D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[Richards]

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

• Had to skirt a forest since their wood colossus was too big to go through the forest without stopping to dislodge trees
• As a result, encountered a lone drow young woman sitting on a rock watching the sunset; the elf sorcerer noticed he could partially see through her and warned everyone she was a ghost
• Were warned by the ghost to flee before Eldoranda showed up when the sun went down, because she'd try to kill them
• Hung around to talk to the ghost (learning she'd just graduated from the training temple and was looking forward to service in a new city as a cleric of the God of Knowledge), as other ghosts, apparitions, and eventually Eldoranda manifested - at which point they learned Eldornada was a banshee and they probably should have heeded the ghost's warning
• Lost the human spellsword, dwarf cleric, halfling guide, and human bard (girlfriend of the PC human bard/rogue) - plus their dinosaur mounts - to the banshee's wail
• Slew the banshee with a combination of a blade barrier spell, a flame strike spell, and a sunburst spell, after which time the apparitions began to attack
• Had the half-orc cleric/paladin leap out of the wood colossus' attic-head, float to the ground with his magic shield's feather fall effect, and use weaponized healing spells against the apparitions(with aid from the elf sorcerer's magic missile spells) to slay the apparitions
• Got the rest of the story from the ghosts: each had been slain after graduating from the training school for female drow clerics and entering a shrine which was to teleport them to the temple aligned with their patron deity; each had been slain from behind and didn't see their killer, but couldn't move on until justice had been done
• Placed the slain PCs/NPCs/mounts in stasis in the wood colossus and headed for the training temple, where they got the human bard/rogue's blindness restored (friendly fire from the elf's sunburst spell)
• The next day, had the half-orc cast raise dead and resurrection spells on the slain PCs/NPCs, then asked to interrogate the male cleric who lived in a hut just outside the temple, but was told he was out gathering firewood (he had accompanied each of the slain girls to the shrine after graduation, but was unlikely to know the killer's identity as he was born blind)
• Prepared an interrogation room for him when he arrived, casting a zone of truth spell (but, unknown to him, he was much higher in level than he pretended to be and he made his Will save easily, allowing him to lie with impunity)
• Got the "blind" cleric's story, wherein he disavowed any knowledge of the girls' deaths and tried blaming it on bugbears said to inhabit the forest
• Investigated the cleric's hut (it was clean of incriminating evidence), and had him lead them to the shrine in question, to which he agreed
• Checked out the shrine, noticing the plinth inside was magical, but none of the carved wooden deity figures were (you placed the appropriate carving onto the plinth and then said the command word inscribed on the back wall to activate the teleport spell)
• Asked the "blind" cleric if he'd carved the deity statues, he said no, but they noticed the statues were striking similar to the ones back at the temple, which they knew he had carved
• Watched as the spellsword, sick of dancing around the accusations, straight-out accused the "blind" cleric of having slain the drow clerics after leading them to the shrine
• Ended up in pitched battle against an 18th-level drow cleric and his summoned night hag assistant, and the cleric blamed the girls for their own deaths, claiming they had to be punished for enticing him when they went to the nearby pond to bathe (while he watched from the forest aided by his eyes of the eagle, which he had always claimed to wear solely to prevent others from being disturbed by his "empty eye sockets" - which he occasionally faked with illusion spells to carry on the pretense)
• Took out the night hag by dismissing the summoning spell
• Knocked the "blind" cleric out with a combination of a horrid wilting spell and the swords of the spellsword and bard/rogue, then bound him up and returned him to the training temple to confess to his crimes
• Got the temple leaders to agree to allow the PCs to bring him to the ghosts of the young women he'd slain and leave his punishment to them

(Yeah, he's dead now, and the ghosts have all passed on to their normal afterlives.)

And then, after the players all thought the adventure was over, I took them through a dreamscape scenario that occurred that evening, in which the PCs:

• Were approached in the Dreamlands by a female moogle who offered to bring them to someone who needed to see them immediately
• Found out it was Andrea Jandoval, the spellsword's arcane instructor whose body they'd been sent to fetch, believing her to be dead - she was not only still alive, but a dreamwalker like themselves
• Learned she'd only tricked them to the Forbidden Lands because of divination spells that hinted they were the five people who would stop a planet-threatening event from occurring
• Found out the Forbidden Lands are filled with undead, mostly liches and necropolitans and the occasional vampire, and that she'd pretended she wished to join them in undeath, slowly forging her phylactery while she tried to learn more about the big threat
• Were told the Forbidden Lands are ruled by the Conclave of Skulls, housed in an area where only the undead could go and survive
• Learned this was Andrea's last day alive; she had to perform the ritual to become a lich because the other undead were getting suspicious; she told them how to enter the Forbidden Lands, to pretend they didn't know her but to pretend to seek to become undead as well, and she'd try to learn the planet-level danger and pass word to them, but if she failed they might have to become undead themselves to gain access to the Conclave of Skulls and learn of the plot for themselves

Next adventure, their halfling guide finally gets them to the end of the road: the drow city where he dropped off Andrea after crossing the continent with her to get her to the Forbidden Lands.

