Walking through the sewers of the city, tracking down an unspeakable horror that has been eating the cities sewer workers.
The party comes to a crossroad that includes a number of boxes that control water flow, that open various passageways to navigate previously blocked off places.
My ranger reaches down to push a button.
Ends up elbow deep in a mimic....and that's where the session had to stop.
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If, if Reagan played disco He'd shoot it to shit You can't disco in Jackboots
Walking through the sewers of the city, tracking down an unspeakable horror that has been eating the cities sewer workers.
The party comes to a crossroad that includes a number of boxes that control water flow, that open various passageways to navigate previously blocked off places.
My ranger reaches down to push a button.
Ends up elbow deep in a mimic....and that's where the session had to stop.
Mimics need to be used sparingly. That situation sounds beautiful though. *golfclap*
Oh man I got a mimic adjacent scene just in the barrel ready to get fired in my game. Last session an assassin rogue picked up what they believe to be one use of dust of disappearance. It's definitely dust of sneezing and choking. I really hope she uses that as part of her first in game assassination target mission. I just wanna see that plan go totally south because there's absolutely no way to identify that the dust isn't dust of disappearance until you've used it and everything is going to shit.
Every movie I've ever seen leads me to believe you can tell the difference between drugs and sugar by sticking your pinky in and tasting/rubbing it against your gums. Why doesn't that work here?!
Every movie I've ever seen leads me to believe you can tell the difference between drugs and sugar by sticking your pinky in and tasting/rubbing it against your gums. Why doesn't that work here?!
This was an old cocaine thing, you could tell the cocaine was cocaine and not just baking powder by putting it on your gums. It would ostensibly numb them. However no investigator with an ounce of sense would ever actually do that with a random substance cause oops it's all poison and now you're dead.
Also the identify spell identifies it as dust of disappearance.
Last time was a shouting match for a couple hours, but it was surprisingly civil since most of it was from the character and not from the player. Time for my character's long-planned day off / Acererak research in Waterdeep. Prestidigitating myself clean every 20 minutes in the jungle is a bit tiresome. I managed to squeeze a couple Acera-facts out of my DM already!
DM's recap:
Homework: Think about what your character would do in the big city. Now's the time to relax, bond, develop your backstory, look for clues, and prepare for the dangerous journey ahead.
Episode 4 Recap: The Hunters
Gnome Chomsky barely noticed the tense standoff between two assassins. His chance for heroics had finally arrived, and he wasn't about to blow it. But which magnificent spell to cast? His mind wheeled, considering his wondrous new options. He could hardly wait to turn himself invisible and sneak over to where Teidi was being held prisoner, then effect a rescue. But he didn't know how to pick locks. No, perhaps it is Asher who should turn invisible. She could pick the lock, free Teidi, and they would all escape on the back of their faithful dinosaur companion. But then, Chomsky would be left out all alone, the only visible one! No, it was better to turn Teidi into a cockroach, so that he could scurry back out with none the wiser. This master plan could never fail! He fired the spell off immediately, then hopped back aboard Junior in anticipation of their imminent escape. "Asher, come on, we're leaving!" he cried. Let's see those nattering nabobs of negativism deny his role in saving the day this time!
Asher, keeping to the shadows of the outer wall, called on her ring of jumping and glided silently up to the roof to get a flanking position on the ruined workshop where Teidi was chained to the wall. She slid behind a cracked roof tile, peeked her head out, and found the deranged tabaxi hunter Bag of Nails staring straight at her from the next tile over. Both drew their bows, and from the bushes below she could see his friends nocking arrows. This was her only chance to avoid a pitched battle and save Teidi's life - for what, the second time this week? Below, Teidi Junior noticed his master had gone and immediately went on the attack. Calling to Chomsky to keep the animal in check, she lowered her weapon and began frantic negotiations. This wasn't a fair fight - perhaps they could come back in an hour, having sorted out their unruly dinosaur? Surely the hunter would want to catch Trogzor, the thief who had precipitated this conflict in the first place? (And that would give her time to give Teidi a proper tongue-lashing for going out alone and getting himself captured.) She bit her lip in concentration, waiting for any sign of duplicity, but perhaps her tabaxi opponent recognized that if they fought, only one would survive. Asher quickly leaped down to ground level and rushed back to their makeshift camp across the river. "Hey, where's Teidi? I thought you rescued him, Chomsky!"
They burst into camp to find Transon happily attempting to explain dragonchess to Trogzor as he bandaged his wounds. The half-orc, thoroughly confused, was happy to get into more familiar territory. Teidi was being held captive, so of course they would go rescue him! He'd heard of Bag of Nails, the famous eccentric who could shoot the beak off a toucan from 600 feet, and this would be yet another chance to help out his charming but inept new friends by matching blade to blade. Trogzor was disappointed, however, because instead of a fight to the death, it was another run-in with Kakarol the shopkeeper, that annoying kobold who gave him those sweet magic items. When Transon heard that Trogzor had stolen that immovable rod rather than paying for it, he angrily demanded it be returned, which was a real drag, but at least he wasn't getting shot at with poisoned arrows, and Bag of Nails was nice enough to admit when he was beaten (their duel was very short, of course it was, no one could withstand Trogzor's blade) and he made everyone some delicious fungus soup.
Teidi was fuming. First he was turned into a cockroach, so he dived into his pack to make it easy to rescue him, but no one came for a whole hour. Was this Chomsky's idea of a sick joke? Then, everyone finally showed up to save him, and the bandits brought a tame flail snail - whose magic-reflecting shell would come in mighty handy against the lich they were trying to kill! - so he bought one of those, fair and square. Then Chomsky and Asher stole it from him, and sold it at a loss! Why, if someone had done that where he came from, they'd be run out of town on a rail. Yet somehow, everyone was mad at him, even though he wasn't the one who started this fight, he was defending his dinos and his new kamadan cubs. It was just plain unfair, to be strung up just because Asher and Chaucerous wanted to make a deal with every corn-pickin' rascal from here to Waterdeep and didn't want to handle the consequences. Teidi was a man of action, and if doors needed kickin' down, he'd be the one to kick 'em! And on top of it all, they'd killed those kittens behind his back. He was gonna care for them and raise 'em to fight evil, because that's a ranger's job! Why could no one else see it that way?
The argument grew heated and more than once Teidi's blood started to boil. If they pushed him, it would be high noon here, right in front of the bewildered tabaxi trio. But eventually everyone simmered down, and Teidi begrudgingly agreed to stop collecting animals for his menagerie, and dashing off at the first sign of trouble. In exchange, the crafty gnome and half-elf repaid him for their share of the coin from the flail snail.
Transon, seeing that everyone was on the verge of doing something they'd regret, made a quick decision. "Gather round, everyone, we're going home to Waterdeep. We need a vacation!" And so, after a brief moment of embarrassment when he forgot about the spell preventing magical travel in and out of the city, they arrived in Syndra Silvane's private teleportation circle. They all smelled like they'd spent a tenday in the jungle, and what Trogzor was wearing would get him arrested for indecency, and Zilla the former slave girl looked like she was about to have a heart attack from seeing high-level magic performed twice in five minutes, but none of that mattered. He was home!
