D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

Richards

Legend
In last night's "Ghourmand Vale" session, the PCs:
  • Opted not to undergo the 20-day trek to the location of the sage capable of determining how best to destroy the ring of the Pomarj we took from the half-orc barbarian last adventure, instead having my sorcerer teleport everyone to Greyhawk City (where we spent the night, and my sorcerer bought that robe of the archmagi he's been wanting), then have the elf druid wind walk us to the town over seven and a half hours the next day
  • Arrived in the town in the afternoon, got directions to the Marquis' dwelling (we already suspect he'd a horned devil, given his name is an anagram of "horned devil"), and headed that way
  • Were met by a male human commoner, female human commoner, male elf druid, and female elf wizard approaching from the opposite direction, who were under attack by a troll who popped out of the flooded creek bed
  • Became suspicious when the "elf druid" cast a scorching ray spell at the troll (the elf wizard did as well, but that would have been normal)
  • Saw a red dragon come flying down out of the sky to land nearby
  • Had my sorcerer attack the red dragon with a maximized cone of cold spell, accidentally catching the invisible bone devil who had been crafting the illusions of the dragon (which my sorcerer's grackle familiar informed me was in fact an illusion) and the troll in its area of effect
  • Discovered the four people were actually barbed devils cloaked in illusions
  • Took out the bone devil with a second maximized cone of cold spell, while the elf archer started sniping barbed devils from her carpet of flying
  • Had to prop up the half-elf paladin and the halfling rogue (and their two players!), who were terribly disappointed when using melee weapons against barbed devils dealt damage to them as well (my nephew now absolutely hates barbed devils!)
  • Mostly cut the barbed devils down with ranged spells and arrows, since their immunity to fire made the halfling's fireball necklace useless and their high AC prevented her from getting much damage in with her short swords (the fact they had imbibed potions of see invisibility didn't help, as it made her magic bracelet of greater invisibility useless as well), but eventually killed them all (the paladin just sucked it up and dealt damage to himself each round so he could deal more damage to the devils)
Now we have to decide whether we want to heal up overnight and go after the horned devil next session at full strength, or attack immediately before he has a chance to set up any defenses (he's been scrying on us, so he knows we're coming), without the spells/slots cast during this session being available. But we've got until next Wednesday to figure that out.

Johnathan
 

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Richards

Legend
We did two short adventures in today's "Dreams of Erthe" game session. In the first adventure, "Fear the Reaper," the PCs:
  • Were traveling down the road when they were met by a small group of drow merchants and their three giant spider cart-pullers, all fleeing for their lives
  • Discovered they were panicked by an approaching shinigami, who they knew from a recent dream of possible events in their immediate future was likely seeking the PCs
  • Tried getting the shinigami to talk instead of fighting it, but it seemed determined to slay them
  • Fought it off (the spellsword surviving two destruction spells thrown his way), eventually slaying it
  • Upon its destruction, time stopped for all but the five PCs, and the Emissary of Akari (God of Death and Undeath in this campaign) approached, telling them Akari sought them as his mortal representatives on Erthe (the gods cannot directly interfere in mortal affairs, but they can have representatives attempting to do their will), in a matter that could affect everyone on the planet
  • Learned from the Emissary that there were hidden enemies in the Forbidden Lands (where the PCs were already heading) who have used divination magic to determine there's a force headed their way from the east that could be their doom (they don't know it yet but it is in fact the PCs), and they were responsible for the attempt at sealing off western part of the continent from the eastern part of the continent (the PCs had a run in an earlier adventure where a cyclops and his two monstrous centipedes tried to do just that), as well as sending out shinigamis to seek out any potential threats headed their way
  • Akari doesn't need them to do anything they wouldn't already be doing - heading into the Forbidden Lands - but he wants them to do so as his representatives
    • The spellsword and sorcerer agreed at once
    • The cleric and cleric/paladin (of the Gods of Protection/Stone and Air/Healing, respectively) balked a bit at being the representatives of a different god than the ones they worshiped, so the Emissary slew them, sent their souls to their respective afterlives, where they were assured by the representatives of their own faiths that serving as Akari's mortal representatives would not alter their standing in their own churches, at which point they were true resurrected by the Emissary and they agreed
    • The bard/rogue absolutely refused
  • The Emissary branded all but the bard/rogue with the mark of Akari on their foreheads (which immediately became invisible), brought the shinigami back to its full power, informed it these five were not the ones it sought for its masters, and sent it on its way with no memory of having encountered the five PCs
My nephew deciding not to have his bard/rogue be one of Akari's mortal representatives will have some interesting repercussions in a few of the adventures to follow, but it was his choice.