Johnathan

 

[el-remmen]

In my Revenants of Saltmarsh game, we played session #58. These are speeding up in terms of the meta-plot (and by speeding up, I mean now moving at a moderate pace, because before things were intentionally slow), as the PCs returned to visit their lizardfolk allies to help determine the next steps in preparing for a potential invasion, while making an effort to find the secret sahuagin lair to assault it first.

There are also two different dragons the enemy may be trying to enlist on their side that the party has decided to help confirm their presence (or absence) as part of looking for the sahuagin lair inland (which is why no one could find it - everyone was looking on the coast or in deep waters), as a map they took off their defeated nemesis several sessions ago indicated the sahuagin lair was where the Dunwater and the Dead Skin Rivers meet.

The session included planning, negotiations with NPCs, mysterious behavior from a PC whose player out sick involving his intelligent scimitar, a skill challenge to navigate up river against a lazy current, and an ambush by more bullywugs than they could count.

It was a lot of fun.

And. . . it struck me that not once in the whole session did the minutia of rules matter. Everything went smooth and the kinds of things folks like to argue about these boards never came up once.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Did a 1-shot "Revenge of the Kobolds" as it was originally presented in 4th edition. It was also, sadly, the last session with that group as the last player moved away.

 

[Richards]

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

• Entered the drow city of Spiraclast, where the ancestor worship practiced by the dark elves includes having their dead family members raised as undead so they can continue being productive members of the city populace
• Were noticed by a few juju zombies in the marketplace, and were surprised when they bowed down before the PCs (reacting to the mark of Akari, God of the Dead and Undead, four of the five PCs wear on their foreheads - and which can only be seen by undead)
• Got caught up in a procession by the rulers of the city, the king and queen (both mummy lords, one a cleric of Akari and one a sorceress) being carried on a palanquin by four mummies, with a processional guard consisting of another mummy, four living drow guardsmen, and two living drow clerics
• Incensed the king, who halted the procession and demanded the juju zombies stop genuflecting to the four PCs (and then he was even further enraged when they ignored his orders, ranking the living Emissaries of Akari as being higher in rank than the king and queen of the city-state)
• Went with the guardsmen when the king demanded the PCs be brought before him, and tried explaining how they'd been marked by an aspect of Akari, but the king decided on the spot they had somehow forged their holy symbols and called for his forces to slay the imposters
• Ended up fighting the members of the procession, while the human bard/rogue, his bard girlfriend, and their halfling guide all discovered the juju zombies were perfectly fine with attacking them, as they didn't have Akari's mark on their foreheads
• Found out the hard way the palanquin had a spell turning effect on it (fortunately they had been using cure spells as weapons against the undead, so when they rebounded back it was no harm done)
• Ended up with the odds even further against them when the mummy lord cleric king summoned a fiendish tyrannosaurus and then an elder blood elemental to aid the royal forces
• Had the human spellsword fly close enough to the king and queen that his ring of silent spells cut off their spellcasting power while still enabling his own
• Had a bit of a miscommunication when the zone of silence around the flying spellsword negated the damage all around him from the cone of cold the elf sorcerer cast, using an ability to turn the cold damage into sonic damage (which doesn't work in a zone of silence)
• Started evening the odds when they took out the palanquin bearers, spilling the king and queen into the street
• Lost their first hero when the half-orc cleric/paladin was taken down by a barrage of spells (the queen stuck with chain lightning spells, her highest damaging spells - she cast five of them over the course of the adventure)
• Lost the spellsword - who was taken down to 1 hp by friendly fire by the elf sorcerer recklessly casting meteor swarm - by one of the queen's chain lightning spells
• Eventually took out the others until it was the elf sorcerer and human bard/rogue (the dwarf cleric was unconscious by this point, but still alive) against the queen, and another cone of sonic instead of cold spell cast by the elf finally took her down
• Met back up with the halfling and bard (who'd fled on their two remaining pachycephalosaurus mounts), found lodging for the dinosaurs and halfling and mounts for the night, and smuggled the PCs in their magic lamp into his room, as there had no doubt been observers who saw the PCs kill the king and queen
• Had the dwarf cleric cast true resurrection spells on the two slain PCs the next morning, then snuck away out of the city without being spotted

Once out of view, the half-orc attached the royal palanquin to the roof of the attic of their wood colossus, so now two spellcasters can ride in comfort (and the protection of a spell turning spell) as they trek north through the desert. However, not only did they say farewell to their halfling guide, but to the bard/rogue's girlfriend as well; knowing she'd just be a hindrance to them in the Forbidden Lands, she decided to travel with the halfling back two cities over, where she'll play in taverns and inns to cover her room and board until the 5 PCs enter the Forbidden Lands, deal with whatever undead threat could disrupt the entire planet, and then come back for her.

