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Previously on Tomb of Annihilation

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties with Roll20, skip to 44:10 when we switch to using Skype for audio.

Starring:
Mannix, level 2 Human Rogue
Khaless, level 2 Half-Drow Rogue
Gillian, level 2 Triton Bard
George, level 2 Tortle Fighter
Therin, level 2 Hill Dwarf Druid of the Moon

After several sessions in Port Nyanzaru, this week provided a bit of a detour. The PCs accepted Rokah’s mission to travel to Fort Beluarian to try and uncover evidence of collusion between the Flaming Fist mercenaries and the pirates of Chult.

Rokah pulled some strings and got them all passage on the Brazen Pegasus for free, able to jump over to the Fort in about half a day. The Fort was open to the public, but the PCs ran into problems almost immediately.

The Castellan, Gruta, met them at the entrance. She explained that adventurers are welcome to shop and pick up supplies in the fort, but all explorers need to purchase a Charter of Exploration. The mercs worked for Baldur’s Gate and claimed the jungle and all its treasures in the name of the Lord’s Alliance.

Fascinatingly the PCs were immediately antagonistic toward Gruta. They picked up on the fact that Undril’s group, the Order of the Gauntlet, weren’t exactly recognizing the Lord’s Alliance’s claims when they set up Camp Righteous. The Flaming Fist’s reach was tenuous at best, enforced by sending out patrols in the jungle.

The PCs argued with her and poked holes in her authority, and were reticent to spending any money on a charter (at one point actually telling her they didn’t have the money).

I was shocked at this whole exchange as Gruta kicked them out, but I also learned some important quirks about my party – they’re not very nice! The main spokespeople – Mannix, Khaless, and Therin, don’t take crap from anyone, especially frosty guards. Gillian is the friendly diplomat, but she appears willing to defer to the others on when to step up.

Through Rokah I could bemoan what had just happened, but also offer a tiny sliver of hope – another entrance to the fort. A secondary gate on another side was less guarded but closed and barred.

The party formulated a dangerous plan. Using oil, candles, and a vial of alchemists fire, Khaless started a fire on the east wall of the fort. While guards rushed to investigate the smoke and fire licking up the walls, Therin wild shaped into a giant spider and stealthily climbed up the southern wall (Giant Spiders have a +7 to stealth!).

He webbed the lone guard that was left and shoved him off the wall. Mannix tied some rope around him and dragged him back toward some buildings outside the fort, and Rokah knocked him out.

I was impressed that my PCs were careful not to actually kill anyone at the fort.

Therin-spider was able to open the gate and everyone rushed inside. They needed another distraction to reach the keep, however. Instead of joining the party, Therin-spider chittered along the walls to wreck havoc on the west gate that the party had originally tried to enter. He used stealth to weave in and out of the outer buildings, webbing anyone who approached while taking a volley of crossbow bolts. He was effective at creating a distraction without putting the entire fort on high alert or lockdown.

The giant spider distraction allowed the others to make it inside the keep. Mannix had stolen the uniform off the guard they had taken out, and played the part of a Flaming Fist merc escorting the rest of the group. When they reached Commander Liara Portyr they had a brilliant idea – paint Gillian as a royal emissary of the Tritons (which actually isn’t far from the truth).

Since Gillian completely looks and acts the part of a royal emmisary, the ruse worked completely. She drank wine with Liara while her ‘servants’ were shown their rooms upstairs.

At this point my party was split into three different areas, a bit of a nightmare for a DM, but still a fun scenario to present.

Since Mannix was still dressed as a guard, the upstairs crew of George, Mannix, Khaless, and Rokah were soon left unattended, and it was easy for them to ransack the Commander’s quarters to find a locked strongbox. Khaless rolled 20 on the lockpick, granting them over 200 gold coins as well as a Sending Stone and a notebook full of ship details out of Port Nyanzaru.

The PCs recognized that this was the proof Rokah was looking for. Rokah was willing to let the PCs keep the 220 gold pot, but he wanted the Sending Stone and notebook as the proof to bring back to his superiors. The PCs were a bit reticent to give them up, but ultimately decided to table the conversation until they were safely away, which Rokah could agree to.

The egress proved a little dramatic as half the party exited through the second story window, climbing (or leaping) down onto the roof of a barracks full of sleeping guards. Gillian and Khaless went out the primary entrance, claiming that the diplomat wanted to do some shopping before retiring.

When some guards rushed out of the barracks, George set fire to a corner of the barracks as they added to the confusion of spider attack + fires. I believe cries of “Undead Fire Spiders” were spread throughout the fort!

The party was doing a decent job in not being bloodthirsty, instead trying to handle everything in a clever way to deflect and distract attention, and I was happy to reward their work. They were able to run to the southern door and escape, at some point meeting up with a wounded and tired Therin-spider.

For funzies I had that first guard, now naked and covered in strands of webbing, emerge from the outhouse at the same time. The players all tackled him, with Therin webbing him once again. Then they hauled ass out of the Fort without looking back.

If anything this session was a great example of salvaging a disastrous beginning into a fun session!

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A press review copy of the module was provided. Find more Roll20 Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

Designed by: Storm Bunny Studios

“Mists of Akuma: Fangs of Revenge” is relatively short adventure designed for a party of 4-6 PCs at level 6-7. It takes place within the city of Samon in the world of Mists of Akuma. I know nothing about this campaign setting outside of the scope of this adventure, but from what I can tell, it’s like a steampunk version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set in the Far East.

The adventure includes an intimidating number of named NPCs as the PCs become embroiled in the middle of a city-wide rebellion, but the module suffers from poor map implantation, token errors, and an inconsistent art style.

