D&D the Wand is a Wonder

The day ended after the defeat of the last dragon with a few notes.  The first note that the sight of the allied Dragon unlocking its jaw and swallowing the larger dragon head first, well since it had been decapitated, neck first after the head had been swallowed.  Anyone who watched the process and either held the contents of their stomachs in or did not have nightmares, would have a story to tell their grandchildren, or live out their days on the alms strangers for the tale.  The second note, was that the Dragon would need to take some time to absorb the other dragon and on that note they should plan to spend several days doing what they wanted.  He assured them that if they truly desired to head on to the next dragon, it would muddle through it the best that he could and he was sure they could overcome the larger dragon; the entire party with the exception of the Paladin, thought the dragon should take the time at it needed.  

The party asked the dragon for information on the area; it was forth coming.  There were a number of threats in the area, the other dragon, who had gathered some Elementals and several yeti as its minions.  They were in the North.  To the left of them in the North-East was a demon that had broken into the region from without.  In the South-East there was a Cloud Giant and his allies—who the party upon hearing this made the assumption that it was a good giant, probably because they did not want to face him or her.  In the South-West, right beside their camp was a Fire Giant, guarding the portal to the Fire Prison.  Due West was a clan of unalloyed yeti.  That outlined the threats within the prison.  They got together to decide how they might chose to tackle to gain a little power and treasure.  

Their plan was interrupted by a flash and a toll of thunder that reverberated through the prison.  The Ranger who was on watch noted that it was coming from the peak of the mountain, where they had arrived a few days ago.  The group gathered at the base to see who was arriving.  It was Muk'culuk and Gashnok the two orcs that the players had allied with a few weeks ago.  They arrived after being sacrificed in the Air Temple.  They told them that the camp was attacked by a force of humans and trolls.  They were beaten to unconsciousness and then sacrificed in the temple and then they were here.   

They brought their loyal henchmen to their camp, before they headed out to either remove potential allies for the dragon or in the least learn how to fight yetis for when they had to fight the Dragon's allies.  There was also a plan to kill the yetis and skin them and maybe disguise themselves as yeti to get the drop on the dragon and its allies.  The approach was easy, up a rising escarpment to a cavern up above the entrance to the Goblin warren that the party destroyed the day before.  The entrance was unguarded and it was only when they entered and their eyes adjusted to the dim light that they noticed the baleful red eyes in the darker recesses of the cave, beyond where their darkvision could pick up. 

Battle was joined right away, no choice really, but there were two caverns attached to the entrance and there were yeti in each cave, which ever group they faced, the other was going to close in behind.  The party decided to engage both groups before they could do that.  Vistra charged forth and readied for the yeti to come within range, and the Paladin charged past her to be the first in the fight.  The Priest of the Red Sun cast a small red globe of fire past the first and second rank of yetis in the opposite cave, where it landed and exploded engulfing the first four and the two hiding behind them in a fire ball.  The Ranger shot arrows trying to assassinate one of the yeti; it took all three of his arrows to bring one of the beasts down!  The Druid cast flaming Sphere into the midst of the yeti, awaking their fear of fire, if the fireball had not done that.  The yeti counterattack was savage.  They attacked with two claw attacks and a fearsome yell which froze their targets in fear.  The paladin and the Storm Cleric fell victim to this, and they were fast for large creatures, faster than them.  The cleric of Xeric cast beacon of Hope above the battlefield, because it looked like the Paladin was likely going to need some healing quickly, again.  The others would need healing too, the yetis began to rip the party asunder.  

Initially, three of the characters froze under the onslaught, but they were able to shrug of the effects of the initial engagement quickly, it was just luck that the three that froze were the heaviest armoured and were able to block the beast's attacks.  After they shook off the initial effects of the encounter, they brought the fight to the yeti.  The Warlock/Bard seeing the Paladin, once again beleaguered by his exuberance to be the hero, perhaps the paladin with a death wish, was engaging six yetis by himself, cast a Bard spell,Hypnotic Pattern, on five of them to halt their progress on turning the diminutive Paladin into an appetizer in plate-mail.  The ploy was successful and instead of six fearsome white shaggy terrors, he faced one.  

