Starring:
Chris as Uffo the Bard – Yes, Chris is playing a bard. It is just as bad as you think it is!
Henry as Darin the Rogue – Trusts no one, especially the bard
Adam as Ari the Wizard – Different name, same old Beaver
Jake as Kroq the Fighter – Really doesn’t like the bard
Matthew as Cru the Cleric – Total waste of space, don’t know why they bothered bringing him
Prelude
The main story so far:
– There is none, it’s a prelude dummy.
Arrival in Red Larch
The abuse started before the table was set up and thus the DM missed recording some of the funnier comments but I did hear “STFU newbie” as the veteran of one whole (short) D&D campaign attempted to assert dominance over the new player.
It was then pointed out that offending the healer was probably not the smartest move ever, especially given how squishy level 1 characters are.
The group introduced themselves to each other and it’s probably best if I just summarise and leave out most of the abuse:
– Darin: Wood Elf Rogue who doesn’t trust anyone and immediately hates the bard and the preteen elf. Here to find someone called Windharrow and avenge the death of a friend.
– Kroq: Draconic Fighter who doesn’t say much. Seems to hate the bard. Doesn’t seem overly impressed by the preteen elf. Here to find the Gladhams; a farming couple who were once kind to him and have since gone missing.
– Cru: Indecisive Cleric on a mission from god. Doesn’t know what the fuck to make of the bard. Here at the bequest of his deity, Thoth (immediately and irreversibly changed to The Hoff), to find the source of the recent troubles and end it.
– Ari: Elf Wizard. A 35 year old female elf. In elf years that is a pre-teen. Just imagine a 14 year old’s wet dream of a Warcraft Night-Elf and that’s what you get. Doesn’t seem to mind the bard. Due to meet her mentor in Red Larch. Is bored and looking for adventure in the meantime.
– Uffo: Halfling Bard. Insanely cheerful. Possibly just insane. Staggeringly irritating and has a miniature xylophone that Chris can’t play so, because he doesn’t know the right notes, he makes up for it by playing the wrong ones LOUDER! <sigh>. He is in the Dessarin Valley to hunt down Bastian Thermander, an arsonist who killed some of his close friends.
Adam immediately volunteered to be the group treasurer and genuinely didn’t understand why the others don’t trust him (it might have something to do with a crossbow and a broken promise from the previous campaign). In the ensuing debate Ari pulled the High-Elf vs Wood-Elf snobbery card. Darin was unimpressed.
Ari, the wizard, immediately set off to the weapons shop to buy a shortsword. As a wizard. A shortsword. At least it wasn’t a lance I suppose. “Well maybe I’m wrong and that sword will get a lot of use” thought the DM at the time.
Uffo wanted to perform in the town inn to earn some money and Ari said she would do a pole dance with him <sigh>.
The party talked to the innkeeper and a few people around town and picked up a handful of minor quests. They then girded their loins and set out for adventure!
Yeah, that sounds exciting doesn’t it? It was more like a school trip with a bunch of squabbling kids. Although, these were heavily armed squabbling kids with magic and a miniature bloody xylophone.
Bears and Bows
This campaign is being run with a milestone experience system. This means the characters will level when they reach certain points in the story. It also means they don’t have to worry about murderizing everything they see for experience points.
The group have been told about a small band of bandits that raided a caravan just outside of town. They arrived at a possible hideout location to find 5 bandits and a nearby wagon with a cage on it. There is a very large, very angry black bear in the cage.
The bandits attack immediately; roll initiative!
First roll of the campaign and the DM nails a 20 for the bandits, they go first. To balance that out the dice gods landed a 2 for the bear so that goes last.
The bandits spread the love around with short bow attacks and the DM landed a crit on Cru and knocked him unconscious before he even got a go.
CLERIC DOWN!
KO’d in his first campaign before even getting a turn! Welcome to D&D Matthew!
Ari lobbed a Magic Missile at the spike holding the cage closed and broke it, thus allowing the bear to get out. Uffo healed Cru. Darin and Kroq stayed at range and shot at the bandits and two of them died from the magic and arrow assault.
The bear broke free and charged into the middle of the three remaining bandits and damaged one of them pretty badly. That unfortunate bandit, who had just seen two of his mates killed and then been assaulted by a very pissed off bear, then had his mother insulted by an insanely cheerful halfling holding a mini xylophone.
The bandits, with a very large, very angry bear up in their grill, forgot about the party and attacked the beast instead.
Some things never change
Then it Ari’s turn again.
