Dale's Campaign - Sessions #1 & #2
Well long prior to the actual final session of our WLD campaign we had several sessions where we thought it was going to be our final session. After one such occasion in region J, Dale decided to go ahead and start some hard prepping of his campaign.
It was about half a year before the final WLD session were to hit, so saying Dale was ready to go would be an understatement.
He has supposedly prepped this campaign to take us from level 1 to level 12. And I don’t doubt that either.
And as for Dale’s style of “dungeon mastering” I’d say he and I are opposites in many areas.
My role-playing range of NPCs is limited, and several usually end up as disgruntled and easily irritated types. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run an NPC dwarf that started with a Scottish accent and morphed into an Irish one as I spoke. But Dale’s range of NPC’s is much broader, and usually tend to be much happier and brighter.
Dale is a bit more imaginative and skilled in creating the little role-playing things that I never seem to get right; things like rhyming clues and fortunes. The only thing I can beat Dale with in that area is that I can think of an original name.
While I am a generally restrictive DM, Dale is not. He is usually quite generous. Neither way is good or bad really, they are just different styles of DM’ing.
For paperwork and prepping, I’ve got Dale beat easy. For one campaign I’ve had all kinds of information listed and prepared. It starts off as a barebones setup that gets more filled in as needed. But in campaigns Dale has run before, his notes usually consisted of 2 pages of pencil scribbles.
As for rules knowledge, rules interpretation, and game ideas, we’re probably pretty close.
So when Dale told me that he had it all written down, I was skeptical. He’d said that before only to produce the 2 pages of notes. But this time his plans were quite a bit more planned out.
But something he hadn’t planned on was losing two of our members.
So after some thought and input, he decided to allow us to take Gestalt characters with the proviso that if we became too powerful or we found some new players we would drop the gestalt.
Now prior to all of this, I had been preparing a PC for Dale’s campaign. I had a half-elf druid planned out and ready to go. His abilities would focus around summoning creatures on adventures and the diplomacy skill while in the city. I had played a 3E druid to over level 12 before, but it was my first 3E PC and felt I could do better.
But when the gestalt ruling came down, the day the first game was supposed to be, my entire character concept might be getting thrown out the window.
None of us had played a gestalt PC before. The amount of power they offer is scary. The amount of paperwork they require is scarier still. I was up to the challenge, but I didn’t want to give up on my concept.
So I decided to find a class that would augment my druid’s abilities rather than add a whole new aspect to him. So I took a look at the summoning spells to get my options of cleric, sorcerer, or wizard. For role-playing reasons I removed cleric. A druid-cleric just doesn’t mesh well in my head. So now it’s sorcerer or wizard. So I broke the two down and compared them with what I wanted out of the class in mind. It came down to the extra feats a wizard gets versus the sheer number of spells per day a sorcerer gets. Sorry sorcerer, I’ll be getting enough spells as it is with two classes.
But to boost the summoning power and get some role-playing credibility, I’ll have my wizard-half specialize in the school of conjuration. I dumped necromancy and illusion. Easy decisions really; necromancy is evil and I’ve got elf blood in me and illusion is a pain for the DM to deal with if done properly.
(If you think illusionists are pansies, then try to fight one. Or better yet – who would you rather fight; a high level invoker or high level illusionist? If you said invoker, you’re going to have a bad wake up call some day.)
As I was in the process of finishing this PC, I came to the conclusion that we were already going down the golden-brick road of munchkinism (I think gestalt PCs are the poster children of munchkins), so why keep the self-righteous pretense that I was better than that? So goodbye half-elf side and hello 100% human with your extra feat and skill points who happened to be a little short and has a liking for all things elven. And his name changed from Kaloristheran to Kal Vesh.
Is it pathetic? Yes. Yes it is.
Is it fun and over powered? Oh yeah.
So at first level I have this:
Kal Vesh
Neutral good human
Level 1 Druid-Wizard (Conjurer)
Strength – 11
Dexterity – 11
Constitution – 13
Intelligence – 18
Wisdom – 16
Charisma – 13
Hit points: 9
Armor Class: 12/10/12 (large wooden shield - when expecting danger he casts Mage Armor)
Feats: Spell Focus – Conjuration, Augment Summoning
Animal companion: Heavy Riding Horse named Vriril (Hey, it’s a good way to get a free horse at level 1 and he’s smarter than your average horse.)
