After having a hearty breakfast our ” heroes” were escorted by the City Watch to their newly acquired ship. Waiting for them onboard was Hoondarrh’s tribute, complete with two knights guarding it.

Before setting sail the party were informed Valdor had been kidnapped, and that the Tyrant was in the process of finding out by whom and where he had been taken.

Our party set sail, and after a slight detour during the night, the ship was attacked by sahuagin.

The battle was long and bloody. Eventually our “heroes” won through.

The sahuagins “boat” was searched to no avail. So it was set on fire!

And that is where our “heroes” were left about to continue the delivery of the tribute.

Post-mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

I’ve had a week to brood on last Sunday’s session. To contemplate what happened during the session. I even got a chance to briefly check in with a player for their thoughts.

Let’s start with my notes for the session.

As you can see three pages. One to track the use of the patches on the robe of useful items. I think it’s important that I also track its use along with the player. Not because I distrust the player. But more things get forgotten or lost. So that if one of those two situations occurs the player can still use the patches.

The first page is a list of major NPCs the players will encounter during the session, along with how the sea travel will work. Finally page two is notes on the two major encounters of the session.

The notes were just about right for me. I need to probably improve the NPC notes a little with a description or film character of the NPCs character. For instance posh, snooty, or Obelix.

The mini large card sized whiteboards are proving really useful. Especially when running combat. They allow me to easily track current health of the monsters and group them. Which I did in this session. With the appropriate monster card out in front to refer to, and the use of my session notes to track spell usage. I great combo for me while running a combat.

The actual combat was dipping into the deadly side of things. So the most challenging one yet for the players. Especially after what was a rather easy combat the previous session. It was interesting that the player I spoke to considered this the first real combat that they had had. Which was an interesting point of view. He also thought their tactics and how they handled the situation was not brilliant.

At the end of the session I got the impression from one player that they had at minimum been frustrated with the combat, and at most had not entirely enjoyed it. Maybe because their character got knocked unconscious twice during the combat. Their comment at the end of the session when I asked for feedback was to remember the action economy. I can see that point of view. However with better tactics from the party. Plus I don’t think that the monsters had a very big advantage on the actions front.

Each player had at least one healing potion, plus the potions on the robe of useful items, and healing spells. So even with the encounter being deadly I felt the players had enough between them to not die.

The combat went on for the majority of the session. Which did surprise me. I was expecting it to go for about half the session.

I was happy with the way I ran the sahuagin. They were split into two groups. And each group had it’s own initiative. I still like rolling once for the attack of the monsters when it is a group. I also used the average static HP of damage from the stat block instead of rolling for damage. It does speed things up.

When the players were first introduced to the two knights on their boat I made it clear that their orders were to guard the tribute. There was a knight placed outside the cabin with the tribute in, and one placed inside. With them swapping over at regular intervals. They were described as being like the Queens Guard at Bucks Palace. So when the sahuagin attacked it wasn’t until the sahuagin baron boarded the ship and went and attacked the knight that they got involved. I handed the control of that knight over to the players.

The player with the deck of illusions had bought their own deck of cards to use as a prop during play. I had taken my own. But happy for them to use their own. However when they used the deck they created a golem illusion placed in front of the cabin door. And it was left standing there. I felt it wasn’t used to its best effect during the combat.

Finally after reminding the player that they had the luck stone the curse was triggered. They clicked then why I had been reminding them about it. I think the curse or an aspect of it could be used to their benefit. Yes it also has a downside. But with a bit of creativity. The players have already been taught that they need to be more careful when negotiating a dungeon of some description. This was a not all that glitters is gold lesson. That suspicion is a healthy thing to have.

The Tomb of Annihilation overland travel kinda worked. The lost mechanic kind of failed when the ranger ships captain was navigating. They had an ability that meant they couldn’t get lost. I need to think about this a bit more. We have a lot of sea travel in the future. Might try the group challenge next. After that I’ll take feedback from the players to which one they prefer.

I started in session 5 to use Pathfinder Cards: Wrath of the Righteous Face Cards Deck to represent the NPCs. Or the main ones they are interacting with. And continued to use them in this session. I think it helps having their card clipped to the DM screen so they players can have an image of what the NPC looks like. It helps bring them to life. It also means I don’t have to find a suitable mini but can get away with using tokens.

Overall I think the majority had a good time. I think the combat was challenging. Now to start planning the next session.