The Cheap DM: Fungal Forest 8 - Game Night
Lighting detail. 3 mini-strings (about 30cm long) of flower lights. They run off batteries.
The party enters the cave....
Battle with a roper.
The full and final layout!
Paladin Oath of the Monster Slayer
At the completion of the Fungal Forest, the party will have reached 3rd Level, which means its time for them to choose their Archetypes/College/Swear the Oath. I'm pretty open and will allow anything from the PHB or Xanathar's Guide.
Both Paladins in the party are being played a little off kilter. One has become, by default, the party's Archer. The other likes killing monsters. There are no Oaths that cover these scenarios for the Paladin class, so I'm hacking together a couple of kits using existing features from different classes.
Why not a Divine Archer (Oath of the True Arrow) or a Dragonslayer?
I did not write most of this, merely complied it from other class features.
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| Art by Dawnweaver13 |
Oath of the Monster Slayer
Tenants of
Monster Slaying
Courage
Never
fear to act.
By Any Means Necessary
My qualms can’t get in the way of
exterminating chaotic beasts.
Restitution.
If beasts of chaos wreak havoc
upon the world, it is because use I failed to stop them. I must help those
harmed by their misdeeds.
MONSTER
SLAYER SPELLS
3rd Protection from
Order and Chaos
5th Zone of
Truth
9th Magic Circle
13th Banishment
15th Hold
Monster
At 3rd
Level
Nature Skill
Add +2 to your Nature skill. You are now proficient if you
were not before.
The Slayer’s Sense
At 3rd level, you gain the ability to peer at a creature and
magically discern how best to hurt it. As
an action, choose one creature you can see within 60 feet of you.
You immediately learn whether the creature has any damage
immunities, resistances, or vulnerabilities and what they are. If the creature
is hidden from divination magic, you sense that it has no damage immunities, resistances,
or vulnerabilities.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to your
Wisdom modifier (minimum of once). You regain all expended uses of it when you
finish a long rest.
Eye for Weakness
Starting at 3rd level, you can focus your ire on one foe, increasing
the harm you inflict on it. As a bonus action, you designate one creature you
can see within 60 feet of you as the target of this feature. The first time
each turn that you hit that target with a weapon attack, it takes an extra 1d6
damage from the weapon.
This benefit lasts until you finish a short or long rest. It
ends early if you designate a different creature
At 7th
Level
Choose two of the following:
Colossus Slayer
Your tenacity can wear down the most potent foes. When you
hit a Huge or Gigantic creature with weapon attack, the creature takes an extra
ld8 damage if it's below its hit point maximum. Vou can deal this extra damage
only once per turn.
Giant Killer
When a Large or larger creature within 5 feet of you hits or
misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to attack that creature
immediately after its attack, provided that you can see the creature.
Horde Breaker
Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack,
you can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature
that is within 5 feet of the original target and within range of your weapon.
Escape the Horde
Opportunity attacks
against you are made with disadvantage.
Multi-Attack Defense
When a creature hits you with an attack, you gain a +4 bonus
to AC against all subsequent attacks made by that creature for the rest of the
turn.
Steel Will
Vou have advantage on saving throws against being
frightened.
At 11th level
Choose One of the Following
Volley
Vou can use your action to make a ranged attack against any
number of creatures within 10 feet of a point you can see within your weapon's
range. Vou must have ammunition for each target, as normal, and you make a
separate attack roll for each target.
Whirlwind Attack.
Vou can use your action to make a melee attack against any
number of creatures within 5 feet of you, with a separate attack roIl for each
target.
Magic Disruptor
You gain the ability to thwart someone else’s magic. When
you see a creature casting a spell or teleporting within 60 feet of you, you
can use your reaction to try to magically foil it. The creature must succeed on
a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC, or its spell or teleport
fails and is wasted.
Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you
finish a short or long rest.
At 15th Level
Choose One of the Following
Evasion.
You can nimbly dodge out of the way of certain area effects,
such as a red dragon's fiery breath or a lightning bolt spell. When you are
subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take
only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on the saving
throw, and only half damage if you fail
Stand Against the
Tide.
When a hostile creature misses you with a melee attack, you
can use your reaction to force that creature to repeat the same attack against another
creature (other than itself) of your choice.
Uncanny Dodge
When an attacker that you can see hits you with an attack,
you can use your reaction to halve the attack's damage against you.
Slayer’s Counter
You gain the ability to counterattack when your prey tries
to sabotage you. If the target of your Eye
for Weakness forces you to make a saving throw, you can use your reaction
to make one weapon attack against the quarry. You make this attack immediately
before making the saving throw. If your attack hits, your save automatically
succeeds, in addition to the attack’s normal effects.
