D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[Richards]

In tonight's "Ghourmand Vale" session, the PCs:

• Approached a warehouse where we believed the stolen cargo from three of my PC's brother's merchant ships was being stored; we decided I'd go in pretending to look to purchase some stolen merchandise, and if we spotted the stolen cargo (identifiable by the family emblem on the crates) we'd take everyone out and then bring in my brother and his men to unload the stolen merchandise back into his ship
• Had the halfling rogue enter the warehouse under a greater invisibility spell and spider climb along the wall, confirming there were commoners removing cargo from my PC's brother's crates and storing them in crates with a different merchant's logo on them
• Notified everyone over our active Rary's telepathic bond spell, and my sorcerer started combat with a maximized chain lightning spell that split one commoner into him plus some sort of red devil (we found out later it was a protean scourge from the 3.5 MMIII)
• The elf druid wildshaped from an albatross 30 feet above the warehouse roof into a Large earth elemental, did a "cannonball" through the roof, and the DM determined the protean scourge and commoner he'd split from (who were directly beneath the hole in the roof) both had the presence of mind - and reflexes - to leap out of the way, avoiding all damage
• Had the paladin charge the protean scourge for a fair chunk of damage
• Took out the commoners and most of the half-orc bodyguards with spells (wall of thorns, chain lightning, cone of cold)
• Killed the protean scourge with multiple attacks by the paladin and halfling in the same round (smite evil plus sneak attack damage = big damage!)
• Slew the half-orc pirate captain with a well-placed arrow through his eye and head by the elf archer
• Recovered the stolen cargo once all of the warehouse workers had all been slain

Our DM reverted a bit back to his "I'm going to rule against you automatically at all times" ways, denying the paladin from gaining extra damage on his attack when he leaped down through the hole in the roof to attack the protean scourge (gravity apparently doesn't add to momentum when he doesn't want it to) and allowing the pirate captain to use Deflect Arrows to prevent the elf archer from performing her signature move (shooting an eye out via quick aim), negating 113 points of damage from an attack there was little chance of him being able to see coming (she flew a carpet of flying from one side of a hole in the roof to the other; he had no idea she was there (she was invisible) but she knew exactly where he was before she moved into position (described over the Rary's telepathic bond) and has a class feature allowing her to quick-aim.

He actually backed down away from that last ruling after we all complained, and showed him the Deflect Arrows feat only applies to attacks he can see coming.

Incidentally, we think this campaign will be finished up by this summer, and the players are all kind of looking forward to it. Then my son takes over the Wednesday night DM reins for the next couple of years.

Johnathan

 

[jasper]

Good. they avoid all the combat except the must have combat encounter. They came up with an out box solution but it totally fitted with the theme of the adventure.

 

[Foodgeek]

Ok, played the OSR with skycrawl again. Trying to get out of a huge building in a dead city to get out i said dead city before we dehydrate and die. then we'll have to fight pats bandits to get back to the top of the planet (we are inside). and we are injured and with dwindling water supplies (a curse dehydrated the city). So, we ran from a huge yellow slime, lost 2 NPC mercs to a flying lizard (petrification), found a magic book (20% was damaged retrieving it) and treasure map, lifted the petrification curse on the city, which caused the gardens to no longer be stone and everything started dehydrating/dying, removed a 5000k pearl like stone from a carnivorous plant, found our way into a big shaft system going upwards (has bridges at different levels) that we hope will lead us out, lost our level 1 fighter henchman to the same petrifying monster that followed us, locked said monster out, and are now trying to get out of this building and city. That is 3 NPCs we lost today.

 

[Richards]

In last night's "Ghourmand Vale" game session, the PCs:

• Teleported back to their headquarters in Ghourmand Vale (from the Greyhawk City/Nyr Dyv area, in which the three previous adventures had taken place), to find out there had been some strange ravens hanging around the HQ, and a high incident of blind beggars whose blindness resisted the local clerics' efforts to restore
• Heard that the Topsy-Curvy Club, a bar/bordello that was a front for a local thieves guild, had really deteriorated, to the point nobody went there anymore as it smelled of rot and decay
• Decided to check out the Topsy-Curvy Club, an area they'd fought in before when taking on the thieves guild there
• Encountered an angel of decay who dripped gobs of rotting flesh, and whose spell resistance made it impervious to the elf druid's wall of fire spell and my human sorcerer's maximized chain lightning spell (grr! - irritating!), finally taking it down with massive attacks from the half-elf paladin (and his awesome sword) and the halfling rogue shooting "pebboulders" (boulders shrunken down to pebble size by my sorcerer's shrink item spells - he keeps her fully stocked each day)
• Next encountered a deathbringer (Large undead fighter) and a vitreous drinker (eye-covered undead with links to a dozen or more ghostly ravens, able to steal the vision of others and then see through their sightless eyes)
• Had the archer take out the vitreous drinker (which also took out the ghost-ravens as a side effect) with a bevy of holy water arrows
• Took out the deathbringer with a combination of the druid's sunbeam spells, my sorcerer's chain lightning spells, and the paladin's sword

