This was one of the most fun sessions I've run, though it was really really long.
So, this is the first high-level campaign I've ever run, and I find I forget a whole lot of things that could prove important to the balance of combat. But I compensate by making the foes ridiculously powerful. Basically, as I see it, each of the six players in my game gets at least 6 times as long to plan their action as I do, so it's not surprising I make sub-optimal choices, but some of the mistakes tonight were just sad.
F'rinstance, the Prismaticly Sphered Beholder got taken down by arrows after the first layer was removed with cone of cold. I kinda forgot about the 7th layer of the sphere, which stops everything. During the fight, I was thinking to myself, "Wow, I thought it'd be much better as a 9th level spell." Now sure, while it was up, it was a holy terror, killed half the elite soldiers the party had traveling with them, and wore down a lot of hit points. I will admit I was kinda sad that no one failed any of the saves against the flashy effects. The flesh to stone, the telekinesis to pull a PC into the prismatic sphere, and certainly not the disintegrate.
It's final tactic, to bowl through the party, was almost effective, but we got to have one of those cool Hollywood "leap and push the dude to safety," so even though it ended up just being a nasty speedbum for the party, it was cool.
The group teleported the army onto the airship, and started rushing into the ship. I figured it'd take a few minutes for the ship to capsize, so a few thousand men made it in (and got killed by monsters, invisible stalkers, the lightning dragon) while the PCs rushed for the head, and went down its nostrils. A mistake, since the head was not the command center. They discovered this after several minutes of exploring, when they finally used Find the Path, and saw it directing them back in the other direction.
So they headed out, and had to fight the lightning dragon. Which sucked, but a few thousand crossbowmen certainly helped. They managed to take the Dragon down with the barbarian taking the brunt of the damage (115 points or so). Then, Rantle, the warrior with the Torch, got the remaining soldiers who wouldn't be able to get into the ship before it tipped over, and he teleported them to safety.
From there, they talked briefly with Pilus's projected image, and basically agreed that, since they were going to eventually reach Pilus anyway (Pilus is quite familiar with adventurers, and he knows the way they work), they might as well just be given a safe path to Pilus. Pilus can lay an ambush more easily, and the party won't have to fight mooks. Pilus agreed, and basically cleared a path for them. They linked up with some soldiers who had pressed deep into the airship, and traveled together.
They got to the antimagic beholder, were really scared for five rounds while the mage with Cone of Cold was trapped outside the room. But he got in, cleared away the main barrier, and the party took it down.
From there, to a vertical chamber with a spiral stairway that went up 80 feet to a balcony. The party climbed and flew, but halfway up, the stairway retracted into the wall, and Pilus (big hooha air mage, remember) cancelled half the party's fly spells. Then the room began to flood with stomach acid. One NPC ally, who is actually, um, immortal (but none of the rest of the party knew) was the only one to be knocked dead by the fall. Thankfully the party recovered her body for a proper burial before she could get dissolved.
They escaped stomach acid room, and then headed into the main control room, where Pilus had set up a phalanx of guards, invisible elder air elementals, the water elementalist, his trusted lieutenant, and another mage who the party hated (long story). Pilus had, admittedly, already been spending a lot of magical energy controlling the airship and directing the battle, so he didn't have all his full power, but he was improved invisible, with a field of null sound around him so the party couldn't hear. It took 5 rounds before a PC actually thought to cast True Seeing, because they were busier dealing with the soldiers and the various spells going on.
Quick side note: Pilus's trusted henchman, the half-Orc/half-Elf Onamdammin, is actually a better biomancer than Pilus is on a small scale, particularly with really twisted monsters. He got his start as a biomancer because he hated his heritage, and wanted to reshape his body to be less like his blood. He's a really sick individual, and in combat he was heavily buffed, fighting with a pick. He hates Elves most of all, and has been responsible for the deaths of many of the PC Elf barbarian's friends. Hell, Onamdammin's palace is made of bodies that were stacked on top of each other and then petrified.
One of his attacks was to petrify part of the barbarians body, with the intent to follow up by shattering it. But he never got the chance.
Rantle, really low on hit points, gets hit by a tornado-force wind that will carry him out of the room and dump him back into the room full of acid, almost certainly killing him. He's also getting hurled along with a bunch of soldiers, since Pilus doesn't mind friendly fire, so as Rantle is falling, he swings the torch at one of the soldiers, cracks his skull open, and activates the Torch. A pillar of flame sears through the roof of this portion of the ship, and plucks
everybody in this combat away.
