Sean's Campaign - Session #8

First things first – apparently Allen did not like Caspar as much as I had thought.

Also there will be no podcast of this episode. Apparently I had not been paying close attention to the space remaining on the hard drive, causing the recording to be pretty much ruined.

But that’s ok; this was not my favorite session anyway and nothing will be missed that won’t get covered again next session.

Then Allen had the gall to bring an Eberron book into my house. He doesn’t know it, but I docked him 25,000 experience points. It’s going to take Lindo a while to hit level 7.

The session itself was pretty much just a thrown together dungeon crawl as only Allen, Aaron, and Justin could make it.

One of the old elves that the party had just saved asked them if they could find a young elf, only 50 years old. The elf-boy was told to run when the kythons grabbed the other elves.

After some half-assed role-playing (I’m not too proud of this particular session), the party traveled south into the gem mines.

There they fought some oversized gricks, a huge carrion crawler, and a final fight between the 5 PCs (Zelast & Ari stayed in town), 4 abyssal maws, a chain golem, and a chain devil (kyton).

Afterwards they found the body of the elf-boy and returned to Krendalar, but not before Ysilia realized that the boy was a member of a noble house in Maratheelia.

More on that next week.

Sean's Campaign - Session #7

I am a crotchety old gamer.

At least that’s what everyone says I am.

They say I hate anything new. Dale and Allen were picking on me because I endlessly bitch, whine, and complain about some of the stuff that WotC prints.

I say bullsmurf!

I have my own personal definition of what D&D is. There are campaigns and world settings out there that use the D&D classes and rules, but they are not D&D to me.

And I explicitly mean they are not D&D “to me” for a reason.
I’m not calling anyone else’s games “not D&D”. As long as you’re having fun, then I’m happy for you. I make no assumption that what I do is “right” and what you are doing is “wrong”.

But don’t go calling me close minded when I say that Eberron is not D&D. It’s anime.

Don’t say that I don’t know what I’m talking about when I say that the Ravenloft Campaign Setting is not a good campaign world for D&D. The setting is too dark and harsh. If the players can’t win, what’s the point of trying? (This does not include the module I6: Ravenloft.)

Darksun is another too harsh world that is not D&D. I loved reading the Prism Pentad, but I would never play in that world unless I had a pad of disposable character sheets.

Spelljammer! What was T$R smoking when they thought up this setting?

Now lest you think I hate every campaign setting that is printed, there are several I like.

Forgotten Realms is a full D&D world that has a rich history. It has enough information for it that will allow you to ignore anything that has happened to it in recent memory.

Kalamar is a D&D world through and through with amazing amounts of detail. If you’re looking for a pure swords & sorcery role-playing setting, this is it.

Mystara/The Known World was the game world that I started with. It is the equivalent of Greyhawk to many AD&D 1E gamers. It’s another interesting world with plenty of information and ideas that gets even more interesting when you add the Hollow World Setting to it.

Midnight is a dark and gritty world that is described as “what if Sauron had conquered middle earth?” Like Ravenloft it’s a harsh world where evil races hold power. But unlike Ravenloft, your actions have an effect.

Planescape was a good idea, but executed quite poorly. But you can ignore those parts (like the half-assed 1800’s English they swiped, and the factions) and use the setting to explore virtually anything in the D&D multiverse.

There are more game worlds out there, but I don’t think I need to list them all.
My argument is that I want my Fridays to be a swords & sorcery D&D night, not a robot-horror-why’d-we-bother-to-show-up night.

Now enough of my defensive ranting and let’s move on to the game.

And what a game it was.

Everyone showed up, everyone got to do something, and the main chunk of this adventure was completed.

Poor Aaron; he’s on his third PC and fourth PC death and he almost lost another one and a horse. Yet never once have I singled his characters out, it’s just how the game unfolds, where the dice land, and Aaron’s choosing to play heroic characters. Never once has Aaron complained and has taken it all in stride. Though this session he did something that was nothing close to what I expected.

