Who wants to play D&D online again?

Can't wait for the really cool hat to show up. 

So, here finally is Part 3 of the last session.



After a superb night’s sleep undisturbed by the memory of the man they killed and the companion they lost, our heroes wake up in one of the side rooms not full of vomit and blood. They agree that they don’t have the cash to pay for Pessimo’s resurrection, and they also agree that none of them wants to drag around Pessimo’s body to deliver him back to his loved ones, so they add an item to their to-do list when they escape this dungeon: tell Pessimo’s family where they left his body to rot.

As they prepare for a day of adventuring, a telepathic message comes from Martella. It seems that Prince Stavian’s killers are retreating and the military is divided in whose side they’re fighting on. The High Strategos Maxillar Pythareus has been moving safely among the assassins, implying that they’re cool with him.

Once again, all this is happening somewhere else and the party can’t really do squat from where they’re standing, so they push on.

After making their way past Pessimo and Bernie’s bodies, the group decides to try one of the doors exiting to the north. After Bomo confirms that there’s nothing scary-sounding on the other side of the door, she throws the door open and finds the room is filled with spider webs and mannequins. The figures are all dressed in fancy wigs and clothes, and one of them is lying on the floor with circles carved into its chest.

Wary of potential traps, or perhaps of walking into a version of Pygmalion where the living statues are all murderous savages instead of dumb chicks, the party has Goha cast Detect Magic into the room. She finds an aura of eldritch power surrounds a wig that one of the mannequins is wearing. After using her powers of logic and deduction, she concludes that the wig is actually a Hat of Disguise in the form of a wig. It allows the wearer to alter their appearance in the manner of the Disguise Self spell. As part of the disguise, the hat can be changed to appear as a comb, ribbon, headband, cap, coif, hood, helmet, or other headwear. After some discussion, the party decides that Bomo should carry it.

Cosgrove and Peak look around the room and realize that some of the clothes and accessories the mannequins are wearing are actually pretty valuable. They retrieve 200 gp worth of jewels before moving on to the next room.

After Bomo once again confirms that there’s nothing scary on the other side of the door, the party looks in and sees that the room is full of several waist-high shelves (that is, waist-high for non-hobbits). The shelves are covered with glass windows, and many strange and curious items are contained within.

Still, our heroes get Goha to confirm if there’s anything magical in the room. There’s definitely something magic in one of the cabinets, but more alarmingly, the entire floor is also suffused with magic. The party is certain the floor is actually lava or some shit. Peak reminds everyone that Bernie would have been useful right about now, as they could have made him test for traps by walking him into the room. Cosgrove agrees that Bernie can at least be useful in death and runs back to the other room. He kicks Bernie’s severed head into the room with the shelves, but nothing happens.

Still, it’s inconclusive on whether the floor is trapped. Maybe it only activates with more weight or something. However, that magic thingy in one of the shelves calls out its sweet siren lure. Bomo suggests that she climb up on the shelf and crawl on top until she can reach the whatever. This way she’ll never touch the floor.

It certainly sounds reasonable, so Bomo puts her idea into action, carefully reaching for the nearest shelf. However, the person who managed to fall three times down the same set of stairs proves her clumsiness and she slips and lands on the floor.

Luckily, nothing happens. Bomo dusts herself off and walks nonchalantly to the magic whatsit. As she reaches out for the cabinet door, Cosgrove suddenly calls out a warning. What if the magic floor is a trap that activates when trying to open a cabinet?

As this is a reasonable concern, Bomo climbs up on the cabinet – this time successfully. She lies on top and carefully opens the cabinet door. It turns out Cosgrove was right as the floor erupts with an electric flash. For one moment, the floor glows with magic lighting before dying down again. This time, nothing happens when Bomo retrieves the object, so she gets down on the ground.

It seems that the magic item is a carving of a silver raven. Cosgrove uses his knowledge of Spellcraft to work out that it’s actually a Figurine of Wondrous Power. It can turn into a living creature which obeys its owner’s commands, staying as a shiny metal raven for 24 hours per week. After some crowing about their valuable new magic companion, then after some deflation at realizing a raven can’t open doors or hold a beer, the party decides that Peak should take it as his part-time animal familiar.

Which is nice, but there’s also the cabinets full of valuable antiquities. What a haul it is! Hidden inside are orc scarificators, Kellid war drums, a ceremonial Brevan scabbard, dwarven mining equipment, a stone-and-gem chunk from an elven aiudara gateway, the bone totem of an Isgeri shaman, and even an inert technological gadget from distant Numeria. Which all sounds cool, but bottom line is that the various loot weighs 10 lbs in total and is worth about 500 gp.

