msully4321
2009-12-09, 03:25 PM
In my somewhat cliche-filled previous session, my party battled a traitorous chancellor (a Wizard 5/Malconvoker 5) in his tower. When it became clear that he couldn't win, he ordered his Unseen Servant to activate the self-destruct mechanism and teleported away (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoadBearingBoss). (It is a long standing tradition in this city that the Tower of the Chancellor collapses every 7 years).
The tower is now beginning to collapse around them. They are on floor two of a five story tower (but I am prepared to retcon it to floor five of a ten story tower or something similar if it will make things more interesting).
Most of my 6-person party wants to escape immediately, but two of the party members plan to go deeper into the tower to try to recover the chancellor's papers.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to play out the escape/exploration and make it an interesting and fun challenge. The party has 4 9th level characters and 2 8th level, but nobody who can cast Dimension Door or Teleport.
I'd like to make it such that the people trying to escape will probably succeed unless things go very badly (or they are very dumb), but will be interesting. Going deeper into the tower is a really dumb move and the players know it, so I have no qualms about making that fairly deadly. A 50% chance of survival for them (more if they are smart, less if they are dumb) seems fair to me.
The next session is also the last session I am running before we all go home for winter break, so I want things to be awesome. It's also a good time to kill characters, since the players have plenty of time to build replacements (my DM - kjones - once ran a semester finale that killed half of the party in a round (all three casters were standing in a line near an enemy with a breath weapon)).
The finale encounter of the session is probably going to be a rematch against the chancellor who has used a scroll of planar binding to bind some sort of fiend (probably a Vrock or a Bebilith), which should be pretty cool. The Chancellor was leveled up to Malconvoker 6 but will have used a lot of his spells for the day binding the fiend and making sure it agrees to his deal, which should level things out a bit.
Ideas?
The tower is now beginning to collapse around them. They are on floor two of a five story tower (but I am prepared to retcon it to floor five of a ten story tower or something similar if it will make things more interesting).
Most of my 6-person party wants to escape immediately, but two of the party members plan to go deeper into the tower to try to recover the chancellor's papers.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to play out the escape/exploration and make it an interesting and fun challenge. The party has 4 9th level characters and 2 8th level, but nobody who can cast Dimension Door or Teleport.
I'd like to make it such that the people trying to escape will probably succeed unless things go very badly (or they are very dumb), but will be interesting. Going deeper into the tower is a really dumb move and the players know it, so I have no qualms about making that fairly deadly. A 50% chance of survival for them (more if they are smart, less if they are dumb) seems fair to me.
The next session is also the last session I am running before we all go home for winter break, so I want things to be awesome. It's also a good time to kill characters, since the players have plenty of time to build replacements (my DM - kjones - once ran a semester finale that killed half of the party in a round (all three casters were standing in a line near an enemy with a breath weapon)).
The finale encounter of the session is probably going to be a rematch against the chancellor who has used a scroll of planar binding to bind some sort of fiend (probably a Vrock or a Bebilith), which should be pretty cool. The Chancellor was leveled up to Malconvoker 6 but will have used a lot of his spells for the day binding the fiend and making sure it agrees to his deal, which should level things out a bit.
Ideas?