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I needed to give my party a few more encounters to bump them up to 5th level before sending them off to the Isle of Dread. So I was looking on the boards for some inspiration and I saw where a DM let his part use the Sea Wyvern as a place for teleportation. I thought this would be a great idea to make a side trek into the forest to find a tree that would be able to do this. One hook later and the party are walking in the forest looking for a tree with a dieing dryad in it who wants her death to help the world again. She gave the party a small task to remove a young adult green dragon from her forest before they would be able to use the tree. I set this up as an EL7 encounter but giving the part an advantage of the dragon losing mobility from an old wound that did not heal correctly that hurt his flying capability. The first decided to try to ask him to leave the forest with the druid leading the way with some flattery. I let him make a heal check and he realized that he did not have strong enough magic to heal the dragon. So the wizard pipes up, I have a wand of restoration. I was thinking that this is strange they can't have one of those, but then I realized what was happening, I called for bluff/sense motive and he rolled an 18+3=21 and I rolled a 2+15 for sense motive and the wizard surprised the dragon with his wand of ray of enfeeblement. Max damage!! And the dragon goes from 19 to 12 for strength. So we roll INT and the wizard beets the dragon and hit him again with the wand and rolls a 20 for a critical hit with a confirmation and bam another 11 points of strength. The dragon lets out his breath weapon and hurts a few of the players including the wizard. Everyone else starts to run up to the dragon who is having a hard time right now and they all decide to delay and do not HP damage at all. Then we have EOR and the wizard decides to withdraw because after a failed save he is at 1 hp. Dragon then makes a feeble full attack at the fighter who has run up and decided not to hit him. Everyone else is delaying and the wizard then uses his wand again to put the poor dragon at 0 strength and then they decide to finish him off when he is helpless. The great and glorious dragon fight that no one actually hit the dragon with any weapon.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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Nice bluff! I have the opposite problem - the party are all fifth level and haven't finished the BG yet.
Two little niggles in the story : The Ray of Enfeeblement effects don't stack, so only the highest of all the rolls would end up in effect. And the spell effect explicitly states that the Strength cannot go below 1. If it was my group I'd say "Nice job guys" and then tell them I'll be running that spell differently the next time. Job done, everyone happy.
Nice idea with the tree - did they need special wood to make the teleport focus? I might just use that.
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Yeah I caught that towards the end of the fight but it was just too cool to not let it slide and it was working well with the story. As for the tree I just made it part of the story on how the Dryad was the protector of the forest and put all of her life energy into the tree giving it the magic spark it needed to change the way I am going to use teleportation.
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I used the silly dream with the druid, I gave him a dream of the ship sinking in a great storm after the mast broke and plunged through the hold and punched out the bottom of the boat with the whole party trapped in the rigging being dragged into the lightless depths. I then had him see the tree with his holy symbol growing in the bark and him feeling a pull up the river and into the forest. After about 5 days of walking in the forest with not so random, random encounters. They met a monster of legend dire bear with a bad attitude that started to growl and raise Cain but not attacking them. The party wisely retreated and the bear followed them for another 4 days to the Dryad's tree.