When we play next session (in two weeks), they'll go through the desert and end the adventure with having entered the Forbidden Lands, their goal for the last 35 sessions or so.

Johnathan

 

[Older Beholder]

We finally got in a session after a few weeks off due to illnesses and just general busyness.
We converted our characters from 14 to 24 rules, so spent the start of the session doing that. It's actually the second time we've converted our characters having started this campaign using OSE.

After much discussion of weapons mastery and how it would work we played for a couple of hours and never had any combat anyway, lol, as we're playing Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

We're in a Bullywug village getting ready to confront the first hag.
I always enjoy Bullywug encounters, so I had a fun session.

 

[Knaves Quill]

My 3 players in my current 5e game reached the edge of a northern forest said to be the home of a druid/last member of a dangerous cult otherwise killed off 20 years ago by the PCs' elders. They use flayed bodies suspended and positioned in the trees to navigate the woods, as the corpses are rotting signposts effectively.

They reach a peaceful clearing but contend with a gnarled, blackened tree that turns out be an acid-weeping treant. They kill it very quickly via the wizard blowing their 2 level 3 spell slots (they're level 5). Deeper into the forest, they find the cave the druid resides in, but nearly die to the group of 5 grotesque stitched-together mismatched animals (Abominations a la Flee, Mortals!).

They take the risk to short rest right outside the cave, and upon entering, find the other druids all in a row, waiting on the PCs. At that point, they ritually slit their own throats, praising the elf ranger in the party. The players, confused, pilfer the quarters of the head druid, finding out 100% that he was responsible for killing the wizard's husband years ago as a revenge scheme on the elders that wiped out his cult. They also find out that the ranger can be killed a very specific way in a ritual to heal nature over a wide area, being that she's a rare "blessed soul." The ranger ran away from home because her family wanted to sacrifice her for this reason, and it turns out it's totally legit and real.

The players enter the lair of the druid, flanked by many beasts, ready to kill. So the wizard knows his husband is dead because of this guy, the ranger feels hollow and defeated that her life may be worth more with her dead, and the paladin (who I have yet to mention) is wondering when he'll see is adoptive father who, he recently found out, joined with a bloody, fanatical church (that are a big enemy of the PCs).

My players and I are giddy their characters are now all miserable in various ways.

 

[cbwjm]

The last session I played was Pirate Borg and it was great. There were only 2 players but we both went in and randomly created our characters, creating our background from various traits we rolled (I was a former nurse who got abducted by a pirate lord who now has a vendetta against me after I escaped).

We started with our ship limping into port, used all of our money to get it into drydock and then went and sought out a means of gaining money, in this case, find and rescue the governor's daughter. We fought a few skeletons and a ghosr but never found the princess since we found a vault filled with loot that provided us more than enough money to get a new ship. We told the governor that we'd found signs of where his daughter was, but otherwise we just left her, because we're pirates and we only cared about making enough money for a new ship and crew.

 

[Richards]

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

• Waited in their halfling guide's inn room (hiding out after having slain the mummy lord rulers last adventure) while the half-orc cleric/paladin snuck out in disguise as a full-blooded drow (via robe of blending) and bought an ioun stone granting him a +2 to his Intelligence, only to have him spot a drow woman/male drow vampire encounter on a balcony; he used an air walk spell to interrupt them, showed the vampire his mark of the God of Death and Undeath, and asked for confirmation on the directions to the Forbidden Lands (which the vampire willing gave him)
• Said farewell to their halfling guide and the human bard/rogue's girlfriend the next morning and set out due north from the drow city into the barren desert, riding in or on their wood colossus (except for the human fighter/wizard/spellsword/eldritch knight, who rode ahead on a phantom steed)
• Encountered the two Colossal monstrous scorpions they'd seen in a dream vision on day three in the desert, and slew them without too much trouble
• Encountered a saguaro sentinel (humanoid cactus creature) and a sand golem on day four, and took out the former with a horrid wilting spell (after which it was pretty easy picking) and the latter by repeated pummeling from the wood colossus, a summoned Huge fire elemental, and a summoned elder earth elemental
• Met up with the sphinx colossus they'd been told was the entrance to the Forbidden Lands on day five, and each PC answered a separate riddle successfully
• Entered the sphinx colossus's mouth (they had to leave the wood colossus behind, with instructions to fight off anyone else trying to enter it other than any of the five PCs), encountered a pitch-black room filled with combined solid fog/mind fog spell effects, and made it through with each of the 5 PCs making their Will save to prevent their minds from being read by the lich waiting for them at the far end (after answering a sixth riddle shared between all five)
• Met up with the lich (who, upon seeing the marks of the God of Death and Undeath on four of their foreheads, muttered, "Mother will be surprised...."), who asked them why they wished to enter the Forbidden Lands, and then ushered them through a door that led them into the said Forbidden Lands

