So my players just went through the last laugh safe house and wiped the floor with them. I don’t even think that they even got a chance to make one attack on my players. So there all feeling good and having learned about the meeting at house Rhavetie (sp?), there off to break it up (They nicknamed it EvilCon). This is a big battle and I would like to really push them. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to run this battle? Anyone have any changes that they made to make it better? Any good or funny stories to tell?
I just ran the safehouse and house Rhiavadi last night in an epic 8 hour session.
The safehouse was cleared with ease. Instead of going through the secret door to get to Jil, a distentegrate was cast on the wall, thus suprising her. I had everyone roll initiative and before Jil could even get off her finishing blow on Fario, she had fell.
Afterwards, the heroes took Fario to Meerthan, where they learned of the meeting at Rhiavadi. They asked Meerthan to cast rary's telepathic bond on the party, which he glady did. Two of the party's sneakier members reduced themselves with reduce person, then cast seeming to look like Rhiavadi's halfling servants. The wizard of the party scried on the seemed party members. After knocking on the front door and succesfully bluffing the halforc guard, they made there way upstairs and into the room where the bad guys were just quieting down to listen to Rhiavadi's speech.
After the speech, the party (after buffing) teleported into the room. Just as they did this, one of the seemed halflings (a rouge) hit half the room with a wand web spell while the other called a shot arrow at Lady Rhiavadi. Rhiavadi's shield guaridan took half damage as her contingency activated otuliuke's resilient sphere (I changed it from the HC). Zarn, Vervil, the Shield Guardian, and the Necrocants were caught in the web. Lady Rhiavadi was severely damaged by the arrows so she teleported to Oblivion. Mhad and Hate were surprised and fled back to shatterhorn. After a Flame Strike from the Cleric, and a chain lightning from the wizard most everyone in the room (including Zarn and Vervil, had dropped). Velior put up a little bit of a fight with some unholy blights but Adrick and his minions surrendured. 2 rounds. That's all that this battle took to be essentially over. The orcs from around the castle arrived at about round 3, but seeing all the uberpowerful bad guys dead or missing caused them to flee.
Overall, a fun encounter. My party was seriously stressing when they saw the number of baddies in this room. Thus, with the two sneakie ones acting all robotic (good bluffs) they buffed up before teleporting in. This definetly helped the party secure their two round victory. Their quick action against Rhiavadi caused her to retreat, plus the fact that Mhad and Hate were taken off guard and fled, helped a lot. My party had 6 members (all 12th level or higher, most at 13th) so the remainder of the guests didn't hold too much of a challenge.
If they're sufficently prepared the tactics outlined in the HC are pretty darn good. If you wanted to be particularly mean you could have some of the villains cast their are buff spells on another (Velior and Melagorn) and coordinate attacks (i.e. well placed darkness by baubau) and maybe even spreading out in the mansion to get the drop on PCs.
The three party guests that I had leave posed the greatest threats to the PCs. If you want to give your PC's a scare have Rhiavadi, Hate, and Mhad stick around a while.
Now, had they come charging through the front door, they would have had the orc guards to deal with, plus alerting the rest of the guests who would have had sufficient time to buff up.
The party paladin's cohorts are helping the PC's remove all the valubles from house Rhiavadi (with the proceeds to go toward the paladin's church of Heironeous, and of course, the poor).
After finding references to "V" in Rhiavadi's notes they are on their way to house Vhalantru. The paladin, who grudgingly sat on his hands for the subterfuge in house Rhiavadi, marched through the streets of Cauldron with purpose. The rest of the party followed after him, asking where he was going. They were shocked when he walked up to house Vhalantru, banged on the door and demanded that in the name of Heironeous he submit to questioning. This is where we ended the session. Should be fun next time.
I just ran the safehouse and house Rhiavadi last night in an epic 8 hour session.
The safehouse was cleared with ease. Instead of going through the secret door to get to Jil, a distentegrate was cast on the wall, thus suprising her. I had everyone roll initiative and before Jil could even get off her finishing blow on Fario, she had fell.
Wow, this is quite similar to how it went down in my game. The dwarf tank used his adamantine axe to cut through the wall. This allowed jil to get off her attack on Shensen (I used her because she’s a cohort of the parties wizard). Upon seeing his girlfriend/cohort stabbed through, the wizard let loose with an empowered Disintegrate. It got passed jil’s displacement and she failed her save. The wizard collected up all her ashes and said that he was going to mix it with some fine tobacco and smoke it. Stating “Thus is the inevitable and unavoidable end to all my enemies!” The player has a smoking pipe in the shape of a dragon that is a souvenir from Mexico. It was a great seen seeing him use the pipe as a prop, sitting there, pretending to puff on it and trying to look powerful (his character plays the role of a bumbling mage that is more dopy then heroic).