D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[doctorbadwolf]

Forgotten Realms.

Me; DM.

Used the DnDBeyond combat tracker for the first time, and its pretty good.

Characters:

Finnan: Halfling thief, former warlock, swordsman, fancy lad.

Lucky: Halfling battlemaster/scout, archer, sky taxi pilot, fast talking cabby with a New Zealand ish accent.

Nemain: Gnome Arcane Trickster/Artillerist, lovable rage lady, makes lots of wonderful toys to kill you with. Very Entrapta. @lowkey13 knows what's up.

Torkann: Dragonborn Battlemaster/Lore Bard, huge nerd, grandson of famous adventurers, tactician, linguist, scholar.

The Toaster: Warforged Cavalier Fighter, named by Nemain, her guardian/protector.

Cellios: Tabaxi Nature Cleric/Open Hand Monk. Wandering healer, reluctant combatant, new to the game.

Last session: last time they were in the city of Lantan, which was currently located in the world of Abeir, the spellplague having shifted several land-masses from one world to another.

Lantan, IMC, is an island city dominated by massive towers that create a 3/4 circle around the city, with the harbor in the center of the Open Quarter. The towers have the appearance of a circular grand pipe organ in light turquoise stone, the smallest at one end standing 100ft, and each successive tower rising 2-3 stories higher as you look counter-clockwise.

They’d done some poking around, and found word of a great artificer in the Heights, and they went to meet with him. They learned that the old gnomish man built The Toaster a bit over 100yrs ago.


During that meeting, the city was attacked by sky pirates. The old gnome led the party to a room in his mansion that then lead into the nearest tower, and (tldr) put them in launch tubes with chairs they strapped into and then entered a Pacific Rim style drift-like state with a semi-sentient magical device, instantly learning how to operate it and extending their senses into its senses.
Then they launched into the air in magi-tech living metal birds to fight the sky pirates.

This session: I start with Cellio entering the city, refreshing everyone as I describe it anew for him. He meets with an old loxodon healer who talks with a slow West Virginia accent, and then goes to meet a young gnome healer, which leads him to take a sky taxi.
A young talkative halfling (half gnome) named Lucky picks him up, and mid conversation on the way, the towers sound their immense klaxon, and Lucky tells Cellio to hold on and pop out the crossbow in the back.

A challenging ToTM fight ensues, each vehicle having HP equal to their controlling character for simplicity. The birds can translate character abilities to something it can do, and extend the range of their spells and other abilities, basically just meaning we don’t worry too much about distance. They face 3 wyvern riders, 4-5 lancers on flying drakes, an indeterminate number of two man teams in flying contraptions like super light aircraft with Tesla cannons, and two larger vessels with ballista and marines, and the two Captains, who are CR 7 and 8 half dragons (One is rezmir and the other a leveled up langdedrosa cyanwrath) with really powerful magic items.

conclusion later!

 

[Zardnaar]

Canceled.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Three out of five players in my 12th level campaign were able to make the latest session--which we play online. As the USA goes into lockdown due to coronavirus, I have a feeling we'll be playing more frequently. I guess that's a little bit of good in a terrible situation.

In any case, the characters are in Ironslag, the fire giant lair from Storm King's Thunder. In this session, they faced off against the giant chief, Duke Zalto, and his wife, Brimskarda. For Brimskarda I used the stats of a CR14 fire giant dreadnought. For Zalto, he was a custom foe created using 4E design principles. For example, he had a special power that triggered when bloodied. And, combined with legendary resistance, I expected him to be basically unstoppable. Then came the halfling bard with Otto's Irresistable Dance, which mixed up both Zalto and the DM for a couple turns. It took 2 1/2 hours for the players to finally fell Zalto, Brimskarda, and a handful of minions. No players we're dropped, but they're basically out of spells and powers, so they're in trouble if they run into significant resistance.

The juiciest part of the session involved the bard and his magical lyre, which is a special item created using 4E rules for concordance. Basically, the lyre grants him several charm-type spells. But it's sentient, inhabited by the spirit of his slain rival from bard college. And that rival is vainglorious and amoral. Well, the bard used up all the spells in the lyre, which required him to roll a d20. On a 1, the lyre would be rendered non-magical. Guess what? He rolled a 1. We discussed if there were any alternatives...and the player suggested that perhaps the spirit of the rival could begin to possess and even control his character. And the character would have no memory of what happened. Essentially, a selfish, greedy, and unethical magical artifact is now undermining the party from within. So...pretty awesome.

Next session, they search Ironslag for Harshnag, a good-aligned frost giant in service of Force Grey, who can lead them to the Eye of the All-Father, a lost temple that holds secrets which will help them stop the giants.

