David Given Schwarm

Married, Father, United

Tag: Dungeons and Dragons

  • Curse of Strahd–D&D Encounters S22 S17

    Cody left his backpack with his character sheets at home. This was evidently my fault since he had asked if I would bring it. Lisa brought his backpack to the shop which had his dice and mini’s, but the she took his folder out to confirm it was in the backpack and left it on the kitchen table.

    It was one of those nights!

    I DM’d sitting down again this week, which was very nice. I had plenty of space.


    Cody also had plenty of room to spread out. He also got to play a new character–Human Ranger! He named him Robin Cloak and really had a ton of fun…


    The party continued to head towards the Amber Temple–but were attacked at a portcullis by Vroks before they could make it.



    The players did roll a lot of Crit’s & Fumbles, but I did not capture them all…I did continue to use the Pathfinder iCrit & iFumble applications which is a lot of fun!

    I also rolled a double crit!



    Killing the party’s Saber Tooth Cat, which actually saddened a player a lot–I felt kind of bad…

  • Zendikar — The Wizards Lab

    Cody, Josh, Kate, & I continued our adventures in the Zendikar D&D Setting!

    After defeating Meepo & four orcs a strong Hodron emerged from the earth & transformed Meepo and his lizard mount into Elderazi Horror!

    The team rallied and brought down the tentacled horror.

    After defeating the Horror they followed the Hodron trail back, under the earth, to the Lair of a Wizard.

  • Actual Play Curse of Strahd–D&D Encounters S22 S16

  • Curse of Strahd–D&D Encounters S22 S16


     

    Another great week of D&D at Kingslayer Comics!


    Kyle brought fantastic snacks–Milk & Cookies, but more importantly:


    POG!

    POG POG POG!



    I changed where I sat at the table & felt like I had more room…


    We are winding towards the end of the Curse of Strahd! PC’s were at level 7 and basically destroying some of the earlier encounters that they had missed.



    I was hoping to get the players to the Amber Temple


    But the finished the battle in the swamp & then killed all the druids near the Vineyard.


    I used my first DM Guild product during this session! I used the 18 cursed items by the great Jeff C Stevens to deliver an hilarious shield which does 1d8 Necrotic if the PC does not make a sarcastic comment before an attack. It is shaped like  a bright yellow smiley face. So Good!

    There were a lot of crits

    I even got one!


    But mostly it was the players

  • Stat Order


    Recently, Brian asked me “what is the official order of D&D Character Stats”–which seems like a simple question, to me….In fact, I quickly responded with SIWDCCh, a word which is in my Dictionary and has been the only possible answer that I have ever heard or considered.

    I base my response on this:

    1st Edition Character sheet


    Which was the first ‘official’ character sheets I ever saw. Before these were available I used pen and paper, but I did write the stats in this order. 

    I flipped through a recent notebook to ensure that I write them in the same order still:

    Random Notebook Photo


    The confusion starts with this 5th Ed Sheet:

    5th Edition Character Sheet


    which has Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, & Charisma–just plain wrong. 

    The Stats are “grouped” correctly–with S & Ch book-ending the pairs [Dex / Con & Int / Wis]; but, overall this order is just crazy.

    I checked some Pathfinder sheet which have this SDCIWCh madness….

    Pathfinder Character Sheet

    Is that one of the differences between D&D and Pathfinder? Does everyone else already know this & I am just late to the game?

    So confused….

  • Actual Play Curse of Strahd–D&D Encounters S22 S15

  • Curse of Strahd–D&D Encounters S22 S15

    Another fun week of D&D Encounters at Kingslayer Comics.

    Melissa was back so the snacks were once again complete out of control.

    I am getting to know the other players characters personalities better as we move into the final few weeks of this campaign.

    I did struggle a lot tonight with table management–spell casters are hard to run when you have a bunch of other creatures. The Cherries are Zombies, the Coffee Cup lid is a Giant Skull. Baba is the green and yellow taffy. The red and blue skittles are scarecrows. the red line is a wall of fire. The red square is a zone of slow.

    I thought the Brezek Runs of Baby Lysaga would be a lot harder — but the 7th level castsers really shut the encounter down. I do not have much experience running 5E above level 5 and that likely came into play with my general tactics.

    There were some crits & funbles but I did not use a table for those this night–this is funny…

  • Plane Shift: Innistrad

    I09 has a review and some preview pages…I am out of my mind with excitement for this…

    This is completely awesome & amazing FREE product!

  • Actual Play Curse of Strahd–D&D Encounters S22 S14

  • Curse of Strahd–D&D Encounters S22 S14

    Another great night of D&D Encounters at Kingslayer Comics playing through the Curse of Strahd–this week it was all about the Werewolves!

    I have no idea what this blurry mess of a photo is supposed to capture

    We did have macroons, not to be confused with Macroons

    The table was in classic form.

    ‘

    Our mini’s are really starting to solidify!

    There was some wonderful role play and some great crits rolled

    we continue to really enjoy the Paizo iCrit and iFumble applications