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Post by gorechyld2000 on Jan 26, 2009 16:00:53 GMT -5
I officially hate invisible nasties. I am sure I will learn to hate a many more things in the underdark before we quit them. Though I Bullvies I convinced that with his diplomatic skill (or failing that) his rugged charms he can lure the assassin out into the open
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Feb 2, 2009 11:01:59 GMT -5
Wow I could have sworn I updated this after our last game. I guess not.
This past weekend, during a rare Friday game, our group of adventurers managed to finish the second task assigned to them by Es Sarch and for that found out where their target was hiding.
The night started poorly. It seems that the cure for Plague Rot sold to Gelna at the Market either didn't take or wasn't what it was proposed to be. The Half Orc was out of commission for a couple days at least, ill in bed at the Dripstone Inn.
Deciding they could do without their Damage Dealer the party moved on to Es Sacha's next task. Eliminating a Favored of Loth. This proved to be as hard as it sounded.
First off the party had to find Eleswara's torture chamber. Thankfully they had rather exacting directions which led them to an old tannery. Here the party found out just how bad a rotting tannery can smell and they ran into Numa. Numa turned out to be a raving lunatic of a Drow who happened to be infected by the Plageuhost. Surprisingly the party didn't slay him on site but instead let him ramble on for a while before he ran out into the street babbling away.
Next the party came to the door which was proposed to lead to the Torture Chamber. As they approached Olaroso began checking the door for traps. He found none but managed to set off a Magical Alarm in the process. This meant they would be facing a Drow Matron who knew they were coming. Not good. Olaroso then attempted to open the door and upon finding it locked set to it with thieves tools. Precious time was wasted with no success. Olaroso then tried out his new Ring of the Ram on the door. Unfortunately by this time a Mage on the other side managed to cast Hold Portal on the door and even the rings 29 STR was not enough to bash through. Getting frustrated Bullvies began hacking at the door with his Adamantine Longsword. Due to it's ability to ignore Damage reduction it only took 4 more round to make a hole in the door.
Once the hole was made two things happened immediately. First the party found themselves silenced (much to the chagrin of the two casters). Second they found themselves coated in thick sticky webs. Seems they had two casters to deal with on the other side. Thankfully only Bullvies was fully stuck in the web, though the others still had to force their way forward only a few feet at a time. The next few rounds had Bullvies getting frustrated as he couldn't break free of the web while the rest of the party slowly moved forward through the web. Their opponents continued to buff themselves and then finally went on the offensive by casting a Flaming Sphere right on top of Beldam. Besides failing to dodge the sphere, Beldam was also scorched as the webs around him burned. On the good side this did clear a bit of a path through the webs.
As the combat continued only Beldam and Olaroso were making much progress through the webs. Beldam was free and had charged a Drow Mage, and Olaroso was almost out but was flanked by two summoned Fiendish Giant Spiders. A round later Bullvies was still stuck fast, Civ was finally moving up and could see one of the spiders, Olaroso was battling the two spiders and Beldam got hit by a Ray of Enfeeblement sapping him of 9 STR and making him pretty ineffective for the rest of the fight. A couple rounds later Beldam continued to try to hit the Drow mage who now spent each round backing out of range and firing a wand of Magic Missile. Olaroso and Civ had defeated the two summoned spiders, but Olaroso was now Blinded by a spell from the Drow Matron. Bullvies was finally out of the web but making very slow progress forward into the room.
The next few rounds of combat had Bullvies finally make it to the room. Civ managed to score a good hit on the Matron but managed to kill an innocent prisoner at the same time. Beldam and Olaroso were fighting a loosing battle against the Mage who continued to avoid being hit while blasting his combatants with Magic Missiles. The end of the fight was a long time in coming but eventually Bullvies managed to corner the Drow Matron and finished her off after a few more rounds and some good saves vs. her spells. Once the Matron was down the party quickly dispatched the mage.
This is probably the longest Fight I have ever seen in a D&D game and I think it went rather well. The party was hurt but not too badly, only using up one Cure Moderate Potion the whole fight. Things could have gone a lot worse though, with some high Saving Throws really saving the day.
After a brief argument over what to do with the Drow and their remains (which ended up with Bullvies changing alignment based on the horrible things he wanted to do), the party grabbed up what loot they could find and let the surviving prisoner know they were from the assassins guild before heading back to Es Sarch.
