The Valley #26
Well Mike had rejoined us just for a few sessions, and soon he’ll be heading out of state for his next step in his doctoring career.
Relocating with 2 children and a newborn does not sound fun in the slightest.
I’m not sure D&D is even legal where he’s going. (Ok, that’s an exaggeration…I hope.)
Justin is out for now. It always happens this time of year for him. This time it’s a job that has him working in the evenings.
So now it’s just 4 total players available and prospects for replacements are few and far in between.
Also, given my tiny amounts free time, I will not be blogging about our Hillside adventures; though I will probably use it as a springboard for something to talk about on occasion. Dale will probably make his own blog posts about our adventures (which I will link when I remember to).
Wildeyes will be getting retired. Apparently the path I was taking him on was a well trod one. In fact, abused would be a more apt description. While I didn’t think that the way I was going to use the Daggermaster paragon path was all that much worse than a bow ranger using those over-the-top bows, there were others out there that exploited the system (surprise) and used the Daggermaster’s powers on a sorcerer.
(In case you didn’t know, WotC has released a list of errata. One erratum changed the critical hit bonus from Daggermaster to only work with rogue powers, which totally kills my plan.)
I’ve recently made a sorcerer (to replace Wildeyes), and the damage a sorcerer can do is scary, but I’m curious if the math is truly that different.
So I did some math on a pure rogue Wildeyes, Wildeyes as is, and the sorcerer.
The math was interesting, but not perfect. I had to make a lot of things equal and help reduce wildly random results, which meant making all attacks limited to just 1 or 2 targets and removing all special magical effects beyond some +2 items.
Wildeyes the melee ranger/rogue:
Total average at-will power damage = 15 / 17
Total average encounter power damage = 14 / 15
Total average daily power damage = 20 / 23
Wildeyes the pure rogue:
Total average at-will power damage = 19 / 20
Total average encounter power damage = 25 / 27
Total average daily power damage = 28 / 30
Aryoon the dragonborn sorcerer:
Total average at-will power damage = 13 / 14
Total average encounter power damage = 17 / 18
Total average daily power damage = 30 / 33
The first number is normal damage at level 9, and the second number is normal damage at level 9 if their crit range was increased to 18-20.
I see that my ranger/rogue creation is actually pretty low, but the damage doesn’t account for one-off attacks like sneak attack once or twice per combat (which the pure rogue gets on his attacks), nor does it account for area attacks which the rogue doesn’t get as many of (or as good). So I would say that the ranger/rogue Wildeyes probably does a little more damage on average but with a lot more dice rolled (and a lot of combat time consumed).
Now I don’t visit the Character Optimization boards on the WotC site, so I could easily have missed something that made the classes over the top powerful, but I don’t see the big need for the nerf.
Look at the increased damage from high crit chances; it just isn’t that impressive with a whopping 1-3 more damage on average.
I can’t think of any legitimate reason other than flavor and intended use of the Daggermaster paragon class that makes me see how it’s broken.
So for the time being I’m playing a simplified rogue Wildeyes (who does more damage in less time I guess) and a dragonborn sorcerer. I’ll be playing both simultaneously, at Dale’s request, to cover our PC needs until we get replacement players.
Yeah, I know, I’m playing a dragonborn. But I came up with a concept and felt like trying it out; a fire-focused dragonborn sorcerer who likes to stand up front and cleanses everything with fire. And he wants to be bloodied. He does better when bloodied, so he’ll be doing all kinds of over the top heroic stupidity until he gets bloodied. At that point he’ll let loose with everything while doing more damage and not taking anymore damage.
At least that’s the plan.
Role-playing-wise, he’s a lawful good narcissist who believes he’s a chosen of Bahamut and his god will do anything to protect him.
So when he comes across a group of Bahamut-following dragonborn, it was Bahamut’s will that led them to him.
If he lives past the first 3 sessions, then he’ll be around for quite a while.
Session 26
Admon (Scott); level 10 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 10 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 10 halfling sorcerer
Kergan (Mike); level 10 dwarf rogue
Subtle clues did not exist for this session.