The Cheap DM: Fungal Forest 7 - Cast of Characters
Just some of the characters and critters who will be inhabiting my Playdoh fungal paradise.
The Murmuring Merchant. If you ever want to have a lot of fun as a DM, make a non-verbal NPC your players will want to interact with. This guy has good stuff to sell, but only communicates in grunts and blowing raspberries.
A Mantango, one of the 'good' tribe of Myconids living in the fungal caves.
The Dryad of the Baobob Tree is slowing being consumed and transformed by the myconids. If she completes her natural transformation she will become a Mycollosus, a living god-being. If she dies while the bones of the black dragon continue to poison her roots, she will become a Slime Giant and wreck havoc.
Lobstrose. The first NPC they meet appears to be a gentle giant, who tells them to be careful around Kandida, and that the dryad is dying and insane. In reality, he was an adventurer in the party that killed the dragon, but was left behind for dead. Trapped and mutated by the alien environment, he's become an embittered bully who rules over the Deathcaps. He blames the dryad for his condition, and wants her to feel continue the pain of dragon bones poisoning her roots. He's absolutely right about Kandida though.
Kandida the gnome alchemist. Let's just say that her potions have many, many, many side effects. Her three eyes don't always blink at the same time and the top one is rarely looking in the same direction as the other two. I played her as an unhinged version of Vanellope Von Schweetz and despite doing nothing but offering to help the party, they were utterly terrified of her. I'm quite proud of that. I stumbled across this picture and loved it too much not to use it.
A Deathcap, the 'bad' myconid tribe.
Found this picture of a baby mimic. Now I get my chance to find out if the playes are too young to know what the movie 'Alien' is about.
A pussbug. Stinging little bastards and, when dead, useful as currency to certain non-verbal, and very hungry, merchants.
The Cheap DM: Fungal Forest 6 - Final Touches
The slime kit I bought was a complete loss and I had nothing to fill the slime-pit the night before the game. I had an idea to use jello cups, but I couldn't fine any in lime. I did fine these. Mmm, sweet, delicious pear-flavoured slime.
The last touch was three sets of battery powered LED sting-lights. A little darkness hides a thousand mistakes. I put a few of the standees I planned to use to test the sizing.
The Cheap DM: Fungal Forest 5 - Build Details
You can really see the sugar/playdoh reaction happening here. The liquid in the upturned egg at the bottom-left is suppose to dry into crystals. It is a cool effect, but it takes days to really start to work. I've also put the aquarium plants in now and I really like how the look.
To keep the playdoh from drying out, I washed everything in coats of white glue and water. Took a few tries to find a good ratio, but it worked.
Sprucing up some of the blander areas.The white stuff is drying glue.
I actually wrote a whole sub-plot for the 3 of these swirly eggs I stashed in the maze, but so far the party hasn't looked twice at them.
The Cheap DM: Fungal Forest 4 - The Build Goes On
Starting on the Slime Pit, where the final showdown will take place. I'm genuinely pissed that I lost that set of bones somewhere between home and the game-shop, they were an inspiration for the plot. Have to come up with something before next session.
This is some knock-off brand playdoh that I grabbed to test. It has a softer, but greasier texture to playdoh. It also pulled like taffy (something that playdoh doesn't do) which allowed me to do these ribbons. The trashcan is a candy container.
Lots of glow stones. My wife made the plant.
Trying something with the Easter Eggs. Bit boring at the moment.
All laid-out.
The Cheap DM: Fungal Forest 3 - The Build Begins
The green pom-poms are just stuck with white glue. I later covered the spots with paint, which helped them stand out more.
I quite liked how this wall turned out, even if some of the jelly-beans kept popping out their holes as the sugar reacted the playdoh. The shell would start to melt and they'd slide out if they could.
I did a couple of these root-like tendrils, but I as never happy with results.
Cluster of plastic eggs. The goop is glow-n-the-dark silly putty, which I didn't end up using.
Glowing stones and yellow jellybeans. You can see here where the moisture in the playdoh started pulling the sugar out of the jelly beans. It actually produced a decent slimey effect.
I was running out of ideas at this point so I just crushed some green playdoh between my fingers and dropped it on a mushed blue wall.
The Cheap DM: Fungal Forest 2 - Laying in Supplies
All in I figure I spent between 40-50$ on this. Honestly, its at least 10$ than I was hoping to spend, but its my first build and I chalk a lot of that inexperience. I ended buying too much of some things that I didn't need, and had to go back for things I didn't think of at first. Everything is from the Dollarstore or Walmart.
The bulk of the project is made out of Playdoh and a bag of plastic Easter Eggs. The eggs had jelly-beans inside and I ended up making use of those as well.
Other purchases included:
-Growing Crystal kit and a Slime Kit. One was partially useful, one was not and neither was worth it in the end.
