Nerd Poker - The Fog Campaign - Episode 83

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

It's time to run a campaign victory lap by raiding a worm-filled house, and set up our next campaign... The Cavern Campaign, starting next week! For 3 bonus episodes a month and more, subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/nerdpoker. For merch, social media, and more, be sure to head to nerdpokerpod.com

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So I'm on a plane flying to the Midwest with Death Angel headphones. So thanks Heavy's audio. You can visit www.com for details. Check it out, my metal friends. Cheers. Hey, it's Brian Pusain. Nerd Poker. We're calling it the Svald Campaign.

My friends are here. Chris Blaine Ken, engineer Sam and of course our kick-ass DM Dan Telfer Welcome to Nerd Poker Hey everybody

It's Brian Pisani You're listening to Nerd Poker It's episode 83 of the fog campaign We're wrapping it up We're on Zoom today We're all here Hey Blaine

Hey Brian Hey, Chris. Hey, Brian. Hey, Ken. Good morning, sir. Dan. Well, hello. Hey, pal.

And running the show, as always, from the cool part of town. Is that an Elvira shirt? Yeah. Nice. It's Sam, everybody. Hello, sweet children. How's that dog? He's right there.

Hey, buddy. Speaking of Muppets. We should. No kidding. We should thank some people, Andy. Why don't we? This is going to be our last episode of the Fog campaign, and it is brought to you by everyone who can support us on Patreon.

And we're very grateful to y'all, especially if you can manage to support us at our top two tiers of support. And y'all got us like Eric Key, Thanks, Eric E. Thank you, Galileo Humpkin. Thank you. This is what I, this next one, this is what I tell myself every morning when I get out of bed. It's not just a rim job.

It's a rim career. Thank you. Hot Dong. Thank you, Blaine's two fingers for all their hard work. Hot Dong, somewhere in the city. Back to my next field, dirty and gritty. Thank you, Hayden, a normal name. Thank you.

Except that you were once. Saniken Skywalker. Thank you, Duane D. Bath tub. Thank you, Bilbo T. Bagan. Thank you, Steve A.G. pinching his taint to cast that spell. Thank you. The pain in Blaine is mostly in Possein. What?

Thank you, 1877, Cars for Cobalds. And finally, thank you, T-Cup Tempest. Blaine, who is the supporters brought to us by? Supposed brought to us by Hustlers Store Back to School Days. Oh, yeah. Yeah, big savings on lunch plugs, double pencils, lunch loom, and the piece with two backpacks. Oh, yeah. Same big.

I mean, talking really big. And the hustler store back to school days. Dan? Explain. Wow, that was upsetting. Well, it's time to talk about what happened on the entire fog campaign. This campaign went, you know, twice as far. many episodes as the mountain campaign.

Part of that was me just seeing how many in-person things we could have with y'all. But I believe it'll be time to try to get some new Hero Forge minis. Try to soak McKeel for some of those. And the way we kind of left things was there was the workshop that you had not dug into onto the first floor. You went in on the second floor, and the first floor was full of worms. And you kind of just got the fuck out of there. Like many buildings, you knew it was dangerous, but unlike some, you did not set this one on fire. Also, we talked a little bit about this, but I think it's a good setup for next episode.

You don't have to use the same characters next episode. It'll be, you know, a campaign with level 10 characters. Two of you have reached out about, three of you have reached out about it. I think Ken is the only one. I don't know anything about what they want to do. But the hopefully interesting part of it is you can take your loot and use it to fund the next character on their mission. So we'll talk about that once we get into the next episode,

but you can use either the equipment or the money your equipment brings in to get the characters through their quest. and so we can spend part of this mission hunting for stuff that might be still hidden away in this house's first floor which is going to be full of the husks of cosmic maggots and then we can talk about how you guys want to try to pawn off or look at your equipment when I explain what it's going to be for so you guys are in Dalsmith you've just defeated the big boss

you killed the giant pile of worms and the fog is starting to abate. The newly installed mayor is a Kuatua, meaning the poor side of town is finally going to get a fair shake. Many of the wealthy older elves and gnomes have all fled town, and it seems like this is going to be a far more communist place. Or as Mayor Giuliani said this morning, the kind of place where they try to tell people they should shop

their genitals off because Rudy Giuliani is afraid of communism. But you guys have set, you've set this up. And right now it's a matter of, do you want to look for more loot? Do you want to send your characters off into the sunset or do you want to maybe sell some loot? You have the advantage of Brian, your fearless leader being the Plank, the head of the local thieves guild. So he can arrange for ponding your stuff off at a decent range.

Yeah. So, like, you know, I would say your, um, your immediate clear options would be to either, you know, see the mayor, to pull some kind of victory lap strings to go to that empty workshop to see if there's more loot to be had, to go to the Planks office to start pawning stuff off or a force thing. Huh. I mean, we want to make money, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it seems like I'm just looking through the inventory. One thing, I mean, why don't we, if we, if the goal is ultimately to sell stuff, why don't we first go to the warehouse and see if there's anything worth rating to add to our pile, then have Brian, you know, work his Harold Hill flim flammary word magic. And we get rich. I mean, I kind of want to see this. Harold Hill, some flammary. But yeah, yeah.