No familiar though.
Combined spells: 6 level 0, 5 level 1
Brian’s PC is a Fighter-Cleric who is basically a paladin with a lot more feats and better spells. He also bought a dog that will aid us a little in combat.
Aaron’s PC is a Warmage-Rogue who gets some sneak attack damage with his spells.
Their names elude me at the moment, but all of our names sound the same (a hard “K” sound).
We were introduced to one another by your standard secret organization of good that works behind the scenes to promote your goodly causes.
Then we were given the task to go put an end to evil in this poor town of Darken Moor and given a nice stipend to start with.
We decided as a group that we were kind of sick of “group treasures” but knew that not having one was a bad idea. So we decided that that half of our treasures would be put into a group fund and the rest would be split evenly. The group fund would go towards helping the group as a whole, like a wand of cure light wounds, while our personal funds would be used as we saw fit (new armor and spells for example).
So with our new money we shopped around and looked for some information about our mission. Kal found the local wizard’s guild and joined it with the aid of our benefactors. While Kal did some studying, Aaron’s PC investigated the history library and found that Darken Moor had been previously been called Darken Glen but had been cursed a coven of hags.
The citizens of Darken Glen had offended the hags by the usual “damn you’re ugly” offenses that hags receive. So the angered hags summoned up a great monster to plague the city and slowly turned the surrounding lands into marsh. And thus the names changed to Darken Moor.
The townspeople eventually made a deal with the monster; they would give it their most beautiful maiden once a year (as a sacrificial meal I would assume) in exchange for it to cease its other attacks.
One year a maiden that had been chosen was also betrothed to a would-be-hero. He planned to find and defeat the beast but the hags spoke with the maiden and told her that if he tried and failed, the deal with the town would have been broken and it would resume its attacks on the town. So they convinced her to sacrifice herself before that could happen.
When the would-be-hero found out about this he went into a deep despair. His spirit still haunts his keep this many years later.
So now it is our job to save this poor city from the evil hags and their evil beast.
But first we have to travel there. Our benefactors also gave the other two PCs horses – dangit I could have had a wolf or something. That’s ok though – my horse will be smarter, and I’ve trained him to choose flight over fight.
So we began to travel. On the way we found many of your usual low-level adventuring jobs. You know what I’m talking about; the raided caravan, the farm infested with spiders, and so on.
We found that a fighter-cleric is unfettered by the problems regular fighters have, which is that they have to stay near the cleric.
And we found that warmage-rogue is pretty nasty when a spell hits a goblin and gets to add his sneak attack damage.
Unfortunately Kal was a bit of a weak link, but had his uses. His low armor class was big impediment, so he stayed out of direct combat. But when his summoning was being used, Aaron’s PC was able to do some sneak attack damage thanks to the flanking. Plus my summoned one-round wolves took down a couple of the bad guys.
By the end of the night we had leveled. Well we almost leveled; but Dale awarded us a temporary 50XP. (Having 973xp is kind of cruel don’t you think?) We’ll have to pay that back.
Kal’s new hit point roll sucked. It was a 3 I think. That’s ok so long as he remains out of combat.
He got to pick 2 new wizard spells too. We have access to the Spell Compendium with this campaign, and there are some nice ones in there. Dale allowed me to pick the spell Nerveskitter add to Kal’s spellbook. It’s a simple spell with a lot of long term use. It simply gives you a +5 on your initiative roll. Even at level 20 I see that spell as useful.
But more importantly my summoned buddies stick around a round longer. Soon there will be an army under my control.
And that was the end of our first session.
It had the usual excitement that new campaigns tend to have.
And now we move on to our second session.
This week Brian had to cancel thanks to car problems. Oh we sure do love cars.
But we’re at the point where if one guy misses, it’s pretty noticeable. But I’m not about to cancel a game if just one person has to skip. Having too few players puts a game group in a bad situation. But we will continue to game, even if it means there are just 2 of us and a DM.
Brian did leave us his character sheet from the previous week, so it’s not like we were out a PC. So Aaron and I controlled Brian’s PC. Well actually Aaron did most of that work.
Oh, and Aaron’s dice had it in for him. Usually only DMs roll that bad in our games. It was so bad that I had to loan him some of my dice. It was pretty funny when he didn’t pay attention and rolled his dice again and rolled two successive natural 1’s.
