Allen is going to run AOW again next weekend?
Allen is going to run AOW again next weekend?
Yuppers, all is aligning in the Age of Worms for massive character deaths, reams of character sheets being deployed from our group's namesake Red Folder, and good old-fashioned maimings and mutilations in general.
Sadly, I think we will only get to the 'warm up' for Dragotha next Saturday, as I'm betting on 3 or 4 more encounters of nasty and unpleasant demeanor to gnaw on our bones before the showdown with ol' bony-face.
Ahhh..I will just not say anything then. It still should be a very VERY interesting session, even if you don't make it all the way to Dragotha.
You STAPing this weekend/Tomorrow?
Btw, finally got in touch with a gamer I used to play with about 9-10 years ago. We are getting together a group. Just gotta check out a few other folks that are interested in joining. Then in a few months (that IF these guys can keep the group together) expect me to begin my own AoW journal. HEehehehe....
Oh, and Allen....Cry Havoc! And let slip the Dragotha's of war!
Ahhh..I will just not say anything then. It still should be a very VERY interesting session, even if you don't make it all the way to Dragotha.
You STAPing this weekend/Tomorrow?Btw, finally got in touch with a gamer I used to play with about 9-10 years ago. We are getting together a group. Just gotta check out a few other folks that are interested in joining. Then in a few months (that IF these guys can keep the group together) expect me to begin my own AoW journal. HEehehehe....
Oh, and Allen....Cry Havoc! And let slip the Dragotha's of war!
Good news indeed Yasha. A couple of gaming buddies from the mid-to-late 90s time frame looked me up about a month ago too. We've now got a Sat night weekly 4e GURPS game, which so far is going well.
Oh, and Allen....Cry Havoc! And let slip the Dragotha's of war!
No problem bro, after I Maze Turin's happy ass out of the picture, they're dog food...
Ahh..the wonderful Maze spell...out of curiosity, what is the intelligence of Turin's Cleric? Can I assume a long long maze effect for him?
I predict the Minotaur dies first.
No problem bro, after I Maze Turin's happy ass out of the picture, they're dog food...
Oh, and Allen....Cry Havoc! And let slip the Dragotha's of war!
I look forward to claiming solo-xp for Dragotha my friend...
Well Turin, if you survive to claim solo-Xp on Dragotha....I think you'll most likely catapult a level. Your cleric is what, 19th currently?
Curiosity get the better of me Turin, what is the build of your cleric anyway? Any chance of doing a post of him for us to be awed by his Undead Turning might?
Well Turin, if you survive to claim solo-Xp on Dragotha....I think you'll most likely catapult a level. Your cleric is what, 19th currently?
Curiosity get the better of me Turin, what is the build of your cleric anyway? Any chance of doing a post of him for us to be awed by his Undead Turning might?
Well, considering Dragotha's CR is 27, and my level is 19th, I think I'm looking at a whole lot more xp than even a single level's worth. Basically, the technical xp award would be 16x that of the standard CR 19/lvl 19 char xp award for a single monster, doubling each step from 19/19 at 21, 23, 25 and 27. Granted, the rules are basically to cap xp awarded at 1 pt below the cap of the level you gain, but since the character would immediately retire (with Dragotha's entire horde in tow), it would be gratifying in the extreme to receive the full XP award. 5700 x 16 = 91,200 xp nominally awarded. At a minimum, that would (technically) bump him to 23rd level, perhaps even 24th level depending upon any other xp awarded prior to the encounter with Dragotha from his remaining guardians.
Should events unfold in the way I am (secretly) hoping they do (everyone else dies but me before turning mightily after getting out of the Maze), I would be happy to detail his build here in the aftermath of the session when Dragotha meets his timely permadeath. Since it would be in the warm and fuzzy glow in the aftermath of the turning of the year, Allen would have that character out of his hair and I would have a new NPC to play with...
If I become dragonkibble (specifically, Dragothakibble), you can reference the above posting (albiet it references 18th level not 19th) for the specifics of the turning ability and the items specifically used to achieve the turning awesomeness in question.
Well if you are the sole survivor, looks like the newly epic level cleric will be facing the endgame solo. Wonder what level you'd end up at if you actually managed that....
