It could be something to do with the 5e conversion. I tried to make the 5e version the same intent without breaking 5e action economy. Maybe the lich inquisitors were out of channel divinity uses? Using counterspell or dispel magic against the fly would have been a bummer.
WotBS Fuzzybear's Burning Sky
- Thread starter Fuzzybear
- Start date
Fuzzybear
Explorer
The fly was really out of range if I recall for a counter as we had a bit of fun with them diving out of the tower to chase her down and cast it on the way down... too good to stop honestly. I think this is often a problem with higher levels in 5e though. It's really hard to truly challenge a party without breaking the rules of the game, especially in a single encounter. It can be done with lots of legendary actions, lair actions, etc., but it requires a lot.
Fuzzybear
Explorer
It's been since July huh... woof.
Starting things off, the party heads to meet with the Shining Lord across the city from the fighting. Myetharia decides to hide her face during this encounter so as to not be recognized as she had grown up in the court and was friends with Shalosha. After initially meeting with everyone and seeing Shaaladel's lust for the Torch and distaste of the non-elves, the party decides to just leave Jack to speak with him. Surprisingly, the 2 agreed on most topics including the elves helping and the future of the war going through northern Shahalesti first, and then gave ground on the topic of Ragesia after the war. Eventually it was decided that Shalosha could lead the land with Shaaladel assuming she would bend the knee to him while the party thinks she could still be strengthened to resist the heavy hand of her father.
With the help of the elves, the ballte in the city streets quickly swung and by night time the call for surrender came in from General Danava. The heroes decided to meet with the General that night, but were surprised with Shaaladel arrived as well. Being well connected, and wanting to be the leader of the Resistance army anyway, the man would not let an opportunity pass to be invovled in the big events of the war.
As they arrived and began talking to Danava. It isn't long though before an ominous voice sounds out as they are all ambushed by a higher ranking officer with Ragesia, some lesser trillith, and some devils. While the Shahalesti group fought off the devils, the party killed Kolvus and his trillith helpers, but they were weakened quite significantly in the fighting. This allowed for an opportunity for Shaaladel to get everything he wanted. With a call to Aurana that it was time, Shaaladel plans to kill the heroes and blame it on the Ragesian ambush in order to claim the Torch for himself and unite the Resistance under his leadership after all.
Shalosha though reaches her breaking point as well. She turns her sword on her father instead of her friends (which was really convenient as well because we had a guest player who got to fill in as her in the battle) claiming that the world will be better off without his hatred. The battle was tough, Shaaladel fought hard, but was not able to get through the party's high effective health. Once he is down and the deva with him slain, Aurana abandons the fight and escapes.
The biggest reveal of the night though was the confirmation that Myetharia is Shaaladel's child and half-sister to Shalosha. In my canon, Shaaladel's wife was unable to produce an heir and presumed barren. But as soon as the couple agrees to have a child with a surrogate effectively, his wife is found with child as well. Now having a problem of 2 potential heirs and the older being a bastard effectively, he sets up the woman with one of his officers and financially supports them forever. Unable to fully let them go though, he keeps them in court and allows Shalosha to grow up and play with Myetharia up until the fateful night that Myetharia's father dies. The circumstances implicate Myetharia herself somewhat and she becomes a social pariah, so Shaaladel distances Shalosha from her as well.
Some of the players had theorized that her story was a rise to queendom, so having confirmation of her royal blood caused quite a bit of stir around the table. Myetharia's player also did not know this in advance which made things very fun.
Danava comes back once the fighting ends as his geas does not allow him to fight against Kolvus and the plan to surrender is finalized for a day later.
At the surrender event, Desire appears and twists the party's wishes into nightmare trillith before animating the massive Coaltongue statue to fight. While I think this went quite well overall, it did not start well for me. Winry jumped up immediately and smacked Desire nearly to death in 1 flurry of attacks. I ignored some of the damage and had the statue animate after her turn as things had already effectively ended for that first encounter. This did make the statue battle a bit more chaotic as the nightmare trillith were around for that as well, but I think it worked reasonably well.