The following content is included in the $9.99 Mists of Akuma: Fangs of Revenge Roll20 module:

• Journal broken up into 4 Acts, plus Prologue and Epilogue
• 4 5-ft battle maps
• 1 isometric building map
• 2 non-gridded city/world maps
• 1 page of NPC tokens
• 21 unique named NPC tokens
• 12 Generic NPC tokens.
• 18 optional PC tokens
• 11 Player Handouts
• 1 original music track designed for the module, plus a curated list of free musical tracks

Meeting with Lord Eidaru of the city of Samon takes up the entirety of Act 1. The party is given a mission to infiltrate some local rebels and put a stop to any would-be insurrection with the working class.

Act 2 opens things up for the PCs to decide where to go and what to do to earn favor towards getting a meeting with the Fangs. The city map of Samon easily points out the notable areas that PCs can travel to, including tokens placed directly on the map. The goal is to acquire ‘Favor Points’ from each area, with the rebels making initial contact upon reaching three points.

Unfortunately almost all of these areas boil down to simply chatting with people and making skill checks. There are a few neat events listed and detailed, like sabotaging a railway or following one of the many named NPCs through the streets, but none of them have any maps.

Oddly the only location in Act 2 with a map is a tavern that’s almost entirely inconsequential to the main plot. The PCs simply get thrown out if they ask about the rebels, yet we get a full battle map with dynamic lighting and tokens.

Act 3 is a big warzone in a garden between multiple factions, with our PCs caught in the middle. Their actions here determine the course for Act 4 as they can choose to help the rebels or the empire. It’s a neat moment story-wise but the adventure doesn’t put any of the tokens on the battle map, and it’s daunting to try and figure out who’s where.

Whatever the PCs end up doing, the insurrection happens in Act 4 and the city is gripped by chaos. The PCs’ goals have shifted to stopping an evil ritual by a group of serpentine shapeshifters holed up the basement of a building. The basement level is given a huge amount of interesting things to interact with and possible ways to approach, but the actual map is hideous and largely empty.

The story structure is more reminiscent of Shadowrun than D&D, which I find refreshing. It’s longer than a one-shot but nearly as big a scope as Lost Mine of Phandelver. There’s too many named NPCs to keep track of for the size of the adventure, but what I found especially egregious were the empty maps. If you’re selling a module directly on the Roll20 marketplace, I expect ready-to-play maps and tokens, and “Mists of Akuma: Fangs of Revenge” fails that basic test completely.

The Pros:

• The Tazuki Rail Basement has a of detail and interesting things to work with (though the actual map is hideous and empty).
• Combat Sheets provide a nice at-a-glance reminder of things PCs can do during combat.

The Cons:

• Tokens aren’t correctly linked to character sheets when dragging.
• Only one of the battle maps have tokens set up.
• Way too many named characters for how relatively short and small the adventure is.

The Verdict: The far East setting amid a world of ANTHROPOMORPHIC SHapeshifters is intriguing, but “Mists of Akuma: fangs of Revenge” Suffers from basic Roll20 map and token errors.

A press review copy of the module was provided. Find more Roll20 Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

Weekly video game adventures. Streamed live every Monday.

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A review copy of “Minotaur’s Bane” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

Designed by: JVC Parry and Phil Beckwith

The conclusion to P.B. Publishing’s Minotaur Trilogy, “Minotaur’s Bane,” is easily the best of the bunch, and one of the best (and bloodiest) adventures I’ve read in quite some time.

Designed for a party of 8th level heroes who have completed the first two adventures, it drops the party into an abyssal battlefield filled with spectral orcs and minotaurs locked in eternal combat. Demons are the real threat, and the party must journey into a challenging and intriguing maze, then further into the depths of a blood-soaked demon-lair to stop the Prince of Beasts himself.

The Adventure Synopsis doesn’t do a great job of outlining the adventure, but thankfully it’s very straight-forward. Picking up right after the second adventure, “Minotaur’s Betrayal” ended, the party is thrown into a demonic demiplane with three separate layers.

The Eternal Battlefield is a giant chasm that opens in the ground beneath the heroes, 100 feet below. A war rages as this reverse-Valhalla captures the minds and spirits of minotaur and orc alike, while demons ravage the entire area.

The party is pursued by a group of Tanarukk using a unique form of chase rules, granting a great sense of pacing and urgency as they battle random encounters and explore demonic versions of previously visited locations, including a zombified town, and the home of demonic Astarte, former leader of the Minotaurs. The party can also pick up several orc and minotaur allies along the way.

Defeating Astarte opens up the way to the next level of the hellscape beneath her house: The Maze of the Minotaur. Any minotaur story has to have a maze (I don’t make the rules), and the maze presented here is fantastic.

It’s built like an old school Zelda dungeon with separate interconnected rooms. But which mini-maze room you end up in depends on which direction you exited. It’s all trial and error, which could lead to heavy amounts of frustration if the PCs are particularly unlucky with their choices, as monsters have a 50% of respawning.

The Maze is a lot of fun. It’s very combat-oriented but suitably twisted and spooky, including a river of maggots, a bestial arena, and a darkened room full of whispering skulls and bone walls. The final boss of the area is a giant demon surrounded by multiple environmental hazards. The bosses in this adventure remind me of Metroidvanias in the best possible way, big marquee battles that are given lots of detail and attention.

After the maze is Baphomet’s Lair. Compared to the first two areas it’s a more traditional dungeon crawl. Demons are torturing people, performing dark rituals, summoning more demons, the usual. There are some places where our heroes can rescue people, including a 9th level mage to add to their party!

The dungeon includes multiple demon-themed sub-bosses leading up to the big bad, a slightly weakened CR 18 Baphomet with demonic versions of both the minotaur and orc leaders. Defeating them actually weakens Baphomet considerably. I love that his tactics each round are spelled out. Very handy for those of us DMs who can be overwhelmed with huge monsters with lots of options.

There’s not much of an epilogue here other than the demiplane closing and Baphomet’s reign of terror coming to an end, though the damage done was irreversible and terrible. A bittersweet ending, though one fraught with peril. The themes of demons, warfare, and bestial wrath are well in each area, and the maze in particular is incredibly clever and well-designed. The Minotaur Trilogy couldn’t have asked for a better conclusion.

