KotS #5
This session went pretty smoothly.
Everyone has learned their PC’s sufficiently enough that we usually don’t have to pull out the rulebooks every thirty seconds.
And for two weeks in a row we had a full table, and this week it mattered as we needed everyone’s abilities to survive as Dale hit us hard with the module.
Me, playing Tornok, the level 2 tiefling warlord
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 2 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 2 dragonborn paladin
Justin, playing Stout, the level 2 dwarven fighter
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 1 eladrin wizard
Usually we discuss with one another what abilities and feats we want to take. Justin had to decide between two utility powers for Stout. Each was nice in its own way, but nothing really jumped out at him as a gottahavit power.
He went with Boundless Endurance, a daily ability that gives him regeneration 5 for an encounter, but only when he’s bloodied. This proved to be a very good decision, and it paid off immensely.
This week’s quote is from Aaron: “I wish I had the power of Raping Strike.”
This was some wiseass remark about Stout’s at-will power Reaping Strike.
Bad Aaron. Baaaad Aaron.
We started the session still in the dungeon, but sufficiently drained in resources that we had to rest.
Even though 4E is much less “resource reliant” and 3E was, when you’re down to less than half of your healing surges and have used all of your daily powers, it’s time to make camp.
So we snuck out of the dungeon of the keep and found Splug, our highly-paid goblin lackey who has keeps camp for us outside the dungeon now.
He cooked us a fine “gourmet” dinner and we didn’t ask what it was made from.
And now everyone likes Splug, even to the point that Valenae and Stout are trying to teach him some skills that might give him levels.
After an uneventful night, we returned to the adventurer’s daily grind of killing monsters and taking their stuff.
Still on the first level of the dungeon, we’re just looking for areas we haven’t mapped out and we enter that area, all while killing things that try to kill us.
The area we entered this time had a pair of zombies and half a dozen minions in the first room that we easily clobbered. Earl’s fiery breath cleaned out the minions and the regular zombies were shredded before they could do much to us.
Then while scouting, Valenae inadvertently tripped a rune-trap that emitted a shriek. The shriek was both a fear attack that affected Stout and Tornok, and a warning to summon some more zombies like the ones we just shredded.
Had the rest of the group not stopped us from running to the room the trap sent us to, I’d be running a new PC next session.
But they stopped us, and we dealt with the new zombies as easily as before.
We searched the rest of the area and found that there were only stairs leading to the second level of the dungeon and the room Stout and Tornok had almost entered.
We chose the room.
The room was long and lined with 10 sarcophagi, 5 along each side. It appeared to have once been a temple to Bahamut, but had been desecrated since then.
Knowing what I know now, Dale gave Tornok and Stout a break before entering this room, as this room was a death trap.
Once we were halfway through the sarcophagus area each one threw out a skeleton, 8 minions and 2 warriors.
At first we thought this fight we be no big deal, until the next round when 8 more minions and 2 more warriors were blasted out of the sarcophagi.
When the third round came along and it happened again, we began pulling back into the hallway we entered from, but the skeletons were making that hard on us.
Our front line formed a wall against the stronger warriors, keeping them away from the rest of us. And were all trying to mow a path to the hallway so we could each shift 1 square a round to our goal.
We were afraid the number of skeletons being tossed at us could be infinite, but they stopped at 5 waves.
By then we were ready to run if need be, but we had also been able to set up a defensive wall in the hallway that only allowed 2 attackers at us at a time.
Unfortunately the skeleton minions had bows and were causing us no end of grief.
That’s where our wizard’s Scorching Burst paid for itself. Hadarai was able to clean out 2-4 minions a round thanks to that power.
We had to swap some people out of the front lines to allow them a chance to heal up, but in the end the skeletons were doomed:
Stout could deal 1d10+7 damage with his axe.
Earl did radiant damage, which added 5 to his 1d10+5 damage.
Tornok could jump in as a front line alternate, but he could also give up his standard action to allow another PC to attack and gave +2 to damage.
Hadarai put his Scorching Burst to use each and every round, dealing 1d6+5 damage in a burst radius of 1. That’s not a lot for 1 round, but it hurts the fifth time. (Yet I’ve heard so many complaints about how wizards suck now.)
Valenae could jump in as a front line alternate and throw daggers from the back.
That fight took every bit of healing we had, but we also earned a huge chunk of XP (hello level 3), and most of use didn’t use our daily abilities.
We scoured that room, and had to do it quickly as Earl and Hadarai told us that the sarcophagi might “reload”. That ended up not being a problem once Earl prayed at the altar of Bahamut, and somehow restored its power.
Valenae found a secret compartment in the altar, holding 5 platinum and silver statues that we assume are of Bahamut.
Once properly rested we entered the last room (I think) of this level, that was just beyond the altar.
It was a large mausoleum holding only one coffin of a warrior in a place of honor.
Of course the resident of the coffin, one Sir Keegan, had to come out and say hi.
Long story short, we had our first non-combat encounter where we convinced Sir Keegan that our intentions were noble (destroying the death cult, preventing the rift from opening).
He told us his story of him failing in his responsibilities, allowing the energies of the Shadowfell realm to corrupt his mind and body. He ended up killing his family and the soldiers of the keep. He now serves an eternal penance in this mausoleum.
He gave us (Tornok) his magic longsword Aekris (no clue on the spelling), a +1 weapon with a daily power that gives its wielder a healing surge when he drops an undead to 0hp and told us the statues of Bahamut we found may protect us later.
We said goodbye to Sir Keegan and are heading to the stairs down to level 2.
And that is where we’ll start our next session.
