The Valley #9-10
Ok, yeah, I’ve not posted a blog entry in a while.
And yeah, I’ll be a session behind after this is posted.
It’s a matter of priorities, and while I enjoy posting, a blog entry takes a fair amount of time.
First I have to type it out from notes and/or memory. Then I have to half-ass-proofread it. Then I post it.
I don’t have pictures like I used to. It’s a hassle to deal with. I know it takes away from the reading when there’s not a visual aid, but oh well.
I don’t post the minutiae of what happens in the game. I’m not a novel writer (obviously); I’m a gamer who believes that recording what happens in his group is entertaining and possibly helpful to others.
Game-wise, things are going pretty well.
Dale makes it to about half the sessions, adding fire power to the group.
Scott consistently has shown that a “boom wizard”, while not optimal, is certainly a viable damage class – until the DM screws with you (read on).
Mike enjoys the time Kergan spends getting the role-playing he does, but will soon be forced to taking a back seat as the storyline shifts to other PC’s for a time.
Aaron is playing his paladin well, in combat and out. As a “tank” class, he’s pretty solid at defending the “squishies” of the group. (We don’t bother saying defender or leader anymore – we say tank and healer. We do say striker and not DPR though. That crosses the line into MMO territory. )
Justin is also doing his job well in combat, but he has a lot of backup with the paladin’s Lay on Hands and Kergan’s clerical multiclass ability. Like Kergan, Duncan has received a good portion of the role-playing. Unlike Duncan, for the near-future, I expect this to not change.
The large amount of healing we seem to get in our group has me wondering; is healing really that needed beyond one dedicated healer in the group?
In the first fight of the day, assuming we had everyone at the session, we have 6 healing minor action abilities available for use. This does not count Second Winds or other powers that the PC’s have taken that give healing of temporary hit points.
Let’s say we keep our cleric, but dump the paladin in favor of a different tank type (that controls better or deals more damage), and Kergan picks a feat that increases his damage a few points in the combat.
Will the combat results change?
I’m betting they’ll change cosmetically, but not overall.
The increased damage dealt or increased control will compensate the loss of healing by ending the combat sooner (damage) or suppressing/directing the monsters’ attacks better (control) thus ending with less damage dealt to the PC’s.
This is all conjecture, as it seems the lessons of 3E haunt 4E with the ever-present fear of lack of healing meaning TPK.
I’ll bet you that a group of 5 healers with a variety of abilities will do similarly to a group of 5 strikers with a variety of abilities if the combat is well-rounded and not setup to advantage or disadvantage either side. The same goes for 5 tanks.
The difference would be the amount of time a combat takes to finish.
The strikers would bring down their opponents fast, though there would be a lot of movement. And if they didn’t drop their targets fast, tragedy may result.
The healers would take a good chunk of time, as they would get beat on harshly, but then heal up easily. All the while their opposition is slowly worn down.
The tanks would take just as long as the healers. They would get hit less often, but would hit often enough to do small amounts of damage, nickel-and-diming their targets to death.
I shudder to think of what 5 controllers would do in a combat. They’d probably lock it down to a standstill.
All of this conjecture assumes that everyone rolls average and are all of an equal competency level.
As for the actual story information, here we go…
Session #9
Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 5 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain)
Duncan (Justin); level 5 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 5 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander and Bobby McDonaldson became friends during the period of time the rest of the group was dealing with the dwarves.
Ander finally convinced Bobby to aid him in creating his cabal of sorcerers, so long as it’s done secretly.
The next day Bobby introduced Ander to a couple of sorcerers he knew:
Fiermach – a human wild mage with a far away stare who seemed barely grounded in reality with several burn scars on his body
Morgrim – an elf that reminded Ander of Sibylline Tarn, dark and prone to anger
Fiermach, when lucid enough to respond, agreed to join the cabal.
Morgrim wanted something more, a show of good will.
He wanted the head of a wizard named Infersidia. She had been doing “unnatural” things by warping nature and life, but Morgrim did not clarify, and helped in no other way. To get a group together to do this task was Ander’s responsibility.
Ander was able to get the group to go, but it took a lot of convincing and research work.
Their research did find them Infersidia’s location, a guard tower that the city sold to her. She was also not a member of the Wizards’ Guild.
When they found the tower it was definitely in disrepair. But that didn’t stop the door from being trapped (I like it when rogues miss traps).
