NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 4670388" data-attributes="member: 99">Aaaaand here we are after session 3.  As usual I'm fairly amped up by GMing and unable to go to sleep which means that I may as well post about it while the memories are still fresh.So I decided that I'd frame this whole session as part of one big skill challenge that would encompass the exploration of the Prison Mines of Pelor.  (By the way, if you think that being sentenced to work in mines underground in the service of the god of sunshine seems overly harsh then perhaps you'd do well to remember that the clergy of Pelor think that only those of pure heart are deserving of basking in the glory of His radiance.)So right out of the gate, Astavian makes a Dungeoneering check to try to see if they can find a likey way that will lead them out of the mines (remember that they need to be going UP out of the mists, hopefully to the top of this plateau where it isn't poisonous).  He rolls pretty crappy (see if you spot a trend there) and instead finds a dead end that vaguely resembles a natural cavern.  There is a fluttering of wings above and some Stirges attack.Now my players have hated Stirges for years.  It's really not all that hard to hate a creature that combines all the worst features of a vampire bat and a mosquito.  In a past campaign, the party Wizard Lightning Bolted the entire party in order to kill the Stirges that were attacking them.  So they get right down to business slaughtering the four that are attacking them.  And they were doing a pretty good job.That's when the pair of Adult Kruthiks burst out of some stone rubble around the edges of the room.  Those things were nasty.  They dished out some major damage with those quills they fire and their claws are nothing to sneeze at either.  The Paladin went down and then so did the Warlock but the Cleric got them back up into the fight, whereupon the Paladin went down again.  It didn't help that Astavian (the Paladin) continued to offer up some of the worst rolls ever seen AND the PC's managed to spread the damage perfectly evenly between the two monsters rather than focus attacks on one of them.  Mialain the Cleric was all over the place healing folks.  And the Ranger was having to play Defender for a good chunk of this fight while the Paladin was unconscious.  Anyway, they finally prevailed and took a much needed Extended Rest.They resumed their exploration with Zanne the Warlock's player asking me if I'd let him roll a Religion Check in the Skill Challenge due to the place being part of a Temple of Pelor.  Shockingly I said Yes and for good reason.  She uncovered some very old runes in a wall written in Draconic.  These claimed that Ryukaar would take vengeance on those who had wronged the Dragonborn or something like that.  They also founds some bones that appeared to be from a Dragonborn's hand.Pressing on looking for an exit they found themselves suddenly ambushed in a long, narrow corridor by these short, ill tempered, shadow lurking Mist Demons.  Stat-wise these were...wait for it...[sblock]Gnomes!I'm a monster!  Rawr![/sblock]I took some minor liberties with their abilities to make things interesting.  I got rid of their ability to turn invisible and replaced that with a kind of reactive fey-step encounter power that allowed them to Teleport 5 when hit.  For their leader I gave him a really nifty power to replace the Arcanist's Dazzling Bolt.  I called it Displacing Bolt and on hit it did a d6+4 Necrotic damage plus it did a secondary attack +4 vs. Will.  If the Will attack hit then the target was Teleported 5 to wherever the caster wanted.  If the Will attack missed then the target was still teleported but the target got to decide where.  This made this combat pretty interesting from my perspective.Most of the Mist Demons charged forward, right past the Paladin and got some shots in on the Warlock.  When they got hit in turn by the PC's (for a considerable amount of damage I might add) they simply vanished.  They had telepoted out of sight around a corner behind the party.  The "Shadowcaster" and another lurker drew the PC's further up the long hallway before the initial group attacked from behind.  They encountered Lord Harrix who got in some pretty good shots for a relative non-combatant, downing two of the foes before the rest of the PC's could come to his rescue.  During the course of the battle the Warlock went unconscious as did the Paladin (but not before the Paladin rolled a bunch of really bad rolls).  Once again the Cleric was instrumental in keeping them alive (it helps tremendously to have somebody that can do a successful Heal Check almost every time before you have to make those Death Saves).They got themselves patched back together and located some wheel ruts for mine carts in the corridor ahead.  