This scenario is linked with Carrion Ridge (21) in the algox sub-campaign which was pretty easy and straightforward (no play report). This one is neither of those things.
This is a Defeat the Boss scenario but with said Boss being physicaly split in two and defeating it forced to be made in three parts, each time having to destroy an altar so one of us (only one) can hurt the Harbinger for a third of its hit points. Phew.
Characters
Schlurkt the Deepwraith (David) lvl 7, a crab that goes stab stab stab
4H2 the Hive (Math) lvl 5, refurbished robotic assembly, ADHD
Teabag the Infuser (Guillaume) lvl 5, no, no, not this kind of teabag or is it?
We start with an invincible and shadowy beast breathing down our necks and monsters ahead.Black imps are protecting an evil altar.The Infuser gets munched a little by the Harbinger.The Deepwraith destroys the altar and get pulled into the Harbinger’s realm, the duel is on!Meanwhile his companions go further into this hellish place and find more enemies and a second altar…The Hive has his full panoply deployed.The Deepwraith has reappeared, none the worse for his duel and will have to help quickly, the situation is perilous.The poor Infuser is yet again the target of the Harbinger.Let’s destroy this altar.Now is the turn of the Hive to fight one on one Hive-Assembly vs Harbinger + summons.This will drag on a bit…Yet another altar and more monsters to boot.The Hive is back, now to the altar.And who gets bitten again? Let’s finish this… (Deepwraith stabs the Harbinger a gazillion times)Victory! Loot!
Closing Comments:
Hard one, and quite a bit cumbersome as a scenario I feel, jumping through every hoops at the right moment-style.
The Deepwraith was especially well-suited to kill the Harbinger really fast, that helped a lot I think.
The Hive took on himself to do it once but in retrospect it wasn’t the greatest idea as it took (understandably) several turns to do the job.
And with that the Deepwraith has achieved his Personal Quest and will retire. Very strong character, with a very high ceiling. Really enjoyable too, he’ll be missed.
Final part of my walkthrough/overview of Dragonbane’s rulebook. We’re getting at the most interesting part: combat and monsters!
Combat system features:
You don’t roll for initiative in dragonbane, you pick an iniative card from the initiative deck (1 to 10 cards). Still a random process but it offers some additional options as players might choose between two cards or swap cards between themselves depending on their abilities, or if they choose to wait before acting.
Combat is lethal. There’s no hit points bloat in DB, on the contrary, the possibility of raising a character’s hit points is very limited. Your character’s constitution score determines your hit points. An orc’s scimitar for example does 2d6 + d4 (str bonus). It does not take a lot of hits to get through your 3 to 18 hps or maybe a bit more (for a long-standing hero with several Toughness say).
The players must be very careful and find ways to mitigate damage.
Armors (and helmets) do help a lot but have some drawbacks too (penalties on skill checks depending on type of armor). For example, a chainmail + open helmet gives 5 armor combined rating and reduce as much incoming damage but gives you a bane (roll twice take worse) on evade, sneaking, awareness.
And then you can also try to parry (with shield or weapon) or evade attacks at the cost of your (only) action, if you don’t have already acted this round. But, if your character has heroic abilities like fast-footwork and defensive you’ll still be able to act after evading or parrying, incredibly useful.
All weapons have features: subtle, long, toppling, piercing, slashing, bludgeoning – depending on type. An halberd for example is long, toppling, slashing and piercing. These add some depth to the combat system, particularly if the optional special attacks are allowed in your game. Indeed if every optional cambat rules are on (shove, weapon damage type as related with armor type, severe injuries when reduced to 0 hp, melee mishap, range mishap, parry movement and special attacks) you have a fairly complex system, not exactly crunchy, but with a lot of options and great verisimilitude I’d say.
Monsters:
The bestiary section of the rulebook shows us 15 classic monsters, a page each. Some are considered « non-monsters » like goblins, orcs and skeletons. The others are, well, monsters… The latter are more complex – they all have a « ferocity » level that determines how many time it can act (how many « turns », with one action and one move per turn) in a round. Thus, the standard giant with a ferocity 1 will act once but dragons with ferocity 3 will have three different initiative cards and have 3 turns in the same round.
