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[highmax28]

Alternatively, the Fallen One is actually imprisoned by the first generation of fey because their current ruler hated him for whatever reason you come up with. The Fallen One thanks the party for freeing him, explains the situation, and disappears (because the bindings of the room bound his magic too), which possibly allows him to show up in disguise in a later plot. He says all the loot is theirs, etc.

OR, the Fallen One doesn't exist. It was all a trick to keep everyone but the most dedicated adventurers from getting their hands on the treasure, explained helpfully by the guardian.

I was thinking that or the guardian IS the fallen one, and all other aspects of him, save for the hidden boss form, was just him using the magic radiating to control hte party along, which is why he was unkillable in the first fight because it wasn't a physical form.

I kinda threw a Jojo's bizarre adventure reference with the Gambler, but at that CR for a party, they're ready to deal with a possible TPK enemy like that. It seemed mean, but I loved the idea that you could willingly gamble your souls for progress.

I also had the test of body come from a previous game of mine, but it was harsher there because the party had to TPK in order to advance. They had to fight an unkillable boss and fight to the death. The "riddle" was to fight to your own death, but it served his purpose.

I also like the idea of the manor being filled with fallen adventurers, because it shows "yeah, they screwed up badly... Don't be like them" and the poltergeist was an excuse to have something legitimately use cleavers and frying pans on players.

I like to have more than just combat thrown in, which is why I always keep my options open for non-combat encounters like the Gambler and the fey. I actually had an instance of that in the 4e tomb of horrors where I had to play a game and, since it was all skill checks, I had to strip naked (because I was wearing armor that reduced some skills I needed to use) and play the games

[Jimmy]

Loving these ideas! I think I've got the background set down now. I've decided to drop the undead component of the manor in favour of a full-out fey themed arc.

Our BBEG is a Blackwood Satyr who has kidnapped several beautiful young women and is holding them prisoner within the labyrinth on the other side of a gateway to the First World. Our boss fight will end up being against him and three other regular satyrs, for a total of a CR 9 encounter. He's been releasing the women into the labyrinth and then he and his companions chase them down for fun, with predictable results for what happens when they're caught.

The hedge maze was created by a Blodeuwedd using their at-will plant growth SLA. This would mechanically allow a hedge maze to appear around the manor overnight. The background story was that our manor is owned by a nobleman that offended our fey antagonists somehow, and in retribution was taken prisoner to be punished. Thus the maze would function as per the Plant Growth spell, meaning a PC's speed drops to 5 ft. within the hedge, and would likely block line of sight.

The manor itself is now ruled over by a pair of fey posing as the new lord and lady of the house. A Stroke Lad and Huldra have teamed up to take over the manor house, using their abilities to disfigure the servants into grotesque parodies of humans.

Obviously the manor house at the centre of the maze would be the first destination of the party, so assuming they get past the maze, they will discover it filled with horribly disfigured servants. Since Stroke Lads are supposed to be cowards, our fellow will reveal the location of the gateway to the First World where the women are being held prisoner if the party succeeds on an Intimidate check, by dropping him to half hit points in combat or by killing the Huldra.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...

I love some of your ideas, though as a DM I usually try to make sure any kind of effect has a basis in the core rules instead of hand-waving it away and saying that 'some strange magic stops you doing that' to prevent PCs using a trick to bypass the challenge.

I like your idea of the guard at the entrance to the maze being a test of sorts. I'm thinking a CR 5 Fey Touched Minotaur to introduce the party to the maze and fey theme of the adventure arc and also remind them of the need to have cold iron weapons to bypass the DR of these creatures. The big issue will be communication, since it would only speak Giant, but I figure if nobody has access to that language it would be simple enough to have an easy Sense Motive check to let them know it wants to test them before they can pass the entrance to the maze.

I also like your idea of seeding the maze with helpful Fey NPCs. In particular, I was thinking of having two Baccae try to seduce the most likely PC and promise to give him a 'gift' if he stays to drink with them. In this case, 'winning' the drinking contest actually involves failing the Fortitude save listed for their special wine, which has no real harmful effect (though making the PCs roll Fortitude saves that increase in difficulty each round will probably have the players extremely paranoid).

As for the maze, I think I'll add four Twigjacks that attack players who push through the hedge instead of following the path. A few Splintersprays should act as a decent deterrent to doing this, I think.

I'm not a huge fan of The Gambler encounter since, as mentioned before, I don't like creatures that have abilities that aren't part of their monster entry. Poltergeists don't have any ability that would let them take the soul of a creature, willingly or otherwise. I could probably do something like give them a Cacodaemon's Soul Lock ability, but overall that doesn't seem thematically appropriate.

On the other hand, the Blodeuwedd has a Lesser Geas SLA that could be quite fun. A Lesser Geas of "Leave this place and never return!" could inflict some discomfort on one member of the party, especially if they try to spend time resting after the fight with the Huldra and Stroke Lad to recover their ability damage.

