I kill enough PC's in my AoW campaign, that I'm a little wary of running this encounter, strange though that may sound. Something about likely TPK'ing the entire party, and then telling them, "oh, you didn't really die, it was only a dream" after pissing them all off and hearing them complain throughout the entire encounter, seems rather... pointless.
Has anyone run this encounter, and have any thoughts they'd care to share on it? All opinions welcome.
Well it also serves to show the rather interesting paradox that the PCs saved the world once already. But in the end I think it really only has much use if you don't manage to otherwise knock off PCs on a regular basis.
In that case you have all sorts of fear and horror, but if your players already keep a roster of back up characters, well then no point in getting them all excited about playing their newest concept only to say 'it was all a dream'. I mean thats kind of mean don't you think? Forcing them to stick with their tired old character after getting them all excited about a new one.
You could just describe them fighting off the swords of kyuss, rather than actually running it. If the idea is that this was in another life you could also switch things up by pointing to the fighter and announcing that his character cast a devastating spell or something like that. Describe the heroic sacrifice they each went through in their previous life in order to prevent Dragotha from getting his phylactery back. Maybe it wasn't even them, but another group of heroes that they just absorbed memories from.
I have some very top-notch players and deaths don't happen very often in my campaign - especially at the level of LoLR. They're just too resourceful, and they come up with incredible tactics that almost always work flawlessly (despite my best attempts to sneak in a way to throw in a monkey wrench once in a while).
That said, when I ran the "Dream Fight" and the hordes of undead just kept coming, two of the five PCs were left dead, and one was barely alive at -8 hp or so. When the dream ended they were sullen and quiet for a minute before the cleric said "We need to stop this." It filled them with an incredible fear of Kyuss and his Age of Worms.
So if your PCs are rugged SOBs who have been cutting down every encounter with relative ease, I highly recommend it. You may even want to send in a few extra waves of knights just to insure that a few characters die - just to get that same point across.
Creative Director
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The dream fight can be trouble; it, like the doppleganger stuff, kind of messes with the unspoken contract between the DM and the players in some ways. Its purpose is, of course, to not only inform the PCs where the phylactery is in a more interesting way than simply boxed texting it, but also to introduce more information about Lashonna and to give the PCs a taste of what Dragotha/Kyuss can be like when the gloves come off.
If you're worried that the "it's all a dream" bit might annoy your players, it's probably better to simply describe the fight with the PCs as casual observers, or even describe it as if they were there doing the fighting. Remember, though, that events in "Kings of the Rift" assume that the PCs had an active role in the dream encounter, so if you change it in Library, change it there as well.
Maybe it wasn't even them, but another group of heroes that they just absorbed memories from.
Funnily enough, that's pretty much what my players assumed, even though it wasn't quite true. It was probably because I had the follower of a PC act like she didn't know her PC, and I ran her in the combat rather than the player. This was actually just my way of doing the "back in time" thing, and of having the players focus on their character and nothing else.
Anyway, at this point in time, our game had only just lost a player, so there was only two PC's and one follower. So the odds were heavily stacked against them. The follower died around the time the last of the monsters arrived, but then the two PC's took to the air and with haste boots made enough distance to take the kyuss knights out of the picture, and the Boneyard couldn't keep up either, so they summoned an air elemental and slowly but surely beat it with spells etc from a distance. It probably helped that, by this stage, I'd said the Druids had got away, so the PC's didn't feel they needed to keep defending their position. And a bit of luck, of course, when the Fighter actually managed to escape a grapple from the Boneyard.
Personally, I don't think the players or me found this whole adventure to be terribly good, but I think the final battle was one of the better ones (as was the one with Darl). I'm sure it depends a lot on your group. Yes, hoards of the kyiss knights can be devastating, but only if your players don't realise the threat early on and do something about it. My players took a few rounds, taking a terrible beating early on, but soon figured out that they needed quite different tactics or they would be pounded before the Boneyard even turned up. For me, I liked the set-up, it's tough, but the players do have time to realise this and adjust accordingly. And it really is the beginning of the turning point of the campaign, so some "epic" elements should be expected.
