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Doc_Outlands
2007-03-02, 07:21 PM
TPK
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Setup:
Two Huge Hippogriffs carry the 5-man Elf strike-team into enemy terriory. Recon overflights by Giant Owls indicate some sporadic Orcish activity in the area, but nothing focussing significantly on the ruins. Several adventuring parties have disappeared after heading out to explore the ruins. Team is being deployed because one of the parties was led by an Elf Princeling - rescuing the Prince, or recovering his body, is the primary goal of the mission. Given the propensity of human ruins to contain extensive relics such as books and magic items,
the team is also tasked with the secondary objective of recovering as many relics as possible and destroying the rest to prevent recovery and use by the Orcs.

Team is to be flown into a drop-zone approx. 6 hr march from ruin. Team is provided 5 Scrolls of Sending and one scroll of Teleport, 5 Bags of Holding, 5 Earrings of the Wolf, and 5 Mithral Breastplates.


Team consists of 5 Elf gestalts, all of whom took the UA Battle Sorcerer variant as one side of their gestalt. Two used the Warrior variant from UA - one took a slightly modified Craigtop Archer from RoS (Elven Treetop Archer) and the other is unknown (halberd fighter), one took Rgr9/DarkwoodStalker1(TWF), one took Rog10, and one took Clr10.

Just before reaching the DZ, the party - on hippogriffs - encountered two juvenile Green Dragons and one young Black Dragon. The first Green Dragon engaged a hippogriff with its breath weapon, rendering the beast unconscious, severely injuring the Ranger, and doing nothing to the Rogue (gotta love RogueSpace!). The Ranger cast FeatherFall on all of them to cause a controlled crash. The second hippogriff took evasive action and the three PCs cast Featherfall and stepped off. (think team free-fall parachuting here) This 'griff attacked
the first Green Dragon and they stayed balled up starting and escaping grapples for a while. The second Green Dragon moved in to engage the three-man "star" in freefall. Some fancy work with a Rod of Rope and a Glue spell had the halberd fighter glued to the dragon's neck. This resulted in a dead green dragon falling from teh sky. The Black dragon, discovering he was pretty much useless in melee combat, turned tail and ran after losing 60%+ of his HP. The other green killed his 'griff opponent about the time the two PCs thought to cast a cure spell on the unconscious griff. He came to and attacked the green dragon, getting another face full of acid for his trouble - again, the Rogue avoided damage and the Ranger got hosed. After seeing the fate of the first Green, the second one, now at about 30%
HP himself, turned tail and ran.

The party touched down, determined their position, and headed out. Three hours later, they were located by a patrol of 8 Hobgob archers and 8 gobbo rangers. The PC's mostly stood their ground (except the halberdier, who used some sort of dimensional jaunt ability to hop about the battlefield) and rained down death and destruction upon their enemies, with the Cleric using Greater Invis to maneuver around the battlefield using her wand of CSW to heal. Granted, they also *took* damage, just not as much. (My 13-yo son had a grand moment when he summoned a Hound Archon to savage the archers, using an outstanding description of the visual effects of the spell as it resolved. Everyone was impressed by the typical hack-n-slasher gone storyteller!) They healed up, gathered up loot, and headed out again. The Treetop Archer spent his entire time in the dense forest 20'+ off the ground, moving via brachiation. Excellent visuals for that character!

As dawn broke, they found themselves on the edge of the woods, overlooking a slight valley wherein the ancient ruins were located. I used the three lower levels of the spire from "Dawn of a New Age" in Dungeon 135. (Hopefully, I'll get to use the catacombs of the "Under Alahaster" map as the "lowest level." under the spire...) Two Ogre skirmishers were also patrolling the edge of the wood and were quickly dispatched. They eyed the 100 yards of recently cleared forest and wondered how they were going to cross it under the hundreds of eyes of Orcs and Goblinoids they saw. The sniper realized the patrols along the levels weren't quite right, seeing through the illusion of extra guards that had seemd to beef up the defenders. Discussion of infiltration routes ensued, with various options being discarded until the halbardier said, "I'd use my Dimensional Door spell, but it'll only take me and four other people - someone will have to stay behind." At which point the rest of the party - almost in unison - said "There's only four more to carry!" (I just looked and he could have only carried *3* others - oops on me for not knowing the spells intimately)

They DD'd to the top of the spire in a tight circle, all facing out with weapons ready. Four archers and a Bladebearer died in that round with minimal damage taken by the PCs.

Tumbling down the sloping side of the ziggurat, they dropped in on the archers guarding the next level and wiped out 8 Hobgob archers in 2 rounds, then moved to the arched openings on the four sides and peeked in. 15 Howling Orcs, an Orc Sergeant, an Orc Wizard, an Orc Mauler, and a Mountain Troll awaited them inside. The TTA fired off a flashbang spell (forgot the name) and ended up blinding all but three of the monsters. During the slaughter, 4 blinded Howling Orcs managed to escape to the lower level. Fireballs and flaming arrows abounded and none of the PCs took damage, thanks to the troll being dazzled.

At this point, we had to break off as one of the players had to leave for drill this weekend and the other was riding with him, so they had to bail out.

Note: As this happened on fairly short notice, I was hard-pressed to do more than work out a bare outline - esp. since I had to help my 6-yo make her characters (I told everyone to make 2 PCs, for sake of attrition) - and resorted to grabbing my stack of cards for my D&D Mini's game and started snatching out things that "looked good" - this meant I ended up using a lot of low-CR critters on them, but I have plans for bigger baddies further down. This also meant I had handy access to non-MM stats for the baddies without having to spend much time
working them up. Worked great and everyone says they're having a blast so far. They are now trying to figure out if we can finish up before one member has to leave for boot-camp in April. I guess that's a good sign...

Thomas
2007-03-03, 02:02 AM
That's like impossible to read. Try separating paragraphs, and not hitting enter at the "end of lines."

daggaz
2007-03-03, 04:30 AM
Yes, the paragraph is your best friend.

Ikkitosen
2007-03-03, 04:45 AM
I had no problem reading it, and it looks like you had a fun session! It's always good to allow the PCs to build their (over)confidence and use up resources on easy baddies before they meet the real threats :)

Doc_Outlands
2007-03-03, 08:48 AM
Ok, I fixed the majority of the format problems - there's still a few I couldn't tell existed in the edit screen. I wrote the post in notepad and c&p'd it - didn't realize it would screw over the formatting so badly.

And yeah - it sounds like everyone had a blast. My main player says it's one of the best sessions I've ever run. I like to allow "Man, it would look cool in the movies if the PC did..." type actions. I kinda adjudicate on the fly rather than stopping to look up specifics (and thus missed the 3 PC limit on the DD spell) when things are happening quickly.

LotharBot
2007-03-03, 02:42 PM
Whenever you write something in notepad to be copy-pasted elsewhere, the last thing you should do before posting it is turn off "word wrap" or "line wrap" or whatever it is in notepad's options. That will eliminate the extra line breaks.

EDIT: here's a link to the original thread, in case anyone missed it or wants to refresh their memories:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35915