Man I was a wizard in my last campaign and I pissed the DM off a couple times with a well timed counterspell. It was probably my favorite spell!
I’m currently playing an anti-magic Lore Bard and holy moly is he fun. Love having Counterspell, Countercharm, Dispel Magic, and a dash of Slow to limit spells coming our way.
I've tried, boy have I, but never run into a circumstance where countercharm is any good
I'm curious if you use some homebrew variant of it or just precautionarily
Man I was a wizard in my last campaign and I pissed the DM off a couple times with a well timed counterspell. It was probably my favorite spell!
I’m currently playing an anti-magic Lore Bard and holy moly is he fun. Love having Counterspell, Countercharm, Dispel Magic, and a dash of Slow to limit spells coming our way.
I swear Bards exist solely to troll DMs. I had a College of Glamour bird that was packed with social manipulation stuff, once he even managed to make use of the "if they've listened to you perform for a minute you get a free Charm on the listeners" feature, when we realised we were being followed and everyone else hid while he played a little tune at the camp fire, waiting for them.
Man I was a wizard in my last campaign and I pissed the DM off a couple times with a well timed counterspell. It was probably my favorite spell!
I’m currently playing an anti-magic Lore Bard and holy moly is he fun. Love having Counterspell, Countercharm, Dispel Magic, and a dash of Slow to limit spells coming our way.
I've tried, boy have I, but never run into a circumstance where countercharm is any good
I'm curious if you use some homebrew variant of it or just precautionarily
It may be because we play in a fey heavy game that it seems to be particularly useful as a preventative.
It's the whole "spend a standard action to prevent something that might happen" bit. Like, if you're a Bard, surely you have something much more useful to spend that standard action on.
I think in our game, it's a prophylactic effect. If I Countercharm, then the monsters tend to suddenly not cast their charm effects. :shrug: I've found it useful.
If necessary? Sure. I can still cast Healing Word to keep the the team going and keep up concentration on Slow. That's what? Three rounds before the wizard, rogue, and paladin utterly obliterate anything? I can live with that as my purpose. Keeping them safe and fighting is my characters only job in combat. I do that by reducing incoming damage and status effects. At least that's how I play this particular character.
Last night Curse of Strahd session has us infiltrating the Wizards of Wine to see what was up with the wine supply. Evil druids, twig blights, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, we were scouting the perimiter of the building when we were set upon by 30!?! Twig blights coming at us from the vineyards. Who had launchable thorn darts? Whatever, it was fun. Anyway, the sky turned dark as the party rushed into the loading dock area for some cover. A few rounds of this go by as we take shots back with various spells and my Eldtrich Blasts, etc. whittling them down bit by bit. Eventually most of the party heads inside proper to try and find better cover/hold a chokepoint from the horde approaching, my hexblade and our barbarian think that's just going to lead to more trouble (Narrator: it did.) and stay outside to cover the party's rear so that when they run head-first into the next encounter we don't ahve twig blights up the butt.
Anyway.... the whole point of me telling you this is to say that when we were down to 20 or so variously damanged twig blights, my hexblade took a flying leap off of a wagon to land amidst the horde in a badass superhero stance, much to my DM's surprise... until I lit off my brand new Thundering Step spell, exploding ALL of them into a pile of toothpicks while I teleported away to safety.
Last night Curse of Strahd session has us infiltrating the Wizards of Wine to see what was up with the wine supply. Evil druids, twig blights, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, we were scouting the perimiter of the building when we were set upon by 30!?! Twig blights coming at us from the vineyards. Who had launchable thorn darts? Whatever, it was fun. Anyway, the sky turned dark as the party rushed into the loading dock area for some cover. A few rounds of this go by as we take shots back with various spells and my Eldtrich Blasts, etc. whittling them down bit by bit. Eventually most of the party heads inside proper to try and find better cover/hold a chokepoint from the horde approaching, my hexblade and our barbarian think that's just going to lead to more trouble (Narrator: it did.) and stay outside to cover the party's rear so that when they run head-first into the next encounter we don't ahve twig blights up the butt.
Anyway.... the whole point of me telling you this is to say that when we were down to 20 or so variously damanged twig blights, my hexblade took a flying leap off of a wagon to land amidst the horde in a badass superhero stance, much to my DM's surprise... until I lit off my brand new Thundering Step spell, exploding ALL of them into a pile of toothpicks while I teleported away to safety.
It was fuckin' rad.
My party did this recently and after fighting all of the blights in one long, long encounter (the druids reinforce over rounds) they decided to flee back to the road and take a long rest. Now they're all pretty new players, so they just assumed that they could rest to regain everything with basically no repercussions, because its what you can do in BG and NWN and stuff.
