Pesky little Balor

[just__al]

It seems just a little to anti-climatic to me. Why didn't the vrocks try to pull the illithid off the Balor? I'm sure at least a few of them could have gotten to the grapple. Also, now that I think of it, they vrocks would know from the blood wars that they can barely harm the balor if they just attack into the grapple (DR and all) and they should have torn the illithid to shreds.

I'm trying real hard not to get in the trap of throwing things at my players over their heads and then slipping on the kid gloves. The stones were a nice touch to make a good and believable way of slightly evening the odds.

That all being said, the mind flayer is a slick idea.

 

[WizarDru]

I'm glad that you had a good time. Following the rules is less important IMHO, than getting too caught up in things. Have fun.

It sounds like you got extremely lucky, the Balor wasn't thinking too clearly, and clearly rolling badly. None of the bad-guys played to their strengths, resulting in an easy victory. Frankly, I'm suprised that he lost so many grapple attempts, and that he didn't shred the folks he was grappling with, particularly the fire-vulnerable treants (while polymorph doesn't grant EX special qualities it does grant the vulnerability). I didn't see any use of his quickened Telekinesis, either, which could have had a major effect on things.
The Protection and Resist Energy spells shouldn't be able to stop his death throes, either. It isn't light-based, he explodes, and the light is just a visual effect. It doesn't bear either the light or fire descriptor...so it should have done a butt-load of damage to everyone.

So, in short, yeah, you got a bit of free ride: but it looks like you went in with a pretty good plan, and while a long-shot, victory was possible. Of course, most of you would have been dead, but hey, victory has it's cost, right?

 

[rrealm]

That's great to hear that you won and had a good time although I do tend to agree that your DM didn't do all his homework. Hopefully he doesn't harbor any grudges since your party walked all over his critters. I know there have been times in the past where I make a (IMO) bitching and well thought out plan and the PCs come along and bypass nearly everything because I wasn't thinking properly.

One time I made a really involved encounter where the party needed to get by a really high metal gate. They could see the mechanism on the other side (I put it within sight to taunt the party) and all these obvious and complex traps around the gate. I thought of everything (or so I thought). “If the party bashes the door down…. This happens. If they try to pick the lock…. This happens. Here are the DCs.” Game time happened and when the group got to this spot I put on my evil grin. They examine the situation and the sorcerer casts fly on the rogue. The rogue flys over the gate and undoes the latch which bypasses all the alerting traps thus allowing them to get the jump on the BBEG of the area. I put my grin away real quick. I have learned from my mistakes and thus now I take into account PCs casting fly and teleport and dimension door. Point being, if your DM didn’t want that encounter to be so easy, the next one won’t since he’ll learn from his mistakes.

 

[Leviticus]

I completely agree with everyone of you. It seemed like the moment we surprised his group, he gave up. He did not use any of vrocks, half fiends or balors abilities to their fullest. I guarentee that he learned a lesson and will hopefully not make the same mistake again.


But we did have fun owning his Balor...