Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Against the Idol of the Sun: A 5e high-level campaign log
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 8168155" data-attributes="member: 7020951"><p><strong>Session 3: 1/9/2021</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Cleric and arcane trickster are absent. I hand the party the blank 18x16 hexmap and go through how exploration works (Survival+Investigation+Perception+time to reach a DC to find things). A random roll puts them in hex 18.10, pretty much in the center of the eastern side of the map over the ocean.</p><p></p><p></p><p>They spend 4 hours checking the ocean hex, don’t find anything, and decide to move on (they miss an underwater structure). They arrive at a beach-to-jungle area occupied by tortles, and spot regular rows of trees. Investigating, they meet a trio (master/apprentice/understudy) of tortle sorcerers who brew potions. The monk makes peaceful contact and acts as the translator, and they get some information about the immediate surrounding area and tortle society (very loose). The party buys some potions, spends the night, then head west without continuing to investigate they area (so they don’t find the tortle village nearby).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They pass over the hex to the west and search the next one (15.10), finding a yuan-ti village (an odd tree formation). It’s dusk, so the air-skiff lands. They approach on foot, see some movement indicating they’re being flanked, and then encounter the village’s leader, a yuan-ti abomination named Ila. They exchange some information, make big promises, and get info about the exact location of the 5 Aaracokra cities, plus an idea of the enemy force sizes...and the location of the Cursed Forest to the north. On their way out, they meet a scarred yuan-ti who asks if they are worthy...they confidently says yes, and she tells them to seek the greater one to the southwest. The party takes that as their best lead/clue and starts heading southwest...earlier than I had anticipated.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They move southwest into 14.10 and search it, and finally have a random encounter (after 20 or so d6s, they finally get a 1). Three air elementals attack the ship, splitting attacks between passengers and the air-skiff. It gets down to about 15hp before they kill the elementals, which definitely makes them nervous. They do some repairs (Mending, and Fabricate the next morning).</p><p></p><p>The next day, they search and find a find an abandoned mine that had signs of troll occupation. They lift into the air in late afternoon, but before they can search and find the secondary Rodan Village (an ‘off-site backup’ of sorts for the Cult of Rodan that watches over the sleeping kaiju on a volcano about 30 miles away), they see another air-skiff. Since theirs only has about two weeks of power left, they immediately decide to be air-pirates, even though there are 11 Aaracokra with the other air-skiff. I’d rolled another airborne random encounter, and it happened to be the 2nd toughest patrol group, composed of a 13th level sun priest, a 9th-level wizard, 3 champions (roughly equal to fighter 8s), 4 SubCommanders, and 2 regular Guards.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The engagement begins at a distance of 360’ with arrow fire as the air-skiffs close on each other. The artificer hastes the barbarian, the paladin hastes himself, and then on the next round they Dimension Door approximately 240’ onto the enemy air-skiff and blenderize the two guards who were standing on it. This kicks off a battle that takes 2-3 hours, but which everyone says I ran well and could not have been sped up. Dozens of javelins were thrown, and many things happened. Here are the highlights that I recall:</p><p></p><p>I forget at least 8 times to call for Concentration checks on Haste. Big oops.</p><p></p><p>The wizard uses Bigby’s Hand to shove the paladin off the air-skiff. Paladin falls 100’ to ground, takes falling damage.</p><p></p><p>Someone kills the wizard by casting Hold Person, causing him to crash to the ground for 10d6 falling damage. The priest dies much the same way, with falling damage popping his Death Ward. The barbarian then jumps out of a tree (which he’d climbed back up) to split 7d6 falling damage with the 1hp priest below him.</p><p></p><p>The barbarian takes the controls of the enemy air-skiff, making it go down to pick up the paladin. The priest hits them with Firestorm, hurting the barbarian and I think also the paladin, and more importantly, destroying the 30-hp power cabinet in the middle of the air-skiff, which then crashes to the ground with more falling damage.</p><p></p><p>The party’s air-skiff, still damaged from fighting the air elementals, gets fireballed. The monk takes no damage. The vessel catches on fire and takes 1d6 damage per round. It gets fireballed again 3-4 rounds later and destroyed. The monk takes no falling damage thanks to his boots, and the artificer just floats there like iron man.</p><p></p><p>The barbarian soaked something like 250 points of damage.</p><p></p><p>Aaracokra tactics (plunging fire, using lances for flyby attacks, etc.) were generally effective – they were just outgunned by the party. It was by no means a cakewalk.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>At the end of the session, the party is all still alive, although the monk is nearly undamaged. They have no air-skiff at all now. They did pick up a +2 Unicorn spear (attunement, resist poison, advantage on saves vs poison, charm, fear). We’ll see if they get a good long rest in tonight or if they roll a devastation centipede or something while on the ground.