You're 15th lvl. How would you move your liberated prisoners to safety in this game?

[ryeookin]

Here's the story:

In my 3.5 game we're roughly 15th lvl. A group of about 7 of us wiz/deepdiviner, sorc/archmage(me), cleric, pally, fighter/dragon disciple, and a bard/lasher will be attacking this evil underground city in the middle of a huge underground ocean. The city itself is raised on an island surrounded by walls and the whole island is under 2 feet of water (as those evil creatures on said island are mostly aquatic). Now we know their are lots of slaves they captured from the surface who are dominated in there so we were thinking we'd like to liberate them all first if possible as we were told the city to a great extent depends on their manual labor so it would help destabilize the city for further assault and remove hostages in the line of fire for the continued siege as well.

The problem is once we liberate them, how the he11 do we get them out of there? While we have a network set up to escort liberated hostages to the surface we don't know how we can get them from the city to said group in a short amount of time. We're talking likely hundreds of people most likely. Teleport, planeshift, etc aren't feasible for numbers such as these (oh and I forgot to mention teleport doesn't work tens of miles near their city anyway). If we had access to 9th lvl spells we could maybe do a gate but we don't have that nor will we for at least a few levels (if at all) and city assault planning and go time is upon us now. An exodus in mass via boats would take time to get the boats which we might have in game however boats are slow.. we'd get creamed by a city retaliatory strike before our fleet escaped far enough.

The only thing I can think of that MIGHT be remotely possible is that their is a random flux point/portal that opens in the city we've heard of and our wiz is a deep diviner who can locate such things. We MIGHT be able to find said point and get people to it. However that runs on so many variables and unknowns it's certainly not reliable or usable for an opening assault.

Any idea on how you think we could pull this off?
(btw we can craft wondrous items, scrolls and potions and have maybe 20-30k gp at our current disposal)

If I/we can't figure out how to evac the people after liberating them, then we'll have to temporarily abandon that as a feasible opening option. Likely instead first target key resistance within the city (such as barracks) for our assault.

PS-
Baddies in city:
aboleths
kuotoa
duergar
mind flayers
and a band of demons most likely

[morkendi]

Your game have air ships?

[eggs]

Planar Binding/Ally can make anything happen.

Chain-Call as many modrons and archons as you can, teleport in with a small army of outsiders, have them teleport/word of recall out with 4-6 prisoners each.

[only1doug]

Fabricate spell + any nearby metals = armed slave uprising

I am Spartacus!

[Randomguy]

You could try getting your hands on a scroll of teleportation circle. Keep one hidden somewhere on the island, and use it to teleport the slaves out. You might want to permanency it.

[Spuddles]

Extradimensional space + plane shift. Eneveloping pit from Magic item compendium has like 15000 cubic feet of space. It's a relic for the kobold god, so you will likely need to succeed on a bunch of UMD checks. Luckily you have access to limited wish, so you can psy reform some skills, as well as a high level guidance of the avatar spell.

Rope tricks may not be able get anyone out of the city, but you can keep them safe for a bit. Magificent Mansions would be even better. If you could blast a few extended MMMs, you can keep hundreds of people safe and fed for at least 60 hours.

Bonus points of you move in with arms, equipment, and drill sergeants to train everyone in the ways of war. No slaves for two days, then suddenly slave rebellion from within, attack from without.

Heck, with repeated castings of MMM, you could establish a forward base and using walls of iron, stone, and fabricate, make siege engines. You won't even need fabricate cause you got slaves. Maybe even establish a portal given enough time.

[Istari]

Stick them in a magic item with extra dimensional storage space? Bags of holding should be able to hold quite a few people.

[Wise Green Bean]

Technically, a level one artificer could make you a scroll of teleportation circle. Hire on a few hundred guys for a day to make a blitzkrieg raid on this city, have them escort slaves/hold off enemies until you're out of the anti-teleportation zone, then get em through the circle. Destroy it when you're done so the baddies can't follow. Or, things get really simple if you are allowed to do a teleportation circle inside the city. It's technically a very different spell than normal teleportation, DM might give you the ok.
There's probably some way to make them all invisible, or able to move faster, or look like the enemy until they get out. I don't know DnD spells well enough.

[Gavinfoxx]

Nested Enveloping Pits with Bottles of Air and Wind Pipes??

