D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[JamesLFlowers]

Our last session we concluded a campaign using the Peterson Games "Planet Apocalypse" setting. This is a setting where the lost plane of UNDERHELL returns and the ArchLords Of Underhell open portals and start invading other planes. Through other sessions we had fought our way through to the ArchLord's throne room and this session was the big boss fight.

Only three of us, my Illrigger, a Paladin, and a Warmage remained. About halfway through the fight we lost the Paladin, but I used my Die On My Command power to hold him from death. The last round, the Warmage got hammered, but I got in a final blow with my battleaxe Ghe'orhey'wo and managed to kill the Archlord which caused the portal he was using to invade to collapse. My Illrigger used his inherent STEP power to step back to his home in the City of DIS with the Paladin and Warmage.

As a reward, my Illrigger was made Lord Commander of the 1117th Iron Legion of Dis and the Paladin and Warmage were returned to Waterdeep.

I don't know if the DM plans to do a large scale wargame for the next game with the Underhell invading Hell, or if we will start anew with a new low level campaign since the survivors are all very high level now but most of the group has dead characters.

One thing this session did show is that when you have high-level Feats, Features, Powers, Actions, and Abilities all in play, combat can drag. I got in a critical hit, and the ArchLord made his save. Then one of my features came into play and forced him to roll a die and subtract from his save. Then an Action/Ability of his came into play and made the save automatic. We had several rounds of stacking things on top of each other in order to resolve combat. Just dragged a little.

 

[Richards]

In today's "Down to Erthe" campaign session, the PCs:

• Were introduced to their mongrelfolk adept's new familiar, a feral junkyard rat named Scruffy
• Overheard the owner of the boardinghouse where they stay rent free (after having saved her son in the campaign's first adventure) complaining that for the third time in as many weeks, a guest snuck out in the middle of the night without paying
• Determined all three missing guests had been staying in the same room
• Searched the room and found a section of floor that could be raised up like a modern day ceiling tile, revealing rungs leading down into darkness
• Went down the rungs and fought a crocodile (which they suspected was being used as a lair guardian) in a closed-off room
• Went through the only door from that room, stepping out onto a ledge along the city sewers
• Had the human scout fight off a shriek spider that glided down from its web-lair along the sewer ceiling to attack her
• Were also attached by a near-invisible flotsam ooze that eventually attached itself to the human monk and had to be killed before they could extricate it from him
• Turned the corner, and the fox hengeyokai wu jen opened a door, revealing a meenlock sentry, which she quickly dispatched with a sleep spell before it could telepathically warn the others in its group
• Went further into the meenlock nest, finally discovering a trio of meenlocks involved in a ritual that would eventually turn the (unconscious and bound) missing guest into another one of them in a matter of hours
• Fought the three meenlocks, but not before the wu jen was rendered catatonic with fear for 7 rounds, and a swarm of allied sewer rats was called to help fight off the intruders
• Had to deal with the meenlocks' rend mind mental attacks and paralysis-inducing claws; at one point, the human scout, changeling rogue, and mongrelfolk adept were all paralyzed (overlapping with the time the wu jen was catatonic), leaving the human monk the sole one dealing with the last two remaining wounded meenlocks and the rat swarm happily feasting upon the paralyzed scout
• All breathed a sigh of relief when the wu jen's catatonia ran its course, leading her to kill the weakest of the two remaining meenlocks, which was enough to convince the sole remaining meenlock to vamoose with a dimension door spell effect
• Brought the kidnapped guest back up to her room to heal up (she'd had all of her stats reduced to 1), then went down to the cellar to investigate the "ugly puppy" the guesthouse owner's son had ben talking about
• Found out the "ugly puppy" was an osquip that had burrowed through a cellar wall, and fed it chunks of crocodile meat until it was convinced they were friendly
• Had the three male PCs/NPC move out of their room and into the one with the trap door to the sewers, not only to "protect" the boardinghouse owner from having anything nasty come up from the sewers, but also because it made for a nice way for them to leave the building unnoticed or have members of the thieves guild the two male PCs are associated with contact them unobtrusively
• Considered allowing some mongrelfolk NPCs they'd recently allied with, and who had opted to leave their hidden lair inside the city dump due to an infestation of dregworms from the Underdark, to live in the former meenlock nesting area, after they'd cleaned it up a bit

Our female player stayed home due to illness, so her scout PC was run first by her husband, then by my son once his wu jen PC got hit with 7 rounds of catatonia (and then, when the scout became paralyzed, I passed him over the mongrelfolk adept NPC's folder so he could run him for a while).

Johnathan

 

[Richards]

In tonight's "Middle of Elsewhere" campaign session, the PCs:

• Interrogated the fiendish humans from the outpost we helped rescue from Abyssal orcs (and a one-armed babau) last session, and found out the fireball protection stems from a shrine nearly 600 miles away
• Got them to draw us a map on how to get there, and were given four fiendish light horses as riding mounts
• Traveled for weeks to get to the shrine, and found it without any trouble
• Upon arriving, saw some dirt being kicked up that alerted us there were invisible creatures nearby
• Converged on the area (my mounted fiendish human on one side, the human shadow druid, fiendish orc fighter (and his dire fell fox), and celestial human witch (and her celestial owl) on the other), and were attacked by a human fighter in full plate mail
• Heard an invisible male spellcaster casting enlarge person on the fighter and a female voice singing in an unknown language, indicating at least two more invisible foes
• Had my cleric summon a fiendish monstrous scorpion (to detect the invisible foes via tremorsense), while the others attacked the now-giant-sized human fighter
• Knocked him out, then focused attention on the fiendish human illusionist when he became visible after casting a scorching ray spell at the witch, which missed
• Thought the female singer was a succubus when she became visible after attacking, but she ended up being a winged half-fiend human bard
• Took out the illusionist, then got the bard to confess they had been sent there by her fiendish father (a nalfeshnee demon) to destroy the shrine responsible for the fireball protection, a plan no longer possible (as it turned out there were two layers of protection around the shrine, one keeping out demons and the other keeping out those of any fiendish nature, which is why they brought along a non-fiendish human to destroy the shrine)
• Killed the bard (you're welcome, Snarf!) since she knew the exact location of the shrine, and we didn't want that information getting out
• Used a sending spell scroll to summon a group of higher-level folks from Elsewhere to learn all they could about the workings of the shrine (as we're only 3rd level at this point)
• "Looted the stiffs" - a proud D&D tradition in most campaigns

And we're now less than 200 XP from attaining 4th level, which we'll no doubt accomplish at the end of the next game session in one week.

Johnathan

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Gathering Storm: A Trip To The Library

(Context since I don’t post most sessions) Previously…

Two years ago: the heroes known in the papers as The Storm Breakers attended a Day of Mourning memorial that turned into a terrorist attack by an aberrant Dragonmarked mutant. The mutant ended up being the old assistant of one Brenn Ir’Gadden, a Brelish noble who some members of the party had saved from an Emerald Claw necromancer’s plot on the Day of Mourning itself.

The heroes sprang into action and saved the city from an Eldritch machine that could have temporarily turned off the manifest zone levitation powers in the city, potentially turning the city of Sharn into a pile of rubble. They were given a large townhouse and a pile of money as reward, and went on to work with Brenn on several other jobs protecting regular folks from chaos, including a heist done during a Great Tourney held in Sharn, and a counter-heist on the Lightning Rail.

1 year ago: the team encountered a cult of aberrations with a semi-controlled chuul-drake matriarch in a tower off the coast of Sharn. The tower was ancient and intricately designed with floors and stairs that could be moved and rearranged, and swarms of dolgaunts, chuul-drakes, corrupted plant monsters, and aberrant dragon cultists. Once cleared out (a very fun puzzle-battle-chase) the tower was revealed to have belonged to the draconic master of the kobold wizard, and then to the dragon that killed said PC’s mentor.

This lead to a thread that brought them to Karrnath, where the Karrnathi Blood of Vol Vryloka Paladin found that her little sister was acting as a secret operative for King Kaius I, a vampire. Before this could be resolved they found Emeral Claw agents and fought them, leading to a very complex puzzle-ritual to stop the leader’s body from exploding in a necrotic nuke.

Lots of research and investigation and weird puzzle adventures later, they have realized that the Lady Illmarrow is Erandis Vol, and that she is working with an ancient red dragon obsessed with using the delkyr (and necromancy) to break The Prophecy and become the progenitor of a new world, and that he may be the father of Erandis Vol, and somehow the Mark of Death is involved.

