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<blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 7985004" data-attributes="member: 7020951"><p><strong>4/2/20 – Via Discord thanks to the Coronavirus</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Several party members were busy and couldn’t get online, leaving it a 3-man band with the monk, the barbarian, and the sorcerer. With resources moderately depleted (monk out of ki points, everyone a few HP down), they go to take a short rest in the safe room. They take no precautions to conceal the previously hidden entrance. Additionally, last session, they learned that the gnomes were charmed by a vampire, and that she returned once a day to renew the charm, and that it had been at least 16 hours since they saw her. Her route to the gnomes goes right by the entrance to the resting area, although they didn't know where she was.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I stop them from rolling dice to recover HP, and have them roll a d10. Nobody makes the roll to be in a corner of the room immune to the Cone of Cold, so they all get blasted by the invisible Oni. The safe area is warded against undead, but Carmella the vampire’s servants, an Oni and a Genie, can both see it, enter it, etc.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Initiative is rolled, and they proceed to kill the Oni before it can act. They then step out into the room and start trying to deal with the vampire, who is up on the wall and hard to reach. She drops a Synaptic Static; the party all makes their saves, but it’s more HP down for everyone. They correctly deduce that she’s giving orders to the genie via having its lamp after she pats the lamp and orders him to kill the group.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The monk runs up the wall, hits her several times, and slow-falls down, but he’s low on HP and she drops him to 0hp. The sorcerer puts Sickening Radius up on the ceiling, forcing her to come down (she makes her save). I don’t recall the exact order of events, but the barbarian charges her, and instead of attacking twice, makes two sleight of hand checks to steal the genie’s lamp. The second one succeeds, and he runs away (she tries to grapple with her AOO, but he breaks free). They start trying to get the genie to work for them, but only give the command of “Help.” He offers some advice about Carmella not being able to see into the warded area, and then goes invisible; plainly concerned that the party will not be victorious, and that he’ll end up with an upset Carmella if he turns on her without specific orders to do so. The barbarian then pops back out to pick up the 0hp (stable) monk, and gets hit by a readied eldritch blast (3d10+12 force damage, ouch). He doesn’t make it back to the warded area, and gets charmed and ordered to give the vampire the genie’s lamp. She does so, then orders the genie to kill them all.</p><p></p><p>The genie’s attacks (3 @ +9 for ~3d6+5 each) knock the barbarian to 0hp.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The party sorcerer steps up, pouring a healing potion into the barbarian’s mouth and casting Chill Touch in melee while standing over his two unconscious comrades’ bodies. After some confusion about whether or not disadvantage is applied (it’s easy to forget that Chill Touch disadvantage applies only to undead), he ends up getting dropped to 0hp. The barbarian gets up on his turn, grabs the monk, and limps away. The sorcerer’s head is cut off, and the genie makes a show of displaying it to Carmella – playing for time, as he doesn’t want to do this. I re-vamp the map to make it more obvious that there’s a back route out of the resting area, and they take it. The sorcerer’s sacrifice is what gave them the time to escape. Hurray for a heroic death.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The two escape at 9hp and 8hp respectively. They enter a large display room; it was supposed to be guarded by four CR5-ish Cerberus Hounds (3 heads, fire breath, etc.), but I cut it to two. They engage the first one, doing over 60hp of damage and bloodying it, and take only minor damage from the 3 retaliatory bites. Still, at such low HP, they know only 1-2 hits will kill them both and it’ll be a TPK. They escape, taking the aerovator (elevator) to the art room. They’re discussing going back and dying on their own terms, and I revise the map to show all exits – including the hidden drow art room they explored last session.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They hide in there, and take a long rest. I roll dice and get a single ghost random encounter, but I can’t think of a way to make it work in a hidden 10x10 room that’s off a room that doesn’t even have ghosts, so I ignore the dice. The sorcerer player’s replacement character, a level 10 half-elf vampire (sword & board) joins the party.</p><p></p><p></p><p>We spend the rest of the time discussing loot – the people whose characters are carrying all the “extra gear” aren’t here, so I go back through the loot list and suggest a few items that I know they have that he could use. Now he’s kitted out with a magic hammer, Full Plate +1, and a shield that grants lightning & thunder resistance.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I did not have the vampire use her legendary actions. Other than that, I played this straight up with the NPCs acting consistently based on their motivations.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The party, however large it is, has encountered Carmella, lost a member, and run away. They are eager to go back. When they do, her (sorcerer) spell slots will be recharged, the genie will have some new scars and be down 30hp, and the genie will also be wielding the +2 Scimitar that the Oni was carrying, which puts the genie at 3 attacks at +11 for 3d6+7 each, making him a huge melee threat.