The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone Versus Dracula - Episode 8

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

The vampire hunters become monster hunters as they face down a mysterious potion-wielding duo. Mutt goes on a retrieval mission. Phileaux drives home his ideology. Godwin throws a Hail Mary.Dice sounds by Tal M. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointaz

Dear diary, I believe it to be vitally important to live a life free from regrets, because as an immortal, that shit tends to add up over time. However, I must own up to the occasional catastrophic boner. For example, the whole vampire thing. I mean hindsight is 2020, but when a subterranean cosmic entity offers you, Infinite power, it is probably prudent to ask a few follow-up questions. Like, does this power require me to drink buckets of yucky, yucky blood? Or, won't my elongated fangs poke my bottom lip like a million times a day?

Spoiler alert. Yes, to both. Let's roll. Initiative. Oh. I like it when we start out going hot like that. Just the sound of dice on the floor, baby. Dice on the floor.

Dice on the floor. 16 total. Fuck, yeah. I don't see you in this campaign anymore for some reason. Me? That's okay. Yeah, but I'm going to fix you up. I see it right there in the game log.

Okay. Yeah. 12 for Brother Philo. Love that. 15 issues for me. Well, plus 2. So it's 17 for you. 17 issues.

16. Is the subterranean god made him a Dracula? Did we know that already? Or is that news to us, the players? You don't know that. And are we allowed to know that? I mean, I thought that was implied by my question. Okay, wow, some very good initiative roles.

Yeah, we're good boys. Yes, the first in the order with a 21 is Dr. Jekyll. He is still in your grasp. My loving embrace. You're loving embrace mutt, but he is going to attempt to do something about that. We are going to do a contested strength check here to see. Strength, you say. Strength, I say.

Interesting. Not my ironically strong suit. Not this frail old man strong suit either. I got a 15 total. Okay, he got a 13 total. That is, I think that's his action. Hold on. Let me check that.

We should learn how to play this game. I mean, here's the thing. We could play this game for a decade, which we have at this point, and I will never, ever remember grapple rules. Never, never, ever. It's when you combine grape and apple. I don't know why you're so confused.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's about what that deserves. I get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, yeah, no, I mean, you have shut this, old man down. He is trying very hard to get out of your grasp. You hear him shout again through your hand. Hide! You drop the patient, Hayd. No, the person!

Um, and... Oh, this is exciting. I was waiting for Mutt's chance to change his body inherently to some different thing. Maybe this is his chance. Maybe I swig that potion down in one. Next in the order with a 19 is Mr. Hyde. Yeah. Mr. Hyde is, he looks over at the potion on the ground where you knocked it away, Lady Godwin. And Lady Godwin, you're right up with this guy. Make an insight check for me, please. This is not your turn. That would be wild. 16.

He doesn't look stoked right now. He doesn't look stoked about this potion that he is being told to drink. he is going to disengage from you as an action, so as not to take an opportunity attack as he sprints over to the flask and he picks it up. That is his turn. Next to the order is Lady Goblin. So Hyde is... I want to see if I can get to the flask. Okay.

Hyde is holding the flask now. If you want to get it out of his hands, you are going to need. I mean, get it away from him. Okay. Describe how you, describe what that looks like. Describe how you're doing that so we can decide on what the role is. Hmm. Maybe even a disarm role.

Yeah, I'm trying to not get like super violent. I think I'm just going to like, you know what, actually. I would just brute force against his body, like, try to knock him over. Oh, yeah, check him. Yeah, basically a big, a big cold shoulder. Okay, let's put him into the glass. Yeah, let's do this. There's a few sort of homebrew disarming.

Disarm is like a thing fighters can do, but there's also some homebrew rules for disarming. I don't know that, like, doing an attack roll that knocks a bottle out of a hand just sort of normally makes much sort of narrative sense. But if you want to spin your action trying to disarm him, then what we will do is your athletics or acrobatics check or an attack roll against my athletics or acrobatics check. So I will contest an attack roll with my athletics check to see how that goes. This is a big boy. He rolls a 14 total. Wow. Oh, no.

Yeah, that's a one that I've rolled there. Critical failure. Huh. Wow. You attempt to tackle him. He, like, just sort of sidesteps out of the way. You are in your rage mode, and maybe this body that you have been sort of Pacific Rim controlling is not quite. It doesn't turn on a dime necessarily.

