Congrats! Age of Worms is a wonderful campaign, and I'm sure it was a blast!
Congrats!
I wouldnt mind having DM'ed the full AoW notch on my belt either. :)
Congrats - give us a few highlights or anything you learned regarding running the campaign that might be of interest to those that have not yet finished it.
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Any words of advice, highlights, warnings, etc. for those DM's that are still running early adventures?
I can give what I remember, but only in the form of a rambling post! It would be an epic poem or a series of limericks, but I'm not very good at Englishing.
I'll clarify anything I'm confusing about. I've just rambled for over an hour writing the below stuff...
The first thing I noticed is that the enemies in AoW pump out a massive amount of damage. My players (other than the archer) didn't really bother investing in armor, so the statted up monsters near the end had virtually no miss chance most of the time. Beware the end affect of some of the beasties getting a full-round attack action against a PC. The barbarian managed to get a full round from Dragotha, Maralel, Kyuss, and a few others. Pretty scary, and the maths....
Around level 15 or so, I got seriously tired of rolling so many damn dice. My work-around was to do averages, and to let my players do the same. Ex: 10d6 = 35 damage, 10d8 = 45. So, when the archer's fullisade of arrows hit someone, the 5d8 + 20d6 + XX became 5d8 + 70 + XX. This was particularly helpful with Dragotha and Kyuss (breath weapon and engulf, respectively).
The PCs get a number of wishes late in the game (The ring of three wishes, the three scrolls of wish, maybe some others?). The magic item use of wish is wonky, so I limit it to a 25,000 gp magic item (or a 25,000 gp improvement to a magic item). Given the very short time frame of the last adventure, those wishes were used to get important magic item improvements done, and yesterday!
I inserted some more diplomacy things, where certain fights could be avoided, because it felt like the last couple were too combat heavy (but see below). I wound up skipping a lot of fights in Dawn of a New Age, because running an 8 spellcaster battle against my PCs (who have saves high enough that the casters aren't much of a threat) would be very tiring for me.....
I seem to run a really brutal campaign (I don't know if that's me or the adventures, since AoW was my coming-out-of-retirement campaign), so I was pretty lavish with the awesome magical items:
- Kongen-Thulnir was a city of warforged giants in my campaign, and during the dragon raid, the warforged barbarian got a Boon that helped him somewhat (he's a novice player, and had trouble keeping track of his abilities).
- Dragotha's hoard had some Quori shards that helped the Soulbow archer (Psionic)
- Dragotha's hoard contained not just the Staff of the Magi, but a Vest of the Archmage (Magic Item Compendium)
- Balakhard gave the Warblade and the Paladin/Cleric/Martyr boons that respectively helped wail on Kyuss creatures and use his Turn Undead uses.
Boons are personal, use/command-word, slotless "staffs" that allow the user to use a set of spells / abilities on a 20 charge scale. They're from the Advanced Gamemaster's Guide (I believe). They recharge on some schedule that was longer than the rest of the campaign.
Let's see now... for earlier adventures:
I linked one of my player's backstories to Alhaster during a side thing (the PC turned out to be the grand-daughter, on her mother's side) of the previous ruler of Alhaster, whom Zeech deposed.
I made sure that Raknian escaped in Champion's Belt; he showed up in Alhaster seeking Asylum with the magical help of Lashonna.
Filge, who was captured during the first adventure showed up on Tilagos to smack the PCs around (in place of whatshisname cleric of Vecna). He won those battles. He showed up again in Wormcrawl Fissure to trade information with the PCs. The warforged barbarian despises Filge, and never got a chance to take it out on him...
Manzorian, when he was introduced was in a wheelchair (a non-verbal cue to the PCs that he won't be adventuring with them), which apparently some player's missed the first time, because I didn't hear the Professor X joke until the second or third time they met with him. I'm in Eberron, so Manzorian was a dragon (Tome Dragon, from one of the Dragon magazines). His interpretation of the Draconic Prophecy was why he was involved only through cat's paws.
The 6 gatable creatures from the Wormfood Article seemed decent. The PCs went with the Solar. I know that the article says he works for free, but I had him extract a "favor" from each of the PCs in exchange for each bit of assistance. Makes them a little less likely to do it willy-nilly.
20-20-confirm happened a couple of times, as well as a few 1s on massive damage saves. It was actually pretty funny.
Individually:
[list]
Yes! Yes!
how did the battle go!?
The battle was pretty hard. Despite the adventure write-up, I did not power-down Kyuss when the PCs arrived. He still took 2 rounds to emerge, though. The players were somewhat tired from fighting Maralel and Lashonna, but they were out of time and couldn't rest.
Kyuss was able to do a significant amount of scaring the players. The rogue/wizard had the staff of the magi, and had it on absorbing mode. I decided to have Kyuss try to overload the staff with quickened dispel magics, just because it's funny to think about.
The PCs had absurdly high saves at this point, not in the least because I kept missing the dispel check to remove Mass Conviction. As a result, the direct effects of Kyuss's spells didn't happen. The fact that he kept throwing around Time Stop and Imprisonment scared the PCs.
He kept throwing the worm onto the archer (who's force enchantment got around the DR) and the wizard (who kept summoning healing with the staff of the magi).
His first attack with his mace was 20-20-17, insta-killing the party's warblade. As before, when the warblade lost her head to a vorpal sword, I allowed Delay death to keep her from dying, but she was incapacitated. The other attacks hit the rest of the party. During the wizard's round, he dispelled the Cowl (I put them at CL 20), and I realized that the mace was vorpal. Awesome! Next round, full attack includes a critical hit with a natural 20, vorpalling the gated solar. Against, delay death.
