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The Adventures of the Endhome 6+1. Rebirth of Barakus! (9-27-06, 19 and 20 back up)
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<blockquote data-quote="Scorch" data-source="post: 3087139" data-attributes="member: 1502"><p><strong>Adventure 17 Summary</strong></p><p></p><p>At the end of the last session Adson, Aislenn, and Ravenspur had leveled to 4th level. I have a rule that you need to rest a night before gaining the benefit of the new level. I know some people say you have to train for X number of days but we were here to roll some dice and kick some monster butt, not role play out finding a sensei in a far away temple to train you in the inner secrets of your craft.</p><p></p><p>As it stood, the group decided to leave the room full of flesh golem pain behind for now and camp outside for the night. Since Adson’s player was not present for this session he got to watch the horses. We had a slight scare before the game got started. It was pouring cats and dogs outside and we were beginning to get some flooding in the basement where the game room was located. A mad dash to fix the drain pipe outside causing the flooding, grabbing towels, and using a wet vac got the problem under control. Nothing like some bad weather to cancel a game.</p><p></p><p>After resting and leveling up the group headed back in to Barakus. This time they decided to explore the other branch of a passageway near the flesh golem room. I was a little relieved since I did not want to have to kill them all for foolishly taking on those creatures. As it stood they only had five adamantine arrows between them.</p><p></p><p>The passageway they explored ended in a room guarded by two drow. They heard the group coming but did not see Absinthe who successfully snuck into the room with a hide and move silent check. The two drow warriors started firing their crossbows the moment they saw the next player in the marching order come within sight. They then threw down darkness. Now darkness combined with their vision abilities in v3.0 of the game was a pretty good tactic but in v3.5 darkness just gave everyone a 20% miss chance and that was about it. Long story short: it did not save the two drow warriors from getting themselves killed. </p><p></p><p>They did manage to alert the drow in the other area who came charging in after two round to engage the party. The wizard, rogue, and remaining drow warriors gave the party a run for their money but eventually were taken down. The group looted the outpost and speculated a bit on why there were drow there. Some thought was given to salvaging the poison on the crossbow bolts but I made it clear it would evaporate as soon as they took it above surface.</p><p></p><p>From there it was on to the area guarded by the aranea, Risstor. I had already read the errata posted on these boards and corrected her to a more survivable encounter. As it stood she heard them coming and webbed the doorway as Absinthe entered, then crawled out of site from those in the corridor. There was some confusion on my part since I assumed that Risstor’s web ability was the same as the web spell but this was not true. The aranea’s ability is easier to deal with and Absinthe was able to free herself while Ravenspur attempted to negotiate with the chatty spider being. Once she named her price for free passage, 1500 gp, the party decided to kill her for her presumption. Someone threw a flask of alchemist fire on the web and it slowly started to burn away while Risstor began to cast spells on herself such as mirror image. The party then dashed into her lair and found her clinging to the ceiling high above. Micca and Ivo began pelting her with spells and managed, through extremely lucky rolls, to hit her every time rather than the mirror images about her. That and bow shots from Keldin took her down.</p><p></p><p>The party searched the area and investigated the long stone stairway leading down to the fourth level. I made it sound as ominous as I could but did not need to since the group had no desire to travel downwards since there was still much of the second level and first level to explore.</p><p></p><p>Ravenspur and Keldin consulted the map to see where they wanted to explore next. This had more to do with the two players sitting next to one another at the gaming table than with their characters being the leaders of the group. Absinthe would lean over every once in a while and make suggestions. </p><p></p><p>Unfortunately before they could explorer further, Keldin’s player had to head home since his wife called letting him know that they were getting some flooding as well. He left his character in the care of another player and headed off. Since he was there for a good chunk of the session, I had no problem awarding him XP for the night.</p><p></p><p>They explored one dead end crypt and were attacked by eight skeletons. Micca managed to totally annihilate them with a turning. The cleric was very happy. They then meandered past the library into an abandoned bedroom and closet. From there they stumbled onto the electrical pillar. What followed was almost something right out of an episode of the Simpsons with Ivo and Aislenn repeatedly electrocuting themselves on the thing while trying to discover its secrets. Absinthe found two of the three secret compartments on it before they decided to move on to the east.