D&D best session yet

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

HP 320.  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

Mreksh Adult white dragon.            17d10 large  +68 proficiency modifier +3

HP 196.   BW 15d6(53)

Damage modifier +4, multi attack bite, claw, claw

bite 2d10, claw 1d6

AC 17.          CR8

Sorcerer level 9.  Spell save DC 15; spell attack modifier +7

10 known spells 5 cantrips 4/3/3/3/1  9SP

Distant spell, each costs 1 SP

Cantrips: Chill Touch 2d8, Minor Illusion, Ray of Frost, Mage Hand, Message

1: Fog Cloud, 2: Gust of Wind, Invisibility, Misty Step, 3: Gaseous Form, Sleet Storm, 4: Ice Storm 2d8, 4d6, Polymorph, 5: Cloud Kill 5d8, Cone of Cold 8d8

The characters received their god given new powers.  The Ranger was given a simple and frequently used power, whisper a prayer to the Grey Warder before attacking and if every attack is successful, the Grey Warder grants him an additional attack.  The fighter was granted a power that gives her temporary hit points when she moves to protect an innocent.  The paladin received a unique spell called Scoria's Lesser Oath.  The Druid was given a power, upon assuming a water creature's form, it would have maximum hit points.  The Cleric was given a power that allowed him to target other creatures besides the one that hit him with Wrath of the storm.  The Atheist got nothing.  

*+*+*+*

The tempo of this session was one that I had agonized over for a while; there was a month long gap between games and my plan was simple.  Have the players battle a difficult creature and the players get ambushed by the evil dragon while they are fighting.  The dragon would paralyze Mreksh and cause him to fall from great height, to die.  Then he would attack the rest of the party, the NPC cleric would rush off to heal the dragon and the dragon would re-enter  the fight before the end, the players would be felled when the Haste spell runs out. And the players win a close fight.  Things changed.

First change, the Dragon has a Polymorph spell that allows it to change to monsters as well as beasts of equal or lesser Challenge Rating.  There is a female Remorhazes in the adventure and it decided to change into a male Remorhazes.  More over, he impregnated the female.  He has a mess of powerful minions, but he is crafty and wants even more powerful minions, so his eight Yetis and three Air Elementals are not the match for one Remorazes not to mention possibly seven.  So months ago he began to cultivate that relationship and the result is six babies and one mother.  Remorhazes are immune to heat and cold, so this a real step up for his minions.  

Moments before the players arrive I finalize my session in my head: the players are attacked by the Female Remorhazes and her six children in a ice field from a crevice in the ice and the dragon disguised as a make Remorhazes emerges and fights the PCs and after they kill him, or make him lose concentration to reveal himself, while his current lesser minions arrive to attack.  Simple but then I get inspired: I have hex map laid out and I put numbers on the edges along the rows and diagonal columns and I get the Players to roll a d12 as I roll 2d12, 3d12, 4d12, and 5d12; the rows have four sets of 12 numbers so that each time as we roll a section of the grid of the glacier drops 20 meters, the ice collapsing.  When the Dragon is revealed, the section dropping is bigger, the hex and all the hexes beside the hex.  The effect made the players feel like the battle map was coming apart around them, even though I knew that if was going to have a marginal effect.  I also put a rule in that if they are standing on the edge they need to make a athletics check to see if the floor under them collapses, Dex save to throw themselves off the section.  Both checks are very easy, 10 and 10 only one ally failed.

The overall effect was that the players all felt that they were going to die and that they had a really good time.  I would say it was the best session yet.  The dragon as Remorhazes had 195 hp, and the mother had maximum 289hp.  The babies had less than half of the suggested hp at 40-50hp.  The yetis had 51hp and the air Elementals had 90hp the Remorhazes moved they expanded the crack automatically 

+*+*+*+*+

The morning dawned and the weather was exactly as they all expected the weather to be like, cold approaching bitterly cold, brief freezing rain giving way to ice pellets and sleet, snow falling in between the gusts that ranged between gale force and cyclone quality.  The snow was bad, little chunks of stone speeding as fast as arrows was something that happened to all of them at one time or another.  The Paladin had extracted a binding oath from the Dragon Mreksh the day before and the Warlock Cael had summoned up a familiar in the form of a rook and sent it to explore the region that they would be going the next day.  Hours later the bird returned and gave its report, that sounded more like resonating croaks and included much cocking of its head and pecking of a map.  The Raven identified yetis and a dragon and swirls of wind.  It found the dragon's hoard too.  

