Ok so, last week my second Star Wars campaign came to a close. The story of the final encounter will be posted later, hopefully next week (I have to transcribe the audio recording). This story is about the one shot dungeon we did last game night.
A Kind Offer
Since I've wrapped up the Star Wars game I'd been running since late January of 2021, I am ready for my long winter nap. Also the holidays are stressful enough without added a role playing commitment on top of that. So I have roughly 6-8 weeks before the next game starts to prep and world build. Fun times.
So @jacobtothe offers to run a mini dungeon for D&D 5th Edition. Hells yeah! I'm in, I haven't played in over a year. I'm going to have fun no matter what. He says to bring 4th level characters, but you can only use the Players Handbook or Xanathar's Guide to Everything for making the characters. Fair enough, I can work with that.
I spend the next week working up a character, playing with the Randomize Character Option on dndbeyond.com, and generally just trying to come up with someone who was both effective in and out of combat, and could be fun to roleplay.
Character Genesis
The first few on the Randomizer were really strange, like a 4th level Minotaur Wizard with 9 hit points, an 8 Intelligence, and a 7 Constitution. It was funny in a "Oh no, I stubbed my toe! I guess I'll start making Death saves." kind of way, but not what I was looking for in a character.
I was using the randomizer because I was checked out from the end of the Star Wars Campaign and I just didn't have the mental bandwidth to plan out a new character. So I decided to use that. So what did I come up with? I'll Let you think about...
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Did you guess a HUMAN FIGHTER? BOOM! Bet you didn't see that coming!
Yeah, I made a Variant Human Battle Master Fighter. I've had this concept of a Fighter using a very specific combo of feats, class features and weapons. I would take Crossbow Expert feat at 1st level and Sharpshooter at 4th. Then I took the Archery Fighting Style and the Precision Attack Maneuver. Finally I picked the Hand Crossbow and... a net.
The whole play style revolves around the net. Use your action to throw the net, then follow up with the Hand Crossbow as a bonus action. Rinse, repeat, victory. He had the Folk Hero Background, was a fisherman and cook that save his village from a sahuagin raid and I named him Robert "Bobby" Filet. I didn't end up playing it, one of the other players didn't have a character and he needed something easy to play since he had never played before.
And I had already decide to play my new concept. I had had a few days off and the creativity returned to me. Since I'm a fan of Bruva Alfabusa's 'If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device', I decided to make a character based of his concept of the Salamanders Primarch Vulkan. So I made a Mountain Dwarf Forge Domain Cleric named Argos with coal black skin, fiery red eyes, green plate armor, and an obnoxiously cheerful disposition. I would greet everyone as FRIEND! and offer them a HUG! However some people were NOT FRIEND! and they needed a special dirt nap hug, a GROUNDHUG if you will. Due to my friendly and cheerful demeanor, I spent a lot of time opening doors looking for new FRIENDS!
The Party
So the group consisted of four players:
@generikat was playing Ho Rogue-ann, a Stout Halfling Rogue.
Her husband played Lars Crenny, a Half-Orc Fiend Pact of the Blade Warlock
The noob played Bobby Filet, the Human Battle Master Fighter.
and of course yours truly played Argos, the cheerful Dwarf Forge Cleric.
As far as parties go it was pretty balanced, considering that we did not talk about what we were bringing ahead of time.
The Mission (Spoilers)
Going forward this will now contain spoilers from the book used. We are running a mission out of the Mini-Dungeon Tome. The party gets a mission to head down into the sewer below Baldur's Gate to take out a group of cultists that holed up in an old thieves guild hideout.
So the first thing, its a sewer. Its the sewer under Baldur's Gate. It's awful, we are making CON Save vs Poison down here. So Argos and Ho Rogue-ann are fine as well as Lars. The noob, making his first check ever with a d20, rolls a Nat 1. Good start. We laugh and tell him to suck it up for the 1d4 rounds he is poisoned for.
So the first room is an L shaped room with both doors leading to the west. Using his superior dwarven knowledge of make things out of stone, Argos figures that the reason for the odd shaped room was that far door leads to a storeroom of some sort. So Ho Rogue-ann checks the door for traps and after she is done Argos heads in loudly announcing that he is looking for new FRIENDS!. Now, shocker, it really is a store room. Its mostly filled with looted bulk goods, wine, bolts of cloth, that sort of thing.
So while the party is getting mad that there is no murder to be had in the room, Argos start doing the dwarf thing and checking the walls for doors. After all, thieves and cultist are tricky and most likely have hidden doors all over the place. Also being the perceptive one, he did find the hidden door. Woohoo Stonecunning! So being the least stealthy Argos decides to hang back and run in if they are in danger. He's loveable like that. So Lars and his Devil Sight takes point, Ho Rogue-ann in the middle and Bobby behind her. Argos is waiting at the entrance for someone to ask for help. Now the Tunnel goes 15 feet , turns 90 degrees, then goes another 15 feet and there is another door. Also a trap.
So if someone stands in front of the door and at the bend in the tunnel, the person in the middle is hit by an explosive rune acid trap. So Ho Rogue-ann makes the DEX save, but still takes about 15 acid damage. So everyone has backed up a bit and are worried about the door being trapped. So they break out the 10 foot pole and start tapping the door, hard. Nothing happens, so Argos squeezes passed them and opens the door without worry. He had cast the light cantrip so those who needed it could see, super helpful. Then out of nowhere two longswords slash out at Argos. TING TING both fail to connect in a meaningful way due to full plate armor and a shield.
The red dragonborn who is hold the two long swords jumps back slightly. Argos asks why he attacked him? The dragonborn says he was frightened and demands to know why they are in his private chambers unannounced. Argos says they knocked with the 10 foot pole and offers a HUG! for disturbing him. The dragonborn then offers the group the three large chests in the room to let him go. Argos says they are there to take out the cultists and asks if he is one. The dragonborn says no, Argos uses Insight vs Deception. Argos gets a 23. The dragonborn, not so much. Argos now knows he is NOT FRIEND! Roll initiative!
First Combat
So the first combat is with the boss of the Mini-Dungeon. So to save time we all rolled initiative at the start and just keep using the same one for every encounter. That order was Ho Rogue-ann, Bobby, Lars, and finally Argos. The dragonborn rolls and ends up in between Lars and Argos. So to be honest, this combat is very one-sided. Ho Rogue-ann ranged sneak attacks, Bobby uses the net and sharpshooter Hand Crossbow shots, Lars uses Eldritch blast, and Argos uses his Warhammer. The dragonborn got off his breath attack on both Argos and Ho Rogue-ann, but died during Bobby's turn the next round. I think we did something like 75 damage in less than 2 rounds. Nets are good for single targets that are large sized or smaller.
So Argos figures if they show the bosses head to the cultists, they will just surrender. So the party removes the head and places it on Argos' warhammer like a puppet. Looting the chests and room, the party found something like 600 gold in silvers and coppers, about a dozen semi precious gems, and the weapons held by the dragonborn. Heading back out we re-check the trap to find out how it worked. It was a duel trigger kind of thing that required two people to stand at different points but would attack a third person in the middle of them. It was discharged of all magic now, so no longer a threat.
So the party heads back to the other door in the first room and this time Argos takes point so his friends don't get hurt. And, of course, sets off the poison dart trap. Now most of the darts fail to hurt him due to his high AC, but a few do hit. Between the darts and the poison he takes about 13 damage. Not feeling deterred he opens the door. Inside are two human wererats, Argos uses the Dragonborn puppet to say "HELLO FRIENDS! I'M YOUR BOSS! YOU SHOULD SURRENEDER! THEY ARE VERY STRONG AND KILLED ME!". They do not surrender, roll initiative!
