looking for stories on final combat in Speaker in Dreams

[Kershek]

*SPOILERS for SPEAKER IN DREAMS WotC module!*




I would like to hear from anyone who has completed Speaker in Dreams and could explain how the final combat unfolded. As the DM, I've been thinking a lot about how it should get set up, but I'm not really thinking of anything good enough that would really reflect Axom's genius intelligence. The only real thought I had was to have him jump over the balcony next to a wall and stay levitated, then throw mind blasts at the party. Can anyone think of anything better?

 

[Saeviomagy]

In ours, we made a lot of ruckus while heading up one of the towers, and he sat outside the tower mindblasting us during a fight (with someone else) until most of us were either engaged in combat or stunned. Then he busted in through a window, and grappled one of the stunned characters (who had moved there for safety before being stunned), hauling them outside the tower and escaping to the top. Luckily our mage had a spiderclimb ready, and the party's barbarian headed up the outside of the tower in hot pursuit, and was able to save the grabbed character before his brain was extracted.

 

[Crothian]

I had the party convinced that the big speech the mayor gives was going to be about them and reward them. They were really caught off gaurd. So, they hole up in a friendly merchants place while the demons take over the town. THey here some horrid screaming sneak out to investigate. THey sneak around the town, encounter some of the demons and kill them. They go over to the mayor's house to see if he can explain what is happening, and can't find him. They split up and the barbarian runs into the mind flayer. I'm thinking I get to kill them one by one. So, they roll iniative, barbarian wins, he charges, rolls a nat 20 followed by a nat 20, and then rolled damage. It was a total of 72 becasuse of the x3 crit weapoon and power attack. Dead Mind flayer. Actually, he took the head off and destroyed it beyond recongition. So, met a gaming everyone knew what it was, but none of the other characters believed his character.

 

[DM with a vengence]

When I played through speaker in dreams, it was with someone who had only DMed once or twice.

We wandered the city, getting randomly ambushed by Wererats, who were easily defeated. Then we hit the tower, and finally the bookshop. After generally smashing all opposition in the town, we went to the mayor's speech.

After he mentioned the whole martial law bit, the Paladin detected evil, and located evil in the tower and on top. My dwarven war cleric drank potions of spider climb and invisibility and put the rogue in his inventory while the wizard cast fly on the paladin's riding dog and hasted himself.

My cleric climbed the tower, getting to the top just a the mayor finished his speech and the demon revealed itself. The rogue threw two daggers into the mind flayer on top, getting sneak attacks, my cleric attacked with Smite, power attack, and strength domain, getting in a nice hit. The paladin spirited charged and smote the demon on the roof, killing it in one hit, and the wizard opened up with a half-dozen magic missiles on the unlucky mindflayer, knocking it to negetive hitpoints.

At that moment the DM screamed at us, threw the book on the ground, and started to cry.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

my group was turned into were-rats.

no final battle for them! so, no help here....

 

[Dinkeldog]

I shouldn't need to do this, but I'll pimp for Wulf again. It's over in the Story Hour Forum.

 

[Kershek]

Thanks for the responses so far. I'll go check out Wulf's stories.

How do you stop the party from hearing the speech and immediately heading to the manor? After all, with a big nasty on the roof of the tower snapping his tail, that's a pretty good indication to the party telling them to go fight right away.

 

[Crothian]

How do you stop the party from hearing the speech and immediately heading to the manor? After all, with a big nasty on the roof of the tower snapping his tail, that's a pretty good indication to the party telling them to go fight right away.

That's why I fooled them in believing the speech was something else. They truely believed the menace was over. They had the wrong spells (they thought they were being rewarded and then going to go back to traveling). They knew they could not win that fight. I also hinted that with all the innocents around, many would die.