My dice, on the other hand, have a sense of irony. Kal has a great big +0 on his initiative rolls. Whenever there was a combat that going first didn’t matter or I used Nerveskitter, I would roll over 15. But in a combats that mattered my dice would give me 5 or less.
But anyway, this session was basically a continuation of the previous week’s “standard, obligatory, low-level plots and monsters”. The peril of low level games is that they are very similar to other low level games you’ve played before. The trick is to get the party to level three as soon as reasonably possible while still allowing the PCs to “grow into their skin”. But that’s just my opinion.
It’s Dale’s opinion too. He admitted that these low-level quests are just to get us to the right point before the real adventure begins. He compares them, correctly, to the fetch quests you get while playing games like Baldur’s Gate.
So first we had to help a small village, jokingly named Littleton. The innkeeper of Littleton had been arrogant enough to actually think some necromancer was going to pay his tab. So the necromancer skipped out on his tab and stirred up the graveyard.
Kal and friends went into the graveyard and cleaned up that problem. The problem was no more than a few skeletons, zombies, and a ghoul who are all now no more.
Thus began Kal’s rules for “appropriation of goods”:
Rule #1 – Don’t steal from the living unless you’re reasonably assured that the good were already stolen. If you defeat an adversary, all reasonable means must be used to return the money and goods to their proper owner. If no such person can be found, a suitable use must be found. Charity is considered a suitable use. This rule should not be used to extremes as sometimes the reward for the defeat of an adversary is his stuff, and such is the spoils of war.
Rules #2 – Putting wealth on the dead is pointless as they can’t take it with them. All such wealth is considered to be free game.
Ok, so we robbed the mausoleums. We didn’t tell the folks of Littleton though. That would be silly. It sounds all noble-like if you have a list of rules to follow.
As a form of gratitude one of the folks of Littleton told about a small cave that a wizard used to frequent but has long since disappeared. They thought we might be able to dig up something value in there.
So we traveled to the cave and were besieged by a couple of hungry stirges. Well Kal had been summoning a wolf, but his fellow party took down the stirges before the wolf came to be (1 round casting times suck by the way).
So Kal sent his summoned up wolf on a quick run about the cave to lure out anything else or perhaps spring a trap. Well that wolf hit pay dirt. An area of darkness appeared around the wolf and a darkmantle leapt out at the poor wolfie.
I think if Dale had put the Fiendish template on the stirges and darkmantle, he might have been punched. (If you don’t follow that joke, reread the early sessions of our WLD campaign.)
Well Kal’s poor wolf took a beating for the whole 2 rounds it existed. It had 1hp left when it disappeared and left a confused darkmantle crushing thin air and deprived of a meal.
Aaron’s PC almost got his head crushed by the darkmantle too. A lucky natural 20 on his usually unlucky dice saved him there.
But it was killed after that and we set about searching the place from head to toe and came up with a little money, a wand, and some spell scrolls.
We took our greedily gotten gains and headed back to Littleton. Halfway there a vicious little krenshar jumped out and blocked the path and did that freaky face-pealing scream thing. All 3 PCs failed their fear saves, but all 3 horses saved. That’s like the saddest thing ever isn’t it? So we fled back to the now empty cave and plotted revenge on the krenshar. The horses laughed at us and the krenshar had some bragging rights.
Since we needed to kill some time, Kal cast Identify on the wand. It was a pathetic Wand of Acid Splash with only 10 charges. Total value: 75gp. Subtract the cost of a 100gp pearl and that leaves you a poor adventurer. Both of the scrolls were level 1 spells, one of which was from the Spell Compendium, so it was newer and worth more. (Dale has restricted access to spells from the Spell Compendium until some role-playing opens up availability to those spells.)
We also discussed the idea of an experience farm. We could stack up the bodies of the monsters we just killed and hope that other monsters would smell the meat and come looking while you’re gone and doing the same at several other caves. Then one day you get back to where you started and monsters should inhabit the caves where you left meat for them. Then you harvest and repeat the cycle. According to the laws of D&D, it should work. I think it’s ingenious.
Luckily the townsfolk of Littleton cut us a deal on some pearls they had. They were on the coast after all, so pearls were something they had to trade. We bought several for 75gp a piece. That helped a bit.
Oh, the krenshar never bothered us again. He’s out there somewhere laughing at us still.
