Tom Cashel
First Post
Part 1 of CotSQ, with pictures, is now posted.
Running CotSQ (Spoilers)
- Thread starter mmu1
- Start date
Tom Cashel
First Post
We played the second session yesterday! Carnage, death, and the grinding of meat!
We began just as they were squeezing Zaggoplixxinnil the Roper for info...one character activated the true seeing power of his ring and strode over to look through the illusory wall...
Both bebiliths came scurrying out, and the (CE) roper immediately betrayed his "excellent new friends" by trying to eat them before the bebiliths could do so. It was not a pretty scene: Vaer (rgr/rog/clr) got sliced to ribbons almost immediately. Dalabrac (rog/shadowdancer) tried to fly up toward the ceiling, not realizing that the bebiliths could reach him...slice, slice, thud. The pseudodragon companion of the druid also bit the dust.
The party Illusionist used a quick mass suggestion to urge the bebiliths that "Your home is being destroyed! You should go there and insure its safety!" Since he has a permanent tongues, they understood and retreated. Zaggo the roper met his end.
But then the Bebiliths came surging out of their cavern again (since it was their home), and only the quick casting of a wall of good by the party cleric of Torm saved the rest of them from destruction.
They teleported to Waterdeep, got healed and restored, and met up with a few old associates (back-up PCs) who agreed to go with them to the Dagger Hills. When they reached the bebiliths, they threw up a wall of stone to block off the entire spider-kisser lair, and simply bypassed it. Wise move, I thought.
This time they used arcane eye to scout ahead, and the first drow watchpost was annihilated by a combo of silence on the hole (descending toward Szith Morcane) and an acid fog on the sentries. One of them expired, while the other got out with 3 hp remaining and fled down to warn the other drow of attack.
But the group pressed on, descending into the top of Szith Morcane. That's when things got even uglier. One of the backup PCs has a few levels of Iaijatsu Master (from OA), so he jumped down the shaft and took out the quth-maren in two rounds. But the spellguard downed a haste potion and started in with the lightning bolts...two bolts later one of the backup PCs (a Diviner) was utterly dead. The sentries fled, and the spellguard got a dagger in his throat as he tried to climb down into the chasm.
The dead drow plunged into the thick webbing and got stuck...bringing the gargantuan spider out at max speed to consume the hapless drow. As they looked upon the massive spider in awe, we finished for the day.
I think that this module is a meatgrinder for parties who insist on charging into every room they find. When my PCs took the time to scout, and came up with a good spell combo, they were able to eliminate foes without putting themselves in harm's way.
We began just as they were squeezing Zaggoplixxinnil the Roper for info...one character activated the true seeing power of his ring and strode over to look through the illusory wall...
Both bebiliths came scurrying out, and the (CE) roper immediately betrayed his "excellent new friends" by trying to eat them before the bebiliths could do so. It was not a pretty scene: Vaer (rgr/rog/clr) got sliced to ribbons almost immediately. Dalabrac (rog/shadowdancer) tried to fly up toward the ceiling, not realizing that the bebiliths could reach him...slice, slice, thud. The pseudodragon companion of the druid also bit the dust.
The party Illusionist used a quick mass suggestion to urge the bebiliths that "Your home is being destroyed! You should go there and insure its safety!" Since he has a permanent tongues, they understood and retreated. Zaggo the roper met his end.
But then the Bebiliths came surging out of their cavern again (since it was their home), and only the quick casting of a wall of good by the party cleric of Torm saved the rest of them from destruction.
They teleported to Waterdeep, got healed and restored, and met up with a few old associates (back-up PCs) who agreed to go with them to the Dagger Hills. When they reached the bebiliths, they threw up a wall of stone to block off the entire spider-kisser lair, and simply bypassed it. Wise move, I thought.
This time they used arcane eye to scout ahead, and the first drow watchpost was annihilated by a combo of silence on the hole (descending toward Szith Morcane) and an acid fog on the sentries. One of them expired, while the other got out with 3 hp remaining and fled down to warn the other drow of attack.
