Session Recap: Keep on the Borderlands (12/29/17)

I am picking up these session recaps mid-stream on this campaign. To get you up to speed, we are playing 5th edition D&D. I initially had this group play through the Sunless Citadel (From the Tales from the Yawning Portal) converted to 5E. The group is a tad over-leveled for Keep on the Borderlands, but I have a few wrinkles that I'm tossing in to keep the game challenging. I should note that I'm basically running this straight out of the original B2 module.

The players for this session were:
Yvelda >> half-orc monk (Brian)
Nadar >> dragonborn paladin (Daniel)
Gensher >> tiefling paladin (Scott)

Player turn out was a little low for this one due to the holidays and people being away, but yet we persisted. The group picked up in the midst of clearing out the goblin warren of the Caves of Chaos. The goblins in my version are all red-cap goblins, meaning that they paint their hair with the blood of their enemies, but I play them fairly goofy and dumb, so most of the blood in their heads comes from their goblin buddies.

Let me diverge a minute and give my impressions of the power scaling in 5E player characters. They're too powerful! Just my opinion, but they are really a resilient bunch given the short rest options afforded to them. I've seen this in multiple game session in various campaigns, there is no fear in monster encounters once they reach the 3rd to 4th level and beyond, which leads to "lets kill everything" approach to play. To combat this, I try to flavor up my monsters a bit or toss in some unexpected abilities. In this session, the random encounter table did all of the work for me.

Back to the recap. The group pushed through a couple of large room goblin encounters making their way pretty easily to the chieftain's room. Many of the goblins had failed their moral check at this point and as the group based through the chieftain's barricaded door, these goblins were not looking for a fight. A few intimidate and persuasion (roleplaying checks as I call them) checks later and the group had cleared this section of the caves. They decided to take a short rest in the ogre cave and gather their loot before advancing, that's when I finally hit a random encounter and it was a doozy.

I rolled a 12 on a D12 >> Gelatinous Cube.

I had the cube waiting for them outside the cave pressed up against the wall, lead character Gensher missed his perception and he basically was one-shotted as the cube engulfed him pushing into the cave entrance. The next few rounds of combat were what make D&D great to me. Yvelda slowly chipped away at the hitpoints of the cube as I moved to engulf their hard earned loot, as Nadar did his best to pull Gensher out of the cube (barely accomplishing this). The two remaining members likely debated running with the loot leaving their companion to be consumed in the cube, but decided to stick it out risky life and limb. This is drama that no other game can simulate. Gensher survived making his final death save with a 2 / 2 split between living and dying...

They regrouped in the previously cleared kobold section of the caves and survived a long rest of random encounters, much to my surprise and disappointment. I'm telling you, really not a fan of the long / short rest mechanic in 5E...moving on they continued deeper into what they thought was the goblin section of caves, only to find out they had stumbled onto the hobgoblins. They don't have much trouble with the initial group of hobgoblins, even after I pulled the ones from the torture room down the hall. The group saves the hobgoblin captives, most importantly of which were the merchant and his wife. I tried to emphasis the horrors they had received at the hands of the hobgoblins and after a bit of convincing, they decided to escort them back to the Keep for a small reward. The merchant and his wife would have likely died on the road back had the group not decided to assist.

The party was likely needing a reset and to dump some loot at this point anyways, plus they had a quest item of sorts to turn into a general good merchant within the Keep. He had requested them find a lavish dress that had been stolen previously, his hope is to woo the barmaid at the Keep tavern whose husband was captured and currently MIA somewhere within the Caves of Chaos. I really love inserting a little conflict into the safe haven and the group took the bait on this one. In fact some members of the group are generally out to help the barmaid, while Nadar, who is a bit of chaotic paladin, is out to "assist" the merchant. There was a little drama between the two NPC's and now things are shaken up in the Keep. This was all great stuff and it is a open bit of story that the group wants to follow-up on when they aren't killing cave inhabitants.

We wrapped up, but I planted another story seed which I won't reveal just yet. I can't say enough how much I love my players, they are all fantastic role-players and they keep me guessing as a DM, evenings like this keep me fueled up to keep playing.