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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8288899" data-attributes="member: 5948">Finally, after much planning and diversionary attacks and recon - the attack on Grudd Haug.We were cooperating with a group of female hill giants who resented their husbands being commandeered by our target Chief Guh for her raiding parties.  With the strategic use of a potion of growth, we were able to make their leader look a lot more intimidating than normal, and that drew out a lot of Grudd Haug's defences while the PCs and their allies (human light cleric, gnome arcane trickster, dragonborn devotion paladin, elf hunter ranger, NPC firbolg druid, and a very powerful but dubiously trustworthy NPC vampire tiefling paladin/bard) pulled off a near-flawless old-fashioned 3e-style scry and fry, courtesy of a sneaky druid scouting in rat form, and the vampire's Helm of Teleportation.We teleport in, chief Guh is hugely fat and largely immobile, but she throws a mean rock and has a couple of oni, a hill giant, and some nasty ogres in attendance.  It briefly rains fireballs, erupting earth, dragon's breath, ice storm, a waterskin of lamp oil carried by the arcane trickster's mage hand, and arrows while the paladin uses a Sleet Storm from a magic item to cut off the door we assume the most dangerous reinforcements would come from (and to prevent us getting in a fight with the hill giant door guard, who was the husband of our hill giant ally and who we very much didn't want to kill).  The ogres go down quickly to spells, one oni gets filled with arrows before the paladin tries out his brand new Great Weapon Master feat and takes it down, the other has time to get off a cone of cold (mostly hitting the last ogre...) before the vampire dismembers it.  Guh goes down in a rain of arrows, flaming oil and Divine Smite.  The hill giant, seeing its chief was down, flees (we'd calculated this would happen, Guh seemed to keep her minions in check with fear), and we're left standing around saying 'was that all'?The gnome does some exploring and slickly saves a captive halfling from being thrown in to an oven by goblin servitors, while the rest of the party cleans up a small unit of orc guards and some worgs, (and takes more damage in the process than they did from the climatic fight with Guh).  Highlight of the day was the formidable 8th level ranger, with a bad run of dice rolls combining with a custom critical fumble table, first missing an attack so humiliatingly badly that all of the rest of the party who could see her got disadvantage for the rest of the round because we were laughing too hard, and then getting shoved off a balcony by a basic goblin (who nearly escaped to get away with it, and would have if he hadn't stopped and spent an action grabbing some of the late Guh's loot)Next on the agenda is (hopefully) convincing the remainder of Guh's giants that their chief is dead, hopefully also that they should give up this 'gather an army' thing and disperse into the hills again.  We found the magic key we were here for (we had to Banish Guh's dying form to get it out from under her, mind you...), but we also will need to check out the lower levels to see if there are any more captives (and loot!), and try to thin out the sizeable numbers of orcs, hobgoblins, oni, ogres, and goblins that Guh had coerced into her army.  Fortunately, we can probably rely on the giants to help a bit with the last.  I don't entirely trust the hill giants to be capable of dealing with whatever sneakiness the remaining oni might be planning though, we might need to attend to that ourselves...Then, sometime to regroup, think about what to do about the vampire, then decide where to go next.  Obvious destinations are Waterdeep or possibly the ancient temple of the ancestral Father-God of all giants, cos we've got some questions to ask that guy...</blockquote>

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