For the PCs, it became essential to dispel the Cowl so that anyone not holding the Rod of Law could actually hit Kyuss's AC.
After the 4th or 5th time Kyuss Time Stopped, Harmed himself back to near full and re-arranged the battlefield, the PCs started to get desperate.
During the finale, the PCs realized inherently that they could detonate their boons as a Staff of the Magi's retributive strike. The warblade was first, because the PC's actions reflect the player's dedicated CN alignment. When she detonated, the party saw that Kyuss was stunned (following the Hand of Vecna rules). The barbarian was next. They actually wound up on other planes. The cleric cast Miracle to try to bring them back, which succeeded. On his next turn, the cleric (who was the last member to have one) used his. He was actually a Risen Martyr (Exalted PrC) and his purpose was defeating Kyuss. His destruction was enough that Kyuss was defeated.
Great hints for the campaign and that battle with Kyuss sounds extra special climatic. Thanks for the write up.
You were Far Too Easy on your players.
You were Far Too Easy on your players.
Are you kidding? They played for eighteen months, and just barely took out Kyuss in what sounds like a very climactic battle. That sounds just right to me.
Thanks for a great write up! My AoW campaign is on hold following the Champion's Games, but I hope it will return sometime in the next year.
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You were Far Too Easy on your players.
Perhaps, but it seemed like a lot of fun for the players, and certainly was fun for me.
Thanks for a great write up! My AoW campaign is on hold following the Champion's Games, but I hope it will return sometime in the next year.
In my campaign, we took a break after Champion's Belt, too. We were going through a player shake up, and I wanted to give DMing a break (as I mentioned above, it was my unretiring). My wife ran a short, two adventure campaign arc for 1st level PCs. This let me play an actual PC and helped introduce two new players to the group.
In game, I said several months passed as the PCs enjoyed their time in the sun for saving the Free City (Sharn).
You were Far Too Easy on your players.
LoL - leave it to Allen to mutter a comment that stirs a hornet's nest. I think in the OP the details of the final, climactic encounter was omitted or not-linkied or something.
Of course, noting the cap letter placements, also brings to mind Darth Vader's " All Too Easy " one-liner from Empire Strikes Back ...
Don't mind Mr. Stewart. He's, like, the last word in Killer DM. His existence serves as a kind of foil for other killer DMs. If your players complain that you kill too many of their characters the DM can always say in all seriousness 'Hey you guys are lucky - you could be playing under Allen Stewart'.
You can go over to the campaign story board and read his STAP campaign. I think on average he kills three characters a session.
Don't mind Mr. Stewart. He's, like, the last word in Killer DM. His existence serves as a kind of foil for other killer DMs. If your players complain that you kill too many of their characters the DM can always say in all seriousness 'Hey you guys are lucky - you could be playing under Allen Stewart'.
You can go over to the campaign story board and read his STAP campaign. I think on average he kills three characters a session.
*grins wickedly*
Allen's and my campaign journals are both in the campaign journal section. I do believe he has somewhat posted on the AoW Obit thread, but perhaps not to the full extent of posting his campaign's full headcount on said thread.
Mine is on the STAP Obit thread at full casualty reporting thusfar. And I have given my players the one shining moment that was achieved thusfar as well.
Congradulations! Sounded like an awesome final encounter. I almost wish I hadn't debuffed him as well whe I ran him...kind of made the fight anti-climatic after Dragotha and Lashonna. Since I'm running it a second time, consider your idea yoinked!
Don't mind Mr. Stewart. He's, like, the last word in Killer DM. His existence serves as a kind of foil for other killer DMs. If your players complain that you kill too many of their characters the DM can always say in all seriousness 'Hey you guys are lucky - you could be playing under Allen Stewart'.
You can go over to the campaign story board and read his STAP campaign. I think on average he kills three characters a session.
And dang' proud of it too.
Players these days are all too frequently: very whiny, high maintenance, and have the "let-me-off-the-hook" attitude no matter how stupid I behave during the game. Your Players need to have the experience of playing under me. I'm in Psychology for my profession, and to truly help your players, I'll give them..., (to borrow a line from the movie What About Bob?),... a little "Death Therapy Bob, it's a guarenteed cure!"
In a few weeks I will be DMing my group's last session of AOW. I've made quite a few changes to the last adventure, which I will not post here. However, I did feel that Kyuss needed a little something to make him truly a force to be reckoned with. So, I made the following changes:
1. Kyuss has two salient divine abilities (as he should according to the rules). His abilities are Hand of Death and Automatic Metamagic (Quicken spell-like ability). Along with the multispell feat, this will allow him to get in a few actions a round.
2. Replaced sorcerer levels with Dread Necromancer. He loses access to the all-powerful time stop, but gains a bunch of other useful spells. Besides, he can cast two quickened harms every round.
3. Three Wormdrakes circle overhead. They can use their gate ability to destroy the sphere of annihilation.
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Don't mind Mr. Stewart. He's, like, the last word in Killer DM. His existence serves as a kind of foil for other killer DMs. If your players complain that you kill too many of their characters the DM can always say in all seriousness 'Hey you guys are lucky - you could be playing under Allen Stewart'.
You can go over to the campaign story board and read his STAP campaign. I think on average he kills three characters a session.
And dang' proud of it too.
Players these days are all too frequently: very whiny, high maintenance, and have the "let-me-off-the-hook" attitude no matter how stupid I behave during the game.
I completely agree. Players in my own AoW game complain that that the adventures are to hard and I should go easy on them. Well start the game in within the first 30 mins the cleric or wizard in the group will burn all there spells to kill anything they run across. Then I have to listen to them complain that they have nothing to do and that the group shoul stop mid-adventure so they can get their spells back.
