Dwarven city seal – part 1

We’re continuing the D&D Essentials adventure. See “Kobold exodus” part 1 and part 2. We have a sunpriest, stormpriest, thief, dwarven slayer, human slayer, knight and a wizard called Trake (me!).

Now for whatever reason, my friends started doing more and more outrageous stuff. When I asked them about it, they said it’s all my fault, because I gave them freedom in my Lone Wolf games (1st session, 2nd session). At one point in the current session, in the midst of yet another outrageous stunt, Modeus (the DM) told me that if I’m willing to write it in the blog, he’ll rule the stunts. Let’s just say the age restriction for reading this blog has been raised. You’ve been warned, but you’re gonna read on anyway, aren’t you?

Consolidated skill checks

Modeus wanted to try a new skill check system. I probably remembered it wrongly, but I’ll try my best. There will be only 4 major skills: Stunt, Lore, Sense, Interaction. “Stunt” is based on Strength, Constitution and Dexterity. “Lore” is based on Intelligence. “Sense” is based on Wisdom. “Interaction” is based on Charisma.

For every trained skill you have in an ability, you get a plus for the corresponding major skill. For example, if you’re trained in Arcana and History (2 Intelligence based skills), you get a +2 to “Lore”.

The final skill score you have is (1/2 your level) + (number of trained skills) + (appropriate ability modifier). So Trake, my level 2 Wizard with 18 Intelligence, will have 1 (half of level 2) + 2 (Arcana and History) + 4 (Intelligence modifier) = +7

Basically, you make an “attack roll” for the stunt/move/action you’re taking, adding the appropriate bonus (say, +7 whenever Trake’s trying anything intelligent, such as solving the Rubik’s cube), and match against the DM’s difficulty check. This means you can get a critical hit (or failure. I’m notoriously known for my 1′s on d20′s), but you do get to roll twice. If you hit, there’s a straightforward 2d6 damage (plus appropriate skill modifier) to whatever the DM’s trying to do.

I probably got that wrong, so I’ll let you know when Modeus comes up with a formal writeup.

Helm’s Seal

So at the end of the last session, we stood in the middle of a smallish cave after defeating a mutant white dragon. We delved deeper and found our way blocked by a sealed entrance. The seal had been removed. Which I’m a bit confused with when I sat down to write this. If the seal’s removed, the way should be clear, right? Our sunpriest (Helm Sunhammer) stood there looking wistfully into the beyond, so close to the city that’s his (I believe the city’s name was Helm) yet unable to reach it. We decided to go back to Fallcrest to find out more about this missing seal.

On the way back, we got waylaid by… wait for it… 3 giant spiders. It was a moderately tough fight. Trake conjured giant dragonflies to descend on the spiders, frightening them into a dazed state. He was inspired by the dragonfly thingie on the knight’s helmet. (Our knight is now known as the dragonfly knight. Read this for the recurring dragonfly theme).

The spiders were killed, and I thought that was a good warm-up to the game. Then Modeus told us, “It’s not over! Suddenly, you see this black dragon fly out of the bushes and then swoop in on you!”. We were to continue the encounter but with fresh initiative. Oh this was not good.

I tried a new move since Trake used his encounter spell on the spiders, and his daily spell will just make everyone go into a coma. So Trake teleported to the head of the dragon and tried to cover its eyes (Trake’s an Eladrin). I was hoping to blind it or disable some of its abilities or something. I failed, rolling poorly for my “Stunt” skill. Trake teleported to the dragon’s head, but couldn’t grab hold of the head and fell to the ground.

Seeing that as an opening for weird stunts, the dragonfly knight bounced and tumbled his way around the dragon to shove his sword up its arse. (I’m so gonna regret using that word…) The knight rolled a critical for his “Stunt” move, and did maximum damage to the dragon’s… uh, rear end. The dragon roared in fury as the knight wiggled his sword in its colon.

With the business end of the knight’s tool in its bowels, the dragon breathed a smoky haze upon the party, casting shrouds of gloom on all of us. This made us vulnerable to acid until we could shake it off. As part of this action, from that point on, whenever the dragon’s attacked, it will spill acid on anyone nearby.

The stormpriest started doing a weird dance, waving his hands in the air and moving to a tune that only he knew. Then he went over to the thief and healed him. Then the stormpriest attacked the dragon, doing moderate damage. And spilled acid on anyone close by. The thief barely survived the acid spill, but the stormpriest died from the acidic backlash.

Let’s have a moment of silence to honour the courage shown by the stormpriest.

Trake ran the heck away from the dragon because he only had 3 hit points left. I wanted to double move, and use an action point to shake off the shroud, but Modeus said one move should make Trake far enough from the toxic carnage. I thought the image of the wizard hitching his robes up and running for dear life was particularly amusing. In my mind anyway.

So the knight slid his sword out from the dragon’s rear end, and then did his tumbling trick to move forward and strike at the dragon’s eyes, hoping to fling its faeces on itself. He failed the “Stunt” roll, but managed to strike anyway. Mechanically in D&D rules, the knight didn’t have to move at all to strike. But if he passed the “Stunt” roll, the DM might add on effects or grant bonuses. I’m guessing Modeus might rule that the dragon be blinded or gets a penalty to attack or something.

The acid vulnerability from the shrouds of gloom combined with the automatic acid spills from the dragon were potent. We finally managed to take down the dragon. It turned out that the dragon was after the spiders for food. When we killed the spiders, the dragon went after us instead.

“But the spiders are still there!” said the sunpriest.
“There’s food for you!” said the dwarven slayer.

Well, the dragon thought humanoids tasted better. It apparently hasn’t met our dragon(fly) knight.

Up next, a necklace of dicks. Don’t ask, just let me gather my wits first…