In addition, monsters attacks are always rolled on a random d6 table. Taking the dragon again as example, it has 6 possible actions: « Dragon Roar! », « Claw Attack! », « Dragon Wind! », « Tail Strike! », « Dragon Bite! », « Fire Breath! ». You re-roll if you get the same action twice in a row.
Not like this.More like: « They have a cave Troll »
In practice, with the relatively weak power curve of character advancement, combined with the lethality of monsters, you’ll probably never fight a horde of (true) monsters in Dragonbane. The scene inside the Moria in the LotR movie with the cave troll and multiple orcs is pretty much how I see combat in DB (with one big monster wreaking havoc in the middle of a confusing melee). Which, y’know, isn’t a bad thing at all.
Closing Comments:
No hp bloat, armors that reduce damage, good tactical depth – those are all things I like for a combat system.
The bestiary section of the rulebook is quite limited. There’s also a Bestiary book, and, it’s fine? It’s no monster bible by any means, I would have like to see more content than that.
I haven’t tested much combat with monsters in my campaign to be honest, with most fights being against humanoids or critters, so « non-monsters » to date. I’ll probably add something to this post or another with more experience.
Our fiftieth scenario of our frosthaven campaign! The three of us are each at our fifth character and there’s not many left to unlock. The eponymous town of Frosthaven is now pretty advanced in buildings/upgrades. On the other hand we still have many scenarios available (dozens?) and we haven’t put much time on the main puzzle recently so we still have a long way to go to finish the game if we wish to be completionists.
This scenario follows our actions last time against a villain called The Collector whereas we messsed up his collection pretty good. This time though we’ll be fighting him and try to put an end to this evil hobbyist.
Characters
Schlurkt the Deepwraith (David) lvl 7, a crab that goes stab stab stab
4H2 the Hive (Math) lvl 4, refurbished robotic assembly, ADHD
Teabag the Infuser (Guillaume) lvl 4, no, no not this kind of teabag or is it?
First room we’re against a savvas icestorm and a savvas lavaflow, two powerful summoners.They’re not the only ones to bring reinforcement though, the Hive brings out his Arcing Generator.One summoner down but the other has brought forth an Ice Demon.We push forward and now face two lurkers.« targeting » « no targets »Leggy is here, we’re sure to prevail!We open the door and find The Collector. Oh, you want to add us to your collection? We’ll see who collects whom. Teabag engages the enemy, helped by the 4H2 but what’s Schlurkt doing? Looting, really?Teabag: « It’s not working, he’s too tough! »But the Deepwraith finally joins the fray and he stabs the Collector a gazillion times!One round of utter carnage. It’s not long after that before we overcome the Collector.
Closing Comments:
Easy scenario, the savvas are strong foes but without much time to summon they weren’t that bad.
The Collector had 75hp but no shield or retaliate and so was a prime target for my Deepwraith. 8 attacks in one round boosted by a power potion, that was satisfying.
Yet another scenario where we couldn’t pick the special item that was buried at the bottom of the loot deck.
A girl from town wants us to save her two brothers. They’ve been taken prisoners by this weird savvas dude, the Collector, as subjects for his experiments.
This a kill them’ all random scenario but with a twist at the end. It figures a mad scientist/evil genius villain but we won’t see him until next (linked) scenario. We’re accompanied by this enthusiastic militia man named Ormi (road event).
Characters
Schlurkt the Deepwraith (David) lvl 7, a crab that goes stab stab stab
4H2 the Hive (Math) lvl 4, refurbished robotic assembly, ADHD
Teabag the Infuser (Guillaume) lvl 4, no, no not this kind of teabag or is it?