I will admit I do fudge the dice here and there. I mean no one likes having to roll up a new character every game, especially in my group. But is it really my fault that their characters fall into traps, get killed by mindflayers or even swallowed by dragons?Heck, just last week while we were talking about past gaming events one of the players said "If we ever go up against a dragon-lich I swear I'm quiting. Those things are just to hard to kill! I mean this one time while I was playing 2e we had to go find and kill one, and it wasn't fun at all!" All I could do at the point was walk outside and laugh to myself....manically of course.
Lazaro, Allen and esteemed virtual gaming buddies:
The sentiments expressed by Lazaro in his reply above are, in a nutshell, the very reason we are often called 'ruthless' or a Killer GM or what have you. You blow a Search check on a trap, trap goes off. You get into a fight with a critterbeastie, the critterbeastie munches off your face, character dies horribly. Yadda yadda yadda. You and/or your entire party set off the thieves' den, try not to act too suprised when they bushwhack your carcasses into next week.
From the sound of things, as well as the hints I've picked up in playing through the Age of Worms thusfar, Kyuss is not going to be a pushover (probably). Which is a magnificent culmination to a hard-fought character-killing campaign taking the better part of a year or more to hack and Diet Roleplay (copyright pending) my way through. If my character(s) take a dirt nap in pursuit of that foe, so be it. I have dice, paper and implements of inscription, a PHB and a DMG (for magic items), a new character will fill the gap soon enough.
To put the thread back on topic, kinda sorta, once again, props to the OP's group for what seems to have been a thrilling conclusion to a challenging campaign! And taking out Kyuss with an act warranting martyrdom is the stuff legends are made of.
I've said it before, being a "mean GM" is all in the delivery. If you can make it "fun", your players will keep coming back, no matter how bad you hammer them, and they'll appreciate your willingness to apply natural consequences rather than letting them off the hook time after time. So WIPE 'EM OUT.
Well this is it, my group has been playing the Age of Worms for over two years now and tonight they face the Big K himself. I'm kinda sad to see it end but I know my group is all pumped for the Savage Tide.
But before we move onto ST they will have one more adventure, for you see Lashonna was beaten not destroyed. So while the players celebrate (hopefully!) Kyuss defeat the Silver Sorceress has run off and joined a little group known as the Union of Eclipses and she plans to avenge her masters defeat by annhilating all life on the material plane!!!
Thanks Paizo for a great Adventure Path, my players and I loved it and from veteran group of players I think it was summed up best when I was told the "AOW was great fun but damn it's tough".
Well this is it, my group has been playing the Age of Worms for over two years now and tonight they face the Big K himself. I'm kinda sad to see it end but I know my group is all pumped for the Savage Tide.
But before we move onto ST they will have one more adventure, for you see Lashonna was beaten not destroyed. So while the players celebrate (hopefully!) Kyuss defeat the Silver Sorceress has run off and joined a little group known as the Union of Eclipses and she plans to avenge her masters defeat by annhilating all life on the material plane!!!
Thanks Paizo for a great Adventure Path, my players and I loved it and from veteran group of players I think it was summed up best when I was told the "AOW was great fun but damn it's tough".
Lord Vile - wow, another Friday & weekend approacheth already ... and another party faces utter annihilation ... I tip my hat to your sir, and may you get to play in the STAP. 2 years of GM'ing is not a short amount of time ...
A toast, to all the characters who will meet thier makers this weekend, and another to all those who ever press on to carry the campaigns through to thier conclusions!
Wow, in only our third session of Dawn of a New Age, my players whizzed all the way to the top of the new Spire, and a Battle Royal is now underway... a few rounds were played out before we had to pause it until next week... This has been a great campaign, and I am pleased to say that the climactic battle is looking most suitable for such an epic campaign...
So, the PC's destroyed the Unlife Vortex, but only succeeded in two of the things required to Fight Despair, and went straight from the streets to the top of the Spire. So when they got to the top of the Spire, they found Lashonna waiting for them, and Kyuss starting to make his way out...
Of course, they did go up with some help: in total, they were packing a divine rank-0 20th level barbarian (via the bead of summoning), an air elemental monolith (via a Wish, IIRC), three elder air elementals (via the staff of magi), and of course a heap of buffs were applied to all...
Half-way through Lashonna's speech, my guys were, like, "I think we'll blast her before she finishes her speech"... a good thing given the DC 42 Will saves coming up if they didn't!
So in the first round, not a lot actually happened, Lashonna got a really good roll for initiative, but just transformed into a Dragon and the PC's mainly moved about a bit, modified the battlefield, finished any short-duration buffs and tried to soften her up (mainly failing due to poor rolls vs SR).
Next round, Kyuss clambered out with a good initiative roll, but was boxed in with walls of force (a sorcerer with Time Stop is pretty handy); the air elemental monolith jumped on him inside the force walls, and he promptly failed his reflex save (+24 vs DC 39 - not great odds). Needless to say, my players (and I) had visions of the fight against Dragotha, where he wasn't really a credible threat like we all expected. You see, my player had hit the jackpot - Kyuss has no Fly speed (only spells to fly). I had to use the spell Miracle to get him out this one (an interesting proposition - who, exactly, is he petitioning for aid? I said he called out to Nerull - not a great look for a demi-god who's only just walked out of his 1500 year prison a couple of seconds prior, quite a funny irony we thought). It was only the threat of Lashonna later this round that diverted the monolith's attention and stopped him potentially ruining Kyuss' day before he even got started. Tip for other DM's: I'm not saying give him a Fly speed, but do have a good think about strategies to combat his lack of ability to fly. If my players were more inclined to draw things out, they could easily fly around and target him with ranged attacks, but they generally prefer to team up and go melee, as they have three good heavy hitters once all the buffs are done, using flight only when facing another flying creature.
