kbrakke
First Post
My first major campaign finally ended last month, it took the characters from level 6 to level 29. I learned a lot, and now I feel qualified to tell you all about it. I put it all in sections so you can read the overarching plot if you care, if not you can just get tidbits that I learned about me and how I like to DM. If you have questions I love to talk about DMing and have lots of thoughts and opinions that I will be happy to share. Given that I dmed from levels 6 - 29 I have had a few experiences.
[sblock=The final party aka Belanor's Exemplary Group of Legend Seekers aka BEGLS.]
Toff ir'Fong - Human 20 Monk (Earthbender) / 5 Mystic / 4 Epic
Belanor el'Gwaylen Lyrical Savant - Solar (Former Half-Elf) 20 Bard (Valor) / 1 Fighter / 4 Rogue (Swashbuckler) / 4 Epic
Val'Dax - Drow 19 Ranger (Hunter) / 6 Barbarian (Totem) / 4 Epic
Bulwark - Warforged 25 Fighter (Battlemaster) / 4 Epic
Werth ir'Tain - Human 25 Wizard (Divination) / 4 Epic
[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 1 Having a campaign setting to start saves invaluable time.] I got the 3.5 campaign guide and read it bit by bit to understand the world. Having much of work in naming, populating and describing different areas freed me up. I was somewhat lucky in that none of my players were familiar with Eberron, so if I changed things they didn't notice. But based on my first attempts to make a campaign world, this ended up being significantly easier. Recently I started a campaign in my own homebrew world, however that game is a hexcrawl where I started by making a map and seeding each environment, each hex, making all the groups and creating NPCs. In effect I made my own campaign setting with the lessons I learned from using others, my first attempt, and 6 years of experience.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 2 How to homebrew.] My girlfriend was enamored with the idea of playing Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender ( This ends up being less Mary Sue than it sounds [ It also spawned the prevalence of the phrase "DMGF Privilege", which gets lots of mileage in our group { I will admit, it still ended up being medum Mary Sue, my GF expressed relief that she can play a new character with more significant flaws now that the campaign is over. }. ]. ). I tried something based on the monk and was dissatisfied. Over the course of play we eventually got to a place where she was an archetype of Monk and everyone was happy. But after playing for several months which knobs I could turn safely became apparent more than. At this point I feel pretty comfortable making pathfinder style archetypes if someone isn't quite satisfied with their character.[/sblock]
[sblock=Humble beginnings (Levels 6 - 10)]
BEGLS started as somewhat well known artifact hunters, running a small shop in Sharn. With Val'Dax's knowledge of Xen'Drik, Toff's earthbending and Belanor's persuasive nature and Bulwark being a warforged it was not surprising that Morgrave University hired them to recover an artifact they just got a new lead on. BEGLS was given a hefty prize to board the next airship to Xen'Drik and recover a Docent that might have ancient information.
After a short foray in to Xen'Drik they recovered their Docent who was sadly quite damaged and couldn't remember exactly where any Dragon Orbs were (Stand in for MacGuffin of great power, sought after by many groups for various purposes). During this time they gained the ire of several groups. It started when they went to Merrix d'Cannith who tried to take the docent for himself much to their chagrin. After some bad decisions they had to leave town for while as they were wanted for murder. On the a train they encountered the second group of people trying to get those orbs, The Emerald Claw.
They made powerful friends of their own and leveraged that in to returning to Sharn with no charges, however that did not stop their enemies. After a few failed assassination attempts during a pastry competition they got back to their task at hand, stopping Merrix. Several weeks of plotting, spying, and killing later the party had found out where Merrix has his secret creation forge in Xen'Drik. They went there and one mission later Merrix was no more, his prisoners were rescued and Jorlanna d'Cannith was now the leader of house Cannith in the west.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 3 Pacing] This game was fundamentally a story based game about the characters and their story (This is opposed to a game about the world and how the players interact with that). As such I made it a goal to have two enemies the party was facing, one primary (Merrix) and one secondary (The Emerald Claw). Then there would be one enemy lurking in the shadows waiting to strike when the party was weak (Rakshasas). In this way they always had their goal of trying to stop Merrix d'Cannith but in the course of doing that they were harassed by the Emerald Claw. This let the party tackle different challenges if one seemed like it was being bogged down. This also meant that as they progressed their foes knew who they were, their abilities and goals. Also by having the foes be interested in them for a longer span of time, the rivalry was more rooted in character, rather than simply being of convince. They hated The Emerald Claw by the time they were seeking to destroy them. Half the group Hated the Rakshasas by the time they were read to be taken down, and eventually everyone feared the Dolgaunts by the end.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 4 I try to buy my player's love with treasure.] I have no self control when it comes to treasure. I decided to give them a triple hoard after getting past Merrix. "Why?" You might ask, and I would tell you "I don't know". I will give out another massive hoard later on, but after that I get things more under control. In my current game I am trying very hard to stick to the DMG because it is a hexcrawl. But the desire is always there to give the players a new shiny thing because I like new shiny things. Recently I have been examining the low magic assumptions and fitting the magic items I give out in to that mold. My problem was that I had given out so many magic items the player didn't really care about new ones unless they did something better. When you have a Vorpal Blade, where do you go? I am keeping better track of this in my new campaigns.[/sblock]
[sblock=Larger threats come to bear (Levels 11 - 17)]
With Merrix gone they turned their attention to The Emerald Claw. With the creation forge destroyed they had no hope of fixing the docent and getting a real map to any dragon orbs. Fortunately one item they recovered was a genie lamp. One lucky roll later three wishes were had. Wish number 1 - I want a baby Wyvvern Egg so our ranger can have his dream pet. Wish number 2 - I wish our docent was fixed. Wish number 3 - I wish you were my best friend. Toff was not a power wisher. All three wishes were granted, sadly the Docent needed some time to organize all its data before it could give them a good map, so the group decided it was time to eliminate The Emerald Claw. This is around the time they learned Jorlana was dating a Rakshasa who had grand plan.