Do it, do it. Let's go into the place. To the Veeves Guild? Well, no, to, let's go first and get all the stuff. Okay. To the workshop. Yeah, let's go to the workshop. Yeah, the northwest side of town, this is the gnome who's mech that you destroyed.

It's like a tinkerer's workshop. The first floor's windows and door are still boarded shut. So you're seeing it in a new light. It's like that weird thing where you're like in a town you've been to several times, but never during daylight. So the place looks a little less foreboding than it used to, Chris. Is this the next day or is this right after the fight? Because I don't know about you guys, but like I'm for sure bleeding and down spell slots.

Are we, are we, Dan, is that the case? Are we going right after that? I'm going to go ahead and say that for the sake of fun, you guys took a victory rest in a tavern already in our back at full health and spell slots. Long arrest. We love it. Okay. All right.

Well, good. That gives me plenty of bardic inspiration to help us with all the weird death traps that Dan's going to throw in us. Nonsense. All right. All right. To the Tinkerer's Workshop. Now, I'll just note, we did kill him because he attacked us.

Had he not turned us. I want to get Speed Buggies autograph. And he attacked you because you broke into his friend's house. Tomato, tomato, clamado, clamato. I mean, I wouldn't talk that way about the new lead of the thieves guilt, but that's me. Spicoli, we're going to go get some more cool stuff. Okay. And then you're going to sell it to your thieie friends, and we're going to make a lot of money.

All right. All right. Workshop's got a front door. It's got a side door where, you know, equipment can be loaded in and out, like parts of a mech. And you did find part of an incomplete mech on the second floor. You, as you approach, notice the front door is heavily boarded. The windows are heavily boarded. But you do remember there is a hole on the second floor.

So you could go back into the second floor that you've already broken into and just sort of dive through the hole. just going to be, you know, a little more perilous. I set it on fire. I kill Blaine's kid. I mean, we are with the thief masters. Do you guys want to try and pick one of these doors and show us how it's done? You have insane sight hand on it says, I will remind you. Yeah, it's pry this shit off and get in there.

Maybe it'll give us access to like a, because we've broken it upstairs, maybe we'll see some new stuff in here. Who's strong? I'm not strong, but I got a good sleight of hand. Yeah, our TV friends. Yeah. Okay. I'll do it.

Whatever. The typical lock is, yeah, you can walk up to this and do a sleight of hand check to unlock it. There are boards on it, so there will be a strength check to pry the boards off first. Okay, well, then I roll a 16. Nice. On a strength check?

Yes. That will pop them off pretty well. You notice there's a bit of damage to the doorway just from having to rip all these things off. They're standard nails, but there were a lot of them. It was hastily done, though. You think that maybe this place was boarded up when this guy, this gnome was like, not in his right mind. So by the time he was nailing the board,

up, he was already pretty far gone with cosmic, what's a good word for it, possession. So, you know, you can not take advantage of the fact that this place has nobody in it, but same time, he was a weirdo, and you might be encountering a trap, as you have noted. So although the boards are gone, it's time for a side of handshadow. but it has been noted several times there might be a trap here. Okay. Does somebody want to check for traps? I rolled a, just do a trap check.

I'm sorry. I rolled a 20 slide in hand, is that? Well, do you want to check for traps first? Sure. Sure. I'll give you Bartic inspiration. I'll strum my lute and go, Spicoli, the one and only.

So what is the role? Investigation. Okay. Oh, man, no. And then, uh... What's the no? What's the number for the listeners? Just real low, seven. Oh, no, no. What was it? It went away.

Okay. I'll... Yeah, I'll pull the campaign. Uh, six. Yeah. And where's the six? There's a six. Yes. Where's the random?

And then we... Shalab got a seven. I'll say you two walk up. And although you could take advantage of the Bartik inspirations that are available to you, I don't know. Did you just cast one on Blaine for pulling the door open, Chris? But those numbers are low enough. You might not even want to add a bardic inspiration. You might want to let the other two kind of come up and help you up at the store. I gave one to Joffrey. The cool thing about my bardic inspirations is that because of the level I'm at, they only go away if it applies to a role that succeeds.

So like, for example, if you apply it to these roles and they weren't enough, they would still hang on to that bardic inspiration until it's successfully used. used. Cool. Great. So you can feel free to use them for whatever you want. It's a D4, yeah?

D8? D8? Oh, geez. Let me make it. I don't know. I mean. Yeah. That's another five to my seven.

So, 12. Yeah, you know, what you're looking for is a mechanical or magical trap. You don't see anything mechanical, but it's going to take either a detect magic or someone rolling higher to be able to sense if there is... I cast detect magic! Well, I counter spell. Oh, wow.

No. I cast detect, detect magic. Oh, wait, you know what? I cast the spell magic. You don't have detect magic? Oh, I might. You don't have detect? I don't.

You make the fun of me? No. I have the spell. Oh. I don't think I have detected. I have it. Yay. Well, look at you.

I'll throw it up. Ew. Yeah. All right. There is an enchantment on the door itself, not just the lock or the doorknob, but the door has some sort of magical aura on its abjuration school. My lord. Here's where the dispel magic comes in.