So anyway, I let Kyuss move himself anywhere on the battle mat with his Miracle (something I've let Wish do earlier when they were fighting Darl - Darl used all three of the efreet's wishes to save his bacon), so K chose to get up nice and close and use a quickened Wail of the Banshee. Note: with divine rank 1, Kyuss should have two salient divine abilities - I used some advice from these boards and gave him Hand of Death (not especially useful against so many foes, but you never know) and Automatic Metamagic (I chose free Quicken of any spell-like abilities). Of course, everyone in the 40' radius had death ward up, so nothing happened. But at least Kyuss was free, and in reach of nearly all the PC's, and his ability to use two 9th level spells in one round got my player's attention! Tip for other DM's: think about the various buffs the PC's use - it might be best to metagame a bit here and not have Kyuss use spells you know will not work (e.g. Wail of the Banshee against PC's who have death ward up) - after all, he's a Deity, so some metagaming isn't unreasonable. Not sure what else I could have used instead of Wail of the Banshee though (I really wanted something that could affect all the PC's and cause them to save or have something really bad happen, not just deal out some damage to them all as mass heal fixes that with one action).
Around now, Lashonna did a fly-by breath attack, using the gas breath. Wow, DC 42 Fort is mean, all 4 PC's failed and were paralysed. It wasn't even worth using Fate Points, the DC was so high. Luckily for them, the two main fighter-types had Freedom of Movement up, so were actually unaffected (had to look that one up, we were worried it was game over right then). But with the two spell-casters out of action, the fight had changed quite dramatically. Luckily for them, nearly every PC has two wishes (rings, scrolls, plus an as-yet unused talisman of zagy), so the main fighter used Wish to free the other two (I ruled it could produce a Mass Freedom of Movement effect - I didn't know if that was a real spell of 8th level or lower or not, but it seemed reasonable, and I'm pretty lenient when it comes to using Wishes especially to get you out of trouble - PC's and NPC's alike!) So this was good I thought; I was talking to a player just prior to the session, where we both thought the amount of expendable treasure accumulated lately was pretty horrific - like 7 wishes, staff of magi, a scroll of true resurrection that's been around for ages and never used, etc etc. It was good to see some of that stuff finally being used, with all the buffing and summoning prior, and now the PC's were having to spend an action pretty much every round on a Wish just to keep in the game...
Also during this round, the rest of Kyuss' heavy hitters appeared... Maralee ran up the stairs, and the three blessed angels teleported in. The players took it really well, in fact they agreed it was their plan all along to "keep our spells intact so we can use them on Kyuss, rather than use them fighting our way to the top then not having a chance to rest before Kyuss appeared". The fact we now had a battle of eight good guys vs 6 bad-guys, one of who is a demi-god, well... as I say at the top, it's looking like a great way to finish off a great campaign campaign that's been running about two years now!
I lose track of exactly what happened which round here, but somewhere around this point the sorcerer/fighter/abjurant champion uses another time stop to do his more usual trick, which is to use Giant Size, Righteous Might, Divine Power (limited wish is a great sorcerer spell) and something else (lucky roll for duration - I always roll in secret and often get a 1) - either displacement or haste I think. So we now have a dual-wielding, Collossal elf towering over Kyuss... The big K doesn't like the look of that, so he takes a full attack round on the elf, and even with his -10 to hit he hits on all attacks, and hits hard (lucky the elf is LN, and Kyuss rolls no 20's). At first, I came up with some 480 hp of damage, but once we remembered the DR from his buffs, the Elf was left with some 30 hp left (once you figured all the buffs giving him some 110 extra hp). Lucky day, the PC's almost had to use another Wish or similar, although I think they used a Mass Heal instead to heal him and another fighter (leaving only one mass heal in a ring of spell storing - two were used earlier against all the undead when the PC's were getting here).
Now, at this point everyone is fully into the battle - the air elementals give up on Lashonna, they can't hit her, so they focus on the blessed angels and maralee. With their DR, it works out neither side can put much damage on the other, and the angels can't vorpal the elementals, so next week I'm thinking they need to find some new targets. Maralee is chewing through her elemental though - she's going to need to be confronted by the party's main fighter I think, as his AC 46+ and massive damage output is the only thing that can really stop her. Lashonna rips into the Air Elemental Monolith, having made her Reflex save against its whirlwind attack - she should be able to deal to it in a few rounds even with its DR, especially when she ups her power attack, unless I roll a bad save or two, but even then, she can fly so she gets a save each round vs the whirlwind effect.
Meanwhile, now Kyuss faces three heavy hitter PC's and their divine barbarian helper, all flanking him, with the party cleric backing them up just out of his reach. With a full-round attack, Kyuss lays down a lot of damage against the barbarian, and engulfs her, but she's still got a few hp left, and I rule that with Freedom of Movement she can be damaged by engulf, but can automatically escape on her turn. But we all expect her to die next round, as I think the Mass Heal will be saved for a bit - she's not actually a great fighter compared to the other PC's, more just another figure to help slow down Kyuss, which she's done well so far. Although she did manage to damage him, as did the Paladin with a couple of good smites. Tip for other DM's: if you're not using "average damage" by this stage of your game, I'd strongly suggest you do so. It speeds things up no end, and saves a lot of headaches adding things up. We've pre-calculated average damage for the main hitters' attacks vs different creature types (lots of bane weapon properties), and written different versions for typical attack combos like power attack, smite evil, hasted, giant sized, etc etc. So players just roll d20 some 5 times a round (everyone's pretty much always hasted), work out the number of hits, then total it up. Same for spells, I just roll a save and we take average damage (which is usually not very good, unless they have used a rod of maximise or empower). No-one misses rolling all those dice - it was kind of fun for a while, but soon just gets tiresome and slows the game down to a crawl, especially when you've got to find this many d6, that many d8, work out your multipliers, buffs, etc etc.