Mreksh also imparted what he knew of the path ahead, it told them about the cracked Glacier with the unpleasant multi legged ice creature that was bigger than it and was immune to cold.  But he stressed that it was a singular threat.  Mreksh also told them that the threat it posed was minimal to the threat of being seen by the dragon along the way and engaging it out in the opn where it could strafe ground targets.  They decided that it would be best to move across the quarter mile of glacier as quickly as possible than take a much longer indirect route.  

The Ranger took the lead.  He was almost invisible with his Elven Cloak and Elven Boots and his ability to walk along treacherous terrain.  The rest were spaced further apart along the route spaced far enough apart so if there was any attack by a Dragon it would only affect a few of them.  The Paladin mounted on his sure-footed giant goat came next, flanked by the slow yet steady dwarf.  Next came the priest of Stomida, the Druid of Xeric, her companion Ceraza, priest of Xeric,  and the Bugbear companion of Cael.  The two Orc companions and Cael came last.  Cael and the dragon were invisible both trying to make the party to be smaller than it was.  The other party members were dressed against the cold and ice with yeti fur coats and yeti leggings with crampons in the feet.  At a distance it was hoped that the swirls of the wind and snow would obscure the white figures on the background of white.  

Before heading out the ranger used his artifact to try to see what the gods said the result of their expedition: Danger was the result.  Half an hour and half way across the ice field, the ranger had already guided the group past several fissures in the ice before leading the group past yet another gap in the ice that lead into the heart of the glacier.  The paladin approached too near to the edge for his comfort and his sense of foreboding spiked and he turned with an arrow notched ready to fire as the edge of the fissure collapsed and a massive blue insectoid head emerged next to the Paladin, its jaws and mandible flexed experimentally as if in anticipation to gorging itself on the paladin and its mount in one bite, that's how big it's jaws were.  

The Party was quick to recover from their dismay and the launched a co-ordinated attack.  The ranger whispered to his god as he loosed three arrows in succession and then reached and launched a forth, a gift shot provided by his devotion to the Grey Warder.  The dwarf quickly launched an attack on the beasty's head and the priest of Stomida circumvented the tail end of the beast to attack it with a radiant flame burst. The NPCs rushed forward to add their might to the battle, but since they were spaced out, they would have to run to get to the battle.  Ceraza cast a spell, Beacon of Hope above the battle so that healing would be accelerated.  Vistra having landed a couple blows on the creature discovered that her footing was being eroded and she had to throw herself away from the collapsing ice edge.  

When the great Ice Beast attacked it missed the target of the attack, the fleeing Vistra, but it was then that a surprise was waiting, for as she attacked the eges of the fissure expanded and extended as six smaller versions emerged beside the rift.  They were newly hatched and voraciously hungry!  Moolite the Paladin seemed to be holding off his attack for the right moment found that his path to the mother was now blocked by a child and he was forced to engage with a lesser evil, he tested the child insects mettle with his lance and smoke it dead in two strokes.  Cael seing that most of the party was far from the combat inspired outlying combatants to run into the combat zone and engage, and at the same time he moved slightly off to a point he would be able to fig at a distance; a personally proven good strategy, but this time flawed: the ice erupted next to him and another character as a slightly smaller male insect broke out and tried to eat him.  The dragon Mreksh circled above and saw that if they were going to help it fight and kill the other dragon, it was going to have to reveal itself in this fight, sooner than it wished.  It landed and cast a haste spell that he twinned and targeted the Ranger and the Fighter.  It then engaged with one of the hungry babies.

The shaking caused by the eruption of the Remorhazes from the ice field caused a unforeseen reaction—the ice field began to collapse.  Chaos soon stalked the battlefield as five little squirming baby insects the size of horses crawled across the I scape looking to devour people whole with bites that when they connected tore chunks out of the person once as much as 25hp damage in one hit.  The unstated thought was if the baby did that, what horror would it be if the adult connected a hit?  It was not long before this was answered.  Three rounds into the fight things seemed to spiral out of control.  The Remorhazes mother was Hot Pink thanks to the Wand of a Wonder and a second use of the wand had apparently done nothing, the Druid was targeted by the Remorhazes that she had just used the wand on.  Its attack engulfed her from head to waist and had done over forty hit points of damage.  Her companion seeing her distress ran forward and healed her for most of that damage, thanks to the Beacon of hope.  One of the Orc companions fell to his apparent death as the ice patch he was standing on collapsed.  Other characters seeing the danger of one of these Ice monsters swallowing a party member and since they had been concentrating on the mother, who was nearly dead, the other was hardly damaged, that this was a bad development.  The Druid decided that she was going to transform into an animal that she hoped would be too big to swallow, a cave bear.  She was wrong.  The Remorhazes snapped back his head and the cave bear slid down her throat into its stomach.  The Druid swore as a bear.  The ranger drew his flaming Longsword and attacked the baby Remorhazes and watched as the sword hit and damaged, but the flames were utterly ineffective; they were immune to Cold and Fire!  A few of the characters had decided that they would continue to pummel the Mother and the babies, but things were really not good now, on the periphery of the fight, eight yetis had appeared and they were charging towards the fray.  

