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SilverClawShift
2007-10-07, 06:04 PM
I'm leaving the original post up in spoilers, cause it's be just silly to delete it ,but the thread's kind of no longer about what it was originally about. Now it's a bunch of updates about my groups halloween campaign, so, yeah, you don't need to advise on how to beat the kythons, we came through it with heavy losses, but survived.

...A.K.A. "Kython Storm".

So, my group is playing a month long campaign intended to climax around halloween. Naturally, this campaign is heavy on the horror side of things. I won't ramble on about the main story-arch or the sub-archs we're currently smack dab in the middle of (at risk of turning this intoa 5 page thread).
But we're currently a 6 person group of level 6 characters, and we're currently in deep dragon doodoo.

We're on a large island/small continent which, aside from a noteable degree of isolation, is more or less like the nearby mainland. A little lighter on supplies and certainly no major cities or kingdoms, but not a bumpkin-ville. it's also been under a massive undead plague for a few weeks, of which we've been a part of.
The undead are all mindless. Anyone who dies rises as some kind of undead creature, usually a zombie. The long dead are returning as skeletons and low-level homebrew ghost creatures (partially incorporeal, creepy suckers anyway). And it's not just humanoids, animals and even insects are simply not staying dead here.
We were hell bent on figuring out why. We're starting to wonder if it'll be a better plan to just turn tail and try to convince some paladin organizations to rake over the place with holy rath.

Except there's a few stubborn villages who simply refuse to give up their ancestral lands/homes. We're currently in one of those villages, which has managed to set up a few concentric rings of walls and trenches that keeps them relatively safe for a decent length of time.
Enter problem two. There's a nest of Kythons that lived deep deep in a cave system, who mostly kept to slaughtering things under ground. The plague has affected them too, and while the kythons have been more successful at keeping their undead numbers down (mostly through brutal claw to claw shredding), the whole thing has them riled up enough that they've broken from their natural insitinctual cycles, and have come to the surface. They're moving across the island in a wave of carnage.

For anyone who doesn't know what a kython is: They're from the book of vile darkness, and the fastest way to sum them up is that they're D&D "Aliens" (as in, chestburster, facehugger, queen alien aliens). They aren't LITERALLY aliens, they're more of a demon/aberration, but that's more or less how to sum it up fast.

The Situation
We're in a village of a about 7 dozen people. We're surrounded by undead humanoids, monstrous humanoids, and animals. They're mooks, we could wipe them out with some patience and a good battle strategy, but there's a bigger problem on the horizon. Our scrying and divinations have let us know that we've got about one week, give or take a day, to get ready for a wave of kythons to attack the town in an orgy of blood and fury.
There's a LOT of them. A LOT of juveniles, a good number of broodlings and adults, and a single slaymaster (you have to know about the kythons for that to make sense). Worse, anything we kill will get up and fight us again, though probably weaker. WORSE WORSE, anything THEY kill will get up and fight us.

I think our DM wanted us to quest for something to help us protect the town, but we threw a curveball at him, and suggested
Us: "What if we taught the village how to fight?"
DM: "In a week?"
Us: "Better than nothing."

In our games, 6th level means you're a downright famous member of your chosen class. Maybe not a world-shatterer, but a 6th level cleric is almost definately someone other clerics have heard of. A 6th level wizard is a respectable and admired arcanist. ect.
Since we're considered "downright incredible" by 99% of the worlds population (99% of the worlds population being 1rst level NPC classes), and since our DM liked our suggestion so much, he's letting us go for it. We get to transform the NPCs into ready adventurers. The solid week of hands-on training will give them a (one-time only) jump to second level, and they loose their NPC classes, gaining real base classes instead.

The Army
Our group is: Wizard, Archivist, Cleric, Rogue, Paladin, and a Dragon Shaman (very relevant of course).
Our DM has agreed that, between the 6 of us, we know just enough to START anyone down any path they (we) choose. If someone wanted to become a spellthief, our wizard and rogue would know enough to turn them into one. If someone wanted to be a binder, our archivist would be able to tell them how to start looking into it. ect. So our options are "anything", and we've got a crapload of books.
Not everyone can fight of course. Relevant numbers:
29 males which we can count actually truly count on in a war (which is what this really is) with alightly above average stats from a life of farming and rough-housing (physically 10-13s with a few peaking at 14, the DM will give us exact numbers at our next session). Mentally a little less stellar, but we can still expect a few to peak up at 13 or 14.
11 women who are hard-headed enough to join us on the battlefield and not freak out (our DM isn't sexist, this is just a slice of ye-olde-village life where not all of the women are ready to stab a zombie in the face untill they're cornered. Please please please don't turn this into a sexism-in-gaming thread, that's not going on, promise). One of the 11 women is a schoolmarm with 16 INT and some pre-cursory training with a rapier (gets proficiency and weapon focus with it as free feats, regardless of what classes we give her). She also has a +1 rapier that's been in her family for a long time, which is relevant because we're looking at mostly simple weapons and farming implements here. She won't let anyone else use the rapier though, unless it's an immediate situation where a weapon is needed.
7 teens (5 male, 2 female) who aren't as physically able as the adults yet, but are still ready to fight. They're also collectivelly furious at the situation and ready to go down swinging, all of them.

Location
There's more people in the village, but they're either unwilling, or unable, to really fight with us. The elderly, the timid, ect. We've also established that at least another dozen of the women and a few more men will be willing to shoot arrows from the rooftops of barricaded buildings, but won't be willing to go into battle head on, and they'll retreat inside at the first sign of the rooftops being overrun by kythons (inevitable if they're too effective).
The kythons will have trouble getting through some of the current defenses, and we have a week to make fortifications, simple traps, and anything else we can think of. If they can't overrun us all at once, they'll wind up attacking in waves, which will give us a chance to re-group and prepare for the next wave. And deal with any zombies in the town :smalleek:
We've got a full map, but it's all pretty basic. Mostly one level buildings made of wood, a few second story buildings, we're going to use the schoolhouse as a base of operations (sturdy as heck, two levels, decent size) and the non-combatants will be inside when the carnage starts. We'll also try to persuade the DM to let us turn a few of the elderly into some kind of healers. That'll give us a chance to get our wounded patched up in between waves without wasting our resources.

Our DM isn't afraid of telling us "You could have saved these people, but failed". We don't know if this is even possible, or if we're in a hopless situation. Our DM isn't the Devil, but he's not going to baby us, especially during a horror campaign.

The Gear
We each have a good collection of 'junk' gear like (scrolls, piddly wands, trap making material, potions ect), a few decents weapon, some armor, ect. Our wizard can craft wands, and both him and the archivist can make scrolls. Past that, we're basically SOL.
Our DM will give us some leeway on what we can find laying around the village (if we go looking for a scythe, we'll probably find a farming implement that'll work for it, ect). We can also expect to be able to improvise some weaker armor and shields out of stuff that's in the town, and there are some real weapons and armor stuff around.
While it's not literally gear, there's also the fact that our wizard knows Arcane Lock as a spell, and can spend the week giving a few strategic locations a +10 DC to be busted down by kythons. The basement to the school (one door only, no way out) will certainly have an arcane lock, plus mundane fortifications, for if the survivors have to fall back inside of it.

But ultimately? I have no freaking clue what to do, and neither does our group. We all have some notes taken down about kythons (or DM is the only one with a book of vile darkness), stuff our Archivist 'told' us with some knowledge checks. I just keep thinking of our DMs reply when our wizard asked how many were coming. "Lots."

We've thought, if worse came to worse, we could try to barricade the survivors in the basement of the school, with some heavy heavy duty physical supplies, and try to run our hides out of there to bring in help... but where we could find help on this island, wether or not the barricades would hold for the undetermined amount of time it could take us, and the downright GRUUSOME possibility that we might not realistically make it back in at all... Not a pretty option.

So.... any suggestions? :smalleek: Any advice, out of the box solutions, sound battle plans, and suicidally insane backup plans are welcome. Downright game-breaking cheese isn't really what we're looking for here, but even that we'll take into consideration at this point. If it's a one time deal to shine like rockstars, our DM will probably let us slide on it.

****
EDIT
****

Forgot to mention. Our next session is tuesday night, and it'll be a long one. We'll have a few hours to hammer out the details of our army and our flash-forward weeks worth of fortification and training, while we sit around watching TV, playing video games, snacking, ect.
After we (the group) feel we're ready, the DM will put on his evil smile and the carnage will begin.

Iamdead7
2007-10-07, 06:26 PM
O_O


You are all screwed.

Very very screwed.

Drider
2007-10-07, 06:26 PM
Bards shine when you have this many people, see if your DM lets an old-tale teller have bard levels and be on a rooftop with the arcers, overtop the battle, so share his bonus with the people below.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 06:27 PM
First things first, this is going to be Alien II all over again, so prep for your group to be the Ripley's. It's an insalvable situation unless you can use heavy Exalted cheese.


Second, d'you have summon spells? They'll be vital in battle.


Third, if you wanna get some use from the person with high INT and a +1 rapier, I THINK warmage used INT. If it doesn't, search for a batsorc like class, rapido!

Fourth,, if you can cast "greater/normal magic weapon", now is the time to use it and give a few super arrows to the archers.

But mostly, prepare for going down, wether in a blaze of glory or obscurity. This ISN'T going to end well.


PS: Actually, it might end well. Find a way to guide the zombhus against the Kythons. Weaker Kythons and less zombies is good.

JackMage666
2007-10-07, 06:31 PM
Your DM wants you to flee. I won't tell you all a Slaymaster can do, but it's CR 11, and a single Kython adult is CR 5. With next to no weaponry, only up to level 3 spells, you're SOL. Your best option if to get the Kythons and Undead to fight each other. They Kython's should be able to take care of a fair number of Undead, and the Undead should be able to take care of a good number of Kython's. This will reduce the numbers greatly, and you'll only have to fight one force of considerably weaker forces, which is a good thing.

Kython's are intelligent, after all, so they'll probably figure the undead are the bigger threat (Slaughterkings are drastically more intelligent than Humans).

My definative recommendation - Let them kill each other. You will die, unless the DM is very nice to you. Perhaps get all the villagers very good at Hiding and let the town get decimated in the Kython/Undead battle. Once they're done with each other, spring up and kill the weakened forces.

The other option is to craft a whole lot of Wands of Fireball, and nuke the undead forces - Kythons are demonbred, so most likely resistant if not immune to Fire, though. Rely on Scouts (Complete Adventurer) to deliver Hit and Run tactics to the Kythons, and they should eventually be killed. It woud take a while, though...

Best tactic I see is fleeing, or letting the armies weaken each other first.

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 06:31 PM
I'd suggest:
1. Have an escape route for the people. Even if it's just a ladder to climb off of a building, it's better than being trapped in a cellar. Unless these xenomorphs can climb walls:smalleek: . Anyway, try to bring some of the noncombatants along, if you can. A few crying children should melt the heart of any real paladin.
2. Make lots of villagers into improvised clerics, if you can. Turn undead and protection from evil can really help against massive waves of zombies.
3. Try and force the kytons to fight their undead ex-chums, if you can. If you can do this, It'll drastically weaken the forces of both sides.

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 06:36 PM
I'm not sure if nuking them with fireballs is that great of an idea. The kytons are, in all likelihood, much stronger than the undead. Try to get the slaymaster surrounded by undead, if at all possible. Don't know if it'll work at all, but tanglefoot bags +web spell might help.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 06:37 PM
As I said, this scenario is Alien II. The commando's battle, they brutally reduce the aliens, but in the end, only Ripley and Bishop survive. I REALLY recommend you lure the foes to battle each other, and also, ask your DM if you could reduce everyone's level by 1 to get one antilife shell. If it lasts long enough, you'll be able to kill the Kythons when there are very little of them, and next to no zombies. Else, prepare an escape route, 'cause you're going down.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-07, 06:40 PM
You are all screwed.

Yes, yes we are.


Bards shine when you have this many people

Yeah, we've touched on that. We have a dragon shaman, who gives a bonus to everyone within 30 feet. We're going to have him keep the "Senses" aura running (a class based bonus to initiative, currently +2 for him) at the start of the battle to tip the initiative rolls in our favor, and then have him switch to damage reduction. If things start looking grim, the fast healing (which only works up to half your hitpoint total) aura goes up.

A marshal or two in the army might be good. If we have a villager or two with 14 CHA, a +2 bonus to something and a +1 bonus to something else (for the class) wouldn't be a bad way to go. Bard falls into the same category of course.


Second, d'you have summon spells? They'll be vital in battle.

I think our wizard knows some actually, but i don't have his spell list. I'll bring it up.


Third, if you wanna get some use from the person with high INT and a +1 rapier, I THINK warmage used INT. If it doesn't, search for a batsorc like class, rapido!

Actually, we're talking about making her a swashbuckler. I think our DM figured we'd try to make her a wizard or something like that, but a 2nd level wizard isn't going to be a whole lot of good for us. She'll run out of spells real fast, only have 1st level spells, and why be excited about 16 INT if all it means is a bonus to some save DCs for spells we can barely use?
Wizard makes sense for a player character, but in this one-time situation? If she's a swashbuckler, she can finesse her weapon, add her int to damage, and have some bonus AC


Fourth,, if you can cast "greater/normal magic weapon", now is the time to use it and give a few super arrows to the archers.

We can cast that for sure, but certainly not enough times to give it to many people.


This ISN'T going to end well.

PS: Actually, it might end well. Find a way to guide the zombhus against the Kythons. Weaker Kythons and less zombies is good.

We've talked about that. We can't come up with a good way to make them fight. The kythons will likely shred them if they get in the way, the ONLY good thing might be kythons clearing out undead so we don't have to.

Luckily, zombies = undead, and kythons = abberations. So our Archivist will be able to get us some handy bonuses against both of them with dark knowledge checks.

Illiterate Scribe
2007-10-07, 06:40 PM
Train them as rogue 1 (skillz)/warlocks with eldritch spear, and preferably with initiative boosting feats, and probably weapon focus as well. You can then find a narrow pass, and pull a '300' on mooks and kythons - use concentrated sneak-attacking eldritch blasts at 200ft to keep the enemy at arm's length, and just keep firing. A bard 1/marshal 1 along with a marshal 2 with the steady hand (+1 to ranged) and motivate dexterity (+cha to dexterity based checks, including initiative) auras will also do wonders for your cause, as you can boost your attack rolls quite a bit.

Goodness knows how you'll fluff this one out, though.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 06:45 PM
There's actually a good way to get zombies and kythons to fight. Train someone to be a barb (I think they get slightly faster movement at level 1/2), get them to make the zombies follow them, make it so Kythons arrive and find zombies in front of them, and watch the fireworks. Also, seriously consider the antilife shell idea. It's more or less the only way you can escape if things get sticky.

JackMage666
2007-10-07, 06:45 PM
Figured something better out - There are 2 Spells that wll prove invaluable in this -

Hide from Undead - Cleric 1 - Becomes for ALL purposes undetectable by undead. Best part is, Mindless undead don't even get a save. You can't attack the undead, or cast spells at them, or anything like that, but they won't even notice you. Duration is 10 min/level, and it effects 1 person/level with each casting. If the undead show up before the Kythons, you'll just have to continuously cast this through a wand, until they show up, then hide from the Kythons and watch the Undead and Kython fight. Alternatively, cast it on some fast people, who bait the Kythons into running right into the Undead ranks. They can jsut run in between the undead, and the undead will form a protective wall so they can flee back to town.

Command Undead - Sorc/Wizard 2 - Short range, LONG duration (1 day/level.). Allows you to command the undead to fight for you. Again, no save for Mindless undead, so you can have the undead attack the Kythons and later have them commit suicide (the spell strictly states they will do so). Make your enemies your allies - Just make sure you have wands of this on hand too, to possess the Stronger Kython zombies when they die.

In other words - Make them all Clerics and Wizards, if they have even 12 Wis/Cha. The others can be Rogues with Max ranks in UMD, or other things that can shoot from a distance and run like crazy. This will not be won with the villagers in melee.

TK-Squared
2007-10-07, 06:47 PM
Train them as rogue 1 (skillz)/warlocks with eldritch spear, and preferably with initiative boosting feats, and probably weapon focus as well. You can then find a narrow pass, and pull a '300' on mooks and kythons - use concentrated sneak-attacking eldritch blasts at 200ft to keep the enemy at arm's length, and just keep firing. A bard 1/marshal 1 along with a marshal 2 with the steady hand (+1 to ranged) and motivate dexterity (+cha to dexterity based checks, including initiative) auras will also do wonders for your cause, as you can boost your attack rolls quite a bit.

Goodness knows how you'll fluff this one out, though.

Sneak Attacks must be from within 30 ft.

The best bet is, as mentioned, make a Marshal or a few for the +Cha to Initiative and what not; make a few clerics too, for spontaneous healing and buffing. But, as a fail-safe, back everyone into the basement with only a single entrance and make a stand there. Ranged behind a wall of meleers; that should hopefully thin numbers down enough. Also, use AoE spells like Chain Lightning with the Wizard to anyone in the way and Magic Missile for Force Damage on any improvised Wizards. Scrolls of Chain Lightning are a good idea; or battle field control spells for minor wizards to cast.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-07, 06:47 PM
Your DM wants you to flee. I won't tell you all a Slaymaster can do, but it's CR 11, and a single Kython adult is CR 5. With next to no weaponry, only up to level 3 spells, you're SOL.

Yeah, we know the challenge ratings :smalleek:

The thing is, we're a 6 person group instead of 4, which gives us a little bit of an edge, and we're getting a small army of second level 'whatever we wants'. Not that a bunch of second level mooks are likely to decimate a slaymaster, but it's not 4 on 1, it's 53 on "question mark".

I don't know a ton about challenge ratings, but our DM has a habit of twisting things up or down in various directions anyway, so the chllenge rating in the book likely means less than what we can come up with.

We are still screwed, i'm just saying, we're screwed for different reasons :smalltongue: :smalleek:


I'm not sure if nuking them with fireballs is that great of an idea.

Elemental spells aren't going to be much help against kythons. Immune to cold and acid entirely, and resistant to fire and electricity. :smalleek:

Illiterate Scribe
2007-10-07, 06:48 PM
I'm just worried about the future. Warlocks are infinite reuse, but the wands aren't. There are still going to be undead around after the Kythons, so you'll need long-lasting support.

:smalleek:

Oh dear. I just realised something. Kythons are aberrations, not outsiders.

They'll get back up as undead after you kill them!

Does consecrate stop that?

Illiterate Scribe
2007-10-07, 06:52 PM
Sneak Attacks must be from within 30 ft.


Whoops, forgot about that. Any decent ideas for the second level?

Ghal Marak
2007-10-07, 06:53 PM
Well, I believe I have an idea. I have no clue if it would work, but hey it's the best I have at the moment.

You could hide everybody away and then let the undead in. When the Kython's roll through, they will see a village of only undead and wipe it out. Hopefully, they won't question it and move on.

Just my 2c.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-07, 06:54 PM
I'm just worried about the future. Warlocks are infinite reuse, but the wands aren't. There are still going to be undead around after the Kythons, so you'll need long-lasting support.

:smalleek:

Oh dear. I just realised something. Kythons are aberrations, not outsiders.

They'll get back up as undead after you kill them!

Yeah, we counted on that. But really, the undead I'm less worried about. A cleric, an archivist, and a paladin in the party (plus a dragon shaman and a wizard, and a rogue (with no sneak, but a crossbow)).
These are mook undeads. They're everywhere, but they're zombies, weak skeletons, and freaky (but weak) ghost creatures. If we stay tight, watch each others backs, heal a little, and drop a few positive-energy bombs from the cleric, we should be able to handle them. It's the villagers who need to fall back and let us tackle the walking corpses.

When the kythons rise, they're going to be rising as zombies. Zombie kythons, but zombies still. We'll spank them with the same strategy that's kept us alive so far.

It just means we've got to stay on our toes ,even in between waves of the real threat :smalleek:

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 06:57 PM
Nope, they don't have high enough level to consecrate anyway. If you ever read erfworld, a page of it speaks of situations like this:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0041.html


Seriously, that page might be your best bet at organizing yourself. From then on, it gets very complicated.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-07, 07:00 PM
You could hide everybody away and then let the undead in.

It's worth a thought. It's a heavy horror campaign, so our DM would definately respect the 'Oh crap, we hide like cats under the bed' option. That said, a ticked off slaymaster is a scary wild card when you're hiding. Plus, kythons have blindsense, so we'd better be REALLY freaking hiding.

Also, I didn't mention this in the thread ,but it's become relevant. It's winter. And snowy. Undead won't leave the same tracks as living (shambling tends to be different from stepping).
We might still be able to hide, but this is D&D. Where rangers can tell what you had for breakfast three weeks ago by the pattern of your footprints on smooth rock, if they're good enough.

So hiding, when there's big snowy neon signs pointing to everywhere we go, makes me nervous. I'm not saying it COULDN'T work, but it's definately not my favorite plan A.

The warlock idea isn't bad, at the bare minimum it's unlimited eldritch blasts. WOULD be akward for the commoners though.
"So, uh, farmer?"
"Yeah?"
"You're part devil?"
"....apparently."
"Yeah, don't come to poker nights anymore. Nothing personal."

SilverClawShift
2007-10-07, 07:03 PM
and pull a '300'

Actually, that might not be a bad idea anyway. We have a week to prepare, and a whole heap of village crap. Wagons, boxes, loose firewood, whatever we can scrounge up. We can choke off sections of the town under heaps of random to make it difficult terrain, and create custom bottlenecks. They'll be able to get over most of our barricades, but they'll be slowed and at a disadvantage through it, so we can focus primarily on the ones at the front of the bottlenecks and pick off stragglers through the rubble....

worth bringing up to my group anyway.

dyslexicfaser
2007-10-07, 07:07 PM
I would suggest turning several of them into neutral clerics of Wee Jas, the neutral goddess who has no problem with raising the dead as long as you're not all evil about it. In the weke before the big fight, have them go out and use liberal rebukes to round up as many undead as possible. Zombies and skeletons can be rebuked with pretty good regularity at level 1, each cleric will have 4-5 rebukes per day, and they will follow and obey the cleric who rebuked them until they die (again).

You are going to use these undead as meat shields against the aliens.

Whoever isn't a cleric should be rogue archers or slingers on the rooftops/walls with a sprinkling here and there of marshals, bards, or dragon speakers. I prefer bards, myself.

Your clerics probably won't be able to rebuke the aliens when they die (too high HD, I'm assuming), so use them to rebuke any villagers who get the axe into fighting on your side, and send them into the melee. Besides that, have them bless the archers, use inflict spells to add what damage they can, and be ready to protect the archers as much as they are able if the aliens make it up the walls.

....
2007-10-07, 07:09 PM
Massive pits with spikes in them.

Booby-trapped buildings and doors. Other traps that you can set off.

One building filled to bursting with alchemist fire and oil/tar/alcohol/whatever else that burns. Lure lots of kythons and undead here and nuke it as a last resort.

I think you'll have to fight tactically to survive, and even if you're clever as hell, you'll still probably go down.

Just remember that if things get hairy, you're more important than villagers. Even little crying babies.

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 07:12 PM
Never thought of using marshals + bards. Anyway, definitely focus on on killing the xenomorphs w/ranged attacks, as well as slowing them down w/spells, traps, tanglefoot bags, and undead mooks. And run from the slaymaster when it rears its head. Hopefully it'll be too distracted with massive amounts of shambling corpses to run you down and turn you all into piles of gore.

Edit: I will say, it's probably not as bad a situation as storming the tower of a reduced kobold lich:smallwink: .

dyslexicfaser
2007-10-07, 07:13 PM
It's true, you can't go wrong with spike traps.

EDIT: Also, schoolmarm swashbuckler? I like how you guys think.

Silkenfist
2007-10-07, 07:14 PM
Warlocks seem to be the class of choice for most of the villagers. Give them an Eldritch Spear and they will be able to take out the smaller ones before they close on you. I don't think, villagers trained in Melee Combat could hold their own. So far it looks like:

- Block all paths to the village, when not possible make them as narrow and obstructed as possible. (edit: Spiked Pits, Spears, Caltrops, whatever you can produce)
- Train the elder villagers in being clerics. Their major duties can be healing and/or turning undead.
- Train a LOT of Warlocks with the Eldritch Spear ability.
- Train a small contigent of Wizards with Battlefield Control. There must be some spells to slow them down, should they advance too far. Colour Spray could work. Or Grease. They only need to buy the Warlocks more time.
- Everyone who doesn't want or is unable to participate in this, should go to the roofs and start sniping away.
- Take ~4 of the town's strongest and give them the best fortification you have. Have them take the literal role of Meat Shield in front of the Warlock Army. Have a bit more of them than you need, so they can take turns in being healed by the Elderly.

- Sit back and pray.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 07:16 PM
D'oh, THIS is the kind of place where you NEED a high level party. It's frickin' unwinnable, and the only way I can think of winning for a high level party against similar, but high level odds, is a War Master's charge of gore and utter destruction.

Ghal Marak
2007-10-07, 07:16 PM
So hiding, when there's big snowy neon signs pointing to everywhere we go, makes me nervous.

Hmm... You have a point there. Maybe if they clear the snow before they go into hiding, but that would entirely depend on how hard it's snowing.

...maybe... dig a tunnel between the two closest buildings, have everybody go into one building, then go underground to the other. Then you just have to lure a good deal of zombies into the building and voila, a standard case of zombies break in and turn everybody present. You'd have to seal up the tunnel, but it could do the trick. Of course you'd have to widen the basement of the second one by digging, but if you’re doing that you might as well start digging an escape route out as well. I don't know what to do about the blind-sense however.

0oo0
2007-10-07, 07:25 PM
The warlock idea isn't bad, at the bare minimum it's unlimited eldritch blasts. WOULD be akward for the commoners though.
"So, uh, farmer?"
"Yeah?"
"You're part devil?"
"....apparently."
"Yeah, don't come to poker nights anymore. Nothing personal."

Heh, I like how you put that. However, I was thinking that it wouldn't be too hard to justify mass warlocks. Just make it be a cultural/racial quirk unique to this island that you discover as you attempt to train the commoners. I think the archivist might stumble onto it or something.

Illiterate Scribe
2007-10-07, 07:35 PM
Heh, I like how you put that. However, I was thinking that it wouldn't be too hard to justify mass warlocks. Just make it be a cultural/racial quirk unique to this island that you discover as you attempt to train the commoners. I think the archivist might stumble onto it or something.

Could be fey? Fey warlocks are always good for laughs.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-07, 07:40 PM
Massive pits with spikes in them.

I question our ability to dig giant pits and put spikes in them within a week. Also, there's the problem of this massive source of our energy relying on surprise, and only working, at most, a few times. We still need to be ready once the pits are being circled.


Booby-trapped buildings and doors. Other traps that you can set off.

Agreed. We're thinking of ways to set up the old "Pull a rope, send a spiked log or 5 swinging down from between two buildings". Hard to setup, but not unreasonable that a team could set a few up. I'd try to save something like that for the slaymaster, personally.


One building filled to bursting with alchemist fire and oil/tar/alcohol/whatever else that burns.

I'll bring it up, but i'm not sure if we can find that much flammable liquid in a secluded village on short notice :-\


even if you're clever as hell, you'll still probably go down

I agree. :-\


Just remember that if things get hairy, you're more important than villagers. Even little crying babies.

Tell that to our paladin. And our group in general is pretty noble and virtuous, if not pious. I don't think we can walk away from this until we literally have no other recourse.


And run from the slaymaster when it rears its head.

We're going to play that part by ear, but I'm hoping we'll have a shot at tearing that sucker down. It's evil, so our paladin is going to try to save the Smites for it. Oh! we also have a heavy warhorse as the paladins mount, i'm going to make sure to remind them that it's on our side.


- Sit back and pray.

I can hear our paladins reply right now. "No. No rest for the wicked."
They're very hard on themselves (not hard on everyone else though, thankfully). Utterly convinced of their own failures and sins, and trying hard to be the majestic person everyone thinks they are.


...maybe... dig a tunnel between the two closest buildings, have everybody go into one building, then go underground to the other.

While I'm sure we've got some leeway, i'm not sure our DM is going to let us dig a functional tunnel in a week, AND train everyone. :-\

JackMage666
2007-10-07, 07:58 PM
I don't know if you saw the spells I mentioned earlier, but they're good to get one army on your side, or at least one army you can ignore entirely, and they'll go about attacking the Kython's on their own. Hide From Undead can be cast by a Cleric with ony 11 Wisdom, but Command Undead needs a Wizard 3/Sorcerer 4. Your Wizard and Archivist likely have it as spells, though, so you should get to crafting wands and giving it to Wizard/Sorc commoners - They can use them, since they're on their spell list - Provided they have a 12 mental stat.

Hide from Undead is Definately a good spell to use, though.

Ghal Marak
2007-10-07, 07:58 PM
Well then... at least you could partialy deconstruct the outer buildings and set up walkways among the inner building rooftops. So your archers could run to another building and kick away the walkway when that building is taken over.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 07:59 PM
Oh, I remembered a way to turn this battle to your side. Checkmate. Ask your DM if, instead of just sitting there waiting, you CAN try to find out the source of the plague, or even try to lure the Kython's leader out to scatter them. Otherwise, it's unwinnable. Flee, regroup, and go back to crush 'em.