Allen’s having a bit of a rough time now. He really enjoyed playing Caspar, but that didn’t end so well. Now he has chosen to play a monk. In our group’s experience; monks who dive head first into combat have a short lifespan. So now he has to play an auxiliary combat character. Like a rogue, a monk needs to have someone else tank for him or he won’t last long.

Dale is just loving Artillery…I mean Artemis. (Dale was originally going to call him Artillery but knew I’d shoot that down.) When they created the warmage, they had Dale in mind. He loves to play wizards, but always runs out of spells way too soon because it’s hard for him to “spectate” (our description for what a caster does when everything is under control and his spells aren’t needed). Now Dale has a class that has plenty of throw away spell slots and all kinds of boom spells.

Joy is having a little rougher time than her father is. She originally wanted to be an eldritch knight, but found out the hard way that in 3E, unlike previous editions, you can’t split yourself between a fighting and a casting class. She found that her character was very underpowered in both classes. So I allowed her to trade in one fighter level for one wizard level each time she leveled. Now she’s a level six wizard who splits her spells between combat, a little scouting, and a little buffing.

Brian I believe is having a lot of fun with his duskblade. The class is very useful in many respects, but it is not a tank class, at least not this early in the game. With its ability to buff and channel damage spells through its sword it’s quite versatile, but it has the weakness of low armor class and hit points. So like the monk, it needs a tank.

Justin is having a little more fun with his scout/rogue than he was before. He created his PC with the idea that Aaron’s character Ian would be the main rogue for the party, so Justin did not place his skill points in any redundant places. But then Ian died, leaving everyone expecting Justin’s PC to take over the rogue duties. So after a week of Justin’s complaints, I allowed him to redistribute skill points. Now I believe he likes his character more, but I think he wants to get back into hacking and slashing rather than running and shooting.

And finally there’s the DMPC Aarasilia. She’s fine because the DM can run her with a note card. But her name has to change. Several players have asked for Ari to heal them, when they meant Aarasilia. So after this session she will be known as Ysilia. I don’t like doing it after she’s been around for a month, but it’s just easier that way.

I believe everyone is happy now with the game itself, though I have thrown some stuff at them that is a bit rough to fight. But you know what? They’re adventurers damn it! You don’t go out to face the world and then run back to mommy when you get a bloody nose.

But I understand, there’s a level of trust that the players have to have in the DM so that he won’t throw anything at them that is over the top for them.

So for them to understand me a little better here’s an inside look at my decision making for encounters:
- If it’s an outdoor encounter; there are usually less of them in a row so they will tend to be tougher for the party because they can regenerate their resources much easier.
- If it’s a dungeon encounter; there are usually more of them so they will be of a lower encounter level unless it’s a boss type of monster. So they players will require some basic resource management.
But don’t go metagaming and think you can totally blow your resources in one combat if you’re outdoors. This DM plays fair, but not nice.

As for the game itself I think I’m balancing many things relatively well, but not perfectly.
The party is mostly sixth level and they have many disposable magic items and a few permanent ones. Which I believe is about right.

I need to place a few less potions a few more scrolls into the magic, but otherwise I think the setup I’ve made is working well.

Now for the synopsis:

The party stopped having gotten a long distance glimpse of the creatures that were taking care of what we decided to call the “vein” or the “fence” - which was the 1”-2” thick fleshy tube that had pulsed as if it had a heart beat and had some kind of thick fluid moving through it.

Since we “poofed” Lindo and Zelast back into the game, Lindo wanted a better look. The only thing new he noticed was a slight difference in color at a point. But he had no idea what that meant.

The group was still a little freaked out (I think I might have overdone the creepiness of it all) so they decided to take a second look at the ring of trash. It hadn’t changed.

So Sorra (yes I know Aaron stole that name from the PHB2) stood up on her horse to get a glimpse over the wall, but could see anything. Then a freshly stripped dwarf skeleton was thrown over the edge from inside the ring.

So Ari cast Fly and Invisibility and did some scouting from above. She saw a three-legged creature feeding itself bits of torn off flesh into its mouth. So she flew back down, told everyone and a combat with an otyugh began.

