Monteporte Session 43 – D&D5e

We started out remembering that we had some magic items to divvy out, since last time we forgot to distribute the freakin’ Ring of Zombie protection.

There were lots of dead undead (?!), and a human figure with a wooden stake driven through the visor of his helmet. The mail is decent quality; this guy was no slouch. Well, other than getting a stake driven through his face, after which slouching was the order of the day, really.

Everything magical/non-weapony from last few sessions:

• Potion of Gaseous Form
• Potion of Animal Friendship
• ring of zombie protection (disadvantage to attacking zombies)
• Magic Helmet
• 4 vials healing potion (1d8+1)
• Dante (Chris): 10 vials holy water
• 10 flasks of holy water (a flask is 5 vials)
• 5 flasks oil

“an than we gose don moore long steps too a odder plase tat haz a beg man and a forrezt and than we gose Further pasd a sittee an dat is wer the nomes ar rimemmer too stele da nomes an brigg dem to elias” (Bork bork bork!)

We divvy up the healing potions between Luven and Dante at two each, so everyone has some, as well as two flasks and two vials of holy water each.

We receive the party pog back, and Luven examines the (locked) secret door, and picks it open with his tools. It’s short corridor with a smaller room than the previous one, and since it’s empty, we know to look for secret doors. We find one, expectedly.

Luven continues to rock the door finding and locked-door picking. He uses his earring of echolocation to find secret doors and such. Since the corridor goes only 15′ and then hits a wall, again, we have a hidden door. 

Portrait of Luven

This one enters a room devoid of creatures, but has a black altar and a stone table against the east wall. There’s some soot on the ceiling on either end of the altar – looking at the surface, on the altar below the soot spots, there are traced of black wax. Candles.  Luven is looking for treasuretreasuretreasuretreasure. We decide Luven is like the hamburglar, and he shouts “Man, this is a gyp!” when no treasure is found.

Looking at the altar and the construction of the room, we determine that it’s set up to look like a temple or shrine, but it’s to nobody. It’s basically for show. We speculate that it was to try and make money or run a con.

We decide to give the altar cap a shove, and Breena, with STR 18 and Aspect of the Bear, she puts us all to shame. “Step aside, men. This is women’s work.” Breena pushes the slab off, and the entire thing collapses. The stone table is broken!

Not that anyone cares. 

We look for more secret doors again, and find one behind the table on the east wall. We ask Breena to do it, since lifting is, again, women’s work. Geez, we do a quick survey: Luven is STR 11, Nosphryc and Dante are STR 18, Breena is STR 18 with her magical Aspect of the Bear, and Adzeer is STR 19. Crimeny.

We decide to detect undead, and we both get a faint sense of Undead behind the door, as if it’s a trace of a creature. The secret door itself is locked; Luven picks it, opens it up a crack, and we head down to some sort of sarcophagus. 

Luven goes to check it out and rolls a natural 1 . . . so he just opens the thing up.

“You can roll all the 20s you wan’t, but you can’t fix stupid” – Adzeer

Inside the sarcophagus, there’s about a cubic foot of dirt, and nothing else. It’s probably the vampire’s sacred soil or something, so Nosphryc pours a flask of holy water on the soil. The name on the sarcophagus says  The water starts to bubble and steam; the helmet no longer detects undead.

Ah. There’s SBF from the letter.
Luven steps into the Sarcophagus drops his pants and piddles all over the vampire’s “sacred” soil.

We go around the area with the Finder’s Lens, but dont’ find much. We head back to the crossroads, and hear noises from the north. Luven heads out on point, and peeks around the corner – he sees some trolls and some hobgoblins, which are known to have pretty good loot.

He tries to gesture to us. We decide there are two Tiger Tanks, a couple of panzers, and he wants a subway meatball sandwich with cheese.

Anyway, we get ready to fight!

Nosphryc rolls poorly, but still better than the trolls. Small favors. 

The hobgoblin starts by saying “I’m going to shove that ‘meh’ up your ass!” and attacks Loven; one hits for 7 HP and the other runs up and misses twice. Now our 18s go,  but a few more hobgoblins just pop into existence as well. We’re now facing at least four hobgoblins and two trolls.

Breena mounts her bear, rides up to a hobgoblin, and tries to grapple him. So a gnome, riding a bear, grapples a hobgoblin. Don’t see much of that! Breena gives him a shove for his second attack (both with advantage). The shove is resisted by Athletics or Acrobatics; the hobgoblin fails, and he’s pinned against the wall by the bulk of the combat bear. Panzerbjorn for the win. The most literal overbearing attack ever. Plus rage. Can’t forget the rage.

Dante steps up and hits the prone, grappled hobgoblin with a firebolt for 13HP worth of damage.  Luven stabs at his foes for 15 HP, with both the Blade of Ung as well as the magical talking sword, Marcus Aurelius. Nosphryc steps up and glaives the prone guy twice for 19 HP, with a crit. He dies.

