Tenth Session, December 11, 2023
Continuing through Chapter 5: Paths of Peril.
The party quickly abandoned their idea of following the tunnel when I worked out how long it was, and instead kept investigating.
Next on their list was the Miner's Exchange. The artwork depicting the missing foundation stone from the base of the exchange is truly terrible. One of my players, the son of a carpenter, looked at it and said "there's no way that missing stone makes it unstable." I'm the son of a person who learnt stonemasonry to build a bluestone house. I agreed. Sigh.
But at least I could play Halia. There's nothing like role-playing a Zhentarim! And she wanted to know what the goblins were up to and what the characters knew. By now it was obvious that they'd been stealing stones, and obsidian ones at that. Which was weird, but that's how it goes at times. But she'd driven them off southwards, and so the party picked up the trail and followed.
(There's no check mentioned in the text, but I allowed everyone to make Survival checks to follow the trail, because I like making skill-based characters feel useful. Except, of course, the tempest cleric with a +7 Nature rolls terribly... again! She's good at that!) But the party were able to follow the trail regardless. (Since other characters rolled well).
They found a camp with three wounded goblins - but not normal goblins! Psionic ones! The fight was sort of tough, but once one was knocked unconscious, the rest surrendered. (Yes, the party were looking for captives, not kills!)
Two pieces of information were gleaned from the captives: The approximate location of the goblin lair, which turned out to be near where the long tunnel ended, and the name of the goblin chief!
(The goblins are in a camp where it looks like several more goblins were present, given the tents left behind. So, it really looks like the goblins used this as a staging point to attack the town, after approaching overland. Meanwhile, a second group of goblins went through an 18-mile tunnel that just happened to end under the well and used that? Because, otherwise, how would they know that they could escape through the well? Suspension of disbelief is hard at this point).
Back to Phandalin, and time to investigate the Sleeping Giant. Where Grista the orc has mysteriously become Grista the dwarf. Just as well the party never met her the first time, right?
The "good luck" stone in the bar top that got stolen - which actually brings sickness - is
not a good idea. Cause, if everyone who goes to the Sleeping Giant gets ill, who ends up visiting? Also, it's spherical. Which brings to mind Obelisks, cause they're spherical. Oh wait, no they aren't. (I guess it's a decorative bit?)
But there turned out to be goblins on top of the tavern! (This is a very nice touch - they dropped a bag of loot and are recovering it. I appreciate things like this). Very quickly noticed by the characters as they returned outside, it was time for a fight.
Text of the adventure: "During the ensuing combat, the goblins do their best to stay on the roof of the two-story tavern, using the high ground to their advantage." Also note that two of the three goblins do NOT have ranged attacks.
Attention to detail is not always a strength of this adventure.
This turned out to be a tricky fight, because the goblin who has ranged attacks can incapacitate characters for a round. And, let me tell you, the Int saves of this group are terrible.
They killed one goblin, and the other two ran off - but it wasn't that easy. And returned the bag of treasure to Griska, who was grateful, offering a week of free food. (Another lovely touch: it mentions the food isn't great! My players and I were amused).
It was time to meet up with the person in town who knew a lot about history and hidden lore, Sister Garaele, and discuss what they'd found. Oh wait, SIster Garaele is strangely sidelined in this adventure. There's a brand new character, a dwarven woman named Gwyn Oresong, who just happens to turn up and be helpful. (I'd be a lot less salty about this if they were
also using the lots and lots of NPCs that were established in the original adventure, but they don't. We have now seen the last mention of the townmaster, Harbin, and a lot of the other established NPCs.)
The players already knew most of it, but Gwyn was able to identify the partial mentions of the goblin hideout as an old Duergar Stronghold.
So, off to the stronghold they went!
More editing cock-ups were to come. Look, this is still the same chapter, and we get this text: "The characters also might know about the pantry tunnel entry from their investigations in Phandalin." If anyone can tell me what this is referring to, I'd love to know.
Yes, the stronghold has three potential entrances - though how the party might work out an undergroup, watery vent would work, I don't know. But they're adventurers, perhaps they assume it.
But the party quickly determined that staying dry was important, so they took a tunnel dug by the goblin's pet badger into the abandoned pantry. And from the pantry, they exited into the... bedroom.
WTF?
Z8=Kitchen
Z9=Pantry
Z10=Bedroom
This is just such bad editing.
I changed it so Z9 entered into Z8, which made SO MUCH MORE SENSE. (Especially as the giant badger who dug the tunnel from Z9 to the outside is in Z8). Whereupon, the window in the west wall alerted the goblins to their presence, and soon it was a massive battle.
With three CR 4 psi commanders joining in. (Two are standing guard on a parapet nearby; there's no way they wouldn't hear the disturbance and come to investigate).
I did have a nice moment where one of the commanders didn't use his area of effect attack because it'd hit their pet badger! Which saved the characters for a round. But the badger ran for it, and he didn't miss with his next attack - that was every character staggered. Even with a bunch of rerolls due to the variant (playtest) inspiration rules I employ.
(Yes, the commander got himself in the blast. He survived).
From there, things went very badly, with two characters unconscious, including the frontline fighter. One of the commanders dragged him away as a prisoner, and the artificer used a fog cloud to help take the unconscious sorcerer to safety. Back down the tunnel!
And that was it for the session. The fighter captive, and the other characters going back to Phandalin to hire help. I rather enjoyed the session, but some of the editing/writing could be a lot tighter here.
We should have another session next week, but then we get hit by three skipped sessions in a row, as the Monday night falls on Christmas, New Year's, and the birthday of our Artificer's wife. So, see you next week before a gap?
(I'll probably run some Cyberpunk RED for the other players on one or two of those occasions).
Cheers,
Merric