I'll dispel that shit. Now, dispel magic, you choose an object. any spell third level or lower, well, you'll end the enchantment right away. But this is a fourth or higher level enchantment on the door. So you need to use your spellcasting ability modifier. The DC is going to be 10 plus the spell secret level. So it's going to be at least a 14.

Yeah, let's see. You know, do it on fifth level. How about that? Just to make sure. I got a number. How you like that level? Matt Damon. So I cast that fifth level.

Nice. Okay. So that is going to be, that'll do it. That will poof the aura. So. Poof the aura, guys. You gave it a poof. Do you need a handkerchief?

The aura visible to someone who might have the text magic running, who may have also been running from the Zoom camera, dissipates. Nice. But aura's gone, blank. It's done. And did you guys check for trap traps? They did. They did.

The thing is they just didn't roll super high. It was Ken who added a Vardig Inspiration, right? What was your number? I think. Fifty, 15? Fifteen. Twelve. After age.

Twelve. Yeah. So, like, I would say that would give you a mediocre concept. You know, like, you're like, okay. But I still spell the day. Blaine, you and it. The magic's gone. I don't know.

The magic's gone, but. Exactly. I was going to say it. It's a time to see a family lawyer. Can Blaine and I check for traps? Is that allowed? I know Ken and Ryan already have. I would say the thing I like to do with the bill.

checks to keep it fair and interesting at the same time is anyone can roll an investigation check, but the difficulty gets higher if you want to do the same character wants to do it more than once. The first time you do it, everyone gets the same DC, but if you miss the check and then you want to do it again, either time starts going by, some sort of consequence of it not having worked this first time. Okay, if I have an 11 investigation. do it plus 11 new investigation so yeah

and I've given each of you Bartic inspiration so it's only 16 I roll 5 okay you've got a parking Blaine you've got a D8 to add if you want

A D8, you know what I'll do it yeah because I ruled a natural one five nice so 21 thank you Chris of course of course

the 21 is going to do it there is some sort of very basic trap on the other side of the door frame the lock itself you could pick but when you open the door there's also going to be some sort of mechanical trap but it's hard to see because it's on the other side like if my phone is the door

you know like you're on this side of the door you're looking at it behind it over here there's some sort of mechanical trap like attached to the walls that will get activated if you open it. Crazy genius. Can I do a, can do a mage hand? We can all step back? It's one of my favorite ways to handle this situation.

All right, yeah, let's all get away from the doorway. Mays, handle it, handle it. Yeah, let's go. I'll give, uh, Spicoli's big sleight of hand roll earlier, will be him just sort of walking over and effortlessly pop on the lock on this. So, uh, you use mage hand. How far back you guys want to go? It's love to just check the end on that one, you know?

What's the range? Yeah, well, for Mage Hand, how close do you have to be? Mage Hand. You have a pretty far distance. It's like 150 feet or some junk, right? Mage Hand, 30 feet. Okay. So we'll be 35 feet.

Yeah. I'll be 30 feet wincing. Yes, take a big old step back, and Mage Hand grabs the doorknob and pulls. the rickety beat-up door opens and there are like on either side of the door there are three wooden planks covered in nails

on the top there are two and you don't see them at first you see them when the door opens and then they all slam outwards about five feet and you just these planks with nails just kind of go fwack they would you know be a pretty rudimentary trap

but it's what a crazy you know, engineer would do. So these are all sprung. Nice. All right, let's go inside and steal this guy's candy. As we walk past, I'm going to

touch one of the nail tips and then look at the camera and go, nailed it. Just the tip. So you head inside. Hey, listen. Nautiful. Listen, I just,

I only know I play one sport, T-ball, and you teed it up. So you head into the workshop and you can see this is the room where you smash the hole in the ceiling. You know there's a garage off to the right to the east. There are dead worms in big piles everywhere. And there are so many by the hole in the ceiling that you almost would not even think of it as easy to get through. But there's a pile of corpses of just like dried out husks, slightly moist inside, perhaps,

but on the outside of crispy carapace going straight, almost flush with the ceiling by where the hole in the ceiling is. So you would have actually had to like clear some away if you went in through that hole. There's also enough of them that you're going to be, you know, up to your ankles in them no matter. what unless you float or something. There's big piles in the walls. There's like cupboards and stuff.

Like armours that all might have tinkerers, tools or treasure, but a lot of it is covered in these big, huge piles of worms that, you know, it's almost like sawdust on the workshop floor. Go ahead. So they're all dried out. Again, crispy carapist could be juicy on the inside, you're not sure.

I love saying crispy carapace. I think Tuddin would look at Siam and be like, how long does your detect magic thing last? Because that might help us in here in terms of... Oh, yeah, it should be still going. Yeah. I think while you're doing that, Twudin will play a sort of complicated little lick on his loot,

and I'm going to cast a spell. Dan, I'm going to cast a fifth level spell. It is called animate objects. Whoa, what? Objects come to life at your command. Choose up to 10 non-magical objects within range that are not being worn or carry. Medium targets count is two. Large count is four.

Huge count is eight. You can't animate larger than huge. Each target animates and becomes a creature under your control until a spell ends, concentration up to a minute, or until reduced to zero key points. So we're not in combat, but what I'd like to do is animate 10 sort of objects that I can sort of more or less see in the workshop. And I'd like them to be our little cleaners. And for a minute, I want them to be like Snow White's birds, except they're, you know, I don't know, a wrench, a bucket, maybe just a shud of metal. And they've got little feet and little arms and little hands with like white gloves on them.