Then we moved on to Smallton. Yeah, Dale really can think up some good city names can’t he? I remember in this once campaign he ran there was this small thorpe of a village called Thorpe. You’d think someone who has been playing D&D for nearly 30 years could think up something better, but oh well.
In Smallton we found a nice wizard of some power, a wizard of name in fact. For those of you who are too new to D&D to know, or too old and senile to remember, a character of name is a character, PC or NPC, who is of “name level”, which used to mean level nine or higher.
I think this fellow’s name was Twila, the Sunmage. We traded him the two scrolls for some spells that were of more use to us. We also bought some scrolls of Identify because the casting time of that spell is painful. It would be easier to buy or scribe the scrolls than actually memorize the spell and cast it. Basically it gives you the ability to identify an item when you get it – just like in Diablo.
When Kal slept that first night his god, Herne, appeared to him in a dream. He had approved of Kal’s actions and thus rewarded him with a boon. Kal had been given access to the level 1 druid spells in the Spell Compendium. Woohoo, jackpot!
As we were in town we found out that Smallton had a thug problem. A group of orcs, a group of elves, and a bugbear were basically shaking down the town and giving it no end to trouble. (I guess thugs are not worth a name level wizard’s time to hunt down.)
Because of our alignments, stupid-good, we had to track these jerks down and give them what for. Heh, now I sound like someone’s grandfather.
We found out where they hid (the sewers) and entered.
We first encountered the 4 orcs. Since Brian’s PC is a loud tin can, they heard us coming. Four orcs were then added to our kill-list. That almost didn’t happen as Dale suddenly hit his good dice roll streak. He almost killed Brian’s PC with a crit, but missed the confirmation roll by one. Aaron’s PC was at 0hp for a moment until Kal healed him.
Summoned wolves really proved their value as a damage dealer and a damage taker.
Plus all of the noise we made attracted the attention of a swarm of rats. This combat didn’t last long though thanks to a wolf and Aaron’s Burning Hands spells.
We searched the room and healed up. We burned 8 charges from the Wand of Cure Light Wounds too.
Then I noticed the time and had to go because I had some stuff to do early in the morning.
We are now low on spells and still need to fight a bugbear and some elves. This might be a challenge.
We can’t stop and rest because the elves might come for some retribution. And they make take it out on us or Smallton.
So we’re going to have to play a little smarter and sneakier next session, which happens to be tonight.
It was about half a year before the final WLD session were to hit, so saying Dale was ready to go would be an understatement.
He has supposedly prepped this campaign to take us from level 1 to level 12. And I don’t doubt that either.
And as for Dale’s style of “dungeon mastering” I’d say he and I are opposites in many areas.
My role-playing range of NPCs is limited, and several usually end up as disgruntled and easily irritated types. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run an NPC dwarf that started with a Scottish accent and morphed into an Irish one as I spoke. But Dale’s range of NPC’s is much broader, and usually tend to be much happier and brighter.
Dale is a bit more imaginative and skilled in creating the little role-playing things that I never seem to get right; things like rhyming clues and fortunes. The only thing I can beat Dale with in that area is that I can think of an original name.
While I am a generally restrictive DM, Dale is not. He is usually quite generous. Neither way is good or bad really, they are just different styles of DM’ing.
For paperwork and prepping, I’ve got Dale beat easy. For one campaign I’ve had all kinds of information listed and prepared. It starts off as a barebones setup that gets more filled in as needed. But in campaigns Dale has run before, his notes usually consisted of 2 pages of pencil scribbles.
As for rules knowledge, rules interpretation, and game ideas, we’re probably pretty close.
So when Dale told me that he had it all written down, I was skeptical. He’d said that before only to produce the 2 pages of notes. But this time his plans were quite a bit more planned out.
But something he hadn’t planned on was losing two of our members.
So after some thought and input, he decided to allow us to take Gestalt characters with the proviso that if we became too powerful or we found some new players we would drop the gestalt.
Now prior to all of this, I had been preparing a PC for Dale’s campaign. I had a half-elf druid planned out and ready to go. His abilities would focus around summoning creatures on adventures and the diplomacy skill while in the city. I had played a 3E druid to over level 12 before, but it was my first 3E PC and felt I could do better.
But when the gestalt ruling came down, the day the first game was supposed to be, my entire character concept might be getting thrown out the window.
None of us had played a gestalt PC before. The amount of power they offer is scary. The amount of paperwork they require is scarier still. I was up to the challenge, but I didn’t want to give up on my concept.
