D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[el-remmen]

Session #42 of my Revenants of Saltmarsh campaign was great. At first having our most vocal and motivational player miss the game because of a migraine was worrying but in the end the session included a riot, bureaucratic delay, an impromptu street fair, a brawl, a drinking contest, and a reunion with a long lost great aunt (who turned out to be the master of the local thieves guild).

 

[Umbran]

My next session should have been this coming Tuesday, but it is cancelled for covid.

Covid is still out there, people. Take a bit of care around it.

 

[James Gasik]

We may have finally lost a player in our Scarlet Citadel game. The encounters are getting more and more dangerous, where we struggle to fit two fights inside 5 hours (in fact, we went over by half an hour today).

Encounter 1 was with "Deep Ones" (Great Shadow over Innsmouth, Batman!), 8 regular and 1 "priest" (who didn't do a lot of healing and cast things like Ice Storm and Sleep). The fact that we were on a boat and they could pop in and out of the water was annoying, but outside of the Ice Storm, they weren't individually dangerous, but ye gods, so many hit points! By casting a buff on the Monk/Rogue, they were able to crank out 52 damage in one turn (there was a critical hit in there) and still failed to kill any opponents!

That fight took 2.5 hours, and the only leveled spell I ended up using was Web, just because it was difficult to avoid hitting my companions in such close quarters (the boat being all of 10' wide...technically 12' but yeah).

Then we entered a sealed room with the mark of an evil god on it and the words "DO NO" scratched on it by a long-dead adventurer. But going into places one shouldn't is what adventurers do, right?

Well pretty quickly we regretted it, as we found ourselves facing a LICH (we're only level 7!). Any nova spellcasting was foiled by the Lich using Silence (they won initiative) and we quickly found that they had a Legendary Action that let them cast Sacred Flame at the end of an opponent's turn, up to 3/turn.

But it got worse from there, as each turn, 4 Wights joined the fray. I cast Mirror Image after leaving the silence, and that proved to be the smartest move I could make, as it saved me from a life drain critical (I only have 44 hit points to begin with, I don't need my maximum hp lowered, thanks!).

A few rounds in, we'd downed the lich, but were surrounded by wights. Even turning them didn't help that much, as they kept spawning (until we finally had 15 of them...would have been 16, but we managed to kill one) and of course, these wights had extra hit points (the DM told us this when we wondered why they were proving to be hard to destroy). Oh and the room was filled with choking smoke that forced a Con save at the start of each turn or you took necrotic damage and had your maximum hp lowered!

I was finally forced out of the room, where I started chucking fireballs into clumps of wights and scoring fairly mid damage. I'd rather use control spells, but again, friendly fire isn't, and with saves vs. damage each turn, I didn't know if I could maintain concentration for very long (and I'd only be able to lock down at most four wights anyways).

As we'd swiped a MacGuffin from the lich, we decided maybe it was time to bail, but then the lich GOT BACK UP and hit the Ranger with Hold Monster...and he failed.

So now we were like "uh, we can escape, but we'd have to leave the Ranger behind!" So people went in to save the Ranger. This led to the Monk being dropped to 0 hit points (though the Cleric got the Ranger out). Then the lich gave us an ultimatum- "give back the MacGuffin, or your friend will become my newest champion!".

And that's where the session ended, with 8 wights dead, 8 still up, 1 lich at an unknown hit point total, and we won't meet again until the new year. I'm down to 1st and 2nd level spells, the Ranger is still paralyzed, and the Cleric is fuming on hit points (a little better off thanks to my Healer feat), and also pretty much out of juice.

So now we can either sacrifice the Monk but use the MacGuffin to gain assistance in dealing with the threats ahead, or claim the Monk and admit defeat. It may be that we weren't meant to win at this time, and there are other areas we can explore- I'm not silly enough to think every fight is winnable. But after the session, the other guys seemed a bit bummed- we did our best, and it wasn't nearly good enough.

 

[el-remmen]

We may have finally lost a player in our Scarlet Citadel game. The encounters are getting more and more dangerous, where we struggle to fit two fights inside 5 hours (in fact, we went over by half an hour today).

