One day arrives and brings the Compendium of Classes in its first edition. No longer have you search through all these rulebooks, only to puzzle your class together (like Paladin of the PHB and the Oath of the Crown from SCAG).
You can get it per my Supplement Site or just by licking on this link.
Compendium of Classes (kentusrpg)v1
I also made some minor corrections to the Compendium of Races. You can grab it at Supplement as well.
Hey there. This blog may be on pause, since my new work and a lot of D&D (there can’t be too much) eats my time well and I’m still half-moving, therefore I’m currently a bit much lazy. But sometimes I do some stuff, too, so here we are.
I’m reading through the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide and I’m surprised, how few character options are there. It seems that WotC wants to stick with the “slow but good”-pacing and I like it.
But since we already have different resources for player characters, I brought some together in one .pdf. This is a racial compendium, filled with fluff-texts and traits from the PHB, SCAG, DMG and EEPC. These are all official rulings, no homemade.
Maybe I’ll update it at a later occasion. But the next plan would be, to do the same for classes. Maybe one day…
Compendium of Races (kentusrpg)v2
EDIT: Updated to v2, some minor corrections.
I made this for the forums and after a second look a few days later, I decided to put it here, too. It’s made for someone, who wanted to include the druid’s wild shape feature to the warlock class and asked the forum, what would be appropriate. So I simply made up a new subclass.
The warlock made a pact with a powerful shapeshifter or beast god, like Malar of the Forgotten Realms. This pact concentrates of attaining the ability to change into various beasts. This is much like the Moon druid subclass in many cases, but overall, this subclass is less powerful in most regards.
At 1st level you get the shapeshifter subtype and can grow either claws, fangs or a horn as a bonus action. Claws go with d4 finesse and light, the bite with d6 finesse and the horn with d8. You have proficiency with all kind of natural attacks. Additionally your beasty nature allows you to roll animal handling and charisma checks with advantage, as long as you interact with beasts.
Your pact spells could be:
1st – Beast Bond (EE Player Guide), Longstrider
2nd – Pass without Trace, Moonbeam
3rd – Bestow Curse, Nondetection
4th – Locate Creature, Greater Invisibility
5th – Commune with Nature, Reincarnate
At 3rd level you have to take a new form of a pact boon, Pact of the Beast. This will be your wildshape-kinda feature, even though it is more restricted. You can only use it once per short rest and have to spend a spell slot to do so. Otherwise it works like wildshape, even though you can use it as a bonus action (but not spend spell slots to heal yourself). And even though you should name it differently, you also get the Circle Forms.
At 6th you get the Primal Strike like a Moon Druid.
At 10th level when you’re in beastform, you have resistance to non-silvered, non-magical weapons to increase the unholiness of the shapeshifting nature. Your natural weapons also count as silvered.
At 14th level you can use your form of wild shape as often as you want, as long you have spell slots. You can even change your shape when you’re still in another.
You can add some druidic spells as invocations, like speak with animals at-will, conjure animals once per day by spending a spell slot, etc. I would choose those, who would make your warlock more like a leader of a pack or an animal master.
Since Wild Shape levels with the character, the other features aren’t too impressive, but it should be a good way to embrace the beast while remaining a warlock in all other aspects. Polymorph wasn’t added for a reason, since there is already an Eldritch Invocation for this and it should be only be usable once per day, since this spell packs a lot of power.
Most players and DMs know the following feats: Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter. Both feats have the ability, to take a -5 penalty on your attack roll to add +10 to the damage roll. Some DMs have a bit of trouble with these feats.
OK, I have to admit: These feats are really good. But after seeing both in action, I don’t think, that they’re broken. It only seems that way at first, since at the beginning of a campaign, those +10 damage will kill monsters outright, however, after getting around 5th level, the monsters won’t be taken down that easily and . And remember, bounded accuracy actually makes it so, that the to hit chance decrease by 25%, unless the enemy’s AC is outright horrible.
