NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="THEMNGMNT" data-source="post: 7951705" data-attributes="member: 6809274">The player characters have just hit 13th level. My goal for this session was to give them a battle where they could try out their new abilities and trounce the competition. At this level, characters get access to 7th level spells, which are "game breaking" in the sense that travel, planar travel, and even death become trivial. It's my first exposure ever to those spells so I'm interested in seeing how they change the game. Finally, I wanted to tie up some dangling plot threads. My campaign has far, far too many.Additionally, the players have acquired a pack of NPCs from their assault on the fire giant headquarters of Ironslag. First is Harshnag, the good frost giant in service to the Blackstaff. Second is Sarisa, an elf tomelock and warrior princess from the High Forest. Third is Zara, a drow priestess of Lolth from House Mizzrym.I'm running a modified version of Storm King's Thunder. The players arrived at the Eye of the All-Father. There, they expect to find the means to reach Hekaton, the overpriest of the giants held captive by the Zhentarim in Skyreach Castle. As they entered the Eye, the elf arcane trickster scouted ahead invisibly and discovered an ambush waiting for them. The ambushers were three different teams of bounty hunters from Waterdeep. (The players have a mysterious, powerful enemy in Waterdeep that put a price on their heads.) How these bounty reached the Eye--and why they're working together--remains a mystery, for now.The first team of bounty hunters consisted of 3 barbaric humans who are actually werewolves. The rogue and beast master ranger made pretty quick work of the werewolves. The rogue is now throwing down 7d6 with every sneak attack and rarely misses while ranger is a tank with nearly 150hp. The second team was a blackguard paladin and 3 convicts taken from the gallows (who use the stats of gladiators). I asked the party's vengeance paladin of Ilmater to give me the name and background of the blackguard. He decided the blackguard was an oathbreaker paladin of Ilmater. So they threw down. We really hammed up the dialogue between the two as they fought.The third team consisted of 3 hook horrors led by a levitating, invisible mind flayer. The mind flayer waited until the party was split and hit half of them with a mind blast. Unfortunately for the mind flayer (and the DM) they were grouped around the paladin. That +5 to saving throws made a huge difference. Only two of the players were stunned. The drow priestess levitated up to the mind flayer and said that if he left now, her house in Menzoberranzan would pay him double the bounty. The mind flayer thought about the offer...and took it. With a quick plane shift, he vanished. Poof! The characters then made short work of the hook horrors. Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for the DM) all 3 hook horrors were possessed by intellect devourers. Using their psychic powers, the devourers dropped Harshnag's intelligence to zero and possessed him. So now the frost giant is attacking the characters. The remaining two devourers are looking for targets to possess. It could get ugly.And on that cliffhanger we ended the session.</blockquote>

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