I do wonder where "powder that's indistinguishable from invisibility powder until you use it" is supposed to be coming from, in-universe. Like, is some magical joke shop crafting it and leaving it around? Some wizard with an axe to grind against stealthy types? Is it like the real world coke/fentanyl analog, where some cartel or lone operator is cutting the "good stuff" with cheap stuff that will kill you, in order to turn a profit?
I do wonder where "powder that's indistinguishable from invisibility powder until you use it" is supposed to be coming from, in-universe. Like, is some magical joke shop crafting it and leaving it around? Some wizard with an axe to grind against stealthy types? Is it like the real world coke/fentanyl analog, where some cartel or lone operator is cutting the "good stuff" with cheap stuff that will kill you, in order to turn a profit?
This batch came off the corpse of a hag, so presumably she knew what it actually was and just didn't get a chance to use it. (Once the party got it out of the ethereal plane and stole its heartstone it died really quickly). Other than that it would be incredibly useful for say a war forged or someone else that doesn't need to breathe. Like the hag had some incoming scarecrows to help her. Incapacitating a bunch of folks so scarecrows can tear them apart is totally workable.
I do wonder where "powder that's indistinguishable from invisibility powder until you use it" is supposed to be coming from, in-universe. Like, is some magical joke shop crafting it and leaving it around? Some wizard with an axe to grind against stealthy types? Is it like the real world coke/fentanyl analog, where some cartel or lone operator is cutting the "good stuff" with cheap stuff that will kill you, in order to turn a profit?
I do wonder where "powder that's indistinguishable from invisibility powder until you use it" is supposed to be coming from, in-universe. Like, is some magical joke shop crafting it and leaving it around? Some wizard with an axe to grind against stealthy types? Is it like the real world coke/fentanyl analog, where some cartel or lone operator is cutting the "good stuff" with cheap stuff that will kill you, in order to turn a profit?
Botched attempts to make invisibility powder.
An amazing explanation.
"You see there's this weird step of the process here, you've gotta add just enough chili powder to get the reaction right, too much and it just turns into this nearly useless coughing powder, too little and you've made a really expensive but effective soup mix."
I do wonder where "powder that's indistinguishable from invisibility powder until you use it" is supposed to be coming from, in-universe. Like, is some magical joke shop crafting it and leaving it around? Some wizard with an axe to grind against stealthy types? Is it like the real world coke/fentanyl analog, where some cartel or lone operator is cutting the "good stuff" with cheap stuff that will kill you, in order to turn a profit?
Botched attempts to make invisibility powder.
Botched attempts at crafting magical items can be remarkably fun.
Like the botched Dwarven Thrower, which instead of returning to you after being used as a thrown attack, drags the wielder to where the hammer lands.
Give a couple of those to a squad of Dwarf Battleragers, and enjoy as they start chucking the weapon behind the enemy line, then cannon balling through them.
I do wonder where "powder that's indistinguishable from invisibility powder until you use it" is supposed to be coming from, in-universe. Like, is some magical joke shop crafting it and leaving it around? Some wizard with an axe to grind against stealthy types? Is it like the real world coke/fentanyl analog, where some cartel or lone operator is cutting the "good stuff" with cheap stuff that will kill you, in order to turn a profit?
Botched attempts to make invisibility powder.
Botched attempts at crafting magical items can be remarkably fun.
Like the botched Dwarven Thrower, which instead of returning to you after being used as a thrown attack, drags the wielder to where the hammer lands.
Give a couple of those to a squad of Dwarf Battleragers, and enjoy as they start chucking the weapon behind the enemy line, then cannon balling through them.
This is AMAZING. If my SKT group gets to dwarfy-lands I am so using this. If nothing else other than backgroud flavour or setting the scene of some kind of giant attack the PC's are involved in. The image in my head is so vivid Its incredible.
Wait.... I have my ToA group this coming weekend (YAY!)... can I give this to the Tomb Dwarves? I think I'm gonna give this to some of the Tomb Dwarves. Bwahahahahhaaha!
Oh hey that made me think of this:
Crannog's Adament Thrower Weapon (warhammer), rare (requires attunement)
You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. It has the thrown property with a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet.
This large, magical warhammer was designed by the great dwarven weaponsmith, Crannog Ironhand, after he witnessed a party member's clever use of an Immovable Rod during a fierce battle. On top of this Warhammer is a small button, which, when depressed, causes the Warhammer to become magically fixed in place, just as an immoveable rod. When you throw this weapon, if it hits, the button is automatically depressed, and the target must make a DC 15 strength saving throw or be moved 5 feet back and knocked prone as the hammer becomes set.
Creatures huge or larger automatically succeed on this throw, though the rod remains fixed in place.
I've started a level 0 Curse of Strahd game. We're 5 years before when the campaign proper is going to start (the campaign starting just before Sergei and Tatianna's wedding day), everyone is a commoner (well, one of them is a noble but her character is 13 years old to compensate). They each have a flaw associated with being baby adventurers, one is illiterate, one is afraid of magic, one has to play with animals on a failed wis save regardless of how dangerous they look, and the noble is a kid and has reduced stats. None get any class features, but got to choose from a few things (a single cantrip, a weapon proficiency, an armor proficiency) and each have 2 fate points they can use to not die
After the first session they're all down to 1 fate point after a scrape with some zombies and wolves (2 combat encounters) and a goblin. They took the goblin prisoner and are nursing her back to health after the goblin pled for life and rolled a stellar charisma check and they agreed that having another hand around town would compensate for the damage the goblin raids have done
Their current goal is to get the princess (the 13 year old) back to her father, the dusk elf king in the Svalich woods. They're not going to make it, as Rahadin has already begun his assault with King Barov's forces to wipe out the elven dynasty in Barovia. They'll find this out with an encounter with 2 deserters who will try to kill them and bring the princess to king barov either for execution or as a hostage, in exchange for some presumable reward.
So far there are no domains of dread, Strahd is off leading his forces against neighboring lands while his father has, through the machinations of Rahadin, begun a campaign to exterminate the noble lineage of the dusk elves in the region. Dark forces are at play in the forest south of the small town theyre in and a young Vistana seer named Eva has given them cryptic warnings and lamented "that it is happening already" before departing in the night - leaving the one party member who is a vistani behind in the village, her belongings having been left at the inn with a note and a tarokka deck
Everyone's having a blast, and over levels 1 (next session) through 3 Barovia will gradually descend into darkness, culminating with the death of Tatianna and Sergei - unless the party can prevent that and I have to figure out how to make curse of strahd still happen
(I already know how, it will be the Dark Lord Petrina Velikovna)
I plan for all of them to die, and claw themselves out of the ground near the village of Barovia, hundreds of years later, with their homeland having fallen apart
The class feature variants from UA have really got me thinking about different types of character builds. I want to make a Rogue (Assassin) multi class Ranger to get Zephyr Strike and just snipe with a bow, while also being highly mobile with bonus action dash. Elven Accuracy for the boost to advantage and you can get a single highly accurate shot with a lot of damage. Non-concentration Hunter's Mark for added damage, level three Ranger to go Hunter and pick up Colossus Slayer for more added damage on subsequent turns. Sharpshooter for the bonus damage, since you always have advantage. A lot of this could be done without the class variations, but some of the added Ranger options make it even better.