After a stunning glyph blasted and stunned half the party, a pair of carrion crawlers crawled out of the ground while a spellfiend vine horror pulled itself off the side of the tower.
The fight was quick, though not exactly easy (read as: nothing really interesting or exciting happened), and next they had opened the door to the tower and found a magical field at the threshold that seemed warp the appearance of the inside of the tower.
When they entered they found that the field made the tower much larger on the inside, with the walls looking paper thin.
They also found a large grey dragon chained to the floor with 6 chains, and a trio of half-white half-grey dragon wyrmlings also chained, but just at the neck.
I wanted to have a tough fight with multiple dragons, but knew it was going to be too much for the party to handle. So I had each wyrmling have to use a move action to make a strength check to break the chain while the large dragon had to break each chain in order to use its abilities specific to that limb, neck, or tail.
Well I rolled poorly, but so did the party, which made the fight challenging without going overboard; though poor rolling all around makes fights take forever.
The next fight contained Infersidia and her minions, but I goofed and the fight was about a fifth as difficult as I meant it to be. It was over before I could modify it on the fly.
Soon Ander had her head (the group was not pleased by this fact), and thus a sorcerer’s cabal was born.
Session #10
Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 5 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 5 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 5 Silverhome dwarven rogue
In game time we jumped ahead a week, to the night of the party that Duncan was going to attend, to both sway the minds of the city council to adding another seat to the council meant for Silverhome and to establish himself as an up and coming person in the political circles.
The party had originally been intended as a small dinner party, but due to the recent issues the city has been having the invitation list was expanded.
The hosts, the Annesius family (merchants), had rented out a large ball-room (or the fantasy medieval equivalent), balcony and all.
Kergan was outside with some guild associates, working their thieving skills on people entering and leaving the place. Due to Mike’s rolling, he failed in his task. No harm done other than lost time.
Duncan’s goal was to get 4 of the 7 current council members to see things his way, and to rub elbows and impress a number of people (diplomacy checks).
The council members each had a DC number (secretly chosen by the DM) that Kergan had to achieve. The results would be modified later based upon the events that occurred later in the evening.
Admon and Edward were also at the party; Edward as a representative of the church and Admon as a representative of his family and their business.
Edward and his paladin superior made small digs at each other all night, and both successfully deflected each other’s verbal skills and neither came out looking worse.
Admon’s only job is to not make his family look bad. It turned out to be a difficult task for him. A diplomacy score of 1 and poor rolling will do that to you.
To keep one person from dominating the spot light for a long period of time, I had each player do some of the role-playing they needed to do or I that I pushed upon them (I’ve got to seed in future plot lines at some point in time).
We started with Duncan; the lion’s share of the role-playing tonight.
First he chatted with council member Hilfan Tryst and was able to push her mind in the right direction, but just a little.
Then there was Father Jason Adrek, head of the Church of Brekaneth, and council member. Duncan is in the rare position of being a non-church member that Adrek actually may like. While Duncan tries to get Jason to agree to Silverhome being added to the council, Jason tries to convert Duncan over to Brekaneth. Both decline, but in a polite manner that leaves options open for later.
Edward was spending his time trying to get a read on how the attendees viewed the competency of the city’s defenses – the answer was that the city has done a decent job and a lot of faith is put into the forces defending the city.
He also chatted with Zenith, the half-elf who is second in command of the Perceptors. It was like talking to a half-elf fighter/wizard version of Edward.
Tonus, a powerful wizard, and friend to all children (not in a Michael Jackson way), sat down next to Admon and chatted with him.
Tonus spends his time saying he’s heard some good things about Admon’s skill as a war wizard.
“I’ve seen wizards like you. I’ve lived centuries. I’ve seen people like you. You’re destined for a short burn; short but intense.”
He then says that wars and other such bloodshed can be avoided with clever manipulations.
Some of the group thought I was getting on Scott’s case about being a war wizard rather than a controller. This was not a correct interpretation of what happened. The role-playing I did was something Tonus would say.
Back to Duncan; next on his list was Thlyria Isara (Thleer-ee-uh Iz-ar-uh). She was sympathetic to his cause, but simply had too many other things she felt were more pressing.
Then there was Aegris Zahn. This was an “oops” for Justin, as he meant to pick someone else, but oh well.
Zahn is a corrupt politician who has used a lot of dirty tricks to get into the political scene, but no one has been able to prove anything.
He had no interest in what Duncan wanted, but he could think of 10,000 things that could get him to change his mind. Duncan got this obvious request for a bribe and moved on.
