iserith
Magic Wordsmith
In tonight's session, the party pushed through the remaining distance in their boat to some submerged ruins about 18 hours from town, desperate to recover a magic item said to be there before a dangerous cult gets their hands on it. At the upper level of the ruins, they did battle with some sporpses, waterlogged human bodies taken over by a rot flower's spores.
The druid killed the first of the sporpses in their midst and it exploded into a cloud of spores that covered the druid, the ranger, and the rune knight. The ranger failed the save and, as a result, he was badly diseased with only 18 hours to live (1d12 + Con score, rolled a 6). Nobody in the party had prepared lesser restoration. Long resting takes 24 hours in this game. This was bad, and they had recently lost the party's barbarian to a similar situation involving a vargouille's curse. (Ultimately, he chose to take his own life by chaining himself to a crate of sex toys and jumping into a lake, rather than succumb to the curse and endanger his friends.)
Now the players really had to think about what to do here, as the stakes were very high for the campaign. Does the ranger accept his fate and delve the submerged ruins to secure the magic item knowing this means his certain death? Or does the party turn around and go back to town, and hope they don't get killed along the way due to monsters and exhaustion, to get their friend cured by an ally at the church... only to potentially lose the magic item to the cult? They went back and forth on this for a while because we're near the end of the campaign, they have very limited time, and it would mean the player of the ranger would have a much lower level character with no time to train them up.
In the end, they came up with a plan: The wizard has a broom of flying, so he took the ranger with him and beelined it to town at the risk of exhaustion. Now the party was split up and, round trip, the wizard and ranger would not rejoin them for another 32 hours. And so began the random encounter checks. Wave after wave of swamp denizens came at the four party members on the boat while the wizard and ranger soared over any potential threats. They barely survived the onslaught, nearly losing their ship and their lives in the process. This entire situation took up the whole 4 hours of the session.
The wizard and the ranger flew back to join them. It was at that point the rune knight remembered something in his pocket: The heartstone of the Hag of Woe which they had captured in the same battle that led to the death of their barbarian friend.
The heartstone can cure all diseases. "I forgot I had it," the rune knight's player remarked. What an epic night with a perfect ending!
Have you ever forgotten you had something in your inventory that would have been clutch had you just remembered to use it?
The druid killed the first of the sporpses in their midst and it exploded into a cloud of spores that covered the druid, the ranger, and the rune knight. The ranger failed the save and, as a result, he was badly diseased with only 18 hours to live (1d12 + Con score, rolled a 6). Nobody in the party had prepared lesser restoration. Long resting takes 24 hours in this game. This was bad, and they had recently lost the party's barbarian to a similar situation involving a vargouille's curse. (Ultimately, he chose to take his own life by chaining himself to a crate of sex toys and jumping into a lake, rather than succumb to the curse and endanger his friends.)
Now the players really had to think about what to do here, as the stakes were very high for the campaign. Does the ranger accept his fate and delve the submerged ruins to secure the magic item knowing this means his certain death? Or does the party turn around and go back to town, and hope they don't get killed along the way due to monsters and exhaustion, to get their friend cured by an ally at the church... only to potentially lose the magic item to the cult? They went back and forth on this for a while because we're near the end of the campaign, they have very limited time, and it would mean the player of the ranger would have a much lower level character with no time to train them up.
In the end, they came up with a plan: The wizard has a broom of flying, so he took the ranger with him and beelined it to town at the risk of exhaustion. Now the party was split up and, round trip, the wizard and ranger would not rejoin them for another 32 hours. And so began the random encounter checks. Wave after wave of swamp denizens came at the four party members on the boat while the wizard and ranger soared over any potential threats. They barely survived the onslaught, nearly losing their ship and their lives in the process. This entire situation took up the whole 4 hours of the session.
The wizard and the ranger flew back to join them. It was at that point the rune knight remembered something in his pocket: The heartstone of the Hag of Woe which they had captured in the same battle that led to the death of their barbarian friend.
The heartstone can cure all diseases. "I forgot I had it," the rune knight's player remarked. What an epic night with a perfect ending!
Have you ever forgotten you had something in your inventory that would have been clutch had you just remembered to use it?
