Author: Dunorlan

Starring:

Author’s Note: The chapter headings for the second part of this write up are brought to you today by the movie Aliens and the letters <expletive deleted>.

That Which Must Be Repeated: This campaign contains hard encounters. It is often not required for all of you to kill all of them in order to succeed!

Season Recap: Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have save the fortified village of Nightstone from goblins following an attack by Cloud Giants from a floating castle (that went east).

– The characters travelled to Triboar and on the way met a cloud giant called Zephyros who travels in a floating tower. He explained that the ‘ordning’ (which regulates giant society) is broken and the players are destined to fix it.

– They helped defend the town of Triboar from a fire giant attack and ransacked a dead wizard’s house for loot with style darlings!

Pre-session Guff

Everyone was early! Except Christopher, obviously, who still hasn’t grasped the concept that if you want to finish on time, start earlier <sigh>

Nah, I’m just fucking with you mate.

Adam and Michael were on first though and they immediately started discussing potential horse names. The DM’s soul shrivelled under the relentless assault of corny bad dad joke names coming out.

The DM and Adam engaged in their traditional argument discussion about how you can or cannot polymorph into something you don’t actually know exists (a T-Rex). This argument discussion has been going on for at least a year and the basic propositions are:

Jake realises that riding horses only have 13 hit points and are squishy and is suddenly very protective of his.

Horsey McBBQ Horsefaces

The DM posts an Equine Horse Colour chart in Discord and asks the players to tell him the colour and name of their horses:

The DM pondered out loud about the wisdom of choosing white horses in a land filled with nasty predators. Eh, it’ll be fine. Probably.

But Binky is definitely getting eaten first if it comes to it.

Following the naming and the subsequent exchange between Regulus and Joffrey about how the Warforged’s horse is not to be eaten, the DM momentarily questioned his decision on the T-Rex just for the potential trolling value.

DM> Right, fuck the fucking late fucker, it’s quarter-to-seven. It might be a fairly short one tonight <it wasn’t> and everything is by the book <it wasn’t> so don’t blame me! Just getting that out there ahead of time in case it all goes terribly wrong.

Shopping Trading!

Last chance shopping was done. Joffrey bought a 10ft pole and a portable battering ram. He now has two of those for some reason.

Chris finally decided to turn up and there was the digital D&D equivalent of the Haka with two sides posturing and exchanging insults and silly faces for a while. It was highly entertaining.

Abelas gave the Bracers of Defence to Clay who sold them in town for 4,000 gold. The DM rolled the value as 11,000 but as one of the merchants pointed out, standard retail is 50% markup so they sell for half of what they would buy them for and then for specialist goods like magic items, they have to go to Waterdeep or Neverwinter. Then they have to hire guards and insure it and actually find a buyer who both has that amount of cash and wants that item.

It’s all hideously complicated and expensive.

Two sets of plate armour were purchased from the Coster, yay! That’s a major step for the two tanky characters, congratulations!

Isaac got some half-plate as well and then Joffrey asked about horse armour which was a bit of a joke from last week but the DM has looked it up and it is actually a thing in D&D… and yes, it is outrageously expensive.

Bethesda would be so fucking happy.

DM Note: you could buy 480 horses for that.

Joffrey purchases scale barding for Shelby which now has an AC of 14 plus its Dex modifier. This prompted a rush to look up riding horse stats:

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Gold was pooled and shared:

The players rest before heading out and attune to their items. Regulus’ utility belt changes as it attunes to him and the Aquabreather changes to a Targeting Monacle.

Quests!

The first quest they undertake is the delivery of saddles to Noanar’s Hold. This saddles are on a cart pulled by Boris the carthorse. Joffrey elects to drive the cart.

As they discussed their route around the five quests as if nothing would change between now and a couple of months travel, Jake dismissed the forest of Lurkwood as a ‘discount Mirkwood’.

Challenge accepted you young fool!

The DM explained that the faction quest to Everlund was the closest thing to a main quest right now. The main objective of the campaign is to stop the giants but they don’t even know what the problem is yet and they are way too low for tackling them. They are not prepared!

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The Gnomish Pontification System informed the players that Noanar’s Hold is 185 miles away… to the north. Further information would only be available when they are closer.

The first stop is Yartar which is 50 miles away. The group elected to travel at normal pace of 24 miles a day.

At the end of the first day’s watch it was discovered that Regulus doesn’t need to sleep but does have to have a motionless down period, but he’s still basically a motion sensor. Which might be useful.

They put on a bit of a spurt and arrive in Yartar the following day. Yartar plays no part in the story at the moment so I’ll skip the description until it matters except to say they heard the following rumours/stories:

– A bard sang tales of Force Grey, a famous adventuring group out of Waterdeep, who were notable for having a frost giant called Harshnag as a member.

– A rumour was overheard that a trade delegation from Mirabar had gone missing near Womford.

They stopped, rested and moved on to the next stop along the Evermoor Way; Calling Horns.

The Evermoor Way

*DM Note – After they are done with a place I’ll copy-past selected bits of the descriptions into the write up just you have a reference about the places visited. This is the stuff the Gnomish Pontification System has access to and is contained with the infamous demonic tome of Dee-Yundee Beayondey.

The Evermoor Way has long been a vital trade route, connecting the settlements of the Dessarin Valley with those of the Silver Marches. The section between Triboar and Yartar is an ancient road, relatively flat and composed of tight-fitting stones. East of Yartar, the road becomes a gravel and dirt wagon trail that passes a little too close to the Evermoors for most merchants’ comfort. Between Olostin’s Hold and Everlund, the trail passes through an area that used to be forest and is now full of tree stumps. Efforts to turn this long stretch into a proper road have long been thwarted by disagreements between the leaders of Yartar and Everlund, and Everlund’s exit from the Lords’ Alliance has dashed all hope.

Calling Horns

Calling Horns was nothing more than a trailside inn until a few years ago, when Tamalin Zoar (female human noble) bought the establishment and retired here. Using her hard-won wealth and influence, she attracted settlers to the region, giving rise to a small village whose citizens pay monthly “tithes” for Tamalin’s protection.

Still spry at sixty, Tamalin is “the law” in Calling Horns — an irony that never ceases to amuse her. She employs nine deputies (veterans of various races) who live in the village proper to help keep the peace. Tamalin also gives free room and board to adventurers who help solve local problems. Given the village’s proximity to the Evermoors, few villagers have cause to complain about Tamalin’s protection racket. She keeps them safe from orcs, trolls, and other monsters, and that’s good enough for them.

Calling Horns stands where Jundar’s Pass meets up with the Evermoor Way. The intersection is marked by a cairn of weathered and lichen-covered orc skulls that commemorates the long-ago slaughter of a horde here. The village proper is made up of rows of small log cottages with bark-shingled rooftops. The Calling Horns Inn, a large fieldstone structure with adjoining stables, stands atop a ridge that overlooks the intersection, surrounded by tall, old trees. The inn’s cellar contains an impressive selection of ales and wines.

You’re dogmeat pal!

The horses are put in the stables but then there’s a discussion about guarding the crate of saddles on the cart, outside, at night. This went on for a while until Tamalin sighed, pointed out they aren’t thinking very practically and suggested they simply bring the crate inside the inn.

Isaac hands out some of Lathander’s pamplets to the locals. Listening back, the DM realises he kind of skipped over some character building with Isaac and should have paid a bit more attention to the cleric and what he was trying to achieve.

At the very least the locals should have been somewhat happier than the DM intimated. After all, soft but strong paper is in short supply in the wilderness towns.

They mostly come at night… mostly

Later that night as they are sleeping in the inn (except Regulus) they are awakened by a disturbance outside from near the stables.

Tamalin enters the room and tells them that something is trying to get to their horses.

They now have to decide whether to put armour on or not before going outside. It takes several minutes to don armour because, as Regulus noted, they are badly designed organisms. They wisely decided not to waste any time and thus Binky did not get eaten.

This time.

There’s no way that horse is surviving Lurkwood though.

As is traditional (well it happened once before) the DM asked the characters what, exactly, they were wearing:

As they exit the inn they see two trolls attempting to break down the stable doors about 60ft away.

FUCK MY DICK!

Isaac gently expresses his minor disappointment as he rolls a 4 for initiative and decides he dislikes playing a character with no Dex.

Regulus opens proceedings with a double crotch cannon lightning blast and hit with both.

Ok, to the DM it is obvious but apparently not to the druid so let me call in a friend to succinctly sum up the tactical situation currently facing the players:

A Guide to Tactical Threat Assessment by Guest Instructor Drikk Fra-Kar (six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena)

A good friend of mine has asked me to summarise the tactical situation without swearing too much, so let’s give it a <expletive deleted> good <expletive deleted> try shall we?

Look Buttercup, it boils down to figuring out what the <expletive deleted> they have, what the <expletive deleted> you have and how you are going to use your shit to <expletive deleted> up their shit in an aggressive and effective manner so you can readily achieve your mission objectives and spend all your loot on ale and whores, ok?

It’s a bit like a divorce.

Enemy Tactical Assessment: Big, green, <expletive deleted> ugly mother<expletive deleteds> who seem to be manly melee specialists and, importantly Princess, they are a long <expletive deleted> way away from you.

Allied Tactical Assessment: One slightly <expletive deleted> gimpy dress wearing finger wiggler, one specialist archer who can hit shit from the next <expletive deleted> realm if she has to, one psycho bot with a mother-<expletive deleted> crotch cannon, a mainly manly melee fighter and a poncy tree hugging shapeshifter who, apparently, is capable of occasionally casting spells that can utterly <expletive deleted> the movement of others.

Situational Tactical Awareness: Half of your party seem to have mislaid their <expletive deleted> armour somewhere so it would be a REALLY good <expletive deleted> idea if someone managed to stop those <expletive deleted> fuglies from getting anywhere near your <expletive deleted> position and save your unusually squishy <expletive deleted> backsides so that one day you can run home to your mommy and tell her how <expletive deleted> brave you were!

Oh, and tell her I said ‘Hi’.

She’ll remember.

Battle Plan Considerations: I’ll let you in on a little secret Florence: the gods chose to imbue us humanoids with opposable thumbs and some seriously good <expletive deleted> woodworking skills and, for those less manly than the rest of us, girly-magic.

So don’t get into an <expletive deleted> boxing match with a gorilla when you can stand a long <expletive deleted> way away and shoot the dumb <expletive deleted> son of a <expletive deleted> with pointy things, flamey things and sizzling shit!

I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit.

Thanks again Drikk! Now, where the <expletive deleted> were we? Oh yes, the DM wanted Joffrey to DO IT!

There are a few ways to use Spike Growth but the main two are to either cast it directly onto the enemies or cast it between you and them. The first has the advantage of definitely dealing damage and slowing them but has less effect on controlling their movement. The second method gives them a choice (if they see it cast) of either going through it, or around it. This will depend on how smart or how pissed off they are. Either way, the second option buys you time to pummel the crap out of them as they try to get to you.

Joffrey chooses the first option and casts the growth directly onto the trolls with about 15ft of it between the closest one and the edge.

The DM then had major problems simply changing the colour of the line tool in TTS.

Clay managed to stick an errant arrow in the side of the cart but not much else. It’s ok, Elvira is next and she can hit shit!

Yeah, she rolled a 1 and hit Isaac’s ear first and then the cart second.

Abelas> Do you want to use a magic arrow?

<sigh>

The second Elvira attack hit and a Shadow Arrow was expended but the troll made the save.

Abelas thinks about it for all of about a quarter second and then Fireballs the shit out of everything except the stable having come under dire threats from the others if he were to nuke their horses.

It’s a thing now Adam!

The trolls move through the Spike Growth, the first one takes 20 damage and the second one takes 15 and dies. Which was nice.

Independently targeting particle beam phalanx.

Combat continues and Regulus did indeed stand a long <expletive deleted> way away and shot the dumb <expletive deleted> son of a <expletive deleted> with sizzling shit.

Joffrey tried to be clever and Thorn Whip the troll out of the Spike Growth but rolled a 2 for attack and was mildly disappointed; “God fucking shit!”.

Indeed.

Clay and Elvira join in with the ranged attacks with Elvira being slightly better at it than the melee guy; “Er… 26 to hit?”

Several players and the DM invoke a heathen deity at that one.

“Save us Abacus!” Was the cry from Isaac, but Abelas declined to Fireball and went with a Chromatic Orb. He hit for 7 damage. The troll had 8 hit points. Shame really.

Michael inquired about the other troll regenerating and the DM mistakenly said it wouldn’t. Look, trolls don’t regenerate from dead on Thursdays between midnight and 2am local in the Evermoors ok? It’s in the UA. Trust me, I’m a DM.

Troll number 1 regenerates 10hp and runs at Joffrey. It comes up five feet short <sigh>

The DM stuffed the initiative and forgot Isaac <sigh>. At least this week Christopher was here to point out the error. He Tolled the Dead on the troll for 21 damage, which was tasty and killed the second troll. End of combat.

Tamalin thanks them, offers them some of the good stuff from the cellar and asks them to travel into the Evermoors, spend a couple of nights there and see if they can find out what is riling up the local troll population. In return she offers a letter of recommendation which is essentially a favour from important people. More importantly, the bearers can avoid law enforcement problems… or at least diminish them somewhat.

The characters agree, finish their interrupted rest and head into the Evermoors the next day.

The Evermoors

The Evermoors is a vast, unsettled area of fog-shrouded hills, cold bogs, rocky ridges, and small peaks. Adventurers crossing this expanse might spot the occasional castle ruin or crumbled tower — a remnant of a bygone realm. Although the region attracts many prospectors, no kingdom or civilization in recent history has been able to tame it. Savage hill giants, ettins, ogres, orcs, and trolls dwell here in great numbers. Settlements that stand on the edge of the Evermoors face constant threats from these and other monsters.

We’re in the pipe, five by five

On the first day they spot a cloud giant castle about a mile in the sky heading east to west. Overnight rest is uneventful but around mid-morning on the second day, they hear a commotion coming from behind a large rock ahead of them with the sound of a large hand hitting something meaty and something speaking giant berating something else.

Joffrey polymorphs into a giant owl and goes scouting and there is some debate about Clay or another sucker volunteer goes with him with Pass Without a Trace active (+10 to stealth). No one was stupid enough to try it. More specifically, Operation Flying Wizerd singularly failed to get off the ground.

The DM doesn’t have a giant owl mini so instead Leroy the map revealer was drafted and Joffrey polymorphed into a giant blood hawk instead. Remarkably it has exactly the same stats as a giant owl!

Joffrey flies over the rock and spots a fire giant slapping around a troll. He hovers nearby and discovers that the fire giant appears to have enslaved the troll and is rather unhappy with it as it has failed to find her something to eat.

This fairly simple act actually resolves the quest; the giants are enslaving the trolls so the trolls are travelling further from their usual haunts.

The question now was whether or not to attempt to <expletive deleted> the giant and the troll.

Despite being in perfectly good cover behind a perfectly good rock with the big dangerous enemies a really long way off who had not noticed them yet, they chose to get closer before starting combat.

We’re on an express elevator to hell, going down!

The DM was a bit scathing about these tactics later but that’s because when the DM plays these scenarios he plays all the characters so having the cleric, for example, do nothing for a couple of turns because the giant is out of range is no big deal. For the players, spending 40 minutes doing bugger all while the long range <expletive deleteds> plink away is actually a pretty big deal and tactics be damned.

The DM’s preferred tactic is for each character to step out from around the bottom of the rock, shoot and step back into cover. If the fuglies want to get to them, they have to travel a long damn way, through a well-placed Spike Growth, while getting shot to shit. The players had a different idea though; they went up the left side of the big rock and got a LOT closer to the enemies.

By the end of this fight the DM was rather grumpy with life in general because he felt the giant got fucked more by the dice than by the players. However, reviewing it back it wasn’t quite so clear cut, as we shall see.

Roll initiative!

The cleric was a tiny bit miffed with the roll of 3.

Unknown to the players, the troll has a specific behaviour protocol. It will roll a d20 and depending upon the outcome either run away, dither and do nothing or join the fight. That is unless it is attacked, obviously.

Abelas nuked both the giant and troll, obviously. Starting off a surprise round, his Lightning Bolt hit each target for 30 but they both made the save and it was reduced to 15. Shame really.

Importantly, Abelas, by far the squishiest party member, had stepped out of cover to cast his spell and then neglected to step back into cover again. The DM fully intended to punish the gimpy wizerd for that mistake with a +11 to hit, 29 damage boulder on the giant’s next turn.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: Oh for <expletive deleted> sake Florence! This is really <expletive deleted> basic tactical <expletive deleted> awareness!

You didn’t tell me there was an android on this mission, why not?

Regulus cast Faerie Fire at the pair and they both made the save again. Shame really.

Elvira steps out:

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Unsurprisingly, she hits the giant and then uses a Shadow Arrow for the added psychic damage and the giant has to make a save against being unable to see past 5 feet. He failed it and that really was a shame.

Joffrey casts Spike Growth directly south of the giant and the troll. This is at an angle to the party, it is not directly between the players and the giant. This is fine if they stay where they are or move to the east. It won’t be so great of they head north and try and get around the rock next to the giant.

Clay longbows it but rolls a 1. Shame really.

Isaac steps up and casts a level 3 Guiding Bolt… and misses. Shame really.

Start of a new round and Abelas casts Chromatic Orb (at level 3) at the giant and, despite the DM’s urging decided it was lightning and not fire damage. It hit for 30 damage which was fairly impressive.

However, Abelas once again neglected to take cover behind the rock right next to him but because the Arcane <expletive deleted> Archer hit the <expletive deleted> giant again, and it failed the <expletive deleted> save again, it can only administer corrective punishment at disadvantage <sigh>.

Arcane fucking Archers eh?

That… could have gone better

The giant throws a boulder at the wizerd with disadvantage and rolls a 2 and a 7. Well, shit.

Then the <expletive deleted> druid stepped up and cast <expletive deleted>Tidal Wave which the <expletive deleted> giant failed the save on, because what the <expletive deleted> else would it do, and was knocked <expletive deleted> prone <sigh>

The troll gets a go and because they attacked it, it attacks them. At least it tried to once it stood up from being knocked prone from the Tidal Wave and it promptly walked straight into a bunch of spikes. However, as it only had half its movement speed left it took very little damage from the Spike Growth. Shame really.

Christopher then had to leave and everyone said a fond farewell and then were rude about him once he had left. Good times.

I’m only joking mate, as you probably recall we were rude about you before you left.

Abelas lobs in a Shatter and remembers to take cover this time. Various other pointy and sizzly things were thrown at the two baddies but eventually the giant gets another turn and the DM points out the slight flaw in their plan; the giant wants to get to whatever caused it the most damage (Abelas) but, because they are behind a rock at an angle, the easiest way for the giant to attack the gimpy wizerd is to go sideways and not through the Spike Growth. Shame really.

The giant, 75 feet away, rolls an attack at Abelas:

And then we had a couple of minutes of ‘fuck me D&D is complicated’ as we all attempted to figure out just how much Bladesinger AC cheese seems acceptable. It’s mainly a question of what stacks and what doesn’t and the DM got it wrong at the time but I’m still not sure what would be right. Opinions are divided online and the rules aint that clear.

TLDR; I’m still thinking about it Jake but you’ll be better off this week then you were last week and shouldn’t be lacking in AC going forwards.

Joffrey turns into a Giant Elk and charges the fire giant, he has reach of 10ft because druid cheese but he rolls low and misses. However, he does have an inspiration from last week and used that and hit. He was somewhat disappointed with the rather low damage roll though; “Oh wot?! That’s a bit wank innit?”

Indeed.

However, the giant gets 10ft of reach as well but its Clay’s turn first. This has not been a great fight for Clay as melee hasn’t happened worth a damn so far and he has been stuck with a longbow but he’s contributing.

Isaac’s turn and Michael challenged the DM to use a Guiding Bolt just to show how utterly crap at dice Christopher is. Challenge accepted!

The DM rolls a 19!

Lols all around.

Absolute badasses

Abelas Regulus and Elvira pile on the damage and the giant is looking distinctly worse for wear.

The giant is up next though and it manoeuvrers around the moose to get a flanking bonus.

Indeed.

Joffrey is punted out of Elk form and takes a further 14 damage and thinks about turning into ‘panic snake’ on his turn but first drops a Call Lightning and nukes the giant for a measly 5 damage.

It only had 3 hit points left.

FIRE GIANT DOWN!

Clay finally gets to use his shiny new greatsword and executes the troll.

Due to the number of players vs a single big creature and all the imbalance that brings without lair actions and legendary resistances, I almost doubled the giant’s hit points for this fight. I felt a bit guilty about that at the start but not at the end, so nice work everyone!

Keep this shit up and I’ll have to start planning stuff properly.

End of Session

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Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Starring:

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Author’s Note: Loot! The loot for this campaign has largely been generated by rolling on the loot tables in the DM’s Guide as per the campaign. However, this produced some deficiencies in the number of recommended items and those holes have been filled by the DM. An example of this was the Glamoured armour they got as a reward last week. All of the items from this week are legendary ‘levelling’ items that will increase in power as the players reach certain levels.

That Which Must Be Repeated: This campaign contains hard encounters. It is often not required for all of you to kill all of them in order to succeed!

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Season Recap: Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have save the fortified village of Nightstone from goblins following an attack by Cloud Giants from a floating castle (that went east).

– The characters travelled to Triboar and on the way met a cloud giant called Zephyros who travels in a floating tower. He explained that the ‘ordning’ (which regulates giant society) is broken and the players are destined to fix it.

– They arrived in Triboar safely but soon the town came under attack by orcs and a pair of fire giants. They killed the orcs and left the giants alone. The giants dug up a piece of an enormous construct and carried it off.

– The party investigate the ruined house of the wizard Kolstaag and discovered a vault and a lamp. When the lamp was touched, a genie appeared! Some of the players thought they would get Wishes. At level6! Awww, isn’t that sweet?

Pre-session Guff

Rum and horses were discussed as was the DM’s wanted-poster facebook picture.

The players discussed the possibility of getting a Wish from the genie and using it to bring Q’Aren back. Yeah, wishes at level 6 aint happening but why spoil it for them at this stage?

Jake was mocked for his habit of running away from battle despite being a melee wizard.

The DM pointed out that they were in a town specialising in horses and teaching people to ride and they might want to think about buying some before they leave town and what they might want to name them if they do so. Adam immediately called dibs on Butt Stallion <sigh>

The travel benefits from horses are not huge but they do allow mounted combat in travel encounters. The DM promised not to deliberately have the horses get eaten at the first opportunity but did point out that they are squishy.

Ooh! That’s not going to be forgotten for a long time yet!

I Dream of Djinni

We start in the vault with the genie having just appeared.

The genie, Benjamin, explains that he is trapped in the lamp and that in order to free him the adventurers must face the ‘guardians’. If they are successful they will gain control of the lamp. If they then release Benjamin he will reward them with magical items of power, majesty, intrigue and mostly importantly; style!

Benjamin advises them to touch the lamp to start the challenge and they might want to back up a bit as they will need the room and Benjamin disappears in a puff of smoke.

Abelas wants to rest for an hour to attune the items he found in the ruined house.

Christina turned up during the planning phase. Clay volunteered to touch the lamp while everyone else backed off a bit. As Clay touched it a projected image of an hourglass appeared with about 30 seconds of sand remaining. Clay backed-the-truck up to join the rest of party in the middle of the vault.

As the timer runs out a force field slams down preventing anyone from exiting the vault. The lights drop to total darkness for a moment and as they come back on the group can see that they are facing… themselves.

6 doppelganger figures form a line in front of the plinth. Roll initiative!

I find your lack of initiative disturbing

The DM came up with this idea only the day before and didn’t really know how it was going to play out as he hadn’t been able to test it. Meh, it’ll be fine!

Also, I had a contingency plan.

The main advantage for the doppelgangers is that they will generally act in unison. The main disadvantage is that the DM won’t generally use anything other than basic abilities and spells.

The DM also set some basic constraints on his team, mainly that they had little or no regard for their own safety and they will act to maximise damage or take actions that will allow others to maximise damage.

As long as the players are a little bit tactical, they should be ok. Well, some of them should be ok because the other stipulation the DM has for his team is utter ruthlessness.

Jake rolled a 6, Adam a 10, Matt rolled a 1 (lolz) and Mike rolled a 3. Panic was setting in until the DM told them it wasn’t as bad as they thought.

There was a substantial amount of bickering that masqueraded as planning but essentially was just a cover for the player’s sniping at each other by proxy through the doppelgangers.

Once everyone had rolled they were individually asked to roll off against their doppelgangers who shared their initiative scores.

This means Doppelganger Abelas, or D-Abelas, will get to Fireball first. Ouch.

There was a brief delay while Adam managed to pick up and fuck up the initiative board somehow (explained later) and then had to work out how his wild-shape stats work. He rolled a wild-shape specialist druid but didn’t bother to look up how the stats work until it became an issue in-game <sigh>

Eventually, combat started.

A pointed exchange

Elvira, A.K.A. “The one who can hit shit”, was first up due to having a billion dex or something. Her response of “I’ll shoot the snake!” causes both consternation and delight amongst the players. Bear in mind that Christina wasn’t here last week and missed the start of the session and then had to level up from 5 to 6 so she was kind of dropped in at the deep end.

It was still funny though.

Once the DM had done what he should have done previously and bothered to explain what she had missed, a different target was chosen. However, during the recounting of events, Mike had noticed something.

And so Elvira shoots at D-Elvira, misses the first one and hits with the second one for 10 damage.

D-Elvira moves 30ft diagonally so that she gets a clear shot at Abelas cowering behind a brazier. Quite what the non-melee melee wizard was doing that close to the front lines is unknown because if he had been behind the rear brazier instead of the front one, he would have still been in cover. It was a real shame.

The first arrow hits for 17 and draws the inevitable cheesy Shield but the follow up hits so high it bypasses the extra 5 AC anyway. Abelas is immediately regretting not having Bladesong’d during the 30 second countdown.

The DM rolls damage and comes up with a 2 but then realises he used the wrong die:

Abelas fails the Wisdom save and is blinded to everything beyond 5ft.

Joffrey, in Giant Constrictor Snake form, slithers over to D-Elvira and launches a constrict attack. The DM puts a pause on everything and rolls back to do what he just forgot to do.

DM cheese is the best cheese!

The first attack misses again, the second attack hits again for another 8 damage and then the DM adds a Grasping Arrow for another 2d6 and rolls two sixes!

Abelas is KO’d and the DM refrains from having D-Elvira run away as that would be cheese even from the DM. Joffrey appreciated the gesture and repeated his constrict attack on D-Elvira who is now grappled and restrained.

CHEEEESE!

I don’t think we’ve had a Hearing is Hard moment since the several “Yes, the bloody tower is destroyed but yes, it still blocks the bloody wall!” moments from Nightstone.

I may have to 🙂

To be fair to Mike, Jake’s mini was tight up against the brazier but it’s not the mini that counts, it is the square it is in and Abelas was in the square behind the brazier and in full sight of the square D-Elvira was in.

Spike Growth, Spike Growth, where for art thou Spike Growth?

The DM peruses Joffrey’s spell list and despairs at all the nuking crap he has selected and the lack of many of the good spells, but we work with what we have.

A 50ft wall of wind appears across the middle of the map. Clay, Abelas and Boarax Thatmightchange need to make a Strength saves, which Abelas auto-fails. Boarax gets splattered against the wall and is killed. Clay stands firm, Abelas fails a death save.

D-Joffrey runs behind the plinth for cover ignoring Joffrey’s suggestion that he Wild Shape. D-Joffrey still has spells to cast!

D-Isaac Fireballs Clay, Isaac and Abelas and rolls 33 damage. That’s a second death save for Abelas. Isaac, also played by the DM (confused yet?) does his own retaliatory Fireball that hits all of the doppelgangers except D-Elvira for 23 damage.

D-Abelas steps up and the DM offers Jake the chance to play the enemy wizard. This caused a bit of a mini brain-fart and Jake had to refuse the temptation. The DM had D-Abelas Lightning Bolt Clay and Isaac because for some reason he thought the real Abelas was already dead. But he wasn’t. Oh well, opportunity missed.

