carborundum
Adventurer
That's brilliant!
/hat tip
/bow before the master ;-)
/hat tip
/bow before the master ;-)
D&D 4E Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Heroic tier (finished)
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Run #47 is in the books.
This week’s game featured two distinct encounters, as we continued our exploration of, and escape from, the house of horrors that is Tomberlin Riverlimb’s basement.
Among the papers stolen from the desks of Tomberlin and his evil genius daughter, we discovered that one of their primary projects was the capture and power-draining of a certain sword. Hey, we have that sword! It’s the one we captured from Alene, the Deva-turned-Rakshasa that we thwarted back in Floodford.
On the one hand: oops, we just brought Tomberlin what he wanted. On the other hand, we discovered the ritual room for the draining all set up for us, with the required reagents already collected. And on the gripping hand, the ritual was dual-purpose, and could be used not only to drain the sword, but to re-align it to a more pleasant divine power. We chose Demis, the God of whom the evil Sklar (the sword’s current patron) is merely one twisted aspect. The ritual involved a circle of small shrines, one each of the 15 Gods of the realm.
To back up for a moment: at the end of the previous game, we had discovered a secret door that was activated by twiddling the doorknob depicted in a painting. At the start of this game, we went through this door, and took the painting with us. This resulted in us being safely barricaded in a wing of the basement, and controlling the only way in or out. So while Tomberlin and his daughter pursued us, they had no way to access our suite of rooms, or to stop us from performing the ritual at our leisure. (In fact, we could hear the daughter berating the father about the idiocy of his “security measure.”)
The ritual involved Logan turning in a slow circle, pointing in turn to each of the 15 shrines. The sword itself sat in the center of the circle next to Logan, and it turned out that this Sklar-ish blade objected to being re-consecrated to another deity. Thus began a half-combat, half-skill challenge, with the party chopping through vines that sprouted out of the sword to kill Logan. Each round, for three rounds, more vine-tentacles would emerge, added to any tentacles we hadn’t killed on the previous rounds. The first time through we killed them all before new ones sprouted, but there were still one or two left when the third set burst out. Worse, the vines grew tougher with each new set, and in order to kill one, a PC had to do damage equal to its HP. (Damage didn’t accumulate from one PC to the next .)
Meanwhile, Logan was spending his turns getting healed (since the tentacles were attacking only him) and making Endurance checks not to flub the ritual. He did fail once, but we succeeded at the challenge, lopping off the final set of tentacles, and allowing Logan the time to complete the ritual. Oddly, the sword itself chose the God to whom it would be rededicated, and it wasn’t Demis, but Solais, God of Shining Light. Logan had a strange out-of-body experience, where an angel/avatar/aspect of the God offered to transform Logan. He took the opportunity to change his class to Avenger, the better to seek out and take vengeance upon Reymus, his personal nemesis. (In other words, this was Piratecat’s fictional justification for allowing Logan’s player to radically alter his character concept. It worked beautifully.)
The ritual complete, we found ourselves besieged, effectively at an impasse with the Riverlimbs, who clearly didn’t have any way of getting to us. There was a moment of panic when Gilran mistakenly thought that the secret-door-painting would open a real door on whichever wall it was hung upon. Before anyone knew what he was doing, he hung the painting on a different wall and turned the doorknob, thinking it would make us an alternate exit. In fact, it opened the wall section that the Riverlimbs were still trying fruitlessly to batter down. Oops! We did manage to slam the door closed (automatically re-sealing it) before they could get in. And this brief opening allowed us a glimpse of the Agglomeration of Wizards that Piratecat described in his previous post. Yuck! (It also allowed the Wizard Ball time to turn Cobalt temporarily to stone, which gave us a sense of how dangerous it probably was. Eeek!)
We rested up in our little enclave, restoring used-up dailies and much-needed surges, before opening the door again early the next morning. We found that the Riverlimbs had gone to bed, but had left their Wizard Ball to guard the door. Fight!
The new beholder is a great piece of solo monster design. In addition to getting attacks with its multitude of rays (2 on its turn), it gets to fire off a random beam, for free, at the start of every PC’s turn!
1. Charm Ray (dominates target)
2. Wounding Ray (damage)
3. Sleep Ray (immobilization, then unconsciousness on failed save)
4. Telekinesis Ray (slides target 4 squares)
5. Slowing Ray (damage plus slow)
6. Brilliant Ray (damage plus blindness)
7. Terror Ray (damage plus target “pushed” its speed)
8. Petrifying Ray (target turned to stone until it saves, then immobilized until 2nd save)
9. Death Ray (damage, then dazed/weakened on failed save, then dead on 2nd failed save)
10. Disintegrate Ray (damage plus more ongoing damage)
Fortunately for us, we chose to emerge at 5:00 AM when the Riverlimbs were asleep, and so only had to fight this one creature, which was (I think) a Level 9 solo. (We’re all 10th level at this point.) It had 392 hit points, which may sound like plenty, but as you know if you’ve been following this thread, a party of 6 with 4 strikers can pile on the damage quite efficiently. Bramble made a huge difference as usual, giving us +2 to hit the Wizard Ball through the whole encounter, and giving us all Resist Damage 4 as well using the Protective Roots utility power.
