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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5432093" data-attributes="member: 78116">Eberron: Dark Prophecy Following on from the giant spider madness of the previous week, we continued with a very similar theme of... giant spiders! Though I suspect the PCs will soon yearn for the good old days of "just" spiders soon enough. For now there was a job to do: The Mayor was under attack and were the PCs bad enough dudes to save him?After treating their injuries from the last combat, the PCs moved towards the house where the mayor was trying desperately to make a last stand. Most of the other able bodied members of the town were unconscious or badly injured - Arden's wife in particular was so badly envenomated that she would die soon without treatment. Suspicious at first of the PCs approach, Arden only opened the door after some brief convincing. This was because a woman had previously convinced him to open up and in doing so, numerous spiders had taken the opportunity to rush in. With his brother and others having left on a near suicidal rescue mission towards the spiders lair. Arden was the last and only thing between the wounded and death.That is until the PCs arrived! Arden was relieved to see them and soon explained the situation. Tybalt examined Arden's wife and realized one of the potions that Gryll had given the party could revive her. This turned out not to be a difficult choice, but I always like to present such "moral" choices to the party. Where they don't gain anything in particular for what they do, but it does cost them something (even if it is fairly minor in the long run). In any event Arianne turned up near the house and asked the PCs to "Parley".Of course it's worth noting that Arianne's idea of a discussion is to have her spiders stick their fangs into you and digest your delicious organs. So you can imagine that you don't get far trying to "talk" to her and simple passive insight revealed the malicious intent behind her words. Arianne was not in any mood for diplomacy and simply insisted that the PCs die horribly. A bitter twisted wreck of a person, the PCs saw that she bore the same mark upon her that the murderous arthropods they had encountered. Within a short while of talking to the PCs she revealed her plan, to marry Leonan (the man her spider abducted at the wedding) by noon the next day. Then promptly turn her army to butchering new Cyre for the honeymoon.With this several phase spiders and two mournland stalkers (converted Dark Sun crystal spiders) entered the building. Here I had put tokens representing large holes through the walls, providing line of sight/effect for powers (like teleporting <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" />). The goal here was simple: Use the phase spiders reaction to teleport PCs onto the other side of the wall, then tear apart individual PCs with the hidden mournland stalkers. This plan worked fairly well, with a phase spider sending the artificer tybalt through the wall - right into the crystalline claws of one of the mournland stalkers.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/EightLeggedRaid.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Tybalt is stuck on the other side of the wall, with a stalker in the same room and the rest of the party trapped fighting the phase spiders in the central room. Despite the tactical trickery, the party performed pretty well and the spiders were soon sorted out. Hitting the Paladin in particular proved difficult as I (the paladins player sadly couldn't make it) kept within his reach of 2 and stuck near the wall to prevent easy flanking. With the battle in the center handled, Marhu tried to smash his way through one of the weakened walls to get through but bounced off (much to my mirth). The second attempt worked perfectly though and he got through, engaging the other stalker to prevent it having too much of its way with Tybalt.In some ways this encounter worked quite well, but in other ways it wasn't quite as efficient as I hoped. Mostly the phase spiders didn't have a great time on their attacks and were killed fairly easily. The point of the encounter was met and made for an interesting tactical situation. So I was quite pleased. Once the spiders were dealt with, a quick retreat back to Gryll's warded house provided safety for an extended rest. With time pressing in with Arianne's impending wedding, the PCs took their reward (some gold and potions of resistance to poison - handy) and followed the southern stream to Arianne's lair.From the utterly silent forest the PCs came across the cave that the creatures lived in. Here it's worth noting that the forests silence was explained: The horrific creatures had basically swept the forest clean of life. All manner of animals such as deer, wolves, bears, cats and every bird imaginable was stuck within the web (in various states of decay). Many sacks of balled dry rotting meat were also suspended from the entrance and ceiling of the cave. The general theme continued within the pitch black interior as well, with lichen and moss growing whenever there wasn't thick mats of white webbing.The PCs soon ran afoul of the caves ferocious defenders, a pair of deadly centipedes that rolled a bit poorly on their stealth checks. Rushing from their rocky hiding places combat began! Gaining the advantage initially, the PCs began to surround and deal with the centipedes relatively easily. During this period two ambush spiders, which haven't been seen since the beginning of the game snuck around into position. On the second round one of the PCs got slightly too close to a large fungus formation, which soon rose up, sprouted legs and then two huge fangs...This creature, a new monster of my own making was a Sporetrap Spider. If you're wondering about the strange name, I actually made it for gamma world initially and then made a DnD "conversion" I liked the concept enough. Covered in deadly spores that can confuse enemies, the sporetrap can rapidly shuffle enemies around the battlefield and even make them attack one another. Unfortunately when I put it into maptools I didn't put the attack as the "failed save" effect, which meant it got a bit more than intended. Fortunately the mistake wasn't too significant, due to the PCs rolling horribly to hit one another anyway - except the rogue who pulled out his dagger to whack the assassin (but it was just a dagger :O).