Now, in D&D your actions have consequences. If you take stupid, badly thought out, irresponsible or selfish actions, the DM will probably punish you for that. It’s his job. In the last campaign Adam/Beaver was a master at taking stupid, badly thought out, irresponsible and selfish actions and was frequently punished by the DM for doing so.
But this is a new campaign and Adam has a whole new character that is nothing like Beaver.
So, Ari wants to fire an area of effect attack at the bear. Kroq, who is one with nature, objects to this saying that the bear hasn’t done anything to them yet. Uffo doesn’t want the bear attacked either because he held out a faint hope of mounting it using it as a mount. Cru also voiced his concerns about attacking something that hasn’t harmed them yet. Darin didn’t really give a toss either way but did point out that bear might just run away if they left it alone.
So this is a creature that might not be a threat if left alone, would definitely be a threat if attacked, and the rest of the party overwhelmingly do not want the bear attacked.
Ari attacked the bear <sigh>
Ever so faintly, far off in the distance, the DM heard a plaintive voice say “We are all a team here!”
As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said “Generally speaking, you should always respect nature. When nature weighs 800lbs, has long claws, large teeth and a really bad attitude, you should respect it by leaving it the fuck alone. When nature can run faster than you can, staying the fuck away from it isn’t a bad idea either.”
Now this bear has a very specific behaviour protocol. It is angry but it also wants to escape. The first thing it does when it gets out of the cage is attack the nearest thing to it, in this case random bandit number 3 (the one whose mother resembles a goat, apparently). If it is damaged at any point it will instead switch to attack whatever hurt it most recently. When it has killed what last hurt it, it will run off as long as nothing else hurts it in the meantime.
Ari just hurt it and is now top of its shit list. However, it is also very nearly dead.
Kroq moved up and used his breath weapon which is a cone attack. Nature lover that he is, he decided to angle it so the two remaining bandits got hit but not the bear. He killed both of them and all the bandits are now dead.
Ari was unimpressed.
The bear ran up to Ari and went ‘full DiCaprio’ on her with a bite and a claw attack and knocked her unconscious.
WIZARD DOWN!
At this point Major Butthurt appeared and Adam started counting squares <sigh>. Bears get 40ft of movement so suck it up, Princess.
Having twatted the twat that twatted it, the bear ran off giving Cru an attack of opportunity. Cru decided not to take it and let the bear go.
There was some discussion about healing Ari but the bear was still making its escape and the DM pointed out that Ari would probably still be able to attack the nearly dead creature if the party healed her this turn. Ari showed absolutely no remorse for attacking the bear at all. A group vote was held and Ari was not healed until the bear escaped. Ari was unimpressed. Good times.
Healing spells were cast and loot was looted. The first quest of the new campaign is now complete!
The group returned to town for rest and resupply.
Oh dear god what have I done?
Stuff that happened in town. Be grateful I have shortened this shite because it went on for a very long time:
– Lengthy discussion on female-elf breast size and the fact that Adam writing ‘buxom’ on his character sheet only means buxom for an elf and is not buxom compared to everyone else. <sigh>
– Uffo gave the group a rendition of the very popular classic ‘Darin is a cunt’ on a mini xylophone. Yes, that actually really happened.
– There was a lengthy discussion on all the instruments Uffo thought of bringing to the game that the DM never, ever wants to hear played at the table.
– There was shopping.
– Ari tried to pull the old “let’s go halfsies on a healing potion and I’ll just hold onto it for now if that’s ok?” trick on the newbie. Cru seemed reluctant.
– There was absolutely zero trust on the gold sharing issue and Ari was still way too eager to be treasurer.
– During the shopping the DM overheard Ari say to Cru “If you go down, I’ll use it on you”. Slut.
– Uffo seriously considered using a hard earned inspiration to bullshit a shopkeeper into a minor discount on something that didn’t cost very much anyway.
The Tomb
One of the local kids had seen a ghost near an old tomb and the party were asked to investigate.
They arrived at the location and found a door, slightly ajar, heading into a barrow. They took a good look around and noticed what might have been part of a large footprint and other prints that possibly belonged to a small humanoid.
Uffo squeezed inside the gap in the door but bumped into some metal that had been piled up against it. The metal fell down with a loud crashing noise. The group waited a while but nothing terrible befell them and so they opened the door properly and proceeded into the tomb.
The tomb was about 30ft square and has a single metal door set in the wall off to one side. Adam rolled perception without discussing it with the party. There was a frank exchange of views. The whole group rolled perception and found nothing.
Adam earned an ‘inspired use of sarcasm’ inspiration from the DM for asking if it was ok with everyone if he rolled an Arcana check.
When the party approached the door a ghostly figure appeared before it and raised a sword in warning. When they backed off the figure lowered the sword. The figure did not respond to attempts to communicate.