Well if you are the sole survivor, looks like the newly epic level cleric will be facing the endgame solo. Wonder what level you'd end up at if you actually managed that....
Egads, if that character somehow, someway managed to solo the entirety of Chapter 12 of the AoW, AND defeat Kyuss ... wow, the xps alone would be truly staggering ...
I wonder what would (will?) happen if Allen scores an all-but-1 TPK with Dragotha...
Bear in mind this too Turin, Kyuss doesn't have a CR. There is not even any suggestions as how to award experience for winning. You just win and ad hoc it I guess....So who knows...perhaps the indomitable Cleric will be somewhere near 30. Or higher, I have no idea...How do you award xp for godslaying? An interesting thought. I would just like to know for the purpose of determining later on, in the aftermath.
Bear in mind this too Turin, Kyuss doesn't have a CR. There is not even any suggestions as how to award experience for winning. You just win and ad hoc it I guess....So who knows...perhaps the indomitable Cleric will be somewhere near 30. Or higher, I have no idea...How do you award xp for godslaying? An interesting thought. I would just like to know for the purpose of determining later on, in the aftermath.
Well, at a guess, without having the XP awarding guidelines in hand, and presuming the mind-numbing possibility of actually solo-playing that character through Chapter 12 solo, I would guess Kyuss' XP award at a pool of 80,000 - 100,000 xp for the entire party.
Again, without having Chapter 12 in hand, I have no idea how many encounters comprising what CRs are en route to Kyuss. Mathematically, it would be fairly easy to guesstimate the xp awards by encounter, tallying as I go - and adjusting post-Dragotha for the xp awards.
Granted, as mentioned before, I do believe Allen would only award the full 91,200 xp for Dragotha upon fulfilling the 'retirement clause' agreement we have. Otherwise, I'd hit 1 xp short of 21st level after that specific encounter (unless by some means I actually breach 20th before the encounter, which would reduce the xp award a bit).
Frankly, I fully plan to have the character summarily retire after the encounter with Dragotha, even if it ends the campaign. (I expect I'll have to True Rez the other PCs afterwards - but they have swag I can sell off to buy the necessary diamonds, albiet requiring a trip to Greyhawk to get THAT kind of cash.) That gives me a NG Peloran 23rd/24th level NPC to use in later campaigns to stomp a mudhole on arrogant PC necromancer types or harrassers of Pelor in general... ^_^
Not too shabby, sounds about like my old high level cleric.
A Cleric of Pelor as well, and at least in my Greyhawk, the highest level Pelorian cleric known. A comparable 24th level. She was retired LONG ago.
I swear, I just got tired of raising everyone else. LOL! Looks like you are going to be in the same situ.
If the campaign doesn't end, are you going to bring in another custom created character just for chapter 12? Or is Allen going to let you run some of his monsters?
That was always a good option my old DM gave us, if one person lost a character in a session and didn't have a backup handy, he'd let them run some of his monsters. It was nasty nasty payback against us, especially if it was a character we didn't like as a party.
Besides, I could just imagine their faces seeing both you and Allen behind the DM screen for the last chapter...a chilling prospect indeed.
Not too shabby, sounds about like my old high level cleric.
A Cleric of Pelor as well, and at least in my Greyhawk, the highest level Pelorian cleric known. A comparable 24th level. She was retired LONG ago.
I swear, I just got tired of raising everyone else. LOL! Looks like you are going to be in the same situ.If the campaign doesn't end, are you going to bring in another custom created character just for chapter 12? Or is Allen going to let you run some of his monsters?
zOMG, ROFLMAO - that group of players would absolutely give birth to livestock if that happened to them!
(The last time Allen & I were on the same side of the GMs screen, the campaign went in the crapper in short order - we suborned the kingdom from the inside out, burned bad and not-so-bad guys to death after reducing thier STR scores to 1 with enfeeblements and alchemists' fire ... we were brutal, and it was a blast. To hose-job them with having TWO of us running the monsters ... sounds like a BlasterCard commercial in the making!)
I expect to bring in a hand-made replacement PC for Chapter 12. And yes, especially at the 3.5 costs for True Rez, I'll be damned if I'm going to shell out ~200,000 g.p. in diamonds just to bring thier sorry asses back from thier messy demises.