[ryeookin]

Thanks for the ideas all:
1) We can't teleport. Teleport fails for miles around this city so that won't work.

2) Arming the people, well doable.. but they'll most likely be low level, starved, exhausted.. etc. But this might be an option. Aside from fabricate, we could bring a bunch of mundane weapons with us in bags of holding to arm them. It's a possible plan B.

3) We don't have any planar binding spells (and our dm would be pist at using such cheese most likely so not a good idea in this case).

4) Also no airships in this game. Even if we had them, this is effectively a huge underground cavern (read hundreds of miles).. so it would have to be one that could be shrunk like the folding boat to get down there. This wouldn't be allowed by my dm. Good idea though if it were allowed.

5) While we could fit people in bags of holding.. hell they won't want to go in there. Even if we were like "shut up! I'm saving you! Get in there! *shove*", even in a type 4 which holds 1,500lbs. That's like at best only 15 people or so methinks. Not to mention they'd need air in there, so we'd have to get around that. Hmm.. maybe if we had like 10 bags of these (which we don't) but then again they each weigh 60lbs each so they'll be too heavy to carry all to be feasible either sadly. Hmm.. maybe if we had items that made breathable air and we had like 10-20 portable holes we could fill those up with people then get out our selves.. however we don't have ANY portable holes, nor the funds to make that many sadly.

PS: Not trying to be a downer shooting peoples ideas down, just letting ya know what would fly and what wouldn't in my game. In any case I appreciate the ideas.

[kitcik]

Wand of Gaseous Form
+
Ring Gates

[CyMage]

Wand of Gaseous Form
+
Ring Gates


Resetting trap of Gaseous Form. <_<

[morkendi]

Kill a bunch and animate dead on them. A lot of your foes are psyonic who don't like undead. Kill a bunch of mobs and take thier treasure then do undeath to death and then make staffs to raise them. Oh whait, thats to evil for the pally......

[Gavinfoxx]

T
5) While we could fit people in bags of holding.. hell they won't want to go in there. Even if we were like "shut up! I'm saving you! Get in there! *shove*", even in a type 4 which holds 1,500lbs. That's like at best only 15 people or so methinks. Not to mention they'd need air in there, so we'd have to get around that. Hmm.. maybe if we had like 10 bags of these (which we don't) but then again they each weigh 60lbs each so they'll be too heavy to carry all to be feasible either sadly. Hmm.. maybe if we had items that made breathable air and we had like 10-20 portable holes we could fill those up with people then get out our selves.. however we don't have ANY portable holes, nor the funds to make that many sadly.

Enveloping Pits hold WAYYYYYYYY more air, and WAYYY more volume, than Bags of Holding or even Portable Holes.

Portable Hole is a 6 foot diameter cylinder, which is 10 foot deep. This has enough air for one medium creature for 10 minutes. The Enveloping Pit trap is a 10' on the side rectangular cube 50 feet deep.

However, the suffocation rules are treated differently, if you follow 'suffocation rules' rather than 'extrapolating portable hole rules'.

A friend of mine did the math, and it works out to this (for a single medium sized person):

10 minutes is the air given in the portable hole item description
90 minutes would be the air in the portable hole using suffocation rules.
200 minutes (3.3 hours) would be the air in the enveloping pit using a scaled up portable hole.
1800 minutes (30 hours) would be the air in the enveloping pit using the suffocation rules.

Remember to NEST like Enveloping Pit Traps! And build rooms in them...

ALSO, these can solve these problems:

Bottle of Air
This item appears to be a normal glass bottle with a cork. When taken to any airless environment it retains air within it at all times, continually renewing its contents. This means that a character can draw air out of the bottle to breathe. The bottle can even be shared by multiple characters who pass it around. Breathing out of the bottle is a standard action, but a character so doing can then act for as long as she can hold her breath.
Moderate transmutation; CL 7th; Craft Wondrous Item, water breathing; Price 7,250 gp; Weight 2 lb.

