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The Tain
2009-04-03, 02:29 AM
With the recent proliferation of well-written (and highly entertaining) campaign journals and the fact that our own group just started this campaign, I figured I'd come out of my usual lurking fugue and put up a recounting of our sessions, both for the benefit of the other players (most of whom frequent the boards) and anyone else who might find it interesting; it's an older module, but it's meant to be one of the better ones, and we've loved it so far. This will be the fourth time our DM's run this module, as it's one of her favorites.

Spoilers ahead, of course.


Session 1

We started out with three PCs, all fourth level:


Gerard, CG male human crusader of Kord, emphasis on Stone Dragon and Devoted Spirit -- my own character, and probably the most level-headed of the three. The party's primary melee fighter, focused on Combat Reflexes and Mage Slayer.
Ozan Hammond, CG male human beguiler, currently masquerading as Phineas the Black, a bard. Makes heavy use of wands to supplement his own arcane magic.
Cam Seavering, CG male human factotum, a swashbuckling jack-of-all-trades, master of none, with Two-Weapon Fighting and Weapon Finesse -- a sailor who found himself more at home on dry land.


Yeah, all human and all Chaotic Good. Character creation was done all together, which is kind of a first for our group -- we usually do character creation beforehand and come to the table ready for play, so it was interesting to see the party that came out of that: fairly homogeneous, but with a pretty versatile skill set. Cam and Phineas both had maxed-out Use Magic Device, and so functioned as the party's primary healers; Gerard's Devoted Spirit maneuvers and stances provided pretty reasonable in-combat healing, and both he and Cam have Healing Belts.

We started off heading into Hommlet, our point of origin to the east being glutted with an overabundance of adventurers and a dearth of 'honest' work for them to do. Half-jokingly, one of our contacts had suggested we head to Emridy Meadows and loot the old battlefield (which, by this point, was bound to have been picked over quite thoroughly, but we were desperate for work or something resembling it).

After arriving in town, we made straight for the Welcome Wench, the only inn in town. Phineas has been plucking away idly at his lute all through the town, rolling remarkably well and managing to thoroughly alienate the inn's resident bard in the process. After getting a less-than-cordial reception from the few denizens of Hommlet we met (including the bartender at the Welcome Wench and the local priestess of Ehlonna, not to mention Phineas's idle playing thoroughly alienating the Wench's obviously-outclassed resident bard, who might otherwise have been a veritable fount of useful information), we opted to head off to Emridy Meadows -- which, of course, was every bit as desolate as we expected, and apparently unpeopled by monsters. After poking around for a bit, without result, we headed up the road towards the area the temple was rumored to be, and upon hitting a fork in the road, arbitrarily went right instead of left...which led us, eventually, to the moathouse.

After exploring the courtyard (a little perturbed by the huge swatch of blood that coated it and the drag-marks leading into the moat-house interior), we took a look inside the ruined gate-tower, to make sure we weren't leaving behind potential enemies, before walking back into the courtyard--

--straight into a blast of lightning, which promptly dropped each of us to less than half our full hit points.

The blue dragon, which had been curled around the top of the tower, promptly won initiative and launched itself into the courtyard, where it hovered long enough to throw up a cloud of dust that to blind all three of us, as closely-grouped as we were. Surprised, blinded and low on hit points, we beat a hasty retreat to the ruins of the tower and slammed the door behind us...after which, of course, we heard the dragon land outside.

Hastily healing our injuries as best we could, Gerard dug a piece of chalk from his pack and hastily began sketching out a battle plan with Phineas on the wall of the ruined tower as Cam tried to reason with the creature lurking outside:

Cam: What grievance do you have with us? We've done you no harm!
Dragon: To hunt you amuses me -- that's enough.
Cam: Well, we're...all sick. All three of us have a terrible disease, and if you eat us, you'll get it too!
Dragon: ...I think I'll take my chances.


At which point, under cover of a loud show of bravado from Gerard, Phineas cast a silent image of the crusader, flung open the door and sent it charging towards the dragon -- straight into the dragon's readied lightning breath. The creature's readied action used, the real Gerard leapt out the door, careful not to interact with his illusionary double. They traded hits, Cam firing off charges from his wand of magic missile and Phineas loosing as many spells as he could think of, until the beguiler got in a critical hit from a wand of ray of enfeeblement, dropping the dragon's strength score into the single digits, which effectively turned the course of the battle -- the dragon, at a huge penalty to its attacks and suddenly too weak to fly, fell in a few more rounds without landing another blow. In the single round it took us to debate about healing it back to semi-consciousness in order to interrogate it about its presence in the area and the location of its hoard, the fallen dragon bled out from -9, shuddered and died.

The dragon slain, we healed up and ended the session for the evening.

Initial thoughts:


For the first fight of the module (at least the first one we encountered), this one was impressively lethal -- if we hadn't retreated to the safety of the ruined tower, we would have been picked off pretty easily. The dragon didn't need to be able to see us to hit us with his lightning breath -- his blindsense would have more than sufficed.
Although his wands were a great help, Phineas the beguiler's spell list is of little use against a non-humanoid opponent with decent will saves, at least in this case.
For all that the factotum has an enormous bag of tricks, Cam's tricks are almost all pretty minor -- he's basically a rogue with inconsistent sneak attack and the ability to cast a couple of minor arcane spells -- his most effective combat rounds, as well, were spent casting out of his wands.
Although he makes for a solid melee tank, Gerard makes for a poor ranged combatant (in point of fact, not even possessing a bow); if the dragon, considering us his lessers, had not descended to taunt us and fought us on the ground, we would have been hard-pressed to win this fight.
For all that we were ambushed and nearly killed in the surprise round, the party recovered nicely, retreating rather than dying uselessly and using chalk to work out a solid strategy for counterattack without being overheard and anticipated by the dragon.

All in all, a great session, and a good introduction to the module -- the first fight set the bar, I think. We've managed a couple more sessions since then, which I'll work on posting later.

bladesmith
2009-04-10, 11:57 PM
And... You haven't gotten to the best part yet! My introduction! :smallbiggrin: