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Bill T's WotBS campaign, reincarnated
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<blockquote data-quote="Bill T." data-source="post: 6940874" data-attributes="member: 6795693"><p><strong>Adventure IV: Traveling to Bresk</strong></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 10px">Dramatis Personae</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 10px"></span></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> <strong>Amelia</strong>, a human spellthieving acetomancer</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> <strong>Erielle</strong>, an half-orc (formerly elven) archer ranger</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> <strong>Kjolmar</strong>, a dour dwarven dungeoncrashing deepwarden</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> <strong>Balan Bastom</strong></li> </ul><p><span style="font-size: 10px">Preparations</span></p><p></p><p>Simeon hands out some equipment for the trip -- several <em>brute</em> items created by a half-orc item creation specialist studying at the Lyceuem, a magic mithral buckler, and several wands, including <em>wall of ice</em>, since it seemed useful, and <em>dimensional anchor</em> because they're nearly useless thanks to the Burning Sky.</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 10px">Sailing to Dassen</span></p><p></p><p>Balan finally manages to convince the heroes to tell him how they're going to get to Bresk: Sail up past the swamp, then jump ship and walk to the mouth of the Nasham river and on to Bresk. However, after the first day and night of sailing, the crew of their cargo ship spots a warship headed their way. The warship, of course, pursues them. The heroes try to get the ship ready for ship-to-ship combat, but it's all for nought, as a bone devil soon appears and makes its surrender demands.</p><p></p><p>Well, it tries to make its demands -- as soon as it appears the heroes open fire, neither knowing nor caring what this oversized skeletal creature is or what it wants. Amelia manages to nail it with her <em>lesser acid blob</em> right off the bat. It promptly moves to where Eriel and Kjolmar are standing and managed to be fearsome enough to send Kjolmar panicking into the sea.</p><p></p><p>The fight is astonishingly one-sided, with Amelia being the one side. Her acid blobs keep hitting, but the devil keeps missing, Kjolmar keeps swimming, and Eriel keeps looking for a better weapon because Amelia thinks a bludgeoning weapon would be more effective against the devil. The bone devil tries to set up a series of <em>walls of ice</em> to fend off Amelia's attack, but finally disappears after getting out its demands: Lower the sails, get in the rowboat and row away from the ship so we can come aboard and take what we want. Oh, and one of the things he wants is that woman throwing acid balls. Then it vanishes in a ball of flame.</p><p></p><p><em><p style="margin-left: 20px">Someone -- probably me -- got lucky that Amelia was included in the demands. They would have seriously considered acceding to the devil's demands. Little did they realize that the ship's sails was one of the things the devil wanted. That would have made for a rather ignominious end!</p><p></em></p><p>So, the heroes come up with A Plan: Pretend to tie Amelia to the mast, send the sailors off on the rowboat, and then everyone else prepare ambush the devil when it appears. Oh, and Eriel needs to cast <em>barkskin</em> on everyone. And Amelia should use the <em>mage armor</em> wand on Eriel. And someone cast <em>owl's wisdom</em> on Kjolmar so he doesn't panic again. Oh, and let's <em>enlarge</em> Kjolmar while we're at it -- we can always do it again if the spell runs out. And then have Kjolmar can hide behind the three-foot-tall house in the middle of the deck.</p><p></p><p>Well, surprise, the devil spots Kjolmar when it reappears. It threatens them both with painful death and moves up to glower at Amelia. Amelia's got two surprises -- she's not bound, and she has a wand of <em>dimensional anchor</em> in her hands, which she promptly nails the bone devil with.</p><p></p><p><em><p style="margin-left: 20px">She barely made the caster level check to hit the bone devil. I deliberately didn't react one way or the other to the caster level check, so she would have been rather surprised if it had teleported away. On the other hand, since bone devils can cast Dimensional Anchor, it immediately knew what she had done to it.