When they returned to the winery I had the tree on the map come to life as an evil ent brought to life by the druids. I fudged some rolls so it didn't annihilate them, and it was a pretty fun way to show them actions have consequences. The world doesn't pause whilst you take a nap.
When my players made it to the winery they had just previously hit level 5. Two characters had fireball. Trivialised the blights but they did burn down the winery.
When my players made it to the winery they had just previously hit level 5. Two characters had fireball. Trivialised the blights but they did burn down the winery.
We mentioned many times that if we had a wizard with Fireball, this encounter would have been nothing. The closest we have in our party is a Bladesinger.
Torog is a really fun god to plot out followers before, because there is some real body horror elements you can lean into if your group is comfortable with that which gives room for lots of creativity.
Today had a oneshot (after a long downtime of D&D due to Corona, though we did do some other games in the meanwhile). Second game we played through Roll20/Discord and we still need to get used to it.
Our DM DMed for the first time and he did really well (as all beginning DMs he had prepared way too much, so we have half a dozen maps we never even visited).
Plot: The emperor has declared a hunt for the mysterious Flying Stag. The hunt is taking place in a forest whose ownership is contested by both nobles living nearby. At the same time, something is wrong with the forest, very few animals here but many chimeras of various animals stitched together and weird druids running around.
Our party:
- 1 Minotaur Figher (Runic Knight). The Big Brute.
- 1 Halfling Fighter (Battlemaster). The Nice Hick.
- 1 Human Ranger (don't know the subclass, but I assume he was a Hunter. Mostly firing bows+ Hunter's mark and none of the other sub-classes special skills). The Self-Obsessed Noble.
- 1 Water Genasi Druid, Circle of Dreams. (me) The Lying Hippy.
With a very combat heavy group, I had to take up the healing/support/magic slack, but combat generally went well. We were all lvl 5, but without special equipment, so the DM, realizing he had sent a Werewolf against us which was immune to about 75% of our party, kinda regretted picking that encounter.
On the first obstacle (a bridge to cross a river) the Ranger convinced the Duke's party that we would assist him in assassinating his rival, the Marquis. We had no intentions of following through.
Next a Druid and his magic killer frogs attacked us while crossing another river (for some reasons the various water obstacles never seemed to bother my Druid too much), earning us a bag of magic beans.
The Minotaur tried to eat the beans, but got himself poisoned. I had some healing, but nothing against poison, so once again I've turned into team mom "Don't stick things in your mouth if you don't know what it is or where it's been."
Next some social maps where we tried to negotiate to get something for the magic beans, but we decided to keep them in the end.
Another combat, ambushed by lycantropes, the DM was worried when he realized that most of us had no way to hurt them. Luckily I had Moonbeam prepared, so a bunch of Wererats just turned into regular peasants who were then pulped by an angry Minotaur and the werewolf was turned into a pincushion.
It was a tough fight though and we really needed a long rest, bit of experimenting with the magic beans, did gain me a Treant, which lead to the following discussion:
Ranger: "He can help us in our fights!"
Me: "He's just a baby!"
Ranger: "He's 15 ft. tall!"
Me: "He's 3 hours old! Give him a chance to enjoy his innocence before the inevitable killing starts."
So we went on without our Treant, who got some life advice from mommy before we left.
Another two combat maps and we encountered the final boss (though we never found the real source of all the corruption in the forest, a lich buried beneath the forest whose corrupted influence had infected the trees).
Quite a busy schedule for a one afternoon oneshot, but we had a brisk pace and we were also not the most subtle party. Probably the reason we also had a lot of combat encounter and few social encounters (now a forest filled with murderous monsters is not the most ideal place for a social gathering). We also sidestepped all political intrigue by being focused on the main goal.
Once again I vastly overestimated how much we could get done in a three hour session.
I at least got to give them a taste of a temple of Torog, god of imprisonment and suffering:
- The tunnel leading to the temple and the temple itself was crawling with centipedes.
- Eyes the size of a person's head were preserved in glass containers and kept their gaze on certain people.
- The door was answered by a masked, heavily-scarred ogre with barbed chains.
- The pews had dried blood and spiked manacles on the arm rests.
- A mural depicting people being tortured and a giant hand erupting from the earth to clutch a thorny rose dripped blood (whether this was a magical effect or blood collected by the cultists was unclear).
- Whenever the doors to the lower chambers were opened the sounds of screaming filtered out.
- The person the party came to see was a corrupted druid with pale yellow false eyes and magical tattoos of roses whose thorns somehow seemed to impale her flesh and cause light bleeding.
