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| #1pukunuiApr 27, 2015 17:23:33 | Hi all,
Last Saturday my wife and our friends started our new D&D campaign. I gave them the option of either Princes of the Apocalypse or Tyranny of Dragons. They quite liked the sound of the latter, so here we are! We got our brother-in-law to join in, so now there are four players. We spent most of the night developing characters, then played a little intro which everyone seemed to enjoy.
I should note that I let everyone start at 3rd level instead of 1st. I also had everyone use the standard array, since some people just wanted to stick with using a pregen instead of making a character from scratch.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE Here are the PCs the group came up with:
Mara Stormwind: A Tethyrian human noble champion who talks softly and carries a big axe. She is pretty much a clone of Kerri from our Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign, right down to her habit of killing things with one stroke of her greataxe! She is looking for her friend, Talis, who may have been kidnapped by dragon cultists in Greenest.
Flint Ironfist: A shield dwarf evoker and dragon scholar. His best friend is a silver dragon of roughly the same age. He has been having apocalyptic dreams for some time now and is determined to find out why. [This is my wife's character. She wanted a "stompy dwarf" like Gimli, but she also wanted to be able to use magic. This was the result. He looks like he'll be fun.]
Erevan Naïlo: A moon elf arcane trickster whose dying father implored him to undo the wrongs he'd committed by dealing with the Cult of the Dragon. Having infiltrated the cult, Erevan has an inkling about what they're up to and is determined to stop them.
Keo Ursine-Brother: A goliath moon druid who is the sole surviving member of his clan. He is conscious of his lack of social graces, apologizing for his uncivilized ways. His grandfather was a famed dragonslayer, which resulted in him being targeted by dragon cultists when he came down from the mountains.
These four strangers are all on a mission. Fate has thrown them together in Greenest ...
The four found themselves arriving in Greenest as the sun was setting. They all gathered in The Lonely Demon Inn, a quiet but cozy place on the edge of town. The proprietor, a grizzled old fellow with an eyepatch, introduced himself as Darvin "Folks round here call me 'Patchy'" Nighthill. He proceeded to ply them with food, drink, and lots of questions.
When Erevan explained that he was something of an entertainer, Patchy asked him to sing "one of those sad elvish ballads". Erevan complied, and the result brought a tear to Patchy's eye. He explained that he'd spent some time with the elves of the Misty Forest when he was younger, and that song had brought back good memories.
Next he turned to Mara. She had little to say other than that she cherished her greataxe, which was a family heirloom. Patchy nodded and pointed to the beaten up old shield and mace that were hanging from the wall behind the bar. They looked like they'd seen a lot of use. "There's nothing like having a trusty weapon by your side," he remarked.
Flint had little to say, which Patchy said he could respect. He acknowledged that many dwarves don't have much to say to strangers before moving on to Keo. He recognized the druid as a goliath, saying he'd met some in the mountains once. Keo apologized for his lack of manners, explaining that he did not know how to use the utensils so would just eat with his hands. Patchy said he'd eaten with his hands while living it rough in the wilds plenty of times.
As the four adventurers tucked into their meals, Patchy began regaling them with tales from his youth. At one point, he asked if any of them had ever fought a dragon. "Well, I have!" he exclaimed. As he launched into another tale, describing the dragon's approach, the inn shook as something heavy flew overhead. A moment later, there was a loud crackle of lightning followed by an explosion from somewhere else in the village.
Patchy deadpanned, "Yeah, just like that."
The four turned to look at him quizzically. "Folks, I do believe we're under attack by a dragon," Patchy replied, as screams of fear and pain could be heard from outside. The old man grabbed his mace and shield from the wall and announced that he was going to draw the dragon away from the town. "Who's with me?" he shouted!
Before the adventurers could respond, they heard a commotion from outside the inn. Turning to look out the inn's windows, they saw an injured man shepherding three young children across the street. They were followed by a young woman clutching a shield and a broken spear. In the middle of the road, she turned to face a gang of kobolds that were chasing her family.
The adventurers decided they'd better aid the family rather than go with the crazy old man with a deathwish. Patchy shrugged and then reached behind the bar, grabbing an old bag which he tossed in the direction of the adventurers. "Suit yourselves. You're going to need what's in there!" he said.