But the farther you go, the less it means in math. At least for some classes. Of course the statistic will change, with different means to give your damage. Let’s compare the paladin and fighter: While the fighter gets another attack at 11th level, the paladin does more damage with his attacks. So the fighter gets more reliability (which means he can take the -5 while having a buffer attack left), while the paladin begins to want more of his attacks actually hit (especially under Divine Favor or another damage buff). Even though the math is the same (-5 to hit, +10 to damage), the paladin player wants all his attacks to hit, while the fighter will think, that one attack missing won’t negate the +10 damage most of the time. A ranger (hunter) with Colossus Slayer will rather try to get his bonus damage done first and then switch to the more unreliable but powerful attacks afterwards, to make most of this subclass trait.
What really makes those both feats shine early on are the other effects. Like making an attack as a Bonus Action when scoring a critical (say hallo, Champion)/killing one or ambushing enemies by shooting from far, far away. Of course these don’t seem all that powerful, until you see it in action. With the +damage the GWM is able to kill a lot of early enemies and trigger the bonus attack, while the sharpshooter can make more shots by retreating.
So, how can I think, that these feats aren’t broken? Simply, because I learned how to soften them without ruling. A special way to ensure it is: More enemies. More enemies makes more damage less important than reliability, since you need to take some of them out, otherwise the bounded accuracy will kick your ass.
As long as you don’t place them that all of them will be spellslinger-fodder, your weapon users will get a hard time, since even with all the damage and all the extra attacks, there will be more rolls, which makes a combat more statistically stable. And the joke is, that even then the XP won’t be as much, since using more enemies makes a encounter more difficult, so you won’t need as much to make it challenging.
Another reason why I don’t go WTF is because most of the real ‘unbalanced’ stuff comes from resources (Superiority Dice), risk (Reckless Attack) or teamwork. And I think teamwork should be strong, playing a game together is one of the reasons why you play D&D in the first place. Even though you should disrupt it occasionally. in the Forgotten Realms are places, where spells won’t work like the caster might think (weaveless areas and spellplague) or the setting makes it impossible to pull off (like balancing on a 2 foot width bridge).
If you really think, that those two feats are bad, you should simply not allow them. If you think, that the -5/+10 aren’t balances, either allow a -5/+5 variant for all other characters or simply switch it with +1 STR for GWM and +1 DEX for Sharpshooter, so the other effects stays in place.
Or maybe you’re like me as a DM and customize some of your enemies to have those feats as well or increade their accuracy/damage otherwise, so the combats will be quicker without loosing their menace.
Since today is still April 1st (in GMT+1) , and I really dislike April’s Fools, I decided to make a serious post about comedy at a D&D-gaming table. Why only D&D? Because there are systems which are meant to be played in a comedic style (like Toons) or those who are so unbelievable in terms of character feats, that you transcend the grasp of realism (like Scion).
A normal D&D-campaign balances around realism and fantasy, in most cases it does so well, even though (in the typical American Fantasy Style) it’s always turning into an epic story with powerful characters which defies the laws of realism in one time while being very vulnerable to realism otherwise. For this, I point to the Tyranny of Dragons Story, which is good imho, but bringing Tiamat t the Forgotten Realms and fighting foes which can shape the realms to their whims, while there are a ton of situations, where you can easily die? It’s very over the top, which is not something all people enjoy.
But like I said, normally D&D balances the realism and the fantastic moments pretty well. So we have a sense of seriousness, coming from the realism, and a sense of freedom, from fantasy, which can turn into humor. Is it bad? Of course not, since everyone having fun is one of the main-goals of playing after all. Can it disturb? Definitely.
Now I simply write about my personal experiences of having comedy in D&D (with some insight in other campaigns).
Maybe some of you experienced a comedy-based campaign already and in most of the times: It won’t last long, since the DM will run out of ideas (s)he wants to master. The problem is to find a balance between serious story-telling to get the characters to where the fun belongs and the jokes which are cracked to be cracked. In movies it works well, since the characters aren’t sentient beings, in P&P it’s problematic, since the players often don’t recognize when to stop.
