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D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--
I hadn't intended to join this Adventurers League campaign, since DM David had explicitly meant it to be for some of the newer members of the league, in particular those who hadn't played D&D very much. But before the first session, he messaged me on Discord and asked me to join it, so he'd have at least one experienced player at the table to explain mechanics to the newbies. I agreed, and rolled up a half-elf sorcerer called Rhoric, with a vague backstory of a Waterdavian noble that had to leave town in a hurry. Our second session, Wizards of the Coast released the new 2024 edition of the Player's Handbook (PHB) and pushed it out onto D&D Beyond, causing the app to default to using the 2024 version of PHB for everything, while AL was still using the 2014 PHB. And then a couple of weeks later, without giving any kind of prep time, AL as a whole (as in the overarching organization, not our local chapter) forced everyone to start using the 2024 edition, which changes up a number of things. So it's been a learning experience for everyone.
At any rate, Rime of the Frostmaiden is set in the Icewind Dale, the grim up-north of the Forgotten Realms setting, which is locked in a sort of perpetual winter. We've been basically taking on jobs as they come along, and while in the town of Easthaven, we participate in a seance and commune briefly with a local spirit called the White Lady, who gives us answers about happenings in some of the towns we've visited, including Easthaven, telling us that "invisible gray dwarves" have been stalking the streets. I knew-- though didn't reveal my outside-game knowledge-- that this meant we were facing duergar, sort of corrupted dwarves, who have the ability to shrink or grow giant, as well as turn invisible.
We boarded the local, ice-stranded, ferry where we suspected the duergar were hiding, and got attacked by one who was standing lookout. Though he got in a couple of nasty hits on me, we laid into him, and as he got low on health, we decided to try to defeat him non-lethally so we could question him. But when he tried to escape by shrinking down and running, our War Cleric hit him with a Nat-20 Guiding Bolt spell, dealing upwards of 40 damage. Generally when an NPC gets reduced to 0 HP, they die unless non-lethal is specified-- and the DM did state we killed him-- but some of the other players tried to argue that it might still be okay. So then I looked up the rules on "instant death," a mechanic that applies when excessive damage is dealt-- if extra damage past the 0 HP threshold meets or exceeds the creature/character's max HP, they die instantly without death saves. So that duergar got reduced into a smear on the floor. We sort of dubbed him "Floorstain" for the rest of the session.
Then, as we tracked the footprints of one of the other duergar through the town, we saw it had stopped and apparently thrown a rock through a window in the town hall. While we were looking at this, a woman came out of the hall and confronted us, asking if we'd thrown a rock through her office window. Suddenly, our War Cleric says, "No, that's my office." Cue everyone at the table looking at their player, and the DM had the woman identify herself as Captain Imdra of the town's militia. Cleric doesn't back down, and keeps trying to gaslight the captain, straight up lying, and doing rather well with their Deception rolls, but we eventually convinced her that the Speaker (mayor) had hired us to look into it. "That was quick, this was like an hour ago," the captain said. I just said, "Yes, well, time is money!" When the captain went back into the town hall to check, I just went, "Go, go!" and we hurried off.
The duergar angle didn't pan out too well. A few more windows had been broken in town, but with no discernable pattern. Just some kind of general nuisance thing, even if we'd found a map in the ferry where the duergar had mapped out the location of their outpost and their fortress deeper in the mountains. We did encounter another duergar when we doubled back to the ferry, but that one got away before we could stop him. We went back to Captain Imdra to report on it-- I had Rhoric tell the Cleric, "Let us do the talking," --but their player committed to the bit and kept trying to gaslight the captain before we sort of quietly pushed her out of the room. We reported on the duergar matter and showed the map as evidence, but then took a job from the captain to search for some missing fisherman.
We were given a skiff (a small boat) to go out looking for them. No one had any proficiency with water vehicles-- until I realized I'd forgotten to set some feats from my background (thank you, 2024 PHB update), and the DM allowed me to retroactively put the proficiency in my character sheet. (I flavored it as being from his noble background, experience on the family yacht.) We came across a cave on the shoreline and then got attacked by a flock of harpies inside.
Late in the fight, I tried to hit one of the harpies with a Chaos Burst spell, rolling a Nat-20 on the attack roll-- until the DM pointed out I was too close to the target, and hence had to make it at disadvantage. (i.e., roll 2d20 and take the lower roll) I was pissed because my dice (as usual) hadn't been very kind. My second roll was still good enough to hit the target, but as Cleric's turn came up after mine, and they used a Guiding Bolt on one of the harpies, I realized something: Cleric had hit my harpy with a Guiding Bolt on their previous turn, which also gives the next attack roll against the target advantage (roll 2d20 and take the higher roll), which means that it would have cancelled out the disadvantage, giving it a straight roll. The DM allowed it and told me to roll for the extra damage. (Critical hits such as Nat-20s mean that you roll twice the damage dice.) So I rolled for the damage, and it was enough to kill my harpy.
Still fun, all this, even if it meant I missed out on DM Minmaxer's final adventure in the Spelljammer set he'd been running.
