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(5e) Against the Idol of the Sun (high level, hexcrawl)
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<blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 8353690" data-attributes="member: 7020951"><p><strong>Session 14: 7/24/2021</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><em>Player-facing recap:</em></p><p></p><p>Everyone made it!</p><p></p><p>The party decides to work on raiding/destroying the temple of Tezcatlipoca, which is halfway across the map, with Aaracokra territory in the way. They decide to thread the needle between a triangle of Aaracokra cities, searching along the way.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They find a shrine with a snake twisted around a pole in the middle of a suspiciously regular item. They rest there safely, find 3 healing potions, and Ssword likes it there.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Moving on, the group continues to head northeast, finding some kind of Aaracokra operation with a couple of big gashes in the ground and buildings around it. It is bypassed and the group continues on northeast. They find a damaged nest that apparently belonged to wasps the size of dogs at some point in the past. Ratel (monk), Teador (paladin), and Dmitri (barbarian) go down to investigate, while Reybella (cleric) and Malamir(artificer) stay in the air. Dmitri’s sense of divine creatures pings, and Reybella and Malamir’s perception checks let them pick up on the general presence of some invisible flying somethings. Five pretty agile Aaracokra Slayers, each dual-wielding short swords, attack; their invisibility drops on their first attack.</p><p></p><p>I have them split into two initiative blocks and roll dual 20s (= 26 total) so all 5 go before the party does. They do some substantial damage with 4 attacks per round, and have some elemental resistances.</p><p></p><p>After 2 rounds, a couple of higher level priests arrive, using Firestorm a couple of times, Harm, and then a few other spells that don’t land very well.</p><p></p><p>2 rounds later, a couple of mid-level priests also arrive.</p><p></p><p>The party ends up killing all enemies except two of the priests (one Word of Recalls out).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>None of the PCs outright die, but it’s pretty close. Dmitri uses his barbarian features to avoid going down at 0hp, and a couple of the others get down to single digit HP. Reybella pumps out a lot of healing with mass cure spells, probably 80-100hp per PC over the course of the fight. That made a huge difference.</p><p></p><p>Ratel used Stunning Strike for the first time ever, stunlocking one of the slayers into oblivion.</p><p></p><p>There are a good number of critical hits on both sides of the fight.</p><p></p><p>Dmitri stabs enough slayers and priests to death to get Ssword a little bit of an upgrade, with its mental stats slightly improved and its telepathy now extended to a 30’ range.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>At the end of the fight, the group loots the area and boogie on to the northeast.</p><p></p><p>The artificer leaves his homunculus bird behind to see what happens; the Aaracokra do come and clean up the area.</p><p></p><p>The party travels for the next half of the day with nothing happening, and settles down for a long rest the next hex over…but I tell them to not actually take/apply the rest yet.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><em>Non-player facing recap:</em></p><p></p><p>“Let’s fly through the middle of enemy territory across trade routes investigating everything while on our slow magic brooms and being very distinctive!”</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>+1 point on Ssword’s development chart for bringing him to a shrine to Sseth.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The party found an Aaracokra gem mine, but bypassed it. At this point I rolled random encounters, and got a 1 (regular encounter) and for this hex a 2, which meant Aaracokra patrol. The regular encounter was just some air elementals. Since the party is not in an air-skiff, the elementals ignored them as they moved out of the elemental’s path.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The group is very distinctive (nobody else on the continent is rocking Iron Man armor and flying brooms), so I had the patrol just hang back at a distance/high altitude. I set a DC 20 Perception check to spot them, and nobody made it on their pre-rolled scores, or on the Perception check for searching the next hex…</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This was an on-the-fly call, and I think the right one since they were within 30 miles of Aaracokra cities. With the distinctiveness and failure of a previous strike team, some of the elite Slayers get called in. They are CR 14 (AC 20/HP150, Multiattack +12 for 1d6+14, heal 1hp each time they damage an enemy, elemental resists, minor blessings from Aaracokra gods). They attack from invisibility. I have priestly backup with 2 senior priests arriving later (following at a distance to not be spotted) and then two more War Priests later.</p><p></p><p>The War Priests really should have been there first. The +2d8 on each attack from Holy Weapon would have been pretty big for the Slayers, since they get 3 attacks with their main weapon.