If you give the players the whatever-bag (in: take out whatever you want), you can be sure, that they pull out a grenade launcher to bomb the villain you’re just introducing. But if you don’t give the whatever-bag, of course in the end they end up in only having the resources they have, without much spark of creativity. It’s basically only what they do in normal campaigns, except they’re more brave, like trying to make a Looney Tunes routine (“Duck-Hunt.” “Rabbit-Hunt.” “Duck-Hunt.” “Rabbit-Hunt.” “Rabbit-Hunt.” “Duck-Hunt!”)
How do you work with that? There are several ways. One of the easiest: Only one side is comedic. If the players like to play the fools, let them form a party which doesn’t take anything serious (like the old TMNT) and match them up with serious plots. Since only goofing around won’t stop the plot, they will somehow or another pull themselves together when needed and make it right through!
Or maybe the heroes are serious, while the villains and plots are somehow strange. Like a wizard, who tries to reshape the weave, so every spell will create cookies. Or another is just a maniac, who wants to break out the 4th wall, trying to convince everyone, that they’re nothing more than notes on a paper.
If only one side goofs around, it’s much easier to control the plot itself and make something like a story. With a real story, a DM is much better able to keep the campaign going, since one scenario will flow into the next and in the end it’s simply a direction to follow. Those who play regularly needs something like that, since simple and connectionless-episodic is very tiring when done repeatedly.
Another got rule in the DMG (p. 269) are: Plot points. This optional rule allows the players to shape the story to their own ideas and of course limiting the access of unbelievableness is another great way to make a comedy without playing randomly.
Normally, I don’t play comedy-based campaigns, but I do add often some comedy as supplement. So when you (for example) play Tyranny of Dragons, you might think: Hey, this might work. Why don’t I add a bullywug, which is actually thinking, it’s a transformed princess. The bizarreness of the situation is something that might enhance the story in a funny way without breaking it. Just be sure, that the players can’t possibly think of it as a subquest or story-hook.
Funny things happens in real life and in Fantasy, you can make it more funny with just a bit of work. Like adding a fart-sound to the evil wizard’s Stinking Cloud or just a description, how a critical hit looks like on the enemy: “Your sword cuts deep into the body of your enemy and splashes hits the adjacent one, which complains: “Hey, look where you’re leaking!”
In the end the most important thing is to determine how much comedy your gaming-group can process. If you’re joking as much out-of-game as playing serious, maybe you should consider to add some more comedy to the game itself as a DM or a player, to keep the rest more focused on the game. So maybe your character has the flaw, that he regularly messes up serious situations. Or maybe you add, as a DM, an additional condition to your lich, like that his phylactery can only be destroyed while he can see it, so you can deliver this line: “Erm, how do you… wait, I meant, what are you holding there? Seems like a very valuable treasure, so it might be better if you keep it somewhere safer than this battlefield. I know, I’m your enemy and trying to kill you, but I really had the urge to give you that piece of advice. Take it, seriously!”
And often the most memorable moments of a campaign are the most funniest. And that’s definitely better than the most annoying ones. -_-
Anyone who plays D&D in campaigns comes to the realization, that the characters will have more gear at some point than they need. Be it due the numbers of attuneable items (I love the attunement system for the limit, normally) or because they found simply better gear and the old one is not needed anymore. Or, of course, because you, the DM, gave all these enemies some cheap magical items, for whatever reasons.
Or maybe your players wants to buy some simpler magic gear, like a Battle Axe +1 without going through all the trouble of a great adventure.
The main question remains: How do you determine the price. Of course the DMG have a table, which shows the value of a magic item, but it’s always in a range.
For my campaigns, I use simple pointers.
This won’t be helpful for all items, but at least it covers a lot. For weapon and armors, I simply take the highest possible price for the rarity and takes a portion of it, depending on the type of item. Since I personally think, that a dagger is much easier to enchant than a greatsword (since it’s simply lesser you need to work on) and the power of a weapon or armor often synergies with its price.
Here you have consider the fact, that there are some things to consider. First, the most powerful armor in each category have to be more expensive than a lesser armor of a category before, since they are less useful. And heavy armors in general are bad except the Plate Armor or if you have a sub-par Strength score. You always have disadvantage and only your STR determines the final outcome and most characters which uses heavy armor, should have STR 15 to see it through.
