D&D Log: Session 9

It’s Monday, so you know what that means everyone! … It means back to work and school with you all. *whip crack*

It also means that it’s time for another D&D related recap, cause I know you all love them so much. Alright, no real updates to say other than this is the first official session where Paw is no longer in the campaign. So let’s go!

Alright, we start off back on the ship about to pull into the docks at Vrimar when the captain notices that there are soldiers on the docks dressed in the royal armor of Sarmanath. To my expectations words has traveled quickly, and we are all wanted. It appeared we would be in danger of being caught when Grae asked the captain if he would stow us away. For 25 gold he’d allow us to clean the… less desirable parts of his ship, and most of the group jumped at that opportunity. However, Juliet is a Druid so she said “eff that” and Wild Shaped into a shark and swam to shore. Viktor also removed his armor and swam to shore. So unlike those suckers, we kept our 25 gold. In truth it was a better plan than we expected since the captain actually learned about our bounties. Garrett alone is worth 1,000 gold pieces, Viktor 750, and the rest of us 500 (I broke out of jail. I really thought I deserved more. I feel like Chopper looking at his wimpy bounty) with the exception of Colonel Vane. Oh right, I forgot to mention that Lord Vane’s Swordmage son was retconned into joining us. Ta-da!

So after we arrived in Vrimar we stayed there for only a hot second before we left to head east to the Black Swamp Salt Marsh. We set off on our path, and after about a day or so of travel we turned in for the night. However… Wild Goblins Appeared! Yes, we were attacked in the middle of the night, but thankfully Lord Commander Juliet was alert enough to wake the party up so we didn’t get too slaughtered. We managed to slay all but one of the goblins and a bat and narrowly avoided having our stuff stolen Good thing too. Imagine how crappy we’d look as the champions of destiny, and our magic astrolabe got stolen by a handful of goblins who probably tried to eat the darn thing afterwards. Anyway, we survived the battle, and the next morning set off , but we now faced a more treacherous situation: a running river. Yes, once again the Dethklok of D&D groups can squash a goddess, but face us off against any form of natural obstacle and we will be stopped in our tracks.

In our defense our plan wasn’t entirely stupid. My goal was to use pikes or something that would be nailed into the ground with a rope attached. The other rope would be tied around Juliet who would swim across and nail the other end on the other end of the river. Then everyone would swim across holding the rope all Legends of the Hidden Temple style. It wasn’t a bad idea, and I stick to that belief, but we failed to have anything to nail these items into the ground with, so wasted idea. Eventually Juliet found a good fording location and we just walked across. However Grae and Garrett managed to be klutzes and fall, with Garrett actually losing his longsword and shield in the water. Garrett has all the bad luck out of combat. Think about it. At the celebration party in Sarmanath he was put into the extremely awkward position with Elena that Grae managed to French kiss him out of, then in the tower outside of Ihestas he set off that ridiculous trap that pretty much slapped him around a hallway. Then when we’re all prisoners Garrett gets to be the first one they torture. And now when we attempt to ford the river, Garrett is the only one who biffs and loses his stuff. Talk about bad luck. If he weren’t such a DM headache you’d have to feel sorry for the guy.

Anyway, we cross the river, the hills, and then enter the Black Swamp Salt Marsh where the Black Library, and hopefully the Word of Morgana, still exists. We come upon a single tree branch acting as a bridge to the next patch of land, and Darstine offered to cross it being the sexy stealthy bitch she is. Unfortunately we are dumbasses and never thought that the waters could be filled with monsters, and in a flash we were surrounded by crocodiles. Oh snap! However it wasn’t all that bad in the end, and we managed to avoid really getting messed up by the encounter. For example, all of us were bitten by the crocodiles with the warning that if remained grabbed by them for a turn then we’d hurt. I think throughout the battle three of us were grabbed, and all us managed to escape the grab before we could suffer the effects. Actually, truth be told, we’ve been pretty fortunate about this sort of thing for a while. I don’t know if we’re a well built party, extremely lucky, or the encounters are just too easy, but we manage to avoid many of the horrid effects Spoony throws at us, but you’ll really see that later. Anyway, after the battle I leveled up (Viktor and Garrett leveled up after the goblin fight), so DING level 3! My Encounter power I picked up wasn’t all that interesting (It’s a Close Burst 5, but targets creatures so it’s insanely situational) but I retrained my Level 2 feat Vicious Advantage to Multiclass in Shaman.

Okay real quick explanation for those who don’t understand, multiclassing is when you take certain parts of another class and use them. In previous additions (or at least 3.5, I don’t remember about prior versions) you multiclassed by taking a “level” in another class. So at 5th level a character could be a 5th level Barbarian, but at 6th level he takes a level in Fighter to get some new options. That was back when D&D had set powers and abilities gained at a level. With 4E your level up is customized to such a degrees that taking “levels” doesn’t work. Instead you use a feat instead, and then you get a slightly nerfed version of another class’ class feature. In my situation I multiclassed into Shaman, meaning I got three powers. One was Spirit Companion, so I can summon a spirit animal. Next was my spirit animal’s special ability which is normally an At-Will, but in the case of multiclassing, becomes an Encounter Power. Finally I get another power called Speak with Spirits that is normally an Encounter, but is now a Daily. So, in short, by removing a feat I’d never gotten to use, I now have the ability to summon animal spirits and two additional effects. In both in and out of combat I can use this, so I was really happy to level. So everybody, welcome Pidgeotto, Juliet’s new Spirit Companion!

