In the last session report I wrote I talked about how it didn’t go very well. People seemed disinterested and the DM grew frustrated, so much so that it took a while before we managed to organize the next session. And organizing the session was a mission in and of itself. It’s been a busy period, what with me going to Prague, another player sorting out a new job and moving away, and the DM had a trip as well, so it took a while and in this time one of our other players grew frustrated and left the Facebook thread we used to talk about the game.
This left me dumbfounded because yes, it was an effort to organize but everyone else knew that it was just a matter of time, and we were all fairly laid back about it. But this player didn’t even talk to us about it he just left with no word or explanation, and it struck me as an immature thing to do. And the silly thing is if he had just been patient and waited another week then he would have been involved in the last couple of sessions, which have been so much fun! So in this session there will be some spoilers for the Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign.
We started off by waking and finding that our Barbarian comrade had died in his sleep and urinated all over his bedding (okay, so that may have been petty but it was still pretty funny; an ignoble death for the barbarian). We ended up coming across a necromancer and asking a Banshee a question for him. When the answer wasn’t satisfactory we tried to placate the necromancer but things went south and we ended up fighting him and a horde of 13 zombies, one of which was our resurrected barbarian friend. Who died again. Then got resurrected again. Then died again.
It was fun.
But the DM really didn’t expect us to fight the necromancer, but it got to a point where the conversation wasn’t going anywhere and he was being completely unreasonable, and obviously he’s a necromancer anyway so he’s evil. It was a tough battle though and for once I was last man standing. I managed to do a really cool thing; with level three I got an ability that lets me reduce damage of ranged weapon attacks and then fling them back if I use a Ki point, so when the necromancer used magic missile I managed to catch them and surprise him with an attack. I also then tried to hop over some zombies in order to get to the other platform and finish him off but that didn’t work, and the necromancer ended up falling off the ledge to his death.
Oh, and I got a really cool ring of protection, which gives me +1 to my AC and +1 to any saving throw!
After this we made our way to Thundertree to talk with a druid there, but along the way I got approached to join the Harpers and the Order of the Gauntlet, both of which are somewhat secret societies dedicated to ridding the world of evil and helping the innocent. I think I’m going to join the Harpers though because there are no lone wolves in the Order of the Gauntlet, and as a hermit monk I feel it’s more in character that I’m a wandering autonomous unit.
But in Thundertree we got told by the druid that he was there to face a dragon, and that session ended with us all excited at the prospect of fighting a dragon!
But at the beginning of the next session we were strongly urged by the druid to not go after the dragon straight away, so we fought some little things, some cultists, and some giant spiders (in which I got paralyzed before I could do anything so I spent the whole fight immobile).
We just about managed to creep up to level four, and got our ability scores increase, which means that we can increase one ability by two points or two by one. I chose to put one in my DEX to take me up to 18 (+4) and my wisdom to 16 (+3). DEX is my main attribute as a monk so my attack bonus went up to +6 and my damage bonus went up to +4, but the biggest thing is that my unarmored defense makes my armor class calculated by my DEX and WIS, so my AC actually went up by two, and with my ring of protection it’s now up to 18!
The dragon battle was so much fun, we tried to trick it at first but that didn’t really work so well, and it tried to make us kill the Druid that sent us on the mission. It kinda says something about our party that I was afraid my comrades were seriously considering it. I tried to to Fangs of the Fire Snake plus a Flurry of Blow but it failed miserably, and I missed with all three attacks. Our rogue managed to get a flying potion so he descended from the top of the tower, and the other two members of our party wailed on the dragon.
The dragon tried to climb out of the tower (it couldn’t fly because there were beams in the way), and it got to the top before we managed to bring it crashing down. Our half-orc dislodged some rubble, and the DM decided that these rocks could be counted as ranged weapons so I managed to catch them and ‘earth-bend’ them back up to hit the dragon. This managed to delay his exit for one turn, in which our halfling sorcerer (who had been downed by a poison gas attack) rolled a 20 on his saving throw and got back up to 1hp, put a spell of sleep on the dragon which made him drowsy, and the dragon came crashing down. On my next turn I brought my quarterstaff down and then punched the dragon through the eye, my fists flaming, until I met his brain.
The DM was kinda shocked because we weren’t actually supposed to kill the dragon; apparently it was supposed to try and fly away when it got down to half its health, and in the campaign booklet it even says that the players are unlikely to kill the dragon, so we got a huge chunk of 900xp each, and we were feeling pretty smug with ourselves.
The two sessions had been great fun, and we’re looking forward to completing more quests to get to level five, which has the next big step up and we get a couple of new abilities so our characters get even more powerful. I feel a bit of pity for my friend because if he had just been a little more patient he would have been able to enjoy it as well, but his immaturity cost him a fun game.
