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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2011-03-10 04:55 am
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2011-03-10 04:55 am
Entry tags:
Wednesday Night D&D
Two sessions, since I missed writing up one due to deadlines.
A change storm washed over the party and this time it affected one of the group. Pok the Paladin has become Pok the Awesome Engine of Arrowy Death. This turned to affect what happens during combat somewhat.
The group, for those of you who forgot/never know, is composed of a Warlock, a Mage, a Swordmage (?), a Cleric and now a Ranger. Note that one of those is a genuine hand-to-hander and the Warlock can fake it, thanks to a feat and a magic item that he has. Ideally the group should create a choke point one swordmage wide so the rest of the group can stand back and volley attacks but that isn't how it works out.
The two library battles:
Since our Elven allies were unhappy at the idea of just torching the library, the group had to clear it out. The building had two rooms that might be occupied so Quinn nailed the doors to one closed (and did a bad job of it but apparently good enough). This ensured that the odds of being jumped from behind were minimized.
Oh, and Skeet was left behind to watch the secured door just in case.
Battle One:
The library was filled with Drow, using the library stacks for cover. On the minus side, there were a lot of them. On the plus side, as soon as the mage cast a fire wall it became apparent the Drow were mostly minions.
This helped less than one might expect, because the non-minions had some nasty attacks. Very alarming, they managed to knock the Cleric below zero (my notes are pretty useless -"more carnage" - but I think the Drow were tossing blasts and bursts like no tomorrow and ISTR they were laying down crippling conditions as well). One lesson learned was that as soon as someone is out, someone else should drag them out of the combat zone lest they keep getting nailed with bursts and blasts.
Anyway, no fatalities on our side. Drow won't surrender so for them it was a total party kill.
Most of the contents of the library survived the fire wall and the blade barrier. The two Elven guides with us got caught up examining the books.
At this point the choice was to retreat into the woods or finish clearing the building so it could be secured as a resting spot for the party. Despite the fact several of us were at two healing surges and partial hit points (and I think the Cleric got to see a tunnel and white light at one point in the first battle) it was decided that it was less dangerous to stay and fight.
There have been some bad experiences in woods.
Battle Two:
The group uncorked the second room, a big round room that was poorly lit. The party could see that there was something up on the ceiling and the group did try to be careful probing the mass, like that ever helps. Eventually Pok provoked the monster with a burst of flame. I have no idea what the monster was, aside from being a swarm of filthy little beasts, but I do know it filled nine squares on the board and had an impressive reach. One of its favourite tricks was to grab people and haul them into the mass for general gnawing and clawing and it was very good at this.
Many dailies got used at this point and I think every variation on a teleport was used as well; unfortunately most of the group only has one teleport each at most.
Once again the Cleric got dropped to zero; Quinn was considering hauling him away from the monster but didn't think he could overcome its strength so he settled for pouring potions into the Cleric.
Again, the group prevailed but this time a number of the group have no surges left and thanks to the final explosion the monster let off when it died, at least one of us is in the single digit range for hit points.
The room contains a magic sphere containing the Chief Librarian. It looks fragile so the group will be hiding it to retrieve it later.
One of the annoying aspects of the battle is that our two Elves never came to help, despite frequent cries of "any time now would be fine, guys" and "arg my spleen!" When the party limped back into the library they turned out to be engrossed in a tome of Elvish rituals. Quinn immediately tried to read it to see what it was (under the false belief he has the best resistance to Will based attacks [1]) but he cannot read Elvish so it had no effect.
The Cleric, having put himself back together, examined the book. His Will resistance is a bit better than Quinn's so he was not entranced. What the book is remained a mystery; it's not cursed but it is hard to resist.
I can't help but notice that once the Paladin became a ranged attack character, the Cleric suddenly started having Near Death Experiences. I think we have to rethink how we do battle.
The party plans to rest until dailies and surges come back, then press on to the alchemist factory.
1: He has the second highest Will rating and IIRC it's purely because he is so gosh-darned charismatic.
A change storm washed over the party and this time it affected one of the group. Pok the Paladin has become Pok the Awesome Engine of Arrowy Death. This turned to affect what happens during combat somewhat.
The group, for those of you who forgot/never know, is composed of a Warlock, a Mage, a Swordmage (?), a Cleric and now a Ranger. Note that one of those is a genuine hand-to-hander and the Warlock can fake it, thanks to a feat and a magic item that he has. Ideally the group should create a choke point one swordmage wide so the rest of the group can stand back and volley attacks but that isn't how it works out.
The two library battles:
Since our Elven allies were unhappy at the idea of just torching the library, the group had to clear it out. The building had two rooms that might be occupied so Quinn nailed the doors to one closed (and did a bad job of it but apparently good enough). This ensured that the odds of being jumped from behind were minimized.
Oh, and Skeet was left behind to watch the secured door just in case.
Battle One:
The library was filled with Drow, using the library stacks for cover. On the minus side, there were a lot of them. On the plus side, as soon as the mage cast a fire wall it became apparent the Drow were mostly minions.
This helped less than one might expect, because the non-minions had some nasty attacks. Very alarming, they managed to knock the Cleric below zero (my notes are pretty useless -"more carnage" - but I think the Drow were tossing blasts and bursts like no tomorrow and ISTR they were laying down crippling conditions as well). One lesson learned was that as soon as someone is out, someone else should drag them out of the combat zone lest they keep getting nailed with bursts and blasts.
Anyway, no fatalities on our side. Drow won't surrender so for them it was a total party kill.
Most of the contents of the library survived the fire wall and the blade barrier. The two Elven guides with us got caught up examining the books.
At this point the choice was to retreat into the woods or finish clearing the building so it could be secured as a resting spot for the party. Despite the fact several of us were at two healing surges and partial hit points (and I think the Cleric got to see a tunnel and white light at one point in the first battle) it was decided that it was less dangerous to stay and fight.
There have been some bad experiences in woods.
Battle Two:
The group uncorked the second room, a big round room that was poorly lit. The party could see that there was something up on the ceiling and the group did try to be careful probing the mass, like that ever helps. Eventually Pok provoked the monster with a burst of flame. I have no idea what the monster was, aside from being a swarm of filthy little beasts, but I do know it filled nine squares on the board and had an impressive reach. One of its favourite tricks was to grab people and haul them into the mass for general gnawing and clawing and it was very good at this.
Many dailies got used at this point and I think every variation on a teleport was used as well; unfortunately most of the group only has one teleport each at most.
Once again the Cleric got dropped to zero; Quinn was considering hauling him away from the monster but didn't think he could overcome its strength so he settled for pouring potions into the Cleric.
Again, the group prevailed but this time a number of the group have no surges left and thanks to the final explosion the monster let off when it died, at least one of us is in the single digit range for hit points.
The room contains a magic sphere containing the Chief Librarian. It looks fragile so the group will be hiding it to retrieve it later.
One of the annoying aspects of the battle is that our two Elves never came to help, despite frequent cries of "any time now would be fine, guys" and "arg my spleen!" When the party limped back into the library they turned out to be engrossed in a tome of Elvish rituals. Quinn immediately tried to read it to see what it was (under the false belief he has the best resistance to Will based attacks [1]) but he cannot read Elvish so it had no effect.
The Cleric, having put himself back together, examined the book. His Will resistance is a bit better than Quinn's so he was not entranced. What the book is remained a mystery; it's not cursed but it is hard to resist.
I can't help but notice that once the Paladin became a ranged attack character, the Cleric suddenly started having Near Death Experiences. I think we have to rethink how we do battle.
The party plans to rest until dailies and surges come back, then press on to the alchemist factory.
1: He has the second highest Will rating and IIRC it's purely because he is so gosh-darned charismatic.