The story was close to chapter’s end and the players were missing the clues or misinterpreting them (causing me much mental trauma).
So this session I slapped them with information and railroaded them to where they needed to be, so we could get to the big fight by the end of the night.
But first we had to integrate Kergan back into the story and explain why he disappeared so suddenly.
Way back, when the party had just defeated Stefforri on the streets of the city, Kergan was about to join his friends on a dragon-back ride to stop Stefforri’s escape.
But prior to that his half-elven Thieves’ Guild superior stopped Kergan and, long story short, led Kergan to the Fey Wild, to the audience of Ivellios Galanodil.
Guy, Kergan’s superior’s name, had been working for Ivellios the entire time, and really had no connections with the Thieves’ Guild. Ivellios had basically duped Kergan into working for him. (It also turns out that Guy is not the true jerk Kergan thought he was. It was just an act as part of the ruse.)
Ivellios sees bad things happening in the future, but can’t piece together exactly what is wrong, so he needed Kergan’s skills.
From that point on Kergan worked for Ivellios.
Kergan stole the Vial of Purity from the City Council to give to the party to help contain Ivellios’s Shame
He scouted the communication runners going from the government building to someone in the Ironmonger territory only to find that Mayor Xavius Ryan is one side of the communicants (not much later all of the communication stops).
Then one day Ivellios tells Kergan that his friends are in danger, and shows him the conversation the party had with the fake Tonus. With a further bit of magic the visage of Tonus is replaced by one of Stefforri. When the party’s conversation with Stefforri ends, she turns and seems to notice the scrying and dispels it with a wave of her hand.
We wrote Duncan out with the excuse of him working on his political career.
Back to present day and poor Ander can’t seem to catch a break.
The dragons seem to be perpetually busy, and probably not even in the Valley.
Nobody from the sorcerer’s cabal he started is around and Fiermach has apparently killed himself by accident.
Even Bobby McDonaldson has gone into hiding.
Kergan looks into why the sorcerers are disappearing and gathers that they have gone into hiding or are on special tasks given to them by Polaris and Ajell.
Edward has kept quiet around the temple after his “attitude adjustment”. There are a lot of “you got showed” looks he has to endure because of it.
Occasionally the group gets together to compare notes at the Roaring Bull Inn. Recently it’s been very quiet, which is unsettling to them – as in “the calm before the storm” kind of quiet.
Admon has learned everything he can from Ivellios’s tomes. (Scott rolled freakishly well on those rolls – as in less than 25% single digit rolls.)
The only thing they need to seal the door to Ivellios’s Shame is silver blood; specifically, mammalian silver blood.
That rules out silver dragon blood that they’ve long thought was the solution.
For several weeks (real world time) he’s wanted to try something, but has been denied an opportunity to test it by Duncan (who thought the idea was a waste of time).
So he goes through the trouble of buying the test equipment, and then gets a vial of Ander’s blood.
Ander, a halfling with silver-toned skin, appeared one day in the Valley on a night where a freakishly powerful storm drenched the land and filled the sky with a lightning storm never before seen in the Valley. He has no memory of anything before that, and is generally considered a minor celebrity in the Valley (up until his naivety or pushiness gets him into trouble).
Admon tested Ander’s blood and found that it had a much larger amount of silver in it than it should.
So they gathered a bit more blood and prepared it with a ritual to be used on the doors in Ivellios’s Shame.
A day later the thin purple skin that is the barrier that keeps the undead elves inside takes on an almost solid look while the denizens inside scream out their pain. Admon believes it will be at least a decade before the magic wears off and the ritual will need to be repeated.
A few days later they’re back in the Roaring Bull Inn doing their usual comparing of notes and such. A few moments after they leave the inn, an explosion erupts from within it.
The party immediately goes into crisis mode and begins helping.
Amazingly no one is killed. The explosion appeared to be centered in the table area where the party was and Bull had been behind the bar, and the party had been the only people there.
The guards show up to take control of the situation, as does the mayor (though mostly for political appearances).
