D&D & Tabletop

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Curse of Strahd??!!

OMG!! I was positively DROOLING over that campaign when I was at the comic shop in Denton for FCBD!! Strahd is one of my top three iconic D&D villains, the other two being Lord Soth of Krynn, and Cyric of Faerun, who was so evil (and insane) he even makes other evil gods nervous! Let me know how that one goes, as I've seen several variations of stats on him, and am really curious how that campaign would play out. I have a 3.5 version of it on a pdf, so I may run some of that at some point, at the very least, or perhaps in it's entirety. I DO at least intend to use him at some point, but I need to find some way of bringing him in that makes sense, because the group is in a part of the world where an Oriental (ie, Eastern) vampire would work better.

[Utrommaniac]

We basically just left off after getting teleported into the forest (with the bard's Patron informing us to head south)

So it begins for real at the next session.

[Candy Kappa]

I'm running Curse of Strahd for the drunk group, have had 2 sessions so far and the next is in three weeks. Luckily the group is seriously downsized from 14 players to originally 5 but we're 6 now, all drinking.

So far they're actually close to get 3 macguffin goals in one sitting and redubbed Strahd to Count Dickula and burned down his carriage

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Lol! I may have to borrow that nickname! Your game sounds- interesting.

So, they managed to get through the next couple of rooms in White Plume, which had originally contained just three ghouls and a ghast. I added two more ghasts and four more ghouls, and a water naga for added distraction. They still killed (almost)all of them in only four rounds. I blame the frigging arcanist and the oracle/healer. Those two are a bit op, due to their builds. Hubby's ninja did a lot of damage too, but at least she takes out single targets instead of whole groups. But at least the naga "escaped"- it went invisible during the battle, and I will be harrassing them with it for a while....

I also found what I think may be the perfect monster to spring on them later, an undead that is both immune to fire (their favorite weapon) and magic resistant. It is also incorporeal, so....

[Utrommaniac]

One of the players is a Tiefling Warlock ("chaotic evil") who didn't tell the group his real name at first.

First Larry, then Tim. It's really Despair (because of course it is).

Then "Tim the Despair" came up, and that became his name

[Utrommaniac]

Continuing today on our Curse of Strahd, we got out of the woods, saved a little girl from being drowned by a crazy dude who thought making a sacrifice would bring fish back to a lake that hasn't had fish for centuries, found out her dad is the guy who was hired by the guy who wants us to take out Stahd, found out that was a trap, returned the kid to her family, went to the nearest town, found out the Burger-mister was bad juju, and now we're just sitting back with the leaders of a resistance movement that can't get off the ground.

So far, no one in the party has taken guesses at Tami's origin. Tim the Despair thinks she actually lost an eye.

[Candy Kappa]

The Tuesday group that I DM agreed to help a devil that was stuck inside a magical circle, releasing him, he agreed to go back to hell as he was summoned by a wizard in the middle of some important bureaucracy work (his words). The party gained a feat and the paladin would know the direction where the royal family that is escaping Azalin the Rex who have claimed the throne (Azalin and Strahd escaped Ravenloft in my previous campaign running Ravenloft II, Azalin escaped the MacGuffin that fixes everything in the end of the module). The monk did not get a feat however, he got a Book Imp familiar (named Ket after a PC in Critical Hit podcast), as well as the ritual to summon him, speak Infernal and a +1 in a ability score.

So it's good times ahead, the lawful good paladin is terrified that he's going to lose his powers over this and the Imp is going to be very friendly and helpful.

I drew Ket as well, as I'm going to keep Imps and Book Imps a lot more separate as creatures.

Spoiler:

[ProphetofGanja]

I love your art style, Candy Kappa



My group finished Dungeon of the Mad Mage a couple weeks back. It was a lot of fun to play through in conjunction with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. Our DM added a lot of twists to the campaign too and of course we caused things to go in some pretty unexpected directions as well.