Since the underground labyrinth is part of the First World, that would mean it would be unlikely to hold any undead or dragons (aside from Linnorm, who are all far too high a CR to place in this quest arc, even as an optional bonus boss). Still, I can think of a few good subterranean fey who might be good additions, as guardians or otherwise. A Polevik or a pair of Tome of Horrors 4 Domovoi would be good ones, as well as a Lampad to act as a red herring encounter to trick the party into thinking they've found one of the kidnapped girls.

[Chevaleresse]

Let's see how today's session went...

First I'll introduce you to the present party members. We've got a gnome rogue who went Arcane Trickster and a monk who has no real idea of what he's doing, but he's got maxed out DEX and decent STR so he can probably do something. I'm rolling a half-elf Magical Girl because I'm unabashedly obsessed with them after watching PMMM a year or two ago, and 5e doesn't have my beloved warlords or psionic classes. (Yes, I'm that guy.) We've also got a pair of clerics: one elven and focused on the supportive aspects of the class (light domain), and the other a dwarven one who's decidedly more smitey with his storm domain. (I don't really know why he didn't just roll a paladin, tbh, but whatever.) They, along with the somewhat generic goliath fighter, are not present for this session, however. The goliath and the gnome were buddies from way back, something about meeting when they were very young, the monk was the Weird Foreign Guy (or Chick, in this case), and the two clerics were basically the girl's surrogate parents because adventurers aren't allowed to have living, non-evil parents. They basically traveled around being clerics and they took my character in when her parents got eaten by a blue dragon. (We decided, for whatever reason, that her other half was actually dwarf, and so they were often confused for her actual parents.)


Last session was left partially unplanned - the DM at the time started some half-baked plotline that involved dinosaurs spontaneously teleporting into town and wreaking havoc. One dead triceratops later, and we're into what was actually planned: the Adventurer's Guild, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Magical palace-type deal, all sorts of accommodations, memorials to past adventurers (with a Hall of Stupid Deaths that had to be at least 50% based on paladins fucking things up), tons of other adventurers passing through. Very, very much a high-fantasy high-magic world. Settling in after downing the dino took all of the time we had left after character creation, so a halfhearted investigation while the DM desperately fumbled for something for us to actually find ended the session.


This time, scheduling issues abound, resulting in the half-party of mahou shoujo, rogue, and monk as mentioned earlier. We get a new quest via my poor girl being selected via d6 to vomit up a scroll (I was informed this was a MLP reference, which did not make me appreciate this process any more or less) containing the relevant information. It was a pretty basic, simple quest, suitable for our level 3 characters - find whatever was responsible for crops disappearing around the nearby village of New Oldtown (another reference, one that I hope readers will understand) and deal with it.


So, we decide to walk, since it's not all that far away and with the track record set by a previous campaign, we'd inevitably find a way to lose any mounts we purchased in some hilariously unfortunate manner. Along the way we run into a goblin merchant, who isn't selling much of interest other than a cockatrice egg. After informing him of the item's identity, and discovering that he was, in fact, monumentally stupid, we elected to just continue on our way.


We walk into town, make a beeline for the tavern. My magical girl plays a song for the taverngoers, and she is informed that she would have gotten a free beer if it wasn't for the fact that she was fourteen. We also run into some generic-looking monster hunter, who mumbles something about killing whatever has been stealing food. Him and most of the NPCs in the village are nigh unintelligible for whatever reason, but we still manage to scrape enough plot off of them to move on, so after a trip to the nearby inn to garner any more easy information we head down to the farm and ranch (they were across the road from one another) where the food's been disappearing from. The old farmer mumbles something about the corner of the field that the food's gone missing from, so we go over there and find tracks. A few Nature checks later, we've followed them into the woods, through the brush, and to a small cave. We discover a few crude cave paintings, the bones of a few of the missing chickens, and a "bed" made of stacked furs and hides sized for a small humanoid. I, figuring that the owner of the cave was probably illiterate, leave behind a drawing that attempted to indicate that eating the chickens was bad, and that we were friendly and had food. The monk reluctantly had to part with a pen and a page of her blank book, but I guess it was for the greater good.


Cut forward a few hours, it was getting late so the party decided to turn in for the night. We kept watch on top of an old windmill, which had a small sort of turret set up with a repeating ballista (don't question it) set up in order to kill the food thief. Around midnight, the monk catches some movement in her spyglass over by the stables at the neighboring ranch. We run over there, sneak in behind whoever, and find a small humanoid wrapped in a cloak. We decide (well, I decide as the rest of the group fails to come up with a plan other than "tackle it") that I should stand up, tell whoever it is that we mean them no harm, and catch them if they run. I do so, speaking my piece in fluent Halfling. (I have a lot of languages.) The figure screams something about "scary big people" in Common, we catch them, and discover that our culprit is a teenaged goblin girl named. . . Becky.


okay wow, this is longer than I thought it would be, more soon

[Jimmy]

...Him and most of the NPCs in the village are nigh unintelligible for whatever reason, but we still manage to scrape enough plot off of them to move on...