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 08:00 PM
This is pretty iffy, but maybe you can get one of the more ballsy PC's to lure the Slaymaster through a gauntlet of traps. I'd nominate the pally, since he has a horse and (Theoretically) enough divine guts to be willing to pull this off.

the_tick_rules
2007-10-07, 08:04 PM
train the villagers in hit and run guerilla tactics. concealed bowmen in trees and rooftops, build traps and stuff. one thing commoners do well is work and build stuff. small groups hit the enemy and fall back leading them into waiting ambushes. disorient and split up the enemy then have the pc's crush the disorganized enemy one at a time.

SurlySeraph
2007-10-07, 08:15 PM
I would suggest turning several of them into neutral clerics of Wee Jas, the neutral goddess who has no problem with raising the dead as long as you're not all evil about it. In the weke before the big fight, have them go out and use liberal rebukes to round up as many undead as possible. Zombies and skeletons can be rebuked with pretty good regularity at level 1, each cleric will have 4-5 rebukes per day, and they will follow and obey the cleric who rebuked them until they die (again).

You are going to use these undead as meat shields against the aliens.

Whoever isn't a cleric should be rogue archers or slingers on the rooftops/walls with a sprinkling here and there of marshals, bards, or dragon speakers. I prefer bards, myself.

Your clerics probably won't be able to rebuke the aliens when they die (too high HD, I'm assuming), so use them to rebuke any villagers who get the axe into fighting on your side, and send them into the melee. Besides that, have them bless the archers, use inflict spells to add what damage they can, and be ready to protect the archers as much as they are able if the aliens make it up the walls.

Good advice. The highest-charisma villagers should probably be Marshals, Bards, and Dragon Shamans, but have a bunch as Clerics go out and collect undead servants in the days leading up to the battle. As said above, making the Kythons fight a lot of undead is your best chance. Have any Wizards you have use Control Undead, too. Put the biggest mob of mindless undead you can make around the town before the Kytons show up. No, bringing more undead into the picture isn't safe, and you should accompany the villagers on their undead-collecting trips to make sure they don't get killed, but you need more meat shields. I propose the following for defenses:
First layer: lots of undead surrounding the town. If they're under your control, great. If not, they'll still fight the Kythons.
Second layer: a wall tall enough that the undead can't get over it, if building one is at all possible. (important)
Third layer: spike pits, for anything that gets over the wall. If you can pour Holy Water into them or light them on fire, so much the better.(optional)
Fourth layer: a wall around the town itself, as high as you can make it. (very important)
Fifth layer: more spike pits, directly behind the wall, so that anything that climbs over it falls in and gets impaled. Again, adding Holy Water of fire would be good if possible. (important, but less important than the walls)
Sixth layer: Fill the streets with rubble, to create difficult terrain. If you can light lots of stuff in the street on fire, good. Even though the Kythons have fire resistance, it'll help (but, because they have fire resistance, don't take away resources from your other preparations just to make things burn because it won't help that much). (optional)
Finally, put everyone on roofs and focus on ranged combat. If you can destroy the stairs in all the buildings and/or completely block their doors, good. That might not stop the Kythons from getting up, but it'll help. Have your Wizards cast Grease (and if you have Druids or Rangers who can cast it, have them cast Spike Growth) on the outside walls of all the buildings. Cast it on the outside of the external walls if you can make it permenant, and on the inside walls too if you can make it permenant there. Or, better yet, just cover the walls in actual grease. That doesn't take a spell, and a village should have some grease around. If I remember correctly, Kythons can climb walls; if I'm wrong, you can disregard that.

As said before, it is critical that the Kythons fight as many undead as possible. You have a bit of a problem in that you don't want the Kythons to interpret you as a threat, but you want to kill them. Whatever you choose to do with the ranged-fighting villagers on the rooftops, have them attack the Kythons exclusively, ignoring the undead, and if possible have them focus fire on individual Kythons at a time, starting with the largest. However, if possible, you should only attack Kythons that are actively trying to attack your villagers. You don't want them to consider you a bigger threat than the undead.

Does Confusion work on Kythons? If so, use it.

If it's possible for your wizard or archivist to use a save-or-die spell or Dominate on the Slaymaster (with a scroll, perhaps), do it. The Slaymaster is the single biggest threat. You want it out of the picture if possible.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-07, 08:17 PM
I don't know if you saw the spells I mentioned earlier, but they're good to get one army on your side

Oh, yeah, i saw them. I didn't think to comment on it, but mainly because it went without saying that you were absolutely right. Hide from undead will be darn good to have at the ready, in case we can make it work for us.

But I'd worry about it not coming in handy without unrealistic events going down. The kythons aren't hunting the undead per se, they're just rampaging. They'll probably rip right through any of them in the way to get into the village. The broodlings will probably be tied up with them at least, though. The broodlings and zombies will have fair chances of killing each other.


Well then... at least you could partialy deconstruct the outer buildings and set up walkways among the inner building rooftops.

Worth a thought, but if the kythons get into a building, that building is probably just screwed.


Oh, I remembered a way to turn this battle to your side. Checkmate. Ask your DM if, instead of just sitting there waiting, you CAN try to find out the source of the plague, or even try to lure the Kython's leader out to scatter them. Otherwise, it's unwinnable. Flee, regroup, and go back to crush 'em.

We could go out looking for something. I think if we did, the village would be gone though. We'd be gambling with the villagers lives (plus the lives of everyone who comes after) on finding something that could help one way or another.
We STILL have to set out searching after this, but I think we have a chance to do something good here, and save some people.

I allready know where we're going. It doesn't even have to be said, but it horrifies me. We have to go into the kython caves once the village is safe.


This is pretty iffy, but maybe you can get one of the more ballsy PC's to lure the Slaymaster through a gauntlet of traps. I'd nominate the pally, since he has a horse and (Theoretically) enough divine guts to be willing to pull this off.

That's part of the plan as it stands. Wether the traps are 'people with weapons' or 'spiked logs' or whatever else we can come up with.... The zombies and skeletons we can rip through if we're careful.

The broodlings we can squish, same deal more or less. The juveniles will be a stumbling block, but we should come out ahead.

...the adults. the adults will be a fight. But at least a winneable fight.

The slaymaster? we're boned. Utterly. Our DM has succeeded in horrifying us, at the bare minimum. But if enough of our army survives, if we use our 'aces' on the slaymaster... set some good traps, have some good tricks...

Maybe.

Awwww crap. They're venomous. I just remembered that. Gonna need some neutralize poisons prepared. :smalleek:

JackMage666
2007-10-07, 08:17 PM
If you happen to have a scroll of Dominate Monster (though Unlikely as it is) or Charm Monster, put all your hope that it will fail the will save (though this is VERY unlikely).

JackMage666
2007-10-07, 08:19 PM
Also, I'd be more worried about the Adult Kythons than the Slaymaster - There's only 1 slaymaster, there is X adults - THe Adults can do alot more damage thanks to their numbers than the Single Slaymaster.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 08:23 PM
silverclaw, remember the erfworld comic I posted? How it talked about ender's game, a single brilliant stroke that will turn the odds of the battle in your favor? Going out and looking for it seems like your best bet.

Meanwhile, get the villagers on constructing ships, as many as possible. Get them to board, and leave a ship for you. This way, if you don't find anything, you get to meet with them. You then train them, get them to be loaded with arrows, and get close to the village and pepper every Kython and undead on sight. And if the village is away from sea, get them close to sea and then try for Ender's game.

Ghal Marak
2007-10-07, 08:34 PM
Worth a thought, but if the kythons get into a building, that building is probably just screwed.

You could destroy the stairs after they go up. It would be hard to get down from after the fight, but that may be thinking a little long term for now.

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 08:35 PM
@SilverClaw:Is this the same DM that pitted you against the tiny kobold lich with trap-filled tower? Not that you should ride on this or anything, but maybe the slaymaster is there scare you, for the most part. I don't think the DM will let you off easy, but if you plan and play as well as possible, maybe he'll show a little mercy. Or maybe not. I always second guess my hunches for a very good reason.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 08:38 PM
Oh, and another thing to ask your DM. How many impalers are out there? They are the stepping stone between adults and slaymasters. If there are at least 1 of them, you're REALLY screwed, and ender's gaming is your only option. They are CR 8, so there's no way you can take on them. So yeah, Ender game, it's the only way.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2007-10-07, 08:47 PM
Your best bet is to keep from melee. If you go to close quarters, your dead. Try flaming arrows. It may not do much more damage, but it may do enough. Enchanting bows is a definate bonus. Have lots of ranged rogues. level 2's. Have some healbots, at least 2 bards or marshals, a warlock for artillery, and at least a few tanks. Have each PC lead a squad of about 5 men. That should do it. Presuming a squarish wall, that leaves you with a reserve squad. You'd be surprised how much work can be done in a day by desperate people. try reading eldest in the inheritance trilogy.

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 08:48 PM
Azerian:She specifically mentioned everything between broodlings and the slaymaster except for Impalers, so I don't think there are any (They would've been revealed by scrying, anyway). And the closest thing to Ender's Game they have is the whole predator shtick with the main baddy, and even that's iffy. As far as I can tell, the best they can do besides that is wear the kython's numbers down, lock the vulnerable villagers in a "secure" place, and turn tail when things get ugly(er).

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-07, 08:53 PM
That's why I suggested going to sea and returning a day or two later. And I don't know, maybe they DO have an ender's game alternative, and it's just that they don't know it.....


Wait. Kythons are not immune to drowning. Get them into water, make 'em go berserk, and watch 'em drown. Might work, and if it does, it's VICTORY!

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 08:54 PM
@SilverClaw:Forgot to mention this, but I wouldn't put npc's against the slaymaster. That's an exercise in futility... and cruelty. The poor sobs wouldn't stand 1% of a chance against him for more than a round, and they'd just piss him off if they peppered him with arrows. They'd be put to better use distracting the adults (Maybe using full defense while a PC and some archers do some damage to 'em).

UserClone
2007-10-07, 08:55 PM
Wizards would be a terrible idea, but what about sorcerers? They get plenty of spell slots, and as a bonus, you could give them all Versatile Spellcaster so they can blow all their 0-Level slots on 1st-Level spells!:smallsmile:

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 08:58 PM
@Azerian: Going out to sea's a nice idea... if you can get those stubborn farmers to move out of their homes, which they wouldn't do in the first place. Maybe the boats can be prepared anyway, in case some of 'em change their mind after seeing the xenomorphs:smallamused: .

TheLogman
2007-10-07, 09:09 PM
Okay, here's my idea. You have 47 people. Make 3-4 of them Bards, the rest Marshals. Preferably the teens. Make the outstanding lady a swashbuckeler maybe? Okay, you have 39 people left. Divide them into 3's.

13 of them spend the week developing stone and wood barricades with murderholes.

Count the number of Bows you can get and have currently. Train that many into Binders, and teach them the system of bargaining, the sign, and the invocation of Leraje, the Herald of the Elves. They gain proficiency with bows of all types, Precise Shot, and the ability to shoot 2 undead at a time if said undead are adjacent. Oh, and Low-light vision. The Condition if they fail is not being able to hurt Elves, not a problem. The Sign is looking Sickly, also not a problem. Have the Archivist make Flaming Arrows for Undead, and Sonic/Force arrows if you can for the Xenomorphs.

Train all that are left also as binders, but teach them the sign, bargaining, and invocation of Amon. Amon grants them horns, and more importantly Fire breath. This Fire Breath will do 1d6 damage in a 10 foot line. This will allow them to flame several undead a turn. Failing this will force them to not accept Spells from Clerics of Law, Sun, or Fire Domains the could be a problem.

Place all the binders behind the barricades that your other guys built, to provide cover for them. The Commoners will be able to kill undead fairly well, but as for the demon things, Cleric casts Summon Monster III, Cure Serious Wounds, Daylight, Prayer, and Searing Light. Wizard Casts Summon Monster II, Web, Fog Cloud, Minor Image, the Buffs if needed, and Command Undead, which will force the undead to fight back against the Demon things.

Finally, turn the area into WW I. The Barricades for the Binders become the edges of your area. Everything else is trapped with everything the Cleric, Archivist, and the Wizard can come up with in 1 Week. This becomes the No Man's land. It is near suicidal to venture into this area. This is good.

Also, for solely coolness factor, have all of the 26 binders make their pacts in a circle around the city, forming this wall of Pacts. Maybe, the Vestiges will detect this, and give you some sort of bonus/help. Maybe.

shaddy_24
2007-10-07, 09:13 PM
I agree that melee would be an exercize in futility, work on ranged moreso. Get rogues, fighters focused on bows, sorcerers, warmages, warlocks, whatever you find that will decimate them at a distance. Set everybody you can on top of buildings and build bridges. Set up defenses so nothing can climb, and if anything tries to get up (going into the building), move to another and pull back the bridge. Then break it. Put rubble in the streets, block all doorways, and give everyone melee weapons (with orders to only use them if they have no way of getting away) for final backup. If they drive you back to the schoolhouse, it's over, so just forget stratagy for the most part and just bottleneck them. Try to keep them trapped up at the entrance and gang up on them. If the slaymaster shows up then you are done for. You have no other options at that point.

As an extra idea, see how many other villages you can get to join you here and see if you can train them up. Extra people are never a bad thing, and you ensure those villages aren't isolated.

dyslexicfaser
2007-10-07, 09:18 PM
As an extra idea, see how many other villages you can get to join you here and see if you can train them up. Extra people are never a bad thing, and you ensure those villages aren't isolated.

And then you move from village to village, bringing more and more villagers into the fold, until you have amassed an army of level 1 commoners, with yourselves at the head. An army of fanatical zealot commoners, loyal to you until death (and beyond, thank you rebuke)!

Then go back and teach those xenomorph punks the meaning of fear.

Dullyanna
2007-10-07, 09:21 PM
I'll second Shaddy_24's strategy. If/when the big baddie pops up, that's when the paladin should chuck something sharp, pointy and holy to draw his attention, and head for the hills (Which are hopefully filled with traps).

Edit:Commoners? Most likely, that'd just give the undead a good meal (And make more zombies).

Double Edit:@Logman:Cool idea. I like it a lot. Only problem is convincing villagers to make blasphemous deals with wierd ass cthulian abominations.

Machete
2007-10-07, 09:24 PM
Traps will help you here. Pits filled with undead spam attacking anything that gets bull rushed in (slaymaster and adult kythons) swinging log trap for a Bullrush.

Then drop heavy stuff in the pits for crushing damage and pinning them to let psudeoghost eat them.


Pacts with demons for Warlocks. Minimal Marshals. Clerics for Hide From Undead.

Ranks in Tumble and Escape Artist are good for combat for physical combatants.

Running could be an option, Barbarian could be good for that. Greatclubs will probably be the best you can do as well as scythes.



Hexblades, what can they do for debuffing at low levels? I'm not familiar, you might want to look into it.

If your enemies are going to be grouped together, a Flask of Curses or Dust of Choking and Sneezing would be handy if you have or can make one.

Got a Bag of Holding? You could grapple or bullrush one or more of the adult or slaymaster kythons into it(maybe using it as part of a pit trap) and pop the bag.


Take away the mobility of the kythons with deep mud, quicksand(pools of water with sand dumped in them, or whatever you can.


Make the teens stay in back, them dying will be bad for morale. Your DM sounds evil enough to use that against you.



Play dirty with Snare and Explosive Runes spells(disarming a rune pretty much just means poking it or smashing it, which if done with a trap trigger like a spiked swinging log will set it off) if you have access to them. Put spikes on anything that you might have a chance of bullrushing something bad into.


Attract as many mook zombies as possible right before the battle and make a preemptive pass at the first wave of kythons and let the kythons deal with most of them. Let the rest follow you and fill trenches.

Its gonna be brutal.

13_CBS
2007-10-07, 09:34 PM
Is the village near a large body of water? If so, it may be possible to have the non-combatant commoners build several large rafts (shouldn't be too hard, I think) or other floating objects, and when the hoard comes get everyone on the raft and hide out at some place. If all goes well, the kythons may simply move on from your area. If the kythons attack, well...at least they'll be swimming.

Zeful
2007-10-07, 10:17 PM
Got a Bag of Holding? You could grapple or bullrush one or more of the adult or slaymaster kythons into it(maybe using it as part of a pit trap) and pop the bag.
Yes get the big bad in a bag of holding or better yet a bag of devouring.



Take away the mobility of the kythons with deep mud, quicksand(pools of water with sand dumped in them, or whatever you can.
And whatever battlefield control spells you got. Grease, Web, Entangle, anything.

Another thing to do is to get the Lesser/greater Sonic Orb spell. No resistnace= lotsa damage to the Slaymaster. Then make ten-twelve sorcerers with that spell (or wands if possible) and have them blast away when the slaymaster shows up.

Also if you want to play around with nature, see if you can toss all the other NPCs levels out the window to get one person to level 5. Then make him a kobald and level his ass up. Get 'em a snake familiar and complete Pun-Pun. You can now take out the entire army with no problems. Or use whatever shape changy type spells to make a level one leanerian commoner. or summon something really big.

Xefas
2007-10-07, 10:18 PM
Just throwing this out there, 'cause I didn't see anyone else mentioning it. Have you put any thought into the Tyranid-esque mutations that the Kythons get? All Juveniles and Adults have a chance of having a random organic addon filled with bonus ownage (bownage?), such as Phase Organs that can make them incorporeal. What about the Acid Spitter and Bone Crossbow wielding Kythons?

You're expecting them to simply charge in, and fall for the choke points, traps, and ambushes you have, but if they do, indeed, have ranged Kythons, and this Slaymaster has any form of patience at all to couple with his 18 mental stats, they could easily just sit back, surround you, wait for you to starve or get munched by zombies, and pick off anyone who comes out of hiding.

Or, if they're just a mindless killing spree, consumed by reckless abandon, it's at least something to consider that melee isn't your only problem.

Also, consider that the Kythons might attack at night, since they all have blindsight.

BRC
2007-10-07, 10:21 PM
Yes get the big bad in a bag of holding or better yet a bag of devouring.



And whatever battlefield control spells you got. Grease, Web, Entangle, anything.

Another thing to do is to get the Lesser/greater Sonic Orb spell. No resistnace= lotsa damage to the Slaymaster. Then make ten-twelve sorcerers with that spell (or wands if possible) and have them blast away when the slaymaster shows up.

Also if you want to play around with nature, see if you can toss all the other NPCs levels out the window to get one person to level 5. Then make him a kobald and level his ass up. Get 'em a snake familiar and complete Pun-Pun. You can now take out the entire army with no problems. Or use whatever shape changy type spells to make a level one leanerian commoner. or summon something really big.
All the commoners are Humans
I say sacrifice the weak and feeble to summon Cthulu, then you won't have to worry about the kythons anymore.

blue chicken
2007-10-07, 10:26 PM
Hiding for the win is your best option, preferably on the water, like everyone else says. If you're dead-set on fighting, though...ah, village defense, one of my favorites. Only for the experienced party of gamers.

The only real advice I have for you it to remember the basics. Use your environment and your logical minds, rather than cheese, as it seems like that's what your DM is more willing to respect here...and it's also more in line with what villagers could actually pull off.

Unless zombies/Kythons count as "unusual" (a critical point subject to your DM's interpretation) than Caltrops are your best friends here. Seriously. A village blacksmith or two, functioning full-out, crafting simple twisted metal prongs? You could make BAGS of these things...and cutting down the Kythons' movement speed to 1/2 means you get twice as many shots at it before it eviscerates your mooks.

There's lamp oil in that village. If your tie six flasks of it together and light enough fuses to be sure it goes off, then you've got a respectable bomb. If you were to fill up a wagon's bed with oil flasks and light 'em, send it rolling into the middle of a zombie-on-alien melee...

Soak a hay bale in pitch and stick a torch in it...firebales you can roll off the wall. Works with flaming logs too.

You've got cauldrons and water. You can boil it up and tip it off the walls for mass carnage at the proper junctures.

Fishing nets? If you're near the water, and you've got some decent weighted nets to fling from the walls...heck, that'll keep 'em from climbing while you dump boiling water on them. Or arrows. Or demonic energy blasts. Whatever.

You can't do it all with village supplies, of course. Your Wizard and Cleric need to be UTTERLY focused on battlefield control. I don't have that many suggestions for the cleric, but for the wizard...how can you neutralize the BBEG?

Ray of Exhaustion springs to mind. Fly has great tactical applications as well. As for lesser spells...glitterdust and web have potential. Consider illusions and junk-level spells (dancing lights) for distractions. Illusions could have a lot of potential.

If you do end up going the 300 round and can train the villagers to take cover (for the save boosts) upon command...consider strategically placed oil barrels +flaming arrows+pyrotechnics. If you smoke cloud the entrance to your gauntlet, you can weaken up the aliens before they come through. If you can get fire out into the swarm and use pyrotechnics...can you blind the undead? Keep in mind that blindSENSE is not blindSIGHT. Screwing up their eyes means you get +50% miss chance, sneak attack benefits, denial of dexterity bonus...you get the idea.

As for killing the BBEG once you've webbed/blinded/exhausted it...just how committed is the paladin? Hee...you could always buff his Con (maybe even cast Rage on him too) hit him with Resist Energy and Protection from Energy, strap him all over with oil flasks, and have him grapple the slaymaster before being set off. (Fireball?) If it's immune to fire...eh, gg, right Paladin? Hee...mmm. Crazy thoughts.

I don't really expect my spell ideas to be that useful, seeing as how the Kythons sound superbadass and I have no idea what their save modifiers are, but some of the more practical suggestions could help a lot, especially if you use some of them together. Really, though, all I'm trying to help you do is think out of the box. You'll never win relying on your PC's and NPC's to actually kill the baddies. You've got to confuse, obfuscate, fight dirty...and you've got to use your head to do it in such a fashion that you get the absolute most bang for your buck.

Korias
2007-10-07, 10:36 PM
Your DM is good. This is a great situation, and the entire encounter gives a sort of desperate theme that is very cool. Now, how to win.

Four extra paladins to aid your PC Paladin might help.
Binders are good. Their vestiges are nice.
Warlocks are also good. They provide unlimited Eldritch Blasts.
Tried homebrew? There are a bunch of classes that can help, and I'll have a few that have some nice abilities at low levels up soon, probably by tomorrow. Afew that come to mind are Vechts (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59064), which provide a useful Harrowing Strike at level 2. Enough of these on the Devastating strike section, this provides alot of damage at kamikaze. Useful if you need to take out the Slaymaster thingy. Another good one is Benders, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54063) who have some useful elemental attacks, which can clean up undead. Dragoons (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58445) Can help, initiating a devastating jumping attack, and also provide a useful little bonus aura on the front lines for those within 30ft. A Lightsmith (The Link Escapes me at this time) can make weapons out of basically nothing, and can also add some nifty bonus damage. This Clerical Domain Might also help, as Grease suddenly becomes a domain spell. Which means that those Grease strategies above us are now suddenly avaliable. Black Mages. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54636) get Scribe Scroll at 1st level, and cast spells as a wizard with some changes. Plus, the Oops Factor can provide some useful crowd control.
These classes can provide some help that are player standpoint initiated. Either way, good luck.

Fizban
2007-10-07, 10:55 PM
Okay, first, Kythons all have fire resistance 20, so no burning, at least against them.

Now, since you don't know how many there are, you can just assume you'll have to fight indefinitely. This means that slot based casting is out, unless you've got enough barricades and such that you can prolong the battle long enough to be able to rest, but I'm going to assume that you get hit hard and fast and it keeps going until you die. I'd say pull back to an area with only 3 or 4 choke-points. Set all your ranged guys and the arcane PC up top for maximum range of targeting. If you've got enough of the "non-combatant" archers, form them into groups to launch volleys (see Heroes of Battle, I think), it'll be more effective than single shots.

Once they get past your caltrops, pits, and other defenses (while being pelted with arrows all the way), they hit your melee defenders. Since you need infinite resources, these will be martial adepts. Crusaders, specifically, since they have a healing strike. They will be backed up at each point by a couple dragon shaman, say one with the DR aura up, and one with vigor. The warlocks will know the summon swarm invocation, and will keep it centered right in front of the melee units. Assuming that it acts on the warlocks turn, they can cease concentration every round right before re-casting so that it doesn't move towards your own guys. The swarm guarantees some damage each round as long as they enemies don't get past your front line, and the nausea gives at least a small chance of stripping attack actions. Bats will inflict bleeding wounds for more damage per round after that.

Hopefully your wizard and archivist have some long range sonic area damage spells, cause those would be really useful.


Of course, this plan would have been good if they didn't all have poison. You could try making them binders instead, or giving them all the shape soulmeld feat for strongheart vests (to regenerate ability damage or reduce each instance by 1), but then they lose the healing strike and have to rely on just the aura of vigor. If you can get a few rounds between waves for the aura to work and Naeborous (the ability damage regenerating vestige) to fix them up, then you might have a shot. Until the Slaymaster shows up, then you all die.

Huh, just noticed that a broodling has AC 18. That means you'll really want warlocks swarming and eldritch blasting. As for the demon/fey fluff: screw it. If they really want to save their village, they can suck it up and make demonic pacts. Or you can do away with it, since just like sorcerers, I see no reason to shoehorn them into wacky heritage/pact making.

Quck edit: actually, I see the best plan as being: train everyone as warlocks with eldrich spear or summon swarm, go to the roof of the tallest stone building, burn the stairs, and live up there with create food/water while sniping everything below. If the building is tall enough they won't be able to get an angle with the ranged Kython weapons, and I don't think they're strong enough to bring a stone building down. Until they leave the combat rules and just undermine the foundation that is. Plus, if you can get it set up for full cover against their ranged attacks, you control the battle speed, and can retreat to recover spells. And if anything you kill animates, that adds a little more damage/distraction down below.

Unless something has a phase organ, then it flies up and kills you.

The most important part of this fight is how many is "lots", and weather or not the Slaymaster is willing to sacrifice it's entire swarm trying to kill you. If you kill enough of it's brood, it should logically move on to some softer meat.

And, always remember, the enemy's gate is down. If all else fails you could try a suicide attack against the Slaymaster, and hope that if you can manage to kill it the others will disperse. If your wizard and archivist go nova on it and survive the rounds it takes to cast their stuff they could probably take it down.

Machete
2007-10-07, 11:07 PM
A contingency desperation plan to kill the slaymaster (and also LURE it out if needed) if it turns out to actually be a strategic master of some sort. This is needed, even if this plan is only half-baked.

Otherwise try to leave it for later as its madness could be all that is keeping the kythons disorganized. Maybe I'm wrong, it is a gamble.


Also, although I doubt your villagers will like this as much as demonic pacts, training a Dread Necromancer or multiples from the weaker folks could prove useful for using the undead as battlefield control items or bomb delivery agents.



It is wierd seeing all these suggesstions for Binders, Warlocks, and other slightly dark themed characters. So, this is where they all come from eh?

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-07, 11:15 PM
The villagers are bloody idiots.

No, I'm serious. They're throwing everything (their lives and the lives of their children and other loved ones) away that really matters over, basically, some turf. Based on what you said, they could evacuate, they're just not smart enough to do it.

Here's what you do:

Plan A: Since the villagers won't listen to reason, if it's practical, just drug them and/or knock them out some other way, tie them up, and drag them onto your ship (I assume you used a ship to get to this island?). They won't exactly thank you for it, at least not now, but they'll live, and maybe someday they'll be able to look back and realize how silly they were being. Even if they're never thankful, maybe their poor children, doomed to have been born to foolish parents, will be.

Plan B: Nod convincingly and say "why yes, sure, we'll help you fight them all," then bug out in the middle of the night or some other time when, conveniently, no one is looking. Maybe snap up anything valuable you can get your hands on on the way out, such as that +! rapier. Where they're going, the villagers won't be needing it anyway.

I'm sorry, but that's not even evil (well, maybe stealing the rapier would be, under the circumstances). There's such a thing as owning responsibility for your own life and your own moronic decisions, and I have little sympathy for people who die for no other reason than, basically, they were just stupid. We have the Darwin Awards so that we can laugh at those people.

Anyway, in my opinion, under no circumstances should you actually try to go through with this fight. It would be one thing if the odds were more reasonable or if there were something more substantial at stake than just a piece of land and a handful of people too lacking in survival instincts to abandon it, but they're not, and there isn't.

Machete
2007-10-07, 11:20 PM
Nowhere girl brings up some interesting choices that the Paladin won't stand for.

Here is another I briefly thought:
--Or kidnap the children and willing teenagers and leave.--



Plus, also put more ranks into whatever skill you can use to train villagers in the future.

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-07, 11:26 PM
Nowhere girl brings up some interesting choices that the Paladin won't stand for.

Here is another I briefly thought:
--Or kidnap the children and willing teenagers and leave.--



Plus, also put more ranks into whatever skill you can use to train villagers in the future.

You might sell the paladin on simply evacuating the willing and leaving, though. Lawful good is not lawful stupid, and if you point out that the foolish have no right to throw away the lives of the rest with their silly decision and that it's basically a choice between saving some lives and saving no lives, you should be fine.

Unless of course the willing have already been evacuated, and the paladin is just doing the "death before dishonor" routine alongside the villagers now. In that case, I recommend abandoning the paladin. :smalltongue:

Edit: Although honestly, unless your paladin is bent on being a fool, it should be enough that you gather the village together for a meeting and there explain, openly and honestly, that you've explored every avenue, tried everything you can think of, and hashed out every conceivable scenario to the best of your ability, and it's your honest professional opinion as "rock star," "amazing" adventurers that victory is, at this time and under these circumstances, not possible. You would be happy to, after properly regrouping and gathering better resources, aid the villagers in reclaiming their lands, but for now, they must evacuate ... or they're never going to get the chance to reclaim those lands because they. Are going. To die.

You're not forcing them -- if they choose, they can ignore reason and common sense and stay. You're not deceiving them or lying in any way -- you did give it your best shot, and you do think there's just no way at this point. You're not even unwilling to make sacrifices on their behalf ... you are willing, but in order for that to work, they must be willing to listen to you. Otherwise, you're basically just tugging on their arms as they dig their heels in, all the while the monster equivalent of a nuclear bomb is descending on your location.

(Or, worse, joining them to die pointlessly right along with them.)

Merlin the Tuna
2007-10-07, 11:50 PM
Don't fight a battle you can't win. You've got a bit less than a week -- if you don't already have a cunning plan, it's way too late to start brainstorming. Nothing is gained or proven by standing your ground and fighting; you will get mowed down if the DM doesn't hedge things pretty intensely.

That said, if you are absolutely set on sticking to your piddly guns, the Cleric and Archivist have their work cut out for them. Stone Shape will greatly accelerate the terrain modification process, and a couple Glyphs of Warding in front of the most critical bunker should help nicely, if you can find some diamonds to grind down for the latter.

Jothki
2007-10-08, 12:20 AM
Calm Emotions on the Slaymaster?

SleepingOrange
2007-10-08, 02:47 AM
So, it seems to me that Silver has made it fairly clear that the village is unlikely to abandon their home-steads; the PCs probably need to decide between 'run away' and 'stay and fight'. If the party is largely lawful-aligned, they'll probably opt for the latter. Or, even if they're not lawful, it doesn't sit well with most good characters to just abandon a swarm of first-level commoners to be mercilessly slaughtered/brain eated. Additionally, while we're meta-gaming, running away will be a lot less fun. Given the choice of a consequence-free (they're not real, remember?) 'famous last stand' or an ignoble retreat, sign me up for the next available six-foot hole.

So, having put forth my reasons for staying, I've gotta say that I'm with some of the other post-ers; your best bet is traps and spells. Train most of your commoners in magical (preferably high SPD) classes, teaching them sonic and force spells, and some (especially the ones not interested in/capable of combat) in expert classes, putting lots of ranks into trapmaking skills. Make sure you create units capable of making magic traps and wands; wands are going to be very important once your low-level units run out of spell slots. Divine spellcasters, too, are going to be necessary; they're tougher and more durable than other primary spellasters, and undead controlling is going to be a huge boon; each 2nd level cleric can control four 1-HD undead by the virtue of their own power, and provided with control undead scrolls or wands, they can control an additonal eight HD of undeadlings. Upon reflection, healing won't be too vital; a little level one-or-two confronted by the most embryonic of Kythons is probably flesh-paste within a round or two, and you aren't going to have the power or resources for ressing. I'd be hesitant to waste a resource like the schoolmarm on a melee class like a swashbuckler; she'll make a good one, but nothing's going to be good enough at her level. Honestly, I'm not sure what to do with her, but a cannon-fodder wasted death seems... wasteful. I dunno, maybe I just have a soft spot for high intelligence characters.

CthulhuM
2007-10-08, 04:39 AM
So, sortof a crucial point I don't think anyone has brought up - exactly how fast do things rise as undead once you've killed them? If it's within a round or two, I think you might have a chance.

Train yourselves a big group of eldritch-spearing warlocks (they'll be much, much more likely to hit than anyone wielding a bow) and try to set up some sort of trap right at the edge of the villagers' eldritch spear range - whatever it is, it needs to kill kythons, and preferably not leave them trapped in a hole.

The idea is simple - as soon as the kythons get within range, set off your trap, and hit them with a volley of 20some eldritch blasts. Hopefully a number will go down immediately, and the villagers can just keep up their barrage. The kythons will probably keep on coming, but pretty soon there are going to be a bunch of them rising as zombies right in the middle of the charging horde. The kythons have to stop and fight the undead rising among them, and the villagers can keep on blasting the closest kythons, causing yet more undead to rise and block the way of the kythons behind them. Pretty soon the kythons are all embroiled in a huge melee with their own dead, and the villagers can just keep blasting away, safe on the roofs and behind your multiple lines of trenches and whatnot.

If/when the kythons do get close, it would be handy to have some dragonfire adepts (from dragon magic, basically a warlock with a breath weapon instead of a touch attack) standing by with their unlimited-use area affect breath weapons. Give them the sickening breath invocation and just have them breathe away. If a given kython is hit by two of the sickening breaths, th effects will stack and it'll be nauseated and basically harmless for that round, buying the warlocks more time to blast it to pieces.

Of course, all this is kinda moot if the undead take hours or even minutes to rise. In that case... well, you're probably screwed, but using sickening breath to hold them off while warlocks and other ranged attackers rain small increments of death on them is still a pretty decent strategy.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-08, 04:52 AM
@SilverClaw:Is this the same DM that pitted you against the tiny kobold lich with trap-filled tower? Not that you should ride on this or anything, but maybe the slaymaster is there scare you

No way. Our DM likes to see us, win, but he's also not afraid to TPK us when we stumble. That's in a normal campaign, this is a horror campaign. We're 6 players, but we've had 9 characters so far.

It's too early and I'm about to head out, so I can't reply to a lot of people directly (I will when I get home), but a few relevant points.

We're not really near water. It's an island in the sense that there's water on all sides, but the 'small continent' means that it's roughly half the size of the USA. That means that water based plans aren't too hot, and evacuating the village (even if they were willing to give it all up) would mean marching for "X" amount of days through zombie infested lands, with "X" amount of work and a lot of question marks when we got to "X" location (which is nowhere good at the moment).
Leaving pretty much delays the inevitable and kills the children and elderly basically. And it's not just our paladin who would be against looting these people and running off, our group is solid good (for a change).

On the other hand, Slaymasters have the ability to throw up disruption fields and can gain spell resistance 20 at will (but it hinders their blindsight). So while magic isn't useless, it will falter around them.
And yeah, we took into consideration that they'll randomly have nasty weapons. And I'm sure we can expect at least one incorporeal kython with a phase organ :smalleek:

Silkenfist
2007-10-08, 06:13 AM
I just can't see the plan working without heavy use of Eldritch Blasts/Spears. The problem is: Where do the villagers get these abilities from? I liked the idea of a demonic pact. Try to have your Cleric contact the lesser Planes and offer one of your party (6th level heroes should be a great prize in your world) in return for the Devils granting their power to the villagers.

I don't know if this works mechanic-wise, but its a stupid plan and hands a plot hook to the DM that he can use no matter how the battle turns out. Which means that he will consider this option favorable :smallsmile:



edit: We still need the Wizard's Spell List. I can't see Level 1 Spells hurting Kythons too much (except for Grease to a small extent, but then again you could get mundane traps for a better effect), so these spells are your only hope of Arcane support. Something like Wall of Gloom could give you a nice edge, if you have access to it.

bugsysservant
2007-10-08, 07:59 AM
Well, as it has been said, you are well and truly screwed. Personally I would focus less on the training of the low level minions, and more on the town itself. Turn the entire town into a giant trap. Have the cleric stone shape a large wall encircling the entire town, leaving a single small door. IF you are so lucky as to have scrolls of wall of stone, use them, if not just have the villagers haul stones to form a massive pile, which the cleric then can meld into a solid wall. Technically I don't think this is allowed by RAW, but you can probably get a DM to allow it, especially considering the odds against you.

Lure the Kythons into the town with illusions/attacking villagers. Any that didn't haul stone should be the standard warlock/marshall/bard/dragon shaman mix, and a dozen eldritch spears should probably draw the kythons within the walls. Once there have the villagers clumb onto the wall by a ramp (which they collapse) and stone shape the door closed, effectively surrounding the kythons with a stone wall. Once there, just open fire. Make sure there are plenty of spiked pits and that all the streets are covered in caltrops. Also see about undermining some buildings to collapse and crush the kythons. All through this the villagers should be taking potshots at the kythons from the wall. And everytime a kython falls, you have a readily available melee troop. If you have any AoE spells which will hurt the kythons, use them before they spread throughout the village, if not, just dump all spells into summoning. If the kythons flee to the center of town, have the villagers lay down boards from the wall to the roofs, and pursue. If the kythons climb the wall, grease it. If you get lucky you will survive long enough to face only a weakened slaymaster, after he has been forced to kill all his newly made undead troops.

Remember, you can't win by standard D&D tactics. Chaos and confusion are your best friends here, any spells you can come up with that will increase these are your friends. Best case scenario is you wipe out the kythons, and save the commoners. Worst case is you seriously dent the kythons forces and flee with your party to plan your vengeance.

Edit: forgot about soften earth and stone. Make sure the village is either clatrops and pits, or impassable mud. This also allows you to conserve your caltrops if these are a problem.

Alex12
2007-10-08, 09:32 AM
Might I suggest a few psionic classes?
Energy Rays for type-chooseable damage (including sonic to ignore damage resistance), Bolt to help archers (2d4 arrows with +1 to attack and damage), Deja Vu, Entangling Ectoplasm, Deceleration, and Psionic Grease to slow them down, Skate to speed up your guys, and Astral Construct for some short-term minions. A Shapers could help you out.

Silkenfist
2007-10-08, 09:37 AM
Might I suggest a few psionic classes?
Energy Rays for type-chooseable damage (including sonic to ignore damage resistance), Bolt to help archers (2d4 arrows with +1 to attack and damage), Deja Vu, Entangling Ectoplasm, Deceleration, and Psionic Grease to slow them down, Skate to speed up your guys, and Astral Construct for some short-term minions. A Shapers could help you out.


Uhm...and where do you get the estimated 2 million power points that you would need to pull this off?

Alex12
2007-10-08, 09:40 AM
Uhm...and where do you get the estimated 2 million power points that you would need to pull this off?

Second level psions get 6 power points per day. Those are all first-level powers that only cost 1 PP to use. Where'd you get 2 million from?

Solo
2007-10-08, 09:43 AM
I just can't see the plan working without heavy use of Eldritch Blasts/Spears. The problem is: Where do the villagers get these abilities from? I liked the idea of a demonic pact. Try to have your Cleric contact the lesser Planes and offer one of your party (6th level heroes should be a great prize in your world) in return for the Devils granting their power to the villagers.

Warlocks don't have to get their powers by evil means, I would like to point out.
You could get power by making a pact with, say, fey or TDPPDC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3227211#post3227211), for example.

Telonius
2007-10-08, 10:09 AM
Illusions will be your friend here. Illusions of weak, injured, delicious peasants. Perfect Kython bait! They're intelligent, but I'm not aware that they have a terrifically good will save, or any "see through illusion"-ish ability. (Maybe your Archivist can tell you differently - I don't have BoVD either).

commander43
2007-10-08, 10:59 AM
Warlocks are most certainly the way to go, because EVERY kython has awful touch AC. Including the Slaymaster. His touch AC is 12. Warlocks are pretty much your best hope.

Machete
2007-10-08, 11:08 AM
Don't waste a single spell on Grease.

A pound of lard (see dungeonscape) can be used to replac it if you can find out EXACTLY when the kythons are coming.

Does anyone have a Spyglass perchance? Perhaps some kind of traps way far out in the direction they are coming from, something loud or that will set off a signal of some sort like a fire or a flare.



Oh, and to all those posts and threads that said Dragonfire Adepts and Warlocks were useless.

HA!

Danin
2007-10-08, 11:29 AM
I must say, I love your DM. I study military tactics on my free time and have a special heart for the last stand, deasperate attempt at glory moments. I also happen to put a large ammount of thought into very similar (Though, I will admit, this is rather unique) situations. I'll give more if I can find the time, but this is just what I thought up off the top of my head:

1: No one said you had to controll the undead. Find a few firm buildings, make em rather sturdy and command undead into them, then release them when there safe and locked up inside. At the very least, the Kythons are swarming and you set fire to a few of the exits and have a mass of zombies swarming out into the streets. This causes confusion and a crowded alley which reduces movement. Now imagine if that alley was filled with cattletrops and the smoke provided a 50% miss chance. That increases the zombies survival rate and allows you to shoot at will, hoping to hit something in that mess.

2: Two story buildings? No, thousands of pounds of debris you can collapse onto Kythons in the streets.

3: If they can reach you, they are far too close. Keep them at a solid range and make use of those marshals and bards. A lot.

4: Don't underestimate NPC classes. If there is a level 3 Expert with ranks in craft alchemy, I couldn't think of a better chance to use smoke sticks and the ones that make you nausiated.

5: Blind sense isn't blind sight. I know its been said, but this is important. They are still subject to the 50% miss chance, they are still vulnerable to sneak attack.

6: Look for alternate class features. I know there is a level 1 bardic varient in Complete Champion that allows you to heal with your Bardic Music. I can't say the specifics as I don't have the book infront of me right now.

7: Appreciate a well placed rock. You have them. You have a roof to hide on and cover to take. Throw big ones.

8: You can move freely through the undead, they can't. By using hide from undead you have a massive advantage when it comes to mobility, use it! Send runners to harray they ensuing mob with long ranged arrows. They attack you? Run through a horde of zombies. Even if it takes them one round to kill them, you gain a good lead. I'd say Barbarians, though I'd prefer something that would be of more use durring the ensuing battle.

9: Warlock 1, Marshal 1. Auras to buff and a second level of warlock doesnt really help much.

10: Luck. You never know what the die is going to do. When my party of 7th level PCs were trapped in an arena and were being beaten on by a pair of Ogres, one with levels in tempest (MM3 I think), Cody Adams, the 4th level NPC class Commoner scored a critical hit with his Mundane Longsword and did enough damage to kill it (12). Luck happens, it could happen to you.

Finally, if push comes to shove and you have your back against the wall and death seems inevitable, never underestimate a well placed bout of sheer glory and awesome to turn the tides of a battle. Being prepared to die for a cause often prevents just that.

You are never screwed, there is always a way to win.

I'll hopefully post some more specific stuff later, but alas I need sleep. Sweet sleep.

psychoticbarber
2007-10-08, 11:30 AM
Good aligned party suggesting demonic pacts to save a homestead? Say it ain't so.

With the same token, though, say it ain't so that a Good aligned party would duck out in the middle of the night to leave these poor bastards alone, let alone the Paladin in the group doing the same.

The general comments on "urban" (it's a village, afterall) warfare are pretty good. I also know little about Kythons, so I won't be too much help in that area.

I just hope I won't be hearing much more about demonic pacts or fleeing in the night :smalltongue:.

Machete
2007-10-08, 11:45 AM
Maybe Celestial Pacts!


There is a way to win this. I see a lot of good tactics here, especially noting that a second level in Warlock isn't that useful. Eldritch spear snipers are essential. Maybe go Dragonfire Adept1/Warlock 1 with a few so they can switch roles if that works with the nausia strategy.


Also, get NAMES of these villagers. Names make the dfference between being "the guy whose face that got ripped off and died" and "Bill, the guy with the wicked scar from almost having his face ripped off and now is an alcoholic Warlock with a score to settle."

Dullyanna
2007-10-08, 12:38 PM
No way. Our DM likes to see us, win, but he's also not afraid to TPK us when we stumble. That's in a normal campaign, this is a horror campaign. We're 6 players, but we've had 9 characters so far.

I'm not trying to say is not that your DM will let you slide. But it seems to me that your party was getting owned in the tower with the shrieking decomposed angel heads, and the kobold lich, by all accounts, should've won, except for the fact that the cleric or whatever just so happened to step on the Deus Ex Machina trap. And managed to escape the tower w/a rope trick. It's important to note that he didn't hold your hands though, since he counted you as dead when cast into the realm of nothingness, until you pulled that nifty hole into the bag trick. What I'm trying to say is that he's not going to fudge dice or cast summon:DM fiat or anything, but he won't intentionally put you into a hopeless situation either. So if you come up with a really good plan to off the slaymaster, he won't just ****block it, like some people I know. Then again, I don't know how the other characters died, so my little hunch could be completely wrong... That took up a crap load of space, didn't it?

Redblade
2007-10-08, 12:43 PM
Well the first idea that springs to mind is the possibility of misdirection, is there anyway you can get a condescending insulting message to the Kythons that appears to be daring them to attack an arrogant and delicious opponent that exists in the opposite direction?

That could buy you some time to take out the zombies that are attacking the town and also see which villagers are worth giving extra training to after that battle to help you when you do have to face the Krythons (They would probably get a reasonable amount of xp from the zombies anyway right?).

The distraction could also be accomplished by sending someone who's fast and willing to die to loop around behind them and deliver the challenge as there dieing words.

And if that's all impossible then I cant really add much to what has already been said, but if you do have to die try and take as much evil as possible with you, maybe if your lucky the cleric/pally's deity will take a liking to you and give you a kick-ass afterlife, maybe even grant you a favour. (if your very lucky)

Yeril
2007-10-08, 12:47 PM
1 word.

Fire, great for taking down zombies, possibly not so for the demons.

how you say? Alchemists fire is 20gp a vial!

true, and in massive amounts that is very expensive, but whats cheaper than alchemists fire? Acid is only 10gp but lower damage output..

the awnser.

Oil.

when prepared (1 full round action, can be done prior to combat) a pint of oil can be thrown as a splash weapon EXACLY the same as alchemists fire.

The drawback? it only has 50% chance of lighting correctly and doing damage, otherwise they just get wet.

The advantage? 1 pint of oil costs 1 SILVER peice.

thats 200 pints of oil for the price of 1 alchemists fire.

Sure its unrelyable but in that volume, a volly of oil will deal so much damage for such a small price its crazy!

thats if you can get some, but then again, 1 single barrel of oil holds about 400 pints so its just a matter of finding some tins if you get a barrel or two.

Not to mention you can coat the floor with oil prior and just torch it all later.

Dullyanna
2007-10-08, 12:48 PM
@Danin:Good one. I completely forgot about giant rocks FTW. A RFE(Enemies)D could help tremendously. Or just dump a boulder on the slaymaster's nogggin. That should net you bonus brownie points just for being cinematic.

Also, I don't think you can aggravate 'em through verbal insults. That'd prolly just result in one of the adult xenomorphs going after you while the others move on.

Edit:Fire's nice against undead, but it's already been stated that the kytons are the cause of concern. The undead are a bit of a double edged sword (Though both edges are blunt).

Machete
2007-10-08, 12:59 PM
How did they find out about this little village anyways? Or are the yjust "randomly" heading toward it?

Is there a way to lure them away?


Vigor spell will be your best friend for the commoners. While it probably won't save most from outright death (an undeath) it will help stabalize those who go into negatives. If you can get the Mass version of it or wands or something that would be coolios too.

Blessed Bandages for the aftermath and battle stabilization.

Zencao
2007-10-08, 01:01 PM
Perhaps you could make some medieval claymore mines? (do a google search) and rig them in chokepoints?

Pits could be very useful, if these creatures can climb walls (but not fly) then rig pits with spikes pointing DOWNWARD out of the walls, so they can't climb up.

Is there any way to make some wire traps?

It seems to me that your best strengh will be in what traps you can prepare, medieval molotov's etc could decide the battle.

Also, have you thought of, as a last resort, getting everyone into the celler, and collapsing the building on top of the enemy?

(I don't play DnD so these are just general suggestions)

BRC
2007-10-08, 01:02 PM
I wouldn't say your totally screwed, the DM dosn't sound like the type to put you in the face of certain death, and hasn't told you how many kythons are coming so he can change their numbers.
However, this is a horror campaign, so expect almost all of the villagers to die, and proably some of the party members. If you win, it will be by the skin of your teeth.

goat
2007-10-08, 03:11 PM
Well, in this situation, I have only one bit of advice.

Pray.

Really. Just make sure your DM understands why you're doing it.

You've told us that the party in question are good, several of them are pious and, perhaps most importantly, are level 6's in a world where level 6's are something to be proud of.

Now, if your cleric and Paladin follow the same god, this is easier, even more so if any of the other characters have a religious side. In the optimum situation, you convert the villagers as well, (Diplomancer! I choose you!) and they all need to pray for salvation.

What you have to hope is that the god in question a) pays attention, b) values his (setting-wise) high level followers, and c) REALLY doesn't like evil abominations that are rampaging across the land towards his high level followers and are about to kill them.

Then pray (out of character) for (in character) divine intervention.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-08, 03:22 PM
Updates, with some good news (thank god).

Our wizard DOES have lesser sonic orb. I KNEW he had a lesser orb of acid (we were near some trolls for a while, it was very relevant). Turns out, he's got all of them but fire. The same player is often (not always) a wizard, and dedicates a lot of their playing to their magic (naturally). I don't know his whole list, but he's smart, so we've probably got a lot of good options.

Our DM, benevolent guy he is, agreed that our spellcasters can craft during the week and still give training. The crafting process can be considered training if it's in front of people trying to learn about it.
We also use the default rules for crafting with a small tweak. While the rules say "items take 1 day to craft per 1000 gp of their price", our DM interprets that as "roughly 16 hours of work = roughly 1000 gp worth of crafting". So things that cost less than that will be craftable in a few hours. We can basically "crunch craft" some wands and scrolls for this, in addition to anything we prepare.

Our groups discussed a few strategies, and some things that could be potentially useful regardless of our main strategies. What magic will help. This is really scary :smalleek: :smalltongue:

Kioran
2007-10-08, 03:36 PM
Problem is, as well, that your low-level militiamen will have a BAB of 1 or 2, maybe another +2 from Abilities, +1 for Wepon Fcous if we´re generous. Maybe another +2 through buffs. Hitting the low twenties ACs of the larger beasts is going to be difficult, so Warlocks going for touch or Sorcerers slinging magic missiles ain´t that bad, provided you have some way to let them drop their "Payload" before the enemy strikes. They aren´t charging you over an open field, but still - how long can you stall them? If you can do it for a while, these Magic missiles or Eldritch blasts will hurt, and you´ll have good chances or roasting the larger targets with concentrated fire from your supernatural squad........
Apart from that, I second the idea of rounding up Undead as cannon fodder through the use of control Undead, if somehow possible. Most importantly: Undead are fodder you can, with good conscience, afford to lose.

Apart from that: Errect chokepoints, ramps, barricades. If I´m not mistaken, your enenmies are going to be, mostly, melee critters. Delaying them or denying them advantages of numbers is the key to success, while you lay down the smack. Javelins, while simple weapons, are probably available and not that bad - everybody in the second line should have a few. Everything helps.

Oh, and pray.

lord_khaine
2007-10-08, 03:40 PM
im amazed noone have mentioned using explosive runes to blow up the kytons, make a decent stack of them, wait until the big nasty gets within 10 feet of it and throw a dispel magic on it.

Korias
2007-10-08, 03:41 PM
Did your DM allow homebrew? Check out the Elemental Born in my signature. That has some good stuff. Also, your an accomplished homebrewer yourself, so you should be able to throw down some classes that can help in a pinch. Just no Kython-hunters.

Also, remember to assign units: A healbot to each squad with a wand of Cure Light Wounds, and a Hospital-esque building for those that can make it (The schoolhouse sounds good).

Zeful
2007-10-08, 03:48 PM
Mirage Arcana (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mirageArcana.htm) ,just vanish the entire settlement. Hide and wait. Also if you have the resources you can have 'suicide squads' that have a bag of holding an a portable hole that they stuff together to open the gate to the astral plane. 10' of enimies are gone.

In seriousness though make a bunch of Wands of the Sonic Lesser orb, and hand them out to the 39ish sorc/warlocks and have them blast away at the slaymaster.

I also recommend dropping buildings/rocks on your enimies. It'll halp alot and make the terrain harder to navigate.

bugsysservant
2007-10-08, 04:08 PM
Alright, I can't hold off asking any longer. What, if any, battlefield control spells do you have. Pretty much anything that will move earth/build walls/shape terrain can be invaluable in this instance, whether in spells or scrolls/wands.

The bulk of your troops can be warlock 1/other 1. An infinite number of eldritch spears=decent damage. The school marm should be a warmage 2 buffed with fox's cunning and eagle's spledor. Her damage output for spells (using sonic orbs) is 42.5 assuming they hit, and they probably will against the touch AC while being buffed by marshalls, dragon shaman, and bards. That will take out a juvenile kython, or a third of the Slaymaster, nothing to snear at for a level two warmage.

But yeah, smoke, caltrops, pit traps, commanded undead, walls, rolling logs and boulders and choke points are all a must. This will be a tough battle, but you can win with good planning and a little luck.

Korias
2007-10-08, 04:28 PM
Apart from all the strategies, what will happen to the villagers that do survive? Will they become 1st level somethings, or go stay 2nd level, or what? Cause with that EXP gain here, they might just make it to 4th level. Which means that their going to be pretty freakin sweet. And you might need them to infiltrate the Kython Hive.

bugsysservant
2007-10-08, 04:46 PM
Alright, scratch warlock. Go Sorceror 2 instead. Hail of stone will bypass any energy resistance. Assuming you can obtain the Material Component (the least of your worries) thats 40 people with 4 spells per day (the rest are better served as buff specialists or the warmage school marm) is 160 spells. Hail of stone deals 2d4 at CL 2 and can effects 4 squares. Assuming you can cluster the kythons, thats 800 damage with no saving throw, SR, or touch attack. And each casting can effect four squares, so the total damage to the kython mob would be in the thousands. And hail of stone works at 120 ft. for CL 2. Just get them in a choke point, and the kythons will fall or flee. This battle is very winnable. (you'll note that each of my successive posts gets more optimistic)

Machete
2007-10-08, 04:49 PM
im amazed noone have mentioned using explosive runes to blow up the kytons, make a decent stack of them, wait until the big nasty gets within 10 feet of it and throw a dispel magic on it.

I mentioned explosive runes.

Explosive Runes. Again. If your wizard has it, flaunt it. The damage from one explosive rune explosion hurting an adjacent rune should set it off (botched disable attempt like). so you can spread them out.


Also, try to deny the Kythons COVER if possible. Put traps by Cover because they don't like getting toasted with eldritch blasts.

Fizban
2007-10-08, 05:37 PM
Alright, scratch warlock. Go Sorceror 2 instead. Hail of stone will bypass any energy resistance. Assuming you can obtain the Material Component (the least of your worries) thats 40 people with 4 spells per day (the rest are better served as buff specialists or the warmage school marm) is 160 spells. Hail of stone deals 2d4 at CL 2 and can effects 4 squares. Assuming you can cluster the kythons, thats 800 damage with no saving throw, SR, or touch attack. And each casting can effect four squares, so the total damage to the kython mob would be in the thousands. And hail of stone works at 120 ft. for CL 2. Just get them in a choke point, and the kythons will fall or flee. This battle is very winnable. (you'll note that each of my successive posts gets more optimistic)

A bat swarm deals 1d6/round and bleeds for 1hp/round until healed. Plus Fort DC 11 or be nauseated, which limits the target to a single move action. And you don't have to worry about material components (what small village is going to have that much jade in it?). True, it has a shorter range, but you only need to fill the chokepoints, and most of your guys have eldritch spear instead and are attacking at longer range. Or you can have Warlock 1/Sorcerer 1 and get both.

Thought: make a few scrolls of the swarm, it's got a concentration duration, and the more ground with swarms on it the better. You can do this even if you don't have warlocks.

The Dragonfire Adept's breath weapon won't hurt the Kythons, and the sickening breath is inferior to the bat swarm.

I second explosive runes. Though you'll have to detonate them manually, a field of those ought to mostly kill anything in it: each one deals an average of 21 damage, enough to put a broodling in the negatives and severely damage a juvenile.


I wouldn't waste time crafting wands if you can train warlocks. Except for a few possible spells (web, command undead) they won't be any better. You've got 14000 worth of crafting time between the wizard and archivist. That should be enough to get a couple auto resetting magic traps up, though that could be seen as cheesy (I don't think it's that bad unless you're using a "healing" trap personally).

Hmm, if you've got wind wall find out if it can stop the acid glob and bone shard weapons. If it can, that'd be good to have on hand. A magic circle against evil might grant the tiniest extra chance if/when they close to melee range.

And of course, it can't be said enough, the most important thing is to transform the village into the biggest hellhole you can. Smoke, oil slicks, pits (Kythons don't have a climb speed or special jump modifiers), barricades, falling rocks, falling buildings, rolling logs (might be a little labor intensive), and so on.

bugsysservant
2007-10-08, 05:59 PM
A bat swarm deals 1d6/round and bleeds for 1hp/round until healed. Plus Fort DC 11 or be nauseated, which limits the target to a single move action. And you don't have to worry about material components (what small village is going to have that much jade in it?). True, it has a shorter range, but you only need to fill the chokepoints, and most of your guys have eldritch spear instead and are attacking at longer range. Or you can have Warlock 1/Sorcerer 1 and get both.

