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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-11-24 01:51 pm
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-11-24 01:51 pm
Adventurer Conquerer King: Session Nineteen
This was mostly - pretty much entirely - one big fight.
The medusa promised to play with the party later and then vanished into the shadows. The group took a quick look around the throne room to see how the dead were slain - trickery, poison in the wine - and then decided that the most sensible course of action was to get the heck out of the caves.
The group did hit the orc armory but much to Otho's annoyance there were no ranged weapons there. On the plus side, the orcs sticking to melee gives the group - well, Otho - a huge advantage but on the minus side, that does not matter because the orcs are mostly dead.
There were three routes available but one of them led to the river and only offered escape in the sense that drowning is an escape and another involved crawling one by one up a narrow chute in conditions that offered no hope of self-defense. This left the third route, which compensated for allowing the party to defend itself and eventual escape by being a maze of caves particularly favorable to ambushes.
Generally Otho goes first but Iatro actually has applicable skills for moving around underground and so it was Iatro and not Otho who realized the medusa had worked her way in front of the party; the subtle clue that let him deduce this was a poisoned arrow sticking out of his chest.
It very quickly became obvious the medusa was very tough and very fast; to compensate for this she also doled out damage in amounts large enough none of us were likely to survive two unhealed shots from her and three would be certain doom (The PCs tend to have 40-ish HP and she was doing stuff like 15 HP from arrows, with 10 ongoing from poison, when she wasn't mixing it up with 20 HP from psychic damage, save vs paralysis). This really looked like a fast route to a total party kill; both Titus and Iatro were out cold and dying at various moments.
Sad to say, Otho at best gets a "participant" ribbon. He managed a critical at the beginning of the fight but then rolled poorly for damage. After that it was a flurry of misses, with the result the Medusa ignored him for most of the fight.
What turned the tide was Iatro: one blow managed to deliver a third of the medusa's HP in one blow and although she returned the favour with a poisoned dagger to the chest and another Gaze of Doom, once he got his second wind in the form of a quick healing potion (he was one save from true death at that point) he delivered another critical that finished her off.
While Patience was busy gluing bits back onto the two melee fighters, Otho quietly searched the body for the bow he knew the medusa used on Iatra. Sure enough, she had a very well made bow of a "seductive design" and now Otho has two magic items quietly whispering to him. Also found were seven suspicious looking arrows; Otho put those away for a special occasion.
Having escaped the caves, the party made their way back to their camp. The three legionnaires were still there and still alive and now they will be joined by the three peasants that the party rescued.
The party does get some bad news via the giant spider that likes to drop in from time to time; the Elf Queen is not happy about the medusa's death and she blames Iatro for it. Oh, well.
The medusa promised to play with the party later and then vanished into the shadows. The group took a quick look around the throne room to see how the dead were slain - trickery, poison in the wine - and then decided that the most sensible course of action was to get the heck out of the caves.
The group did hit the orc armory but much to Otho's annoyance there were no ranged weapons there. On the plus side, the orcs sticking to melee gives the group - well, Otho - a huge advantage but on the minus side, that does not matter because the orcs are mostly dead.
There were three routes available but one of them led to the river and only offered escape in the sense that drowning is an escape and another involved crawling one by one up a narrow chute in conditions that offered no hope of self-defense. This left the third route, which compensated for allowing the party to defend itself and eventual escape by being a maze of caves particularly favorable to ambushes.
Generally Otho goes first but Iatro actually has applicable skills for moving around underground and so it was Iatro and not Otho who realized the medusa had worked her way in front of the party; the subtle clue that let him deduce this was a poisoned arrow sticking out of his chest.
It very quickly became obvious the medusa was very tough and very fast; to compensate for this she also doled out damage in amounts large enough none of us were likely to survive two unhealed shots from her and three would be certain doom (The PCs tend to have 40-ish HP and she was doing stuff like 15 HP from arrows, with 10 ongoing from poison, when she wasn't mixing it up with 20 HP from psychic damage, save vs paralysis). This really looked like a fast route to a total party kill; both Titus and Iatro were out cold and dying at various moments.
Sad to say, Otho at best gets a "participant" ribbon. He managed a critical at the beginning of the fight but then rolled poorly for damage. After that it was a flurry of misses, with the result the Medusa ignored him for most of the fight.
What turned the tide was Iatro: one blow managed to deliver a third of the medusa's HP in one blow and although she returned the favour with a poisoned dagger to the chest and another Gaze of Doom, once he got his second wind in the form of a quick healing potion (he was one save from true death at that point) he delivered another critical that finished her off.
While Patience was busy gluing bits back onto the two melee fighters, Otho quietly searched the body for the bow he knew the medusa used on Iatra. Sure enough, she had a very well made bow of a "seductive design" and now Otho has two magic items quietly whispering to him. Also found were seven suspicious looking arrows; Otho put those away for a special occasion.
Having escaped the caves, the party made their way back to their camp. The three legionnaires were still there and still alive and now they will be joined by the three peasants that the party rescued.
The party does get some bad news via the giant spider that likes to drop in from time to time; the Elf Queen is not happy about the medusa's death and she blames Iatro for it. Oh, well.