Session #27

Yeah yeah, I know I'm falling behind on the blog.
Summer isn't exactly a slow time for me.
So you'll just have to forgive me if I end up late every-so-often.

But I will note that the Bodycount is up to date, the character info is up to date, and in case you hadn't noticed yet, I added a few little extra things to the page.

The FAQ is some reprinting of previous stuff, adding some new stuff, and some things discussed in a few forums I've seen.

The quotes are just some general comments overheard at our table that I remembered.

But here is our current FLGS,
Yottaquest

This is actually an old picture, by about a year. The store has grown up quite a bit since then.
I first saw it on the way to Justin's place for our D&D game, and prior to the WLD campaign. This was going to be Aaron's first session with us, and Joe wasn't in the picture yet. Aaron noticed the place, and I went to visit it a few days later.
The place had only a handful of people there, but the owner, Matt, was very nice and we chatted it up for about an hour.
Turns out that he was a lifelong gamer that had always wanted to open a gamestore. So he mortgaged his house and took a chance.
Well through good salemanship, choosing a decent location, and the rare concept of thinking before doing, Matt has turned a small bare shop into a store that is getting fuller by the day. Fuller of stock and customers.
I hate going there and leaving without buying something, but oh well.

So if you're going to be in the Cincinnati area and you fell like playing a CCG or something, stop at:
Yottaquest
7607 Hamilton Avenue
Cincinnati, OH 45231
(513) 923-1985

Yeah, I know it's kind of a free bit of advertisement, but you have to trust me on this one. I have seen some really good gamestores and some really shitty ones. This store is a good one, and it's getting better all the time. And I want to help the place out.

Ok, now onto the session itself...

Everyone was at this session, and everyone should be coming to the next one.

This was a rough night for the heroes. Read on...

Map

We stopped last week where the party had to rest in the efreeti's giant bedroom.

The party knew that they needed to get back to the garrison just to see if the "store" was up and running again.

Their only problem was getting past the thousands of mephits eager to give their brand of justice to Zorak. And dangit, the clever players found a very simple way...Wind Walk. And man it was so easy for them. The DM had to pull out his own PHB to try to poke holes into the spell (read as "try to screw over that idea")...but he came up with nothing.

So in a matter of minutes the party was able to trace a route back to region I. Then whoosh, they were off.

When they made it back to region I, they did have to return to solid form because the flesh of the region was still present, but the region was getting better. And also, the sounds of combat were still present, but not as close or often.

But otherwise, the heroes had returned to the garrison with no problems.

Their main intent was to trade in their excess equipment for something more usable to them. The party actually had many magic items, but the vast majority of them were weapons.

And luckily for the party, the "store" was back in business, and had recently been restocked after the exploits of the garrison armies. The bad news is that the available equipment was limited to what was not as needed for the army. The good news is that the garrison was offering top trade value for army usable equipment.

The heroes left with a lot less weapons and miscellaneous junk and a few good items. Most of them were handed to Zorak. Notable a Ring of Force Shield, 2 Gloves of Storing, Rod of Lesser Maximize Spell, and a Rod of Lesser Silent Spell.

Note for later use, Senmonious took the magical longsword that Dalron had when he died, but was never able to identify.

Room J71: Sen's Detect Evil once again showed the overwhelming presence of evil on the statue in this ice cold room. And since the party just can't let something like that go...

This time the entire group entered the room, so as not to be separated like before.

And a few seconds after they entered a thick wall of ice covered the western half of the room.
The party began searching the room, starting with the demonic looking statue. What they found was that the statue was in fact encased in ice. The ice was so hard and perfect that it could not be seen until you were right up on it.
Then another wall of ice covered the eastern wall.
And shortly thereafter, the northern wall.
Then a Cone of Cold blasted them.
By now the party decided that leaving was a good idea rather than being encased in ice themselves.
So they tried to blast the wall away with fire spells.
They almost succeeded, but this time the wall reformed before they could finish.

The party looked at the evil statue and decided that the only way for them to leave this room was to destroy the statue.

The ice encasing the statue had 500hp and a hardness of 20. This meant that most weapons were worthless against it. But plain old fire did full damage.
The party kicked into gear. And after a few rounds they had a system down.
Thunderclease, sadly being the smartest member of the group, realized that the spells were emitting from the statue on 30 second (5 round) intervals.

Round 1: Zorak casts a fire spell (Fireball or Scorching Ray).
Rounds 2-4: Valden uses his flaming sword, and Krieg and Thunderclease use a couple of torches that have been sitting near useless in their backpacks for the past few weeks.
Round 5: A random effect emits from the statue (Ice Wall, Ice Storm, Cone of Cold, Slow, or Freezing Sphere). After awhile Joe learned the art of counterspelling, making Zorak a perfect foil for the statue's spells.

498 points of damage later, the last inch of ice covering the statue exploded as the devil within the statue broke free.

An ice devil, or Gelugon, surprised the party and thanked the party for freeing it with a crit with its spear to Cleez.

