#ray plays strahdborne

[bitter-like-coffee]

i know i almost never report here for anything but...we killed strahd in strahdborne (a loose adaptation of bloodborne w strahd elements in dnd our dm homebrewed)!

ilya, @mithryl-ninja‘s level 10 swashbuckler, had been geas’d by strahd after our opening oneshot where everyone’s characters tried (and barely failed) to kill strahd. the rest of the level 10 squad had been slaughtered, and @wayanayaw‘s paladin, evalina, had her body stolen and taken over by strahd.

fast forward, we’ve had two deaths in our level 3 party and we’ve climbed all the way to level 20 (with hyper-accelerated levelling).

alala, my leonin battlemaster, friend, @thefandomcassandra‘s firbolg/hexblood druid, puck, mith’s changeling bard, and celia, wayan’s hexblade/sorcerer (and evelina’s younger sister)...made it to strahd. By now, puck and celia were the only two remaining of the original group. We were joined by @neonchapel‘s dmpc/npc kingsley, who friend had recruited as the result of ...basically an item-triggered wild magic surge. kingsley was very stupid and very strong, and a good aim. he was also very fragile.

so....friend cast freedom of movement on alala. this is a surprise tool for later.

we start fighting strahd, and ilya/mir. puck gets counterspelled over and over but still manages to cause trouble and get things done, and doing his best to...be puck in all that entails (being a nuisance to enemies and a very good healer, lifter of spirits, and absolute bastard). strahd tries to start gunning for celia, but celia uses blink...and puck starts to really piss strahd off... repeatedly, strahd tries to grapple alala, because she’s strong as fuck and deals a lot of damage, aided by purple worm poison puck had duplicated using an item...and consistnetly fails to land many hits, and ther’s some wild trading of blows happening. and then strahd grapples puck...who has -1 strength.

puck, it is important to note, has a mask. we never saw him remove it. puck, it is important to note, is a changeling. puck’s mask, as it turns out, never came off for a reason. strahd’s “bite” attack was ripping off the bony carapace that covered his face. due to everyone’s careful work (and some good damage dealt by celia), strahd dropped him, but not without cost. she cut him from toe to tip.

celia used her aasimar radiant consumption to burn strahd as revenge.

alala lost it and slashed the shit out of him.and then friend shapechanged into an abishai. friend absolutely destroyed him....and then celia staked his heart.

we got...so much fucking money for killing him and ending the horseshit going on in barovia. so much so that friend true rez’d puck, and then contentedly went on to become a hag as they had intended. puck and celia travelled together...and alala bought a cabin in the middle of the plains to desperately try to avoid anything that could possibly force her into that hell again.

it was sad i cried. one of the first campaigns we’ve ended in a long long time

[bitter-like-coffee]

well, uh, @thefandomcassandra‘s barbarian, facet, died in combat a few days ago. mummy rot rendered her functionally un-saveable. she fought well, and well, sandr’s got a firbolg-based hexblood shepherd druid (Friend) who’ll be kicking ass, taking names, and taking the role of primary healer for now.

because uh, pasha, my peace cleric of ilmater, died shortly after facet did. he took a page from @mithryl-ninja‘s bard puck’s book and made it his mission to be as hard to ignore as possible while taking hits. i went into that fight knowing he would want to take death blows if it meant buying the others time or hopefully saving them. so the boss of that session’s fight was a dullahan, and wanted to kill celia, @citrusapples‘ sorcerer. pasha took a hit and pissed off said dullahan so bad she downed him immediately so he couldn’t block for celia again.

vitally, because she’s a dullahan, i need to point out this is the second time liam has accidentally triggered a boss’s second phase within a few turns and it’s the funniest fucking thing for him to Suggest she get off the horse, immediately followed by @neonchapel going “... [Phase 2 has just triggered]”

u u im gonna play a leonin battlemaster next so we’ll see how that goes! also, celia uh, has a Curse so that her hands might potentially just....Cast Spells on their own if she fails con saves! she barely passed all of them this time :’)

[bitter-like-coffee]

well. i realized i’ll probably be posting here a lot, purely to share Sad Strahdborne Art that only like. 5 people understand.

for context, @neonchapel is running a dnd game that VERY loosely takes elements from curse of strahd that is primarily based around bloodborne boss mechanics (fighting Big Boy Bosses, several of which who have multiple phases, etc). our first session was the 4 of us fighting strahd and his minion as level 10 characters, who barely failed to slay strahd. (the party consisted of ilya sorokov, mith’s swashbuckler/battlemaster drow; strixx,sandr’s shadar-kai devotion paladin of the raven queen; evelina auranesi, wayan’s watcher paladin, and celia’s older sister; and cyrus the tinkerer, my leonin gunslinger/rogue).

after they perished, the annual black friday free-for-all to send people into the mist to destroy strahd and keep the mists from advancing happened, and our party ventured into the mist, whether for a pardon from petty crime, or pilgrimage, or revenge.

the current party consists of @mithryl-ninja‘s changeling glamour bard puck merlowe (we love one bastardman w a hurdy gurdy); @thefandomcassandra‘s shadar-kai raven-queen idolozing zealot barbarian/lycan bloodhunter facet (she craves death, in the gay way, and to recover her comrade’s body from strahd); @wayanayaw‘s aberrant mind sorcerer/hexblade warlock, celia auranesi (she wants to avenge her sister and the two additional hands gifted by her patron want to tuch); and my drow peace cleric of ilmater, pasha dal relmyr (he’s just a nice but sad dude who had no idea what was being asked of his charge. he didn’t want to hurt anyone. keyword: didn’t.)

also in the party was pasha’s...ward, his informally adopted daughter, and his junior acolyte of ilmater, pakron patina, half-drow half-elf. they’d been tasked to go through the mists together for a pilgrimage to a specific barovian church of ilmater. neonchapel himself intended for pakron to die immediatley, as a classless npc w 6 hp. somehow, when hostile npcs tried to kill her, they didn’t manage to one-shot her. from there, everyone protected and supported her in becoming a light cleric of ilmater. this poor traumatized kid learned how to fight from the barbarian and after we found a baby dragon, was going to class into cavelier w it because they were both scared orphans. the fight where she was oneshot by a mummy, she would have had enough levels gained to be cavelier.

everyone in the party is p fucked up about it. the same bastard that dusted my baby inflicted facet with mummy rot and none of us know so she’ll almost guaranteed die next bossfight and be replaced with sandr’s hexblood shepherd druid, Friend.

[bitter-like-coffee]

some buddies, by which i mean ( @neonchapel, @thefandomcassandra, @citrusapples, and @mithryl-ninja) are playing a bloodborne dnd game very loosely based on curse of strahd. we had our first character death yesterday, and another looms on the horizon. pakron, my peace cleric’s adopted daughter and fellow acolyte was instantly dusted by mummy rot, and facet, sandr’s barbarian, contracted mummy rot unbeknownst to everyone including herself. ,u - u,

[bitter-like-coffee]

;; n ;; pasha and pakron are together now. more detailed post to follow eventually