Adventures in Milmar #26 - Death by Dumbness

This post tells the continuing tale of an adventure I ran in Dungeons & Dragons a while ago.

In the last post, Adventures in Milmar #25 - Deeper into the Warmark I described some of the perilous encounters our intrepid murderhobos adventurers had to deal with as they traversed the Warmark.

This desolate and cursed place has been a no-man's-land between the Grand Duchy of Enrieme and the Sidhiaran elves for centuries, and it is the kind of warfare that creates deep (and often magical) scars in what was once a lovely bucolic landscape.

Fifth Encounter - Trouble with Wyverns

After a tough fight beating the treants I described last time, the party finally had a bit of a break (or so they thought).

After slogging through swamps and dismal, dead woodlands on previous days they finally had a morning where they found themselves walking over rolling, hilly grassland. There were even hints of green in the mostly blackened and blasted grass.

It was all a false hope, of course. They spotted three black specks in the sky, crossing the horizon. Caught in the open, they were easily visible, and the specks changed direction revealing themselves to be a trio of wyverns, flapping lazily in their direction.

These wyverns were straight out of the monster manual, page 303. By this stage the players knew I played monsters as more than just big stupid bags of hit points. A predator like a wyvern may not be hugely intelligent, but it does have a certain natural cunning and combat ability.

Xiang'Hua the Tabaxi monk had not had a good fight against the treants. She was too fragile to go toe-to-root with them, and although her damage output was impressive it was delivered by manoeuvrability and large numbers of low-damage blows rather than a single powerful strike.

She dashed forwards, aiming to intersperse herself between the wyverns and the rest of the party. I think the idea was to break the attack up, attracting a wyvern to herself so there were less for her companions to have to deal with. It's also possible that there was an element of glory-hunting.

I think her idea was to put herself at a point where they'd use up their movement for the round and be effectively "stopped" at her location in order for her to deliver her multiple attacks.

She positioned herself so that the wyvern's previous move would put if 40 feet from her. Xiang'Hua had a smirk on her face as she readied the flurry of blows to beat down the one which finished it's movement in her square next round.

But this was an encounter designed to be severely challenging to the whole party working as a team. For a single character, it would be deadly.

This is the point where I uttered that immortal Dungeon master phrase "Are you sure ?"

Most players know that this is code for "You are about to do something incredibly, mind-numbingly stupid. I am giving you a chance to reconsider. If you don't, the consequences are all your own responsibility."

Xiang'Hua's response; "I know what I'm doing".

Such confidence.....

Image created by AI in Wombo.art

The first clue that this wasn't the case was also the last.

Turns out that 40 feet per round was half speed. There's nothing in the rules to say a creature or player has to use up all their movement allowance every round. Additionally, if you check page 190 of the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, the rule is clear that you can make part of your move, make an attack and then make the rest of your move.

The slightly complex interplay of rules meant that all three wyverns could strafe Xiang'Hua and move safely out of striking distance. One would take an attack of opportunity on the way past, but it would be a single strike, not the whole flurry of blows.

Additionally, the rule for wyverns is that while flying, they can use a claw attack instead of either one of the bite or stinger one. The claws haven't got the range of the other two attacks, but are more likely to hit and do more damage.

Xiang'Hua's face dropped into an expression of shock when I described the acceleration and that all three wyverns were targeting her (as the only character in range), not just one of them.

The first wyvern got in good solid hits with both claw and stinger. The stinger does 2D6+4 damage, but additionally forces the target to make a DC15 Constitution save against poison, taking half damage on a pass or the full 7D6 damage on a fail.

That was an ouch ! She failed the save. Both attacks and the poison reduced her hit points by about 45, reducing her to single digits.

There was nothing she could do but steady herself as the second wyvern dived in. It missed with it's claw, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Then I rolled it's stinger. Natural 20.

Critical hit; that means all damage is doubled. We actually have a house rule which is that instead of rolling damage normally then doubling it, we double the number of dice rolled and use double the adds. It has the effect of moving the damage to more average values, and reducing the risk of all the excitement of a crit only to follow it up by rolling a 1.

Xiang'Hua rolled her poison save... and failed. That meant 4D6+8 of piercing damage, followed up by 14D6 poison damage. And the wyvern rolled well. Very well.

Nearly 90 points of damage hit Xiang'Hua. The massive damage rules kicked in; her negative hit points were more than double her normal maximum, and that meant instant death. No option to roll death saves or anything, and her foolish move forward had put her out of range of anything her companions could have done.

So died the Tabaxi Monk Xiang'Hua, killed by her own hubris and stupidity. Plus some unlucky dice, but mostly just stupidity.

Next time.... first encounter with the Sidhiarans