Uller
Adventurer
The party (4th level):
Half Elf Warlock (Fiend)
Wood Elf Monk (Shadow)
Human Paladin (Avenger)
Gnome Rogue (Arcane Trickster)
High Elf Wizard (Evoker)
Last night my group arrived in Thundertree.
First a little background: I have set Lost Mines in the eastern portion of the Barony of Harkenwold in the Nentir Vale, 10 years after the events of Reavers of Harkenwold and Thunderspire Labyrinth (those PCs are now import NPCs in the region). The Paladin (Marcos) is a landless knight, his family having been driven from their land in Thundertree by the Iron Circle. I've removed the dragon cultists from Thundertree and replaced them with more zombies. The zombies are part of mystery connected to Old Owl Well (which is for another thread)...plus I just wanted the party to have to fight a huge hoard of zombies...because it's fun and they just didn't have the proper respect for undead...
So after completing Cragmaw Cave, the Redbrand hideout and all of the Triboar Trail side quests they arrived in Thundertree seeking out the druid Reidoth and a family heirloom belonging to Marcos's childhood friend, Mirna. The Paladin in particular was anxious to get there to begin reclaiming his (admittedly humble) ancestral home. After a small fight with some zombies and twig blights (very ho-hum!) they made their way to Reidoth's house. The druid seemed mainly annoyed with the PCs for disturbing him, but once he saw Marcos he became more friendly (no one passed secret insight checks to notice he had some ulterior motives...he wants Marcos to die...more on that later).
After a bit of pleasant talk about what is going on in Easthill (the town I replaced Phandelin with) and the area around Thundertree the party asked Reidoth about Cragmaw Castle and why they wanted to get there. He agreed to help them with their problem if they helped with his problem, mainly to get rid of all these zombies, spiders and most importantly the dragon. At this point I pointed out to Marcos's player that the tower that the dragon occupied was his home before the Iron Circle came and slaughtered his family and scattered the people.
The party agreed. After a short rest they decided to go after the spiders and zombies first so the rest of the town would be safe in case the fight with the dragon went badly. They started with the spiders at the center of town. However, the rogue (for reasons I don't understand) decided to sneak around to the north on the side of the hill...then rolled quite badly on her stealth check...so I decided that since they created quite a bit of noise in their first fight (using spells like shatter and eldritch blast) that the dragon was awake and watching and might look for an opportunity to make a preemptive strike on these miscreants invading his home.
The party started the fight with the spiders by shaking their webs to attract them and attacked with readied actions. That was going well enough but 4 twig blights and 4 zombies were attracted by the sound and came around the southwest corner. The party quickly dispatched the spiders and turned to deal with the new threat. At this point they clumped up quite nicely. So I decided the dragon would strike. They were too far for it to fly and breath. So it flew slowly to just behind the last stand of trees north of the crossroads, hoping to remain concealed and unleash its breath on all or most of the party in one go on the next round. My intention was for the dragon to breath on as many PCs as he could and then return to his tower to let the denizens of the village finish them off...things turned out rather differently...
Unfortunately for the dragon, the warlock and wizard were both lagging behind a bit and noticed the movement in the trees. An eldritch (repelling) blast knocked it down (I decided that the 10' push warranted a DC 10 dex save to avoid falling, it failed and ended up on the ground behind the trees. This gave the party the time they needed to finish off most of the zombies and twig blight and begin to scatter (although the monk was knocked out by a crit from a zombie, forcing the paladin to lay on hands to get her back up). Because now the dragon was prone it put him out of range of a move and a breath...so he decided to stay on the ground and double move to the road northwest of the store.
The wizard used the scroll of fireball he found earlier...not to great effect. Then the gnome player said the words: "Would Tasha's Hideous Laughter work on a dragon?" Yes. Yes it would. "So a kobold, a goblin and an orc walk into a tavern..." The dragon failed it's save...it started to smirk, then to giggle...then to laugh. Then it turned over on it's back rolling about in uncontrollable fits of mirth at the gnomes enchanted joke.
At this point they all decided to move to various covered positions and ready attacks for when the dragon broke out of the spell (knowing that damaging it would likely break it early). On it's turn, it saved, unleashing a volley of attacks against it. On the gnome's turn "An Ogre and a Hill Giant were playing a round of golf..." Dragon fails again...after another volley of attacks from the party (they were throwing everything they had at it while keeping themselves scattered and covered as much as possible...only the Paladin was staying right on top of it to make melee attacks) it was down to half it's HP. This time when the dragon broke out of the spell, his expression had gone from one of rage/mad laughter to fear. I still had every confidence he would get off a good breath weapon attack and then move safely back to the tower...then came the third Tasha's Hideous Laughter...dragon rolls it's save (this time with my good d20 known to my players as "the green death"...such is their fear of it they often try to steal it and hide it from me. My daughter (the gnome player) hid it under her bed for months just to prevent me from using it...): Wis save roll: 1!
At this point the party goes from hoping to survive to outright blood lust. They pummel it. It fails three saves (with advantage!) triggered by damage, then fails AGAIN on it's turn. Another round of pummeling. By the time it finally is able to act, it is down to 21 hit points. It lucked out in that an eldritch blast knocked it away from any PC so it could move without provoking an OA. But it was prone and too far from the tower or any real cover to be able to breath and move to safety.
So off it flew to the tower. At this point the party was entirely spent. No more spells, ki points, lay on hands...even most of their scrolls were used up, but they were all relatively healthy hp-wise. So I figured they'd head back to the druid's house for a long rest (and I'd let the dragon heal up some too). Nope....the blood lust had kicked in...the paladin called his horses and charged up the hill, followed closely by the rest of the party.
As they approached, the wizard, monk and warlock took cover among the rocks and bushes below the tower, the rogue began climbing the tower walls and the Paladin had his warhorse "KICK THE GOD DAMN DOOR IN!" He dismounted and strode in only to find another door in his way. So he bashed it down with his mailed fist....and the dragon had readied his breath weapon...The Warlock and the Monk heard the sound of rushing air as a cloud of green gas spilled out of the tower's doors and windows...then a loud thud like a sack of potatoes hitting the cobble stones followed by the paladin's sword clanging as it fell to the ground and skittered out the front door (he took 44 hp damage...he had 41 hp...that much damage would have killed the wizard outright).
On it's turn the dragon moved forward to finish the fallen paladin. But readied attacks by the party drove it back (where it readied a bite attack on anyone coming through the door). The monk moved into the tower (picking up the sword along the way) and gave the paladin one of his healing potions. By this time the gnome had made her way to the top of the tower...and lept down upon the dragon with her daggers! She hit with one attack dealing sneak attack damage (she attacked from hidden...the dragon had no idea she was coming).
On the paladin's turn, he stood up, charged in (the dragon didn't take it's readied attack because now it was dealing with a gnomish death from above) and...CRIT. The paladin's sword stabbed deep into the beast's neck, slaying it.
I was utterly stunned. A party of 4th level characters essentially beat an encounter of 2 giant spiders, 4 twig blights, 4 zombies AND a young green dragon and killed them all with two PCs being dropped to 0 hp but no one dying.
With this, they decided to go back to the druid's house for a long rest. They still failed to notice Reidoth was a bit shifty. He was still refusing to tell them what they wanted until they finished clearing the town ("a deal's a deal young ones!"). The gnome entertained the idea of trying Charm Person but the wizard stopped her. The Paladin briefly considered intimidating him ("look old man, we just killed a God Damned dragon...") but decided that would be against his ethos (he's Lawful Neutral...and a deal is a deal).
