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Against the Giants: Campaign Journal
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<blockquote data-quote="cthulhu42" data-source="post: 7353122" data-attributes="member: 6792361"><p>Session 13</p><p></p><p> We start the session with Thoradin gathering the group around him for a healing ritual, although Edran is already on the run. Thoradin shrugs, unwilling to let Edran dictate his actions and begins to cast anyway. </p><p></p><p> Edran sneaks down the southern hallway and spies a group of gnolls down a westward tunnel. Letting them be, he continues south, back to the throne room, then circling around to find the group once again. He does a little more searching to the west, but finally stays put long enough for Thoradin to cast his ritual and benefit from healing. </p><p></p><p> Hearing Edran tell of the gnolls, they head down to deal with them, calling out a warning to surrender. The gnolls are having none of it and respond with crossbow fire. But in the end, they are just gnolls, and the party wade into them, soon killing five of them in short order. The last two gnolls drop their weapons and cower for their lives. </p><p></p><p> From a nearby door comes a call for help, and soon the heroes meet Obmi, the dwarf prince, who has been held prisoner here lo these last twenty-five years. The party is suspicious, but with no good reason not to trust the dwarf, they welcome him into the fold. </p><p></p><p> From there they head south into the council chambers where Edran attempts to disarm a trap on a chest they find in a hidden alcove. He fails spectacularly and is hit by all six poisoned arrows, taking a gawd awful amount of damage. </p><p></p><p> After a bit more searching, they decide to move on. Edran tries to open the door to the west, only to have it pulled open as he does so by a fire giant on the other side. The giant pounds Edran mercilessly. Krote steps up, but the giant scores a critical hit, piling on around fifty points of damage. The heroes do manage to kill the giant, but a short rest is called for. </p><p></p><p> After the rest they head out again, stepping around the dead giant and turning south, discovering the kitchen and storage room. Edran lowers himself via rope down the garbage chute in the kitchen, but at fifty feet the rope isn't long enough to get him to the bottom. Smelling truly terrible, he has Krote pull him back up. </p><p></p><p> They head north now, following the hall as it then angles to the north/west. Down a side hall they discover a barred door holding another prisoner. This is Gerit, a merchant from Ulek, held here for the last three weeks after his caravan was ambushed by giants. He promises the heroes a hefty reward if they can get him to safety, and so he joins the group. He isn't much of a fighter, but they set him up with a crossbow and tell him to stay towards the rear. </p><p></p><p> Next they find an empty barracks, devoid of much else but giant belongings. Edran decides to use a recently found wand of Detect Magic, powering it on and racing off to backtrack, searching for any magic they might have missed. He goes full circle through territory they've already trod, but then decides to have a peek behind a set of doors they'd passed earlier. He manages to open the heavy doors, but hears giant voices beyond. In a rare moment of discretion, he hot foots it back to the party, telling them what he found. Thinking to deal with the giants, they follow Edran back to the doorway. </p><p></p><p> Thoradin, Krote and Edran step through, and are immediately spotted by a giant. The fight is on.</p><p></p><p> These are the remnants of the upper level giants. The fire giant cook is there, calling out orders to nine fire giant servants and seven gnolls thralls. The servants are not nearly as tough as their fire giant brethren, and Sai takes out most of the gnolls with a well placed Fireball. But under the command of the matron she giant, they use tactics that make them dangerous indeed, falling back to draw the party deeper into the room, attacking from both sides. That, and the fact that Edran is still unable to sneak attack, make the fight much harder than it probably would have been otherwise. </p><p></p><p> But then things get even worse. Obmi, hanging towards the back, suddenly lashes out at Sai, dropping the wizard with a single axe blow! Krote, meanwhile, is Dominated, and has no choice but to attack Thoradin. It is only when one of the giants hit Krote and cause a lucky save against the spell that he comes out of it. </p><p></p><p> Edran manages to swipe a healing potion from Krote and races to Sai, dumping the potion down his throat. A very confused Sai Misty Steps back down the hall, trying to get his bearings. Heeding Edran's warnings that Obmi and Gerit are villains, Sai tags Gerit with a Firebolt, only to have it splat against the merchant with no damage at all. Gerit, in fact, merely smiles evilly at Sai. </p><p></p><p> We had to break there, unfortunately, as it was 11:30. We will start the next session in mid combat. </p><p></p><p> It is Harvester 13, roughly 11:00am. </p><p></p><p> Post game notes: An interesting night with the introduction of two nefarious NPC's, and a little bit of error on my part for not properly thinking them through. </p><p></p><p> Obmi, the assassin dwarf, is fairly easy to deal with. Given his “cell” and all the items he had in his secondary cell, it was a bit of a tough sell to make the PC's buy his story of having been held captive for twenty-five years. Certaily I could have made that shorter, but again, not enough forethought on my part. Still, he was convincing enough that the PC's let him come along. </p><p></p><p> Gerit is a whole other ball of wax. He is a Rakshasa in disguise, and I am utterly guilty of not having delved into the 5E version of what those guys can do (it's been a busy couple of weeks, give me a break already!). So when I decided that it was time for him to strike, well, it could have gone better.