After Tonus was done entertaining the younger people with his magic, he pointed Edward in the direction of Terras Villium IV.
Terras was looking for some assistance in finding a place for the relocation of his family’s mercantile business to somewhere in the Valley. This was both a seeding of a future plot hook, and to bait something in front of Aaron; a potential magic store in the Valley.
Next was rapid-fire role-playing for Duncan (it was getting late and we hadn’t had a combat yet).
Horgred Gorn had no interest in talking to Duncan, but his uncle Dhryveg did. They were nice and polite and even a bit of charisma in all of all that, but there was no chance of any changes.
Brandon Accord, the life of the party, is the shining example of good on the council, and is whole-heartedly on Silverhome’s admission to the council.
Ilustaria Joron’s catering to the non-human vote made it relatively easy for Duncan to convince her of his case.
Then the party was over as a party member was killed by a shadowy blade going through his torso and his wife screaming about it.
For the record, Scott absolutely hated this combat because of my special additions to it:
500 bonus XP, -25XP per innocent killed (or all XP if a PC killed them), and -10XP for each square damaged by a PC (like a boom spell).
The room was full of party-goers (minions, who are neither ally nor enemy) and four shadow creatures teleported onto the balcony. They killed any party-goers in their way until forced to stop by a PC.
For several rounds the exit out of the room was packed, as panic set in and everyone tried to get out of the room at the same time.
The only person in the party who was equipped for a fight was Kergan, and he and his “friends” had to climb the balcony to join the fight.
Admon could cast his spells, but was limited to Magic Missile, and missed quite often (though he did roll and unnaturally high amount of natural 20’s).
But that is ok; at the end of each round one of the PC’s had their equipment magically placed on them by Tonus (who had left the party an hour or so prior).
Three of the attackers were taken out in the usual manner, but the last one, a dark stalker, had such high defenses that the party fought him for at least 10 rounds alone. But he did eventually drop and it was a very close fight.
(At this point the thieves, including Kergan, rob the place of any quick-to-grab items of value – like paintings.)
All the treasure the attackers had on them was a drawing of Admon.
As the crowd was picking up the pieces of what had just happened, they hear the sounds of the roof being torn apart, followed by screams of terror, then followed by screams of “they took the children!”
Next the party is running after a trio of dark draconic shapes flying in the black night with children in their claws. Once again Tonus helps them by illuminating the dragons’ flight to their destination.
Since the party had to run hard, I forced them to make athletics skill checks (DC16) to push some fatigue on them.
Six skill checks later:
Admon – 1 failure, -1 healing surge
Kergan – 3 failures, -2 healing surges, -1 to attacks
Duncan and Edward – 4 failures, -2 healing surges, -1 to attacks, -1 movement
This all had a enough of a difference on the combat to make me think it was just about right, as Edward had only 1 healing surge remaining, and the movement hit came into play just often enough to hurt.
The irony was that the group’s wizard did the best, and the two most athletic members did the worst.
The dragons landed in a clear area a short distance from the city wall, and unlit (save for Tonus’s lighting).
They had followed three black dragons, a young and 2 wyrmling, and waiting in the clearing was an adult black.
He was amused by the party, until he saw Admon and thought “2 birds, 1 stone” (referring to black dragons working for the Herollus family in some capacity).
As he was about to strike at the party a silver streak crashed into the dragon.
That’s when combat began.
The party had to face the two black wyrmlings, and young black dragon while Polaris, the silver dragon, took on this adult black dragon.
At the end of every round some minor effect from the two big dragons fighting would spill over into the party’s fight, in the form of some acid or cold damage.
The two children ran as fast as they could as the party and dragons only paid attention to each other.
Note for anyone wanting to run black dragons: don’t. They have high defenses, high hit points, low attacks, and low damage; meaning that a black dragon fight will take forever.
The party won, but the effects of the fatigue jog earlier (the athletics checks) hurt the party as most of them only had a healing surge to last the whole fight.
Admon: “I’m bloodied again.”
Kergan: “Wizard, heal thy self.”
Edward: “You’re on your own.”
The adult black fled from Polaris, giving a perfect opportunity for him to talk to the party.
The party was honored greatly, even though Polaris is a bit more scarred than most silver dragons his age, and also a slight bit less patient than his brethren as well.
And Polaris apparently knew/knows Edward’s grandfather.
After only a few minutes Polaris had to leave, though he walked rather than flew.
