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.

Today, I’m talking about the Forge Domain Cleric subclass. Deities of this domain are the patrons of all those who work with metal, from the simple village blacksmith making nails and horseshoes to the master craftsmen creating mithral armor. Such Clerics might be called on by their god to seek out and recover lost artifacts, liberate mines that have been overrun by monsters, or uncover rare materials with which to craft powerful magic weapons.

Starting at 1st level, you have proficiency with heavy armor and smith’s tools. You also gain access to the first of your Domain Spells, which are always prepared and don’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. You gain access to more spells as you level up, including Identify and Searing Smite at 1st level, Heat Metal and Magic Weapon at 3rd, Elemental Weapon and Protection From Energy at 5th, Fabricate and Wall of Fire at 7th, and Animate Objects and Creation at 9th level.

Also at level 1, you can imbue weapons or armor with the Blessing of the Forge. At the end of each long rest, you can touch one nonmagical suit of armor or weapon, making it magical until your next long rest. If the object is armor it gets a +1 bonus to AC, and if it’s a weapon it gets a +1 to attack and damage rolls. The magic fades away if you die, and you can only use this ability on one object at a time.

At 2nd level, you gain the Artisan’s Blessing, which allows you to use your Channel Divinity feature to create simple non-magical items. You conduct an hour-long ritual and create a nonmagical item that must be at least partially made of of metal. This can be a suit of armor, a simple or martial weapon, a set of tools, 10 pieces of ammunition, or some other metal object. The object you create can have a value no greater than 100 gp, and you must have metal, which can include coins, of equal value to the object your making available during the ritual. You can also use this to create a duplicate of a nonmagical item, provided you have the original with you during the ritual.

At level 6, the Soul of the Forge grants you resistance to fire damage, as well as a +1 bonus to your AC while you are wearing heavy armor.

At 8th level, your weapon attacks become Divine Strikes, dealing an additional 1d8 fire damage on a hit once per turn. This increases to 2d8 at level 14.

Finally at level 17, you are a Saint of Forge and Fire. You have full immunity to fire damage, and while wearing heavy armor, you have resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage as well.

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[spoiler title=”Players and Characters”]We’re playing through a homebrew story put together and DM’d by TheHayesCode! This story is set in the world of Eberron, and concerns the fates of a group of convicts sentenced with transportation to the exotic continent of Xen’Drik. Here’s a brief run-down of the PCs (all Level 3):

• Kalanyl, a Drow Cleric of the scorpion-god Vulkoor and our native guide on Xen’Drik, played by Wafflicious 
• Vic Lustig, a nondescript-by-design Human Sorcerer (Wild Magic) counterfeiter, played by JosephusBrown 
• Bulwark, a Warforged Paladin of the Silver Flame (Oath of Redemption), played by TheCleverGuy 
• Higgins, a malfunctioning Warforged Barbarian (Path of Ancestral Guardian), played by Spiny Creature 
• Zumira, a Goblin Wizard (Order of Scribes) serial killer, played by The Wasp 
• Jo Bean, a very young-looking Human Rogue with a bad attitude, played by Otto [/spoiler]

This week’s recap was written by Wafflicious, as our Drow prison chaplain Kalanyl. Thanks, Waffles!

[spoiler title=”The Search for Dale”]

Personal Records of Kalanyl:

The human Vic turns up at the bar while my sister and I are still drinking and catching up. I suspect this one will be difficult to keep in line as he has some vested interest in making nice which I never trust. But he seems to be of some help because I found out later in the evening there was an ogre fight and he kept it more bloodless than usual. It turns out to be a short night, as we’re woken not long after by the screams of a hobgoblin shouting about a monster attack in the orchards. Not our usual way of spreading word of an incursion, yet still effective. Several of the newcomers and I converge on the orchard to find some of the workers there in a daze. They don’t know of any monsters but do remember having a ravenous craving for fruit which they sated among the banana trees. Some ‘monsters’ they turned out to be. They were in some trouble for that, but not as much as the last fellow they had been working late with, who was last seen headed toward the animal stables. All hell, along with all of the pigs, had broken loose but I wasn’t able to find anything more interesting. The rest of the miscreants joined us and several of the affected (as the hobgoblin returned to us feeling as foolish as the others) described a wet or otherwise unpleasant sensation on their legs which led me to think that it might be one of the amphibious local creatures. They each turned up with traces of poison and I promised to tell their superiors they weren’t at fault for the trouble but it means we’ll have to send a party out after them in the daylight.

Of course, come morning the only ones foolish enough to turn up for this rescue were the new arrivals and I am yet again assigned to them. Hopefully I can find at least one among them who would be interested in learning about the power of Vulkoor. They might just be eager to have their things back, since they still think they’re above the rules about prisoners and their more dangerous possessions. We pick up the trail heading north into the forest, and it’s a decent hike until we hear croaking in the trees and are assailed by the very frog-men we were seeking. The newcomers are fairly strong, and we pick them off as quickly as they can attack us, even when one of them casts a huge ring of protrusions at us. We send the last of them packing, they aren’t all eager to die by our hands today.

There’s no more trouble until we hit a bridge over a crocodile infested river. But the crocs aren’t what we have to worry about as not one but two massive snakes block our way as soon as we’re all on the bridge. I do my best to weaken them while the others use their skills to take the snakes to task. They are a talented lot for fights, I will give them that. Even if the goblin is a spook. One of the crocodiles even tried to get in on the action only to be hit with a bolt split from Vic’s hands. Both of our new warforged are worthy foes in battle, but it was Jo, the little one, who split both the snakes herself. She will be one to watch out for.

[/spoiler]