</p><p></em></p><p>The fight isn't quite as one-sided this time, although Amelia manages to make another critical hit with an acid orb. The devil tries to scare Kjolmar off the boat again, but Kjolmar's not impressed. He lays into the devil with his 7-iron. The devil tries one more series of attacks before looking to establish terms of its own surrender. Eriel, of course, keeps firing arrows <em>[sigh]</em>, but the heroes finally decide to give it a chance to make an offer. After a bit of back-and-forth, the deal with the devil shapes up to (1) it won't try to harm anyone on the cargo ship, (2) it'll tell them what it knows about what's going on in the war, and (3) sail with them as far as it can, all the way to Bresk.</p><p></p><p>The heroes pick up some relevant information -- there's a war party searching for them on the peninsula, there's a Ragesian army north of Alydi Gap, and General Revulus is prepping a task force including Inquisitor Crona, an aerial cavalier, and some scouts for some sort of mission.</p><p></p><p><em><p style="margin-left: 20px">Sadly, I don't think the players are keeping notes, so this bit of information will likely be lost on them. Also, they didn't demand the devil stop its privateering ways, so I assume it returns to duty as soon as its contract with the heroes is fulfilled -- which, as you know, is sooner than they expect.</p><p></em></p><p><span style="font-size: 10px">Up The River Without A Boat</span></p><p>The bone devil gets a good laugh and promptly vanishes when the party sees that the Nasham River is frozen practically to its mouth. Balan's eager for a sleigh ride, so they buy a sleigh and a horse or two and head north.</p><p></p><p><em><p style="margin-left: 20px">I still need to decide how big the sleigh is and how many horses it requires. Per tradition, a one-horse open sleigh is the obvious choice, though.</p><p></em></p><p>The encounter a huge, hot, multi-legged creature pursuing a mob of refugees. Eriel slaughters it with her arrows before it even gets close.</p><p></p><p><em><p style="margin-left: 20px">Well, that was boring -- between the ranger's good Spot check and the archery combat style, the thing didn't get a chance to do anything at all. I wanted to try an awesome blow on someone!</p><p></em></p><p>A couple days later, the sleigh gets stuck, and the heroes dig it up and the associated evidence. They investigate where the horse tracks come from, and Eriel is able to track one of them up the tree. Eventually they manage to draw a connection between the tree and the one man's rope burns. :-D The heroes consider taking the men's remains to Lady Dene, but her stronghold is at the far side of her territory and Balan doesn't want to risk missing their audience.</p><p></p><p>Shortly thereafter, they come upon the Talon's men going through some halflings' wagons. When they discover the woman hiding under one wagon and threaten to kill her, Eriel promptly fires a "warning shot" about two inches in front of the leader's nose. Oddly enough, the leader feels threatened, so he kills the woman and orders his men to attack.</p><p></p><p>Amelia tries to get Balan to cast <em>Deep Slumber</em> on the soldiers, but she doesn't have the time to convince him. The squad moves near the sleigh, and, when Eriel prepares to fire her bow, he immediately orders them to move up to her. It's all for nought, though, as the Talon squad is no match for the heroes. They can't even manage to snatch Eriel's bow out of her hands with their flails as she renders the leader unconscious with a volley or two of arrows. Kjolmar, meanwhile, knocks down several of squad members before one of them snatch his flail away. They all get up together, so Kjolmar finally dungeoncrashes one into the sleigh, killing the soldier and, more to the point, getting him to stop holding onto his flail so Kjolmar can pick it up. Amelia, loathe to stir up more trouble, tries to move into a position where she can head off the soldiers should they try to escape.</p><p></p><p><em><p style="margin-left: 20px">Afterwards, she realized she should have tried to convince Balam to put Eriel into a slumber rather than the soldiers. Probably wouldn't have been a good idea for party relations in the long run, but it was funny enough he probably would have gone along anyhow.</p><p></em></p><p>The remaining soldiers surrender, so the heroes very graciously heal them (using the soldiers own healing potions!). The question them some about what they've been up to, and manage to learn that they were the ones who had killed Lady Dene's men.</p><p></p><p>At this point, the heroes feel like they've put themselves in a tight spot. They certainly don't want to murder the captive soldiers, but they don't feel they dare release them for fear of getting arrested as soon as they get to Bresk. Eventually they convince themselves that the least awful option is to go to Lady Dene with the remains of her men and the soldiers that killed them.