Wind Pipe
A device built for pumping air into submerged or otherwise enclosed spaces, this is a 2-foot-long brass tube, threaded so that additional lengths of ordinary tubing can be attached. The wind pipe has a diameter of 3 inches.
When activated, a flow of air equivalent to a moderate wind blows through the pipe. The intake end must be surrounded by air for the magic to work. Even if the space the air moves into has no outlet, the wind pipe provides circulation of the air magically.
Moderate evocation; CL 10th; Craft Wondrous Item, favorable wind; Price 7,000 gp; Weight 10 lb.

Chamber of Comfort
The temperature in this stronghold space is always a cozy 70°F. Additionally, the room magically circulates fresh air in and out of the room. The smoke from a fire lit in the room draws directly into the ceiling and then disappears. The place is never stuffy, always feeling like a soft breeze is flowing through the place, even if it’s airtight.
Caster Level: 5th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Leomund’s tiny hut; Market Price: 7,500 gp.

[deuxhero]

Wizard Shadow Walks/Phantom Steeds away from teleportation blocker (greater) Teleports to metropolis, buys Gate scrolls, returns back

[Gray Mage]

Have the cleric use greater planar ally to call a Noble Djinni and use wish? Or various Astral Devas for multiple uses of Plane Shift?

[Voidling]

if the evil city trades with the out side area you could use a

Wagon of holding

master crafted wagon with secret trapdoors with bags of holding and bottles of air ect.

put normal trade goods on the wagon(s) puts weapons and tool in the secret places. Then smuggle people to ill to fight out while arming the willing ones.

Also digging a old fashion tunnel could work (throw in a few useful spells to speed things up ect).

[Randomguy]

You could try escape via boats, but with extras, like illusions to mislead the enemy (a programmed image of the boats going in a different direction, or a Screen to hide your ships from sight. ) and spells like control winds, control weather and control water to make yourselves harder to follow.

If you get your hands on a scroll of Standing Wave with a high CL, you could make a building or warehouse near the water a kind of secret base, smuggle all the slaves in there, and cast it on the building when you're ready to leave. You'd probably need to disguise the entire wave with an illusion, though, and even then you might have a bit of trouble, but if the entire party's on the wave then you should be able to handle it. The downside is that it only goes 60 feet per round, but that's about 6.8 miles per hour, and the fastest ships in the phb, galleys, go about 4 miles per hour.

If the enemies send ships after you, then hit them with standing wave as well, going in the opposite direction. Boats probably don't have good reflex saves.

[Toofey]

If you're down for some RAW silliness you have have them stand in a line and pass the person in the back of the line along the line to the front until they are all free. From what I understand since passing things doesn't require an action or take up time, they should be able to get up to a fairly good speed doing this.

Otherwise... Maybe control weather and make it super sunny so they can escape under cover of daylight, the worst of the things you mentioned aren't really all that fond of sunlight.

[kitcik]

A friend of mine did the math, and it works out to this (for a single medium sized person):

10 minutes is the air given in the portable hole item description
90 minutes would be the air in the portable hole using suffocation rules.
200 minutes (3.3 hours) would be the air in the enveloping pit using a scaled up portable hole.
1800 minutes (30 hours) would be the air in the enveloping pit using the suffocation rules.



I am AFB, but are you assuming there is one creature in the enveloping pit, thereby allowing a lot more air to be in it? Because I think the idea of the pit would be to stuff a bunch of people in it, thereby leaving less space for air and more people to divide it between.

I am in for CyMage's amendment to my idea:
Resetting trap of Gaseous Form + Ring Gates

[MatrixQ]

You might be able to get enough ingredients to create a large cauldron of some shapeshift spell, so they can turn into bats or something else that can move fast while not drawing too much attention to itself and then get them to the extraction point that way. Could be a bit pricey though. Someone else suggested gaseous form, which would be a bit cheaper, but it is also rather slow, and I think as creatures you should be able to hide better than as a huge cloud of smoke.

Come to think of it, you could use shape stone (one of my favorite spells, to be honest *g*) and create a sort of pipeline from the extraction point to the prisoners. If you create it right below the street, it should not be visible. Then you take out your wand(s) of gaseous form and start casting gaseous form on them individually and they get out through that pipe unseen. Since they can't all get through the pipe at once, you can safe your money and not use potions for this. Of course you will have to give them enough time to get through the pipe, since the gas can only move 10 feet or so. Depending on how long your way is, it might be easier to build up a few points where they will get out and another of your party will transform them again and they go the rest of the way.