And I want them to try and clear out as much of the dead worm carapuses as possible, especially following Siam's thing of like, oh, look like there might be something magic over here, that kind of thing. I want them to kind of help us make some paths. Get a big monitor lizard in there. Oh, God. I like that shit. Yeah, so I heard wrench and bucket and sheet of metal to get some tongs, some pliers, some pliers.

A screwdriver, maybe a large bolt. Yeah, one of those things that are sort of bigger, obviously if there is like a dust, like a broom, I'd love to animate a broom. If there's a like a, what do you call that thing, you sweep stuff into? Pan. Yeah, pan.

Yeah, definitely, I definitely would love an airport bag. Oh, 10 airport bags. Yeah, if I could animate any like brooms, stuff that naturally would be good at. Dude, got it. So, like, there is a broom. There is also a very long pair of tongs. It looks like there's probably some sort of...

Gene Simmons there. Long Kong. I really hate how long it took me to get that joke in. It only took one second. So, yeah, long tongs, plier, screwdriver, broom. there is a coal shovel there is an axe but it's like you know

wood axe not a fighty axe it probably wouldn't hold up well on combat and let's see so I got wrench, bucket, sheet of metal log tags flyers this is a long screwdriver broom, a shovel

an axe and let's say you will also use there's like another just one will just say like socket wrench. And these things are all going to grow little legs and become helpers. And do you say they had little hands too?

I just heard little legs little legs and skinny arms. But like the legs end in like a big shoe. Right, right. Old timey cartoon. Yeah, whole time. Yeah. The broom using a shovel. They do like a jaunty walk everywhere they go where they're like pumping their arms up

and down. And yeah, yeah, yes, there's a tuba playing from somewhere. That's it. They're able to clear the worms and they're able to do some rudimentary searching. Can I get, I'll let you choose, Chris. You can do an Arcana check or an investigation check to guide these guys. Oh, well, let's see. For Arcana, I have plus four, an investigation plus two.

I will do Arcana plus four. Mm-hmm. Makes sense? 13. All right. Again, rudimentary. So they clear all of the furniture that looks like they have drawers or an armoir, and they're kind of using the massive pile as a North Star.

So on the northeast corner of the room, there's that hole in the ceiling with a very high pile of terapuses, and they're kind of pushing everything in that direction and making smaller piles around it. So you can see things better. They clear little paths in the dead worms to all of these things. So you can see there is two armoires, which are, you know, like big cupboards with vertical doors on them. It's like a breakfront. There are floor cupboards, two tool benches with drawers. And that's about all that they have been able to suss out on their own.

You don't see like a lot of, nothing is obvious that could be buried under the worms, but there are still smallish piles of worms against some of the walls that are just sort of mystery piles. And who knows what, you know, is happening under most of these worms on the floor, although there are paths to all of that furniture, two MRs, four cupboards,

two tool benches and drawers. All right, I will give a, I will re-give Bark inspiration to Blaine. so all three of them have a barter conspiration. I think we just divide up. I'll take one of the cupboards. There's two armoires. They think everybody's split up and see what we have.

I'll go through the drawers. I don't want to touch the floor. It's kind of gross. I'll do an armoire. Spicola, you want an armoire or a cupboard? Covered. Okay. So let's hear, as you're doing the role, what the role is for.

Brian, you want to get it started? Yeah. There's a cupboard, right? Yeah, what am I doing? Investigation? Yeah. Okay. Investigation to check it out, like, right up, standing up in front of it,

and then if there's a lock, that's, you know, where we get into slight of antsy. Another role. There's low row. You have Barter Conspiration if you want to use it. All right. Well, that will just get me to 12 at the very most. Oh, 16. It's a barred inspiration.

Okay. If you want, you don't have to. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I got it. I got a six. That's good. Right.

Yeah. 14. Yeah, it doesn't look like there are any traps on this coverage. Okay. I investigate further. Open it up. You can either just open them or you can take a further precaution, but from what you can tell, there's no precaution we have with this coverage.

Right up in it. Great. Inside, you see gems, gems, gems. You found the gem cupboard. Jam covered. This cupboard does not have any money in it, per se. These are all things that would have to be sold at some sort of rate. But you find what the flat market value would be about 500 gold's worth of gems.

Nice. Any holograms? No, but there might be special ones. mixed in with them that are more than just valuable for money. What do you mean like magical? I mean, let's run everything we get past Siam. Yeah, I've got my detect magic is still up. Okay.

And there's going to be little auras sort of coming from all the stuff you find in large quantities. But, you know, these gems, you'd have to sort of spend some time digging around. But I believe Blaine, you maybe wanted to open something. Yeah, one of the armouards. Okay. Do that investigation check, boss. 19, 8 plus 11. Okay.

There is a very simple lock on this. Slight a hand check required. That's 16 plus 4. Pop that right off. These things are no problem for you guys. long as they're not super secret and hidden. And when the lock pops, the armoire is now available to you. Pop and lock.

