| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
We are at the end of Book 5 of Extinction Curse, in the encounter before the fight against the BBEG of that book. They were really prepared to fight the Boss, they did managed their resources really well. But a bunch of bad choices and the will of the die were all against them. It was a Moderate encounter against one creature APL+0 and two APL-2, after some two other Moderate fights and some skill challenges.
Spoilers ahead.
The minions, two Graveknights that they already foght before, used their breath-like weapon and did some damage to some of them. Nothing really bad, because they usen potions of energy resistance before and half of them had Evasion. The Mini Boss, a Marilith, used Blade Barrier cutting the monk from the rest of the group.
Without a line of sight, the witch had to use her familiar to target the enemies behind the wall, the Mini Boss got a nat20 and the minions got a sucess. The cleric decided to cross the Blade Barrier, got damaged in the process, and casted a spell that again the Mini Boss rolled really well. The Mini Boss is now slowed 1 for one round. The rogue decided to activate his wings and hide behind the wall. The monk activated her Skinstone in order to tank the fight.
Minions proceed to attack the cleric and the monk, Mini Boss was slowed and did only a crit in the cleric. Now the cleric was surrounded by three enemies that they already knew that had AoO, and two of them could nulify their positive spells.
The group proceeded to shove the minions around to toss them inside the Blade barrier, which did really good damage. The problem was that the cleric was low in HP, casting no spells because of fear to take several AoOs and the posibility to have his spells countered. Even worse, one of the minions that was inside of the Blade Barrier end up changing target. You see, I use to randomly choose who the enemy will target when the best choice isn't obivious, by rolling a dice. And the dice told us that that enemy would go after the witch that was left alone behind the Blade Barrier wall.
At this moment, everything went straight down. The witch was alone with one of the minions, part because the party shove it that way and part because the dice said so. Without much else to do, at least I don't know what else she could do, she used a Desintegrate and the enemy was still alive after that. The cleric was down and the rogue spent two rounds givin him those really big healing potions. The monk continued to shove around enemies. Everyone let the witch alone with a enemy again.
The minion with the witch knocked her out and crossed the Blade barrier again. At this point, the Blade Barrier did the most damage that the enemies took. They both got away from the wall so they could not be shoved again in a single atempt. The Mini Boss attacked everyone. The cleric would die due to Wounded/Dying, but used a ability to "stop" the damage until next turn.
No one went to save the witch, the Rogue almost managed kill one of the minions (who was at 20% of his HP due the Blade Barrier), and even thou the Monk was the one who has the means to exploit the Mini Boss weakness she continued only attacking other minion. The witch died, people used their hero points.
The cleric died because the damage he stoped has finaly arrived, no hero points left.
They decided to flee. The rogue, due some shenanigans, managed to "steal" the cleric body and had enough movement to fly above the Blade Barrier. The monk managed to cross the Blade barrier and got the witch's body(a leshy) inside the bag of holding.
The enemies managed to hit the rogue enough to knock him out, right above the Blade barrier, dying 2. The enemies all crossed the Barrier taking damage, they are barely alive.
The monk grabed the rogue, managed to dodge some AoOs and got away.
End of the spoilers.
They failed the mission, and we already had decided that they got only one chance. The McGuffing that they need to use to "save the world" is now lost. I told them that, if they want, they could continue the adventure without the possibility to get the Good Ending, but they could at least achieve the Not So Bad Ending. Only the cleric was really dead at the end, but they could ress him after they flee from the BBEG vicinity. Whitout the full party there is no way to beat the enemies. It's a technical TPK.
It was our 79th session in this campaign, that we started in March of 2020. That was 15 months ago!! The group was level 17.
I really don't know what I want with this post. I feel sad. We don't know yet if we want to continue this adventure, even thou we had so much fun playing it. We loved the circus part. We were looking forward to next session because we were going to Plane Shift to the domain of Pharasma in order to perform for her!(that was a homebrew thing, a side quest they decided they want to do)
The witch's player is sad because his character is always going down in the fights, and the group can't manage to find a way to prevent this. It's not a character/mechanic problem, it's a players problem.
I'm DMing to them for almost 3 years now. One of them want to DM a little bit, maybe something small. We are defilitely going to take a break. We may or may not get back in this adventure. They could try to get the Not So Bad Ending, or we could do a "Different Timeline" with other characters.