Oh, Kyuss also used a quickened Feeblemind on the elf, who failed his save. I think the elf has yet to actually get any attack rolls in, although he is at the top of the initiative for next week (well, just after the monolith, who rolled 20 and so got 35 on its initiative). So yet another high level spell goes out from the Cleric to fix up the elf.
So that's all we've got to so far - something like 3 rounds of combat, which took about two hours I think (including the time to work out their buffs and summonings prior). Rounds were going pretty slow due to the number of creatures involved and my lack of preparation for running Kyuss - I had figured that, based on past performances, the group would not by-pass the tower of the spire, but of course as every DM knows the PC's always do something unexpected. So I spent more time than usual juggling all the bad-guys' stat blocks (luckily I photocopy each adventure, so I ripped out the relevant pages and spread then out on a chair next to me and had Kyuss' on my lap where I normally have my materials - no DM screen for me), and quite a bit of time combing Kyuss' spells and spell-like abilities to work out good tactics. Tip for other DM's: the suggested tactics in the adventure are OK, but you really do need to have combed his spells well and highlighted the best ones for various situations. For example, when I found him trapped in walls of force and a DC 35 reflex save air elemental monolith on top of him (he only gets +24 on reflex, and has no fly speed), I struggled to come up with a good tactic - it took me a few minutes to work out a good combo as originally I was going to disintegrate the walls, but he was then still going to struggle moving away without spending more rounds. Giving him Automatic Metamagic was a real boon for me, the ability to always cast a spell or do a full attack round, and also cast a quickened spell / spell-like ability on top really helps make him a good threat, and reinforces his divine nature. After all, he has a few quick spells on his list, but in general his spell-like abilities are much nastier and include spells up to 9th level, so quickening them is pretty cool (the caster level is only 11, but that's not an issue for most of them).
Phew, I think the fight so far has been a good warm-up for the next session, where we will see just how it all works out. After my PC's took Dragotha down a bit too easily, we are all in agreement that this final big fight will be something completely different - Kyuss will take some beating, especially as long as Lashonna is still by his side. If the PC's do manage to kill Lashonna, that will be their third victory against Despair, so I'll reduce Kyuss to divine rank 0, which might help tip the balance a little more, although I think that like Dragotha, once all his side-kicks are gone, the PC's will deal to him (eventually) regardless. Still... with AC 50 (the main fighters have brilliant energy weapon buffs on, bypassing his +8 armour), they are struggling to hit more than 1-2 times a round, so he's still got about 500 hp left, and the Cleric was hoping he'd be undead so she doesn't have much in the way of spells to throw at him especially when his Fort and Will saves are so good (she has got Fire Seeds pre-cast though - can't remember if he's immune to fire or not, I'm sure we'll find out eventually). And while the elf has got Arcane Strike and plenty of 8th levels lots free, I think he'll be lucky to hit more than once or twice there too, so all up I think that even with three heavy hitters on him, Kyuss will last a few rounds yet, and many more Wishes will be used to raise the fallen before it's too late...
More next week!
good stuff - keep it coming.
More next week!
you ended a session in the middle of the final battle?? whyyyyy?!?!?! ;-)
messy
you ended a session in the middle of the final battle?? whyyyyy?!?!?! ;-) messy
Heh heh, we've had to do that at least once before too... last time was against the Titan. Often gives DM and players a chance to take a breather and come up with better tactics for the next week.
This time around, the players jumped to the top of the spire only half-way through the session, so I was loathe to just stop it there and say, "sorry, you'll have to fight Kyuss next week!" Then I think we would have been playing until 1-2am if we didn't call it at the usual time, and we've all got day-jobs... Plus, of course, we've still got the post-battle stuff to resolve, most important of which is whether anyone will take on Zeech for rulership of Alhaster (an interesting proposition, given pretty much every PC has plans for retirement elsewhere) - could take a good half hour on that one, which makes for a pretty small last session by itself!
Mind you, marking up the battle-map so we could come back to it later was a bit of a mission - luckily, one player had the bright idea of using blu-tack to mark each figure's position, and writing on that.
Thanks for the wonderful run-down Hastur. That was totally helpful and very entertaining. I look forward to the sequel!
You are most welcome; this forum has given me a lot over the last two years, only fair I share a bit too.
I must say, I'm a complete newbie when it comes to running games around 20th level - my previous high was something like 15th, so I've found the truly high levels to be quite enlightening and useful as far as fine-tuning my DM-ing skills goes, as well as what makes for cool high level adventures (alas, the Island of Tilagos does not qualify, in my group's opinion; but everything from there has worked really well, kudos to the adventure designers for the last three and I guess a bit of kudos to me for sanding down a few rough edges here and there too). It's been good for my players too - they were pretty good players to start with, but I think they all learned (some slower than others) how to be even better players - what works, what doesn't, how to size up a challenge and plan a bit better (when they felt like it), and certainly what makes strong spell choices and strong combat tactics. As a DM, this last point is actually quite important - I remember my old 1st edition group, who were pretty poor players overall, too lazy, not really putting a lot of through into any of their actions - I had to baby-sit them and fudge a lot to keep them from getting out of their depth. I'm happy to say I've never done this these days, and any player that is a bit slack eventually comes around once they see I won't fudge anything to keep them alive, and that I'm not afraid of throwing the odd combat their way that's quite difficult.