Ahhh....yeah I wouldn't pay that for their sorry corpses either.
It'll be interesting to see what you end up making for the showdown. Oh and I agree, going after Kyuss is cool. But getting to fight, and hopefully ice Dragotha I think is the highest height of the campaign. Kyuss has his great points, but hes not a dracolich.
Or even better, as Carborundum once wrote,
Dragodessa, the rhagodessalich
Ahhh....yeah I wouldn't pay that for their sorry corpses either.
It'll be interesting to see what you end up making for the showdown. Oh and I agree, going after Kyuss is cool. But getting to fight, and hopefully ice Dragotha I think is the highest height of the campaign. Kyuss has his great points, but hes not a dracolich.
Or even better, as Carborundum once wrote,
Dragodessa, the rhagodessalich
Awesome ... lol ... and I would not be surprised to find that Dragotha scored the highest kill-count of anything with the possible exception of Kyuss himself.
Kudos to Carborundum for the nickname ... although I rather think Dragotha would be a mite upset with him for it ... ^_^
If I recall correctly, James Jacobs stated on a post somewhere that Kyuss was to be considered a CR 28 opponent. I could be mistaken, but I recall that was what he said. I plan to treat Kyuss at a CR 28 encounter.
If I recall correctly, James Jacobs stated on a post somewhere that Kyuss was to be considered a CR 28 opponent. I could be mistaken, but I recall that was what he said. I plan to treat Kyuss at a CR 28 encounter.
KA-CHING!! Yasha ... time to crunch some numbers ...
So did you guys get to do any AoW this weekend? Any dragonkibble?
So did you guys get to do any AoW this weekend? Any dragonkibble?
Yes we did indeed have a session, but since this is Allen's journal it seems rude to post any details.
Well, other than total denial of any character deaths (other than the 2 from the expiration of the Revenance spells cast 2 sessions ago in the wake of 10 flame strikes).
We ended this past session with the very opening of the grand finale with Dragotha himself. I'd prefer to let Allen recount the details of the session naturally.
Btw...if a 19th level Turin the Cleric (carnivorous of course) manages to defeat Dragotha and earn solo-survivability XP, according to my calculations that will net the Ravenous Cleric: at 19th level 194,940 xp, if at 20th level 136,800 xp.
Btw...if a 19th level Turin the Cleric (carnivorous of course) manages to defeat Dragotha and earn solo-survivability XP, according to my calculations that will net the Ravenous Cleric: at 19th level 194,940 xp, if at 20th level 136,800 xp.
I'd pegged the award at 4 doublings over the baseline award for 19th level character vs CR 19 [the xp awards double for every +2 CR above baseline - so x2 @ CR 21, x4 @ CR 23, x8 @ CR 25 and x16 at CR 27], or a total 91,200 xp [whatever # x 16]. Cardinal Tiberium did not make 20th this past session (for which I'm sure Allen is grateful), although he is fairly close. Of course, I would be more than happy to rake in the XP figures you've calculated if they prove accurate at that magic moment. ^_^ 194,940 xp would more than double my character's present xp total!
Allen's been slacking on awarding XP (most likely to preserve his sanity) based on the character levels, instead awarding a flat XP award irregardless of actual level - but, he will also "autobump" characters if they are below a certain point at the beginning of a particular chapter or session. (Not that it will often do them much good mind.)
In last Saturday's (Sept. 29) Killer Age of Worms campaign, there were ZERO (0) player character fatalities. Before anyone goes into shock, let me state that the PC's have NOT YET begun the fight with Dragotha. That will happen at the beginning of our next game session on October 13th. Due to a low player turn out (only 5 today, with a 6th showing up late without a character sheet), I opted to slow things down and force a showdown next session. I dare say that Dragotha, legendary monster that he is, deserves a larger group to utterly annihiliate, and I'm hopeful that next time he will get his due when more of my challenged players return from their shameful absense during this session.
