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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MortalPlague" data-source="post: 6071821" data-attributes="member: 62721">I really need to get around to typing these up sooner.  Our 7th session is already in the books, and I'm still putting six up.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Session Six - Part TwoWithout much further ado, our heroes set up camp in the dungeon.  They didn't trust Pohtep's offer to share camp; they figured (correctly) that he would enact some sort of treachery.  So they set watches (two on watch at a time) and rested in the South Cells.Most of the undead in the halls isn't inclined to rove.  But the behir was another matter entirely.  I gave it a pretty good chance to show up during any of the watches.  It landed on watch two, with Brelf and Estel awake and watching.  Brelf made an excellent check and spotted the beast slipping quietly up the South Well, just a short ways down a corridor from where they camped.  On an excellent stealth roll, he managed to hide beside the doorway so that he'd have a free attack on the beast when it slipped inside the room.  Estel hid similarly, and readied a ray of frost.The surprised behir was struck by the ray, but Brelf's attack missed (his dice were miserable this session).  The behir was high on the initiative, however, so when its turn came around, it beat a hasty retreat.  It's incredible speed put it down the well before anyone could catch it, even with Estel's ray of frost.Under the hood: This particular behir is an opportunist, hoping to pick off strays and eat them.  Its bravery extends to sneaking up on sentries, but when confronted by the whole awoken band, it decided to retreat.  The delightful part of the behir's stat block is its speed; the beast can move 50 ft, and climb 30 ft.  It makes it a perfect ambush predator.The PCs worried that the beast might try again, but their fears were unfounded; it had been bitten once, and it was not keen to be bitten again.  The remainder of their rest passed without event.Gathering their strength, the PCs set out to find Queen Teera.  They decided to check some of the rooms to make sure nothing would surprise them, and wound up slipping into room 12.There, they were attacked by the wraith who used to be a guard captain, and his skeletons, half armed with bows.  The ghouls joined the fight almost immediately.  The undead won the initiative, and they charged forward and blocked the entrance.  Most of the fight took place there; the wraith fell quickly, despite taking half damage, though he did strike for some decent damage himself.  The ghouls managed to paralyze both Brelf and Zarchus (NPC warrior), though each of them shook off the effects quickly.  The remaining skeletal archers were finished off, as were the ghouls, and the encounter was won.Under the hood: This encounter weighed in at 700 xp.  Average for 4 PCs at level 3 is 440 xp, while tough is 840 xp.  So this was leaning much closer to tough than to average.  However, I ran this fight rather poorly.  One of the best ways to make a fight boring and static is to bottleneck the PCs in the door, and that's what I did here.  In doing so, I made it so only the wraith and one other skeleton could attack the PCs in melee, which meant all the melee PCs focused the wraith down very quickly.  Handmaiden Meriele helped with some radiant damage as well.  The ghouls were reasonable threats, but their low AC made them easy to bring down.  The skeletal archers proved to be the biggest challenge, constantly hitting.  Brelf, once again, emerged from the fight with a score of arrows sticking from him.They claimed a silver chain of rank from the defeated wraith; he had once been the Captain of the Queen's guards.  Satisfied with their victory, they ignored the cavern and decided to confront the Queen.Regicide: Not Just For Kings!Since Brelf had seen the layout of the Queen's chamber the day before, the adventurers had a good idea of the layout.  They sent Vell around to the end of the chamber to peer down the collonade, and he was able to confirm that they had not moved.  So they made a plan.  Brelf, with Meriele and the NPC warrior Zarchus would attack through the side door, engaging the archers in close combat.  Meanwhile, Vell, Estel, the Semi-NPC rogue Myrielle and their NPC patron, The Ivory Lady would slip around to the collonade approach, and fire at the foes from behind the cover of the pillars.  It was a very good plan.Initiative was rolled.  Myrielle the Semi-NPC Rogue went first, followed by Estel, the wizard.  There was no way to get a surprise round against the undead, but since the collonade attackers were going to spring the attack, I gave them advantage on the first attack.  They all had to make their saves against Queen Teera's fearsome presence, and all made it; except for Estel!  I allowed the wizard to 'spend' her advantage in exchange for a second saving throw, which she made.  The PCs had been preparing for the attack, after all.Here's how it went down.  Myrielle took aim and shot Queen Teera.  She added her martial dice, and came up with 9 damage, after Queen Teera's damage reduction cut it in half.  Then Estel went; she cast Melf's Acid Arrow.  Being a metamagician, she used her energy substitution to make it a fire arrow.  The bolt struck Queen Teera.  She, being vulnerable to fire, took a solid 32 damage.  Queen Teera died.Undead are not creatures prone to any sort of morale, however, so her skeletons continued the fight.  There were eight of them with bows, and though Brelf, Zarchus and Meriele launched a devastating assault, cutting down three of four to start, the others began to wear down the warriors with their incredible accuracy.  Then the two wights joined the fight, emerging from the chamber behind the throne.  And from further down the hallway, the Queen's handmaiden, another mummy, and her five zombie guards began to lurch towards the ranged characters from behind.The melee contingent fought the wights while trying to pick off the skeletons.  Meriele left them to go for the new mummy; she had some alchemist's fire ready for Queen Teera, but robbed of that chance, she figured one mummy's as good as another.  The ranged characters began to retreat down the hall, firing ranged attacks while the mummy and zombies slowly tried to close.  Mummies and zombies are both slow, so it was easy to kite them, but they needed to be dealt with quickly; Brelf and Zarchus were being shot to death by the archers while dealing with the wights.I've attached a picture of our battle mat at about this point.  Characters are labelled.  The green is the outline of the tunnels that run under this area.<img src="http://jasonromein.ca/TeeraFight01.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />You can see that there was a further complication; sensing his opportunity, Pohtep and his band were moving in from the south to enter the fight.  Myrielle was backed into a wall by the mummy and her zombies; instead of disengaging, she decided to try her luck cutting down the mummy.  Alas, that didn't go so well; the damage did not fell the undead creature, who then struck her for all her hit points.  Myrielle was knocked down to 0, and then she failed her save against mummy rot.  Which meant that she could no longer regain hit points (among other things).The ranged characters dispatched the mummy, with the aid of Meriele's alchemist's fire.  But Pohtep marched up the short hallway and announced gleefully his intent to betray them.  He channelled trickery and cast mirror image, becoming a target much harder to strike.  Laughing, he launched his attack; his archer, Shirk parked in the short hallway and began to pepper foes with arrows.  Felicia Lunarlynx, the ferocious warrior charged Zarchus and Brelf straight on.  And Daria meekly slipped into the chamber behind the throne room, waiting for her chance to strike unnoticed and assassinate someone.  Pohtep was marching up and he used his magic to cause problems; he used Command to force Brelf to kneel, and that's what he spent his next turn doing.  Two skeletons remained, and he hadn't the ability to take them down.  Zarchus was busy fighting for his life against the ferocious Felicia Lunarlynx.The Ivory Lady finally made something of herself in this fight; she took aim at Pohtep with her crossbow and crit him!  On top of that, she successfully hit the true Pohtep, rather than one of the doubles, hitting him for nearly 20 damage.  Nearly bloodied, the priest of trickery used inflict serious wounds on Meriele.  He missed the Handmaiden, but she still took half damage, which was enough to drop her unconscious.Felicia was striking at both Brelf and Zarchus with whirlwind attack, though both were parrying most of the damage.  Their battle went back and forth until Vell took aim and critically shot Felicia for nearly 30 damage.  Badly wounded, the fighter had only a single hit point remaining.  Brelf went in for the kill and hit.  He rolled 14 damage.  She parried 11.  She caught his blade, but the force of his blow drove her parry down, till his axe rested in her skull.At the top of the round, a new creature entered the initiative list.  Those who succeeded on a listen check could hear something moving about down the well.  The bells had been rung earlier, when Vell had been taking cover behind them.  But it was clear to all that something was coming up the well.Estel was trying to strike Pohtep, managing to dispatch one of his doubles.  The Ivory Lady was handed a potion for Meriele; she ran forward to the stricken form, and then fed the cleric a potion.  Meriele returned to life with 5 hit points.  The last of Pohtep's doubles was destroyed, leaving him a ready target for Brelf.  The wounded warrior ran over and planted his axe in Pohtep's back, taking down the evil cleric with extreme prejudice.At this point, the behir struck.  Ringing the top of the well were Brelf (badly wounded), the corpse of Pohtep, Meriele (badly wounded), and The Ivory Lady.  I rolled a d4 to determine who the beast went for, and came up with Meriele.  The behir attempted to pull her down the well, but on a roll of five, it missed! Frustrated, it slunk away into the tunnels, not wanting to risk full-on conflict.Brelf dashed over to the hallway, where he cut down Shirk.  The last member of Pohtep's band, the lovely assassin Daria surrendered.  And with that, the fight came to a close.Here's how it all looked at the conclusion.<img src="http://www.jasonromein.ca/TeeraFight02.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Under the hood: This was one hell of an encounter.  I linked three whole encounters, and I added a random behir attack at the end.  It was a dynamic, shifting, exciting encounter.  Many characters nearly died.  Much loot was acquired.  And the XP from the fight gave the PCs level four.There were a few standouts.  First, Queen Teera went down like a punk, but the circumstances felt appropriate.  She'd had a chance to be badass earlier, so I didn't feel like my villain hadn't lived up to expectations.  Secondly, her demise had come specifically at the hands of a potent spell which had been modified to cater to her specific weaknesses through use of a class option.  It was a reward of smart play and preparation that they were able to take her down as quickly as they did.The rival adventuring group worked really well, and felt extremely dangerous.  I built them using PC rules, so it was really a PC vs PC fight.  Pohtep's mirror image was brilliantly effective; it made him a caster who could withstand some hits, while his lackeys tied up some of the warriors.  Felicia was a dangerous combatant; she nearly took down Zarchus, and had he fallen, she wouldn't have had to split attacks between him and Brelf.  Shirk was dishing out tons of damage as an archer.  Only Daria never really got to use her tricks, and that's fine; she was really an assassin, so full-out combat isn't her thing.I couldn't have written a better script for the behir attack.  When the die came up and indicated Meriele was the target, the whole table was riveted.  The attack roll came up '5', and we had a great description of Meriele lying flat as the beast swept over her.  It was electric.And when it came down to it, it was a fast combat!  This sort of fight would've taken a majority of the session in 4th Edition.  Not so here!Following the battle, the PCs bandaged up and claimed the priceless necklace from Queen Teera.  They searched Daria and relieved her of her weapons.  She made an attempt to use her charming presence to charm Brelf, but his godlike wisdom check bested her formidable charisma check.  Angered at her attempt to seduce him, the group sent her out into the dungeon to make her way back, weaponless and alone.I rolled a percentile chance for her to make it back out of the dungeon; she had the advantage of stealth, though without weapons, it was risky.  Still, the dice told me she lived, so there would be one who beat them back with news of Pohtep's demise.Weary and beaten down, the party decided against further exploration.  The Hall of Bells had kept its secrets so far, so why not another week?  Gathering the poor rogue Myrielle, stricken with mummy rot, they headed to the entry hall.  There, they would rest a little longer so they weren't so vulnerable when they came out.So that's it for session six.  Session seven, coming up soon!</blockquote>

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