</p><p></p><p><em><p style="margin-left: 20px">This plan came together via email the day after the session. I'd wondered if they were going to go that way, and figured it was more interesting for Balan to agree to the plan rather than wave his diplomatic papers. They impressed me with their reasonably detailed plan about how to approach Lady Dene to give themselves a good chance of getting out of this without getting hanged themselves. They probably don't realize it yet, but Lady Dene's men will make truly excellent witnesses to their own murders.</p><p></em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bill T., post: 6940874, member: 6795693"] [b]Adventure IV: Traveling to Bresk[/b] [SIZE=2]Dramatis Personae [/SIZE] [LIST] [*] [B]Amelia[/B], a human spellthieving acetomancer [*] [B]Erielle[/B], an half-orc (formerly elven) archer ranger [*] [B]Kjolmar[/B], a dour dwarven dungeoncrashing deepwarden [*] [B]Balan Bastom[/B] [/LIST] [SIZE=2]Preparations[/SIZE] Simeon hands out some equipment for the trip -- several [I]brute[/I] items created by a half-orc item creation specialist studying at the Lyceuem, a magic mithral buckler, and several wands, including [I]wall of ice[/I], since it seemed useful, and [I]dimensional anchor[/I] because they're nearly useless thanks to the Burning Sky. [SIZE=2]Sailing to Dassen[/SIZE] Balan finally manages to convince the heroes to tell him how they're going to get to Bresk: Sail up past the swamp, then jump ship and walk to the mouth of the Nasham river and on to Bresk. However, after the first day and night of sailing, the crew of their cargo ship spots a warship headed their way. The warship, of course, pursues them. The heroes try to get the ship ready for ship-to-ship combat, but it's all for nought, as a bone devil soon appears and makes its surrender demands. Well, it tries to make its demands -- as soon as it appears the heroes open fire, neither knowing nor caring what this oversized skeletal creature is or what it wants. Amelia manages to nail it with her [I]lesser acid blob[/I] right off the bat. It promptly moves to where Eriel and Kjolmar are standing and managed to be fearsome enough to send Kjolmar panicking into the sea. The fight is astonishingly one-sided, with Amelia being the one side. Her acid blobs keep hitting, but the devil keeps missing, Kjolmar keeps swimming, and Eriel keeps looking for a better weapon because Amelia thinks a bludgeoning weapon would be more effective against the devil. The bone devil tries to set up a series of [I]walls of ice[/I] to fend off Amelia's attack, but finally disappears after getting out its demands: Lower the sails, get in the rowboat and row away from the ship so we can come aboard and take what we want. Oh, and one of the things he wants is that woman throwing acid balls. Then it vanishes in a ball of flame. [I][INDENT]Someone -- probably me -- got lucky that Amelia was included in the demands. They would have seriously considered acceding to the devil's demands. Little did they realize that the ship's sails was one of the things the devil wanted. That would have made for a rather ignominious end![/INDENT] [/I] So, the heroes come up with A Plan: Pretend to tie Amelia to the mast, send the sailors off on the rowboat, and then everyone else prepare ambush the devil when it appears. Oh, and Eriel needs to cast [I]barkskin[/I] on everyone. And Amelia should use the [I]mage armor[/I] wand on Eriel. And someone cast [I]owl's wisdom[/I] on Kjolmar so he doesn't panic again. Oh, and let's [I]enlarge[/I] Kjolmar while we're at it -- we can always do it again if the spell runs out. And then have Kjolmar can hide behind the three-foot-tall house in the middle of the deck. Well, surprise, the devil spots Kjolmar when it reappears. It threatens them both with painful death and moves up to glower at Amelia. Amelia's got two surprises -- she's not bound, and she has a wand of [I]dimensional anchor[/I] in her hands, which she promptly nails the bone devil with. [I][INDENT]She barely made the caster level check to hit the bone devil. I deliberately didn't react one way or the other to the caster level check, so she would have been rather surprised if it had teleported away. On the other hand, since bone devils can cast Dimensional Anchor, it immediately knew what she had done to it.