I have a feeling that if they decide to try and make these variations official, they're going to nerf the Ranger ones. They're so strong for a 1-2 level multi class dip. Path of the Berserker Barbarians can take 1 level in Ranger for Tireless to be able to remove a level of exhaustion after a short rest, which is pretty good. And the Favored Foe Hunter's Mark doesn't require Concentration so you can cast it before Raging and keep the damage bonus.
It's good stuff.
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The class feature variants from UA have really got me thinking about different types of character builds. I want to make a Rogue (Assassin) multi class Ranger to get Zephyr Strike and just snipe with a bow, while also being highly mobile with bonus action dash. Elven Accuracy for the boost to advantage and you can get a single highly accurate shot with a lot of damage. Non-concentration Hunter's Mark for added damage, level three Ranger to go Hunter and pick up Colossus Slayer for more added damage on subsequent turns. Sharpshooter for the bonus damage, since you always have advantage. A lot of this could be done without the class variations, but some of the added Ranger options make it even better.
I have a feeling that if they decide to try and make these variations official, they're going to nerf the Ranger ones. They're so strong for a 1-2 level multi class dip. Path of the Berserker Barbarians can take 1 level in Ranger for Tireless to be able to remove a level of exhaustion after a short rest, which is pretty good. And the Favored Foe Hunter's Mark doesn't require Concentration so you can cast it before Raging and keep the damage bonus.
It's good stuff.
Might make path of the berserker worth going down.
I am going to DM a one-shot where the group are members of the Axe of Mirabar. I haven't done anything with dwarven cities yet, but it seems Mirabar is just pretty chill and equal-opportunity capitalist with a very active and well-funded police force.
I am going to run a one-shot off the shelf (Council of Quails), but they'll be introduced to the adventure from the comfort of their station in the city proper. It just gives them plenty of chances to make this Mirabar 99. I hope it's going to work out: I've got two newbies who have never roleplayed before. I hope the tropes of "you're cops in a fantasy world" will come easy to them. I know one of them loves Discworld, so she should be fine.
To guide their character creation process I asked them two questions: (1) why did you join the Axe? and (2) you almost failed your entry exam, what happened and how did you overcome it?
I always thought Mirabar was rife with racial tensions between the humans up top and the dwarves down below?
I don't remember where I got that idea from, though.
Not from 5e, then. There's class tensions with an upper class who is aware that the lower classes should not realize just how big the income gap actually is.
Also: a city that is more concerned with protecting trade interests than anything else is not exactly a fair society.
thats most D&D cities, Wakanga Otamu of Chult is buying magic items for 20,000+ gold off the players in Mad Mage meanwhile there's people so poor in his city that they willingly sell themselves into slavery just to get a consistent meal
I'm so glad my players decided to flip the table and end slavery in Nyanzaru, we got a lot of stuff undone with that but that campaign is on hold
To get Wakanga's support they had to agree to define slavery as only applying to creatures from the prime material plane, as he had started to get the wizards of chult to sour on the notion by running a pearl-clutching PR campaign about every star-eyed apprentice who summons a familiar being slapped in irons once slavery was outlawed
So, I've got my ToA group this weekend. Super excited. We left off with one more tomb on the first floor left to do, and I've prepped my way to the end of the third level. Hopefully we'll get that, because the Beholder fight at the end of the level would be a killer climax to another epic game weekend!
Speaking of killers though... gawddamn that sounds like a hard fight. A beholder, no lair actions but made perma-invisible by Acererack's fuckery, a hard to smash trap in the middle of the room that magnetically attracts metal to itself, and a super slick floor like you're fighting on teflon. I mean, it sounds like a lot of fun. Except, since we had a death last session (the sorcerer got disintegrated) and that player can't make it anyway to roll up a new mans we're short. We're also short our cleric player, but we're definitely going to have another jaeger the cleric. But that means a pretty damn hard fight, with only 4 characters on the board. They're currently level 8... but I think I might bump them 9 after they finish the second level of the dungeon.
I know I posted a little while back about not pulling punches on boss fights and everyone will be the better for it .... but I also do NOT want a Beholder driven TPK.
Ranger barbarian specifically using favored foe tireless and berserker barbarian
-Race: half orc, lizard folk, almost anything out of the ravinia books, basically anything that gives bonuses to con, wisdom, and strength, I'm really liking lizardfolk for the extra skills and stuff though.
-Background: gladiator, criminal, or urchin are my go to here, thieves tools are really useful, but honestly anything could work so long as it doesn't overlap with the barbarian/ranger skillset too much, basically anything but outlander.
Leveling order:
Level 1 barbarian (rage unarmored defenses 2 skills)
Level 2 ranger (get favored foe and tireless and another skill)
Level 3 barbarian (survival instincts instead of danger sense so 2 skills with expertise)
Level 4 ranger (get a fighting style: druidic warrior for mending and guidance, and ranger spells)
Level 5 barbarian (berserker)
Level 6 ranger (hunter with colossus slayer)
Level 7 ranger(ASI/feat I say GWM for sure)
Level 8 ranger(second attack and second level spells)
Level 9 ranger (canny for yet one more skill at expertise)
Level 10 barbarian(ASI/feat: literally anything you want)
Level 11 barbarian(fast movement)
Rockin a great sword of course, 3d6+6 damage on a single attack of which you have 3, sprinkle a d8 in there somewhere, with upwards of possibly 10 skills you're proficient in, 3 with expertise, with a number of tool proficiencies as well, and spells that you can trade around or just dedicate to healing. Yeah I'd play that progression.
I think after 11 if you're sticking to the barbarian ranger it's gotta be a sprint for either 9 in barbarian to get more rages and more rage damage and brutal critical, or a run to 11 in ranger to get 3rd level spells and whirlwind attack. Both together will get you an all the way to 20 build, possibly only staggering levels because the whirlwind attack is only super useful with the extra rage damage (this guy's mainly a focus fire damage dealer with hunters mark)
However I'd probably just level dip fighter to champion or battle master with a soupçon of rogue to grab second wind, action surge, a little extra damage boost from the fighter sub class, 2 more skills and further expertise. If I'm getting to champion fighter and the game is still miraculously continuing past 15 getting up to 9 in barbarian with brutal critical and better rage damage is basically the end game there.
I'm gonna be honest the, "this doesn't count against concentration", thing is both a thing I missed my first read through of the UA, and totally fuckin nuts. My next build is gonna be a pact of the blade warlock ranger that both hunters marks and hexes folks at the same time...