- The high priest of the temple, a flightless beholder with all its eyes removed (its eyes being the ones magically preserved in the glass containers) and replaced by useless round stones that rode on the back of a very big centipede it was attached to, made a brief appearance.
- A mutilated mind flayer also briefly showed-up, one with a metal helmet fitted to its head to forbid its psionic abilities, its facial tentacles cut-off, and its mouth covered with a mesh that allowed it to breathe and nothing else.
- The druid briefly described the Torog cultists' belief that pain is finite and that it is the holy duty of the followers of the god of suffering to concentrate pain in themselves and their "charges" so that there will be less misery and torment for everyone else to feel.
- The druid also brought up her personal green house, eager to take a moment and brag about the fearweed she'd gotten from the Shadowfell and the amnesia-inducing memory moss she'd obtained from the Feywild.
The bard/cleric of Sarenrae, goddess of mercy and redemption, was thoroughly disturbed and went to their own temple to pray for a means to get over the nightmare fuel she'd just witnessed.
The party briefly considered taking the place down, but were dissuaded when they found out the local archmage tyrant used it as the prison and would most likely visit his wrath on whoever attacked it. I said that if they got in, killed everyone who saw them, and got out they'd probably be fine, but the risk was deemed too great for four 6th-level characters (but not off the table when they got stronger).
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
The bard/cleric of Sarenrae, goddess of mercy and redemption, was thoroughly disturbed and went to their own temple to pray for a means to get over the nightmare fuel she'd just witnessed.
The bard/cleric of Sarenrae, goddess of mercy and redemption, was thoroughly disturbed and went to their own temple to pray for a means to get over the nightmare fuel she'd just witnessed.
a flaming scimitar
barring that, scorching sunlight
I had maps and stats ready if they decided to storm the place, but nope. The implicit threat of the Ordinator Arcanis keeping them from being able to return to the campaign's central hub in the Underdark (at best) or unleashing their wrath on them (at worst) must have been too much of a deterrent.
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
I simply do not understand not wanting to murder-hobo
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
I successfully transition my IRL group to Roll20/Discord!
It wasn't a complete trainwreck!
Yay, technology!
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I simply do not understand not wanting to murder-hobo
For Storm Kings Thunder my group decided that we were going to play a good group, 3 of us played actual family members, 20 something human brother, 12 year old sister and 40+ half orc uncle. We didn't kill when we didn't need to and returned stolen loot and gold to those who were robbed. It was fucking CHALLENGING. D&D adventures assume a certain amount of murder-hoboing and looting.
If anyone is familiar with the book Spellstorm, I'm running my Storm King's THunder group into basically the same scenario
A group of archmages is convening on a mega-mansion to convince the lord-owner to sell them The Lost Spell (and only he knows where the only scroll is hidden so they cant just steal it or kill him), a spell mcguffin device that can do lots of cool stuff, a gift from Mystra that breaks all kinds of rules (including, potentially, causality). The twist is that the sale is happening during a time of year when a magic storm forms around the mansion, which it does every year, making magic all but nonfunctional within. I've decided to use a few cobbled tables I have for shit that happens in the mansion for wild magic surges if players try to cast spells.
The players have been tasked by a bumbling old fool and definitely a trickster named Elminster with trying to keep track of what's going on in the mansion during the 10 days the lord evaluates the buyers and try and keep the spellless archmages from killing anyone. This is taking place in Exandria instead of FR. The guest list includes:
-Delilah Briarwood, she had another clone floating about, she is Vecna's Best Girl and full of unending rage at the death of her beloved, who was basically Strahd, so...
-Scanlan Shorthalt, gnome bard extraordinaire
-Gilmore, everyone's favorite magic shop franchise operator
-Allura Vysoren, Minister of Arcana for the Tal'dorei Republic, too pure for this situation and my players
-Sha'an the Serpent Queen. Other than elminster this is the only character I'm stealing from Greenwood's novel, she's extremely evil and has poisoned nails and is the perfect red herring.
-Trent Icithon, Archmage of Civil Influence of the Dwendalion Empire (he's... goebbels)
- Apprentice third class Ray Bronzeshadow, a mage of no significant skill from the Crystal Chateua of Marquette (the players figured out in 5 seconds that this is basically a grad student sent on what her bosses figured was a suicide mission)
- Essek Thelyss, Archon of Dunamis from the Xhorhasian Empire (collectively referred to by the critical role fandom as Hotboi. My players also refer to him as Hotboi)
- Zan Tal'dorei, an undead spirit of the first princess of the Tal'dorei empire from hundreds of years ago. She's been floating around all this time but tries not to be too much of a bother, acts as a secret protector of the realm and founded this world's version of the Harpers. She's a great hero from the past, led a last alliance of elves and men, etc, etc...
