He's going Eldrich Knight here on out, which is a little more reasonable (but in a way the damage has already been done). No worries, he's going down. That 41 AC is just provoking me to go after him and put it to the test.
Turin...always so fiendish...
Nice combo of Tactics. Flesh Ripper is a great spell. Here's the question though...what class is he taking next? He finished out AC <--- Abjurant Champion (I wonder if that was intended...?), so what is he going to try now. Unfortunately AC, as printed, only requires Combat Casting to enter, so he really didn't waste any feats getting into the class.
Excellent... teach 'em to keep thier ACs in line with what they face.
I do like the concept of the fleshripper-in-silence combination - may I assume you arranged for him to have something analagous to the sorceror's metamagic mastery alternative class ability so he gets to tag your most-loathed PC every round ?
Those are decent, but I tend to save those low level spells for when the big guns run out of ammo. The brain collector in the crater has true strike, which will be handy. But my cleric has +9 to hit with his RT attack. I made a mistake Argent's touch AC is 14. I only need a 5 to hit him with Flesh Ripper.
The thing about this PC is that this player rolls worse then anyone I've ever met. So even though he is the munchkin of the party, his suped up PCs just barely allow him to break even in performance with the other PCs. He's a natural 1 machine.
What about some of the lovely cleric spells that buff ranged attack rolls from the Spell Compendium ? Or other fun ones, such as faerie fire, glitterdust ... true strike ...His touch AC is only 15 or so. I think I can manage that.
As long as the touch AC is considerably lower than the regular AC, I wouldn't worry overmuch.
Although I about shot a player in the face when he wanted to play some super-AC twinky character ... something about a 100 AC vs movement-provoked AoO ... I mean really now...
P.H., you giving him Heightened Spell too ? So he can stuff that lovely spell into higher level spell slots ? (Granted, with no save, there's no need - one can always burn higher level spell slots on lower level spells ... but still ...)
But my cleric has +9 to hit with his RT attack. I made a mistake Argent's touch AC is 14. I only need a 5 to hit him with Flesh Ripper.
The thing about this PC is that this player rolls worse then anyone I've ever met. So even though he is the munchkin of the party, his suped up PCs just barely allow him to break even in performance with the other PCs. He's a natural 1 machine.
Oh man, poor guy, no wonder he ramped up his AC ... throwing gobs of nat 1s all the time is depressing as all get out.
Meh, screw it, flense 'im anyway.
Those tactics tend to get a little low. I try to save them as a last resort. I've been taunting him in e-mails about encounters with cave trolls in dead magic zones, but probably won't sink to that level unless all else fails. My other tactic is to use critters with high grapple checks, provoke the attack of op if need be, and then do a touch attack to start a grapple, and then Bod's your uncle. However, after the recent bad experience that caused the death of his familiar and his near demise (soon to be posted), he's caught onto this weakness and will likely be having the cleric buff him with Freedom of Movement whenever possible.
Lovely lovely lovely....besides, if you have to....just have an appropriately leveled BBEG cast Anti-magic field on a melee oriented associate and send them into lovely melee with Mr. AC (still means Abjurant Champion...the other meaning too...), to take a cheap move out of Allen's AoW. But this time on the side of righteousness, that is, the DMing side.
Well..if you can find a place for it...something strong like a Blackscale Lizardfolk, some monk levels and Reaping Mauler. That would be something for him to fear.
Oh damn...he caught on. I really should finish reading the posts before I begin to reply.
The Death of Paradox (Paradox is Argent's parrot familiar):
This is the game session 18 from Argent's perspective. He tells it as a tavern tale, from sometime in the future. Whether he lives long enough to tell the story in this manner is still up in the air...
“Ah, you wonder my friend why my establishment is called the Parrot Docks do you, well that is a sad story but one I am willing to tell as you seem willing to listen.”
“After the destruction of Farshore by the Crimson Fleet, a group of friends and I established this colony at Rat’s End with the survivors. During that stressful time I buried myself in my studies, which payed off for I created a new spell which allowed me to enchant two regular weapons to fight for me; I won’t bore you with the specific details let’s just say I was excited and looking for opportunities to use it.”
“I got my opportunity when the group of adventurers I was with decided to salvage the Bearded Maiden, Brecca’s, … yes, yes THE Captain Brecca; may Procan watch over and protect his soul and may he be with sturdy dwarven women in the afterlife. Anyway, where was I, ah yes, the Bearded Maiden, Brecca’s ship. We explored the ship and were not there a few moments when we were attacked by some cleric and a large sea serpent. It was so large that it blotted out the sun and its maw was filled with razor sharp teeth. My companions used spells to enhance our melee fighter’s abilities and sent her into battle. She started attacking it and was doing admirably, as always. I had just finished my final spell and entered into melee with the beast, much to my surprise, Jaheria; our melee fighter, took a swing at me. It was obvious that her mind had been taken over by some foul magic, but I could not worry about that now. Screaming a battle cry I began attacking the beast, my swirling blades cutting deep into its flesh and my spell charged weapon crackled with the power of the skies and charred the monsters flesh. I laughed as I watched it fall in onslaught of this single charge, it was a glorious moment for me.”
Argent pauses a moment, wiping a glass with a rag and smiles but sadly. Remembering both the moment and what was to come.
Unfortunately we soon saw that something was wrong with Jaheria for she turned and began attacking her brother. Seeing the cleric on the shore I felt the wisest course of action would be to defeat the spell slinger and it didn’t take long for me to convince him that it would not be prudent to fight me. He ran like a coward from the taste of my blades. I unfortunately found that I was too late, as Jaheria upon awakening was struck with the horror of having just killed her own brother. In her grief she decided that he should be raised. We would find out later that this was against the customs of her people and would cause us no end to trouble later but that story I will save for another time.
After her dead brother, Veldren, strange Olman man, necromancer and don’t make me tell you of his mother; unpleasant stuff, had been resurrected and some of the salvage from the Bearded Maiden taken care of we decided to make our way to the source of the black pearl which had brought so much grief to Far Shore. Rather then pay tribute to the Glutton to sail to the cave we decided to use Brecca’s spells to travel there. The spell allowed us to enter the cave and go deep into its belly without raising a single sword. I watched as the trog guards to the cave watched us slip through the bars of the cave’s closed gate and go by, helpless to do anything about it. I was a little upset by this, I did not want to leave them behind to be dealt with later after we had exhausted all our resources; plus I was eager to enter into battle once again after my initial foray into melee was so successful. I continued with my companions anyway.
Deep within the caves we made our stand, and having just got there I began to put up my armor which alerted their guards to our presence. Soon I had 3 of the horrible things surrounding me but I was not worried because none of them could strike me. Soon they all fell to my whirling blades.
It was here I would make a grave error. You see my new found usefulness in melee combat had made me cocky…yes I know, even me. In my arrogance I told Brecca that I would take care of the guards that we had left behind, so that we would have no surprises, and having seen what I could do he agreed with my insistence that I could take care of it alone.
Taking my familiar with me I rushed down the exit tunnel and found the guards running down to warn their companions. I dispatched them easily, which only made my ego swell, and so I continued up to the cave mouth.
Here I used invisibility and snuck up on one of the two sleeping guards, ending his life quickly and painlessly with a decisive strike. I turned upon the remaining guard and could see the fear in his eyes. I smiled in my glee for in that moment I believed that nothing could stop me. To my surprise, the gate to the cave opened and allowed the waiting dinosaur to enter.
It was then that things took a turn for the worse. The massive beast lumbered up to me and laughing with over confidence I let it close in. It took me in its massive jaws and began crushing the life from me. It was too strong for me to break out, and I was too pinned to cast spells, I admit that I began to panic. I had but one choice and it was a difficult one. I asked my friend and familiar, Paradox, to sacrifice his own life for mine; to which that brave and noble bird agreed. Using a spell that required only a word to activate, my parrot and I switched places. Paradox was in the beast’s mouth and I was standing on the cave floor nearby. I did my best to damage the beast to save my familiar and trusted friend; wracking my mind for anything that would help him. When I watched him get swallowed by the beast I even considered switching places with him again, but he died before I was able to use the spell.
Enraged by my trusted friend’s death I ran to the entrance to the cave and flew up into the air, getting out of range of the dreaded thing’s mouth. The beast chased after me, thinking me an easy dinner after his horrific appetizer. I proved him wrong as in my fury I began using the Fireball wand that I had salvaged from the Battle of Farshore; laying into him with repeated blasts until there was nothing but a charred husk that I dug the remains of my once friend out of.”
Argent sighs and hangs his head, overcome with grief.
“At the time we were just setting up this establishment and I decided to name it ‘The Parrot Docks’ as a play on words of name of my noble friend, who sacrificed himself so that I could live. I miss him greatly.”
Happy Thanksgiving (Canadian that is)!
I am thankful for a good group of players, a large table to game on, and the chance to bag a few PCs tomorrow (gobble, gobble). Now time to go eat some bird. Monday- Lightless depths continues!
Happy Thanksgiving (Canadian that is)!
I am thankful for a good group of players, a large table to game on, and the chance to bag a few PCs tomorrow (gobble, gobble). Now time to go eat some bird. Monday- Lightless depths continues!
After stuffing your faces ... kill 'em all !! ^_^
Happpy Canuck Thanksgiving!
PCs
Breca: Sea Cliff Dwarf, male, Cleric 8/Demon wrecker 3
Argent: Air Gensai, male, Fighter 1/Swashbuckler 3/Wizard 2/Abjurant Champion 5
Vel’drin: Human, male, cleric 6/zombie master 4.
Jaheira: Deathtouched, fighter 9/totemic demonslayer 1.
Buranwa: Human (Olman), male, Scout 3 (Jaheria's cohort))
Yvy Sparks: Human, female, sorcerer 6/Malconvoker 4 (Alex's replacement character for Czar)
Jakara: Human (Olman), male, ranger/totemic demonslayer (rescued from the trogs in the last game session, played today as a PC by Steve, our guest player)
Game Session #19 part #1.
Having dealt with the trog leper colony, the party takes some time to return to the colony of Vessarin and regroup. Vel’drin retires to his quarters, and indicates that he has been magically contacted by the lich master and must commune with his master, an endevour that he suspects will take him a few days. Breca teleports to Sasserine, and there he meets up with Lady Vanderboren. Lavinia has been busy; she has sold off the remainder of the famiy’s wealth to help raise funds to contribute to the destruction of the Lords of Dread and stop their manufacture of shadowpearls. She has been busy gathering a new band of adventurers to replace the Jade Ravens and help deal with their enemies. They call themselves the Second Sons, though Breca has no intention of transporting any of them to his colony until he meets them and sees what sort of characters they are. Yvy has been helping Lavinia with these tasks and Breca does willingly teleport her back to the colony, for she is eager to join the battle against the Lords of Dread. Breca doesn’t take the time at this point to meet the Second Sons, as he is in a hurry to venture back to Gallivant’s Cove and is not feeling particularly trusting of strangers. He does spend some time helping to acquire some gear for the rescued Olman warrior Jakara, as the Olman seems to be a stalwart man willing to offer his aid.
A few days later the band is ready to make their return to the cove. This time they opt to sail a ship. They take the Hellfish, as it is in the worst condition, and the one that is most expendable should it be assaulted by the Glutton.
They chart a course that takes them well out to sea, so as to avoid dangers that may be lurking near the coast. After several days at sea the ship arrives in waters north of the cove. There they set anchor. They leave Argent behind to help the crew guard the ship and drink away his sorrows after the death of his familiar. Vel’drin too is still deep in his reverie with the lich master, which prevents him from joining the band on their next foray, so he remains in his cabin. Thus the group sets out five strong and consists of Breca, Yvy, Jaheria and her cohort Buranwa, and the Olman warrior Jakara.
The band treks overland for a couple of days along the rocky coast until they finally make it back to the sea cave that leads to the trog settlement. The group finds that little has changed since their last visit, and they press through the tunnels to the leper colony. Here too things are much the same as when they left, so the group uses the lift and descends down into the deep shaft that is rumoured to lead towards the place where they Shadow pearls are created.
The shaft drops some four hundred feet down into darkness. At the bottom a long tunnel way strectches out before them. Yvy, Jakara, and Buranwa have no means of seeing in the dark and have to use light spells to illuminate the tunnel. Just up the tunnel on the left is an iron gate that leads to a side tunnel the slopes steeply downward. They opt to ignore it for the moment and follow the main tunnel. As it turns out it stretches on for some distance, and seems to go progressively deeper into the earth. They hike for about ten minutes and it shows no sign of ending. The light supply is fading, so they turn back and decide to investigate the side tunnel.
Soon the side passage opens up into a large cave. Here and there large stalagmites extend up towards the ceiling, but the floor looks as though it has been flattened to make it easier to move about on. Breca spots two iron gates on the opposite wall that look like they might lead to additional chambers. From one of them the sounds of pained moans emerge. The stench of trog is heavy in the cave, but with no sign of life, Breca and Jaheria decide to investigate, while the remainder of the party waits in the darkness, with their light source concealed.
Breca and Jaheria begin their sweep. Far to the right side of the cave they find a wooden wrack with several flayed corpses. Some are human and some are trog. They also find the equipment necessary for making arrows, and several arrows that look sized for a bow an ogre or troll might use. Additionally they come to a ledge that looks down on a pit, and in the pit are several human prisoners, all of whom are in terrible condition. A couple of the prisoners appear to be Olman, but the others are obviously from the north. As Breca and Jaheria consider aiding them, Yvy suddenly exposes her light stone. A trio trog lepers is attempting to creep up on the humans, but it seems that Yvy heard them coming.
Two more emerge from behind a large stone column near Breca and Jaheria and look ready to attack. The group breaks into action. A swift melee ensues with Yvy summoning a howler from the lower planes to aid the fight. Jaheria enters into melee, and Breca lends his crossbow and spells to the battle. Jakara finds himself unable to contribute much, for early in the fight he succumbs to a leper’s hold person spell. The lepers don’t prove to be a great challenge, and the heroes victorious with few injuries to show.
They manage take one of the trogs alive and interrogate him. This proves useful, for they learn that a band of trogs accompanied by demonic archers is on their way back to the settlement with more shadow pearls, which they will eventually exchange with the Crimson Fleet for slaves and supplies. The demonic archers happen to be the ones making the arrows. They also learn that one of the iron gates leads to an area where the Shadow Pearls are stored until the time for the exchange.
The adventurers finish their scan of the cave and find a hatchery area with many old broken trog eggs shells, but no sign of hatchlings or live eggs. They also find yet another prison pit. This one contains several diseased trogs, and it was from here that the moans had been coming from. Jaheria puts these wretches out of their misery with some savage blows from her Shimo Koa.