We defeated the guy who was calling himself Halaster Blackcloak, aka the Mad Mage himself, who was actually a crazed mind flayer who had been trying to build a true-to-life simulation of first Waterdeep, then Faerûn, and eventually all of Abeir-Toril itself (a la The Matrix, with countless unsuspecting individuals held captive in pods, unaware that they were inside the simulation).

So now Bojack Samson, the adventuring minotaur barbarian, has retired to spend his time sailing his ship and working at the bar The Watery Tart, which he co-owns with his former adventuring companions.

[Utrommaniac]

Ahh, I can't wait to get back on board our group's Dragon Heist game. The DM needed a break from that for a while.

He was running Jarlaxle as the main bad guy for that run, but I'm not quite sure what his deal is yet.


I'm also trying to find home players to do Lost Mines of Phandelver with. For sure my brother and his girlfriend, and after having a bit of a D&D discussion with my mom, she sounds a little interested. If only she had time.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Oh, wow, all these campaigns sound awesome! Yesterday we continued our run-through of White Plume. Since the party I'm DM'ing is a bit higher level than would normally tackle this adventure, I've thrown a few extra traps, encountees, and the like to up the ante, especially considering that they will end up in possession of three very powerful artifacts, with Blackrazor being the most dangerous. In our last two sessions, I added a black pudding while they were resting in a cleared area, and uped the number of ghouls and ghasts, plus added a water naga.

And speaking of imps and such, I'm adding several mephits later on, just to shake things up a bit, with all of them complimenting each other's powers.

[Utrommaniac]

I have a bit of time to keep brainstorming on Lost Mines, but I'm still short on ideas.

What I'm clueless about is in bold:

Spoiler:

• Sildar and Glasstaff are working together.
• Sildar is SYLGAR, the Xanathar's beloved pet goldfish shapeshifted into an elven form (not human - since the Xanathar favors elves). I guess in the games I'd run, Sylgar is the Xanathar's most trusted spy. It works for him to be an elf too, since the medallion that transforms him just stores the memories of the elf Sylgar across hundreds of goldfish. So it's one guy who doesn't realize he's been hundreds of goldfish. He just thinks he's one goldfish who can turn into an elf.
• Which would mean Glasstaff is also part of the Xanathar guild.
• Sildar/Sylgar offering a player a position in Waterdeep would be a lure for if there's a later Waterdeep campaign.
• Some of the goods the players would be hired to protect are eventually going to the Xanathar guild.
• Nezzar is trying to open a portal to the feywilds in the mines. I don't know why yet. Part of it has to do with his Fey ancestry.
• However, Agatha is a distant grandmother of his, and that would be important.
• Sildar/Sylgar and Glasstaff are also trying to do that, but get there before the Spider. I don't know what the Xanathar wants from the Feywilds, but it's probably the same thing as Nezzar.
• I'm not sure how they manage to get the players to help them while keeping the wool over their eyes about their true ambitions
• I have no idea what to do with Venomfang and everything to do with him in all of this or where his purpose would lie
• Same with the Redbands

[Utrommaniac]

So uh...finally got some combat four sessions in.

...struggling against a scarecrow in the woods. And the "House of the Windmill people" that was filled with NOPE. Which had a really big struggle against a suit of armor and specter.


Stopped our game on our way down to the basement, and we're going to work on our characters on D&D Beyond on Monday before the next game in two weeks

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Soooo, my group has gotten almost to the second main boss in White Plume (in this case, the ogre mage), and are currently trying to figure out a way to free the two manticores guarding the door to the "captive" halfling (actually the ogre mage in sisguise). My hubby's ninja owns a sword sacred to Bast that has a geas on it not to allow harm to feline creatures (including magical beasts), so the party is trying NOT to kill them, but they are too big to escape the room on their own, so the party is working out how to shrink/transform them to get them out. I'm having fun watching them figure out ways to deal with these challenges without resorting to killing the "monsters".

[Utrommaniac]

In our last two games, we got through the Durst manor (the "Nope House"), helped bury the Burgermeister of Borovia, decided to wait on healing the Priest of Borovia's son and get stronger before we do that (our paladin/bard needs a spell she needs to reach level 5 on), and killed a hag!