Realizing that ranged combat was its forte, we swarmed around the Wizard Ball, delivering massive melee attacks and using various powers that granted us combat advantage (since, with its all-around vision, we couldn’t gain CA by flanking it).
The best two moments of the fight:
- Gilran running right at it, sliding under the Tenser’s floating disc upon which it sat, and snapping the metal chain that was channeling the main head’s power-inhibited ability.
- Strontium describing her use of the “Taunting Phantom” power as inviting all of the monster’s component wizards to argue about a seeming paradox in magical theory. When they all started bickering instead of remembering to fight us, the Caducity head had to bite one of them to get them to focus. Brilliant!
Also, I'm still in love with the Knockout/Bloodbath combo. Cobalt climbed up the arms of the wizards, clocked the Caducity head unconscious, and then used an Action Point to slit its throat as the head lolled backward. 75+ damage in a single round! It would have been more total, but we killed the beast before the Ongoing 21 could kick in.
During this battle, a golem of some sort started banging a gong, presumably to alert the Riverlimbs that we had come out of hiding. Next game we will certainly have to deal with Tomberlin and his daughter, so we’re not out of the woods yet by any means. It does feel good, though, to be chewing up his vile menagerie.
This week’s game featured two distinct encounters, as we continued our exploration of, and escape from, the house of horrors that is Tomberlin Riverlimb’s basement.
Among the papers stolen from the desks of Tomberlin and his evil genius daughter, we discovered that one of their primary projects was the capture and power-draining of a certain sword. Hey, we have that sword! It’s the one we captured from Alene, the Deva-turned-Rakshasa that we thwarted back in Floodford.
On the one hand: oops, we just brought Tomberlin what he wanted. On the other hand, we discovered the ritual room for the draining all set up for us, with the required reagents already collected. And on the gripping hand, the ritual was dual-purpose, and could be used not only to drain the sword, but to re-align it to a more pleasant divine power. We chose Demis, the God of whom the evil Sklar (the sword’s current patron) is merely one twisted aspect. The ritual involved a circle of small shrines, one each of the 15 Gods of the realm.
To back up for a moment: at the end of the previous game, we had discovered a secret door that was activated by twiddling the doorknob depicted in a painting. At the start of this game, we went through this door, and took the painting with us. This resulted in us being safely barricaded in a wing of the basement, and controlling the only way in or out. So while Tomberlin and his daughter pursued us, they had no way to access our suite of rooms, or to stop us from performing the ritual at our leisure. (In fact, we could hear the daughter berating the father about the idiocy of his “security measure.”)
The ritual involved Logan turning in a slow circle, pointing in turn to each of the 15 shrines. The sword itself sat in the center of the circle next to Logan, and it turned out that this Sklar-ish blade objected to being re-consecrated to another deity. Thus began a half-combat, half-skill challenge, with the party chopping through vines that sprouted out of the sword to kill Logan. Each round, for three rounds, more vine-tentacles would emerge, added to any tentacles we hadn’t killed on the previous rounds. The first time through we killed them all before new ones sprouted, but there were still one or two left when the third set burst out. Worse, the vines grew tougher with each new set, and in order to kill one, a PC had to do damage equal to its HP. (Damage didn’t accumulate from one PC to the next .)
Meanwhile, Logan was spending his turns getting healed (since the tentacles were attacking only him) and making Endurance checks not to flub the ritual. He did fail once, but we succeeded at the challenge, lopping off the final set of tentacles, and allowing Logan the time to complete the ritual. Oddly, the sword itself chose the God to whom it would be rededicated, and it wasn’t Demis, but Solais, God of Shining Light. Logan had a strange out-of-body experience, where an angel/avatar/aspect of the God offered to transform Logan. He took the opportunity to change his class to Avenger, the better to seek out and take vengeance upon Reymus, his personal nemesis. (In other words, this was Piratecat’s fictional justification for allowing Logan’s player to radically alter his character concept. It worked beautifully.)
The ritual complete, we found ourselves besieged, effectively at an impasse with the Riverlimbs, who clearly didn’t have any way of getting to us. There was a moment of panic when Gilran mistakenly thought that the secret-door-painting would open a real door on whichever wall it was hung upon. Before anyone knew what he was doing, he hung the painting on a different wall and turned the doorknob, thinking it would make us an alternate exit. In fact, it opened the wall section that the Riverlimbs were still trying fruitlessly to batter down. Oops! We did manage to slam the door closed (automatically re-sealing it) before they could get in. And this brief opening allowed us a glimpse of the Agglomeration of Wizards that Piratecat described in his previous post. Yuck! (It also allowed the Wizard Ball time to turn Cobalt temporarily to stone, which gave us a sense of how dangerous it probably was. Eeek!)
