What's been your experience with this encounter? Here is ours ...
Tonight my players assaulted the beach portal point - it took about a four hour gaming session and concluded in cinematic style since their victory was clearly established.
Encounter Details:
Unexpected
1. Player comment as they received a deadly barrage of demonic siege engine fire concentrated on the portal point when they entered: "... and why did we use the portal and not just approach the area via Plane Shift ... or Greater Teleport from our boat via River Styx to Abyssal Ocean to Gaping Maw?" I didn't have an especially compelling answer for them other then "distract Demogorgon with an open portal point. Fortunately, they stayed put and fought it out.
2. How powerful a dozen Hezrou Unholy spells were on massed players. Although they cured all damage with one Mass Heal.
3. Mass Greater Energy Resistance (+30), several, made the call lightning (Nalfeshnee) and the acid siege weapon virtually impotent (especially with reflex saves by PCs with evasion).
Creative Player Strategy
1. Used Earthquake to basically take multiple siege weapons out of action ...
2. Used Tsunami to sweep up all visible Demons at the bunkers
3. Used high Reflex saves and evasion to completely ignore Blade Barriers (Mariliths)
DM Mistake(s) - mine
1. Summoned demons - shouldn't have been able to physically attack the PCs with Prot v Evil. Oops - but ultimately didn't decide anything.
DM Successes
1. Provide each of the four types of demons their own initiative roll to divide it up among the players turns.
Interesting Situations
1. If you can see through a wall of force, and there is room around it (left/right/above), would magic missile be able to target a creature (in range) on the other side, or is this a case where straightforward line of effect is prevented? My ruling - given that magic missile is a special spell in the annals of the game, so long as the path was within range, and provided that the target could indeed be seen and thus 'targeted', it would work.
What's been your experience with this encounter? Here is ours ...
Tonight my players assaulted the beach portal point - it took about a four hour gaming session and concluded in cinematic style since their victory was clearly established.
** spoiler omitted **...
1) Plane Shift has a miss chance of 5-500 miles. Even Greater Teleport can fail if they don't have a reliable description. Iggy was using the thin area between the planes as a target for her gate(s), and thats not a valid target for Gr Teleport. You also have to consider the interdiction zone, it might affect teleports to the beach.
But the best reason is that the party are there to clear the beach so that the invading army of Eladrin can use the beach as a staging area (to distract Demo.)
DM Mistake 1), if the summoned Demons can't touch them, they should stand back and use Dispel Magic to drop that buff and then attack, or just use their SLAs if they can't crack the Caster Level.
Thanks for this insight, my players won't be there for awhile, but I am already prepping some ideas I have. I wrote a program to randomly map the Blast Disks so that I don't have to mark up the battlemat and potentially give away their locations.
1) Plane Shift has a miss chance of 5-500 miles. Even Greater Teleport can fail if they don't have a reliable description. Iggy was using the thin area between the planes as a target for her gate(s), and thats not a valid target for Gr Teleport. You also have to consider the interdiction zone, it might affect teleports to the beach.
But the best reason is that the party are there to clear the beach so that the invading army of Eladrin can use the beach as a staging area (to distract Demo.)
We discussed that, and I had Iggwilv bring that up ... but after all they have been through, the players, and their characters, are highly skeptical of everyone's motivations. They know they are being used and trying hard to accomplish their mission without being pawns.
Hired Sword wrote:
DM Mistake 1), if the summoned Demons can't touch them, they should stand back and use Dispel Magic to drop that buff and then attack, or just use their SLAs if they can't crack the Caster Level.
Problem with Dispel Magic is that the players were so buffed with spells (minutes/level and hours/level) that it was highly unlikely any one Dispel Magic would get to the needed spell (Prot v Evil). The summoned demons were also only Babaus and Hezrous. Well, the Babaus don't really have any truly useful SLAs, so that left flanking physical attacks which should have been thwarted by Prot v Evil. Then the Hezrous, fewer of them, were actually using SLAs.
Hired Sword wrote:
Thanks for this insight, my players won't be there for awhile, but I am already prepping some ideas I have. I wrote a program to randomly map the Blast Disks so that I don't have to mark up the battlemat and potentially give away their locations.
How did your group handle the blast disks?
With Reflex and evasion, little damage. Although they were all using Wind Walk/Cloud Walk, the proximity would have gone off. The reality, however, is that they were able to attack from a distance and once they realized the blast disks were there, they could fly high enough (perfect movement, too with that spell) to avoid the proximity.
Some other prep to do:
1. Go ahead and determine how many summoned demons are present and where they appear. I just went by percentages, if Hezrous had a 35% for another Hezrou, and there were 12, I had 4 appear.
2. Based on my read of the time it takes for the portal to fully form, combined with the alert status of the Demons (anticipating danger), the initial actions and summoned demons were already in place by the time the first characters came through.
3. Much like an LST from WWII, the characters had to come through in 3 ranks (not all could fit in at once). So as they arrived, they needed to move out of the way (I said it too 10' of movement as part of a movement action, to move through the portal, so they largely moved through and out and then had a standard action).
4. Since the demons with siege weapons were readied on the portal, I allowed the first wave of characters to be hit with a readied action (firing the siege weapons) as an interrupt to their initial move action through the portal. So it hit them on the first wave.
5. The acid launchers did almost nothing given the Prot v Acid (30) and then evasion.
6. You also need to decide if you are going to let magic (acid, magic missiles) pass through the portal to the other side. The other side in our case was their ship.