Peak is concerned about how to sell items of such dicey provenance, but Bomo assures him that she comes from the shitty part of town and totally knows people who can move hot materials. Peak takes her at her word and the party splits the haul among themselves.

Weighed down even more, the party moves on to the last room left. After being assured by Bomo that there are no untoward smells or sounds coming from the room, our heroes fling open the door and find a bunch of taxidermied animals standing around in various poses. There’s an elephant, a giant snake, a couple of wolves, an eagle, and even a griffon in the corner.

Wary of living statues – eventually they have to encounter one – the group has Goha again test for magic. She confirms that the griffon and the wolves at least have magic hanging around them.



The party prepares for combat. Peak sidles up beside the griffon while Bomo covers the wolves. Cosgrove and Goha hang back and stay out of biting range. With our heroes arrayed for battle, Peak draws his rapier and carefully pokes the griffon.



Success! The griffon comes alive with mechanical whirring. It beats its wings, with the left one tearing off, and as it steps forward its front foot rips off. The griffon roars and battle begins!

Goha is fastest on the draw and shoots her new crossbow from the hip. It sinks into the griffon’s flesh with a solid hit. However, the griffon acts like it barely noticed getting hurt. It’s the griffon’s turn to attack, so it takes a swipe at Peak with its talons. However, Peak is too agile and easily dodges the attack.

The wolves in the back come to life as well. Their clicking mechanisms try to propel them to stand on their hind legs, but one wolf collapses onto the ground and twitches fruitlessly like one of those busted Zoids toys (remember Zoids?) while the fur on the other wolf’s back splits open and it just stands there tangled up in its skin with its flesh and mechanical parts exposed to view. Guess those wolves won’t be doing any fighting.



Bomo is glad that their flank is clear so she moves in to punch the hell out of the griffon. However, the griffon bobs and weaves like a champion prizefighter and is unscathed. Peak takes the opportunity to attack the griffon from behind and scores a palpable hit with his rapier by stabbing the griffon where its wing used to be. However, the griffon again barely notices.

At this point Cosgrove is getting concerned at how tough the griffon is. He remembers that there’s actually a cleric in the other room and shouts through the doorway for Jowuan Zubari to join in the fight. Jowuan shouts back that as a worshipper of the god of merchants, it would be against his religion to offer aid for free. Again he is reminded that the party promised to pay him and even gave him a little taste in advance, so he grudgingly gets his short spear out. However, he’s in the next room so it’ll take him a while to actually close the distance to the griffon.

Having slightly increased the odds in their favour, Cosgrove loads his crossbow and shoots a bolt at the griffon. He misses and the bolt ends up in the ceiling. However, this is better than when Goha fires her crossbow, as she accidentally shoots Bomo in the back. The griffon thinks attacking Bomo is a good idea and snaps out its jaws, but the little halfling dodges successfully. She tries to retaliate with her old one-two punch but the griffon is no slouch at dodging either.

However, Peak uses the distraction to entangle the griffon. He cracks his whip and wraps it around the creature’s neck, lowering its mobility. Thanks to this, Cosgrove and Goha both pincushion the griffon with more crossbow bolts.

Bomo finally manages to connect with a solid hit to the griffon’s jaw, though she whiffs her follow-up punch. Meanwhile, Peak decides that a mechanical griffon is kind of like a mechanical bull and that he should try riding this ornery steed. He makes a tremendous somersault and lands gracefully on the griffon’s back while still keeping it entangled in his whip. As he does so, Cosgrove shoots the griffon once again.

Jowuan Zubari is finally close enough to attack the griffon. He charges in beside Bomo with his short spear and practically impales the griffon, damaging it terribly. Goha tries to use the opening to shoot the griffon again but everything is too chaotic and she misses. Meanwhile, the griffon is getting ticked off at having someone riding around its back and starts bucking like a bronco, throwing Peak off and releasing itself from his whip.

Bomo again punches the crap out of the griffon and Peak slashes at it, though he only scores a minor cut. However, Cosgrove finishes things off with a bolt through the griffon’s head and the creature finally drops dead. Hurrah!

And thus ends the tale of that night’s adventures. Who knows how many more hobbits the party will kill? Maybe they can change things up by executing a gnome or a dwarf? Tune in again next time for more! Same Bat-time, same Bat channel!

I think I'm free every Saturday that month. 