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Had the party cleric been there, or even one of the two arcane tricksters (for lamp-stealing), this would have gone differently – but it did not, and that’s how the dice fall. Had they not taken the chances I gave them, all 3 characters would have died. Hopefully we have a bigger group next time.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>….</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>4/16/20</strong></p><p></p><p>5/6 players, woohoo! Playing via Discord. We only had about 2.5 hours of game time due to the later start and someone having to get up early the next morning.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The session started off with a recap, and some summarizing and re-attuning of items, as items collected 2 sessions ago still hadn't been attuned to by anyone. Our barbarian ditched his Breastplate of Fire Resistance (which he had down as requiring attunement correctly, and I had thought did not, incorrectly) and put on the Mirrored Helm, which gives immunity to Charm, resistance to Psychic Damage, and some substantial bonuses against enchantments and gaze attacks. The new character (Teador the Paladin) was introduced, the brother of the dead sorcerer - although he did not know his brother was dead.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The party left the art room and back-tracked their flight from last session, easily killing the 2 cerberus hounds. As written, there were 4 in that room, but I cut it to 2 last session because there were so few players; I can't have more magically appear, so they only faced two. The hounds were cleaned up pretty quickly, and the party looted some high-end mundane gear. They did not investigate the room further, so they didn't find the small secret room containing a magical leather armor (nothing great, but still).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The party backtracked to the rest area, and then to the room where they'd previously found Carmella. They looked around for her, didn't find her, and started yelling insults and taunts, trying to draw her out. They got no response, but it did alert her (next room) that they were there. When they came up the air-elevator to the next room over, they found the genie and air elemental flanking the door, ready to dish out a beat-down.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They knew that the genie didn't really want to fight them, but was following orders from the vampire, so they didn't attack him at all, the whole battle. Wielding the +2 Scimitar from the Oni, he was attacking 3x/round at +11 for 2d6+7 slashing + 1d6 lightning damage. That's a lot of pain! The party is level 10, so they could take it. They killed the Air elemental fairly quickly, and got blasted by Synaptic Static (3 failed saves and got a debuff), although the damage roll was terribly low. The arcane trickster went invisible, then used the invisible mage hand to take the genie's lamp off the vampire's sash. He rolled a 27 and used an invisible hand, so it was pretty much a case of "NOBODY" saw that happen, not even the genie. That led to the genie getting in 1 more round of attacks at Carmella's behest.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Shortly thereafter she was dogpiled by a raging zealot barbarian, a vengeance paladin with a critical smite, and a kensei monk with 4 attacks. She had too few HP to survive escaping when she transformed into a swarm of bats. The genie would have attacked them (at their strong lamp-holding suggestion), but was at the wrong place in the initiative order to do so.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The aftermath of the battle consumed the remainder of the session. I may not have this down in the correct order.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>-They dismantled Carmella's body, and used holy water, a stake through the heart, etc. to prevent her coming back. Don't recall the exact list, but it was what they did to Elizabeth Bathory also - they are pretty thorough. She had a Ring of Evasion, which nobody took.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>-The genie gave them the Scimitar of Sobek, a +2 Scimitar that the Oni had previously been wielding. As a bonus action, it (once per day) allows the wielder to Wildshape into a Giant (huge) Crocodile, and gives advantage on saves vs. Fear. The Barbarian took it, and is now without his Luckstone. He can still rage, so it's a ~100hp w/ DR buffer shape that does major damage. We discussed the power level, and I said that if it became facerollingly powerful, we'd potentially change it to just Polymorph.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>-They talked about the genie coming with them, and he asked to be freed, that he did not like being a slave. They offered to be good masters, but he pointed out that most thought that. (he had some claw marks and lost HP due to Carmella punishing him after last session). They offered to free him, but asked that he check to make sure that the prisoners they freed escaped. At this point, Teador (new character) interjected, listing off some names of people to watch for from his party and people he knew - including the dead sorcerer. "Uh, let's talk about that later" was the response. The genie offered some sort of boon, and I really pushed back on them to decide or ask for something instead of having me give them options. "This is DM-Limited Wish" sort of. There was a LOT of discussion over this, and it included 3 people using the Discord dice-roller to play virtual Rock Paper Scissors. In the end, the Paladin (Teador) asked for a weapon he could use. I had the genie spin a line about the intent going into it, etc... ultimately giving them the Anyblade, a +2 weapon that can, as an action, change shape into any simple or martial melee weapon. It also counts as silver, adamantine, etc. for purposes of penetrating DR - basically the old Metalline property. He was happy with that! This is only the 3rd +2 weapon in the party (Scimitar of Sobek, Trident, now this). The genie wind-walked on out of there.