Swarms are very bad ideas for this battle. Since the casters have no control over the creatures and the duration lasts for concentration+2, a sadistic DM (this is a horror campaign after all) will wipe out half your forces before they can dissmiss the swarm. Plus, there is no guarantee that multiple swarms won't just attack each other. While it would be good to have a warlock 1/rogue 1 sneak invisibly to the kythons well before they get near the village, and sic multiple swarms on them to weaken them, using the two round overlap, it would be very unwise to have those swarms near the villagers as a whole.

Actually that is a good idea. Have a few of invisible warlocks wait at the kython nest for them to emerge and have them tail the kythons with multiple swarms. Once the kythons actually show up, they would be significantly weakened, especially by the bleeding as they unlikely to be near healing, or delayed by the hunt for the invisible warlock/rogues.

Edit: That reminds me, how far away is the kython nest? If the distance is significant, the warlocks could just hit them using the above tactic at the midway point. Since they are pretty much guarenteed to lose 1 hp per round+the actual damage from the swarm, that could wipe out the army right there.

dyslexicfaser
2007-10-08, 06:00 PM
If you happen to have lots of wood handy for javelins or other throwing weapons, there's a feat in CW (I think) that lets you hit with throwing weapons as a touch attack, in exchange for no str bonus to dmg.

This would allow even lowbie slingers or javelineers to hit the beasties.

EDIT: I'm assuming. I don't know the stats on these buggers, maybe even their touch ac is too high.

tahu88810
2007-10-08, 06:23 PM
Your a goner. No questions asked.

But I'll gladly list ways to prolong your suffering:

1) Cheap, barbaric traps: Deep pits, deep spiked pits, swinging logs, those snares that catch people and hang 'em up by their ankles. Those will all work. Especially against the zombies, they are mindless, so they can't climb. And it will slow the Kython's down.

2) Explosive runes, infact, put them everywhere you can (In one, narrow street), and when the Kython's reach that area have everybody pull back at a dead run before you Dispel Magic right in the center. DONT do it to the zombies, do it to the Kythons.

3) A few Wands of CLW for the combatants (So they can heal themselves and allies, and hurt zombies) and a LOT for a healer or two.

4) If you want to look into magical traps, there is a magic turret in the PHB2 that looks very usefull, spam Cure or Force spells...

5) And since Kythos drown...make a really really dip trench. Cover the trench so it won't be noticed. Fill trench with water. When Kythos fall in, fire arrows at them. Either they'll swim under and drown, or they'll get knocked back trying to climb out and eventually drown. Either way, they should start to drown.

6) As for the zombies, I think that warlock 1/other 1 idea posted above looks usefull...

bugsysservant
2007-10-08, 06:29 PM
EDIT: I'm assuming. I don't know the stats on these buggers, maybe even their touch ac is too high.

Nope, only 12-13. For specialized javelin throwers, this is nothing. I would still go mainly with spell casters, however.

Machete
2007-10-08, 06:30 PM
Nets and Springwalls from Arms and Equipment Guide will help slow the Kythons down. Huge Nets too that target areas if possible!

Between trees, used from buildings, rigged to fall or thrown into pits before rocks are thrown or fall in on top of Kythons.

A batch of Tanglefoot bags rigged to fall on Kythons may also be useful, multiple attacks like a dozen of these goobags at once by tying them together. Especially good it their strength is hampered.

Vigor spells are better than cure spells.

Dragoinfire Adept is out because it is ineffective.

Da Beast
2007-10-08, 06:37 PM
The best way I've ever heard to make an effective fighting force out of commoners was to have 100,000 of the stand in a straight line with a stack of quarter staves at the far end. The first commoner picks up a staff and uses a free action to pass it to the next person. That one passes it to the next and so on. I don't know the exact math, but when the staff reaches the end of the line it will be moving over 4 miles a second and would in theory launch rail gun style into your enemy. Repeat as necessary. Don't know what you could do with 7 dozen.

Dullyanna
2007-10-08, 06:51 PM
@Brennus:That's pretty cheesy, IMO. SilverClaw's explicitly said that stuff like that is out of the question. Also, I think Buggsyservant's got a good idea w/ the warlock attrition strategy. Except that those bastard xenomorphs have blindsense. Maybe if they just shot the kytons from a distance whilst moving backwards?

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-08, 06:53 PM
With the same token, though, say it ain't so that a Good aligned party would duck out in the middle of the night to leave these poor bastards alone, let alone the Paladin in the group doing the same.

It's absolutely so. Maybe not in the middle of the night ... but yes, good people can still abandon individuals who are determined to commit suicide (which, effectively, this is).

From the PHB:

Evil: "Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master."

Neutral: "People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions about killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships."

Good: "Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others."

Okay, so there we are: good characters make personal sacrifices to help others. Fine. That's like being always "Helpful" ("will take risks to help you" -- protect, back up, heal, aid) to people who aren't obviously evil. What it is not, automatically, is being effectively "Fanatic" ("will give life to serve you" -- fight to the death against overwhelming odds, throw self in front of onrushing dragon) to all people who aren't obviously evil (although I could argue that putting your children in this kind of danger over land is an evil act ... but that's a separate issue).

In my opinion, if you go through with this, your party is acting, basically, as though you were all "Fanatic" towards the villagers. I don't know where people got the idea that being good (evil lawful good, even as a paladin) means you're required to be suicidally stupid, but that does seem to be a popular view.

I don't even know that I consider staying and fighting to be a particularly good act. It strikes me as arrogantly foolish. Perhaps it would be more "good" to take the willing along on an evacuation, protecting them and guiding them, and plan for a future retaking of their lands with better resources if and when possible. It isn't quite as macho, though, so maybe that's where the appeal is lacking for some people here. :smallamused:

Saph
2007-10-08, 07:05 PM
If possible, make sure to train a handful of the villagers as Dragon Shamans, to function as combat medics. One Dragon Shaman can heal a nearly-infinite amount of HP with his vigor aura, as long as it's spread out over a long time.

Oh, and please tell us how the battle turns out. I'm really curious now. :)

- Saph

Dullyanna
2007-10-08, 07:06 PM
I'd hate for this to devolve into an alignment thread, but I will say that, IMO, stupidity and evil are separate things, to an extent.

Machete
2007-10-08, 07:14 PM
@Brennus:That's pretty cheesy, IMO. SilverClaw's explicitly said that stuff like that is out of the question. Also, I think Buggsyservant's got a good idea w/ the warlock attrition strategy. Except that those bastard xenomorphs have blindsense. Maybe if they just shot the kytons from a distance whilst moving backwards?


Not a bad idea. As an exit strategy have a portion of the barracades extending however far out you have them and whatnot DRENCHED in oil and some Fuse (Arms and Equipment Guide) leading through it all and back over the wall. Hide and disguise this fuse. When all is starting to look bad and defenses are breeched and they start to get inside, light it up and watch the barracades and such begin to burn down in a small lane leading from the town. Have a way to breech the defenses from the inside with a bomb(alchem fire, alchem frost(or whatever it is called from Frostbite), edritch blast, acid, or any combo) and ride out on horses hitched to wagons carrying some ranged warriors who can attack as they flee and carry survivors with. Cast Sanctuary on the horses, driver, and all noncambatants. Warlocks will work well for this and finding a way to make extra wide wagon wheels will be helpful for traction and making the ride less bumpy. They can fire while riding away in the wagons.

It isn't great, but if you have a path or road, you have an exit strategy that whittles down the enemy.


Servant Horde will be good for adding to the barracade and simple trap labor force.


It occurred to me that these kythons may try to grapple a lot. Some kind of spiked armor or improvised spikes may discourage this or alternatively use the Escape Artist bonus funtion of Lard from Dungeonscape.


This thread is really getting the ol noggin a cookin!

huyneo
2007-10-08, 07:24 PM
Here are some spells that might help...
Spawn Screen Cleric 2 Wiz/Sorc 2 1 person/ level can't be turned into undead if you really don't want them to become undead
Holy Storm Cleric 3 Creates 20ft Storm around themselves dealing 2d6 to anyone that normally is hurt by holy water 1round / level. Material Component Flask of Holy water
Quick Potion Sorc/Wiz 2 Just cast any buff type spell into this and it lasts 1 hour/ CL. Good for if you split up.
Servant Horde Sorc/Wiz 3 Before the battle when you want to set up and it is very dangerous. oh yeah... 2d6 +1/ level servants.
Manyjaws Sorc/Wiz 3 effectively 1 Jaw/Level which fly up to 90 ft a round. Deal 1d6 damage unless reflex for half Concentration up to 3 rounds. somewhat good if you think about it.
Blade of Pain and Fear Cleric 3 Creates Blades in all spaces next to you and deals 1d6+1/CL every round. Works best if he is surrounded.
Thats kinda all i can get out right now X_X

Anyway, you can hook up logs on the walls if you can.. if it has walls.
Logs can ussally boll over people if they are moving. You can also set up logs to roll off the slanted roofs of the houses. I suggest building some kind of surrounding moat/pit around the base of operations. And only build 1 path into
the base. You should try to shut off as many entrances to the town as possible. Should also prepare some dispel magics if they try to use some
magical way to get into the town or the base. Reinforce the Base, include
windows and any such other opening. When you get more clerics on your side
you might want them start making lots and lots of holy water. Vats of it is
very preferable. You want your commoners to be in the back and never in the
front. You should try to least casualties, but that might now be avoidable.
I don't know... this is all i can think of doing...

Ashtar
2007-10-08, 07:52 PM
I'd say a squad of fighters, 2 ranks (longspear in the back, light weapon in front with shield feats (phalanx fighting, shield mate, shield specialization) with the hold the line feat on the back rank are very nice to have to block off an area. Any creature approaching takes 3 AOOs as it enters the threatened area. Back up the squad with a couple of clerics (yay Bless (50' radius!), cure light wounds), a bard/marshal, if you can prepare a wand of aid, it could help. Protection from Evil is also very good.

If you can, have Armor spells cast to help the commoners.

If you do it correctly you can have level 2 fighters with an AC around (10 base, +4 Armor, +1 light shield, +1 sp shield, +1 shield mate, +2 phalanx fighting, +2 protect from evil) = 21 reasonable enough for them to survive in contact. This gives time for clerics to heal them from behind. It would be even better with a shield of faith to help them.

These serve as a melee screen, have warlocks shooting from above (ie. standing on roofs) to avoid hitting your own troops.

Alternatively, I would say, make every villager a cleric. This maximises the healing capability and might even get you some help from the upper plains ^^.

Finally, if you can, druids are a nice addition. Entangle is useful, you have the animal companion extra, too.

And sorcerer cheese with sleep, color spray if these work on the beasties. (I don't know the HD on the mooks).

Also, remember to CONSECRATE the village. Undead cannot be created with that area and are weakened and easier to turn.

Glyph of warding can be useful, but it's material cost is excessive. What's nice is you can choose the energy type.

bugsysservant
2007-10-08, 07:56 PM
Damn, forgot blindsense. It isn't blind sight, but you still will get hit if the kythons start charging or shooting your warlocks. Still, since the bleeding lasts till a sucessfull heal (not a skill kythons have) it could still work.

Anyway, looking through the spell compendium, don't forget wall of smoke. Anyone that goes through it must make a fort save or be nauseated (can only take a move action) for one round. This could be critical to getting of that last round of hail of stone before the kythons actually attack. Also, since it provides concealment, you can just dig a really deep pit filled with spikes on the other side. Since you don't have to worry about trap doors, it can be fairly easy to construct too, and if you cast silence, the kythons can't yell to their friends to hold back. And since kythons don't have climb or jump as class skills, wetting the sides of the pit should keep them there indefinitely. Once you have the entire kython horde in one big pit, empty your repetoire of hail of stone/summon swarm, or even just roll boulders/logs on top to crush them.

@ ashtar-fighters won't stop them. The Slaymaster is CR 15, and will tear through a line of level two fighters in no time, even with AoO (they have 127 hp, AC 30, and +17 to hit). Admittedly, there is only one slaymaster, but even juveniles would do a serious number on that line, maybe even kill them all.

psychoticbarber
2007-10-08, 07:58 PM
It's absolutely so. Maybe not in the middle of the night ... but yes, good people can still abandon individuals who are determined to commit suicide (which, effectively, this is).

Well, we play and run our Paladins differently. I wouldn't fall a Paladin for leaving, but I'd make him feel pret-tee guilty about it. :smallsmile:

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2007-10-08, 07:59 PM
Actually, Blade of Fear and Pain just creates a sword. Not a lot of blades. just one "3 foot long pillart of knashing teeth"

SurlySeraph
2007-10-08, 08:04 PM
Also, remember to CONSECRATE the village. Undead cannot be created with that area and are weakened and easier to turn.

I disagree here. You want as many undead as impossible in the area, because they'll slow down the Kythons, which are the real threat. Zombies are easier to get away from than Kythons are. As I said before, it would be good if you can get a mob of undead surrounding the town before the Kythons show up.

Ashtar
2007-10-08, 08:17 PM
I hadn't read the entry for Kythons... error corrected.
After reading it, all I can say is You are so screwed.

If they even get into the village, or even close enough to use their ranged weaponry. It'll be a massacre.

So, covert the whole village and pray!

TheSteelRat
2007-10-08, 09:05 PM
Some basic factoids about the enemy (Kythons)

1. They have Blind SIGHT. (BoVD pg. 178) Unless the version of the book I'm looking at isn't the right one. They have ranks in Listen only.
2. They're mostly melee combatants, but every attack is almost a killing blow for a 1st or 2nd level character, especially since they have constitution poison.
3. Everything bigger than a broodling has a chance of having a ranged weapon, most of which would cause near-instant death on being hit.
4. They have no ranks in Climb or Jump, and have only a standard land speed.
5. They have very high standard AC, but incredibly low touch AC.
6. Their immunities and resistances make any energy attacks besides Force and Sonic more of a threat to your side than them.


Random points to be made

a) Whatever class you select for them needs to focus on Ranged Touch Attacks, since otherwise you're SOL for being able to a) Hit them, b) Do Damage.

b) Making them come to you will probably be your best bet. Find out the Climb DC's of whatever defensive structures you'll be creating, and make sure they can't make the check. The highest any of them get is a +4 to climb, so anything with a DC higher than 20 is instantly inaccessible. If your buildings are made of brick, all the better, since the DC is 25 for "A rough surface, such as a natural rock wall or a brick wall." As for them jumping, they again only get a +4, and the broodlings would probably be treated as quadrapeds for their vertical reach, but the rest will have the 8 ft starting point. Hope your houses are higher. Anything taller than 14' ft for the roof would be nearly impossible for them to jump up onto (and that's just for a hand-catching). What this does mean though is you need to dig a trench around buildings, and move anything that they could possibly hop up onto, even to adjacent buildings, since they can probably make jump checks between rooftops. Make sure whatever rocks you're dropping on them won't let them hop up on'em and kill ya that way either. As a note - this doesn't apply to the Slaymaster. It can reach you. And then you die.

c) It doesn't say what their blindsight relies upon, but it's worth a try at least to have any deafening attacks possible, as that *could* blind them, and once blinded any non-touch attacks will have an increased chance of success, but I think it's still worth only going for touch attacks.

d) It's safe to assume that given their bonuses to hit and damage, your meat shields will die in one round once in melee. That's about it folks.

Dullyanna
2007-10-08, 09:14 PM
From what I can tell, Warlocks really seem to be the way to go here. Fluff wise, try and get the archivist to determine if any have fey/demon blood; also, see if there are any nearby forest spirits that are pissed enough to lend power to the villagers, so they can combat the bastardly demons and zombies that are killing all the wee forest friends.

GoC
2007-10-08, 09:18 PM
Running away while saving many:
Train all of them for long enough that they become lvl1 clerics.
While doing that create an infinite use item of sleep.
In the middle of the night kidnap all their children and young teenagers.
Load them all into any carts/wagons in the village and smash the remainder (if anyone wakes up then Sleep them).
Steal any valuable lightwieght items.
Hitch all the horses to the wagons and use a wand of Mount if there aren't enough.
Nail a message somewhere informing the villagers where you are taking their children (leave a more subtle clue if you can but be sure they can find it).
Ride to the next village in the path of the Kythons and kidnap their kids+belongings too, leaving a clue as to where you shall go next.
Ride to the next village (always make sure it's at night and all the children have been put to sleep with your infinite use item).
If you see anyone nearby just Sleep and untie the kiddies and say that as the famous lawful goodies you are taking these children to safety and away from the Kyton horde.
Once you arrive at the outskirts of a large and well defended town wait for the persuing mob to get into view (you've got a better spot check and so can see them before they see you).
Dump the kids in the middle of the town square with the valuable items then leave and put on a disguise.
Enter the city again as new adventurers/mercenaries.

The results:
+The clerics easily protected the mob as they raced through zombie territory (and got a few servants for themselves).
+You now have a large(r) army to defend a more easily defended city from the Krytons (they will have almost certainly gained a level or two as well).
+You have saved not only more than half the people from that town but also many more from other towns and all the kids.
-You have lost your good reputation and have to take on a new identity (as the stupid commoners will probably blame you for the deaths of any who got left behind/didn't join the mob).
-They might see through it and realise that their kids are perfectly safe and don't persue you (you still save many though).

What do you think? Would it work?

SilverClawShift
2007-10-08, 09:26 PM
Another update. Our DM is going to let us make wands with reduced cost, and reduced charges. This is good, it means we can equip twice as many snipers with 25 charge wands instead of 50. If we decide to go that route, we're still in discussion.

Here's our current plan.

Preperation
Our archivist is going to spend the week scribing useful divine scrolls (magic vestments, sound burst (! :D). The archivist is also our secret weapon, with the cleric as a backup to that. Bestow Curse baby. Our DM--- err, the KYTHONS won't see it coming. Hit the slaymaster (BEFOE he puts up spell resistance) with a curse that makes him lose half of his turns, 50% change of doing nothing all the way, permanent duration. If we can get off more bestow curses, they'll go on the adults. The broodlings should get stomped, the juveniles will be tough but killeable... if we can cut the effectiveness of the adults by 50-25% and turn the slaymaster into a question mark, we might actually have a freaking chance of surviving this.
Kythons aren't stupid, they're as intelligent (or better) than a human. Broodlings are dumb but cunning. If we can down the slaymaster and enough adults, they'll probably turn tail, either back to their caves, or just dispersed.

We'll do the math at the table, but our wizard is going to scribe a bunch of scrolls, and of course, craft wands. Mostly of lesser sonic orb, but also of other spells that will be handy en masse. Mage armor, protection from evil, scrolls of magic weapon, and reduce person. Reduce person, for our snipers :smallamused:. +2 Dex, Attack, and AC. Effectivelly a +3 to hit, and a bonus to avoid getting slashed if they do wind up face to face with something before they turn tail and run.
He's going to craft the wands as level one. They'll only do 1d6 damage, but he can churn more of them out. We figure a dozen snipers hitting all over is better than 3 snipers hitting harder.
Wands of summon monster 1. We're going to spam celestial badgers onto the field. We have no delusions, the badgers are there to die while slowing down kythons. We're comfortable with that, and since summoned monsters just go to their home plane anyway, we like to think they'll be okay with it too.
Web, will also be cast in the streets to slow the suckers down.
Scrolls of cats grace will go to boost our snipers a little more.
Displacement on the best frontliners (us) (50% miss chance please).
And fly, for the big guns (the three pure casters).

We have stone, and a good amount of it. Our cleric is going to spend the week Stone Shaping it into what we need. He can manipulate 54 cubic feet of stone per day. Which is a LOT of freaking stone, probably exhaust our supplies after a day or two at the most.
We're going to avoid guerilla warfare (against our cunning, stealthy, blindsight foes? screw it, we're not going to go into the shadows with THEM :smalleek: )
Instead, we're going to jump straight to the last stand. Three buildings, the schoolhouse and the two buildings in front of it. (Basically, picture a dead end road. The schoolhouse is the dead end, with two buildings facing each other in a sorta-triangle. 40 feet between the faces of the buildings, which will become relevant.
The buildings are going to be the ones we focus all our energy on. Arcane locks, HEAVY fortification, insane levels of rubble and stony hazardous terrain ALL behind the three of them. They will literally be reinforced with stone, with stone walls connecting the gaps, stone doors, stone covered windows.... we're basically going to make it unrealistic for anything to come in in any direction but the front. They might come OVER, but certainly won't get in THROUGH. We hope, anyway. But even if they get through the stone, there's still arcane-locked doors in their way... basically way too much trouble to come in the back way.

So now we're fighting kythons in a stone bottleneck? What to do from here.

The roofs and rear are going to have a few glyphs of warding. Our wizard doesn't know explosive runes at the moment, so that's out. He will set some alarms in the back, so we know if they're trying to get in that way.
The street and areas in front of us, same thing. Glyphs of warding, set to sound-burst or inflict-wounds. That'll at least thin them out, and possibly stun some of them. The less we go toe to toe with at once, the better.

We've also got a few traps and tricks for the frontal assault, which we're hoping to snag adult kythons with. The slaymaster will probably be too smart to fall for much, but we're going to put spiked pillars up ready to fall forwards, sideways, and wherever else we can position them. There's a chance our DM will even use his infamous line "Forget the math, that just killed whatever it hit".
Spiked trenches will be set up, mainly to slow them down. The last spiked trench will be facing backwards. We're prepared to bullrush them into it if we get the chance.

So who's "we"?

The Army

Or should that read "The victims?"

No matter. We're in this now.

The buildings on either side of the street are going to be our BATTERIES. People who weren't good for much else are going to become dragon shamans. They don't need high stats, they just need to show up. Marshals will be trained the same way. 2nd level marshals don't actually NEED charisma, their major aura functions without it (based on level). Marshal major auras are wonderful things like damage reduction, damage boosts, melee and ranged boosts, and AC boosts. And save boosts. Really, they just freaking boost.
We're going to fluff it that they're watching the war intently and shouting out warnings and good info. We figure, 24 people will become marshals and dragon shaman (5 marshals to every 3 dragon shaman, set up in redundant circles in all three buildings at the windows in a pattern which will overlap the carnage zone, so the frontliners will get 5 marshal aura boosts and 3 dragon shaman boosts regardless. HOPEFULLY we can keep things from falling apart, the redunant boosts will help, the dragon shaman healing will help keep everyone up and moving) That'll give us: Damage reduction 1/-, +1 to attack in melee AND ranged, +1 AC, +1 Damage from the marshals, and another +1 melee damage, another DR 1/magic, and fast healing 1 (up to half your hitpoints max) from the dragon shamans.
The dragon shaman will ALSO be warlocks. We're going to try to fluff it as draconic powers manifesting in bizzarre ways. "They say everyone has a little dragon blood in them". That will help us survive, and keep the villagers from killing each other afterwards. The dragon shaman/warlocks (1/1) will also be reduced :smallamused:. That extra +2 to attack (+2 Dex, +1 attack) means something. They don't need strength anyway, and they'll be harder to hit if it comes up.
Each 8-man team of aura boosters will also have two meat shields with two handed weapons. They will also have a weak healer (better than nothing) who will have the main goal of stabilizing anyone before they die. The dragon shaman healing auras will then pick them back up from the negatives.

That leaves us 14 people, one of which is Miss Beverly the schoolmarm. +1 rapier, high int, weapon focus with it? We were going to make her a swashbuckler, but 2nd level swashbucklers don't get the int to damage, so it's a waste. She's going to become a duskblade. +2 BAB, +1 rapier, +1 focus, +1 magic weapon... She won't be on the REAL frontline, but she's a backup frontliner who can cast true strike a few times.

13 people left. Warlocks, battle sorcerers with sonic orb wands, and clerics with scrolls of useful cleric stuff and some big-gun healing for emergencies. Sniping out of barricaded windows ideally. We'll see if we can spare a few people to dedicate themselves to reinforcing barricades should they start to fall. We also want to stick at least one dedicated healer and one dragon shaman with a healing aura in the schoolhouse with the survivors, as an emergency heal-bot area.

We're still going through stuff looking for other bright ideas, but that's the battle strategy as it stands.

The Cleric, Archivist, and Wizard are all going to be flying. 60 foot move speed, able to get out of harms way. If we can crunch the numbers, there'll be scrolls of fly for me, the paladin, and the dragon shaman as well.

The wizard will float above us dropping sonic-bombs and being our eye-in-the-sky. He's also going to be saddles with the responsibility of keeping the magic flowing with his scrolls and wands (those he didn't hand off to the trainees).
The archivist is going to get everyone a +1 to attack and saves against undead AND abberations for the combat. MAYBE a +2, if the rolls are well. The archivist will also be flying, with the intention of dropping weak heal-bombs and keeping his eyes peeled for the slaymaster. When he sees him, he's going to let the cleric know, and the two of them are going to fly-by attack him with some bestow curses. If the intiative works out in our favor, they can both get him BEFORE he throws up his magical defenses, which would be sweet. 50% chance of inaction AND -4 to attacks if they both curse him.
There'll be scrolls of sound burst and spiritual weapon for any incorporeal kythons with phase organs (hopefully there won't be more than one :smalleek:).
The cleric and archivist both CAN drop heal-bombs, but we have some wands of cure light wounds, and hopefully they'll be able to use their spell slots for other useful things. The cleric will also have turn-undead uses, which we will need.
The Paladin is going to be buffed up as high as we can and keep his mount in reserve, save his smites for when he thinks they'll do some good, and have some lay-on-hands for stabilizing healing. His AC will be
The dragon shaman is going to keep their initiate aura up as we go into things, so we'll ALL have +2 to initiative. After the combat starts, they'll either get us +2 damage, DR 2/magic, or fast healing 2 (half hitpoint max). It won't stack with the other dragon shamans, but if we need an extra edge in one area, they can make it so. They're a copper dragon totem too, so they can spider-climb at will and give us acid resistance 10 if needed. Since a kython might have an acid-spitter weapon, that could come in handy. They can also use a 3d6 line of acid breath weapon (usless against kythons) and have 18 healing 'lay on hands' of their own.

I'll be sneak attacking with a sonic orb wand :smallamused:. I've got enough UMD to not really worry about it, and with a sneak I'll be doing 4d6 sonic damage. With some good rolls and good positioning (easier to do if I'm flying at 60 feet movement), I'll be able to do some decent damage.
I'll have real weapons of course, but I'll be trying to hit their Touch AC for a reason, so wand of sonic it is.

We, uh. might. Uh, yeah, we're screwed.

Oh, we'll also have Delay Poison cast on us before battle, so we won't have to worry about THAT. we just have to worry about, you know, everything else. :smalleek:

And they'll get back up after we kill them :smalleek:

Things have been returning as 1/2 and 1 challenge rating pushovers, and our wizard actually has a wand with a few fireball charges for big groups of undead... I still worry about that slaymaster getting back up though. That's a big zombie.

Korias
2007-10-08, 09:32 PM
Go for the overkill with the Slaymaster. Think about it this way: If there's nothing left of the Slaymaster, there cant be a zombie. Obliterate it, and your made. Idea: Disintigration.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-08, 09:34 PM
What this does mean though is you need to dig a trench around buildings

GOOD!

Yeah, I'll mention that. Dig trenches around the rear, encase everything in stone.

Machete
2007-10-08, 09:41 PM
Without knowing the Kython numbers I give you a 30% chance of survival. I'd suggest you re-go through the thread for ideas again. I think you can even the odds to 50-50 at least.

Rex Blunder
2007-10-08, 09:55 PM
It sounds like it'll be a great session! I hope we get to hear the full report.

ReproMan
2007-10-08, 10:13 PM
Oh Man, it's just like the last chapter in 'World War Z'... Hmm...

If you don't want to know how the Humans win in that book, don't read below:

'The Box'. It's your only hope.

The idea is simple. Create a line of riflemen (in this case, Warlocks w/Eldrich Spear). Place them on an elevated platform (so they're out of reach of a normal charge, and the bad guys will have to climb to get to them). Draw a line in the snow at the 300' marker, all around the . As soon as any bad guy crosses that line, he gets TAKEN DOWN with EXTREME PREJUDICE.

You'll want to build your platform away from and in front of your village, and remove every shrub, every tree, every possible source of cover or distraction to line of sight. Outside the 300' line, feel free to dig trenches, create booby-traps, drop bombs, explode some runes, etc, but inside you'll just want to have an absolutely clear line of sight for your Warlocks. Caltrops are fine, as they do not block line of sight and act to slow speed, thus enabling more shots to be taken by the snipers.

As to the construction of your platform; some elementary cover (wooden battlements) might come in handy, in case any of them have crossbows or other ranged weapons, but your best asset by far is simply range and the number of individuals firing at the oncoming horde simultaneously.