-Some plastic aquarium plants. The best purchase by far and I'm only looking to get more.
-Mini-strings of LED flowers and required batteries.
-Bag of glow-in-the-dark plastic pebbles. Good colour, lousy at the glow-in-the-dark part.
-Paint, brushes, carving tools
-Silly Putty and a row of green-pompoms.
Banana Knife
The greatest advantage to this weapon is its conceal-ability. Its greatest flaw lies in its fragility and tenancy to go bad before it can be used.
Green peel knives will last d6 days before spoiling beyond use. Yellow peel knives will last d4 days and spotted peels will last only d2 days. Once unpeeled, the knife is good for only 2d10hours, or one fight, before turning into a pungent goo that will attract wandering monsters at 2x times normal.
Certain hags know of many recipes for old banana knives such as throwing pies, shrapnel muffins and vile, vegan ice-creams. These witches often have ice-chests full of brown, shriveled old knives that they fully intend to use one day soon and are not just taking up space.
Cost: 100gp for a green peel, 75gp for a solid yellow peel, prices falling rapidly the more spots that appear.
Damage: d6 (green, yellow and lightly spotted. d4 for browning peels). Slashing and acid (fructose)Weight: --
Properties: Light, thrown, Conceal-ability.
Rare footage of an actual, skilled banana-knifer in action....
Wonderful Wednesdays
From the (terrible, terrible) '05 Dukes of Hazzard movie, but she's with Willy(!) and its my day off, so its kind of thematic.
Session XI: What's in the Box?
As expected, the night was spent in one big, long battle between the party, the pirates and the Gnoll slavers.
I began the session with the Chromatic Imps exploding out the back of the pirates' ship. Then things grew very quiet on the docks, and I told the party that they begin to hear this coming from the deck of the slavers' junk (Chinese sailing ship) ... I played the sound clip off my phone.
There was derring-do, there was showdowns and sacrifice, explosions and swinging from the rigging, there were ninja style attacks and some glorious fails (the black Dragonborn captain of the slavers - who was suppose to be this big, scary tough guy - couldn't roll for beans. Though he did manage to spit acid right into Scruffy's face during the big show-down). One character went down, another finished with literally 1 hit point left. I call it a success.
The fight ended with the slaves rescued (one taken on a hireling), the pirate captain dead, the ship on fire and the slavers escaping in their badly damaged boat (it might have been hit by lightning a couple times).
But for all the party's tactics and bravery, they are not natural looters. They barely searched the empty mid-deck and found only one of the possible three chests I'd placed there (also missed the bag of gunpowder sitting on the stove, which accounted for one of the explosions) and didn't loot any of the bodies. I'm trying to give each character a minor, magical item that isn't a weapon or armour, but they aren't looking around hard enough to find where I am hiding them in the game. Its an odd position to find myself in as a DM.
Of the three chests I'd hidden on the mid-deck, they salvaged one. Peter the Thief flubbed three roles trying to pick the lock, so it remains unopened. Of the three chests on that deck, one had basic treasure (coins and gems), another had a magic item for one of the PCs, and the third was a party item rolled from the trinket table in the PHB. I haven't' decided yet which chest they saved...
Next Session: The party has been hired by a Tiefling monk to retrieve his Sensei's magical trident from a dead dragon's lair. At least, they think she's dead ....
Wonderful Wednesdays
Its a shame we did get to see Gal Gadot in a version of this. Maybe in the sequel?
The Cheap DM: Fungal Forest Part 1
There are only three more sessions before the end of this term and I want to shake things up a bit before raising everyone up to 3rd level on the last session. Inspired by our new volunteer, I'm going to offer up a SideQuest: A chance to explore a small Fugal Forest beneath a dead baobob tree in the middle of a swampy lake.
I was going to do the usual,' find some maps on-line' to use as terrain, but I wasn't finding anything that matched the pictures in my head. Then last Sunday afternoon I was out walking the dog when I found two plastic easter eggs lying under a tree in a public park. They had either been overlooked, or more likely, been ransacked of their goodies and then discarded. I liked their bright colours and their shape, and inspiration hit.
I made a run to the dollar store to see if there were any holiday deals left. I found some spotted plastic eggs, so I grabbed a bag for test purposes (note: I'm gonna need two more bags). I also broke out the grid board I made a few months ago out of some laminate scavenged from work. I haven't had a chance to use the board yet, so I'm excited about that as well.
Just laying things out to see what it might look like.
Quick sketch of a map. It needs to look curvy and organic.
I wasn't sure what to do with these swirl-pattern eggs at first, but I think that standing them upright makes them look like markers or carvings made by the Myconids.
I did mention the slime pool. Another dollar store purchase.
The next step is gonna require a shit ton of playdoh.
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