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>-They then sat Teador down and discussed his brother's death with him, assuring him that Adrian had died heroically saving them, etc. Quoth the player: "To spare you my bad acting, I'll tell you that, yeah, he breaks down crying for a while." They loot the room, finding a few healing potions, and a gear list that exactly matches up with Adrian's gear (minus a couple of items that'll show up on his shade later), including 835gp. They recognized it right off, especially since there had just been discussion about his old character having about 800 gold. It worked really well...and the Paladin ended up insisting on keeping his brother's Wand of Magic Detection.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They stopped there with a short rest. They thought this was a tough fight "If the vampire, the Oni, and the Genie isn't the boss, I'm worried." - whereas to me, it was a pretty easy fight since nobody got hit to 0, charmed, stunned, or seriously CC'd. They are at least down some spell slots and HD so that they won't be able to fully nova in the boss fight. Everyone had fun.</p><p></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>4/23/20</strong></p><p></p><p>5/6 players again. Late start, but we ended up running about 3 hrs 45 minutes anyway.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Quick recap of last session, confirmed nobody shuffling items around. They head east through an unexplored door and find a 30x30 room of gems, jewels, crowns, lining the walls, etc. after the thief unlocks the door. There’s some discussion, including the exact line “I feel like ghosts are going to appear and attack us if we take something,” followed about 20 seconds later by a player grabbing something off the shelf. 8 ghosts promptly appear as scripted for the room. I was glad they couldn’t see my face when someone made the comment about ghosts! The ghosts do some damage (I run them without the fear/aging aura) and then get killed. One player is possessed, grappled by another player, and then the ghost is Turned right out.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>What follows is a 10 minute diversion into Adventurer Accounting and De-junking, as most of the characters drop excess non-magic items (starter chainmail, the maul carried from level 3 on, etc.) in order to fit as much high value loot as possible into their backpacks. The entire contents of the room are worth about 140,000gp (rolled) and require 9 cubic feet of space. Most of them walk out with about 15,000 gp worth of stuff, and dreams of building mansions or living in luxury for the rest of their lives. “I’m getting rid of my coins to stuff in more gems.” “I don’t need my mess kit.” </p><p></p><p>In a lowish-magic setting (most of Europe is level 5 and under, with +1 weapons considered prized heirlooms), excessive monetary wealth doesn’t buy you better gear – it buys social status, lands, properties, and high offices. In other words, it buys plot hooks J</p><p></p><p>They enjoyed it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The next room is another one full of piles of gold. I decided that “3 Huge skeleton dragons 60’ up on the ceiling right over the door” requires a perception check when everyone’s looking around at ground height… only the last 1 in made the check. Two of the dragons opened up with their breath weapons, dealing a good amount of damage, while the third went to melee. Although plenty of HP damage was dished out, no PCs were seriously inconvenienced by all this. The Paladin killed 2 dragon skeletons and burned all of his spell slots on smites, while the arcane trickster finished off the last with a crossbow bolt sneak attack. There were a couple of crits. They are burning through 200+ enemy HP a round some rounds now.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They investigate the western room, which has a cabinet by the door containing a Rod of Telekinesis, some Alchemist’s fire, and torches. After picking the lock on the acid-warded door, they find a big “cube of force in iron frame” type box with a lid that they can open. As one of them said: “I don’t think we should open it, but I want to.” So they do.</p><p></p><p>I call for arcane checks as something <em>wrong</em> and ugly sticks a pseudopod through and starts pulling itself out. Arcana 24 gets “A word pops into your mind. “Shoggoth.” You feel like fire would help, or that telekinesis might be effective.”</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They use the Rod’s one charge for the day to hold it in (advantage on opposed check + good roll) while two others run in and slam the lid on it, latching it shut. They then leave the room.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That was the expected outcome. It was only technically a combat encounter, although a real screw-up could have made it one (I do have the Shoggoth statblock ready)… it was really an exploration encounter.