There's some parts to it that I just don't find enticing at all, like the equipment wear-and-tear system. But there's also some stuff that I really like, such as the ammunition rule:
Instead of tracking each individual shot, take a d12—this is your Ammunition die. Roll it whenever you take a shot. If you roll a 1 or 2, the die gets one size smaller.
d12 -> d10 -> d8 -> d6 -> d4 -> 1
If you're down to one piece of ammunition and you use it, that's it—you've used the last piece, so remove the ammunition completely from your inventory.
I like this because I've always felt like I was somewhat clipping the story's wings by not tracking ammunition in some way (players can't run out at a dramatic moment if they're not tracking it), but I hated the finicky bookkeeping of counting out how many arrows/bullets/whatever you had at all times. The book suggests a similar system for potion flasks (how many doses of healing potion do you have? Is that flask at a d4 or a d6 capacity?) and even burnout from casting too much magic between rests. I like it.
The book also ports the Stress Accumulation/Madness Breakpoint mechanic from the game, which I like, and has a slot-based inventory framework so that -- again -- you can reintroduce a logical and interesting limitation for your characters without precisely calculating weight for their inventory.
Anyway, I've been working on assembling materials for a combination Acquisitions Incorporated/Darkest Dungeon game, where players each have multiple members of the same guild, and take turns running brief episodic adventures (1-4ish sessions each) for each other. All characters are semi-randomly generated (drafted from a randomized pool), there's HQ development/town investment stuff, etc. Play is intended to be at least slightly more lethal than usual, because (like Darkest Dungeon) the guild persists even when your character dies, and there's always another wagon of new guild applicants to choose from.
I'm up to almost 200 subraces and almost 200 subclasses for my random generator, because I like big tables (and I cannot lie).
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Idea I had today while driving: At the end of most good adventures in Paranoia (I know, it's a different game, stay with me), there's a debriefing where players are expected to account for their actions, decisions, and failures. It's always one last terrifying hurdle where, inevitably, the players begin throwing each other under the bus in order to shift Friend Computer's attention off themselves.
The Acquisitions, Inc. sourcebook sets up a framework for player characters to take on long-term positions within the company that grant them specific benefits. I like this idea, and I think it works well for the thing I'm building as well, but "long-term" is less of a concern with high-lethality episodic adventures. In addition, I've been playing with the idea that every reward in the game -- gold, XP, treasure, anything -- gets boiled down to the equivalent of company scrip, in the form of "Requisition Tokens". These tokens can be exchanged for training (to level up), spent as currency anywhere the guild is recognized (with tokens becoming more valuable as the guild increases in reputation), traded for equipment or upgrades at the beginning of a mission, etc.
Before each mission, the DM will put forth a number of positions/responsibilities that need filling, depending on the nature of the mission. Player characters will divvy the roles up between themselves. An example of three that will often need filling:
Marketing -- You are responsible for advertising our services at every opportunity to those who have not heard of us, and for ensuring that no guild member's actions reflect negatively on the guild's professional reputation.
Accounting -- You are responsible for all guild property on this mission, including guild members and other property which does not yet legally belong to the guild but could, with sufficient effort, become so. Ensure that all property is appropriately cared for, not wasted, and that any losses are materially documented.
Quality Control -- You are responsible for documenting any dereliction of duty by guild members, and interfacing with your co-workers to rectify such derelictions. This position comes with a quota; you are expected to report at least one dereliction, attempted dereliction, or rectified dereliction. Failure to do so will be interpreted as a failure to give sufficient attention to your responsibilities.
A few that could be thrown in by a pernicious DM:
Morale Officer -- Ensure that morale remains high, no matter what.
Documentarian -- The marketing department needs material for their new ad campaign; ensure that all major moments of triumph on this mission are recorded in visual, auditory, olfactory, or material form. The flashier, the better.
At the end of the mission, the party members* will be asked to account for their actions, and characters who effectively persuade the guildmaster that they fulfilled their given responsibilities will be given bonus Requisition Tokens on top of their salary. The bonus of any position which was not adequately fulfilled will be distributed among the other party members.
*The ones who survive, anyway. A deceased party member will be assumed to have discharged their duties honorably, and their bonus distributed among the other members of their division**.
**A character's division just happens to coincide with, "other characters controlled by the same player".
Well... the session went very well! The beholder fight, not so much.
Level 2 and 3 of the Tomb of Nine Gods went incredibly well. The bargained with Withers to give him a first hand account of how well his traps perform. Now instead of Tomb Guardians molesting them when they rest, the Sewn Sisters invade their dreams and lower their max HP, and the Guardians shadow them as the move through the dungeon watching how well they perform. Eventually, Withers is going to get tired of this, and renege on the deal. But for now it gave me short handed players a reprieve.
The fight against Belchorz the Unseen? Different story. I made they found and rested in the room of respite, and flat out told them that now would be a good time to look at spell selections and that all the funky abberant mold they've been seeing with random eyestalks popping out? Your characters must be giant idiots if they can't figure out a beholder was coming.
First couple of rounds, the beholder fucks with their spells and items. Eventually closing his Eye and moving the drape over the floating magnet. Whoosh. Heavily armored cleric goes flying and is now stuck to an orb. Arcane trickster takes a few turns to go invisible himself and run up the wall with his slippers of spider climbing. He can't get advantage though on his sneak attacks so is frustrated. The meaty barbarian gets sent out of the room running and the Bard is charmed. Luckily. the cleric manages to dispel the magnetic orb and crashes back do to the floor. So that's a win. But the rest of the encounter goes poorly. Too may eyestalks and not enough targets to spread them out across means that my party was always constantly disabled. I played the Beholder as fucking with them, so Zero death rays. Only one disintegration ray and maybe two enervations. The rest of the time is was putting them to sleep or fear or whatever. It just wasn't fun. The bard player (having consumed too many.... consumables.... by this time, and made to feel useless by his social character getting constantly put to sleep all the time had kinda checked out. The action economy of saving their lives by not killing them, but rather disabling them dragged the fight out. Instead of the rogue and his crossbow doing 12-18 damage (instead of 30-40 on sneak attacks) and the Barbarian left with handaxe throws in the dark and one of more of them, instead of attacking, where instead running around waking each other up from sleep. It just wasn't fun. Even for me, since yeah I want to kill them in ToA.... but I don't want a TPK. Too many eyes, not enough targets. No wizard/sorcerer type to throw up area effects for big damage numbers. It was attrition, and the PC's would not survive attrition. Not like the beholder was going to let them whittle it down over 25 rounds of handaxes. One dead character is fun. All dead characters ends the campaign. To give the checked out Bard player a "win" I suggested that he use his Suggestion spells to have the beholder "leave them alone!". Which lead to an invisible beholder floating down and screaming, "This is BORING!" in the bards face. The party skeddaddled back to the room of respite for a short rest and we ended the session on a downer.
The session was an unqualified success. Losing that boss fight though was a downer. Yeah, sometime you lose...and in losing you learn things and can use that going forwards. Buts is not really fun, is it?
Oh well.