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>There is a very limited population of Slayers, so they will not make an appearance again for a while. This means the next deliberate attack on the party will probably need to rely on summoned creatures for melee/beatstick firepower. I’ll probably go with some sort of evil conjured creature(s).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>From this, the Aaracokra should learn:</p><p></p><p>-One of the party keeps not showing up on divination or scrying (the dwarf, effect of Ssword)</p><p></p><p>-Casters aren’t enough; high-end melee isn’t enough</p><p></p><p>-Area of effect spells and debuffs tend to fail often (party has generally good saves)</p><p></p><p>-Larger numbers are needed – this is hard to run at the table. I still forgot to use the Warding Light (light cleric reaction) feature the senior priests have most of the time.</p><p></p><p>-The Aaracokra need a better way to split the party up or use less blunt-weapon tactics (long ranged attacks, wear them down, etc.). The Aaracokra approach to battle makes this hard for them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>At this point, the party’s location is still generally known. They rest at night (Aaracokra do not have Darkvision) using Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum. At this point, given the number of divinations that can be directed at the party (near 3 cities, several reported fights, etc.) it’s safe to say the Aaracokra know where they are and can locate their resting place. The sound & vision blocking of Sanctum works both ways.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I need to figure out a less “roll initiative” way for the Aaracokra to wear down the party. They have Weather Control, and I’m considering having them park near the party and use Weather Control to create “unbearable heat” conditions. I need to dig into this a bit more, but I think it could keep them from resting fully.</p><p></p><p>Another option is just to spam summons or fireballs or whatever into the Sanctum.</p><p></p><p>The Aaracokra will have a problem in that the monk’s Cragtop bow +2 has a super-long range, longer than most spells, so they can’t attack from full safety.</p><p></p><p>They also explicitly have <em>Symbol</em> on the spell list for senior priests, so they could set up several Symbols as a trap, and then attack from the far side of them.</p><p></p><p>There are also plenty of lower-level Aaracokra around. I may need to stat up a group or mob template to represent 4 or 6 soldiers flinging javelins en masse. The party will buzzsaw through them, but it’ll be faster at the table than a bunch of individual soldiers running around with lots of misses.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The party has no teleportation, no earth glide, and no faster mode of travel than the brooms of flying, so I need to set up something where they can be defeated and run away without being TPK’d, but where it’s still possible to lose a PC or two. Luckily, the Aaracokra are militant, angry, and are not a hyper-organized/optimized society, so it’s OK if I design a plan that’s not perfect for them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Now that Ssword can talk to the group and is a bit more aware, he’ll probably tell them they need to work on ways to get around without being seen. I’m not sure what to have him suggest, as I don’t see any great options for this on the cleric, artificer, or paladin lists.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="J-H, post: 8353690, member: 7020951"] [B]Session 14: 7/24/2021[/B] [I]Player-facing recap:[/I] Everyone made it! The party decides to work on raiding/destroying the temple of Tezcatlipoca, which is halfway across the map, with Aaracokra territory in the way. They decide to thread the needle between a triangle of Aaracokra cities, searching along the way. They find a shrine with a snake twisted around a pole in the middle of a suspiciously regular item. They rest there safely, find 3 healing potions, and Ssword likes it there. Moving on, the group continues to head northeast, finding some kind of Aaracokra operation with a couple of big gashes in the ground and buildings around it. It is bypassed and the group continues on northeast. They find a damaged nest that apparently belonged to wasps the size of dogs at some point in the past. Ratel (monk), Teador (paladin), and Dmitri (barbarian) go down to investigate, while Reybella (cleric) and Malamir(artificer) stay in the air. Dmitri’s sense of divine creatures pings, and Reybella and Malamir’s perception checks let them pick up on the general presence of some invisible flying somethings. Five pretty agile Aaracokra Slayers, each dual-wielding short swords, attack; their invisibility drops on their first attack. I have them split into two initiative blocks and roll dual 20s (= 26 total) so all 5 go before the party does. They do some substantial damage with 4 attacks per round, and have some elemental resistances. After 2 rounds, a couple of higher level priests arrive, using Firestorm a couple of times, Harm, and then a few other spells that don’t land very well. 2 rounds later, a couple of mid-level priests also arrive. The party ends up killing all enemies except two of the priests (one Word of Recalls out). None of the PCs outright die, but it’s pretty close. Dmitri uses his barbarian features to avoid going down at 0hp, and a couple of the others get down to single digit HP. Reybella pumps out a lot of healing with mass cure spells, probably 80-100hp per PC over the course of the fight. That made a