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They then investigate the hole in the wall, which leads down to an 80’ deep 3’ wide pit containing a +1 Shield of Angel Wings (Feather Fall, Bless D4 is always 4, Bane D4 is always 1) and a Staff of the Woodlands. It’s literally a hole that Dracula threw useless items into. The cleric takes the shield, boosting her AC to 17. The group short rests.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They head into the boss room, where a Reverse Gravity effect triggers, slamming all the coins on the floor against the ceiling. All of them made their Dexterity save thanks to being within 10’ of the Paladin’s +4 Aura of Nope. The boss is a reskinned dragon that’s a giant bat. It falls in 1 or 1.5 rounds of combat… the GWM Barbarian/Fighter action surges for 4 attacks, crits, and does something like 130 points of damage in one round out of 200hp. I don’t think anyone took double-digit damage.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Then the “other” bosses drop in, Slogra & Gaibon (source direct from Castlevania). Unfortunately, I gave Slogra vulnerability to bludgeoning damage (as a dinosaur skeleton knight), so he went down super fast to, yep, another crit. Gaibon flew around for a while, missed all but one of his talon attacks – as in, 3 of his 4 or 5 attacks were natural 1s – and spat acid balls at them, wearing them down while the party plinked back at his 260hp with ranged attacks. He knocked the monk (kensei weapon: longbow) to 0 hp, but was then killed by a 5th-level Guiding Bolt. A highlight of this battle was the halfling arcane trickster holding his attack so that the barbarian could throw him 20’ as an improvised weapon, dealing 1d4+str damage on hit and getting his one melee attack in.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They then got the loot (Skyfall boots: Immune to falling damage, redirect it to a 10’ AOE, a +1/2d6 fire lance, and an Ioun Stone of Mastery) and leveled up to 11.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I need to look again at boss monster HP for the rest of the game and inflate it some. I really see why “giant bag of HP” status is needed, although a lot of it is also due to the # of crits they rolled.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>5/7/20</strong></p><p></p><p>A monk, a cleric, an arcane trickster, and a paladin walk into an evil shadowy Clock Tower.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The first floor is a big (80’ diameter) room with three trap doors down and one stair up. There are three large driveshafts spaced around the room that are driving the gears and the shadow-generating functions of the clock tower (it’s doing a “Sauron’s Shadow” type thing over the surrounding area). They investigate them all briefly, go up to the room full of gears, decide that it’s a pain to cross, and then go down one of the trap doors.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They skip the two with “long stairs down” and go down the one that’s a shorter ladder, spotting two fiends. The religion checks are flubbed, and the arcane trickster invisibly tries to walk across a big open room towards an Erinyes with 120’ Truesight and a Chain Devil. He gets spotted, and initiative is rolled. The Erinyes casts “Illusory Dragon” from a scroll, hitting the rogue and the monk. The rogue ends up deciding to use Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, and succeeds (I overlooked her spell resistance, so he, as a halfling, had advantage from being hidden behind the monk). The incapacitation cancels the Illusory Dragon, and that’s how a 1st-level spell shuts down an 8th-level spell.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The Erinyes did substantial damage with her +1 longbow and +1d6 electrical arrows, plus the innate +3d8 poison and DC 14 CON or be poisoned effect on her attacks, but they ultimately brought her down. The Chain Devil was a speed bump. The monk took both the arrows and the bow, as longbow is his kensei ranged weapon.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They take a short rest. There’s substantial back-and-forth about how to destroy the mechanism that uses the despair fluid from the dungeon to power a driveshaft. After trying a few things, the paladin turns the Anyblade into a pick and bashes a hole in the bowl holding the fluid, so that it drains out much faster than it flows in. This starts to slow the driveshaft & associated gears, but it’ll take some time.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Returning to the entry room, they’re confronted by Akmodan’s Simulacrum. It rolls poorly on initiative, so by the time its turn comes, it has fewer than 10 HP left thanks to a critical sneak attack. It manages one cursed touch (curse resisted) and one Harm (saving throw made) before being reduced to snow. Arcana checks flubbed.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The group ends up going up and around/through the gears, rather than disabling power to the other two driveshafts. The movement/exploration challenge is much harder, and they miss out on some good gear, but this does get them to their goal faster and without a couple of tough fights. They didn’t need the +2 spear, +1 repeating crossbow, +1+damage maul, or the +1 trident+blind 3/day items anyway, right? On the balance, probably smart play. Akmodan (the boss) can cast Simulacrum every 6 hours, so if they long rest at all, they get to fight another Simulacrum. The idea was that they’d disable all the driveshafts and have a resource-drain challenge, but it looks like they’ll make it through the next 2 floors without even needing a long rest. So much for lots of extra build-up! That’s DMing for ya. I’m not going to punish smart, goal-oriented play.