One of the yeti attacked the still frightened Storm Cleric and while rending him was struck by lightning for the offense and knocked back ten feet.  The sound of thunder seemed to regain his mindset and he gave the Yeti a solid and savage hit with his great axe, that opened the yeti up from the top of its breastbone to the bottom of its bowels, eliciting the comment that the yeti smelled worse on the inside than the outside; it died.  The six on the right were methodically burned and worked down and killed while the mounted paladin, charged, disengaged and charged the yetis again and again to the left, by himself.  With the rest of the yetis dead the party turned to support the paladin and his struggles with the second group of yeti.  Granted, the yetis were all under the effects of the Hypnotic Pattern, but still.  After the fight the party went back to camp to lick their wounds and they collectively decided that they were well enough to go after the Fire Giant.  

They surveyed the lair of the Fire Giant and they found him patrolling in military fashion around the portal to the Fire Prison.  Above the portal were several yetis hanging on hooks slowly drying out in the heat to make a yeti jerky.  The party retreated around the edge to await the signal by the ranger that they should attack.  The ranger then set up a couple delaying traps that he hoped might hold off the giant for a round or two and he stalked up to the Giant.  His cloak and boots of Elvenkind made his character into the scariest stalker ever.  Waiting until the Giant was both near to the ranger and with his back to him, the ranger fired a volley of arrows to assassinate him.  Even with the Giant's cast iron frying pan thick armour, the ranger managed to hit the giant twice.  And the battle began, with the giant charging for where the arrows came from and the ranger moving from that place to around the corner.  The party was set up for maximum effect, the Bard/Warlock had his wand of Paralyzation out and ready to fire, the fighter types were spaced out to allow the ranger and the giant to pass between them, so the heavy armoured characters could cut block the giant from the weaker characters and rush to kill the giant if it should  be paralyzed and the Ranger was going to pepper the giant to death with arrows from cover.  Then the Druid stepped out and drew her sporadically effective Wand of a Wonder and zapped the Giant!  

The giant stopped mid charge, thrust his super great sword into the ground and began to do a jig with his hands on his hips and standing in a squat legs kicking out from him and arms rising out above his head mid dance and yelling out the Giant equivalent, "Hey!"  the character's stunned expression said it all, they rushed the dancing giant, timing their attacks for when he's dance made him most vulnerable.  Deprived of sword, the giant lashed out with a kick that went between to combatants.  The giant died with a very confused look on his face, and the Druid put her wand away, believing that her Wand, was the single best wand ever.  

The next day the characters headed out to seek out the demon that the Dragon talked about.  They found it and they charged forth.  The demon decided to fly above the characters and seek out the best target to attack and eat.  The ranger, did not care and fired his bow as quickly as he could to bring it down.  The Druid drew her favourite weapon, her Wand and fired it at the Demon.  The group was held in suspense, waiting for the affect of the wand.  The demon laughed.  The characters laughed, as silver coins began falling out of the Elf's ears for thirty seconds, well after the last of the demons blood had been shed by the party.  The warlock had gathered the thirty coins from the ground and asked the Druid to do that again.  

Next session, the players will go forth and fight the Dragon in the subjective North, as ninth level Charcters!

Problem with Self Diagnosis

The problem with an undiagnosed condition or state is that even though it remains undiagnosed, it is still in play and effect; you just might interpret it as something else.  I believe that my autism has other associated problems.  Like I grew up thinking that love and relationships were linked and sex should only occur with some one you love deeply and this altered me deeply; it may have been the origin of my Demisexuality.  Some definitions.  Demisexual is the belief that you need to love and trust someone before you can become intimate and prematurely entering a sexual relationship would result in problems.  Autism is a spectrum of issues, actually as best as I can figure out a bunch of spectrums that result in a disorder that is unique for every individual.  

I diagnosed myself with Autism in late 2006 and with Demisexuality in late 2015, both after I was thirty.  I believe that the latter was a result of the former, but it may not be.  Anyways living with both of these conditions has warped my perception of myself greatly.  There was the suicide attempt and the profound depression and the unrealistic expectations about relationships and even my sexuality.  

I would think about peers romantically and I would take a lot of time to become interested and then when I was interested I would be besot with them and that was just high school.  After high school relationships became more important and quick—for others.  I slowly became interested in one woman over a few months and later it developed into something huge for me, but in that time, she had five relationships.  After a time I did get a relationship, but it was rushed, I mean it progressed to sex after three physical dates and twenty long emails and fifty hour long telephone calls and it was too soon and it did not work out. (I was serious when I said at I had to really get to know a person).