The party was split. Bulwark, Val'Dax and Werth were content ignoring the Rakshasa, it wasn't hurting anyone so what's the big deal? Belanor having newly found the Silver Flame was adamant that the Rakshasas be killed as they were nothing but fiends. That left Toff in the uncomfortable position of being courted by these fiends for unknown reasons. Toff wanted the Warforged to have a future, to have a place they could call their own and be able to go to school and get jobs. Working with the Daughters of Sora Kell she started to see how the Warforged would have a home in Droaam, and the Rakshasas wanted to help. This all seemed good, but clearly it could not be, their souls were black as night.
While that was happening the group started to find intel on secret Emerald Claw bases, they began systematically raiding these bases to find where their main headquarters were. One base was an interdimensional stronghold lead by one Count Strahd von Zarovitch, a personal friend of Erandis Vol. (Destruction of cannon aside, it was a great few sessions as this high powered group ran through the original Ravenloft, with some plot related additions). The end result, lots more treasure and one character death. After the party got split by one of the many traps Bulwark and Val'Dax began to fight Count Strahd while the rest of the party was cornered by some Iron Golems. Bulwark got charmed and Val'Dax took a swing at him to try and wake him up. His newly found Vorpal Blade went snicker snack and Bulwark was no longer charmed. The last thing Bulwark remembers was Count Strahd's eyes and then blackness, Val'Dax confirms that Bulwark was killed in that fight. Fortunately they found a scroll of resurrection and everything was good.
After finally reaching the final base they stopped the main Emerald Claw plot. There was to be a mass sacrifice for Erandis to try and return her to power sans dragon orb. With that halted the group made their way to her lair where they finally gave her the final death. With the present, widespread and very corporeal threat of the Emerald Claw gone, the group began to understand their largest foe. Val'Dax, an Umbragen drow had left his home to find something to help in the fight against the Daelkyr, they started to learn more about the history and the importance of Byeshk in warding against these creatures. Fortunately the Daughters of Sora Kell happened to be right next to the mountains full of the stuff, they just wanted some help establishing their new nation, and with several noble contacts it was a slam dunk.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 5 Pacing again.] If you are playing a game bout the characters and their story, you do not need to slog through fights that have no chance of a deadly outcome unless it is part of a larger adventuring day. The plan of discovering the extent of the Emerald Claw operation by sneaking in to bases and stealing documents was great. The execution was not. Each base ended up being a slog where they simply fought everything inside. They were swinging above their level because of the magic items I showered on them and I was unwilling or unclear on how to adjust things to be relevant again, a problem that would plague me until about level 21 or so. As a result we just had several sessions that were go to a place, walk in fight for a few hours, leave. In a different world I would have tightened up the whole experience, advancing them to the next plot relevant point quickly when it was apparent that there was no value gained by simply fighting through bases of disposable enemies. Another option would have been to radically overpower the bases to make it so they simply couldn't walk in and rather had to use a combination of stealth, cunning and combat to get to their goal. In either case, the planned sessions were simply unnecessary. This also resulted in them blowing through the levels 12 - 16 or so just fighting group after group. I wish I had enforced a more dramatic narrative arc during this time, rather than simply allow weeks of slogging.[/sblock]
[sblock=The fate of worlds part 1, Fiends (Levels 18-23)]
They now had two threats, the Rakshasas and other Lords of Dust whom the Rakshasas had dealings with and the Daelkyr who were still a mystery. The group determined with a fixed Docent that there was an Orb of Dragonkind hidden in Ashtakala, the home city of the Lords of Dust. With that power they could defeat the Rakshasas permanently, and so they went. The group braved the Demon Wastes. Along the way they met the orc tribes who were fervent followers of the Silver Flame. Belanor was enamored with them and their zealotry, and quickly became friends. So the party went to Ashtakala and changed things forever.
