Sean's Campaign - Session #14
Now if you’re wondering why I’m lagging a bit with updating the sessions, it’s because I’ve been busy with personal (non-gaming) life, busy with a new season of TV, and busy with electronic gaming.
I’ve been playing Neverwinter Nights 2 and I love it. It’s much better than the first one.
And recently my wife and I got a Nintendo Wii, and it too has been stealing much of my free time away from me.
We had a chance to play my brother-in-law’s over the holiday and we were both immediately hooked on it.
The last game system I owned and played a lot was the Super Nintendo back in the early 90’s. After that the other consoles that came out just weren’t interesting to me because I had some PC gaming to do and the console games just didn’t strike me as all that much fun.
I figured my age that made the games less fun because I saw the controllers with the multiple knobs and a dozen buttons as something over complicated I had no intention of bothering with. The Street Fighter and first person shooter games held no interest for me and in order to play them well you had to master that “thing” they called a controller.
So until this past holiday season, I never thought I’d want another console system.
Once the wife and I had the bug for a Wii, the epic hunt was on. It took us 10 days, a network of people looking for one for us, a lot of driving around, and who know what else, but we finally got one.
My favorite game is Excite Truck. It’s a simple racing game that doesn’t require much race-driving skill to enjoy. You basically get awarded points for insane driving. Plus you only have to worry about 4 buttons, 2 of which you hardly use – steering is done by turning the controller itself like a steering wheel.
Then there’s bowling on the Wii. My wife kicks my ass at bowling. You use three total buttons while bowling – the act of throwing the ball involves you acting like you’re bowling.
Forget the PS3. It’s more of the same you’ve seen before and it’s overpriced.
Screw the Xbox 360. Like Microsoft needs more money, plus it’s more of the same.
Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be writing about D&D gaming.
This session was a bit better than the previous one, but it was almost all adventuring and combat.
And before I forget, I added a couple of new things for the players.
First, I’ve brought back the d20 re-roll every level, starting at level 8, with a few less restrictions than I had for the WLD. Basically the player can use his re-rolls for nearly anything he’d like, saving throws, skill checks, attack rolls, and so on – so long as they are for a life or death situation for him or a party member. And this time they accumulate.
I’ve done this because I’m running a rough game that always seems to stretch the group thin of resources. I’m allowing them to accumulate because in the WLD it seemed that the front line PCs use them a lot, but the rear of the group uses them rarely but when they use them it likely for a save or die situation.
Second, I’ve brought back the d6 add-on roll. But the players only accumulate them for showing up to the game early.
Basically they get to add 1d6 to add to another die they’ve rolled. It doesn’t fix a natural 1, nor can it make a natural 20, it’s just a little bonus to help.
Now if you’re thinking it’s just a kind of baby-sitting technique, you’re wrong. Think of it more as an ounce of prevention. I’ve seen it a couple of times before. One or two players start showing up a little late, so the game starts a little late. Then another player or realizes that showing up on time is a waste so he plays a computer game an extra 15 minutes or something like that. Then a circular effect begins and soon enough your game is starting an hour later than it used to.
The “1d6 add-on” acts as anchor to prevent the time-creep and it doesn’t penalize anyone for being late.
And in spite of what Allen calls them they are not “Eberron Action Points.” If you need a source for their origin, it goes back to the “force points” from the first Star Wars RPG.
We last stopped with the party being snuck into the glade where the elven Tree of Life was supposed to be.
When Brian asked if Zelast had ever known the glade was here, or even anything about the tree I informed him that Zelast remembered a large tree that was relatively alone this general area, but nothing special beyond that.
So the party entered the over grown and tangled area.
Vines, shrubs, and trees twisted together to create a joined canopy far above casting the whole area into a slight shadow.
They followed the clearest ground until a batch of vines burst up from the ground, starting the first combat of the night.
The party faced a pair of greenvises. Think of Little Shop of Horrors and you have a greenvise.
They could only see one, and barely at that as it had a reach of 15’ so it kept its main body within the cover of the surrounding foliage.
The party quickly finished it off, but the second emitted a cloud of acid fog prior to getting near the party. This fog did 3d8 points of acid damage a round, slowed movement to 5’ a round, limited sight to 5’ around, and covered enough area to not even worry about the party getting out of it.