Later, I found at I would fall in love with women that I worked with, the only problem was that I was ten years older than the median age in my workplaces, a factor of autism and perpetually starting new entry level positions.  But it was then that things started to go wrong.  No diagnosis made me think that there was something wrong with me.  Why was I only attracted to younger women?  Later when I had a job in e school system when I had almost exclusive contact with young teenagers I decided that I must be a pedophile, because I was only attracted to those students that I spent a lot of time with.  And during that time I would date older, my own age.  Those dates would fail, because I had no connection to the person.  Sex would fail spectacularly and I would see it was proof that I was attracted to children.  That thought process strongly affected my choice of career.  I always wanted to be a teacher.  But I would not be a pedophile teacher; oxymoronic in the extreme.  

I did meet a woman, whom I love.  The only problem was that she had a teenage daughter.  I resisted meeting her.  I was afraid.  I pushed her, my girlfriend away because I feared for her daughter.  How could I, a pedophile, be in the same room as a teenager, alone with a teenage young woman?  But I met Natural20 after my diagnosis of demisexuality, and ten years after my Autism diagnosis, but my internal perceptions of my self had not changed.  I called myself a pedophile after I became intimately involved with a young woman, but never actually intimate.  If she had pursued me I would have caved, because I actually loved her, but I set up blocks to prevent that from happening, but I was constantly afraid.  I was attracted to her because I spent hundreds of hours talking with her and as her sounding board for all her problems, not because I was a pedophile.  But in my head, I was one.  

I just realized that I was not a pedophile, but rather I was only spending time with people not of my age for the past ten years and I was forming very strong bonds with these age groups.  If I had been doing the same with people my own age, I would have fallen in love with them too.  I was now allowed to be a teacher, without fear that I would hurt children, except now that I was twice the age of starting teachers, do I really want to throw myself into that career, knowing that it is filled with people who think that teaching is a young person's game.  Natural20 will tell me I can become a teacher if I want to, but I also don't want to start my tenth entry level position.  So.  Diagnosis needs to be done earlier, before it can alter how you think about yourself.

D&D planning session, how to make dragon fights more nail biting

D&D planning session.

These dragon fights are not lasting long enough I am told.  They are awesome, but there is a lack of real danger in them I am told.  The tough part I tell them is that if the dragon gets off its breath weapon off twice in a fight, there will be real deaths.  

The next Dragon is a little stronger than the last one:

 Mature.                20d10 large. +100 proficiency modifier +4

HP 210.  BW 18d6(63)

Damage modifier +5, multi attack bite, claw, claw

bite 2d10, claw 1d6

AC 18.              CR11

Sorcerer level 12.  Spell save DC 17; spell attack modifier +9

12 known spells 6 cantrips 4/3/3/3/2/1  12SP

Distant spell, Empowered spell each costs 1 SP

8 minions

Cantrips: Chill Touch, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation, Ray of Frost, Mage Hand, Message

1: Fog Cloud, 2: Gust of Wind, Invisibility, Misty Step, 3: Gaseous Form, Sleet Storm, Slow, 4: Ice Storm, Polymorph, 5: Cloud Kill, Cone of Cold, 6: Chain Lightning

It might be easier to increase e hit points of the dragon to make the fight last longer, but that feels fake.  The approach to the Dragon cave is treacherous and there is a Remoraz in the area.  If they are attacked be that beast and are forced to engage it, the dragon might use that time to launch an attack on the characters.  The Remoraz is a formidable creature, immune to heat and cold almost as tough as a dragon.  It will require the dragon to aid the characters.  The dragon will say that they could go fight the last dragon, but it needs a week to recuperate from eating the last dragon, but if they insist, he will help them the best he can.  He will haste the characters and cast magic where it will help them.  The fight will be as nasty as I can make it.

I will mention that the weather in the prison is erratic with wind and snow appearing at random, clear skies then blizzard, and then a moment later clear.  That the sky is filled with clouds that seem to be rolling toward them at random.  One such storm seems to be advancing on them.  Then just as the last of the fight is finished, two groups of two air Elementals attack from the left and the right flank.  The point is, the Dragon foe knows about the haste spell and intends to run it down, making the targets exhausted.  The dragon intends on surprising the Dragon ally with a paralyze spell and have him fall out of the sky.  The cleric, will rush to its side.  Two groups of four yeti will attack from the centre right and left, four of them invisible and the elemental Grues will attack up the centre.  The storm heading in, will strike with a bolt of lightning that will strike a single character and then split and strike three others.  The dragon will fly down then from the Fog bank that it created and breathe on the characters, hoping to kill them.  The breath weapon is a 90' cone. Doing 18d6 damage.