</p><p></p><p> As a side note, I decided that Obmi and Gerit were at least familiar with one another and snuck in a few hushed conversations as they trailed the exploring party. Gerit is obviously the boss here, and Obmi is firmly in the minion position, at least for now. </p><p></p><p> As the fight with the giants developed, I had the pair of them hang back with Sai. When it looked as if the battle was at that tipping point where the PC's were set to prevail, they struck, hoping to shift it the other way in hopes of getting into the giant's (and ultimately the drow's) good graces. Obmi scored a crit against an unaware Sai. The doubled sneak attack and poison damage was just enough to put our wizard down. </p><p></p><p> In the meantime, Gerit used his Dominate Person on Krote, which would have been fine had Krote not been hip deep in giants at the time. His wisdom save is terrible, but what with getting smacked around by giants, he got about three chances to save in the first round of his being Dominated and eventually passed after only beating on Thoradin for a single turn. In hindsight, I should never have had Gerit use that big gun in that situation. </p><p></p><p> Gerit's second attempt was a Suggestion against Krote, which took hole, but then we got mired in the discussion of what constitutes “reasonable” with regards to what he could actually suggest that Krote do. In the end, he Suggested to Krote that Thoradin was an enemy, secretly in league with the giants, which is very unsatisfying, and not up to Rakshasa standards, I think. It was getting near the end of the night, and right after this discussion we wrapped. I'm actually thinking abut retconning Gerit's last action after doing some more research on rakshasa in general, and digging into Suggestion, which I can't believe is still so poorly and vaguely worded. With forty years to work on it, you'd think a decent version of that spell would have been written by now. </p><p></p><p> But the problem is largely mine. Rakshasa are obviously not toe-to-toe combat monsters, and Gerit should have way deeper aspirations and machinations than I've given him credit for. In hindsight, I can see that the best thing to do is to have him Planeshift himself and Obmi out of there and reappear later as a much more interesting reoccurring villain. I'd love to blame the module for not hinting at his real motivations, but really, it's on me. The module provides the bones. It's my job to flesh them out. </p><p></p><p> Oh well, live and learn.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="cthulhu42, post: 7353122, member: 6792361"] Session 13 We start the session with Thoradin gathering the group around him for a healing ritual, although Edran is already on the run. Thoradin shrugs, unwilling to let Edran dictate his actions and begins to cast anyway. Edran sneaks down the southern hallway and spies a group of gnolls down a westward tunnel. Letting them be, he continues south, back to the throne room, then circling around to find the group once again. He does a little more searching to the west, but finally stays put long enough for Thoradin to cast his ritual and benefit from healing. Hearing Edran tell of the gnolls, they head down to deal with them, calling out a warning to surrender. The gnolls are having none of it and respond with crossbow fire. But in the end, they are just gnolls, and the party wade into them, soon killing five of them in short order. The last two gnolls drop their weapons and cower for their lives. From a nearby door comes a call for help, and soon the heroes meet Obmi, the dwarf prince, who has been held prisoner here lo these last twenty-five years. The party is suspicious, but with no good reason not to trust the dwarf, they welcome him into the fold. From there they head south into the council chambers where Edran attempts to disarm a trap on a chest they find in a hidden alcove. He fails spectacularly and is hit by all six poisoned arrows, taking a gawd awful amount of damage. After a bit more searching, they decide to move on. Edran tries to open the door to the west, only to have it pulled open as he does so by a fire giant on the other side. The giant pounds Edran mercilessly. Krote steps up, but the giant scores a critical hit, piling on around fifty points of damage. The heroes do manage to kill the giant, but a short rest is called for. After the rest they head out again, stepping around the dead giant and turning south, discovering the kitchen and storage room. Edran lowers himself via rope down the garbage chute in the kitchen, but at fifty feet the rope isn't long enough to get him to the bottom. Smelling truly terrible, he has Krote pull him back up. They head north now, following the hall as it then angles to the north/west. Down a side hall they discover a barred door holding another prisoner. This is Gerit, a merchant from Ulek, held here for the last three weeks after his caravan was ambushed by giants. He promises the heroes a hefty reward if they can get him to safety, and so he joins the group. He isn't much