I hadn't intended to join this Adventurers League campaign, since DM David had explicitly meant it to be for some of the newer members of the league, in particular those who hadn't played D&D very much. But before the first session, he messaged me on Discord and asked me to join it, so he'd have at least one experienced player at the table to explain mechanics to the newbies. I agreed, and rolled up a half-elf sorcerer called Rhoric, with a vague backstory of a Waterdavian noble that had to leave town in a hurry. Our second session, Wizards of the Coast released the new 2024 edition of the Player's Handbook (PHB) and pushed it out onto D&D Beyond, causing the app to default to using the 2024 version of PHB for everything, while AL was still using the 2014 PHB. And then a couple of weeks later, without giving any kind of prep time, AL as a whole (as in the overarching organization, not our local chapter) forced everyone to start using the 2024 edition, which changes up a number of things. So it's been a learning experience for everyone.
At any rate, Rime of the Frostmaiden is set in the Icewind Dale, the grim up-north of the Forgotten Realms setting, which is locked in a sort of perpetual winter. We've been basically taking on jobs as they come along, and while in the town of Easthaven, we participate in a seance and commune briefly with a local spirit called the White Lady, who gives us answers about happenings in some of the towns we've visited, including Easthaven, telling us that "invisible gray dwarves" have been stalking the streets. I knew-- though didn't reveal my outside-game knowledge-- that this meant we were facing duergar, sort of corrupted dwarves, who have the ability to shrink or grow giant, as well as turn invisible.
We boarded the local, ice-stranded, ferry where we suspected the duergar were hiding, and got attacked by one who was standing lookout. Though he got in a couple of nasty hits on me, we laid into him, and as he got low on health, we decided to try to defeat him non-lethally so we could question him. But when he tried to escape by shrinking down and running, our War Cleric hit him with a Nat-20 Guiding Bolt spell, dealing upwards of 40 damage. Generally when an NPC gets reduced to 0 HP, they die unless non-lethal is specified-- and the DM did state we killed him-- but some of the other players tried to argue that it might still be okay. So then I looked up the rules on "instant death," a mechanic that applies when excessive damage is dealt-- if extra damage past the 0 HP threshold meets or exceeds the creature/character's max HP, they die instantly without death saves. So that duergar got reduced into a smear on the floor. We sort of dubbed him "Floorstain" for the rest of the session.
Then, as we tracked the footprints of one of the other duergar through the town, we saw it had stopped and apparently thrown a rock through a window in the town hall. While we were looking at this, a woman came out of the hall and confronted us, asking if we'd thrown a rock through her office window. Suddenly, our War Cleric says, "No, that's my office." Cue everyone at the table looking at their player, and the DM had the woman identify herself as Captain Imdra of the town's militia. Cleric doesn't back down, and keeps trying to gaslight the captain, straight up lying, and doing rather well with their Deception rolls, but we eventually convinced her that the Speaker (mayor) had hired us to look into it. "That was quick, this was like an hour ago," the captain said. I just said, "Yes, well, time is money!" When the captain went back into the town hall to check, I just went, "Go, go!" and we hurried off.
The duergar angle didn't pan out too well. A few more windows had been broken in town, but with no discernable pattern. Just some kind of general nuisance thing, even if we'd found a map in the ferry where the duergar had mapped out the location of their outpost and their fortress deeper in the mountains. We did encounter another duergar when we doubled back to the ferry, but that one got away before we could stop him. We went back to Captain Imdra to report on it-- I had Rhoric tell the Cleric, "Let us do the talking," --but their player committed to the bit and kept trying to gaslight the captain before we sort of quietly pushed her out of the room. We reported on the duergar matter and showed the map as evidence, but then took a job from the captain to search for some missing fisherman.
We were given a skiff (a small boat) to go out looking for them. No one had any proficiency with water vehicles-- until I realized I'd forgotten to set some feats from my background (thank you, 2024 PHB update), and the DM allowed me to retroactively put the proficiency in my character sheet. (I flavored it as being from his noble background, experience on the family yacht.) We came across a cave on the shoreline and then got attacked by a flock of harpies inside.
Late in the fight, I tried to hit one of the harpies with a Chaos Burst spell, rolling a Nat-20 on the attack roll-- until the DM pointed out I was too close to the target, and hence had to make it at disadvantage. (i.e., roll 2d20 and take the lower roll) I was pissed because my dice (as usual) hadn't been very kind. My second roll was still good enough to hit the target, but as Cleric's turn came up after mine, and they used a Guiding Bolt on one of the harpies, I realized something: Cleric had hit my harpy with a Guiding Bolt on their previous turn, which also gives the next attack roll against the target advantage (roll 2d20 and take the higher roll), which means that it would have cancelled out the disadvantage, giving it a straight roll. The DM allowed it and told me to roll for the extra damage. (Critical hits such as Nat-20s mean that you roll twice the damage dice.) So I rolled for the damage, and it was enough to kill my harpy.
Still fun, all this, even if it meant I missed out on DM Minmaxer's final adventure in the Spelljammer set he'd been running.
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