Breca decides to teleport the prisoners back to Rat’s end, where they are purged of disease before being permitted to stay in Vessarin. He discovers that one of the prisoners was a merchant from Irongate named Belthas, and he may be able to offer a reward for his safe return home. The rest of the heroes wait in the stinking dark cavern for Breca to return. The time passes and Breca wind walks back to the caves. He stops in at the Hellfish on the way and finds that all is in order. Though Argent is quite drunk, and Vel’drin is still holed up in his cabin.
He soon meets his companions back in the caves and they follow a tunnel way down to where the pearls are supposably stored. This tunnel also opens up into a large cave, but much of this cave is dominated by a large underground lake filled with milky water. The smell of sulfur is strong. A section of smooth rocky shore lies between the heroes and the lake, and at the shoreline is a ghastly sight. Four strange looking reptilian creatures (digesters) crowd around a writhing membrane like sack. The sack is made of glossy, yellowish, tanslucent material and seems to have something living inside of it that is trying to escape. The creatures turn their heads as the band enters the room, and they surge toward them. Breca catches them with a powerful cone of cold, but it isn’t enough to stop them, and all four come forward and unleash terrible streams of acid from tube like appendages on their heads. Jaheria and Jakara are both terribly burned by the acid.
Once again battle erupts. This time Yvy opts to summon a Yeth hound into the fray, which proves quite effective against the digesters. Jaheria and Jakara both are in terrible agony, but find the strength tear into the nasties. Breca tries to make his own contributions with shots from his crossbow and Buranwa hangs back and uses his longbow. Despite the horrific acid damage taken by the Olman warriors the fight has soon turned in the heroes’ favour. This suddenly changes when a true horror emerges from the lake.
PCs
Breca: Sea Cliff Dwarf, male, Cleric 8/Demon wrecker 3
Argent: Air Gensai, male, Fighter 1/Swashbuckler 3/Wizard 2/Abjurant Champion 4
Vel’drin: Human, male, cleric 6/zombie master 4.
Jaheira: Deathtouched, fighter 9/totemic demonslayer 1.
Buranwa: Human (Olman), male, Scout 3 (Jaheria's cohort))
Yvy Sparks: Human, female, sorcerer 6/Malconvoker 3 (Alex's replacement character for Czar)
Jakara: Human (Olman), male, ranger/totemic demonslayer (rescued from the trogs in the last game session, played today as a PC by Steve, our guest player)
Game Session #19 part 2.
The creature is massive in size. It has a huge fleshy, spherical body dozens of eyes emerging from it. This strange body is supported by six enormous, puckered tentacles; three hold weapons, and the other three end in terrible toothed maws. The abberation initially activates some sort of magic that freezes the Yeth hound in place, and Yvy turns her attention toward it summoning an equally big centipede before it, hoping to distract the thing while the heroes finish off the digesters and prepare to deal with this horrific new threat. Breca wastes no time and summons a pillar of scalding holy steam down from the sky that scorches the thing and causes it to writhe in pain. It responds by savagely tearing the centipede into shreds with its tentacles. Breca then hits it again with yet another column of steam, and this seems to harm it enough to convince it to retreat back under the water. In the seconds that pass the group does some healing and spreads then spreads out. It isn’t long before the creature shows itself once more, though it seems to have nearly fully healed from its wounds, and it attempts paralyze Breca with magic. It then hauls its bulk out onto the land. By the time it manages this feat Yvy has summoned a large shark in the water, and two more centipedes. They all attack the thing as it surges out of the lake towards the party, nipping it with their bites. This time it ignores the critters, despite the damage they do, seeking to take out the casters. Luckily, both Yvy and Breca have dimension door spells and they teleport away. Breca ends up standing in the air (due to airwalk) well away from the thing, and Yvy transports herself to a rocky islet in the middle of the little lake.
Jaheria and Jakara are left to fight the terror. Jaheria finds the courage to charge it, but as she moves in one of its jawed tentacles swoops down and scoops her up in its toothed mouth, crushing her with its deadly sharp teeth. She is trapped and can do little to escape. Breca aims a soundlance directly at the tentacle and hits, causing it to drop her to the ground. Jakara makes the same mistake and also tries to charge in at the thing, he too ends up snapped up in its jaws with the life being crushed out of him. A badly wounded Jaheria finds herself prone on the ground near the beast. Fearing to stand, she attacks from the ground and still manages to lay several savage blows into it. The holy energy from her Shimo Koa is effective against the beast and surges through it. These final attacks are enough to bring it down. Its massive body crashes to the ground, dropping a terribly injured Jakara at her side.
Over the next few minutes much healing magic is expended. Furthermore, Buranwa is able to recall an old story told by Requota that featured such a monster. He believes the creature is known as a Deepspawn, and is capable of spawning replicas of creatures it has devoured. The now frozen sack on the ground, that the party saw writhing when they entered, suggests some truth to this, as it contains a fully grown digester. Next Breca casts a water breathing spell on Jakara, and the Olman warrior bravely searches the milky waters of the lake. After a long time he manages to find a small cache of treasure (mostly coins and gems) kept by the beast, and he returns to the surface with the loot. While this is going on the group investigates the islet in the centre of the lake, and there they find two large stone disks. Running around the perimiter of each disk are six circular indents that look as though they could accommodate a shadow pearl. Currently, they are all empty. In the centre of each disk is a primitive symbol of a twin headed reptilian creature. Breca recognizes it as an image of Demogorgon- the prince of Demons. Demogorgon is not widely known among mortals, and worshipped mostly by savage creatures such as trogs, but he is reputed to being a being of near godlike power and among the most powerful demons in the Abyss.
PCs
Breca: Sea Cliff Dwarf, male, Cleric 8/Demon wrecker 3
Argent: Air Gensai, male, Fighter 1/Swashbuckler 3/Wizard 2/Abjurant Champion 4
Vel’drin: Human, male, cleric 6/zombie master 4.
Jaheira: Deathtouched, fighter 9/totemic demonslayer 1.
Buranwa: Human (Olman), male, Scout 3 (Jaheria's cohort))
Yvy Sparks: Human, female, sorcerer 6/Malconvoker 3 (Alex's replacement character for Czar)
Jakara: Human (Olman), male, ranger/totemic demonslayer (rescued from the trogs in the last game session, played today as a PC by Steve, our guest player)
The next step for the group is to deal with the shadow pearl convoy that is on its way back from the depths. They decide to wait in the connected cave, where they found the arrows and prisoners for the convoy to return, and then ambush them. Preparations are made. Breca uses stoneshape spells and carves a niche in one of the stone pillars to hole up in and cast spells. The rest of the group stays on the ground, concealed and ready to strike.
Days pass, but eventually the convoy arrives. A pair of digesters enters the cave first, quickly followed by a trio of arrow demons and about a half dozen trog lepers. The adventurers spring their ambush. Breca begins by launching a cone of cold that horribly injures many of the their foes. Yvy remains invisible, but continues summoning and soon brings another howler and giant centipede into the fray. Jaheria and Jakara rush from their hiding places and engage their foes in melee. They quickly find themselves facing an arrow demon, trogs and the digesters. Furthermore, one of the trogs proves to be a spellcaster and launches a mighty spell that shakes and rends the earth. Jaheria, Jakara and Yvy are all injured by the spell. Yvy is hurt bad enough that she has to fall back and heal.
The arrow demons prove deadly. Each demon has four arms and has an oversized bow. Even worse the demons are coordinated enough to fire both bows in tandem. They begin launching massive arrows at the party. One targets Breca and pumps him full of arrows. While the other two start going to work on Jaheria and Jakara. Luckily Breca manages to get off a banishment spell and sends one of them back to the abyss. Yvy sicks her howlers on another, and Buranwa manages to finish off the third with a well placed arrow (after he was softened up by Jaheria and Jakara). The trog cleric is injured enough from Breca’s cone of cold and a soundlance spell that he retreats with a few of his henchmen back into the tunnel, while being pursued by Yvy’s centipede. There he manages to dispel the creature and do some healing while the heroes finish off the digesters, remaining trogs and arrow demons. As he remerges he finds the heroes are all badly wounded from the battle. Yvy’s howlers have been destroyed by the arrow demons. Jaheria is unconscious and bleeding to death (having sustained a terrible acid blast from a digester). Jakara is also badly wounded and even Breca is in rough shape (the arrow demons did a number on him)
Breca has left his hiding spot and is busy trying heal Jakara and Jaheria. Seeing the dwarf who has caused him so much trouble the trog casts one of his most devastating spells. He extends his open hand and with a gesture Breca feels his heart being wrenched out of his body. Breca’s great fortitude allows him to keep his heart in place, though he does suffer further injuries (enough to nearly finish him off). Breca hits him with a flame strike that finishes off his minions, but the cleric trog is still standing. Jakara then charges him but has no luck getting past his stoneskin spell. The trog then launches another deadly spell. He forms a black claw of deadly energy and fires it Jakara, but Jakara dodges it and it explodes harmlessly against the wall behind them. Before the nasty priest can get off another spell Breca drives a sound lance through him that finishes him off. Looking around at the carnage it seems that heroes have won a very tough fight.
In the tunnel they find a small group of trog zombies. They bear two stretchers, and on each stretcher is a pair of shadow pearls still in their geods. Breca quickly turns the zombies to ash with his turning skills. The party now finds themselves with four shadow pearls, but they have also learned from the interrogation of the trog they had earlier captured that dozens of shadow pearls have already been taken by the Crimson Fleet.
DM notes: I almost bagged a couple of PCs in this fight, so it was a little disappointing that there are no deaths to report. I had one well in negatives and the others close to dropping. This encounter would have been much tougher if the PCs hadn't got the drop on their enemies. I couldn't justify pre buffing my cleric since he did not suspect the ambush. That gimped him quite a little. At the end of the fight he cast a Flesh Ripper spell (book of vile darkness) that could have done 10d8 to a PC but he missed with his ranged touch (it would have been an instant PC death), but I rolled 3 when I needed a 4 or better.
Now I've let four shadow pearls fall in their lap, and I'm not really sure if that was a mistake or not. They're a pretty responsible group, though they have been tossing around the idea of dropping a couple of them in Scuttlecove.
Breca: Sea Cliff Dwarf, male, Cleric 8/Demon wrecker 3
Argent: Air Gensai, male, Fighter 1/Swashbuckler 3/Wizard 2/Abjurant Champion 5
Vel’drin: Human, male, cleric 6/zombie master 4.
Jaheira: Deathtouched, fighter 9/totemic demonslayer 2.
Buranwa: Human (Olman), male, Scout 3 (Jaheria's cohort))
Yvy Sparks: Human, female, sorcerer 6/Malconvoker 4 (Alex's replacement character for Czar)
Jakara: Human (Olman), male, ranger/totemic demonslayer
In the aftermath of the battle with the trogs bearing the shadow pearls, the group takes several enchanted items from the trog priest. Jakara finds a magical amulet and pair of bracers that had been his. They also find an enchanted cloak made from a patchwork of human skins, reptilian hide armour and an Olman style sword. Breca uses his magic to transport the group back to the colony of Vessarin. The Shadow pearls are then transported to the ruins of Farshore via magic, where Breca seals them in the secure cave he had hollowed out months before to store the party’s treasure. Next the group returns via teleportation magic to Gallivant’s cove, and they continue their search for the source of the Shadow Pearls. Yvy switches roles with Argent and takes up guarding the ship and Veldrin remains holed up in his cabin communing with the Lichmaster. Thus, it is Breca, Argent, Jaheria, her cohort Buranwa, and Jakara the Olman warrior who descend into the underdark in search of the Lords of Dread.
After a couple of days of uneventful travel through dark tunnels with only Argent’s Luminous armour to light the way the tunnel finally opens into one of the larger caves they have come across. The tunnel enters the cave well up its sheer walls and it is a long drop into darkness to reach the floor. A forest of stalagtites hangs down from the cave’s ceiling, many of them long enough to completely drop out of sight into darkness. A slick, steep, winding trail leads down the cave wall allowing brave travelers a route to its floor. Breca decides he doesn’t want to risk the trail and airwalks out into the middle of the cave. Argent casts levitate on himself and hops down floating towards the bottom to scout it out. The rest of the band watches from the tunnel as Argent’s light emitting form illuminates the cave as he descends down toward the bottom. He floats down several hundred feet, and as he nears the floor he spots a sea of stalagmites sprawling out on the ground below him.
Suddenly, one of the stalagmites shoots out a series of thick, sticky strands that reach some fifty feet in length. Two of them catch him and start pulling him down. Furthermore, the strands sap the strength from his body. With no easy means of escape Argent dimension doors safely back up towards the ceiling. He awaits Breca and the two of them move down together, but stop out of range of the strange stalagmite like creature’s sticky tendrils, hovering in the air. The two then try to blast it with magic. It seems quite resistant to spells, and Argent’s scorching ray fails to have any effect on it. Breca however, manages to inflict significant harm to it with a flame strike spell. They then take out their bows and begin peppering it with arrows. It squeals and howls. It then shouts out in Draconic. Argent is able to understand the creature and realizes it is crying out to parlay and be spared.
Argent calls off Breca, and he begins conversing with the strange creature. He asks it why they should spare its life, and it explains that it can offer them information about the realms below if they allow it to live. They agree to its terms, and Argent asks it what it can tell them about beings known as the “Lords of Dread”. The creature explains that it knows little about these beings, but has heard the name tossed around by the bands of trogs that occasionally pass by this way on their way deeper into the earth. Apparently it had an arrangment with the trogs, and they would make it offerings of food in exchange for passage. It does know that much of the deeper levels were long ago filled with water, and that through powerful magic the water was driven from the caves. The Spirits of human warriors from the surface now keep the water from returning. Furthermore he has heard that in the deepest reaches is the ruin of a strange and alien city that was once home to a race of huge and horrific fish creatures. When the water was driven away the fish creatures were turned to stone. It can offer little else in the way of insight, for the underdark is an ever-changing place and danger can be found at any turn. None-the-less the heroes honour their bargain. They leave the thing in peace and head on their way.
Days pass and still they travel deeper into the bowels of the island. They see signs of life here and there in the form of strange phosphorescent liken and fungi along with various beetles and insects (some the size of dogs), but they are fortunate and encounter nothing of real danger. Eventually they arrive in another cave of interest. This sprawling cave is bisected by a wall that radiates pale blue light. The wall seems to be made of a transluscent membrane like material and reaches from floor to ceiling. There are no visible gaps in the wall. Ghostly apparitions of Olman warriors drift along the face of the wall as though they are floating in a stream. Their faces are serious and determined and the whispers of a thousand Olman voices echo through the cave. The adventures are cautious as they approach, and no one is eager to touch the wall. Breca decides to use his stone shape magic to try to carve a tunnel around the spirit wall, but quickly disovers that the strange magical curtain passes through stone as easily as air, and he finds his tunnel blocked by its presence. They inspect it closer, and realize that it is only a couple of inches thick. Argent tosses a rock through it, and it lands of the other side with no obvious effects. Jakara is even brave enough to touch it and claims that it feels like cool water. Breca decides to walk through and does so with ease. Seeing him pass safely through the wall the other heroes follow. When passing through the wall the whispers turn to a brief roar, as though one hundred voices are screaming in one’s ear, but subside as soon as one is through to the other side. At this point Breca decides to test the enchanted spirit wall and casts a create water spell on the other side of it. He discovers the wall does in fact hold back the water, which lends some support to the story told by the roper encountered earlier.