And also found all of the Mad Mage's stuff in the waterfall, so that will make our first encounter with him real easy.

[Candy Kappa]

Oh, man...

so much have happened since last post I made.

The Tuesday game:
During a simple, sidequest I murdered 2 characters.

Backstory: When the group managed to get trapped on the plane Toad's Boardwalk, and ends up stealing a god's head from a casino vault for a Fire Genasi named Captain Jaxxon Flameberg, I took Toad's Boardwalk and the heist plot from a D&D podcast but oh boy did it go a entirely different and very entertaining way.

Now, the god who rules Toad's Boardwalk; Lord Gomma is a little pissed at the Captain for stealing the head he himself wanted.

So, when the party was helping the Captain delivering the lost soul of a very powerful wizard to a hidden mansion on the moon, which turned out to be Mordenkainen who died 10 years ago in my campaign thanks to the previous PCs. The group and the Captain got jumped on their way back to their ship.

A red Slaad was posing as a negotiator, but ended up slashing the Captain who freaked out about being harmed by a Slaad, and the group was ambushed by mercenary Gith. Unfortunate I had this encounter to be a bit too powerful and ended up slaying the Goliath Fighter and Monk Tabaxi. The leader Gith retreated when the Slaad was slain.

The Captain took the remaining Halfing Paladin and the 2 corpses to a shady place where they met a very powerful Drow Priestess who owed the Captain a favor. Raise Dead time!

But, the Tabaxi made a deal with the devil (literally) and since he was so obsessed with magic (and lichdom) he came back as a Wizard and looked more devilish as the character is a re-flavored Tiefling with wings. This was not enjoyable for the Paladin.

They did later encounter another Gith ambush by the same guys to finish the job only to completely decimate the Gith. And now they have a +3 Silver Greatsword that they took (if you know about the Gith, they care about their swords lol)

Currently they are on a quest to find the spell Aumvor's Fragmented Phylactery, before Azalin's forces does. Either through finsding Aumvor the Undying's spellbook or find Acererak the only other known person to have it.

Azalin didn't cross ravenloft with his phylactery, so if someone defeats him, he'll end back there. The group through research found Aumvor's castle that got banished into the Shadowfell and through a fetch quest from the castle's owner Morasha (Aumvor's great-grandniece) they will get the spell, hopefully, they currently is on the fetch quest.

I do have some things planned for the Monk turned Wizard as he is very interested in extending his life and in lichdom, and he was very interested in learning the spell to create Living Zombies, I might have the potential true BBEG as one of my players lol


The Drunken Game: I killed 1 character and almost 2 more.
Don't split the party!

So, the Ravenloft group decided to get the burgomaster's help to find Ireena who's gone missing in Vallaki and they needed to get the St. Andral’s bones, which they know who has them but they decided to do something else the previous session.

But, these dumb-asses didn't split the party in two, no no no, they split it in three!

The Ranger and Rogue stayed at the Blue Water Inn, to "protect" Ismark, but they stayed on the roof scouting...

The Cleric and Wizard went to talk to the Burgomaster

The Orc Fighter, Elf Fighter and Bard went to see the coffin maker who's stolen the St. Andral’s bones.

Wizard and Cleric through shenanigans managed to enter the burgomaster mansion and actually got an audience, and then wanted to walk over to the coffin maker house, easy!

The Fighters and Bard... They muscled themselves into the coffin maker's house, interrogated him where the bones at, and he said upstairs. The bard goes alone upstairs and is ambushed by vampire spawns, cue initiative. It does not go well, the 3 PCs are overrun with vamps and while valiantly and did manage to kill 2 of them, they all fall unconscious.

The Wizard and Cleric had to wait X turns until they could join the fight since they where walking from the burgomaster house which is a good distance away. I was nice and had 550 feet distance and the walked 60 per turn, they where 2 turns away from the house when the fight was over.

