Only if you promise better card draws.

Eh. Ok. Even if you can't promise better card draws.

Only if you promise better card draws.

Done! Not necessarily for you, but I'm sure someone will pull the good stuff.

RFTG

I'll play but as always, I am happy to sit out to make room for new players.

Ran the final session of my 2+ year D&D/Pathfinder campaign (we converted to 5th Ed about 8 months ago) last night. Showdown between 7 16th level PCs and an ancient wizard in his pocket dimension with a few giants, a pair of lamia matriarchs and an adult blue dragon backing him up.

About an hour in I thought I had horribly miscalculated as the entire party was either down and making Death Saves or sitting at around 20 hit points and the baddies had barely been scratched. But they somehow managed to turn it around through judicious spell use (Holy Aura and Circle of Power are incredible buffs. Holy Aura alone probably turned 2 dozen crits against PCs into misses during the course of the fight) smart deployment of an Eversmoking Bottle (Transmutation specialists are powerful, but the vast majority of their spells require you to see your target) some good luck.

Overall the battle took close to 5 hours to play out, 4 out 7 PCs got dropped (and multiple times at that) a 5th would have dropped if not for being a half-orc and the party wizard actually got killed by a Finger of Death, but the cleric managed to bring him back with Revivify. They were all running on fumes at the end, having used most of their spell slots and other per day/rest abilities as well as the majority of their potions and scrolls. Final blow came from the rogue who had popped a potion of Invisibility the previous round (which was only effective thanks to the bard having dispelled the big bad's buffs, including True Seeing) and then fired at the flying evil wizard with his bow for a sneak attack.

As I told them after it was all over, there was no doubt that they fully earned that final victory.

That sounds properly epic.

I'm in for racing.

Kalshane, that sounds awesome and hair-raising!

What an ending!

Thanks. This was actually a published adventure path (first time running one of those. I normally run home brew games) because I mistakenly thought it would save me time. But between setting up all the maps and monsters in Roll20 and making changes to accommodate my much larger than expected party, it probably ended up being just as much work, if not more so. Then 5e came out and it felt like the solution to all the issues I was having running high-level Pathfinder. So we switched systems, which of course meant even more prep-work for me converting all the baddies over, but made the actual game sessions run much smoother.

But adapting the final battle to 5E probably took the most work of all (since treating the BBEG in his pocket dimension as a Legendary creature in his lair seemed to make a lot of sense and because 5e concentration mechanic pretty much invalidated the entirety of his published tactics) and I was really, really worried I had misjudged it, especially when it looked like a TPK in the making by the end of round 3. But credit to my players for never giving up and scouring their character sheets for whatever they could use to turn the tide.

RftG

Milords, ladies and other National Assistance holders, we interrupt this tale of epic tabletoppery to announce the beginning of game 8 of Race for the Galaxy. We have the same rules and cards as last game, and indeed the same players too. Everyone is about to receive a choice of two starting worlds, from which they will pick one; and a choice of six starting cards, from which they will choose four to be their starting hand. They will also receive the random goals for this game - as always, we have two "Most" goals and four "First" goals. Last game, Laga claimed four of them for a bonus 14 points, enough to secure victory. Will one player dominate them again?

Cards are going out now. Everyone, please let me know which cards you keep.

I realized going into our second Ravenloft session that my players were afraid of the room where they had elected to take an extended rest. Not wandering monsters, but the room itself.