Pros: 

• Uses past characters and events from the Minotaur Trilogy in meaningful ways.
• Fantastic battle maps and overland map of the Abyssal Rift.
• Tons of custom NPCs and monsters
• The Eternal Battlefield provides a good mix of overland adventure, random encounters, chase sequences, and mini-dungeons.
• The Maze of the Minotaur is clever, lengthy, and challenging, and could translate well to virtual tabletops.
• Epic final boss battle versus Baphomet, Prince of Beasts!

Cons:

• Several errors, such as miss-numbering foes, or pointing to an “eastern passage” instead of a western one.
• Baphomet’s Domain is strangely organized for DMs.

The Verdict: “Minotaur’s Bane” provides fun mazes, horrible demons, and large-scale warfare in this action-packed, epic conclusion to the Minotaur Trilogy.

A review copy of “Minotaur’s Bane” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

While I’m still hoping to reach my next Patreon Goal to add a possible second live Let’s Play stream per week, I’ll be peppering my live Let’s Plays with some offline gameplay. To help remember what happened, and to regale you of any drama, I’ll be writing these Field Reports between Episodes.

Darkest Dungeon Episode 03 will air Monday, Oct. 15.

Week 5

I haven’t lost any heroes, but I’m also being very cautious and proactive in regards to stress and disease. I’d expanded my roster to 12, but nearly half of them were in treatment, including most of my veterans.

Week 5 brought my first special event – an extra six recruitable heroes, in addition to the three I’m offered every week! Unfortunately I’d already hit my cap, so I went through and dismissed some that I was less than enthused with, like the Antiquarian. I hired an Arbalest named Vane, and a second plague doctor named Chatwood.

I’m still embarking on Short missions and working my way up to the first boss of each region. I’m mostly picking missions based on the rewards; often the rewards are class-specific for something I haven’t even seen yet, like Hound Master.

I embarked on a Short Warrens mission with the goal of exploring 90% of the rooms. I used the following squad:

• Lynom, lvl 0 Leper
• Engerrand, lvl 1 Bounty Hunter
• Boneth, lvl 1 Vestel
• Vane, lvl 0 Arbalest

I enjoyed using a Leper as my frontline tank for the last run, but he got so fucked up with stress and disease that I dismissed him. Thankfully I have another one!

I really enjoyed the team comp here, as multiple heroes could mark, stun, and heal, and Engerrand received the Man Hunter quirk from a curio that lets him do more damage against the mutated beasts of the Warrens.

With my full healer Boneth keeping everyone topped up it was a fairly easy mission (Vane and Lynom also have healing abilities as well), but I realized the Warrens deals a lot of Stress damage, and has a very annoyingly high chance to infect my heroes with disease.

Learning which foes appear in what zones is definitely key to putting together a successful team.

Both Vane and Boneth were heavily stressed to around 50, and Vane got Syphilis! Ugh. I’ll be without my awesome Arbalest for awhile as I have to treat her disease first, then her stress level.

Week 6

Most of my roster is now back in action. I really wanted to use Fitzherbert the Grave Robber with her awesome Very Rare relic, but she had been in a similar situation as Vane, and now had to go to the bar to relieve stress after she was treated for disease last week.

With a better understanding of the Warrens, I decided to go on another Short Run. Mission Goal: Defeat 100% of Room Battles.

Squad:

• Lynom, lvl 1 Leper
• Engerrand, lvl 1 Bounty Hunter
• Dismas, lvl 1 Highwayman
• Corbon, lvl 1 Plague Doctor

I broke my rule here by not slotting in any newbies, but I was excited to have an experienced squad for once (experienced for me at least). Dismas was technically diseased, but his disease only affected Camping Skills, and Short missions don’t use camping at all (and I’ve yet to try a longer one).

This team kicked all kinds of ass. Engerrand proved incredibly useful because he did bonus damage to Humans, Marked and Stunned, and he could also Stun and Mark foes with different abilities.

Dismas is the bleeding king with a strong AOE attack, and I used Corbon’s Stunning grenade more than his actual acid grenade with good results. Lynom was just there to tank and soak it all up, and he did a fine job.

The result was one of my best runs yet, with no one above 30% stress. And still no deaths! The only bummer was Dismas getting a second disease, a nasty one that I’ll need to treat.

The good news: I officially unlocked my first boss – The Swine Prince! It’s a Medium mission. I’ll probably want to try another Medium mission first just to see how they operate. I’m also going to try and save boss runs for the live streams if possible.

Look for more Field Reports throughout the week. Watch my Let’s Play live streams every Monday.

Behind-the-scenes DM-only live stream of building and preparing our ongoing Tomb of Annihilation series.

Streamed live every Thursday.

Support the channel via Patreon.

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

Support my channel via Patreon!

Previously on Tomb of Annihilation

Starring:
Mannix, level 2 Human Rogue
Khaless, level 2 Half-Drow Rogue
Gillian, level 2 Triton Bard
George, level 2 Tortle Fighter
Therin, level 2 Hill Dwarf Druid of the Moon

After a fun little excursion to Fort Beluarian our heroes returned to Port Nyanzaru to get the ritual results from Zitembe, pick up new party ally Inete, and repel a sudden undead invasion from the slum district of Malar’s Throat.

On the way back to the city, Mannix and Khaless wanted a little private time with the Sending Stone they had lifted off Liara Portyr. They sent off a message to the unknown owner of the paired stone, with Khaless pretending to be Liara. The message they received back seemed to know their deception, however, hinting that Liara had used some kind of passphrase as a security measure (also Khaless rolled crap on the Deception check!).

While they didn’t learn anything knew, they were willing to give Rokah the stone and notebook to complete the quest. Rokah hinted that he could work with the PCs in the future if he learns anything more about the Pirates, and the PCs accepted this outcome.

When they reached the city harbor he handed over the payout of 50gp. Plus the big haul from Liara’s lockbox, that’s 54gp per person. Not bad for a single session with almost no combat!

