Ravenloft #5
Do you know what would be funny?
Watching Dale run an arcane caster who only casts non-combat spells. No defensive spells allowed, and especially no offensive spells.
He can do it, but he will squirm the entire time.
It used to bug him when I would run a wizard and I’d only have about 25-40% of my useful spells being combat spells. He’s more used to it now though.
For this session I believe I put Kelvin’s spells to optimal use; offensive, defensive, and miscellaneous. By the end of the session he had only Web and Levitate left to cast, when he started with the above plus Benign Transposition, Nerveskitter, Magic Missile, Ray of Enfeeblement, Mage Armor, Baleful Transposition, See Invisible, Regroup, Fireball, Haste, and Orb of Electricity. That’s 11 out of 13 spells cast.
Why am I kind of proud of simply casting spells? Because it’s hard to judge when to hold back your spells for later and when to let them fly like there was no tomorrow.
This was a good session where the combats we had challenged us appropriately, and our actions had consequences.
Joy was not feeling well so Aaron played Mina.
We started off with us waking up the morning after beating up on the crazed, dual-axe wielding dwarf and returning to town and trying to find out some information about the fanes/shrines that were mentioned in the Tome of Strahd.
Sir Uric knew nothing of them.
Grevan knew nothing of them.
The bartender knew nothing of them.
Izmark the Lesser knew nothing of them.
We tried to ask the Vistani, but they were unwilling to help. In fact they would rather draw weapons than talk to non-Vistani. Some of us really wanted to take them on, but decided not to…yet.
We found out a grand total of two things. The adventurer we found stuffed by the crazed dwarf was not local to the area and his wife lived in Waterdeep. And the wolves serenaded the church of Lathander while we weren’t there. Otherwise we have nothing new to work with.
So right then I was thinking that either Dale has missed giving us some clue, or we missed something.
All we could do was to find the fanes/shrines on our own.
There’s the Forest Fane. We assume that to be somewhere in the forest. But this damned land is nothing but forest.
Then there’s the Mountain Fane. Guess where we assume that one to be. But none of us are naturists/survivalists, so that path isn’t so easily taken. It is still a better choice to work with than the Forest Fane.
Then there’s the Swamp Fane. According to Sir Uric there is only one swampy area in this region, so that gives us a place to go. He did warn us that the mosquitoes there are as big as F14 Tomcats. Kelvin has no clue what an F14 Tomcat is like, but if the mosquitoes are as big as a housecat then we are in for some trouble.
With no better option presenting itself to us, we got directions to the swamp from Uric and head out.
Our first encounter was not all that surprising. There was an area about 30’ across that we were trying to get through, one at a time. While a couple of us had crossed, a shambling mound appeared and a mosquito swarm coalesced and attacked while Marco was in the middle of crossing.
Kelvin got everyone back together with a Regroup spell (gathers allies from short range and teleports them next to you), which helped Marco get out of harm’s way and brought Ian and Deimos into melee, but also set us up for the mosquito swarm’s attack.
The swarm was basically immune to weapon damage and most spells, and was able to swarm around 4 of us and drain a point of constitution and do a point of damage. The only solution to that was Kelvin’s only area affect spell, a Fireball, which did double damage to the swarm and killed it. Then the rest of the party itself swarmed the shambling mound and took it out.
After that, getting across the swamp was no big deal, but shortly there after we had to start wading through knee-deep swamp water, cutting our movement in half.
We were approaching a rubble strewn strip of land with some odd structure on it when we were attacked by something call a blood eel and a hag of some sort.
The hag kept trying to use her “evil eye” on the fighters, but they kept making their saving throw. But the hag failed her saving throw when Kelvin chose to Baleful Transposition with her (two targets, who get a save if they like, switch places). That put Kelvin safely out of the water and away from any further blood eels and put the hag right in the midst of our fighters. Ian critted her out of existence as the rest of the group pounded the eel to fish-goo.
As the party came to the strip of land another blood eel popped out, but a good random level roll from Kelvin’s Orb Electricity left the thing with single digit hit points, which pretty much meant the thing was doomed for even trying.
With everyone back on dry land, we found out that the odd structure was most likely the Swamp Fane and that the hag was probably its guardian. But nothing conclusively told us that it was broken, so we searched it, tried to dispel the faint humming of magic we could hear coming from it, and even tried to dig into it to verify or guaranteed that we had destroyed and hoping to find a clue to the whereabouts of the next fane.