Of course, if you have a lot of time, you could also create a big tunnel below the city with stone shape and then let them walk through it.

A very costly version would involve a combination of flesh to stone + shrink object to just carry them out in your bag. You could cover the costs of flesh to stone by getting a polymorph scroll to turn yourself into a medusa or something similar and just use its natural abilities. Shrink object should be affordable after that. You can learn the stone to flesh spell and take your time transforming everyone back once you are out with your normal spell slots. Or you hire some more wizards to get it done faster, if you want.

[Murg]

This sounds an awful lot like the Night Below campaign. Great Shaboath, I take it?

My suggestions (very minor spoilers ahead):-- get as much intel as you can about your target before you attack. It can really make a huge difference between an easy fight and a suicide run.

Get as many slaves as you can as fast as you can on your first try for maximum surprise value. Aboleth have genius level intelligence - once they see you're going for the slaves they can make life very difficult, such as by ordering dominated slaves to attack you.

I wouldn't recommend ignoring the slaves to go after key centers of resistance first like you mentioned. With one party of adventurers vs an entire evil city they aren't going to run out of troops any time soon.

Good luck!

[Gavinfoxx]

I am AFB, but are you assuming there is one creature in the enveloping pit, thereby allowing a lot more air to be in it? Because I think the idea of the pit would be to stuff a bunch of people in it, thereby leaving less space for air and more people to divide it between.

I am in for CyMage's amendment to my idea:
Resetting trap of Gaseous Form + Ring Gates

Well, the idea is to halve it for each person beyond one!

And look at those ~7.XK GP items for ways to manage the air.

Or you could, you know.

Leave the pits (at least partially) open?

[Gavinfoxx]

I am AFB, but are you assuming there is one creature in the enveloping pit, thereby allowing a lot more air to be in it? Because I think the idea of the pit would be to stuff a bunch of people in it, thereby leaving less space for air and more people to divide it between.

I am in for CyMage's amendment to my idea:
Resetting trap of Gaseous Form + Ring Gates

Well, the idea is to halve it for each person beyond one!

And look at those ~7.XK GP items for ways to manage the air.

Or you could, you know.

Leave the pits (at least partially) open?

[Madara]

I am AFB, but are you assuming there is one creature in the enveloping pit, thereby allowing a lot more air to be in it? Because I think the idea of the pit would be to stuff a bunch of people in it, thereby leaving less space for air and more people to divide it between.

I am in for CyMage's amendment to my idea:
Resetting trap of Gaseous Form + Ring Gates

Gases have no set shape or volume. I just had to take this opprotunity to actually use something I learned in school...

[MatrixQ]

Gases have no set shape or volume. I just had to take this opprotunity to actually use something I learned in school...
Only slightly true. A gases volume and pressure are correlated, so if you have the same amount of air molecules in a room that is filled with people, the pressure will rise up dramatically. Since that many people will heat up the air, the pressure will rise even more. I am not bored enough to do the math right now, but It will at least be very uncomfortable.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Obliterate any opposition? I mean... you're 15th level and caster heavy. I doubt there's anything short of DM Fiat that you can't completely roflstomp.

Bring their whole city down with Earthquake. They'll be too busy trying to not die to chase after your helpless victims.

Use a Horn of Blasting to kick down the door. Blow up buildings en route to the slaves you are rescuing to maintain clear line of effect. Heck, drop down a Cloudkill and follow it into town.

Demons are easy. Memorize up a Holy Word for the Cleric. Badda-bing, badda-bye-bye.

Aboleths are also easy on land. Don't let 'em hit you, fry them from a distance.

Kuo-toa are minor nuisances to you at this point. They don't even register on the CR scale anymore. Exterminate masses you find with Fireball, and keep going.

Same thing with the Deep Dwarves, except they can have SR. Still, shouldn't be enough to slow you down any.

The Ilithids are your only serious threat. For this, we have Mind Blank put on the party, which you should have access to by now. Illithids are no longer a threat.

Holy Word will be your most powerful weapon here, since everything is evil and bound to be lower HD than you. Flame Strike is also pretty good in this instance. Normally, blastomancy sucks. But in this case... so do your opponents, and it is a great way to take out masses of critters at once.

