Baldur's Gate II (5e campaign log)

[J-H]

Session 8: 9/3/2023

With the party low on resources and pretty beat up, they continue upwards out of the swamp. Not too far into the forest, Cormak’s +5 Perception score notices that a heap of brush up ahead looks awfully regular and brown. After some discussion, the party, about 50’ away from it, decides to back off and circle around. Some of the Blights get up and pursue them, but with no good ranged attack, limited vision, etc., the party gets clear pretty quickly.

Blights are a really lame monster. They are a <1 CR threat with minimal ranged damage, and are slow enough that 2/3 of them can be outrun by any player character who isn’t Exhausted or Encumbered. They have no stealth skills to support being ambush predators, their senses are too limited to let them hunt, and the slowest and most powerful of them relies on enemies getting within 15’ of it. There’s really no way to use them in combat unless the party is forced to approach them by narrow terrain. Even attacking the party at night is risky given the sub-par Perception and lack of stealth. Bleh. I think I see why a5E didn’t even bother making a version for their Monster Manual.

Moving onwards, the party starts sees some Stonehenge-style standing stones heading up towards the top of a higher hill. At the base of the closest stone wait two shadow druids; one with a staff, and the other with a club and a hawk. I thought starting at about an 80’ distance would give room for the Shadow Druids to do some spellcasting, but the club-wielder ended up built as a Beastmaster with a great magic club and no gap-closers. His Beast of the Air was too fragile and never got to attack anything. That said, the players spent the whole battle spread out, there was a lot of using trees to break sight lines for defensive purposes, and Cormak and Cernd ended up in melee with Dalok (the club user) anyway. They took some hits, and then the druid got close enough to do Erupting Earth under them for 3d12(!) damage, which totaled out to a disappointing 8. One of the places druids get mistreated is in damage dice. Erupting Earth would be better if it was 6d6, and Call Lightning would be better as 4d8 than 3d10. I had Dalok use his +7 Athletics check to try to shove and grapple Cormak over a few times, but the dice meant it never happened successfully. So much for demonstrating how knockdown+grapple is handy.

After they took him down, it was a matter of chasing down the druid who had been calling down lightning on them for a while. They broke CL concentration so he summoned a beast next to Mergand who used Shield, then they broke Concentration on that… he went down. Cernd was down to 13hp, and the rest of the party was beat up. They let Cernd regenerate and drank some potions, then went to meet Faldorn.

Loot:
Club +1: Gnasher
Makal of the Pine, a devious druid, carved this club and bonded it with the
spirit of his wolverine companion. Like that tenacious creature, Gnasher is
a dangerous weapon in the hands of a skilled user. When the club strikes,
sharp spikes dig into the victim's flesh, causing extreme pain.
Makal used the club successfully on several occasions, earning the anger of orc loggers
threatening his forests.
It deals +1d6 piercing damage on hit.

They also found a bag containing 20 turquoise gems worth 100gp each. I subbed these in for the really weird sword in this encounter.

Faldorn gave her arrogant speech, and they pretty much just pushed Cernd forward and said “Here, you deal with it.” Nobody really wanted to argue with her much or grandstand for the audience of a dozen or more druids (including Pauden and some others). I narratively described the fight as starting off with a swarm of insects from Faldorn and lightning from Cernd, then a big cloud of fog that obscured the battlefield as lightning crashed down regularly, until Cernd walked out holding Faldorn’s head in his bloody claws.

The druids say that with Faldorn dead, those who were kept in check by fear of her challenging and killing them (really weird tradition for vegetarian hippie wizards) can work on fixing things. They give the party her old staff, a Staff of Thunder and Lightning +2. I stick with the 5e version on this item, as it’s better and easier to use. Cormak takes this, as the +2 makes it as effective as his non-magic shortsword, and it gives him some extra options.

Long rest.

They head back to town and talk to Lord Mayor Coprith (or, as their notes say, “Mayor”). He thanks them and pays them 7500gp (found later that it should have been 10k, will make it up). He asks if, since they seem so competent, they could help with the genie problem as well. They tentatively agree, nervous about fighting genies, and proceed to the tent outside of town.

Also, somewhere in here they decide to keep Cernd with the party, and let Aerie stay in Trademeet. It’s a nice place to live and she’s been able to help patch up the town guards who got injured.

The one standing outside returns Mergand’s greeting. “Greetings to you… human male, correct? You mortals all look so alike.” There’s a bit of back and forth where Mergand clarifies that he’s half –elf (“Elves, the short ones, right?”) and eventually they go in to meet Khan Zahraa. He explains that the Dao djinn are holding the trade in Trademeet hostage because their quarry, a Rakshasa named Ihtafeer, is somewhere near here. They’ve been chasing her for month and would rather the townsfolk or whoever do it as they are bored of the chase. Ludwig says something about them being good at finding and killing things.
“Excellent.”
“Wait, did we just make a bargain with this guy?”