The ranger who was engaged with a baby saw the yetis approaching and thought that it might be better if he further way from that charging line.  His haste affected speed moved him much closeted to the other end of the battle and he continued to pepper his targets.  Vistra ran up to the male Remorhazes and used her speed enhanced attack combo to attack three times and her attack had a surprising result; the beast's outer armour had been exposed hitting an artery splashing the ground with blood and caused a deflation of the insect, the beast flexed and undulated, vomiting up a nearly dead and digested bear, and when the shuddering was finished large white wings had emerged and the insect form had broken apart to reveal a smaller, yet more deadly White Dragon.  The dragon turned his head toward the bulk of the combat and exhaled.  The air temperature dropped about 150°C in less than a second, the paladin engaging the Remorhazes now dragon rolled to the snow shield raised, now covered with the ice of frozen air, the indomitable Fighter barely succeeded her save and the cleric of Stomida saved as well, but succumbed to his injuries.  The other priest of Xeric took a full blast and her concentration on the beacon of hope went out.  When the iced air sublimated off the people, all e NPCs in the fight were down and a few of the characters too.  The players dragon was on the other side of the battle dealing with the yetis, who as it turned out were not resistant to cold damage.  Three tornadoes (air elementals) emerged from the yetis and charged across the field to snipe and kill standing characters.  

Things were looking worse and worse, but as a bright side, it appeared that the architect of this battle had been revealed and the mother of the Remorhazes were dead along with four of her children.  The yetis were almost dead too.  The Druid was in good standing as since her form as a bear had absorbed most of the last horrible seconds of combat.  She healed her companion Ceraza, returning the favour of half a minute before, returning her to life.  Only one of the dead on the field was dead.  The others were suffering from convulsions and in their death throws.  Ceraza cured the spared the priest of Stomida and he rose just as an elemental flew phased and pummeled him to death again.  The Druid stood in the field of battle and swore that there was something she could do.  The dragon also looked upon the field and saw some glaring issues and he spun in place and breathed again, knocking a few of the characters that had not been hit by the first blast of frigid air with another close to its equal, the fighter was very unlucky and was hit by this blast as well.  The glacier looked like Swiss cheese; since the dragon rose from the skin of the Remorhazes it had begun to collapse at an accelerated rate.  The Druid cast a mass heal and she blanketed the region with healing energy and people who had been gasping their last breath, stabilized and were even healed.  The Paladin cast haste on himself and charged to help the Storm Priest arriving I time to fight off the air elemental while the baby Remorhazes, approached.  Ceraza heal the cleric again and the paladin rode off to kill the Dragon.  The Remorhazes killed the priest again.  Mreksh had already flown and dropped on the enemy dragon and fought it up and close and personal to prevent it from laying waste to the now fragile party.  The Orc ranger that had fallen through the ice finally climbed out and began firing upon the dragon and the surviving enemies.  The last baby Remorhazes was killed as it worried upon the Half-Orc's torso and Ceraza healed him yet again, one final time!  And the party managed to kill the dragon. 

The whole party stopped and silence reigned for the first time in a minute; the Ranger and the Fighter collapsed exhausted from racing around under a haste spell.  The last two air Elementals flew off.  The cratered ice field stilled and the party was finally able to rest.  Well until Mreksh began to noisily devour the dead dragon.  It tossed a necklace off of one of its claws and continued to eat.  A buzzing ioun stone that was missed in the combat hit the ground and the dragon dropped it near the necklace.  

The treasure, unguarded was still a chore to uncover.  It was located deep in a pool that's surface had been iced over.  Well more exactly, the fire gem had melted the treasure out a block of ice twenty-five feet thick and heated the bottom three fifths of the pool.  The hoard was small but pretty valuable.  There was a magic Great axe of giant slaying and a gem of seeing along with the rest of the magic and the treasure.  The necklace on the dragon was a necklace of transformation, that allowed a wide range of creatures that a shape-changer could change into, Druids could transform in to creatures similar to them, humanoids and giants and as she an elf, she could transform into fey as well.  The dragon could transform into creature's of ice and Draconic creatures instead of the limitations of Polymorph.  The Ioun Stone was of leadership, and it raised the Paladin's charisma by 2.

