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Against the Idol of the Sun: A 5e high-level campaign log
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<blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 8952422" data-attributes="member: 7020951"><p><strong>Session 13: 7/10/21</strong></p><p>Barbarian & artificer both out.</p><p></p><p>The party decides to explore their way northwards and skirt the closest Aarakocra city. They know they’ll need to do some kind of a strike on one of the cities or temples to prove their chops. </p><p></p><p>They find a couple of sets of abandoned dwellings – one an old Aarakocra village from before the fall of the Yuan-ti, and the other an abandoned Giant fort. Moving into the jungle, I finally roll a couple of random encounters as they explore. I decide to combine the two. They spot a Roc diving on them and duck down into the jungle. In the jungle, the Paladin flies ahead on his summoned griffon, and a Titanic Snake (50’ long, big enough to swallow a horse) launches itself from a tree towards him. It successfully bites the griffon, which fails a Dexterity save to avoid being swallowed. Teador the Paladin gets a Dexterity save to avoid being swallowed with it, and gets a total of 7…so they are swallowed.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, Ratel the monk flies back up, readying an action to drop to the ground when the Roc goes for him. This helps, but the Roc is fast enough to reach him on the ground, damaging and grabbing him.</p><p></p><p>The Paladin drops a smiting hit inside the snake, but it passes the DC 21 Constitution save (barely) and doesn’t throw him up. The griffon is killed by acid damage and vanishes from the snake’s stomach.</p><p></p><p>Reybella the cleric uses Summon Celestial for the first time, summoning an Avenger (archer) that fires 3x 2d6+9 radiant arrows down into the snake. Pretty good damage.</p><p></p><p>Dmitri the barbarian is still being run by the party, so he hurls his returning greataxe at the Roc, and crits – twice. The monk then acrobatics his way out of the Roc’s talons and damages it some more. It departs on its turn, having lost over half its HP.</p><p></p><p>The Paladin makes a Concentration check, and casts Banishment at the snake from inside it (he can see in the dark, so he’s not blinded, and anyway he could tell where it was). Poof. He moves away, and actions are readied. When everyone’s ready, he dismisses concentration on Banishment, and the very confused snake reappears and is shredded.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The party also finds a secluded village of Myconids in the jungle. They are pretty peaceful, and the party finds out that the Aarakocra leave them alone because they have no hearts or blood. It's an interesting conversation, although they don't really learn anything plot-relevant. The myconids use spores to grant telepathy, and don't have individual names. It was fun trying to run "very alien mindset." They do grab a bag of telepathy spores and put them in the ice chest of preservation, so they have a 1-time 1-hour duration telepathy spore package now.</p><p></p><p>In the mountains to the west, the party later encounters an elderly cloud giant. He reacts poorly to fliers, but is otherwise willing to talk, although it becomes very quickly apparent that he has a major memory problem. He doesn’t remember quite what he’s out there to do or where he was going or which Giantish city he’s from. I wrote this deliberately as a “has dementia” characterization from personal experience. Anyway, he’s a cloud giant with innate spellcasting and a Staff of Frost, so even though he’s old and confused, he can deal a lot of damage. If the party had approached flying and not talking, or looked like Aarakocra, he would have greeted them with a Cone of Cold.</p><p></p><p>The party gets him to agree to travel back to the closest Giant city they know of with him. Along the way, they’re attacked by 4 Chimeras. The old giant rolls dead last on initiative, and proceeds to fail his Dexterity save against 3 Chimera breaths; he was only the main target for 1 of the 3, but he was in the blast zone for the other 2. He took 120/200hp in damage in the first round before he got to act. The Cleric gave him about 40hp of healing, and then on his turn he Misty Stepped to the side and blasted 2 Chimeras with Cone of Cold from his staff. The whole encounter lasted maybe 2-2.5 rounds. One of the Chimeras tried to escape, but was stopped cold by the Paladin’s Sentinel feat. The others went down so fast they didn’t get a chance.</p><p></p><p>Once returned to his city, the giant is separated from the Staff of Frost. One of the named NPCs brings it over to the party and tells them that he keeps managing to find the staff even when they hide it or take it away, and that he probably wouldn’t go off on his own without it… and asks the party to take it with them when they go.