Poll of the Day > Finally Found Out How Intense D&D Can Be

(+) Yeah! (+)

So... I just played my first "serious" campaign session. My little sister is the DM making a custom campaign. I've only ever played a joke character before and am fairly new to playing. This was the second session she's DM'd, and only I was playing so that she could get used to my unit and I could get a feel for my character.

My character, Quillyn, was a fugitive of sorts on the run (he's a custom dual-wielding jack-of-all sort w/2x small rapiers +hand crossbows to compensate for our lack of players as we're only going to have 3 in total, so he can actually heal himself or someone else a teensy bit, just once per day, when he hits an enemy). He'd stolen some stuff from his pursuers and leapt onto a ship and tried to hide. In an extraordinary turn of luck, the crew of this ship shielded him from discovery, no questions asked. Quillyn's alignment was originally going to be Chaotic Neutral, but I changed it to True Neutral just before the start of the session.

The next 5-6 HOURS of the session consisted almost entirely of roleplay, with Quillyn taking care to get to know the crew and me (the player) fishing for as many details as possible. There was a brief fight in a ransacked settlement in which I kept forgetting things and it went pretty badly, but none of the NPCs died and I ended up killing like 3 of the enemies out of 5 so the crew were pleased with Quillyn.

So for hours and hours I interacted with a set of very interesting, shockingly detailed and unexpectedly compelling and nuanced characters. This surprised me because I already knew before the session started that in order to get Quillyn to the location he needed to be at to meet the other players' characters, ALL of them had to die. They were fodder.

But I was curious and I wanted to see how much my sister had put into these fodder characters, so I kept pushing and pushing, learning as much about them as fast as I could as the hours (in-game, 3 years) went by, and as I did I knew it was a double-edged blade because they were completely screwed and the more I talked to them the more I liked them but I couldn't help myself.

In the last two conversations I had with the crew members, my sister started having to choke back tears, and I knew that my time was almost up. But when she sprang the trap I realized simultaneously that I was going to be crushed to see them die... and that there was almost no chance at all that any of them would live. We were trapped on a ship flanked by two enemy ships that attacked in the night, so our cannons weren't loaded and theirs were. They dropped a net into the water in the south and their leader started posturing.

Our captain challenged theirs to a duel.

And I realized that if the crew was wiped, Quillyn would probably never, ever recover from it and he'd be a miserable wreck for the rest of the campaign and probably die in a few sessions.

So Quillyn ran down below deck, woke everyone up, and while the two captains talked, convinced the crew to make a desperate gamble. We have no mages on board, and no one to cast water breathing, but we broke through the hull of the ship, and swam out, save for the first mate, who ran back up deck against Quillyn's wishes. We swam out, painfully slowly in the darkness, and...

Quillyn couldn't leave, just couldn't, so I broke away and swam alongside the ship and climbed back up and onto the deck. And my captain fell in a single strike to the enemy. I used it to shoot him with my hand crossbow.

This fucker has an AC of 18 HP (found out from my strike, which was 18), and he's downed my captain in one round. So I use my only healing ability on my strike to heal him for 7 HP, and my captain gets up and tries to pretend the shot came from him to maintain the "duel" idea to prevent the enemy crew from firing. He shoots the enemy for... 3 damage, and that's when I realize that we are so, so screwed. I can't do this by myself, there's no way.

And then the enemy captain realized as he grabbed at his wound... that he'd been shot by a crossbow and a pistol. And he gives the order to his minions to fire INTO THE WATER at my escaping crew and then swings at my captain again... and does 7 damage. Captain is down.

My character screams at the first mate to take the captain and run. She's a triton and she's terrified so she does what I say. I then use another ability to turn invisible just for my turn so I can desperately try to get another sneak attack, which I make (barely) and inflict a debuff on him that causes him to miss one hit on the next turn, but my invisibility immediately ends.

He hits me and wipes out over 2/3 of my HP with a nat 20. The enemies fire on the water, and murder the little boy in our crew, and in a panic I scream that I'm going to kill their leader to try and get them to fire on me instead. I swing and hit once, and this time I am panicking because I have very little left, but I use an ability that gives me a bit more damage and it is just. not. enough. He has so much HP. It's hopeless. He rolls a natural 20 again... and the crew's magic cat jumps in the way, taking the hit for me. ;_;

The mooks shoot into the water again and kill my kenku friend. So I tell their captain that I'd rather burn in hell with him than be captured and I strike and miss one and CRIT with the other... it's not enough. He's pissed off now, and he uses a spell to damage me and knock me into the net in the water. I'm at 6 HP. He walks up to the net as the bodies of the two dead are gathered into it as well... but the other crew members are gone!

But this fucker is still alive and two of my dead friends are next to me. So when he walks up to the net, I rush him... miss... and CRIT... and apply the last damaging skill I have to it to buff the damage as much as I can for...

31 damage.

He had 32 HP.

I'm falling apart emotionally at this point. He killed two of my friends- the two NON-COMBATANTS at that... he killed our CAT... Quillyn's trapped like a rat... I've given it absolutely everything I could, and it wasn't enough. This fucker is going to get away, he's going to knock me out on this turn because he can't leave or I'll get an attack of opportunity.

But then... he doesn't attack. He, like me, thinks Quillyn's got nothing left, and he mocks me, and my crew, and our blood, with my rapier still in his body.

I knew what the DM was doing.

I twisted the blade.

Carted off with the corpses of two of my friends to face a fate worse than death, the others missing in the water...

As they strapped Quillyn into the machine in a place that no one has ever escaped from to await the first proper session of the game, we couldn't believe it. My character, in 7 hours (3 years), went from running, to staying behind so others could run. From fleeing capture himself with no greater motivations or goals beyond survival, to calculatingly accepting surrender if it meant he could kill this one evil fucker and maybe, maybe, maybe save even just one person, and pulled off some of the most badass clutch moves and desperate tactics that his unit is capable of... in session 0.

And that's the story of how Quillyn the self-serving survivor with no goals and no plan killed an enemy with an AC of 18... and 70 HP and sacrificed his freedom to save the lives of most of his crew. He made a journey that I was thinking of having through the entire campaign in one session.

I have to change his alignment again. He's turned into a goddamn hero.

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Sounds like your sister's a good DM. Glad you had fun.

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PMarth2002 posted...

Sounds like your sister's a good DM. Glad you had fun.

Yeah, she was mostly just pleased that I was pleased, but I think she underestimates just how good it was. I was making her juggle six different crew members to sate my curiosity and she was on that shit like a pro. Every one of them was charming with believable flaws and interesting physical characteristics and complex connections to parts of the setting. I still have like two dozen things I want to discuss with each of them lol. I don't know how the fuck she did that but if this is how much effort she put into fodder I can't wait to see what else she's got.

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https://i.imgur.com/FsBzNrq.png

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