Hello darkness my old friend

It wasn’t missed for long, it was Abelas’ turn and he rolled a 3 for his final death save. Wizard dead.

So we are now an hour into the fight and the DM finally remembers the specialist music he found; commence a medieval version of Duel of the Fates.

Duel of the Fates – Medieval Version

Looking at the replay I think at this point the DM accidentally killed Isaac instead of just knocking him out. Oops! It’s in the UA! Trust me, I’m a DM!

CHEEEESE! Well he should have been hit with the Wind Wall if the DM had thought about it, but still.

D-Regulus nukes Joffrey and then Regulus takes great delight in nuking D-Abelas.

Clay uses his Second Wind to regain hit points and then longbows D-Abelas knocking him out. He then advances on the restrained D-Elvira, hits her, Action Surges and hits her again with an added Trip Attack knocking her out and then with his last attack he longbows D-Isaac and rolls a crit! Nice round Clay!

D-Clay retaliates by running over and hits actual Clay twice for 21 which was exactly what was needed to knock out Clay. D-Clay then Action Surges and hits Joffrey once.

I’ve come to talk to you again

At the end of the round the rear two braziers go out and Abelas and Isaac get reincarnated at the back of the vault with full hit points but they have not recovered expended spell slots.

Elvira’s turn and the Wind Wall becomes a problem as it blocks normal arrows. At this point the DM on the fly homebrewed the rules to allow Arcane Archers to shoot magic arrows from Level 6. Monks get magic fists at level 6 and Arcane Archers are ARCANE archers so they bloody well should shoot magic arrows from quite early on. Now that the D&D world is a better place, back to Elvira’s turn!

Elvira shoots D-Isaac and KO’s him. D-Clay is the recipient of the second attack.

Ooooh!

Elvira rolls low, still hits due to having +10 on her attack rolls, and then a remarkable job of completely ignoring Mike’s advice about using a magic arrow, saving it until later. But not much later; ACTION SUUUURGE!

D-Clay gets hit by another arrow and more psychic damage and he only has two hit points left… but the Shadow Arrow works and he can’t see beyond 5ft. Oh noes! It’s ok though, Joffrey is next to him so he still has something worthwhile to hit.

Joffrey drops the unconscious D-Elvira and attempts to constrict D-Clay. He misses. “Is that is?” asks Regulus. Yes, that is it.

Legendary Cheese

D-Joffrey steps out from behind the plinth and Tidal Waves Joffrey, Clay (KO), D-Clay (2HP) and D-Elvira (KO).

Indeed.

The rush of water hits the druid for 4d8 but the snake still has 16 hit points left. Regulus laments the fact that if he had been knocked out of wild shape form “at least he would have been something useful”. Meeow.

Adam clicks on something weird in game:

Good times.

Having cast the spell the DM also has D-Joffrey turn into a Giant Constrictor Snake. This was only for the reason that it was really simple to copy paste the snake already on the table.

Oooh! There’s a lot of snark around tonight and Chris isn’t even here!

You sure bro?

He was right, Giant Constrictor Snake is a 60HP buffer to druids. Nice.

This is Abelas’s first turn since he got resurrected:

Abelas Fireballs the shit out of everything around the plinth. D-Regulus goes down and the snake has to roll for a save.

Isaac steps up and wants to cast a Fireball. Regulus interjects and wants a more single-target spell cast as all of the enemy are down except for the Giant Snowflake Snake. There was a remarkably long discussion about what should happen only for it to be a Fireball anyway <sigh>.

DM> D-Abelas fails it and takes a death save. D-Isaac fails it and is departed. Giant Snowflake <rolls a 4> but, you know, +7 to that because snakes are really dextrous… he still fails it.

Regulus nukes the snake twice and knocks the doppelganger druid out of snake-form.

KO’d Clay passes a death save but KO’d D-Clay goes one better, rolls a natural 20 on his death save and pops back up with 1 hit point. That won’t last long though right? They’ll just kill him straight away, right? Right.

End of round and dead D-Isaac comes back as the third brazier goes out.

At this point a short (I know, right?!) discussion took place about not killing the doppelgangers but to just KO them and then they shouldn’t resurrect via the braziers. There was also some discussion about killing the downed Clay with friendly fire so he would come back at full health.

Regulus> How do we know these last ones are generic ones and they aren’t only for them?

Ooh, good question. What the players don’t know is they are only for the doppelgangers. There are two resurrects each but the players have used both of theirs.

Clay is left bleeding out and was not summarily executed, which is a shame, and Elvira was talked into attacking D-Isaac instead of finishing off 1HP D-Clay. D-Isaac is hit with a Shadow Arrow, promptly stuffed the save and is blinded past 5ft.

Cheese on cheese

Joffrey the Giant Snowflake ran away from D-Clay provoking the attack of opportunity and promptly got hit for eleven damage. The DM has a thing about deliberately provoking attacks and so went full cheese and did a trip attack on the fleeing snake.

Hmm.

Joffrey Tidal Waves three of the doppelgangers and sadly a large boulder failed to materialise to splat him. He then used his second Wild Shape to turn back into a Giant Constrictor Snake.

Regulus was unimpressed:

Accurate answer at least.

D-Joffrey heals D-Abelas to get him back up as this maximises party damage output. He then copied Joffrey and also uses his second Wild Shape to turn back into a Giant Constrictor Snake.

Isaac Tolls the Dead on D-Clay and D-Clay made the save so still has 1HP left. The DM sighs and has Isaac Healing Word Clay.

D-Abelas Fireballs the crap out of everything in the far side of the room. Abelas retaliates with a Lightning Bolt on D-Himself and D-Joffrey. D-Joffrey obviously made the save as he gets +7 to Dex because snakes are very dextrous after all but D-Abelas gets roasted and is no more.

Oh dear <invokes heathen deity>

Totally random comedy interjection from Adam.

Double-Tap

Regulus shoots 1HP D-Clay and finally downs him again and the follows up with a shot at D-Isaac and downs him as well. Nice shootin’ Slick!

At the bottom of the map things have cleared out leaving the two shape-shifted druids facing each other. The music plays in the background; dit-dit-diddle-oo, dit-dit-diddle-oo

Clay longbows D-Joffrey and the round ends.

At this point the only doppelganger left up is D-Joffrey but all of the players except Isaac are up so the DM brings the fight to a conclusion as the lights go out once more and when they come back up everything is reset. All spell slots and hit points are restored.

Now I give my players a lot of grief (but they cause me a lot of grief so it’s fair) but this time they nailed it. Once they figured out the braziers they stopped short of taking out the doppelgangers and won the war of attrition. I didn’t know how this was going to turn out so well done everybody, good work!

I counted 6 Fireballs, a Lightning Bolt, a couple of Tidal Waves and a lot of sharp & pointy things and lightning being thrown about. Awesome.

Looty McLootface!

The DM informed the party that the last brazier was indeed for the doppelgangers and there was much amusement about how they nearly killed Clay to bring him back.

Benjamin reappears, congratulates the players and asks if they will set him free. They have a bit of chat about it during which some interesting assumptions were made (how do you know he actually is a Djinni?) but they agreed to free him and control of the lamp was relinquished.

“Reward time darlings!”

The DM issues a dire warning about the players taking anything other than the ‘dormant’ versions of these with threats of divine smitings and having their goodies taken away!

These items start as Dormant and then progress to Awakened and then Exalted, gaining new powers as the players level up.

Clay receives Legana, a stone greatsword:

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Legana (Dormant)

Weapon (greatsword), uncommon (requires attunement by an Earth Genasi)

This sword appears to be made of stone and yet is no heavier than a normal greatsword. This is no primitive weapon; the sword is beautifully crafted and it seems to be carved from a single piece of flint. The blade has perfectly symmetrical concave serrations and appears to be indestructible.

Dormant: Greatsword +1

While attuned to Legana you gain Darkvision and Tremorsense to 30ft.

You may cast Absorb Elements at will, as a reaction three times per short rest.

---

Oh dear. Anyway, onwards!

Joffrey receives the Hide of the Feral Guardian

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Hide of the Feral Guardian

Armor (studded leather), legendary (requires attunement)

It is believed that this polished and beautifully detailed leather armour was a gift from Melora, bestowed on a long-forgotten archdruid and champion of the natural world before the terrors of the Calamity.

Dormant

While wearing the armour in its dormant state, you gain the following benefits: The armour grants you a +1 bonus to AC.

While you are transformed by an effect that replaces any of your game statistics with those of another creature, you have a +1 bonus to melee attack and damage rolls, and you retain the benefits of this armour.

As an action, you can use the armour to cast polymorph on yourself, transforming into a giant owl while retaining your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. This property can’t be used again until the next dawn.

---

Adam obviously tried to immediately cheese the Awakened version <sigh>

Regulus receives a hefty looking utility belt with 6 pouches. Benjamin explains that there used to be a user manual but unfortunately it was incinerated… along with the last owner.

Benjamin seems somewhat glad to be rid of the item and tells Regulus to be careful with it.

---

Engineer’s Utility Belt (volatile)

This utility belt contains 12 charges that allow you to power a variety of gadgets.

All charges are recovered at dawn.

Dormant: 1 charge each

Grappling Hook – WARNING! Do not exceed cable length!

Aquabreather – Effects unknown

Goblin glider cloak – survival guaranteed or your money back!

---

Elvira receives a Stormsong Longbow which was originally part of a set but the Rapier and the Dagger are missing. There are rumours that the rapier has been seen in the hands of ne’er-do-well in the Red Larch area.

---

Stormsong Longbow

Weapon (longbow), uncommon (requires attunement by a by an Air Genasi)

Crafted by the master elven weaponsmiths of Silverymoon, legend has it that this bow was imbued with the maelstrom of energy resulting from the divorce of Drikk Fra-Kar and his third wife, the Air-Genasi Storm-Sorceress S’Zariel.

Made of rare darkwood and engraved with thin mithral lighting bolts, this longbow weighs half as much as a normal bow. Magical lightning flickers along the length of the engravings when the bow is fired.

Dormant: Longbow +1

While attuned to this weapon you gain Darkvision to 120ft and you can accurately predict the weather for the next 12 hours.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: What can I say, I’m a sucker for dark blue hair and fiery tempers!

---

Isaac receives an item I won’t list here but will cover when Chris is next with us (mainly because I haven’t actually finished making it yet)

Abelas receives the Circlet of Faetriss

---

Circlet of Faetriss

Wondrous Item, uncommon (requires attunement by a by a Wizard)

Crafted at great expense as a wedding present for Drikk Fra-Kar’s second wife, Lady Faetriss. Returned at great speed (and imbued with a significant amount of negative psychic energy) during the divorce proceedings when it transpired that Lady Faetriss was in fact, a succubus.

Dormant: While attuned to this item, your Armour Class is 15 + your dexterity modifier

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: Still totally worth it!

---

Benjamin wishes the adventurers farewell and good luck against the giants and fades into his lamp which then fades from this plane of existence.

Horsey McHorsefaces

Back at the Lord Protector’s place they informed her that the wizard was dead and then had a conversation about whether to tell her about the Djinni and the fact that they released it.

Matt> This was the mistake we made in the Underdark where we kept not telling people what we’d done and then demons and dragons kept fucking up the cities.

The DM invoked D.I.C.K.S. (Decision Indicators for Controlling Key Strategies) for the first time this campaign. DICKS was free DLC released by the DM during the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign to streamline arguments strategy decisions while not lumbering characters with group decisions they are really uncomfortable with.

The debate wasn’t heated in any way but it was getting late. After discussions, the first stage of DICKS is the vote: Clay and Regulus wanted to tell her, Abelas and Joffrey did not. Elvira had the deciding vote and went with telling her.

The second stage of DICKS is to ask the players if they have any strong character related reasons for not doing it.

Amazing.

The Lord Protector hints at the possibility of having the house rebuilt for the adventurers if they come into money in the future and return.

The adventurers explained about the genie and the Lord Protector was most pleased with having had a potential threat to the town removed. Whatever Benjamin was, he is someone else’s problem now.

They are offered a significant discount on horses and they head off to the in-town ranch and purchase some mounts.

The DM looked to wind up the session there and told the players to have a think about any shopping they might want to do before leaving town. Joffrey asked if there could be horse armour.

There could be horse armour and it would be extortionately expensive, and then we all complained about the Horse Armour DLC in Oblivion and then we all shamefacedly admitted to buying it anyway <sigh>

End of Session

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

This is the original DICKS post from way back when:

Free DLC!

Starting next session the DM will be introducing the Decision Indicators for Controlling Key Strategies protocol.

Yes; DICKS.

In the event of a conflict the DM or any player can immediately invoke the protocol by sighing and loudly proclaiming you are all a bunch of DICKS! Then the following will be roughly adhered to:

1. Current President identifies all major options for taking care of whatever the fuck it is you need to take care of.

2. Other players asked one at a time if they have other options they want considered.

3. Other players asked one at a time if they have major character-related issues with any of the options.

4. Options with major issues are removed and are not an option any more.

5. Briefly discuss and vote on remaining issues.

The DM will mediate on whether or not an issue really is a major character-related issue or if you are just being an entitled snowflake.

You are still free to not follow the path voted on by the group but there will be consequences for doing so. I’m mainly thinking lightning bolts but a mutant strain of Orcish herpes is not out of the question.

Starring:

Author’s Note: This week’s chapter titles are brought to you by Johnny Cash and some of the greatest lyrics of all time from A Boy Named Sue.

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That Which Must Be Repeated: This campaign contains hard encounters. It is often not required for all of you to kill all of them in order to succeed!

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Season Recap: Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have saved the fortified village of Nightstone from goblins following an attack by cloud giants from a floating castle (that went east).

– The characters travelled to Triboar and on the way met a cloud giant called Zephyros who travels in a floating tower. He explained that the ‘ordning’ (which regulates giant society) is broken and the players are destined to fix it.

– They arrived in Triboar safely but soon the town came under attack by orcs and a pair of fire giants.

---

Pre-session Guff

It turns out the DM boomered the recording yet again and grabbed video by mistake. Downside: huge file size. Upside: The DM can actually remember what actually happened.

There was no session last week because Mike thought his anniversary was more important than D&D and the DM wanted to watch the US Open golf. I don’t think I need to say any more about that.

There was then a halt to proceedings while the DM tried to figure out why the fuck Adam wasn’t showing up on Discord for Mike and the DM but was for Jake.

Once this was corrected the DM kicked off the Theme from Rocky. Adam laughed and said it was going to be his theme tune. Mike suggested his theme tune should be ‘Hurt’ and then the DM and Mike both agreed it absolutely must be the Johnny Cash version “I hurt myself today…”.

Chris was late and was roundly abused in his absence. Matt turned up and sounded like his head was in a bucket of water.

Rocky Theme ends and Queen start up with We Will Rock You.

Adam attempted to trigger the DM by explaining the current DFU civil war over dashes and slashes. The DM was on leave however, and couldn’t care less. Chris turned up:

And so, with Johnny Cash singing “And you could have it all, my empire of dirt” we turn to the main session and pick up where we left off; with Joffrey stuck under a rock..

Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes…

The DM explains that the rock was not actually pinning Joffrey and that was just for comedic effect. It turns out plans had been made around Joffrey still being pinned and so the DM put it to a vote. Surprisingly, they didn’t all vote to leave him under there. I think we were all feeling a bit sorry for Adam after last week’s write up.

Spoilers: it doesn’t get a much better this week.

The boulder was moved so it was slightly away from Joffrey’s unconscious body and the Orc raider.

Then the DM realised he had forgotten to turn on the map grid:

So, the main group of players is in the middle of the east side of the map by the Lord Protector’s tower. Joffrey is in the middle of the map adjacent to a large rock and a single orc raider stands beside him. Three Orogs and six Orc Raiders are sweeping down from the north and the two giants are in the north-east corner. One is digging and one is looking smug.

The orogs dash towards the party and finish about 30ft short of Clay. Regulus finishes laughing at Joffrey, runs away manoeuvres back a bit and attempts to crotch-cannon the closest orog. His first roll of the night was a 2, much to the amusement of the rest of the table.

His second attack was much better and he even remembered the ‘to Hit’ part, and a lightning bolt streaks past Isaac’s ear and strikes the orog in the chest.

The DM detects a small amount of latent hostility from the warforged who clearly still hasn’t either forgotten nor forgiven Joffrey for nuking Boarax Thatmightchange a couple of sessions ago.

At this point there was a minor delay as the DM discovers that a dry-wipe pen applied to a board two weeks ago is no longer dry-wipe and had to find something a bit stronger to clean it with. Yes, we may be in a digital age but the DM still writes initiative and hit points down on a board. Don’t knock it, it works.

Mostly.

And he went down but to my surprise…

Abelas throws a Chromatic Orb at the closest orog and rolls a natural 20! Yay!

However, despite the DM thinking he laid out spell crits pretty plainly a couple of weeks ago in a ‘Fuck me, D&D is complicated’ section of the write up, Jake managed to utterly bugger the interpretation <sigh>

Good times.

Come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear

Jake asked what combat round we were on as this governs how long his Blade Song cheese lasts. In the following conversation it was established that:

The DM rolled a 4-shot volley from the NPC archers and rolled so low that, as Mike pointed out, even adding all four up still wouldn’t have hit the 18AC orog they were aiming at <sigh>

The male giant digs, the female giant picks up another boulder and holds her attack.

Clay charges the orogs and launches an attack! It falls just short! He remembers Isaac’s Bless! He rolls an extra d4 and hits!! Isaac is super impressed with himself! Clay’s second attack also hits and the orog takes a hefty chunk of damage.

Isaac lands a 10-point Toll the Dead on Clay’s orog and then turns to the unconscious Joffrey:

Isaac> I shout to him “Selune has abandoned you my idiotic friend! May Lathander heal you in her ever-glowing light!”

Whilst the DM admired the gall of the 5 Int cleric calling the druid an idiot, his inner Yoda was sighing and saying “Only just begun, the healer wars have”.

Isaac then casts Healing Word on Jeffrey for 5 whole hit points and Isaac runs behind a market stall.

DRUID UP!

The orc raider next to Joffrey goes next, rolls high and hit the druid with a greataxe for 9 damage.

DRUID DOWN!

Isaac helpfully shouts at him “You must accept the light brother! Embrace Lathander’s goodness!”

Joffrey was unimpressed.

I expect Lathander was as well.

The DM is genuinely feeling sorry for Adam at this point.

Two raiders attack Abelas and he casts Shield to gain 5 more AC.

Joffrey has to make a death save and despite Abelas willing it to be a 1, he made it comfortably.

Clay, now surrounded by three raiders and two orogs, gets hit twice by the raiders.

FIGHTER DOWN!

It’s looking a bit rough now with two of the five players on the floor! The three other mounted raiders charge ahead and engage Isaac, Regulus and Abelas up close. The slower orogs follow behind.

Abelas, the melee wizard, misty steps out of melee range <sigh> He did kill one of the raiders with a Toll the Dead though. The DM had the NPCs back-the-truck-up and volley-fired into the remaining raiders, killing them both. This only left the orogs and the giants. The giants both started digging, giving the party some breathing room.

I busted a chair right across his teeth…

Isaac and Regulus actually start planning on what to do and how to do it. It was quite remarkable. The main gist of the plan was for Isaac to use Healing Word on Clay who was “choking on his own vomit” and for Regulus to head over to Joffrey who was “probably ok” and use Cure Light Wounds on the downed druid.

There was a “Are these ten-foot squares?” moment and the skies momentarily darkened as Lathander abandoned the perpetrator.

Regulus was a bit worried about the oncoming orogs but Isaac was more worried about the three raiders surrounding Clay’s unconscious body:

There was then a five minute discussion on whether Isaac should Fireball absolutely everything, Fireball only the orogs or Fireball only the raiders and Clay.

Isaac didn’t actually want to Fireball anything. Abelas wanted Isaac to Fireball everything. Regulus wanted him to Fireball just the orogs. Joffrey didn’t have an opinion because Adam had fallen asleep having not done anything for the first hour.

Eventually Isaac gave up on the Fireball plan and resorted to the original idea:

The first roll missed by quite a lot. The second roll just hit. The third roll was… well it was a bit weird. You have to go some to bollocks-up a digital dice roll by Chris managed it and cocked a virtual cube. Outstanding.

The table thought that was an 8 but the DM decided the table was full of shit and called it as a crit. The last roll also missed. So four shots fired, two shots hit, but one was a crit. Damage wise, the first ray hit for an unimpressive 5 damage but the crit hit for 24. There was a certain amount of overkill as the orc got vaporised.

Spell slots were running low but Abelas reassured everyone that he still had his staff so everything was ok.

Isaac ducks behind a stall gaining cover but an orog still hit him with a javelin provoking a discussion about the difference between cover and concealment. It started with the DM using the word ‘frippery’ and ended with a comment from Mike of “She might not penetrate me but it did not come out well” <sigh>

And we crashed through the wall and into the street…

Regulus moved over to engage the orc near Joffrey (still down!). Abelas ran away from an orc raider and an orog provoking two attacks of opportunity. The orog hit him but his cheesy blade ward mitigated half the damage.

The DM volley fired all six NPCs and missed with every single one of them <sigh>. The second volley hit the orog twice. The Lord Protector has a stern word with her troops.

Isaac then randomly decided he gets to move his spell range and took off 60ft north. This was corrected with some minor abuse and then he healed Clay. Yay.

The DM uses push to talk on his microphone but OBS records everything whether it is pushed or not. At this point on the audio stream the DM can clearly be heard to sigh loudly as his spidey sense tells him where this is heading.

I’m not quite sure what exactly sparked Chris to start a race war as well as a religious war but I’m sure it will all end well. However, being a cleric in medium armour the odds are far more likely that the shape-shifted druid with a massive hit-point pool will be the last healer standing in many future battles but Adam will almost certainly forgive and forget, right? Right.

The DM had an amazing turn which ended with him proclaiming “For fuck sake, these fucking orcs fucking suck!”

Joffrey is down and has failed one death save. If he rolls a 1 he is dead.

He rolled a 3.

There’s a definite pucker factor in this campaign so far.

Abelas is adjacent to the NPC archers on one side and the last two orc raiders on the other side. The melee oriented wizard cast Blade Ward and, once again, did not actually melee despite both starting and finishing his turn in melee range of an enemy <sigh>. We have a bladesinger who refuses to bladesing. I’m not sure if he even has a sword at this point.

The NPC archers finish off the orc raiders.

Kickin’ and a gougin’ in the mud and the blood and the beer

The giants find what they were digging for and it appears to be quite large as the male giant has to use an action to free it from the ground.

Clay makes a single crossbow attack against the last surviving orog. He rolls a 3. He uses Bless. That made it a 4. As Isaac succinctly put it “You spent an hour dead and that’s what you came back to?”

The orog (not Abelas) got Toll the Deaded by the cleric for 4 hit points. That’ll learn him some manners.

It’s Joffrey’s turn. We started at half six, it’s now a quarter past 8. The DM is still feeling sorry for Adam despite the fact that it was self-inflicted. Joffrey’s return to action was met with enthusiastic support and encouragement from his team mates such as “Why don’t you wild shape?” and “Cast Tidal Wave again!” and “Just walk over to the giants!” and “Let the wizard mount you again” and “Wear another rock as a hat!”.

The druid runs behind the boulder for cover and Ice Knife’s the last orog.

The DM then gave a pertinent description of the how the orc died horribly but was frozen in place and thus the dex save for the rest of the spell effect was unnecessary. It seems however that whatever key the DM was pressing was not the push-to-talk key and so everyone got really confused and he had to repeat it <sigh>

Regulus asks Joffrey if he needs healing. There is no response. Adam’s hand (in Table Top Simulator at least) is going round in circles but from Adam there remained no response. It then transpires that Adam had left to go for a leak and inadvertently put his headphones down on the left arrow key. This of course caused the next two minutes to be filled with everyone trying it out until the DM got dizzy and tried to get the fight back on track.

I tell you I’ve fought tougher men…

The male giant pulls out a 2” thick band of adamantine roughly 11 feet long and looking like it weighed somewhere in the region of 1,000lbs (that’s 450kg for the young’uns). The giant has to use both hands to carry it and he starts to head out of town. The female giant picks up a boulder and accompanies him.

Now that the item was free of the earth the DM called for Arcana checks and Joffrey rolled a natural 20.

The DM apologises for what he is about to tell them. If they get carried away here we could see a total party wipe but he doesn’t tell them that bit.

The item appears to have once been part of an enormous construct. It also looks to be extremely valuable, at least several thousand gold pieces worth of valuable.

This provoked the obvious discussion about what they could spend that on (plate armour!) vs having to be alive to spend it. As far as the Lord Protector is concerned, the giants are leaving and she is very happy with that.

The main issue is the lack of spell slots. Clay cares not for spell slots however “We could take ‘em!”. The rest of the party were unconvinced.

Indeed.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “Nobody likes Fire Giants, mainly because they are gingers. There’s also the plate armour, the mountain of hit points, the immunity to fire (and thus most wizards), and the bad attitude. But it’s mostly because they are gingers”

The DM asked if anyone wanted to contest the exit of the giants. Even Joffrey realised that this was a bad idea. Regulus wanted them to rebuild it so that he and the construct could “become… BROBOTS!”

Don’t make me put a ‘dad joke of the week’ section in here Mike! Aint nobody got time for that!

But I really can’t remember when…

Regulus then decided to use the last round of combat to throw another tribble from the Bag of Tricks (I told you I was going to regret that), rolled an 8 and got the Giant Moose. He proposed several name choices, one of which was “Hello, my name is Bambi, you killed my mother, prepare to die” or “Anonymoose” <sigh>

There some more abuse but eventually we got back to the game and everyone levelled up.

DING, DING! LEVEL 6!

Good times.

He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile

The party were asked to go back and see the Lord Protector the following morning for their reward and so they went for a good meal and long, well-earned rest. During this period a number of the NPC militia members visited the party and quests were obtained! I’ll cover those after next week’s session when they leave town.

Abelas was looking at his hit points and his new Life Transference ability which deals 4d8 damage to you but heals for twice as much; “I could go down if I take all of it”.

That’s what she said.

The following day the group went shopping and Clay bought a longbow. Abelas bought a rapier. Other shopping was going on when the DM suggested that just maybe, they should go and get their rewards first and then do shopping later because, you know, you’re probably about to be given a chunk of money.

They return to the Lord Protector’s tower where they are duly thanked and rewarded with 200gp each and a set of Glamoured Studded Leather Armour +1 which is handed to Elvira.

The party also receive two quests, one to go to Everlund to speak to the Harpers and the other a bit more local. It seems that when the giants entered town they trampled through several buildings including The Boar’s Rest which is the home of the wizard whose gargoyles they disposed of. No one has heard from the wizard since and no one in town wants to risk going up there so she asks the party to check it out and see what happened to him.

She points out that there is absolutely no rush which prompts Regulus to wink slowly at her and say “I understand!”

I heard him laugh and I heard him cuss…

Much laughter and abuse followed particularly between Joffrey and Isaac.

Much as the DM hates to criticise a good rant, and hates defending Adam even more, he never said the armour was for Elvira, he actually said the opposite. It was just handed to Elvira as the most suited to use it.

Also, criticising a player for forgetting a character’s name while getting their class wrong (“I’m pointing at the ranger behind us”) is a tad hypocritical. Elvira is a fighter. It was funny though, so who cares?.

When all this calmed down, they went shopping properly and this time bought Healing Potions! Yay. They then headed off to rob check on a wizard.

He went for his gun and I pulled mine first…

Two fire giants had walked through the house and the magmins had some fun too. It was looking a bit ropey with about half of the structure in ruins.

They search the ruins and find a vault entrance and a body, mostly buried in the rubble, with just an arm sticking out. Clay goes to check the body and a call for first aid is issued. Joffrey assists the fighter and rolls a 1 <sigh>. He does get advantage and the second roll is marginally better: they are fairly sure he is very dead.

Then, because they have the attention spans of goldfish, they decided not to check the body but to go into the vault. The DM interjected to simply point out that if they go into the vault, he will not remind them about the body when they come out of the vault next week. Well, that isn’t entirely true the DM would remind them about the body at about the time they arrive in the next town.

