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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 7985003" data-attributes="member: 7020951">2/27/2020It lives!  After several delays due to sickness, life, etc., we got to play again tonight.  The group started with the cleric, monk, and two arcane tricksters.  The barbarian & sorcerer didn’t show up until later.They finished their short rest to find that (most) of the minotaurs from the previous session were now coming up the hallway, angry and looking to finish the fight.  Dice were such that nobody was surprised, and the minotaurs ended up being too far away to actually move in and attack the first round – they could only double-move in.  The rogues had already hidden themselves, one on each side of the 10’ wide doorway, so this lead to a pair of sneak attacks that killed one (injured) minotaur and hurt another before much else happen.There was some movement around, and one knockdown/shove close to the edge, but nobody got knocked off the 100’ fall, which is too bad.  One player got knocked to 0 and another was hurting, but the minotaurs were reckless-attacking with 14 AC and pre-existing damage.  Corwyn, the arcane trickster (Rogue 9) burned the remaining charges in his ring to go Improved Invisible for a couple of rounds, and went right after the minotaur sorcerer.  Blade Ward (bonus/quickened action) blocked some of the damage, but it pulled the sorc out of the fight, making him waste a round on See Invisibility, and then retreat back into the hall to deal with Corwyn.  Ultimately, the sorcerer was able to line up a lightning bolt on ¾ party members, and then died.  The monk (Ratel) had wall-run around him to block his line of retreat.I mention that they could see the impressions that the 800# minotaurs had left in the carpet, and they decide to back-track the minotaur’s route.  Corwyn has +12 on his Investigation checks, and a helper, so with a 29 and then a 31, they are easily able to figure out the entire route, helped by any doors on the path having been left open.  They run into a single Invisible Stalker in the library stacks, but other than that, the tracking is so good that it’s like Corwyn can smell their path.  The group finds an open secret door and takes the spiral staircase down to the dungeon, where they emerge into a large-sized bedroom (Adam’s room, though they don’t know this).  The barbarian (Dmitri) and sorcerer (Adrian)’s players arrive just in time to fight a pair of spellstitched Flesh Golems.  Each golem has a different cantrip or 1st level spell on each arm, but the only hits they land are a pair (on the same character) that trigger Inflict Wounds.  Then they’re toast.The party emerges into the hallway and has about a dozen doors to check.  They pick the alchemical storage area (just pots, vials, etc).  One of the players excitedly loots a dozen or more glass vials, and then they open the next door to the giant chemical-filled lab belonging to Adam (Frankenstein’s Monster).  There are a bunch of 5x10 tables full of chemicals, burners, glowing things, etc…. a giant mad-scientist chemistry lab.  One of the Arcane Tricksters (Adrian) disguises himself as a short minotaur, while the other sneaks into the room and starts hiding under tables and trying to tie table legs together with rope.The disguised one has some dialogue with an annoyed Adam, who chastises him for interrupting his experiments.  Some of the rest of the party stacks up outside, and disguised-minotaur keeps talking about adventurers that they chased off.  Igor becomes visible, and the disguised player offers that they found hydra blood and werewolf blood on one of the adventurers, and that it could be useful.  Adam sends Igor over to collect it, and the disguised character stalls for time.  “one…. Two….” Slowly handing the vials over, and unconvincingly (Deception 3+5) dropping a couple.  Igor gets impatient, grabs the character’s bag, and starts yanking them out.  In doing so, he brushes against Adrian and discovers the magical disguise.  Igor earns a rapier wound to the chest for this, and initiative is rolled.I had too many options for Adam:  Do melee; spellcast as a 13th level bard; throw alchemical weapons; mix the different options together.  I ended up not using half of the choices.  One of Adam’s legendary actions is “Igor, the Wand!”, which triggers his levitating little hunchback helper to use the Wand of Lightning out of turn, healing Adam and damaging whoever’s in the path of the lightning bolt.  That only got used once before everyone focused Igor down.  The sorcerer cast Fireball twice during the battle, ruining most of the tables by causing their contents to explode (3d6 damage to adjacent creatures, Dex DC 14 half).  This did serve to boost the power of his fireball by 6d6 against both Igor and Adam.   Adam used Vicious Mockery as a legendary action on misses, doing damage.  Two party members went to 0 from this and thrown items (I think from Igor).Corwyn (Arcane Trickster 9) spent part of the battle ducking around, using ropes to link a bunch of tables together so that they could all be pulled over at once.  Unfortunately, a party member ended up at 0 hp between a couple of the linked tables, and then the sorcerer caught a couple more of them inside the Fireball.  The rope did get pulled, but most of the random effects were simply “broken glass and puddles, difficult terrain.”  (I rolled 4 on the 1d4 3 times out of 4).  