Yeah. Yeah. So he steps out of the way of your attack. Dang it. Next in the order is Crawford Muntner. You are still grappling. Dr. Jekyll, if you wish to continue that, that is going to be your action again.

I hold my sickle to his throat. Okay. And I say, uh, Mr. Uh, hard was it? I don't know exactly what, uh, that potions. It's Dr. I'm not talking to you. Oh.

Talking to the other one. Talk to him. Talk to me. You're having me. Begin. Yeah. Listen, I don't know what that potion is going to do, but the second you unstopper it,

I'm going to slit his throat. And I ready an action. So that if he unstoppers the bottle, okay, gnarly. Cool. That is your turn then? Correct. Okay, cool. We've never had a hostage negotiation, I think, on the show before.

Yeah, this is fun energy. Cool. Next in the order is Brother Phila. Brother Philo, you are sort of in between these two engagements, as they were. You see Lady Godwin having just missed her attempt to get this bottle out of Hyde's hand, and you see Mutt holding Dr. Jekyll at knife point, or sickle point. What do you do? Could I do an Arcana check to try to determine what the substance is in the bottle?

Absolutely you can. That will not even be your action. Okay. Holy fucking Dirty 25 I meant to clean as 25 as I've ever seen Jeez oh Pete man Okay so that's a crit

Yeah all right Hmm You are experienced With the alchemical arts Yes You have seen many potions in many bottles So much so that you have no trouble identifying a lot of this kind of stuff on site.

There is a luminosity to the fluid in the bottle that suggests a tremendous amount of power is in this thing, the specific nature of which you cannot quite discern. One thing, though, that you can also tell, not just from the color, but from the sort of viscosity of it, the way that it sort of clings to the sides of the interior of the flat. of the flask, the legs of the bottle, if you will, of the fluid, rather. It looks like blood. You would be shocked if it wasn't. So this appears to be some sort of very, very potent, magically enriched blood substance. I will also say with a 90 arcana check, you also, I think, pieced together that they are members of what was called the cult of the buried blood.

And so there is a synapse that fires in your brain that sort of connects those two points. Okay. I think the adorable little puppet boy is going to jump up. Okay. And wrap himself around the hand and the bottle to impede progress to once he's names lips. Okay, so this is either, I mean, you have your choice now, we've done this both in combat now, is this a grapple of you trying to restrain him, or is it a disarm of you trying to get this bottle out of his hands? Because I think using the parlance of D&D, like this action is

one of those two things. I think he's, I think he's trying to get it out of it. I think he's trying to impede his progress to drink it, I think he would... Well, let me ask you this. If my plan is to try to get it out of his hand, would slight of hand work? Yes. I mean, in... Yes. I would say, normal, you are in combat trying to do something like this. You would have disadvantage, but you do also have Lady Godwin kind of flanking him at this point. His attention is sort of on her at this moment as he had to sort of sidestep this attack.

So if you wanted to make a slide a hand check, absolutely I would allow that. It's going to be tough. I would say it is a DC-15, if you want to pull that off. Okay. Slide of hand. No, not a one. A one would not get that.

Fist or famine. Yeah. It is. Yeah, the thrill of victory and the agony of the feet. Yeah, can we just smooth these out a little bit? That's a crit fail. We get all just 10s across. the board, that'd be fine.

I'd say he dives for the bottle, misses it completely. Well, Dad, you gotta create one. I don't think you get to say what happens at all. He eats your little wooden body. That's true. No, you jump up like an Olympic gymnast, like,

trying to grab the arm, and you just kind of like dangle there, like laundry on a clothes line, and he just kind of like, like, easily, easily waves you off of his arm. So I'm not. hanging on the arm. You are not hanging on the arm.

Next in the order is the Black Earth cultist. Okay. He, underneath your hand, I've just realized that characters can take actions when they're grappled. They just can't move. He begins chanting.

I was so afraid you're going to say he licks my hand. Oh, thank God. And Travis, while he's doing it. No! The tongue comes out a little bit. Gross. He is going to cast hold person on you. On me.