Eventually Girvan Torl shows up and, in his newly pompous way, tells Edward (and crew) to move along “Men are here now.”
Correctly, the party believes the attack was on them, a continuation of the previous week’s ambush arranged by Stefforri.
Kergan attempts to pose as an assassin to see if he can find someone who is looking to have them killed, but he fails at it (poor rolling).
But they still have a plan. Kergan gets Guy to procure the magical bell that detects outsiders (by not making a sound when one is within 25’).
The first place they head is the government building to check the mayor and his staff. No one there appears to be a demon, devil, daemon, or demodand (suck it 2E naming changes).
They warn Mayor Ryan that Stefforri is still in the Valley which visibly upsets him. He notices that all of the city’s protections appear to be elsewhere leaving only the city guards and the party left to defend it.
Kergan suspects the mayor, but gets no reads off of him. (The old joke – how do you know if a politician is lying? His mouth is open.)
Kergan whispers to him “I know who you’ve been talking to” and then rings the bell leaves. The mayor just looks confused.
Then Admon has an epiphany and finally connects some dots.
The DM thinks “About damn time.”
Admon says “A succubus can only control one person at a time. Girvan Torl was being controlled at the same time that Mayor Xavius Ryan was being controlled.”
The DM thinks “Yes! They’re about to get it.”
Admon says “So there must be two succubi.”
The DM thinks “D’oh!”
The party decides to scour the city looking for Stefforri and another not-yet-seen succubus.
They start with the Grand Temple of Brekaneth, believing that if Stefforri’s back, she might be behind the changes in Girvan Torl.
Kergan is made invisible by Admon, and then Kergan walks around inside and out of the church while ringing the bell. The bell rings throughout the entirety. Everyone hears the bell, but they attribute it to something new to the church. The only person who sees Kergan is Father Adrek, but he just gives Kergan a look of “what are you doing?”
When Kergan is about to flee away, Tonus steps around the corner and begins to talk. (Of course Kergan rings the bell just to make sure it’s not Stefforri.)
Tonus: “You’ve been looking for me?”
Kergan: “There seems to be something bad brewing in the Valley.”
Tonus: “There always is…”
Kergan then proceeds to ask him all kinds of questions, but Tonus only gives vague answers. Mainly because that’s the only reason why anyone seeks him out, they always want something.
Before he leaves, he tells Kergan that the party should trust their feelings.
This helps affirm the party’s thinking that Stefforri is hanging around the mayor again.
It’s late in the evening so the party begins heading to their homes.
Kergan takes a detour and sneaks into the mayor’s house again. It’s late, but the mayor isn’t home. He does find evidence that 2 people have been living in the mayor’s house.
In the meantime Ander decides he wants to sleep on his balcony under the sky. He notices a large man dressed in plate armor walking oddly along the rivulet.
Edward has been discreetly asking people in the temple if Girvan Torl has been dating anyone, but there is no one. He finds out that Torl has left the temple a few hours prior. Edward then leaves to find him and stops to get Admon along the way.
When Ander heads outside to check on the armored man, he finds Admon and Edward about to knock on his door.
They compare notes while heading to the river only to find the armored man gone, and the rivulet water glowing faintly green.
They correctly suspect that it is the zombie elixir and warn nearby guards who then proceed to sound the alarm.
By this time Kergan has joined the group on his way back from the mayor’s house.
A few moments all four of them are walking upstream along the edge of the fast moving rivulet (it’s not too deep, but it could carry someone away).
They come to the edge of the small waterfall that feeds the rivulet. They see several people standing around but two of them are pouring barrels of glowing green liquid into the water. The other people are undead.
Mayor Xavius Ryan, “Ah, I expected you fellows to show up. It’s a shame I’m going to have to have you killed.”
Then the zombies charge the party, but we don’t even run that combat.
Xavius: “Well done! I guess it’s time to do this the hard way.”
Stefforri speaks a word of magic and fire erupts all around them, fire that is both burning and freezing.
The fire grows into a giant 3-sided pyramid (almost in the shape of a d4).
Stefforri had linked this area and her sanctum together.