Next they will have to decide where they will go and if they will be waiting for Mreksh to come with them.  

What'cha Doing?

Reading instead of writing this winter.  It is Spring now and this winter I have read 14 books.  Four have been Tanya Huff's SciFi series Confederation.  Four have been from Brandon Sanderson, my favourite Author.  Three have been part of the Murderbot series of Martha Wells, also by her a last (for now) book of the Raksura.  A personal favourite superhero themed book based in Canada, They Promised me the Gun Wasn't Loaded, was consumed heartily.  The newest Peter Grant novel was read.  

On my list for Spring includes two more Confederation novels, a Steam Punk Zombie novel set on the Orient Express (Reverant Express) and a George RR Martin novel, half brick.  There are others.  Oh!  Michelle Sagara released the latest in her series I was reading last year.  I picked it up and I had a third conversation with her.  I was never enamoured by our conversations, but this time I really enjoyed it and nearly spent the day talking with her and missing my regular game.  Turns out that Michelle Sagara used to play Dungeons and Dragons.  She has a couple other series that I might pick up later, one that she calls high magic—although our discussion started because I sad her setting I was reading was high magic that resembled technology and she maintained that it was no different than technology.

Anyways reading and planning D&D sessions, writing the session up for here and posting a cleaned up version for my players.  That's what I have been doing, that and working all winter long and spending time with Natural20.  I miss writing but I am giving it up for something better.  Spring is here.  I am watching more movies too.  My friend Chris died.  I am running a game for his children and their friends.  Using that trip to do stuff for the family, at least that is the plan.  Listen to podcasts.  

Politics in early 2019

Politics has been at a fevered pitch recently.  There was the SNC Laveland affair in federal politics—which has been a study in partisan politics.  The corporation was investigated because it did a few bad things.  It bribed government officials in a country where bribing was a common thing.  There was more, but what ever they did, it was illegal.  The company will face the justice system and they will lose government contracts and maybe people will get laid off.  Everything is unclear.

What is clear is that the last government put space between the The justice system and the Office of the Prime Minister.  The Prime Minister sets who is the Attorney General, the Attorney General selects the person who interfaces with the justice system, meaning that the Prime Minister can't direct what is happening in the justice system or put pressure on the person who does.  

The controversy was that the Attorney General felt like the Prime Minister wanted to control the situation but the Attorney General was not having any of it and everyone was unhappy.  Then he shuffled his Cabinet and she moved positions to veterans affairs, he wanted to give her Native affairs, but she did not want it because she was a Native and thought that there was a conflict.  She later resigned and said that she thought that she was being punished because of the conflict as Attorney General.  

Mostly, the entire 'scandal' has a different feel.  I think that the entire Parlimentary system, built by men, has a very aggressive feel to it, and some people will never adjust to the oppositional nature of the setting.  There have been three women who have resigned because of this affair.  A veteran politician and a woman said as much, these are not my words.  She thought that the women were not used to the way politics was done in the Capitol.  The real question is, is Politics being done corrrectly.  Something that has worked with men for hundreds of years, might not work with all women.  It might not work with the majority of women.  It mig mean that to be inclusive in politics, politics will have to change.  

We have spent months on this scandal so far and the Concervative Party wont let it go.  Mostly they wont let it go because there is going to be an election in half a year and they don't want people to be focused on their links to White Supremicist organizations.  As Natural20's husband said recently, "It is not clear that Sheer is a bigot himself, but it is clear that Bigots are people whose votes he wants".  

The complication is that at the same time that the discussions were occurring in Ottawa, there was a Chinese National being held in custody waiting for deportation to the USA, for breaking a US law.  The Chinese government tried to pressure Canada to release the national and even arrested two canadians for reasons, but mostly a tit for tat ploy.  The canadian government said that the rule of law would prevail and there was nothing that they could do.  The scandal suggested to the Chinese that Canadian Law was in fact exactly like Chinese law and flexible, which it was not.  The Chinese will probably sentence the Canadians to life in prison or death.  Which is a lesson, China and many other nations on the path to Democracy are really far away from true democracy.  They are so used to doing business their way that they assume that everyone does business the same way.

