Game Summary - September 5th, 2018

Whelp, what can I say?

You guys are awesome and fucking drove off a dragon.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, let's see where we're all at.

While Hydrian is still sleeping it off (whatever 'it' is) at Stonehill Inn back in Pangolin, our friend Zbych is still snoozing in Cottage 1 near our friends in Thundercats.  Must be still recovering from Aunt Alderleaf's pie.

Mysteriously, Adokul and Hollyires disappeared. Twig blights? Probably.

But no worries.  It turns out that somewhere along the way, god knows where, Thee Wiz picked up the Gnome Sorcerer Jubie (HannaH). Not sure what happened there or how I missed that. Huh.

Hmm...and then there's Auk, an Aarakocra Rogue, I never did sort out how he got there? Maybe he ate Hollyires. Something like that.

Back in Pangolin, Kuma (NOT Kumar) was waking up from a very thorough rest, but felt the early itches of either lice, crabs, or some form of magical goat VD.  Needless to say, despite his mountain-dwarfness, he felt utterly compelled to bathe himself at the washing well outside the inn. At this point, a great, blazing Phoenix swoops down, grabs Kuma (and, conveniently, his gear), carries him rapidly across the landscape and deposits him in front of Auk, angrily exclaiming, "Ak! Aak-ahhk, aak! Aaaaak!" Auk knows what it means, and a haunted expression chases across his face.

With Thaddeus waking up from a nice snooze at Cottage 1, and the rest of the gang gathered nearby at Cottage 2, everyone was reunited, weather prognosticated, and all was well.

The band back together, the decide to loudly wander through Thundercats, Thaddeus calling plaintively for Play-Doh the Druid.  Play-Doh appears from Cottage 4 telling them to shut up but invites them into his Cottage for tea.  Once in the cottage, Play-Doh grumpily tells them to shut the fuck up or they'll wake the young green dragon Venomfang hanging out in Cottage and Tower 7.  It also turns out the Play-Doh is happy to take them to the location of Wave Echo Cave (but not go inside *shudder*) if they 'take care of' the dragon for him.

The  crew traipses (skips, cavorts, strolls, marches, prances, etc.) to Cottage 7 and while about half the party stays outside, calling out the dragon for some chit-chat, the other half goes inside the cottage attached to the tower where they try to spring on the Venomfang's butt from behind.

Things don't go quite according to plan.

Auk is summarily chomped on and spat out (too many feathers?) and goes critical.  As the inside-the-cottage gang launches an attack on literal dragon-ass inside the tower, the dragon (hardly noticing) simply climbs out the room where he prepares to take on Maridine after she actually nails it a few times with crossbow bolts.

Once the rest of the crew is back outside, the rest of the party actually does solid work on Venomfang.  Alpha-septum uses his invisibility scroll to sneak underneath the dragon and stab in the soft, soft, well, not-exactly-soft underside. Maridine heals Auk and continues to cross-bow-bolt the nasty lizard. Thaddeus turns into a wolf and bitey-bites Venomfang, only to realize, shit, AC 18. Fortunately, no teeth broken. 

AC 18, guys. EIGHTEEN. You'll did great.

Anyway, Rosco and Kuma had a harder time getting their attacks to land, and God/dess is contemplating getting them new d20s that don't suck.  Thee Wiz did fantastic work fire-bolting and magic missiling the fuck out of Venomfang. Auk managed to get in a few attacks which didn't quite land... but was getting there!  And right at the last minute, Jubie was finally liberated from her sack (ahem), totally smiting Kuma with her coppery gnome-ness. 

Now about half-way to dead, Venomfang decides this isn't worth the trouble (plus, spiders for every meal is getting old), and bails, learning many valuable lessons about not playing with his/her food in the future.

It was way past God/dess's bedtime, so the loot in Cottage/Tower 7 will have to be explored next time.  Because that was such a bad-ass battle, God/dess will also make sure that any players not at the next game who took part in the battle will get a share of the loot.

We also made some good headway on actually playing the game correctly. Thanks to Thadeus actually reading the manual (what a concept) we spent some time during the game getting used to property rolling Saving Throws and DC (Difficult Class) throws.

So here's the breakdown if I have this right:

DC (Difficulty Class) Throw.  

1. Player wants to do something (say, walk a tight-rope).  

2. DM decides on the difficulty (doesn't tell player).

3. Player rolls d20 and adds appropriate modifier. In this case, Dexterity, specifically Acrobatics.  Lets say the player rolls a 4 (pretty shitty), but is a half-elf rogue with sweet Dexterity and has a +4 modifer to Acrobatics. So the roll is 8.

4. DM had already decided (secretly) that this was Very Easy, so a DC of 5.  Since the total is 8 (higher than 5), the character makes it! Woot!

Saving Throw (usually in a melee or last-minute situation)

1. Cleric decides to cast a Charm spell on a Nun. (Because reasons.)

2. The Cleric doesn't roll a d20 for attack, we just assume it hits. 

3. The spell's DC (Difficulty Class) is 10 + Spell Level +  primary spellcasting Modifier.

(INT for Wizards, CHA for Sorcerer's and Bards, WIS for Druids and Clerics).

4. For the Cleric, we'll say this is 10 + 2 + 3 = DC 15.

5. The Nun then rolls a Wisdom saving throw against this, so whatever she rolls plus her modifier.

6. She rolls a 12, but her Wisdom modifier is 4 (cuz she's a Nun) and gets 16. Since this is higher than the Cleric's DC of 13, the Nun succeeds and sees right through the Cleric's Charm Spell. And so he gets none. 

7. If she'd gotten 14 or lower, she would have failed and the Cleric would have his way. Gross.

8. Get it? Nun? None? Anyway.

We haven't been doing the Spell DC, I realized, so next game we'll start working on this.

And finally,

Death Saving Throws 
1. A rogue falls off a tight-rope over a ravine (different tight-rope, I guess) and takes so much damage, she's below 0*.
2. Each round after that, she rolls a d20.
3. 10 or higher and she succeeds. She's still alive! Though knocked out. Oh well.
4. 9 or lower and she fails.
5. After 3 failed throws, she dies.*
6. After 3 successful throws, she gains 1 HP and is stabilized enough to heal herself, or otherwise, well, do something.
7. Rolling 20 = automatically 1 HP!
8. Rolling 1 = automatically 2 failed throws!
9. Before you ask, there are no modifiers on Death Saving Throws. It's between you and God/dess.

*If you receive damage below zero that's equal to or greater than your Hit Points, you're supposed to die outright. So if a Sorceress has 12 HPs, and she takes 24 points of damage when a pride of lions falls out of the sky and lands on her, she is supposed to dead-dead.  I guess I'm supposed to dramatically tear your sheet in half.  But because God/dess is good and kind, God/dess will probably figure out some way to get around this with permanent penalties.  Like, Astarte will claim said Sorcercess as her own, demanding she solitarily hunt and devour a dire lion once a year, but also takes away one Constitution point and permanently removes Burning Hands spell.

Anyway.

Dragons, guys. Dragons.

You did it.



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