In Ashtakala, in the Garden of Pain the last Coutal lives, tortured endlessly, but never killed. In this way his soul cannot join the Silver Flame, and through him the wards are not fully complete. A clever or powerful overlord could use this flaw to escape. The party knowing none of this rescued the Coutal. As soon as his Dracolich guard was defeated he begged Belanor "Kill me now so that I may join the Flame and my bretheren who used their lives to keep Eberron safe" to which Belanor responded, tearfully "No, I cannot kill a creature a noble as thee". And so this Coutal was not slain, and the largest sideplot emerged. Now having a way past the Flame, Bel-Shalor granted his emissary great power. And thusly Korliac of the Grey Flame came to be their foe, but that is not yet.
The party feeling good about both rescuing the Coutal and vandalizing the building that the Lords of Dust meet in finally found the locaton of the dragon orb, it was beyond a portal, that only Toff could pass through. So she did, and found her self trapped in a maze, running from a high pitched Hyena laughter that always seemed to find her. Finally, after using all her powers she found herself face to face with the Orb. Then it appeared, The Goristro. A single critical gore attack was enough to simply kill Toff, and she found herself in a maze, with a vague feeling she had been there before. Finally she found her self face to face with the orb, but this time it was different, she dodged the Goristro's attack, grabbed the orb and saw her escape. Thusly Toff emerged, 7 years older to a party fighting for it's life against the denizens of Ashtakala and Korliac.
Toff's torment was buried deep within her, blurring together to form one single event. Which was good, because if she broke down then they would have all died. Unfortunately for them the orb she had didn't seem to do much, it was dull and lost the gleam it had when she found it. They had more pressing concerns however, Korliac proved to be a little OP. No matter how hard they hit him, he only seemed to take 1 damage. His AC was higher than theirs, and dispel magic was no use against his magic gear. Every hit of his turned their blood to acid and finally after a round they realized they needed to flee. 1 Chase later, they barely managed to planeshift away, to regroup and resurrect those who had fallen.
And so the group embarked on the quest of determining how to kill Korliac the Grey Flame, emissary of Bel-Shalor the Shadow in the Flame. It was pretty simple, so I don't know why they didn't figure it out at first. 1) get him to fail a save in a consecrated zone to prevent extradimensional travel, this also cuts his artifacts off from the power of Bel-Shalor. 2) Dispel magic him, making sure to roll a total of 20 to dispel his magic items. 3) Then you just have to knock out a very mad Pit Fiend, who has spent a few rounds turning your blood in to Acid. 4) Once that is done, beat him down then cast Imprisonment on him. If he dies, he can simply revive in the hells, this prevents any of that. Fortunately they realized the gravity of the situation and actually spent days planning their approach. They also had Werth, a divination wizard checking out the omens of each day. Finally they had three bad omens, which meant it was go time.
The plan went well. There were a few rounds where it was close, but once the items were dispelled it was all over. Toff had engineered a trap with the Orc Tribes to make sure they fought Korliac alone, and it worked. I was never prouder then when they trashed Korliac.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 6 No story survives contact with the players.] I had expected Belanor to listen to the Coutal, a symbol of his faith. His selfish nature took over and he refused to kill it insisting that he, Belanor wasn't that sort of person and damned the world. we never explored it in game, but his actions started two major wars and made a permanent schism in the Church of the Silver Flame (An additional one, his being a Solar already causing prior blood of vol cultists to convert to worship him). I'm not irritated by this, rather I love it. Players will always surprise you no matter what you think you know. The best thing to do is roll with it.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 7 You can have a world beyond the players, but don't expect them to care.] I occasionally tried to add more politics to the story of the game, but the players never bit. So finally when we got to this plot I just skipped past it. In a game about the players, don't focus on things the players are not concerned with. A combination of their high level and arc the game took, they just didn't care about continental politics. So the war happened, the religious schism happened, but none of it really effected the players. It was all for me, and we just skimmed over it.[/sblock]
[sblock=Back on track]
Finally with Bel-Shalor defeated they found Toff's Orb was working again, no longer suppressed by Korliac's fell influence. From it emerged a powerful tool, a Holy Avenger Dimensional Anchor Spear. At this point I was just slamming cool items together and calling it a day, and it was pretty sweet. They decided it was time and began to move to attack the rakshasas, unfortunately the Rakshasas struck first and the party was on the backfoot, protecting their loved ones in Sharn and trying to stop them. Over the course of that day they realized the current plan. They wanted to frame the Warforged as terrorists, lashing out at Sharn in an effort to start a war or have them banished. Then, when the Warforged were beaten down the Rakshasas would step in to rescue them and gain their army, a perfectly loyal force of trained soldiers who are shunned by the rest of the world. Fortunately for Khorvaire this plan did not come to pass with some quick thinking and lots of hacking and slashing from the party.
Finally with everything relatively settled in Sharn (Remember, two wars and a church schism) they set out to Xen'Drik to deal with Belashyrra.