Their trek continues for many more miles. Days have now passed, and when the party finds it needs to rest Breca uses his stone shape magic to carve an alcove for them to sleep in that he seals the entrance of, so that they will not be bothered. In the days that follow, they pass though many more tunnels and caves and even walk along the base of chasm filled with glowing liken that was likely once a mighty underground river (now only a small trickle of water passes through it). The trail they are following eventually splits off in two directions. One way continues along the river bed, but the other goes back up into the tight cramped tunnels that they had been used to traveling. The group decides to take the latter route. This proves to be a good decision for it leads them to a small shantytown. The village is guarded by a half dozen, hulking, bipedial insect like critters with chitinous hooks in place of hands. After a brief but non violent standoff with these guardians, the leader of the settlement emerges form behind its crude walls to speak with the visitors. He introduces himself as Vertram, and could pass for an ugly, pale human. However he and the citizens of the village that they call Barbas are mongrelfolk, and the features of phanaton, rakasta, human, and even bullywug and lizardfolk can be found among them.
The heroes enter their pathetic village and find themselves being swarmed by vile and curious mongrelfolk children; they are forced to swat them away as they make their way down towards the largest structure in the village- the “town hall”, which is the only two story building in the wretched throp. Here they sit down for a meal of mushroom and beetle stew, and share stories of the surface world with their host Vertram. He in turn shares tales of his own that prove to be of interest. He tells that some of his ancestors, like the Olmans, were from the ancient Olman surface kingdom of Thanaclan, and that long, long ago they were in a war with a race of demon fish that dwealt beneath the earth. The demon fish would send their armies to the surface to raid for slaves and plunder their riches. The war came to an end when the Olman god of rain and storms intervened. He cast a tear down into the earth and it drove the water from the tunnels. Without water, the demonfish turned to stone and were defeated. Now a great, magical wall of energy haunted by the spirits of dead Olman warriors still keeps the water at bay and prevents the demonfish from returning. The ruin of their city lies somewhere in the depths below. Yet Vertram states that according to legend some other evil has moved into their home and has been stealing their secrets. Now these beings are as much a threat as the demonfish ever were. Vertram is not too familiar with these creatures but does suspect that they may be the Lords of Dread that the party is searching for. Furthermore, he explains that in recent years they have become more active and have had dealings with the some of the trog tribes. The tunnels have become more and more dangerous, and his people have even been considering leaving Barbas and making for the surface. Finally, in exchange for some clerical aid for his village’s sick, Vertram offers to take the heroes to see one of the petrified demon fish.
Game Session 20 part 2 (see previous post for details on party composition)
Later the group is back in Barbas, and arrangements are made to evacuate the people to the surface. Breca is kind enough to offer the mongrelfolk the chance to settle in Vessarin, and they are most grateful. He proposes to use magic to move them fom Barbas to the surface, though it will take time. He first tries to use word of recall to teleport Vertram and a few other villagers, but this for some reason fails and the group ends up in an unfamiliar cave, somewhere in the underdark. However, they do manage to teleport back to Barbas and then later use wind walk to travel to Vessarin. Over the course of a few weeks, Breca continues to use his wind walk magic to move villagers from Barbas to Vessarin. The people of Vessarin are shocked to find that their new neighbours are hideous mongrelfolk and time will tell how the two groups mix with one another.
Once this task is complete the group gets back to their quest. They continue to delve deeper into the caves in search of the Lords of Dread. More miles of the underdark are explored. Days pass, and the one of the tunnels finally opens into a worked, mosaic tiled passage. This tunnel in turn opens into a large, roughly square shaped chamber that seems to be some sort of shrine. The floor of the room is filled with stagnant, putrid water of an unknown depth. Broken columns and other rubble protrude from the water haphazardly throughout the room, though a rubble of pathway of sorts does span the shrine to leading to an exit in the centre of the wall on the opposite side. The walls are decorated with bas reflief sculpture showing Olman warriors plunging spears into the heads of petrified demon fish. And the architecture does resemble that of the ancient Olmans of Thanaclan- though it is a strange place to find such craftsmanship to be sure.
As the adventurers make their way into the room a spectral Olman warrior suddenly rises out of the water and addresses them in a booming voice. It demands to know why they have invaded the sanctity of the shrine. Jaheria takes the lead on this and introduces herself and the party. Meanwhile Breca begins airwalking out into the centre of the room, sticking towards the ceiling, away from the murky water. As he watches the Olman he notices something the strange- it seems that the Olman is but an illusion, some kind of magical veil disguising its true form, which is that of one of the huge, hideous, tentacled demon fish. Seeing the true nature of the spectre sets Breca off. He shouts out that treachery is afoot and summons a column of scalding steam down from the sky to blast the aberration. When the steam clears there is no sign of the creature, though suddenly four tentacles burst out of the water and wrap themselves around Jaheria, who is standing at the edge of the murky pool beside Jakara. She is yanked off her feet, dragged into the water and pulled under.
Breca and Jakara watch, but can only see some churning in the pool. Argent decides to go after her. He has a fly spell cast on him and uses it to help propel himself through the water. His luminous armour lights up the pool and reveals the form of the great fish creature, which is surrounded by a dark cloud of mucus. Jaheria writhes helplessly about, trapped in its tentacles. Argent hurries to her rescue thrusting his rapier into its head. The attack unleashes an orb of electricity spell stored inside the blade. Unfortunately the electrical charge disperses into the water, shocking him and Jaheria just as badly as the monster. However, his light does illuminate their enemy well enough for Breca to target it with a sound lance. The spell rips through the water and blasts it with enough force to finish the thing off, and send its blubbery corpse sinking to the floor.
Jaheria drags herself to shore, battered from the attack. More horrifying than the physical damage is that her contact with the creature has infected her with some kind of skin condition. Her body is transforming into some kind of gelatinous membrane! Luckily, Breca is there with a heal spell and manages to cure her. An extensive search is done of the area, but nothing of significant value or interest is found. Thus, the band decides to press on.
I still have one more post to finish off game session 20. However in the mean time, it looks like this Sunday we will be deviating a little from savage tide. Breca's player is unavailable, so I'm thinking of running a one shot to give the other players a chance to run a new band of back up characters that they have created. They call them the Second Sons and the group will be hired by Lavinia to replace the fallen Jade Ravens. The idea is that they will soon be word of recalled by Breca to new colony, and can be available to replace any fallen PCs. The one shot I want to run will take place somewhere around Cauldron of Sasserine before they meet Lavinia.
The party composition is:
Whisper Gnome/ Spellthief
Human/ Fighter type (a Vanderboren scion)
Human/half vampire/ arcane trickster
Aventi/mystic theurge
The party is fairly well designed for stealth, and has quite a lot of arcane types, so I'm thinking a scaled up version of Kill Bargle- with a bit of a lost temple of Tharizdun type twist.
Right now I have in mind that Bargle's lair will be an abaonded fire giant shrine in the Hellfurnaces. The shrine will feature some Tharizdun type stuff. An outer keep built a while back by hobgoblins will surround the entrance to the shrine and will be home to Bargle's mooks (I'm thinking half golems).
Bargle himself will have recently becomed enamoured with a local girl and I'm thinking of making him some kind of Fleshwarper. He likes sculpting people, and has done lots of construct type creation (hence the half golem mooks). He's decided to make this attractive local girl his latest work of art. The heroes will have to try to save her and take him down.
Bargle will be the main villain, and though he is chaotic I'm thinking of giving him a barbed devil body guard (rationale- that lawful devils are easier to bargain with and control, which isn't really true, but he seems to go with that premise). I want to use a dragon of some kind because I haven't run a significant fight with a dragon in a few years and STAP doesn't feature many. I'm also throwing a fire giant or two (I'm building the adventure a bit around my miniature collection and I want to use my fire giant since I haven't used it yet).
As for devious traps (well I could use some ideas). I think the first chamber of the shrine will feature a massive fire. The fire giant will be in the fire, working on some smithing, and will use the fie in battle as much as possible. Furthermore, the fire will conceal the entranceway to the next part of Bargle's lair and the tunnel that is hidden by the fire will also be filled with the fire (divine magical fire). The fire will make it tough to search for traps and hidden doors. A hidden door will be located partway down the tunnel this door will lead to the lower section of the shrine where Bargle has made his lab. Those that continue down the flame filled tunnel will find nasty traps (suggestions are welcome).
The lower level will have some natural caves (probably my dragon will have its lair around here- I have large dragon minis for: fang, shadow, black, green, and white dragons, so I'll probably use one of those (I'm leaning towards fang or black). The next section will be Bargle's lair/lab, and maybe somethinglike the cyst at the end of Temple of Tharizdun.
Anyhow if anyone has any ideas for devious traps or nasty henchmen or some good ways to beef up Bargle let me know.
PCs (present for this session
Breca: Sea Cliff Dwarf, male, Cleric 8/Demon wrecker 3
Argent: Air Gensai, male, Fighter 1/Swashbuckler 3/Wizard 2/Abjurant Champion 4
Jaheira: Deathtouched, fighter 9/totemic demonslayer 1.
Buranwa: Human (Olman), male, Scout 3 (Jaheria's cohort))
Jakara: Human (Olman), male, ranger/totemic demonslayer (played today as an NPC by me)
Finally, they reach their destination. The tunnels again open, and sprawling out before them is the largest carvern they have yet encountered. It is so large that an entire city haunts its floor, and because the tunnel they have come from opens into the cave from high up near its ceiling they have an excellent panoramic view of the cityscape below. It is evident at a glance that this cave was once completely submerged, for the rock has been worn smooth by water and is still encrusted with salt and other mineral deposites. The city below is possibly the strangest city they have ever laid eyes on. It has a beautiful yet horrific and utterly alien look about it. Huge columns of blazing purple light burst up out of the cave floor haphazardly through out the city and bathe the entire place with a sickly purple light that allows the group to take in the awe inspiring sight. Every building is unique and most resemble living organisms that one might find growing on a coral reef more than buildings. Some of them have cila and tentacles growing off them, and few show any sign of symmetry or right angles. In fact, all the buildings look like they have been grown rather than built. Some structures even appear as though they are breathing and undulate like a lung drawing breath. Many have completely rotted away, and others show obvious decay and have strange patches of mould and rot covering them. There seems to be no method to the layout of the city, though it is obvious that whatever creatures once inhabited it would have been swimming not walking.
In a normal city any one of the buildings would stand out as an obvious landmark, but here they all melt together (in some cases literally). Yey, there are three features in the cityscape that do stand out. The first is the columns of purple light, the second is a crater that has left a gaping hole where no structures exist, and the final location is a stone stepped pyramid that resembles on Olman temple, which looks quite out of place among all the organic buildings that make up the alien city.
After taking in this spectatcle the party is unsure how to proceed. In the end they decide to head towards the stone pyramid, but they opt to go through the city and explore a little rather than merely flying over the city and descending directly onto the pyramid. Non-the –less they do use flight magic to help make them more mobile, and soon they have made their way down and are flying among the alien buildings. The group is very warey of danger especially from the buildings themselves. However, as it turns out the city is quiet and seems devoid of residents. Thus, they proceed among the residences with little difficulty.
Soon they are approaching the temple. A large clearing surrounds the great pyramid and several pools of water speckle the clearing. Now that the pyramid is closer, they can tell that even this building isn’t entirely stone. Throughout the building’s structure patches of stonework are missing and beneath the stone can be seen signs of some type of fleshy matter. Futhermore, large patches of mould and fungi have covered sections of the stonework. The only visible entrace to the building is a “door” located on the top of its final step, but this entrance looks more like a fleshy woman’s vagina than a true door.
As the heroes contemplate their next move a pair of the humanoid, eel/squid creatures emerge from one of the pools (the same sort they fought on the wreck of the Bearded Maiden over a month earlier). With the group hovering in the air and Argent giving off light from his luminous armour spell, the band is not exactly difficult to see, and it suddenly seems like the entire temple complex has gone on alert. The portal at the top of the pyramid opens up and more of the creatures start swarming out. However, these ones are much larger. They easily rival the size of hill giants and they are flying, a squad of six races through the sky to intercept the approaching adventurers. More begin to swarm out of the pools of water that surround the temple. Seeing such defences the group makes a hasty retreat. They duck into an upper entrance of a nearby, mineralized building, and find that it leads into a spacious and roughly circular chamber. There are no obvious other exits, but the room does have various little alcoves and nooks that provide potential hiding spots, and it is big enough for a fight. Knowing that they probably have less than a minute to prepare themselves for their enemies they buff up with spells. Argent hurries about with his wand of invisibility and makes each member of the group invisible, though he saves a greater invisibility spell for himself.
Soon the foes glide into the room. Breca unleashes the first major attack, using a cone of cold to blast them as they fly in. The hulking terrors take the blast and surge toward the now visible Breca. One quickly wraps his tentacled tail around the dwarf and starts constricting him while his allies slash at Breca with their massive clawed hands. Argent tries to aid Breca by using his slashing blades spell and rapier to distract the critters and turn their attention toward him. However, he is insvisible and proves to be much tougher target to hit, so only one makes a real effort to deal with him. The rest continue their attack on Breca. Jakara and Jaheria soon enter combat as well and their surprise attacks prove formible, but like Breca they become visible as they attack. Only Buranwa stays in hiding, doing his best to get out of the way and let his master (Jaheria) take care of the deadly foes.
Breca is able to use a dimension door spell to teleport out of the grapple to the other side of the chamber, and from there he unleashes soundlance spells. Unfortunately the fight is not going well for the party. Jakara and Jaheria all find themselves quickly grappled and constricted, and have soon sustained significant injury. Even Breca is grabbed up again by one of the fiend’s as it hurries back across the room to finish him off. Only Argent finds himself able to avoid their attacks and keeps on fighting. Eventually, three of the six have fallen, and Breca has used a teleport to escape and position himself outside. Looking around he sees another squad flying toward them, accompanied by a pair of nagas. Knowing they are not going to win the fight he calls for a retreat. Jaheria has been freed because Argent and Breca killed her opponent, and Jakara finds himself in the same situation. By this time both of the Olman’s have sustained extensive injury- especially Jakara. Yet they do manage to fly out and join Breca. But they aren’t safe yet. Now the nagas are close enough to unleash their magic, and bolts of magical lightning streak towards the battered heroes. All party members sustain injury from the attacks, and the lightning damage is enough to slay Jakara. Fortunately, before any more attacks come Breca manages to use his Word of Recall spell to get wisk them away.
