after playing lower levels for so long and not really having proper set up to deal sneak attacks, I've *finally* reached a point where I can sneak attack/crit without much of a partner.

I became the solo melee after some people left the table, so I've been picking stuff to proc off-guard solo

Yeah, this is quite a grim-dark campaign, and the overarching thing my DM has repeated to us is "actions - or inactions - have consequences"

The remaining PCs have actually bonded even more due to the tragedies, and out of session have started chatting on how protective each other has become to one another.

to quote an NPC from our campaign, "the ones who hold the torches of both A-Team and B-Team".

Another NPC, our boss, right before a major assignment, also said to the remnants that as we cannot give the dead a funeral, we are to give them purpose.

Not only that, but A-Team was also cut in half, as half of the players had to drop due to scheduling and time constraints. The DM wove into the story that the PCs who left actually resigned, some from guilt, some from trauma.

The remaining PCs are now the remnants of the investigation teams, and

incomplete leads, and just not having enough time in game (which was the theme of this section of the campaign), we failed in capturing him. The crime lord heard our plans, and decided to send us a message by murdering most of the B-Team, leaving only two survivors.

A-Team was tasked with taking down a crime lord who managed to gain power by using recent tragedies, and they seem to be allying themselves with what we currently consider a national threat.

Unfortunately, due to various reasons - moles in the police, not enough manpower, missed or

It's not a standard campaign - the party is a team of officers tasked with protecting the country from internal and external threats (think fantasy FBI). In our office, we had two main investigation teams, A and B. A-Team is the party, and B-Team is NPCs that we all grew close with in various ways

Her /lovely/ ex is one of the execs of Arasaka, has been stalking her since the breakup, to the point of arranging her older brother's death and putting her in extreme debt to keep her tied down. She's been in hiding ever since, but that debt ain't gonna pay itself, and you can't hide forever in NC-

able to save some of the children in time. He's currently thrown himself into work to hide from the nightmares that haunt his sleep, and he's being even more reckless of his life due to survivor's guilt.

(Ironic enough, but he's not phased by burning alive - it's happened many times already--)

his own life, painfully. (He basically grappled the fey lord and lit both he and the fey lord together up using multiple alchemists fire.)

The god of his party member witnessed his sacrifice, and resurrected Sil, but it doesn't erase the feeling of burning alive, nor the guilt of not being

2. His death, and the situation surrounding it. He fought a fey lord, a deity in its own right, alone, but Sil couldn't turn back - not if it resulted in the deaths of innocent children. Out of pure desperation, he decided to take the deity down no matter what it took, which resulted in the loss of

of demonic origin, but the reasons why she, the mortal, chose to undergo this process seemed true to him. (Which was to become a protector of elven kind.)

considering that he's a 260+ elf. He spent many of those years as the equivalent of a religious assassin, killing the corrupt and evil in her name.

However, in spite of the knowledge (and thanks to one of the other PCs), he ended up becoming even more devout to her - his goddess' origins may be

1. His crisis of faith, that nearly made him lose all sense of his purpose in life. He came to a horrible discovery on the truth of the goddess he worshiped - she was an artificial goddess, born from a demonic ritual. He spent all his life faithfully following this goddess - which is pretty long,

--Thames Grimsley has ascended to godhood, because his GF made a whole book in her drunken stupor of why we should all worship her boyfriend.

Said gf, a player, is a cleric, and has substituted all her prayers to her god, and redirected it to her bf.