The party returned to the city and as heroes to the Annesius family.
And yeah, I’ll be a session behind after this is posted.
It’s a matter of priorities, and while I enjoy posting, a blog entry takes a fair amount of time.
First I have to type it out from notes and/or memory. Then I have to half-ass-proofread it. Then I post it.
I don’t have pictures like I used to. It’s a hassle to deal with. I know it takes away from the reading when there’s not a visual aid, but oh well.
I don’t post the minutiae of what happens in the game. I’m not a novel writer (obviously); I’m a gamer who believes that recording what happens in his group is entertaining and possibly helpful to others.
Game-wise, things are going pretty well.
Dale makes it to about half the sessions, adding fire power to the group.
Scott consistently has shown that a “boom wizard”, while not optimal, is certainly a viable damage class – until the DM screws with you (read on).
Mike enjoys the time Kergan spends getting the role-playing he does, but will soon be forced to taking a back seat as the storyline shifts to other PC’s for a time.
Aaron is playing his paladin well, in combat and out. As a “tank” class, he’s pretty solid at defending the “squishies” of the group. (We don’t bother saying defender or leader anymore – we say tank and healer. We do say striker and not DPR though. That crosses the line into MMO territory. )
Justin is also doing his job well in combat, but he has a lot of backup with the paladin’s Lay on Hands and Kergan’s clerical multiclass ability. Like Kergan, Duncan has received a good portion of the role-playing. Unlike Duncan, for the near-future, I expect this to not change.
The large amount of healing we seem to get in our group has me wondering; is healing really that needed beyond one dedicated healer in the group?
In the first fight of the day, assuming we had everyone at the session, we have 6 healing minor action abilities available for use. This does not count Second Winds or other powers that the PC’s have taken that give healing of temporary hit points.
Let’s say we keep our cleric, but dump the paladin in favor of a different tank type (that controls better or deals more damage), and Kergan picks a feat that increases his damage a few points in the combat.
Will the combat results change?
I’m betting they’ll change cosmetically, but not overall.
The increased damage dealt or increased control will compensate the loss of healing by ending the combat sooner (damage) or suppressing/directing the monsters’ attacks better (control) thus ending with less damage dealt to the PC’s.
This is all conjecture, as it seems the lessons of 3E haunt 4E with the ever-present fear of lack of healing meaning TPK.
I’ll bet you that a group of 5 healers with a variety of abilities will do similarly to a group of 5 strikers with a variety of abilities if the combat is well-rounded and not setup to advantage or disadvantage either side. The same goes for 5 tanks.
The difference would be the amount of time a combat takes to finish.
The strikers would bring down their opponents fast, though there would be a lot of movement. And if they didn’t drop their targets fast, tragedy may result.
The healers would take a good chunk of time, as they would get beat on harshly, but then heal up easily. All the while their opposition is slowly worn down.
The tanks would take just as long as the healers. They would get hit less often, but would hit often enough to do small amounts of damage, nickel-and-diming their targets to death.
I shudder to think of what 5 controllers would do in a combat. They’d probably lock it down to a standstill.
All of this conjecture assumes that everyone rolls average and are all of an equal competency level.
As for the actual story information, here we go…
Session #9
Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 5 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain)
Duncan (Justin); level 5 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 5 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander and Bobby McDonaldson became friends during the period of time the rest of the group was dealing with the dwarves.
Ander finally convinced Bobby to aid him in creating his cabal of sorcerers, so long as it’s done secretly.
The next day Bobby introduced Ander to a couple of sorcerers he knew:
Fiermach – a human wild mage with a far away stare who seemed barely grounded in reality with several burn scars on his body
Morgrim – an elf that reminded Ander of Sibylline Tarn, dark and prone to anger
Fiermach, when lucid enough to respond, agreed to join the cabal.
Morgrim wanted something more, a show of good will.
He wanted the head of a wizard named Infersidia. She had been doing “unnatural” things by warping nature and life, but Morgrim did not clarify, and helped in no other way. To get a group together to do this task was Ander’s responsibility.
Ander was able to get the group to go, but it took a lot of convincing and research work.
Their research did find them Infersidia’s location, a guard tower that the city sold to her. She was also not a member of the Wizards’ Guild.
When they found the tower it was definitely in disrepair. But that didn’t stop the door from being trapped (I like it when rogues miss traps).
After a stunning glyph blasted and stunned half the party, a pair of carrion crawlers crawled out of the ground while a spellfiend vine horror pulled itself off the side of the tower.
