Having Fun with Nasty Swarms [3.5]

[Craenor]

So, I'm sure this will be met with skepticism by some and amusement by others. I'm hoping for more amusement. :)

Our party, this past weekend (11-12th level group Archer-Ranger, Dervish, Sorcerer and Arcane Hierophant) had to deal with a mist shrouded valley full of VERY nasty swarms.

In this case, they were modified forms of greater cranium rat swarms (lizards instead of rats, plus a few other changes).

Here's the issue though, the Arcane Hierophant has an LA of 4, so doesn't have a lot of spells and my Sorcerer doesn't actually have any true AoE spells he has stuff like Manyjaws (which our GM deemed, rightfully so imo, to be single target-ish and thus ineffective against swarms).

So, how do we deal with three of these swarms?

Well, I won't go into great detail, but essentially we bought...

1,000 gallons of oil
50 new, soft wooden 20 gallon barrels (non-durable)
A wand of Shrink Item, 50 charges

And in addition, borrowed the services of numerous priests in a temple sympathetic to our cause for the casting of Glyphs of Warding (all triggered by proximity of these particular lizards).

We filled each barrel, put a glyph on the inside of the lid, sealed the barrel and my sorcerer used the wand to "shrink item" the barrels with a command word release based on the number of the barrel (barrel one, barrel two, etc.).

Hilarity, massive fires, near death experiences, thrown grenades, mine fields and fun ensued.

[cssmythe3]

Novel solution!

Heheh. Reminds me of a game where a halfing rogue had the following items.

Boots of Striding and Springing
A lit torch
A bag of holding filled with oil (That's about 120 gallons)


One round he tossed the torch into a pack of drow, next round he jumped over them and dumped the oil while in midair.

FooosH!

[Anasazi]

I believe the saying is, necessity is the mother of invention, and invention goes hand in hand with creativity. So well done.

[Archeagus]

Being the ranger in the group, it was my job to ride around and drop the shrunken barrels of fun in the area in preparation for the ensuing tide of swarms. The code phrase to un-shrink them was bound to the Sorceror (a phrase too base and offensive to repeat here, but very cathartic after previous attempts to best these buggers). So the remaining barrels were tightly clasped in dimensional space when he would utter the command.

It took almost half the barrels before the battle began to swing in our favor. Twice I was assaulted by the swarms, forcing me to flee through lines of unexploded barrels trying to lure the offending swarm to its doom, all the while praying that I could outrun the blast radius (something we were not able to accurately gauge going into the battle).

Other times, I would run out of range of the party, wait for the swarm to about overtake me, drop a handful of barrels and haul tail down range again, hoping the sorceror would allow me proper clearance before shouting out the command phrase. (Many a times, Craenor feels party members are simply tools to be used and discarded as suited by his needs. Just ask the paladin ... oh wait, you can't, because he got him killed. :smalltongue:)

The biggest challenge was overcoming their mental assaults at the beginning of the battle. One failed save there could (and had in previous encounters) cause the battle to be lost before it even began.

[Craenor]

(Many a times, Craenor feels party members are simply tools to be used and discarded as suited by his needs. Just ask the paladin ... oh wait, you can't, because he got him killed. :smalltongue:)

In my defense, I never explicitly stated that none of those were Symbols of Death. I just speculated, encouragingly, that they might not be.

[lyko555]

In my defense, I never explicitly stated that none of those were Symbols of Death. I just speculated, encouragingly, that they might not be.

^ I must know tell me

[Craenor]

^ I must know tell me

Well, when we were assaulting a portal that was sealed with 8 renewing symbols (they would fire and have a localized effect on who triggered them, then reactivate 10 minutes later), I may have convinced the Paladin that none of the three remaining, unidentified symbols (which all were from the school of necromancy), could possibly be Symbols of Death.

But that's because we figured none of the symbols repeated and he made his save against the first Symbol of Death. So we had him go ahead and try to eat the other two, but the second one was also a Symbol of Death and he failed that save.

Oops.

So, now we have a Dervish.

[Abd al-Azrad]

So, how do we deal with three of these swarms?

Well, I won't go into great detail, but essentially we bought...

1,000 gallons of oil...

Of course you fight swarms with fire. You fight everything with fire!

This was highly amusing.

[Craenor]

Of course you fight swarms with fire. You fight everything with fire!

This was highly amusing.

I really haven't laughed so hard at in game events in years.

[Craenor]

Just wanted to post a message to kind of close this out for now, since we just fought the (semi-dormant, somewhat modified) Elder Brain (and lived, yay!).

After our fun with the Illithid-bred Swarms, we had about half of our exploding barrels left (and a few lizard bodies to trigger them with).

We made our way into the lair of the Elder Brain and the first thing waiting for us was an Iron Golem.

No slick way around those, so we just brute forced it down. Swords, arrows and Melf's Acid Arrows, wee.

After it fell, it occurred to us that, gee, that's a lot of scrap metal, must be worth something! So we spread our Portable Hole beneath it, dropped most of it in, pushed the rest in and took the body with us.

The hole it was guarding lead to four flesh golems (really Brain golems). Irritatingly for us, they were standing in an inch of water which was constantly charged with a small surge of electricity (enough to slowly heal them and enough to dispel any slows on them from frost or fire).

We brute forced them down as well, but couldn't find a way to get past this room. Thinking the water was blocking some detail, we threw down our portable hole, full of Iron Golem, and the water ran into it.

After a bit of trial and error, we found that standing in the alcoves they came out of would transport us to the main lair of the Elder Brain.

Unfortunately, we showed up in different spots on different levels. Immediately, we were assaulted with the mind controlling power of the Elder Brain. About half of us were able to make our saves.

We made our way to the central chamber housing the brain, and the fight was on.

Party against party, half of us against the brain, shrugging off mind blasts, dodging arrows, disabling our own friends to keep from having to kill them, or to keep them from killing us.

Needless to say, things are tense. So we took the last of our barrels, 10 of them, and threw them on the brain. We shouted the command word to activate them, threw a lizard body on them and "Boom!" they blew.

So the Brain orders our Ranger (who he had under his mental control) to "Put it out, put it out!"

So the ranger busts out his Decanter of Endless Water and starts to use it, I dispel it, suppressing it for a few rounds.

So the Ranger, who has the Portable Hole, puts it up on the vertical wall, near the Elder Brain. (Not sure how others play it, but in our world, you can put a portable hole against a wall and it'll open that way, with the contents crashing to the bottom and half of them spilling out on the ground. Or you can open it on the roof and the contents will empty on the floor).

So, Ranger puts portable hole against the wall and water comes pouring out on the brain, but, despite being very careful, the body of the Iron Golem tumbles out onto the brain as well, a drop of a few feet.

Splash, crash, bounce...

The fight continues, very intense, and I'm pumping spell after spell into the brain, we're hacking away at it, etc.

Then, the Arcane Hierophant flies over to the portable hole, grabs it off the wall, flies down to the brain, spreads it out under the iron golem, golem falls in again. He then carries it to the ceiling, 60 feet up, spreads it on the ceiling...

And yes, the 5,000 pound defunct Iron Golem fell 60 feet onto the battered, bruised, immolated Elder Brain ....sploosh!

Let me tell you, it took more than a few Prestidigitations to get the brains out of all of the clothes, fur, hair, etc.