Soon it became a combat with 4 otyughs and 12 man-sized dire rats inside the ring of trash, so the ground was cluttered making combat hard for the Brightblades.

The combat lasted several rounds and the party survived with several scratches.

Then the party did what would best be described as dumpster diving on a grand scale. And they found quite a few trinkets, but they all need a bath now.

Next the party returned to their temporary hideout near the vein. Previously Artemis had cast a couple of Firetrap spells as a form of protection, but when they got near the house, they heard a couple of explosions and some chattering laughter coming from one of the things they had seen earlier. It taunted them a bit, but got away unscathed.

They did not follow it, but instead found another house to use as a base. But it made no difference.

During the night the mischievous critters made some alterations to the house.

The next morning, when everyone (including Sorra’s warhorse – which slept in the house) left the house, the creatures cause the roof of the porch to collapse down onto Sorra and the horse she rode in on (hah!).

Sorra was hurt, but the horse was in bad shape. But the party gave chase to the running creature.

Artemis somehow got an early lead and chased the creature as it ran around a corner, where 3 more of its siblings waited in ambush. Two of them gave Artemis a good scare while the other two ran after the members of the party who ran out the back door.

The party killed 3 of the things, and one got away. And they found out that the things have several energy resistances or immunities, and a high armor class.

But what they hadn’t found out was that these things were only the juveniles.

When the last one of them ran off, it was screeching like a kicked puppy. But while the party was thinking it was just yelling out a warning or a call for help, it was really yelling out for mommy and daddy.

Instead of the party running and hiding, they returned to the vein and decided to hack at it. They did, and it was indeed a tube of a whitish and pasty substance. Aaron, and I have no idea why he did this, decided to have Sorra taste it.

It tasted like chicken.

It didn’t take long for the parents of the juvenile critters to respond. As expected, they were much tougher than the juveniles.

What the party fought before were juvenile kythons, what they would be fighting now is 2 adult kythons and a single kython impaler – all from the Book of Vile Darkness.

And it was a tough fight.

Sorra and her horse both took a beating. At one point both were unconscious and one of the adult kythons was dragging her away for unknown reasons. The kythons’ high armor class (27 for the impaler) made it very hard to hit, so she fought mostly on the defensive, thus preventing as much damage as possible while the casters shaved off the kythons’ hit points.

Lindo and Trebor never stepped a foot into melee combat. They used ranged attacks 100% of the time. I don’t know if it was smart thinking or cowardice on their part.

Ysilia used every single spell she had to keep the melee fighters from falling. She had only level 0 spells and a wand of cure light wounds at the end of it.

Zelast was in just as bad of shape as Sorra, but with a worse armor class. It wasn’t until the last swing of combat, did he ever actually score a hit.

Ari did some buffing and some damage with spells, but she ran out of offensive spells before combat was over.

Artemis saved the day with the spell Hail of Stone. It’s a first level spell that does 1d4/level of falling rock damage (max 5d4) in a 10’ radius, but there is no save or spell resistance to it. In the hands of Artemis it does 5d4+6 damage and 50% more if he empowers it.

Its only downside is that it costs 5gp in jade per casting. In the situation this combat presented, it wasn’t an issue.

Of the nearly combined 200 hit points the 3 kythons had, Artemis probably took away 160 of them.

The party, being unsure if there were more of these things, or possibly even incorporeal undead, fled the city because they were took weak at this point.

This time when Sorra slept, she dreamt of the woman begging for help yet again.

At about 2 in the morning, a nasty storm descended upon them. Once the hail began they searched for shelter, but found nothing. They reluctantly returned to the city and slept in the cathedral.

(Yeah the dreams and the storm was a cheap GM’s tool, but I’d hate for the party to fight the big fight only to leave without any treasure or conclusion.)

When the storm ended, they heard the screeches again, but this time they sounded frantic and higher pitched. And when they looked outside, the northern half of the city had been blown apart from the storm. Because it hit the ring of trash, debris from it had scattered as well.

After some extra time for rest, the party returned to the vein. They found it in the condition it had been left, though areas next to the dead parts looked a little bit bruised.

