Session 0

This is point by game and I suggest to not assume your PC will survive through the game: ToA is rather deadly. Revivify and other resurrection spells don't work in the world while the artifact you seek to destroy is functional
You can't roll for starting wealth - you have your starting gear and extra 750 gp (I've decided to change 1d10x25 to a 10x25)

No rolling in this thread, but feel free to discuss/align your character choices.

Also feel free to ask DM any Session 0 questions.

Thanks for adding me! Excited for this game! :)

As I announced: I would like to use some pregen character. I found this one:
Level 9(of course) Cleric

You think it will be ok? Equipment is also ok? One think I would only change is to make him Chaotic Good. Is it ok?

2. What PC sheet you prefer for players? This one: Custom from forum or some other version? As I'm new to the sytem I can take the one you are most used to or recommend:)

pregen looks good and equipment seems to be within 750 gp. Allignment does not matter to me
I avoid using custom sheets but allow players to do that - I believe that for a cleric "Dungeons & Dragons 5th" would work better than custom, but that's just me. Probably other players who are used to custom G charsheet could suggest something.

Hello again, Grey Thank you for letting me join!

I am thinking magic user. Sorcerer Maybe. I will try to start working on it today.

How are we advancing? XP or Milestone?

Thanks for letting me join this merry band!
I'm going with hexblade.
Any magic items to start?

Milestones
Start described here - magic items

So, what I have in mind is a fairy Sorcerer. Really a relentless spell sniper, sort of an arcane attack helicopter. If that doesn't fit in with the rest of the party, then I'm flexible. Often I play archers or clerics.

Hi friends, looking forward to our game.
Human fighter, for me.
Cheers.

My plan was a Giant Barbarian/Battlemaster Combo.

The goal is to make a "Thor" inspired viking like character made basically to be a dumb brute who throws a big Thunder/Lightning hammer around.

I know someone else already mentioned Fighter. So don't want to step on toes either there

Edit: Grey I know you mentioned all published official books are open. Do you have an opinion on Backgrounds that grant feats as in the Giant Foundling from Bigsby's?

My plan was variant human for a feat, however I am torn from starting with Strike of Giant (Cloud) feat for flavor or Great Weapon Master for optimization (because this is an especially deadly campaign). However there is the "why not both?" with the Vhuman/Giant Foundling combo, which would fit both flavor and optimization

That was me, but please play what you want to, no toes stepped on. Plenty of smash for both of us, I’m sure! :)

Going to go Rogue Arcane Trickster/Artificer. I will start building them today.

Character build submitted.

Still Suring up the story elements/backstory but mechanically I am there

My character is posted as well.

@thorsman99 don't see you PC, did you submit it to the game?

Everyone - I'm going to add your PC tokens to roll20 using this tool . If you don't like what I've got feel free to send me or post here a better version of your tokens. Here are tokens of first two PCs

I believe I forgot to hit "submit". Please let me know if you can see it now.

I have not played ToA but a while ago I read the start.

Do we need to worry about Insect Repellent or Rain Catchers?

---

Character is done.
How much backstory are you looking for?

I have some sheet updates/edits to do for ease to still do.

I have submitted my character too. Please welcome Zean:) In the end I have gone with the custom sheet - as I love it's flexibility/hackability and layout seems very similar to non-custom, so there should be no problem with readability I think.I will probably change quite some his backstory, but for now I have copy-pasted his background from pre-gen material. Wanted to have something to work on.

Last question: how much do we track food, light sources and similar things in this game? Should I add Zean some traveling rations or something like that? How many?

Two guys on the team gonna be throwing storms. Should be fun

"Thunder Brothers" ? Or... you think it will cause some problems/overlap ? I'm quite new to 5th ed.

I have a Bag of Holding if needed.
Also I have 400gp still to spend.
Trying to figure out what to use it on.

I have a load of gold too. Sorcerers don't need a lot of expensive stuff.

Jealous! If I buy a tent will you stuff it in there?

5e damage types do come to play but thunder is literally the 2nd least resisted damage type.

Vulnerabilities are rare.

We are good. We could if you want work on smjoining some backstory elements like I am the viking barbarian warrior to your viking skald/godi from the same tribe\group.