We rested up in our little enclave, restoring used-up dailies and much-needed surges, before opening the door again early the next morning. We found that the Riverlimbs had gone to bed, but had left their Wizard Ball to guard the door. Fight!
The new beholder is a great piece of solo monster design. In addition to getting attacks with its multitude of rays (2 on its turn), it gets to fire off a random beam, for free, at the start of every PC’s turn!
1. Charm Ray (dominates target)
2. Wounding Ray (damage)
3. Sleep Ray (immobilization, then unconsciousness on failed save)
4. Telekinesis Ray (slides target 4 squares)
5. Slowing Ray (damage plus slow)
6. Brilliant Ray (damage plus blindness)
7. Terror Ray (damage plus target “pushed” its speed)
8. Petrifying Ray (target turned to stone until it saves, then immobilized until 2nd save)
9. Death Ray (damage, then dazed/weakened on failed save, then dead on 2nd failed save)
10. Disintegrate Ray (damage plus more ongoing damage)
Fortunately for us, we chose to emerge at 5:00 AM when the Riverlimbs were asleep, and so only had to fight this one creature, which was (I think) a Level 9 solo. (We’re all 10th level at this point.) It had 392 hit points, which may sound like plenty, but as you know if you’ve been following this thread, a party of 6 with 4 strikers can pile on the damage quite efficiently. Bramble made a huge difference as usual, giving us +2 to hit the Wizard Ball through the whole encounter, and giving us all Resist Damage 4 as well using the Protective Roots utility power.
Realizing that ranged combat was its forte, we swarmed around the Wizard Ball, delivering massive melee attacks and using various powers that granted us combat advantage (since, with its all-around vision, we couldn’t gain CA by flanking it).
The best two moments of the fight:
- Gilran running right at it, sliding under the Tenser’s floating disc upon which it sat, and snapping the metal chain that was channeling the main head’s power-inhibited ability.
- Strontium describing her use of the “Taunting Phantom” power as inviting all of the monster’s component wizards to argue about a seeming paradox in magical theory. When they all started bickering instead of remembering to fight us, the Caducity head had to bite one of them to get them to focus. Brilliant!
Also, I'm still in love with the Knockout/Bloodbath combo. Cobalt climbed up the arms of the wizards, clocked the Caducity head unconscious, and then used an Action Point to slit its throat as the head lolled backward. 75+ damage in a single round! It would have been more total, but we killed the beast before the Ongoing 21 could kick in.
During this battle, a golem of some sort started banging a gong, presumably to alert the Riverlimbs that we had come out of hiding. Next game we will certainly have to deal with Tomberlin and his daughter, so we’re not out of the woods yet by any means. It does feel good, though, to be chewing up his vile menagerie.
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Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
So, this was a fun game. Some comments from my side of the screen:
- Damn, that beholder (aka wizard golem) went down quickly. It never got to go between the time it was bloodied and the point it died, and it died just before the 21 pts of ongoing damage kicked in at the beginning of its turn. I love having four strikers in the party. Combats move quickly and it's just enough to get them in lots of trouble.
- The "do something cool" cards remain a great way to remind heroes that they aren't limited to their powers. In this case, I decided that they could nullify the "beholder"'s central eye (aka Caducity's screams) by snapping the mithral chain that acted as the control mechanism and which bound the beholder/golem to the spot. I was already a little squiffy on a monster power that limits PCs to at-wills only, and this seemed like a good compromise.
- I liked the idea of a dangerous ritual to let Logan change his class. He and I spoke about the class change ahead of time, and this both helps the player and does wonderful things to upcoming plot. A win-win.
-I had two handouts which said the same thing, but I had my MD/Ph.D. friend Bandeeto re-write one of them. Believe it or not, the following says "divine magic items tend to be dedicated to a God, magical and psionic items tend to have their own personalities, but primal relics are blank slates that can be imprinted upon." He did such a good job that I had to provide an easier-to-understand translation because even I couldn't read it.
[sblock=First handout]It has long been supposed that extranormal morphogeneic kinesthetic artifactual realizations (EMKAR) derive primary imprinting at coalescence.
The basis for these conclusions derive primarily from the many manuscripts authored by D_, in which he claims to demonstrate ethocentric ego collapse via hyper-real psychoetheric analysis (HRPA). Unfortunately these arguments fail to recognize the crucial theist and planidirectional vectors inherent in the global philosomatrix, which render unstable the results of psychoetheric analysis.
The field has been further obscured by E_'s ill-considered attempts at retrograde primary components analysis (RPCA), in which a non-representative sample of available EMKARs was undertaken, and uniformly demonstrated highly flexible philosomatrices experiencing proximity-based aura shifts. To avoid further obfuscation in this area, I have now analyzed the full spectrum of EMKAR primacy, using exhaustive multi-vector probes and verifying the conclusions with an independent, blinded panel of EMKARs isolated from proximity effects and deiplanar fields. These studies suggest a tripartite categegorical schema that may be used to classify EMKAR philosomatrices. EMKARs whose coalescence vectors are theodominant display a crystalline weave structure closely aligned to their unique deisphere.
In contrast, thaumodominant vector influences lead, as a rule, to pseudo-random egowave collapse. The steady state thereby obtained exhibits remarkable philosomatriceal rigidity, albeit an order of magnitude removed from that observed in theodominant EMKARs. Finally, EMKARs coalescing with primal planidirectivity exhibit exclusively vitreous egoconduits which undergo thaumoquantum period realignment subject to individual proximity auras. This schema may be used to properly classify EMKAR philosomatriceal behavior in any environment, and constitutes a novel and comprehensive reworking of the current paradigm regarding this widely misunderstood topic.[/sblock]
Yikes. That's an unusual handout as it's only there to show that Tanis Riverlimb was a big jerk who ripped pages out of books. And because it amused me! The second handout was more plot-relevant and full of important clues.
[sblock=Second handout]While arcane construction tends to resist moral and ethical absorption through self-repairing ablative ego determination, divine and psychic artifacts tend towards self-determined principles that are integrated into their psycho-magical weave from initial creation. They seldom, as one might say in the vernacular, "change horses in mid-stream." Not so with self-aware primal relics. My research has shown that these have a high probability of becoming moral "sponges," as it were, that quickly absorb and respond to their bonded wielder's core sets of philosophical belief. As such, given a certain baseline level of raw power, it is possible to observe the degradation or self-improvement of a living experimental subject by remotely monitoring the emotional state of its primal accoutrements.
Interestingly, it is possible and often desirable to strip such an item of its ongoing moral resonance and reset it, neutralize it, or realign it with a more suitable user. This should only be undertaken by a skilled alchemist with fast reflexes.
To do so you will need two drams of entropic acid, three peryton tears, a dropper of stale roper bile, and a salve made from the pulverized heartroot of a shambling mound. Mix all ingredients except for the tears carefully and apply to the item. Use gloves. Place the item upon an otherwise bare altar in the middle of the divine wheel. Stand beside the altar, facing the shrine of the God whose portfolio the item's current personality most mirrors. Utter the Creator's Prayer for exactly 30 seconds, with two seconds of praise per God, rotating from each shrine to the next as the chant continues. Relics may experience minor physical change during this cleansing.
At the end of the prayer apply the three peryton tears to the item. Manifestation of a physical change is normal at this point, and shows that the ritual is proceeding as expected. Lift the object and quickly place upon the shrine of a God whose divine personality you wish the item to adopt. Pray for holy acceptance; approximately five seconds of prayer will clear an object's residual taint and leave it stripped clean of moral or ethical predilection, while twelve seconds will form a future connection between the primal relic and the principles espoused by the deity in question.
Cleansing spoiled items can prove to be highly efficacious. Any existing tracking spells are inevitably born away and dispersed, and the item's links (if any) to previous owners are neutralized completely. [/sblock]
The goal? To tell the PCs "Hey, you have a dangerous evil sword that the bad guys want! You can nullify it if you want to. C'mon, you want to. Honest." I had to bribe them with an extra action point to do it immediately, but I have kind and understanding players.
I love handouts. Even when they're incidental to the plot, they're still fun.
- Damn, that beholder (aka wizard golem) went down quickly. It never got to go between the time it was bloodied and the point it died, and it died just before the 21 pts of ongoing damage kicked in at the beginning of its turn. I love having four strikers in the party. Combats move quickly and it's just enough to get them in lots of trouble.
- The "do something cool" cards remain a great way to remind heroes that they aren't limited to their powers. In this case, I decided that they could nullify the "beholder"'s central eye (aka Caducity's screams) by snapping the mithral chain that acted as the control mechanism and which bound the beholder/golem to the spot. I was already a little squiffy on a monster power that limits PCs to at-wills only, and this seemed like a good compromise.
- I liked the idea of a dangerous ritual to let Logan change his class. He and I spoke about the class change ahead of time, and this both helps the player and does wonderful things to upcoming plot. A win-win.
-I had two handouts which said the same thing, but I had my MD/Ph.D. friend Bandeeto re-write one of them. Believe it or not, the following says "divine magic items tend to be dedicated to a God, magical and psionic items tend to have their own personalities, but primal relics are blank slates that can be imprinted upon." He did such a good job that I had to provide an easier-to-understand translation because even I couldn't read it.
