Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Castlevania campaign log
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 7984999" data-attributes="member: 7020951"><p><strong>12/5/2019</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p> <strong></strong></p><p></p><p>One arcane trickster (the one with no fighter levels) not attending; sorcerer late.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The party continued wandering around the ballroom maze, giving up on mapping and using the Outlander background our barbarian has to find their way back to where they’d been before. By the end of it, they had hit all but 2 or 3 of the rooms, but had not done much Investigating/detailed checking, so they’ve missed most of the up-and-down connections to the Library and Dungeon areas.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They fought the Wicked Tree, a tree with 120hp, two good slams, and casting as a 7th-level Druid. It put Spike Growth between itself and the door; our barbarian took the damage to cross the distance, while the monk jumped part of the way to avoid some of it. It got off a Hold Person after dropping Spike Growth, but was put down really quickly. The cleric used Sacred Flame, and the fire kept it from regenerating. It had snake swarms up in the top of the tree, and the 1st and 3rd hits dealing 10+ damage dropped the swarms down on our barbarian. The swarms didn’t last much longer. It dropped an item that requires attunement and gives +1 floating stat point (reassignable at long rest), a 2nd level spell slot, and vulnerability/disadvantage vs poison. Our dwarven cleric took it, neutralizing her advantage/resistances vs. poison.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The antigravity room was fun (walk in, fall to ceiling), and the arcane trickster with the spider climbing armor had fun showing off and bothering people who were climbing up. They then went from that into a pitch-black room. The sorcerer player was running late and arrived at just that time, which was good. The whole big room was covered in a Darkness effect, and nobody had any light spells…so they spent a round or two fighting Shadows (8 of them) in the dark before figuring out that Dispel Magic would take down a Darkness effect. One Fireball on the Shadows later and there were only a couple of them left… Shadow damage is nasty, but they are very fragile.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>After that, the group fought a few specters, was sufficiently paranoid about a room with a few “magical” tables (animated objects) and no guano from the bats above to skirt the edges and not trip the tables. They then dealt with a room with a high dark ceiling by sending a light up; that agitated the bats (2 dire, 2 swarms, 4 vampire bats). They dealt with those by Fireballing, closing the door, and then Fireballing the remaining (approaching) bats again. One dire bat survived with 7hp just long enough to trip a readied action from the Barbarian.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I changed where a door pointed on the fly as there wasn’t much left to the maze, and had them head towards the boss area. There was different music for this (“Chandeliers” from Super Castlevania IV) and it was a pretty cool fight.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>(post boss stats).</p><p></p><p>Note that I gave separate initiative turns to the two dancers, and that when one moved, they both moved. If they’d hit someone – no AOOs from that person.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The fight ended with the monk bloodied, the barbarian badly injured even with healing. Highlights:</p><p></p><p>The entire fight, only one out of four characters on the ground failed the DC 10 Acrobatics check!</p><p></p><p>The Arcane Trickster climbed up the wall and moved around on the ceiling, shooting arrows down from chandeliers. At one point, he dropped a chandelier on the boss (and the adjacent barbarian), dealing about 20 damage to the boss and about 4 to the barbarian thanks to resistances.</p><p></p><p>The arcane trickster up in the ceiling repeatedly rolling natural 20s on his Perception checks to spot the boss dancers after they spun off into the dance and became “hard to spot”.</p><p></p><p>The sorcerer had used all his 3rd level spots earlier and I think forgot that he could upcast, so he dropped Sickening Radiance on the dancers, with one taking initial damage (the other passed the save) and then damage again for one on the next enemy turn…then he dropped concentration on it before the Barbarian went and got hurt by it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I had the dancers sharing up to 50% of the damage received with each other at will (a better version of the ability granted by the rings they dropped), so they both went down at the same time to the barbarian – after parrying away a killing blow from the monk.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Everyone is leveling up to 8. The monk increased Dexterity, the Sorcerer took Spell Sniper (Eldritch Blast), and the barbarian took Great Weapon Master. The GWM-Zealot-Barbarian’s player was happily calculating his non-crit max damage as somewhere around 100, especially if hasted. Oi. Monk’s theoretical max damage (if everything hits) is in the 60s, I think. He keeps using his Ki points to Flurry and has yet to ever use Stunning Blow.