Lonely Tylenol
2012-02-05, 11:20 PM
OK, so I'm in Oahu (an island of Hawaii), but I'm typing this for my group on Kauai (another island of Hawaii). If you happen to be in that group, you can and SHOULD read on, because... Well.
For those of you not in my group, I am referring to this 12-player (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228912) group (minus one of the magi, who had to quit for personal reasons).
So I have a large group, and I have to fly from Kauai to Oahu once a month for my course's seminars. Being that I have a large group and am not always able to run the game, I decided to do something novel: I got two co-DMs and then pre-wrote the encounter and general storyline of the adventure, such that the encounter could be run by these two co-GMs while I was gone. Then, I split the party up, so that each co-GM would run half.
I have been getting reports in from a bunch of the party's members, and it seems like the whole thing was a resounding success, except for one thing: at the end, the race against the oncoming hordes of possessed troll-likes turned into a Grimlock Grinder.
Here's the backstory:
The party was taken to a small mining town to the far northeast of their capital by the Minister of Commerce, who was investigating reports of protests over the use of machinery replacing workers. When they get there, they find total carnage: people are running around, frightened, throughout the town, boarding up their homes and storing food in shelters. They come to find that the machines have gone haywire and are pummeling and killing everything around them, and some of the miners have gone missing in the chaos, but aren't among the dead, and oh, whosoever can save them?
They head into the mine shaft, and they find the source of the initial chaos: the automatons have, indeed, gone crazy. After encountering a Pulverizer who appears to have short-circuited, and is making jerky movements, followed by a Hammerer who is beating the ever loving crap out of a pile of scrap formerly known as another Pulverizer, the party surveys the surroundings, and nope, no miners (except for a few dead ones). They descend further.
They descend down to a circular walkway for a time, and suddenly the shaft bottoms out, and only a rope ladder is there to carry them down. At the bottom of the ladder, they find that the tunnels have suddenly changed flavor: the mining team had, inadvertently, tunneled into the Underdark. The tunnels go in two directions--one "left" and one "right"--and so the party splits up to double their chances of finding the miners quickly. I'll give both sides.
Left:
The left side came across the corpse of a drow warrior near a (mostly) closed stone door after following a narrow tunnel. On the other side was a bridge that had been cut down, save for two ropes which they had to cling and crawl through to get by, but ultimately succeeded in the doing.
Shortly after the party crossed the bridge, they were attacked by a huge centipede, which was residing in the crevice and had seen them move across. Smelling food, the centipede closed on its prey--and instead tasted defeat.
The left side then finds their way into a large hall, which appears to have been completely overturned in a great struggle. Drow bodies are scattered everywhere, as well as those of greyish, troll-like race that they weren't as familiar with. While they were searching the room, they were ambushed by two drow rangers hiding behind piwafwis (which are basically drow Cloaks of Elvenkind), making a desperate last stand against the intruders. They are, however, able to talk them down, given the direness of their situation (and they were outnumbered even here), and this is where their part ends (and merges with the other side, after the spoiler).
Right:
The party encounters a bizarre patch of oil, about 10 x 30 feet along their tunnel, which smells terrible and is otherwise exactly like Grease. The squares are trapped, however, such that sudden and large forces (such as the force of a fall, or the combined weight of several adventurers) drops an alchemist's fire from the ground, setting the oil on fire. They pass by (but I was never given details on if they set off the trap), but the trap malfunctions at some point, causing a cave-in (this was not something I planned on, but something the DM who was running the group came up with, and that's OK). The way back is now blocked off.
They enter into a large room, rich with silver showing through the walls (as well as numerous holes), and of otherwise very shoddy construction, as if it was being hastily mined. Mats and mining supplies litter the ground, as do limbs and body parts of drow. Three Grimlocks happen to be feasting on such a body when they are interrupted by the party, which attacks them.
