Okay, so in this one some metagaming played a part. We’re coming to the end of the Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign but one of our group is moving away, so we’re trying to get t finished in a couple of sessions before he leaves. However, our DM thought it might take a bit longer, and since we were close to level five he suggested the other three of us have a session where we can level up and get that sorted out, so we don’t have to stop and start in our next session.
We started off heading to Wave Echo cave where we ran into some Bugbears and a few other nasties. Apparently this encounter wasn’t in the scenario guide, but later on I am going to mention a couple of spoilers so if you’d rather not know about some of the things waiting in Wave Echo Cave, beware!
Since I have the ability to reduce damage from ranged attacks I was happy to sit in the middle and have javelins thrown at me, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Luckily I have the movement to run around and catch up with the fights. We finished the fight handily, and were confident we’d reach level five in no time. One nice touch is that the DM had the Bugbear kill himself rather than subject himself to our interrogation methods, because our Rogue and Half-Orc have a tendency to kill people no matter what.
We go into Wave Echo Cave and our DM realises that he’s made a little miscalculation. It’s actually 6500 to level five, not 6000, so he has to make some adjustments on the fly. Anyway, we split up and explore the cave when this glob creature attacks us. The DM did a great job with the model, and it was a fun fight. Then, because I have a curious nature, I flung a set of doors open and ghouls came out. This time it was a little more tense because they have the ability to paralyse, requiring a constitution save to escape. For some reason I was rolling pretty well yesterday, but on the CON saves I was doing terribly. Anyway, we make it through that one alive and then we explore a little more and find some stairs. I get excited and run up the stairs only to find about nine ghouls waiting for us.
Oh no.
We’re also bottle-necked, which is okay in some respects because it meant that not all of them could attack. I also made good use of my Patient Defense ability (until the start of my next turn all attacks made against me by attackers I can see are made with disadvantage). This was particularly nice when my DM rolled a crit, but had to take the lower dice score, and thanks to my AC of 18 I was fairly safe. Not so my friends. The Half-Orc misty-stepped to the rear of the pack and tried to do Burning Hands but he didn’t roll much damage, and since he went into battle with half his hit points (despite us telling him to use a healing potion) he was down fairly quickly. Then the rogue fell soon after that, and at this point I’m still only level four so I only have four Ki points. I can still make two attacks but I can no longer use my patient defense.
The other guys do their saving rolls while my AC does its job and I manage to keep whittling away at the ghouls. Both my comrades get down to 2 saves and 2 fails, and thanks to some ingenuity by the DM they manage not to suffer perma-death. Meanwhile I get struck down to 2 hit points while there are two fresh enemies remaining, but Corrin Lyvan stands strong and manages to end the fight with a crit.
Phew. That was damn tense considering it was only supposed to be a quick session. We made it to level five as well, and I’m now halfway to level six! I’m excited for level five though. Proficiencies go up by one so I get some extra modifiers on my attacks. For my monk abilities I get an extra attack, just because, so on my turn I can do a maximum of four attacks if I use Flurry of Blows. I also get Stunning Strike, where I can attempt to stun someone I’ve hit, paralysing them until the start of my next turn, which I think will be rather fun. With my fast movement I think it’ll all me to attack and move, setting up the enemies for my allies to knock down. My monk damage die has gone up from a d4 to a d6 as well, so my unarmed strikes have the chance to do more damage.
All in all it’s shaping up well and I can’t wait to try out these new abilities!