As the title says, I ran my first Epic session last Sunday.
It commenced with the PCs having just finished an encounter. They were (and still are) in Phaervorul (from P2 Demon Queen's Enclave). I have eliminated a lot of the cruft, trying to reduce it to a few interesting elements - the Mindflayers (I pluralised them), the slightly mad drow wizard, the two drow factions (soldiers; temple folk) and the demons and Orcus cultists. Given the PCs entered the outpost at 20th level, I've also upped the level of everything a suitable amount.
After crossing the bridge (which involved dealing with vrocks and haures demons as well as some spiders and wight minions) they found and dealt with the mindflayers (giving the dwarf the chance to raise his concordance with Whelm by beating up on the troll) and then met and treated with the wizard before going to the soldiers' barracks to recruit them as allies.
With their allies in tow, they started exploring the ruined areas on the left side of the map ("behind" the barracks), trying to get the lie of the land and also looking for clues to help with shutting down the Abyssal breaches. (I pluralised them too.)
In fairly short order they ended up in the ruined house with the blood pool and Orcus statue that anchors the breaches. The wizard/invoker started trying to shut that down (as a skill challenge), while the other PCs dealt with a sudden assault of enemy forces - a Husk spider from behind and waves of ghouls and mezzodemons, plus a flying nycademon and arctide runespiral demon attacking from across the bridge to the next ruined building. The previous session ended with the wizard/invoker succeeding, and the other PCs beating up on all the Abyssal forces. (And they had done all of the above on a single pool of daily resources, so were pretty depleted in surges and powers, except for the two defenders.)
In the break between sessions I was looking through my copy of E1 Death's Reach and found nice stats for a ghould horde, plus a Portal Thing consisting of coagulated blood necrotically transformed into an ooze. I decided that these looked like fun, and so started the Epic session (the players had been told to turn up with their 21st level sheets - a midencounter transformation!) with the blood in which the invoker was standing coagulating around him and lashing out with its tendrils, while the other PCs got swarmed by a final rush of ghouls up the sides of the cliff they were standing next to: a 21st level and 22nd level elite, against PCs low on daily resources and who had only the encounter resources that they hadn't spent in the prior 22nd level encounter.
In their depleted state the PCs felt the pressure early - the invoker/wizard dropped, but the paladin revived him by laying on hands (I think he spent 4 of his 5 LoH over the course of the session). The boost in damage was noticeable for both strikers - the sorcerer having a net +7 gain from +3 overall stat gain, +1 from his Focus feat and +3 from his Epic Destiny; and the ranger doubling his Twin Strike dice plus getting 3 dice of Hunter's Quarry plus testing out his new 19-20 crit range. They did get to benefit from their drow allies, however, with the party's dwarven warleader calling in archery support as a minor action (+23 vs AC area burst 2 in 15 for 4d6 damage, +10 for being an area attack against a swarm).
One bit of the session that I enjoyed, though, didn't have a lot to do with crossing the mechincal threshold to Epic, although relevant story elements were in play.
In the previous session the players had mostly managed to keep their PCs unbloodied so as not to trigger the nearby Abyssal breach, but in this fight there was a lot of bloodying going on. The Abyssal breach only attack bloodied targets but can attack through blocking terrain (I was still granting -5 to hit for total concealment), and on a hit removes the target from play (they get temporarily sucked into the Abyss!).
The first PC to end up in the Abyss was the drow chaos sorcerer/Demonskin Adept who reveres Corellon but is also a Primordial Adept of Chan (the elemental queen of good aeiral creatures). When he arrived in the Abyss he had about 12 hp left, and had been planning to second wind on his turn. The player enquiring whether there was anything he might do while temporarily trapped on the Abyss, I asked whether in his thoughts he would reach out for connections to chaotic forces. I didn't really need to ask - the answer way "yes." I told him he felt a caressing breeze, and he rolled an Arcana check and hit a medium but not hard DC. So I told him he could not be sure what it's source was. Being a chance-taking drow he decided to "embrace" it nevertheless - at which point I let him have his second wind, and also informed him that the breeze came from Yan-C-Bin, elemental prince of evil aerial creatures. (Had he rolled less than a medium DC he would have been decieved into thinking it came fro Chan; on a hard DC he would have discerned the truth.) So now the drow has internalised a bit of his elemental patron's nemesis, which should be interesting in the future.
