My First 5E Campaign Session 6

This session was pretty much just combats.

I’m pretty much using this campaign to figure out things about 5E. Once I get a good baseline understanding of how the game works, I can then allow for other options and what not from non-core sources.

So far I’m finding that the classes are decently balanced, but no so much as to be boringly similar, like how 4E got with its bloat of classes.

I’ve yet to see if I’m giving out too much in the way of magic items.
75% of them at this level are temporary ones, such as potions and scrolls, and healing potions are about half of the items overall. (And trust me, they get used.)
The remaining 25% are simple +1 weapons, a +1 shield, and a Wand of Magic Missiles (and yes, I don’t count that as temporary given how it works).

This session was basically a transition night to go from the “Newton zone” to the “Franklin zone”. I’m using a spreadsheet to deal with choosing monsters and giving the right amount of treasure. These transition sessions are what I’ll be doing to balance the treasure the party has earned versus what it’s been given.

I could be more complicated, but it’s not worth it.

Justin was not at this session. Between work, college classes, and camping weekends he shows up about half the time. This will allow for me to see if people lagging behind in levels are as much of a drain as they were in 3E.

In 3E, if you were 2 levels behind, you were often a liability. Hopefully with 5E’s less steep power vs. level incline, it won’t be an issue.

Aaron played Rhoanel, half-elf bard
Dale played Rumi, wood elf monk
Everett played Markus, halfling rogue
Craig played Knox, half-elf sorcerer

Justin’s Cedraic, half-elf ranger, was off scouting while the party risked their lives.

We started in Newton where the party had just seen the meteor fly overhead.

It was obviously the talk of town and everyone had their own interpretation of what that meant. It was a messenger of doom, a sign of good times, and so on.

They stopped at Tonus’s house for a chat, but he was mostly playing the senile old man bit where he’d say one thing, then forget the whole conversation a minute later.

When asked about the meteor he said “It’s about time that thing showed up.” When they pressed further he said “What? Huh? What meteor? There was a meteor?”

So the party left town and walked along the road to Castle Franklin, reportedly a five day journey.

This party found a way to make that 7.

Their first night they were attacked by shadows, and that scared them quite a bit. Luckily the strength drain goes away after an hour.

They had to rest extra long to make up for the lost rest.

A day later they saw a sign for chicken crossing, except the chicken’s shown to have a lizard tail in the picture. They decided to travel faster on the road, but they didn’t know that this road was a railroad and they were promptly attacked by a flock of 10 angry cockatrices.

In a fit of horrible rolling by both Dale and Aaron, Everett and Craig, the two newest members of our group, had to fight 6 (maybe it was 8) of the remaining cockatrices alone.

And they did it.

Knox spent his time avoiding getting hit, while Markus did the damage to finish them off one at a time.

And the DM anticipated this fight may have had a bad ending, so he had a force of knights and their retainers show up 5 minutes after the last cockatrice was killed.

The knights informed them that their now-solid companions would be back to normal in a day.

The knights then road off towards Castle Franklin on their own quest to join some warlord.

Once the fully flesh and bone group got moving again they came to a pile of villager and orc bodies blocking the road. When Rhoanel went up to investigate, an ogre burst out of the pile while hidden orcs appeared on the sides of the road.

The party killed the ogre in 1 round. The orcs fled.

And finally they started seeing some farmlands instead of open grasslands.

And they found a quick dispute between a farmer’s daughter and her parents. She was running away to be with her boyfriend because she loved him and stormed off.

They pleaded with the party to help their daughter. She wasn’t acting normal as the man she was supposedly in love with was a known thug “Slick”, who had been causing problems with his gang of bandits recently.

The party was given directions to where the girl went and found the cave hideout.

Long story short, the bandits did a lot to stop the party and harass them when they could, but it wasn’t enough.

And they found the love potion that Slick had given the girl. Once he was dead, the potion’s effect ended.

My First 5E Campaign Session 5

This session was a full one.

Welcome Craig to our group. (Note: Craig is not the guy we invited then uninvited.)

After a chunk of time of just a few players, it’s good to have a good sized group.

5E, I think, is slowly gaining traction. Pathfinder is still strong, but a lot of people are giving 5E a try.