The fight was quick, though not exactly easy (read as: nothing really interesting or exciting happened), and next they had opened the door to the tower and found a magical field at the threshold that seemed warp the appearance of the inside of the tower.
When they entered they found that the field made the tower much larger on the inside, with the walls looking paper thin.
They also found a large grey dragon chained to the floor with 6 chains, and a trio of half-white half-grey dragon wyrmlings also chained, but just at the neck.
I wanted to have a tough fight with multiple dragons, but knew it was going to be too much for the party to handle. So I had each wyrmling have to use a move action to make a strength check to break the chain while the large dragon had to break each chain in order to use its abilities specific to that limb, neck, or tail.
Well I rolled poorly, but so did the party, which made the fight challenging without going overboard; though poor rolling all around makes fights take forever.
The next fight contained Infersidia and her minions, but I goofed and the fight was about a fifth as difficult as I meant it to be. It was over before I could modify it on the fly.
Soon Ander had her head (the group was not pleased by this fact), and thus a sorcerer’s cabal was born.
Session #10
Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 5 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 5 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 5 Silverhome dwarven rogue
In game time we jumped ahead a week, to the night of the party that Duncan was going to attend, to both sway the minds of the city council to adding another seat to the council meant for Silverhome and to establish himself as an up and coming person in the political circles.
The party had originally been intended as a small dinner party, but due to the recent issues the city has been having the invitation list was expanded.
The hosts, the Annesius family (merchants), had rented out a large ball-room (or the fantasy medieval equivalent), balcony and all.
Kergan was outside with some guild associates, working their thieving skills on people entering and leaving the place. Due to Mike’s rolling, he failed in his task. No harm done other than lost time.
Duncan’s goal was to get 4 of the 7 current council members to see things his way, and to rub elbows and impress a number of people (diplomacy checks).
The council members each had a DC number (secretly chosen by the DM) that Kergan had to achieve. The results would be modified later based upon the events that occurred later in the evening.
Admon and Edward were also at the party; Edward as a representative of the church and Admon as a representative of his family and their business.
Edward and his paladin superior made small digs at each other all night, and both successfully deflected each other’s verbal skills and neither came out looking worse.
Admon’s only job is to not make his family look bad. It turned out to be a difficult task for him. A diplomacy score of 1 and poor rolling will do that to you.
To keep one person from dominating the spot light for a long period of time, I had each player do some of the role-playing they needed to do or I that I pushed upon them (I’ve got to seed in future plot lines at some point in time).
We started with Duncan; the lion’s share of the role-playing tonight.
First he chatted with council member Hilfan Tryst and was able to push her mind in the right direction, but just a little.
Then there was Father Jason Adrek, head of the Church of Brekaneth, and council member. Duncan is in the rare position of being a non-church member that Adrek actually may like. While Duncan tries to get Jason to agree to Silverhome being added to the council, Jason tries to convert Duncan over to Brekaneth. Both decline, but in a polite manner that leaves options open for later.
Edward was spending his time trying to get a read on how the attendees viewed the competency of the city’s defenses – the answer was that the city has done a decent job and a lot of faith is put into the forces defending the city.
He also chatted with Zenith, the half-elf who is second in command of the Perceptors. It was like talking to a half-elf fighter/wizard version of Edward.
Tonus, a powerful wizard, and friend to all children (not in a Michael Jackson way), sat down next to Admon and chatted with him.
Tonus spends his time saying he’s heard some good things about Admon’s skill as a war wizard.
“I’ve seen wizards like you. I’ve lived centuries. I’ve seen people like you. You’re destined for a short burn; short but intense.”
He then says that wars and other such bloodshed can be avoided with clever manipulations.
Some of the group thought I was getting on Scott’s case about being a war wizard rather than a controller. This was not a correct interpretation of what happened. The role-playing I did was something Tonus would say.
Back to Duncan; next on his list was Thlyria Isara (Thleer-ee-uh Iz-ar-uh). She was sympathetic to his cause, but simply had too many other things she felt were more pressing.
Then there was Aegris Zahn. This was an “oops” for Justin, as he meant to pick someone else, but oh well.
Zahn is a corrupt politician who has used a lot of dirty tricks to get into the political scene, but no one has been able to prove anything.
He had no interest in what Duncan wanted, but he could think of 10,000 things that could get him to change his mind. Duncan got this obvious request for a bribe and moved on.
