LMoP DM Blog VII: Icespire Hold, Dragon Slaying and Ending the Campaign

Again, this session got squeezed in a few days early, and we played on a Monday night (10/21/2019) just two days after out previous session. We are somewhat hurrying the story to finish before Kaalia's player has to leave town for a month; we hope to kill the dragon before the she has to leave.

Its also probably a good sign that the players enjoy playing so often! Things are heating up and the campaign is coming to a close. This was our 18th session (though I probably lost count in there somewhere).

Frosty Short Rest and Extended RP

Last time, the players had entered the gatehouse H2 and fought some bandits. They quickly decided to rest up in room H5 and H3, leaving some horses in the outer room.

I took a hint from one of The Lazy DMs (Sly Flourish) philosophies: Start Strong! I decided to have the short rest interrupted by some horse neighing and creaking out of its stall.

In retrospect, this was a pretty weak start, but it did get things rolling immediately with animal handling checks and concern about what caused the horse to freak out. Was it the dragon? Or did the horse not want to be so near it half-butchered brethren?

After this, food arrived and some breaks happened. In the meantime, I pulled out my d100 RP questions table and started asking away.

I have found this to be a really great technique and helps get the players into their characters heads immediately. I got the list from a site called DnDSpeak, and the questions rolled tonight were:
# 41 Does your character care about how they’re perceived by others?
and
# 14 Has your character ever been in love?

These were really great ones, and everyone had a different response. Particularly the love question got players laughing about which NPCs they were attracted too, with the two girl players complaining about a lack of handsome men, haha. The players ended up chatting for almost a half hour here about these questions, and I almost wanted to interrupt them, but it was such good RP and character building that I allowed it.

What better place to get philosophical than in a frozen fortress atop a mountain before killing a dragon.

Into The Fortress Proper

The players lined up and crossed the bridge at H7. I described the large chain and bell on the outside of the building, and the players were very suspicious. They got low perception checks to hear the dragon breathing nearby, but they did know he was close and didn't want to make any noise if possible.
Fearing a trap, Garron the rogue climbed up and detached the bell while two other players tried to catch it below. They were also hopeful the bell was magical or had some use but it didnt! One player failed his DEX save to catch the bell, but the other player did well enough that it was caught with minimal noise and place securely on the ground.

They opened the fortress proper and came into room H12. In the chimney nearby they noticed some movement under the snow and some investigation led to the horrible realization that it was a nest of Stirges!

Flesh-Pelican is what I call em

I tweaked these monsters some and created a "Dire Stige" with a lot more HP and more damage, as well as two "Hasted Stirges" who were permanently hasted. The players are quickly learning to hate these monsters and my descriptions of their proboscis and blood draining always get a good reaction!
They quickly mopped this up, but took a decent amount of damage, and again wanted to short rest.

I was surprised and kinda thought to limit their short rests but decided to let them have it. Maybe there is a rule for this? They got all their life back and continued.

Exploring the Fortress

The fortress is described pretty weakly in the adventure, and it really showed here. The players really wanted some interesting stuff to explore, but there just wasn't much. They found a dead orc skeleton on a throne but never really pieced together the places history. They did make the conclusion that maybe these orcs were the ones who destroyed Phandalin a long time ago, which was pretty cool.

I added some extra stuff in here related to the Red Wizards. They found some books about domination magic and took them as loot, but my story is that the red wizards were planning to control the dragon somehow.

They also found a teleportation circle! They were very exciting about this as they had found one previously and watched an NPC named Halia (from LMoP) disappear into it. They had their hunches she was up to something, but didn't have any good evidence. And in this dungeon, I am revealing that she is working with the red wizards and also that she is dead! (I'll get there in a bit).

Rooftop

On the roof, the group found some minor treasure and began scoping out the sleeping dragon. Some good RP and planning was had, and eventually I rolled a dice and had the dragon stir to indicate that they couldnt plan forever! Here is what it looked like.

Pretty epic!

Aeras the druid considered throwing a mysterious clear potion at the dragon (it was an invisibility potion oh god no) but eventually decided to drink it in bear form in case of any side-effects.