It was evening when the party returned to Port Nyanzaru, so they went to the Temple of Savras to follow up on the ritual results with Grandfather Zitembe.

Zitembe was harried from the 24-hour ritual, but he regaled the bits and pieces he had learned. It was mostly confirming that my PCs’ personal quests were indeed in Chult, but they didn’t learn any exact locations. Artus Cimber could not be located at all, Zagmira was somewhere in the jungle, and Siburrath may be near a temple by a beach.

The Soulmonger had the most intriguing tease. Savras had pointed Zitembe toward a hidden city far to the south, and a black obelisk draped in vines. But Acererak showed up and psychically shoved him out of the divine guidance, leaving him shaken.

The party was surprised when Inete, the young acolyte they had rescued from Viplo, demanded to join them, much to Zitembe’s horror. She claimed she had been given a vision from Savras. She saw red-robed figures pouring out a giant floating rock in the jungle, heading south. Savras identified it as the Heart of Ubtao, located somewhere in or around the Aldani Basin.

Naturally the PCs were disdainful. I enjoyed that they instantly wrote her off as a naive teenager, which isn’t far from the truth. She’s not a Commoner, however; she does have some low level Cleric spells. Ultimately the party accepted her though none but Gillian felt any real affection or loyalty to her.

Inete would be given the change to test her mettle right away. As the party left the Temple of Savras they heard alarm bells in the distance. They rushed toward the source – the southern most gates at Malar’s Throat.

Throngs of people were rushing into the city gates, screaming about undead pouring out of the jungle. It was a simple matter to talk the guards into opening the gates and letting the PCs out to investigate the area.

When they reached the large Temple of Tymora they finally spotted the action: half a dozen zombies, skeletons, and a ghoul were attacking people as they fled. Many ran toward the gates that the party had emerged from, while others attempted to get inside the Temple. Roll for initiative!

This was a large-scale, straight-forward fight, probably the first we’ve had in our campaign. The party rushed into action, starting with Therin wild-shaping into a bear and taking on several of the undead at once.

The undead cut down many of the poor townsfolk before they reached the center square, where the party was able to engage them. Gillian unleashed a Thunderwave while Khaless and George ran up to slice and dice. Mannix kept to the shadowy alleyways to shoot from afar, while Inete cast Bless and Sancutary before running up to apply Sacred Flame.

I was astonished by how well I rolled throughout this fight. Zombies and Skeletons aren’t exactly strong but I was rolling 17+ on most attack rolls, dealing solid damage to everyone, especially Khaless and George. Therin-bear was forced to use his Wild Shape healing to stay topped off, while Gillian had to heal George who came dangerously close to falling.

The only disappointment was the ghoul, the ‘boss’ of this encounter, who got off one attack before being completely destroyed but the multi-attacking Therin-bear!

Eventually the PCs turned the tide. I had some surprises in store near the end, when Undril emerged from the Temple to briefly help the party, before explaining that she had been inside helping those who first arrived. She warned to watch the bodies of those who had fallen. Khaless hurried to burn them after the fight, noting that the last one started to rise as a zombie!

Is the Death Curse creating a zombie apocalypse scenario? Dun dun duuuunnn!

When folks die they cannot be raised, the soul is being drawn into the Soulmonger. Apparently the body can rise as an undead horror. This is definitely not how undead are normally created in D&D (which I made sure to explain).

The party quickly picked up on the horrific ramifications, noting that the city could quickly tear itself apart, and/or create a panic. They worked with the temple and the guards back at the gate to discreetly warn them of what they had learned. The Death Curse was more than just an inconvenience, it was the beginning of the end.

With the immediate attack repelled the party returned to the Thundering Lizard Inn for a much needed Long Rest, ending their second full day in Chult.

When they awoke they found a message had been left for them – the Merchant Prince Wakana O’tomu had invited them to meet with him at his Villa. Day three also brings the long-awaited and highly anticipated dinosaur races. All of this next week!

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern! 

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A review copy of “Versatile NPCs II” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

Designed by: Darrin Scott

The Monster Manual provides a solid list of monster types found in swamps, dungeons, caves, and volcanic fortresses. But what if you need to outfit a caravan? Or an NPC adventuring group? Or an entire town comes under attack and you want something more than just Commoners and Guards?

“Versatile NPCs II” provides over 60 miscellaneous humanoid statblocks, effectively translating many player character archetypes into NPCs, making it an incredibly helpful resource for almost every campaign.

The rather massive 75-page compendium includes 66 total statblocks, mostly drawn from familiar character classes like paladin and ranger. Most of the challenge ratings are solidly Tier 1-2 with a few very high level entries for your supervillain legendary mages.

There’s a slight emphasis on quantity over quality, but that’s more due to the CR value of most entries rather than any inattention to detail. Many of the entries are quite literally just player characters at certain levels. The Paladin, for example, has Divine Sense, Divine Smite, and Lay on Hands.

I was very impressed with the visual presentation. Almost every single NPC gets a full color, high quality picture depicting a sample character, and the organization, font, and page color all elevate the compendium into a more professional level.

My favorite part were the sample NPCs. Every single entry has up to three “Sample NPC” paragraphs. These provide fun mini-backstories for sample characters that you could use in your campaign. They’re well-written and provide some excellent new ideas on how to use some of the otherwise fairly mundane statblocks – such as using the Cavalier for a Firenewt riding a Strider.

The best statblocks are either those which are entirely new, like Artificer, Thunderer, and Skyward Fighter, or those that fill the missing holes from the Monster Manual, like proper NPC statblocks for a Ranger and a Paladin.

On the other hand, many of the statblocks are slightly repurposed or recycled versions of existing entries. Sometimes this is a welcome addition, like adding Tribal Assassins, Zealots, and Warchiefs to the existing Tribal Warrior.

But while it’s nice to have a few more options for low-level vagabonds aside from the overused Bandit, I’m not sure we needed Swift Fighters, Rugged Warriors, Mariners, Soldiers, Scoundrels, and Delvers. I hate to complain about too much of something when we’re getting over 60 entries, but it does cause many of them to overlap and become less interesting as a result. It’s a minor quibble in an otherwise fantastic compendium.