Tempest cleric with giant barbarian escort feels appropriate

Ball bearings....lots of ball bearings

You two can be Móði and Magni.

I've submitted Ixion Vanth IX: human hexblade!

Are magic items available for gold? I did not get that impression from the character creation post.

*grumble*
Have I misapprehended? :(

I was going to ask but I took max recommended price for an uncommon magic item to be safe (1d6x100).

600gp of the 750 seems fair

I can recommend using https://www.dndbeyond.com/equipment for purchasable equipment list.
I don't anticipate any magic item purchase as part of session 0 activity

Thanks everyone for quick building PCs, approved all and opening game thread. I will be reviewing PCs through next week and may ask you some updates later (for example would like to have list of languages somewhere I can easily find them to not ask every time)

@Smiley can you please share with me an avatar or token that feature your PC face only (optionally torso) to not stand out of other PC tokens, thanks. @Annex I may probably have similar request for you, but will see what can I do with the one you have there

With that I made a change...honestly it is probably more optimal this way so not complaining.


What type of encounter per rest situation are we looking at? Like 3-4 combats per long rest? Since we are starting mid module, I am assuming some of the kid gloves on learning DM style for this would naturally be taken off so just sort of getting my head around resource expenditure. I have a lot of "per long rest" abilities haha

I saw mention of a Bag of Holding, and I thought I'd missed something. :P
Edits and revisions to come, and here's a smaller head shot.

I took levels in Artificer.
For one of my infusion I took Bag of Holding.

Now I get it, thanks. ;)

Good question! Actually two of them
1. As a DM I try not to decide/impact when party takes LR and SR. If party want to do LR after each fight - they have all the rights in the world to do that. Besides - most scenario will have built triggers/events/ticking time/what not to prevent that. I believe: it's the scenario not DM that must dictate rests.

2. ToA has 4 chapters. Each chapter has it's own peace. There were a chapter where we rarely had two and never three encounters per day. There was a chapter that forced players to finish whole chapter with not a single LR.
You are now at the start of new chapter and have no idea what is going to happen in the Tomb you are searching. Will it prevent you from sleeping whatsoever? Will it have beasts, demons and undead randomly jumping on you ever time you try to take short rest? Will you be able to find safe place to rests? You have no idea I'm afraid.

P.S.
For a lvl 9 party I will not be counting rations and water. There are plenty of magic ways to overcome that.

P.P.S. You can always have your PC die and create new PC who is better suited for the chapter , LOL

That is a good answer for me. I don't think I will run into issue but if I do, that is the game.

In general I like those ideas, especially as I wanted to keep Zean "pirate" background as I found it interesting as "not the first thing that comes to mind when I see word: cleric" :) So connecting it with piracy is interesting.

So let's go with it, but I would prefer that we have met on the sea - not coming from the same tribe/villige. As I like to think that Zean wasn't 100% sure about "this piracy thing" - but hay! Someone have to tend to warriors wounds too! ;) And supporting them with some thunder powers are also very in place. So still thinking why Zean become the pirate, but lets go with that we meat on one of the ships, ok? Maybe there was some duel between our PCs for some reason - and even though your PC is the strong one, my proved to be an equal opponent when he drew on the divine powers with which he was endowed? So opponents first, and form that day friends ?

Ok here is my thought. I am a Giant Foundling, human who was taken in by Giants and raised as their own. Maybe you and your pirate group would be the first Humans that Throgin ever meets. Maybe (almost Pocahantas-y) Throgin and Zean met, battled then became friends before the Giants and the pirates meet.

Zean wielding the power of the storms and Throgin, who harnesses some primal energy of giants that allows him to do something similar. Maybe Zean finds the source of Throgin's power to be interesting and a blessing from his god. While Throgin is more on a journey to learn about his prior origins and see the world after being sheltered by more solitary giants.

At this point they have been traveling with each other for a long time and see each other as "sworn brothers". Each relying on each other for various things, Zean being a more calm collected Cleric is the Eye of the Storm and Throgin the more head strong Barbarian is the Storm itself. (More of a Hurricane analogy than a Thunderstorm but totally works). Zean keeps Throgin focused, while Throgin keeps Zean more grounded.

