5e Game - Part 18

It has been many more sessions since last I typed about the game, but as many weather related stops and starts as we have had, not quite as many play sessions as you would think. Or I would like. We played when we could get enough people in and I was feeling up to it, as I freely admit at least one weekend I did not want to DM whatsoever, so we worked on a small project that has been consuming my spare time (more on that in a moment), and I made them watch Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, a terribly cheesy and fun movie from the '80s that I love. My players are still complaining about me forcing them to watch it, but I still love it.

Ah yes, my arts and crafts project. I have mentioned before, and even posted pictures, that I am using Rich Burlew's fantastic A Monster for Every Season paper minis, as they are both good looking (if you love The Order of the Stick they are great) and about the most affordable option you can ask for. They are very time consuming, however, especially if you jump on with both feet and attempt to make them all. Which is what I am doing, and there are easily hundreds of these little guys, if not thousands, and each one needs to be printed (done), cut out (done), folded (mostly done), and have a coin or coins taped into their bases (again, mostly done). Oh and then I need to sort them and figure out a storage solution that fits into the available space in our already cramped home. Easy peasy. I will try to get pictures of them all together once they have all been put together.

Side note from the future, as I have gotten a little behind on this series, I did actually finish all of the paper minis, which I then sorted into various size zipper bags and then used an entire 9-block organizer thing with the fabric cubes (it was on sale at Target along with the fabric cubes). Here's pics of the minis as I was sorting them out:

That's a lot of minis, that didn't cost a lot except in time

The party, flush and heady with their success over the massive wave of lizardfolk (when did D&D become so politically correct that lizardmen was unacceptable? le sigh), the party lashed their canoes together into a party barge, complete with BBQ grill and cooler in a floaty, and headed into the ruins of the drowned city, the once former center of a decent sized empire. All of this carpentry, by the way, was accomplished by the ranger, the same ranger who was still not giving any thought as to why his Primeval Awareness had been working spottily the past day or so, confidently pointed towards the center of the city and declared the bad guys be that way. The party drove straight towards the center of the city, and immediately fell into the lieutenant's trap, consisting of himself, the dragon, multiple ogres carrying ballistae, an ettin, and a dragon-themed fiend. My gripey player, the ranger's player, decided I was cheating, but calmed down after a little explaining - they've been using this spell, which cancels out your ability, which you haven't been asking me anyway because you expect to use it like a passive in a videogame that is always on which is not how this works, you need to tell me that you're using it. 

Anyway, the ambush happened, to the sound of the sad trombone - wah wah waaaahhhh - as it did a whole lot of nothing, but the lieutenant, on the back of his dragon, got to make a big, flashy entrance that wowed the players. In the scrum that ensued, the druid summoned two octopi that were immensely handy to have around (I'm a dad, I can make the dad jokes), and became a shark, only to have to turn back into his own halfling self to cast heals on the paladin; the wizard, having just learned his first 4th level spell, successfully turned the dragon into a duck for about 5 seconds before it died (from the acid breath of the fiend, oddly enough, as it is a black dragon) and became a dragon once again, a very unhappy, mad, angry dragon; the paladin got golf clubbed off a parapet and into the water by a crit from the ettin; and the water, as this is all happening on a lake covering an ancient, sunken ruin, was a huge factor of this combat, hindering movement from combatants on both sides. In the end, the party overcame, and managed to query the lieutenant who died, but was still alive enough to be interrogated due to plot armor, the highest AC known to role-players the world over. 

The lieutenant revealed he was out here in the swamp raising dragon-fiend hybrids for the invasion. Oh, and please don't kill my pet eagle. The ranger's ears perked up at that one, as he has been trying to get an animal companion of his own (see the dire wolves in an earlier session that nearly ate him, but merely followed the party around, for some laughs), and this intrigued him. 

The party continued on, the ranger once again proving to be as handy with carpenter's tools as he was with a bow, managing to save the party barge before it sank completely, though the BBQ grill and floating cooler were long gone. The party snuck up on the remaining hobgoblins, their presence no longer being masked by the lieutenant (now dead) and easily detectable by the ranger. The fight was quick and predictable, except for the druid who tried a new trick and became an extremely large anaconda and caused a fair bit of havoc.

