Winter Splendor - chrisman/skookums-and-dragons GitHub Wiki
- Date: 2/28/2019
- Players
- Linda Vu - Dumple, Cowboy Centaur Gun Slinger
- Alex B. - Jeff Baseball, Bitter Lizardfolk Barbarian (Papa Johns + Jeff Bezos)
- Hood - Ernan, Gnome Artificer and Alien Conspiracist
- Trips - Zuck, Evil Warforged Warlock
- chrisbrown - DM
- First game! Welcome Trips to the table
- Welcome to Blue Harbor! An idyllic seaside town where not everything is as it appears.
- Zuck's telepathic robot voice 🤖
- Dumple has way too much gear: four whips, five crossbows, four shields, etc.
- Dumple and Baseball for some reason demolishing Enrique's Empanadas first thing
- Dumple and Baseball (quite the dynamic duo!) doing a grapple bite + handcuffs combo to neutralize the imp
- Dumple's creative use of flaming holy water to attack the spiny devil
Spoilers lie herein
- Played straight through, no side quests/"bonus objectives". Took +4.5 hours. Maybe should have started outside the Villa instead of outside Enrique's. (Baseball kind of built his character around a rivalry with Ricky, but he was kind of a distraction from the plot as time went on.)
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This module, moved from Waterdeep to Blue Harbor:
- Aria Cavatina, the aasimar bard, is Ingrid Ingridson
- Cassalanters = Lamplighters
- The Black Viper = Barnabus Teach (But they never talked to him)
- Floon Blagmar = Tripping Billy (But they never talked to him)
- Debut of Joblin and the Goblinist Manifesto!
- Surprising stuff the players did
- They never got the paper from the girl. Had to figure out reasons for the imp to give them clues.
- Inappropriate combat: They attacked Enrique. They tied up and disposed of Captain Staget. They attacked Victoro Cassalanter. Lesson: if you have a named character, you need a stat sheet for them.
- They did not like the Lamplighters, and wanted to directly confront them. And they were not interested in discharging the sigil until I figured out how to explain that it needed to be discharged or it would rip open a permanent portal. That is, this part took some driving home:
There is a chance the characters wonder why they should even finish the puzzle if it will just bring more enemies to the villa. A successful DC 14 Intelligence (History) OR (Arcana) check confirms that since Elzerina has already activated the sigil, it needs to be expended fully before it can close. An NPC can also suggest this to the characters if there is doubt.
- Also had to have Victor promise to end his own life in order to break the contract, in order to protect the remaining Lamplighter children. Lesson: find the players' motivation!
- They spined devil should have been, according to the math from the DMG, a very difficult "Very Deadly" encounter. But a bad initiative roll + a surprise round means they killed it without it ever taking one turn!! Should maybe have had the circle summon a few additional imps
- Puzzle: had to tell them to go get the toys, but then they figured out the puzzle immediately. like, in zero seconds.
- could have done some better environmental details in the City of the Dead. wasn't very spooky.
- weak finish with the devil's death throes confession, "Oh no, I hope you don't pour Holy Water on the summoning circle, that would suck for me!"