So after a night's rest out into the village they went. They seemed not at all frightened of zombies and plants even though they had learned by now how zombies don't always drop when they seem like they should...So I decided to turn it up a notch. On the eastern side of town I replaced all the monsters with 5 groups of zombies for a total of 20...and all of them would be attracted to any noise of combat (the druid warned them of this)
When they met the first group of 4 inside the ruins of a house, the warlock opened the fight by destroying the house with shatter ("This is my BOOM stick!"). From there it turned into a long running battle as groups of zombies converged on them. The party had not thought through their position. The Paladin, Monk and wizard were fighting about 10 zombies that had them surrounded in the open street. The Rogue was hiding in the bushes, sniping, moving and hiding again. The warlock was off kind of on his own with about 6 zombies coming his way.
The monk spent the almost the entire fight trying to bring down a single zombie that stubbornly refused to be destroyed...I've never heard the player swear before...but by the 5th or 6th round she was dropping the f-bomb and insisting zombies couldn't be killed. The Paladin had cast divine favor and eventually they figured out a good zombie killing tactic...everyone attack healthy zombies and let the Paladin finish them off with radiant attacks. Eventually the warlock and wizard had to use misty step (The warlock from a scroll) to escape the horde and hide in a building with the rogue while the paladin and monk managed to get in a corner to limit the number of attacks. By the end of the fight both were down to just a couple of hit points but they managed to prevail (the rogue killed the one the monk couldn't with well placed arrow).
That's where we ended for the night. Yes...I was being quite hard on them. I'm not afraid to kill a character or even the entire party if they are not careful. But they've proven that they are beginning to master their characters and are full of tricks that can overcome some very difficult foes. But they realize they are very lucky to all be alive.
They are at 6050 XP. I'm considering just leveling them up to 5th level now for Cragmaw castle (yes, I'll toughen it up a bit). Reidoth also knows the location of Wave Echo Cave and the party could go straight there if they chose (but he won't volunteer that information unless they ask). He may choose to betray them...he really doesn't want Marcos returning to claim his birth right and reestablishing civilization...Reidoth sees the Thundertree as sacred and wants his fellow tribesman to move back into the area.
Anyway...it was quite a bit of fun.
Half Elf Warlock (Fiend)
Wood Elf Monk (Shadow)
Human Paladin (Avenger)
Gnome Rogue (Arcane Trickster)
High Elf Wizard (Evoker)
Last night my group arrived in Thundertree.
First a little background: I have set Lost Mines in the eastern portion of the Barony of Harkenwold in the Nentir Vale, 10 years after the events of Reavers of Harkenwold and Thunderspire Labyrinth (those PCs are now import NPCs in the region). The Paladin (Marcos) is a landless knight, his family having been driven from their land in Thundertree by the Iron Circle. I've removed the dragon cultists from Thundertree and replaced them with more zombies. The zombies are part of mystery connected to Old Owl Well (which is for another thread)...plus I just wanted the party to have to fight a huge hoard of zombies...because it's fun and they just didn't have the proper respect for undead...
So after completing Cragmaw Cave, the Redbrand hideout and all of the Triboar Trail side quests they arrived in Thundertree seeking out the druid Reidoth and a family heirloom belonging to Marcos's childhood friend, Mirna. The Paladin in particular was anxious to get there to begin reclaiming his (admittedly humble) ancestral home. After a small fight with some zombies and twig blights (very ho-hum!) they made their way to Reidoth's house. The druid seemed mainly annoyed with the PCs for disturbing him, but once he saw Marcos he became more friendly (no one passed secret insight checks to notice he had some ulterior motives...he wants Marcos to die...more on that later).
After a bit of pleasant talk about what is going on in Easthill (the town I replaced Phandelin with) and the area around Thundertree the party asked Reidoth about Cragmaw Castle and why they wanted to get there. He agreed to help them with their problem if they helped with his problem, mainly to get rid of all these zombies, spiders and most importantly the dragon. At this point I pointed out to Marcos's player that the tower that the dragon occupied was his home before the Iron Circle came and slaughtered his family and scattered the people.
