Episode 2:
The Demon Army retreated to the Lava Pit and we almost took down the Noble Salamander Sorcerer due to the wave of lantern archons chasing them.
In a harassment attack, they tried to send a couple elder earth elementals surrounded by silence spells, but having seen this tactic from them before, our Hallow caster used the silent spell metamagic feat during his cast, so that was a futile effort. An untouchable aura power on the caster also prevented the elementals from attacking him directly.
We've found out that there is only about 40' of rock between us and the lava pit level below, so our Lythic tremorsense sonar buoys are able to keep that level pretty much tracked.
Now we need to work out a surprise attack to take out the bigs once and for all.
Ok, so now advice sought once again: The lava pit and it's noble salamander contents are obviously where they are going to make harassment attacks in an attempt to interrupt the hallow caster.
1) We need some way to prevent earth gliding from below into the temple or to somehow hide the caster from anything that might come up from below --
2) They might have extraordinary senses and high perception like tremorsense, lifesense, etc -- need methods on how to foil these so we can make a surprise attack from an unexpected angle. Some way to draw them out of an entrenched position where they can perform harassment attacks.
You could seed the earth with metal, copper coins, iron spikes, whatever, every 3' - 5' or so to form a grid that they can't earth glide past. Presumably they could take actions to pick up the metal and then continue to earth glide, but it would maybe slow them down.
Brijidine Azatas have move earth at will, which is extremely effective against earth gliding, and covers a large area. Having some of these with readied actions might work pretty well. There are some lesser creatures that get it 3/day, which might work in a pinch.
Incorporeal should defeat tremorsense.
I had a similar idea to the copper coins -- do you think they can be magically trapped with something like glyph of warding so that if they are manipulated, it can use the blast glyph to damage the earth glider?
Sadly we only have one Brijidine Azata. Given the RA map, with The Waterfall and Akbeth's Grave below it, I was thinking of having the Brijidine Azata create a drain for the lava pit and essentially drain it into the lake below. This would reduce the danger from the lava, and I could spread brown mold over the remaining hot rock to harden it quickly and cool off the room. A couple rock to mud spells from the Brijidine would handle that relatively quickly.
It could draw out the bad guys who are hiding in the southern temple area -- and if it doesn't, so much the better.
Incorpreal -- true, but I would need to have it applied to upwards of 12 characters for it to become effective. Not sure how I would accomplish that. Flying would also work. That I can do.
Yeah, I've notice the lack of rules regarding spells that could potentially use different media than air/water, despite spells that allow a character to operate inside that same media (meaning earth/fire).
I like the sonic attack, since sound transfers through earth decently...although it would have reduced range/reduced damage outside of direct contact, I think.
Although the GM tagging the elementals with silence would make this attack type ineffective too.
Back to the drawing board. I'm beginning to warm to my idea of draining the volacanic cauldron on level 10 in to level 11, though. It's different enough that I'm not sure the GM would have a countermeasure for it. The less he can plan contingencies, the better.
One problem is that we would be leaving our fortified location in the temple and fighting in their lair.
Depending on how physics-y you want to get, sonic damage should propagate further in solid material compared to air, and even better than water. The physical properties of the earth increases the sound speed. That's why you can detect vibrations from earthquake pressure waves half-way around the world. Theoretically, a sonic attack should be devastating in the earth medium.
You're right of course that a silence spell may negate this, but elementals with silence should lose their tremorsense (though maybe not by RAW). They would effectively be blind while in the ground.
I agree that magic is not well defined for the earth medium, such as do you even have line of effect for anything? Sounds like a recipe for a possible argument with the GM.
Given these issues, draining the cauldron sounds like a good way forward.
Having silence negate tremorsense wasn't something that I had thought of. I wonder if silence would work on preventing detection via tremorsense.
Yeah, no line of effect is a big point hampering most things -- which is why I thought the blast glyph would have to activation on touch and couldn't on proximity.
Since it looks like the bads are hiding in the southmost room (boxing themselves in), I think I can use rock to mud to fill in the room that connects the southernmost rooms with the long tunnel up the west side of the level, preventing them from leaving easily and flanking us -- then using rock to mud again a couple times to expose the tunnel leading from the south rooms (the east-west tunnel that leads to the western side north-south tunnel) to ranged attack -- and one hell of a surprise, once they figure out that their normal exit is blocked and the wall that was hiding them is suddenly gone.