Wipe the den of evil off the map. If you are worried about the slaves, drop a Hallow with Circle of Protection against Evil down on it. Or maybe Forbiddance it. That should protect the slaves while you are cleansing this stain upon the world.

[Dr Bwaa]

The easy way is just to find a way to get a teleport-like effect without actually using teleport/plane shift/whatever, to get out of the restricted zone. Thus:

1. Gather slaves.
2. Put a Bag of Holding (type I) in a Portable Hole.
3. Plane Shift (or scroll of Gate, or whatever) back to reality from the Astral Plane.
4. Repeat as needed every time you encounter slaves (or enemies, for that matter).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The easy way is just to find a way to get a teleport-like effect without actually using teleport/plane shift/whatever, to get out of the restricted zone. Thus:

1. Gather slaves.
2. Put a Bag of Holding (type I) in a Portable Hole.
3. Plane Shift (or scroll of Gate, or whatever) back to reality from the Astral Plane.
4. Repeat as needed every time you encounter slaves (or enemies, for that matter).

Bage of Holding + Portable Hole trick no longer works, as of 3.x.

[ryeookin]

@ ShneekeyTheLost:
See here's the thing. I'm the most optimized player in the group and while I'd love to be in a group where we all powergamed/optimized as I did.. they don't and I can't tell them how to play their characters (they have kids and such so they don't have time to geek over tactics like I do). As such we don't bring as much pain against the bbegs as we could as a group. It's fine, I roll with it but that's why your way won't work with a direct assault.

Fun fact though, my next spell when I hit 16 lvl will be sunburst (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/sunburst.htm). That combined with my archmage ability to shape area spells so as to not hit allies means I'll be nuking that insane area radius spell right in the middle of my group and blinding veritable ARMIES of enemies anywhere near us with each use (80ft radius burst ftw!). Needless to say I can't wait to lvl so I can play with my new toy. ;)


This sounds an awful lot like the Night Below campaign. Great Shaboath, I take it?

My suggestions (very minor spoilers ahead):-- get as much intel as you can about your target before you attack. It can really make a huge difference between an easy fight and a suicide run.

Get as many slaves as you can as fast as you can on your first try for maximum surprise value. Aboleth have genius level intelligence - once they see you're going for the slaves they can make life very difficult, such as by ordering dominated slaves to attack you.

I wouldn't recommend ignoring the slaves to go after key centers of resistance first like you mentioned. With one party of adventurers vs an entire evil city they aren't going to run out of troops any time soon.

Good luck!

Yep, that's the one. And I also anticipated they would use the slaves to attack us. Our plan was to have a few of our lower lvl casters prepare several dispel magics to get dropped on the dominated prisoners while the bigger guns (sorcerer and wiz) are free to handle the bigger fish (ha pun).

After looking at all the ideas mentioned here so far, the only option I see that sounds reasonable/like something we could get away with (read my DM won't go for many of the convoluted ideas mentioned above, they just either take too long, require resources we don't have, or are too complex) the one that looks like it has the best chance right now is arming the slaves and turning them back on their masters. We'll tell them to fight for their freedom and we have their backs! Lets be honest though.. they'd be our wave of red shirts hopefully keeping the enemy busy so we can get our group in position for melee and rain down as much magic to devastating effect as we can on as many evils as we can..

Sounds like that's the best idea so far now that I've though about it more.

[Spuddles]

Enveloping pits are relics and are RAW hard to get and can't be used by anyone but level 9+ divine casters of the god of kobolds.

Why no magnificent mansions? It's a seventh level spell that will last 30 hours. Cast one of those, put the slaves in it, wreak havoc, retire to mansion, recast, repeat.

[Telonius]

Yoinking an idea from an episode of Avatar: the Last Airbender...

Get a bunch of disguise kits, and a few people with high Bluff checks, and you have yourself an instant leper colony. They'll open the gates to let you out.

[only1doug]

After looking at all the ideas mentioned here so far, the only option I see that sounds reasonable/like something we could get away with (read my DM won't go for many of the convoluted ideas mentioned above, they just either take too long, require resources we don't have, or are too complex) the one that looks like it has the best chance right now is arming the slaves and turning them back on their masters. We'll tell them to fight for their freedom and we have their backs! Lets be honest though.. they'd be our wave of red shirts hopefully keeping the enemy busy so we can get our group in position for melee and rain down as much magic to devastating effect as we can on as many evils as we can..