They wisely decided to check the body first. The dead wizard had no loot on him but nearby was a chest that had been summoned via a Leomund’s Tiny Chest spell just before a house collapsed on him. In the chest were some Bracers of Defence and a Wand of the War Mage +1. Abelas nicked both items without even asking the others.

Having robbed the dead, they headed into the vault. The vault is around 50ft wide and about 120ft long. There are four braziers, two on each side of the vault and at the far end is a plinth upon which sits an old oil lamp.

Isaac and Regulus cast Light and Regulus summons Anonymoose <sigh>. However, a Giant Elk is actually size ‘huge’, which is a 15ft area. This is too big for the ceiling of the vault and thus Regulus releases the squished creature and summons… Boarax Thatmightchange!

Joffrey turns into a Giant Constrictor Snake and wants someone to mount him again <sigh> Unsurprisingly there are no volunteers. They light the braziers and approach the plinth and the oil lamp.

Regulus touched it.

He stood there lookin’ at me and I saw him smile…

A genie appeared!

End of Session.

---

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

– Will Adam have wasted another Wild Shape?

– What opportunities will be offered by the genie?

– Will Abelas the melee wizard actually melee?

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

Let’s have a chat about the giant fight. First of all it should be noted that there is no right or wrong way to do this. A party of level 5 adventurers up against two CR9 Fire Giants is not something you would be expected to handle. Staying the fuck away from them is not a bad tactic at all.

However, if the party had managed to get one of the giants down to half hit points, which is still quite a lot, then they would have withdrawn from the fight. Obviously the players did not know this.

Had they forced them to retreat, the group would have gotten the relic which is worth at least 5,000 gold if they sell it in town. If the giants had retreated, they would then have come back two days later when the full militia had been formed.

In order to have had a chance against the giants somewhat different tactics would have needed to be employed.

The fight sets up so that the orc raiders and the orogs attack the players to give the giants time to dig up the item. There is only one round of orc reinforcements. Obviously the players did not know any of this. However, the giants were no immediate threat and should have been ignored completely until both waves of orcs were disposed of.

The caravan park runs up the middle of the map and is surrounded by a waist-high wall. This forms a natural choke point in the top corner closest to the orcs. The choke point is 30ft wide between the wall and some market stalls.

A Spike Growth spell laid down at that choke point would have seen 6 of the raiders and all of the Orogs have to traverse through the entire length of it. Spike Growth has a 20ft radius and when a creature moves in it they take 2d4 piercing damage for every 5ft they travel. There is no save which is really nice when dealing with 18AC Orogs in plate. In addition, the ground becomes difficult terrain which would have severely hampered the orcs efforts to close with the party.

To put that into context, each creature travelling through that area would take twice as long to traverse it and would take an average of 40 damage doing so. That would have killed the goat mounts, the orc raiders, the magmins and probably the Orogs (42HP each) just by itself leaving the party with only the other six raiders coming from the other side to worry about and they could easily have been dispatched by the NPC archers, maybe also with a Shatter. Twelve shortbow attacks per round against relatively squishy orcs would have made short work of them.

An alternative to Spike Growth would have been Faerie Fire, a level 1 spell with a dex save, not something plate-clad Orogs are very good at. This would have made the Orogs considerably easier to hit and arrow-bait for the NPC archers.

Either way, by sticking together and using the terrain, the orcs and the Orogs could have been finished off without undue expenditure of resources. However, once it went pear-shaped expenditure of resources became necessary just for survival and that precluded any serious attack on the giants.

Once the orcs had been dispatched, one of the NPC’s would have fired at the giants and provoked the rock-throw response. Joffrey actually did everyone a favour there as the NPC may have been killed and they give quests out if they survive.

Regardless, once the rock throw happened, the way (or ‘a’ way) to counter it would be to cast Fog Cloud, another level 1 spell, on the giants as they were defending a stationary point. Then have everyone move into range and into cover, prep attacks and then have the Fog Cloud caster drop concentration on the spell. If done just after the fire giant’s turn, this would give an instant full-round of attacks on one giant followed by another full turn for the players.

After that it could have gotten messy but it’s a huge damage head start and the casters would have still had most of their spell slots.

Control, it’s a really good thing.

Starring:

---

Author’s Note 1: There is a disagreement or two in here. Here’s how this works; generally the abuse being thrown is of a good natured taking-the-piss variety and it sounds a lot worse than it is. On very rare occasions someone gets actually properly annoyed in real life. These incidents are marked by the DM with the arrival of Major Butthurt (we have a mini and everything). Even though it may sound like it at times, Major Butthurt was not present tonight… mostly. He definitely shows up at one point in the write-up though!

Author’s Note 2: In order to try and reach Adam’s cognitive functions the DM has resorted to desperate measures that hopefully will find root in Adam’s cortex: cat memes. Just bear with me. If it doesn’t work this week, I’ll try something else, like giving up.

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That Which Must Be Repeated:

Because sometimes people just don’t get it, I’m going to park this here at the top of every write-up going forwards:

This campaign contains hard encounters. It is often not required for all of you to kill all of them in order to succeed!

However, killing all of them might yield more loot.

Season Recap: Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have save the fortified village of Nightstone from goblins following an attack by Cloud Giants from a floating castle (that went east).

– The characters travelled to Triboar and on the way met a cloud giant called Zephyros who travels in a floating tower. He explained that the ‘ordning’ (which regulates giant society) is broken and the players are destined to fix it.

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Pre-session Guff

Adam broke one his monitors and is stuck with just one for tonight. He joined the chat and sounded like he had his head in a bucket.

<sigh> And so it begins and so it continued. Adam did not have a good session, which was hugely entertaining for the rest of us of course.

Chris didn’t bother turning up because ‘being on holiday’ is now, apparently, a good enough excuse for missing D&D. I don’t think I need to say any more about that.

Christina couldn’t make it because she had to get up early to harass a paedophile, or something.

A pokemon discussion started, mainly about winding Chris up now they know he hates it. The DM is with Chris on this one but happily he gets to engage smurf mode again on vlc when listening back to it.

It’s not that the DM hates pokemon as such, it’s just he had become bored with it by the time silver came out 20 years ago and even for a table full of nerds this is… well, just listen to this shite:

“Who loves Bulbasaur?! It’s a lettuce with legs!”

“Yah, I know right? Charizard is soooo overrated!”

“Dude! Charmander is totes where it’s at!”

And so on. And on. And on. And on <sigh>

The DM warns the party that tonight may be quite combat heavy and a bit ‘sloggy’ but should be worth it.

---

Healing Potions are so Boulder-Rated

We re-join the party in Triboar just after the gargoyle fight and the DM asks Joffrey and Clay if they wish to regroup with the others at the Triboar Arms. They do but sadly Joffrey drops his wild shape form and chooses not to travel through town as a dire wolf and thus the DM couldn’t have the locals shoot arrows at him. Sad times.

No shopping was needed even though the DM specifically mentioned an Alchemist. Clearly they don’t think they need healing potions. Or they need the money more.

Clay failed to buy a longbow.

Regulus was approached in the bar by a messenger from the Lord Protector who was having to deal with another orc raid on a second outlying ranch. She had arranged free lodgings for the party at Northshield House, a reputable inn on the east side of town run by an ex-adventurer Urgala Meltimer.

Resting was undertaken and Regulus managed not to mess up an Animal Handling check and thus did not get savaged by Urgala’s three mastiffs.

As they approached the marketplace an alarm bell starts ringing and someone runs past shouting “ORCS! RUUUUN!”

The Lord Protector emerges from her tower, spots the party and offers to double their reward if they help defend the town. The party agree enthusiastically. As they head east the Lord Protector shouts for any members of the militia to muster on her.

---

New Kids on the Rock

As they left the centre of town and emerged into more open lands to the east, they spotted a burning farmhouse over 300ft away. Orc raiders mounted on war goats were moving swiftly around the fields while magmins, tiny fire elementals, were gleefully incinerating the building.

There are two six-packs of orc raiders and another two six-packs of magmins. Only one group of raiders is currently visible.

While the DM was setting up, Jake and Mike started dropping spoilers about Wasteland 3 and the DM politely and respectfully asked them to stop, probably only dropping a C-bomb three or four times. They actually did stop but this was probably due to the amount of enemies the DM was piling onto the table.

<sigh>

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Fuck me, D&D is complicated – Episode 4: Mounted Combat

In short, you use half your movement to get on/in or off/out of a mount/vehicle.

Independent mounts – If you are on an intelligent mount (like a dragon) or even a semi-intelligent mount (like a wild shaped druid) the mount gets its own initiative and acts as it wants on its turn.

Controlled mounts – If the mount is not intelligent, like a horse or a flying Delorean, then it acts on your turn. It moves as you direct it and it can only take three actions: Dash, Disengage & Dodge.

This will become important later.

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Somewhere Boulder the Rainbow

Initiative was rolled and the DM remembered Isaac this week so that’s already an improvement.

Regulus realises he should have used his pokemon bag before now but will do it on his first turn.

<sigh>

Adam has an idea now though and he’s not giving it up easily. Fireball has a range of 150ft and the orcs are about 300ft away:

There was now an extended intermission with Adam mentioning Trump getting nominated for the Nobel peace prize, the DM pointing out he had done more to earn it that Obama ever did, Mike disagreeing, the DM consequently going on an extended rant about Benghazi, Fast & Furious, the ‘Hands Up Don’t Shoot’ lie, race riots and using the FBI to conduct illegal investigations on your political rival while the press thinks the sun shines out of your backside. WHOOOOOsaaaaaaaaaah!

Once that all settled down, Adam got it going again by mentioning a film Official Secrets and this caused the general slagging off of Tony Blair, Dubya and Bill Clinton but prompted the question of “If you can’t get a blow job from your secretary as President, when can you?!”

Once all that settled down the DM asked everyone not to do it again as he was still trying to set up a battlemap!

---

Stone Bonkers

Jake was probably hoping Adam had forgotten all about his amazing idea to charge the oncoming enemy hordes. He hadn’t:

<sigh>

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Choose Your Stone Adventure

And so Joffrey cast Barkskin on himself, used one of his two wild shapes per short rest (this will be important!) and turned into a dire wolf. Operation Gimp-Elf-Wolf was a go!

The Lord Protector has five members of the militia with her and they act as a single unit controlled by the DM. They will primarily volley-fire shortbows. At the start of their turn the Lord Protector shouts out to them “This may be another feint! We’ve had two already, don’t anyone get carried away!”

This was supposed to serve as a warning to the party not to blow all their resources on this fight. It didn’t quite work out that way.

The militia form a firing line on the left side of the map. About 50ft in front of them is a farmhouse with a field behind it. A path heads straight up the centre of the map and an orchard is on the right side.

The militia are instructed not to fire at anything until it comes within range (they have limited arrows) and the DM draws a grey line on the map 100ft away. This was supposed to just be indicator to the DM where attacks would happen but it became a ‘line in the sand’ for the players. This was unexpected but it did render some structure onto what could have been a messy, spread-out fight.

Well that wasn’t the plan at all was it?

Joffrey points out that he can’t actually make it past the line in one turn anyway. Abelas was talking about the battle line (of fighters) Joffrey was talking about the DM’s archery line on the map. This simple confusion was probably mostly responsible for what follows.

Clay advances to one square in front of the militia and holds his attack to 100ft. The DM sighs heavily and draws a second line just for Clay (briefly called the ‘cunt line’) before it was erased as Regulus persuades Clay to move back a square so everyone is firing at the same point.

Regulus fondles his furry ball sack and then he opens the Bag of Tricks, produces a Tribble and throws it: “I choose YOU… NoShiro!” A disappointing 3 rolled by the Artificer produces a standard Badger. It could have been worse. Not by much though.

The first magmin pack dashes towards the party. They are still miles away. The second pack moves forwards but they stop to start burning a cart. The orc raiders, seeing an enemy, charge downfield.

---

Operation Gimp-Elf-Wolf is LITERALLY a go!

What she actually said (because I know scrolling up is hard) was “This may be another feint! We’ve had two already, don’t anyone get carried away!” and Abelas literally did get carried away! Baddum-tish!

---

Operation Gimp-Elf-Wolf is LITERALLY a NO-GO! ABORT, ABORT, LITERALLY ABORT!

Clay declined. Literally.

*During the shouting, Matt said something like “That’s the first three paragraphs!” Oh mate, that’s 8 pages and two and half thousand words so far and it LITERALLY aint done yet!

---

Chip on his Boulder

Six war goats bore six orc raiders to within disadvantaged javelin range of the abandoned dire wolf. Two of the six attacks hit for a total of 12 damage.

The second wave of raiders came into view and started charging downfield after the first pack.

Learning from the orcs, the players than start engaging the raiders at long range with disadvantage. The militia have 20 arrows and think this might be a feint which means another fight to come so they want to see the whites of their eyes. The players do not have this ammunition constraint and the orcs are stupid. Player spell slots are a different matter though.

Joffrey had way too many options available to him and dithered for a while and also produced a frustrated cry of “I JUST WANT TO SPUNK EVERYTHING!”

Hopefully not literally.

Or on a cat.

There was a fair bit of laughter going on through all of this.

---

He should have stone better!

Clay opens up on the raiders with a light crossbow attack, hits despite the disadvantage, and when asked by the DM if he targets the war goat or the orc, he targets the goat.

He inflicted nine damage and killed the goat. This of course left the orc (the dangerous one with the ranged javelin attack) untouched.

Clay then takes his second attack with the crossbow and also aims at a mount and also kills it and also leaves a dangerous orc undamaged while having killed a non-dangerous goat.

Clay> I’ve peaked! I’m going to bed now.

So, did anyone spot the staggering amount of CHEESE that Matt just slipped past the DM?

Crossbow, light – 1d8 peircing – Ammunition, (range 80/320), loading, two-handed.

Loading -Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of ammunition from it when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make.

Cheese of the week trophy awarded and the DM will LITERALLY remember this.

---

His stone worst enemy

The raiders enter non-disadvantage range and cut loose with javelins hitting both Clay and Regulus. Then we discovered the DM had a maths-is-hard moment and Regulus did not get hit after all.

Isaac cast Scorching Ray at an orc, hit with two of the three rays and melted its face right off! At least that’s what would have happened if the DM hadn’t rolled 4d6 damage and come up with 6 <sigh>

Joffrey, still chuntering at an Abelas who didn’t care, dropped wild shape form (he only has one left) dropped Bark Skin, once again declined to cast Call Lightning and cast Moonbeam instead on the second raider pack.

The raiders don’t take damage from the Moonbeam until the start of their next turn and the DM had to strongly resist attacking them with the NPC archers. He figured Joffrey was having a bad enough time of it as it was without deliberately trolling him (for a change).

Abelas had no such compunction however and Fireballed the shit out of everything anywhere remotely close to the druid’s Moonbeam <sigh>.

There was a momentary interruption as a steam train went past the DM’s window. Which was nice.

Back at the table, the DM drew the Fireball’s 20ft radius which encompassed the Moonbeam’s 5ft radius and commented that it looked like a Death Star and that should be the party’s insignia should they ever come up with a name.

Abelas rolled a distinctly average 32 but since the orcs have 15 hit points even if they made the Dex save they would still have been taken out. Everything in the circle got WTFBBQd.

Joffrey was decidedly unimpressed.

Clay LITERALLY cheesed another two attacks with a crossbow. That’s two he needs to pay for!

Regulus lamented having to attack an orc at disadvantage because it was just over 90ft away. When people started laughing he remembered he could move. We’ve all been there Mike but still; LOLZ.

And just to prove the old adage about when it rains:

Sometime earlier the DM had surreptitiously renamed Badgy McBadgypants to ‘Badgy McBBQ Badgypants’

This is one hour and forty two minuts into the recording of a mostly combat oriented session and the only thing Adam has done is cast a Moonbeam that never hit anything because Jake maliciously Fireballed everything near it.

---

It’s a no-parking stone!

The DM marched a pack of Magmins straight past Joffrey’s Moonbeam explaining that he was constrained by the creatures he was playing, they aren’t that bright and they’ve never seen a Moonbeam spell before and they have no idea it can move.

The up side – Two hours into the fight and Joffrey/Adam might have started to do something useful for the first time this session.

The down side – All this shite kicked off again:

Go back and read the paragraph Stone Bonkers to find out what literally happened.

So now the main aim of Regulus, Abelas and I’m ashamed to say, Isaac (it is what Chris would have wanted!), was to nuke the Magmins before the Moonbeam hit. Isaac didn’t have anything non-fire related, Regulus didn’t want to get hit with an attack of opportunity and Abelas was too gimpy to get within range.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “To be a true warrior, first you must defeat the enemy within! No, not your inner doubts or any other such namby-pamby hippy bollocks, I mean the dicks in your party!”

---

A legend in one’s stone lifetime

A large amount of effort was expended on failing to get Abelas in range of the Moonbeam-Magmins to Shatter them. Regulus wanted the other group nuked instead of Adam being trolled.

Jake listened unfortunately.

And finally, after two hours and twenty six minutes, Joffrey damaged something other than his pride! His Moonbeam hits the six-pack of magmins for an entire seven points of damage. This singularly failed to kill even one magmin.

Earlier, Joffrey had mocked Abelas for his low damage on a Shatter, which was a bit rich.

---

The Demilitarized Stone

The remaining Magmins were cleaned up and the various rider-less war goats ran off ending combat.

Regulus became Pedanticus and started reading waaaaay too much into a simple comment and started asking the Lord Protector if more attacks were coming. How the fuck would she know, is she suddenly psychic? <sigh>

Speaking of which, an alarm bell was heard coming from the town square! Looks like another attack is coming! What were the odds, eh?

---

Entering the Hot-Stone

As they run past the Lord Protector’s tower, a large rock lands on a nearby cart smashing it to pieces. As a cloud of dust erupts from the wreckage, a second rock lands, tumbles through a fence and slams into the side of a building.

The technical Dungeon Master term for this kind of narrative is ‘A really big fucking hint’.

To the north of the town square the party can see five orogs (bigger, meaner orcs) two more packs of magmins and six more mounted orc raiders.

Oh, and two Fire Giants; twenty feet of plate armour, red hair, dark skin and bad attitude.

---

Hoist With Your Stone Petard!

While the DM was setting up the map, Jake noted that Chris had posted on Facebook that he had gone to see Tenet at the cinema instead of coming to D&D. I don’t think I need to say anymore about that.

But I’m going to. Clearly Chris could have safely participated in a Covid-free wholesome D&D session of abusing Adam for being useless. Instead, he has chosen to go and see a movie that will likely be around for months, putting all the other people in the cinema at risk and putting his co-workers at risk when he catches the Covid in the cinema and passes it on to them.

This is still not as bad as going to see a shit dinosaur movie though.

---

The Twilight Stone

Initiative was rolled and it was not good.

Abelas got 3 (lolz), Joffrey got 8, Regulus got 4.

Joffrey> Are we going to get a go before we get a rock thrown at us?!

The orogs moved as a screening line in front of the giants. The Giants headed left, away from the players, seemingly with a destination in mind. One of them was holding what appeared to be a large magical rod and seemed to be guided by it.

As they passed a building, one of the giants gestured and the magmins gleefully ran over to set it ablaze.

Adam then invoked the name of a heathen deity as he suffered a cat + plate related incident. There were a few totally uncalled for comments about how it probably wanted its cock massaged again.

Clay attacks the orogs with his crossbow, twice, again, for yet more cheese, again, but both shots bounced off the orc’s plate armour.

---

Revvin’ up your engine, listen to her howlin’ roar!

(can you see where this is going?)

Joffrey runs forward and casts Call Lightning before he actually knew where the giants were going. This was probably not the brightest move. There was also a certain amount of fuckupery with a marker <sigh>

We eventually got it sorted, Billy Five-Clicks was already on the lightning bolt part before he had gotten the cloud up.

WARNING: Incoming rhetorical DM Chris-level ranty meltdown, you may want to skip to the next section.

<sigh> I don’t get it, I really don’t. You are level five! They are fucking giants! What the actual FUCK is going on in your head?! Do you somehow think that you are fucking invincible despite ALL the fucking evidence to the contrary?! Is it because you are simply suicidal? Is it because you simply don’t understand how much of a fucking threat these things are?! Everyone else gets it WHY THE FUCK DON’T YOU?! Everyone else tells you it’s fucking stupid WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN?!

In Princes of the Apocalypse you faced a Fire Giant in THE FINAL FUCKING ENCOUNTER! That’s how fucking tough they are! One level 16 of YOU vs ONE of them is still a fucking DEADLY fight!

WHY THE ACTUAL FUCK DO YOU WANT TO FUCKING ANTAGONISE TWO OF THEM AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME AT LEVEL FUCKING FIVE WHILE NOT EVEN TAKING BASIC FUCKING PRECAUTIONS LIKE STANDING IN FUCKING COVER OR HAVING FULL FUCKING HIT POINTS?!

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WHOOOOOOsaaaaah…

---

It’s ok, got that out of my system for a few sessions now. Good to go again!

---

Metal under tension, beggin’ you to touch and go!

(can you see it yet? Can you?!)

Joffrey nuked the orogs instead of the giants and then he turns into a Dire Wolf and charges fifty feet towards the middle of the map. Alone. Again.

This is almost exactly how the DM felt about this weeks session:

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Regulus and Abelas also piled into the orogs with lightning and Fireballs respectively. For some reason orog number 2 earned particular ire.

Having reached a designated point in the north-west corner, just outside the area of Joffrey’s Call Lightning, the male fire giant started digging while the female giant readied an action. The DM was very clear that she readied an action.

Adam was slightly very sarcastic about this and the DM had to point out that the square they were supposed to dig up was one closer to the Call Lightning boundary but still outside of it and he had shifted it slightly to avoid any confusion issues later.

What the DM didn’t say was that it was fucking stupid to cast the Call Lightning when Adam didn’t know where the giants were going despite the DM clearly saying they seemed to be heading to a specific spot because waiting one fucking turn to place your main AoE spell that is likely to last for the entire fucking fight was clearly asking too fucking much.

WHOOOOOsaaaaaah! Sorry, channelled a bit too much Drikk Fra-Kar there! Speaking of which:

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “Patience! It’s not just a fucking virtue Buttercup, it’s actually a pretty good fucking combat tactic!”

The militia volley-fired at the orogs and did a fairly significant amount of damage.

Things we never had to worry about before eh? 🙂

The orogs skirt the Call Lightning area.

YES! He gets it! He gets it sarcastically but he gets it!

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “If you want your enemies in a particular location and they are melee oriented, then you know where the fuck you need to stand don’t you Princess?!”

The magmins, however, did not see the orog get nuked and they are idiots so they ran straight into the circle and for the second time in nearly three hours of combat, Joffrey actually damaged something.

However, he also ran further into the middle of the map.

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HIIIIIIIGHWAY TO THE…. DANGER-STONE!

(not sorry!)

Not for the first time this campaign, Adam woefully underestimated the movement speed of the enemy. I would remind you, dear reader, that he just had a fight with two packs of orcs mounted on war goats and they repeatedly dashed 100ft <sigh>

Six orcs used their goat mounts to dash and surrounded the Dire Wolf that had run off, alone, into the middle of the battlefield.

“It’s like déjà vu all over again.” – Yogi Berra

Joffrey got hit with three or four attacks (I lost count) but still had a few of his dire wolf hit points left.

The male giant digs some more, the female giant holds her action. Once again, the DM is really clear that she is holding an action.

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Rock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

The giant’s support troops were getting thinned out but the female giant sounded a warhorn and at the end of the round four more orogs and another six raiders appeared.

The ‘Joffrey-is-about-to-get-gangbanged-without-lube’ problem was solved by a Call Lightning which Adam rolled so low it didn’t even half-damage the goats, and then a Shatter from Regulus:

Regulus drops the Shatter right on Joffrey. Joffrey fails the save with style because nobody saw that coming, right? Eight points of damage were dealt to the druid and everything around him. This killed a couple of orcs and a few goats.

Abelas then stepped up and gleefully also Shattered Joffrey and the remaining orcs. Joffrey fails the save with aplomb because nobody saw that coming, right?

Abelas rolled fifteen points of damage and that was enough to knock Joffrey out of dire wolf form and knocked another thirteen points off his druid hit points. It also killed all but one of the orcs. That orc subsequently twatted Joffrey for another nine hit points.

The male giant digs again, the female giant holds her action again. Once again the DM was really clear that she was holding an action.

---

Gonna Take You Right Into The Danger-Stone!

The DM now has to gently explain to Regulus (who’s main attack takes an action to do 2d6 damage to a single target) that a spell that for ten minutes allows you to repeatedly use your action to do 3d8 damage in an AoE, is not actually, in any definition of the word, ‘shit’ <sigh>.

The DM didn’t even bother to explain to Adam that druids are not shit it’s just that he’s playing his like a wizard (he didn’t even take Spike Growth as a spell ffs!) as druids are about control not nuking everything. I’m not going to explain how to druid here as the fight is still going. I’ll cover all the effective things Joffrey could have done next week.

Riiiiiide Into the Danger-Stone !

And so, we have arrived. Events were put in motion three hours, twenty nine minutes and thirty one seconds previously that all led up to this exact moment of staggering stupidity. A below max hit-point druid, not in any sort of cover, casts a weedy 4d8 water spell (average damage 18) at a pair of giants with hit points around ten times higher than that (and that’s only if they are normal fire giants), who have ranged attacks that can crush carts and one of whom has been holding an action just waiting for someone to feel lucky (punk).

You literally could not make this shit up.

It took some more explaining. He still didn’t get it, or chose not to. The fire giant spent her entire action getting ready for a trigger that may or may not happen, which is the risk you take by holding. It actually didn’t happen twice so that’s two wasted actions. Once the trigger happens, her action immediately takes place.

Most spells, including Tidal Wave have a verbal and somatic component:

Verbal – Most spells require the chanting of mystic words. The words themselves aren’t the source of the spell’s power; rather, the particular combination of sounds, with specific pitch and resonance, sets the threads of magic in motion.

Somatic – Spellcasting gestures might include a forceful gesticulation or an intricate set of gestures.

Think of this like a prep phase and then a delivery phase. You have to stand there chanting and waving before you can deliver the spell while she has already done her preparation phase for throwing the rock and only has the delivery phase of it to do. Therefore, she gets to make the delivery while you are still in the prep phase.

INCOMING!

Rock. Ranged Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, range 60/240 ft., one target. Hit: 29 (4d10 + 7) bludgeoning damage.

DRUID DOWN!

---

End of Session.

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post Session Guff

See that wall? Waist high cover. Wouldn’t even have had to move away from the orc.

Starring:

---

Season Recap: Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have arrived in the fortified village of Nightstone only to find its human inhabitants have fled following an aerial attack by giants in a floating castle.

– The village was cleared of scavenging goblins and then attempts by both the Zhentarim and a bunch of mostly-peaceful Orcs to take over the village were foiled.

– Our heroes proceeded to the Dripping Caves to rescue the villagers. They killed the goblins and ogres but Q’Aren was killed by a Black Pudding.

– The characters travelled to Triboar and on the way met a cloud giant called Zephyros who travels in a floating tower.

– Zephyros explains that the ‘ordning’, which regulates giant society, is broken and the players are destined to fix it. Or die trying. Which is nice.

---

Pre-session Guff

Remarkably little pre-session guff this week aided by the DM forgetting to start recording on time again <sigh>

The main highlight was the DM pointing out that the player minis had all been recreated with white bases, allowing the DM to tint them to the player’s Table Top Simulator name colours for easier identification of who is who (whom? I’m sorry, my face is tired).

---

Duel of the Waifs

At the end of last session a bunch of thin and lightly armoured air cultists had landed on the cloud and politely requested an audience with Zephyros. Abelas had responded to this request with uncouth and demeaning language and an utterly uncalled for threat.

Having had his honour impugned (great word!) by a lightweight plebeian, the equally lightweight Amarath felt compelled to enter a duel with the uncivilised, uncultured, unmannerly wizard in order to teach him some much needed restraint and respect.

Roll initiative!

