Sollir Furryfoot
Explorer
More posting darnit!
Stupid cliffhangers
(Some really nice stuff once again, Jester)
Stupid cliffhangers
(Some really nice stuff once again, Jester)
-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
(Cydra) Great Conflicts
- Thread starter the Jester
- Start date
the Jester
Legend
Sollir Furryfoot said:More posting darnit!
Stupid cliffhangers
(Some really nice stuff once again, Jester)
Everyone just left from doing character creation for my low-magic experimental campaign... working on the update now! I'll post it in the next hour or so.
Sollir Furryfoot
Explorer
That's awfully amusing because I'm doing the same exact thing basically. My high level, near-epic game has been on short pause to start a new, low level, low magic one My group just finished their first adventure over the course of 2 sessions and it's proving to be good fun. Good luck with your new campaign!
My group just finished their first adventure over the course of 2 sessions and it's proving to be good fun. Good luck with your new campaign!
the Jester
Legend
Storming Hell- Finale
Never has an adventuring party warded and enhanced themselves so heavily. Holy aura, righteous might, expansion, freedom of movement, shapechange, mass far strike, mass elasticity, cat’s grace, bear’s endurance, mass true sight, protection from fire, protection from acid, protection from cold, mind blank, stoneskin, greater stoneskin, fly, piercing clarity, holy sword- the list goes on and on. One or more of them has each of these enchantments laid about them. And there are more, far more.
Finally, as our heroes fairly crackle with eldritch energies, Albin, with the aid of a Marius’ moment bestowed by Orbius, picks the lock sealing the massive double doors. He then motions to the combined party’s warriors. Lester, Sybele, Grimdim and Inoke put their shoulders against the doors and throw their weight against them. The stench of brimstone rolls out over our heroes.
There is no need to hold back, no advantage to be gained by conserving resources. This is it, this is do or die. This is the big one. This is when reputations are forged forever; this is when heroism is really established. This is no turning back.
The vast doors fall open and reveal the scene ahead: A huge throne room, sprawling away in all directions. Great pillars stretch along the sides of the chamber and a carpet of red satin edged in gold thread leads from the entrance to a the massive and threatening Throne of Hell. The walls are draped with spectacular tapestries, edged in precious metals, set with stones. The high ceiling is frescoed with scenes of evil and deviltry, from betrayal and greed to posthumous torments. Nearly twenty fully armed and armored pit fiends, arrayed in ranks in between the heroes and their target, who reclines sanguinely on the throne in the back. Next to him, a beauteous fiend resembling an angel with cute little horns leans insouciently against the wall. On the other side of her is a simpering courtier of a fiend, whom the more planar-savvy of the party instantly recognize as Martinet. In the forward corner slithers a gigantic red dragon.
There is no moment of hesitation, no pause, no attempt at parlay.
Immediately, there is battle.
Several of our heroes rush forward only to be caught in the terrible furnace-like heat of the dragon’s breath weapon. White-hot flame blasts all around them, the air itself incandescing. There are several screams from the party, but then Inoke moves to engage it. Grimdim charges forward for Martinet. Lillamere flies upwards and hits the dragon with a maximized cone of cold, but the dragon’s own eldritch defenses prevent it from being harmed.
Orbius casts time stop, both empowering and maximizing it with the greater metamagic rods he picked up with his ill-gotten gains from the gambling scheme, and the shennanigans really begin.
The largest cluster of pit fiends is in the center of the chamber, directly in between the party and Asmodeus. There are a dozen close together. Perfect, Orbius thinks, and begins casting a series of prismatic walls- in essence creating a prismatic box holding the pit fiends in. With the whole area dimensionally locked, they won’t even be able to teleport out, the Eye gloats.
Another maximized time stop follows immediately after he emerges from the first, and now he casts and reads from scrolls a series of spheres of ultimate destruction. When time starts to flow again he’s ready, and four deadly black voids travel towards the devils opposing our hereos.
BOOM!! BOOM!! A series of explosions lances through the heroes as the untrapped pit fiends launch quickened fireballs and several fire off meteor swarms as well. Another attempts to implode Lazenby, but the wizard shakes it off.