When the vitreous drinker was slain, those it had blinded earlier were spontaneously cured, which was a nice side effect. But the whole adventure was pretty much an opportunity for us to fight some unusual undead, plus advance the plot forward a bit, as we found evidence the vitreous drinker (at least, likely the others as well) had been "hired" to overtake the area by the forces of Iuz, who I think our DM is setting up as the "final boss" of the campaign.

Anyway, it was nice to be gaming again on Wednesday night after nearly a month on hiatus, due to vacations, holidays, and sickness.

Johnathan

 

[Bae'zel]

Had a great time running my Ravenloft campaign. My players are awesome.

Only sore spot was realizing how utterly terrible the Dark Souls RPG books can be for pre-made campaigns. The editing team must have been drunk or something. It's all over the place (Tome of Journeys). It's so poorly organized and structured, pieces are missing, cites treasure but doesn't tell you what, mentions monster stat blocks that you have to find for yourself (doesn't mention WHERE the stat block is located) and everything is out of order.

I don't recommend the Tome of Journeys at all. It's so bad that I reached out to one of the authors to ask for help about their adventure and they never replied back.

 

[Richards]

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

• Were asked (specifically, the dwarf priestess was asked) to bless a dwarven mining town where no babies have been born in several years
• Were escorted into the fortified mine, where their hosts stopped off at the "Mead from a Stone" tavern for a quick drink before hunting down the mayor
• Learned the bartender was a retired adventurer who has a magic item like a decanter of endless water that pours mead instead of water; as it's an endless supply, he charges a mere copper piece per full tankard of mead
• Questioned the tavern folks what had changed in the last couple of years, trying to pin down what might have caused the sudden infertility
• Noticed the mead they were being served showed up as a minor poison under a detect poison spell, but tasted no different after a purify food and drink spell
• Found out the bartender had a magical enchantment aura about him, and after interviewing him under a detect lies spell (which indicated he'd been lying about finding the magic decanter when he was an adventurer), had the half-orc cleric/paladin cast a protection from evil spell on him that temporarily negated the geas he was under, at which time he confessed he'd been given the decanter by duergar who he met monthly in his storeroom and was compelled to sell it at ridiculously low prices to ensure the whole village partook
• Destroyed the decanter
• Went into the storeroom and found a secret door in a fake crate that led to a set of stairs leading down, but which had a primitive alarm notifying the duergar alchemist of intruders
• Caught the alchemist in a hold person spell as three barrels in the storeroom animated and attacked
• Fought the alchemist's homunculus, who freed a swarm of rats being held in cages below the tables along the back wall, while the human spellsword and the half-orc dealt with the attacking barrels
• Summoned a bat swarm to deal with the rat swarm, then saw a duergar fighter enter from a bedroom and disappear after seeing combat going on in the alchemy room (he teleported away to get reinforcements)
• Killed the duergar alchemist and his homunculus, then had to deal with the duergar fighter on his steeder and a duergar cleric (the real brains behind the operation - she was the one keeping the dwarven bartender under geas spells), who had teleported in as reinforcements
• Killed the fighter and blinded/deafened/paralyzed the steeder with a holy word spell cast by the half-orc, and then the dwarf priestess cast another one after the duergar cleric summoned a night hag that was casting magic missiles at the human spellsword
• Took out the last two combatants, freeing the dwarven community: eventually, the infertility drugs they'd been imbibing through the mead will wear off and they'll start having kids again

I told the players in about 10 months, there will probably be a bunch of dwarven kids born that get named after them (and that the ugliest one would likely be named after the half-orc).

Johnathan

 

[Gorg]

It ended in a total party kill...

Lost Mine of Phandelver, Wyvern Tor.

party of 4, 4th levels. Failed to take out the sentry, before he could warn the camp. It was a good try- the rogue used sneak attack to shoot him with his short bow. Did 14 points of damage- the orc had 18...

