Out of Character discussion:

Gilly joined the group at the same time I did. Bright eyed and full of hope. Oh, how I long for those days...

Wow am I really the only OG elementalist? And seeing as how my original character died, this is a group of people completely unrelated to the original questers.

Yup. The gnoll encounter was with the original group that brought the wagon full of wheels to the village (all of a week ago, in-game time). Angel was the last member of that group, even though @Aldrusian left quite a while before and we just NPC'd Angel.

@dominion451 is the longest player in the game but Gilly's technically the longest character in the party.

Gilly won't have much to hate on Eltrezar for after this! Lol

Eltrezar is going to swear an oath of vengeance against Gnoll-kind, and will not rescind his oath until the Swagger Dagger is back in his grasp!

Oh we'll get it back...

@dominion451 saw the Monster Reaction roll, which I initially forgot to hide. It was very not good in the party’s favor. That was most likely another fight the party couldn’t afford to have.

Luckily, the module specifically states if gnolls are rolled up in a random encounter they come with certain rules I must abide by in the module, Rules as Written, one of which is that they had a 75% chance of being willing to negotiate for treasure rather than battling to the death, which they will do as well.

Unfortunately the party had little of value the gnolls would care about aside from the jeweled dagger. I felt having the gnolls take the dagger was feasible. Forcing Eltrezar to give the dagger willingly was a bit nasty of me, I admit, but also enjoyed.

I originally planned for Eltrezar to watch the gnoll start plucking jewels from the hilt with a rusty steak knife, ruining the dagger for sure, and likely damaging the stones they’re interested in as well, but that just seems egregiously dickish.

So the dagger stays intact, and I’ll even toss in a very minor clue as to where it might be reclaimed. Not a great clue, just a enough for a tiny flame of hope to torment the wizard. That’s what a benevolent DM does…

More than fair... Generous really ;)

Yup, checks out.

So what do you guys think about hiring a bunch of extra muscle for our next foray? I'm talking like four or five extra fighters...

We definitely need pole arms as well so that we can have people attacking from the back melee rank, not to mention lots more missile weapons.

Did we ever find a ruling for polearms having reach and fighting from back ranks? The core rule is just that they're slow and two handed. I agree with most of this, in that we need more warriors, but if polearms don't have reach then it might be better to find sword and boards.

Let's rally the entire town against Lareth. Everybody.

Everyone. Even the children. Give em slingshots. I know the Rules Cyclopedia states polearms have reach but I guess OSE probably has their own telling.

Let's convince the mayor for rapid expansion of the town. And then once the Moathouse is incorporated, we send in a couple kids to get hurt and sue the town until they clean it up. Given the nature of the hauntings and whatnot, we can probably buy it for dirt cheap.

Think anyone actually owns it anymore? Once we clear it out I say we raise our flag and claim it in the name of the Spanish Inquisition.

We have three claims to the moathouse! We found it. We cleared the monsters. We tested the infrastructure. We fought off the previous claimant. Four claims!

As a cleric of Cuthbert I'm basically a circuit court judge so I say those claims are fair and legal sir. Dismissed.

"We're bringing Nezzy back (Yeah),
Those other players don't know how to act (Yeah),
Bors let me make up for the health you lack (Yeah),
Cause you're dying up, gotta make it fast (Yeah),
Take him to the town, huh!"

-Eltrezar the Medium ft. Timber

Lol, nice!

I’m genuinely worried we’ve left @nezzeraj alone for too long. I hope we didn’t lose a player.