Present day: The team got an airship, and a target on their backs, as this is one of the first generation of non-elemental airships, running instead of magic energy called aether that is collected and channeled through Syberis crystals. On their first outing, heading to the Library of Korranberg, they are beset by marauders on flying wingsuits, flying mounts, and small two person flying craft, and an epic 3d battle ensued. They won the day, using some mechanics for airship combat that I adapted from SW5e mixed with 5e ship combat and some of my own ideas, it was great fun, and they finally made it to the library.

Things go well, they are researching under the watchful eye of staff, when alarms go off and they are enlisted to help stop a group of vandalous thieves who end up being some sort of cultists tied to necromancy and a red dragon (sound familiar?)

The thing I’m most proud of was managing four PCs all researching their own things without anyone getting bored, and…

The fight! I had very few stats for the enemies, and didn’t even have a set number of them. The group is level 11, they had one NPC as backup, and faced a dozen or so enemies. The main one, The Witch, was loosely based on a CR 8 IIRC Death Cultist, but with legendary actions, and the ability to kill her followers in order to heal. Her lieutenants were two “dragoons” with hp and other stats of a similar cr Knight off DDB, but with a Dragoon Leap, Lay on Hands, and Smite. Then there were regular knights, a clutch of archers, and assorted assassins. I had hp, damage, etc, but the fight was almost entirely improvised beyond the basics, and it was WILD. Several PCs came with a good Smite or Death Ray of dropping and would have without proactive healing and great tactics and rolls, and every was totally locked in every turn as things unfolded.

Oh! And I had a sort of rhyming motif in the session. During research one party member kept making perception and investigation checks to keep tabs on librarians and track potential points of egress in case they needed to make a fast exist, and this lead to them finding out very quickly as each check on their turn got them more aware of some sort of bad situation unfolding and got them into the fight before all the enemies were in the library.
Then during the fight the Paladin caught something off about the witch, and subsequent insight checks and a perception check clued her in that the witch was action the monk’s sister, which lead to the monk keeping her from being killed by the party.

Overall, it was great. We lost track of time, everyone got their cool moments, and tension was high.

Oh! And the wizard used Feather Fall on a falling Dragoon, leading the second Dragoon to fall onto the first, and both took 30 falling damage. It was fantastic.

I love when the PCs hit me out of nowhere like that.

 

[Zardnaar]

They killed Bhaals avatar and an undead Sarevok.

 

[Richards]

In tonight's "Middle of Elsewhere" campaign session, the PCs:

• Learned the shrine we'd discovered last session, which shielded a thousand-mile-diameter section of Avernus from being hit by fireballs, was powered by destroying souls of the dead (making it not useful for the city of Elsewhere), and returned to the city, where a month or two passed uneventfully
• Were apprised that someone was messing around with the town's church and were asked to check it out
• Showed up at the church to find four robed beings standing there levitating items into place, modifying the structure (and it looked like they were making a smaller version of the shrine)
• Did not appreciate being ignored when we told them to stop, and initiated combat, learning they were constructs with almost no facial features, and they discorporated when slain
• Killed the four outside, then went inside, since we heard more construction work going on inside there
• Found four more constructs and a robed human "supervisor" who lectured us about slowing down his work
• Demanded to know who he was and why he thought he could modify the temple without approval from the town elders, and got the brush-off
• Convinced him to dismiss the four astral constructs inside the temple (who had been adhering rune-covered plaques inside the temple) and argued with him about talking to the town elders before he did anything else; he refused, saying he was installing a shield that would protect Elsewhere from all planar effects and would be powered by the soul of the undead form formerly trapped on Mount Celestia (which we discovered a year ago, and whom he claimed to have taken and stashed away somewhere to be used as a power source for the shield)
• Told him under no uncertain terms he was to cease all actions until we could get town council approval, as he refused to explain who he was or why he felt he could modify our temple willy-nilly
• Watched as the intruder eventually voluntarily dissipated as well (Spellcraft checks told us he had dismissed an astral form, putting him at 18th level or higher - we're all 3rd-level)
• Informed the council what had happened, got their permission to destroy all of his construction work and mount guards there to slay any astral constructs who showed up to complete the work
• Learned he was likely a wizard who'd been cast out of Elsewhere millennia ago
• Leveled up to 4th-level and advanced the campaign clock to the end of the year, when we were to planar jump to a random plane, only....
• ...Ended the session on the plane of Mechanus, no longer in Elsewhere, with two of us riding our fiendish horses and the other two riding a levitating coffin being dragged through the air behind the other two fiendish horses; we're guessing we lost some memories somewhere along the way, but we'll learn more about that next week

Johnathan

 

[Sulicius]

I had a great time last sunday on the second session of my Return of the Red King campaign.

