my friend wrote this on are groups behalf (he is the fighter)
So, our group was sent out on a mission to retrieve a shipment of ore for the local blacksmith. It had been expected to arrive five days prior, but it had never showed up. We made our way out of the city, and eventually found its wreckage a few days up the road. There were several corpses nearby, one of which was missing an arm, which had been severed in an impossibly clean manner in a single strike.
We also found some tracks, which we followed and, eventually, traced back to a nearby cave. Outside the cave, we saw a group of 5 bandits, two of whom were in a makeshift watchtower keeping guard over the area. The DM expected us to take the battle on headfirst.
Our first thought was to try to snipe the occupants of the watchtower, but this was swiftly vetoed due to the fact that the rest of the bandits would have noticed. Then we had a second thought. Our party had two tieflings in it, both with thaumaturgy as a racial talent. One of them used it to create an explosion noise on the opposite side of the camp, while the other created a mild earthquake to make it seem as if the ground had shaken from the force of the blast.
We expected some of the bandits to leave to investigate, and indeed the bandits were shaken, physically and mentally. One of them made to go investigate, but was swiftly berated by the occupants of the watchtower for leaving his post. So Operation Explosion was a bust. Then, the bard had an idea.
He used prestidigitation and set the watchtower on fire.
One of the bandits panicked and tried to put the fire out. With his bare hands. He failed, and now his hands were burnt and his clothes were on fire. His friend then came over and attempted to put him out, and succeeded in the attempt. He then tried to put out the fire in the tower, and my fighter, having absolutely none of that, pulled out his crossbow and sniped him. Roll initiative.
My fighter went first, followed by the archers in the tower. They tried to shoot the only combatant they could see, which was of course my fighter. They missed. My fighter flipped them off.
The bandit who had earlier attempted to put the fire out with his bare hands, did the exact same thing once again. Predictably, it failed, and his hands were burnt even further. It was at this point that the party, nearly collapsed with laughter, dubbed him “Captain Burnyhands”. His friend came over and attempted to put out the fire with his cape, with considerably more success. The vampire and rogue closed in, with the rogue adamantly refusing to do anything at all combat related.
The bard, having noticed that the watchtower was not in fact on fire, decided to rectify that, and set it on fire again. On a different leg this time, to maximise the structural damage. The archers fired at my fighter. They missed. I flipped them off.
Captain Burnyhands then had an epiphany. Seeing as he could no longer feel his hands, he reasoned that they would be perfect tools to bludgeon the fire out. Against everyone’s expectations, he succeeded. Then the rogue ambushed him and tied him up with a rope.
We’re not sure if it was his burny hands or the situation in general, but Captain Burnyhands then broke down and started crying. The archers fired at my fighter again. They missed. I flipped them off.
The surviving bandit on the ground (who still had functioning hands and wasn’t subdued) proceeded to charge my fighter, and ran past the vampire, who got an attack of opportunity. He stopped directly in front of my fighter. The vampire then scaled the watchtower and begun to attack the archers. They shot at him. They missed. He flipped them off.
Before the bandit could act, my fighter fired a point blank crossbow bolt into his heart. He was dead in moments, but he had the time to look up at the burning watchtower, and Captain Burnyhands crying on the ground, and say his last words: “Fuck me.” My fighter replied “I already did.” The bard, feeling bad for Captain Burnyhands, ran up to him to try and persuade him to join our side. Captain Burnyhands cried even harder.
It was at this point that the bandit chief came out of the cave, and shouted at the bandits for disturbing his sleep. He then noticed the fighting, and ran up to the bard and took three attacks, shouting “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO LAURENCE?!”
He missed them all. He then proceeded to charge my fighter. The bard then used healing word…on Captain Burnyhands. He was no longer Captain Burnyhands, we presumed that he must have been Laurence.
My fighter then proceeded to miss both of this attacks, one of which i used an action surge for, because the chief had an AC of 16 (actually 15, the DM fucked up the numbers). The chief proceeded to retaliate, and was far more effective, cutting my HP in half. The sorceror then proceeded to latch onto him with a witch bolt and begin draining his HP, while the vampire, rogue and bard rushed to assist.
Before they could do much, however, my fighter went down. However, the bard cast healing word again, bringing him back into the fight. He made several more attacks, hitting the vampire and the fighter, leaving the fighter on 2 HP. We managed to give as good as we received, however, and eventually a combination of huge amounts of attacks and HP drain from witch bolt brought him down.
It was at this point that the party debated what to do about Captain Burnyhands, who we found out was named Laurence Burns. See, he had been tied up and taken captive in the middle of battle, which technically made him our prisoner. The vampire was all for executing him for being in our way, but the fighter, a knight, was averse to executing an unarmed prisoner, and suggested taking him back to town and turning him over to the proper authorities.
The vampire then pointed out that, because the party was theoretically equal, and the fighter hadn’t taken him prisoner, it wasn’t his decision to make. We asked the rogue, who was the one who had done so, what he believed, and eventually we put it to an unofficial vote, where the party ended up coming down on the side of the vampire. The fighter begrudgingly agreed, but asked to stage an interrogation beforehand.
The rogue decided that, depending on how cooperative he was, he would either be quickly executed via the vampire draining his blood (which would, as the vampire pointed out, take about 30 seconds) or slowly and painfully tortured to death. At this point, the NPC cleric, a tagalong to replace our missing member on the day, chimed in, saying that he could use zone of truth to aid the questioning, to which we all agreed. The questioning lasted ten minutes (realtime), during which we could ask him as many questions as we liked. We questioned him on the nature of his job, who he was, what his gang had been up to, and what was in the cave ahead. As we finished asking questions, the timer began to run down to the final ten seconds, and the vampire declared his intention to start feasting.
My fighter stepped forward, drew his sword, and beheaded Captain Burnyhands, killing him instantly.
The table pretty much instantly went into an uproar after this. The vampire was furious, the bard had apparently wanted to hug him goodbye, and the DM asked that I make an alignment check. I then proceeded to explain that my fighter had killed Captain Burnyhands because he would otherwise be killed by the vampire, which would have been drawn-out and painful either way. As a knight, he couldn’t allow a prisoner under his charge to experience that, so he gave him a quicker death as a mercy killing, rather than just executing him for the fun of it. The DM acknowledged this, and withdrew the request.
The vampire, however, was still fuming about losing his meal. I pointed out that there were plenty of freshly dead corpses for him to drain blood from, but he was apparently looking forward to having a fresh meal for once. I then pointed out that if we had to live on preserved rations and dried food, he could suffer through some corpse blood. He then proceeded to say that he was thinking of burning the fighter’s rations as a response, but we ended up having to end the session there.
