Thunderspire Labyrinth #3b

(Sorry for the delay in updates, we’ve had some computer issues and did some traveling for my twin’s first birthday.)

Welcome to week 2 off non-module gaming.

You’d think that with 7 total people in the group we’d be able to consistently have 4 players and a DM, but not at the moment.

Really 3 players and a DM isn’t that bad, it’s just that the WotC modules are written for 5 PC’s. I could scale the module, but I’d have to reduce the toughness of the modules by around 40%. I’d rather increase the difficulty later than reduce it now.

Instead I’m just going to run quick and easy modules I make up.

Really we’re still learning the ins and outs of the 4E system, and running a combat-oriented mini-module is pretty good for all involved.

Those who miss don’t miss the module.
Those who show get XP, some treasure, and learn to how to deal without key members of the group.
I get some experience in the nuances of making encounters for 4E.

Man oh man do I enjoy making those encounters. I never realized how much more fun it could be to actually add things to the map to make it harder on the party and easier on the monsters. And yes, I make sure to adjust XP for too easy and too hard maps.

Though in my future campaigns, players who have a tendency to miss more than others will have to have their PC’s put in to more of a background role and to play a class that isn’t crucial to the group.

For this week, I brought Dieter back so that party could have an extra target. I also set up the module to be scalable in case they didn’t want Dieter back.

So our lineup for this session:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 5 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 5 dragonborn paladin
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 4 eladrin wizard
Sean, controlling Dieter, the level 4 human fighter (bodyguard) DMPC

We hand waived Brom moving on and Hadarai stepping in, as the group rested near the waterfall from last week.

After a nice breakfast cooked by Splug they were about to head back to town when a small bird flew up to the group. It seemed frantic and smelled like smoke.

The bird flew to the party, then away, then to them, then away, so they curiously followed it until they could see the outline of a small forest in the distance with a smoky haze over it.

Being heroes, they knew what they had to do.

The bird led them to a trail in the trees before it flew out of sight.

Valenae took lead, which was the best option, as the ettercap and his two pet deathjump spiders had set a trap.

Valenae did not fall into the 30’ pit (with spikes and poison) thanks to his passive perception and then we went on initiative.

This was supposed to be a semi-easy fight that ended up a bit tougher than it should have been.

The map was mostly forest except for a 10’ path, the trap blocking forward movement, and the ettercap added some lovely webbing to the area early on the combat. All of this really hurt the mobility of the party.

The spiders jumped into spots where they could poison someone while not be totally surrounded while the ettercap did his best to restrict movement even more.

The party was frantically trying to bring down a spider with their very limited movement.

At one point Dieter was hit by so many effects he was immobilized, slowed, prone, and taking an ongoing 5 poison damage.

Once they dropped the first spider, the rest of the combat was much easier to deal with. The fight sucked at least one healing surge from everyone though.

After searching and resting they got back on the trail, which slowly changed from a claustrophobic forest to a friendlier place where the trees seemed to beckon the party forward.

Eventually they came to a high-canopied area that was almost a clearing. At one edge of the clearing was a large, root-covered stone tablet with glowing gold runes on it that Hadarai determined was a stone of healing (5hp per round, and regain a healing surge once per day while adjacent to it).

As they were using the stone a slightly charred but healing treant made himself known.

(The treant had a name, but no one ever asked him for it.)

The treant requested help from the party to aid in destroying a force of orcs that were rampaging through the forest.

Of course the party agreed, and with a wave of the treant’s hand, a new path in the trees opened for the party to follow until their noses told them where to go.

When they saw and smelled increasing amounts of smoke they attempted to go into stealth mode, but only Valenae had results that were good enough to hide from your deaf grandparents.

This encounter was all forest except for 10 burning forest squares. At the end of each round, each burning forest square had a chance to go out and leave rough terrain or had a chance to expand and create another burning forest square. Actions in combat increased the chances for either result.

A group of 4 orc minions, a pair of hell hounds, and a harpy were here simply to wreak havoc in the forest. The party was going to stop them, and without using fire type spells and abilities.

As expected, the minions were nothing but a nuisance. The hell hounds were very rough on the party with their fiery aura dealing free damage to them every round. And the harpy held back until there was an opening for her to start using her abilities.