They kill them off, and upon searching the bodies, they each feel a warm feeling in their heads, but each one of them makes the save. They find that each of the Grimlocks have, hidden in their ears, a puppeteer, which is telepathically instructing them to pick it up (thinking they're under its control). They find the puppeteers, pick them up, and realizing them for what they are, they crush them. The puppeteers emit a piercing psychic shriek upon being destroyed (not unlike the beginning of Pendereki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"), which alerts the rest of the psychically-controlled Grimlocks to their presence, and a veritable horde of Grimlocks (the DM of this group rolled 1d20 plus half of a percentile roll, and had a number of 65) start pouring out from the holes in the walls and converging on their point, axes raised and in a frenzy. With no way back, the group has no point but to press forward into a small exit at the other end of the room, racing against the horde.
The left group heard the psychic shriek from their end while negotiating with the drow, and when they crossed around from their side, the right group was finishing off two dread guards (fluffed as constructs of the army they were fighting for, though they were completely unresponsive) while one of the right group is holding the Grimlocks at bay using a natural choke point in the crevice they found themselves in, which was only about five feet wide. This is where things get screwy.
One of the left players, a Human Warblade, took point at the choke hold so that the rest could cross the bridge safely, and another, a Goliath Barbarian, went to help him. The Barbarian entered into a whirling frenzy (+ mountain rage; I have allowed this myself) and the Warblade entered into a total defense (and used Stone Bones regularly) and the two of them (with the party's assistance) slaughtered all 65 Grimlocks.
Every last one.
The barbarian himself killed 50 of them; he is a spiked chain grappler (Spirit Bear) and mountain rage makes him large, so he was able to hit more or less anything around through the choke point.
Now, obviously there was an oversight on my part (building in a choke point so the Grimlocks don't overrun them while they are fighting the dread guards), and I suspect that there were some... Flexible interpretations of the rules that I may or may not have allowed (I'm not sure, but I think the Warblade combined Combat Expertise with total defense or fighting defensively, the alchemist gave the Goliath an extract of Enlarge Person), and maybe even some things I would have done differently (like having the Grimlocks adapt to the situation by forming a wide perimeter or by bull-rushing the Warblade), but... They wound up with a literal Grimlock Grinder with everything they got put through.
Yeah, I just kinda don't know how to move forward from there. Seeing as I wasn't there to see it unfold, I really don't know what to do. Word around the table is they all had a blast doing it, though. That's where they ended for the night, so I pick up exactly at the point where they finish killing more than five dozen Grimlocks.
What should I do about this?
For those of you not in my group, I am referring to this 12-player (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228912) group (minus one of the magi, who had to quit for personal reasons).
So I have a large group, and I have to fly from Kauai to Oahu once a month for my course's seminars. Being that I have a large group and am not always able to run the game, I decided to do something novel: I got two co-DMs and then pre-wrote the encounter and general storyline of the adventure, such that the encounter could be run by these two co-GMs while I was gone. Then, I split the party up, so that each co-GM would run half.
I have been getting reports in from a bunch of the party's members, and it seems like the whole thing was a resounding success, except for one thing: at the end, the race against the oncoming hordes of possessed troll-likes turned into a Grimlock Grinder.
Here's the backstory:
The party was taken to a small mining town to the far northeast of their capital by the Minister of Commerce, who was investigating reports of protests over the use of machinery replacing workers. When they get there, they find total carnage: people are running around, frightened, throughout the town, boarding up their homes and storing food in shelters. They come to find that the machines have gone haywire and are pummeling and killing everything around them, and some of the miners have gone missing in the chaos, but aren't among the dead, and oh, whosoever can save them?
They head into the mine shaft, and they find the source of the initial chaos: the automatons have, indeed, gone crazy. After encountering a Pulverizer who appears to have short-circuited, and is making jerky movements, followed by a Hammerer who is beating the ever loving crap out of a pile of scrap formerly known as another Pulverizer, the party surveys the surroundings, and nope, no miners (except for a few dead ones). They descend further.
They descend down to a circular walkway for a time, and suddenly the shaft bottoms out, and only a rope ladder is there to carry them down. At the bottom of the ladder, they find that the tunnels have suddenly changed flavor: the mining team had, inadvertently, tunneled into the Underdark. The tunnels go in two directions--one "left" and one "right"--and so the party splits up to double their chances of finding the miners quickly. I'll give both sides.