I started laughing here. Bravo, good sir.

[Arx]

(if you're a fighter, you're a walking weapon shop. Also, if you're an archer you wear leather)

Okay, you're going to have to explain what you mean by these. For the first one, I'm guessing you're saying fighters can use any weapon pretty well (though fighting-style tends to make people focus on a specific type in my experience). And nothing about playing any archer-build restricts you to wearing leather, except maybe if you're a pure rogue.

(a) chain mail or (b) leather, longbow, and 20 arrows
(a) a martial weapon and a shield or (b) two martial
weapons
(a) a light crossbow and 20 bolts or( b) two handaxes
(a) a dungeoneer's pack or (b) an explorer's pack

That's the fighter starting equipment. The number of weapons seems ridiculous to me, and it gets pretty weird if you want to be a chainmail archer (longbow and buckler, no arrows?). Also, you then either have to double up on ranged weapons or use a handaxe (or two, why the heck not) in melee.

It just grates with me. Starting with a budget and buying equipment just seems a lot cleaner and achieves the flexibility they're trying to get at without the weird interactions they get by trying to make it streamlined. Fundamentally, my issue is that by making it more accessible, they've taken the depth out, unless there is a 3.5 esque starting set up rule somewhere.

Spoiler: Warlock starting equipment (click to show/hide)

(a) a light crossbow and 20 bolts or (b) any simple
weapon
(a) a componenl pouch or(b) an arcane focus
(a) a scholar's pack or(b) a dungeoneer's pack
Leather armor, any simple weapon, and two daggers

A primarily magic-oriented class (although certainly not entirely) starts with four weapons. Which are all practically useless unless for some reason you can't use magic, because you've got piles of options on spells that work better and make use of your (probably better) charisma bonus.

[Skyrunner]

My first session as a GM in a while (last time I played was in .. 2011) is coming up. Nervous ._.

[Neonivek]

5e is a much needed step forward for Dungeons and dragons

But is also a major step back.

Unlike 4e which was a misstep with many good qualities. It feels like 5e was a great step with many negative qualities.

I still love you 5e *hugs*

[GiglameshDespair]

My first session as a GM in a while (last time I played was in .. 2011) is coming up. Nervous ._.

No pressure

5e is a much needed step forward for Dungeons and dragons

But is also a major step back.

Unlike 4e which was a misstep with many good qualities. It feels like 5e was a great step with many negative qualities.

I still love you 5e *hugs*

No DnD edition is perfect, but I do believe 5e is a step in a better direction than 3.5e, even if (or perhaps because) it has less superfluous material.

[Jimmy]

D&D quote of the week: "Paddle faster; I hear banjos!"

[highmax28]

@jimmy

I didn't say the gambler was a poltergeist, i just said there was one in the kitchen and the gambler was just some spirit that just hangs around. Can be any powerful undead or similar.

If you're not gonna use it, im actually thinking of keeping it myself and making my own campaign out of it. My only problem is it would get lengthy due to it being like 3 dungeons in one adventure.

[Neonivek]

No DnD edition is perfect, but I do believe 5e is a step in a better direction than 3.5e, even if (or perhaps because) it has less superfluous material.

In many ways because. I like that you don't NEED a Rogue, heck you could get away with not having a Cleric.

The only major issues is the lack of customization. The fact that your character is on rails doesn't help.

[GiglameshDespair]

No DnD edition is perfect, but I do believe 5e is a step in a better direction than 3.5e, even if (or perhaps because) it has less superfluous material.

In many ways because. I like that you don't NEED a Rogue, heck you could get away with not having a Cleric.

The only major issues is the lack of customization. The fact that your character is on rails doesn't help.

What do you mean, on rails?

[highmax28]

No DnD edition is perfect, but I do believe 5e is a step in a better direction than 3.5e, even if (or perhaps because) it has less superfluous material.

In many ways because. I like that you don't NEED a Rogue, heck you could get away with not having a Cleric.

The only major issues is the lack of customization. The fact that your character is on rails doesn't help.

What do you mean, on rails?

I think he means the fact that there isn't much in terms of customization compared to other editions. For example, once you're a valor bard, you're stuck one, etc.

[Chevaleresse]

...Him and most of the NPCs in the village are nigh unintelligible for whatever reason, but we still manage to scrape enough plot off of them to move on...

I started laughing here. Bravo, good sir.

I try.

Sadly the rest of the sesh probably won't be up until tomorrow, but it involves a number of failed checks for navigation and questionable goblin tech.

[Kadzar]

It just grates with me. Starting with a budget and buying equipment just seems a lot cleaner and achieves the flexibility they're trying to get at without the weird interactions they get by trying to make it streamlined. Fundamentally, my issue is that by making it more accessible, they've taken the depth out, unless there is a 3.5 esque starting set up rule somewhere.

Try the first page of the equipment section. There's a "starting wealth by class" table, which can be used instead.