On you to attempt to break off this grapple and free himself. You must succeed on a wisdom saving throw. Hmm. That wisdom saving throw is 11. You need to hit an 11 here. Oh, it almost a bounce off of 18. It's a nine total, Griffin.

You feel this gross old tongue sort of brush against your fingertips as this man chants a spell. And while you're thinking like, this is weird, you realize that he is starting to just sort of move out of your grasp. And as you try to do something about that, you cannot. And you realize that you have been paralyzed by this spell.

You are incapacitated, can't move or speak. And any attack that hits the creature is a critical hit against you. He is going to use his move action now to get away from you and huff it towards hide. So am I still just standing there with my arms? He just whoop, down the middle? Yes, you are now holding no one. I look so dumb. You do look pretty good.

In wrestling terms, that was a reverse. As he sprints at Hyde, he says, Hide, do it! What are you waiting for? Next in the order is Hyde. He says, I really don't. I really, really don't want to. Oh, how about this?

He unstoppers the bottle, and he chucks it at Dr. Jekyll. And it shatters as it hits him right on the top of his head, coding him in this dark red glowing blood. Dr. Jekyll begins to heave on the ground. Uh, next in the order is Godwin. Damn. Um, oh, man. Oh, man.

Okay, so he's on the ground. Yeah. Hyde isn't. Hyde looks very pleased with himself. I'm kind of embarrassed for you a little bit because I feel like you don't understand the Jekyll and I'm feeling a little bit embarrassed for you. No, it's two buddies. He's Jackal. He's Hyde.

They couldn't be more different. One is the doctor. The other's a jerk. Okay. Yeah. And Hyde was a Frankenstein in the book, right, Juse? We're taking some fun liberties here on The Adventure Zone versus Dracula. Uh, okay.

I, why did he take the potion? Um, do I have time? I guess it, it would be an action to try to see if I can figure out, like, well, did Philo have any? I know he wouldn't be able to communicate that to me, but like, does Philo know what's about to happen? No, I mean, Philo knew that something bad was about to happen and that this was very magical blood

of the buried variety. How have, throughout the course of this, have either one of them taken a, like, attack on us? No. I mean, you guys essentially, jumped them. Right. Most of their actions at this point have been very potion focused.

They attacked, so not them, but people in, dressed like them, members of this cult, attacked us on our way to Lumino at the beginning of this arc. Okay. And they had a big cart full of dead animals, which granted could mean they're... As a hunter. They could be butchers. I mean, I've killed animals Crawford by number four, too. But they seemed like they did it in a booth.

kind of way. I'm gonna punch him hard enough in the stomach to try to make him puke. Hide? Or Jekyll? The one who took a potion, Giffin? Hide through the potion at Jekyll. Right. And it just smashed all over.

Well, that's not, puking's not going to help. I mean, you could still make him puke, though, if that's how you get your jollies. I do also think you took that exact action more than once as Amber Green. That's true. I don't want people to think. What's around?

Road, The road to the, just off the road to the north side, you guys sort of were at this fork because you saw this convoy pass. There is the sort of boundary of the Stranglemire. It's down a sort of rolling, gentle cliff, it's like 20 feet of tumbling hill going down into the mire where no living things appear to be standing.

there is a sign that is at the crossroads. One point is pointing and says this way to the ungentle wood. And the other sign is pointing the other way and it says this way to, I don't have anything. The gentle wood. The extremely gentle wood. I am going to. The 100-acre wood. I'm going to try to.

Winnie DePoo's public domain. So that's actually canonical. The 100-acre wood is that way. I'm going to try to get Jekyll. to the Stranglemire. I'm going to try to take both of us down the hill in the hopes that I can get him into the water and wash him off before the potion warms.

Okay, that's cool. You sprint up, if you do this, you're going to take an attack of opportunity against Hyde. He is going to throw some hands. Let him try. Okay, he's not bad at it. Him being Mr. Heidenall. Yeah.

