Ellie_the_Elf
First Post
We've been talking a bit in this thread about this adventure (in Dungeon 123) and I thought I'd share my experiences of running it.
PCs were all 30th level at the start of the adventure- a human wizard/cleric/mystic theurge/archmage of Mystra, an elven bladesinger, a drow spellthief and a fey'ri rogue/swashbuckler. Most of these characters had been played since low levels, the spellthief since 20th. They had killed Great Wyrm dragons, demon princes and a number of balors. They'd saved Faerun from eternal darkness. They'd spent time in Myth Drannor and lived to tell the tale. Perhaps most significantly for this adventure, three of them had recently finished a quest spanning many planes to restore Lathander's chosen (why she needed restoring is way too complicated to fully explain) and had been granted immortality (in the sense of immunity to aging).
Although this obviously reduced one of the adventure's threats, at least for the human, I decided it didn't make things much different than if I'd had an all-elf party so just ran with it.
I didn't use Ojhalia, as we already had an NPC wizard who was known to deal in time travel and other such things, so she called the PCs to visit. They quickly accepted the mission and got prepared, expecting great numbers of undead since she had mentioned how old the hourglass was, and the vampire.
Hueresefful inflicted a lot of damage, although the wizard managed to make his save against spell worm. His crawling heads proved more of a nuisance than anything else, as they had a lot of trouble hitting even the most lightly armoured PC. I'd probably advance them a bit if I run this again. A lot of save or dies were thrown around, but no PC deaths. Huersefful's low HP proved to be his downfall, and after failing a save vs dimensional lock, he became easy pickings once the crawling heads were dispatched and he became surrounded.
Getting into the hourglass itself took my PCs a while, as they experiemented to find out how to enter, and leave again, and tried to determine if there was more than one entry point. While this went on, the wizard became impatient and wandered off into the first tetrahedron alone. He proceeded to spectacularly fail his spot checks vs the hiding glooms, and died in the surprise round. At this point, he reminded me of the Elminster's Evasion he'd cast before leaving home, and was shocked to discover his body didn't move
The rest of the party caught up, killed one gloom and raised the wizard as the other 2 glooms fled. We ran the rest of the monastery as a running battle between glooms, barbed devils and PCs, with the PCs finally emerging victorious, but low on effective spells, with the rogue dead and the others injured badly enough for them to decide to rest before continuing.
They were glad they'd rested once they went through to the Nexus tetrahedron, as Voursoul proved a formidable opponent. Up to this point, we'd never used Mordenkainen's Disjunction in the campaign, so I had her open the battle by casting it- taking down all the party's just-cast buff spells and destroying the spellthief's Hewards Handy Haversack (but, sadly, no other items). Panic set in, as Voursoul continued to be incredibly effective while the party were having great difficulty so much as scratching her, watching her successfully save against almost everything they cast, and taking a great deal of damage from her breath weapon (the wizard and bladesinger cast energy immunity (acid) on themselves after she first breathed, but these were taken down with her second disjunction). The spellthief was killed and the rogue fled after realising the gravity of the chamber prevented him from making any meaningful actions, and nobody had any fly spells left to cast to help him. The shifting gravity and it's effects really made this encounter challenging, for my group at least. The remaining two party members were getting low on spells and contemplating running after the rogue, when the inevitable happened- Voursoul rolled a 1 vs disintegrate
With some difficulty, the spellthief's body was removed from the sphere of ruined bodies, and they retreated to lick their wounds, calling me every name under the sun and declaring Dungeon magazine to be the work of the devil as they went. The fight took us about 4 hours real time to complete, the longest we've ever had outside of a mass combat situation.
(We broke for the night there and the next week saw frantic debates about tactics and the like on our campaign messageboard, with everyone blaming everyone else for their general unpreparedness )
Day 3, and the fey'ri was really beginning to feel the effects of being aged and everyone else was starting to get seriously worried that they'd never get out of this place. Their tactics, however, had improved considerably, and they killed the Uvuudaum and forced Irivere's surrender without too much difficulty, with the bladesinger preventing the party from injuring the elven queen while he restored her (they had found a letter in the first tetrahedron which mentioned her past etc. and they realised who she was as soon as they entered the room, although the rest of the group were going to kill her anyway <rolls eyes> This gave us a nice opportunity for a bit of roleplay, so Baucojin spent some time preparing himself instead of immediately attacking. He was killed before he had chance to break his staff or flee, but there were a few rounds of panic beforehand as the party were split by forcecages and struck by his direct damge spells. The party didn't attack the phane until they'd defeaed Baucojin which probably made the fight easier. They spent some time studying the tablet, and attempting to remove it, but weren't sure what it meant.