Johnathan
 

Richards

Legend
In today's second adventure, "Stuck in the Middle with You" - which occurred a few days later - the PCs:
  • Started in a drow city built upon a wild magic zone, with a Temple of Telgrane (this world's God of the Sun and Knowledge) dedicated to studying the effects
  • Had their traditional heroes' feast altered by the wild magic (everything tasted like garlic), which resulted in the opposite effects than normal
  • Approached the Temple of Telgrane on their way out of the city when a mob of fleeing drow came running away from the temple, closely followed by a massive flesh colossus composed of the bodies of numerous creatures (humanoid and animal)
  • Approached the flesh colossus close enough that three of the PCs were temporarily stunned by the telepathic field it emanated (composed of scores of screaming victims merged into the colossus)
  • Had the elf sorcerer erect a prismatic wall directly in front of the flesh colossus to prevent it from absorbing the body of the stunned spellsword, who was right in front of it
  • Had the dwarf cleric slay the colossus with an implosion spell (that was anticlimactic!), at which point two figures were all that remained, each clutching a magic gem in their hands: a drow cleric and a drow wizard, both colleagues from the Temple of Telgrane
  • Watched as the two attacked each other (while yelling back and forth at each other, to the point the PCs who understood Drow could piece together their backstory), then the cleric/paladin, once he was no longer stunned, used a control winds spell to toss them both into the prismatic wall spell, which slew them both
The whole thing was due to the wizard blaming the cleric for having stolen the last of his cookies months ago, the cleric denying it, and the wizard crafting the two gems, which were to link their minds together so the wizard could read the cleric's memories to prove he'd stolen his cookie - but a wild surge merged their bodies together, and then they got more and more colleagues engulfed in what was eventually to become the flesh colossus.

The PCs are now staying in the city long enough to testify before the fact-finding committee, which works out well because two of them had ordered magic items from the teleporting Gnomish Consortium, and they'll be easier to find if they stay in town long enough for their items to be delivered to them there.

(And the cleric had been telling the truth - the wizard's cookie had been stolen by a lab assistant using an invisibility spell.)

Johnathan
 

Zardnaar

Legend
They completed Dragon of Stormwrack Isle last session. The wanted to stay on tbe Isle for 1 more level which they did today. Hitting level 4.

I mined the level 2 part of HotDQ and the waves there. Added steam vents and tweaked the shrine.

The Ebon Triad was involved. Ex tomato followers following a heresy around the dead 3 Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul. The heresy is they're 3 aspects of an evil over god they are calling Zeon.

They recovered a dessicated dragons heart bound for Baldurs Gate. Some sort of ritual that will succeed where Karsus Folly failed. The grand design failed. Dead three failed.

Totally not doing Baldurs Gate 4.
 

ptolemy

Explorer
Last session of 5e:

The players had discovered that their librarian buddy was actually an arcane caster at the same time that the baron did. Despite the librarian using magic to help save the baron from political embarrassment the baron insisted on trying them for witchcraft and sentenced the poor guy to death. The archeologist (secretly a warlock who will be executed the moment anyone finds out) sent his "trained raven" to steal the Dean's potable hole, smuggled it into the dungeon with a note to the effect of "hide in this" then the "raven" took the hole to a nearby copse to meet the players. The Dean had been onto them all the time, as he wants the librarian/wizard in the party (a long running NPC) to translate a copy of De Vermis Mysteriis* but he cannot act openly to challenge the baron as he needs the baron to stay in the anti-war faction. The Dean snatched the librarian and then informed the party that he had been executed at dawn - which the party knew to be false as they were with him at that time. The Dean is impressed and wants to hire the party for missions, he has the librarian under lock and key and the players have been paid off. They haven't realised the Dean has manipulated them, but they will find out if they carry on like this...