Stefforri and Xavius are now floating on some runed discs with another one on the ground.
Near the corners of the place are also runed circles.
The runed discs and runed circles can teleport to another empty runed disc or circle so long as it’s empty.
The runed discs can fly at the rider’s normal speed if they make a DC20 Athletics or Arcana check. If the check failed, or the disc was not occupied, then it fell 2 squares.
Each round, if there were at least 3 open teleportation points then 3 devil minions would appear.
There were also 3 spined devils that attacked the party from the ground.
My intent was for minions to harass the party in melee but be easily clearable, the spined devils to harass them enough from ranged to force the party to pay attention to them, and have Ryan and Stefforri casually attack and curse the party from a distance. Once the spined devils were down, then the Cambion Hellswords would appear and beat up on the party in melee. And once one of the bosses was bloodied, or I felt the time was right, the bosses would go from harassment mode to kill-the-party mode.
As I expected, the party had other plans.
After the usual evil mastermind ranting, Xavius was beat to all hell and back as the party shredded him with daily power after daily power.
First they knocked him off his disc and swarmed him, but he was able to get away to a disc and get out of melee…for a time.
Mayor Xavius Ryan’s last words were a congratulatory “Well done”.
The party did not get to celebrate a victory as the cambions were let loose and Stefforri went on full aggression.
She used her sorceress powers from above until the party started riding the discs and hurting her. So she moved to ground and used her succubus powers to force the party to separate from one another, giving her minions a great chance to swarm the individual party members.
Most rounds she was able to dominate one of the party members, usually Edward, and would send them charging at another party member.
She was also able to consistently keep Kergan charmed, which forced him to stay away from her or be forced to protect her.
But the party was able to hit her often enough, even without their usual healer.
When she dropped the whole pyramid of fire disappeared, and they were back in the Valley, with zombie elixir polluted water to deal with.
Several months ago a reader of the blog did an excellent rendering of the mayor.
I wanted to post it before, but I thought it would be bring too much attention to what the mayor was doing.
So now I present to you Mayor Xavius Ryan, born Session #1, died Session #26.
Relocating with 2 children and a newborn does not sound fun in the slightest.
I’m not sure D&D is even legal where he’s going. (Ok, that’s an exaggeration…I hope.)
Justin is out for now. It always happens this time of year for him. This time it’s a job that has him working in the evenings.
So now it’s just 4 total players available and prospects for replacements are few and far in between.
Also, given my tiny amounts free time, I will not be blogging about our Hillside adventures; though I will probably use it as a springboard for something to talk about on occasion. Dale will probably make his own blog posts about our adventures (which I will link when I remember to).
Wildeyes will be getting retired. Apparently the path I was taking him on was a well trod one. In fact, abused would be a more apt description. While I didn’t think that the way I was going to use the Daggermaster paragon path was all that much worse than a bow ranger using those over-the-top bows, there were others out there that exploited the system (surprise) and used the Daggermaster’s powers on a sorcerer.
(In case you didn’t know, WotC has released a list of errata. One erratum changed the critical hit bonus from Daggermaster to only work with rogue powers, which totally kills my plan.)
I’ve recently made a sorcerer (to replace Wildeyes), and the damage a sorcerer can do is scary, but I’m curious if the math is truly that different.
So I did some math on a pure rogue Wildeyes, Wildeyes as is, and the sorcerer.
The math was interesting, but not perfect. I had to make a lot of things equal and help reduce wildly random results, which meant making all attacks limited to just 1 or 2 targets and removing all special magical effects beyond some +2 items.
Wildeyes the melee ranger/rogue:
Total average at-will power damage = 15 / 17
Total average encounter power damage = 14 / 15
Total average daily power damage = 20 / 23
Wildeyes the pure rogue:
Total average at-will power damage = 19 / 20
Total average encounter power damage = 25 / 27
Total average daily power damage = 28 / 30
Aryoon the dragonborn sorcerer:
Total average at-will power damage = 13 / 14
Total average encounter power damage = 17 / 18
Total average daily power damage = 30 / 33
The first number is normal damage at level 9, and the second number is normal damage at level 9 if their crit range was increased to 18-20.