Was thinking about your proposition of development of my ideas and... I must say: I like it. Let's go with it! Copy-pasted this to my PC sheet, eventually will work on this some more when I will have more time. But I think it is detailed just enough for good and elastic backstory:)

I especially like:
:)

What is the current party composition? I have a Thri-kreen (still count as humanoid?) druid rogue I can level up or go ranger or bard-lock

I'm going to ban Thri-kreen , sorry

no worries, just noticed party composition listed in recruit thred, sorry for asking again
Sounds like we need melee combat and a touch of magic. Either a wild Magic Barbarian or an artificer sounds like a good fit then. I've never done an alchemist artificer or wild magic barbarian so I will go with one of those... looking into an interesting race and will post basics when done.

I am working on a shifter (if that is ok?) wild-magic barbarian 5 / Druid 4
If not shifter than Tiefling

We actually lost exactly barb and artificer.
We may seldom regret Int based skill check failures but there are never lot of important ones in 5e.

Shifter teleported from Eberron will work perfectly well.

Can I take a Strixhaven background? (re-flavored as shaman)
Are common magic items available at creation? (assuming no, just asking)
Are other potions besides healing available at creation? (not sure, asking about common potion)

Right, I should have mentioned from beginning. Wil update game description with following info:
You can only buy equipment listed in PHB (2014) as well as any spell ingredients. No magic items, no potions other than health potion costing 50 gp per PHB. Please note that revivify don't work in this scenario - don't spend your money on Diamonds

Assuming we are coming in together Psybermagi, I posted the basics of my character in the thread. Human former court mistress and famous beauty now aged into a Twilight cleric. Adequate at melee but not likely to use it often, will look to get Detect Magic as a ritual so the group will have that. Are we newly met, old allies . . . if you are a shifter, you probably weren't around 30 years ago when I was in my prime.

Grey said Nyx was pulled over from Eberon so he may have been caught up in some sort of trouble with the locals who might have taken hi as a Lycanthrope. Your character could either have helped secure my freedome or I could have simply been a slave for a time and used as a guard then when you left the court and/or became a priestess I somehow became attached to you. Though Nyx came from a barbarian tribe he was educated to be a spiritual leader for his people so we could have bonded over the spiritual nature of life and thic may have been what drew us to become involved in the ToA

Ok, Nix is about good to go. Just filling in wild shape and spells.
Will start reading lore dump
Is there anything else I should know before joining the story? Do I need to read all previous posts? what is the planned entrance of new characters into the story?

Works for me

Not sure I understand the clone part. Am I the clone, or is there a clone running around, or don't I know? How do I know about the whole cloning thing?

Also, any issue if we tweak the origin to be a little more heroic? ie. Lude went in with a party to rescue the scion of an old court friend whose treasure hunting party had been lost, the rest of the party was killed, etc. etc. rather than being the treasure hunter herself. You can have her know the one she went after is dead, have them show up at some later point, etc.

I assume he means your spirit now inhabits a clonef body after the original body died. To my knowledge you can't clone a soul. The amnesia would be a result of the attempts to recover any knowledge you had. You can play with this and say clear memories include distant path, your purpose for coming and your death. But most of the aspects of your actual adventure to get where you are now god muddled or stripped.

If you still wat to I see no reason why we could not have met each other before joining the other PC. Both somewhat lost we have been scavengind from enemies and other slain adventurers as we try to escape the mess we are in by collecting as much information as possible.

Up to the master of 9 gods but works for me.

No worries. I don't want to make the unification process any harder than it already is. Treasure hunting we go.

@GreyWord What is the plan/time-frame for getting us newcomers into the story?

Maybe we can do it In simpler way? I started to expect that if we lift the skeleton from the tile he currently is , the stone door to the south could open? If that’s true, we will do it with Tinks… and "by complete coincidence" we will saw the duo on the other side of the stone door ? What you think GM?

Let's split the responsibility. I will make sure you saw them as soon as you do your part of the deal

I mean I only have information from players that a) Tinks not touching anything, not to mention lifting b) I have impression that Zean is careful to choose a symbol to stand on - and there are quite few of them to stand on if Zean want to lift the skeleton.