They followed these uphill to a big vertical shaft with a spiral stair running around the inside and in the center was a sort of elevator with a big pulley.  Astavian the Paladin pulled on the rope and brought down the elevator.  They heard voices approaching from they way they'd come just before they began to haul themselves up in the elevator.No sooner had they gotten away from the baddies below than they ran into some more above.  Another "Shadowcaster" as well as a tougher warrior type Mist Demon were waiting for them at the top.  The Shadowcaster nearly frightened the Warlock to death by using a power that shifted her out of the elevator basket and over the side.  She caught herself and Mialain and Lord Herrix hauled her back in.  But on the following round a Displacement Bolt yanked the Warlock out of the basket and onto the catwalk above a LONG drop.  Just one round later the Shadowcaster rolled a recharge on the bolt and shot the Cleric with it this time.  The Shadowcaster failed to hit the Will attack and thus Mialain got to pick where she wanted to end up...and she picked almost exactly where the Shadowcaster wanted her:  Up on the catwalk with him and his sidekick.A pitched battle ensued on the catwalk while Eshik the Ranger and Astavian got Lord Herrix up the elevator.  Then Astavian ran to engage the Shadowcaster side of the fight while Eshik stayed behind to babysit Herrix and keep an eye out for the trio of pursuing lurker type Mist Demons who had been hurrying up the stairs.  This was  pretty classic case of "divide and conquer" with the PC's first finishing off the Shadowcaster, then the warrior type (whose attacks were shifting the Warlock dangerously close to the edge of the catwalk) and finally they made short work of the trio of Mist Demons who had chased them up the stairs.A chamber they entered from a door off the catwalk took them into some kind of temple where there was a statue of a dragon made from the bones of some Dragonborn.  It seemed to indicate that these Mist Demons worshipped some kind of dragon-thing that had to do with darkness.  Around the neck of the statue hung a stylized dragon pendant that appeared to be very old and had traces of Pre-Cataclysm Wizardry upon it (which supposedly works somewhat differently than modern Wizardry).  They also found a walled off exit with a small but very sturdy looking door with an iron bar across it.  That appeared to be their only way out but they opted to take another Extended Rest before pressing on and we wrapped the session there.***I had a few goals for this session:Work in another Skill ChallengeMake terrain a bigger factor in the battlesUse more varied types of combatantsI also decided I wanted to step up the difficulty and see how they managed since the last four fights were all ones that the Encounter Builder said were "Easy" (and they sure as hell didn't seem all that easy when I ran them).This Skill Challenge was rather different in feel from my earlier effort.  Because it was so spread out it felt like just a few individual skill checks.  But on the other hand I LOVED the way this abstracted navigating the mines without me having to explain in detail which way they turned at every intersection.  On the whole I think this was a success.Terrain was a minor factor in the first fight and it was a major, major factor in the final fight.  In the first battle there were some stone pillars that blocked lines of sight and had to be worked around.  I'd also considered letting the Kruthiks burrow through one of them to collapse some rocks on a few of the PC's but I kind of forgot about that in the even and regardless they were doing just fine.  The spiral staircase, elevator and the LONG drop in the final encounter added some tension that I really liked.  The PC's had a fairly easy time of it compared to the first two since the bad guys were split up but the ever-present fear of falling was especially felt whenver the warrior Mist Demon would shift the Warlock over near the edge of the drop.I liked the variety of the bad guys in each encounter.  The Stirges and Kruthiks complimented each other but mostly dealt a lot of damage.  The fight with the Mist Demons in the hallway was totally defined by the teleportation of the Mist Demons.  That came off very cool to me because they would vanish and return after a few rounds.  I LOVED how the Displacement Bolt worked in play.  And that was especially cool in the final encounter the way the elevator and staircase interacted with the teleportation powers of the bad guys.All told another fun session.  The PC's made Level 2 and next time we find out what's behind door number 3.</blockquote>

Verification