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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 8001033" data-attributes="member: 7020951">5/28/205 party members – the Fighter/Arcane Trickster made it back for the first session in a while, the barbarian wasn’t there, and the new ranger character got re-done into a sword & board + archery gloom stalker.The Arcane Trickster rolls a double 20 on his Helped check to use the controls to turn off the shadow generator.  Total success vs a DC 25.They looked out at the bridge towards the central keep and decided to go back down to explore the areas they didn’t go to before, so that they can kill every foul creature in the castle!They go down the staircase to the water power area (an underground river with water wheels).  The arcane trickster sends his bat out to investigate it (200’ upstream, dark), and the bat gets shot by a hidden fishman assassin.  They decide not to mess with it, go up, and then go down to the lava/geothermal area. They’re immediately attacked by three Stone Men (from way back when they were 5th level).  A couple of the smaller Stone Men splits get shoved into the lava as they play around.  They then move across a bridge to the main area, a large island of rock in the middle of a river of lava.  The AT disguises himself as an Azer, but his Deception check isn’t so good, he’s speaking the wrong language, and they don’t recognize him.  One of the Azer approaches, trying to touch him and clearly suspicious.  They deal with the 3 Azer and the fire elemental that crawls out of the machine…but one of the Azers takes the Dodge action and runs, yelling across the river of lava to the Azer camp.He’s dead before the forces over there come into action:  2 more Azer (who never amount to much), a ~level 10 equivalent battlerager with a +1 dwarfbane maul that never gets to hit a dwarf, and a spellcaster.  The caster has two magma mephits, who end up spending most of the battle providing ¾ cover from the group Kensei, who takes up a position and lands at least one shot a round with his bow for an average of about 18-20 damage per hit (despite the disadvantage of shooting across the heat distortion of 60’ of lava).  The caster does manage to get off a Vitriolic Sphere, a Fireball, and a Wall of Fire.  The Kensei wears him down over 3 rounds, and of course I forgot to have him Quicken Blade Ward each round.  HP damage is inflicted, but nobody is seriously inconvenienced.  The caster had Disintegrate, but never got into range – plus I don’t want to kill a PC with a random mook at this point.They shut down the Geothermal plant with a 31 on an Investigation check to figure out how to do so.  That means they found the gearbox, disengaged the clutch, then smashed all the gears and control panels.They ended up with the Rock-Smasher, a +1 Maul that does +1d8 thunder damage, and against dwarfkin does 2d6 bonus damage and a STR DC 15 or knock-back 10’… plus Boots of Cold Resistance and Gloves of Healing, which do Cure Wounds 1/day (no attunement needed for those two).We stopped there after about a 3-3.5 hour session.  A couple of my players are very slow at dice-rolling math, plus we had a side trip into two of them being attuned to the same shield due to absences.  It’s a bit frustrating to repeatedly have to explain or go through the same class features repeatedly for the same people.  I think the Arcane Trickster has changed spells known around three times, although he’s been gone for the last 3 levels – so he could have done a level-up swap-out anyway.Still two sessions left as they side-trip for more killing and loot.  PCs…gotta kill everything!If they decide to pull another long-rest after getting right next to Dracula’s keep….something bad will happen to them.  I’m not sure what yet.  Maybe more minions sent by Death, or Dracula making a hit-and-run pass at killing them, or something.  Maybe I’ll have an NPC send a Sending to one of the characters with a “we have 2 hours before Vienna falls and 300,000 people die” message?  This is not the point in the game where it makes sense to sidequest.</blockquote>

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