</p><p></p><p><strong>Session 14: 7/24/2021</strong></p><p></p><p>Player-facing recap:</p><p>Everyone made it!</p><p>The party decides to work on raiding/destroying the temple of Tezcatlipoca, which is halfway across the map, with Aarakocra territory in the way. They decide to thread the needle between a triangle of Aarakocra cities, searching along the way.</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>Moving on, the group continues to head northeast, finding some kind of Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra Slayers, each dual-wielding short swords, attack; their invisibility drops on their first attack.</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>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>2 rounds later, a couple of mid-level priests also arrive.</p><p>The party ends up killing all enemies except two of the priests (one Word of Recalls out). </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>Ratel used Stunning Strike for the first time ever, stunlocking one of the slayers into oblivion. </p><p>There are a good number of critical hits on both sides of the fight.</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>At the end of the fight, the group loots the area and boogie on to the northeast.</p><p>The artificer leaves his homunculus bird behind to see what happens; the Aarakocra do come and clean up the area.</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><em>Non-player facing recap:</em></p><p><em>“Let’s fly through the middle of enemy territory across trade routes investigating everything while on our slow magic brooms and being very distinctive!”</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>+1 point on Ssword’s development chart for bringing him to a shrine to Sseth. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The party found an Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>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…</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>This was an on-the-fly call, and I think the right one since they were within 30 miles of Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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.</em></p><p><em>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.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>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).</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>From this, the Aarakocra should learn:</em></p><p><em>-One of the party keeps not showing up on divination or scrying (the dwarf, effect of Ssword)</em></p><p><em>-Casters aren’t enough; high-end melee isn’t enough</em></p><p><em>-Area of effect spells and debuffs tend to fail often (party has generally good saves)</em></p><p><em>-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.</em></p><p><em>-The Aarakocra need a better way to split the party up or use less blunt-weapon tactics (long ranged attacks, wear them down, etc.). The Aarakocra approach to battle makes this hard for them.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>At this point, the party’s location is still generally known. They rest at night (Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra know where they are and can locate their resting place. The sound & vision blocking of Sanctum works both ways.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>I need to figure out a less “roll initiative” way for the Aarakocra 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.</em></p><p><em>Another option is just to spam summons or fireballs or whatever into the Sanctum. </em></p><p><em>The Aarakocra 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.</em></p><p><em>They also explicitly have Symbol 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.</em></p><p><em>There are also plenty of lower-level Aarakocra 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.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>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 Aarakocra 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.</em></p><p> <em></em></p><p><em>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.</em></p><p></p><p><strong>Session 15: 8/14/2021</strong></p><p></p><p>Everyone was here. Happy Birthday D!</p><p></p><p>The party starts taking their long rest, but after a little over an hour, it’s become unbearably hot, to the point where they can’t rest. It doesn’t take long to figure out that it’s Control Weather. They depart Mordenkainen’s Sanctum and travel a couple of hours east, but it’s still hot. Malamir the Artificer uses his Stone of True Seeing and spots a Scrying sensor. Teador the Paladin dispels it, but there’s no guarantee another scrying sensor isn’t there shortly after.