Potions All Around

Last night was the conclusion of the drow war and it was pretty harrowing for my players.  They began the night as we left off last week where they were facing two giant spiders, two minotaur, two drow fighters, and a drow wizard.  The intrepid heros’ situation quickly went from bad to worse.  A fireball from the lady drow general took most of the party’s hp down quickly.  Fortunately for them it didn’t take much to finish of the minotaur.  Then the general trapped the halfling barbarian in a web, leaving him out of commission for the rest of the battle because he just couldn’t roll a strength check high enough to break free.  In a couple of rounds after that she took out the goliath cleric with poison spray, knocking him down to zero hit points.  The party really couldn’t handle much more from her and luckily the monk rogue, or mogue as I like to call him, took her out with a couple of well-placed arrows and the remaining spider she had summoned disappeared with her.  This left a two on two battle between the ranger, the mogue, and the two drow fighters.  The fighters dealt a little more damage, but were taken out fairly quickly by Carter’s ranger.  At the end of the battle Tyr’s mogue moved to revive the cleric.  Carter’s ranger moved to free Hal’s barbarian from the web, but the halfling had his pride and refused the help.  Hal rolled strength checks until the halfling finally freed himself.

After the battle they ventured back to the surface drow town and collected their earnings.  They shopped for supplies including hitting the newly added to the campaign potion shop.  I think I talked about this in one of my other blog posts but I’m tweeking 5e to allow a lot more magic and one of the ways I’m doing that is making potions much more available.  I combed through the DMG and made a list of every potion or potion like substance.  This one and only time the potion shop had at least one of everything so that they could get an idea of what all is available.  From now on when they come across someone offering potions I will control what potions are available and how many are in stock.

After shopping they had a nice meal together where Carter’s character revealed that his real motive for going on the mission into the Underdark was to retrieve a magic chalice, which he found when they raided the map room in the tower when they were in the Underdark.  He explained to them that he needed to return it to his home so that he could be allowed to marry his love Amara.  A full elf that he had been forbidden to continue seeing because he is only a half elf.  He asked the rest of the party if they would accompany him back to his town with the chalice.  They agreed though Argon, Tyr’s goliath cleric, made no bones about the fact that he was going only because it might further his own quest for a magic item lost to his people.

As they made their way to Tannis’s home they came across an interesting set of ruins.  When they sat under a stone the stone would speak a riddle.  Upon correctly answering a riddle the stone would ring and a stone in the center of the circle would turn.  They got a little hung up on the fourth riddle but they did eventually solve it, at which point the center stone began to hover above the ground revealing a beautiful mithral wand.  Argon succeeded on an arcana check, which meant that he identified the wand as one he remembered reading about.  It was created by the faery folk and casts the spell Conjure Fae.

Next on their interesting journey they came across a cat standing on its hind legs with its paws up on a stone.  It was looking at them with an intelligence in its eyes.  Hal’s halfling started to work a ritual for speaking with animals but Carter’s ranger said heck with that and just started talking to the cat who answered him in common.  Turns out she had lost an item down a well and asked them if they would retrieve it for her.  Argon, the cleric, cast augury to see what the outcome of helping her would be and was reassured that it was the right thing to do.  Both Carter and Tyr were very suspicious of her.  After they returned her item to her she offered to give each one of them a potion of their choice.  Shortly thereafter the party arrived at Tannis’ town.