In this session, the PC's faced off against the Wormdrake, which proved to be a very difficult task for them. In the 5th round of combat I obtained an "unofficial PC kill" when Mr. Wormdrake used his cold & acid breath weapon yet again to turn Dwarf Cleric #3 into a freezing puddle of gore on the floor. The player of Dwarf Cleric #3 then cooked me up a sob story about him misunderstanding the duration of his Fortunate Fate spell which he had memorized for the day, and argued that he would have cast it, had he known it lasted for 10 minutes per level, and not 1 round per level, as he had thought. Yeah, I know, really lame. Yet he is a good player and a great member of the group, and he's never asked for a favor or anything else for that matter, so I opted to do a Roll-off for it, and he won. Otherwise, his PC was dead meat. In reality, he should have been...
The Wormdrake nearly polished off several other PC's as well before Turin and the Half-dragon nitwit finished him off...
The group then wiped out the three Nightcrawlers in record time, irritating me tremendously. Lastly, the group approached Dragotha's chamber and arrived just as we halted things for the afternoon. They are in the hallway about 20 or 30 feet outside of Dragotha's lair. The entire place is covered in dimensional locks, so no one's teleporting away to hide. A Maze trap failed to send Turin packing, due to my oversight on the dimensional lock. All of the players decided to have their characters act and move on the same initiative:) All have now done so, and when we left off, it was now Dragotha's turn to utterly annihiliate them (Dragotha is under a Surperior Invisibility spell, and I heavily modified his spell list). He's got Mahuudril and another cleric helper to boot, and both have summoned Incorporeal Undead support to help in dispatching the PC's. I'll forbear in going into details as to how I propose to slaughter, and rather turn it to you readers to discuss many of your own sadistic ideas as to how it could be accomplished. If I like some of them, I may even use them. So impress me:D
Look for the good tidings of great joy on or shortly after October 13th.
That 'sob story' isn't any lamer than having Dragotha forget about his own Dimensional Lock spell's effectiveness in shutting down his own (or his allies') Maze spell, Allen. :P
Chalk it up to quid-pro-quo : that player got to have a pertinent spell in place, Dragotha didn't have to piss away a Maze spell because the GM fubared his [not Dragotha's, the GM's] Spellcraft check (as advised at the table, although perhaps lost in the end-game jabberjawing).
Summoned nothing man - at least one of those bad guys has Create Greater Undead - those puppies are controlled. (The Dread Wraiths you referred to as being Summoned Undead, or more specifically incorporeal undead in your post.)
Too bad we're not yet in the new rotational schedule ... *sighs wistfully*. Although hopefully we can finagle several more players to attend in 2 weeks' time.
Doh! Hey Turin, I did an Xp amount for CR 28. I think I was figuring it for you solo-killing Kyuss instead. I just got off work, but that is not excuse.
Doh! Hey Turin, I did an Xp amount for CR 28. I think I was figuring it for you solo-killing Kyuss instead. I just got off work, but that is not excuse.
LoL. Sawwright Yasha, I generally cheat and use post-it notes in advance of play so I know how much XP a given encounter awards as a pool by character level, awarding it accordingly when the time comes to divvy up the XP. I went through the entire Sinister Spire and did this, made things much easier when the awarding time came this past session.
Summoned nothing man - at least one of those bad guys has Create Greater Undead - those puppies are controlled. (The Dread Wraiths you referred to as being Summoned Undead, or more specifically incorporeal undead in your post.)
Too bad we're not yet in the new rotational schedule ... *sighs wistfully*. Although hopefully we can finagle several more players to attend in 2 weeks' time.
Good of you to point out my inconsistency Turin, and it may even make a small difference during the encounter, in that while you may turn these creatures, you can't dismiss them. Of course, you can invite them to tea for all I care, just as long as they first turn Chip's Half-Minotaur into a dried husk or something comparable...
Good of you to point out my inconsistency Turin, and it may even make a small difference during the encounter, in that while you may turn these creatures, you can't dismiss them. Of course, you can invite them to tea for all I care, just as long as they first turn Chip's Half-Minotaur into a dried husk or something comparable...Summoned nothing man - at least one of those bad guys has Create Greater Undead - those puppies are controlled. (The Dread Wraiths you referred to as being Summoned Undead, or more specifically incorporeal undead in your post.)
Too bad we're not yet in the new rotational schedule ... *sighs wistfully*. Although hopefully we can finagle several more players to attend in 2 weeks' time.