There’s an extended discussion about how to search town for shapeshifters, including walking around for a bit seeing if Kondar, Ludwig’s sword, heats up. For a “vendor trash” sword in the game, I’ve gotten a good bit of mileage out of “heats up around shapeshifters!” They try to figure out if there’s anything worth stealing in town, as the rakshasa was described as a thief. They talk to the mayor, but he doesn’t have any good ideas, although he does give them some background about a couple of noble families who bicker over prestige. He can’t think of anyone else strange, except that one guy who yelled something about Bhaalspawn and teleported away from Mergand.

The group eventually decides that a group of magic users who can shapeshift, the druids, might be a place where a shapeshifter would hide. They head back to the druid grove, and I ask which way they want to go, the swamp route or the hill route. They say hill, and then Ludwig’s player goes “Wait a minute… what about that potion lady and her cottage?”

Ding ding ding

They decide to be super cautious, and wait until midnight before spying on Adratha’s cottage. Cernd takes this time to talk to Mergand about him looking like a duck, walking like a duck, and quacking like a duck, but not being a duck (drawing from an in-game conversation). Mergand admits that his father was Bhaal, and that violence seems to follow him around, but that he’s doing the best he can. He asks a bit about how Cernd controls the werewolf transformation.

Cormak casts Pass Without Trace and accompanies Ludwig to the cottage. They peer in the front doors, but it’s dark and nobody’s on the first floor. The sword is warm, indicating a shapeshifter is present. They circle around back. Ludwig easily climbs up to the second floor window to peer in, but it’s still dark and he has no Darkvision. Cormak makes it up with less stealth, but PWT saves him from waking them up (which would have been “fun”). He can make out two medium humanoids, but no other real details. He checks the back yard, but his Investigation roll of 12 isn’t enough to find the human bones in the compost bin in the dark while sneaking around.

They go in the next morning after breakfast to ask about potions, but Ihtafeer immediately smells the magical stink of the Djinni on them. Despite her having advantage, the party has THREE players with init over 20, and they start going after her. Cernd drops a great 3rd level Moonbeam on her, but Rakshasas are immune to such low-level magic. On Ihtafeer’s turn, the rakshasa drops Stinking Cloud, and almost everyone spends the next two turns failing saves while she claws at them with disadvantage due to the cloud’s opacity.

A few notes here:
Ludwig took the Lucky feat instead of increasing his INT or anything else at level 4.
I used the book Rakshasa, except Ihtafeer got 40 extra HP. I did not use most of the book spells as they didn’t fit with the feel of the encounter, but did keep Stinking Cloud from BG2. Fly, Plane Shift, and True Seeing are nice but not really relevant. I dropped her spell save DC from 18 to 16.
Sadat used a +2 Quarterstaff instead of his claws, and was more a melee foe when he showed up.
These could take the CR down a bit, but this is still a party of a 6th level NPC and 3 4th level PCs taking on a pair of enemies in the CR 10+ range.

Ludwig is the only one consistently saving, and scores a few hits, but Ihtafeer’s Concentration rolls are consistently high. Around round 3 or so, Cormak manages to take an action, and uses his scroll of Dispel Magic to get rid of the Stinking Cloud. Everyone starts attacking, and then on Ihtafeer’s next turn, she casts a spell. Ludwig fails a wisdom save.

On his next turn, she orders Ludwig, who is the victim of Dominate Person, to kill Mergand. He rolls a nat20 with sneak attack (Mergand is next to Ihtafeer using his +1 quarterstaff, as he has no spells that will get through her defenses), and instantly zeros out Mergand from full. Mergand Nat20s on his death save (the 3rd nat20 death save in 2 sessions) and uses his turn to go Invisible. Cernd pumps out damage. Cormak uses the Staff of Thunder and Lightning; Ihtafeer saves vs stun but takes some damage. On Ludwig’s next turn, he’s ordered to try to kill Cernd, and does score a couple of hits. This goes on for another round or two, and a second Rakshasa, Sadat, enters the building through the 2nd floor window and hops down to the ground floor, joining the battle. Eventually, Cernd breaks Ihtafeer’s Concentration, and Ludwig finishes her off. Sadat swears vengeance and targets only Ludwig. Cormak does some battlefield healing to keep Ludwig and Cernd topped up, and Sadat gets brought down.

I fudged one dice roll in this combat, just to make Sadat miss once when he would have hit because Ludwig and Cernd were both into single digit HPs. Cormak was the only one who didn’t end up under 5hp at some point!

Loot:
Quarterstaff +2
Periapt of Proof Against Poison (attunement, immunity to poison damage and the poisoned condition) – goes to Mergand.

It’s late, so we stop there. I tell them that they have more gold coming, and to start looking at the list I’ve provided of what’s for sale… they will have close to 25kgp and can afford one really good item or some medium-tier stuff. They do not feel ready to go after Irenicus yet in terms of power level, so they won't be paying Gaelan Bayle off yet. If they walk around town with a lot of money, Valen may pay them a visit, though.

I have the first Bhaal dream queued up for when Mergand's player is ready to respond via Discord PMs.