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It’s hard to convey all the problem-solving of trying to navigate past moving gears. The Arcane Trickster’s reliable talent let him no-fail the entire acrobatics experience, while the Monk’s wall-running let him do it in a couple of stages. They used rope and pitons to make a path onto the ladder, off it around obstacles, and back on, and reached the next room.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The next room had 6 of the regenerating red skeletons, plus some hazardous spinning helicopter-blade things. The skeletons weren’t much of a threat, so the paladin shoved the last one into the spinning blade thing. It did not make the DC 15 dexterity save, nor did the skeleton survive 2d10 bludgeoning + 2d10 electric + 2d10 necrotic. To prevent the skeletons from regenerating, they removed all femurs and humerus bones, then threw them down into the room of gears below. If they come back through, the skeletons will have to wiggle after them and try to bite them. Good solution.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Stopped there.</p><p>---and I'm all caught up for now!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="J-H, post: 7985004, member: 7020951"] [B]4/2/20 – Via Discord thanks to the Coronavirus[/B] Several party members were busy and couldn’t get online, leaving it a 3-man band with the monk, the barbarian, and the sorcerer. With resources moderately depleted (monk out of ki points, everyone a few HP down), they go to take a short rest in the safe room. They take no precautions to conceal the previously hidden entrance. Additionally, last session, they learned that the gnomes were charmed by a vampire, and that she returned once a day to renew the charm, and that it had been at least 16 hours since they saw her. Her route to the gnomes goes right by the entrance to the resting area, although they didn't know where she was. I stop them from rolling dice to recover HP, and have them roll a d10. Nobody makes the roll to be in a corner of the room immune to the Cone of Cold, so they all get blasted by the invisible Oni. The safe area is warded against undead, but Carmella the vampire’s servants, an Oni and a Genie, can both see it, enter it, etc. Initiative is rolled, and they proceed to kill the Oni before it can act. They then step out into the room and start trying to deal with the vampire, who is up on the wall and hard to reach. She drops a Synaptic Static; the party all makes their saves, but it’s more HP down for everyone. They correctly deduce that she’s giving orders to the genie via having its lamp after she pats the lamp and orders him to kill the group. The monk runs up the wall, hits her several times, and slow-falls down, but he’s low on HP and she drops him to 0hp. The sorcerer puts Sickening Radius up on the ceiling, forcing her to come down (she makes her save). I don’t recall the exact order of events, but the barbarian charges her, and instead of attacking twice, makes two sleight of hand checks to steal the genie’s lamp. The second one succeeds, and he runs away (she tries to grapple with her AOO, but he breaks free). They start trying to get the genie to work for them, but only give the command of “Help.” He offers some advice about Carmella not being able to see into the warded area, and then goes invisible; plainly concerned that the party will not be victorious, and that he’ll end up with an upset Carmella if he turns on her without specific orders to do so. The barbarian then pops back out to pick up the 0hp (stable) monk, and gets hit by a readied eldritch blast (3d10+12 force damage, ouch). He doesn’t make it back to the warded area, and gets charmed and ordered to give the vampire the genie’s lamp. She does so, then orders the genie to kill them all. The genie’s attacks (3 @ +9 for ~3d6+5 each) knock the barbarian to 0hp. The party sorcerer steps up, pouring a healing potion into the barbarian’s mouth and casting Chill Touch in melee while standing over his two unconscious comrades’ bodies. After some confusion about whether or not disadvantage is applied (it’s easy to forget that Chill Touch disadvantage applies only to undead), he ends up getting dropped to 0hp. The barbarian gets up on his turn, grabs the monk, and limps away. The sorcerer’s head is cut off, and the genie makes a show of displaying it to Carmella – playing for time, as he doesn’t want to do this. I re-vamp the map to make it more obvious that there’s a back route out of the resting area, and they take it. The sorcerer’s sacrifice is what gave them the time to escape. Hurray for a heroic death. The two escape at 9hp and 8hp respectively. They enter a large display room; it was supposed to be guarded by four CR5-ish Cerberus Hounds (3 heads, fire breath, etc.), but I cut it to two. They engage the first one, doing over 60hp of damage and bloodying it, and take only minor damage from the 3 retaliatory bites. Still, at such low HP, they know only 1-2 hits will kill them both and it’ll be a TPK. They escape, taking the aerovator (elevator) to the art room. They’re discussing going back and dying on their own terms, and I revise the map to show all exits – including the hidden drow art room they explored last session. They hide in there, and take a long rest. I roll dice and get a single ghost random encounter, but I can’t think of a way to make it work in a hidden 10x10 room that’s off a room that doesn’t even have ghosts, so I ignore the dice. The sorcerer player’s replacement character, a level 10 half-elf vampire (sword & board) joins