Dms Notes: this was another really tough fight. Jakara died, Breca had expended his most potent spells and had only a few hp left and Jaheria was near to dropping as well, only Argent was pretty much unscathed (mostly thanks to improved invisiblilty spell and his obscene 40+ AC), but with multiple incoming spellcasters he might have been in trouble shortly. A retreat was a very good idea. Unfortunately for the party I've been using the Faeress rules from the Underdark sourcebook that prevents teleporting from the underdark to the surface. Thus, Breca's word of recall has moved the party out of Golismorga, but not out of the underdark. I had skipped the encounter with Rhagodessa, so I think I will use it at the beginning of next game session. The hereos will be deposited in that cave- battered and nearly depleted from battle, which should make for an interesting challenge when they Rhagodessa come for them(though with active flight magic they will likely be able to flee or at least stay out of melee.
The party has been having some trouble getting the info they need in this adventure. They killed the Igirzid (so had no guide). In Barbas they did well, but when they later encounted the Aboleth they killed it as soon as Breca happened to notice it was using illusions to disquise its true nature. So when they got to Golismorga they really didn't know how to proceed, but since the temple stood out as being much different than the rest of the city they headed for it. The defences they encountered has piqued their interest, and they learned that just flying in without a real plan won't get them far in this adventure.
P.H., something you could do for the Fire Giant is have it use a net. Net the PC and drag them into the fire. You'd just need to figure out the damage the fire should be doing each round. You also might want to look into switching one of the giants feats for the feat in Races of Faerun that lets a Fire Immune or Subtype creature actually heal from fire damage. Being directly in the fire will heal him/her each round. Its not an insubstantial amount either, depending on the size of the fire.
Its a Giant area, so I assume up in the mountains right? This only works if there is a narrow ledge/walkway leading up a sheer cliff to the entrance. Well something to do would be give the giant a potion of invisibility. Have the fire going in the room, the giant will stand with readied action a short charge away. Bull Rush them off the cliff.
Just switch out Improved Sunder for Improved Bull Rush. It does require the Giant knowing their coming of course.
Thanks for the suggestions Yasha. Unfortunately, I didn't see your post until after I ran the session. Though it still turned out to be quite challenging.
In this game session we took a bit of a break from our regular campaign, and the players got a chance to test out some back up characters they might run eventually in Savage Tide should something tragic happen to their current PC (highly probable)
The PCs were
Anita Alucard (human/half vampire, Rogue/Sorcerer/Arcane Trickster- 11th level)- played by Jeff (of course)
Vossler Vanderboren (human, male, Hexblade 11)- played by Jason
Angela (Winged Aventi (see stormwrack), favoured soul of Elhonna- 11)- created by Jeff as the healing b!#~!, played rather poorly by me.
Mikhaal (whisper gnome, spellthief 11) played by Michael.
Instead of writing my usual journal this week. I'm posting the one Jeff wrote for Anita and adding in some dm commentary. Commentary is all the bracketed text...
Yet another boring day and I find myself in this bar filled with heathens (This begins at a tavern in a frontier fort located between the cities of Sasserine and Cauldron- Fort Rankin). The lifestyle of a mercenary may lead to fabulous wealth, but it is definitely not for the beautiful people. Of course the group I’m currently attached to seems to be the exception to this rule (Finally a party that has PCs with decent charisma scores! yeah!). It’s a refreshing change even though I find most of them very crass. That dippy angel b!@~# keeps smiling at me, is there anything that doesn’t ruin her good mood? Vossler just keeps staring vacantly around and that gnome, the way he snickers, I don’t think I’ll ever trust him (Charisma scores not always reflected in our rping). All and all they are an odd group, but they keep things interesting, we get the job done and most importantly, it pays well.
I survey the room as I sip my wine in a pint glass (yes I said a pint glass, I shudder but these establishments are a necessary evil) and sit feeling seriously overdressed. I wonder if I can talk my way into some nobleman’s party tonight so I can have something to eat that I won’t regret later.
A noble woman comes to our table, sorry but I didn’t bother to remember her name (Augustine Merivanchi- relative of Manthalay and Avner). She hires us for a job. It’s been a while since we had proper work and I think Vossler accepts it more out of boredom then anything else. Seems they have a lecherous spellcaster kidnapping young women and they want us to deal with it (Goes by the name Bargle- taken from an really old adventure from the red box I think). It doesn’t sound like too much of a challenge and her offer is fairly lucrative; besides, what else are we going to do (exactly)?
We gather what little information there is on the wizard and don’t come up with much (his true appearance has bulging eyes and skin that is semi see through). Seems this is going to be a smash and grab, hopefully we can avoid most of the guards and get in and out without too much trouble.
We arrive at the wizard’s fortress late into the afternoon (in the Hellfurnace mountains to the west is the ruin of a small fortress built by humanoids. The fortress is build around the entrance to an ancient shrine constructed by giants). Using Vossler’s familiar we find out that the guard is fairly lax and we’re able to fly down the side of the cliff behind the walls and find cover. It’s a fairly run down place, shows a certain lack of discipline so that leads to me to believe this will be an easy job. Leaving Captain Clang and LookItsAnAngel behind me the shifty gnome scope out the place. Far courtyard seems to contain a prisoner and the room is right next to where the guards are neglecting their duties. We make our way back and after a brief discussion decide the enemy of our enemy may be our friend.
Breaking in to the small room is easy and the handy gnome uses his silence ability to hush up any unfortunate noises that may alert the guards. The prisoner is moaning in pain in a corner. Seeing us he stands up and reveals his injury. Seems the guy isn’t hurt exactly, he looks like some kind of stitched together rag doll made of human flesh (half flesh golem who has recently had the operation). He screams a silent bellow of rage and attacks us. I lash out with my chain, but the spell contained within doesn’t have the usual effect, seems these freaks are immune to magic. We dance in the close quarters in eerie quiet, fortunately our adversary is weak and he falls quickly. Abandoning the body we return to our hiding place. I cast a rope trick and after secreting away some of our possessions we climb in.
The gnome stays out to watch and later reports two more of those things, but older and healed up, seems these modifications are intentional. They only get water and return back to the building. We decide as night falls that it may be better to avoid confrontation with these things entirely and go through the front door (the front door is a massive set of giant sized double doors that are built into the cliff face that the fortress extends out from).
One handy Knock later we’re in.
Inside we find giant steps leading down and as Vossler stumbles down them undignified I decide to Fly. I start getting that sense of foreboding, so I also decide to buff up a bit. At the bottom of the steps is a large room, and at the other end a towering inferno and a giant statue (fire giant shrine). We have little time to take all these details in however when a low growl alert us to an approaching tiger. Looking closer though it seems our usual luck is holding out because its not just a tiger, but from the looks of it a dire tiger….and not only that, oh no, never just that….but it seems to have the same augmentations as the guards outside. This monstrosity seems to be a fusion metal and beast (half iron golem dire tiger= nasty!). Everyone immediately takes to the air…. except Vossler of course; the idiot, I always told him that he should spend his savings on something to give him the ability to fly (a little life lesson for our newest player). What could he be saving it for anyway? As he’s learning right this moment, life is too short.
It was almost funny to watch the tiger savage him (The tiger pounced on him for 70 damaged. I laughed!), but as he will probably be whining about it later I decide to help him. If I use fly on him though he will never learn, besides I didn’t have many left, so instead I just turned him invisible. Our fearless leader then ran as the tiger leapt after him like a kitten after a mouse (he was chased back up the stairs and ended up trying to climb the wall at the top, except the tiger could smell him and started jumping up and trying to slash at him with his claws. Eventually Vossler took enough damage that he fell unconscious and tumbled off the wall. The extra 4 damage from the fall nearly polished him off. As it turned out this would be about the 1st of 5 or so times that he dropped below 0 in this game session). At least he was doing us a favour by leading it away as at that moment his “master” stepped out of the flames. Seems this wizard has a fire giant building these things.
Unlike his creations, I’m guessing that this guy isn’t impervious to my magic. After a quick invisibility I test my theory and my trusty chain sinks into his flesh, feeding me his lifeforce (stupid spell storing weapon with vampiric touch, plus he had improved invisbility on him, so he could do a sneak attack as well). The gnome attacks just as viciously as I do and seeing that we have things well in hand the healer runs off to help our leader with his cat problem (he was also invisible). In the end it was rougher then I expected, but soon the giant ran into the flames where we could not give chase.
Checking in on Vossler it was obvious that the tiger was more than he could handle. Honestly it was tougher than I thought, but I would never let him know that (It was looking bad for a while. I thought Vossler was done for sure, and I would have killed him except that Mikhaal decided to use a ghost sound to try to distract the tiger, and he rolled pretty high on a bluff check, so I ruled that the tiger followed off the sound and left Vossler alone to bleed out on the floor, which allowed Angela to get to him and do some healing). Luckily, we discovered that it wasn’t immune to well placed strikes and me and the gnome eventually were able to surround him and take him down little by little (this took a while, but with the PCs invisible and flying it was tough for the tiger to get any good licks on him and he eventually was defeated).
Looking at each other, well they were a sorry sight, but the giant's lifeforce shielded me from any real harm; and really we needed to rest if we were going to face this wizard. Hiding our extra dimensional containers on top of a handy pillar (they tied a quiver of Elhonna and a bag of holding to the top of big pillar in the shrine). I cast a rope trick and we climbed into our safe haven in the lion's den. We were given some amusement a short time later when a demon found our stuff and in an attempt to claim the goods it teleported up and fell down to the ground (this was a little embarassing for me). He left, and in that short time Angela moved our things to a more secure location.
Upon waking we buffed up and started leaving the safety of our nest; predictably we were attacked. Seemed the giant was ready for round two. Would have been an easy fight…except he brought a friend. I found myself looking upon the majesty that is a black dragon. Unfortunately, it was also looking straight at me. Also unfortunately for me, it seems that “I” was the center of his attentions; but really I can’t blame him for that. Seems staring dumbly into the open maw of a dragon is the wrong reaction for first meeting one, and I paid for my error when a line of acid struck me in the chest (40+ damage later..). After that it rushed in to get close and personal like an unwanted suitor. I’d have none of that and withdrew to recuperate. By the time I rejoined the battle, the fire giant had fallen (Angela cast Righteous Might on Vossler, and after nearly taking a 3x damage critical hit from the giant's maul- if only I'd confirmed it, he managed to bring the still wounded giant down) and the dragon could no longer see me (Anita had improved invisibility on her, but Mikhaal had stolen the dragon's "see invisibility" spell from the dragon). I wasted no time in exacting my revenge. I laughed with delight as each savage blow dug into his flesh (the dragon was still getting some licks in, and with a high AC it was taking the PCs a while to finish it off, but once the buffed up Vossler joined Anita and Mikhaal the dragon really started taking the damage).
Then there was this really bright light….and things got crazy (At this point Bargle arrived. He had improved invis, fly and other spells active on him. He entered the fight with a prismatic spray spell. It hit both Vossler and Anita, and both of them failed their saves. I also rolled that they were hit by the insanity effect of the ray, so at that point they were both insane).
I mean that literally of course. Obviously someone slipped something into my drink and I better not wake up in some sleazy inn next to something that just climbed out of the trees or there is going to be hell to pay!
(After this things got nasty. Bargle started pummeling the party with fireballs and such. Vossler was brought to negatives then healed and brought to negatives again, and i think this cycle even occured a third time. When he was on his feet he and Anita spent most of their time babbling like idiots, running scared or attacking their fellow party members. Anita was actually the one that brought Vossler down the second time as I recall. Angela, our cleric wasn't much use against Bargle because she couldn't see him, so she spent most of her time trying to heal up Vossler and herself. Finally she was dropped as well. Mikhaal was pretty much the only one who managed to do much against Bargle. And being a spell thief he was pretty effective. After stealing several of his active spells (see invisibility, dimension door, his contingency). Then he started laying in with some sneak attacks and was able to silence him as well. After Bargle was silenced he knew he was in trouble, so he decided to bail, and he flew through a hidden flaming passage built into the base of the room's giant stature. Mikhaal wanted to chase after him, but took the time to stabilize Vossler and Angela first. At the end of the session he had gone after Bargle. Vossler was down but stable and insane. Anita was up and insane, and Angela was down but stable).
In this game session we took a bit of a break from our regular campaign, and the players got a chance to test out some back up characters they might run eventually in Savage Tide should something tragic happen to their current PC (highly probable). This is the next phase of "Kill Bargle".
The PCs were
Anita Alucard (human/half vampire, Rogue/Sorcerer/Arcane Trickster- 11th level)- played by Jeff (of course)
Vossler Vanderboren (human, male, Hexblade 11)- played by Jason
Angela (Winged Aventi (see stormwrack), favoured soul of Elhonna- 11)- created by Jeff as the healing b#@*%, played rather poorly by me.
Mikhaal (whisper gnome, spellthief 11) played by Michael.
Having found only a dead end at the end of the flaming hallway, Mikhaal decides to double back and see if there was anything he overlooked. As it turns out he discovers a concealed door in the sidewall of the passage. It is partially open, but his haste and the flames that engulf the entire hallway caused him to pass by it. With fire all around him, he again mutters a brief thanks for his magical wards, and ducks into the hidden door. He finds himself at the top of a spiral staircase that is sized for a fire giant, and the little whisper gnome begins flying downward. Eventually, the stairs end in a long dark corridor, but it seems that the hallway does open into some sort of large cave like room at its conclusion. Halfway down the hallway a body lies crumpled on the ground in a pool of rancid blood. Cautiously, sticking to the shadows the stealthy spellthief approaches. The corpse fits the description the tavern wench gave of Bargle. His body has strange translucent flesh, and his skeletal structure is visible through it. The “man’s” eyes are overly large and bulge out of his head in an unsettling way. Numerous deep puncture wounds hole his torso, and from the wounds his life’s blood has spilled out onto the stone floor. He no longer breathes. Mikhaal is awash with emotion. He feels disappointed that in the end he was not the one to bring Bargle down, but at the same time he feels relief to see that the dangerous mage is dead. Finally, he feels a tinge of fear- the last he knew Bargle was well protected with a stoneskin spell, he had seen evidence of this first hand when his own sneak attacks had little effect on the mage. What ever did this to him had done its work quickly and effectively. Concerned, that Bargle’s assassin might still be lurking nearby, Mikhaal surveys the area, but seeing no danger he takes the time to search the mage’s corpse, and gaze on it with an arcane sight divination. The body no longer radiates any magic, and it seems that whoever did this looted the corpse as well. Only Bargle’s soiled robes remain, and they seem to be mundane.