I see that my ranger/rogue creation is actually pretty low, but the damage doesn’t account for one-off attacks like sneak attack once or twice per combat (which the pure rogue gets on his attacks), nor does it account for area attacks which the rogue doesn’t get as many of (or as good). So I would say that the ranger/rogue Wildeyes probably does a little more damage on average but with a lot more dice rolled (and a lot of combat time consumed).
Now I don’t visit the Character Optimization boards on the WotC site, so I could easily have missed something that made the classes over the top powerful, but I don’t see the big need for the nerf.
Look at the increased damage from high crit chances; it just isn’t that impressive with a whopping 1-3 more damage on average.
I can’t think of any legitimate reason other than flavor and intended use of the Daggermaster paragon class that makes me see how it’s broken.
So for the time being I’m playing a simplified rogue Wildeyes (who does more damage in less time I guess) and a dragonborn sorcerer. I’ll be playing both simultaneously, at Dale’s request, to cover our PC needs until we get replacement players.
Yeah, I know, I’m playing a dragonborn. But I came up with a concept and felt like trying it out; a fire-focused dragonborn sorcerer who likes to stand up front and cleanses everything with fire. And he wants to be bloodied. He does better when bloodied, so he’ll be doing all kinds of over the top heroic stupidity until he gets bloodied. At that point he’ll let loose with everything while doing more damage and not taking anymore damage.
At least that’s the plan.
Role-playing-wise, he’s a lawful good narcissist who believes he’s a chosen of Bahamut and his god will do anything to protect him.
So when he comes across a group of Bahamut-following dragonborn, it was Bahamut’s will that led them to him.
If he lives past the first 3 sessions, then he’ll be around for quite a while.
Session 26
Admon (Scott); level 10 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 10 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 10 halfling sorcerer
Kergan (Mike); level 10 dwarf rogue
Subtle clues did not exist for this session.
The story was close to chapter’s end and the players were missing the clues or misinterpreting them (causing me much mental trauma).
So this session I slapped them with information and railroaded them to where they needed to be, so we could get to the big fight by the end of the night.
But first we had to integrate Kergan back into the story and explain why he disappeared so suddenly.
Way back, when the party had just defeated Stefforri on the streets of the city, Kergan was about to join his friends on a dragon-back ride to stop Stefforri’s escape.
But prior to that his half-elven Thieves’ Guild superior stopped Kergan and, long story short, led Kergan to the Fey Wild, to the audience of Ivellios Galanodil.
Guy, Kergan’s superior’s name, had been working for Ivellios the entire time, and really had no connections with the Thieves’ Guild. Ivellios had basically duped Kergan into working for him. (It also turns out that Guy is not the true jerk Kergan thought he was. It was just an act as part of the ruse.)
Ivellios sees bad things happening in the future, but can’t piece together exactly what is wrong, so he needed Kergan’s skills.
From that point on Kergan worked for Ivellios.
Kergan stole the Vial of Purity from the City Council to give to the party to help contain Ivellios’s Shame
He scouted the communication runners going from the government building to someone in the Ironmonger territory only to find that Mayor Xavius Ryan is one side of the communicants (not much later all of the communication stops).
Then one day Ivellios tells Kergan that his friends are in danger, and shows him the conversation the party had with the fake Tonus. With a further bit of magic the visage of Tonus is replaced by one of Stefforri. When the party’s conversation with Stefforri ends, she turns and seems to notice the scrying and dispels it with a wave of her hand.
We wrote Duncan out with the excuse of him working on his political career.
Back to present day and poor Ander can’t seem to catch a break.
The dragons seem to be perpetually busy, and probably not even in the Valley.
Nobody from the sorcerer’s cabal he started is around and Fiermach has apparently killed himself by accident.
Even Bobby McDonaldson has gone into hiding.
Kergan looks into why the sorcerers are disappearing and gathers that they have gone into hiding or are on special tasks given to them by Polaris and Ajell.
