Additional Evidence Suggesting that the Illusionist Class is Based on Wall of Serpents

Since this blog doesn't get many views it is easy to obsess over where my traffic is coming from. I started getting some hits from Knights & Knaves so I decided to investigate. Turns out a post I wrote earlier about the possible source material for the phantasmal force spell was at least partially corroborated by Gary Gygax on Dragonsfoot in 2002.

Here is an image that proves I'm a genius.

I feel super smart right now.

Map Key of the Plague Year 4: Humble Pie

Map by Paul Haupt III 

A Throne raised up on a small dais, stone, covered in dust. Also a banquet table in the middle of the room, also stone and covered in dust. On the table are three pristine well decorated cakes. They look delicious, but don't say that. Let the players ask. Describe fondant on one butter cream icing on another, the third perhaps is indescribably, nothing on the surface could compare, a pastry of secret subterranean wonder.

Obviously, it's a trap.

But, before we get to that there is also a secret door (do not write adventures like this). The secret door is in the space behind the throne and the back wall. A successful secret doors roll will reveal a draft behind the throne. The door is unlocked when about the weight of a human is placed on the throne (or more). When there is no such weight, the door is locked.

opening the secret alcove reveals a magical war hammer, which hasn't been identified by my players yet so I am not going to say what it is, and 5 gold nuggets worth 100gp each.

Anyway back to the trap. The cakes are Humble Pies, 1hp mimics created by Zach from Zenopus Archives:

My players were not stupid enough to try and eat the cakes, but you could tell that they kind of wanted to eat the cakes anyway. Traps like this create a kind of longing for death in most PCs. In a way they are the most unfair of all traps. They are so obvious and ridiculous that they become seductive and intoxicating.

Thaddeus Wangshingle and Winslow Mudfish

The other day I came across some old character sheets from 2005 to 2006. I played a thief named Winslow Mudfish and my friend played a cleric named Thaddeus Wangshingle. They started out in small town and tracked a group of mysterious men in black plate mail to the city of Karameikos. There, they thwarted an invasion and eventually wound up getting sucked into the Abyss, where they both perished.

Here is Winslow Mudfish in all his glory. A simple small town thief, who would go on to achieve both great and not so great things.

The most mysterious item he ever got was "The Jawbone of the Gods."
I never figured out what it did.

In the Abyss Winslow got transformed into a bugbear and got a new character sheet.

There are a lot fewer notes on the Abyss.
The Abyss does not contain a lot of NPCs with adventure hooks apparently.

Here is Thaddeus Wangshingle. I believe this drawing depicts Thaddeus after he lost all his equipment being teleported to the Abyss and not his sartorial choices in Karameikos.

The Dread Rod in the lower right corner of this page is the item that finally did everyone in. It wound up completely corrupting Thaddeus. The party wanted to throw it into a portal to the elemental plane of fire to destroy it, but Thaddeus had other plans and rebelled against us.

Here is Thaddeus completely corrupted by the Dread Rod. He started calling himself "Deus Judas," which was also the name the Dread Rod called itself. Honestly, he looks a little less evil here than the hirsute bondage daddy that was his previous incarnation. 

You don't need as much other equipment when you are the human form of the Dread Rod, I guess.

In the end the party fought Thaddeus and some demon, whose name escapes me now. The party won just barely. Winslow Mudfish, seduced by the power of the Dread Rod tried to grab it as it hurled towards the elemental plane of fire. He did reach it, but could not extricate himself from the pull of whatever gate connected the Abyss to the elemental plane of fire. He was sucked in and burst into flames clutching the Dread Rod in paroxysms of agony and the ecstasy of power.

The rest of the party, Norvin the dwarf, guy we found in a cage, and elf with two swords made it back to Karameikos, teleporting into a fountain in the middle of the city.  The End.

Oh yeah, I forgot, They were completely naked when they returned to the prime material plane.

Statistics for the Witherhelm campaign

Homebrew Homunculous asked a question on Reddit about how many I have been running a campaign for a year now and have played 10 sessions. I send out the experience totals in an email after each session so I know how much experience was gained each session. Here are some statistics:

	XP		Notes	Deaths
	1,970		Double session	4
	1,395			1
	1,435			1
	860			0
	898			1
	2,505			2
	2,613		This XP was the reward of fighting in a mass combat battle, not the result of normal D&D play	0
	15,014		Tower of the Stargazer: party got the large horde of treasure	1
	14,670		The Party got lucky with the deck of many things	0
	75			0
Total XP	41,435		Total Deaths	10
Average XP	4143.5

To make some more sense of these numbers, there are 8 players in the campaign and some play more regularly than others. It is much harder for me to calculate the average XP per player per session because of this but it works out to be about 600 XP or so.  I do use 1 GP = 1 XP and monsters give experience per the table in the Greyhawk supplement.

You might also notice that my game is fairly deadly with on average 1 death per session. This means that although I have given out a hefty amount of XP the game is still only starting to get  mid level D&D since replacement characters all start at level 1. As you can see from the roster below the highest level PC after all this XP is only level 4 and I still have quite a few first level characters.

Current Roster:
Belree the Antiquarian: 1st level elf
Herbert the half-hearted: 2nd level halfling
Larchmont: 3rd level paladin
Lyster: 3th level magic-user
Pyker: 2nd level fighting-man
Sven: 1st level male bikini babe (from black pudding)
Theodora: 1st level magic-user
Zander Scuttletoes: 4th level halfing thief

Roll of the Dead (in order of death):
Fulray the 9th the fighting-man - shot by a bunch of arrows
Hodor the cleric - spear through the chest
Barney the angry peasant - killed by the wraith
Valarakus the magic user -  shot in the back by arrows
Sonya fighting-(wo)man - killed by the wraith
Vern the dwarf - backstabbed by a thief
Rodoh the cleric - poison chest
Vernando the dwarf - killed by goblins
Eladrana the elf - killed by goblins
Fod the halfling -  killed by a trapped chest