Pop that bad boy open? Yes, please. Okay. So when you open it up, it looks like there is some basic gear in here, just like, you know, a bib and some gloves. But there's also what looks like a little pile of folded up equipment. Hmm. Is it, do they have lobsters?

on them? No, nothing for Bubba Gump's. Oh. But you do get the sense that some of this stuff could be magic. It's just blacksmith tools,

an apron, that's sort of thing. Okay. And it's... With the, yeah, you're the one who has detects magic running as well. You're going to see an aura coming from an amulet that's

folded up in some of the clothes. There's also a bracelet in there. Interesting. And yeah. I'm just trying to make sure there's a pair of gloves that appear to be magic at the bottom of the pile.

Stuff that's all hung up in plain sight. Pretty boring stuff, but mixed in the pile, you find them via the auras, are making that part pretty easy. All that stuff. Okay. I'm going to slide these things into my primordial pouch. And because you had to take magic running and you found them via Oro,

you want to run an Arcana check. And if you can get it, why don't you do an Arcana check for each of the items that you found? And if you beat it 20, you recognize what it is. Okay. Here's the amulets. Okay. It's a 14 plus 7

It's 21 Oh That's an amulet of health Your constitution score is 19 while you wear this amulet It requires attunements So anyone using it With this will take up one of their limited attunement slots It has no effect on if your constitution's already 19 or higher without it

It's an amulet of health From the D&D Beyond archives All right. I'm going to do the bracelet. Oh, that's a 17 plus 7. Jesus. Which is 24. Okay. This is a really powerful bracelet known as Big Bee's Beneficent Braclet.

It is jewelry. So when you look at it, you can tell it's like a little golden cuff with chains on it and rings attached to the chains. Okay. They're very delicate chains. so you look like a real fancy lad while wearing this. And it has random properties. Once you attuned to it,

against it takes up an attunement slot. It's going to roll properties from the property table. If you remember, the Dungeon Master's Guide has that table of minor and major properties that magical items can have. So when you attuned to it, you would activate it. But it also does,

maybe not for you, Blaine, allows you to cast mate hand. Hmm. And there are a couple of other hand-related abilities tied to the most notable of which, I believe, is Big Bee's hand. As an action, you can use it to cast a ninth-level spell, Bigby's hand. When you cast it this way, it doesn't require a concentration. And then it can't be used again until next dawn.

However, again, the tunement slot. Okay. Very valuable thing, though. Very nice. Oh man, we're all going to get a boat. We're each going to individually have our own boats and we're going to race each other in the closing credit sequence. It's a trip down Main Street.

Oh, shit. Pass. And I'll do the gloves. Great. You know what that means? That means that's not a very good one. That's a 13 plus 7, so 20. But that is what I was asking for, right?

I know you need it over 20. No, 20. You meet it to yeat it. So these are gloves of swimming and climbing. While wearing these gloves, climbing and swimming don't cost you extra movement. And you gain plus five bonus to athletics checks that are about climbing and swimming.

Cats love water. They do. And there are a lot of climbing and swimming moments in the average cavern. Oh. So maybe I can leave these to another character. Ken, I believe you're owed some action. What would you like to walk up to?

Drars? Love us and jars. So we dropped in drawers. Brian's got one of the four covers. Blaine's taken one of the armoires and we have two tool benches with drawers. Great. I would investigate them. All of them?

You're just going to take over now? It's time for 10. I don't mean to make this drag out, but yeah, this will go by fairly quickly. I regardless. I have 18 arms. It's okay. So which one? The first drawer or whatever.

First drawer of, I'm going to just choose one since I think, because I'm asking you to name furniture, it's not clear. We'll say another one of the cupboards, so investigation check. That is a... Let's see if what I can do with the inspiration. 7 plus 3.10. Yeah, you don't know what the fuck is going on with this thing, but you do feel like it's probably not unlocked. It's probably locked.

You're just unable to verify whether the lock is there in the dim light. Should I try to? Slight of hand it? May I? Yes, ma'am. So that'll be a slight hand check. That's a 16. There is a basic lock on it.

It's just a little hole underneath the knob, but you manage to pop it. You're welcome. But yeah, there are four drawers. All of them have one of these on it. Inside, more tools. Mm-hmm. It looks like a tool coverage.

There are basic types of most major tools here. So right now, none of these are magical, but if you wanted to collect, there are thieves tools, glass blower's tools, potters tools, carpenters tools, mason's tools, tinkerers tools, and woodcarvers tools. I mean, these valuable tools,

resale or not for as much money but they're definitely not common if we're getting into the more specific stuff like the tinker's tools bradly the seers get this stuff yeah and i'll look at spikot it's like this seems like a great opportunity for the thieves guilds to completely like set themselves up as far as oh we have every kind of tool you know at you know at a major discount that we will of course give them a fair price. Why don't you do an insight check, Chris and Brian? Insight. Insight.

Feels right. 24. Out of sight. Inside a night. Inside a night. What you got for me, Brian? 11. then.

All right. Well, you're going to have to take his word for it a bit, but we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven kinds of tools. And you do think, Chris, if these, if Brian were to sell these as like a set of seven tools, it's going to have sort of like an incremental bonus. So these are worth a certain amount individually. Like, let's just say, I don't know, five gold individually,

but maybe they're worth one gold more each as you might. multiply how many are sold together as a set. So if you, the thing is there's so many here and you're, you're going to have another adventure coming up that you might want to hold on to a specific one, but there will be worth more if you don't hold on to any of them. Yeah.