It was me who was gone in February and I have finally gotten off the plane. Any saturday in March is likely fine, just settling back in and I imagine I'd hear of any busy times soonish.

I think that works for me.

Uh, so, what with the pandemic and all, are we still on for playing next Saturday the 28th at 9 pm Eastern Daylight time?

patbat Baron von Costume Celebith Nudeviking 

I should be good.  Even with the extra hours I should be done and home by then.

Roll20 has some free junk up on account of this gosh darned coronavirus. While a lot of it is modules for systems other than D&D/Pathfinder there are also some random tokens and maps and stuff that people who run campaigns and what not might want to grab on account of them being cheap as free.

blog.roll20.net/post/612497773955350528/stay-at-home-play-at-home

We hadn't, no. I was going to ask after writing up the last session but I guess we can set the date now. Seeing as how none of us have anything else going on right now, would two weeks hence be okay? Specifically April 25th at 9 pm EDT again?

patbat Nudeviking Baron von Costume

Yes I think the 25th will be fine for.

Session 8 Part 1: Mar 28 2020
Players: Bomo Frugglemop (Nudeviking ), Cosgrove Ashmore (Baron von Costume ), Goha (patbat ), Peak Dartbox (Celebith )
Location: Unknown

We open on a scene of desolation. Our heroes have just had a knock-down drag-out fight with a mechanical griffon and are standing over its broken body. Peak Dartbox decides that the moment needs to be memorialized and grabs a couple dozen griffon feathers to fashion a headdress with after the current situation has passed.

After watching Peak gather his trophies like a rich dentist on safari, the group settles down to debate where to explore next. Each room they’d recently cleared had at least one door leading somewhere unknown and they debate the pros and cons before picking one.

Bomo again listens at the door and sniffs for any strange smells, then just to be safe also licks the door. She discovers nothing besides the fact that the door tastes like old wood. Having confirmed with three of her five senses that nothing strange is immediately happening with the door, she throws it open and sees a room filled with banners hanging everywhere.

It’s all very interesting, but the party needs to check if anything weird is going on in the room. Goha carefully stands in the doorway and casts Detect Magic but finds that there’s nothing magical at all in the room.

Having established that nothing in the room is actively trying to kill them, our heroes study the banners covering everything. A few of them have the mysterious circles drawn on them that the party had seen before. At first our heroes ask Cosgrove where the banners are from, since he presumably learned about banners as an aristocrat, but after some hemming and hawing he admits that he actually failed his heraldry class at university. This is a black mark against him since we all know from Game of Thrones that heraldry is really important. The party takes a moment to regard Cosgrove with shame and disappointment before turning to Peak.

He’s a lot more helpful and tells everyone that the banners in the room are from all kinds of places – a few regiments of the Taldan Phalanx, some baronies, a couple of foreign allies, and so on. It’s basically a random assortment of heraldic banners, though none are newer than a couple of hundred years.

Since the party has no use for a bunch of random old crap, they move on and try another door. After Bomo confirms again that nothing weird is on the other side, she confidently steps over the threshold. Most everyone else has gotten impatient at the whole checking for traps thing and join Bomo in what looks like a hallway stretching to the east and west.

However, this was exactly the wrong time for the party to let their guard down as they manage to trigger a magical trap. Our heroes are struck with a Confusion spell, even Cosgrove who had prudently stayed behind but still managed to get caught with the splashback.

The Confusion spell affects each person in a different way. Goha immediately tries to beat herself up, but owing to her terrible melee skills she instead swings wildly and keeps missing her head. Peak also feels the inescapable urge to hit herself, but despite being better trained than Goha she also manages to miss when punching her own face. Meanwhile, Bomo stands around and babbles incoherently, making not much of a change from her usual behaviour, while Cosgrove just acts normal, like an incredibly high person who looks and sounds fine but who is losing their shit on the inside.

The party again tries to resist the Confusion spell, and this time Bomo and Cosgrove succeed. Peak is momentarily able to resist not injuring himself, while now it’s Goha’s turn to start babbling incoherently. Cosgrove and Bomo decide that they should restrain Goha before she starts trying to hit herself again, but Goha flails around like a crazy bag lady and is too slippery for them grab.

The Confusion spell again tries to take hold of the party. Goha finally throws off the mental shackles of the spell, but Peak fails miserably and instead is taken by the irresistible urge to attack Goha. He runs up to Goha and immediately slaps her in the face for 1 point of damage. At this point the spell wears off and Peak apologizes in embarrassment for slapping Goha in the face.

