We had the last session of the AoW yesterday. Man, that Kyuss with his wailing
dire ax executioner's mace is a badass.
First, some final observations about swordsage and schools.
The medium BAB isn't as limiting as it appeared at first. This is because much of the swordsage's combat power is tied up in strikes, so most of the time I was making just the one attack per round at my highest bonus. In this circumstance, it didn't matter as much that I had fewer iterative attacks, or that the BAB wasn't the best (since it was usually still high enough).
Diamond Mind is an awesome offensive and defensive school at high levels. The best offensive strikes I had were time stands still (#1), diamond nightmare blade and greater insightful strike. Diamond defense saved my butt half a dozen times, and on at least 4 occasions those were with a 2 on the d20 roll. This made for much mirth (from me) and much wailing and gnashing of teeth (from the DM and other players).
Of the other strikes, five-shadow superlongname still has the coolest name, but we ruled that it didn't work on undead, which is most of the monsters in AOW. Other than that, the secondary effects are nice, but when it comes to taking someone down, there's no substitute for gobs of hit point damage. Swooping dragon attack OTOH is just silly; I stopped using it after the first 2 sessions because DC 60+ saves were too much for people to accept.
Time stands still and diamond nightmare blade are possibly a bit too good. I hit 300 points in the first round against Kyuss with TST. That was with -10/+20 Power Attack and an artifact item giving +20 to hit; that +20 however has to be considered in the context of my medium BAB and Kyuss' 53+ AC. I can only imagine what a properly twinked warblade would be capable of. In another fight, I hit 270 points with a DNB critical. IMO the maneuver is too situational; it's mediocre against high-AC opponents, but against low- and moderate-AC ones it's a killer. Maybe +5 attack and x3 damage would make things more consistent, rather than x4 damage.
Other staple stances/maneuvers: from Shadow Hand, the teleporters, balance on the sky and one with shadow; from Tiger Claw, sudden leap, leaping dragon stance, pouncing charge and raging mongoose; from Diamond Mind, all the save boosters and quicksilver motion.
Great moments in the session:
The fight with Lashonna at the base of the ziggurat. The wizard cut loose with 2 maximised meteor swarms, and the cleric did the same with 2 mass heals. The dwarf barbarian, who normally feasts on such occasions, was there basically to clean up the scraps this time. I busied myself taking down a couple of armoured reavers in one round, with time stands still (one full attack per opponent, after they got softened up first with a sunburst). Oh, and I showed those Blessed Angels how to REALLY wield a bastard sword like a girl.
The fight with the three broodfiends, with their Int-draining attacks, was PAINFUL. We went 4 sessions without a single PC death, and then we got 2 in the one fight. The eldritch knight archer failed saves against 2 of their breath weapons, and then got whacked with a critical, taking him to -25 points. He was a puddle of goo inside his contingencied resilient sphere. I got tentacled for 11 points of Intelligence drain, taking me to 1 Int. I've already mentioned
separating your mind from your body, but this was ridiculous. The barb had it worse, being taken to negative Int, dropping him stone dead despite still having >300 hit points.
(Aside: D&D could do with a spell to remove ability drain as a standard action. Restoration takes 3 rounds, and greater res 10 minutes.)
As if this wasn't bad enough, the archer then got up, and we could see that he was now an undead horror dripping with worms. (Something similar would have happened to the barb, but the cleric used miracle to keep him alive.) He started attacking us, so we were forced to take him down. Some of the other players questioned my ability to keep using maneuvers despite being at 1 Int, but I pointed out that I'd been separating my mind from my body for so long, it had become second nature. Besides, by definition, you don't need brains to dish out mindless violence.
So, we killed the undead archer. The wiz glitterdusted him, negating his greater invis, and I charged in with diamond nightmare blade, doing ~190 damage. Poor sod didn't even have Con bonus to hit points.
I GOT TO DIAMOND NIGHTMARE BLADE A PLAYER CHARACTER. I CAN DIE HAPPY NOW.