A week ago a lone gunman entered a mosque in New Zealand after issuing and manifesto on the Internet, praising Donlad Trump and White Supremists, logged on to Facebook and streamed a shooting spree to the platform.  In this shooting spree he shot numerous  people in one mosque, and went back to his car to reload and returned to 'double tap' his victims to make sure they were dead.  Then he drove to another mosque to repeat his atrocity and he shot another group of praying people.  This time someone from that mosque ran after him and attacked him with one of the shooters abandoned guns shattering his windsheild and causing him to flee for his life.  I am sure he felt like a victim after that.  He killed 51 people and wounded an equal number.  New Zealand and the world condemned the incident and the country quickly went into action to prevent future similar crimes.  

Meanwhile, people were offering Thoughts and Prayers.  Again.  Except someone suggested that Thoughts and Prayers for the first mass shooting did nothing to stop the second or subsequent mass shootings, so maybe thoughts and prayers do nothing.  And Right in America, shit on her for suggesting that.  There will be another Mass Shooting in the world soon, it will most likely be in the United States, where thoughts and prayers are offered to victims of mass shootings.

Provincial politics is heating up.  The Ontario Concervatives, fighting off their links to White Supremacy groups themselves are constantly harping that the Carbon Tax will suck money from people's pockets and saying that their environmental program will be better, except they don't have one.  They are saying there is no problem.  Oil companies have come forward to say that the carbon tax is a good tax.  But no, the liberals have imposed it so it must be bad.  In Alberta, they have a carbon tax for years.  There the tax has been used to fund transit systems.  Imagine that, a tax that funds programs that reduce carbon emmissions. 

The way is works is companies and households are taxed according to the pollution they produce, because pollution must be cleaned up and that costs money.  If the household or e company reduces the pollution it produces, it pays less tax.  Simple.  

The federal tax works the same way, but has a carrot too.  The government will give every resident a rebate to cover some of the tax that they will pay over a year.  If they reduce their carbon footprint they recieve the same rebate and pay less taxes.  Simple.  The tax is supposed to scale, so at the largest producers are insentivized to reduce pollution sooner, before the tax increases the next year.  It is getting easier for people to reduce their footprint.  For example more and more car manufactures are producing electric cars.  Electric cars will not pay any tax on gasoline, and in Ontario, none of the electricity is produced with fossil fuels, so instant lower footprint.  Lower the heating costs of your home, turn the thermostat down, get better insulation, switch to natural gas, switch to electricity switch to solar heating.  Lower your footprint, pay less taxes.  Simple

The US senate passed a bill to end Donald Trump's false emergency.  It passed with a 59-41 margin.  Donald Trump vetoed it.  They need to pass the bill 67-33 to make it unstoppable, but getting 12 republicans to vote for the first bill must have been a nearly impossible task, getting another eight to switch sides nearly impossible, but I just realized what the emergency powers would allow him, Trump, to do.  He can take the money from any program and use it to build his useless wall. He could take it from the Affordable Care Act that gives millions of Americans health insurance.  He could take it from NASA, he could take it from any place in the government.  He could take it from disaster relief funds, he could take it from Education.  He could doc the pay of every federal employee.  He could say the Parks get no money this year.  What is clear is at the wall will be more expensive than $10 billion and Mexico will not be paying for it.  So given that list of places Trump could take the money from, it is unlikely the democrats will ever get the 2/3 necessary to prevent a future bill from being vetoed.  

On the other hand, there are a number of states that have passed laws that prevent voters college votes from going to anyone that does not receive most of the popular vote.  Washington has also passed a law that prevents a name from appearing on the ballot who has not released their tax records to the public.  

Politics.  It has been nasty all round.  Yet still I hope and participate.

D&D; Planning Gods

Roleplaying in Dungeons and Dragons is about fantasy becoming real, and I have decided to make the fantasy real by making the fantasies of our world unquestionably real.  Religion, gods are real.  How I have done that is to make religions into cults; the old definition of cults—secret knowledge that is passed along as a religious figure increases in power, the knowledge gain in the cult powers the spell advance.  I have also added bonuses for when the true Gods notice when you do their will.  They don't care why you do it, but that it has been done.  The blessing is given to whom ever completes the requirement for the blessing.  The blessing of the god is pretty significant, it might make you want to repeat it, do the will of the God in question.  The ability to cast a higher spell than you are capable of, for discovering forgotten knowledge, might lead you to look for greater and greater lost knowledges.  Pulling off elaborate pranks to receive Advantage on dice roles, might be a reason to become more chaotic by pulling pranks on party members.  Giving money to the poor to gain a blessing.  Killing things to get a blessing.  Killing those that use Necromancy. Holding an oath with difficulty.  To get a special advantage, to get power.  Because the gods always honour people who do their bidding—something that never happens in our world, because gods are fantasy.