- Two mages whos names are in my notes that were already murdered when the party arrived
The party is sold to the mages as being the "cooks and cleaning staff". The players organized themselves into jobs, and without any preparation but all at once they picked jobs that their characters would be terrible at. The 8 foot tall dragonborn fighter is acting as the maid, the rogue and elemental sorcerer are the cooks (despite the fact that artificer has cook proficiency). The artificer just said "I'm a doctor", and is just exploring the mansions and mapping secret passages, responding to any inquiries with "Don't worry, I'm a doctor". I let him roll Wisdom(Persuasion) for this.
The wild magic sorcerer thought it would be fun to find a private closet and keep trying to cast spells to see if something happened, despite being warned of the danger, because "that Elminster guy probably isn't even a real wizard" (insight check 9). After a few whiffs got a wild magic surge + the special table I got + the spell succeeded. She got detect magic up! She flared up in hives for 1d4 hours. She fired a bolt of lightning that duplicated a random member of the mansion which would hide in the shadows and try to stalk and kill them. Hilariously, the dice landed on Rogue, and she got to experience what the DM does trying to track down her clone's motherfucking 32 stealth rolls (so, no)
Artificer broke into the bedroom of the serpent queen, was KO'd by a dart that delivered 16d8 poison damage, expressed surprise that such deadly poisons even existed (I reminded him, she wanted to kill archmages with these traps), laid on the ground rolling death saves until he stabilized, woke up an hour later, and decided to check her room later.
Session ended with the clone of the rogue breaking into a hidden room on the fourth floor containing an artifact weapon that may or may not be immune to the effects of the spellstorm, the wards guarding it set off a "random effect", unleashing a clay golem into a house full of wizards with no magic and fighters and rogues with no magic weapons, tune in next time!
everyone wanted to keep going but wild magic sorcerer was getting a migraine so we ended it a bit earlier than normal, everyone had fun
this is the last bit of homebrew stuff I got planned until Fire Giant SKT dungeon so, glad it's going as psychotically as normal
this actual quest got a whopping 3 hours of the 6 hour session, the first 3 hours were spent trying to one up each other on gifts for the rogue's kid's 8th birthday
wild magic sorcerer bought her a Very Rare magical item called a decanter of endless cats, the girl's near-invulnerable status as a royal changeling is the only reason she wasn't immediately killed by asking the item to create a tiger for her... see the rogue's kid was created through a Wish, so I made her a type of humanoid race from The C Team, figuring this way Rogue could haul her daughter around over this long-as-balls in-universe campaign without worry of her dying to a fireball. As long as you aren't in a dead magic zone or something crazy, I said, your daughter is effectively invincible because she can turn into a solid block of steel if she needs to
Anyway so rogue brought her kid to the mansion with the dead wild magic with no less than 3 archwizards that could be campaign villains
Just spent way too long statting-up another NPC the characters might not even fight for my campaign. He's basically a combination of a deep gnome, the Black Earth Priest and Stonemelder from Princes of the Apocalypse, and the Stone Sorcerer from an old Unearthed Arcana.
Stone Priest Adghall
Small humanoid (deep gnome), neutral
Armor Class 16 (stone durability) Hit Points 52 (8d6+24) Speed 25 ft.
Gnome Cunning. Stone Priest Adghall has advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws against magic. Innate Spellcasting. Stone Priest Adghall's innate spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 12). He can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
At will: nondetection (self only)
1/day each: blindness/deafness, blur, disguise self Magic Weapons. Attacks Stone Priest Adghall make with his Rockslide Gauntlets are magical. Spellcasting. Stone Priest Adghall is an 8th-level spellcaster. His spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 14, +6 to hit with spell attacks). He knows the following spells:
Cantrips (at will): eldritch blast, friends, mage hand, mending, minor illusion, mold earth
1st level (4 slots): feather fall, shield, sleep, wrathful smite
2nd level (3 slots): earthen grasp, spike growth
3rd level (3 slots): counterspell, erupting earth
4th level (2 slots): conjure minor elementals (earth elementals only), staggering smite Stone Aegis. As a bonus action Stone Priest Adghall can grant an aegis to an ally he can see within 60 feet. Bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage against the ally is reduced by 5 for 1 minute or until Priest Adghall uses Stone Aegis again. Stone Camouflage. Stone Priest Adghall has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made to hide in rocky terrain. Stone Durability. Stone Priest Adghall's AC is equal to 13 plus his Constitution modifier. His maximum hit point total has also been increased by 1 for each hit die he possesses.