the party. We spend the rest of the time discussing loot – the people whose characters are carrying all the “extra gear” aren’t here, so I go back through the loot list and suggest a few items that I know they have that he could use. Now he’s kitted out with a magic hammer, Full Plate +1, and a shield that grants lightning & thunder resistance. I did not have the vampire use her legendary actions. Other than that, I played this straight up with the NPCs acting consistently based on their motivations. The party, however large it is, has encountered Carmella, lost a member, and run away. They are eager to go back. When they do, her (sorcerer) spell slots will be recharged, the genie will have some new scars and be down 30hp, and the genie will also be wielding the +2 Scimitar that the Oni was carrying, which puts the genie at 3 attacks at +11 for 3d6+7 each, making him a huge melee threat. Had the party cleric been there, or even one of the two arcane tricksters (for lamp-stealing), this would have gone differently – but it did not, and that’s how the dice fall. Had they not taken the chances I gave them, all 3 characters would have died. Hopefully we have a bigger group next time. …. [B]4/16/20[/B] 5/6 players, woohoo! Playing via Discord. We only had about 2.5 hours of game time due to the later start and someone having to get up early the next morning. The session started off with a recap, and some summarizing and re-attuning of items, as items collected 2 sessions ago still hadn't been attuned to by anyone. Our barbarian ditched his Breastplate of Fire Resistance (which he had down as requiring attunement correctly, and I had thought did not, incorrectly) and put on the Mirrored Helm, which gives immunity to Charm, resistance to Psychic Damage, and some substantial bonuses against enchantments and gaze attacks. The new character (Teador the Paladin) was introduced, the brother of the dead sorcerer - although he did not know his brother was dead. The party left the art room and back-tracked their flight from last session, easily killing the 2 cerberus hounds. As written, there were 4 in that room, but I cut it to 2 last session because there were so few players; I can't have more magically appear, so they only faced two. The hounds were cleaned up pretty quickly, and the party looted some high-end mundane gear. They did not investigate the room further, so they didn't find the small secret room containing a magical leather armor (nothing great, but still). The party backtracked to the rest area, and then to the room where they'd previously found Carmella. They looked around for her, didn't find her, and started yelling insults and taunts, trying to draw her out. They got no response, but it did alert her (next room) that they were there. When they came up the air-elevator to the next room over, they found the genie and air elemental flanking the door, ready to dish out a beat-down. They knew that the genie didn't really want to fight them, but was following orders from the vampire, so they didn't attack him at all, the whole battle. Wielding the +2 Scimitar from the Oni, he was attacking 3x/round at +11 for 2d6+7 slashing + 1d6 lightning damage. That's a lot of pain! The party is level 10, so they could take it. They killed the Air elemental fairly quickly, and got blasted by Synaptic Static (3 failed saves and got a debuff), although the damage roll was terribly low. The arcane trickster went invisible, then used the invisible mage hand to take the genie's lamp off the vampire's sash. He rolled a 27 and used an invisible hand, so it was pretty much a case of "NOBODY" saw that happen, not even the genie. That led to the genie getting in 1 more round of attacks at Carmella's behest. Shortly thereafter she was dogpiled by a raging zealot barbarian, a vengeance paladin with a critical smite, and a kensei monk with 4 attacks. She had too few HP to survive escaping when she transformed into a swarm of bats. The genie would have attacked them (at their strong lamp-holding suggestion), but was at the wrong place in the initiative order to do so. The aftermath of the battle consumed the remainder of the session. I may not have this down in the correct order. -They dismantled Carmella's body, and used holy water, a stake through the heart, etc. to prevent her coming back. Don't recall the exact list, but it was what they did to Elizabeth Bathory also - they are pretty thorough. She had a Ring of Evasion, which nobody took. -The genie gave them the Scimitar of Sobek, a +2 Scimitar that the Oni had previously been wielding. As a bonus action, it (once per day) allows the wielder to Wildshape into a Giant (huge) Crocodile, and gives advantage on saves vs. Fear. The Barbarian took it, and is now without his Luckstone. He can still rage, so it's a ~100hp w/ DR buffer shape that does major damage. We discussed the power level, and I said that if it became facerollingly powerful, we'd potentially change it to just Polymorph. -They talked about the genie coming with them, and he asked to be freed, that he did not like being a slave. They offered to be good masters, but he pointed out that most thought that. (he had some claw marks and lost HP due to Carmella punishing him after last session). They offered to free him, but asked that he check to make sure that the prisoners they freed escaped. At this point, Teador (new character) interjected, listing off some names of people to watch for from his party and people he knew - including the dead sorcerer. "Uh, let's talk about that later" was the response. The genie offered some sort of boon, and I really pushed back on them to decide or ask for something instead of