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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 7984997" data-attributes="member: 7020951">I forgot to write down the date.  Stage 3 (Caverns, Part 1)The paladin and the fighter/rogue were out, so the party took on the caverns with only 5.  It worked out well, as the caves are very close quarters.  Most fights had Dmitri (the barbarian) in front, soaking and dealing the most damage, while the rest of the party stacked up behind him.  He absorbed enough damage to kill the entire party at least once.  He got dropped to 0 and had two failed death saves at one point, but wasn’t worried since the party cleric has Revivify.    They fought basically every enemy on the map except the last two bone pillars near the waterfall. The party went east and up pretty early, and figured out pretty quickly what was up with the two Stone Men.  I eliminated the “resistant to non-magical damage” bit, and I’m glad I did.  I didn’t have them use the “earth glide and drop stalactites for 2d6, dex save half” ability much, as the party has zero way to counter it.Highlights:The dwarf being ahead and finding the giant pile of gold in the Xorn lair.  “I know it’s a trap of some kind, but I’m still going to do it”.  He actually was smart, throwing a rock ahead and then picking up only one piece of gold.  I had the xorn wait until everyone else was busy stuffing packs and Dmitri was checking the other path.  Xorns hit super hard!  At only 70hp, it went down quickly.Other highlights:Dmitri the dwarf (barb) climbing down first, and taking fire bolts from a couple of Bone Pillars.  He dropped on down, even though the rest of the party was 35’ above him.  The sorcerer started climbing down; the halfling rogue held his action to “attack when I’m in range”, waiting for the halfling fighter to tie a rope and lower him down at barely-safe speeds.  The chimney was only 5’ wide, but the sorcerer made the Acrobatics check I called for (18) to not get knocked down as a halfling rogue went sailing down past him.The bone pillars throw a lot of damage, 4x +3 2d10 firebolts each per round, but they have low AC, low HP, and take +50% damage from bludgeoning weapons.  Also, the barbarian was wearing the breastplate of Fire Resistance from last session.“You approach the next room and hear chirping and hooting sounds, kind of like the bats you fought earlier.”  The sorcerer fireballed the room, killing the swarm and letting me introduce the next Stone Man as showing up pretty damaged.The final fight of the night was the last two Death-piloted skeletons plus a bone pillar hidden in the corner.  The barbarian charged in again, saw what he was up against, and requested that the sorcerer fireball the room with him in it.  He made the save, then took only half damage thanks to fire resistance – so he took 6 damage while 3 enemies took 24 damage each.  Danger close fire support!Also undated:  Session 5:  Stage 3, Part 2We permanently lost the player of the Paladin to RL commitments.  The party now has:1 dwarf zealot barbarian tank1 halfling battlemaster2 arcane tricksters, one of whom has two levels of fighter1 life cleric1 dragon sorcerer (fire)Items and armor were reshuffled, and the halfling is now at AC 20 (full plate + shield).  Partway through the session, we discovered that the Fighter/Arcane Trickster had never picked a Fighting Style.  Ugh.I skipped the last two bone pillars in the caverns as redundant, and the party began climbing up the waterfall after some concerns about the distance they’d fall.  Due to the climbing involved, the barbarian carries the halfling fighter on his back (STR 18, he can do it).  This is helpful, because they climb up onto a ledge and are faced with a bone pillar in front of them spitting fire, and a thornvine attacking them from behind.The fighter/arcane trickster uses his agility to get right up in the bone pillar’s face, but ends up eating a “drop to 0” amount of fire damage in the process.  Some vampire bats are attracted by the fight and fly down after a round or two of combat.  The only serious damage was the rogue.There may have been one more thornvine at the top, but I think I skipped it.They then emerged into the sunken city in a giant lake.  The barbarian, wearing his ring of swimming, checks the houses and finds that they are mostly empty, but appear “lived in.”  Most of whatever was living there apparently got up and left en masse in an organized fashion not too terribly long ago (the fishmen are off sacking Venice).  One of the arcane tricksters puts Dancing Lights underwater for visibility, and spots one of the fishmen closing in.  The group is attacked by two spitters and 3 of the jumpers that move up to melee.  They are dealt with pretty quickly, although everyone seems to hate the spitters since they have ranged attacks with a save and a possible blinding effect at short range.I skip the second “random” encounter because I’m concerned about time, and it’s good that I did.  They then explore the temple, and try to talk to the fishmen.  