[sblock=First handout]It has long been supposed that extranormal morphogeneic kinesthetic artifactual realizations (EMKAR) derive primary imprinting at coalescence.
The basis for these conclusions derive primarily from the many manuscripts authored by D_, in which he claims to demonstrate ethocentric ego collapse via hyper-real psychoetheric analysis (HRPA). Unfortunately these arguments fail to recognize the crucial theist and planidirectional vectors inherent in the global philosomatrix, which render unstable the results of psychoetheric analysis.
The field has been further obscured by E_'s ill-considered attempts at retrograde primary components analysis (RPCA), in which a non-representative sample of available EMKARs was undertaken, and uniformly demonstrated highly flexible philosomatrices experiencing proximity-based aura shifts. To avoid further obfuscation in this area, I have now analyzed the full spectrum of EMKAR primacy, using exhaustive multi-vector probes and verifying the conclusions with an independent, blinded panel of EMKARs isolated from proximity effects and deiplanar fields. These studies suggest a tripartite categegorical schema that may be used to classify EMKAR philosomatrices. EMKARs whose coalescence vectors are theodominant display a crystalline weave structure closely aligned to their unique deisphere.
In contrast, thaumodominant vector influences lead, as a rule, to pseudo-random egowave collapse. The steady state thereby obtained exhibits remarkable philosomatriceal rigidity, albeit an order of magnitude removed from that observed in theodominant EMKARs. Finally, EMKARs coalescing with primal planidirectivity exhibit exclusively vitreous egoconduits which undergo thaumoquantum period realignment subject to individual proximity auras. This schema may be used to properly classify EMKAR philosomatriceal behavior in any environment, and constitutes a novel and comprehensive reworking of the current paradigm regarding this widely misunderstood topic.[/sblock]
Yikes. That's an unusual handout as it's only there to show that Tanis Riverlimb was a big jerk who ripped pages out of books. And because it amused me! The second handout was more plot-relevant and full of important clues.
[sblock=Second handout]While arcane construction tends to resist moral and ethical absorption through self-repairing ablative ego determination, divine and psychic artifacts tend towards self-determined principles that are integrated into their psycho-magical weave from initial creation. They seldom, as one might say in the vernacular, "change horses in mid-stream." Not so with self-aware primal relics. My research has shown that these have a high probability of becoming moral "sponges," as it were, that quickly absorb and respond to their bonded wielder's core sets of philosophical belief. As such, given a certain baseline level of raw power, it is possible to observe the degradation or self-improvement of a living experimental subject by remotely monitoring the emotional state of its primal accoutrements.
Interestingly, it is possible and often desirable to strip such an item of its ongoing moral resonance and reset it, neutralize it, or realign it with a more suitable user. This should only be undertaken by a skilled alchemist with fast reflexes.
To do so you will need two drams of entropic acid, three peryton tears, a dropper of stale roper bile, and a salve made from the pulverized heartroot of a shambling mound. Mix all ingredients except for the tears carefully and apply to the item. Use gloves. Place the item upon an otherwise bare altar in the middle of the divine wheel. Stand beside the altar, facing the shrine of the God whose portfolio the item's current personality most mirrors. Utter the Creator's Prayer for exactly 30 seconds, with two seconds of praise per God, rotating from each shrine to the next as the chant continues. Relics may experience minor physical change during this cleansing.
At the end of the prayer apply the three peryton tears to the item. Manifestation of a physical change is normal at this point, and shows that the ritual is proceeding as expected. Lift the object and quickly place upon the shrine of a God whose divine personality you wish the item to adopt. Pray for holy acceptance; approximately five seconds of prayer will clear an object's residual taint and leave it stripped clean of moral or ethical predilection, while twelve seconds will form a future connection between the primal relic and the principles espoused by the deity in question.
Cleansing spoiled items can prove to be highly efficacious. Any existing tracking spells are inevitably born away and dispersed, and the item's links (if any) to previous owners are neutralized completely. [/sblock]
The goal? To tell the PCs "Hey, you have a dangerous evil sword that the bad guys want! You can nullify it if you want to. C'mon, you want to. Honest." I had to bribe them with an extra action point to do it immediately, but I have kind and understanding players.
I love handouts. Even when they're incidental to the plot, they're still fun.
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Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Run #48 was this past Thursday. First, the quick plot summary:
We had just destroyed the beholderesque Wizard Ball and were now hurrying through Lord Tomberlin’s labyrinthine basement, looking simultaneously for both the exit, and for the Lord and his daughter. We discovered a well-concealed and not-obviously-openable secret door, but opted to finish “cleaning out” the area in order not to leave possible monsters at our back while we messed around with opening it. That turned out to be a mistake, though there was no way to realize it at the time. We stumbled into a large room full of alchemical supplies, at the far end of which were two large flesh golems. These golems wore death-masks of our hosts (Tomberlin and Tanis) and one spoke with Tomberlin’s voice. (We thought these might be the humans themselves, somehow possessing the golem bodies, but it turned out to be just a magic mouth.)
