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This story is too epic to just post in the Vaults of Madness thread, and it comes with the question of whether I handled it correctly, which isn't that important since my party seemed to really enjoy the way it played out.
So, the party, consisting of:
Strel, the gnome sorcerer now suffering from schizophrenia.
Manius, a human bard / dragon disciple with a string of bad luck with cohorts and the current leader of the Pathfinders, suffering from an extreme phobia of shaving, which will manifest itself if someone appears clean shaven in front of him. Julliver, as a Pathfinder, has attached herself to him as his latest cohort, in the hopes that this will stop their deaths.
Bishop, a very tactical and defensive human fighter.
AND
Ellisar, an elven druid and cousin to Osond of the Rainbow Serpent Tribe (which are all elves in my game).
The lead-up to this...
The party just finished clearing out the first vault, and have freshly exited from Urshlar's secret study, with two members suffering from a fresh set of insanities. Heading back to the Pathfinder camp (their faction, which is currently allied with the Sargavan Government), they run headlong into the two fleeing Pathfinders, who warn them of the Aspis Consortium attack on their camp, moments before they are shot in the back by the pursuing Aspis Legionaries. The party vows revenge, as the two unlucky Pathfinders informed the party of the ritualistic execution of poor Amivor Glaur, and his head being mounted on a stake. This leads to many of the Legionaries being beheaded during combat.
The party retreats back to the Artisan District for the night and to plan their counter-attack. They encounter Julliver, since healed of her paranoia, having herself escaped from the Pathfinder camp and then an ambush from 8 serpentfolk seekers (a random encounter) through the use of a Potion of Invisibility. She gives more details on the attack, as well as declares that Manius is the new de facto leader of the Pathfinders, being the next ranking member after Glaur. Not that Julliver cares too much, as she hardly considers herself a Pathfinder anymore, but Manius declares that after this expedition, he's not sure how the rest of the society will view him either, which impresses Julliver, and she vows to follow Manius at least until Eando is rescued.
The Tribe of the Rainbow Serpent ups it's guards at the urging of the party, who is now convinced that the Aspis Consortium is on a rampage, and manages to drive away the Serpentfolk Seekers searching for Julliver, slaying one and showing the body to the party the next morning. The party is now concerned with this fact, and I think not certain if this serpentfolk is with the ones on the island with the rakshasa, or not, but either way have declared their first priority as freeing the captive Pathfinders in the new Aspis Consortium camp.
Ellisar scouts the camp in the form of a raven, even going as far as to mount atop Dargan Etter's staked head and peck at it to further the ruse. He gets an idea of the layout of the camp, and it's defenses. Upon reporting this information back to the party, they decide the best course of action is to slay Ivo Haigan in the hopes that the rest of the Aspis forces will disband without the presence of a strong leader. They toy around with the idea of hiring the Red Mantis to do it, but decide it's too dangerous to trust them. They know that they can't approach the camp without being seen, and the only person who can get close enough is Ellisar, the druid. So the party hikes and sets up camp near the new Aspis base of operations, in preparation for a night time raid.
Another interesting strategy they mentioned was napalming the camp with alchemist's fire. They have over three dozen flasks of the stuff from the keches as well as vials they've accumulated over time. They were thinking Ellisar could drop it down on the tents and buildings and sow confusion among the ranks, but they finally discarded that idea as being too risky, as they might start executing prisoners, and several NPCs that the party was fond of were captured, including Athyra, N'kechi, Havilard, and Jask.
On their way to their temporary camp close to the Aspis Consortium, they stumbled upon poor Pezzock, who escaped the initial slaughter by being stealthy (I've rolled Pezzock up to stay even with the party so he can jump in and be useful at times), and with the additional firepower, were able to defeat a random encounter of four camulatzes (an encounter I was afraid might be too much for the party, but again, glitterdust and a massive trip CMB from the bard, and the alternating full defense toting fighter, with close to a 40 AC, and power attack, saved the day). Long, run-on sentence. My 9th grade English teacher is rolling in her grave. Or at least I hope she's dead, as I never liked her, but that was only fifteen years ago.
So Ellisar buffed himself like crazy. Stoneskin, Barkskin, Magic Fang, etc. He morphed into a large sized earth elemental. He cautiously burrowed his way into the Aspis camp, a difficult task since he doesn't have tremorsense and therefore had to rise from the earth every ten yards or so to check where he was going. He passed his stealth checks to slip past the guards. He burrowed up into the room Ivo was sleeping in. I figured Ivo didn't have his armor on at night, but he did roll a 31 on his Perception check, so before Ellisar could coup de grace him, Ivo's eyes popped open. A massive earth elemental was staring him in the face. Baleful Polymorph instead. Ivo passed his save, rolled to his feet, and grabbed his falchion, calling for his guards and alerting the two gorrillons in the other room. Stone Shape the door closed. Ivo slashes at the druid, but can't connect. The druid has no problem hitting because of the lack of armor. Several rounds back and forth, while Aspis mercenaries make their way to the building's entrance, not realizing they can't get into the bedroom. Druid crits and Ivo is hurting. Ivo rolls out the window and rolls a 19 on the d20 for his Stealth check. I figure he'll slip away and the party will have to go about this the old fashioned way. Ellisar literally walks through the stone wall, rolls a 19 on the d20 for his Perception check. Oh, yeah, druid. Elf. Perception is class skill. Wisdom primary ability score. He gets a 37 on his Perception check. Spots Ivo trying to slink around a corner and disappear into darkness. Can't let that happen. Wall of Thorns. Now Ivo is trapped. Ivo, area too small to drink his potion of invisibility, decides to go out fighting, screams an obscenity, and lunges at the druid. Still can't connect with all the buffs. Druid smashes his head into a pulp (kinda literally, considering). Rest of the Aspis Consortium is hacking at the Wall of Thorns trying to reach their leader. Ellisar, as a large sized Earth Elemental, dismisses the Wall of Thorns, holding aloft Ivo in one large, rocky hand, and thunders at the mass of mercenaries, "Get the *bleep* out of my city!"
Well, at this time, the mercenaries weren't really expecting something like this. Several of them lowered their crossbows. A few started whispering amongst themselves in wonder. And several fired their weapons. Only one connected. It did 11 points of damage. Oh, yeah... Stoneskin. Ellisar casually flicks away the bolt, laughs, and tells them that their puny pointed sticks have no effect on a being of pure NATURE, and then calls down a Flame Strike on three of the mercenaries, including the one that fired the bolt. He failed his save, and it was close to 50 points of damage. They flee or surrender at 14 or less HPs, which he had, so he screams and flees in terror, which breaks the morale of many of the other mercenaries. Ellisar, who has the Weather domain, then launches a few lightning bolts down at a few of them, plus any others that try to approach him. Within a few rounds, no mercenary had the courage to face the creature that single handedly, and without any real harm to himself, defeated their terrifying new leader. A creature that managed to sneak into camp undetected despite there being only one real approach. It didn't make sense for the camp to even attempt to kill Ellisar.
So Ellisar marched the captured Pathfinders straight out of camp unimpeded, launching spells at anyone who ventured too close. Outside the walls, he threw up a Wind Wall, which stopped the mercenaries who had the courage to fire at their mass of fleeing prisoners from doing any damage. This fact also demoralized whatever Aspis Consortium members were left.
Obviously not the way the module intended the encounter to go down, but my party spent the better part of our weekly five hour session planning their assault, and everyone at the table was laughing and cheering at the end of the session, so I guess it was a rousing success. And for the poor druid, who normally doesn't do much other than scout and buff the rest of the party, it was a fantastic moment to shine.
I do want to know how other GMs would have handled the situation, though, and whether anyone thinks that I perhaps miscalculated something, or made some sort of glaring error with either the role play or the rules.
@ martryn - Epic! That is a way cool outcome for this encounter. If the whole table was cheering, you did it right. If the character that doesn't normally shine got to, you get bonus XP! ;)
Several things bother me greatly about certain assumptions of the game, one thing is with so many "intelligent" encounters is their willingness to die for really low stakes. Here you have the head of the Aspis do the intelligent things he could. He ran. He was caught.
Tremendous shows of force and immunity to regular weapons would be enough to make many a mercenary's blood run cold. That they should waver in the face of an overwhelming force of nature is, well, natural.
Another assumption is everyone walks around in armor all the freaking time. When I was younger I fought in the SCA and wore some very well made armor. It sucked, and no way in the world would you sit down to a meal in it, let alone sleep in it. Yes there are enchanted sets of armor that comfortable enough to sleep in but that is fairly rare.
I'd say this went by the numbers and went well.
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Well, to be fair, the Endurance feat (which I believe Ivo has) lets you sleep in medium armor without penalty. As I recall, Ivo wears a breastplate, so it shouldn't be much of a problem for him to keep it on most of the time.
Characters in Pathfinder tend to be larger-than-life; I'm not sure why a guy sleeping in his armor is any more incredible than a guy who can *grow giant and turn into living rock*.
Anyway, while I think the Aspis Legionnaires are supposed to be fairly elite agents of the Consortium rather than random hirelings (I could be wrong on that, though), it makes sense that they'd be pretty intimidated. Heck, even if they weren't intimidated, it would have been pretty clear to them that they were outgunned and not equipped to handle the thing they were facing. Whether fleeing in terror or retreating in good order, I don't think they would stick around.
Edit: Just read your post a little more carefully; with Ivo dead the rest of those Aspis guys have no real reason to stay in the city, and the PCs likely got the hint that something weird was going on when they smashed Ivo's head in. I'd say the encounter played out pretty close to how it's supposed to, and you got a cool story out of it to boot! Kudos!
Oh, yeah, Endurance. That forgotten feat. Usually when I see Endurance in an NPCs stat block I skip completely over it without even registering that they have it, as it's nothing but a pre-req 95% of the time. Good call. Still don't know if things would have turned out differently, but the fight wouldn't have been so easy, that's for sure.
The largest fall-out over the encounter has been all the complaints the players gave me the next week over the missing loot all the Aspis Mercenaries had. They complain about treasure all the time, and they wanted those +1 Longswords or whatever it was that the Legionnaires use. In fact, it's been a month since the encounter, and they're still mentioning that as a sore spot. I don't see why any of the Aspis mercenaries would have left their combat gear when they packed up and got out of the city the next day, though.
The party and their new alliance of Pathfinders, Sargavans, and Pirates have commandeered this camp area for their own, and spent a week of game time converting it to a more permanent camp.
Modern armor is not particularly more comfortable than medieval armor. I've dealt with both (medieval: hobby; modern: army infantry). You can pretty much assume that after all the training and a year of time spent intermittently in the field as an infantryman, pretty much everyone in my unit effectively had the Endurance feat.
It was still miserable wearing armor, and everyone looked for excuses to take it off all the time.
Yes, we were able to sleep in our body armor and ballistic helmets without it affecting our ability to function the next day (or in three hours, as sleep was not always at night, and often far less than eight hours). In fact, I could sleep through outgoing artillery fire (an important skill when that may be the only time you get to sleep for the next two days) in the back of a moving truck in full combat equipment with my rifle in my arms. What I couldn't do is consider any of that even remotely comfortable when I was awake to notice, and yeah -- if I was in conditions were I was allowed to remove the gear and it was safe to do so, I damned well took it off when I sat down to eat.
Ivo was in the middle of an encampment filled with his combat veteran underlings, personal guard outside the door, probably imagining himself quite safe from surprise guests. Of course he wasn't wearing his armor. It's not a matter of being more or less "realistic" than someone taking on the form of an earth elemental or throwing fireballs or having conversations with dragons. It's a matter of Ivo being something we recognize as "human", and thus inclined to be comfortable, regardless of the penalties he may or may not suffer the next day.
. . . and if we can just ignore the idea of sleeping in armor being uncomfortable, of having cramped muscles in the back and neck and moving stiffly after snoozing in twenty pounds of steel (or a flack jacket with steel plates in its pockets), we should ignore the rules for how much gear you can carry, forced marches, sleep requirements, starvation or dehydration, heat in the jungles of Smuggler's Shiv, and anything else related to human comfort and stamina in the game.
No, thanks. I'll stick to the assumption that, even if you have the Endurance feat, you're not going to sleep in armor unless you have a Very Good Reason to do so.
I'm somewhat confused. Is there a feat or ability that allows the druid to use spells while in wild form? I only see reference to the druid not being able to talk or use abilities, and I'd hate to limit my players, if there is a feat or something that lets them.
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I'm somewhat confused. Is there a feat or ability that allows the druid to use spells while in wild form? I only see reference to the druid not being able to talk or use abilities, and I'd hate to limit my players, if there is a feat or something that lets them.
Natural Spell
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Awesome! Thanks!