Inoke pounds the dragon with the mace of St. John, dealing a series of incredible blows to it. Veil dances in to flank it and Lester leaps into the fray with it as well. The dragon struggles with them for a moment, but the adventurers facing it are the most puissant of two worlds. Inoke pounds at it and Lester’s electrically-substituted fire storm finishes it off. Above, high in the air, Lillamere turns his attention to Asmodeus himself, smirking ironically as he invokes one of his most powerful spells, crushing fist of spite. The fist pounds down at the chair, but Asmodeus doesn’t even move from his throne. He must have resisted it, Lillamere thinks in dismay.
The pit fiends, more than half their number taken out of the fight by Orbius’ prismatic box, fall back under withering missile fire from Sybele and Jared. Kyrion, Horbin and Sir Maxwell rush a pit fiend and slay it. The devils are on the defensive!
***
Asmodeus watches the battle through the eyes of his projected image and snarls. How did this happen? He clutches the ruby rod at his side and licks his ruby lips. He will not be overcome by mortals! Their clever trap for his guards is the problem, and there is only one way to deal with it quickly- a Mordenkainen’s disjunction.
But if he does that, Asmodeus will also encompass the wards he has put up himself in the disjunction! He grimaces, watching as the dwarf hacks Martinet to pieces, and decides that, perhaps, it would be best to cancel the dimensional lock to give his pit fiends the ability to teleport free of the box.
But what if that is what Lucifer wants? Asmodeus wonders, and curses aloud. It does not matter; he must see to his own escape. It is increasingly looking likely that he will have to run.
Then something happens that makes his eyes widen.
Veil’s shield, with the six-fingered hand spiked to it, begins to glow. And then a beam of purple light shoots from it to the northeast corner of the throne room- right where the secret door leading to Asmodeus’ true self is.
It will take too much time anyway- nearly a minute- to release the lock. Mordenkainen’s disjunction it is, then.
***
The spheres of ultimate destruction flit back and forth, blasting one pit fiend into oblivion. Lillamere exterminates another with a maximized disintegrate. The courtier Martinet doesn’t stand a chance against Grimdim; the dwarf cuts him down with the same contempt he would treat a goblin, then he turns to advance on Glasya. The unending stream of missile fire continues to tear into the remaining pit fiends.
Then, suddenly, there’s a sickly ripple of white light as the disjunction shoots out, eliminating one side of the prismatic trap Orbius has captured the other pit fiends in. They start to pour out, but Lazenby is too fast for them. He flits into the air and gives out a wail of the banshee.
The fiends of the pit cannot withstand the terrible blast of eldritch sound. Seven of the twelve caged by the prismatic walls fall dead! The other two quail even as Lester blasts them with a pair of electrically-substituted fire storm. The blasts also catch Glasya, behind them, and another of the surviving pit fiends. To Lester’s delight, Glasya jerks through an electric dance before falling dead to the marble floor!
Asmodeus’ face contorts. “GLASYA! NO!!!” he cries in rage. His eyes glow orange.
“Watch out!” Inoke cries as he comes into view. “That’s not the real him, it’s just some kind of illusion!”
Lazenby grimly hits the projected image with a greater dispel magic before Asmodeus can cast through it, and the image winks out. “But where’s the real deal?” the mage cries.
“There!” responds Lillamere. He gestures to one corner of the room- where the glaring beam of light from the shield given to Veil by Graz’zt has outlined a door-shaped crack in the wall in purple. And just as our heroes begin to surge towards it, the door is flung wide and Asmodeus strides forth, his ruby rod of Hell held high above him. He screams inarticulately in rage, preparing to unleash a devastating mystical assault on our heroes.
“Cut off his escape!” cries Jared, felling another pit fiend with his bow. Sybele stands next to him, with Jezebel behind them both, casting spells to aid them should they be attacked.
Orbius time stops.