So I decided to find a class that would augment my druid’s abilities rather than add a whole new aspect to him. So I took a look at the summoning spells to get my options of cleric, sorcerer, or wizard. For role-playing reasons I removed cleric. A druid-cleric just doesn’t mesh well in my head. So now it’s sorcerer or wizard. So I broke the two down and compared them with what I wanted out of the class in mind. It came down to the extra feats a wizard gets versus the sheer number of spells per day a sorcerer gets. Sorry sorcerer, I’ll be getting enough spells as it is with two classes.
But to boost the summoning power and get some role-playing credibility, I’ll have my wizard-half specialize in the school of conjuration. I dumped necromancy and illusion. Easy decisions really; necromancy is evil and I’ve got elf blood in me and illusion is a pain for the DM to deal with if done properly.
(If you think illusionists are pansies, then try to fight one. Or better yet – who would you rather fight; a high level invoker or high level illusionist? If you said invoker, you’re going to have a bad wake up call some day.)
As I was in the process of finishing this PC, I came to the conclusion that we were already going down the golden-brick road of munchkinism (I think gestalt PCs are the poster children of munchkins), so why keep the self-righteous pretense that I was better than that? So goodbye half-elf side and hello 100% human with your extra feat and skill points who happened to be a little short and has a liking for all things elven. And his name changed from Kaloristheran to Kal Vesh.
Is it pathetic? Yes. Yes it is.
Is it fun and over powered? Oh yeah.
So at first level I have this:
Kal Vesh
Neutral good human
Level 1 Druid-Wizard (Conjurer)
Strength – 11
Dexterity – 11
Constitution – 13
Intelligence – 18
Wisdom – 16
Charisma – 13
Hit points: 9
Armor Class: 12/10/12 (large wooden shield - when expecting danger he casts Mage Armor)
Feats: Spell Focus – Conjuration, Augment Summoning
Animal companion: Heavy Riding Horse named Vriril (Hey, it’s a good way to get a free horse at level 1 and he’s smarter than your average horse.)
No familiar though.
Combined spells: 6 level 0, 5 level 1
Brian’s PC is a Fighter-Cleric who is basically a paladin with a lot more feats and better spells. He also bought a dog that will aid us a little in combat.
Aaron’s PC is a Warmage-Rogue who gets some sneak attack damage with his spells.
Their names elude me at the moment, but all of our names sound the same (a hard “K” sound).
We were introduced to one another by your standard secret organization of good that works behind the scenes to promote your goodly causes.
Then we were given the task to go put an end to evil in this poor town of Darken Moor and given a nice stipend to start with.
We decided as a group that we were kind of sick of “group treasures” but knew that not having one was a bad idea. So we decided that that half of our treasures would be put into a group fund and the rest would be split evenly. The group fund would go towards helping the group as a whole, like a wand of cure light wounds, while our personal funds would be used as we saw fit (new armor and spells for example).
So with our new money we shopped around and looked for some information about our mission. Kal found the local wizard’s guild and joined it with the aid of our benefactors. While Kal did some studying, Aaron’s PC investigated the history library and found that Darken Moor had been previously been called Darken Glen but had been cursed a coven of hags.
The citizens of Darken Glen had offended the hags by the usual “damn you’re ugly” offenses that hags receive. So the angered hags summoned up a great monster to plague the city and slowly turned the surrounding lands into marsh. And thus the names changed to Darken Moor.
The townspeople eventually made a deal with the monster; they would give it their most beautiful maiden once a year (as a sacrificial meal I would assume) in exchange for it to cease its other attacks.
One year a maiden that had been chosen was also betrothed to a would-be-hero. He planned to find and defeat the beast but the hags spoke with the maiden and told her that if he tried and failed, the deal with the town would have been broken and it would resume its attacks on the town. So they convinced her to sacrifice herself before that could happen.
When the would-be-hero found out about this he went into a deep despair. His spirit still haunts his keep this many years later.
So now it is our job to save this poor city from the evil hags and their evil beast.
But first we have to travel there. Our benefactors also gave the other two PCs horses – dangit I could have had a wolf or something. That’s ok though – my horse will be smarter, and I’ve trained him to choose flight over fight.
So we began to travel. On the way we found many of your usual low-level adventuring jobs. You know what I’m talking about; the raided caravan, the farm infested with spiders, and so on.