NPC Ormi (Math)
Seems like the Collector has hired algox as guards for his abode.Schlurkt kills the archer in no time and is joined by Ormi and Teabag in melee against the unlucky, poisoned guards.Meanwhile 4H2 deploys his first apparatus of many, his Sniper Turret.With the last guard poisoned and on its last leg, Schlurkt opens the door to the next area but takes a step back as two more archers are aiming at the intruders.Ormi hasn’t learned prudence yet…We’re ready to fight them now but the Steel Automaton behind is a tough cookie.Reinforcement from the Hive, with an Armored Tank. Superior numbers will see us through.The final blows goes to young Ormi!Schlurkt opens the left door and comes face to face with two ferocious bears. No worries, he’s got help from 4H2 from afar.On the other side, Teabag will have to fight two fierce lurkers all by himself.This side is clear.« targeting » « no targets »Hold on Teabag we’re coming!About time, the Infuser is battered and bloodied.Final area, two more algox and one bladespinner.We see the captive brothers in the back and we’ll have to act fast before they’re shredded to bits by the bladespinner.Ignoring the dumbfounded algox for the moment, Schlurkt and 4H2 focus on saving the brothers.Teabag is probably taking sips from an infusion or something.With the bladespinner destroyed and the brothers out of danger, we finish the last guards onward to victory!
Closing Comments:
Not an hard scenario by any means but made way more complicated by two annoying town challenges cards and also, by the fact that me and Math were both going for masteries on our characters and thus were restricted on our actions.
This scenario figured monsters from all 3 major factions, a rare event and a boon to Guillaume for his personal quest.
Getting invisible is a big part of the Deepwraith’s abilities but that meant risking the NPCs lives (and getting penalties if they died) so I had to eschew doing it a few times in this scenario.
The Infuser managed to fight two lurkers almost all by himself, a testament to this character’ strength certainly.
I will finish my dragonbane rulebook’s walkthrough soon enough. Part III is about how dragonbane handles combat, a strong point of the system in my opinion. In short I think it achieves to strike a good balance between providing tactical options (manoeuvers, weapons variability, heroic abilities and so on), and simplicity.
Armors in dragonbane offers damage reduction, something I’ve always prefered over decreasing chance of being hit.
And it also has helmets… How is there no helmets (except magic ones) in typical D&D? I understand we’re playing a game and not everything has to be realistic but come on!
Hey, we’re back playing Frosthaven! And we’re having two new characters in the team as last time we played we had two retirement at once. Math is reprising his role as the unfettered Hive, a character that was as long-standing as a fart in the wind, so maybe we’ll see a little more of it this time. Guillaume on the other hand will play a brand new character, the Infuser, a character that plays a lot with elements. I’m still playing Schlurkt the Deepwraith; high level, well-equipped, impeccable deck, very efficient, feels good to be a killer crab.
Okay, so in this scenario we’re helping this guy, this Trenchcoat NPC and huh… Who the hell are you again and why does it matters to us? A cavern, an artefact you say? Gyah fekkit, just point us in the right direction…
Characters
Schlurkt the Deepwraith (David) lvl 7, a crab that goes stab stab stab
4H2 the Hive (Math) lvl 4, refurbished robotic assembly, ADHD
Teabag the Infuser (Guillaume) lvl 4, no, no not this kind of teabag or is it?
No matter what, never turn left he says. Yeah, yeah, we can do that.
We begin… already in close combat.We let the lurkers make their move and they make the best of it. But then it’s our turn and we make the crustacean monsters pay dearly.We ignore the left door and get into a larger area. We have to kill these monsters in a particular order for some esoteric reason.Be kind missus eel, it’s not your time to die yet.You pest, not killing you is the harderst part, I mean it.Hey 4H, your legs are wandering around again.« Schlurkt, go into this room, we’ll wait behind the auto-cannon… »Gasp Oh, only a statue. And what’s that in that chest, a fish hook weapon?Final room. The Elite Lurker Soldier is calling for reinforcement.Things are brutal but the Deepwraith let out an Ink Cloud to hide himself and the Infuser so they have a brief respite.All is in place for the final moment of the fight.Leggy kicks a lurker into oblivion.D’ya want to be my friend? No? Stab
Closing Comments:
We’re at our last few town challenge cards and they’re the most annoying as it’s those we kept delaying to do. We still picked two but it ramped up the diffulcty of the scenario quite a bit.
But we went on not opening doors at our left and that probably saved us a lot of trouble.
