The Hierophant

Rogue One and Solo are my two favourites of the four new films.

So is mine. The xp is totally bollocksed though. I’m out on a Sunday 8 July I am afraid.

Nope! I just make it up. Look for the sort of thing you might rub on brisket.

You might well be right if you meet that infrequently. (One of the reasons it’s diffixult to play D&D as a grown up is competing time pressures.) I suspect you could trim quite a lot of the wide ranging travel and tighten the overall focus. The idea is that giants are threatening the whole region and it feels like that. You could narrow the region down to focus on in and around Phandelin and I think probably run it just as well.

As a player of SKT (here) I am really enjoying it. It is quite wide ranging but doesn’t feel at all railroady. That’s a good thing as far as I can see. It feels like we have had multiple routes to follow and could have gone in a few different directions. I still have no idea where this will end up.

I think one of the key differences was we had time to plan and prepare those attacks. We didn’t really last night. The Hill giant show down was carefully planned and the plan went well. The two blue dragons would have killed us but we called a draw (twice) after taking one down. The problem seemed to be once we failed at persuasion there weren’t really any other viable options. I appreciate the room was bigger than the corridor but I wanted to use the doorway to funnel them. That didn’t work as the Cloud giant could misty step and it wasn’t any sort of obstacle to the other three. There are no sour grapes from me. And it presents some interesting opportunities. It was just an unbalanced encounter. That in itself isn’t a problem for me. There should be foes the PCs shouldn’t try to face. Running away should be something we consider (indeed we have done!). It’s just in this situation the plot required us to deal with the unwinnable encounter and we were unprepared for it and largely unable to prepare for it.

It deal feel a bit unwinnable, if you look at it on paper we're all down (two have been down twice) and none of the giants are down. I haven’t crunched the numbers but what was the challenge rating I honestly don’t think we did much in the way of making mistakes either. We could have attacked head on but we were there to help and negotiating was the obvious way to deal with it. It’s not like we were there primarily to attack like we were against the fire giants. The problem was Billin got caught and Foehammer went to rescue him. Foehammer didn’t want to fight and as a result didn’t rage and took 52 points of damage in that second round. The next problem was we couldn’t funnel the giants. There was no way we could take them in the open so hiding in the room behind a human sized door seemed the obvious tactical manoeuvre. But it didn’t have any effect in stopping the giants reaching us (okay the Cloud Giant can Misty Step, but the Fire Giant wasn’t hindered at all). I suppose the the real problem was poor Persausion Checks. But we haven’t really got anyone focused on diplomacy. Maybe that was the main issue. I'm not sure we have taken on four giants at once before, certainly not in circumstances where we didn’t have a route to disengage (we were teleported here and had nowhere to go). We have normally been able to take them one or two at a time and that’s what we were trying to do with the human sized room. It didn't work, neither did diplomacy and all we could try to do was desperately defend ourselves. I have no idea what the challenge rating of that encounter is but I really struggle to see what we could have done to have turned the tide. But while I struggle to see how the encounter was winnable without a successful persuasion check I certainly am not upset about it. I'm happy with the choices I made for Foehammer and threw in some good RP. I'd be happy with a TPK and I'm happy to see how it turns out. I can do Monday but not the Tuesday or Wednesday I am afraid.

Yeah, I love short ribs. You have to remove the papery membrane on the bottom of the bone. Then a spicy rub and low and slow. When end I do chicken on the BBQ most of the time I marinate a whole chicken in BBQ sauce for a day or so then beer can chicken with the older version of this. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Weber-Style-Poultry-Infusion-Roaster/dp/B00FLRBMHW?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-ipad-uk-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00FLRBMHW. Indirect heat in a hot bbq and paste regularly in the marinade. It cooks in no time and is a massive favourite with the family. Carve. Serve the breasts and legs. When it’s cool pull the meat off what’s left for fantastic leftovers. I'm going to do a tandoori version soon.

F**K the giants, they don't deserve our help.

This was from a few weeks ago: That was pork again. The two pots are a bbq sauce and a ragu. I like to use the heat from the bbq when cooking indirectly. I've not just done pork. A few ordinary BBQs (homemade burgers and local sausages); shoulder of lamb (slow cooked with a homemade tzatziki; couple of whole chicken (beer can method); some chicken pieces marinated in homemade tandoori mix. I've just done more eating than photography!

I love the look of those ribs though.

Ha ha ha. I have. That’s not because I haven’t been BBQing, I have! Pulled pork today. I put it on at 6:30 and took it off about 13:30 We're just about to eat. BBQ was a little lower than I would have liked, snake method with hickory chips. Homemade BBQ sauce with some of the fat from the pork; homemade potato salad (homemade mayonnaise); homemade salsa; pittas; asparagus; sweet corn.

Wow. These just on YouTube? Would love to buy or get on Spotify. So so much good jazz around at the moment. I need to post stuff when I get the chance.

You may have noticed from my posts here I am interested in the history of D&D. Here is the original Mordenkainen.

Greyhawk I hope! [/hardcore nerd]