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They may go to the Library next, or they may decide to backtrack to the dungeon or to further explore the Ballroom maze. I’m not sure which. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>12/19/19</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>After a recap and a bit of discussion, the party heads into the library entry room. They assess the books in the library lobby, which are all (as far as they can tell, with 80% of it being in languages they don’t read) published this year. The library contains copies of all books or writings published or reproduced in quantity…magical duplication. There are 5 doors in the lobby. I learned today that my party will just follow the left-hand door/wall when exploring…so that’s nice to know for the future!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They go into the History & Geneaology stacks, a huge maze-like room, and spend a few hours looking for useful information. They find little, and end up hearing and fighting two axe armors. Ghosts attack the back of the party during this fight, dealing quite a lot of necrotic damage. The arcane trickster, who spider-climbed up to the top of a bookshelf, uses Fire Bolt, and the group has their first encounter with a Halon Elemental, which they attack and kill. The AT uses his bat familiar to scout the room, eliminating the planned need for survival or INT checks to navigate their way back out. He also takes a few books, which means if they ever try the mirror portal (currently in library lobby), he’ll be able to use it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The next room they try is the librarian’s office. “This is a long, narrow office about twenty five feet deep and, after accounting for shelving, ten feet wide. Books, scrolls, tablets, etc., line shelves going seven feet high on both sides and the back of the room, and more are stacked on a desk and table near the back. An elderly elf sits in a comfortable-looking chair behind the desk, glancing up at you from the tome he’s currently reading. A mage-light hovers over the desk, providing excellent illumination of his book.”</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They are immediately wary, but get a bit rude when he doesn’t help them find things, and refers to them as young and needing time to learn. He namedrops Shaft, but I’m not sure if the players who are familiar with Castlevania got it. When they ask about magic, he mentions the need for a key. His response when they ask for it? “No.” The Barbarian comes really close to attacking, but the group ends up deciding to leave. There is serious discussion about coming back for him later.</p><p></p><p>The librarian is a disguised Lich with some super powerful items that give him an extra spell slot at every level, and will be very hard to fight.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The next room is fossils on display – illithid, purple worm, drider, elephant. They proceed through there (no combat) after identifying them. They end up in the library of lesser magic. Detect Magic early on shows them one of the Rugs of Smothering, which the barbarian goes up to and pokes. It misses its attack, and they shred it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They start finding loot immediately, and declare that they’ll stay as long as it takes to find it all (that’s 8 hours based on their rolls). About an hour in, 10 Spellbooks attack. These are little flying animate objects with AC 14, 18HP, and spellcasting. Roll 1d8 for each book to determine what spell it will cast that round, off a predetermined chart. The most common spell cast was Magic Missile. The party didn’t use any AOEs (Sickening Radiance could have one-shotted them), so this went on for a while and a substantial amount of damage was dealt to the party. The Kensei has a longbow as his kensei weapon, but his damage was much less, as was the barbarian. The AT had no way to trigger sneak attack either.</p><p></p><p>They got a lot of scrolls of questionable utility, and some other minor supplies, like a Wand of Secrets that I hope they remember to use. They also took a long rest, as they’d spent a solid 12-14 hours exploring two rooms for useful materials.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The door leading from there to the Library of Greater Magic is locked with Arcane Lock and a very high DC, and they roll poorly. (no rerolls, otherwise just take 20). Crowbar rolls are also poor. The barbarian gets out his (magic) greataxe and decides to start chopping through the door, because whatever’s on the other side must be valuable! Most of the rest of the party moves away to the sides, assuming that some sort of retribution would come. I had not planned for this.