In post 546, Claus wrote:Why the heck do players do this? :-/ It is a particular kind of rules layer, I will call them "reality lawyers" that I hate.
do what? they didn't do anything that seemed bothersome. Indirell made the roll to notice, Bree didn't. Bree threw faerie fire at it and the ogre made its save. Bree went to sleep. *shrug*
Ah ok. I was thinking it went along something like this.
Player A spots something.
Player A: I try to wake player B
Player B: Why are you trying to wake me?
Player A: I think I saw something, get ready.
Player B: I think you didn't *go back to sleep*
This is player B making things difficult for the group for the sake of "realism", and, as a DM, It bothers me when the party self-sabotages like that.
So, in the 6th world (Shadowrun), there are people who are attuned with technology in a semi-magical way (this does not come up directly in the computer games). These people can access computer systems without decks, sometimes without even touching the computer. They can also summon "program spirits" (low level AIs) when they are in the Matrix. This power, in 5th edition, is called "Resonance".
In short, it is "magic for machines" (remember that regular magic is essentially incompatible with technology).
IRL campaign continued last night, with the party making quick work of the gnolls and hyenas they found in the forest. Rorin used Calm Animals to render three of the four hyenas docile, leaving just two gnolls and one hyena left to combat the party. They took down the hyena and one of the gnolls, and the second gnoll surrendered. In fear of its life, the gnoll revelaed that the Jalantharr Rangers had learned the wizard they were seeking had been captured by the gnolls and attacked the tribe's lair, and he led our adventurers there.
The party descended into the lair and came to a large open area, where a lengthy battle had just concluded. The rangers had slain many gnolls, but were busy licking their wounds and counting casualties after such a lengthy battle. There were three doors, one of which was marked with a rune nobody recognized. Rorin figured out that the rune functioned in some way similar to a Glyph of Warding, so the party went down one of the other paths instead. They came to a larger door, marked by three runes, and the dwarves realized that the walls on the either side of this doorway had open space (as opposed to solid earth) behind them. Despite their best attempts to lift or break through this stone, they were unable to do so.
Thus, the party went down the only remaining path available to them. They edged their way down a hall and came to a pair of rooms, one on either side of the hall. One room housed two more gnolls, and the other a minotaur! Everyone but Lia (who was staying back with the captive Grumgar and the wounded Jalantharr Rangers) engaged in battle. Petra snapped off a Tasha's Hideous Laughter spell on the minotaur, but not before it gored Rorin severely. Hearing the commotion, Lia came to aid/heal the party. She also slew the minotaur with a mighty slash of her sword, beheading it entirely. After dispatching their enemies, the party looted a nearby chest in one room, and found a pedestal in the other room. Inscribed on the pedestal was a rune identical to one of the ones they saw earlier. Kalabash, showing no fear, touched the pedestal and the rune started to glow blue. They went back to the other path, where they saw the corresponding rune glowing above the massive stone door.
Realizing they had to explore the lair further to find the other runes, the party prepared to set forth and unlock these runed doors to find their captive wizard ally.
Tense. The owlbear could pretty nearly one-shot any of the 4 of them if it landed both attacks and rolled decent - and it rolled decent pretty much all night (and the party rolled like shit).
Last night was our last 5e session for the year. It was mostly an RP session to tie off loose ends and lots of exposition.
Tusk, the barbarian who fell from the flying castle, and was taken as dead by the rest of the group. Survived. Beaten and battered, he trekked through the snowy mountains, guided by an unknown force. He arrives upon a camp, where three dwarves are guarding his demonic-possessed two handed sword, Hazewraw. He rushes to it, and quickly defeat the dwarves, who were trying to take it to their mountain homes to be destroyed (one of the dwarves was a good cleric). After the combat, Tusk fights a battle of wills with the Demon in the sword as he tries to spare the dwarves, and wins by a small margin, killing only one of them. After that, he treks back two Waterdeep to try and find the rest of the group, stopping at every inn to drink and spend his hard earned gold on rounds to strangers!