My son Logan's a bit bummed that he can't bring his half-orc's wood colossus into the Forbidden Lands with him, but it's just too big.

Johnathan

 

[OB1]

Started the Crystal Cave adventure from QftIS last night. First 2 hours were spent exploring the city of Sybar mingling with the locals for rumors about the waring families, eventually day drinking at the Ocean's Draw tavern, getting warned off their quest by another adventuring group who just returned from Echo Cave in defeat, listing to a bard sing sea shanties with clues to how to get past the guardian of the cave (an addition to the adventure by me), the fighter successfully cutting the purse of a noble in the packed bar as he went to bed, a bar brawl breaking out when said noble realized his bag of gems was missing, the other three party members hillariously failing to get out of the middle of the fight (played for laughs, no real initative or dangerous stakes), the rogue successfully wooing the elf mage of the defeated adventuring group in the middle of the fight, and her deciding to dimension door the two of them up to her room, our ranger then getting his purse snatched by the halfling rogue of the adventuring group, only to realize it when he got to his room, then returning with the other 2 members of our group to find the halfling, discovering them across the road, our wizard webbing up the other party, and the rogue ruefully returning the stolen purse. Our rogue then successfully walk of shame stealthed back into the party's room for the night.

After break, the party finally went to the Govenor's mansion to get the deets on the quest and headed out, running into 3 Aridni (nasty little CR 5 fey creatures from Tome of Beasts) who they failed to apply the lessons from the bard to avoid fighting) and had a tough fight that nearly went sideways. Afterwards they found a clue that the other adventuring party bargained their way past this fight. Ended the session with them just an hour or so walk to the cave and the guardian there (a CR 9 Dryad). We'll see if they learned their lesson from the Aridni in the next session and make their way into the cave!

 

[Richards]

In today's "Dreams of Erthe" campaign session, we ran through two short adventures. In the first one, the PCs:

• Were brought by their lich guide Pendlebrook to a reception hall (he sent out a message spell telling other undead he was bringing potential recruits)
• Met a bunch of liches, necropolitans, and a few vampires, all of whom were curious about the marks on the foreheads of four of the five PCs distinguishing them as "Chosen of the God of Death and Undeath"
• Got called out when another necropolitan entered the reception hall, recognized the PCs as the ones who slew his bat familiar and forced him to flee from the mausoleum where he'd been animating skeletons and creating boneless in preparation for becoming a necropolitan himself, and demanded to know why they were there
• Explained that they had merely been stopping someone from breaking the local laws, and they had no issue with him becoming an undead necropolitan, he just couldn't animate dead interred in tombs - he should have sought out volunteers instead
• Had another bit of excitement when Mother Bones arrived - she's the drow lich cleric of the God of Death and Undeath, and she was very suspicious that her god would have selected four living creatures as his Chosen when she'd been in His service for literally centuries
• Agreed to Pendlebrook's suggestion that the PCs battle it out with a necropolitan wizard's new guardians: four dinosaur paleoskeletons ready to rise up from the ground and fend off invaders: if the PCs won, it would show they were in the god's favor
• Went outside the reception hall and battled four paleoskeletons: a parasaurolophus, dimetrodon, triceratops, and tyrannosaurus
• The dwarf cleric summoned an earth titan that pummeled the parasaurolophus pretty badly from the get-go
• The elf sorcerer cast a chain lightning spell that destroyed the dimetrodon and parasaurolophus
• The half-orc cleric/paladin destroyed the tyrannosaurus with a destruction spell
• The dwarf cleric and human spellsword slew the triceratops with their weapons
• The assembled undead watching agreed the PCs were worthy of being the god's champions (although only begrudgingly so on the part of Mother Bones and the necropolitan whose original bat familiar the half-orc had slain back on their home continent years ago)

Johnathan