Thunderspire Labyrinth - Conclusion

Let me just say that the last couple sessions of Thunderspire Labyrinth were quite anti-climactic, at least to me.

With The Keep on the Shadowfell, we had a shiny new edition of D&D that we wanted to learn and explore. Halfway through Thunderspire Labyrinth, I think the shine of 4E wore off and the “flatness” of H2 was shown.

The last half of the module consisted of the party just going from one fight to another occasionally punctuated by one of those lovely skill challenges that if I ever use again, it will not be done using the H-modules as a guide.

The modules were designed to lead the party from A to B to C, but it was in an obvious manner that really gave the party nothing special to do other than be prepared for the next fight.

Here’s the chain the party had to follow:
- Defeat the Grimmerzhul duergars which mentioned something about an organization.

- Get back to town and Mages of Saruun tell them to search for a missing member of their order named Paldemar.

- The next day the party receives a note to meet someone in an “evil organization” seeking to leave it. And yes the note actually said “evil organization”.

- Of course the party is ambushed at the meeting, but that’s ok because the ambushers had information on them saying they were working for Paldemar and to give the party’s corpses to some gnoll chieftain in the “Well of Demons”.

- At this point the whole party is on autopilot. I mean I could have seriously said “just set up the map and prep for a fight”.

- They arrive at the Well of Demons only to find that they have to take some test. Seriously, thanks to the long delays in gaming thanks to the holidays and the lack of need to pay attention, several of our group actually forgot the whole point of why they were in the Well.

- They find and defeat the gnoll chieftain, which was actually a decent fight that pushed the party to its limits. But if not for the fights, this module would have absolutely nothing of interest in it.

- They receive a magical silver key from the gnoll chieftain that actually leads them to their next location, the Tower of Mysteries. Though they take a break in the Seven Pillared Hall to restock, rest, and so on.

- They let the silver key lead them to a hidden location not far from the town, which opens a door to another skill challenge where an apparition of Vecna wants to hear secrets and such. I attempted to give it a larger bit of role-playing and reducing the ridiculous DC of 22 (which on average needs a roll of 15 on a d20). The party failed miserably thanks to horrible rolling, but they bribed me with Gummi Savers and beef jerky, so they passed with flying colors.

- The Tower of Mysteries really wasn’t a tower, just one level on top of another that can only be reached through by teleportation circles. So they effectively teleported from one fight to another.

- Level 1 consisted of a bunch of goblin-like creatures called norkers (call them magi-goblins if you want, but not magic nose goblins – that’s in Ren and Stimpy) and some other creatures known as Enigmas of Vecna which have attacks that cause the party members to not be able to use any non-at-will powers.

- Level 2 is about the same, just add a Bronze Warder (a heavily armored bronze minotaur that can wreak havoc in melee). The party wins again.

- Level 3 is the lair of Paldemar (shocking huh?). In this supposed-to-be climactic battle the party is besieged by more of the same as they were on level 2 plus Paldemar.

Paldemar has a ridiculously high AC for a wizard, a reusable power that can make it even higher, over 175 hit points, and has +20 to hit with a melee attack that deals 1d8+8 damage. That doesn’t include that bonuses he had from being on his home turf or any of his magical attacks.

The party was slowly eviscerated.

They took out all of his mooks (norkers and enigmas) with relative ease, but the bronze warder and Paldemar was too much.

One by one the party fell or flirted with the new death rules until they actually died. They had Paldemar down to less than 30 hit points by the end, and the warder was just under half.

“Why didn’t you pull Paldemar’s punches?”
I did in a fashion, I had him move around a lot and give plenty of opportunity attacks so he couldn’t be cornered in the room, but the party had to roll at least a 12 or better on a regular attack and Paldemar had other defenses.
I couldn’t really pull the punches that much. At least one person in the party would notice. And if they’re even a little like me, I’d rather be TPK’d than fight a watered-down final fight.

My grading of H2:
Combats: A-
The fights were good and solid with plenty of clever ideas
Plot: D
One fight after another, threadbare plot, poorly set up skill challenges, and pitiful treasure (the module hands out less treasure than the DMG suggests) make the module a chore halfway through.
Overall: C+
I feel like I’m being generous with that.