As Keo snatched the bag out of the air, Patchy struck his mace on his shield and the weapon lit up with a bright, magical light. He then ran out the backdoor to fetch his horse.
Keo had a quick look inside the bag. Finding its contents too confusing, he handed it to Flint. The dwarf wizard took one look at it and was overjoyed to see it was a bag of holding, with an internal space much larger than its outside would suggest. Shouldering the bag, he went through the front door with the others to help the villagers.
The kobolds didn't stand a chance, and the woman, who introduced herself as Linan Swift, was most grateful for their assistance. She called her husband and their children back and suggested that they all make for the keep in the center of town as quickly as possible. As they made their way through the village streets, they could see that it was under attack by more than just a dragon. Groups of kobolds and human raiders were lighting things on fire, looting buildings, and chasing after screaming townsfolk all over the place.
It took the group some effort to avoid the raiders, but they managed it successfully, although they picked up another family and some more adults along the way. By the time they made it to the path leading up the hill to the keep, the group had rescued thirteen villagers. Sending them on their way, the group turned to fight a rearguard against a group of kobolds with a man-sized scaly beast - which Flint identified as an ambush drake - heading towards them from the south. The drake managed to get one good bite in against Erevan before it and most of its kobold handlers were taken out. The survivors fled south into the darkness.
Seeing that more raiders were closing in on their location, the group decided to retreat into the keep as well. As a few more stragglers followed them in, the castellan ordered the keep's gates to be closed.
To be continued ... |
| #2sirkaikillah11Apr 27, 2015 20:15:08 | Patches the one eye bartender and former adventurer. Awesome! |
| #3Varden_KholApr 27, 2015 20:17:41 | Ah, poor Patchy. Hopefully he comes out the other side of that fight. Funnily enough Erevan Nailo was the name I picked out for a villian in my campaign. It's good to see his alternate reality version isn't praying to the Great Old Ones. |
| #4pukunuiApr 27, 2015 20:52:47 |
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| #5BRJNApr 28, 2015 17:48:05 |
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| #6pukunuiApr 28, 2015 18:27:25 |
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| #7pukunuiSep 14, 2015 2:33:51 | I kinda fell off the recap wagon for a while there, but I think I might attempt to get back into it. We were on a lengthy break recently and only just restarted the campaign this past weekend, kicking off Episode 4 in style. I'll quickly recap the events from Episodes 2 and 3 first, though.
Episode 2 The PCs accepted Governor Nighthill's request to track the raiders and find out what the story was. They met up with the stragglers, whereupon Flint turned Erevan invisible so the elf rogue could sneak up on the kobolds and, doing his best kobold impression, incite them towards violence against the cultists. This worked a treat and the PCs hardly needed to do any fighting themselves. They managed to talk to one of the cultists before he expired, learning of the rearguard waiting in the rocks. This enabled them to avoid the rearguard encounter entirely. They scouted around the camp from the top of the ridge. In the end, they decided to just have Erevan sneak into the camp under cover of darkness to rescue Leosin. Believe it or not, the players came up with the idea of replacing Leosin with a straw dummy completely on their own! As a result, they were able to get Leosin far enough away from the camp before the alarm was raised that no harm came to anyone on the way back to Greenest.
Episode 3 The PCs accepted Leosin's request to return to the camp and find out more. Of course, they found the camp all but empty when they returned. They were able to wheedle a few details from the recalcitrant hunters before heading into the cave. Erevan used his cultist outfit to scout ahead, chatting with the guards in the cave entrance before heading back out again to inform the others of what he'd found. They opted for the frontal assault (of course). They fought their way through to Mondath's chamber, but the priestess slipped down the escape hatch hidden beneath her rug. Instead of following her, they dragged some of her heavy furniture on top of it and then went and explored the rest of the cave complex.