The fight was not the main event, but just an appetizer for the main course, the things the party found at the headquarters to this band of baddies. They found the lieutenant's eagle and the ranger managed to seduce it (not in that way, pervert) with the promise of much food, and now he finally has a pet, which he forgets he has most of the time. The party also found a note that talked about a lich in the area and his phylactery, and how mad the lich would be if someone brought him back his phylactery. Of course, they then found said phylactery. The party also found the spawning pit for the dragon-fiend hybrids, and destroyed the eggs, moving their side one step closer to victory in the coming war. "What shall we do with the phylactery?" they pondered. "Kill the lich with it, or give it back in the hopes he will leave us alone?" They pondered for a moment, but not too long, as the local elves, who had noticed the party offing the lieutenant and his dragon swooped in on their giant owls and spirited the party back to their island.

The elves were mostly relieved the party had done them the huge favor of removing the bad guys from their watery homeland, but were still torn. Long isolationists, they were still loathe to join the fight against the horde of hobgoblins. And while they freely admitted the lizardfolk the party had killed were working for the bad guys, the elves were a little miffed that the party had not tried to parley more with them before nearly wiping out the whole tribe. The party made their plea, finally revealing the phylactery and the note concerning the phylactery and the bad guys' plan to use it to get the lich to fight on their side. The elves took an evening to hash it out amongst themselves, and finally decided to help. What can I say? The party made valid points and the paladin rolled really well on his Persuasion check.

As part of the support the elves were making to the war effort, they supplied giant owls to the party. "Oh good," the party said, "we can fly all the way to the lich, be there in a couple of days." In many ways, D&D is not like the world Tolkien created, but it was very similar in this case. Of course the owls cannot take the party the whole way, that would be too easy, er, um, they might get hurt flying over the enemy a few times. Plus the party needs to report to the nominal leaders of the area, and also research the lich. The party grumbled, but agreed that made sense, and went back to the capital. They arrived after an uneventful flight (it could have been worse - warning, that link is NSFW), and immediately split up to take care of their various chores. The lich is bad and lives out in the wastes to the southwest. The people of the area are grateful for what the party has done. The city is gearing up to stand siege from the bad guys. Could the party check in on a gold shipment also heading southwest? It is for the dwarves, so that they will send us aid.

It is at this point when the wizard's player, the one with the drinking problem and who was a bit sloshed, had the brilliant idea to try and get the city to lend the party use of everyone from the city's jails/prisons to... the rest of us never quite figured out. How would the party move fast with so many more people, especially since they would not have horses like the party would? How was the party going to feed them? What were they even going to do for the party, when they weren't trying to escape or kill the party in their sleep (they were in prison for reasons, after all)? This is the issue with drunks who have been drinking, they think they have the best plan ever, and it starts out promising, but mostly it ends up being nothing and wasting everyone's time. The rest of the party and I got him under control pretty quick, though, and the group moved on to the next part pretty quickly. 

This was not the end of it with this player, but you have to remember this was all happening over multiple sessions, so it didn't come up again until our session two weekends ago, which I'll talk about below.

The party headed west down the major trade road of the area, and ran into an ambush. We'll, I say "ran into", but really they detected it in time and managed to ambush the ambushers quite handily. Whilst patting themselves on the collective backs - the cavalier lackey of the paladin rode the druid, who had turned himself into a rhinoceros, into battle and lanced a barghest to death, it was pretty cool - the party realized they had wasted more time by dealing with what was essentially an annoyance, and they had bigger fish to fry. They decided to leave the trade route, and use the ranger's navigational skills to strike a direct course to the best guesstimate of where the lich's lair was.

