I totally forgot to post a recap of the last session, but it’s been a long time now and I don’t remembered what happened. It was something about going down a well and fighting a demon bat and doing some other shit.
The important thing is Lance Granite, sexy dwarf cleric, was fine.
Anyway. We started the session with combat looming. Nipping at our heels were a disgusting of goblin-ghasts. Disgusting is how you refer to ghasts in numbers, I’m fairly certain. This was unfortunate for us, because it was a rough combat. There was lots of poison, and some stunning, and dual-wielding dagger assholes. Luckily, Sarenrae was on the case! Light Cleric is ending up being really fun, thus far. I mean, I’m basically a sorcerer with healing spells and buffs, as my fire spells really get some mileage. Even better, the Light Cleric abilities are pretty rad. I really got my money’s worth out of Radiance of the Dawn and Improved Warding Flare. Improved Warding Flare feels pretty good to me, mostly because I have nothing else to do for a reaction, anyway. Negating damage, even if it is not always useful, is a good cleric theme.
Dynamic lighting is both frustrating and cool when used with Roll20. I think it’s the thing slowing down our sessions the most, but it’s does add to game play when it is working correctly. It’s sort of a shame Fantasy Grounds is getting all official 5e content, and I hope Roll20 gets something going for it. I like how much it already has, but having the pre-packaged stuff available would be really nice.
The group is getting a lot of experience with conditions, and for the most part it goes pretty well and is resolved fairly quickly. I remain not a fan of the alternate critical fumble system, but I can live with it. We did run into a corner case where I had Spirit Guardians active and a person designated to ignore Spirit Guardians summoned a Celestial Lion from an item. It was ruled the Celestial Lion was recognized as per the user, but I would have been fine either way. You live and die by the friendly fire, after all.
This was a climactic session for most of the party, but I lacked the connection to the antagonist the rest of the party possessed. The ghast behind much of the actions, someone saved by the party earlier in the adventure path (before he was a ghast) was confronted, and the ghast was groveling for our help. He claimed he was taken advantage of by The Brotherhood, an organized crime guild, and the Skin-Saw Man, who might or might not be the tag-team partner of Bone Saw, who is always ready.
However, I don’t feel bad about it, as the dude killed his lady. Then he was blackmailed into getting ghast rats or something? Also, he then got possessed and was like, “Nah guys who are helping me, suck it.” I figured it would come to that, though. So I dealt a ton of damage first. The other sticking point was around Death Saves, which is fair. It’s not the most transparent of systems, frankly. It all worked out, though the rules on being attacked when you are dying is pretty rough.
All in all, it was a fun session, lots of fights, and lots of good 5e experience for everyone.