Rantle's player knows just the right place, but he's not sure the Torch can go there. One Elvish emperor they'd encountered before has a palace with a permanent dimensional lock there, and there are a good number of soldiers around who are at least angry at Pilus, if not necessarily loyal to the PCs. So the whole battle suddenly shifts to the roof of this palace, which is now in flames from the Torch.
Pilus decides to drop all pretense of hiding because he needs to get back to his ship, so he sends his elder air elementals at Rantle to try and pry the Torch from his cold dead hands. Meanwhile, the Elf barbarian has beaten the crap out of Onamdammin, and another ally has the half-breed fighter-mage flanked. Onamdammin knows he has to escape, so he sprints away, taking attacks of opportunity as he runs to get clear so he can cast a spell. I say, "Onamdammin's clear, so he casts teleport."
The players correct me on my mistake, and Onamdammin himself is quite surprised when his mad dash to safety carries him off the roof of the palace. His teleport spell fizzles, and he plunges to his death.
Rantle's in trouble, though, nearly unconscious, when some of the most fortutitous dice-rolling I've seen in a long time occurs. Rantle has a sword that, if he criticals, the soul of Agony that's in the blade will deal back at the target any damage it dealt to Rantle this round. So, after getting beaten near to death by the air elemental, Rantle crits, hits it for something like 50 damage, and
then the psychic monk with the elder god in her head gets another crit, and the thing fails its Fort save against massive damage.
The immortal NPC, who'd been unconscious on the floor, getting caught in various area of effect spells, finally regenerates enough to stand up. She casts the one spell of this fight, and takes out the aforementioned mage that the PCs hate (long story).
Pilus at this point no allies left, but still only one member of the party, the cleric with True Seeing, knows where he is. And this cleric with true seeing, named Guthwulf, Minister of Pain, is Lawful Evil; self-centered, not really willing to risk himself. He almost considered joining with Pilus, except that one of his friends was killed by the lightning dragon. Guthwulf, who never attacks, has charged his Staff of Pain with a Slay Living spell, and Guthwulf plans to use it.
Still feeling in control, Pilus telekinesises Rantle, yanking him into the air after him as he flies away, intending to kill Rantle when he has no allies to help, take the Torch, and rescue his precious airship. As he flies, Guthwulf hurls his Staff of Pain like a lance at Pilus. And of course, because it was so cool that it had to work, he rolls a 20, and strikes Pilus. For drama's sake (and because I figure, 'He's a lich; I don't mind him being torn to pieces'), the staff pierces his chest, and the stored Slay Living spell triggers.
I'm still thinking Pilus is going to escape. If not with Rantle, at least back to his airship for another defensive. Perhaps he'll plan a teleport tactical strike, or perhaps he'll hold the army hostage and convert them to monsters. I mean, it's a Slay Living spell, he's a lich, and he's 18th level. I say, "Well, he pretty much can't fail this," and I toss the die.
It's a 1.
After that, there was no way I was going to drag the game on longer. That was Pilus's final bow. With a burst of divine energy, Pilus's body was ripped to pieces. Though his soul partially retreated to his phylactery, it was mostly trapped in his airship, heavily wounded from thousands of soldiers battling inside it. The party is too tired and injured to risk heading back, but a quick scrying shows them that the airship has crashed into the ocean, and sunk into the deep.
Right now I'm too sleepy to recall much more specifics, but I know this thread certainly helped me flesh out the details of the airship more, set the atmosphere. The flocks of white crows that took to the air as soon as the Torch landed the first time spooked them. I had them run across groups of soldiers covered in mucous, drowned, though I never actually put them in such a situation because . . . well, I didn't want the heroes covered in snot for the dramatic encounters. They got reports from soldiers about fighting deeper in the ship nearby its multiple hearts, and at spawning pits where monsters kept pouring out.
And heh. They could have waited to attack a couple more days, and it would have crashed on land, to be looted for all its . . . substantial amounts of treasure. But now it's at the bottom of the ocean, sure to make for a great dungeon in some later campaign I run.
Thanks a lot guys. My college is going on Spring Break next week, so no games for me for a while, but I am happily tided over.
Oh, and the party leveled. *grin*