We never found any kind of answer.
But we did notice that the fog was getting thicker.
“Look out!” was about all Kelvin could get out before the Fireball hit.
We apparently didn’t pay close enough attention to the Tome of Strahd.
I visited the Swamp Fane, the Forest Fane, and the Mountain Fane, and claimed their power for my own. Thus I solidified my grasp on this dim shadow of life.
I made the fanes my own, and I have become the Land. Also I made the fane-servants my own, and they serve me as once they served the saints of the fanes.
In other words, we might have just hurt Strahd and he decided to show up and hurt us back. I believe it to just be an image of him, because it was daytime, but there was no time to really experiment.
Post fireball results:
Ian was at -3 hit points.
Deimos was at 6 hit points.
Mina was around 10 hit points.
Marco was at -6 hit points.
Tenbeers was over 25 hit points.
Kelvin was at 14 hit points.
Initiative was rolled and Kelvin was first (thanks to a luck reroll, the Nerveskitter spell, and a +2 modifier). Since Kelvin can’t die, he chose to take on Strahd directly. He cast a Sudden Empowered Ray of Enfeeblement and hit Strahd with it (note: I later found out that undead are immune all of that, oops – but it didn’t really matter, and Aaron usually catches that stuff). Strahd lost 9 points of strength, making Kelvin his primary target, just what I wanted.
Out of game I basically figured I was sacrificing Kelvin to get the rest of the group time to stand up and run.
Mina, receiving a big bonus to turning thanks to Lathander’s sun domain, hit him hard with a holy-ball, and did a whopping 9 points of damage with it. Later when Deimos would try the same thing, there was no effect.
Strahd put a big bullseye on Kelvin and hit him with a special Magic Missile spell that drains a level with the first missile. But Kelvin, being a wild mage, was able to scatter it randomly to all targets within 20’.
Deimos was hit by the level draining missile, oops.
He also was hit by another normal one, but he lived through it because he had just healed himself.
Marco was hit by two missiles, leaving him at -14 hit points, oops.
Ian was hit by a missile, leaving him at -8.
The next round Kelvin taunted Strahd and threw a Magic Missile at him. The Mina attempted to turn again for no effect.
Strahd responded with a Lightning Bolt, which also had a level drain effect on it. Dale rolled 10d6 for 36 points of electrical damage.
If I made Kelvin’s Reflex save (somewhere around DC18 I would guess), he’d be at -5 hit points. Then I would have to save the level drain Fortitude save (DC20 I guess), or lose another 5 hit point and be at -10 hit points.
I failed the Reflex roll and Kelvin turned into a not-so-lucky, not-so-invincible, pool of goo at -23 hit points.
Woohoo, five sessions is a lot longer than I thought he would last!
After that everyone scattered.
Tenbeers, being the last to leave the battlefield, survived two rounds against Strahd before running. Strahd was floating just inches above the stagnant swamp water, so Tenbeers couldn’t get into melee with him. Tenbeers saved versus the domination attempt, but couldn’t do much about the 3 level Enervation drain.
Later the remnants of the party regrouped and quickly grabbed the bodies of Marco and Kelvin. The nearby sound of hunting wolves meant that they had to grab what they could off of the bodies and run. Hopefully they won’t see those two ex-PC’s later.
They next ran back to Barovia and quietly rested.
Deimos’s level loss was not when he made the save for it the next morning.
Now I know what you’re thinking, I caused Marco’s death. You can look at it that way.
Or you can look at it this way, in a “what if” alternate reality line of thought:
Round 1 (post Fireball)
- Kelvin hits Strahd for 9 points of strength loss (yes, a goof, but oh well).
- Mina hits Strahd with an empowered holy nuke.
- Deimos heals himself putting him somewhere in the mid-teens in hp.
- Kelvin takes an average of 17 points of damage from Strahd’s draining magic missiles, leaving him at -4. Then he probably will fail the save vs. level loss, so now he’s at -9.
- Marco bleeds a little (-7).
- Ian stabilizes (it happened in the real scenario).
- Tenbeers shoots at Strahd with his crossbow, but it has no effect.
Round 2
- Kelvin fails to stabilize and dies.
- Mina rushes to Marco and heals him, or stays there and heals herself. For now we’ll say she healed Marco.
- Deimos heals Ian to positive hp and quicken turns Strahd for no damage.
