So these stories are about my one character Dragon, who I’ve told a story about before (check it out, it’s called “How a 5-year old killed my character”). I go more in depth about his character in the other story, but all you need to know for this one is that he’s a blue dragonborn, draconic bloodline sorcerer (with blue ancestry, so lightning is his thing) who says that he’s a dragon cursed into the form of a dragonborn.
For those of you who don’t know, Shocking Grasp is a cantrip where you make a melee spell attack vs. AC (you have advantage if the target is wearing metal armor) and if it lands you deal 1d8 lightning damage and the enemy no longer has a reaction until the start of their next turn. Now most people would probably say it’s not very useful, since only sorcerers and wizards can do it and they are rarely in melee range. However, despite this I have had used this spell a surprising amount with Dragon. So, here are 3 short stories of the various uses I found for shocking grasp.
The first of these short stories happens in a hidden underground temple to some Drow god, I think. Which in itself was weird since we weren’t anywhere near the underdark, but that’s not here or there. Anyways, as the party was exploring we came across a room that was filled with runes that were in the shape of the constellation Orion. Not sure what to do (as there was no visible way to continue), we threw something at one of the runes to see what would happen. When the rune triggered, a hidden door opened, and out of this new hole in the wall came a half-starved dire wolf. Now dragonborn tend to be pretty stockily built, so Dragon was actually one of the largest people on my team. A fact the DM took to note, when she said that the dire wolf saw the “big lizard boi” and thought that he’d make the best meal. So the wolf ran straight at me and attacked. And it missed, rolling low enough to not get past my high for a sorcerer AC (but you know, still a sorcerer, still fairly low). Not wanting to be in melee range, I used shocking grasp to take way it’s reaction, so it couldn’t get an attack of opportunity as I ran away. I had hoped that it would think that I was to tough a meal now and go after some one else, but nope, it still wanted a chunk of Dragon flesh. So, it caught up to me, attacked, and missed again. So a shocked it again, and ran away again. Between my shocking, and the rest of the party hitting it too, we managed to kill the wolf without it having done any damage to anyone. Though, Dragon took some damage to his pride as the other players started making jokes that Dragon like to “Taze Puppers” and that I should make his preferred enemy dogs. I actually got in on the joke and created this gif after the session ended.
The second story is much shorter. This one involved the party entering an abandoned house. However, when we got there we found evidence of someone being there recently. As we explored we found what we guessed was some kind of experimentation notes, but we couldn’t really tell since none of us could read dwarvish, and thats the language the notes were in. In the attic, we also found a magic cirlce that seemed to be designed to instantly kill whoever entered it. However, as we were inspecting the cirlce (from safely outside of it) my character smelt something burning. However the DM specifically said I smelt burnt toast, to which I immediately respond “Wait, isn’t that a sign of having a stroke. Are you telling me that Dragon is having a stoke.” But, Dragon was not, it was actually the person who had been experimenting in there burning the house down around us. We managed to get out and track him through the forest. When we eventually cornered him, i prepared shocking grasp, but didn’t cast it, so the electricity could play across my fingers. This was an attempt to intimidate him into telling us what he had been doing in that house(since we couldn’t read his notes). After I succeeded and we got our info, we argued what to do with him, during which he bit off his own tounge and let himself bleed to death.
The last story has me using shocking grasp on one of my party members. In the afore mentioned temple we found a treasure room that had 3 large chest filled with platinum. The total in the chests was a whopping 7,500 platinum (so 75,000 gold). I don’t quite think our DM expected us to go through the trouble of carrying 3 large chests out of an underground temple and to the nearest civilization, but we did. Well, mostly I did, since I had already claimed it as my hoard (you know, since Dragon thinks he is a dragon, he needs a hoard), I used a table we found in the temple as a sled, and as soon as we were back in town I put them on a cart. However one time when we were in a tavern, on of my teammates suggested that i split up the hoard equally. Meanwhile the player of the character asking this started to play the Soviet national anthem on their phone. I was having none of his communist crap (*insert Liberty Prime quote here*), so I cast Shocking Grasp on him (i was actually Level 6 at this time, so i got to do 2d8 damage). This actually started a mini brawl between our players that almost resulted in the death of the character who initially asked. Needless to say, our team is very disfunctional.
I would also like to note that I never said I wouldn’t give them any of the money. In fact, I do let them use it, but it’s as they need it, and they need to “convince” me that it’s to Dragon’s best interests (most of their arguments are that they make better meat shields). I almost always give them the money. I figured this was the best way to balance not being a jerk, and not going against my character. However, splitting the money, is completely against Dragon’s character and is never happening, and if he asks again, he’s getting another shock.
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