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View Full Version : Making an encounter memorable: PC's versus drow



Greyfell
2010-10-16, 03:42 PM
Hello all. I've had an encounter for my ongoing 3.5 campaign brewing in my head for a while, and I thought I'd throw the bare bones ideas here and see if you all had thoughts on making it more memorable for my PC's

First bit I want to lay down here so we dont have any misconceptions: In my campaign, the events of the War of the Spider queen or what have you novels have not (and will not) happen: Lolth is alive as are the rest of the Drow Pantheon. (sorry, have had to many threads derailed by quippy 'but their god/gods are dead' comments.)

So anyhow. The party is four characters of 6th level. (Monk/swordsage/shadowsun ninja, dwarf crusader/paladin, human mystic ranger based archer, aasimar sorcerer), as well as the ranger's animal cohort and the paladin's cohort (dwarf fighter 4).

The general idea: there has been a fight between the worshippers of Eilistraee and a Lolth worshipping drow slaving party. The evil drow run a close run battle, and have captured one priestess of Eilistraee and are torturing her in cruel and horrific ways as they party gets into range of the encounter. MY general thoughts for the drow opposition (possible with a lot of their spell slots used up to show the very recent fighting):

drow cleric 8
drow cleric 5
Drow ninja 4
somewhere between 4-8 drow warrior 3 or maybe even fighter 2.

Is this enough to challenge experienced players? The dwarf swordsage/monk player in particular (as shown in another thread I have here on just challenging him) is a really, really solid, well played character. Should there be a lowish level (3-4) wizard or sorc for the drow to give them arcane support?

Other factors: I'm debating having a group of captured humans (mostly commoner and expert 1st or 2nd level) under guard by the drow as the 'loot' from their slaving expedition. This will keep the PC's with using annoying 'mass nuke' tactics (not that they have to this point, but I don't want them to turn around and decide every encounter should end in repeated uses of web spell plus a flame source).

I'm also considering making the cavern they've holed up in to be a mess of broken/rough terrain, maybe a deep rock fissure here and there as well. Some elevated, dark areas with lots of Stalactites (or whichever it is) for cover and sniping.

Callista
2010-10-16, 04:05 PM
This looks like "tough but doable" to me. It will probably depend mostly on the clerics' spell selection and whether the drow warriors use cohesive tactics or not...