 

[Reynard]

Last night we finally got the guys back together for more Dungeons & Dads, aka Drunks & Dragons aka Dungeons and Flagons. Most of the players are lapsed gamers or first timers, all 40-something dads. It was a fun session in which I flipped the script on a typical "hunt down the bandits" adventure that also led to a Skyrim style mini-dungeon that itself led to the first foray into a "crashed spaceship" style adventure. There were many jokes, of course, and much beer was drunk, but it went well and even the total newbies got into character. And they did not go full murder hobo on me, which was honestly a bit of a surprise.

 

[cbwjm]

Had another session last Friday. The players had been directed to deal with a warlock lieutenant so that he wasn't a problem later on. He had made a deal with a Cyclops based on Polyphemus and his carnivorous sheep (at least they were carnivorous in the Percy Jackson novels).

The players got their attention, cyclops, warlock, and a bloodthirsty swarm of sheep raced down the mountain road towards the players. The sheep were killed before they could do any real damage, though at least one player to damage from their gnashing teeth aura. Then came the slog of fighting warlock and cyclops. It reached a point where I ended up changing direction, the Menos the cyclops turned on the warlock, crushing him with his club and surrendering. He'd been told it would be an easy victory but all that happened was that he lost all of his sheep, he loved those sheep.

The players made peace with him, even resting in his cavern. He traded a chime for some sheep made by the glassblower in the party (who knew that would come in handy) and then the next day the party travelled back to the dragonborn city of Tymanther, stopping at a dwarven inn along the way which had recently been freed from orcs and was full of dwarves celebrating.

The party levelled up to 5. I'm hoping this will help fights go a little quicker now, especially with the halfling barbarian able to make two swings with her necrotic warhammer.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Forgotten Realms.

Me; DM.

Used the DnDBeyond combat tracker for the first time, and its pretty good.

Characters:

Finnan: Halfling thief, former warlock, swordsman, fancy lad.

Lucky: Halfling battlemaster/scout, archer, sky taxi pilot, fast talking cabby with a New Zealand ish accent.

Nemain: Gnome Arcane Trickster/Artillerist, lovable rage lady, makes lots of wonderful toys to kill you with. Very Entrapta. @lowkey13 knows what's up.

Torkann: Dragonborn Battlemaster/Lore Bard, huge nerd, grandson of famous adventurers, tactician, linguist, scholar.

The Toaster: Warforged Cavalier Fighter, named by Nemain, her guardian/protector.

Cellios: Tabaxi Nature Cleric/Open Hand Monk. Wandering healer, reluctant combatant, new to the game.

Last session: last time they were in the city of Lantan, which was currently located in the world of Abeir, the spellplague having shifted several land-masses from one world to another.

Lantan, IMC, is an island city dominated by massive towers that create a 3/4 circle around the city, with the harbor in the center of the Open Quarter. The towers have the appearance of a circular grand pipe organ in light turquoise stone, the smallest at one end standing 100ft, and each successive tower rising 2-3 stories higher as you look counter-clockwise.

They’d done some poking around, and found word of a great artificer in the Heights, and they went to meet with him. They learned that the old gnomish man built The Toaster a bit over 100yrs ago.


During that meeting, the city was attacked by sky pirates. The old gnome led the party to a room in his mansion that then lead into the nearest tower, and (tldr) put them in launch tubes with chairs they strapped into and then entered a Pacific Rim style drift-like state with a semi-sentient magical device, instantly learning how to operate it and extending their senses into its senses.
Then they launched into the air in magi-tech living metal birds to fight the sky pirates.

This session: I start with Cellio entering the city, refreshing everyone as I describe it anew for him. He meets with an old loxodon healer who talks with a slow West Virginia accent, and then goes to meet a young gnome healer, which leads him to take a sky taxi.
A young talkative halfling (half gnome) named Lucky picks him up, and mid conversation on the way, the towers sound their immense klaxon, and Lucky tells Cellio to hold on and pop out the crossbow in the back.

A challenging ToTM fight ensues, each vehicle having HP equal to their controlling character for simplicity. The birds can translate character abilities to something it can do, and extend the range of their spells and other abilities, basically just meaning we don’t worry too much about distance. They face 3 wyvern riders, 4-5 lancers on flying drakes, an indeterminate number of two man teams in flying contraptions like super light aircraft with Tesla cannons, and two larger vessels with ballista and marines, and the two Captains, who are CR 7 and 8 half dragons (One is rezmir and the other a leveled up langdedrosa cyanwrath) with really powerful magic items.

conclusion later!

