Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9119639" data-attributes="member: 508">Ugh.  Tonight's "Ghourmand Vale" session left a bad taste in my mouth.  The PCs:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Were asked by the famed author, E. L. Grimwade, to take her to the Mistbrenner Farm to see the site where we vanquished some vampires several months ago; we agreed on the condition she brought along a potion of gaseous form for her own safety</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Got to the "abandoned" farm to see a neighboring farmer fleeing the farmhouse in a panic, saying he'd broken in to steal a few things from the farmhouse (he especially liked a pitcher the dead owner, Bea Mistbrenner had), but she showed up as a ghost and chased him</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cast a bunch of prep spells, entered the farmhouse, and saw the ghost, which immediately fled to the Ethereal Plane</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Searched around for numerous rounds (eating away at the duration of our prep spells) while the ghost stayed on the Ethereal Plane, until finally in desperation my sorcerer PC started kicking ashes from the fireplace onto the neatly-swept floor and tossing chairs around, commenting on what a dump the farmhouse was in an attempt to get the ghost to show up so we could slay her (we'd slain her when she was alive the last time we were there at the farm - she was an evil cleric who'd been creating undead)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Had a different ghost manifest behind my PC and start moaning; my PC failed his save, dropped everything he had been holding, and ran at top speed out of the farmhouse (he'd have the "panicked" condition for 7 rounds, and we were all hasted at the time; another PC tried to stop me but failed)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The druid PC cast an entangle spell to slow me down, which only caused me to cast a dimension door spell to teleport out of the entangle area of effect (760 feet away, to be exact); I'd spend the next four rounds using up all of my remaining 4th-level spell slots casting dimension door, putting me 760 feet further away each round so it would be impossible for me to return until the rest of the adventure was over - as a result, I spent the whole session jotting down what everyone else did each round so I could use the notes to write up the Story Hour</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The other PCs slew both ghosts, and then a spirit naga that was somehow in league with them, then burned down the farmhouse in the hopes that might prevent the ghosts from remanifesting in 2d4 days</li> </ul>None of the players were particularly thrilled with this adventure, because of the constant "you would have normally hit, but you didn't" effects as a result of the ghosts being incorporeal and the spirit naga casting both invisibility and displacement spells on itself, plus the frustrating rounds of everybody doing nothing for round after round because we had no way of interacting with ghosts when they were on the Ethereal Plane.  The DM's wife even suggested our PCs just leave, since there was no real reason for us to stick around and put the author in danger (it was supposed to have been an abandoned farm), but mostly as an excuse to cut the session short after I had been more or less excluded from playing.But I made the best of it: I had five 3rd-level spell slots available when I finally trudged back to the farmhouse after the panicked condition had worn off (at the end of the night's session), at which time the other PCs had set everything ablaze, so I used five shrink item spells to turn bonfires into pieces of cloth I can later revert to blazing fires in an instant.Still, overall, a pretty sucky session.Johnathan</blockquote>

Verification