No, not pugilist. Notorious stinker, Mr. Hyde. He pulls out a scimitar and swings it at you as you pass. No, that is a three plus five and eight. That is all he can do on a reaction. So you get away from him and hoof it over to Dr. Jekyll. What do you do? I'm going to try to tackle, pick him up.

up and haul him to the Stranglemire to get us to the edge where we can like tumble down into it. Okay. I'm going to say this is another, this is another sort of contested check we're going to make, but he will have disadvantage on this since he is on the ground and also not doing particularly well. Let's just call this a straight up athletics check. He is attempting to not fall off this, not fall down this hill you are attempting to do it. Okay. He got a 13 total.

Are you fucking kidding? That is a critical failure, a one. That's three. One and a critical failure. What is happening? What is happening? It's never really, really strange. Fuck.

I wasted my 25 on identifying a formula, and then it didn't. He stands. No, now, dad, to be fair, you found out it would be bad if he drank the potion that the bad guy was trying to drink and that it was very viscous. What more could you possibly need to know? I gave him some lore. Eat my chaps. If you want big action, don't make insight rolls, folks.

Yeah, that's the same thing right. Arcana never, no fun ever came out of an Arcana chick. You go to just sort of horse collar tackle this guy down off the hill. He stands up very quickly as you are. approach and you kind of swing off of his neck. You are going to land prone on the side of the road, not tumbling down the hill, but precariously sort of at the top of it. He is transforming. He is much more imposing than the form that he once possessed. His eyes turn. blood red and full of fury as his brow furrows and then furrows some more.

And his body begins to contort and grow in size until he is roughly in step with Mr. Hyde at this point. Only his teeth are growing long and sharp and from the back of his robes, two wings sprout. Oh, damn. Now, why did it? I now should not. Shouldn't I have gotten to take some sort of bonus in my bonus action there before all this happened? You don't know. I could have had one.

One sweet bonus action. You rolled a critical failure. So I guess I don't get a bonus. It has to fail really bad, critically. It does feel very bad. Do you have a bonus action? I mean, I can do my, I get my frenzy, my bonus attack from my frenzy. I will say you did land prone.

So you would be doing that from the ground since you use your move action to get on. Get on up over here. So we'll pocket that bonus action away for as a reaction. Can I ready an action? Did I fit myself on the ground like a cockroach? No. The action that you took was the attempted tackling. Next to the order, though, is mutt.

Okay. So what I can do is to make a roll a check to break it, right? Break what? To break the whole person. Yes, that is correct. No, he definitely, definitely, definitely lost concentration. Sick. On this spell as he transformed.

I believe this is a concentration, yes. Yeah, so no, the whole person definitely would have broke as he had a bottle smashed on his head and then transformed into this thing. Oh, cool. Okay. Okay. So that I'm picturing the scene correctly, right? Yeah. Right now, Hyde is a little up the road.

Yep. With Philo, who is now kind of on the ground because he missed grabbing the bottle. Yes. And Jekyll has transformed into some kind of winged beast. Right. He's like right at the crossroads, right next to a downed, not down. but prone Lady Godwin. Okay. And then you're there recovering from your paralysis.

Okay, cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Great. Can I recognize what he's turning into? Absolutely can with a survival check. Okay. I would recommend there's 19 other numbers on the dice. Yeah.

Just any of those other great numbers. Way cooler. Okay. If it's something undead, I have, advantage on survival checks or yeah to recall information about them. Pretty much everything here is undead. Oh, is it 22 total? Oh, no, that's a stealth check.

Ignore that. End of nine. So 22 was my highest. Okay. There has been rumors on the Monster Hunter message boards. Sorry, wait. Yeah. No, not the message boards for the Capcom video game franchise Monster

Hunter. I'm sure that there's lots of conversations happening on there all the time. For a hunter. A varying levels of quality and appropriations. Yeah, sure. You, as a crypted hunter, have heard rumors about things in on grave becoming more dangerous, more unknown. these lands have been known to you and your clan for generations something is changing here something is happening here that is unprecedented

the body count is rising and a lot of people lay that at the feet of the cult of the very blood this appears to be a vampire it has all the makings of just a straight up classic vampire vampire. But you have hunted vampires before and they have not looked, they have not looked like this. I would say the only thing you've seen that looks vaguely like this is when you did battle Dracula yesterday. And as you all sort of caught his ire, you saw him begin to transform into something like, something like this. Not a, not a vampire thrall per se, but a,

capital V vampire. Oh, sick. Okay. Um, well, I'm gonna designate him with my hunter's prey. The mark? Yep. Hunter's mark? Yep. Okay. And I'm gonna shoot him with my heavy crossbow.