Fantasy becomes real in a fantasy world.  In Fantasy, gods are real.

This level the characters have reached Ninth level.  The clerics have been getting a steady introduction to the Cult of their gods, every time they gain a spell level increase, they learn a new facet of their religion.  The druid and the cleric both get this affect at ninth level, I have decided that the other characters will get this bonus as well, or at least something special from their god, a congratulations for all the good work they have done.  So far I have done a good job on this aspect, I hope it continues.

The Cleric of Stomida:

1st level; the Weather Goddess, the Goddess of Agriculture, is also the Goddess of jokes and lies

3rd level; those that get away with elaborate pranks get her Blessing.  ( advantage on all saving throws for a day.

5th level; know your base.  When the Red Sun eclipses the Yellow, the day is dark; the green leaves and the the green in the feilds all go black, but they do not wilt or die, for they are nourished by her light.  Stomida is e goddess of Agriculture.

7th level; when the Red Sun is dominant, so are you!  (cast one spell that day as one spell level higher)

9th level; Stomida is the Goddess of Storms and storms are erratic in nature.  The Tempest will often leave a a simple structure undamaged and obliterate a strong one.  (When Wrath of Storms is evoked, you may chose another target, other than the one that provoked)

The Clerics and Druids of Xeric

1st level; Xeric dispises undead as they are a defilement of the life cycle.

3rd level; those that kill someone who interrupts the natural cycle of life have his ire.  Those who kill these enemies have Xeric's blessing.  (Xeric's blessing allows the use of raise dead and resurrection spells without gaining Xeric's ire.)

5th level; when the moon of Xeric is bright and the night is clear one needs not worry about seeing at night.  Cast your eyes up to him, his gazer is filled with blue and white; the white is always changing swirls upon the blue like clouds over water.

7th level; when casting spells made of water, one only needs to say Evoke Xeric's name to have him take over control of a spell, no concentration needed

9th level; for the home of Xeric is water and is constantly in motion and is not a place for the weak, water creatures are the highest form and they, for a Druid, will have maximum (hp) strength

For the other characters, they have a lesser connection with their gods.  There is a paladin of Scoria, a ranger who revers the Gray Warder and a fighter who fights for Hestuim.  

The blessing of Scoria is granted when you keep an oath through great temptation, the blessing allows you to make a Greater Oath of Scoria, the penalty for breaking the Greater Oath is a wisdom save, instant death or half maximum hp damage.  If the Oath is freely given, the oath breaker takes 200% maximum hp damage, save for half.

A ninth level paladin gets to cast as a third level spell, Scoria's Lesser Oath, which causes the casting Paladin's leve x d8 damage, constitution save for half.  Cast as a ritual with a knowing participant the oath breaker takes the paladin's level x8 damage no save.

The Ranger.

The Ranger as a class sucks in 5th edition.  A ranger knows its quarry inside and out, they know how to hurt them.  When a ranger hits a enemy creature, they add their Proficency bonus to the damage.

As a faithful follower of the Gray Warder, by uttering praise to the Gray Warder when fighting a chosen enemy you gain advantage.  One must praise the Gray Warder with every attack, if all attacks are successful, you gain another attack as a reaction to your success.

The Fighter

As a warrior dedicated to Hestium, if you should protect an innocent from harm or death, you shall gain 5 temporary hit points, only one gain per innocent.  

The is one player who when I asked him what deity his character worships, he said none.  He said his character believes in gods, but thinks that they are just more powerful people.  No belief means no favour from any god.  No special powers for him…

… except that leaves him open to greater influence.  At tenth level he will have a dream, sponsored by Drogath offering him power.  A little at first then once every level a bit more.  Because its not fair that they should get special powers and not him.  The first time at tenth level he will offered a equalizing payment.  Every-time another character invokes praise of their god to gain power, he can equalize things by stating the unfairness of it all, that's not fair, you cheated, or something similar and you will get a one point advantage, +1 to hit, +1 save, +1 ability check, +1 to your spells save threshold; only one.  At 11th level he will be offered a greater temptation, by 12th level it will become clear that Drogath is behind the offering, shift alignment one step to evil…

… if he is not tempted at 12th level he is granted membership in to the Priesthood of the Hidden goddess and he can see her in her temple, reveal her on her holy days, and see the Blue Sun, he also is granted her blessing.  Her priests do not get spells.  A truly agnostic god.  If he is not tempted to evil, he would be granted the Blessing of Scoria, for staying true though temptation, and get a greater Oath of Scoria.