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, I had a chime sound (like the one that goes when the halon elementals appear), and I have the librarian walk in, walk halfway across the 120’x120’ room – with the party having time to say that they do something…but one of them perceives the fossils in the prior room moving. The librarian casts a spell. “Make a Wisdom save” – not enough to beat the librarian’s spell DC for Dominate Monster. “Stop that.” “Prevent damage to my library.” (I forget the exact words – both commands telepathic)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Then the librarian calmly walks out of the room without saying anything else.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The barbarian spent the fight after this trying to get damaged so he could make new Wisdom saves to break the Dominate effect. He failed every single save despite a Luckstone and a Mantle of Spell Resistance!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The party then went to the room of the oriental stuff, and immediately identified the naginata-wielding statues as likely hostile. Two fireballs dropped on the monk, the barbarian (who wears fire resistant armor), and the naginata armors did a lot of damage. The four halon elementals so summoned (one at casting point, one at detonation point) did some damage as well. Lacking a way to refer to them, I let the name slip, and our retired Navy guy pretty much figured out their purpose from that. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They took a short rest after this fight, letting the domination expire, and gave the Helm of the Crescent Moon (from the samurai statue in the middle of the room) to the cleric. It gives +30’ DV range, and 1 battlemaster maneuver & superiority dice (short rest). </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>We ended the session there, and there was more discussion of going after the librarian. There are only four rooms left in the library, including the boss room. They managed to circle all the way around the fiendish gynosphinx’s room. The door in the north wall of their current room will be the 3rd door to her room that they have seen!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> ….</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>1/2/20</p><p></p><p>First game of the new year! We got a late start, the cleric was absent, and two of the players (barbarian & sorcerer) did not arrive until well into the evening due to work.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The group looted the chapel, getting the +1 heavy flail and the mithril crucifix (1/day counterspell death/necromancy; 1/day negate damage/effects to self from one death/necromancy spell; usable by Good only). They then locked it back up like it was before, and went to the other main room they had not explored, the lair of Nebetah, the fiendish gynosphinx. (why gynosphinx, why not just “male sphinx” and “female sphinx” – are they different species?). They interacted with her peacefully, amusing her with a song (Performance check 22 and some good flattering words), a limerick (actually composed by a player), and a haiku (also actually composed). After some discussion, they learned more about Akmodan, who will show up later as the boss of the Clock Tower, and received the key to the Room of Greater Magic that she was holding on to.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The library is Unhallowed with Silence. They ignored all of the doors except one hidden door leading to a bedroom (empty), which they found. The party looted the library for a few hours, getting a number of good items. Whilst spread about it, one of the doors they had not explored opened. The sorcerer got a chance to move, but nobody else in sight made the perception check (silence, remember). He used his turn to move around and grab two other characters to alert them. Shaft the Death Priest, standing just outside the library in the hallway, where there’s no Silence, got off a Hold Person that hit all 3 of them. He then critted the sorc. The next round, the Barbarian saw it and came over, but Shaft used his dagger force disadvantage on the save vs. Harm person, cancelling out the Mantle of Spell Resistance’s advantage. I believe his next round was when he upcast Inflict Wounds and rolled a 20 on his attack roll for 18d10 damage, knocking the barbarian to 0 and coming within 20hp of an instakill. One rogue and the sorcerer (who had zero non-V spells) were plinking with crossbows. The other rogue came over to douse the barbarian with a potion, and got hit with Contagion (Slimy Doom). He used his turn to chug a potion of vitality to remove the poison. Over time, the rest of the party broke out of Hold Person and started damaging Shaft. He used Shield a couple of times and eventually took enough damage to make him use Word of Recall to retreat (down the hall, which is semi-blocked by Spiritual Guardian.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The group shut the door, locked it (he had the key), and then jammed a couple of items through the door handles. They then ran to the hidden bedroom, locked it, and took a short rest. I looked over Shaft’s spell list and did not find anything that would let him teleport, reach through the door, or otherwise remove the blockage. Any damage to the library infrastructure (ie, destroying the door), was out, as the Librarian doesn’t like that sort of thing. Had I thought of it, I could have had him take the hinge pins out completely and push the door over, but my DM brain didn’t keep up with INT-19/WIS-20 death priest. Oops. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>After resting, the group charged through the Spirit Guardian, spreading the 60 points of damage out across everyone but the sorcerer. They engaged Shaft (winning initiative) and did a lot of damage pretty quickly. The giant-sized (Huge) suit of armor that’s the technical level boss animated and started laying down a healthy amount of damage. At one point, 3/5 players were down. Ultimately, they killed Shaft, dead far enough before his turn that I threw away the original plan of him casting Earthquake and shattering the floor of the entire room. After that, it was mostly a matter of wearing the animated armor down before it could kill them dead.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Mistakes I made with Shaft:</p><p></p><p>-Completely forgot to use his Legendary actions. They were on a 2nd page and I didn’t spot them until 2/3 of the way through the battle. Worked fine without them.</p><p></p><p>-Failed to use Shield at the beginning of the player turn (initiative worked out so that they all went in a big block), then failed to use it on each successive hit. He lost half his HP in one round, but saved a 1st level spell slot! (Oops)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They were still worried about a TPK due to the # of players knocked down, though, so it was good.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That was the end of the session. Half the floor in the room collapsed down to the dungeon, giving them a route down there, or they can backtrack and finish looting the library area.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The group ended up with two tomes (INT & CON), but the tomes require 48 hours of study. They’re going to have to do some figuring and finagling to actually get one or both of those to kick in before the campaign ends. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>1/23/20</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p> <strong></strong></p><p></p><p>The barbarian’s player wasn’t able to make it tonight, and the sorcerer was very late. Without the damage-soaking/dealing Leeeeroy Jenkins barbarian, the party has a very different dynamic.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They never went back to finish looting the Library of Greater Magic. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They went down the pit into the dungeon (via spider climb, slow fall, and ropes), used Mage Hand (Arcane Trickster) to pick the lock for the ruined cell they were in, and eventually found the portcullis leading to the central dungeon area (command post). It was shut. They interacted with both groups of prisoners. They freed the Transylvanian natives (19, mostly civilians), who were polite and seemed harmless, but ended up being pretty hostile to the Turks (54, military) after I over-played the arrogance of the officer who was speaking for them. The party helped the Transylvanians get going up the rope, and then spent a while dithering about what to do next… long enough for most of the civilians to make it up, and for me to roll and determine that the minotaur patrol (which covers both prisoner-holding wings) was heading their way. They saw it coming and made a fighting retreat with archery and ambush, ultimately using the bottleneck of the cell door to the vertical pit to stymie then. The minotaur sorcerer stuck his head into the cell door, took an arrow, and cast Wall of Fire up at the top of the ledge, burning the tops of both ropes down, damaging 2 party members, and killing 5 of the civilians. The cleric dispelled it, and then the group retreated up to the top.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They worked with the remaining civilians (one of whom was a druid, they instantly recognized Goodberry) to give them a copy of the map and talk them through all the dangers heading out of the castle. They almost forgot to tell them some things, but I was nice and mentioned them walking towards the library with their torches held high to see (which would trigger halon elementals). The two arcane tricksters gave them surplus gear (non-magical weapons and armor) in addition to the map and recommendations for where to go. As they left, the civilians asked for the names of their rescuers, and then their druid cast Pass Without Trace on them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>There was some discussion partway through the session of other routes, and I mentioned that if there were secret doors that they hadn’t checked for or hadn’t found, I couldn’t tell them about them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The group ended up cautiously going down and finding a spread of ball bearings in front of the cell door, left by the minotaurs, making it harder for them to go in and out. There was some taunting back and forth, arrows through the doorway, etc., but nothing definitive. The minotaurs, who lacked ranged weapons, weren’t going to squeeze into a 100’ deep killbox, and the party didn’t want to come out and