[/sblock]
[sblock=The Fate of Worlds part 2: invaders from afar (Level 24+)]
Thus embarked the last arc of the game. I had some grand plans for having them retake Khyber. There were outposts, the ability to build strongholds. I made troops the players could recruit gained from years of play but at the end of the day high level fights that had a chance of danger took too long, we could do at best 1.5 per session. A full campaign to retake Khyber would take a literal year, and one player was going to Grad School soon, so I sped it up.
The party braved the horrors of the Dolgaunts, a series of creations each more horrifying than the last. Belashyrra continued to talk to them, discuss the "art" that he made and asked the characters to critique it. Every time they thought they understood the creatures, a new one would appear with a new role to play. Finally Belashyrra showed them his best creation, and hinted at his magnum opus. The party had many dead characters.
At this point nothing normal challenged them, so I ignored normal. I made a series of creations designed to fill a role and attack one of the party's weaknesses. We had a series of introductory encounters, culminating in what I called the Dolgant Perfect. I would estimate a character died every other combat because I was trying to kill them. They had a Solar on their team, which meant 3 free resurrections a day, and they had never been challenged like this before. I did actually run mock fights, and it turns out when I played the characters with perfect information they usually didn't die. But when the PCs did they usually died after some miscommunication, it worked perfectly.
With each death they lost some part of their soul. Every time they died and came back the Dolgaunts learned one of their abilities and one of their body parts was replaced by a symbiont. They slowly lost themselves down there. The characters fought onwards with the only goal of killing Belashyrra and getting themselves back. The most horrifying creature was the Dolgaunt Perfect, if it managed to lock you in it's maw it could take a part of your soul.
In my best idea yet, the Doldgaunts were ever evolving, specifically every time a character died I rolled a d20 and gave all the dolgaunts the ability the character got at that level as well as a hit die. When the players realized this they were horrified and immedeately started playing more defensively, Death meant something to them again. The scariest part was the Perfect's ability to not only gain an ability, but remove it from that player. Overall I think I managed to actually finally make them fear for their character while still acknowledging how powerful their characters actually were. Because I ramped up to this, the players didn't feel cheated, it was well telegraphed.
Finally they encountered something strange, a writhing mass of tentacles that seemed to be made of millions of Symbionts. without much direction they walled it up in a force cage and a stone wall. This was a mistake. They found the same mass again later, but this time it was twice as large and had learned how to disintegrate things as well as splash acid. They fought it as normal this time, and when they struck the "final blow" they watched as these symbionts scattered in all directions. But still they soldiered onwards finally arriving in the main city, Belashyrra's domain.
The main enemy of the Symbiont Swarm was 100% ripped off of a Sci-Fi novel called Broken Angels. In that they face a nanobot swarm that learns to respond to methods used to destroy it. In effect every time you fight it, you tell it how to beat you the next time. In my original plan I wanted them to face it many more times having it grow and eventually have them think outside the box on either how to defeat it, or plan to not use all their various abilities to prevent it from learning. Sadly that didn't fully happen, though I think I drove the point home. Any lesson here? Steal Steal Steal and then Steal some more.
Finally in the city they saw the extent of Belashyrra's art. All the creatures flayed, recombined and taken apart. They saw many failed creatures and the evolution of what came to be the creations they fought. Finally they entered the citadel where Belashyrra made his home. And were greeted by his creations. A wall split the party in two leaving some to have to deal with a Perfect, but they managed to regroup and pull through with no losses. They quickly healed up using all their items and made their way in to the main room where they were greeted by a familiar sight, a mass of writhing symbionts making up a colossal octopus like creature appeared and spoke to them this time. It said it learned from its past mistakes, and the only thing left now was to assimilate the characters to bring a new way of life to world, the characters were non-plussed. They began to hack and slash, finding it harder than before, but still, manageable. Quickly however, Belanor spied a figure watching with interest, Belashyrra. Belanor made the executive decision to attack Belashyrra, and things got much harder. Now rather than being a passive observer he was dragged in to the fight half way through, and fighting a powered Symbiont Swarm and Belashyrra was not easy. As the fight went on they managed to dissipate the swarm, but it seemed the more Belashyrra was hurt the more dangerous he became. Finally as many of the party lay diying in Belashyrra's psychic haze Val'Dax in a flury of swords managed to bring Belashyrra down. It was over. with most of the cosmic threats eliminated the group parted ways. Things were stable for now.[/sblock]
We did a ton of stuff, it turns out a 2+ year campagin has a lot of things happening in it. There was much I left out, but I hit all the major points. I learned so much just by playing, and the #1 thing I learned from all of this is Don't Mix Game Types. We started with a game about the characters, and their heroes journey to make a mark on the world and overcome their adversaries. That is what the game should have been about. I occasionally added some extra elements that I wanted to try. Sometimes we added some survival elements, sometimes it was trying to get them to be involved in political affairs, but each time that fell flat. The game was about the characters, and it should have stayed that way.
You can of course have a game where you mix these things, but that's something that should be determined at the beginning. How the game is structured plays a big role in how the players play their characters and even how sessions are structured.