Ari lasted two rounds before her low hit points dropped her to negatives. Lindo turned into a coward when he was reduced to 5 hit points. The rest of the party was pretty seriously hurt by the acid.
Artemis used his Gust of Wind spell to clear the area, thus ending the acid damage after 2 rounds.
Shortly thereafter the second greenvise pounded Sorra pretty good, dropping her to negatives as well. But Artemis was going to town with his warmage spells, Zelast was whomping on the plant creature in melee, and Ysilia was healing as fast as she could, allowing Ari get back up and join Artemis in the nuking fun.
When that was over, charges of curing wands were drained heavily (nearly a full wand by the end of the night), and the party searched the area for treasure.
(Remember as Gary Gygax has said: “All good adventurers are Neutral Greedy.”)
They found a few minor trinkets and an elf skeleton who they believed to be of the friend of the druid elf that sent them here.
Aaron wanted Sorra to take the hand of the skeleton until I informed him that the magic item he was thinking of required a mummified elf hand, not a skeletal one.
Healed up and ready to go, the party moved on.
They got about 20 feet before a sonic glyph was triggered. Its high pitched blast was both a warning that intruders were coming and required some more healing for the party.
Another 50’ of slow walking and the party made it to a large open area where the canopy raised to over 60’ high with the majority of it resting upon the upper branches of a huge, dark tree.
Creating a defensive line in front of the tree were five unicorns; four of them with black coats and one whose horn was a jagged spike. None of them looked nice or happy.
The tree, calling herself the queen of the elves, demanded to know why the party entered her glade. Sorra responded that they were here to cure the queen of whatever was making her sick. The queen informed that she was happy the way she was, then she ordered the party to leave or die. Guess what they chose?
After the glory I had with the critical hits last week, I was back to sucking on dice fume this session.
With that said, the party cleared out the evil unicorn infestation relatively easily.
But they never did anything to attack the tree.
While still in initiative order, Sorra took a look at the tree, searching for evidence of anything that could be causing the Tree of Life to turn bad. All that got Sorra was several poundings from some very large branches (3d6+12).
Then Ysilia fell into a well-concealed pit on the ground. She survived the fall thanks to D&D physics. She stood up, cast Light, let the party know she was alright and in a dug out cave, and that she just heard something else down here.
So then the party split between investigating the pit, and checking out the Tree of Life.
Eventually Trebor noticed, from 20’ away, that the base of the tree was slightly darker than higher up the tree and it did not look one bit natural.
When Ysilia, Ari, Zelast, and Lindo were down the pit a small horde of 20 dretch demons rushed the party from the darkness.
Dretches have very few hit points, but they have a lot of resistances that the party had some trouble dealing with. And since the roots of the Tree of Life were still around, no fire spells could be used.
Eventually Sorra dropped from climbing a rope down, squishing one dretch, Ari cleaned out a large swath of them will a couple of non-energy area spells (Hail of Stone), and dark voice came from the darkness asking the party to come see him because was bored and hungry.
By the time the combat was over, healing was being spread around heavily, and everyone was down in the cave. The voice taunted while they were healing up.
When the party was ready, they were hoping it wasn’t going to be a combat because they were tapped out of resources. Ysilia had only 3 low level spells left, Ari had only wands and unusable fire spells, Artemis had only one high level spell left (which he was saving in the event of an evac), and so on.
But they had another combat, like it or not.
The party traveled a short distance through the dug cave until it opened into a natural cavern with a small stream running through it. Protruding through the ceiling of the cave, and dangling into the stream was the taproot of the Tree of Life. And standing next to the taproot was a huge demon.
The glabrezu was holding onto the taproot with his normal hand, spreading some kind of foul magic into the tree. Throughout the combat, the glabrezu could not move, but it was free to use its spells and abilities, it could reach 15’ with its pincer hands, and bit anyone dumb enough to get within 5’ of it.
(This was an intended nerfing of a creature that could have easily crushed the party even had it been fully rested. I adjusted the CR of the thing from 14 to 11 for XP purposes later. No free XP from this DM.)
Sorra: moved to the far side of the demon, and put an oil of bless on her weapon while doing so. She got into melee with it and hurt it slightly with her now good-aligned weapon. That ceased when the glabrezu used his Power Word Stun on Sorra.