Round 1: The party is caught off guard by this a little, so Torin and Sen are not near the combat at this time. Krieg, Cleez, and Valden are right there though.
The gelugon is toying with the party, does a mere 20 points of damage to Cleez.
Thunderclease attempts to take a chunk of out it, but misses with all attacks. He uses a full power attack and that costs him 2 hits.
Zorak starts with Haste. But it does not effect Torin as he's out of range for the "no 2 of which may be 30' apart".
Valden and Krieg back away from melee to make room for others, heal Cleez, and cast their standard buff spells.
Senmonious moves towards the combat while casting a buff spell on himself.
Torin moves towards combat.

Round 2: The gelugon hits Thunderclease with his spear and his tail. Thunderclease fails both saves versus the numbing cold. The first failure dispels his Haste, the second slows him.
Cleez does not power attack, but still rolls pathetically low with his 1 attack.
Zorak casts Greater Invis on Torin, which later turns out to be pointless (it can still see him).
Valden preps himself for combat in his usual manner.
Krieg continues to buff the party.
Senmonious makes it into combat with a simple 5' step. Wielding the unidentified magical longsword, he swings at the devil with a smite evil...
(Sidenote: read about Dale and his luck in the FAQ section.)
The sword erupts with brilliant white energy of goodness. (In the hands of the fire giant queen, it erupted with fire.)
Natural 20. Crit confirmed. Multiple damage dice later and the 196hp gelugon takes 56 points of damage.
Torin scratches the gelugon for 8 points, but no sneak attack damage.

Round 3: It's mad now. It was happy playing with his new toys. But not any longer, they will pay for this atrocity. So he casts Cone of Cold since all of the party were conveniently grouped nearby.
This put the party in very bad shape, another such attack would have killed 2 of them outright, and 2 more if they failed their saves. Krieg only had 10hp.
Cleez attacks with his 1 swing, and hits for 30 points. It now has 102 hp.
Krieg spent the round healing whoever needed it most.
Valden thinking that his attack was need more than the healing, did 38 damage to the devil.
Zorak casts Haste on the party again and moved out of Cone of Cold range. Torin was now Hasted and Cleez was at regular speed again.
Torin's attacks only did 1hp of damage.
The thing still had 63hp, and there was only Sen left before it went again.
Sen did his 2nd and last smite evil...with another natural 20. Which was confirmed with a natural 20. Damage was not rolled yet (it's pretty complicated), so Dale rolled his other attacks first. His secondary swing was also a natural 20, but the crit was not confirmed. (3 nat 20's in a row are a 1:8000 probability.) And the Haste attack missed.
So Sen now had to roll a crit with a smite evil and a regular hit while using a +3 holy longsword and with some exalted feats thrown in.
Total damage dealt in the 2 hits: 84
It was at -21hp.

Thunderclease stood there with his mouth hanging open, trying to comprehend what just happened.

A potential TPK thwarted by paladin doing what a paladin does best.
Destroying evil.

This is just the first fight of the night.

Our heroes desperately needed to rest after that. So they once again returned to the efreeti room. (They made it past the brazier trap by using Torin as a decoy and exploiting his Evasion ability.)

After an unexciting rest, the heroes got back to work with...

Room J69: This room had 3 angel statues and a large brazier on the eastern wall. Once the party entered, the doors slammed shut and a gate dropped down in front of the doors; trapping the party inside.
Then some glowing words appeared on the doors, "The breath of flames blocks your path. Salvation lies in its destruction."

The room immediately began to get hotter and stuffier as the brazier burned away.
Attempts to extinguish the fire in the brazier failed.
Investigations of the angels resulted in a fireball emitting from them.

So instead of thinking about the solution to the puzzle, they used their wand of Detect Secret Doors and their wand of Knock to leave.

Room J70: This odd room was filled with a Deeper Darkness spell and anyone chaotic in the group was at -8 to their dexterity. Otherwise the area felt quite well and not as oppressive as the rest of the area.

The party made note and moved on.

Room J66: This room was split into 5 sections. Four of the section contained a gargantuan half-fiendish wyvern.
Unfortunately for the party, the secret door they came through put them into one of the occupied cages. And the party was about to find out how nasty these creatures are, as the cages occupant charged towards them.

Round 1: Thunderclease moves 5' into the room, rages, and delays his attack until after Zorak casts Haste.
Wyvern's turn: It's close enough to take a 5' step and get its full attack action. Which is 1 bite, 1 tail, 2 wings, and 2 talons. It hit with the bite, the tail, 1 wing, and 1 tail. Total damage was over 120, including the poison from the tail. Had Cleez not raged, he'd have died. But in either case, he was at single digit hp.

The party's tactics changed radically after that. It was now a rescue operation.
Healing spells, Lay-on-hands, and Haste flowed heavily.
And just for kicks, since he nothing better he could do, Thunderclease took some swings at the wyvern.
It was hurt bad, but not bad enough.
On his next action, Cleez took a 5' step through the door and closed it.

When the wyvern tried to bash at the door, something happened to make it stop.
The party had no clue what it was, nor did they care to find out.
They just assumed it was the nature of the prison.

The party fled to rest afterwards, and we called it a night.