Next fight, with Maralee and her Kyuss knight companions, all 8 of them, all with more Int-draining tentacles. The barb was hiding behind the wiz, but we shoved him out in front. Another meteor swarm/mass heal/incendiary cloud combo helped take them out, and Maralee made a tactical mistake by charging in to attack, thus opening her to a full attack from the barb and a GIS from me. However, it still wasn't enough to kill her before she took me to 1/4 hit points and the barb to negative Int again. Yep, third PC death for the session, although a heal stopped him from turning into undead.
Last fight, with Kyuss. From what the module says (the DM lent it to me after the game), I surmise that Kyuss should have taken 2 rounds to emerge from his prison if we finished all the subquests, which we did. Stuff that for a joke; we'd probably have snotted him in one round, let alone two, if left to our own devices.
So, instead, we got to face Kyuss in (almost) his full glory: AC 53-ish, 600+ hit points, active from the get-go. And we snotted him anyway, time-stop-multiple-harm cheese and all.
From the top:
I win init, go first, open with sudden leap, followed by time stands still for 303 points (less DR). Wiz casts time stop of his own, summoning an elemental monolith and a solar, and bringing out the sphere of annihilation. Eldritch knight dispels 5 of 8 of Kyuss' buffs.
Kyuss casts time stop, coming out of it much healthier, with a new buff going (unholy aura) and a funky looking rod floating on top of the sphere. Said rod falls into the sphere, causing an almighty explosion for 60 points of damage to everyone. Presumably Kyuss as well.
The barb charges in and hits for another 100 points with Slashing Flurry (and he wanted the rod of law, hah). The cleric strips another 2 of Kyuss's buffs away.
In the next round, I use diamond nightmare blade for 230 points, the elemental monolith hits for ~90 points, and the solar casts mass heal for another 100 points.
Kyuss is looking rather unhealthy again, so he does his time stop trick, which the cleric tries to counter, but fails. He reappears somewhere over there. The barb, instead of following, delays....
I attack with pouncing charge, for another 150-odd points. The wiz dim doors the barb next to Kyuss, and the barb full attacks for something in the region of 300 points. The numbers got a bit hazy after a while.
Kyuss is again looking rather bad, so resorts to time stop again, but is counterspelled. Whoops! Decisive moment in the fight, thanks to the cleric and the eldritch knight who used a spell to let him reroll the dispel check. He's naturally rather pissed, so resorts to his engulf special attack, rolling over the wiz, the barb, and me. This was one of the occasions where diamond defense saved my butt. There's nothing like rolling a 2 on a DC 39 save, and announcing "I made it!" The wiz also succeeded, but the barb wasn't so lucky, taking 16 points Int drain, dropping him to -4. For the third time in the session.
I dance out of the engulfing mass of worms, and on emerging, use greater insightful strike to shove my blade into Kyuss where it hurts. Damn Kyuss still won't go down! And because I used diamond defense, I couldn't finish him off with raging mongoose!
So it was the barb and wiz who killed Kyuss instead. THEY STOLE MY KILL, THE BASTARDS.
3 rounds. One guy died, and would have lived if he'd rolled 1 higher on his save. Half the group came out of it with no damage at all, including me. Kyuss' time stop tactic had the side-effect of keeping him constantly on the defensive, so he never actually did anything to hurt us (except for making the sphere explode, and engulfing at the end) -- and as soon as the tactic failed, we were able to finish him.
It's not a fight I'd have wanted to do without all that spellcaster support, since it's the combination of melee twinkage and counterspelling that did it for him. I'm not sure that the counterspelling cleric had as much fun as he might have, though, since although it was a critical contribution to the fight, all the gloryhound damage-dealing stuff was from me, the wiz and the barb. But that's a discussion for another thread.
So it all ended in joy and happiness... and a massive tower that dissolved into a huge mass of worms in seconds flat. Said worms proceeded to eat into the ground, creating a 100' wide hole and forming a notorious dungeon that will challenge adventurers for years to come. Well, these things happen.
(Epilogue)
As it turns out, Padma's not going to to be able to retire just yet. She's fated to get sucked back to Faerun, as the
next episode of the struggle against the King of Shadows gets started. No rest for the wicked, as they say....
Though was the eldritch knight you mentioned at the finale with Kyuss the same guy as the one who was turned into undead? If so, how was he restored?
