need some allies to fight the Aarakocra due to the size of the enemy military involved; I do have a method for tracking combat power deployed to a fight and tell them so.
They decide (using knowledge from the absent Goliath ranger Helwyn) to go visit the giants in the southwest corner of the map, exploring along the way. They go one hex south and start searching it. I finally roll a random encounter, and it’s the toughest Aarakocra patrol (1 wizard, 2 clerics, 4 champions, 2 mid-rankers).
They hear or spot the patrol passing overhead. The monk dashes up a tree to see what it is, and tries to stealthily see from the top of the jungle canopy. He rolls a 23 or 24 for stealth. The Aarakocra roll a 16 and 17 on the perception dice, and the average perception score for most of them was +8…so they see him. Roll initiative.
This fight took the rest of the session and lasted for about 7 rounds.
Ratel wins initiative and burns some ki points to put two arrows into the enemy wizard (closest one/front of the air-skiff), dealing about 60% of the wizard’s HP in damage. That wizard goes Greater Invisible on his turn, and stays that way (moving around) until nearly the end of the battle. Nobody tries to track or target him.
Reybella (cleric) tries out her new spell (Firestorm) and deals 35 or 17 damage to 5 or 6 enemies, as well as blowing out the heart/power box on the air-skiff. I thought they’d try to capture it for mobility, but nope. Boom.
The enemy senior cleric opens up with Dawn, but since you have to end your turn in it for it to take effect, it’s pretty worthless.
We mis-read the Boots of Speed and think they give disadvantage on all attacks. Combined with the Artificer’s AC 24, he’s nearly un-hittable despite being the focus of a lot of attention at first. Magic Missile, Harm, Blight, and a Sacred Flame do connect over time.
The paladin and cleric are riding the paladin’s summoned griffon. It works pretty well, up until the Aarakocra start targeting it after a round or two of failing to hit the paladin’s AC 22. They do eat a couple of rounds of Spiritual Guardian damage in the process.
One of the enemy priests casts Cure Mass Wounds twice, as well as Cure Wounds once (on the wizard). Healing 5 enemies for ~22hp each is a pretty big battle-extender, especially when the party lacks AOE damage. This makes him enemy numero uno for the party.
The artificer, boosted by Haste and Boots of Speed, comes up with a combo plan with the monk (who has boots that give immunity to fall damage, and a high speed). The monk runs up a tree. The artificer picks him up, then flies up 100’+ (I don’t recall the exact number), then uses the monk as an improvised weapon to attack the enemy priest that’s done most of the healing. On a hit, the enemy takes fall damage, and the monk gets to take one attack. On a near miss, the monk can make a dexterity save to re-aim himself (this happens once, successfully). The first time it was 9d6 damage; the second time, the artificer went higher and it was 15d6 damage, plus some AOE damage from the boots. The monk then fell another 70’ to the ground, landing next to and damaging the cleric who had been grounded when the griffon was killed (oops!).
The wizard eventually drops his invisibility in round 5 or round 6 and hits the artificer (very high up, >200’ above the party) with Bigby’s Grappling Hand. Over two rounds, this drops the artificer to 1hp. The two weakest Aarakocra attack him while he’s grappled, but still fail to hit his AC 24. The remaining enemy priest says to just take one for sacrifices, and they start to fly away. The monk makes two shots at disadvantage, popping the priest’s death ward and then killing it with the follow-up. The artificer gets reduced to 0 by magic missile after being squeezed, but he’s a half-orc, so he stays at 1hp. On his turn, he manages to use his action to escape from the hand. He’s still Hasted (never failed a Concentration save), and uses his move and hasted action to dash/fly towards the ground super-fast.
One enemy wizard and two enemy warriors escaped.
The cleric went down to about 20hp at one point, but the paladin and monk didn’t take much damage from what I can recall. The monk completely negated a critical-hit javelin with Deflect Arrows, then threw it back at the enemy and did 13 damage… and he spent a lot of time under the jungle canopy and thus mostly out of sight.
One of the enemies was carrying a potion of Supreme Healing, but used it during the fight. The party did acquire a new magical spear from one of the enemy champions:
Skirmisher’s Spear
Very rare, requires attunement
The wielder of this +3 spear’s speed is increased by 10 ft. If the wielder moves more than ½ his move speed during his turn, he may make an attack against an enemy as a Bonus Action during that move.
The monk wants it to make his speed even higher. I need to look up retraining rules to let him drop his trident kensei weapon (which he hasn’t used in 4 levels) for something else.
The party chooses to head southeast into some mountains and long-rests, knowing that they have probably earned some specific enemy attention. This is their second run-in with a patrol in this area of the map with escapees, plus some of them were seen during the attacks they did around Tezcatlipoca’s temple.
I’ll have to figure out enemy reactions between sessions. There will definitely be some heavy patrolling and reinforced search parties for them. The wizard in particular can shed light on what does and doesn’t work on them. The party succeeded on saves vs blindness (once) hold person (twice) and a few other things during the fight. Lower-CR enemies are still a threat, but DC 12 or DC 14 is fairly easy for most of them to make (monk, paladin, and artificer all have or grant save bonuses).