Thunderspire Labyrinth #6

Yeah, I know I’ve been neglecting updating the blog.

I’m pretty far behind really, but I’ve been on overtime at work for the past 3 weeks (and counting) and my wife has a big career-related test coming up that she has to do a lot of studying so that means I have to pick up the slack as best I can.

I’ll try to catch up, or not get farther behind.

Don’t put any bets on it though.

Anyway, this is generally how our combats go with 4E:
Early rounds – The monsters use their offensive powers, putting the party on the defensive while they recover.
Middle rounds – The party recovers then uses offensive powers to specific targets.
Late rounds – If they’re doing well, the party mops up the field. If not, they’ll use their reserves as best they can until they barely eek out a win.

Of course which class and player combinations are present affect that.

Example: When Ander uses his daily power Spiritual Weapon, Valenae is able to attack that target and gets his sneak attack damage all from range, and for the entire encounter.

Our lineup for this session:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 7 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 6 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 5 elf cleric with some ranger multi-classing
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 5 eladrin wizard

If all goes well, this next session should have everyone.

Last session we stopped with party having cleared out half of the last tower (north) of the Horned Hold.

The next step on their path of destruction was a room holding a dozen slaves, an elite duergar theurge, a couple of duergar guards, and a pair of spined devils.

The party heard voices through the door, so they were ready for combat.
The duergar were on alert, so they were ready for combat as well.
In other words, there was no surprise round and no chat. We just jumped right into initiative.

The slaves were in large pits, so they were safe for the most part.

The devils used those pits to their advantage. They could easily use their ranged attacks against the party while anyone coming after them had to around the pit. Even then, the devils could just fly to another spot, forcing that person to go around the pit again and again giving the PC only opportunity attacks.

The theurge was able to lay down a barrage on the party early on leaving several of them blind and prone. She repeated this as often as she could. But it also made her a prime target. When the party targeted her, she didn’t last too long.

The guards were nothing more than speed bumps meant to buy time for the rest of the group.

Scott: “I actually killed something for a change.”
(Earl tends to take the hard hits rather than giving them.)

The combat took plenty of time, and drained a fair amount of resources from the party.

It didn’t help them that teamwork was a bit lacking this time around as everyone seemed to do their own thing.

But they still won and freed the slaves; 8 from a village the Bloodreavers had raided not long ago, 3 prospectors from within the labyrinth that were nabbed by the Bloodreavers, and a goblin that was once a Bloodreaver but they decided to sell him.

The slaves were in poor shape, but healthy enough to leave, yet too afraid to leave the place without the party killing the leader of the Horned Hold, Murkelmore Grimmerzhul. He’s particularly vicious and ruthless duergar who would do worse than re-enslave them if they were caught.

Luckily Murkelmore’s room was not far from their current location. In fact had the party picked an east door instead of a north door, they’d probably have fought him first.

They knew they found the right room when they heard the crackling of a large fire and some angry ranting.

They opened the door to find a large and opulently decorated room. It was guarded by a pair of duergar shocktroopers, another duergar theurge, and a paladin of Asmodeus – Murkelmore.

Murkelmore shouted a challenge to the party and combat began, once again, with no surprise or chitchat.

Since this was the final fight of the Horned Hold, the combat was especially vicious. So vicious the party had some second thoughts halfway through the first round of combat as Murkelmore charged at them and theurge blinded them.

Hadarai responded with a Web spell which delayed the shocktroopers from getting to the party so soon, but gave the theurge a good buffer so she could last longer and gave her more opportunities to recharge her powers.

Earl does the best he can at being defender and he takes a beating in the process. He uses his daily powers to buff up the party with a zone that boosts AC and a power that gives everyone +3 to damage. Both of them pay off in the long run.

The shocktroopers do nothing more than hack away at any target that is near enough too them. The party is not thrilled when the shocktroopers expand to large size like Rundarr did last session (large size, 2 reach, and +5 to damage).

The party just kept taking a beating and quickly ran out of usable powers.

Ander, who usually has several powers to use, was down to at-will powers halfway through the combat. And this was the norm for the combat for everyone.

Murkelmore was a huge nuisance with nearly 200 hit points, at least a 20 in each defense, had powers that could push someone away, and he even had a rechargeable healing power (which really angered the group).

The fight was getting desperate when the party had only dropped a single shocktrooper, and had to use most of their powers to get that done.

