Came here from Reddit, can see some stuff from me there too https://www.reddit.com/user/BloodBrandy/
Surprise Magic Items
So in today's session my group set out to what may be the final battle of the campaign, a war to dethrone a Drow Matron. Given my character, an Eladrin with multiple personalities (One for each season) does not need a full 8 hours for a long rest, I set out in the middle of the night for each of them to make a prayer to a god before we then gave a final prayer to our celestial patron.
Spring gave prayer to the Elven God of War and Order, and was surprised that we ended up with a Chainbreaker Scimitar (A +1 Scimitar that also gives advantage to break chains, manacles and similar bindings, and such things are vulnerable to it's damage).
Summer gave a prayer to the church of Macho Man Randy Savage, and made friends with the cleric on duty.
Autumn gave prayer to the trickster Gnome god, getting a flute and well wishes from the nice old lady at the temple.
And Winter gave prayer to the dwarven god of War, getting a one use blessing that gives the target a lot of boons for a minute).
Then on our second day at sea with pirate friends, en route to war, my character decides to play the flute for their girlfriend.
Then the DM asked me what my spell save DC was and rolled a wisdom save...
So I have learned I have a flute that casts confusion centered on me (I am immune) as long as I play it (Once something makes the save or has the spell end on it, it's immune for a day)
So...Just have curses be permanent? Why?
It's a thing about Law, specifically the realm of Law, Mechanus, who's power I would guess they carry with them.
One of the (I think optional in 5e) realm rules for Mechanus is you do not make attack rolls. Instead, you treat any roll as a 10 and add your stat and proficiency as the realm removes the idea of random chance and focuses on clockwork regularity. Even damage die default to their average, which makes combat a lot more straight forward but also means you can come up on something you literally cannot hurt.
There's a handy common level magic item in Xanathar's Guide, called the Clockwork Amulet, which let's you skip an attack roll and just take it as a ten, and do so once per day (No attunement, resets at sunrise). It's a good thing in certain situations
He rose to godhood a century ago using six magical crystal gems, and in doing so both felled an Orc god and an evil Orc champion, the foul Ho'Gann
I remember a point where Magneto trapped Red Skull in a metal bunker underground with just bare minimum supplies then sealed the place
When the Paladins are demonic and the Warlock is angelic
Our party has been investigating the Church of the Macho One (aka the Church of Randy Savage), which is our Paladin's Church, after receiving information of a demon that our paladin ticked off a long time back, had been influencing things and may be linked to the death of the previous head of the church.
After a short investigation, dispelling an illusion of the Paladin's parents, and checking the guard records, the captain of the church guard drops his cover and attacks us and the new Macho Pope. However, as the Captain screamed his head off as the lair actions triggered, I, being closest to her, noticed odd whispers around the Macho Pope.
Turns out she was the demon in question under Shapechange. The fight dragged on and we had a couple close calls, with the Paladin having to counterspell a Power Word Kill, the Rogue avoiding being plane shifted to the Abyss, and the Bard dropping a Fire Storm from her instrument to take out the guard captain.
The Demon, a powered up Marilith, was drawing power from a gem that she had captured holy souls in, which lead my Warlock to take the initiative in summoning an Arisen Nightmare (A celestial Nightmare with all it's Fire replaced with Radiant) and gave him the duty of breaking the gem. Overall he only got one hit in on he because he missed his others, but that one hit was a crit with most of the damage being Bludgeoning, which the gem was vulnerable to.
The party followed suit, including the Barbarian who was grappled in the Marilith's coils and eating a lot of damage herself, but managed one last crit on the Gem, which shattered it and caused 85d6 Radiant to both her and the Demon, ending the fight and us having to quick Revivify the Barbarian.
It wasn't a dungeon, it was a harbor city we were literally just using as a point to teleport to in order to cut a week+ off our travel time. And it's kind of thrown some wrenches into our long term issues.
As it stands it lead to a Navy Captain and her plattoon coming to see us while we were getting horses near the city gates.
That lead to him revealing to her, in a private talk, that his church has some demonic infiltrators of some sort, which will cause issues with the shade we've been having them throw on the Human Queen as she is controlled by the Yellow Diamond (Yes, that one), but as he did not mention that latter bit to the captain for some reason, she just has partial information, meaning she can give this to the queen as cassus belli to have her millitia march on the neutral City of Temples without knowledge that her own monarch is compromised.
If he had just not suddenly added Sir to his name, or doubled down, the worst we'd have is maybe some monster hunters coming for me thinking I'm a hag, which isn't that bad honestly, but our current plan is less than a week from our big plan to stage an assault on a Drow capital to free them from the demon worshiping leadership, we just got this information that there may be some level of issue among the Paladin's church, and now we have another timer until the Captain decides to pass this information along and we have the Human Empire marching on the City of Temples.
And the Paladin probably would have been fine if he'd doubled down and stuck with the "Sir", but backing down to erase it when questioned is going to raise suspicion and make it more obvious he's lying. With the guard getting a lucky 17 on insight roll from that, it just went downhill
Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
We're getting close to a climax of our campaign, and we needed to get to the City of Temples. The issue is that the City of Temples does not have a permanent teleportation circle, under the belief that it should be some level of a pilgrimage.
The issue comes from the problem that the three closest cities to it are the Human Capital (Where the Queen, secretly controlled by a space rock from before time modeled after the Yellow Diamond, has had our paladin wanted in the past), the neutral City of Tomorrow (Which we fled after a fight with a devil assassin caused a lot of collateral damage) and the main port for the Human Empire (See above)
So with the port being our best option (Outside of my own suggestion of seeing if we can get transport from a Hag we know, but we're unsure the cost on that), our Paladin attuned his long unused Hat of Disguise, agreed on the fake name Virunus.
