AvocaD&D and Tabletop Gaming Thread: Murder in Skyway, Week 10

Welcome back to the weekly D&D and Tabletop Gaming thread!  Here’s a place where we can talk about Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop games that you nerds might be into.  Tell us about the games you’re playing, speculate about future expansions, recruit your fellow Avocados into new groups, whatever you want.

Games like D&D take a lot of prep time (especially for the DM) and possibly a long-term commitment from everyone involved.  But we don’t always have that kind of time.  So today, I want to know what are your favorite games to play on short notice?  What tabletop games do you pull out and play for an impromptu game night?

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The AvocaD&D group is currently playing through an Eberron adventure, DM’d by Josephus Brown. Our characters are all at Level 5.

[spoiler title=”Cast of Characters”]

• TheCleverGuy as Cybin Stoneswift, a Hill Dwarf Wizard who’s singularly obsessed with the study of various forms of mushrooms
• Otto (our only non-Avocado party member) as Magz, a Changeling Rogue, a native of Sharn familiar with the city’s seedy underbelly
• The Hayes Code as Cassidy Cody, a Tiefling Bard who makes a living busking in the lightning rail stations with the talent passed down to her from her Pa’s deal with the devil
• Wafflicious as Pizzazzle, a Dragonborn Druid who just wants to clean up the planet so it’s fit for consumption by the all-powerful Nexu
• Mr.ImMyOwnGrandpa as Marcus Tor, a Half-Orc Barbarian and former athlete with a rage-inducing magic spike lodged in his chest
• Anna Nomally as Annya, a Human Rogue who failed at being an assassin because she kept befriending her targets
• The Wasp as NRS-K80, a Warforged Cleric who discovered a passion for healing with the end of the Last War[/spoiler]

[spoiler title=”Finishing the Fight”]So there we were, locked in battle with a group of assassins in the middle of a potion lab. Annya and I had killed the getaway driver, and Pizzazzle was keeping the sniper across the way tied up.  Tor, Magz, and Cassidy had engaged the assassins inside, and one of them was currently floating up the ceiling, thanks to a spilled potion. Their target, a nobleman by the name of Potellos (or was Patella?), was cowering in the corner behind a couple of body guards.

Up on the water tower across the road, Pizzazzle whacked the restrained sniper again and again with her staff, hoping to knock her out.  Meanwhile, inside the lab, Tor was taking on two assassins at once, while trying to get a third to notice him as well.  The magic from the spike in his chest allowed Tor to dodge most of the attacks against him, and another broken potion bottle soon turned one of the assassins into a hovering psychic jellyfish–I’d heard rumors of the existence of flumphs, but I’d never actually seen one before, so it was very exciting to me. Unfortunately, Tor slashed at the Flumph with his axe, and it turned back into a person.

Meanwhile, Magz had taken out the assassin in the alley, so Cassidy and I could enter the building to help Tor.  At that point, K80 flew in on the Meat Wagon, landing on the roof.  She jumped down and summoned a Spiritual Weapon, a staff with a snake wrapped around it, to whack at one of the wounded assassins, whom Cassidy finished off with her crossbow.  I use one of my most poisonous fungi to send a Ray of Sickness at another of the assailants.  With one of his partners dead, the third assassin finally turned his attention from Mr. Potato to Tor.  He knocked over another potion bottle in the process and turned himself a bright blue color.  That pesky levitating guy hit Cassidy and Potbelly with some thrown darts, and unfortunately the nobleman was killed. Tor and Cassidy focused their attacks on the blue assassin, while K80 ushered some civilians out of the lab, commanding her Spiritual Weapon to keep the bad guys at bay.  Mr. Portobello’s two remaining bodyguards, rushed forward to avenge their fallen boss.  One managed to finish off the blue guy, but the other knocked into another table and was turned into another flumph!  Only the floater was left, and he didn’t seem to be coming down anytime soon.  I him with another Ray of Sickness, making sure not to stand directly under him.  Since he couldn’t get away,  he threw a few more darts at us until Tor impaled and electrocuted him with a javelin of lightning.

While all that was going on inside, Pizzazzle had managed to knock out and capture the sniper.  We decided to take her back to our safehouse for interrogation.  The surviving bodyguards gathered up the body of their boss and left, but not before Tor “cured” the one who’d been transformed by hitting the flumph with his axe again.  I have to give him credit–it worked.  While Cassidy and Pizzazzle made sure the sniper was tied securely, the rest of us poked around the room looking for interesting potions or other things. I found a couple of healing potions, a potion of mind reading, and a potion of hill giant strength. Tor found a bottle of sovereign glue, and K80 found a philter of love and a potion of diminution.  Tor also grabbed a book of spells, and I traded him that strength potion for it.

Back at the safehouse, the captured sniper resisted Pizzazzle and Cassidy’s charm attempts and committed suicide before she gave us any answers.  So we went to find the victim’s wife, who was a prominent member of the Sharn city council, to see what she could tell us.  We met with Mrs. Portobello in her office at the brothel she runs.  She was very up front with us, and told us that she’d hired the assassins to have her husband killed.  Apparently his not-very-discreet affairs had started to have a negative impact on her image.  The councilwoman decided to give us the fee that should have gone to the assassins, since they had failed so miserably at not being noticed.  And they were all dead anyway.[/spoiler]