Dave’s bardic inspiration lined up, ready to go

I use the term adventures rather loosely — farming ghouls for XP — ghouls are way nerfed in 5e — an empty room explored at length — Daniel refuses to draw a map — Tim annoyed at this — Pally tank game mad strong — dodging while restrained — nothing fancy, just doin werk.

I use the term adventures rather loosely
Because this episode honestly don’t have a lot going on. Tim and Jim just put in some work. A two man wrecking crew. Methodically hitting those rooms and hitting those faces.

farming ghouls for XP
Incentives matter. If you didn’t get XP for kills, we wouldn’t have bothered. So, if this part is boring, thank Mike Mearls.

ghouls are way nerfed in 5e
They really are. Only one attack per round, save vs paralysis at the end of each of your turns?!?!

Compare this to the 1981 Moldvay Basic set:

teach me how to moldvay

So of course Dave & Bart were like

okay 5e

an empty room explored at length
This was a badly written empty room. There are well written ones. Go read +Courtney Campbell talk about how to write good ones.

Pally tank game mad strong
Really, it’s not fair. Paladin with shield, plate, and defensive fighting style has 21 AC. It’s extremely tough to hit, especially when the bard uses cutting words to debuff an attack that actually does manage to get through. Or when the bard banes everyone. And pallies can self-heal.

dodging while restrained
Funny thing, as I was listening to this ep, I was also reading this post from +Justin Alexander about fiction-mechanics relations. We had a relevant moment pop up:

Dave is hit by the One-Eyed Shiver’s ice eye ray attack. He’s restrained until he makes a Strength check. I’m thinking this is because he’s frozen to the ground or encased in ice or whatever.

Then the guy casts thunderwave against Dave. You can Dex save for half damage vs thunderwave. But I ruled that Dave couldn’t make the save since he was held in place by ice.

Whoever you think was right (wink wink), the convo is exactly the sort of situation that Justin talks about in his article. Go read.

nothing fancy, just doin werk
That’s it. We’re going to be putting up some more info about the character roster in the near future. Expect a couple special episodes not too far off from now.