Everything freezes in place around him. First he hits Asmodeus with another disjunction, shaping it to get only him. Then the Eye of Boccob chants and gestures, and another prismatic wall appears behind the Lord of the Ninth, cutting off his retreat through the secret door.
Then time is flowing forward again, and it’s all on Inoke.
He pours it on, thundering towards Asmodeus, the mace of Saint John tight in his hands. He has lived, worked and trained for years to make the most of his charge; and as he charges the Arch-Devil, he prays he has done enough.*
WHAM!! WHAM!! WHAM!!
Inoke careens into Asmodeus with obscene force, hitting him with such incredible strength that the devil’s body flies back into the prismatic wall and his head smashes free of his body!**
Asmodeus is no more.
Next Time: Oh, it’s not over yet! Our heroes must still escape from Hell!
*I’m sure I’m missing some of the charge power-ups Inoke had going, but I know he had a fully augmented psionic lion’s charge, I know he used the heedless charge function of his tactical feat to take a penalty to AC instead of to attacks with power attack, and he power attacked for his full BAB. I believe he also Power Lunged, and used his chain of overwhelming force warmind ability. In other words, he pulled out all the stops.
**Yes, Inoke decapitated Asmodeus with a blunt weapon. He dealt over 700 hp of damage from that charge. Holy crap!
Never has an adventuring party warded and enhanced themselves so heavily. Holy aura, righteous might, expansion, freedom of movement, shapechange, mass far strike, mass elasticity, cat’s grace, bear’s endurance, mass true sight, protection from fire, protection from acid, protection from cold, mind blank, stoneskin, greater stoneskin, fly, piercing clarity, holy sword- the list goes on and on. One or more of them has each of these enchantments laid about them. And there are more, far more.
Finally, as our heroes fairly crackle with eldritch energies, Albin, with the aid of a Marius’ moment bestowed by Orbius, picks the lock sealing the massive double doors. He then motions to the combined party’s warriors. Lester, Sybele, Grimdim and Inoke put their shoulders against the doors and throw their weight against them. The stench of brimstone rolls out over our heroes.
There is no need to hold back, no advantage to be gained by conserving resources. This is it, this is do or die. This is the big one. This is when reputations are forged forever; this is when heroism is really established. This is no turning back.
The vast doors fall open and reveal the scene ahead: A huge throne room, sprawling away in all directions. Great pillars stretch along the sides of the chamber and a carpet of red satin edged in gold thread leads from the entrance to a the massive and threatening Throne of Hell. The walls are draped with spectacular tapestries, edged in precious metals, set with stones. The high ceiling is frescoed with scenes of evil and deviltry, from betrayal and greed to posthumous torments. Nearly twenty fully armed and armored pit fiends, arrayed in ranks in between the heroes and their target, who reclines sanguinely on the throne in the back. Next to him, a beauteous fiend resembling an angel with cute little horns leans insouciently against the wall. On the other side of her is a simpering courtier of a fiend, whom the more planar-savvy of the party instantly recognize as Martinet. In the forward corner slithers a gigantic red dragon.
There is no moment of hesitation, no pause, no attempt at parlay.
Immediately, there is battle.
Several of our heroes rush forward only to be caught in the terrible furnace-like heat of the dragon’s breath weapon. White-hot flame blasts all around them, the air itself incandescing. There are several screams from the party, but then Inoke moves to engage it. Grimdim charges forward for Martinet. Lillamere flies upwards and hits the dragon with a maximized cone of cold, but the dragon’s own eldritch defenses prevent it from being harmed.
Orbius casts time stop, both empowering and maximizing it with the greater metamagic rods he picked up with his ill-gotten gains from the gambling scheme, and the shennanigans really begin.
The largest cluster of pit fiends is in the center of the chamber, directly in between the party and Asmodeus. There are a dozen close together. Perfect, Orbius thinks, and begins casting a series of prismatic walls- in essence creating a prismatic box holding the pit fiends in. With the whole area dimensionally locked, they won’t even be able to teleport out, the Eye gloats.