And of course beyond that I learned a lot about how 5e ticks, what knobs can really be turned or even just ignored, how to create high level encounters, high level monsters ETC. (Spoiler, it really does rely on your players choices at that point).
This is a long way of saying, I played a lot of 5e and will happily tell people my opinions if they want to hear it.
[sblock=The final party aka Belanor's Exemplary Group of Legend Seekers aka BEGLS.]
Toff ir'Fong - Human 20 Monk (Earthbender) / 5 Mystic / 4 Epic
Belanor el'Gwaylen Lyrical Savant - Solar (Former Half-Elf) 20 Bard (Valor) / 1 Fighter / 4 Rogue (Swashbuckler) / 4 Epic
Val'Dax - Drow 19 Ranger (Hunter) / 6 Barbarian (Totem) / 4 Epic
Bulwark - Warforged 25 Fighter (Battlemaster) / 4 Epic
Werth ir'Tain - Human 25 Wizard (Divination) / 4 Epic
[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 1 Having a campaign setting to start saves invaluable time.] I got the 3.5 campaign guide and read it bit by bit to understand the world. Having much of work in naming, populating and describing different areas freed me up. I was somewhat lucky in that none of my players were familiar with Eberron, so if I changed things they didn't notice. But based on my first attempts to make a campaign world, this ended up being significantly easier. Recently I started a campaign in my own homebrew world, however that game is a hexcrawl where I started by making a map and seeding each environment, each hex, making all the groups and creating NPCs. In effect I made my own campaign setting with the lessons I learned from using others, my first attempt, and 6 years of experience.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 2 How to homebrew.] My girlfriend was enamored with the idea of playing Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender ( This ends up being less Mary Sue than it sounds [ It also spawned the prevalence of the phrase "DMGF Privilege", which gets lots of mileage in our group { I will admit, it still ended up being medum Mary Sue, my GF expressed relief that she can play a new character with more significant flaws now that the campaign is over. }. ]. ). I tried something based on the monk and was dissatisfied. Over the course of play we eventually got to a place where she was an archetype of Monk and everyone was happy. But after playing for several months which knobs I could turn safely became apparent more than. At this point I feel pretty comfortable making pathfinder style archetypes if someone isn't quite satisfied with their character.[/sblock]
[sblock=Humble beginnings (Levels 6 - 10)]
BEGLS started as somewhat well known artifact hunters, running a small shop in Sharn. With Val'Dax's knowledge of Xen'Drik, Toff's earthbending and Belanor's persuasive nature and Bulwark being a warforged it was not surprising that Morgrave University hired them to recover an artifact they just got a new lead on. BEGLS was given a hefty prize to board the next airship to Xen'Drik and recover a Docent that might have ancient information.
After a short foray in to Xen'Drik they recovered their Docent who was sadly quite damaged and couldn't remember exactly where any Dragon Orbs were (Stand in for MacGuffin of great power, sought after by many groups for various purposes). During this time they gained the ire of several groups. It started when they went to Merrix d'Cannith who tried to take the docent for himself much to their chagrin. After some bad decisions they had to leave town for while as they were wanted for murder. On the a train they encountered the second group of people trying to get those orbs, The Emerald Claw.
They made powerful friends of their own and leveraged that in to returning to Sharn with no charges, however that did not stop their enemies. After a few failed assassination attempts during a pastry competition they got back to their task at hand, stopping Merrix. Several weeks of plotting, spying, and killing later the party had found out where Merrix has his secret creation forge in Xen'Drik. They went there and one mission later Merrix was no more, his prisoners were rescued and Jorlanna d'Cannith was now the leader of house Cannith in the west.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 3 Pacing] This game was fundamentally a story based game about the characters and their story (This is opposed to a game about the world and how the players interact with that). As such I made it a goal to have two enemies the party was facing, one primary (Merrix) and one secondary (The Emerald Claw). Then there would be one enemy lurking in the shadows waiting to strike when the party was weak (Rakshasas). In this way they always had their goal of trying to stop Merrix d'Cannith but in the course of doing that they were harassed by the Emerald Claw. This let the party tackle different challenges if one seemed like it was being bogged down. This also meant that as they progressed their foes knew who they were, their abilities and goals. Also by having the foes be interested in them for a longer span of time, the rivalry was more rooted in character, rather than simply being of convince. They hated The Emerald Claw by the time they were seeking to destroy them. Half the group Hated the Rakshasas by the time they were read to be taken down, and eventually everyone feared the Dolgaunts by the end.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 4 I try to buy my player's love with treasure.] I have no self control when it comes to treasure. I decided to give them a triple hoard after getting past Merrix. "Why?" You might ask, and I would tell you "I don't know". I will give out another massive hoard later on, but after that I get things more under control. In my current game I am trying very hard to stick to the DMG because it is a hexcrawl. But the desire is always there to give the players a new shiny thing because I like new shiny things. Recently I have been examining the low magic assumptions and fitting the magic items I give out in to that mold. My problem was that I had given out so many magic items the player didn't really care about new ones unless they did something better. When you have a Vorpal Blade, where do you go? I am keeping better track of this in my new campaigns.[/sblock]
[sblock=Larger threats come to bear (Levels 11 - 17)]
With Merrix gone they turned their attention to The Emerald Claw. With the creation forge destroyed they had no hope of fixing the docent and getting a real map to any dragon orbs. Fortunately one item they recovered was a genie lamp. One lucky roll later three wishes were had. Wish number 1 - I want a baby Wyvvern Egg so our ranger can have his dream pet. Wish number 2 - I wish our docent was fixed. Wish number 3 - I wish you were my best friend. Toff was not a power wisher. All three wishes were granted, sadly the Docent needed some time to organize all its data before it could give them a good map, so the group decided it was time to eliminate The Emerald Claw. This is around the time they learned Jorlana was dating a Rakshasa who had grand plan.