The next PC to end up in the breach was the invoker/wizard. As he got sucked in he made a skill check to try to understand its structure (so that he could destroy it in the futre) and - now being a Sage of Ages with +34 or so to Religion checks, and +29 to Arcana checks - he succeeded spectacularly, and thus commenced the process of closing the breach from the inside. This produced some colourful narration plus some more excellent rolling from the player, who decided that the PC would stay inside the breach and try and close it rather than let it spit him back out. The breach then hit the paladin, who ended up inside it with the invoker/wizard and contributed one success to the skill challenge by lighting it up with his radiant weapon - when the challenge was concluded by the wizard/invoker on his next turn both PCs fell from the sky where the breach was the 50' back to earth, which knocked the paladin unconscious (but he was revived with a potion).
The player of the invoker/wizard has become very proactive with his skill challenges, and his use of powers to augment his skills (eg he burned the use of his Circlet of Continuity to help him make effective skill checks while trapped inside the breach; in the eariler session he used Thunderwave and Rebuke Undead to help destroy the form and power of the Orcus statue). He has the Expert Ritualist feat and is fairly liberal in his intepreation of what counts as using a skill in a ritual (ie he does not confine himself to rituals in the technical sense), and on that I've been happy to follow his lead: he was applying the bonus in his checks for the challenge both against the Orcus statue and agasint the Abyssal breach.
In any event, after the two PCs tumbled back to earth from the closed breach, the others finished off the ghouls and the party reunited. Feeling very weary, they returned with their drow allies to the barracks to spend the "night".
It commenced with the PCs having just finished an encounter. They were (and still are) in Phaervorul (from P2 Demon Queen's Enclave). I have eliminated a lot of the cruft, trying to reduce it to a few interesting elements - the Mindflayers (I pluralised them), the slightly mad drow wizard, the two drow factions (soldiers; temple folk) and the demons and Orcus cultists. Given the PCs entered the outpost at 20th level, I've also upped the level of everything a suitable amount.
After crossing the bridge (which involved dealing with vrocks and haures demons as well as some spiders and wight minions) they found and dealt with the mindflayers (giving the dwarf the chance to raise his concordance with Whelm by beating up on the troll) and then met and treated with the wizard before going to the soldiers' barracks to recruit them as allies.
With their allies in tow, they started exploring the ruined areas on the left side of the map ("behind" the barracks), trying to get the lie of the land and also looking for clues to help with shutting down the Abyssal breaches. (I pluralised them too.)
In fairly short order they ended up in the ruined house with the blood pool and Orcus statue that anchors the breaches. The wizard/invoker started trying to shut that down (as a skill challenge), while the other PCs dealt with a sudden assault of enemy forces - a Husk spider from behind and waves of ghouls and mezzodemons, plus a flying nycademon and arctide runespiral demon attacking from across the bridge to the next ruined building. The previous session ended with the wizard/invoker succeeding, and the other PCs beating up on all the Abyssal forces. (And they had done all of the above on a single pool of daily resources, so were pretty depleted in surges and powers, except for the two defenders.)
In the break between sessions I was looking through my copy of E1 Death's Reach and found nice stats for a ghould horde, plus a Portal Thing consisting of coagulated blood necrotically transformed into an ooze. I decided that these looked like fun, and so started the Epic session (the players had been told to turn up with their 21st level sheets - a midencounter transformation!) with the blood in which the invoker was standing coagulating around him and lashing out with its tendrils, while the other PCs got swarmed by a final rush of ghouls up the sides of the cliff they were standing next to: a 21st level and 22nd level elite, against PCs low on daily resources and who had only the encounter resources that they hadn't spent in the prior 22nd level encounter.