Having acquitted themselves well in this challenge, the party decides to continue their exploration. Goha guards the door opening to the north of the hallway while Bomo carefully goes east. The doors on the south of the hallway just open onto rooms the party has already explored, but Bomo looks for more traps on the floor in front of each door. There’s none for the first door, so it’s entirely possible the party had just happened to walk through the one door that had a trap in front of it.
Meanwhile, Goha examines the door she is guarding. It’s covered with more of the circles our heroes have encountered before, but this time drawn in chalk, as well as some mathematical notes. Goha tries to use her half-remembered knowledge of engineering to discern any clues but only succeeds in confirming that whoever drew the circles was really good at doing so since they’re all perfectly round.

Bomo and Cosgrove take turns checking the hallway floor for more traps and find none. While Bomo is checking some more floor tiles, Peak decides that he’s pretty sure there aren’t any more traps and walks on the exact tiles Bomo is examining. Apparently he’s right as nothing kills him right at that moment.

Finally, the party reaches a bend in the corridor. After peeking around the corner, they confirm that there’s a door leading south to someplace they haven’t been to before. Before our heroes continue, they instruct Malphene Trant to take the useless hangers-on following them and watch over the bunch in room # 14.

After the party has confirmed that there doesn’t seem to be anything horrible on the other side of the door, they crack the door open and see room # 18. It’s a room full of bookshelves and assorted poindexter crap – scrolls, papers, tomes, etc. Most of the room is dusty but there’s a work area that’s suspiciously clean. On the south end of the room are two doors leading to who knows where.

Now it’s Goha’s turn, and she casts Detect Magic to suss out if there’s anything funny in the room. There definitely is and it’s a scroll case stuck in shelf in the middle of the room. Having established that there are no other magic thingamabobs, Peak joins Goha among the stacks and starts poking around for anything interesting.

While rooting around the shelves, Peak hears Goha shrieking behind him. It seems that Goha fell for the old spring snake prank when opening the scroll case.



However, instead of an inanimate wire spring, the scroll case contains a Guardian Scroll waiting to kill anyone that opens its container. It flies out and attacks like a murderous version of the magic carpet from Aladdin. Whoops!



Luckily, Peak Dartbox uses his lightning fast reflexes to immediately react, and he whips out his rapier and stabs at the scroll from behind. However, the Guardian Scroll is undeterred from its original goal and it grabs at Goha, who is now locked into a wrestling match with a flying piece of paper.



Meanwhile, Cosgrove’s first impulse is to throw a grenade, but once again he has to forego doing so because he’ll blow up his companions, so he reluctantly puts away the bomb he had taken out and charges forward to pull the scroll off Goha. However, he’s actually not any good at pro wrestling and he misses and grabs Peak instead.

The party’s resident wrestling expert, Bomo, shows Cosgrove how it’s done and grabs the Guardian Scroll from behind, forming a threesome with her and Goha sandwiching their enemy. Goha tries to wriggle out of the scroll’s hold on her but is also really crap at fighting hand to hand and it turns out is literally unable to fight her way out of a paper bag.

Peak tries to help with pulling the scroll off Goha but it’s entirely too wriggly for him to grasp. The Guardian Scroll also manages to wriggle free of Bomo’s grip, leaving it free to focus on Goha. The Guardian Scroll maintains its grip on Goha, who isn’t doing too well at the wrestling thing. Cosgrove and Bomo both again try to grab the scroll, but it seems to be in the zone as it effortlessly avoids their attempts.

Having witnessed the scroll’s wrestling prowess, Goha tries something new and instead goes for an Acid Splash attack. However, it’s also a miserable failure and Goha misses hitting something literally within arm’s reach of her. Peak decides using magic isn’t a bad idea and uses his musical ability to damage the scroll with an Ear-Piercing Scream, leaving the scroll Dazed.

The party is feeling a tad desperate and wonder if they should call Malphene for backup. However, she’s currently 200 feet down a winding corridor and they realize she wouldn’t be able to hear their cries for help.

Cosgrove and Bomo again try grabbing the scroll, but both fail. Bomo does so disastrously as she misses the Guardian Scroll and finds herself grappling with Goha instead. It seems that this is the cue for everyone to start screwing up as Goha again misses with her Acid Splash; Peak Dartbox also misses skewering the Guardian Scroll with his rapier, but his screwup is much worse since he ends up stabbing Goha in the leg instead.

