Daemonium - Brave Surviver!! Session 15: North Ambern Hexcrawl Part 1

Characters:

Za'vak Al-Hadim - Level 4 Paladin/Level 1 Fighter
Gene Erikson - Level 4 Fighter
Vamp Testy, The Monkey Sympathizer - Level 4 Monk
Redmond Frionbarr - Level 4 Bard 

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The party's mission is to escort the Princess of Cashua to the hidden Wood Elf Kingdom. For this session, Gene Erikson was present for the first half and Za'vak for the second half due to scheduling. Structurally, the search for the Wood Elf Kingdom was handled with a Hex Crawl in the area of North Ambern. At the start, we had Gene, Redmond, and Vamp.

The party picked up some supplies and set off from Fort Redmond (Redmond's player insists that it's called another name which I can never remember, haha. My bad brother). They were warned that a young hunter from the village, Tomlinson, had already left to try to join them on their adventure. Tomlinson is on the encounter list, so it's up to chance if he finds the party.

The party looked out from the tower of Fort Redmond. They spied a massive oak tree and some hills in the distance. They talked about a few plans: Gene wanted to travel to all of the forest hexes marked on the map, Redmond wanted to travel by the river which was thought most likely to contain the hidden Wood Elf Kingdom. Before deciding on an exact plan, the party travelled to the massive Oak tree. Numerous pixies surrounded it and Redmond (A Half-Elf) briefly communicated with them, but they decided to move up to the hills rather than investigate the old tree. The Fairies mentioned that the Elves were to the North West, though this was somewhat cryptic.

They moved up to the hills and spied the palisades of a recently constructed fort. Stumps of trees sat at the base of the hill. Vamp Testy went to scout ahead and happened to run into a patrol of Orcs. There were 7 of them and Vamp decided to lead them off. A Dire Wolf with an Orc rider left the fort in pursuit. The party split up and, at this point, Redmond, Gene, and the Princess decided to seize the fort. I ran the following by swapping back and forth between the groups, but I will now describe them sequentially.

Redmond, Gene, and the Princess found themselves in battle against 10 or so Orcs, a Dire Wolf, and an Orc Boss. Gene had encountered said Orc Boss at Mirror Mountain, who was upset at the death of his useless son. Each turn the Orc Boss pulled a random item on a d6 out of his Bag of Holding. The party did a good job of stopping him from doing so. The Boss was only able to pull a single item out (Salamander Heart) which had the effect of a weak fireball. Despite taking some damage, the party eliminated half of the orcs and prompted a morale check. The foes failed and they surrendered. The Orc Boss offered them their fort, but Gene really wanted that Bag of Holding. So Redmond casted the spell Shatter which blew the brains out of the Dire Wolf, and the Boss had no choice but to surrender the bag. He may well be back at some point, hopefully with some earplugs. During the fight, the Princess held her own (She is a level 2 Fighter stat wise, but lacks Action Surge/Second Wind but she does have a +2 magic rapier).

Vamp ran away and managed to lose the Orcs. However, the Dire Wolf had his scent and found him at the top of the tree. Vamp jumped down and, with a critical hit (Bungeons!), managed to reduce the wolf to half HP. It failed its morale check and ran away. For some reason, Vamp decided to play dead. The seven orcs found his body and, for good measure, decided to stab him. They all did so and Vamp died. 

Sad :(

At this point, Za'vak arrived and Gene's player had to leave. The party lit a bright flame to signal for support. Za'vak rode up, and the party rested for the night. Gene left the next morning to find Vamp, who was still missing. From the hilltop, the party spied an old fort to the east. It looked thoroughly worn down.

While walking through the dense woods, a dragon flew through the sky and landed nearby. It rolled well on its Reaction roll, so I decided it was hunting in the area and did not spot the party. Redmond and Za'vak decided to explore the fort and shelter from the dragon. It was also getting late, due to the time spent waiting for Za'vak.

They spied a room filled with webs through the window, and decided to light it up with a torch. Even though webs probably don't work like this, I decided that the webs were very flammable. The giant spiders screeched and decided to run away. A bunch of skeletons were in the room, encased in web. Now freed, they started to act as if they were having a pleasant dinner around a dining table.

The party made short work of the spiders. The survivors retreated north. They decided to avoid the skeletons, who were just chilling anyway, and went north. They rolled an encounter for an undead king of some kind who was pretty tough, but Za'vak's empowered smites from his new magic item were quite potent. The monster went down quickly. The party found a locked door as well as another room. Redmond picked the lock, and found an obviously cursed dagger in a small room as well as two sets of ancient bronze armor (As plate, but very fucking heavy). Redmond grabbed the dagger and it immediately cursed him. The armor came to life and attacked. The party retreated behind Za'vak, and a series of incredible rolls by Za'vak and the Princess took care of the ghost armor. The cursed dagger attuned to Redmond, who now must take a life each day or lose 1 Max HP. Uh oh!

The party made camp and rested in the first room. 

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Notes:

- This was my favourite session so far, and most of the players had a good time too. Redmond's player prefers the more narrative driven sessions, however. It can be tough to find a balance, but I'm trying to have a variety of scenarios for the players.

- 5e is not ideal for hex crawls but the act of travelling around, managing time and resources, etc is always fun. This hexcrawl is pretty simple, as its based around finding a specific location, and I really look forward to the next mission the players wanted to do which will include a more involved hexcrawl and a serious dungeon. The main "meat" of this section will be the negotiations within the Wood Elf kingdom. I suspect we'll have two more sessions of crawlin' tops, but probably one more if the players decide to really focus on searching for the Elves.

- Combat is too complex, takes too long and the skill system still sucks. I roll everything for enemies on an x-in-6 or as a 2d6 reaction check and I want to do more of that lol. The fact that enemies have attributes like players is a massive design mistake, that I think probably only exists to justify selling books with monster stat blocks.

- Character death in 5e sucks because building a character is way too involved. Vamp's player died in one of the funniest ways I've ever seen, and he accepted his demise with the grace of Moses. For High Fantasy, I think something like Dolmenwood strikes the right balance for character creation. Things should be random, there should still be some choice, and characters should start out as distinct but I really dislike all the nobs and bobs in 5e. It also means players come with a lot of pre-baked assumptions about their characters, which is not my preference. Also fuck "builds" in a TTRPG lol.

-  Gene got the Bag of Holding! Because the Orc Boss could only use one out of the six magic items in there, it's pretty dope. Gene wants to use the tuft of Unicorn hair he found inside to make boots of haste. Very cool: But he'll need to track down someone who has the know how to make them.