D&D chatter

You know those moments when the party pulls A Weird, Risky Stunt that takes you totally unawares? An out-of-left-field encounter resolution where you have to go, “Sorry, one sec, the DM is buffering - let me sort out what happens”?

Well. It’s kind of my first time experiencing that and it was very fun and I’ve never seen my party quite so on the edge of their seats before. :D

Curse of Strahd spoilers below the cut.

Spoiler: Aforementioned CoS Spoilers

Our party has recently delved into the basement dungeon below a rather haunted mansion once belonging to the upper-class Durst family. They’ve found the basement rather unhospitable - what with the ghoulish remains of unfamiliar humans clawing up from the earth, and a lone grick laired up in the larder - but they didn’t really get the Real Big Spookings until they went poking about further in.

The chamber: full of manacled skeletons and an imposing statue of a disdainful-looking pale man with one hand resting on the flank of a snarling wolf, the other holding a crystal orb.

The party warlock: casting Detect Magic and picking up that....

A) the orb has an aura of divination magic, and

B) oh, he’d not noticed how the statue has too many shadows but now he can sense their necrotic energy he sure does now!!

Also the party warlock: touching the orb to see if he can remove it.

The rest of the party: watching on in moderate-to-severe alarm, but nobody’s going to stop him...

So naturally the moment he lays a hand on it, those extra shadows shift and rise up like so much smoke, full of ominous whispers. They’re poised to converge on him....

And then the warlock says, “DM, do I have time to do something before this kicks off,” and I say, “Depending on what that is, sure, what do you wanna try?” because I want to see where this is going, and he....drops into a low bow and asks what they require of him.

And I’m like Huh. Okay. Gimme a quick general Charisma, I guess, to see how well you play the part. He passes.

So they tell him that ‘he requires sacrifice, he requires your devotion’. He tries to offer up a fancy (and slightly macabre) eyepatch he found earlier. No response - they stand and wait in silent judgement. The air is tense, the temporary truce feeling Extremely Temporary unless he can think fast-

And from the back of the room (where everyone else is just frozen silent waiting to see where this goes), the firbolg paladin finally pipes up. They swoosh their cape and cast Disguise Self, and in their place stands the man depicted in the statue. They specify that they want to throw their arm aside as if casting *off* their form, and who am I to say no to a move like that? They are, without knowing who he is yet, impersonating Strahd himself.

Not!Strahd gives a haughty hand-wave and dismisses the shadows, calling Lucan back to his side - “Enough of this. Come away. We have no need of that.” They tell the shadows they are dismissed!!!

And I’m there like OKAY OKAY OKAY..........roll deception there, buddy. Because they’ve shown up and decided to uhhhh Pretend To Be The Guy They Don’t ICly Know Is Literally Strahd. There are no middle options - this will end either very well, or very badly indeed.

I’m there rolling dice for the shadows - do they see through the ruse?

The paladin passes with flying colours.

So they’re The Guy They Don’t Know Is Strahd now - they continue to address the warlock like an ill-disciplined servant, and he plays along and falls in line. The shadows, at their ‘master’s’ command, fade back into their place on the wall. Not!Strahd brushes their fingers over the orb, and feels that same chill, that same sensation of being watched - along with a low, dark chuckle that only they hear. They’ve certainly dodged the immediate threat, but their antics have not gone unnoticed. :)c

The paladin got the hell out of there in as dignified and ostentatious a fashion as possible, barking for the others to follow. The moment everyone was into the next room over, they slammed the door behind them and all sort of sagged in abject relief, IC and OOC. :D

I know it’s probably super Newbie DM of me to get so jazzed, but it’s the first time I’ve had the experience of, “Oh man, the thing you’re doing is very cool and has interesting consequences so I’m not very well going to rain on this parade - roll and we’ll see what happens.” Particularly playing from a prewritten campaign, it’s exciting to find out what happens when the players do something unprecendented - I was as excited and nervous about their rolls as they were??

I LOVE DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, DMing is so fun now I’m getting the hang of it!! I get so nervous before game time but once we’re in, this party makes it so worth it. It’s also the first time they’ve de-escalated something that was very obviously about to be violent, which they celebrated in the aftermath of the game, haha!

I just can’t wait for next week. :)c

 

That experience never gets old.

 

I'm in a Dungeon of the Mad Mage campaign at the moment and I'm pretty sure my poor paladin is going to die of a heart attack before any of the monsters get him. The party warlock is an eternally curious drow who just... won't stop touching things. Even when they're really obviously cursed. And now he's got the cleric into it as well, and even ending up with skeleton hands from touching a cursed harpsicord hasn't bloody taught them.

 

3rd session today! finally starting to learn a bit more about Myria's curse - looks like it's somehow connected to an ancient army of feral zombie soldiers that the elves made to fight some giant ants! Our DM is excellent at worldbuilding so I can't wait to find out more!!

we also managed to avoid splitting the party today, unlike the first two sessions where we always ended up scattered all over the city at some point. Probably helps that we were in an actual dungeon this time. One of the other PCs is an elf who's told us almost nothing about his past, but some of it came to light today and I think I could get the rest out of him next session if I try so I'm very much looking forward to that.

 

Yesterday's game involved tiny little minnow shark swarms that could buzz through armour on a good enough roll.

We all agreed that they look like helicoprion, but teeny.

 

So this weekend was a bit nuts, but I learned stuff!