Sounds like that's the best idea so far now that I've though about it more.

It's sad to use the freed prisoners as your rebel army, it would be nicer to be able to save them (I've had characters in a similar circumstance) Freeing them, casting Prot Evil (puts the mental control on hold) and arming them to help does work though,and if you can't ensure the safety of the ex-slaves what other hope do they have? ("well thats removed your bindings, you guys wait here and hope that we win so that you don't get enslaved again...")

[ahenobarbi]

Well if you are dangerous enough you could free the slaves, give them some means to escape and defend them selves (boats, maps, regular arms and armor, protection from evil) and hope your intelligent enemy will go after you not after slaves (because they are no real threat and there will plenty of time to recapture them after they have dealt with you).

Well you'd need more intel to know if this might work.

[morkendi]

Your game have air ships?

[Downysole]

I like the idea of getting the slaves out to some large vessel (or building) and using your resources to defend the vessel while they get away.

I'm guessing your best bet to get the slaves to the vessel is to control water and have the waters recede around the entrance to the lair. Then send them out. Daylight spells and things like flare should help you out considerably for slowing your pursuit, and where that fails, wall spells can help.

Bottom line is that you are going to have to free the slaves walking. And then you have to get them across a sea. I don't see you doing that without a vessel of some sort.

[Roguenewb]

Den of Unfathomable ancient evil?

Brainwashed, unsaveable slaves of said evil who would be better off dead?

Access to Psychic Reformation through Limited Wish?

Lack of ability to Teleport?

It's starting to sound a lot like Locate City Bomb. Nuke it. Let the gods sort out their own. Put a contingent Raise Dead on yourself, and when you come back and get restorationed, "forget" that particular trick.

If you don't like the "Noble Sacrifice Nova" idea, then you can set yourself up with Death Ward and do a bunch of Fell Drain LCBs (you should be capable of like...18 at this level) everything with less than 18 HD=Wight, everything with less than 90 HP=dead, everything else? City full of Wights to deal with, which, as an earlier poster said, are a pain in the ass for great psionic evil.

I don't recommend the Locate City Bomb for normal game play, but the lack of a good D&D nuke means I like to keep it in my back pocket, for times like this. And hell, if Pelor can't reclaim the souls you nuked, what kind of god is he? If you really wanna go whole hog, after everyone levels from the massive experience points, when your cleric hits 9th level spells, he miracle all the innocents you nuked back to life. Seems fair to me.

[only1doug]

It's starting to sound a lot like Locate City Bomb. Nuke it. Let the gods sort out their own. Put a contingent Raise Dead on yourself, and when you come back and get restorationed, "forget" that particular trick.

If you don't like the "Noble Sacrifice Nova" idea, then you can set yourself up with Death Ward and do a bunch of Fell Drain LCBs (you should be capable of like...18 at this level) everything with less than 18 HD=Wight, everything with less than 90 HP=dead, everything else? City full of Wights to deal with, which, as an earlier poster said, are a pain in the ass for great psionic evil.

I don't recommend the Locate City Bomb for normal game play, but the lack of a good D&D nuke means I like to keep it in my back pocket, for times like this. And hell, if Pelor can't reclaim the souls you nuked, what kind of god is he? If you really wanna go whole hog, after everyone levels from the massive experience points, when your cleric hits 9th level spells, he miracle all the innocents you nuked back to life. Seems fair to me.

I dunno, it all seems kinda evil to me...
I personaly would rather go with incompetant good (Arm the slaves and set them rebelling) rather than Successful Evil (Kill em all and let god sort them out)

[ryeookin]

@Roguenewb
Yeah I could try locate city bomb.. that is if I wanted to get a book thrown at my head. Seriously though, there is no way in hell our DM would let that fly.

Attempts to "break the game" with my DM only serve to piss him off.

@Spuddles

Right, magnificent mansion! I forgot about that! Great idea! I am not keen on using it so much as to stay within the city (call me paranoid but I think the doorway would get spotted and we'd all get expelled while resting finding ourselves surrounded and pretty much F'd) but I emailed my Dm asking him that if say the spell was cast below deck on our sail boat (folding boat srd), would the entrance to the mansion move with the boat. If it does success!