Actions Multiattack. Stone Priest Adghall makes two melee attacks. Rockslide Gauntlets. +5. 1d6+3 bludgeoning damage plus 1d4 piercing damage. Stone Priest Adghall can also expend a spell slot to push the target 5 feet and deal extra damage, dealing 2d8 bludgeoning damage for a 1st level slot, plus an additional 1d8 for each level of the slot above 1st. Eldritch Blast. +6. Range 120 ft. 2 beams. 1d10 force damage, and the target is pushed 10 feet.
Reactions Feather Fall. When Stone Priest Adghall or a creature within 60 feet falls, up to five falling creatures have their rate of descent slowed to 60 feet per round for up to 1 minute. If the creature lands before the spell ends, it takes no falling damage and can land on its feet, and the spell ends for that creature. Shield. Until the start of Stone Priest Adghall's’ next turn, he has a +5 bonus to AC, including against the triggering attack, and he takes no damage from magic missile. Stone Retribution. When a creature Stone Priest Adghall can see within 60 feet hits the target of Stone Aegis with a melee attack, he can use his reaction to teleport to an unoccupied space he can see within 5 feet of the attacker. Stone Priest Adghall can teleport only if he and the attacker are on the same surface. He can then make one melee attack against the attacker. If that attack hits, it deals an extra 1d10 force damage. Unyielding. When Stone Priest Adghall is subjected to an effect that would move him, knock him prone, or both, he can use his reaction to be neither moved nor knocked prone.
The CR is a very rough approximation as this guy could open a battle concentrating on Blur, Staggering Smite, Conjure Minor Elementals, Spike Growth, etc. If he's got an ally he'll apply Stone Aegis and make use of Stone Retribution. If he's concentrating on Spike Growth he'll use Eldritch Blast to push the target through the damaging terrain. If he starts in melee he'll burn all but one of each spell level's slots above first to power his Rockslide Gauntlets.
I specifically referenced Feather Fall in the statblock because Adghall and his allies live in a deep gnome village built around a large pit and could use the spell to quickly escape.
I was looking through old Dungeon magazines for inspiration and found one from the 3E era detailing a deep gnome vampire wizard who kept his coffin inside a stone golem.
I'm working on a 5E spiritual successor: a deep gnome vampire artillerist artificer who keeps his coffin inside a golem incorporating his eldritch cannon that uses tiny constructs called exsanguinators to collect blood from humanoids and bring it back to his mobile coffin.
I'm watching the anime Overlord and the main character just cast around two dozen buffs on himself. There's definitely some D&D influence in this series, but they clearly aren't using Concentration.
I played in a game last night where two monsters (presumably ones from Tome of Beasts) brought my fighter down from 108 hit points to 7 in one round. They also both grappled me, so I had to use both my action and Action Surge to attempt to escape from the grapples, but failed on the second attempt.
The only thing that saved me was Heavy Armor Mastery (which took off 3 hit points worth of damage from each attack) and my sorcerer companion casting Twinned Spell Polymorph to turn both my character and an NPC companion into triceratopses, which the DM decided would frighten off the relatively unintelligent monsters.
Warlock 2, Abjurer x (or deep gnome warlock 1) is probably my favorite cheese build for that reason.
Edit: but you can get the invocation for that without taking the dip thanks to the eldrich invocation feat in tasha's, the dip just gives you armor of agathys
I've created a reverse Captain Carrot situation for my wife's Strahd campaign: A dwarf raised by Vistani in order to explain why I know so much about their lore compared to the newer players.
Transmute Rock question: The spell says you can turn stone to mud in a forty foot cube, and it gives rules for what happens in you target the ground and what happens if you target the ceiling. If you cast the spell in low ceilinged stone hall is there any reason you couldn't have both the ground and ceiling effects happen?
Can anyone spot a reason why the college of creation bard can't just use Animating Performance on an enemy's breastplate and use a bonus action to order it to fly away with the enemy?
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Can anyone spot a reason why the college of creation bard can't just use Animating Performance on an enemy's breastplate and use a bonus action to order it to fly away with the enemy?
I'd allow it up to the carry strength of the dancing item, which appears to be 270lbs. I think that it's a real creative use of the ability.
Can anyone spot a reason why the college of creation bard can't just use Animating Performance on an enemy's breastplate and use a bonus action to order it to fly away with the enemy?
I'd allow it up to the carry strength of the dancing item, which appears to be 270lbs. I think that it's a real creative use of the ability.