Thing One: I absolutely should avoid scheduling both games I'm running on the same weekend whenever possible. I got one group to commit to Saturdays and one to Sundays initially so I could do this if I needed to, but- wow, that was A Bit Too Much Stress on the planning side.

Thing Two: I'm in love with the Tabletop Audio website

Thing Three: I really, really appreciate all of my players <3

 

I'm planning the final adventure of the mini-arc for my all-hobbit party, and I am super super excited but also want to make this worth the build-up. This is the first time I've focused so much on structure, and the first time I've intentionally planned a mini-arc as opposed to either a one-shot or a long &/or open-ended campaign, and so it's weirdly nerve-wracking to try to stick the landing, so to speak?

 

squints

 

I swear I did not do that on purpose! My players were all pretty burned out on an exceedingly epic (both in length and in seriousness) campaign before I volunteered to run one, so we all wanted to scale down some lol.

 

I discovered yesterday that halfling gunslinger best gunslinger

Because in e5, guns have a 'misfire' mechanic that temporarily breaks the gun. It triggers if you nat1 an attack roll (usually, some have higher Rates). Except of course as a halfling you get the lucky trait, which lets you reroll all your nat1 checks, and which has no cooldown. You gotta take the second roll as it comes, but still. So you basically become immune to misfire, and it's GREAT

 

I think they're working on the basis of very early firearms which were more prone to destructive misfires, but... probably not quite so often. And such a misfire would require the weapon to be replaced, not repaired.
From the mechanical perspective, of course, there's no difference between 'fails to fire and needs reloading' and 'missed', so a critical fail has to do something worse...

 

I just realized that save for one (1) Party member, everyone has someone else riding shotgun in their Brains....

Sella: the green fire. BBEG. Sella hates it
Zizzik: Astilabor, cause cleric. Loves it
Petric: The False Moon, cause Patron. Also loves it
Asherra: the ghosts of the blue and white ancient dragon. Hates it
Omen: False Moon. Fragment shenanigans. Would prefer more
Yuka: the only one without mindfuckery. Yet.

This is apparently just kinda how we roll...

 

Like, during our last long rest, sella got a terrifying vision, ash had dragon shaped nightmares, and petric gained the ability to telepathically communicate with Warforged, in a limited fashion

You can see why he's a happy little roguelock.

 

If the tech is that early, though, reloading would take on the order of minutes. That's the era where people carried multiple pistols, not to dual wield but because that was the only way to get more than one shot off in the same fight.

 

A new player got the Perfectly Normal Deck of Cards and has been pulling at least two from it per session, on average. It's only in the second-to-most-recent session that a genuinely bad card came up as being from the Deck of Many Things. So now I get to design and detail the devil hordes of Orthuunol Menimenider who has just decided to hate some poor Tabaxi ranger in some little microplane somewhere for some reason.

Want to work out the why beyond

Also, am now sad I made the Awkward Axe a greataxe. Sure, it works better that way, but the player who got it also got the Repulsive Shield (described as being decorated with the most beautifully proficient designs ever seen by the dwarven(!) wielder, but unfortunately that talent was used to make the most grotesque and nauseating images possible, details left undescribed).

I feel like if he could wield both at once, that's just automatic advantage to Intimidate checks right there. Not just his, anyone referencing him as well. "Tell us what we want to know, or he'll be the one asking." "The one with a shield that makes my eyes want to vomit and the axe with screaming faces all over it." "That's the one."

The best part is that despite being a barbarian his background is as a cook, he's very passionate about his friends and good food and one of the less morally questionable people in the party. And yet...

Oh, also, the above-mentioned tabaxi ranger got a cursed mood ring, which determines his mood for the day forcibly. He got "angry" last time, which resulted in him attacking a bunch of Yuan-Ti during a ritual of theirs while demanding to speak with their manager.

I love both my parties so much.

 

for anyone interested currently playing spelljammer which is streaming on twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/aulddragon?sr=a

 

i started today’s session by drawing the suspicion of a paladin to poor Myria while she was reading suspicious scrolls in the library, and i ended the session by accidentally teleporting behind two fleeing assassins, clotheslining them with Tenser’s Floating Disk, and leaping on top of one of them so i could beat the other one unconscious with my quarterstaff!

i’ve been wanting to do that since i learned that Tenser’s Floating Disk exists and it felt just as awesome as i thought it would :D i’m also really excited by the paladin thing! i recently gave our DM a bunch more information about Myria’s backstory, including the fact that she’s wanted for necromancy by the political/religious authorities in her home city, and it looks like that will be biting her in the ass sooner rather than later ^^ AND some weird shit keeps happening with her magic. Cause Fear has given her visions of the target’s memories twice now, which it definitely isn’t supposed to do, and i think it gave one of the targets some kind of vision about her too. and that teleporting thing? she somehow learned it after reading an ancient riddle written in Draconic. Myria is freaked the fuck out and i am loving it!

also Myria is getting really worried about one of the other party members, Cheeky - she’s a half-elf sorcerer raised by gnomes who’s trying to discover her origin and the true nature of her powers, and in pursuit of this she’s gone to a local order of religious scholars who keep doing magical tests on her. Myria is absolutely convinced that if the nuns learn too much, they’ll decide she’s too dangerous to live, but she can’t get that through to Cheeky without revealing more of her own history than she’s willing to tell.

oh yeah and a couple hours into the session we got a surprise thunderstorm with hail :D real D&D weather!! i think this might have been the best session yet, and we’re playing again in two weeks ^^

 

Spoiler: i also made Myria in heroforge

and I bought a miniature which is actually fairly accurate