Baaaad News - chrisman/skookums-and-dragons GitHub Wiki
A Wild Sheep Chase is one of the most popular one-shots out there for D&D. It's meant to be run for ~5th level adventurers. This game was adapted for a trio of 1st level adventurers.
Spoilers here: https://winghornpress.com/adventures/a-wild-sheep-chase/
- Klick Klack: A kenku barbarian (Alex B.)
- Halfrik Johnson, Private Investigator: a tiefling rogue (Linda Vu)
- Nature Boy! Halfling Ranger (Chris A.)
- DM: chrisbrown
- First game! This was Linda's first time at the table
- Breaking the DM: Klick Klack (Alex) almost ended the game before it started by deciding to be sheep-phobic, and killed the main plot hook.
- Continuity: game started at Enrique's Empanada Emporium, local shadowrunner hangout, but in the idyllic seaside town of Blue Harbor
- wtf: the team named itself Dirty Bloody Viscera
- DBV also stands for Devil, Bird, and Vine-swinger?
- 🔥🔥🔥 Halfrek notices that the California King beddragon is mostly made of wood, pulls a Fisty, and sets it friggin on fire with themself in the middle of the blaze!
Spoilers/Behind the Screen
- modified stat blocks/encounters mostly from this thread/homebrewery
- Inspiration: give it early and often to encourage RP and "good behavior"
- everybody gets a custom magic item at the beginning
- ranger gets a grey Bag of Tricks: this was surprisingly unbalancing, having two extra "pets" (wild boars) who can actually attack
- goggles of Dancing Lights (at will) and Faerie Fire (1 charge) for the rogue: a very de-powered and flavored Ring of Shooting Stars
- winged sandals of Jump (bonus action) and Feather Falling (permanent) for the kenku. (Just combines the effects of Ring of Jumping and Ring of Feather Falling)
- NPC customizations:
- Guz = Winifred the half-orc. aka Winnie. supposed to be (horrifyingly) transmogrified into Winnie the Black Bear at the end for a Winnie the Pooh joke. But the gang started destroying the first encounter (partially because of help from the boar from the ranger's BoT), so I re-introduced the black bear ("Tiny") to the first encounter, but never got around to doing the big reveal. so they never actually got to fight Winnie the Bear or Tiny the Bear, or see either reveal, which I was looking forward to. and Winnie, supposed to be an important and recurring character, was never seen again after the first encounter.
- Noke = Bighead: tiny goblin with grotesquely big head. Had a whole lot of relationship and backstory with Finethir that I never got around to delivering because I was rushing through the end because at that point we were ~1 hr over.
- the dragon's breath attack felt too powerful, even with the dragon as depowered as it was. I didn't let it hit them full strength. Maybe if I had, and somebody went down, it would have felt more deadly and dangerous and fun? I don't know. Level 1 is just so squishy.
- instead of becoming a Gibbering Mouther at the end (a very hard encounter!), Bighead turns into a Flumph and falls prone.
- Additions and Extra encounters:
- add a chase scene! with a 5:3 success/failure rating. It seemed to go pretty good. I think it was fun.
- Modified rules: https://www.matthewperkins.net/blog/2018/7/1/alternate-chase-rules
- Encounter tables: https://olddungeonmaster.com/2015/01/17/dd-5e-quick-reference-chase-rules/
- add a couple puzzles:
- minor illusion door: sturdy door, no handle, no keyhole, no nothing; large button set into the wall next to it. Pressing the button makes it sound like the door is opening, but the door doesn't budge. Repeat as necessary. Solution: each button press does actually open or close the door. it just doesn't look like it because there is a minor illusion of a closed door over the actual door. pressing, leaning, knocking on it, etc while it's open will reveal this.
- dark stairway: stairs continue infinitely up and down (after entering the stairway) so long as there is any light whatsoever. Runes and etchings carved into the wall in various languages give hints. (turn away from the light. Let the blind lead the blind. Embrace the dark. etc)
- had a whole plot-driving expository Horror Scene planned for a forest outpost that the players decided to walk past instead of investigating. Lesson learned: allow them to decide to walk by, but then make them encounter it anyway later.
- add a chase scene! with a 5:3 success/failure rating. It seemed to go pretty good. I think it was fun.
- NPC dialog: learn a few more things to say as NPCs in combat. DM kept repeating the same in-combat lines over and over. ("Ouch, this is terrible! I hate this!")
- other things that surprised me: had to look up how fire damage works
- stuff to do better next time:
- move faster. game was too long. players were tired at the end.
- quicker access to NPC/mob stats. index cards?
- how to better and more quickly track initiative?