Dale's Campaign - Session #13
Well this session was pretty good.
At least 75% of the evening was spent on an “End of Chapter” combat.
But because Mike was late, thanks to the wonderful local entertainment we call Friday evening traffic.
So we chatted it up for a while until he showed.
Our conversations covered things like how PC deaths are about halfway split between bad dice rolls and poor player decision making.
Then there was something that I call “Cracking the eggshell”. It’s pretty simple; once one PC drops in a combat there is a much higher chance of another PC dropping.
That happens because of how well a group can work together and each person has their own job to do. If there is a sudden job opening, and no one is capable of replacing the now dropped PC, then the party had best end the combat ASAP or flee lest they lose more people.
And then we talked about clerical turning ability. We’re not big fans of how it works as is, but all of the alternatives we come up with aren’t any better.
Once Mike showed up, we got down to business.
The first thing we did was to get with the Brothers Grimm to make sure they were forewarned that we might break the tile they gave us a while ago, which would summon them to our aid.
(We’d heard rumors that there would be a lot of big nasty monsters in the hags’ employ.)
Next we met with Ian, who had determined the location of the hags’ lair. We cast our long term buff spells then Ian teleported us there.
We appeared not even 100’ away from a large cave opening somewhere in the swamps.
We cast all of our remaining buff spells that mattered (Kal had memorized some anti-drowning spells), summoned the Brothers and charged into the cave.
We had not buffed up that much since the WLD.
The combatants:
The “good” guys:
Culan, a level 8 fighter/cleric
Mark, a level 8 paladin/fighter
Kineo, a level 8 warmage/rogue
Kal, a level 8 druid/conjurer
Jaxil, a level 6 cleric cohort
3 Brothers Grimm, all level 9 gestalt casters who each had cast Greater Invisibility on themselves and made it clear that they were there for firepower only. If things got too hot, they were out.
The bad guys and girls:
5 ogres, level 5 barbarians
Uncle Ebb, ogre magi
A grey render, powered up
3 hags, all probably annis types, all with warlock levels
A magical cauldron called “the ghast pot”. It popped out a new ghast every round. When it was full it would tip over and the ghasts would charge. It would then start over.
A night hag, hidden in a secret area
No round-to-round description this time. It’s not as easy to keep track of that when you’re not the DM.
The combat starts off with Uncle Ebb turning invisible.
Kal then summons up an Evard’s Black Tentacles. Only one ogre gets caught up in the spell, but it does remove it from the combat.
The Brothers Grimm are very effective at working together, and each has a Wand of Fireballs and a large array of nasty spells. They fry anything that moves that wasn’t one of us.
Mark rushes forward for a fight, but he’s all alone as our only other melee guy is at the bottom of the initiative stack. So he’s standing there all alone as a trio of very charred and raging barbarian ogres pounds the snot out of him.
Since he didn’t know how much damage the ogres could do, he didn’t use his magical. That proved to be a very bad choice as he was left with less than half his hit points.
Jaxil, who had been delaying his action until someone was hurt, moved to heal Mark, but Mark had moved too far into the combat.
The hags curse and blast anything that they can see.
The ghast pot tips over, dumping out 6 ghasts. They run towards the hurting Mark.
Culan charges forward, rips up an ogre good, and use his Quickened Turning to send 4 of the 6 ghasts running to the other side of the cave.
The render charges Culan dealing a healthy chunk of damage.
Uncle Ebb reappears and turns Culan into a goat (nat 1 on the save). But he’s an enlarged, buffed up Billy goat.
Several Dispel Magic spells are wasted trying to fix this. I just couldn’t get the rolls needed to remove the Polymorph.
To make things even worse, the hags knock Culan into the low teens in hit points.
We are now on the defensive.
The combined attacks of the grey render and a single ogre finally bring Culan into negative hit points.
The attacks of the Brothers Grimm do the majority of the damage to the ogres and the grey render. They bring down four of the ogres and the grey render in the first three rounds of combat.
We hear a scream when the render drops. Kal, with a See Invisible spell active, sees a Night Hag entering the cave through a secret door.
