Session #38
Well I slaughtered another PC this session.
Actually it was the dice. Yeah that's it. I'm not to blame. It was the dice. Of course when my dice roll a natural 1, I put them in a bag to teach them a lesson.
Ok that's not quite true. I have so many dice (like every good gamer) that I haven't used the dice I'm punishing. So I guess I'm actually using those dice as an example to the rest of the dice. That'll teach them.
Ain't room for slacker dice behind my DM screen!
No game next week. Brian has something to do...and Aaron has something to do...and Jeff's wife's birthday is next week as well...aaaand since Aaron is driving Justin to the games while Dale is on hiatus, Justin's out.
So next weekend I'm taking the wife the Renaissance Festival.
Map
Room N16: Well we started of this session with a lame room. Detect Evil (clerical version) detected multiple hordes comprised of weak creatures in this column-filled room. The party explored the room and the hordes did not react. So the party left them alone and moved on.
Room N18: Yet another horde of weak creatures in a room that didn't react to the party. Except this time instead of columns the room had arches of bones. Ooh...aah. Next!
Room N19: More weak hordes. Note to group: Head west ya pansies! Metagaming ain't 100% bad.
Room N20: Another crypt room with some slightly stronger hordes. So the party backed up and began casting their buff spells. They got off about 2 spells before I said, "Stop casting and roll initiative." These undead weren't letting the party buff up in order to kill them.
The room contained a wight horde. The clerics in the party had almost exclusively made their 4th level spells Death Ward. So most of the undead they meet are almost impotent. And my response was to add a 2nd wight horde.
It didn't change much.
Even with 480hp each and a horde cornering Torin, this fight was not even a challenge. All it accomplished was to calm a little of Thundercat's bloodlust.
Oh yeah...it's a horrible joke that just gets worse and worse.
Thunderclease is now called Thundercat or Lion-O.
When he drops a monster he performs a thundercleave.
Repeat that kind of joke over and over.
Hmmm...to make the joke even worse, I might even add a mummy sorcerer for the group to fight.
Room N23: Another wight horde in this room was trapped behind the bars of their crypts. While Torin searched the room, one tried to grab at him. It missed and the party ignored the wights and moved on.
Room N24: Same as room N23, pretty much.
Room N25: This room had a very high ceiling. And hanging from the ceiling were multiple cages filled with the animated skeletons of giant evil creatures.
Torin entered the room and searched. When he found nothing, Valden and Thunderclease joined him, using their stone-cunning in the hopes of finding something more.
What they didn't know was that several of the skeletons had already broken free. Five skeletal dragons, 2 adult blacks, 2 adult reds, and an old red waited for something to feed on. (Later on I reread and caught a mistake I made...it should have been 3, 3, and 1 instead of 2, 2, and 1 dragons.)
Surprise round: The 2 blacks dropped down. One attacked Cleez and the other on Torin. Minor damage to both.
Round 1: The 2 reds drop down. One on Valden and the other on Torin (the room is getting full now). The one on Valden missed, the one on Torin did some more minor damage.
Cleez drops the black on him.
Valden and Krieg cast some buffs.
Torin is trapped and his only option is to swing and do some damage.
The black on Torin brings him down to 50% hp.
Round 2: In the encounter instructions it says the old red dragon skeleton waits to attack a target that it drops behind the party "flanking the weakest and culling them from the heard."
That target is Torin. He's cornered, hurt, and separated from his comrades. It drops down at him and takes another chunk out of him.
The other 2 reds and the black attack. Torin is left with less than 20hp.
Cleez rips on the red dragon on Valden.
Krieg casts Heal with the intent to use it as a Harm spell on the adult red on Torin. But he rolls a natural 1 on his defensive casting. Rough day for Torin huh?
Valden casts a circular Blade Barrier. (He made his defensive casting roll, of course.)
The damage from it finished the red that was on him, and almost took down the black on Torin, and hurt every other dragon in the room. Something finally went Torin's way, and he made his reflex save; taking 0 damage from the spell.