Our heroes had just escaped a dungeon from being sacrificed to Tiamat, and now had to find civilization. They were low on any sort of supplies, but had to move on.

The first random encounter they got was a mimic pretending to be a big hollowed out tree. The PC’s were looking for a place out of the rain, so things got dire quickly. Level 1 PC’s do not fare well against a mimic. They had to flee after 2 PC’s went down, but got healed back up!

They then met a merchant on her way to a village. There was another recent addition to her wagon, a cultists who had also just left the dungeon after things went wrong. This was a classic “I came here for the group activities” kind of cultist, which showed the players not all cultists know what they are doing.

Then they arrived at Redwood Watch. This is the first adventure from Dragon Delves. It worked out really well. Meet the villagers, get to know what is going on, get supplies, but get asked to investigate.

During the night, they had a vision. They had taken an egg from the dungeon before, which appeared to be the egg of an ancient gold dragon who once protected the land! Sadly, he was murdered by the red dragon king, and the egg never hatched.

The heroes got a vision from the egg of the first quest, and the ancient gold dragon appeared before them .

He asked them to:

• protect the land from the returning red dragon king
• hatch the egg by having it soak up the magical essence of 10 dragon lairs
• power up magic items in the same dragon lairs
• follow the egg’s visions to find the next lair
• each lair would level the party up

The players reacted really well to this. Clear goals, clear upside (upgrading magic items), clear steps.

They then did the first half of the adventure, and it went really, really well. Snappy combats, fun RP and nice exploration.

Looking forward to the next!

 

[Weiley31]

Apologies in advance, this is gonna be a bit of a long read

I've been gming a series of an ongoing session of Mork Borg for Thursday game nights lately. Which have been quite popular and been told by the one player to keep it running as long as possible while he works on his campaign ,Some of the highlights from the last series of sessions were as followed:

-A Pyromaniac Heretical Priest pc whose fires, whenever she starts em, NEVER GO/DIE OUT. I've made it a thing to point that out whenever somebody looks in the area of the flames or ones recently started compared to flames made by somebody else. A Wickhead Prophet seems to be HEAVILY interested in her for reasons unknown as of yet.

-A Fanged Deserter PC whose hungry all the time and greatest enemy is trees. Everytime he "fights" one, I specifically always say "The Tree will remember this." However, he has encountered one tree, who the player has dubbed Treeresa, that has taken a shine to him. All because the one tree he fought and slayed killed Treeresa's fave human. Ah, forbidden love ala Montesques and Capulets.

His best friend is a Skull who is the ONLY voice of reason when said character(and player) decides to go off the rails(which is what happened at the end of the latest session and when he does random "Skull Checks").

-An Executioner npc, the ONLY actual friendly person encountered thus far or not motivated by greed or trying to kill the party, whose the most happy/content in life after lopping off a head or two. Knows the Wretched Noble pc. Not the brightest and affectionately rambles a bit when the topic of head lopping comes up.

-Barrister, the talking Magical Horse (Wretched Noble pc feature). It has been suggested/pointed out by a number of NPCs that there is something off/wrong about said Horse. But nobody can put their fingers on what it is exactly that gives off such a feeling. The Wretched Noble gets a kick whenever Barrister eats the faces off of corpses or badly injured people. At one point, it laughed, like a human, at a PC that rolled poorly during STR test to climb to safety. (Spoilers: It's not a guy wearing a horse suit. But it sure as hell isn't a Horse. Only certain things/beings, like Bunnies from BunnyBorg, can truly see what Barrister actually is. And No, the Wretched Noble isn't one of em. Smirks).

-Mr. Spooder: A giant talking Spider NPC/monster who is in possession of a very fine and regal looking, wide brimmed top hat. When said hat is worn by Mr. Spooder, everybody "sees" no spider, but, a sharply dressed and regal looking figure wearing such a fine top hat. There is NO Illusion magic at work and if this was a tv show, the audience would be seeing a giant spider wearing a top hat on its head. But to everybody else, no spider at all. Why the hat works this way for Spiders (only), nobody knows. Mr. Spooder got the hat off a guy he pounced on and ate after said guy wandered into his wet, damp cave some time ago. Ever since learning what the hat could do when worn (by Spiders), Mr. Spooder uses it to go into the nearby village to abduct a person, whenever he needs a meal to "stockpile," or to buy something at the village store. Apparently he knows, according to the one player, the Fanged Deserter PC.