</p><p></p><p>Three of the Aaracokra escaped, and may bring word back to their bosses. Or maybe not... I’ll look at the map later and figure out if their chances of getting home while split up and wounded are very good.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="J-H, post: 8168155, member: 7020951"] [B]Session 3: 1/9/2021[/B] Cleric and arcane trickster are absent. I hand the party the blank 18x16 hexmap and go through how exploration works (Survival+Investigation+Perception+time to reach a DC to find things). A random roll puts them in hex 18.10, pretty much in the center of the eastern side of the map over the ocean. They spend 4 hours checking the ocean hex, don’t find anything, and decide to move on (they miss an underwater structure). They arrive at a beach-to-jungle area occupied by tortles, and spot regular rows of trees. Investigating, they meet a trio (master/apprentice/understudy) of tortle sorcerers who brew potions. The monk makes peaceful contact and acts as the translator, and they get some information about the immediate surrounding area and tortle society (very loose). The party buys some potions, spends the night, then head west without continuing to investigate they area (so they don’t find the tortle village nearby). They pass over the hex to the west and search the next one (15.10), finding a yuan-ti village (an odd tree formation). It’s dusk, so the air-skiff lands. They approach on foot, see some movement indicating they’re being flanked, and then encounter the village’s leader, a yuan-ti abomination named Ila. They exchange some information, make big promises, and get info about the exact location of the 5 Aaracokra cities, plus an idea of the enemy force sizes...and the location of the Cursed Forest to the north. On their way out, they meet a scarred yuan-ti who asks if they are worthy...they confidently says yes, and she tells them to seek the greater one to the southwest. The party takes that as their best lead/clue and starts heading southwest...earlier than I had anticipated. They move southwest into 14.10 and search it, and finally have a random encounter (after 20 or so d6s, they finally get a 1). Three air elementals attack the ship, splitting attacks between passengers and the air-skiff. It gets down to about 15hp before they kill the elementals, which definitely makes them nervous. They do some repairs (Mending, and Fabricate the next morning). The next day, they search and find a find an abandoned mine that had signs of troll occupation. They lift into the air in late afternoon, but before they can search and find the secondary Rodan Village (an ‘off-site backup’ of sorts for the Cult of Rodan that watches over the sleeping kaiju on a volcano about 30 miles away), they see another air-skiff. Since theirs only has about two weeks of power left, they immediately decide to be air-pirates, even though there are 11 Aaracokra with the other air-skiff. I’d rolled another airborne random encounter, and it happened to be the 2nd toughest patrol group, composed of a 13th level sun priest, a 9th-level wizard, 3 champions (roughly equal to fighter 8s), 4 SubCommanders, and 2 regular Guards. The engagement begins at a distance of 360’ with arrow fire as the air-skiffs close on each other. The artificer hastes the barbarian, the paladin hastes himself, and then on the next round they Dimension Door approximately 240’ onto the enemy air-skiff and blenderize the two guards who were standing on it. This kicks off a battle that takes 2-3 hours, but which everyone says I ran well and could not have been sped up. Dozens of javelins were thrown, and many things happened. Here are the highlights that I recall: I forget at least 8 times to call for Concentration checks on Haste. Big oops. The wizard uses Bigby’s Hand to shove the paladin off the air-skiff. Paladin falls 100’ to ground, takes falling damage. Someone kills the wizard by casting Hold Person, causing him to crash to the ground for 10d6 falling damage. The priest dies much the same way, with falling damage popping his Death Ward. The barbarian then jumps out of a tree (which he’d climbed back up) to split 7d6 falling damage with the 1hp priest below him. The barbarian takes the controls of the enemy air-skiff, making it go down to pick up the paladin. The priest hits them with Firestorm, hurting the barbarian and I think also the paladin, and more importantly, destroying the 30-hp power cabinet in the middle of the air-skiff, which then crashes to the ground with more falling damage. The party’s air-skiff, still damaged from fighting the air elementals, gets fireballed. The monk takes no damage. The vessel catches on fire and takes 1d6 damage per round. It gets fireballed again 3-4 rounds later and destroyed. The monk takes no falling damage thanks to his boots, and the artificer just floats there like iron man. The barbarian soaked something like 250 points of damage. Aaracokra tactics (plunging fire, using lances for flyby attacks, etc.) were generally effective – they were just outgunned by the party. It was by no means a cakewalk. At the end of the session, the party is all still alive, although the monk is nearly undamaged. They have no air-skiff at all now. They did pick up a +2 Unicorn spear (attunement, resist poison, advantage on saves vs poison, charm, fear). We’ll see if they get a good long rest in tonight or if they roll a devastation centipede or something while on the ground. Three of the Aaracokra escaped, and may bring word back to their bosses. Or maybe not... I’ll look at the map later and figure out if their chances of getting home while split up and wounded are very good. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Against the Idol of the Sun: A 5e high-level campaign log
Top