D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[toucanbuzz]

Awesome.

Running Kingmaker conversion where the 4th level PCs are currently building a frontier barony full of fey. After narrowly defeating the goblin cannon fodder of the monstrous kingdom to the west (led by a troll king), and in doing so avenging the death of a PC who was disemboweled by their leader, the PCs had to deal with their High Priest refusing to heal dying men who fled in battle as they had made the State religion the Goddess of War in order to obtain political favors and venture capital to build stuff.

Because the army routed early on, the fight was on the muddy streets, and the hero of the town is their 3-legged mascot, a dog named Stumpy.

War is expensive, and they were forced to miss an invitation to a festival from their beleaguered neighbor to the east who is trying to subjugate centaurs, who were here a long time before anyone else, and discussing border trade and treaties. That's for another day.

Meanwhile, a kobold tribe they previously saved from annihilation has taken the opportunity to "grow strong" against the human threat. Ungrateful creatures! As they see it, humans will act nice for awhile then take your land. So, the kobolds acted first, grabbing land while the PCs were occupied with the monstrous kingdom and expanding their numbers by merging with another tribe. The PCs decided to deal with this threat, but their small militia army had routed and the kobolds had numbers anyways. They got an idea from a friendly gnome explorer whose people were being sniped on their travels by the emboldened kobolds. The gnome had never thanked them properly for once saving their lives and valuables, so he offered his "exploding powder" idea from a faraway land. The PCs offered tribute in the form of ale and seized goblin weapons to the kobolds, who happily accepted them and subtly insulted them, making it clear that everything on their side of the river was theirs...and perhaps more.

What the kobold chief didn't know is our PCs built a secret compartment under the weapon stash packed neatly with a large volume of exploding powder and a short fuse to be lit by the party's Quasit familiar (invisible at the time). Let's see what happens...

Big botta boom. This opened the door to explore the frontier a bit more, and we're currently in an ancient elven ruin where half of an ancient artifact weapon lies buried...and they already have the other half. They just don't know it, yet.

 

[Richards]

We performed a stealth assassination, slaying the Mortal Queen (a half-find drow cleric of Lolth who had declared herself not only the ruler of the Underdark drow city of Overreach but of all drow) on the flagship of her spelljamming fleet, surrounded by the entire Overreach flying navy who could have whooped us good if they'd have known of our presence. But the combination of a teleport spell, a silence spell cast upon a dwarven barbarian who then hid inside a bag of holding held by the human sorcerer until after we'd teleported into the room, and the fact the Mortal Queen (a 20th-level cleric - we're all 12th-level, by the way) had been piloting her flagship (and thus couldn't cast spells for the next 24 hours) made her easy pickings. We took out her two bodyguards with ease and took her down without too much trouble (although the barbarian's player was rolling like crap all night), ending up with our human sorcerer stepping out onto the deck, throwing the Mortal Queen's severed head among her troops, and announcing there had been a change of leadership (we were allied with the Matriarch of the Second House of Overreach, the House in charge of the flying navy). Now there's a big civil war breaking out in Overreach, as the Second House is escaping on the spelljamming vessels (something about the impending destruction of the planet that we're prophesied to potentially stop), the members of the First House (the Mortal Queen's former House) have been reduced to slavehood, and the Third House (the one we had originally been slaves to and are now members of as free citizens) has risen to be the most powerful of the remaining Houses.

And to cap things off, we all leveled up to 13th as a result. (It turns out half-fiend drow 20th-level clerics are worth a butt-ton of XP!)

Johnathan

 

[Zardnaar]

DM stinker special combat.

Level 9 PCs they encountered a being immune to radiant and psychic. It was a flying incorporate psychic vampire feeding off drugged Drow hedonists.

I made it vulnerable to necrotic and force.

Almost got a tpk with two bleeding out on two failed saves and a third stunned senseless. Mindblast similar to illithid, synaptic static spell plus the mindblast effect recharging. Incoming 20d8 psychic damage+8d6+debuff+stun effects.