The party was split. Bulwark, Val'Dax and Werth were content ignoring the Rakshasa, it wasn't hurting anyone so what's the big deal? Belanor having newly found the Silver Flame was adamant that the Rakshasas be killed as they were nothing but fiends. That left Toff in the uncomfortable position of being courted by these fiends for unknown reasons. Toff wanted the Warforged to have a future, to have a place they could call their own and be able to go to school and get jobs. Working with the Daughters of Sora Kell she started to see how the Warforged would have a home in Droaam, and the Rakshasas wanted to help. This all seemed good, but clearly it could not be, their souls were black as night.
While that was happening the group started to find intel on secret Emerald Claw bases, they began systematically raiding these bases to find where their main headquarters were. One base was an interdimensional stronghold lead by one Count Strahd von Zarovitch, a personal friend of Erandis Vol. (Destruction of cannon aside, it was a great few sessions as this high powered group ran through the original Ravenloft, with some plot related additions). The end result, lots more treasure and one character death. After the party got split by one of the many traps Bulwark and Val'Dax began to fight Count Strahd while the rest of the party was cornered by some Iron Golems. Bulwark got charmed and Val'Dax took a swing at him to try and wake him up. His newly found Vorpal Blade went snicker snack and Bulwark was no longer charmed. The last thing Bulwark remembers was Count Strahd's eyes and then blackness, Val'Dax confirms that Bulwark was killed in that fight. Fortunately they found a scroll of resurrection and everything was good.
After finally reaching the final base they stopped the main Emerald Claw plot. There was to be a mass sacrifice for Erandis to try and return her to power sans dragon orb. With that halted the group made their way to her lair where they finally gave her the final death. With the present, widespread and very corporeal threat of the Emerald Claw gone, the group began to understand their largest foe. Val'Dax, an Umbragen drow had left his home to find something to help in the fight against the Daelkyr, they started to learn more about the history and the importance of Byeshk in warding against these creatures. Fortunately the Daughters of Sora Kell happened to be right next to the mountains full of the stuff, they just wanted some help establishing their new nation, and with several noble contacts it was a slam dunk.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 5 Pacing again.] If you are playing a game bout the characters and their story, you do not need to slog through fights that have no chance of a deadly outcome unless it is part of a larger adventuring day. The plan of discovering the extent of the Emerald Claw operation by sneaking in to bases and stealing documents was great. The execution was not. Each base ended up being a slog where they simply fought everything inside. They were swinging above their level because of the magic items I showered on them and I was unwilling or unclear on how to adjust things to be relevant again, a problem that would plague me until about level 21 or so. As a result we just had several sessions that were go to a place, walk in fight for a few hours, leave. In a different world I would have tightened up the whole experience, advancing them to the next plot relevant point quickly when it was apparent that there was no value gained by simply fighting through bases of disposable enemies. Another option would have been to radically overpower the bases to make it so they simply couldn't walk in and rather had to use a combination of stealth, cunning and combat to get to their goal. In either case, the planned sessions were simply unnecessary. This also resulted in them blowing through the levels 12 - 16 or so just fighting group after group. I wish I had enforced a more dramatic narrative arc during this time, rather than simply allow weeks of slogging.[/sblock]
[sblock=The fate of worlds part 1, Fiends (Levels 18-23)]
They now had two threats, the Rakshasas and other Lords of Dust whom the Rakshasas had dealings with and the Daelkyr who were still a mystery. The group determined with a fixed Docent that there was an Orb of Dragonkind hidden in Ashtakala, the home city of the Lords of Dust. With that power they could defeat the Rakshasas permanently, and so they went. The group braved the Demon Wastes. Along the way they met the orc tribes who were fervent followers of the Silver Flame. Belanor was enamored with them and their zealotry, and quickly became friends. So the party went to Ashtakala and changed things forever.
In Ashtakala, in the Garden of Pain the last Coutal lives, tortured endlessly, but never killed. In this way his soul cannot join the Silver Flame, and through him the wards are not fully complete. A clever or powerful overlord could use this flaw to escape. The party knowing none of this rescued the Coutal. As soon as his Dracolich guard was defeated he begged Belanor "Kill me now so that I may join the Flame and my bretheren who used their lives to keep Eberron safe" to which Belanor responded, tearfully "No, I cannot kill a creature a noble as thee". And so this Coutal was not slain, and the largest sideplot emerged. Now having a way past the Flame, Bel-Shalor granted his emissary great power. And thusly Korliac of the Grey Flame came to be their foe, but that is not yet.