Dieter did his best to hold back one hell hound while Valenae and Earl the party took care of the other.
Hadarai took care of the minions and blasted whoever made the best target.

When the harpy finally let loose, she played the game of charming the group and keeping them off guard until her screeching attack recharged. It was a rough dance, but eventually the party was able to nickel and dime her to death.

The party put out the fires on the area and rested and healed up, more healing surges gone.

Afterwards they followed their noses until they came to a large swath of the forest that was now barely burning embers and scattered everywhere were hundreds of dead creatures of the forest, slaughtered for sport by the orcs.

The party and the orcs saw each other at the same time. With a shout the Eye of Gruumsh (orc priest) ordered his troops to charge (8 minions, 4 berserkers).

The party quickly formed a line as best they could by some burned down trees, but that didn’t stop the orcs from flanking them.

This combat beat the party up bad. Nearly everyone in the party had fallen at one point, some of them more than once, heal checks and powers got them back up.

After the last orc died the party was nearly spent. Everyone except Earl was down to their last healing surge or two, and no one had any dailies left. But the fighting wasn’t over.

When they were about to head back to the healing stone, they heard some maniacal laughing and shouting from someone.

With the party not too far away, Valenae scouted this rocky area out. He found a human mage investigating a large brass cup sitting on a marble pedestal. The mage was emanating heat and holding an iron staff forged in the shape of a tall flame.

Near the mage were his two pets, a magma claw and a magma hurler, and his bodyguard, an ogre.

Valenae was given the option to get a surprise round or to warn his friends. He chose the surprise round and threw his dagger at the ogre (I wonder if Aaron thought they only had 50 hp like they did in 3E).

He rolled a nat 20 and did and impressive 35 points of damage with a simple dagger +2, but that didn’t even bloody the ogre. Worse, his targets were closer to him than allies were.

“Destroy him my pets!”

The two sides collided at a choke point on the map. The party was in very bad shape resource-wise, but were in a slightly better tactical position.

The ogre smashed, the magma hurler lobbed balls of molten rock, the magma claw ripped into them, and the mage blasted the party with fire spell after fire spell.

Valenae did his best to hide and throw daggers, Hadarai did his usual blasting from behind, Dieter moved up to block movement to protect the backline, while Earl took on the ogre as best he could.

The ogre and Dieter were the first to fall, but the party was taking a horrible beating from the mage. He was a human mage with the Scion of Flame template added, wielding a Staff of Fiery Burning +2, which meant his measly Magic Missiles were actually Fiery Magic Missiles that did 2d4+6 fire damage, or 14+2d8 fire damage on a crit. Plus anyone that hit him with a melee attack took 4 fire damage, and the party was out of healing.

Next Earl dropped then the magma claw, then the magma hurler.

This week’s quote of the week:
Sean: “Haha. He stole your kill.”
Brian: “I don’t care. I want that thing off of me.”

The mage was standing, and he wasn’t bloodied.
Hadarai was standing. He had 2 hit points left and no healing surges.
Valenae was standing, and he also had 2 hit points left, no healing surges, and two healing potions.
Healing potions are worthless without a healing surge, so Valenae dumped both of the potions down Earl’s throat (who still had 5 healing surges) while Hadarai occupied the mage.

Once Earl was up and standing he charged the mage while the other 2 PC’s hit him with their ranged attacks.

When the mage finally dropped, even Earl was down to single-digit hit points.

After the party did their usual search and rest, the treant found them (many orc parts and pieces hung from his many branches), and thanked them for their heroism.

He also explained to them that the fire mage would have gained nothing from the brass cup once it was removed from its pedestal.

After that it was late, so we stopped for the night.

Thunderspire Labyrinth #3a

(Sorry for the delay. Power has been out.)

You know, I’m glad they didn’t continue the “beefing up” of dragons.

Dragons had been steadily increasing in power with each new edition of D&D. While 4E still has strong dragons, they are more balanced than before and the abilities of each dragon distinguish them from one another rather than being giant winged wizards they were in 2E & 3E.

The only thing missing is the quantity of them. As of right now we have only 20. I want more.

Yes, I’m sure more are coming, but I don’t feel like waiting.
I bet someone has already created updated versions of the older edition dragons. I just need to stop playing WoW long enough to look around on the web.