At this point the party found out that the person they are tracking has taken up residence in what is called locally "The Necromancer's Spire", a huge complex built into a natural rock column at the center of the city. Feeling a little worse for wear, the party took a couple days off, getting full bed rest so they would be ready for the dungeon ahead. During this time Bullvies atoned for his past behavior blaming it on being stuck in Webs and watching his friends in a loosing battle. This returned his alignment (for now) and allowed him to again use the Artifact Sword Merthuvial.
Fully rested the party headed to the Necromancer's Spike. In the entry way they were faced with two well equipped Drow who claimed that House Dusklorn owned the spike and that the party was not welcome. Skipping the usual parley the party attacked. The fight was fairly quick but made interesting due to a restricted area and a large number of thin columns. The thin columns gave anyone standing in the same square as one a +2 to AC and a +1 Reflex Save. The Drow combined this with attacking around corners to spend most of the fight with +6 to AC, which added to their Plate Mail made them near impossible to hit. Beldam pulled a great stunt though and disarmed one of the Drow with an impressive martial arts display, but not before he scored a hit on Civ who went to sleep due to Drow poison. After that the party pretty much surrounded the weaponless Drow and finished him off then moved onto his partner. It wasn't a long fight.
Now the party stands ready to enter the Necromancer's Spike and begin their search for Fadheela of the Vanguard of Setrous.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Feb 11, 2009 12:13:30 GMT -5
I still say that my sword was being overly sensitive... I mean The matron was dead when I finally got her squished into the iron maiden afterall
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Feb 11, 2009 13:03:39 GMT -5
It was more the fact of what you WANTED to do to her when she was alive, rather then what you actually did to her once she was dead.
I still say you go with the Temporary insanity plea from being trapped in webs while watching your compatriots being beaten down.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Feb 19, 2009 15:42:57 GMT -5
I was looking at it as I was the architect of fate and delivering unto her in her final moments the pain that she had visited upon so many other innocents.
Well.. the gods are fickle I suppose.
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Feb 20, 2009 14:15:08 GMT -5
Hey maybe you just found a good segay into a multi class Warrior/Cleric of Judgement. That would be an interesting twist for your character. Heck if your alignment is right you could go for a Paladin of Judgement. It would probably benefit the group greatly due to the lack of any healing ability currently in the group, plus you could spend those rounds walking up to the combat casting buffs on yourself instead of cursing your slow movement rate.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Feb 23, 2009 12:45:23 GMT -5
Well let me look at the write up for the cleric of judgement this weekend.. oh wait. I can look at it online I think at the WotC website. I will look. I actually HAD been thinking about going the cleric route but was just waiting to see what happens with my character. I figured if I died I would totally be bringing a cleric into the party, but if I can avoid that then that sounds like a good idea.
Could I still use my longsword if I was a cleric, or has that changed with the new 3.5 rules? I think it has right?
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Feb 23, 2009 13:48:38 GMT -5
You don't loose any feats when you add a second class, and Weapon Proficiency Martial Weapons is what you have that lets you use a sword, so I don't see why not. There may be something where specific gods favour specific weapons, I would have to look it up. It wouldn't take long to figure out though.
Not even sure there is a God of Judgement in the normal Pantheon but now you can make a cleric of anything buy just choosing two Domains. I think one of the domains is Judgement (it may be one of the new ones from the Complete Warrior), you would just have to pick another one like say Defence or Healing. We can go through the list Saturday.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Feb 26, 2009 11:28:06 GMT -5
I will look into it for sure this weekend. Our party could deffinately use the healing and well I like playing clerics anyways. I alos think that its cool that you can "customize" your cleric somewhat if I understand correctly. By picking your diety and feats and stuff like that. Sounds pretty cool. I would imagine that there is even more cooler stuff in the 4th ed. Well we will see saturday.
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Feb 26, 2009 13:07:10 GMT -5
4th is way too different. Actually in 4th you have way less options. Sure you can pick you God but all that does is give you access to one, let me repeat, one ability and to use that ability you need to get a feat for it. After that you get to pick your powers as normal, but there are only 5 different 1st level At Will powers and you normally get to pick 2 (humans get 3), that doesn't leave a lot of room for variety. What you usually get is either the Ranged Cleric who uses Lance of Faith alot, or the Melee Cleric who uses Healing Strike alot. Pandora's actully playing a cleric that is a mix of the two. Besides those three I don't really see much difference between one cleric to the next besides roleplaying of course.