Even better I asked him if it would stay on the boat (since it has no weight) if we shrunk the boat back down. If it did, then now we can pile the people in our boat, then into the mansion, shrink it down, planeshift twice (to get back into the material plane) and we're good!

Now I just have to see what he says (might take awhile to hear back from him as he's usually pretty busy).

[morkendi]

I wonder if you could enchant something like an air ship with burrowing?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Put the folded boat in a Telekenetic Sphere just to be safe? Too bad you can't do that with the unfolded one (not enough room in the sphere), or it would really trivialize your escape.

[Hyde]

I vote for the gaseous ring gates. Because I love ring gates, and they're so difficult to actually find a use for

But since when do portable holes and bags of holding not make a rift or gate to the astral plane? that's still around.

[Keld Denar]

Yea, what a lot of people are missing is that there are a ton of enemy casters in the city. I'm currently DMing this module fort my girlfriend and her parents, and the last part is intense. Most of the slaves will be Dominated, and won't want to be saved. The Aboliths all have class levels. Like, 15+ levels of wizard or sorcerer or cleric.

One does not simply walk into Mordor Great Sheboath.

Have you made any allies? The Green Dragon on the surface could help. You might even be able to recruit the demons to help against the devils in the city. Heck, you might even be able to recruit the Lich if you can stomach it. There are tons of allies in that game. Heck, you can even recruit the Derro, release them in pay of the city and just let them loose to snag everything they come across.

Your best bet its the waypoint stones, though. Careful to cover your tracks though, you don't want to alert the enemies to their existence. That's just asking to get ambushed.

[ryeookin]

Yea, what a lot of people are missing is that there are a ton of enemy casters in the city. I'm currently DMing this module fort my girlfriend and her parents, and the last part is intense. Most of the slaves will be Dominated, and won't want to be saved. The Aboliths all have class levels. Like, 15+ levels of wizard or sorcerer or cleric.

One does not simply walk into Mordor Great Sheboath.

Have you made any allies? The Green Dragon on the surface could help. You might even be able to recruit the demons to help against the devils in the city. Heck, you might even be able to recruit the Lich if you can stomach it. There are tons of allies in that game. Heck, you can even recruit the Derro, release them in pay of the city and just let them loose to snag everything they come across.

Your best bet its the waypoint stones, though. Careful to cover your tracks though, you don't want to alert the enemies to their existence. That's just asking to get ambushed.

We made allies with the renegade mind flayers. They're giving us intel on the city and we just finalized a written contract with them. They will help with the assault as well.

That's right we did plan on using the earth nodes to get in/out of the city and yeah, we'll DEFINITELY need to be careful so they don't know we're using them or we'll be screwed by an ambush there. Hmm.. maybe we could put the magnificient mansion in our hut for transport if my DM allows. If not, well MMM should be usable in the city methinks for the PCs at least. That is the city was described as full of houses like a normal city so we'd just need to break into a random home (maybe dimension door-ing into one so if we were observed they wouldn't know we're we'd gone) and cast MMM in maybe a closet to rest methink. (That is if we entirely take slaves out of the equation, if they are involved that won't work as we won't be able to abandon them).

For us however I think MMM would work as 1) how would they know we'd stayed in their city (we'll cast Mage’s Private Sanctum in MMM so they can't scry on us). 2) Even if they DID know.. how would they find us. We'd be hidden in some obscure house, in some obscure location in said house.

Anywho back to your questions:
As for our other allies, yeah well we don't have any others. As for the negotiation with the demons, our paladin was told by his god effectively "You want to WHAT with them? F that.. kill them now!" so no demons as allies. I didn't think of the green dragon but I feel that might be cheating using that now (as it's sort of a campaign spoiler that I didn't' already think of myself ahead of time) so I won't use that one.. and lastly the lich, we already killed it and its phylactery (he was insane anyway.. no talking to him/it).

[Thalnawr]

Out of curiosity, did the paladin prevent you from allying with one or more of the several major opposing evil factions around the Sunless Sea? Or have you even found any of them? We had someone in our group who prevented that, back when we were playing the 2nd edition version of this, and it ended up absolutely wrecking us. We ended up failing the mission and dooming the world due to this person's stick-up-the-posterior attitude...

Edit: Ninjas...