Edit: At one point, I had fun moment when the invisible rogue slippered himself up the walls to the ceiling and trying to edge around the room get an angle on the invisible beholder.... Belchorz opened his Eye, ending the invisibility and the slippers and dropping the rogue 50' to the floor. That was fun. He made his concentration save though! So somewhere near the ground, he turned invisible again the rest of the party just heard a thump somewhere on the other side of the room.
Edit2: Geez. My grammer and tenses and writing "me" instead of "my" and dropping words when I type fast is really on display in this post. Oh well. Technically I am at work and should not be wasting time on forums.
some party compositions are just not that great against a beholder
basically every single person needs a method of doing ranged damage, a monk and a ranger against him in my game made him a good deal easier
edit: I also replaced him with a death tyrant since they had killed him earlier at another location where I naively thought they wouldn't just attack
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
So is going through this beholder the only way forward? Or do they have other things they can do? Losing to a boss but only having the boss to face again to proceed sucks, especially if the battle tactics were good, and the boss is just too powerful.
Feasibly now that they know what they are facing, they can quest to get advantages against it. Maybe something to get rids of it's invisibility and maybe blind some of its eyes or something.
Or turn it against him. Not having read the adventure i assume the beholder in question can pull in or repulse metal? Make it so in pull in it maybe traps the melee's sword but also gives advantage to someone shooting an arrow on that then. And on repulse, it gives advantage on dex saves at cost of losing additional 10 feet of ground as the character let's themselves be pushed out of the way.
I'm not too worried about the adventure being derailed by not "beating" the mini-boss. The beholder was just the final "fuck you" of level 3 of a 6 level dungeon. The players can easily bypass the Beholder and just keep continuing down chasing the Soulmonger and the lich. There is nothing, really, the beholder offers except for choice lootz.
The magnetic sphere, a separate thing from the invisible sphere with the killer eyeballs, was disabled and crashed into the floor on turn 3 or 4. And it only adversely affected one character. All ranged attacks were at disadvantage anyway due to the beholders' wish granted invisibility, so a magnet pulling arrowheads out of true was not a factor. No, the main problem as I see it was twofold: 1) With only 4 PC's at level 8 on the board, there were too many attacks available to the beholder to give the PC's a chance, if the beholder was not illogically nerfed by me. The damage potential I already lowered immensely so as to give them a chance. And the disabling that was going on was making the fight un-fun. 2) The party make-up (barbarian, cleric, rouge & bard) was not well suited to damaging an invisible foe who stayed out of reach of melee damage dealers. Plinking away with handaxes and non-sneak attack arrows was not going to chip away at 200hp of Beholder fast enough. They really needed a AoE damage dealer to throw up fireballs and the like to actually hurt the thing. Alas, he was disintegrated last session, and the player did not show up this session to be reintroduced with a new character.
During a smoke break, around turn 5, a few of the players were grousing about how this thing was invisible as OOC they knew that Beholders don't usually have greater invisibility. To which I giggled (as I often do about how much of an asshole Acererak and his dungeon is, may the gods bless Chris Perkins) that Acererak wished the beholder to be invisible, so fuck you guys! I think they took that to mean that they couldn't cast dispel magic on it to try and drop the invisibility. And the bard, not the most enthusiastic D&D player in the first place, who has spend most of fight made useless by charms or sleep spells was the only one who had Dispel Magic left and he had kinda checked out of the combat and wasn't really doing anything. That may have been a mistake on my part, telling them about how much Acererak is a jerk, mid-combat OOC instead of after the encounter was over. The group usually likes to hear how much the trap rooms and assorted fuckery in Tomb could have hurt them, so I enjoy telling them about it after they pass the room in question. I think my mentioning wish signaled to them that they couldn't, at least temporarily, defeat it.
They got bumped to level 9 after the encounter anyway.
I stumbled in to a relatively new D&D group that plays weekly. They said they could use a magic user so I decided to make a warlock hexblade so I could still melee and good God this class is strong.
I stumbled in to a relatively new D&D group that plays weekly. They said they could use a magic user so I decided to make a warlock hexblade so I could still melee and good God this class is strong.
I did literally the same thing.
Then I realized I only have limited spell slots and blew them all in the first fight.
Still strong though, it's like having a multipurpose fighter, who when he's fully rested can just go ham on a single target.
If, if Reagan played disco He'd shoot it to shit You can't disco in Jackboots
I stumbled in to a relatively new D&D group that plays weekly. They said they could use a magic user so I decided to make a warlock hexblade so I could still melee and good God this class is strong.
Yes! Once my ToA campaign is done (two more weekend sessions?) I will be playing in my buddies CoS campaign as a celestial patron fluffed Hexblade. I am so excited.
I stumbled in to a relatively new D&D group that plays weekly. They said they could use a magic user so I decided to make a warlock hexblade so I could still melee and good God this class is strong.
I did literally the same thing.
Then I realized I only have limited spell slots and blew them all in the first fight.
Still strong though, it's like having a multipurpose fighter, who when he's fully rested can just go ham on a single target.
I'd played a fey pact warlock before and the spell slot limits are usually workable for me since short rests are fairly common.
I would have gone with sorcerer or wizard but the sheer number of spells is intimidating since I'm joining in at level 8.
Posts
The party comes to a crossroad that includes a number of boxes that control water flow, that open various passageways to navigate previously blocked off places.
My ranger reaches down to push a button.
Ends up elbow deep in a mimic....and that's where the session had to stop.
Mimics need to be used sparingly. That situation sounds beautiful though. *golfclap*
A designer "fuck you" to adventurers from dungeon populators all across the Great Wheel.
To be fair, the dragon was the nicest creature in the whole city
Duergar are jerks
This was an old cocaine thing, you could tell the cocaine was cocaine and not just baking powder by putting it on your gums. It would ostensibly numb them. However no investigator with an ounce of sense would ever actually do that with a random substance cause oops it's all poison and now you're dead.
Also the identify spell identifies it as dust of disappearance.
DM's recap:
Episode 4 Recap: The Hunters
Gnome Chomsky barely noticed the tense standoff between two assassins. His chance for heroics had finally arrived, and he wasn't about to blow it. But which magnificent spell to cast? His mind wheeled, considering his wondrous new options. He could hardly wait to turn himself invisible and sneak over to where Teidi was being held prisoner, then effect a rescue. But he didn't know how to pick locks. No, perhaps it is Asher who should turn invisible. She could pick the lock, free Teidi, and they would all escape on the back of their faithful dinosaur companion. But then, Chomsky would be left out all alone, the only visible one! No, it was better to turn Teidi into a cockroach, so that he could scurry back out with none the wiser. This master plan could never fail! He fired the spell off immediately, then hopped back aboard Junior in anticipation of their imminent escape. "Asher, come on, we're leaving!" he cried. Let's see those nattering nabobs of negativism deny his role in saving the day this time!
