My 4e group played a short session yesterday.
In the previous session, the PCs had negotiated the surrender of the frost giants of the glacial rift. The giants had agreed to shift their allegiance from Lolth and the Winter Court to the Raven Queen, provided that the PCs dealt with the Prince of Frost.
The PCs used a couple of Seeming rituals to disguises themselves as frost giants and a fomorian. They then pulled the lever that opened the portal to the Prince of Frost's throne room (adapted from the original in G2, where the level teleports to Snurre's hall), and with a successful Bluff check persuaded the Prince to come through the portal to talk to them.
When the Prince of Frost came though, accompanied by the Sisters of Lament, the PCs assaulted them immediately.
Now, a bit of practical background to that assault: one of the players was not able to come along to the session, and no one else had a copy of his PC sheet (the paladin of the Raven Queen). So it was determined that the Raven Queen had summoned him to Letherna, to consult with her about her takeover of winter in the Feywild. But the players had already been a little anxious about the pending fight - a 31st level solo with two 24th level elites - and without their paladin (who was carrying 5 of the party's 14 or so total healing surges, and has the highest AC in the party and hence is the best at single-target lockdown) they were even more anxious.
I therefore let them talk me into a surprise round with their successful bluff - I'm normally a bit of a surprise-round sceptic! - but I couldn't remember the rules and naturally got it wrong! No combat advantage, but I let each PC take a full complement of actions before the NPCs got to act. Mistake!
The players proceeded to completely hammer this encounter (33rd level for 4 PCs) - the invoker/wizard's imp dropped its fire and brimstone (Devil's Pawn theme) which inflicted a -2 defence penalty on all the NPCs, the cleric-ranger dropped a zone of Fire Storm, then there was the AoE stun, followed by the AoE domination from the invoker, and then - once the Prince of Frost had extricated himself from that - a single-target domination dropped as an interrupt (Divine Philosopher's Uncanny Insight). For dealing with action denial, I had given the Prince the ability to drop his aura to cancel effects, but he had already done this to cancel the stun when he then got hit by the AoE domination.
After the domination came Word of Anathema (vulnerable 11 to all damage). The invoker used his Knowledge is Power, his Clear Sight ability from the Eye of Vecna, his Memories of 1000 Lifetimes and his Insightful Riposte to make sure that his attacks hit.
All-in-all it was just brutal: the only PC who took any damage that cut through temp hp (bestowed by Cloak of Courage) was the fighter, who went out the back, came back to life with his ring of the Phoenix, and got healed up in virtue of surges donated by other PCs (Shared Healing). The players rolled very well - in one round when the fighter made 6 attacks, for instance, needing something like 14+ to hit the Prince and 6+ to hit the ghosts, he didn't miss once; and there were mutiple crits from the PCs in the first couple of rounds.
There was never a sense of the PCs being on the ropes. They finished off with 6 surges left between them, plus Divine Regeneration and 3 "when you die" powers unused. And with a renewed sense that they're ready to take the fight to Lolth and Orcus!
The question now is, can they make it from 28th to 30th without an extended rest?
In the previous session, the PCs had negotiated the surrender of the frost giants of the glacial rift. The giants had agreed to shift their allegiance from Lolth and the Winter Court to the Raven Queen, provided that the PCs dealt with the Prince of Frost.
The PCs used a couple of Seeming rituals to disguises themselves as frost giants and a fomorian. They then pulled the lever that opened the portal to the Prince of Frost's throne room (adapted from the original in G2, where the level teleports to Snurre's hall), and with a successful Bluff check persuaded the Prince to come through the portal to talk to them.
When the Prince of Frost came though, accompanied by the Sisters of Lament, the PCs assaulted them immediately.
Now, a bit of practical background to that assault: one of the players was not able to come along to the session, and no one else had a copy of his PC sheet (the paladin of the Raven Queen). So it was determined that the Raven Queen had summoned him to Letherna, to consult with her about her takeover of winter in the Feywild. But the players had already been a little anxious about the pending fight - a 31st level solo with two 24th level elites - and without their paladin (who was carrying 5 of the party's 14 or so total healing surges, and has the highest AC in the party and hence is the best at single-target lockdown) they were even more anxious.
I therefore let them talk me into a surprise round with their successful bluff - I'm normally a bit of a surprise-round sceptic! - but I couldn't remember the rules and naturally got it wrong! No combat advantage, but I let each PC take a full complement of actions before the NPCs got to act. Mistake!
The players proceeded to completely hammer this encounter (33rd level for 4 PCs) - the invoker/wizard's imp dropped its fire and brimstone (Devil's Pawn theme) which inflicted a -2 defence penalty on all the NPCs, the cleric-ranger dropped a zone of Fire Storm, then there was the AoE stun, followed by the AoE domination from the invoker, and then - once the Prince of Frost had extricated himself from that - a single-target domination dropped as an interrupt (Divine Philosopher's Uncanny Insight). For dealing with action denial, I had given the Prince the ability to drop his aura to cancel effects, but he had already done this to cancel the stun when he then got hit by the AoE domination.
After the domination came Word of Anathema (vulnerable 11 to all damage). The invoker used his Knowledge is Power, his Clear Sight ability from the Eye of Vecna, his Memories of 1000 Lifetimes and his Insightful Riposte to make sure that his attacks hit.
All-in-all it was just brutal: the only PC who took any damage that cut through temp hp (bestowed by Cloak of Courage) was the fighter, who went out the back, came back to life with his ring of the Phoenix, and got healed up in virtue of surges donated by other PCs (Shared Healing). The players rolled very well - in one round when the fighter made 6 attacks, for instance, needing something like 14+ to hit the Prince and 6+ to hit the ghosts, he didn't miss once; and there were mutiple crits from the PCs in the first couple of rounds.
There was never a sense of the PCs being on the ropes. They finished off with 6 surges left between them, plus Divine Regeneration and 3 "when you die" powers unused. And with a renewed sense that they're ready to take the fight to Lolth and Orcus!
The question now is, can they make it from 28th to 30th without an extended rest?