Since some of the party were still a little weak from the kythons’ poison, the casters of the party decided to rain fire from above down onto the vein. Although fun, it produced nothing new.

The very next day, the party followed the veins to their center point, slowed by a kython booby trap or two.

- WARNING!!! Gross stuff coming up!

The veins led to a large open sewer pipe that opened up to the river. Inside the pipe they saw row after row of pustule-like eggs being fed the paste from the veins. When Trebor popped one of the pustules a tiny little kython fell to the floor – which was quickly crushed by Trebor’s shoe.

Then the party was attacked by 6 small kython broodlings - which were then killed by a single Hail of Stone spell from Ari.

Once that footnote of a fight was over, Trebor heard the faint sound of a person begging for help.

Farther back in the sewers was the kythons’ central area for feeding their eggs. Half a dozen humanoids, one of which was the woman from Sorra’s dream, were suspended from the ground.

They had no arms, no legs, and the lower half of their torso was open and exposed. Their intestines formed the large network that consisted of the vein. The kythons had been using people’s digestive tracks as incubators and feeders. They spread them throughout the town to collect moisture (it rains a lot), and to mark territory.

And as for what the people ate…
People taste like chicken.

Back when Aaron had Sorra eat some of the paste, I asked him if he was sure. He was.

Yep, the kythons had been feeding these people other people.

Hey they’re in the Book of Vile Darkness for a reason. And that book is stamped with an adults-only sticker. I’m pretty sure that cannibalism would be considered vile.

Some of the party searched around while others talked to the barely alive feeding machines to get the above information. They found the larder – 40 elves that had been captured and poisoned to 0 points of strength, and kept here for future use.

And on that lovely note, we stopped.

Next week Dale, Joy, & Brian will be out, but we’re still going to play. I just might have to do a side adventure.

Sean's Campaign - Session #6

This was both a great and disappointing session.

The disappointing:
- Allen had to cancel on us the morning of the game. So there was no monk at this session.
- Brian missed as well, but he had given us a couple of months warning. The problem is that he is the first of our group to run a duskblade, and probably the only player in the group who has read the class closely enough. The meant that anyone who ran Zelast was not going to so well. So I took him out of the game for speed and sanity’s sake.

It has been my experience that when you run your PC and someone else’s PC for the evening, especially one you’re unfamiliar with, then both PCs suffer. And the more complicated and involved the characters are, the worse this problem becomes.

On the plus side, Dale was able to make it to the game, but a little late. Aaron played Artemis until Dale showed.

I believe that everyone will be at the next game and on time even.

The great:
I had the players on their toes and genuinely creeped out.

All I did was paint a disturbing picture of some odd things in the city, added some freaky creatures, and mixed in some just plain gory fun.

I did have to do some additional DM railroading. I didn’t like that. But apparently I did too good of a job of creeping out the players that they wanted to run away from the prepared adventure. Damage control was required.

Game Synopsis:

We last left the group in the empty city of Krendalar after they had just fought some gargoyles in a cathedral.

Unsure of where to go next, the party set about on the main road to the center of town. But that ended when the wind direction changed for a brief moment and that wind brought the smell of trash and death.

Half the group failed the DC10 fortitude save and were sickened for the next hour.

So they changed their minds about traveling down the main streets and moved to the side streets instead while and looking for some kind of landmark to head to. Towards the northern section of the city they saw what they believed to be a wizard’s tower, so they made their way to it.

It was in most respects your standard wizard’s tower; five stories tall, made of dark stone, a magical aura surrounded the place, with a fence and a short, locked, iron gate.

The halfling scout/rogue Trebor had to climb over the short fence & gate because he had put 0 points into the Open Lock skill. (Justin has complained quite loudly about how poorly he assigned his character’s skill points.)

Once he made it over the fence he set about checking out the door to the tower.

The door set about pounding the daylights out of Trebor.

It was a mimic that had assumed the shape of the door and had been patiently waiting for a meal to show.

And although it pounded Trebor nicely enough, there was enough acid spells flung at it to melt it into a steaming pile of chemicals.

But during the fight, a circle of powdered silver was disturbed and the mild abjuration magic that the party had detected before was gone.