Amarath goes first and he opens the flap on the bag he is carrying, which has a smiley face embroidered on it. He points at Abelas and says “That one!” and starts laughing. Nothing appears to happen.

Abelas activates his Bladesong cheese and casts Hold Person on Amarath who fails the save with style and is paralysed. The DM implied this had not been a terribly well thought out action (twice actually) but that was because the DM was under the impression that Hold Person granted a save when you take damage. It does not, so this was actually a very good move by the melee-not-melee wizard there!

So then we turn to Joffrey <sigh>.

This was genuine question and not a typically overly-sarcastic DM question because, while the DM has known Adam for a few years now, he could well be colour blind without the DM knowing it and if he was colour blind things could be changed to accommodate that.

Adam isn’t colour blind though, he’s just an idiot.

At least at D&D.

Regulus> I think the problem is that the elf on the picture of Abelas looks quite cool and there’s no way his character looks like that.

<sigh> Shots fired! Just wait till you’re rocking 30AC Jake then they’ll be more respectful.

Oh wait, no they won’t.

It’s the cultists turn and they don’t get involved. They just nod to each other in appreciation of Abelas’s move, obviously understanding the situation better than the DM did at least.

---

Weapons of Cheese

I don’t know if that was a troll or not but thumbs up for it anyway 🙂

CHEEEEESE!

Regulus also preps an attack with similar conditions as Clay.

N’Von, the other Cult Fanatic, mocked Abelas by laughing at him and saying “The peasant thinks he has done something clever”. What the fuck does she know eh?

However, something invisible makes a melee attack on Abelas, which hits but he uses a cheesy Shield, gains 5AC and the attack consequently misses.

The DM informs Clay he can use his prepped attack because something hits Abelas that was adjacent to him and because he can’t see it, he has to pick one of the seven squares adjacent to the wizard to attack and hope it is the one with the attacker in it.

Clay then indicates he wants to attack a completely different square that is not, in fact, adjacent to the wizard at all <sigh>. Clay fires at a newly chosen square but misses. The cultists boo at this uncalled for interjection into a personal duel and they party gets the impression that any further interference will result in a full scale fight (not that that is ever a bad thing).

Unfortunately, Regulus also prepped an attack but he prepped it against ‘anything I see attack Abelas’ and he did not see what attacked him.

This was a DM fuckup by the way, you do in fact get to choose if you take your prepared action or not. I think being forced to is much more fun though!

---

DM cheese is the best cheese <sigh>

Abelas launches a Chromatic Orb attack against Amarath which has advantage because the cultist is paralysed.

Regulus attempts to get Amarath’s Dex bonus to AC removed because CHEEEEESE!

However, not to be too hard on the pscho-bot, Abelas befitted from a significant chunk of DM cheese anyway <sigh>:

Paralysed

– A paralyzed creature is incapacitated (an incapacitated creature can’t take actions or reactions) and can’t move or speak.

– The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.

– Any attack that hits the creature is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature.

Well… shit. Oh well, spilt cheese and all that jazz (jazz Adam, JAZZ!).

So Abelas gains a totally undeserved spell crit and, ignoring Joffrey’s variety of opinions on exactly how that worked, sought confirmation from the DM instead.

---

Fuck me, D&D is complicated – Episode 2: Spell Crits

Single target spells hit for criticals just like any other attack but the DM has house ruled against AoE spell crits because that is A) Cheese B) AoE spells with an attack roll are rare and C) If players can do it, enemies can do it and you really don’t want enemies critting on AoEs.

You cannot crit on the main AoEs, Fireball, Shatter, Sprit Guardians etc for a reason; that’s the route to total party wipes.

However, some spells have an attack roll and an AoE component. Lets have a look at Ice Knife:

You create a shard of ice and fling it at one creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d10 piercing damage. Hit or miss, the shard then explodes. The target and each creature within 5 feet of it must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 cold damage.

In this case, if you roll a 20, the single target portion of 1d10 piercing gets the added crit damage but the second part, 2d6 cold, is an AoE component and does not get doubled.

Next time on ‘Fuck me, D&D is complicated’: invisibility and Faerie Fire.

---

That’s ORBit of all right! (sorry)

Joffrey casts Faerie Fire on the group of bad guys clustered near Abelas.

Half of the cultists, and the Invisible Stalker, failed the save and were lit up. The DM introduces a somewhat different mini to the table; just a plain mini-base called ‘Less Than Invisible Stalker’.

Joffrey turns into a Dire Wolf at the end of his turn and Mike gets picky about the DM having sized it to take up only 40ft instead of 10ft <sigh>.

---

Fuck me, D&D is complicated – Episode 3: Invisible Stalkers and Faerie Fire

Normally, anything invisible that gets lit up by Faerie Fire gets attacked with advantage:

Any attack roll against an affected creature or object has advantage if the attacker can see it, and the affected creature or object can’t benefit from being invisible.

However, the Invisible Stalker is not a visible creature that has turned invisible, it is inherently invisible. All Faerie Fire does is create a glow around it, you still cannot actually see the Invisible Stalker. Thus, the benefits of the stalker’s invisibility are lost (no disadvantage on attack rolls) but the players still cannot see it so no advantage either.

---

You can quote me on that Gary, it’s fine!

All seven of the cultists obey their orders and attack the wizard, five with melee and two with daggers. Abelas blows another spell slot to Shield again and gets hit only once but he could be a bit buggered.

Adam> Whatever happens Jake, you’re in for a world of hurt!

Jake> Nah, I’m fine.

The DM makes a particular note of that because Jake being ‘fine’ is going to come down to whether he make two saves in a row… he just doesn’t know this yet.

Elvira longbows the Stalker but it is resistant to non-magical weapons and takes half damage. A magical Shadow Arrow is launched which deals additional psychic damage but it makes the save and is not blinded/shadowed.

Clay attacked with a warhammer and missed with both style and aplomb. He moved away and got walloped with an attack of opportunity from the Stalker. He then attempted to use his second wind as a bonus action even though his turn had ended. This was discussed at length and even though he is technically able to do it, it was generally agreed that this was still CHEEESE!

Unfair? Maybe. Funny? Definitely.

Speaking of Cheese: N’Von casts Hold Person on Abelas!

“Nah, I’m fine” – Jake, September 2020

He fails the save!

“Ok, I’m not fine!” – Jake, September 2020

Jake desperately turns to Bladesong to save him but Bladesong gives him the middle finger because, good as it is, it aint that good. The wizard is now paralysed and surrounded by enemies that will attack with advantage and auto-crit. The Stalker alone will hit twice for 10 damage each which would both crit for a total of 40 points. That’s gonna hurt!

---

You can certainly try!

Joffrey asks if he could bite-attack Abelas and drag him out of the surrounding mobs. Abelas is a bit unhappy with this but Regulus regards it as a win-win.

However, we are dealing with the vagaries of initiative order and Abelas is next. He gets to spend his turn doing nothing BUT at the end of that turn he gets to make another save. If he fails this one he is is dead.

He made it.

Ok, at this point, and indeed going forwards, you may think the DM is a little harsh on Adam. However, you have to understand that Adam has a history of asking if he can do stupid shit which we then waste time exploring when Adam actually has no actual intention of doing the stupid shit. The DM has previously warned Adam that one of these days he would make him do the stupid shit he ‘just asked’ about. This was the day.

Adam was unimpressed.

The cultists attacked Abelas en-mass and took two hits, one a crit. This was followed up by two dagger throws at the wizard and one of those was a crit too. Guess we know where all of Clay’s good dice rolls went.

WIZARD DOWN!

Sadly, Elvira declined the DM’s suggestion of attacking Abelas with a rope arrow and dragging him out of there.

At this point the DM asked everyone to look at the table and see if they could figure out what the DM had forgotten. Clay correctly pointed at Isaac. Yes, three rounds of combat without even adding the cleric to the initiative board <sigh>

---

Some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue.

Clay tried to land a hit for a change:

Clay Action Surged and attacked again and he hit! He used a trip attack and landed 17 damage but N’Von rolled a 20 on the save because dice just like fucking with Matt I guess.

Isaac gets Abelas back on his feet with a Healing Word.

N’Von, somewhat surprised at Clay having landed an attack, casts Hold Person on him to make sure we put a halt to that kind of behaviour! Clay rolls a one on the save. Mike hasn’t seen Matt on one of his streaks before:

Abelas gets up and Misty Steps out of the brawl much to the scorn of the DM and Regulus. Abelas responded to the scorn with an erudite “Fuck you!” and Tolled the Dead on an unfortunate cultist.

The DM then stuffed the initiative order again <sigh>. Joffrey moved over next to Regulus and cheesed Pack Tactics, which grants advantage when he is next to an ally. An unfortunate cultist died. The rest of the cultists, unable to get to Abelas, ran over and attacked the paralysed Clay. Yet another DM crit landed but that was all that hit.

Regulus pointed out that the Less Than Invisible Stalker hadn’t had a turn because the DM had forgotten about it and stuffed the initiative order yet again <sigh>

Elvira attacked the Stalker but rolled a critical miss, the DM rolled a d6 to see what it hit and it hit, and killed, a cultist instead! Bonus.

Clay rolls for his save against Hold Person!

Clay rolls really low!

---

And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

FIGHTER DOWN!

Matt goes very quiet.

Abelas> There’s maths going on here!

Clay had 14 hit points left out of 36 so it would have taken 50 points to kill him outright. He lives by 8 points!

Joffrey then repeatedly asks Abelas to ‘mount me’ in a distinctly rapey voice. Abelas refuses and Regulus gets upset that he wasn’t asked to mount the Dire Wolf <sigh>

Abelas, faced with four cultists, three of which are lit by Faerie Fire, launches a guaranteed-hit Magic Missile at one of the lit ones instead of the unlit one <sigh>

At this point Abelas is attacked by the Less Than Invisible Stalker and then asked why he didn’t Shield, replies that Shield is a level 2 spell. The ensuing meltdown was highly entertaining and if I reproduced it here would mostly consist of two pages of Jake swearing interspersed with a page of laughter and abuse and a recalculation of all the wizards spell slots because he had been spending them wrong for the entire fight. Good times.

Abelas then redeems himself by dropping a Shatter on the cultists surrounding the downed Clay. This does cause Clay to fail a death save but it kills all four cultists and nicely messes up N’Von as well.

---

Gorgon-fuckin-zola!

Joffrey moves over next to the unconscious Clay and attacks N’Von:

CHEEEEEESE!

<laughter and abuse is hurled at Adam for a while>

The attack, without the benefit of cheesed advantage, still hits and kills N’Von.

The fight wraps up with Clay making a death save and hoping not to get a 1. He gets healed by Joffrey who cheap-ed out with a level 1 Healing Word. The Less Than Invisible Stalker gets pounded by everyone but it has 104 hit points and is resistant to non-magical weapons so it can tank a fair bit. However, Zephyros floats down from his study just long enough to hit it with a level 6 Magic Missile which neatly vaporises the glowing invisible stalker.

Loot is rolled for and Joffrey wins the bag with the smiley face which is actually a Bag of Holding. Inside the bag is a pouch with ten pinches of Pixie Dust. When sprinkled on a creature they roll a d100 and gain the following:

1-70 – Flying speed of 60ft for 10 minutes

71-80 – DC 11 Con save or unconscious for 1 minute

81-90 – DC 11 Wis save or hit by a Confusion spell

91-100 – Invisible for 1 hour.

They were contemplating testing it immediately with the added spice of sprinkling it on the victim volunteer just as they jumped off the cloud.

Adam> <happily> You gave this to the worst possible person didn’t you?

DM> You have a 70% chance of making it, a 20% chance of not caring if you make it and a 10% chance of no one seeing if you make it.

The party marked their victory over the cultists with some celebratory mayonnaise from the Alchemy Jug.

Of course, they have just made an enemy of an entire evil cult but I’m sure it will be fine.

---

Is it a Bard? Is it a Plane? No.. ah crap it IS a bard wait .. is that a fucking DRAGON?!

The following day, the party are outside enjoying the view as the world slips by beneath them when Joffrey spots a huge silver dragon approaching the tower with what appears to be armoured dwarves clutched in its talons. The DM advised them they had a couple of minutes to prepare.

Ok, two things to note A) Isaac is not actually an idiot he is very wise, he just cant add up and reason things out too well. B) The DM is discovering, as Chris did, that having an Intelligence of 5 is a remarkably good excuse for doing things you probably wouldn’t normally do.

The players take refuge inside the tower with the wizard and the druid bravely hiding under the table.

The silver dragon (Clarion) approaches the tower, circles it up at the top and roars at the griffons. The griffons scatter. The dragon then lands on the cloud to the right of the entrance and drops off six dwarves.

One of the dwarves has subdued silver trim on his armour and he turns to the dragon “Would you kindly keep an eye on that one master Clarion?” nodding in Isaac’s direction. Then he turns to his team:

“Lord’s Alliance Strike Squad: you know your orders and you know who gave ‘em! Destroy the navigation orb and end the threat. Bottoms up!”

The dwarves all drink potions and turn into misty clouds. They start moving towards the tower entrance at a speed of 10ft per turn. Clarion takes to the air and moves to a station in front of the main entrance.

Arcana checks were made and the party understands that this is Gaseous Form and while in the form of a misty cloud, the target can’t talk or manipulate objects.

Isaac runs into the tower and starts babbling about Lord’s Alliance turning into clouds and heading towards the tower.

That was the second big Lord’s Alliance hint drop by the DM and he was starting to get that ‘obtuse’ tingle about his players again.

To be fair to Adam, listening back on the audio the DM’s voice was really quiet on the first line and part of it dropped out. This whole miscommunication was still funny though and the whole incident greatly tickled the DM who took some time to get the game back on track. I was very tired, that’s all I’ve got.

---

Negotiations

Regulus proposed talking instead of fighting. That’s a really good idea as Clarion has around 250 hit points, an AC of ‘fuck-me-that’s-hard’ and does three melee attacks at +13 to hit. Not picking a fight with it is a really good idea.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “Generally speaking, the only thing that wins in a fight with a dragon is the dragon”

Joffrey asked if anyone was part of the Lord’s Alliance (the DM never doubted you!). It took a while but Elvira remembered that she was part of that faction.

I’m not sure if this was a judgement on Elvira’s negotiating skills but Joffrey gets a fantastic idea:

The ‘idea’ was relegated to a backup plan which was a good choice because if they had jumped off a perfectly good cloud the DM would have landed them in far deeper shit than the shit they were currently in.

Elvira was bravely volunteered to go and negotiate with the cloud dwarves THAT CANNOT SPEAK. The DM dies a little more inside. Finally Joffrey suggested that Elvira talk to the fucking dragon instead of the fucking dwarves! Halle-fucking-lujah.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “Generally speaking, negotiation is the art of saying ‘now calm down, we’re all friends here!’ until your spellcasters are in range and you can go ‘SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS!’ Unless of course the thing you are negotiating with can swat you like a fly, then it’s a matter of sucking up to it and buying time while the others leg-it.”

Elvira is the sacrificial lamb sent out to be a scooby-snack for the adult dragon:

Elvira explains that she is part of the Lord’s Alliance, that Zephyros is a friendly giant and has no part of the recent attacks and that he is helping restore the ordning.

This is a Persuasion check with a DC of 15. That is made with advantage if the person making it is part of the Lord’s Alliance. It is made with disadvantage if any of the dwarves had been killed. If the check fails, one further check can be made to persuade the dragon. If the second check fails as well, the dragon and the dwarves say they cannot take any chances and they attack the navigation orb crippling the tower. Zephyros will not use violence against them.

Zephyros has descended to the first floor as Elvira approaches Clarion and the situation is tense. However, Elvira rolls an 18 on the first check, Clarion believes her and calls off the attack. The leader of the dwarves is impressed with Elvira’s show of courage facing down an adult dragon and invites her to visit Mithral Hall. The dragon picks up the dwarves and departs the tower.

The DM asks for history checks and several of the party recall that in the times before the humans, dwarves and elves ruled these lands, giants and dragons inhabited them and were dire enemies. That enmity persists to this day.

Ding ding! Level 5!

---

The DM is really going to regret this

Zephyros drops them off about half a day’s travel from Triboar. He doesn’t want to take the tower anywhere near a town at the moment. Before the party departs he passes each of them a pouch with 100g in it for ‘seeing off the unwanted visitors’. Joffrey attempted to embezzle Isaac’s share <sigh>

Zephyros also has an item for Regulus that he got from a friend on the lost island of Lantan. It is a prototype Gnomish Pontification System with a built-in Satisfactory Navigation module. It can tell you where you are (sometimes), it can tell you where the nearest settlement is, it can tell you how long it will take to get there (sometimes), and it can tell you which direction it is in (it is stuck on north). It is also stuck on ‘automatic mode’ but Zephyros doesn’t know what that means.

It can also give you information about the nearest settlement. The accent is rather… annoying. This is what it has to say about Triboar:

– Triboar is a mercantile towwwwn!

– It was built where The Long Road meets the Evermoor Waaaaay!

– The name is thought to originate from a traveller slaying three boars in one day over three–hundred years agoooo!

– Nearly half of Triboar’s population live outside of the town in ranches and farrmsteaaaaads!

– Triboar’s main market is for horses raised on the rancheeeees.

– The town is rules by an elected Lord Protectooooor!

– The laws are enforced by the Triboar Tweeeelve!

– These are mounted warriors drawn from the local militiaaaa!

– Due to its central location, Triboar is home to numerous guides who escort merchants and travellers all over the Sword Cooooooast!

The GPS also runs on cheese (stop laughing!). You need to put a small amount of cheese in the back compartment once a week.

Zephyros gently hands the GPS to Regulus, clearly glad to be rid of it and he then fondly bids farewell to the party and was last seen waving to them from his cloud as he heads off to the Moonshae Isles for a well-deserved holiday.

---

You are in… Tribooooooar!

Half a day later the group enter Triboar and pass a tavern called the Triboar Arms (burned down twice, rebuilt twice!) and take some refreshment. The prices are reasonable, the staff are cordial and the food and drink are good. The owner, a tiefling called Nemyth, informs them of the main layout of the town. The two main areas of interest to the party are the Lionshield Coster to complete their quest for Morak and the Lord Protector’s tower as she may have work for them.

They head over to the Lionshield Coster to complete the quest and do some shopping with Regulus lamenting that he only needs another 1,390 gold pieces to be able to get some plate armour.

The Lionshield Coster looks as if it has been recently refurbished and the party are greeted by the two human proprietors Aleastra Ulgar and Narth Tezrin who ask what they can do for the party today.

---

My CPU is a neural-net processor; a learning computer.

<sigh>

---

Are we learning yet?

---

Bag of Tricks – Grey (The DM is going to regret this as well)

Wondrous Item, uncommon

This ordinary bag, made from grey cloth, appears empty. Reaching inside the bag, however, reveals the presence of a small, fuzzy object. The bag weighs 1/2 pound.

You can use an action to pull the fuzzy object from the bag and throw it up to 20 feet. When the object lands, it transforms into a creature you determine by rolling a d8 and consulting the table that corresponds to the bag’s colour.

The creature is friendly to you and your companions, and it acts on your turn. You can use a bonus action to command how the creature moves and what action it takes on its next turn, or to give it general orders, such as to attack your enemies. In the absence of such orders, the creature acts in a fashion appropriate to its nature.

Once three fuzzy objects have been pulled from the bag, the bag can’t be used again until the next dawn.

D8:

1 – Weasel

2 -Giant Rat

3 – Badger

4 – Boar

5 – Panther

6 – Giant Badger

7 – Dire Wolf

8 – Giant Elk

---

The DM didn’t think he’d regret it quite so soon though…

It was immediately agreed that the creatures summoned by the bag had to have Pokemon names. Joffrey wanted his wild shapes to be part of the bag leading to Regulus saying “I summon YOU… Insensitive Bastard!” <sigh>

Speaking of insensitive bastards, Clay wanted to sell the haversack, a dead man’s gift to the party <sigh>

Then the psycho-bot determined he could summon three creatures each morning and then dissect them just before dawn <sigh>

Once they had stopped being quite so.. well.. them, they headed for the Lord Protector’s keep which seemed quite busy and were shown inside. Darathra Shendrel is the current Lord Protector of Triboar and she greeted the party, identified herself as a Harper to Regulus, and explained that orcs had recently raided an outlying ranch and the Twelve had been dispatched to investigate.

In the meantime she had a more underhanded task that she needed unknown people for, people who could take care of themselves. About five years ago a rich, retired adventurer called Hyuth Kolstaag had leased some land from the Crown and built a mansion on a ridge overlooking the north part of town.

Kolstaag is a complete dick, had many enemies anyway and made a bunch more once he moved into town. Recently, three assassins tried to eliminate him. They failed. As they escaped town they killed a stableboy on a nearby ranch. Kolstaag has neither admitted any responsibility nor offered compensation to the family.

After the assassination attempt, Kolstaag has enlisted four gargoyles to guard his estate. Unfortunately, they get bored just being perched on the corners of the mansion and have taken to swooping down on passing travellers to scare them. Meetings with Kolstaag have proven fruitless as he stubbornly refused to see the problem.

Darathra wants the party to walk past, provoke an ‘attack’ from the gargoyles and obviously be forced to defend themselves vigorously. She asked that they avoid direct confrontation with the wizard if they could help it and stated she could handle the fallout if they handle the gargoyles.

The party tried to tell Darathra a seemingly endless stream of inanities she either already knew or just didn’t give a single toss about and eventually they ran out of things she didn’t need to hear and fucked off.

---

Rock On!

The DM moves the party up near The Boar’s Rest.

Regulus> I don’t want to get into a fight now because I haven’t chosen my names yet for my creatures. I’ll end up with shit ones like Badgernator and… Weaselor!

Jake then derailed the entire session for about 10 minutes by saying that even Mike’s godawful names were better than the current iteration of Pokemon and sparking a lengthy nerdgasm debate <sigh>

Thankfully, the second time through the DM could listen to it on double speed so they all sounded like smurfs. Good times.

As they saunter close to the estate trying to look conspicuous (it’s the opposite of ‘fly casual’), two gargoyles lift off from the building and close on the party screeching threateningly. Making full use of Isaac’s 5 Int the DM has him scream “DEMONS!” and Guiding Bolts the lead gargoyle. Roll initiative!

Clay> One of my better rolls this evening… seven!

---

That moment when the DM asks “Are you sure?”

DM> You get a surprise round because they definitely were not expecting to be attacked back.

Elvira has a gargoyle up in her grill so she goes melee and double stabs it.

The DM forgets again what Dual Wielding is called in D&D; Two Weapon fighting. Load of pish.

Joffrey runs into the age old druid problem; so much cool shit to use and only one concentration spell. He is also reticent about blowing too many spell slots too early. The DM knows this will be the only fight of the day though and tempts him into using Call Lightning.

A 60ft diameter storm cloud appears above the battlefield, helpfully highlighted in bright pink by the DM. Joffrey can now use an action to call a bolt of lightning down which hits everything in a 5ft radius of the impact point. This will be somewhat important later.

Having not nuked the house, Joffrey retreats a bit and Wild Shapes into a Dire Wolf.

Clay figures he needs all the help he can get and moves into a flanking position opposite Boarax Thismightchange for the +2. He rolls a 5 and misses. His second attack hit though. He then Action Surged and did another two attacks.

At this point there was a discussion on the flanking bonus:

I think they all missed that one 🙂

We couldn’t fit ‘Second Lastbelas’ on the initiative tracker so had to settle for ‘Not Lastbelas’. While this does not adequately sum up Jake’s hideously bad initiative, it had to do.

A combination of Chromatic Orb, a warhammer, some double stabby shortswords and double lightning attacks took out the first two gargoyles with relatively few issues.

---

Unintended consequences

Then it was Joffrey’s turn but he didn’t want to hit the house with his Call Lightning so he held his attack:

CHEEEEEESE!

At the end of that round a very angry wizard appears from the house demanding to know what the hell was going on.

---

Until we meat again!

Magic Missiles and a near-max longbow attack from Elvira obliterated the fourth gargoyle leaving only the wounded third gargoyle next to Boarax Thatmightchange.

Nobody chose to attack the wizard and combat ends. The wizard had a proper meltdown and strops off to see the Lord Protector. A nearby nondescript farm hand approaches Regulus, winks and informs him that a number of carefully placed witnesses saw who attacked first and he advises them to lay low for a couple of hours and then go collect their reward.

The group decide to head back to the Triboar Arms for a drink but first Regulus squares off with the Dire Wolf Joffrey:

---

Regulus is so disgusted he just walks off. Joffrey tucks in. Abelas and Elvira walk off with Regulus. Joffrey takes a fried leg over to Clay as a peace offering. Clay throws it and calls out “Fetch!”.

So three of them head to the bar and Joffrey and Clay stay behind playing fetch.

Let us take a moment to member Boarax Thatmightchange and all the joy he brought us with his all too brief existence.

Ok, moment over, IT’S BARBECUE TIME!

End of Session.

---

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Starring:

• Matt as Clay the Battlemaster- Romancer
• Isaac the Inattentive Cleric – Ranter
• Mike as Remulus the Artificer – Not meaning to be offensiver
• Jake as Abelas the gimpy Wizard – Non-scriber of scrolls-er
• Christina as Elvira the Arcane Archer – Slasher
• Adam as Joffrey the Druid – Destroyer of RPer
• Gary as The Disorganised DM – Non-recorder of the second half-er

---

Author’s note 1: After last week’s epic you will be delighted to know this week will be a much shorter write up. Mainly because the DM boomered the recording but also because they spent 3.5 hours planning a fight that took 3 minutes.

Author’s note 2: I wrote Author’s note 1 right at the start. I mean, I only had 90 minutes of audio from a three-hour session and a chunk of the missing section was in-character exposition that could be dramatically reduced in the review right? Right. However, I forgot what generally happens when Chris and Adam start interacting <sigh>. Consequently, this one turned almost as long as the last one.

---

Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have arrived in the fortified village of Nightstone only to find its human inhabitants have fled following an aerial attack by giants in a floating castle.

– The village was cleared of scavenging goblins and then attempts by both the Zhentarim and a bunch of mostly-peaceful Orcs to take over the village were foiled.

– Our heroes proceeded to the Dripping Caves to rescue the villagers. They killed the goblins and ogres but Q’Aren was killed by a Black Pudding.

---

Pre-session Guff

Five minutes into pre-session guff the DM realised he had forgotten to install OBS to record it <sigh> His request that everyone repeat everything they had said in those previous five minutes was met with substantial resistance. Mainly the discussion was about the suddenness of Q’Aren’s demise.

The DM put on the sad depressing music but the group felt that was inappropriate for how they felt about her passing and so thanks to Spotify, further discussions were held while Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead! was playing in the background.

The DM reminded the players he was running the game on a newly rebuilt machine and absolutely nothing could go wrong.

Adam and Jake attempted to explain to Mike why, at the place we work, South Block was not actually south of North Block but east of it. This made perfect sense to someone who got paid far more than we do <sigh>

Chris arrived:

• Mike> It turns out Chris, and I don’t mean this to sound offensive…
• > everyone waits for Mike to sound offensive
• Mike> …but last week you’ve done the most useful thing by not being here.
• Chris> <almost but not entirely unenthusiastically> Fantastic..
• Mike> You have discovered that you can cast Silence ritually.
• Adam> Yeah, you had your best week last week Chris.
• Chris> I channelled myself through the DM.
• Mike> To be fair, Q’Aren died so everyone had their best week last week.

Chris asked the DM if he could in fact cast Silence ritually, the DM did indeed confirm that it has the ritual tag, Chris asked if he had to have it on his spell list, the DM dismissed such tosh and pointed out that it was on his spell list now. DM cheese is the best cheese!

This is also why the DM prefers to delegate characters/NPCs to the other players, especially after the whole Wanye-killing-Imix thing, but dicking over Isaac is probably too much temptation for the other players. Whereas the DM will dick over everyone equally of course… er… except Adam. Adam gets dicked over far more than anyone else because Adam deserves it. Ok, this has gotten more off track than Adam’s current Hitler-youth lesbian haircut, onwards!