Second Combat
Second verse same as the first, the wererats are going between Lars and Argos. So Ho Rogue-ann and Bobby have trouble the first round, since no magic weapons. Bobby does manage to net one of the wererats but his crossbow bolt does nothing. Lars summons his pact blade to do that sweet magic weapon damage to it. The first wererat fails to escape the net and the second wererat makes an attack on Lars with the bite, hits and, yep, Lars fails the CON save. Lars is gonna be a wererat. Lars in retaliation uses Hellish Rebuke, burning the wererat proper. Going over my spells, I need a game changer here. As a Forge Cleric, Magic Weapon is always prepared! So I cast Magic Weapon on Bobby's Hand Crossbow, and oh boy the tables have turned.
Next round Ho Rogue-ann uses dodge. Bobby and Lars bring down the first wererat. I do want to point out at this time, that Lars just now realizes that he is out of spell slots. His player says, "No, I'm fouth level, I have to have more then two slots!". Nope warlocks have some serious Arcane Disfunction some times. Moving on. The second wererat fails to hit Bobby and Argos uses the help action on the second wererat.
Ho Rogue-ann shoots and hits but can't hurt the remaining wererat. Bobby nets the second wererat and shoots it, Lar stabs it with his pact weapon. At this point the wererat tries to escape. Not having any of that, Bobby tosses a net on it. It is at this point I relize that I am stupid and Argos has a magic weapon from his class features. Always review your classes kids! I smack it with the hammer and kill it. Victory for Argos. We move on to the next room after Ho Rogue-ann checks the door for traps.
The next room is mostly just collapsed but stable rubble, creating difficult terrain to the next door. As we move towards the door, we are ambushed by a swarm of tiny poisonous snakes! Roll initiative!
Third Combat
Ho Rogue-ann nopes out of range and attacks. Bobby shoots twice since you can't net a swarm. Lars uses Eldritch Blast. The snakes swarm in to Bobby's square and start to bite him. Argos wades into them to be a tasty metal clad distraction and uses his warhammer. They try the mouth hugs on him, but full plate armor wins out. The party basically just whittles them down over two rounds.
So after checking the last door for traps, we enter into the barracks. Three wererats are playing dice when the party busts in. Argos once again try to get them to surrender with the dragonborn puppet head, they decline claiming we will join them. Argos says no, roll initiative!
Final Combat
The wererats once again go between Lars and Argos. Now Bobby has still got the magic hand crossbow because we haven't stopped, and Lars has been out of spells slots since the first room with the wererats.
So Ho Rogue-ann knows she can't do much without a magic weapon, so she decides that "Hey, why don't I also just net some fools!". Now here is the problem with nets. They are range 5/15, which means you always have disadvantage with them. The reason why they work with Bobby is because his feats negate this. So she misses, yells sorry, and goes and retrieves the net she dropped. Bobby nets the first one, shoots, gets a nat 20 and does about 25 damage. Lars stays back and uses Eldritch Blast on the first wererat. During the wererats turn, the first one gets free of the net, and second attacks Lars doing a few points of damage. The third wererat shoots his crossbow and missed Bobby. Argos rushes up and engages one the third wererat hoping to keep it distracted while the others put down the remaining two.
Ho Rogue-ann, being clever and resourceful, pulls out a rope and fashions a lasso and is trying to rope the second wererat. She misses. Bobby reapplies net to the first wererat and ends him with a bolt to the head. Lars uses his pact weapon against the second wererat. The second wererat stabs at Lars and misses. The third wererat engaged with Argos tries to bite him. Argos says "VULKAN PROTECTS!" and the wererat misses. Argos smacks it with his magic warhammer.
Ho Rogue-ann collects herself and manages to rope the second wererat restraining it. Bobby then proceeds to shoot and kill it. Still holding the rope, Ho Rogue-ann is pulled to the ground when the body falls. Bobby then use his bonus action to shot and end the third wererat as well as the combat. At this point the Dungeon Master points out that there are 18 beds and only 5 dead wererats. While the dungeon is finished, the mission is not.
The End
And that's it we ended the one shot, with nobody dying or even getting knocked out. Sure some of the cultist are still at large and Lars has that nasty infected bite wound, but we did clear out the old thieves den. It was a fun one shot and reminded me of how much I missed playing. Hopefully I will get the chance to play again soon.
Anybody else have a fun one shot story? Leave a comment about it below. Till next time, happy gaming FRIENDS!