The gimmick with killing the monsters in a certain order in the second room, aside from being very gamey, made things a lot more complicated and one misplaced 2x hit on a bleeding (wounded) lurker meant that we had to rush killing the 2 others that were earlier in the order. We managed to do it but it was a close one.
A few years ago, in my D&D 5E campaign in the jungles of Chult, my players fought a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Awesome? Heck no, twas a real snoozefest of a fight. A bit predictable in fact, dinosaurs are pretty bland in D&D, the T-Rex has one bite attack and a tail attack (how does a tail attack makes any sense I wonder) and that’s it – but that’s not really what I want to talk about. One character, Rufb the barbarian, was pretty messed up by the fight, the T-Rex bite attack does hit very hard obviously, and he lost probably more than half his hit points, even with his damage resistance. No worries, one long rest later and he was as fresh as ever – full hps, all his abilities back, etc. And that was with the so-called Gritty option on mind you. He healed, naturally healed – no magic, not even bandages involved, from wounds by a T-Rex bite frikkin overnight…
Now, we know that D&D 5E has definitely a super-heroic style, characters are pretty much like in video games and, yeah, there’s absolutely no sense of verisimilitude.
On the other hand, in many old-school systems for the same long rest all you get is 1 hp (unless you’re a magic-user and much more importantly also get all your spells back!). That’s more realistic for sure, healing takes time, and more in tune with a game of resources management.
But in my opinion also lacking in some way?
I mean, it’s a bit annoying, it goes against what I said about 5E, but I think that the best example of an interesting resting mechanics I can come up with is also found within video games rather than a supposedly more flexible tabletop rpg.
In Darkest Dungeon, in medium and large expeditions you’ll most likely camp along the way. You then spend a bundle of wood and some food to get back some hit points and, more interestingly, also spend from a limited pool to activate camping skills.
Three skills are accessible to every characters, anyone can do an Encourage, a Wound Care or a Pep Talk to help another character.
Every other skills are character-specific. Be it the Anger Management of the Abomination, the Restring Crossbow of the Arbalester, the Zealous Speech of the Crusader, they all are coherent rp-wise and flavorful For example, if the highwayman’s camping skills are about giving fighting bonuses to himself only, the Vestal’s are all about helping others.
A personnal favorite of mine is the Grave Robber’s Gallows Humor which has, for all companions. 75% chance to decrease stress by 20 (that’s good) and 25% chance of increasing it by 10. The Grave Robber herself has an automatic -25 stress. Dark humor is hit or miss, it is well known. A somewhat similar skill is the Jester’s Mockery which decreases stress for everyone at the expense of one companion, the butt of the joke the poor lad.
Now, many of those camping skill gives temporary buffs and that is something that can be portable to ttrpgs if one wishes so. Get your whetstone out of your backpack and sharpen your sword or encourage a low morale henchmen – could be included in any system I think. On the other hand, the examples from Darkest Dungeon mostly work on the premise of the specifi Stress parameter. I guess you must have some resource other than hit points, if not stress then something else in order for it to work. I know that I could borrow some things and implement it into Dragonbane for example because it got a willpower pool and conditions to fiddle with.
Edit: It seems like Tales of the Valiant, a 5E derivative system from Kobold press, has some interesting resting (or resting-adjacent) mechanics involved. Here’s a play report from blogger Blacksteel who uses it to good effect: https://towerofzenopus.blogspot.com/2025/10/valiant-swords-of-greyhawk-session-14.html I still wouldn’t run something similar to 5E but it’s interesting nonetheless.
So that’s a bit random but I was thinking about resting/camping in D&D and then how STIRGES should preferably feed on sleeping targets and act more like their real-world counterpart, the vampire bat. And yeah, we might say I got down the rabbit hole…
Am I a bat or am I a mosquito?
The sanguivore stirge should not be seen as predator but in fact as a parasite (it doesn’t wish to eat you, just to steal some of your blood, that’s parasitic in nature). Sometimes the boundary between the two gets blurry, for example many species of leeches in the real world are often both – stealing blood from animals and also swallowing micro-organisms.