</p><p></p><p>The party ends up turning back west to try to find whoever is casting the spell. They fly due west, arrayed over 1200’ in a north/south line (300’ spacing) on brooms, with the griffon, homunculus, and Silver Raven figurine extending the line. It’s about midnight, and they’re now on rocky terrain.</p><p></p><p>Suddenly, two glowing four-winged celestials flash into existence (randomly chosen in front of Dmitri, middle of the line), firing four arrows that all strike him for about 70 points of radiant damage.</p><p></p><p>The enemy forces are two senior priests (one concentrating on Control Weather), one scarred wizard (using the Magic Missile/Bigby’s Hand combo from before – they realize that he’s probably the one they killed before, but Raised from the dead), and two war priests, plus summoned Celestial Archers.</p><p></p><p>The party being spread out really hurts. Dmitri charges forward (but the brooms are slow) and is down to about 3hp before he gets into melee with the enemies. I had intended for the battle to happen in the middle of an area affected by Symbol<img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" />eath (10d10 necrotic/turn, Con save half) set up as a trap. However, I realized partway through the first round that Symbol’s exclusions only apply to triggering the spell, not to the effects. Since the Aarakocra wouldn’t stand in the area of effect, I had to move it further out. Ultimately, Dmitri was the only one who was harmed by it. Lesson learned.</p><p></p><p>Ratel the monk spent the whole battle closing distance while firing arrows at the big bright glowing summoned celestials. I think he popped 3 of the 4 (the war priests re-summoned them). They have good damage, but AC 16 and 40hp is pretty low for a 5th level slot. </p><p>Reybella, at the far right end of the line, spends the whole battle trying to get close enough to do anything. She doesn’t have any speed enhancers or mobility spells (life cleric).</p><p>Teador the Paladin used his last 4th-level slot to Dimension Door into the enemy group. Malamir spent a couple of rounds dashing with his winged (artificer suit) boots.</p><p></p><p>Dmitri stayed up at 0 hit points with multiple failed death saves (hits). Zealot barbarians with Rage Beyond Death are very very hard to actually put down. Hit point damage just flat doesn’t matter.</p><p></p><p>Ultimately, the Aarakocra Word of Recall out, with nobody dying on either side except some summons. Five Aarakocra casters have now encountered the party, fought them, and lived to analyze lessons learned for future battles.</p><p></p><p>The party moves an hour east and rests, figuring they can’t do anything to stop the scrying.</p><p></p><p>They then search the hex, and discover an old cart track and pile of boulders that looks like a deliberately blocked cave entrance. It turns out to be a 30’ high x 20’ wide (+-) mine shaft. They follow it a few hundred feet back before encountering some interesting mushrooms with holes on the side. Malamir decides to touch one, and the Shriekers shriek until destroyed.</p><p></p><p>This reveals a 30’ square shaft going 200’ down, blocked by a massive and extremely thick iron grate. Malamir uses Fabricate to create a hole, and the party drops down. There’s a Symbol: Fear at the bottom, but most of the group is within range of the Paladin’s aura and isn’t affected.</p><p></p><p>They systematically check hallways. The first hallway has some brown mold (DMG pg 105), and some giant scrap, plus 26 20lb bars of silver (100gp value each). The next hallway has a giantish corpse with some rot grubs. Around this time Dmitri realizes that he’s been wielding a short sword and could be using a shield. This saves him from getting bit by rot grubs (+0 to hit, rolled 19; he’d just changed AC from 18 to 20 by putting on his shield).</p><p>The grubs die swiftly, of course.</p><p></p><p>The next tunnel goes farther into the mountain, then down a long ramp, and around a corner to a dimly lit room. Several of the party spot something reflective on the ceiling. Malamir and Teador fly up to investigate, and pass their Charisma saves. It’s a mirror. Malamir decides to Identify it, using Identify as a ritual. We discuss, and he has to make 2 more Charisma saves (bless + flash of genius means he passes both with exactly 15 on a DC 15 ). It’s a mirror of life trapping. Discussion ensues.</p><p></p><p>Teador decides to smash the mirror.</p><p></p><p>8 deformed giant-things rain down on the floor 40’ below. To be continued next session…</p><p></p><p>I go ahead and have everyone level up to 15.</p><p></p><p><em>Not for party consumption notes:</em></p><p><em>They did survive an encounter with another kill team. There is no plan for defeating scrying, so I have another attempt on them scheduled for some convenient time in the near future. If they seek out the Yuan-Ti, they’ll either set off wards against scrying, or they’ll lead the Aarakocra to a Yuan-ti village that can then be destroyed.