Upon arriving at the port, I give my usual nickname as my name, the guard remarks it's a short name for an elf and I say I just got back from the Feywilds (True) and am working on getting it all back (Not entirely false, but not true). After a short bit of back and forth, my young-ish elf (20 years since birth as a human, less than six months since I was reincarnated as an Eladrin, but I also spent 700 years in the Astral sea, so toss up which number counts), treating the 47 year old guard as a young fellow, and saying he can call me auntie. This and a joke from our Halfling, had the guard now being scared I am some level of actual fey, if not an outright hag.
The halfling and his goblin fiance who is disguised as a halfling give normal fake names without issue.
The half orc signs with a rough scrawl of a bear, and it's accepted relatively easily
But then the Paladin signs as Sir Virunus. Then when questioned if he's a knight of some sort, he backs down to erase the Sir upon questioning. This, of course, was sus as heck, which leads to them sending a navy captain to talk to us as we are getting horses, which leads to...further issues >.>
From our campaign sheet, the Church of Macho Madness is Chaotic Good, Light Domain
Long Term Ramifications
Tonight in D&D: We preside over a peace talk between Dwarves and Shadar-Kai, I tell one Evil Morally Questionable pair of lesbians about another pair of Evil Morally Questionable pair of lesbians they can be friends with, and the possible benefits of said friendship.
We learn that the old Pope of Macho Man Randy Savage, who we thought was alive but in containment after being mind controlled by the Yellow Diamond, is actually dead and the current Pope of Macho Man Randy Savage is either controlled by, possessed by or working for an Arch Demon. Said new Macho Pope is also possibly the reason the followers of Macho Man Randy Savage are having trouble with their powers, and is not only in control of our Paladin's family fund but may have killed his parents, who were also supposed to be in containment.
This brings about long term effects of my original character, a Tabaxi Rogue, keeping a magic book out of the hands of a Tiefling Warlock Mob Boss (Who was the cousin of our Paladin), it falling into the hands of a party member who became a servant of this archdemon, dying and the archdemon getting a vendetta against out paladin.
And as the day comes to an end, my Eladrin's spring personality keeps from screaming, goes to her room with a drink, says a prayer and just spends time with her familiar.
Well at this point, my Warlock has an enemy for almost each season, them being an Eladrin
Spring has this situation, where some servant of the archdevil knows her face
Summer has a Lich Queen who has his portrait from a ghost who saw him during a heist of her library
Autumn's issue is she trapped a Dracolich in the astral sea with no way back on her own
Winter is the only one sitting pretty, with the only big name attached to his face being that the Winter Queen adores him as much as she does all children of winter
The Power of Prayer should not be doubted, even if you aren't a cleric
This week our group engaged a group of devil worshiping centaurs and a Bone Devil they had summoned who had escaped us a couple weeks ago.
My warlock kept out of range of most of them by dint of riding a special Figurine of Power that is an Arisen Nightmare (a Celestial Nightmare, just replace Fire with Radiant, give it wings and take away the Ethereal Step ability), most of our group had Fly on them and the Bone Devil went down quick because of a Holy Avenger crit from the paladin.
After that though, with civilians of the herd starting to sacrifice themselves to the blood pond, the paladin (Of Redemption, afraid of losing his oath) and the rogue (Not wanting to kill kids) tried to talk things down. The dark priestess was hearing none of it and just wanted us dead.
Pretty soon four adults and a child had unalived themselves into the now black and bubbling pool, the priestess was dead and growing into some sort of gnarly tree, and our barbarian half orc was dead. The rest of the group started to flee, but my Warlock had a couple remaining desperate attempts in that I had a couple of scrolls of Guiding Bolt in my pocket.
With a prayer to the Sun God and the Nature Goddess, my DM allowed me the first try and after a religion check, a damage roll and a D100, a bit of the pond purified, but that didn't last long and top of the next round, a visage of the Archdevil of the Fourth Circle came up, anointed a new priestess, inflicted fear on our bard and my steed (They were the only others in range and I passed the saving throw) and slumped back into the pond.
My steed, frightened, used it's next action to dash the fuck out and the Bard did the same. The steed carried me a good distance before passing his fear check to break it, and we decided we had to do something about it, even as the rest of the group was hauling ass to both get away and get the Barbarian revived.
The steed swiftly carried me back to the spot we had just been and joined me in prayer, adding the God of Protection and Goddess of Justice on his end, and with another religion check, a damage roll and a D100, the pond was wholly purified, if only for a moment, before evaporating, leaving behind a red stained crater, and a momentary visage of a devil who's summoning we'd apparently interrupted and who got a good look at me before fading back to the Hells
--------- Blood Pond image clipped from - https://www.deviantart.com/skvor/art/Dark-Pond-635218185 Trident Throw clipped from video "Myth's Bad End"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euPfAilSpuU
Wait until the players become the crew of the Red Dwarf
Sometimes, "Questionable" friends can be just the friends you need
Watching a documentary on Tubi, and this quote seemed applicable to another meme I'd made in the past.
Documenary is "Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau"
Fiendish Problems require Fey Solutions
FIRST POST HERE! But also a direct follow up to my last allowed post in the old lands of long, long ago.
Two centaur tribes in a forest and another in the mountains to the north. One a bunch of overly pacifistic pacifists, one a bunch of devil worshipers who sacrifice anyone they find lost in the forest, and the mountain ones something akin to ogre/elephant centaurs.
The pacifists don't like us picking a fight with the devil worshipers and seem bent on trying to justify their stuff because of past bonds...Well, all my personalities say that devil lady gonna die.