I’ll not go into truly gruesome territory over here (there’s plenty of it when we talk about parasites) but suffice to say, I think including parasitic behavior within your fantasy ecology can definitely add some kind of unforgiving nature ambiance.
In my own game, in my Jungles of Chult campaign, I had giant parasitoid wasps (the mounts of wasp-riding goblins) that laid their eggs inside giant spiders and also fed on the spider-like sentient Araneas. The Araneas turned to the adventurers for help against this threat in exchange for precious spider silk vestments.
If character creation in Dragonbane is a bit different from other D&D-adjacent system, we’re now gonna talk about two mechanics that makes it, hmm maybe not groundbreaking (what is nowadays?), but unusual in a good way.
Character advancement:
There is no levels in Dragonbane. Instead how your character can improve is by increasing his skills (including with weapons), gaining new spells (see part 1) and, less frequently, gaining new heroic abilities.
Each time you roll a d20 and roll a 1 (a dragon) or a 20 (a demon) you check a box next to the skill you used.
In addition, if you answer yes to these questions at the end of the session you can check a skill box of your choice:
Did you participate in the game session? (a freebie)
Did you explore a new location?
Did you defeat one or more dangerous enemies?
Did you overcome an obstacle without using force?
Did you give in to your weakness (optional rule)
(You can also find a teacher that has at least 15 in the skill you wish to improve and is better than you. The cost in time and money is left to the GM discretion, no direction is given in the rulebook beyond that unfortunately.)
Then, at the end of the session, with all checked boxes you must roll a d20 and exceed the number you already have in order to increase your skill by one. Pretty simple.
Heroic abilities: There’s 2 ways to gain new heroic abilities. The first is if you manage to increase a skill to 18 you immediately gain a new heroic ability of your choice. The other way is by accomplishing a « grand heroic deed », that’s also left to the GM’s discretion but it’s mentionned that it should be a rare event.
Pushing your roll & Conditions:
Now, another fun and interesting mechanics that is actually an optional rule, but I really see don’t why one wouldn’t include it, is the Pushing your roll. If a character fails a skill check he can choose to re-roll but with a cost, he’ll suffer from a condition from now on. Each attribute is linked to a specific condition: Strength >> Exhausted, Constitution >> Sickly, Agility >> Dazed, Intelligence >> Angry, Willpower >> Scared, Charisma >> Disheartened.
You choose the condition you’ll gain and will have bane (roll two d20 take worst) on any skill check linked to the affected attribute. You can’t choose a condition you already have and you’re also supposed to roleplay somewhat the whole deal.
You can also gain conditions in other ways, an environemental effect, a monster attack, etc. To remove a condition (or all conditions) you must do a shift rest (6 uninterrupted hours).
Closing Comments:
For me the character advancement system is reminiscent of the Elder Scrolls video games (I’ve played extensively to Morrowind back in the day, didn’t even try Skyrim though) where your stats simply improve with how much you use them. I like this.
An unfortunate side-effect though, at least for my young players, is the « I want to roll… » just in the hope of rolling a 1 or 20 and check the skill box. Listening to a door with an awareness check has never been so popular I tell you.
I’ve homebrewed somewhat the questions in my game (i.e did you explore a new location? >> did you find an iconic location in the dungeon?)
The way we play, my players’ characters suffer from at least one or two conditions each session, both from pushing their luck and dungeon hazards. The way to remove a condition is a bit more arduous than simply shift resting in my game, they must find a way for their characters to have a good time (i.e having a quality meal).
The conditions makes me think of my basic military training where I saw several guys vomiting from exertion (sickly!) but still going on, I dunno, makes sense to me.
Battered from their last expedition, the Battle Brothers are back in town to recuperate and do some training afterward – before going back to the dungeon. They bring their new member, another goblin named Grimoire, a friend of Torch that can do magic.
Jedri, Ratman Thief, he likes his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
Torch, Goblin Knight, not expendable anymore (Edmond)
Grimoire, Goblin Mage, frail but smart (me)
Longfelt
Rumor
-There’s a monstrous rat disguised as a person going by night in the thieves’ quarter – hey (pointing at Jedri) wait a minute, y-y you’re a rat!
