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Saph
2010-01-23, 09:38 PM
Campaign Journal - Seven Kingdoms


Setting

This is a 3.5 campaign journal set in our DM's gameworld, a home-made setting called Seven Kingdoms. It's got some similarities to Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, but the main difference is the prevalence of interplanar portals. There are lots of them, every city has a dozen or so, and new ones open regularly. When they do a team is sent to temporarily seal the portal until the government can investigate it and decide whether to close it for good or keep it around. Our party is currently engaged attempting to do just this.

I'm writing the journal in an OOC sort of way, similar to SilverClawShift's one a while back - it seemed appropriate, given that our campaign is starting to look similar to hers. Since I have a bunch of other things I'm supposed to be doing, there's no guarantee I'll be able to keep it up, but if enough people like it I'll have a try!



Episode 1 - Wrestling Smackdown Zombies

Party Lineup

We're playing basic 3.5 with the exception of using Pathfinder base races, effectively making all the basic races a fair bit stronger than usual (Pathfinder base races all have a net bonus to ability scores). To balance this out characters could also take a free +1 LA 3.5 race instead. The starting party ended up as follows:

Aasimar Sorcerer 6 / Ruathar 3 - My character. Built for survivability first, flexibility second, offensive output third. Uses a runestaff and the Fey Heritage feats for a fairly wide selection of spells and SLAs. Goes around glowing with brilliant light all the time as a result of the Luminous Armour spell.
Human Ranger 9 - One of the newer players to the group. The character was designed to be easy to play, but she’s getting the hang of the game anyway. Standard build.
Dwarven Druid 9 - Played by one of the group old-timers. He always builds powerful characters but still dies with remarkable frequency. Brown bear companion, standard Druid tricks.
Tiefling Rogue 5 / Assassin 4 - Okay, technically the Assassin part is supposed to be a secret, but it’s so blatantly obvious that no-one’s even pretending to be fooled. Female but goes around in a Hat of Disguise pretending to be male, no-one knows why.
Half-elf Druid 3 / Sorcerer 4 / Arcane Hierophant 2 - Newbie. Wolf companion. Started off as Druid5/Sorc4 but took up the Arcane Hierophant class at my suggestion.
We were running a sweepstake for most likely character to die first. I picked the half-elf, and might have won it but for . . . well, I’ll get to that later.


Daze and Days

The first hour or so was taken with character creation, and the next hour with RPing and getting to know the rest of the party. Once we’re ready we catch a teleport to a waystation that’s near the area where the portal’s supposed to be, and head off.

After a couple of uneventful days travelling, we run into some fellow travellers; a handful of guards escorting three women. These turn out to be a covey of hags. We discover that they’re a covey of hags as a result of the following exchange.

Me: “I cast detect magic.” (A couple of details had started to make me suspicious.)
DM: “The old woman on the wagon glares at you. Make a Will save.”
Me: “23.”
DM: “You’re dazed. You lose concentration on the spell.”
Assassin: “Hmm . . . you know what, I think maybe we should leave.”
Druid: “Yeah. Let’s.”

We back off. Since I’m on a horse I can still travel despite being dazed. The hags don’t try to pick a fight and we soon move out of line of sight. The DM tells me I’m still dazed and I wait for it to wear off. It doesn’t. After ten minutes I start to get a bit restive.

DM: “You’re still dazed.”
Me: “Okay, have I got any idea how long it’ll take to go away?”
DM: “Three days.”
Me: “Three days?”
DM: “Yup.”
Me: “Do I get another save at some point?”
DM: “Nope.”
Assassin: “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you.”
Me: “Um . . .”
Ranger: “Well, we could lead your horse along until you recover.”
Me: “Uh, sorry guys. It looks like I’m going to have to drop out of this one.”
Ranger: “Is that want you want to do?”
Me: “Well, no, but it’s not like I have much choice. There’s nothing I can do like this.”
Assassin: “Yeah, but you can’t exactly go back to the inn. That’d mean walking right past the hags.”
Druid: “Maybe we can fix it. Do I know what spells could cure this?”
DM: “Sure. It can be cured by remove curse or dispel evil.”
Druid: “Which . . . aren’t on the Druid spell list. That’s annoying.”
DM: “They’re not?”

(For those wondering, the creature was a sea hag (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/hag.htm#seaHag), and yes, their daze effect really does last for three days. It’s also supposed to be only DC 13, but the DM had advanced the thing so that the DC was up to 23 . . . which was what I’d gotten, but at the time he’d misheard. You can imagine my reaction when I found that out at the end of the session.)

Lacking any other option, the party pressed onwards and eventually discovered a creepy abandoned hamlet. The two druids started to investigate. In the meantime I was trying to figure out what to do. Since I couldn’t take any actions, there wasn’t any way for me to participate, but walking off didn’t seem like a good response either.

Finally I hit upon a solution. I had some college work to do for my tutorials next week, so I pulled my laptop over, downloaded the manual chapter and assignment, then got a sheet of paper and started making notes. This way I could listen to the game with one ear and it gave me something to do while I couldn’t act.

As it turned out I didn’t have to keep it up for very long. By the time I’d dated the page and was onto ‘Tutorial 12: The Liability of Employers: Primary Liability’ the DM snapped and told me “Fine! You’re not dazed anymore!” I put the laptop away and went back to the game.


Zombies

The creepy hamlet was deserted and large parts of the streets were underwater. The druids had snooped around and felt something moving beneath the surface of the water. The single-class druid summoned a dire rat; it sank without a trace. He summoned a shark; it chased after whatever was in the water, went around in circles, and lost them. The druids were left standing on their own in the knee-deep water, and tried to figure out what to do.

In the meantime me, the ranger, and the assassin climbed up onto the roofs and jumped across from building to building. One building turned out to be empty apart from a bunch of corpses, which promptly rose as zombies. We climbed back up onto the roof again and the zombies, being zombies, couldn’t figure out how to follow us. By this point we were getting a little bored with the hamlet, so the druids split up and started searching the remaining buildings. Unfortunately, that was what the creatures lurking underwater had been waiting for.


Wrestling Smackdown Zombies

The two creatures underwater were Drowned from MMIII. For those who don’t know, Drowned are an especially nasty type of undead that force everyone within 30’ to make a drowning check at the beginning of every turn (DC 10, rises by 1 each round, failure means dropping instantly to 0 HP and dying two turns later). The DM toned them down slightly by making the drowning check a Fort save instead of a Con check and by allowing drowning/dying characters to stabilise with a successful roll, but they were still ridiculously deadly. One of the Drowned started climbing up after the characters on the roof, while the other drowned one of the druids down to -1 HP, grabbed the second druid, and started performing wrestling moves on him. The druid had used up all his Wildshape uses and as a result got suplexed, choke-holded, and then powerslammed into me. The rest of the party jumped down and managed to kill off the first Drowned, but as soon as we did the second one, who’d climbed up onto the roof, proceeded to do a jumping elbow slam onto the sorcerer/druid’s head. The sorc/druid, who’d only just been healed up from drowning status, went down for the count.

By now everybody had been making drowning checks for several rounds and at this point the quality of the rolls took a sudden nosedive. The sorc/druid was already bleeding out at negative HP and his wolf failed a drowning check and started drowning. The single-class druid managed to summon another shark but immediately afterwards failed his drowning check and also started drowning. The ranger, who’d been shooting the Drowned, tried to get to him to stabilise him with a Heal check but nat-1ed her Fort save and also started drowning, and the following turn, the assassin failed his Fort check as well and also started drowning.

This just left me. The remaining Drowned grappled me and tried to shove my head into its chest cavity. I used my anklets of translocation to blink behind it, let my belker claws spell rip it up a little, then cast steeldance and double-stabbed it. The Drowned grabbed me again and headbutted me. I belker clawed it again, steeldance-stabbed it again, reached out to tag the druid/sorc with my foot, used my dimension door SLA to teleport with him up to the roof, and stabilised him. The round after that, the druid’s shark finished off the Drowned and the battle was finally over. Nobody was really in the mood to stick around the hamlet much longer, so after healing up we hurried on to the nearest town, where we ended the session.


Thoughts

Drowned really are stupid. Their drowning aura is insanely deadly, their +20 to Hide/MS means that they’re almost guaranteed to ambush you, they have 150 HP so killing them takes forever, and they Fast Heal the whole time you’re trying.
Despite the various deadly stuff trying to kill or inconvenience us, the session was a lot of fun. I couldn’t help noticing that we were only 1 roll away from a TPK at the end (if I’d failed the last drowning check before D-Dooring, there would have been no party members left to heal up the drowned ones) but I have to admit that the risk made it a lot more entertaining. High-lethality games are usually more memorable anyway.
Archer Rangers really aren’t as bad as people make them out to be. The Ranger probably did more damage to the Drowned than any other character, and was only dropped by rolling a natural 1. She accomplished more than the Druid and certainly more than the Assassin or the druid/sorc. Of course, the last isn’t too hard. I’m still not really sure what the newbie was trying to do with that combination. He seems very keen on RPing but hardly said a word all session. That said, he claimed to have had fun and said he’d be back next week, so maybe we’ll find out more then.

Starbuck_II
2010-01-23, 10:11 PM
Archers rangers aren't a problem at low levels: they have that range (being out of danger) bonus. It is just you get more attacks TWFing.

Is the 1/2 Elf becoming a Arcane Herophant (that one that combines Druid companion/Familar)?

Saph
2010-01-24, 05:35 AM
Is the 1/2 Elf becoming a Arcane Herophant (that one that combines Druid companion/Familar)?

Well, I showed him the class. Not sure if he's going to go for it or not.

Kaun
2010-01-24, 06:35 AM
Nice read, Keep it up!!

Seems slightly random so far i must admit though, how did the summoned shark achieve much in knee deep water?

Saph
2010-01-24, 06:57 AM
Seems slightly random so far i must admit though, how did the summoned shark achieve much in knee deep water?

Since it had to make drowning checks along with the rest of the party, a better question would be how it was possible for a shark to be vulnerable to drowning. :P

Starbuck_II
2010-01-24, 11:12 AM
Drowning in air?

Kaun
2010-01-24, 02:52 PM
Since it had to make drowning checks along with the rest of the party, a better question would be how it was possible for a shark to be vulnerable to drowning. :P

Sharks can drown if they stop moving under water cant they?

Anyway sounds nice and random.... keep it coming

Saph
2010-02-01, 11:34 AM
Episode 2: Frankenstein and Friends


Second session of the campaign, along with our first PC death, and a significant amount of sanity loss both in and out of character. The druid's player had to miss today's session, so we had only four PCs: my sorcerer, the druid/sorc (who’s rebuilt his character as an Arcane Hierophant), the archer ranger, and the kleptomaniac rogue/assassin.

Our party had reached Swamp Town, and the first item of business was to find the portal we were supposed to be closing. We knew it was somewhere in the swamp, unfortunately, Gather Information checks revealed that pretty much everyone in the town disliked outsiders and wasn’t willing to help. The only useful information we got was that there was a cabal of three evil spellcasters in the area who went by the unimaginative name of “The Three”. Their names were Ventis, Type, and Sentinus.

Lacking any better plan, we decided to look them up and ask for directions.

Meeting Ventis

Ventis occupied an abandoned temple built on a small cliff near town. Guarding the front door were a pair of nabassu gargoyles. They attacked us on sight, ignoring our efforts to talk to them (with hindsight, calling them a pair of “overgrown lawn ornaments” probably didn’t help). I blinded one with glitterdust, the ranger shot the other one full of arrows, and both of them fled. We continued on to find a group of acolytes digging a big hole in the graveyard, and I stepped forward to talk to them.

A bit of background at this point. My sorcerer uses a spell from the Book of Exalted Deeds called luminous armour that protects the caster with glowing golden armour of light which shines as brightly as full daylight. I use another spell called steeldance which animates a pair of daggers to hover around me. Both of these spells were active at the time.

Me: “Hi. Does Ventis live here?”
*The acolytes look at the the figure shining with holy light and with two daggers floating over his shoulders.*
Acolytes: “Um . . . yes?”
Me: “Great. We were hoping to ask for directions.”
Acolytes: “ . . . Sure. Go right in.”
Me: “Thanks!”

We headed for the temple, and the acolytes went and hid behind gravestones to see what would happen.

Ventis’ temple turned out to be almost empty except for a shadow elemental that showed us in. There was a brief delay when the rogue discovered a golden tub of water, with runes inlaid all around the edge, but we eventually managed to drag her away and in to meet Ventis.

Ventis turned out to be an old man, and quite polite and helpful once we explained why we were there. He explained that about a month ago, a cult based in Swamp Town had sold their cabal a set of tablets with a ritual that was supposed to be capable of opening a stable portal to the Abyss. One of the three, Type, tried to use it. It didn’t work. The ritual didn’t open a portal, but did send Type insane, paranoid, delusional, and violently psychotic.

It sounded as though the cult in the town was where we needed to look, but Ventis didn’t know their location. He did suggest that either Type or Sentinus probably would, though. The problem was that Sentinus lived in the undead-filled hamlet that we’d all nearly died in on the way here, and Type was, as mentioned, insane. Still, Ventis had been helpful, so we thanked him and were about to leave.

DM: “So, anything else you want to ask him before you go?”
Rogue: “Oh yeah! What’s that gold rune-covered tub of water outside for?”
Ventis: “It’s a jacuzzi.”
Us: “...”
Ventis: “What? Just because you’re running an evil cabal doesn’t mean you can’t have a few luxuries.”

After we’d finished laughing, we went outside, waved to the (still hiding) acolytes and left.

Chat with Sentinus

We headed back to the undead-filled village and searched it. Luckily, there weren’t any more drowned in the area, but the only thing of interest we found was a submerged tunnel. Me and the Arcane Hierophant went to investigate, him dealing with the water by turning into a seal, and me holding my breath with the aid of an item.

Sentinus was at the end of the tunnel, in an underground church, and turned out to be a banelar naga. After some negotiation and a few awkward moments where he asked about eating the seal, he agreed to tell us the location of the cult in exchange for payment. Unfortunately, the type of payment he was interested in was arcane knowledge; specifically, he wanted to be taught spells, which would take me several days. By this point the rogue was getting bored, so we agreed that me and the seal would stay and deal with Sentinus, while the two female sneaky-types would go and investigate Type and see what they could learn.

As it turned out, this was a mistake.

Meeting Type

While the Arcane Hierophant and my sorcerer were being entertained by Sentinus (who turned out to be a very pleasant host) the rogue and the ranger travelled to Type’s mansion. It turned out to be guarded by a bunch of half-golem undead. With hindsight, this should probably have been a warning.

With their Move Silently and Hide scores, the two girls sneaked inside and found Type. More specifically, his full name was Model 7-12 Prototype, one of the early-model warforged. Ventis had mentioned to us that the model had been retired ahead of schedule due to certain “issues” with the mental programming. Type was marching up and down, holding a scroll, and muttering and cursing to himself in a variety of languages. The rogue decided to steal the scroll.

Bad idea.

Type screamed and went into a fury. The rogue used her Hide in Plain Sight ability and vanished. The ranger couldn’t. This was the point at which we discovered that Type was a 12th-level Dread Necromancer. While the rogue fled, the ranger got hit with, in quick succession, ray of exhaustion, cloudkill, and fear. She ran screaming, though not very fast.

The rogue got out through a window, circled around, and made it to the front of the mansion in time to see the ranger crawl out of the front door, pursued by Type and a few undead. She manged to heal the ranger up from single-figure hitpoints, but at this point Type, who’d figured out that he couldn’t spot the rogue, started casting magic jar. The first casting possessed the ranger, the second casting possessed the rogue instead, and Type then used the rogue’s body to chase the ranger down and hit her with a vampiric touch which, due to a critical hit and the energy drain effect of the Dread Necromancer’s touch, killed her instantly.

The rogue woke up a few hours later strapped to a surgical table . . . which was was where, mercifully, we cut back to the other half of the party.

Rescue Mission

Me and the Arcane Hierophant finished up with Sentinus, received the cult’s location from him, along with some other useful information, said goodbye, and headed out to the rendezvous point. When the rogue and the ranger didn’t show up, we knew something had gone wrong.

We made it to Type’s mansion and started figuring out what had happened. The Arcane Hierophant turned into a bird and flew around the outside, while I buffed up Cassy (my rat familiar) and sent her in to investigate.

The Arcane Hierophant found the ranger - or rather, her animated body, which was wandering around attacking small living creatures near the mansion. Cassy found the rogue, and returned.

Me: “You found him? Is he alive?”
Cassy: “Yes!”
Me: “Is he all right?”
Cassy: *puzzled look*
Me: “Are all of his bits still attached to him?”
Cassy: “Oh! No, they’re not.”
Me: “Okay, so- Wait, what?”

After conferring with the Hierophant, I used an invisibility scroll and sneaked inside.

The rogue was in the basement, in Type’s holding cells. Various bits of her body had been removed, including but not limited to both hands, both feet, a leg, an eye, at least one elbow, and several internal organs. Most of the missing bits had been replaced with parts from . . . other creatures. I wasn’t really sure what, and to be honest I didn’t really want to know, but they had a lot more fingers and toes and at least one bit had been replaced with parts from an octopus. She’d also had a complete blood transfusion and was bleeding some kind of black sticky stuff.

The rogue was conscious and after getting her free her first priority was to find the missing bits of her body. A few of them were in jars around the room. The remaining ones were attached to other creatures. You see, there were other prisoners in the cell block, too, in the same sort of physical condition. Most were dead . . . or at least they looked dead.

Rogue: “There. That one’s got my leg. I want it back.”
Me: “The leg’s kind of . . . um . . . on it.”
Rogue: “So cut it off!”
Me: “But-”
Rogue: “Oh, for- Give me that!”

Rogue snatches sword off me and starts hacking. Blood and black stuff starts flying everywhere and the thing she’s hacking it off starts screaming.

(This was the point at which I started getting queasy. The DM commented that he should include a sanity loss system. I told him that more important than the fictional sanity of our characters was the REAL, ACTUAL sanity of our PLAYERS.)

To cut a long story short the rogue got most of her body parts and internal organs back, I think, and no I don’t want to go into the details of how. I dimension doored us outside and went to meet up with the Arcane Hierophant.

After that particular traumatic experience, getting the ranger’s body back seemed pretty easy. The hierophant used his sling to hit it with a rock from a distance, it chased us, we ran away, let it catch up, turned, and destroyed it. It turned out to be a wight, but a lightning bolt from the Hierophant finished it off. We took the body and ran.

Finishing Up

We got back to the town without incident except for a few very strange looks. A reincarnate spell got the ranger back and a restoration dealt with the Hierophant’s energy drain from the wight - luckily we’d swiped enough stuff from Type’s mansion on the way out to pay for it.

However, trying to figure out what to do with the rogue was . . . more of an issue. She currently has enough grafts to audition as Frankenstein’s monster, and is missing one lower leg. We’ve got a bunch of spare parts that would theoretically be able to . . . yeah, so anyway.

So, any suggestions on how to deal with this one? Grafts aren’t my area of expertise, and honestly it’s gotten to the point where I’m sufficiently creeped out that I don’t particularly want to research it myself.

Anyway, next session the rogue and ranger are probably going to be away, so we’ve got some time to figure out how to deal with it. We’ll be investigating the cult’s lair, which hopefully will work out slightly better . . .

Goonthegoof
2010-02-01, 11:56 AM
If you want the original limbs back you could just chop the limbs off and get someone to cast regenerate (or maybe there's a lower level substitute, I'm not sure). On the other hand you may want to get the rogue to stick with them, from the sound of it he has about 100000gp worth of grafts at this point :smallwink:

Saph
2010-02-01, 12:07 PM
We were wondering about the Regenerate approach.

The problem with it is that a) it requires a 13th+ level cleric and b) I really don't want to think about how it would deal with internal grafts.

Malbordeus
2010-02-01, 01:33 PM
and the two days the rogue was there more or less means its 2000gp of grafts, tops.

game dm btw.

Lamech
2010-02-01, 02:51 PM
The obvious solution is kill and raise dead; you have all the body parts.

The Glyphstone
2010-02-01, 03:03 PM
and the two days the rogue was there more or less means its 2000gp of grafts, tops.

game dm btw.

Totally should have made the villain a Fleshwarper there. :smallbiggrin:Not only for the thematics, but they can craft grafts at 1 hour/1000GP instead of 1 day/1000GP.

Saph
2010-02-01, 03:35 PM
The obvious solution is kill and raise dead; you have all the body parts.

We have most of the body parts. Dealing with the internal ones might be more of an issue, even if the character consents, which I'm not really sure she would.

Person_Man
2010-02-01, 05:35 PM
Random thoughts:

Ruathar is an interesting PrC choice on your part. You don't lose caster levels and you pick up slightly better HD and Saves, plus some minor Elf stuff. Was there any particular build goal behind it, or was it a roleplaying thing? Since it's only a 3 level class, what are you going to do when you gain anther level?

Wait, so you failed the odd DC 23 Will Save vs Daze against the Hag. Doesn't the same Gaze attack inflict a Fort Save to avoid Death? Or did your DM just hand wave that away?

I'm surprised your DM would just announce to you how long the Daze effect would last, rather then calling for a Heal check or something similar, and then just hand wave the duration away. Why didn't the party just rest for 3 days? Is there some "beat the clock" element going on?

Similarly, when your PC chooses to teach the Sentinus spells to get the location of the cult, why do the other party members feel compelled to "do something" when not doing anything would actually be much faster, easier, and safer for the party?

I thought spontaneous casters can't use Sanctified spells like Luminous Armor, except through magic items (BoED pg 83)?

In regards to the Assassin body problem, I would just wait for her to die of "natural" causes (presumably an undead creature mauling her when she tries to do something stupid again, like steal a scroll from a BBEG), and then Reincarnate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reincarnate.htm) her an entirely new body. It doesn't require an intact body, just 1000 gp of rare oils and unguents and "the remains."

Anywho, despite my nit-pick-ery, I appreciate campaign journals and hope you keep writing. It's always interesting to see how other groups run games, rather then debating balance in rules in the abstract RAW.

Goonthegoof
2010-02-01, 09:11 PM
I think the rest of the party was just roleplaying, and decided their characters sitting still for days wouldn't make sense. Anyway I think the dm ignored the gold limit/day there, as there's no way replacing every appendage would cost less than 2000.

Saph
2010-02-02, 01:29 AM
Random thoughts:

Ruathar is an interesting PrC choice on your part. You don't lose caster levels and you pick up slightly better HD and Saves, plus some minor Elf stuff. Was there any particular build goal behind it, or was it a roleplaying thing? Since it's only a 3 level class, what are you going to do when you gain anther level?

Abjurant Champion. Ruathar gives you the weapon proficiency to get into it, plus I like elves.


I'm surprised your DM would just announce to you how long the Daze effect would last, rather then calling for a Heal check or something similar, and then just hand wave the duration away. Why didn't the party just rest for 3 days? Is there some "beat the clock" element going on?

Similarly, when your PC chooses to teach the Sentinus spells to get the location of the cult, why do the other party members feel compelled to "do something" when not doing anything would actually be much faster, easier, and safer for the party?

PCs tend to get bored fast. "Do nothing" is good from the point of view of the one who wants to wait, but I've noticed that it rarely works, since most groups have at least one player with a short attention span. Basically as soon as one PC declares they're going to be spending a few days doing something, the others go and find something else to do.


I thought spontaneous casters can't use Sanctified spells like Luminous Armor, except through magic items (BoED pg 83)?

Huh, quite right, never noticed that one before. It's a bizarre rule, I've no idea why they decided that prepared casters should be able to use them but spontaneous casters shouldn't. Well, it's kind of part of my character's theme by now, so I guess I'll stick with it.

Saph
2010-02-07, 07:25 AM
Episode 3: Dark Water


Long session today!

The ranger and the rogue were away for this week, so the party roster was me (Sorc 9) the Druid (Druid 9) the Arcane Hierophant (Sorc 4 / Dru 3 / Arc Hie 2) and a new player who got given one of the DM’s pregens, a Dragon Shaman (level 9 with a bunch of aberrant feats).

At the start of the session, we’d just gone to bed after recovering from the raid on the mansion of the other member of the Three, Type (the insane Dread Necromancer with a penchant for undead and golems). Both me and the Arcane Hierophant were down a bunch of spells, so we really were hoping for a good night’s rest.

Naturally, we didn’t get it.


Rematch

The DM calls for listen checks and we wake up at midnight to the sounds of shouting and screaming. The druid flies over towards the front gate and sees the town guard flooding in. Attacking the town are a bunch of undead, half-golem undead, and golems.

Crap.

We buff up and head out. Immediately we get ambushed by a mohrg and a bunch of shadows. I fried the shadows with a wings of flurry spell, but not before they’ve knocked a fair bit of Strength damage off me, the druid, and the dragon shaman. Everyone rolls high on their Fort saves against the mohrg’s paralysis, and it goes down shortly afterwards.

That was when Type showed up. He opened up with a cloudkill that weakened the Hierophant and his wolf companion. The Hierophant turned into an eagle and flew up, while the Druid charged in in bear form and started clawing at him. Type responded with a vampiric touch that knocked off a bunch of the Druid’s HP and gave him two negative levels as well. The rest of the party spread out around Type and kept blasting him.

Type used some kind of special ability to dump TWO vampiric touch spells into the Druid at the same time, along with extra damage from his touch, along with another two negative levels. The Druid went down to negatives, but that just gave everyone else a clear shot on Type. I blasted Type with a seeking ray and a ray of flame, the Hierophant hit him with lesser orb of fire and lightning bolt, and the Dragon Shaman breathed on him. The sheer volume of damage got through Type’s hit points, and he went down for good.

Me: “Okay, pop quiz: what happens to a bunch of golems and undead when the guy who’s commanding them gets killed?”
Hierophant: “Don’t know.”
Me: “Let’s find out.”


Golem Rampage

Turns out the answer is ‘they keep doing whatever they were ordered to do.’ Which in this case was ‘attack the town’. The attack force consisted of a bunch of skeletons, a bunch of half-golem zombies, a dirt golem, and an iron golem. The iron golem had a shield with a glowing symbol of pain on it, and was smashing one guardsman a round with its warhammer. The druid had chucked a wall of thorns on top of the creatures, but they were forcing their way out of it.

We did our best to help the guards, but found out quickly that we were outmatched. The druid was strength-damaged and energy-drained, I was almost out of spells, and the Hierophant and Dragon Shaman’s energy attacks ended up helping the golems more than they hurt them. The Dragon Shaman tried using his ventriloquism ability to trick the golems. It didn’t work, but it gave me an idea.

Me: “I’ve got a plan. Hold them for a second!”
Druid: “It’d better be one hell of a good plan.”
Me: “Okay, I duck back around the corner of the building, out of sight.”
Druid: “That was . . . very unimpressive.”
Me: “Wait for it! I saw Type during the fight, right?”
DM: “Yes.”
Me: “And he was casting spells, so I heard his voice, right?”
DM: “Yes.”
Me: “I use Disguise Self to make myself look exactly like him, march out into the open with my full commanding prescence, throw out my hand at the iron golem, and shout in his voice, ‘YOU! Stand down, NOW!’ “ *Disguise check*
Golem: “PASSWORD.”
Me: “You DARE challenge me for a password? I CREATED you, you worthless chunk of metal! You exist only to serve my will! I order you to stand down and to-”
Golem: “PASSWORD INCORRECT. ACCESS DENIED.”
Druid: “I don’t think the password would be something that long.”

By this point only a handful of guardsmen were left. Since none of my spells could do anything but mildly annoy the golem, I kept on shouting orders at it. The DM allowed me to have a go with my Use Magic Device skill, trying for the ‘Activate Blindly’ thing. Unfortunately, I kept on rolling low.

Me: “I command you to cease! Command override, alpha gamma five!” *UMD*
Golem: “PASSWORD INCORRECT. ACCESS DENIED.”
Me: “Special order, epsilon eleven zero ten!”*UMD*
Golem: “PASSWORD INCORRECT. ACCESS DENIED.”
Me: “Priority override! Sigma . . . um . . . seven two!”*UMD*
Golem: “PASSWORD INCORRECT. ACCESS DENIED. SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ACTIVATED.” Beep. Beep. Beep. Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep-
Me: “Oh, cra-”
BOOM.

The explosion took out the golem, the gates, all the guards still nearby, some chunks of the Arcane Hierophant, and the rest of the invasion force, ending the battle.


Get Paid Twice!

Once we’d cleaned ourselves up, we realised we’d done pretty well out of the deal. No-one was dead, and Type’s body had been loaded with magic items. The only problem was that the Druid was carrying around four negative levels, and we’d already used up the town’s only restoration scroll.

However, at this point we remembered that Ventis had offered us a sidequest to recover the tablets from Type’s mansion (you know, the same ones that caused all the trouble in the first place). And since Type’s mansion was now missing an owner and all of its guardians . . .

We looted Type’s mansion, more thoroughly this time, and took the tablets to Ventis. Along the way we had a look at the tablets with a Comprehend Languages spell and found that the ritual seemed intended to open a portal to a place of “dark water”, or maybe “darkness and water”. It also opened the portal at a different place and under someone else’s control, which made us feel better about giving the thing to Ventis. Ventis gave us a generous reward, threw in a restoration scroll and the casting of it for free, and we went back to the town happy.

Me: “So we got all of Type’s gear, and then we got a reward from Ventis as well. Get paid twice, yay!”
Dragon Shaman: “You know, I think we can get paid three times. I go along to the Town Hall and ask if they’d be willing to reward us for our part in defending the town.” *Diplomacy check*
DM: “Sure. They’re willing to give you 100 gp per member of your party. They ask how many of you there are.”
Dragon Shaman: “ . . . Ten!” *Bluff check*

So we got paid from that as well. Pleased with ourselves, we rested for the night and then headed off to the cult’s lair the next morning, following Sentinus’ directions.


Dark Water

The trip there was relatively uneventful. We got attacked by three chuuls (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/chuul.htm) on the way there, and then by a bunch of assassin vines (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/assassinVine.htm) while climbing along the cliff path to the entrance, but the only event of note was the Arcane Hierophant’s wolf companion dying (which he was very sad about right up to the point where he noticed he could just summon another one with 24 hours prayer).

Sentinus had given us one other piece of advice along with the directions, a single message saying ”Kneel Before the Eyes of God”. Apart from giving us Indiana Jones ideas, this didn’t mean anything to us, until we found the entrance. There were two black pillars, glowing with magic, and a corridor ending with three glowing gems in a vertical line. With the rogue and ranger gone, I got nominated as the party scout.

Me: “Okay, I kneel down and cautiously go forward on my knees into the corridor.”
DM: “Okay.”
Me: “I go a bit further forward, still on my knees.”
DM: “You look pretty silly, but okay.”
Me: “I go up to the end of the corridor.”
DM: “Okay.”
Me: “ . . . and round the corner.”
DM: “You’re fine. You see the next room.”
Me: “Whew.”
Arcane Hierophant: “That looks easy. I walk in.”
Dragon Shaman: “I walk in too.”
DM: “You set off the trap. Black tentacles come out from the pillars and grapple everyone in range.”

*several rounds later*

Me: “Okay, which muppet decided to just walk in?”
Arcane Hierophant: “What was the problem?”
Me: “The problem was that we were SUPPOSED to kneel down.”
Arcane Hierophant: “Really?”
Me: “YES.”
Arcane Hierophant: “Nobody told me that.”
Me: “You just saw me cross the corridor on my knees RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.”
Arcane Hierophant: “You did?”
Me: “YES!”
Arcane Hierophant: “Oh wait, that guy said something about kneeling before the eyes, didn’t he? Last week?”
Me: “GAH!”

Unfortunately, the trap was now triggered throughout the lair, and as we quickly found out, those black pillars were everywhere. It was a basic black tentacles (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blackTentacles.htm) trap, so the grapple checks weren’t TOO hard to beat, but they were still annoying. In the end I just cast freedom of movement and scouted the place out. It turned out there were two ways down to the next level, a shaft and a well that seemed to be filled with crystal clear water.

Dragon Shaman: “I don’t want to go past the tentacles. Let’s try the water. I’ve got water breathing, I jump in and swim down.”
Me: “Okay, I jump in too.”
DM: “Will saves, both of you.”
Me: “Oh great.”
DM: “You see through the illusion. It’s not crystal clear water. It’s horrible slimy muck.”
Dragon Shaman: “Yuck.”
DM: “ . . . And it’s not empty either. Something opens three red vertical eyes beneath you and glares at you, and you feel something trying to seize hold of your mind. Will save.”

Yeah, it was an aboleth. Looks like we’ve found out what the ‘dark water’ was a reference to. The Dragon Shaman made his will save and the aboleth squirted ink and fled, but we had no way of catching it. We climbed out and headed for the other end of the floor, getting harassed by tentacles along the way.

The final room we encountered before we had to end the session was some sort of weird shrine. Three altars each had something on them that looked human, or sort of human. The room was also filled with the black pillars, and since I still had freedom of movement on, I was the one nominated to go in.

Me: “I walk in and get harassed by tentacles.”
DM: “The tentacles harass you.”
Me: “Go away tentacles. I have a look at the humans on the slabs.”
DM: “They look . . . odd. Their skin is sort of moist.”
Me: “I poke one with my staff.”
DM: “It squishes.”
Me: “Um. I back out of the room.”
DM: “The tentacles continue to harass you.”
Me: “Go away tentacles. Go find a Japanese schoolgirl to molest.”
DM: “The tentacles look ashamed.”

That was where we left it for the day. The bad news was that we’re now in the middle of the lair of an aboleth cult, and will probably have only about three players for next week’s session. The good news is that we got a whole bunch of useful equipment, including a rod of Extend Spell (useful for me), a rod of Rapid Spell (useful for the summoners), a rod that acts as a necromantic focus for the purposes of black onyx (which would be great if we had anyone in the party in the habit of casting Animate Dead, which we don’t) and a headband that grants +2 CL, but which is also unholy (not sure what to do about that one).

We actually accomplished quite a lot this session, which surprised the DM a bit after our slowness in the last two. The Dragon Shaman was quite handy, but that player probably won’t be around for next session. Still, looking forward to it.

Kzickas
2010-02-07, 12:34 PM
The trip there was relatively uneventful. We got attacked by three chuuls (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/chuul.htm) on the way there, and then by a bunch of assassin vines (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/assassinVine.htm) while climbing along the cliff path to the entrance, but the only event of note was the Arcane Hierophant’s wolf companion dying (which he was very sad about right up to the point where he noticed he could just summon another one with 24 hours prayer).

I think the quality of the story would be greatly improved by telling about these sort of encounters, rather than just mentioning them off hand. But then again not everyone can be SCS:smallfrown:

Otherwise a good read

Deth Muncher
2010-02-07, 01:47 PM
Me: “I walk in and get harassed by tentacles.”
DM: “The tentacles harass you.”
Me: “Go away tentacles. I have a look at the humans on the slabs.”
DM: “They look . . . odd. Their skin is sort of moist.”
Me: “I poke one with my staff.”
DM: “It squishes.”
Me: “Um. I back out of the room.”
DM: “The tentacles continue to harass you.”
Me: “Go away tentacles. Go find a Japanese schoolgirl to molest.”
DM: “The tentacles look ashamed.”


Best. Thing. Ever.

CTLC
2010-02-07, 01:56 PM
Best. Thing. Ever.

very true.
great journal!

Starbuck_II
2010-02-07, 02:56 PM
Me: “Okay, pop quiz: what happens to a bunch of golems and undead when the guy who’s commanding them gets killed?”
Hierophant: “Don’t know.”
Me: “Let’s find out.”

Golem Rampage

Turns out the answer is ‘they keep doing whatever they were ordered to do.’

Yep that is what the MM says.


I loved the access denied. Self-Destruct activated :smallbiggrin:

Saph
2010-02-07, 04:18 PM
I think the quality of the story would be greatly improved by telling about these sort of encounters, rather than just mentioning them off hand.

Well, not every encounter makes for a dramatic story.

In the case of the chuuls, for instance, the party was going along the riverbank when we spotted them in the water. They won initiative and one chuul hit and grappled me, one chuul hit and grappled the druid, and the last chuul hit and grappled the wolf. On our turn, I got out of my grapple with anklets of translocation, the druid got out of his grapple with heart of water, and the wolf got out of its grapple when the Chuul nat-1ed its grapple check. The dragon shaman and I killed my chuul with my ray of flame and his lightning breath, the druid and his brown bear killed their chuul by beating it into a pulp with their claws, and the third chuul managed to knock the wolf to -11 before fleeing back into the water with the body. The Hierophant zapped it with a lightning bolt, I finished it with a magic missile, and that was that.

It was an entertaining battle, but we were never in any actual danger of losing. The only reason the wolf got killed was because the Hierophant keeps sending it into frontline combats when it's really not tough enough to do the job - 26 HP just doesn't cut it at our level. It had nearly been killed twice already, this was the point at which its luck finally ran out.


I loved the access denied. Self-Destruct activated :smallbiggrin:

For some reason all I could think of were Star-Trek style commands. :P

Olo Demonsbane
2010-02-07, 04:53 PM
Thanks for yet again giving us a Campaign Journal!

Woo-Hoooo!

Saph
2010-02-14, 12:49 PM
Episode 4: Aboleth Central



Most of our regular players were away for today’s session, so we had a couple of new guys joining instead. The roster was:

Sorcerer/Ruathar - Me.
Druid/Wiz/Arcane Hierophant - Same guy as before, who’s now rebuilt his character yet again, exchanging his levels of Sorcerer for Wizard. Now known as the Amazing Polymorphing Character.
Half-elf Cleric - New guy playing a Cleric Archer build with Zen Archery. He’s likely to be joining our group from now on, but might be switching characters.
Goliath Warblade - Random one-off player.
We’d gone into the aboleth lair with four PCs and continued with four PCs, so it actually worked out OK.


I’ll Take Your Brain To Another Dimension

We descended down the shaft and into the aboleth temple.

The interior of the place was . . . weird. I have to say, the DM did a really good job of getting across just how alien aboleths are. For those who don’t know, aboleths are the D&D precursor race; they existed before any of the terrestrial races and remember all of it. For every one thing in the temple that we could figure out, there were three more things that we had absolutely no clue what they were. There was one cold room with spines on the walls that had bits of corpses impaled on them and on the floor was a glowing red symbol that radiated evocation and necromantic magic. Another room had static illusions of creatures; humanoids, magical beasts, constructs, you name it, all with weirdly warped features. Another held a giant sphere of something that looked like liquid shadow just hanging in the air. In another one was a pool of liquid blue. It looked blue, smelt blue, and sounded blue. We went through maybe ten rooms without encountering a single thing, all dead silent except for dripping water.

