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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7346964" data-attributes="member: 6779196">It was pretty successful! One of my players I don't think fully understood the intent of the mechanic, as he kept trying to flash back to moments earlier during the escape attempt, rather than to something they had set up before trying to escape. Another one really got it though, and used it to great effect. The other two are a little socially reserved and neither of them took the initiative to suggest flashbacks, but one was really good at recognizing what the guy who kept trying to do shorter-term flashbacks was trying to accomplish with them and suggesting alternatives that would be more in line with the intent of the flashback mechanic while achieving similar results. Overall I was happy with the results, though if I were to try it again, I think I would try to be a bit more specific with when and how flashbacks can be used, maybe tying them to Inspiration, or a similar meta-resource. And I'd try to explain them a little better to avoid the issue of players trying to flash back to "right before we came into the guard tower" instead of "a couple days ago." I used Jorlan's Gambit to kick things off and my players snuck into the guard tower and the armory first, in hopes of grabbing some hand crossbows and poisoned bolts, not realizing the Drow kept the poison separate from the bolts (to their credit, they did find an already-poisoned bolt thanks to the random roll for what they had on them, so it was an understandable assumption. This was partially successful, but they got caught before they could secure all the equipment they wanted. Tried to knock the elite guard out with the poisoned bolt, but he easily passed his save.They pretty easily took out the regular Drow, and were doing decently against the Elite, all things considered. Eldeth tried to tell them to run while she held him back, and the NPCs did, along with one PC, but the others... Seem to be reluctant to run away from anything*. Even after the Elite two-shotted Eldeth (which would have been a one-shot had it not been for her poison resistance), they still tried to keep fighting, right up until the party Sorcerer was one-shot by him. The players made brilliant use of a flashback here to set up the Sorcerer diluting the poison used on the Elites' shortswords while she was on cleaning duty earlier in the week, which I permitted to remove the poison damage the Sorcerer would have taken, saving her life. Technically that should have saved Eldeth too, but I didn't want a flashback to ret-con more than a turn or so of action, and the adventure really sets her up to get killed anyway. That also finally got it through to the other players that running was the best plan, throwing a Ray of Frost and an Entangle back at the Elite to slow him down.Meanwhile, the one PC who did run away with the other NPCs went into Ilvara's quarters with Prince Drendali to recover their gear. Luckily for my PCs, I rolled no one in either chamber. The PC got knocked out by the needle trap on the chest, but Drendali was there to shake him awake and the ecided to just take the whole chest with them and deal with opening it later.The group met back up at the waterfall, where they planned to dive into the pool below, just as the Elite made it out of the guard tower. He called for help, though I ruled that this could only be heard by the guards in the East-side watch post and the handful of Quaggoths that were in their quarters, due to the noise from the waterfall. They made to blow the warning horn, and the PCs used another flashback to set up that they secretly emptied a chamber pot into the warning horn earlier while on chamber pot duty, which I found hilarious. I decided it muffled the sound of the horn and also sickened the drow who blew it.The party took the opportunity to dive into the pool where they handily dealt with the Gray Ooze (it didn't even last a full round). And that was when I had A Flight of Demons kick in, to occupy the Drow in the outpost while the players followed Shuushar towards Sloobludop. That was where we called the session. I skipped the fight with the Vrok cause it was getting late by this point.*(side note: this is exactly how we ended up in this situation in the first place; they got TPKed in the Goblin caves in the first session of Lost Mine of Phandelver, and I decided to have the goblins turn them over to Neznar, who in turn sold them to Ilvara rather than ending the campaign after the first session).</blockquote>

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