The PCs bested the violet fungi and a patrol of kobolds and made their way through the bat cave without disturbing its inhabitants. They took a short rest on the ledge above the trash heap before pressing on. Erevan scouted ahead alone, discovering the meat locker. They all went north together to the drake training room, where I had added a kobold "wyrmpriest". He proved to be a bit of a glass cannon - he blasted Erevan with an acid orb and then got knocked down into the pit, where the juvenile drakes hungrily tore him to shreds. The PCs later made mincemeat of the kobolds and urds in their barracks, but then fumbled their initial foray into the shrine room (despite me giving them a free short rest that I described as an "adrenaline rush"). Erevan managed to invisibly sneak past Cyanwrath to get into position behind Mondath before the others charged in, but they were soon defeated by the half-dragon and his berserkers, while Mondath's spirit guardians did Erevan in. (That being said, Cyanwrath only had like 3 hp left at the end of the fight, so they'd almost gotten him!)
Rather than have it be a TPK, I decided that Cyanwrath wanted to interrogate them (and possibly try to recruit them), so he had Mondath cast spare the dying on them all. They woke up in the pit at the far end of the dragon hatchery, in which I had also added a few of the prisoners from the camp (who were being saved as food for the wyrmlings once they hatched) and a scaffolding for the kobolds to use. Unfortunately for me, I kind of fumbled this scene and allowed the PCs to escape and recover their stuff before Cyanwrath had the chance to talk to them. I'd allowed them to gain the benefits of a long rest while huddled up in the pit, so Keo changed his spell selection, which made a huge difference during their rematch against Cyanwrath et al (IIRC he used hold person on either Cyanwrath or the berserker). I believe I also made it so one of the berserkers had been repositioned in the cave entrance since the PCs had wiped out all the other guards and the kobolds.
The PCs summarily dealt to Cyanwrath and the berserkers, but Mondath managed to escape, taking one of the hunter's horses with her. They thought about trying to chase after her but ended up letting her go. They went back into the cave and destroyed the dragon eggs with ranged attacks - not wanting to risk going near the mysterious tentacled thing that kept telepathically asking them for food. They then went back to the trash heap and Keo went in to retrieve the chest they'd noticed before. He was ambushed by troglodytes, and he came very close to dying, except that I ruled that the last remaining troglodyte couldn't fit his body through the narrow fissure and so left him behind, and then one of the others managed to get to him with a healing potion just in the nick of time!
Episode 4 Back in Greenest, the PCs were warmly welcomed by Governor Nighthill, who informed them that Leosin had left already but there were some horses waiting for them should they wish to follow the half-elf. The governor pulled out a map of the region and pointed out the various routes they could take to get to Elturel. The PCs opted to ride to Berdusk and then take a boat down the Chionthar to Elturel. Flint wasn't too sure he liked the sound of that but went along with it anyway. It's about 125 miles from Greenest to Berdusk, so at a normal pace, the PCs were looking at 5 days on the road. [FYI: The 200 miles from Greenest to Elturel mentioned in the adventure is for the most direct route across the Greenfields. Going by the overland travel rules in the PHB, that journey should actually take eight days, not six.]
About a day or so out from Greenest along the Uldoon Trail, the PCs sought shelter from the heat in a copse of trees surrounding a small spring. Just as they were getting nice and relaxed, they heard some piercing cries from above. A group of three griffons had spotted/smelled their horses and were diving to attack! Luckily the PCs had had the foresight to tether their mounts to a tree or else the frightened animals might have bolted. As it was, the PCs had a hard fight on their hands. While they managed to fend off the lead griffon, the other two held their attack and managed to slay two horses. Only one managed to break the tether and make off with the corpse, while the other struggled long enough that the PCs were able to do it in.
When they were only a day away from Greenest, they encountered a patrol out of Berdusk (one of the city's roving "gauntlets", made up of soldiers, militiamen, convicts, and mercenaries). They filled in the patrol's leader on what had happened in Greenest, and the patrol continued on its way, determined to do what it could to help the people of the Greenfields recover from the cultists' attacks. [FYI: At the beginning of Episode 2, Leosin's disciple, Nesim Waladra, mentions that one of his brothers had gone to Berdusk to seek help but that it would be many days before any help arrived. I decided that this patrol was that help.]
Not having any current info to go on for the next part of the journey, I referred to the 2e Forgotten Realms Adventures and Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast for info on Berdusk and Scornubel. The PCs had a bit of fun in Berdusk. Erevan went to the temple of Deneir (aka. the old Harper base known as "Twilight Hall") to buy some healing potions. He also bought a bottle of the famed Berduskan Dark wine, and the PCs all sampled some of the local delicacy known as goldenstars (which, based on the description of them in Volo's, one of my players identified as samosas). [Incidentally, one of my players is German, and when I showed the group the black and white images of the city in the Volo's book, she said it reminded her of some of the places back home!]
