*turns to Lae* "Kithri, Kith for short. Your... prisoner appears to be awake, though." *turns back to Varlan and points swords at him*

"Ah, I was wondering when you were going to wake back up. Rise and shine, flat-ear."

Varlan curses and coughs a few times, and seems furious that he's still alive. "What, pointy-ears?" He tries to spit at your boots, but can't muster the strength and just slumps back down. "Can't let a man go out on his own terms? Have to torture me, too?"

(I tied him up, right?)

(yeah)

Lae smirks. "I wanted to talk. It's very rude to stab yourself when someone's talking to you."

uh look everyone this ran really long and I have to leave for Grandparents Dinner

(Does Astrid have another slot for Zone of Truth?)

(oof yeah)

(We can pause here if that's okay with everyone?)

i guess we can leave Interrogation for next time, lol

aww, I was saving a line for when we killed him :p

i was expecting y'all to just merc this man :p

Kith spits at Varlan's feet. (A.) "May Baphomet devour your soul in torment, murderer, and you shall never know peace even in death."

(nobody else will understand but that's beside the point)

next time on D&D: Interrogating the Crazy Murderer

Hehe well Lae's neutral good

He wouldn't kill someone unless it was absolutely necessary

...Kith would.

I was Contemplating ending him with toll the dead

But i figured it was worth a shot to try and talk some sense into him

Kith is fully able to smack him now, as an aside :p

I would make a joke about how I still haven't warhammered anyone, but... usually the combat is fun for me despite that, and this time it wasn't.

It took a really long time in between turns and everything I did failed

Aw :(

:(

:/

Also club died ;-;

i had expected Astrid to attack the dragon with the undead protection, but in hindsight i realize you were too far away, so that's my bad for putting you in a bad position.

And I left Clubs and That just to see if I could help with Turning the dragon, but that failed and now Clubs is dead

(the dragon did feel a little bit OP, TBH)

Maybe you can pray to Pan?

(yeah, the dragon was a little insane)

it is definitely on me for bad encounter design, i apologize. the dragon was a nerfed Brass Dragon stat block but i probably did not nerf it enough

and i should have just had clubs dodge

sorry :(

I mean, we are only lv 4

Dragons are like

Cl28

I mean yeah I could do that RP-wise, but I also didn't have much time to RP since my turns were short and I was trying not to join in the dialogue too much to make it my turn again

...4? did I miss a levelup? o.o

Sorry for all the dialouge

@Mithical oof, you may have

Dw, its pretty simple this lvl

i feel bad now, definitely didn't do the best job of designing the encounter. should have just had varlan attack without the zombie, and should have put you guys in a better tactical position

i'm sorry :(

You can either add +2 to stay, +1 to two stats, or take a feat

Or have the dragon be like a summon under varlan

astrid should have been given more doing-stuff time, as well. i should have put astrid closer to allow for melee stuff

I mean, it would have gone better if either Hold Person or Turn Undead had worked

I thought it was like

...have Pan / other deity take Varlan's lifeforce and resurrect Clubs...

put varlan to some use

Both of those failing meant both my Cool Plans were not cool

I think it would've been interesting if Varlan and the Dragon shared a turn

Like Varlan can either use the dragon to attack or he can attack himself

poor Rusty must've been terrified in the quiver, also... why must all the (friendly) NPCs be so Smol

i was struggling to figure out a way to make the encounter interesting, since Eldritch Knights are squishy and you would have slaughtered him if he hadn't had a minion/extra power. so i thought it would be cool if he resurrected the zombie, but i didn't do a good job balancing it. that's my bad

we can retcon that Clubs dodged the fire, i shouldn't have killed Clubs in the first place.

It might be cooler if Pan resurrects her instead :P

i apologize, bobble, i feel bad you didn't get to do much

clubs dodged, ran off, and we all thought they were ash-ified, but survived?

Dw too much about the boss fight. And yeah, sorry bobble that your stuff didn't work out :(

sad dm is sad

@Sciborg must give tanky dwarf another combat encounter to make up for it... :eyes:

Clubs went and talked to Pan/Mish?

Have I even been hit? I'm supposedly the tank but Lae is always drawing fire

anyway, the teleport thing was interesting, and I'm glad I got the opportunity to smack Varlan again

dm will try to feel better and do a better job next time :(

@bobble @PrinceNorthLæraðr as an idea... are you available when we generally do the Thursday session?