I mean, especially because, I mean, I don't know if you guys know, the legend of this particular collection of tools is they were fundamental in the killing of Caius. True. Already in the salesperson mode.

I mean, it just makes sense that we would keep them together as a set for a serious collector or perhaps thieves guild that wants to assemble a full set of board. Yeah, it's gather up. Okay. Great. What are you saying to bag of holding, Dan? You got a bag of holding in here?

Not yet. Hey, Chris, you haven't had a chance to rifle around in anything. Did you want to pick one of those things? I was going to do a cupboard. Great. Watch roll in investigation check, boss. that's investigation I have a plus

this so of course I rolled an eight yeah you know what's going on with these drawers but they are small it's a smaller I will step back

and use and strum a sort of sustained note and summon a mage hand to open the cupboard great and stand back

just a touch so You jostlet, it is locked. Basic lock. Can I? Sly the end check yet. Yeah. Let's see.

We do that. Now, plus six, bonus. 24. Nice. Look at you. You aren't magic canned Spicoli, but you do quite well. I've been spending some time with these steeds. These knuckleheads.

Yeah. Cat and a stoner. You pop off the. Simple lock, but it is a mechanical lock. It doesn't look like it was necessarily easy to do. There are a lot of pins inside of it, but you managed to flick them all open. And open it up, and there are a whole lot of little vials. Can you do an insight check?

Impules. Insight. Six bonus to this. Uh, 20. Okay. This is mostly poisons. Mmm. Great.

And there's another droid nothing but Taco Bell lettuce. Ew. Ew. Probably a wiltier brown. All right. And so there are one, two, three, four, five, six poisons. And then some sort of weird tincture, some sort of weird post. sort of weird potion.

And what looks like, I don't know, like a magical water in a little vial. Magic water. Dan, can I take a taste of the potion to determine what the potion itself is? Is that an ability you have? I want to say it is. No, it's a, I think it's just a D&D. It's the D&D rule.

I always forget, but when it comes up, I'm like, oh. So, yeah, what? I won't do that with the poisons or the tinct or anything, but just a potion. I just want to take a tasty little sip. I'll give it a good shake. Make sure the bobbin, cider, moving around. But I want to try to determine what kind of potion.

What was big fat straws? So you get to do an Arcana or a medicine check. Oh, your choice. I'll do Arcana. Okay, plus four bonuses. I rolled a natural one, so it's a five. Oh, you don't know what it is. I will, you will not get poisoned by the potion, but you can't tell what it is.

Yeah, I'll just, I'll just make a real face. Mmm. Ooh, guys. Good one here. That's a good one. And I'll just take it. Soy sauce. Is he soy sauce?

Cool. Uh, hey, soy boy. I believe Blaine has been the longest since you cracked something open. We still have one covered, one arm noir, and two tool benches. I'll do the other armwarr. Great. Investigation check, please. Well, all right.

That's 12 plus 11. Jesus. Unbelievable. All right. You pop that bad way wide open. I know. Well, you told me what your next character is. I do think your next character could be related if you wanted them to be related.

It's up to you. Happy family. All right. You pop this open. And yeah, there are strange tools you don't really recognize, but little bits of them makes sense. You think this is like tinkerer stuff? Can I get an insight check?

Sure. 14 plus 10. 24. Nice. Yeah, you dig through a lot of garbage. A lot of this looks like it is stuff he hung onto for highly specialized tinkering that maybe could add a little value if you spent a lot of time sorting it out and adding it to the tinkerers tool set that you guys already found.

But because you got such a high role, you notice there are a valuable trio of goggles. Walton goggles? He's great in everything. Wallen goggles, star of Fallout. The white, light. Lotus. Righteous Jim Stones, vice principles. Justified.

The unicorn. He's having a moment, and I can't think of anyone else better to have a moment than Walton Goggins. Oh, great. He's one of those people on sets will go in interviews and talk about how great he wants to work with. um people i think like david lynch at one point was like i gotta figure out how to work with this guy

um all right so three pairs of goggles three pairs of goggles can i do an arcana check on them uh yeah so i will need a 20 for you to figure out what they are okay uh that's a seven and seven of fourteen so that is not quite you've got a bardic inspiration if you want to you Yeah? Yeah, why not? I'll do it. It's a 14.

Yeah, still blew it. All right. It's a toughie, but you do know that they are magical because they emit oras. Okay. I'll do goggles two. That's also a fail. What number? That was a three plus seven, except a 10.

So I can't even try. Third pair. Not your specialty, Stevie Boy. Third pair is a two. So it's three magic goggles, and I don't know what they do. I mean, they win golden gloves. So we've got a couple of tool benches. Brian, you want to tackle a toolbench?

Sure. Yes. Great. So roll an investigation truck, please. Is Bartik Inspiration still available? Yeah, you still have it. Do you need to roll the D8, Brian? You guys thought I did.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, you got a six. So it's 20. Oh, cool. Nice. Nice. All right.

So there is no lock on this one. You can pop this one right open, Brian. Shit. Okay. That's what I do. A lot of clockwork parts, a lot of little gears. This is, of all the things people have opened so far, the one that seems like it's full of the most junk.