Also I would halve the movement, in line with the grapple rules.
my DM has just told me that he won't allow that, because there's no save associated with it and doesn't like it, so worn or carried items can't be animated
welp
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
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I've tried, boy have I, but never run into a circumstance where countercharm is any good
I'm curious if you use some homebrew variant of it or just precautionarily
It was a very polite ambush, I can tell you that.
It may be because we play in a fey heavy game that it seems to be particularly useful as a preventative.
It is neither too on the nose nor terrible.
Especially if you give them a big intro Arrraaach- Naaaa- ROOOOOOOOOK!
Just make sure your players aren't warhammer players since they will associate it with the goblin monster
One of them MIGHT get the reference, but first and foremost they are D&D players through and through.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Anyway.... the whole point of me telling you this is to say that when we were down to 20 or so variously damanged twig blights, my hexblade took a flying leap off of a wagon to land amidst the horde in a badass superhero stance, much to my DM's surprise... until I lit off my brand new Thundering Step spell, exploding ALL of them into a pile of toothpicks while I teleported away to safety.
It was fuckin' rad.
My party did this recently and after fighting all of the blights in one long, long encounter (the druids reinforce over rounds) they decided to flee back to the road and take a long rest. Now they're all pretty new players, so they just assumed that they could rest to regain everything with basically no repercussions, because its what you can do in BG and NWN and stuff.
When they returned to the winery I had the tree on the map come to life as an evil ent brought to life by the druids. I fudged some rolls so it didn't annihilate them, and it was a pretty fun way to show them actions have consequences. The world doesn't pause whilst you take a nap.
We mentioned many times that if we had a wizard with Fireball, this encounter would have been nothing. The closest we have in our party is a Bladesinger.
1) Fight Torog cultists
2) Fight duergar
3) Fight ghouls
4) Fight myconids and demons
5) Fight goblinkin and Torog cultists
6) Fight goblinkin, grell, and evil fey
That's it, I don't have time to change my mind again. This is what I'm going with.
Our DM DMed for the first time and he did really well (as all beginning DMs he had prepared way too much, so we have half a dozen maps we never even visited).
Plot: The emperor has declared a hunt for the mysterious Flying Stag. The hunt is taking place in a forest whose ownership is contested by both nobles living nearby. At the same time, something is wrong with the forest, very few animals here but many chimeras of various animals stitched together and weird druids running around.
Our party:
- 1 Minotaur Figher (Runic Knight). The Big Brute.
- 1 Halfling Fighter (Battlemaster). The Nice Hick.
- 1 Human Ranger (don't know the subclass, but I assume he was a Hunter. Mostly firing bows+ Hunter's mark and none of the other sub-classes special skills). The Self-Obsessed Noble.
- 1 Water Genasi Druid, Circle of Dreams. (me) The Lying Hippy.
With a very combat heavy group, I had to take up the healing/support/magic slack, but combat generally went well. We were all lvl 5, but without special equipment, so the DM, realizing he had sent a Werewolf against us which was immune to about 75% of our party, kinda regretted picking that encounter.
On the first obstacle (a bridge to cross a river) the Ranger convinced the Duke's party that we would assist him in assassinating his rival, the Marquis. We had no intentions of following through.
Next a Druid and his magic killer frogs attacked us while crossing another river (for some reasons the various water obstacles never seemed to bother my Druid too much), earning us a bag of magic beans.
The Minotaur tried to eat the beans, but got himself poisoned. I had some healing, but nothing against poison, so once again I've turned into team mom "Don't stick things in your mouth if you don't know what it is or where it's been."
Next some social maps where we tried to negotiate to get something for the magic beans, but we decided to keep them in the end.
Another combat, ambushed by lycantropes, the DM was worried when he realized that most of us had no way to hurt them. Luckily I had Moonbeam prepared, so a bunch of Wererats just turned into regular peasants who were then pulped by an angry Minotaur and the werewolf was turned into a pincushion.
It was a tough fight though and we really needed a long rest, bit of experimenting with the magic beans, did gain me a Treant, which lead to the following discussion:
Ranger: "He can help us in our fights!"
Me: "He's just a baby!"
Ranger: "He's 15 ft. tall!"
Me: "He's 3 hours old! Give him a chance to enjoy his innocence before the inevitable killing starts."
So we went on without our Treant, who got some life advice from mommy before we left.
Another two combat maps and we encountered the final boss (though we never found the real source of all the corruption in the forest, a lich buried beneath the forest whose corrupted influence had infected the trees).
Quite a busy schedule for a one afternoon oneshot, but we had a brisk pace and we were also not the most subtle party. Probably the reason we also had a lot of combat encounter and few social encounters (now a forest filled with murderous monsters is not the most ideal place for a social gathering). We also sidestepped all political intrigue by being focused on the main goal.
