Convergence DM Log - Session 10 1/26

 Preamble

Last week I looked at the clock at 9:45pm.  We end the session right around 10pm.  The dragon was revealed and not yet defeated.  He was giving them a fight.  The question was simple.  What should we do?

On the one hand it was reasonable for the dragon to take it's wounds and fly away.  They had killed it's masters, it had fought valiantly and seen it was outclassed.  It made sense for a juvenile white dragon to take to the skies and escape.  It would end the session on an up note (we sent a dragon flying away in fear!) and a cliff hanger (a reveal of a character a short time later).  The party had different ideas.

So we ended session 9 in the middle of the dragon fight and started where we left off.

Dragons but of a Fun Variety

Combat can be boring.  I attack, I roll, I tally, I repeat.  We go back and forth and back and forth.

My hope was to keep this fight interesting while also letting my players kick out some of their more interesting powers along the way.  A sanctuary spell on one PC (which I need to remember ends if they make an attack) forced the dragon to become more mobile.  There was the overpass signage that Syb climbed and fought from.  There were places to take the party different directions and do things with them.

The monster manual does not have a clear good evil Dragon that lands at CR4-5 that I really liked for this encounter.  And before someone says something:  1)  A single creature in a fight is at a disadvantage to a party of 4 people due to the action economy.  2)  Rerolls.  Enough said.

Rather than completely writing a monster from scratch, I took the stat block for a monster that I did like for this (the gorgon) and I applied the Dragon Skin to it.  Of real fun was this particular element:

Petrifying Breath (Recharge 5–6). The gorgon exhales petrifying gas in a 30-foot cone. Each creature in that area must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a target begins to turn to stone and is restrained. The restrained target must repeat the saving throw at the end of its next turn. On a success, the effect ends on the target. On a failure, the target is petrified until freed by the greater restoration spell or other magic.

So while petrified is a lovely condition to throw at a player I applied the homebrew "Frozen".  In my actual write up/ notes I had also planned to give the player 3 saves with a progress through "Move = 0" to "Restrained" to "Frozen solid; Crap".

And then came the props moment of them all:  Heat metal. 

Players will surprise you

I don't often gush on the ingenuity of my players and I really should.  Maybe it's from the hours spent debating about the best way to dispose of a corpse.  Either way, huge props to NLK for the quick thinking to cast "Heat Metal" on her own armor.  Totally in theme and totally perfect for the moment.  On top of it it all, she led with "I know I'm going to take damage".  A perfect offered compromise that performed as expected because of that perfection.

 Who's there?

Players seem to like NPC's.  Chat likes NPC's, especially with silly accents.  I like NPC's that I don't have to work too hard to get an accent for.  And I wanted to introduce someone that the party could come to like just to see if I could.  Lindy was there to act as a possible exposition tool as the party and to set up the a little of the choices before the party.  Do they go and investigate the "Forge Cleric"?  Track down the rogue Dragoon?  

Rangers and their Pets

Tiffany's character Syb was due to get a new pet as a Ranger.  Of course the player kept bouncing around between going beast master or swarm master.  For me as the DM I find the former a lot simpler to manage thematically but I won't deny that the swarm could be impressive.  As we went round and around Tiffany not only bounced between the two subclasses but also the pet she wanted when she got her pet.  Finally I just made it clear:  You can have any pet you want just decide by the time it becomes clear you're getting your pet.

And so it was there on the road were cages of animals and one animal remained.  What was it?

After much deliberation, and the consideration and rejection of animals like a Griffin Cub, or the like, Syb got her Pteranodon.  So yeah, the party has a tank pet and a flying DPS pet.  

What could go wrong?

Looking Ahead (Here be Spoilers)

The party is headed towards a village build up from the ruins around a small shopping center, suburban community.  Through the wonders of magic there's a chance for them to have some good RP with the nature of creation and destruction and the role of the forge in both sides of that equation.  What I'd like to do is manuever Kati into a conversation with Cormag the Forgemaster, and possibly even suggesting that they could take down the empire and restore freedom to the region once the Empress is removed.  After all every good villain is a hero in his own mind.

Conclusions

I'm excited to get away from the "plan" and into one of my more comfortable ways to run a game, that being "go mess around and I'll try to keep to the bigger picture".  I think I got hamstrung by the party not heading out of town with the Convergence Shard and needed some kind of reason.  Now they've got more reasons than they have time to explore them.

Let's see where that goes.