Into the ruins beneath Eldermere....the party fleeing the blazing fire now engulfing the village above descend into the forgotten depths beneath the town. I had a few traps and encounters planned for the first level of this dungeon, but it was not overly large in concept. 5 rooms consisting of burial chambers and crypts of a long forgotten king. Each of the crypts set to provoke an encounter if messed with with a minor undead entity (skeleton) with the final crypt holding the champion of the forgotten king (skeletal warrior). Of course the group was out for the goodies so all of the crypts were disturbed, with final encounter with the skeletal warrior grinding their resources down a bit further. There was one last room remaining which contained the sarcophagus of the court wizard, along with the secret entrance to the second level of the dungeon....
I always love the dialogue that arises from a group debating how far to push their luck in a dungeon when their resources start to be consumed. This harkens back to the days of my youth running 1st and 2nd edition games...when those resources run out, death is not far behind for the player characters. They decided to push onward...the "boss" of this level was a specter which had beefed up a bit and included a mechanic in which only allowed the creature to be hit / damaged when exposed to direct light. The theme of light vs. shadow is something I wanted to introduce here and now, because it will be ongoing through the rest of the dungeon as well as the remainder of the campaign.
Have I mentioned how much I love undead, they are great creatures, I miss the danger of level drain, but 5E has some included the mechanic in their HP and stat draining abilities in some of the more powerful undead. My wizard-shadow specter could drain HP's and it made this encounter some lethal...the group was definitely caught off-guard by the shadow/light mechanic and I was able to drop the wizard before they could get their footing on the fight....he survived based on the death saving throws, but hey enjoy your new HP max of 4!
I digress....the group was pretty beat up at the point, but they did pick up this sweet sword off the skeletal champion...did I mention it was cursed? +1 to hit and damage, but if you do not spill blood every 24 hours for the sword to "drink" you take 1d8 damage that cannot be cured...have fun you murder hobo's! Have I mentioned how I love to reward my groups with cool, fun and usable magic items...this being my first campaign I had run in 5E, this turns out to be a bad idea in this edition, but more on that later.
The party decided to hole-up and take a long rest at this point, but I did have an encounter planned to foreshadow some of the shadows associated with the Book of the Shadowhorn.....don't forget, this is what they were here to find after all. The hope was to show that something truly evil, powerful and ancient was lingering here....this was the book. During the rest, I random rolled to see whose watch was affected...Petros, the warlock, he's evil by the way....during his watch, there in the darkness of the hallway something is moving swirling about, almost in macabre dance...risking a little more light, he reveals that innumerous shadows are floating and swirling about, too many to count as they withdrawal from the light. Mission accomplished as this set a sense dread upon the party, what were they actually up against here?.......
Friday, November 30, 2018
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Waterdeep Dragon Heist, Session 2
We were back in action of 4/5 of the players present for this game, no Aaron (Avaros the bard) for this one...it may have proven costly. Fresh off the heals rescuing Raeynar Neverember from the clutches of the Xanathar guild, the group decided to call it a night, rest, regroup and set off to find Floon in the morning.
They played this part pretty cautiously, recruiting help from the Street Sweepers guild of Waterdeep, thinking they may have better information as to where Xanathar sewer hideout would. Thanks to some quick NPC random rolling, I had a crippled dwarf lead them down into the sewers and get them going in the right direction.
The first noted encounter is with a solo gazer prior to reaching the hideout. I'm not really sure what the point of this encounter is...maybe to ahold to the fact that Xanathar is a beholder....regardless, the group blew right through this, the only drama was them making checks to leap over the sewage channel to the other side, which some promptly failed. I took my time to describe the smell and just pure awfulness of this....fecal matter hanging on their robes, bits of torn and stained cloth wrapped around their legs, make it gross!
Reaching the hideout, things got interesting....first encounter is with some goblins behind arrow slits, with the hopes of catching the unwary in a crossfire. Some impressive rolls and Amber the cleric "getting her hands dirty" made this encounter trivial.....she through shit at them. Moving into the hideout, the next scripted encounter turned the evening sour for the group. A duergar and Xanathar thug waited to ambush the party. Invisibility and surprise attacks can wreck a low level party....case in point: Moving deeper into the hideout, when suddenly the duergar strikes the sorcerer from behind...I crit....one down. Initiative and the thug moves in engaging Brian's character Paul, the duergar, now enlarged, cuts down Amber the cleric....the thug is dispatched, but the party is seriously hurting and my dice were hot. Have I mentioned I make all of my rolls out in the open, I don't fudge the dice rolls at least. It's now 2 versus 1, the rogue goes down next....I'm really sorry guys. Paul managed to score a hit on the duergar and I had him drop, perhaps a little before his HP total said he would.
Death saves and Paul trying to stabilize those who he could was high drama with everyone watching the rolls...I love these moments at the table, there is no talking, just the sound of the dice spinning. They all lived, but Cody's was on 2/3 death saves with the last roll, sealing his fate...he lived. My hands were tied for a couple of hours in-game as Paul barricaded and hid the recovery party and himself...some random noises deeper in the hideout, could I possibly through a random encounter at the one upright party member....maybe not this time.