The curious gnome presses on, and finds the hall does in fact open into a very large natural cavern. One filled with dark recesses and haunting rock formations. Taking time to search the cave as stealthily as possible, he finds much of interest. First is a side cavern, located up one of the walls of the main cave. This chamber appears to have been the lair of the dragon they slew, for the floor of the cave is covered with bones and treasure. A horde of coins, gems and a handful of art objects dots the ground. Again he uses an arcane sight spell to search for magic, and he turns up three arcane scrolls and a wand. The items are quickly deposited into his haversack along with as much gems, platinum and gold as it can accommodate. There is much he is forced to leave behind, but he plans to come back for it as soon as he can.
Back in the main cave, Mikhaal discovers another tunnel branching off of it. This tunnel appears to have been carved into the wall of the cave with magic, and it opens into what is obviously Bargle’s well equipped laboratory. Bargle’s shop of horrors features five big stone topped tables. The central table is cluttered with oddly shaped beakers and vials- some filled with strange, bubbling, and colourful liquids, along with a few books and sheafs of paper. The next three tables are more like operating tables and each one has a subject strapped to it. The final table would be better suited to shop of sculptor and has large hunks of clay on it that are in the process of being shaped into limbs. Most of the work is covered with damp burlap, to keep the clay from drying out, but one big clay arm is on full display, and it looks as though Bargle may been busy working on it. On the wall to the left of where Mikhaal entered the room are several shelves that house rows of glass jars. The jars contain samples of a myriad of limbs and organs, from all manner of creature that float in a slightly yellow tinged liquid. Beneath the shelves are barrels and crates with contents that Mikhaal can only speculate on. The wall to his right has sturdy wooden pegs protruding from it, and dangling from the pegs are completed limbs crafted from iron and stone. Strange smells waft into his nostrils, and his sanity is strained by the grizzly sight of the lab before him. Yet the whisper gnome finds the courage to venture in. He is cautious not to touch anything, and again uses his arcane sight to search for magic auras. He finds several. The wall opposite his entrance is more or less empty and a large section of it radiates illusion magic, as well a small section of the wall with the limbs hanging on it radiates conjuration magic. Faint auras of transmutation magic linger on the bodies strapped to the tables, and abjuration magic protects one of the drawers built into the main lab table.
With the knowledge of his arcane sight to guide him, Mikhaal begins his investigation. The bodies on the lab table are sedated somehow, but seem to be still alive. One is a male ogre, and limbs of clay have replaced much of his natural appendages. The other is a human male, and some of the ogre’s limbs seem to have been swapped onto him. Both of these individuals look as though their surgery is complete. The final victim is a human woman, one that fits the description of the Gina Merivanchi. Already much work has been performed on her as well. She has had one arm amputated, though nothing has yet replaced it. Crude, scaly skin grafts have been sticked to her chest, mutilating her once attractive breasts, and the hand of her only arm has been replaced by a hairy, gnarled, and clawed hand that may have once belonged to a gnoll or similar creature. However, she is still alive. There is little the gnome can do for any of the poor bastards, so for now he turns his attention to other matters.
He starts investigating the wall radiating illusion magic, and soon discovers it is an illusion itself. He walks through the imaginary wall and finds himself in a summoning chamber. This is evident from the complex summoning circle etched into the floor. The etched area has been filled with silver and forms are rather beautiful pattern on the otherwise drab stone. With no sign of anything currently being trapped in the circle, the gnome decides he’d best return to his companions, and see if they have survived his absence.
Mikhaal arrives back in the upper shrine (around the same time his protection from fire is expiring), and finds things are about how he left them. Vossler and Angela are still unconscious and nearly dead from their wounds, and Anita seems to still be insane. She is sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth with her arms clutching her knees, all the while moaning in strange gurgly voice as thick gobs of drool crawl down her chin (it isn’t pretty). It takes Mikhaal a couple of minutes to decide on a plan, but in the end he turns his attention toward Angela, and steals one of her mass aid spells (she has no actual healing spells since she just converts her other magic into healing). The boost from the aid spell brings the woman with the angelic wings conscious, and she is then able to use her healing magic to heal herself and he rest of the party. Unfortunately, she doen’t have the power to cure Vossler or Anita of their madenss, so her and Mikhaal take the time to bind their friends with rope and gag them, so that they won’t be a danger.
Mikhaal offers to return to Sasserine with all haste and return with the magic needed to heal the minds of his friends, and Angela agrees to watch over them while he is gone and pray for his success and safe return.
DMs Notes: This section the adventure was done over E-mail. Bargle was in fact killed by a barbed devil. He had summoned the devil some time ago to help him with his research. It was being help prisoner in his summoning circle, and he had been planning on using the devil as a personal assistant. When Sasmose the wounded fire giant burst into Bargle's lab claiming that the shrine was under attack by adventurers, Bargle decided to make use of the imprisioned devil. He bargained for a service, and the devil bluffed him into thinking that he had successfully completed the binding. When the devil was released to go after the adventurers he could have turned on Bargle or teleported eleswhere, but he was curious about Bargle and the magic he might possess. He decided to keep the charade up and follow orders. Later Bargle set up his ambush, using his ally Ilthane and Sasmose to deal with the characters. When he was forced to engaged them and weakened himself, the devil decided to take the opportunity to attack the fleeing wizard as he made a retreat. He then looted the corpse and teleported off. He might still return...
Here's a letter from Captain Breca recapping and detailing some is his recent activities...
Father,
How things change. I write to you again from Vessarin to speak of dangerous travels in the underdark, and the addition of unlikely colonists.
The caves of the troglodytes lead deeper into the earth, into that realm known to the underdark. Having killed a potential guide, we wandered long beneath the earth, venturing ever downward, till a meeting with a roper gave us some clue as to the whereabouts of the 'Lords of Dread'. We followed worn passages and avoided areas that showed signs of deep dwellers till we came across a magic barrier, blue like the sea and yet with the faces of many Olman within it. I believe it is used to keep water out of the area within it, which seems to span many miles. We cautiously made our way through it and continued on.
Eventually, we came across a village in the underdark, whose inhabitants are the twisted descendants of surface dwellers from aeons ago. I have heard tales of this before, of the mongrelfolk, but never expected to see such people with my own eyes. Once the shock of their forms subsided, I found them uncommonly hospitable and curious, as tales of pure-bloods, unharmed by centuries of isolation, were but legends amongst them. Despite misgivings, we were welcomed into the village of Barbas and allowed to rest. I tended to their ill as best I could, but for some there will never be enough healing to remove their bent and twisted forms.
I acted rashly in reviving their chief after he was slain by cave-trolls while showing us a petrified demon-fish, but it seemed the least thing to do for so forlorn a people. It was then obvious that these people, degenerate in some ways but essentially good, faced a bleak existence beneath the earth, and if discovered by the Lord of Dread, probably would be sacrified in some foul manner to Demogorgon or whatever demon lord they worship.
Thus, after much thought, I offered their little tribe a place at Vessarin, and upon deliberation they accepted. It took some effort to transport them all beyond the barrier, which thwarted attempted to teleportbeyond it, and to hastily prepared caves at Vessarin, but over the last two weeks, we have moved all with no loss of life.
I have counselled the people at Vessarin as best I could to prepare for the newcomers, and rather than shocking them with the whole village arriving at once, I have magically tunnelled several caverns as temporary living quarters for the tribe two or three miles up the valley from Vessarin proper. As such, my hired guardsmen provide rotating security, and every one are as good a dwarf as I had expected, for they pass no comment on the appearance of so many strange folk and attend to their duties without complaint.
I have asked Vertram and his council to respect the people of Vessarin and they have agreed to only reveal themselves gradually, with those who are less deformed making initial contacts and helping as they can. I can tell that some of those at Vessarin are unhappy with the arrival of the mongrelfolk, as they outnumber my colonists almost two to one, and are not 'normal' by the standards of surface dwellers. However, as they slowly adjust to daylight and to the hazards of the surface, they have overcome most with their willingness to work hard, and their genuine curiousity about this new place.
Before their arrival we struggled daily with so many necessary tasks. Now, with about thirty of the mongrelfolk assisting Vessarin during the day, we have constructed three palisades ringing each terrace, and have cleared a several acres of brush on the southern headland for farming. The mongrelfolk are most unsure of the ocean, with the exception of a dozen who sailed here from Gallivantís Cove on the Hellfish. I have had some success in teaching them basic seamanship, and thus they take the boats out after dark and fish by moonlight in the cove.
The remainder of the folk have been shaping the crude tunnels and caves to more suitable purposes, as well as introducing several species of fungus, lichens, and beetles to side caverns, some of which are edible while others produce natural light or are a food crop for the glow beetles which are the mainstay of their diet. Professer Aldwattle is very excited about both the phosphorous lichen and the beetles, and spends a good portion of each day amongst the mongrelfolk recording their knowledge and fiddling with his chemicals. He has been adopted by two young mongrelfolk, who follow him relentlessly and assist him whenever possible. I suspect if this keeps up I will have to build his laboratory at what he has taken to calling 'New Barbas'.
Thus I am ready to accept more skilled labour here to expand the population and make the colony truly viable. I have enough gold to pay the 30 odd staff for three or four months, and have left instructions with Jeffs should anything befall me. All who come here know that the non-magical route home is dangerous, but possible. I will be speaking with Lavinia shortly regarding her return and the sale of goods from Farshore, as I have repaired the ships as best I can and they are ready to be sailed to Sasserine or Gradsul and some of the investment returned. I will speak with Hemdell and Rolstan about this shortly.
So with the tribe relocated, we have a combined population of almost 213 souls, within sight of what Farshore once was. I have agreed to bring Lavinia and her mercenary company, the Second Sons here as well, though I have doubts about the mercenaries, who seem like a quartet of dandies. I will remain behind for the moment to ensure they do not disrupt the tenuous balance at Vessarin. Egil has also agreed to come to Vessarin. I think that the prospect of carving out life from the wilderness here appeals to him, and since the loss of Hlaf, he has not been himself. Mother will be sad to see him go, but I think he'll find purpose here. I was not aware of his talents with earth-dreaming, but his abilities will certainly be useful. The Foegrims have informed me that another company of dwarves has agreed to the enterprise, miners and masons from Haverhill, along with quite a few skilled human refugees from the Holds of the Sea Princes, intent on a new life. So the work continues apace between searching for those who create the shadow pearls. Perhaps when Egil comes he will follow up where we have thus far failed.
On the morrow we return to the Underdark and attempt to go further into the core beyond the veil, to find those responsible for the shadow pearls. I have moved one of the pearls to a cave at the southern tip of Farshore, and will consult with Argent on testing how they are activated and then safely disposed of - we suspect that a force chest or an extradimensional space may do the trick best. Once I have knowledge of this, I will pass it along to all the clerics i know, so that they may be able to thwart the effect.
I will write again in a few days, but now I must see to transporting these Second Sons, as well as Egil and a few more miners.
Peace of the depths be upon you,
Breca.
And here is a final little wrap of the one shot- "Kill Bargle" game session I ran with the player's alternate PCs (The Second Sons) last weekend.
In the end, Mikhaal is gone for some three days. During that time both Vossler and Anita make attempts to escape their bonds, but don’t succeed. Mikhaal returns and heal scrolls are used to restore their minds back to health.
After that a search of lair takes place once again. Bargle’s spell book is acquired along with his notes on golem creation and flesh grafting. Some expensive inks and components for scribing scrolls are taken, as well as the remainder of the dragon’s treasure. Anita (though deformed) is still alive and is taken back to Fort Rankin, and Bargle’s corpse is brought back to Sasserine where the bounty is claimed. All in all it end’s up being a successful and memorable quest for the Second Sons.
Now Back to the Savage Tide and the Lightless Depths.
Coming up the destruction of Tlaloc's Tear and the final assault on the kopru temple (Good thing those back up characters are on hand)!
Game Session #23 part #1 (the lightless depths continued)
Having just narrowly escaped a deadly attack by Kopru and naga, the heroes find themselves in an empty cave where they are able to rest, then teleport back to the remains of Barbas, and from there windwalk their way back to the Hellfish, which they find still stationed off the coast of the Isle. Things have been quiet on the ship, but Veldrin has come out of his trance, and Yvy seems quite bored.
The band returns to Vessarin, where things are progressing well. The mongrelfolk are beginning to be integrated into the community, though for now they have their own colony of sorts that Breca has helped to create for them with his divine magic (for which they are greatly in his debt). In fact, the mongrelfolk have never seen such potent divine magic wielded by an individual before and they seem to revere him almost like a god.
The next step for the group is for Breca and Argent to take a journey back to Sasserine to pay a visit to Lavinia, who has contacted Breca via a message spell. Veldrin and Jaheria stay behind to supervise things in the colony while the pair is gone. In Sasserine they meet Lavinia for dinner at her manour. They find that it is bare of furnishings and most of the estate has been sold off to help give her money to hire adventurers to help with her new obession- stopping the threat of the Shadow Pearls. To that end she has recruited a reputable and experienced band of adventurers that are well known in the region. They call themselves the Second Sons- though these days their roster includes a many females as males.
Her half elven cousin Vossler is the nominal leader of the band, though a striking woman calling herself Countess Anita Alucard is just as often the spokes person for the party. In addition another attractive woman with the wings of an angel is the band’s healer, and a cunning whisper gnome named Mikhaal helps in other ways. Breca is hesitant to bring unknown and powerful adventures to his colony, and makes it plain that the Isle of Dread is a dangerous place that is not for the faint of heart or for folk looking to earn some easy coing. He assures them that the dangers and evil they will face there will be most extreme, and that activities happening on the island pose a threat to the entire Flaness.
The Second Sons listen closely to Breca’s words, but aren’t dissuaded, whether it is a general desire to do good for the world or merely the prospect of challenging adventure and wealth that lures them is not clear, what is clear is that they are willing to take the risk and follow the dwarf.
Soon the Second Sons and Lavinia are magically transported to Vessarin. Yet, Captain Breca is not quite ready to resume his quest into the underdark. Over several more days he makes trips to Gradsul and reunites with his father. From Gradsul he brings two crews of cliff dwarf sailors from the Angsparr clan to sail the Blue Nixie and the former Stygian Shark back to Gradsul with trade goods salvaged from Farshore. Much of this wealth will go to help restore Lavinia’s fortunes, but a good chunk will also feed into the coffers of the Angsparr/Foegrim Trading Consortium and hopefully a trade route can finally be established between the mainland and the Isle of Dread.
With this task done it is agreed that the time has come to return to the alien city at deep in the bowels of island to confront the “Lords of Dread”.
Game Session #23 (Assault on the temple of the Kopru)
Breca: Sea Cliff Dwarf, male, Cleric 8/Demon wrecker 4
Argent: Air Gensai, male, Fighter 1/Swashbuckler 3/Wizard 2/Abjurant Champion 5
Vel’drin: Human, male, cleric 6/zombie master 5
Mikhaal: Whisper Gnome, male, Spellthief 10/Sorcerer 1
The time has come to go against the Lords of Dread of in Golismorga.
