Session 24: 3/26/2022

Dmitri’s player was unable to make it, so Ssword has moved over to be with Teador the Paladin. They discuss and execute a modified version of the original plan for the attack on Tlalchantli, the city of Tlaltecuhtli, the earth goddess. They meet up with a large group of yuan-ti nearby and get some scrolls of Dimension Door and potions of invisibility, and then spend a couple of days sneaking to the city. The yuan-ti have a spy base nearby, so this goes pretty smoothly.

They decide to attack at mid-day, when the patrols are out of town and the temple isn’t full of sleeping priests in large numbers. The yuan-ti launch a couple of major raids on the north and south end of the city, closest to the garrisons, firing arrows, lighting warehouses of food on fire, etc. The group waits a few minutes, downs potions of invisibility, and slips through the roads until they are within Dimension Door range of the temple. They teleport up to the top, finding, as expected, a vertical flight shaft that connects all the floors and leads straight down to the altar, 120’ below.

Not everyone has flight, so 3 of them ride down in a Bigby’s Hand elevator (it moves 60’ per round and can grapple a huge creature, so it can carry a few willing medium creatures) while Ratel the monk slow-falls down. They did occlude sunlight on their way down, so the priests at the bottom were not caught totally off-guard.

We paused the fight due to time about 5 ½ rounds in (2.5 hours of combat, approximately). At this point, Cipactli is dead, the high priestess has Antilife shell up but is down about 100hp, and one senior priest is dead…and the altar is destroyed by means of Ssword draining divine energy through it.

Battle highlights:
The altar acts on initiative 20 each round, opening a 10’ wide pit 1d10+1x10’ deep under the closest target (Dex save to avoid falling in). On the next round, it opens a new pit and the old one slams shut. Only one character fell into a pit (Teador) and he misty-stepped out.
Someone fired Synaptic Static as an opener and did over 100 points of damage to 4 of the enemies. The debuff sticks around a long time with none of them having INT save proficiency.
High priestess opened with Bones of the Earth. The strength 12 warlock tortle is still pinned between the ceiling and a pillar (it’s a strength check to get out, not a strength save). He’s taken some damage, but also has been out of the way of the biggest threats and appeared incapacitated until he dropped Maddening Darkness on about 1/3 of the room, doing a pretty good amount of damage. It’s still up.
The battlefield has been too mixed-up for the lower-level priests to use Fireball effectively. They’ve mostly been missing with Sacred Flame and Guiding Bolt. Almost every single Inflict Wounds the priests tried to use has missed also.
The enemy priests did land a Banishment and a Hold Person, but concentration got knocked down fairly quickly for those.
Ratel the monk got swallowed by Cipactli and managed to do enough damage to get thrown up, as well as landing enough Stunning Strikes to burn through Cipactli’s legendary resistances and stun it. Cipactli died shortly thereafter.
Ssword spent 5 rounds draining the altar and is now back in play.
Psychic Lance is pretty good at disabling enemies… lots of INT saves failed in this fight.

I’m pretty sure we’ve hit the turning point in the fight, but several PCs have been knocked about quite a lot, and reinforcements are probably on the way relatively soon (it’s been about 45 seconds since they were spotted).

DM notes:
The party:
Rivkah, 16th level creation bard, satyr - has analysis paralysis and actually used her dagger once instead of a cantrip like Thunderwave. Still did some damage with Psychic Lance, Electric Guitar (lightning bolt), and I think synaptic static.
Saqwam, 16th level Fathomless warlock, tortle - still figuring out what he needs to do with stuff. Maddening Hex was a good pick though.
Teador, 16th level vengeance paladin, half-elf - Solid mobility and damage carrying the fight. Hasn't used Lay on Hands yet.
Ratel, 16th level kensei monk, wood elf - I think he's out of ki points. More stuns this session than the previous 24 sessions!

Enemy forces:
1 high priest capable of casting 9th level spells
2 senior priests capable of casting up to about 7th level
4 sun acolytes casting up to 3rd level spells
2 champions (melee)
1 Cipactli, a CR 20 huge crocodile creature covered in mouths that bites everything near it, and hits for +14 with a 3d12+8 bite attack, plus tail slap, etc. It also can burrow through the ground and is tough and scary.

I’m not optimizing my tactics too much here. The enemies are mostly focused on “biggest threat” rather than “lowest AC”, which means they were missing a lot. I had the two melee enemies do the same thing each turn, and the Sun Acolytes would all cast the same spell so I didn’t have to use as much mental bandwidth. The simplified caster statblocks seem to be working. The big slowdown is waiting on dice rolling and dice math, plus the newer players taking time to figure out what to do. They are getting faster!

The High Priestess has Mass Heal (700hp healing) on her list, and I’m not using it, as that would have wiped out all the damage the party did in 4 rounds of combat. This doesn’t need to stretch out further and the resources burned means it could turn into a TPK. This is the second session for 2 of my players.
I may edit her statblock to reflect some other earth-themed 9th level spell.

It may have looked grim for the PCs for a while, but with no DM fudging aside from sub-optimal tactics and ignoring one spell, they are going to win this. High level PCs are pretty tough and have ways to recover from problems. This is why I don't worry about "How will my players solve X;" they'll figure out a way. It's just my job to give them interesting problems to solve.