The thing with 4th edition is that it's more like Magic The Gathering then Skills and Powers. A character chooses a 'hand' from a set of powers listed in the Players Handbook. As the player levels up they get to choose new powers from higher levels or swap out a power increasing their hand size and thus options. What this means for Fighters and other characters who generally spent every action rolling to hit in previous editions is that they have a nice range of options every situation now. What this means for Magic users or anyone else that had books and books of abilities to choose from is that they have been streamlined down to a few core powers. Now this makes combat more strategic, quicker and I dare say more fun, but it really does limit the players options as far as character specialization goes.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Mar 2, 2009 11:27:31 GMT -5
I totally could have taken that golem!!! i have also decided that someone/somthing has cursed my dice. I will have to find the proper rituals to placate whatever dark powers have infested my dice and prevented them from rolling anything higher than a 4 most of the time in combat.
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 2, 2009 21:45:40 GMT -5
You did leave them at the DM's house for like a month. That can't be a good thing for PC dice.
Will post up a summary of our last game once all this funeral stuff is out of the way.
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Post by PandoraGreen on Mar 5, 2009 14:22:50 GMT -5
Oh crap, is THAT what's wrong with my dice? Being that I live with the DM what choices do I have. Maybe I should rig up some sort of off site storage. ;D
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 5, 2009 15:32:20 GMT -5
Okay here's a summary of our last game. It's been a few very full and busy days so I may have messed up a few of the facts. If so feel free to correct me.
The party ventured into The Sinister Spire, better known as The Necromancers Spike. In just one session they managed to fully search 2 floors of this horrible place. Here are some highlights.
At the second room in Gelna throws open the unlocked door and stares into a room of horror. It's filled to the ceiling with 4 foot shelves and on these shelves are preserved limbless bodies. Gelna quickly slams the door and the party tried to forget about this room. At the same time Bullvies decides to explore a corridor only to have a Ghostbuster's Slimer moment as a maddened spirit rushes him and passes through him and through the wall behind. For the next half hour Bullvies stinks of the grave and can't shake a cold feeling.
A bit later in a room that smelled of death (because Bullvies was in it) the party found a Temple of Lloth. Surprisingly the party entered the web filled room and began a fearsome fight against a Golem made of bone, talons and claws. This was a tough fight as the beast kept producing swarms of red eyed spiders and the webs in the room slowed movement. The most memorable moment was Siv jumping upon what appeared to be a web covered pedestal to gain advantage of ground only to find it was actually an uncovered well. Her ring of Feather Fall (just recently purchased) prevented any damage besides embarrassment.
Many other rooms were searched most of which being ancient decrepit storage areas filled with all manner of gross, interesting but useless items. The party did manage to find a bit of loot, Gelna being especially proud of a Chalice venerating the Warrior God Kord. While this was going on a few odd 'haunted' moments occurred as well. One involved Bullvies chasing after a little girl, who could not be found and another had Siv re-living the burning of her homeland. This latter incident was contained by Beldam literally wrestling the elf to the ground.
The climax of the first floor occurred in a twisted looking Kitchen. Siv headed in first and was surprised and surrounded by Ash motes - small intelligent undead made up of the soot from the cooking fires. She held her own though and managed to only get a few cuts and bruises before the party proper moved into the room. Near what seemed like the middle of the fight Gelna maneuvered close to a Cupboard in order to flank one of the motes and was shocked nearly to death as the cupboard came alive and grabber her in two pseudo-pods and bit her with huge gnashing teeth. Not a usual mimic, this undead ghoul mimic was almost too much for the party to handle. By the end of the fight it had 3 of the party members weapons and two of the party members stuck to it before going down.
After taking a bit of time to rest back in town, the party the party returned to the spire and ventured up wards (after finding the secret doors leading to the stairs. Upstairs the party faced even more horrors. The party decided to split up at this point with most of them exploring a secret passage while Bullvies backtracked to check out a pair of stairways. The party in the passages found they opened into huge carnal pits. A waste area for discarded experiments for the one time master of this spire. On one side they found a pile of bones, teeth and mandibles, the other held a mass of flesh, muscle and sinew. The most disturbing part was the fact that both pits began to twitch and move with residual magic. The doors to both areas were quickly shut, just as Bullvies opened the door on a huge Drow Flesh Golem.