Valenae had one chance to take out the theurge when she was blinded. He had to fey step behind her, effectively cutting him off from the party. If he hit he’d probably deal enough damage to take her out. But he missed, was very low on hit points, and had no one around that could help him.

“So Stout will lead a new group of adventurers into the dungeon.”
- Mike

Had I rolled a little bit better, it would have been a TPK. But the party finally was giving more than they were getting and when they finally killed Murkelmore they half cheered, half breathed a sigh of relief.

Given the party’s current state, the remaining 2 duergar were still a real threat to them.

First they carefully took out the theurge, and then surrounded and hacked away at the shocktrooper until he died.

And all they won in treasure was a few hundred gold and a flaming maul +2, which none of them use.

After a quick rest they gathered the freed slaves and made their way back to the Seven Pillared Hall (the goblin disappeared along the way).

Before they entered the Hall, Valenae snuck into Gendar’s Curios and Relics to take care of the business with the skull-topped rod and to make sure the Mages of Saruun weren’t going to destroy them for meddling in the business of the Grimmerzhuls.

Gendar told Valenae that the Mages have no interest in what happens outside the Hall so long as it doesn’t affect what happens in the hall.

Gendar then asked that Valenae sneak back out of his shop as he wanted to problems with the Grimmerzhuls.

After that the party boldly marched the ex-slaves into the Seven Pillared Hall, making sure to wave hi to the duergar standing outside the Grimmerzhul Trading Post. They then led them to the exit of the mountain where the villagers and company fled to the nearest city.

The exhausted party was about to rest for the evening when Brugg, the foul-tempered ogre in the employ of the Mages of Saruun, came up to the party with fury in his eyes demanding that the mages wanted to see them.

He led them to a magic circle near the giant minotaur statue in the Hall.

A few moments later a humanoid person appeared in the circle, wearing a golden mask.

The Mage of Saruun told the party in a flat voice that one of their numbers had disappeared, named Paldemar.
He tasked the party to find Paldemar, and if he was alive, to kill him.

He then disappeared.

That wasn’t much information to go on, but conveniently the next morning a runt of a kobold brought them a sealed scroll.

It was a note from someone working with the duergar who wants to get out of working with them. He would be willing to give the party information if they were to help him get out of the organization.

And with that, we stopped.

Thunderspire Labyrinth #5

I’ve heard and read of others thinking that combats still take too long. They’ve come up with various solutions such as adding a bonus to hit depending on which round of combat you’re on.

Here’s my solution and it’s easy to do; be prepared.

Unless you’re totally winging it, DM’s have needed their notes ready and in order before the game since its inception. I try to have all creatures in each combat shown on a single piece of paper, with separate check boxes for encounter powers if there are more than one of the same creature.

More than ever before players need to be prepared also.

If you’re a player and you have to add your personal strength modifiers to your math, you’ve just wasted time.

Example: A level 2 fighter with an 18 strength, the Power Attack feat, and a +1 greatsword, using his Cleave attack in combat.
Cleave
At-will, Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage, and an enemy adjacent to you takes damage equal to your Strength modifier.
Increase damage to 2[W] + Strength modifier at 21st level.

Power Attack
When making a melee attack, you can take a –2 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll (or a +3 bonus to the damage roll with a two-handed weapon).
This extra damage increases by level, as shown on the table below, but the attack penalty remains the same.
Level Extra Damage (Two-Handed Weapon)
1st–10th +2 (+3)
11th–20th +4 (+6)
21st–30th +6 (+9)

It’s a waste of time each round if you have to do the math, because most of it will never change. Your stats only change now when you level so why have all the extra information?

Having that on your character sheet is a giant waste of space. You should only have the name and PHB page number of that power on the sheet, then you have a separate sheet (or cards) with all of your on it with all of the math done already.

The above should then look like this:
Cleave (Standard, At-will) – Martial, Melee Weapon (greatsword)
+9 vs. AC; 1d10 + 5 damage, and an enemy adjacent to you takes 4 damage.
Power Attack = +7 vs. AC; 1d10 + 8 damage, and an enemy adjacent to you takes 4 damage.

The only modifiers that come into play are ones that happen during the game.

In our game, you know who the prepared ones are because their round takes less than a minute and they rarely say things like “plus my charisma modifier”.

But then again, I get picked on when I push for people to hurry up.

Those people never played much D&D prior to 3E. Back when all non-spell attacks were generally 1 or 2 swings, with damage rolls that hardly changed and combat rounds took half the time they do now.

