D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[THEMNGMNT]

61 sessions into my 13th Age campaign. Eyes of the Stone Thief expanded to cover all 10 levels. Five player characters who were 6th level for most of the events below but just reached 7th level.

Since I last posted, the characters:

• Traversed the Labyrinth of Darkness, which had the warped architecture and physics of an MC Escher drawing.
• They overcame a giant minotaur known as the Beast of the Labyrinth.
• Were ambushed by the drow enemies of our drow chaos mage. It was a surprisingly lopsided battle that cheered the players.
• Infiltrated the headquarters of the Cult of the Devourer, deep in the heart of the Stone Thief.
• Arrived in an amphitheater where the Cult was about to ritually sacrifice the Crone, an aspect of the Priest icon from a previous age.
• Hundreds of Cultists led by a Secret Master filled the amphitheater.
• The innocent citizens of Dungeontown were in thrall to the Master and being used as cannon fodder against the characters.
• Also, the Cult had control of the characters' souls, which through a series of complicated events were trapped in a handful of soul gems.
• An epic throwdown ensued, with 3 of the 5 characters reduced to zero hit points and making death saves.
• Unconscious characters were able to channel through the soul gems to psychically attack the the Cultists.
• While unconscious, the minotaur savage reached out to the Stone Thief and encouraged it to turn against the Cult.
• The elf bard used a magical flute to "pied piper" the citizens of Dungeontown and turn them against the Secret Master.
• The minotaur savage landed the killing blow on the Secret Master.
• The characters freed the Crone.
• They recovered their soul gems.
• The surviving Cultists hailed the human occultist as their new leader and the Last Master of the Cult.

Next session, the players have to decide what to do with their newfound power, which presents a host of ethical dilemmas.

 

[Older Beholder]

A few weeks ago we made up a bunch of characters each for a game to be played when we’re a player short for our main game.

On the weekend we played a session with everyone there just so we all got a feel for the system together.
During the session, we were making our way to a rooftop banquet on top of the building we were in, but were constantly met with obstacles, one character was killed. It was a lot of fun.

Can you guess the system we were playing based on a character sheet?

 

[Richards]

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

• Got a message at a drop-site from a Guild informant saying he had info about a plot against the Guild, he wanted to meet, he thought he was being followed, and the secret knock to use so he'd know it was the PCs
• Went to the informant's apartment and heard his dog barking from inside
• Kicked down the locked door, saw an elf assassin standing over the dead informant and fighting off the dog, but the assassin tossed down a smoke bomb that filled the room up with a obscuring mist spell effect
• Had the human scout PC crawl into the room and drag the informant's body out into the hallway, where they could see his throat had been cut; he managed to croak out "Birthday...cake..." before dying
• Had the snow fox hengeyokai run around the building and the human monk leap onto the rooftop to try to cut off the assassin, but he'd already high-tailed it through the alleyways behind the apartments
• Alerted the city guards, bundled up the body, and decided to bring it and the dog to the Pantheonic Temple where they could get speak with animals and speak with dead spells cast
• Were accosted by a pair of street urchins wanting to feed the dog (poisoned} meat, ran them off, and then encountered a band of four human thieves and an elf ranger (with hawk companion) trying to take the dog and the horse with the informant's body on it - they slew the thieves and the hawk and then ranger opted to flee, but they learned from that there was a hit out on both the informant and the dog
• Got to the temple, found out from the dog that he and the informant had overheard the elf assassin talking to someone else in an outdoor café, and found out from the slain informant that the elf and the older human man (balding, stooped, with a horse's head cane) talking about a plot to slay the Guildmaster (of the Guild the changeling rogue PC works for) at his birthday party later today
• Sent the rogue PC to warn the Guild of the plot (they told him which reception hall the party was at, and told him to check into the bakery that supplied the cake), while the others took the dog to the café, (where they queried the wait staff and got a description of the man with the horse's head cane)
• Went to the bakery, discovered the cake had been picked up by a scantily-clad woman (who was scheduled to pop out of the cake) wearing a red-and-gold cape, and who had - of all things - a snail on her shoulder
• Raced to the reception hall and entered through the side door, to discover the cake had already been delivered, the woman was about to pop out, and she used her cape of the mountebank to teleport to safety after using her ring of spell storing to cast a dispel magic spell on the snail, which was really the basilisk the PCs had polymorphed two adventures ago at the behest of a wizard
• Fought the basilisk (which resulted in the hengeyokai and the monk being petrified), but saved the Guildmaster and the majority of his high-ranking guests
• Told the Guildmaster everything they knew (except the fact they were the ones who had procured the basilisk-in-snail-form), and he recognized the balding, stooped man with the horse's head cane as the head of a rival guild of thieves and assassins