Everyone has learned their PC’s sufficiently enough that we usually don’t have to pull out the rulebooks every thirty seconds.
And for two weeks in a row we had a full table, and this week it mattered as we needed everyone’s abilities to survive as Dale hit us hard with the module.
Me, playing Tornok, the level 2 tiefling warlord
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 2 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 2 dragonborn paladin
Justin, playing Stout, the level 2 dwarven fighter
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 1 eladrin wizard
Usually we discuss with one another what abilities and feats we want to take. Justin had to decide between two utility powers for Stout. Each was nice in its own way, but nothing really jumped out at him as a gottahavit power.
He went with Boundless Endurance, a daily ability that gives him regeneration 5 for an encounter, but only when he’s bloodied. This proved to be a very good decision, and it paid off immensely.
This week’s quote is from Aaron: “I wish I had the power of Raping Strike.”
This was some wiseass remark about Stout’s at-will power Reaping Strike.
Bad Aaron. Baaaad Aaron.
We started the session still in the dungeon, but sufficiently drained in resources that we had to rest.
Even though 4E is much less “resource reliant” and 3E was, when you’re down to less than half of your healing surges and have used all of your daily powers, it’s time to make camp.
So we snuck out of the dungeon of the keep and found Splug, our highly-paid goblin lackey who has keeps camp for us outside the dungeon now.
He cooked us a fine “gourmet” dinner and we didn’t ask what it was made from.
And now everyone likes Splug, even to the point that Valenae and Stout are trying to teach him some skills that might give him levels.
After an uneventful night, we returned to the adventurer’s daily grind of killing monsters and taking their stuff.
Still on the first level of the dungeon, we’re just looking for areas we haven’t mapped out and we enter that area, all while killing things that try to kill us.
The area we entered this time had a pair of zombies and half a dozen minions in the first room that we easily clobbered. Earl’s fiery breath cleaned out the minions and the regular zombies were shredded before they could do much to us.
Then while scouting, Valenae inadvertently tripped a rune-trap that emitted a shriek. The shriek was both a fear attack that affected Stout and Tornok, and a warning to summon some more zombies like the ones we just shredded.
Had the rest of the group not stopped us from running to the room the trap sent us to, I’d be running a new PC next session.
But they stopped us, and we dealt with the new zombies as easily as before.
We searched the rest of the area and found that there were only stairs leading to the second level of the dungeon and the room Stout and Tornok had almost entered.
We chose the room.
The room was long and lined with 10 sarcophagi, 5 along each side. It appeared to have once been a temple to Bahamut, but had been desecrated since then.
Knowing what I know now, Dale gave Tornok and Stout a break before entering this room, as this room was a death trap.
Once we were halfway through the sarcophagus area each one threw out a skeleton, 8 minions and 2 warriors.
At first we thought this fight we be no big deal, until the next round when 8 more minions and 2 more warriors were blasted out of the sarcophagi.
When the third round came along and it happened again, we began pulling back into the hallway we entered from, but the skeletons were making that hard on us.
Our front line formed a wall against the stronger warriors, keeping them away from the rest of us. And were all trying to mow a path to the hallway so we could each shift 1 square a round to our goal.
We were afraid the number of skeletons being tossed at us could be infinite, but they stopped at 5 waves.
By then we were ready to run if need be, but we had also been able to set up a defensive wall in the hallway that only allowed 2 attackers at us at a time.
Unfortunately the skeleton minions had bows and were causing us no end of grief.
That’s where our wizard’s Scorching Burst paid for itself. Hadarai was able to clean out 2-4 minions a round thanks to that power.
We had to swap some people out of the front lines to allow them a chance to heal up, but in the end the skeletons were doomed:
Stout could deal 1d10+7 damage with his axe.
Earl did radiant damage, which added 5 to his 1d10+5 damage.
Tornok could jump in as a front line alternate, but he could also give up his standard action to allow another PC to attack and gave +2 to damage.
Hadarai put his Scorching Burst to use each and every round, dealing 1d6+5 damage in a burst radius of 1. That’s not a lot for 1 round, but it hurts the fifth time. (Yet I’ve heard so many complaints about how wizards suck now.)
Valenae could jump in as a front line alternate and throw daggers from the back.
That fight took every bit of healing we had, but we also earned a huge chunk of XP (hello level 3), and most of use didn’t use our daily abilities.
We scoured that room, and had to do it quickly as Earl and Hadarai told us that the sarcophagi might “reload”. That ended up not being a problem once Earl prayed at the altar of Bahamut, and somehow restored its power.
Valenae found a secret compartment in the altar, holding 5 platinum and silver statues that we assume are of Bahamut.
Once properly rested we entered the last room (I think) of this level, that was just beyond the altar.
It was a large mausoleum holding only one coffin of a warrior in a place of honor.
Of course the resident of the coffin, one Sir Keegan, had to come out and say hi.
Long story short, we had our first non-combat encounter where we convinced Sir Keegan that our intentions were noble (destroying the death cult, preventing the rift from opening).
He told us his story of him failing in his responsibilities, allowing the energies of the Shadowfell realm to corrupt his mind and body. He ended up killing his family and the soldiers of the keep. He now serves an eternal penance in this mausoleum.
He gave us (Tornok) his magic longsword Aekris (no clue on the spelling), a +1 weapon with a daily power that gives its wielder a healing surge when he drops an undead to 0hp and told us the statues of Bahamut we found may protect us later.
We said goodbye to Sir Keegan and are heading to the stairs down to level 2.
And that is where we’ll start our next session.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 11:14 PM
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