Our lineup for this session:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 6 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 6 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 5 elf cleric with some ranger multi-classing
Justin, playing Stout, the level 5 dwarf fighter

“Eladrin; like elves, but gayer.”
- Justin

I should probably not quote Justin anymore.

We last stopped with the party defeating Urwol the Master Smith and his subordinates in the Southeast tower of the Horned Hold.

This tower was cleared out, so they had 2 options of where to continue; via corridor to the southwest tower (where the scout ran to), or via bridge to the north tower. They opted for the less traveled bridge to north tower.

After picking the lock, they entered an abandoned and ruined room with rubble nearly everywhere as most of the non-stonework fallen off the walls and ceiling. The room was otherwise boring to them, but not the next one.

The next room held a pair of duergar guards and a pair of animated clockwork arbalesters (automated crossbows). In a common room adjacent to the new room and the last was also another guard and a duergar theurge (wizard).

Earl acted first in the initiative, and for whatever reason he tried peaking into the common room. He saw the guard and the theurge, and they saw him.

End result, the party had two fronts to fight with Stout taking on the 2 guards and arbalesters and Earl taking on the guard and theurge, while Valenae and Ander went wherever need and opportunity took them.

Here’s a nice combo; Spiritual Weapon and Sneak Attack from range. It allows our rogue to avoid the usual severe beating he receives by getting flanking from range.

This fight took a little while to play out, but teamwork and controlling both front lines made it easy enough.

I hate the fighter’s ability to stop someone from running with an opportunity attack. It ruins a lot of my fun. Especially when the theurge tried to run to get some help when he was instead stopped, surrounded, and slaughtered.

The group now had control of the bridges leading to both southern towers, so instead of pushing ahead and clearing out the northern tower and possibly getting flanked by the denizens of the southwestern tower, they instead chose to charge to the southwestern tower and clean it out first.

The southwestern tower was on alert and prepared for the party to come through either entrance to the tower.

The party charged in and burst open the door, and were kept at the door for a few rounds by the guards while the rest of the duergar in the tower (3 scouts and a champion named Rundarr) got into combat from their starting positions.

Valenae did his best to deal damage while taking as little as possible, to moderate success.
Ander healed when he needed to and otherwise made his attacks from range (there’s still something wrong about clerics having a laser attack).
Stout and Earl did their usual front line defense with Stout taking the brunt of the early attacks, and Earl taking the brunt of the attacks from Rundarr. That turned out to be a very one-sided deal.

While the duergar scouts were turning invisible and sneak attacking at every opportunity, Rundarr waded into melee, apparently unconcerned with the damage he was taking, and was allowed to attack twice each round.

The party was ok with that until Rundarr became bloodied. He then grew to large-sized, got reach 2 with his hammer, and a +5 to damage with each attack.

In one round Rundarr hit and critted Earl, taking Earl from max hp to single-digits.

Then get this: they started to whine about how much damage they were taking from the scouts and Rundarr. But during this same combat they were using most of their daily powers, and at one point Stout dealt 1d10+7 damage to any enemies adjacent to him automatically, no attack roll, they just had to start their turn next to him.

In spite of Rundarr’s massive damage-dealing, of the party focused on him and he didn’t last long. Once he dropped, the scouts were doomed. One managed to escape, never to be seen in the Horned Hold again.

In spite of having used several daily powers, the party was good on healing surges, so they headed back to the northern tower. Interestingly they chose to keep to the less traveled road and found an old door with a rusty lock.

Inside was an old temple to Baphomet, with several human bodies lying on the floor.

When Stout investigated one of the bodies, it sprang up and attacked him. That’s when those who don’t have the Monster Manual found out that undead don’t drain levels at all now; they just suck out healing surges with every hit.

Five dead wights later, and the party was suddenly low on healing surges and had to rest. They chose to stay in the nasty chapel to rest because they figured no one came here often.

It was late in the session, but not too late, so they quickly explored more of the main section of more traveled section of the tower.

When they had a combat in the next room, I called it a “speed combat”. In other words, if you weren’t ready, your PC delayed until you were ready.

The combat was pretty simple for the DM to run, 4 more orc berserkers and an ogre.

The fight was a quick and simple bash-fest that the rested party dominated, and was otherwise uneventful.

We then stopped for the night.

Thunderspire Labyrinth #4

I really need to update the links on my blog. For one I need to add Dale’s blog about his home made world:
http://worldoferrin.blogspot.com/

I like his world because it is an old world that has slowly evolved to meet Dale’s needs and he doesn’t run things the way I would. Visit it and give it a read.