[/INDENT] [/I] The fight isn't quite as one-sided this time, although Amelia manages to make another critical hit with an acid orb. The devil tries to scare Kjolmar off the boat again, but Kjolmar's not impressed. He lays into the devil with his 7-iron. The devil tries one more series of attacks before looking to establish terms of its own surrender. Eriel, of course, keeps firing arrows [I][sigh][/I], but the heroes finally decide to give it a chance to make an offer. After a bit of back-and-forth, the deal with the devil shapes up to (1) it won't try to harm anyone on the cargo ship, (2) it'll tell them what it knows about what's going on in the war, and (3) sail with them as far as it can, all the way to Bresk. The heroes pick up some relevant information -- there's a war party searching for them on the peninsula, there's a Ragesian army north of Alydi Gap, and General Revulus is prepping a task force including Inquisitor Crona, an aerial cavalier, and some scouts for some sort of mission. [I][INDENT]Sadly, I don't think the players are keeping notes, so this bit of information will likely be lost on them. Also, they didn't demand the devil stop its privateering ways, so I assume it returns to duty as soon as its contract with the heroes is fulfilled -- which, as you know, is sooner than they expect.[/INDENT] [/I] [SIZE=2]Up The River Without A Boat[/SIZE] The bone devil gets a good laugh and promptly vanishes when the party sees that the Nasham River is frozen practically to its mouth. Balan's eager for a sleigh ride, so they buy a sleigh and a horse or two and head north. [I][INDENT]I still need to decide how big the sleigh is and how many horses it requires. Per tradition, a one-horse open sleigh is the obvious choice, though.[/INDENT] [/I] The encounter a huge, hot, multi-legged creature pursuing a mob of refugees. Eriel slaughters it with her arrows before it even gets close. [I][INDENT]Well, that was boring -- between the ranger's good Spot check and the archery combat style, the thing didn't get a chance to do anything at all. I wanted to try an awesome blow on someone![/INDENT] [/I] A couple days later, the sleigh gets stuck, and the heroes dig it up and the associated evidence. They investigate where the horse tracks come from, and Eriel is able to track one of them up the tree. Eventually they manage to draw a connection between the tree and the one man's rope burns. :-D The heroes consider taking the men's remains to Lady Dene, but her stronghold is at the far side of her territory and Balan doesn't want to risk missing their audience. Shortly thereafter, they come upon the Talon's men going through some halflings' wagons. When they discover the woman hiding under one wagon and threaten to kill her, Eriel promptly fires a "warning shot" about two inches in front of the leader's nose. Oddly enough, the leader feels threatened, so he kills the woman and orders his men to attack. Amelia tries to get Balan to cast [I]Deep Slumber[/I] on the soldiers, but she doesn't have the time to convince him. The squad moves near the sleigh, and, when Eriel prepares to fire her bow, he immediately orders them to move up to her. It's all for nought, though, as the Talon squad is no match for the heroes. They can't even manage to snatch Eriel's bow out of her hands with their flails as she renders the leader unconscious with a volley or two of arrows. Kjolmar, meanwhile, knocks down several of squad members before one of them snatch his flail away. They all get up together, so Kjolmar finally dungeoncrashes one into the sleigh, killing the soldier and, more to the point, getting him to stop holding onto his flail so Kjolmar can pick it up. Amelia, loathe to stir up more trouble, tries to move into a position where she can head off the soldiers should they try to escape. [I][INDENT]Afterwards, she realized she should have tried to convince Balam to put Eriel into a slumber rather than the soldiers. Probably wouldn't have been a good idea for party relations in the long run, but it was funny enough he probably would have gone along anyhow.[/INDENT] [/I] The remaining soldiers surrender, so the heroes very graciously heal them (using the soldiers own healing potions!). The question them some about what they've been up to, and manage to learn that they were the ones who had killed Lady Dene's men. At this point, the heroes feel like they've put themselves in a tight spot. They certainly don't want to murder the captive soldiers, but they don't feel they dare release them for fear of getting arrested as soon as they get to Bresk. Eventually they convince themselves that the least awful option is to go to Lady Dene with the remains of her men and the soldiers that killed them. [I][INDENT]This plan came together via email the day after the session. I'd wondered if they were going to go that way, and figured it was more interesting for Balan to agree to the plan rather than wave his diplomatic papers. They impressed me with their reasonably detailed plan about how to approach Lady Dene to give themselves a good chance of getting out of this without getting hanged themselves. They probably don't realize it yet, but Lady Dene's men will make truly excellent witnesses to their own murders.[/INDENT] [/I] [/QUOTE]
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