---

Asshat and Battery

The party are gathered outside of the bat cave which has a convenient 20ft sphere of silence cast over the big gaping hole in the middle of it AND which is circled in bright pink by the DM to indicate where it was. Chris, who wasn’t here last week, was confused:

• DM> Silence has been cast and as sound cannot pass through it, you can now operate safely in the cave without getting bit to fuck. Er… that’s a technical zoological term used by bat keepers by the way.
• Jake> Silence is all well and good but we’ll have to make sure no one with a light source goes in there.
• Chris> So.. just.. er.. someone… what’s in here?
• Jake> Bats.
• DM> Thousands and thousands of bats.
• Chris> Oh, ok.
• DM> <pretending to be butthurt> Did you not read the write-up that I literally spent twelve fucking hours making so you would understand what you missed?!
• Chris>Yeah, I understood it <obviously he did not> I’m just clarifying if… I thought that was where the Black Pudding was, potentially, that was all.
• Jake> The black Pudding is right there…
• DM> <pointing at the gigantic Black-Pudding-eating-an-orc- mini> So you missed this here?
• Chris> Oh nice, that’s cool, ok, I’m with you.
• DM> Attention to detail, and that’s why he isn’t an analyst any more.

Shots fired!

Regulus and Abelas were discussing who should go into the cave to talk to the villagers:

• Regulus> We should get Daphne to come in with us because I’m thinking we are quite a peculiar looking group.
• Abelas> I feel that I’m the least threatening looking of all of us because I basically look like a sickly elf.
• Regulus> And, to be fair, you are the least threatening of all of us.
• Abelas> <unintelligible>-bitch!
• Regulus> If one these people stumble on you, you could die!
• Abelas> I only have two less hit points than Q’Aren had!
• <general laughter>
• Dead-Q’Aren> You’ve got a lot more than she has now!

---

Ritualisation

Chris brought up the ritual casting of Silence once again as Isaac didn’t have it prepared. The DM suggested he should roll with it and left a message for future Gary to look it up so I’m looking it up.

Ritual casting takes 10minutes plus the usual spellcasting time and does not cost a spell slot. However, the confusion arises from how ritual casting is applied differently to Wizards and Clerics:

Wizards have a spellbook of all the spells they know of which they memorise/prepare a selection for use. They can ritually cast anything in the spellbook (that has a ritual tag) so any ritual they know, they can cast without preparing it.

Clerics know all of their spells automatically but, like Wizards, can only memorise a selection of them for use. However, the Cleric ritual casting reads as follows: “You can cast a cleric spell as a ritual if that spell has the ritual tag and you have the spell prepared.”

So Clerics are much more limited to what they can ritually cast than Wizards but Wizards have to find all their spells.

On the next episode of ‘Fuck me, D&D is complicated’ we will cover the difference between invisible and hidden, and discuss if invisible creatures provoke attacks of opportunity. My, that sounds like fun!

---

Be a prick hour

Isaac decided he didn’t want Abelas to go into the dark cave and insisted he cast light on him. Abelas insisted he could see in the dark. Isaac didn’t believe him as “The dark is all encompassing!” and the psycho-bot interjected and asked Abelas if he could have the elf’s magic eyes when he was dead <sigh>

The DM interrupted the argument discussion to provide the above details on Cleric ritual casting but said it was ok because “It’s in the UA! Trust me, I’m a DM!”

He also apologised for not listening to the argument discussion and asked for a recap:

• DM> So what were you arguing about.. sorry, what were you ‘discussing’?
• Abelas> For some reason Isaac wants to be a prick and cast Light on me.
• Isaac> The Light is all-encompassing!
• Abelas> I keep telling him I can see in the dark…
• Isaac> Lathander doesn’t want you to go into the darkness, it’s dangerous and you’re my friend.
• Regulus> And I was procuring your eyes when you die.. you’ve said that now…
• Abelas> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, if I die…
• <At this point, probably because of years of playing with a DM who is very strict on the exact wording of such things, Abelas hesitates and actually thinks about it>
• Abelas> .. no.. if I am absolutely dead and I can’t be brought back, then you can have my eyes.

Meanwhile the DM had been thinking how to diffuse the situation so we could actually get on with it and informed Isaac that he currently had Light cast on his shield and if he cast Light on Abelas, his own Light would go out. This was obviously not going to happen and so the gimpy wizard proceeded into the cave unlit.

But only after Regulus tinkered a lit stone and tried to pass it to Abelas to which the elf plaintively asked “Is this ‘be a prick hour’?!”.

Yes, yes it is.

---

Karma; she knows what you did and she knows where you are

There are approximately 30 villagers scattered on the ledges above the sunken centre of the cave. There are a mix of races present, some of which have darkvision and some that do not. There are several wounded town guards and an unconscious male human. And a lot of bat shit.

Abelas approached an older looking male dwarf that waved to him. Regulus asked if there were any gingers because he didn’t want to rescue gingers <sigh>

Abelas whispered to the dwarf about the Silence spell and the DM asked him why he was whispering. Jake then suffers a minor meltdown as he starts to object but then remembers, out loud, all the things the DM had just said about the area of silence and explained, in detail, exactly why his brain had failed to process this information. Good times.

So everyone, including the DM had a good laugh at Jake’s expense but Karma, however, is indeed like Drikk Fra-Kar’s first wife (a monk): she can run really, really fast and she will catch up to you:

• DM> He introduces himself as Morak, the owner of the Nightstone Inn. He says most of the people here are fine if a little bit malnu… malnooo… malnor… trish… oh for fuck… malnourished! <sigh>
• Chris> Malnourished!
• Jake> Malnourished!
• DM> <because this is not the first campaign that word has been a problem> Why that word?! Why ALWAYS that fucking word?! For fucks sake brain, get in gear!
• Mike> Hungry and thirsty!
• DM> Thin and dehydrated!

The DM, once his brain did get in gear, explains that there is also a 30-ish-year-old human present, Adam’s new character, a druid called Joffrey Nettlefisted or something.

---

OH COME ON!

Everyone else can walk with some assistance but this dude is unconscious. So now they have to decide how to get the unconscious Joffrey out if the cave:

• Abelas> So they can all leave on their own but I can.. er.. I’ll go and pick up Joffrey.
• Adam> What’s your strength?
• Abelas> Oh fuck…
• <laughter>
• Abelas> I’ll try and pick him up, why not? This might be… am I actually going to drop you and kill you?
• Regulus> Or you could just come out and ask if anyone has any spare healing spells?
• Abelas> Yeah, but I’m proud!
• DM> What’s your Strength?
• Abelas> Er.. thirteen, it’s not bad.
• DM> Not, it’s not bad… it’s not good either. Well what we will do then is you can pick him up, you can bear the weight but it’s dark in there and it’s slippery because everything is covered in bat shit so let’s do an Athletics check..
• <laughter>
• DM> …to see if you can get him back down that slope.
• Regulus> It should be an Acrobatics check…
• Abelas> <rolling> No, it shouldn’t! OH COME ON!
• <Jake rolled low. Really low>
• DM> The two of you tumble down the slope and into the zone of silence and Joffrey you have just failed one death save.
• <Amidst more laughter, Adam offers up a short prayer to a heathen deity>
• Abelas> <laughing> Am I actually going to get you killed?

The DM is a dick, but he’s not enough of a dick to kill Adam’s new character before he even got to use him. Although it was tempting.

Abelas furtively looks around, realises no one saw him, casually picks up the druid and carries him out of the bat cave as if nothing happened:

• Regulus> What have you found elf?
• Abelas> <dramatically> I have found… this!
• Regulus> Is he dead? Can he be dissected?
• Abelas> He is not dead yet!
• Regulus> Let’s give it a minute…

---

WELCOME!

Regulus reluctantly casts Cure Wounds on the druid and Joffrey is born! Let’s hope he lives longer than the last one.

• Regulus> He is functioning again.
• Joffrey> Ugh, what the fuck? Who dropped me in bat shit?
• Regulus> That would be…
• Abelas> That would be me!
• Regulus> .. him!
• DM> So there are around thirty villagers streaming out of the bat cave, what are you going to do?
• Isaac> <To Joffrey> WELCOME! Lathander will protect you!
• Joffrey> Er.. can I cast Shape Water on this pool and clean my clothes with it please?
• DM> You can absolutely give it a go <poker face is holding… oh wait, Adam can’t see it anyway>
• Joffrey> I’m going to do that.
• Regulus> This is the water… <thinks better of the warning>.. Ok!
• Abelas> Ok, good!
• Joffrey> <Adam realises he just forgot something from last week> Oh, I should have said the bottle of water from my pack…
• Abelas> Yes you should!
• DM> So this is The Polluted Pool…
• <laughter>
• DM> The water is polluted with toxic minerals so you have just made yourself quite a bit dirtier. Adam, would you like to explain to the others what Joffrey is wearing?
• Joffrey> I was wearing a luminous white cloak because I am part of the church of Selune.
• DM> <ever so slightly very sarcastically> Because that’s the perfect thing to go adventuring in.

Adam explains that Joffrey is a bit of a germophobe and doesn’t like getting dirty. Then he does indeed use his own clean water to remove most of the dirt and bat shit.

---

There I was, a-digging this hole…

A spirited discussion took place on whether or not to go kill the Black Pudding. At this point Chris started drawing on the map because the DM has a new install and all of the TTS permissions he previously disabled were now re-enabled and thus the DM proceeded to re-disable everything with some alacrity because players are twats who have to touch everything.

I love you guys really.

You’re still twats who have to touch everything though.

The DM goes to call up the Nightstone map but has to go via the main SKT table art which shows a Storm Giant beneath a large boat which Chris hasn’t seen before:

• Chris> Oh, wow..
• Mike> Oh yeah, we came on a boat Chris.
• Adam> Then we… travelled in it…
• <groans>

<sigh>

The main Nettlestone map loads in:

• Chris> Oh, this place looks better than it did the other day.
• > confusion as this is the same map
• Mike> No… it looks pretty much the same.
• Chris> Oh, maybe it was just darker in the room I’m in at the moment.
• Adam> A Light Cleric confused by light.
• Mike> And yet I suspect even you wouldn’t have gone in to fight a Black Pudding with five hit points.
• Chris> No… I do need to kill it though because it is black and black is dark and dark is bad.
• <sounds of fake shock and outrage erupt from the other players because the year is 2020 and the world is insane>
• Chris> <realising what he said and the times we are living in, starts back-pedalling fast> For the recording, it is because I’m a LIGHT CLERIC! I’m all of sudden seeing the KKK connotations of my class and race…
• Adam> Do you want to borrow my white robes?
• Chris> NO! Well this is spiralling quickly!

We are now an hour into the session and Christina says hello on Discord. She has been with us for quite a while but couldn’t get a word in through the abuse, blatant racism, constant diatribe, and absolute bollocks.

---

“Meta-prick!” – Uffo the bard 2018

Back in the village, Morak takes charge of organising care for the wounded and initial rebuilding efforts. In addition, a messenger is dispatched to Lady Nandar’s people in Waterdeep so they can arrange relief efforts and send a new sovereign.

The DM enquired if the party, once rested, wished to go back and kill the ooze and explore the last bit of the Dripping Caves. Mike became obsessed with some special ability he thought he remembered Black Puddings have besides the ‘split when hit with slashing’ thing.

The DM allowed him a nature check to see if he would ‘remember’ it (spoilers; there’s nothing to remember) he rolled high and learned that Black Puddings are exceptionally good at killing low hit-point Half-Orcs.

> Post-publish edit: Mike has complained pointed out that one of the things lost in the missing audio was the discovery that Black Puddings also split when hit by lightning. This level of pedantry is clearly uncalled for because who really cares if the thing splits in two and doubles its damage output in the staggeringly unlikely chance that A) A player is playing an Artificer B) That artificer chooses ranged spec and C) That ranged spec artificer hits the Pudding with a lightning attack, right? Right. Sheesh, some people.

Chris apologised for bringing up the ooze weakness thing but the DM explained why he generally doesn’t give a toss about it: it is really hard to separate what the player knows from what the character knows.

Narrative meta-gaming, where a player exploits previous knowledge about what is about to happen in the story, is bad as it ruins it for the other players but meta-gaming relating to creatures is a much more nuanced issue.

Take werewolves and vampires for example, these don’t exist in our world (or do they?!?!) and yet we know quite a lot about their supposed weaknesses because we tell tales about them. In a society without TV or Hollywood, tales are the main form of entertainment and so the characters could have picked up all sorts of information about all sorts of creatures.

As long as you aren’t looking up, purely for example, Banshees in the monster manual (Adam) then don’t worry about it too much.

---

Silence is not golden

The DM asks the party two questions:

– Will you help with the repairs?

– Will you return the stuff you looted from these people’s homes?

On the repairs, Regulus was enthusiastic and they agreed stay on in the village and help out for a couple of days while Morak gives them free room and board at the Nightstone Inn.

As for the loot, Regulus and Abelas immediately agreed to return the items they ‘acquired’. Isaac, Elvira and Clay said nothing.

Adam, who would have returned the loot over Q’Aren’s dead body (if one was left), suddenly decides Joffrey is offended by the idea that this party loots stuff and looting is an offence to Selune.

The DM looks forward to all the occurrences in the future of this campaign where Adam has to override all his natural D&D instincts to do whatever is best for Adam at the expense of anyone or anything else (Womford anyone?) because Selune thinks it is bad.

I would remind you, dear reader, that in this game the deities are real, their powers are real, their ability to withhold spells from wayward magic casters is very real and they are played by the DM. Happy times ahead!

Several items were returned to Morak who, as a former adventurer, fully understood the looting of a seemingly abandoned village. The act of compassion cost the party about 120 gold in returned trinkets and raised the standing of the party in the village.

---

And this is why we can’t have nice things RP

• DM> Having returned the items via Morak, your standing in the village is now quite high.
• Abelas> I bet our standing is even higher now that Q’Aren is dead!
• <laughter>
• DM> That evening as you are eating a good, hot meal, Morak approaches with an old cask telling you that ‘This is the good stuff’ and invites you to get drunk and tell him what you remember about Q’Aren who died saving the villagers.
• Regulus> Who?
• <laughter>
• Isaac> I just sit there quietly playing with my holy symbol occasionally lighting it up and don’t really talk about it.
• Joffrey> What’s your holy symbol, a spliff?
• Isaac> It’s about the size of a half-pint glass and the base of it is made out of metal which has several sort of inlays and then the top half of it is made of a transparent material with several tiny bits of metal inside of it that zig-zag in the middle and then poke down at either sides. Whenever I hold it up, it lights up.
• Regulus> Isn’t it a chalice?
• Isaac> It can be whatever I want it to be.
• Regulus> Fair enough… I thought Lathander was a chalice.
• DM> <sigh> Sounds like a light bulb to me.
• Regulus> Yes, nice!
• Isaac> That’s exactly what it is, thanks Gary. That went over everyone’s head except the DM’s!
• Joffrey> I stopped listening about halfway through because I didn’t need all this.
• Isaac> That’s because you gave <unintelligible> you petulant little cunt!
• <laughter>
• <Also, first c-bomb of the campaign?? I think so! And it wasn’t Jake!>
• Abelas> Oh! Language!
• Isaac> I thought, you know, maybe drop a little bit of RP, maybe make a little bit of an effort but no, channelling Ari, Q’Aren and every other cockwomble you’ve played..
• Abelas> You’re wasted here!
• DM> <sigh> Joffrey, would you like to share anything about yourself with your new companions?
• Isaac> I hope you… choke on a bone you prick…
• <more laughter>
• Jofrrey> Why do you guys bring this dick along with you?
• <Jake sounds like he is struggling to breath at this point>
• Isaac> Honestly, you spoil everything… Literally everything…
• Regulus> <laughing> Isaac was a little less sweary last week if I remember..
• Isaac> You literally are the worst person I have ever met.
• <more laughter>
• Isaac> Honest to god.. I literally had like a ten-second bit of RP. “I stopped listening”?! I hope you trip over your cat and stub your toe on something!
• DM> Its penis?
• <there’s a reason the DM said this, it isn’t going in print but Adam and cat penises is a thing>
• Isaac> Yeah, I hope you kick it in the dick and have to massage it because you’re good at that!
• <laughter that is now verging on hysterical>
• DM> I have to type this shit up!
• Isaac> I spent a good half-hour thinking up a really clever little holy symbol, it’ll be a light bulb, hold it over my head, Lathander will make it light up, that’ll be nice, “I stopped listening halfway through”, oh god, you know what? If you ever start choking to death, I’m going to stop resuscitating you half way through and just let nature take its course and do us all a favour!
• <by now the laughter is very much on the hysterical side>
• A few seconds pass while everyone tries to get their shit together.
• DM> <still struggling> Joffrey… Joffrey, was there anything <starts loses it again> … anything you wanted to share with the… rest of the… party?
• <the DM dissolves into a fit>
• Joffrey> Not now!
• <everyone loses it again>

---

Pronunciation

The party are discussing going back after the Pudding when Chris asks:

• Isaac> Gary, before we go, obviously I missed some bits, is there anywhere like a religious temple or place here for prayer or stuff?
• DM> Yes, there’s a church to… hold on one second caller… <starts looking it up>
• Regulus> That was Meilikki wasn’t it?
• DM> Good memory except it was Mellikkikkiki which is, of course, the proper pronouncement.
• > great grammar there from the DM!
• DM> Er… number five. Temple: wooden temple is… ah, shit. <sigh> This wooden temple is dedicated to Lathander and Mellikkikkiki.
• Isaac> Fuckin A! That’s a good bit of luck. Right.. er.. I’d like to…
• Regulus> Retire?
• Isaac> <laughing> No, I’d like to.. that’s amazing, I’d like to spend the morning encouraging all the villagers to come to the temple so I can hold a sermon on the benefits of worshipping Lathander!

Persuasion rolls were made, and given that Isaac was one of the group that rescued the village, and that the gods are very real in this setting, the villagers agreed and crowded into the church for the sermon. Joffrey went along as he is ‘tolerant of other religions’ and Regulus went along to randomly fix things in the church during the sermon.

---

Ding, ding!

Once again, planning resumed for the return to the Pudding (this is actually the fourth time) and then the DM remembered a minor issue he had overlooked and announced everyone had gained a level. Welcome to level 4!

Clay decides to go around the village trying to chat up women due to his randomly-rolled character trait of perpetuating the clan or something <sigh>.

At this point the second minor item the disorganised DM had forgotten was remembered and Morak had the key to the Lionshield Coster vault and sold them items up to 75g in value.

Adam was deeply disappointed when the DM informed him he was penniless because he was caught by goblins.

The DM explained how, going forwards, we would be breaking expenses down into those ‘of consequence’ and those ‘not of consequence’. We aren’t going to bother with a handful of silver pieces for staying at an inn, for example, but if you want to stay at a posh boarding house for 5gp a night, then that we will deduct it.

Shopping commenced:

• – Clay suggested buying a bucket to put Q’Aren’s remains in <sigh>.
• – Abelas scribed his Comprehend Languages scroll until the DM asked if he had the 50g it takes. He did not.
• – Regulus finally got some heavy armour.

---

A Polite Ideological Disagreement

And then we went off to fight the Pudding but there was a minor religious war on the way <sigh>.

• Isaac> I bid my congregation farewell.
• Joffrey> Joffrey was asleep at the back.
• Isaac> <singing> That’s coz he’s a diiiick!
• Joffrey> I fell asleep half way through…
• > shots fired
• Isaac> What’s your god? Your fake prophet? Your false idol?
• > shots returned!
• Joffrey> <shocked> Selune!
• Regulus> Selune?! That’s the opposite to.. so you’ve got the dawn… and the dusk
• > The DM dies a little inside on realising this. It’s going to be a long campaign
• Isaac> Seloone? How do you spell that? Is it like a place you get drunk and piss on the floor?
• Joffrey> No, Sel-une you illiterate… hang on.. what’s your intelligence?
• Isaac> Seven? Five? More than you can count.
• Joffrey> Actually, I think I can count higher than you because your intel… . intely? .. int… is… er.. lower than mine..
• > ’Malnourished’ motherfucker! Welcome to the club!
• Isaac> Wow! “Your intel is low!”
• Joffrey> <laughing> I didn’t say mine was high! But it’s definitely higher than yours!
• Isaac> Selune… yep, she looks like a bitch. Lady of Silver?
• Joffrey> Yeah?
• Isaac> Chaotic good.. what a fucking surprise. Moon Maiden… sounds like a cow.. and the Night White Lady… yeah, sounds shit mate..
• > This went on for some time

It turns out that the lowest rank in the church of Selune (like Joffrey) is ‘Touched’, which set off a whole stream of touching priests jokes <sigh>.

---

Longest Fight Ever Shortest Fight Ever (longest planning session ever)

The pudding is in a stalagmite inside a small cave with three passageways leading to it. The main problem here is the very limited room which would put most of the players within melee distance of the stalagmite, and the Pudding has full cover while it is in there.

The planning for this took forever. Now, to be fair to the players, last week they saw one of their companions one-shotted by this thing. However, it really isn’t that dangerous.

Last week the DM pointed out that according to Kobold Fight Club (Yip yip!) a Black Pudding vs five level 3 adventurers is a Medium difficulty fight. Now they have six level 4 adventurers and that doesn’t even register as an Easy fight. In fact, the DM had to add a second Black Pudding to the fight to get it to Medium so this was all a bit OTT but they seemed to be enjoying arguing having tactical discussions.

Plan 1 – by Clay:

Clay casts Pass Without a Trace and the players sneak past the stalagmite to position themselves in the three tunnels. Provoke it (somehow) and attack.

Plan 2 – By Regulus

Regulus and Abelas prep Magic Missile and a sucker brave volunteer provokes the Pudding to attack from its lair. Clay was nominated. The DM wondered what their plan was after the two Magic Missiles hit for at best, a quarter of its hit points while the brave volunteer has lost most of his.

Plan 3 – By Isaac

Clay casts Pass Without a Trace and the players sneak past to investigate the unexplored area and then leave the Pudding alone. Joffrey attempted to modify this plan by having him set fire to the stalagmite to drive the Pudding out. It was gently pointed out that this was in fact, the polar opposite of what Plan 3 set out to do.

At this point the DM seeks to add some sort of structure to the discussion at least and positions the minis adjacent to the 5ft wide passageway leading into the Pudding cave:

• DM> You are approaching from this direction and I need a marching order. Who is at the front?
• > silence
• > more silence
• > sudden laughter
• DM> <sigh> The sound of tumbleweed…

The DM explained that we were going to line up, roll initiative, and the Pudding would not act on the first turn as it wasn’t actually aware that they were there. The DM also, just to be a dick, dropped the possibility that the Pudding wasn’t actually in there any more and all this bollocks was pointless.

Regulus pondered once more on the thing he had forgotten about Puddings and the DM got busy duplicating about 8 Pudding clones purely as a wind-up.

Now that we had initiative (and Regulus had attempted to cheese it and Abelas was Lastbelas again) the players had a better idea of what the difficulties were. The difficulties were more difficult than they had anticipated. As this became more apparent, we had Plan 4:

Plan 4 – By Joffrey

• Joffrey> Just drop a Shatter on the block in the middle
• Regulus> That would actually work.
• Abelas> That isn’t a bad shout. I don’t know what would happen but we’d probably piss it off. I could Shatter and then Misty Step out.

This plan did involve everyone moving into the side passages and then shattering it out. This proved to be complicated and we then had Plan 5, a variation on Plan 1:

Plan 5 – By Clay

They all move past the stalagmite making a lot of noise and head into the new area hoping it would come out and follow.

This would actually happen and is in fact what is supposed to happen if the players are unaware of the Pudding. As this was supposed to happen, obviously it did not happen <sigh>

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena, once said: “As adventurers you have two reliable and trusted staples of violence that are easy to utilise and have been proven to fuck things up 99% of the time: brute force and fire. Generally speaking you should just try Plan A: stab the fucker with something pointy. If it proves to be resistant to pointy things go to Plan B: try setting the fucker on fire. If it looks really fucking dangerous Plan C involves setting it on fire first and then stabbing it with pointy things. If it was already on fire when you met it then you are probably fucked and might want to rethink your strategy. Running the fuck away is always a good Plan D.”

At this point the DM boomered the recording so any further plans, and there were several further plans, are now sadly lost so we will skip to the Final Plan!

Final Plan:

They relocated to the main cave and then Lastbelas cast his ‘move-the-gimpy-wizard-a-bit-faster’ Bladesinger ability and used Mage Hand to empty an oil flask into the stalagmite. This was then ignited with a Firebolt and Lastbelas legged it back to the main cave.

Thankfully for Lastbelas the Black Pudding is even slower than he is with only a 20ft movement speed and it dashed out of the cave after him. It made it halfway down the 5ft wide passageway.

From there it was subject to a barrage of ranged attacks and Elvira hit it with an Entangling Arrow; 2d6 piercing damage and it is entangled. When it moves it takes damage or it can waste an action removing the brambles. Unfortunately, the brambles do slashing damage and this caused the Pudding to split when it next moved.

The main event in this fight was Joffrey using his first ever Wild Shape and turned into a Dire Wolf. This was really cool! Well it was up until the DM put the mini on the table and Joffrey realised he had just turned into a large creature and couldn’t fit down the passageway lolz.

The two puddings were dispatched in about a tenth of the time it took to actually plan the fight and the adventurers retired back to the village.

---

A-questing we shall go

Morak had a task for the party: the villager in the Dripping Caves that had been fed to Pho’Hark’s giant rats was Darthag Ulgar the owner of the Lionshield Coster and Morak’s friend. Morak requested the party bring news of Darthag’s passing to his widow Aleastra Ulgar who runs the Lionshield Coster in Triboar.

When the party agreed to do this, Morak gave them two magical items from his adventuring days as payment. Some of the party (you know who you are!) bitched about not being given these rewards for saving the town so they were handed to more grateful members of the team.

Look, the town is not Morak’s, it belongs to a bunch of rich twats in Waterdeep. Morak just wants a job done and is willing to pay for it. If you want a reward for saving the town, go see the owners in Waterdeep. Good luck convincing them that they owe you anything though.

Joffrey got an Alchemy Jug and Isaac got an Amulet of the Drunkard which heals when you drink alcohol (once per day).

---

Statuesque

As they leave the inn on the second day Morak informs them that there is something outside he wants them to see. It appears that the miller’s daughter, Hildy Delfryndel, is a budding sorceress who is adept at shaping stone.

In the middle of the town square, where once stood the obsidian Nightstone, is now a large carving. The stone seems to have been formed of the rocks dropped by the cloud giants, magically moulded together to form a 4ft square plinth upon which stands a life-sized statue of Q’Aren.

She is holding a greatsword aloft with one hand while she strangles a goblin with the other and she is screaming in victory. A discarded shield lies at her feet.

The inscription on the front of the plinth reads:

Q’Aren – Hero of Nightstone

She died as she lived – screaming

On the left side of the plinth is carved:

She was the loudest of us

On the right side of the plinth is carved:

Her brave companions will always remember her last words to them: “Come my robot friend! Turn on vibrate mode!”

On the back of the plinth are carved several line of verse:

Through early morning mists I see

A horde of orcs, charging at me

Their manager, I’ll go and see

And scream at him until he pees

The party made some touching farewell comments to their fallen comrade such as “I don’t care” and “Yeah, whatever” so let us all take a brief moment to remember Q’Aren and all the joy and pain she brought to our lives for the brief time she was with us.

Ok, moment over, off to Triboar.

---

Cardio

A couple of days later the party spot an enormous tower floating on a billowy cloud a thousand feet overhead. The tower appears to be hundreds of feet tall, and its spire looks strangely like a wizard’s pointy hat.

The tower drifted closer to the party and a spiral staircase made of clouds formed underneath it.

The players were asked if they wanted to investigate and they did so enthusiastically. Their characters may not have been quite so enthusiastic when they got to the top of the 1,000ft staircase.

The cloud at the top of the stairs is as firm and safe as solid ground and the group tentatively entered the ground floor. The main area is a 100ft high hexagonal chamber with a giant-sized table and chair and a number of braziers lit with Continual Flame spells.

There is a 20ft wide hole in the ceiling through which descends a cloud giant named Zephyros:

---

The Important Stuff

Zephyros introduces himself and asks the players’ names. As they respond he starts smiling and explains that he has been looking for them.

