Musings on Sunday's session

[hong]

It wasn't just three hours; it was three hours after you said "we're nearly finished".

And the fact it was ~40 degrees yesterday and humid probably didn't help either.

Grappling wouldn't have worked; nobody had improved grapple, and the bad guy would most likely have won the opposed roll; anyway it doesn't stop spell-like abilities.

You know, now that I think of it, you guys have never used grappling, ever since that first encounter with the bloodmage with a stilled harm....

Piratecat: We've got enough villians that got away already.

How many is it now? There was Mordax, the guy who got blinded, polymorphed into a bat, and flew away; Varimer and Enchilios, although they weren't really "bad guys"; Dormand the bloodmage, he who hates being called Doorman (twice); Mariah, after killing Ronin; a demon underneath the bloodmage tower; the ninja hit squads (twice); Altin, the bloodmage/archmage; and now Faerinel the fallen ghaele. That's quite a few.

I think I have a reason why the next guy won't be teleporting away, though. Assuming you guys do what you said you were going to do at the end of last session.

Monsters with healing isn't usually a problem, as unless you use 3.0 heal, it's rare for healing in combat to heal much more than you take. D-dooring away, healing, then returning was more of a problem - maybe you should have had her stay away after her first retreat. Maybe a hint for us to rest up before doing the ritual (but we thought we'd defeated all the guardians, and thought we had to do the ritual ASAP).

Well, that was true. If you'd waited, the entire island would have been overrun by those shimmering waves of death energy. Although I have to admit, my main motivation was to ensure that the fights beforehand, whose purpose was basically to drain your resources, didn't entirely go to waste.


More info on the fight, for the peanut gallery:

The stock MM ghaele doesn't have any armour, which struck me as weird, so I gave her a chain shirt. That alone bumped her AC up by 4. Then she hit the group with a blasphemy, which dropped their Str by 6 (and thus attack bonuses went down by 3). She was also juiced up on divine power, divine favor, bear's endurance, greater heroism, and magic vestment. The thing is that ghaeles, unless juiced, are fragile indeed, only having 65 base hit points and an AC of 25. Numbers like these make for a short lifespan for a CR 13 creature.

The high stats are mitigated somewhat by the fact that I use a hero point system IMC. Spending a hero point lets you add your character level to any one d20 roll, or to AC vs one attack, or to one save DC; most of the PCs had 2-3 hero points for this fight. Because of this, they still managed to keep scoring hits and breaking through SR. Perhaps they could have made better use of these hero points, though.

It was made tougher by, as Geoff said, the PCs having had a couple of fights beforehand. These fights were pretty easy, but did have the effect of draining spells from the healer and the sorc. Also one of the players couldn't make it, so they were down one tank fighter/barb. If he'd been there, it's possible they could have taken the ghaele down before she managed to blink out.

There were a number of pretty cool stunts: the healer used magnetism to disarm the ghaele's greatsword (although she just switched to spells, and then took the sword back); and the sorc used touch of idiocy to drop the ghaele's Wis by 3, depriving her of all her big boom spells (mass inflict serious, fire storm, plane shift, slay living). It just took a _long_ time.

The players are not complaining. They're a great bunch of guys, and they take the good with the bad. Even so, it wasn't hard to notice the general glumness at the end of the session.

 

[Michael Carter]

The players are not complaining. They're a great bunch of guys, and they take the good with the bad. Even so, it wasn't hard to notice the general glumness at the end of the session.

No I as a player am not complaining.

My character (Carmen) is complaining though and getting frustrated with herself that she let such evil escape. There wasn't much else that she could have done during that fight, it was just that she wasn't ready to fight such a powerful foe. We should be thankful that we came away with our lives but it still leaves a bad taste in the her mouth.

As a player, I enjoyed the fight even though it took a long time. I would have been very frustrated if we had been gifted the victory by the enemy not playing smart. I look on the defeat as a character building exercise. Carmen is now starting to realise her purpose in this world and regain focus after the loss of her cohort Sebastian a while back. It was a good session even if it was exhausting. This session and in particular, this loss, has been a turning point for Carmen. Watch this space.

