D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[the Jester]

Just finished up and it was awesome.

Ran my Delta group; last game, we ended mid-combat with a death knight king who couldn't be defeated in normal combat (when he started his turn at 0 hps, he regained half his hps and rose up at the start of his turn). He was a villain who could only be defeated if the pcs solved his 'puzzle' first (they had to destroy his crown).

Last session, they'd figured out that (probably) his crown was the source of his "can't be killed" power, and that the chill touch clause that prevents regaining hps would delay, but not entirely stop, his regaining hps. They had a pc who had fallen under an 8-hour long charm that made him fanatically devoted to the king. And oh yeah, this was all in an underwater dungeon, which added all kinds of shenanigans to the tactical situation.

This game, they knocked out the charmed pc (who still contributed to the game by giving away his inspiration to another pc at a crucial moment, since I view inspiration as a meta level mechanic), destroyed the death knight's remaining minions, and slew him again- and this time they got his crown off, stone shaped him into a wall, and started to flee.

But he had an item that let him word of recall to an area near their flight path....

Even an adamantine dagger couldn't harm his crown. They tried to get out of the dungeon, but King Lopindor was in hot and angry pursuit.

The pcs fled up a spiral stair and shattered in behind themselves, hoping to slow Lopindor's vengeance. At the top they encountered a rejuvenated ghost who had previously tried to stop them from descending to confront the king. It was a soundless ghost, but a pc with Observant and Keen Mind had cast comprehend languages and read his lips as he told them (in an extinct tongue) that the king couldn't be slain "unless....." (trailing off).

This time, they had the crown, and the ghost led most of them away while two pcs, the tiefling fighter and goliath barbarian, set themselves as a rear guard.

Lopindor rose and defeated the rear guard, leaving them dying, while the ghost took the others to a hidden shrine (that they had to blast their way into) with three altars. A magical message from the king's long lost wife gave them the clues they needed to destroy the crown, which finally let them take down Lopindor.

And they barely managed to save their dying rear guard, thanks largely to the charmed pc's inspiration. Without it, one of them would have had a natural 1 on a death save and would have died.

As the pyramid began to collapse around them, they fled. Again, that Keen Mind feat saved the day, allowing the party wizard to lead them out before it all came down. A few potions of flying and a fly spell completed their escape, although the pirate ship that they had allied with capsized and sank; but from the pcs' airship, they managed to rescue about half of the crew.

Then Discord took a crap and started getting very laggy, and we called it a night.

But the long and short of it is, a party of 7th to 9th level pcs managed to defeat a CR 20 bad guy, and though they had to leave most of the treasure behind, they definitely earned their victory.

 

[Richards]

For the first time in my various 3.5 campaigns, I was on the players' side of the DM screen when a PC first used the Evard's black tentacle spell. It's amazing how much more I like that spell when I'm not a hapless DM getting all of his evil bad guys taken out of the fight by it! (Instead, my son the DM got to experience how frustrating that spell can be.) But we went into the adventure expecting we'd be fighting undead and we ended up battling fiends instead - go figure. It ended up being a surprisingly short session, in part because that spell took out the majority of the foes for a good chunk of the time (even killing some of them without letting them ever escape), and partly because one of the players opted to stay home due to experiencing gastrointestinal distress after consuming an entire large bag of Flaming Hot Doritos. (That sounds like a failed Wisdom check right there!)

Johnathan

 

[THEMNGMNT]

90th session for my group of five 15th level player characters in a highly customized, non-canon version of the Realms.

Waterdeep has been conquered by frost giants allied with the Zhentarim. Manshoon, leader of the Zhents, has seized Blackstaff Tower and is trying to attune to the Blackstaff. The characters have arrived in Waterdeep, rallied their allies, and are planning to assault Blackstaff Tower.

This session started with the characters teleporting into the Tower of Aghairon, where the Open Lord Dagult Neverember had taken refuge and was organizing a resistance against the giants. Previously, the characters were wanted by the authorities on false charges. Neverember tells the characters that he's cleared their names, and one of his spies has uncovered the identity of the Masked Lord that framed them. However, the spy has been cut off and trapped by the Masked Lord's minions, and so if the characters want this information they have to go save the spy. This is a thread that ties back to a totally different plot. I dangled it in front of the players because I want to wear them down a bit before they confront Manshoon. They weren't taking the bait. They were laser focused on getting to Blackstaff Tower and starting their attack.