So, the fight is pretty abstract ToTM for the aerial portion. When groups of bad guys go, I usually have them target a few PCs who then make Dex saves, rather than resolving a bunch of attacks.
It also meant that most PCs took some damage each round no matter what.
With two legendary creatures, the PCs has to think fast and plan ahead, and only avoided anyone going down by using their resources proactively, and getting lucky rolls.

They took down one ship, and then the other. Langdedrosa’s ship crash landed on a platform, and his crew got into a cover-fire fight with the city guard. Rezmir’s ship blew apart, but she and several of her crew leaped from it before it blew and used flying armor or conjured wings to fly to the rest of their grounded allies.

By that time, Finnan had left his bird-craft to falling-aerial-Strike Rezmir, so he was riding on his bird rather than inside it. So he did the same kind of strike against Langdedrosa as he fell from his bird a second time. Rogues.

With the fight taken to the ground, it got less abstract, but I didn’t want to mess with the flow so I kept it ToTM. Lucky and Cellio and some other blue lanterns flanked the pirates, and they all waded through the ranks. Drakes and archer attacked in groups still, forcing strength and Dex saves respectively. The half-dragons and the 2 remaining wyverns had their own turns.

The fight hit hard. Langdedrosa’s Sword lets him add 2d10 lightning damage as a bonus action, to the target of the attack and 2 enemies within 15ft of the target, pulling them in on a failed save. He also has a LA that lets all his allies either move or attack, and a bonus action that gives all his allies within 60ft THP. Rezmir has two legendary items lol.

Every PC had some really cool moments, but the end of the fight was the most amazing part, especially because it worked out this way mostly just due to dice.

So, in our version of FR, the world of Abeir is a world of islands, rules by dragons. Lantan is off the western coast of what would be the largest landmass in the world (roughly between Indonesia and Australia in size), if it weren’t for Maztica, the Land of The Blue Sky.

Torkann is descended from the free Dragonborn of Tymanchebar. Langdedrosa is the son of a dragon overlord, and a Loyalist.
So, as the battle turns against the Pirates, and the PCs are running dangerously low on resources, Langdedrosa challenges Torkann personally, calling him a bastard orphan, an ungrateful welp of ungrateful traitors.
Torkann insults his mother, and slaps sword against shield, accepting the challenge.
Torkann fights with an arm shield and a curved one-handed sword that shines with sunlight. Langdedrosa uses a longsword that crackles with lightning, switching between one and two handed swings.
They trade blows, bloody each other. They’re both low on HP, like, about 1/3 their max.
Lang goes, blasting Torkann with lightning and then a second attack that crits, knocking Torkann to about 5hp.
Torkann lets his companions know not to interfere, and counters with two strikes, one of which crits, the other is a pushing strike. Lang is now at 3 hp.
They’re both below 10hp now, standing with 10ft of open space between them, bloody and exhausted, in mirrored stance with their swords upright to the sides, quiet as the battle rages around them.
I ask for an initiative roll, Torkann wins 16-14.
That means he gets advantage on the check to resolve this. Opposed attack rolls.
Langdedrosa Cyanweth and Torkann of Anakul sprint toward each other, the distance just short enough it’s almost more of a leap.
Langdedrosa rolls a total of 25.
Torkann rolls a total of 26.
I tell Torkann That Langdedrosa comes in with a two-handed “Palpatine manuever” thrust, and twists at the last step into a horizontal slash, and ask how he counters. He and I stand and play it out a bit, as he describes sidestepping slightly mid-lunge and dropping below the swing, and I describe his enemy’s momentum carrying him into the thrust, gasping a brief obscenity, grabbing Torkann’s shoulder, and saying, “Well done, bastard.” Before he dies.

 

[was]

We started Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Had three character deaths due to insect swarms, but it was interesting.

 

[prabe]

Erkonin #1, Session #47 (5E)

Party found the last devils that had come out of the gate and killed them. Went to the captain of the guard and found there was nothing further for them to do in that city, so they cast Teleportation Circle and went to their home.

At their home, they checked in with their castellan and made sure things were proceeding according to their desires. Next day, they took their riverboat to the nearby large city.

In that city, they spent some time interacting with the ruler, who happens to be a powerful outsider. Turns out he wants the same thing/s many of the party do, and they are much more devoted to working with him, especially since one of their long-term goals is undoing his cousin's control of a somewhat smaller city to the north (part of her larger realm). Party gathered some information that will be useful in their more immediate task, retrieving a powerful druidic staff from a library in a college of magic.

Party went to some other allies in the city, to be teleported to a circle in another city (major seaport city, well to the south). Need ally to teleport them to the circle because she's not supposed to hand the sequence out.

Party is going to start next session in that seaport.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

I'm running a modified version of Storm King's Thunder for my online group. We live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Guadalajara, Mexico. Most of us are under shelter in place orders. So we're now trying to play weekly (rather than biweekly) to fill the time. Characters are 12th level and, as of the end of this session, are right on the cusp of 13th. That's the highest level I've ever played by a significant margin.