Being curious about what treasure that might be found in a wizard’s tower, the party entered.

They found room after room of nothing valuable, but on the third floor they were attacked by 3 shadows. A sun domain empowered turn from Moore killed two of them and sent the third packing. But not before they had a chance to drain a couple of points of strength from Trebor and Moore.

Aarasilia used her last Lesser Restoration spell of the day to help Moore get some strength back.

But it didn’t matter.

On the fifth level of the tower was a study holding 2 more shadows (one of them from before) and a greater shadow.

By the time the party dropped the first normal shadow, Moore had only 8 points of strength remaining. And since the armor he was wearing was too heavy, he could only stand where he was. Which made it easy for the greater shadow to do his 1d8 strength damage to Moore – and of course I rolled an eight.

One round later and Moore the cleric became Moore the shadow.

Eventually all of the shadows were finished off, but they had lost yet another PC.

There was no nearby city, so raising him from the dead was not an option.

At this point we took a pause to allow Aaron time to make a new PC and to give Justin a chance to rearrange his skill points; because no one should have to play a character they think sucks.

When that was done we returned to the game.

They searched the tower thoroughly, hoping that there would be some nice treasure, and not so subtly hinting to the DM that a Raise Dead scroll could be part of the treasure.

But the DM was not so benevolent. There was some nice treasure, but they did not find any level 5 clerical scrolls in a wizard’s tower. However he did allow Aaron to roll up a new PC and let Justin rearrange his poorly placed skill points.

As they were searching the tower Trebor saw two things of interest while scouting from the balcony on the fourth floor.

The first was an arrow landed near him with a note on it:
“Be ready to run when I give the signal – Recin” (...or something to that extent.)

The second was a figure on horseback heading towards the northern city entrance.

Trebor relayed both bits of information to the rest of the party and they set about meeting this new person.

Of course it was Aaron’s new PC, the lady knight Sorra, but the DM had a little fun with the encounter by throwing in some high-pitched monstrous screams coming from the west and south.

And although the new knight joined in just fine, the note from Recin, the total lack of corpses, and screams had everyone on edge.

They took Moore’s body to the cathedral, and returned to the tower for a night of rest. But it wasn’t a very peaceful night of sleep. They heard the screaming sporadically throughout the night and could hear the sound of swords being drawn on occasion. This didn’t help the party’s spirits one bit.

They decided they were going to leave the city as they had determined that this city was still standing, but not occupied by anything friendly. So the DM did a quick augment to Sorra’s background story stating that she came to this particular city because of a very real dream she was having about some woman on death’s door begging for help. So now the party is searching for the woman.

Next the party headed south on the city’s main north-south street, and they received another good blast of garbage & death wind.

But this time they followed the smell to its source; a 10’ tall wall of trash, broken furniture, and bones all packed together to form a very large ring around the center of the city. They discussed setting the ring on fire but decided against it when they figured that the fire would be a giant beacon.

They decided to search the western side and abandon the giant ring of trash for now and headed west, but not along the main east-west road. They instead moved south and west.

The first thing they found was disturbing; a long glistening tube of something living. Inside the tube they could see a fluid moving slowly through it and it pulsed with a kind of rhythm akin to a heartbeat. It traveled from the inside of the western city wall and out of sight to the north. At no point did it touch the ground. It was either draped across something or was held up by a pole of some sort.

The party had no idea what to make of the whole picture, so they decided to scout a little more. Ari cast Fly and Invisibility on herself and scouted from above. She saw that the tubes spread very far to the north and branched off at irregular intervals. And at one point she caught a glimpse of some large black creature running fast on four legs.

When Fly wore off, the party took a defensive position within eyesight of the tube and Ari yanked one of the tube’s pole supports out from under it, letting it hit the ground.

At first it was nothing, but then they heard more of monstrous screaming, from multiple locations that began converging on the area where Ari and the tube was.

They thought the creatures would converge on the tube, but instead they converged near Ari.

The moment Ari heard an unworldly growl come from around the side of a house; she darted to join the rest of the group. She wasn’t taking any chances, whether she was invisible or not. But she did get a glimpse of the critters.