It was almost a relief when we finally got attacked by something. An ogre mage had been watching us from above while invisible. It waited for us to pass by, then blasted us all with a cone of cold. It died before it could take a second action. Ogre mages are kinda over-CRed.

We descended another level, and reached the temple bottom.


Aboleth Central

The bottom level of the temple was a huge cavern with walkways over a lake of clear water. At the other end, shimmering in the air, was the portal we’d been sent to seal, with a bunch of fish-men working on it.

At least, that was what it looked like.

In fact the place was covered with so many illusion spells it was hard to tell them apart. Illusory walls, persistent images, mirage arcana, you name it. By pure fluke the cleric had cast an extended true seeing in the last level, and its duration was just barely still running by the time we reached the cavern. Looking through the illusions, he could see that half the walkways weren’t really there, aboleths were concealed around the cavern edges behind invisible walls, and coiled around the portal itself was an eight-headed cryohydra. The aboleths saw him seeing them, and it was initiative time.

The following battle was confusing as hell. The cleric could see through the illusions, but the rest of us couldn’t, meaning we had to rely on his shouted directions to figure out where to attack. The warblade went running around the edge of the cavern, heading for the portal (and the hydra). The cleric cast righteous might and tried to follow, but got intercepted by an aboleth. It was hard to figure out exactly how many aboleths there were, since they were using projected images to attack from a distance, and the dozens of illusory walls shielded them from sight. To make things worse, we were getting attacked by creepy shadow duplicates of ourselves that dealt Wisdom damage, making it harder to see through the illusions.

The aboleths started using their enslave attacks, and the Warblade, being at the front, attracted most of the attention. He managed to resist the first few with lucky rolls and Moment of Perfect Mind, but finally failed a save and was dominated. He promptly used Iron Heart Surge and threw it off. By this point he’d managed to make it around to the portal, so an annoyed aboleth stuck him in an illusionary box. The cryohydra breathed on him for 24d6 cold damage. The warblade retaliated by stepping out of the box and punting the cryohydra 30 feet into the lake (Knockback is a really silly feat). The cryohydra swum back up and bit him five times, taking him down to 7 HP. The Warblade countered with a Disrupting Blow, forcing the hydra to lose its next turn, the Arcane Hierophant hit it with two lesser orbs of fire, the Warblade kept beating on it with his greatsword, and the hydra went down, just barely dying before it had the chance to get another attack off.

Meanwhile the cleric had been taking a pounding. He’d forgotten to heal up after the last fight, and the aboleth was tentacling him faster than he could heal himself. Each tentacle hit was forcing a Fortitude save, and he’d failed a couple (Danger Will Robinson!) I couldn’t see the aboleth through the illusions, but could see the thing’s tentacles, so I charged across the walkway, yelled “Banzai!”, jumped down on top of the thing, and hit it with two belker claws spells one after the other while its tentacles bounced off my armour. The spells shredded it.

With the hydra and one of their number dead, the remaining aboleths disengaged and disappeared off into the underwater tunnels. Some of the party wanted to go after them but it didn’t take too much thought to realise that trying to fight aboleths underwater in the dark wasn’t likely to end well. We’d been hired to seal the portal, so that was what we did. The device we’d been given worked as advertised, the portal sealed, and we got out of the temple before the aboleths came back with reinforcements.


That’s the Thanks You Get

We made it out of the temple, getting harassed by tentacles along the way, and had made it back to the riverside before the cleric started developing problems. His skin started itching and gradually transformed into a transparent membrane which started to dehydrate. Splashing it with water stopped the damage, but no-one in the party managed to get a high enough Heal or Knowledge (Dungeoneering) check to figure out how to cure it, so we decided to get some help from Swamp Town.

Once we did, we noticed that the gates were closed. There were some people up on the walls watching us, and they didn’t look friendly. A couple of ballistas also seemed to be pointed roughly in our direction.

I approached and called up. “Hey there. What’s the problem?”
One of the town council stuck his head over the wall. “You!”
Me: “Hi. Can we come in?”
Councilman: “Defilers! Heretics!”
Me: “Uh . . . is that a ‘no’?”
Councilman: “You have attacked the masters!”
Me: “The masters? Wait, the aboleths?”
Councilman: “Do not dare speak their name! Now go, or be shot where you stand!”
Me: “Look, could you just tell us how to help our friend here?”
Councilman: “He has been touched by the masters. His place is to serve them! As is yours! Bah, I have talked enough! Be gone!”
Me: “Fine, we’re going. But just for the record? Next time your town gets attacked by an army of golems and undead, we are not helping you.”
Councilman: “Fire the ballistas!”

We skedaddled and found a place to camp for the night.

Next morning the cleric tried all the spells he could think of to cure his condition, starting with lesser restoration and scaling up through remove disease, remove curse, dispel magic, restoration, and break enchantment. They didn’t work. Finally through lack of better options, me and the Hierophant disguised ourselves and sneaked back into Swamp Town. A few Gather Information checks told us that we needed a heal spell, so after some argument, we went back yet again to visit Ventis’ place.

Cleric: “So these guys are an evil cabal, right?”
Me: “Yup. The Three. Well, I guess they’ll have to call themselves The Two now.”
Cleric: “So what sort of evil plots do they do?”
Me: “From what we’ve seen, they offer side quests to adventuring parties to retrieve items for them, and run a shop on the side. They’re big on merchandising.”
Cleric: “That doesn’t sound very evil.”
Me: “Well, it works for the Red Wizards of Thay.”

We managed to get a heal scroll, the cleric cured himself, and with that, we set off home.


Finishing Up

That pretty much wrapped up the mission. The walk back to the capital city was a long one, so the cleric used a sending spell to contact the caster who’d teleported us out there in the first place. He sent a message back to meet him at one of his teleportation circles, which we did, and caught a lift back. He mentioned on the way that he had another job for us . . . but that’s a story for next session. I went off to sell and divide up the loot, the Arcane Hierophant went off to scribe spells, and that was where we left it.

Today was hopefully the last of the randomised party sessions - the players who were away should be back by next week, and character rebuilds should have mostly finished, meaning that from now on we should have a more stable group.

The DM mentioned he’d been half-expecting a TPK, and with hindsight, we were pretty lucky with our party makeup. If our absent party members had been there (druid, brown bear, ranger, assassin) half the party would probably have ended up enslaved. As it was the one PC who did get dominated was the one who could completely ignore it with Iron Heart Surge, and the cleric who was the other major target kept getting lucky on his Will saves.

We also ended up with a pretty nice list of treasure, including:

Black Dragoncraft +2 Studded Leather (probably going to the ranger)
Metamagic Rod of Rapid Spell (taken by the Arcane Hierophant, as the Druid’s already got a way of speeding up his summons)
Metamagic Rod of Extend Spell (probably going to the Druid)
Black Gem of Gnar Headband (provides a profane bonus to CL, and also gradually turns the user evil. I’m trying to see if I can get a friendly cleric to redeem it.)
Ring of Cold Resistance (currently unclaimed)
Ring of the Ram (35 charges remaining)
Folding Boat (it’s exactly what it sounds like. Incredibly random item, no idea what we’re going to do with it.)
There was also enough gold from selling proceeds to deal out about 5,000 gp to everyone, so everyone’ll have the chance to have some fun shopping and gearing up.

And last but not least, I levelled. :) I took my first level of the Abjurant Champion prestige class and picked up the Arcane Fusion spell. My abjurations get extended, my AC is even higher, and with Arcane Fusion I can cast two spells in one turn. Next week we start on our next mission, and we'll see where it goes from there!

Olo Demonsbane
2010-02-14, 09:36 PM
All right! I've been looking forward to this journal all week!

What spells do you plan to be using your Arcane Fusion on?

Rising Phoenix
2010-02-15, 01:05 AM
Awesome Saph!

Thanks for sharing. I'll be following this if you keep at it.

R.P.

Colmarr
2010-02-15, 02:22 AM
Definitely a fun read :smallsmile:

Ravens_cry
2010-02-15, 03:08 AM
Your DM sure knows how to churn out weirdness. Fantastic read, here's to the bold adventurers! *raises glass*

Saph
2010-02-15, 07:32 AM
Cool, glad you guys like it! :)


What spells do you plan to be using your Arcane Fusion on?

Well, I just swapped out a 1st-level spell for Benign Transposition, and I've already got Wings of Flurry . . . so I'm figuring I can probably come up with some entertaining ways to use the two of those together.

Saph
2010-02-21, 04:00 PM
Episode 5: Walk Like An Egyptian



The campaign’s been running for a month now, and the party is steadying down. This week's roster:

Sorcerer 6/Ruathar 3/Abjurant Champion 1: Me.
Druid 3/Wizard 4/Arcane Hierophant 3: The Amazing Polymorphing Character, now (hopefully) finalised.
Druid 9: As before. Dwarf, brown bear companion.
Ranger 9: Archer, still carrying a negative level from her reincarnation.
Rogue 5/Assassin 4: Ms. I’m-Not-An-Assassin-No-Really. Started the session missing an arm and a leg and with a bunch of graft issues to work out. On the plus side, has stopped disguising herself as a man.
Warlock 9: Same guy who played the Dragon Shaman a couple weeks back; this time he made a character of his own. Made heavy use of Eldritch Chain.
Since we had a week or so’s spare time in a major city, the first thing the party did was go shopping. I got the CL-boosting headband purified and picked up another piece of the Raiment of the Four, the Ranger commissioned an augment crystal and a magic buckler, the Hierophant scribed a bunch of spells and got some enchantments put on his boots, and the Druid saved up.

Somewhere along the way the Assassin showed up again, this time minus the grafts and with her arm and leg regrown. She was vague about the details of how she’d done it, but a couple of OOC comments suggested she’d gotten Ventis’ help to get herself fixed via a Faustian pact (yes, the deal-with-the-devil kind). The devil in question, however, didn’t remove her new claws or her Necrotic Cyst. Since we didn’t know anything more IC, we didn’t push her on it (besides, life’s too short to waste worrying about the inevitable).

With that done we picked up our new Warlock companion and were given our new mission. Another portal had opened somewhere out in the northwestern desert and our job was to find it and close it, same as last time. We geared up and headed out.


A New Journey

Our first port of call to look for clues was Sunspire, a city for acadamics and arcanists situated on the edge of the desert. Upon arriving there we found that it was called ‘Sunspire’ because it was built on a spire. Specifically, a 500-foot-tall pillar of rock. We looked up at it for a moment.

Me: “. . . So is there a way up?”
DM: “Yup, there are doors leading in to a staircase. A very, very tall staircase.”
Druid: “Heh. Well, you guys can walk. I transform into an eagle and start flying.”
Hierophant: “Me too.”
Warlock: “I’m just going to spiderwalk up the cliff.”
Assassin: “I use spider climb as well. Have fun taking the stairs!”
Me: “Yeah, screw that. I dimension door straight to the top. Anyone want a lift?”
Ranger: “Me!”
DM: “Well, the two of you teleporting reach the top first. The fliers get there next, and the climbers a little way afterwards. Finally, the bear finishes the long climb to the top and collapses at the head of the stairs.”
Druid: “I hop off my bear’s head and tell it well done, and it can wait for me at the bottom. Off you go.”
Ranger: “Aren’t druids supposed to be nice to their animals?”

Some questioning of the locals revealed two things. First, the most likely location for a new portal would be along Void Ridge, a cliff of black stone about five days’ journey into the desert. Second, according to the desert nomads, there were reports of healing spells failing in the area. It sounded ominous, but we couldn’t narrow down the portal’s location any further without going and taking a look for ourselves. There were supposed to be some tombs along the ridge which sounded as likely a location as any, so the next morning we set off into the desert.

The trip was fairly uneventful. For a couple of days we were followed by a pack of jackal-headed humanoids. Eventually we ran out of patience and forced a confrontation. They were driven off fairly easily, though they did turn out to be tougher than we expected - the smaller ones were capable of pulling off Death Attacks, while the larger ones, once the battle started turning against them, let out a howl and vanished. A search of the area turned up tracks, but little else. Slightly worrying.

A few more days of travel brought us to the Void Ridge.


Meat Grinder

The Void Ridge was a huge cliff of black rock rising out of the rubble and sand. There was a doorway in the rock, with two immobile jackal-headed statues flanking the entrance. It looked like a trap. And what do you do with something that looks like a trap?

Yep, send in the thief.

Assassin: “Okay, I search for traps.”
DM: “You find no traps on the ground leading up to the door.”
Assassin: “I search for traps up to the door.”
DM: “The statues start to move.”
Assassin: “I run away!”
DM: “Roll initiative.”
Assassin: *rolls a 1* “Crap.”

The statues turned out to be golems. At this point, we discovered a slight gap in our party’s capabilities. The Warlock couldn’t do squat against the golems, since all of his invocations allowed SR. The assassin also couldn’t do anything against the golems, since they were immune to crits. The ranger could do a tiny bit of damage to the golems from range, but given that her arrows were doing 1d8+4 per hit and the golems had DR 5, she was going to run out of arrows before the golems were going to run out of HP.

That left the druid, the Arcane Hierophant, and me. The Arcane Hierophant used an invisibility spell and started pelting the golems with summoned animals (bears and wolves) all of which, without exception, died horribly. The golems weren’t actually attacking, just standing hitting everything that came near, so it was suggested that we could just back off, but the druid thought he could take them, so he wild shaped into a polar bear and he and his bear charged one golem each.

The good news was that the druid was able to do effective damage to the golems. The bad news was that the golems were able to do much more effective damage to the druid. By round four or so the assassin, the druid, and the bear were down and bleeding, and the golems were looking for new targets.

Me: “Great. Okay, looks like retreating isn’t on the cards anymore.” *to the warlock’s player* “Hey!”
Warlock: “Huh?”
Me: “I’m sending you a patient. Benign Transposition!”

I switched places with the assassin, sending her back out into the desert for the warlock to stabilise and heal up. The golems promptly started beating on me instead, but with my AC and heart of earth spell I could shrug off most of the attacks. Unfortunately I didn’t have much that could hurt the golems in exchange (annoyingly, there’s a spell on my to-get-list specifically designed for killing golems, but I won’t have it until NEXT level). All I could do was cast steeldance and have my daggers start chipping away at the statue, while the ranger continued to pelt it with arrows from a distance.

In the meantime, the druid was still dying, and had reached -9 HP. I was able to stabilise him at the cost of an AoO, but now we needed a way to get him out of combat range. I looked over at the warlock, who’d just healed the assassin up to conscious.

Me: “Hey. You haven’t taken any damage yet, right?”
Warlock: “No, why?”
Me: “Benign Transposition!”
*Warlock switches places with the druid. Golems look down at warlock. Warlock looks up at golems.*
Warlock: “Wait! I don’t like this plan!”
Me: “Let’s put it this way. Everyone in the party has to perform a role, and since you’re not filling ‘glass cannon’ you get to do ‘meat shield’ .”
DM: “The golems are tired of trying to hit glow-rod over there, so they turn and beat on you instead.”
*One round of full attacks later*
Warlock: “Ow! OW!”
Me: “Quit complaining, you’ve got damage reduction.”
Warlock: “I’ve got damage reduction TWO! One more hit and I’m dead.”
Me: “Oh, fine. Benign Transposition.” *Warlock switches places with one of the Hierophant’s summoned creatures*.
Assassin: “That spell is awesome.”

In the meantime the assassin had healed up the druid, who after his near-death experience had decided to pull out the stops.

DM: “Your summoning spell completes. What level?”
Druid: “Summon Nature’s Ally V. I summon a dire lion, then I cast Animal Growth.”
DM: “You have a huge dire lion.”
Druid: “Dire Lion, destroy the golems!”
Huge Dire Lion: “kill golems.” *charge*pounce*claw*claw*bite*rake*rake*

(Two rounds later)

DM: “The dire lion does as much damage as all the previous attacks put together. Under the rain of blows, the last golem is torn to pieces.”
Hierophant: “My invisibility is still running. I’m going to go through into the doorway and see what I can find.”
Warlock: “That really hurt. Has anyone got any healing?”
Me: “Sure, I start burning charges from my wand.”
Druid: “Well, I don’t want to waste my summon now it’s buffed and angry. I tell it to go inside the tomb and tear to pieces everything it finds.”
Huge Dire Lion: “kill everything in building.” *moves through doorway*
Hierophant: “What do I find inside the tomb?”
DM: “ Well . . . the corridor runs only a little way before it ends in a stone slab. However, you do hear something behind you. It sounds big. And angry.”
Hierophant: “Behind me?”
Huge Dire Lion: “kill everything in building.”


Tomb Raiding

Druid: “Look, it was an accident.”
Hierophant: “I helped heal your bear! I went into combat to help you!”
Druid: “Well, you were invisible, so it’s not as though we knew where you were. See, this is why communication with your allies is so important.”

The interior of the tomb had a definite Egyptian feel, including stone slabs for doors. We couldn’t figure out how to open them, so just had the Warlock Eldritch Blast them a few dozen times until there was a big enough hole. After a few rooms we found ourselves facing a corridor with jackal-headed statues standing in alcoves.

Me: “This looks dodgy.”
Druid: “Yeah, I think it’s trapped. Which means . . .”
Assassin: “NO. I’m not doing this again. Find your own damn traps.”
Hierophant: “All right, I summon a badger and send it off down the corridor.”
DM: “Oookay.” *rolls about twenty dice* “Make a Fort save for the badger.”
Hierophant: “Uh . . .” *starts leafing through pages*
DM: “Actually, just tell me its HP total.”
Hierophant: “Um . . .” *continues leafing through pages*
DM: “You know what? Don’t bother. Your badger is dessicated into a crystal of salt.”
*silence*
Assassin: “That was awesome! Do it again!”
Warlock: “Wait, I’ve got a bag of tricks! I use that as well!”

(Several gruesome deaths later . . .)

DM: “Okay, this time the cat makes it past the remains of the previous animals. It gets to the end of the corridor before there’s a click as it sets off a pressure plate. You hear a hissing sound as darts fire . . .”
Warlock: “Cool!”
DM: “ . . . from behind the party. Oh, and the cat looks back and sniggers.”

Once we’d done our Fort saves and had finished picking out the darts, the corridor was cleared. The Warlock blasted down the door, and we were through into the last encounter of the day.


That Rotting Feeling

Behind the door were half-a-dozen mummified figures that immediately swarmed out into the room. Packed closely, they were a good target for a blasting spell, so I hit them with a wings of flurry.

DM: “Your spell blasts one of them into pieces.”
Me: “Cool.”
DM: “The others twist and weave out of the way, and escape unscathed.”
Me: “They’ve got Evasion?”
DM: “ . . . And now they step up and attack you with flurries of blows.”
Me: “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
DM: “Yep, you’re fighting mummy monks.”

The battle was close quarters, with six mummies and five PCs packed into a 20’ by 20’ room. The druid, to his everlasting shame, failed two grapple checks against a mummy while in polar bear form and got pinned, while a second mummy started elbow-dropping him in the head. A third mummy beat up the Warlock, but the Warlock hit it twice with eldritch chain and blew the creature apart along with the one next to it. Another mummy was turned into a pile of ash by a triple scorching ray from my staff, the Druid finally managed to turn the tables on the one grappling him and ripped it to pieces, and the Ranger finished off the last mummy with an arrow, the flame enhancement on the shot doing just enough damage to drop its HP to zero.

It had been Fortitude saves all round during the fight, and the druid and warlock had failed. As we withdrew from the tomb, the mummy rot started to take effect, decaying their bodies for Con and Cha damage . . .

. . . and that was where we left it for the night.

Our current situation could be better, but could be a lot worse. A quick check on spell lists has confirmed that no-one in the party’s capable of curing Mummy Rot, and we’re five days out from the nearest city. On the plus side, we have several ways of healing ability damage, so we can probably hold off the disease long enough to find a cure. A more serious problem is that we still don’t know for sure where the portal is. We know it’s somewhere along the ridgeline, and the tombs seem like a logical place to start searching, but it’s still only a guess. Next week we’ll probably get the Druid to cast a commune with nature to see if the tomb’s radiating anything that suggests a portal, and if that doesn't work we'll just continue raiding it on general principles.

Cisturn
2010-02-21, 09:48 PM
awesome i cant wait for the next update

Saph
2010-02-22, 06:53 AM
Thinking about it, I should have probably named this one the "Animal Abuse" episode.

Sallera
2010-02-22, 11:41 AM
Heh, I love your writing style, Saph. This certainly promises to be... almost as good as the RHoD campaign. :smalltongue:

evil-frosty
2010-02-22, 06:05 PM
Great read Saph. Congrats to your DM for running a pretty cool game too, quick question is the same group that went thru RHoD?

Saph
2010-02-22, 06:49 PM
Yep, same group, though some have joined and some have left. The rogue/assassin is the Druid from the RHoD game (the one responsible for constantly reincarnating the PCs), and the Druid in this game is the Duskblade player from RHoD. The DM is the guy who played the Master of Shrouds in RHoD (he of betraying-the-party fame :smallamused:). The Ranger and Hierophant are relatively new to the group.

evil-frosty
2010-02-22, 07:30 PM
Man your DM has done quite a few awesome things, betraying the party, and now mummy monks, which i am going to shamelessly steal. Also that fight with the aboleths must have been a bitch to run with all of the illusions.

Colmarr
2010-02-22, 07:42 PM
Warlock: “Wait, I’ve got a bag of tricks! I use that as well!”

(Several gruesome deaths later . . .)

The use of summons and bags of tricks to safely trigger traps has always been one of my biggest beefs with 3.Xe. It just feels so unheroic.


The druid... got pinned, while a second mummy started elbow-dropping him in the head.

This, on the other hand, is made of awesome :smallbiggrin:

Swooper
2010-02-22, 09:28 PM
Black Gem of Gnar Headband (provides a profane bonus to CL, and also gradually turns the user evil. I’m trying to see if I can get a friendly cleric to redeem it.)
I take it you and/or your DM play Warhammer? :smalltongue:

Very enjoyable read so far, looking forward to the next installment.

Malbordeus
2010-02-23, 07:55 AM
i may or may not have played warhammer... and i may or may not have collected Chaos, darkelves, and undead...

i deny all rumours. :smallredface:

Saph
2010-02-28, 01:52 PM
Episode 6: There And Back Again



Everyone was present today but the Druid’s player, so the party was pretty much the same as before. The Druid was relegated to NPC healbot status and we kept on exploring the tomb.


Animal Abuse, Continued

The exploration through the trap-filled tomb progressed, while the warlock and the assassin between them continued their quest to see how many problems they could solve by means of a bag of tricks and animal cruelty.

- Trapped corridor? Pull out a weasel and send it running in to see what happens.
- Portcullis? Pull out a bear and have it lift the grating while the party crawl underneath.
- Swarm of blood-draining undead mosquitos? Pull out a . . . actually, the animals didn’t help much there.
- Ominous-looking door behind the undead mosquitos? Pull out a wolf, throw wolf through door, slam door, listen to what happens.

DM: “You hear a scuffling, a crunching noise, a yelp, a splat, then the sound of shuffling footsteps as something goes back to its resting place.”
Warlock: “Anything else?”
DM: “Yes, a slow drip as the remains settle.”
Ranger: “Ewww.”

We opened the door to find . . . another group of mummy monks. Roll initiative.

The battle went poorly compared to the last one, mainly because the party no longer had a meat shield. The first mummy through the door got torched by the assassin’s flaming weapon and my scorching rays, but mummies #2 through #6 proceeded to tumble in and surround the warlock. Next round they hit him five times.

Warlock: “That puts me to -8. I fall over.”
DM: “So the last mummy tumbles in and . . .”
Me: “Wait a sec. Don’t you have damage reduction?”
Warlock: “Oh yeah. So I’m on -6.”
DM: “And take off two points for all the other hits.”
Warlock: “I’m on 2 HP then. So I’m still up.”
DM: “In which case, the last mummy tumbles in to hit you instead.”
Warlock. “ . . . Crap.”
DM: “ . . . and scores a critical. You take 29 damage.”

First time I’ve ever seen a character killed because of having DR.

By the end of the battle the remaining mummies were dead, but the assassin and the Hierophant’s wolf had been infected with mummy rot too. More seriously, the assassin and the wolf were on single-digit HP. Since mummy rot causes every healing spell cast on the infected character to fail unless you can make a DC 20 CL check, our attempts to use healing wands all fizzled.

Assassin: “OK, so now what?”
Me: “Now we’ve got a problem. You see, mummy rot’s got an incubation time of one minute, and it deals constitution damage. And anything that dies from it turns into dust.”
Assassin: “So?”
Me: “So unless you can heal yourself up, you're going to be dead in about . . . oh . . . thirty seconds. Twenty-nine . . . twenty-eight . . . twenty-seven . . .”
Assassin: “So how do we fix it?”
Me: “Not sure. Twenty-six . . . twenty-five . . .
Assassin: “STOP COUNTING!”
Ranger: “Hasn’t anyone got any healing spells?”
Hierophant: “Already used all mine. I’ve got some berries though.”
Me: “Oh, just thought of something I could do. Summon Nature’s Ally.”

I summoned up a unicorn, the ranger used her potions, and the hierophant started administering goodberries. Between everything the wolf and the assassin were able to pull up enough HP that when the mummy rot hit, they were weakened but still alive.


There And Back Again

With one party member dead and half the rest infected with mummy rot it was pretty clear that we weren’t doing any more adventuring for the day, so we withdrew from the tomb and found a cave to camp in. It was suggested that the Druid could Reincarnate the warlock next day, but then it was pointed out that the spell would still have the failure chance from the DC 20 CL check.

Me: “Okay, looks like I’d better make a trip to town. Anyone want anything from the shops?”
Ranger: “Can you pick me up some healing kits and arrows?”
Assassin: “I think I’ll come along too.”

My sorcerer doesn't know teleport, but in between Session 4 and Session 5, I'd spent nearly all the treasure I'd gained from the last mission on a Magic Item Compendium item called the belt of the wide earth which lets the wearer spontaneously cast teleport twice per day by sacrificing a 5th-level spell slot. We blinked back to the Temple of Pelor and started getting ourselves some healing (luckily we’d thought to get a temple credit note when we started the mission, so we could put it on expenses). The assassin had a little more trouble getting served - turns out that even clerics of Pelor aren’t very keen on healing Evil-aligned characters, and she was pointedly told by several heavily-armoured paladins that “we don’t serve your kind here.”

The assassin had one other issue to deal with in town: she’d been carrying around a necrotic cyst for a while and had finally decided to get it removed. Unfortunately, removing a cyst kills the bearer unless the remover can make a DC 20 heal check. The assassin went along to the local equivalent of the Royal College of Medicine and found a professor willing to perform the surgery. Everyone watched very closely as the DM rolled the dice for the NPC’s skill check . . . and got a natural 20. With that solved, we rested the night in the inn and teleported back.


On The Bright Side, Your Physical Stats Are Much Better

The druid, ranger, and Hierophant had managed to pass the night in the desert without any random encounters. We’d picked up the components for a reincarnate spell, so the first thing on the agenda next morning was for the druid to bring back the warlock. The reincarnation roll was . . . a 26.

Which is one of these:

http://blog.pierrickauger.fr/__oneclick_uploads/2008/04/gnoll.jpg
The warlock took the news fairly well, all things considered - it did at least mean that he was a lot tougher, and his Hideous Blow is actually useful now. He gets to ignore the +1 LA, but the racial hit dice means that he’s effectively a level 10 character with 8 levels of warlock and 2 RHD, which means he’s going to take forever and a day to level. But at least he’s less likely to die in the meantime.

With that done, the druid cast a commune with nature. It confirmed that there was a source of negative energy somewhere nearby, so in the hope that the portal was somewhere inside, we headed back into the tomb.


As If The Chromatic Ones Weren’t Bad Enough

We’d cleared out the ground floor of the tomb and found staircases up and down, so we headed up to find a huge spacious room with a ledge running around the top. At one end was a Gargantuan-sized statue reaching up to the ceiling. Edging forward to peer around the corner, we saw the glint of treasure near the statue.

Me: “I’m getting the feeling we shouldn’t go for the shiny stuff.”
Ranger: “Yeah, it’s got kind of a ‘touch this and die’ vibe going on.”
Warlock: “I’ll spiderwalk up to the ledge and peer around the corner. Can I get a good look at the treasure heap?”
DM: “Yup. You can see piles of coins and glittering items, and right in the middle, looking a little out of place, a plain wooden staff. Then you hear a hissing voice from behind you. ‘Had a good look, warlock?’ “

The warlock turned around and saw this.
http://slyflourish.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/32865_CN_GL.jpg
Yeah, it was a dragon. We hadn’t been able to spot it since it had been covered in shadows. To begin with it didn’t look all that dangerous, as it was only Medium-size, and even with a full attack it didn’t do much damage to the warlock. We changed our minds pretty quickly when it used its breath weapon on us and everyone who failed their save gained two negative levels. :smalleek:

The battle was pretty brutal. The dragon's concealment, DR, and SR meant that most of our attacks kept missing, while it was flying around 40 feet up breathing negative levels on everyone. In the end weight of numbers finally brought it down, but by the time it was dead the party had 12 negative levels between them - four on me, two on the ranger, two on the Hierophant, and four on the wolf. The only ones who’d escaped had been the gnoll warlock (who’d been up on the walls out of the breath cone) and the assassin with his high Reflex and evasion.

Ranger: “So how do you get rid of negative levels?”
Me: “With a restoration spell. Which only clerics get.”
Ranger: “Which we don’t have. Great.”
Hierophant: “Can you teleport us to town?”
Me: “Can’t. I only get four 5th-level spells a day and I’ve got four negative levels.”
Warlock: “What if we wait until tomorrow?”
DM: “Then after 24 hours everyone who’s got negative levels will have to make one Fortitude save for each or lose the level permanently.”

We sat thinking for a bit.

Me: “Hey, I’ve got an idea! I’ve got 52,000 XP!”
DM: “Okay . . .”
Me: “So, if we do XP for the session and I gain enough to level up, then I’ll have one extra 5th-level spell, so I can rest overnight and then teleport us back to town!”
DM: “Fine, we’ll do XP. It’s late anyway.”

The DM calculated experience for the day’s encounters, and I added it up. I needed 55,000 to go up to level 11, and adding everything together, my new XP total was . . .

54,249. :smallannoyed: So much for that plan.

Assassin: “So how hard is it to throw off negative levels?”
DM: “With a -1 penalty for each one? Hard.”
Ranger: “I don’t want to lose more levels. I only just got back to level 9 again.”
Me: “Wait! I’ve got another idea!”
DM: *facepalm* “Now what?”
Me: “We all gather up the treasure and go out of the tomb.”
DM: “Okay.”
Me: “Then we go back to our campsite.”
DM: “Okay.”
Ranger: “So far I’m not that impressed with your plan.”
Me: “Wait! I go up to the druid and take off my belt.”
DM: “. . .”
Ranger: “. . .”
Assassin: “What does this plan involve again?”
Me: “Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. The Druid’s still got some 5th-level spell slots, so I give him my belt of the wide earth and tell him to teleport us back to the temple in Sunspire.”

So that was what we did. Me, the ranger, and the Hierophant all got restorations to get rid of the negative levels, and everyone finished the session happy.


Finishing Up

Looking back on it, it seems like we spent half the session teleporting back and forth between the city. Really, this whole mess just goes to show how much more difficult life is in D&D when you don’t have a cleric. Healing HP damage is easy, but getting rid of curses, negative levels, and ability drain without a cleric along is a pain in the neck. I think I’m going to have to figure out a way to cast healing spells or something.

The Hierophant’s wolf companion now has mummy rot AND four negative levels. We’re starting to think it might be kinder just to put the poor thing down.

The dragon’s treasure horde had a whole lot of fun stuff. There was a wand of shatter, a wand of keen edge, and the Assassin’s player actually managed to roll a 100 on the Items treasure table, giving us a major magic item (first time I’ve ever seen that happen). It turned out to be a ring of protection +4, which in the end the Assassin kept on grounds of having the worst AC in the party. The staff was interesting as well - according to our identify spells it’s supposed to be something called the ‘Staff of Kings’, but it’s missing its head. There’s a slot in front of the gigantic statue about the right size to put the staff into, but we’re currently thinking that we’ll finish assembling the thing before we try to use it.

sofawall
2010-02-28, 02:59 PM
Poor wolf.

evil-frosty
2010-02-28, 04:46 PM
Poor wolf.

I agree, that wolf has gone thru a lot. Especially for a wolf.

Also Saph your group has had some interesting experiences with Reincarnate, wonder if you will have to use it again in this campaign.

Saph
2010-02-28, 04:59 PM
Well, so far we've got a half-orc ranger and a gnoll warlock.

Given the party's luck so far with reincarnates I've told the others that if I ever get killed, I want to get raised rather than reincarnated, I'll pay for the diamonds myself, just as long as I don't have to roll on that damn reincarnation chart.

The ranger's response was "if you ever get killed, it'll mean everyone else in the party's dead as well, so there won't be anyone to get you raised OR reincarnated."

Mind you, this was before I got energy-drained to hell by the dragon. :P

Schylerwalker
2010-02-28, 09:12 PM
Lmao, you found an item called the Staff of Kings, missing its head, and it looks like there's a slot where you can insert the staff?

Get ready to fight Duriel. Roflsauce.

Still, excellent journal. Good read so far!

evil-frosty
2010-02-28, 09:20 PM
I am sorry, but uh whose Duriel? Sounds like he might be from Diablo but i dont remember much of that game. And ya i never want to get my character reincarnated, i picked the race i am for a reason. Though i dont mind reincarnating other people. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Zephyros
2010-03-01, 12:21 AM
Duriel was a misshapen worm thingie, bossing around at the end of Act II of Diablo II; many a valiant and foolish characters met their doom fighting that slimy caterpillar alone :smallsigh:. To get to him you had to form the Staff of Kings (which initially missed its headpiece - the Amulet of the Viper) and place it in a slot :smallbiggrin:

All in all, nice journal Saph. And kudos to your DM he is handling your sessions with great creativity (served along with the necessary healthy dose of DM-sadism :smalltongue: )

Tehnar
2010-03-01, 06:51 AM
Nice to read another one of your journals.

AFAIK you can't Iron Heart Surge out of a Dominate, since you can't take actions while dominated.

Saph
2010-03-01, 07:25 AM
Huh. The Duriel thing actually sounds kind of plausible.

The statue standing above the slot is a gigantic jackal-headed human, so our concerns were more that the statue would animate into a golem and attack us. On the other hand, our DM does play a lot of CRPGs . . .

And yeah, technically Iron Heart Surge doesn't allow that. On the other hand, by the book rules it also allows you to shut off any effect that you're standing in, up to and including epic spells, so it's one of the prime examples of "does not work without houseruling". :smalltongue:

Olo Demonsbane
2010-03-02, 09:45 PM
Woo! Two new updates since I was able to find this journal!

Thanks for updating this Saph, I am really enjoying seeing how your character does.

Deth Muncher
2010-03-06, 11:48 PM
Hm...smells like an update is around the corner...

Saph
2010-03-08, 09:17 AM
Episode 7: Looking for Trouble


We’d switched to playing Sundays for this week and the next. The Hierophant’s player works Sundays and so couldn’t make it, but the rest of the group was the same as before:

• Sorcerer 6 / Ruathar 3 / Abjurant Champion 1: My character, aka “Glow Rod” due to constant use of the luminous armour spell.
• Rogue 5 / Assassin 5: Our party trapfinder, sort of.
• Ranger 9: Currently a half-orc.
• Warlock 8: Currently a gnoll.
• Druid 9: Dwarf, and spends most of his time in wild shape form. Brown bear companion.

At the beginning of the session, me, the ranger, and the druid were in town getting our negative levels removed, while the warlock and the assassin were in the cave we were using for our campsite.


Animal Abuse, Part III

The first thing the warlock decided to do was to get the Hierophant’s mummy-rot-infected, energy-drained wolf (now that the Hierophant wasn’t around) and encourage the druid’s bear to eat it. He rolled Handle Animal, and given that the bear was already hungry, managed to succeed.

Me, the ranger, and the druid teleported back the next day to see the assassin, the warlock, the unhappy-looking bear, the burnt corpse of a scorpion, and the half-digested remains of the wolf.

Ranger: “ . . . What happened?”
Warlock: “Well, you see, we were attacked by a scorpion during the night, and the wolf heroically saved us, holding the scorpion off long enough for me to burn it and as a result the bear ate the wolf through absolutely no fault of anyone’s.” *Bluff check of +20*.
Me: “Oh. Okay, then.”
Druid (to the bear): “Speak with Animals. What actually happened?”

The bear proceeded to tell the Druid the truth, but since the Druid didn’t particularly care one way or another, nothing came of it.

(As a side-note, the DM decided at the end of the session that combined with the other animal abuse, this was enough of a tipping point to push the Warlock over from Chaotic Neutral to Chaotic Evil, since the wolf had a humanlike Int score and was a sapient creature.)


Possession Repossession

The party got together and headed back to the tomb, downstairs into the unexplored regions. The first room was empty except for a door on the opposite wall holding a canine skull with a red gem set into the centre. It looked like a trap. And what does our party do when we suspect a trap?

Warlock: “I pull an animal out of my bag of tricks and send it inside.” *gets a wolverine*
DM: “Your wolverine runs inside.”
Warlock: “Hm, it might not be heavy enough to set off the traps. I tell it to jump up and down on the floor.”
DM: “Your warlock gives you a long-suffering look and obeys. By the way, everyone roll a dice.”
*pause*
Druid: “Hey! I just had to roll a Will save.”
Warlock: “Huh? I didn’t notice anything.”
Ranger: “Me neither.”
Druid: “Well, I did. It felt like something was trying to control me.”
Assassin: “We didn’t have to roll one.”
Me: “On the other hand, it’s possible that we all had to roll Will saves, and you, with your high saves, high Wisdom, and dwarf bonuses, were the only one who passed, while the rest of us are actually dominated. In which case we’d now be obliged to destroy you.”
Warlock: “Could be.”
Assassin: “Kill the one who refuses to serve.”
Ranger: “Kill.”
Me: “Kill.”
Warlock: “Kill - oh, I had to roll a save as well.”
*pause*
Assassin: “Me too.”
Me: “I cast Protection from Evil.”
DM: “And could you now roll a save for the wolverine.”