Torin takes a 5' step away from combat and goes on full defensive.
Round 3: The red dragon rips into Torin and leaves him exactly at -11hp.
Torin has failed the test of Survival of the Fittest.
The Blade Barrier drops the black on its action.
The rest of the party finishes off the other 2 dragons pretty handily.
The party searches for more treasure...but they only seem to find treasure on the scraps of Torin.
They scoop up Torin and flee back to the garrison, give him a proper burial, and return.
Room N26: Prior to entering this room, the 3 remaining PCs (I will now dub them Dead Meat) cast their buff spells and begin another charge through the dungeon.
Ya see, the players believe that without their buff spells they are not going to last in the dungeon. Now I can't say I disagree with them. But their solution, charging through the dungeon with all of their buffs on, has tragedy written all over it.
This room contains a horde of wights. Each wight is impaled upon a spike sticking out of the wall.
The party decided that the wights were fine where they were, and moved on.
Room N27: This room contained a single black ghostly shape. The party had cast Invisibility to Undead (or whatever the equivalent spell is). The party moved in to begin combat.
The dread wraith howled out an order and combat began:
Thunderclease moves in and take a big chunk out of the solo wraith.
Three other dread wraiths rise from the floors or fly out of the walls and attack the party.
This time the dread wraiths are better equipped for the party. It's called Spring Attack. Previously I had missed that feat on the list. Everyone say "Thank you Dale" for pointing it out.
:)
So the three dread wraiths jump in and swing once at each party member and then flee back to the into the walls. The wraiths find out that the party is protected from their drain attacks.
The original wraith attacks Cleez and tries to flee. Thunderclease gets a lucky swing and the wraith goes poof.
Two hordes of skeletons poor out of the walls.
Krieg and Valden delay their actions and wait for a wraith to approach them.
The next round Thunderclease takes out both hordes, Valden smacks a dread wraith hard when it comes in to attack, and Krieg hits the other with a Searing Light.
When the party brings down the 2nd dread wraith, the other 2 flee.
Room N100: Thundercat, with his new 70' speed, leads the party on their charge through the dungeon.
These alcoves are trapped and shoot burning oil out when someone passes through the area.
Thunderclease and Valden make their saves and take no damage.
But Krieg has a couple points of damage he needs to heal. And he has this exalted spell called Energetic Healing that he wants to use. Energetic Healing prevents damage from an energy type (fire in this case) and then heals you 10% of that damage that it prevented.
Krieg thought he would be getting some use out of this spell.
Nope. The trap actually does 50% fire damage and 50% unholy damage.
So he took 6d6 damage, for 3 rounds, half of which was prevented, half wasn't, and 10% of the first half offset the damage from the 2nd half. End result; Krieg netted 31 points of damage that he had to spend 2 rounds of their charge healing.
"Who the hell ever heard of unholy oil?"
Hah!
Oh, he made his save on the 2nd N100 spot.
Room N101: The party burst through the door and found...
This room contained "shadow tides that roll like a living sea."
In other words it contained:
1 dread wraith leader
6 dread wraiths
18 wraiths
Versus:
Thunderclease - barbarian kitty cat
Valden - combat cleric with 5 rounds of buff spells remaining
Krieg - combat healer and undead nuker
Round 1: The dread wights, using their amazing speed, move immediately into the walls to perform their hit and run attacks again.
The other, normal, wraiths form into 3 phalanxes of 6.
The leader stays stationary and appears to bark out orders.
Thunderclease and Valden delay their actions and wait for a wraith to approach them.
Krieg hits the leader with a Ray of Light (and smacks a few other wraiths who were unfortunate enough to be in the way).
Krieg also has a Celestial Brilliance spell active, so that does 1d6 points of damage to all nearby undead each round.
Round 2: All 6 dread wights burst through the walls to attack the party. But Cleez and Valden were ready.
