We are just finishing up Zenith’s Trajectory, and I am curious to see how other groups made their way through Bhal-Hamatugn’s various obstacles. My PCs had a particular item that proved quite useful in a couple of different spots: a folding boat – so I’m wondering how others fared without it. (How they have a folding boat is whole other story).
Upon arriving, my group managed a peaceful transit with Aabhaca the ferryfrog, but did need to retreat out of the complex to heal after their encounter with Aushanna the erinyes. This was the first and most obvious instance where having a portable boat made life a lot easier. If they didn’t have it I think I may have allowed them to find Aabhaca’s boat tied up along the shoreline a short distance from the stairs, otherwise it would have been all but impossible to get across the water on their own. So how did others handle this?
Another difficult encounter is the fingerling pool. Swarms are annoying enough as it is, but putting them underwater makes them twice as annoying since it takes away the area of effect options of fire and many spells. My group once again made use of the folding boat here, this time to form a make-shift bridge from the dry part of the room over to the stairs leading up to Dhorlot’s chambers. They were so annoyed by the fingerlings that they decided to just skip the living quarters area down the hall past the portcullis. Funny how a bunch of diminutive offspring of Dhorlot would give them more trouble than the dragon father himself, whom they managed to pulverize in about four rounds. In any case they basically chose to not even try and kill the fingerlings, so I’m curious how other groups dealt with them if they did try and kill them.
In my 4E campaign, I reskinned the fingerlings using the fearsome Kruthiks (who have a "gnashing aura" that does auto damage to any character who ends their turn next to one), and gave a few juveniles an acid spit that dealt ongoing damage. They are also perfect as minions - little scurrying creatures with a big bite but no health. The party fought them in a room stolen from Keep on the Shadowfell, a caved-in room with small tunnels through which the "fingerlings" could scurry, but medium sized characters had to squish into.
It was nasty. The gnome rogue pursued a fingerling into the tunnels, only to get trapped by a second one that cut off the tunnel behind him, and no one else could fit into the tunnels to help him. Meanwhile the constant gnashing aura damage and numerous ongoing poison effects ravaged the party. Seems to be a tradition - they had a harder time with the babies than with the father himself. ;)
To cross they used Water walk and Air walk spell each time and also, Abhaca was a recuring enemy and they killed him on the third encouter at the end of the exploration.
They didn't kill the fingerlings, to dangerous.....they went over them.
As a whole they had a very hard time in this adventure, running from Aushanna, running from the high priest, running from the dragon.... the easiest was Zenith, alone against a group he had no chance at all....very funny.
Yes very hard, I cooled it a bit but very funny, everyone remember the dwarf fighter prone in the "bed" of a Kuo toa after a missed balance check, trying to stand up and finaly trying to fight....7 rounds without a hit....hilarious and there was only 4 KT in the room.
This evening they'll face some nasty giants and the stary mirror, more fun to come;)
It's also been a while for our group, but they managed to tick off the sentries fairly quickly. Using the rules as given for the cleric's prep time spread out the encounter so they didn't have any one huge fight until the temple. Aushanna appeared when they were way down on HP, so they fled and she attempted to intercept them in the tunnels.
Big mistake. The party's cleric had retained one of the wands of control water and there was water in the tunnel! That was the end of Aushanna. We learned a lot about the capabilities of the Control Water spell and swimming in turbulence rules as he buffeted poor Aushanna with water and released it repeatedly. She managed to switch to her sword just as the half-orc barbarian caught up to her and another wave engulfed them. It was short and ugly - an ignoble ending for such a lovely lady.
Rather overconfident, they found Zenith and chased him straight to Dhorlot's lair, where the fingerlings hit the cleric hard and Dhorlot finished off both the cleric and Zenith with a breath weapon. The rest fled at that point, leaving Dhorlot in single digits and almost everything else dead. [Anybody else notice that cute little "immune to weapon damage" in the fingerlings description? Now why would that be?] I ended up using a scrying Kaurophon to pop in and finish off the dragon (and happily nab his loot) and retrieve the bodies of the cleric and Zenith. That was how he introduced himself to the party - bargaining for bodies!
