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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 1926582" data-attributes="member: 63">Your fight sounds exhausting, but yes, fun.  It will make a great story in the future, and that's what makes this game great.  *grin* As for my story, I found it on another thread.For me, the singlely coolest fight pitted four PCs and one NPC ghost against about 100 enemy soldiers.  Through clever tactics and sheer persistence, the PCs managed to succeed.The heroes had sneaked into the villain's cliffside stronghold, avoiding the heavily-guarded front entrance by stoneshaping airvents from the surface that led to deeper in the complex.  Their goal was to rescue several dozen prisoners, including an adolescent Dragon and the dead body of one of their companions, but the prisoners were being kept in a three-story, warehouse-like room near the normal front entrance.  They figured that they could sneak in the back way easily, since the attention of the guards would be focused outward instead of inward.The layout of the warehouse was complex.  The whole room was about 100 ft. x 80 ft., and 60 ft. high, with one exit on the ground floor leading outdoors into a canyon, and the other exit on the third floor balcony, leading deeper into the complex.  Dozens of cages were on the first floor, holding prisoners, with several side rooms that had guard quarters, armories, and a small stable.  Everything a small villainous army could want.  A catwalk-balcony ran around the inside wall, 20 ft. up, and then another at 40 ft. up.  Stairways led between the ground floor and each catwalk, and in the center of the room and in two corners were three freight elevators, lifted by pulleys and chains.  A half dozen huge pillars, and numerous small pillars, supported the weight of the ceiling.The PCs enter from the third floor, inadvertently tripping an alarm, so everyone in the complex knows they're there.  The party consisted of:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rhuarc, half-Elf Rogue 4/Ranger 1/Assassin 4/Shadowdancer 1.  He slinked from shadow to shadow, killing guards that never even saw him.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Malek, human Rogue 10.  A master archer, Malek sniped from behind pillars and used his mobility to evade anyone who got too close.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Iolus "Inky" Flintflindercandle, gnome Cleric 9.  Unfortunately he'd used most of his spell slots stoneshaping their way in, and he was paralyzed early in the fight.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Stanely Deadtree, human Fighter 6/Paladin 4.  Stanely bravely fought his way from the third to the first floor, aided by superemly accurate covering fire from Malek.  When he reached the ground floor, he freed the prisoners and recruited the young Dragon to their side.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Alejandra Pratt, human ghost Paladin 3/Ranger 2.  Alejandra could not do much, since she was more of a free-floating spirit than an actual 'ghost' by D&D monster manual standards.  She did play a crucial role in spotting an improved invisible rogue enemy who was spiderclimbing through the battlefield with hit-and-run tactics.</li> </ul>The battle started as several dozen guards on active duty began to rush for the intruders on the third floor.  Stanely ran straight for the stairs down, fighting fearlessly through numerous guards, while Malek provided covering fire to protect Stanely from enemy spellcasters, while Rhuarc hid in the shadows, protecting Malek from those guards already on the third-floor balcony.Taradas, the enemy rogue 12 with improved invisibility, took out Inky with paralysis poison, leaving the party with no spellcasters for assistance.  Rhuarc had to break off from defending Malek to chase Taradas, aided by the ghost Alejandra, who could see the invisible enemy.  Enemy spellcasters started aiming their magic at Malek, forcing him to hide and move, and Stanely began to have trouble as even more soldiers began to surround him.Rhuarc lost track of Taradas, but managed to reach the first floor (hiding in plain sight), where he used his assassin deathstrike ability to take out the enemy wizards.  Malek turned the tables on the bad guys, using some of their own defenses against them, such as when he tipped a vat of molten lead over and killed a half-dozen guards by the ground-floor exit.  Stanely found his route to the ground cut off when one of the wizards stoneshaped away the stairs, so the brave holy warrior simply leapt down onto one of the cages below, then down onto the ground floor.By this point, the more skilled guards were emerging from deeper in the complex, but Rhuarc was practically invisible, and Malek was skilled enough at hit-and-run that most attacks against him ended up hitting pillars or other bad guys.  Stanely was beginning to get weak from dozens of minor wounds, but most of the guards from the ground floor had chased him onto the second floor balcony, and their own way down had been removed by their own wizard (the stoneshaping), so they had to jump after Stanely.  By the time they were ready to take on the holy warrior, Stanely had released the young dragon from her cage, and the wyrm tore through the panicking guards.  In the confusion, Rhuarc started ushering prisoners out through the front entrance, hoping they'd all be able to escape soon.From his numerous flights and dodges, Malek found himself out on a spur of the catwalk on the third floor, near where the freight elevator would stop.  He was about to climb down the freight chain when Taradas reappeared, his invisibility having worn off (it was a long fight).  Taradas stabbed and nearly killed Malek with a sneak attack, but Malek grabbed Taradas, and the two of them tumbled from the catwalk down to the roof of the freight elevator, twenty feet down, where it hung in mid-air.  On the ground floor, Stanely readied a magic item that would allow him to dimension door, so he can teleport up to the elevator and help Malek, but he didn't get the chance.And here comes to complicated and cool part.Taradas grabs one of the the chains to the elevator and cuts it, so that when the elevator falls, he'll be carried upward to the third-floor balcony, and Malek will fall and be crushed with the elevator.  The elevator begins to fall, but the dragon swoops in and snatches Malek, rescuing him.Meanwhile, Taradas rides the elevator chain upward toward the third-floor balcony.  But before he can get off and be safe, Stanely uses his dimension door ability to teleport in mid-air, above Taradas.  Stanely grabs onto the chain too, then cuts the chain below where he holds it.  Thus, Stanely is carried up to safety, while Taradas flounders in mid-air just long enough for the heroes to savor his demise before the sneak-attacking bastard splatters to the ground 40-ft. below.With most of the high-ranking soldiers and mages dead, the weaker ones flee, and the heroes, along with their new dragon companion, are able to waltz out the front door, injured and nearly unconscious, but victorious.</blockquote>

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