Young Dragon ally  14d10 large +42 proficiency modifier +2

HP 119.   BW 12d6(42)

Damage modifier +3, multi attack bite, claw, claw

bite 2d10, claw 1d6

AC 17.                CR7

Sorcerer level 6.  Spell save DC 14; spell attack modifier +6

SP6, Cantrips Ray of Frost, True Strike, 1: Fog Cloud, Magic Missile, 2: Mirror Image, Invisibility, 3: Counter Spell, Haste, Sleet Spell

The just recently revived Dragon will attack with all of its might, what little it has left and try to defend the characters and casting its last Haste spell on the characters. If the characters let the dragon have it's week of rest, it will be stronger but the fight will go down much the same way.  

The trouble is that if the Dragon breathes twice, all the characters will die.  Or enough of them will.  The paladin might survive because he has some pretty defensive feats, but in order to win, he will need to heal another character, which he has never done before.  It could be a total player wipe.  There is a chance the Druid will survive if she is in animal form.  The Cleric will cast Beacon of hope before leaving the area, and she will dash to the aid of he dragon, while the characters fight the dragon's minions.  Hopefully this will make the ordeal more of a nail biting experience.

D&D: Dragon on Dragon fight

It has been a while, everyone showed up.  The Cleric was there.  The Druid, the Fighter, the Paladin, the Ranger; it looked like that Bard/Warlock was not going to make it, but he showed up too.  Everyone was there, they knew why they were there: they were going to fight a dragon, and they had a dragon on their side.  

There were a lot of questions, like why are we going to free this other dragon? It is evil, why would we do this?  And, if we free him wont he just turn around and kill us?  Won't he stay in the area?  What's to stop him from setting up shop right where we live.  These were good questions, but there were simple answers and they involved entering the world around them.  Finally.  The world I built was complex and assuming that it was just like every other world they knew was a mistake.  Winter is passed and it is now Spring, but that spring lasts longer than an Earth like season.  It lasts for the equivalent of six years.  But humans can't fathom such long lasting years, other races can.  Longer lived races measure the passage of time by the long year, the full passage of the seasons, Spring to Spring.  The short lived races use the passage of the two co-orbiting suns as a year, the week that they both disappear behind the third Sun, invisible to all, at the center of the solar system, as the end and the start of the Short Year.  Hey, this means that winter will not be coming back for twelve years, fifteen actually.  Then someone said, "Like in Game of Thrones!". I said no, and killed his character.  

They also asked, what was the Dragon's alignment?  To which I said, I don't know, do you have a way to determine that?  I don't see alignment as fixed in stone, but mutable depending on experiences.   There was a discussion what the characters would be doing before they had a long rest and even if they were going to have a long rest yet, they were pretty strong still and had close to maximum hit points.  They talked with the NPCs and asked them about the other prisons.  They learned that the Fire Prison was in a constant battle between Elementals and Demons and that both sides had powerful dragons and that the battle was pretty even and had been for years, each side looking for recruits or for trade to gain an advantage over the other side.  They also learned about the Water Prison.  Nobody wanted to go there.  People went there and they never came back, maybe the portals out had been destroyed or perhaps some evil had gained supremacy and had locked the area down.  When they spoke to the Dragon, Mreksh, it stated that it had been to all the prisons but he had not been to the Water Prison in fifty years, and doesnt intend to anytime soon… there is something wrong there, but his did mention that it was a vast warm sea with much wild life, including a couple of Turtle-Dragons.  

The choice was to fight the bigger dragon or to fight the lesser dragon.  The greater dragon had co-opted yeti and Elementals to its cause and the lesser a colony of goblins.  Goblins sounded easier to fight than yeti and Elementals.  The Mreksh told them that the Goblin colony had been nurtured by his enemy for nearly a century and he had been training them and breeding the colony for that time.  When they approached the cave entrance, there was signs that the goblins had been there for a long time: the cave was walled off to a height of ten feet, the wall made of snow and ice had battlements. The cave entrance was 150 feet wide and it looked like if they were prepared for an attack, they would man the parapets and hold off any foe here.  Out side the walls they are joined by two familiar Bugbears, the ones that they battled beside when they defeated the lesser temples of Fire and Water.  Using a common language, the bugbears told a story of the betrayal of the the Cleric of Air, who sacrificed the Bugbears when he had gained the trolls as allies.  They joined up with the characters.  