This session was a bit light on the player side; Mike, Justin, and Brian couldn’t make it.

Dale was able to join us this week, so we had 3 players, and the DM added an easy to run DMPC - Dieter, the human defensive fighter.

Dale played Brom the warlock. Dale has been waiting to play an infernal-pact warlock for the longest time. His only job is to blast away targets, something Dale is an expert at and gets much joy from.

Dale loves the class. I, on the other hand, just do not like the overly-complicated class. But I’m also not a fan of the constant “marking” that the melee classes do now. It doesn’t help that we always make a urine-based remark when someone says “I marked him”.

We still chuckle at the reference though, because we’re guys.

For a quick role-playing reason to get Brom and Dieter together, Dieter was Brom’s hired bodyguard.

So our lineup for this session:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 5 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 4 dragonborn paladin
Dale, playing Brom, the level 4 tiefling warlock (hell pact)
Sean, controlling Dieter, the level 4 human fighter (bodyguard) DMPC

To get the story going quickly, Brom was hunting for his stolen Rod of First Blood +2. He was on the trail of someone known as Gormothriz.

(Crappy plot huh? I was looking for quick and easy, not realistic. I’m saving realistic for my next campaign. Right now plots are just threadbare excuses to go from encounter to encounter.)

Valenae and Earl had been scouting around Winterhaven while the rest of the group were making magic items or off doing their own thing when Splug found them and begged for their help.

Poor Splug had been evicted from his home under the waterfall (previously occupied by Irontooth and pals) by a bunch of kobolds working for someone named Gormothriz.

While Valenae and Earl were discussing the best plan, Brom had overheard their conversation and the mention of the name Gormothriz. For mutual benefit they joined forces and later that day they were once again traveling down the King’s Road.

Of course there was a bandit ambush along the road. It’s now required to have an ambush on all roads in 4E (page 208 of the DMG for reference).

It was a simple fight of 8 human rabble minions, 1 doppelganger sneak, and 1 doppelganger assassin that the party tore through.

That was exactly what I wanted. I had to throw a moderately weak combat against the party to make sure they could handle the progressively stronger combats I was about to throw at them. And remember, their only healer was Earl, whose heals are limited to Lay on Hands once a day, and a power that heals everyone 6 if he hits his target.

The minions died quick and easy.
The sneak died quickly as well, but at least he gave a good smack to Valenae first.
The assassin did the best against the party, forcing them to use different tactics to stay alive.

(Please let me know if you actually looked up page 208 of the DMG.)

Next we jumped to the waterfall, where the kobolds of Gormothriz had set up their home.

The kobolds knew the party was coming, and the party could see a kobold or two through the trees. Thus the combat began with no surprise round.

The kobolds were scattered about the map, getting cover or hiding as best they could.

The party intended to get into the caves to set up a killing point, but the kobolds would have none of that. The kobolds instead lured the party to stay out in the open for javelin attacks and were able to sucker Dieter into a pit holding a stormclaw scorpion (which almost killed him) and kept Brom and Dieter out of the combat for several rounds so the kobolds could concentrate on Earl and Valenae.

In spite of the huge amounts of maneuvering the kobolds were doing, the party took them down one by one.

(In case you want to know – there was 1 kobold slyblade, 1 kobold wyrmpriest, 1 kobold dragonshield, 10 kobold minions, 1 10’ pit, and 1 stormclaw scorpion.)

This time when they searched the lair for treasure, they also found a recently dug large tunnel that led out of their sight, presumably to the big fight with Gormothriz.

But Valenae had been a little too “brave”, and had no healing surges left. Not a good position to be in when possibly fighting a boss.

Which leads us to this week’s quote by Aaron.
Aaron “I gotta work on being more chicken”.

I’ve been trying to hammer that into Aaron a while now. All it’s gotten me is a higher PC body count.

So they rested peacefully through the night (not that I didn’t roll for random encounters).

The next morning they went down the tunnel, which just connected to another area high up on a hill.

Although it was late in the season, it wasn’t quite winter yet. But this area had recent snow on it and there was cold wind whipping throughout (the map was Hailstorm Tower to those it matters to).

Aaron quickly forgot that bit about being more chicken and had Valenae scout the areas ahead.

