Dungeons & Dragons - The Bad Lick Beast

We had what was my favorite session of the campaign so far yesterday.  We are continuing to play through a conversion of The Chained Coffin.

The group is trying to bring a coffin to a holy site known as the Luhsaal Wheel. There, the spirit in the coffin can be freed and the group can stop a guy named Boak from becoming a huge, demonic beast.

The Party

Kyrin - Human Cleric of the Raven Queen
Mistletoe - Human Druid
Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian
Valiant "Val" Westwinter - Tiefling Sorcerer

Blackcloak

When we left off last time, the group had just run into a guy wearing a cloak made of housecat fur. He called himself Ol' Blackcloak. He's a devil, and he tried his best to convince the group to hand over their souls to him, but no takers. I think Ramrod threatened him and he did the classic D&D cartoon exit: he walked behind a tree and.. he's gone.

The heroes soon camped for the night. While taking watch, Mistletoe saw a huge owl up in a tree, staring at him. Mistletoe cast speak with animal and actually got some useful directions to the wheel.

The Ghost Farm: The next day, the heroes arrived at the farm. By this point, they were quite sick of the guy in the coffin constantly asking, "What's going on? Are we there?"

Ramrod had taken to kicking the coffin just to mess with him. The coffin warned him that he might be sorry one day soon...

The heroes arrived at an abandoned farm. Kyrin can sense undead with his eyes of the grave power. He saw that there were skeletons in the cornfield and a ghost in the cabin.

Using Abilities: The group decided to deal with the skeletons, and deal they did. The heroes excel against skeletons because of their vulnerability to bludgeoning. I purposely put them in there for this reason. A lot of times in D&D, us DMs tend to shy away from using monsters that we know are ineffective against the group.

For example, a group might have a lot of characters resistant or immune to fire. So you might not want to throw a fire elemental at them. I think you should. Players wait a long time to get to use a certain power sometimes, I think it's good to make sure they get to use it.

Once the skeletons were destroyed, the heroes went into the farmhouse. The ghost was an old feller with a long beard sitting in a rocking chair. He was a bit ornery, but the group put him at ease.

The players noted my excessive use of southern accents in this adventure. I told them they should try to get used to my five stupid voices because they'll be hearing them forever.

Bad Licking: Somewhere in here, the heroes learned that the weird creature who flew over their camp last session is called the Bad Lick Beast, and he guards the Bad Lick Bridge. This is why I love the stuff Michael Curtis writes. Who else comes up with stuff like a cloak made of cat fur and a Bad Lick Beast?

The group declared that their albino runt froghemoth, Hoppy, was the "Good Lick" Beast. This cracked me up. For the rest of the session, Hoppy gave the group good licks when appropriate.

The Bridge: The heroes arrived at Bad Lick Bridge. Far below, a river raged. The bridge was in extreme disrepair. There were actually holes in it in places where the stone had fallen away.

It turned out the Bad Lick Beast lived here. It flew up through a hole and swiped at Ramrod, but missed. It soared into the air as the group pelted it with throwing axes, arrows and magic missiles.

As I noted that the magic missiles left smoking holes in the beast's chest, I looked at the player playing Mistletoe and declared them to be Mistleholes. Or Missleholes? I was beyond pleased with myself.

The heroes got a good look at the creature. It has a man's torso, goat legs, a goat head, moth wings and flaming eyes.

It swooped down, trying to divebomb Ramrod. Mistletoe had readied a gust of wind. He ended up hitting both Ramrod and Bad Lick with it. Each made a DEX save to avoid plummeting far below. Ramrod made his save. Bad Lick didn't! Battle over.

The Door: The heroes crossed the bridge and came up a massive puzzle door. Basically, you have to line up the correct three runes to open the door.

I had sent Ramrod's player an advance email about this. He can read these runes, as they were made by ancestors of the goliaths over a thousand years ago. They were seers.

They actually wrote things directly to Ramrod, telling him secrets and warning him about future events.

The puzzle was complicated. Basically, the group had to line up the correct set of gods from my campaign. On their first try, they failed. The door exploded with energy and sent two heroes hurtling over the side of the bridge. Thankfully, they both made their saves. Hoppy helped them up and gave each of them two Good Licks.

The Wheel: The group got past the door and entered the complex. They came upon a room with a table depicting a constellation. There were three orcs in an adjacent room. They were eating, and they lived among their own filth.

The group was appalled at this. The orcs were afraid of the heroes and didn't want any trouble.

The heroes headed up some stairs and came to the Luhsaal Wheel outside. There was a big monolih inside a massive bowl.

Once night fell, a the event happened - the Black Conflux. A massive moon appeared in the sky, actually taking up about 1/4th of the total sky above them.

The air crackled with energy. A portal opened. Out came Boak the bad guy. He was accompanied by a maw demon and 4 dretches.

Boak immediately was hit with energy, as was the coffin. The group looked in horror as Boak transformed into a 20 foot tall two-headed demon-thing of Demogorgon!

The spirit rose out of the Chained Coffin and shot into Kyrin's body. Kyrin began to grow! He too was 20 feet tall and was under the effects of enlarge, bless and heroism.

Kyrin heard the voice of the spirit in his head say, "Please get revenge on Ramrod for me."

Kyrin looked down at Ramrod, who'd been teasing the coffin all session.

That's where we stopped.

It was really fun and the group is great. Adding Val's player has really enhanced the campaign. The way she runs her character makes the game feel more real, if that makes sense.

Everyone is really good. I was very fortunate to find that every reader I have run games for are really, really good players.

Next week we'll get to see Giant Kyrin fight a giant monster. Should be awesome!