Great idea, messed up by the rest of the party getting in the way.The monk was ducking in and out of the door, shooting arrows and retreating, so Adam stepped outside and cast his highest-level spell, Forcecage, completely shutting down the character.  I don’t like doing that, but it’s only one battle and it was on the spell list and made sense.  HP damage continued to mount, and Adam was unsuccessful in causing any failed CON saves with his Stinking Cloud.  The party never grouped up enough for Confusion to be worthwhile, and there was never enough dialogue for his Mass Suggestion to kick in as useful.The party then looted the area, and re-distributed some items.  Everyone has full Attunement slots now, with items left over.  Some Attuned items were not being used and now reside in backpacks.  With the area boss defeated, the party leveled up.The door to the Treasury area lies ahead of the party, although they could also go back and explore the rest of the Dungeon.  By backtracking the minotaurs and coming out through the secret door, they missed the central control area (monsters and portcullises and acid pits with bridges that dump you in) and all of the flavorful areas, like the zombie-animation room, the blood-draining room, the flesh-golem animation room, etc.  They also missed an entire wing of prisoners who will probably go un-liberated.  However, they did defeat the area boss, found pretty much all the magic loot that there was to find, and bypassed the most heavily fortified and potentially annoying area in the dungeon.  I consider that a success on their part.They could also go back to the library and help Nebetah the sphinx, or the prisoners who they directed to the library chapel, or kill the librarian (lich).  I think they’ll push ahead and probably won’t get around to going back.3/5/20We got a bit of a late start.  Only one rogue this session due to work, the spider-climbing one (Adrian).  When I describe a room, ceiling height is pretty much a mandatory piece of information now.  He and I had some discussions between sessions, and he used the alchemy lab to make several doses of giant spider poison ready, as well as create a modified Vitality potion that removes 1 level of exhaustion and grants advantage on STR & DEX checks for 1 round (using werewolf blood).  Later (during the session) he bottled up some of the dungeon despair fluid into a 3-dose injury potion, Wis DC 14 or take 1 level of exhaustion on hit (does not stack with self).  That pretty much just gives skill check penalties, so I don’t think it’ll break anything.The group decides to go back and explore the rest of the dungeon.  They check out the other doors in the hall they were in, finding an empty library with safe resting area, a room with cages for Large creatures (empty), and a room with a non-animated flesh golem hooked up to what’s heavily implied to be a lightning rod.  They disconnect the cables, and the monk opens up the flesh golem’s chest, shoves a dart into its heart, and then sews it back up.  I counted that as successfully sabotaging it!They then approached the nerve center for the prison area, but from the back side.  It’s a 40x40 building with a 25’ perimeter of floor around it.  There were two minotaurs (1 caster, 1 regular) in the building, left over from a previous session, but healed up.  Each of the four corners of the larger room had a bone pillar in it.  There were also 3 Nothics (damage type changed from necrotic to psychic), each on the far side of an acid moat, and each controlling the bridge over the acid as well as the portcullis to a given section of the prison.The spider-rogue sneaks across the roof and drops down onto the top of the central building.  The monk dashes over and onto the building… then the sorcerer drops a fireball through the window (no glass), severely damaging both minotaurs (49 damage out of 8d6+3).  The two in the middle run in and kill the minotaur caster before he even gets to go.  The four party members proceed to wipe out the rest of the enemies; I roll randomly, and 2 of the nothics get aggressive, then plastered.  The last one drops his bridge into the acid moat and tries to make himself less noticeable.  The monk dashes across the top of the acid, and the rogue spider-climbs across.  They interrogate the nothic, who doesn’t know much but points to where other prisoners are.  They ask about weapons and magic items, and he tells them about enemies that they’ve already killed.  Ultimately the rogue tests the despair fluid on him, then throws him into the acid pit, where he dies.  They raise the bridge out of the acid pit.They then go down the other wing of the prison, liberating both groups of captives.  There wasn’t much friction (Lithuanian peasants and Magyar cavalry), and the captives easily persuade the group to help them get out, also cluing them in to the fact that they missed a couple of rooms in the dungeon entry block (they did).  Crossing back, they go down the hall towards the dungeon entry, defeating two flesh golems handily – one golem didn’t get to go at all due to bad initiative and being destroyed (93hp) by two or three players.  The captives then leave the castle happily. The group goes over to the hall of mirrors, and successfully goes through the teleport-mirror to the hallway because the rogue has looted a bunch of books.  They pop back and forth, and almost decide to take on the (massively powerful spellcaster lich) Librarian, before deciding to come back to him later.They go back to the dungeon, waving at the Cyclops butler as they pass.  