Pros: 

• Huge, diverse selection of NPC classes and archetypes.
• Excellent character artwork for each entry.
• Every NPC has 1-3 well-written and fun sample character stories.

Cons:

• Many of the entries simply tweak or scale existing humanoids from the Monster Manual.

The Verdict: By converting all of the various PC Classes and Subclasses into NPCs, “Versatile NPCs II” provides a wealth of options for DIVERSIFYING any humanoid NPCs in your campaign.

A review copy of “Versatile NPCs II” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

While I’m still hoping to reach my next Patreon Goal to add a possible second live Let’s Play stream per week, I’ll be peppering my live Let’s Plays with some offline gameplay. To help remember what happened, and to regale you of any drama, I’ll be writing these Field Reports between Episodes.

Darkest Dungeon Episode 03 will air Monday, Oct. 15.

Week 7

I’d gained access to The Swine Prince boss of the Warrens last time, but wanted to save it for Monday’s live stream. Instead I decided I needed to try an actual Medium mission for the first time, so I knew how Camping worked.

Week Seven brought extra Antiquarians, a class I’m wholly unimpressed with. Plus I still have my full roster of 12 heroes, and can’t yet afford to expand it.

My Grave Robber, Fitzherbert, gained the Tippler trait from drinking. So far the traits that restrict or limit heroes to certain stress-relieving functions don’t seem too difficult to manage, but I could see it being a pain while I still have only the one slot in each area each week.

Vane, my Arbalest, was sent to the bar for stress-relief, and Lynom my remaining Leper to the Transept. I’m not sure why they cost different amounts of gold. Are some better stress-relievers than others?

My first Medium quest is in the Weald, with the standard Explore 90% of rooms objective. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been to the Weald yet, so starting with a Medium-length mission was perhaps not the best idea.

Squad:

• Reynauld, lvl 2 Crusader
• Engerrand, lvl 1 Bounty Hunter
• Fitzherbert, lvl 1 Grave Robber
• Corbon, lvl 2 Plague Doctor

I was not prepared for how big the Weald was. Rooms were stretched apart by long stretches of dark hallways, putting a real strain on my torch and food supply. I brought a few extras knowing it was a longer mission, but I had no idea that the Weald’s whole thing was that it was very long.

There weren’t even that many fights – I went five rooms before I saw a battle, and the foes weren’t particularly strong, but I was intensely worried about my torch and food levels. At one point I was forced to let my team go hungry in order to have enough food for the camp.

Camping was thankfully intuitive. The more food I had the more I could heal, and I had a certain amount of time I could use to apply everyone’s campaign skills. Some skills cost more time than others, forcing me to carefully pick and choose. The Crusader had a very nifty stress-reliever for the whole party, while Corbon could help heal.

Camping also gave us full torchlight, but I was still staring down the second half of the dungeon. It didn’t help that it had three branching paths, two of which had over five rooms, forcing me to double back early on and waste a lot of torchlight.

As much as I like my veteran Crusader, I’ve decided that the Kleptomaniac trait is the FUCKING WORST. No less than three massive loot piles he took for himself! I was not happy about it. Towards the latter stages of the dungeon, I was using him as my only healer, with his pitiful 3HP heal keeping my backline from falling.

By the time I reached the end I was out of food, out of torches, most of my party was hovering around 50% health (darkness makes enemies a lot tougher), and I still had one room left. It was the most nervous I’d been playing the game. Thankfully the room didn’t contain a fight, and I was greeted with the quest complete pop-up. Huzzah!

As difficult as that dungeon was, I actually didn’t suffer much stress at all. I had taken a ton of damage but in Darkest Dungeon that doesn’t seem to matter as long as you survive (only stress lingers after a dungeon, as well as traits and diseases).

In other words, it was my most successful outing yet, and I was able to use my new resources to finally get the level 1 weaponsmithing upgrade at the Blacksmith.

Look for more Field Reports throughout the week. Watch my Let’s Play live streams every Monday.

I was completely devoid of internet access yesterday due to an outage in my area. We’re back in business today, so I’m rescheduling last night’s Darkest Dungeon stream to tonight.

Same time – 7:30p Pacific/10:30p Eastern US.

My first boss battle was a breeze thanks to a map that lead me right to the boss room, where I was able to camp just outside.

The boss himself was immune to stun but weak to blight, so it was a simple matter of stacking massive blight stacks and hacking away with my Leper and Bounty Hunter. Down goes piggie!

My heroes have started reaching level 3, and I went on another successful Medium-length mission, this time in the Ruins, and opened up the first Ruins boss. No deaths and no major calamities or stress to worry about – feeling pretty good so far, but it’s still fairly early….

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A review copy of “Attack on Coppercoil” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

Designed by: Tel Aviezer

Gnomes are probably the most overlooked race in Dungeons & Dragons, and no I’m not trying to make a size joke. They’re often portrayed as an in-between combination of the pragmatic, stoic dwarves and free-wheeling halflings. Are they nature-loving hippies or industrious artificers? No one race should boil down to any single profession or trait, but it makes gnomes a bit trickier to pin down, and I don’t see them used very often in adventures.

Enter “Attack on Coppercoil,” which satisfies my gnome curiosity. The titular community, which resides inside a massive hollowed-out tree stump in a forest, is under attack by a sudden raiding party of Duergar who have tunneled up from underneath, and it’s up to the PCs to rescue them.

It’s designed for a party around 3rd level, with adjustments for levels 1-4, and should take about one or two sessions.

What makes this relatively straight-forward adventure so compelling is the excellent use of environmental storytelling.

The entrance has dead gnomes with crossbow bolts in their backs. The druid’s home, a birthday party, and a bat “hibernaculum” have been ransacked, while duergar are still trying to get into the magically locked door of the scriptorium. A giant snail lie butchered and bleeding at the stables, while another cowers in its stall. Numerous notes and drawings make reference to a friendly octopus named Silas who lives in the fountain, while a construct defends his master’s home while repeating his dying words over and over again.