This comedy of errors has lasted long enough for the scroll to recover from being Dazed. Its first act is to suffocate Goha by wrapping itself around her head.

With the situation becoming even more desperate, Cosgrove does some out of the box thinking and chugs a potion of Reduce Person. He targets the effect on Goha, whose innate half-elf constitution would normally automatically resist such a spell, but Cosgrove somehow manages to gain Goha’s consent to the procedure despite her asphyxiating inside a roll of paper.

It’s a success and Goha shrinks to Bomo’s size, which causes her to slip out of the Guardian Scroll’s grip. Bomo uses the distraction to bludgeon the hell out of their paper enemy with two fists of halfling fury. Clearly, she’s tougher than Goha and can at least match a paper bag in a hand to hand fight.

Goha, currently a half-elf the size of a hobbit, decides that perhaps using the crossbow would be a better idea, except she’d be shooting crossbow bolts that are tinier than normal. However, Cosgrove tells her that objects grow back to normal size after leaving her possession, so she considers throwing the crossbow instead, like a criminal throwing his gun at Superman, or perhaps she can throw some chairs like a pro wrestler. She decides to simply shoot her crossbow instead but misses once again.

This is better than Peak Dartbox’s attempt, at least, since he misses completely with his rapier and gets it stuck firmly in some bookshelves. He’s now lost his main melee weapon and is that much closer to fighting with his fists, which as a musician is one of his greatest fears.

The Guardian Scroll leaps at the opportunity to use its razor-sharp edges to slice at Peak, but he’s too nimble and he completely avoids getting a really big paper cut.

Cosgrove decides that maybe he should switch to bashing stuff instead so he takes out his mace and takes a swing at the scroll. However, he misses so badly it’s actually embarrassing to everyone there. It turns out that effete and drugged-out academics aren’t too good at physical stuff.

Bomo then tries to show Cosgrove how it’s done and gives the scroll her old one-two. However, she was showboating too much and punches a shelf instead, hurting her hand for 1 hitpoint of damage. Goha again tries shooting the scroll and again misses, but at least it’s not a catastrophic failure, which in Goha’s consideration is basically the same as a hit.

As for Peak, he initially considers using his whip, but then decides to back off a bit and shoot the Guardian Scroll with his short bow. He hits but he only manages to take a little bit off a corner.

The Guardian Scroll decides it wants to grapple someone new so it grabs at Bomo. However, it turns out that halfling brawlers are more slippery than half-elven wizards and Bomo easily bobs and weaves out of the scroll’s reach like a tiny Mike Tyson.

Cosgrove misses with his light crossbow, and so does Bomo with her right jab, but her left cross punches a hole out of the scroll.

The party has been fighting this scroll for what feels like ages. Goha wonders if this scroll is actually a final boss and they’re facing the evil mastermind behind everything. Faintly, she imagines she can hear the final boss music from Final Fantasy 7.



However, Goha tries her Acid Splash spell again, and for once it hits. It’s only 2 points of damage but that’s still more than zero. Hurrah!

But Goha may have sucked up the luck that Peak was supposed to get as he misses his shot with his short bow. For its part, the Guardian Scroll tries slicing Bomo but again doesn’t get the squirrelly little hobbit.

Now it’s Cosgrove’s turn, and somehow he makes the perfect shot. From aiming his crossbow to holding his breath and then pulling the trigger, everything happens exactly the way it’s supposed to and he hits the Guardian Scroll dead center. It falls to the ground dead, inasmuch as a piece of paper can die.

The party pauses a moment to drink in the victory in one of their greatest battles. Truly, this was a foe out of legend.



Then some other stuff happens. But that’s for Part 2, see you then!

We still playing tomorrow?

Yes, I'm also still good. I'm just finishing up the write-up of the last session right now.

Okay, so as a result of last night's heroics, the party gains a level and everyone is now level 3. I figured we might as well do the levelling up in between sessions. This levelling checklist is pretty helpful in explaining the steps. For rolling your Hit Die to find out how many hp you get, just click on the Hit Points part of your character sheet.



The description of your class in the official rules will also describe levelling up in more detail, including what stats go up for which level. Here are your class entries:

Wizard
Brawler
Alchemist
Bard, Masked Performer

You should be able to directly edit your Base Attack Bonus, Fortitude, etc in your character sheet if you go to the Configuration tab.




If you edit Skill Ranks and change it from 2 to 3, then your Skill Points will automatically increase and you can just stick those new points in whichever skills you want. Anyway, I think those are the main points for how to level your character in general and in Roll20.