The party feeling good about both rescuing the Coutal and vandalizing the building that the Lords of Dust meet in finally found the locaton of the dragon orb, it was beyond a portal, that only Toff could pass through. So she did, and found her self trapped in a maze, running from a high pitched Hyena laughter that always seemed to find her. Finally, after using all her powers she found herself face to face with the Orb. Then it appeared, The Goristro. A single critical gore attack was enough to simply kill Toff, and she found herself in a maze, with a vague feeling she had been there before. Finally she found her self face to face with the orb, but this time it was different, she dodged the Goristro's attack, grabbed the orb and saw her escape. Thusly Toff emerged, 7 years older to a party fighting for it's life against the denizens of Ashtakala and Korliac.
Toff's torment was buried deep within her, blurring together to form one single event. Which was good, because if she broke down then they would have all died. Unfortunately for them the orb she had didn't seem to do much, it was dull and lost the gleam it had when she found it. They had more pressing concerns however, Korliac proved to be a little OP. No matter how hard they hit him, he only seemed to take 1 damage. His AC was higher than theirs, and dispel magic was no use against his magic gear. Every hit of his turned their blood to acid and finally after a round they realized they needed to flee. 1 Chase later, they barely managed to planeshift away, to regroup and resurrect those who had fallen.
And so the group embarked on the quest of determining how to kill Korliac the Grey Flame, emissary of Bel-Shalor the Shadow in the Flame. It was pretty simple, so I don't know why they didn't figure it out at first. 1) get him to fail a save in a consecrated zone to prevent extradimensional travel, this also cuts his artifacts off from the power of Bel-Shalor. 2) Dispel magic him, making sure to roll a total of 20 to dispel his magic items. 3) Then you just have to knock out a very mad Pit Fiend, who has spent a few rounds turning your blood in to Acid. 4) Once that is done, beat him down then cast Imprisonment on him. If he dies, he can simply revive in the hells, this prevents any of that. Fortunately they realized the gravity of the situation and actually spent days planning their approach. They also had Werth, a divination wizard checking out the omens of each day. Finally they had three bad omens, which meant it was go time.
The plan went well. There were a few rounds where it was close, but once the items were dispelled it was all over. Toff had engineered a trap with the Orc Tribes to make sure they fought Korliac alone, and it worked. I was never prouder then when they trashed Korliac.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 6 No story survives contact with the players.] I had expected Belanor to listen to the Coutal, a symbol of his faith. His selfish nature took over and he refused to kill it insisting that he, Belanor wasn't that sort of person and damned the world. we never explored it in game, but his actions started two major wars and made a permanent schism in the Church of the Silver Flame (An additional one, his being a Solar already causing prior blood of vol cultists to convert to worship him). I'm not irritated by this, rather I love it. Players will always surprise you no matter what you think you know. The best thing to do is roll with it.[/sblock]
[sblock=Lesson 7 You can have a world beyond the players, but don't expect them to care.] I occasionally tried to add more politics to the story of the game, but the players never bit. So finally when we got to this plot I just skipped past it. In a game about the players, don't focus on things the players are not concerned with. A combination of their high level and arc the game took, they just didn't care about continental politics. So the war happened, the religious schism happened, but none of it really effected the players. It was all for me, and we just skimmed over it.[/sblock]
[sblock=Back on track]
Finally with Bel-Shalor defeated they found Toff's Orb was working again, no longer suppressed by Korliac's fell influence. From it emerged a powerful tool, a Holy Avenger Dimensional Anchor Spear. At this point I was just slamming cool items together and calling it a day, and it was pretty sweet. They decided it was time and began to move to attack the rakshasas, unfortunately the Rakshasas struck first and the party was on the backfoot, protecting their loved ones in Sharn and trying to stop them. Over the course of that day they realized the current plan. They wanted to frame the Warforged as terrorists, lashing out at Sharn in an effort to start a war or have them banished. Then, when the Warforged were beaten down the Rakshasas would step in to rescue them and gain their army, a perfectly loyal force of trained soldiers who are shunned by the rest of the world. Fortunately for Khorvaire this plan did not come to pass with some quick thinking and lots of hacking and slashing from the party.
Finally with everything relatively settled in Sharn (Remember, two wars and a church schism) they set out to Xen'Drik to deal with Belashyrra.
[/sblock]
[sblock=The Fate of Worlds part 2: invaders from afar (Level 24+)]
Thus embarked the last arc of the game. I had some grand plans for having them retake Khyber. There were outposts, the ability to build strongholds. I made troops the players could recruit gained from years of play but at the end of the day high level fights that had a chance of danger took too long, we could do at best 1.5 per session. A full campaign to retake Khyber would take a literal year, and one player was going to Grad School soon, so I sped it up.