of a fighter, but they set him up with a crossbow and tell him to stay towards the rear. Next they find an empty barracks, devoid of much else but giant belongings. Edran decides to use a recently found wand of Detect Magic, powering it on and racing off to backtrack, searching for any magic they might have missed. He goes full circle through territory they've already trod, but then decides to have a peek behind a set of doors they'd passed earlier. He manages to open the heavy doors, but hears giant voices beyond. In a rare moment of discretion, he hot foots it back to the party, telling them what he found. Thinking to deal with the giants, they follow Edran back to the doorway. Thoradin, Krote and Edran step through, and are immediately spotted by a giant. The fight is on. These are the remnants of the upper level giants. The fire giant cook is there, calling out orders to nine fire giant servants and seven gnolls thralls. The servants are not nearly as tough as their fire giant brethren, and Sai takes out most of the gnolls with a well placed Fireball. But under the command of the matron she giant, they use tactics that make them dangerous indeed, falling back to draw the party deeper into the room, attacking from both sides. That, and the fact that Edran is still unable to sneak attack, make the fight much harder than it probably would have been otherwise. But then things get even worse. Obmi, hanging towards the back, suddenly lashes out at Sai, dropping the wizard with a single axe blow! Krote, meanwhile, is Dominated, and has no choice but to attack Thoradin. It is only when one of the giants hit Krote and cause a lucky save against the spell that he comes out of it. Edran manages to swipe a healing potion from Krote and races to Sai, dumping the potion down his throat. A very confused Sai Misty Steps back down the hall, trying to get his bearings. Heeding Edran's warnings that Obmi and Gerit are villains, Sai tags Gerit with a Firebolt, only to have it splat against the merchant with no damage at all. Gerit, in fact, merely smiles evilly at Sai. We had to break there, unfortunately, as it was 11:30. We will start the next session in mid combat. It is Harvester 13, roughly 11:00am. Post game notes: An interesting night with the introduction of two nefarious NPC's, and a little bit of error on my part for not properly thinking them through. Obmi, the assassin dwarf, is fairly easy to deal with. Given his “cell” and all the items he had in his secondary cell, it was a bit of a tough sell to make the PC's buy his story of having been held captive for twenty-five years. Certaily I could have made that shorter, but again, not enough forethought on my part. Still, he was convincing enough that the PC's let him come along. Gerit is a whole other ball of wax. He is a Rakshasa in disguise, and I am utterly guilty of not having delved into the 5E version of what those guys can do (it's been a busy couple of weeks, give me a break already!). So when I decided that it was time for him to strike, well, it could have gone better. As a side note, I decided that Obmi and Gerit were at least familiar with one another and snuck in a few hushed conversations as they trailed the exploring party. Gerit is obviously the boss here, and Obmi is firmly in the minion position, at least for now. As the fight with the giants developed, I had the pair of them hang back with Sai. When it looked as if the battle was at that tipping point where the PC's were set to prevail, they struck, hoping to shift it the other way in hopes of getting into the giant's (and ultimately the drow's) good graces. Obmi scored a crit against an unaware Sai. The doubled sneak attack and poison damage was just enough to put our wizard down. In the meantime, Gerit used his Dominate Person on Krote, which would have been fine had Krote not been hip deep in giants at the time. His wisdom save is terrible, but what with getting smacked around by giants, he got about three chances to save in the first round of his being Dominated and eventually passed after only beating on Thoradin for a single turn. In hindsight, I should never have had Gerit use that big gun in that situation. Gerit's second attempt was a Suggestion against Krote, which took hole, but then we got mired in the discussion of what constitutes “reasonable” with regards to what he could actually suggest that Krote do. In the end, he Suggested to Krote that Thoradin was an enemy, secretly in league with the giants, which is very unsatisfying, and not up to Rakshasa standards, I think. It was getting near the end of the night, and right after this discussion we wrapped. I'm actually thinking abut retconning Gerit's last action after doing some more research on rakshasa in general, and digging into Suggestion, which I can't believe is still so poorly and vaguely worded. With forty years to work on it, you'd think a decent version of that spell would have been written by now. But the problem is largely mine. Rakshasa are obviously not toe-to-toe combat monsters, and Gerit should have way deeper aspirations and machinations than I've given him credit for. In hindsight, I can see that the best thing to do is to have him Planeshift himself and Obmi out of there and reappear later as a much more interesting reoccurring villain. I'd love to blame the module for not hinting at his real motivations, but really, it's on me. The module provides the bones. It's my job to flesh them out. Oh well, live and learn. [/QUOTE]
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