having me give them options. "This is DM-Limited Wish" sort of. There was a LOT of discussion over this, and it included 3 people using the Discord dice-roller to play virtual Rock Paper Scissors. In the end, the Paladin (Teador) asked for a weapon he could use. I had the genie spin a line about the intent going into it, etc... ultimately giving them the Anyblade, a +2 weapon that can, as an action, change shape into any simple or martial melee weapon. It also counts as silver, adamantine, etc. for purposes of penetrating DR - basically the old Metalline property. He was happy with that! This is only the 3rd +2 weapon in the party (Scimitar of Sobek, Trident, now this). The genie wind-walked on out of there. -They then sat Teador down and discussed his brother's death with him, assuring him that Adrian had died heroically saving them, etc. Quoth the player: "To spare you my bad acting, I'll tell you that, yeah, he breaks down crying for a while." They loot the room, finding a few healing potions, and a gear list that exactly matches up with Adrian's gear (minus a couple of items that'll show up on his shade later), including 835gp. They recognized it right off, especially since there had just been discussion about his old character having about 800 gold. It worked really well...and the Paladin ended up insisting on keeping his brother's Wand of Magic Detection. They stopped there with a short rest. They thought this was a tough fight "If the vampire, the Oni, and the Genie isn't the boss, I'm worried." - whereas to me, it was a pretty easy fight since nobody got hit to 0, charmed, stunned, or seriously CC'd. They are at least down some spell slots and HD so that they won't be able to fully nova in the boss fight. Everyone had fun. [B] 4/23/20[/B] 5/6 players again. Late start, but we ended up running about 3 hrs 45 minutes anyway. Quick recap of last session, confirmed nobody shuffling items around. They head east through an unexplored door and find a 30x30 room of gems, jewels, crowns, lining the walls, etc. after the thief unlocks the door. There’s some discussion, including the exact line “I feel like ghosts are going to appear and attack us if we take something,” followed about 20 seconds later by a player grabbing something off the shelf. 8 ghosts promptly appear as scripted for the room. I was glad they couldn’t see my face when someone made the comment about ghosts! The ghosts do some damage (I run them without the fear/aging aura) and then get killed. One player is possessed, grappled by another player, and then the ghost is Turned right out. What follows is a 10 minute diversion into Adventurer Accounting and De-junking, as most of the characters drop excess non-magic items (starter chainmail, the maul carried from level 3 on, etc.) in order to fit as much high value loot as possible into their backpacks. The entire contents of the room are worth about 140,000gp (rolled) and require 9 cubic feet of space. Most of them walk out with about 15,000 gp worth of stuff, and dreams of building mansions or living in luxury for the rest of their lives. “I’m getting rid of my coins to stuff in more gems.” “I don’t need my mess kit.” In a lowish-magic setting (most of Europe is level 5 and under, with +1 weapons considered prized heirlooms), excessive monetary wealth doesn’t buy you better gear – it buys social status, lands, properties, and high offices. In other words, it buys plot hooks J They enjoyed it. The next room is another one full of piles of gold. I decided that “3 Huge skeleton dragons 60’ up on the ceiling right over the door” requires a perception check when everyone’s looking around at ground height… only the last 1 in made the check. Two of the dragons opened up with their breath weapons, dealing a good amount of damage, while the third went to melee. Although plenty of HP damage was dished out, no PCs were seriously inconvenienced by all this. The Paladin killed 2 dragon skeletons and burned all of his spell slots on smites, while the arcane trickster finished off the last with a crossbow bolt sneak attack. There were a couple of crits. They are burning through 200+ enemy HP a round some rounds now. They investigate the western room, which has a cabinet by the door containing a Rod of Telekinesis, some Alchemist’s fire, and torches. After picking the lock on the acid-warded door, they find a big “cube of force in iron frame” type box with a lid that they can open. As one of them said: “I don’t think we should open it, but I want to.” So they do. I call for arcane checks as something [I]wrong[/I] and ugly sticks a pseudopod through and starts pulling itself out. Arcana 24 gets “A word pops into your mind. “Shoggoth.” You feel like fire would help, or that telekinesis might be effective.” They use the Rod’s one charge for the day to hold it in (advantage on opposed check + good roll) while two others run in and slam the lid on it, latching it shut. They then leave the room. That was the expected outcome. It was only technically a combat encounter, although a real screw-up could have made it one (I do have the Shoggoth statblock ready)… it was really an exploration encounter. They then investigate the hole in the wall, which leads down to an 80’ deep 3’ wide pit containing a +1 Shield of Angel Wings (Feather Fall, Bless D4 is always 4, Bane D4 is always 1) and a Staff of the Woodlands. It’s literally a hole that Dracula threw useless items into. The cleric takes the shield, boosting her AC to 17. The group short rests. They head into the boss room, where a Reverse Gravity effect triggers, slamming all the coins on the floor against the ceiling. All of them made their Dexterity save thanks