Now I'm probably not the first to say this... but... I'm pretty sure this Adventure Path has been a once in a lifetime event... something like at least two years have gone by, starting with five players and ending with only two (one an old gaming friend from some five years ago)... us older guys with families and full-time jobs really don't get enough time to game, and keeping a group together and on the same campaign for such a long time is near impossible (especially when most gamers I know love creating new characters as much as they love playing them - so it's even more amazing the two players left have their original PC's still intact from 1st level; in fact, we've only had about 4 deaths so far (excluding animal companions) and everyone was raised again, such was every-one's attachment to their PC). I really can't see myself ever DMing a group from 1st to over 20th (+) level again, so I shall cherish the memories, the good times (which were many) as well as the not so good (a few of those too, not surprisingly), and just the ability to say that yes, I really have DM'd a group of the same PC's all the way from 1st to epic level. All this in a campaign that managed to hold together a continuous plot-thread that bound it all together, but didn't rail-road my players either - and it was never boring, every adventure (including side-treks) was different! The fact it was set in Greyhawk, so I could do a couple of loose tie-ins from prior campaigns, made it even sweeter.
Anyway, I'm rambling... until next week!
Great post Hastur! Kyuss should have fire resistance 20 (although the module says otherwise) due to his divine nature. Fire seeds can do quite a bit of damage and he should view them as a real threat.
I'm wondering if freedom of movement could have protected Kyuss from the air monolith? If not, all he needed to do is cast protection from good.
Which book has air Monolith?
Which book has air Monolith?
Complete Arcane, page 156
Kyuss should have fire resistance 20 (although the module says otherwise) due to his divine nature. Fire seeds can do quite a bit of damage and he should view them as a real threat. I'm wondering if freedom of movement could have protected Kyuss from the air monolith? If not, all he needed to do is cast protection from good.
Thanks, useful info. I'll check his spells well before the finale - there are so many there, across two pages, it's quite difficult on the fly, especially when normally I'd have used a yellow highlighter on the key ones to help guide me. And I noted during the combat to date, that he has no buffs on (makes sense, I guess), so here's hoping he's got some quickened buffs (although, without say the Multispell feat, that's still quite limiting). I guess there's always Time Stop, although in my group any creature that buffs itself is almost immediately hit with one or more greater dispel magics...
Hey, also, did no-one else notice his tactics say he heals himself with his Harm spells, and yet he's an aberration, so he should be using Heal spells??? Seems they originally designed him as an Undead then changed their mind (my players expected him to be undead, and I ruled that since he was a Deity no knowledge check could determine his creature type; it was only when he was successfully critical hit or something that they realised he wasn't undead - they were surprised! Quite funny, they thought, Kyuss having all these undead followers that would be severely disappointed to find out their master wasn't one himself!) I did pick that one up, and have changed his Harms to Heals.
Kyuss has a negative affinity ability that makes him react like an undead creature to positive and negative energy. So yeah, he uses harm to heal himself.
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Great post Hastur! Kyuss should have fire resistance 20 (although the module says otherwise) due to his divine nature. Fire seeds can do quite a bit of damage and he should view them as a real threat.
I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that Dieties and Demigods indicates that his Fire Resistance should be 36 (which would make the 6 an unfortunate typo): base of 35 + 1 per point of divine rank.
Why the gods are specifically resistant to fire is a bit odd, though.
Great post Hastur! Kyuss should have fire resistance 20 (although the module says otherwise) due to his divine nature. Fire seeds can do quite a bit of damage and he should view them as a real threat.
I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that Dieties and Demigods indicates that his Fire Resistance should be 36 (which would make the 6 an unfortunate typo): base of 35 + 1 per point of divine rank.
Why the gods are specifically resistant to fire is a bit odd, though.
All those smitings of heretics you see ... toss a couple hundred flame strikes a day through your clerics, guess it builds up a resistance to it or something ... ^_^
Under 3.0, it was Fire Resistance 20 + Divine Rank.
For 3.5, the official conversion PDF states the Fire Resistance is now 5 + Divine Rank. So the 6 is not a typo.
Kyuss has a negative affinity ability that makes him react like an undead creature to positive and negative energy.
Correct, I missed that one. Thanks. As it turns out, my players eventually worked this out when they saw him use a quickened Harm on himself, so not very surprisingly, next round he got hit by Mass Heal. Until then, they were too afraid to do so in case it healed him (heh heh).
So, last night saw the continuation of the fight against Kyuss...
I can't even begin to try and describe the action round by round, as I think we played at least four more hours before the fight was finally over... I'll do my best to give the hightlights, hopefully there's some insights buried within...
To start with, I was interested to hear both my players say, just before we kicked off again, how they had both spent the last week wracking their brains almost non-stop on tactics to help defeat Kyuss. To me, this, in itself, meant that whatever happened, the campaign was going to conclude on a high note, one the players would enjoy and remember.
I'd made up a couple of joke "bumper sticker" / "t-shirt" printouts, one with "I survived the Age of Worms" written over a huge pile of treasure, the other one "I survived the Age of Worms*" with small-print at the bottom saying "*until Kyuss showed up", and a picture of Kyuss running rampant in Alhaster (from the dungeon mag cover). They thought it was funny, and at that stage they were pretty much prepared to all be wiped out by Kyuss and his crew (after a good fight, of course!)...
Anyway, we set up the board again, and battle commenced, similar to before really, at least to start with. This time, the players intended to try and take out Kyuss' minions, then focus on him, but for whatever reason that just didn't pan out for them. Had they done this, I do feel they would have had an easier job of it, for killing Lashonna would have stripped Kyuss of his divine Rank 1 and stopped him choosing whatever spell he wanted from the Cleric list (something I missed last time, but used a *lot* this time around, like a lot of 9th and quickened 6th level cleric spells without regard to what he had memorised - very useful).
