Session Seven: Prison Break

The Story so far

Rurik is the eldest son of the Thane of Clan Wolfhammer. From birth he was bred to be a proper dwarf, he would serve his time in the guilds as a child and then his time in the army when he reached manhood. All in preparation for the day when he would take over from his father.

During his time with the army he served with distinction a solid shieldman, and a good friend to the troopers in his command. One day while on patrol they spotted a group of orcs running from a burning farmhouse. Taking a quick stock of his soldiers, he ordered them to follow. Chasing the orcs through the mountains took hours, and when they finally caught them it was an ambush. Each dwarf fought hard, and in the loosest of senses the battle was a victory. Only two dwarfs survived the battle though, Rurik and, his brother who had been assigned as the cleric for the squad, Ruik.

Ruik blames his brother more than anyone else and when they returned to the hold demanded a full trial be conducted. Rurik instead chose to leave. He would serve a term of 50 years in exile, and only then would he return. No sooner was the choice made than Ruik changed his thoughts. He wanted his brother punished for his foolish acts, but not for him to be sent out into the wilderness alone. Rurik promised him he would return when the time was right, and that they would rule the clan together wisdom and strength when the time came. With a final embrace Rurik began his long walk.

He still carries with him a warg tooth from that battle. A reminder of his failures, and a reminder to act with a cooler head.

Journal

It has been 3 years 3 months and 12 days since my exile began. In this time, I have travelled south. My hope: to arrive at Cragmire, the southern dwarven kingdom; perhaps there I can make myself useful to my people. I could find redemption in serving.

Along my road to the south, I was captured by the foul servants of the Overlord of Shadow Krezzik Dar. Little did he know a cage can not hold a Wolfhammer for long. Everywhere I looked more despair came upon me, my fellow captives were of types I couldn’t recognize, or I couldn’t trust.  Finally when I felt the time was right, I launched the plan to escape. Leaping at the wall of my cage, I knocked it to the ground causing a commotion. If I was going to be in a cage, they were going to have to kill me, I am no demon slave. An imp guard came to see what I was doing, and seeing my cage knocked over he attempted to indulge his cruel tastes by stabbing me with his dagger. Little did he know this was my trap! Allowing the blow to land, I grabbed his arm and beat him against the bars of the cage, stunning him. The other prisoners, each with their own dreams of freedom, began to act. Using my actions as a distraction, they were able to act without being seen.

Seeing their comrade in trouble, two more imps came to attack me. Unfortunately for them, their brother was already dead. Worse: now I was armed. Their tails lashed out into the cage, trying to kill me with their poison. HAH! I am dawi! I am of the earth, their poisons are nothing to me. I lashed out with the dagger, killing another imp. The remaining imp flew away, ignoring the insults I threw at him.

I looked around to see what the other prisoners were doing. An orc had managed to unlock his cage. Calling upon all my strength, I lifted my cage and ran over to the orc so that he could release me. A risk given that he was an orc, but one that paid off. He unlocked my cage and then proceeded to murder two drow that were also prisoners. It seems his favour is random... he also released two duergar.

In the end, 5 of us grouped together for mutual safety: Azhag, an orc spell caster; Torvanor, a cleric of Poseidon who seems touched by the elements; Kova, a ship’s lookout with planar blood; Willis, a halfling rogue; and myself. Stealing a map from one of the tents, we gathered our gear and supplies and ran off into the tunnels leading towards Cragmire.

I know I will be making sure that any followers of the Overlord of Shadow repay me for the grudge I now carry against their master

Behind the Screen

After last weeks TPK we each made new characters. This time the party was specific about each role, I was to be the tank. Being a tank means that you have two main roles in the party, survive being hit and make sure the rest of the party isn't getting hit. This is a job I am really familiar with since I have had characters perform it in dozens of different games. Being new to 5e I was excited to see what it brought to tanking.

One of the first things I noticed was that there were plenty of tools to actively help your party if a mob decided to attack someone beside you. As a battlemaster I had picked up goading attack, and I have the protection fighting style. This mean that I could potentially  force disadvantage on two foes per turn, as long as my friends were near me. This is a huge upgrade from 3.5 where as a tank you had to depend entirely on forcing attacks of opportunities to make sure mobs didn't get passed you to the squishier members of the the party, which doesn’t help other melee characters.

As a fighter one of the big things is a huge amount of Ability Score Increases(ASI) as you level up. In a game using feats this gives fighters the chance to tailor their build for a wide variety of roles. For a tank the feats that I was looking at were:

Shieldmaster: Allows you to push foes as a bonus action, increases your defense against harmful effects, and gives the ability to take no damage from dex based attacks.

Lucky: The ability to either take advantage or force disadvantage 3 times per long rest. Most importantly it can be done after seeing the roll, but before knowing if it was a success or not.

Alert: Bonus to initiative, and can not be surprised.

Sentinel: Increases your ability to make attacks of opportunity(AOO), and forces enemies that you hit with an AOO to stop moving.

Tough: Increase HP

Fell Handed: Bonus to attack rolls with dwarven weapons, chance to knock enemies prone, chance to do damage even on a miss with disadvantage, can give an additional bonus to hit when aiding another.

Heavy Armour Master: damage reduction(DR) and +1 Str

Each of these feats is designed either to either make it harder for the enemies to kill me, or to control the battlefield in some way. The most important ones to me are Shieldmaster and Lucky. The other feats has their utility, but it will be a close call between the feat and just gaining bonus stats.

Level advancement: Unlike other builds that I had looked at I was pretty happy with stopping at a 16 str and an 18 con at least at 4th level. This means that my plan as I level up as far as feats is:

4: +1 Str +1 Con

6: Shieldmaster

8: Lucky

12: Fellhanded

14: Sentinel

16: Tough
19: Heavy Armour Master

This means at level 20 I am sitting around a 26 AC(assuming +3 Full Plate and +3 Shield), DR 3, 20d10+120HP(220 average). I have a ton of abilities that let me control the battlefield, to assist my friends in having advantage, and forcing disadvantage on my foes. It's going to be fun to see how it plays out. Next blog post I will go in depth into how I see the battlemaster maneuvers.