Discover Top Posts Tagged with #monster vault

Game Session Five, Part Three.

There's something that I left out last time. The players' battle plans were actually quite ingenious, in that they planned something that I had considered, but figured wouldn't happen. And i figured it wouldn't happen because they didn't have any explosives to blow the bridge. But then...

The players wanted to blow the bridge, but weren't sure how. It seemed impossible, and after discussing it with Dar Gremath, they had no explosives to use. However, they realised something. They had spent a few nights at the Mallard Inn before, where they were served some fantastic ale. And that means that the Inn must have a supply of alcohol. Wonderfully flammable alcohol.

They purchased as many barrels as they needed to cover the bridge from the Inn, then placed them along the bridge. I didn't want to ruin their fun, and I was enjoying this, so let them plan it all out properly, lead a trail back to behind the barricade and then use a torch to light it. And they did. Once the first of the Iron Circle rabble was about to reach the barricade, they lit the bridge. Explosions all along the bridge were enough to kill all but one of the rabble and leave the few more powerful enemies bloodied and ready to be slain from a distance.

And so that's how the battle went. The odd thing was that while Varis the paladin and Torrin the warlord simply sat there for most of it, Merric, Vale and Reverence, being the rogue, wizard and warlock, who all have ranged attacks, were able to wipe out the enemies, and had quite a good time.

I'm not sure if it counted as a success or a failure in terms of being a good battle for the players. They were incredibly happy when they blew the enemy to pieces, but then it became a case of attacking at range and waiting for the elves, who arrived after enough rounds had passed (more rounds than it should have been, since I wanted to at least get the enemies to the barricade, but they had only just made it when I decided it was time to have the elves come in) and 'saved' the day.

But it was then that the heroes were told by a rebel scout that they were needed, as the bullywugs had arrived and were headed towards the stables, where the innocent were hiding. Leaving the barricade, the players left enough soldiers to continue the fight and headed north for the stables. Dar Gremath ran past them, shouting a few words of encouragement, and they continued through the town square, where they were confronted by two tar devils, a dark adept, two cutthroats and (plucked straight from my new Monster Vault) a rather large ogre. The players are level 4 at this point, so I chose a nice level 6 ogre that had a chance of actually killing one of them. He started the battle with his encounter power that left the warlord (if I remember correctly) bloodied immediately.

The players were in uproar (and Vale was quite annoyed with me) and they were worried about this guy. Merric could't seem to get round to flank him and the others seemed to miss repeatedly. Varis stepped in to take a hit that was directed again at our warlord, Torrin and the team was losing health fast. This wasn't helped by the fact that the cutthroats were attacking at the same time, the dark adept healed the ogre halfway through and the two tar devils were grabbing the players with their nets and restraining them where possible.

I thought they might be in trouble, but the ogre fell and they were much more comfortable (although it was still a tricky fight ahead of them) at the end of session five. Which was a really fun session.

#moving those rabble all at once was really really annoying and big battles like that are really really annoying #ogre #tar devils #monster vault #level 4 #miss #nets #explosions

Today my postman delivered me a present in the form of the new Dungeons and Dragons Monster Vault Threats To Netir Val.

Those of you familiar with the D&D essentials monster vault, this is different in almost every way.

The product is packaged in a sleeve instead of a box making the whole thing look similar to a D&D core book. The monster vault book that is inside is also decorated to look like a core book however it is paper back.

There is a double sided poster map in the pack with four different scenes on it, all quite nice and different. there is a map made using the new D&D witchlight fens tile pack from the look of it and this may help to suggest whats coming out in future tile packs as i do not recognise some of the tiles in used in the other maps.

Now onto the main reason to buy the pack ..THE TOKENS.. so with WOTC ditching miniatures (terrible idea) ,getting good quality monsters without having to do any painting means your gonna have to use tokens. There are 8 sheets of tokens and this is where i get a bit angry .... I have quite a few of these tokens now I have all of the tokens from all of the D&D essential and .....THERES NO CONSISTENCY THROUGHOUT!!!!..... and its getting really really annoying , so the redbox tokens were glossy, thin and did not have bloodied sides, ok i can handle that they dont have bloody sides as its a starter pack. D&D essentials monster vault tokens glossy, thicker , bloodied sides ..D&D MV TOTNV tokens , thin ,matte bloodied sides have labels on them saying the monsters name ? ? .... im starting to get annoyed by these more the labels than the thickness / finish because now theres no room for "pretending" you know to the untrained eye you can say a kobold token is a lizardfolk token.

so all in all a good product (some of the tokens are a bit boring and one in particular a bit confusing need to read the monster book) just a bit annoying with the lack of consistency between their products.

#d&d #dnd #Dungeons and Dragons #monster vault #Threats of the netir vale