The wolverine turned, and charged the druid. The combat lasted one round, but once the wolverine was down, the ranger was the next target. The effect (as you’ve probably guessed by now) was Magic Jar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicJar.htm), and the ranger promptly failed and attacked the rest of us. It didn’t help that the spell had also given her the ability to do Strength damage with her touch.

By the time the gem was finally smashed, ending the spell, the druid and warlock had taken about ten points of Strength damage each (we realised afterwards that if it hadn’t been for the warlock's Strength boost in gnoll form, the damage would have killed him), and the ranger had been beaten unconscious with nonlethal damage. We explored behind the door, destroyed the shadow that had been doing the possessing, and proceeded onwards.


Yet More Animal Abuse

The next two rooms contained traps, which our assassin, for once, actually managed to detect. The first room’s floor was a pit trap, which we bypassed by putting a spike in the wall and tying a rope to it to use as a rope swing over the top. The second room was filled with frescos of jungle, snakes, and a mosaic of a hydra. Detect Magic confirmed that it was a magical summoning trap. The assassin tried to disable it.

Assassin: *rolls an 18*
Me: “Cool.”
Assassin: “26.”
Me: “ . . . What?”
Assassin: “What?”
Me: “You’ve only got +8 to your skill?”
Assassin: “I’ve been spreading out my skill points. Does that disable it?”
DM: “Given that that would be the minimum target number for a level one trap, no. You set it off.”

The trap summoned up a pyrohydra and a few snake swarms. This was the point at which we realised we’d forgotten to fully heal up after the previous battle, and the ranger was knocked unconscious in the second round. The druid fled using wild shape, the warlock fled using spiderwalk, the assassin fled using spider climb, and I picked up the ranger and swung over the pit trap while singing the Raiders' March from Indiana Jones (which made the GM facepalm). The pyrohydra breathed fire after us, couldn’t fit through the door, and retreated back into its room. Everything went quiet.

While I healed up the ranger, the druid went back for another look. The pyrohydra had vanished and the frescos and mosaic were lifeless again.

Druid: “I wonder if that trap’s reset. I summon a giant eagle.”
DM: “You have a giant eagle.”
Druid: “I order the giant eagle to fly round the corner into the room and land on the mosaic of the hydra. Let’s see if the trap resummons those creatures every-”
*Poof* *squawk!* *CHOMP* *CHOMP* *CHOMP* *CHOMP* *CHOMP* *CHOMP* *CHOMP* *Crunch* *FWOOSH*
*sound of dead body burning*
*silence*
Assassin: “I think that’s a yes.”

We decided to take another route.


Return of the Animal Abuse

The second route through the lower levels of the tomb led into a room packed with treasure. Prominently placed on one wall was a Symbol of Weakness.

Warlock: “I pull out an animal from my bag of tricks and send it in!” *rolls a bat*
(Me and the ranger silently move our miniatures out of direct line of effect.)
DM: “The bat flies in and flaps around.”
Warlock: “I tell it to bump into the symbol.”
DM: “The symbol activates. Make a Fortitude save for your bat.”
*roll* *fail*
DM: “The bat hits the floor, paralysed.”
Warlock: “Cool. So I-”
DM: “And since you were directly in line of sight to the symbol when it activated, you also need to make a Fortitude save.”
Warlock: “Aw, lame.”

(Another failed save later)

Me: “So now we have a paralysed gnoll.”
Druid: “Let’s rest, then. How long until we regain spells?”
DM: “Twenty-three hours.”
Druid: “Why so long?”
DM: “Because you prepare spells once per day and you ONLY WOKE UP ONE HOUR AGO.”
Druid: “Oh, right.”
Me: “I’ve already used my daily charges on my Rod of Bodily Restoration. And since SOMEONE didn’t prepare any spells to cure ability damage . . .”
Druid: “I’m not a healbot. Anyway, I need my second-level spells for other things.”
Me: “Like what?”
Druid: “Oh, you know. Stuff.”
Me: *sigh* “Fine. I use my talisman of the disc to summon a Tenser’s Floating Disc and put the paralysed gnoll onto it.”
Druid: “You carry the weirdest magic items.”
Me: “It’s an item that can carry dead or unconscious teammates. How often has that come up by now?”
Druid: “Good point.”
Me: “And since the party healer DIDN’T PREPARE ANY SPELLS TO CURE ABILITY DAMAGE . . .”
Druid: “If your Armour Class wasn’t so high I’d slap you.”


Reasons To Hate Energy Drain, Continued

We rested for a day. The symbol was dealt with by means of a large earth elemental (I called it up with Summon Nature’s Ally V, told it to smash the wall with the symbol on it, then stood well back. One minute and a passed Fortitude save later, there was a crater in the wall and no more symbol).

Unfortunately, the next room contained something even more annoying. These were some kind of freakish undead spiders with a swarm attack and energy drain, so they’d move into our squares and we’d take swarm damage and an automatic negative level. Luckily Wings of Flurry is a spell perfectly designed for killing swarms, but even so, by the time they were all dusted the party had eight negative levels between them. We had to decide whether to progress onwards or flee back to town.

(As a sidenote, this is why experienced D&D players hate negative levels so much. As soon as you have even one, you need a Restoration or you risk losing twenty encounters worth of XP from one die roll. It’s bad enough if you have a cleric in the party, but if you don’t they’re a nightmare.)

In the end we decided to keep exploring, but our resolution didn’t last long. The next room contained some a sheet of evil negative-energy-aligned magic that summoned up rows of undead creatures in ancient armour. They were called ‘sword wraiths’, and as soon as the Warlock passed his knowledge check and mentioned the words “life-draining” everyone in the party, in a single motion, turned and ran, leaving the Warlock’s latest summoned animal (a weasel) behind to face the eight undead monstrosities. While the weasel died horribly I teleported the rest of the party back to Sunspire.


Loot and XPs

There was a giant pile of treasure to sell this week. We’d picked up over 20k’s worth just from the symbol room, and then the Warlock’s player proceeded to keep on rolling ‘Art Object’ on the treasure tables (for those who don’t know, D&D art objects retail for a LOT of money). Several gold crowns, jewelled electrum rings, gold circlets, and gold and emerald cups later (whose selling price was further boosted by the Warlock’s Bluff skill) the party had a total of over 80,000 gp to split between them. We bought everyone a handy haversack and an extra healing wand, put in an order for a staff of fixing things (a runestaff with a bunch of clerical spells on it) and still had over 11,000 gp to split five ways.

We also got XP, and I levelled. :smallsmile: Since I’ve been there for every session and haven’t died, I’m a fair bit ahead of the others. 11th-level sorcerers get a whole bunch of new spells known, and my picks are:

2nd-level: (haven’t decided yet)
3rd-level: Melf’s Unicorn Arrow (golem-killer)
4th-level: Ruin Delver’s Fortune (all-round protection)
5th-level: Overland Flight

Some of the others, however, had been falling behind, and since it was late, the discussion turned into silly ways to gain XP. After the warlock’s plan to find a sleeping 20th-level character and CdG him was shot down (hint: 20th-level characters don’t get to 20th-level by being easy to kill) the druid had an idea.

Druid: “Hey, could I cast Commune with Nature and find the nearest dangerous monster?”
DM: “ . . . Sure.”
Druid: “Okay, I do that next day. I commune to look for a nearby monster that’s just challenging enough without being really deadly.”
DM: “Your spell says ‘that way’.”
Druid: “Okay, guys, coming?”
Ranger: “Okay!”
Warlock: “Sure, let’s go.”

They decided not to take my character along. The druid explained that since I was 11th-level I’d leech off too much of the XP. My response was that they’d be coming back crying to me in a few hours asking me for a teleport taxi service for some bodies or whatever ridiculous situation they’d manage to get themselves into without me along. While the druid OOC admitted that this was pretty likely, it was late and everyone was feeling in the mood for something random before we headed home.

Possibly as a result of this, the DM told me to run the random encounter for them.


Looking for Trouble

I did a Google search, found a random encounter generator, typed in ‘Desert, ECL 10’, and looked to see what came up. The first result was a half-donkey paladin accompanied by a spellwarped donkey paladin (???). That went in the bin. The second result was a bit more useful - a group of advanced magical beasts.

Me: “After five hours of travel, you see something up ahead, a hundred feet away. Three largish creatures on the ground.”
Ranger: “I try to identify them.” *rolls Knowledge: Nature*
Me: “They look like giant lizards from this distance, but they’re not natural.”

(First round of combat)

Ranger: “I Rapid Shot.” *does 40ish damage*
Warlock: “I Eldritch Chain the other two.”
Druid: “I cast Cloudburst.”
Me: “The three creatures amble forward. They don’t move all that fast, and actually, they don’t really look like predators - they’re too slow. They just keep moving steadily towards you.”

(Second round of combat)

Ranger: “Rapid Shot again.” *does another 40ish damage*
Me: “That one’s badly bloodied, but still up.”
Warlock: “Eldritch Chain again.”
Druid: “I start casting Call Lightning Storm.”
Me: “The creatures keep ambling forward under the hail of fire. Now that you’re closer you can see that they’ve each got six legs and their eyes are glowing with a green light.”

(The druid’s player is the most experienced one out of the group, and I’d been watching him to see at which point he’d figure it out. As I got to the part about six legs I saw an “oh, crap” look come into his eyes as he realised what these things were. Here’s a picture.)

http://www.iwozhere.com/SRD/images/MM35_PG23.jpg
Druid: “I fly away! Back off! Back off NOW!”
Me: “Their turn. They advance and gaze at you. (to the ranger) Make a fortitude save.”
Ranger: “19.”
Me: “You feel a weird uncomfortable sensation as you meet the eyes of this thing, but you’re fine. (to the warlock) Make two fortitude saves.”
Warlock: “32, 17.”
Me: “You’re fine.”
Ranger: “My turn?”
Me: “Yes. Make another fortitude save.”
Ranger: “16.”
Me: “You turn to stone.”

The battle was quick and brutal. The advanced basilisk wounded by the ranger was finished off with a flame strike from the druid. The druid summoned up a bear which was turned to stone as well. The other two basilisks headed for the warlock and kept gazing at him. The warlock’s high Fort save from Dark One’s Own Luck and his Gnoll levels kept him safe long enough to Eldritch Chain the second basilisk, but just as he was about to finish off the third he rolled a natural 1 on his save. The druid killed the last basilisk with Call Lightning Storm and the battle was over.

Leaving the druid out in the desert, on his own, with two statues of party members and one statue of a bear. And that was where we left it.

At first it was suggested that we could get the clerics at the temple to heal them up with a break enchantment, until the DM pointed out that it would need a stone to flesh, which isn’t a cleric spell. There was also the issue of how the druid was going to transport the statues back in the first place (he can turn into a bear, but bears aren’t great at carrying things). He was working on some elaborate plan of making up a drag with his Survival skill when we left. The warlock was also coming up with some obscure plan involving stone to flesh and Last Breath to get rid of his Gnoll status, although the GM flat-out told him that he wasn’t allowed to voluntarily fail his save against dying.

But hey, on the plus side, they all got the XP. :smalltongue:

sofawall
2010-03-08, 09:45 AM
The first result was a half-donkey paladin accompanied by a spellwarped donkey paladin (???).

Best part.

Saph
2010-03-08, 01:20 PM
It probably wins the award for weirdest result I've ever seen.

Still haven't picked my last 2nd-level spell. I'm kind of tempted by Resist Energy, since I'll be able to cast it as a swift action in another level or so.

Olo Demonsbane
2010-03-08, 01:34 PM
Awesome. Energy drain sucks though. You need some Death Ward.

Resist Energy gets my pick. Being able to throw that up as a swift action would be VERY useful.

Schylerwalker
2010-03-08, 02:37 PM
Ohhh man, I bet the rest of the party is piiiiiiissed at you. Throwing basilisks at them? Deliciously naughty. I heartily approve. Were they all greater basilisks, or one greater and two ordinary?

Saph
2010-03-08, 03:37 PM
Three advanced basilisks, with 6 extra HD each. How annoyed the other players will be probably depends on what happens when we try to get them unpetrified at the start of next session. :P

arguskos
2010-03-09, 11:51 AM
For your level 2, I like Escalating Enfeeblement. It's like Ray of Enfeeblement, but better. Then again, you've been fighting lots of undead, so it's not as amazing. And I don't know if you have Ray or not.

Saph
2010-03-09, 06:36 PM
I've got access to Ray of Enfeeblement through my runestaff (along with Ray of Clumsiness and several others). The main issue with those kind of spells that about half the creatures we fight are either constructs or undead.

Deth Muncher
2010-03-09, 06:37 PM
I've got access to Ray of Enfeeblement through my runestaff (along with Ray of Clumsiness and several others). The main issue with those kind of spells that about half the creatures we fight are either constructs or undead.

Actually, would you mind telling us just what all is in the Runestaff? If'n you don't mind?

Saph
2010-03-09, 06:43 PM
Actually, would you mind telling us just what all is in the Runestaff? If'n you don't mind?

It's my "Runestaff of Rays". :smallsmile: Ray of Enfeeblement 3/day, Ray of Clumsiness 3/day, Targeting Ray 3/day, Ray of Flame 3/day, Scorching Ray 3/day, Seeking Ray 3/day, Ray of Dizziness 1/day. Fairly cheap and gives an arcane caster a lot of extra flexibility.

If we manage to get the clerical runestaff made to order, though, I'll probably switch to using that instead, since the way our encounters are going being able to use Restoration will probably be a lot more useful than having several extra ways to zap things.

Deth Muncher
2010-03-09, 07:09 PM
It's my "Runestaff of Rays". :smallsmile: Ray of Enfeeblement 3/day, Ray of Clumsiness 3/day, Targeting Ray 3/day, Ray of Flame 3/day, Scorching Ray 3/day, Seeking Ray 3/day, Ray of Dizziness 1/day. Fairly cheap and gives an arcane caster a lot of extra flexibility.

If we manage to get the clerical runestaff made to order, though, I'll probably switch to using that instead, since the way our encounters are going being able to use Restoration will probably be a lot more useful than having several extra ways to zap things.

Oooooh, okay. Well that's just dandy. Pity you don't get something like "Ray of Greater Disrupt Undead or something. But then, if you DO get that cleric staff, you'll be fine.


EDIT: Er, Saph? Read this (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ps/20070216a).


When an arcane spellcaster is attuned to a runestaff, she can substitute any of the spells stored in the runestaff for a prepared spell or spell slot of equal or greater level. She must have the spell on her spell list and be of sufficient level to cast it, though she need not know it or have it in her spellbook. If she has some of the spells on her spell list, but not others, she can only substitute spells that are on her spell list. Most spells stored in runestaffs can be used up to three times per day, unless otherwise noted in the item's description. Spells cast from a runestaff act in all ways as if the wielder had cast them normally, including casting time, attacks of opportunity, saving throw DCs, caster level, and other effects.

Unless your DM is cool and handwaves that away, you won't be able to cast Restoration, unless that's on the Sorceror list and I missed it.

Saph
2010-03-10, 09:15 AM
Unless your DM is cool and handwaves that away, you won't be able to cast Restoration, unless that's on the Sorceror list and I missed it.

UMD. I've got pretty close to +20 by now.

Deth Muncher
2010-03-10, 09:19 AM
UMD. I've got pretty close to +20 by now.

Oh. Hurr hurr. :B I plumb done forgot 'bout that there skill.

Then yeah, you're fine. It's cool the DM is letting you put in a commission for that - while most of mine probably would, I know a lot who won't.

Saph
2010-03-15, 11:41 AM
Episode 8: Maybe We Should Try A Different Plan


So, after the Basilisk Incident last week, the status of our party is as follows:

• Druid: In the desert, several hours walk from anywhere.
• Ranger and Warlock: Petrified into statues with the Druid.
• My Sorcerer: In the academy town of Sunspire, shopping.
• Assassin: Left behind at the adventure site near the tomb in the middle of nowhere, in a cave with two animal companions and not much else.

We rejoin our heroes as they decide what to do about it. :smalltongue:


Bad News, Teleports, and Unicorns

The druid managed to rig up a sled and dragged the two statues across the desert to Sunspire, dragged them up the several hundred feet of stairs to the city, dragged them to the tavern where we were staying, propped the two statues up on either side of the tavern’s front door, then lumbered in (still in bear form) into the common room, where my character was trying to chat up some of the apprentices from the wizard’s academy.

Me: “So how did it go?”
Druid: “Well, we met some basilisks.”
Me: “Did you win?”
Druid: “ . . . Yes. Yes, we did.”
Me: “That’s good.”
Druid: “Of course, there were a few slight problems.”
Me: “ . . . I’m not going to like hearing this, am I?”
Druid: “Well, I think we should look on the bright side. Our party expenses for food and drink should have just gone down by 40%.”
Me: “ . . .”
Druid: “And all of us are in one piece. A very solid piece.”
Me: “Okay, either you’re trying to tell me that Mary and Rufus (the names of the ranger and warlock) just got petrified by basilisks, or . . . actually, I can’t think of anything else you could be trying to tell me.”
Druid: “Have a look outside. That should explain everything.”
My character sighs, gets up, gets halfway to the door, stops, goes back, tells the druid “I TOLD you so”, and goes out to have a look.

Since I couldn’t immediately think of any way to solve the statue problem, I decided to do something about the problem I could solve, namely, the assassin having been left behind at the cave. I teleported over there, found him and the druid and ranger’s animal companions, and teleported back.

Unfortunately, the teleport was off target, landing us 6 miles outside town, and the DM proceeded to roll a random encounter immediately afterwards. Fortunately, it was a flesh golem, and slow-moving creatures in the open desert aren’t all that dangerous. I summoned up an earth elemental to keep it busy and killed it by firing unicorns at it with Melf’s Unicorn Arrow.

Warlock’s player: “Let me get this straight, you learnt a spell that attacks enemies with flying unicorns?”
Me: “Yep.”
Warlock’s player: “Why did you learn a spell that attacks enemies with flying unicorns?”
Me: “Wouldn’t a better question be: ‘why wouldn’t you learn a spell that attacks enemies with flying unicorns?’ ”
Warlock’s player: “No.”
Assassin: “Can you ask them if they know the way to Candy Mountain?”
Me: “Sure, next time I summon one.”


Discount Depetrification

By next morning, all the party was reassembled in Sunspire, and we had to decide what to do. Some Gather Information checks had established that there weren’t any spellcasters in the city capable of casting stone to flesh.

Druid: “Okay, so I’ve looked through my spells and I’ve found that I can turn them into mud, turn them into glass, turn them into sand, or turn them into glass and then turn them into sand.”
Me: “Can you turn them into flesh?”
Druid: “No, don’t have that one.”
Me: “Great.”
Assassin: “So what happens if you resculpt a statue before unpetrifying it?”
Me: “Not helping.”
Assassin: “I’m going to go looking for an artisan to give the ranger’s statue a nose job. Plus I’m going to see what she’s wearing and-”
Ranger’s player: “Try it and die.”
Druid: “What about the fey court? Some of their lords are supposed to be able to use that kind of magic, right?”
DM: “Yup. The usual price they ask in exchange is for someone to stay with them forever.”
Druid: “Perfect. So we just give them Aiden (my character’s name).”
Me: “Um . . .”
Druid: “It’ll be fine! You’re good-looking, so they’ll like you, and all you have to do afterwards is teleport away.”
Me: “I’m not liking this plan.”
Druid: “Well, I’ve got another idea. I can use reincarnate. So that would bring them back in a new body. So all we have to do is find a way of killing them . . .”
Me: *smacks Druid over the head with a rolled-up newspaper* “No! No! Bad!”

We decided to ask around the wizard’s academy again and see if they had any spells that might help. This time, we turned something up. One of the students had researched a spell that was supposed to take a previously-living statue and give it a new body. It was still experimental, but on paper the maths looked good, and since they’d never had a chance to try it before, they were willing to cast it at cost price.

In the absence of any better plan, we decided to give it a go.

And the spell worked. The gnoll warlock got depetrified into the body of an orc (losing his racial hit dice and gaining enough XP to level in the process) and the half-orc ranger was turned into . . . another half-orc. Could have been worse. The nerdy students who’d come up with the spell started breaking out the champagne, and we got asked for suggestions for a name for the spell.

In the end the name that was settled on was Crazy Dave’s Discount Transmutation. We’re thinking of getting a scroll of it.


Back to Work

With that settled, we teleported back to the tomb. This time we left the animal companions behind - they aren’t much use against undead and I can only carry 4 passengers when I teleport.

This time we avoided the hydra and dread wraith summon traps and explored the rest of the floor, finding two routes down. The first set of stairs led downwards to a door, and at the top of the stairs were two medium-sized jackal-headed statues holding glaives. To nobody’s surprise they animated and attacked once we got close, but they proved a lot easier than the big ones we’d fought outside. The ranger was hit by a nasty x3 critical, but we finished them off without much trouble.

However, while we were healing up, the druid made the mistake of running down the stairs to look at the door. A pressure plate clicked and a ten-ton block of stone fell down with a massive boom, blocking the entire stairway down. Once the dust settled we saw that written on top of the block was ‘R.I.P. TOMB ROBBER’.

Some tapping on the stone (and hearing the druid tap back) revealed that the block hadn’t actually crushed him - it had just sealed him in. We waited a few minutes to see if the druid had any way of getting out on his own, and then, when he didn’t appear, decided to circle around to the other route down in the hope that we could get around to reach him from the other side . . .

. . . and that was the point at which the druid decided to use meld into stone and pop back up through the block. :smallannoyed:

The second route down was a large, empty room with statues of scholarly-looking jackal-headed creatures leading to stairs downwards. It didn’t radiate magic. However, when the warlock pulled out an animal and threw it in to run around the room, he heard an irritated-sounding voice in his head. ”Would you please stop doing that?”

The voice from inside the room wasn’t all that keen on speaking, but when it became obvious we were about to try to make our way through it started talking to us. It told us that it was under instruction to stop us if we tried to force our way past; however, it didn’t particularly want a fight, so it wouldn’t care if we took another way down. When we asked which way down it gave us a few hints along the lines of “how about you try the routes that don’t involve going through the front entrance of the trap-filled tomb?”

We backed off and conferred, and two views were put forward on what we should do next.

a) Force our way in and kill the thing if it tries to stop us. The druid backed this one because he likes brute-force solutions and besides, it might be only a voice, and the warlock wanted to kill it because the voice had insulted his fashion sense.

b) Back off and try exploring the other ways into the mesa. My character and the ranger were arguing for this, my character because the voice hadn’t been aggressive, and the ranger because she didn’t think our party’s track record against mind-controlling enemies was very good.

In the end the second approach won out, and we backed off, left the tomb, camped, fought off an attack by ibis-headed sphinxes overnight, and started searching the outside of the mesa. We spent over a day searching, and were almost ready to give up and try plan A when we finally found it.


Outside, Inside

About three sessions ago, while making the journey to Void Ridge, we’d fought off an attack by a group of jackal-headed humanoids in the deep desert. We’d considered tracking them back to their lair, but ended up exploring the tomb instead. This time, we found them.

The jackal-headed things were inhabiting a tunnel complex beneath the rock, and were also keeping a collection of half-starved humanoid prisoners (which removed any particular desire on our part to talk to them). The central room of the tunnel complex held four smaller jackal-headed things, two larger jackal-headed things, and two medium-sized ones who looked like spellcasters. Further inside, guarding the prison, were three of the sneaky jackal-headed things - the same ones we’d fought out in the desert who had been capable of Death Attacks.

The druid had found all this out through a weird scouting spell that detached his hand and turned it into a spider (don’t ask), and we made a quick plan and launched our attack. The ranger had picked up a Necklace of Fireballs in the last adventure, so everyone but me took one of the 3d6 beads, counted down, and threw 12d6 worth of fireball damage into the middle of the rather surprised jackal-heads.

It turned out the things had fire resistance. It made the fireball attack pretty ineffective, but in the long term it didn’t help them much. A confusion spell from me took out the four little enemies, the jackal spellcasters threw fireballs back at us to very little effect (half the party has evasion or fire resistance) and the large jackal-headed things were finished off by arrows from the ranger, the warlock’s eldritch chain, and my wings of flurry spell.

However, the three sneaks hadn’t yet showed themselves. I went running down the corridor looking for the prisoners, and found them; there were two prisoner cell blocks, one containing humans, elves, bugbears, and gnolls, and the other containing ones that had been warped by some kind of magical energy. While the assassin stayed behind to Death Attack the remaning confused enemies, I ran into the left cellblock with the humanoids. The druid followed me. The ranger and the warlock went into the right one. There was no sign of the sneak-things (Danger Will Robinson!). Seeing nothing, the warlock and ranger hung around for 3 rounds. The DM called for spot and listen checks. Both failed.

As the jackal-sneaks and the spellcasters that had been accompanying them decloaked from their invisibility, the ranger and the warlock got hit with three Death Attacks. The ranger’s high Fort save kept her alive, but the warlock rolled a natural 2. Dead.

There was one last chance. The druid had Last Breath prepared. In an amazing display of teamwork, the ranger picked up the body of the warlock (taking three AoO’s on the way), ran him into range of the druid, the druid ran up and cast Last Breath on him, and . . .

DM: “The spell fails.”
Druid: “What?”
DM: “He’s been killed by a death effect. Reincarnate doesn’t work.”
Druid: “Oh.”

Without the element of surprise, the sneaks weren’t so dangerous anymore, and I wiped them out with Wings of Flurry, but there was nothing we could do for the warlock. And so after joining the party as a human, being infected with mummy rot, dying, being reincarnated as a gnoll, turning Chaotic Evil, being petrified, and being turned into an orc, the warlock finally died beyond hope of return. The ranger gave him a funeral pyre. The assassin was going to throw some animals from his bag of tricks into the fire, to commemorate the warlock’s distinguished history of animal abuse, but the ranger nixed it.


Finishing Up

With the combat over, we ended the session shortly afterwards. We spoke to the prisoners and found that they’d been captured from a village raided by the jackal-things. The more mutated prisoners weren’t capable of talking anymore. I tried talking to the bugbear and gnolls as well, but this wasn’t much of a success (turns out that Comprehend Languages doesn’t work all that well for communication when the creature you’re trying to talk to is unfriendly).

The warlock’s player took the death fairly well, and didn’t seem too bothered at the prospect of having to make a new character. Since the party lacks either a cleric or anyone with good Knowledge skills, his current plan’s to come back as an Archivist.

So that leaves our party in the caves of the jackal-things, many days away from civilisation, with a group of a dozen or so badly malnourished prisoners. While we can probably take on the jackal-things, we’re less sure what we’re going to do about the rescuees.

On the plus side, we gained a load of treasure, the ranger finally levelled up so everyone’s now level 10+, and we went through an entire session without having to teleport back to town to cure some weird undead-inflicted condition. So, you know. Progress. :smalltongue: Tune in for further adventures next week!

Zombimode
2010-03-15, 12:11 PM
Very entertaining read, as always :)
Do your games always have such a high lethality rate?

arguskos
2010-03-15, 12:12 PM
Poor damn bastard. The Warlock just can't catch a break. At least he died well.

Saph
2010-03-15, 12:49 PM
Very entertaining read, as always :)
Do your games always have such a high lethality rate?

Actually, this is a pretty low death rate compared to our usual games. :P

arguskos
2010-03-15, 12:51 PM
Actually, this is a pretty low death rate compared to our usual games. :P
I read your RHoD journal. That was highly lethal, no joke. And my players say I'm rough (1 death/three sessions, give or take).

Saph
2010-03-15, 12:53 PM
We worked out the death rate at the end of the RHoD game and found out that it had averaged to two character deaths per session. By comparison this campaign's been relatively safe.

arguskos
2010-03-15, 12:56 PM
We worked out the death rate at the end of the RHoD game and found out that it had averaged to two character deaths per session. By comparison this campaign's been relatively safe.
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, I really need my players to read that journal, and realize that when they get themselves killed, it could be a lot worse.

Also, note to any of my players reading this (since a few of you do): GUMBO WILL GET YOU KILLED.

evil-frosty
2010-03-15, 05:02 PM
Awesome read Saph, please keep updating it. Also ya deaths in my groups campaign are rare. We'll go down into negatives but we dont die. Most likely a side effect of everyone cept 1 having a way to cure, including 4 clerics and a druid.

Saph
2010-03-15, 05:47 PM
A thing about deaths in this campaign is that the DM is playing strictly by the book - you die, you lose a full level. You really notice how much of a hit it is to your XP total - the ranger died once, and she's only finally now managed to claw her way up to level 10. I'm thinking I ought to get a scroll or two to help with it.

Malbordeus
2010-03-15, 06:35 PM
the archivist will help.

heres hoping he takes the insta raise-dead spell. or buys a scroll of last breath (archivists are so strange. clerical wizards that can learn spells not on their class list...)

Raiki
2010-03-15, 06:36 PM
the archivist will help.

heres hoping he takes the insta raise-dead spell. or buys a scroll of last breath (archivists are so strange. clerical wizards that can learn spells not on their don't have a class [spell] list...)

Fixed that for you. But you're absolutely right, they're very strange. Especially when combined with Shugenja shenanigans. Try saying that three times fast.

~R~

Saph
2010-03-16, 02:13 PM
Fixed that for you. But you're absolutely right, they're very strange. Especially when combined with Shugenja shenanigans. Try saying that three times fast.

Hmm . . . So can Archivists use magic items that require a spell to be on their class list, like scrolls and runestaffs?

d13
2010-03-16, 03:00 PM
Awesome journal, Saph. It prevents me from killing myself bored at work xD



I did a Google search, found a random encounter generator, typed in ‘Desert, ECL 10’, and looked to see what came up. The first result was a half-donkey paladin accompanied by a spellwarped donkey paladin (???).

I just found a random encounter generator, and Desert ECL 10 gave the following result:

* Brass Half-Dragon Donkey Rogue 3 (CR 5)
* Vampire Basilisk (CR 7)
* 2 Basilisks (CR 5)

EL ~9.64

I'm getting the urge to run this encounter xD

Olo Demonsbane
2010-03-16, 04:18 PM
Thanks for keeping us updated Saph. :smallsmile: I checked this journal about 3 times on Thursday before I realized that it wasn't Sunday *facepalm*


I just found a random encounter generator, and Desert ECL 10 gave the following result:

* Brass Half-Dragon Donkey Rogue 3 (CR 5)
* Vampire Basilisk (CR 7)
* 2 Basilisks (CR 5)

EL ~9.64

I'm getting the urge to run this encounter xD

I am running this encounter. Not sure when, but I will run it.

Malbordeus
2010-03-16, 05:27 PM
Hmm . . . So can Archivists use magic items that require a spell to be on their class list, like scrolls and runestaffs?

ok, gained the ability to care for five minutes and looked it up, then applied a healthy dose of common sense.

Cleric is indeed their class list, but they have the ability to learn non-clerical spells from scrolls... sort of like Dread Necromancers and Warmages with their advanced learning.
so for the purposes of magic items, they can use all cleric ones, but spells from other lists only count as being on their list if they have learnt them and added them to their prayer book already.

thats the closest i can make it out, with my limited care-time avaliable. anyone else want to hazard a guess? or should this be a topic for a different thread? :smallconfused:

Warclam
2010-03-16, 05:37 PM
ok, gained the ability to care for five minutes and looked it up, then applied a healthy dose of common sense.

Cleric is indeed their class list, but they have the ability to learn non-clerical spells from scrolls... sort of like Dread Necromancers and Warmages with their advanced learning.
so for the purposes of magic items, they can use all cleric ones, but spells from other lists only count as being on their list if they have learnt them and added them to their prayer book already.

thats the closest i can make it out, with my limited care-time avaliable. anyone else want to hazard a guess? or should this be a topic for a different thread? :smallconfused:

Sounds right to me, though I'd like to point out that runestaves are arcane-only, so they're a no-go for archivists. There are domain staves in Complete Champion, but they expressly can't be custom-made: they contain all the spells from a single domain, castable once per day. Not as useful.

d13
2010-03-16, 09:56 PM
I am running this encounter. Not sure when, but I will run it.

Let me know how it goes :smalltongue:

Eldariel
2010-03-17, 10:09 AM
After noticing this for the first time, I've been itching to make time to read through it, but failing constantly. Now, I'm glad I did; awesome campaign you've got there, with lots of death (as it should be), lots of spells meeting their limitations (as they well should) and lots, lots of dead animals (...well, maybe that's a bit wrong), precisely as things should go. Oh, and barrel-loads of fun, probably to play and definitely to read. Are you sure you and SCS aren't related?

By the way, yeah, that Death Ward? I heard it's a pretty good spell. Though of course, being Druid 5 1 min/level, it's still a bit high level to prepare consistently. Speaking of which, I'm a bit surprised by the utter lack of your own roads in the various dungeons you've been to; between a Druid and a Sorcerer, you certainly have the expertise necessary. Oh, and I trust you'll be picking up Disintegrate on 6 to dust some dead?

Saph
2010-03-17, 10:59 AM
After noticing this for the first time, I've been itching to make time to read through it, but failing constantly. Now, I'm glad I did; awesome campaign you've got there, with lots of death (as it should be), lots of spells meeting their limitations (as they well should) and lots, lots of dead animals (...well, maybe that's a bit wrong), precisely as things should go. Oh, and barrel-loads of fun, probably to play and definitely to read. Are you sure you and SCS aren't related?

Heh. :smalltongue: Thanks.


By the way, yeah, that Death Ward? I heard it's a pretty good spell. Though of course, being Druid 5 1 min/level, it's still a bit high level to prepare consistently. Speaking of which, I'm a bit surprised by the utter lack of your own roads in the various dungeons you've been to; between a Druid and a Sorcerer, you certainly have the expertise necessary. Oh, and I trust you'll be picking up Disintegrate on 6 to dust some dead?

I'm having trouble deciding - I really want Disintegrate (it would have been great this week) but I kind of want to take Superior Resistance first (since I can cast it on other party members and with my Abjurant Champion levels, it's automatically extended).

And yup, the druid's started using Death Ward. Made for kind of a funny story actually. When we went back to the tomb (the Back to Work section in the post above) the druid made sure to cast an Extended Death Ward before we got into the room with the sword wraith trap.

Me: "Should we see if we can disable it?"
Druid: "No, we don't have time. I want to keep going before my Death Ward runs out."

(We push forward and discover a room with some locked iron caskets.)

Assassin: "I try to pick the locks."
DM: "Fail."
Assassin: "What if I take 20?"
Druid: "That'll take too long, my Death Ward will have run out. Let's keep going."

(We find the room with the golems.)

Ranger: "You know those things are going to animate as soon as we get near."
Assassin: "I could check for traps. Take 20?"
Druid: "That'll take too long. We need to keep going before my Death Ward runs out."

(We destroy the golems and face the stairway down.)

Druid: "I run down the stairs and try to open the door!"
BOOM.

(The Druid gets sealed in by a giant block of stone. The party spends a while experimenting with trying to talk to him via Morse code, which might have worked if it wasn't for the fact that nobody in the party knew Morse code. The Druid spent a while trying to tear the door down and press onwards before giving up and using his spells to travel back up and rejoin the party.)

Ranger: "How did you get out of that trap?"
Druid: "What can I say? I'm just that good."
Me: *reaches up to pat the Druid on the shoulder* "And I'm sure your Death Ward was very helpful."
Druid: " . . . Shut up."

Beowulf DW
2010-03-17, 02:04 PM
I must admit that the way this campaign was set up is pretty damn smart. Taking assignments and going on missions for an organization means that new players or players who have to create new characters can join in with the following excuse:

"[Insert Organization's name] assigned me to your group because they thought you could use some help."

Very clever.

Eldariel
2010-03-18, 06:43 AM
*Story about Druid's haste being slightly counterproductive*

Heh. Glad I asked :smallamused:


As for your spell, I'd definitely go for Disintegrate for now. It definitely opens up possibilities, giving you a swiss army knife of making your own doors and paths where Move Earth/Stone Shape isn't enough (in such trap-filled tombs, it may be extremely handy), best offense against many types of Undead (in such undead-filled tombs, it may be extremely handy), and of course, being able to convert things that annoy you into nothing is just overall extremely handy.

Superior Resistance is a great spell, +3 to all your saves and you certainly are rolling those aplenty, but:
1) It's a Druid-spell too.
2) It doesn't actually expand your strategic alternatives nor aid you in dealing with things that just don't stay dead. It gives you a numeric buff and a very handy one at that, but ultimately I think, with your creativity Disintegrate is going to be slightly more useful.

Malbordeus
2010-03-19, 05:58 AM
I must admit that the way this campaign was set up is pretty damn smart. Taking assignments and going on missions for an organization means that new players or players who have to create new characters can join in with the following excuse:

"[Insert Organization's name] assigned me to your group because they thought you could use some help."

Very clever.

not too cleaver when you consider the rarity of 9th level characters... you need a LOT of money to be able to pay for adventurers of this level, which normally means governing bodies, guilds, or very large cities.

but you can use said missions to lead the party into the whole saving-the-world type plotlines, so its a functional, if crude, way of railroading the party without them noticing. :P

Deth Muncher
2010-03-19, 08:44 AM
Heh. Glad I asked :smallamused:


As for your spell, I'd definitely go for Disintegrate for now. It definitely opens up possibilities, giving you a swiss army knife of making your own doors and paths where Move Earth/Stone Shape isn't enough (in such trap-filled tombs, it may be extremely handy), best offense against many types of Undead (in such undead-filled tombs, it may be extremely handy), and of course, being able to convert things that annoy you into nothing is just overall extremely handy.


But, y'know, you've got to be aware and wary of the cathartic potential of Disintigrate. Why do I put it like that? Think, for a moment, of real life. Hasn't someone ever done something so stupid that you just wanted to reduce them to a pile of dust? Wouldn't that feel really GOOD? Now think of what might happen if you were granted that power several times per day.

Food for thought.

Zephyros
2010-03-19, 09:59 AM
^^ research "Vacuum Cleaner" spell?

bebecatty
2010-03-19, 11:30 AM
but you can use said missions to lead the party into the whole saving-the-world type plotlines, so its a functional, if crude, way of railroading the party without them noticing. :P

Hehee sweetie we noticed :P
Course I like to think theres a difference between being "railroaded" and saying "oh look theres a plot-train, lets jump on and see where it goes!"