The blessed angels and the elder air elementals kept each other busy, with no real advantage either way, and due to DR and good reflex saves basically it was going to take forever for either side to get a kill.
Maralee prooved to be a different story, she killed an elder air elemental in 1 or 2 rounds then proceeded to the PC's, where she distracted the main tank for at least two rounds before her hp ran out (he took a while to work out how much power attack to add, otherwise she might have died earlier, especially with his +5 bonus to hit and damage on her from Bucknard). Only my poor rolls saved him from a horrible beating from her though, she was really tough.
The air elemental monolith was a good match for Lashonna, she full-round attacked it once or twice but it still survived, lucky for her she had much better reflex saves than Kyuss (his reflex save is his weak-spot!), so she wasn't caught up in the vortex or if she was she got out next round. After a while, when the monolith was redirected to Kyuss, the big K decided to get rid of it, using Imprisonment. Ouch, that's a mean spell, if you wanted an easy TPK just use that spell once per round until everyone's gone!
I guess at this point, I realised that, while I wasn't going to give my players an easy ride, in reality it wouldn't have been overly difficult to come up with tactics against them that they really couldn't counter, even with their multiple wishes. Or if they could, it would become a very drwan-out, not very fun encounter. So, in a few cases, I deliberately chose tactics for Kyuss that were good and solid, but not going to screw the party over with no real hope of winning. More on this later...
At one point, Lashonna actually managed to attack the party, but her paralysation breath was useless now as everyone had freedom of movement, and her cold breath wasn't much use either due to a fire shield (cold) on everyone. She did try and dominate the tank, but his ring of spell reflection sorted that one. She made her save and saved me the trouble of having to decide what happens if a dominate monster is relected upon the caster (and of course she is immune to mind-affecting spells, but we forgot that at the time). I think she might have had a single bite attack on someone before she got disctracted by the summoning of yet another air elemental monolith (via another wish, I think). At one stage, she had antilife shell up, but it was soon dispelled (the cleric had 6 fate points, and used at least 4 re-rolling vs SR or for dispells at various points, to make sure spells worked). Eventually, after a long period of being whittled away at by elementals and the odd PC attack, Lashonna ran out of hit points and became gaseous, but this was virtually the end of the whole fight, so she pretty much managed to hang in there until the end. Only one of her angels was killed too, when the Paladin had some "free time" and went flying after them one by one.
So, Kyuss was starting to run out of support, the party tank was wailing away on him for an average of three hits per round (brilliant energy weapon, uber-duber strength, etc etc), and the party sorcerer was managing an average of about 2, sometimes more, hits with arcane strikes. The Paladin and summoned help struggled to hit, but still, as I say earlier, some rounds all Kyuss could do was Time Stop and heal himself back up, then quicken a (relatively) minor spell on them, and the cycle would repeat. He wasn't really winning. So I had him run around during time stop a bit, which at least broke up the monotony of the battle. Sometimes this worked well, like when he did a quickened dispell magic on the sorcerer and managed to strip out all his sorcerer buffs (so he shrunk from Colossal to Medium sized, lost a lot of hp, and Kyuss moved up to put him in melee threat range). Funnily, the player forgot he could have used the staff of magi to absorb this spell (I only remembered on the way home). But against caster level 27, Kyuss didn't manage to strip any of the Cleric's buffs, so casting GDM on everyone was a pretty useless tactic, the odds of stripping anything useful from even one PC was slim. Sometimes this hit and run tactic didn't work so well, as the players then focused on Kyuss' minions, cast spells, used wishes etc, basically getting themselves sorted again. I think over the whole fight, I managed to beat-down the sorcerer at least twice, nearly killing him and feebleminding him, and nearly killed the summoned barbarian, but otherwise the rest of the party never dropped below about half hit points, and then a mass heal sorted them all out again (later on, it was mass cure spells of lower level, but the level of hurt they were experiencing was also lesser).
Now, at various points, once the three main melee types got around him and got the smack-down going, Kyuss was losing something like 300+ hp a round; in a couple of rounds, it was more like 500-600! So he had to use a large number of Time Stop spells. At one point I think he used three in a row, just to survive. This only left him a quickened spell to use against the PC's, and they all had death ward up, so he was struggling to do anything useful, and his minions were pretty much all tied up. Still, he had a lot more spell power than the PC's, so waiting for him to run out of spells wasn't really an option, Kyuss would win that battle (eventually).
There were funny bits here and there, like my group's fun ways of getting out of trouble... using the ring of the wind dukes has always been the tank's favourite "get out of jail" tactic. The Cleric got a good one on Kyuss at one point, using Repel Metal to push him away from everyone and off the top of the Spire... as he couldn't fly, and didn't have feather fall on his list, they were looking forward to seeing him hit the ground, but we decided it took more than a round to fall that far, so he used another Miracle to move himself back onto the top of the spire.
Now, as I say earlier, I was trying to vary my tactics a bit, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I wanted the fight to end before midnight, one way or the other. And I didn't want to use some tactic that gave the players almost no chance whatsoever, like say using Imprisonment on all of them (sure, the PC's could have used their flight abilities to get away, but then the fight would have been a virtual stale-mate as they don't have anywhere near as much ability to deal damage from a distance, and shen he got low on hp he'd time-stop and heal). Lastly, I wanted the fight to remain fun for all, with some good action each round. On that last point, I was a bit let down by my dice - Kyuss' mace was having a bad hair day, he struggled to hit anyone and never threateded a decapitation, much to my dismay. Even with engulf, his melee ability was rubbish (as per my original post, I rulled that Freedom of Movement allows you to automatically escape the engulf, i.e. he can engulf you and deal the damages, but you are then free to walk back out of it).