* we are playing just 5e as some light hearted fun after our CoC campaign got a little heavy what with people being sectioned, dying and being spirited away by dimensional shambles. They all groaned when they found the copy of DVM ;-)
 

We've converted our OSE Dolmenwood campaign into 5E, and are now playing through Wild beyond the Witchlight.
Last session we arrived at the introductory carnival and spent the session playing 'side-show alley' games. It was a lot of fun.
 

James Gasik

We don't talk about Pun-Pun
To my surprise, my two prodigal players showed up early...but more on that later.

With the full party on deck, they went into the penultimate encounter of the main quest, to recover the stolen treasure of the town of Sturnheim. They first encountered some ghouls and a few traps, which made them, perhaps, overly cautious. They used more spell slots than they needed to, which was a good sign as it would make the next encounter properly challenging.

As it was, a poison gas trap, a ghostly bandit with a spectral handgun, and a dual-wielding ghoul rogue (with a few more random ghouls) turned into an epic three hour battle with lots of ups and downs. But in the end, they prevailed despite a few close calls, and burned through the last of their healing potions.

Then, to my surprise, the players suddenly decided instead of taking a short rest and moving on to wait until they could long rest! I hadn't anticipated this, but thanks to Leomund's Tiny Hut and the fact that they had cleared out all the other encounters in the mini-dungeon. In the end this turned out ok, but when 4/5 of your party are spellcasters, this shows that I am going to have to try and put more pressure on the party in the future- I wanted to use less epic battles to move the adventure along, but if they're going to insist on taking on every fight with full power, I don't see how that's going to work out. I don't blame the players- if you can get an advantage, you should take it, after all.

At that point, the two players who had been absent the session before suddenly said they had to go. One had made plans with his gf, and that player was the other player's ride, so with 75 minutes left on the clock, I was down to three players again.

Hence why the long rest turned out to be a non-issue. The players continued to explore, encountering a Water Naga that they managed to persuade to help them, and she provided a lot of information about the dungeon and the area- information they should have gotten a long time ago, but despite being in a central part of the dungeon, they'd basically managed to avoid her completely. They found a shrine to Orcus, that long ago had been the focal point of a ritual to transform a Wizard into a lich, that had gone wrong. Destroying the shrine, they claimed a crystallized dragon heart brimming with necromantic power.

On the way out of the dungeon, they faced the last encounter, a zombie dragon surprisingly possessed by the spirit of the ancient Wizard, much to his chagrin. Instead of fleeing, they faced the creature down.

The battle was somewhat lopsided- the physical power of the dragon was immense, but it was very slow moving. The Wizard could recall a few random spells to make up for this, but in the end, the trio were able to exploit the zombie's weak points and eliminate gobs of hit points in short order, earning a huge chunk of xp.

Which now has 3/5 of the party a full level ahead of the others. Time will tell if that's going to be a problem.

With the lost treasure recovered and returned to the town, the players got their cut, and next session will have to decide if the remaining side quests are worth their time or if they should continue to the next town in search of new challenges.
 