Raidon, the druid, returned to his home village, near the South Woods. During the campaign, he sent them a Dragon Egg, and it was well time for it to hatch. The village, after many months, was relatively unscathed from Cult attacks, but had brimming to the top with refugees from nearby towns that had not been so lucky. After a few days, the dragon egg hatches, and a black dragon comes out of it. Raidon spends the entire month trying to raise the dragon to overcome his evil tendencies, by impressing upon him the teachings of Selune. He also invested almost all of his gold into improving his village to accomodate the refugees, and raising a new temple for the moon goddess.
Damaya, the warlock, secreted the high priest of the cult that they had managed to capture into her hidden demonic shrine. She made the human sacrifice to her demon patron, Neruda. The portal that links Neruda to this world widened by the tiniest bit, and the demon gave her a new, powerful ability to destroy her foes. He told her that more power would be rewarded by more sacrifices, but she also had to find new acolytes to properly honor him. Also, he said that by torturing the soul of the high priest, he learned much about the cult plans. Behind the humans who are foolishly trying to summon Tiamat into the world, he could smell the stench of devils pulling the strings from behind the courtain. He ordered Damaya to capture a Wyrmspeaker, the highest rank in the cult of the dragon, and sacrifice them upon the altar so that he could learn more. Damaya spent her hard earned gold buying a few new magic items, including a clasp of invisibility.
Kavah, the Paladin of Bahamut, was contacted by the leader of the Order of the Gautlet, and member of the Theocracy of Ethulgard. The Kingdom of eternal light had heard of his heroic feats, and wanted to honor and reward him for his services to the Sword Coast. He spend a month at the capital, Ethuriel, giving his money to families that had lost much during the cult attacks, and teaching and inspiring new paladins. He also hired a young and promising band of adventurers to scout the heartlands, to find out the truth about the increased goblin attacks in the region, that had disrupted some of the caravan trade.
After a few weeks, a single warrior returns from this group. Covered in gruesome burns of unknown origin, and clutching a tattered banner. In the banner it read:
"King Yemmick"
(Yemmick was a lowly goblin that led a small band which the group met back when they were first level nobodies. The goblin tried to use a hostage situation to capture everyone, but failed. In the ensuing battle, he ran for it, and the paladin followed. Not only Yemmick managed to escape, but while the paladin was away from the combat the rest of the band killed the cleric of the group. The paladin swore revenge on the goblin, and even tried to find him a few times, but never heard about him since)
The party ventured forth through the gnolls' lair, looking for the other rune pedestals to open the sealed doors within the lair. They came across a gnoll who was tending to another gnoll in a cage. They could tell that the caged gnoll had been magically altered or affected in some way, but not how. Tarl charged and pinned the regular gnoll, preventing it from opening the cage. The party slew the gnoll and spoke with the caged gnoll, who asserted that he had been locked up because the other gnolls feared him. He asked Rorin to empty the dead gnoll's pockets, but Rorin found a stone that glowed with the light of the moon, and surmised that the captured gnoll was a lycanthrope. They dragged the gnoll's body around a corner and looted it out of sight of the lycanthrope. Petra used her newfound Wand of Web to ensure that the lycanthrope would not be able to break out of the cage anytime soon.
They subsequently found a circular room with a second rune pedestal in front of it, as well as four large stone triggers or buttns around it. Kalabash touched the rune while avoiding the triggers around it. While the rune glowed just as the one before, the room sealed off and began filling with water! The party members quickly jumped on all four buttons, which opened up two metal grates in the floor to drain the water, but the only for out remained sealed. They hit the rune again, turning it (and the torrent of water) off and left the room to solve later.
Continuing down another path, they came to a room with two treasure chests. The first contained a small amount of loot while the second was a mimic. After fighting off the mimic, they dragged the corpses of their slain foes back to the circular room and used them to activate the stone triggers. Then Kalabash touched the rune again. Having activated them in the right order, the rune glowed blue without activating he water trap, and the party moved on.
Continuing down another path, the party avoided several traps and came to a very large room which was bisected by a massive iron gate. On their side of the gate was a rune pedestal, and on the other side they saw several humanoid skeletons, a skeletal hyena, and a massive five-headed hydra. Recognizing that the path out of the room was too small for the hydra to fit through, the party prepped a web to slow the skeletons and had Kalabash smack the rune and bolt as quickly as possible, allowing them to escape without fighting off the monsters.
Finally, the party backtracked and found the final rune pedestal next to a sleeping troll and a large pool of acid. Luckily, Kalabash *barely* managed to sneak up to the rune, activate it, and sneak away without waking the troll.
Having activisted all of the runes, the party returned to the massive sealed door which had naturally opened. They crept down the hall and found an enormous room, where a gnoll shaman and several other gnolls were conducting a ritual involving the captive wizard. Four gnolls were tending to four different colored crystals, each of which shone a beam of light to a massive crystal near the wizard. Upon being attacked, the shaman summoned a quartet of zombies -- the wizard's ranger escort. After a brutal battle, which saw Lia fall unconscious and two others nearly do the same, the party defeated their enemies, shattered the magical crystals, and rescued the wizard from his ethereal chains.
That's where we left off, and we may be taking a several week break for the holidays/end of year. The party has to tie up any loose ends with the wizard and finish recruiting the Jalantharr Rangers, head to Silverymoon to enlist the aid of their militia, and head back to Citadel Felbarr to take on the Red Wizard/Orcish alliance head on.
With this being my first time DMing, this was the first time I'd created any real dungeon crawl scenario. I tried to keep it from being "you fight gnolls. Then more gnolls. Then you do some things and fight more gnolls."
Naturally, there were a few things the party did that I didn't quite expect. The water trapped room played out more or less as I expected, except the party chose to use dead bodies on the triggers rather than themselves. They did consider using a Summon Nature's Ally spell in case the room still sealed off. Their approach to dealing with the lycanthrope was unique, I hadn't thought about entangling the caged gnoll in a web to ensure he wouldn't escape.
They chose to cover the long hallway leading to the hydra with webs, rather than simply turning the skeletons and running from the hydra, which was fine.
In the ritual chamber, I tried to give them options to resolve the final conflict. By shattering all four crystals, the party would have freed the powerful wizard who could have aided them in battle. However, they had managed to avoid enough combat and save enough spells to just take on the gnolls. Lia managed to turn all four zombies, simplifying the fight. Petra and Rorin just unleashed a volley of offensive magic and despite having their cleric fall unconscious, they cleaned up nicely.
All in all, I'm pleased with the design and difficulty of the experience. I was prepared to scale down the final fight a little bit if I had to, but I was impressed with the party's ability to conserve resources while advancing through the gnolls lair. And I definitely learned a lot for if & when I design another experience for them.
In post 559, quadz08 wrote:Tense. The owlbear could pretty nearly one-shot any of the 4 of them if it landed both attacks and rolled decent - and it rolled decent pretty much all night (and the party rolled like shit).
"We rolled like shit" is an understatement. I don't think I've ever seen so many Nat 1s in an encounter.
The dungeon design was really excellent from Glork. I fully intend to utilize some concepts / ideas from that dungeon in my own designs, it was a blast and very clever.
I'm getting myself into a 5e campaign...let's see how this goes :'D
"It hurts to have control over anything. I'd rather be a leaf in the wind."
Call me Lily instead. Avatar is Bellossom from Pokemon! drawn by Ether.
Espeonage (08:39) - lily is happy = everything is good with the world
Honestly my favorite part of the dungeon was the false-rune that was a gas trap. I fully expected you guys to go "that's not one of the runes" and just bypass it but NOPE send Tarl in to do your dirty work, and only after he winds up sickened does quadz go "wait a second, that's not even one of the runes we need!"
My character is Harland, a 24 year old ork (so basically middle-aged). Backstory is that he was doing freelance work for the Lone Star security firm for years. Work got more dangerous, ended up with him raiding a Novacoke den to extract a wageslave who had gone AWOL. During the raid, his security team went off the rails and a firefight broke out, resulting in several children dying. A tweaked out junkie cranked out on Novacoke came charging at Harland with a katana and took off his arm. His team got him out of there, and he woke up in the hospital. His supervisor didn't want to see such a "young" guy like that, so he paid the bills, got him a shiny new arm (complete with shotgun), and helped him get setup in Seattle, far away from the horrors of working for Lone Star. Harland used his talent for tracking people down to open up shop as a private investigator, and has been working in Seattle for five years now.