Asher, keeping to the shadows of the outer wall, called on her ring of jumping and glided silently up to the roof to get a flanking position on the ruined workshop where Teidi was chained to the wall. She slid behind a cracked roof tile, peeked her head out, and found the deranged tabaxi hunter Bag of Nails staring straight at her from the next tile over. Both drew their bows, and from the bushes below she could see his friends nocking arrows. This was her only chance to avoid a pitched battle and save Teidi's life - for what, the second time this week? Below, Teidi Junior noticed his master had gone and immediately went on the attack. Calling to Chomsky to keep the animal in check, she lowered her weapon and began frantic negotiations. This wasn't a fair fight - perhaps they could come back in an hour, having sorted out their unruly dinosaur? Surely the hunter would want to catch Trogzor, the thief who had precipitated this conflict in the first place? (And that would give her time to give Teidi a proper tongue-lashing for going out alone and getting himself captured.) She bit her lip in concentration, waiting for any sign of duplicity, but perhaps her tabaxi opponent recognized that if they fought, only one would survive. Asher quickly leaped down to ground level and rushed back to their makeshift camp across the river. "Hey, where's Teidi? I thought you rescued him, Chomsky!"
They burst into camp to find Transon happily attempting to explain dragonchess to Trogzor as he bandaged his wounds. The half-orc, thoroughly confused, was happy to get into more familiar territory. Teidi was being held captive, so of course they would go rescue him! He'd heard of Bag of Nails, the famous eccentric who could shoot the beak off a toucan from 600 feet, and this would be yet another chance to help out his charming but inept new friends by matching blade to blade. Trogzor was disappointed, however, because instead of a fight to the death, it was another run-in with Kakarol the shopkeeper, that annoying kobold who gave him those sweet magic items. When Transon heard that Trogzor had stolen that immovable rod rather than paying for it, he angrily demanded it be returned, which was a real drag, but at least he wasn't getting shot at with poisoned arrows, and Bag of Nails was nice enough to admit when he was beaten (their duel was very short, of course it was, no one could withstand Trogzor's blade) and he made everyone some delicious fungus soup.
Teidi was fuming. First he was turned into a cockroach, so he dived into his pack to make it easy to rescue him, but no one came for a whole hour. Was this Chomsky's idea of a sick joke? Then, everyone finally showed up to save him, and the bandits brought a tame flail snail - whose magic-reflecting shell would come in mighty handy against the lich they were trying to kill! - so he bought one of those, fair and square. Then Chomsky and Asher stole it from him, and sold it at a loss! Why, if someone had done that where he came from, they'd be run out of town on a rail. Yet somehow, everyone was mad at him, even though he wasn't the one who started this fight, he was defending his dinos and his new kamadan cubs. It was just plain unfair, to be strung up just because Asher and Chaucerous wanted to make a deal with every corn-pickin' rascal from here to Waterdeep and didn't want to handle the consequences. Teidi was a man of action, and if doors needed kickin' down, he'd be the one to kick 'em! And on top of it all, they'd killed those kittens behind his back. He was gonna care for them and raise 'em to fight evil, because that's a ranger's job! Why could no one else see it that way?
The argument grew heated and more than once Teidi's blood started to boil. If they pushed him, it would be high noon here, right in front of the bewildered tabaxi trio. But eventually everyone simmered down, and Teidi begrudgingly agreed to stop collecting animals for his menagerie, and dashing off at the first sign of trouble. In exchange, the crafty gnome and half-elf repaid him for their share of the coin from the flail snail.
Transon, seeing that everyone was on the verge of doing something they'd regret, made a quick decision. "Gather round, everyone, we're going home to Waterdeep. We need a vacation!" And so, after a brief moment of embarrassment when he forgot about the spell preventing magical travel in and out of the city, they arrived in Syndra Silvane's private teleportation circle. They all smelled like they'd spent a tenday in the jungle, and what Trogzor was wearing would get him arrested for indecency, and Zilla the former slave girl looked like she was about to have a heart attack from seeing high-level magic performed twice in five minutes, but none of that mattered. He was home!
This batch came off the corpse of a hag, so presumably she knew what it actually was and just didn't get a chance to use it. (Once the party got it out of the ethereal plane and stole its heartstone it died really quickly). Other than that it would be incredibly useful for say a war forged or someone else that doesn't need to breathe. Like the hag had some incoming scarecrows to help her. Incapacitating a bunch of folks so scarecrows can tear them apart is totally workable.
Botched attempts to make invisibility powder.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
An amazing explanation.
"You see there's this weird step of the process here, you've gotta add just enough chili powder to get the reaction right, too much and it just turns into this nearly useless coughing powder, too little and you've made a really expensive but effective soup mix."
Botched attempts at crafting magical items can be remarkably fun.
Like the botched Dwarven Thrower, which instead of returning to you after being used as a thrown attack, drags the wielder to where the hammer lands.
Give a couple of those to a squad of Dwarf Battleragers, and enjoy as they start chucking the weapon behind the enemy line, then cannon balling through them.
This is AMAZING. If my SKT group gets to dwarfy-lands I am so using this. If nothing else other than backgroud flavour or setting the scene of some kind of giant attack the PC's are involved in. The image in my head is so vivid Its incredible.
Wait.... I have my ToA group this coming weekend (YAY!)... can I give this to the Tomb Dwarves? I think I'm gonna give this to some of the Tomb Dwarves. Bwahahahahhaaha!
Crannog's Adament Thrower
Weapon (warhammer), rare (requires attunement)
You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. It has the thrown property with a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet.
This large, magical warhammer was designed by the great dwarven weaponsmith, Crannog Ironhand, after he witnessed a party member's clever use of an Immovable Rod during a fierce battle. On top of this Warhammer is a small button, which, when depressed, causes the Warhammer to become magically fixed in place, just as an immoveable rod. When you throw this weapon, if it hits, the button is automatically depressed, and the target must make a DC 15 strength saving throw or be moved 5 feet back and knocked prone as the hammer becomes set.
Creatures huge or larger automatically succeed on this throw, though the rod remains fixed in place.
After the first session they're all down to 1 fate point after a scrape with some zombies and wolves (2 combat encounters) and a goblin. They took the goblin prisoner and are nursing her back to health after the goblin pled for life and rolled a stellar charisma check and they agreed that having another hand around town would compensate for the damage the goblin raids have done
Their current goal is to get the princess (the 13 year old) back to her father, the dusk elf king in the Svalich woods. They're not going to make it, as Rahadin has already begun his assault with King Barov's forces to wipe out the elven dynasty in Barovia. They'll find this out with an encounter with 2 deserters who will try to kill them and bring the princess to king barov either for execution or as a hostage, in exchange for some presumable reward.