But we did discuss how they wanted to divide their forces. Basically, three scenes are going to unfold simultaneously. The player characters are going to attack Blackstaff Tower to kill Manshoon and free the Blackstaff. One PC and several NPCs (played by the, um, players) are going to destroy the laboratory on the other side of Faerun where Manshoon's clones are held in stasis. And, finally, a group of NPCs are going to attack the frost giant iceberg lair in the middle of Waterdeep Harbor (Svardborg from Storm King's Thunder). The players had been planning to let the attack on Svardborg happen off-camera, but I talked them into playing through it by letting them create 11th level characters of their choice. Basically, they can test drive a new build. I really love the Svardborg map and have been itching to use it for years...so the players met me half way.

The session ended with the tiefling shadow sorcerer using plane shift to transport the characters into the center of Blackstaff Tower. The teleportation circle was guarded by two iron golems. The characters defeated them. And that's where we stopped for the night.

The players have basically spent most of the last three sessions planning this climactic assault and so it feels good to be finally underway. This is going to be fun. When/if Waterdeep is freed and Manshoon defeated, the campaign will enter its final act. We've been playing for three years and it feels really satisfying to be nearing the end.

 

[Reynard]

Session 1 of the new Eberron Q'Barra campaign.

I have the players doing a lot of the work in coming up with details and NPCs for the starting town, both to give me a chance to focus on adventure creation and to get them invested in the place since it is going to be the HQ of the campaign. It's basically an Old West dragonshard boom town and the PCs include the de facto sheriff and his go-to posse for solving problems. While I am generally aiming to have a "3 plot hooks at all times" structure for the campaign overall, the first adventure is intentionally more directed. I think of it as a pilot for a new TV show and want to make sure it gives a sense of what the campaign is going to be about as well as make sure every PC has a chance to shine.

The game opened with a goblin prospector named Kadj coming into The Leaky Keg (the town's one tavern) and starting to get drunk in celebration. But the sheriff PC notices that while Kedj drinks he looks around the tavern in an increasingly anxious manner. The sheriff questions him and finds out the three brothers -- dumb trouble makers that work cheap -- Kedj hired to port his most recent and significant cache back to town have not shown up. It's getting dark and Kedj is worried they ran off with his shards. Sheriff gathers up the posse -- a early generation warforged, a crazy druid, a lizardman monk, and a goliath wizard we call "Naked Hagrid" -- to go looking.

Our table uses 4E style skill challenges pretty extensively with varying degrees of success and failure. They decide to travel up the route they think the brothers would have come down to town and find out what happened or where they deviated from the path. The party is successful so they find the bodies of the brothers before they have been devoured by crocs (but did not get a complete success so an additional encounter element is present). The party has to defend the bodies from the crocs and fight off a trio of miremal fey that had been tracking them (the consequence of their imperfect success). Naked Hargrid goes down during the battle and nearly dies but luck breaks their way and they win.

Another new rule we have instituted is using Inspiration differently. Any player can call for Inspiration at any time and get a reroll, but doing so puts a "DM Inspiration" in a pool for my use.

Once the fight was over the Party was able to examine the scene. It looked on the surface like a local lizardfolk tribe attacked and killed the brothers, but there were enough strange clues to point toward someone pretending to be members of that tribe. The party is set to follow the tracks of the attackers and see where they came from.

It was a good starting session overall. Like any good TV show it will take a few sessions for both the characters and the "show" to find its footing but I am optimistic. These days I am disinclined to faux medievalism and bog standard fantasy in general, so Eberron is a good choice of settings. Some players have more knowledge of the setting than others, but we are going to play fast and loose with lore anyway and I am going to lean toward saying "Yes" to the players as much as possible.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Our last two sessions were great but for different reasons:

In our AtG game, we continued a combat after defeating King Snurre (Queen Frupy and her escorts showed up). I won't go into details since I don't want to spoil anything, but we fought wave after wave of fire giants, hell hounds, etc. The battle took over 60 rounds and 9.5 hours to play out! So many times it looked like it was the end as we finished one wave and had a few rounds of brief reprieve before the next.

During the battle one of the PCs was (literally) sent to Hell.

And so our last session was for him, trying to survive in Avernus, as the rest of us waited before we could risk casting our one Gate spell off of a scroll. He survived, barely, after defeating numerous devils and using his wits to find places to rest. Finally, when our Luck Blade restored its power with our dawn, our Sorcerer attempted the Gate. He failed. He used a point of Inspiration. He failed, again. The Luck Blade was used. He failed--again. We have no other way at the moment to get to our stranded friend in Hell.

But, we have a plan. We'll find out Friday how it goes...

 

[ccs]

Oh let's see, the last we checked in on the idiots heroes they were deep in the Fire Giant chapter of SKT derping about....

This past session things improved! And got pretty amusing in the back 1/2 of the session.

The Tiefling Warlock, with the Rogues help, managed to persuade the human fighter that they should indeed use the fact that a force of city guard was distracting the Fire Giants & find the Iron Flask/capture the fire elemental.
So they set about exploring some more. In the process they freed some more slaves (a bunch of dwarves, some gnomes, & several Hobgoblins).
The Fighter (ex-Paladin) dearly wanted to fight the hobgoblins. He was instead talked into arranging a duel with them at a set date & place - provided that he & they escaped the Fire Giant forges.
The party knows what what they need (Iron Flask) & what to do with it. They have no idea where it is or what it looks like. Fortunately while the Fighters been setting up his dueling date, the Rogue was talking to the rescued dwarves. Who DO know what the flask looks like.

This gave the Tiefling player an idea! Weeks ago the party had acquired a 1e Potion of Treasure Finding. So they fed it to one of the dwarves so that he could lead them to the flask & sending the other slaves to the surface. And off they went.
They're almost there when they nearly blunder into a hoard of goblins.... Everyone in the party manages a stealth check - except the Rogue & the goblins begin searching. The dwarf tells the others what the flask looks like, that it's down that hallway (wich leads to only two doors out of sight) & then sprints back the way they came drawing the goblins away from the rogue. The party honors his sacrifice by slipping down said hallway.

They managed to find the flask. And some other treasure, including a rune etched horn (the conch that SKT uses to port the PCs to Maelstrom). The teifling deciphers the runes on the horn with some Comp Language & realizes that this! is their escape mechanism! Or at least could be - though they've no idea where it'll land them.
While they're messing around the Fire Giant daughter/Duchess notices the open door & enters the room. They hear her coming, take the flask, some of the loot & the horn, and hide under the bed. Once again the rogue fails the stealth check.
Roll initiative! The giant moves the bed & draws a sword sized pin out of her hair intent on skewering the PCs (1st). The rogue cowers expecting to be splatted (4th), the fighter prepares to charge/sheild block for the rogue (3rd), and the tiefling (2nd) sounds the horn - transporting PCs & Fire Giant Duchess alike to Maelstrom.

Once in Maelstrom? Disoriented both the party & giant look around & hear the musical performance going on upstairs. Initiative is re-rolled as everyone gets their barings. The giant wins again.
Looking panicked the giant messes with her hair & asks the PCs "How's my hair look?!?" Tiefling (still with comp lang running): "Um, fine?"
And the giant runs off across the room & up a flight of stairs.
Party: "???"
And then they follow her. Interrupting/intruding upon the Storm Giant princesses performance.
Every giant lord & guard in the room looks at them & the FG Duchess who's sliding into place, though not a beat is missed musically.
At this point the backgounds the ex-pally & warlock have chosen come in VERY handy & they 1) recognize that they are in the presence Giant nobility. 2) Recognize the appropriate etiquette for the moment. They immediately sheath their weapons & stand there very respectfully observing the performance.

The session ended with the idiots three small-folk (A human fighter holding a fire giant sized golden crown, a 14 year old ninja kid (rogue) clutching a huge Iron Flask, & a purple winged teifling with the fire giants Horn of Transportation), covered in soot & grime, tracking goblin blood on the floor, clutching obvious Fire Giant treasure, standing uninvited in the heart of Maelstrom within a mere move action of mostly hostile giants.....

 

[Guest 6801328]

We had a character die. Doesn't seem to happen very often.

Spoiler

In Forge of Fury, crossing the rope bridge, the rogue rolled two nat 1's in a row on Acrobatics, then a 3 on Athletics, and took the plunge. Splat. The poetic part of all of this was that it was a dragonborn rogue...yes, really...so it all kinda made sense.

 

[Nebulous]

We had a PC die too. Forge of Fury has claimed its second victim.

 

[Nebulous]

We had a character die. Doesn't seem to happen very often.

We have had characters at 0 and unconscious several times this campaign, or running around single digit hit points, and the grand finale is looking like it's going to be a doozy...

 

[Reynard]

Last night Team Avernus finally decided to not only divest themselves of the Shield of the Hidden lord, but actually free the Hidden Lord in the process. this sets in motion a battle between that devil and Zariel over rulership of Avernus, which the PCs hope to use as cover to find Zariel's Sword so they can break Elturel free and get the Hell out of there.

What they don't know is that Zariel is going to be rather cross with them for letting the Hidden Lord out, AND that fomenting civil war in Avernus will make it more likely that the Abyss will be able to take Avernus in the Blood War.