Next session is the first session of Dale’s game with our return to his personal game world of Errin.
With the holidays over I’m hopeful that I can return to a regular upkeep of the blog.

And I’m hoping to add some information of my next actual campaign to begin after Dale’s. I stopped running it right before we began the World’s Largest Dungeon.
Since sorcerers were a big part of this campaign, I’m hoping that some new information about them is coming soon, and will be out in the PHB2.

See you next year.

Thunderspire Labyrinth #10 & #11

Yeah, it’s been a while since I updated.

The holidays have always hosed over our gaming, and this year is no different.

In fact, for the first time in a very long time they played a week without me (Dale ran a one-shot) and one of the sessions listed here, I arrived late, so the group prepped up their PC’s for Dale’s upcoming campaign.

We have two sessions left in the year and I want to finish this module by then so Dale can start up his campaign at the start of the New Year.

Our lineup for session #10:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 8 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 7 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 7 elf cleric/ranger
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 6 eladrin wizard
Dale, playing Brom, the level 6 tiefling warlock
(I could be off on the levels.)

The last session we stopped with the group about to begin their search for 3 of 4 items that would allow them to take some kind of challenge or test. The four items are a mask, a blade, a bell, and a tome (the one item they had already).

The three remaining items were in rooms adjacent to the central area, where they talked to the ghosts last week, and where the final “challenge” will take place once they put all 4 items on 4 runed circles simultaneously.

Note: The runed circles are nowhere near one another, and are separated by doors and other obstacles. This could prove to be a problem later on once the party begins the challenge.

And they’re doing all of this to find a gnoll chieftain who might know something about Paldemar.

The first room the party entered opened up to a 10’x10’ room with a curtain covering the entrance to a much larger room.

Hadarai detected magic from beyond the curtain and got an “overwhelming” response.

When Valenae peeked into the room from around the edge of the curtain he was attacked by his own reflection in a mirror; a beam shot from his eyes and narrowly missed him.

This very large room had several columns with mirrors on their sides that attacked anyone who had their eyes open or attacked them.

Over the span of a couple of rounds Valenae, Brom, and Hadarai attacked the closest mirror. In turn each of them disappeared and was teleported into a dark room that wasn’t so empty.

It had a desperate and starving gnoll in there that had fallen for the same trap a few days prior. The gnoll did some damage to the three new visitors, but he didn’t last long.

That brings us to Earl and Ander.

Ander had the bright idea of pulling the curtain down and walking along the edge of the room, so he and Earl avoided every single mirror in the place.

At the other end of this L-shaped room they came to a second curtain that held a shrine to Baphomet, the mask they were looking for, and a couple of boneshard skeletons that gave them a run for their money.

A successful religion skill check told them that if they put their hand on a minotaur-sized hand imprint on the shrine, it might do something interesting. In this case, empty out the “holding room” that Valenae, Brom, and Hadarai had been sent to.

Ander, for whatever reason, tried the mask on. Then he punched Earl in the face. Then he took the mask off. (The mask gives darkvision, but if you’re bloodied you attack the nearest person to you.)

Next they rested up in the central room and investigated it a bit. While doing that the evil of the Abyss bled into this reality and the party got a glimpse of it, and was rewarded with a penalty to their Will defenses for a while thanks to all the lovely things they saw.

The next door they could not open, but heard chanting more than a few feet away from the door. They noted this for later and moved on to another room.

This semi-donut-shaped room had several pillars of many people that began chanting and grasping wildly at the air around them in an obvious bit of insanity.

At the end of each round all of the pillars in the room would do something different; from as simple as attacking or grabbing, to something fun like teleporting people around them.

I refereed that as “Pillar Time”.

What the party didn’t see, thanks to poor rolling, was the 6 carnage demons hiding near the pillars on the ceiling.

And to make it even worse the party entered the room with no defensive formation and also split up to go around the “hole” in the donut-shaped room. The simply expected the pillars to be the reason they were on initiative.

When they spotted the shrine that had the bell hidden near it, they had trouble missing the barlgura demon guarding the shrine.