fight. Eventually, Goris, the minotaur boss (modified Goristro without all the resistances) arrived. He used his Cape of the Mountebank to teleport straight up right next to the archer rogue, the cleric, and the sorcerer. The kensei monk sped back up the rope (using his walking on walls ability) and they worked together for a few rounds to kill Goris – it was really touch and go for a while. The other arcane trickster played spider-climb keepaway downstairs. Goris went down, and the spellcaster who came with him (who had been too far back to interfere in the upstairs fight, slinging spells at spider-climber) hit the exact same spot with Wall of Fire, destroying another rope and knocking the monk to 0. The minotaurs then retreated in good order, and are now behind a closed portcullis with renewed HP (short rest) but down spell slots. It’ll be a tough nut for the party to crack next time. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Out of the whole session, they freed 14/19 prisoners, ignored 54, and killed 2/9 minotaurs. It was definitely a tough scenario tactically due to the verticality, the choke point, and the way I played the minotaurs as a disciplined, planning enemy.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="J-H, post: 7984999, member: 7020951"] [B]12/5/2019 [/B] One arcane trickster (the one with no fighter levels) not attending; sorcerer late. The party continued wandering around the ballroom maze, giving up on mapping and using the Outlander background our barbarian has to find their way back to where they’d been before. By the end of it, they had hit all but 2 or 3 of the rooms, but had not done much Investigating/detailed checking, so they’ve missed most of the up-and-down connections to the Library and Dungeon areas. They fought the Wicked Tree, a tree with 120hp, two good slams, and casting as a 7th-level Druid. It put Spike Growth between itself and the door; our barbarian took the damage to cross the distance, while the monk jumped part of the way to avoid some of it. It got off a Hold Person after dropping Spike Growth, but was put down really quickly. The cleric used Sacred Flame, and the fire kept it from regenerating. It had snake swarms up in the top of the tree, and the 1st and 3rd hits dealing 10+ damage dropped the swarms down on our barbarian. The swarms didn’t last much longer. It dropped an item that requires attunement and gives +1 floating stat point (reassignable at long rest), a 2nd level spell slot, and vulnerability/disadvantage vs poison. Our dwarven cleric took it, neutralizing her advantage/resistances vs. poison. The antigravity room was fun (walk in, fall to ceiling), and the arcane trickster with the spider climbing armor had fun showing off and bothering people who were climbing up. They then went from that into a pitch-black room. The sorcerer player was running late and arrived at just that time, which was good. The whole big room was covered in a Darkness effect, and nobody had any light spells…so they spent a round or two fighting Shadows (8 of them) in the dark before figuring out that Dispel Magic would take down a Darkness effect. One Fireball on the Shadows later and there were only a couple of them left… Shadow damage is nasty, but they are very fragile. After that, the group fought a few specters, was sufficiently paranoid about a room with a few “magical” tables (animated objects) and no guano from the bats above to skirt the edges and not trip the tables. They then dealt with a room with a high dark ceiling by sending a light up; that agitated the bats (2 dire, 2 swarms, 4 vampire bats). They dealt with those by Fireballing, closing the door, and then Fireballing the remaining (approaching) bats again. One dire bat survived with 7hp just long enough to trip a readied action from the Barbarian. I changed where a door pointed on the fly as there wasn’t much left to the maze, and had them head towards the boss area. There was different music for this (“Chandeliers” from Super Castlevania IV) and it was a pretty cool fight. (post boss stats). Note that I gave separate initiative turns to the two dancers, and that when one moved, they both moved. If they’d hit someone – no AOOs from that person. The fight ended with the monk bloodied, the barbarian badly injured even with healing. Highlights: The entire fight, only one out of four characters on the ground failed the DC 10 Acrobatics check! The Arcane Trickster climbed up the wall and moved around on the ceiling, shooting arrows down from chandeliers. At one point, he dropped a chandelier on the boss (and the adjacent barbarian), dealing about 20 damage to the boss and about 4 to the barbarian thanks to resistances. The arcane trickster up in the ceiling repeatedly rolling natural 20s on his Perception checks to spot the boss dancers after they spun off into the dance and became “hard to spot”. The sorcerer had used all his 3rd level spots earlier and I think forgot that he could upcast, so he dropped Sickening Radiance on the dancers, with one taking initial damage (the other passed the save) and then damage again for one on the next enemy turn…then he dropped concentration on it before the Barbarian went and got hurt by it. I had the dancers