I enjoy these combats that are partially puzzles even if the scale and terrain were very difficult to do on a VTT. I think a physical map for this would have been amazing to do, but sadly not an option for our group. Rev had a lot of fun being tricky, Winry was fast and headed for some ballista, while the other 3 kept the statue busy and away from the ally trillith. While they had some difficulties, they figured things out pretty quickly and were able to defeat Victory.
As the Ragesians are removed from the city in the aftermath, Bryn and her son Keth have their final confrontation with her husband, Brent. In the end, Brent argued that she had emotionally left him long ago for her job and the stars (her cleric power source). He regrets what he did, but feels the end was coming either way. Keth doesn't forgive him and considers killing him, but gives the dagger to Bryn to decide what to do. She buries it in the ground instead. Brent says he will leave and she doesn't need to worry about him anymore. The emotional moment was quite the tonal sucker punch right after the joy of freeing Gate Pass, but I think that was perfect for this campaign full of pyrrhic victories.
The biggest event was yet to come though as Shalosha appears the next morning with a request. She needs to go secure her homeland and needs help. Not from the full party, just from her half-sister. She needs someone she trusts to have her back and protect her while she consolidates power with the idea being that the Shahalesti will be more help to the Resistance after she can gain full control. Myetharia agrees and says tearful goodbyes to the rest of the party.
Behind the scenes, Myetharia's player was having her first baby (already happened by the point I'm writing this up... sorry)! She's taking a step back until she can get things under control and be able to commit to a normal playing time again. We will (do) miss her, but we plan to have her return at any point with the Shahalesti behind her. She can even jump in and out of the next adventure easily with it being in a weird dreamscape anyway, so the timing is pretty good.
I plan to have Aurana dealt with off screen by Myetharia as part of the consolidation of power in Shahalesti. This way she can have done something useful to the plot while being over there as well.
The fight against the statue was better, though the massive amount of onlookers and the trillith chase just weren't fitting into the rules and how the situation unfolded. With Winry's nuclear nova at the start, plans changed in a hurry. It was really nice to have a "get over here" to pull around people, and the larger scale of the map made the twilight cleric's aura less effectively. This is something that the difficulty of fights is having a hard time overcoming often. 24 temp hp every turn is a lot for most of 5e enemies. It makes every fight hard to balance as either it isn't hard enough to even get through the shields, or it is and everyone is nearly dead. All in all, would not recommend playing twlight cleric as written.
Next time - the source of the nightmares.
Politics and Patricide
The next handful of sessions dealt with 2 things - the end of the Ragesian occupation of Gate Pass, and Shaaladel.Starting things off, the party heads to meet with the Shining Lord across the city from the fighting. Myetharia decides to hide her face during this encounter so as to not be recognized as she had grown up in the court and was friends with Shalosha. After initially meeting with everyone and seeing Shaaladel's lust for the Torch and distaste of the non-elves, the party decides to just leave Jack to speak with him. Surprisingly, the 2 agreed on most topics including the elves helping and the future of the war going through northern Shahalesti first, and then gave ground on the topic of Ragesia after the war. Eventually it was decided that Shalosha could lead the land with Shaaladel assuming she would bend the knee to him while the party thinks she could still be strengthened to resist the heavy hand of her father.
With the help of the elves, the ballte in the city streets quickly swung and by night time the call for surrender came in from General Danava. The heroes decided to meet with the General that night, but were surprised with Shaaladel arrived as well. Being well connected, and wanting to be the leader of the Resistance army anyway, the man would not let an opportunity pass to be invovled in the big events of the war.
As they arrived and began talking to Danava. It isn't long though before an ominous voice sounds out as they are all ambushed by a higher ranking officer with Ragesia, some lesser trillith, and some devils. While the Shahalesti group fought off the devils, the party killed Kolvus and his trillith helpers, but they were weakened quite significantly in the fighting. This allowed for an opportunity for Shaaladel to get everything he wanted. With a call to Aurana that it was time, Shaaladel plans to kill the heroes and blame it on the Ragesian ambush in order to claim the Torch for himself and unite the Resistance under his leadership after all.