The party in the tunnel was unaware of the fight above as Bullvies challenged the creature to one on one combat. The initial fight was fast and decisive though as the creature bull rushed the fighter down into the pit of muscle and flesh. At that point things got even worse for the fighter as two undead swarms formed in the pit, one of bone and one of flesh, both moved toward the downed fighter. Hearing the battle cry of their slightly battered warrior the party rushed to get to the upper level and take on the golem. The fight went poorly at first as each combatant was knocked down one at a time, thrown into one or the other carnal pit. Eventually the party triumphed though, with Siv the mage doing the most damage to the swarms (though helped by Bullvies' magic sword) and Gelna and Beldam slowly beating down the Golem.
We ended after this fight, with the party in a somewhat battered state.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Mar 6, 2009 14:36:00 GMT -5
Note to self: Bull Rush is a good feat to have!
well the only thing that I can think of that you forgot to mention was that when Siv ran up the stairs to see what was all the ruckus, right after I was smashed over the side into the pit of juicy body parts and various nastiness Siv blasted the Golem with a lightning type spell and managed to HEAL the Golem! All my hard work was for nothing at that point. oh well... Guess we know for next time...
I still maintain I could have taken that Golem if it didnt cowardly knock me off the ledge.
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 8, 2009 9:43:11 GMT -5
True I did forget that. Lightning definitely heals Flesh Golems (think Frankenstein's monster).
Bull Rush isn't a feat actually, it's just an attack that anyone can do as a standard action. Now there is a feat called Improved Bull Rush that means that you can make a bull rush attack without provoking an Attack of Opportunity. Either way I doubt your fighter would do as well as a Large Creature with 21 Strength though it can be a useful tactic.
I just wish I remembered that each of those pits were supposed to have attacks of their own. The bone one was supposed to have skeletal limbs try to grab you and hold you while the swarms fed and the Flesh pit was supposed to be sticky and envelop. That's what I get for playing later then usual and getting to parts of the module I hadn't re-read recently. I guess I will just have to come up with something nasty for the next floor to make up for it.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Mar 9, 2009 11:24:16 GMT -5
Bring it on! Buliwyf is ready! Just as soon as I find my potions of healing... We should invent a helmet like they have in RL for our characters. You know the beer helmet, where you can put cans of beer in the holders and it has straws that hang down to your mouth. Well... we could put 2 potions of healing in there instead! I would think a helmet like this would allow you to drink a potion as a free action and also not povoke an attack of opportunity. Ultimately it IS the DM's discretion
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 9, 2009 11:39:20 GMT -5
Feel free to multiclass into Wizard, take the Craft Wonderous Item Feat, spend your next 5 levels of skill points in the Craft Skill, give up some xp and a ton of gold and invent it. I have no problem with that. Or you guys can pool all the gold and magic you have so far, sell it all and hire someone to invent it.
The one thing that caught me with your post... is that how you spell your character's name?!? I'm way off.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Mar 13, 2009 14:46:39 GMT -5
Yes that is the correct spelling of my name. Buliwyf. Hey its Nordic what can I say. Are YOU going to argue with a Viking? I think Not! IF your character had his/her nipples pierced or ears pierced or anything else pierced, could they conceivably wear more magical rings and get the bonus' from them? I mean.... why does it only work when they are on your fingers??? So are we getting closer to the end of this module and if so are we going to be staying with our current chars and going on from there? I mean do you have more stuff to run or will we be making gladitorial areans again? If so I need to start recruiting some minatours right away!
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 13, 2009 15:19:17 GMT -5
Actually the rules specifically state that magic rings do not have to be worn on fingers. It still stands that you can only be under the effect of two magical rings at a time though, and it's the first two you put on. We are near the end of THIS module, not the Quest. So unless we have a TPK I don't plan on swaping over to anything else any time soon. If we do happen to have a TPK I will be strongly considering a change over to 4th edition, where I will do my DM Herald test with WotC and start running RPGA sanctioned games. Until then "Bully Wiff" will continue to bravely adventure stating "That can't be good!" after each door is opened, as he has for the last 6 levels
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Mar 17, 2009 10:41:22 GMT -5
And its pronounced either "Bull Vice" or "Bull Wisse" Not sure but Bully eyes or Bull thighs or whatever other silly way you think it does. Just watch 13th warrior. Hes the main character, Well the cool main character. Antonio Banderas is so NOT cool when tagging along with some kicka** Viking warriors. Although in the book by Michael Crichton "the eaters of the dead" which the movie is about, the Vikings are even better! And the little arab is more of a putz.
that being said. I look forward to what should be the climactic last battle of this module soon. I cant imagine the baddy will be in acny shape to put up much of a fight having had to run from us for months it seems. Im sure I am wrong... we'll see.
