AvocaD&D and Tabletop Gaming Thread: Carnival of Shadows, Episode 3

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 we’ll take a look at the War Domain for the Cleric class.  War Clerics are chosen servants of the gods that watch over warriors and reward great deeds in battle.  There are war gods of every alignment, from good-aligned deities that champion honor and chivalry to evil gods of destruction and conquest.  All War Clerics gain proficiency with martial weapons and heavy armor, making them formidable front-line fighters.  The War domain also provides access to certain spells as specific levels; including Divine Favor and Shield of Faith at 1st level; Magic Weapon and Spiritual Weapon at 3rd; Crusader’s Mantle and Spirit Guardians at 5th; Freedom of Movement and Stoneskin at 7th; and Flame Strike and Hold Monster at 9th level.

At first level, a War Priest can make a bonus action attack after making a normal attack action.  You can do this a number of times equal to your WIS mod, and you regain uses after a long rest.

At second level, you can use your Channel Divinity to make a Guided Strike. This allows you to add 10 to your attack roll, and you can choose to use it after making the roll, ensuring a hit when you need it the most.  Later, at 6th level, you can also use your Channel Divinity to grant War God’s Blessing to an ally, giving them the same +10 bonus to an attack roll.  This does use up your reaction, so it’s limited to once per round.

At level 8, you gain the Divine Strike ability, which allows you to add 1d8 to your damage for one attack per turn.  This increases to 2d8 when you reach level 14.

Finally at 17th level you become an Avatar of Battle, and gain permanent resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons.

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The AvocaD&D crew is playing in a brand new, The Hayes Code-original adventure in the Eberron setting.  We’re playing as members of a traveling carnival, who are also known to do a little investigation or espionage work on the side.

[spoiler title=”Cast of Characters”]

• Tinka, the Warforged Battlesmith Artificer, who performs tricks with the mechanical animals she creates (The Wasp)
• Wind Over Sand, a Tabaxi Open Hand Monk and contortionist (Wafflicious)
• Clo Fullia, a Shifter Battle Master Fighter, a bearded lady who also has a tendency to shift into strange beasts (Otto)
• Tano Lyrimasyl, a blade-juggling Elven Bard of the College of Swords (TheCleverGuy)
• The Shill, a Changeling Trickery Cleric who works the crowd looking for easy marks for the rest of the carnies (Josephus Brown)

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[spoiler title=”More Mazes, More Monsters”]

From the memoirs of Tano Lyrimasyl, former soldier of Valenar…

After presenting Vermis with his roses, he offered us a reward of we cleared out some more of the hazards from the hedge maze.  But first, we had a night to ourselves to rest up and make some plans.  We needed a discreet way to track down this Merryt Amastacia and get her to Warble’s safehouse.  I know a spell that would convince her to come away with us without any trouble.  But we had to find her first, and we couldn’t be too obvious about it.  The University is quite large, so we decided that we’d split up and cover as much ground as possible.  Each of us keep their eyes open for the young woman wearing a scarf around her neck.  Whoever found her would make some excuse to bring her to a predetermined meet-up spot, where we’d all gather.  Outside the main library for instance.  From there we could head to the safehouse, bringing Ms. Amastacia either willingly or enchanted.  Or if worse came to worse, the Shill could grab the girl and leap over the edge of the Floating Towers with a Feather Fall token we purchased.

But we had some time, and Vermis’s offer of bounty was too good to pass up.  Tinka, Shill, Clo, and I went back into the maze.  (Wind Over Sand needed a little more time to rest–I suspect the Floating Towers did not agree with her.  They do take some getting used to.)

The maze was quite large–we probably only actually saw about half of it, counting both trips together.  I won’t bore you with all the details, just a few highlights.  Clo stumbled upon a green dragon and decided to fight it instead of running away like a sensible person.  She was lucky the dragon turned out to be an illusion.  And I was lucky that I decided to take a peak beyond the illusory dragon; it had apparently been set to guard a pedestal, on which sat a thin brass circlet.  Tinka later identified this as a Circlet of Blasting.

Later, we found a lost student, a Tiefling by the name of Lillith Scalwalden.  She told us she’d been lost in the maze for weeks, and had only survived off of mayonnaise and water created in an alchemy jug.  We were able to see her safely out of the maze, and she gave us the jug as a reward.  Though I must say, I don’t think that woman had much future in the University–we were only two turns away from the entrance when we found her.

That’s not to say there was no danger of course.  I myself set off a trap that paralyzed me for a short time.  Long enough for my friends to amuse themselves balancing random small objects on my head.  And then there was the hag.

In a dead-end clearing in one corner of the maze, Shill found a large peach tree. Sitting underneath the tree was a friendly-looking human woman who invited us to try some of delicious peach preserves she had made. Whatever she had in those jars, it smelled wonderful to me.  But Clo’s shifter senses must have picked up on something that the rest of us did not.  Before I could even think, Clo just charged in with her axe and cut the poor woman down.  At least, she would have cut the woman down if this had been a normal human.  Instead, she bared her teeth and lashed out with long, wicked claws.  The woman let out an inhuman scream, and the jars of preserves suddenly exploded all around us.  The jelly itself came to life, all the bits from various jars combining together into a giant peach-colored ooze. We tried to focus our efforts on the hag–I even used a new spell I’d learned to fill the air around her with spinning daggers.  However, when the jelly monster attacked me, I slashed back with my scimitar, cutting the jelly in two.  For a second I thought it was dead, but then both halves started moving towards us again.  Tinka brandished her whip and caused one of the halves to split again–now there were three of these things.  While we were distracted with the jellies, the hag vanished.  While mine and Clo’s weapons were useless, Tinka had a giant wrench and Shill was able to call forth a spiritual hammer to squash those jellies into paste.  Clo actually just punched the last one hard enough to drop it.  With the jellies taken care of, I cast Faerie Fire to try and see if the hag was still in the area.  We didn’t see anything at first, but when Clo started to chop down the peach tree in frustration, the hag toppled out of the branches.  Clo grabbed her and she tried to surrender, but Clo was having none of that.  I wasn’t quite sure of the ethics of killing the hag after she yielded, but Clo was less concerned.  After it was done, Tinka detected necromantic magic coming from the peaches in the tree.  She picked one up and studied it for a few minutes and discovered that each peach was infused with a person’s soul.  I felt much better about removing that threat from the world.

[/spoiler]