It also flew.

They seemed to have fun being pushed to the limits and one PC requested a look at my printed out sheet to see how I made it and formatted.

 

[ccs]

We were down a player this time (wich in a 3 player + DM PF game is significant), so we concentrated on things that didn't require combat.

 

[el-remmen]

Today was our 4th in-person session since post-vaccine. And it was a romp 'em stomp 'em

The PCs entered the swamp lair and what followed were a series of tough fights, starting with some lowly dominated caravan guards, one of which got swallowed by a confused giant toad in the next room when he ran to get help (the adventure says the sound of fighting would rile up the toads and confuse them). The fight with the toads (and the discovery of a seemingly forgotten treasure room) was followed by dealing with green slime and then fighting wave after wave of cultists. They were not hard individually, but there were 14 of them in three waves. Luckily some of them were in the PJs and only had a chance to grab up a shield for the fight. We ended the session after a very difficult fight with some cultist lieutenants - two of which were having a field day sneak attacking folks. The druid dropped as did their cleric/monk ally, but they were brought back to fighting shape.

They took two short rests in there as there were hurting and were going over their gear to see how many healing potions and goodberries they have left before continuing their raid. So far they seem to be going headfirst - trying to get surprise when they can, but after the first guards, everyone has heard them coming.

Fun! Fun! Fun! I wish we had gotten a little further because there is a magical great axe they are on the verge of discovering and this will be the barbarian's first serious magical item. His last axe turned out to be cursed and he has already used up his two javelins of lightning.

 

[jasper]

Did not level up. Travel 940 miles. Journey between three kingdoms. Spend 75 GP 1 copper for horses. Bard spend 124 gp 2 silver 5 copper on new armour. Traded with a Merchant name Joe cost us 28 GP 1 silver. Tavern fees were 37 gp 1 silver 5 Gp. Dungeon Entrance Fee was 15 gp 5 silver 1 copper. Only have 27 Gp left.

Did not allow the Taxbaxi to join our group. The Sage did not get by Alligator. Bard did sing to the gator. Did not loot the temple. Scoped out another temple. Not good loot there. Servants at castles did not clean castle.

Okay we went on vacation to Baton Rouge Louisiana. My wife nearly adopted a lynx mixed breed cat. Went the Tabasco Jungle Garden where our host got too near a gator. Wife took pictures. There was a Buddha statue on sight. Sunday went to our host’s church for services and came home. Number of laws broke NONE. But my rear hurts from 15+ hours of driving I logged.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Been awhile since I've updated my Eberron campaign's progress in this thread. I'll do a few posts in the relatively new future going over what has happened since then.

The party, now known as "The Fortunate Four" ventured to Xen'drik to learn the secrets of docents. At first they were debating on whether to simply gather enough docents to not have to buy/retrieve more in the future or to try and discover how to create docents, but they eventually settled on seeking how to recreate docents to prevent trips to Xen'drik in the future. The Fortunate Four bought a place on a boat that was heading to Stormreach and left on their expedition into the distant jungle continent.

When they arrived, they spent a week in the local bars and taverns, listening to whispers and rumors about Giants, Docents, and previous expeditions to Xen'drik. During this week of carousing, they managed to hear tales of a giant settlement on a volcano to the south east, Tempest's Spine, which was just north of Dread Lake. The rumors described a huge city named Cloudhold Keep, build upon the clouds and inhabited by Cloud Giants, with settlements below of Frost Giants (on top of the mountain) and Fire Giants (inside of the volcano), and they learned of a renown Cloud Giant historian that lived there, Mistress Azara Zephyros.

The party bought a rowboat, travelled through the Thunder Sea into the bay just north of Tempest's Spine, and landed on the shore, about three days travel to the mountain. On the way, they encountered a Wyvern, which they slew, a group of Ettin Hunters, whom York quickly befriended with the help of the Enlarge/Reduce spell, and a Half-Ogre that kindly pointed them towards a trail up the mountain. Just before sunset on the last day, the Fortunate Four got the top of the mountain, and found a settlement of Frost Giants that were strangely wearing clothing made out of vines, feathers, and cloth, instead of the typical Nordic-style armor. With a bit of persuading and gift-giving, they convinced the Frost Giant Chieftain to contact the Cloud Giants of Cloudhold Keep and get them to lower the drawbridge up to the floating city.