-The Ranger

Person_Man
2010-03-19, 01:06 PM
It seems like you roll Saving Throws every round. If I ever play with your DM, remind me to be a Warforged Hexblade/Blackguard/Warblade with 3 different Save boosting items, a Ring of Evasion, a Tabard of Valor, Protection from Good constantly on, the Fearless Destiny feat, and Soulfire armor (+4 enhancement, immunity to Death effects, energy drain, and negative energy, BoED). I would also buy Winged Boots, so that I would never walk on a pressure plate again.


Also, with the exception of constant Summon spells and the weird spider hand thing, it sounds like your party has mostly avoided battlefield control, action advantage, or divination spells/tactics. Any particular reason behind this, or is it just that you find other spells/tactics more interesting?

Eldariel
2010-03-19, 01:41 PM
-The Ranger

You do realize that by using this signature, you shall be forevermore known here as "The Ranger" rather than by any other name, right? :smalltongue:


Other than that, glad to hear of other players in these journal-games!

Saph
2010-03-19, 02:23 PM
It seems like you roll Saving Throws every round. If I ever play with your DM, remind me to be a Warforged Hexblade/Blackguard/Warblade with 3 different Save boosting items, a Ring of Evasion, a Tabard of Valor, Protection from Good constantly on, the Fearless Destiny feat, and Soulfire armor (+4 enhancement, immunity to Death effects, energy drain, and negative energy, BoED). I would also buy Winged Boots, so that I would never walk on a pressure plate again.

That would just mean everyone else would get hit with the effects instead. :P But yeah, that's why I want Superior Resistance.


Also, with the exception of constant Summon spells and the weird spider hand thing, it sounds like your party has mostly avoided battlefield control, action advantage, or divination spells/tactics. Any particular reason behind this, or is it just that you find other spells/tactics more interesting?

To be honest, in most of the battles we've been in, battlefield control wouldn't have worked all that well. Battlefield control requires all the party to be on the same page and our battles usually involve everyone doing their own thing.

Our party scores high on brute-force firepower and low on attention span (which come to think of it describes most adventurers).

Saph
2010-03-22, 07:51 AM
Episode 9: The End of the Sand


The Druid couldn’t make today’s game, so it was just my Sorcerer (level 11), the Assassin (level 10) and the Ranger (level 10). The session opened with our party standing over the body of our ex-comrade the Warlock, along with a bunch of rescued prisoners, deciding what to do next. The Druid was assumed to lead the prisoners away to the nearest safe campsite before we progressed onwards.


Enter the Archivist

At which point there was an “aaaaaaAAAAAARGH!” noise followed by a man landing with a splat at the Assassin’s feet.

The man was on the young side, with very expensive clothes and a sword cane, and kept saying things like “Rather”, “Good show”, and “Top hole!”. (The player had modelled his accent on Bertie Wooster from P.G. Wodehouse - aka ‘upper class twit’.) It turned out that he’d been working on a spell and had managed to get himself teleported and plane shifted all at once.

For those interested in the mechanical side of things, the character build was Factotum 1 / Archivist 8. The DM tried to talk him into being a single-class Archivist so as not to lose caster levels, but the player wanted to be able to trapfind (which he was admittedly very good at with his 20 Intelligence).

In the meantime the ranger had been scouting ahead and had heard the sound of some more of the jackal-headed things trying to be quiet. Back to work.


Time, Place, Occasion

Around the next corner was an alchemical laboratory. There were no enemies in view. In fact there were three of the spellcasting jackal-headed things, but all three were using invisibility. For the curious, their real name is marrutacts, a type of marruspawn, and they look like this:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/sand_gallery/87629.jpg
Each could cast spells as a 5th-level wizard, and they managed to make quite a nuisance of themselves with dispel magic and damage spells before the Ranger killed one with an arrow critical and the Assassin sneak attacked another to death with her rapier. I grappled the third one and actually managed to get a grip on it. It responded by chomping me in the face and locking its jaws.

Me: “Hey! Look, I know you can’t keep your hands off me, but let’s draw the line at teeth.”
Ranger: “Is there anything you won’t hit on?”
Me: “I try to pry its jaws off.” *grapple check fail*
Ranger: “I think he’s just putting up a token resistance.”
Assassin: “I can’t believe you’d cheat on me like this. I thought we had something special.”

Since it was grappling, the spellcaster jackal had no Dex bonus and the assassin promptly sneak attacked it into a bloody corpse.

Ranger: “Wow. I think that’s the first time we’ve seen a death from make-out.”
Me: “More like death from jealous ex.”
Assassin: “Meh, that works too.”

With the enemy casters dead, we started healing up, but the noise had attracted attention. The high priest of the creatures was in the area - a marru with a red robe and white fur. He was in fact a Wizard/Beguiler/Ultimate Magus, and had approached under invisibility before making his attack, opening up with scalding mud, a higher-power version of transmute rock to mud, caving in the ceiling and turning the entire room into a fire-damage-dealing mud bath. The assassin was able to avoid most of it due to her Evasion and tiefling resistance, but the ranger and archivist had already taken damage in the earlier fight and were dropped to low HP. I flew out of the mud and landed next to the high priest, and he dropped a wall of magma around us, sealing me off with the high priest within a 10-foot by 15-foot cubicle. Time for a cage match.


Wizard vs Sorcerer

The high priest attacked me with a save-or-die touch spell, mummify. I blocked it with wings of cover and used invisibility to stop him from trying again. He blasted the entire area with a flaywind burst which I dodged with ruin delver’s fortune. He dropped resinous tar over the area to stop me from adjusting position with 5-foot steps, and I broke the invisibility to hit him with belker claws. He threw up another spell to resist the ongoing damage from the belker claws and grappled me with telekinesis. I decided enough was enough and teleported out with dimension door, reappearing on the other side of the wall of magma with the rest of the party.

While we’d been duelling the rest of the party had been un-burying themselves from the searing mud. The archvist and the ranger had both been dropped to single-figure HP, but the archivist had made it out by healing himself while the ranger had broken out of the mud with a potion of fly. By the time I reappeared most of the party was clustered back out in the corridor, and had been deciding whether I needed rescuing. They were glad to see me but with the wall of magma blocking the opposite side of the room, no-one was sure about how to deal with the priest. On my suggestion the ranger flew into the room (having used Resist Energy for some fire resistance) to try and find him. The high priest promptly reappeared and cast a wall of sand spell across the entrance, locking the ranger inside with him and sealing the rest of us out.


Wizard vs Ranger

The ranger opened up on the high priest and managed to do some damage, but his stoneskin and energy resistance absorbed most of it. He countered with a ray of enfeeblement which the ranger dodged. She used a potion of invisibility, he responded with an area dispel magic which knocked off the ranger’s fly spell and sent her down into the mud with a splat, she drank a potion of levitate and popped right back up, and the priest used his huge Listen check to pinpoint the ranger and hit her area with a glitterdust. She failed her save and was blinded.

In the meantime, the rest of us outside had been trying to force our way in. I really wished I had disintegrate, but instead we just had to improvise - I summoned up an earth elemental and told it to smash the stone at the corner of where the wall of sand blocked our way in. After a few rounds of smashing it had produced a six-inch hole. Too small for movement, but big enough to grant line of effect - I teleported inside with my anklets of translocation, the assassin teleported inside with her boots of swift passage, and we were back in the fight.


Final Duel

I used benign transposition to switch the ranger with the earth elemental, dropping the blinded ranger off next to the archivist outside (who cured her next turn). The high priest cast haboob, turning the entire room but for a 5-foot strip into a skin-flaying sandstorm. The assassin used invisibility and spider climb to manuever above the high priest and started studying him for a Death Attack, but the priest’s hearing picked up the assassin and he revealed and blinded her with another glitterdust. Next he summoned up a couple of allips with Summon Undead V, but they couldn’t hit my Touch AC and I killed them next round with Wings of Flurry.

But the constant fighting had worn down the priest and he was running out of higher-level spells. I hit him with another belker claws, and next round, fired a Melf’s unicorn arrow spell down at him from above. The bull rush effect of the unicorns knocked him down into the scalding mud, and the three spells combined did a massive amount of damage. He managed to get off a last spell - flesh to salt. The assassin failed her save and turned into a pillar of salt, but the high priest died the round after. The rest of the party were left in the wrecked laboratory, on top of the cooling mud, with a salt assassin and a dead enemy.

(As an aside, the Archivist had used the time while we were fighting to create a giant skeleton with Animate Dead and have it try to bash its way through the stone wall to join the battle. Both me and the ranger gave him “oh, he’s THAT kind of divine caster” looks.)


Moving On

By this point most of the party were pretty much dead on their feet, so we pulled back to our cave campsite and rested. We still had that scroll of Crazy Dave’s Discount Transmutation, so I used it on the assassin to un-saltify her (and turn her into a half-orc in the process, but oh well). Since we’d been attacked by allips, I blew my last few low-level slots casting Ectoplasmic Armour on myself, the ranger, and the assassin before going to sleep.

Luckily we didn’t get attacked in the night and the next morning we went back to searching the caverns to find that we’d pretty much cleared the place out. One area had been sealed off by a steel barrier, and the only remaining exit was a set of double doors up . . . which led back up into the lower level of the tomb, into the room with the disembodied voice.

Voice: “Oh, hello. Did you deal with them all?”
Me: “Pretty much.”
Voice: “Lovely. Well, that wizard was the one who bound me here, so now I can leave.”
Assassin: “Wait, have you seen any portals around?”
Voice: “Sure. It’s behind the statue on the upper floor. Just put the staff in the slot.”
Me: “We’re missing the staff’s head-”
Voice: “Did you try looking around the wizard’s neck?”
Me: “Uh . . .”
Voice: “Well, have fun with that. See you.”

There was a crack of thunder and the thing was gone, which I guess disproves the ‘it was just a voice’ theory. We went back through our bag of loot and discovered that the wizard had indeed been carrying a silver skull that screwed into the top of the Staff of Kings. They fitted together with a click and the staff suddenly got a lot more powerful, becoming a runestaff capable of casting a bunch of undead-related spells. It also turned into a +1 unholy weapon, at which point I dropped the thing as though it was radioactive and handed it over to the assassin. (The archivist wanted it as soon as he heard about the undead-creating features, but at this point I put my foot down and refused to give the evil minor artifact to the stranger.)

We retraced our steps back out through the tomb, up to the ground level, up to the first level, past the place where we’d fought the dragon, to the giant statue. The assassin put the staff in the slot and with a rumble a pair of staircases opened up, leading downwards. We descended.


The Portal

The room below was the personal burial chamber of the king this tomb had been built to hold, with his golden sarcophagus, the sarcophagi of his four favourite wives, and a pair of ceremonial statues. Crackling between the statues was the portal we’d been sent to seal - a gateway to the Negative Energy Plane. Flying around the portal were a group of four little black and red things - negative energy elementals of some kind called zag-yis. An advanced spectre flew out of the sarcophagi to join them and the final battle kicked off.

The archivist used his Dark Knowledge ability, giving everyone huge bonuses to attack and damage. The spectre responded by charging him, hitting him, and then hitting him again when he tried to move away, dealing out four negative levels (and also taking away the archivist’s higher level spell slots which had been filled with stuff like restoration and death ward, meaning he now had no way to cure it.)

The rest of the party had much less trouble. In between the ectoplasmic armour spell and their high Dex scores, the ranger and the assassin were almost immune to the incorporeal touch attacks of the zag-yis and the spectre, and with the Dark Knowledge boost they dealt massive amounts of damage back. I chucked in some force attack spells and the zag-yis started exploding. After trying and failing to injure us a few times the spectre gave up and took another shot at the archivist. He hit him and drained yet another two levels, but the ranger and the assassin focused their attacks on the spectre next turn and destroyed it.

We were left with the portal, some caskets of treasure, and the sarcophagi. I chucked the portal bomb through the portal, sealing it, and our mission was done. We got to work stealing the caskets of treasure, but I didn’t want to actually break open the sarcophagi so left them alone. The assassin waited until my back was turned and broke them open anyway.


Epilogue

The archivist was ferried back to Sunspire, got a restoration for his six negative levels, and spent several days trying to research where he was. He discovered that he was definitely on a different plane, and since this was a nexus world, there was no easy way to figure out how he could get home. He asked if he could travel with us in the meantime. The exact response was something along the lines of “Sure, you can join our team. There’s lots of travel, you get to meet a wide variety of interesting creatures, and you have a good chance of getting reincarnated in a new body.”
I spent the next few days ferrying the prisoners back to Sunspire, one teleport at a time. Since I could only bring four passengers per casting and could only cast the spell twice per day, it took a while. I also went shopping, buying the last piece of the Raiment of the Four, upgrading my Cloak of Charisma, and commissioning a few other odds and ends.
The assassin went to find a buyer for the Staff of Kings. She rolled a natural 20 for Gather Information and managed to find the mansion of a very rich man called Cedric who paid her 26,000 gold for the thing. Cedric’s servants at the mansion were all under dominate effects. We couldn’t help wondering if we’d just created a BBEG for later. The assassin also left Cedric her business card in case he needed any work done.
The assassin was also subject to horrible nightmares for every night after leaving the tomb, leaving her fatigued and eventually exhausted. We’re not sure whether it’s aftereffects of the staff or a curse from looting the sarcophagi.
The ranger picked up the warlock’s “pimp suit” from where he’d put it on order before dying. Apparently he wanted her to have it. I’m not quite sure what she’s planning to do with a lurid purple suit with a wide-brimmed hat, but I suppose she’ll come up with something.
And we went home.

While collecting our payment from the Duke in the capital city, we also found that two more portals had opened while we’d been busy with the last ones . . . but that’s a story for next time!

Raiki
2010-03-22, 01:21 PM
Most excellent. Ya know, reading this really makes me want to play an old-school kind of gritty game. It's been so long since a character death was anything more than a minor (and brief) inconvenience in our games. It's to the point where people actually start getting upset at the DM if their character dies. :smallsigh: Well, what can you do?

Anyway, great session. Thanks for keeping this journal running.

~R~

imperialspectre
2010-03-22, 02:04 PM
Saph, I still can't decide whether your storytelling ability or your tactical skill is more impressive. But the journals are certainly always a hell of a fun read. :)

evil-frosty
2010-03-22, 03:46 PM
Wonderful story. Quick question what book are those wing of x spells from?

IthilanorStPete
2010-03-22, 04:18 PM
Wonderful story. Quick question what book are those wing of x spells from?

Races of the Dragon.

Saph
2010-03-22, 04:21 PM
Saph, I still can't decide whether your storytelling ability or your tactical skill is more impressive. But the journals are certainly always a hell of a fun read. :)

Thanks. :smallsmile:

Yeah, Wings of Cover really saved me against the wizard priest. He tried two or three Fortitude save-or-die spells against me - odds are I would have failed at least one of the saves if the spells had landed.

Eldariel
2010-03-22, 05:13 PM
Told you to take Disintegrate :smalltongue: But yeah, I'm just wondering why the Archivist chose to provoke AoO before casting Death Ward; surely casting it defensively before moving would've put him in a bit better position? I'll also have to admit, I was rooting for the Wizard for a moment there; he was doing such a beautiful job negating your action advantage and using quite efficient text book offense.

It was like poetry in motion. Though your team's performance was quite inspiring too, but somewhat more...crude? Your personal performance was, naturally, stellar. And good job dealing with the undead with a bit less hassle this time!

Saph
2010-03-22, 06:20 PM
Told you to take Disintegrate :smalltongue: But yeah, I'm just wondering why the Archivist chose to provoke AoO before casting Death Ward; surely casting it defensively before moving would've put him in a bit better position?

He just forgot. The DM doesn't allow takebacks.


I'll also have to admit, I was rooting for the Wizard for a moment there; he was doing such a beautiful job negating your action advantage and using quite efficient text book offense.

It was like poetry in motion. Though your team's performance was quite inspiring too, but somewhat more...crude? Your personal performance was, naturally, stellar. And good job dealing with the undead with a bit less hassle this time!

Yeah, the DM played the enemy caster very neatly. Scalding mud is a nasty spell when used indoors - first you get 8d6 damage from the cave-in effect, then you get from 5d6 to 10d6 fire damage every turn if you can't get out of the stuff, and finally you get extra fire damage even if you do. I think both the Ranger and the Archivist were one unlucky damage roll away from death - would have been fairly anticlimactic for the Archivist to have died in his first encounter!

And yes, I'm definitely picking up Disintegrate. :smalltongue:

Eldariel
2010-03-22, 06:25 PM
He just forgot. The DM doesn't allow takebacks.

Ah, hm. That's an excellent means of generating dead people, especially combined with some kind of a limitation on time you may use to take a turn. Good job not having any bodies this session, btw. At least I think salt statues don't count as bodies :smallconfused:

Deth Muncher
2010-03-22, 06:30 PM
At least I think salt statues don't count as bodies :smallconfused:

No, but it DOES let you trade for gold.

Kaulesh
2010-03-22, 07:54 PM
Druid: “If your Armour Class wasn’t so high I’d slap you.”

Someone's probably mentioned it before, but I just now found this and am reading through the thread. This is possibly the best line ever.

Awesome story. I'll be following this.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-03-22, 10:39 PM
AWESOME

That is the only word I have to describe this campaing journal.

I will definetly follow this up.

Erts
2010-03-23, 06:05 AM
Wow. This is great. Tons of fun to read, can't wait till another post!

Saph
2010-03-23, 12:31 PM
Glad you like it. :smallsmile:

We're going back to playing on Saturdays from this week on, so the next writeup should be up on Sunday.

Math_Mage
2010-03-23, 01:26 PM
[insert generic but sincere compliment about the quality of the campaign journal here]

:smallbiggrin:

Myshlaevsky
2010-03-23, 05:12 PM
This was a really enjoyable read. I'm looking forward to the next update.

Mushroom Ninja
2010-03-23, 07:22 PM
The man was on the young side, with very expensive clothes and a sword cane, and kept saying things like “Rather”, “Good show”, and “Top hole!”. (The player had modelled his accent on Bertie Wooster from P.G. Wodehouse - aka ‘upper class twit’.)


That's awesome. P.G. Wodehouse is one of my favorites!

Schylerwalker
2010-03-24, 02:30 PM
Epic mage duel is epic. :smallbiggrin: Looking forward to the next update!

JadedDM
2010-03-24, 08:42 PM
You know, it occurs to me that if these portals keep cropping up in incredibly dangerous locales, full of monsters, traps, and energy-draining undead...it almost seems completely unnecessary for you guys to go and seal them up, doesn't it?

Mushroom Ninja
2010-03-24, 08:44 PM
You know, it occurs to me that if these portals keep cropping up in incredibly dangerous locales, full of monsters, traps, and energy-draining undead...it almost seems completely unnecessary for you guys to go and seal them up, doesn't it?

I dunno, if I were a government, I wouldn't want unwatched portals existing anywhere, even if it's a hard to get to place.

Saph
2010-03-25, 06:14 AM
The portal bombs we get given for these missions are actually only temporary seals. What they're designed to do is keep the portal inaccessible until someone with the access code reaches it. Then the government sends out a research team, investigates where the portal leads, and either seals it permanently if it's to somewhere dangerous (like the Negative Energy plane) or keeps it if it could be profitable for interplanar trade.

So far four have opened within the past month. Normally only a few appear per year, so there's obviously something strange going on.

Saph
2010-03-28, 02:21 PM
Episode 10: The Index and the Library


The Assassin was away today. In his place was a newbie who got handed the group’s resident NPC, the Dragon Shaman (who everyone has decided to call “Dave”). At the end of last session we’d just finished up our mission to seal the portal in the desert. We returned back to the capital city to be told that while we’d been busy with the last portal, two more had opened up.


Mission Briefing

The Duke explained that trying to close the portals one at a time obviously wasn’t working. They’d been able to detect some sort of ‘echo’ from the opening portals, enough to suggest that the cause of the portals was somewhere on our world. They couldn’t figure out where this echo was originating from - but they did have a plan as to how we could find out.

The capital city we’re based in, Garrin’s Claim, is built over the ruins of a much older city. Most of those ruins had been preserved, and somewhere in those ruins was a library. The library had some sort of index device that, according to the duke’s divinations, was capable of telling us what we needed to know about the opening portals. We even had a partial map of the catacombs from the last expedition down there.

The bad news was that the reason we only had a partial map was that the last expedition to make the trip down into the catacombs had been wiped out except for a single survivor who came back insane. So, you know. What you expect as an adventurer, really.

We spent a day doing preliminary divinations, choosing a spell list, and casting long-term-buff spells, then descended into the catacombs. The priest in charge of the entrance opened the door to let us pass, then stood watch behind us.


Never Cut A Deal With A Devil

The catacombs beneath the city were walled with adamantite, rusting but still strong. Locked doors barred our way - some were locked with a higher-level version of arcane lock that required a special key, while others were simply bolted from the other side. A knock spell opened one of the bolted doors and we progressed onwards.

The door led into a mazelike area of the catacombs that looked like it had once been a prison. Sections of the corridors were sealed off with adamantine bars, meaning that we had to wind our way through rather than going straight. Inside the first room was a bone devil (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/devil.htm#boneDevilOsyluth).

Archivist: “What ho!”
Bone Devil: *stares* “Who are you?”
Archivist: “I’m Rufus Bingley Whittington. Delighted to meet you.”
Bone Devil: “Bug off.”
Archivist: “Yes, well, we will, but we rather need to look for a library.”
Bone Devil: “It’s not here.”
Archivist: “Would you mind telling us what is here, then?”
Bone Devil: “Yes, I would. Go away.”
Archivist: “Well, we’d be quite happy to, but we just need to confirm that this area isn’t what we’re looking for. Would you mind drawing us a map?”
Bone Devil: “ . . . Fine.” *takes a piece of paper, sketches out a map.* “Now leave.”
Archivist: “Excellent! What ho!” *leaves.*

Needless to say, the bone devil lied. The map wasn’t accurate - the ranger and druid did some investigating between them and found this out, and also discovered that the area was filled with devils. While we were doing this, the devils conferred and started stalking us. The bone devil went invisible, started teleporting, and used a wall of ice to block off the corridor to one side, another wall of ice to block off the party’s route back, and a final wall of ice to cut me off from the rest of the party. At this point we rolled into initiative.

The bone devil decloaked next to me and attacked. His attacks bounced off my AC and I hit him with a belker claws. Unfortunately, the DM’s ruling that untyped spell damage counts as physical damage and so is subject to DR, meaning that the spell only scratched him instead of nearly killing him. He tried grappling me, I teleported out of the grapple and cast freedom of movement, and at this point the bone devil figured out he was outmatched and teleported away.

From that point on we just had to fight our way through room by room, smashing the walls of ice and getting harassed by teleporting devils. The bone devil was the biggest nuisance, flying invisibly overhead and casting a new wall of ice every turn (I REALLY need to remember to pick up See Invisibility for next time). The other devils were a lot easier to deal with. Three hellcasts teleported in, but we heard them, revealed them with a glitterdust, and cut them to pieces. Two kytons staged a surprise attack on the Archivist and got similarly slaughtered by the Ranger. The final opponent was an erinyes who managed to do some damage with her arrows before I caught up with her and shredded her with steeldance. The Archivist had been using his Dark Knowledge ability, and we were all getting massive damage bonuses against the things. Once everything went quiet we healed up and moved on.


Interplanar Kidnap

Beyond the prison area was a single massive room. It contained a bunch of large fiendish monstrous spiders, and a huge spider demon - a bebilith. (Picture below.)

http://www.dungeons-and-dragons.de/drachengriff/bebilith.jpg
After one look at the bebilith, the archivist decided he didn’t want to fight the thing without some sort of meat-shield, so told the rest of the party to wait a second and ran back around the corner. Thirty seconds later, he reappeared leading a Medium-sized creature disguised - very badly - as an animal.

Me: “What’s that?”
Archivist: “It’s a bear!”
Everyone: “ . . . “
Archivist: “Well, I just went around the corner, and, well, I found a bear wandering around, and it wants to help us.
Everyone: " . . . "
Archivist: "So, good show and all that, hmm? Let's go in.”
Ranger: “ . . . What.”
DM: “Yeah, you know what? That bluff is so bad you don’t even need a Sense Motive check.”
Me: “It’s not very big for a bear.”
Archivist: “He’s undernourished.”
Me: “And it’s standing on two legs.”
Archivist: “Yes, I’ve been teaching him that trick.”
Me: “And it's carrying a longbow.”
Archivist: “He’s very clever.”
Me: “And it’s got red glowing eyes.”
Archivist: “He’s an albino.”
Ranger: “It’s a walking skeleton!”
Archivist: “That’s just colouration.”
Me: “You went back and cast Animate Dead on the Erinyes corpse, didn’t you?”
Archivist: “ . . . Maybe?”
Me: “Oh, forget it. Just send it in to get destroyed.”

We entered and the battle started.

Round 1: Bebilith disappears. Fiendish monstrous spiders move up and ready to attack. I fly in and use wings of flurry, the ranger, dragon shaman, and druid open fire with ranged attacks, and three out of the four spiders die.

Round 2: The bebilith blinks back in right above the ranger and the erinyes skeleton and 2 tons of demonic spider drop on top of them. The ranger dodges with Evasion but the skeleton’s smashed into hundreds of tiny pieces. The druid kills the last spider and wildshapes into a dire lion, the artificer uses Dark Knowledge, and the dragon shaman and I open up on the bebilith. With the Dark Knowledge boost, we do light damage. The ranger 5-foot steps out of the bebilith’s square and defends.

Round 3: The bebilith full attacks the druid, dealing 40ish points of damage, but due to his poison immunity he’s not seriously hurt. I flank the bebilith, the druid full attacks it, the dragon shaman full attacks it, the ranger starts her turn next to it and tries to withdraw to firing position. The bebilith uses its 10-foot reach, makes an AoO, and grapples her.

Round 4: The bebilith uses a spell-like ability and the Ranger has to make a Will save. She rolls a natural 2. The Bebilith Plane Shifts to the Demonweb Pits, taking the Ranger with it. Battle over.


Proposed Solutions

We sat around for a moment trying to figure out what to do next.

Dragon Shaman: “Well, I guess this means we get her share of the loot.”
Me (to the Archivist): “Have you got a spell that can trace a plane shift?”
Archivist: “Unfortunately not.”
Druid: “There’s a way to trace a teleport, but I don’t think there’s any way to follow her across planes.”
Me: “Crap.”
Dragon Shaman: “What's the problem? More money for us, and it’s not like we needed her around anyway.”
Me (walks over and puts an arm around the Dragon Shaman’s shoulders: “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. What did you just say?”
Dragon Shaman: “ . . . “
Me: “That’s what I thought.”
Archivist: “Gentlemen, gentlemen! I’m sure we can work something out.”

In the end we came up with the idea of using some combination of Scrying, Reincarnate, Plane Shift, and/or Planar Binding to get the Ranger back. The only issue was that the Archivist wasn’t yet high enough level to cast Plane Shift. He was, however, only a few thousand XP off, so we decided to go and beat up some creatures so that he would level. The chamber with the spiders contained the long-dead body of the prison warden, and on the body was a runic key. We headed back to find that the runic key did indeed open the arcane locked doors from earlier, and we progressed onwards.

The next creatures we ran into were a trio of stonesingers. They’re such utterly bizarre-looking aberrations that I won’t even try to describe what they look like. Instead, here’s a picture:

http://tu.snappark.com/b5061a9efe7e

Link if image doesn't work. (http://www.snappark.com/image/223921/info/theme/26816/)
The archivist tried using a scroll of tongues and talking to the stonesingers, while the druid tried killing them. The two approaches didn’t mix well. After a brief scuffle, a temporary truce was declared and the stonesingers proved willing to talk. They explained that they were waiting here to get through the next door and kill the creature inside, but said creature was extremely powerful and had warded the door with a magical trap. The archivist told them that we’d sort out the problem, and the stonesingers backed off to let us pass.

The magical trap on the door turned out to be a symbol of death. With the combination of his huge Disable Device skill and a death ward, the Archivist got through it in a few rounds. I opened the door with knock and we entered. By now we’d pretty much completely forgotten about our mission to discover the library, so naturally, by pure fluke, this was the point at which we found it.


The Library

The library was huge and cavernous. There were dozens of shelves with ancient books, and at the centre was a desk. A man in a plain brown robe was sitting there, writing. As we entered he looked up at us.

Librarian: “Who are you?”
Me: “We’re looking to borrow a book. Could we apply for a library card?”
DM: “ . . . I don’t know whether that should be Bluff or Diplomacy. Pick one and roll it.”
Librarian: “Which side do you serve in the war?”
Me: “Uh . . . you know, it’s been quite a long time. Which two sides are you thinking of?”
Librarian: “Answer the question. Who do you serve?”
Archivist (pushing forward): “They serve me, of course. Lord Rufus Bingley Whittington. Delighted to meet you!”
*everyone else facepalms*

The librarian didn’t react entirely positively to the archivist, but was at least willing to talk, and I asked if he could help us find out what he needed to know. Once I got to the part about portals opening he got a thoughtful look on his face and started flipping through index cards. The archivist started wandering up and down the aisles while I took the opportunity to covertly study the librarian with detect magic (I’d learned my lesson from what had happened in the first session of the campaign and had cast the spell before entering). The librarian had four auras on him, illusion and necromancy, which made me very cautious. At this point the librarian looked up.

Librarian: “You said you’ve identified two portals so far, is that correct?”
Me: “Yes.”
Librarian: “Where did they lead?”
Me: “The Plane of Shadow and the Negative Energy Plane.”
Librarian: “Hm. I think you have something of a problem.”
Me: “What do you mean?”
Librarian: “Suffice it to say that you might want to leave your world while you still can. You should consider changing sides.” *Suggestion effect.*
Me: *successful Will save.* “Don’t. Do that. Again.”
Librarian: “Well, that’s a pity.”
Me: “Could we talk about this?”
Librarian: “No.” *roll initiative*

I won initiative and opened up on the librarian with the most powerful attack I had, using Arcane Fusion for Wings of Flurry and Lesser Orb of Acid.

DM: “The Wings of Flurry fails to beat his spell resistance and he’s immune to acid. The attack activates his contingency and a Symbol of Death activates on his robe. Everyone start making Fortitude saves at the beginning of your turn.”
Me: :smalleek:

The library turned into a battlefield as everyone opened up on the librarian with everything they had, the Dragon Shaman using his lightning breath, the Druid turning into a Dire Lion and hitting with a full pounce attack, and the Archivist throwing an attack spell. It all bounced off with zero effect. The librarian responded with a Quickened Scorching Ray and a regular Scorching Ray, both targeted at the Archivist, dealing 24d6 fire damage and killing the Archivist instantly.

On my turn I flew over to the Archivist and used a scroll of Last Breath (just barely making the UMD check), reincarnating him as a halfling on -1 HP, and the Druid cast Rejuvenation Coccoon. The Archivist was protected in a shell of force and healed up next round.

The rest of us weren’t protected, though, and the librarian kept beating on us with its vast collection of spell-like abilities and the constant presence of the symbol of death. The Dragon Shaman was almost immune to the symbol due to his massive Fort save and the druid cast a Death Ward, but I had to keep spamming Wings of Cover to block the LoE. By this point I’d been casting spells all day and my reserves were getting low.

Things were going badly until the Archivist popped out of the rejuvenation coccoon and hit the librarian with a targeted dispel magic. With insanely lucky rolls (two natural 20s on his dispel checks) he managed to knock out both the librarian’s symbol of death and his desecrate. Almost as importantly, from the abilities the thing was using he managed to correctly identify it as an ultroloth, a Neutral Evil outsider. It had SR 25, energy resistances to everything, and - most awkwardly - DR 15/good, making the Dragon Shaman and Druid’s attacks almost useless. If we’d had the Archivist’s Dark Knowledge we could have done enough damage to break the DR, but he’d used up all his uses on the earlier fights. The Ranger had a bunch of blessed silver arrows and could have beaten the DR as well . . . but she was gone too. As it was, all we could do was have the Dragon Shaman uses an oil of bless weapon on his weapon; the ultroloth responded with a ray of enfeeblement, hitting the Dragon Shaman with -11 to his Strength score and reducing his weapon damage to papercut level. The rest of us just kept chipping away at the thing, the druid trying to grapple it to slow it down, while I alternated between scrolls of true casting and force attacks.

The druid had picked up a new animal companion for the adventure, some kind of elemental hawk, and kept telling it to attack the ultroloth in the hope that the ultroloth would spend his actions attacking it back. It didn’t. Instead the ultroloth hit me and the druid with fear. We passed our saves but still were frightened for a round.

Me: “I’m afraid of losing my individuality!” *flees into corner*
Druid: “I’m afraid of fear itself!” *flees into same corner*.
Me: “We do the Shaggy and Scooby-Doo thing and the dire lion jumps into my arms.”
DM: “It’s a dire lion. It weighs 3 tons.”
Me: “Rule of funny?”
Druid: “My hawk attacks the thing. ‘Don’t worry, Uncle Scoob! I’ll protect you! Lemme at ‘em! Lemme at ‘em!’ “
*rolls a natural 20* *confirms*
Druid: “Yes! I don’t believe it, a critical!”
DM: “So after subtracting DR, how much does that do?”
Druid: “ . . . zero.”
DM: “The ultroloth is not going to waste an action on killing your animal companion even if the companion DOES sound like Scrappy-Doo.”

The ultroloth kept attacking with scorching ray, mass suggestion, enervation, and a few others besides, but even with its resistances, the four-on-one action advantage meant we were dealing more damage to it than it was dealing to us. The archivist had a few ineffectual tries with phantasmal killer and dismissal, got another scorching ray to the face for his trouble, and ran outside the door to try to get help from the stonesingers.

Archivist (still using tongues): “I say! We’re fighting the creature inside and need a bit of a hand. Could you help us out?”
DM: “They sing a message back to the effect of ‘sucks to be you’.”
Archivist: “Er . . . does that mean they won’t help us?”
Me: “It means that now we’re both weakened, they’re going to kill him AND us.”

(Looking back on it, we tried talking to three of the encounters we faced in this session and got nothing but trouble for all three of them. If the DM’s trying to break us of the habit of talking to enemies instead of fighting them, it’s working.)

But next round, I used a true-casting-boosted arcane fusion for wings of flurry and magic missile and finally, after taking a total of nearly two hundred points of damage, the ultroloth died. We slammed the doors and we were alone in the library.


Final Battle

It still wasn’t over. The stonesingers outside opened up on the doors with their sonic attacks. Each could do 12d6 sonic damage, but it still took them a little time to blast through the adamantite, and we set up for a final defence. The Druid, the Archivist, and I were almost completely out of spell slots, but I still had my spell-like abilities and the Druid had one last spell he’d been saving. As the stonesingers smashed the door the druid fired off a flaywind burst, I summoned up an air elemental and hit them all with a confusion, and the archivist cast silence from a scroll right into the middle of them, negating their sonic attacks. Confused and unable to fight back effectively, the stonesingers were slaughtered.

And that was where we ended it for the evening. By the way, if this sounds like a long session, it was. We started at 2 in the afternoon and finished at almost 11:00. There wasn’t time to do treasure or XP, so we packed up and had to hurry home before the trains stopped for the night. We managed to find the Index in the library, a sort of gold-coloured control module, so our mission’s a success, techically. As for what we’re going to do about the ranger, we’re not yet sure. OOC information is that the ranger’s had it, but IC, our characters have been adventuring together since the start of the campaign and want to at least try our best to get her back. In case that doesn’t work, we were talking about new characters, but the player doesn’t really want to try a different character class and would probably just make another ranger.

The Dragon Shaman’s player wants to join the group and was also talking about making a new character. At the moment the role we’re most lacking is beat-stick, so he’s thinking of some kind of martial class.

They’ll both have plenty of time to think about it, because with the Easter break coming up, our DM’s going LARPing for a weekend, so there’ll be no game next week. Next session will be on the 10th of April, so you guys will have to wait a fortnight for another writeup. The story continues then. :P

evil-frosty
2010-03-28, 03:08 PM
Awesome session Saph. Quick think your pictures dont show up, at least for me they didnt.

Saph
2010-03-28, 03:14 PM
Fixed the first picture. Second one seems a bit unreliable for some reason. I really didn't feel like trying to describe what those things looked like. :)

Dusk Eclipse
2010-03-28, 03:16 PM
Fixed the first picture. Second one seems a bit unreliable for some reason. I really didn't feel like trying to describe what those things looked like. :)

Are they by any chance the scorpion like aberrations which have an leech like apendice instead of stinger and mandibles instead of claws?

Saph
2010-03-28, 03:18 PM
Are they by any chance the scorpion like aberrations which have an leech like apendice instead of stinger and mandibles instead of claws?

Yeah, the leech-like thing is similar to a lamprey's mouth. They also have a set of tentacles where their heads should be with pointy bits on the end. I put a link in underneath the picture.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-03-28, 03:25 PM
Those things are creepy as baator.

Eitherway as always I really enjoyed the journal.

Raiki
2010-03-28, 06:00 PM
Very, very nice. I actually just introduced my group to the myriad offensive uses of plane shift a few sessions ago. Imagine their suprise when, near the end of the climactic battle against the dragon, he used prismatic spray, and the meat-shield failed versus the...blue? I think it was the blue ray, y'know, the plane shift one? Anyway, he had alot of fun in Dolurrh (Eberron game) the next session.

As always, beautiful write-up. And your tactical genius still astounds me.

~R~

Eldariel
2010-03-28, 07:52 PM
You out of all people caught without a See Invisibility-scroll? For shame! :smallwink: Also, that Ultraloth sounds like a pretty epic fight. Let's hope your next session doesn't start with the Bebilith jumping back with reinforcements.

By the way, I hope you found some scrolls in the library, and have some way to Teleport out? Sounds like you might need it. That was quite an entertaining read; keep it up! I'll be sheering from the sidelines :smallbiggrin:

Erts
2010-03-28, 08:52 PM
I agree with Dusk Eclipse, those things are very creepy.

Very nice entry Saph, interesting and informative!

Yahzi
2010-03-29, 12:47 AM
Me: “Wouldn’t a better question be: ‘why wouldn’t you learn a spell that attacks enemies with flying unicorns?’ ”
Made me lol. :smallbiggrin:

Saph
2010-03-29, 04:48 AM
Yeah, I could have sworn I'd brought a See Invisibility scroll, but when I checked my character sheet it turned out I didn't. I'll get one next session. :)

I've still got a single 5th-level spell slot left, so getting out shouldn't be too much of a problem. Mostly we're trying to figure out what to do about the Ranger.