Uncle Ebb pours salt onto Culan’s would. Well actually he kills him with a Cone of Cold at Culan, Kineo, and Mark. Amazingly and ironically Mark survives this by making his save and the cold damage preventing buffs that Culan had cast.
Kineo fails his save. Aaron is irritated because Kineo has never had an opportunity to use his Evasion ability because Aaron never makes the save DC.
Mark attacks a ghast while prone with his Mace of Disruption. And since Dale is on his usual low-rolling kick, it poofed.
Kal, unable to help in a defensive manner, finally gets to go on the offensive. He summons three celestial bison and places them around Uncle Ebb. They get one attack and make it count.
Forty-two points of damage later; Dale: “Scratch Uncle Ebb.”
Sean: “That was it. That little bastard could have died a long time ago.”
I should have had Kal do that much sooner.
And yes, three summoned magical buffalo killed an ogre magi.
One of the Grimms casts Revivify on Culan.
(Revivify is a Spell Compendium spell that works like a Raise Dead, but without the level loss. The catch is that it has to be cast within 1 round of the death.)
In spite of Jaxil’s meager healing, the hags use their eldritch blasts on Mark.
Say goodbye to Mark.
Kineo, seeing an opportunity, gets the three warlock hags caught in a Stinking Cloud.
That would be the beginning of the end for them. In short time the Brothers and the bison finish them off.
The night hag moves towards the unconscious maiden.
Nothing good can come of that, we all think.
Kal, out of any other options, and not wanting to see the girl die, sees no choice but to sacrifice himself.
He casts Dimension Door and places himself between the night hag and the girl.
(Dale actually asked me at least twice if I was sure.)
A giant load of spells is unleashed at the night hag, but only a third of them make it through thanks to her spell resistance.
But I think Dale pulled the punch on Kal.
He could have put a real hurting on Kal with that night hag, but she only cast Magic Missile at him.
Kal whips up another couple of celestial bison around the hag (since the others did so well).
Hoping that a cool tactic would pay off, Jaxil cast Silence on Kal. Kal chose to fail the save.
Kal holds a Greater Rod of Silent Spell, the hag is only 15’ away, the area of a Silence spell is 20’, and the celestial bison have her blocked in.
But that didn’t get to pay off.
An Orb of Force from one of the Brothers, and an empowered Orb of Force from Kineo turns her into paste.
The only enemy left standing on the battlefield is a lone ogre barbarian who just recently broke free of the Evard’s Black Tentacles.
Guess how long that guy lasted.
Then we went about helping the girl, looting the area, and destroying anything that was evil that we could destroy (like the ghast pot).
Although we didn’t care much for the Brothers Grimm, they did do quite a bit more than they needed to help us out, so we gave them nearly 3000gp in gems and told them how to get past the locking mechanism of the gold door to the ancient ruins we met them at oh so long ago.
That really threw them off.
They expected us to send them off, but we were nice to them.
Then some odd guy just wanders into the cave. After very little deliberation we conclude that he is Jaxil’s god, Saint Leonard the Traveler.
He removes all of our maladies and such, praises our good work, then offers us some words of wisdom, and moves on (through the cave wall).
Much brown-nosing was done by us. The Brothers tried to look as small as possible until he left.
Among the horde of loot we found was a large book that radiated much evil mojo that resisted all of our attempts to destroy it.
One of the Brothers offers to translate it for us. We say sure, but just give us the jist of it (just in case).
And it basically goes through the steps of draining an innocent girl of her charisma until it kills her and sucks her soul into Hell.
Lovely story isn’t it?
After a lot of thought, and showing the book to Ian, we remember that we still have to free the ghost Bauer.
Long story short, we found Bauer and gave him the book and another ghost appeared. It was his betrothed and they now rejoined.
(Insert your own mushy frou-frou stuff here.)
He then destroys the book and they fade away after letting us know that we have one more immediate thing to do.
The only task we can think of is to redeem the Brother’s Grimm. Or at least turn them away from evil.