Now heading cross country, the party readied themselves for less encounters with the baddies from the invading horde and for more encounters of the random kind. They were only mildly surprised when they ran into said army's raiders and a heavily laden cart, that had formally been heading to the dwarves. The party, unwilling to tangle with two ettins plus a handful of goblins at close range, peppered them with arrows at extreme range. The baddies charged, but eventually succumbed to the withering arrow fire, the last ettin dropping a ways from the party, stunned but not dead. The druid, a halfling, had come into a pair of Boots of Striding and Springing, decide this was the best time to go running across the field, casting Jump on himself for good measure and using it to make some incredible leaps, and finally ending up on top of the downed ettin, pogo-sticking it to death with a scimitar. The rest of the party sat stunned in awe, and awarded the druid's player an Inspiration die for his efforts.

The wagon was indeed full of gold, the dead humans lying about were indeed guards from the capital, and now the party had the moral dilemma - deliver the gold to the dwarves, and slow down their arrival to the lich, or keep the money for themselves? Who would know they kept it? Anyone outside the party who knew what happened was dead. They made me proud, keeping the gold was never seriously considered, though admittedly even the money-hungry rogue has earned enough "filthy lucre" from these adventures this amount of gold just did not seem like a lot, by comparison.

The party split, one group heading south, hard, to deliver the gold to the dwarves and do some shopping for the party while there, while the rest wended their way southwest, lazily. The gold party arrived with little of interest happening during the trip, and handed over the gold successfully. Shopping was also accomplished, the party's Bags of Holding becoming existentially lighter not only in gold but also excess magic items used to barter for more useful items to the party. Yes, this is a 5e game, but this and the first set of adventures come from version 3.5, which was a lot more magic item heavy. This half of the party then wended their way to meet up with the rest of the party at the edge of the wastes. This session wound down pretty quietly and in an unexcited manner, but sometimes,

The other half of the party, not having to make a detour, made their easier, less hurried, way to the edge of the wastes and so got chased by some owlbears for a bit. The ranger and rogue used this encounter to attempt to convince the paladin's cavalier retainer that he smelled like cream cheese and that owlbears found that smell irresistible, and that's why they were being chased. The cavalier did not believe a word of it and attempted to ignore them. He got a little back as the party then encountered a nest of giant wasps that everyone else in the party but him failed to notice. Knowing the giant wasps were not a dire threat, the cavalier hung back and let the rest of the party run into them, and the ranger's horse temporarily went down before the party managed to kill the wasps. The cavalier, being a cavalier, immediately revived the horse and berated the ranger for letting it die. The ranger and rogue continued to try and tell the cavalier he smelled like cream cheese, but now the cavalier merely smirks at their inept attempts at a prank.

Ah yes, my player with the drinking problem, and yes, he has a drinking problem. I talked about his issues in our last session wrap-up, but never did get a chance to have a sit down with him, and still have not. I did, at some point during the many sessions of play recounted in this post, watched him pull a Four Loko (if you are not familiar with the brand, don't, just don't) from his bag upon arriving at the game, and I point blanked him. "Don't. We need you functional at the game." He threw away the Four Loko. And I think he has been mostly sober outside of the games (he has been completely sober at the games) since then, but I haven't heard him say he is going back to AA. If you or one of your players has a drinking or substance abuse problem, please seek help, life is too short to waste it.

The Warlock is Broken

I admit that I am an old grognard who started playing D&D back in the 80s and have been known to grumble about this newfangled edition that we are playing. I also admit that I never played 4th edition and never really played a lot of World of Warcraft or any of the other MMORPGs out there. One of the issues that I have with 5e is with the warlock class, and not because of where it came from but because, thematically, it does not make a lot of sense. Here is what I think is wrong with the class and what I would do to fix it.

I do not think you should create an entire class just because you wanted to use the word "warlock", which is admittedly a badass name. Your classic arcane classes - wizards and sorcerers - already cover quite a bit of the territory, leaving very little for warlocks to differentiate themselves. Wizards are tied to schools and apprenticeships, the traditional paths of learning arcane knowledge. Sorcerers are inherent casters, molding the forces of nature through their ancestry or special circumstances of their birth. And as a class, sorcerers are fairly young, only appearing in 3rd edition, though you could argue hedge wizards and wild mages did first appear in 2nd edition, if not earlier. But basically for the longest time you had "trained" spellcasters and "innate" spellcasters. What do warlocks bring into the mix? They are not trained, there is by definition no academies for warlocks; yet neither are they innate, as their powers do not come from within, or their ancestry, but from an outside otherworldly entity. We already have those, by the way, they are called "clerics" and "druids".