From the rest of the group’s vantage point (from the second floor of an abandoned house), they did not see the creatures as Ari.

But eventually they did see one of them fix the broken pole. And although it was far away (at least 600’), they could make out a man-sized creature with a shiny black carapace, a pointed and less than friendly mouth, and it walked on all fours or legs as it chose.

Next week I believe everyone is around.
And hopefully we’ll close out this adventure and head on to the next one.

Sean's Campaign - Session #5

(Podcast will be late...technical issues & new TV season ya know.)

Woo woo, all aboard! Everyone get on the train!

After last week’s “lesson”, or debacle, depending on your point of view, I decided to push the PCs a little harder in the planned on direction.

Although I wouldn’t quite call it a plot train, it was more of a heavy handed DM intervention to pick up the pieces of the previous week and put the game back on the right track.

The players could still have ignored it all and done their own thing, which is fine for a while. It’s all part of trying to find a good balance between allowing the players the freedom to develop their characters and goals, and giving the DM something to work with to get his story or plan to work.

Pre-game stuff:
Everyone but Dale made it. Aaron played Artemis.

Allen’s new PC is a monk named Lindo.

Aaron’s new PC is a cleric named Moure (or Moore, More, or Moor).

No game next week. Enough people needed to skip, so we’re calling it off.

My critique of the game:

The ability to trip is a lot more powerful than I had thought. In the players’ hands or the DM’s hands it can totally change the direction of a combat.

And for whatever insane reason, I rolled more natural 1’s on d20s than should be allowed by the laws of probability. Rolling a natural 1 should happen no more than 5% of the time with a d20. Yet I was getting them 20% of the time. And I’m back to retiring dice when they roll 1s, so I retired a good 20 d20s during this session.

Game Synopsis:

We started with the party returning to Endrin with sorrow at the loss of their friends Caspar & Ian.

The first thing they did was to sell their three remaining horses. The horses seemed to be too much of a liability (being monster chow and all), and the price for selling horses was at a premium.

Next they went to the Roaring Bull Inn, to both drown their sorrows and figure out a plan to find others who might want to join them on their adventures.

Bull was quite sad to hear of the loss of the two men, but understood that these things happen.

He allowed Artemis to tell the glory of their story to the audience at the inn, but no one was interested in joining up with the group as the audience was not the adventurous type.

The next item on the party’s list would be to post fliers throughout the town.

That got only one hit, and that was from a city guard with a message; the group now calling themselves “Caspar’s Brightblades” presence was “requested” by the king.

Note: Read “requested” as “All aboard!”

The king was looking for groups of brave souls to do what he could not afford to do with the city guards; rid the surrounding country side of danger.

So he and his advisors were in the process of setting up organized groups of individuals to do so. They would take the individuals and group them together for various tasks.

And that is how our group got their two newest members; Lindo & Moure.

The (railroaded) task they were given would be to clear the northern road to make contact with the city of Krendalar. Wizards had been able to make contact with wizards in other large cities, but if no wizard was present in a city, no communication would occur and the status of the city itself was unknown beyond refugees who were no longer coming.

What the party would be given is small but significant enough to them; they would be allowed to consign the creation of minor (+1) magic armor and weapons and possibly have the enhancements increased if they party supplied the appropriate gems.

So the newest incarnation of Caspar’s Brightblades set off the next morning.

(I don’t remember why they chose that name, by the way.)

They began their trek along the northern road and the first thing to happen was a bad omen of things to come; rain. Not a thunderstorm, just a gloomy downpour that seemed to repeat itself off and on for the next week of encounter-less travel.

That is until they came across the bodies of a couple of travelers, who were being picked apart by a couple of giant vultures. When the vultures noticed the PCs, they gave a warning shriek. The party responded with a half-dozen arrows. The vultures flew away.

But it was really a trap.

The Brightblades went about checking out the bodies, and while doing so a dozen worg-riding goblins charged from just outside the party’s sight (using a single scout that was hiding a short distance away).

