Session #32

A new region! Yay!

10 sessions for us in a single region is just too much.

I found a way nerf (read as "screw over") Wind Walk to prevent its use in scouting, and it's all legal (as far as I'm concerned). If Wind Walk gets dispelled while the party is in the gaseous form, they lose all the movement benefits of Wind Walk and they can't do squat until they become solid, involuntarily, after 5 rounds. Granted, it's a slim chance of happening, but it only needs to happen once. Aaron had expected this, and wasn't surprised. I knew this had to be done when most everyone thought it was going to be a breakfast spell. Plus it prevents the spell from being exploited through "clever usage".

And now it's time for Sean's Movie Reviews:

I've seen a fair number recently actually...

War of the Worlds - It didn't suck. I didn't think it would either. But I try to boycott anything that contains a Scientologist (read as cult member). But Lady Ao used her amazing powers of guilt against me saying a single sentence "I saw Hulk & Daredevil with you". Curses foiled again.
There are a few scenes that show true human nature. At least in my cynical expectation of human nature.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Actually pretty good. And it really doesn't step on the toes of the original movie. It's like you're watching the original book as it is being read to you. Unless you are a true cynical bastard of course.

Fantastic 4 - Boy is that title a lie. Well it didn't suck. But it certainly wasn't good. It was better than I expected. I expected a giant pile of a movie and only got a small one.

It is definitely time for the superhero movies to stop. I've heard good and bad things about the most recent Batman movie. But since I thought that ALL of the Batman movies sucked, I had no will to even give it a shot. It was obvious that Elektra was horrid just from the commercials.

The X-Men movies rocked. The Spiderman movies rocked. But every other superhero movie in recent memory has blown.

Hollywood, stop it!
Why must you drive a movie genre into the ground if it might make a single penny?
Don't force me to punch Stan Lee in the back of his head.

Ok enough of that.
Man, I need to make a ranting blog...

This session was some good old fashioned hack-n-slashing fun. I rolled lots n lots of dice. And lots of them were damage dice.

It was a good change from the last few weeks which mostly involved investigative work.

This week's map was a little too tall for me to deal with in my usually manner. So it's a little hacked up.

Map

Alright, in the last session, I failed to mention that Vrisht told the party about the 3 doors into the undead prison and that there were guardians of the doors.

So the party at least had an inkling of an idea that something was there. But this dungeon has taught them to expect the unexpected. So they took their standard precautions. But one thing they failed to do was...cast their pre-combat buffs.

Day 44, 8am (starting the 1 month countdown).

After the party had left Tyrus's newly frozen lair, they decided to take their naps right there at the foot of the lair. Well the DM thought that warranted plenty of random-encounter rolls...and not a single encounter came up out of 8 rolls. And it happened again later on too.

Oh well. I'm sure they'll get one of the more interesting ones.

Gate N4: The entirety of the eastern wall towered above the party. The gate to enter the prison stood over 30' tall. The relief on the door depicted clawed skeleton enjoying the moment while standing upon a mountain of butchered corpses. Making up part of the door's frame were 2 giant executioner's, their axes forming the top of the arch. About the top of the axes were 5 sneering demons.

Standard scanning showed nothing, mostly because the door blocked any detection spells.

So Torin moved into search the door. He found a nice and complex lock. He attempted to pick it...

What Torin didn't know is that the DM put a big sign on his back. It was "My name is Dalron".

Surprise round: 4 of the 5 demons were really powered-up gargoyles. And one of the executioners was a shield guardian.
The guardian took a single swing at Torin with its giant greataxe. Anything but a natural 1 guaranteed a hit with its bonuses (+38 for 3d8+21). It hit of course.
Each of the gargoyles dropped down into melee and each got a single swing on Torin. 3 hits for 1d8+6 a pop.
Torin ends up with less than 30hp.

Round 1:
Zorak casts Haste.
Senmonious use his lay-on-hands on Torin.
The shield guardian uses its stored spell on Torin; Phantasmal Killer. Torin makes his will save.
The gargoyles have swarmed Torin, each getting their full attack on him.
2 claw attacks (+17 for 1d8+6), 1 bite attack (+15 for 1d8+6), 1 gore attack (+4 for 1d8+3). They leave Torin with less than 20hp.
Thunderclease is happens to be standing merely 5' away, so he gets to take a 5' step and do his full attack action. Thunderclease hit with most of his attacks, doing over 120 points of damage.
Valden casts Righteous Might.
Torin takes a swing and a 5' step away from the gargoyles and towards Krieg.
Krieg casts Heal on Torin.

Round 2:
Zorak casts Disintegrate at the shield guardian. He hit and the guardian failed its save. It took 74 points of damage.
Sen takes a few swings on a gargoyle and does about 40% of its hp.
The shield guardian and the gargoyles chase after Torin (they're going after the guy who touched the door). His full hit points are 92. They do a combined 98 hp in damage. Torin drops.
Thunderclease continues to rip into the guardian. He leaves it in chunks on the ground.
Valden foregoes his combat swings to cast his Heal spell on Torin.
Torin stands up and takes the free swings from the gargoyles.
Krieg casts Cure Critical on Torin, but his die rolls suck.

