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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 7989861" data-attributes="member: 7020951">5/14/204 players, barbarian had internet trouble and the dual-class AT was busy with school.The party continued upward without taking a short rest, crossing another room of gears with no problems (the medusa heads never hit).  That room had a pillar of shadow running vertically through it, and out through a lense in the (50’H) roof.  The next room, which they scouted, had that pillar of shadow, plus some magic darkness and some animated armors.  They used the Rod of Telekinesis to lift the Paladin up to the lense, and he smashed it at the price of a bit of necrotic damage.  I went to all the future areas and reduced the amount of magic shadow substantially.They then fought four axe-throwing animated armors that did a bit of damage, plus four shadows that moved out of the pillar of darkness and then flubbed every single attack roll.Before taking a short rest, the arcane trickster popped up to the next level to check it out.  He saw nothing, but inside the magical shadow were 3 werewolves that had been killed by Death (for objecting to hunting the party).  Death has Lifesense, so he can auto-sense living beings and their hit points.  Death waited 30 minutes, then walked the werewolves down halfway through their short rest.  Two pack lords (low-AC/high HP brutes) that hit with some attacks, and one shaman corpse that Death could cast some higher-level necromancy spells through.  He cast Finger of Death on the character with the lowest HP, who failed the save and took 70-something damage with 30-something HP left and turned into a zombie. (“Hey, do you want to run Corwyn as a zombie and fight the party?").Shortly after that, I learned that Zombies can’t be Revivified.  Party took a short rest and we waited for a new character to be rolled up… possibly should have ended the session because it took >40 minutes for an 11th level Gloom Stalker w/ gear, partly due to the player forgetting that we did point buy instead of rolled stats.They then head upstairs to the boss fight, Akmodan the (modified) Mummy Lord + 2 regular (CR 3) mummies.  To get into the room, they have to walk through a Guardian of Faith (except the monk, who wall-walks past it), and then Akmodan rolls high on initiative and drops Insect Plague on them.  The cleric (downstairs, with LOS to the spell but not Akmodan), Dispels it on her turn.  For the entire fight, every mummy was using Dreadful Glare every turn, plus sometimes as legendary actions, and not a single Dreadful Glare save was failed!  As a result, I’m not going to mention that ability again in this write-up.  Assume it was used.  All Mummy Rot saves were also made successfully.One Mummy goes down fairly quickly, while Akmodan stays at range and uses the shadow pillar in the middle of the room as cover.  The Paladin tries to close in on him, but can’t cross the distance.  Three times during the fight, he casts Firebolt – and gets counterspelled every time!   The monk runs a wide flank and does quite a bit of damage with his bow, and then gets hit with Banishment, which sticks for about 3 rounds before the Concentration save is failed.  Akmodan uses a legendary action to end up next to the ranger and the cleric, and does more damage to them than they to he.  The Paladin is still chasing him trying to get in range at this point.  Akmodan looks at the Ranger, decides he’s low on HP, and casts Sleep…and it takes the party 2-3 rounds to wake him up.  The Paladin then finally gets in close, blasts him with a searing smite for a lot of damage, and of course the DC 34 Concentration save on Banishment is failed.  Akmodan promptly uses a legendary action to activate the Stopwatch, a custom item that gives him a charge-based Time Stop (recharges 1 round of Time Stop per day).  The world judders slightly, and he’s no longer in the room (he went downstairs).  The group heals and moves around, and then right before his next normal turn, he uses the legendary action whirlwind to appear at the top of the stairs, then cast Harm on the Paladin, and then legendary actions himself back downstairs.  The Kensei Monk moves to the top of the stairs and eats an Insect Plague to the face; Akmodan is low on HP and out of sight, so the monk readies an action to attack…and on his turn, the mummy lord walks forwards and gets shot twice, shattering his death ward and leaving him at 1hp.  The paladin runs down and dashes towards him, but can’t…quite…reach him…and has to stand there for 3! Legendary rotting fist attacks, only one of which hits.  The monk then runs up, hits him, and takes out that last HP.The mummy lord’s form collapses into sand, and a small grey cloud races past the party and through a small mirror in the far corner of the room; the mirror then shatters.  Akmodan is now back in Egypt in his labs.  The party assesses the loot, including the aforementioned Time Stopping stopwatch, a nice +1 light hammer that does +2d4 poison damage, some healing potions, a brooch of shielding, and a black potion labeled in Latin, which none of the characters can read.  They are able to determine that it’s not poisonous, and the paladin drinks it.  I PM one of the other players to let him know that one of the paladin’s eyes has turned completely black.  We have a bit of fun with it… it’s a potion that permanently grants the effects of the Devil’s Sight invocation (120’ darkvision, works through Magical Darkness).They level up to 12.  The Shadow generator in the clock tower is still online, which will impact their fight with Dracula if they do not disable it next session.  Only about 4 fights left in the total campaign from here.The party composition is now: Barbarian, Ranger, Paladin, Monk, Cleric.  Zero arcane casting, very little utility casting.  Not what I expected.</blockquote>

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