D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[Sacrosanct]

Great session. One of those sessions where you wish you could keep gaming, even though it was really late.

It was the second playtest session for GEAS, this time where they entered the dungeon proper so we got plenty of time to really test drive the rules. The dungeon itself had the effect I wanted when I designed it. Kept players on their toes and they thought it was super cool. TLDR version: There are three dungeon levels: an ancient dusty crypt, a wet fungi covered slime coated dungeon, and a level where everything was made from candy. Every hour, they PCs were teleported to a random level. The needed to find clues along the way to find a way out. Each time there was a transfer, a small random change occurred to them (spell damage types changed, growing hair, turning colors, etc.) It totally caught them by surprise and they had a lot of fun with it.

One of the players was playing a rune mage, and based on this playtest, we agreed some changes would be made to really make the class fun. He's one of those players who loves options and working things together to find solutions, so the evolution of rune magic is taking a more complex approach. Rune magic allows you to combine runes of various effects to form a final spell. There's a lot of creative opportunity there. On top of that, you can use vigor to fuel spells to greater affect or increase your chances of success. It's a contested dice pool system, so the effect of your spell depends on if you fail utterly (disaster), just fail, beat the contested roll, or beat the contested roll by more than one die (spectacular success). Sorcery is a magic system for those who prefer a more simple style you might be more familiar with.

One the players started getting used to the dice pool system, combat started going by faster than a game like D&D, where you roll and then figure out modifiers to that roll. It was nice to see that manifest in actual play as intended. They are also a big fan of the initiative system. In a nutshell, everyone rolls 1d10 and adds any modifiers. The lowest is placed as the baseline. The next higher chooses if they want to go before or after the lower one. And so on, until the person with the highest initiative chooses where they want to go in the combat order. It really helps resolve issues I have with held actions in D&D, and doesn't punish the highest initiative player by forcing them to go first if they don't want to because it screws up their tactics.

 

[Richards]

In this past Wednesday's "Ghourmand Vale" campaign, the PCs:

• We hired to check out a halfling village, some three days away on horseback, that had some strange elements moving in; one "human" had a snake instead of an arm and was hiding it in his sleeve, leading the halfling ranger asking for the PCs to believe it was a cult worshipping a snake god
• Figured out it was probably a group of yuan-tis and agreed to go with the halfling back to his village to check it out
• Found the buildings in smoking ruins when they arrived, with a sinkhole in the middle of town
• Quickly slew three yuan-ti purebloods barbecuing a dead halfling in the middle of town
• Fought off three more yuan-ti purebloods who crept out from between ruined buildings
• Used dimension door to get everyone to the lower level of the sinkhole, where they could see a slow-moving underground river
• Fought two yuan-ti halfbloods (one at a time), and three violet fungi
• Fought two yuan-ti abominations, one of whom successfully repulsed out NPC druid into fleeing from the scary serpents
• Got a bunch of jewelry from the half-bloods
• Made sure the ranger's farm (far on the outskirts of town) and family were okay - they were
• Headed on back to Ghourmand Vale

It was our first session after leveling up to 9th last session, and the DM soon regretted letting us take as much time for buff spells as we needed before making our presence known in town, as my sorcerer cast cat's grace and haste on everyone, and the druid's wolf animal companion ended up dire wolf sized (animal growth) with a magic fang and a mage armor spell cast on him, making him almost a 7th PC!

Johnathan

 

[Richards]

In today's "Dreams of Erthe" campaign, the PCs:

• Arrived in town, couldn't find anyone who knew about someone being trapped in their dreams, so had to "triangulate" the location with the moogles in the Dreamlands
• Showed up at the house where the dreamer was in, knocked on the door, and received no answer, so the bard/rogue tried picking the lock and set of a noisy alarm spell that alerted the neighborhood
• The bard used a high Bluff to convince everyone he was the owner's cousin, and the spellsword used a ring of silence to "turn off" the alarm (actually, keep it quiet until it ran through the spell's duration)
• Searched the house, found a 50-year-old woman asleep in her clothes on the guest bed
• Performed the ritual to enter her dream and found her in the living room, alternately staring at her hand in wonder and looking fearfully at the table, which was not only breathing but which she was sure wanted to kill her
• Had the dwarven cleric destroy the table with her dwarven warhammer, after which she noticed the woman's pupils were all dilated
• Fed the woman a potion of neutralize poison spell, which counteracted the effects of the "magic mushroons" she's accidentally put in her salad before falling into the dream coma
• Listened to her explain she was the mother of the owner of the house, who ran a gambling hall and inn on the other side of town
• Agreed to fetch the woman's son for her, so he could pay them for their trouble (and explain to her about the "magic mushrooms," about which she did not approve)
• Went to the gambling hall (the Honest Hand) and talked to the owner, eventually finding out he'd been staying there for the past two weeks after someone tried to kill him; further pushing eventually led him to all but admit he may have stolen a pearl of power from a wizard who had summoned an invisible stalker to find him, slay him, and fetch the pearl of power back
• Agreed to protect the manager from his invisible assassin, eventually luring it to try to kill him when he stuck his arm out of the side door (this after having determined the Honest Hand had been built on the site of a permanent anti-magic field, explaining why the summoned invisible stalker couldn't enter the gambling hall)
• Fought the invisible stalker (the dwarven cleric eventually banished it back to its home plane), but learned the manager was an evil rogue himself
• Got locked in the Honest Hand when they locked the doors at midnight for the "rich local aristocrats" rounds of poker with the manager
• Heard a banging on the front door and a cry for help, which was at first in a deep, gruff voice and then in the same voice pretending to be a young woman (and not very well)
• Readied weapons when a bouncer opened the door to let an aristocratic man and woman enter, only once they stepped into the anti-magic field they were revealed as skin thieves: upright-standing bear-people with eight fingers who wore the skins of their victims and took on their appearance in that fashion
• Fought and slew 4 skin thieves, a skin thief Rogue 8, a skin thief Fighter 10, and three brown bears
• Had the half-orc cast a bestow curse spell on the manager that made him always tell the truth, and brought him back to see his visiting mother, who castigated him for leaving her in a dream coma for two weeks and dealing with "magic mushrooms"
• Took the 2,500 gp in pearls his mother made him pay them for rescuing her from the dream coma

