Have you ever had such terrible dice luck in DnD that your character becomes practically useless, then have the dice gods give you all your luck back in one glorious moment of triumph? That’s exactly what happened in my first ever 3 sessions of DnD.
I’d been interested in trying DnD for months, but felt too socially awkward to find a group. When my friend (also new to the game) told me he wanted to run a 3 session mini campaign to get his barings, I jumped at the chance. He had all of the players roll up their real-world selves as level 3 characters, complete with stats and a class that matched us. I cast myself as a Monk, and our other players picked Bard (my girlfriend), Wizard, and Cleric. The Cleric was the only one who didn’t dump strength and could wear armor, so he ended up becoming our tank, and I was ready to frontline right alongside him. Boy did THAT go wrong!
Session 1:
We’re all transported to a strange world by a blinding flash of light and find ourselves lying in a forest. I stand up and roll a perception check to look around. Natural 1. I hit my head on a branch and take 3 damage. Everyone else gets up and we follow a chimney smoke trail toward a nearby seaside town. I roll a perception check to check out the town. Natural 1. I hit my head on a branch and take 3 damage, again. We walk through the town to tge beach where we meet a crazy man trying to construct a kite to catch lightning in a bottle. He needs us to help gather supplies, so we go dumpster diving behind a fishery for discarded fishing line. I get into the dumpster fine, then fail 2 investigation checks and find nothing but rotting fish. I then fail 5 acrobatics checks to get out andcreate enough noise to alert the fishery workers. Thankfully our Cleric rolls a nat 20 in deception to convince the workers that nobody’s out back while the Bard helps pull me out. I now smell like dead fish for the rest of the day. Stuff happens and we end up talking with a fey dragon at a lake who can send us home with some magical components. We decide to rest for the night at the local inn, where our Wizard payed for our room with a bag of Resses Cups and a favor since we had no money to speak of.
Session 2:
Our favor to the innkeeper involved negotiating a trade route at the nearby stables. A few stable-hands tell us of some monsters up the path and a hapless adventurer who went after them and hadn’t returned, so we head off to take care of them. Shortly out of town we find the adventurer, gravely injured after being robbed 2 minutes into his quest. After our Cleric botches a medicine check, the Bard and I try to carry him back to town. Nat 1 strength check. As I’m picking the adventurer up, I drop him and his head smashes on a rock, killing him instantly. Well butts. We take some of his gear and carry the corpse back to town where he will be respectfully buried, then head back out to fight monsters.
Not too much farther down the road, we hear the sound of a saxophone in the distance shortly before spotting a trio of Jazzcrabs (that’s a WHOLE other story). I roll high initiative and dart forward to attack the lead crab. 2 to hit. My handaxe glances off the shiny brass of the saxophone and I’m too busy laughing to remember I could have used flurry of blows. Our Bard lands a massive Shatter on the crab gang and I miraculously make the save not to get hit. It was at this point the DM revealed that these crabs explode shortly after death. I roll dex to dodge. Nat 1. I take double damage from the blast and am knocked unconscious. Our Cleric is forced to protect my limp body while the Wizard and Bard defeat the remaining crab with a great performance of the Epic Saxophone song and a dagger. We then head back to town, me limping, to nurse our wounds and tell the stable-hands that the job is done.
Session 3:
Due to a fantastic investigation roll by our Cleric earlier, we know that the components that the fey dragon needs to send us home are at a watering hole near a neighboring town. When we get there, I roll perception and get a nat 3, so I’m completely oblivious to the fact that all of the sand around the shore has vanished. Another jazz crab emerges from the water, but our Bard knocks a performance roll out of the park and befriends it by harmonizing with it’s performance of Careless Whispers.
Our Wizard’s detect magic spell tells us that the components we’re searching for have moved up the path along with a trail of sand and some big magical footprints. Along the way we cross a ghost town with a spooky inn that, because I rolled another 3 in perception, I couldn’t tell was creepy and haunted. Thankfully the DM made it clear that this area will show up again in a longer campaign, so we could (and should) skip the inn for now and follow the footprints.
Finally, we come to a bridge that clearly has an ominous pile of sand sitting under it. I roll *gasp* another 3 in perception, so my Monk casually strolls onto the bridge where he is immediately grabbed by a Sand Golem. It’s face has a fire ruby embedded in it, which is the final component we need to get home. I roll a 2 for initiative, so our Cleric goes in first with a swing of his mace, but that’s when we find out that this golem is completely immune to physical damage in this form. The Wizard hits it with a fire bolt, turning it to glass, and the Bard throws their dagger and breaks off the arm holding me. Before my turn, the Golem manages to shake off it’s paralysis and return to it’s sand form. Guess who has absolutely no magic damage! I just took my turn to apply some bug spray I’d carried over from the real world.
The next round rolls around and our Wizard turns the Golem to glass again. This time our Bard lands an incredible 22 damage shatter and blows half of the thing’s body away. Then it happened. The Golem failed to break paralysis and I was right next to it, ready to finally be useful. My time has come. I roll to attack with my hand axe. Natural 20 and max damage! FINALLY! That’s 16 damage, but I’m not done. I spend my first and only ki point to do flurry of blows and land a 5 and a 6. Everyone is cheering! Golem is down to 4 HP and our Cleric shatters it into dust with one final mace swing.
Now with the components in hand, we travelled back to the fey dragon and gave her the components. She sent us home, along with a note telling us that her name was Scam Likely and thanks for the fire ruby, suckers!
Looking back, I could have used some of my Monk abilities that i just didn’t think of at the time, but I think this might have been the best possible way I could have been introduced to DnD. All of the bad rolls ended up being hilarious and the whole group was super supportive about it. And that payoff! Though I definitely wouldn’t want my bad luck streak following me into the larger campaign. Wish me luck!
[zombify_post]
0 Comments