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The same gang as last week (minus one, whose regular spot at the other 5:00 PM table had opened back up) gathered Wednesday evening for some more drow-fighting fun. It’s nice to have regulars!

• A goblin hunter named Snipe
• A goblin scout named Squintch
• A goblin slayer named Snarl (who is completely out of healing surges)
• A svirfneblin warpriest named Ziti
• A drow mage named Zin
• A dwarf fighter named Thoradin

As the party rested after a tough fight with a drow priestess, her archer allies and several rooms full of skeletons, a sudden flash of light filled the room. When it faded, a human female and an elf male were standing there. The woman was familiar to the group – it was Khara Sulwood, whom the party had met during the first session back at the Old Skull Inn. Her elf companion was Tharinel, and they had been teleported here by Elminster.

After a few niceties and introductions, it soon became clear that Khara and Tharinel were eager to help recover the Pendant of Ashaba that the drow had stolen.

To the fight!

There was no puzzle or anything like that this week. The party followed the path toward the deep Underdark and eventually came upon a large room filled with bad guys. Two drow archers stood on a platform on one wing of the room with a purple goblin nearby, while two drow scouts stood on the other wing of the room in front of some big spider gates, along with two more purple goblins.

Spider Gates – Gridded

Spider Gates – No Grid

The three goblin members of the party recognized the purple-skinned goblin enemies as Lolthbound goblins, which they hated. The PC goblins had +2 to hit the purple monstrosities.

As I’ve done for the past three weeks, I left the encounter as written, even though I had six PCs and the encounter was written for five. And once again, I feel like this was still a good challenge for the party. Having two NPCs to help definitely made a difference. Snarl’s player controlled Khara the knight and Snipe’s player controlled Tharinel the scout. The players seemed to have a good time directing the NPCs around the board, even though I had forgotten to print out the stat blocks for them.

We ended up with two PCs dropping unconscious this time – Snipe and Thoradin – but fortunately they both had plenty of healing surges. Snarl, the surgeless wonder, managed to end the battle with more hit points than he’d had at the start thanks to some splash healing from Ziti the warpriest. Ziti has been a real MVP the past few weeks, keeping the healing coming as her allies dropped around her. Squintch got the moment of greatness award this week for a particularly memorable charge-crit-max damage on secondary attack move against one of the drow scouts.

At the end of the encounter, five of the six PCs leveled up to level 2. Woo hoo! This will make a big difference in the weeks ahead, I’m expecting.

Sadly, I will be out of town next week and unable to run Encounters, but I’m looking forward to being back in two weeks’ time for the start of Chapter Two!

-Michael the OnlineDM

OnlineDM1 on Twitter

Post Script

The card and dice game I mentioned last week is coming along nicely. I’ve contracted with a graphic designer for the card layout and other work, and I’ve started contracting with artists for sketch art for the initial version of the game. I’m planning on doing a small print run for GenCon, and if it succeeds I’ll do more from there (probably a Kickstarter for full color art and a larger print run). I’ve formed an LLC for publishing the game, hired a lawyer… it’s exciting! More to come as I get to the point where I can start sharing details.