That otherworldly patronage, the one thing that differentiates warlocks from the other arcane casters, is also what makes them make no sense as a full class on their own. If you were to live in a medieval or Renaissance fantasy world you would see the wizards going off to their various schools, the clerics gathering in their churches and temples, the druids communing with the natural world, and the sorcerers learning their various innate abilities (yes, and the hippie bards wooing various people with their lute skills and trying to convince everyone they had the magical skills, too). Then you have the warlock - she says her patron is a celestial, but what if she were lying? And with as capricious as all the gods are on both sides of the alignment chart, who can tell if this is "sane" time or "run for the hills" day? What if her patron suddenly asks her to kill you in your sleep? Or the next village over, the entire village, especially that pesky orphanage? Plus, it does not matter if she wants to do it or not, she is not giving up the power, not only because once you get a taste of it you want more, but also because her contract might stipulate that her soul is immediately property of that patron upon failure to undertake any project the patron wants her to do. No, fantasy worlds already have too much danger inherent to them, no one wants to put up with yet another potential threat, much less one that moves in next door.

The biggest problem I have is this... well, okay, let me just put this to you as an example. Please watch these two videos from Zee Bashew, who is doing some fantastic animations about D&D.

Yes, yes, Mr Bashew loves warlocks, but that is not what I wanted you to focus on. Instead, answer me this - where did those two stories happen? Both of the stories are fantastic and entertaining, but where did they happen? No, don't tell me where they happened in the game world, but did these happen in game? Before game? In an in-between session? The first video is a warlock's background, their back story that was written outside of the game by the player, probably alone without any of the other characters or even the DM present, where that PC came from and why they are a warlock. It's a fantastic story... but that's not your character, so what do you care? A PC's backstory is, let's face it, interesting to their player and their player only, and only interesting to anyone else (most likely the DM) when they want to use it against you. The second video happened in game, and will be a story the DM and the players share with each other for years to come. And that is my biggest problem with warlocks - they automatically come with this great and awesome story hook... that no one but you gives two craps about. You want the most interesting story about your character to happen in-game, with your friends, not as part of the backstory. I can do that all day by myself and without a party, it is literally called "writing fiction" and does not even need a game or rules set to do.

As such, to me the warlock is just broken, but not in a rules sense, but in a theme sense. In my current game, I do not allow warlocks as a playable class, but have been thinking about allowing it back into the mix. However, not as a class, but only as a multiclass and only offered when certain things happen in the game. Yes, I said offered, because I do like that aspect of the explanation of the class. Here is what I have worked out so far.

First off, the PC or the entire party has to be dead (or at least unconscious and making death saves) for the {whatever} to offer their aid. Or the DM can start the whispering in any of the PC's ears from this {whatever} through secret passed notes (or text messages, you kids and your technology), setting up the final offer of power at a thematically appropriate place in the story. 

Second, this power that is offered to the character - and yes, only one PC, even if the whole party is down - must be able to help the party conquer the current foe or situation. Yes, if the party just falls to bad die rolls or really poor planning, it may just be the Dice Gawds telling you that it's time to roll up some new characters and try again. This, of course, is very dependent on the DM to decide if the death meets this requirement, and may have to adjust the situation so that the newfound powers.

Third, the DM decides who is offering this power to the PC, and which PC in case of a TPK, or rolls a d6 to determine who (1 - Archfey; 2 - Fiend; 3 - Great Old One; 4 - Celestial; 5 - Hexblade; 6 - the PC gets to decide). The DM also decides when the new warlock is going to be tasked with something that goes against the PC's ethos or the party or their current mission. Yes, even if they end up with a patron such as the Celestial, the Archfey, or Hexblade, every warlock (this is another quibble I have with the base warlock class, this should happen to every warlock, period) will be asked at some point to do this betrayal, of their party, their employer, or themselves. If the warlock refuses, not only do they lose all of their warlock levels, but half of their other levels (removable curse side quest to get these back, but the warlock levels are gone for good), plus the patron has now marked them for termination by one of their other agents. Or even themselves, but make it another agent of the warlock, because you want this to be a challenge that the party can overcome, not the impossible TPK you would expect by suddenly facing the Great Cthulhu itself.

