The party hadn’t been back at their digs long before there was a knock on their door. Drenol, Jeb, and Babs answered the door.

It was their neighbour a gnome called Nala. She needed their help. Her husband Hornwin had gone down into their cellar and hadn’t come back up and she was worried. Apparently they had a rat problem.

After a little debate whether they would help, they did indeed end up going next door to find Nala’s husband.

In the basement after destroying a swarm of spiders, triggering a stink cloud and throwing up. The trio found Hornwin lying unconscious in the corner of a room that had dire giant rats in it.

After defeating the dire giant rats and a were rat that appeared the party had the corpse of Hornwin in front of them. It would seem Hornwin had been a were rat.

After breaking the news to Nala that here husband was dead the trio returned home.

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. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else.

This was our first session since the end of November.

Work shifts and the seasonal thing that happens in December being the main factors getting in the way of the session happening.

The change of job opened up my ability to say “I’m free on …” and for regular sessions to be planned again. I think if the work front hadn’t changed the campaign would of just ended. My old job was getting so that planning or committing to anything was just not possible.

It was good to be back behind the DM screen.

As there was fifty percent of the players unable to make this session I went with a one shot adventure for those that were there.

I went with a Mike Shae adventure idea he said he used as an introduction adventure for level one characters of clearing out the basement of the tavern of the rat problem.

But my party were a couple of levels higher. So I could use dire giant rats!

I used a map from the Lazy DM Companion for the basement. Well part of it. I didn’t need the whole thing.

In one of the rooms I added a glyph of warding that when triggered (which it was) cast the spell cloud of stink. If any character had covered their nose (as warned) I gave them advantage on the constitution saving throw. It did lead to a comedic moment of describing the character throwing up with reference to the infamous scene from Team America. With the added bonus of the Babs character slipping up in the resultant pool of vomit.

My dice rolling during combat was atrocious. I don’t think I landed one hit! Although I did roll high on saving throws. So it evened out in the end I suppose.

Once or twice I used the fumbled searches deck to come up with items to find. I should of made a note of the items. One was a book that I said was titled 101 rat recipes, and a burnt bit of parchment. Despite the party trying to find any hidden writing on the parchment they found none. But they only used the old heat and lemon juice ideas to find any. I still have an opening to use this as a plot hook at some point. But I did like using the deck and found it very useful.

I felt the dire giant rats were underwhelming. I think the hit points could have been maybe three times the original value, instead of doubling them. It might have helped if I landed an attack.

I did have the npc they were meant to be saving turn into a were rat. Which they killed.

There was a little discussion over whether the npc got death saving throws. My train of thought was they were killed as a were rat, there was no mention before delivering the killing blow they were “pulling their punch” and aiming to just knock out the npc. So taking the were rat down to zero hit points killed them. As they died they obviously reverted to their original form.

I liked the ingenious use of the bag of holding to get rid of the grimiskas. Now the party have a bag of holding. I have a plot thread there to pull at some point now.

I thought the session worked well as a side distraction from wherever the main campaign is going for those that were able to make the session.