Encounter 1 was with "Deep Ones" (Great Shadow over Innsmouth, Batman!), 8 regular and 1 "priest" (who didn't do a lot of healing and cast things like Ice Storm and Sleep). The fact that we were on a boat and they could pop in and out of the water was annoying, but outside of the Ice Storm, they weren't individually dangerous, but ye gods, so many hit points! By casting a buff on the Monk/Rogue, they were able to crank out 52 damage in one turn (there was a critical hit in there) and still failed to kill any opponents!

That fight took 2.5 hours, and the only leveled spell I ended up using was Web, just because it was difficult to avoid hitting my companions in such close quarters (the boat being all of 10' wide...technically 12' but yeah).

Then we entered a sealed room with the mark of an evil god on it and the words "DO NO" scratched on it by a long-dead adventurer. But going into places one shouldn't is what adventurers do, right?

Well pretty quickly we regretted it, as we found ourselves facing a LICH (we're only level 7!). Any nova spellcasting was foiled by the Lich using Silence (they won initiative) and we quickly found that they had a Legendary Action that let them cast Sacred Flame at the end of an opponent's turn, up to 3/turn.

But it got worse from there, as each turn, 4 Wights joined the fray. I cast Mirror Image after leaving the silence, and that proved to be the smartest move I could make, as it saved me from a life drain critical (I only have 44 hit points to begin with, I don't need my maximum hp lowered, thanks!).

A few rounds in, we'd downed the lich, but were surrounded by wights. Even turning them didn't help that much, as they kept spawning (until we finally had 15 of them...would have been 16, but we managed to kill one) and of course, these wights had extra hit points (the DM told us this when we wondered why they were proving to be hard to destroy). Oh and the room was filled with choking smoke that forced a Con save at the start of each turn or you took necrotic damage and had your maximum hp lowered!

I was finally forced out of the room, where I started chucking fireballs into clumps of wights and scoring fairly mid damage. I'd rather use control spells, but again, friendly fire isn't, and with saves vs. damage each turn, I didn't know if I could maintain concentration for very long (and I'd only be able to lock down at most four wights anyways).

As we'd swiped a MacGuffin from the lich, we decided maybe it was time to bail, but then the lich GOT BACK UP and hit the Ranger with Hold Monster...and he failed.

So now we were like "uh, we can escape, but we'd have to leave the Ranger behind!" So people went in to save the Ranger. This led to the Monk being dropped to 0 hit points (though the Cleric got the Ranger out). Then the lich gave us an ultimatum- "give back the MacGuffin, or your friend will become my newest champion!".

And that's where the session ended, with 8 wights dead, 8 still up, 1 lich at an unknown hit point total, and we won't meet again until the new year. I'm down to 1st and 2nd level spells, the Ranger is still paralyzed, and the Cleric is fuming on hit points (a little better off thanks to my Healer feat), and also pretty much out of juice.

So now we can either sacrifice the Monk but use the MacGuffin to gain assistance in dealing with the threats ahead, or claim the Monk and admit defeat. It may be that we weren't meant to win at this time, and there are other areas we can explore- I'm not silly enough to think every fight is winnable. But after the session, the other guys seemed a bit bummed- we did our best, and it wasn't nearly good enough.

sounds like a lot of fun, actually!

 

[cbwjm]

No one died last session which was a tad surprising considering the lethality of old school games, though my level 1 wizard is still 2100 xp to level 2. Really want those extra hit points so that I'm not always in fear of dying to a single hit, an extra spell slot would be nice as well.

The party consisted of:

• A level 1 magic-user (me)
• A level 2 druid
• A level 4 thief
• A level 1 thief

We started the session with the idea of stopping some bandits that were preying on the main road between a city and a small town. We tracked down their ambush site (thanks to others having been caught in said ambush site in the past), I charmed a bandit, who has now opted to move on from banditry, who told us where to find the main camp, but 13 bandits was too much for us to handle. We did however, manage to free a prisoner before escaping. We now have a map of the bandit caves (from the charmed bandit mentioned earlier) so we can go in with a little more muscle next session, hopefully our main cleric has returned by then.