All of these elements help tell the sad story of this community’s immediate plight. Eventually the PCs meet the one non-captured, non-slain gnomish resident (the young birthday girl) who can fill in the rest of the details. A duergar raiding party had tunneled up and attacked without warning, using a giant spider to smash down doors and capture the poor residents.

The duergar aren’t interested in wholesale slaughter, however, but in capturing gnomes to take back and enslave. The party has a chance to rescue everyone in a final boss battle against the duergar leader.

There may be some interesting dilemmas if the party had looted any of the gnome’s belongings – they’ll want them back! Though they are willing to pass out some rewards as well.

As much as I like the well-detailed map, it’s not without flaws. For some reason the stump is enormous (over 250 feet across!) and thus the entire area feels oddly empty. The buildings and areas themselves are packed with things to interact with, but the spaces between are extremely empty. A zipline between elevated buildings is awesome, but it would have been just as cool 50 feet long as opposed to over 100 feet long.

The appendix includes notes on a few unique creature statblocks, items, and as well as several quality player handouts. There’s also a fully fleshed out optional variant that adds a party of evil adventurers who also come calling. Since Coppercoil sent out a bunch of SOS message in the hopes of rescue, it makes sense that one of those may have fallen into the wrong hands.

Balasar’s Bashers are the classic antagonistic adventurers. They show up ready to loot the place and only engage in enemies if there’s profit involved. Used well they could enhance the entire adventure, adding a rogue element of danger at just the right moment.

Pros: 

• Coppercoil comes alive through environmental storytelling in each area, from an insidiously trapped letter to an interrupted birthday party.
• Everything you need on a single map, with full color and black and white options.
• Fun elements and options for PCs – including a friendly octopus, tamable giant snail, defensive construct, and alarm-blaring trap door.
• Several full page player handouts to draw the PCs into the town’s history and current plight.
• Optional evil party of adventurers that can throw a deliciously evil wrench into the PCs’ plans at any time.

Cons:

• The map needs height elevation markers in the southern area.
• The map feels overly big, and as a result a bit empty.

The Verdict: “Attack on Coppercoil’s” Superb environmental storytelling make this low-level rescue mission into a giant tree stump memorable and compelling.

A review copy of “Attack on Coppercoil” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

Behind-the-scenes DM-only live stream of building and preparing our ongoing Tomb of Annihilation series.

Streamed live every Thursday.

Support the channel via Patreon.

When it comes to doing TV recaps, I’m pivoting to video! Haven’t decided if I’ll do one every week, but for now enjoy my recap and discussion of the first two episodes of the new season of The Walking Dead.

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

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Previously on Tomb of Annihilation

Starring:
Mannix, level 2 Human Rogue
Khaless, level 2 Half-Drow Rogue
Gillian, level 2 Triton Bard (out this week)
George, level 2 Tortle Fighter
Therin, level 2 Hill Dwarf Druid of the Moon

It’s the day everyone’s been waiting for – Race Day! I’ve been teasing the dinosaur races ever since my players arrived at Port Nyanzaru. I wanted to save it as one of the last things they did in the city before entering the jungle proper, and I think it was worth the wait.

For the dinosaur race I adopted the Alternate Dinosaur Racing Rules from Sean McGovern’s “Tomb of Annihilation Companion.” He had a brilliant idea to break up the race into multiple stages as racers went around the city.

Each stage consisted of an event that racers had to respond to in the form of a skill check, usually Animal Handling. Succeeding added to their ‘speed tally’ on the Initiative tracker. The racer with the biggest number at the end of the final stage was the winner.

I liked this idea a lot, though I ended up changing most if not all of the individual stage components, creating my own racetrack around the city.

Anyone participating in the race had to register for a 10gp fee, which provided a saddle and someone to evaluate their dinosaur for betting odds.

As I suspected, my players attempted to manipulate the system. Therin could wild shape into a hadrosaurus (“Pinecone”) and acted sickly and lame during the inspection (same with his ‘rider’ Mannix), resulting in the biggest long-shot at 6-1 odds.

Khaless also registered with her purchased hadrosaurus, Princess Consuela Banana Hammock, and received 2-1 odds.

I included four NPC racers: Tiryk, famous racer and son of a Merchant Prince, riding an allosaurus named Bonecruncher; Taban, brutish champion of the arena riding a young T-Rex named Scarback, Kwilgok, a tortle riding an ankylosaurus named Deadly Treasure, and Gondolo, the halfling member of the dubious guides the PCs met at the inn, riding triceratops Zongo.

Three of them were drawn from the Tomb of Annihilation book, while Kwilgok is one of the NPC tortles introduced in “The Tortle Package.” All had different dinosaurs, and thus different DCs for their Animal Handling and different speeds for when they succeeded.

Admittedly it was a bit tricky to keep up with the various numbers and modifiers without slowing things down too much for the players, which is why I kept the number of racers relatively low. Big enough to be exciting but low enough to keep things moving.

My players ended up betting big on their wildshaped druid, thinking they had a big advantage on other racers. The wrinkle they would soon discover was their wild shaped druid had to roll Athletics, instead of the jockey rolling Animal Handling. Therin’s hadrosaurus shape had only a +2 modifier.

Here were the total stats for each racer, including the dinosaur’s listed speed, the DC the racer has to meet to successfully move that round, the racer’s Animal Handling modifier, and their odds to win.

• Tiryk – Bonecruncher (young allosaurus), Speed 60, DC 16, AH+5, 1-4 Odds
• Taban – Scarback (young T-Rex), Speed 50, DC 15, AH +3, 1-2 Odds
• Kwilgok – Deadly Treasure (ankylosaurus), Speed 30, DC 10, AH +4, even odds
• Khaless – Princess Consuela (hadrosaurus), Speed 40, DC 13, AH +1, 2-1 odds
• Gondolo – Zongo (triceratops), Speed 50, DC 15, AH +1, 4-1 Odds
• Mannix – ‘Pinecone’ (Therin-hadrosaurus), Speed 40, DC 13, Athletics +2, 6-1 Odds

As you can see, some of the dinosaurs are definitely faster than others, but the DC to control them is also more difficult.