Valden rips one shadow a new one with his powerful swing. He leaves the shadow at 50%.
Cleez, on the other hand, had a surprise ready. Krieg had cast Disrupting Weapon on Cleez's sword. All it took was one swing and the dread wraith was blasted into oblivion.
(I have now looked at the spell more closely and realized that this would not have worked on a dread wraith. But it didn't have any real effect long term. Eh...live and learn.)
The remaining dread wraiths jumped into melee from all sides, attacked Valden (and only Valden), then fled back into the walls.
One squad of wraiths surrounds and attacks the party directly, another moves in behind the party, and the third moves to attack the party from the hallway.
This basically leaves the party pinned down.
The wraith leader continues yelling out orders.
Krieg narrowly misses the wraith leader.
Round 3: Valden and Cleez begin clearing out all of the normal wraiths near them.
The dread wraiths continue their hit and fade attacks. They avoid Cleez and almost exclusively focus their attacks on Valden.
The other wraiths continue to smother the party, and also focuses their attacks on Valden.
(Valden is saved a lot of damage thanks to all of his buffs.)
The remainder of the combat goes the same way:
Valden deals out heavy damage thanks to all of his combat-cleric buffs.
Cleez foregoes his power attacks and uses his +2 Holy Disrupting Greatsword to poof the wraiths away (it works perfectly legally on regular wraiths by the way). Oh and he whines when no one attacks him.
Krieg pulls the party to the center of the room to help limit the dread wraith's Spring Attacks.
By the end of the combat, all but 3 of the regular wraiths are gone for good.
The remaining 5 dread wraiths and their leader (who later joined into melee) eventually change their target to Krieg. But it is too late for them. When a 2nd dread wraith bites it, they flee.
The party does a quick, and fruitless, search for treasure, then flee back to the garrison and cash in on some nice XP. That was an EL19 encounter defeated by 3 level 14 PCs, which gets each of them over 8000xp.
And the only thing that truly made it possible...a smurfing level 4 cleric spell (Death Ward).
Actually it was the dice. Yeah that's it. I'm not to blame. It was the dice. Of course when my dice roll a natural 1, I put them in a bag to teach them a lesson.
Ok that's not quite true. I have so many dice (like every good gamer) that I haven't used the dice I'm punishing. So I guess I'm actually using those dice as an example to the rest of the dice. That'll teach them.
Ain't room for slacker dice behind my DM screen!
No game next week. Brian has something to do...and Aaron has something to do...and Jeff's wife's birthday is next week as well...aaaand since Aaron is driving Justin to the games while Dale is on hiatus, Justin's out.
So next weekend I'm taking the wife the Renaissance Festival.
Map
Room N16: Well we started of this session with a lame room. Detect Evil (clerical version) detected multiple hordes comprised of weak creatures in this column-filled room. The party explored the room and the hordes did not react. So the party left them alone and moved on.
Room N18: Yet another horde of weak creatures in a room that didn't react to the party. Except this time instead of columns the room had arches of bones. Ooh...aah. Next!
Room N19: More weak hordes. Note to group: Head west ya pansies! Metagaming ain't 100% bad.
Room N20: Another crypt room with some slightly stronger hordes. So the party backed up and began casting their buff spells. They got off about 2 spells before I said, "Stop casting and roll initiative." These undead weren't letting the party buff up in order to kill them.
The room contained a wight horde. The clerics in the party had almost exclusively made their 4th level spells Death Ward. So most of the undead they meet are almost impotent. And my response was to add a 2nd wight horde.
It didn't change much.
Even with 480hp each and a horde cornering Torin, this fight was not even a challenge. All it accomplished was to calm a little of Thundercat's bloodlust.
Oh yeah...it's a horrible joke that just gets worse and worse.
Thunderclease is now called Thundercat or Lion-O.
When he drops a monster he performs a thundercleave.
Repeat that kind of joke over and over.
Hmmm...to make the joke even worse, I might even add a mummy sorcerer for the group to fight.
