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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 5309121" data-attributes="member: 726">Run #41 is in the books.   It was a good one!Brief synopsis: we had left off puzzling how to cause sunlight to reach a subterranean grating, where the direct line between the sun and the target was impeded by a tube of magically-suspended dirty water.   Clearwater solution might have worked if we had more of it, but we didn’t have enough.  Instead we found a long hollow log, patched it up with a Mending ritual, plugged up one end with waterproof moss and sap, and lowered it into the water tube like a straw.  Once the plugged end poked out into the air, we lowered Cobalt into the hole on a rope (between the “straw” and the side wall), where he would remove the plug, and allow sunlight to spill unimpeded through the log, from the noonday sun down into the bell-jar-shaped sub-basement.Our plan was interrupted by a Froghemoth, clinging to the side wall of the bell jar.  It grabbed Cobalt with its tongue, drew him into its mouth, and started to chew.   There followed a logistically-complex battle, with various party members diving down the watery shaft and clinging to the rope.  The NPC (Thimbletick, the old and crazy Grey Guardsman)  dove in, swung on Cobalt’s legs, and grappled the monster on purpose.  The fight became easier once Thimbletick peeled the froghemoth (which we were calling a “Squog,” as in squid-frog) from the wall.  The bottom of the bell jar was about 40’ down, and Logan (conveniently still up-top, with his player absent from the game) lowered the rope down so we could fight it en masse.   A few dailies were hurled, and we annihilated it.That was the first half of the night’s fun.The second half came when the spilling light caused the lower grating to magically unlock, leading us into a straight-shot gauntlet of traps set up by someone who clearly wanted to keep unwanted visitors from the Big Treasure At The End.    The first trap was a classic “narrow hall opens into a smallish but wider room, with something cool but dangerous.”   The cool-but-dangerous thing in this case was a lever sticking from a pedestal, and a closed chest right next to it.   Clearly, everyone else should wait in the hall in case something awful happens when the lever is pulled.  Right?   Except that on closer examination with Thievery, Dungeoneering and Perception checks, we figured out that pulling the lever was probably going to cause the corridor walls on either side of the little room to smash together.  Sure enough, that’s what happened, but we were all safe in the room with the chest.  Which opened.  To Reveal a key inside.  Which we took.The next trap had already been sprung – a dead mimic in an alcove.   Since we had pinged Level 9 after the Squog fight, Strontium used his new Level 9 Daily:  Animate Dead.  So now we had a dead chest-shaped mimic ambling on in front of us, which was great, because there were more traps!The mimic first set off a Glyph of Warding (yay!), and then revealed the deadly nature of the trap after that, by getting ripped apart by it.  To elaborate:  it was a large (40’ x 60’, I think) room, with 6” of mist covering the floor.  At the opposite end of the room is a vault door, slightly ajar.   The mimic moved into the room, at which point four smoky tentacles formed out of the mist and tore it into pieces.  Ok!  Let’s not do that!  Bramble, the Shaman, experimented by summoning her Spirit Companion out into the middle of the room, above the mist.  No good.  Spirit annihilated by mist-acles.  But Perception and Arcana checks, made concurrently with Thicket’s dissolution, revealed glowing circles on the floor (under the mist) at each corner of the room.  Strontium figured out that a) the tentacles would attack anything in the room that was taller than 6 inches high (i.e. stuck out of the mist), and b) that if creatures could somehow get to all four corners simultaneously, the trap would be disarmed.Our solution:  Far left corner:  Thicket, Spirit Companion, summoned directly to the desired location.   Far right corner:  Strontium’s Familiar, small enough to scoot below the mist level.  Near left corner:  Mule, conjured with Cobalt’s 10’ Pole of Mule Summoning.  Near right corner:  Cobalt, pole vaulting into place using the aforementioned pole.  Success!  Trap disabled.  Our reward?  A creepy voice from beyond the vault door, announcing “Death Abides.”  End session.Tactical notes on the Squog fight:  -    Piratecat used someone’s home-made Level 14 solo Froghemoth, and dialed it back into something more level appropriate.   It had attacks it could make every round as minor, move and standard actions, so it could pummel someone good every round.-    To wit:  on the very first round of combat, it reduced Cobalt from 59 to 20 health, and it could have been worse.-    Objectively this fight wasn’t particularly challenging.   The modified Squog was about a Level 9 Elite, against a party of 6 Level 8 characters.  In practice, things started out hairy because of its superior tactical position, clinging to wall while we lowered ourselves down on ropes.  Once it was grounded, and we could more-or-less surround it, we destroyed it.-    The Squog had a brutal auto-when-bloodied attack, but it missed almost everyone.  I see that in the stat block for the original monster, that attack was simply an Encounter Power.  That makes me wonder:  which is better to have?   The obvious advantage of the Encounter Power is that you can choose an optimal time and place to use it.  With the triggered-when-bloodied, it’s possible that most enemies aren’t in range, and the power is wasted.   On the other hand, the triggered version has the huge advantage of action economy.  -    Cobalt has becomes resigned to his role as party “bait.”  With no defender in the group, he has the highest AC and REF in the party, and has 3 different ways to trigger healing surges on himself.  (Inspiring Word from Warlord MC feat, Stanching Armor, and his second wind.)  Also, he’s naturally reckless, which helps.-    This combat marked the 817th time since the game began that the wizard Strontium couldn’t make good use of Acid Arrow because the splash damage would burn allies.  -    Between Stron’s Phantasmal Assailant,  Gilran’s Darkfire, and his own Adaptable Flanker, Cobalt had combat advantage almost the whole fight, despite never actually flanking with someone.  I (heart) my friends!-    This fight may have been the only one we’ve had thus far where we didn’t use a battle map.  The vertical, 3-D nature of the fight meant that Piratecat was drawing pencil sketches on a blank paper, erasing and redrawing PC’s as we moved around, and giving us approximate distances when relevant.   Although I’m a big fan of tactical grid maps generally, it worked very well.  I think the fact that there was only one enemy made it feasible.-    Here’s a link to the original Level 14 froghemoth:  <a href="http://sefotron.blogspot.com/2010/08/froghemoth-level-14-solo-brute.html" target="_blank">Musings of the Grumpy GM: Froghemoth - Level 14 Solo Brute</a>Notable differences in Piratecat’s version include:-     246 HP, instead of the 500+-    Defenses about 6 lower-    No “Swallow Whole” ability-    No stun attached to its “Stunning Croak” – it was just damage</blockquote>

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