1) My own group actually did something that. They were still needed on the beach though (to assist the beach-head forces that got pinned down), and their subsequent T-port still put them in the same starting location.
2) They lost two PC's to Hezrou's (requiring some true resurrections). Area dispels also meant that some PC's were missing some important buffs later on (which became a problem for them).
3) By this level most PC's can just fly over terrain, so I put in a few barrage balloons too.
4) Magic Missile reads "The missile strikes unerringly, even if the target is in melee combat or has less than total cover". The implication is that is does not hit if the target has full cover vs. the caster.
4) Magic Missile reads "The missile strikes unerringly, even if the target is in melee combat or has less than total cover". The implication is that is does not hit if the target has full cover vs. the caster.
Matthew,
Two questions for you ...
1) What's a barrage balloon? Sounds cool.
2) Does full cover vs. the caster mean it must be a line of effect? In the case I dealt with there was a Wall of Force. The PCs had no concealment - since the Wall of Force is fully transparent; but full cover only on frontal, not from above. Does this situation mean since the Spell Caster (or siege weapon) can target the PCs, and there is a path (albeit not a line of effect) to the target (a popup path), that the PCs could in fact be targeted?
SR, Mass + Super-large Monk, Warblade, and Ranger/Pyrokineticist made this less of a "storming Normandy " and more like "walk in the park".
Even the biggest demons there couldn't do anything worthwhile to them.
I tend to agree ... especially since the biggest challenge for the PCs was dealing with something new (blast disks, force ballistae, acid launcher). Once they recovered from that, they largely handled it, although the number of Demons and the terrain meant it took a bit of time, but once the PC plan was in effect, the ending was a foregone conclusion.
As the DM, I think the value of this encounter is three fold:
1 - PC expectations: this is war, not just melee, and so they need to be prepared for a change in the sheer scale.
2 - PC expectations: okay - some new items were thrown into the mix, which for a bunch of very experienced min-maxers, is always thrilling.
3 - Whittling them down: just one encounter, but others are calling, so more and more spells will begin to get used up.
Player comment as they received a deadly barrage of demonic siege engine fire concentrated on the portal point when they entered: "... and why did we use the portal and not just approach the area via Plane Shift ... or Greater Teleport from our boat via River Styx to Abyssal Ocean to Gaping Maw?" I didn't have an especially compelling answer for them other then "distract Demogorgon with an open portal point. Fortunately, they stayed put and fought it out.
As the ruler of Gaping Maw, Demogorgon can close access to that layer. That's why Iggwilv creates the portals, she's using an epic spell that circumvents Demogorgon's power to seal off access. Plane Shift or Greater Plane Shift just wouldn't work.
JustTim wrote:
Does full cover vs. the caster mean it must be a line of effect? In the case I dealt with there was a Wall of Force. The PCs had no concealment - since the Wall of Force is fully transparent; but full cover only on frontal, not from above. Does this situation mean since the Spell Caster (or siege weapon) can target the PCs, and there is a path (albeit not a line of effect) to the target (a popup path), that the PCs could in fact be targeted?
Line of effect is a straight line. If you're on one side of a wall of force and your target is on the other, you can't target him with a spell.
Player comment as they received a deadly barrage of demonic siege engine fire concentrated on the portal point when they entered: "... and why did we use the portal and not just approach the area via Plane Shift ... or Greater Teleport from our boat via River Styx to Abyssal Ocean to Gaping Maw?" I didn't have an especially compelling answer for them other then "distract Demogorgon with an open portal point. Fortunately, they stayed put and fought it out.
As the ruler of Gaping Maw, Demogorgon can close access to that layer. That's why Iggwilv creates the portals, she's using an epic spell that circumvents Demogorgon's power to seal off access. Plane Shift or Greater Plane Shift just wouldn't work.
JustTim wrote:
Does full cover vs. the caster mean it must be a line of effect? In the case I dealt with there was a Wall of Force. The PCs had no concealment - since the Wall of Force is fully transparent; but full cover only on frontal, not from above. Does this situation mean since the Spell Caster (or siege weapon) can target the PCs, and there is a path (albeit not a line of effect) to the target (a popup path), that the PCs could in fact be targeted?
Line of effect is a straight line. If you're on one side of a wall of force and your target is on the other, you can't target him with a spell.
I hadn't thought of the ruler of the plane angle - good point. So is that called out anywhere, or just implied? I like it, and will be comfortable using it.
Yeah, on the line of effect. I just wondered if Magic Missile would be different given it's almost mythical staying power in this game. I also wonder about the concept of total cover - is it total cover when it blocks line of effect only; so two-dimensional cover?
I hadn't thought of the ruler of the plane angle - good point. So is that called out anywhere, or just implied? I like it, and will be comfortable using it.
It's called out in several locations. Divided's Ire, Wat Dagon, the Interdiction Zone generated at Lemoriax, even the Lemorian Golem back in Fogmire. These all have (or are) foci for/of Demogorgon's Will.
Aerial booby-traps used during WWII to protect against low-flying aircraft (dive-bombers). The wire anchoring the balloon to the ground would entangle (or even sever) wings, then trigger an explosive charge.
There's a memorable scene involving barrage balloons from the new Doctor Who series. During the first season with the 10th Doctor (Tennant), Rose Tyler (a companion) is dangling from a barrage balloon over London during the Blitz with an air-raid going on around her ... and wearing a large Union Jack on her clothing. She was not happy. :)
Correction to my previous post: upon reflection, I believe that the incident occurred during the 9th Doctor's run (played by Christopher Eccleston) in the new series.