Uh, okay. Are you using which bolts are you using? The silver-tipped ones, the good ones. We only have three of those, right? I can reclaim him once I kill him. What's that? I can pull him back out once I kill him. Oh, fuck, I forgot about that.

That's the beauty of crossbow bolts. They're very reusable. If you miss, they are going. I don't plan on missing. Okay. So you mark it as your quarry. You would deal an extra 1D6 damage to the target whenever you hit it with a weapon attack, and you have advantage on any check you make to find it.

Okay, cool. So go ahead and roll your attack roll for me, please. Oh, my fuck. James. One! Travis, I'm so sorry. It couldn't be. Travis, I'm so sorry.

This can't be. One third. One third of your silver-tipped crossbow bolts. This one, Travis, you don't want this bolt. This bolt must have been fucked up with the fletching of it. Because it just goes right over his shoulder and it hits the road sign and pinks off that. It didn't even stick in. Pretty shitty crossbow bolt.

So you don't even carry it. as you watch it go flying through the air and landing squirt into the strangle mire. Yeah. That is really unfortunate. I'm so sorry for that to happen to you guys. You know, there are days and there are days. You know what I mean, guys?

Do you have anything else? Yeah, I turn to the two of it when I go, sorry we jumped you guys, let's call this one. You know what? We've all made some mistakes in our life, am I right? They are probably, honestly, at this point, point, they're probably just dying to see what happens next. To see what fuck with does the stooges come up with to entertain them?

Next of the order is Philo. Fylo's tired of dicking around. All right. I didn't realize you were doing that between our turns. Grow up. Philo is going to cast the spell catapult. Yeah. Um, he is going to catapult the bloody cross.

Oh, holy shit. The glowing bloody cross? Yeah. Yeah. The old rugged glowing bloody cross. It's still a cross. Okay. He's going to, he's going to catapult it at the, uh, the vampire hide.

Vampire. Jekyll or whatever the vampire is. Jim, vampire Jekyll. All right. So he is going to make a. dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, it strikes the target and stops moving when the object strikes something, the object and what it strikes, each take 3D8 bludgeoning damage. If this hits, it will do, well, we'll see. All right. He is going to roll his deck save. That is no, that is a

four plus three, a seven. You hit. Let's roll 3D8 bludgeoning damage. I can do that for you if you like. I did it. Oh, you did roll 3D8? 6, 8, and 2. 16. Describe what this looks like as you do this, because this is metal as fuck.

He tosses the bloody cross just a little bit, right, like into the air. Gestures with both hands, you know, kind of a Dr. Strange, you know, cool thing and the cross for just a second hangs in midair and then goes flying right at vampire jekyll and and impacts him now i would also maintain please not that i'm trying to be greedy no go for it that it is it is a crucifix and silver no oh yeah no i i remember all that um yeah uh it it doesn't just hit him, as the spell would suggest, the tip of the long end of the crucifix, jabs into the center of his chest, just missing his heart, you would estimate. And as it does, he shrieks a hellish siren.

In the woods surrounding all of you, you just start hearing birds losing their minds, just taking off in flight up to the skies as this howl just tears through the trees, as this glowing silver cross jabs into his chest. He is going to take 32 points of damage, half of which, for this thing's sort of radiant nature. And you can see the skin around the cross crackling a bit. Uh, so that was, that was pretty cool. Next in the order is Dr. Jammle. He is going to, I mean, the only one who it makes sense for him to attack is Philo.

Uh, he takes off like a bullet. Uh, and you are having a hard time sort of visually tracking him, uh, as, he suddenly appears behind you. He is going to try to first sink his claws into you. That is a 23 versus AC. Let me check. Yeah. Okay.

Now that Dad's body is wooden, does he have any kind of natural armor? Well, we did roll a new sheet for Philo. He has the characteristics of a war forged. Oh. If I'm not mistaken, right, Dad? right? I mean, a 23 is going to hit no matter what.