As luck would have it, the favorite of the match, Tiryk, performed absolutely horribly the whole way despite his +5 modifier. I rolled 15 after 15, narrowly missing his huge 60 speed boost, resulting in a last place finish.

The other racers kept it pretty close throughout, though Mannix/Therin had a particularly slow start in the beginning, with Therin rolling >10 on every roll.

They did have one big advantage – Mannix could take the Help action to grant advantage to Therin’s rolls. He could only do this for one roll during a stage, but it ended up being invaluable as they slowly gained ground.

Khaless managed to keep up with them despite only a +1 to Animal Handling. Funny enough the original long-shot, the drunken, fast-talking halfling Gondolo, ended up being the most dangerous NPC racer, keeping pace with them for most of the race.

While I had all these plans in place, it was impossible to tell how the race would end up working live. I was legitimately worried that my PCs would fall behind and never recover. Thankfully that didn’t happen. Both Khaless and Mannix/Therin were in the lead or close to it throughout the race, yet most racers stayed close enough to make it exciting, including Mannix throwing out caltrops to slow down some pursuers when they surged slightly ahead in the final stretch.

The race was a lot of fun. The Mannix/Therin combo ended up coming in first, with Khaless hot on their heels. The payout was ridiculous, including several hundred gold in winnings to multiple PCs. At this point they could probably retire from adventuring at the ripe old status of level 2!

But, the death curse won’t solve itself. After the race the players were invited to Wakanga’s villa to meet with the Merchant Prince. He had taken an interest and liking to our PCs’ various shenanigans around the city (and Fort Beluarian).

Wakanga revealed some details about a previous adventuring party, The Company of the Yellow Banner. It was they who stumbled upon a lost city and saw visions of Acererak. It was the thin lead that suggested it may have something to do with the death curse (and further confirmed by Zitembe’s ritual on seeking the Soulmonger).

The PCs were given one half of a Sending Stone that Wakanga had used to communicate with them. The messages had stopped when they had reached this city, but the PCs will be able to recall messages once per day by rolling an Arcana check to attempt to piece together their journey.

Wakanga also told them of a construct that had once belonged to a group of elder tortle adventurers. The Merchant Prince had come into possession of a tattered, mostly destroyed journal. The only useful piece of information was notes about the construct and its location. Wakanga expressed interest in retrieving it – and its control amulet if possible, for a handsome reward.

Finally, Wakanga revealed a teleportation circle, a gift from the Harpers. It didn’t work outside of Chult, but he was sure there were other circles out there in the jungle. He was willing to become the PCs’ official sponsor and allow them use of any circles for a much easier way to return to the city, provided they can find them.

Armed with mountains of gold and more quests than they know what to do with, the party is prepared to get some final shopping done, then head out into the jungles of Chult.

Next time – leveling up to 3 and beginning the jungle excursion!

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern! 

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I’ll be peppering my live Let’s Plays with some offline gameplay. To help remember what happened, and to regale you of any drama, I’ll be writing these Field Reports between Episodes.

Darkest Dungeon Episode 04 will air tonight, Monday Oct. 22.

Week 10

The stress-relieving Abbey was free this week, but I actually passed The Swine Prince boss fight with such flying colors that everyone was stress-free, though my awesome Grave Robber Fitzherbert needed to be treated for disease. Stupid Warrens.

Mission: Warrens, Medium, Explore 90% rooms

Squad:

• Reynauld, lvl 2 Crusader
• Paris, lvl 1 Abomination
• Bonneth, lvl 1 Vestel
• Vane, lvl 1 Arbalest

This was my first time using an Abomination (who received a free level up in one of the weekly events). It’s an interesting class with the ability to transform into a monstrous werewolf-like form, which grants powerful melee abilities at the cost of stressing everyone out a bit. His human form has a really solid stun ability that came in very handy as well.

Thanks to some luck with scouting I found my first secret room, and it was fairly close and easy to reach. A good reason to always carry a key, as it provided a gigantic haul of treasure.

With the secret room plundered I received my biggest payout yet, about 12k, nearly doubling my money!

Unfortunately while I was never in danger of dying (Bonneth is a stellar healer) I did get saddled with lots of stress. I was able to reduce quite a bit from some camping skills but both Vane and Reynauld ended up with stress in the 50s by the end. Worse, Vane got two diseases and Paris one, ugh. Stupid Warrens! Poor Vane will be out for awhile.

Week 11

Another big recruiting week with 6 bonus heroes. I was able to afford the bigger roster upgrade, so now I can hold up to 16 different heroes at a time!

Unfortunately the only new class available was a Man-at-Arms named Briqueville. I recruited him then stuck him in treatment to get rid of his kleptomania.

It’s interesting that recruiting heroes is completely free. Since some of my heroes will be out for multiple weeks, it’s going to help having a big roster that I can rotate between, provided I keep them all decently leveled.

Mission: Weald, Short, Explore 90% of rooms

Squad:

• Lynom, lvl 2 leper
• Engerrand, lvl 3 Bounty Hunter
• Bonneth, lvl 2 Vestel
• Fitzherbert, lvl 2 Grave Robber

This is one of my best teams, and with a short mission I expected very little resistance. The Weald’s defining feature is its very long rooms, resulting in lots of needed torch light. Bonneth comes in handy with her attacks that restore torchlight during combat.

For some reason the damn enemy forces seemed to know how useful that was, and targeted her in nearly every fight! Despite using Lynom’s Protection to Mark himself.

Poor Bonneth ended up with nearly 100 stress! I sent her to the Abbey for meditation. I also remembered I could purchase different camping skills, including having a fourth available for each hero. That should come in handy during longer missions.