- Strahd cast’s the level draining Lightning Bolt (36 damage) at either Mina or Tenbeers and chances are another PC is in the line effect. If I were the DM, the cleric holding the holy symbol of a sun god would be my target. Scratch Mina and Marco as Mina will probably fail her Reflex save.
- Ian gets up and runs off the map.
- Tenbeers starts moving away.
Round 3
- Deimos tries another quickened turning and runs off the map.
- Strahd tries to dominate Tenbeers but fails.
- Tenbeers gets a little farther away.
Round 4
- Strahd casts Enervation at Tenbeers and drains 3 levels.
- Tenbeers gets off the map.
There, I’ve justified my action as helping the party more than hurting it. I saved Mina’s life by scattering the damage amongst the party and making a target of myself to take the Lightning Bolt the next round rather than die directly from the Magic Missiles.
Eh, believe what you want.
I was playing a wild mage. Adventuring with one of them is asking for trouble.
But dat ok cuz next week me gonna bring in me gud friend Gortag Crushface, half-orc barbarian. Him gud at killin things.
I believe Allen will be bringing in a bow-using ranger.
Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- Next on our to-do list might be to wander search around the base of the mountains, hoping to find something useful.
- The next time we assault a fane guardian we need to get in and out real fast. Maybe, if things are going our way, we’ll ambush Strahd. Yeah, and then we’ll replace two more PC’s.
- I wouldn’t be surprised if the next fane’s defenses are beefed up a lot.
- After talking a little with Sir Uric, I’m fairly sure that Strahd and his minions cannot enter the chapel that is within Castle Ravenloft. The ace of spades mentioned something about the powers of good protecting us. It seems to fit, but who knows.
- Several of Strahd’s spells come with a nasty level-draining effect. This almost guarantees that we’ll be walking around with negative energy protection spells on as much as possible.
- Strahd being able to attack us during the daytime concerns me. I’m hoping that it was because of something that we can fix, like destroying all three fanes. In case it’s the mists protecting him, I would like to find a spell that can effectively lift the mists and allow direct sunlight in.
- We should have paid more attention to the Tome of Strahd, though it probably wouldn’t have changed anything for this session.
See you all next week.
Watching Dale run an arcane caster who only casts non-combat spells. No defensive spells allowed, and especially no offensive spells.
He can do it, but he will squirm the entire time.
It used to bug him when I would run a wizard and I’d only have about 25-40% of my useful spells being combat spells. He’s more used to it now though.
For this session I believe I put Kelvin’s spells to optimal use; offensive, defensive, and miscellaneous. By the end of the session he had only Web and Levitate left to cast, when he started with the above plus Benign Transposition, Nerveskitter, Magic Missile, Ray of Enfeeblement, Mage Armor, Baleful Transposition, See Invisible, Regroup, Fireball, Haste, and Orb of Electricity. That’s 11 out of 13 spells cast.
Why am I kind of proud of simply casting spells? Because it’s hard to judge when to hold back your spells for later and when to let them fly like there was no tomorrow.
This was a good session where the combats we had challenged us appropriately, and our actions had consequences.
Joy was not feeling well so Aaron played Mina.
We started off with us waking up the morning after beating up on the crazed, dual-axe wielding dwarf and returning to town and trying to find out some information about the fanes/shrines that were mentioned in the Tome of Strahd.
Sir Uric knew nothing of them.
Grevan knew nothing of them.
The bartender knew nothing of them.
Izmark the Lesser knew nothing of them.
We tried to ask the Vistani, but they were unwilling to help. In fact they would rather draw weapons than talk to non-Vistani. Some of us really wanted to take them on, but decided not to…yet.
We found out a grand total of two things. The adventurer we found stuffed by the crazed dwarf was not local to the area and his wife lived in Waterdeep. And the wolves serenaded the church of Lathander while we weren’t there. Otherwise we have nothing new to work with.
So right then I was thinking that either Dale has missed giving us some clue, or we missed something.
All we could do was to find the fanes/shrines on our own.
There’s the Forest Fane. We assume that to be somewhere in the forest. But this damned land is nothing but forest.
Then there’s the Mountain Fane. Guess where we assume that one to be. But none of us are naturists/survivalists, so that path isn’t so easily taken. It is still a better choice to work with than the Forest Fane.