Edward has kept quiet around the temple after his “attitude adjustment”. There are a lot of “you got showed” looks he has to endure because of it.
Occasionally the group gets together to compare notes at the Roaring Bull Inn. Recently it’s been very quiet, which is unsettling to them – as in “the calm before the storm” kind of quiet.
Admon has learned everything he can from Ivellios’s tomes. (Scott rolled freakishly well on those rolls – as in less than 25% single digit rolls.)
The only thing they need to seal the door to Ivellios’s Shame is silver blood; specifically, mammalian silver blood.
That rules out silver dragon blood that they’ve long thought was the solution.
For several weeks (real world time) he’s wanted to try something, but has been denied an opportunity to test it by Duncan (who thought the idea was a waste of time).
So he goes through the trouble of buying the test equipment, and then gets a vial of Ander’s blood.
Ander, a halfling with silver-toned skin, appeared one day in the Valley on a night where a freakishly powerful storm drenched the land and filled the sky with a lightning storm never before seen in the Valley. He has no memory of anything before that, and is generally considered a minor celebrity in the Valley (up until his naivety or pushiness gets him into trouble).
Admon tested Ander’s blood and found that it had a much larger amount of silver in it than it should.
So they gathered a bit more blood and prepared it with a ritual to be used on the doors in Ivellios’s Shame.
A day later the thin purple skin that is the barrier that keeps the undead elves inside takes on an almost solid look while the denizens inside scream out their pain. Admon believes it will be at least a decade before the magic wears off and the ritual will need to be repeated.
A few days later they’re back in the Roaring Bull Inn doing their usual comparing of notes and such. A few moments after they leave the inn, an explosion erupts from within it.
The party immediately goes into crisis mode and begins helping.
Amazingly no one is killed. The explosion appeared to be centered in the table area where the party was and Bull had been behind the bar, and the party had been the only people there.
The guards show up to take control of the situation, as does the mayor (though mostly for political appearances).
Eventually Girvan Torl shows up and, in his newly pompous way, tells Edward (and crew) to move along “Men are here now.”
Correctly, the party believes the attack was on them, a continuation of the previous week’s ambush arranged by Stefforri.
Kergan attempts to pose as an assassin to see if he can find someone who is looking to have them killed, but he fails at it (poor rolling).
But they still have a plan. Kergan gets Guy to procure the magical bell that detects outsiders (by not making a sound when one is within 25’).
The first place they head is the government building to check the mayor and his staff. No one there appears to be a demon, devil, daemon, or demodand (suck it 2E naming changes).
They warn Mayor Ryan that Stefforri is still in the Valley which visibly upsets him. He notices that all of the city’s protections appear to be elsewhere leaving only the city guards and the party left to defend it.
Kergan suspects the mayor, but gets no reads off of him. (The old joke – how do you know if a politician is lying? His mouth is open.)
Kergan whispers to him “I know who you’ve been talking to” and then rings the bell leaves. The mayor just looks confused.
Then Admon has an epiphany and finally connects some dots.
The DM thinks “About damn time.”
Admon says “A succubus can only control one person at a time. Girvan Torl was being controlled at the same time that Mayor Xavius Ryan was being controlled.”
The DM thinks “Yes! They’re about to get it.”
Admon says “So there must be two succubi.”
The DM thinks “D’oh!”
The party decides to scour the city looking for Stefforri and another not-yet-seen succubus.
They start with the Grand Temple of Brekaneth, believing that if Stefforri’s back, she might be behind the changes in Girvan Torl.
Kergan is made invisible by Admon, and then Kergan walks around inside and out of the church while ringing the bell. The bell rings throughout the entirety. Everyone hears the bell, but they attribute it to something new to the church. The only person who sees Kergan is Father Adrek, but he just gives Kergan a look of “what are you doing?”
When Kergan is about to flee away, Tonus steps around the corner and begins to talk. (Of course Kergan rings the bell just to make sure it’s not Stefforri.)
Tonus: “You’ve been looking for me?”
Kergan: “There seems to be something bad brewing in the Valley.”
