Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 9420654" data-attributes="member: 6801060">Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 12): Hap (Part 2)After cashing out on the previously unsold items, it's time to rest up before we head to Hap.[ATTACH=full]374679[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]374680[/ATTACH]And then it's time to leave and head south.[ATTACH=full]374681[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]374682[/ATTACH]We head south.But... on the way...[ATTACH=full]374683[/ATTACH]Yikes! Dragons, plural![ATTACH=full]374684[/ATTACH]Three of them, to be exact. Thankfully, 1e dragons aren't that bad, with much lower HP and much easier-to-hit AC than later edition versions. However, their breath weapons are still pretty formidable! Luckily, they're hemmed in by the trees, so their movement and aim will be hindered significantly.Being grouped up like that make them a tempting target, which Brin quickly takes advantage of.[ATTACH=full]374685[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]374687[/ATTACH]Luckily, despite the trees, there's still a nice straight line-of-sight to target them.[ATTACH=full]374688[/ATTACH]Bleh. I'm guessing they made their saves.[ATTACH=full]374689[/ATTACH]Bragir moves into position to launch a fireball as well. Bant and Brother Baltor have already moved up towards the dragons, but weren't able to quite reach them.[ATTACH=full]374690[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]374691[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]374692[/ATTACH]Ugh, another batch of saves...[ATTACH=full]374693[/ATTACH]Well, one didn't save at least. It's quickly taken out by the archers.However, it's now their turn, and one of them aims its breath weapon at Baroness Bella...[ATTACH=full]374694[/ATTACH]Ouch! That must have been a direct hit and failed save! Luckily, the bottom one is trapped by the trees and the other dragon, and can't get in position to breathe as well.Once my melee get up there, though, the remaining two are dispatched quickly.[ATTACH=full]374695[/ATTACH]The party got some nice XP, but Baroness Bella and Bant took some significant damage.[ATTACH=full]374696[/ATTACH]But it's onward to Hap! Perhaps this seemingly random attack by dragons might be explained there...[ATTACH=full]374697[/ATTACH]Since we might get into some fighting before we can find a place to rest, we elect to camp outside of town.[ATTACH=full]374698[/ATTACH]After some quick healing and memorizing, we prepare to enter the town of Hap.[ATTACH=full]374704[/ATTACH]Well, that's ominous...[ATTACH=full]374706[/ATTACH]And, well, that's even more ominous. Good thing that I decided to rest before entering the town!Dark elves, in broad daylight! We need to stop whatever is happening here quickly![ATTACH=full]374712[/ATTACH]Yeah, Drizzt they aren't. (The Crystal Shard had been published the year before, and already our favorite drow was making a name for himself).[ATTACH=full]374727[/ATTACH]They have a mage with them! We'll need to focus as much as we can on him.The real issue here is that 1e drow had serious magic resistance, so trying our tried-and-true tactic of fireballing everything in sight is potentially a lot less effective than it normally would be. Knowing this, I didn't even attempt to cast a spell in this fight, and just wore them down the old fashioned, non-magical way.Luckily, the mage quickly gets hit by an arrow, and is not only injured, but unable to cast a spell this round.[ATTACH=full]374729[/ATTACH]...So he stupidly runs up to start meleeing....[ATTACH=full]374730[/ATTACH]That goes as well as could be expected, although Bragir gets the killing blow.[ATTACH=full]374731[/ATTACH]And shortly afterwards, they are all dead (Bragir is getting all the killing blows! I'm guessing Bant is getting annoyed in the manner of Legolas and Gimli)[ATTACH=full]374732[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]374733[/ATTACH]That's some decent XP, so let's see what they had...[ATTACH=full]374734[/ATTACH]They have special drow gear. In ye olden times, drow gear was nice... until it evaporated in the sunlight. This game has a similar process, although it's based on location, and not day/night. It's broad daylight here, but the equipment is just fine. It's only after you leave the Hap area that it will be destroyed. And... in the meantime, +3 weapons are awesome! The drow chainmail, however, isn't an improvement for anyone.[ATTACH=full]374735[/ATTACH]We luckily avoid any further patrols until we can duck into a building.[ATTACH=full]374736[/ATTACH]They don't have much to say, so we head south towards a much larger building. It's the town's inn, but before we can even register that, we meet our special guest star for this section:[ATTACH=full]374737[/ATTACH]Akbar is another character from the Azure Bonds books, a wizard from the distant southern land of Turmish. As NPCs are usually helpful, we let him join the group.[ATTACH=full]374738[/ATTACH]We stay, so we can check out Akbar's character sheet, and then rest. We'll make this our base to take out patrols until we've cleared them (just like in our old Phlan days!), and then search out whoever is in charge of this occupation.But first, let's see Akbar's stats. If you've looked at the above picture, you can already tell that we aren't going to be impressed...[ATTACH=full]374739[/ATTACH]That's bad... like really bad. He has a fragile 15 HP and an AC 10 (the game uses his published stats, like for all the other NPCs from the novels), so he's going to be hidden in the back row and hope that enemies don't get around the others to murder him immediately. He's also level 5, when the rest of my party is around 8 or 9. But, as a magic-user, he can still throw around fireballs and magic missiles, so he's not entirely useless. Conversely, we're going to be fighting drow a lot, which will inhibit even this slight upside.In the original game, it was very tempting to drop him, even if you did lose all the RP stuff and game info you get if he's with the group. The real issue back then was that, no matter how much XP he got, you couldn't train him, as the nearest training hall is in Essembra, and since he leaves the party forever if you leave the Hap area maps, he remained near-useless for the entire time. Now, however, with GBC, he can be trained, and will get max HP each time he levels. Since he's only level 5, it won't take much time for him to gain a level or two, so he'll actually be tolerable well before we've completed this section of the game.I save and try a few things to make him a bit better.[ATTACH=full]374740[/ATTACH]That Ioun Stone raises DEX to 18, so let's see if we can get that AC down a bit! And we have some extra drow chainmail, as well...Neither work. The drow chainmail was a forlorn hope anyway, as he's not a multi-classed elf, but the Ioun Stone was a huge disappointment, even if I wouldn't be able to get it back from him later (as you can't trade back from NPCs in the game, which is why I saved before trying all this).More importantly, though, I trade him the darts I got, so he won't go weaponless here in a bit, as he only has 20 in his inventory. Once he's out of spells (or we elect not to have him cast them), he'll at least have something to do other than stand around. I've played plenty of games where I forgot to get him darts, and he was even more useless than normal with nothing to do once he ran out of his original 20.[ATTACH=full]374741[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]374742[/ATTACH]Yep, still Dex 13, even with the stone equipped...So, reversing all of that experiment other than giving him the darts, we prepare to rest in the inn.[ATTACH=full]374743[/ATTACH]Well, his memorized spells are useful at least! They could really have ruined him more by giving him nothing but useless spells, which, in retrospect, is kind of surprising they didn't lol.We rest up...[ATTACH=full]374744[/ATTACH]And head out to explore the rest of the town, and to clear out patrols.(The secret here is that the more patrols you defeat, the fewer enemies appear in the final fight in this town. As this means fewer mages and clerics, it's a good idea to take them down piecemeal instead of facing them en masse and be subject to several hold person and lightning bolt spells when you failed to wound them or get past their magic resistance. The goal is to defeat at least four patrols before heading to the final fight)A few buildings down, we reach the local temple.[ATTACH=full]374745[/ATTACH]Another place to rest if we need it.But as we exit the temple...[ATTACH=full]374746[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]374747[/ATTACH]They have a cleric this time. Again, we'll need to focus on him before he gets any spells off.[ATTACH=full]374748[/ATTACH]Buffy has been bumped to the front due to the addition of Akbar, but her AC isn't bad, and she has a new, if temporary, weapon![ATTACH=full]374749[/ATTACH]The cleric is hit![ATTACH=full]374750[/ATTACH]And he, too, moves to the front, where he quickly goes down.[ATTACH=full]374751[/ATTACH]Soon, the last of the patrol is dead.[ATTACH=full]374752[/ATTACH]And Brother Baltor picks up a nice, if (again) temporary, weapon.[ATTACH=full]374753[/ATTACH]We took a bit of damage, but we have two close spots to duck into if we need to rest, so we'll continue searching out patrols.[ATTACH=full]374754[/ATTACH]But we've reached the image limit, so we'll leave the final few patrols, as well as the leader of the occupation of Hap, for the next post!</blockquote>

Verification