Cisturn
2010-03-29, 07:47 AM
Saph, i just read your RHoD log and i gotta say you are an amazing story teller, after being able to read a whole campaign at once i don't know if i'm going to be able to wait for the updates week by week

Saph
2010-03-29, 02:51 PM
Glad you like it. :smallsmile: I'm actually a semi-professional writer in real life. I'm not working on any books right now with my exams coming up, so I have a fair bit of time to spend on things like this.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-03-29, 02:56 PM
Glad you like it. :smallsmile: I'm actually a semi-professional writer in real life. I'm not working on any books right now with my exams coming up, so I have a fair bit of time to spend on things like this.


Well that explains your writing abilities, I really enjoy your writing style. have you already published something?

Saph
2010-03-29, 04:26 PM
A couple of novels so far. Just sent another manuscript to a publisher who expressed a previous interest, so here's hoping. In the meantime I've got exams and a research essay to do.

Raiki
2010-03-29, 07:32 PM
Holy rusted metal batman! To think, our Saph, a published author. Would you be willing to post or PM me the titles? I'd be quite interested in looking them up.

~R~

Myshlaevsky
2010-03-29, 07:43 PM
Holy rusted metal batman! To think, our Saph, a published author. Would you be willing to post or PM me the titles? I'd be quite interested in looking them up.

~R~

I would also appreciate being able to check them out, so this goes for me too.

Olo Demonsbane
2010-03-29, 08:25 PM
Great sessions! Your tactical genius manages to newly amaze me every time.

And I would also like to request book titles, if that's all right with you.

Raiki
2010-03-29, 08:46 PM
Haha! Looks like I've started a trend...or maybe a fan club? That's it, I call it!

Raiki: Founding member of the Saph Fan Club!

~R~

IthilanorStPete
2010-03-29, 08:50 PM
4thing or 5thing the request for book titles? Because this is utterly awesome.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-03-29, 11:34 PM
I sixth (or seventh) the petitoin for titles..

also Dusk Eclipse: second member of Saph's fanclub:smallsmile:

Saph
2010-03-30, 07:48 AM
Heh, okay. The first book was published as "To Be A Ninja" then reprinted as "Ninja: The Beginning." The sequel is "Ninja: The Battle". Funnily enough, both books are about ninjas. :smalltongue:

Both came out a good few years back and aren't currently in print, but you should be able to find copies on the Net if you're interested. Do a search along with my surname, Jacka, and they'll come up at the top of the search results.

Deth Muncher
2010-03-30, 07:51 AM
Heh, okay. The first book was published as "To Be A Ninja" then reprinted as "Ninja: The Beginning." The sequel is "Ninja: The Battle". Funnily enough, both books are about ninjas. :smalltongue:

Both came out a good few years back and aren't currently in print, but you should be able to find copies on the Net if you're interested. Do a search along with my surname, Jacka, and they'll come up at the top of the search results.

Gott in Himmel!

That's pretty neat.

Eldariel
2010-03-30, 10:29 PM
You know what just occurred to me (in addition to "Amazon has Saph's books for cheap!")? You need to learn Silence somehow! I mean, imagine how many times it'll get you out of trouble to shut the Archivist up when he gets too vocal :smalltongue: Oh, and it has some combat uses too. Too bad about that divine type of the spell and all...

Dusk Eclipse
2010-03-30, 10:51 PM
You know what just occurred to me (in addition to "Amazon has Saph's books for cheap!")? You need to learn Silence somehow! I mean, imagine how many times it'll get you out of trouble to shut the Archivist up when he gets too vocal :smalltongue: Oh, and it has some combat uses too. Too bad about that divine type of the spell and all...

I have to agree with eldariel on both accounts, and as for getting silence. How about a wand? it is a bard spell.

Olo Demonsbane
2010-03-30, 11:28 PM
An eternal wand would be easy, you probably won't want it more than twice a day.

Saph
2010-03-31, 07:30 AM
Actually, the Archivist's Bertie-Wooster style conversation has been pretty handy so far. Every enemy he talks to assumes that the party must all be complete morons and end up giving away more than they intended to. I've got a couple of scrolls of Silence, though, just in case. :)

Last Laugh
2010-03-31, 03:58 PM
Next session will be on the 10th of April, so you guys will have to wait a fortnight for another writeup. The story continues then. :P

YAY! Best birthday present ever! Ty Saph!


I hate waiting

Deth Muncher
2010-04-10, 01:58 PM
Hey. Saph's gaming today. That means we get an update!

Saph
2010-04-10, 03:28 PM
Yep, just finished the session. :) Now I just need to find the time to write it up!

Cute_Riolu
2010-04-10, 03:56 PM
Awesome! Can't wait to hear of it. :D

Cisturn
2010-04-10, 04:22 PM
i'm looking forward to it too. and because of this thread my cleric now carries a scroll of reincarnate (couldn't find last breath) with him at all times. So far our male hill-giant fighter had been reborn a female gnome, epically funny.

Raiki
2010-04-11, 09:07 PM
So. While the fan club is (im)patiently waiting...who brought the popcorn?

And actually, that last post brings up a good point. Where is Last Breath out of? I really don't feel like searching through the umpteen million books.

~R~

Eldariel
2010-04-11, 09:10 PM
So. While the fan club is (im)patiently waiting...who brought the popcorn?

And actually, that last post brings up a good point. Where is Last Breath out of? I really don't feel like searching through the umpteen million books.

~R~

Spell Compendium, like just about every other spell ever :smallbiggrin:

Raiki
2010-04-11, 09:17 PM
Spell Compendium, like just about every other spell ever :smallbiggrin:

*Shrug* Yeah, I probably could have found that, but I'm AFB and I was curious. Anyway, thanks.

~R~

Saph
2010-04-14, 06:55 AM
Episode 11: Rescue Mission to the Demonweb Pits


Last session ended up with our party victorious in the Library, in possession of the Archive, with the ranger kidnapped in the Abyss and the archivist reincarnated as a halfling.

This week’s session was spent on cleaning up the problems of the last. :P

The writeup’s been delayed somewhat because I’ve been writing something called an IRE (Independent Research Essay) for college - four thousand words long, and I had to research a whole new area to do it. Pain in the neck, to be honest. Anyway, now it’s finished, so I get to have a little bit of fun before I have to start revising for exams. :)

This week’s party was my Sorcerer, the Assassin, the Archivist, the Druid, and the kidnapped Ranger. The Arcane Hierophant also showed up again.


Loot & XPs

The first thing to sort out was items and XP. We found a bunch of useful stuff, including wands of false life and invisibility for the Assassin, a wand of delay poison for the divine casters, and a suit of plate armour with the invulnerability enchantment (which the Assassin managed to flog off for a good price). We also got about 1,000 gp each in scrolls.

The Archivist’s main priority was to figure out a way of turning back from a halfling, so I decided to give the Archive a try to see whether it’d tell us anything useful. The thing was shaped like a gold rod, with various gems. Poking one of them eventually got me to a search function. I tried searching for ‘reincarnate’ and ‘halfling’ to see what would happen. An illusionary image of a man in wizard’s robes appeared and started narrating.

Image: “Daily journal entry. Today during training exercises in laboratory A, an experiment got out of hand and several students were unfortunately liquified. We were able to recover enough of their bodies for revivification magic, but two of them were reincarnated as halflings. Needless to say, hilarity ensued.”
Archivist. “I press fast forward.”
Image: *fzztzwip* “-using oil and whipped cream, we found that it was possible to-”
Archivist: “I press fast forward again.”
Image: *fttwzwizwip* “-of all seventeen schoolgirls. Recording ends.”
Me: “Well, it definitely works.”

I used dimension door to shift us back to the bottom of the stairs, and we exited the catacombs the way we’d come in. We dropped off the Archive with the Duke, were told that he’d get in touch with us when he needed us, and headed back to start planning our rescue mission.


Rescue Plans

By this point a few hours had passed since the bebilith had plane shifted the Ranger away to the Abyss. I used a commune spell and got the following answers:

Q. Is [character’s name] alive?
A. Yes.
Q. Is she in the Demonweb Pits?
A. Unclear.
Q. Is she in the Abyss?
A. Yes.
Q. Is she currently a prisoner?
A. No.

Which, while it wasn’t great news, could have been a lot worse.

The next issue was getting the team together. The Archivist had gained enough XP from the Ultroloth battle to level up to Factotum1/Archivist9 and had picked Plane Shift as one of his 5th-level spells. The Assassin and Arcane Hierophant had some shopping to do, but were basically ready. The issue was the Druid, who had a long list of things he wanted to do, including travelling around the world to get a new animal companion.

Me: “So, ready to go?”
Druid: “Ready to go where?”
Me: “To the Abyss. We need to rescue Mary.”
Druid: “Wait, you’re not actually serious about that? I thought you were just kidding.”
Me: “Nope.”
Druid: “Alright, alright. I’ll just be a few days.”
Me: “We don’t have a few days.”
Druid: “She’ll be okay for that long, won’t she?”
Me: “Well, let me think. She’s in the Abyss, the pure embodiment of Chaotic Evil and one of the most hostile places to life in the entire multiverse. I don’ t know, how okay do you think she is?”
Druid: “Well, she’s probably dead already, then.”
Me: “She’s alive.”
Druid: “How do you know?”
Me: “Because I just used commune and asked.”
Druid: “Well, I probably wasn’t around for that.”
Me: “We’ve only just finished collecting our payment for the last mission.”
Druid: “But I’d be gone by now.”
DM: “No, you were around.”
Druid: *sigh* “Oh, fine. I’ll help out.”

We rested overnight so that the Archivist could level, and, with the Druid’s reluctant co-operation, put our plan into action.

The first step was a scrying spell, cast by the Druid. Using the Ranger’s animal companion, he was able to zero in on her and reveal her, in the Abyss, hiding in some kind of white webwork. The Archivist was able to identify her location as the Demonweb, part of Lolth’s domain. The good news was that the Demonweb isn’t quite as bad as the Demonweb Pits. The bad news was that while you can plane shift or teleport in to the Demonweb, you can’t plane shift or teleport out without Lolth’s express permission. I used a message spell to communicate with the Ranger and we were able to work out a plan. The Archivist also knew that the Demonweb was dotted with portals, so the plan was:

1. Archivist transports party in with plane shift.
2. Locate Ranger with circle dance.
3. Travel to her location and meet up with her.
4. Find a portal and leave.

We took an extra day to get the necessary materials (also giving the Druid time to get his animal companion), and the next morning, put our plan into action. Just before we left, the Druid took the opportunity before we started to point out that we were probably all going to die.


Into the Abyss

The Demonweb is a vast network of stone floors, linked together with curved tube-like tunnels of sticky webbing. The stone and webbing shift and warp to form the twisted bodies and faces of condemmed souls. Here and there were solid metal doors leading off apparently into nowhere - portals. The Plane Shift worked without a hitch and we landed right in the target area. The Archivist had worked out a way to make the jump more accurate by using the ranger’s animal companion as an additional focus, and we were less than a mile off from her location. Circle Dance revealed the direction we needed to take.

Almost as soon as we landed we were attacked by swarms of spiders and a bebilith. The bebilith spat webby goo over me and the Hierophant and ripped holes in the Assassin with a full attack, but it was outgunned and with the entire party hammering it and the Archivist’s Dark Knowledge boosting the attacks, it went down fast. I finished the thing off by stabbing it through the eye with my bless-weaponed longsword, then struck a dramatic pose on the creature’s body.

Druid: “Will you quit doing that?”
Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.”
Assassin: “Hey, glow-rod! Get down here and heal me, then let’s get out of here before more show up.”

And in the next chamber, we found the Ranger, hidden in the webs. (She'd managed to give the bebilith the slip and since then had been using her Hide and Move Silently skills to stay out of sight of the demons, but the difficulty checks had been getting steadily harder as time passed.) There was a brief but happy reunion.

Ranger: “Thanks for coming to get me. Really.”
Archivist: “No need to mention it, dear girl. Now I think we should make our exit quickly, what?”
Me: “Agreed. We backtrack to the last portal.”
Druid: “Do you know where this leads?”
Archivist: “Not a clue, sorry.”
Me: “But any other plane we get to, we can use plane shift from there. We only need to get out of the Demonweb.”
Archivist: “All right! I open the portal.”
DM: “It doesn’t open.”
Archivist: “Hmm? How do I activate it?”
DM: “You need the permission of Lolth or one of her yochlols.”
Archivist: “ . . . ”
Me: “ . . . ”
Druid: “ . . . ”
Assassin: “We’re all going to die.”
Druid: “You don’t think this was something you could have remembered BEFORE WE CAME HERE?”
Archivist: “Well, I didn’t know! I can’t be expected to know everything!”
DM: “And you can hear the sound of scuttling from several directions. Everyone roll initiative.”

To be continued. :smalltongue:

Rising Phoenix
2010-04-14, 08:17 AM
Thank you kindly for the awesome write ups. Makes me wish I had time to write up my own... :(

DabblerWizard
2010-04-14, 09:29 AM
Saph - Your story, and your depiction of it, are very entertaining. Thanks for doing all of this write up work! :smallsmile:

Eldariel
2010-04-14, 09:46 AM
Excellent exploits. A party is stuck in Demonweb with no hope of survival: perfect. :smallbiggrin: Of course, it'll be even better once you do survive.

Mushroom Ninja
2010-04-14, 09:47 AM
Dear me, your DM does seem to be quite the cutthroat...

Math_Mage
2010-04-14, 07:57 PM
Dear me, your DM does seem to be quite the cutthroat...

Not as cutthroat as Saph was. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94243) :smallbiggrin:

Starbuck_II
2010-04-14, 08:12 PM
So is the plan to harass the creations of Lloth till you annoy her enough to free you?

Mushroom Ninja
2010-04-14, 08:14 PM
Not as cutthroat as Saph was. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94243) :smallbiggrin:

True enough, true enough.

Raiki
2010-04-14, 09:05 PM
Wait! But! What?! That's...!


That wasn't nearly enough to alleviate my 'Saph's Campaign Journal addiction' syndromes. I didn't even get halfway through my popcorn!

*Sigh* Well, I guess it's better than nothing. :smallwink:

/whining

Anyway, seems like it's going to be quite interesting from here. Can't wait to hear about it, and thanks for the awesome stories. :smallbiggrin:

~R~

Saph
2010-04-15, 08:08 AM
Episode 11(2): Rescue Mission to the Demonweb Pits, Continued


Bad to Worse

The party stood around trying to figure out what to do next. While we did, the enemies closed in.

This time the opposition was more serious: spider swarms, four driders, another bebilith, and a yochlol. The druid faced off against the driders while the rest of us tried to break through the demons at the rear.

A note here about the druid’s player - he’s kind of competitive in regard to character power. Apparently in between the last session and this session he’d looked up the spells my character was using, realised that my character was really hard to kill, and decided that he wanted to make his character more powerful to compensate. So he’d found one of the druid optimisation handbooks, traded his old animal companion in for a Fleshraker and searched for a whole bunch of obscure spells. As a result, he cut through the driders without much difficulty, though he took a fair amount of damage in the process.

The demons around the back were more of a challenge. The Hierophant summoned something useless that the Bebilith killed with a single AoO. The Archivist used his Dark Knowledge, and the Ranger moved into position and hit the Bebilith with an unbelievably lucky full attack, rolling three natural 20s and hitting it with a normal hit and a x3 critical hit and a double x3 critical hit all in one round, dealing regular bow damage plus magic and strength damage plus favoured enemy damage plus extra critical damage plus fire damage plus cold damage plus the Artificer’s Dark Knowledge bonus damage, all of which went through its damage reduction due to the special arrow material. It did enough damage to kill the Bebilith in a single round. The DM described it as one arrow going through one eye, another arrow going through the other eye, then the two arrows meeting inside the thing’s head and then exploding.

Ranger (to me): “Beat that.”
Druid: “I knew we kept you around for something.”

Unfortunately, the yochlol reacted to this by targeting the Ranger with dominate person, and after throwing off the first attack she succumbed to the second. By this time the rest of us were starting to badly hurt the yochlol, so it gave the Ranger a final telepathic command and then teleported away.

DM: “You get an order to run to the nearest portal and touch it.”
Ranger: “I guess I do that, then.” *runs past the Archivist and Assassin.*
Me: “Guys! Catch her!”
Archivist: “I try to grab on to her leg.” *fail* “Arrgh. Stupid halfing body.”
Assassin: “I try to trip her.” *fail*
DM: “You reach the portal, touch it, and blink out.”
Assassin: “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Again?”
Me: “Hmm. She was able to use the portal . . . that means the yochlol must have lowered the barrier that forbids anyone else from activating it, and those things usually work on a round by round basis . . .”
Druid: “Huh?”
Me: “I fly after her at full speed and touch the same portal that she used.”
DM: “You vanish too.”

The Archivist made it to the portal next round and also tried to activate it . . . no effect. With all the enemies dead or teleported, the battle was over. The party stood around looking at each other, until the Druid showed up, covered in drider gore and looking happy.

Druid: “Well, that was fun! I guess we should keep looking for a way out . . . hmm? Where did Mary and Aiden go?”
Assassin (to the Archivist): “. . . You tell him.”


The Black Fen

The Ranger and I popped out on top of a mesa rising out of a vast swamp, in darkness . . . but natural darkness, this time. The portal was behind us in the shape of a black pillar, and needless to say it didn’t work when we touched it. (The Archivist later identified the plane as the Black Fen - a plane used by Lolth for her breeding experiments.) Looking up, we could see that it was nighttime. I fixed the Ranger’s dominate effect with protection from evil and resurgence, then we tried to decide what to do next.

Ranger: “So what do you think we should do?”
Me: “Well . . . either they’ll come looking for us or they won’t. We should probably stay by the portal for a day or so, just on the off chance that they manage to trace us through it. If they haven’t found a way through by then, we’ll start searching for a way out on our own.”
Ranger: “I guess we’ll take watch and camp out for the night, then.”
Me: “Besides, hey, starlight. It’s better than the Abyss.”
Ranger: “Just as long as you don’t try to bring out a blanket and a bottle of wine or something.”
Me: “Well, actually, one of the things I carry in my Handy Haversack-”
Ranger: “No.”


Escape

Druid: “Well, this is great. We started off with ONE party member lost on another plane and now we’ve got TWO. Can we just leave them there this time?”
Archivist: “Why?”
Druid: “Well, since they’re the only two party members with Good alignments, this is our chance to be a completely non-Good party.”
Assassin: “No, we need to find a way to get them back.”
Druid: “Eh?”
Assassin: “Hey, with them gone, I’m now the party’s moral compass.”
Druid: “ . . . “
Archivist: “ . . . “
Assassin: “What?”
Archivist: “All right, all right, I’ve got a plan. I think if we can get to an unformed portal, and use the energy in that, it might let me use a Plane Shift again.”
Druid: *sigh* “Fine, let’s give it a go.”

And that was pretty much what they did. I only caught snatches of it since, with my character and the Ranger gone, we were mostly chatting to each other and not paying very close attention (it was kind of fun not having to be responsible for anything that happened for a change). But to cut a long story short, the Archivist managed to use his Knowledge (Planes) skill to navigate to a tower studded with pulsating venom sacs: Lolth’s way of growing portals. Each was a developing planar gate. He did some kind of magical preparations, got everyone to hold hands, then punctured the portal and hoped for the best. A surge of venom flowed out over everyone . . .

. . . and it worked. The party were dumped in a sunny, green woodland. A brief check confirmed that they were back in our world on the Material Plane.

The rest was easy. The Archivist had already figured out that we were on the Black Fen, so the next day after repreparing spells the party plane shifted over, travelled to our location with transport via plants, said hi to me and the Ranger, and plane shifted back. There was a minor hiccup on the return journey when the Archivist’s plane shift managed to land us 350 miles off target . . . vertically, straight upwards, giving us a nice view of the world from low earth orbit. Fortunately, being dropped from the upper atmosphere isn’t actually all that deadly to a 10th-11th level party, and with a combination of flight and teleportation magic we got down to ground level. And we were home.

There was one final issue to sort out. The Archivist had been complaining all session about being reincarnated as a halfling, and there was actually a very practical reason for it - he’s a Factotum1/Archivist9, and the favoured class for Halflings is Rogue. This meant that he was looking at a 20% XP penalty unless he could figure out a way to turn back into a human.

The easiest way we could figure out was for the Assassin to kill him, and for the Druid to cast Last Breath, getting him a new roll on the Reincarnate table. However, while the Assassin was more than happy to go along with the plan, the Druid was less keen, seeing it as not sufficiently respectful. Finally I suggested a compromise plan: the Archivist and Assassin should kung fu fight to the death, and the Druid should Last Breath whoever died.

For whatever reason, everyone thought this was a great idea.


Assassin vs Archivist

We decided to stage the event in the main square of the capital city, and advertised it as widely as possible. A couple of hundred spectators showed up, and the Ranger went around selling tickets. The Druid took up position in bird form on top of a nearby building, then dropped a cometfall spell onto the middle of the square to get the crowd’s attention. I used a scroll of amplify that I’d bought for the purpose and started doing my best imitation of a WWF announcer.

Me: “And now, the battle you’ve all been waiting for! This grudge match has been building for months, and the results will be deadly and brutal! Two will enter . . . only one will leave! First, in the blue corner! This half-orc has shed bodies as normal men shed clothes. She disappears without a trace and leaves death in her wake. I give you Oros, the Silent Shadow!”
*Assassin enters to special effects provided by glitterdust and call lightning spells*
Me: “And in the red corner! The magic of all the deities, combined into a single form! Fiends and undead alike have fallen before-”
Heckler: “ ‘E’s just an ‘alfling!”
Me: “Do not let his small size fool you! This man has-”
Heckler: “ ‘E’s an ‘alfling! ‘E’s rubbish!”
Me: “Yes, he may be a halfling, but that small shape hides devastating powers! More spells than you can imagine are at his command! I give you Rufus Bingley Whittington, the Mighty Atom!”
*Archivist enters to more special effects*
Druid: “The ‘Mighty Atom’? WTF?”
Me: “The battle will begin in one minute! Gentlemen, start your spellcasting!”

Both characters started buffing themselves up, eying each other over the circle of difficult terrain at the centre of the square. After one minute I gave the signal, the Druid sent down another lightning bolt, and the battle kicked off.

The Assassin won initiative and promptly went invisible. The Archivist chucked a wall of magma at where he thought the assassin had gone, then threw a silence spell at the area behind him. Everyone waited for the Assassin to reappear. She didn’t. We waited some more. Still nothing.

Me: “Didn’t you prepare any spells to see invisibility?”
Archivist: “I haven’t got any on my spell list.”
Me: “You’ve got access to every divine spell in the game!”
DM: “Invisibility Purge, maybe?”
Archivist: “What book’s that in?”

With no way of spotting the Assassin, the Archivist started taunting her and making Diplomacy checks to get the crowd on his side, who started booing the Assassin. The Archivist was in the middle of another Diplomacy check when the Assassin appeared behind him with a Death Attack.

The Archivist made his Fort save, and thanks to his truckload of temporary HP from some obscure Paladin spell, wasn’t seriously hurt by the Sneak Attack damage. He backed off and the Assassin used her wand of invisibility and re-vanished. The Archivist dropped another wall of magma, the Assassin reappeared and Sneak Attacked him again.

The battle continued in that vein: the Assassin would keep going invisible, while the Archivist used the extra actions to use further buffs. The Assassin cast Find the Gap, allowing her to make attacks as touch attacks, and so was hitting on pretty much every shot, but could only attack once every two rounds. The Archivist hit back with two Phantasmal Killer spells, but good save rolls kept the Assassin alive. Finally the Archivist ran out of attack spells and was stabbed to death. The Druid swept down, cast Last Breath, and rolled . . .

Me: “A 79. That’s . . .” *checks table* “ . . . I don’t believe it. Human.”
Archivist: “Woohoo!”
Druid: “Which is just as well, because there’s no freaking way I’m doing this again.”

And that, finally, was it for the session. With the XP from the battles, about half the party was level 10 and the other half level 11. We hadn’t really gained any treasure, but the money from last session’s trip made up for it.

So, the Ranger’s back, the Archivist’s a human again, and we’re all ready to start a new adventure this Saturday. I’ll write more then. :)

OMG PONIES
2010-04-15, 10:56 AM
I can't decide which group I idolize more: yours or SilverClawShift's. As the only logical conclusion, I suggest a supergroup team-up. One epic gaming group, gifting the masses with their amazing campaign journals.

Raiki
2010-04-15, 06:56 PM
I feel much shame. :smallfrown: I must confess that I harbored doubts, but Saph has returned to smite me with awesomeness for my lack of faith.

Also:


...[T]he Archivist and Assassin should kung fu fight to the death, and the Druid should Last Breath whoever died...

For whatever reason, everyone thought this was a great idea.


This. I was gasping for breath after I read this, I just couldn't stop laughing.

~R~

Olo Demonsbane
2010-04-15, 07:22 PM
I literally shouted with enjoyment on getting a SECOND update. :smallbiggrin:

Also, Ku Fu fights to the death? Awesomesauce.

Deth Muncher
2010-04-15, 07:35 PM
The fact that your DM was so helpful with the semi-formed portals being abusable to get you out of there as well as letting the epic kung-fu smackdown of glory go down is almost as epic as the story itself.

Sir Giacomo
2010-04-16, 12:17 AM
This, Saph, is awesome.
It is starting to get better than even your RHoD campaign journal. And the hilarious role reincarnation appears to play in your groups - epic stuff!

- Giacomo

Colmarr
2010-04-16, 05:18 AM
There was a minor hiccup on the return journey when the Archivist’s plane shift managed to land us 350 miles off target . . . vertically, straight upwards, giving us a nice view of the world from low earth orbit.

Exactly how common are these vertical mistargets?

If I remember correctly, something similar happened in you Red Hand of Doom campaign as well (although possibly with a sustantially lower altitude - my brain is saying 100 miles...)

Saph
2010-04-16, 05:33 AM
Exactly how common are these vertical mistargets?

If I remember correctly, something similar happened in you Red Hand of Doom campaign as well (although possibly with a sustantially lower altitude - my brain is saying 100 miles...)

Spells like teleport and plane shift have "off target" results, but don't have a table for direction, so we use the old 3.0 table. The way it works, you roll a d10, and you end up off target in the following direction:

1: North
2: North-east
3: East
4: South-east
5: South
6: South-west
7: West
8: North-west
9: Straight up
10: Straight down

We've never yet had the "straight down" result, so I don't know how the DM's going to adjudicate that - landing us in the Underdark, probably. :)

Saph
2010-04-18, 08:47 AM
Episode 12: New Journeys

The Ranger’s player was away this week, but we had a new player joining, as well as a full roster from before, giving us a party of:

• My Sorcerer
• The Rogue/Assassin
• The Druid
• The Factotum/Archivist
• The Druid/Wiz/Arcane Hierophant

. . . and the new guy, who built a single-classed Fighter. Since he’s relatively new to the system, we built him a very straighforward character with Melee Weapon Mastery to hit hard and Improved Toughness, Diehard, and Steadfast Determination to keep him alive. Used a greatsword and full plate.

The character’s background was that the Archivist had hired him as a meat-shield bodyguard. The Archivist introduced him to the rest of us as “my man”.

Me: “Please tell me he’s not called Jeeves.”
Archivist: “Of course not! His name is, um . . . ”
Fighter: “ “
Druid: “What was that?”
Me: “You know what, we’re just going to keep calling you Dave.”
Fighter: “Fair enough.”


Bad News

The Archivist spent a day or two with the Duke and his advisors, going through the records in the Archive. What they found wasn’t good.

Short version: We’re screwed.

Fairly-short version: The opening portals are a sign that a world-eating aberration of demigodlike power called the Daeklyr (aka “Day Killer”) is waking up. This means that we’re screwed.

Long version: The Daeklyr came to our plane of existence about a thousand years ago, and made itself an army by corrupting native creatures into aberrations. The human civilisation previous to our one, along with forces from the land of the giants to the east, fought a war against the Daeklyr’s forces. Pretty much everyone lost. The human empire that we took the Archive from was trashed, the giant reinforcements were slaughtered, and the Daeklyr was imprisoned. It’s worth noting that the human empire had large numbers of high-level spellcasters and small armies of golems. Even so, they couldn’t figure out a way to kill it, and the most they could do was seal it away inside a crystal and then summon creatures to take the crystal into the depths of the earth.

Our best guess is that the portals currently opening are both a symptom and a cause of the Daeklyr starting to wake up again. Which means that closing the portals will slow the process down, but won’t actually stop it.

So yeah, to reiterate: we’re screwed.

The Druid’s first response: “So can we figure out what sort of immunities and resistances this Daeklyr would have?”
*everyone else stares at him*
Druid: “What? I just want to know what would damage it.”


Plans & Preparations

After much discussion, we came up with four possible plans to get more information. In ascending order of “most likely to get us useful information” and “most dangerous” they went as follows:

4. Talk to the elven kingdoms to the west. Pro: I’m a ruathar, so they’d almost certainly be helpful. Con: unlikely that they’d know all that much.
3. Investigate/seal the portal that’s opened to the north, in the Duchy of the Wilds. Pro: would help slow the portal process. Con: unlikely to get us much information of note.
2. Investigate/seal the portal that’s opened to the east, in the giant country. Pro: the giants probably are likely to know the most about these events, having been involved in them 1000 years ago. Con: the giant kingdoms are Lawful Evil and dislike humans.
1. Get in touch with and try asking questions of Malagrak, a dragon mentioned in passing in the Archive’s records. Pro: he would now be a Great Wyrm Green Dragon and would have first-hand knowledge of the events. Con: take a wild guess.

In the end we decided to start with the most dangerous and work our way down.


Attempt 1: Spam the Dragon

After some consultation of spell lists, it was discovered that the Sending (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/sending.htm) spell allows neither a save nor spell resistance and thus was the best way available to us of getting a message to a great wyrm. We spent a while composing a twenty-five-word message giving a summary of what was happening and politely requesting an audience, and the Archivist cast the spell.

Shortly afterwards we got a message back. [I]“Thank you for your polite request. Permission denied.”

Archivist: “What if I cast the spell again and sent another message saying ‘Please help, please please please please please?’ “
Assassin: “So you’re saying we should keep sending the dragon spam mail?”
Archivist: “Yeah!”
Me: “Just so you know, I’m not going to be anywhere within line of effect if you try this.”


Attempt 2: Tomb-Raid the Giants

Next we tried talking to the giants. A teleportation circle took us most of the way there, then we walked for three days to the border. Once we were there we sent up a flare and waited. After a short while an emissary and two bodyguards came over to talk to us. All three were fire giants.

The discussion wasn’t productive. The giant told us that they knew about the portal in their realm and had already isolated it with a barrier preventing it from supplying energy anywhere, and had changed its destination to the Elemental Plane of Fire. According to our Knowledge (Arcana) checks, this wasn’t possible, making us fairly sure they were lying. Unfortunately there wasn’t really anything we could do about it, and if we tried going into the giant territories we’d risk provoking a war. We told them to communicate with us if anything changed and they wanted to share information. They told us they didn’t care about anything that could possibly happen in the human kingdoms, and left.

The druid and archivist between them had come up with another plan: go to the Barrow Hills, filled with giant-made tombs, break into the tomb of a giant who’d lived during the wars, and cast Speak with Dead on him. We made a short trip there, and, after multiple detect magic spells, found that all the tombs had a desecrate on them with a circle of death spell tied to it. We decided not to go in after all.


Attempt 3: Visit the Fey

After general fail on the first two attempts, we decided to try the portal in the Duchy of the Wilds. The thinking was that we could at least close the thing if nothing else, and might get some useful info if we were really lucky.

The Duchy of the Wilds is to the north of our home kingdom, and is mostly forest. There’s no central government, but there’s a fey ruler named Queen Sylvas (who my character’s kind of related to, but that’s another story). A teleportation circle took us most of the way, and we started exploring. Looking around we saw beautiful, lush green forest in every direction, with hills and water features breaking the tree cover.

The DM had apparently decided to break out the Monster Manual III today, so we ran into one creature after another from that book. First up were a trio of adamantine construct swarms called shredstorms. The fighter, archivist, hierophant, and assassin were unable to touch the things due to not having any area attacks, but me and the druid blew them up with a cometfall, a fireball, and a wings of flurry.

We kept on exploring and found a large, deep pool of water fed by a waterfall. Curled up in the corner of the pool was a 20-foot long creature called a Dragon Eel (it’s what it sounds like).


Swimming and Scouting

Me: “Look, it’s over there.”
Druid: “I try and identify it with Knowledge (Nature).” *fail*
Archivist: “I try and identify it with Knowledge (Planes).” *fail*
Me: “I try and identify it with Knowledge (Arcana).” *fail*
Druid: “Hmm, wonder what it is.”
Archivist: “Maybe it’s an aberration.”
Dragon Eel: *raises its head out of the water* “What am I, a tourist attraction?”
Archivist: “Oh, hello. Have you seen any portals around here?”
Dragon Eel: “No.”
Archivist: “What about those tunnels down at the bottom of the pool?”
Dragon Eel: “Nothing down there last time I checked.”
Druid: “Would you mind if we went down there through your pool and had a look?”
Dragon Eel: “Go ahead. I’ll follow you down.”

The Druid changed into a large shark and swam down, and the Hierophant did the same after changing into a sea lion. The Assassin cast amorphous form and did the same (turns him into an ooze, which doesn’t need to breathe) and I just held my breath and went swimming.

The Dragon Eel let us get down to the bottom of the pool, then attempted to eat us. Hands up if you saw that one coming.

I spotted the thing in time to avoid being surprised and hit it with a belker claws spell as it came in, but it chomped me for 50-odd damage and then grappled me with Improved Grab. The druid summoned an orca whale. I cast Benign Transposition and switched places with the orca (there was some discussion about whether the spell would work or not, but the DM finally okayed it).

Even with two party members back on dry land and unable to help, the action advantage meant that the battle swung our way pretty quickly. The dragon eel ripped the orca whale down to only a handful of hit points, but the Druid then cast Summon Nature’s Ally VI and summoned three more orca whales. By the time the water cleared, there was nothing left but a cloud of blood and body parts. While the others started searching the tunnels I swum back up to find that the Archivist and Fighter had been spending their time drinking Pimms and dressing up the Hierophant’s wolf in a bowler hat and a monocle.

Archivist: “What ho! Anything happen down there? We noticed the water level changing rather oddly.”
Me: “We had a slight breakdown in communications. On an unrelated note, do dragon eels keep treasure hoards?”
Archivist: “Not entirely sure. Pimms?”

The tunnels turned out to be another false trail and we regrouped back on the surface.

The Hierophant had so far managed to be totally ineffective in combat (firing single-target spells at the swarms and nearly hitting the orca whale in the battle underwater) but he had prepared an Analyse Portal spell and so he and the druid turned into birds and went off on a scouting mission. They found two sites of interest: a circle of tall bones hung with silk ribbons, and deeper within the forest, a pair of twisted trees in a clearing of red and black flowers. The Analyse Portal spell revealed that the first was a gate while the second was a portal to Arborea.

The party assembled at the gate and decided what to do next. The portal in the deep forest sounded like it might be what we were looking for, although it seemed a bit too easy. Another issue was that the druids had also noticed shadow elves around the portal.

Even if we weren’t sure if it was the right portal, though, it was too close to the description not to check it out. We were just about to set off into the forest when we noticed that the forest had gone dead silent. A cloud of dandelion seeds filled the air, and as we turned we saw a single figure standing in the gate circle. It looked like this.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/mmiii_gallery/83038.jpg
The Archivist couldn’t identify what it was, even with his +25 knowledge check. With hindsight, this should have been a warning. It was in fact a ragewalker, a CR 14 monster from MMIII.


Bladed Death

The ragewalker glided forward and threw up a wall of fire followed by a blade barrier right in the middle of the party, dealing 15d6 damage to everyone who couldn’t make the save. The Archivist rolled a nat. 1 and not only ate 50 points of damage but had his mithral shirt destroyed. The druid’s fleshraker also lost a ton of HP and would have died if the druid hadn’t saved it with its collar of healing. I dodged the blades with ruin delver’s fortune and hit the ragewalker with a unicorn arrow, throwing it back through its own wall of fire and next to the fighter.

The Druid, Assassin, and Hierophant all ran away, but the Fighter proved more dangerous. He’d already hit the ragewalker with a critical hit for 40-odd damage as it went past him, and now he beat on it twice more. The ragewalker retaliated by throwing up another blade barrier and another wall of fire, boxing the Fighter in on all four sides and leaving him with the choice of running through the walls or slowly burning to death. The Fighter decided to go vertical and used his Climb skill to scramble up one of the standing bones that made up the circle. The Druid changed into a giant eagle and did a Gandalf-style pickup, grabbing the Fighter off the top of the pillar with a flyby and then dropping him down next to the Archivist.

There was a stalemate for a couple of rounds. With the cover and concealment from the walls of fire and the blade barriers, we couldn’t hit the ragewalker, but it couldn’t hit us either. It tried chasing after the assassin, but she just teleported out of the blade barriers and ran away. Me and the Hierophant circled in the air above the thing and sniped at it, my magic missiles doing some damage but having difficulty breaking its spell resistance.

DM: “This is really stupid. This thing’s got absolutely no way of attacking flying enemies.”
Me: “Does seem weird.”
DM: “It really can’t seem to do anything except . . . oh.”
Druid: “Oh?”
Me: “Oh what?”
DM: “I just forgot about half of its abilities. Let’s see . . . it goes through the blade barrier, voluntarily fails to overcome its own spell resistance, and moves within 10 feet of the Archivist and the Fighter. Both of you make Will saves at the beginning of your turn.”
Archivist: “Um . . . 25.”
DM: “Fail. You fly into a mindless killing frenzy and attack the Fighter.”
Fighter: “23?”
DM: “Fail. You fly into a mindless killing frenzy and attack the Archivist.”
Me (to the Fighter): “You know, killing your employer is going to look really bad on your resume as a bodyguard.”

The fight between the Archivist and the Fighter went pretty much as you’d expect. One round later the Archivist was on the point of death, so the Druid swooped down in eagle form and cast a rejuvenation coccoon on the Archivist. The ragewalker opened up with its spiked chains and hit the druid once on the way in, hit him three times more with a full attack, then hit him a final time as the druid fled, leaving him on single-figure hitpoints. I tried to use Benign Transposition to switch the Fighter with the druid’s Fleshraker, who was way over on the other side of the battlefield, and failed - since the Fighter was in a killing frenzy, he wasn’t willing. Next turn, the Ragewalker killed the Fighter.