And you would think an experienced DM like me would understand the power of a trip attack en-masse, but I have actually rarely used it. Well this night I learned that lesson.

Over the next few rounds the goblins closed and surrounded the party. The party put up an amazing fight, but the worgs’ tripping ability, even at a mere +3, just proved to be too much for them.

The combat rounds went something like “Ok PC, the worg bites you for 7 points of damage, make a trip check. Ok, the worg won so you’re now on the ground.” Then the PC would have to stand up and then face the attacks of opportunity from 3 worgs. This happened to every PC usually every other round.

But I realized that this TPK was my mistake, and although I gave the party a few breaks, there was no way out of the situation without making it obvious that I was doing a deus-ex-machina (or however it’s stated).

So after everyone was either dead or dying, the remaining goblins grabbed the bodies and took them to the goblins’ camp. Then the party woke up in Endrin.

They were told they had been saved by a passing group of guards, and brought back to the city and raised up.

So I basically raised them, with an XP hit, but otherwise left them intact. TPKs are no fun, especially when it’s mostly the DM’s fault.

Side Note: Princess Arianna received a full resurrection, for obvious reasons. It pays to be a king’s daughter. This means that someone in the royal house knows who she is.

Over the next week the party members recovered and were sent out for guard duty of the farmlands for a few more weeks, as the royalty had to make sure that they weren’t wasting resources on the party and their near-deaths was just the result of a bad day.

Once that was done and over with, the party set out again, on day 100.

This time it was only partly cloudy when they started.

Their first encounter started off pretty scarily, but after round 1 there was nothing to worry about.

A fiendish dire lion attacked them and pounced Moure, dealing 49 points of damage with 4 claw attacks and a bite attack. Then it was summarily slaughtered with a barrage of spells, arrows, and sword thrusts.

A few days later, in the middle of the night they were attacked by a pack of four ghouls and a creature called an overghast (large, spiky, entangling entrails, and other such fun). Although Aarasilia and Artemis were frozen in place by the ghouls, the party was able to get themselves together and did not become food.

They searched around for the lair of the ghouls (for treasure of course) and came upon a small cave with a dozen dread warriors, which ended up as a very one-sided battle.

Once that unpleasantness was over, plus a few more days travel, and party finally saw the walls of the city of Krendalar.

The Brightblades approached the western entrance of the small city cautiously. But nothing happened.

No sneak attacks, barrages from the sky, or spells from out of nowhere.

When they actually entered the city, it was utterly empty of life. The place was nothing more than a walled, over-sized ghost town.

The first thing they chose to investigate was the guard towers for the entrance. They found evidence of the guards defending themselves from the city’s inside, but like everywhere else they’ve been they found no bodies.

Their next option was to find a large and notable building.

The nearest such place was a gothic-style cathedral, which was still mostly undamaged.

The doors were neither locked nor barred. So they entered it slowly.

This gave the four gargoyles enough of an opportunity to sneak and get next to the party before combat began.

There were two normal gargoyles on the inside of the building, where Zelast, Moure, and Aarasilia were.
And there were two gargoyles with 5 levels of rogue outside the building, where Ari, Trebor, and Artemis were (we poofed out Lindo when Allen left early and took his character sheet with him).

It was a pretty nasty fight. The gargoyles on the inside prevented the group’s main melee people from helping the melee-fragile casters.

Gargoyles with rogue levels are just plain nasty. These would get to deal an extra 3d6 points of damage with every single hit if they qualified for sneak attack damage, and they get four attacks with a full attack. That adds up to a total of 14d6 + 2d4 + 4 damage if every attack hits (58 average damage).

Luckily for the party that much damage never occurred, but it could have.

It took at least three rounds for the party to successfully deal with the weaker gargoyles before they could get outside. And during that time Ari was knocked unconscious, and shortly later was joined by Artemis.

Eventually, once the party was able to regroup, all four gargoyles were put down. And many healing spells had to be used to get the party back in fighting shape.

And we stopped on that high note.

The odd thing was that the two gargoyles were much tougher than the wolves (by nearly 2 EL) but the mass of trips made a huge difference.

Next session – worgs and gargoyles unite!