I'm also inclined on dropping brown mold into the formerly lava filled cauldron to turn down the native heat and give us a "hazard zone" for the native salamanders in the area. It will harden the bottom of the bowl and prevent the steam from the lake below from filling the room (cold will make it condense back into water before it's another hazard).
Since our big bad is Mephistal (FGG's Book of Horrors Complete), and he comes along with a lot of undead -- specifically incorporeals -- we'll need to prevent the hiding in the floor and attacking from below trick. -- Flying should prevent that for the most part, but that puts us in danger of dispel magics. -- But he should be more worried about getting blown away than trying to take us out via killing our spells. We've also been buying lots of the ghost powder, so we might put that to good use.
Episode III:
Well, this one didn't go so well -- mainly due to some stupid actions on our part -- short attention spans and abandoning comrades in the field allowed the bad guys to get the tactical upper hand.
The named sorcerer, a balor and 2 noble salamanders decided to wait out in the open on the lava pit level while the BBEG (Mephistal) decided to leave. They played a game of "fishing for goblins" while the Brijidine Azata and I attempted to do a drain of the lava cauldron. Apparently there is a gate to the elemental plane of fire that is the ultimate source of the lava on this level -- so that didn't quite work.
I decided to mess with the salamander's in a similar fashion as I did previously, so I had an anti-napalm grenade made up (basically two flasks strapped together -- one of alchemist fire, the other of brown mold). Using this, I hit two of the noble salamanders and got them covered in brown mold, and the brijidine cast a flaming sphere at the salamander's location and sent it after the sorcerer salamander as well. For grins.
The sorcerer salamander had a quick ray of frost that broke the line of brown mold leading to him pretty much readied, so the plan didn't go as well as I'd have liked, but it did cause them to have to flee, but the balor stayed.
At this point, the rest of the party joined me on the lava pit and took out the balor. Since he died in pretty much one round to our ranger and his bow (with smite support), our warrior and his retinue of paladins, etc decided to leave. (this was one of the bigger mistakes of the night).
Some of us decided to stay in the pit, and the salamander sorcerer, his two nobles, a summoned marilith and a summoned balor dicided to return -- they ganged up on the ranger and nearly took him out. Only a handy defer fatality power saved him and he gets pulled back into the temple for a couple emergency heals and a greater restoration from our called solars. The wizard gets a heal as well from the damage the balor did to him. Then they return to the fight, and they teleport back down to assist with the mess of things the sorcerer salamander brought with him.
It took the return of the fighter cohort/paladin group, our dwarf fighter (the willie bomb) and his wizard liege to finally take down the sorcerer, one noble salamander in the initial round of trying to rescue the wizard/ranger pair.
At this point, everything is sort of improving the longer we fight -- but bad guy reinforcements showed up. Two dread wraiths, a shadow pop up out of the ground to take down the wizard that had just teleported in with the dwarf (6 constitution points drained and 15 strength points drained -- with 1 point left that is the result of his wearing a +6 strength belt which was a hand-me down from a +6 all physical belt that his cohort got a hold of in the past).
Back into the room pops Mephistal and two called Mariliths on the far opposite side of the room.
Lastly, a Witch, Drow Sorcerer, and a monk? showed up flying over the lava pit, and led in with a mage's disjunction spell. Then a slew of bad saving throws went down. The dwarf lost his +5 axe, the strength drained wizard with the strength belt lost the belt and died. The Ranger lost what was like a +5 holy speed bow -- I don't think the ranger's wizard lost anything. Human fighter with his paladin retinue didn't lose much of significance that I could tell. My character was hidden and outside the area of effect of the disjunction.
After the disjunction came the Polar midnight spell -- which didn't seem to have much of an effect. Subsequently the mariliths tried to violent thrust telekinesis the ranger into the lava, but that was intercepted by the hound archon by using "Paladin's Sacrifice"? So he got chucked into the lava instead. The second marilith tried again, but a successful saving throw prevented that from happening.
I was able to retaliate and take out the flying sorcerer, dispelling his fly and dropping him into the lava, and then move back out of line of sight of flying casters.
This is where we ended the night. Next episode in a couple weeks.