sharing up to 50% of the damage received with each other at will (a better version of the ability granted by the rings they dropped), so they both went down at the same time to the barbarian – after parrying away a killing blow from the monk. Everyone is leveling up to 8. The monk increased Dexterity, the Sorcerer took Spell Sniper (Eldritch Blast), and the barbarian took Great Weapon Master. The GWM-Zealot-Barbarian’s player was happily calculating his non-crit max damage as somewhere around 100, especially if hasted. Oi. Monk’s theoretical max damage (if everything hits) is in the 60s, I think. He keeps using his Ki points to Flurry and has yet to ever use Stunning Blow. They may go to the Library next, or they may decide to backtrack to the dungeon or to further explore the Ballroom maze. I’m not sure which. [B]12/19/19[/B] After a recap and a bit of discussion, the party heads into the library entry room. They assess the books in the library lobby, which are all (as far as they can tell, with 80% of it being in languages they don’t read) published this year. The library contains copies of all books or writings published or reproduced in quantity…magical duplication. There are 5 doors in the lobby. I learned today that my party will just follow the left-hand door/wall when exploring…so that’s nice to know for the future! They go into the History & Geneaology stacks, a huge maze-like room, and spend a few hours looking for useful information. They find little, and end up hearing and fighting two axe armors. Ghosts attack the back of the party during this fight, dealing quite a lot of necrotic damage. The arcane trickster, who spider-climbed up to the top of a bookshelf, uses Fire Bolt, and the group has their first encounter with a Halon Elemental, which they attack and kill. The AT uses his bat familiar to scout the room, eliminating the planned need for survival or INT checks to navigate their way back out. He also takes a few books, which means if they ever try the mirror portal (currently in library lobby), he’ll be able to use it. The next room they try is the librarian’s office. “This is a long, narrow office about twenty five feet deep and, after accounting for shelving, ten feet wide. Books, scrolls, tablets, etc., line shelves going seven feet high on both sides and the back of the room, and more are stacked on a desk and table near the back. An elderly elf sits in a comfortable-looking chair behind the desk, glancing up at you from the tome he’s currently reading. A mage-light hovers over the desk, providing excellent illumination of his book.” They are immediately wary, but get a bit rude when he doesn’t help them find things, and refers to them as young and needing time to learn. He namedrops Shaft, but I’m not sure if the players who are familiar with Castlevania got it. When they ask about magic, he mentions the need for a key. His response when they ask for it? “No.” The Barbarian comes really close to attacking, but the group ends up deciding to leave. There is serious discussion about coming back for him later. The librarian is a disguised Lich with some super powerful items that give him an extra spell slot at every level, and will be very hard to fight. The next room is fossils on display – illithid, purple worm, drider, elephant. They proceed through there (no combat) after identifying them. They end up in the library of lesser magic. Detect Magic early on shows them one of the Rugs of Smothering, which the barbarian goes up to and pokes. It misses its attack, and they shred it. They start finding loot immediately, and declare that they’ll stay as long as it takes to find it all (that’s 8 hours based on their rolls). About an hour in, 10 Spellbooks attack. These are little flying animate objects with AC 14, 18HP, and spellcasting. Roll 1d8 for each book to determine what spell it will cast that round, off a predetermined chart. The most common spell cast was Magic Missile. The party didn’t use any AOEs (Sickening Radiance could have one-shotted them), so this went on for a while and a substantial amount of damage was dealt to the party. The Kensei has a longbow as his kensei weapon, but his damage was much less, as was the barbarian. The AT had no way to trigger sneak attack either. They got a lot of scrolls of questionable utility, and some other minor supplies, like a Wand of Secrets that I hope they remember to use. They also took a long rest, as they’d spent a solid 12-14 hours exploring two rooms for useful materials. The door leading from there to the Library of Greater Magic is locked with Arcane Lock and a very high DC, and they roll poorly. (no rerolls, otherwise just take 20). Crowbar rolls are also poor. The barbarian gets out his (magic) greataxe and decides to start chopping through the door, because whatever’s on the other side must be valuable! Most of the rest of the party moves away to the sides, assuming that some sort of retribution would come. I had not planned for this. Anyway, I had a chime sound (like the one that goes when the halon elementals appear), and I have the librarian walk in, walk halfway across the 120’x120’ room – with the party having time to say that they do something…but one of them perceives