So after using time stop after time stop, seeing Maralee and an Angel cut down, and Lashonna reduced to less than 100 hp, [and the DM thinking "it's getting late"], I decided Kyuss would have to at least try and kill a PC or two to tip the balance. So in a round where the PC's inflicted a "paltry" 300-odd points of damage against him, he just left himself within the monolith's vortex and went all-out attack. Unfortunately, no-one was killed, although Kyuss had a bit more luck and the party only managed about another 300 points of damage in another full round on him...
The party was actually hurting a bit at this point, I really wanted to roll at least one 20 (one player had rolled a number of them already to score hits on Kyuss, why coundn't I?), and I knew I still wanted to get the final scene with Zeech in before we feel asleep... So rather than hit the re-set button yet again, forcing another 2 rounds minimum (each round took a fair while to run), I said "screw it" and Kyuss put in another full round attack with some quickened spell for good measure...
Alas, it wasn't Kyuss' day... despite his three uses of Miracle (Nerul must have been getting sick of him), about five time stops, maybe a dozen or more heal spells, eventually Kyuss' minions were killed (Lashonna's hp ran out about a round prior), Kyuss' last attack (he was on 19 hp) swung his mace and missed every time, his engulf failed to drain enough intelligence (party tank actually has good Int), and it was good night Kyuss... with his very next blow the party tank smacked the mighty Kyuss down.
We were all pretty tired, and ultimately a little surprised. No-one really thought Kyuss would be defeated, but in the end his minions were eventually killed / driven off, and while I could have strung the fight out longer, the result wasn't really in question once it was all the PC's vs Kyuss, especially since Kyuss had just been reduced to divine rank 0 so couldn't just use quickened heal, mass heal, or whatever, but actually would have had to use his prepared cleric list (which was getting a bit thin). With two uber-tough melee guys on him (the tank, and the sorcerer with arcane strike who didn't actually need to be colossal to inflict a lot of damage), two other melee types who could occasionally inflict more damage, and a Cleric for support, Kyuss' number was up.
Still, as far as beating the odds goes, this one was pretty amazing... a CR 22 Maralee, 3 x blessed angels, a CR 23 Lashonna (who is, by the way, much tougher than CR 23 in my opinion - a lot closer to the CR 27 Dragotha), as well as a divine rank 1 Kyuss who can cast two spells a round (virtually any spell in the book). That was one hell of a tough fight, so kudos to my players (all two of them) for battling away and winning through. In the end, they were actually all at nearly full hit points, and had at least one wish left (meaning they used about 5 wishes during the fight). Oh, and the scroll of true resuraction they had been carrying around for some 4 levels now, was never required.
To wrap it up, we quickly roll-played the destruction of the spire, the PC's destroying Lashonna for good, they rounded up all the citizens they had tucked away earlier in Lashonna's dungeons, and of course Zeech came out. Now this was something I was looking forward to, to see how my players handled it... They were originally keen to just kill him on sight (once he was verified as evil via detect evil), given the general lawless place that Alhaster had become, but I managed to get enough words in before he was struck down (the potion of displacement I had him drink prior helped too; even though a player burned the last wish to re-roll the miss chance, the tank still missed on his fly-by charge with max power attack, and the cleric was casting a full-round spell on him).
So Zeech's challenge to the party, in particular to a one on one duel for the rule of Alhaster, was unexpected by my players, and of course being mostly Lawful and/or Good, they went into a huddle to decide who, if anyone, should actually take up the challenge. The obvious choice was, of course, the party tank, but he had previously promised to serve the lillend for ayear as soon as Kyuss was dealt with. So rather than invite any further complication, he passed on the opportunity. In the end, Melinde, the Paladin follower of the Cleric took up the offer, with the Cleric's blessing of course. Their original plan was to settle down in Diamond Lake together, but I guess that plans are made to be changed, especially when an opportunity such as this appears.
We didn't go into too much after this, it being late and all - I said that Zeech was no real match for the Paladin, being 4 levels below and having lesser magic items, so he died in the arena the next day; perhaps strangely, he seemed to expect and be at peace with it. Whether that means the Paladin and Cleric go their separate ways, is up for conjecture, but I'd say it's likely - the Cleric owns a set of mines and mansion near Diamond Lake, which her father helps run, but ultimately they were looking forward to her returning there to settle down and retire from adventuring. I do know the party tank also plans to retire to the Diamond Lake region, and set up a fighter training school based around the mansion...
I know this because the next campaign I'm running will be "Expedition to Greyhawk Ruins", where the Age of Worms tank's player will be running a fighter/dervish who was personally trained by said "tank".
All the best everyone, especially to those who haven't got to the end yet, and thanks for reading this long rambling post. It's been a wild ride of a campaign that I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from, a true once in a lifetime opportunity for me. But while the memories will endure, my current focus is already well into the next games I'm running, "Shattered Gates of Slaughterguarde" and "Expedition to Greyhawk Ruins" (yep, I'm running two campaigns in parallel now, week-about; should take a year or less)....
p.s. I'm going to post the stats of the my fours PC's in a separate thread.
[...] all he needed to do is cast protection from good.
Yeah, I did cast a quickened Protection from Good at some stage later on. Not a big deal by then, though - the PC's were the main threats, the summoned creatues just helped keep Kyuss' minions busy.
So, last night saw the continuation of the fight against Kyuss...
I'm going to post the stats of the my fours PC's in a separate thread.
great read! can't wait to see the stats. :-)
good stuff, hastur. :-)
messy
Hastur, you missed a golden opportunity to TPK your entire lot... I'll not be making that same mistake next weekend.
Hastur, you missed a golden opportunity to TPK your entire lot... I'll not be making that same mistake next weekend.
You are so evil, lol, and at the same time a great inspiration.