I at least got to give them a taste of a temple of Torog, god of imprisonment and suffering:
- The tunnel leading to the temple and the temple itself was crawling with centipedes.
- Eyes the size of a person's head were preserved in glass containers and kept their gaze on certain people.
- The door was answered by a masked, heavily-scarred ogre with barbed chains.
- The pews had dried blood and spiked manacles on the arm rests.
- A mural depicting people being tortured and a giant hand erupting from the earth to clutch a thorny rose dripped blood (whether this was a magical effect or blood collected by the cultists was unclear).
- Whenever the doors to the lower chambers were opened the sounds of screaming filtered out.
- The person the party came to see was a corrupted druid with pale yellow false eyes and magical tattoos of roses whose thorns somehow seemed to impale her flesh and cause light bleeding.
- The high priest of the temple, a flightless beholder with all its eyes removed (its eyes being the ones magically preserved in the glass containers) and replaced by useless round stones that rode on the back of a very big centipede it was attached to, made a brief appearance.
- A mutilated mind flayer also briefly showed-up, one with a metal helmet fitted to its head to forbid its psionic abilities, its facial tentacles cut-off, and its mouth covered with a mesh that allowed it to breathe and nothing else.
- The druid briefly described the Torog cultists' belief that pain is finite and that it is the holy duty of the followers of the god of suffering to concentrate pain in themselves and their "charges" so that there will be less misery and torment for everyone else to feel.
- The druid also brought up her personal green house, eager to take a moment and brag about the fearweed she'd gotten from the Shadowfell and the amnesia-inducing memory moss she'd obtained from the Feywild.
The bard/cleric of Sarenrae, goddess of mercy and redemption, was thoroughly disturbed and went to their own temple to pray for a means to get over the nightmare fuel she'd just witnessed.
The party briefly considered taking the place down, but were dissuaded when they found out the local archmage tyrant used it as the prison and would most likely visit his wrath on whoever attacked it. I said that if they got in, killed everyone who saw them, and got out they'd probably be fine, but the risk was deemed too great for four 6th-level characters (but not off the table when they got stronger).
a flaming scimitar
barring that, scorching sunlight
I had maps and stats ready if they decided to storm the place, but nope. The implicit threat of the Ordinator Arcanis keeping them from being able to return to the campaign's central hub in the Underdark (at best) or unleashing their wrath on them (at worst) must have been too much of a deterrent.
It wasn't a complete trainwreck!
Yay, technology!
For Storm Kings Thunder my group decided that we were going to play a good group, 3 of us played actual family members, 20 something human brother, 12 year old sister and 40+ half orc uncle. We didn't kill when we didn't need to and returned stolen loot and gold to those who were robbed. It was fucking CHALLENGING. D&D adventures assume a certain amount of murder-hoboing and looting.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
A group of archmages is convening on a mega-mansion to convince the lord-owner to sell them The Lost Spell (and only he knows where the only scroll is hidden so they cant just steal it or kill him), a spell mcguffin device that can do lots of cool stuff, a gift from Mystra that breaks all kinds of rules (including, potentially, causality). The twist is that the sale is happening during a time of year when a magic storm forms around the mansion, which it does every year, making magic all but nonfunctional within. I've decided to use a few cobbled tables I have for shit that happens in the mansion for wild magic surges if players try to cast spells.
The players have been tasked by a bumbling old fool and definitely a trickster named Elminster with trying to keep track of what's going on in the mansion during the 10 days the lord evaluates the buyers and try and keep the spellless archmages from killing anyone. This is taking place in Exandria instead of FR. The guest list includes:
-Delilah Briarwood, she had another clone floating about, she is Vecna's Best Girl and full of unending rage at the death of her beloved, who was basically Strahd, so...
-Scanlan Shorthalt, gnome bard extraordinaire
-Gilmore, everyone's favorite magic shop franchise operator
-Allura Vysoren, Minister of Arcana for the Tal'dorei Republic, too pure for this situation and my players
-Sha'an the Serpent Queen. Other than elminster this is the only character I'm stealing from Greenwood's novel, she's extremely evil and has poisoned nails and is the perfect red herring.