Then there’s the Swamp Fane. According to Sir Uric there is only one swampy area in this region, so that gives us a place to go. He did warn us that the mosquitoes there are as big as F14 Tomcats. Kelvin has no clue what an F14 Tomcat is like, but if the mosquitoes are as big as a housecat then we are in for some trouble.
With no better option presenting itself to us, we got directions to the swamp from Uric and head out.
Our first encounter was not all that surprising. There was an area about 30’ across that we were trying to get through, one at a time. While a couple of us had crossed, a shambling mound appeared and a mosquito swarm coalesced and attacked while Marco was in the middle of crossing.
Kelvin got everyone back together with a Regroup spell (gathers allies from short range and teleports them next to you), which helped Marco get out of harm’s way and brought Ian and Deimos into melee, but also set us up for the mosquito swarm’s attack.
The swarm was basically immune to weapon damage and most spells, and was able to swarm around 4 of us and drain a point of constitution and do a point of damage. The only solution to that was Kelvin’s only area affect spell, a Fireball, which did double damage to the swarm and killed it. Then the rest of the party itself swarmed the shambling mound and took it out.
After that, getting across the swamp was no big deal, but shortly there after we had to start wading through knee-deep swamp water, cutting our movement in half.
We were approaching a rubble strewn strip of land with some odd structure on it when we were attacked by something call a blood eel and a hag of some sort.
The hag kept trying to use her “evil eye” on the fighters, but they kept making their saving throw. But the hag failed her saving throw when Kelvin chose to Baleful Transposition with her (two targets, who get a save if they like, switch places). That put Kelvin safely out of the water and away from any further blood eels and put the hag right in the midst of our fighters. Ian critted her out of existence as the rest of the group pounded the eel to fish-goo.
As the party came to the strip of land another blood eel popped out, but a good random level roll from Kelvin’s Orb Electricity left the thing with single digit hit points, which pretty much meant the thing was doomed for even trying.
With everyone back on dry land, we found out that the odd structure was most likely the Swamp Fane and that the hag was probably its guardian. But nothing conclusively told us that it was broken, so we searched it, tried to dispel the faint humming of magic we could hear coming from it, and even tried to dig into it to verify or guaranteed that we had destroyed and hoping to find a clue to the whereabouts of the next fane.
We never found any kind of answer.
But we did notice that the fog was getting thicker.
“Look out!” was about all Kelvin could get out before the Fireball hit.
We apparently didn’t pay close enough attention to the Tome of Strahd.
I visited the Swamp Fane, the Forest Fane, and the Mountain Fane, and claimed their power for my own. Thus I solidified my grasp on this dim shadow of life.
I made the fanes my own, and I have become the Land. Also I made the fane-servants my own, and they serve me as once they served the saints of the fanes.
In other words, we might have just hurt Strahd and he decided to show up and hurt us back. I believe it to just be an image of him, because it was daytime, but there was no time to really experiment.
Post fireball results:
Ian was at -3 hit points.
Deimos was at 6 hit points.
Mina was around 10 hit points.
Marco was at -6 hit points.
Tenbeers was over 25 hit points.
Kelvin was at 14 hit points.
Initiative was rolled and Kelvin was first (thanks to a luck reroll, the Nerveskitter spell, and a +2 modifier). Since Kelvin can’t die, he chose to take on Strahd directly. He cast a Sudden Empowered Ray of Enfeeblement and hit Strahd with it (note: I later found out that undead are immune all of that, oops – but it didn’t really matter, and Aaron usually catches that stuff). Strahd lost 9 points of strength, making Kelvin his primary target, just what I wanted.
Out of game I basically figured I was sacrificing Kelvin to get the rest of the group time to stand up and run.
Mina, receiving a big bonus to turning thanks to Lathander’s sun domain, hit him hard with a holy-ball, and did a whopping 9 points of damage with it. Later when Deimos would try the same thing, there was no effect.
Strahd put a big bullseye on Kelvin and hit him with a special Magic Missile spell that drains a level with the first missile. But Kelvin, being a wild mage, was able to scatter it randomly to all targets within 20’.
Deimos was hit by the level draining missile, oops.
He also was hit by another normal one, but he lived through it because he had just healed himself.
Marco was hit by two missiles, leaving him at -14 hit points, oops.
Ian was hit by a missile, leaving him at -8.
The next round Kelvin taunted Strahd and threw a Magic Missile at him. The Mina attempted to turn again for no effect.