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The Aarakocra now know that the short guy with the short sword doesn’t show up on divinations and seems immune to hit point damage. They’ll have a better plan next time. The War Clerics and others with +6 to +9 to hit just don’t cut it reliably enough. Unfortunately, there are only about 30 or so Slayers in existence, and 5 of them just got killed a few days ago.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Running caster-heavy battles like this is also time consuming and a bit tiring. Unless they go with overwhelming numbers, which is hard to run at the table, they will have a hard time overcoming the party. Sure, I could send in 8 clerics who all open with Fireball, but this is where D&D as a fun game conflicts with “fighting a war effectively.”</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Right now I’m leaning towards the Aarakocra just spying on the party and letting them wreak havoc in the party’s wake unless/until they attack Tezcatlipoca’s temple.</em></p><p><em>I’m not sure if they realize how bad being able to be scried on consistently is…and at least two of the Aarakocra temples have full-time scrying rooms.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Dmitri is very hard to kill. Since Ssword gives him Mind Blank, he can’t be affected by Calm Emotion. Sleep or Death effects are about the only way to put him down now. Hold, Paralysis, etc. work , but he’s got advantage on saves, a paladin aura, and a friendly artificer around, so those are not super reliable. Grapple also doesn’t work well against a raging barbarian. If they keep going for Tezcatlipoca’s temple, they’ll run into plenty of Death effects anyway.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Anyway, this is one of the dozen-or-more dungeons scattered around the map…they finally found one! There was silver on the first floor, so I’m sure they’ll continue exploring out of greed. It’ll probably take all of next session. Lots of fomorians of a few different types.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="J-H, post: 8952422, member: 7020951"] [B]Session 13: 7/10/21[/B] Barbarian & artificer both out. The party decides to explore their way northwards and skirt the closest Aarakocra city. They know they’ll need to do some kind of a strike on one of the cities or temples to prove their chops. They find a couple of sets of abandoned dwellings – one an old Aarakocra village from before the fall of the Yuan-ti, and the other an abandoned Giant fort. Moving into the jungle, I finally roll a couple of random encounters as they explore. I decide to combine the two. They spot a Roc diving on them and duck down into the jungle. In the jungle, the Paladin flies ahead on his summoned griffon, and a Titanic Snake (50’ long, big enough to swallow a horse) launches itself from a tree towards him. It successfully bites the griffon, which fails a Dexterity save to avoid being swallowed. Teador the Paladin gets a Dexterity save to avoid being swallowed with it, and gets a total of 7…so they are swallowed. Meanwhile, Ratel the monk flies back up, readying an action to drop to the ground when the Roc goes for him. This helps, but the Roc is fast enough to reach him on the ground, damaging and grabbing him. The Paladin drops a smiting hit inside the snake, but it passes the DC 21 Constitution save (barely) and doesn’t throw him up. The griffon is killed by acid damage and vanishes from the snake’s stomach. Reybella the cleric uses Summon Celestial for the first time, summoning an Avenger (archer) that fires 3x 2d6+9 radiant arrows down into the snake. Pretty good damage. Dmitri the barbarian is still being run by the party, so he hurls his returning greataxe at the Roc, and crits – twice. The monk then acrobatics his way out of the Roc’s talons and damages it some more. It departs on its turn, having lost over half its HP. The Paladin makes a Concentration check, and casts Banishment at the snake from inside it (he can see in the dark, so he’s not blinded, and anyway he could tell where it was). Poof. He moves away, and actions are readied. When everyone’s ready, he dismisses concentration on Banishment, and the very confused snake reappears and is shredded. The party also finds a secluded village of Myconids in the jungle. They are pretty peaceful, and the party finds out that the Aarakocra leave them alone because they have no hearts or blood. It's an interesting conversation, although they don't really learn anything plot-relevant. The myconids use spores to grant telepathy, and don't have individual names. It was fun trying to run "very alien mindset." They do grab a bag of telepathy spores and put them in the ice chest of preservation, so they have a 1-time 1-hour duration telepathy spore package now. In the mountains to the west, the party later encounters an elderly cloud giant. He reacts poorly to fliers, but is otherwise willing to talk, although it