Shalosha though reaches her breaking point as well. She turns her sword on her father instead of her friends (which was really convenient as well because we had a guest player who got to fill in as her in the battle) claiming that the world will be better off without his hatred. The battle was tough, Shaaladel fought hard, but was not able to get through the party's high effective health. Once he is down and the deva with him slain, Aurana abandons the fight and escapes.
The biggest reveal of the night though was the confirmation that Myetharia is Shaaladel's child and half-sister to Shalosha. In my canon, Shaaladel's wife was unable to produce an heir and presumed barren. But as soon as the couple agrees to have a child with a surrogate effectively, his wife is found with child as well. Now having a problem of 2 potential heirs and the older being a bastard effectively, he sets up the woman with one of his officers and financially supports them forever. Unable to fully let them go though, he keeps them in court and allows Shalosha to grow up and play with Myetharia up until the fateful night that Myetharia's father dies. The circumstances implicate Myetharia herself somewhat and she becomes a social pariah, so Shaaladel distances Shalosha from her as well.
Some of the players had theorized that her story was a rise to queendom, so having confirmation of her royal blood caused quite a bit of stir around the table. Myetharia's player also did not know this in advance which made things very fun.
Danava comes back once the fighting ends as his geas does not allow him to fight against Kolvus and the plan to surrender is finalized for a day later.
At the surrender event, Desire appears and twists the party's wishes into nightmare trillith before animating the massive Coaltongue statue to fight. While I think this went quite well overall, it did not start well for me. Winry jumped up immediately and smacked Desire nearly to death in 1 flurry of attacks. I ignored some of the damage and had the statue animate after her turn as things had already effectively ended for that first encounter. This did make the statue battle a bit more chaotic as the nightmare trillith were around for that as well, but I think it worked reasonably well.
I enjoy these combats that are partially puzzles even if the scale and terrain were very difficult to do on a VTT. I think a physical map for this would have been amazing to do, but sadly not an option for our group. Rev had a lot of fun being tricky, Winry was fast and headed for some ballista, while the other 3 kept the statue busy and away from the ally trillith. While they had some difficulties, they figured things out pretty quickly and were able to defeat Victory.
As the Ragesians are removed from the city in the aftermath, Bryn and her son Keth have their final confrontation with her husband, Brent. In the end, Brent argued that she had emotionally left him long ago for her job and the stars (her cleric power source). He regrets what he did, but feels the end was coming either way. Keth doesn't forgive him and considers killing him, but gives the dagger to Bryn to decide what to do. She buries it in the ground instead. Brent says he will leave and she doesn't need to worry about him anymore. The emotional moment was quite the tonal sucker punch right after the joy of freeing Gate Pass, but I think that was perfect for this campaign full of pyrrhic victories.
The biggest event was yet to come though as Shalosha appears the next morning with a request. She needs to go secure her homeland and needs help. Not from the full party, just from her half-sister. She needs someone she trusts to have her back and protect her while she consolidates power with the idea being that the Shahalesti will be more help to the Resistance after she can gain full control. Myetharia agrees and says tearful goodbyes to the rest of the party.
Behind the scenes, Myetharia's player was having her first baby (already happened by the point I'm writing this up... sorry)! She's taking a step back until she can get things under control and be able to commit to a normal playing time again. We will (do) miss her, but we plan to have her return at any point with the Shahalesti behind her. She can even jump in and out of the next adventure easily with it being in a weird dreamscape anyway, so the timing is pretty good.
Thoughts and Changes
Aurana honestly felt pretty disappointing as a boss assist. Her dreamscape 9th level spell functioned to effectively just give her resistance to all damage that I could tell (and only if they did not save). The tentacles were useful, but with some good saves to the paralysis effect, they were largely a small damaging annoyance rather than something the party felt the need to focus to remove.I plan to have Aurana dealt with off screen by Myetharia as part of the consolidation of power in Shahalesti. This way she can have done something useful to the plot while being over there as well.