The next week brings a +15% Virtue Chance, so I think it’s time to take on my next boss, either the first of the Ruins or the Weald (have yet to even enter the Cove).

Darkest Dungeon Episode 04 will air tonight, Monday Oct. 22.

Look for more Field Reports throughout the week. Watch my Let’s Play live streams every Monday.

Darkest Dungeon Episode 05 will air Friday, Oct. 26.

It’s time for my second boss fight, The Weald’s Wizened Hag in week 12.
I went in with a powerful squad, all level 3, of some of my best heroes. But the Weald is stressful as hell, with long hallways that sap my torchlight. The boss room was in one of the last rooms I found (far different than the Swine Prince), though I was able to rest and recuperate somewhat beforehand.
My awesome Grave Robber was saddled with a Paranoid Affliction early on, and everyone was a bit stressed going into the boss.

The hag was awful. She could grab someone and throw them into her pot, taking them out of my lineup and doing 4 damage/round. I was forced to use my attacks on the pot to free them, which meant hardly ever attacking her. And messing up my lineup order was a huge pain.

At one point near the end I made the cortical decision to attack the hag instead of the pot, putting my poor stalwart leper Lynom at death’s door. But it worked out, I was able to kill her, and everyone survived – barely! Nearly everyone had to immediately get some stress relief and disease treatment afterward. Definitely my most harrowing mission yet.

Afterward I did a Short mission in the Weald, trying out the Man-at-arms class. He’s got some nice support buffs but once again the Weald caused me all kinds of stress, afflicting my Jester. I’m glad I have a deep roster as things are definitely getting more challenging…

Weekly video game adventures. Streamed live every week.

We’re shuffling our schedule a bit this week so we can get back up to our full crew. We’ll be going live with our D&D Tomb of Annihilation stream this Thursday, Oct. 25. Same time – 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern.

My Crafting Annihilation live stream will remain unaffected. Still airing Thursday morning!

Also note that I’ve added a second weekly stream for my Let’s Play series (currently Darkest Dungeon), on Friday at 11am Eastern/2pm Pacific, in addition to my Monday evening stream.

A review copy of “Children of the Fey” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

Designed by: Steven Wallace

While the Monster Manual (and other monster compendiums) contains a fair share of faerie-based foes, most are drawn from European folklore (hell, much of the entire fantasy genre is distilled from Tolkeinesque medieval Europe, but let’s not get sidetracked).

The concept of faerie player races isn’t exactly new, but “Children of the Fey” has a distinctly international flavoring, drawing in cultural nature and spirit beings from around the world, including Australia, Celtic, Japanese, African and Inuit, creating a rich tapestry of faerie races and subraces, as well as a full NPC bestiary using each race.

“Children of the Fey” includes three broad category of fey player races with three subraces each, for a total of nine new player races.

Half Fey include the wolf-like Adlet, the Kitsune, who can transform into multi-tailed foxes, and the lanky, rock-loving Mimi. These were my favorite races of the bunch as they felt the most unique and original.

The Adlet half wolf lower bodies and feel adapt in wintery climes, while Kitsune grow tails as they age and gain wisdom, which in D&D terms translates to reflecting their WIS score. Mimi had by far the coolest look and culture, living in small isolated communities, squeezing between rocks with their elongated bodies and painting their caverns.

The Lár Fey originate in the Material Plane and include the Alseid, the Ghillie Dhu, and Tikoloshe. I’ve seen Alseid in other compendiums as basically deer centaur, but the designer puts an emphasis on their fey connections and their magical, protective groves, similar to dryads.

Ghillie Dhu, the Celtic Children of the Forest, make for a weird player race. A perpetually precocious child is a tricky line to walk in any adventuring party (and usually the worst character in any JRPG) and their mechanics are weak. Tikoloshe are the classic pranksters who look like sea dwarves and come with swimming speed, water breathing and innate spells!

You can probably guess what the Arboreal Fey are all about. Dryad is a pretty easy and obligatory inclusion. Kodama are straight-up walking plants, which is always a fun race to see (I AM GROOT), those these plants are quite vindictive. The final new race is the Tani, a sort of sentient plant-fruit that constantly hover just above the ground, giving them a limited flying speed.

At a glance each race feels sufficiently balanced, with nothing too terribly game-breaking or eyebrow raising, though it does feel a little weird that an Alseid can only use their horns defensively once per short rest.

As a complimentary bonus to the player races, each of the entries is given multiple statblocks to be used as NPCs. These range from a generic statblock, usually around CR 1 or 2, to more exotic and specialized versions, like an epic CR 15 Kitsune monk. It also serves as a fun example to see how these races can fit with certain class builds and archetypes, such as the Snow Strider (Adlet Wizard with ice spells) and Floral Ravager (Alseid Barbarian/Ranger wielding a greataxe).

Better yet, each NPC is given a brief blurb on how to effectively use them in combat – or how to introduce them in a campaign. The CR 5 Park Warden dryad, for example, isn’t necessarily designed as a combatant but perhaps as an NPC who can offer a quest, share some information, or just provide a fun chat.

Pros:

• Nine player races and 26 NPC statblocks, all within a fey-touched theme.
• A diverse roster of choices that favor multiple ability scores and play styles.
• Each race includes a nice section on ‘Adventurers,’ highlighting possible character concepts.

Cons:

• The ‘grove protector’ concept is overly used, and could by applied to the dryad, alseid, and tani races.
• The Ghille Dhu, or child of the forest, makes for a lame player race.

The Verdict: By drawing from folklore around the world, “Children of the Fey” provides a refreshingly diverse pool of interesting new player races and NPCs.

A review copy of “Children of the Fey” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.

Support my work via Patreon.

REMINDER: Tomb of Annihilation airs TONIGHT instead of tomorrow this week. Same time!

Behind-the-scenes DM-only live stream of building and preparing our ongoing Tomb of Annihilation series.

Streamed live every Thursday.

Support the channel at https://www.patreon.com/Roguewatson