First of all, I didn’t die! Orgonbrand has made it through his fifth session. I am not at all confident for his sixth session, but we’ll get to that later. For now, all that matters is he made it through this one. Not without a couple of extremely close calls, but we’ll get to that too.
Secondly, we were once again without our two extra players, for the same reasons as last week. One couldn’t make it, the other had technical issues again. The latter’s character, Clourc, an aarakocra barbarian, was with the party, however, just being run as an NPC. For housekeeping, we had another NPC with us as well, so the party numbered five.
We started the session by making our way to the manor we were about to try to get into. I had the brilliant idea to use my flame breath to set the main gates on fire so we could sneak over the wall on the opposite side, which worked right up until we actually had to do the sneaking. Between the five of us, only three with disadvantage, we rolled two 6’s and three 7’s – and it was the disadvantaged folks who rolled the 7’s. Basically, the moment we hit the ground on the other side of the wall, we were spotted.
The subsequent fight with the guards began with me putting two of them to sleep while the third ran away to get help. He brought more guards, whom our party quickly cut through, and the surviving two ran away again, this time from fear. Clourc and our NPC gave chase, while I entered the house through the back door, expecting Gib and Sarek to back me up. But then they followed the others as well, leaving me all alone.
While the others chased down the guards, including fighting the extra ones at the burning gates that the fleeing ones just managed to run them into, I was ambushed and knocked out by a trio of imps, and brought to two failed Death Saves. For the first time this session. It might not have gone as badly for me as it did had one of their hits not been a critical hit, which brought me to unconsciousness, causing the final hit to auto-fail me those saves.
Luckily, I managed to pass my first two actual saves and then Sarek healed me with a potion of healing. So, first possible death narrowly avoided.
Meanwhile, more imps appeared, but the rest of the party managed to kill them and the remaining guards. It was very efficient. I was the only one who took more than a fraction of damage.
Once we were done with that fight, we searched the rest of the floor and found nothing but the family tressym (flying cat) which I immediately befriended and is now the most preciousest boy in the whole wide world. Then we went upstairs, and got into another fight.
This one went well as well, at first. There were five more guards, whom we quickly cut through, but then, as we searched the floor, the party split. Gib and the NPC ended up in a room with an animated suit of plate armour, while Clourc and I found ourselves in a room with a crippled (and not very powerful) cleric and an imp. Sarek was sort of in-between the two pairs.
I was brought to unconsciousness by the cleric, because my Dex save is shit, and subsequently failed my first two death saves (second time) before Sarek healed me back up again with another healing potion. Meanwhile, Clourc killed the cleric, got knocked unconscious by the imp, got a natural 20 on his death save, woke up, and killed the imp.
Meanwhile meanwhile, Gib and the NPC fought the armour. It withstood a buttload of damage, knocked Gib unconscious (but I healed him back up), and ended up getting pounded on by all of us before it was finally destroyed. Tough business.
Afterwards, we searched the floor and I cast Prayer of Healing, giving those of us who were injured (everyone but Sarek, to varying degrees) a modicum of health back as we determined that we probably didn’t have time for a full short rest. The burning gate, in theory a good idea, was now drawing too much attention from the outside. Then, we began heading downstairs, and ended the session there.
Basically, and I feel like I’m getting a touch of deja vu here, but basically, we’re about to enter the next stage of a dungeon and three of our party members are sub-20 hit points. More specifically, me, because I’m so susceptible to death, and our two proper tanks. More significantly, I’m down to having just one spell slot left, despite trying to conserve them. Which means our party’s healing is down to my one slot, Gib’s inherent healing ability (healing hands and just one point of lay on hands left, I think) and a handful of healing potions.
This is why I am not hopeful for Orgonbrand’s survival next week. Because, for some reason, as with the imps in this session, my chances of death seem to shoot from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye. But I’ve been wrong before, so we’ll see. Whatever happens will happen when it happens, and you’ll have to tune in next week to find out what it was.