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.