It ends up being Breca, Argent, Veldrin and Mikhaal that make the trek back to the underdark. Jaheria strangely decides to remain behind in Vessarin to help the mongrelfolk integrate into the colony. Her motives for this are unclear- does she have some great pity for the pathetic creatures? Did the horrors and near death experiences in the underdark finally take their toll? Perhaps time will reveal the answer to this riddle. It doesn’t take the group long to make it back to the alien city due to Breca’s wind walk spell.
This time the characters take a different approach they decide that instead of going back to the temple it would be prudent to investigate the mysterious crater that they can see in the distance on the far side of the city.
They use invisibility magic to approach with as much stealth as possible. The crater is about 120’ in diameter and 50’ deep, and it is not unoccupied. At the bottom of it is a brackish pool of water along with a variety of colourful moulds and fungi. Of even more interest is a stone head of statue that is carved in the image of a reptilian creature wearing a feathered headress. The head is about ten feet in diameter and sits in the centre of the crater. Observing the head is a huge sized creature, unlike anything any of the characters have seen before. It looks like a giant brain with multiple eyes, a huge toothy maw, and insect like legs that hold up the mass of flesh. Lucikly, the thing doesn’t seem to notice the invsible characters creeping forward.
The heroes regroup and decide that the hideous creature looks dangerous and hostile. The statue head also resembles something that Veldrin recently saw in his dreamlike tances, so they decide it would be wise to get a better look at it. Mikhaal and Argent decide to sneak in and make the first strike at what they have decided is an enemey. Mikhaal successfully creeps up on the thing, and having used arcane sight to determine that statue head radiates divine magic and the creature has arcane magic, he hopes that he might be able to sneak attack it with his handcrossbow, which will give him the chance to steal a spell. However, upon closer examination he realizes that the thing has a highly alien physiology with no obvious vulnerable areas. In the end he goes for an eye, but his non magical bolt deflects off it with no real effect. This does get its attention, and Argent swoops in (also invisible) with a pair of longswords magically hovering at his side, and lays into the creature. The thing twitches and writhes from the assault, and then is hit by a soundlance from Breca and a Flame Strike from Veldrin. The flame strike does the most damage to it, and the thing turns its focus towards Veldrin and Breca who are standing near the edge of the crater looking down on the horror, now fully visible. It then lets loose magic of its own, trying to freeze Veldrin in place, but the zombie master resists the spell.
The group unleashes another barrage of spells and attacks injuring it further, but not with the power of the first wave. Suddenly it disappears from sight, and it seems that party has scared it off. Veldrin decides to fly down into the crater to investigate the statue head, while Mikhaal and Breca stand watch. By this time Breca has summoned a trio of lantern archons to aid in the battle, and they begin to disperse to keep watch in case the attack has drawn attention from other foes.
The statue head in the crater is familiar to Veldrin and he recognizes it as an image of the ancient Olman god of rain and storms. He remembers the god being a tempermental being, more feared than loved, but also a god who was very protective of his followers. In his dream he saw Olman priests levitating the statue head into the air above one of their stepped pyramids and then lowering it into a shaft that ran down through the centre of the pyramid into the depths. Veldrin and Argent begin to speculate that perhaps this relic was a divine weapon used to help win the war against the ancient demon fish, but as these specualations take place their foe returns.
It suddenly appears behind Breca, its hulking body towering over the dwarf. Breca senses its presence and before the thing can strike he teleports into the crater to join his companions. Argent, confident in the strength of his magical armour hurtles through the air at the thing and strikes again with his rapier and dancing swords. It retaliates by expelling a burst of flame that radiates out from its body and nearly sears Argent to death (Argent took 51 damage and had to make a massive damage save, as usual the dice weren't kind to Jeff- he rolled a 3 which gave him a 12 on his Fort save. In the end he rolled an action die and that gave him a 15- exactly what he needed to live- oh Jeff you never fail to impress). About then the lanter archons open up on the giant aberration with blasts of holy light, and Breca and Veldrin unleash another round of spells. All in all it is enough to lay the terror down, before it cause any more harm to them.
After the battle Breca takes the time to cure Argent’s wounds and the heroes then decide to return to the tunnels to hide, rest and commune with the gods to help them plot their next course of action.
A couple of dms notes: It if it weren't for action points I would have killed Argent. He is currently the PC thorn in my side. His 40+ AC is reallying getting my goat. The only thing I hit him with is spells, natural 20's and a handful of attacks that don't involve AC (trample), I used to have grappling on my side, especially using the kopru, but now he has taken to having an active Freedom of Movement spell which has made that tactic rather ineffective.
I had hoped the Brain Collector would perform a little better, but the PCs got the drop on it, and managed to dish out a lot of damage before it could cause much real damage (such is the way with the single BBEG). Though I did make one big mistake. After he retreated the first time, he buffed with some spells before coming back, and I had meant to cast improved invisibility on him before he returned but forgot. If he had returned invisible I would have been able to get the drop on Breca and hit him with a nasty hasted vampiric touch bite attack combo. Luckily the PCs are finding the attack on the temple a tough fight. The update is coming, though we had to quit in the middle of the fight with Ulioth, but I feel a couple kills coming (hopefully after next game session I will have a couple of PC fatalities to report).
Tell me about it. The DCs on its spell saves were pretty high. I was sad, but Ulioth is making up for it. I ramped up his spell selection a little, which has served him well so far, and his dual actions ability rocks it- too bad I could only use it twice per day.
Ooh they were lucky with that evil beast! Shoot first and shoot some more after - appropriate tactics!
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Tell me about it. The DCs on its spell saves were pretty high. I was sad, but Ulioth is making up for it. I ramped up his spell selection a little, which has served him well so far, and his dual actions ability rocks it- too bad I could only use it twice per day.
Ooh they were lucky with that evil beast! Shoot first and shoot some more after - appropriate tactics!
For that crazy high AC, I would really look forward to Khala if I were you. Khala's breath is a 6d6 acid attack that uses a ranged touch attack bonus of +26. In addition if it hits it automatically inflicts a negative level. Hit him with 3 or 4 of those and watch him curl up in the fetal position magical armor and all. Similarly the Bile Wretch is a real fun one. He can use that room he is in to effectively stay in the black bile of the world, and then pop up and suprise the characters to get a free breath attack each round. Then on his actual action have him submerge again. You can effectively guerilla attack them to death with that creature. If I remember right his breath weapon does 6d6 acid and then 6d6 fire once exposed to air.
One other thing I wanted to point out that I am not sure if you know or not, is those luminous armor spells are sanctified spells, and inflict ability score damage every time they are cast. You can look in the book of exalted deeds to see, but the other thing is those spells are only available to truely exalted characters. At this point he has already used them so it isn't probably fair to go back and say he can't have them, but make sure he is taking the ability damage every time he casts it. I think the damage is something like 1d6 Str and 1d6 Wis.
If he is already doing that, sorry if I missed it. I hate twinkers with a passion. A 41 AC at 11th level for a primary caster is sick and broken as hell. Another thing you might want to watch out for is him taking 1 or 2 levels in Argent Savant as that class will add 2 more AC to both his shield and armor spells for a total of 45 with just one level in the class.
Thanks for the good advice Brent. I too am looking forward to sicking the Bilewretch and Khala on him. I actually switched up Ulioth's spell list, so he has a wall of dispel magic in placce of greater command. I'm going to have Ulioth retreat to the Bilewretch chamber and put up the wall. I'll keep the last Behemoth to hold them off a round or two while Ulioth preps. When the PCs go through they will certainly pass through the invisible wall and then it will be targeted dispels all around. That should knock down his buffs a few pegs. Then it will be Bilewretch oclock.
I think he has been docking his ability score points for the luminous armour, but I should check on that. Damage output isn't his strong suite, so he has made some sacrifices in exchange for his disgusting AC. None the less I need to kill that twinky. Every other party member is sitting around AC 25 (higher when buffed with spells, but certainly not above say 30-33).
Tell me about it. The DCs on its spell saves were pretty high. I was sad, but Ulioth is making up for it. I ramped up his spell selection a little, which has served him well so far, and his dual actions ability rocks it- too bad I could only use it twice per day.
Ooh they were lucky with that evil beast! Shoot first and shoot some more after - appropriate tactics!For that crazy high AC, I would really look forward to Khala if I were you. Khala's breath is a 6d6 acid attack that uses a ranged touch attack bonus of +26. In addition if it hits it automatically inflicts a negative level. Hit him with 3 or 4 of those and watch him curl up in the fetal position magical armor and all. Similarly the Bile Wretch is a real fun one. He can use that room he is in to effectively stay in the black bile of the world, and then pop up and suprise the characters to get a free breath attack each round. Then on his actual action have him submerge again. You can effectively guerilla attack them to death with that creature. If I remember right his breath weapon does 6d6 acid and then 6d6 fire once exposed to air.
One other thing I wanted to point out that I am not sure if you know or not, is those luminous armor spells are sanctified spells, and inflict ability score damage every time they are cast. You can look in the book of exalted deeds to see, but the other thing is those spells are only available to truely exalted characters. At this point he has already used them so it isn't probably fair to go back and say he can't have them, but make sure he is taking the ability damage every time he casts it. I think the damage is something like 1d6 Str and 1d6 Wis.
If he is already doing that, sorry if I missed it. I hate twinkers with a passion. A 41 AC at 11th level for a primary caster is sick and broken as hell. Another thing you might want to watch out for is him taking 1 or 2 levels in Argent Savant as that class will add 2 more AC to both...
In this section the heroes begin their assault on the temple of demogorgon in Golismorga. For party composition details see the previous post.
After the battle with the Brain Collector, Breca takes the time to cure Argent’s wounds and the heroes then decide to return to the tunnels to hide, rest and commune with the gods to help them plot their next course of action.
The commune magic proves fruitful, and the heroes learn a number of interesting things. Firstly the gods make it clear that the statue head is a weapon used by the Olmans to defeat the demon fish. It is responsible for pushing the water out of the tunnels, and it is the anchor for the magical spirit wall that holds back the waters and keeps the city dry. They discover that their spells are enough to destroy the relic, and it is suggested that bringing back the water will hinder the ability of the Lords of Dread to produce shadow pearls, and will provide a distraction that might give the heroes a chance to penetrate the temple. They also learn that in order to shut down the pearl production they must destroy the “crawler from the deepest depths of the earth”.
From these divinations a plan emerges. It is decided that Mikhaal and Veldrin will keep an eye on the temple while Breca and Argent destroy the statue head. Once this is done Breca and Argent will return to near the temple as well. They will wait and see if some of the guards are distracted by the water returning, and then when the way is clear attack the temple, and fight their way to the source of the shadow pearls.
The plan is put into motion. Breca casts windwalk on the party, and Mikhaal and Veldrin fly to the vicinity of the temple where they take cover behind the least dangerous looking structure they can find. Argent and Breca arrive at the crater and Breca promptly shatters the head with a sound lance spell. A few moments later a low distant rumble and a faint tremor are noted. The pair fly back towards the temple. They take the time to materialize to their tangible forms, and from their vantage point atop an organic tower they watch. The rumbling slowly starts to grow louder and the trembles more frequent. Soon the heads of the kopru begin to poke up from the pools of water that surround the temple. Nagas slither out from nearby buildings to see what is going on. At that moment Breca and Argent get gutsy and start shouting and taunting the nagas. This gets their attention, which causes a number of them to take to the sky and start flying towards the dwarf and the air gensai. Breca and Argent start promptly assuming their gaseous forms again. Suddenly, a barrage of several dozen magic missiles blast into the pair. Fortunately, Argent is protected by a shield spell and Breca by a spell immunity dweomer; the bolts of magic cause them no harm. However the orbs of force and hailstones that follow the magic missiles aren’t so harmless and the duo is suddenly taking hits. An instant later their transformation is complete, and their misty bodies race off through the city with the nest of naga in hot pursuit.
With their windwalk magic the pair is able to outpace the nagas and they soon loose them in the maze of alien structures. As soon as they spot a building that doesn’t look like it will harm them they glide into one of its orifices and reassume material form. Some needed healing doled out with a wand, and then Argent uses a charge from his wand of invisibility on Breca, and casts improved invisibility on himself. Breca also makes use of an airwalk spell on himself and Argent a fly spell on his person. The pair then teleport in front of the temple and find that squads of Kopru are hurrying off into the city to investigate the tremors and sudden influx of water that is beginning to pour into the massive cavern. Yet three of the giant sized Kopru still remain at the top of the temple ready to face intruders. Though the creatures can’t see Argent or Breca, Argent is emiting light from his luminous amour spell, which has the unsettling effect of lighting up the area in front of the temple without showing its source. This they notice. This Veldrin and Mikhaal also notice. It’s go time!
Mikhaal uses a sniper shot spell and launches a bolt from his handcrossbow from a good distance. It flies true and hits one of the behemoths in the head. At the same time Veldrin readies himself with spells and Argent races up the temple to engage the kopru, while Breca summons another batch of lantern archons. Argent’s first strike is solid and the things swing wildly at him unable to effectively connect. The Kopru quickly retreat through an organic, sphincter like opening at the top of the pyramid (It seems that the stone was built over top of one of the city’s strange organic buildings). Argent sees that it is about to close and dives in after them. The rest of the party hurry for the top of the pyramid, but can’t make it in time before the “door” closes.
Argent finds himself inside the temple alone against three of the Kopru. Luckily his protection from evil spell protects him from their mental domination, and his obscenely potent magical wards are more powerful than the toughest enchanted plate male (stupid abjurant champion prestige class, grumble, grumble). The room he enters is a strange place to be sure. It reeks of rot. and the walls are fully made of organic matter that resembles sinew and muscle. Yet the floor is stone, but it looks as though the architect tried to tile right over top of the flesh- with some success, though it shows through here and there. A single opening in the floor descends deeper into the complex. One of the Kopru seems to already have gone through, while the other two eagerly await the arrival of the foolish intruder.
Unable to see him they begin randomly attacking in front of them, and finally they connect with blows, though the blows cause no damage they are able to locate his position. Instead of moving, the cocky spell warrior attacks, his dancing blades spell and rapier once again slashing and stabbing his already injured foe. Yet that one strikes back. Its tail suddenly curls around the invisible Argent and starts to crush the life out of him (good old improved grapple feat). Blood begin to run down out Argent’s mouth, as he feels his bones and internal organs being crushed to powder. The other one sees that his ally has things well in hand and disappears down- deeper into the temple.
Just as Argent is considering using a dimension door spell to free himself from the crushing tail of the behemoth, Breca and company manage to pry open the “door” (an offside reference is made here to violating a virgin storm giant) and swoop into the temple. A well-placed bolt from his bane crossbow is enough to fell the already injured creature, and Argent floats free. The band stops to regroup here. Argent is healed and a freedom of movement spell is placed on him to prevent further problems with constricting kopru. The other adventurers cast their own spells to prepare for the upcoming battle.