Now recovered they move deeper into the hideout, a quick detour to check out a hastily barricaded closet door...surprise, it's a slime! Amber goes down and is nearly pulled into the pit....barely spared. Which leads to the final encounter...
So let me pause for a second and state, I'm really not a fan of the recent WoTC releases and this encounter is pretty poor in my opinion. If I had to do it over again, I'd change a lot...especially the whole mindflayer part. I get they are trying to allude to more danger and sinister things at work with the Xanathar guild, but it's just kinda poorly done.
OK, back to it...Bloth the rouge sneaks ahead and sees a red-headed man being tortured by a robed half-orc while this otherworldly, almost alien like creature looks on, its tentacled mouth twitching in perceived boredom. The group did pretty well, not to meta this encounter and proceeded ahead despite the quite obvious danger. As the group enters, I had the mindflayer exit with a dismissive hand...deal with these...The group had no issues here and Floon...beaten and scared was saved. I have to admit, I modeled my NPC Floon from Adam Koebel's stream of this same adventure on the Roll20 broadcast of their games. In fact I model a lot of my NPC's from him, fantastic DM.
That about wrapped it up....the party headed back, Floon in-hand, to collect their reward from Volo.....surprise it's Trollskull Manor. We'll pick up from here when I run the next session. If I could change anything about this session it would definitely be to remove the mindflayer from all of this..its is just a little much and awkward. I'd also make some more consequences for delaying in getting to Floon...perhaps they just find him dead, I don't think this really impacts anything. The group is still going to get the house. Anyways, stay tuned, I've got some good things planned heading into the next session as I start to deviate a lot from the book.
They played this part pretty cautiously, recruiting help from the Street Sweepers guild of Waterdeep, thinking they may have better information as to where Xanathar sewer hideout would. Thanks to some quick NPC random rolling, I had a crippled dwarf lead them down into the sewers and get them going in the right direction.
The first noted encounter is with a solo gazer prior to reaching the hideout. I'm not really sure what the point of this encounter is...maybe to ahold to the fact that Xanathar is a beholder....regardless, the group blew right through this, the only drama was them making checks to leap over the sewage channel to the other side, which some promptly failed. I took my time to describe the smell and just pure awfulness of this....fecal matter hanging on their robes, bits of torn and stained cloth wrapped around their legs, make it gross!
Reaching the hideout, things got interesting....first encounter is with some goblins behind arrow slits, with the hopes of catching the unwary in a crossfire. Some impressive rolls and Amber the cleric "getting her hands dirty" made this encounter trivial.....she through shit at them. Moving into the hideout, the next scripted encounter turned the evening sour for the group. A duergar and Xanathar thug waited to ambush the party. Invisibility and surprise attacks can wreck a low level party....case in point: Moving deeper into the hideout, when suddenly the duergar strikes the sorcerer from behind...I crit....one down. Initiative and the thug moves in engaging Brian's character Paul, the duergar, now enlarged, cuts down Amber the cleric....the thug is dispatched, but the party is seriously hurting and my dice were hot. Have I mentioned I make all of my rolls out in the open, I don't fudge the dice rolls at least. It's now 2 versus 1, the rogue goes down next....I'm really sorry guys. Paul managed to score a hit on the duergar and I had him drop, perhaps a little before his HP total said he would.
Death saves and Paul trying to stabilize those who he could was high drama with everyone watching the rolls...I love these moments at the table, there is no talking, just the sound of the dice spinning. They all lived, but Cody's was on 2/3 death saves with the last roll, sealing his fate...he lived. My hands were tied for a couple of hours in-game as Paul barricaded and hid the recovery party and himself...some random noises deeper in the hideout, could I possibly through a random encounter at the one upright party member....maybe not this time.
Now recovered they move deeper into the hideout, a quick detour to check out a hastily barricaded closet door...surprise, it's a slime! Amber goes down and is nearly pulled into the pit....barely spared. Which leads to the final encounter...
So let me pause for a second and state, I'm really not a fan of the recent WoTC releases and this encounter is pretty poor in my opinion. If I had to do it over again, I'd change a lot...especially the whole mindflayer part. I get they are trying to allude to more danger and sinister things at work with the Xanathar guild, but it's just kinda poorly done.
OK, back to it...Bloth the rouge sneaks ahead and sees a red-headed man being tortured by a robed half-orc while this otherworldly, almost alien like creature looks on, its tentacled mouth twitching in perceived boredom. The group did pretty well, not to meta this encounter and proceeded ahead despite the quite obvious danger. As the group enters, I had the mindflayer exit with a dismissive hand...deal with these...The group had no issues here and Floon...beaten and scared was saved. I have to admit, I modeled my NPC Floon from Adam Koebel's stream of this same adventure on the Roll20 broadcast of their games. In fact I model a lot of my NPC's from him, fantastic DM.
That about wrapped it up....the party headed back, Floon in-hand, to collect their reward from Volo.....surprise it's Trollskull Manor. We'll pick up from here when I run the next session. If I could change anything about this session it would definitely be to remove the mindflayer from all of this..its is just a little much and awkward. I'd also make some more consequences for delaying in getting to Floon...perhaps they just find him dead, I don't think this really impacts anything. The group is still going to get the house. Anyways, stay tuned, I've got some good things planned heading into the next session as I start to deviate a lot from the book.
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