The Fighters and Bard had to do death saves. Bard did well and survived, Orc Fighter had 1 fumble and after the player took a huge swig of whisky rolled a crit. The Elf fighter sadly had 3 failures and died.

When the Wizard and Cleric came to the house, they healed the injuries, took the dead elf and the unconscious coffin maker with them, but... DIDN'T TAKE THE ****ING BONES WITH THEM!

Rogue and Ranger had a fairly uneventful day, but the Ranger went into Ismark's room and... he light a cigarette (cause, the player started smoking so now the PC do too?), shoved the cig in Ismark's neck to wake him up and punched him yelling that Ismark was hiding information about Ireena being missing. Ismark freaked out and drew his sword and when the Ranger tried to attack him again he slashed him. The Ranger then dived through the window, ran off and went to sleep in a back alley.

And, the following night:

Spoiler:

St. Andral's Feast.
If you don't return the bones, the vampire spawns attack the church at night while its full of people. The commotion woke the party, they tried to help out, but Strahd showed up and killed Father Lucian, the party fled back to the inn and just went back to sleep... Next session is this Friday

The Saturday Game:
Our DM is not feeling well, so the 3.5 game is on hold. So we're gonna do some boardgames and someone else os also going to lead WoD Changeling the Lost 2e.

I'm a bit sad about it since I found a nice feat that gets me more Ninja Tricks, and since we get feats each level I could have cheesed it a little bit getting some Tricks I really wanted.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Almost forgot to mention I have a 5th ed game on Discord with my RuneScape clan on Wednesdays now. Just got started, was supposed to run a module with the party seaeching for a missing shopkeeper, but instead they decided to join my NPC Beznik of his quest to find "the first flame", which he believes is the spark that created the fires ignited the beginning of the multiverse. (I am using the gnome lore of the lifequest from Dragonlance, where every gnome has a unique lifequest they wish to complete. His happens to be finding the ultimate source of all fire.) So, now this group of noobs has shrugged off a module that would have had them facing a wererat and her vermin minions to rescue the shopkeeper from a hidden stronghold under the shop, in favor of an NPC's own personal "wild goose chase", lol! (It's really not, but Beznik only knows of legends and myths about the creation of fire at the beginning of time, with little actual info to find it!)

[Utrommaniac]

Sooo...we went to Berez...and ended up raiding Baba Lasaga's hut...including the gem stolen from the vineyards.

...and hopefully will be a lot stronger by the time we actually meet her because we are so screwed.

(My character, who was created by a Beholder, runs the Trollskull Tavern in Waterdeep after fixing it up, knows about the Xanathar by now, so she pegged it on him to throw her off their trail)

By now, we've gotten Irena to safety and put the bones back. And told Issek about Irena somewhat. Just not that she's his sister. Told Irena that Issek is her brother, though.

[Candy Kappa]

my drunken group is well into spoiler territory with CoS

Spoiler:

The second last session we had, almost everyone died fighting Blights and Druids at Wizard of Vines vineyard. The Wizard thought a diplomatic approach would be good and tried to just walk to the house, cue a million twig monsters and the fight happen right outside the house attracting everything hostile.

It didn't help that the Orc Fighter had a bout of scuicidal thoughts since his beloved Elf Fighter had died, so he gave up fighting and torn to shreds while the Ranger and Rogue tried to save him and got trapped and killed themselves.

The Wizard and Bard managed to escape.

Cue last session:

After the funeral of Father Lucian and the dead Elf Fighter, the Cleric who was afk previous session traveled to the Wizard of Vines with Ezmerelda, on the way they encountered the new PCs and Ezmerelda split from the group as she was going to investigate/confirm where the sun sword is.

when the party is joined back into one, the Bard had a glorious idea and used a illusion of Strahd to lure out the druids and while the druids was listening to illu!Strahd's speech the Wizard lobbed a fire ball in the crowd and killed all of them, destroyed the staff so every blight on the vineyard died as well. They got the vine back to Vallaki and got the MacGuffin, so 2 of 3 items acquired.

