Here's the third and final update on the Forge of Fury. Spoilers as usual.
one of the things I left out last time was the party vs the giant chained up lizard. Being utter cowards, they never approached it, and killed it with arrows while it was chained up.
When they approached the stairs down to the roper level, I added crude trog cave-paintings of trogs approaching what the party guessed was the stone tooth itself (but was meant to be the roper) with fire and one trog with nothing. they guessed that they either were sacrificing the third trog, or needed fire for some reason as they continued below.
In the roper's lair, two of them were immediately and the roper thanked them for bringing food. The party managed to escape thanks to an incredibly rare (and incredibly lucky) stunning fist by the monk. (rolled a 1 on the save, wasnt sure it would work, but couldnt find any rules saying ropers are immune to stuns or crits, or that stunning fist has to bypass spell resistance)
They ran away for a few days to recover their STR drain, and came back to the ropers cave with offers of food (the freshest dead things they killed). Thinking myself clever, I had the roper tell them that this offering was good enough and he would let them pass, but that if they passed again, they would need to bring FRESH MEAT. The party quickly agreed and moved through the roper's lair to the dwarven prison. Because I misread the module, I thought that the jailer's key was actually a key to the forge area, and since the party has neither an open lock of 30 or a knock spell...it was.
But now the party is distraught that this area is a dead-end, and that there is no fresh meat here to kill and bring to the roper. Luckily, the cleric had summon monster memorized, and i never specified how MUCH meat the roper wanted... so they fed it the summoned monster and passed.
The entered the forge, avoided the axe traps, fought the duergar. The "standard" duergar warriors were too easy, the ganged up on the rogue, but the fighter with the 2-bladed sword proved to be a tough opponent. The party never entered the actual bladeworks and instead fought the animated table, and then went towards the undead area. Between the cleric and the sheer amount of damage the fighter types are doing, they proved to be no problem.
The overly cautious and paranoid party completely avoided the animated rug, sure it would come alive and eat them.
The succubus was also (correctly) treated with suspicion, and was let out of the room, but then failed on her attempt to level drain the cleric.
By the time the party got to the last two duergar and the illusionist, and quickly overwhelmed them, the illusionist was desperate to escape. He illusioned Nightscale and the party panicked, but they didnt let the illusionist escape and finished him off before shifting their attention. They were happy to find Nightsclae was just an illusion.
I misplayed Nightscale badly. I played him as cocky, eager to press the fight at times rather than use constant hit and run tactics. He used his breath weapon, flew in for attack, used his breath again. The big thing that happened early was the monk4/sorc1 used ray of enfeeblement on the dragon. without sr, this took away the dragons damage bonuses and lowered his attacks.
The party made the mistake of splitting up again, in an effort to lead Nightscale away from the big lake, they left the cleric alone on the lake side of the stone bridge, and then Nightscale cut her off. Up to that point I was fine, but then things fell apart quicky. I wanted to use Nightscales full attack on one of the party, but *I* got cocky. I never expected the usually cowardly party to finally suck it up.
The ftr/rogue tumbled past the dragon to get into a flanking position, the monk came in close to flurry and the cowardly barbarian remembered to rage.
Combine this with some AWFUL rolling on my part, and before the dragon could slip back into the water to circle for another breath,the three of them dropped him.
Lessons learned on my part: prolly shouldve either bumped the dragon up, or at least given him more (max?) hp, at least to get away to get one more breath weapon off and let the party actually WORRY before they dropped him. as it was, the ending was too sudden and not very suspenseful.
also, dont get cocky. its one thing when i got cocky as a player and have allies to back me up, but a solo monster should never get too reckless.
lesson learned on their part: If they can gang up on one creature, they can do a lot of damage VERY quickly.
future concern on my part: most of my 3e playing has been in a homebrew world where my DM uses armor as damage reduction AND class defense bonuses so we all have ACs that higher than normal. I've been told that in regular 3.x that by mid-levels, AC is almost meaningless (unless you direct all your attention to it) This is clearly looking to be the case so far, as there are very few misses (although the dragon had most of his rolls under 5)
next up: Speaker in Dreams, edited to get around a player who knows the ending of the module. help me change things up in my new thread.
Thanks to any and all who contributed to this thread.
