D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

It was good- fast-paced, starting in a combat that was last session's cliffhanger and ending in a confrontation with the adventure's BBEG (or one of them, anyway) that was inconclusive and resulted in the bad guy fleeing while the pcs fell back, both sides pretty close to defeat.

For those familiar with it, I am running the 1e module L1: The Secret of Bone Hill, and the pcs fought the skelter, zombire, AND Telvar this session.

In today's "Dreams of Erthe" campaign, the PCs:

• Learned there were five dragons who couldn't be contacted through the Dragonmind (the voluntary telepathic network used by dragons when they sleep for months/years/decades, allowing them to stay in contact with others of their kind as they plot and scheme)
• Were told (by the Council running the Dreamlands) that in each case, when the moogles examined the dreams of the five sleeping dragons (one of each of the chromatic species), there was an overly-large hypnalis viper basking in the dream and taking on the properties of the dragon in whose dream they were squatting
• Agreed to rid the five dreams of their half-dragon hypnalis vipers, under the belief that slaying them would allow the sleeping dragons access to the Dragonmind once again
• Went in one by one to each dreamscape, taking on the white, red, green, blue, and black half-dragons in that order, five against one each time
• After each viper was slain, sure enough, that allowed the dragon to return to its "normal" dreaming and got it back into the Dragonmind (which was good, because that way the other dragons could talk the dragons out of attacking the dreamwalker PCs it "suddenly" found invading its dreams)

So, five short encounters with creatures the PCs had never fought before. These advanced hypnalis vipers were tough; several times I almost "killed" a PC (which would have resulted in that PC being thrown out of the Dreamlands and waking up in the Mortal World in a cold sweat), and there was a lot of draconic breath weapons and catching PCs in coils and constricting them going on in the dreamscapes. (In each case, the dragon's dreamscape was a representation of its lair on the Mortal Plane.) As a result, there was no treasure this time through, and the next adventure will have the PCs tracking down where these five advanced hypnalis vipers came from, considering the Nightmare King who controlled the "normal" ones has long since been slain.

Johnathan

Session 2 in the bag. Introduced the new character to our all-caster party, a ranged Fighter (sigh, lol), and after a lot of discussion, finally got the party on the road, only to run afoul of the first optional encounter, Sir Nycklos of Roeh, a 70+ year old Paladin (CR 8 Knight Champion!) with a Don Quixote complex and packing radiant heat! From there, they teamed up with a friendly "half-oger" and made their way to the next leg of the main quest...and almost turned right around and left after seeing what appeared to be a red dragon! Following an annoying fight against Jermlaine (annoying CR 1/8 fey) and their giant rat pets, they found a sizable hoard of loot.

Lessons learned: why do I always give the players multiple plot hooks simultaneously? It's just going to lead to time spent debating where to go.

Also, if you don't want the PC's to go someplace because they aren't ready for it, that is the one place they really want to go!

Stocking shops with useful items doesn't do you any good if the party is poor and doesn't think they can afford things.

If there is a potential for a combat, the players will always choose to fight.

If it looks like a dragon, expect the players to seriously consider turning around and going home!

16 cr 1/8's and a cr 1/4 might look like an ok encounter on paper, until you have to start rolling dice. Especially if a bunch of them have pack tactics!

Lighting rules suck.

Letting players find useful magic items doesn't help if they don't have the ability to identify those items in a timely fashion.

Players with darkvision will never say they have a light source unless you impose some penalty to them for being in dim light.

Til next time!

In tonight's "Ghourmand Vale" game session, the PCs:

• Were hired to stand watch over a slain paladin's corpse in the Temple of Pelor overnight, while the temple leadership went up to the top of the hills to catch the first rays of the morning sun to light the torch which would then be used to immolate the paladin's body; they'd be back three hours after dawn the next morning
• Took up positions and waited for trouble
• Got alerted by my sorcerer's grackle familiar that there were people approaching, so we got one round of "combat is imminent" spellcasting in before an enemy wizard cast a passwall spell through the back wall, 15 feet up (leading onto the choir loft, where my sorcerer and the elven archer were stationed), the opening showing up directly behind the (invisible) archer
• Had a human fighter, an elven fighter, a halfling rogue, and a gnome rogue enter the choir loft and head in opposite directions, two of them facing my sorcerer, who cast a chain lightning spell that killed the human fighter and hurt the other three (the wizard stayed outside the temple and was out of my range of vision)
• Had the archer move into position to snipe the wizard outside through the passwall opening, killing him instantly with a shot to the eye
• Caught the other three intruders in the druid's wall of thorns spell; they all damaged themselves trying to escape, to no avail
• Had my sorcerer kill both rogues and wound the elf fighter further with a lightning bolt spell
• Watched as a githyanki sword retrieval team (four githyanki fighters, one githyanki wizard) started dimension dooring into the temple, seeking to retrieve the silver sword the dead paladin had taken from their Astral Plane fortress years ago after it had already been taken by mind flayers (I guess it took them that long to track it to its current whereabouts)
• Concentrated fire on the githyanki intruders, considering only the elf fighter was left of the "local" thieves after the paladin's sword - and he was stuck good in the tangle of thorns
• Blasted the githyanki with chain lightning spells, the half-elf paladin charging over the choir balcony 15 feet down to a githyanki fighter, the elf druid summoning an elephant to gore another one, and the halfling rogue sneak attacking all over the place
• Watched as one githyanki fighter made it to the paladin's corpse and retrieved the githyanki silver sword, but killed her before she could dimension door away with it, then killed the last remaining githyanki the following round
• Allowed the elf fighter to surrender to the half-elf paladin, on the condition he "turned state's evidence" against the local thieves guild he worked for
• Observed the ritual burning of the slain paladin's body the following morning
• Got some well-needed sleep (and some sweet githyanki loot)

And we're now close enough to 13th level that next session should push us over the edge.

Johnathan

Richards said:

Watched as a githyanki sword retrieval team (four githyanki fighters, one githyanki wizard) started dimension dooring into the temple, seeking to retrieve the silver sword the dead paladin had taken from their Astral Plane fortress years ago after it had already been taken by mind flayers (I guess it took them that long to track it to its current whereabouts)

Click to expand...

So there's a Dungeon Magazine adventure that has a similar scenario, where a warrior stole a powerful silver sword, Diamond-edge and years later the Githyanki show up to reclaim it after he's long since retired (Into the Silver Realm, Dungeon #43). This is the explanation given:

So, simply put, time has no real meaning for the Githyanki- two weeks or thirty years, they can pop out of a color pool from the Astral Plane to get revenge for something you did months or years ago, but for them, it was yesterday.

Good point. I don't think the DM had that in mind when he came up with the adventure, but it's a happy coincidence that offers an excellent explanation. He was more concerned that we killed the githyanki sword retrieval team (as expected), and so he purposefully didn't have any of them have any Astral-cord cutting silver swords on them so we didn't just pile on more reasons for future githyanki attacks.

Johnathan

This past session my low level party sailed to an island, met crab folk who tried hard to drug them (not to harm them, but because they knew only a human could lead the group into the dungeon, and my PCs are half-sea-elves and a catfolk). NoPC succumbed, so they recruited a ship’s crewman as their token human hero, met the couatl who allowed them to enter the cave, and explored a small dungeon. They conquered the dungeon, but barely escaped, leaving most of the treasure behind; there was a time limit and a puzzle that they almost didn’t solve - they found an alternate path around it, avoiding doing the logic problem. The couatl though, grateful for being freed from guarding after 2,000+ years, both retrieved the buried treasure and told them a story about six more secret treasures hidden until it was time for a hero to retrieve them and defeat the Serpent People (for humanity). My PCs seemed somewhat unimpressed, but they are going to meet more serpent folk soon, so we shall see.

We finished an adventure arc in OSE.
The final couple of combats were so dull that the whole thing felt anti-climactic. One of my characters died due to either the DM not knowing the rules or just wanting to kill a character to show how challenging and exciting the game was.

Afterwards the DM mentioned they were considering switching the game to 5E, still using Dolmenwood as the setting, but converting the rules.

Playing right now. We’re in a war campaign fighting against orcs. So many orcs. It’s awesome.

EDIT
Light cleric just discovered Radiance of the Dawn. Player is all but drooling in excitement.

Great jungle exploration session. Including malaria, quicksand, a mudslide, rations getting spoiled by fungi, su-monsters, and a tasloi initiation ceremony based on this: