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My gaming group just finished off "Burnt Offerings" Wednesday night and it came to an interesting close that I feel compelled to share. It involved quite possibly the funniest, most creative takedown of an adventure's main villain that I've ever witnessed.
First, a little background. The adventurers in my game consist of:
Dwarven Fighter 3
Shoanti Barbarian 3
Human Bard 3
Dwarven Wizard 3
Half-Elven Cleric 3 of Desna
Half-Elven Rogue 2 / Ranger 1
So, a party of six PCs...all 3rd level...who stormed through the goblin warrens of Thistletop and then pulled back to rest up, heal, and re-prepare spells before venturing into the sub-levels to hunt down Nualia and her more powerful minions.
We were a little pressed for time to wrap up our gaming session with the big finale, so I decided to have Nualia and the majority of her henchman attending a ceremony of Lamashtu in the underground temple. So, aside from Orik, everyone was on hand for this final battle. I sincerely thought it might prove too tough of a challenge, even for a party of 6 PCs at full-strength.
Boy was I wrong!
The party surprised the following adversaries by bolding charging straight into the temple:
11 goblins (the runty kind with only 5 hp apiece)
3 goblin commandos (the tougher kind with 9 hp each)
1 goblin war chanter
Bruthazmus
Lyrie
2 yeth hounds
Nualia
Here's what happened.
Surprise round: The party's bard hits a group of four regular goblins with a sleep spell and puts them all down. The party's ranger/rogue nails another regular goblin with a thrown dagger sneak attack...who goes down and out before ever drawing his dogslicer. The dwarven fighter and Shoanti barbarian run into the room to occupy any of the other goblins before they can organize, but don't kill any of them yet (surprise round used for movement not attacking). The party's wizard then nails Lyrie with a magic missile spell before she can even put up a defense.
Round 1: The party wins initiative. The bard fires off another sleep spell into the midst of four more regular goblins. All but one fall down. The party's wizard casts another magic missile at Lyrie. She goes down without ever getting off a spell. The dwarven fighter chops down another goblin and cleaves into another one, wounding it quite badly. The Shoanti barbarian shrugs off attacks of opportunity from two goblin commandos in order to close with Bruthazmus and deal a heavy blow on the bugbear. The ranger/rogue sneak attacks another goblin by flanking one of the guys who chased after the barbarian. And last, but not least, the party cleric delays his action this round in order to prepare to cast a healing spell on anyone who takes damage from the opposing forces.
Now, the bad guys get to act. They're already down one mage (Lyrie), seven goblins (asleep), and three other goblins (killed outright). Because of the absolute devastation dealt in this initial round, I have Nualia frantically start putting up defensive spells (i.e., shield of faith). The warchanter starts singing in the hopes of raising the spirits of the majorly demoralized goblin commandos that are left. Bruthazmus gives as good as he gets on the Shoanti barbarian, but it's a barbarian...the guy's got enough hit points to soak it pretty well. Nualia sends her yeth hounds to the bottom of the altar to guard her while she continues preparing defenses. This was an intential strategy I'd planned on using from the very beginning, because I knew Nualia would need something formiddable to hold back the party so she could raise her defenses...and because I knew if the yeth hounds jumped into the fight early in the battle, it would like overbalance the threat level of the encounter. So, I purposefully wanted to hold them out for at least a round or two...but I started having second thoughts the moment everything went so badly for the bad guys. Even so, I stuck with this metagame decision for this round.
Round 2: The dwarven fighter, ranger/rogue, and Shoanti barbarian continue to have a field day cutting down goblin commandos, the remaining couple of regular goblins, and harrying Bruthazmus. The party cleric makes good on his role, healing up the barbarian everytime it seems like he takes a major blow. The bard takes down the goblin warchanter with a well-placed crossbow bolt. And by the time it comes around for the party's wizard to act, he's got nothing between him and the yeth hounds. So he rushes forward, brandishing the wand of shocking grasp he'd recovered from the Catacombs of Wrath under the Glassworks. He zaps one of the hounds quite well, but it doesn't go down.