We found that a fighter-cleric is unfettered by the problems regular fighters have, which is that they have to stay near the cleric.
And we found that warmage-rogue is pretty nasty when a spell hits a goblin and gets to add his sneak attack damage.
Unfortunately Kal was a bit of a weak link, but had his uses. His low armor class was big impediment, so he stayed out of direct combat. But when his summoning was being used, Aaron’s PC was able to do some sneak attack damage thanks to the flanking. Plus my summoned one-round wolves took down a couple of the bad guys.
By the end of the night we had leveled. Well we almost leveled; but Dale awarded us a temporary 50XP. (Having 973xp is kind of cruel don’t you think?) We’ll have to pay that back.
Kal’s new hit point roll sucked. It was a 3 I think. That’s ok so long as he remains out of combat.
He got to pick 2 new wizard spells too. We have access to the Spell Compendium with this campaign, and there are some nice ones in there. Dale allowed me to pick the spell Nerveskitter add to Kal’s spellbook. It’s a simple spell with a lot of long term use. It simply gives you a +5 on your initiative roll. Even at level 20 I see that spell as useful.
But more importantly my summoned buddies stick around a round longer. Soon there will be an army under my control.
And that was the end of our first session.
It had the usual excitement that new campaigns tend to have.
And now we move on to our second session.
This week Brian had to cancel thanks to car problems. Oh we sure do love cars.
But we’re at the point where if one guy misses, it’s pretty noticeable. But I’m not about to cancel a game if just one person has to skip. Having too few players puts a game group in a bad situation. But we will continue to game, even if it means there are just 2 of us and a DM.
Brian did leave us his character sheet from the previous week, so it’s not like we were out a PC. So Aaron and I controlled Brian’s PC. Well actually Aaron did most of that work.
Oh, and Aaron’s dice had it in for him. Usually only DMs roll that bad in our games. It was so bad that I had to loan him some of my dice. It was pretty funny when he didn’t pay attention and rolled his dice again and rolled two successive natural 1’s.
My dice, on the other hand, have a sense of irony. Kal has a great big +0 on his initiative rolls. Whenever there was a combat that going first didn’t matter or I used Nerveskitter, I would roll over 15. But in a combats that mattered my dice would give me 5 or less.
But anyway, this session was basically a continuation of the previous week’s “standard, obligatory, low-level plots and monsters”. The peril of low level games is that they are very similar to other low level games you’ve played before. The trick is to get the party to level three as soon as reasonably possible while still allowing the PCs to “grow into their skin”. But that’s just my opinion.
It’s Dale’s opinion too. He admitted that these low-level quests are just to get us to the right point before the real adventure begins. He compares them, correctly, to the fetch quests you get while playing games like Baldur’s Gate.
So first we had to help a small village, jokingly named Littleton. The innkeeper of Littleton had been arrogant enough to actually think some necromancer was going to pay his tab. So the necromancer skipped out on his tab and stirred up the graveyard.
Kal and friends went into the graveyard and cleaned up that problem. The problem was no more than a few skeletons, zombies, and a ghoul who are all now no more.
Thus began Kal’s rules for “appropriation of goods”:
Rule #1 – Don’t steal from the living unless you’re reasonably assured that the good were already stolen. If you defeat an adversary, all reasonable means must be used to return the money and goods to their proper owner. If no such person can be found, a suitable use must be found. Charity is considered a suitable use. This rule should not be used to extremes as sometimes the reward for the defeat of an adversary is his stuff, and such is the spoils of war.
Rules #2 – Putting wealth on the dead is pointless as they can’t take it with them. All such wealth is considered to be free game.
Ok, so we robbed the mausoleums. We didn’t tell the folks of Littleton though. That would be silly. It sounds all noble-like if you have a list of rules to follow.
As a form of gratitude one of the folks of Littleton told about a small cave that a wizard used to frequent but has long since disappeared. They thought we might be able to dig up something value in there.
So we traveled to the cave and were besieged by a couple of hungry stirges. Well Kal had been summoning a wolf, but his fellow party took down the stirges before the wolf came to be (1 round casting times suck by the way).
So Kal sent his summoned up wolf on a quick run about the cave to lure out anything else or perhaps spring a trap. Well that wolf hit pay dirt. An area of darkness appeared around the wolf and a darkmantle leapt out at the poor wolfie.