D&D plans for the future

As my campaign gets close to tenth level and the end of this module I consider a few things.  I think, do I want to continue this game on?  Do I want to start something new, a new game that game I had started with my friend who died.  I want to continue that game, restart it.  Ask who in the current game wants to play it and ask others if they want in, if there is not a full group.

If they don't want to stop, I have a lot of material, like

***SPOILERS***

… like the places that the characters have their land grants in are spread out and diverse.  They are areas that are problems and have problems for the Duke of Greysteel, but they are also sites where he might want new settlement and new villages, i.e. growth.  

The mountain land he is hoping for mineral independence and smithing of weapons.  The area south of Hommlet is filled with monsters, but has an old town in it, the old town from before the temple that was set up.  Those both have threats that might end two of the characters.  The mountain has a dragon, a red Dragon.  The abandoned town has undead and demons.  The other locations are benign, in theory.  The Southern reach toward Jarda has a bridge and an inn and a few dozen farmsteads, but a bigger river than Greysteel, it could be a port if it is properly developed.  The other two areas are along the Northern boarder, one between Neloar and Hommlet and e other further East.  The Duke wants the fighter and the paladin to be kept busy and possibly overwhelmed.  The boarder region he wants secured, and the south he wants more taxes brought into his coffers and access to bigger markets and trade.  

The thing is if the Red Dragon is defeated the area becomes administrative.  If the Undead and the evil is destroyed, the one that created the Temple of Elemental Evil, there is a town ready to be repaired and settled.  The land between Neloar and Hommlet is boring.  The other two are gateways to the outside.  The Southern settlement is close to Jarda, about a week and a half journey, but the river is navigable and would end up by the a city, just a week's journey down river, fighting a war with a mighty empire that stretches from there all the way to the Great River, some five thousand kilometers down river.  If only they knew that.  The land to the East is set up near an ancient road that leads to the Orc lands.  The road crosses a steep river valley whose river goes to Neloar.  The river valley is spanned by and ancient bridge, that is 500 feet above the river and stretches a kilometer with a single concrete span, with a single arch.  The bridge and the road is straighter than an arrow and less weathered than stone. 

Four adventure leads.  A journey into the past, a journey into the future and two journeys for now.

Also there is the artifact sword bow, the Sword reward from the Paladin of Jarda that attacks once for every attack made against the weilder… I think a missed attack gets a -10 attack swing and a hit gets a full attack, otherwise he might charge through enemies just to get them to attack him with opportunity attacks.  Still -10 to hit would hit a lot of attackers.  

The white dragon they are helping, every time they help him he will change subtly.  The Ranger will be most likely to notice the changes as it slowly changes from a white Dragon to a Silver Dragon, moves from Lawful Evil to Lawful Good.  It was Lawful Neutral when they first met it, having formed many mutual defense oaths with groups.  

D&D for youngsters

How to introduce character creation to younger kids when they were only used to someone else making their character and they never had to accept random, they never got to discover their character.

They get a choice on what race they are, but they have to chose from the following, human, elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling, half-Orc and Half-elf.  Their parents are all successful adventurers in the past and they came together many years ago and settled a town together out of the wilderness.  They cleared the fields and planted crops, raised cattle and set up shops.  They got married and had children.  

Fifteen years later after growing up on the stories of fighting battles and defeating hoardes of goblins and vanquishing dragons, saving princesses, the children from these stalwart heroes want to go out and make a name for themselves too.  These children have advantages that their parents never had, they have money and they still have treasure; they have friends in high places and there is a whole bunch of people in the area that know each of the adventuring trades and will train these children.  The first born children of the adventurers at the age of fifteen are getting ready to apprentice to the various trades.

The first day the children are given a task by the people of the village.  Winter is coming and they need firewood chopped, split and stacked to dry.  It is long hard work that must be done but the farmers and the trades people alike and it is something that they are already familiar with, but the local woodsman has told them that he will be watching them and taking notes on how they do roll d6 every two days for six days and one the seventh day.  The first for how many trees they chop down and drag out of the forest, the second for sawing the logs up, the third for splitting the logs into wood and the last day stacking the wood into cords.  4d6 drop the lowest and that is strength score.

