Session 4 Summary

This was the start of the mission of the party to find out what happened to the missing and dead men in the abandon mine shaft.  Course, going in they would be beseeched by the creatures that are in the mine shaft.

The party consisted of a half-elf sorcerer that doesn't cast spells, a half-elf warlock with an imp familiar, two high-elf wizards, a wood-elf ranger, a human druid, and a silver-dragonborn paladin.  It was a busy day.  So much so there were a couple of monsters that I wouldn't have played otherwise.

So, they go in to find some bats and spiders, and they are hungry of course.  Nature checks verify that the bats are bats, and the spiders are spiders, though the sorcerer rolled a 20 on that, so I kindly told him one of the spiders were kinda blue.  The player of the sorcerer memorized the monster manual, so he got unnerved, as he deduced, rightly, that it was a phase spider.  So the players tried to get the spider first, with the druid, having wild-shaped into a giant spider, restraint the phase spider.  The phase spider survived to its turn to ethereal jaunt its way out of the material realm and into safety.  Course, this did not sit well with the players.

So, the players were focusing on bats and spiders, quickly taking them out, however a surprise was hinted when a percentage check revealed to the druid, still in spider form and therefore knows when there is something on the webbing, that there was a surprise on the ceiling of the cave.  The party panicked and assumed it was more phase spiders.  Course, the paladin starts to advance, and a failed perception check had something come moving off of the ceiling, and was able to attack on AC, thus wrapping itself around the paladin's head, blinding and suffocating him.  So the paladin resorted to using his breath attack as he is dragonborn.

The sorcerer wanted to know what that was, and was made to roll arcana as it wasn't a natural creature.  He rolled a 20.  So I told him it was a Darkmantle, and showed the party what it looked like from the monster manual.  This was the monster they saw:

So, the party straight up shit themselves, forgetting about the phase spider that was still somewhere in the ethereal plane, and were determined to kill the Darkmantle, and then two other ones that came from the ceiling, attaching themselves to one of the wizards and the sorcerer.  The party, in a panic, were shooting and casting spells on them before the three party member started suffocating.  There were a lot of "Are you wearing a helmet...?  Don't care, that thing is ugly!  Kill it with fire!"

Lastly, the phase spider materialized behind the warlock, as the warlock spent the entire encounter hiding in the back letting his imp doing the fighting.  The other wizard (the one that wasn't attacked by the Darkmantles) saves the warlock.

So, with the monsters down, the adventures can carry on with their investigation.