Run #48 was this past Thursday. First, the quick plot summary:
We had just destroyed the beholderesque Wizard Ball and were now hurrying through Lord Tomberlin’s labyrinthine basement, looking simultaneously for both the exit, and for the Lord and his daughter. We discovered a well-concealed and not-obviously-openable secret door, but opted to finish “cleaning out” the area in order not to leave possible monsters at our back while we messed around with opening it. That turned out to be a mistake, though there was no way to realize it at the time. We stumbled into a large room full of alchemical supplies, at the far end of which were two large flesh golems. These golems wore death-masks of our hosts (Tomberlin and Tanis) and one spoke with Tomberlin’s voice. (We thought these might be the humans themselves, somehow possessing the golem bodies, but it turned out to be just a magic mouth.)
We fought and defeated the golems (more later on this battle), and then took the time to pick, bludgeon and dissolve the secret door and continue our escape. Soon after, we noticed that smoke was billowing from several of our packs; it seemed that all of our papers – including the incriminating evidence pilfered from Tomberlin’s study – was on fire! (Alas, we were only able to salvage two of the party’s four Ritual Books – ugh.) Worse, smoke and flames were starting to fill the corridors. It seemed that Tomberlin had triggered some failsafe to destroy his own house, along with all of the evidence of his gruesome hobby. We did grab one piece of incriminating artwork, slicing out the canvas from a family portrait showing the whole Riverlimb clan around a bloody dissection table.
A skill challenge ensued to escape the burning building. This consisted of various checks to actually escape (like kicking down doors, figuring out the likely direction to the exit, holding up collapsing ceilings so others could escape, etc.), alternating with Endurance checks. A failed Endurance check meant a lost healing surge. Fortunately we only failed one of the primary checks, because Piratecat confided afterward that when it came time to roll the Endurance checks, we would have to roll one for each failed primary check, and take the worst of those.
Anyway, we found our way through the conflagration (lamenting all of the left-behind loot that we had planned to go back and get after dealing with Tomberlin) and crashed through the front door to the front lawn. There we saw a gaggle of his servants, looking scared and confused. We quickly asked one where Tomberlin had gone, and the servant indicated he and Tanis had fled down the only road away, in a carriage. We grabbed horses from the nearby stable and gave chase.
It took us about half an hour to realize that there were no fresh carriage tracks on the road we were taking. The servant had lied to us, a possibility we had foolishly not considered. We charged back, and renewed our questioning, this time with more blatant threats of violence if we were lied to. One servant cracked, and told us Tomberlin had simply doubled back in the carriage to the carriage house by the river. There we discovered that the one boat usually tied up there was gone. They had fled into the fen, had an hour head start, and we had no way to follow them. Argh!
But… Strontium used a magic crystal ball to try to find Tomberlin. He received a vision as if he was Tomberlin, and could hear Strontium’s own voice. So he was hiding somewhere quite close! Meanwhile, Bramble was communing with the spirit of the river, and gained the insight that only Tanis had fled on the boat. Bramble impressed upon this spirit how evil Tanis was, and how she had been using Quith essence in her alchemy, but the Spirit had no power to take direct action. Then we decided to use Ghost Sound and bluff checks to pretend that we had caught Tanis, and called out that if Tomberlin didn’t show himself, we’d kill his daughter. This seemed like it would fail, but the river spirit, swayed by Bramble’s entreaties, imbued Stron’s illusionary sound with a cry that actually sounded like Tanis’s voice.
The manure pile in the carriage house shifted.
We extracted Tomberlin from the dung heap in which he had been hiding. A combination of threats, appeals to his ego, and showing him the rolled up family portrait, resulted in a boasting confession of his unwholesome experiments and rituals. It helped that one of the civilians on hand was a fighting man whom we had tussled with back in Floodford, and one with whom we had had a respectful rapport even as we fought. He knew we were good people, and so believed our account of Tomberlin’s misdeeds.
With him bearing witness, we executed Tomberlin right then and there for various capital crimes, most notably assault on the Grey Guard and interfering with their duties. But his genius daughter Tanis is still at large. Hello, recurring villain!
Some notes regarding the battle with the golems:
- We got to see more of Logan as a Pursuing Avenger. The specifics of his powers were nothing spectacular, but his oath-double-roll ability to hit almost every time was quite satisfying. Also, his ability to slow and immobilize targets proved a great boon.
- At the end of the previous combat, Piratecat gave us a choice: if we immediately pressed onward, he would let us consider the current encounter as still going on; or we could stop the encounter, rest, and get various powers back. We opted for the former, almost entirely because the whole party still had Resist Damage 4 up from Bramble’s Protective Roots power. It was a good choice; the golems hit often, but not for huge damage. As such, that spell probably saved us over 50 collective hp over the course of the battle.
- This was the first time Gilran used his 9th level Daily, Howling Hurricane. Boy howdy, did he use it to good effect! He was enabled by the fact that one of the golems opened the combat by flipping over a table full of highly-combustible reagents, creating a zone of damaging fire. Hah! Gilran’s power created a movable zone that let him slide creatures around. Combined with Logan’s movement-restrictors, he saw to it that the golems spent a great deal of time in the blaze. Now that’s comedy!
- Immobilizing/slowing the golems also kept them from using a rampaging ability they had, which allowed them to run around damaging every target in their (extended) path.
- The golems had an interesting attack: when they hit, the target had the choice of being stunned, or taking extra damage. I think that’s nifty monster design; the hero is hosed either way, but they get to pick their poison. It’s another strategic choice to make in the middle of combat, which is great.
- A predictive thought about the Avenger: in a battle against (say) four equally dangerous foes, he’ll be somewhat less effective. Even with his 1/encounter ability to change oath targets, one of two things will be true:
o If the party is smartly focus-firing, the Avenger will be unable to apply his Oath to the 3rd and 4th enemy, or
o The party won’t be focus-firing.
- Speaking of focus-fire: we were incredibly efficient about killing the golems, polishing off one before doing almost any damage to the 2nd. It made the fight go much better for us overall.
- Piratecat started out with some absurdly good rolls for his golems at the start of the combat. So much so, that I started keeping track: 17, 19, 18, 20, 17, 9, 17, 4, 11, 15, 2, 16, 7. That’s an average of over 13 per roll!
- We were unable to find anything in the rulebooks about invisibility giving a bonus to stealth checks. As far as we can tell, the way in which invisibility “interacts” with the stealth check mechanic, is that ordinarily you have to have total concealment (or full cover) to become hidden, and invisibility makes it easier. Is that correct? Are we missing something?
Next game: Most likely we’ll start the long journey back to Floodford, as we’ve finally completed our mission to find out what happened to Caducity. Meanwhile, political chaos rages all around us. Meta-game wise, we’re probably only three or four sessions away from hitting Paragon, and I’m very curious about how the story will reflect that jump. Something supremely rat-bastardy, I don’t doubt!