After walking up the giant-sized drawbridge that was made out of pure mithral, the party was met by a Cloud Giant courier that invited them into an apartment-sized leather bag (with airholes so that the party could breathe) who then took them across the giant city to the Halls of the Titans, where the party met with Azara Zephyros, the noble Cloud Giant that was intrigued by the adventurers and gladly pointed them in the direction of a Fire Giant that could help them with their goal of discovering how to create Docents, in exchange for a favor (they exchanged Sending Stones so that they could contact one another when the favor was ready).

They made their way to a Fire Giant tinkerer that Azara directed them to, who was known for being kind to smaller races and often employing them to help with some of the finer details of his craft, that lived in the central volcano of the Fangs of Argarak. After multiple random encounters (like a weeping tree that was surrounded by impaled, decapitated skulls/heads that the party slowly and carefully backed away from, a Were-Panda that was happily munching on some bamboo in the jungle that the party entirely ignored, a squad of hobgoblins that were searching for a stolen ancient Dhakaani artifact that was taken to Xen'drik, and a battle between some Ezdari (homebrew wasp-folk) and drow were-spiders that the party also ignored), they made their way to the Fire Giant's lair and were able to convince him to direct them to a sentient, ancient Warforged Colossus made for the Giant-Quori War nearly 100,000 years ago named Xartohs the Hivemind.

 

[Umbran]

We are doing a comedy of manners, mucking about with several couple's marriage prospects and local society papers, while likely needing to fend off a zombie-making mad scientist who really ought to be dead, and saving the solar system from international intrigue involving mind control research.

And we haven't even gotten to the dinner party yet.

 

[Zardnaar]

They chopped there way through a stinker of an encounter to link up with the Transcended. A small group of Drow monks.

They passed a variety of trials and convinced them to join their forces.

Since March they've rallied 3 factions of Drow the last survivors of Maemydra. They discovered a possible crack in the forces of Kurgoth Hellspawn.

Also Kossuths faith has no beef with Elistraee's. Kurgoth isn't a fan though.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

27th session in my Dragon Heist/Deck of Many Things mashup. Three PCs of 6th level: half-orc fighter, half-elf wizard, halfling rogue. In the previous session, they violently resisted arrest by the City Watch in a noble's estate. When the orc killed his first watchman, the fight turned serious, and the wizard was slain.

This session opened in the middle of the battle. The rogue and fighter turned the tide against the Watch. The fighter simply hacked his way through them, dropping two at a time. The rogue finally decided to stop being clever and just get stabby. One sneak attack from the rogue nearly felled the leader of the Watch, a detective who is an antagonist of his. The detective used dimension door to escape with only 7 hp remaining.

The two surviving Watch were captured, questioned, and left alive by the PCs. The Watch had shown up unexpectedly at the noble estate -- filled with dead nobles the PCs did not kill -- after being tipped off by a mysterious source. The PCs think someone is trying to frame them. And they're right.

The PCs escaped to the mystical hideout of the rogue's thieves guild. In their possession is a magical artifact, the Silver Chalice of Siamorphe, which can bring back the dead. But they were unsure how to use it. Magically disguising himself, the rogue crossed the city to the home of an ally who could provide some insight. Along the way, he saw the Watch out in force and wanted posters going up all over the city.

They are now Waterdeep's most wanted men.

The remainder of the short session was working with the wizard's player to determine: 1) what he experienced while he was dead 2) how he is going to change when he comes back from the dead. We toyed with some ideas that got the player really excited. "Wow, I never knew getting killed could be so much fun!" said the player, a first time D&D-er. So that was cool.

Next session: Resurrection!