The biggest complaints seem to be a lack of options and low level lethality.

A lot of people see the number of books in Pathfinder as a problem. It’s hard to get new players into a game like that if they have to buy and read a ton of books to make a PC as good as everyone else at the table.

So I’m thinking that since 5E is new, and PF is losing its more casual players to the more rules-light 5E, Pathfinder is going to have to change somehow.

It should be interesting to watch 2 different versions of D&D fight it out.

Though I still think that 5E could use more monsters and an SRD/OGL.

So for the first time in a long while, our table was full with five players and a DM.

Aaron played Rhoanel, half-elf bard
Dale played Rumi, wood elf monk
Everett played Markus, halfling rogue
Justin played Cedraic, half-elf ranger
Craig played Knox, half-elf sorcerer

Everyone is level 3, and a few are painfully close to level 4.

This night was a mostly combat night, though the group did their best to role-play. Unfortunately the DM set up the situation that what they tried to role-play was doomed to fail.

We last stopped with the Rhoanel, Rumi, and Marcus in Newton and Rhoanel wandering the wilderness (with an -away/afk- tag over his head).

The quests the party had remaining to take care of were making sure that boat travel was made safe again, and making sure that a side road leading to Pirate’s Bay was made safe again.

Two very similar quests with quite a lot in common.

The party started with the path and met Cedraic and a few moments later Knox arrived.

Justin: “You have your name floating above your head. You must be a PC.”
(There was some small actual role-playing, but what Justin said was probably more correct.)

So the 5 PCs travelled north along the slightly overgrown road, which became more and more overgrown the farther they traveled.

They saw a bear along the way. It saw them. They made a bunch of noise and looked big and it ran off.

Then they travelled north some more, until the road all but disappeared into wilderness.

They kept going and began to see things out of the corner of their eye that disappeared when they looked.

At one point they took a step and a ball of light appeared behind a tree. Then they took another step and it was gone.

The sounds of nature also seemed to be a bit less cordial and a bit more feral.

Then they came to a sign saying “Keep Out!” with an old shack several dozen feet away.

They slowly moved forward, ignoring all potential illusions until an old woman came out of the shack to yell at them to “Go away!”

All attempts to parlay with her were met with “Go away!” or something similar. When it came to a stalemate of actions, she attacked, as did her pets in waiting.

Some of the party was surrounded by several blights of all types with the old woman, a green hag, turning invisible until she had a chance to attack a weak target. The rest of the party was scattered about.

A few PCs went towards where the hag was while the rest dealt with the blights.

Knox thought he’d be ok being close to a pair of vine blights, but he was quickly dropped to negatives (even with several of us saying “Are you sure?”).

But the party won after they got their bearings.

Then they set the house on fire…before searching it for treasure. Oh well.

With that quest completed they returned to town and got their reward. Then they rested and headed towards the pier to figure out how to take care of the creatures destroying or damaging shipping boats.

They still had the boat from the last session, so they scouted around walking on the beach, searching the area, and finally they returned to town and bought fishing gear.

Eventually, toward the latter part of the day, a mermaid appeared to them and they began talking.

The mermaid admitted that it was her damaging the boats because she didn’t like them. As she talked further talking with the party, they got her to agree to stop doing it, but she would need them to come to her cave to sign the proper papers.

The party thought it was odd, but agreed to follow her to her cave.

As she swam ahead, Rhoanel decided to try to cast Read Thoughts, and it worked.

She was thinking “I’M HUNGRY!”

So that ruined that role-playing too.

One of them tried to get in the water to deal with her directly, so she showed that one her true face (that of a sea hag) and then swam off to her lair and prepared for their coming attack.

The party eventually found her mostly submerged cave and spent a lot of time scouting it out invisibly before attacking.

Their scouting revealed her and 8 giant crabs, but it did not reveal the hidden squid in the water.

The party spend a fair amount of time preparing, and they tried to go in unison to the cave but their swim checks prevented that.

So they entered the combat nearly one at a time, which made it rough on the first people to enter the combat, but thanks to their good saving throws and my horrible rolling, this fight was a wash.

So they got their treasure and returned to town to get their reward and a few bonus hit points.

The next morning they woke up, heard an odd explosion and looked overhead to see a meteor streaking across the sky.