Zelast: Moved into flanking position with Sorra when possible, but was otherwise a target for the abuses of the glabrezu. Eventually the glabrezu picked Zelast up and prepared to pound him fiercely until it had to deal with the casters.
Ysilia: Cast Shield Other on Zelast and kept herself healed up with wands.
Lindo & Trebor: Had no way to hurt the demon other than with a critical hit with high damage rolls.
Ari and Artemis: Ari used a Wand of Magic Missile (level 9 caster) and Artemis used his remaining first level spells as Magic Missiles. Eventually the damage added up and made the glabrezu pay attention. Over a couple of rounds it used its unlimited uses of Reverse Gravity to send every one but Sorra and Zelast into the ceiling and back down.
It was down to one hit point when another Magic Missile penetrated it magic resistance and finished it off.
Once again healing was thrown around and the party searched for treasure, finding plenty of nice trinkets, including a tarnished silver horn the glabrezu wore around its neck.
The party could not identify the horn, but when they touched it, the black tarnish faded, leaving a silver horn.
They went ahead and rested where they were and discussed what they should do next; deciding upon climbing up out of the pit, casting Invisibility on everyone and sneaking back to see their elven druid friend.
They expected the taint of evil to be gone from the Tree of Life by morning, but it was not. It was still just as angry at the party and still clearly wished to harm them. They determined that it just might take a while for the tree to recover.
When the party left the glade, the tree screamed out a warning to Jothillian.
Artemis then cast Invisibility on everyone and headed to the exit of the glade.
They found a group of 4 elven guards wearing armor of house Vornoth, standing close enough together to prevent slipping through. The guards’ keen elven ears could clearly hear the group tromping through the area (platemail and all), so of course they alerted their boss.
A handsome elf strode into the party’s view. His pale gold hair barely covered an acid burn scar on his right cheek.
Upon seeing him, Ysilia gasped and took a step back.
He spoke to someone the party couldn’t see and moments later the party appeared.
The handsome elf looked at them and spoke, “You are all under arrest for crimes committed against the elves of Maratheelia. Your sentences will be carried out in the morning.”
“What is the sentence?” Artemis asked.
“Death.”
And we stopped there.
I’ve been playing Neverwinter Nights 2 and I love it. It’s much better than the first one.
And recently my wife and I got a Nintendo Wii, and it too has been stealing much of my free time away from me.
We had a chance to play my brother-in-law’s over the holiday and we were both immediately hooked on it.
The last game system I owned and played a lot was the Super Nintendo back in the early 90’s. After that the other consoles that came out just weren’t interesting to me because I had some PC gaming to do and the console games just didn’t strike me as all that much fun.
I figured my age that made the games less fun because I saw the controllers with the multiple knobs and a dozen buttons as something over complicated I had no intention of bothering with. The Street Fighter and first person shooter games held no interest for me and in order to play them well you had to master that “thing” they called a controller.
So until this past holiday season, I never thought I’d want another console system.
Once the wife and I had the bug for a Wii, the epic hunt was on. It took us 10 days, a network of people looking for one for us, a lot of driving around, and who know what else, but we finally got one.
My favorite game is Excite Truck. It’s a simple racing game that doesn’t require much race-driving skill to enjoy. You basically get awarded points for insane driving. Plus you only have to worry about 4 buttons, 2 of which you hardly use – steering is done by turning the controller itself like a steering wheel.
Then there’s bowling on the Wii. My wife kicks my ass at bowling. You use three total buttons while bowling – the act of throwing the ball involves you acting like you’re bowling.
Forget the PS3. It’s more of the same you’ve seen before and it’s overpriced.
Screw the Xbox 360. Like Microsoft needs more money, plus it’s more of the same.
Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be writing about D&D gaming.
This session was a bit better than the previous one, but it was almost all adventuring and combat.
And before I forget, I added a couple of new things for the players.
First, I’ve brought back the d20 re-roll every level, starting at level 8, with a few less restrictions than I had for the WLD. Basically the player can use his re-rolls for nearly anything he’d like, saving throws, skill checks, attack rolls, and so on – so long as they are for a life or death situation for him or a party member. And this time they accumulate.