You have (by my count) 47 villagers capable of becoming Warlocks. That means you will have every round 47 300' 1d8 (let's call it 5 damage) shots with about a 50% hit percentage. This means you can expect to drop a dozen broodlings every round just from a single volley if you tell people to fire in groups of 3/4 at individual targets. You could also expect to drop 2-3 juveniles with the same amount of firepower, or even 1.5-2 adults (1 adult plus some broodlings). With 30 movement, you can expect to have 3 rounds minimum to fire at these guys if they're running full out at you, double that if you litter the ground with caltrops, even more if they're stopping to shoot (tell the villagers to target ones with weapons FIRST, of course), plus any time it'd take for these guys to climb up and attack you (I'd recommend thoroughly greasing the sides of the platforms. That's an extra 3+rounds of shooting before any villager is in any danger of being meleed).

Let's recap the numbers - 47 shooters, 300' line, caltrops, 40' raised platform with greased sides:

Minimum rounds to melee contact: 7-8
Average hitting damage per round of shooting (assuming 50% accuracy): 105.75
Average damage over 7 rounds: 740.25
Average # Broodlings killed over 7 rounds: 67.3
Average # Juveniles killed: 18.1
Average # Adults killed: 9.9

That is the potential damage just to the first wave alone. After they go down, subsequent waves will face identical slaughter, and there is no way the villagers will not kill one of these things with 8 rounds of concentrated shooting. And, of course, if one or two shooters multi-class into Bards/Marshals, the team hit percentages will go up exponentially and make the slaughter all the more colorful.

You can TOTALLY win this one. I didn't even mention the kinds of things your Big Guns could be doing during all this time, raining death and pain all along the lines of baddies.

Thoughts?

Tor the Fallen
2007-10-08, 10:56 PM
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, use fire!

Mundane fire has little chance of killing kythons. It will also be unlikely to kill a zombie in a single round. Instead, what you risk, is burning all your mooks alive, destroying your stocked goods, and basically turning everything into a BBQ for the kythons.


Good set up; just make sure you've got some way to survive for a couple days. What happens when the kythons retreat?

I also recommend distributing scrolls of extended Rope Trick to each strike team. Once the fireworks begin, have one of them pop it with UMD, or right before (they'll last 12 hours extendend).

This way, they have an inaccessible extradimensional space to retreat to, heal up, and await rescue, in case their position is overrun. You may think about putting alarms at the strike team sites so you know when a unit has kython on them.

Also note that your sneak attack only has a range of 30 feet.

shaddy_24
2007-10-08, 11:01 PM
I think it might be a good idea to at least snipe them a little as they make their way into the town. Set up a few groups of warlocks and marshals on top of buildings and block off the way up. When the monsters begin looking for a way, use wood planks as bridges and begin working your way back to the schoolhouse. This should allow you to kill or at least injure a couple of the stronger ones (as long as you focus on them more), as long as they don't come after you incorporally or with ranged weapons. If they pull that off, run as fast as you can, or you're going to die. Set up the main battle in the area you have planned, but try to damage them beforehand as well.

And look for backup if possible. There are no towns nearby to join you? A couple extra people would greatly increase your chances.

blue chicken
2007-10-08, 11:20 PM
Hmmm...hey, it'll work, if you ask me. Just let me get a few things straight.

Basically, your plan is to run them into a kill-zone with you fighting from an elevated position that they can't approach from the back? For my mechanical purposes, I'm picturing this three-building cluster as a rectangle with one of the short sides open...cram enemies inside, melt them with your ranged attackers, yes? I like your ideas of just making the buildings inaccessible with stone. Thick enough walls and enough Arcane Lock and you should be all right...except for that whole phasing thing. Just make sure you figure a way to keep your OWN access into them before the attack. But you're smart enough to think of that.

...if that's right...I think it's a pretty good idea. As one of the earlier posters said, though, you should maybe try to incorporate a few more of the mundane defenses into the plan if you can.


My only additional thoughts: extending the killzone for advanced range. What invocation are you giving your warlocks? Just use stone shape and give yourself an alley they have to run down to get into your box. Line it with caltrops, of course. Lots of caltrops. That way you get extra rounds of ouch while you're shooting at them.

Don't forget to have grease ready to cast on the walls of your buildings to repel climbers...or even render up some lard in cauldrons at the top and tip them over as the attack starts. That should work too.

Have NETS at the top to drop. Even just fishing nets. Can't hurt.

And finally...the improvisation. Sure, my oil fire ideas kind of fail what with the baddies' energy resistances...but they're not immune to shards of metal, are they?

Your easiest, cheapest mass destruction idea is to fill small casks of oil with caltrops or other metal shards and have them at the bottom ready to go off. If you wanted, you could use flasks, gluing/wrapping caltrops all over the outside surface and then lighting/throwing the bombs. I don't know how your DM would calculate damage for one of those. Maybe like the Psionic power Storm of Crystals? It's a thought.

Your concept is sound; just don't forget to buff with more strategic details. EASY, CHEAP strategic details that will keep you ALIVE.

SleepingOrange
2007-10-08, 11:32 PM
I feel that many of you (including you, Silver) are too focused on healing; i don't know exactly how much damage we're looking at per Kython (some of us can't go out and buy supplements willy-nilly [although the BOVD is certainly on my list]), but it seems like any of your Doritoes hit by a kython is basically pâte de paysan mort. I feel you'd be better served spending your time creating combat-based and defense-based characters and items than healing ones; I'll reiterate my thought that magic-user/expert (trapmaking, blacksmithing) classes will serve you well here, especially if you create them from the non-combatants.

Bestow Curse? 'Gasmic thinking. Unfortunately, it's a touch-range spell. How do you think you're going to get close enough to slam him with a curse without being +17-to-attacked to death? I know wizards have it as a class spell, but does yours? If he does (and has spectral hand), have HIM deliver the curses from on high; if not, does an archivist (pardon my ignorance, but I don't know much beyond the core rulebooks and a few specialty supplements) get UMD? If he does, get a Dorito wizard to scribe him a scroll of Spectral Hand and let him do it. A couple Spectral Hands and three curses later, and your Slaymaster is a minus-6-to-strength-fifty-percet-lose-turn-chance-minus-4-penalty-to-rollsMaster. Failing that, let the Rogue have two or three scrolls of Spectral Hand and three or four(Actually, let's make it a few more; if he can curse the Slaymaster with the turn-loss curse, and then keeps getting lucky, he could reduce its physical stats to ones. Spectral Hand lasts for a minute/level.) scrolls of Bestow Curse and give him the fly spell, and you've got a well-dodging, flying, curse machine. Adittionally, having their leader turned to a catatonic pile of flesh could be bad for Kython morale; they are intelligent, so let's use it against them.

Machete
2007-10-09, 12:03 AM
Flask of Curses with a wire attached to it and being manipulated by a Mage Hand.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/cursedItems.htm#flaskofCurses

Open and Close over the enemy repeatedly to curse them all into sucktown!

Or if your DM rules it is one use, make multiples.


It is a lot faster than one at a time with Spectral Hand and won't miss (just hope their Will saves suck).

SleepingOrange
2007-10-09, 12:13 AM
That MIGHT be a good idea, were it not for the fact that a flask of curses is CL 7th, and the 'curse' it contains is just a -2 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks. I doubt they'd even stack.

Edit: Aditionally, it says 'when first unstoppered'. I take that to mean that it's a one-use-only item.

Machete
2007-10-09, 12:17 AM
CL7 Arrgh, I missed that. Maybe with some negotiation though a similiar item could be crafted.

Fizban
2007-10-09, 12:53 AM
A little late back in but:


Swarms are very bad ideas for this battle. Since the casters have no control over the creatures and the duration lasts for concentration+2, a sadistic DM (this is a horror campaign after all) will wipe out half your forces before they can dissmiss the swarm. Plus, there is no guarantee that multiple swarms won't just attack each other. While it would be good to have a warlock 1/rogue 1 sneak invisibly to the kythons well before they get near the village, and sic multiple swarms on them to weaken them, using the two round overlap, it would be very unwise to have those swarms near the villagers as a whole.

Actually that is a good idea. Have a few of invisible warlocks wait at the kython nest for them to emerge and have them tail the kythons with multiple swarms. Once the kythons actually show up, they would be significantly weakened, especially by the bleeding as they unlikely to be near healing, or delayed by the hunt for the invisible warlock/rogues.

Edit: That reminds me, how far away is the kython nest? If the distance is significant, the warlocks could just hit them using the above tactic at the midway point. Since they are pretty much guarenteed to lose 1 hp per round+the actual damage from the swarm, that could wipe out the army right there.
Ah, but, the invocation only lasts for concentration. Like I said before, assuming the swarm acts on the casters turn (like most summoned creatures I believe), then you can dismiss it (free action to cease concentration) and recast it farther away if needed. The scroll swarms could be kept farther away, as they're more for free ranging damage than point defense. And for both of these, I've been assuming that there will always be more enemies. It's far from perfect, but I think it's better than relying on an expensive spell with limited castings.

Know what I just noticed? Smoke inhalation damage from forest fires. When in doubt, set the village on fire and choke em' to death.

Also: I agree, waay to focused on healing. Even against a d12 hit die any hit from a Kython is just about a 1 hit kill. Even ignoring the poison, the juveniles hit pretty hard.

The_Werebear
2007-10-09, 02:39 AM
Maybe this is just totally stupid of me, but...

Maybe slapping the Slaymaster with Calm Emotions and trying to negotiate a truce is possible. If he no longer is quite so bloodthristy, he may be smart enough to realize that the zombies need to be killed too.

I am not familiar with Kythons beyond passing, so I don't know if they could be placated into passing the village up like that.

TK-Squared
2007-10-09, 04:36 AM
Maybe this is just totally stupid of me, but...

Maybe slapping the Slaymaster with Calm Emotions and trying to negotiate a truce is possible. If he no longer is quite so bloodthristy, he may be smart enough to realize that the zombies need to be killed too.

I am not familiar with Kythons beyond passing, so I don't know if they could be placated into passing the village up like that.

Kythons only speak a warped version of Infernal and the only do so with each other.

bugsysservant
2007-10-09, 05:18 AM
A little late back in but:


Ah, but, the invocation only lasts for concentration. Like I said before, assuming the swarm acts on the casters turn (like most summoned creatures I believe), then you can dismiss it (free action to cease concentration) and recast it farther away if needed. The scroll swarms could be kept farther away, as they're more for free ranging damage than point defense. And for both of these, I've been assuming that there will always be more enemies. It's far from perfect, but I think it's better than relying on an expensive spell with limited castings.

Know what I just noticed? Smoke inhalation damage from forest fires. When in doubt, set the village on fire and choke em' to death.

Also: I agree, waay to focused on healing. Even against a d12 hit die any hit from a Kython is just about a 1 hit kill. Even ignoring the poison, the juveniles hit pretty hard.

Yeah, missed that. Since it is the case, having warlocks summon swarms to start the bleeding of the kythons, then running, would be good. No kython has heal as a class skill, so the best they can muster would be an untrained wis. check, not too dificult for the Slaymaster, but it can probably take out a few broodlings in the interim.

And I said it before, but since the tactical situation is so delicious...
At the choke point dig a really big pit. Big enough to hold all the kythons with room to spare. Encircle the outside of this pit with boards covered in lard, so anything that gets in has a greasy overhang, and anything charging slides in automatically. Then summon a wall of smoke to conceal it. IF you are lucky the entire kython army will just fall into the hole, where they can be killed at your leisure.

Edit: forgot the silence effect. Make sure to cast it so the kythons can't yell to their comrades, and probably cancels their blindsight.

huyneo
2007-10-09, 05:53 AM
Actually, Blade of Fear and Pain just creates a sword. Not a lot of blades. just one "3 foot long pillart of knashing teeth"
Dangit!
wrong name for the right spell.....
now i forget the actual name...

Dullyanna
2007-10-09, 07:24 AM
Maybe this is just totally stupid of me, but...

Maybe slapping the Slaymaster with Calm Emotions and trying to negotiate a truce is possible. If he no longer is quite so bloodthristy, he may be smart enough to realize that the zombies need to be killed too.

I am not familiar with Kythons beyond passing, so I don't know if they could be placated into passing the village up like that.

It's not stupid, but TK-squared's right, and they're bleedin' demons anyway. Getting back on track, the marshal/dragon shaman idea sounds pretty good, and I do agree that lots of healing won't help very much, since any solid hit would be insta-death for any villager. And the slaymaster will rise as a big zombie, but it'll be slow as hell. If you're lucky (Well, even more lucky considering you've already dropped the bastard at that point), the other kythons will see him as a larger threat. And this is pure speculation, but what do you expect to find in the caves after this battle? Maybe a slaughterking, if your DM feels like scaring you some more?

Telonius
2007-10-09, 08:32 AM
Wands of summon monster 1. We're going to spam celestial badgers onto the field. We have no delusions, the badgers are there to die while slowing down kythons. We're comfortable with that, and since summoned monsters just go to their home plane anyway, we like to think they'll be okay with it too.

No matter what else happens, this battle is going to be glorious. CELESTIAL BADGERS, ATTACK! :smallamused:

Zeful
2007-10-09, 11:28 AM
Well if your going to curse the slaymaster, have your curserers refocus the first round of combat, it'll give them the result of a 20 on their inititive roll allowing them to go first. Then drop half his actions, and then entangle/grease/solid fog him, he's either standing still, wrapped up, falling down, or going nowhere real fast.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-09, 03:35 PM
A few things worth mentioning, as we gear up for war (me and the wizard are here, the DM is on his way, the rest of the group will be here soon).

The healing isn't for the villagers. The villagers are going to be sniping/marshaling/dragon shamaning from barricaded positions foritified with solid rock. Any incorporeal kythons are something to worry about, but beyond that, if they're getting attacked by generic kython swarm, we allready lost anyway.

No, we, the adventurers, are the frontliners. And we DO need healing, because we CAN expect to survive a few hits from the kythons. The healing is to keep us up and running more than anything else.
Miss Beverly is going to be at the door. She's shouldering the responsibility of deciding when she can help us in combat, and when the door needs to be shut and barricaded (for better or for worse).

I'll let you guys know what happened...

Alex12
2007-10-09, 03:40 PM
All I can say now is good luck, many natural 20s to you, and if you die, may the story of your valiant fight be told for ages!

#Raptor
2007-10-09, 04:10 PM
I actually don't play d&d (just so you know, so take my ideas with a grain of salt :smallwink: ), but i think i've got a idea:

While your're already cursing the Slaymaster, why not take it a step further and let some of the commoners take a single Hexblade level and add Hexblades Curse to the regular curses?
I've read the descriptions of "Hexblades Curse" and "Bestow Curse" and i don't see anything saying they won't stack.

Then you'd have an additional:
-2 on attacks, damage rolls, saves, ability checks, skill checks for 1 hour.

Doesn't sounds too bad, imho.

Also, let whoever took the level in hexblade (lvl 1 should be enough, i don't think theres anything useful in hex 2 for this battle) take the Feat "Extra Hexblade’s Curse".
It adds an additional 2 curses every day... it's homebrewed though.
But i really don't think this feat is unreasonable or anything. Paladins have extra smiting. Barbarians have extra rage. Can't see a reason why Hexblades shouldn't have extra hexblades curse. Even if you sucessfully curse the slaymaster early, there are still the other bugs.

Oh, and... since extra smiting and extra rage can be taken multiple times, its probably just fair to assume that extra hexblades curse would work the same way.
So thats 5 x Hexblades curse for 1 lvl of hexblade and 2 feats. :smallsmile:
( http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Extra_Hexblade's_Curse_(DnD_Feat) ) I don't know how good the slaymaster's will saving throw is, or if the hexblade might get killed early, so it might be a good idea to have more than one hexblade.

Alright, i hope this wasn't a total waste of your reading time. :)


Oh and, i don't know if this has been mentioned before, but build some improvisational bridges between the rooftops so your army can focus it's forces / run away from invaded rooftops (destroy the bridges after running away).

/E: Good luck!

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-09, 05:33 PM
Well, we play and run our Paladins differently. I wouldn't fall a Paladin for leaving, but I'd make him feel pret-tee guilty about it. :smallsmile:

Unhappy about not being able to save everyone? Perhaps.

But who should feel guiltier, truly? The paladin who unwisely stays with the fools and dies along with them (saving no one), or the paladin who wisely gathers those willing to evacuate and guides/protects them on an evacuation, thereby saving some lives?

The former may indeed feel righteously justified in his/her actions, and the latter may in fact feel guilty about not being able to save them all. However, I'd make a case that the former is wrong to feel so righteous, and the latter just needs a friend to sit down and have a good heart-to-heart about how sometimes, in the complicated game of life, we can't save everyone even if we really wish with all our hearts that we could. "You did everything you could for them."

In other words, I'm not at all sure that I'd agree that choosing glory over the chance to actually save lives is a more "good" act at all. I'm not even sure that it's a good act period, in fact:

Staying to fight because you really believe you can save them? Good.

Staying to fight while fully expecting to lose, sacrificing the entire village (including people you might have been able to evacuate and thus save) in your blaze-of-glory last stand? Neutral stupid at best.

(Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but I feel very strongly about this. :smalltongue: )

But oh well, it sounds like you've decided anyway. Good luck. :smallamused:

Tor the Fallen
2007-10-09, 05:41 PM
Unhappy about not being able to save everyone? Perhaps.

But who should feel guiltier, truly? The paladin who unwisely stays with the fools and dies along with them (saving no one), or the paladin who wisely gathers those willing to evacuate and guides/protects them on an evacuation, thereby saving some lives?

The former may indeed feel righteously justified in his/her actions, and the latter may in fact feel guilty about not being able to save them all. However, I'd make a case that the former is wrong to feel so righteous, and the latter just needs a friend to sit down and have a good heart-to-heart about how sometimes, in the complicated game of life, we can't save everyone even if we really wish with all our hearts that we could. "You did everything you could for them."

In other words, I'm not at all sure that I'd agree that choosing glory over the chance to actually save lives is a more "good" act at all. I'm not even sure that it's a good act period, in fact:

Staying to fight because you really believe you can save them? Good.

Staying to fight while fully expecting to lose, sacrificing the entire village in your blaze-of-glory last stand? Neutral stupid at best.

(Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but I feel very strongly about this. :smalltongue: )

That's what we call "loser-think." Paladins aren't losers, they are positive thinkers.

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-09, 05:45 PM
That's what we call "loser-think." Paladins aren't losers, they are positive thinkers.

That's where we disagree.

To me, positive thinking is, "We can save anyone willing to come with us. The journey will be difficult, but if we all stick together and keep our wits about us, we can make it. And perhaps someday, we can return here and reclaim this land."

When you start saying, "We're pretty sure we can't win, but let's just die anyway," that's on a different level entirely. It's actually perfectly honorable (in the Bushido sense, at least), but it's not necessarily good, and it's definitely not necessarily good when you're choosing throwing the lives of others away as well in a desperate blaze of glory over a really good chance of saving many of those lives by getting them out of there.

This is a real bone of contention for me because I refuse to agree that paladins are required to be idiots.

Tor the Fallen
2007-10-09, 05:51 PM
That's where we disagree.

To me, positive thinking is, "We can save anyone willing to come with us. The journey will be difficult, but if we all stick together and keep our wits about us, we can make it. And perhaps someday, we can return here and reclaim this land."

When you start saying, "We're pretty sure we can't win, but let's just die anyway," that's on a different level entirely. It's actually perfectly honorable (in the Bushido sense, at least), but it's not necessarily good, and it's definitely not necessarily good when you're choosing throwing the lives of others away as well in a desperate blaze of glory over a really good chance of saving many of those lives by getting them out of there.

This is a real bone of contention for me because I refuse to agree that paladins are required to be idiots.

But the villagers are choosing to make a stand against evil. If the paladins leave, then they are fleeing, and letting all those people die.
If the Paladins hold the children hostage so as to force the adults to go with, well, that's not very nice, and is actually pretty evil.
Also, the OP pointed out that a forced march would condemn the old and young to death, pretty much. I doubt that the Paladins' gods smile on that sort of thing.

Solo
2007-10-09, 06:00 PM
Good aligned party suggesting demonic pacts to save a homestead? Say it ain't so.

With the same token, though, say it ain't so that a Good aligned party would duck out in the middle of the night to leave these poor bastards alone, let alone the Paladin in the group doing the same.

The general comments on "urban" (it's a village, afterall) warfare are pretty good. I also know little about Kythons, so I won't be too much help in that area.

I just hope I won't be hearing much more about demonic pacts or fleeing in the night :smalltongue:.

As I said, you don't have to make an evil pact.

SleepingOrange
2007-10-09, 09:20 PM
Also, Nowhere Girl, within the very PARAMETERS of this debate– er, forum– was the caveat that
"there's[sic] a few stubborn villages who simply refuse to give up their ancestral lands/homes."

You're not going to get any to leave, so that rebutts your first plan of gathering those who will leave and taking them with you away. As to the plan of just abandoning them all as 'stupid stubborn peasants', they (as we've demonstrated through our planning) DO have a chance; IF AND ONLY IF the PCs stay and train/help prepare the villagers. Thus, leaving would be condemning the villagers to death; staying might not only save the lives of an entire friggin' village, but could destroy an army of evil that has been and would continue to ravage the land and its people. So:

Good: Destroy army of evil or die trying

Evil: Kill villagers through negligence; allow army of evil to kill entire village AND other villages on their rampage

In a world where a 6th-level character is a rawkstar, you can't let an army of high-CR mosters destroy all civilization on an isolated (read as: long time before other, higher-level characters come to aid) island.

Plus,
"They're moving across the island in a wave of carnage."
what makes you think that once they destroy this village, they won't just move on to the next, and next, and next, until they finally catch up and kill all of you and the people you 'saved' just because you wouldn't prepare for a siege?

psychoticbarber
2007-10-09, 09:23 PM
As I said, you don't have to make an evil pact.

I believe it was mentioned, but I don't think it was given much thought until after I posted. Could be wrong, but I was just reacting to the general tone of the thread. Sorry if you felt I ignored your post, not my intention!

Gralamin
2007-10-09, 09:31 PM
Hopefully there is still time for this, but I never saw something mentioned.
Turn the school teacher into a warblade. Focus on Diamond Mind.

Either then that, You've gotten good advice so far.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-09, 10:39 PM
Wall of text alert. This is a big post, split into spoilers for your conveiniance.

So, wow. That went, uh... well?

It went, in any event.

Actually it went much better than expected, and simultaneously much much worse.

Our defenses, physical, and strategical, worked like a charm.
The Total Score (at the end of the day as given to us by the DM?)

44 dead Broodlings
27 dead juveniles
18 dead adults(!)
1 dead slaymaster
Dozens and Dozens of dead zombies of all makes and models.

Approx (no exact count) 100 dead celestial badgers (seriously... wands being passed around and total summon spammage)
2 dead villager wizards
7 dead villager marshals
3 dead villager barbarians
2 dead villager dragon shamans
1 dead villager cleric

1 dead PC rogue ( :( )
1 dead PC Cleric
1 dead PC wizard
1 paladin with a near death experience

1 partirdge
1 pear tree
5 golden rings (not really)


And a lot of updates for our group. I think, in the end, we can consider the whole battle to be one darn immpressive success. But there were loses.

Onto the meat... The DM did not coddle us. No screens were used or rolls were fudged. The DM swore prior to the main event that the kython forces had the raw numbers (in AC, attack and damage) to kill all of us 4 or 5 times over, and he wasn't kidding. They were played intelligently, savagely, and beautifully in a macabre way. Tricks stopped working on them, I don't think any trap worked on the kythons more than twice. Luckily we had quite a few traps.

How It Went Down

It was night, but a bright moon and a few continual flames gave us enough illumination that we weren't hindered by the darkness.
We heard them long before we saw them. That was the worst part. The DM would describe what was going on.... it was cold, we could see our breath and the eerie pale lights and unnatural arcane glows making weird ripples on the disturbed snow, our own trenches fading into the distance. We could HEAR chirping, crawing, chattering... the archivist informed us it was only the young and less adept broodlings and juveniles we were hearing. the adults... we wouldn't hear them. We might not even see them before they closed the gap between us.
Then the bastard started giving us turns. We would pace, ready actions, stare into the distance... making us describe what we did around the table a few times waiting for the slaughter to come to us. I've never felt so darn HELPLESS in a game before, being given a turn and trying to think of something else I could do to help our fight, though there was nothing.

Then we saw the first of them. The warlocks opened fire, and rolled well. The boosts they had and the eldritch spears started nailing broodlings to the ground, and every few times you'd see a juvenile fall too. There were no adults.

The wizard and archivist took to the skies. The glyphs of warding we'd set up started dropping sonic bursts on the battle field, stunning kythons and killing/softening them in small groups. The webs slowed them down. Most of them broke away and started swarming in a wider path at that. When they got close enough, the ones with weapons started peppering us with venomous bone shards and acid splashes. We took hits. The dragon shaman threw up his acid resistance, but we considered the early damage to be a poor indicator of our success.
The first wizard "died". The DM rolled it true, right in front of us. 90% cover on a target from 80 feet away... bone shard to the face. 1 damage, 6 CON damage on a guy who only had 6 hitpoints. The healing auras actually picked him back up, and he fought for another minute before the secondary CON damage took him down to zilch.

Still no adults.

We started swinging at the juveniles. I managed to sneak-attack a few with acid orbs and literally just "POP" them. that felt good. Then I got bit on the arm and slashed to the nine hells by a kython adult. We hadn't even seen them, but the DM said they hid until they got past the last trench, fair and true. We started seeing more in the incoming wave after that. I survived it though, and downed a potion.

The paladin shone like a bright star, truth be told. Lucky lucky rolls. Critical hits left and right, high damage, blocked almost everything that tried to hit him. Shruggde off lots of the stuff that did with damage reduction from the marshals.
There's lots going on that I'm not explicitly saying. The wizard popped sucker-targets with sonic orbs, the villagers kept peppering the enemies with 1d6s, the first of the adult kythons fell, ect. We were taking damage, but we were SURVIVING it, and taking tons of those bastards down in the process. I'll stop describing the generic warfare here. Monsters died, we got hurt and healed, monsters started coming BACK to life, to get killed again and complicate matters. Kythons fought zombies, zombie kythons bit kythons before being torn into 6 seperate peices, celestial badgers got stepped on as living roadblocks....


Everything above was generic warfare. The stuff below is specific stuff that happened.

The Traps

We saw a lineup. 5 adults and 3 juveniles ended their turns on a clean row.... in one of our traps. It wasn't something blatant, it was just that sooner or later, a bunch of swarming enemies were going to wind up giving us a good swing. We hand-axed the ropes holding up one of our trap poles, and BOOM, kython-kabob under a heavy wooden pillar covered in jagged metal and wooden spikes. some of them survived, but pinned, and the paladin cut their heads off (no roll, he had to use actions to do it, but our DM likes to let the numbers slide when you're running a 3 foot steel blade into a pinned monsters face).
We managed to get another bunch of them under another poll, but after that, they started staggering their waves, tore down two of the polls themselves, and got a circumstance bonus to their reflex save to avoid it when we tried it again.

The paladin bullrushed a few adults into the spiked trench. 5d6 peircing damage and a pinned kython each time. One tried to bullrush HIM into it, but he cut the suckers head off with a critical hit instead.


The Tragedy

Two incorporeal kythons, one adult and one juvenile. They split up and ran THROUGH us, through the walls of the buildings on either side, and started chomping. We heard the screams. The buildings were fortified enough that we had trouble getting into them.
The 50% miss chance made them ridiculous. The juvenile fell, but not before taking a few people with him.
The adult, however, decimated the building he was in before we could do much. Took some heavy licks for his trouble (including from me, firing through a window with sonic orbs and a few sneak attacks... some of which missed entirely do to the incorporeal nature).

Then he ran through the walls again and out into the open battlefield.

The paladin got in two hits that avoided the miss chance. Heavy ones. Like I said, he rolled well tonight.
The cleric sent a spiritual sword after him. It dropped the monster, but not before it slashed through the wall and tore a wizards face off.

It fell near the doorway. Miss Beverly stabbed it in the throat for good measure.


Broken Wings

The wizard got slaughtered. The archivist took heavy hits, but managed to stay in one peice. The wizard just got hammered with bone shards and acid splashes. Even after using a scroll of energy resistance, he just couldn't keep in one peice. he finally fell to yet another bone shard (which only deal 1 damage :-\ ) and came tumbling out of the sky onto the cold hard frozen ground. Died on impact, no chance of healing. The DM starts passing him secret notes.

A few rounds later, he gets up.

Now, it turns out, whatever's causing the undead to rise has a nasty streak. Most things that come back to life are mindless carnivores. Mook zombies and 'ceramic' skeletons (easily killed, that is :-p).
Powerful people? People who are more noteable than your average blacksmith or wild wolf? People with a large number of class levels? Yeah, they come back to life as something bigger. Something SENTIENT. And something downright sadistic.

The wizard spoke to us while it aided our enemies, and fought us. It said...awful things. The afterlife, the cause of the undeath, it's big. And bad. And more than some horrible plauge or negative energy pulse... It's not some necromancer with a new trick. We don't know exactly what it is, but "Eil Ei" (aisle-eye), as it called itself, has us convinced that this is not a happy time to... uh...exist.

We managed to hurt it enough to scare it off. But it's got the wizards gear, it knows how to cast the wizards spells, it remembers everything about US, and it DOES NOT LIKE US.
Or anyone. Anyone still breathing that is.

So, to quote our paladin, "Wow, that sucks".


