I may have used a purple worm way back in the day. But I used one again about a year or so ago, as described here:
[sblock]A purple worm under the control of Pazrael/Pazuzu attacks an undergroudn duergar city that the PCs have just helped save from a demonic invasion that they helped cause.
The worm swallows swallowed a duergar theurge who was carrying a casket containing one fragment of the Rod of Seven Parts. The 19th level PCs drive the worm out of the hold by rallying the despondent duergar and activating their magically automated ballistae. The worm burrows off. Although the duergar theurge was the PCs' friend, they have to give her up for dead. But they prepare to chase the worm!
The player of the invoker-wizard rolls Nature for a purple worm knowledge check, and they get the run down on its swallow ability, including 30 acid damage per round (the paladin and defender have around 150 hp each, the strikers a bit over 100, the invoker 90-ish). They decide that, before heading off, they will try and get a sack of something alkaline try and neutralise the acid should anyone be swallowed. One of the players says (and I take his word for it) that lime is used in smithing, and so will be present in the duergar hold. They make a Dungeoneering check (seemed more applicalbe than Streetwise in all the circumstances - it wasn't about persuading someone to give them lime, but rather knowing where to find it in the half-ruined duergar hold), and with a reasonable success I let them have two sacks of it. One is with the sorcerer and one with the fighter, they being deemed the two most likely to go into the worm.
When they met the worm (in the company of two T-Rexes in a big cavern) it quickly swallowed two of the PCs - the invoker and the sorcerer. Inside the worm they were able to grab the swallowed casket (the DC by level table gave me numbers to assess the difficulty of doing this sort of thing inside a purple worm's gullet). The sorcerer dropped his bag of limb, reducing the ongoing acid damage from 30 per round to 20 per round (4e's default damage reduction is 5 points per tier). He then used his 6th level utility power - the pillar of earth one from Heroes of the Elemental Chaos - to force open the worm's jaws so they could (i) get some light, and (ii) get out (the player argued - plausibly enough - that the worm, having burrowed through miles and miles of rock, must have enough dirt in its mouth to meet the material component requirement for the spell). Given that this is a non-standard use of the spell, I asked for an Arcana check for the sorcerer to summon enough power to do it: he rolled enough for Moderate but not Hard success, and so I levied a hit point penalty against him as he tried to marshall the chaotic forces (p 42, appropriately MM3-ed, gives me easy access to mechanically balanced damage expressions). The invoker, being concerned about the consequences of too much elemental chaos, used his Rod of 4 out of 7 Parts to try and contain the forces - his Arcana roll was in the middle too, and so he rather than the sorcerer internalised the damage, through his Rod. The sorcerer then succeeded at an escape check with a bonus for the worm's mouth being forced open, and flew out. The invoker was able to teleport out - normally you can't teleport out of being swallowed because you need line of sight, but in this case forcing the worm's mouth open granted line of sight.
Later in the encounter the fighter PC got swallowed, and was in danger of dying inside the worm, so the ranger-cleric flew into the worm's mouth on his carpet of flying - succeeding at an Acro check, and voluntarily taking swallow damage on his way in - so he could heal the fighter. They both then got regurgitated by the worm because it didn't want too people trying to kill it from the inside. It swallowed the invoker again and tried to tunnel off with 5 parts of the Rod, but the other PCs killed it before it could get underground. (They beat up on the T-Rexes too.)[/sblock]
[sblock]A purple worm under the control of Pazrael/Pazuzu attacks an undergroudn duergar city that the PCs have just helped save from a demonic invasion that they helped cause.
The worm swallows swallowed a duergar theurge who was carrying a casket containing one fragment of the Rod of Seven Parts. The 19th level PCs drive the worm out of the hold by rallying the despondent duergar and activating their magically automated ballistae. The worm burrows off. Although the duergar theurge was the PCs' friend, they have to give her up for dead. But they prepare to chase the worm!
The player of the invoker-wizard rolls Nature for a purple worm knowledge check, and they get the run down on its swallow ability, including 30 acid damage per round (the paladin and defender have around 150 hp each, the strikers a bit over 100, the invoker 90-ish). They decide that, before heading off, they will try and get a sack of something alkaline try and neutralise the acid should anyone be swallowed. One of the players says (and I take his word for it) that lime is used in smithing, and so will be present in the duergar hold. They make a Dungeoneering check (seemed more applicalbe than Streetwise in all the circumstances - it wasn't about persuading someone to give them lime, but rather knowing where to find it in the half-ruined duergar hold), and with a reasonable success I let them have two sacks of it. One is with the sorcerer and one with the fighter, they being deemed the two most likely to go into the worm.
When they met the worm (in the company of two T-Rexes in a big cavern) it quickly swallowed two of the PCs - the invoker and the sorcerer. Inside the worm they were able to grab the swallowed casket (the DC by level table gave me numbers to assess the difficulty of doing this sort of thing inside a purple worm's gullet). The sorcerer dropped his bag of limb, reducing the ongoing acid damage from 30 per round to 20 per round (4e's default damage reduction is 5 points per tier). He then used his 6th level utility power - the pillar of earth one from Heroes of the Elemental Chaos - to force open the worm's jaws so they could (i) get some light, and (ii) get out (the player argued - plausibly enough - that the worm, having burrowed through miles and miles of rock, must have enough dirt in its mouth to meet the material component requirement for the spell). Given that this is a non-standard use of the spell, I asked for an Arcana check for the sorcerer to summon enough power to do it: he rolled enough for Moderate but not Hard success, and so I levied a hit point penalty against him as he tried to marshall the chaotic forces (p 42, appropriately MM3-ed, gives me easy access to mechanically balanced damage expressions). The invoker, being concerned about the consequences of too much elemental chaos, used his Rod of 4 out of 7 Parts to try and contain the forces - his Arcana roll was in the middle too, and so he rather than the sorcerer internalised the damage, through his Rod. The sorcerer then succeeded at an escape check with a bonus for the worm's mouth being forced open, and flew out. The invoker was able to teleport out - normally you can't teleport out of being swallowed because you need line of sight, but in this case forcing the worm's mouth open granted line of sight.
Later in the encounter the fighter PC got swallowed, and was in danger of dying inside the worm, so the ranger-cleric flew into the worm's mouth on his carpet of flying - succeeding at an Acro check, and voluntarily taking swallow damage on his way in - so he could heal the fighter. They both then got regurgitated by the worm because it didn't want too people trying to kill it from the inside. It swallowed the invoker again and tried to tunnel off with 5 parts of the Rod, but the other PCs killed it before it could get underground. (They beat up on the T-Rexes too.)[/sblock]
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