We fought and defeated the golems (more later on this battle), and then took the time to pick, bludgeon and dissolve the secret door and continue our escape. Soon after, we noticed that smoke was billowing from several of our packs; it seemed that all of our papers – including the incriminating evidence pilfered from Tomberlin’s study – was on fire! (Alas, we were only able to salvage two of the party’s four Ritual Books – ugh.) Worse, smoke and flames were starting to fill the corridors. It seemed that Tomberlin had triggered some failsafe to destroy his own house, along with all of the evidence of his gruesome hobby. We did grab one piece of incriminating artwork, slicing out the canvas from a family portrait showing the whole Riverlimb clan around a bloody dissection table.
A skill challenge ensued to escape the burning building. This consisted of various checks to actually escape (like kicking down doors, figuring out the likely direction to the exit, holding up collapsing ceilings so others could escape, etc.), alternating with Endurance checks. A failed Endurance check meant a lost healing surge. Fortunately we only failed one of the primary checks, because Piratecat confided afterward that when it came time to roll the Endurance checks, we would have to roll one for each failed primary check, and take the worst of those.
Anyway, we found our way through the conflagration (lamenting all of the left-behind loot that we had planned to go back and get after dealing with Tomberlin) and crashed through the front door to the front lawn. There we saw a gaggle of his servants, looking scared and confused. We quickly asked one where Tomberlin had gone, and the servant indicated he and Tanis had fled down the only road away, in a carriage. We grabbed horses from the nearby stable and gave chase.
It took us about half an hour to realize that there were no fresh carriage tracks on the road we were taking. The servant had lied to us, a possibility we had foolishly not considered. We charged back, and renewed our questioning, this time with more blatant threats of violence if we were lied to. One servant cracked, and told us Tomberlin had simply doubled back in the carriage to the carriage house by the river. There we discovered that the one boat usually tied up there was gone. They had fled into the fen, had an hour head start, and we had no way to follow them. Argh!
But… Strontium used a magic crystal ball to try to find Tomberlin. He received a vision as if he was Tomberlin, and could hear Strontium’s own voice. So he was hiding somewhere quite close! Meanwhile, Bramble was communing with the spirit of the river, and gained the insight that only Tanis had fled on the boat. Bramble impressed upon this spirit how evil Tanis was, and how she had been using Quith essence in her alchemy, but the Spirit had no power to take direct action. Then we decided to use Ghost Sound and bluff checks to pretend that we had caught Tanis, and called out that if Tomberlin didn’t show himself, we’d kill his daughter. This seemed like it would fail, but the river spirit, swayed by Bramble’s entreaties, imbued Stron’s illusionary sound with a cry that actually sounded like Tanis’s voice.
The manure pile in the carriage house shifted.
We extracted Tomberlin from the dung heap in which he had been hiding. A combination of threats, appeals to his ego, and showing him the rolled up family portrait, resulted in a boasting confession of his unwholesome experiments and rituals. It helped that one of the civilians on hand was a fighting man whom we had tussled with back in Floodford, and one with whom we had had a respectful rapport even as we fought. He knew we were good people, and so believed our account of Tomberlin’s misdeeds.
With him bearing witness, we executed Tomberlin right then and there for various capital crimes, most notably assault on the Grey Guard and interfering with their duties. But his genius daughter Tanis is still at large. Hello, recurring villain!
Some notes regarding the battle with the golems:
- We got to see more of Logan as a Pursuing Avenger. The specifics of his powers were nothing spectacular, but his oath-double-roll ability to hit almost every time was quite satisfying. Also, his ability to slow and immobilize targets proved a great boon.
- At the end of the previous combat, Piratecat gave us a choice: if we immediately pressed onward, he would let us consider the current encounter as still going on; or we could stop the encounter, rest, and get various powers back. We opted for the former, almost entirely because the whole party still had Resist Damage 4 up from Bramble’s Protective Roots power. It was a good choice; the golems hit often, but not for huge damage. As such, that spell probably saved us over 50 collective hp over the course of the battle.
- This was the first time Gilran used his 9th level Daily, Howling Hurricane. Boy howdy, did he use it to good effect! He was enabled by the fact that one of the golems opened the combat by flipping over a table full of highly-combustible reagents, creating a zone of damaging fire. Hah! Gilran’s power created a movable zone that let him slide creatures around. Combined with Logan’s movement-restrictors, he saw to it that the golems spent a great deal of time in the blaze. Now that’s comedy!
- Immobilizing/slowing the golems also kept them from using a rampaging ability they had, which allowed them to run around damaging every target in their (extended) path.