The party braved the horrors of the Dolgaunts, a series of creations each more horrifying than the last. Belashyrra continued to talk to them, discuss the "art" that he made and asked the characters to critique it. Every time they thought they understood the creatures, a new one would appear with a new role to play. Finally Belashyrra showed them his best creation, and hinted at his magnum opus. The party had many dead characters.
At this point nothing normal challenged them, so I ignored normal. I made a series of creations designed to fill a role and attack one of the party's weaknesses. We had a series of introductory encounters, culminating in what I called the Dolgant Perfect. I would estimate a character died every other combat because I was trying to kill them. They had a Solar on their team, which meant 3 free resurrections a day, and they had never been challenged like this before. I did actually run mock fights, and it turns out when I played the characters with perfect information they usually didn't die. But when the PCs did they usually died after some miscommunication, it worked perfectly.
With each death they lost some part of their soul. Every time they died and came back the Dolgaunts learned one of their abilities and one of their body parts was replaced by a symbiont. They slowly lost themselves down there. The characters fought onwards with the only goal of killing Belashyrra and getting themselves back. The most horrifying creature was the Dolgaunt Perfect, if it managed to lock you in it's maw it could take a part of your soul.
In my best idea yet, the Doldgaunts were ever evolving, specifically every time a character died I rolled a d20 and gave all the dolgaunts the ability the character got at that level as well as a hit die. When the players realized this they were horrified and immedeately started playing more defensively, Death meant something to them again. The scariest part was the Perfect's ability to not only gain an ability, but remove it from that player. Overall I think I managed to actually finally make them fear for their character while still acknowledging how powerful their characters actually were. Because I ramped up to this, the players didn't feel cheated, it was well telegraphed.
Finally they encountered something strange, a writhing mass of tentacles that seemed to be made of millions of Symbionts. without much direction they walled it up in a force cage and a stone wall. This was a mistake. They found the same mass again later, but this time it was twice as large and had learned how to disintegrate things as well as splash acid. They fought it as normal this time, and when they struck the "final blow" they watched as these symbionts scattered in all directions. But still they soldiered onwards finally arriving in the main city, Belashyrra's domain.
The main enemy of the Symbiont Swarm was 100% ripped off of a Sci-Fi novel called Broken Angels. In that they face a nanobot swarm that learns to respond to methods used to destroy it. In effect every time you fight it, you tell it how to beat you the next time. In my original plan I wanted them to face it many more times having it grow and eventually have them think outside the box on either how to defeat it, or plan to not use all their various abilities to prevent it from learning. Sadly that didn't fully happen, though I think I drove the point home. Any lesson here? Steal Steal Steal and then Steal some more.
Finally in the city they saw the extent of Belashyrra's art. All the creatures flayed, recombined and taken apart. They saw many failed creatures and the evolution of what came to be the creations they fought. Finally they entered the citadel where Belashyrra made his home. And were greeted by his creations. A wall split the party in two leaving some to have to deal with a Perfect, but they managed to regroup and pull through with no losses. They quickly healed up using all their items and made their way in to the main room where they were greeted by a familiar sight, a mass of writhing symbionts making up a colossal octopus like creature appeared and spoke to them this time. It said it learned from its past mistakes, and the only thing left now was to assimilate the characters to bring a new way of life to world, the characters were non-plussed. They began to hack and slash, finding it harder than before, but still, manageable. Quickly however, Belanor spied a figure watching with interest, Belashyrra. Belanor made the executive decision to attack Belashyrra, and things got much harder. Now rather than being a passive observer he was dragged in to the fight half way through, and fighting a powered Symbiont Swarm and Belashyrra was not easy. As the fight went on they managed to dissipate the swarm, but it seemed the more Belashyrra was hurt the more dangerous he became. Finally as many of the party lay diying in Belashyrra's psychic haze Val'Dax in a flury of swords managed to bring Belashyrra down. It was over. with most of the cosmic threats eliminated the group parted ways. Things were stable for now.[/sblock]
We did a ton of stuff, it turns out a 2+ year campagin has a lot of things happening in it. There was much I left out, but I hit all the major points. I learned so much just by playing, and the #1 thing I learned from all of this is Don't Mix Game Types. We started with a game about the characters, and their heroes journey to make a mark on the world and overcome their adversaries. That is what the game should have been about. I occasionally added some extra elements that I wanted to try. Sometimes we added some survival elements, sometimes it was trying to get them to be involved in political affairs, but each time that fell flat. The game was about the characters, and it should have stayed that way.
You can of course have a game where you mix these things, but that's something that should be determined at the beginning. How the game is structured plays a big role in how the players play their characters and even how sessions are structured.
And of course beyond that I learned a lot about how 5e ticks, what knobs can really be turned or even just ignored, how to create high level encounters, high level monsters ETC. (Spoiler, it really does rely on your players choices at that point).
This is a long way of saying, I played a lot of 5e and will happily tell people my opinions if they want to hear it.