Till the 28th I will be sharpening my sword and singing my battle songs in preparation for the climactic battle. I'll probubly be caught in a web or put to sleep for the whole damn thing but, oh well...
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Mar 29, 2009 14:28:01 GMT -5
thus my predictions came true... for the most part.
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 29, 2009 18:03:27 GMT -5
Aye that they did, for the most part. So we were able to finish off the module last night, though we did run over time. Think we definitely need to work on something to speed things up, especially in combat. The night started with the Party finding a Necromancer's Lecture hall, complete with pews, a examination table, a raised dais etc. After cautiously entering the room the party was assaulted by a trio of undead oozes. These mobs looked way worse then they were, they were all rather easy to hit and didn't have much too them. The only real complication happened when one tried to Envelop Buliwyf and a Shadow jointed the fight attacking Beldam. The fight was pretty short though with no significant damage done to the party. From there the party explored a study and library of the Necromancer where they found a few medium magic items and the old Wizards Spell Book, which could have been a great find if they had a Wizard in the party, but actually only meant some gold for the group. From here the party found a Graveyard, in the middle of the spire. This huge natural cavern held their first real challenge of the night. This came in the form of a Wight and something called an Entomber. The Wight was fairly ineffective but the entomber managed to score two good hits with it's Entomb ability, which cased both of the parties elves to be buried 8 feet in the ground (Siv and Olaroso). Quite a bit of damage was done to the party but they did manage to defeat these undead and unbury their friends before they ran out of breath (you can hold your breath for a ridiculously long time in D&D). The next challenge came to the party on a rocky overlook to the graveyard. Here they found an undead dessicated hulk of a Mind Flayer and the creature that put it in that state: a huge Dried up Giant, encrusted with Salt and barring yellow teeth behind parched lips (a Desiccator). This fight took some time but was eventually won by the party. After defeating this parched pair the party took some time to explore the rest of the floor and then resting for the night in a secret room they had found. Here's a few shots of this first floor of the night: Well rested the party headed up to the next floor of this accused tower. The first room they found proved to be a long challenge for the group. The room had a series of 6 mirrors along one stepped edge and from these stepped a creature made of glass and it's two glass spider minions. This proved to be a long hard fight for the party as the spiders kept the party at bay and the Shardspitter hurled shards of glass at the party and summoned glass tentacles from the mirrors on the walls. As the fight went on the room and floor began to fill with shards of broken glass as spiders, tentacles and even mirrors were smashed. By the end of the fight most of the room was dangerous to tread on and only one mirror remained... which the party quickly shattered. From here the party came across a foul temple to the Devil God of the Undead: Orcus. Seems the Necromancer was also a Cleric. Here they fought the guardians of the temple, two creatures formed of purple fire and a Voidwraith that literally sucked the air from the room. Another fairly long fight for the party which caused a ton of minor wounds from burning embers scattered by the fire creatures. Here Siv had a very effective use of Chill Touch, cast through her Sword that effectively removed one of the fire Necromentals from the fight. Surviving the temple the party found they had learned much on their journey thus far and returned to town to rest, re-stock on potions, sell off some loot and contemplate their adventure so far (level up to level 7). Fully rested and restocked the party returned to the Necromancers fight to face their final challenge. Things started badly for Buliwyf, as he stepped onto a cursed stair way and not only found himself bereft of 6 Con, he also alerted their pray that the party was coming (not that he knew that at the time). From here the party passed through a terrible gallery of statues. Each of these had parts of them that had been left as flesh, a horrifying fate for the creatures stuck in this state. An angel with only it's wings flesh and still flapping in vein, a Drow women with only her hands left flesh grasping at air were only two of the horrors. After a short trek through these rooms the party finally faced the cause of this torture. The fight was long and hard. First Buliwyf was assaulted by a quartet of blind Grimlocks as he entered the room, totally bottlenecking the only door in for the rest of the fight. He battled on valiantly though and was able to move over to let Gelna the Half Orc into the room, only to catch the glance of something off in a corner: With reduced resistances due to the curse from the stairs Buliwyf's fortitude