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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ellington" data-source="post: 5937423" data-attributes="member: 6692166">My group had another session tonight and a new player joined in. We were at six players so the group decided that a fun way to implement a new character was to have the new player play as the cocky archer the party met in the last session. We statted him as a human fighter with the commoner background and the lurker theme. He had a longbow and a high dexterity score and it was fairly easy to piece together.The session began at the tavern where they were having a conversation with the new player who told the party that he had a map showing a treasure north of the village that had been handed down to him by his newly deceased father. After coming to terms on how to split the treasure, they decided that they wanted to rent some horses to reduce travel time. As is customary of our D&D runs, this took way more time than it should have, as the players haggled for ages with the man renting them their horses for a few silver pieces and argued over who would share horses. Finally they rode out of town but were stopped by the captain of the guard that warned them of a vicious pack of gnolls that had been pestering travellers in the forest north of the village, led by a pack lord known as Mudscalp. They told the guard that they'd bring him the heads of the gnolls for a bounty and rode off. Nothing drastic happened on the way, so no rolls needed to be made for a ride check since the riders all had training in Animal Handling.When they came to the forest they left the horses with a stableboy and told him they'd be back the following day. They headed off into the forest and the archer and the rogue scouted ahead stealthily. After a while they heard some noises and came upon a weird little gnome sitting in the forest making soup. After some conversation and insight checks they deduced that he was a bit weird but not malevolent, so they joined him for a dish on mushroom soup and he gave them an offer to buy a strange vial of a pink substance he had found in the woods. The rogue gave him some gold pieces decided to keep the potion, which didn't come up for the rest of the run. They bid the gnome farewell and followed the map towards the treasure. On their way there they encountered some tracks which they discovered matched those of gnolls.Even though the tracks led to a different path than that of the treasure, they did the adventurous thing and followed them and came upon a small campsite. They snuck around and got into position, but the gnolls spotted some of the less stealthy party members and a fight ensued. There were 7 gnolls as well as a pack lord. The gnolls tried for pack tactics and went in pairs of two while the pack lord stayed behind and used his evil powers to enrage his gnolls. The gnolls rolled well and got some good hits in, but the rogue and the fighter managed to down two of the gnolls from stealth. The fighter and the cleric of Moradin took to the front lines and defended the cleric of Pelor and the wizard. The wizard positioned himself for some good uses of Burning Hands while the cleric of Pelor threw Radiant Lances all over the place.The gnolls fell pretty quickly, but the rogue got cocky and tried to attack the pack lord who managed to down the rogue in one hit thanks to a lucky roll. The party ganged up on the pack lord who fought for a while and stayed alive for a pretty long time since he healed up whenever one of his gnolls got to 0 HP. The cleric was happy that he could bring the rogue up from 0 HP with his healing word spell and still be able to attack the leader. They eventually managed to defeat them all and cut off their heads to bring back to the village as bounty. They had a rest, took some shifts and the cleric of Pelor used his herbalism to create a healing potion with ingredients from the forest.The next morning they followed the map which led them to a small cave opening which was adorned with heads on spikes. The rogue spotted a gnoll head on one of the spikes and decided to bring it back for a little more bounty. What the guard doesn't know won't hurt him, right? The rogue scouted ahead and discovered that an ogre resided in the cave. After a small discussion on how to approach, they decided to light a fire and smoke him out. The rogue and the archer decided to position themselves on top of the cave entrance, which proved to be a mistake. The ogre came out, stepping on the campfire and took a little fire damage. As the party faced the ogre the pair upon the entrance realized that the smoke from the fire was giving the ogre concealment, so they needed to reposition themselves to be able to gain their stealthy advantage rolls. The fight went pretty well, but it wasn't really much of a threat since the players had 6 actions for every 1 action the ogre got. The cleric of Pelor was happy with his first casting of Spiritual Hammer which upped his damage output by a lot, even if his other spells didn't hit. The ogre got in around two hits before he was downed, and the players noted that his HP might have been a bit excessive when he posed such a small threat offensively. Maybe some area attacks would help in future versions of the ogre?After the ogre was down, the players went into the cave and found a small tunnel which the halfling crawled into and discovered a small chest filled with gold pieces, as well as a key wrapped inside a scroll. Although eager to discover what was written on the scroll, we decided that this would be a good time to call it a game and we wrapped things up, and the players got enough XP to hit level 2 (thanks to some benevolence on my behalf).The players were happy enough with the session, especially on how smoothly combat went. The dwarf fighter was again a bit annoyed on his lack of options in combat. The cleric of Moradin thought Divine Favor was a bit boring when compared to his other spells, but he was very happy with Crusader's Strike, but he noted that he thought it was a bit of a misnomer. The rogue was very happy with every single ability he had, even though his Luck rerolls didn't amount to much. The wizard was a bit more creative this time around, but even though he accepted that sleep was a powerful spell it didn't really work the way it sounded it would work, as we advised him against casting it on the pack lord and the ogre. The cleric of Pelor was again happy with his laser tag gameplay, and the new player thought his makeshift archer fighter worked well. I was happy with how easy things were to run, and whenever the party wanted to do something creative it's relatively easy to attribute it to one of their skills or just as an ability check. I'm still not happy with the monsters in the bestiary. The gnolls were fine, but the ogre was just dull as hell. I'd like to give him something to deal with a large number of smaller opponents, like a cleaving attack or a ground stomp or something.I'm looking forward to see what new things level 2 has in store, and I'll be sure to post the results here. If there are any questions about my run, be sure to let me know!</blockquote>

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