In their depleted state the PCs felt the pressure early - the invoker/wizard dropped, but the paladin revived him by laying on hands (I think he spent 4 of his 5 LoH over the course of the session). The boost in damage was noticeable for both strikers - the sorcerer having a net +7 gain from +3 overall stat gain, +1 from his Focus feat and +3 from his Epic Destiny; and the ranger doubling his Twin Strike dice plus getting 3 dice of Hunter's Quarry plus testing out his new 19-20 crit range. They did get to benefit from their drow allies, however, with the party's dwarven warleader calling in archery support as a minor action (+23 vs AC area burst 2 in 15 for 4d6 damage, +10 for being an area attack against a swarm).
One bit of the session that I enjoyed, though, didn't have a lot to do with crossing the mechincal threshold to Epic, although relevant story elements were in play.
In the previous session the players had mostly managed to keep their PCs unbloodied so as not to trigger the nearby Abyssal breach, but in this fight there was a lot of bloodying going on. The Abyssal breach only attack bloodied targets but can attack through blocking terrain (I was still granting -5 to hit for total concealment), and on a hit removes the target from play (they get temporarily sucked into the Abyss!).
The first PC to end up in the Abyss was the drow chaos sorcerer/Demonskin Adept who reveres Corellon but is also a Primordial Adept of Chan (the elemental queen of good aeiral creatures). When he arrived in the Abyss he had about 12 hp left, and had been planning to second wind on his turn. The player enquiring whether there was anything he might do while temporarily trapped on the Abyss, I asked whether in his thoughts he would reach out for connections to chaotic forces. I didn't really need to ask - the answer way "yes." I told him he felt a caressing breeze, and he rolled an Arcana check and hit a medium but not hard DC. So I told him he could not be sure what it's source was. Being a chance-taking drow he decided to "embrace" it nevertheless - at which point I let him have his second wind, and also informed him that the breeze came from Yan-C-Bin, elemental prince of evil aerial creatures. (Had he rolled less than a medium DC he would have been decieved into thinking it came fro Chan; on a hard DC he would have discerned the truth.) So now the drow has internalised a bit of his elemental patron's nemesis, which should be interesting in the future.
The next PC to end up in the breach was the invoker/wizard. As he got sucked in he made a skill check to try to understand its structure (so that he could destroy it in the futre) and - now being a Sage of Ages with +34 or so to Religion checks, and +29 to Arcana checks - he succeeded spectacularly, and thus commenced the process of closing the breach from the inside. This produced some colourful narration plus some more excellent rolling from the player, who decided that the PC would stay inside the breach and try and close it rather than let it spit him back out. The breach then hit the paladin, who ended up inside it with the invoker/wizard and contributed one success to the skill challenge by lighting it up with his radiant weapon - when the challenge was concluded by the wizard/invoker on his next turn both PCs fell from the sky where the breach was the 50' back to earth, which knocked the paladin unconscious (but he was revived with a potion).
The player of the invoker/wizard has become very proactive with his skill challenges, and his use of powers to augment his skills (eg he burned the use of his Circlet of Continuity to help him make effective skill checks while trapped inside the breach; in the eariler session he used Thunderwave and Rebuke Undead to help destroy the form and power of the Orcus statue). He has the Expert Ritualist feat and is fairly liberal in his intepreation of what counts as using a skill in a ritual (ie he does not confine himself to rituals in the technical sense), and on that I've been happy to follow his lead: he was applying the bonus in his checks for the challenge both against the Orcus statue and agasint the Abyssal breach.
In any event, after the two PCs tumbled back to earth from the closed breach, the others finished off the ghouls and the party reunited. Feeling very weary, they returned with their drow allies to the barracks to spend the "night".