Sort of

@Sciborg *pats birdy*

@bobble I don't think so

@Mithical your regular time is my end of school/biking home/early homework

For obvious reasons I cannot do anything while biking

Aww. :/

Because AP Gov test. Not sure if that is morning or afternoon

@PrinceNorthLæraðr then maybe I'll take the Dual Wielder feat

@Mithical good feat

I would ask borg when our next lvl up is :P

If Clubs was actually going to talk to gods, Astrid has a slot for Speak With Animals left

We might need zone of truth tho :/

@PrinceNorthLæraðr (remind me how I calculate hit points? +6?)

@Mithical uhhh its your average hit die rounded up plus con mod

@PrinceNorthLæraðr different levels? I have slots for both

Oh ok

@PrinceNorthLæraðr so 10 (base) + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 +2 = 36? That sound right?

sorry, I'm not good with mechanics

Have I attacked anyone? As in attempted to hit someone?

@bobble I don't think so...

You'd get 8 HP this lvl up if your con mod is 2

So I've never attacked or been attacked, somehow, though three combats

@bobble you turned that undead dragon and cast spike growth

this campaign hasn't been big on combat in general thus far

Undead dragonborn*

@PrinceNorthLæraðr that's not an attack, it's defensive really

All Astrid has done is defense and buff

To be fair, I did push you out of the way first fight and our second fight was like

Two rounds long

So not sure that second one cpunts

I really have to go, we've arrived

Aight

\o

Lae can give you advantage on initiative for next combat

I have +6 initiative bonus anyways

should i have done more to push astrid into enemies/make astrid fight? have i been doing a bad job of that?

Nah lae's just a hog

oink oink

i think lae needs to tone down but it's also on me for not getting astrid involved enough, maybe

should have put astrid closer to combats

i don't know. i'm not sure what to do :(

Yeah. Doesn't help that astrid's initiative ain't that great

I think DM should check with bobble if Astrid should get some solo combat / Astrid-focused combat

it seemed like most combats astrid wanted to be out of the way so i just let that happen, i didn't want to make astrid fight if she didn't want to fight

I can give Astrid an advantage on initiative rolls

but now i feel bad

teleport Lae to Johnny, Kith and Astrid have a girls' day out hunting monsters? :P

Haha

Lae can also assist so Astrid cando more fighting

it's been really hard balancing everyone and trying to give everyone equal screen time, i feel like i've failed to do that with astrid and it makes me sad

it was not intentional

:(

DM is still human, as far as we know, which means not infallible

I think I talk too much

lae talked a lot during this combat so i was trying to juggle having him respond and also attacks

Yeah

Sorry about that

that may have distracted me

it's okay, i just feel bad that bobble felt left out

Yeah. Same

i was also trying to run combat while not feeling good, so that was a factor in not doing a good job

that part's fully my bad

but previous combats i had no excuse

oy mick, stop beating yourself up over it

sad birdy noises

Maybe we can level up ;p level five is a MAJOR milestone in terms of character shenanigan

But don't beat yourself up so much over it

@PrinceNorthLæraðr oh no, more scary mechanics

you can level up, yeah - i was gonna have you hit level 5 after this

@Mithical nah, its not too bad. Just more powerful spells and abilities

I just found out we were supposed to be level 4 and now we're supposed to go up to 5?? eek

Oh also proficiency boost!

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I'm just really bad at DnD mechanics, which is one reason combat took so long I think

and d'arvit, it's a quarter to four in the morning, lost track of time >.<

BTW I didn't want to mention this in the middle of combat,but I don't think you can cast an action spell and a bonus action spell

@Mithical oof, go to sleep

mith should zzzz ;-;

Ah yup

So actually, spare the dying and sanctuary was the right call

when a player isn't happy about a session i try to understand what went wrong, so i think our resolutions here are: let's give astrid more time to talk, rein in lae, and i need balance encounters better when big monsters are involved.

Yee

:thumbsup:

I shall be more mindful about not hogging "table"time

and when bobble returns we will give the bobble a big hug

Hm do I go level two cleric or level four hunter?