Hearing of this « disguised monstrous rat » they immediately think of their friend Tlali and they go see her at her house. There’s a nice reunion, she explains that she started the process to get back her human form but there’s powerful magic involved (Sethid’s, the Master of the Dungeon) and it will take a while.
They do some training and are living at the Hare & the Hound inn for the moment.
They buy some supplies, Forka buys a great helm and then, after 9 days in town, are ready to go dungeon-delving once more.
Gunderholfen
Travel through the Ganfal swamp is uneventful.
They enter the dungeon and when they approach Level 1C they start to see a trail of dead hobgoblins – all missing their ears. The corpses are fresh – recently killed for sure.
Forka pick up the scent of non-hobgoblins and tries to track where it goes – more dead hobgoblins on the other side of the (cut) rope bridge that leads to the exit of Level 1. They spend some time reparing the bridge and continue their tracking down in Level 2 and then it goes south and west in an area the PCs already explored (and had a bad time against both zombies and giant ants).
They’re near the giant ants’ nest, the insects are clearly agitated. The PCs quickly cross the area and further south, they hear some voices coming from the room with the aforementionned zombies.
The Battles Brothers decide to go back the room with broken crates and wait there for the other guild to come their way (there’s no other path). They soon hear the sounds of a battle between adventurers and giant ants though.
It seems like the other guild is retreating in order, with a rearguard fighting in the narrow tunnel. The Battle Brothers see an elf, with short sword and buckler in hand, emerging from the tunnel. The latter is surprised and maybe a bit alarmed but then he asks for their help against the giant ants – they’re coming in great numbers.
Aracyne hesitates an instant on what his best for his guild (even contemplating murder!) but then he decides to help the other adventurers IF they accept to give his guild some money… The two elves quickly negociate and settle for 80gp to be given after this fight. The other members of the rival guild come into the room one by one, two mages, a hunter and the last being Bayard the Bold, their leader, brandishing a glowing mace and his plate armor covered in insect juices – an impressive sight! His companion informs him that the Battle Brothers will help the Protectors and already the first giant ants enter the room.
The ensuing battle is intense, with the fighters type holding the line, at least at first, against both normal worker giant ants and bigger, meaner soldier giant ants. Another wave of monsters arrives though and some get past the frontline and one mage of the Protectors get nearly bitten in half by a soldier ant. The other mage hurries to keep him alive with healing magic. Forka makes good work of his two-hand hammer, delivering massive blows left and right. Aracyne and his hunter counterpart shoot arrow after arrow on the incoming ants. Grimoire, their new goblin mage, proves to be a good addition and incinerates ants with fireballs. Two dozens dead ants are littering the floor and the two guilds seize the opportunity to move away from there, going east and south, with the Battle Brothers knowing their way around, and soon getting behind a door where the ants horde won’t reach them.
Now in safety, the Elf from the Protectors (their treasurer named Bodil) counts 80 gold coins and gives them to Aracyne with Bayard frowning at the sight but not saying anything. The two guild leaders then exchange a few compliments, talk about their recent delves and then Aracyne has this idea, he offers to the Protectors to do a joint expedition into Level 4. Bayard, not one to decline a challenge less his reputation for bravery takes a hit, doesn’t think much and accepts.
Closing comments:
I had decided when I started this campaign that I would put some emphasis on adventuring guilds interactions. I have written some random tables, erased them, re-written some more, to help me get a sense of what NPCs guilds would likely achieve as competing explorers (the PCs still having a decent headstart, of course it’s still about them). I’m not quite satisfied with this tool yet but it did indeed lead to this, I think, interesting session.
Now, dealing with so many NPCs, adventurers with all their abilities to boot, is certainly cumbersome for me as a the DM. In fact, I’m pretty certain it’s the reason why in most campaigns rival adventurers don’t seem to accomplish anything ever and are reduced to discreet appearances here and there.
Isaac’s first instinct was to ambush the Protectors while they were fighting the giant ants. A sound plan strategically speaking. Also quite ruthless. I let him choose his course of action but I’m happy in the end he chose to help (with a price attached) instead of killing.
Streets & Spores 