This was curiosity. Not like, oh, isn't he made of Adamantium now? He does not mull you or scratch you with his closet. He just lifts you up off the ground, which frankly, now that I'm thinking about it, probably wouldn't take much effort

really at all to do. You're just a little public guy. He, grabs the side of your head, your wooden puppet head, bends it over, and tries to sink his teeth into your neck. Yeah, good luck with that. He rolls a 20. You don't feel it, but it looks really weird as this giant vampiric beast chomps down onto your neck. And it doesn't hit quite the same way as a human's neck would. It basically is just like fully enclosing you like a tiger's jaws. Right.

You, however, take you take five points of piercing damage. But that is all you take. And he pulls his teeth back and it's like, what? And he is just looking at you very confused.

That is his action. He still has you grappled, but the bite doesn't seem to have taken purchase in your, you know, dowel rod of a neck. And you said, how many points? Five points of piercing damage. Mr. Hyde is up next. He sees what just transpired and is shocked to see Dr. Jekyll look as he does now.

He says, oh, damn. And Jekyll looks up at him with his teeth bared. And Mr. Hyde says, well, I better hit the old, the old trails, uh, bye, sorry. He turns heel and takes off running. You are grappled, Philo, so there is no opportunity attack. He is going to dash, and he is able to get 60 feet away. So he is, he is heading out, and he is getting there fast. I'm Emily Fleming.

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We have the solution for you. It is to listen to the podcast. Oh, no, Ross, and Carrie. Next in the order is Lady Godwin. You are prone at the side of the road, but you do not have, you do not have this guy hanging over you, threatening to bite you now. So that's, you know, not bad. I'm going to try to, what's the distance on him?

He is maybe, I mean, this whole encounter has been in a pretty tight space. I would say he's maybe 10 feet away from you, but, or Hyde's not 10 feet away. Jekyll and Philo are 10 feet away from you. But you are prone, so you will have to spend your move action to stand up. Um, okay, I'm going to, uh, jump, jump up. Okay. Uh, and, in a cool way. Yeah, sure.

Mm-hmm. Thank you. Uh, I'm going to jump up and try to, I just try to get an attack in. I mean, in, into, uh, do you have any throwing, any throwing, uh, weapons, any items, uh, that you have acquired, uh, that you would, uh, that you would like to use. because you are not going to be able to get in melee range. How high. How high? I'll tell you what, let me, oh, oh, oh, I will chuck the consecrated oil.

Oh, okay. At him. I know that's supposed to be applied to my weapon, but I don't have time. No, yeah, I will allow its use like this for sure. How high up is, uh, track home? He's not flying. Just got wings. He just has cool wings.

Okay, great, great, great. Yeah, he's trying to find a mate. It's hard out here. There we go. Okay. Consecrated oil, co-s an object and divine good giving him raining damage. Okay.

This can basically be the same sort of thing as bottled, bottled sunlight. Maybe a little bit weaker than that, but that is a sort of splash-based thing that you could use for this effect. Go ahead and roll a ranged melee attack, just sort of, I guess, with an improvised weapon. If you have a ranged melee weapon, you can sort of use the stats for that as a shortcut. Let's see here.

Okay, so better than a one. It's a three. Then I roll a three. A three plus a five. The good news is the bottle doesn't break as you attempt to throw it. But you kind of get a Charlie horse at your arm twist weird. It just kind of tumbles across the ground and lands like five feet in front of him. He looks down at it.

It looks up at you. Laf's a guttural laugh. Next to anyone is Crawford Bundner. Is he still laughing? Okay, I scoop up the bottle as I'm running towards him and smashed on his face. I will allow you to give your proficiency bonus on this one. So this is a... Are you throwing it at his face?

I don't know if this is a Dex check or a strength attack. I would say if you're throwing it at his face, I will give you decks. Then, yeah, I'm a ranged guy. Yeah, right. I'm scooping it up and checking out of his face. So this will be just your decks modifier plus your proficiency bonus.

So I guess just your standard kind of. My decks modifier plus my proficiency bonus. So plus eight. That's a 19 total. All right. Thank you. Yes. As the liquid sunlight,

splashes across his face, you hear him try to let out another one of these guttural shrieks. But some of the stuff that makes that sound is now sort of sizzling underneath this radiant liquid in a way that is unpleasant to see and to hear. roll 2D6 for me. No, we'll say what was the, roll 3D6 for me. And I also have my hunter's mark on him, so it's an additional D6.

