Campaign Season 18: Sacred Stone Monastery

[Creep/DM]

Goldenfields

Goldenfields is a huge walled temple-farm dedicated to Chauntea, the goddess of agriculture. Called “the granary of the North,” it’s the only reason many Northerners ever taste soft-fleshed fruit larger than bush berries. Waterdeep, Secomber, Yartar, and points beyond consume the temple’s reliable output: carefully husbanded grains and dried, oil-packed, or salted foodstuffs preserved in vast storage cellars, vats, ricks,and squat stone grain-towers.

Hired adventurers patrol the walls and the land immediatelyaround them, watching for anyone approaching. More than five thousand people live and work in Goldenfields year round, farming more than twenty square miles of tillage in gangs of hard-working gardeners. No guest at Goldenfields ever leaves hungry, and the farmer-priests expect that everyone should leave with “food for a tenday or more on the road, and seeds for the future beyond that.”

Sacred Stone Monastery

A trail leads into an ever-narrowing defile between bluffs of wind-sculpted sandstone. Eventually the walls draw in so closely that you can reach out and touch either side, but then the narrow space opens into a hidden canyon in the heart of the hills. A sprawling monastery with dark, narrow windows and red tile rooftops stands in the middle of this natural amphitheater, ringed by sandstone cliffs all around. Ahead, a weathered flight of stone steps leads up to the closed monastery doors. The plain doors are made of heavy timber with iron studs. A dusty footpath circles the building.

[Creep/DM]

Web Spell

Each creature that starts its turn in the webs or that enters them during its turn must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is restrained as long as it remains in the webs or until it breaks free.

A creature restrained by the webs can use its action to make a Strength check against your spell save DC. If it succeeds, it is no longer restrained.

In case our Practitioner of the Art have not realised how the spell works, the DEX saving throw is only required when a creature starts its turn in the webs or enters them during its turn (not every 5 feet of movement).

A restrained creature only needs to make a single successful Strength check and it is no longer restrained. It does not need to make another DEX saving throw during its turn unless it moves out and then enters into the webs again.

[Satosh - Byron]

Makes for a very odd imagination of how things are pictured in the mind ahahaha, once they have succeeded in the saving throw/broken free they can run circles in the affected web area without any issues, but once they walk out and back in and they are at risk of getting entangled again. I guess if that's how RAW/RAI works then oh well..

[Creep/DM]

There are of course an unlimited number of ways to imagine it, for each negative example there is a positive example, so do not be constrained.

[Creep/DM]

Klaudius gains Inspiration for being a coin toss away from the reaper.

Heads or tails?

[Klaudius - Dino]

Klaudius feels the cold touch of death, the sensation of falling into a bottomless pit. Yet even as ogres, orcs and other creatures leer at his fallen form, it is not his time yet. For as he fights with bow, two-weapons, and holding his trusty shield against the flurry of attacks by the monks, it is time for the ex-legionary to cast away his old mantle of being a rigid infantryman, and become an all-rounder fighter in a party of adventurers. Aye, it's about time.

[Ian: Kastor Sparkcog]

Opps, i had not seen the "for the first time on a turn" so I had assumed the Dex save was repeatable per affected area. Oh well, have to read the spellbook more closely.

Still a good spell even with the corrected ruling, just need to have enough flies in the web to be effective.

[Satosh - Byron]

So are we for sure getting out of there without Carbo's head? We've missed a bunch of alleys, have not found Arisa, also the delegates mentioned that there may be more in deeper in the earth. Also note that since the monks were practicing eventhough they were informed of our intrusion and the fact that the head of the monk was attempting to go towards the exit we can assume that she was trying to get help - which means that the people upstairs have no idea that we'd survive the umberhulk and the guards.

We've gone through wayyy too many combats without a short rest, I'm starved! My earthy sense are tingling and am reluctant to pop my head out of the dungeon; we've given carbo around an hour to prepare whatever he's preparing upstairs and I popped my Pass Without Trace so we can almost for sure forget about "sneaking out" =P

1. I suggest (and prefer) cleaning up the mess and rest in the training grounds, cast the black square to block one of the doors and watch the remaining door for enemies.
   
2. Get out as fast as possible and hope for the best. If we encounter enemies at least we have 16 sacks of meat (we only need the dwarf!).

[Lester Lee]

Given what happened at Rivergard Keep, Tagrel prefer not to rest in enemies' stronghold. Especially when we know that they are still around. We know not how much forces they have, and they can easily overwhelm us by attacking us every now and then, denying us of any rest while trapping us within. At this point of time, Tagrel assumes at least 5 enemies, which are the 5 we met before descending down the stairs. Unless Tagrel mistook what the remaining monk is saying, the side door leads outside, so there is no need for sneaking.

Side note: Chuckling to myself while browsing Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. Arandel should check out page 131. :P

[Satosh - Byron]

To be fair, the castle idea was our poor call, 1) the priestess escaped and shouted "Jolly will be back for revenge!" 2) Jolly leaves the castle at midnight and comes back so we know for sure he can get before 8 hours, what were we thinking when we decided to long rest tsktsk 3) I was going to say something about not letting me have the 3/4th watch because that's when Jolly is most likely going to reach us from wherever he came from, but WIS 8 and carefree attitude heh.

In this case,

1) We're not taking a long rest

2) As explained in my first post no one has realized that we survived the 'trials', otherwise we'd already be surrounded. The monks were training, no pursuits, no alarms have been raised (of we know)

3) With Leomund's Tiny Hut they can't even open one of the two doors so we only have to be focused on one door.

4) I used Pass Without Trace from the guard room and we arrived at the Training Grounds, even if they hired 100 rangers it's impossible to track us physically. They can only magically track us, which is a possibility.

5) I'm not afraid that we'll be ambushed on the way to the outside, I am certain we'll be ambushed when we're outside. How do you suppose we're going to, first of all, get to the front gates unnoticed with 17 clumsy noncombatants and out of the 6 combatants half of which can't even sneak properly.

   - Worse comes to worse the guards are going to be intimidating enough that half the noncombatants will try to hold us down (grapple) so that "they'll be spared"

   - Best case scenario the guards threatens to slaughter the noncombatants if we don't lay our arms down. We might lose the cleric (you) and Aran because, well, RP =D

Point is, there is no sneaking out of the monastery. I'd rather take the chance to get the short rest in the training grounds after we clean up the blood spatters outside with prestidigitation. There's only 1 entrance we have to look out for and everyone can be inside the grounds rather than going up facing multiple traps and/or ambushes with our pants down.

Worse case scenario if we take a short rest:

  -Short rest is unsuccessful if they bump into the grounds 

  -If anything they'd be surprise to see us in the training grounds if they randomly wandered in haha..but yeah, most likely just normal initiative. No traps, no ambush, no hostages.

  -A fireball is thrown into the room. In which case we probably won't fare any better if we're ambushed when we're out in the opens.

There are literally no scenarios that I can think of that could be less riskier than getting the short rest. I'd be more inclined to get out without a short rest if we do not have hostages, but we have a ton of them...

TLDR: We'd be in a much better shape to be ambushed after the short rest than before.