After 2 attempts to run this campaign failed for different reason I finally get to use Dragotha tomorrow, and hopefully next week it ends with Kyuss.
I will be back here with details on Monday.
After 2 attempts to run this campaign failed for different reason I finally get to use Dragotha tomorrow, and hopefully next week it ends with Kyuss.
I will be back here with details on Monday.
Woohoo! Get em Wraith! Big D was my favorite big bad. (Although the body-snatching doppleganger and Darl Quethos are pretty close too.)
Kill zem ... let one live to weep tears while gnashing broken teeth upon the bitter marrow of his own shattered bones.
We expect a comprehensive report! :)
The players won out, partly due to DM error, and I had to conduct the fight with regards to one player not pulling their weight which I will take care of at the end of this post. I would have posted this as soon as I got home last night but my internet has been down all day.
The players leveled to 20, but there was not way I was going to have them walk into a boss fight fully buffed. Earlier in the session they had defeated a group of assassin devils(3.5), but one of them ran escaped. When the got to the level Dragotha was one he was ordered to scout the area to alert the other baddies that they were coming. He was invisible so he had very high stealth check. Nobody even knew he was around. He gets back to the advanced nightcrawlers and lets them know they have company. They buffed up, and one of them summons greater shadows which are not a threat to really defeat the party but 1d8 strength drain sucks. That takes out two restoration slots, which is ok by me because I just wanted to burn as many healing type spells as I could before the big fight. The 2nd nightcrawler then summons 8 more greater shadows as the PC's round the corner. The last about 2 rounds, and I focus my attacks on those with lower AC to force more healing(hp healing) abilities to be used. They end up in Dragotha's lair. He congratulates them on defeating Auroglorosa who I remade into an advanced Umbral Wyrm with sorcerer levels to replace Brazzemal the Burning because they were both red dragons, and I did not want to have them face the exact same dragon type twice. After he congratulates them he tells them they are also foolish for coming into any dragon's lair with no bargaining chip, which is an obvious reference to the destroyed phylactery. The party talks smack. Dragotha wins initiative. He opens up with death wind for 130 points of damage, but everyone made their save so they took less. The fort save for the tornado force winds only got two people, and the fear aura which I augmented with a Spell Compendium spell(AURA OF TERROR), would have had them run away instead of just shaken. One player did fail, but the monk had an ability from the APG to allow a companion to reroll a failed save. After that I tried to use bestow curse but the dice gods were against me, and the best melee fighter made that save also. The first fighter charges in, and I had the feat large and in charge which basically allows me to send anyone who provokes an AoO flying back to where they came from, but I forgot I had it. This proved to be a crucial mistake later on. The next fighter charges in and I get a nat 1. The monk is next and he tries to tumble in, but by this time I remember I have Large and in Charge, so I smack him back into the wall. The witch is up next, and decides to move to within 30 feet. She passes the save from the paralysis from the gaze, but not from the bite. She is thrown back into the wall and taken out of the game for 9 rounds. The clerics tries to cast a spell, but I had Resonating Resilience from the Spell Compendium up. What does that do? Well it forces the caster to make two SR checks and take the lowest one. I got an evil glare for that one. :)
Round 2 I cast time stop, and move to the other side to undo the flank of the two fighters along some other spells that I can't recall. The TWF fighter is only a 5 ft step away so he opens on Dragotha scoring several crits. The other one takes 5 ft steps until round 4 so as to not provoke. The cleric(Mystic Theurge) drops all of Dragotha's buffs, but I did not have the room to start a bull rush, and she was out of bite range so I could not deal with her at the moment. The monk continued to not do a lot, which I will get into later. Rd 3, Dragotha lays into the TWF fighter, but does not kill him. He is down to 11 HP though. I then throw a another bestow curse out, but the two handed weapon fighter rolls high enough to escape. The cleric throws a sunburst at Dragotha, which only serves to irritate him, and he promises her a long and painful death. I can't remember what happened in this round for Dragotha. The TWF fighter lays down the damage again, not having to deal with mirror image and deflection. The other fighter makes it to Dragotha, and pushes him down to about 300 HP.
When Dragotha's turn came about this time he quickened time stop, and got all his buffs back, and most of his HP causing many sad faces to appear. Dragotha then finished off that annoying fighter, well at least for that round. I had to round things out, since I did not know what characters 4 and 5 were bringing to the table so I basically handed out a get out of jail free card, known as a pheonix pin. I used the remaining attacks on the other fighter. Fast Forward The cleric kept dispelling, and I kept rebuffing. I took a gamble to finish off the two-handed weapon fighter instead of opting for a rebuff because it was getting late, and the debuff-rebuff thing was getting tiresome. I left him with single digits, which was enough for both fighters to do enough hp damage to finish him off.
Errors on my part:I forgot to include the shield spell in his AC, and I forgot that great wyrms deal 2d10 fire damage every round to anyone close to them.
As to the witch and monk they were ran by the same guy. It seems he is just happy to show up and play, which is fine in the sense that he is not a spotlight hog, but it carries the other players carrying the weight. He has not gamed with us for a while and once I realized, before the Dragotha fight, that he would be a nonfactor I know I had to change things up. The other players knew I held back some, and they wanted the "full experience" of such an encounter. So the agreement is that the mystic theurge player will make a 2nd character so I can go all out on the Kyuss fight.
The contributing players did use good tactics, and I felt it would have been close with a 4th player, but they had no chance with only 3 of them. Enough of my mini-rant. Next or at most, in 2 weeks there will be Kyuss, and there will be no holding back of tactics.
Edit:The first time the cleric tried to use Greater Dispel she did it as a targeted affect instead of area affect and I had spell turning up so it was given back to her. It was a later dispel that make Dragotha lose his buffs.
The players won out, partly due to DM error, and I had to conduct the fight with regards to one player not pulling their weight which I will take care of at the end of this post. I would have posted this as soon as I got home last night but my internet has been down all day.
** spoiler omitted **...
That sounds like a pretty epic fight, Wraithstrike, congrats! Regarding the resonating resilience spell, which book did you get that from? My players are about to square off against Kyuss and I'd really like to surprise them with that, but I couldn't find it in the SC.