If you’d like me to link to your site, let me know. I just ask for you to link this site in return.

Also, feel free to comment on blog entries. I like it when (non-malicious) comments are left.

Amazingly, I’ve recently had to turn away a couple of prospective players. That’s quite a turnaround from just a few months ago, or our post-WLD player collapse when half our group disappeared in a week.

But I don’t know. With our constant fluctuations on player attendance, maybe adding person #8 is needed.

On that thought, our lineup for this session:

Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 6 eladrin rogue

Mike, playing Ander, the level 5 elf cleric with some ranger multi-classing

Justin, playing Stout, the level 5 dwarf fighter

Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 4 eladrin wizard

Dale, playing Brom, the level 4 tiefling infernal warlock

We started the session with the party regrouped at Winterhaven and starting their 3 day trek back to Thunderspire Mountain.

Along the way they had a random encounter against some starving kruthiks (5 adults & 1 hivelord on the King’s Road map).

Note to all players: in 4E your abilities do not change in mid-combat. There’s no need to redo that map each and every action.

The combat was just another training exercise for the party, though the hivelord’s ability to double the damage of nearby kruthiks made the front liners a little nervous.

But soon enough they were back in the Seven Pillared Hall in Thunderspire Mountain, resuming where they left off.

(They had to dust off their notes to remind them of their current quests and goals within the mountain.)

Their current goal/quest was to follow a lead they found in the Bloodreaver’s hideout. It was a contract to the Bloodreavers from Murkelmor Grimmerzhul about selling slaves.

Now the group knew that there was a place in the Seven Pillared Hall called the Grimmerzhul Trading Post, which is run by duergar, and they killed two duergars in their big fight with the Bloodreavers.

But the party is quite afraid to anger the Mages of Saruun, who run the hall, and don’t want to start a fight within the hall. So they instead went about gathering some information from their two biggest sources within the hall – the halfling Rendill Halfmoon of the Halfmoon Inn and the drow Gendar of Gendar’s Curio’s and Relics.

Rendill told them that he noticed the Grimmerzhul’s buying a lot of food recently and had heard a rumor that the Grimmerzhul’s occupied a fortress somewhere in the mountain.

Gendar, talking only to Valenae and Brom, confirmed that there was indeed a fortress the Grimmerzhul’s occupied, and gave them the information for a favor – he wants a skull scepter he knows the Grimmerzhul’s have, but needs 300gp to hold as insurance until brought said scepter.

He gave them directions along the Road of Shadows from the Seven Pillared Hall to a place known as the Horned Hold, a set of three interconnected fortresses over a 300’ chasm.

The party discussed plans of attack; whether to sneak in or just charge in weapons and spells killing every duergar in sight.

Both of those plans were thrown over the cliff when they saw the only entrance to the hold, a set of portcullis being guarded by 5 orcs wielding crossbows and longspears.

They changed their tactics to Chewbacca-style trickery. Brom, who no one knows about, acted like he had captured Stout, and was hoping for a reward from the Grimmerzhuls, while everyone else hid a good distance away from the entrance.

After some role-playing and some excellent bluffing, the orcs fell for it and when they opened the portcullis they were rewarded with an axe to the face.

Stout charged into the room while Brom stayed back a blasted, while the rest of the party charged from their hiding place.

Orc after orc fell, but one of them managed to run away to the next door and shout out a warning before he was finally killed by Brom.

Since the party wouldn’t get to rest, we just kept the same initiative and kept on with the combat.

All 5 orcs were now dead but were being replaced by 2 more orcs, a pair of duergar scouts, and Urwol duergar’s “Master Smith”, who have had 1-2 rounds to prepare.

When Hadarai opened the door (I have no clue why the wizard opened the door, so don’t ask), he was greeted by a pair of orc berserkers who were happy to say hi and block up the passage so the scouts and Urwol could freely attack from range.

The scouts could turn invisible then come back with a sneak attack, while Urwol had several blasting spells he could throw at the front and rear of the party.

Once Hadarai got away, it wasn’t long before the orcs fell, and once the orcs fell, Urwol and a scout fell.

The other scout was able to get away and this time the party was in no condition to run after an invisible duergar to possibly start another combat.

“The word is out, Stout’s in the Hold” – said by Dale (I think), but it’s true. Those who took out the Bloodreavers are in the Horned Hold and that is concerning to the duergar.

The party took this time to rest and search for treasure.

Among the treasure was the scepter Gendar wants.

We stopped there for the evening.