Room N23: Another wight horde in this room was trapped behind the bars of their crypts. While Torin searched the room, one tried to grab at him. It missed and the party ignored the wights and moved on.
Room N24: Same as room N23, pretty much.
Room N25: This room had a very high ceiling. And hanging from the ceiling were multiple cages filled with the animated skeletons of giant evil creatures.
Torin entered the room and searched. When he found nothing, Valden and Thunderclease joined him, using their stone-cunning in the hopes of finding something more.
What they didn't know was that several of the skeletons had already broken free. Five skeletal dragons, 2 adult blacks, 2 adult reds, and an old red waited for something to feed on. (Later on I reread and caught a mistake I made...it should have been 3, 3, and 1 instead of 2, 2, and 1 dragons.)
Surprise round: The 2 blacks dropped down. One attacked Cleez and the other on Torin. Minor damage to both.
Round 1: The 2 reds drop down. One on Valden and the other on Torin (the room is getting full now). The one on Valden missed, the one on Torin did some more minor damage.
Cleez drops the black on him.
Valden and Krieg cast some buffs.
Torin is trapped and his only option is to swing and do some damage.
The black on Torin brings him down to 50% hp.
Round 2: In the encounter instructions it says the old red dragon skeleton waits to attack a target that it drops behind the party "flanking the weakest and culling them from the heard."
That target is Torin. He's cornered, hurt, and separated from his comrades. It drops down at him and takes another chunk out of him.
The other 2 reds and the black attack. Torin is left with less than 20hp.
Cleez rips on the red dragon on Valden.
Krieg casts Heal with the intent to use it as a Harm spell on the adult red on Torin. But he rolls a natural 1 on his defensive casting. Rough day for Torin huh?
Valden casts a circular Blade Barrier. (He made his defensive casting roll, of course.)
The damage from it finished the red that was on him, and almost took down the black on Torin, and hurt every other dragon in the room. Something finally went Torin's way, and he made his reflex save; taking 0 damage from the spell.
Torin takes a 5' step away from combat and goes on full defensive.
Round 3: The red dragon rips into Torin and leaves him exactly at -11hp.
Torin has failed the test of Survival of the Fittest.
The Blade Barrier drops the black on its action.
The rest of the party finishes off the other 2 dragons pretty handily.
The party searches for more treasure...but they only seem to find treasure on the scraps of Torin.
They scoop up Torin and flee back to the garrison, give him a proper burial, and return.
Room N26: Prior to entering this room, the 3 remaining PCs (I will now dub them Dead Meat) cast their buff spells and begin another charge through the dungeon.
Ya see, the players believe that without their buff spells they are not going to last in the dungeon. Now I can't say I disagree with them. But their solution, charging through the dungeon with all of their buffs on, has tragedy written all over it.
This room contains a horde of wights. Each wight is impaled upon a spike sticking out of the wall.
The party decided that the wights were fine where they were, and moved on.
Room N27: This room contained a single black ghostly shape. The party had cast Invisibility to Undead (or whatever the equivalent spell is). The party moved in to begin combat.
The dread wraith howled out an order and combat began:
Thunderclease moves in and take a big chunk out of the solo wraith.
Three other dread wraiths rise from the floors or fly out of the walls and attack the party.
This time the dread wraiths are better equipped for the party. It's called Spring Attack. Previously I had missed that feat on the list. Everyone say "Thank you Dale" for pointing it out.
:)
So the three dread wraiths jump in and swing once at each party member and then flee back to the into the walls. The wraiths find out that the party is protected from their drain attacks.
The original wraith attacks Cleez and tries to flee. Thunderclease gets a lucky swing and the wraith goes poof.
Two hordes of skeletons poor out of the walls.
Krieg and Valden delay their actions and wait for a wraith to approach them.
The next round Thunderclease takes out both hordes, Valden smacks a dread wraith hard when it comes in to attack, and Krieg hits the other with a Searing Light.