He ended up triggering some falling rocks, which woke up Gormothriz (a young white dragon), and put us on initiative.

Valenae was first on the initiative stack, so he ran away from the falling rocks, only to hide behind another area that triggered falling rocks. This time Valenae did take a bit of a beating from the rocks.

Poor Valenae’s situation did not improve. Instead of moving to help Valenae, Brom and Dieter took another route to get in a good position to nuke the dragon.

That’s ok; karma gave a great big middle finger to Brom as he missed with his best daily and encounter powers

Then Gormo showed up and made poor Valenae’s day even worse by using his Frightful Presence, which stunned Valenae and forced him to stay in the falling rock area for another round. The following round Gormo ripped into Valenae.

Leaving Valenae for dead with only 3 hit points, Gormothriz moved to breathe at Brom and Dieter.

That gave Earl and Valenae a chance to heal Valenae.

Dale, seeing the situation for worse than it was, began pushing for a retreat. That would have been a bad thing. It’s not often that food just delivers itself to a dragon, but to then run away is just plain rude.

Frankly Dale missed that the dragon was only a level 3 creature and had already used its action points and breath weapon. Not to mention that the dragon’s attacks aren’t that strong, I had just rolled well – up to that point.

The dragon began to miss with all of his attacks, and then the party surrounded him and proceeded to give him “the business” as Dale likes to say.

That forced Gormo to fly back to his tower, which is very open to the weather and isn’t very defendable. But it was coated in ice, making movement difficult for all but Gormo.

Additionally several of the squares were “treacherous ice”, a nasty trap that knocks people prone, damages them, and can even end their turn prematurely.

The party followed Gormo and continued to pound on him.

Once again Valenae threw caution to the wind and teleported into a flanking position – right onto a square of treacherous ice. The ice immediately knocked him prone and would have killed him had Brom not killed Gormo that same round.

They healed up, searched for treasure, and so on.

It was still a little early so we added another fight against some zombies that unthawed when Gormo died. There was nothing much to it other than Valenae almost dying yet again and Earl almost joining him.

Thunderspire Labyrinth #2

Here’s a little side effect of having monsters with a variety of special powers; monsters that have no cool special powers are boring to run.

Hobgoblins should never be boring. They’re D&D’s uruk-hai and the hobgoblin soldier’s special abilities all have to do with being in formation and a pre-emptive chance at a saving throw.

Give me an ettin with its double-actions and “swat” abilities that make rogues cry.

Something I haven’t done much of (in these two whole sessions I’ve run) is do a lot of role-playing. And I think everyone in the group is ok with that for now. At the moment we’re more interested in figuring out the game and getting new powers and how best to use them.

Now as time goes on and we become more comfortable with the edition, we’re going to add in more role-playing.

But for the time being we’re just jumping into the action with just enough role-playing to get by.

Our lineup for this session:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 5 eladrin rogue (guess who’s made it to all of the sessions)
Justin, playing Stout, the level 4 dwarven fighter
Scott, playing Earl, the level 4 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 4 elf cleric
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 4 eladrin wizard

We last stopped with Valenae having returned a magical drow music box to Gendar.

Now the only course of action the party had presented to them was going after the Bloodreavers in the Chamber of Eyes, but they didn’t quite want to jump into that just yet.

They asked the Halfmoon halflings for any leads, but weren’t given any appealing options that didn’t sound like suicide missions into the Underdark.

Valenae didn’t want to just hang out in the Seven Pillared Hall for fear of accidentally angering the Mages of Saruun so the group decided to scout out the area of the Chamber of Eyes.

Somehow “scouting the Chamber of Eyes” turned into “raiding the Chamber of Eyes and clearing out the Bloodreavers”.

There were 2 entrances to this ancient temple of Torog. One was through a pair of doors that were locked with guards behind them. The other was through an unlocked door on a balcony 15’ up.

With a series of decent climbing checks, everyone was up on the balcony and when Valenae heard possible snoring that is when scouting turned into raiding.

Valenae saw a pair of goblins cleaning their equipment and a bugbear sleeping on a bed.