Left:
The left side came across the corpse of a drow warrior near a (mostly) closed stone door after following a narrow tunnel. On the other side was a bridge that had been cut down, save for two ropes which they had to cling and crawl through to get by, but ultimately succeeded in the doing.
Shortly after the party crossed the bridge, they were attacked by a huge centipede, which was residing in the crevice and had seen them move across. Smelling food, the centipede closed on its prey--and instead tasted defeat.
The left side then finds their way into a large hall, which appears to have been completely overturned in a great struggle. Drow bodies are scattered everywhere, as well as those of greyish, troll-like race that they weren't as familiar with. While they were searching the room, they were ambushed by two drow rangers hiding behind piwafwis (which are basically drow Cloaks of Elvenkind), making a desperate last stand against the intruders. They are, however, able to talk them down, given the direness of their situation (and they were outnumbered even here), and this is where their part ends (and merges with the other side, after the spoiler).
Right:
The party encounters a bizarre patch of oil, about 10 x 30 feet along their tunnel, which smells terrible and is otherwise exactly like Grease. The squares are trapped, however, such that sudden and large forces (such as the force of a fall, or the combined weight of several adventurers) drops an alchemist's fire from the ground, setting the oil on fire. They pass by (but I was never given details on if they set off the trap), but the trap malfunctions at some point, causing a cave-in (this was not something I planned on, but something the DM who was running the group came up with, and that's OK). The way back is now blocked off.
They enter into a large room, rich with silver showing through the walls (as well as numerous holes), and of otherwise very shoddy construction, as if it was being hastily mined. Mats and mining supplies litter the ground, as do limbs and body parts of drow. Three Grimlocks happen to be feasting on such a body when they are interrupted by the party, which attacks them.
They kill them off, and upon searching the bodies, they each feel a warm feeling in their heads, but each one of them makes the save. They find that each of the Grimlocks have, hidden in their ears, a puppeteer, which is telepathically instructing them to pick it up (thinking they're under its control). They find the puppeteers, pick them up, and realizing them for what they are, they crush them. The puppeteers emit a piercing psychic shriek upon being destroyed (not unlike the beginning of Pendereki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"), which alerts the rest of the psychically-controlled Grimlocks to their presence, and a veritable horde of Grimlocks (the DM of this group rolled 1d20 plus half of a percentile roll, and had a number of 65) start pouring out from the holes in the walls and converging on their point, axes raised and in a frenzy. With no way back, the group has no point but to press forward into a small exit at the other end of the room, racing against the horde.
The left group heard the psychic shriek from their end while negotiating with the drow, and when they crossed around from their side, the right group was finishing off two dread guards (fluffed as constructs of the army they were fighting for, though they were completely unresponsive) while one of the right group is holding the Grimlocks at bay using a natural choke point in the crevice they found themselves in, which was only about five feet wide. This is where things get screwy.
One of the left players, a Human Warblade, took point at the choke hold so that the rest could cross the bridge safely, and another, a Goliath Barbarian, went to help him. The Barbarian entered into a whirling frenzy (+ mountain rage; I have allowed this myself) and the Warblade entered into a total defense (and used Stone Bones regularly) and the two of them (with the party's assistance) slaughtered all 65 Grimlocks.
Every last one.
The barbarian himself killed 50 of them; he is a spiked chain grappler (Spirit Bear) and mountain rage makes him large, so he was able to hit more or less anything around through the choke point.
Now, obviously there was an oversight on my part (building in a choke point so the Grimlocks don't overrun them while they are fighting the dread guards), and I suspect that there were some... Flexible interpretations of the rules that I may or may not have allowed (I'm not sure, but I think the Warblade combined Combat Expertise with total defense or fighting defensively, the alchemist gave the Goliath an extract of Enlarge Person), and maybe even some things I would have done differently (like having the Grimlocks adapt to the situation by forming a wide perimeter or by bull-rushing the Warblade), but... They wound up with a literal Grimlock Grinder with everything they got put through.
Yeah, I just kinda don't know how to move forward from there. Seeing as I wasn't there to see it unfold, I really don't know what to do. Word around the table is they all had a blast doing it, though. That's where they ended for the night, so I pick up exactly at the point where they finish killing more than five dozen Grimlocks.
What should I do about this?