@Pedrop I did not want to spoil it earlier, but lift the skeleton does not open anything. I would be happy to introduce new PCs behind that door if it did, but it does not.

@badbaron @Psybermagi thanks for patience. I plan to introduce your PCs over into the story over the weekend and expect you to do your PC description Monday.

Note to current party members: I plan to narrate story and some of your PC decisions without asking your permission. You will need to trust me that I'm doing that with the only intention to introduce new players as fast as I can. Hoping for your understanding and support

Yeah 👍

I'm OK with that.

All good.

Looking forward to seeing you all.

Hope it's obvious now: I haven't had anything against it:) Introducing new players was a priority for me too:)

Anomen (Ano to friends) is a champion of Helm and a recently-coronated knight. He is eternally optimistic, devout in his faith, and symathetic to the common folk. At times, he’s very judgmental - mostly of himself.

Hailing from the City of Coin, Ano spent young years squiring for local warriors. Much to his father’s dastardly dismay! Taking up mantle of war over wealth, Ano turned his back on House Delryn’s merchantile business. Making chivalric bones as a young squire, and studying at the feet of Helmites, before eventually pledging fealty to the Most Radiant Order of the Noble Heart. He very recently became a full-fledged knight - a goal which had proven elusive, until recent successes in and around Amn. Now coming to the fabled Tomb, our paladinic hero seeks to prove his recently-awarded knightly meddle.

Aligning his Helm-minded self with fellow adventurers, Ano’s next chapter is about to begin!

I’m not sure how hip anyone is to the Baldur’s Gate computer games (specifically the second one, I’ve never played BG3 but have heard good things). Anomen was always a favorite NPC of mine, so with my occasion penchant for re-imaging and playing named characters, I thought I’d roll him as a Paladin. I might multi class Fighter/Battlemaster, for the Rally maneuver. I’ve not delved into multi classes much, this might be a good opportunity. Not sure how optimal that’d be. I can have a Sheet together shortly.

Does this seem like a good fit for our game? Any suggestions or thoughts?

I suggest you switch to this order from 5e settingsThat order has history in the land our story takes place: All members of the Order of the Gauntlet are unflinchingly brave, but many of their expeditions fare poorly or meet with outright disaster when confronted by conditions that confound their training and contradict their mindset.
I would see your PC realizing that order's goal to eliminate undead in the land are unreachable and instead agree to help person outside the order because you see her goal both - a more noble and and achievable. (you judgmental nature seems to support this little heresy)

That will happen, and thank you!

Update - I removed Anomen and added a new sheet instead. Ano was getting complicated. I’m overloading on dwarves lately, but kindly submitting a dwarven fighter cleric (mostly fighter). I’ll have him properly laid out over the next 24 hours. Sry for my delay. Cheers everyone.
Good to go, with Ano!

Except for minor spell selection, I’ve got Anomen Delryn ready to go. Hope I’ve not held anything up. Thanks for patience. Simply will wait for a DM prompt, no rush.

no worries, we're still alive. So, all good! :)

Awesome! I definitely don’t want to be late for a TPK! :)

Noted, and thanks so much. :)

Vesuvius, or simply Vesu (VAY-soo) to allies, is a dark and dastardly knight. He is cold, calculating, and selfish. At times, he’s very judgmental - but mostly of himself. In spite of it all, however, he’s also lawfully-minded and cooperatively aligns with those loyal to his causes.

Coming of age, Vesu pledged fealty to a local order of Amnish knights. Mentored by Amolas Amolensen, an elderly knight secretly holding malevolent intent. Rumors of a death-curse abounded, and our dark-knightly fellow made devious pact with the Shadowfell! Secretly binding himself to the Raven Queen, along with another human adventurer - one Ixion Vanth IX.

The two humans bound themselves wickedly to Clomayer (CLO-mare), a longsword of ill repute. The pact diabolically stating, if Ixion should fall, Vesu must retrieve the savage blade from dungeonous ground.

Under his mentor’s devious influence, Vesu eventually aligns himself with the Zhentarim. Following principles favoring sinister self. And so now comes our diabolical knight. For to collect - and, to conquer.