After Tonus was done entertaining the younger people with his magic, he pointed Edward in the direction of Terras Villium IV.
Terras was looking for some assistance in finding a place for the relocation of his family’s mercantile business to somewhere in the Valley. This was both a seeding of a future plot hook, and to bait something in front of Aaron; a potential magic store in the Valley.
Next was rapid-fire role-playing for Duncan (it was getting late and we hadn’t had a combat yet).
Horgred Gorn had no interest in talking to Duncan, but his uncle Dhryveg did. They were nice and polite and even a bit of charisma in all of all that, but there was no chance of any changes.
Brandon Accord, the life of the party, is the shining example of good on the council, and is whole-heartedly on Silverhome’s admission to the council.
Ilustaria Joron’s catering to the non-human vote made it relatively easy for Duncan to convince her of his case.
Then the party was over as a party member was killed by a shadowy blade going through his torso and his wife screaming about it.
For the record, Scott absolutely hated this combat because of my special additions to it:
500 bonus XP, -25XP per innocent killed (or all XP if a PC killed them), and -10XP for each square damaged by a PC (like a boom spell).
The room was full of party-goers (minions, who are neither ally nor enemy) and four shadow creatures teleported onto the balcony. They killed any party-goers in their way until forced to stop by a PC.
For several rounds the exit out of the room was packed, as panic set in and everyone tried to get out of the room at the same time.
The only person in the party who was equipped for a fight was Kergan, and he and his “friends” had to climb the balcony to join the fight.
Admon could cast his spells, but was limited to Magic Missile, and missed quite often (though he did roll and unnaturally high amount of natural 20’s).
But that is ok; at the end of each round one of the PC’s had their equipment magically placed on them by Tonus (who had left the party an hour or so prior).
Three of the attackers were taken out in the usual manner, but the last one, a dark stalker, had such high defenses that the party fought him for at least 10 rounds alone. But he did eventually drop and it was a very close fight.
(At this point the thieves, including Kergan, rob the place of any quick-to-grab items of value – like paintings.)
All the treasure the attackers had on them was a drawing of Admon.
As the crowd was picking up the pieces of what had just happened, they hear the sounds of the roof being torn apart, followed by screams of terror, then followed by screams of “they took the children!”
Next the party is running after a trio of dark draconic shapes flying in the black night with children in their claws. Once again Tonus helps them by illuminating the dragons’ flight to their destination.
Since the party had to run hard, I forced them to make athletics skill checks (DC16) to push some fatigue on them.
Six skill checks later:
Admon – 1 failure, -1 healing surge
Kergan – 3 failures, -2 healing surges, -1 to attacks
Duncan and Edward – 4 failures, -2 healing surges, -1 to attacks, -1 movement
This all had a enough of a difference on the combat to make me think it was just about right, as Edward had only 1 healing surge remaining, and the movement hit came into play just often enough to hurt.
The irony was that the group’s wizard did the best, and the two most athletic members did the worst.
The dragons landed in a clear area a short distance from the city wall, and unlit (save for Tonus’s lighting).
They had followed three black dragons, a young and 2 wyrmling, and waiting in the clearing was an adult black.
He was amused by the party, until he saw Admon and thought “2 birds, 1 stone” (referring to black dragons working for the Herollus family in some capacity).
As he was about to strike at the party a silver streak crashed into the dragon.
That’s when combat began.
The party had to face the two black wyrmlings, and young black dragon while Polaris, the silver dragon, took on this adult black dragon.
At the end of every round some minor effect from the two big dragons fighting would spill over into the party’s fight, in the form of some acid or cold damage.
The two children ran as fast as they could as the party and dragons only paid attention to each other.
Note for anyone wanting to run black dragons: don’t. They have high defenses, high hit points, low attacks, and low damage; meaning that a black dragon fight will take forever.
The party won, but the effects of the fatigue jog earlier (the athletics checks) hurt the party as most of them only had a healing surge to last the whole fight.
Admon: “I’m bloodied again.”
Kergan: “Wizard, heal thy self.”
Edward: “You’re on your own.”
The adult black fled from Polaris, giving a perfect opportunity for him to talk to the party.
The party was honored greatly, even though Polaris is a bit more scarred than most silver dragons his age, and also a slight bit less patient than his brethren as well.
And Polaris apparently knew/knows Edward’s grandfather.
After only a few minutes Polaris had to leave, though he walked rather than flew.
The party returned to the city and as heroes to the Annesius family.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 11:41 PM
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