The party agreed. After a short rest they decided to go after the spiders and zombies first so the rest of the town would be safe in case the fight with the dragon went badly. They started with the spiders at the center of town. However, the rogue (for reasons I don't understand) decided to sneak around to the north on the side of the hill...then rolled quite badly on her stealth check...so I decided that since they created quite a bit of noise in their first fight (using spells like shatter and eldritch blast) that the dragon was awake and watching and might look for an opportunity to make a preemptive strike on these miscreants invading his home.
The party started the fight with the spiders by shaking their webs to attract them and attacked with readied actions. That was going well enough but 4 twig blights and 4 zombies were attracted by the sound and came around the southwest corner. The party quickly dispatched the spiders and turned to deal with the new threat. At this point they clumped up quite nicely. So I decided the dragon would strike. They were too far for it to fly and breath. So it flew slowly to just behind the last stand of trees north of the crossroads, hoping to remain concealed and unleash its breath on all or most of the party in one go on the next round. My intention was for the dragon to breath on as many PCs as he could and then return to his tower to let the denizens of the village finish them off...things turned out rather differently...
Unfortunately for the dragon, the warlock and wizard were both lagging behind a bit and noticed the movement in the trees. An eldritch (repelling) blast knocked it down (I decided that the 10' push warranted a DC 10 dex save to avoid falling, it failed and ended up on the ground behind the trees. This gave the party the time they needed to finish off most of the zombies and twig blight and begin to scatter (although the monk was knocked out by a crit from a zombie, forcing the paladin to lay on hands to get her back up). Because now the dragon was prone it put him out of range of a move and a breath...so he decided to stay on the ground and double move to the road northwest of the store.
The wizard used the scroll of fireball he found earlier...not to great effect. Then the gnome player said the words: "Would Tasha's Hideous Laughter work on a dragon?" Yes. Yes it would. "So a kobold, a goblin and an orc walk into a tavern..." The dragon failed it's save...it started to smirk, then to giggle...then to laugh. Then it turned over on it's back rolling about in uncontrollable fits of mirth at the gnomes enchanted joke.
At this point they all decided to move to various covered positions and ready attacks for when the dragon broke out of the spell (knowing that damaging it would likely break it early). On it's turn, it saved, unleashing a volley of attacks against it. On the gnome's turn "An Ogre and a Hill Giant were playing a round of golf..." Dragon fails again...after another volley of attacks from the party (they were throwing everything they had at it while keeping themselves scattered and covered as much as possible...only the Paladin was staying right on top of it to make melee attacks) it was down to half it's HP. This time when the dragon broke out of the spell, his expression had gone from one of rage/mad laughter to fear. I still had every confidence he would get off a good breath weapon attack and then move safely back to the tower...then came the third Tasha's Hideous Laughter...dragon rolls it's save (this time with my good d20 known to my players as "the green death"...such is their fear of it they often try to steal it and hide it from me. My daughter (the gnome player) hid it under her bed for months just to prevent me from using it...): Wis save roll: 1!
At this point the party goes from hoping to survive to outright blood lust. They pummel it. It fails three saves (with advantage!) triggered by damage, then fails AGAIN on it's turn. Another round of pummeling. By the time it finally is able to act, it is down to 21 hit points. It lucked out in that an eldritch blast knocked it away from any PC so it could move without provoking an OA. But it was prone and too far from the tower or any real cover to be able to breath and move to safety.
So off it flew to the tower. At this point the party was entirely spent. No more spells, ki points, lay on hands...even most of their scrolls were used up, but they were all relatively healthy hp-wise. So I figured they'd head back to the druid's house for a long rest (and I'd let the dragon heal up some too). Nope....the blood lust had kicked in...the paladin called his horses and charged up the hill, followed closely by the rest of the party.