I need to be prepared for them to try to talk to everyone!They focus down the water elemental and close-range fishmen while the two spellcasters hit them with Shatter, Fear, Slow, etc.  Everyone saves against Slow; two characters have to dash off for two rounds due to the Fear effect (note: this knocks them out for 4 rounds of time so it’s not too fun).  The halfling Arcane Tricksters spends his time sneaking and trying to get into range, but does some damage and lands some good Chromatic Orb damage.  A couple of players get knocked to 0, almost but not quite including the cleric.Loot:  Circlet of Blasting, 2 healing potionsShort rest on top of the temple.At this point it’s close to 9pm.  “I have work tomorrow and should go.  How close are we to finishing and leveling?”  “Ahh…two more fights.”  “Screw it, I’ll stay!”The rogues successfully sneak up to the outside of the palace tower and do recon.  The rest of the party climbs up sneakily, except that the barbarian rolls poorly and gets spotted.  The fishman boss slugs down a potion of Enlarge Person and gets bigger!  The spellcaster with him is focused down in the first round (60hp) and doesn’t get to do anything at all.  The big fishman doesn’t last much longer, and the skeletal hydra heads tied down on the 1st level end up pretty irrelevant and get picked off quickly without doing much.  I was expecting the party to come in on the 1st level, where it would have been much more relevant…but they didn’t, and their plan worked!Loot:  +2 Trident; 1 healing potion.Then they fought the 8-headed hydra.  There was a lot of maneuvering in this battle, as the hydra tried to stay in range for its 30’ line poison breath.  The sorcerer, who kept pelting it with annoying fire repeatedly, went down to 0 like 3 or 4 times.  I ran with the rule that you have to kill all heads of the hydra for it to die, but that when it went to 0hp, it started attacking with disadvantage and its poison breath was weaker.  The sorcerer was out of Fireballs and, aside from one Action Surging round from the Battlemaster, the barbarian was the main source of head-killing.  In total, they did 649 points of damage to the hydra before the last head was seared shut!(no loot, it’s just a monstrosity).Level up!The only characters who haven’t gotten substantial loot so far are the Arcane Trickster 5 (he has some mundane stuff but hasn’t used it, and he’s gotten use from the +1 bolts) and the Life Cleric (she inherited the Adamantine Breastplate).  I’m not sure what loot a cleric needs…it’s not like she needs to be “even better” at healing right now, and she rarely uses melee weapons or offensive spells.9/12/19:  Stage 4AOnly 5 players.  The Fighter/Arcane Trickster has to miss again.  I think I have to assume he’ll be gone about half the time.The party approaches a large building with a big tower rising up from its rear after leaving the lake.  They cautiously approach the double doors, after finding scratch marks and bone chips in the path.  These scratch marks and bone chips are noted several times throughout the building, but they never really figure out what they are.They hang a left, tripping a weak ambush of 6 skeleton ambushers, who are all dispatched with nearly no damage.  Then they enter the skull room, figuring out quickly that something’s up.  The Sorcerer uses his wand of Detect Magic, spotting one of the 4 skulls sitting in alcoves (along with a bunch of non-magical skulls).  The barbarian, Dmitri, throws his axe at it, but misses (cover/disadvantage) since it’s in a small cubby and his axe is big.  The skull goes blurry.  Then four other skulls go blurry.Puxiweil (paralysis skull) paralyzes Dmitri, and gets focused down first.  The group generally focuses down the skulls one at a time once they can force a failed CON save and remove the blur.  This works out okay for them, but all three of the other skulls do manage to get their big AOEs off (Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Lesser Cone of Cold), for 8d6, 8d6, and 6d6 respectively.  I had intentionally planned to avoid a TPK by having the skulls only use one big AOE per round (using their energy rays otherwise, aside from one Hold Person).  I forgot to have them use Shield, but oh well.Somehow the group manages to not die, and I think only one person even drops to 0.They then take a short rest, finding another healing potion and two vials of holy water, before checking out the rest of the building.  The ghosts don’t last long, and they loot the loot I had rolled.  I realized that the Scroll of Protection is enemy-specific and roll it… 84.  Yep, they got a Scroll of Protection from undead, 5’ radius, lasts 5 minutes, Cha DC 15 or undead can’t go in.  That’s pretty strong!They enter the spinning tower (I finally remember music), and dispose of the “training” encounter of four skeletons before it even has a chance to do the once per round rotation.But that’s okay, because there’s plenty of spinning while fighting Elizabeth Bathory!  I pre-rolled the initial checks, and she charmed two people before being caught.  