Round 3:
Zorak casts Magic Missile on a gargoyle.
Sen continues to take chunks out of the same gargoyle.
The gargoyles continue to go after Torin. They do 86 points of damage to him. He drops again.
Thunderclease hits with 3 of his 4 attacks and drops a gargoyle. His cleave attack hurts another.
Valden heals Torin, despite Brian's statement that Torin has failed the test of survival of the fittest and deserves to be left to die.
Repeat Torin's previous actions.
Krieg continues to heal Torin.

The rest of the combat is a wash.

And they get a small reward. They get to look into room N11 because the shield guardian did a Wile E. Coyote. when he left the archway.

Room N11: This rubble filled room has many glowing runes on the walls and the rubble. And the most disturbing thing the party finds is a transparent, white-blue glowing wall in the center of the room.

Detection spells couldn't penetrate the wall either. Detect Magic just showed it to be an overwhelming abjuration magic.

The party, decides to check the other doors before they walk through this room.

Gate N2: Another 30' tall gate. This time the relief on the door was that of a giant cloaked figure. His face was hidden in the hood of his robe. In one hand he carried a giant gavel. In the other hand was a giant scale, with a giant skull on each of the trays.

That part of the door screamed giant-ass guardian. So the party moved on.

Gate N3: And the final 30' tall gate depicted an old man being led down a path by a skeleton. Making up the door's frame were a couple of statues. One held a giant staff, the other a giant shield.

Having seen all they need to see, the party moved back to...

Room N11: The party was a bit jittery about going through the magical wall. And far be it from me to not exploit that.
The brave Senmonious took the first step through the wall. Then the rest of the party began walking through. Torin was to be last because he is not of good alignment.
So I said, "Nothing happens to those of you that have gone through. Just let me know when Torin goes through."
So, as predicted, the group stopped dead in their tracks and gave Torin a few buffs.
And when Torin passed through...nothing happened.

The door on the other side of the room was thick enough to block detection spells and abilities, so the party had to risk it.

Rooom N12: This room was one small earthquake from collapsing. Throughout the room were several lit braziers, 2 statues, and an unlit brazier in front of each of the statues. One statue was of a fleshless warrior wearing the skin of its enemies as its armor. The other statue was a skeleton with no eye sockets sitting upon a throne.

The door to the east showed a relief of hundreds of tiny figures climbing the bones of a giant corpse. The door showed no way of opening it. Searching came up with nothing. A charge from the wand of Knock did nothing.

So the party looked to the unlit braziers in front of 2 statues.

First Torin investigated the statues and came up with nothing.

So they lit the northern torch.
Nothing happened with the door.

So they lit the southern torch.
An empowered lightning bolt ripped through Senmonious and Thunderclease.
Nothing happened with the door.

They tried all possible variations with no luck.

So they took a closer look at everything. A couple of Knowledge: Religion checks later and it was revealed to the 2 clerics (but not the 8 intelligence paladin) that the 2 statues and the eastern door were the 3 aspects of death (the judge, the guide, and the executioner).

That connected the dots for the party. They realized that each of the gates showed an aspect as well.

So they left the room and made a new resting place. Krieg had a Wall of Stone spell still memorized. So he started to build the group's very own fort. He decided that every day, if he still has the spell at the end of the day, he'll add to it.

Note: No sofa was hurt in the making of the fort.

Gate N3 (again): This time Thunderclease was going to touch the door while heavily buffed, including Greater Invisibility.

So Thunderclease tries to open the door...

Two shield guardians, one swinging a giant staff, the other bashing with a giant shield, do not swing at Cleez.
Instead they blasted out with their stored spells. The entire party is in range of both Shout spells.
End result: minor damage to most of the party, Zorak is deafened, and Krieg, who is protecting Cleez with a Shield Other spell, is now under 50%.
Thunderclease rips into the shield guardian. Well not really. He misses with all 4 of his swings.
Senmonious and Torin double-team one guardian while the rest of the party goes for the other. Torin doesn't do his usual in-and-out combat movement, as he's fairly sure that Thunderclease is the only target the guardians are going to deal with.

The rest of the rounds blur together.
Thunderclease, Krieg, Valden, and Zorak take longer to take out their one guardian than Torin and Senmonious do for theirs.
Thunderclease takes a huge pounding, even while being protected by Invisibility. Well actually Krieg and Thunderclease do. Krieg is even forced to swing blindly with a Heal on Cleez.
And Cleez only hits one time the entire combat. The very last swing on the last shield guardian standing.
It only had 4hp left.

Once again, a Wile E. Coyote effect, allows the party to move in to the next room.

Room N5: Another transparent, blue-white wall of energy split this room in 2. Otherwise the room is empty save for the east and west doors.

Room N6: This room's walls are full of glowing runes. A Comprehend Languages spell reveals them to be just a bunch of names, with nothing else about them.

Room N7: Another room with 2 statues, a relief on the eastern door, and 2 unlit braziers.

And we stopped there for the week.

There will be no game next week, and possibly not the week after.
Next week several of us have plans.
And the week after because we've played for 8 weeks in a row, and there's about to be a wife revolt.