Oh, wow, okay. 11 total? 11 total, okay. As parts of his upper body begin to crackle, as the radiant sunlight splashes across it. You see him take a step back. He drops you, Philo.

And he is looking a little bit panicked. You see a little bit of that sort of frail appearance that you noticed before, if only in body language alone. And you see him unfurl his wing. It is not his turn. He takes 22 points of damage from that. He is bloodied officially and then so. Next in the order is Brother Philo.

Brother Filo is going to take his quarterstaff and smack it into the glowing silver cross still embedded in his chest and try to do even more damage. Okay. So this is going to be just a straight-up attack roll against this thing's, I'm going to say just against its AC, against the vampire's AC. If you hit, it will give you the effect of the catapult cross situation from the first place. But you do need to hit. Okay. Let's see. Fudge, seven. No. Four plus three is a seven. He flexes a peck. And then.

Okay. I still have a bonus action. Okay. Whole arm master. You take attack with a quarter step. You can use a bonus action to make a melee attack with the opposite end of the weapon that uses the same ability modifier as the primary attack and has a damage of dive D4. You have one more shot at this.

Yep. He looks like he is about to take flight. You have one more shot at this. His armor class is a 15. Get him. 16! 13 plus 316? Yes, that is a hit.

You strike the tip of the cross that is still sticking out of his chest, and it disappears. As the entire surface of the cross is now embedded in his body, you are going to roll another 3D8 radiant damage. Okay. Roll good. I'm trying to find it where I've lost my 3D8. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I know what to do. I know what to do.

Okay. 855. That's 18. Jesus Christ, 36 points of radiant damage. You hit the cross right on the very tip of it, and it vanishes into his chest, and you see light begin to spread through his now visible. veins, which are showing through his increasingly translucent skin. He looks at you confused, as if to be smited by a puppet like this, is strange to him. He looks down at the now hole in his chest

and very desperately tries to dig and grab the cross out of there, but it is no use. It is gone inside of him. He looks up at you, panic-stricken, and you hear him try to say something, very panicked and frenzied, but the parts that make sound are just no longer functioning within him, and suddenly his neck cranes backward, light shoots out of the front of his face, and he instantly explodes into a cloud of ash. And your... I still didn't get teeth!

Your cross clangs to the ground. And by your cross, I mean, the one you did take from that dead body one time. Well, I guess we've really showed them how we do business around these matters. I guess you learned a thing or two about messing me. with the big guys. I'm pretty sure that Brother Phila did nearly all of the damage that entire. I smashed the, I smashed.

Oh, that is true. You threw a bottle. Dad is just doing his Liza P. Cosplay. Yeah. This brutal. Codokio. Next in the initiative order is Mr. Hyde

who dashes off again. Can I speak as a free action? Or is he gone before I notice. I mean, we're pretty busy. Yeah, no, I don't think. that is going to be possible. He's like 120 feet away from you. Now there is...

Yes, let him tell the tale of the guys who walked past us that one time. Yeah, they didn't get a lot of info about you. They were pretty rude in how few questions they asked. And you did give him an out. Mutt did give him an out. He could have just walked away. Did you give him an out?

No. I said that as Travis. There's no way his retelling of the story does not start with... I swear to God, it was a... a fucking damned stuff. There we were,

just walking along on our way to that birthday party for my granddad with a cart full of dead farm animals.

Hey, Brother Philo, give me another Arcana check, please. Okay. Oh,

yeah, now it's at 24. Hey, that's a good one. As as he was vanishing as he was sort of industifying.

You caught a sort of primal look in his eyes that sparked your memory. You also know that this was a vampire without bite marks. And

you piece together that that is what set you off on this mission in the first place as you investigated the strange illness that has befallen your turbo cardinal. Could Philo look around for any traces of the potion, like pieces of the bottle that might have the potion in it, that he could. Do you want me to look for it? Because like, I'm going to say this is not a looking check.

This is a luck check because it seems, you know, I don't, it seems unlikely that. there would be anything that you would be able to use that has not been, you know, contaminated by, you know, the dirt road that it landed on. If you want to roll a luck check, if you can get a 15 or better, I will say that, yes, absolutely, you find a luck. Just D20, just straight D20. Okay. 13.