However, you do find some. Little clockwork acorns and a clockwork amulet. Okay. Clockwork acorns. Clockwork acorns. What's the amulet do? Robot seats. Dan, can I tell what the amulet does?

You can roll an Arcana check or show it to a friend to roll an Arcana check. Up to you. I will give Twitten another inspiration. Amulet, you finish. Got a 14. 14 will not quite cut what it is. Does someone else want to take a look at him? Brian,

you have other bardic inspiration? Or do you have another bardic inspiration? Yeah, I'll try it. That don't do it. You only need a six on a D8. It could be done. Got it. Seven.

Nice. Excellent. So the lesser shocking of the two things is the amulet. It is literally called in the Dungeon Master's Guide a clockwork amulet. It contains tiny interlocking gears and is powered by magic from mech and which is the plane of clockwork with predictability. There's a faint ticking and wearing noise that comes from inside. When you make an attack roll while wearing it,

you can forego rolling the D20 and get a 10 on the die. Once you use it, the property can't be used again to the next dawn. Basically, it's a way to get a consistent attempt at an attack. Okay. More weird is the acorns. It is an acorn-sized sphere of brass. It contains a small, amount of blasting powder and a

clockwork trigger is an explosive seed you find three of them talk about explosive seeds grenade corns they're like little grenade corns yeah Dan is the mechanic

I know some I feel like with throwing stuff like that it's like as long as it's 20 feet you can put it where you want and then it's a DC for whoever's around to try and get away Is that right? As opposed to an attack role?

It's more about whatever's around there trying to not get affected by the blast. Yeah, I mean, the rules and the items say explosive seed can be thrown up to 30 feet. That needs an impact. And then you make a saving throw. Cool. So you can potentially have it on a timer and run away. But I would say that would be tricky and you'd have to do something else to it. You could set it down and, yeah, like whip a rock at it and set it off.

Oh, that's cool. That's great. What's the damage? The damage is not too shabby for a tiny explosive. It's first a DC-10 deck save and then a 1D8 bludgeoning damage. Okay. And it still halved on a successful save. And even if someone made a deck save, they could potentially get killed if they're down to one or two hit points by this thing.

Yeah. And bludgeoning might be, you know, useful as just, you know, we're bringing little blasting caps into caves. Yes, exactly. So this would be an automatic success when breaking up physical objects that are not extra sturdy. Well, we should be doing damage against the object. Bring this new back to life and have them make a hundred of them for us.

Well, it's almost time to go. Let's get this last tool bench done. Ken, I believe it's been the longest since you've popped something open. You want to pop in there? I shall investigate. Let's roll that check. Let me bonus that if I can. Whoops, a doodle.

It's a seven plus eight. I saw a whoops a doodle at the dog park the other day. It was really cool. So, 15. All right. It seems like it's probably, you know, openable, but it looks almost like this covered has been scored and marked up on purpose, like someone has been damaging it. Do an insight check. Yeah, right.

Let's see, that's a 26. Hmm. Ooh. Is that okay? You did such a good job. Thank you. Good boy. This is a tool bench that looks like it's got three drawers on it.

They're all locked. And it was purposely damaged to dissuade people from going inside. Oh, I'm going in. All right. So you want to do a slighting end check to pop the locks? Is there any magic showing on this thing? There is not. Except inside.

Intel's in there. You said, what am I? I'm sorry, a sleight of hand. Yes. Okay. I'm going to give Ken my last bardic inspiration. All right. That's a 15.

Nice. They'll pop them locks. Yeah. The shore contains a cloak that is folded up, a magic cloak. Shezoic. All right. One of the, one of the, One of the cloaks is glowing and it has small bits of fungus growing on it.

That's the close zero. One of them is black and mysterious. And one of them is black and silk and a fine garment. Nice. All right. This is the things he wore when he felt like being shady. There's a big dog in my kitchen. It sounds scary.

I like the look you had on your face when you said that. You were so delighted by the giant dog in your kitchen. She is a total delight. I'm delighted by her all the fucking time. Yay. That's great. So congratulations. You guys have looted a ton of stuff.

We can get more into what all of it is on our next episode when your old characters will meet your new characters in the same place. And we can talk about whether you're going to be selling or equipping them. It's going to be a real mind fuck, but we've never done that, and I thought it would be fun. Can you have a character? Yes. Cool. Do you want to give everyone a little teaser of your character?

No, his name is Luther, and he doesn't know. Give us those exact lengths, brief little teasers. Brian, what's your character? I'll have a name in a minute. I haven't named him yet. I kind of wanted some help with him. Sure. I like what your premise was that you told me last night. Yeah, I wanted to play, how do you pronounce it?

Dwergar. A Dwergar, a Dwergar, which is a gray elf that, I mean, Dwarf, sorry, yeah, gray dwarf. And my guy has a power where he can grow big. And that's part of it's part of their, Rosan, go bar. They're free. They comes with being a drag bar.

Say it again? Dwergard. Dwergard. It took me a while to figure that one out, but only from DMing that I get the practice. And it's really, they're really fun. Their backstory is really cool because they're survivors of mindflare and slavery. And so they're like resistant to being charmed. And they're surly as fuck.