</p><p></p><p>There they found the secret panels with the buttons to disable the pillar. They only were able to play with them for about a minute before someone opened the door to the east and alerted the hobgoblin guard who promptly charged off to warn the tribe. The group entered the guard room and spent a few minutes arguing what to do which gave the hobgoblins enough time to warn their two warring leaders, the bugbear brothers, to call a truce to defend their lair. The two brothers and their hobgoblin lieutenant each took 6 hobgoblins and attacked from three different sides at once. </p><p></p><p>Since they coordinated their attacks they all got to move on the same initiative. I called surprise round in the middle of a debate between the players and the doors burst open and the group was flanked on three sides by 21 opponents.</p><p></p><p>Now this could have gotten very dangerous for the group and I expected them to retreat back down from where they came but Ivo pulled something out of his hat. The crafty wizard had purchased a scroll of fireball and had managed to puzzle out is secrets enough to cast it. I had ruled that the two parts of casting a spell off of a scroll that was a higher level than you could cast could be split into two different tasks. The deciphering of the scroll could take place at any time and the player could take 20 on it to do so. The spell caster check needed to take place at the time of actual casting. Ivo easily cast the spell off of the scroll and the fireball went roaring down the corridor to detonate just far back enough so as not to backwash into the room with the party. Seven hobgoblins were instantly burned to death and I had Ivo make a fortitude check not to be deafened by the explosion. That was a flavor text touch on my part since he was casting an unknown spell for the first time in an enclosed area.</p><p></p><p>This changed the tone of the battle completely as the party now only had to deal with attacks on two fronts. The two bugbear brothers put up a valiant fight and managed to get their troops into the room with the players but after another few minutes of combat they were taken down. </p><p></p><p>The lair was looted (“How nice that they left us the keys to their locked chests!” piped in Absinthe) and the group moved south. They came to a sealed door which I added some flavor text involving warnings in goblin written across it. That gave them all pause and they decided since they had blown almost all their resources against the hobgoblins that it would be a good idea to camp in one of the rooms. They chose the abandoned bedroom because it had a bed.</p><p></p><p>During their rest I rolled two encounters with gnolls so I decided to combine it into one big encounter of six gnolls sneaking up and charging them at once. Those on watch were able to warn the others but not before the small room was suddenly hip deep in gnolls. The combat was over quickly but was notable in that it started a trend for the rest of the night where I could not hit Ravenspur to save my life. I must have had him targeted three times during the combat but could not roll over a five.</p><p></p><p>The random encounters for the group were becoming more of an annoyance for me to run. The group was third and fourth level at this point and most of the stuff on the chart was pretty low end for them. I might have to start rolling from the encounter charts for the levels below soon.</p><p></p><p>There were no more encounters for the rest of the night (or at least what they thought was night, since it was hard to keep track underground). A quick discussion decided that they would check behind the locked door in the hobgoblin lair. They get past the door and explored the corridor beyond. Absinthe discovered the pit trap and triggered it so the group could edge around it to the door on its other side. They get past that door into the crypt beyond. Ravenspur took an interest in the stone sarcophagus in the center of the room and cast detect magic. The gnome sorcerer detected the illusionary magic within. After Absinthe gave it the all clear for traps, Micca popped the lid open and the secret area opened up and a mummy shambled out making a line right for the cleric.</p><p></p><p>Thinking that it may be an illusion the group started chanting “Disbelieve! Disbelieve!” but unfortunately for them it is all too real. Half the party was paralyzed with fear at the very sight of the undead horror. Micca took a hit from the mummy and was able to withstand the curse of its touch. He skipped back and cast “Calm Emotions” which had the immediate effect of removing the fear keeping half the party from joining in the combat. Fire spells and alchemist fire was readied and all do significant damage to the creature. It still managed to do massive amounts of damage to the group but luckily every hit did not land the dreaded mummy rot. </p><p></p><p>One last fire spell knocked it down to zero hit points and I could have just said it collapsed but the group had been really struggling to fight it so I gave them some rewarding flavor text. The mummy burst into flame and stumbled past the group, moaning all the way, and fell into the pit beyond the door where it was impaled upon the spikes below. I actually got a round of applause for that.</p><p></p><p>After the tomb was looted the party then checked out the door to the west and, after opening it, found another crypt much like the one they had just left behind. </p><p></p><p>“NOT AGAIN!” they all howled, knowing that they were most likely going to have to fight another mummy. Their greed for XP was what decided it for them. They had a plan!