In this version of STK, the giants are being manipulated by the Zhentarim, and Manshoon rules the Zhentarim using an army of clones that share a hive mind. In the previous session, the characters slew the fire giant chief Duke Zalto and freed an elven warrior princess that was his captive. (Actually an archfey pact of the tome warlock with an emphasis on infiltration-style spells.) In gratitude, she gave her magical sword to the elf rogue arcane trickster. It's a Sword of Answering in the form of a rapier, so it's a big melee boost for a rogue. The player of this character isn't the most tactical, and doesn't expect (or want) to be the best in combat, but does notice when he's being significantly overshadowed by other characters. I've been loading him up on powerful magic weapons to help get him back into competition.

The battle with Zalto left the characters mostly tapped out of their spells and powers. Basically, they're now at the point where they can be truly challenged. (12th level characters are hard to wear down.) I dangled several temptations in front of the players to get them to make some dangerous decisions, but they were just looking for a way out. The players made a plan to get to the prison and bust out their frost giant ally, Harshnag. Harshnag knows the location of the Eye of the All-Father. That ancient temple to the giant gods can somehow lead them to Hekaton, the storm giant priest that's giving orders to all the other giants. The players busted some other prisoners out of their cells, distracted the fire giant guards, and snuck into Harshnag's cell. Then they used a scroll of teleport to escape Ironslag and teleport to the Eye of the All-Father. The rest of the session involved them scouting the entrance to the Eye. Oh, and they got a mysterious vision of Manshoon slaughtering all the prisoners in Ironslag in retaliation for the characters' actions. Manshoon is meant to be a big bad evil guy, but he hadn't done much that was truly villainous yet, so I took advantage of this opportunity.

Overall, it was a fun session with some good roleplaying and a fair amount of sneakiness, which is something this party struggles to do well. Mostly they just hit stuff until it stops moving.

Next session they'll take on the temple's guardians and maybe even level up.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

The player characters have just hit 13th level. My goal for this session was to give them a battle where they could try out their new abilities and trounce the competition. At this level, characters get access to 7th level spells, which are "game breaking" in the sense that travel, planar travel, and even death become trivial. It's my first exposure ever to those spells so I'm interested in seeing how they change the game. Finally, I wanted to tie up some dangling plot threads. My campaign has far, far too many.

Additionally, the players have acquired a pack of NPCs from their assault on the fire giant headquarters of Ironslag. First is Harshnag, the good frost giant in service to the Blackstaff. Second is Sarisa, an elf tomelock and warrior princess from the High Forest. Third is Zara, a drow priestess of Lolth from House Mizzrym.

I'm running a modified version of Storm King's Thunder. The players arrived at the Eye of the All-Father. There, they expect to find the means to reach Hekaton, the overpriest of the giants held captive by the Zhentarim in Skyreach Castle. As they entered the Eye, the elf arcane trickster scouted ahead invisibly and discovered an ambush waiting for them. The ambushers were three different teams of bounty hunters from Waterdeep. (The players have a mysterious, powerful enemy in Waterdeep that put a price on their heads.) How these bounty reached the Eye--and why they're working together--remains a mystery, for now.

The first team of bounty hunters consisted of 3 barbaric humans who are actually werewolves. The rogue and beast master ranger made pretty quick work of the werewolves. The rogue is now throwing down 7d6 with every sneak attack and rarely misses while ranger is a tank with nearly 150hp.

The second team was a blackguard paladin and 3 convicts taken from the gallows (who use the stats of gladiators). I asked the party's vengeance paladin of Ilmater to give me the name and background of the blackguard. He decided the blackguard was an oathbreaker paladin of Ilmater. So they threw down. We really hammed up the dialogue between the two as they fought.

The third team consisted of 3 hook horrors led by a levitating, invisible mind flayer. The mind flayer waited until the party was split and hit half of them with a mind blast. Unfortunately for the mind flayer (and the DM) they were grouped around the paladin. That +5 to saving throws made a huge difference. Only two of the players were stunned. The drow priestess levitated up to the mind flayer and said that if he left now, her house in Menzoberranzan would pay him double the bounty. The mind flayer thought about the offer...and took it. With a quick plane shift, he vanished. Poof! The characters then made short work of the hook horrors. Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for the DM) all 3 hook horrors were possessed by intellect devourers. Using their psychic powers, the devourers dropped Harshnag's intelligence to zero and possessed him. So now the frost giant is attacking the characters. The remaining two devourers are looking for targets to possess. It could get ugly.

And on that cliffhanger we ended the session.