We manage to block the corridor, more or less, but the tactical advantage does not yet seem with us. Adzeer gets hit once for 2 HP, and two hobgoblins attack Luven, one hitting for 5 HP, the other for another 5 HP. 

Breena attacks with the Battle-Axe of Aknarr, twice, hitting both times, for a total of 19 HP. Not bad, not bad. 

Adzeer kills the wounded fellow with a mighty blow from the Mace of Curn. Dante then steps up to the corner and attacks with the Axe of Delnar, hitting for 11HP. The hobgoblin speaks disparagingly of our ancestry. Luven hits for 21 HP, including 4d6 worth of sneak attack.

Nosprhyc then steps up and hits twice for 15 HP with his glaive.

Now the trolls move up, and Luven gets bitten by a troll, but only for 5 HP; the frantic swinging with the trolls arms does an additional 12 HP of damage. Yowch.

The hobgoblins disappear; they teleport away somewhere. Probably behind us.

Breena hits wtice with her axe for 25 HP, but it’s not magical or fire damage, so it’s going to grow back. Adzeer casts a 3d8 healing spell on Luven for 15 HP to keep him in the not-dead column.

Dante steps to the side and tries to hit the front troll with a firebolt, which he does for 11HP of non-regenerating fire damage. Woof.

Luven quaffs a quick potion using a Cunning Action, and hits with his sword for 23 HP, thanks to a highly distracted troll. Nosphryc hits twice for 19 HP with his glaive. His knees buckle after the second hit, but he doesn’t go down.

A troll chomps at Breena, and rolls a critical hit for 13 HP; another crit with the next arm does 16 HP more, and the final swipe misses. His Aspect of the Bear halves this 29HP down to 15HP, which is fortunate.

Adzeer steps in front of Luven and casts at the troll that was almost dead, but is now recovering. Sacred Flame – it does radiant damage, so not unhealable by trolls, but better than nothing. 13 HP of damage. Dante flings another firebolt, but only hits for 3 HP this time. Luven uses his shortbow and adds his sneak attack damage for 24 HP of damage(!).

Nosrphyc flings a flask of oil at the fallen troll (he’s regenerating), hits, and then hits for 12 HP.

The final troll chomps at Adzeer, and hits AC 21 by rolling 25! He bits for 9 HP, and then misses twice. 

Breena’s player had to step out, but she comes back and gets to take her turn, and then another to start the next round. Two attacks with her axe hit for 27 HP, and then twice more for 28 HP. Those are mighty, mighty blows.

Dante hits the oil with the firebolt; the oil bursts into flame as well – 9 HP for the bolt, and 5 HP of fire damage for the oiled-up troll. Both die, and the fight is over.

The trolls, together, have 12 silver bars, and 2 bags each with 15 lbs of rotting meat. Each hobgoblin has a spear, a light crossbow with 12 bolts each, a dagger, and one of the hobgoblins has a small sack tied to his bolt. 

The sack is a bag of holding – there are 71 gold bars, 322 silver bars, 3 more crossbow bolts, and a bedroll. A good WIS roll shows them to be 3 bolts of vampire slaying, which give Advantage and 3x damage. The bedroll is Mildor’s Bedroll of Comfort. It provides perfect sleeping comfort on any semi-horizontal surface at temps of -20 to 120F. It also causes searchers looking for us sleeping to have disadvantage on Perception rolls. Camouflage elven bedroll! (p. 22 in the LL Bean catalog, we think).

The brown sacks to the north are yet unplundered, so we plunder them. Five large sacks, lumpy in the middle of the floor. Each of them is moving as if something inside is breathing. We open them up, and find more gnomes. One of the gnomes with us recognizes them. Good, they can take care of them. 

We inquire how close we might be to their gnome-home. They have no idea. 

After the fighting and searching, we take a short rest, it being a little after noon. The short rest brings most people back to full HP.

We each earn 2980 XP. I get a Feat or stat boost, and . . . hmm.

Nosphyrc’s stats are

STR 18
DEX 14
CON 16
INT 13
WIS 15
CHA 14

So there are quite a few things I could do here.

• STR stat boost for STR 20. Hits me with +1 to hit, +1 damage for all melee stuff.
• DEX stat boost for DEX 16. Given me being encased in plate, there’s no AC help for me here, so that’s just +1 to hit with my bow. Probably bad idea.
• CON 18 would give me +1 HP for the rest of time, and raise my HP maximum, I think. Given I’m a front-line guy, this is not necessarily a bad thing
• INT 14 WIS 16 would give me +1 to two different stats, both of which have seen use. Perception is a big thing for Nosphryc, and this would help that.
• Heavy Armor Mastery gives +1 STR for STR 19, plus soaking three points of mundane damage per shot. That’s a good thing.
• Polearm Mastery is nice because of the extra attack (only 1d4, but includes the STR bonus, so it sorta turns the glaive into 8+1d10+1d4, for 10-22 damage, more with a critical
• Sharpshooter is nifty, and would be lethal against foes where I have advantage. We have a grappler in the group that likes to throw people down, which would make for a nice one-two combo
• Finally, Observant for +5 to Perception is sweet.