Since most weapons aren’t as pricey as armor and there are actually reasons to have a certain weapon within your proficiencies, these should be normally less valuable. But don’t hesitate to push up the value of certain weapons, like Flametongue, which seems to be too great of a weapon for the ‘over the thumb ruling’ I provide.
These are only quick and dirty rules for the value of items. If a player asks about a certain item, like: “How much would it be, if I want to acquire a Longsword +1?”, you can look this list up, to say: “At least 175gp, but be prepared to spend more.”
If the players asks about a “Manual of Bodily Health”, of course you’re supposed to answer in mean laughter. A permanent boost to an ability score is of course something, which isn’t measured in gold pieces, but in mercy.
Consider always the possibility to lower or raise the price, if you can or if the item is especially powerful or too specialized to be useful most of the time. You should even go over the normal limits of the category, if you think it’s doable.
And of course, it’s only the value. For selling, you should adjust it (normally half the value, but I often use reputation and such to raise or drop the selling price).
Like the title says, I updated the cleric’s and paladin’s overviews. I replaced the Death Spoiler with the actual Death Domain in the DMG, which got some features changed (like no more ignoring necrotic immunity) and I added the Oathbreaker.
Seriously, the only reason I could understand why those weren’t included in the PHB would be, that they weren’t ready that time.
When writing the wizard’s overview, I will include the Artificer Arcane Tradition, of course. This turned out to be great, since I’m in love with resource management and this Arcane Tradition makes a lot of use of it.
btw, we had our first Baldur’s Gate Self-Made Campaign game session yesterday and it was great. Even though I realized, that you have to change some mechanism and events from the game (since you shouldn’t expect PCs running into someone’s else houses and asking them directly, if there is something wrong), I realized by playing it, that there are a lot of mechanism in 5e, which should be included, like cartography (and proficiency with its tools) or out of combat features, which can bypass some encounters entirely.
We got to level 3 and are currently in Beregost, even though it’s much more fast paced than the game in terms of level, it does feel right in terms of power so far. Next they want to hunt the gnolls at High Hedge, before going to Nashkel to investigate the iron shortage.
I’m moving, in April I will get into the new house. So there is still a lot to do, but at least I wanted to share something…
First of all, I share some official stuff from WotC on my side, you can download them there, too, it’s totally free, but since not all of you likes to look regularly there, I just figured, I can simply upload them here, too, and you can get it, if you want.
In this case we get the first 2 instances of Unearthen Arcana, which provides pre-rulings for Eberron and a army-combat system. I guess it might be worked over after some thought there for the hard-cover variant (especially since the Eberron races only have +1 to two abilities, which is uncommon so far).
Now I’m proud to say, that I will begin a Baldur’s Gate campaign with a new party. And that means to transfer the beloved PC-game to the P&P media in 5e! I will try to transfer my campaign notes into a self-made gaming module, which can be DMed by those, who also played and love the game or if I’m a bit skilled even those, who don’t.
Of course I know, that I’m not able to make it like the game, since the companion NPCs and the playstyle does a lot for the mood. But in the end, it’s still a strong plot, a great journey and some quite great story twists, which will make this very enjoyable, especially for those, who don’t know the games or were too weak to play them.
The plan is to make a campaign with a proud numbers of the optional quests, since you can actually take some time in most cases. I’ll try to write game reports, too, but I still have two left for Tyranny of Dragons (and the campaign will go on, too), so I won’t make promises.
This is sadly all this time, with the new campaign I have a lot to do, and moving isn’t good on your time, either. Be patient and I will make the wizard’s overview, even though I will first update my paladin and cleric overview with the options of the DMG.
Sorry for the great delay, Christmas and other stuff kept going on and on and on and so I was pretty unmotivated to do the blog. Even though I played a lot of D&D in this time and in the end have a lot of experience to share. I won’t have much free time (at least without decreasing my time playing D&D), but at least I’ll try at least one per week.