But the group pressed on, descending into the top of Szith Morcane. That's when things got even uglier. One of the backup PCs has a few levels of Iaijatsu Master (from OA), so he jumped down the shaft and took out the quth-maren in two rounds. But the spellguard downed a haste potion and started in with the lightning bolts...two bolts later one of the backup PCs (a Diviner) was utterly dead. The sentries fled, and the spellguard got a dagger in his throat as he tried to climb down into the chasm.
The dead drow plunged into the thick webbing and got stuck...bringing the gargantuan spider out at max speed to consume the hapless drow. As they looked upon the massive spider in awe, we finished for the day.
I think that this module is a meatgrinder for parties who insist on charging into every room they find. When my PCs took the time to scout, and came up with a good spell combo, they were able to eliminate foes without putting themselves in harm's way.
My party's encounter with the drow in the chasm worked out a little differently, in part due to changes I've made to sections of the Dordrien level.
Basically, instead of having the dirders sealed off in their little cave, I added a large section of interconnected caves between the crypts and the first Drow outpost, and let the driders loose in there - I didn't like the fact that the Drow city was a 5 minute walk from the surface. In one of the caverns, I included a fairly well-hidden passage that led to the chasm (emptying close to the cavern with the Fang of Lolth, but on the opposite side of the chasm) allowing a party not hell-bent on fighting everything an alternate way into the city.
Through a stroke of luck, they did find the opening, followed it, noticed the Fang's cave, used stone shape to make a bridge connecting the two openings, avoiding having to fly inside the chasm... And completely blew the encounter with the Fang - in part due to a bad Diplomacy roll, but also in large measure due to not-so-hot role-playing. The Fang proceded to badly maul one of the characters, got hurt in return, and ran way.
They went outside to the bridge they created, and took a look around - and were able to see only some of the peripheral strands of the giant spiderweb. They deliberated for a while, didn't feel like climbing down to see what lived in the center of the web... So, figuring this was the home of some guardian spiders that could just be fireballed into submission from a distance (divination would have probably been a good idea, but to be honest, I hadn't thought about it much either, or I'd have had an NPC they had with them drop a hint or two), and not realizing that this was the fraeakin' Drow city, the party Sorcerer fired several flaming quarrels from his crossbow down into the web, to see what they could flush out...
Predictably enough, this alerted the Drow in the guardpost, who yelled a warning down to the barracks, putting the place on alert, to which the party sorcerer responded with a Fireball. After that, they just sort of stood around for a few rounds, waiting to see if any drow would commit suicide by trying to climb the walls up to them, and were brought back to reality when the Sorcerer got hit by a Lightningbolt that came out of thin air, followed by a couple more - the guardpost Spellguard (I tinkered a lot with the spellbooks for the various Drow casters, in part to make sure some of them actually used half-decent spells suited for the environment, in part for variety.) used those several rounds of inactivity to use Fly and Improved Invisibility, pop the potion of Haste, and came up to investigate, mauling the party (who had NO See-Invisiblity type spells prepared)... So, seeing they wouldn't be able to accomplish much, they retreated to the surface, and decided to rest in one of the mausoleums.
In the night, low on HP and spells, they got jumped by the Drow raiding party (two Quth-Maren, Arcane Guard, Cleric, and 10 warriors), and were nearly TPKed - two characters were burned to a crisp, the rest ran away.
Basically, instead of having the dirders sealed off in their little cave, I added a large section of interconnected caves between the crypts and the first Drow outpost, and let the driders loose in there - I didn't like the fact that the Drow city was a 5 minute walk from the surface. In one of the caverns, I included a fairly well-hidden passage that led to the chasm (emptying close to the cavern with the Fang of Lolth, but on the opposite side of the chasm) allowing a party not hell-bent on fighting everything an alternate way into the city.