That orc then won initiative, and used it to sound the alarm.

Thus, the party got to face 7 angry orcs and an ogre all at once with no surprise round, or time to sneak up, position, or reconnoiter. Nor did they get the chance to even the odds a bit with an area of effect spell or such.

As it turned out, rolling 7 attacks at +5 each round, plus the ogre - when they won initiative slots 3, 4, and 5-is a LOT of chances to roll high... 1d12+3 damage adds up quickly! The ogre's +6, and 2d8+4 was just the salt in the wound.

3 rounds later, all 4 characters were down, and there were just 2 wounded orcs left. I chose to have them run away, as the adventure suggests, after both bosses got toasted. The mage was the last standing, and tried his best with a Burning Hands spell (they were bunched up in/in front of the cave mouth), that ALL but a single orc failed their save on, lol. One of the two survivors knocked him down to 0 on his way out of Dodge.

I knew it would be a tough fight, but this was unexpected. The dice giveth, and the dice taketh away.

The unfortunate initiative rolls left them no real chance to disengage and flee or reposition. Fighter and cleric positioned in front to protect the rogue and the mage. Both rolled terribly on their initiative rolls, and went last. They got their butts kicked, before they could... They positioned in the cave opening, so the monsters could only reach them with melee attacks.

The mage did an impressive job, tho. He single handedly slew the ogre. It was only a piss poor attack roll on the Melf's Acid Arrow spell that should have dropped him (causing the orcs to scatter and run), that allowed the beatings to continue till everyone got dropped. The Cleric was too hard pressed to cast any spells. (and too unconscious after round 2)

As a nice gesture, lol, I had the 2 survivors run away without doing any coup de grace attacks- so the party could make death saves, and live. Fighter recovered first, and helped the cleric- who helped the rogue and wizard.

As the raiders were in fact, driven off- they completed the quest, and got the nice fat xp award.

 

[Foodgeek]

Ok, played the OSR with skycrawl again. Trying to get out of a huge building in a dead city to get out i said dead city before we dehydrate and die. then we'll have to fight pats bandits to get back to the top of the planet (we are inside). and we are injured and with dwindling water supplies (a curse dehydrated the city). So, we ran from a huge yellow slime, lost 2 NPC mercs to a flying lizard (petrification), found a magic book (20% was damaged retrieving it) and treasure map, lifted the petrification curse on the city, which caused the gardens to no longer be stone and everything started dehydrating/dying, removed a 5000k pearl like stone from a carnivorous plant, found our way into a big shaft system going upwards (has bridges at different levels) that we hope will lead us out, lost our level 1 fighter henchman to the same petrifying monster that followed us, locked said monster out, and are now trying to get out of this building and city. That is 3 NPCs we lost today.

Continued: We kept moving up the shaft system and ran into a new PC. His party had been tricked by the bandits to come down this way (they knew about the boulder creatures) and he was the only survivor, their (skyship) navigator/rogue. We went into the room where his party does and killed the little rolling rock creatures there. We still had to get out of that dead city before water ran out (dehydration curse) so we didn't even check the bodies (he said nobody had magic items).

then we heard the bandits coming...saying they handled that party well 9they were going to loot the bodies) but that they had handled our party badly (we killed 7 of them on our way in after our ship crashed). we ambushed them but it turned out to be 18 of them (we had 5 PCs and one NPC) so we concentrated the sneak attack on the leader in chain mail and demolished him. The rest of the bandits failed a morale check (this is an OSR with the skycrawl addon) and we picked a few off while they scattered (and a boulder monster ate one).

We kept heading upward, exited the building and went looking for our other NPCs, 2 of which (pilot and scholar) had died of dehydration (we had found/made one barrel more water in the building, so they had less) and one was passed out (symbiote engineer) so we saved him. The Giant and robot were fine (one is immune and one has more HP). Made our way up out of the underground city, killed two bandits and took their floating little ferry), hid in the jungle and rested (magic user (me) and cleric were out of spells). Then we saw the brigands at the floating port were organizing little floating ferries and we ran for the new PC's airship and blasted off. Heading for the Banking world to drop off a PC (whose player moved away) and his robot and make some deals (we have treasure and info to sell or trade and need 5 new crew meembers). In total, we lost 5 NPCs on that world, 3 to petrification and 2 to dehydration.