That should be interesting.
At least 75% of the evening was spent on an “End of Chapter” combat.
But because Mike was late, thanks to the wonderful local entertainment we call Friday evening traffic.
So we chatted it up for a while until he showed.
Our conversations covered things like how PC deaths are about halfway split between bad dice rolls and poor player decision making.
Then there was something that I call “Cracking the eggshell”. It’s pretty simple; once one PC drops in a combat there is a much higher chance of another PC dropping.
That happens because of how well a group can work together and each person has their own job to do. If there is a sudden job opening, and no one is capable of replacing the now dropped PC, then the party had best end the combat ASAP or flee lest they lose more people.
And then we talked about clerical turning ability. We’re not big fans of how it works as is, but all of the alternatives we come up with aren’t any better.
Once Mike showed up, we got down to business.
The first thing we did was to get with the Brothers Grimm to make sure they were forewarned that we might break the tile they gave us a while ago, which would summon them to our aid.
(We’d heard rumors that there would be a lot of big nasty monsters in the hags’ employ.)
Next we met with Ian, who had determined the location of the hags’ lair. We cast our long term buff spells then Ian teleported us there.
We appeared not even 100’ away from a large cave opening somewhere in the swamps.
We cast all of our remaining buff spells that mattered (Kal had memorized some anti-drowning spells), summoned the Brothers and charged into the cave.
We had not buffed up that much since the WLD.
The combatants:
The “good” guys:
Culan, a level 8 fighter/cleric
Mark, a level 8 paladin/fighter
Kineo, a level 8 warmage/rogue
Kal, a level 8 druid/conjurer
Jaxil, a level 6 cleric cohort
3 Brothers Grimm, all level 9 gestalt casters who each had cast Greater Invisibility on themselves and made it clear that they were there for firepower only. If things got too hot, they were out.
The bad guys and girls:
5 ogres, level 5 barbarians
Uncle Ebb, ogre magi
A grey render, powered up
3 hags, all probably annis types, all with warlock levels
A magical cauldron called “the ghast pot”. It popped out a new ghast every round. When it was full it would tip over and the ghasts would charge. It would then start over.
A night hag, hidden in a secret area
No round-to-round description this time. It’s not as easy to keep track of that when you’re not the DM.
The combat starts off with Uncle Ebb turning invisible.
Kal then summons up an Evard’s Black Tentacles. Only one ogre gets caught up in the spell, but it does remove it from the combat.
The Brothers Grimm are very effective at working together, and each has a Wand of Fireballs and a large array of nasty spells. They fry anything that moves that wasn’t one of us.
Mark rushes forward for a fight, but he’s all alone as our only other melee guy is at the bottom of the initiative stack. So he’s standing there all alone as a trio of very charred and raging barbarian ogres pounds the snot out of him.
Since he didn’t know how much damage the ogres could do, he didn’t use his magical. That proved to be a very bad choice as he was left with less than half his hit points.
Jaxil, who had been delaying his action until someone was hurt, moved to heal Mark, but Mark had moved too far into the combat.
The hags curse and blast anything that they can see.
The ghast pot tips over, dumping out 6 ghasts. They run towards the hurting Mark.
Culan charges forward, rips up an ogre good, and use his Quickened Turning to send 4 of the 6 ghasts running to the other side of the cave.
The render charges Culan dealing a healthy chunk of damage.
Uncle Ebb reappears and turns Culan into a goat (nat 1 on the save). But he’s an enlarged, buffed up Billy goat.
Several Dispel Magic spells are wasted trying to fix this. I just couldn’t get the rolls needed to remove the Polymorph.
To make things even worse, the hags knock Culan into the low teens in hit points.
We are now on the defensive.
The combined attacks of the grey render and a single ogre finally bring Culan into negative hit points.
The attacks of the Brothers Grimm do the majority of the damage to the ogres and the grey render. They bring down four of the ogres and the grey render in the first three rounds of combat.
We hear a scream when the render drops. Kal, with a See Invisible spell active, sees a Night Hag entering the cave through a secret door.