When they got too close to the shrine all of the carnage demons dropped from the ceiling and began attacking the party while the barlgura stayed near the shrine.

Surrounded and spread out, the party knew they stepped in something bad, so they began to pull back.

That’s when “Pillar Time” hit with a “reality warp” and teleported the party randomly throughout the room, spreading them even farther apart.

We noted that sometimes it’s better to take multiple opportunity attacks than face the special attacks that might be used against you.

The saving grace the party had was that none of the demons had a defense above 20.

Slowly and very painfully the party fought back the carnage demons, and finally faced off and took down the barlgura.

Hidden under a loose tile near the shrine was the bell they needed. When they finally found it, they grabbed it and ran before “Pillar Time” hurt them anymore.

It took them over 5 rounds to get out of the room thanks to the random effects of the pillars.

At least I enjoyed the chaos.

The party had been sufficiently drained, so they decided to rest in a small room (10’x15’) in the complex rather than risk the unknown by leaving the area.

It took them 8 hours to get 6 hours of rest thanks to the “closeness” of this place to the Abyss. This included a fight with a barlgura that just appeared from out of nowhere and attacked.

The final item room, the one containing the blade, made some sloshing, water sounds when they listened to it at the door.

They opened to find not a room full of water, but one full of blood that was 6’ deep save for a divider in the center of the room, a pair of very large minotaur statues, and a pair of pedestals each holding one half of a dagger.

They correctly deduced that these minotaur statues were not of the stationary kind. They spun around and slapped their scourge-laden whips at anyone in the room.

Ander also noticed some “forms” hiding in the blood.

But it really didn’t matter. Earl had some Boots of Wavestriding and ran from one end of the room to a corner holding the dagger’s hilt and then to another corner holding the blade.

What should have been a nasty encounter was barely noticeable overall as all my rolls against Earl were of the single-digit variety.

With that they returned to the central room and set up to place the 4 items on the runed circles.

It was late so we stopped there, hoping to get back to this as soon as we can.

And thus begins session #11

Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 8 eladrin rogue
Mike, playing Ander, the level 7 elf cleric/ranger
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 6 eladrin wizard
Dale, playing Brom, the level 6 tiefling warlock
Justin, playing Stout, the level 6 dwarf fighter

Scattered throughout the testing area were the 5 PC’s, with Ander, Valenae, and Stout each by themselves to place their item on the rune.

Each item was placed in each rune, the runes glowed, the items disappeared, then a thunderous roar erupted from the center of the testing area, and traps attacked from the rooms that contained the runes.

Stout was skewered when a pair of oversized crossbows dropped out from the ceiling and shot at him. He left the area the first chance he had.

Ander was attacked by a whirlwind, but he quickly left the room and it did not follow.

Ander then joined Valenae who was surrounded by skeletons grasping at him from the floor. They both left that room the first opportunity they had.

Hadarai and Brom had a simple trap, a pair of busts of Baphomet that screeched out a terrifying scream that forced them into the center run of the testing area.

The center run contained a giant, rolling, spiked, black ball of force that went in a continuous circuit. This “Doom Sphere” didn’t hurt a single PC, but was a constant headache to the group.

And finally the thunderous roar was from the Guardian, a young green dragon. Now the dragon alone versus this party would have been shred to pieces. Even two of these dragons against this party would be “about right”. But when you add in all of the traps and the party starting off pretty separated, this one dragon had a slightly better chance of survival.

The dragon had an instinctive knowledge of where the Doom Sphere was, a tactical need to keep the party separate from one another, an ability to slide a target 2 squares every round (possibly into the path of the Doom Sphere), and a preference to go after solitary targets – especially the lightly armored or unarmored kind.

Accordingly, Hadarai took the brunt of the attacks from the Guardian.

All of the traps, its mobility, and the separated party couldn’t give the dragon enough of an advantage to do anything more than hurt the party slightly.

By the time the tenth round came, the Guardian was dead and the party safely avoided the other obstacles until only door left unopened by the party opened and fog rolled in from beyond it.

The party then stepped forth.

And we had to stop after that one long fight.