becomes very quickly apparent that he has a major memory problem. He doesn’t remember quite what he’s out there to do or where he was going or which Giantish city he’s from. I wrote this deliberately as a “has dementia” characterization from personal experience. Anyway, he’s a cloud giant with innate spellcasting and a Staff of Frost, so even though he’s old and confused, he can deal a lot of damage. If the party had approached flying and not talking, or looked like Aarakocra, he would have greeted them with a Cone of Cold. The party gets him to agree to travel back to the closest Giant city they know of with him. Along the way, they’re attacked by 4 Chimeras. The old giant rolls dead last on initiative, and proceeds to fail his Dexterity save against 3 Chimera breaths; he was only the main target for 1 of the 3, but he was in the blast zone for the other 2. He took 120/200hp in damage in the first round before he got to act. The Cleric gave him about 40hp of healing, and then on his turn he Misty Stepped to the side and blasted 2 Chimeras with Cone of Cold from his staff. The whole encounter lasted maybe 2-2.5 rounds. One of the Chimeras tried to escape, but was stopped cold by the Paladin’s Sentinel feat. The others went down so fast they didn’t get a chance. Once returned to his city, the giant is separated from the Staff of Frost. One of the named NPCs brings it over to the party and tells them that he keeps managing to find the staff even when they hide it or take it away, and that he probably wouldn’t go off on his own without it… and asks the party to take it with them when they go. [B]Session 14: 7/24/2021[/B] Player-facing recap: Everyone made it! The party decides to work on raiding/destroying the temple of Tezcatlipoca, which is halfway across the map, with Aarakocra territory in the way. They decide to thread the needle between a triangle of Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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: “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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra need a better way to split the party up or use less blunt-weapon tactics (long ranged attacks, wear them down, etc.). The Aarakocra approach to battle makes this hard for them. At this point, the party’s location is still generally known. They rest at night (Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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 Symbol 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 Aarakocra 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 Aarakocra 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.[/I] [B]Session 15: 8/14/2021[/B] Everyone was here. Happy Birthday D! The party starts taking their long rest, but after a little over an hour, it’s become unbearably hot, to the point where they can’t rest. It doesn’t take long to figure out that it’s Control Weather. They depart Mordenkainen’s Sanctum and travel a couple of hours east, but it’s still hot. Malamir the Artificer uses his Stone of True Seeing and spots a Scrying sensor. Teador the Paladin dispels it, but there’s no guarantee another scrying sensor isn’t there shortly after. The party ends up turning back west to try to find whoever is casting the spell. They fly due west, arrayed over 1200’ in a north/south line (300’ spacing) on brooms, with the griffon, homunculus, and Silver Raven figurine extending the line. It’s about midnight, and they’re now on rocky terrain. Suddenly, two glowing four-winged celestials flash into existence (randomly chosen in front of Dmitri, middle of the line), firing four arrows that all strike him for about 70 points of radiant damage. The enemy forces are two senior priests (one concentrating on Control Weather), one scarred wizard (using the Magic Missile/Bigby’s Hand combo from before – they realize that he’s probably the one they killed before, but Raised from the dead), and two war priests, plus summoned Celestial Archers. The party being spread out really hurts. Dmitri charges forward (but the brooms are slow) and is down to about 3hp before he gets into melee with the enemies. I had intended for the battle to happen in the middle of an area affected by Symbol:Death (10d10 necrotic/turn, Con save half) set up as a trap. However, I realized partway through the first round that Symbol’s exclusions only apply to triggering the spell, not to the effects. Since the Aarakocra wouldn’t stand in the area of effect, I had to move it further out. Ultimately, Dmitri was the only one who was harmed by it. Lesson learned. Ratel the monk spent the whole battle closing distance while firing arrows at the big bright glowing summoned celestials. I think he popped 3 of the 4 (the war priests re-summoned them). They have good damage, but AC 16 and 40hp is pretty low for a 5th level slot. Reybella, at the far right end of the line, spends the whole battle