Fourth, this has to happen in secret. Or as secret as any small group of friends can keep such things from each other. The other players, if they know, will have to keep in mind their characters do not know... at least until it becomes obvious to everyone. Again, this ties back into the warlock's patron requiring something that causes the character to think long and hard about their deal. Think about it as if you were living in this magical world, and suddenly you find out one of your trusted associates has this contract that will require them to do something they don't want to do and more than likely it will be something you are not going to like either. How do you think someone living in that world will react? It is not good - how can I trust them? when will they be asked to kill or betray me? will I have to kill them first? are they too powerful to kill or will they become too powerful to kill and do I need to do it now, do I run, or wait until they attempt the betrayal? Which is why I insist the betrayal portion of the contract be included with every warlock. Otherwise, without this contract, just make a wizard and send them to school, they can find arcane knowledge just like all the other non-sorcerers.
Fifth, finally, the rules crunch. This is the part that I am not 100% on, so this is just one option I would like to offer up and always welcome discussion (discussion mind you, not "that's wrong, you suck" and nothing more, don't waste your time or mine with trolling). Hopefully this will spark some thought and force me to do some more cogitating on the problem, and one of us will come up with something that works fantastically. The main problem is that because you are making this a multiclass, you (as our nominal DM) never know when the PC will accept the contract. If the party is still all 1st level, a simple multiclass as laid out by the PHB will suffice, but at higher levels you have to get creative to give the character enough oomph to actually be worth them considering the contract.

• For tier one characters (levels 1 to 4), give them as many levels of warlock equal to their current level. Do not give them any experience points, just give them the levels (plus hit points/dice, and any other leveling bonuses as listed in the PHB) in addition to the class levels they already hold. The character still has to earn those levels back and basically how many ever levels of warlock they just gained, that is what they are doing for those levels. For example, a 2nd level fighter dies and accepts an offer from a celestial. Now the character is fighter 2/warlock 2, and until they earn enough experience points for level 5, cannot make any leveling choices like the rest of the party is doing.
• For tier two PCs (levels 5 to 10), give the character 3 to 5 levels of warlock, and just like tier one PCs, no extra XP, and they have to spend that many levels earning the warlock levels they gained. I say 3 to 5 levels, as I am not sure how many I would give. Probably just default and say 5, as it is definitely enough of a bump to make a difference, but not so much as to make that character vastly more powerful than the rest of the party. And if a player death occurs at this tier, the party is generally facing some very serious threats and need the extra firepower. 
• For tiers three and four PCs, the likelihood of them needing the pact (in other words, dying) but it may happen, so you have to plan for it. Whatever level the character is currently, they get half that number of levels of warlock. So if the PC is 13th level, they automatically get 6 levels (round down) of warlock, plus the hit points/dice and everything but the XP of those 6 levels. This is dangerous territory, as this could easily push the PC into levels over 20, in fact if they are 14th level or higher, it will push them into combined class levels higher than 20. I think this is still okay - yes, that PC is going to be hugely powerful, but this also means their patron is going to be asking for that "special favor" sooner rather than later. This also means that character is basically done - they no longer level and are really just waiting for the contract to come due or the campaign to end or the rest of the characters to also hit 20 and decide it is time to retire.

I hope it was obvious, but whatever contract you decide to hand to the newly warlock character, if they die, their character now belongs to the {whatever}. Normal resurrection spells and the like no longer work on that PC, and the rest of the party will now have to go on a quest (if they so choose) to recover the warlock's soul from the {whatever}, and then can perform the resurrection or whatever.

There you go, hopefully this sparks some thought and initiates a discussion. And wasn't too much of a mad, disjointed ramble like I normally do.