The Guild paid to have stone salve applied to those who had gotten petrified by the basilisk. So now next adventure, it's all-out war on the rival guild, with a simultaneous attack on every business the rival guild owns; the PCs will be in charge of taking out a pawnshop and the neighboring bar, either or both of which is believed to hold a training hall for the rival guild's thieves and assassins behind the public areas.

Johnathan

 

[el-remmen]

It went well and was fun, but I am really worried we left off at the beginning of a combat that may end up in a TPK!

After being ambushed as they re-entered the Moathouse, the party was able to kill off most of their attackers and escape back into the dungeon. After making quick work of some zombies they rousted while doing some searching, a investigation of a torture chamber revealed a secret passage that they decided to follow.

The passage led out into a pitch black crypt through a narrow hole that required bellycrawling to come out into a niche where the bones of the dead had been interred. Now, keep in mind only one PC has darkvision and the light source was back in the tunnel. The halfling gloomstalker went first but then the human paladin followed. He had already used divine sense to know that undead awaited somewhere in there. Well, of course, he stumbled forward in the dark and was beset by the four ghouls and one ghast in there!

Making a long story short, the paladin was managed to avoid many attacks with his high AC, but eventually he was paralyzed and dragged into the ranger's spike growth forcing the latter to have to cancel it. The druid and the swashbuckler managed to get into the fight and bring some light forward, but the former fell to multiple attacks including a crit - and that is where we left it.

The ghouls are fairly wounded and could drop, but we start next time at the top of the round with the ghast and 2 ghouls beating everyone on initiative save for the swashbuckler.

I never expected them to plunge ahead without light when they knew undead were ahead, but alas!

 

[Richards]

In last week's "Middle of Elsewhere" campaign, the PCs:

• Went exploring at midnight on Shift Day into the new plane the town of Elsewhere had shifted to; they had plunked down in the middle of a deep forest
• Sent the elf witch's owl familiar exploring above the tree line, and he came back with word the forest continued on for quite a distance before opening into grassy plains
• Trekked north through the forest, saw some anarchic squirrels (allowing the PCs to deduce the plane was chaotically-aligned), and entered the plains, opting to travel on for another couple of hours due to the thick mist that kept the rising sun from bothering the fiendish orc PC's light sensitvity
• Camped out in the plains at around 10 in the morning, planning to sleep for 8 hours and take off again when it got dark enough for the orc's comfort; set the owl familiar and my cleric's skeletal horse as guards, with orders to wake us if anyone approached the camp
• Were awakened by war horns blowing from two directions, crawled from the tents to discover two small armies of 14 members each charging each other, with our camp smack dab in the middle
• Fled sideways out of the way of the charging armies (chaotic humans from the north, celestial humans and elves from the south), while the shadow druid cast a spike growth spell in front of the northern army to slow them down
• Got caught up in a three-way battle: northern army vs, southern army vs. PCs, since both sides seemed perfectly willing to slay us (the celestial elves, in particular, did not like the fiendish orc PC)
• Had the druid cast entangle spell that bound a clump of the southern army, while the elf witch cast a fly spell and hung out 30 feet above the battlefield (safe in the knowledge neither army wielded ranged weapons), taking potshots with fireball spells while my PC focused his attacks (and summoned monsters) on the mounted leader of the southern army, who had slain Victor, my former fiendish horse (I had traded him to the druid after I raised his slain horse as a skeleton and used it as my riding mount between adventures)
• Eventually managed to slay all 28 foes without taking any casualties ourselves (although there were a few close calls), other than Victor
• Found out we were on Ysgard when, after the battle, the Valkyries came to take the dead to the mead hall to drink and boast until they were automatically resurrected the following day

So that means Victor will be automatically returned to life tomorrow - and furthermore, any PC deaths for the next year (the time Elsewhere spends on Ysgard) will only be temporary. That gives the DM a great incentive to try to kill off our PCs as much as possible during the next half-dozen adventures or so. Gulp!

Johnathan