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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 4417449" data-attributes="member: 12037">After Sapphire deftly picked the lock, they pushed the door open and entered the dingy entranceway. The place was lit with dim torchlight, and a stone hallway crept out in front of them, a door on their left several yards in front of them, and two doors on the right, one close by and the other at the end of the hallway. Sapphire went first, checking for any traps that might be in the room, stopping at the first doorway and giving it a once over. Satisfied that it wasn't trapped, she checked the lock. The door being unlocked, she stepped back to let Quinn take the lead as they checked out the other side.Pushing the door open, Quinn found himself face to face with several robed figures and another in leather armor. The guy in leather, made a quick grab for his longbow and darted for the back, while the others pulled curved knives from under their cloaks. The PCs reacted at the same time, their weapons ready, and started moving toward the enemies in the other room.With the sound of battle beginning, they heard move noise coming from the other door across the hall, and it flew open revealing another three robed figures, one of which was taller than the others and carried a staff. That one muttered something, pointing his staff at them, and lightning arced through the air toward them, striking Quinn, Korvun, and Tordek.At the same time, the archer flung a rear door in the room he was in open, and jumped into the hallway at the far end, loosing two arrows straight at Alandra, one of them grazing her leg. She returned the favor, flinging two of her own arrows at the man, both of them coming close to embedding themselves into his chest. Winded, the man took two steps backward, getting back his footing.Quinn took advantage of the opportunity, running toward the archer, his halberd stretched outward, but the floor gave way under him and he plummeted several feet into a hidden pit with a crash. Looking around, the walls were rough, and he didn't think it would be too difficult to climb back out. As he looked around, however, he noticed dozens of eyes gleaming on the far side of the pit.Tordek moved backward, allowing Korvun to position himself between the mass of oncoming enemies and the squishier party members. He let out a stream of light, striking one of their attackers and sending him to the ground screaming in pain. Korvun took the opportunity to move forward and cut down another one as Sapphire slipped to the side and pelted the sorcerer with a blast of eldritch might.The archer and Alandra exchanged more arrows as the mage in the other room pointed toward Sapphire, striking her with pure force square in the chest. She retreated backward, firing another blast at him while Korvun attempted to hold off an attack from the rabble, several of them managing to move around him and flank Tordek and menace Alandra. While this was going on Quinn was being covered with a horde of rats, climbing and biting all over him, as he tried desperately to pull himself out of the pit.As the PCs moved in closer together to try to keep away the robed figures surrounding them, the mage took his opportunity, a globe of bright light forming on the tip of his staff, he cackled out a shout and it flew toward them, exploding in a blast of thunderous sound ringing through their ears and bodies, shocking them dumb. But, Alandra then managed to turn the tables on the archer and drop him as Sapphire dropped another one of the robed figures.Finally, out of the pit, Quinn moved over to aid his allies, cleaving through two of the assailants at once, and letting Korvun move over to help Tordek. With the rabble dropped, Alandra and Sapphire quickly ganged up on the mage, who tried to escape but was felled by ranged attacks.OOC:[sblock]I really liked this encounter. It included a pit trap with a rat swarm at the bottom, 6 Human Rabble, an Elf Archer, and a Human Mage. The rabble were in the front keeping the melee characters from getting to the mage, while the archer hid behind the trap (which caught Quinn). The minions making up the front line actually worked well. The only real problem was that the rats climbed up out of the pit after Quinn (with a Climb Speed 2) and continued the fight. Without a wizard in the party, ti was actually the last thing they dropped and was made boring without any Close or Area attacks to deal full damage. In the future I'm going to have to avoid swarms. They just aren't fun for this particular group, unfortunately.[/sblock]Injured, the party was forced to rest before moving on, checking over the corpses and making sure each and every one of them was dead while deciding which way would be best to move on - both the room with the mage and the one the archer had occupied had doors leading further into the temple. Putting it to a vote, they decided to go through the door with the archer.Sapphire checked the door for traps, but found nothing and they opened it. On the other side was a long hallway with a door on the far end."That's definately not a trap," Quinn pointed out sarcastically.Sapphire offered "I'll... stay in here. You guys go ahead.""I'll stay here too," said Tordek."Me too," said Alandra."Ooh, no. Sapphire, you're coming with us." said Quinn. "You're the one who can look for traps."Sapphire sighed, but accepted, and she, Quinn, and Korven went into the room while the others waited outside. It wasn't long before Korvun, however, not Sapphire found the trap. And, of course, he pointed it out by accidentally stepping on a stone that depressed into the floor, making several spears fly up out of the ground and attempt to stab his friends. At the same time, the door slammed closed behind them cutting them off from Alandra and Tordek, and a trap door opened in the ceiling, releasing a gooey orangish-yellowy-brownish amorphous creature.With the door closing on them, Tordek and Alandra had no idea what was happening on the inside, except that it couldn't be good due to all the screaming and shouting that the others were doing. And the fact that an obvious trap had just been sprung, which is rarely advantageous to those who set them off. So, they did the only sensible thing they could do, which was to repeatedly throw themselves at the wooden door, hoping to break the thing down.At the same time, the others readied their weapons, trying to attack the jelly-like creature who clung to the walls and pounded them with pseudopods as it did so. At the same time they tried to avoid the spears coming up from the ground underneath them, stabbing at them as they fought.Quinn was the best off, using his superior reach to slash at the thing and being protected by his armor. Sapphire found a safe spot by the door and attempted to unlock it from the inside while the others attempted to bash it down, and Korvun found another safe spot by the wall and swung his falchion through the air, cutting the monster as it repeatedly pounded on him with surprisingly solid blows.After several back and forth attacks, the creature split into two! One of them crawled along the floor to the other side of the room and proceded to pelt Quinn while the remaining blobby bits kept hitting Korvun. Sapphire gave up on the lock and started blasting away, while Tordek and Alandra kept up their pounding.Finally, the door broke down, and Alandra fired shots which sank deep into the creature as Tordek gave those inside some much needed healing. After a few more blows from Korvun, that one drooped and plopped down from its perch, covering him with slime. Turning to the other one, they managed to finish it off, and retreated back through the doorway, away from the trap.Now that the monster was gone, and they had escaped from the room, Sapphire was able to take her time finding and disabling the triggering mechanisms for the trap. The room finally safe, they kept moving through the temple, hoping that they were almost to their destination, and that the trap had not slowed them down too much in their quest.OOC:[sblock]Okay, so this wasn't the best designed encounter. By now I've learned several things about 4e encounter design. One important tenet is: mobility is fun. They like to move around and to not just stand there and slug it out. Which is what this encoutner mainly consisted of. Because the room was so cramped and dangerous, they found safe spots and stuck to them.If I had it to do over again, I would use several different kinds of traps, preferably some that encouraged movement, like swinging boulders or some such, where the PCs could take cover with the trap/environment and interact with it more. I learned something, though![/sblock]</blockquote>

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