Hey PH! I do have to report that Greater Luminous Armor is only 1d3 Strength Damage when cast. Not really that bad of a penalty for someone who really doesn't rely on strength. I agree with Brent on this though, watch out for him trying Argent Savant. That would just make matters worse. Worse still, there are no requirements, other than being able to cast a decent number of force-effect spells (5 spells, 1 must be 5th lvl+).
Personally after rereading the language used in both the Argent Savant and Abjurant Munchampkin (I still think Spell Focus: Abj should be a prereq., at the very least...) I would rule the bonus to AC/Force spells to be a 'Competence bonus' or an 'Enhancement bonus' either way, you can't stack two bonuses of the same kind together. I also would rule that this is not an 'untyped bonus' (which essentially stacks with everything) as it is skill with abjurations (i.e. competence) that gives this bonus in the first place.
Also, what is Argent's current defensive suite?
My suspicions...
10 Base AC
+4 Dex Bonus
+13 Armor (Greater Luminous Armor +8 armor and +5 Abj Armor feature)
+9 Shield (Shield Spell +4 shield and +5 Abj Armor feature)
Thats 36.
Where's he getting the last +5? Ring of Protection, Amulet of Nat Armor? Or is he using a Magic Vestment spell or something? I'm curious. Know thy enemy and learn his weaknesses.
Well here's Argent's current stat block. Though he is about to level up. I've pretty much gone over it with a fine tooth comb, but if you see anything that is out of whack let me know. Also if you happen to notice any useful weaknesses I can exploit let me know. Currently to me his saving thows stand out as one of his weaker areas, so anything I can do that will force him to roll saves will be rough on him. However we do use action points in our game (1d6), so he does tend to use those very liberally with his saves, which has saved his ass on repeated occasions.
Argent Kirkson
Air Genesai, Male, LV 11; Fighter 1 / Swashbuckler 3 / Wizard 2 (Abjuration Specialist / Abjurant Champion 5, Alignment: CG, Deity: Lastia
HD: 9d10 + 2d4 + 22, HP: 99
AC: 14 unarmored (+4 Dex)
41 (+13 Greater Luminous Armor, +9 Shield, +4 Dex, +5 Natural Armor)
14 Touch, 27 Flatfooted
Initiative: +4, Speed: 30 ft.
Languages: Common, Olman, Draconic, Auran
Senses: Spot -1, Listen -1, Search +5
Base Attack: +10; Grapple: +11; Ranged Attack: +14
Melee Attacks: 15/10 Rapier +1 (spellstoring), 1d6+7; 18-20/x2 Crit
Ranged Attacks: 15/10 Deathwand Crossbow, 1d8+2; 19-20/x2 Crit; 80 ft.
15/15/15/10 2xCold Iron Longsword Steeldance, 1d8+5; 19-20 Crit
Saving Throws: Fortitude +8, Reflex +6, Will +7
Attributes: Str 13, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 20, Wis 8, Cha 8
Special Abilities: Darkvision 60 ft, Levitate, Blur, Breathless, Find Familiar, Insightful Strike, Abjurant Armor, Extend Abjuration, Swift Abjuration, Arcane Boost, Martial Arcanist
Feats: Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Improved Levitation, Weapon Finesse, Rapid Reload, Alertness, Scribe Scroll, Combat Casting, Craft Wand
Skills (13 ranks): Balance [5] +11; Bluff [5] +4; Concentration [14] +16; Knowledge (Arcana) [5] +8; Jump [4] 5; Profession (Sailor) [8] +7; Spellcraft [14] +19; Swim [2] +3; Tumble [11] +15
Spells (Banned School- Enchantment):
4 2+1 (S) Dimension Door, Force Chest, Greater Invisibility, Greater Luminous Armor, Orb of Electricity, Repair Critical Damage, Stone Skin
3 3+1 (S) Arcane Sight, Dispel Magic, Dragon Skin, Fly, Haste, Lightning Bolt, Magic Circle Against Evil, Steeldance, Tongues
2 4+1 (S) Arcane Lock, Balor Nimbus, Earth Bind, Greater Slide, Knock, Luminous Armor, Mirror Image, Scorching Ray, See Invisibility, Web, Wraithstrike
1 5+1 (S) Animate Rope, Benign Transposition, Comprehend Language, Endure Elements, Feather Fall, Grease, Identify, Lesser Orb of Electricity, Lesser Orb of Sound, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Shield, Shocking Grasp
0 4 Prestidigitation, Detect Magic, Light, …
Equipment: Wand of Magic Missile (5th), Wand of Invisibility, Quiver of Elhonna, Ring of Sustenance, Healing Belt, Headband of Intellect +4, Scroll Organizer, Masterwork Potion Belt, Spell Component Pouch, Belt Pouch, Backpack, Elven Tree Tent, Bedroll, 2 gp
Bolts: Bolts (46), Flame+1 (5), Alchemical Silver (10), Cold Iron (10)
Scrolls: Comprehend Languages (1), Tensur’s Floating Disk (2), Obscuring Mist (2), Disguise Self(2), Unseen Servant(1), Mage Armor(1)
The +5 natural amour you see in his stat block comes from the dragonskin spell, which he normally uses as a buff before battle. Furthermore, his foes have a -4 to hit him in melee due to the light emitted by his armour, so his effective AC is around 45. Add in any additional dex boost from a spell like cats grace or a deflection mod from protection from evil or a shield of faith and he can easily up to around 49-50
Also, what is Argent's current defensive suite?
My suspicions...
10 Base AC
+4 Dex Bonus
+13 Armor (Greater Luminous Armor +8 armor and +5 Abj Armor feature)
+9 Shield (Shield Spell +4 shield and +5 Abj Armor feature)Thats 36.
Where's he getting the last +5? Ring of Protection, Amulet of Nat Armor? Or is he using a Magic Vestment spell or something? I'm curious. Know thy enemy and learn his weaknesses.
Ahh. Okay, I wanted to know the breakdown of his buff/defensives. I'll see if I can't devote some effort to finding some ways around it. Turin! This is a callout, lets help PH kill Argent!
Bear in mind you could always adapt Turin's new and legendary
'Lenny Bomb'.
Ahh. Okay, I wanted to know the breakdown of his buff/defensives. I'll see if I can't devote some effort to finding some ways around it. Turin! This is a callout, lets help PH kill Argent!
Bear in mind you could always adapt Turin's new and legendary 'Lenny Bomb'.
That Touch AC of 14 calls out bright and loud for starters - sneak attack and various tossed caustic and flammable fluids come immediately to mind, let alone such nastiness as the various Rays, Melf's Acid Arrow, Evard's Black Tentacles and so on. The regular AC of about 50 is admittedly a real problem - until the Big Strong Critter grapples him and proceeds to administer a wrasslin' submission move...
The Lenny Bomb comes courtesy of the Craft Contingent Spell Item Creation feat (Complete Arcane) and the Death Throes spell (Spell Compendium). The spell does not restrict multiple castings in its text, nor does the feat restrict multiples of the same spell and triggering condition.
Now, take that same combination and use it on named summoned monsters, say along with Maximized or Empowered Death Throes at a modest to disgusting Caster Level, and things get ugly real fast... <weg>
Other weak spots include all 3 of his saving throw bonuses, the fact that he cannot conceal himself in any fashion due to his luminosity and of course there are brilliant energy weapons to consider - although I advise against the latter personally unless that's about all that can be tasked to the antagonist in question. Toss 2 or 3 Enervates at him and watch him degenerate to uselessness (or outright deceased status) is another viable combat option of course. Such a bright target, enough to impose a combat penalty, is also likely to be targeted by the heaviest artillery the baddies possess, if nothing else but to turn off that big honkin' lightbulb floating overhead...
I concur with much of what you say. The low touch AC, and the low saves do make him vulnerable to spellcasters. With two clerics in our party they can keep him buffed with freedom of movement and deathward, which gives him protection from grapplers and enervation. Dispel Magic effects are of course dangerous to him, but with the quickened abjuration ability he can rebuff pretty quick. We have been ruling that he can be invisible with the greater luminous armour there is still light, but no obvious source of the light, though presumably it would be in the centre of the circle, so it generally isn't so hard to locate him, but the miss chance still applies. Furthermore, our cleric has taken to off setting the light now and then with a deeper darkness.
I need to look into this so called Lenny Bomb, can you give me some more details.
Ahh. Okay, I wanted to know the breakdown of his buff/defensives. I'll see if I can't devote some effort to finding some ways around it. Turin! This is a callout, lets help PH kill Argent!
Bear in mind you could always adapt Turin's new and legendary 'Lenny Bomb'.
That Touch AC of 14 calls out bright and loud for starters - sneak attack and various tossed caustic and flammable fluids come immediately to mind, let alone such nastiness as the various Rays, Melf's Acid Arrow, Evard's Black Tentacles and so on. The regular AC of about 50 is admittedly a real problem - until the Big Strong Critter grapples him and proceeds to administer a wrasslin' submission move...
The Lenny Bomb comes courtesy of the Craft Contingent Spell Item Creation feat (Complete Arcane) and the Death Throes spell (Spell Compendium). The spell does not restrict multiple castings in its text, nor does the feat restrict multiples of the same spell and triggering condition.
Now, take that same combination and use it on named summoned monsters, say along with Maximized or Empowered Death Throes at a modest to disgusting Caster Level, and things get ugly real fast... <weg>
Other weak spots include all 3 of his saving throw bonuses, the fact that he cannot conceal himself in any fashion due to his luminosity and of course there are brilliant energy weapons to consider - although I advise against the latter personally unless that's about all that can be tasked to the antagonist in question. Toss 2 or 3 Enervates at him and watch him degenerate to uselessness (or outright deceased status) is another viable combat option of course. Such a bright target, enough to impose a combat penalty, is also likely to be targeted by the heaviest artillery the baddies possess, if nothing else but to turn off that big honkin' lightbulb floating overhead...
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This is a little underhanded, but perhaps the trick is depriving him of those clerics for easy buffs/healing. It seems in the campaign journal that the times in which he has been the closest to death are when he gets cocky and relies on that AC to protect his butt when he goes into an unknown situation. You might want to try to set up one of the encounters such that some meatier melee types tie up the two clerics and then dangle some sort of carrot (maybe treasure would work?) to get him to go off on his own into a waiting trap with spellcasters. Then go after that touch AC like gangbusters. Enervations, Rays, Vampiric Touches, or spells that attack any of his saves. A great example is the area inside the temple in the city of broken idols, there are 2 skinwalker sorcerers/acolytes of the skin who have fireball and lesser rods of empowering sittin on catwalks above basically a big empty room. Every round you can drop 30d6 of napalm on his +7 Reflex save butt. You can do it from such a range, that melee won't even be a factor. Enervate doesn't allow a saving throw initially, so hit him with 3 or 4 of those, and he will likely be dead or utterly useless, in which case he is still easy to kill.
I am with Turin and Yasha. Go after the saves and the touch AC. There is no easy way for him to increase them without taking resources away from his mega twink. The dispel magic wall idea is also very solid as it will force him to use a round rebuffing at the least. If you could silence him I don't see anything that would easily allow him to rebuff, especially if deprived of his fly ability as he would be stuck in the radius of the silence effect. Another decent idea is to use natural hazards to nail him. How about a silence spell cast by Ulioth onto a behemoth's belt and then have the behemoth grapple him. Inside the silence effect, he can't use dimension door to escape and his grapple mod is negligable. A great point to do this is with Khala. Khala has a great grapple, and doesn't need to speak to use his Spell like abilities. So have khala have a cultist cast silence on him, and then have him immediately grapple Argent and use his breath attack on him while he is grappled each round. He can't DDoor out and will take con damage because of his low Fort Save, will take level damage from the breath as well as acid damage and constricting damage. That will reduce super twink to goo rather quickly I would think.
You're right Argent has gotten a little cocky and it has nearly got him killed in the past- though he doesn't seem to have learned his lesson. He does tend to use energy resistance on himself which protects against those fire balls and such. Unfortunately, I used Ulioth's silence spell (the update is coming), so he won't be able to use later in conjunction with his wall of dispel magic. I'm hoping to debuff his freedom of movement and lower his AC enough that I can land some hits from the Bilewretch and get him grappled. Then drag him into the acid pits (which I upgraded so they do 5d6 acid damage per round) or just blast him with its breath weapon.
This is a little underhanded, but perhaps the trick is depriving him of those clerics for easy buffs/healing. It seems in the campaign journal that the times in which he has been the closest to death are when he gets cocky and relies on that AC to protect his butt when he goes into an unknown situation. You might want to try to set up one of the encounters such that some meatier melee types tie up the two clerics and then dangle some sort of carrot (maybe treasure would work?) to get him to go off on his own into a waiting trap with spellcasters. Then go after that touch AC like gangbusters. Enervations, Rays, Vampiric Touches, or spells that attack any of his saves. A great example is the area inside the temple in the city of broken idols, there are 2 skinwalker sorcerers/acolytes of the skin who have fireball and lesser rods of empowering sittin on catwalks above basically a big empty room. Every round you can drop 30d6 of napalm on his +7 Reflex save butt. You can do it from such a range, that melee won't even be a factor. Enervate doesn't allow a saving throw initially, so hit him with 3 or 4 of those, and he will likely be dead or utterly useless, in which case he is still easy to kill.
I am with Turin and Yasha. Go after the saves and the touch AC. There is no easy way for him to increase them without taking resources away from his mega twink. The dispel magic wall idea is also very solid as it will force him to use a round rebuffing at the least. If you could silence him I don't see anything that would easily allow him to rebuff, especially if deprived of his fly ability as he would be stuck in the radius of the silence effect. Another decent idea is to use natural hazards to nail him. How about a silence spell cast by Ulioth onto a behemoth's belt and then have the behemoth grapple him. Inside the silence effect, he can't use dimension door to escape and his grapple mod is negligable. A great point to do this is with Khala. Khala has a great grapple, and doesn't need to speak to use...
Now, considering the buffs that he seems to constantly be wearing, both from himself and from the clerics, a tactic to consider might be the spell
Reciprocal Gyre. I'm not sure how it would interact with his abjurative abilities, but it will turn all those buffs against him.
5th level spell, from Complete Arcane. Does 1d6 damage per spell level targeted on Argent (i.e. all personal defensive spell/buffs) Will Save for half. Then a Fortitude save or be stunned for 1d6 rounds if the Will save is failed.
Either that or use Fleshshiver. (6th level, Updated in Spell Compendium)
Text is: a creature with Hit Dice equal to or lower than your caster level is automatically stunned for 1 round (if higher, they get a save vs stun).
Next round they take 1d6 per level (max 15d6) and are nauseated by pain for 1d4+2 rounds, Fortitude negates.
Two very favorite spells of mine.
I've had some fun with that spell before- though we ran into a discussion about how it would interact with a spell turning spell, as we had a PC use it against an enemy wizard who had spell turning. I ruled it bounced back and the PC got hit with his own recricol gyre spell- poor bastard.