I think if Dale had put the Fiendish template on the stirges and darkmantle, he might have been punched. (If you don’t follow that joke, reread the early sessions of our WLD campaign.)
Well Kal’s poor wolf took a beating for the whole 2 rounds it existed. It had 1hp left when it disappeared and left a confused darkmantle crushing thin air and deprived of a meal.
Aaron’s PC almost got his head crushed by the darkmantle too. A lucky natural 20 on his usually unlucky dice saved him there.
But it was killed after that and we set about searching the place from head to toe and came up with a little money, a wand, and some spell scrolls.
We took our greedily gotten gains and headed back to Littleton. Halfway there a vicious little krenshar jumped out and blocked the path and did that freaky face-pealing scream thing. All 3 PCs failed their fear saves, but all 3 horses saved. That’s like the saddest thing ever isn’t it? So we fled back to the now empty cave and plotted revenge on the krenshar. The horses laughed at us and the krenshar had some bragging rights.
Since we needed to kill some time, Kal cast Identify on the wand. It was a pathetic Wand of Acid Splash with only 10 charges. Total value: 75gp. Subtract the cost of a 100gp pearl and that leaves you a poor adventurer. Both of the scrolls were level 1 spells, one of which was from the Spell Compendium, so it was newer and worth more. (Dale has restricted access to spells from the Spell Compendium until some role-playing opens up availability to those spells.)
We also discussed the idea of an experience farm. We could stack up the bodies of the monsters we just killed and hope that other monsters would smell the meat and come looking while you’re gone and doing the same at several other caves. Then one day you get back to where you started and monsters should inhabit the caves where you left meat for them. Then you harvest and repeat the cycle. According to the laws of D&D, it should work. I think it’s ingenious.
Luckily the townsfolk of Littleton cut us a deal on some pearls they had. They were on the coast after all, so pearls were something they had to trade. We bought several for 75gp a piece. That helped a bit.
Oh, the krenshar never bothered us again. He’s out there somewhere laughing at us still.
Then we moved on to Smallton. Yeah, Dale really can think up some good city names can’t he? I remember in this once campaign he ran there was this small thorpe of a village called Thorpe. You’d think someone who has been playing D&D for nearly 30 years could think up something better, but oh well.
In Smallton we found a nice wizard of some power, a wizard of name in fact. For those of you who are too new to D&D to know, or too old and senile to remember, a character of name is a character, PC or NPC, who is of “name level”, which used to mean level nine or higher.
I think this fellow’s name was Twila, the Sunmage. We traded him the two scrolls for some spells that were of more use to us. We also bought some scrolls of Identify because the casting time of that spell is painful. It would be easier to buy or scribe the scrolls than actually memorize the spell and cast it. Basically it gives you the ability to identify an item when you get it – just like in Diablo.
When Kal slept that first night his god, Herne, appeared to him in a dream. He had approved of Kal’s actions and thus rewarded him with a boon. Kal had been given access to the level 1 druid spells in the Spell Compendium. Woohoo, jackpot!
As we were in town we found out that Smallton had a thug problem. A group of orcs, a group of elves, and a bugbear were basically shaking down the town and giving it no end to trouble. (I guess thugs are not worth a name level wizard’s time to hunt down.)
Because of our alignments, stupid-good, we had to track these jerks down and give them what for. Heh, now I sound like someone’s grandfather.
We found out where they hid (the sewers) and entered.
We first encountered the 4 orcs. Since Brian’s PC is a loud tin can, they heard us coming. Four orcs were then added to our kill-list. That almost didn’t happen as Dale suddenly hit his good dice roll streak. He almost killed Brian’s PC with a crit, but missed the confirmation roll by one. Aaron’s PC was at 0hp for a moment until Kal healed him.
Summoned wolves really proved their value as a damage dealer and a damage taker.
Plus all of the noise we made attracted the attention of a swarm of rats. This combat didn’t last long though thanks to a wolf and Aaron’s Burning Hands spells.
We searched the room and healed up. We burned 8 charges from the Wand of Cure Light Wounds too.
Then I noticed the time and had to go because I had some stuff to do early in the morning.
We are now low on spells and still need to fight a bugbear and some elves. This might be a challenge.
We can’t stop and rest because the elves might come for some retribution. And they make take it out on us or Smallton.
So we’re going to have to play a little smarter and sneakier next session, which happens to be tonight.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 2:44 PM
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