They just let her talk without answering her, and I was not subtle about it…  I walked around the table and dropped off notes to the charmed people (Dmitri the barbarian who does radiant damage “just close your eyes and listen to my voice”, and Ratel the halfling fighter “keep your casters from upsetting me”), and to the one who spotted her (Reybella the cleric).  The cleric’s player needed some nudging to decide to do something… and so she finally said “I cast Fire bolt” and rolled a crit for about 35 damage.  I was really surprised at how quiet the table was compared to the usual.  O h well.Elizabeth went after her and knocked her to 0 pretty fast, and charmed someone else somewhere in that timeframe.  We had a moment where I had the party cleric at 0, 3 party members charmed, and the last one was a sorcerer who had no radiant damage available.  He was trying to break the charm by doing things like Magic Missiling his party members (after having been knocked down by the charmed halfling who was “trying to keep him from doing something that would anger the vampire”).  “Roll an intelligence check real quick for m.”  “4.”  “Ok, you think it’s a great idea to magic missile your party members!”  He probably should have cast Blink, but oh well.  It’s also worth noting at this point that the half-elf (1) and elf (1) character players forgot about the advantage vs. charm, and so did I.A couple of moments helped turn this around:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Said halfling fighter had gotten the spellcaster down, then looked around and said “Oh, look, our cleric is down.  I’ll go stabilize her.”  Elizabeth says “I didn’t say to do that” and he says “You didn’t say not to.”  The next round he puts a healing potion into the cleric, and she ends up putting up Spirit Guardians, an AOE Radiant emanation to stay safe with.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The halfling Arcane Trickster (charmed) has tossed away his weapon, as instructed, and goes up to her and tries to pick her up.  “So, is there a Mr. vampire somewhere?”  (We found out earlier in the evening that this halfling, Corwyn, is aged 30 and on his third wife).  Instead of biting him, she hits him (legendary action), then hits him twice more on her turn instead of biting him.  He ends up getting a couple of sneak attacks in and annoying her.</li> </ul>It’s still very much “could be TPK” territory, but Elizabeth has taken less than 40 points of damage and is healing rapidly with a “snack” or two (freed someone from charm).  She ends up going right over to the dwarven zealot barbarian (Dmitri) with legendary actions, right before his turn, and biting him.  He takes some bad damage, but Dmitri’s eyes immediately go bloodshot with rage and he goes to town on her (a good turnaround for the player who had previously been forced to do nothing for multiple rounds!).  Elizabeth is dead in about two rounds, after having transformed to a swarm of bats at low HP (legendary action) in preparation for flying out a window (legendary action planned).  She takes a Guiding Bolt to the Bat Swarm for about 20 points of radiant damage.The group is paranoid about her coming back to life, so they engage in several different tactics to try to prevent it, and they loot the body (Ring of Protection +1, Cloak of Spell Resistance).  They continue up the rotating tower.  Instead of having the rogue poke his head out the top, the barbarian does it, giving the ballista-operating skeletons time to turn the ballistas around.  Our two arcane casters (AT & Sorc) both cast Minor Illusion, while the halfling fighter throws a blanket up out of the trapdoor to give some motion.  I have two of the three ballista operation teams fall for it.  The group rushes up, taking only a single ballista bolt to the raging barbarian (targeting randomly rolled) for moderate damage before clearing all 9 skeletons.  The arcane trickster gets the bracers of archery (+2 damage), and they decide to bed down for a long rest after reloading two ballistas and pointing them across the bridge.  The third ballista was damaged with the sorc decided to fireball it and its operators to shut them all down at once…The rotating tower was okay, but a bit of a pain.  I don’t think I’ll do anything quite like that again.  It was hard to remember to rotate it each turn (should have put out an init card) and they all just ended up running downhill the whole time… okay, I guess it did keep it from being a static fight.I got good feedback from several people about how the vampire fight went; apparently a couple of them are reluctant to even try running vampires because the Charm/fragility/lethality combo makes them hard to balance.  They had fun with it.  It was still super, super close to a TPK!  I don’t mind killing one party member, but killing all of them would have been a bit much.The Life Cleric is dishing out massive amounts of healing, and despite what the guides say, does make a big difference in keeping people alive in battle.</blockquote>

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