You're very certainly. Blaine, who you got? Two words, two words. Mr. Bites. You want the tooth? You can't handle the tooth. Are you guys ready for 30 to 80 episodes of that voice? And, wow.

Like I said, could be related to Siam Spade if you wanted to, but we can get into that next episode. Chris, how about you? My character's name is... Once again, a rare species from Chris Tallman, which I really liked. My character's name is Corbeau, and he is a Shatter Kai, which, not the same as Brian's Dwergar, but it's a shadow elf. They were once... Not that they're not good or bad, but they tried to, like Dan's Eld's...

from that campaign several campaigns ago. The Shadow Faye thought they could take out, thought they were the best to run the world. They fucked up and instead have been absorbed into the shadow fell. So they are sort of elves between life and death, and they have shadow powers. I love it. And if any of you guys have played Baldur's Gay 3,

there's a Shatter Kai, like, hidden in Act 2 that you may or may not find. that is a really cool encounter. Oh, neat. But it's, it's, I love how they're corrupted by the Shadowfell, which is also a part of Act 2 of that game. Oh, I admit. That's fun.

Yeah, yeah. So I am really stoked to get more into it. Like I said, it's going to be a cave campaign. Do you guys think we should call it the cave campaign or the cavern campaign? Uh, yeah. Cairns. Cavern? Yeah.

The cavern campaign. We got one vote for you. of the beginning of the episode. Yeah, I think Brian voting means that we go by what the boss man wants. Let's call a cavern. I like cavern anyway.

That would have been my vote. I wouldn't know that. I would have rolled up a Beasel. It just has better alliteration, even though they both have alliteration. Cavern campaign has that vowel just tanginess to it. So that's going to do it

for the looting of the workshop. You guys are going to meet outside of Delsman's with your new characters. Good job. Hooray. You save Della Smith. It's in a good spot. We won and won.

Cool. Brian is doing his victory lap. You can hear it in his voice. The thing you can check out, y'all, is darkest whimsy.com. I would love if you subscribed to that on YouTube, even if you never watched it, just to help bump the numbers. It's a little show, but we are having a lot of fun on it. It's got some really talented improviser type. people.

So as the summer winds down, my stand-up, I'm not really doing too much because I had a movie scheduled, and so I had to move all my stand-up, and then the movie got bumped. So I'm home writing and then hanging out with the family and going to Pizmo and stuff like that. And so I won't be doing stand-up till really September. And then the first week, or the first show back is Ventura Theater with J.T. Habersat. It's like the final week of September. Before that, though, I've got in the end of August, my Nourcal friends,

I'll be up in San Jose for GalaxyCon Saturday, Sunday there, signing. I have a ton of pictures from everything I've done well most of everything I've done and then I have comic books to sign to Rifters and Grommets but Devil's Rejects is always welcome so bring your Devil's Reject stuff

I'm one of the hard guys to get me and Sherry zombie so if you need me and Sherry you can at least get me at GalaxyCon in August, Brianpastain.com for other stuff. I've got some new shirts that I really love, so check them out. Ooh.

And you know what? Before we cut to Blaine, this is the finale. You guys got plugs? Blaine, you got a project that you like to plug once a month or quarter-ish? Ken, you got shirts you make.

Chris, you're in movies and television. You got anything you just want to tell people they can go check out? Thundermans, Clash the Thundermans, is going to be on September 3rd. Nice. Yeah. Uncle Goopi on Tea Public. Nice.

Those are fun shirts. I'm doing Scribble Jonah Ray's show in Highland Park on August 25th. And also I have a cardiologist appointment on the 13th of Phoenix. Oh. Jonah's show is really full. fun. Anybody in LA, you should just, that should be a regular show for you. I've been in the space. It's a really, like, nice community space. And but also, Jonah's just the best.

Jonah's an old, old friend. I love that kid. And a kid that 40-something year old man, but, uh, but I love him. And, uh, I support everything that guy does. So, uh, yeah, he's good for comedy. His show is, his show is great. I did it a couple, uh, like last month and I had a fucking blast. And he always has a great, has a great music guest, too. He's got good taste.

The lineups are fantastic. Yeah. Cool. That was fun, dude. What a great, God, 83 episodes.

It went a lot longer than I thought it was going to, but I set up a lot of threads. I want to close out. And you fucking tried to kill us over and over. You did. And that I, wow, wow,

sure. Yeah. Well, we're still here. That's all that counts at the end of the day. I have fun, so thanks guys. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah. Audience stick around and tell friends

and it's a perfect time to jump in because our next episode is episode one. Thanks for listening. Oh, Blaine. We attribute the success saved mankind for money. Thanks for joining us on this episode. You got walls and a roof. Well,

Oh shit. Oh, you know what? Sorry, I was distracted. I was looking at the Nerd Poker Mailbag. Oh, uh, Dear Nerfoker. I'm so glad we had this time together. Just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems you just got started and before you knew it, cops everywhere.

We'll see you on the next season of Nerd Poker. Thanks for listening. into another episode of Nerd Poker. You can follow us at patreon.com slash nerd poker, and you get bonus episodes from there, and you can also send us anything at P-O-Box 16069 in Cino, California, 911416.

Thanks for listening.