Me: “Hmm . . . I use my Spellcraft skill to figure out whether I can use Benign Transposition on a newly-dead body.”
DM: “You know what, I’ll let you get away with it.”
Me: “Awesome. Benign Transposition, switching him with the Fleshraker, and now he’s not frenzied so he’s not unwilling.”
DM: “Yes, dead creatures are always willing.”
Me: “ . . . ”

The Druid used Last Breath and reincarnated the Fighter as a half-orc. Next round the rejuvenation coccoon ended, and rather than watch the Archivist get torn to bits again, I did a diving charge and bull rushed him through one of the walls of fire, taking him out of LoS of the Ragewalker and preventing him from attacking anyone but me. By this point the Druid and the Fighter were on single-figure HP and effectively out of the fight, the Archivist and I were on the other side of a wall of fire, and the Assassin had turned invisible and had started stalking the Ragewalker for a Death Attack.

While this had been going on, the Arcane Hierophant had been circling above and sniping at the Ragewalker with giant’s wrath to zero effect. The Ragewalker finally got annoyed enough to reflect one of the shots back at him and hit him in the face, whereupon the Hierophant flew away, buffed up his companion familiar wolf, and sent the poor 50 HP wolf in to attack the CR 14 ragewalker. Needless to say, the wolf was mauled horribly. The Fleshraker succumbed to the ragewalker’s frenzy aura, charge-pounce-killed the wolf, then turned on the ragewalker and managed to do some minor damage before dying as well.

Meanwhile I’d been trying and failing to cure the Archivist’s frenzy with resurgence, while the Archivist had been trying and failing to hit my AC with his caster attack bonus. The Ragewalker looked around, couldn’t see any more targets, and walked through the wall of fire, emerging next to me and the Archivist. I used a true casting scroll to beat the thing’s spell resistance, blasted it with wings of flurry, and next round hit it with a lesser orb of acid. The Ragewalker had been fast healing throughout the fight, but the accumulation of damage, combined with the heavy hits from the Fighter at the beginning of the fight, was finally too much for it. It hit the ground. Immediately afterwards, the Assassin decloaked from invisibility and stabbed it.

Me: “You fail at kill-stealing.”
Assassin: “I could have taken him.”


Looking for Trouble, The Sequel

The party was pretty much tapped out by this point, so we withdrew, healed up with wands, and found a campsite. There wasn’t much treasure, but what we did get was interesting - a +4 heavy steel shield for the Archivist and a decanter of endless water for . . . anyone, really.

We then tallied up XP. I hit level 12 and happily started updating my character sheet (I’m still having trouble deciding between superior resistance and disintegrate. One’s more powerful, but the other would actually have saved several party members by now . . . hmm). While I was doing this, however, the Archivist found out that he needed 55,000 XP to hit level 11 and his current XP total was 54,997.

Archivist: “AAAH! I don’t believe it! I’m three points short!”
Me: “Just wait till next week. It’ll mean you’ll gain more XP from next session’s encounters.”
Archivist: “Wait! I’ve got an idea!”
Me: “Oh no. Please don’t-”
Archivist: “Let’s go find a random encounter!”
Me: “Are you out of your freaking mind? Don’t you remember what happened last time?”
Fighter: “Why, what happened?”
Me: “They ran into a bunch of basilisks and we spent half next session depetrifying them.”
Fighter: “That sounds fun.”
Me: *facepalm*
Archivist: “Excellent. Let’s do that, then.” (to the Hierophant) “Coming?”
Hierophant: “Okay.”
Assassin: “I’ll hang back and follow the others, ready to help if they get into trouble.”
DM (to me): “Want to run this one too?”
Me: “ . . . Sure. Why not.”

The Druid’s player had left early for a fancy dress party, and my character had to stay back for conflict of interest reasons, so this meant the party was the 10th-level Fighter, the 10th-level Archivist, the 11th-level Hierophant (still in bird form), and the 11th-level Assassin. I went online to the same random encounter generator I’d used last time and typed in “Forest, ECL 11.” This was what the generator came up with.


• Assassin Vine, CR 4
• Owl, Giant, CR 4
• Owl, Giant, Advanced to Huge, CR 6
• Giant Stag Beetle, CR 4
• Giant Stag Beetle, Advanced to Huge, CR 6
• Digester, CR 6
• Green Dragon (Very Young), CR 4
• Green Dragon (Young), CR 6

Total Encounter Level: 11

Me: “ . . . Are you really sure you want to do this?”
Archivist: “Yup.”
Me: “Roll initiative.”


Rumble in the Jungle

The party advanced through the forest and came face to face with the bizarre assortment of monsters at a distance of 60 feet. The two groups stared at each other with identical expressions of ‘who the **** are they?’

The digester bounded forward and sprayed acid over the Archivist and the Fighter while the giant owls swept in and raked the Hierophant with their claws. The Hierophant flew away to a distance of 100 feet from everyone else. The two dragons promptly chased him down and both used their breath weapons. Next round the Hierophant used invisibility and fled. The smaller dragon chased him while the larger one turned on the rest of the party.

The Fighter stepped up and pounded on the Digester, hurting it so badly that it didn’t come into melee range for the rest of the battle. Next round he 5-foot-stepped back and gave the same treatment to the smaller owl, killing it instantly. Meanwhile the Archivist was using his Dark Knowledge on everything he could, and the Assassin came out of hiding and hit the larger owl for a massive sneak attack, doing 40ish points of damage and causing it to flap away. The dragon strafed the party with its breath weapon, but the Archivist threw up a mass resist energy, making the three of them immune to the dragon’s breath and the digester’s acid.

The giant stag beetles were much more dangerous, though: even the smaller one could do 20 points on a hit and the larger one’s bite attack had a +16 bonus and did 6d6+15 damage. The two of them started chewing on the fighter. The fighter one-round-killed the smaller beetle and knocked the larger beetle down to 5 HP the round afterwards, but its answering bite took the Fighter to -12, killing him instantly.

Fighter: “I’m dead again?”
Me: “You’re dead, Dave.”
Archivist: “Who is?”
Me: “Everybody, Dave.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2LAMvcZXPA)
Assassin. “That’s it. Your official name is now ‘Dead Dave’.”


Hide and Seek

Meanwhile, the Hierophant was being chased by the Very Young green dragon. You’d think that an 11th-level character should be able to take a CR 4 monster, even low on spells, but the Hierophant kept trying to cast summons. Since the dragon had a breath weapon to interrupt any spells with, this didn’t work very well. When the dragon proved that it could still attack him even through his invisibility spell, the Hierophant tried hiding. Funnily enough, this didn’t work very well either. The Hierophant started running away, occasionally using a cure spell or attempting another summon, while the dragon kept chasing him, breathing on him every couple of rounds. It was only 4d6 per breath, but the damage was starting to add up, and in animal form the Hierophant’s armour class wasn’t much good.


Finale

The battle in the main clearing had come down to the last survivors. The surviving giant owl and the digester had fled, and both beetles had been killed, but the Young Green Dragon was unharmed. The fighter had been brought back to life with a revivify, but he was on 0 HP and the Archivist was only on 22 himself.

The dragon stepped up and full attacked the Assassin, taking her down to 3 HP. It was all down to the Archivist, who had a pair of 5th-level spells he’d been saving - two castings of Plane Shift.

Assassin: “Get us out of here!”
Archivist: “I’m sort of tempted to use it on the dragon.”
DM: “That would be about fifty-fifty. And if it makes its save, it’ll kill you on its turn.”
Archivist: “I’d still like to try-”
Assassin & Fighter: “NO.”
Archivist: “But if we-”
Assassn & Fighter: “NO!”
Archivist: “Oh, fine. I yell out ‘We’re retreating, old boy!’ and shift us to the Ethereal Plane.”
Hierophant: “I fly away as fast as I can, another 160 feet.”
Me: “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
Hierophant: “Um . . .”
Me: “The good news is that there’s no longer a dragon chasing you.”
Hierophant: “Oh. That’s good.”
Me: “The bad news is that this is because there are now two dragons chasing you.”
Hierophant: “Oh.”

The Hierophant flew away again, trying to find somewhere to hide. It didn’t work. He flew down to ground level and changed into human form, looking for some stone to meld into. The dragons followed him down and both breathed on him. The acid damage took him down to -8 HP, and the dragons ripped him to pieces the round afterwards.


End Result

At the close of the session, the Assassin, Archivist, and Fighter were left on the Ethereal Plane. The Archivist’s got a casting left of Plane Shift, but it’s anybody’s guess where they’ll end up. Since they beat everything except the dragons, they earned XP for defeating a 10th-level encounter.

The Hierophant’s dead, in an unknown location somewhere in the forest. His companion familiar and the druid’s animal companion are also dead.

My Sorcerer and the Druid are back at camp in the wilds.

Me: “So, have you guys learned to stop having me run random encounters yet?”
Assassin: “Nah, that was fun. Plus we got the XP.”
Archivist: “I levelled!”

Mushroom Ninja
2010-04-18, 09:48 AM
I love how your random encounters end up being more deadly than the actual adventure. :smalltongue:



The Druid’s first response: “So can we figure out what sort of immunities and resistances this Daeklyr would have?”
*everyone else stares at him*
Druid: “What? I just want to know what would damage it.”

I like the way this guy thinks! :smallbiggrin:

Myshlaevsky
2010-04-18, 09:52 AM
Me: “So, have you guys learned to stop having me run random encounters yet?”
Assassin: “Nah, that was fun. Plus we got the XP.”
Archivist: “I levelled!”

I hope they never learn, that was pretty entertaining. It sounds like the new player didn't have much in the way of Beginner's Luck.

Eldariel
2010-04-18, 10:36 AM
Oooh, a Ragewalker! I have...bad memories of those. In our very first 3.5 campaign, on level 13, our party was assailed by one and we just got totally mauled. As a bonus, we were flying in a cave that intervened with teleportation meaning we had no ways of out-mobilitying it. The only thing that saved us was the Cleric getting lucky on SR breaching to Destructioning it. At this point half the party was hammering each other already and taking various AoE damage effects.

Those things are scary; DC 28 Will-save :smalleek: Honestly, the only saving grace about it is that clause about Wisdom, so morale of the story is to always keep Clerics and Druids around in case you run into Ragewalkers. Immunity to arrows, SR 28, we had Core characters back then so that thing was just kicking our rears across the countryside.

Olo Demonsbane
2010-04-18, 01:12 PM
Awesome update. I hope they want more random encounters, those are really entertaining...

Dusk Eclipse
2010-04-18, 01:14 PM
The thing I actually want to see, is Saph's sorcerer actually TAKING part in one of thos random encounters... I am sure the general outcome would be far better.

Raiki
2010-04-18, 03:31 PM
The thing I actually want to see, is Saph's sorcerer actually TAKING part in one of those random encounters... I am sure the general outcome would be far better.

Well, you know, the fact that both Saph's Sorc and the druid weren't there was very likely what made the battle so difficult in the first place. If you reread most of the 'normal' battles, you'll see that Saph spends half of the fight striving to keep the rest of the party alive. And the druid seems to be the only other optimised character in the party, who also happens to handle a good portion of the crowd control. Therefore, a large crowd of lower CR monsters, which takes away the action advantage, was the worst possible encounter for the remainder of the party.

...Just sayin.

Anyway, fantastic session, fantastic write-up. Thanks Saph.

~R~

Kaulesh
2010-04-18, 06:24 PM
DM: “Yes, dead creatures are always willing.”


I have to admit, I laughed at that.

LordShotGun
2010-04-21, 09:23 AM
I lol'd HARD at the sending spam idea for the great wyrm. Next time I play DnD im gonna ask my DM if I try this with our party's big bad.

Saph
2010-04-21, 06:08 PM
I lol'd HARD at the sending spam idea for the great wyrm. Next time I play DnD im gonna ask my DM if I try this with our party's big bad.

Yeah, we decided in our case we probably had enough issues without going out of our way to annoy a great wyrm dragon.

First thing we're going to have to deal with at beginning of next session is the Archivist's Plane Shift. Depending what direction he rolls for his off-target scatter, he and the other two characters could end up:

1) Several hundred miles out to sea (oh, and none of them can swim)
2) In low earth orbit
3) In the Underdark

Saph
2010-04-25, 12:55 PM
Episode 13: The First Guardian


The Ranger was back today, while the Fighter and the (now-dead) Hierophant were away, so the party was:

• My Sorcerer (Aiden): At camp out in the wilds.
• Druid: Showed up late and so wasn’t there for the early encounters.
• Ranger (Mary): Back in town.
• Archivist and Assassin: On the Ethereal Plane.

The first hour or so was spent on cleaning up the mess caused by last week’s random encounter. :P


Cleaning Up

The Archivist cast plane shift and he and the Assassin wound up 315 miles off target, landing way off the campaign map somewhere in the tundra in the far north. There was a brief discussion of putting up a flag and claiming the territory until the DM mentioned that these were the kingdoms of the frost giants, at which point the Archivist hurriedly cast teleport from a scroll and blinked back to the capital.

My Sorcerer was back at camp wondering where they’d gone, when I got a sending from the Archivist. The written message went something like this:

”ran into some dragons and monsters. gasper died. gone back to capitol to get mary and armour. will meet up and and travel back to” [rest of message cut off due to word limit.]

After we’d finished laughing, my return message was:

”Learn to spell. I’ll wait two hours, then if you’re not back will teleport to main square. PS: you’re accident prone. Aiden.”

I teleported, got the story from the Assassin and the Archivist, and the reunited party spent the night in town, then teleported back to the Duchy of the Wilds. The first job was to recover the Hierophant’s body.

The Ranger was able to track the trail of the Assassin and Archivist back to where the battle had taken place, and we located the site where the Hierophant had died. The two green dragons that had killed him weren’t there. Their mother, however, was.

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm286/Aeil_1977/Dragons/greendragon.jpg
After some fast talking, we managed to avoid a fight (we had enough issues to deal with without picking fights with huge dragons). The dragon tried to strong-arm us into providing ‘compensation’ for the attack on its kids, but the Archivist convinced it that we’d spread word of how powerful it was instead. This satisfied it enough that it directed us to the Hierophant’s body and then told us to get out of its territory, which we did. Needless to say, the Hierophant’s magic items had been taken, so we buried the remains (the Archivist saved a finger for possible reincarnation). With that done, we went back to our mission.


Elf Annoyance

The portal to Arborea that we’d located last week was only a short walk away. We moved through the forest towards it and were intercepted by the shadow elves.

I stepped forward and tried talking to them. They confirmed that the portal had opened recently but also said that they were there to prevent it from being interfered with. We explained about the Daeklyr and why we needed to seal it. They agreed to let us past. We went past. They tried to shoot us. So much for the diplomatic approach.

The elves weren’t particularly high-level, and although they could stay effectively hidden in the woods, their arrows didn’t do much more than scratch us. I flew after one group while the Ranger climbed a tree to try and get a bead on the others. I was able to track down the first group of elves, but as soon as I got a bead on them, they surrendered. Unfortunately, while I was interrogating them, the actual threat of the encounter turned up at the the main group.

Two Allips (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/allip.htm) appeared around the Archivist, Assassin, and Druid. The Druid and Assassin promptly nat-1ed their Will saves against the Allip’s Madness ability and sat around helpless. Both Allips hit the Druid and Wisdom-drained him. The Ranger shot both Allips from her perch in the tree and killed them both. Next round, two more Allips appeared and Wisdom-drained the Druid again. The Ranger shot them too. Next round, two more Allips appeared and just for a change, started hitting the Archivist.

At this point the enemy spellcaster who’d been summoning the Allips with Summon Undead got sick of the Ranger shooting them all and broke her invisibility to drop a cloudkill on the party. The Druid was fine but the Assassin continued rolling 1s and lost so much Constitution that her HP hit minimum. The Ranger jumped down and redeployed, the Druid recovered from the Allips' effect and started fighting back, and I told the shadow elves to get lost and flew back to rejoin the others.

The enemy spellcaster was some sort of half-fey dread necromancer shadowcaster combination. She had some weird abilities that made her very difficult to hurt with magic - when I tried a scorching ray she countered it instantly and attacked me back with something else. Next round I cast a disintegrate which she dodged. She then proceeded to somehow cast the same disintegrate straight back at us, hitting the Ranger, dealing 106 points of damage, and reducing the Ranger to a small pile of dust.

This might have gone on for a while, but as it turned out, while the woman’s defences against magic were amazing, her defences against physical attacks were considerably less so. The Druid pounced on her and only two or three hits killed her, ending the battle.

The Archivist Last Breathed the Ranger who was reincarnated as a Dwarf. This put a stop to the game for about fifteen minutes while we debated the “do female dwarves have beards?” question.

Ranger: “I am NOT GROWING A BEARD.”
Druid: “But you’d look so much better with one!”
Archivist: “What if I cast Silverbeard on you?”
Ranger: “No!”
Archivist: “But it gives an Armour Class bonus-”
Ranger: “NO!”

Three Restorations from the Archivist’s Runestaff (which we’d just finally picked up last week) fixed the Wisdom drain and we advanced.


One Problem Settled . . .

We advanced towards the portal. The portal to Arborea was between two great oak trees whose branches were twined over to form an arch. The clearing was peaceful and serene, with patches of red and black flowers scattered across the grass.

We spent about half an hour debating how to safely approach the flowers.

Ranger: “A completely empty clearing, and we’re treating it like it’s some sort of deathtrap.”
Me: “Hey, I bet you that as soon as we take one step towards that portal, at least one species of plant is going to animate and try and kill us.”
Assassin: “Why don’t we send a bunch of animals in?”
Ranger: “Do you really have to?”
Assassin: “Better them than us.”

The Assassin pulled four wolverines out of her bag of tricks, thew them into the clearing, and ordered them to run towards the portal.

The red and black flowers (which the Archivist identified as Dread Blossoms) animated, flew into the air, swarmed over the wolverines, and killed them all in six seconds.

The Assassin threw in a couple of bears. They died even faster than the wolverines.

Ranger: “Would you stop doing that?”
Archivist: “What if we all take some beads from the Necklace of Fireballs and use those on the swarms?”
Me: “Okay. I’ll take the portal bomb and circle up high. Once they’ve been drawn out, I’ll do a dive and throw the bomb through the portal.”
Assassin: “Let’s do it. I throw the first fireball into the swarms.”

There were in fact six of the Dread Blossom Swarms. The first four had been drawn together by the Assassin’s animals, and proceeded to take three fireball beads from the rest of the party plus an actual fireball from me. It didn’t kill them and they promptly swarmed over the four ground-bound members of the party.

Me: “Did that at least hurt them?”
DM: “They’re looking a bit scorched, but they’re still going strong.”
Me: “Man, these things are tough.”
DM: “Or maybe they’ve just been fed.”
Ranger: “Damn it! I TOLD you!”
Assassin: “Well, how was I supposed to know?”
Me: “Maybe we should put up a sign saying ‘Don’t Feed The Plants.’ “

The Dread Blossoms proved to be quite lethal, with their swarm damage, nausea effect, paralysing venom, and blood drain ability. Worse, nobody but me had any area-attacks. I threw another fireball down right into the middle of the melee, killing three of the swarms and doing no harm to the party due to their mass resist energy, but then the two undamaged swarms showed up.

The party members on the ground decided it was time to bug out and gathered for a teleport. The swarms had been drawn away, so I dived and threw the bomb through the portal gate, sealing it. The Archivist teleported the rest of the party out, the swarms came for me, and I teleported out as well. Mission accomplished.


. . . And Three More Come Along

Back at town, we got some bad news. First, there were disturbances cropping up in surrounding villages. Second, the Duke’s spellcasters had been getting some odd readings from the first portal that we’d sealed, the one in the aboleth temple. It didn’t look as though the seal was actually breaking, but it seemed like something we should check out.

Third, the portal in the fire giant kingdom had “hatched”.

This was the point at which we learned a little more about what was going on. It turned out that the Daeklyr creation that the Archive had been talking about, the Raver, had made four “Guardians” before its imprisonment. The Guardians were designed to rescue the Raver if it were ever imprisoned (as it was). We didn’t really know how the “hatching” process worked, but the end result had been that a mountain in the giant kingdoms had been levelled and the creature that had done the levelling had escaped. So now there’s a gigantic mutated army-killing monster wandering around the kingdom of the fire giants.

Given that the fire giants are jerks, this wouldn’t actually bother us much, except we’ve got a nasty feeling this thing’s going to find its way into our neighborhood sooner or later. Tracking down the Guardian and killing it seems like the most reliable long-term plan, but trying to do a search mission in a kingdom of hostile giants is going to carry with it problems of its own.


Spam the Dragon, Part II

The Archivist decided at this point to try bugging the Green Great Wyrm, Malagrak, with another sending spell, basically saying "Please help us, we really need your advice, we beg that you speak to us."

He got the following return message: "Consider yourself spoken to."

After we'd finished laughing, we decided to check out the portal in the aboleth temple first, in the hope that it would be easy to deal with. It wasn’t.


Deja Vu Dungeon

My teleport was on target and we landed at the entrance to the aboleth temple. This was the same dungeon that we’d entered in Episode 3 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7887336#post7838780) and cleared out in Episode 4 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7887336#post7887336). As it turned out my character was the only one still in the party who’d been there, so I ended up guiding the others.

The secret entrance by which we’d entered last time had been locked. Some investigation revealed that it had in fact been stone shaped shut and there was no way to open it. I used a disintegrate and there was no more door. We bypassed the traps to discover that the tunnel down had been bricked up. We spent fifteen minutes arguing about how to get through the bricks before I got rid of them with another disintegrate. At the bottom of the shaft was a symbol of weakness. I failed my Fortitude save, took enough Strength damage to knock me down to a Strength of 1, and wiped out the the symbol with another disintegrate. We waited while I healed up with lesser restoration, then pressed onwards. (Disintegrate, the “Make Your Problems Go Away” spell!)

The druid sent a spider hand scout down into the portal room to reveal that it had been heavily changed. The water was now ice, with stalagmites pointing upwards, and the path around the outside was cracked and broken. Where the portal had been was a sort of broken coccoon, and curled up inside it was a cat the size of a house with white fur, six legs, and four tentacles sprouting from its back.

The Assassin had left early, so the party by this point was my Sorcerer, the Ranger, the Druid, and the Archivist. We conferred and decided what to do next.

The Druid declared that he wanted to fight the thing toe-to-toe. Basically, the player had spent the last few weeks looking up every single one of the most powerful Druid spells he could find, had figured out that he could get his Strength score to about 50ish, and wanted to demonstrate his power. The rest of us looked at each other, shrugged, and agreed. The Druid spent a while casting all his buff spells (I think he had about fifteen or so by the end) and entered, invisible. The battle kicked off.


The First Guardian: Doom Kitty

The guardian was in fact a Displacer Beast Pack Lord, advanced to Gargantuan size, with its hit dice swapped for Outsider HD and a few more added, given the Cold subtype, and with the abilities of a Phase Spider tacked on, enabling it to phase in or out of the Ethereal Plane as a free action once per turn. The Druid advanced into the room, the Archivist continued to buff everyone, the Ranger got ready to jump around the corner and open fire, and I took out a mirror and started doing my hair.

The Druid summoned a lion which charged and attacked. The Doom Kitty gave the lion the equivalent of a stern look and the lion died. The Druid cast some attack spell or other and the Doom Kitty vanished. The Druid advanced into the centre of the room and waited. The Doom Kitty phased in behind the Druid and hit him with a full attack, dealing about 100 damage, taking off the Druid’s temporary hit points, and nearly killing him (two of the strikes were criticals and probably WOULD have killed him if he hadn’t been immune to crits). The Druid vanished into a rejuvenation coccoon.

Me: “I call around the corner, ‘So is it dead yet?’ “
Druid: “What the **** do you think? Are you going to get out here and give me some artillery support, or what?”
Me: “Well, I wasn’t sure if you needed any help.”
Druid: “[deleted due to profanity]”

I flew up and into the chamber and tried a ray which missed due to the Doom Kitty’s displacement. The Ranger had more luck, stepping out into the doorway and hitting it with a normal arrow and then a critical for 60-70 damage. The Doom Kitty vanished. The Ranger readied an action. The Doom Kitty phased in in front of her and full attacked her. The Ranger got off one shot before the Doom Kitty hit her with a tentacle AoO, four tentacle attacks, two claw attacks, and a bite attack, dealing about 130 damage and killing her instantly.

Me: “Aah! Not again! She’s going to need a revolving door in the afterlife at this rate!”
Ranger: “Oh, thanks.”
Archivist. “Not to worry! Last Breath!” *grabs Ranger, drags her out of sight, and then rolls a 76* “Hooray!”
Me: “What?”
Ranger: “I’m human! I’m beautiful again!”
Me: “You’re always beautiful to me.”
Druid: “Stop with the pick-up lines and do something useful!”

The Doom Kitty smacked me around a bit as I flew above it (the room had a 60’ ceiling, but it could reach that high without difficulty). I hit back with unicorn arrows and scorching rays. The displacement threw off about half my attacks, but my spells were still wearing it down. Finally the Druid came out of his coccoon and pounce attacked the thing. Only three out of his seven attacks hit, but the three strikes still did about 150 damage. The Doom Kitty hit the ground, dead.

With the guardian dead a giant crack sounded and fissures ran through the portal, then there was another crack and cracks started spiderwebbing through the ice. Rubble started to fall from the ceiling.

Ranger: “It’s going to collapse! Teleport us out of here!”
Druid: “No, wait. Disintegrate the portal first!”
Me: “I can’t see, has it fallen apart yet?”
Archivist: “It’ll probably collapse with the cave anyway.”
Druid: “Use teleport, then. I turn back into a dwarf to make it easier.”
Archivist: “Wait, teleport to where?”
Druid: “I’m not sure. Actually, I’ve got a transport via plants. Maybe I should use that instead.”
DM: “You all have to make Reflex saves to avoid damage from falling rubble as you STAND AROUND ARGUING IN THE MIDDLE OF A COLLAPSING CAVERN.”
Archivist: “Oh, all right, I cast Teleport.”

We vanished just as the ceiling came down.


Epilogue

The Ranger’s now back to human, and very happy about it, as is the Archivist. In recognition of this fact, the Archivist is going to stop using Last Breath and start using Revivify instead.
Since we’d taken out the equivalent of a major boss with only four party members, we all gained a huge amount of XP. The Ranger’s level 11, the Archivist and Druid are level 12 or close to it, and I’m surprisingly close to level 13 and a whole bunch of new spells.
We were actually thinking about going after the second Guardian in the last couple of hours before we had to go home, but sanity prevailed. The Archivist then suggested we should fight a random encounter. The Ranger shouted a very loud “NO!” :smalltongue:

Dusk Eclipse
2010-04-25, 01:23 PM
Episode 13: The First Guardian

<snip>


We were actually thinking about going after the second Guardian in the last couple of hours before we had to go home, but sanity prevailed. The Archivist then suggested we should fight a random encounter. The Ranger shouted a very loud “NO!” :smalltongue:[/LIST]

Ha! I knew sometime sooner or latter someone would learn that random encounters are deadlier than the actual campaing (or at least that is my perception of it)

Also as always awesome session Saph, thanks for sharing this with us.

Starbuck_II
2010-04-25, 01:54 PM
Druid should have buffed himself his own miss chance. He became a glass bazooka since the creature was so strong. :smallbiggrin:

Raiki
2010-04-25, 01:56 PM
Yay! A new Saph post! This has made my day.

And yeah, I do have to agree with SB_II, a massive strength score and alot of temporary HP will get you very little if you can't take a punch.

~R~

Draz74
2010-04-25, 02:00 PM
The Ranger could hit the Allips reliably -- how? Bow with the Force enhancement?


My Sorcerer was back at camp wondering where they’d gone, when I got a sending from the Archivist. The written message went something like this:

”ran into some dragons and monsters. gasper died. gone back to capitol to get mary and armour. will meet up and and travel back to” [rest of message cut off due to word limit.]

After we’d finished laughing, my return message was:

”Learn to spell. I’ll wait two hours, then if you’re not back will teleport to main square. PS: you’re accident prone. Aiden.”
[snip]
The dragon tried to strong-arm us into providing ‘compensation’ for the attack on its kids, but the Archivist convinced it that we’d spread word of how powerful it was instead. This satisfied it enough that it directed us to the Hierophant’s body and then told us to get out of its territory, which we did. Needless to say, the Hierophant’s magic items had been taken, so we buried the remains (the Archivist saved a finger for possible reincarnation). With that done, we went back to our mission.
[snip]
They agreed to let us past. We went past. They tried to shoot us. So much for the diplomatic approach.
[snip]
Ranger: “I am NOT GROWING A BEARD.”
Druid: “But you’d look so much better with one!”
Archivist: “What if I cast Silverbeard on you?”
Ranger: “No!”
Archivist: “But it gives an Armour Class bonus-”
Ranger: “NO!”
[snip]
The Assassin threw in a couple of bears. They died even quicker than the wolverines.

Ranger: “Would you stop doing that?”
...
Me: “Did that at least hurt them?”
DM: “They’re looking a bit scorched, but they’re still going strong.”
Me: “Man, these things are tough.”
DM: “Or maybe they’ve just been fed.”
Ranger: “Damn it! I TOLD you!”
Assassin: “Well, how was I supposed to know?”
Me: “Maybe we should put up a sign saying ‘Don’t Feed The Plants.’ “
[snip]
Me: “I call around the corner, ‘So is it dead yet?’ “
Druid: “What the **** do you think? Are you going to get out here and give me some artillery support, or what?”
Me: “Well, I wasn’t sure if you needed any help.”
Druid: “[deleted due to profanity]”
[snip]
Archivist. “Not to worry! Last Breath!” *grabs Ranger, drags her out of sight, and then rolls a 76* “Hooray!”
Me: “What?”
Ranger: “I’m human! I’m beautiful again!”
Me: “You’re always beautiful to me.”
Druid: “Stop with the pick-up lines and do something useful!”
[snip]
DM: “You all have to make Reflex saves to avoid damage from falling rubble as you STAND AROUND ARGUING IN THE MIDDLE OF A COLLAPSING CAVERN.”
Archivist: “Oh, all right, I cast Teleport.”

We vanished just as the ceiling came down.
[snip]
The Archivist then suggested we should fight a random encounter. The Ranger shouted a very loud “NO!” :smalltongue:[/LIST]

How much classic D&D humor can one session hold? :smallbiggrin:

Darkxarth
2010-04-25, 02:01 PM
I kind of wonder what happened to those Aboleths. There several left when the party last left the dungeon. I suppose they can't get back in until the ice melts. Still, it would have been interesting to see a fight between the Doom Kitty and the Aboleths.

Actually, the Aboleths probably would have enslaved the Doom Kitty and then everything would have been much, much worse.

Cisturn
2010-04-25, 02:11 PM
I love this campaign, thanks a lot Saph, your really helping me break up the high stress level of exam week

Malbordeus
2010-04-25, 02:23 PM
somone asked about the rangers arrows... the ranger has the craft Bowmaking skill, and can make her own arrows, so when the party in a previous session found a trap that consisted of - a shadow imprisoned within a blessed silver sarcophagus and a Margic jar spell... she had the idea to melt down the silver for ammo.

far be it from me to eliminate the property that made it so effective at holding an incorporeal creature captive, it also comes in useful vs various evil outsiders too.

Saph
2010-04-25, 02:23 PM
And yeah, I do have to agree with SB_II, a massive strength score and alot of temporary HP will get you very little if you can't take a punch.

Well, he could do crazy amounts of damage, but so could the thing he was fighting. It led to a bit of a weird fight.


The Ranger could hit the Allips reliably -- how? Bow with the Force enhancement?

Blessed silver arrows. During the desert arc we found a tomb lined with blessed silver that was trapping an incorporeal undead. We dismantled it and took it away with us and the Ranger used her Craft skill to make a bunch of arrowheads out of the material.

edit: Heh, ninjaed by the DM. :P

Eldariel
2010-04-25, 02:42 PM
Grand. I'm happy to know picking Disintegrate turned out to have been a good decision :smallbiggrin: Though yeah, Quickened True Strikes for your Rays? Removes miss chances too.

Saph
2010-04-25, 03:52 PM
Grand. I'm happy to know picking Disintegrate turned out to have been a good decision :smallbiggrin: Though yeah, Quickened True Strikes for your Rays? Removes miss chances too.

I've actually got True Strike as a spell known, but the problem is that my best attack spells (Scorching Ray and Unicorn Arrow) all use multiple shots. I'll probably pick up one of the Orb spells next level, though, so that'll combo nicely with Arcane Fusion.


I kind of wonder what happened to those Aboleths. There several left when the party last left the dungeon. I suppose they can't get back in until the ice melts. Still, it would have been interesting to see a fight between the Doom Kitty and the Aboleths.

I think the Doom Kitty would have shredded them in seconds. :P It had a ton of spell resistance and probably could only fail saves on a 1.

I actually suspect that the Aboleths have moved out. The fact that the temple had been sealed makes me suspect that they found a new place to do their freaky worshipping in.

Draz74
2010-04-26, 12:12 AM
When you hit L13, if it's no trouble for you, I wouldn't mind getting a full spell list for your character.

Saph
2010-05-02, 12:14 PM
Episode 14: Things Fall Apart


We were low on numbers today. The Assassin and Druid were away, and the Fighter’s player hasn’t shown up for a couple of sessions. That meant that the party was:

• My Sorcerer, 12th-level.
• The Ranger, 11th-level.
• The Factotum 1/Archivist 10.
• And a newbie who built his character at the beginning of the session. The guy used to play in a couple of our campaigns a while back, and has a reputation both for powergaming and also for dying with amazing frequency. His first suggestion for a character was a Planar Shepherd. :P After that was shouted down he played a Wizard/Sorcerer/Ultimate Magus (or something) build instead, with some sort of talking symbiotic devil thing in his stomach.

At the start of the session we had two major issues to deal with. First was tracking down and destroying the Guardian that had hatched from the portal in the fire giant kingdoms. Second was reports of strange happenings and disappearances spreading through the villages. Since we really didn’t have any idea how to solve the second problem, we decided to give the first a shot.


Against the Giants

According to our maps the giant city where the portal had been was built into the side of a mountain. I figured we had decent odds of getting there with a teleport, so that was what we tried. The spell was right on target and we appeared a little way south of the giant city and the mountain.

At least, we appeared a little way south of where the giant city used to be. Looking north, it turned out the city wasn’t there any more. In its place was a crater a mile wide covered with a cloud of dust. The city walls had been blown down and only a couple of watchtowers were still standing. We exchanged looks and started on foot towards the crater. We ran into trouble almost immediately: a fire giant leading a squad of six hill giants.

Me: “We come in peace!”
Giant: “You leave in pieces, small creature!”

At this point, it’s worth taking a brief pause to explain what some of the other party members had been doing. The Archivist had decided over the past few sessions to devote himself to a buffing role, and one of the spells he’d dug up with the DM’s help was a Spell Compendium Ranger spell called foebane, which turns a weapon into a +5 bane weapon against a specified enemy type. He cast this on the Ranger’s bow, threw a divine agility spell on her as well, and finally used his Dark Knowledge to give everyone an extra +3d6 damage per round. Adding that to the Ranger’s own abilities and factoring in her attack bonus and feats, as well as one or two other buffs, she was attacking four times a round for 1d8+7d6+8 damage per shot and hitting every time.

The effect was kind of like a railgun. Basically, I stood at the front and soaked up attacks while the Ranger killed everything. The giants between them had over a thousand hitpoints, but they were still all dead within four rounds. The Archivist and the Ultimate Magus tossed in a few attacks of their own before deciding that it simply wasn’t worth spending the spell slots.

Next encounter was a fire giant sorcerer with a bunch of class levels, two more fire giants, and four hell hounds. These ones didn’t even manage to get close enough to put their minatures onto the battle mat. The Ranger spotted them two hundred and fifty feet away and railgunned them all to death before they could even get into melee.

The third encounter was three more hill giants, a pair of stone giants, and a stone giant druid. They managed to do a little bit of damage to the Ultimate Magus before they all died as well.

Ranger: “This is fun!”
Me: “This is like a duck hunt.”
Archivist: “I think I’m going to start mass-producing scrolls of that spell.”

With the last set of giants down, we advanced into the crater itself. We could see tunnels at the edge, leading into the mountain, while the crater itself was covered in a thick blanket of dust.

The dust was heavy enough that it acted like an effective fog cloud, cutting vision down to 5 feet. The terrain was also difficult. We started quartering the ground, looking for tracks, and after a while we found some: long, sliding marks of something very big. The tracks led from the caves and then vanished into a pile of rubble: whatever it was could tunnel underground. The Ranger’s best guess was that the tracks looked like some kind of worm. We’d just decided to check out the tunnels when the four of us were blasted with a cone of fire breath.


Dragons in the Mist

While we’d been talking, the heavy cavalry had shown up: an Adult Red Dragon. Dragons are bad news at the best of times: a CR 15 dragon in terrain that prevented us from seeing it (while it could locate us just fine with its blindsense) was just plain bad news. The Archivist’s mass resist energy protected us from its fire breath, but the dragon then landed next to the Ranger (and 10 feet from the Ultimate Magus) and chomped her.

Ranger: “Do you think I should shoot it or run?”
Me: “I’ve got a rule: don’t stand and trade full attacks with anything that has more than twice as many limbs as you.”
DM: “I’d agree. I’d also say the same for anything that’s two or more size categories bigger.”
Ranger: “Fine, I run.” *Tumble check fail* *AoO* “Ow!”
Me: “Trust me, it could be a lot worse.”
Ultimate Magus: “I start casting Summon Undead V.”
DM: “Oookay, that’ll be a 1-round casting time. Defensively?”
Ultimate Magus: “Sure, defensively.”
DM: “Dragon’s turn.”
Dragon: *ROOOAR!* *full attack!* CHOMP! SLASH! SLASH! WHAM! WHAM! THWACK!
*chew*
*chew*
*spit!*
Me: (to the Ranger and the Archivist) “. . . and that’s why you don’t stand next to dragons.”

The Ultimate Magus went into negatives somewhere around the first wing and died before the dragon got to the tail slap. The Archivist hit the Ultimate Magus with a last breath, reincarnating him as an elf, but with one party member dead and another wounded, it was obvious we were onto a loser. A few more rounds followed of the dragon targeting us with crush attacks before the Ranger grabbed the Magus and I evacuated everyone with a teleport.


