Session 27: 6/11/2022

The party is now back up to 5 reliable members. Troudaar, the Goliath warrior (samurai), has been quietly traveling with the party for a while (that’s the excuse). We equipped him out of spare gear the party had: Broom of Flying, anti-scrying amulet, Plate +2, Maul of Extreme Pain (+2 maul, +2d8 psychic damage), Ring of Spell Turning. It took a while to get his character sheet built, so actual playtime was only about 2 hours.

The party finishes their long rest, hidden in a cave (I wanted some terrain variation). As they discuss what to do next (at my prompting), Ratel overhears fragments of discussion in the Aaracokra language in the near distance. He had the highest pre-rolled Perception, and can understand any language as a monk. There were fragments of a discussion about “they must be around here” and “the bounty on that group.” The party talks briefly about what to do, and I mention that Ratel doesn’t hear anything any more.

Teador the paladin hastes Ratel, who heads outside. He sees two Aaracokra hidden in trees not too far away. Being a hasted monk, he runs up the tree to the farthest one, which is wielding two wands, hits the spellcaster in the face several times (no stuns), then runs the rest of the way up the tree, does his boot-drop thing for minor damage, and lands on the ground with a very loud noise. I check with the rest of the party, and they were in a “wait for him to be a diversion” mode and not “ready to rush outside” so they sit out the rest of the round. All the enemies go.
The barbarian-like enemy closest to the cave chugs a potion (Storm Giant strength). The spellcaster twins Hastes on him and on the monk Aaracokra. The monk one flies in and makes four attacks against Ratel. Three miss, but on the fourth, his hand and forearm go translucent, and he reaches inside Ratel’s chest and tries to pull his heart out. Ratel makes the Con save and only takes half of the 10d10 force damage. A lightly armored Aaracokra flies over, blinking in and out of place twice (horizon walker teleport) as he stabs Ratel twice, once with 9d6 sneak attack damage.

Ratel starts of the next round simply running dead away at Hasted Monk Dash Speed after disengaging. I don’t remember the number, something ridiculous like 320’/rd. The monk Aaracokra, also Hasted, flies after him, ending up 40’ behind.
The spellcaster moves and the horizon walker/rogue hides, disappearing from the map.
The rest of the party runs out of the cave and starts heading in the opposite direction.

In round 3, Ratel dashes further away. The enemy monk catches up, ending his turn only about 25’ overhead – just out of melee range.

The Aaracokra spellcaster casts a 4th level Mind Whip at the party but gets Counterspelled by Saqwam the Warlock. The horizon walker rogue blips in, stabbing Teador the paladin with sneak attack, and Rivkah the bard with no sneak attack. This was a mistake, as Teador got to use Sentinel to make a reaction attack for 20-30 damage against the rogue. The high strength barbarian, meanwhile, charges in, his fingers ending in two inch talons. He attacks Saqwam once and Troudaar twice, hitting every time for about 20 damage per hit; Troudaar passes his wisdom save to avoid having to attack the ally standing next to him (Beast barbarian feature). I forgot the 4th attack from Haste.

Teador smites the snot out of the horizon walker rogue with 94hp of damage inflicted. Rivkah considers using Power Word Kill but decides to use Psychic lance instead, leaving the rogue with 3hp. Saqwam fires two Eldritch blasts that blow the barbarian back 20’ away from him, and a 3rd that kills the rogue. I think he forgot the 4th ray.
Troudaar action surges, attacking the beast barbarian 6 times including one crit. The damage is decent as only about 60% of it is resisted, and that was a lot of hits.

In the distance, Ratel fires two bow shots at the monk overhead and moves somewhere. The monk easily follows, pummeling him with 3 attacks and another heart-ripping attempt, which Ratel again saves against, I think – don’t recall.

Back at the main battle, Teador drops Concentration on haste (basically stunning Ratel) and successfully Banishes the enemy caster (basically stunning the monk and barbarian). The party deals a bit more damage to the beast barbarian, and then Rivkah asks how many hit points he has left. I say he’s pretty badly hurt and allow a medicine check to determine that he in fact has 97hp. Power Word Kill, boom and dead. Saqwam Counterspells the enemy caster’s Vitriolic Sphere, then casts Danse Macabre to raise the two dead enemies and zombies, making them much harder to bring back to life.

Once both monks recover from the post-haste Lethargy, they trade blows. Ratel is on the ropes with much lower hit points, but finally succeeds with a stunning fist, and the battle is over thanks to repeated stuns at that point. The enemy sorcerer pops out of banishment just in time to receive about 12 different attacks before he gets to go, and Shield avails him nothing.

The party heads west, then curves north, with a long rest somewhere in there. The random encounter chances are very high currently due to the Aaracokra’s alert status. They run into 2 more Quetzals and have very bad group stealth checks. Ratel (very stealthy) moves normally, and the rest of the party uses a pair of Dimension Doors to get 500’ or so out of the Quetzal’s path. They evade another patrol (3 air-skiffs and 30+ Aaracokra) with some decent stealth checks, and then another (1 quetzal, 2 air-skiffs & 20 Aaracokra) the same way. A couple of people have rolled 2s or 3s for Stealth, and Rivkah turns whoever is least sneaky Invisible, which helps bring the group average up.
During one of these encounters, Saqwam orders the zombies to bury themselves in the ground as they are insufficiently stealthy… thus end the zombies.
The party is now about 12 miles away from the city where Tlaloc’s high temple is.

Also, they get to level up to 18, and loot distribution resulted in a net +4 AC for Rivkah and +1 for Saqwam, bringing them up to 20 and 19 respectively from 17 & 17.
1 potion of storm giant strength
3 potions of superior healing
Ioun Stone of Protection (Rivkah)
Ring of Protection +1 (Saqwam)
Short Sword +3 (Rivkah)
Studded Leather +3 (Rivkah)
Wand of the War Mage +2 (Rivkah)
Brooch of Shielding (Troudaar)

DM notes: I was worried this was going to be too tough for my players. It wasn’t! Maybe it would have been if they were 4 PCs tonight instead of 5. I didn’t use the head-hunter’s stun-on-sneak-attack ability right away, and I should have. If something’s too tough for the players, it’s probably not. These were under-geared for PCs but highly geared for typical NPCs. The strategy of splitting them definitely helped, as the monk’s heart-ripping attack and speed would have been very dangerous had he faced anyone but another monk. The counterspells shut down the sorcerer, who was stuck concentrating on Haste and couldn’t bring his twinned Flesh to Stone to bear. Due to the splits and early death of the rogue, they never got to the point where he could use Twinned Power Word Pain either. He could have counterspelled the counterspell, but it was on a second page (character entry too long) and I missed it.
Still a good fight and had them worried a bit.

I think this proves I can stop worrying about throwing the kitchen sink at them.