The party checks out the other two rooms, being seriously impressed by the one that provides a huge boost to Animate Dead (which nobody in the party uses).  The other one is where blood is harvested for the blood fountain.  There was supposed to be a flesh golem in there, but based on how the last fight went, I just say that they killed it before it could act. They check the room and find the (barely concealed) route up, which takes them up to the blood fountain in the ballroom.  They consider going to the red skeleton/map room, but decide against it.  One of the characters sticks his face into the blood fountain, and I’m sure to point out that it’s warmer than body temperature.  They chalk it up to magic and still never investigate the room or fountain more closely.  They are finally finding some of the connections between levels, and one of the players said it was very Castlevania-like to be doubling back between areas and feeling over-leveled for some enemies.Finally, they head through the door at the back of Adam’s lab into the treasury.  They touch coins before trying to gather them, so 4 ghosts pop up.  They kill 2 ghosts before the ghosts get to act.  One ghost (injured) possesses the party monk.  The other one moves around the room and wakes up 3 of the skeletal hydra heads, which were last seen in the Sunken City long ago.  The possessing ghost is driven out by Turn Undead.  The skeletal hydra heads do minimal damage, as a Hasted GWM barbarian doing 2d6+5+1+10 damage x 1.5 for bludgeoning x 3/round (with a kill) plus 1d6+4 radiant once per round…. Tends to make them basically explode.They search the room and find a shield and a path to a rest area, but don’t follow it yet.  The shield is magic but still unidentified.  They start picking up coins, and pass most of their wisdom saves.  I decide that a handful of coins is 25gp.  One character fails a save and mindlessly picks up handfuls of coins for a while before deciding to stop, and successfully saving.  They figured out pretty quickly that it was a simple compulsion to continue looting on a failed save.The barbarian walks over to the south side doors, which are air-movement elevator shafts.  It looks like the party’s about to go through that door and face a vampire at the start of the next session (sans Barbarian, who arrives late due to work).  That’s going to be a tough fight for them.  It was late so I called a good stopping point.  We have 6-8 sessions left.3/19/20Another slightly short session with a late start.  The dry-erase battle mat was left at someone’s house, so I had to make do with a pencil and paper for an under-sized map with over-sized minis.  It was a bit confusing and annoying to run at times, as the first fight had 6 enemies and the second had 12, and that was a lot to keep track of.The party decided to short rest, then turned left instead of right.  This put them in a big (80x40) room full of statues on bases every 5’, for a bunch of rows and aisles.  The foes here were 6 gnome burglars, each with 4d6 sneak attack, good hide scores, uncanny dodge, etc.  One of them had been killed and possessed by Death, and was still wearing a mirrored helm that gives great protection against charm, domination, gaze effects, and psychic damage.  The dead one specifically held back and hid until it could go after the cleric.  It took 4 scorching rays to the back, including 1 crit, and didn’t survive long.The group ended up killing all but gnome; that last one, the arcane trickster/fighter managed to grapple and put manacles on after having the cleric blind him.They interrogated the gnome, and he talked for his life, a very chatty fellow.  He proclaimed himself a member of the Brotherhood of Serendipitous Meetings, and a Venetian.  He told how they had broken into the castle to steal Dracula’s wealth, and then had met a kind of scary/creepy, but strangely trustworthy, vampire woman who offered them a deal; they could wait and kill some adventurers with good loot for her and be paid and work for her, or she could kill them.  They took the deal and were outclassed.  He tried to run a line about a very high reward being paid for his release, but the party beat his deception check.  They know that there is a female vampire, not the one they already fought, in this area – probably very nearby.In the end, they took the long round trip to take the gnome to Nebetah, the fiendish gynosphinx, and leave him with her as a toy/chew toy.  They chatted with her for a bit, but didn’t learn much new, as she hadn’t seen most of the rest of the castle.As they leave, they hear Nebetah ask the gnome what stories he has…based on how I played him, I think he’s got a LOT to tell, and will probably befriend her.  He might even pop loose the magical collar keeping her contained, and perhaps escape with her.  The party says they’ll go back for her later, but I don’t think they realize the castle will start to collapse.  They also discussed killing the librarian, again, and decided against it, again.They returned to the treasury and went into the next room, an art room full of whip-equipped skeletons.  With no map, this one was a bit of a slog.  The session ended with them looting the area, including a number of high-value art pieces and a Tentacle Rod (DMG item).  Not sure who will attune to the Tentacle Rod (should be the cleric) or if anyone will wear the Mirrored Helm.  The Mirrored Helm will really help against the vampire that they will soon face…</blockquote>

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