Return to Giant Country

Back in the capital, we discussed what to do and came up with a plan. Now that we’d seen the tunnels, we could return the next day after regaining spells and teleport directly into the mouth of one of the tunnels. Hopefully that way we could avoid the dragon (plus if it did come after us, it’d have trouble maneuvering and wouldn’t have the benefit of the dust cloud). Since the tunnels went underground and the Guardian was a burrower, we figured we had a reasonable chance of finding it.

And that was what we did. The teleport spell took us right on target to the cave mouth. We hurried in before the dragon could notice us.

The caves were filled with dead giants. We checked the bodies and discovered that all had died from suffocation. A moment later we realised that we were suffocating too: the air had been displaced by chokedamp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackdamp) and there wasn’t enough oxygen to keep us alive.

We backed off hurriedly to the mouth of the cave where we could breathe. My character has a magic item that lets me hold my breath for 12 hours, so I volunteered to scout the tunnels and see what I could find. The others stayed near the cave mouth where the air was breathable and I took a deep breath and headed in.

The tunnels were wide and extensive. Dead giants were everywhere; some wearing armour, while many were wearing robes or only partial clothing and looked like they’d been asleep. I managed to find a couple of useful items but after five minutes’ searching I’d come to dead ends and couldn’t see any sign of how to find the Guardian. I turned around and was almost back to the party when the Guardian found us.


The Second Guardian: The Nomming Dark

http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationscreatures/games/dnd/purpleworm.jpg
The earth shook and in a shower of dirt and falling rubble a Gargantuan-sized wormlike creature erupted from the earth just behind where the Ultimate Magus and the Archivist were waiting. Unlike a normal Purple Worm this thing was black, with red stripes down its belly. It was also far more dangerous.

Surprise Round: The Guardian noms the Ultimate Magus, chomping him for 40+ damage. It then grapples him, deals bite damage again for another 40+ damage, kills him, bites him all the way in half, and spits the two halves out back down of the tunnel.

First Round: The Guardian rolls a natural 20 on its initiative check, full attacks the Archivist, stings him with its tail, chomps him for bite damage, then grabs him for bite damage again. Through unbelievable good luck the Archivist is left alive, in its mouth, on exactly 1 hit point. He casts Teleport, manages to pass his concentration check, and flees.

Ranger: “AIDEN! RUN!”
Me: “Okay, I fly in and- huh? Where’s Rufus? Scratch that, where’s everyone?”
Ranger: “Less talking! More running!”
Me: “I land next to Mary and ready an action to cast teleport.”
DM: “What’s the trigger?”
Me: “Anything attacks or threatens either of us.”
Ranger: *starts poking me in the shoulder* “I’m threatening you! I’M THREATENING YOU! Time to go!”
DM: “And the creature rears up and breathes a torrent of molten lava.”
Me: “ . . . Yeah, okay, teleporting now.”


Death’s Not What It Used To Be

We returned yet again to the capital and again discussed plans. After some quick calculations, we came to the conclusion that we should - just - be able to take on the Nomming Dark now that we knew what it could do and if we were fully buffed up and ready. We drew up a list of buffs we’d need and enlisted the help of some friendly casters for tomorrow morning.

At about this point the Ultimate Magus was thrown into the room. His clothing around the midriff was gone and there were scars across his torso, but he was still in one piece. When asked how he’d survived he said something about Contingency. Given that I’m pretty sure both in and out of character that Contingency is of very limited help after you’ve been bitten in half, either he’s covering up something or the DM just couldn’t be bothered to wait around for him to roll up yet another character. In any case, we rested again, the Archivist picked a new spell list with care, and we assembled next morning to buff up. Once we were carrying about 10 spells each, we teleported back to the giant country yet again.


Return to Giant Country 2: The Rematch

We arrived in the tunnel. It was empty. We spread into combat formation and waited. Nothing happened.

I tried stamping on the ground. Nothing.

The Ultimate Magus made a Perform (Morris Dancing) check. Still nothing.

DM: “You feel that something is wrong.”
Me: “Like what?”
DM: “Like the fact that you’ve been here making noise for ten minutes and the worm hasn’t eaten you yet.”
Me: “I try going to the tunnel mouth to look out.”
DM: “Make a Reflex save.”
Me: “Oh, for-” *fail*
DM: “You take 77 fire damage from the dragon’s breath. It was just above the tunnel waiting for someone stupid enough to stick their head out.”
Me: “That thing is REALLY starting to get on my nerves.”

We backed off down the tunnel with our weapons trained on the entrance and the dragon didn’t follow. We didn’t want to follow it out into the dust storm and it wasn’t following us down the tunnel, so we cast teleport and left yet again.


Plans

Back in the capital we got some bad news. The remaining two portals had “hatched” as well. The city’s spellcasters had received differing signals from both, but through research and divinations, the upshot of it was:

• The three remaining Guardians are all on their way here. They’re heading for the Raver’s prison, but since the prison is somewhere beneath or around the kingdom’s capital city, they’ll be going through it on their way.
• The first one won’t be arriving for at least 24 hours, but anything longer than that is anybody’s guess.

In short, we’re in trouble. We can only barely take on one of these things, and now we’ve got three to deal with. More to the point, we’ve no easy way of finding them before they find us.

On top of that, the Duke also told us that reports of disappearances and strange events from the surrounding villages are getting worse. This is bad news because last time the Raver/Daeklyr showed up, it had the ability to create minions out of native creatures.

In the end we came up with a few plans for the next day, and decided to investigate the village disappearances in the meantime. We caught a teleportation circle lift to the nearest easily accessible village, and started sniffing around.

It was pretty late by this point, so we didn’t get to do much more. The village was small and nondescript, and the villagers were close-mouthed and scared; lots of people were disappearing and they were afraid that they might be next if they talked. After some investigation the Ultimate Magus managed to turn up some evidence pointing to the nearby graveyard, so we went there. Once there we discovered a statue to a god of death radiating deific-level magic, and a set of non-human tracks leading between the statue and the river.

Lacking any better plan, we decided to do a stake-out: the Ranger would hide near the statue while the rest of us would withdraw further away. The Archivist cast an alarm and we settled down for the night to see what would happen, and at that point we finished for the night.


Loot and XP

Even though we got no XP from the dragon or Guardian encounters (not having defeated them) we’d earned a ton of experience and treasure from all the giants we slaughtered. I dinged up to 13th-level, and the Archivist and Ranger both hit 12th.

We’re starting to encounter an issue with treasure, now, however: we all earned about 16,000 gp from gold and sold items, but we no longer have any major magic items we can spend it on. We can’t go shopping for items, because anything we want is so incredibly expensive that it’s very unlikely a shopkeeper will just happen to have one of them sitting around, and if we put in an order for it to be custom-made, it’s likely that the world is going to end before we can collect our merchandise. It’s the standard problem PCs hit when they reach the point where they’re the highest-level characters around, but in our case it’s more of an issue because from now on, every day counts.

With this in mind, the Archivist and I were talking about alternative ways to spend our cash. He’s now an 11th-level Archivist, which means he gets access to 6th-level cleric spells, one of which is Planar Ally. For my part, I was able to find a few scrolls of Lesser Planar Binding, and now we’re thinking of enlisting some outsiders as allies.

As a 13th-level sorcerer I get new 4th-, 5th-, and 6th-level spells. For my 4th-level spell I was tempted by Assay Spell Resistance, but I’m probably going to go with Orb of Force. My 6th-level spell is almost definitely going to be Superior Resistance so I can spam it on the party non-casters. For my 5th-level spell, I had been planning to take Wall of Force, but now I’m seriously considering taking Lesser Planar Binding, just so I can recruit a bunch of allies to do the jobs we don’t have time to manage.

Either way, it should be interesting!

Eldariel
2010-05-02, 01:12 PM
For level 5, have you considered Scrying, Contact Other Plane or another means of locating the Guardians? Seems that's a rather immediate matter and any magic that could help you locate them would be incredibly valuable. Also, seems like a tough start for the Ultimate Magus. I love it :smallbiggrin:

But there's a few Contingencies that could work. It's possible to generate Contingent Revivify or even, through Craft Contingent Spell, Resurrection-type. Or just Clone. That's all high-level magic though, but it's not entirely out of the real of possibility.

Saph
2010-05-02, 01:19 PM
For level 5, have you considered Scrying, Contact Other Plane or another means of locating the Guardians? Seems that's a rather immediate matter and any magic that could help you locate them would be incredibly valuable.

The Druid and Archivist can both do Scrying, so I'm inclined to leave that to them. CoP is just too dangerous and unreliable, and honestly my Commune ability is capable of handling most of our question-answering needs. What we really need are some scouts. I'm thinking maybe Lantern Archons.

Deth Muncher
2010-05-02, 01:35 PM
Wow, I must be psychic or something. I was thinking to myself "Hm, I bet Saph updated today...' And here we are.

Anyway, so. You've got more money than you know what to do with. I like the idea of enlisting extraplanar allies. See if you can get a 20th level Monk. :D Anyway, your hoards of treasure could now be used to pay dragons too, y'know. Draconomicon has rules for enlisting the aid of dragons. Alternatively, see if you can pay off Big Red?

Darkxarth
2010-05-02, 02:07 PM
Lots of bad luck, and it really is a shame you couldn't get the stubborn Fire Giants to help, but at least you harvested them for gold and XP, which is nice, too.

What other types of Guardians are you expecting? You've faced the Ice monster and you know what the Fire/(Earth?) monster is. There's probably a giant flying creature with Lightning attacks (maybe a modded Elder Arrowhawk?) and then I would bet on a humanoid of some kind (not the Type humanoid, just something bipedal with at least 2 arms and at least 1 head).

Deth Muncher had a good idea about paying off Dragons. Why not contact That One Dragon one more time and see if you can pay it to assist? Of course, the third time might be the final straw that makes it decide to hunt you down, so... maybe not. As for fighting the Black and Red Worm, it sounds like the magma breath is powerful, but you already have Mass Resist Energy. What you really need is some Sovereign Glue to glue its maw shut so it can't eat anyone. Or maybe just a ton of animals to serve as bait...? You all fly/hover in the air and let the animals bring the Worm out of the ground, then do your thing.

Eldariel
2010-05-02, 02:14 PM
The Druid and Archivist can both do Scrying, so I'm inclined to leave that to them. CoP is just too dangerous and unreliable, and honestly my Commune ability is capable of handling most of our question-answering needs. What we really need are some scouts. I'm thinking maybe Lantern Archons.

Good choice, though any Outsider with Greater Teleport At Will would probably work quite well. The lower planes in particular are full of those, even at the Lesser range. Bearded Devil is a fine choice, for example, as is Hound Archon (and indeed, Lantern Archon).

I'm personally of the school that finds the risk of CoP worth it (even without the Take 10 option), but as it'd take scrolls (of e.g. Improvisation) to ensure auto-success, I can see why you wouldn't want to burn resources on it. It's a great source of otherwise-impossible-to-acquire info though.

Saph
2010-05-02, 02:38 PM
What other types of Guardians are you expecting? You've faced the Ice monster and you know what the Fire/(Earth?) monster is. There's probably a giant flying creature with Lightning attacks (maybe a modded Elder Arrowhawk?) and then I would bet on a humanoid of some kind (not the Type humanoid, just something bipedal with at least 2 arms and at least 1 head).

The other possibility is that each Guardian is themed after the portal. So the Aboleth portal was illusion and cold, so we got a giant cold-subtype Displacer Beast. The Fire Giant portal was earth and fire, so we got a fire-breathing Purple Worm.

The desert portal was negative-energy themed, so some sort of undead? Maybe a Nightwing? And the Arborea portal was nature- and fey-themed. No idea what the Guardian from that will be.


Deth Muncher had a good idea about paying off Dragons. Why not contact That One Dragon one more time and see if you can pay it to assist? Of course, the third time might be the final straw that makes it decide to hunt you down, so... maybe not. As for fighting the Black and Red Worm, it sounds like the magma breath is powerful, but you already have Mass Resist Energy. What you really need is some Sovereign Glue to glue its maw shut so it can't eat anyone. Or maybe just a ton of animals to serve as bait...? You all fly/hover in the air and let the animals bring the Worm out of the ground, then do your thing.

The big problem with burrowing creatures is that it's really hard to force them to fight you unless they want to. I think my character could tank the Nomming Worm if I had to, but the problem is that it could just burrow back into the ground whenever the fight stops going its way.

As for the big red dragon, we're starting to wonder if it might be under some sort of compulsion. It's acting kind of weird for a dragon, and didn't talk to us when it had the chance.


Good choice, though any Outsider with Greater Teleport At Will would probably work quite well. The lower planes in particular are full of those, even at the Lesser range. Bearded Devil is a fine choice, for example, as is Hound Archon (and indeed, Lantern Archon).

Hound Archons are the other possibility. I'm wary of picking any Evil-aligned creature as there's too great a chance of them subverting orders or screwing things up just because they can. I figure if I pick Good-aligned creatures and pay them something we'll probably be safer.

I actually thought about taking Greater Planar Binding for my 6th-level spell, but decided it was probably more trouble than it was worth - outsiders with 12 HD are likely to be too dangerous to safely bind.

Eldariel
2010-05-02, 02:59 PM
The big problem with burrowing creatures is that it's really hard to force them to fight you unless they want to. I think my character could tank the Nomming Worm if I had to, but the problem is that it could just burrow back into the ground whenever the fight stops going its way.

You could just try to gain burrow-speed for the lot of you along with Tremorsense; I can't think of it off-hand, but there are spells for that. It could even the odds quite a bit. Polymorph if nothing else, though I'm sure you're intentionally avoiding that.


Hound Archons are the other possibility. I'm wary of picking any Evil-aligned creature as there's too great a chance of them subverting orders or screwing things up just because they can. I figure if I pick Good-aligned creatures and pay them something we'll probably be safer.

Well, it's forcefully bound and compelled to obey so there shouldn't really be all that much difference between Good and Evil (though I suppose, if you make a Good Outsider understand the gravity of the situation, it could willfully help you).

Besides, as long as there's a bit in it for the Evil Outsider, particularly a Lawful one should be pretty reliable; after all, they're all about ends and don't really mind some servitude to get something they really desire. I've always been partial for Devils, though I suppose the risks are greater for a Sorc than a Wizard due to the inability to outwit them consistently...but on the other hand, with your force of personality, you can just make them want to serve you :smallwink:


I actually thought about taking Greater Planar Binding for my 6th-level spell, but decided it was probably more trouble than it was worth - outsiders with 12 HD are likely to be too dangerous to safely bind.

I take you mean Planar Binding? 'cause Greater is a level 8 spell. But yeah, on the other hand, there's little matching a Glabrezu for power in what you can gain on these levels. Risky? Absolutely! Powerful? Without a doubt! Scrolls could be the most convenient if they happen to exist in any relevant amount, frankly; it's not like you plan on casting Planar Bindings too often. As a Sorcerer, again, Charisma-checks and Charm Monster are your bread and butter so I'd definitely think about it.

Saph
2010-05-02, 03:48 PM
Well, it's forcefully bound and compelled to obey so there shouldn't really be all that much difference between Good and Evil (though I suppose, if you make a Good Outsider understand the gravity of the situation, it could willfully help you).

Besides, as long as there's a bit in it for the Evil Outsider, particularly a Lawful one should be pretty reliable; after all, they're all about ends and don't really mind some servitude to get something they really desire. I've always been partial for Devils, though I suppose the risks are greater for a Sorc than a Wizard due to the inability to outwit them consistently...but on the other hand, with your force of personality, you can just make them want to serve you :smallwink:

It's still kind of asking for trouble. Forcefully bound doesn't mean helpful; they might have to obey the letter of your commands, but there's nothing stopping them from deliberate misinterpretation or taking actions that they know are going to make things worse in the long run. I think it's ultimately safer to have servants that aren't opposed to everything you stand for. :P

Darkxarth
2010-05-02, 04:22 PM
The other possibility is that each Guardian is themed after the portal. So the Aboleth portal was illusion and cold, so we got a giant cold-subtype Displacer Beast. The Fire Giant portal was earth and fire, so we got a fire-breathing Purple Worm.

The desert portal was negative-energy themed, so some sort of undead? Maybe a Nightwing? And the Arborea portal was nature- and fey-themed. No idea what the Guardian from that will be.

Oh. Right... duh.

There are a couple of powerful, evil Fey creatures (I am think of Verdant Prince, CR 10) that could be further enhanced with class levels. More likely, though, it'll be something big. Like an Oaken Defender or an Advanced Treant with Fire Immunity.


The big problem with burrowing creatures is that it's really hard to force them to fight you unless they want to. I think my character could tank the Nomming Worm if I had to, but the problem is that it could just burrow back into the ground whenever the fight stops going its way.

As for the big red dragon, we're starting to wonder if it might be under some sort of compulsion. It's acting kind of weird for a dragon, and didn't talk to us when it had the chance.

But how intelligent is this creature? Enough to deliberately avoid a horde of helpless, delicious animals on the off chance that it might be an elaborate trap on the part of a group of high-level mortals? If yes, then I'd start looking for a burrowing monster of your own to summon/ride.


Hound Archons are the other possibility. I'm wary of picking any Evil-aligned creature as there's too great a chance of them subverting orders or screwing things up just because they can. I figure if I pick Good-aligned creatures and pay them something we'll probably be safer.

I actually thought about taking Greater Planar Binding for my 6th-level spell, but decided it was probably more trouble than it was worth - outsiders with 12 HD are likely to be too dangerous to safely bind.

Yeah, I agree with you here. Go for something Good-aligned. Even if they are irked about being bound ("We are in the middle of a war up there!") at least they won't stab you in the back if you make a deal.

LordShotGun
2010-05-02, 04:51 PM
"This is a duck hunt"

I laughed at this line. Anyway, it seems like you have enough spells to nutralize just about any kind of elemental damage so the fire worm doesnt seem like it would be a challange once you prepair for it. Maybe with a few of your other teammates the fights would go better, (or worse knowing thier track record)

Eldariel
2010-05-02, 04:51 PM
It's still kind of asking for trouble. Forcefully bound doesn't mean helpful; they might have to obey the letter of your commands, but there's nothing stopping them from deliberate misinterpretation or taking actions that they know are going to make things worse in the long run. I think it's ultimately safer to have servants that aren't opposed to everything you stand for. :P

True. The point I was making though is that Good creatures, when forcefully bound, may do exactly the same. I mean, no sentient being takes well to enslavement, which is why I generally prefer creatures of opposed alignments; feels more ethical to only steal the self-control of those not on your side.

If Charmed, the Devils tend to work quite in your favor anyways, and as Charm lasts as long as Binding, all you need is to get them Charmed while in the Summoning Circle. Though of course, if things go well with the binding and the Archon understands its necessity, chances are he'll become a willing ally. As you will.


There are a couple of powerful, evil Fey creatures (I am think of Verdant Prince, CR 10) that could be further enhanced with class levels. More likely, though, it'll be something big. Like an Oaken Defender or an Advanced Treant with Fire Immunity.

There's of course Master of the Wild Hunt as far as tough Fey goes; default is CR22, but a bit of a drop in its efficiency would make it a frightening boss. Given they already faced a Ragewalker, chances are the Guardian is going to be something even meaner. It could also be some of the tougher plants like Ironmaw.

Darkxarth
2010-05-02, 05:11 PM
There's of course Master of the Wild Hunt as far as tough Fey goes; default is CR22, but a bit of a drop in its efficiency would make it a frightening boss. Given they already faced a Ragewalker, chances are the Guardian is going to be something even meaner. It could also be some of the tougher plants like Ironmaw.

My guess, though, is that it will also be something pretty enormous. The Doom Kitty was Gargantuan, the Nomming Dark is Gargantuan, and the Nightwing and Nightwalker (both likely candidates) are already Huge. The Master is only Large, and he doesn't really seem like the kind of monster that makes sense with a size increase. That being said, enormous Plant monsters aren't necessarily it either, but I think they're more likely than inexplicably large Fey. The only way to know is to wait and see.

Saph
2010-05-02, 05:30 PM
True. The point I was making though is that Good creatures, when forcefully bound, may do exactly the same. I mean, no sentient being takes well to enslavement, which is why I generally prefer creatures of opposed alignments; feels more ethical to only steal the self-control of those not on your side.

Well, my current plan is to ask them if they're willing to help in exchange for payment and send them back if they're not. Since I've got a huge Charisma modifier, I figure I've got a reasonable chance of getting at least one or two.


My guess, though, is that it will also be something pretty enormous. The Doom Kitty was Gargantuan, the Nomming Dark is Gargantuan, and the Nightwing and Nightwalker (both likely candidates) are already Huge. The Master is only Large, and he doesn't really seem like the kind of monster that makes sense with a size increase. That being said, enormous Plant monsters aren't necessarily it either, but I think they're more likely than inexplicably large Fey. The only way to know is to wait and see.

The DM's said that they're all likely to be similar: giant deadly melee monsters, advanced versions of normal kinds with a bunch of extra HD and some special abilities added on. The one advantage we have so far is that the two we've met so far are relatively unintelligent.

I'm guessing that at least one will be a flier, so maybe some sort of flying fey or undead with loads of extra Hit Dice. They also have to be able to move at reasonable speeds, but not too fast - if they could teleport or cross the continent in a day they'd be here already, and if they're too slow they wouldn't have been picked as guardians in the first place.

Fizban
2010-05-07, 05:58 PM
I'm sure you already know the power of Planar Ally, but I just wanted to mention here that a Trumpet Archon has 12 HD, casts as a 14th level cleric, and can be your mook for nearly two weeks at the low low price of a 6th level spell slot, 250xp, and 12,000gp. Since it was called and paid for, it shouldn't be taking a share of the loot or xp, and being a good creature might not even charge full price.

For your own spells and scroll buying, might I suggest Dragon Ally? None of the pitfalls of forcing the creature to work for you, and much sturdier than the lower HD good outsiders that might more willing to help. Dragons actually charge less money than outsiders per HD, but the spells have a higher HD capacity to...make up for it? Considering your success at buffing routines, a nice dragon tank and a Trumper Archon for an extra set of clerical buffs should be pretty effective.

Saph
2010-05-09, 11:45 AM
Episode 15: Side Trip


This week’s highlights!

The party was my Sorcerer, the Druid, the Ranger, the Archivist, and the Wizard/Sorcerer/Ultimate Magus from last week (currently reincarnated in elf form). At the beginning of the session we were staking out a graveyard which we suspected had something to do with the recent outbreak of disappearances. The Ranger hid in the graveyard, while the rest of us went to sleep in the forest nearby.


Creepy Rituals ‘R’ Us

At about midnight a procession of cloaked and hooded cultists wearing tentacle masks coming out of their faces entered the graveyard with a chained up, half-naked prisoner. At the same time two tall things with tentacles coming from their face and one very large thing with tentacles coming from its face emerged from the river and headed for the procession.

We briefly considered approaching them politely, before deciding it was unlikely to work.

I dropped a confusion into the middle of the cultists. The cultists started gibbering and running in all directions. The two tentacle-faces river stopped, fireballed most of the cultists and the prisoner (destroying the evidence), turned, and started running back towards the river. Me and the Ranger went chasing after the tentacle trio. The larger tentacle thing mind blasted us, the Ranger shot it to death, and the two medium-sized tentacle things dived into the river. She searched upriver, I searched down. With a high Spot check I managed to spot the two tentacle-faces swimming beneath the surface, and dived into the water right next to them.

DM: “The two creatures look at you, then swim away.”
Me: “I attack of opportunity them!”
DM: “With what?”
Me: “I grapple them!”
DM: “ . . . okay, you provoke attacks of opportunity from them, and they grapple you.”
Me: “I grab them first!”
DM: “Roll a grapple check.”
Me: “No, I’m grappling them, they have to roll a grapple check.”
DM: “It’s . . . oh, forget it. You successfully get into a grapple with two things with tentacles, go you.”

On my turn I dimension doored up into the sky and yelled for the ranger, the ranger moved up and shot one of the tentacle things while it was still underwater, and the last one plane shifted away. Battle over.

If you’re wondering where everyone else was while this was going on, the Druid was on his way and catching up, and the Archivist and Ultimate Magus, in an epic battle, and after expending several spells and many rounds of effort, successfully managed to subdue and knock unconscious two confused CR 0 commoners. While the Archivist started dissecting the bodies I went back to sleep so that I could re-prepare spells next morning.

One hour later, I get woken up again by the Archivist. He announces that he’d identified the tentacled thing as a mind flayer, the larger tentacled thing as a half-illithid chuul, and using a speak with dead spell he’d identified that the aberrations had a base in the bottom of a nearby lake.

Me: “Is this anything that needs my attention right now?”
Archivist: “We’re planning to explore the lake tomorrow morning.”
Me: “Then I’m going back to sleep.”

Three hours later, I get woken up again.

Me: “NOW what?”
Ranger: “Random encounter.”


I Shall Love Him And Hug Him And Call Him George

We were using the same random encounter generator as last time. This time it threw out a CR 10 Huge Advanced Rhinoceros, ridden by a CR 6 Gnoll Sorcerer, and accompanied by a CR 6 Huge Advanced Ankheg.

The Ranger shot the Gnoll to death in a single round, the Ultimate Magus and the Druid fried the Ankheg, and I refused to get out of bed and tried to get back to sleep. The rhino charged. The druid cast an antilife shell. We sat around next to the druid watching the rhino bounce ineffectively off the spell’s radius. The Ranger then used Wild Empathy on it, rolled a 30, and turned it friendly.

Ranger: *pets the rhino* “Awww! Who’s a good little rhino? Are you a good little rhino! Yes you are! Yes you ARE!”
DM: “This thing’s supposed to be a CR 10 monster! It has more HP than any two party members put together!”
Ranger: “He’s not a monster, he’s my friend!”
DM: *sigh* “Fine, if you’ve finished making a mockery of this random encounter, let’s go ahead and-”
Archivist: “Let’s keep it!”
Ranger: “I use Handle Animal. I’m going to ride it!”
DM: “ . . . What.”
Ranger: “Woohoo! I have an epic mount!”
Archivist: “Can she turn it into her animal companion?”
DM: “NO! It has 23 hit dice!”
Ranger: “Can we take him with us tomorrow? We could give him water breathing.”
DM: “No! It’s an unintelligent animal! It can’t-”
Archivist: “What if we cast Awaken on it?”
Druid: “Hey, yeah, I can cast that spell.”
DM: “GAH!”
Druid: “I’d have to make a really high will save . . .”
Archivist: “That’s okay, we could buff it up before you made the roll.”
Ranger: “Yay! We have to awaken Woderick!”
DM: “Woderick?”
Ranger: “That’s his name. Woderick the Whino.”
DM: *facepalm*
Me: “Can I go back to sleep now?”
DM: “No. There’s a 5-ton rhino being ridden up and down next to you. The earth’s shaking.”
Ranger: “Yaaay! Aiden, look!”
Me: *pulls pillow over head*

In the end I had to use a scroll of Rope Trick to get any sleep.


It’s Deeper Than It Looks

Next morning, after several hours delay from all the interruptions, we regained spells and walked the short distance to the lake. It looked completely empty. Everyone started discussing about which buffs to use and after 15 minutes I got bored and just jumped in.

DM: “Will save.”
Me: “Again?” *pass*
DM: “You see through the illusion. The lake is not empty. There’s a gigantic fish-shape with tentacles floating in the dark water.”
Me: *teleport back out to the shoreline* ”Guys!!”

The aboleth mage was in fact the same one we’d fought back in Episode 4. Just like last time, it was cloaked in layers of illusions - the trouble was, this time we didn’t have someone with true seeing. The lake was covered with an illusion, the underwater ruins were layered with illusions, the aboleth we could see was itself an illusion (project image) and the actual aboleth was hiding somewhere behind yet another illusion in one of the hundreds of hiding places within the lake.

The battle was a bit of a fiasco. Since we had absolutely no way of finding the aboleth, all we could really do was sit there while it unloaded its SLAs and shadowcaster abilities on us. The Ranger got dominated by a true enslave effect and was ordered to kill the Ultimate Magus. He tried to hit her with a protection from evil. It didn’t work and she shot him into negatives. The Aboleth dropped an AoE lightning blast on the area, killing the Ultimate Magus. The Archivist last breathed the Ultimate Magus and brought him back as a dwarf. The Aboleth decided that killing negative-HP PCs was great fun and blasted the area with another AoE, killing the Ultimate Magus again. The Archivist brought the Ultimate Magus back yet again with revivify.

Archivist: “Honestly, old boy, just how many times to I have to do this?”
Me: “That’s the fourth time in as many days! You might as well reattach his head with Velcro at this rate!”
Archivist: “Well, this is the absolute last time. So you’d better not die again!”

In the meantime I’d managed to break the Ranger’s dominate effect with a resurgence, in between soaking up cold, lightning, and Wisdom-damage attacks from the aboleth. The druid had been doing circuits of the lake trying and failing to locate the aboleth with blindsense, and finally gave up, returned, and dropped an obscuring mist spell to allow the party on the shore to retreat.

In the end the aboleth retreated. This was not so much because we were threatening it as because it’d run out of uses of its daily abilities to attack us with. We decided to follow up and chase the thing, so while the other PCs stayed on shore the druid and I swam down into the lake to try and find the entrance to the underground base. We found it, behind one of the several dozen illusionary walls. We also found the ten-headed hydra that was guarding it.


High-Level D&D Combats Can Be A Little Weird

Surprise Round: Druid summons orca whale. Hydra breathes 30d6 acid for 117 damage to all three of us. Orca whale dies.

First Round: I empowered belker claws the hydra, druid attacks for 20ish damage, hydra attacks us ten times and misses ten times.

Second Round: I empowered belker claws the hydra again, druid uses a breath attack on hydra, hydra attacks us ten times and misses nine times.

Third Round: I empowered unicorn arrow the hydra. Hydra by this point has taken (10d12)*1.5 damage from my belker claws plus (4d8+32)*1.5 damage from the unicorn arrow plus some extra from the druid. It dies.

After that brief excitement, we went to fetch the rest of the party then swum down the tunnel after the aboleth.


Skum and Villany

The aboleth had mobilised thirty CR 2 skum (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/skum.htm) who attacked us as we entered the base. We killed them all in three rounds. It was a ‘mice trying to stop a rhino’ setup.

Once again, the aboleth had spammed illusionary walls everywhere in the room. We poked around and managed to find a tunnel downwards. The druid and the ranger failed their saves to disbelieve and decided it wasn’t there.

Me: “This way. Who’s going first?”
Ranger: “But that’s a stone floor.”
Me: “It’s another illusionary wall. Look.” *takes Ranger’s hand and puts it through the stone*
Ranger: *fails save again* “Ahh! Don’t do that!”
Me: “Don’t do what?”
Ranger: “I don’t know, whatever magic stuff you use to do that.”
Ultimate Magus: “Oh, step aside. I’ll do it.” *pokes Druid’s hand through illusion*
Druid: *natural 1 on will save and starts laughing* “I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s the floor.”
Me: “Gah! You just went through it!”
Druid: “Okay, okay, so you can cast meld into stone. There’s no need to show off.”
Me: “There’s no stone!”
Druid: “Listen, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to stone, and I’m telling you that’s real stone.”
Me: “Arrgh! Watch!” *stick head through illusion*
DM: “You stick your head through and find yourself looking down into darkness. The darkness attacks you. Make a Reflex save.”
Me: *succeed!*
DM: “You avoid being engulfed by the darkness.”
Me: *pulling my head up out of the floor* “Ah! I got attacked by the darkness!”
Ultimate Magus: “ . . . the what?”
Me: “The darkness! Through the invisible floor! It attacked me!”
Druid: “You know, I think you’re starting to lose it.”


Munch Munch

The darkness - aka an elder black pudding (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ooze.htm#BlackPudding) - popped up in the middle of the party and attacked. The Ranger shot it. It split into two Elder Black Puddings and started clobbering the party.

One of the puddings grabbed the Ultimate Magus and engulfed him. He failed his Concentration check to cast while grappled, and next turn, the pudding dissolved everything on the Ultimate Magus’ body, including his clothes, armour, backpack, and spellbook (in the backpack). The Ultimate Magus’ player crumpled up his character sheet, threw it at the DM’s head, and started working on a new character.

The game was put on brief hiatus.

Once normal service resumed, I killed the puddings with a pair of wings of flurry spells, revealing the Ultimate Magus’ floating body. Pazuzu appeared, stabbed the Ultimate Magus through the stomach, tearing out his devil-symbiote-familiar thing and doing just enough damage to drop him to negatives but not actually kill him, waved at us, and teleported out.

Yes, that last part was serious. No, I have no idea what’s going on by this point either. I suppose that at least gives some explanation as to how the Ultimate Magus survived getting bitten in half last session.

And at this point it was almost 10pm, so we packed it in for the night.


Cleaning Up

We gained a respectable amount of treasure from the session, though not so much XP - all the encounters bar the aboleth were under our party level.
We still haven’t had our chance to carry out our planar binding/planar ally plan. I’m intending to planar bind a bunch of lantern archons, the Archivist is planning to planar ally a Trumpet Archon and have everyone pool their money to buy it’s services.
The Ultimate Magus got his equipment back, though it was damaged. I think the DM is just making up the consequences of the Ultimate Magus’ deaths as he goes along by now, probably because he’s finding the character’s lemming-like death procession amusing.

Unfortunately, however, my law exams are now starting in a little over a week’s time. So this week’s campaign journal is going to be the last one for a good month (since I’ve got a ton of revision to get back to). Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up once June rolls around and my exams are over . . . but until then, this is going on hiatus. Sorry! :smallsmile:

Dusk Eclipse
2010-05-09, 11:53 AM
I have to say it, I LOVE the random encounters.... and I am sorry to hear you have to stop the campaing journal for while, but nevermind it is for an important reason, good luck in your exams.

The Glyphstone
2010-05-09, 12:06 PM
And a month-long hiatus should be just long enough for the ranger to train Wodwick to serve as a mount, right?

Eldariel
2010-05-09, 12:24 PM
Hilarious session! I absolutely loved reading through that one. Though I'm betting the UM is getting slightly vexed by now. Aiming character sheets at DM is a rather dead giveaway. Ever suggested he use some more defensive magicks?

By the way, what was the Rhino doing while you were exploring the lake? Or what became of it in general?


And yeah, lots of the quotes were absolutely hilarious today. Also, this goes to show why an illusionist can be a bothersome opponent, and why Aboleths underwater are somewhat bothersome.

Grimlock
2010-05-09, 12:35 PM
Dear God I love Reading this! It is hilarious!

Saph
2010-05-09, 12:59 PM
Hilarious session! I absolutely loved reading through that one. Though I'm betting the UM is getting slightly vexed by now. Aiming character sheets at DM is a rather dead giveaway. Ever suggested he use some more defensive magicks?

The amusing thing is that he got more upset about losing his equipment than he did about being killed four times. D&D is weird like that.


By the way, what was the Rhino doing while you were exploring the lake? Or what became of it in general?

It got zapped at the start of the Aboleth combat, and the Ranger told it to run away. Just as well, really. If the Aboleth had True Enslaved it the results could have been ugly.

Deth Muncher
2010-05-09, 01:17 PM
...of course you would render the rhino harmless and befriend it. Why would I think anything different? WHY WOULD I THINK ANYTHING DIFFERENT? /Dr.McNinja

Draz74
2010-05-09, 02:59 PM
Wild Empathy Win. I'll never call it a useless ability again!

Saph
2010-05-10, 06:07 AM
Oh, and here's my current spell list:

0-level: Detect Magic, Message, a bunch of others I hardly ever use.
1st-level: Grease, True Strike, Shield, Protection from Evil, Benign Transposition
2nd-level: Glitterdust, Belker Claws, Wings of Cover, Luminous Armour, Resist Energy
3rd-level: Dragonskin, Heroism, Steeldance, Unicorn Arrow
4th-level: Wings of Flurry, Heart of Earth, Ruin Delver's Fortune, Orb of Force
5th-level: Arcane Fusion, Overland Flight, Lesser Planar Binding
6th-level: Disintegrate, Superior Resistance

Next, I've got a Runestaff (Magic Item Compendium) that gives me access to another 7 or so ray spells, of which scorching ray, ray of clumsiness, and targeting ray get the most use. I've also got a full set of the Raiment of the Four (also Magic Item Compendium) that gives me magic missile 3/day, fireball 3/day, freedom of movement 2/day, and teleport 2/day, as well as a useful commune ability.

Then I've got seven Knowstones which each add one spell to my spell list, notably ectoplasmic armour, lesser orb of acid, wings of swift flying, and knock.

Finally I've got the Fey Heritage feats from Complete Mage, which give me disguise self, deep slumber, charm monster, confusion, dimension door, and summon nature's ally V as SLAs usable 1/day each, which don't come out of my spell slots.

All told, I have about 60 spells that I can cast spontaneously, not counting scrolls and wands.

Deth Muncher
2010-05-17, 02:57 PM
Oh, and here's my current spell list:

0-level: Detect Magic, Message, a bunch of others I hardly ever use.
1st-level: Grease, True Strike, Shield, Protection from Evil, Benign Transposition
2nd-level: Glitterdust, Belker Claws, Wings of Cover, Luminous Armour, Resist Energy
3rd-level: Dragonskin, Heroism, Steeldance, Unicorn Arrow
4th-level: Wings of Flurry, Heart of Earth, Ruin Delver's Fortune, Orb of Force
5th-level: Arcane Fusion, Overland Flight, Lesser Planar Binding
6th-level: Disintegrate, Superior Resistance

Next, I've got a Runestaff (Magic Item Compendium) that gives me access to another 7 or so ray spells, of which scorching ray, ray of clumsiness, and targeting ray get the most use. I've also got a full set of the Raiment of the Four (also Magic Item Compendium) that gives me magic missile 3/day, fireball 3/day, freedom of movement 2/day, and teleport 2/day, as well as a useful commune ability.

Then I've got seven Knowstones which each add one spell to my spell list, notably ectoplasmic armour, lesser orb of acid, wings of swift flying, and knock.

Finally I've got the Fey Heritage feats from Complete Mage, which give me disguise self, deep slumber, charm monster, confusion, dimension door, and summon nature's ally V as SLAs usable 1/day each, which don't come out of my spell slots.

All told, I have about 60 spells that I can cast spontaneously, not counting scrolls and wands.

If you've got a bunch of spells you don't use, why not swap them out? You DO know that at every even level, you can swap out a spell of the highest level you can cast -1, right? Pick spells you want to use. I know lots of the spells you don't use are cantrips, but still, you can always swap out useless ones for fun ones like Stick or Acid Splash.