Pretty neat and the first time I've see that encounter go that smoothly.

Then with clues that maybe the kidnapped Ireena is hidden at the burgomaster's house, they did a full on assault on the mansion thinking the burgomaster was the culprit. Slaughtering over 20 guards, setting the mansion on fire taking a few servants on the way, beating up the burgomaster and hogtying him, killing his dogs and set a arrow through Izek's skull when he tried to escape with Ireena over his shoulder.

we ended there...

[MsMarvelDuckie]

We finished White Plume last session, with two of three of the legendary weapons in tow (they have Whelm and Wave, but hubby's ninja had the brilliant idea to take Blackrazor to the etheral plane and drop it there) and even defeated the Efreet who was the wizard's main "guardian" of the entire complex. He ran off, so may show up again later (and perhaps his master as well). And since Strahd has been the subject of discussion here lately, I decided to replace the low-level vampire from the White Plume module with him (he lost a bet with Kereptis and agreed to serve as a guardian for the hammer Whelm as payment). Needless to say, the reaction from the group when they realized whom they faced was priceless! Our kitsune arcanist literally ran screaming like a little girl, while the rest decided to stand their ground. It ended with them throwing Beznik (along with his entire pack full of explosive gear) at the coffin, which shattered all of his alchemy equipment, and his wand of fire, with spectacular results. The explosion took out Strahd, (who had already taken several hits from the party) and actually killed our barbarian (the one who had been slowly turning into a pudding mutant). The oracle had to revive her, and do a major healing on everyone else (particularly Beznik, who was at ground zero of the blast, and took almost as much damage as everyone else in spite of having fire resistance from being a pyromancer). Long atory short, it was one of the most entertaining sessions in a while. Now they are continuing on to Mito, so Issa (the ninja) can return her family's heirloom sword. But for now, I have planned a simple one-shot for Halloween, involving my own version of a "monster mash", lol. I've been wanting to do a mad scientist type encounter for a while, and now I might get to do just that....

[Candy Kappa]

The Tuesday game ended and we're on a new campaign where I am a player (yay). I play a LockBard who's Patron is The King In Yellow and her name is Cassilda. Currently Cassilda and Archer the Elven Ranger is dead in a dungeon we went into and the remaining member Attika the Half-Orc Wild Magic Sorcerer is still alive. Cassilda will get better thanks to her Patron sugar daddy, so that'll be fun. We got killed due to Wild Magic shenanigans during combat, the sorcerer gated in 5 Flumphs that got a rage induced thanks to the magic of the land we're on and killed the last monster and us.

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My Tuesday Campaign ended with the group defeating Azalin Rex. After fighting through some of his forces like JuJu Zombies and living armors, they met a Headless Horsemen in the throne room which they killed twice (If they died there I had plans of running a modified From the Shadows module).

The Fight With Azalin was super tough. They had 4 npcs that helped fighting which all died, and despite the Wizard having 10 coins from Animate Object, a summoned Worg and a Babau demon (doing 12 attacks on his turns) and the Fighter having nearly auto Advantage and a +3 magical sword and 24AC and a decked out Paladin. They still technically TPK'ed

But. Thanks to previous shenanigans with the Fey, the party had a free resurrection, and the Paladin had not used his. So when the fight was over and everyone was dead, Azalin walked away from the fight with his back turned to the now very much alive Paladin, who woke up with spell slots and still had his Mace of Disruption. Azalin was under 25hp due to underestimating the party and got a critical smite in the back of his head.

The Party also had a scroll of raise dead, so the Paladin got to wake up the Fighter, while the Wizard crawled out of Styx meeting Asmodeus waiting for him.

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On Saturdays we're back in the tabletop game, but now we're doing Chronicles of Darkness: Changeling the Lost 2nd edition.

It's lots of weird freaky fun.

I play Lucy Loveday, who was a PI's secretary back in the mid 1920's, she escaped her Keeper and ended up in 2019 and lives with 3 other Changelings. She now runs her own PI business.