LoL. I rather suspect you will be able to have them do so with gleeful abandon and utter ease on the bad guys' "Round 1", regarding slurping the half-minotaur's not-inconsiderable CON score to 0. Matter of fact, should they do so, I would most likely HAVE to act in preparation for having to obliterate one or more of my former party members in light of such a deliciously brutal development. (Given that he would spawn in 1d4 rounds as an 18HD or so dread wraith of Large size and crappy deflection bonus/hit points [due to his non-existant Chruzima] himself, I have no intention of letting such an occurance deter the pursuit of Dragotha be of concern for terribly long.)
The other advantage for the dread wraiths being commanded rather than summoned is that they can also be bolstered (on your cleric's turn, albiet it is unlikely to prove significantly beneficial to more than one or two of them) for a longer-term benefit than a standard summons achieves. (Not to mention the full-round casting time of a summons spell... ouch.)
That damned Minotaur really makes me wish there was a 'maximize supernatural ability' feat for the ability drains.
Well I do suppose there is the 'Empower Supernatural Ability' feat detailed in the Tome of Magic.
I'd love to see a nice Dread Wraith give a good whack to that whack-job.
What am I saying...oop, I almost just blurted out one of Dragotha's feats. Sorry Allen. Turin, no cookie crumbs for you.
And regarding the above post on the xp, if a 19th level character actually managed to survive Kyuss, I'd eat my shoe.
That damned Minotaur really makes me wish there was a 'maximize supernatural ability' feat for the ability drains.
Well I do suppose there is the 'Empower Supernatural Ability' feat detailed in the Tome of Magic.
I'd love to see a nice Dread Wraith give a good whack to that whack-job.
What am I saying...oop, I almost just blurted out one of Dragotha's feats. Sorry Allen. Turin, no cookie crumbs for you.And regarding the above post on the xp, if a 19th level character actually managed to survive Kyuss, I'd eat my shoe.
I expect Meestir Dragotha to have Arcane Strike - and to batter-fry Sir Hexen Ineptus with his own medicine as soon as he comes into reach. At a guess, I would expect at least 4, maybe 5, dread wraiths under Dragotha's command to gang up on one melee character at a time, starting with El Stupido, the feral half-minotaur frenzied berserker - last I heard, his Touch AC was relatively negligible, so I'd expect at least an average of 10 - 14 points of CON drain right out of the gate, more if they have some ability to prosecute a full-round attack AND have multiple incorporeal touch attacks at thier disposal. This does not count the not-inconsiderable firepower at the disposal of his two spell-chucking critterbuddies.
I admit I was expecting Dragotha to have a Projected Image up - but we've not gotten inside of the main chamber, so in character I do not know where he is at just yet.
Damn, just when things are looking rosy ... dread wraiths' CON drain allows a Fort save ? Blecch. *Wanders off to see about uber-augmenting an advanced Shadow or maybe an Allip...*
That damned Minotaur really makes me wish there was a 'maximize supernatural ability' feat for the ability drains.
Well I do suppose there is the 'Empower Supernatural Ability' feat detailed in the Tome of Magic.
I'd love to see a nice Dread Wraith give a good whack to that whack-job.
What am I saying...oop, I almost just blurted out one of Dragotha's feats. Sorry Allen. Turin, no cookie crumbs for you.And regarding the above post on the xp, if a 19th level character actually managed to survive Kyuss, I'd eat my shoe.
Surviving Kyuss isn't the hard part per se, it's doing enough damage to the semi-gawdling to make his fishbait carcass fall over that's the hard part.
This is true. Though I do admit, someone, somewhere suggested that Kyuss should have the Multispell feat. I personally plan on doing a custom rework, once I get there...if I ever get there. I really detest unreliable players.
I personally plan to look into that, and the idea of doing him written up as a Dread Necromancer instead of a Sorcerer base. That would fit better with the concept of him I think. While I do realize that will drastically limit Kyuss arcane versatility to some degree, I'm going to check it out and see how it works up one of these days.
Yasha,
From what I've seen of Dread Necromancers in play, the 20th level of it would defeat Kyuss' core concept: a living critter producing undead. (That, and it'd be pretty embarrassing to have a semi-gawd disrupted on a bad die roll...)
A Necromancer/Transmuter specialist, now, I can see...
