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Celestial Cascade (shardmind bard): I use vicious mockery against the earth elemental. “You’re not tough! You’re just sedimentary!”
DM: It’s actually igneous. Sedimentary is the soft kind.
Celestial Cascade: That...that was kind of the whole joke.
DM: The room appears to be completely bare.
Celestial Cascade (shardmind bard): Ah, what the heck. I step in.
DM: As soon as you step onto the pressure plate-
CC: Of course.
DM: -the lights blink down for a second and then there are 24 Celestial Cascades standing in the room.
Keen (human warlock): I start to cry.
Calypso (human sorceress): I roll 18-
Celestial Cascade (shardmind bard): I turn it into a crit!
Calypso: Sweet, this is my level nine daily! Okay, lemme add it up... 39 damage straight up ... *starts rolling dice* 50 ... and I get another d10 for it being up against that wall ... Uh, I deal 71 damage to the behir. *looks hopefully at DM*
DM: Nicely done. Keen, I think it’s your turn.
Calypso: It’s not dead?
DM: Not even close.
Calypso: *sags*
DM: Guess what just recharged!
Calypso (human sorceress): (groaning) Lightning breath.
DM: Against *checking board* five of you.
Keen (human warlock): Am I a target?
DM: No.
Celestial Cascade (shardmind bard): What about me?
Calypso: He said against five and we just established who it’s not!
Celestial Cascade (shardmind bard): I’m playing song of rest during the short rest, everyone can add 15 to the value of your healing surges.
Amari (human vampire): Do you take requests? Can you play 4′33″ by John Cage?
CC: Sure, I play that.
Amari: *sniggers*
Calypso (human sorceress): Is that the one that’s literally all rest?
Amari: It’s beautiful.
DM: Everyone except Celestial Cascade, please roll a d8.
Keen (human warlock): I rolled an 8.
Amari (human vampire): Me too.
Gronthil (dwarf runepriest): Same.
Calypso (human sorceress): (wailing) Why can’t we roll like this for damage?
DM: I once got accused of playing devil’s advocate for saying sand is a solid. It was so stupid! Sand is a solid!
Rach (playing Celestial Cascade): That is stupid. The devil has no say in it.
MVPillow this week goes to Gronthil for immediately laying down a ‘resist 5 damage from all sources’ zone which probably prevented somewhere in the region of 200 damage.
But I want to talk about this week’s session in a little more detail. Most combat encounters, it feels like there are one or two people who really step up- usually different people each time, depending on rolls and what kind of encounter it is. But the boss fight of this dungeon was such a beautiful example of each character fulfilling their role exactly as required. Without every single one of us pulling our weight, we would all have died this session.
Gronthil laid down several helpful zones, the most significant of which prevented 5 damage from all sources to each of us. That kept us alive. Period.
Smitters tanked like a cast-iron boulder. If anyone else had gotten swallowed by the behir, they would have died with the passive damage going off every turn. Smitters outlasted it by healing inside the monster, buying us the time we needed to chip its health down.
Keen cast his daily hunger of hadar, which dealt 2d10+1d6 damage to the boss three times a round. Without dealing that much damage that fast, we could not have outlasted it.
Calypso, aside from dealing silly amounts of damage, contributed by using the control aspect of a daily power to keep the behir grounded in that damaging zone for the entire encounter. It wasn’t getting away.
Amari separately dominated and blinded the boss, limiting its ability to target us or land attacks. This was also the key to Smitters’ personal survival, since Amari caused the behir to let them go with just a sliver of health left.
Celestial Cascade bent luck to direct the course of the battle. Most impactfully, they let Calypso deal a devastating amount of damage on a critical hit, which was key in killing the boss before it killed us.
Gronthil, you’re MVP. But this was perhaps the best encounter we’ve ever fought, and everyone did so well. Thank you, team.