the fossils in the prior room moving. The librarian casts a spell. “Make a Wisdom save” – not enough to beat the librarian’s spell DC for Dominate Monster. “Stop that.” “Prevent damage to my library.” (I forget the exact words – both commands telepathic) Then the librarian calmly walks out of the room without saying anything else. The barbarian spent the fight after this trying to get damaged so he could make new Wisdom saves to break the Dominate effect. He failed every single save despite a Luckstone and a Mantle of Spell Resistance! The party then went to the room of the oriental stuff, and immediately identified the naginata-wielding statues as likely hostile. Two fireballs dropped on the monk, the barbarian (who wears fire resistant armor), and the naginata armors did a lot of damage. The four halon elementals so summoned (one at casting point, one at detonation point) did some damage as well. Lacking a way to refer to them, I let the name slip, and our retired Navy guy pretty much figured out their purpose from that. They took a short rest after this fight, letting the domination expire, and gave the Helm of the Crescent Moon (from the samurai statue in the middle of the room) to the cleric. It gives +30’ DV range, and 1 battlemaster maneuver & superiority dice (short rest). We ended the session there, and there was more discussion of going after the librarian. There are only four rooms left in the library, including the boss room. They managed to circle all the way around the fiendish gynosphinx’s room. The door in the north wall of their current room will be the 3rd door to her room that they have seen! …. 1/2/20 First game of the new year! We got a late start, the cleric was absent, and two of the players (barbarian & sorcerer) did not arrive until well into the evening due to work. The group looted the chapel, getting the +1 heavy flail and the mithril crucifix (1/day counterspell death/necromancy; 1/day negate damage/effects to self from one death/necromancy spell; usable by Good only). They then locked it back up like it was before, and went to the other main room they had not explored, the lair of Nebetah, the fiendish gynosphinx. (why gynosphinx, why not just “male sphinx” and “female sphinx” – are they different species?). They interacted with her peacefully, amusing her with a song (Performance check 22 and some good flattering words), a limerick (actually composed by a player), and a haiku (also actually composed). After some discussion, they learned more about Akmodan, who will show up later as the boss of the Clock Tower, and received the key to the Room of Greater Magic that she was holding on to. The library is Unhallowed with Silence. They ignored all of the doors except one hidden door leading to a bedroom (empty), which they found. The party looted the library for a few hours, getting a number of good items. Whilst spread about it, one of the doors they had not explored opened. The sorcerer got a chance to move, but nobody else in sight made the perception check (silence, remember). He used his turn to move around and grab two other characters to alert them. Shaft the Death Priest, standing just outside the library in the hallway, where there’s no Silence, got off a Hold Person that hit all 3 of them. He then critted the sorc. The next round, the Barbarian saw it and came over, but Shaft used his dagger force disadvantage on the save vs. Harm person, cancelling out the Mantle of Spell Resistance’s advantage. I believe his next round was when he upcast Inflict Wounds and rolled a 20 on his attack roll for 18d10 damage, knocking the barbarian to 0 and coming within 20hp of an instakill. One rogue and the sorcerer (who had zero non-V spells) were plinking with crossbows. The other rogue came over to douse the barbarian with a potion, and got hit with Contagion (Slimy Doom). He used his turn to chug a potion of vitality to remove the poison. Over time, the rest of the party broke out of Hold Person and started damaging Shaft. He used Shield a couple of times and eventually took enough damage to make him use Word of Recall to retreat (down the hall, which is semi-blocked by Spiritual Guardian. The group shut the door, locked it (he had the key), and then jammed a couple of items through the door handles. They then ran to the hidden bedroom, locked it, and took a short rest. I looked over Shaft’s spell list and did not find anything that would let him teleport, reach through the door, or otherwise remove the blockage. Any damage to the library infrastructure (ie, destroying the door), was out, as the Librarian doesn’t like that sort of thing. Had I thought of it, I could have had him take the hinge pins out completely and push the door over, but my DM brain didn’t keep up with INT-19/WIS-20 death priest. Oops. After resting, the group charged through the Spirit Guardian, spreading the 60 points of damage out across everyone but the sorcerer. They engaged Shaft (winning initiative) and did a lot of damage pretty quickly. The giant-sized (Huge) suit of armor that’s the technical level boss animated and started laying down a healthy amount of damage. At one point, 3/5 players were down. Ultimately, they killed Shaft, dead far enough