The next week the sheep herder is taking the flock out to the summer pasture and she needs some help.  The spring lambs are very playful and they keep running away from her and playing in the tall grass, she needs them rounded up and brought into the fold.  After the sheep are on the pasture, she needs to harvest the wool from the older sheep and to do that they need to cut it off shear the sheep.   After all the wool has been gathered she needs the wool cleaned and carded and to do that they need to brush the wool out and remove all the seeds and burs that the wool has gathered.  On the last day, she wants you to spin the cleaned and carded wool into yarn.  4d6 drop the lowest and that is a dexterity score.

And so on.

It went well.  Characters got made and they were really good randomly generated characters, better than random.  9 was the lowest stat and that was on the fourth character, the fourth wheel, coincidentally the only 18 was on that character too.  But now I have to make the adventure and it is going to be tough because I have already identified one of the players as a "Mad Scientist"; he wants to break the rules and be amoral—he wants to see how far he can go.  Natural20 thinks that it is because of modern sandbox video games you can do anything with no repercussions.  

The village they grew up in was settled by successful adventurers.  They took their gold and magical items and did not build massive castles; they built a village and exchanged the sword for the hoe.  They married and raised children.  They grew up with stories about dragons and demons and treasure troves from first hand stories.  They remember when the dragon swooped down hearing about the wealth of the area and how no one died.  The dragon lived too it was subdued and told to spread the word that no one should ever come to this village or they would meet death.  So, life was safe and boring.  When the first children started to go looking for adventure, the parents decided to put a stop to it and to train their children properly.  Then out fit them and send them out into the world, where hopefully they would live and come back and settle down.  

They were apprenticed for two years and then they left together to look for adventure.  When they got through to the next village they found that it was very different.  The paint was peeling on the buildings, the bridge looked like it was in poor repair.  The road was covered in weeds.  They went into the bar they had a few drinks, insulted the local folk and started a fight.  The fight was a big fight, as most people were not trained warriors and they were.  Yes, still first level, but trained.  The sorcerer started the fight but the Ranger, he started throwing tables and he was the one that decided to pull steel, but then thought better of it.  When the militia was called in to break up the fight, he started to punch them and beat them with clubs made of broken furniture.  When they took him down, finally, they gave him a very thorough beating and kicking afterwards.  

When they regained consciousness, the sorcerer was bruised, the cleric was good and the Ranger w at one hit point with a couple broken ribs, but still wanted to fight more.  Brought to the magistrate and asked who they were and where they were from, the sorcerer told him the truth and the magistrate asked if he was the son of The great General, Paladinlord Brighthammer.  His response was, "He was a General?"  And that set the tone for the rest of the adventure for that character.  The magistrate told the party that if they worked to clear up some problems in the village, he would overlook the bar fight and not send a note off to their home at Victory, asking for the General, to come pick up his son.  

There was a little disturbance in the graveyard, and there were some woodsmen that we're chased out of the local forest by giant spiders, one was poisoned, and there was a disruption in trade from the road to the south.  If they could get to the root of these problems he would forget about contacting their parents.  But they would have to check in once every two days, or the morning of the second night, he would send for the 'General'.

*^*^*^*^*^*

Running for kids means that there will always a bit more of the Mad Scientist in their characters, but I expect that they will get that out of their system quickly when he rewards start coming to them.  

The area is just meant to be a starting region.  There is a Necromancer that has set up in the area, in the deep forest.  His presence and his minions some goblins are responsible for everything in the village.  The shenanigans in the graveyard are the goblins digging up graves for materials for the Necromancer.  The creation of undead and the activities has pushed the spiders from their home to attack the woodsmen.  The goblins are left to their own most of the time, so they have been attacking caravans that have been camping on the road.  They undermined som large trees near the road and knocked them over, traders stop to remove the trees and get into town after hours, after dark they camp and the goblins attack them.  

There will be a crazy old man who talks about things he has seen in the forest most of which are false.  He has a stone that looks like an egg and he claims it is a Dragon's egg.  There will be a nymph who lives in a pool in the forest.  If they watch her swim she will charm them, if they act like gentlemen she will help them.  There is a crypt in the village that dates to the time that it was first settled over a thousand years ago, there is a ghost and a specter in various parts.  There is a riddle about the bridge in the village in the graveyard and there is a secret dungeon and treasure trove in e bridge, but only if they solve the riddle.  If they think to use the Internet to solve the riddle, I don't care.  The riddle will point to an egg and another will point to the bridge.  There is a stone in the bridge missing and it is shaped like a stone.…, I wonder where they can find a stone shaped like an egg!