The fight against the statue was better, though the massive amount of onlookers and the trillith chase just weren't fitting into the rules and how the situation unfolded. With Winry's nuclear nova at the start, plans changed in a hurry. It was really nice to have a "get over here" to pull around people, and the larger scale of the map made the twilight cleric's aura less effectively. This is something that the difficulty of fights is having a hard time overcoming often. 24 temp hp every turn is a lot for most of 5e enemies. It makes every fight hard to balance as either it isn't hard enough to even get through the shields, or it is and everyone is nearly dead. All in all, would not recommend playing twlight cleric as written.
Next time - the source of the nightmares.
RangerWickett
Legend
Excellent stuff with Myetharia and Shalosha.
Fuzzybear
Explorer
The Truth in Dreams
Now short one party member, the group gets together to discuss the next step. Talking with Metamorphosis and Vigilance, they learn that the best way to get where they need to go is to bargain with the elemental deities for safe passage to the entrance to the dreamworld. After heading back to Seaquen to get prepared and talk with Simeon, they head to a place of power nearby (in "the ballsack" as they love to call the south area of Megadon's lands) and spend time attuning with the elements of water and earth to call forth the kraken and worm. Jack's connection with the Eagle through Parallax helps calm their annoyance and eventually they agree to help the next day.Into the depths of the earth they travel and arrive at the entrance to the crystal dragon's home. Things start with some bartering and offers, though I was not as kind as @Tolamaker was apparently as I had them eat up a diamond for revivify first before calmly telling the party they still can't go past. It eventually turns to combat. Honestly, I feel like I did a quite poor job in this fight. I started it in a bad spot and only got the walls involved a little bit. Running it online was really cool with the invisible walls creating all sorts of chaos. In the end, the party was inconvenienced more than actually in danger, but it was a fun time for everyone as they figured it out.
From there they headed into the dream world. They went for the castle first as the only obvious direction and met up with the tiefling there. I do agree with @Tolamaker that it felt very disjointed and random. I probably should have worked more to attach it to someone's story elsewhere, but I didn't have that idea. We had some fun talking with an evil not so evil dude, but the biggest reveal was something that came up randomly at the end. In exchange for the help from Sagramar, Rev decided to give away his secret that he is a clone, and one of a handful that all seemingly came from the same death. Sagramar did some testing as this was information that was fascinating to him, and learned that Rev was born as a fragment of a soul, seemingly split into many peices. As only a fragment, his soul was fraying faster than normal and would fade far before his body normally would. I shocked the party and gave him a 5 year prognosis on life. But not without hope. Sagramar also gave Rev an obsidian knife capable of reuniting the soul fragments in his clone twins to his to prolong his life.
This was something spur of the moment, but I wanted to build on one of the themes of this campaign that I felt that my players were avoiding - is it okay to do evil in the name of good. I know this comes up more with the restored Torch also, but what is the worth of a life? Is it diminished if that life is owned by a bad person? I thought this was a good primer for that later discussion on if the Torch is worth using or destroying based on the cost. It has at the least spurred on some more good roleplay among the party as they talk about the future after the war and what that will be for Rev.
The rest of the trip to the prison palace went pretty close to the book. They met Flight who they liked but won the game very quickly, took the trip through to the resting spot, saw some weird things before and after, though largely tried to avoid interacting with all of them, fought off a group of lesser trillith, befriended a few who nearly instantly betrayed them, held off a horde, and killed the corrupted trumpet archon. I feel like this whole section could have been improved by tying it much more obviously and directly into what is going on in the rest of the campaign, but again, this is hindsight. It did not go badly at all, but it does feel very much like a side quest is happening that isn't as connected as it probably could be.
After the first handful of sessions, Myetharia even joins up. As I said before, the plan was always to have her join in when she could and stay away when she couldn't. The dream world gave a very simple explanation for how and why this could happen, so an apparition of Myetharia basically was fighting with them. I told her player what was going on so that she could answer questions appropriately, but I wanted to have the party feel confused and disconnected from reality while all of this was going on. One idea I had came up when Bryn tried to message her son during the night spent resting on the mountain top. From one sending to the next, I had Keth tell her that 2 weeks had passed when it was only seconds for Bryn. Myetharia's arrival but without any knowledge of what was going on save that she went to Calanis also helped sow confusion.