Since he was first on initiative he took this opportunity to fey step next to the bugbear and deliver a coup de grace using his vicious short sword +1. Had he dealt 2 more damage with the auto-crit from the weapon, he’d have killed the bugbear outright. But he didn’t so that made the fight a bit more interesting for him. Being alone and soon to be surrounded by 4 goblin skull cleavers and a bugbear warrior is not a safe place to be.

Well the bugbear did wallop him nicely, but with Valenae’s friends rushing to help him and plenty of cover for defense, he was fine in the end.

The combat ended up taking forever because it was just a back-and-forth fight with one snag for the party – one of the goblins ran off to warn Chief Krand that they were under attack. The party saw the goblin flee, so they were expecting the worst.

In spite of that knowledge they decided to do a pincer assault on a room.

Their option was to have either 1 long line of characters trying to enter the room, or 2 smaller lines of characters entering the room from 2 directions. Which might have worked had both doors not been locked leaving one of the groups to be pinned in a dead-end until they unlocked that door.

Stout and Ander raided from one pincer, and he was able to bust the door open with the two of them facing off against a pair of duergar warriors.

Valenae, Hadarai, and Earl were unable to get their door open, meaning they were getting attacked by a dire wolf and a goblin skullcleaver.

Now there were more Bloodreavers ready to attack, but Chief Krand felt it best to hold forces in reserve so as not to place too many soldiers in harm’s way if they weren’t needed. But once his soldiers started taking casualties, he signaled a charge.

To back up the duergar, Krand sent a hobgoblin archer and a hobgoblin warcaster.
To back up the dire wolf, Krand sent 2 hobgoblin archers, and faced off against Earl himself.

After many rounds of trying they finally got the 2nd door open, but it may have been too late; Stout and Ander had to retreat back down their hallway a bit for tactical and defensive reasons, and the archers were about to knock Hadarai out of the combat (he was really messing with their attacks).

With Hadarai down, the archers focused on Earl, bolstered by Chief Krand’s special abilities that gave them +2 to hit and damage against targets he hit with his melee attack.

Ander and Stout slowly dropped their opponents until they were able to join in to help the other group.

For several rounds Earl bounced up and down on hit points – up from his and Ander’s healing abilities (which also put Hadarai back into the fight), and down from Krand and the archers. But he couldn’t stay up round after round.

Eventually he dropped, but he had bought enough time for the two groups to get back together.

Valenae was able to spend a round hiding and then pop out and sneak attacking Chief Krand, dropping him.

This week’s quote - Aaron: “Haha, stole your kill”
It was spoken several more times that night by different players.

After that it was only a matter of time for the combat to end.

In their searching for treasure they found a contract for the Bloodreavers to sell their slaves for 1000gp, signed by Murkelmor Grimmerzhul two days ago.

That named sounded familiar to the group, but they didn’t know why until later.

(Also while the party was searching and resting, there were a few straggler Bloodreavers that ran off.)

Since the Seven Pillared Hall was only 250’ away from the Chamber of Eyes, Valenae ran off to ask Gendar information about the Bloodreavers and Murkelmor Grimmerzhul. It cost him 20gp (10gp for the information + 10gp for Gendar to forget he was asked) and Gendar filled him in that some Bloodreavers had come to the Seven Pillared Hall a short while ago, entered the Grimmerzhul Trading Post and then went off into the Underdark.

That caused some pieces to fall in place, so Valenae returned to the Chamber of Eyes.

The party rested there for the night, then effectively locked the place up returned to the Seven Pillared Hall where they were greeted by Brugg, the ogre in the employ of the Mages of Saruun. He less than politely told the party to be careful and to not cause any more trouble.

They gave 10gp entice names from Brugg of who had been talking about them, but Brugg said nothing and kept the 10gp.

With that the party went to the Halfmoon Inn.

The Halfmoon’s were pleased to hear that the Bloodreavers were out of business and they confirmed what Gendar had said and pointed out the Grimmerzhul Trading Post to the party.

On the plus side, Gendar finally delivered the Create Magic Items ritual to the group, the party safely delivered Chief Krand’s head to Fallcrest to collect the 1000gp reward, and finally they safely traveled all the way back to Winterhaven so Valenae could finish his FedEx quest for Bairwin.

Then, with the group’s slowly accumulated wealth, they went about making magic items.

Next week we may have only 3 PC’s, so I’m going to make a side quest that might work for 2 strikers and a controller.