Defamation of a Mother

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

.... Or how lussmanj makes up stories about defeating Lloth aligned Hivemothers. (That thought alone is so out there, that it should be obvious that what follows must clearly be made up) :smalleek:

lussmanj, the stage is yours.

[Keld Denar]

Party makeup -

Me - Fighter/Barb/Rogue/Exotic Weapon Master/Occult Slayer 15
Fighter/Barb/Deepwarden/Occult Slayer 15
Wizard/Divine Oracle/Loremaster/Archmage 15
Cleric/RSoP/Church Inqu/Contemplative 15
Cleric/Church Inqu 14
cohort - Marshall/Bard 13

Foe- Shadow Advanced Beholder Hive Mother Blackguard2 aprox CR19-20

Setting - Kuo-Toa battle arena, aprox 150' long, 50' wide, 60' high

Plot - Beholder was a powerful ally of both Lloth and her drow. He was trying to solicite the aide of a powerful nation of Kuo-Toa to mobilize against the country the PCs were in. Idea was to have the Kuo-Toa weaken the country so the drow could come in and conquer. PCs had already defeated level 17 drow priestess with a pair of Dragoloths. Enraged beholder demands to challenge PCs himself to sway the Kuo-Toa back to his side.

Combat log to follow...

[Keld Denar]

Party is currenly buffed to the teeth, running buffs are:

Freedom of Movement on everyone from rings or spells
Death Ward on everyone
Righteous Wrath of the Faithful
Recitation (all members worship Pelor)
Chained Valiant Fury
Greater Magic Weapon and Magic Vestiments +5 on all party
Mass Fly
+6 Bard song
Initiative was buffed to +18 before dex and imp init from:
Combat Readiness (+6 init)
Chained Nerve Skitter (+5 init)
Marshall Motivate Dex (+7 init)

Opening:
Party wins init and opens up. All affected by central AM eye (240' cone) Beholder is about 20' off the ground. Both fighter types do double move fly (can't charge and gain altitude) and move out of the AM field then fly into flank. Rest of part moves out of AM field.

Beholder goes and fixes archmage character in personal AM field. Disjoins other fighters mass fly effect, falls. Marshall cohort gets Flesh - Stoned, rest of saves survived. Beholder climbs higher (30' fly because of shadow template).

I fall because I don't have a fly-buddy (see Mass Fly discription) and am grounded. I move back toward party and drink potion of Enlarge Person. Other fighter activates his celestial armor and flys up. Archmage enjoys personal AM field and sits on his thumb. One cleric throws up a Wall of Stone between beholder and casters. I forget what the other cleric did. Martial stayed stoned.

Beholder goes and shifts his AM field to ground the other fighter. Targets archmage with 7 eyerays. Hits with Stone to Flesh, archmage stoned. Deathward on me disjoined. All other saves made. We still haven't hurt it yet, and are down 2 party members.

Party goes. One cleric uses Ruby Ray of Reversal to unstone the archmage. Fighters still can't reach beholder. I move back and get a fly cast by the archmage. Other fighter can't do anything due to AM.

Beholder goes. Eye Rays fly but all saves pass except archmage who rolls 2 one vs charm monster. Moves towards party. Switches AM to cone and covers most of party.

Other fighter flys up and attacks beholder finally hitting and doing damage. Archmage gets out of AMF and casts sonic scorching ray + quickened sonic scorching ray doing over 130 damage. I move out of AMF, then fly up to beholder.

More to continue!

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

Good saves from the party!

(DC 36 for others following.)

[Keld Denar]

Um, after that, we pretty much got ahead. The beholder used its inflict critical wounds eye on itself, which healed it. Seeing this and using some logic, we deduced that it was Tomb-Tainted (Tomb Tainted Soul feat). The beholder then disjoined the archmage's FoM and charged it, going for the bite + imp grab + swallow whole (did I mention it was huge? yea...) sucess ment it was now grappling the archmage. Next round it would move for the swallow. Eye cone directed to the other flying fighter, grounding him.

My character charged the beholder. It was just out of my reach, but with my speed, jump, and reach with a spiked chain, I was able to hit it. I was too afraid to power attack, even with my +40ish to hit, because its AC was so high. One cleric casts heal, moves up and touches the beholder. It makes its save, but still takes 89 points (augemented healing CL15 heal). The other cleric drops a mass cure serious and does a little more damage.

Beholder decides to move instead of swallow, and makes a grapple check to fly out of reach. Suceeds and pulls archmage up in the air. All eye rays are saved against. He directs AM cone down on the party.

I fly up and attack the beholder, hitting it again. The other fighter also hits it. Both clerics fly up and heal-bomb it. After another round of damage and another heal from the 2nd cleric, the beholder finally drops.

I must say, I was sweating the whole time. One more failed save and we would have gotten TPKed. One of the clerics used a break enchantment on the bard and we were good as new.

I'm pretty sure thats mostly how it happened. It took place between about 11:30 pm and 2:30 am. It was probably the most satisfying D&D victory I've ever had. The beholder had been a major plot device for almost 2 years now.

[Keld Denar]

Good saves from the party!

(DC 36 for others following.)

The saves were pretty tough. I know my fighter was sitting on a +26 fort save after buffs, meaning a roll of 9 or lower failed the death effects. Fortunately, there were no reflex save rays, since that was the general weak save of the party. The clerics, bard/marshall, and wizard had high base will saves to protect against the charm and inflict rays, and the clerics had high fort to resist the disintegrate and other fort saves. The 2 fighters were immune to all of the charm effects since they were both Occult Slayer5s and had very respectable fort saves.

If the party had been different, it would have probably been a TPK. This is a crack group of players I have had the pleasure of gaming with for almost a year now. Most of the characters abilities compliment each other with noticable synergy and use a number of preplanned tactics. Still, that was probably the most challenging high level encounter I've faced ever.

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

The poor thing was basically defeated by it's own inflict spell. :smalltongue:

I think you worked together quite nicely and supported each other too. This was clearly not your first fight together.

Thanks for sharing this epic near epic battle. :smallsmile:



Edit: Ahh I see. Still impressive though. :smallwink:

[Alveanerle]

One newbie question if i may - how do you fly in an antimagic field? Don't all fly effect spells/equipment gets supressed while in the antimagic area?

[Keld Denar]

You don't. AM field doesn't dispel the fly effect though, just suppresses it. So a character with an active fly spell running who is targeted by the AM cone would lose the benefit of fly (this falling....hard). Once the character moves out of the cone, he can resume flying with any remaining movement speed. In the discription I gave, every time the beholder hit me or the other fighter with the AM field, we dropped and had to move out of the area to fly back up.

That said, beholders are naturally buoyant on the Prime, which is where they get their Ex fly from. That means that a beholder in an AM field does not fall and bounce like a basketball. This is sad, because the easiest thing to do would have been to have the archmage drop an Master of Shaping AMF on it, then me and the other fighter beat the tar out of it, since without perfect fly and limbs for locamotion, it would be pretty much helpless. Sadly, that was not the case....