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.

This week’s D&D subclass spotlight is on the Warlock’s Undying Patron.  This type of warlock get his or her powers from an entity that was once mortal but has unlocked the secrets of everlasting life–or at least everlasting undeath.  Like all patrons, the Undying starts by adding a handful of spells to the available spells a player can choose from; these include False Life, Ray of Sickness, Blindness/Deafness, Silence, Feign Death, Speak With Dead, Aura of Life, Death Ward, Contagion, and Legend Lore.

At first level, the Among the Dead feature allows you to also learn the Spare the Dying cantrip, and have advantage on saving throws against disease.  In addition, you gain a level of protection from undead creatures–undead must succeed a WIS save in order to target you with an attack, provided you haven’t attacked that creature yet.

By 6th level, you can Defy Death.  Once a day, when you succeed on a death saving throw or use the Spare the Dying cantrip to stabilize an ally, you can also regain some of your own hit points (1d8 + CON).  Being able to pop yourself back up from unconsciousness is a pretty big deal!

At level 10, your Undying Nature means you no longer need to breathe, eat, drink, or sleep (though you still require rest to replenish your HP and abilities), and you age 10 times more slowly than normal.  You’re on the hook for guard duty while the rest of your party sleeps and any underwater exploration you might come across, but you’re also effectively immune to any poison gas effects.

Finally, at level 14, the Indestructible Life feature allows you to heal yourself on a bonus action for 1d8 plus your Warlock level.  It’s a decent chunk of healing, even if you roll poorly, and it won’t eat up a spell slot or an attack.  But you can only do it once per short rest.

This seems like a really powerful class.  All of the abilities have their uses, even if some are somewhat dependent on the campaign you’re playing.  If you’re not fighting many undead, for instance, you won’t get much use out of the Lv1 feature, though Spare the Dying is handy cantrip to have available no matter what.  The self-healing is what I really like though, especially Defy Death.  Save that Cleric’s spell slot for someone else, you won’t be needing any help!

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I’m currently running the group through The Sunless Citadel adventure, from Tales from the Yawning Portal.

My players are:

• Seraphina Lathander, an Aasimar Cleric (The Wasp)
• Oona Maku, a Half-Elf Ranger (Wafflicious)
• Gash the Furious, a Half-Orc Barbarian (Otto)
• Slowclap, a Kenku Monk (Josephus Brown)
• Finfizzy Tanglethump, a Gnome Warlock (The Hayes Code)

Credit for this week’s recap goes to Wafflicious!

[spoiler title=”The Sunless Citadel”]

Oona’s notes continue…

Our intrepid barbarian smashed through another blocked door and into a hallway that turned out to be ineffectively trapped. I had been worried we were getting over our heads but we might be a bit much for them instead. Pressing on we came upon a statue  of a rather striking dragon who riddled us well. Just not so well that our warlock couldn’t find the answer. So what appeared on their own at night and faded away by day was indeed the stars and we were granted access further into the darkness.This time we found statues of elves, although one seemed to be missing. Not seeing much else we could do with it we cautiously made our way over and around a spiked pit and straight into a demon who claimed to be watching over a ‘dragon priest’.

It should be no surprise we took our aggression to the demon. What else were we to do in this situation, really? Only it seems the demon took offense and as soon as they had been smacked a bit they turned tail and ran, invisible, right through our fingertips leaving us alone in a room with a massive coffin in the center.

The whole thing stank of trouble… so clearly we broke the locks off the coffin and released the troll priest within. Immediately the beast began to gain strength from his freedom and we set upon it with all haste. The monster gave us a decent fight but Slowclap, ever the nimble fighter finished it for good while a bit of holy fire still burned within him.

The group of us took a rest then, to count our winnings and for Fin to summon up a Sprite to our aid. With our energy restored we pushed on again, deeper into some sort of underground garden. The grand castle that collapsed here can still support a great deal of life, with the help of skeleton gardeners apparently. Massive glowing mushrooms all around us, so of course we skipped away and into a crag full of little holes.

We could not help ourselves in looking for anything interesting in those holes, like a fiery snake. Our physical fighters found themselves at a disadvantage, as their blows were returned with burns. Seraphina took her holy fire to it and I split it with an arrow. Good to know my bow skills aren’t utterly lost since leaving the service.

As we wander on we force our way into a room with a rusted dragon statue holding a tray in its mouth. But we have nothing of value, or at least nothing it values, to offer and had to let it go for the moment.

Which turned out to be for the best as we were all too close to a whole civilization of goblins. Fin’s clever familiar scopes ahead for us, but their information is no match for the sound of a bookcase being jostled blowing our cover. Not that it was much of a problem, Gash made goblin chowder of more than a few of them with all of us picking off others as they came in. Our noise drew all of the goblins, the tending skeletons from the gardens beyond AND a bugbear who was supposedly in charge.We were lucky to have two holy people with us as one became a target, then the other, but never each enough to be taken down. I swear we killed a dozen goblins and a handful of skeletons to boot. Even the bugbear doesn’t escape with his life.

We rest here again and will attempt to push on again when we are fit.

(As Waffle has been keeping track of this and might not be able to make the last game the party currently has:

• 804 Silver Pieces
• 407 Gold Pieces
• 4 gems
• 2 sapphires
• Bugbear weapons
• 2 silver rings
• 1 amulet
• 1 fancy dagger
• 1 Scroll of Command lvl 2
• 1 Scroll of Inflict Wounds lvl 2

[/spoiler]