- The golems had an interesting attack: when they hit, the target had the choice of being stunned, or taking extra damage. I think that’s nifty monster design; the hero is hosed either way, but they get to pick their poison. It’s another strategic choice to make in the middle of combat, which is great.
- A predictive thought about the Avenger: in a battle against (say) four equally dangerous foes, he’ll be somewhat less effective. Even with his 1/encounter ability to change oath targets, one of two things will be true:
o If the party is smartly focus-firing, the Avenger will be unable to apply his Oath to the 3rd and 4th enemy, or
o The party won’t be focus-firing.
- Speaking of focus-fire: we were incredibly efficient about killing the golems, polishing off one before doing almost any damage to the 2nd. It made the fight go much better for us overall.
- Piratecat started out with some absurdly good rolls for his golems at the start of the combat. So much so, that I started keeping track: 17, 19, 18, 20, 17, 9, 17, 4, 11, 15, 2, 16, 7. That’s an average of over 13 per roll!
- We were unable to find anything in the rulebooks about invisibility giving a bonus to stealth checks. As far as we can tell, the way in which invisibility “interacts” with the stealth check mechanic, is that ordinarily you have to have total concealment (or full cover) to become hidden, and invisibility makes it easier. Is that correct? Are we missing something?
Next game: Most likely we’ll start the long journey back to Floodford, as we’ve finally completed our mission to find out what happened to Caducity. Meanwhile, political chaos rages all around us. Meta-game wise, we’re probably only three or four sessions away from hitting Paragon, and I’m very curious about how the story will reflect that jump. Something supremely rat-bastardy, I don’t doubt!
We had just destroyed the beholderesque Wizard Ball and were now hurrying through Lord Tomberlin’s labyrinthine basement, looking simultaneously for both the exit, and for the Lord and his daughter. We discovered a well-concealed and not-obviously-openable secret door, but opted to finish “cleaning out” the area in order not to leave possible monsters at our back while we messed around with opening it. That turned out to be a mistake, though there was no way to realize it at the time. We stumbled into a large room full of alchemical supplies, at the far end of which were two large flesh golems. These golems wore death-masks of our hosts (Tomberlin and Tanis) and one spoke with Tomberlin’s voice. (We thought these might be the humans themselves, somehow possessing the golem bodies, but it turned out to be just a magic mouth.)
We fought and defeated the golems (more later on this battle), and then took the time to pick, bludgeon and dissolve the secret door and continue our escape. Soon after, we noticed that smoke was billowing from several of our packs; it seemed that all of our papers – including the incriminating evidence pilfered from Tomberlin’s study – was on fire! (Alas, we were only able to salvage two of the party’s four Ritual Books – ugh.) Worse, smoke and flames were starting to fill the corridors. It seemed that Tomberlin had triggered some failsafe to destroy his own house, along with all of the evidence of his gruesome hobby. We did grab one piece of incriminating artwork, slicing out the canvas from a family portrait showing the whole Riverlimb clan around a bloody dissection table.
A skill challenge ensued to escape the burning building. This consisted of various checks to actually escape (like kicking down doors, figuring out the likely direction to the exit, holding up collapsing ceilings so others could escape, etc.), alternating with Endurance checks. A failed Endurance check meant a lost healing surge. Fortunately we only failed one of the primary checks, because Piratecat confided afterward that when it came time to roll the Endurance checks, we would have to roll one for each failed primary check, and take the worst of those.
Anyway, we found our way through the conflagration (lamenting all of the left-behind loot that we had planned to go back and get after dealing with Tomberlin) and crashed through the front door to the front lawn. There we saw a gaggle of his servants, looking scared and confused. We quickly asked one where Tomberlin had gone, and the servant indicated he and Tanis had fled down the only road away, in a carriage. We grabbed horses from the nearby stable and gave chase.
It took us about half an hour to realize that there were no fresh carriage tracks on the road we were taking. The servant had lied to us, a possibility we had foolishly not considered. We charged back, and renewed our questioning, this time with more blatant threats of violence if we were lied to. One servant cracked, and told us Tomberlin had simply doubled back in the carriage to the carriage house by the river. There we discovered that the one boat usually tied up there was gone. They had fled into the fen, had an hour head start, and we had no way to follow them. Argh!
But… Strontium used a magic crystal ball to try to find Tomberlin. He received a vision as if he was Tomberlin, and could hear Strontium’s own voice. So he was hiding somewhere quite close! Meanwhile, Bramble was communing with the spirit of the river, and gained the insight that only Tanis had fled on the boat. Bramble impressed upon this spirit how evil Tanis was, and how she had been using Quith essence in her alchemy, but the Spirit had no power to take direct action. Then we decided to use Ghost Sound and bluff checks to pretend that we had caught Tanis, and called out that if Tomberlin didn’t show himself, we’d kill his daughter. This seemed like it would fail, but the river spirit, swayed by Bramble’s entreaties, imbued Stron’s illusionary sound with a cry that actually sounded like Tanis’s voice.