I plan to have a few weeks have passed since they went into the dreamworld even though they will have only spent 1 night there. Partly this is to get back closer to the timeline in the adventure path (we're around 5 months at this point, not the 9 or 10 we should be at apparently), but also just to add mystery and chaos to the dreamworld.
Following the path of blood, the palace came into view. They head in and talk with Freedom, but quickly refuse her offer. It was pretty vague, though there was a moment of consideration from some of them that this might be a way to end things without a fight. Disappointed but not surprised, Freedom begins the assault. The party tried to focus on her, but with her darting in and out of sight, along with the resistance from all damage from rolling a natural 19 on initiative, Freedom easily tanked things for a while. When she went below 3/4, I had her retreat a bit more and the party eventually focused down the hydras in the entrance hall. In the meantime though, the enemies had done a ton of damage; enough that Bryn was forced to use her 9th level spell slot to Mass Heal everyone back up. Even after that, the hit and run tactics continued and whittled away at the squishier members of the party for a while.
It took a lot of discussion, but once they started moving around they did figure out the puzzle fairly quickly. They made the very aggressive decision to split up, open up every room, aggro every enemy, and then just run. Despite taking hits, a couple people getting rough, I didn't want to actually disintegrate anyone, so I had Freedom use that on Bryn to get her back to dangerous health totals. Speedrunning things though worked far too well honestly! Though it did require me to decide that the room enemies couldn't make it into the central prison. If they had, I think it probably would have been a TPK honestly, though getting through that Twilight Cleric aura with a bunch of low level enemies is tough once the combat draws to a small area like the central room.
Running out of time in a session and not wanting to make that combat with Freedom last over 3, she decides to give up when below half health, alone, and seeing no way through the temporary hit points without further uses of her disintegrate knife. A brief argument with the statue trillith ends with Freedom ominously telling the heroes that it doesn't matter if she lets them in anyway as they will never stop the Annihilation that is coming.
Healing up a little with some goodberry wine and potions, the heroes use the red keys to open the portal into Trilla's nightmare seeking to save her and prevent Annihilation from being unleashed upon the world.
Next time I'll wrap up this adventure as I did change things up quite a bit from here.
Tolamaker
Adventurer
I would argue I was more lazy than kind, but it comes to the same result, haha!
I think I forgot to include this, because it was a tiny moment, but in my game, players have frequently been asking what happens to souls in soul gems, because of Shaalguenyavar and the Torch. I had been hemming and hawing, having NPCs give different answers, when at the end of freeing Gate Pass, they're suddenly talking to Shaaladel and his two shoulder angel bodyguards. Eluriah, the druid, seeing the opportunity to talk to some heavenly beings, asked them straight up what happens to souls, and I decided I had to give a straight answer back.
"When a soul is consumed for magic, it is gone. It is as if that creature had never existed. No heaven, hell, or afterlife of any kind awaits that which never lived."
That gave them a lot of pause, and now has them talking more explicitly about destroying the Torch, and the sword.
Oginme
Explorer
I have a group (not the one I write about here) who have just retrieved the torch and are having serious discussions and moral crises about using the torch. They are now in the Temple of Echoed Souls looking to repair it, but are also wary of the cost of using the Torch.
Great stuff!
rstivers1989
Villager
Hey there - I just wanted to let you know that I found these write-ups and your YouTube videos and as someone who is actively starting this campaign it has been incredibly helpful. I noticed there hasn't been a video or a post for a while, did the group end up falling through?
Fuzzybear
Explorer
We haven't stopped. We had a pretty decent break over holidays. We haven't made it to a point where I'd write another section quite (1 more session I think).
As for the videos, the person who was doing them has been too busy to make them for a while working a full time job plus a side business. I will pass along the hopes though and see if we can find some time to post some more episodes. I believe we just did 142 on Monday, so there are a lot in the queue.
Thank you so much for the kind words and encouragement!
As for the videos, the person who was doing them has been too busy to make them for a while working a full time job plus a side business. I will pass along the hopes though and see if we can find some time to post some more episodes. I believe we just did 142 on Monday, so there are a lot in the queue.
Thank you so much for the kind words and encouragement!
