Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

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.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Death House Halloween Special Two-Shot--

Since several of the Adventurers' League DMs will be unavailable on the actual Halloween Thursday, AL won't be running that week. So they decided to do their Halloween Special as a two-shot the past two weeks, running the "Death House" module from the Curse of Strahd setting. Everyone had to create fresh, Level 1 characters with some restrictions (only specific books were permitted for creation) and the understanding that we would not be able to use these characters after the adventure was done. (As the titular Death House is inside Barovia, a land trapped in the Mists of Ravenloft, and which don't allow people to leave afterward.) The house is called "Death House" for a reason, as it can be challenging for Lvl 1 characters.

I had initially signed up for one DM's table, but was asked if I would be willing to switch, since another DM's table had had a few people back out due to RL reasons. I agreed, and had prepped two characters-- a Fighter and a Cleric-- to meet the needs of the table. It was a good thing I had, since we had two Rogues and a Warlock at the table. And it went rough... I was the healer, but ended up nearly dying twice, burning one of my limited abilities to heal myself back up, and then a spell slot to heal someone else before the end of session 1. But I wasn't the first to die, as it turned out-- that honor went to DM David (playing for one instead of running the table) at another table, whereupon I found out that the DMs had pooled together and bought three special gold-painted dice-holders, on which they'd attached a simple plastic plaque reading "I Died First in Death House - D&D Adventurers League '24." Every table had one.

By that point, I was almost eager to be the next to die, but that honor went to Brian, a relative newcomer to AL (though not D&D), when his dwarf rogue got killed by a zombie. He jokingly noted, "I never got to get into his backstory!"

In part 2 of the adventure this week, Brian brought out his secondary character-- as we were in a new session, the DMs ruled he could bring in another Level 1 character, while everyone that survived was allowed to reach level 2 (but no HP or spell slot or limited ability resets). He jokingly said this paladin was here to arrest his dwarf rogue from the previous week-- "I've been pursuing him for years!"-- and asked where he was. "I think we left him back in one of the crypts." He continued the joke by implying he was going to go into the dwarf rogue's backstory, only for all of us to basically, semi-IC, go "No one cares."

We managed to make it to the finale of the adventure, where we were fighting a shambling mound-- a very challenging fight for four level 1-2 adventurers. Things only got more challenging for us because our rolls were terrible, and we just couldn't land any significant hits on the shambler. That didn't mean that it was messing us up, however. Our warlock had Pact of the Chain, which in the current 2024 rules allow him to cast Find Familiar without spending a spell slot. His warlock kept his familiar-- a cat (actually a Sphinx of Wonder, but flavored as a cat) called Asmeowdeus-- out at all times and had it do all the attacking for him. So Asmeowdeus would draw aggro on the shambler, doing some damage, get attacked and sometimes downed and engulfed, but as a familiar, it would just puff out of existence on death, and the next turn, the warlock would just summon his familiar again and have it draw aggro again.

Additionally, our surviving rogue threw a vial of alchemist's fire at the shambler, setting it on fire. While it was resistant to fire damage, that fire couldn't really be extinguished, so every round of combat, it was doing 1-4 points of damage. Given how poorly I was rolling, and how after the first familiar death, Asmeowdeus wasn't getting a chance to attack and was just there to draw aggro, we not-so-jokingly claimed that the alchemist's fire was doing more damage than any of the players. Especially after Brian's Paladin went down in the first round of combat and took enough damage to instantly die.

Brian was handed a stack of pre-generated characters and told to pick one, and if the party was still alive after three turns, he could re-enter with a new character on the same initiative count he'd had before. So in he comes with another paladin, and he managed to survive a few rounds, putting in some significant hits, before he too went down. And the cycle repeated as we were basically cherry-tapping the shambler and kiting it around. Brian returned with a kobold sorcerer, but we weren't able to kill it on his round, and then the shambler was left with 2 HP.

Suddenly, we went, "Wait. Is the alchemist's fire going to actually kill this thing?!" Top of the round, it's the shambler's turn, so the rogue rolls the d4 to see how much damage it would take-- and it only took one. The rogue held his action, wanting the fire to kill it, but on my turn I insisted on making an attack roll despite their objections, since-- after how poorly my dice had been behaving-- it would have been so appropriate if they came in clutch now. Alas, they didn't, so it comes back to the shambler, and it finally dies to the alchemist's fire!

Now we had to run and get out of the collapsing house. Fortunately, we'd found a shortcut staircase with a trapdoor that led up to the parlor, so we didn't have to run through the whole house to get out. We managed to avoid getting poisoned by the choking smoke filling the first two rooms we were trying to get out of, and then had to pass DEX saves to get through the doors (now whirling frames of scythe blades) without damage. We managed to get out the door, but Brian's kobold sorcerer took enough damage in the last door to drop to 0 HP.

I did say my cleric stabilized him, but then the rogue and warlock's players shared a look, and went, "We start stabbing the kobold." I laughed, and gave it some flavor, "Yeah, there we go. I'm like, 'Okay, he's stable.' Stab, stab, 'Nooooo!' And the camera pulls out and back through the Mists, fade to black."

All in all, it was fun, and even Brian had fun despite dying three separate times.

One fun quip at the table--
While Brian's first paladin wanted to heal the rogue with his Lay on Hands ability, the rogue's player said, "You have my consent." And the DM nodded, "Consent is key when you Lay on Hands."

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance Mike's One-Shot--

One of our players was not available this week, and rather than run three straight weeks without a session (two weeks ago we ended early when a player failed to show up; we couldn't continue without them as this was literally the kick-off of the wider campaign), Mike offered to return to DM duties for a week. We agreed, and he gave us the basic rundown of we were getting hired to investigate an old sorcerer's tower near Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms. He let us make Level 3 characters.

I decided to keep it simple and just ran an Orc Rune Knight Fighter called Uthakk, while Bob brought out an Elf Swashbuckler Rogue called Wesley, Eric ran a Tiefling Grave Domain Cleric called Enigma (and he literally made up the name on the spot when he realized he'd been so caught up in building the character he hadn't named him), while Jesse brought along a Tiefling of his own... an older Tiefling with a limp, a Fiend-Patron Warlock called Pimbley Grib.

We knew we were in for an interesting game when Jesse revealed that Pimbley spoke almost no Common. In our first bit of roleplay as our party of adventurers met with the client hiring us, after explaining what the job was and asking if we'd take the job, we all agreed, until it got to Pimbley, who was silent for just long enough to be awkward before saying, in a slightly too-loud accented voice, "Yes!" And later when he was asked a more direct question that required a more complex answer, Pimbley just nodded and repeated, in the same way, "Yes!"

I immediately compared him to Borat, and Jesse started laughing because I'd picked up on some of the vibe he'd intended.

I hadn't put much thought into what Uthakk's personality was going to be like, but I just fed off Jesse's Pimbley energy and promptly gave Uthakk a thick Slavic accent of his own. Not quite full Borat in my case, but it definitely contributed to the wild, chaotic energy at the table.

We had a lot of fun, and afterward, Mike said it was the "least hinged" we've ever been, but he really wanted to do future one-shots with that crew.