Started Flood Season today and managed to get my party through the Lucky Monkey encounters in another of our marathon 7 hour sessions. Thought I'd share and bounce ideas and stories off the other DMs and players out there.
Session started with the fateful first encounter with the Stormblades, whom I have been mentioning occasionally in passing. The party, minus the bard, were dining at the Drunken Morkoth and playng drinking games (the rogue/warmage, Fletcher, in the party is an avid drinker/gambler on the side). The party's rogue/cleric (Fharlanghn), Hemlock, was losing horribly and terribly drunk by the time the Stormblades showed up. Annah starts the conversation off by mocking the PC's and their party, at which point Fletcher shouts that they're known as the Seekers of the Way, and Hemlock loudly renames the party the anti-Stormblades. This prompts Todd to spit on Hemlock. Fletcher of course takes offense, drains his tankard of ale, and throws it at Todd, who dodges aside. Roll for initiative.
What finally amounted was a webbed common room, Annah held, Hemlock with a knife at her throat, Cora grappled by the town guard representative in the party, Marcos, and Todd grappled by Beck, the party ranger, a kukri at his throat as well. The town guard, arriving on the scene, of course thought the PC's were crazy and would have arrested them, but Annah, in an attempt to make herself and the Stormblades look even better, did the "noble" thing and didn't press charges.
The games in town were a huge success with the group as well. Hemlock made it to Day 4 of the drinking games, and Fletcher made it to Day 5. The party bard, Kip, played on Day 3, earning almost 10 gp, and the party did well on the booth games, Marcos winning two in a row. Most of the party swam to look for the Lake Monster as well, though only two of them made it to the 17th round of the Hunt. Invitations to the Demonscar Ball were also passed out, Kip and Fletcher receiving them for their festival activities, and the party's cleric of Pelor (Fernando) getting the single invitation that Kristof received. Can't wait to run that in a few weeks.
Before the ball, though, the party made the trip to the Lucky Monkey. The party's Oriental Handbook based rogue (whose name is so complicated I don't remember it), picked the lock on one of the shuttered windows to the kitchen, and was able to peek inside unnoticed by Tongueater and the baboons. The party then picked another locked shutter to the main room. The rogue and Hemlock stood out back with the intention of sneaking in after the rest of the party lured Tongueater out by throwing two of the fireballs from the necklace of fireballs into the front window at the bandits drinking inside. After the fireballs went off, and the bandits "seemingly" dead, Fernando hurried to the back of the inn to see what had transpired. Beck led Marcos and the necromancer/cleric (Wee Jas), Naginada, inside to look for survivors, whom they found hiding behind the bar. Combat errupted and Beck came out badly hurt, but otherwise the party was ok.
Around back, tired of waiting, and seeing that Tongueater was not being lured anywhere, the Oriental rogue tumbled through the window to confront him. Tongueater passed his save against being held by Fernando, put ate a crit from a bolt fired from the window by Hemlock. Raging, Tongueater layed the rogue out cold second turn, and the baboons swarmed out the window to attack Fernando and Hemlock, Tongueater soon following. Hemlock held his own for several rounds against the trio of baboons, but finally was knocked unconscious during the third of fourth round. Fernando, in his full plate, managed to stay alive throughout Tongueater's rage using up all of her (the player's) power points (and she had some saved up). The rest of the party finally found their way either through the building or around it, and Fernando retreated behind Fletcher, Kip, and Marcos, then turned and threw her 6d6 fireball from her necklace. Tongueater failed his save and took 28 points of damage, and Marcos stepped up and slew him the next round.
Naginada wound his way through the building and managed to single handedly take out the 8 men reinforcements for Tongueater with his small army of summoned undead and a flaming sphere.
Healing up, Oriental rogue (who stabalized at -8), Hemlock (who was healed at -9), and Naginada explored the basement, rescuing Shensen. Fletcher, meanwhile, crept upstairs and looked around until he found the deed to the Lucky Monkey. Now he is curious as to whether or not he can claim ownership to it, thinking to invest in Forgery when he levels up. Happy with Sarcem's body and head, and having rescued Shensen, the party beat a hasty retreat back to Cauldron. End of Session.
How did the encounter with Tongueater go with your parties? Who would you say owns the Lucky Monkey now? Can the party claim ownership for it somehow, or possibly buy it?
Once again I think the key to whether or not the encounters at the Lucky Monkey are hard or easy for the PCs really depends on that one critical element... whether or not they split up. For the tactics they used it sounds like your group was lucky in how it came out... would have been even worse had you used the feralized tongue eater.
Sean Mahoney
*Possible Spoilers*
Toungeater and his baboons roughed our party up, but we defeated him in the end. The funny thing is that the party went to the back of the inn to perhaps gain a measure of surprise. They spotted the
corpses in the back and using mainly missile fire they took care of the "mini dinosaurs" eating them.
Our party also tried to quietly get in the back way, but Tongueater was on my half-orc barbarian right away. The two had an epic battle while the baboons fought the dwarf cleric and the drow paladin. The elven mage aided the half-orc and thankfully due to the barbarian rage we were able to vanquish all our foes.
The mage went through every spell at his disposal. We entered the inn bloody and tired and then managed to get into another scrap with occupants who heard noise. After dispatching them our game ended for the night.
I thought the encounter was a tad rough for a party ranging in levels from 2 - 4 at that juncture, but then again I thought the final battle in the first part was hard as well.
I will say this though, I do feel like the party is being challenged.
This campaign will reward those who come up with alternative ways to engage the enemy over and over again. Straight forward tactics will leave those playing in store for some tough encounters.
Sean Mahoney
Generally splitting up always goes bad. If we have learnt anything from Horror movies anyway :P
This campaign will reward those who come up with alternative ways to engage the enemy over and over again. Straight forward tactics will leave those playing in store for some tough encounters.
Sean Mahoney
Our party tried the forward approach in the first adventure and almost didn't survive to tell the tale. With the second adventure I wanted to try it a bit more stealthy, BUT I wasn't planning on having the toughest cookie in the first part of the adventure fighting our party that early.
I do have to say that I am enjoying this first AP a lot and it has to do with the party make up as well as the adventure itself.