Oh Crap
So obviously they really want to get behind that door but need to get this thing out of the way. Some interesting assumptions were made about it before a cunning plan was hatched.
The party gathered on one side of the room and Ari used Mage Hand to try and open the door. The ghostly figure immediately attacked Ari, moving right through Kroq to do it.
This enemy has an AC of 12 so it is pretty easy to hit. It has 22 hit points so reasonably robust but nothing to really worry about. However, it hits for 3d6 necrotic damage, averaged out at 10 points per attack. Level 1 characters are really squishy.
At the start of the game the DM had flippantly said “It’s not like I would kill anyone in the first session”. The ghost hit Ari for 10 hit points. Ari only has 9 hit points. Ari falls unconscious. Ari has to make a constitution save or those hit points are unrecoverable until the next long rest. As that is more missing hit points than Ari has, if she fails the saving throw she is dead. Deceased. An ex-buxom elf, nailed to a perch etc.
Oh shit.
Ari passed the save.
The DM breathed a sigh of relief.
When Ari fell unconscious, the mage hand spell failed. With nothing near the door and having not been attacked by anyone, the ghost moved back to protect the door.
Ari made a death save and rolled a 20, recovered a single hit point and was back in play.
The party discussed it and decided to stay and fight. Ballsy. Stupid, but ballsy.
Darin ran up and stabbed it with a rapier; it took half damage.
Uffo cast Tash’a Hideous Laughter at it and it failed its save but, much as the DM would have liked to see what happened, it is immune to the prone condition and the spell took no effect.
Kroq ran up and breathed on it. It took half damage. It has now taken 10 points of damage and has 12 points left, but they don’t know that.
Now they are in trouble. There’s only the cleric left before the ghost gets another turn. It will probably kill someone if it hits them.
No pressure then.
Before the game Adam had spoken to the DM, worried that Matthew might get a bit disheartened with his Knowledge Domain cleric being a bit pants at combat, at least in the early levels. A couple of possible solutions were discussed in case it became an issue. Aren’t assumptions wonderful?
Cru steps up, fires a Guided Bolt (radiant damage, not resisted), nails the die rolls, and scores… 12 points of damage and aggressively exorcizes the crap out of the Spectre. One shot fired, one boss mob dead on the floor… and all over the walls… and all over Darin and Kroq.
Aaaaand Rest
The door was opened and a chest and coffin found in the next room. The chest had a hidden compartment that contained some small but valuable items. Those not wanting to desecrate the coffin left the room, the rest opened it carefully but nothing bad happened… or did it?
Nothing was found in the coffin.
The party decided to rest. There was much discussion about resting. The DM wanted to know if they rested inside or outside the tomb. This provoked a heated discussion about the safety of resting in the tomb with the door nearly closed and the likelihood of attack by a halfling army.
The party decided to rest inside the tomb.
During Darin’s watch the sound of small feet were heard sneaking about outside. Darin shouted a challenge but sadly a halfling army failed to materialize.
In the morning Ari had a long heartfelt debate with the rest of the party about using one of her two spell slots to pre-emptively cast Mage Armour. She decided that getting into a fight soon was unlikely and would wait to cast it until they arrived at the next location; Lance Rock.
Upon exiting the tomb the next morning, the group were immediately ambushed by a goblin and a half-ogre. Ari swore long and loudly. Everyone else laughed.
The half-ogre one-shotted Kroq, the party tank. Ouch! Everyone stopped laughing.
FIGHTER DOWN!
Uffo insulted its mother. It didn’t know who its mother was and the spell had no effect.
The pair demanded the valuable items from the tomb in exchange for leaving the party alone. The group weren’t willing to part with their shiny items and the fight continued.
Ari spent seventeen hours planning the same Witchbolt spell attack three times, exactly the same way each time and then when she finally did it, did it differently to the first three times anyway. It was well worth the wait though, it hit for 3 whole points of damage,
Cru, the cleric who struggles in combat, casually reached up, cast Inflict Wounds and rotted the face off the half-ogre, killing it in one shot. Two fights, two attacks, two boss kills.
The goblin was fodder for rest of the party.
At some point during the previous mini-adventures, Ari and Cru touched something they shouldn’t have and started having dreams about the undead.
End of session.
Next time on Ten-foot Squares:
– Will ‘Darin is a cunt’ become the next big hit in the inns of the Dessarin Valley?
– Will the cleric ever pull his finger out and be useful in combat?
– How much musical abuse can Henry take before beating Chris to death with a miniature xylophone?
– Who will the DM inadvertently nearly kill next?
Tune in next week to find out!