Yes, Pidgeotto. I’m a nerd, but eff you all I’m rolling with it. Okay, so moving along we stumbled upon a large castle that looked to have been ruined with time, but we could hear the beating of drums going on inside, so it certainly wasn’t as abandoned as it looked. We scouted the area out and found two entrances. One was through a shattered portcullis at the front of the castle, and the second was a shattered breach in the wall that looked to be in repair. We figured the shattered breach was our way in for a surprise attack, but as Grae investigated he managed to set off a fiendishly clever trap. Our element of surprise was completely lost, and now we alerted the enemy to our exact location where we then found ourselves surrounded by an army that doubled our size. It was time, FOR EPIC MUSIC!!!

Truth be told this really was an epic fight. About a dozen guards, plus an ogre of some kind, plus a mage. That’s a battle right there, with the odds firmly against us. It was ass whopping time. So our battle began, and the minion guards managed to lay on the hurt. 4 damage might not seem like a lot, but imagine it from six guards at once all focused on one character. It adds up. Luckily we managed to clear the guards out slowly, and Garrett used his daily which allowed all of us to shift one square if we were within 5 squares of an enemy who died, so by killing minions we managed to destroy Spoony’s terrain advantage. This was just one part of the “Fuck you Spoony” encounter that this became. Soon our group managed to pour into castle so we could rescue Grae since the schmuck ran right into and obviously got pulverized. I think you can really pinpoint the “fuck you”-ness of the battle when Viktor attacked Hiatha the Befouled (the mage). As an immediate reaction she was allowed to teleport away, or rather she would have if not for Pidgeotto. See my Spirit Companion’s encounter power means that whenever a creature adjacent to my bird leaves the square without shifting I get an attack against Will. If I hit, the action is immediately denied, and the creature must use a new action to carry out the ability, so with my hit I managed to deny the teleportation. KRACK KAW!!! I love Pidgeotto so much.

Anyone, the crap feast really piled on as we systematically eliminated all of the guards (except Bob, but I’ll come back to him), leaving only Ursula the ogre, and Hiatha. Colonel Vane marked Ursula, and Viktor marked Hiatha. For those unaware, marking is a mechanic any class can use, but Defenders have a very special mark. It just so happens that both Fighters and Assault Swordmages have ones that allow them attacks if they betray the mark. So this meant Hiatha could only attack Viktor, and Ursula could only attack Vane. Lame. Then I managed (just managed mind you) to hit both Hiatha and Ursula with Faerie Fire meaning Ursula and Hiatha granted combat advantage, and were slowed. Then Grae hit Ursula with his daily that slowed the creature and then caused it to bleed out 5 points of damage each turn, and then Juliet hit with Storm Spike that made it so if Ursula didn’t move more than two squares each turn she’d take an addition four damage, but since she was slowed that was physically impossible.

So let’s sum this up. Ursula is an enormous ogre, however the mark against her meant that she could only attack the group’s Jedi without having said Jedi teleport in and attack should the attacks hit. In addition she was under the effect of my Daily which made her slowed, and grant combat advantage with the added 3d6+5 damage waiting for her once she saved. In addition Grae hit her with his Daily that also slowed her, dealt big damage, and caused an ongoing 5 damage each round until she saved. In addition to that, I hit her with my At-Will Storm Spike to deal damage that will also deal even more damage if the creature can’t move more than two squares which is an impossibility since it’s currently slowed due to TWO SEPARATE EFFECTS. And that’s not including any of the same shit we did to Hiatha. Spoony hated us. All in good fun mind you, but any time he tried something, we denied it, or restricted it, and eventually his threatening ogre was just desperately trying to anything he could that wouldn’t provoke some effect, all the while just accepting the natural 9 damage he was going to take each round. Ah… that’s why I like playing a Controller. In fact you can define why I love playing a Controller by the Pidgeotto teleport stop above. Being able to say “No” when the DM tries to do something is just so much fun.

Now I mentioned this all without talking about Bob the Great Minion. See, in 4E D&D there is a monster type known as “minions”. Minions are monsters that lack most abilities and have only 1 HP, but make up for it in sheer numbers. They’re cannon fodder basically. You throw waves of them at the players, and they’ll take a hit and die. That’s all there is to them. So one hit no matter what will kill them (well, 99% of the time at least). Anyway, most of the minions were dead when Hiatha used a power that gave all of her allies 4 Temp HP and +2 to attack, so for the first time a minion had more than 1 HP! Sure the first attack one took killed him, but to our surprise Darstine attacked a minion and hit for 4 damage. That meant that maybe for the first time ever, a minion managed to survive an attack. This grand warrior was henceforth known as Bob, and Bob was a dreamer! He had aspirations of being the best, and an interesting backstory! He had to afterall, he was Bob the Minion That Lived! Unfortunately Darstine killed him next turn, but still, the legend of Bob will never die.

Speaking of which that makes another D&D meme we’ve created. Let’s add Bob the Minion That Lived to list of such noble memes as “We were fighting like men”, Bosco the Adventurer, “Are we on fire”, Onion Rings, and Juliet gets raped by everything. We are the Dethklok of D&D groups.

Anyway, just as a note before the big battle against Ursula and the elves (should have mentioned they were elves above but… meh too much backspacing), we found out Escalean is here, also searching for the Word of Morgana. He fled further into the library (this is the Black Library for those that haven’t guessed), so now we must chase after him! That’s how our next session will start, and trust me if Escalean is alone then we are really going to have fun with him if we can catch him. So in total our session went over very well. I’m really looking forward to next session, and I must give Spoony special thanks. Not only does he put up and take our beatdowns in stride, but he’s telling a really interesting story, so kudos to him. Well thanks for reading friends, and I ask if you enjoyed this article just comment below. I do love the comments ever so much. Until next time brave adventurers.