This was a fun adventure, and the players went off on all sorts of weird paths, at once point convincing themselves the dreamer was the table (a mimic, they'd decided) instead of the older woman; the spellsword deciding to accuse one of the aristocrats playing cards of planning to burn down the place with a fireball spell (this was before the PCs learned the Honest Hand was built in an anti-magic field, so the manager knew at once he was in no particular danger from that alleged threat); and the same spellsword's player irritating the other players when he pointed out they could easily be the assassins when they were all trying to convince the manager to hire them to take care of the invisible assassin who was after his life. We ended up doing a lot more in-character role-playing than normal, which was a nice change of pace. (Our group's normally more combat-oriented.)

As the rogue who stole the pearl and the wizard he stole it from were both evil, the PCs decided to let them figure it out among themselves, and moved on to the next dream victim.

Johnathan

 

[Evilhalfling]

It was okay. lots of movement driving the plot forward, but few player choices during the session.
1. feasted with a governor, party approved to add "Dragonslayers" as title.
2. Trading run (PC plan) nearly 2000 gp in profit
2A - small sailing skill challenge while under attack by water elementals.
3. Bargaining with the high priestess of death, to resurrect a dragon they had killed (PC plan from 2 sessions ago)
4. building a temporary temple on a beach. - UNI students expected to arrive the week after the ritual.
- (players came up with this rather than haul the dead dragon across a city to a guarded catacomb.
5. test flight on their new spelljammer.

the players left excitedly planning improvements to their flying ship.

 

[Richards]

In tonight's "Ghourmand Vale" session (we were two days later than normal this week) the PCs:

• Were hired by a dwarven miner to take out a band of trolls that had eaten some of the surveyors who were plotting out the entrance to a new mine shaft that would eventually hook up to the main silver mine
• Were asked by the famous visiting author (think Agatha Christie, if she wrote adventure novels for young adults) from the previous adventure if she could tag along as an observer (we said "Yes" - my PC is a huge fan of her works)
• Prepped four "troll grenades" - four bonfires were built up, and my sorcerer cast a shrink item spell on each, giving them a clothlike form; each bonfire cloth was then rolled up and inserted into a separate flask of oil; all four "troll grenades" were given to the halfling rogue PC
• Rode to the troll valley and found its cave (it was about an hour away)
• Prepped combat spells as usual, and had the 60-year-old author drink down a potion of gaseous form so she'd be pretty much immune to harm, but could still observe
• Entered the troll caverns, and managed to take down all four trolls inside through judicious use of stone spikes, scorching rays, a flame strike spell, flaming arrows, and the four troll grenades - none of the PCs took a point of damage from the trolls, who failed to close before being shot down at range
• Exited the caverns in a hurry, when my sorcerer's grackle familiar started panicking (my PC felt it over the empathic link), due to an approaching behir who had been dining upon trolls when hungry (we slew all four trolls in the caverns, but there had been bedding for six)
• Took out the behir with an ice storm, a flurry of flaming arrows, and capped it off with another scorching ray spell
• Got paid by the dwarven miners (who tried to undercut the price we'd agreed upon, with no success)

The behir didn't even get to attack us; it spent its movement getting out of the ice storm field of effect and was readying a breath weapon zap the following round, but it was dead before its second round of action ever arrived. And three of us finally earned enough for the items we'd been saving for: a holy enhancement to the paladin's +1 flaming burst longsword; a bracelet of invisibility for the halfling rogue (who already has two magic rings and has no desire to wear a hand of glory around her neck); and a lesser metamagic rod of maximize spell for my sorcerer.

Johnathan

 

[Older Beholder]

I've slowed down my play recently, dropping down to 1 game every couple of weeks.

Last session was fun, we're on a bit of story arc at the moment where we went through a portal and ended up on the other side of the map. Having wandered across a desert for a while we eventually came to a city where we've spent the last couple of sessions. In the city you need to be a member of the sorcerers guild in order to legally cast spells, and a member of the mercenaries guild in order to draw a weapon. So we've been doing a bunch of missions to gain entrance to one or the other, it's been a nice mix of puzzles and moral dilemma type situations for the most part.