As they approached, the wizard, monk and warlock took cover among the rocks and bushes below the tower, the rogue began climbing the tower walls and the Paladin had his warhorse "KICK THE GOD DAMN DOOR IN!" He dismounted and strode in only to find another door in his way. So he bashed it down with his mailed fist....and the dragon had readied his breath weapon...The Warlock and the Monk heard the sound of rushing air as a cloud of green gas spilled out of the tower's doors and windows...then a loud thud like a sack of potatoes hitting the cobble stones followed by the paladin's sword clanging as it fell to the ground and skittered out the front door (he took 44 hp damage...he had 41 hp...that much damage would have killed the wizard outright).
On it's turn the dragon moved forward to finish the fallen paladin. But readied attacks by the party drove it back (where it readied a bite attack on anyone coming through the door). The monk moved into the tower (picking up the sword along the way) and gave the paladin one of his healing potions. By this time the gnome had made her way to the top of the tower...and lept down upon the dragon with her daggers! She hit with one attack dealing sneak attack damage (she attacked from hidden...the dragon had no idea she was coming).
On the paladin's turn, he stood up, charged in (the dragon didn't take it's readied attack because now it was dealing with a gnomish death from above) and...CRIT. The paladin's sword stabbed deep into the beast's neck, slaying it.
I was utterly stunned. A party of 4th level characters essentially beat an encounter of 2 giant spiders, 4 twig blights, 4 zombies AND a young green dragon and killed them all with two PCs being dropped to 0 hp but no one dying.
With this, they decided to go back to the druid's house for a long rest. They still failed to notice Reidoth was a bit shifty. He was still refusing to tell them what they wanted until they finished clearing the town ("a deal's a deal young ones!"). The gnome entertained the idea of trying Charm Person but the wizard stopped her. The Paladin briefly considered intimidating him ("look old man, we just killed a God Damned dragon...") but decided that would be against his ethos (he's Lawful Neutral...and a deal is a deal).
So after a night's rest out into the village they went. They seemed not at all frightened of zombies and plants even though they had learned by now how zombies don't always drop when they seem like they should...So I decided to turn it up a notch. On the eastern side of town I replaced all the monsters with 5 groups of zombies for a total of 20...and all of them would be attracted to any noise of combat (the druid warned them of this)
When they met the first group of 4 inside the ruins of a house, the warlock opened the fight by destroying the house with shatter ("This is my BOOM stick!"). From there it turned into a long running battle as groups of zombies converged on them. The party had not thought through their position. The Paladin, Monk and wizard were fighting about 10 zombies that had them surrounded in the open street. The Rogue was hiding in the bushes, sniping, moving and hiding again. The warlock was off kind of on his own with about 6 zombies coming his way.
The monk spent the almost the entire fight trying to bring down a single zombie that stubbornly refused to be destroyed...I've never heard the player swear before...but by the 5th or 6th round she was dropping the f-bomb and insisting zombies couldn't be killed. The Paladin had cast divine favor and eventually they figured out a good zombie killing tactic...everyone attack healthy zombies and let the Paladin finish them off with radiant attacks. Eventually the warlock and wizard had to use misty step (The warlock from a scroll) to escape the horde and hide in a building with the rogue while the paladin and monk managed to get in a corner to limit the number of attacks. By the end of the fight both were down to just a couple of hit points but they managed to prevail (the rogue killed the one the monk couldn't with well placed arrow).
That's where we ended for the night. Yes...I was being quite hard on them. I'm not afraid to kill a character or even the entire party if they are not careful. But they've proven that they are beginning to master their characters and are full of tricks that can overcome some very difficult foes. But they realize they are very lucky to all be alive.
They are at 6050 XP. I'm considering just leveling them up to 5th level now for Cragmaw castle (yes, I'll toughen it up a bit). Reidoth also knows the location of Wave Echo Cave and the party could go straight there if they chose (but he won't volunteer that information unless they ask). He may choose to betray them...he really doesn't want Marcos returning to claim his birth right and reestablishing civilization...Reidoth sees the Thundertree as sacred and wants his fellow tribesman to move back into the area.
Anyway...it was quite a bit of fun.
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