The Ranger set out as a diversion and a Trojan horse, using his natural and unnatural stealthiness, Cloak and Boots of Elvenkind.  He sneaks past the wall and discovers that it is manned by only eight goblins, but they are keeping the other characters out of battle and just out of range by their bow fire.  The Survivors led by Gank were heading up the opposite side of the wall, but since they were not magically stealthy, were moving slowly.   Additionally the heaviest armoured characters were advancing slowly to try to bring the attention of the goblin archers on them exclusively to give the humans a chance.  The dragon moved behind the goblins invisible to them.  The ranger targeted the first goblin and took aim and fired from total surprise, three rapid shots, to hits and it was then that he realized that these were not normal goblins, the fighter and the Paladin charged forward, e paladin on his mount and the fighter just running flat out.  The eight humans rose as on and targeted goblins and fired.  The dragon landed behind goblins and lashed out with his two claws and bite attack.  The goblins were injured but not one had died.  The ranger took aim and fired his arrows again, this time finally killing one.  The battle lasted longer than it should have, bunt the battle was won.  Eight elite goblins were dead and no alarm had been sounded.  

The path to victory was filled with a lot of caution.  After the wall the group moved with purpose across the snow field, until one person found the first trap.  After that they moved slowly in single file checking for traps along the route.  The next cave entrance they found was well lit with a giant bonfire that used no wood to burn.  The most observant among the party thought that the bonfire looked at them.  It was a Fire Elemental that was trapped by a magic circle.  Around the fire elemental there was twenty goblins farming massive mushrooms that were growing in the heat provided by the elemental.  The Druid cast a sleet storm spell to immobilize the goblins and make them easier targets.  The party ganged up on them and they proved to be normal goblins and not elite goblins.  After the fungus crop was ruined and the goblins dead, the party approached the elemental, using the fighter's sword as translator, they asked how the Elemental got captured and they asked what it would do if they freed the creature.  It's response was much to the liking of the party, it wanted to burn goblins.  They freed the Elemental.  

The next passage was wide and long, the entire way was glare ice with a dusting of snow on the top, so it was especially slippery and the party advanced at a crawl.  When they reached the end of the passage, it seemed that their progress had been noted and there was a host of goblins waiting for them, about fifty in total.  There was so many of them that they filled the entrances to two caves, one that was a dead fall of 20' into the next cavern and the other the living area for the colony.  Each of the goblins was at least ten feet apart and armed with bows and battle axes.  They were ready to pepper the group and they were far enough apart that if the characters had potent magic, it would be a quarter as effective.  

The Fire elemental wasted no time with tactics, it went for the first goblin and set it aflame before traveling to the next and the next, until it had moved as far as it could go.  Many of the goblins were common goblins and they roasted where they stood, but some of them were elite and they ran burning from the elemental.  Seeing the numbers of foes before the group, the Mreksh decided that it made sense to reduce goblin numbers than to save itself in reserve for fighting the bigger dragon, so it swooped in low exhaling a frigid blast of cold air.  Half of the goblins were engulfed in the cold air, the elites were surprised by the sudden attack and were caught in unawares.  All the goblins in the frigid air were frozen solidly, and they died.  In response, the dragon that they had been hoping to ambush, who was also invisible, magically appeared, jaws agape, and frigid air streaming from its mouth as well.  All but two characters, the paladin and the fighter, were engulfed, and they were covered with hoar frost, after throwing themselves to the side of the blast of Winter.  The eight Survivors and one of the bugbears turned into instant popsicles and died. The characters hit by the breath weapon thought that it was their last breath, but they all survived, some though barely.  The Warlock only survived because he had a premonition a second before the attack and he had buried his body in the snow.  

The appearance of the second dragon was a shock to the first dragon.  The frenzy that he warned them about was on him and he fought against its irrationality of it.  He cast a spell on two of the characters before following his most basic instincts.  It then locked jaws around the bigger dragon and it around its smaller.  The spell was a twinned Haste spell and it affected the Fighter and the Paladin.  They charged into battle faster than they thought possible.  The paladin struck first and blasted the dragon with holy might, the Warlock blasted the dragon with a paralyze from his wand.  The Druid struck with her Wand of a Wonder, blasting a hole in the ground under the dragon.  The fighter lashed out at the beast smithing it hard with a series of well placed critical hits.  The dragon ally bought the Dragon enemy down to the ground, their entangled bodies thrashing around.  The paladin drove down on the beast with his lance and struck hard delivering another holy smite.  The warlock attempted to paralyze the dragon foe again, and the Druid used her wand too.  The result was more comical, as an invisible marching band appeared half way between the target and played loud music while walking back and forth.  The fighter again got lucky with a solid series of hits, and two critical hits at that.  The cleric's spiritual axe s'more the creature killing it dead.