Fleshshiver I need to look into.
Now, considering the buffs that he seems to constantly be wearing, both from himself and from the clerics, a tactic to consider might be the spell
Reciprocal Gyre. I'm not sure how it would interact with his abjurative abilities, but it will turn all those buffs against him.
5th level spell, from Complete Arcane. Does 1d6 damage per spell level targeted on Argent (i.e. all personal defensive spell/buffs) Will Save for half. Then a Fortitude save or be stunned for 1d6 rounds if the Will save is failed.
Either that or use Fleshshiver. (6th level, Updated in Spell Compendium)
Text is: a creature with Hit Dice equal to or lower than your caster level is automatically stunned for 1 round (if higher, they get a save vs stun).
Next round they take 1d6 per level (max 15d6) and are nauseated by pain for 1d4+2 rounds, Fortitude negates.Two very favorite spells of mine.
That is the question though...do they have access to Spell Turning right now? I'm blanking on the character's levels at the moment. about 12th right? So no spell turning as yet, right?
And yes, spell turning is the danger of a Gyre. But that is how a spell duel of that sort works. Thats why someone planning on Gyring an Abjurative specialist should have a Ring of Counterspells with Reciprocal Gyre in it.
Brent gives most excellent advise PH.
The Lenny Bomb presumes a 12th level/12 HD critter-caster with access to the Death Throes spell at a minimum.(Cleric 5, Sor/Wiz 5, SC pp 60-61.) Use the Craft Contingent Spell feat (Complete Arcane) to tack this puppy onto mooks, triggering upon the same conditions as the spell itself, the difference being that the spell has no set duration. For the added creepification factor (and not accounting a smidge for any other buffs and items), every recipient viewed with Detect Magic radiates a Moderate aura of Necromancy... the only clue as to what awaits them.
The 'bare bones' version of this combination is done at a Caster Level of 9, instantaneously delivering (upon death) 9d6 force effect damage to a 30ft radius burst that allows no saving throw and ignores spell resistance. Statistically average damage weighs in at a respectable 48 hit points. Cost is 4,500 gp. A Maximized CL 9 Death Throes would dole out a more impressive 72 hp burst (SL 8, CL 9, cost 7200 gp). A summoner able to track down and spend about a week at a time with thier named summonable critters could spend a great deal of time, money and xp on preparing a veritable horde of kamikazicritters...
The "Version A" Lenny Bomb utilized 7 caster level 20 death bombs, heightened to spell level 8. 140d8 damage averages at 630 hp, which I rolled on 7d8 x20 in Lenny's (very brief) encounter with Dragotha's deathwind breath weapon.
Personally, I would go with one of the following versions:
"B", minimalist version: Maximized Death Throes, Spell Level 8, Caster Level 15, deals 120 hp force effect damage to a 30 ft radius burst upon death (no save, no SR), cost of 12,000 gp.
"B", full version: Maximized Death Throes, SL 8, CL 20, cost 16,000 gp, dealing 160 hp.
"C", deluxe version: Maximized Transplanar Death Throes: SL 9, CL 20, cost 18,000 gp, dealing 160 hp even inside of extraplanar spaces within the burst. Use a minimum of 5 of these (800 hp), 10 if you wish to be truly thorough (1,600 hp). Perfect for fragging those hiding in Mazes, Mordenkainen's Mansions, Rope Trick holes and other such places...
Here's the final segment of where we got to with the expedition into the Kopru Temple.
The party has entered the temple and chased the Kopru to the lower levels.
Veldrin wanders over to the opening in the floor and sees that below is another chamber that is much larger than the relatively small chamber they are currently in. However, this room is full of water. He estimates that there is an air pocket about two feet high between the water line and the ceiling, but other than that the room is submerged. No one is eager to dive in, but Mikhaal opts to go first. He is again made invisible (thanks to Argent’s rapidly depleting wand), and using an airwalk spell the gnome crouches low and walks in the small gap between the ceiling and the water. Breca’s lantern archons accompany him, providing illumination to the pool below. The water is murky and rank, and like the chamber above, this room has fleshy organic walls. It is as though he is walking inside some kind of massive abberation. Suddenly there is splashing in the water and the three sectioned, fluked tails of giant kopru lash out of the water and begin thrashing the lantern archons. Two are blasted back to the heavens, while one manages to teleport to the safety of the room above. Mikhaal decides to stay quiet. With no freedom of movement spell active on him, moving and fighting in the water will prove tricky, and he’s smart enough to know when to lay low.
The others soon enter with Argent eager to spearhead the attack. In the dark waters the heroes find three of the oversized Kopru waiting for them. One of them is not one of the ones from up top. This one has an elaborate chain shirt and wicked looking double pointed spear. He hangs back a little while his two allies move in on the characters. But he soon displays his power by opening up with a powerful spell that nearly obliterates Veldrin’s mind (feeblemind- he made his save) and then in the same instant surges towards Breca and unleashes a flurry of devastating spear thrusts on the dwarf that leave him on the verge of unconsciouness. The canny dwarf realizes he might be about to die, so he plays possum and allows his body to float towards the floor of room, where he hopes he will be forgotten and have a chance to use a heal spell. Veldrin tries to do his part by contributing offensive spells to the fray, but the Kopru are able to resist his attempts to magically blind them and slay them. Argent continues to make use of his steeldance spell and take advantage of his invisible state as it is on the verge of ending. The kopru find that they are unable to harm Argent and turn their attention toward Veldrin. Mikhaal remains in hiding, though he does manage to hit their leader with a well placed ray of enfeeblement. The leader moves in on Veldrin, but first casts a silence spell on himself, which suddenly makes it very difficult for the party spellcasters to do anything. Veldrin soon finds him the next victim of a series of horrific spear thrusts that put him on death’s door and send his bloody, unconscious body drifting down to join Breca’s on the floor of the chamber (good thing Breca had used water breathing on the party). Argent manages to finish off one of the Kopru with blades, but suddenly finds himself essentially alone against two of them. Mikhaal tries to remain hidden looking for an opportunity to strike.
The session ended at this point.
DMs Notes: I buffed Ulioth with Rigtheous Might in lieu of another 5th level spell. That combined with Bull's strength increased his damage output a lot, which was why he proved able to take down Breca in one round and Veldrin in another. He also silenced himself (not sure if that was a good move). He will dismiss it shortly. Currently he has taken some damage but is hanging in there. However, he is about to lose his righteous might, which will knock his AC down and take off 40hp. His strength will also go to crap (thanks to the 8 point penalty he took from ray of enfeeblement). He is low on offensive spells, but still has a wall of dispel magic and a wrack spell. Plus he can convert to cause wounds spells- I'm thinking on lacing Argent with a couple. My current plan is to have him fall back (taking Veldrin's -8 hp body with him) to the Bilewretch room. The party will have to get through another vagina door to reach him and I will leave the surviving Kopru Behemoth behind to buy him time. I want him to get his wall of dispel magic up for when the PCs come after him, and hopefully give him a chance to heal a little. After that it will be mostly up to the Bilewretch. If things go well the PCs will go through the wall and loose a lot of their buffs, making them vulnerable to the Bilewretch.
Do not forget the oft-forgotten debuffing spell of the game : Slow. (Especially against such relatively weak save bonuses.) Tag them with two of them if the baddies can figure they have haste or anything similar up - one to counter the haste (and shut down thier booties), the second to royally and literally slow them down... Heighten Spell is invaluable in conjunction with Slow, to better punch through such pesky things as globes of invulnerability...
Here's my version of Ulioth's stat block. He has already cast: feeblemind, righteous might, spell resistance, air walk, control water, dispel magic, bull's strength, resist elements, and silence. Everything else is still ready to roll. He is about to lose righteous might, which will drop his strength to 12 (due to ray of enfeeblement). His hp are down at 158, but he will also lose 40 when the spell vanishes (I think- is that right?).
Ulioth, CR 14, CE,
kopru, male, cleric 8/thrall of Demogorgon 4
Languages: Korpru, Abyssal, Aboleth, Aquan, Olman
hp 179 (20 HD) +40- hp 219
AC 27 (+8- +4 chain shirt, +1 dex, +3 deflection, +5 natural) FF 26, Touch 14
AC 30 (+8- +4 chain shirt, +1 dex, +3 deflection, +9 natural, -1 size), DR 5/good
Initiative: +5, Speed: 5’, swim 40’, SR 22.
Senses: Spot +6, Listen +6, darkvision
Active Spells: righteous might, spell resistance, air walk, bull’s strength, fly (from a potion), resist acid, silence (for now).
Base Attack/Grapple: +18/+32 or +38
Full Melee Attacks: +2 unholy spear, +28, +23, +18, +13/ 2d6+15 (21 or 27), 19-20 x3, and tail slap +27/1d8+4 (8), and bite +27/1d6+4 (7).
Saves: Fort +15 (+17), Ref +10, Will +19
Memorized Spells (CL 10, +21 touch, +19 ranged touch)
5th feeblemind*, wall of dispel magic, righteous might, spell resistance.
4th air walk, sending, dimensional anchor*, cure critical, control water
3rd dispel magic, wrack x2, contagion*, cure serious.
2nd blindness/deafness (DC 18)*, bull’s strength, cure moderate (x2), resist elements, silence, spiritual weapon.
1st divine favour x2, protection from good, doom*, aid, entropic shield.
Abilities: Str 16 (24/28), Dex 12, Con 16 (20), Int 10, Wis 23, Cha 16.
Attack Options: ignore hardness 1 per day, dual actions 2 per day, reaching touch 3 per day, fear touch (3 per day, DC 17- frightened for 1d4 rounds or shaken for 1 round).
Special Abilities: dominate person (SU, 1 per day, DC 18), hypnotism (DC, 1 per day), darkvision, amphibious.
Skills: Concentration +14, Escape Artist +11, Intimidate +13, Knowledge (Arcana) +6, Knowledge (Religion) +8, +6 (Planes).
Feats: Craft Wonderous Item, Improved Crit (Spear), Improved Initiative, Improved Toughness, Multiattack, Thrall to Demon, Willing Deformity.
Gear: +4 chain shirt, +2 unholy spear, periapt of wisdom +4, ring of protection +3, portable hole (filled with water), potion of blur, potion of resist acid, potion of cure critical, potion of fly )x2), wand of cure moderate (14 charges).
If you have a battle plan that I can use next game session let me know.
PH, when is your next session? I'll dig a good look through my mag for some inspiration. Chances are Turin will be much faster than I am though. And while I might occasionally pull something interesting out, Turin is well carnivorous. Trust him for the number crunching. Brent should hopefully weigh in too. He often seems to have some useful insights.
Off hand, its been a bit since I've looked at this particular arc of the STAP. So I'll be needing to refresh myself on it. Try and have some suggestions tomorrow.
I definately think its safe to say that Ulioth considers Argent the prime threat at the moment. Definately focus the Bile Wretch on him. 'If' it can hit him of course. Otherwise, slay as many of the others as possible and then try and take him down or make him run.
We're scheduled to play again on Sunday. A couple things- I pride myself on running my villains honestly, so I won't retool his spell selection, and the Bilewretch I'm running as stated in the mag. The one change I've made is that the bile will do 5d6 acid per round to anyone submerged in it, and I'm calling for a naseau Fort save to anyone entering the room from the toxic fumes given off by the bile DC ? (hopefully Ulioth won't fail his).
PH, when is your next session? I'll dig a good look through my mag for some inspiration. Chances are Turin will be much faster than I am though. And while I might occasionally pull something interesting out, Turin is well carnivorous. Trust him for the number crunching. Brent should hopefully weigh in too. He often seems to have some useful insights.
Off hand, its been a bit since I've looked at this particular arc of the STAP. So I'll be needing to refresh myself on it. Try and have some suggestions tomorrow.
I definately think its safe to say that Ulioth considers Argent the prime threat at the moment. Definately focus the Bile Wretch on him. 'If' it can hit him of course. Otherwise, slay as many of the others as possible and then try and take him down or make him run.
By the way I haven't used Ulioth's ignore hardness yet. Could I use that to penetrate Argent's armour with a power attack or does it not ignore amour bonuses?
If you have a battle plan that I can use next game session let me know.
Guess his SR of 22 didn't help so much... and why did you bother with an air walk spell ? He has a 5ft land speed, so it does him no good at all. Swap it out unless they've observed him "swimming in air". Since he has not fired off his spiritual weapon, I would swap it out for Lesser Spell Immunity and key it to Ray of Enfeeblement and one other first or second level spell he's observed them making use of that allows SR. The Air Walk should probably be swapped for a Divine Power spell, which will stack nicely with Divine Favor. He I believe has one remaining use of dual action for the day, which would best be used to simultaneously grant himself Divine Power AND Divine Favor, giving himself a 10-round timer for those spells.
As a generalized battle plan - especially if the remaining kopru behemoth buys enough time - would go along these lines I imagine:
1. Immediately withdraw to the bilewretch's chamber, burbling appropriate orders to the remaining behemoth to block his retreat. Ready his potion of Cure Critical (4d8+7) as he withdraws.
2. Drink potion of Cure Critical, average dice should patch up 18 out of the 21 hp he is actually down. Drop the object upon which he cast silence (probably, say, a now-empty potion vial, although a rock is preferable, or an ingot of verdigris-coated copper is even better) at the entryway as he moves adjacent to the bilewretch. Order bilewretch into blocking position. Such an ingot would have been in his spell component pouch.
3. From the rear of the chamber, raise the Wall of Dispel Magic across the vaj-door just behind it (to catch PCs as they come through both it and the ingot of silence at thier feet).
4. Surgically remove (via Dispel Magic) that enfeeblement penalty.
5. Grant himself Lesser Spell Immunity: Ray of Enfeeblement and most likely Magic Missile or some other 1st or 2nd level spell he's observed them using more than once, especially from wands or the like. EDIT: Without swapping out spiritual weapon, skip to 6.
6. Dual-action cast Divine Power and Divine Favor on himself IF he perceives the characters are approaching, otherwise proceed to 7.
7. Drink potion of Blur (to gain the immunity to critical hits and sneak attacks that concealment grants mainly) or dual-cast as above if he hears PCs.
8. Cast Entropic Shield or dual-cast.
9. Potion of Fly (to improve his speed mainly).
10. Dismiss the silence.
11. This is where to dual-cast Divine Power and Divine Favor should the characters spend time (as is likely) mending thier severe wounds after squishing the behemoth left behind. Again presuming they have not moved to punch through the vaj-door, nor engaged the bilewretch, at this point he moves behind the bilewretch using it to greet the characters ahead of him, wand at the ready in his off-hand.
Ideally, the characters are about patched up at the same time the bilewretch moves to engage them with the above baddie in tow behind him. Mulch characters to your heart's content, say via flanking perhaps...