huge difference. Ratel used Stunning Strike for the first time ever, stunlocking one of the slayers into oblivion. There are a good number of critical hits on both sides of the fight. Dmitri stabs enough slayers and priests to death to get Ssword a little bit of an upgrade, with its mental stats slightly improved and its telepathy now extended to a 30’ range. At the end of the fight, the group loots the area and boogie on to the northeast. The artificer leaves his homunculus bird behind to see what happens; the Aaracokra do come and clean up the area. The party travels for the next half of the day with nothing happening, and settles down for a long rest the next hex over…but I tell them to not actually take/apply the rest yet. [I]Non-player facing recap:[/I] “Let’s fly through the middle of enemy territory across trade routes investigating everything while on our slow magic brooms and being very distinctive!” +1 point on Ssword’s development chart for bringing him to a shrine to Sseth. The party found an Aaracokra gem mine, but bypassed it. At this point I rolled random encounters, and got a 1 (regular encounter) and for this hex a 2, which meant Aaracokra patrol. The regular encounter was just some air elementals. Since the party is not in an air-skiff, the elementals ignored them as they moved out of the elemental’s path. The group is very distinctive (nobody else on the continent is rocking Iron Man armor and flying brooms), so I had the patrol just hang back at a distance/high altitude. I set a DC 20 Perception check to spot them, and nobody made it on their pre-rolled scores, or on the Perception check for searching the next hex… This was an on-the-fly call, and I think the right one since they were within 30 miles of Aaracokra cities. With the distinctiveness and failure of a previous strike team, some of the elite Slayers get called in. They are CR 14 (AC 20/HP150, Multiattack +12 for 1d6+14, heal 1hp each time they damage an enemy, elemental resists, minor blessings from Aaracokra gods). They attack from invisibility. I have priestly backup with 2 senior priests arriving later (following at a distance to not be spotted) and then two more War Priests later. The War Priests really should have been there first. The +2d8 on each attack from Holy Weapon would have been pretty big for the Slayers, since they get 3 attacks with their main weapon. There is a very limited population of Slayers, so they will not make an appearance again for a while. This means the next deliberate attack on the party will probably need to rely on summoned creatures for melee/beatstick firepower. I’ll probably go with some sort of evil conjured creature(s). From this, the Aaracokra should learn: -One of the party keeps not showing up on divination or scrying (the dwarf, effect of Ssword) -Casters aren’t enough; high-end melee isn’t enough -Area of effect spells and debuffs tend to fail often (party has generally good saves) -Larger numbers are needed – this is hard to run at the table. I still forgot to use the Warding Light (light cleric reaction) feature the senior priests have most of the time. -The Aaracokra need a better way to split the party up or use less blunt-weapon tactics (long ranged attacks, wear them down, etc.). The Aaracokra approach to battle makes this hard for them. At this point, the party’s location is still generally known. They rest at night (Aaracokra do not have Darkvision) using Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum. At this point, given the number of divinations that can be directed at the party (near 3 cities, several reported fights, etc.) it’s safe to say the Aaracokra know where they are and can locate their resting place. The sound & vision blocking of Sanctum works both ways. I need to figure out a less “roll initiative” way for the Aaracokra to wear down the party. They have Weather Control, and I’m considering having them park near the party and use Weather Control to create “unbearable heat” conditions. I need to dig into this a bit more, but I think it could keep them from resting fully. Another option is just to spam summons or fireballs or whatever into the Sanctum. The Aaracokra will have a problem in that the monk’s Cragtop bow +2 has a super-long range, longer than most spells, so they can’t attack from full safety. They also explicitly have [I]Symbol[/I] on the spell list for senior priests, so they could set up several Symbols as a trap, and then attack from the far side of them. There are also plenty of lower-level Aaracokra around. I may need to stat up a group or mob template to represent 4 or 6 soldiers flinging javelins en masse. The party will buzzsaw through them, but it’ll be faster at the table than a bunch of individual soldiers running around with lots of misses. The party has no teleportation, no earth glide, and no faster mode of travel than the brooms of flying, so I need to set up something where they can be defeated and run away without being TPK’d, but where it’s still possible to lose a PC or two. Luckily, the Aaracokra are militant, angry, and are not a hyper-organized/optimized society, so it’s OK if I design a plan that’s not perfect for them. Now that Ssword can talk to the group and is a bit more aware, he’ll probably tell them they need to work on ways to get around without being seen. I’m not sure what to have him suggest, as I don’t see any great options for this on the cleric, artificer, or paladin lists. [/QUOTE]
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