Ghosts of Saltmarsh – Session 1.

So I felt a lot better than yesterday, so that was a bonus.
I finished prepping for the campaign by around 3pm, so I had enough time to be ready just in time!
Thanks gut…

I got a new member of the group, Ben, who is playing a Tiefling Wizard.
That brings the total members of the party to 5, but I have told the Hall of Heroes that I’m happy with 1 more member, as 6 is what I was used to.
Plus I get to have more targets for the creatures without really having to increase the number of them in the encounter.
So I brought my speakers this time, as I had planned to be playing background music the whole time.
It’s something that really helps set the mood and builds the energy of the scenes and combat.
And considering I had the whole back room to myself last week, it’ll be great!

‘Cept I got lucky last week, and there’s a group that normally plays there on Thursday nights.
And they happen to consist of a few of my old friends from high school.
So that’s… a thing…
It’s also good that they’re some of the loud friends from high school… so now I’m shouting everything to be heard.
As a side note: my throat hates me right now.
So using my speakers and playing music isn’t really an option anymore, which bums me out.
I also like to record my sessions so I can listen back to them instead of having to write anything down…
That can’t happen.
But I should have expected things like this to happen, as it’s a public place, it’s not my house anymore.
Just one of the ways I’ll have to adjust my DM style for this.

We also had someone sit in, she wasn’t playing, she just wanted to see how D&D was played.
I apparently made such a good impression that she’s joining the Saturday group!
I did say I was going to include her in things… and then totally forgot to do so.
But now, onto the session breakdown!

We started a little late, and ended a little early, which is OK with me, but I doubt next session will be that way.
As I said before, this session was a way to get everyone to Saltmarsh and to get them to level 2 before they really started.
So I did my page and a half of preamble that no one cared about as the other group discussed shootings in America… loudly.
I then had them take watch, and on the 3rd watch, the first bandit stepped on a twig and alerted the elf ranger, named Erdan, to their presence.
I hadn’t expected Erdan, who is played by the young Harry, to try and talk to them instead of waking everyone up.
The bandits were just as startled as I was and screamed in attack!
Combat!
It was fairly close quarters, but because Erdan passed his perception check I let the bandits scream wake everyone else up.
They were still on their backs, but ready to go.
I think the combat lasted 2 or 3 rounds, which is a long combat in 5th edition.
With Jordan, the human paladin played by Jordan, taking a few hits, but decapitating one bandit.
Erdan stabbing another bandit in the heart with this short sword.
Revan also took a few hits, but Evan’s character, managed to take one down.
Valrax, Ben’s wizard, did some impressive damage with Chill Touch.
And Maestro, Matt’s Tiefling Sorcerer, managed to distract the last bandit long enough for Jordan to javelin him through the chest…
Too bad Maestro was trying to get him to surrender.
With that, they looted the corpses, where I had to adjust the totals on them because it needed to divide by 5 instead of 4.
After they had finished looting Jordan and Revan noticed another bandit off in the distance, running away.
Erdan decided to take a shot with his long bow, which only just missed.
They argued a little about taking one of the pack horses and riding after him, but Joven, the person who hired the group to take him to Saltmarsh told him not to bother… especially after he rolled a nat 2 on his Animal Handling check to get a horse.

With that they rested and headed out for the rest of the trip… which was cut short as 4 more bandits and their cocky Half-Orc captain stood in the middle of the road.
He threatened to kill them all and the next battle was on!
Now, the Bandits are CR 1/8th, they have terrible AC and not much HP, though more than some of the PCs.
But the Bandit Captain is CR 2, with more HP than the party combined, and 3 attacks a round!
So I nerfed him pretty hard.
He threw both of his daggers as his first move, which reduced him to 2 attacks from then on.
He then only attacked the tanks, and I had to fudge plenty of rolls, otherwise they were down for the count quickly too.
I was honestly having a weird night with the dice.
I started really cold, barely able to roll anything in the double digits.
That changed for most of this battle.
I fudged a lot of rolls, missing when I should have hit.
A lot of the time I just didn’t add modifiers, and then I cut the Captains HP by 15.
He also didn’t attack until all the other bandits were dead.
I did give him the orcish Relentless Endurance which made the final blow that much more awesome.
There were a lot of misses from the party, and then low damage rolls when they hit.
So it took a while for the bandits to drop.
By then the two tanks had taken some damage, almost enough to drop them if I hadn’t nerfed the damage as well.
It’s one of the reasons I always roll behind the DM screen.

The turning point of the battle was when Maestro used Thaumaturgy to make himself look like he was on fire to try and intimidate the Captain.
He failed, and annoyed the half-orc so much that he charged him during his next round.
He hit on his first attack and did 6 of the Sorcerers 8 HP.
But I rolled terribly on the second attack and missed.
Revan ran up and stabbed him in the chest with his first attack.
Which took him over 50 HP and would have killed him without the Relentless Endurance.
But seeing as Revan was a two weapon fighter, he spun the blade in hand and stabbed through the top of the half-orcs head.
He rolled a nat 18, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt on how the attack worked.
It worked so well he managed to have the two swords touch inside the now dead Bandit Captain.
Victory!

With that they had a short rest and made their way to Saltmarsh.
After a quick scene at the gates, they each got payed 5 gold and Joven rode off down the hill.
A short scene, that no one cared about, later, and the session was over!
I have to say: doing different voices at a shouting level is really difficult, so they all basically sounded the same… not that it’s too different to normal, but it’s just even worse.
With that, I ended the session and levelled everyone up to level 2.

Next week we start the campaign properly… time to start prepping for real!

To follow how the campaign is going, find more here:
Session 0 | Session 2 | Session 3 | Session 4 | Session 5