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.