-Last sessions' ending: the first session opened up with the PCs as prisoners being escorted to the Executioner's cliff where said Nice Executioner was supposed to behead em. The Wretched Noble started an impromptu escape, which lead to a fight, which lead to the Heretical Priest causing a fire, which burned all the prisoners alive and made quite a scene with death, corpse eating(Fanged Deserter), and only the PCs surviving the incident*(real talk, this wasn't supposed to happen and was off the rails. I had a whole sequence planned out that was suppose to be a quasi-An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge minus the ending but having drowned maidens in the river being an obstacle to deal with alongside pursuing soldiers. None of that ended up happening thanks to the Wretched Noble's Player's very first action*

What does all that have to do with the last sessions' ending? Well, our party of 3(+Barrister+A Skull+a Talking Ancestral Sword+Hamm/not food) are kinda wanted now by the Church of the Twin Headed Basilisk. After encountering three groups of soldiers hunting em down, they go the the village nearby Mr. Spooder's cave. The Fanged Deserter PC is always hungry. So, he goes in the village Tavern, goes up to the Tavern Keeper, and attacks em. Let's just say, there's a lot of dead bodies. Like, even the Wretched Noble pc is rolling their eyes, and grabbing the Heretical Priest to hightail it outta there. On the plus side, during the chaos, Mr. Spooder was able to snag a Tax Collector and a villager running for their life. (He's gonna be good on food for the next three month in his cave tho).

Everyone seems to be having a blast.

 

[Richards]

In yesterday's "Down to Erthe" campaign session, the PCs:

• Received an invitation to the home of a noblewoman, Lady Arabellas Vulpina
• Arrived there to be asked, quite bluntly, whether the snow fox hengeyokai wu jen PC had stolen items from a wizard's tower the previous night (and denied it)
• Learned the wizard in question, a friend of Lady Arabella's, saw someone leaving his attic workshop through the window (which was 35 feet off the ground), and when the thief looked back, it had the head of a red fox
• Heeded the suggestion from Lady Arabella they they go call on the wizard, providing him with a note she wrote and sealed which stated her belief they were innocent but they would aid him in tracking down the thief (as the noblewoman said, she had no trouble tracking down the hengeyokai PC, and neither would others looking for a fox-headed thief, so it was in her best interests to clear her name)
• Met with the wizard, explored his tower exterior and lab, and found no tracks of anyone having tried to climb up the nearly smooth exterior walls of the building
• Discovered a clump of the fox thief's fur in the lab, which aided the wizard in his scrying spell
• Saw a dragon-winged fox in the scrying mirror, and also saw a normal fox, a fox-headed serpent, and another wizard in view; the wizard casting the scrying spell recognized the other one in the mirror, and was surprised he'd have been behind the theft of his items
• Agreed to go fetch back the stolen items from the wizard
• Cased the thieving wizard's place, talked to neighbors, interviewed a cleric of the Goddess of Magic, and learned he'd stopped attending services about two months ago, around the same time he hired on a foreign servant woman who wore kimonos
• Figured the wizard was under the sway of the "servant" and decided to go confront them directly, after purchasing scrolls of prptection from evil to prevent any charm effects
• Went to the wizard's manor, was met by the "servant," who ushered them into the library while she went to fetch her master
• Tried casting another protection from evil spell on the wizard (to negate any charm effect he might be under) when they entered the library, but it didn't take, and the fight was on
• Had a long, drawn-out fight that ended up with the wizard invisible and fleeing to the back of the manor to fetch reinforcements (two bakemonos, the half-red-dragon fox, and his owl familiar), while the PCs slowly whittled down the kitsune's hit points (she had a high DR) with magic missile spells, skirmish attacks from the scout, and finally some silver kitchen knives fetched by the mongrelfolk adept (which overcame her DR)
• Got the wizard to realize he'd been under the kitsune's charm effect, but only after they'd slain the combat-happy bakemonos
• Had the wizard return what had been stolen from the other wizard, and returned them
• Are now in the good graces of two wizards and a noblewoman, all of whom now know who to reach out to if they need any adventurers

Johnathan