This is from session two of a new group and campaign, the DM was doing a great job of mixing his content in with first party content when he hadn't finished (or started) a custom dungeon.
This particular session involved the DM, a dragonborn Paliden named swifts, and myself, a tabaxi ranger named Ruby. The rest of the party had been unable to make it to this session sadly, but the DM was still intent on killing us as hard as possible.
It begins in a valley, where there is a unusually uncharacteristic snowstorm happening, we were on a quest to retrieve the adventurous children of a local lord, and we were heading towards a chasm that had appeared some weeks beforehand, and everyone assumed that the chasm was magic in some way.
Swifts, the Paliden, had made a check to see if we could tell how long the storm would last, he didn't have the highest wisdom or intelligence (0 and -1) and rolled the lowest value that I've ever seen this player roll, a 3 (which was not surprising at the time, but in this very dungeon, the player found his lucky dice). Swifts told the party, which at this point consisted of swifts and myself, plus a centaur guide, that this was the worst snowstorm he'd ever witnessed, and he thought that we should find some shelter, because he's not sure how long the storm will last. As it turns out, it had only just started snowing, and swifts had never seen snow before, so he freaked out when the sky cried cold. Being a tabaxi ranger, I thought I'd give a shot at seeing the intensity of the storm and how long It would last, but this was where I discovered that all my dice were unlucky, I rolled a natural 1, the well travelled tabaxi ranger from the wild outlands, concurred that this snow "storm" was the most spectacular and terrifying storm that had ever happened, it definitely, for sure, signalled the end of the world.
We decided that we should really complete this quest quickly and run the fuck away because hey, the world is ending with a blizzard, we should probably get to a tavern.
We stop for the night in an abandoned church and over night the snow builds up, about 6ft high, even though our destination was about a days walk away, it was going to take three days in this snow at normal pace, and we'd freeze to death much sooner than that.
So using the centaur as a shield, we managed to carve out a path as we travelled, travelling as fast as we could, doing two con saves per hour to see if we got a fatigue point (or two), that meant we had to make 16 saves to see if we made it our not, and if we failed 4 of them, we'd slow down, a lot. 7 fails meant permanent death.
We managed to get to the edge of the chasm, where we used our collective 200ft of rope to tie a harness for the centaur (which I rolled a nice and juicy 8 on), and try to lower the centaur down.
It didn't work, we lowered the centaur down about halfway before all of a sudden, the rope no longer had tension on it, we peer over the edge and notice that the centaur, was now critically injured, and we had about 18 seconds to get down and stabilise the beast, being a tabaxi I was quickly able to climb down and save the centaur, before going back up, tie off the rope so swifts could climb down (with an unnatural 20) and then climb back down as swifts came down the 60ft drop.
We found a small cave in the side of the chasm and took a few days to remove the two points of fatigue that swifts had, and I somehow had managed to avoid any points of fatigue, so I spent my time hunting for firewood and food.
After swifts was no longer fatigued, and the centaur had succumbed to the cold, we decided to continue further and deeper into the chasm, where we could see a fortress sitting at the bottom. We were making headway for a courtyard when I ran ahead making use of my speed bonus against swifts so that I could easily run off and get some assistance.
I descended a set of stairs that were about 80ft tall, while swifts got distracted by something at the top landing.
I was told to roll for initiative, swifts too.
So we rolled, (him a Nat 20, his first of the campaign, and myself an unnatural 20) and the enemy was a small pack of whopper sized rats (whopper as in the burger from hungry jacks and burger king) the rats were on the landing in front of me, with swifts 80ft above that, it would take him 4 turns to get down to me, but he had an idea, we "knew" the end of the world was coming, we no longer have any respect for our own lives, so he decided to jump off the landing and try to land on the rats, so he rolled, Another two Nat 20's in a row.
Swifts had jumped off a flight of stairs, 80ft in the air, and did a double back flip bellyflop.
Onto all the rats.
Now swifts is not a small dragonborn, he started with 18 strength and weighed about 400lbs, these rats didn't stand a chance, the dm rolled all their damage and for some reason turned the excess damage Into xp for swifts.
This was our first battle encounter, and at the end of it came out with a total of 327xp each.
Swifts should have taken damage and he should have instantly died, but with his three Nat 20s in a row, the dm made the exception. I was stood there, amazed and bewildered, this half ton hero had just belly flopped onto a bunch of rats, and I was honestly surprised that I wasn't hit.
This was the start of a beautiful character that still plays to this day, as the general of an army that follows a white dragon, that intends to rule the world.
[zombify_post]
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