Session 38, 2/18/2023
Ratel’s player couldn’t make it. A family member with “some” D&D experience joined while visiting in town, playing Rivkah… Walking in to a high level game with a 20th level bard you’re unfamiliar with and haven’t picked a spell list for is not a smooth transition.

I didn’t get the one-on-one recon/infiltration session done with Ratel between sessions as planned. We have “assumed” that it succeeded, and will do minor retcons as needed when I get it done in the next 2 weeks.

Assuming success, “What next?” ended up being a plan for the party to go ahead and attack Quetzalcoatl’s temple and destroy it. The city is laid out as a long, thin rectangle, about half of which is occupied by an assembly line for air-skiffs. They decide to go for a night attack, and teleport in around midnight to the sawmill area. It’s vacant, and they find some barrels of corn oil (used to lubricate the trough the air-skiff frames travel down). Heading to the western side where a bunch of logs are staged, they douse them in about 30 gallons of oil, then Fireball the storage lot and immediately Teleport across the city to a concealed point near the temple.

(note: They used the Silver Raven figurine to pick up stones from target points for teleportation without errors)

They then wait about 5 minutes to see the response, and see some Quetzals flying overhead, which causes Teador to say they should go for the temple at once. They are invisible… but as they round the corner, a Quetzal has the temple ground entrance blocked. I ask how quiet they are, and the results are something like 3, 7, 11, 14… so the group gets Prismatic Sprayed . Teador gets an 8 and then rolls double 7s, but that’s one that does nothing on a successful first save. Wanting to hold on to invisibility, the party changes course and flies up to the top of the temple, leaving the Quetzal behind them to call out a warning. Initiative was rolled with the Quetzals getting a nat 1.

The second Quetzal on top of the temple is actively looking for them, but when I say it starts to… I don’t even remember if I said what… “I Banish it!” It succeeded versus one Banish, but not the second one. Teador has a +15 Constitution save, so unless he takes 30+ damage in a hit, it’s still banished. As of writing, we’re about 5 rounds into the fight and that Quetzal is still in never-never land.

The group drops into one of the two vertical entry shafts to the top level of the temple, and finds the altar, the high priest, 4 lesser priests, 2 iron golems, and a floating blue golem thing.
Late in round 1, six more smaller golems, with weapons similar to the staff weapons from Stargate, enter the room as reinforcements.

The enemy high priest uses an 8th level Summon Fiend for a Yugoloth that does nearly nothing. The group opens with Chain Lightning (Paladin’s Air Elemental Command ring) and the Lightning Guitar, which ends the summoned fiend due to Concentration failure. Then the two Senior Priests in the room cast Spirit Guardian on top of the party… so anyone who goes anywhere is going to take damage. They stay still, except for Troudar, who starts moving to engage the golems (40 damage from SGs). The Iron Golems get close enough that one of them can breathe poison and does damage.

Next round, the High Priest drops a Prismatic Sphere on the party (except Troudar). Saqwam the Warlock tries to counterspell it, but can’t. Two Dimension Doors fix the problem, except that Teador is blinded for the next minute.

I don’t have a detailed record of the full fight thus far (it’s on pause until next session), but the dice were terrible. Over 5 rounds not a single combatant has rolled a natural 20. Troudar got reduced to 0 while attacking the High Priest, and used his Samurai capstone in a round where he was also Action Surging, for a total of 12 attacks made at +14 to hit against enemies of AC 22 and lower. I think he scored a total of 4 hits.

He did manage to block a Prismatic Ray with his sword, then discharge it into the High Priest.

Teador has stabbed the Ssword of Sseth into Quetzalcoatl’s altar, and plans to use his action next turn to cure the 1 minute blindness from Prismatic Wall. He's currently using the Rod of the Sun, which does half its damage as radiant and half as fire...which means it does 0 damage to Iron Golems.
Saqwam got tired of being beat up by an iron golem and a priest and just turned into a Planetar.
Troudar is back to full HP thanks to Power Word Heal, but the dice still hate him.
Rivkah (new player using someone else’s bard) has had a hard time figuring out what to do and doesn’t have a lot of great options.

DM Notes: Terrible, terrible dice. I feel bad for them. They are facing 3 high level casters, 2 Iron Golems, and 6 CR 2 mini-golems. This is the easiest temple fight by the numbers, yet they are having more trouble than any other temple attack… Ratel the super-mobile death/stun dealer being missing makes a huge difference. They are letting enemies stack up around them instead of staying mobile, and nobody is using any form of crowd control or mobility control.

There’s a Mind Golem in the room hitting them with Ego Whip (one at a time) at a relatively low DC, but both Teador and Troudar have failed their INT saves and had partial turns as a result. It has low AC and low hit points, but nobody has fired so much as a Fire Bolt at it.

Troudar’s Crystal Sword (+3/+3) is great for blocking rays and spells, but has less damage than the +2/+2d8 maul he was using before. I need to fire more rays at him to let him get the chance to use it.
They did have the High Priest down to about 60hp, but he used his one-off “heal 100hp” bonus action and cleared it.

Bad dice, bad tactics… and reinforcements should start showing up shortly.