Despite Flint's objections about going on the water, the group soon found a barge captain willing to take them downriver for free in exchange for them acting as guards, as the gnolls in the Reaching Wood had grown restlessly bold of late [a hint I took from the 4e FRCG's entry on Elturgard]. Erevan put Flint to sleep to get him on board. Before the dwarf woke up, he had another of his apocalyptic dreams, this time featuring the city of Berdusk being reduced to rubble.
Due to the risk of gnoll attacks, the barge captain said he would sail through the night, using Erevan's darkvision to help guide him rather than lanterns (which would make them more of a target). Sure enough, some gnolls attacked them on a stretch of the river that drew close to the edge of the Reaching Wood. The gnolls fired flaming arrows at the barge from the safety of the trees. One of the deckhands went down, but Keo was able to revive him. The big druid also used spike growth to great effect after Erevan and Flint, who were able to attack the gnolls back thanks to their darkvision (and Erevan's new Sharpshooter feat), had whittled them down quite a bit. Poor Mara was left with little to do besides dodge the gnolls' flaming arrows and put out the small fires they caused amongst the barge's cargo.
Needless to say, the barge captain and his crew were most grateful when they reached Scornubel with all hands. I gave them a quick rundown of the city, including the relatively recent addition of the paladin citadel, which had been built when Elturgard annexed Scornubel after the Spellplague almost destroyed the city due to severe lack of trade. The PCs decided not to spend much time here, each seeking a place to bed down for the night according to their needs (Keo, for instance, opted to sleep in a paddock, while Mara chose the most expensive inn she could find). The next morning, Erevan had to put Flint to sleep again in order to get the stubborn dwarf back on the barge.
The trip to Elturel was uneventful, though I made sure to describe the city's magical second sun growing bigger and brighter as they drew closer. I also mentioned that, as they went into the city, they noticed that many of the homes and buildings had heavy black-out curtains. Unfortunately, we had to stop there, but we're planning on doing a longer session next time, so hopefully we'll get through the meetings with Leosin and Ontharr and then be on our way to Baldur's Gate, where I have a few fun little extras in mind for the PCs while they wait for the cultists to show up.
Thoughts While everyone seems to be enjoying the campaign overall, my wife has voiced some dissatisfaction with her character. While she greatly enjoyed playing the elf wizard pregen in our previous Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign, she feels like Flint isn't special enough and is considering having him not show up at the docks when it's time to head downriver to Baldur's Gate. Her issue mainly seems to be that there's nothing that really makes him stand out. He's not the only one in the party who can see in the dark, nor is he the only one who can speak Draconic, cast spells, or fight in melee. I've pointed out to her that wizards really start to come into their own when they gain access to 3rd level spells and that while Erevan can cast wizard spells too, he's mostly limited to enchantment and illusion. He can't do big blasty spells like Flint can. I also reminded her of her Sculpt Spells ability - Flint is the only one in the party who can drop a spell like fireball on the bad guys without needing to worry about where his allies are. So we'll see. She might come to enjoy him more as the campaign progresses. I just wish I could find a way to help her enjoy him more now.
On a side note, I've also got a separate thread in which I detail the changes and additions I'm making to the default setup as I go along. Check it out here: My Tyranny of Dragons. |
| #8Varden_KholSep 14, 2015 14:12:47 | Thanks for the write-up. It's always great to see how other people's campaigns are going.
My only advice about making the dwarf character shine is to find that one thing they are the best at and adding a challenge based on that. I recently added a challenge to my campaign where a golem gave the party riddles and the answer had to be cast on the golem in the form of a spell. I kind of tailored it towards my Sorcerer player's spell list, so the answers were Fire, Lightning, Water, that kind of thing. It meant that her greater number of spell slots and variety of spells got the party through the challenge, even though everyone had input on actually answering the riddles.
Anyway, keep it up. |
| #9pukunuiSep 14, 2015 15:48:43 |
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