 

[Zardnaar]

No one died last session which was a tad surprising considering the lethality of old school games, though my level 1 wizard is still 2100 xp to level 2. Really want those extra hit points so that I'm not always in fear of dying to a single hit, an extra spell slot would be nice as well.

The party consisted of:

• A level 1 magic-user (me)
• A level 2 druid
• A level 4 thief
• A level 1 thief

We started the session with the idea of stopping some bandits that were preying on the main road between a city and a small town. We tracked down their ambush site (thanks to others having been caught in said ambush site in the past), I charmed a bandit, who has now opted to move on from banditry, who told us where to find the main camp, but 13 bandits was too much for us to handle. We did however, manage to free a prisoner before escaping. We now have a map of the bandit caves (from the charmed bandit mentioned earlier) so we can go in with a little more muscle next session, hopefully our main cleric has returned by then.

I was very generous xp wise with my players. Tok them 3-5 sessions to level up.

 

[Distracted DM]

Been running A5E from level 1 up to Red Hand of Doom, party almost TPK'd at level 4 in the first actual Red Hand book encounter- level 4's a little low but I felt like the time was right.

I ripped 13A's Flee rule, and then had them do a skill challenge to see how effective their route was. My only regret was allowing leveled spells to be auto successes in the skill challenge. Made it too easy, no one lost any equipment or received any scars/wounds/fatigue etc.

Still, good session considering the party had to flee.

 

[James Gasik]

sounds like a lot of fun, actually!

Each session I wonder if this is the one where we TPK. But I'm pretty sure that even if we do, we'll just make new characters and try again. I know one thing though- I need a break from being a primary spellcaster. Matter of fact, the Kobold Press weapon options look really nice- our Monk is always pulling out some goofy maneuver, like this session, "Lock Blades" (Rapier). When hit by a melee attack, as a reaction, you can make an attack roll of your own to negate the attack (I think you have to exceed the number of the attack that hit you).

One of the things that made this one rough was all the natural 20's flying around. In one round, the DM rolled 2 on me (one of which was sucked up by my mirror image, and the other, luckily, only did 11 damage). To down the Monk, he rolled 3!

The worst part is, he rolls in the open in a dice tray, so all you can do is sigh and take the beats, lol.

 

[cbwjm]

I was very generous xp wise with my players. Tok them 3-5 sessions to level up.

I think that's what it's gonna take for my wizard, a couple of sessions with decent loot for xp should get me to level 2, I just need to survive for that long.

 

[Andvari]

PC plans that are even slightly complicated usually go wrong, typically because not everyone is on the same page, they are surprised by unknown factors, or there's a bad die roll. This time two things went really well.

They are infiltrating a castle and entered a smithy with 2 azers and a fire giant. They rolled high enough to convince the giant "the Boss" was angry he was late in his work, which caused him to reveal a powerful magic full plate he'd made. They then rolled high again, attempting to convince the fire giant they were he to take it to said boss immediately.

Later they went to complete a slave escape they had laid the groundwork for the previous day. They'd found out the evil humanoids within the castle really preferred meat from the wilds rather than the cleric food they'd been mostly feeding on, so the players had made a couple of hunting expeditions for them.

Once they discovered slaves working in the castle kitchen, they arranged for a as many slaves as could be spared to bring back bigger game (claiming a mastodon was on the menu). When they arrived, there were 3 human slaves, 2 orc slaves, and an ogre. They got really worried when I mentioned the ogre, but proceeded with their plan, killing the hobgoblin and moving unattested through the courtyard with the slaves, past the guards they'd become familiar with. Hulda the ogre was just happy to be free, and didn't cause trouble.

They'd set a fuse to light the kitchen on fire to hide their misdeed, and once outside, arranged a mock chase with the local milita, so to the castle guards it appeared the slaves escaping wasn't the fault of the PCs. Apart from attacking the hobgoblin (which died in 1 hit to the level 7 rogue anyway - I only set up the battle for tension), I don't think I even needed to ask for any rolls during the slave rescue.