<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/SporesoftheTrapsporeSpider.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Dazed and firmly confused, the PCs got slid into a big pile and had some fun flailing (rather ineffectually in the end) at one another. The dazed paladin then suffered two brutal attacks, hitting mostly due to the effect of combat advantage. The first spore attack and melee attack would have missed as well if it wasn't for the sporetraps handy centipede flanking buddy, which the paladin was near originally. Gaining combat advantage against defenders is utterly invaluable for any monster - especially one that attacks multiple times every round. The trapspore then action pointed and attacked with his double attack, pulling the paladin back and inflicting a bite that dropped him unconscious! This is where the PCs discovered the danger of this creature, as it gains future bonuses to damage against opponents it has grabbed (dealing 1d6 extra poison damage).The round started to swing back towards the monsters, as the PCs found themselves ambushed from the nearby cobwebs by ambush spiders. The quick and accurate attacks from hiding landed home, inflicting ongoing poison damage on numerous PCs. The Paladin got himself back up but was rapidly dropped back again by the trapspore spider, who with the centipede continued to drop him unconscious. Once again the sheer value of the CA the creature had was ever present: ensuring the paladin didn't act at all again on his next turn (he was before the leader in initiative).Eventually the PCs killed the centipedes and one of the ambush spiders, but one was still left and the trapspore had a decent - but not huge - amount of HP. This left a very precarious position, as ongoing damage managed to drain the warforged of HP (he failed four saves against his ongoing damage!). The other ambush spider helped out though by failing to successful hide from the PCs, greatly reducing his accuracy on his charging venom bite (+3 from hidden!).<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/PrecariousPosition.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Here the PCs have been hammered, the leader is out of healing and ongoing damage is starting to take its toll. The trapspore is in a feisty mood and so is the ambush spider.This was quite a tense situation! The final turn went as dramatically as I could have hoped. The trapspore tried to attack the paladin, who kept it marked and without CA, missed his all important bite attack. Marhu decided he'd had enough of the creature and finished it off with a brutal critical hit - combined with its vulnerable 5 fire - to send it from 19 HP to -18 in a single blow :O. One of the advantages of being unconscious for most of the fight is you still have your encounter powers later on <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The final ambush spider then critically hit the paladin to add a final insult to injury, but was then quickly dispatched by the other characters without much issue: Ending the battle. If this had not happened, several of the PCs may have gone down due to ongoing damage! The wizard was on single digit HP and the artificer had healed the previous round (so wasn't too bad). The most remarkable thing about this was that the three front line characters had the HP totals of 1, 2 and 3! <img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/123HPHahaha.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Marhu the Paladin is on a single HP. Walker the Assassin is on 2 HP. Ryske the Rogue is on 3 HP. That's a pretty remarkable way to finish a fight. Investigating the corpses, they found signs these were some of the men who went on a rescue mission to the caves. It seems they did not get very far at all, having feel victim to the trapspore spider. Although this didn't come up in game, what is left of the body is being consumed by saprophytic fungi. These fungi are then picked up by the spider and placed onto its carapace, keeping the life cycle of the spider going. The bigger the spider and the more fungi it has upon it, the more successful it is as a predator. Why did I put this in here? No reason, I just wanted to convey that bit of information I wrote in some manner. Moving on further into the spider filled tunnels, the PCs rapidly encountered an underground stream... with the only crossing point looking to be numerous slippery slime covered rocks... Edit: Trapspore spiders stats. Note that he slides as an effect, making him  particularly effective at getting rid of Knights and Defeners that need  to be adjacent. Except dwarves. He hates dwarves. But everyone hates  dwarves. Also, it is actually a large creature (not medium, silly MB). <img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TrapsporeSpider.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> </blockquote>

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