This was definitely a really big piece of work, since I had no idea how I could make it even remotely viable. But now it’s done! Wohoo, only one more to go, even though it’ll be a lot of subclasses there… dammit. As always my personal opinion and somehow I think an overview isn’t too accurate here, since the warlock class is much harder to grasp than most other classes, since there are way more ways to customize it.
This is an overview, so I’ll just categorize each class in certain categories to see how it cuts and give a personal grading. The end-grading won’t count the multiclass-strength in (for obvious reasons) and is more like an overall impression than a mathematical derivation.
Any feature in italic is from a subclass and a abbreviation will say which one (in the warlock’s case AF for the Archfey, FI for the Fiend and GO for the Great Old One). And red features means there is a flaw or a minus in said category.
Multiclass: Fantastic
Offense: Good to Great (FI)
Resource Management: Great
Support: Bad
Survivability: Decent to Good (AF, FI)
Utility: Good to Great (GO)
Overall: Good
Multiclass warlocks are pretty common in the forums, mostly because you can grasp some really nice features with only a few warlock levels when focusing on another class or instead take a few level in another class, to enhance your warlock build. This is possible, since the warlock class is much more customizable than your average class, so the customize option ‘multiclass’ just add to that strength.
One of the strengths of the warlock are the Invocations, which enhances any category you feel is lacking, but at the same time every warlock have one problem: The power of the moment. Without short rests a warlock lacks a lot of power, since he have less resources but it’s easier to regain those. So for short and hard encounters the warlock loses out against every other class, while on a long adventuring day with the common 3 short rests, he will be at least reliable and at the end have more spells left than the other arcane casters.
But first you need to get to this point, since other classes lacks the means to regain resources early in the game and you don’t want to go on an adventure, while your companions hit rock bottom of their power. So at the start you will be underwhelming, then you become reliable and in the end it all comes down how well you build up your warlock.
I suggest the warlock class for everyone who likes having options and not too specialized. For those who wants options and be specialized, I suggest a warlock-multiclassing, which are very common these days as ideas on the forums. You can combine the warlock with any other class to make it work better in one department.
The wizard’s overview will have to wait, since I never got the chance to speak about the other books and want to finish the game reports of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign I’m mastering. Even though we didn’t get that far there, sadly.
Got entangled with a video game and failed the saving and strength checks multiple times. About every day, using a lot of precious non-working time on that. But now it’s played (even though I might start the sequel soon) and I want to write a bit before seeking for new pleasures.
But we had our second Tyranny of Dragons Session, if you haven’t read the first even though you want to, here is the link.
Since we play with only 3 players, I use the XP like normal, since it should balance itself out at some point. But in the last session, we got enough XP to gain 2 levels, so I let the players decide, if they really want to skip the 2nd level entirely. And after some thoughts they said yes.
So we have now our lightly enhanced party, Konrad took the Oath of Vengeance and Aelar entered the Circle of the Land (Forest), since he tries to emerge in the role of a supporter and healer, a thing he hadn’t done before.
Aelar Naïlo (Woodelf Druid; NG) – Aelar is an elf in his 3rd century and saw a lot. But most of the time he spent learning, first to become a druid, but after he got prophetic dreams every fifth tenday, he tried to learn what these dreams mean. So he traveled around the Sword Coast, searching for different tomes and mentors and ended up learning from a Copper Dragon, since his dreams showed signs about the destruction by chromatic dragons. And who could possibly know more about dragons than dragons themselves? But after years of study, his dreams became much more vivid and came more often, so he thought it was time to bring his knowledge to the field and prevent the oncoming disaster. And it seems, that Greenest will be the first of many steps of this way.
His background is Outlander to show how much he traveled, his campaign-bound are those prophetic dreams, which comes every fifth night now. His personality makes him more patient, taking time to see problems from different angles, while he has the flaw to underestimate the short-lived races, since they can’t possibly acclaim the experience of the centuries. He decided to take the Dragon Scholar trait instead of his Outlander one, since he is well-versed in terms of dragons.