-Trent Icithon, Archmage of Civil Influence of the Dwendalion Empire (he's... goebbels)
- Apprentice third class Ray Bronzeshadow, a mage of no significant skill from the Crystal Chateua of Marquette (the players figured out in 5 seconds that this is basically a grad student sent on what her bosses figured was a suicide mission)
- Essek Thelyss, Archon of Dunamis from the Xhorhasian Empire (collectively referred to by the critical role fandom as Hotboi. My players also refer to him as Hotboi)
- Zan Tal'dorei, an undead spirit of the first princess of the Tal'dorei empire from hundreds of years ago. She's been floating around all this time but tries not to be too much of a bother, acts as a secret protector of the realm and founded this world's version of the Harpers. She's a great hero from the past, led a last alliance of elves and men, etc, etc...
- Two mages whos names are in my notes that were already murdered when the party arrived
The party is sold to the mages as being the "cooks and cleaning staff". The players organized themselves into jobs, and without any preparation but all at once they picked jobs that their characters would be terrible at. The 8 foot tall dragonborn fighter is acting as the maid, the rogue and elemental sorcerer are the cooks (despite the fact that artificer has cook proficiency). The artificer just said "I'm a doctor", and is just exploring the mansions and mapping secret passages, responding to any inquiries with "Don't worry, I'm a doctor". I let him roll Wisdom(Persuasion) for this.
The wild magic sorcerer thought it would be fun to find a private closet and keep trying to cast spells to see if something happened, despite being warned of the danger, because "that Elminster guy probably isn't even a real wizard" (insight check 9). After a few whiffs got a wild magic surge + the special table I got + the spell succeeded. She got detect magic up! She flared up in hives for 1d4 hours. She fired a bolt of lightning that duplicated a random member of the mansion which would hide in the shadows and try to stalk and kill them. Hilariously, the dice landed on Rogue, and she got to experience what the DM does trying to track down her clone's motherfucking 32 stealth rolls (so, no)
Artificer broke into the bedroom of the serpent queen, was KO'd by a dart that delivered 16d8 poison damage, expressed surprise that such deadly poisons even existed (I reminded him, she wanted to kill archmages with these traps), laid on the ground rolling death saves until he stabilized, woke up an hour later, and decided to check her room later.
Session ended with the clone of the rogue breaking into a hidden room on the fourth floor containing an artifact weapon that may or may not be immune to the effects of the spellstorm, the wards guarding it set off a "random effect", unleashing a clay golem into a house full of wizards with no magic and fighters and rogues with no magic weapons, tune in next time!
everyone wanted to keep going but wild magic sorcerer was getting a migraine so we ended it a bit earlier than normal, everyone had fun
this is the last bit of homebrew stuff I got planned until Fire Giant SKT dungeon so, glad it's going as psychotically as normal
this actual quest got a whopping 3 hours of the 6 hour session, the first 3 hours were spent trying to one up each other on gifts for the rogue's kid's 8th birthday
wild magic sorcerer bought her a Very Rare magical item called a decanter of endless cats, the girl's near-invulnerable status as a royal changeling is the only reason she wasn't immediately killed by asking the item to create a tiger for her... see the rogue's kid was created through a Wish, so I made her a type of humanoid race from The C Team, figuring this way Rogue could haul her daughter around over this long-as-balls in-universe campaign without worry of her dying to a fireball. As long as you aren't in a dead magic zone or something crazy, I said, your daughter is effectively invincible because she can turn into a solid block of steel if she needs to
Anyway so rogue brought her kid to the mansion with the dead wild magic with no less than 3 archwizards that could be campaign villains
The CR is a very rough approximation as this guy could open a battle concentrating on Blur, Staggering Smite, Conjure Minor Elementals, Spike Growth, etc. If he's got an ally he'll apply Stone Aegis and make use of Stone Retribution. If he's concentrating on Spike Growth he'll use Eldritch Blast to push the target through the damaging terrain. If he starts in melee he'll burn all but one of each spell level's slots above first to power his Rockslide Gauntlets.
I specifically referenced Feather Fall in the statblock because Adghall and his allies live in a deep gnome village built around a large pit and could use the spell to quickly escape.
I'm working on a 5E spiritual successor: a deep gnome vampire artillerist artificer who keeps his coffin inside a golem incorporating his eldritch cannon that uses tiny constructs called exsanguinators to collect blood from humanoids and bring it back to his mobile coffin.
The only thing that saved me was Heavy Armor Mastery (which took off 3 hit points worth of damage from each attack) and my sorcerer companion casting Twinned Spell Polymorph to turn both my character and an NPC companion into triceratopses, which the DM decided would frighten off the relatively unintelligent monsters.
Edit: but you can get the invocation for that without taking the dip thanks to the eldrich invocation feat in tasha's, the dip just gives you armor of agathys
I'd allow it up to the carry strength of the dancing item, which appears to be 270lbs. I think that it's a real creative use of the ability.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Also I would halve the movement, in line with the grapple rules.
welp