</p><p></p><p>Micca would edge forward and flip open the stone sarcophagus with a rope tied around him. If he was paralyzed by a mummy fear effect then the group would pull him back in. Meanwhile, Ravenspur had his necklace of fireballs ready to chuck one in as soon as the mummy showed itself.</p><p></p><p>The plan pretty much went off as they had hoped. Micca flipped open the lid and the second mummy shambled out of its secret hiding area. Micca was hit by the fear effect and was paralyzed. The others began dragging him back as Ravenspur threw a bead from the necklace of fireballs into the crypt. The mummy was horribly burned but it was a much tougher specimen than the one they fought before. It shambled after the limp Micca as he was dragged into the first crypt. Aislenn went up to engage it as the others pelted it with missile weapons and magic missile spells. </p><p></p><p>It smacked Aislenn a good one and she succumbed to the curse. I rolled two six sided dice and she lost 5 constitution and 6 charisma. OUCH! During another attack it wound up and attempted to slug Ravenspur who got a little too close but the bad luck I was having hitting him that night protected the little gnome.</p><p></p><p>After some hectic combat the last mummy went down. There was some confusion on my part on how mummy rot worked. After reading the rules on it I decided that it would hit once. If she got hit a second time and failed another save then she would suck down even more CON/CHA damage. Fortunately that did not happen. The next day I did some research online and found that I had made the correct decision according to some on the EN World forums. I also found out that I had totally forgotten about the mummy’s DR but that did not matter as much since 90% of the damage done to it was magical fire.</p><p></p><p>Since Aislenn looked like death warmed over, the group decided it would be best to return to Endhome. They wrapped her in a cloak so the city watch would not take her for a leper (4 Charisma, YIKES!). The journey back was uneventful (they had cleared out most of the threats to and from Barakus). Their first stop was Micca’s temple to see if they could ask Father Beamus to recommend a cleric to be able to cast remove curse then cure disease. </p><p></p><p>The cleric of Pelor was distraught and he had some disturbing news.</p><p></p><p>“Yeah, what?” joked Absinthe “Curley’s body gone missing?”</p><p></p><p>“Actually, yes.”</p><p></p><p>“NO WAY!”</p><p></p><p>Ah, my plan to move them into direct conflict with the evil adventuring party was coming to fruition.</p><p></p><p>This was probably the most experience for a session they had ever received. Everyone would level to fourth level. The second level of Barakus was almost completely cleared out but there was still the matter of the black dragon on the first level and the evil adventuring party to contend with.</p><p></p><p>Next Session: Picking a fight!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scorch, post: 3087139, member: 1502"] [b]Adventure 17 Summary[/b] At the end of the last session Adson, Aislenn, and Ravenspur had leveled to 4th level. I have a rule that you need to rest a night before gaining the benefit of the new level. I know some people say you have to train for X number of days but we were here to roll some dice and kick some monster butt, not role play out finding a sensei in a far away temple to train you in the inner secrets of your craft. As it stood, the group decided to leave the room full of flesh golem pain behind for now and camp outside for the night. Since Adson’s player was not present for this session he got to watch the horses. We had a slight scare before the game got started. It was pouring cats and dogs outside and we were beginning to get some flooding in the basement where the game room was located. A mad dash to fix the drain pipe outside causing the flooding, grabbing towels, and using a wet vac got the problem under control. Nothing like some bad weather to cancel a game. After resting and leveling up the group headed back in to Barakus. This time they decided to explore the other branch of a passageway near the flesh golem room. I was a little relieved since I did not want to have to kill them all for foolishly taking on those creatures. As it stood they only had five adamantine arrows between them. The passageway they explored ended in a room guarded by two drow. They heard the group coming but did not see Absinthe who successfully snuck into the room with a hide and move silent check. The two drow warriors started firing their crossbows the moment they saw the next player in the marching order come within sight. They then threw down darkness. Now darkness combined with their vision abilities in v3.0 of the game was a pretty good tactic but in v3.5 darkness just gave everyone a 20% miss chance and that was about it. Long story short: it did not save the two drow warriors from getting themselves killed. They did manage to alert the drow in the other area who came charging in after two round to engage the party. The wizard, rogue, and remaining drow warriors gave the party a run for their money but eventually were taken down. The group looted the outpost and speculated a bit on why there were drow there. Some thought was given to salvaging the poison on the crossbow bolts but I made it clear it would evaporate as