Enna Amakiir (Half-Elf Sorceress; CN) – Enna was once a street-kid in Waterdeep who cut purses. One day she tried to steal from two cultists from the Cult of Dragon, but was caught. Since she was quite dexterous, the cultists decided to adopt her, but years after members of the Cult, Frulam Mondath, Bog Log and Rezmir backstabbed her adoptive parents to further their goals and even Enna was thought dead. But after fleeing first, she changed her appearance and took an alias to join the Cult again, even though in another region. After passing the tests, she chose the red affinity and since she seemed to be viable, she was one of the chosen new Dragonclaws (practically the lowest rank within the cult after a test-phase as an initiate), which should be used in an experiment to grant the specimen draconic magic. For this an organ of a wyrmling and a blood-transfusion was made, Enna’s left eye was replaced and she was one of those who survived. After some basic training, she became a Dragon Sorcerer, the power she sought to execute her revenge. And after hearing, that at least 2 of her 3 targets planned to attack the town Greenest, she decided to travel there.
To express the life on the street, she took the Urchin background and replaced the trait with the Cult of the Dragon Infiltrator, while choosing the bound of revenge for her parents. She’s neither trusting, nor trustworthy, but she does what’s necessarily for survival, even though some of her actions seem suicidal.
Konrad Dorn (Human Paladin; LG): Konrad is a son of one of the Nine of Neverwinter and seek to follow his father’s footsteps. He was trained by Ontharr Frume, a paladin of Torm, but since Konrad is pretty ambitious and seeks a more direct and stark way to confer good and justice, he decided to take Bahamuth as his patron deity. After reaching knighthood, he wanted to gain experience and spread the good to the world, so his mentor offered him a quest: To visit Greenest and
Even though Konrad is a knight, he’s also a Noble by birth, so he took the standard background. His bound lies within his mentor/pupil-relationship with Ontharr Frume (an important NPC of the campaign) and while he is generous and couth, he can also be fierce and sometimes a bit slick, especially when women comes into play.
This is a Game Report of the second Episode of Tyranny of Dragons, which got completed that day, so if you haven’t played it but want to, don’t read any further. This time we didn’t got that much game-time, since one had to leave early, but we got through that one barely… Good enough!
The raiders were fought back and the party showed some saiyan-feature: Getting stronger after being on the brink of death. Especially Konrad, who got his ass whooped by Langdedrosa Cyanwrath. After a long rest, Governor Nighthill asked the players to visit the camp of the raiders to gather more information. The party accepted, even though Enna wanted to hear about the reward first.
Before they left, a monk of Berdusk asked them to look for another brother, the half-elf monk Leosin Erlanthar. He studied the Cult of Dragons before and they came to Greenest for some further investigations and Leosin’s colleague feared that the half-elf got captured in the attacked or (maybe worse) tried to infiltrate the cult at that opportunity. So another check-point to the list.
After a while of following the very obvious path a small army leaves behind, they saw some cooking fire smoke a mile ahead and decided to get a look. When they got closer, Aelar decided to scout ahead and wild shaped himself into a mouse, so he wouldn’t get another look, even when detected.
There was a small camp there with 4 humans and 8 kobolds, after watching those a while, they didn’t seem that careful, made a camp in a tactically poor place and weren’t showing awareness at all. After reporting, the party didn’t thought of them as a rearguard, but most likely stragglers. Time for intelligence gathering, means first looking for traps around that camp, a bit of sabotage afterwards, then putting some of them into sleep and finally, beating the rest up.
They got the hint, where a real rearguard could be and bound the survivors on a tree. Avoiding the rearguard wasn’t a problem with this information, there was no reason to risk the mission by attacking it. If the rearguard gives an ‘all-OK’, then it’s much easier to infiltrate the camp.
Since it was only a day since the Greenest attack, stragglers coming back to the camp weren’t too unusual. The cultists still weren’t at uniform and they hired a bunch of mercenaries, so after blending in (with a Charisma Check), they could move freely.