I’ve done this because I’m running a rough game that always seems to stretch the group thin of resources. I’m allowing them to accumulate because in the WLD it seemed that the front line PCs use them a lot, but the rear of the group uses them rarely but when they use them it likely for a save or die situation.
Second, I’ve brought back the d6 add-on roll. But the players only accumulate them for showing up to the game early.
Basically they get to add 1d6 to add to another die they’ve rolled. It doesn’t fix a natural 1, nor can it make a natural 20, it’s just a little bonus to help.
Now if you’re thinking it’s just a kind of baby-sitting technique, you’re wrong. Think of it more as an ounce of prevention. I’ve seen it a couple of times before. One or two players start showing up a little late, so the game starts a little late. Then another player or realizes that showing up on time is a waste so he plays a computer game an extra 15 minutes or something like that. Then a circular effect begins and soon enough your game is starting an hour later than it used to.
The “1d6 add-on” acts as anchor to prevent the time-creep and it doesn’t penalize anyone for being late.
And in spite of what Allen calls them they are not “Eberron Action Points.” If you need a source for their origin, it goes back to the “force points” from the first Star Wars RPG.
We last stopped with the party being snuck into the glade where the elven Tree of Life was supposed to be.
When Brian asked if Zelast had ever known the glade was here, or even anything about the tree I informed him that Zelast remembered a large tree that was relatively alone this general area, but nothing special beyond that.
So the party entered the over grown and tangled area.
Vines, shrubs, and trees twisted together to create a joined canopy far above casting the whole area into a slight shadow.
They followed the clearest ground until a batch of vines burst up from the ground, starting the first combat of the night.
The party faced a pair of greenvises. Think of Little Shop of Horrors and you have a greenvise.
They could only see one, and barely at that as it had a reach of 15’ so it kept its main body within the cover of the surrounding foliage.
The party quickly finished it off, but the second emitted a cloud of acid fog prior to getting near the party. This fog did 3d8 points of acid damage a round, slowed movement to 5’ a round, limited sight to 5’ around, and covered enough area to not even worry about the party getting out of it.
Ari lasted two rounds before her low hit points dropped her to negatives. Lindo turned into a coward when he was reduced to 5 hit points. The rest of the party was pretty seriously hurt by the acid.
Artemis used his Gust of Wind spell to clear the area, thus ending the acid damage after 2 rounds.
Shortly thereafter the second greenvise pounded Sorra pretty good, dropping her to negatives as well. But Artemis was going to town with his warmage spells, Zelast was whomping on the plant creature in melee, and Ysilia was healing as fast as she could, allowing Ari get back up and join Artemis in the nuking fun.
When that was over, charges of curing wands were drained heavily (nearly a full wand by the end of the night), and the party searched the area for treasure.
(Remember as Gary Gygax has said: “All good adventurers are Neutral Greedy.”)
They found a few minor trinkets and an elf skeleton who they believed to be of the friend of the druid elf that sent them here.
Aaron wanted Sorra to take the hand of the skeleton until I informed him that the magic item he was thinking of required a mummified elf hand, not a skeletal one.
Healed up and ready to go, the party moved on.
They got about 20 feet before a sonic glyph was triggered. Its high pitched blast was both a warning that intruders were coming and required some more healing for the party.
Another 50’ of slow walking and the party made it to a large open area where the canopy raised to over 60’ high with the majority of it resting upon the upper branches of a huge, dark tree.
Creating a defensive line in front of the tree were five unicorns; four of them with black coats and one whose horn was a jagged spike. None of them looked nice or happy.
The tree, calling herself the queen of the elves, demanded to know why the party entered her glade. Sorra responded that they were here to cure the queen of whatever was making her sick. The queen informed that she was happy the way she was, then she ordered the party to leave or die. Guess what they chose?
After the glory I had with the critical hits last week, I was back to sucking on dice fume this session.
With that said, the party cleared out the evil unicorn infestation relatively easily.
But they never did anything to attack the tree.
While still in initiative order, Sorra took a look at the tree, searching for evidence of anything that could be causing the Tree of Life to turn bad. All that got Sorra was several poundings from some very large branches (3d6+12).
Then Ysilia fell into a well-concealed pit on the ground. She survived the fall thanks to D&D physics. She stood up, cast Light, let the party know she was alright and in a dug out cave, and that she just heard something else down here.
