frog said:
Played it for 3.0. The party was 3 lvl 11 (cleric, wizard, fighter), 1 lvl 10 (barbarian), 1 lvl 8 (druid) and 1 dire bear animal companion.
If it weren't for the dire bear they all would have died horribly. Two of the party had wands for healing and basically spent the whole time healing the bear, barbarian, and fighter. Otherwise, toast.
The bottom level ended up in a truce with the orcs who started their rebellion when the party attacked (they figured something was up when the flamestrikes went off all over) and the party only finding the secondary treasure room. They completely missed the primary treasury.
Well, I suppose I can consider it spoiled
* SPOILER ANYWAY! *
so our trick was first to sneak in invisibly and scout the place, with the additional mission of poisoning the wine, since we had learned there was a feast taking place from other sources. We secretly contacted an orc and my bard PC (introducing himself as "Unseen Fang" - Secret Orc) basically bamboozled her into thinking we were the spearhead of a big orc rebellion against the giants. We didn't know the orcs were already up in arms, but since it happened that they were, the kitchen slaves were only too glad to help us spike half the wine supply with giant centipede venom (a spoonful of Prestidigitation takes the edge off too). Then while the giants were busy poisoning themselves at the big feast, the rogue and the bard with loads of sneaking magic invisibly and sneakily flew into the pantry with the rest of the party stuffed in a bag of holding. We planned it out so that nobody was in there long enough to suffocate, though obviously there was a risk. Once we debagged, the bard used Sculpt Sound to make the basement sound like it did when we got there (to cover the screams of our hapless victims), and we crept down the stairs. With some clever uses of Invis and Silence, etc., we managed to take out every giant in the basement without the others knowing, linked up to the orcs (very happy to join us), and secured the stairway, where we laid an ambush. Then we just picked off ogres etc. as they came down the stairs for provisions, even a giant at one point, when someone wondered what was keeping the ogres. In the meantime, we found the treasure room, and then the secret passage. Well, we couldn't resist the secret passage, so we followed it up... into the middle of Nosra's quarters, where - by some strange coincidence - Nosra was laid up nearly incapacitated with "drunkeness". Quite dishonorably, we killed him in his bed, though he did manage to nail the half-orc pretty hard with a bedpan. We got found out at that point, and so we raced back down into the dungeon and holed up with the orcs overnight.
Of course the giants were ready for us the next day (at least the ones who weren't dead or poisoned), but by then we had a host of jubilant orc allies to absorb hits and all our spells back (plus a few level raises), so we managed to fight our way out. We came back the next day, I believe ,and wiped out most of the tribe after collapsing the roof of the stead on a number of them.
And here's the good part - the party cleric had died the day before we hit the stead, when he tried to wrestle a dire wolf..., so we did the whole first day without a cleric, just healing from a handful of potions, the bard, the monk, and a low-level druid. Come to think of it, I guess we were in the 9th-10th range, since I'd just gotten Inspire Greatness. Had a rogue 6/ranger 3 (or so, but with fav enemy giant), barb 8/rang 1, bard 8/barb 1, sorc 7/druid 2, monk 10.