No, on a 13, I'll give you this thread. On a 13, you find a shard of the bottle. It has a little bit of this blood on it. It's a little bit, it's not quite as luminous. It seems like a little bit of dirt got on it as well. But you do have at least that much to go on. I think he takes it, he pours it into one of his vials on his bandolier. Fylo vials.

My filo, my filo, my files. Yeah, he puts him in his filo. His filo. Sure, got it. His filo actory. You, that's good too. Damn. Oh, that's real good.

What do y'all do next? And, like, so when he exploded, like, his robe, everything, like, there's no trace of them left. There's no trace. The only thing that remains is the, is the cross. I pick it up. Okay. And I grab my bottle. You grab your bottle.

I smashed it. It did get smashed. Oh, man. All right, help kill him. Yeah, but. All right. I will say this, and we do it a little bit of fun here, I will say that the cross, the silver crossbow bowl is sticking out. of the Stranglemire.

It is about 10 feet in to the, into the muck. But you do see it there. I think I could get it. Hey, Garwin? Lady Garwin. Will you hold my feet? Yes. And then you'll pull me back out, right?

Oh, of course. Yeah. Shouldn't be much of a problem. Slate fellow. Would this quarter staff help? It's pretty long It's pretty long Yeah, okay

I take it from the name, Griffin That if I go into the mire It's gonna be bad Give me a history check please Okay 18 plus one and 19 Yeah for sure You I mean

You know about the strangle mire You know not to go in the stranglemire Mama always said Don't go in the stranglemire You'll get strangled If you go in there as the name would suggest. This is a sprawl, it is the largest sort of, like, biome in this, in this whole peninsula of

on grave. It surrounds Dracula's castle on all of the sort of land surrounding Dracula's castle is impossible to reach his castle because of it. It serves as a very handy moat for him. So, yes, you don't know, I think, specifically what the Stranglemeyer does. You just know don't go in the strangle buyer. Okay. But you also do know it's a really nice crossbow bolt.

Oh. Okay, do I have any chewing gum? No. Uh-huh. Wait, roll a luck check. Uh-huh. A 19. Yeah, you got some gum.

Nice. I chew it up and I stick it on the quarterstaff. Okay. Quarterstaff ain't 10 feet long. I'm leaning out what Godwin holds my hand. Okay. And I'm stretching out to try to stick the chewing gum to pull the

thing out. Okay, um, give me a slight of hand check with advantage as you have some help from Lady Kotlin. Okay, that is, oh, nope, that was a five plus four and nine.

And then that, 20. Oh, damn. Feast and famine today. You, this is weird, man. You stick the gum stick onto the tip of the silver crossbow bolt and manage to pull it back. As you are dangling over the stranglemire, like as soon as you cross the threshold of it,

it doesn't, hands don't shoot out of the mud and try and grab you. You just feel like your life force is being drained down into the, down into the muck. you can see sort of traces of your essence being drained off. But you are so quick at getting this fucking arrow back that it does not have any impact on you before you are pulled back. You recover your crossbow bolt. Wee. That is the kind of drama we deliver here on the adventure show week and week out. A lot of people win in.

A lot of actual play shows, they wouldn't even make a character, a moment out of one wayward arrow. They wouldn't waste your time with that. No. And a lot, you know what? I'll tell you a lot of them, they get a little showboaty, and they want to end an episode with like something exciting or like a cliffhanger or something.

I got my crossbow bolt back. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm very excited. There's no tension there. You know what I mean? It's not. Well, the crossbow bolt, forgive me for shooting it into the Maya. We have the confidence that you're going to come back.

That's a trust we're placing in you because we trust you that much. Griffin, do you want to make up a bullshit cliffhanger for Justin? Yeah, sure. How's this? No, I want to... Oh, okay. This is kind of going against the spirit of trust that we've all established.

It works hard to establish, but okay. You take your bolt back. Uh-huh. And remove some of the excess gum on it. Reset the fletching. As you know how to do so well. Yeah, I do. Polish up the silver of it.

Get that yucky mud off. As you do, A voice from the arrow says, Thank you, son. What? I knew it. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows.

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