Good point Turin. As I have said before, my experience with select classes is relatively limited. The DN is one, I have also thus far not used for an enemy nor seen a player use a Marshal.
And not suprisingly, the truenamer has been relegated to the unopenable section of the Tome of Magic by most people I've gamed with. No one wants to do the math at the table, even if the concept, if not the application, is sound.
Good point Turin. As I have said before, my experience with select classes is relatively limited. The DN is one, I have also thus far not used for an enemy nor seen a player use a Marshal.
And not suprisingly, the truenamer has been relegated to the unopenable section of the Tome of Magic by most people I've gamed with. No one wants to do the math at the table, even if the concept, if not the application, is sound.
Yeah, while the 'subset' books have neat toys to play with, to be frank adding in D&D Miniatures, Incarnum, Tome of Magic and even Book o' 9 Swords tacks on a LOT of extra chunk in the game that is a pure headache to deal with as a GM.
A Marshall is, like many of the 'non-standard' core classes, a consideration for a group with more than 4 members. You simply gotta have the arcanist (whether wiz/sorc or warmage is relatively immaterial - you need artillery), a cleric ('cause of the curatives and restoratives mainly - although turning undead is a nifty added bonus), a trapfinder (rogue is best, but whatever makes that players' boat motor on works just fine) and a speedbump (ANY character that can take and dish out healthy melee damage, and at least serve to slow down critterbeasties which desire to munch on the soft and squishy arcanist).
Of course, with 4e, it may well be that the necessity is less and the variety available still makes a valid game - on that we shall see.
Yeah, who knows what they are going to come up with. A Speedbump Trapfinder? He does it with his head? okay....
Surviving Kyuss isn't the hard part per se, it's doing enough damage to the semi-gawdling to make his fishbait carcass fall over that's the hard part.
Actually, surviving Kyuss is quite a chore as well. He has so many offensive capabilities that you will never get to all of them. But even then, there are still several oversights that the designers left (deliberately or unknowingly). Kyuss' spell list is exclusively from the Players Handbook, while my players use spells from every book out there. I'll therefore be changing Kyuss' spell list, and I'll do the same for Dragotha. I think an Admixture Breath Weapon out of the gate from Mr. Dragotha should do a nice 44 d10 for starters... I'm anticipating avoiding using Arcane Strike with Dragotha, though I may have it in the event of an emergency. Kyuss on the other hand will have Arcane Strike, as well as Power Attack and Cleave swapped in for several useless feats that he has. I suspect that Kyuss can readily burn 100 Sorcerer spell levels into his arcane strike, and with his power attack do in the area of 325 to 350 HP/ per hit for one round:)
Yeah, who knows what they are going to come up with. A Speedbump Trapfinder? He does it with his head? okay....
Such characters are often named Lenny and given red tunics to wear at all times...
Actually, surviving Kyuss is quite a chore as well. He has so many offensive capabilities that you will never get to all of them. But even then, there are still several oversights that the designers left (deliberately or unknowingly). Kyuss' spell list is exclusively from the Players Handbook, while my players use spells from every book out there. I'll therefore be changing Kyuss' spell list, and I'll do the same for Dragotha. I think an Admixture Breath Weapon out of the gate from Mr. Dragotha should do a nice 44 d10 for starters... I'm anticipating avoiding using Arcane Strike with Dragotha, though I may have it in the event of an emergency. Kyuss on the other hand will have Arcane Strike, as well as Power Attack and Cleave swapped in for several useless feats that he has. I suspect that Kyuss can readily burn 100 Sorcerer spell levels into his arcane strike, and with his power attack do in the area of 325 to 350 HP/ per hit for one round:)Surviving Kyuss isn't the hard part per se, it's doing enough damage to the semi-gawdling to make his fishbait carcass fall over that's the hard part.
I would surmise that the Age of Worms was written before the advent of all or nearly all of the splatbooks that even now burden the shoulders and wagons of numerous players, thus the 'pure PHB' spells lists seen in the AoW are wholly subject to change with the availability of newer materials. (I place the initial chapters of the AoW in the vicinity of 3 years ago more or less, which predates quite a bit of the splat now in print.)
