D&D 5E; Princes of the Apocalypse (Part 1) : Listen at doors!

Well, we start deep within a fairly watery grave dungeon.

Previously the party picked a fight in one room and then as the dungeon has it, the group in the room just north burst through the door. And the party was already pretty dilapidated from fights before this - they all ran!

This session, because of the drop in/drop out nature, two of the beat up PC's are just not there - I really have to figure a result for this. Because otherwise it's winning (surviving  conflict) by NOT playing and...that really is anti game!

Anyway, so many things happened this session - all because a player forgot to listen at a door before they opened it!

These are the things you listen at!

To be honest the players had just been opening doors willy nilly about a dozen times before this. But when they are all on HP in the single digits...

But people forget the basics.

Funnily it was a barracks - there was a chance of all six occupants being asleep (roll 1D6 to see how many are asleep)

I say "You really want this to be a six" and roll in front of the players! Nup, only three are asleep!

They are a bunch of reavers and after the players try to (now getting kind of old) 'were the cleaning crew' routine, the reavers decide they want to mug the players - bustling them out of the room and closing the door so they don't have to let the priests in on the take (or worse, the cult priests stop the mugging!)

Players don't want to part with all their gold though. And the rogue (who just dropped into the party out of the blue because drop in/drop out play (gunna have a post about that soon how it makes characters into caricatures)) goes for the sneak attack - and fails. Okay, the player suggests maybe they might not have noticed the arrow and I'm a little kind because it's such a bad shot I let the rogue make a deception check to see if the arrow was even noticed. He rolls well, so he had aimed it in such a way that if it failed, it wouldn't be noticed (perhaps stealth would be a better roll for that, but whatevs).

So kind - only for him to fail the next ranged attack anyway! Screw it, they've noticed him - the reavers were going to beat up the PC's anyway and now it's on regardless!

And that's like the first five minutes of a two hour session! Oh yes, it went downhill even further - hilariously so! I'll try and continue the report tomorrow!

Part 2