Through a stroke of luck, they did find the opening, followed it, noticed the Fang's cave, used stone shape to make a bridge connecting the two openings, avoiding having to fly inside the chasm... And completely blew the encounter with the Fang - in part due to a bad Diplomacy roll, but also in large measure due to not-so-hot role-playing. The Fang proceded to badly maul one of the characters, got hurt in return, and ran way.
They went outside to the bridge they created, and took a look around - and were able to see only some of the peripheral strands of the giant spiderweb. They deliberated for a while, didn't feel like climbing down to see what lived in the center of the web... So, figuring this was the home of some guardian spiders that could just be fireballed into submission from a distance (divination would have probably been a good idea, but to be honest, I hadn't thought about it much either, or I'd have had an NPC they had with them drop a hint or two), and not realizing that this was the fraeakin' Drow city, the party Sorcerer fired several flaming quarrels from his crossbow down into the web, to see what they could flush out...
Predictably enough, this alerted the Drow in the guardpost, who yelled a warning down to the barracks, putting the place on alert, to which the party sorcerer responded with a Fireball. After that, they just sort of stood around for a few rounds, waiting to see if any drow would commit suicide by trying to climb the walls up to them, and were brought back to reality when the Sorcerer got hit by a Lightningbolt that came out of thin air, followed by a couple more - the guardpost Spellguard (I tinkered a lot with the spellbooks for the various Drow casters, in part to make sure some of them actually used half-decent spells suited for the environment, in part for variety.) used those several rounds of inactivity to use Fly and Improved Invisibility, pop the potion of Haste, and came up to investigate, mauling the party (who had NO See-Invisiblity type spells prepared)... So, seeing they wouldn't be able to accomplish much, they retreated to the surface, and decided to rest in one of the mausoleums.
In the night, low on HP and spells, they got jumped by the Drow raiding party (two Quth-Maren, Arcane Guard, Cleric, and 10 warriors), and were nearly TPKed - two characters were burned to a crisp, the rest ran away.
Tom Cashel
First Post
mmu1 said:
That's a cool idea--direct the PCs to the role-playing instead of to the combat. I'm trying to run everything "by the book," just to see how well it's designed but of course adding my own plots and tangents and motivations). But mostly I'm running what I imagine a playtest would be like. I think that the surprising closeness of the outpost to the surface also results in the PCs not realizing that they've stumbled onto a Drow city. Either way, they fight when they probably shouldn't!
My party's Illusionist had the great idea of using Veil to give them all the appearance of drow. But then they didn't do it!
Improved Invisibility is a very powerful addition to a hasted, flying Spellguard. Did they waste him? In my game the Spellguard toasted the party Diviner pretty quickly, before getting killed.
Tom Cashel said:
That's a cool idea--direct the PCs to the role-playing instead of to the combat. I'm trying to run everything "by the book," just to see how well it's designed but of course adding my own plots and tangents and motivations). But mostly I'm running what I imagine a playtest would be like. I think that the surprising closeness of the outpost to the surface also results in the PCs not realizing that they've stumbled onto a Drow city. Either way, they fight when they probably shouldn't!
My party's Illusionist had the great idea of using Veil to give them all the appearance of drow. But then they didn't do it!
Improved Invisibility is a very powerful addition to a hasted, flying Spellguard. Did they waste him? In my game the Spellguard toasted the party Diviner pretty quickly, before getting killed.
Nah, he ran out of direct-damage spells and hung back - since they couldn't locate him, they couldn't do much to him. The sorcerer tried blasting the areas the spells were coming from with Fireball, but since I had him cast first, then move, he wasn't hitting anything...
Improved Invisibility is highly powerful, but at 10th/11th level (especially in the Realms) between See Invisibility, Invisibility Purge, Blindsight, Faerie Fire, Glitterdust, and Druids being able to wildshape into things with Scent and Blindsight, I have no hestiation about using it - not with three casters in the party (A sorcerer, druid and cleric). He was also the only character I was throwing at them, I could have had the Spellguards from other areas get involved, or have someone direct the giant spider into the action...
They were also 36 point buy characters, so for the most part, they were pretty tough - the sorcerer had around 60 hit points.