Everyone got in positions (as seen above) and the fight began with a Wind Wall and a Fireball via Necklace of Fireballs with 4 beads. This ended up being something like 10d6 damage to start the fight. A few potions were drank to prep and the fight was on!

After the fireball, the dragon predictable woke up and entered initiative with an angry breath attack.

I made some cool changes to the dragon in order to make it more interesting and step one was to double its HP to 250.

I then gave it a bunch more actions and reactions, as well as lair actions.

REACTIONS

• (Wing Block) - When hit by a ranged spell or attack: roll 1d6 and reduce damage taken by that value. After 3-4 uses, the dragon can no longer fly.
• (Take Flight) - When three players enter melee: the dragon sweeps its wings and makes a majestic leap into the air. Provokes no attacks of opportunity, and all players must make DC15 STR/DEX saves or be knocked prone. If they fall prone on ice, they slide back 5 feet.
• (Bite) - When a players comes within 10 feet of the dragon, it makes a bite attack.

LAIR ACTIONS (keyed to occur at initiative count 20)

• End of Round 1: Ice on the floor spreads 5ft in all directions. Players caught in the spread must make a DC10 DEX save or slip and fall prone on the ice.
• End of Round 2: Spray ice breath into the air, causing sharp hail to fall on everyone not under cover for 1d6+1d4 damage. (maybe this should have had a save, but I think it was fine)
• End of Round 3: Create a solid ice wall that is impassable in a line from the dragon.

The only one my players called bullshit on was the AOO bite attack; the rogue Garron had learned these mechanics in and out and was like WAIT THAT'S NOT HOW THAT WORKS and I got to tell him what every DM loves to tell a player, "Now this is how it works!".

Overall, my changes were pretty good and the players seemed to enjoy the fight and its surprises. Two players went down and a few death saves were made, but the Paladin Brise was pumping out way too much damage for it to be a challenge. At one point I think she had 4d8 + 4d6 + STR bonus and easily did more than half the total dragon HP.

Great Success

The players ended up victorious with Brise landing the final blow. Everyone cheered around the table and Dragons Milk stout was poured all around.

I really loved that my players wanted to do both in-game and out-of-game toasts about the occasion. I started with a simple one, toasting to good friends and friendships strengthened through adventures in dnd. This was a really high point; its a great feeling to wrap up a campaign nicely like this.

The players proceeded to scale the dragon and collect something like 50 dragon scales (oh shit what have I done). They also found about 175 gold each, as well as 550 total gold in art good to be sold. Some potions and magic items were also found, primary among them the teleportation cudgel used to activate the teleportation circles. They had a way home quickly as the other one they knew about was outside Phandalin. 

They examined the frozen ice pillars and found the frozen form of Halia in the ice. Halia who had just lost an election a few days previously, and was now wearing red robes of the wizards from Thay. The players were a bit confused, and will learn more as they come back to town and learn more. (Jelenath, another character, knew about Halia's death here a week ago and has been disguising as Halia for a while in an attempt to run a big con.)

As proof of their deeds, they chopped off the dragon head and slid the frozen corpse of Halia back into the teleportation circle. After a flash of light, they were back home and I ended the session there.

This moment felt really great, everyone was happy and the campaign has come to a nice ending.

Finale

I ended with some discussion about the future of the game. I thanked everyone for playing so far and described my plans going forward.
We have one player leaving town for a month, and another player having a baby in three weeks. So we will likely need to space things out more and take some breaks over the rest of the year. Just about everyone is going out of town for Christmas and New Years, so things will be a bit touch-and-go for a while.

We agreed to play if we had 4 players and skip if we only had 3. We also discussed getting another player to fill in for a while.

And then I discussed the adventure not ending! We all plan to keep playing, continuing our adventures with Storm Lords Wrath which is a direct sequel set in the nearby town of Leilon. Its a decent adventure involving cultists and more dragons, but is mostly interesting for rebuilding the coastal town. My players have expressed a lot of interest in boat-based adventures, so I will definitely throw that in there.

We also discussed that we are mixing combat and RP pretty well together, and that each session should really have at least one combat.

And that's it! I think the DM blogs will slow down for a while after this, but more adventures are always to come.