In another way, however, an "all PHB" spells list is not unreasonable - highly unlikely given his divine rank of 1 and its attendant mile radius of awareness. His worminess' cultists would have (effectively) kept him reasonably current on the magic floating about the game world - in other words, he has a (at least vaguely) plausible reason and method for alterning his known spells list and of course (assuming he also has divine spellcasting as so many 3e gawds do) changing his prepared clerical spells as well.
Arcane Strike on Kyuss...*shudder* it was Turin that wrote that Allen. I would never assume surviving Kyuss, even as published, would be easy or simple. Yeah...as you said, Offensive Diversity...
Sure he does have a breath weapon, though other things more than make up for that. I'm sure you know which things I'm talking about Allen.
Though I will admit, I've heard on various other posts that some think Kyuss wasn't really harder than Dragotha. So I guess that depends entirely on how you run them both. Personally I see a great deal more capacity to scare the living pants off of players with Kyuss. Dragotha is Dragotha....but hes a Dragon, and we already all know his main trump card, the breath weapon. Kyuss on the other hand....who knows. That is the little fear of the unknown that I love to throw players into. Not to mention having no idea what they should really prepare magically for defenses. Or if they ended up just wasting their time.
Arcane Strike on Kyuss...*shudder* it was Turin that wrote that Allen. I would never assume surviving Kyuss, even as published, would be easy or simple. Yeah...as you said, Offensive Diversity...
Sure he does have a breath weapon, though other things more than make up for that. I'm sure you know which things I'm talking about Allen.Though I will admit, I've heard on various other posts that some think Kyuss wasn't really harder than Dragotha. So I guess that depends entirely on how you run them both. Personally I see a great deal more capacity to scare the living pants off of players with Kyuss. Dragotha is Dragotha....but hes a Dragon, and we already all know his main trump card, the breath weapon. Kyuss on the other hand....who knows. That is the little fear of the unknown that I love to throw players into. Not to mention having no idea what they should really prepare magically for defenses. Or if they ended up just wasting their time.
I always viewed a dragon's breath weapon as more along the lines of one of 3 tools : breath weapon, spellchucking and melee carnage. Depending upon spells known as to what kind of 'reach' a dragon has prior to closing to melee range, but a dragon is by far at its deadliest in melee combat.
Kyuss is by far the more dangerous of the two. The GM merely need remove one self-imposed penalty (and if you have a copy of Dawn of a New Age, Yasha, you know what I'm referring to), and I think the PC's have no chance of winning. I'm taking a creative way of keeping the limitation in place without letting the PC's knowingly take advantage of it:)
Oh yes, I have Dawn of a New Age...you just made me get it out. I'm just trying to think of which penalty/limitation you mean. In my opinion there are a few. I'm trying to think of a way for us to communicate without letting Turin in on it. I know!
*switches to Drow Sign*
Personally I think those DMs out there that have run the fight and thought it too easy or disappointing...I think they followed the adventure as printed too much without much consideration that this is the endgame and should be run accordingly.
I plan to disallow a few of the little nerfs that can be done/are suggested at the beginning of the adventure chapter.
Be careful Yasha - depending upon your upfront limitations, you may unecessarily hamstring the PCs before they even know it. Since I do not know of the limitation/nerfs in question (other than the Sphere of Annihilation *winkwink*), I would recommend gauging your group's capabilities according to what condition they are in upon Kyuss' emergence.
Sometimes certain GMs *coughcough* are a tad remiss in thier flavor text reading ...
Then again, I think we'll have a mewling basket of meerpsmurfs once Dragotha annihilates most (or all) of the party anyway, so the throwdown with Kyuss may not even happen.
edit: WTF ... my avatar changed to a SMURF ?!
So now you are a 'Carnivorous Savage Old Smurf'? Definately wft!
And yes, I mainly speak of the Sphere. I am totally taking that out of AoW. Sorry, I'll take it into account, but I am not going to rob myself by allowing that damnable thing in.
Sorry, but I have hated Spheres of Annihilation ever since a DM threw a Blackball at us. If you know what that is then you know what I mean. That DM loved that damn Blackball so much there were Three...I mean Three TPKs with that damned thing. Oh and he did make sure to tell us it was supposedly the same Blackball devouring each party. He did not get to DM again for a while.
WHY oh WHY am I a Smurf too!?