Here the problems started. Konrad wasn’t willing to befriend cultists for gathering information, so he took a look around the camp, while avoiding the tents and the cave, which got highlighted in importance, for the case, he run into Langdedrosa. Aelar used his second wild shape per rest during the straggler fight and they didn’t rest before, but he was also fixed at the idea of entering the cave. He wanted to leave the camp again for collecting poisonous herbs to mix it in the guard’s meal, so they get diarrhea. Not bad per se, but leaving the camp might get too much attention and they still knew nothing. So for leaving the camp unnoticed, he wanted to take a short rest to regain wild shape. Enna took the liberty to mesh into the cult (like she did in the past) and gather some information.
After rolling on a list I made, Konrad and Enna could do their actions, while Aelar who wanted to rest, met up with Frulam, who became suspicious of Aelar, since he was resting at a random place! She talked to him and the dialogue left both inactive players grind their teeth, since Aelar wasn’t humble and ‘initiatish’ at all. I described her down to the Purple Robes, without calling her name, but he sadly forgot about the fact, that Wearer of Purple are high ranked members of the cult and if it’s not a half-dragon, it has to be Frulam. It was very fun to see the other players reaction.
If you served the army for compulsory military service (or watched some movies with that theme), you know that one guy, who is kinda wishy-washy, reeks out of unwillingness, and subtly doesn’t accept any authority without speaking that line out. Aelar was this case, but he tried his best, after Frulam asked some questions.
It may be mean to say, but his answers were… shocking. Like ‘Where did you join the cult?’ He said: ‘The last town, how was it called…?’ ‘Interesting. And who recruited you?’ ‘Erm… that kobold. Can’t exactly pronounce its name… and they all look the same.’ I get old, I guess. Because I brainfarted for some seconds there, not able to have a clear thought. I guess Frulam was the same.
Too unsure if this was the worst cultist or spy in history, Frulam made the character standing watch at Leosin, who got captured before and now was tied up at the tents, while one of Frulam’s trusted men was observing him. More to see, if there was any kind of reaction there, while she would consult Rezmir later (even though the PCs didn’t knew about that).
Leosin was in a pretty bad shape and when he was coughing, Aelar used this to secretly put a Goodberry into his mouth, while pretending slapping the monk. It became a suspicious incident, but the watcher of Aelar didn’t notice the real intend. Afterwards Aelar began talking to his watcher in a nonchalant manner, acting like an airhead. He got too many lucky rolls there!
Meanwhile Konrad found other prisoners and Enna began to obtain the reasons, why the cultists are here: To gather treasures for a big hoard to present it to the Dragon Queen, so Tiamat will rise from the Nine Hells to the world. That can’t be good! She heard about the fact, that in the cave will be the treasures additionally to the dragon eggs, and some other informations, which might be interesting for the governor.
Enna and Konrad met up, Aelar not. He was still under observation, so he didn’t want to risk meeting the others. Enna was about to plan an assassination of two of her three targets, Rezmir and Frulam Mondath, but Konrad on the other side wanted to free all prisoners as quickly as possible. Since he declared he’d do this even this night, Enna who would need a lot more of preparation time had to concede, especially since she wants to survive her revenge: Killing leaders inside a big camp without good means of escaping might be a bit suicidal, especially if said leaders aren’t helpless either.
So they sought out Aelar, Konrad was able to notice that Aelar was consciously avoiding them and thought, it’d be better to realize his plans without him. Enna found out where Leosin was held captured and after a session of minor work, they ‘switched’ nightly guard duty with some cultists.
At night Aelar was able to use the darkness to lose his warder and he wanted to free Leosin himself, where he met the other two. Leosin who remembered the Goodberry told the party openly, that he doesn’t wish to be freed, since he was about to gather some precious information, but since the characters planned to free the other prisoners, he resigned. They put on a dummy, sneaked to the other prisoners who were locked up for the night, picked the lock and freed them. Since they reduced the night watch by taking over that post, it was quite easy until they got to the watchtower at the entrance. After some thought and a gentle reminder of the ability to cast spells at higher slots, the high risk sleep (which would put down 2 guards at average to sleep and will definitely caught attention with the chanting) became a low-to-mid risk sleep, since casting it on 2nd spell level definitely put the numbers to their favor.
The escape succeeded! They returned to Greenest with Leosin and the other prisoners without too much of a ruckus. And timely.