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I created an entire second group of PCs for this encounter, and extended the encounter into a two-session mini-adventure. Each fof the Alt PCs was similar to their AOW counterpart in feel, but very different in the details. I had the Bbn/Frenzied Berzerker playing a Ftr/Knight, the Sor playing a cleric of Boccob... things like that. Basically, the PCs for the AOW game got to "see through the eyes" of these other heroes, but gradually they began to notice things about the "other them" changing, subtly altering until at the final fight it was actually them against the hordes of nastiness. Then i killed them all, brutally describing each death, and how the PC stepped back after the moment life ceased and saw the "original" second PC. Then they jumped back to the non-dream reality and we continued on.
It was a lot of work and headahce to come up with and stat up each one, but the change of pace was refreshing to the players and was ultimately a big hit.
That would also be my advice to you. As you do not need to frighten your players, describe to them, who they were in the fighting, maybe write a short story about what these alter-egos did in the last months to fight dragotha and that this is now the time to make the last stand, probably to sacrifice their lives to bring their ultimate plan to save the world to fruitition. Paint a very grim picture, so that they see that the world is on the edge of doom. Maybe describe how many sacrifices they had to do, how many friends they lost already (maybe these friends are amongst the Kyuss Knights). So for your players this will be an opportunity to really die in a heroic act, knowing, that their own characters will not be touched. I wouldn't go as far as to make up stats for these alter-egos, the PCs originals are fine (just an idea, you could swap character sheets around the table, so that the PCs can have the taste of a different class for just one fight...).
Hope you have fun anyway.
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If I thought my players might have a problem, I'd be up front about it...tell them that it IS a dream right from the get go. Describe the "past" adventurers praying for divine aid, then describe their "dream" selves fusing into these ancient heroes...They will take risks and do things they normally wouldn't do knowing it "doesn't count" but that is certainly in keeping with the spirit of the sequence anyway: Brave heroes risking life and limb to save the world.
Then, of course, proceed to destroy them without mercy, in a spectacular orgy of death.
Most players will love to unleash everything they got without regard to "conserving" power. A great battle is a great battle, even if its "only" a dream.
Quite frankly, I loved this encounter. The imagery and descriptive text is simply amazing (good job Mr. Logue) and the sheer lethality of it made my PCs jaws drop. I sort of pulled the wool over my PCs eyes, and gave hints that they were thousands of years into the past and that only by surviving would they learn the truth of Dragotha's Phylactery (not true). It added an element of desperation to the fight, and I allowed them to use whatever resources they had, not telling them that they would be replenished. In short, they were completely unsure whether it was a dream or not until it was over, which made the encounter quite dramatic since only two out of nine characters (including cohorts) survived. (It reminded me of Dragons of Winter Twilight, Silvanesti).
To discourage flying above the fight (and besides the fact that the Swords can Negative Fireball the air), I described the fight between Lashonna and Dragotha as well as the draconic shrieking hosts that surrounded him. A couple pictures of Wormdrakes (with no Knowledge check allowed) backed them towards defending the druids.
Losing is not a given. My group actually defeated the dream forces.
Powergamers all, the entire group won initative, and the volley of earthquake spells (there was two characters who cast 'widen' earthquakes) on the cliff edge took the Swords of Kyuss out of the picture long enough for the characters to pound the Boneyard and the randomly emerging out of the rubble Swords in bone shards.
Based on climb rates and time, when the first wave gains the cliff edge, the second wave is just starting up the cliff face. The resultant landslides buried both groups of Swords.
I've just run the Dream Fight this night. Two of the PCs died in the fight with Krathanos, which was the last trial they tackled. The remaining two defeated Sayren-Lei surprisingly fast. Then I ruled that the two dead PCs would also appear in the dream fight, alive again.
And as the Swords killed everyone but the cleric in a few rounds, my players suspected that they are not really dead (except the two who died earlier of course).
So I think, that encounter worked quite good with my group. They have had quite an easy time in the last encounters, so that really was a change of mood....