The manure pile in the carriage house shifted.
We extracted Tomberlin from the dung heap in which he had been hiding. A combination of threats, appeals to his ego, and showing him the rolled up family portrait, resulted in a boasting confession of his unwholesome experiments and rituals. It helped that one of the civilians on hand was a fighting man whom we had tussled with back in Floodford, and one with whom we had had a respectful rapport even as we fought. He knew we were good people, and so believed our account of Tomberlin’s misdeeds.
With him bearing witness, we executed Tomberlin right then and there for various capital crimes, most notably assault on the Grey Guard and interfering with their duties. But his genius daughter Tanis is still at large. Hello, recurring villain!
Some notes regarding the battle with the golems:
- We got to see more of Logan as a Pursuing Avenger. The specifics of his powers were nothing spectacular, but his oath-double-roll ability to hit almost every time was quite satisfying. Also, his ability to slow and immobilize targets proved a great boon.
- At the end of the previous combat, Piratecat gave us a choice: if we immediately pressed onward, he would let us consider the current encounter as still going on; or we could stop the encounter, rest, and get various powers back. We opted for the former, almost entirely because the whole party still had Resist Damage 4 up from Bramble’s Protective Roots power. It was a good choice; the golems hit often, but not for huge damage. As such, that spell probably saved us over 50 collective hp over the course of the battle.
- This was the first time Gilran used his 9th level Daily, Howling Hurricane. Boy howdy, did he use it to good effect! He was enabled by the fact that one of the golems opened the combat by flipping over a table full of highly-combustible reagents, creating a zone of damaging fire. Hah! Gilran’s power created a movable zone that let him slide creatures around. Combined with Logan’s movement-restrictors, he saw to it that the golems spent a great deal of time in the blaze. Now that’s comedy!
- Immobilizing/slowing the golems also kept them from using a rampaging ability they had, which allowed them to run around damaging every target in their (extended) path.
- The golems had an interesting attack: when they hit, the target had the choice of being stunned, or taking extra damage. I think that’s nifty monster design; the hero is hosed either way, but they get to pick their poison. It’s another strategic choice to make in the middle of combat, which is great.
- A predictive thought about the Avenger: in a battle against (say) four equally dangerous foes, he’ll be somewhat less effective. Even with his 1/encounter ability to change oath targets, one of two things will be true:
o If the party is smartly focus-firing, the Avenger will be unable to apply his Oath to the 3rd and 4th enemy, or
o The party won’t be focus-firing.
- Speaking of focus-fire: we were incredibly efficient about killing the golems, polishing off one before doing almost any damage to the 2nd. It made the fight go much better for us overall.
- Piratecat started out with some absurdly good rolls for his golems at the start of the combat. So much so, that I started keeping track: 17, 19, 18, 20, 17, 9, 17, 4, 11, 15, 2, 16, 7. That’s an average of over 13 per roll!
- We were unable to find anything in the rulebooks about invisibility giving a bonus to stealth checks. As far as we can tell, the way in which invisibility “interacts” with the stealth check mechanic, is that ordinarily you have to have total concealment (or full cover) to become hidden, and invisibility makes it easier. Is that correct? Are we missing something?
Next game: Most likely we’ll start the long journey back to Floodford, as we’ve finally completed our mission to find out what happened to Caducity. Meanwhile, political chaos rages all around us. Meta-game wise, we’re probably only three or four sessions away from hitting Paragon, and I’m very curious about how the story will reflect that jump. Something supremely rat-bastardy, I don’t doubt!
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
"- We were unable to find anything in the rulebooks about invisibility giving a bonus to stealth checks. As far as we can tell, the way in which invisibility “interacts” with the stealth check mechanic, is that ordinarily you have to have total concealment (or full cover) to become hidden, and invisibility makes it easier. Is that correct? Are we missing something?"
Correct. Being invisible doesn't make it easier to hide, it just gives you total concealment so you can make stealth checks. Personally there have been times when I've considered magical invisibility to give some situational bonuses, but it is a pretty workable system.
Sounds like it was a pretty kick-ass adventure, hehe.
Correct. Being invisible doesn't make it easier to hide, it just gives you total concealment so you can make stealth checks. Personally there have been times when I've considered magical invisibility to give some situational bonuses, but it is a pretty workable system.
Sounds like it was a pretty kick-ass adventure, hehe.
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
Alomir
First Post
This won't be a problem; when my current oath target drops to zero HP, I regain the Oath of Enmity encounter power. The 1/enc ability to switch allows me to change my mind once BEFORE the current target goes down.
Maybe not rules correct, but this is how I've always played it too, treating everyone else as "blind" in re: the invisible person. Makes it a lot easier to get off those stealth checks.
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