After a few busy weekends where we weren’t able to squeeze in a game session, we got back to our campaign this weekend with a return to the ruined town of Thundertree to confront the young green dragon, Venomfang. When the party first ventured into town they managed to avoid the attentions of the dragon but learned of its presence from the cultists they encountered there. They decided not to confront it yet because… dragon.
The Thundertree area was designed with the assumption that the characters exploring there would normally be around level 3. My players at this point had already worked their way through Cragmaw Castle and some of the smaller adventure areas and had reached 4th level… and this made a huge difference in the results of the dragon encounter. Taking into account the higher character level, I tried to make the encounter slightly more difficult by having the dragon call out the cultists to attack the party. I thought it would be in character for him to fly to the top of his tower and watch in amusement for a few rounds as the little creatures fought below him, egging them on, saying things like, “who will prove worthy to serve me?”.
The players had other ideas, however. They immediately piled on him with ranged attacks and spells, doing significant damage before he even entered combat. The sorceress used her sorcery points for the first time, taking advantage of her quickening ability to cast bonus-action spells for two rounds in a row. Characters were spread out and using the buildings and trees in the area as cover, so VF’s breath attack was of limited use. He got off one poison spray, taking out one of his own cultists as collateral damage and seriously injuring the party member he was targeting, though the character (barely) survived thanks to a successful saving throw.
By the time Venomfang had fired off a breath attack and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) his bite/claw/claw routine once, he was already down below the half hit points that the adventure guide said would be enough to make him abandon this lair. He declared, “this place isn’t worth the trouble,” and turned to fly off. At this point, another round of damage from Witch Bolt kicked in, a javelin struck him, a critical arrow hit from a ranger with Colossus Slayer did major damage, and finally a Moonbeam knocked him out of the sky.
This session also marks our first use in D&D of some of the stuff I’ve been crafting. (I haven’t posted anything new in that regard in a couple of weeks because I have several simultaneous projects in a not-quite-done state and am waiting to finish them.)
Two random outdoor encounters during travel gave us a chance to use some of the outdoor terrain. (This underscored the need to make some trees! We placed one pseudo-tree using a jewelry rack thing belonging to my daughter.) The first was a daytime assault by a group of hobgoblins looking for easy prey, which I remembered to take a couple of pictures of. The second was a wolf-pack assault on the much more impressive tableau of a camp site featuring tents and a flickering fire… which I completely forgot to photograph.
I had printed a large map of Thundertree for the previous visit there, so we re-used that – but with a few of my almost-done ruins and modular tower pieces in place. (We also put a little clump of green grass stuff on top of the tea-light campfire to simulate a bush that was set on fire during the battle.)
I’d hoped to have a landscaped and flocked hill ready for the tower to sit on top of, but it wasn’t nearly finished yet. More to come on the tower in the near future!