The Slaymaster

Oh boy.

We didn't see him coming either. He managed to dodge the alarms, came at us from a side (over the top of one of the buildings) and went right into the freaking fight.
The cleric and archivist WERE both successful at cursing him, in between his turns no less, so by the time his turn came, any magical defenses were too late. 50% chance of doing absolutely nothing each time he came up to bat, and -4 to attacks and saves and pretty much everything.
His next at bat? Do nothing. I managed to get in a sneak attack sonic-orb, the cleric managed to hit him with an inflict-wounds spell, and the archivist flew off screaming at us to get the hell away from it. The townspeople peppered it, and we were amazed at how effective our tactic was.

The problem is, a slaymaster who's half as effective can still F***ING kill you and F***ING eat you as an afterthought. One turn he's doing nothing, the next turn he beats the cleric into the DIRT and kicks him across the street into a wall. The cleric hit negatives, but the dragon shaman aura brought him back to conciousness, and he healed himself.
The paladin charged and gave a good smite evil. I debate turning tail and running, but instead hit it for another sneak attack.

Then the slaymaster turns to me. Hits me, grapples me, and rolls for damage. It rolls...max. No kidding. 35 damage, right there. I was allready a little roughed up, and didn't have THAT many hitpoints to begin. He brought me to -12, just like that.
The DM described it as "One quick jerking squeeze" and I'm a ragdoll. The slaymaster pitches me across the street too and starts fighting the paladin. He rolls well, manages to seriously mess the thing up and dodge a lot of its hits and took light damage. But in the end, the paladin falls into negatives and the slaymaster starts battering the front door to the school (the dragon shaman ran in, pulled in Miss Beverly (who was trying to charge it) and slammed and baricaded the door... none of us blame him in the slightest). The slaymaster is still taking blast damage from the snipers, but we're screwed right? dead wizard, dead rogue, cleric with 2 hitpoints getting torn apart by kythons, paladin in the negatives (looks dead, but is actually CLIMBING in health thanks to the surviving dragon shamans) and a dragon shaman who's drawing blanks on battle strategy.

Oh. The archivist :) And our last good trap. THE HAMMER.

As a final-day last-thought trap, the cleric made the hammer. It's a big dumb-bell shaped stone something. The heavier end is braced with wooden pillars, and it's resting in the rubble on a pivot point. The archivist, despite being down to squat hitpoints, swoops through the carnage, grabs the ropes out of the rubble, and flies hard, pulling, tearing out the wooden supports.
The heavy end immediately falls to the ground hard (killing an adult kython that chased the archivist). The momentum sends the thing up, up, JUUUUUUUST OVER the peak where it looks like it might stand proud.....and CRASHING DOWN onto the slaymaster.
That was our suicide switch, intended to hit flush with the front of the school and seal it in stone. We would send one brave (and dead) person charging for the ropes, hoping we could survive a few days in the stoney tomb and then dimension door out, to try to rescue the survivors. We would also be praying the kythons wouldn't decide to just start tearing away... we honestly didn't know. If they decided to start hitting the weak spots in the rocky shell with acid, we would be screwed. They'd get in and slaughter us.
Like I said, that was our "what do we do now?" suicide plan.

But we didn't count on a slaymaster paying all his attention to beating in the front wall while our flying lunatic of dark knowledge sent a huge stone face onto the area.

Splat splat goes the big angry bug.

Our DM was actually a little shocked. Not SURPRISED, he knew about the hammer switch, he just thought the chance of us going for it then was non-existant.

But the fight wasn't over.

Some of the kythons broke ranks at that, scattering, no slaymaster rallying them. Some adults, and a decent sized swarm of littler ones stuck around. The place was in shambles. The schoolhouse was almost immpossible to get in our out of, but the chokepoint turned to work in the kythons favor instead :-\. With only 5 foot cracks in our out of the front wall (the slaymasters huge form kept the stone from sitting as flsuh as we had plannde), the snipers became less useful. The cleric got shredded, and the kythons were trying to pour into the schoolhouse by tearing at the barricaded windows on the second floor. The snipers could only get one at a time now from each spot. It actually looked like we were totally toast, despite our good fight.

But as all this was going on, so was something else. Something our archivist was watching with some magical vision, confused and amazed.


Living Dead Girl

As the fight was going on, the DM started on me. (we didn't need secret notes past a certain point, I'll mention where).

"Roll a will save".

I was now in the realm of ghosts and spirits. The ethereal. But not THE ethereal, a twisted and injured one, whatever was going on WAS big. ALTERED PLANES OF EXISTANCE kind of big.
As a ghost walking around, I could see some rough forms of the real plane, and a bunch of dead bodies... and I could see other spirits. Kythons included. None of the spirits, allied or not, could hurt each other. Everything passed through everything else harmlessly. The DM noted that my +1 dagger was the only thing that felt like it had any weight whatsoever...
I saw spirits being dragged back into their bodies kicking and screaming. The bodies then winked out of this plane....couldn't see the undead. For whatever reason.

My will save was just high enough to resist coming BACK to life (I rolled a 4, one higher than I needed the DM said). The DM described it as sliding backwards towards it, as if I were on ice. I felt an evil presence trying to erase and dominate my thoughts, all I felt was the urge to maim, hate, hurt, and more importantly, KILL, and leave corpses in my wake.

I managed to stop it just before I hit my corpse. I wandered, confused as to what to do here. Making will saves to stay dead, knowing it was a matter of time before I rolled a 3 or lower.
I saw the dead kython with the phase organ. He was trying to go corporeal, but only could for a few seconds at a time. No one noticed another kython in the 'wave' blinking in existance for a few seconds...
I took a potshot stab at him with my dagger....
And it worked! my magic dagger was officially the most powerful thing here, everything else was just mist.

Note: To TRY to compress this allready huge post down, I'll go into speed-description here rather than posting another 3 pages of it.

I cut the phase organ off the kython, and tried to use it, but was even worse at it than him (apparently non-kythons can't actually really use that stuff). The archivist noticed a confused rogue blinking into existance for half-seconds though. We went out of secret notes, as the archivist knew what was going on and could relay it to the survivors later anyway.

I saw the slaymaster come climbing out of his battered body. He charged me, and realized it did nothing. Then he started fading back into HIS body...
...and I jammed the dagger in and twisted. His physical body shook, twisted, threw the stone block off of him with a terrible roar, went silent, twitched, ect... He couldn't come all the way back with me riding him with a magic dagger in his 'spine'.
The survivors watched in horrified confusion as the body convulsed, before I finally dealt it enough damage that the spirit winked out of existance alltogether. No more slaymaster.
Seeing their slaymaster leader threatening to come back to life? The remaining kythons scattered in terror.

But then what of me? I was still making will saves. And I finally failed one.

What happened next was sheer awesome on my DMs part. He swears up and down that he didn't plan this, that it just made sense when he saw what was going on.
The DM gave me a REFLEX save. Something a rogue could be expected to make. A reflex save for the purpose of activating the kython phase orgasn as I was sucked back into my body.
My temporarily physical form couldn't be pushed back into my real body. The 'essence' trying to dominate me faltered, broke, and was ejected as the return to unlife temporarily failed. My spirit was pushed back into my dead frame, but the evil evil thing trying to hitch a ride was forced back into the nothing.

I heard it, cursing me, promising me unspeakable horrors, telling me it 'wasn't done with me'.


***********************

So that's that. I'm undead, the paladin is battered, the archivist and dragon shaman pulled through. The villagers are greatful, though still mourning their losses. The FREAKING HUGE kython force was actually scattered. They're still dangerous, but so are the zombies.

The villagers are....waryingly accepting of me being there with my allies, just as they're warily accepting of me. My friends suspected a trick, the archivist interrogated me in a dark knowledge-esque way, the paladin pinged me for evil/good and found I was still good, and I'm not spitting curses at everyone and promising them a world full of the walking dead.
So they're letting me stay with them. The paladin promised me that if he started thinking I was less than good, he wouldn't hesitate to smite me fast.
The villagers are too greatful for everything we did to not thank me, but they are certainly keeping their distance.
We went up a level. The archivist was actually kind enough to learn Gentle Repose to keep me from rotting, though I did have to physically stitch my wounds shut. He also knows some inflict spells, and is going to make me a few scrolls for healing.

The wizard character is now an NPC, and no doubt we'll be running into him again. The force that was supposed to take me over is looking for revenge too, the DM informed us. And the kythons have not forgotten our existance, even if they ran scared.

The wizard PLAYER is going to take over Miss Beverly the duskblade :D. He (she, whatever) gets a "Hey I'm now a PC!" XP boost up to 6th level, and the DM promises he'll close the gap between party members as fast as possible.
The cleric player is going to have to roll up a new character, and is thinking of going factotum. If I know my DM, that means we'll run into him in the kython caves... Not a bad way to weave a new character into an established group, I say.

*****************************

Rewards

Aside from the level jump, we also got some other stuff. Not a lot of gear, but it's worth mentioning.

We've got 14 doses of adult kython venom extracted from dead bodies.

We scavenged a bone-shard hand crossbow which will turn bone fitted into it into tiny little peircing darts. 1 peircing damage only, but it can also hold poison naturally and automatically coast each dart with the poison/venom loaded into it. The archivist is holding onto it for the time being. Figures it might come in handy, despite the low BAB.

The archivist suggested ("dark knowledge" as fluff, really the DMs direction) that he could reinforce the paladins armor with kython carapace. The paladins shield now has a mundane boost of +2 AC with no noticeable weight increase. Kython shell is good stuff. His full plate also has a mundane boost of +1, and his outfit is now dark and spooky (no shining armor here folks).

One of the zombies that came shambling into town was some kind of arcanist in life. The paladin was squeemish about looting a random corpse, but agreed that being wasteful of supplies in such hard times would do no one any good.
The zombie didn't have MUCH, but some good stuff. A spellbook - The archivist is going through it looking for stuff he can learn. It's mostly arcane stuff, but some the spells are also on divine spell lists, so he's going to copy those. Then we can sell the spellbook for some good cash if we ever find a place that would want it.
A ring - Bonus arcane spell slots for spell levels 0, 1, and 2. Straight to Miss Beverly.
A necklace - dull tarnished chain with a strange circular pendant. Turned out to give the wearer and anyone in a radius +1 to will saves. We figured the dragon shaman should get it, since we're all trying to stay in his radius anyway.
Turns out, the DM wasn't going to tell us outright what the pendant really did unless we were smart enough to do that. The pendant ALSO gives the dragon shaman +1 to his auras, above whatever his class would make him project. I like it, a lot, personally. It's a clever little item.

Miss Beverly also turned out to have a decent nestegg saved up, but not a lot of real gear, so the duskblade player is really running lean until we get to a place that actually has stuff for sale.

I'm generically undead with no LA or adjustments. That's pretty darn good as it is, though not without its troubles.
The phase organ? it's still attached to my spirit. Once per encounter, i can go incorporeal for one round. The DM said I might be able to get better at it with feats/levels/time.
The phase organ also has some secondary effects. I've got kythonish spirit residue on me. Once per day, I can make a dose of adult kython venom fit for coating a weapon or arrow or something. I can also SPEAK with kythons, but I've allready checked, they understand me and I understand them, but they will have absolutel-jack-crap to actually do with me. No profound sense of kinship in the slightest.
That may sound like a lot, but remember I'm a rogue in an undead heavy campaign, heh.

Looking back, you could get the impression that our DM tries to give us all something cool every time he gives us stuff. Not true, but I think he was inclined to give us all SOMETHING after what we just went through.

**********************

Anyway, what a nerve wracking game. It kept looking like a TPK.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to post/suggest/or encourage here :). We're still discussing what to do next, but all signs point to the kython caves.

0oo0
2007-10-09, 11:06 PM
That was an amazingly awesome story. I would LOVE to be a part of a game that glorious That is an example of DnD at its best. I really like how the balance of tragedy verse heroism, and loss compared to gain (er not complete loss). Once again, great story

Danin
2007-10-09, 11:10 PM
That is made of awesome and win. Congratulations on your victory, I can see it was well earned.

I also have to say that your DM seems very good, I'm impressed be a lot of what he did, as am I with the actions you and your fellow players took. I suppose now you venture into the caves. Good luck with that and happy gaming.

XiaoTie
2007-10-09, 11:12 PM
Damn that was some trully epic battle, reaaally cool indeed. Oh, and congratulations for "surviving" :elan:

SurlySeraph
2007-10-09, 11:16 PM
Epic. Very, very epic. I'm a bit amused to notice that you lost about 1/3 of the villagers AND about 1/3 of the PCs - that's a bit fairer a ratio than I usually see when NPCs are around to act as meatshields. Good luck clearing out the caves. You can't make something like sonic napalm or nerve gas, can you? After that, I'd want to have some kind of seriously unbalanced anti-Kython weapon.

Machete
2007-10-09, 11:48 PM
WOOOOOO!
YEAH!
This is the epic stuff of bard songs!

SleepingOrange
2007-10-09, 11:56 PM
That was satisfying in the extreme. With a bit of cinematography, and a relationship between the wizard and Miss Beverly, that'd make a great movie.

Heheh, just kidding. I wouldn't sully it like that. All in all, extremely impressive. You WILL use this thread to keep us posted on the rest of the campaign.

I want to meet your DM.

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-10, 12:10 AM
If the Paladins hold the children hostage so as to force the adults to go with, well, that's not very nice, and is actually pretty evil.

It actually isn't, as it's making sacrifices to save others (from themselves, in this case -- not unlike how we save mental patients from themselves against their will sometimes ... and I think the direct comparison between some of these villagers and mental patients is apt in this case). It is dishonorable (unlawful), however.


Also, the OP pointed out that a forced march would condemn the old and young to death, pretty much. I doubt that the Paladins' gods smile on that sort of thing.

Because they'd be so much safer and better off staying in this deathtrap and getting torn apart, spending their last brief moments in unrivaled agony, right? :smallamused:

I'm sure if everyone put their heads together, they could work out ways to have stronger people assist weaker people on the march (supporting, carrying, etc.). There are ways to make that kind of thing work.


Also, Nowhere Girl, within the very PARAMETERS of this debate– er, forum– was the caveat that


"there's[sic] a few stubborn villages who simply refuse to give up their ancestral lands/homes."

You're not going to get any to leave, so that rebutts your first plan of gathering those who will leave and taking them with you away.

No, we only can't get "a few" to leave, so that rebuts nothing. And somehow, I doubt that each village is a single hive mind without any dissenting individuals in it.

In any case, how are those other, non-stubborn villages doing while you muck about with the crazies? Will they have anyone to help them try to escape safely?

Or do they just not matter?

Although I even wonder about those few hold-outs -- how much effort was actually invested in trying to get them to come around? Did anyone even try something like, "We honestly can't win this here and now, but if you'll come with us, I swear to you, we will return to reclaim these lands in time"?

I somehow doubt it.


Plus,
what makes you think that once they destroy this village, they won't just move on to the next, and next, and next, until they finally catch up and kill all of you and the people you 'saved' just because you wouldn't prepare for a siege?

That's why you get as many people as you possibly can completely the hell off of that island until you can gather better resources and return to launch a competent counteroffensive, coincidentally no longer sacrificing the lives of innocent villagers (other than just the ones who really want to and are able to come back with you and fight) in your quest for glory.

At least in my opinion, good is putting people's lives first, not putting dreams of glorious victory over impossible odds (I'm looking at you, Col. Travis) first.

Edit: But I also think this argument has been done to death, and we're just disagreeing and that's that now. So I'm dropping it here.

SleepingOrange
2007-10-10, 12:53 AM
Good idea. Any opportunity to be the bigger 'man' that also makes your opponent look like an [unspecified insult] for continuing after you nobly agree to disagree should be pounced upon.:smallwink:

Dullyanna
2007-10-10, 07:30 AM
And we get yet another awesome story from you. As far as I can tell, your DM is one of the best I've ever heard of. If you ever have the time and inclination, please tell us how the rest of this story turns out.

Alex12
2007-10-10, 07:31 AM
...
...
...
Wow.
That was awesome. Awesome is a word that's overused these days, but that's the only word I can use to describe it.

GoC
2007-10-10, 10:57 AM
Wow.:smalleek:
You have an awesome DM!
Very well told on your part too.


But the villagers are choosing to make a stand against evil. If the paladins leave, then they are fleeing, and letting all those people die.
If the Paladins hold the children hostage so as to force the adults to go with, well, that's not very nice, and is actually pretty evil.
Seems nice enough to me...
And it saves more people.


Also, the OP pointed out that a forced march would condemn the old and young to death, pretty much. I doubt that the Paladins' gods smile on that sort of thing.

I'm actualy curious about a few things...
If there are two choices:
A. This kills 30% of your villagers and gives each other villager a 30% chance of dieing. It is also an unlawful act.
B. There is a 50% chance you'll lose all your villagers and a 5% chance each you'll lose 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 percent of them.

Which option should the Lawful Good Paladin choose?

Option A averages about 49% surviving.
Opton B averages about 27.5% but gives a chance that none die.

Note: This is only loosely related to the real situation.

BRC
2007-10-10, 11:08 AM
...That was awsome incarnate.

Zeful
2007-10-10, 11:29 AM
I have to agree with others, that was epic. It does seem like a moive or something. I hope you get undeadified sometime in the future, but you might lose the phasing, which will come in handy in the Kython caves.

All in all good luck!

hewhosaysfish
2007-10-10, 11:35 AM
The wizard spoke to us while it aided our enemies, and fought us. It said...awful things. The afterlife, the cause of the undeath, it's big. And bad. And more than some horrible plauge or negative energy pulse... It's not some necromancer with a new trick. We don't know exactly what it is, but "Eil Ei" (aisle-eye), as it called itself, has us convinced that this is not a happy time to... uh...exist.


It's called "I lie"? May not want to take it at face value then. :smallsmile:

Telonius
2007-10-10, 02:52 PM
This one deserves its place on the Best Gaming Stories of All Time. The Badgers of Celestia will be talking about this one for centuries to come. :smallbiggrin:

SilverClawShift
2007-10-10, 04:44 PM
Although I even wonder about those few hold-outs -- how much effort was actually invested in trying to get them to come around? Did anyone even try something like, "We honestly can't win this here and now, but if you'll come with us, I swear to you, we will return to reclaim these lands in time"?

I somehow doubt it.


Well, I'm glad to know we're not alone at our table at least. There's an 8th person with us keeping tabs on things :smallsmile:

Really, I don't know how this turned into a debate on what paladins can, cannot, should, or should not do in the first place. The paladin didn't tell us we couldn't leave, the paladin didn't really have much to say about it beyond "There's evil everywhere. We'll try to stop it here, or we'll try to stop it elsewhere". He tries to live his life righteously and serve as an example that goodness can be strength, nothing more, nothing less.

Some villagers wouldn't go. Some realistically couldn't. They stayed together as a community in the only home they knew. They wouldn't leave, and we wouldn't leave THEM. That's really all there is to say about it. :smalltongue:


As far as I can tell, your DM is one of the best I've ever heard of.

And everyone else talking about how good/awesome he is.

I've come to realize that's very true. He's the only DM I had, I thought that this was just how D&D was (and wondered how anyone could think it wasn't fun). Then I started to discover that a lot of people say we're playing wrong because the paladin doesn't lose his abilities if he tells the evil guards that he doesn't know where the rest of his party is hiding, or because the DM sometimes lets things happen without rolling to see the numbers first, or ect.

It seems, and I mean absolutely no offense when I say this (really), that a lot of DMs are more concerned with the numbers, or the world, or telling a story, than with the other players and the GAME.
Our DM is more of a mindset of sort of MAKING a story with us. Really, we're trying to have fun, right? I mean, that's why people play games, cause they're fun times. Our DM could have sent a single incorporeal kython into town to slit everyones throats with no rolls on our part while we slept before the battle, if he wanted to. He's the DM, he can do anything he wants. That doesn't mean it would have been a very good story, or a fun game :smalltongue:

But a lot of people we meet/talk/try to play with tell us we're doing it wrong and that we should be more concerned with how our characters dietary habits affect our energy levels, or how we should never cast fireball if we have <X> splatbook with <X> spell in it and we're stupid for thinking otherwise.


It's called "I lie"? May not want to take it at face value then. :smallsmile:

Beleive me, that occured to us. It even taunted us with it, giving the whole "or do you not even know what's true and false?" deal.

But some of the things he said were obviously true. This is more than an animate dead spell or something. He knew EVERYTHING the wizard knew. He hitched a ride in his body, and whatever's going on is affecting EVERYTHING alive. Even vermin and abberations...

Ah well, we've got another session tonight. Time to figure out what to do now.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-10, 05:06 PM
This one deserves its place on the Best Gaming Stories of All Time.

It's not all THAT good, but yeah, I'm fully enjoying this campaign :smalltongue:

*edit*

Er, that is to say, the STORY isn't that good. The campaign rocks. I ramble incoherently too much.

dyslexicfaser
2007-10-10, 05:44 PM
So...

rocks fall, kython dies?

Hardcore.

Saph
2007-10-10, 06:30 PM
That sounded absolutely brilliant. Well done. :)

- Saph

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2007-10-10, 06:36 PM
Wow. Just... wow.

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-10, 08:28 PM
Really, I don't know how this turned into a debate on what paladins can, cannot, should, or should not do in the first place. The paladin didn't tell us we couldn't leave, the paladin didn't really have much to say about it beyond "There's evil everywhere. We'll try to stop it here, or we'll try to stop it elsewhere". He tries to live his life righteously and serve as an example that goodness can be strength, nothing more, nothing less.

Some villagers wouldn't go. Some realistically couldn't. They stayed together as a community in the only home they knew. They wouldn't leave, and we wouldn't leave THEM. That's really all there is to say about it. :smalltongue:

I'm sorry if I came off as snarky. My bone to pick had a lot more to do with certain attitudes people have about what good people "should" do and with the casually suicidal (metagaming: "the GM will never kill us anyway!") and casually callous ("they're just NPCs; it doesn't really matter if they all die in a hopeless slaughter while we chase glory") attitudes people sometimes have in these kinds of games than with you specifically. If I was projecting something onto you and your group that doesn't really apply, then I apologize.

Cocky
2007-10-10, 09:03 PM
I came out of lurking and registered just to compliment your story.

Kudos man, seriously.

shaddy_24
2007-10-10, 09:14 PM
You know what, I would love to be able to play a session that is that much fun and is so well done as that one. That was absolute and sheer brilliance. Your DM deserves huge amounts of praise for that. I've only started though, so I have yet to see how I'll turn out. Hopefully I'm as good at the gameplay aspect as your DM is. I think my story creation is fine where it is, but I would love to be that good at individual sessions.

Neon Knight
2007-10-10, 09:19 PM
That was... incredible.

I wish I was that awesome of a DM.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-11, 04:14 PM
I'm sorry if I came off as snarky.

It's okay, it just seems like anything connected to D&D also has a lot of people telling you you're wrong no matter what decision you make. Especially concerning paladins. There's usually 4 or 5 discussions about paladins falling going on simultaneously. It gets tiring.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-11, 04:17 PM
doublepost.

lord_khaine
2007-10-11, 04:42 PM
so, did any of the villages lv up?

SilverClawShift
2007-10-11, 08:13 PM
No way, that was the point of them jumping to second level.

But then, our DM doesn't award XP for kills or in a set pattern or anything, it's more of a vague "this is where you are" kind of thing for us :smalltongue:

Eighth_Seraph
2007-10-11, 09:13 PM
I'd like to join the masses saying one of several variations of "That is an amazing /epic battle."

I have to say that I am very VERY impressed by the actual horror and suspense elements shown here. Giving you turns as you wait for your opponents to come upon you and potentially slaughter you? Hearing the screams of those that you failed to save? Knowing that if you can hear it, it's not a threat, and that it's only that which you can't hear that you should fear with your very soul? A fearless schoolteacher being forcibly made to stand down by others that want to keep her alive?

That's beautiful work. I'm going to do that now. Someday, I will run this scenario. Thank you, ma'am.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-12, 09:21 AM
I have to say that I am very VERY impressed by the actual horror and suspense elements shown here.

Heck yeah. When our DM is hosting a horror campaign for halloween month, he's not kidding about the horror part. :smalleek: :smallbiggrin:

Of course, you basically have to agree to be scared. Like watching a horror movie at noon with sunlight streaming in through the window and then saying "It wasn't scary". ANyone can dettach themselves from fiction.

You gotta agree to let it under your skin before you find out what 'it' is :smallbiggrin:

Tor the Fallen
2007-10-12, 10:44 AM
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Grey Watcher
2007-10-12, 11:44 AM
Heck yeah. When our DM is hosting a horror campaign for halloween month, he's not kidding about the horror part. :smalleek: :smallbiggrin:

Of course, you basically have to agree to be scared. Like watching a horror movie at noon with sunlight streaming in through the window and then saying "It wasn't scary". ANyone can dettach themselves from fiction.

You gotta agree to let it under your skin before you find out what 'it' is :smallbiggrin:

May I quote you on that? That's a very astute and simple way of putting it. Much more accessible than "willing suspension of disbelief."

(Also, admittedly, I don't care for horror movies because I fail to do exactly that. I get into a weird mindset where I see it as a contest between me and the filmmaker, so I'm deliberately trying NOT to be scared.)

Oh, and, yes, this was, from what you report, an incredibly great session. Not only loosing your friends but having them turn into nasty foes. You, yourself, get to survive, but with an especially nifty and beautifully poetic Terrible Price (even if, from a strictly mechanic perspective, it's more of a reward than a price).

Not to mention, I have to applaud a DM who can give his players an (apparently) hopeless situation and not get into the "screw 'em" mentality. It's really great that he let you, for example, use a combination of luck, quick-thinking, and sheer audacity to escape being a slave to Eil Ei.

Oh, and I think I missed it. What happened to the Cleric? Do he run off screaming "I'll get you and your little dog, too!" like the Wizard, or what?

SilverClawShift
2007-10-12, 07:39 PM
May I quote you on that?

Absolutely :)


I don't care for horror movies because I fail to do exactly that. I get into a weird mindset where I see it as a contest between me and the filmmaker, so I'm deliberately trying NOT to be scared.

I used to be like that actually. I would refuse to let myself get scared, because I thought of being scared as bad and refused to let the movie 'get' me. Then I realized "Wait, I'm watching something scary because I WANT to be 'gotten' and scared"...


You, yourself, get to survive, but with an especially nifty and beautifully poetic Terrible Price (even if, from a strictly mechanic perspective, it's more of a reward than a price).

Yeah. Mechanically it's very lovely. I wasn't thinking of all the stuff being undead actually meant, but it's on immpressive list of goodies.
But roleplaying wise, my character isn't too happy with the turn of events. In an 'intellectually disspassionate' way, i recognize how much more durable I am, and the gentle repose spells will keep me from turning into a shambling pile of gross. But I'm still literally stitched back into one peice, and, you know, dead. Also, my DM won't take it easy on me, I'm sure. The villagers whose lives, town, and entire history I've just helped save from utter destruction are only VAGUELY accepting of me. Anywhere else I go after this? I'm gonna have to invest in a heavy black hood and let the party do most of the talking.


Oh, and I think I missed it. What happened to the Cleric?

I knew I forgot to mention something. The cleric was utterly SHREDDED. He kept climbing out of negatives and trying to escape/fight, and the kythons had him completely surrounded. Finally when he came back as undead, well, it was very brief. He shouted some vague curses at us, but it kinda lacked the impact of the spider climbing hissing wizard cackling at us as he escaped, considering the cleric was screaming at us while getting devoured 'alive' by kythons.

I actually asked the DM what was up with the will saves. If me, a rogue with low wisdom needed a 3 or lower to return to life, why did the wizard (and especially the CLERIC) return the same? He said that he basically was giving us a 1-in-whatever chance of coming back each time we rolled. He called it a will save because it was our 'wills' that were doing the struggling, but we all had about an equal chance of getting sucked back into our bodies.
Seems fair.

*******************

Also, while I'm here posting about this, I might as well mention a great freaking scare the DM got out of us.

We, the 4 surviving players, (with the new duskblade schoolteacher along for the ride (with swashbuckler levels no less, the player took them on level up :smallamused: )) have collected our wits, organized our gear, patched ourselves up, and tried to figure out what to do next. We decided to check out the moutains with the kython caves, naturally. It's the LAST place we want to go, but it's also the most logical next step in trying to find out "Just What The Heck Is Going On Here Gang?". We tracked the kythons back through their warpath, but got sidetracked. Not too far from the village, we found a little wooden cottage. It was ransacked and shredded, and the doorknob had the same pattern stamped into it as the dragon shamans sparkly new necklace. We figured this was the arcanists home, the kythons tore him apart, and he got up afterwards and happened to trail towards the village (probably drawn by the living kythons in fact).
We're all pretty noble and virtuous by nature in this campaign, if not specifically PIOUS. Robbing the dead feels yicky. But the cold hard truth of the matter is, it's the dead of winter, we're on an island infested with undeath, and we're dealing with monsters so fearsome they make us STOP worrying about the aforementioned undead. he's dead, we're not (er... most of us.) We need whatever we can scrape up here.

So we head in, and yeah, we have nothing to say in our defense. We were going to loot everything valuable like starving rats to help cover our rear ends when the next wave of trouble starts.

So, we're exploring the cottage very quietly. The roof and some walls were torn apart, so snow was starting to blanket over everything. We found a lot of useless spell scrolls, some good stuff like coinage, medical supplies, a few potions (a lot of them frozen and cracking the glass containers they were in, but a lot still useable, though unidentified). We found one of our DMs notorious calling cards, the "Magic Item with no directly applicable use" that we wind up figuring out what to do with. In this case, it's a coin that, when flipped, will change the pattern engraved on it so that it always lands heads. Except that if it initially lands on tails, the pattern takes a good 5 second to change, and does so visibly and with a series of faint clicking noises. useful, right? I'm hanging onto it though. I'm a rogue, it's a magic coin. That's like, what I'm all about right?

Anyway, through this whole thing, the DM is doing a good job creeping us out. A cold and dark cottage that someone actually LIVED in not two days ago, suddenly barely recognizeable as a home. A lot of morbid detail. We had a pretty moody setup going here.

Then, we find 'it'. The arcanist had some kind of weird construct, something like the rest of us had never seen before (archivist included). It was battered and partially dissasembled, apparently by the kythons. It was also covered in strage markings, runes, glyphs, symbols, text fragments (on its forhead, etched in faint dwarven runes, "thus unbound unfettered and felled"). ect.
Nearby it, what looked for all the world to be some strange flute made of the same material and in the same fashion, though not covered in the markings or runes.
We kind of fixated on the golem naturally (in retrospect, our DM would have tricked us into focusing on it if we hadn't in the first place). We managed to strap the sucker back into one peice. We shrugged and asked ourselves what to do with it, until we noticed that the flute had a dettachable series of small black gemstones, which the archivist identified as being effectivelly "wands" with a single charge and a very simple activiation. A little further examination, and he reveals that each gemstone contain a single spell, "repair damage".

You know darn well what we did.

So the DM describes the scene, getting more and more quiet. The construct begins to twitch, and jerk. The wooden grain of its frame snaking back together, the cracked stone plating melting into solid peices once more. He gets real quiet, we're all leaning close together, and he tells us this.

"Suddenly, the construct springs up in one fast fluid motion, grabbing <dragon shaman> by the shoulders and shouting...."

And THAT is when the 6th player, the one with no current character, grabs the dragon shamans player by the shoulders and screams "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE CREATOR?!?"

I. Almost. Peed myself.

It took us five minutes to stop laughing/throwing things/settle back down and get to the game. The player decided to be a WARFORGED of all things. Him and the DM decided behind the scenes that a warforged experiment the arcanist cooked up would be a great new addition to the party. "It" primarily served the arcanist as an assistant during magical concerns, but also as a cook, housecleaner, and entertainment.

So, now we have a warforged bard in the party. And I thought I was the odd one out :smallamused:

They agreed that the best way to introduce the new character would be a shocker moment. I'm inclined to agree.
So there we go. The bard plans (assuming it survives) to become a sublime chord and act as our primary arcane spellcaster, in a sense. And the DM successfully made us wet ourselves by playing one of our group against us. That bastard :smallamused:

Tyrael
2007-10-12, 08:34 PM
Wow, that is really, really fantastic. It sounds like your DM is an absolute master of getting together with players and giving everyone memorable moments that will be talked about for sessions to come

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE CREATOR!?!?

That's absolutely genius.

Best
Chara intro
Ever.

Alex12
2007-10-12, 08:58 PM
Your. DM. Rocks.

Grey Watcher
2007-10-12, 09:51 PM
A very deft character intro. Bravo. (Or should I say "Brava"?)

I also gotta say that frozen potions cracking their vials has to be one of the best bits of flavor I've ever seen. I realize it's a mundane detail, but it's those oft overlooked mundane details that really bring a scene together, I think, especially when you're dealing with (unwillingly) abandoned property.

ElectricEel
2007-10-13, 09:00 AM
Very, very cool. Sounds you're having a good campaign.

bugsysservant
2007-10-13, 09:41 PM
Wow. I missed the last couple of pages for some reason, so today I have been steadily progressing through your two last encounters. They were both incredible. It has been said before, and I hate to trivialize the role of the players, but your DM is seriously awesome. 'Course good players make good Dms, hmm :smallwink:

Anyway, see if you can use this thread to keep your loyal fans posted about your campaign, if you would be willing. I don't know if that violates forum rules (I assume not) or if you would have to start a new thread, but I am really interested in how your campaign unfolds.

Alex12
2007-10-13, 09:46 PM
Anyway, see if you can use this thread to keep your loyal fans posted about your campaign, if you would be willing. I don't know if that violates forum rules (I assume not) or if you would have to start a new thread, but I am really interested in how your campaign unfolds.

I agree. I really want to know how this goes, because it sounds purely awesome. That character intro was beautiful, and your DM sounds like he really knows how to do it right: the atmosphere, the descriptions, the challenges, everything.




Also, off-topic, I never noticed your sig before, bugsysservant, but I love it.:smallsmile:

SilverClawShift
2007-10-14, 12:16 PM
I also gotta say that frozen potions cracking their vials has to be one of the best bits of flavor I've ever seen.

It's the littlest things that really make a picture come together, I agree. Finding a potion drives it home that someone lived there. Finding a potion cracked and useless from exposure to the cold because the owner died drives it home that someone lived there.


Anyway, see if you can use this thread to keep your loyal fans posted about your campaign, if you would be willing.


I agree. I really want to know how this goes, because it sounds purely awesome.

I always feel weird just rambling on about a campaign no one else is taking part in. It feels like I'm going "ME, ME, read about ME" :smalleek:

But yeah, I guess there's no reason I couldn't post about the campaign here, what else is this thread for? We've had a few sessions since then, and another one tonight, but I'll try to get some more of the facts about it up.

BRC
2007-10-14, 12:21 PM
You DM is awsome. They should make a DnD Hall of Fame and give your DM a wing.

TheSteelRat
2007-10-14, 12:24 PM
Yeah, we like you talking about this campaign. So many wonderful ideas, definitely an inspiration to gaming. Can we rent your GM? Pretty please?

Lolzords
2007-10-14, 02:08 PM
I'm imagining a montage with that live to win song in the background. :smallamused:

shadowdemon_lord
2007-10-14, 04:46 PM
Wow, I loved the description of the battle, and the character intro was nothing short of awesome. I like the setting idea a lot, and the fact that you not only do you have hordes of wandering undead, but also bands of roving Kythons wandering around is cool. I'd love to keep reading about this campaign.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-14, 06:23 PM
Allrighty.

So to recap the warforged portion of things, we did get him (it) to calm down fairly quickly. Despite the dragon shaman wearing his creators necklace, we managed to convince him that we had nothing to do with what happened. When he found out we were going after the kythons (and of course, having been shredded by them and knowing his 'father' was destroyed by them, is now very very anti-kython) he eagerly joined up with us.
Of course, that really goes without saying, since he's a player-character :p. His natural armor is also pretty kickin and enchanted well.
The party is at that magical point where we realize we can start mutliclassing/prestige classing. The warforged plans on becoming a sublime chord, the paladin is looking to become a death delver, I'm actually gonna take a few levels of factotum to give myself a little more edge.

Anyway, this has been a few sessions, so I'm trying to keep it neat and trim and give highlights.

Now, we make our way through the snowy dead woods. There's lots of zombies around, but for the most part, we're taking care of them pretty effeciently.
Then, we realize, there's trouble. Not trouble in the way you might traditionally think, but worse trouble. One of the zombies isn't shambling towards us. It's watching us. And when it realizes we're watching it? It dissapears back into the trees.

To quote the paladin. "Wow. That sucks".

It wasn't the wizard, so it's basically foreshadowing that things are gonna keep getting worse for us with this whole 'not 100% dead and angry at you for being alive' thing.
But we make it to the mountain range, and track the kython trail back to a cave entrance. The zombies (a lot of whom were still shambling for us) cease to be even a threat of a problem when we start climbing the rocks. Zombies aren't the best climbers, fortunately. We're keeping our eyes peeled for... uh, the sentient ones. If there are stronger undead watching us, we don't want them following.
Me excluded of course. :smallconfused:

I'm sure you can imagine how this goes. We don't want to go into the kython caves. We just don't, prepared or not. But there's not a lot of places to check out, things aren't going to spontaneously get better, and we need to know what riled those monsters up.
So we head in. We're taking it fairly slowly. I'm on point, cause, you know, I'm the rogue. Not that it really matters, we can't hide from these things the way we'd like to be able to. But I'm undead, along with some pretty sleek resistances, and I can blink ethereal and sprint if I really have to.
The warforged keeps humming quietly. We keep having to shush him. The archivist is compulsively checking his bone shard crossbow, despite it being useless against kythons. "I don't know, it just makes me feel safer to have it ready."
We do fight some kythons, but it's nothing like the war. We're doing very well at keeping them under control when they attack us. Never facing more than an adult or two at a time, still have some sonic orb stuff from the battle. Going well.

We can tell the cave is going donwards, not up, which is making us generically claustrophobic. FOr some reason, it seems worse to be heading into the black when you're also heading underneath the surface.
And then as I'm doing a random check for traps (just in case), I notice something scratched into the wall. It's a circular pattern filled with obscure arcane runes that we can't recognize. Not even the warforged who's covered in random obscure runes.
The archivist is leafing through his notebooks furiously (read: the DM is giving him notes on what he's figuring out after he rolls a knowledge check... I know it's kind of silly, but it really helps with immersion when the character who rolls the knowledge check tells you what's up, instead of the DM telling you himself).
The archivist, holding up a black handbook and a small rod with a light on the end: "It's... it's a seal."
Us: "okay, what are we getting at?"
Archivist: "Blasphemy. It's blasphemy. It's a seal of an otherworldly being, neither angel nor devil." he crosses himself here. "They enter this world through the souls of willing mortals, heretics, and corrupt us to unknown ends".
(Now mind you, we all know what the binder class is, but good golly I was immperssed with the archivist players acting here. Impressed enough that it was creepy.
Anyway.)
Duskblade: "So there's something down here in addition to the kythons?"
Archivist: "...if I didn't know any better... I'd say the kythons made this."

So we press on, very uneasy. Mind you, the whole time, I'm trying to talk to the kythons, like some kind of warped ranger (I wasn't even interested in diplomacy with them, creepy monsters, but the archivist correctly reminded me that I was probably the first mortal *akward pause* uh, the first material creature to even understand what the kythons were saying, so I had to try). They won't have anything to do with me. They just won't. I try telling them we only want to find out why nothing will stay dead, telling them to back away before the bloodshed, asking them what the seals we keep finding on the walls mean. They just hiss curses at me, and either dissapear into the smaller sub-caves, or attack violently.
But as we descend, we notice the kythons are actually thinning out. What that meant was still open to interpretation.
Then we come into a massive chamber. We're on a ledge overlooking it. It goes easily 30 feet down and 50 feet up. The room is around 100 feet to a side, give or take.

And there are undead kythons pinned to the walls, cippled with no limbs, or otherwise incapacitated. A zombified kython with no lower half crawls up the wall at us meekly.
There are also seals carved EVERYWHERE. Scratched right into the stone, overlapping each other, seemingly for dozens and dozens of different vestiges.

We're all rolling spot checks. The archivist makes it first.
Archivist: "...Everyone get ready to run for your lives."

A 'slaughterking' kython. The grand daddy of grand daddy kythons. The kind that kill slaymasters from boredom.

To quote our paladin: "Wow. That sucks."

The slaughterking? It's scratching the ground. (Now would be a good time to remind anyone reading that slaughterkings are more intelligent than a human being by a wide margin (20 INT)).
We don't even know if it's seen us. Then, it hisses, in that strange clicking hiss that only I can understand (read: the DM gave me a note) "Leave this place now."

I tell the group. The archivist tells me to try to talk to it (while we're all backing towards the entrance). I'm actually picturing this scene. We're god knows how far underground, surrounded by undead kythons and blasphemous religious symbols. I just say quietly, barely a whisper "I don't think I can". I was serious, I'm trying to think of what to say to this thing, and I'm just terrified.
The archivist reminds me that I'm the only one who can even try. So I managed to say one word.
"Please"

The kython turns to look at us, growls quietly, and goes back to scratching. After a few moments, the area in front of him lights up. We see, what looks like a JESTER with dozens of arms spring out of thin air, juggling dozens of tiny objects.
Of course, this is a real vestige, but we don't know that in character.
Vestige: "Sorry there guv'na, no pacts today, otherworld's closed up shop. going out of business, huge sale, everything must go! *insane cackle*"
Kython, still speaking in growling clicks and hisses (which the DM actually did, knowing I'd just tell the group, and wanted to do a quiet angry hissing voice for it): *angry hiss* "How is this happening."

The vestige stops juggling, rubs his chin ponderously, and leans to the kython before saying very slowly, and very confidently. "Because we. Want. Out."
And with a huge insane grin, the vestige turns from the kython and looks me dead in the eyes. Says in a boisterous friendly grin "I'm still mad at you!!!!"

And then winks out of existance as fast as it came in, while the kython pounds the ground in a fury and tears off one of the undead kythons heads, throwing it at us, and scattering away into some dark hole.

Sweet mercifull macgilicutty.

Anyway, to tighten things up a little here, we press forwards, and down through the dark hole the slaughterking went in. Everything was covered in slime, there were bones and dead body parts everywhere. By a few checks revealed that they weren't human, or even surfacers bones. There was apparently a whole eco-system that went much, much deeper into the caves, of which the kythons were only a part.
We found the slaughterking deeper down, checking over a bunch of scratched in runes that were, apparently, his notes. He wasn't interested in the surface, he wasn't even interested in killing us (though he said repeatedly that he would kill us if we didn't leave).
I managed to convince him we would gladly leave, in one peice, but we didn't know what was going on and could he please just tell us anything. We got some facts out of him.

There's a lot, lot more vestiges than anyone, scribe, scholar, cleric or binder has ever heard of. In fact, there's millions. Billions. Countless. Most of them are weak, powerless, but they still exist in the 'nothingness'. No sensation, no communication. Nothing but black. Inky timeless black, forever.
Kythons (who were originally created by fiends trapped on the material plane) weren't just a fluke experiment. There were seeds of intent lain in their race. The demon prince orcus intended to use them, in ways unknown, to reclaim the vestige tenebrous from the nothingness and reclaim the measure of divinity he acheived. Kythons have some innate knowledge of binding, but don't actually do binding themselves, they just know about it.
Whatever's going on (the kython didn't know, and is trying to find out), it's big. Something's wrong, the tether of the planes are fraying, and vestiges have apparently found a way to push themselves into the ethereal plane, hijack peoples souls, and use them as more than just temporary pacts. They're piggybacking back into reality on them and taking them over.
Even insects and rodents are coming back, because any vestige that finds a way in is TAKING it, regardless of how insignificant. Even the eyes of a spider are better than no eyes whatsoever. The weak ones are degenerate and can't really be called 'minds' in any sense. They're just pushing into reality blankly to get away from the 'void'. Those are the shamblers. They kill for no reason other than to make more paths in.
The more powerful vestiges are trying to piggyback in on more powerful souls (read, higher level characters and powerful creatures). A more powerful soul makes a more powerful 'ride', and lets them retain their sense of self, but more or less consumes whoever their ride was. They don't keep their powers, but they get the minds and full knowledge of whoever they come in on, and keep their own minds as well.
It's possible that a powerful enough soul would let a vestige keep its own powers through the process. But they aren't worried about that. They just want to EXIST again.

A lot of powerful vestiges are out in the world now. Some are still there, and at least one is still willing to make pacts and doesn't wish to leave the void. The others are scrabbeling to get a way out of it. They would all love nothing more than to kill you dead and give another vestige a ride into the world.

And we know tenebrous is still a vestige.

So uh, yeah. To quote our paladin yet again: "Wow. That sucks..."

And it does. It does indeed suck.

The kython ran down another hole eventually, but promised that if it saw us again, or if we hassled it in any way while it tried to figure out what was going on, it would shred us to ribbons.
We had a hard time convincing the warforged not to attack the kython. All he wanted to do is kill kythons.

We came back to the surface in dreary silence. We were all kinda stunned sick actually, we have no idea what to do here.
We made it back to the village, and they let us rest there for a while. We also went to another village (me in a heavy black hood and only coming out at night, and we managed to convince the warforged to act like he was just a golem under our control to avoid real trouble beyond a 'what the heck' reaction). Refreshed our supplies, got some gear for the duskblade (who the DM has allowed to come up to 7th level with us now).

So, I'll put a breaker in here for the current climax, which is going to get picked back up tonight.

********************************************

The archivist asked us if we'd mind returning to the mainlands instead of exploring the rest of the island. He wants to get to church and pray with his brethren, but also to report what he's discovered and try to get some backing from the church at large for us to continue our explorations on the subject (though we admit to not being sure where to go from here).
We also need to let them know they're missing one semi-famous cleric, and that the paladin is officially leaving his 'path'. Staying virtuous and noble, and remaining with the church, but will no longer advance as a paladin itself. The DM is letting him keep his abilities in this setup, which we all think is fair.

So, we start sailing back to the mainland. It's not a pleasant ride. We see a lot of undead sea creatures actually. We killed a few undead sharks that gave us trouble, and we actually saved a school of dolphins from a zombie killer whale (really, the paladin saw a zombie attacking a school of friendly dolphins, and just went APE on us, tore off his full plate, swung out on a rope, dove and started fighting the thing in water. Naturally, we all helped after that).
We thought. We saw. An undead blue whale. SWEET. MERCILESS. ASMODEUS. Save us now.
Just thinking about that makes my back shiver. Tiny wooden sailing ship, UNDEAD BLUE WHALE. oh god.

We don't know if it was still alive, something else, or just our eyes playing tricks on us, cause we weren't attacked by it. Gave us all the heebie jeebies though.

So?

We make it back to the mainland. We're sailing for port, cloudy day, releived to be getting away from the undead infested waters (especially before the nasty storm the captain smelled in the air hit).

I don't know why it didn't really hit us.

Undead infested island.

Ethereal plane broken.

Undead in the waters.

I guess we really just weren't thinking about it as hard as we should have been. Because we docked in port, and tied the ship up and whatnot. We swung off it, and went with the captain to find the harbor master to let him know we were in port (and we were paying for the docking anyway).

The place was empty. No one around. We peered towards town? no signs of life. We started getting a really uneasy feeling. We went in towards town a little ways (the captain came with us)? Nothing. We climbed a belltower. Took a look around the town. Noth- wait. There's someone. "Hey, what's going o-" the duskblade starts to shout, before the archivist clamps a hand over her mouth and pulls us all down so we're laying prone.

Archivist: "we're in trouble"

And then? We hear a single zombie moan angrily. Followed by about a thousand more moans from every direction.

We managed to barricade the door to the belltower, and the doors leading back up to the tower portion itself. We had a single scroll of 'fly' left over from the war, and we used it on the paladin and sent him flying to look for somewhere we can head to. He found that the church was barricaded pretty heavily, and that a few other buildings, mostly homes and shops, were boarded up and might have people in them too.

We just have to fight through streets literally flooded square to square with zombies to get there.

To quote EVERYONE. "Wow. That sucks."

**********************

So that's where we're standing right now. We're gonna game for a few hours tonight, and hopefully tommorrow night too (but definately tuesday).

We'll see where this goes I guess.:smalleek:

*edit*

Think I forgot to mention. The warforged really does not care about what's going on. He's staying with us cause we're friendly towards him and he doesn't really have anything better to do without an 'owner'. He's got a dissapassionate outlook on everything, mainly because if he gets destroyed, that's that. No undeath, just a question of wether or not someone will repair him at some point.
Still, he's party-loyal and utterly fearless.

bingo_bob
2007-10-14, 06:42 PM
Oh dear. That's quite a situation, there...

Just remember then. Vestige-Zombies with names from ToM are bad news. Especially since the higher level ones are likely to retain their powers. Acererak will be particularly nasty.

Tor the Fallen
2007-10-14, 06:53 PM
Why didn't a mage that was powerful enough to craft a warforged not get a monstrously badass visage in him?

SilverClawShift
2007-10-14, 06:59 PM
Why didn't a mage that was powerful enough to craft a warforged not get a monstrously badass visage in him?

DM oversight. :smallbiggrin: Also probably the fact that part of it the DM makes up on the fly.

It hadn't occured to me, I wonder if it's occured to anyone else. I don't think I'll bring it up though, that'd just be petty. Also, he can just Rule 0 it and give any reason.

Shas aia Toriia
2007-10-14, 07:07 PM
Wow. Keep us posted, this is actually the most awesome campaign ever. Sounds like you have a great DM.

Although I was wondering if the rest of the world was undead-ified.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-14, 07:21 PM
And if you wanna clear a path out, use spheres and walls of fire. They'll save your ass, since you can spam 'em for a while before going down. And believe me, you'll really need to clear a path, even for 10' away from the tower. And consider runnin' away through rooftops to reach the barricaded buildings. And turn the people you find into Warlocks, dragon shamen, and marshals :smallbiggrin: . Maybe that grin is inappropiate. The World's goin' down in flames.

bugsysservant
2007-10-14, 08:01 PM
Wow...

I mean, damn.

First, thanks for putting the effort in to keep us posted. You really do a great job conveying the atmosphere of the campaign (I assume). And again, your DM kicks ass. Seriously. Good luck with the zombie hordes, if you have no other option, try scavenging boards and going from the bell tower by them. Once retracted the mindless zombies shouldn't be able to follow. 'Course some of 'em might not be mindless...:smalleek:

Anxe
2007-10-14, 08:01 PM
Where do you live and can I come play?

Machete
2007-10-14, 08:16 PM
Is your DM single and female?

TheLogman
2007-10-14, 08:18 PM
The Church is probably your best bet. It might have a few friendly NPC clerics who are willing to help. At 7th level, I think your Archivist only has 1 Wall of Fire if any? Try to get a night of rest, restore spells, and then in the morning, here's an idea. Aided by all the battlefield controls you guys can muster, send yourself into the undead sea, trying to get the the Church. If they don't attack you because you are undead, great, then you can get into the Church, hopefully NOT get killed by the guys inside, (They don't have to know you're undead) then they can send out a team of Clerics (If any) to Turn the Undead to create a path to send the rest of the party through. Once inside, Clerics and other more powerful characters in the Church might be willing to help with the Kython situation, or at least sell/give you some supplies.

If you are very lucky, there might be a witchslayer in town. Those guys are good against vestiges, and hate them a ton. Get as many of them as you can if there are any at all. If there aren't, consider taking classes in WitchSlayer yourselves, it would be the perfect prestige class for the Paladin.

Anxe
2007-10-14, 08:21 PM
I'd suggest you have the wizard flying person rest while you guys keep the zombies out. When he awakes he casts fly on everyone and you zip around town and get everyone still alive to the church or whatever place looks most defensible. And after that it becomes BURNINATION TIME!

Grey Watcher
2007-10-14, 11:00 PM
DM oversight. :smallbiggrin: Also probably the fact that part of it the DM makes up on the fly.

It hadn't occured to me, I wonder if it's occured to anyone else. I don't think I'll bring it up though, that'd just be petty. Also, he can just Rule 0 it and give any reason.

Eh, it's explained easily enough. The Vestiges (what the heck is a Vestige, anyway?) don't have any means of predicting where or when a new entrance will open up. Granted, the smarter, more powerful Vestiges are specifically looking for more useful portals, but that doesn't stop a lucky lesser Vestige from taking advantage when a door opens up right next to him.

From a meta-game perspective, does that mean each of those Will saves you made was against a separate Vestige?

Also, you're in deep doo-doo. You better hope that most of these people were Level 1 Commoners and Experts, and thus, aren't any deadlier than a standard zombie.

Solmage
2007-10-15, 12:40 AM
Damn, this is an awesome campaign! Please keep it coming!!

I even refrained myself of going into that morals debate, SEVERLY biting my tongue, just not to interrupt the grandiose storytelling!

I even got the shivers when picturing the scene, but I do have a question: Exactly what were you thinking when you decided to go after a HUGE alien-like critter to TALK to it? I'm quite brave but frankly, After the previous battle I'd have said 'err.. aha.. yes.. we're leaving now! kthanxbye!' :smalltongue:

Korias
2007-10-15, 08:33 PM
Eh, it's explained easily enough. The Vestiges (what the heck is a Vestige, anyway?) don't have any means of predicting where or when a new entrance will open up. Granted, the smarter, more powerful Vestiges are specifically looking for more useful portals, but that doesn't stop a lucky lesser Vestige from taking advantage when a door opens up right next to him.

From a meta-game perspective, does that mean each of those Will saves you made was against a separate Vestige?

Also, you're in deep doo-doo. You better hope that most of these people were Level 1 Commoners and Experts, and thus, aren't any deadlier than a standard zombie.

A Vestige, from my knowledge, is a creature of power that resides in the ethereal plane. Binders make pacts to add the Vestige's power to their own, and gain some nifty abilities and drawbacks. One mentioned earlier gives you a better shot with a bow, but you look sick and cant shoot elves.

Seek out the Binder Fluff for more info. I belive its PHB2.

Shas aia Toriia
2007-10-15, 08:39 PM
Binders make pacts to add the Vestige's power to their own, and gain some nifty abilities and drawbacks. One mentioned earlier gives you a better shot with a bow, but you look sick and cant shoot elves.

Wow, that's useful. Since people don't fight elves too much, that's useful.

Xefas
2007-10-15, 09:12 PM
A Vestige, from my knowledge, is a creature of power that resides in the ethereal plane. Binders make pacts to add the Vestige's power to their own, and gain some nifty abilities and drawbacks. One mentioned earlier gives you a better shot with a bow, but you look sick and cant shoot elves.

Seek out the Binder Fluff for more info. I belive its PHB2.

The Vestiges aren't in the ethereal plane, to my recollection. I'm pretty sure they exist in a state of non-existence in a non-plane of nothingness.

Grey Watcher
2007-10-15, 10:09 PM
Xefas appears to be correct. I managed to find a Wikipedia article about binders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29).

SilverClawShift
2007-10-15, 11:10 PM
Although I was wondering if the rest of the world was undead-ified.

Yeah. In retrospect, it should have hit us when we learned more about the vestiges pushing through. That's not exactly a localized problem

Then it should have hit us again when we noticed undead sea creatures.

And it REALLY should have hit one of us when we realized the town was empty. But nope. No one's perfect I guess (or if someone did suspect something, they didn't say it aloud).

The player who said they were shouting out to the figure didn't even realize it, but that's when the rest of us did. The archivist honestly even jumped at the other player :smalltongue:.


And if you wanna clear a path out, use spheres and walls of fire. They'll save your ass, since you can spam 'em for a while before going down.

That would've worked great, if we had someone capable of doing that, hehe. While almost everyone in the party has some kind of magic (the dragon shaman has auras, and I have UMD, but that's not exactly the same).


First, thanks for putting the effort in to keep us posted.

No problem, it's fun to talk about it :smallsmile:


Is your DM single and female?

He's taken, and very male. Fortunately, his girlfriend understands him dedicating large amounts of time to this.


I'd suggest you have the wizard flying person rest while you guys keep the zombies out.

No more wizard. He's a zombie. Or a vestige. Or, whatever. A duskblade, a bard, an archivist, and a paladin, are our spellcasters.
And our DM does keep track of what spells we have access to, and makes us follow the rules on learning new spells fairly strictly (which is actually a lot of fun, once you get used to it).


After the previous battle I'd have said 'err.. aha.. yes.. we're leaving now! kthanxbye!' :smalltongue:

Beleive me, I WANTED to. But I was, unfrotunately, our party face in this instance. I was the only one who could communicate with it, and it was the only kython who would even tell us to leave before it ripped our faces off, so we had to try.

************************

As for vestiges, yeah. They don't really 'exist' in the same way anything else does. They are literally nowhere, don't truly exist in any way we can understand, and aren't even really creatures/outsiders/ect of any type.

They don't even have alignments. They just are. Or aren't. Depending on how you look at it.

They're from the tome of magic, for the binder base class. Which is a very fun class that I highly recomend. Binders (who are usually considered heretics and burned at the stake by any organized religion, in fact, the book has an organization which is a collection of 4 otherwise un-associated churches who would gladly fight each OTHER, except they're more conerned with wiping out binders). Anyway, Binders can write seals and 'summon' forth a vestige. The vestige doesn't really exist in any physical way, and they usually appear as something that wouldn't even be capable of physically maintaining itself (even beyond the magical monstrosities normal in D&D).
But they can make pacts. They latch whatever trace of their essence still remains onto the soul (or essence) of the binder, called a 'pact'. The vestige gets to experience reality through the body/eyes/ect of the binder who is tied to them, albeit in a limited way. Other than that, they are in the 'void', the nothing, the place that doesn't exist.
When the pact is made, they give the binder a list of at-will abilities (with recharge periods, usually) and sometimes other cool stuff like damage reduction or elemental resistances or such. In return, they influence the way the binder looks (called the sign) and acts (called the influence) in some subtle ways.

Vestiges can be really creepy, but the creepiness is very superficial. Once you get over the disturbing nature of the pacts, and the pact making processes, a binder is just another character with a weird way of getting power. They're harmless.