He explains that giant society is caste based and the castes are ranked by the ordning, a system imposed upon them by their gods, especially Annam the All-Father. Traditionally the ordning ranks the giants as follows:

• Storm Giants – powerful and wise, generally good and bad
• Cloud Giants – aloof and aristocratic, generally good and bad
• Fire Giants – tyrannical and warmongering, generally bad
• Frost Giants – merciless and predatory, generally bad
• Cave Giants – xenophobic and reclusive, generally neutral
• Hill Giants – gluttonous and chaotic, generally just stupid

Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, the ordning has been broken and each of the giant tribes is trying to gain the favour of their gods and earn a higher place in the next ordning. For some this means finding relics of the lost giant empire, over which many of the current humanoid settlements are built. For other giant races, raiding and conquest will be how they try and earn prestige with their gods. Small folk are just in the way.

Zephyros has been using the Contact Other Planes spell to find out why the ordning was broken and what to do about it. Unfortunately, this spell is quite difficult to cast and if you get it wrong you go insane for a day; you can’t take actions, speak or understand what is spoken.

Repeated uses of this spell have taken a bit of a toll on Zephyros but he has learned that he must not interfere and that the party will be instrumental in fixing the ordning and stopping the giants from rampaging across The North. Zephyros has no idea how they will do this or where to start but he offers to give them a ride to Triboar before he goes off to the Moonshae Isles for a nice holiday until all this fuss is over with.

“Anyway.. the erm… yes, the ‘demigods’ tell me that you are going to be instrumental in restoring the ordning and bringing peace to the realm, especially the one called… er… erm.. oh yes, yes Q’Aren.. who shall reunite the orc hordes in a ‘peaceful consumer-rights driven empire’ that will… er.. erm.. what was it? Oh yes yes, bring peace and prosperity to the entire continent.. um… Where is Q’Aren by the way?“

---

Triggered

Zephyros requested the party keep to the ground floor of the tower, not difficult as I don’t think they have any way to get up to the next floor, and to try and avoid the four griffons he keeps as pets up in the aerie.

The trip to Triboar was set to take 3-4 days and the DM asked the group if there was anything they wanted to do in the downtime. The main activity of choice seemed to be bickering <sigh>

On the second day the characters were outside the tower watching the world go by when they spotted nine very thin and lightly armoured humans riding giant vultures approaching the tower. They landed on the cloud and dismounted.

*DM note: I had originally spread the players out at random but then swapped over some to get Clay and Regulus in the doorway should they want to block the newcomers from gaining entrance to the tower. This also accidentally placed a couple of players a bit too far out on the right side of the tower so the DM decided on a whim to land the vultures on the left side. The effect of this was that Jake/Abelas was the closest player to them when they dismounted.

The lead rider calls out to Abelas in a particularly haughty manner:

“You there! Peasant!

Kindly inform your master that representatives from his eminence Yan-Ci-Bin, Prince of Elemental Air, and of his holy prophet Aeresi, last of the wing-ed elves and bearer of the thrice-blessed holy spear Windvane, are here to discuss a mutually beneficial alliance with him…. Why are you just staring at me slack jawed?”

*he turns to his companion*

“Ugh, my dear I fear the owner of this tower is running an asylum for mental deficients. Mayhap, we should just enter the tower and attempt to contact the owner without dealing with these… imbeciles.”

Jakebelas responded with an insult and a threat to which the lead rider took great offence and the resulting duel will take place next week.

End of Session.

---

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

– Will Jakebelas survive his encounter with the air cult?

– How will Zephyros react to Jakebelas starting a brawl in his tower?

– What is the terminal velocity of an adventurer falling off a 1,000ft high cloud?

– How will the war between Selune and Lethander progress?

Tune in next week to find out!

---

Post Session Guff –

I remembered Uffo calling someone (Darin?) a meta gaming prick or similar in Princes of the Apocalypse and wanted to know the year for a paragraph title. I have the entirety of those write-ups in one document so I conducted a search for the word ‘prick’ through that campaign. I thought you’d like to see the 10 results:

• 1. Uffo> You prick!
• 2. Uffo> If you leave now I won’t be wearing your skin as a jacket afterwards you little prick!
• 3. Fiki> What a prick!
• 4. Fiki> I want to squeeze it out as I get kicked, prick!
• 5. Uffo> I cutting words it: “Fuck off you monkey prick!”
• 6. Uffo> Fuck up those apey pricks!
• 7. Fiki> Shut the fuck up you lizard prick!
• 8. Uffo> Downsey! Downsey lizard prick!
• 9. Uffo> I’m saying it’s a pretty cool name for a node you fucking social justice prick, shut up!
• 10. Uffo> It was still my go so you can get fucked you pasta eating prick!

So a few things I noticed:

• A. I didn’t actually find the meta-prick quote but we didn’t record the first few sessions
• B. There’s way fewer incidents of it than I expected in 43 sessions
• C. This made me miss Uffo, strangely
• D. Wtf was happening with number 4?!

Starring:

Adam as Q’Aren the Samurai – Because now is the time for not fucking about!

Matt as Clay the Battlemaster – Yep, no, no, no, 13!

Jake as Abelas the gimpy Wizard – “I don’t need Con!”

Mike as Remulus the Artificer – I’d like to say she’d be missed, but…

Gary as The DM/Isaac the inattentive Cleric – So, you’re following Adam’s plan, yes?

---

Author’s note 1: This week, at the place where most of the cast work, someone took offence at a commonly used term of reference that is simply not offensive but, because of one person’s feelings, everyone else now has to change their behaviour of over ten years. One day I’ll write down exactly how stupid that is but for now at least, I need the job. If anything strange gets referenced in tonight’s session, just roll with it.

Author’s note 2: As Chris can only make every other week at the moment, the DM will be playing a very passive Isaac, the 5-Int Light Cleric, whenever there are only 4 other players.

Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

The party have arrived in the fortified village of Nightstone only to find its human inhabitants have fled following an aerial attack by giants in a floating castle. The village was cleared of scavenging goblins and then attempts by both the Zhentarim and a bunch of mostly-peaceful Orcs to take over the village were foiled. Our heroes rested and proceeded. 

---

Pre-session Guff

Mike joined and the DM started explaining the woke works shenanigans. <redacted> joined and immediately dropped the word-that-shall-not-be-spoken <sigh>.

Matt had stolen Adam’s usual teal colour. Adam was unimpressed. Matt also complained that the map was just a black square. The DM pointed out that if Matt had bothered to turn up last week instead of playing tiddlywinks, he would have known that this is Tabletop Simulator’s fog-of-war.

Mike threw some abuse at Matt about it and the DM pointed out that this was actually worse than leaving early to go see a shit dinosaur film that would be around for the next six weeks. Jake, finally off the hook for ‘worst excuse for missing D&D ever!’ was impressed.

The DM’s main computer motherboard died and he is currently running the session on a much less powerful secondary machine. Absolutely nothing can go wrong with trying to run Tabletop Simulator, Discord, Fifteen separate tabs in Chrome and OBS (to record the session), on a potato.

---

Dripping Caves and Dodgy Knees

The adventurers approached the location of the goblin cave and found a small rocky hill covered with pine trees. The DM asked for history checks which were duly passed, and it was thus known that goblins are formed from small clans of bigger tribes. The name of the clan is typically taken from a combination of the chief’s name and the tribal name. These were the Bad Knee tribe and the chief’s name was Pho’Hark and thus these are the Pho’Knee goblins.

The DM also reminded the players that when they were looking up the list of looted goods in the Lionshield Coster back in Nightstone, one of the under-10gp items was ‘Clothes, costume’.

Yes, I’m going there.

Nature and Survival checks were made and they determined that it would take an hour or two to walk around the hill. They actually chose to do this rather than just barge in through the front entrance and discovered two alternate entrances, one on the west side with a stream flowing through it, and one on the east side.

As they get ready to enter the Dripping Caves the players discuss what new abilities/spells they have gained at level 3:

• Regulus> I have Feather Fall prepared in case we need it.
• Abelas> Nice. I can also now, thanks to Gary letting me slightly change elf…
• Q’Aren> Again?!
• DM> STFU ‘Tempest Cleric’
• Abelas> I can now Misty Step.
• DM> Isaac is now a Firbolg not a.. a… <brain fart>
• Regulus> A Tabaxi.
• Abelas> Not a fucking cat.
• DM> Yes, that.
• Regulus> Is that the character that Chris is going to keep playing?
• Q’Aren> Until next week! The number of times he has talked to me about changing character, I swear it has been a different race or class every time..
• DM> Pot calling Kettle, you are black, over.
• > laughter
• Q’Aren> Well, yeah, obviously.

The DM enquired if they were going to use one of the side entrances or barge in through the front door:

• Q’Aren> Q’Aren prefers back doors.
• Clay> I wink at Q’Aren.

<sigh>

---

Theatre of the Mind

The ensuing discussion mainly covered going in via the stream because nobody would be expected to. This was countered with the reverse-psychology argument that meant the stream was exactly where they would be expected, which was then countered with the reverse, reverse-psychology argument and this drivel continued until Regulus pointed out that they were talking about the tactical acumen of goblins.

“Ok… yeah, good point” was the main response and they bravely entered the cave via the stream. Clay cheesed his Earth-Genasi Pass Without a Trace ability and they group stealthed into the Dripping Caves.

Regulus took the opportunity to inform the DM of the two things he needed to make his character concept work; plate armour and a gem worth 100g. He then added “Oh, and a Chinook” which means he still hasn’t learned to be careful what you ask for, or the DM just might give it to you.

DM Note: we are using Tabletop Simulator’s fog-of-war for this session. We haven’t used it before and the DM’s test run with it ranged from ‘quite good’ to ‘a bit pants’ so it was an exciting new adventure… no, it was a shit show, obviously.

Q’Aren bravely volunteered to enter the dark back crack first. She also led the way into the cave. Isaac decided he didn’t like the dark and cast Light on his shield. Clay ended up with it cast on his sword which kind of put the dampeners on the whole ‘stealth’ thing but they tried it anyway. That’s the spirit.

• Q’Aren> I don’t know how you stealth in a dark cave with a light source!
• Regulus> Quietly.

The team carefully stealthed into the dark crack and came upon a small cave where the stream pooled. It had two entrances. The DM asked Q’Aren where she wanted to go and the answer was ‘forwards’ which somewhat confused the DM.

Just to show that not listening is a two-way street, the DM then completely missed Q’Aren saying “All I see is wood”. While the DM has a perfectly good map on his screen, it was invisible to the players because… computers.

It was a good four minutes later before the missing map issue became apparent and was fixed by everyone re-logging. “I thought we were playing theatre of the mind!” said Adam.

/facepalm

---

Shat On

Goblin tracks were found and the lesser travelled north passage was chosen as the way forwards:

• Q’Aren> That’s definitely where the loot room is!
• > general agreement
• DM> So you’re following Adam’s plan, yes?
• Regulus> <doubtfully> Yeah…
• Abelas> When you say it like that…
• Q’Aren> Shit stirrer!

The group continued deeper into the cave and found a large rock blocking off a side tunnel 4ft high that clearly needs to be pushed clear. Not wanting to be ambushed while looting, Q’Aren decided to just peek around the corner into the room ahead and was asked to make a stealth check by the DM. Q’Aren gains +10 from Pass Without a Trace but is in heavy armour so suffers disadvantage. Adam stuffed the roll and was spotted by a Giant Rat; roll initiative!

There is a body on the floor in the middle of the cave being fed upon by seven Giant Rats while Chief Pho’Hark and two bodyguards gleefully watch them feed from the back of the area.

Q’Aren eyes up the cluster of rats and turns to Abelas:

• Q’Aren> They look about right for a Shatter
• Abelas> They do don’t they… but, you know what a Shatter will do?
• Q’Aren> Kill all the enemies?
• Clay> And alert everything in.. how far is it?
• Q’Aren> Five hundred feet is it?

Shatter doesn’t actually have an audible range on the description but Thunderwave does and that’s 300ft so we’ll roll with that as it covers the entire cave complex.

Q’Aren, Regulus and Abelas all rolled 19 on initiative just to be awkward. Abelas was elected to go first to Shatter Chief Pho’Hark. However, the DM is a dick and, knowing how Jake hates to be put on the spot for conversations, decided to muddy the waters a little:

• DM> Abelas… would you like to begin negotiations or would you like to attack?
• > general mirth at Jake’s expense
• Abelas> Oh…. fuck you!
• > more laughter
• Abelas> I would like to attack because ‘fuck goblins’
• Regulus> <also muddying> As long as we find out where the prisoners are first…
• Abelas> <disappointed> Ahhh… shit. If you wanted someone to do the non-homicidal way, someone else should have gone first!
• <Further pressure was then applied, mainly by Regulus, leading to a mini-breakdown>
• Abelas> Oh… fuck you Gary! Now I have to think! Nah, fuck it! Shatter on the Chief!
• Regulus> <laughing> I heard “Shat on the Chief!”

<sigh>

Boom goes the spell: A sudden loud ringing noise, painfully intense, erupts from a point of your choice within range. 17 damage, halved on one bodyguard and the Chief, the Bodyguards only have 7 hit points so one got fucked and the other got properly fucked. The Chief was unimpressed.

---

Fuck this, next week it’s Hexes!

Q’Aren did not have enough movement to go and have a word with the boss and was trying to decide what to do but the DM was having a minor crisis over the size of the Giant Rats having first said they were small, then said they were tiny, read they were small, scaled them as tiny, re-scaled them as small, finally started to get it right and the Regulus asked “Are these ten-foot or five-foot squares?”

And then Tabletop Simulator crashed

<sigh>

Ok, I’m going to cut Regulus a tiny bit lot of slack because the DM was fucking about with resizing supposedly ‘Giant’ rats and putting four of them in one square BUT the player models are ALWAYS scaled to the map so just for future reference:

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “A dear friend of mine has noticed that both new and experienced adventurers are having problems with basic size perceptions and he has asked me to explain, without swearing, how to tell the difference between 5ft and 10ft squares. I owe him a favour so let’s give it a whirl:

If four of you <expletive deleteds> can fit in one <expletive deleted> square, then it is a <expletive deleted> TEN-FOOT <expletive deleted> square!

If only one of you <expletive deleteds> can fit in the <expletive deleted> square, then it is a <expletive deleted> FIVE-FOOT <expletive deleted> square!

I know this is a difficult concept for you to grasp because thinking is hard for you, maths is hard for all of us, and geometry is like my second ex-wife; you can feel the life draining out of you while you try to get your <expletive deleted> head around just what the <expletive deleted> is going on. HOWEVER! This is pretty <expletive deleted> simple stuff you <expletive deleted> mother<expletive deleted>ing <expletive deleteds>!!”

So there you have it, thanks Drikk! Where the <expletive deleted> were we? Oh right; Regulus crashed it.

---

I love you auto-save!

Steam cloud updates were cloud-updated, DM reloadings were reloaded, player relogging-ins were re-logged in and Giant Rats were rescaled to whatever the <expletive deleted> size squares we were supposed to be using.

The DM tried to sneakily replace the dead bodyguards but Jake noticed. Booo! Finally we were back to before Regulus broke everything so, over to Q’Aren:

• Q’Aren> I’m going to try and negotiate with the rats…
• Abelas> What?!
• Q’Aren> I’m going to drop my shield and pull out my greatsword…
• Regulus> Oh for fuck… why do you even carry the shield?
• Q’Aren> Just in case!

Q’Aren charges into the middle of the room and attacked a Giant Rat. She missed by an impressive amount.

Mike then got AC and to-hit the wrong way around (again) and the DM stuffed up the initiative order (again).

With some nifty manoov… maneoeov.. maneuovr… ‘moving things about tactically‘ the DM managed to completely surround Q’Aren and then announced the rats get Pack Tactics which allow them to attack at advantage if another rat is nearby.

Q’Aren was unimpressed.

Four hits for a total of 16 damage landed and Q’Aren was looking rather ropey. She was also low on hit points.

Isaac, realising that (even with 5 Int) Q’Aren was probably unhealable (made up word!) at this point, dropped Flaming Sphere at the back of the rat pack, used a bonus action to ram it into a rat and killed it outright.

Adam announced he had to leave for a few minutes. The DM attempted to troll Jake by swapping Matt to orange, this not only failed dismally, it actually re-hid the entire map from Matt <sigh> Leroy was employed to uncover the important bits for him.

---

Pho’Shame!

Clay massacred a rat and Abelas lobbed a Magic Missile at the Chief, rolled high for 14 damage and killed him. Abelas was super-impressed and fist-pumped. Isaac, not understanding, smiled and made the wanker sign back at him. Good times. Still, the gimpy wizard did indeed kill a boss.

PHO’HARK DOWN!

Speaking of the wanker sign, Adam announced he was back.

Q’Aren uses Second Wind and Jake made a fart joke about it that was so bad I’m not going to repeat it. Adam said “Well I’m back on 13 so I’m pretty much back up and fighting now”. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Regulus fries a rat with lightning (once we corrected AC to to-hit again) and sadly declined to say it was with a crotch-cannon.

It was the rats turn and they piled in on Q’Aren who went down faster than Goodyear’s share price but used her half-orc cheese ability to pop back up on one point. Isaac’s Flaming Sphere killed two rats at the back and the enemy numbers were by now severely diminished.

Clay decides to kick the rat with only one hit point left that he failed to kill last time. The kick lands, kills the rat and sends it flying straight at Q’Aren and the DM declared Q’Aren was now wearing the dead rat like a face mask. A young woman prisoner ran out of an alcove at the back of the cave, took one look at Q’Aren, screamed and ran back in there.

Gimpy the Wizard charged the last rat and attacked with his quarterstaff! He missed. By quite a lot. Q’Aren object interacts with the rat mask and throws it at the wizard. Abelas was asked to make a Dex check and, gimpy or not, he managed to dodge the rat carcass and it flew over his head and hit Clay in the face. I think Karma was paying attention even at this point.

The DM then realised he had been repeatedly moving Isaac out of the line of fire through a solid 4ft boulder <sigh> DM cheese is the best cheese.

Adam then decided to change team to the ‘joker’ team, reset his fog of war and fucked everything up <sigh> The DM was castigating Adam when the rest of the party came to his defence stating he was away when we learned about the whole changing colour/team buggering the entire world. The DM was about to apologise when Adam blatantly grabbed Leroy and started clearing the map and was promptly kicked from the session by the DM for this heinous act.

Once Adam had rejoined we actually got back on with the game!

Lighting it up, again?

The young woman was called Daphne and she was Lady Nandar’s lady-in-waiting. The poor unfortunate that the rats had been feeding on was called Darthag Ulgar and he had been the proprietor of the Lionshield Coster. This will be important later but the DM will remind you about it when it becomes pertinent.

Daphne explained that she thought the rest of the villagers were being held somewhere in the north-east corner of the caves and that something nasty was guarding them. She couldn’t be sure because the caves are dark and she is only human.

• Abelas> So can Daphne… she can’t see much in this cave?
• DM> Well she can see fine in this cave because it’s pretty well lit by both Isaac and Clay.
• Abelas> Just to be friendly I suppose, I pick up a rock and cast Light on it so she has a light source.
• DM> Can you roll a D100 for me please?
• Abelas> What?! No… NO!! There’s no wild magic here!

In a previous campaign Jake had cast light on a stone in an area of magical fog called Faerzress and rolled a 7 on the wild magic table casting Fireball on his location. Good times.

OotA – The Stone of Surprising Warmth

Clay moved the boulder, which made quite a lot of noise but nothing compared to the Shatter. There was 13gp, a small number of valuable knick-knacks, a set of Thieves Tools and a magic item decided by rolling on Magic Table A. Mike then managed to massively complicate rolling a d100 for reasons I’m not even going to go into. They found a spell scroll of Comprehend Languages.

The Shaft of Fire!

Leaving the Chief’s cave and heading for the main area they came across a small alcove with a natural chimney leading upwards. Interestingly, the book doesn’t actually say where this chimney leads <sigh>

If they had come here from the other direction a subversive goblin would have done a deal with them to overthrow Pho’Hark and get the prisoners released but since they did it ass-backwards, she legged it. The shaft led outside after some quick DM improv work and they had a merry time lighting a bonfire under it to make sure no reinforcements were coming down it.

---

What’s that ogre there? (sorry)

Q’Aren stealthed forwards into the main cave, somewhat nervous and expecting flaming or pointy death to come raining down on her at any moment:

• DM> Where do you want to stealth to?
• Q’Aren> Just about here… looking left and right… defensively… expecting attacks… expecting a Fireball out of nowhere… shield raised…
• Abelas> I get the feeling Q’Aren is nervous…
• Q’Aren> Well I’ve probably got less hit points than you.
• Regulus> Do you want another healing before we start?
• Q’Aren> Nah, I’ll be alright. I’ve got spears now!

I don’t remember spears having a particularly high armour class but I’m sure she’ll be fine as long as she rolls a decent stealth check.

Q’Aren rolls a really low stealth check.

Oh dear.

---

It’s Time for a Shrekoning! (not sorry)

• DM > <rolls dice> Ok… dear oh dear..
• Q’Aren> Q’Aren dies?
• Regulus> I’d like to say she’d be missed, but…
• DM> A goblins archer, hiding on that shelf, sees you come in and the ogre that was…
• Q’Aren> AN OGRE?!
• DM> ..enjoying a nice mud bath until he was disturbed by the Shatter which rang through the cave, and his wife that was asleep in the middle of the cave are all aware of your attempt to sneak into the cave. Could you all roll initiative please?

Q’Aren planned on climbing up the cliff and twatting the goblin but the archer gets a surprise round against the half-orc, attacks with advantage, hits for 5 damage and runs out of range of Q’Aren. Adam was unimpressed; “Little bitch!”.

The male ogre, Nob, twats Q’Aren with a tree for a lot of damage.

FIGHTER DOWN!

The rest of the party were still in the narrow passageway and hadn’t actually entered the main cave yet.

• Regulus> If we keep very quiet…
• > worried laughter
• Abelas> I’m going to use Melf’s Acid Arrow..
• Regulus> Ooh nice!
• DM> It’s crap but it’s a classic!
• Regulus> At Q’Aren because we won’t let them have her body!
• Abelas> I’m going for Nob!
• DM> Oh, I forgot to say, the Pho’Knee goblin archer there is dressed in a snowflake costume.

Abelas missed but the arrow still splashes Nob with a small amount of damage. Clay ran in and missed an ogre roughly the size of an elephant and refrained from using his Action Surge despite the ‘gentle encouragement’ of the party.

Isaac got Q’Aren back up with a Healing Word as a bonus action and then the DM tried to cast Bless with Isaac’s action:

• Regulus> Can you cast two first level spells…?
• DM> That was a bonus.. ah… bollocks
• Q’Aren> You can’t… Goddammit!
• DM> Look, it’s in the UA, right?!
• Regulus> Yeah, yeah, I remember it now, I was just reading it last night!
• Q’Aren> It’s homebrew!
• DM> <sigh> Toll the Dead then.

DM cheese is the best cheese!

---

Maximum Ogre-drive! (still not sorry)

• DM> Q’Aren..
• Q’Aren> Q’Aren is back up and ready to rumble! Right, ok, here we go! Q’Aren is going to throw her shield on the floor…
• Regulus> Of course she is..
• Q’Aren> ..because now is the time for not fucking about! She pulls out her greatsword… I’m going to use Fighting Spirit to give myself five temporary hit points and to give myself advantage on attack rolls until the end of my turn AND I’m going to use Action Surge to give myself two actions…
• DM> Could you make a perception check on the tree that the ogre is holding please?
• Q’Aren> <confused> <rolls> Nineteen!
• Regulus> Wow!
• DM> You perceive that the tree is unimpressed by your five extra hit points.

However, both of Q’Aren’s attacks hit for quite a large amount of damage and Nob is looking decidedly worse for wear.

Three more Pho’Knee goblins appear from the darkness of the cave, one is dressed as a special princess, one as a fairy and one as a sparkly unicorn.

Nearly-dead-Nob swings his tree at Q’Aren, it hits!

FIGHTER DOWN!

A plaintive sigh is heard from the depths of the passageway where Isaac is hiding.

Thog, wife of Nob, swings at Clay but misses. Clay ripostes for a decent hit.

Abelas Magic Missiles nearly-dead-Nob and wisely plays it safe by using all of them on the ogre, dropping him alongside Q’Aren.

NOB DOWN!

Clay hits Thog for 13 damage. There is then a long confusing discussion between Matt, Jake and Mike on superiority die and what they can be used for. The DM points out that Thog is a ‘large’ creature and says “Actually, I’ll rescale her” and makes Thog occupy four squares. Three seconds later; “Shouldn’t ogres occupy four squares?” asks Adam. <sigh>

---

Maths is Ogre-rated (I’m on a roll!)

Clay makes a trip attack and claims 16 damage and asks Thog to make a Strength save against being tripped and prone.

With all the intervening chat the DM has lost track of things and is now very confused about what the fuck just happened. He isn’t the only one:

• DM> Was that 16 damage for the entire attack, from your turn?
• Matt> Yes..
• DM> Because you had 13…
• Mat> Yep, no, no, no, 13 was to…
• DM> Right, was it 13 plus 16, or was it just 16?
• Matt> 16
• DM> Cool <rolls for the Str save> Come on Thoggy! Ah.. crap

Alas poor Thoggy, laid low by a dirty trip attack 🙁

Isaac runs in and casts Cure Wounds on Q’Aren for the maximum 11 hit points getting her back up again. Regulus wastes the precious princess Pho’Knee with a Magic Missile.

Q’Aren, back on her feet from being off her feet from being back on her feet from being off her feet, lands a crit on Thog for an impressive 22 damage!

The Pho’Knee Fairy hits Q’Aren with a shortbow shot and takes care of those temporary hit points. But now it was Thog’s turn again!

The DM is trying to figure out which of the two fighters hit for the most as they would get twatted by Thog:

• DM> Right.. er.. Clay hit for 16..
• Regulus> And tripped her over!
• Clay> I did 13 with my first attack, 16 with my Action Surge attack…
• Regulus> Hang on! So you did a total of 29 damage that round then?
• Matt> Yeah, 13 from the first one and 16 from the..
• DM> AAAARGH!
• > laughter and mockery piles on poor Matt

DM note: Even knowing what happened, I still got confused just listening back to it, so don’t sweat it Matt, it all turned out right in the end 🙂

---

Her time here is Ogre (is there no end to this madness?!)

Sadly, Thog misses, Clay ripostes and, much to everyone’s amusement (except Matt), was given helpful advice from Regulus on how to add up his damage and tell the DM. Clay gets the last laugh by landing 15 damage on Thog who only had 12 hit points left.

THOG DOWN!

Abelas wanted to make a ranged spell attack against Snowflake who was up on the ledge. The DM used some advanced trigonometry and the in-built precise, geometric tools of TTS to exactly measure just how far the gimpy wizard needed to be from the ledge to see the butt-hurt Pho’Knee Snowflake:

---

After all that Abelas used Chromatic Orb instead of Magic Missile, much to the disgust of Regulus who pointed out that with only 7 hit points a goblin is pretty likely to be one-shotted by Magic Missile, which is a guaranteed hit, that does a minimum of 6 damage, and that’s really unlikely as you’d need to roll three ones on three d4s.

Obviously, Abelas missed with Chromatic Orb because Karma is watching and she finds this kind of stuff funny. Actually, that may have gotten Karma’s attention because a lot of dice rolls after that were decidedly wonky.

Adam gave a wonderful description of when you should use Chromatic Orb; “It’s great for when you are up against things that have resistance to things!” Which is both vague and accurate at the same time.

Clay attacked Sparkles the unicorn goblin but missed. The DM reminded Clay he was blessed and could roll an additional d4. He did so and still missed.

Isaac casts Faerie Fire on the goblins hiding in the rocks in the middle of the cave, two failed the save and will now be much easier for the players to hit (goblins have an AC of 15 because they are nippy little fuckers).

Regulus killed one (the special little princess Pho’Knee I think) but only after Jake gleefully corrected him on the AC-to-hit issue.