Strahd responded with a Lightning Bolt, which also had a level drain effect on it. Dale rolled 10d6 for 36 points of electrical damage.
If I made Kelvin’s Reflex save (somewhere around DC18 I would guess), he’d be at -5 hit points. Then I would have to save the level drain Fortitude save (DC20 I guess), or lose another 5 hit point and be at -10 hit points.
I failed the Reflex roll and Kelvin turned into a not-so-lucky, not-so-invincible, pool of goo at -23 hit points.
Woohoo, five sessions is a lot longer than I thought he would last!
After that everyone scattered.
Tenbeers, being the last to leave the battlefield, survived two rounds against Strahd before running. Strahd was floating just inches above the stagnant swamp water, so Tenbeers couldn’t get into melee with him. Tenbeers saved versus the domination attempt, but couldn’t do much about the 3 level Enervation drain.
Later the remnants of the party regrouped and quickly grabbed the bodies of Marco and Kelvin. The nearby sound of hunting wolves meant that they had to grab what they could off of the bodies and run. Hopefully they won’t see those two ex-PC’s later.
They next ran back to Barovia and quietly rested.
Deimos’s level loss was not when he made the save for it the next morning.
Now I know what you’re thinking, I caused Marco’s death. You can look at it that way.
Or you can look at it this way, in a “what if” alternate reality line of thought:
Round 1 (post Fireball)
- Kelvin hits Strahd for 9 points of strength loss (yes, a goof, but oh well).
- Mina hits Strahd with an empowered holy nuke.
- Deimos heals himself putting him somewhere in the mid-teens in hp.
- Kelvin takes an average of 17 points of damage from Strahd’s draining magic missiles, leaving him at -4. Then he probably will fail the save vs. level loss, so now he’s at -9.
- Marco bleeds a little (-7).
- Ian stabilizes (it happened in the real scenario).
- Tenbeers shoots at Strahd with his crossbow, but it has no effect.
Round 2
- Kelvin fails to stabilize and dies.
- Mina rushes to Marco and heals him, or stays there and heals herself. For now we’ll say she healed Marco.
- Deimos heals Ian to positive hp and quicken turns Strahd for no damage.
- Strahd cast’s the level draining Lightning Bolt (36 damage) at either Mina or Tenbeers and chances are another PC is in the line effect. If I were the DM, the cleric holding the holy symbol of a sun god would be my target. Scratch Mina and Marco as Mina will probably fail her Reflex save.
- Ian gets up and runs off the map.
- Tenbeers starts moving away.
Round 3
- Deimos tries another quickened turning and runs off the map.
- Strahd tries to dominate Tenbeers but fails.
- Tenbeers gets a little farther away.
Round 4
- Strahd casts Enervation at Tenbeers and drains 3 levels.
- Tenbeers gets off the map.
There, I’ve justified my action as helping the party more than hurting it. I saved Mina’s life by scattering the damage amongst the party and making a target of myself to take the Lightning Bolt the next round rather than die directly from the Magic Missiles.
Eh, believe what you want.
I was playing a wild mage. Adventuring with one of them is asking for trouble.
But dat ok cuz next week me gonna bring in me gud friend Gortag Crushface, half-orc barbarian. Him gud at killin things.
I believe Allen will be bringing in a bow-using ranger.
Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- Next on our to-do list might be to wander search around the base of the mountains, hoping to find something useful.
- The next time we assault a fane guardian we need to get in and out real fast. Maybe, if things are going our way, we’ll ambush Strahd. Yeah, and then we’ll replace two more PC’s.
- I wouldn’t be surprised if the next fane’s defenses are beefed up a lot.
- After talking a little with Sir Uric, I’m fairly sure that Strahd and his minions cannot enter the chapel that is within Castle Ravenloft. The ace of spades mentioned something about the powers of good protecting us. It seems to fit, but who knows.
- Several of Strahd’s spells come with a nasty level-draining effect. This almost guarantees that we’ll be walking around with negative energy protection spells on as much as possible.
- Strahd being able to attack us during the daytime concerns me. I’m hoping that it was because of something that we can fix, like destroying all three fanes. In case it’s the mists protecting him, I would like to find a spell that can effectively lift the mists and allow direct sunlight in.
- We should have paid more attention to the Tome of Strahd, though it probably wouldn’t have changed anything for this session.
See you all next week.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 8:57 PM
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