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Message: <blockquote data-quote="THEMNGMNT" data-source="post: 7936740" data-attributes="member: 6809274">The 5 player characters are 12th level in a Forgotten Realms-set mash up of Storm King's Thunder and Tyranny of Dragons/Scales of War/Dragonlance. Everything that follows makes more sense if you're familiar with SKT.The Zhentarim are masterminding the giant attacks on the North via a captive Hekaton. Manshoon, leader of the Zhentarim, takes the form of an army of clones in continual telepathic communication with one another. In the previous adventure the players finally figured out that they're facing multiple Manshoons. Unfortunately for me, the CR12 Archmage stat block I've been using for Manshoon folds like a wet paper bag. In two combats he has literally not gotten off a single spell before the PCs have taken him out. Plus I'm just not very good at running high-level spellcasters; I've already got my hands full with all the other monsters.The most recent session was the PC's third session in Ironslag, the fire giant lair. They had snuck all the way in undetected and located Duke Zalto, the fire giant chief, and his wife. They attempted to parley. Unfortunately, Zalto wanted only battle and blood--and he was getting plenty of that making war on behalf of the Zhentarim. However, the giants have a longstanding hatred of dragons and the Duke was intrigued by the PCs offer to make war upon Tiamat's Cult of the Dragon. He said he would consider their offer...if they survived Manshoon's ambush that he, Zalto, had just led them into. The fight took place on the lowest level of Ironslag--mostly in the dining hall and elevator area. Manshoon arrived on the elevator with two hobgoblin warlord bodyguards and a pair of invisible stalkers. In the dining hall, four shadar-kai in employ of the Zhentarim attacked. Zalto, so as to not appear traitorous, threw his two hell hounds and a pair of fire giant blacksmiths into the mix. On the player side, they had an allied NPC elf bladesinger and elf warlock (the latter being a captive princess held in Zalto's maul). So, yeah, a lot going on there. I presumed the villains would wipe the floor with the PCs--Manshoon is getting sick of their antics and wasn't planning to pull any punches. But once again the players beat his initiative and took him out before he cast a single spell, thanks to the combined efforts of the beastmaster ranger and vengeance paladin. The halfling bard continued to annoy with counterspell, cutting words, and shield. The shadow sorcerer made clever use of banishment to get the elf warlock out of the maul. The elf bladesinger got off steel wind strike and did some serious damage to the shadar-kai--what a badass spell. And the arcane trickster rogue, played by a good lateral thinker, sent the elevator back up the shaft to split the enemy forces.The battle took 3 hours to almost (but not quite) finish. The PCs held up surprisingly well, but have blown most of their high level spell slots. At the very end, one of them attacked Zalto, effectively snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. What the players are about to learn is there's a second Manshoon at Ironslag. And he's pissed. Next session should be the grand finale with the PCs up against Manshoon and the Zhents plus Zalto and his family. It's gonna get ugly.</blockquote>

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