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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9652205" data-attributes="member: 27780">Back in action after after a week's absence due to me having to work on Sunday. 6 out of 7 players were present, including the Drow who hadn't shown up for a full month now. (and we were starting to wonder if he was gone for good, but turns out he was just busy moving house) In sharp contrast to last time, this was  pretty much pure action, as I tried to keep flipping perspectives back and forth to keep people from feeling left out despite the party being split. First up, some time spent on the surface where the fungus sharks had a pretty poor time against the damage resistance and disease immunity of the drow's summoned water elementals. After a couple of rounds of that which made it clear the PC's were in no real danger despite the sheer number of opponents they had to fight, we flipped back down to the underwater temple entrance, where the high hp of the turtles meant they took a good 4 rounds to finish off. While this was taking place, our sniper was skittering ahead as usual, using a combination of invisibility and blink to get through the walls and make sure he explored every nook and cranny while avoiding notice. He soon became aware that there were multiple places where the wall into the temple had crumbled that were being guarded by more sharks, which were aware of the PC's due to the hivemind and trying to set up ambushes themselves. But having no real stealth skills, he could easily spot them and report back to the others, who headed that way and laid into them, with the summons going first and absorbing most of the damage. The sniper once again stayed out of combat and kept on checking his compass, finding that they were close enough that even small movements now changed the direction it was pointing. He soon found the precise spot above the gate and tried phasing down, but weirdly enough, there's no open space between levels 1 & 4 where the gate is (and I had to carefully measure the maps from the stairways to figure that out, as the levels aren't all in neat squares one above the other) so after going 30' down he had to head back up again to avoid ending his move inside the rock and taking damage. Since it didn't look like they'd be able to short-circuit the adventure that way it was time to go back to the entrance and do a bit more exploring for the proper way down. Meanwhile, up above, most of the monsters had stopped fighting and dived for the temple to defend it. This was the players cue that it was time to reunite the party. So the Drow, Binder & Orc hitched a ride on a couple of the water elementals and chased them down, leaving just 5 summoned monsters up top to keep that front of the fight going. They arrived at the bottom just as the others meandered back to the main gates, leading to another fairly brief battle against the wave of kuo-toa that had made it down before them. While the other 6 were busy, the sniper once again snuck off, this time heading down the ramp to the north. He easily spotted the secret door to the east and explored that, finding the tunnel down to level 2 and the other secret door leading into the altar room. Once the battle was over, he once again apprised the other PC's of the situation and they followed him, leaving the elementals behind at the gates to slow down the next load of kuo-toa and sharks from behind. The sniper headed down to the next level while several of the others investigated the altar, spotting and dispelling the trap activating the water elemental before it could cause them any trouble. But time ran out on us once again, so they didn't get to pick up the treasure in there and there's still three levels to this dungeon to go. Will they get to the big boss next time, or will the tricks of the eyes of the deep & morkoth keep them diverted all next week? It's amazing how slowly the plot can go when you're juggling lots of characters, rolling for every action and never drop out of combat time.</blockquote>

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