before his turn that I threw away the original plan of him casting Earthquake and shattering the floor of the entire room. After that, it was mostly a matter of wearing the animated armor down before it could kill them dead. Mistakes I made with Shaft: -Completely forgot to use his Legendary actions. They were on a 2nd page and I didn’t spot them until 2/3 of the way through the battle. Worked fine without them. -Failed to use Shield at the beginning of the player turn (initiative worked out so that they all went in a big block), then failed to use it on each successive hit. He lost half his HP in one round, but saved a 1st level spell slot! (Oops) They were still worried about a TPK due to the # of players knocked down, though, so it was good. That was the end of the session. Half the floor in the room collapsed down to the dungeon, giving them a route down there, or they can backtrack and finish looting the library area. The group ended up with two tomes (INT & CON), but the tomes require 48 hours of study. They’re going to have to do some figuring and finagling to actually get one or both of those to kick in before the campaign ends. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. [B]1/23/20 [/B] The barbarian’s player wasn’t able to make it tonight, and the sorcerer was very late. Without the damage-soaking/dealing Leeeeroy Jenkins barbarian, the party has a very different dynamic. They never went back to finish looting the Library of Greater Magic. They went down the pit into the dungeon (via spider climb, slow fall, and ropes), used Mage Hand (Arcane Trickster) to pick the lock for the ruined cell they were in, and eventually found the portcullis leading to the central dungeon area (command post). It was shut. They interacted with both groups of prisoners. They freed the Transylvanian natives (19, mostly civilians), who were polite and seemed harmless, but ended up being pretty hostile to the Turks (54, military) after I over-played the arrogance of the officer who was speaking for them. The party helped the Transylvanians get going up the rope, and then spent a while dithering about what to do next… long enough for most of the civilians to make it up, and for me to roll and determine that the minotaur patrol (which covers both prisoner-holding wings) was heading their way. They saw it coming and made a fighting retreat with archery and ambush, ultimately using the bottleneck of the cell door to the vertical pit to stymie then. The minotaur sorcerer stuck his head into the cell door, took an arrow, and cast Wall of Fire up at the top of the ledge, burning the tops of both ropes down, damaging 2 party members, and killing 5 of the civilians. The cleric dispelled it, and then the group retreated up to the top. They worked with the remaining civilians (one of whom was a druid, they instantly recognized Goodberry) to give them a copy of the map and talk them through all the dangers heading out of the castle. They almost forgot to tell them some things, but I was nice and mentioned them walking towards the library with their torches held high to see (which would trigger halon elementals). The two arcane tricksters gave them surplus gear (non-magical weapons and armor) in addition to the map and recommendations for where to go. As they left, the civilians asked for the names of their rescuers, and then their druid cast Pass Without Trace on them. There was some discussion partway through the session of other routes, and I mentioned that if there were secret doors that they hadn’t checked for or hadn’t found, I couldn’t tell them about them. The group ended up cautiously going down and finding a spread of ball bearings in front of the cell door, left by the minotaurs, making it harder for them to go in and out. There was some taunting back and forth, arrows through the doorway, etc., but nothing definitive. The minotaurs, who lacked ranged weapons, weren’t going to squeeze into a 100’ deep killbox, and the party didn’t want to come out and fight. Eventually, Goris, the minotaur boss (modified Goristro without all the resistances) arrived. He used his Cape of the Mountebank to teleport straight up right next to the archer rogue, the cleric, and the sorcerer. The kensei monk sped back up the rope (using his walking on walls ability) and they worked together for a few rounds to kill Goris – it was really touch and go for a while. The other arcane trickster played spider-climb keepaway downstairs. Goris went down, and the spellcaster who came with him (who had been too far back to interfere in the upstairs fight, slinging spells at spider-climber) hit the exact same spot with Wall of Fire, destroying another rope and knocking the monk to 0. The minotaurs then retreated in good order, and are now behind a closed portcullis with renewed HP (short rest) but down spell slots. It’ll be a tough nut for the party to crack next time. Out of the whole session, they freed 14/19 prisoners, ignored 54, and killed 2/9 minotaurs. It was definitely a tough scenario tactically due to the verticality, the choke point, and the way I played the minotaurs as a disciplined, planning enemy. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Castlevania campaign log
Top