The bad guys act...what little is left of them. Bruthazmus is hammering away with his flail, but gaining no advantage over the combined efforts of the Shoanti barbarian, ranger/rogue, and party cleric. Just about all of the goblins (regular, commando, and warchanter) have been taken out. Nualia casts a buffing spell (bull's strength), and takes her first steps into the battle. She directs the yeth hounds to attack. The first one savagely bites into the party's wizard. The other one risks an attack of opportunity to charge past him to aid Bruthazmus. I give the wizard an AoO with his wand, and of course, by only needing to hit the hound's touch AC, he lands a blow that weakens it before it even arrives.
Round 3: The party's barbarian, ranger/rogue, and cleric put down Bruthazmus. Ding dong, the bugbear's dead. The dwarven fighter is trading misses with the sole remaining goblin commando. The party wizard zaps and kills the yeth hound trying to eat him. The party cleric teleports (via his special Travel domain power) as a swift action to heals up the wizard. And the bard fires another crossbow bolt, but misses.
The bad guys are seriously depleted now. The sole remaining goblin commando is getting nowhere against the dwarven fighter's formiddable AC. The remaining yeth hound is going after the ranger/rogue and does considerable damage with its bite. This is the first party member in serious danger of going down. Nualia uses another action to activate her Sihedron medallion to gain false life and cast divine favor before she goes up against the cleric of Desna and the party's wizard.
Round 4: The Shoanti barbarian (who has no one attacking him any longer) makes a bee-line for Nualia, deciding to charge her and try to grapple her before she can do anything to the party wizard and cleric. He provokes an AoO in doing so and Nualia promptly inflicts a grievous wound on him with her bastard sword. The cleric and wizard, however, disengage and fall back to aid the others against the yeth hound. Their combined efforts with the ranger/rogue bring it down. The dwarven fighter eliminates the last goblin commando. And the party's bard hits Nualia with a crossbow bolt. First blood is drawn upon the main villain.
Bad guys turn. Nualia is the only one left...aside from a bunch of sleeping goblins on the temple floor back towards the entrance. She attacks the Shoanti barbarian and injures him further. His hit points are dropping rapidly.
Round 5: The Shoanti barbarian tries to grapple with Nualia again. She nails him with her AoO and down he goes. The party cleric rushes to his aid and heals him enough to get him back on his feet. The party wizard hits Nualia with his last best spell...daze monster. Nualia fails her save. Uh-oh. She will lose her action until her turn on the next round. The rest of the party is too far away to capitalize on this event. They spend the rest of their actions on ineffectual movement, buffing spells, or ranged attacks that miss.
Nualia's turn. Oh right. She doesn't get one. In all her empowered state (bull's strength, divine favor, shield of faith, false life granted by the Sihedron rune, etc.), she's completely impotent in that moment...laid low by a crafty dwarven mage and his daze monster spell.
Round 6: Someone hands the Shoanti barbarian a potion bottle. He rushes forward and...in the player's own words "glomps Anime-style" onto Nualia with another grapple attempt. This time, because she's dazed, she can take no actions...so, I rule no AoO to stop him...he just has to beat her touch AC. Which he does. We then resolve the opposed grapple check. Even with her bull's strength, she fails to beat him. So, she's grappled.
Now comes the surprise. I'd forgotten the potion bottle in the barbarian's hand. The player wants to know if he can use a free action to drink it as he's wrapped around Nualia. Since he didn't have to take an action to ready the potion, I decide this is more of a swift/free action than a standard one. So I say yes.
What's in the potion bottle? It's the potion of tree shape they'd recovered from Gogmurt the goblin druid who guarded the approach to Thistletop. What does tree shape do exactly? It instantly transforms the user into a tree. He loses his DEX bonus to AC, but gains a +10 natural armor bonus, can't move, yada-yada-yada. The important thing (from the barbarian's perspective) is that now Nualia isn't just grapple, she's flat out entangled by this effect! After goggling over the creative use of this potion and overall grapple tactic, I rule Nualia is pretty majorly incapacitated by the effect...i.e., she can't easily get free from this...and the most of the party surrounds her while a few others dispatch the sleeping goblins.
End of encounter.
Nualia is soundly defeated.
Craziest outcome anyone could possibly imagine...
Just thought I'd share,
--Neil
That sounds tree-men-dous!