Tonus: “There always is…”
Kergan then proceeds to ask him all kinds of questions, but Tonus only gives vague answers. Mainly because that’s the only reason why anyone seeks him out, they always want something.
Before he leaves, he tells Kergan that the party should trust their feelings.
This helps affirm the party’s thinking that Stefforri is hanging around the mayor again.
It’s late in the evening so the party begins heading to their homes.
Kergan takes a detour and sneaks into the mayor’s house again. It’s late, but the mayor isn’t home. He does find evidence that 2 people have been living in the mayor’s house.
In the meantime Ander decides he wants to sleep on his balcony under the sky. He notices a large man dressed in plate armor walking oddly along the rivulet.
Edward has been discreetly asking people in the temple if Girvan Torl has been dating anyone, but there is no one. He finds out that Torl has left the temple a few hours prior. Edward then leaves to find him and stops to get Admon along the way.
When Ander heads outside to check on the armored man, he finds Admon and Edward about to knock on his door.
They compare notes while heading to the river only to find the armored man gone, and the rivulet water glowing faintly green.
They correctly suspect that it is the zombie elixir and warn nearby guards who then proceed to sound the alarm.
By this time Kergan has joined the group on his way back from the mayor’s house.
A few moments all four of them are walking upstream along the edge of the fast moving rivulet (it’s not too deep, but it could carry someone away).
They come to the edge of the small waterfall that feeds the rivulet. They see several people standing around but two of them are pouring barrels of glowing green liquid into the water. The other people are undead.
Mayor Xavius Ryan, “Ah, I expected you fellows to show up. It’s a shame I’m going to have to have you killed.”
Then the zombies charge the party, but we don’t even run that combat.
Xavius: “Well done! I guess it’s time to do this the hard way.”
Stefforri speaks a word of magic and fire erupts all around them, fire that is both burning and freezing.
The fire grows into a giant 3-sided pyramid (almost in the shape of a d4).
Stefforri had linked this area and her sanctum together.
Stefforri and Xavius are now floating on some runed discs with another one on the ground.
Near the corners of the place are also runed circles.
The runed discs and runed circles can teleport to another empty runed disc or circle so long as it’s empty.
The runed discs can fly at the rider’s normal speed if they make a DC20 Athletics or Arcana check. If the check failed, or the disc was not occupied, then it fell 2 squares.
Each round, if there were at least 3 open teleportation points then 3 devil minions would appear.
There were also 3 spined devils that attacked the party from the ground.
My intent was for minions to harass the party in melee but be easily clearable, the spined devils to harass them enough from ranged to force the party to pay attention to them, and have Ryan and Stefforri casually attack and curse the party from a distance. Once the spined devils were down, then the Cambion Hellswords would appear and beat up on the party in melee. And once one of the bosses was bloodied, or I felt the time was right, the bosses would go from harassment mode to kill-the-party mode.
As I expected, the party had other plans.
After the usual evil mastermind ranting, Xavius was beat to all hell and back as the party shredded him with daily power after daily power.
First they knocked him off his disc and swarmed him, but he was able to get away to a disc and get out of melee…for a time.
Mayor Xavius Ryan’s last words were a congratulatory “Well done”.
The party did not get to celebrate a victory as the cambions were let loose and Stefforri went on full aggression.
She used her sorceress powers from above until the party started riding the discs and hurting her. So she moved to ground and used her succubus powers to force the party to separate from one another, giving her minions a great chance to swarm the individual party members.
Most rounds she was able to dominate one of the party members, usually Edward, and would send them charging at another party member.
She was also able to consistently keep Kergan charmed, which forced him to stay away from her or be forced to protect her.
But the party was able to hit her often enough, even without their usual healer.
When she dropped the whole pyramid of fire disappeared, and they were back in the Valley, with zombie elixir polluted water to deal with.
Several months ago a reader of the blog did an excellent rendering of the mayor.
I wanted to post it before, but I thought it would be bring too much attention to what the mayor was doing.
So now I present to you Mayor Xavius Ryan, born Session #1, died Session #26.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 12:04 PM
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