So far there are no domains of dread, Strahd is off leading his forces against neighboring lands while his father has, through the machinations of Rahadin, begun a campaign to exterminate the noble lineage of the dusk elves in the region. Dark forces are at play in the forest south of the small town theyre in and a young Vistana seer named Eva has given them cryptic warnings and lamented "that it is happening already" before departing in the night - leaving the one party member who is a vistani behind in the village, her belongings having been left at the inn with a note and a tarokka deck
Everyone's having a blast, and over levels 1 (next session) through 3 Barovia will gradually descend into darkness, culminating with the death of Tatianna and Sergei - unless the party can prevent that and I have to figure out how to make curse of strahd still happen
(I already know how, it will be the Dark Lord Petrina Velikovna)
I plan for all of them to die, and claw themselves out of the ground near the village of Barovia, hundreds of years later, with their homeland having fallen apart
I have a feeling that if they decide to try and make these variations official, they're going to nerf the Ranger ones. They're so strong for a 1-2 level multi class dip. Path of the Berserker Barbarians can take 1 level in Ranger for Tireless to be able to remove a level of exhaustion after a short rest, which is pretty good. And the Favored Foe Hunter's Mark doesn't require Concentration so you can cast it before Raging and keep the damage bonus.
It's good stuff.
Might make path of the berserker worth going down.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I am going to run a one-shot off the shelf (Council of Quails), but they'll be introduced to the adventure from the comfort of their station in the city proper. It just gives them plenty of chances to make this Mirabar 99. I hope it's going to work out: I've got two newbies who have never roleplayed before. I hope the tropes of "you're cops in a fantasy world" will come easy to them. I know one of them loves Discworld, so she should be fine.
To guide their character creation process I asked them two questions: (1) why did you join the Axe? and (2) you almost failed your entry exam, what happened and how did you overcome it?
I don't remember where I got that idea from, though.
Not from 5e, then. There's class tensions with an upper class who is aware that the lower classes should not realize just how big the income gap actually is.
Also: a city that is more concerned with protecting trade interests than anything else is not exactly a fair society.
I'm so glad my players decided to flip the table and end slavery in Nyanzaru, we got a lot of stuff undone with that but that campaign is on hold
To get Wakanga's support they had to agree to define slavery as only applying to creatures from the prime material plane, as he had started to get the wizards of chult to sour on the notion by running a pearl-clutching PR campaign about every star-eyed apprentice who summons a familiar being slapped in irons once slavery was outlawed
Speaking of killers though... gawddamn that sounds like a hard fight. A beholder, no lair actions but made perma-invisible by Acererack's fuckery, a hard to smash trap in the middle of the room that magnetically attracts metal to itself, and a super slick floor like you're fighting on teflon. I mean, it sounds like a lot of fun. Except, since we had a death last session (the sorcerer got disintegrated) and that player can't make it anyway to roll up a new mans we're short. We're also short our cleric player, but we're definitely going to have another jaeger the cleric. But that means a pretty damn hard fight, with only 4 characters on the board. They're currently level 8... but I think I might bump them 9 after they finish the second level of the dungeon.
I know I posted a little while back about not pulling punches on boss fights and everyone will be the better for it .... but I also do NOT want a Beholder driven TPK.
-Race: half orc, lizard folk, almost anything out of the ravinia books, basically anything that gives bonuses to con, wisdom, and strength, I'm really liking lizardfolk for the extra skills and stuff though.
-Background: gladiator, criminal, or urchin are my go to here, thieves tools are really useful, but honestly anything could work so long as it doesn't overlap with the barbarian/ranger skillset too much, basically anything but outlander.
Leveling order:
Level 1 barbarian (rage unarmored defenses 2 skills)
Level 2 ranger (get favored foe and tireless and another skill)
Level 3 barbarian (survival instincts instead of danger sense so 2 skills with expertise)
Level 4 ranger (get a fighting style: druidic warrior for mending and guidance, and ranger spells)
Level 5 barbarian (berserker)
Level 6 ranger (hunter with colossus slayer)
Level 7 ranger(ASI/feat I say GWM for sure)
Level 8 ranger(second attack and second level spells)
Level 9 ranger (canny for yet one more skill at expertise)
Level 10 barbarian(ASI/feat: literally anything you want)
Level 11 barbarian(fast movement)
Rockin a great sword of course, 3d6+6 damage on a single attack of which you have 3, sprinkle a d8 in there somewhere, with upwards of possibly 10 skills you're proficient in, 3 with expertise, with a number of tool proficiencies as well, and spells that you can trade around or just dedicate to healing. Yeah I'd play that progression.
I think after 11 if you're sticking to the barbarian ranger it's gotta be a sprint for either 9 in barbarian to get more rages and more rage damage and brutal critical, or a run to 11 in ranger to get 3rd level spells and whirlwind attack. Both together will get you an all the way to 20 build, possibly only staggering levels because the whirlwind attack is only super useful with the extra rage damage (this guy's mainly a focus fire damage dealer with hunters mark)
However I'd probably just level dip fighter to champion or battle master with a soupçon of rogue to grab second wind, action surge, a little extra damage boost from the fighter sub class, 2 more skills and further expertise. If I'm getting to champion fighter and the game is still miraculously continuing past 15 getting up to 9 in barbarian with brutal critical and better rage damage is basically the end game there.
I'm gonna be honest the, "this doesn't count against concentration", thing is both a thing I missed my first read through of the UA, and totally fuckin nuts. My next build is gonna be a pact of the blade warlock ranger that both hunters marks and hexes folks at the same time...
Been looking at GiffyGlyph's Darker Dungeons -- a rules supplement that's pretty obviously intended to port features from Darkest Dungeon into 5e.
http://www.giffyglyph.com/darkerdungeons/index.html
There's some parts to it that I just don't find enticing at all, like the equipment wear-and-tear system. But there's also some stuff that I really like, such as the ammunition rule:
I like this because I've always felt like I was somewhat clipping the story's wings by not tracking ammunition in some way (players can't run out at a dramatic moment if they're not tracking it), but I hated the finicky bookkeeping of counting out how many arrows/bullets/whatever you had at all times. The book suggests a similar system for potion flasks (how many doses of healing potion do you have? Is that flask at a d4 or a d6 capacity?) and even burnout from casting too much magic between rests. I like it.
The book also ports the Stress Accumulation/Madness Breakpoint mechanic from the game, which I like, and has a slot-based inventory framework so that -- again -- you can reintroduce a logical and interesting limitation for your characters without precisely calculating weight for their inventory.
Anyway, I've been working on assembling materials for a combination Acquisitions Incorporated/Darkest Dungeon game, where players each have multiple members of the same guild, and take turns running brief episodic adventures (1-4ish sessions each) for each other. All characters are semi-randomly generated (drafted from a randomized pool), there's HQ development/town investment stuff, etc. Play is intended to be at least slightly more lethal than usual, because (like Darkest Dungeon) the guild persists even when your character dies, and there's always another wagon of new guild applicants to choose from.
I'm up to almost 200 subraces and almost 200 subclasses for my random generator, because I like big tables (and I cannot lie).
The Acquisitions, Inc. sourcebook sets up a framework for player characters to take on long-term positions within the company that grant them specific benefits. I like this idea, and I think it works well for the thing I'm building as well, but "long-term" is less of a concern with high-lethality episodic adventures. In addition, I've been playing with the idea that every reward in the game -- gold, XP, treasure, anything -- gets boiled down to the equivalent of company scrip, in the form of "Requisition Tokens". These tokens can be exchanged for training (to level up), spent as currency anywhere the guild is recognized (with tokens becoming more valuable as the guild increases in reputation), traded for equipment or upgrades at the beginning of a mission, etc.