There are some major world events building in the background which I think are going to start to impact the campaign going forward in the next few session which I'm excited about.

 

[Richards]

Ugh. Tonight's "Ghourmand Vale" session left a bad taste in my mouth. The PCs:

• Were asked by the famed author, E. L. Grimwade, to take her to the Mistbrenner Farm to see the site where we vanquished some vampires several months ago; we agreed on the condition she brought along a potion of gaseous form for her own safety
• Got to the "abandoned" farm to see a neighboring farmer fleeing the farmhouse in a panic, saying he'd broken in to steal a few things from the farmhouse (he especially liked a pitcher the dead owner, Bea Mistbrenner had), but she showed up as a ghost and chased him
• Cast a bunch of prep spells, entered the farmhouse, and saw the ghost, which immediately fled to the Ethereal Plane
• Searched around for numerous rounds (eating away at the duration of our prep spells) while the ghost stayed on the Ethereal Plane, until finally in desperation my sorcerer PC started kicking ashes from the fireplace onto the neatly-swept floor and tossing chairs around, commenting on what a dump the farmhouse was in an attempt to get the ghost to show up so we could slay her (we'd slain her when she was alive the last time we were there at the farm - she was an evil cleric who'd been creating undead)
• Had a different ghost manifest behind my PC and start moaning; my PC failed his save, dropped everything he had been holding, and ran at top speed out of the farmhouse (he'd have the "panicked" condition for 7 rounds, and we were all hasted at the time; another PC tried to stop me but failed)
• The druid PC cast an entangle spell to slow me down, which only caused me to cast a dimension door spell to teleport out of the entangle area of effect (760 feet away, to be exact); I'd spend the next four rounds using up all of my remaining 4th-level spell slots casting dimension door, putting me 760 feet further away each round so it would be impossible for me to return until the rest of the adventure was over - as a result, I spent the whole session jotting down what everyone else did each round so I could use the notes to write up the Story Hour
• The other PCs slew both ghosts, and then a spirit naga that was somehow in league with them, then burned down the farmhouse in the hopes that might prevent the ghosts from remanifesting in 2d4 days

None of the players were particularly thrilled with this adventure, because of the constant "you would have normally hit, but you didn't" effects as a result of the ghosts being incorporeal and the spirit naga casting both invisibility and displacement spells on itself, plus the frustrating rounds of everybody doing nothing for round after round because we had no way of interacting with ghosts when they were on the Ethereal Plane. The DM's wife even suggested our PCs just leave, since there was no real reason for us to stick around and put the author in danger (it was supposed to have been an abandoned farm), but mostly as an excuse to cut the session short after I had been more or less excluded from playing.

But I made the best of it: I had five 3rd-level spell slots available when I finally trudged back to the farmhouse after the panicked condition had worn off (at the end of the night's session), at which time the other PCs had set everything ablaze, so I used five shrink item spells to turn bonfires into pieces of cloth I can later revert to blazing fires in an instant.

Still, overall, a pretty sucky session.

Johnathan

 

[Stormonu]

I ran my yearly Ravenloft one-shot on Labor Day this last Monday. My eldest son, a couple of his friends and my brother played. We started in the Mournlands in Eberron with the players seeking the treasure vault of the last queen of Cyre. They ended up on the Cyre1313 Lightning Rail, also known as the Mourning Rail.

The party's objective was to break a Mordenkainen's Seal to the 13th car to escape the train. The Seal had seven components (aligned to the Seven Deadly Sins). The key to the seals were hidden away as quests among the various cars in the train. To further urge them into action, they had 1 1/2 hours before the apocalyptic Mourning would overtake them and they would Groundhog Day back to their starting position - and the train got bigger and more dangerous on each trip. In the end, they had 3 attempts to solve the seven quests and get into the 13th car.

Alas, they ended up spending too much time dithering on the early puzzles on the first and second trip, and ran out of time with one last puzzle to solve. But they had did have a blast and there were some really tense moments (the maze-like dining car filling with water had them pretty nervous, like the "They Swim" scene from Alien Resurrection).

Looking back, I probably needed to bump up the allotted time per trip to about 2 hours to give them enough time to reach the finale. Then I could've killed them all with the proper Darklord reveal.

After I polish up my game notes a bit, I think I'll post it on ENWorld for others to try.

 

[jasper]

Good. I had one my Adventure League players show up and played a Paladin which last saw action in 2019.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

52nd and 53rd sessions of my Neverwinter/Sword Coast campaign. Drow evoker wizard, human genie warlock, half orc vengeance paladin. They reached 10th level over the course of the sessions. The characters have multiple leads into the schemes of an array of villains. They are making plans to pursue one particular lead--a conspiracy among evil nobles to use an orc invasion to overthrow the city's Queen. They spent the sessions making plans, fighting a few minor battles, and the like. Honestly, I don't have the energy to right it down, but we had fun. Feels good to be closing one chapter and moving on to another.