soon as they took it above surface. From there it was on to the area guarded by the aranea, Risstor. I had already read the errata posted on these boards and corrected her to a more survivable encounter. As it stood she heard them coming and webbed the doorway as Absinthe entered, then crawled out of site from those in the corridor. There was some confusion on my part since I assumed that Risstor’s web ability was the same as the web spell but this was not true. The aranea’s ability is easier to deal with and Absinthe was able to free herself while Ravenspur attempted to negotiate with the chatty spider being. Once she named her price for free passage, 1500 gp, the party decided to kill her for her presumption. Someone threw a flask of alchemist fire on the web and it slowly started to burn away while Risstor began to cast spells on herself such as mirror image. The party then dashed into her lair and found her clinging to the ceiling high above. Micca and Ivo began pelting her with spells and managed, through extremely lucky rolls, to hit her every time rather than the mirror images about her. That and bow shots from Keldin took her down. The party searched the area and investigated the long stone stairway leading down to the fourth level. I made it sound as ominous as I could but did not need to since the group had no desire to travel downwards since there was still much of the second level and first level to explore. Ravenspur and Keldin consulted the map to see where they wanted to explore next. This had more to do with the two players sitting next to one another at the gaming table than with their characters being the leaders of the group. Absinthe would lean over every once in a while and make suggestions. Unfortunately before they could explorer further, Keldin’s player had to head home since his wife called letting him know that they were getting some flooding as well. He left his character in the care of another player and headed off. Since he was there for a good chunk of the session, I had no problem awarding him XP for the night. They explored one dead end crypt and were attacked by eight skeletons. Micca managed to totally annihilate them with a turning. The cleric was very happy. They then meandered past the library into an abandoned bedroom and closet. From there they stumbled onto the electrical pillar. What followed was almost something right out of an episode of the Simpsons with Ivo and Aislenn repeatedly electrocuting themselves on the thing while trying to discover its secrets. Absinthe found two of the three secret compartments on it before they decided to move on to the east. There they found the secret panels with the buttons to disable the pillar. They only were able to play with them for about a minute before someone opened the door to the east and alerted the hobgoblin guard who promptly charged off to warn the tribe. The group entered the guard room and spent a few minutes arguing what to do which gave the hobgoblins enough time to warn their two warring leaders, the bugbear brothers, to call a truce to defend their lair. The two brothers and their hobgoblin lieutenant each took 6 hobgoblins and attacked from three different sides at once. Since they coordinated their attacks they all got to move on the same initiative. I called surprise round in the middle of a debate between the players and the doors burst open and the group was flanked on three sides by 21 opponents. Now this could have gotten very dangerous for the group and I expected them to retreat back down from where they came but Ivo pulled something out of his hat. The crafty wizard had purchased a scroll of fireball and had managed to puzzle out is secrets enough to cast it. I had ruled that the two parts of casting a spell off of a scroll that was a higher level than you could cast could be split into two different tasks. The deciphering of the scroll could take place at any time and the player could take 20 on it to do so. The spell caster check needed to take place at the time of actual casting. Ivo easily cast the spell off of the scroll and the fireball went roaring down the corridor to detonate just far back enough so as not to backwash into the room with the party. Seven hobgoblins were instantly burned to death and I had Ivo make a fortitude check not to be deafened by the explosion. That was a flavor text touch on my part since he was casting an unknown spell for the first time in an enclosed area. This changed the tone of the battle completely as the party now only had to deal with attacks on two fronts. The two bugbear brothers put up a valiant fight and managed to get their troops into the room with the players but after another few minutes of combat they were taken down. The lair was looted (“How nice that they left us the keys to their locked chests!” piped in Absinthe) and the group moved south. They came to a sealed door which I added some flavor text involving warnings in goblin written across it. That gave them all pause and they decided since they had blown almost all their resources against the hobgoblins that it would be a good idea to camp in one of the rooms. They chose the abandoned bedroom because it had a bed. During their rest I rolled two encounters with gnolls so I decided to combine it into one big encounter of six gnolls sneaking up and charging them at once. Those on watch were able to warn the others but not before the small room was suddenly hip deep in gnolls. The combat was over