Richards

Legend
In tonight's "Ghourmand Vale" session, the PCs:
  • (Picked up where we left off last session, when we had to finish early due to time constraints)
  • Explored the partially ruined chateau and tower the horned devil we slew last session had been inhabiting in his human guise
  • Killed an imp on the lower level of the tower (5 arrows from a 16th-level elf archer = pincushion)
  • Had the human sorcerer dimension door everyone into a room sealed off with a phase door spell (to which we weren't attuned), in time to see a slain lich reforming
  • Watched the half-elf paladin destroy the lich before it could take full form (and noticed it was missing a hand)
  • Went back down and had the elves (archer and druid) look for secret passages
  • Found a hidden door leading to stairs leading down to a hidden temple
  • Fought a human cleric there, who cast quickened silence and blade barrier spells, the latter spell only catching the paladin
  • Took down the cleric with a combination of a halfling-flung fireball bead, the archer's arrows, and a massive-damage smite evil attack from the paladin
  • Discovered a magical painting of all the devils we'd seen thus far (in the last 3 adventures), which allowed each of them to assume a humanoid form; the jade frame was valuable
  • Looted the place, ended up with some Nolzur's marvelous pigments and a rod of the python, as well as the lich's severed hand (apparently the devils had the lich paint their magical portrait, then killed him rather than pay for it; the skeletal hand can be used with our cubic gate to take us to his phylactery if we can figure out what plane it's on
  • Now have a side quest to find the lich's phylactery, hidden away on a distant plane (the DM came up with some handwavium reason why it was reforming here in the tower instead of by its phylactery - in other words, he forgot how phylacteries normally work)
Johnathan
 

Richards

Legend
In today's "Dreams of Erthe" campaign, the PCs:
  • Departed the drow city they'd been staying in with a warning about gnoll bandits attacking people on the road
  • Traveled half a day without incident, then saw a dilapidated wooden structure up on a ridge overlooking a meandering stream surrounded by scrub brush
  • Had the elf sorcerer's pseudodragon familiar fly over to investigate the wooden structure, and when he flew up he saw dead gnolls laying on the ground just ahead
  • Found themselves surrounded by gnolls on all sides courtesy of hallucinatory terrain and veil spells, creating the illusions of false scrub brush and making each gnoll look like a bush - they all got surprise attacks in before the full melee started (but my attack rolls were subpar, so I didn't deal as much damage as I would have hoped)
  • Discovered (over the course of the battle) they were up against 20 gnolls, 8 gnoll archers (10th level), 4 gnoll fighters (10th level), one gnoll adept (10th level), 12 undead gnoll skeletons, 14 undead gnoll zombies, and one gnoll sorcerer (15th level) - the PCs were all 17th level at the time
  • Got hit by a chain lightning spell that the pseudodragon saw came from the top floor of the wooden structure
  • Took out most of the basic gnolls (18 out of 20), most of the skeletons, and about half of the zombies when the half-orc cleric/paladin cast a holy word spell
  • Had the half-orc take out the rest of the undead with two turn undead attacks
  • Messed up the gnoll fighters and archers with random effects from multiple castings of the elf sorcerer's prismatic spray spell
  • Had the human spellsword and human bard/rogue take out the remaining fighters (who'd been blinded and deafened by the holy word spell - it was pretty much a clean-up action at that point
  • Discovered the wooden structure was in fact a wood colossus when it assumed humanoid form and started heading towards the PCs, only to be stopped in place by a summoned Huge fire elemental (and when the construct had slain it, by a replacement Huge earth elemental)
  • Took out the archers with a large summoned earth elemental, the dwarf cleric, and the sneak attacks of an invisible bard/rogue
  • Had the pseudodragon attack the gnoll sorcerer in the attic "head" of the wood colossus, hitting it once in two subsequent rounds and actually knocking it unconscious with its sleep venom on the 2nd round
  • Had the spellsword fly into the attic window, only to discover all the controls were written in Drow (which he didn't understand)
  • Had the half-orc fly the elf sorcerer up to the wood colossus' head (just out of striking range) and cast gaseous form on him so he could enter the attic control room
  • Had the elf revert the colossus to house form
The PCs have decided to keep the wood colossus; the half-orc cleric/paladin will be casting six make whole spells per day to spruce the dilapidated colossus (which is thousands of years old, dating back to the wizard war that almost destroyed the drow civilization on the continent) over time until it's almost like new.

And as this was our 85th adventure in this campaign, they all leveled up to 18th at the end. Only 15 more adventures to go!

Johnathan
 

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