So then the party split between investigating the pit, and checking out the Tree of Life.
Eventually Trebor noticed, from 20’ away, that the base of the tree was slightly darker than higher up the tree and it did not look one bit natural.
When Ysilia, Ari, Zelast, and Lindo were down the pit a small horde of 20 dretch demons rushed the party from the darkness.
Dretches have very few hit points, but they have a lot of resistances that the party had some trouble dealing with. And since the roots of the Tree of Life were still around, no fire spells could be used.
Eventually Sorra dropped from climbing a rope down, squishing one dretch, Ari cleaned out a large swath of them will a couple of non-energy area spells (Hail of Stone), and dark voice came from the darkness asking the party to come see him because was bored and hungry.
By the time the combat was over, healing was being spread around heavily, and everyone was down in the cave. The voice taunted while they were healing up.
When the party was ready, they were hoping it wasn’t going to be a combat because they were tapped out of resources. Ysilia had only 3 low level spells left, Ari had only wands and unusable fire spells, Artemis had only one high level spell left (which he was saving in the event of an evac), and so on.
But they had another combat, like it or not.
The party traveled a short distance through the dug cave until it opened into a natural cavern with a small stream running through it. Protruding through the ceiling of the cave, and dangling into the stream was the taproot of the Tree of Life. And standing next to the taproot was a huge demon.
The glabrezu was holding onto the taproot with his normal hand, spreading some kind of foul magic into the tree. Throughout the combat, the glabrezu could not move, but it was free to use its spells and abilities, it could reach 15’ with its pincer hands, and bit anyone dumb enough to get within 5’ of it.
(This was an intended nerfing of a creature that could have easily crushed the party even had it been fully rested. I adjusted the CR of the thing from 14 to 11 for XP purposes later. No free XP from this DM.)
Sorra: moved to the far side of the demon, and put an oil of bless on her weapon while doing so. She got into melee with it and hurt it slightly with her now good-aligned weapon. That ceased when the glabrezu used his Power Word Stun on Sorra.
Zelast: Moved into flanking position with Sorra when possible, but was otherwise a target for the abuses of the glabrezu. Eventually the glabrezu picked Zelast up and prepared to pound him fiercely until it had to deal with the casters.
Ysilia: Cast Shield Other on Zelast and kept herself healed up with wands.
Lindo & Trebor: Had no way to hurt the demon other than with a critical hit with high damage rolls.
Ari and Artemis: Ari used a Wand of Magic Missile (level 9 caster) and Artemis used his remaining first level spells as Magic Missiles. Eventually the damage added up and made the glabrezu pay attention. Over a couple of rounds it used its unlimited uses of Reverse Gravity to send every one but Sorra and Zelast into the ceiling and back down.
It was down to one hit point when another Magic Missile penetrated it magic resistance and finished it off.
Once again healing was thrown around and the party searched for treasure, finding plenty of nice trinkets, including a tarnished silver horn the glabrezu wore around its neck.
The party could not identify the horn, but when they touched it, the black tarnish faded, leaving a silver horn.
They went ahead and rested where they were and discussed what they should do next; deciding upon climbing up out of the pit, casting Invisibility on everyone and sneaking back to see their elven druid friend.
They expected the taint of evil to be gone from the Tree of Life by morning, but it was not. It was still just as angry at the party and still clearly wished to harm them. They determined that it just might take a while for the tree to recover.
When the party left the glade, the tree screamed out a warning to Jothillian.
Artemis then cast Invisibility on everyone and headed to the exit of the glade.
They found a group of 4 elven guards wearing armor of house Vornoth, standing close enough together to prevent slipping through. The guards’ keen elven ears could clearly hear the group tromping through the area (platemail and all), so of course they alerted their boss.
A handsome elf strode into the party’s view. His pale gold hair barely covered an acid burn scar on his right cheek.
Upon seeing him, Ysilia gasped and took a step back.
He spoke to someone the party couldn’t see and moments later the party appeared.
The handsome elf looked at them and spoke, “You are all under arrest for crimes committed against the elves of Maratheelia. Your sentences will be carried out in the morning.”
“What is the sentence?” Artemis asked.
“Death.”
And we stopped there.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 7:08 PM
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