quickly but was notable in that it started a trend for the rest of the night where I could not hit Ravenspur to save my life. I must have had him targeted three times during the combat but could not roll over a five. The random encounters for the group were becoming more of an annoyance for me to run. The group was third and fourth level at this point and most of the stuff on the chart was pretty low end for them. I might have to start rolling from the encounter charts for the levels below soon. There were no more encounters for the rest of the night (or at least what they thought was night, since it was hard to keep track underground). A quick discussion decided that they would check behind the locked door in the hobgoblin lair. They get past the door and explored the corridor beyond. Absinthe discovered the pit trap and triggered it so the group could edge around it to the door on its other side. They get past that door into the crypt beyond. Ravenspur took an interest in the stone sarcophagus in the center of the room and cast detect magic. The gnome sorcerer detected the illusionary magic within. After Absinthe gave it the all clear for traps, Micca popped the lid open and the secret area opened up and a mummy shambled out making a line right for the cleric. Thinking that it may be an illusion the group started chanting “Disbelieve! Disbelieve!” but unfortunately for them it is all too real. Half the party was paralyzed with fear at the very sight of the undead horror. Micca took a hit from the mummy and was able to withstand the curse of its touch. He skipped back and cast “Calm Emotions” which had the immediate effect of removing the fear keeping half the party from joining in the combat. Fire spells and alchemist fire was readied and all do significant damage to the creature. It still managed to do massive amounts of damage to the group but luckily every hit did not land the dreaded mummy rot. One last fire spell knocked it down to zero hit points and I could have just said it collapsed but the group had been really struggling to fight it so I gave them some rewarding flavor text. The mummy burst into flame and stumbled past the group, moaning all the way, and fell into the pit beyond the door where it was impaled upon the spikes below. I actually got a round of applause for that. After the tomb was looted the party then checked out the door to the west and, after opening it, found another crypt much like the one they had just left behind. “NOT AGAIN!” they all howled, knowing that they were most likely going to have to fight another mummy. Their greed for XP was what decided it for them. They had a plan! Micca would edge forward and flip open the stone sarcophagus with a rope tied around him. If he was paralyzed by a mummy fear effect then the group would pull him back in. Meanwhile, Ravenspur had his necklace of fireballs ready to chuck one in as soon as the mummy showed itself. The plan pretty much went off as they had hoped. Micca flipped open the lid and the second mummy shambled out of its secret hiding area. Micca was hit by the fear effect and was paralyzed. The others began dragging him back as Ravenspur threw a bead from the necklace of fireballs into the crypt. The mummy was horribly burned but it was a much tougher specimen than the one they fought before. It shambled after the limp Micca as he was dragged into the first crypt. Aislenn went up to engage it as the others pelted it with missile weapons and magic missile spells. It smacked Aislenn a good one and she succumbed to the curse. I rolled two six sided dice and she lost 5 constitution and 6 charisma. OUCH! During another attack it wound up and attempted to slug Ravenspur who got a little too close but the bad luck I was having hitting him that night protected the little gnome. After some hectic combat the last mummy went down. There was some confusion on my part on how mummy rot worked. After reading the rules on it I decided that it would hit once. If she got hit a second time and failed another save then she would suck down even more CON/CHA damage. Fortunately that did not happen. The next day I did some research online and found that I had made the correct decision according to some on the EN World forums. I also found out that I had totally forgotten about the mummy’s DR but that did not matter as much since 90% of the damage done to it was magical fire. Since Aislenn looked like death warmed over, the group decided it would be best to return to Endhome. They wrapped her in a cloak so the city watch would not take her for a leper (4 Charisma, YIKES!). The journey back was uneventful (they had cleared out most of the threats to and from Barakus). Their first stop was Micca’s temple to see if they could ask Father Beamus to recommend a cleric to be able to cast remove curse then cure disease. The cleric of Pelor was distraught and he had some disturbing news. “Yeah, what?” joked Absinthe “Curley’s body gone missing?” “Actually, yes.” “NO WAY!” Ah, my plan to move them into direct conflict with the evil adventuring party was coming to fruition. This was probably the most experience for a session they had ever received. Everyone would level to fourth level. The second level of Barakus was almost completely cleared out but there was still the matter of the black dragon on the first level and the evil adventuring party to contend with. Next Session: Picking a fight! [/QUOTE]
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