Except in this campaign apparently. :smalleek: They found some way to force themselves back into reality, and they're going for it, regardless of the costs to us.

The 'millions of weak vestiges' thing is something our DM made up, it's not in the real binder fluff, it's just why nothing, regardless of type of creature, will stay dead :smalleek:

Anyway, we played a while on sunday, got together but couldn't actually play today, and are going to have another session tommorrow. I'll try to make some time to update on what's going on :).

Thanks for the words of praise to the DM everyone. He deserves it. He makes up a lot of stuff on the fly, but he spends a lot of time between sessions coming up with ideas and material so he can weave it all together easily. We the players are all really greatful to have someone happy to play on the other side of the table, and good at what he does.

Korias
2007-10-16, 06:20 AM
The Vestiges aren't in the ethereal plane, to my recollection. I'm pretty sure they exist in a state of non-existence in a non-plane of nothingness.

Its also been... God, I havent lookd up binders in ages. I should go find that book. My memory is a bit screwy at the moment, anyway.

Anxe
2007-10-16, 09:56 AM
Seriously. I want to play with you guys.

My second idea for what you should do is collapse the tower somehow. Have it fall sideways though, so it crushes a bunch of Zombies. Then you have a little island of upper ground to fight them off from as well.

Tor the Fallen
2007-10-16, 05:55 PM
DM oversight. :smallbiggrin: Also probably the fact that part of it the DM makes up on the fly.

It hadn't occured to me, I wonder if it's occured to anyone else. I don't think I'll bring it up though, that'd just be petty. Also, he can just Rule 0 it and give any reason.

Whew, that's good. Nothing insidious then :smallwink:

shadowdemon_lord
2007-10-16, 08:02 PM
I just assumed it was because the wizard was killed by the Kython horde. He was probably either eaten after they killed him (thus making it impossible for him to come back with no body) or simply promptly killed again once he came back.

Porthos
2007-10-16, 08:41 PM
I wonder if this port town has a shopping mall.

Might come in handy, you know. :smalltongue:

Tor the Fallen
2007-10-16, 08:43 PM
I wonder if this port town has a shopping mall.

Might come in handy, you know. :smalltongue:

Until the motorcycle gang shows up.

shaddy_24
2007-10-17, 06:53 PM
Thanks for updating us on this. This just conferms that your DM is absolutely amazing and that must be a really fun campagne. I would love to play in it.

Solmage
2007-10-17, 07:04 PM
[..] (who are usually considered heretics and burned at the stake by any organized religion [...] , in fact, the book has an organization which is a collection of 4 otherwise un-associated churches who would gladly fight each OTHER, except they're more conerned with wiping out binders). [...]

[..] but the creepiness is very superficial [...] They're harmless. [..] Except in this campaign apparently. :smalleek:

NOW you see why they were being hunt down by those churches and burnt at the stake! Those irresponsible binders are what caused this, each little bind empowered the vestiges a bit more, and over millennia they finally are able to breach the barrier!

So, when all is said and done, remember, have YOU burned a Binder today? :smalltongue:

Ikol_777
2007-10-17, 10:54 PM
Against the BBEG I reccomend a couple wands of:


Ray of Enfeeblement
Necromancy
Level: Sor/Wiz 1
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Effect: Ray
Duration: 1 min./level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes

A coruscating ray springs from your hand. You must succeed on a ranged touch attack to strike a target. The subject takes a penalty to Strength equal to 1d6+1 per two caster levels (maximum 1d6+5). The subject’s Strength score cannot drop below 1.

T

Anxe
2007-10-17, 11:30 PM
Why would you need a couple of wands of those? 3 or 4 scrolls would be enough to hit him I'm sure.

Grey Watcher
2007-10-18, 08:45 AM
Given that the campaign is based around a systemic problem with the nature of the afterlife, one has to wonder how a BBEG would work. I mean, yeah, they could square off against an uber-vestige-zombie, that's got both the vestige's and the victim's powers intact, but what are the odds such a being will be standing between the players and the Cosmic Mojo That Will Set Everything Right Again? (My sense of drama and plot construction says "pretty good, actually.")

Alex12
2007-10-18, 09:10 AM
Given that the campaign is based around a systemic problem with the nature of the afterlife, one has to wonder how a BBEG would work. I mean, yeah, they could square off against an uber-vestige-zombie, that's got both the vestige's and the victim's powers intact, but what are the odds such a being will be standing between the players and the Cosmic Mojo That Will Set Everything Right Again? (My sense of drama and plot construction says "pretty good, actually.")

Well, perhaps it could be that the MacGuffin, when activated/destroyed/whatever, also forces all "improperly bound" vestiges (read:those inhabiting corpses) back into the proper place, and naturally any vestige that realizes this is going to try really hard to keep that from happening.

That's my guess about what happens, anyway.

Grey Watcher
2007-10-18, 09:51 AM
Well, perhaps it could be that the MacGuffin, when activated/destroyed/whatever, also forces all "improperly bound" vestiges (read:those inhabiting corpses) back into the proper place, and naturally any vestige that realizes this is going to try really hard to keep that from happening.

That's my guess about what happens, anyway.

True enough. I was imagining that the MacGuffin would only stop new vestige-zombies from coming into being and all those that are already there would still have to be dealt with, but then, that would be a less satisfying victory, wouldn't it?

Alex12
2007-10-18, 10:02 AM
True enough. I was imagining that the MacGuffin would only stop new vestige-zombies from coming into being and all those that are already there would still have to be dealt with, but then, that would be a less satisfying victory, wouldn't it?

Plus, the vestige-zombie would definitely have a motivation for being there: "What? You mean if this thing is activated I'll have to go back?! HELL NO!"

Anxe
2007-10-18, 05:40 PM
I think the BBEG would be a flesh and blood Vestige.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-18, 09:31 PM
Okay, have some free time, so here's what's up.

Our standing group, (level 8, all around the board), Rogue/factotum, Duskblade/Swashbuckler, Archivist, Bard, Dragon Shaman, and a Paladin/Death Delver (who is still virtuous and true and good and all, but is starting to flippin LOSE IT as far as sanity goes. He's hit negative hit points one too many times).
(we also still have "Cap'n Carver", the us).

As far as out of character concerns go, the paladin has seriously cracked. I mean, the PLAYER is fine, he's just embracing the idea of a paladin gone loopy :smalltongue:. The DM is letting him keep his paladin abilities as long as he stays 'good', and he's still all about the paladin leanings and behavior and moral code. He's just getting creepy.
The kython plated armor and shield probably doesn't help his image, cause he's in glossy black armor and all. But more to the point, him and the DM have been discussing something behind the scenes, and they've agreed that the paladin is losing his celestial horse. A celestial mount is kind of a reflection of the person riding it in some ways, and the noble angel-horse was fine when he was a sword-and-board paladin straight up, but now?...
Thing is. He's KEEPING a celestial mount. WHAT he's keeping as a mount was revealed to the rest of us as a surprise, and I'll tell you when, and what :smalltongue:

In character

Our next session started in the same spot the other left off. We're pinned in a rather plain belltower, the streets are pretty much flooded with zombies. There's random houses that are boarded up, and the church is heavily barricaded, but we have no guarantee that anyone is actually in these places.

We're at the top of the belltower, the wind is picking up and it's obviously about to storm hard. The zombies are circling us. They're not completely thick around the belltower yet, but they're COMING, and it's just a wall of corpses past the few gaps anyway.
The relatively weak barricades we threw up start to give, and then finally let go with a whimper. The zombies come shambling in, moaning hungrily. Lots and lots of them. Even if they're all mook-strength, we're going to have a hard time with the numbers alone.
The duskblade, no hesitation, jumps up, grabs a wooden beam, and gives the rope holding up the big heavy metal bell a quick swip. It falls, tears up the internal structure just a teensy bit, and pancakes a bunch of corpses. It also acts as a choke-point in the bottom of the tower itself, so we basically are seeing LINES of zombies coming up, instead of mobs. So that's a little good, but we're still in bad shape.

The archivist comes up with an idea, and gets the DM to agree to it 'behind the scenes' (read: in notes).
Now, in our group? Prepared casters tend not to prepare all their spell slots unless they know something's coming up. If we're about to trek through the woods, they'll fill their slots with buffs and useful stuff of course. If they know they won't get a chance to prepare spells later, they'll fill it up with what they think will come in handy. Otherwise? They leave their spell slots open. It still takes time to sit down and ready them all to be cast, but personally, I kind of like that. It makes magic something a little more cinematic and a little less "machine gun"ish. Spells take time to prepare, so if you have the time, you can prepare what you need. Otherwise, be ready with your best guesses.
Our archivist has his spell slots unprepared. So what does he do? He touches the paladins shoulder (in and out of character) and says "Buy me some time. I need to pray."
The dragon shaman, leaning over the railing and looking down at the corpses groaning upwards at us, says "Yeah, we ALL need to f***ing pray".

So the archivist kneels in the corner, prayerbook open, wind whipping throughout the wall-less area we're in, while the rest of us try to find ways to make ourselves useful.
The paladin rushes down the stairs (actually cackling 'heroically', would be the best way to put it) spinning his sword above his head. Takes up a natural chokepoint on the stairs and starts trading blows with corpses. The Duskblade/Swashbuckler readies herself behind the paladin and curses about not having a reach weapon. The dragon shaman keeps a little distance, but gets in aura-range of the paladin and puts up some damage reduction for him. The warforged bard sits calmly at the top of the stairs and begins a creepy flute song (...), and I perch on the stairway higher up and start plunking stuff with my crossbow.
This goes on for a while, the paladin is taking some injuries, but is still fighting like a pro. The bodies are piling up in front of him and slowing the zombies down, but also confusing matters some (they all look dead anyway, I can't tell what I'm chopping at! It's just a wave of teeth and rotten faces)
Finally, the archivist shouts down "I'm ready, I still need more time!"
And starts climbing outside to get to the pointed roof of the freaking belltower. In what's about to become a torrential downpour. Lunatic.
I ask what in the nine hells he thinks he's doing, and he says "Hemmoraging divine magic, just get me time!"
The thing is, he wasn't just casting spells. He was giving spell slots, but he was also asking for a miracle in a way. He's perched up there, clinging to a lightning rod (!!!) and reaching up towards the sky. Fog and vapour are drifting past, and he's running his fingers through it, mumbling chants and giving up his spell slots. All of them. For?
The storm breaks. The DM makes him roll a reflex save (failed) and takes heavy electrical damage, and is temporarily deafened, but survives it. Slides down the rooftop weakly, the bard grabs him and pulls him in, and the downpour begins.

The downpour with faint but present traces of holy water throughout the entire cloud system. Oh yeah.

Apparently, the archivist got his miracle. He gave up his spell slots for the day... ALL of them, to pour as much divine and personal energy into the air as possible. He cast Bless Water a few dozen times in every spell slot he had available (except 0 level) and prayed that it would distribute throughout the clouds. And it did.
It wasn't KILLING anything, it was too dilluted. But the zombies were flailing and collapsing in divine agony. The more vaguely-not-stupid ones shambled for cover, but most of them just collapsed groaning in fury.

And it got us what we needed. With the warforged bard carrying the injured archivist (yeah, not anything in D&D rules, but the DM and us all agreed that he wasn't going to be sprinting after getting hit by lightning, high level or no), we broke for it. We fought viciously through the zombies still in the belltower and broke out into the rain. Heavy heavy rain. Heavy...holy water rain. Hmmm, seems like we're forgetting something, seems like, seems....

Oh right, I'M NOT FREAKING ALIVE ANYMORE.

So >I< start screaming in agony too, much to everyone elses surprise. Luckily I'm a player character. I'm taking divine damage (1's not even dice, and sporadic at that, but still). I manage to put on my gloves while we run and put up my heavy black hood. I also dig through my packs and manage to find a plain cloak to hold over my head, which doesn't doo much, but the "one divine damage" thing came less often.
Jeez.
So we make it to the church and start hammering the doors and shouting as intelligently as possible. "Please we're alive, let us in!"

And? After a moment, we hear running towards the doors. A slot opens up, and we hear a lot of confused conversation, but the guy at the door says "Go somewhere else!" Another voice behind him shouts "Open the door gregor!" Enter a shouting match. He's refusing to risk opening the locked door, people behind him are agreeing, people behind him are shouting to open it anyway, we can't leave them out there, it's too dangerous, open the god **** door, it could be a trick, ect. We're shouting at them to open it, it's not a trick, for gods sake the zombies are weakend but still COMING FOR US.

Me? I'm shrieking in burning divine pain. The paladin, in a panic seeing me in pain, starts slam-kicking the door to get it open. The group gets even more riled up, the screaming is reaching a peak, the zombies wails are getting closer, angrier, and hungrier.

Dm: "<silverclaw> you take one more divine damage"
Me: "oh F*** IT! I go ethereal and through the door, ready for trouble"
Everyone, DM included: ....*jaws dropped*

Anyway. I ask if I catch 'gregor', the guy at the door off guard for a sneak attack. The DM says "You just turned into a spectre, floated through the door at 60 feet a round, and dropped back into a solid shape with a thud. You're darn right you caught him flat footed".
So I elbow him to the back of the head, unarmed attack, sneak attack subdual damage. With the sneak, it was enough to send him way down, down for the count.
I throw the wooden beams back and start unlocking the door. The paladin kicks it in, breaking the last few locks, and in we come. A big wild eyed guy with glistening black armor and a sword and shield (also glistening black), a freaky rune carved golem holding a singed and injured dark-eyed archivist (who, really, are creepy no matter how you cut it). A dragon shaman who's starting to show traces of lizard, and... well, I guess the duskblade schoolmarm with a rapier still looks pretty normal, but drenched.
We immediately slam the doors shut and start re-barricading them. I'm sizzling like a smokebomb, and start tearing at my holy-water soaked clothes and stumbling and screaming in a pained panic. The warforged sets the archivist on a pew and makes sure he's okay.

*EDIT* Also, I forgot to mention. Cap'n Carver got red-shirted on the fight through the rain :smallfrown: *END EDIT*

So, now I'm basically naked. And dead. And smoking with holy "acid". Ans stitched together.
Someone in the crowd: "She's one of them!"
Paladin: "No she's not!"
Someone else: "Who they heck are YOU?"
Paladin: *readies sword and steps between me and the crowd* Someone willing to die defending the innocent!
Crowd: "You killed gregor!"
other part of the crowd: "No, he's still breathing!"
Someone else in the crowd, pointing at the warforged: "What the hell is THAT THING"
Warforged, calmly: "I'm a housekeeper."

...

*cough*

(also, for anyone who wonders if my group can keep in character and out of character stuff seperate? And wonders about group dynamics and things like that? The paladin who was ready to die defending me from an angry crowd? Same player who was the rogue who gave me TO an angry crowd to be burned at the stake in another campaign.
It's a game everyone, keep that in mind if you get mad at each other over stuff that goes down :smallwink: )

So, anyway. I managed to scrounge up, what basically amounts to a hobo outfit from the dry miscellanous gear we had in our packs. A lot of nothing, tied cloth, cloaks folded into each other and held together with pins. My armor class sucks, but at least I'm not naked.

We managed to get the crowd convinced that we were the good guys, somehow, but they remained pretty divided and not many of them trusted us. We got the archivist healed up, but he was completely out of magic. He's basically down to dark knowledge as far as class abilities go.
The dynamics of the crowd were fairly interesting, as was their situation. They'd been in the church for days and days, no one trusted each other, they still weren't sure what the heck happened, they were out of food for the past few days, a lot of them were dying or dissapearing.
It was actually a little confusing. Not that we couldn't tell what was going on, it was just that the DM did a good job of feeding us information second-hand, with commoners bickering at each other and contradicting each other.
Then Gregor started coming around, and that just made things worse.

What we established was that:
No one trusted us. Especially me.
There was no food left in the church.
People kept dissapearing or dropping dead.

Now, I'll condence down a lot of this part, not because it's not interesting, but because it's a pain to keep straight i conversation, let alone typing it all down. The game went murder-mystery on us. We're talking to people, trying to establish who knows what/was where/likes who/trusts who/is lying/isn't lying. It's an uphill battle since they don't like us anyway, and don't feel compelled to tell us a lot to begin with. The duskblade is making more progress than the rest of us.

Finally, we start figuring out what's up. The duskblade starts accusing two women of being the murderers, and they freak out and start crying. A guy, (Levain was his name) starts getting in her face and growling at her, how dare she be trying to stir up trouble when there was allready too much of it going on, she should be greatfull they don't throw us through the windows and back to the zombies, ect.

Duskblade: My hair's still wet?
DM: You're all drenched, except for <silverclaw> who took the time to dry off specifically because she was burning to death.
Duskblade: I wring out my hair casually, catch a handfull of the water, and throw it in Levains face.

...Oh HELL yes. We figured it out (well, she did. Well, the player (he) controlling her did. Whatever).

Levain SCREAMS, the same way I screamed, and falls back clutching his burning and smoking face. The crowd immediately backs away from him with gasps and screams. Levain bares his fangs and charges the duskblade.
Yeah, Levain was a vampire. People weren't just being killed in some random pattern, they were being EATEN. The archivist and duskblade collaborated information and figured out that much. No one knew who the vampire was, but the duskblade was trying to draw him out, making him go on the offense before he got put on the defense. It worked, and he was exposed.
The interesting thing? Levain wasn't part of this undead swarm. He'd apparently been a vampire for a good decade, and this situation was very bad for him. He had feeding grounds, but no good way of covering his tracks.

Ballroom Blitz
You want chaos? This fight we had next was chaos.

The paladin does a detect evil. The DM informs him "You get pings all over. The whole group isn't evil, but some of them are."
The paladin charges Levain for a smite evil, hits him hard. So hard, Levain immediately turns into a swarm of bats and flies down into the church basement to retreat. The paladin charges after him, the duskblade is in hot persuit.
Another guy from the crowd (he had a reason) takes the opportunity of the confusion to tackle the dragon shaman and starts fighting him. Isolated, the dragon shaman is doing fairly well in the fight, but his main party roll of 'making everyone better' gets weakened when he starts having to back up the stairs to the second level to retreat from the (now two) guys attacking him.
The crowd starts fighting itself, accusations are flying, who knew what, why did you let this happen.
A large part of the group swarms me. The warforged-bard runs to help me, and gets me a flanking position where I actually start getting sneak attacks (sub-dual still... I didn't want to kill the confused commoners unless it became me or them).
The dragon shaman takes a running leap from the second level balcony and back to ground floor, softens some of the damage with tumble, but still hits negatives. One of the guys who attacked him moves for a coup de grace, the other comes after me.

And then the archivist opens fire from the pew with his kython dart gun. 1 peircing damage to both of them.

Attacker: "What did you think that'd accomplish? Oh no, a splinter, I-" and then falls to one knee, breathing heavily as the venom eats 4 of his CON right then and there. "What...what was"
The other attacker loses enough hitpoints that he drops into negatives. The crowd backs away from the archivist and the three of us group together. The bard manages to get the dragon shaman back into positives, and the four of us go running after the paladin/duskblade/vampire combo while the first attacker limps after us.

(I hope I'm explaining this clearly).

Now, while this was going on, the vampire raked over the duskblade in bat-swarm form, and she's bleeding heavily. The vampire reforms, the duskblade gives him a whack, he gives the paladin a whack, they all trade blows for a few rounds while the vampire tries to turn the situation to his advantage (spider climb? still getting stabbed. Cover from the table? paladin kicked it over my head, ect)
They drop the vampire, but, you know how that goes. He turns into a mist and seeps through a bunch of cracks in the stone wall (...and we all get hit with a heavy clue-by-four). We catch up, the paladin lays on hands on the duskblade so she stops losing hitpoints, and the paladin starts hammering away at the wall and trying to tear at the stones.

Anyway. We get through the stone wall with some effort, and we find? Stone passges. Filled with spiders, webs, dust... A few doors here and there leading to other hallways and rooms. We know there's a vampire coffin in here somewhere, but it looks like something more too. There are unholy symbols, small altars, bloodstains.
After a few looks around, the Archivist informs us that it's a 'temple' to the demon prince of undeath, Orcus. It's less of a full blown temple, but it's likely a place that a cult of orcus can meet in secret. The layout also suggests that it will lead to under the cemetery too.

We trek in a ways, carefully. We're looking for a vampire coffin afterall, it's recovering down here somewhere. But after a few passages? We hear a thunk behind us. An oil barrel was just punctured and pushed over by the guy who attacked the dragon shaman, and it sloshes around our feet. He's looking sickly from the venom, but is standing strong.
He strikes a torch and gives us this line. "Orcus prefers his sacrifices be made in the darkness, not the flame. But this will have to do", and starts lowering the torch to the oil.

Paladin, out of character: Then I guess it's time for me to summon my mount.
Warforged, out of character: Yeah, a horse probably won't help us much down here.
Paladin: Yeah, I don't have a horse anymore. Trust me.

The DM smiles slyly, and tells us what we see. A dark shape melts from the ceiling and descends slowly towards the attacker. We can't make it out in the shadows, but it's big.
Paladin, in character, to the attacker: "As a warrior of all that's virtuous and honest in this world, I need to inform you that a giant spider is about to attack you from behind."
The attacker smirks.

And finally we see it. The flame from the torch reflects off its segmented eyes, and we see the dark, but somehow 'silvery' carapace of a celestial monstrous spider grapple the attacker effortlessly and spin him up in a bundled web before pulling him up and dropping the torch to the stone ground harmlessly.

...CELESTIAL MONSTROUS SPIDER?

Yup. Our paladin has a brand new bag. And it's AWESOME. First off, a silvery carapace and golden eyes? Oh yes. And it's slower than a horse, but it has a climb speed, and webs (no venom. Paladin spiders don't get venom, fair enough). And he can RIDE it, and it's INTELLIGENT, and friendly towards us. I think it's less physically durable than a horse, but I don't care. CELESTIAL SPIDER MOUNT.
Our paladin is still a good guy, and a warrior of paladin morals. But he's become, uh, 'dark' and insane enough that heaven isn't giving him a horse anymore. He's gonna be riding around on a Large sized spider.

And I fully approve.

Anyway, more has actually happened since then, but I'm getting tired, and the writing is starting to wear on my mind. We managed to find the vampires coffin and stake it.
The townspeople are pretty overwhelmed at this point. Too much going on. The zombies, the murders, us busting in, the vampire, and now there's a demon worshipping cult in town and we have no idea who are members of it?

But, they found out that in about 17 hours, the archivist is going to be able to summon enough food for everyone, and then some. It's going to be bland oatmeal, but nutritious, and people on the brink of starvation usually aren't upset about oatmeal.
Suddenly they like us a whole lot more, which is fair I guess. They've even agreed not to kill me when no one else is looking. I'm still wary though.
The paladin has opted NOT to let them know he rides a giant spider. Seems...uh, yeah. But we found a few rooms full of ancient religious lore, and a few useful items. I even found some decent makeshift armor that's good for me, and a collar that keeps me under a constant "Gentle Repose" to prevent me from rotting so the archivist can use his spell slots for more important stuff. (the collar was the vampires actually).

So, yeah, when I have more mental energy, I'll keep going. But I will say that I don't think the BBEG will be a straight up vestige. (if we even have one straight up like that, our DM doesn't always give us one big "Mwuhahah" kinda guy. In fact it's kinda rare). I also don't forsee a macguffin, but it is possible. That's nother thing our DM doesn't like to do, big "Omg reach this to save the world" buttons.

I dunno how this is going to go down, truth be told. (also, we're higher level at this point, but we were 8 at the start of this section, so yeah)

bingo_bob
2007-10-18, 09:48 PM
I envy you SOOOOO much right now. It's not even funny.

bugsysservant
2007-10-18, 10:14 PM
"Now children, thank the nice lady for her post."
"Thank you SilverClawShift."

Seriously though, very cool. Again, thanks for the time put in. And the part about the detect undead with hair: pure win. You, and your DM, rock.

Anxe
2007-10-18, 10:15 PM
Your DM's probably gonna give you an escape passage through the basement temple you found. You've still gotta get to those other people in the other random barricaded houses.

Arraxis
2007-10-18, 10:21 PM
That game you are having sounds so cool! I really want to see some more updates for it later on. I wish I could get in on a game like that :D

Anxe
2007-10-18, 10:25 PM
So have you considered my application to your group yet?

Doresain
2007-10-18, 10:35 PM
ok, so i got tired of reading the same battle strategies over and over again after page 3, so there is probably a lot that i missed in between there and here...but in regards to the warlocks, you dont have to make a pact with a demon to gain a that power...on an island where the dead simply rise up for kicks, wouldnt it make sense that some of the townsfolk would have such fiendish power bred into them?

so far, warlocks seem like the way to train these commoners...roughly 43 warlocks, each with eldritch spear makes for 43 ranged touch attacks per round at d6 damage, not to mention what the PCs can do...take out some of the bigger kythons first, as well as a number of the smaller ones...swarm the xenos with their own undead brethren as well as the zombies already present...

another good training outlet would be 43 dread necromancers with tomb-tainted soul at first level...unlimited heals for the commoners, rebuke undead and summon undead, good armor and weapon useage...

of course, both of these options leave quite an interesting effect on the town should they all survive...

EDIT: i feel like an idiot for not readin the rest...my bad

SilverClawShift
2007-10-18, 10:36 PM
One thing I forgot to mention. The archivist is spending a lot of time 'researching' the religious information we found in one of the stoney 'dungeon' rooms. So he's pouring over ancient cursed texts by candlelight, the duskblade and dragon shaman are sleeping upstairs with the commoners, and me, the warforged, and the paladin are all actually bunking in web-hammocks in the room with the archivist. I wanted to be high up and hard to reach, we figured the warforged would be better off that way too, god knows what some random commoner with a knife will decide to do to us.
The paladin is too, not because he wants to be away from them, but cause it's his spider webs :-p.

I just thought that was kinda cool and worth mentioning though.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-18, 10:38 PM
so far, warlocks seem like the way to train these commoners

Good info, I'll keep it in mind :smallbiggrin: :smallwink:

BRC
2007-10-18, 10:40 PM
I am going to tell my paladin-loving friend about this, and he is going to demand a celestial spider mount, and I will back him up.

bugsysservant
2007-10-18, 10:48 PM
Good info, I'll keep it in mind :smallbiggrin: :smallwink:

Don't be patronizing :smalltongue:

Doresain: Actually that battle was already held, and won. Several pages ago. Next time, if you are going to skip a few pages, at least read the last current one or two. This thread is now devoted to the growing cult of SilverClawShift, and the tales of her campaign. (hmm, I wonder what level bard she is to have fascinate all of her loyal readers. *Goes away to ponder.*)

Doresain
2007-10-18, 10:54 PM
Don't be patronizing :smalltongue:

Doresain: Actually that battle was already held, and won. Several pages ago. Next time, if you are going to skip a few pages, at least read the last current one or two. This thread is now devoted to the growing cult of SilverClawShift, and the tales of her campaign. (hmm, I wonder what level bard she is to have fascinate all of her loyal readers. *Goes away to ponder.*)

yeah i noticed...wish i had a group that could stay on one game long enough to make it epic...without the use of "one-shotty" the elven ranger and "beardyface" the dwarven cleric

SilverClawShift
2007-10-18, 10:58 PM
This thread is now devoted to the growing cult of SilverClawShift

Awe, don't talk like that, it's just gonna make me do this ~>:smallredface:

Really, my DM is the bard, I'm just repeating what's going on.

bugsysservant
2007-10-18, 11:21 PM
Awe, don't talk like that, it's just gonna make me do this ~>:smallredface:

Really, my DM is the bard, I'm just repeating what's going on.

Hmm, a blushing undead necromancer. The sight might just be worth the unspeakable wrath I will incur. :smallbiggrin:

Darkantra
2007-10-19, 12:54 AM
Aaaagh! I stopped reading this thread right after the battle for the village and just started reading it again tonight.

I have to say, reading about this campaign has given me numerous ideas for one that I'm brewing up, and since I'm still a novice to D&D it's actually taught me a good deal.

I have a couple of questions, does your group listen to any music to help set the scenes, and if so could you list some of the songs? Also, I'm curious about the monster ratio in this world, lots of aberations and undead to be sure, but are there any monstrous humanoids, and if so how are they handled effectively in a horror setting?

Brilliant saga, kudos to yourself and the DM!

Zeful
2007-10-19, 08:08 PM
I have to ask, would it be possible to apprentence under your DM?

Grey Watcher
2007-10-19, 10:29 PM
I gotta say, among his many gifts, I think the greatest talent your DM has is a good sense about when to just put down the rulebook and go with a cool idea. Yeah, Bless Water shouldn't work that way, but damn it, it's too cool a solution not to give the player a shot with it.


...I also don't forsee a macguffin, but it is possible. That's nother thing our DM doesn't like to do, big "Omg reach this to save the world" buttons....

Now I have this mental picture of the PCs busting into a room with a console with two buttons on it, labeled "SAVE WORLD" and "DESTROY WORLD".

Kraggi
2007-10-19, 11:51 PM
If I were a BBEG, my quest would be to switch the labels on those two buttons.