trying to get close enough to do anything. She doesn’t have any speed enhancers or mobility spells (life cleric). Teador the Paladin used his last 4th-level slot to Dimension Door into the enemy group. Malamir spent a couple of rounds dashing with his winged (artificer suit) boots. Dmitri stayed up at 0 hit points with multiple failed death saves (hits). Zealot barbarians with Rage Beyond Death are very very hard to actually put down. Hit point damage just flat doesn’t matter. Ultimately, the Aarakocra Word of Recall out, with nobody dying on either side except some summons. Five Aarakocra casters have now encountered the party, fought them, and lived to analyze lessons learned for future battles. The party moves an hour east and rests, figuring they can’t do anything to stop the scrying. They then search the hex, and discover an old cart track and pile of boulders that looks like a deliberately blocked cave entrance. It turns out to be a 30’ high x 20’ wide (+-) mine shaft. They follow it a few hundred feet back before encountering some interesting mushrooms with holes on the side. Malamir decides to touch one, and the Shriekers shriek until destroyed. This reveals a 30’ square shaft going 200’ down, blocked by a massive and extremely thick iron grate. Malamir uses Fabricate to create a hole, and the party drops down. There’s a Symbol: Fear at the bottom, but most of the group is within range of the Paladin’s aura and isn’t affected. They systematically check hallways. The first hallway has some brown mold (DMG pg 105), and some giant scrap, plus 26 20lb bars of silver (100gp value each). The next hallway has a giantish corpse with some rot grubs. Around this time Dmitri realizes that he’s been wielding a short sword and could be using a shield. This saves him from getting bit by rot grubs (+0 to hit, rolled 19; he’d just changed AC from 18 to 20 by putting on his shield). The grubs die swiftly, of course. The next tunnel goes farther into the mountain, then down a long ramp, and around a corner to a dimly lit room. Several of the party spot something reflective on the ceiling. Malamir and Teador fly up to investigate, and pass their Charisma saves. It’s a mirror. Malamir decides to Identify it, using Identify as a ritual. We discuss, and he has to make 2 more Charisma saves (bless + flash of genius means he passes both with exactly 15 on a DC 15 ). It’s a mirror of life trapping. Discussion ensues. Teador decides to smash the mirror. 8 deformed giant-things rain down on the floor 40’ below. To be continued next session… I go ahead and have everyone level up to 15. [I]Not for party consumption notes: They did survive an encounter with another kill team. There is no plan for defeating scrying, so I have another attempt on them scheduled for some convenient time in the near future. If they seek out the Yuan-Ti, they’ll either set off wards against scrying, or they’ll lead the Aarakocra to a Yuan-ti village that can then be destroyed. The Aarakocra now know that the short guy with the short sword doesn’t show up on divinations and seems immune to hit point damage. They’ll have a better plan next time. The War Clerics and others with +6 to +9 to hit just don’t cut it reliably enough. Unfortunately, there are only about 30 or so Slayers in existence, and 5 of them just got killed a few days ago. Running caster-heavy battles like this is also time consuming and a bit tiring. Unless they go with overwhelming numbers, which is hard to run at the table, they will have a hard time overcoming the party. Sure, I could send in 8 clerics who all open with Fireball, but this is where D&D as a fun game conflicts with “fighting a war effectively.” Right now I’m leaning towards the Aarakocra just spying on the party and letting them wreak havoc in the party’s wake unless/until they attack Tezcatlipoca’s temple. I’m not sure if they realize how bad being able to be scried on consistently is…and at least two of the Aarakocra temples have full-time scrying rooms. Dmitri is very hard to kill. Since Ssword gives him Mind Blank, he can’t be affected by Calm Emotion. Sleep or Death effects are about the only way to put him down now. Hold, Paralysis, etc. work , but he’s got advantage on saves, a paladin aura, and a friendly artificer around, so those are not super reliable. Grapple also doesn’t work well against a raging barbarian. If they keep going for Tezcatlipoca’s temple, they’ll run into plenty of Death effects anyway. Anyway, this is one of the dozen-or-more dungeons scattered around the map…they finally found one! There was silver on the first floor, so I’m sure they’ll continue exploring out of greed. It’ll probably take all of next session. Lots of fomorians of a few different types.[/I] [/QUOTE]
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Against the Idol of the Sun: A 5e high-level campaign log
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