-Michael

 

[hong]

No I as a player am not complaining.

My character (Carmen) is complaining though and getting frustrated with herself that she let such evil escape. There wasn't much else that she could have done during that fight, it was just that she wasn't ready to fight such a powerful foe. We should be thankful that we came away with our lives but it still leaves a bad taste in the her mouth.

I think there's a definite chance of a rematch eventually.

As a player, I enjoyed the fight even though it took a long time. I would have been very frustrated if we had been gifted the victory by the enemy not playing smart. I look on the defeat as a character building exercise. Carmen is now starting to realise her purpose in this world and regain focus after the loss of her cohort Sebastian a while back. It was a good session even if it was exhausting. This session and in particular, this loss, has been a turning point for Carmen. Watch this space.

Perhaps you and Varimer could have a talk about loss at some stage.

 

[diaglo]

...the first half was spent in talking between a female ex-assassin NPC and the rest of the group. I enjoyed it, and the people who were involved probably enjoyed it, but those who weren't involved may have felt left out.

you could've hiked your skirt up some more to let the others in on the action.


it is hard to keep some out of the conversation esp. when it may be important to the whole group.

since you trust the group. do it all in front of them. this will also reduce the amount of time and possible missed information when the PCs all get back together. unfortunately, it may cut down on PC to PC roleplay.


they are 12th lvl, right? and you didn't just give them the levels...they earned them, right?

by this time in their adventuring careers they should be looking for the information themselves on ways to keep adversaries from fleeing. esp when they've encountered so many previous hit and run baddies.

get them to do the leg work. get them to offer the dimensional anchor solutions.

 

[hong]

you could've hiked your skirt up some more to let the others in on the action.

How did you find out what Austrians wear under their kilts?

it is hard to keep some out of the conversation esp. when it may be important to the whole group.

since you trust the group. do it all in front of them. this will also reduce the amount of time and possible missed information when the PCs all get back together. unfortunately, it may cut down on PC to PC roleplay.

Yeah. It would probably be more of a problem if my campaign was really intrigue-heavy and everyone had their own secrets and hidden agendas. It's pretty straightforward though, so it should work out okay.

they are 12th lvl, right? and you didn't just give them the levels...they earned them, right?

by this time in their adventuring careers they should be looking for the information themselves on ways to keep adversaries from fleeing. esp when they've encountered so many previous hit and run baddies.

get them to do the leg work. get them to offer the dimensional anchor solutions.

That's a good point.

 

[S'mon]

Grappling wouldn't have worked; nobody had improved grapple, and the bad guy would most likely have won the opposed roll; anyway it doesn't stop spell-like abilities.

Spell-like abilities require Concentration checks when grappling, but my point was that the weight of the grappler ought to count towards the teleportation weight limit.

 

[hong]

Spell-like abilities require Concentration checks when grappling, but my point was that the weight of the grappler ought to count towards the teleportation weight limit.

Nope, not by the book. Heck, if it did, that would be one great way to take people for a ride when they didn't want to go.

 

[S'mon]

Nope, not by the book. Heck, if it did, that would be one great way to take people for a ride when they didn't want to go.

Indeed.

- S'mon

 

[hong]

Dim door is already a must-have spell. Making it even more useful is not exactly high on my list of priorities.

 

[Stalker0]

Dormand the bloodmage, he who hates being called Doorman (twice).

hehe, in a game we are playing we also have a bad guy named Doorman. But that's because, he's a doorman

As far as conversations in front of the whole group, your players are probably going to tell you they want to be involved.

But subconsciously they don't

People want mysteries, they want to know things the other players don't, they want to be a little frustrated, its FUN!!

I remember a battle where my character was blinded. Normally, we just play it out using rolls or listen checks to determine which way my character would go. I decided to just stick a piece of paper between me and the battle board so I couldn't see anything. The excitement was 10 fold. My character reacted the same as he would have with me seeing, we still made checks and I moved appropriately, but I as a person reacted differently and that made all the fun.