Player’s side: If the moon druid have one flaw, it’s the fact that he has to really weight up every wild shape he wants to use. Only 2 per short rest and combat forms makes most of his class, while the often much better way is to use wild shape to become something weak, but not outstanding. And something you can ignore if you’re still detected.
And yes, remember that you can always cast spells at higher spell-levels! Especially the Sleep-spell enhances its use more steeply than other ones, even though it might lose a bit of handiness in the high levels.
Finally, it’s a dumb idea to give some attitude to someone who is leading the camp you’re spying on. As long as you don’t try to become a Power Ranger, attitude should be presented with care. Helps in RL, too.
DM’s side: The really hard part was to hint to the players, they don’t have to enter the cave and that it’s a recon mission, instead of a spying one. Gladly, after detecting those prisoners, Konrad forced his ideals to the other PCs and it went smoothly like the adventure said. I mean: How can PCs even think about forcing their way into the cave, if access is very restricted and too much cultists to fight are in the camp?!
Preparation time: About 20 min, 7 min of reading and 13 min of noting down some possible ‘random encounters’, which might occur, when they roam or stand around the camp. Got the Frulam Encounter there, too.
Here for reference: After the players decide to take action, roll a d20.
1-8: The PC can make the called action without further interference.
9-12: The character will be assigned to a job by a higher cult member, roll a d6 (1: Standing watch at the entrance; 2-3: Standing guard by the prisoners; 4-5 move crates, food brought by the hunters and other goods; 6: Be assigned to a job outside the camp, like replacing one of the rearguard)
13-16: A cultist remembers the character from the attack of Greenest, but not necessarily its role. Maybe he thinks of the character as a mercenary or has no idea why the character is that familiar, but is ready to find out.
15-17: Langedrosa comes by, the player character must make a DC Charisma Check to hide in the cultist crowd, otherwise Langdedrosa might notice them. A character which fought against Langedrosa is immediately
18: Frulam Mondath becomes suspicious of the character’s action and she/he has to roleplay her/his way out.
19: Rezmir is making an example to increase the camp’s discipline again. And the character was one of the randomly chosen ‘initiates’, who get bound, whipped and/or Dragon Breathed.
20: Be evil.
Changes: Add a personality to Frulam? And cutting some corners in gathering information, after confirming that only Enna was willing and able to do it, to decrease some game time. The player would have get any bit of information out there with time, but letting the player roll for feeling it was accomplished is simply way faster than using a lot of time to make an ingame-dialogue, which would bore the other players.
Special Techniques: I rotated the players regularly, normally first to say what they want to do in camp, afterwards I handled every one of them by ‘timing’ and used up playtime so far. After that, mostly improvisation, since social encounters works more smoothly that way. Every DM should have some impro-skills or be willing to learn those, since it makes the game less mechanical and cuts down preparation time immensely in a social situation. If you disagree, try running ‘World of Darkness’ without any improvisation and you will find a very sad system.
Final Thought: This was more of a social challenge and it was kinda bumpy, since Konrad didn’t want to befriend the cultists in any way if possible and Aelar’s player almost got them captured. Even though there is a captured paragraph, it’s hard to punish someone who tries to roleplay, but just got the wrong idea what would be wise to do, especially with a character who has actually a above average wisdom score.
But at least I’m happy that he rolled well and after talking to him, I hope he understood where the problem lies. He got that much better after playing Scion, but in D&D he’s not a child of a god and can’t boost with a body, who is almost maxed in the undestructible-department.
As a paladin of vengeance, Konrad can actually lie his way into the camp, but since he plays a young fool with too much stories about heroics in his head, this wasn’t too bad in a roleplay point of view. Even though that simply means, that in infiltration Enna have to carry the whole party and there are some segments in this module, where infiltration is smarter than assault.
But in the end, a great day, especially since after a combat-heavy start, now a social interaction took most of the time. So module really likes to introduce one pillar at the time, next time it’ll become a dungeoneering experience, so the third pillar, exploration, will be introduced in this edition. Hope they didn’t forget how to do it…
Kentusrpg smart-assing D&D 5e 