When the party brings down the 2nd dread wraith, the other 2 flee.
Room N100: Thundercat, with his new 70' speed, leads the party on their charge through the dungeon.
These alcoves are trapped and shoot burning oil out when someone passes through the area.
Thunderclease and Valden make their saves and take no damage.
But Krieg has a couple points of damage he needs to heal. And he has this exalted spell called Energetic Healing that he wants to use. Energetic Healing prevents damage from an energy type (fire in this case) and then heals you 10% of that damage that it prevented.
Krieg thought he would be getting some use out of this spell.
Nope. The trap actually does 50% fire damage and 50% unholy damage.
So he took 6d6 damage, for 3 rounds, half of which was prevented, half wasn't, and 10% of the first half offset the damage from the 2nd half. End result; Krieg netted 31 points of damage that he had to spend 2 rounds of their charge healing.
"Who the hell ever heard of unholy oil?"
Hah!
Oh, he made his save on the 2nd N100 spot.
Room N101: The party burst through the door and found...
This room contained "shadow tides that roll like a living sea."
In other words it contained:
1 dread wraith leader
6 dread wraiths
18 wraiths
Versus:
Thunderclease - barbarian kitty cat
Valden - combat cleric with 5 rounds of buff spells remaining
Krieg - combat healer and undead nuker
Round 1: The dread wights, using their amazing speed, move immediately into the walls to perform their hit and run attacks again.
The other, normal, wraiths form into 3 phalanxes of 6.
The leader stays stationary and appears to bark out orders.
Thunderclease and Valden delay their actions and wait for a wraith to approach them.
Krieg hits the leader with a Ray of Light (and smacks a few other wraiths who were unfortunate enough to be in the way).
Krieg also has a Celestial Brilliance spell active, so that does 1d6 points of damage to all nearby undead each round.
Round 2: All 6 dread wights burst through the walls to attack the party. But Cleez and Valden were ready.
Valden rips one shadow a new one with his powerful swing. He leaves the shadow at 50%.
Cleez, on the other hand, had a surprise ready. Krieg had cast Disrupting Weapon on Cleez's sword. All it took was one swing and the dread wraith was blasted into oblivion.
(I have now looked at the spell more closely and realized that this would not have worked on a dread wraith. But it didn't have any real effect long term. Eh...live and learn.)
The remaining dread wraiths jumped into melee from all sides, attacked Valden (and only Valden), then fled back into the walls.
One squad of wraiths surrounds and attacks the party directly, another moves in behind the party, and the third moves to attack the party from the hallway.
This basically leaves the party pinned down.
The wraith leader continues yelling out orders.
Krieg narrowly misses the wraith leader.
Round 3: Valden and Cleez begin clearing out all of the normal wraiths near them.
The dread wraiths continue their hit and fade attacks. They avoid Cleez and almost exclusively focus their attacks on Valden.
The other wraiths continue to smother the party, and also focuses their attacks on Valden.
(Valden is saved a lot of damage thanks to all of his buffs.)
The remainder of the combat goes the same way:
Valden deals out heavy damage thanks to all of his combat-cleric buffs.
Cleez foregoes his power attacks and uses his +2 Holy Disrupting Greatsword to poof the wraiths away (it works perfectly legally on regular wraiths by the way). Oh and he whines when no one attacks him.
Krieg pulls the party to the center of the room to help limit the dread wraith's Spring Attacks.
By the end of the combat, all but 3 of the regular wraiths are gone for good.
The remaining 5 dread wraiths and their leader (who later joined into melee) eventually change their target to Krieg. But it is too late for them. When a 2nd dread wraith bites it, they flee.
The party does a quick, and fruitless, search for treasure, then flee back to the garrison and cash in on some nice XP. That was an EL19 encounter defeated by 3 level 14 PCs, which gets each of them over 8000xp.
And the only thing that truly made it possible...a smurfing level 4 cleric spell (Death Ward).
posted by BlueBlackRed at 6:44 PM
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