Uncle Ebb pours salt onto Culan’s would. Well actually he kills him with a Cone of Cold at Culan, Kineo, and Mark. Amazingly and ironically Mark survives this by making his save and the cold damage preventing buffs that Culan had cast.
Kineo fails his save. Aaron is irritated because Kineo has never had an opportunity to use his Evasion ability because Aaron never makes the save DC.
Mark attacks a ghast while prone with his Mace of Disruption. And since Dale is on his usual low-rolling kick, it poofed.
Kal, unable to help in a defensive manner, finally gets to go on the offensive. He summons three celestial bison and places them around Uncle Ebb. They get one attack and make it count.
Forty-two points of damage later; Dale: “Scratch Uncle Ebb.”
Sean: “That was it. That little bastard could have died a long time ago.”
I should have had Kal do that much sooner.
And yes, three summoned magical buffalo killed an ogre magi.
One of the Grimms casts Revivify on Culan.
(Revivify is a Spell Compendium spell that works like a Raise Dead, but without the level loss. The catch is that it has to be cast within 1 round of the death.)
In spite of Jaxil’s meager healing, the hags use their eldritch blasts on Mark.
Say goodbye to Mark.
Kineo, seeing an opportunity, gets the three warlock hags caught in a Stinking Cloud.
That would be the beginning of the end for them. In short time the Brothers and the bison finish them off.
The night hag moves towards the unconscious maiden.
Nothing good can come of that, we all think.
Kal, out of any other options, and not wanting to see the girl die, sees no choice but to sacrifice himself.
He casts Dimension Door and places himself between the night hag and the girl.
(Dale actually asked me at least twice if I was sure.)
A giant load of spells is unleashed at the night hag, but only a third of them make it through thanks to her spell resistance.
But I think Dale pulled the punch on Kal.
He could have put a real hurting on Kal with that night hag, but she only cast Magic Missile at him.
Kal whips up another couple of celestial bison around the hag (since the others did so well).
Hoping that a cool tactic would pay off, Jaxil cast Silence on Kal. Kal chose to fail the save.
Kal holds a Greater Rod of Silent Spell, the hag is only 15’ away, the area of a Silence spell is 20’, and the celestial bison have her blocked in.
But that didn’t get to pay off.
An Orb of Force from one of the Brothers, and an empowered Orb of Force from Kineo turns her into paste.
The only enemy left standing on the battlefield is a lone ogre barbarian who just recently broke free of the Evard’s Black Tentacles.
Guess how long that guy lasted.
Then we went about helping the girl, looting the area, and destroying anything that was evil that we could destroy (like the ghast pot).
Although we didn’t care much for the Brothers Grimm, they did do quite a bit more than they needed to help us out, so we gave them nearly 3000gp in gems and told them how to get past the locking mechanism of the gold door to the ancient ruins we met them at oh so long ago.
That really threw them off.
They expected us to send them off, but we were nice to them.
Then some odd guy just wanders into the cave. After very little deliberation we conclude that he is Jaxil’s god, Saint Leonard the Traveler.
He removes all of our maladies and such, praises our good work, then offers us some words of wisdom, and moves on (through the cave wall).
Much brown-nosing was done by us. The Brothers tried to look as small as possible until he left.
Among the horde of loot we found was a large book that radiated much evil mojo that resisted all of our attempts to destroy it.
One of the Brothers offers to translate it for us. We say sure, but just give us the jist of it (just in case).
And it basically goes through the steps of draining an innocent girl of her charisma until it kills her and sucks her soul into Hell.
Lovely story isn’t it?
After a lot of thought, and showing the book to Ian, we remember that we still have to free the ghost Bauer.
Long story short, we found Bauer and gave him the book and another ghost appeared. It was his betrothed and they now rejoined.
(Insert your own mushy frou-frou stuff here.)
He then destroys the book and they fade away after letting us know that we have one more immediate thing to do.
The only task we can think of is to redeem the Brother’s Grimm. Or at least turn them away from evil.
That should be interesting.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 9:07 PM
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