Q’Aren climbs up onto the ledge and hits Snowflake for exactly double his hit points and responded to an enquiry by Regulus with “I’m OK, I have 16 hit points now!”

On her next turn Q’Aren was given the choice of climbing slowly down from the ledge or jumping off of it but having to make an Athletics check to avoid damage.

Obviously, because it is Adam after all, Q’Aren chose jumping and equally obviously, then rolled spectacularly low and took falling damage. Remember this moment, gentle reader, it will have consequences later.

The last of the costumed goblins employed hit-and-disen-fucking-gage tactics to attack and hid behind the rocks, greatly amusing the DM and irritating the crap out of the players.

• Abelas> Right, I’m done with this fight! Magic Missile!
• Regulus> If you roll three ones I will piss myself laughing!
• Abelas> Me too!
• DM> This is the one with the sparkly unicorn costume on.
• Abelas> <starts die roll> Yes, I want to killOHMYFUCKINGGOD!

Yes, gentle reader, he rolled three ones. This leaves Sparkles on one hit point and most of the table in hysterics.

The DM had planned on Sparkles running off but Clay had other ideas and ran in and massacred the poor Pho’Knee.

---

They think it’s all ogre… It is now! (that’s it, I think we’ve finally hit pun ogre-load!)

Combat ends and the players are disappointed by the lack of loot.

An extended argument discussion then took place on where to go next. Q’Aren wanted to explore the south-west section of the caves to ‘avoid being ambushed’ but the other three players all wanted to explore the north-east side where the prisoners were being kept.

This was very much a disagreement between players and not characters and it went on for a while culminating in:

• Matt> We ALL disagree with you Adam.
• Adam> Yes, exactly! Let’s go and look in here <points at the south-west>
• Jake> You do whatever the fuck you want…
• Adam> Right! Q’Aren is going to look over here!
• Jake> Right, and we’re going over here?
• Matt> Yep, we’re all going the other way.
• > general laughter

So they split the party and Q’Aren went wandering off alone in a dark cave. When we play on an actual table, the DM keeps a Grick mini in the box especially for these kinds of occasions but sadly did not have one prepared for TTS and because his main machine with all the art software on it is broken he couldn’t make one on the fly either <sigh>

We dealt with Q’Aren first: the south-west caves are where the goblin non-combatants live, the old and the very young. They cowered away from the hulking half-orc and Q’Aren decided to attempt to convince them that she had single-handedly slain both ogres and that the goblins should now follow and serve her <sigh>.

The DM, in a moment of unthinking stupidity (natural 20 anyone?), allowed an Intimidation roll. Thankfully, Q’Aren rolled spectacularly low yet again and got laughed at by a goblin granny. Q’Aren gives up and moves further into the complex in search of loot.

---

Batter Up

Back with the moderately sane group, a sunken cavern was found with a large hole in floor from which was heard the sound of flapping wings.

Daphne warned them to be stealthy and while Abelas volunteered to sneak in, Clay just went ahead and entered the cave. Unfortunately, Clay is still affected by the Light spell so stealthy it was not.

Thousands of bats erupted from the floor. Just before they filled the centre of the cave, Clay saw the villagers huddled on elevated ledges to the sides of the area. The bats damage anything in the centre squares of the cave.

Daphne facepalmed. Matt explained he forgot he was lit up. Jake pointed out that Clay’s mini literally has a light source attached to it to show it was lit. Good times.

The only realistic way to get the villagers out would be to wait for the bats to settle back down. The DM did not write this scenario and asked the players not to question the dodgy logic of this ‘prison’ too closely.

Back over with Q’Aren, she finishes exploring the south-west and encounters… THE CAVE OF BONES!!! Disappointingly, this is just a refuse room and not the loot room that Q’Aren was hoping for so she reluctantly rejoined the group at the bat cave.

It looked like the bats would take a few minutes to settle and the players started discussing what to do when they did settle.

• Abelas> Could we…
• Q’Aren> <eyeing up the unexplored south-east corner> Should we see what’s going on next door first?
• Abelas> No!
• Clay> You guys that aren’t casting light should just be able to stealth in there.
• DM> While you are waiting for the bats to settle, which would take 5 or 10 minutes Q’Aren, would you like to explore this south-east area?
• Q’Aren> Yes I would!
• Regulus> I’ll go with her…
• Q’Aren> Why would we not explore while we are waiting?
• Regulus> I’ll go with her!
• Q’Aren> Come my robot friend! Turn on vibrate mode!

<sigh>

---

Hello darkness my old friend

So, having split the party again, Regulus and Q’Aren explored down the south-east passageway and found a small cave with a large stalagmite in the centre of it. The stalagmite appears to be hollow with numerous fist-sized holes in it. Lying near the base of the stalagmite are the remains of two badly corroded goblin scimitars. A small tunnel leads off from the far side of the stalagmite from which issues the sound of running water.

Regulus immediately makes the comparison to the scene with the stump in Flash Gordon.

• Adam> Q’Aren trusts the robot!
• Mike> Have you seen Flash Gordon?
• Adam> No
• <the DM sighs and feels really, REALLY fucking old>
• Mike> In that case its fine, nothing can go wrong!

Queue a bunch of GORDON’S ALIIIIVE! impressions.

Regulus tinkers light onto a stone and drops it into one of the holes to see if they are interconnected. As he drops it, a pseudopod streaks out of the hole and makes a free attack against the Warforged. It missed. Whatever is in the stalagmite has complete cover from the two players. Roll initiative!

Q’aren rolls an eight, Abelas rolls a two. Awesome dicemanship. Q’Aren was still third so that shows how badly everyone else rolled.

Abelas, Clay and Isaac are back in the main cave and are oblivious to what is happening in the south-east area.

• Q’Aren> It’s me? Can I actually see the pod?
• DM> Nope, it is in total cover.
• Q’Aren> I’m going to try and put a spear in the hole, just try and poke it in..
• DM> Unfortunately, the holes are not straight, they twist around so you can’t get it very far in.
• Q’Aren> Can I take a five-foot step back?
• DM> Yes
• Q’Aren> And shout at it in every language I know, which is a few of them, that I think it is a pussy for hiding in the hole.
• DM> I can’t believe I’m looking up up what languages a Black Pudding understands… languages; none
• <The DM has a quick think, figures that if oozes can be affected by Vicious Mockery and similar spells then they can be taunted but it’ll take something special to get the Pudding out of that hole, and comes up with an Intimidation check of DC20>
• DM> Make an Intimidation check…
• Q’Aren> Because that’s gone well before…
• DM> It’s more like a provocation…
• Q’Aren> <rolls><delighted> Whoa! Natural twenty!
• DM> <sigh> You have definitely got its attention!
• Q’Aren> I’m going to just bash my shield with my fail!
• <The DM places a very large Black Pudding in the cave>
• Q’Aren> <nervously laughing> Oh.. I’m sad it worked… oh shit!
• DM> It makes a melee attack against you at plus five…
• <The DM rolls high>
• DM> That’s six bludgeoning damage.. and eighteen acid damage…
• <intakes of breath and shocked sounds>
• Q’Aren> Ummm…
• Abelas> Wot?! Is that just death? Is that just perma-death?!
• <silence>
• Q’Aren> That’s… actually just killed me… like outright killed me…
• <shocked silence>
• <everyone starts laughing>
• Q’Aren> Yeah, no I’ve just done the maths, that just killed me…
• DM> Your non-magical armour takes a permanent -1 to AC.
• Q’Aren> <laughing> yeah, because Q’Aren really cares about that right now.
• Abelas> “I don’t need Con!”
• <everyone starts laughing again>

---

I’ve come to talk to you again

Q’AREN DECEASED!

Players start discussing their hit point maximums. The Pudding cannot one-shot anyone from full health but it can certainly KO everyone but Clay from full. However, it has an AC of 7 so it’ll get hit by pretty much every attack and it has 85 hit points so it will last 2-3 rounds of combat at most against a full party. It is dangerous, but it shouldn’t be deadly, unless…

• DM> How many hit points did you have when you walked in there Adam?
• Adam> Five…
• <silence>
• <more silence>
• <hysterical laughter>
• DM> <struggling to get his shit together> You.. went wandering alone… in a cave.. with five hit points?
• Regulus> I can fix your armour!
• <more laughter>
• Q’Aren> Can you fix a dead fighter? At least I got to use all my shit before I died <mournfully> I really liked Q’Aren…
• <more laughter>
• Abelas> I hated her!
• Q’Aren> That’s why I loved her!

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “Let us raise a toast brothers and sisters, to a true FIGHTER that has fallen in battle today! Mourn them not, but revel in their glory as they died the way every true fighter wants to; doing something incredibly ballsy.. but really fucking stupid. TO THE FALLEN!”

Having seen Q’Aren killed in one hit, Regulus takes an extremely pragmatic approach to the situation, ignores Dead-Q’Aren’s suggestion to explore the hidden water cave (“All the loot is there!”), disen-fucking-gages and runs the fuck away. The pudding has a movement speed of 20ft and it it just found lunch so it fails to pursue the Warforged and settles in to feast on Q’Aren’s corpse.

Jake, probably feeling he needed to step in for Christina, blatantly mis-gendered Q’Aren’s rapidly dissolving body. Shame on you sir!

Regulus calmly approaches the others and announces “Q’Aren is dead”. Abelas struggles not to smile. Dead-Q’Aren points out to Clay that the body is still warm and Jake laughs so hard he starts choking <sigh>

• DM> Um… shall we park it there?
• Jake> Ok, but I say Adam rolls his new stats now!
• <shocked laughter>

Too soon Jake, but funny!

DM> Drikk Fra-Kar is going to have some words to say about this…

Matt had to depart to go to the loo and Adam wished him a good shit <sigh>.

The somewhat shocked players discussed Q’Aren’s demise and the DM shared the custom weapon he had designed for her:

Shriek – Q’Aren

This three-headed flail has hollow heads that emit a loud and irritating screech when they are swung at speed.

The construction of this weapon is thought to have been commissioned by Drikk Fra-Kar, six time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena, in order to drown out the voice of his fourth ex-wife (who he claimed to be a shape-shifted harpy).

Dormant: War-Flail +1

1d8 bludgeoning. Versatile (1d10)

While attuned to Shriek, your self-belief is bolstered even further giving you advantage on saves against Fear and Charm.

If you roll a 1 for damage, Shriek channels your outrage and adds an additional 1d6 psychic damage. This damage is added even if another effect causes the 1 to be re-rolled.

Just because the error was corrected, does not mean it was not an error and someone needs to answer for it!

Awakened: War-Flail +2

A true consumer rights champion must learn many different approaches to gaining satisfaction:

Each head adds a different elemental damage type; on a successful hit with Shriek you may now add a single elemental effect; 1d6 of Acid, Frost or Fire damage.

Exalted: War-Flail +3

You have learned to channel your outrage through the flail. As an action you can rapidly whirl Shriek and focus the resulting screech on a single target within 60ft, counting as a thrown weapon attack.

Any creature struck by the focussed sound blast takes 2d8+6 psychic damage. If your attack roll was a 20, and if the creature has an Intelligence of at least 8, it is Stunned until the end of its next turn while it attempts to make sense of what just happened to it.

If your attack roll is a 1, you briefly begin to believe you may not actually be on the correct side of the argument and you are stunned until the end of your next turn while you have a word with your internal manager and mentally re-assert your gods-given consumer rights.

---

Finishing Up

• DM> Adam, Q’Aren may only have lasted for three session but it was a hell of a three sessions!
• Adam> I had so many feats planned for her!

The DM explains what could have happened with the Chief; if they had come in from the side tunnel they would have met a dissident goblin called Snigbat in the chimney cave and could have overthrown the Chief, and then Snigbat, as the new Chief, would have freed the prisoners.

Alternatively, negotiations with the Chief were possible. The villagers could have been ransomed (expensive), they could have found him a new lock for his treasure chest, or he would have tasked them with killing the Black Pudding which was stopping them getting to clean water. He was in the process of feeding a villager to his pet rats though, so negotiations were probably not going to happen.

Adam decided to roll his stats and we will find out next session what he came up with.

The players then went to great lengths to discuss how they would get the villagers out of the bat cave:

• DM> While you’ve been discussing that, Isaac has spent the last ten minutes quietly sitting there casting Silence as a ritual spell.
• Regulus> I didn’t know he could do that!
• DM> Neither did I until about five seconds ago…

End of Session

---

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

– What new character will Adam bring to the table?

– Will Abelas and Regulus want this one dead as well?

– Will Christina blatantly misgender them?

– Will the new one last longer than the old one?

Tune in next week to find out!

---

Post-Session Guff – Anatomy of a Character Death

When most robust systems fail there is typically a string of unlikely incidents leading up to it and this was no different. There were numerous points where this could have been averted:

– If they had chosen the other side of the cave to enter from, they would have run into the Pudding right at the start with a full group and full hit points.

– Negotiations with the Chief could have informed them about the presence of the Pudding.

– Q’Aren not jumping off the ledge would have saved just enough hit points to make it a KO instead of a death.

– Both Isaac and Regulus had spell slots available that could have been used to heal Q’Aren if they had known how badly she was hurt.

– Previous disagreements aside, there was no practical reason not to have the whole party explore the south-east area while the bats settled down.

Ultimately though, splitting the party and going exploring in a dark cave with only 5 hit points is… well, let’s just say it is not the ‘optimal’ survival strategy.

Kobold Fight Club (Yip yip!) which is an encounter-building tool used to measure how dangerous D&D fights are, shows that for five level 3 adventurers vs one Black Pudding the fight difficulty is Medium. For two level 3 characters it is Lethal. Now put one of those two on only 5 hit points.

Frewell Q’Aren you were fun.

Really, really fucking stupid… but fun.

Starring:

Sophie as Adalyn the Druid

Matthew as Sahrosret/Clint/The-Barb-With-No-Name, a Barbarian

Adam as Doc the Cleric

Henry as Valas the Ranger

Jake as Attacus (at the backattus) the ‘premier’ Paladin

Chris as Kinlek the ‘worst’ Paladin

---

Our intrepid level 4 (and still rather squishy) heroes have entered the Whorlstone Tunnels in pursuit of a rather evasive gnome-like creature called Droki. Valas is low on hit points from an earlier encounter with a bunch of angry locals and some Death Dogs.

The tunnels are filled with a weird magical fog that pervades the Underdark called ‘faerzress’. They don’t know that this faerzress has been tainted by an outside force and has an unfortunate side effect.

They witnessed Droki pluck and eat a small mushroom, shrink to half his size and run into a small crack. There are not enough mushrooms for the entire party.

The Barb with no name immediately ate one of the mushrooms and ran in after Droki. The rest of the party, after having berated Clint significantly for running off alone (Clint gave not one toss), decided to go the long way around.

We join our heroes with the party split. Clint is off in a narrow crack chasing Droki and the rest of the group are advancing down the main tunnel.

---

• DM> This is for those of you that aren’t pygmyfied: the tunnel slopes down to the edge of a large pool that fills the cavern ahead. The opposite shore is nearly 100feet away and nothing can be seen beneath the surface of the black water.
• Adalyn> Ooh!
• Kinlek> Hmm. Toss a rock into it, see if anything comes back out?
• Attacus> *To the DM* So we can’t see anything in the water?
• DM> Nope.
• Doc> *to Attacus* Do you know Light?
• Attacus> I do! Can I pick up a rock or something, imbue it with light and throw it in the water and see what happens?
• DM> *Poker face is holding, all systems green* Absolutely. So you’re going to cast a spell yes? A cantrip?
• Attacus> A cantrip, yes.
• DM> Cool… could you roll a D100 for me please?
• Attacus> …. Ah, fuck
• Party> *Groans*
• DM> This would not normally happen in faerzress but in this faerzress we are going to the Wild Magic Surge table!
• Party> *Groans*
• Attacus> *rolls* so… 700?
• DM> /facepalm
• Party> *laughter*
• Attacus> Er… or 007? Ok, what am I doing wrong here?
• Valas> *heavy sigh* Let me see and I can help you!
• Attacus> That’s 70 then?
• Valas> *heavy sigh* No, look *rearranges dice* so it’s…
• Attacus> Oh, I see, so it’s just seven then! Sorry!
• DM> *Looks up 7 in the mostly harmless surge table, goes slightly pale, poker face is not holding, all systems red! Adam notices*
• Doc> Oh no.. Is that… Fireball on your position?!
• DM> *Momentarily speechless just nods*
• Party> *hysterical laughter*
• Attacus> Oh come on! I WAS JUST LIGHTING SHIT UP!
• Doc> That’s a pretty extreme light spell Jake!
• Party> *more hysterical laughter*
• DM> *struggling to recover some composure* Ok, so you hold up a rock and say ‘Light!’ and a Fireball erupts… *DM starts to lose it* at third level…. on yourself! *DM loses it completely, everyone else loses it completely*
• Attacus> *Struggling to stop laughing* I might have killed us! I think I just killed us!
• Doc> That’s 8d6 damage!
• *everybody loses it, some time passes whilst composure is regained*

That is up to 48 points of damage for the uninitiated; considerably more damage than most of the players current hit points.

• Valas> *looking at his hit points, realization dawning* I… I haven’t…. No one healed me yet!
• *everyone starts laughing all over again*
• Valas> I have 13 hit points!
• Kinlek> You might actually die!
• *everybody loses it again*
• Kinlek> Can I say, no matter what happens from now on, I am no longer the worst Paladin!
• Attacus> *still laughing* Oh come on! Fuck off, I was just trying to light shit up!
• Valas> *To Kinlek* Well YOU asked him to do it; “Have you got a light? Yeah, go on!”
• Kinlek> No! No! That was Adam! Not me!
• Doc> I said “Does anyone know light” I didn’t say “Can someone cast light?” I’m not getting the blame for a total party wipe out!
• *coughsemanticscough*

The DM asks everyone to make a Dex save based on Attacus’ spell modifier. It does not go well.

Valas> *mournfully* Well I’m proficient in Dex saves, so plus six, so 9 total and I still fucked it. Oh well.

Attacus, at the very centre of the explosion, was the only party member to pass the save. The DM asked him to roll 8d6. He had to ask someone for more dice. The total was rather low twenty nine.

• DM> Attacus is till on his feet, his eyebrows are somewhat singed and he has a rather surprised expression on his face. He turns around to find…
• Adalyn> I’m still up!
• Kinlek> I’m out.
• Doc> I’m out too.
• Valas> I’m truly fucked, yeah. Minus 16!
• *everyone loses it again*
• DM> The rock is now glowing very brightly indeed in your hand.
• Attacus> I put it down very gently!
• *more laughter*

The party members were healed without anything too bad coming from the surge table and the DM congratulated Jake on downing more players in one go than he has managed in three campaigns so far.

Good times.

The stone has now become a magic item called The Stone of Surprising Warmth that permanently glows. When held to the ear the listener can faintly hear the sound of five humanoids exclaiming in surprise.

Starring:

---

Author’s note: The DM would like to apologise to the players for being grumpier than normal. I’m going with sleep deprivation but mainly it was just Chris… and Adam… and Jake… And Mike. But not Christina.

---

Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

The party have arrived in the fortified village of Nightstone only to find its human inhabitants have fled following an aerial attack by giants in a floating castle. The village was cleared of scavenging goblins and an attempt by the Zhentarim to take over the village was foiled. Our heroes have enjoyed a good night’s rest but in the morning, a new threat emerges. 

---

Pre-session Guff

Matt decided not to bother turning up because apparently playing football in 90 degree heat is preferable to playing D&D. I don’t think I need to say any more about that..

Chris eventually decided to turn up this week and promptly blamed Microsoft for eating his homework causing the delay (pfft).

Mike took issue with Chris for recommending Horizon Zero Dawn without warning Mike that he would have to play as a ginger.

Chris created his character and rolled decent Wisdom and Charisma and a truly impressive 5 for Intelligence. However, as Chris correctly observed “I don’t have to be intelligent to hit things”. Although he followed that up with “How do you like those stats Adam, you little dickweasel?” which set the tone for the lengthy discussion which followed about which character Chris should make with those stats.

Jake and Mike admitted to joining Epic Games. The DM immediately disowned them and hoped they got digitally shafted when Trump bans Fortnight and by giving all their data to Tencent.

Five minutes after completing rolling his dice, Chris asked if we were all just waiting on him. We were. At ten minutes after dice roll, with Chris still putting his character together and Adam still calling out random suggestions such as “Multiclass Bard/Druid!” and “Shadow Sorcerers are cool!” the DM rather unhelpfully played Under Pressure on the discord music bot.

The DM then reminded all present that the session audio was being recorded and that it would be deleted as soon as the write-up was complete. The side effect of this is that the DM knew exactly how long it took for Chris to make his character. Mike pointed out that Jake could have had a whole round of combat in the time it had taken Chris so far.

Just for the record, in Princes of the Apocalypse, Kroq once spent 12.5 minutes on one turn. Chris created his Tabaxi Cleric in just under 11 minutes.

Adam mocked Mike for mispronouncing Genasi. The DM mocked Adam for mispronouncing Drow.

The choice of faction came up for Chris’ cleric and it was generally felt that the Order of the Gauntlet fitted the ‘nice but dim’ theme.

---

Give them nothing! But take from them… everything!

Breakfast in the partially-demolished inn was interrupted by one of the town guards bringing news of a disturbance outside the gates. The players proceeded up the gatehouse towers and witnessed an orc warband emerging from the early morning mist. There were around twenty orcs plus a war chief and a shaman.

Observations of the warband showed that they had no baggage train or other supplies, several of them were wounded, some with arrows still sticking out of them, and the shaman was holding an unusual looking staff.

At this point Chris stated he was having trouble with the D&D Beyond app due to having two accounts. In amongst a barrage of abuse, mostly about not being willing to pay the trivial amount for the yearly sub was this exchange:

• Adam> <rather smugly> I haven’t paid and I have just the amount of characters I need.
• Chris> Yes, but you’re not DMing a campaign you little twerp so shut up.
• Adam> Well that’s your fault for not doing paper-based!
• Chris> I… wha..? I’m doing it on… Shut the fuck up! Christ, I can’t believe I exposed myself to you again… <sigh> That’s the wrong wording!
• DM> <amidst general laughter> Well, that’s your quote for the week!
• Chris <sigh> Thanks Gary.

Welcome back Chris, it’s like you were never away 🙂

Back in the world where you can make it up, the orc war chief (Gurrash) shouted for his warband to ‘Take the stronghold before they catch us!’. There’s a clue there:

– Something stronger than the Orcs attacked them

– The Orcs really need to get inside the fortifications

– If the party hold on long enough, the Orc’s attackers should show up

It went utterly unnoticed of course. It wasn’t the only thing that went unnoticed this night but it was probably the most important one.

Roll initiative!

---

This is where we hold them! This is where we fight! This is where they die!

Initiative rolls caused some amusement for two reasons:

– Jake/Abelas ended up with a really quite impressive 2 for initiative.

– The DM pointed out that all of the Orcs have both more intelligence than the cleric and more dexterity than the wizard.

The DM specifically asked Q’Aren if she were going to repeat what the orc war chief shouted to his warband and Q’Aren did so. So now they were aware of it twice.

• Regulus> Can I shoot at Nagora One-Eye?
• Q’Aren> Wait… you’re going to shoot them?
• Regulus> <exasperated> Yes! You just told us they said they were going to attack!
• Q’Aren> I didn’t say they said ‘attack’ I said they said ‘take’!
• *Everyone else sighs heavily

Regulus shoots at Nagora and misses by quite a large margin. It is subsequently deduced that the Orc Shaman must have some kind of missile deflecting shield!

As a bonus action the orcs get to move up to 30ft towards a target they can see and they have enough strength to be able to jump the gap where the raised drawbridge is. Seeing twenty orcs charging the gates, Q’Aren pondered stabbing everyone and changing allegiance.

The orcs spread out on the narrow ledge between the palisade and the water. A few of the closer ones made it without dashing and some attempted to climb the palisade and found it was designed not to be climbed. A couple of others launched javelin attacks at the defenders in the towers and hit the new cleric.

On her turn, Q’Aren attempted to negotiate:

• Q’Aren> Don’t attack! We can come to some sort of agreement. It won’t affect your statutory rights!
• Gurrash> The only ‘agreement’ we are going to come to, half-breed, is which side of my belt your head ends up hanging on.

Shots fired!

Q’Aren responded with an assertion of rights delivered by light crossbow which hit Gurrash for three damage.

Elvira stepped up and even with her to-hit she missed the shaman. “It’s because of that forcefield” was the excuse rendered, with Regulus agreeing fully.

Gurrash, seeing that the palisade is unassaultable (made up word!) orders the orcs to retreat. Then it is Norgra’s turn:

• DM> She is going to point at… Q’Aren and she speaks a command. Could you make a Wisdom saving throw please?
• > silence
• > more silence
• > and a little bit more silence still
• Chris> Have you been charging those dice Adam?
• >silence
• Jake> Have we lost Adam?
• Chris> ‘Loss’ is a strong word…
• Jake> <going full-existential> Was he ever really here?
• Adam> What’s what?
• > general muttered swearing from several people
• Mike> Make a Wisdom saving throw Adam…
• Jake> Did you hear anything of that?!
• Adam> No.. I did say I’m going to quickly run to the loo

<sigh> It will surprise you not one iota, gentle reader, to learn that the DM has gone back through the audio and Adam at no point mentioned he was leaving for anything.

Q’Aren made the save and thus ‘half-orc base-jumping’ was not a thing. The DM was unimpressed.

The final player was Abelas, nicknamed Lastbelas for this fight. Lastbelas went for a Toll the Dead at which point Adam, who once played a wizard for a significant chunk of a campaign, objected because he thought wizards don’t get Toll the Dead <sigh>.

Another round started with the orcs continuing to retreat while the party peppered them with ranged attacks. Gurrash ordered four orcs to swim downstream and scout the island.

---

Earth and water… You’ll find plenty of both down there

Regulus quickly realises that the weak spot in the defences is on the southern end where the bridge from the keep breaches the palisade and he heads off in that direction. He asks about the ruined watchtower in the corner and the DM confirmed that it was indeed ruined but the outer 20ft high wall was solid.

Isaac spent his turn hugging everyone because they had clearly won the battle now that the orcs were retreating. This bit of deliberately misunderstanding the situation earned a ‘free hugs!’ inspiration from the DM who was all too used to his players not deliberately misunderstanding things (yes, that’s an insult).

At this point, about an hour into the fight, the DM realised he hadn’t added the Town Guards to the initiative board <sigh> Finger <-> pulse.

Regulus, Abelas, Isaac and Elvira sprinted towards the bridge. Well, Regulus, Isaac and Elvira sprinted, Abelas kind of hobbled along a bit. At this point the DM and Regulus got into a disagreement about movement speed and listening back to it the DM sounds far more serious about it than he was feeling. I guess that’s something we lose from not being around the table unfortunately.

Q’Aren decided to stay put saying “I’m not running all the way over there based on a theory!”

Lastbelas asked about the ruined watchtower in the corner and the DM confirmed, again, that it was indeed ruined but the outer 20ft high wall was solid.

The bridge ends at a 20ft gap in the palisade above a 10ft muddy slope down to the water. This muddy slope extends all the way around the outside of the palisade.

At this point Q’Aren asked if she could lower the drawbridge by herself. Major Butthurt turned up and the DM, with only the tiniest sliver of sarcasm, reminded the player of all the times he had said that the drawbridge takes two people to operate AND of the practical demonstration of that when the Zhentarim spy couldn’t lower it herself.

Then Q’Aren, who was on a roll at this point, questioned the defensive architecture of the bridge-palisade combo, leading the DM to respond, again with hardly any sarcasm at all “It’s almost as if there’s an entire fucking keep, with a curtain wall, dedicated to protecting this fucking area! Ooh! Look! Guardhouses!”

Having seen everyone else bugger off, the penny drops with Q’Aren and she starts sprinting off after the others.

The orcs in the river swam into sight of the breach and immediately split up with two of them swimming back towards the mainland and two carrying on towards the bridge. On their next turn, having been shot at by the players on the bridge, the DM had the two that stayed in the river duck underwater. His exact words were:

“These ones submerge under the water and you lose sight of them. I’m just going to park them there for now” and the two minis were moved out of the way up by the keep wall so they were handy for when the DM needed them to ambush the targets players on the bridge who were too cool to take cover.