It was tough, even though my party was smart, careful, and ingenious.
Treppa,
Why didn't Aushunna just teleport out of the chamber and come at the party from another direction?
Olaf the Stout
Treppa,
Why didn't Aushunna just teleport out of the chamber and come at the party from another direction?
Olaf the Stout
Hi Olaf!
She failed her Concentration check on the teleport spell-like ability not once, but twice! I rolled miserably for her. Guess I could have fudged it and made her auto-succeed, but the use of the water was so ingenious I didn't want to penalize the players. The dungeon nearly killed all of them as it was, and I added more erinyes later so they weren't shorted a fun fight.
Treppa
Ah ok. Personally I would have done the same thing in your situation. If she flubbed the Concentration check then that's bad luck for her. I would have let the PC's take advantage of their good fortune because there will probably be another fight down the road where the luck will go the other way.
I'm running my group through the SCAP at the moment and they are currently nearing the end of The Test of the Smoking Eye. At the start of the campaign I decided that (for the first time) I wasn't going to fudge any dice rolls, for good or for bad. I made sure the players knew this as well.
In the past I've fudged many a dice roll (mainly in the PC's favour). However I've found the whole "letting the dice fall where they may" experience very liberating. It has made for some very tense moments where I thought there was going to be a TPK.
For example, last session a Retriever took a PC from full HP's down to -8 with a full attack and then took a second PC down from over 100 HP's to almost single digits the following round with another full attack. The second PC managed to roll a 19 for a save (he needed a 16+) and avoid an otherwise certain death after I critted with a ray attack and rolled 24d6 damage on top of 2 claw hits!
On other occasions though the PC's have walked all over what I thought was going to be a difficult combat thanks to some poor rolls on my behalf. I really though there would have been a lot of deaths but so far there has only been 1 death in the campaign (from a pair of Zombie Ogres of all things!).
So mark me down as a fan for letting the dice fall where they may.
Out of interest, Aushunna handed my party's ass to them on a plate and they only survived the encounter due to a very one-sided deal that they were forced to make with her.
Olaf the Stout
...
So mark me down as a fan for letting the dice fall where they may.
...
Olaf the Stout
I agree in general, but also take the temperature of the table as the encounter flows. The important thing is that the players have fun. At the time, my party was acting like the old AD&D "Born to Kill" characters... they truly savored destroying Aushanna and had a great time, even though it was not the encounter as designed. And it gave them a heartening victory in a dungeon that otherwise nearly destroyed them and their morale.
I had a bunch of scrambling to do in RP and behind the scenes after Bhal-Hamatugn to regroup the party and motivate them for the next section. This was definitely the most disruptive dungeon for us, the second being the one you're running now - the Smoking Eye character was never the same and the player ended up changing characters. So good luck! It's all a fun ride, though, isn't it?
Treppa
Thanks everyone for sharing your stories. It's always interesting to hear how other groups managed the various obstacles in different ways.
As with many other groups, Aushanna was the most difficult encounter that my PCs faced while in Bhal-Hamatugn. It was also the longest and most frustrating encounter of the campaign so far. Being unable to reach the erinyes gave the players fits. And her DR meant that even the ranger bow specialist ended up having a hard time really hurting her. There weren't any deaths, but plenty of characters in minuses, and our cleric pretty well used up all the curing wands and spells he had. In the end Aushanna simply ran out of arrows and had to come down and engage the PCs directly (after charming one to guard her naturally). Once in melee range she didn't last long.
That encounter was one which as DM I should have known better than to stretch out as long as I did. I could see the players getting frustrated, and should have had Aushanna do something other than continue to fly around shooting round after round after round. I think that battle ended up taking over 20 rounds and more than 2 hours to get through, which is just too much if everyone isn't having fun. A lesson I've learned before, but forgot to apply in the heat of the moment.
The battle with Zenith was tough but fun, with our dwarven paladin blood relation to Zenith striking him down with a timely smite evil. The invisible stalker was a serious distraction, but did serve as a great reason for the sorcerer to use the wand of see invisibility picked up earlier and end up noticing Zenith's birthmark.