Another maximized time stop follows immediately after he emerges from the first, and now he casts and reads from scrolls a series of spheres of ultimate destruction. When time starts to flow again he’s ready, and four deadly black voids travel towards the devils opposing our hereos.
BOOM!! BOOM!! A series of explosions lances through the heroes as the untrapped pit fiends launch quickened fireballs and several fire off meteor swarms as well. Another attempts to implode Lazenby, but the wizard shakes it off.
Inoke pounds the dragon with the mace of St. John, dealing a series of incredible blows to it. Veil dances in to flank it and Lester leaps into the fray with it as well. The dragon struggles with them for a moment, but the adventurers facing it are the most puissant of two worlds. Inoke pounds at it and Lester’s electrically-substituted fire storm finishes it off. Above, high in the air, Lillamere turns his attention to Asmodeus himself, smirking ironically as he invokes one of his most powerful spells, crushing fist of spite. The fist pounds down at the chair, but Asmodeus doesn’t even move from his throne. He must have resisted it, Lillamere thinks in dismay.
The pit fiends, more than half their number taken out of the fight by Orbius’ prismatic box, fall back under withering missile fire from Sybele and Jared. Kyrion, Horbin and Sir Maxwell rush a pit fiend and slay it. The devils are on the defensive!
***
Asmodeus watches the battle through the eyes of his projected image and snarls. How did this happen? He clutches the ruby rod at his side and licks his ruby lips. He will not be overcome by mortals! Their clever trap for his guards is the problem, and there is only one way to deal with it quickly- a Mordenkainen’s disjunction.
But if he does that, Asmodeus will also encompass the wards he has put up himself in the disjunction! He grimaces, watching as the dwarf hacks Martinet to pieces, and decides that, perhaps, it would be best to cancel the dimensional lock to give his pit fiends the ability to teleport free of the box.
But what if that is what Lucifer wants? Asmodeus wonders, and curses aloud. It does not matter; he must see to his own escape. It is increasingly looking likely that he will have to run.
Then something happens that makes his eyes widen.
Veil’s shield, with the six-fingered hand spiked to it, begins to glow. And then a beam of purple light shoots from it to the northeast corner of the throne room- right where the secret door leading to Asmodeus’ true self is.
It will take too much time anyway- nearly a minute- to release the lock. Mordenkainen’s disjunction it is, then.
***
The spheres of ultimate destruction flit back and forth, blasting one pit fiend into oblivion. Lillamere exterminates another with a maximized disintegrate. The courtier Martinet doesn’t stand a chance against Grimdim; the dwarf cuts him down with the same contempt he would treat a goblin, then he turns to advance on Glasya. The unending stream of missile fire continues to tear into the remaining pit fiends.
Then, suddenly, there’s a sickly ripple of white light as the disjunction shoots out, eliminating one side of the prismatic trap Orbius has captured the other pit fiends in. They start to pour out, but Lazenby is too fast for them. He flits into the air and gives out a wail of the banshee.
The fiends of the pit cannot withstand the terrible blast of eldritch sound. Seven of the twelve caged by the prismatic walls fall dead! The other two quail even as Lester blasts them with a pair of electrically-substituted fire storm. The blasts also catch Glasya, behind them, and another of the surviving pit fiends. To Lester’s delight, Glasya jerks through an electric dance before falling dead to the marble floor!
Asmodeus’ face contorts. “GLASYA! NO!!!” he cries in rage. His eyes glow orange.
“Watch out!” Inoke cries as he comes into view. “That’s not the real him, it’s just some kind of illusion!”
Lazenby grimly hits the projected image with a greater dispel magic before Asmodeus can cast through it, and the image winks out. “But where’s the real deal?” the mage cries.
“There!” responds Lillamere. He gestures to one corner of the room- where the glaring beam of light from the shield given to Veil by Graz’zt has outlined a door-shaped crack in the wall in purple. And just as our heroes begin to surge towards it, the door is flung wide and Asmodeus strides forth, his ruby rod of Hell held high above him. He screams inarticulately in rage, preparing to unleash a devastating mystical assault on our heroes.