was not enough and he was turned to Stone. This only spurned the rest of the party on with more vehemence though. Gelna was taking care of the Grimlocks one at a time and had made enough from for Beldam to get into the room. Around this time another horrid creature charged the party coming out of hiding from behind a Drow statue, this was the Medusa's bodyguard a huge Bloodhulk. The fight continued with most of the party averting their eyes from the Medusa and trying to finish off the Minions in the room first. Siv stayed well back in the doorway and used her ranged spells on the baddies as best she could (scoring one great hit with Melf's Acid Arrow on the Medusa). Around the same time Gelna used her Intimidating Rage feature and caused the Yuan-Ti to be shaken for the rest of the fight. Olaroso stayed well back out of the room and used charges from his Ring of the Ram to help battle the Grimlocks. Buliwyf, of course just stood there. Mid way through the fight all of the Grimlocks had gone down, but not before Olaroso happened to catch the gaze of the Medusa while taking aim into the room for a shot with a wand of Magic Missile. That was 2 of 5 party members turned to stone. The remaining members battled well though. Beldam managed to disarm the Medusa of her magic short bow while Siv continued to hit her with arrow shots and low level ranged spells. Gelna finished off the Bloodhulk eventually then moved in for the kill on the Medusa. Thankfully for the group their fortitude continued to hold up and no more members were Stoned. A great bull-rush by Gelna knocked the Medusa into an electrical field (latter revealed to be a portal) which did a great deal of damage to it. The battle raged on for a few more rounds though with the beast healing itself once and continuing to attack with the snakes it had for hair. It was a loosing fight and just a matter of time at this point for the Medusa and she finally fell to Gelna's axe. A shot of the final floor with a ton of D&D minis representing statues and lots of Modeler's Attic bits and Mage Knight scenery representing a storage room: Now all that the party had left to do was to search the place and figure out what to do about their stoned companions. Here I botched pretty bad, as I had never thought to look up how to change a statue back to flesh. So we spent a great deal of time rifling through books looking for potions or whatever to fix the two out of commission party members. Eventually we found all the rules only for me to reference back to the module and see that three oils of stone to flesh were in the loot. Definite rolling of 1 on DM skills there. Unfortunately for Olaroso there was another save required to be turned back to flesh and that was failed. Which meant we now had to look up rules for Raise dead. In the end though all party members were brought back (with Olarosos back down to 6th level and 5K gold lighter), all loot was found and divied out and the hook for the next part of the adventure was laid out. The party now readies their selves to step through the portal at the top of the Necromancer's Spike and assault "The Fortress of the Yuan-Ti"
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Mar 31, 2009 10:19:08 GMT -5
Its always awesome to be taken out of the fight instantly in the final battle fo a campaign you have been playing fr months... ugh.
So thats the end of the under dark it seems. Hey... did we ever find those moldy old bones of that king??!?!!?
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 31, 2009 10:54:44 GMT -5
It wasn't the final battle of the Campaign, just the final battle of chapter 2. There is one more section of this story arch. After that I'm working on picking up a Mini Campagn for 9-12th level called Expeditions to the Demonweb Pits... it sounds much more pleasant then this current adventure The bones were sent through the portal to the fortres of the Vanguard of Setrous, who hopes to manipulate them for their own vile means. Which would be where the party will be heading next.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Apr 1, 2009 8:58:25 GMT -5
Bloody hell, how fast does that chick run! I mean isnt there some magical elixer that we all could take to stay awake for a few weeks and keep us fed so that we could just RUN untill we caught her?!?!?! I mean how much of a frickin lead does that chick have! ugh! Im totally gonna impale her nice and slow on the end of my retarded magical sword when I find her
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Apr 13, 2009 13:27:20 GMT -5
So far so good outside of the underdark. Finally have baddies I can critical hit again. Although... those big purple worms really REALLY hit hard! OUCH!!!
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Apr 14, 2009 9:54:32 GMT -5
Been rather busy so haven't had a chance to do a proper update.
We started the new module "Fortress of the Yuan Ti" last session and things went rather well I think, though the party through a big monkey wrench into my preparations.
Before moving to the new area everyone had a chance to rest up and do some shopping. There was a minor encounter with some Drow but not much happening until we got to the module proper.