This sounds like an awesome battle. There's nothing wrong with the PCs soundly defeating the villains when it involves creative thinking and heroic efforts. I especially applaud your willingness to let your players do things that made them feel heroic even though it meant weakening the opposition. Holding back the yeth hounds, allowing the AoO attack with the wand, and, of course, allowing the barbarian to drink the potion in the grapple all speak of a DM who realizes the goal of the game is not to defeat his players but to provide opportunities for fun.
I'm going to take this lesson to the table with me when my group games tomorrow.
Certainly brave tactics helped win the day, but I also noticed the effectiveness of the sleep spell when cast as a standard action instead of the 1 round action that it is in the rules.
I agree with the previous response that you shouldn't let rules get in the way of the fun in oddball actions or corner cases...but be careful of letting them hold all the cards!
what about the yeth hound's howl?
against my PCs this is what almost f'ed them up.
It did mess my party up. :( It is amazing how easily PCs can fail what appears a fairly easy saving throw.
...what about the yeth hound's howl?
Knowing that I wanted this full-scale battle to include ALL of the major adversaries, I decided to withhold the yeth hounds' howl. To me, that would have been overkill from an EL/CR perspective...even with 6 PCs in the party. In retrospect, I could certainly have held off on it until they actually entered the fray. But by that point, I honestly don't think it would have mattered much.
I'm quite happy with how things worked out. The important thing is it's not supposed to be a game of outsmarting your players and slamming them with every special ability or advantage that the opposition has at its disposal. Instead, the important thing is to make the encounter memorable and fair. And, for a battle royale against the BBEG, this one came off really well.
Certainly brave tactics helped win the day, but I also noticed the effectiveness of the sleep spell when cast as a standard action instead of the 1 round action that it is in the rules.
Yes. Perhaps it didn't come across in my description, but the bard did take up her entire round on the second casting. I just decided to rule that she could begin the first casting and finish on the surprise round when they barged into the temple. They knew what they were facing on the other side of the door, because they'd already done their scouting. So I didn't mind ruling it that way. It makes sense to me that a sleep spell could go off that way.
The second sleep spell probably should have been delayed until Round 2 rather than letting it go in Round 1 as well. But again, how hard would it really be to imagine a bard rolling right through the first casting of such a spell and into the next one without having to wait until the next round for it to go off? I felt that as long as she wasn't moving or taking any other action than casting the spell, I'd let it work in the same round given that she'd just cast an earlier one. Plus, at that point in the battle, I had a whole room full of mini's on the table for those goblins and the situation looked dire indeed. If the PCs didn't gain some kind of early knockout of those adversaries, this could have been an entirely lopsided battle in the other direction.
As it was, everything the PCs did was a challenge. They succeeded at that challenge on a round-by-round basis through a combination of good die-rolling, good tactics, and good cooperation. So I felt the players deserved an in-game reward for that effort. I think it worked out okay. And it worked out without having to resort to the minion rules of 1 hp adversaries to help the PCs clear the room in a titanic battle.
I agree with the previous response that you shouldn't let rules get in the way of the fun in oddball actions or corner cases...but be careful of letting them hold all the cards!
That's absolutely my philosophy. Rules are there when they need to be. And I think a good DM has to understand the flow of the game and the story to know when to apply them and when to let them slide. When to use a creature's special ability and when to ignore it. I think everyone came away from the game happy...including me. I didn't mind seeing the bad guys go down like they did. The imagery that came across from the game was one of extreme heroism...not rule-bending. And that last little tactic to not even bother with slaying Nualia but tangling her up so well that she'd never be free until she surrendered was a worthy ending.
Thanks for everyone's responses,
--Neil
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My PCs also came up with a elegant tactic to defeat Nualia.
The rogue (highest initiative) slips around the back of the room and positions himself within 30' of Nualia, then holds his attack.
The monk (next initiative) tumbles across the room directly to Nualia and delivers a Stunning Fist. Nualia fails her save and is stunned.
The rogue unholds and delivers his bowshot, getting Sneak Attack damage because Nualia is stunned.
Nualia loses her turn.
Next round: The rogue delivers another Sneak Attack enhanced arrow, followed by the monk's FoB, which is more than enough to drop Nualia before she can take an action.