Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 4953579" data-attributes="member: 99">Where does all the time go?  Well my daughter is home sick from school today so I may as well use this downtime productively, eh?...They delved down into the tunnel, which ran long and straight.  It opened into a larger area at one point and as they were exiting this area they suddenly found themselves beset by a pair of large, rubbery, flying creatures.  These enveloped different members of the party while others were forced to attack them even though some of the damage transferred through onto the enveloped character.  Worse yet they could teleport and carried Eshik up to the celing.  He did manage to escape but was hurt by the fall to the cave floor.  Zanne was able to teleport out of the grasp of her assailant long enough for them to destroy it and the other one quickly fell.  Catching their breath they pressed on.Finally they came to where the passage broke into a very large cavern.  Toward the center they could see several large pillars and humanoid creatures moving among them.  The whole place carried a horrid stench.  Presuming these were the "Stink Lizards" that had attacked the Gnomes, they moved in ready for battle.They soon got one.  The Stink Lizards were well organized and some hurled javelins with tremendous force while others closed with massive claws.  Their apparent leader was some sort of shamanistic spellcaster.  It harnessed the power of its own stink and was able to unleash bolts of poisonous stench upon the party.  The party tried to converge and focus their attacks upon this priest but more reinforcements kept joining the fight from the far corners of the cavern.  As they began to get better control of the battle, the PC's noticed a huge shape lurking around the periphery of the fight.  When one of the Stink Lizards screamed, they caught a glimpse of a gigantic spider.  Trying to flee certain death at the hands of the PC's, the priest ran into the grasp of this monstrocity.  Weak and drained from the fight, the PC's fled to the safety of the passage they had entered from, hoping it was too small to accomodate the spider.  Whatever the reason, it didn't follow.They rested and regained their strength before re-entering the cavern where they discovered that the spider had created a massive web around the central pillars.  The group moved forward to confront this monster, knowing that the Gnomes would never be able to vanquish such a beast.They burned away some of the outer webs and Astavian moved forward to challenge it and was suddenly siezed in its mandibles.  As the others approached to give battle they discovered how incredibly mobile the spider was in its web.  It was able to manipulate the strands of the web in such a way as to keep some of the group at bay while it attempted to suck the life from the Paladin.  But Zanne and Mialain had powerful ranged attacks and Eshik's skill as a Ranger made him nearly as mobile as the spider.  With but one foe to focus their attacks on, they made short work of the creature.Exploring the rest of the cavern they discovered what appeared to be a "holy pool" with water flowing out of it via a stream and into a larger pool that held an enormous crayfish.  The creature did not leave the water to attack them and the party determined that it posed no threat to the Gnomes so long as they didn't disturb it.  They found another exit from the cavern that ascended and Eshik used his chisel to leave careful markings to steer the Gnomes away from the crayfish pool.The ascending passage had been cut by water and was more winding than the mined hallway they had used to descend.  But it still took less than two days travel to arrive at a place where they could feel a faint breeze coming from up ahead.  There was a pile of refuse in a cavern at the bottom of a 40' deep pit.  They moved ahead to peer up the pit when a swarm of beetles gushed out of the rotting pile to attack them.These were rather swiftly dealt with by a combination of Zanne's fiery powers and the breath of the Dragonborn.  But the combat had been loud enough to draw the attention of something from above.  Suddenly a giant humanoid appeared at the edge of the pit and hurled a boulder down at them.  Zanne attempted to use her Diabolic Grasp, pulling the creature over the precipice to fall 40 feet onto the pile of refuse.  But the attack missed and the creature retreated to get another boulder.  When it returned however it was Mialain's turn and she called on her link with nature to loosen the stones at the edge of the pit.  The earth crumbled beneath the weight of the giant and it plunged 40 feet to land on the refuse pile below.  Thus wounded and prone, it took only a few moments for the combined might of the party to slay it.Eshik managed to climb up the pit into its lair and set a rope for the others to ascend.  The cave was fairly shallow and the soon found themselves standing under open sky for the first time in a few days.  Mialain thanked Melora for their safe arrival at the other side of the passage under the Mist.  But they found their happiness somewhat dampened when Eshik discovered an even larger set of footprints leading away from the mouth of the cave up into the hills...*********The creatures they encountered on their descent were Darkmantles that I'd slightly house-ruled to allow part of the damage to transfer to anybody they were enveloping.  These posed a threat as much from the damage party might inflict upon themselves as from their own powers.  But Mialain did a great job of healing as usual and Zanne's teleportation powers once again came in handy.The "Stink Lizards" were of course Troglodytes.  Most of them were Impalers or Thrashers but they were led by an Elite that I pulled off of the Compendium named Kasszt.  His At Will twin Poison Ray combined with the Cavern Curse (recharges on a 3 or higher!) meant that the party was Weakened and Slowed, plus taking ongoing Poison and/or Necrotic damage for a large portion of the combat.  The addition of this leader made this a very challenging fight and the players well and truly hated that guy by the time it was over.  They were only sorry that the spider got to kill him instead of them.Speaking of which, after all the damage they had taken in the fight, they were terrified of that spider.  They fled and debated attacking it but I recall that Zanne had ZERO Healing Surges left.  So they opted to rest and recover.  They spent some of their major Dailies before the assault on the spider (which was a re-skinned Neldrazu) including Astavian's Wrath of the Gods and Mialain's...whatever the one is called that boosts the party's AC.  Even though the spider could shift through the web (which was difficult terrain) to keep the PC's at bay, Eshik managed to stay one step behind it and Zanne and Mialain could attack it from range (Zanne used her powers to burn away any webs that got in the way providing concealment).  In the end it was a pretty easy fight.I was thinking that the Rot Scarab Swarm might momentarily make them think it was the Lamia returned to take revenge but it didn't seem to cross their minds.  It was mostly a speed bump encounter to set up the attack by the Cave Troll that they dealt with creatively and quickly.  I was pulling for Zanne's Diabolic Grasp to work since that character is developing a bad habit of failing rolls on her coolest powers.  But Mialain's stunt to "Loosen Earth and Stone" was worth the wait.  The creature was a Cave Troll and had some regeneration but it took some nasty damage from the fall and the PC's pounced upon it and made short work of it.</blockquote>

Verification