The module started fast and hard with the party coming upon a community of slaves kept by the Yuan Ti to provide them with food, etc. This community was currently guarded by a Dire Snake (I used a Purple Worm mini, thus Gore's comment) and a Black Naga. This fight was long and interesting. The Worm didn't last long but the Naga was a sorcerer who made good use of invisibility, buffs and lightning bolt spells. The party won this one but was pretty battered and bruised right at the start.
After this fight the party made some good diplomacy checks (with some bonuses for providing food to the people) and got some information on the Fortress as well as a place to hide and rest when needed.
After a good long rest the party moved onto the fortress itself and here is where they messed me up. Instead of going through the front doors as the module and I expected (either disguising themselves as slaves, killing a patrol as it came out, or just forcing their way in) they instead climbed the outside and entered via a balcony on the 5th floor. I was totally unprepared for this so didn't have Dungeon Tiles, miniatures or anything else ready. So there was a bit of a delay as I quickly reviewed the area.
After getting my bearing the party began to explore Castle Serastis. This is a huge place filled with large open halls and rooms. The first challenge came in a huge hall with two spiraling towers and a black ziggarut in the center. There the party faced a Yuan-Ti abomination and two Yuan-Ti Halfblood archers. This was another interesting fight due to the fact the archers were on top of the towers and were out of sight range for anyone without low light vision. Siv, Buliwyf and Beldam concentrated on the Abomination while Gelna and Olaroso worked on the archers. The ground fight was going fairly poorly and Buliwyf ended up getting hit by an Aversion ability that took him out of the fight (which seems to be a common trend with him). The tower fight was going much better though as Olaroso made some great use of his Ring of the Ram, using it to slam the Halfbloods out of their towers. If the fall didn't kill them Gelna was right there ready to Smash. After the Halfbloods were taken care of the Abomination didn't last much longer.
Exploring further the party came to a floor that held mostly living quarters. Here they ransacked the place. At one point they were a bit too loud and had to deal with some Lizardmen but that fight was quick. After dealing with the Lizardmen the party managed to sneak up on some Sleeping Yuan-Ti Purebloods. This fight was a bloodbath as the party managed to slaughter most before they even woke up.
From here the party fought a couple more Lizard Men guarding the way to one of the Castles three towers, but chose not to advance up it and instead continue their exploration of the main halls. Hitting the entrance floor they faced off against a Half-Elf Cleric and his Undead Behemoth Rapter. I don't know if the dice were with them or what but this fight was over almost before it started. The mobs just didn't stand a chance.
At this point the party was pretty battered and beaten, and two of the members needed to level up (both Olaroso and Buliwyf died during the last session and needed to be Raised, so had lost a level) so they decided to exit out the front doors and hide with the slaves in order to get some rest and level up. We stopped at this point.
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Post by gorechyld2000 on Apr 15, 2009 8:42:09 GMT -5
You should know this group well enough by now to know that we very rarely do anything straight forward when it comes to following a set plan during an advnture. I think you did pretty well haveing to cope with our surprise attack on the upper levels last session. This time just get everything mapped out for whatever tower we are heading into and no matter what side we choose just run that as the correct side, that should prevent ay hiccups from happening. So what lvls are we supposed to get to after we complete this adventure? 13? I am likeing it so far not having to deal with undead all the time, but that black naga wizard was insanely tough. I think this should prove a god challenge for us all.
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Post by Gilvan Blight on Apr 16, 2009 10:55:55 GMT -5
Should be good for the rest of the module. Won't be using dungeon tiles unfortunatley as the maps are a little off standard. The tiles are great for typical square/rectangular rooms, not so great for octagonal towers.
I think things start slowing down as far as how quick you guys level from now on. By the end of this module they expect everyone to be level 8 or 9. So that's not nearly as much advancement as the last two. There are some optional quests though (ones for those Action Points I mentioned last session) that may get the level a bit higher.
After this module I don't have anything planned. There is a 9th level campaign I'm trying to get ahold of but it's been hard. The used books did the oposite of what I expected. I thought with the release of 4th Edition all the 3.5 stuff would get to be dirt cheap. Instead it's all gone up in price and value since it's out of print and a lot of players perfer 3.5 to four. So we will have to see what I can figure out for after this. I think we still have at least 2 sessions left before that becomes a problem.
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