“Cut off his escape!” cries Jared, felling another pit fiend with his bow. Sybele stands next to him, with Jezebel behind them both, casting spells to aid them should they be attacked.
Orbius time stops.
Everything freezes in place around him. First he hits Asmodeus with another disjunction, shaping it to get only him. Then the Eye of Boccob chants and gestures, and another prismatic wall appears behind the Lord of the Ninth, cutting off his retreat through the secret door.
Then time is flowing forward again, and it’s all on Inoke.
He pours it on, thundering towards Asmodeus, the mace of Saint John tight in his hands. He has lived, worked and trained for years to make the most of his charge; and as he charges the Arch-Devil, he prays he has done enough.*
WHAM!! WHAM!! WHAM!!
Inoke careens into Asmodeus with obscene force, hitting him with such incredible strength that the devil’s body flies back into the prismatic wall and his head smashes free of his body!**
Asmodeus is no more.
Next Time: Oh, it’s not over yet! Our heroes must still escape from Hell!
*I’m sure I’m missing some of the charge power-ups Inoke had going, but I know he had a fully augmented psionic lion’s charge, I know he used the heedless charge function of his tactical feat to take a penalty to AC instead of to attacks with power attack, and he power attacked for his full BAB. I believe he also Power Lunged, and used his chain of overwhelming force warmind ability. In other words, he pulled out all the stops.
**Yes, Inoke decapitated Asmodeus with a blunt weapon. He dealt over 700 hp of damage from that charge. Holy crap!
Cheiromancer
Adventurer
Jester,
Have you house-ruled disjunction? It has been used a couple of times now, and I haven't seen anything about magic items being destroyed.
Oh, and in case you forgot, your story hour totally rocks!
Have you house-ruled disjunction? It has been used a couple of times now, and I haven't seen anything about magic items being destroyed.
Oh, and in case you forgot, your story hour totally rocks!
Brain
First Post
Yeah, it was 781 damage dealt in 5 hits, the last being a critical. I literally had a whole page list of the spell effect up on Inoke in this fight. (I'll post the list when I get home from work today) When one of the enemies Greater Dispelled Inoke, it took a couple of minutes of rolling to figure out what was dispelled.the Jester said:
Edit: Here is the list of spells and effects Inoke had up around the time of the battle.
Contingency - Plane Shift - verbal trigger
Mind Blank
Seeming
Heroes Feast aftereffects
Death Ward
Dispelling Buffer (psi)
Mass Stoneskin
Gaze Screen (custom?)
Energy Adaptation (psi)
Elasticity (custom)
Steadfast Perception (psi)
Greater Stoneskin (custom)
Protection from Spells
Schism (psi)
Invisibility
Haste
Cat's Grace
Bear's Endurance
Greater Concealing Amorpha (psi)
Expansion (psi)
Offensive Precognition (psi)
Offensive Prescience (psi)
Synethsete (psi)
True Seeing
Protection from Fire
Holy Aura
Shield of Faith
Empowered Augment Weapon - Electric (custom, cast twice)
Spell Resistance
Fly
Rary's Telepathic Bond
Bless
and one more that I can't read
Some of the stuff overlaps, but this just serves to give an example of how crazy the preparations got.
Last edited:
the Jester
Legend
Cheiromancer said:Jester,
Have you house-ruled disjunction? It has been used a couple of times now, and I haven't seen anything about magic items being destroyed.
Oh, and in case you forgot, your story hour totally rocks!
No- I like destroying magic items!
Well, Orbius got caught by one of the disjunctions but lost nothing important. Iirc, nothing worth recounting got destroyed.
the Jester
Legend
arwink said:
Er, tons, at least in the high-level campaign.
(I honestly can't be more specific than that.) Epic levels are all about customization imho.Angel of Adventure
First Post
Nicely done, Jester. That fight was a ton of fun!
Say, since we all had true seeing up, was there something that kept us from seeing Asmodeous' projected image for what it really was?
-AoA
Say, since we all had true seeing up, was there something that kept us from seeing Asmodeous' projected image for what it really was?
-AoA