Friday night we had another game session, a little more combat heavy than I would have liked but everyone said they had fun. Log is overe here:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/banner-marches/adventure-log/session-6, and below.
[sblock]It was a massive chamber, with a ceiling some 40 feet high, stalactites casting long shadows in the party’s torch light. This was as far as Kirito’s ill-fated expedition had penetrated into Dragon Mountain. There were stories of these kobolds, Clan Humanbane, who had raided human settlements in the mountains for decades under the leadership of an albino kobold called Crusher. One day, so the story goes, Crusher was kidnapped and tortured by a party of adventurers, however he escaped and now harbors a burning hatred for humankind.
Despite being on guard, the PCs (now reunited after their sphere of annihilation mishap) were caught in an ambush by kobold slingers who targeted the thunderstone poison orbs affixed to the hanging corpses. Between Zolar and Lily’s thundering and freezing magic, they made short work of the slingers. Fanning out, the PCs found a wooden bridge (after Zolar was nearly decapitated by a set of steel jaws), and came up with a clever plan to bypass any traps: Zolar would cast thunderwave on the paladin Ardell and slide him across the bridge so that his full body weight couldn’t trigger any potential traps on the bridge. It worked splendidly, until Ardell realized he was standing in a puddle of oil on the other side. A shout of “Bree-Yark!” echoed from the shadows and dozens of kobolds began attacking the party, starting with a volley of flaming sling shots at the oil puddle. Later, Raphael would run across the bridge, leading to several alchemical flasks built into the bridge breaking and the entire bridge going up in flames.
A furious battle ensued on three fronts: (1) the mass of kobolds and slingers, who Miri, Zolar, Raphael, Ardell, Tristan, and Lily faced courageously, (2) kobolds riding giant bats and wielding slings who attacked Miri and Zolar, trying to haul them away or drop hornet’s nests on them, and (3) a band of kobold kidnappers equipped with paralyzing poison which attacked Kirito as he took the long way around. After a bunch of fighting, the albino chief Crusher appeared on the rooftop of an old dwarven building and his scraggly voice echoed throughout the chamber: “The one called Kirito bring to me. The rest kill. Summon the gorgon!” With that, Crusher kicked the corpse of one of Kirito’s former adventuring companions to the ground with a burning arrow tacking a note to the chest.
A loud charging sound came from deeper in the Bell-Chasm District, and a gorgon charged Raphael, knocking him backward, but Raphael rallied with Ardell and Miri to make short work of the gorgon. Meanwhile, Lily unleashed arcane fury on Crusher, turning him into a bat then back into a kobold, before Crusher bitterly slinked away into the darkness, calling his clan to retreat.
Two side quests of happened around this time: Kirito came upon a blackened rune-engraved dwarven skull which seemed to be watching him in a supernaturally unnerving way. Miri summoned shades of her tribe, one of whom advised her that the messenger Vao’es was on a lower level held captive but alive.
The PCs had won the day…for now. But the bells had been rung, alerting all kobolds in the vicinity to the presence of intruders in the Mountain.[/sblock]
There were some 50 kobolds in this combat, and, despite me adding a gorgon to the encounter, I noticed that my party of 7's ability to kill kobolds thru multi-targeting is high enough to make the usual tricks (waves of minions, spacing them apart) not matter much.
Someone joked at the end of this session that "We did more damage to each other thru friendly fire than the kobolds did to us!"
This was one of the few standup fights where the kobolds attacked en masse, and as DM I didn't care for it as much, though I think the players just enjoyed getting to whack a ton of kobolds. The barbarian also mentioned that she liked that there was a *real* monster with HP to fight in this combat, and not just minions (I put the gorgon in for her and the paladin, who are at a slight disadvantage against minions).