Last night, we continued fighting an epic battle(27th level pcs) that started 2 sessions ago. So far this encounter has lasted over 8 hours, and no one shows signs of being bored with it. I'm rather proud, so I'm sharing some details.
The characters are after the Heart of Vecna, in Osterneth's chest. She happens to be commanding a massive Astral Dominion ship loaded with undead. I drew it up in maptools and literally placed hundreds of undead on the ship. The heroes gathered what resources they could, 8 smaller ships, loaded with allies, and attacked. One player actually said he hoped it wouldn't be a Wolf 359, great Star Trek reference.
The first night, we spent a great deal of time with the planning and then they finally attacked. Once they saw the size of the ship, they got real nervous. In addition to the dominion ship, Osterneth also had a flight of black dragons, and a huge dracolich supporting her.
We improvised some mass attack rules, the heroes had come with several dragons as well, so those forces more or less cancelled each other out, except for the dracolich, which went around smashing their small ships. This was the end of the first night.
The second night, the heroes decided it was time to enter the fray. Instead of landing on deck, they created a portal and came out right at the stairs heading below, bypassing the carnage on deck. Heading down, they were not going to be as lucky. Once again, hundreds of creatures awaited them. We use a 2 hit minion rule, and let me tell you hundreds of minions is something to see. Now the challenge really started for them. They knew they wouldn't get another rest before facing Osterneth, so they did their best to use at wills and managed to kill literally hundreds of ghouls throughout the session. Eventually, they did start to dip into encounter powers and tossed up a wall of fire since the creatures were approaching from 2 directions. As they closed in on the door leading to Osterneth, the session ended.
Last night, they really began to see what Epic means. As we returned to the battle, the dracolich lifted the deck of the ship, tossed the mangled bodies of 2 of their favorite NPCs to the ground in front of them, and let loose his massive breath weapon. The battle seesawed as the players tried to conserve resources, but the dragon was too much. His ability to deflect one blow a round really limited their ability to damage him. In the second round, the wizard used a custom ability to call his ship to them, crashing it into the dragon. This obliterated their ship, did 10d10+20, to everyone, acrobatics save for half, and really hurt the dragon, but didn't put him down for the count. It also split the dominion ship in half, removing their rear flank, but also forcing them into movement they didn't want to have to do.
At one point, I had the cleric go negative for HP, and be 8 points from total death. The rogue also went down, unconscious, the Wizard had 8 HP, and the warlord was down to 3. The fighter was also bloodied. The players have never been so pressed. In the end, they managed to kill the dragon, and remaining minions. No chance to take 5, as they are outside to door to Osterneth's cabin.
A couple things I learned during this. If you keep changing it up, players don't get bored and you can drain their resources. On the other side of the coin, they have ridiculous powers. The Warlord used some ability that gave him regen 20 or so till the end of the encounter. He also burned all his inspiring words and used another power to get them back. The cleric has more ways to raise herself than raise other people, and the fighter is just tough. Most of them still have their action points.
Still, everyone enjoyed it, and I hope the next encounter lives up to everything leading up to it.
The characters are after the Heart of Vecna, in Osterneth's chest. She happens to be commanding a massive Astral Dominion ship loaded with undead. I drew it up in maptools and literally placed hundreds of undead on the ship. The heroes gathered what resources they could, 8 smaller ships, loaded with allies, and attacked. One player actually said he hoped it wouldn't be a Wolf 359, great Star Trek reference.
The first night, we spent a great deal of time with the planning and then they finally attacked. Once they saw the size of the ship, they got real nervous. In addition to the dominion ship, Osterneth also had a flight of black dragons, and a huge dracolich supporting her.
We improvised some mass attack rules, the heroes had come with several dragons as well, so those forces more or less cancelled each other out, except for the dracolich, which went around smashing their small ships. This was the end of the first night.
The second night, the heroes decided it was time to enter the fray. Instead of landing on deck, they created a portal and came out right at the stairs heading below, bypassing the carnage on deck. Heading down, they were not going to be as lucky. Once again, hundreds of creatures awaited them. We use a 2 hit minion rule, and let me tell you hundreds of minions is something to see. Now the challenge really started for them. They knew they wouldn't get another rest before facing Osterneth, so they did their best to use at wills and managed to kill literally hundreds of ghouls throughout the session. Eventually, they did start to dip into encounter powers and tossed up a wall of fire since the creatures were approaching from 2 directions. As they closed in on the door leading to Osterneth, the session ended.
Last night, they really began to see what Epic means. As we returned to the battle, the dracolich lifted the deck of the ship, tossed the mangled bodies of 2 of their favorite NPCs to the ground in front of them, and let loose his massive breath weapon. The battle seesawed as the players tried to conserve resources, but the dragon was too much. His ability to deflect one blow a round really limited their ability to damage him. In the second round, the wizard used a custom ability to call his ship to them, crashing it into the dragon. This obliterated their ship, did 10d10+20, to everyone, acrobatics save for half, and really hurt the dragon, but didn't put him down for the count. It also split the dominion ship in half, removing their rear flank, but also forcing them into movement they didn't want to have to do.
At one point, I had the cleric go negative for HP, and be 8 points from total death. The rogue also went down, unconscious, the Wizard had 8 HP, and the warlord was down to 3. The fighter was also bloodied. The players have never been so pressed. In the end, they managed to kill the dragon, and remaining minions. No chance to take 5, as they are outside to door to Osterneth's cabin.
A couple things I learned during this. If you keep changing it up, players don't get bored and you can drain their resources. On the other side of the coin, they have ridiculous powers. The Warlord used some ability that gave him regen 20 or so till the end of the encounter. He also burned all his inspiring words and used another power to get them back. The cleric has more ways to raise herself than raise other people, and the fighter is just tough. Most of them still have their action points.
Still, everyone enjoyed it, and I hope the next encounter lives up to everything leading up to it.