Draz74
2010-05-17, 03:16 PM
If you've got a bunch of spells you don't use, why not swap them out? You DO know that at every even level, you can swap out a spell of the highest level you can cast -1, right? Pick spells you want to use. I know lots of the spells you don't use are cantrips, but still, you can always swap out useless ones for fun ones like Stick or Acid Splash.

How do you know she doesn't already know Stick and Acid Splash? Saph's a much better Sorcerer player than most of us will ever be; I'm sure he picked cantrips intelligently. The point is that, even so, most of them don't come up that often.

Saph
2010-05-17, 03:29 PM
How do you know she doesn't already know Stick and Acid Splash? Saph's a much better Sorcerer player than most of us will ever be; I'm sure he picked cantrips intelligently. The point is that, even so, most of them don't come up that often.

:smallredface:

You've got it. Even with careful choice of cantrips, detect magic and message are about the only ones that I use much. And my retraining slots are all taken with higher-level spells.

Very brief highlights of Saturday's session (unfortunately I'm in the middle of exams, so don't have time for a writeup) are that we did the following:

Played Three Stooges with a bunch of blast glyphs in the aboleth's lair. "Which way should we go?" "That way." BANG! "No, that's trapped." "It's okay, I'll go back." "Wait! It's still-" BANG!
Had a Jaws-esque fight with the aboleth with the creature hiding behind and under illusionary walls.
Half the party were rendered unable to breathe water and the other half unable to breathe air. Hilarity ensued.
Convinced the local government to give us vast amounts of cash.
Went shopping in Sigil.
Came back and fought the third Guardian, otherwise known as Eye Eye.
Oh, and I got to use my Planar Binding spells. Turns out that Lantern Archons make awesome scouts. It's like having a bunch of spy satellites with a real-time feed.

Deth Muncher
2010-05-17, 03:57 PM
:smallredface:

You've got it. Even with careful choice of cantrips, detect magic and message are about the only ones that I use much. And my retraining slots are all taken with higher-level spells.

Very brief highlights of Saturday's session (unfortunately I'm in the middle of exams, so don't have time for a writeup) are that we did the following:

Played Three Stooges with a bunch of blast glyphs in the aboleth's lair. "Which way should we go?" "That way." BANG! "No, that's trapped." "It's okay, I'll go back." "Wait! It's still-" BANG!
Had a Jaws-esque fight with the aboleth with the creature hiding behind and under illusionary walls.
Half the party were rendered unable to breathe water and the other half unable to breathe air. Hilarity ensued.
Convinced the local government to give us vast amounts of cash.
Went shopping in Sigil.
Came back and fought the third Guardian, otherwise known as Eye Eye.
Oh, and I got to use my Planar Binding spells. Turns out that Lantern Archons make awesome scouts. It's like having a bunch of spy satellites with a real-time feed.

Sigil, like, Planescape Sigil? Like Lady of Pain Sigil? Like City of Portals Sigil?

arguskos
2010-05-17, 03:58 PM
Sigil, like, Planescape Sigil? Like Lady of Pain Sigil? Like City of Portals Sigil?
No, like, Fishstick Sigil. YES THAT ONE. :smallannoyed::smalltongue:

There isn't another one, so I can only assume that Saph took a quick jaunt to The Cage for some shopping.

Deth Muncher
2010-05-17, 04:01 PM
No, like, Fishstick Sigil. YES THAT ONE. :smallannoyed::smalltongue:

There isn't another one, so I can only assume that Saph took a quick jaunt to The Cage for some shopping.

Aw, I wanted a magic fishstick... :smallsigh::smallwink:

arguskos
2010-05-17, 04:03 PM
Aw, I wanted a magic fishstick... :smallsigh::smallwink:
THOON IS ALL! ALL IS THOON!
THOON THOON THOON

The Glyphstone
2010-05-17, 04:55 PM
Thooooooooooooooon....

arguskos
2010-05-17, 05:13 PM
Thooooooooooooooon....
Thoon is all!
http://cm1.theinsider.com/thumbnail/400/456/cm1.theinsider.com/media/0/111/0/david-beckham-fish-sticks.jpg

Ok, sorry Saph, we'll stop this now. Also, whenever you get the time to post up the next episode, I'm sure we'll be all over it like white on rice. :smallamused:

Malbordeus
2010-05-18, 03:52 PM
its vaguely better than ...

Charlie... CHARLIEEEEEEE Come to candy mountain Charlie... *shudder*

Math_Mage
2010-05-18, 06:54 PM
Thoon is all!
<snip>

Ok, sorry Saph, we'll stop this now. Also, whenever you get the time to post up the next episode, I'm sure we'll be all over it like white on rice. :smallamused:

What if Saph serves brown rice or fried rice or perhaps couscous? :smalltongue:

Redrat2k6
2010-05-18, 11:22 PM
I envy your sorcerer knowledge Saph.

I've read treantmonk's spell list suggestions, but I have to ask...

If you could only have PHB spells, what would they be.

Deth Muncher
2010-05-19, 12:53 AM
I envy your sorcerer knowledge Saph.

I've read treantmonk's spell list suggestions, but I have to ask...

If you could only have PHB spells, what would they be.

Check out the link in my signature to Solo's Stupendous Sorceror Stratagems.

Saph
2010-05-29, 06:36 PM
Just a note that I haven't forgotten about the journal, I'm just in exam season and way too busy to do the long writeups. :smallwink:

We just finished what'll probably be the penultimate session of the campaign today. It involved lots of golems, a vast collection of weird monsters, a friendly pyrohydra, and my (supposedly) Good-aligned character ended up enslaving an angel (I did have a good excuse, honest). My exams finish in a couple weeks, so I'll try to catch up and narrate the final section of the campaign then!

Malbordeus
2010-05-31, 12:41 PM
the fact you turned yourself into an aboleth to do it kinda kills the good aligned excuse :P

Exterminatus
2010-05-31, 12:47 PM
Polymorph any Object shenanigans or Shapechange shenanigans?

Deth Muncher
2010-06-07, 11:48 PM
How go exams, Saph?

Saph
2010-06-08, 04:17 AM
All done!

Now where were we . . .

XiaoTie
2010-06-08, 05:39 AM
Brace for epic-awesome-final chapters!

Greenish
2010-06-08, 05:49 AM
Brace for epic-awesome-final chapters!*braces* Puttin' mah goggles on! :smallcool:

Grimlock
2010-06-08, 06:10 AM
All done!

Now where were we . . .


Woohoo!

I've been looking forward to this!

Saph
2010-06-08, 08:16 AM
Episode 16: Shopping in the Cage


The Ultimate Magus didn’t show up for this week’s session, so it was just our ‘core’ party - the Ranger, the Druid, the Assassin, the Archivist, and me. The Assassin and the Druid were late for the session, so to begin with it was just the three of us.

My Sorcerer, the Ranger, and the Archivist picked up the session underwater in the Aboleth Mage’s lair, having just taken out an elder black pudding.


The Three Stooges Go Aberration Hunting

We went down the underwater tunnel to find a passageway with two doors. I opened one. A Blast Glyph (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/glyphofwarding.htm) blew up in my face. We moved on and found steps leading upwards into an area with air. The Archivist stuck his head up out of the water and ate two Mind Blasts from a pair of Mind Flayers who’d been sitting there waiting for us.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG187.jpg
I teleported up into the room, landed on another Blast Glyph, and got explodinated again. An Arcane Fusion blew apart one of the Mind Flayers, and the other fled. I pursued it through a doorway, triggered yet another Blast Glyph, and fell straight through an illusionary floor into a Huge Gibbering Mouther.

Me: “Is there a single room in this place that ISN’T trapped?”
DM: “They’re aboleths. They get to do illusions and glyphs at will, how do you think they spend their free time?”
Archivist: “I use my Dark Knowledge.”
Ranger: “I’ll get up out of the water so I can shoot the thing next turn.”
DM: “Will saves against the gibbering.”
Ranger: *rolls a 1* “Oh come ON!”
DM: “Yay, we get to look up the Confusion chart!”
Me: “You know, thinking about it, has there been a single session where you haven’t been mindganked by a Will save?”
DM: “That’s what you get when you have the highest DPS and the lowest Will in the same character.”

The Mouther couldn’t hit my AC and I shredded it with steeldance spells. While the Ranger recovered, the Archivist ran through into the next room and into yet another Blast Glyph and four more mind blasts. The remaining Mind Flayers had made a last stand to protect their pool of tadpoles. I flew in, cast two Wings of Flurry spells, and there were no more mind flayers.

We were discussing what to do with the pool of illithid tadpoles, when we heard a BANG! from below.

Archivist: “I guess the rest of our party showed up.”
Assassin (calling from the other room): “Hey guys!”
Me: “Wait, don’t come out of the water just yet. There’s a-”
BANG!
Me: “-never mind.”
Assassin: “We’ll catch up.”
Me: “NO! There’s another glyph leading in to the next room. And an illusionary floor.”
Assassin: “That’s okay, I’ll disable it.”
Assassin: *rolls a 1*
BANG!
Archivist: “Oh, I’ll go back and handle it.”
Me: “Wait, the entrance has got another-”
BANG!
Me: *facepalm*

Once the comedy sketch was over, we discussed what to do with the mind flayer tadpoles swimming in the pool of icky water. The Archivist tried casting Purify Water to turn the water crystal clear. It didn’t kill them. I threw my Dust of Dryness into the water (random magic item that I’d been wanting to use). It left them flopping around on the floor, but still didn’t kill them. Finally I just sent everyone out and fireballed the room. That did the trick.

We went back down into the water, and ran into the Aboleth Mage again.


Party Vs Aboleth, Round 3

Since this battle was at close quarters and the Aboleth had used up most of its direct attacks in the previous fight, it went a lot faster. The Aboleth popped up from beneath an illusionary floor and hit the Ranger, the Archivist, and the Druid with a super-powered break enchantment effect, dispelling 80% of their buffs. The Assassin was in amorphous form and so couldn’t do anything to hurt the creature. The Ranger tried to shoot it and got AoO-disarmed, then was dragged into its mucus cloud, failing her Fort save (though her anklets of translocation saved her from death). Although the Druid had lost most of his buff spells, he wild shaped into a combat form and leapt in. The Aboleth threw up an illusionary wall behind him, cutting off our line of sight, and in the two rounds that the rest of the party took to swim into combat range and get through it, it was all over. The Druid took a huge amount of damage and also failed his Fort save against the tentacle attacks, but he ripped the Aboleth to pieces.

After some hasty expenditure of all the party’s remaining high-level healing magic, the status of our party was:

• The Druid and Archivist could breathe air but couldn’t breathe water, due to having had their water breathing spells dispelled.
• The Ranger could breathe water but couldn’t breathe air, due to having been aboleth-mucused.
• My Sorcerer could breathe both water and air, since I’d been out of the dispel radius.
• The Assassin didn’t really care what he could breathe, as he was too busy laughing at everyone else.

With hindsight, it was lucky the Aboleth failed its dispel check against the Ranger’s water breathing, or she would have been unable to breathe water OR air. That would have been nasty to watch.

The Ranger and I went swimming, found the aboleth’s treasure, set off another trap or two, then the party just reassembled on the water’s edge and waited for the aboleth mucus to wear off. Once it did, we teleported home. There were still a couple junior aboleths running around, but we decided we’d spent enough time on this.


Outside Assistance

Back at the capital, we reported in to the Duke, then the Archivist and I requisitioned a villa outside the city to try out our new Calling spells. The Archivist went first and tried out Planar Ally. We’d been hoping for a Trumpet Archon. We got a Red Slaad instead. It took our money and then vanished after agreeing to terms.

My Lesser Planar Binding (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/planarbindinglesser.htm) was more effective. I called up three Lantern Archons (whom I named Lux, Blinky, and Flicker) and got them to agree to help us as scouts and messengers for 60 gold a day. Their first job was to go spy on the other portals. They blinked out and returned shortly.

Lux came back from the desert portal reporting that there was an army of undead milling around in the ruins of the shattered tomb. Something had also left the tomb, and gone through the desert nomad camp that we’d visited back in Episode 5. The desert nomads had been turned into dust, statues, or both.
Blinky came back from overseeing the fire giants to report that they were massing in an army. They seemed to be being led by a fire giant mounted on a huge red dragon.
Flicker reported that everything in the woods around the Arborea portal was dead. A line of villages between it and the capital was also dead. He also mentioned that every dead creature had had its eyes plucked out.
Me: “ . . . Well, that’s not incredibly creepy or anything. Start warning the villages next in line to evacuate, and report back if you run into any difficulty.”

While all this was going on, the Ranger had made a trip back to the lake to pick up Woderick and had him teleported to the capital. The Archivist, on the other hand, had gone to the Duke and made a long speech. It basically amounted to “Your country’s going to be destroyed, we’re your best hope of stopping it, so give us all your money.” He rolled a 40 or so on Diplomacy.

Amazingly, the Duke agreed. (Which is in itself pretty weird. Seriously, we’ve all played RPGs where we’re saving the world, right? You never get a blank cheque, even if it would make sense. Except this time we did.)

We got literal chests of cash, more than we could count. We later found out it came to about 100,000 gold each. There was literally no way we could spend that in the capital. We needed somewhere good for shopping. Like, REALLY good for shopping.

Conveniently, it just so happened that the Archivist had Plane Shift.

After some discussion it came down to a choice between the City of Brass and Sigil. We went for Sigil.


Shopping in the Cage

One Plane Shift to the Astral Plane and some pool-hunting later, we were in the Cage. According to the picture the DM showed us, it looks something like Halo except with city.
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs18/f/2007/194/6/d/Sigil_City_of_Doors_by_Fuflon_by_Deusuum.jpg

We got robbed almost immediately. Given the average level of thieves in Sigil, it’s real easy to lose your money. We lost about 20,000, but learned our lesson and switched our formation to one where several of us were watching every chest at all times. We made it to the shops, and went nuts with shopping.

Everyone bought a bunch of stat-increasing items - by the end of the first round of shopping we all had +6 stat boosts and several of us got even more than that. +5 cloaks of resistance were also standard. The Druid bought +5 Wild armour and a Monk’s Belt, the Assassin bought a luckstone and enough Dex-boosting stuff to kick his Dexterity up to 31, the Ranger got a new uber-bow, and the Archivist got some high-quality AC boosts and a whole bunch of scrolls. For my part I got a Strand of Prayer Beads, a few Knowstones, and for the final battles, a superweapon - five scrolls of Shapechange. (Yes, they’re one-shots. Yes, they go for 4,000 gp each plus a 1,500 gp focus. They’re still worth it.)

We geared up and Plane Shifted back, ready to kick some tail.


Preparations

According to my Communes, the first Guardian to reach the city would be the one from the forest portal. According to the Archivist’s Knowledge checks, the creature that matched the evidence we had most closely was a monster called an Ocularon: a large floating eyeball monster that could control the severed eyes of its victims, using them as prying eyes spells and also as exploding poison bombs.

My Lantern Archons told us that the thing was going from village to village, killing everything in its path. Unfortunately one of an Ocularon’s abilities is at-will invisibility, so they couldn’t spot it. The best we could do was get to the next village ahead of it and wait.

So that was what we did. We arrived at the village just in time to watch everyone clearing out in a panic. Once the village was deserted we got up onto the rooftops and waited.

After a while, we noticed the birds had gone quiet.

We started buffing. Once see invisibility was up we started seeing little floating things - eyeballs. The druid took the form of a small dragon and flew around, attacking them. He destroyed one or two, but the rest withdrew.

We waited some more. Still nothing.

We started scouting around. We saw some eyeballs. They were on the side of the village where the monster hadn’t been coming from.

Druid: “Oh, great.”
Ranger: “It’s gone around us, hasn’t it?”
DM: “This one’s intelligent, you know.”
Me: “If the mountain’s not going to come to the adventurers, I guess the adventurers are going to have to come to the mountain.” *cast Shapechange, turn into a Large Gold Dragon, turn around and look at the others* “Everyone who can’t fly, hop on my back.”

The druid and I took off, zooming towards the city. Our See Invisibility effects didn’t have enough range to pick the thing up for sure (turns out trying to find an invisible thing in three dimensions is kinda difficult) but with our huge dragon flight speeds, we were hoping to close on it faster than it could dodge. We found a cluster of eyeballs and torched them with our breath weapons. No sign of the parent.

Then the druid had an idea. Instead of moving in arcs, he went for where the eyes were concentrated, and then flew straight up.

That did it.


The Third Guardian: Eye Eye

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ff_gallery/50119.jpg

The grandmother of all Ocularons dived down on the druid from above. It was Gargantuan with four huge tentacles, and also had the eye ray attacks of a beholder. While it blasted the druid, four eyeballs did kamikaze runs on me, exploding for 50ish damage and exposing all of us four doses of its poison (which would probably have killed half the party if we hadn’t had the foresight to ping ourselves with a Delay Poison wand before battle).

Me: “This is no good. We’re too big a target bunched like this.”
Ranger: “You could land.”
Me: “No, then you’d be too far . . . Hang on. Oros, you know the Feather Fall spell, right?”
Assassin: “Yeah, I- Wait, what?”

I pulled round in an arc, used the dragon’s huge fly speed to climb above the creature, then used Shapechange to switch from dragon form to nymph, pulling away with Overland Flight. The Assassin used Feather Fall and she, the Ranger, and the Archivist started falling at a steady 60’ per round down past the somewhat surprised eye monster.

The eye monster kept chasing the druid, blasting him with fire and cold rays and hitting him with its tentacles. In dragon form, the Druid couldn’t hit it back easily and had to resort to breath weapons and spells. The Ranger filled the creature with arrows while I fired orbs of force and magic missiles from above, leaving ugly purple bruises all over the thing. Eye Eye hit the Assassin with a delusion ray and the Assassin started staring into space giggling about the pretty colours. The Ranger got hit by a tractor beam and started getting dragged in. She did a called shot, hit the tractor beam eye right in the pupil, and broke the lock. Eye Eye went after the Druid again and hit him with a cold ray, an electric ray, two tentacles, and four eyeballs, killing the Druid and sending him tumbling out of the sky. But next round, the Ranger hit Eye Eye with a final full attack, dropping it to negatives. It fell out of the sky and hit the ground with an enormous splat.

The Druid was falling past the Archivist, so the Archivist asked the DM if he could grab him on the way past. The DM let him, at the cost of breaking the Feather Fall. The Archivist Revivified the Druid in midair while falling. They then hit the ground with another splat, killing the Druid again. The Archivist survived the falling damage, cast a second Revivify, and the Druid was back.

And that was where we left the session. We were all feeling pretty drained and were hoping for some rest before taking on any more enemies. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t get it. :smallamused:

Eldariel
2010-06-08, 10:24 AM
You killed the Aboleth Mage? Congratulations! Didn't seem like that'd ever happen, but I guess...well, you know what you've said about Druid spells and enough aggression. Sounds like Glyphs didn't bother you all that much though; one would imagine the damage would add up.

Epic fight with the eye-thing. Kinda early to use Shapechange, but I guess it was your best shot aside from some strange Scry-related shenanigans. It's really bothersome how D&D lacks long-range non-standard senses. It's really hard to locate anything that's hiding with anything but just extraordinary Hide.

Saph
2010-06-08, 10:27 AM
Well, I had five scrolls, I figured a Guardian fight was worth it. :smallwink:

The Glyphs would have been annoying, but my character's got resistance to all five types of energy now, so between that and passed saving throws I could pretty much ignore them. Otherwise yeah, they would have added up.

Greenish
2010-06-08, 10:38 AM
You were given actual resources to save the world? I thought that was against the NPC code!

Malbordeus
2010-06-08, 12:22 PM
theres more coming, keep holding that breath :P

Saph
2010-06-08, 12:25 PM
Yeah, next installment won't be until tomorrow though. :smallwink:

Kaulesh
2010-06-08, 01:05 PM
Saph is such a tease... :smalltongue:

Cisturn
2010-06-09, 02:35 AM
I just want to know what the druid came back as...and then what the druid came back as the second time

2xMachina
2010-06-09, 04:12 AM
Revivify not reincarnate. No change.

Saph
2010-06-09, 07:05 AM
Episode 17: This Is Why You Kill The Bad Guys When You Have The Chance


Eye Eye No Die

The session picked up with the five of us standing around the body of Eye Eye. We flew back to town and settled back in. The Druid and the Ranger made plans to awaken Woderick, while the Archivist went back to sending spam mail to the gods asking for assistance. He’d sent a message to St. Cuthbert two days ago and got a reply back saying “Look for my coming at dawn on the third day. This address is not meant for unsolicited mail. If you have received this sending in error, please destroy its contents.” We weren’t sure whether it was the deific equivalent of an auto-reply or not.

Before going to bed, I settled down for a chat with my Lantern Archons. Our plan was to rest for the night and then go after the fourth Guardian. I was getting reports on the status of the desert path when one of the Archons, Blinky, popped in.

Blinky: “Report on the villages in the path of the Ocularon. There are fungal growths.”
Me: “Hmm. Better investigate that when we have the time.”
Blinky: “Addendum to report. The creature you killed isn’t.”
Me: “Isn’t what?”
Blinky: “Isn’t killed.”
Me: “What?”
Blinky: “It picked itself up a few minutes ago and then vanished.”
Me: “WHAT? How the hell-?”
Ranger: “I thought we killed it?”
Me: “We did! We dropped it way into the negatives. Unless-”
DM: “Remember when I said that all the damage you did appeared as large purple bruises?”
Me: “ARRRGH!”

We all collectively kicked ourselves. Eye Eye had the Regeneration ability, and once we’d left it had just regenerated back up and flown away.

We teleported out there to collect some of its blood for scrying purposes, but couldn’t find the thing. Our buffs had worn off and it was sunset, so we decided to leave it for tomorrow. The others were just about to go to bed when I decided to try a last Commune.

Me: “Will the first Guardian to arrive at this city likely to be the same one that we fought today?”
DM: “Yes.”
Me: “Is it likely to arrive in the next 24 hours?”
DM: “Yes.”
Me: “Is it likely to arrive in the next 12 hours?”
DM: “Yes.”
Me: “ . . . Is it likely to arrive in the next 3 hours?”
DM: “Yes.”
Me: “Um . . . Guys?”

The situation didn’t look good. Not only had we failed to kill the thing, we were worse off than we’d started. The Archivist and I had both used almost half of our spell capacity, and the Druid was out of spells completely (dying twice will do that to you).

We were just starting to work out a defence plan when things got even worse. The Lantern Archon I’d left to try and locate the desert Guardian popped in and told us that the Guardian was attacking the nearby city of Sunspire and slaughtering the population. We gave each other a set of resigned looks.

Archivist: “Do you think we should go there?”
Me: “We don’t have a choice. Pull out that Teleport scroll.”


Night Battle

We blinked into Sunspire, the Ranger and I lighting up the pitch darkness with our luminous armour spells. The first thing we heard was screaming, and we headed down the main avenue, buffing ourselves as we did. Being a Sorcerer, I could just recast all my buff spells, but the prepared casters were low on protections by this point.

The townsfolk were being cut to pieces by undead minions called swarm-shifters (another Libris Mortis monster). The Ranger shot one of them to death and the others turned into Diminutive swarms, making them immune to weapon damage. I cast Wings of Flurry repeatedly and wiped them out.

There was a brief lull in the battle. We’d killed off the little things but we were pretty sure there was a bigger one around. I took to the air and the Assassin and the Ranger took to the rooftops. The Archivist moved into the shadow of a building and summoned up the Red Slaad he’d made a bargain with last session.

Archivist: “All right, we’ve paid you, now fulfil your side of the bargain.”
Slaad: *looks around* “And?”
Archivist: “You agreed to help us fight the Guardians.”
Slaad: “So where is it?”
Archivist: “You know what, just wait there and-”

At this point the building behind the Archivist animated and ate him.


The Fourth Guardian: Black Death

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/libris_gallery/84752.jpg
The fourth Guardian was originally a creature called a Voidwraith from Libris Mortis, a particularly horrible incorporeal undead with the ability to suffocate anything near it. This one was a Gargantuan-sized formless cloud of negative energy with four limbs, energy drain and a variety of poison-based spell-like abilities.

I tried to come up with a funny name for it but really couldn’t think of one.

The creature opened up with a cloudkill to block off line of sight and then hit the Archivist with a full attack, giving him four negative levels and a bunch of extra damage and crippling him so badly that he was effectively taken out for the rest of the day. The Druid covered the Archivist as he retreated, taking a couple of negative levels in the process, then backed away himself. Unfortunately, this left the Slaad, the Archivist, the Druid, and the Ranger all near each other. Black Death breathed a cone of poison over all of them.

The Druid was immune to poison. The other three weren’t, and all failed the save against the ridiculously high DC. They turned to stone.

Archivist: “All of us?”
DM: “I did warn you this thing could petrify.”
Ranger: “Isn’t your Slaad still up?”
Druid: “Or immune to poison or something?”
DM: “Nope.”
Druid: “You know what? That thing was a total waste of money.”
Archivist: “How do you think I feel? I had to pay XP for it.”
Druid: “Aiden? Time to retreat.”
Me: “I . . . guess.”

The Druid grabbed the petrified Archivist and used an acorn of far travel effect to teleport back to the capital. I came close to doing the same, but in the end, I just wasn’t willing to do it. If we ran away and rested overnight, the Guardian was going to kill everyone in the city by dawn. I still had a bunch of spells and scrolls left and I wasn’t willing to run unless I knew we had absolutely no chance of beating the thing. I kept flying circles above the Guardian, shooting it with a steady supply of orbs of force and magic missiles.

The Assassin jumped across the rooftops, caught a scroll from me, and used it to cast Crazy Dave’s Discount Transmutation on the Ranger, depetrifying her but also turning her into a gnome. The two of them split up and Black Death went after the Assassin. The Assassin used invisibility magic and a Gravestrike weapon and actually put up a respectable fight against the monster, getting two or three Sneak Attacks in, but in the end Black Death just flowed through the buildings, full attacked her, and killed her. It was just me and the Ranger left. (At this point the Druid was making comments about how the other characters should be angry at me for not running away, which wasn’t helping my concentration.)

I kept up my force attacks from above while the Ranger opened fire on the thing from below, doing heavy damage with her blessed silver arrows. Black Death chased her and caught her. She survived the first attack and I dived down past the thing to dimension door the two of us away.

I used a scroll of Shapechange and the Ranger used a potion of Fly, and we flew back to find that Black Death had sunk into the ground. A second later we heard a chorus of screams from a nearby building. I switched to dragon form and charged in, but by the time we got there there was nothing left but corpses. We pulled up and kept searching.

Finally Black Death decided to finish the fight. It went to the inn (the very same one we’d stayed at last time we’d visited the city), cast a deeper darkness effect over the building, then started slaughtering the people inside. I charged in in Gold Dragon form, smashed through the window, located the thing with my blindsense, and Wings of Flurried it while the ranger sent a volley of arrows in from outside. It emerged into view and blasted us both with its petrifying breath. This time we both saved, and I fired my second-to-last high-level spell at it, a Disintegrate. It hit, and luck finally turned our way as the thing failed its save. Black Death took 100-odd damage and disintegrated into a cloud of incorporeal dust. The second Guardian was dead.


Picking Up the Pieces

By this point the party was almost completely wiped out. The Archivist was petrified, the Assassin was dead, the Ranger had been turned into a gnome, and the Druid and I were both out of spells. The Druid caught up to us catching a lift from the spellcaster who runs the city-to-city teleportation rings, and we went searching through Sunspire. Since I’d used my only scroll of Crazy Dave’s Discount Transmutation, our only way to un-petrify the Archivist was to get another casting of it. We couldn’t find any more scrolls in the Wizard’s Guild, but we could find the creator, Crazy Dave. We persuaded him to come along with us back to the capital.

Back in the suburbs of the city, we used the villa’s garden and got to work. We’d picked up a scroll of Raise Dead a while back, so I got ready to use that on the Assassin, while Crazy Dave got to work on de-petrifying the Archivist. The Ranger and Druid stood watch.

Unfortunately their Spot checks weren’t enough to detect the invisible monster watching from a few hundred feet away. Eye Eye waited until we were right in the middle of casting our spells, then attacked.


Eye Eye, Captain

Eye Eye sent four more exploding poison eyeballs to blow up around the Ranger and Crazy Dave, and this time there was no delay poison to save them. The Ranger took about 10 Constitution damage and Crazy Dave took about 25, which needless to say killed him. The Druid used a scroll to do a last breath on Crazy Dave, and the Ranger heroically used her one action to use Delay Poison on Crazy Dave to stop him from dying again. Next round Eye Eye sent another volley of poison eyeballs which dealt about 20 more Constitution damage to the Ranger.

Ranger: “I’m dead.”
Me: “I run across, drawing a scroll as I do, and cast Last Breath on her.” *UMD success*
Ranger: “Oh, cool. So I get to change bodies and stop being a gnome?”
Me: “Yep.”
DM: “Roll percentile.”
Me: “27.”
Ranger: “What’s that?”
Me: “ . . . “
Ranger: “What race am I?”
Me: “ . . . gnome.”
Ranger: “DAMN IT!”

Eye Eye blasted the Druid with its eye rays, and the Druid backed off out of range. I shifted form into an Avoral and did a Lay-On-Hands on the Ranger, healing her up to full, then ascended into the sky to face Eye Eye. It hammered me with a full set of eye rays, including a Greater Dispel Magic. Luckily for me, the dispel didn’t get my Shapechange, and I shifted into a Planetar and charged the thing with my longsword.

Meanwhile the Ranger pulled out a potion of Enlarge Person and drank it, negating the size penalty from her Gnome status, then started shooting Eye Eye full of arrows. Eye Eye whacked me with its tentacles and its eye rays. I could block the dispel effect with Wings of Cover, but the stun, electric, and cold rays were wearing me down . . . until I had a sudden inspiration and used a scroll of Ray Deflection. All of a sudden the eye rays started bouncing off.

The Planetar form gave me regeneration and such a ridiculous AC (a total of 60-something) that even with its +40 attack bonus Eye Eye was only hitting me on natural 20s. Unfortunately for me, the DM was rolling a LOT of natural 20s, and my HP kept dropping. But with it busy fighting me, the Ranger was able to fulfill her DPS role, shooting it for vast amounts of damage every round. Eye Eye knocked me down to 7 HP, grappled me, and was just about to spear my eyes out when a final full attack from the Ranger dropped it.

DM: “It’s down.”
Me: “Okay, it is NOT getting up this time. I use my last 6th-level slot and do a coup-de-grace Disintegrate on it!”
DM: “It doesn’t kill it. Just bruises.”
Me: “Seriously?”
DM: “Doesn’t overcome its regeneration. Nonlethal damage.”
Druid: “I use my force breath weapon on it!”
DM: “Bruises.”
Me: “I Shapechange into a Gold Dragon and breathe fire on it.”
DM: “Bruises.”
Me: “I Shapechange into a Silver Dragon and breathe cold on it.”
DM: “Bruises.”
Me: “I Shapechange into a Bronze Dragon and breathe lightning on it.”
DM: “Bruises.”
Me: “I Shapechange into a Green Dragon and breathe acid on it.”
DM: “Bruises.”
Me: “Gah!”

*Ten minutes later*

Druid: “Okay, so that’s fire, cold, acid, lightning, sonic, force, disintegration, slashing, bludgeoning, piercing, silver, cold iron, Good-aligned and Evil-aligned damage. What’s left?”
Me: “Wait, I remember now! I cast Keen Edge from my wand on my longsword and coup-de-grace it.”
DM: “It dies.”
Druid: “We dismember the body.”
Me: “And then burn it.”
DM: “It’s dead, all right?”
Me: “We’re not taking any chances this time.”

We finished off the Transmutation on the Archivist (who came back as a human, much to the Ranger’s annoyance) and the Raise Dead on the Assassin. Crazy Dave had been reincarnated as a female due to the Druid’s whim. The Assassin and her started talking and for whatever reason seemed to get on very well, withdrawing to the same room.

I went to bed.


The Third Day

*knock knock*
Ranger: “Aiden! Wake up!”
Me: “Sleeping.”
Ranger: “No, seriously! You have to see this!”
Me: “Listen, we just fought all night and saved the city twice. It can wait ‘til noon.”
Ranger: “But it’s the third day!”
Me: “Wake me on the fourth.”
Ranger: “But there’s a whole army of celestials outside the gates!”
Me: “What?”

There was, in fact, an army of celestials outside the gates. According to the DM they were Justicars, and they took up positions in and around the city to defend it.

Me: “Huh. I guess asking for help really can work.”


Finishing Up

• We all levelled, unsurprisingly. I hit level 14, swapped out my Overland Flight for Lucent Lance, and picked up Elemental Body as my new 7th-level spell. It gives poison immunity, which would have been really handy if I'd had it before fighting the two poison-themed Guardians. :smallwink:

• The Druid finally Awakened Woderick. He rolled a 15 on his Intelligence score, making him more intelligent than either the Druid or the Ranger.

• Woderick decided to take up an interest in economics, and started sending messages to the Duke with suggestions for economic redevelopment.

• The Duke decided to take a vacation from the craziness and gave up running the city for a while, leaving it to the Justicars.

• The Assassin and Crazy Dave didn’t come out of their room for the next day, being busy with “research”. The Archivist started banging on their door, looking for another scroll of Discount Transmutation. He got told to leave in language I can’t reprint on the boards.

• The Archivist waited until they’d left their room the next day, and broke in, discovering a half-built flesh golem. He told me about it. My character’s response was “I don’t want to know.”

• The Archivist confronted the Assassin about the flesh golem. The Assassin told him to mind his own business. The Archivist told her that he’d broken into her room and seen it.

• A Justicar heard the Archivist confessing to breaking and entering and hit him with an imprisonment spell.

• Several saving throws later, we managed to persuade the Justicar to accept a reasonable fine instead of the year’s imprisonment.

With three out of four Guardians dead, the time pressure was relaxed a bit, although we still couldn’t afford to just sit back and take it easy. My Lantern Archons reported that the fire giants were massing on the eastern border, although they hadn’t crossed the border just yet. Worryingly, an army of frost giants had also shown up on the northern border. There was a brief discussion as to whether the Archivist had managed to provoke them with the earlier ‘flag’ incident, but we decided that probably wasn’t too likely.

The Lantern Archons also reported that the Nomming Worm had stopped heading towards the city. Instead it was circling around it. We didn’t know why.

Most importantly, though, the Duke’s researchers had finally discovered the Raver’s prison. For those who’ve been having trouble keeping track (we did, too) the order is something like this:

• The Daeklyr created a creature called the Raver to free them in case they were ever imprisoned. They were imprisoned, and the Raver is now trying to free the Daeklyr.
• The Raver created four Guardians to free it in case it was ever imprisoned. It was imprisoned, and now the Guardians are trying to free the Raver.
• The Raver’s still imprisoned somewhere below the earth, but it’s going to break out sooner or later.

According to the Duke’s researchers, there was a network of tunnels beneath the town hall which led into a dungeon. The dungeon would, if we followed it far enough, lead us down to the Raver’s prison. The prison is, obviously, dimensionally locked, so teleporting there isn’t an option, but burrowing and dungeoncrawling could both work.

So that was what we decided to do. I used Lesser Planar Binding to call up a couple of Lesser Xorns to act as scouts (I agreed to pay them 20 pounds of silver per day) and we got ready for the Very Definitely Final Dungeon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon).

Darkxarth
2010-06-09, 08:13 AM
This game is EPIC! I wish all of my games were as exciting as this. Heck, I wish any one of my games was half as exciting as this. I cannot believe that you guys managed to defeat three separate Guardian encounters, eliminating two Guardians, in the same day! Being a Sorcerer has really paid off for you, Saph. A Wizard would've had to throw in the towel, Good alignment or not.

Can't wait to read about the "final" dungeon and see what the Nomming Worm and giant armies are up to. I would bet bad things on all fronts.

Eldariel
2010-06-09, 08:43 AM
Couldn't you Shapechange into a Burrowing form and hunt down the Worm? Though I guess it's a bit bothersome if only you and Druid are going in. That was rather epic; I can't believe you managed to stop the Black Death missing most of your spell selection, but I guess Shapechange will do that saving a tad on that front. And then the Eye Eye thingy. Wow, that thing is annoying; I'm guessing it takes metal (silver/cold iron/adamantine, not sure) or keen weapons to kill?

Good show, looking forward to reading the rest. Did you consider using Shapechange to take some Incorporeal forms for better Incorp-hunting? Or Chronotyryn [FF]? I always found that one hilariously awesome myself (Double Actions among other things), and it's 17 HD; just low enough for a scrolled Shapechange.

Deth Muncher
2010-06-09, 09:16 AM
@latest update: Oh snap.

So the worm is circling the city...maybe it's trying to weaken the defenses on the walls? Further, maybe the Raver's prison has Pro. Evil on it, or maybe all of your angels are producing a large Pro. Evil effect, so it can't come any closer.

Saph
2010-06-09, 09:17 AM
Yeah, it turns out Eye Eye's regeneration was only overriden by Keen weapons. Most obscure vulnerability ever.

We did think of burrowing after the Worm, but the trouble would be that it would have all the advantages: it could just burrow up to us and eat us one at a time, while we'd have no Line of Effect. And we wouldn't be able to communicate with each other easily, or use ranged attacks - bottom line, we're probably not going to be able to fight the thing until it decides to fight us.

Chronotyryn is on my list for a form to try out in a later session. There's one more session in the backlog to write up, which I'll do tomorrow - I got up to all kinds of weird Shapechange stuff in that. :smallwink:

Warclam
2010-06-09, 05:17 PM
Man, I love this story. So epic.

Heh, you folks should have brought along some trollbane. That stuff overcomes ALL regeneration.

Greenish
2010-06-09, 05:52 PM
So the worm is circling the city...maybe it's trying to weaken the defenses on the walls?Or maybe it's waiting for reinforcements… Dun dun duuun.

Kaulesh
2010-06-09, 06:02 PM
10 gold says the worm (and its buddies) attacked while the group was dungeon-crawling it up.

bebecatty
2010-06-09, 06:42 PM
IIRC silver also overcame Eye-Eye's regen, which is why my arrows (after I trial-and-error-ed my way through all other types I own) were able to do so much damage in one round. In fact I kept offering to stab it a couple of times to finish it off but you did seem to be having so much fun with your "science" I dont think you heard me :smallwink: