World's Largest Dungeon in actual play [Spoilers!]

[erucsbo]

part 2 from #2099 above.
The one round of respite enabled a little healing to be done, then the whirlwinds came back with a vengence - no longer content to toy with the characters, the idea was to pick them up and drop them the 100-150 feet to the bottom of Death Canyon.
4 elementals, 4 characters in range - 2 who had been along at the previous session were absent, and 1 who had missed the last session had come, so I had his character a bit apart from the others.
The elementals managed to pick up 2 characters, one got killed as it tried, and the other failed to pick up the paladin (Divine Grace and a high Charisma really helps when needing to make DC25 saves).
Two characters were carried over the open canyon while the one that tried to pick up the paladin kept at it.
Thanks to readied actions, a web was cast below a falling character as flame strike took out one of the above-canyon elementals. The other elemental moved away from the web and dropped the fighter, who then managed to catch and activate an immovable rod that had been thrown by the rogue from the edge of the canyon.
The elemental that had been trying (and failing) to pick up the paladin was eventually dispatched and this only left the one that had dropped the fighter. It bore down on the fighter who was hanging by one arm from the rod, with a readied action to attack the elemental. Spells had reduced it to 1 hp and the fighter put nothing in to Power Attack to ensure that he hit it - he did.
The party recovered the fighter and the cleric (who was on the web) and retreated to the elementals' caves to recover.

After recovering they found the giant bones, but avoided (wisely) going in to Death Canyon or the depression with the Xorn, and headed ENE. Eventually hitting the wall of the tomb, tracking north, then when hitting the wall of Black Mountain turning south we finished the session.

I think I'll try and push them in to J for a bit, maybe to stop the release of Tyrus, because at character level 10 I'd guess they would be well out of their depth if they managed to breach the tomb.

any suggestions, and for those who have done J, do parties tend to go north or east?

 

[rvalle]

Now, here's a question. It seems to me that the demons should have some source of healing for the demon lords, at the very least. But the region doesn't really allow for that, save for the flux of positive and negative energy. Any thoughts? Otherwise, Gwarny'z is going to be very anticlimactic when the group returns.

I've had this problem too as my party stormed the group of demons hacking at the dome. They hurt the 6 armed demon and one of the 4 armed guys with claws but didn't kill them. Right now I have those demons off 'out of bounds' healing up by getting their HP's per day.

Idea: There used to be a cleric with the anti-paladin on the little island but, per the WLD she died a while back. You can bring her back as a resourse for the demons.

rv

 

[rvalle]

I think I'll try and push them in to J for a bit, maybe to stop the release of Tyrus, because at character level 10 I'd guess they would be well out of their depth if they managed to breach the tomb.

any suggestions, and for those who have done J, do parties tend to go north or east?

My group came from the W and after starting N and hitting the Fire Salamanders went South and avoided the whole middle. The problem with this is that they ended up going to the NE corner and, as 9th level characters in a region made for higher level characters ended up finding things WAY over their head (Rasts). One dead character and a hasty retreat later and the group gave up on this area and headed elsewhere.

Jim Pinto once said that J could use some expanding... spread out the groups to take up more space as they are too confined in the Dungeon Region. This isn't something I was able to do but its a good idea. If nothing else it could help explain who the heck the Giants are making those greatswords FOR.

rv

 

[jim pinto]

Jim Pinto once said that J could use some expanding... spread out the groups to take up more space as they are too confined in the Dungeon Region. This isn't something I was able to do but its a good idea. If nothing else it could help explain who the heck the Giants are making those greatswords FOR.

rv

the beauty of the northern regions is that you can make them A LOT taller if you want to (especially J and L) and it merely pushes the cavern maps further away, without disrupting meticulous cartographers

 

[erucsbo]

My group came from the W and after starting N and hitting the Fire Salamanders went South and avoided the whole middle. The problem with this is that they ended up going to the NE corner and, as 9th level characters in a region made for higher level characters ended up finding things WAY over their head (Rasts). One dead character and a hasty retreat later and the group gave up on this area and headed elsewhere.

Jim Pinto once said that J could use some expanding... spread out the groups to take up more space as they are too confined in the Dungeon Region. This isn't something I was able to do but its a good idea. If nothing else it could help explain who the heck the Giants are making those greatswords FOR.

well - they are heading south to J. They are level 10 though, and a full party has 8 characters so they should be able to handle most things.

I had them encounter the lantern archon in N and they had avoided touching the doors, and wisely realised that they might be in big trouble. The fighter has a scarab of golembane and detected the golems.
They went in to the mound of rock and encountered the devourer.

Now - here is the quandry of having an NPC as the moral compass.
The NPC is a paladin of Tyr and never strikes first unless the situation demands it (ie - to prevent a creature doing damage to others etc). The party members pile in to the room and start going at the devourer, with all of them missing, including spellcasters failing SR rolls. The paladin didn't attack because the devourer was grovelling.
BECAUSE of this the party decided to try negotiation instead, though not before the devourer did Confusion on the party.
The party backed out without continuing the battle, but I am still worried about the philosophy that they carry that if something looks evil then it probably is and therefore should be attacked first before any questions are asked. This sort of attitude is going to get them slaughtered in the diplomacy rich areas of J and eventually N, and while the paladin is not going to play counter-type, I still want to make sure that they don't use her as the only way to know what "good" is supposed to be.

And the quote of the night was "let's go south and release Tyrus". It was a verbal slipup - they meant deal with Tyrus, but it was still pretty funny at the time.

And for the record - the open plain in the north of M (and far west of N) is more boring than an unaltered region A - but thankfully able to be navigated out of far quicker.

Now to read up on J and troll back through the several thousand entries here for tips

 

[Mark]

Will there be some effort for groups to finish the WLD prior to 4E? Will some groups switch to 4E and continue to play in the WLD?

 

[BlueBlackRed]

I figure there will be no new WLD groups, and those who are currently running and are still playing it in May will finish it.

 

[rvalle]

My current plans are to finish WLD in 3.5 which will probably take another 2 years or so. Then start another massive 1-20 module either in 3.5 again or switch to 4.0 depending on what I think about it at the time.

If 4.0 comes out, is very cool and everyone in my group wants to switch I'd jump to 4.0 at that time.

rv

 

[erucsbo]

goodness knows how long it will take us to finish WLD. We only play once a fortnight and it could well be another couple of years before the end. We will be using 3.5e.
No plans to move to 4e, but we may juryrig some of the rules if they make the game easier - especially in speeding up encounters.

 

[pokedigimaniac]

No plan to convert to 4e, but I'm not above cannibalizing some of it to make stuff faster. (I have some issues with speed in combat.)