@Sciborg Yes

Oh, I also learned a cool trick

*considering multiclassing to Warlock for backstory reasons*

You can rope trick and ambush enemies from above as long as you beat their passive perception

Well rangers get extra attack at level 5 which I'd a tad insane

Ughhh both level ups are meh for me

They're both at like a one level way from something really cool

Oh, Astrid would've gone into the action

Just... combat ended too soon

First combat: buff everyone, then try to jump in front of Lae (=engage in melee). That was stopped, I'm fine it was still fun

Second combat: Turn Undead. I think that's it? I was planning to either run in and warhammer or shoot off some attack spells the next turn, but Lae ended the combat early

Third combat: wasn't in range to do what I wanted so I ran up closer, tried to do A Thing but that failed. Was planning to get closer the next turn but Clubs and That were hurt and I needed to check on/stabilize that. Was planning for the next turn to be Spiritual Weapon in the form of a vengeful Clubs, but again, combat ended

Astrid isn't the kind of person to attack the very first turn, spends that setting up a more favorable battlefield (buff/disable enemy). Then the next turn would probably get angry at a friend getting hurt and really dive into it. Short combats mean I don't get to transition from set-up to attack. And the combats are short because everyone else is so efficient and gets in early

So the big issue, it seems, is that combats have been too short to allow Astrid to get past the setup phase and execute all your planned fun attacks.

I've also noticed that everyone else here seems to be more "I do a thing and I roll" whereas I lean towards "I do a thing" and wait to see if that requires a roll or not. The first playstyle eats up more time because the invocation of mechanics means it gets some priority and more automatic DM involvement, and more ability to influence the world

@Sciborg yeah, basically

The different roll styles are also definitely a factor, we had discussed how Lae is a very active character making lots of rolls and that can take spotlight away from other characters.

If I have to rule on something Lae is doing it distracts me from what everyone else is doing

Not realizing that has led to a sense of Lae-hogging and I apologize for not being better about that

If I had gotten another turn, would you have let Vengeful Clubs Spiritual Weapon ram into the dragon?

I should have stepped up more and been like "okay i'll deal with this stuff but first we should let Kith/Astrid do stuff"

is a horse allowed to be spiritual-weapon'ed?

It just takes the form of something relevant

I was going to argue that Clubs was an animal and we found him in the wild thus Pan would be fine with it

i'm iffy on if the RAW word "weapon" can apply to a horse

but we would have made it work

I remembered you saying that a satyr was fine before, but that's more directly connected to Pan

if we're all really unhappy with how the combat went in general, i'm fully willing to use time travel as an excuse to redo the fight properly, remove the dragon and just have it be Varlan and some smaller minions, and let everyone execute their plans properly

we've already established time jumping is possible

instead of the dragon Varlan would summon some skeletons/ghosts or something to make it more balanced

and the horses would go hide so they don't die

You could also pull "it was all a dream", Astrid's fear of how it would go

sure, yeah

i'm totally down to do that, i don't want to move on from this feeling unhappy.

we've done this before in my IRL campaigns where an encounter goes not the way we wanted, nobody's really satisfied, and so we just say "screw it" and do it again

If you want you could ask in RPG chat, I'm sure they could come up with some ideas to help

"and then Astrid snapped out of the daydream, and the actual combat started"

:p

You are still best birdy, don't worry

birdy feels bad and will do better

Tree makes upset noises

>:(

Grove rant?

how does tree feel about the redo-combat idea?

Oh, that's perfectly fine as long as you'll let me at least keep round 1 damage :P

We may change the whole setup, i want to give Astrid time to do Cool Stuff. but we can discuss it next week

Okay

Are you available for Grove ranting?

sure

i'm thinking if we have a few skeleton minions instead of the Big Zombie, that makes for a longer combat with weaker enemies - they aren't super strong, there are just a lot of them, so lots of chances for Astrid Cleric-Smashing and anti-undead powers to feel useful

and the horses won't be targeted, they'll just run around kicking things

Thad will also buff from a distance, that way Astrid doesn't have to be buffing

Do you have stat blocks for undead spider thingies?

ooh, i can find some spiders

does that seem like it would be more fun, though?

More smaller enemies sounds good

okay. we will do that :)

Thad is going to hide somewhere away from spiders and buff us?

Yeah. Varlan will probably still want to target him but he'll be more protected this time

maybe we can also start a bit later next time so Gray can join, but schedules are hard to line up now

Should I bookmark the session or not?

I was really looking forward to having a session titled "Kith Punches a Dragon"