to being within 10’ of the Paladin’s +4 Aura of Nope. The boss is a reskinned dragon that’s a giant bat. It falls in 1 or 1.5 rounds of combat… the GWM Barbarian/Fighter action surges for 4 attacks, crits, and does something like 130 points of damage in one round out of 200hp. I don’t think anyone took double-digit damage. Then the “other” bosses drop in, Slogra & Gaibon (source direct from Castlevania). Unfortunately, I gave Slogra vulnerability to bludgeoning damage (as a dinosaur skeleton knight), so he went down super fast to, yep, another crit. Gaibon flew around for a while, missed all but one of his talon attacks – as in, 3 of his 4 or 5 attacks were natural 1s – and spat acid balls at them, wearing them down while the party plinked back at his 260hp with ranged attacks. He knocked the monk (kensei weapon: longbow) to 0 hp, but was then killed by a 5th-level Guiding Bolt. A highlight of this battle was the halfling arcane trickster holding his attack so that the barbarian could throw him 20’ as an improvised weapon, dealing 1d4+str damage on hit and getting his one melee attack in. They then got the loot (Skyfall boots: Immune to falling damage, redirect it to a 10’ AOE, a +1/2d6 fire lance, and an Ioun Stone of Mastery) and leveled up to 11. I need to look again at boss monster HP for the rest of the game and inflate it some. I really see why “giant bag of HP” status is needed, although a lot of it is also due to the # of crits they rolled. [B]5/7/20[/B] A monk, a cleric, an arcane trickster, and a paladin walk into an evil shadowy Clock Tower. The first floor is a big (80’ diameter) room with three trap doors down and one stair up. There are three large driveshafts spaced around the room that are driving the gears and the shadow-generating functions of the clock tower (it’s doing a “Sauron’s Shadow” type thing over the surrounding area). They investigate them all briefly, go up to the room full of gears, decide that it’s a pain to cross, and then go down one of the trap doors. They skip the two with “long stairs down” and go down the one that’s a shorter ladder, spotting two fiends. The religion checks are flubbed, and the arcane trickster invisibly tries to walk across a big open room towards an Erinyes with 120’ Truesight and a Chain Devil. He gets spotted, and initiative is rolled. The Erinyes casts “Illusory Dragon” from a scroll, hitting the rogue and the monk. The rogue ends up deciding to use Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, and succeeds (I overlooked her spell resistance, so he, as a halfling, had advantage from being hidden behind the monk). The incapacitation cancels the Illusory Dragon, and that’s how a 1st-level spell shuts down an 8th-level spell. The Erinyes did substantial damage with her +1 longbow and +1d6 electrical arrows, plus the innate +3d8 poison and DC 14 CON or be poisoned effect on her attacks, but they ultimately brought her down. The Chain Devil was a speed bump. The monk took both the arrows and the bow, as longbow is his kensei ranged weapon. They take a short rest. There’s substantial back-and-forth about how to destroy the mechanism that uses the despair fluid from the dungeon to power a driveshaft. After trying a few things, the paladin turns the Anyblade into a pick and bashes a hole in the bowl holding the fluid, so that it drains out much faster than it flows in. This starts to slow the driveshaft & associated gears, but it’ll take some time. Returning to the entry room, they’re confronted by Akmodan’s Simulacrum. It rolls poorly on initiative, so by the time its turn comes, it has fewer than 10 HP left thanks to a critical sneak attack. It manages one cursed touch (curse resisted) and one Harm (saving throw made) before being reduced to snow. Arcana checks flubbed. The group ends up going up and around/through the gears, rather than disabling power to the other two driveshafts. The movement/exploration challenge is much harder, and they miss out on some good gear, but this does get them to their goal faster and without a couple of tough fights. They didn’t need the +2 spear, +1 repeating crossbow, +1+damage maul, or the +1 trident+blind 3/day items anyway, right? On the balance, probably smart play. Akmodan (the boss) can cast Simulacrum every 6 hours, so if they long rest at all, they get to fight another Simulacrum. The idea was that they’d disable all the driveshafts and have a resource-drain challenge, but it looks like they’ll make it through the next 2 floors without even needing a long rest. So much for lots of extra build-up! That’s DMing for ya. I’m not going to punish smart, goal-oriented play. It’s hard to convey all the problem-solving of trying to navigate past moving gears. The Arcane Trickster’s reliable talent let him no-fail the entire acrobatics experience, while the Monk’s wall-running let him do it in a couple of stages. They used rope and pitons to make a path onto the ladder, off it around obstacles, and back on, and reached the next room. The next room had 6 of the regenerating red skeletons, plus some hazardous spinning helicopter-blade things. The skeletons weren’t much of a threat, so the paladin shoved the last one into the spinning blade thing. It did not make the DC 15 dexterity save, nor did the skeleton survive 2d10 bludgeoning + 2d10 electric + 2d10 necrotic. To prevent the skeletons from regenerating, they removed all femurs and humerus bones, then threw them down into the room of gears below. If they come back through, the skeletons will have to wiggle after them and try to bite them. Good solution. Stopped there. ---and I'm all caught up for now! 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