Before each mission, the DM will put forth a number of positions/responsibilities that need filling, depending on the nature of the mission. Player characters will divvy the roles up between themselves. An example of three that will often need filling:
A few that could be thrown in by a pernicious DM:
At the end of the mission, the party members* will be asked to account for their actions, and characters who effectively persuade the guildmaster that they fulfilled their given responsibilities will be given bonus Requisition Tokens on top of their salary. The bonus of any position which was not adequately fulfilled will be distributed among the other party members.
Level 2 and 3 of the Tomb of Nine Gods went incredibly well. The bargained with Withers to give him a first hand account of how well his traps perform. Now instead of Tomb Guardians molesting them when they rest, the Sewn Sisters invade their dreams and lower their max HP, and the Guardians shadow them as the move through the dungeon watching how well they perform. Eventually, Withers is going to get tired of this, and renege on the deal. But for now it gave me short handed players a reprieve.
The fight against Belchorz the Unseen? Different story. I made they found and rested in the room of respite, and flat out told them that now would be a good time to look at spell selections and that all the funky abberant mold they've been seeing with random eyestalks popping out? Your characters must be giant idiots if they can't figure out a beholder was coming.
First couple of rounds, the beholder fucks with their spells and items. Eventually closing his Eye and moving the drape over the floating magnet. Whoosh. Heavily armored cleric goes flying and is now stuck to an orb. Arcane trickster takes a few turns to go invisible himself and run up the wall with his slippers of spider climbing. He can't get advantage though on his sneak attacks so is frustrated. The meaty barbarian gets sent out of the room running and the Bard is charmed. Luckily. the cleric manages to dispel the magnetic orb and crashes back do to the floor. So that's a win. But the rest of the encounter goes poorly. Too may eyestalks and not enough targets to spread them out across means that my party was always constantly disabled. I played the Beholder as fucking with them, so Zero death rays. Only one disintegration ray and maybe two enervations. The rest of the time is was putting them to sleep or fear or whatever. It just wasn't fun. The bard player (having consumed too many.... consumables.... by this time, and made to feel useless by his social character getting constantly put to sleep all the time had kinda checked out. The action economy of saving their lives by not killing them, but rather disabling them dragged the fight out. Instead of the rogue and his crossbow doing 12-18 damage (instead of 30-40 on sneak attacks) and the Barbarian left with handaxe throws in the dark and one of more of them, instead of attacking, where instead running around waking each other up from sleep. It just wasn't fun. Even for me, since yeah I want to kill them in ToA.... but I don't want a TPK. Too many eyes, not enough targets. No wizard/sorcerer type to throw up area effects for big damage numbers. It was attrition, and the PC's would not survive attrition. Not like the beholder was going to let them whittle it down over 25 rounds of handaxes. One dead character is fun. All dead characters ends the campaign. To give the checked out Bard player a "win" I suggested that he use his Suggestion spells to have the beholder "leave them alone!". Which lead to an invisible beholder floating down and screaming, "This is BORING!" in the bards face. The party skeddaddled back to the room of respite for a short rest and we ended the session on a downer.
The session was an unqualified success. Losing that boss fight though was a downer. Yeah, sometime you lose...and in losing you learn things and can use that going forwards. Buts is not really fun, is it?
Oh well.
Edit: At one point, I had fun moment when the invisible rogue slippered himself up the walls to the ceiling and trying to edge around the room get an angle on the invisible beholder.... Belchorz opened his Eye, ending the invisibility and the slippers and dropping the rogue 50' to the floor. That was fun. He made his concentration save though! So somewhere near the ground, he turned invisible again the rest of the party just heard a thump somewhere on the other side of the room.
Edit2: Geez. My grammer and tenses and writing "me" instead of "my" and dropping words when I type fast is really on display in this post. Oh well. Technically I am at work and should not be wasting time on forums.
basically every single person needs a method of doing ranged damage, a monk and a ranger against him in my game made him a good deal easier
edit: I also replaced him with a death tyrant since they had killed him earlier at another location where I naively thought they wouldn't just attack
Feasibly now that they know what they are facing, they can quest to get advantages against it. Maybe something to get rids of it's invisibility and maybe blind some of its eyes or something.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
The magnetic sphere, a separate thing from the invisible sphere with the killer eyeballs, was disabled and crashed into the floor on turn 3 or 4. And it only adversely affected one character. All ranged attacks were at disadvantage anyway due to the beholders' wish granted invisibility, so a magnet pulling arrowheads out of true was not a factor. No, the main problem as I see it was twofold: 1) With only 4 PC's at level 8 on the board, there were too many attacks available to the beholder to give the PC's a chance, if the beholder was not illogically nerfed by me. The damage potential I already lowered immensely so as to give them a chance. And the disabling that was going on was making the fight un-fun. 2) The party make-up (barbarian, cleric, rouge & bard) was not well suited to damaging an invisible foe who stayed out of reach of melee damage dealers. Plinking away with handaxes and non-sneak attack arrows was not going to chip away at 200hp of Beholder fast enough. They really needed a AoE damage dealer to throw up fireballs and the like to actually hurt the thing. Alas, he was disintegrated last session, and the player did not show up this session to be reintroduced with a new character.
During a smoke break, around turn 5, a few of the players were grousing about how this thing was invisible as OOC they knew that Beholders don't usually have greater invisibility. To which I giggled (as I often do about how much of an asshole Acererak and his dungeon is, may the gods bless Chris Perkins) that Acererak wished the beholder to be invisible, so fuck you guys! I think they took that to mean that they couldn't cast dispel magic on it to try and drop the invisibility. And the bard, not the most enthusiastic D&D player in the first place, who has spend most of fight made useless by charms or sleep spells was the only one who had Dispel Magic left and he had kinda checked out of the combat and wasn't really doing anything. That may have been a mistake on my part, telling them about how much Acererak is a jerk, mid-combat OOC instead of after the encounter was over. The group usually likes to hear how much the trap rooms and assorted fuckery in Tomb could have hurt them, so I enjoy telling them about it after they pass the room in question. I think my mentioning wish signaled to them that they couldn't, at least temporarily, defeat it.
They got bumped to level 9 after the encounter anyway.
I did literally the same thing.
Then I realized I only have limited spell slots and blew them all in the first fight.
Still strong though, it's like having a multipurpose fighter, who when he's fully rested can just go ham on a single target.
Yes! Once my ToA campaign is done (two more weekend sessions?) I will be playing in my buddies CoS campaign as a celestial patron fluffed Hexblade. I am so excited.
I'd played a fey pact warlock before and the spell slot limits are usually workable for me since short rests are fairly common.
I would have gone with sorcerer or wizard but the sheer number of spells is intimidating since I'm joining in at level 8.