At this point Abelas Lastbelas gained an unwarranted obsession with being on the far side of the bridge instead of, say, the near side where everyone else and the palisade was.

Elvira let loose with a longbow at the two runners and nailed one at 120ft lopping off half his hit points but then all of the rest of the orcs charge out of the fog heading for the bridge.

---

This is NOT where we should hold them! This is NOT where we should fight! This is NOT where they die!

Lastbelas, continuing his obsession with the far side of the bridge, crossed the repaired gap and move higher up the bridge to ensure he was seen by as many of the oncoming enemy as possible and that he was as far away from any cover as possible. He then attempted to engage the two minis the DM had parked ‘out of the way’ prompting another appearance by Major Butthurt as the DM got unnecessarily grumpy at him.

Regulus then ‘got it’ and suggested they defend from the palisade gap but he then ‘lost it’ when he suggested they try and barricade it. The orcs are dashing 90ft per turn which is going to put them at the gap in around three turns… or 18 seconds in-game time. The DM did not actually point this out at the time as he was enjoying seeing the various proposals Mike was coming up with that couldn’t possibly work in time.

Alas, Adam got impatient and politely suggested Mike might want to start thinking about wrapping up the planning and doing something else:

“OH MY GOD JUST SHOOT ONE!!”

Indeed. When further abuse was heaped on by Chris and the DM, Mike plaintively (and accurately) pointed out that he was the only one thinking about making this place defensible.

As the orcs surged forward, Chris made a comment missed by the DM at the time (moving 20 orcs is a pain) but it was quite pertinent “Someone should have asked them what they were running from”.

We’ll find out soon!

The two underwater scouts popped out onto the bridge and one of them took a big chunk off of Q’Aren’s hit point total with a greataxe. Q’Aren was looking a bit ropey. She was low on health too.

Regulus pointed out that he wanted it remembered that later, when they were getting bummed by the orcs, he had wanted to barricade the palisade gap. He was roundly mocked and abused by the rest of the party but mostly by Q’Aren.

Isaac attacked and failed to move off the bridge into cover, but he does have an Int of 5. Q’Aren drops her shield, pulls a greatsword and decapitates one of the orcs on the bridge.

I suppose this discussion was inevitable but it took place about an hour and twenty minutes into the fight:

• Q’Aren> Oh, what I might do though, because I completely forgot about it until just now… SECOND WIND!
• Regulus> Niiice!
• Q’Aren> I don’t need healers! Awww.. five.
• *There is now a few seconds of silence while everyone’s brains catch up on the other thing Fighters have at level 2
• Regulus> Erm… couldn’t you action surge as well?
• *far off in the distance, the faint sound of a penny dropping can be heard…
• Lastbelas> Yeah… you can
• Q’Aren> Can I?!!
• DM> /facepalm
• Q’Aren> ACTION SUUUURGE!

And the rest of the party tries to sigh and laugh at the same time.

Q’Aren attacked the second orc on the bridge, hit it, rolled a 1 for damage, announced proudly that she gets to re-roll ones, and promptly rolled another one. The orc was left with one hit point.

Lastbelas gets ready to end its sorry existence but the DM noted it was Elvira’s go next and, much to the disappointment of Jake, she finished it off with a swift shortsword thrust.

Isaac asked about the ruined tower and the DM repeated everything he had previously said about the ruined tower (twice) <sigh>.

• Isaac> How are those two orcs looking?
• DM> 17 is nearly dead.
• Isaac> I will Toll the Dead on orc 17 please!
• DM> He failed the save..
• Isaac> He’s brown bread! Er.. oh wait I have to roll for damage right?
• Regulus> I can hear Gary praying for a 1 here
• *Isaac rolls a 1
• *laughter all round
• Isaac> <sigh> Cocks!
• DM> Karma heard you and responded!

Having finished his attack, the character with the Int score of 5 then moved behind the palisade into full cover leaving all the ‘smart’ people standing on the bridge like a bunch of javelin targets.

---

Madman… You’re a madman!

So now the orcs have crossed the river and are stacked up on the bank and are about to come storming down towards the bridge. “This is where they finally see sense and hole up somewhere” thought the DM. But no. Some players had other ideas.

• DM> Q’Aren’s turn
• Q’Aren> Erm… I can’t quite charge into them can I?
• Isaac> No… I was thinking that..
• DM> <laughing> Why would you want to try?!!
• Q’Aren> Because I can’t hit them from here!
• Regulus> I have to wonder; what’s our end goal now?
• DM> What’s the most defensible position here? It’s this gap..
• Regulus> Yes! It’s that gap there!
• DM> But no! Let’s abandon it and charge in so I can put an orc here, here, here… <this went on for some time as the DM plainly indicated exactly where the 17 oncoming orcs were going to end up on their next turn>
• Q’Aren> Yeah but I’ll stop them getting to <unintelligible>. I can’t do anything from range!

So there you have it folks, instead of spending a round doing nothing, getting defensive, and thus surviving to dish out heaps of damage to compacted orc hordes in future turns, Billy 5-clicks just had to do something this turn.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “Oh by Moradin’s scuffed left nut, this isn’t even tactics, it’s just ‘not being really, REALLY fucking stupid’. This is me getting remarried levels of stupid.”

Lastbelas> THEN WAIT FOR THEM TO COME AT YOUUUUU!

Regulus> <clearly having given up on common sense> Focus your inner Jake! Don’t worry about damage!

• Lastbelas/Jake> If I wasn’t so gimpy, I’d be in there!
• *The DM was laughing at this point… but also crying inside a little bit.
• Q’Aren> Oh… That’s what Q’Aren would do! It’s worked every single time for her so far!
• (That’s once by the way, for those keeping count)
• Q’Aren> I can’t quite reach them can I?
• Lastbelas> Oh Christ, he genuinely is charging them!
• DM> No you end up here <moves Q’Aren to within 10ft of the orcs>
• *It has finally sunk in to Mike that yes, this staggering stupidity is actually about to happen.
• Regulus> Why would you… why… <words fail Mike at this point>
• Lastbelas> She’s gonna die and I’m not even that bothered.
• Q’Aren <laughing> I take the dodge action!
• Elvira> <incredulously> Have you not got a shortbow?
• *There now follows a short discussion on the merits of just about any ranged attack over what the fuck Adam just did. It accomplished nothing.
• Q’Aren> Q’Aren has made her decision!
• Regulus> Q’Aren has just lost us this town 🙁
• Q’Aren> I believe that Elvira can save me.

You might want to remember that particular quote.

The DM puts the theme from MASH on the discord bot; suicide is painless. This one won’t be.

---

---

Elvira steps up and cuts loose with her, admittedly impressive, longbow attack. She only gets one of those however and there are sixteen orcs about to descend on Q’Aren.

Elvira> Can I levitate him back?

Christina immediately recognises her mistake; no, not that the creature must be willing, but that she just misgendered Q’Aren!

BUUUUURN THE HERETIC!

Having corrected that horrendous oversight, Elvira realised that levitate would only suspend Q’Aren 20ft in the air.

Lastbelas> It’s ok Christina, let the past die.

Lastbelas then fails a Toll the Dead and then fails to move into cover.

The DM starts moving orcs and, despite the fact that Adam has now seen these orcs move repeatedly, and heard the DM repeatedly say “they bonus move their speed towards hostiles” AND despite the fact that the DM CLEARLY showed Adam EXACTLY where the orcs were going to move next turn, he still said “Oh… they move a lot further than I thought”

---

---

Desperate now, Adam tries to cheese in the ‘melee attackers blocking ranged attacks’ optional rule. The cheese failed.

Q’Aren faced 5 melee attacks (Greataxe – 9 damage) and twelve javelin attacks. One melee hit took the half-orc down to 1 hit point and the first javelin attack knocked her unconscious.

FIGHTER DOWN!

• Q’Aren> I didn’t expect that many to be on me!
• *The DM had given up and couldn’t even summon up a response. Jake did it for him:
• Lastbelas> Well, you’re a fucking idiot.
• *laughter
• Q’Aren> I expected three or four!
• *Incredulous laughter around the table
• Lastbelas> <pointing> They were all THERE!

I’m not sure if this is the stupidest thing I have seen in D&D. I’ll ask the players if they can remember anything more stupid. The 10hp Cleric charging the dragon turtle was up there as a contender but I think this one edges that.

Adam, on a personal note, despite all the abuse I throw at you in these reviews, please don’t ever change the way you D&D.

---

Then we will fight in the shade.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “Look, if you know you are about to be on the receiving end of a bunch of pointy sticks fired at you from a long way off, don’t just stand there like a fucking scarecrow! TAKE FUCKING COVER!”

There is a 20ft tall palisade right next to the bridge that is specifically designed to protect against ranged attacks.

The DM had eleven javelin attacks left and three idiots players standing on the bridge to aim at. The attacks were evenly split with one left over and the dice gods promptly fucked over Jake which was probably just karma because he had insisted on being the highest and most visible target DESPITE HAVING THE LOWEST ARMOUR CLASS!

<intermission>

Apologies, had to get my blood pressure back under control. So, four attacks at disadvantage (due to range) on Lastbelas, one lands and hits so hard even shield couldn’t protect the gimpy wizard.

Lastbelas> From that one attack I’m a bit ropey

Probably shouldn’t have just stood out in the open like a numpty then.

Three attacks at Elvira resulted in one hit. Three at Regulus all missed. The only one not attacked was Isaac, the idiot cleric who still had enough sense to stand behind the giant wall of wood. Unfortunately, Isaac’s brief dalliance with sensibility did not last long.

---

This is blasphemy! This is madness!

Isaac charged right up to the orcs <sigh>

• Isaac> Then I will shout out “I will save you ugly green person! As I kill all these ugly green people!”
• *suicide is painless starts playing again on the discord bot
• Isaac> “The power of Lathander compels you!” and then I will pull out my holy symbol. Can all of those orcs Gary, make a Con saving throw please?
• DM> <wondering what this cheese will be> What are you trying to do exactly?
• Isaac> It’s my Channel Divinity, it is Radiance of Dawn. It dispels all magical darkness within 30ft…
• *Well that’s pointless here, thought the DM
• Isaac> Each hostile creature must make a Con saving throw or take 2d10 +2 radiant damage, half on save.
• “Fucking hell!” Thought the DM
• “Fucking hell!” Said Lastbelas.
• “Bloody hell!” Said Regulus.
• DM> <trying, and failing, not to sound too sceptical because he generally trusts Chris on these things as opposed to, say, Adam> Yeah, I’ll need to look that up because that does not sound right…

It was right. The main question around the table was ‘How has Adam not discovered this cheese previously?!’

The cheese attack hit the orcs for a combined 108 radiant damage.

Fucking Light Clerics, I miss the Bard already <sigh>

Isaac then used his last remaining movement to jump in the water.

---

Clearly, you don’t know our women.

Elvira killed an orc from the bridge and then the orc shaman popped out of the water and commanded Lastbelas to ‘Dive’ resulting in him diving into the water. This gave the DM a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

At the end of this round eight elf scouts that had been pursuing the orc warband appeared on the river bank. The scouts get two attacks with their longbows and the promptly set about massacring the orcs. The warband split with half going for the scouts and half going for the players at the bridge.

Gurrash died in single combat with the scout leader and Norgra did not last long after.

At the bridge, Regulus dropped a Grease spell on the bank causing the encroaching orc half-horde to have to go around it in the water. This allowed them to surround the idiot cat cheese-cleric though.

Underwater combat means melee at disadvantage unless specific weapons are used. One of those weapons is the javelin. The cat got repeatedly punctured.

CLERIC DOWN!

As he is in the water he cannot recover hit points until he can breathe again and he cannot be stabilised. It was agreed that NOW would be a good time to levitate him out of there. Just for good measure, and because the DM is a dick, he had the pending cat-corpse start drifting away downstream.

Elvira> I levitate the cat!

DM> Ok… there is now a drowned cat dangling 20ft in the air! You don’t see that every day.

Now that 40% of the party were down it was decided that Regulus had the right idea and moving to somewhere a tad more defensive was in order. Even the gimpy wizard abandoned his bridge fetish and went back into the village.

A much diminished half-horde of orcs made it to the bridge and attacked the three remaining defenders. Elvira got hit hard by a Greataxe!

ARCHER DOWN!

Lastbelas> Oh no! Is it going to just be the gimpy wizard left defending the town?

No. It was the gimpy wizard and the psycho-bot.

As Elvira was unconscious, the idiot cat cleric dropped out of the sky and back into the river where he started drowning again. The DM got that warm fuzzy feeling again.

The DM, surveying the chaos and several impending player-corpses, commented that it would be really useful to have a cleric that could cast Healing Word as a bonus action right about now instead of going out in a suicide bombing run.

In response Chris wielded his 5 Int like a Shield of Deflection +3, blaming everything on being stupid, and the DM reluctantly agreed he had a point.

Lastbelas cut loose with a Magic Missile barrage and killed two orcs that the idiot cat cheese-cleric had messed up earlier.

However, he then undid all his good work by trying to totally cheese a bonus action healing kit to get Elvira up <sigh>. Cheese of the truly smelly variety there, shame on you!

There are two orcs left and Regulus has a choice; attack or cast a healing spell on Elvira. He gets the Archer back on her feet!

The two orcs attack! It could all end here!

They both miss! Yaaaay!

The scouts finished off the last of the orcs on the mainland and the two orcs on the island were summarily executed by a combination of Firebolt, Magic Missile and a double-stabby shortsword attack.

End of combat… aaaand relax.

The elf scout leader, with no love for the village, shouts sarcastically at the party “YOU’RE WELCOME!” and they bugger off back to Ardeep Forest.

They fished the idiot cat cheese cleric out of the river and then the DM used some subtle subliminal messaging to get them to loot the magic staff off of the corpse of the shaman. Lastbelas receives a Staff of Fixing; +1 to AC and can cast Mage Armour and Shield.

DING DING! Level 3!

End of session!

---

Some final thoughts

Well that was a bit of a slog with the DM at one point running 22 orcs and eight scouts causing some long turns. On the plus side, that entire fight basically got you from level two to level three in one session.

Obviously standing on the bridge was a bad idea. One alternative, apart from defending the gap, was to hole up in the windmill. It only has one door, 5ft wide and you know you can snipe from the top of it in cover. There were a few ways to go. You went with the more er… direct approach 🙂

Adam asked at the end how hard it is to get killed in 5^th edition. Hard. Put it this way, when you reduce an orc to 0HP it gets killed, whereas when an orc reduces you to 0HP you fall unconscious. It then takes three failed death saves to actually die. If we reverse that and say that when you KO an Orc it will take three more hits to actually kill it, would you spend those attacks on a target that can’t hurt you, or would you focus on an orc that is still throwing javelins at you? Generally speaking, enemies will attack outstanding threats before targeting downed players, unless they are especially smart or especially vindictive.

---

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

– Can Matt be bothered to turn up or will darts/dominoes/bowls simply be more important than D&D?

– What can Adam do that could possibly be as stupid as what he did this week?

– What revised character will Chris turn up with and how is he going to play the 5 Int?

– Will Christina blatantly misgender anyone else?!

Tune in next week to find out!

Starring:

Adam as Ari/Beaver the Wizard – Zombie-herder.

Jake as Kroq the Fighter – Smugly informing everyone of how many hit points he had left.

Chris H. as Uffo the Bard – The Bard wanted it and the Bard got it.

Matthew as Cru the Cleric – Feels they have cleared this floor.

Henry as Darin the Rogue – Dealing fuck-tons (imperial, not metric) of damage.

Sophie as Torren the Cleric – Wotsing?

---

Chapter 1 – Secret of the Sumber Hills continued.

The main story so far:

– A rogue member of a cult dedicated to the worship of ‘elemental earth’ tried to gain control of the town of Red Larch.

– A trade delegation from Mirabar went missing in the area recently. Powerful organisations want them found.

– Whilst travelling with the delegate prisoners, the Black Earth cult got into a fight with the Air Cult. It isn’t known what the outcome of that was or where the delegates are now.

– The party investigated the Air Cult base at Feathergale Spire

– The boss was beaten, the spire looted, a letter from the head of the Howling Hatred air cult ‘Aerisi’ was found and also directions to Riverguard Keep.

– There was also a mention of ‘Sacred Stone Monastery’ being associated with the Black Earth cult.

– The temple entrance in the valley is protected by a barrier they party cannot get through yet.

– Rivergard Keep was found, entered and the boss, Grimjaw (a were-crocodile), was killed. A second amulet was recovered from Grimjaw’s corpse.

– The party travelled to Scarlet Stone monastery and attempted to gain entry. When they were told to get lost, they waited until night, stealthily entered the rear gardens and started a loud fight right outside the bedroom of the main boss.

---

Pre-session guff

There was some pre-session banter and, as predicted, the Battle Royale won’t be forgotten any time soon. Someone politely enquired if Ari was actually going to do any damage today. Uffo suggested the players not be salty about the Battle Royale. Darin pointed out that, as the winner, Uffo would say that and politely intimated that he could go fuck himself.

Adam stated that Firefly was shit and the DM rescinded all inspiration awards from Ari for the remainder of the campaign and asked all other players to remind the DM of this fact should he forget and attempt to reward Ari with an inspiration at any point going forward.

Adam can remove this penalty by watching the entire Firefly series and the Serenity movie and then explaining to the group, in detail, why he still thinks it is shit.

The DM told the players not to chase their personal quests; they will find them in the normal course of their travels or the DM will ensure they know where to go.

The DM also stated that both Ari and Cru were still experiencing the nightmares about the flaming skull and it had been about 7 days since those started.

---

Monastery Exploration

Our band of intrepid adventurers have just finished a monster of a fight with the bulk of the monastery monks where Uffo got a bit buttfucked due to an epic fail of an attempted con-job.

It wasn’t really his fault.

It was really funny.

Uffo wanted to heal himself but couldn’t find his spellcasting modifier. You know, that thing he uses pretty much every fight. The DM pondered why nobody thought to add important information like that to the character sheets so it could easily be found when they needed it.

Uffo also started the session in style with a Maths is Hard moment.

President Henry resigned from his position of authority within the group and jokingly nominated Jake to take over. Jake accepted enthusiastically and before you know it, a joke nomination ended up in charge. There’s a lot of that going around.

The newly christened President Corbyn-Trump promised to charge recklessly into every fight without stopping to think about the consequences. No change there then.

The monastery guest quarters were located and a locked chest found beneath one of the beds. The lock was picked and several scrolls were found. Ari got really excited over one of the level 5 ‘schpells’ (that shit is catching) and explained to the group what it did.

It makes mud, apparently

Uffo was super unimpressed.

Several gargoyle statues were spotted in the main entry hall and the group decided not to risk a confrontation should they not be the statues they appeared to be and avoided the room.

A scriptorium was found where the monks had been busy copying the Testament of Unrayle which contains the following information:

– Marlos Unrayle is the ‘prophet’ of elemental earth.

– He had visions that led him to a place called The Fane of the Eye where he found a magical weapon called Ironfang and took it for his own.

– Unrayle established the Temple of the Black Earth Cult in a long-abandoned dwarven stronghold that exists below Sacred Stone Monastery.

– He is in possession of something called the Black Earth Geode and when all is ready “the Evergrowing Mountain shall come and remake these lands in his own image”.

Monkey Magic

Exploring further, they arrived at the… DOJO OF DOOOOOM!

In the centre of the dojo is Hellenrae, the monastery boss. She is wearing one of the golden masks but this one has no eye-holes. Hellenrae is blind. She is also a pretty decent monk.

Low level monks are cool but squishy. High level monks are slippery and dangerous. There are five normal monks in the dojo as well.

Hellenrae ran up to Kroq, threw three attacks at him and landed a couple, and then she ran back into the centre of the dojo (without suffering attacks of retaliation due to cheaty monkey mobility stuff) and pulled the cheesy Morpheus ‘bring it’ hand gesture.

The doorway got a bit congested with Kroq, Torren and four of the monks piled into a very small area. Uffo managed to run into the room, launched a Magic Missile attack at Hellenrae for about 3% of her hit points, then ran back behind Kroq and taunted the Boss with the same hand gesture from between his legs. Er… between Kroq’s legs… because if it were between Uffo’s legs there’s some serious contortion happening.

Just for the record guys; squishies taunting bosses is generally a bad idea. Squishies taunting bosses that specialise in taking down squishies…. Oh my.

The DM had originally intended to focus Hellenrae’s attacks on Kroq or Torren as she was the first thing the party has run into that can reliably hit the high AC characters (+7 to hit) and Jake was smugly informing everyone of how many hit points he had left.

However, the bard wanted it and so the bard got it.

Hellenrae ran up to Uffo and hit him three times (+7 to hit for each attack) for 9 damage each. Ouch!

BARD DOWN!

Tripitaka was a bitch too

Cru got Uffo back off the floor and Ari pulled a risky (but ballsy) move to Shocking Grasp Hellenrae, which landed and prevented her from making reaction attacks until her next turn. This allowed Uffo to get the fuck out of dodge.

The phrase “nine plus four is fifteen” was clearly heard by several people but afterwards no one would admit to it. Uffo compounded the Maths is Hard moment by responding “No it’s 14”

Cru used this opportunity to pop a level 3 Inflict Wounds at Hellenrae but she is a difficult target to hit and the attack missed costing the cleric a level 3 ‘schplot’. If it had landed there would have been a lot less pain going forward. Shame.

Kroq started his turn at the same time as Chris pulled out a packet of crisps. The DM made a mental bet that the crisps would be finished before Kroq’s inevitable eleventy billion attacks. It didn’t quite happen but apparently the packet was nearly empty by the time Kroq was finished and Hellenrae had taken a substantial amount of damage.

Kroq however, did not quite seem to realise the danger he was in; at +7 to-hit she will land 1-2 attacks on average per round. She only needs to get slightly lucky to land all 3. If she gets 4 turns during the course of the fight, that’s 12 attacks total, plus she gets reaction attacks if people miss her, and that is a significantly better-than-even chance of getting a crit at some point in the fight.

Hellenrae got that crit at the start of her next turn.

Maths is Awesome!

Kroq took 18 damage and, more crucially, failed the Con save and was stunned. This gave Hellenrae advantage on her next two attacks against him, she only needed one.

FIGHTER DOWN! 

Then, just to be a dick, the DM ran Hellenrae over to the bard and twatted him again for good measure.

Torren seemed to be having a wonderful time Wrath of the Storming (Wotsing?) monks who made the mistake of hitting her and Darin was doing what Darin does; hiding and dealing fuck-tons (imperial, not metric) of damage. The monks were slowly whittled down and died defending the honour of their dojo.

RIP Monkey, you were amazeballs

Sadly, the brave and noble Hellenrae was eventually brutally murdered by the band of rampaging, cheaty, clearly overpowered, homicidal and dysfunctional ruffians when all she wanted was to defend her home, do Kung Fu, punch people repeatedly and help bring about the end of the world 

Let us take a moment to reflect on her outstanding contributions to this campaign; punching the bard repeatedly in the face until he was unconscious and proving to Kroq that he is not actually invincible.

Farewell Hellenrae you magnificent blind bitch, you will be missed.

Ok, moment over.

President Corbyn-Trump Takes Command

Hellenrae had a key and another of the cultist-symbol amulets on her which were duly looted.

The DM forgot to mention the amulet (again) so retcon that fucker in there.

The group were pretty messed up after this fight and a pretty lengthy discussion on resting took place. Cru was heard to say “I feel we have cleared this floor”.

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Aren’t assumptions wonderful?

Uffo had a naturally occurring Scpell Schlot incident. Told you, that shit is catching!

They decided to check the last few nearby rooms; one was locked, one was a distillery with a lot of cheap brandy in it (Ari and Uffo helped themselves to a few bottles) and the other proved to be Hellenrae’s chambers where Torren found a rather tasty Hammer of Thunderbolts hanging on the wall.

President Corbyn-Trump decided that a short rest in the well-protected room was in order. Ari dragged the body of Hellenrae into the room and cast Animate Dead on it, accompanied by a chorus of groans from the other players.

The Zombie-monk immediately shuffled as far from Ari as it could get and made an attempt to walk through the wall and would not obey Ari’s commands.

In the ensuing torrent of abuse, Ari was called something very nasty indeed, which was a bit harsh, but funny as it wasn’t her fault. The nightmares Ari and Cru had been experiencing since pretty much the first session were symptoms of a curse they picked up when the touched something they shouldn’t have. One effect of the curse is that undead avoid you. Ari doesn’t know this.

Kroq stated “I don’t want to rest with a zombie in the room!” which was bizarre but accurate and tickled the DM. No one else seemed to find it funny, but fuck those losers.

Ari then attempted to do some entertaining but hopeless zombie-herding with little success and Cru eventually put the zombie-monk down with a few Sacred Flame cantrips.

Ari was unimpressed.

The Shrine of Black Earth

Other than the locked area that they can’t figure out how to get into yet, there is only one room left unexplored and it is the large central chamber of the monastery with the gargoyle statues by the front door.

They wisely decided to once again avoid any potential “AAAAARGH IT’S NOT REALLY A STATUE!” moments and avoided the front entrance. They stacked up on a side door and Uffo attempted to steal Ari’s brandy bottle. He failed hard and Ari caught him and poured the brandy over his head.

Uffo was now vulnerable to fire but sadly the DM never got the chance to put that to use 

Inside the shrine is a Black Earth Priest (a.k.a Beppé), and two Black Earth Guards. The party discussed the last time they fought a BEP and couldn’t quite remember what he did other than it was an AoE. They agreed it was a fantastic idea not to clump together.

The fight started and the party clumped together.

Nice.

Beppé felt duty bound to lob a level 3 Shatter in to the midst of the group. Uffo responded by casting his Faery-Fire stuff on all three cultists.

---

Ari> Longbow attack on Beppé!

*Ari rolls a 3*

*Ari is unimpressed*

Ari> Oh wait, didn’t we get advantage on that?

DM> Yes

Ari> Cool!

*Ari rolls a 4*

*Much laughter*

Ari> Well… fuck.

---

Kroq burned fifteen resources to land one hit on the priest. The DM lol’d.

The priest lasted somewhat longer than his predecessor in the Tomb of Moving Stones but not by much. The last guard did a runner towards a lever in the corner. Or was it towards the door that was next to the lever? What does the lever do? They may never know as they cut him down before he could get to wherever it was he was going.

Victorious once more, the party engaged in a lengthy discussion about whether to short rest, long rest or push on. Henry went for a piss.

Henry returned from his piss and complained bitterly that they were still arguing the same points they were on when he left.

There are several sets of stairs leading down below the monastery and Uffo felt that, while there were almost certainly bad guys down there, “I’m guessing they don’t come upstairs for the most part”.

Aren’t assumptions wonderful?

This discussion continued for a lot longer until it was finally put to a vote.

If only you have some ability that would let you know if a proposed course of action were a good idea or not. Like… I dunno… may the Augury spell? That would be really useful and totally amazing.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena, once said “Use fucking Augury you twats!”

Consequences

The party left the monastery, headed into the woods and long rested in a tiny hut Uffo pulled out of his arse. Or something.

On returning to the monastery, the party found that the denizens below did, in fact, come upstairs for the most part and they faced Beppétoo, three BEGs and six Duergar (grey dwarfs.. dwarves?).

There was a brief Beaver appearance when it was suggested that in the middle of a fight, where they hadn’t actually seen all of their opponents, they cast Dispel Magic on the door in the garden.

The DM likened this to Dubya’s decision to start not one, but two land wars in Asia at the same time.

The Black Earth cultists were eventually defeated.

End of session.

---

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

– Will the Battle Royale result continue spill into the main campaign?

– What were the consequences of those were-croc bite constitution checks (still x2)?

– How long will it take for whatever is fucking up Ari’s undead summon bollocks to wear off?

– What is behind the magically locked door?

– What does the brass lever do in the main hall?

– How fucked would they be if they had gone down the stairs without resting?

Tune in next week to find out!