So on to the Temple Tetrahedron....the wizard had forgotten the lessons of the monastery tetrahedron and entered the hall first- and was killed yet again, this time by a quivering palm attack. One monk was then killed in a single round by the rogue, who managed to flank, and the others fled to fight with Beshejaer. The resulting battle was over quickly- I'm not really sure why, perhaps I don't play enemy clerics effectively enough? But she had trouble injuring the party, while they barely broke a sweat, even with all the support she had. They took the bindings, mostly due to the strength of the magic they were radiating, but didn't try to use them.
I was looking forward to the Blackstone Gigant, since I don't have the fiend folio and hadn't used one before, and it didn't let me down, petrifying both the bladesinger and the rogue when they went to investgate the tablet it was holding. The other party members got the bladesinger out of the room, and after some deliberation and a stone-to-flesh spell, chose to rest.
I think it helped them a great deal that we stopped playing at that point, because it gave them a chance to research appropriate things to shapechange into (their chosen tactics, since the bladesinger had rolled an 18 on his fort save to avoid being petrified, and still failed) When we returned the next week, the bladesinger shapechanged into an infernal (they'd fought one recently, and found it was immune to petrification) and led the combat. The gigant was low on HP anyway, from the first battle, in which the rogue had got a full attack off before being turned to stone, and fell relatively quickly second time round. The party spent enough time searching the remainder of the temple to find all of the treasure and the scroll, and were suprisingly unphased when they realised they would have to fight a god. Casting every buff spell at their disposal (which left the lowest PC armour class at 60
) they followed the steps detailed and called Erivatius forth, barely pausing as they effortlessly killed the seven maruts.
Any attempt by Erivatius to bargain was swiftly rebuffed, and battle commenced. I had some fun with his remaining divine powers, but the PCs pulled out all the stops- and five rounds later, the bladesinger confirmed a critical hit with his vorpal sword- and the material plane was saved. They spent a while talking to Morwel, and received her gifts, then prepared to travel home, with Irivere, who they plan to take to Evermeet where she will hopefully be able to regain a place in the elven nobility, in tow.
So in summary- The Voursoul encounter was particularly challenging, probably even more so then Erivatius himself because the environment hindered the PCs so much. We had 4 PC deaths and two petrifications in total, and a number of wishes were used by the party. The two primary casters ran through almost all their spells more than once, which had been almost unheard of for a long time before QH. The lack of teleportation magic really hurt the PCs and voided a lot of their favourite combat tactics. And we had a great time with it throughout
Ellie.
PCs were all 30th level at the start of the adventure- a human wizard/cleric/mystic theurge/archmage of Mystra, an elven bladesinger, a drow spellthief and a fey'ri rogue/swashbuckler. Most of these characters had been played since low levels, the spellthief since 20th. They had killed Great Wyrm dragons, demon princes and a number of balors. They'd saved Faerun from eternal darkness. They'd spent time in Myth Drannor and lived to tell the tale. Perhaps most significantly for this adventure, three of them had recently finished a quest spanning many planes to restore Lathander's chosen (why she needed restoring is way too complicated to fully explain) and had been granted immortality (in the sense of immunity to aging).
Although this obviously reduced one of the adventure's threats, at least for the human, I decided it didn't make things much different than if I'd had an all-elf party so just ran with it.
I didn't use Ojhalia, as we already had an NPC wizard who was known to deal in time travel and other such things, so she called the PCs to visit. They quickly accepted the mission and got prepared, expecting great numbers of undead since she had mentioned how old the hourglass was, and the vampire.
Hueresefful inflicted a lot of damage, although the wizard managed to make his save against spell worm. His crawling heads proved more of a nuisance than anything else, as they had a lot of trouble hitting even the most lightly armoured PC. I'd probably advance them a bit if I run this again. A lot of save or dies were thrown around, but no PC deaths. Huersefful's low HP proved to be his downfall, and after failing a save vs dimensional lock, he became easy pickings once the crawling heads were dispatched and he became surrounded.
Getting into the hourglass itself took my PCs a while, as they experiemented to find out how to enter, and leave again, and tried to determine if there was more than one entry point. While this went on, the wizard became impatient and wandered off into the first tetrahedron alone. He proceeded to spectacularly fail his spot checks vs the hiding glooms, and died in the surprise round. At this point, he reminded me of the Elminster's Evasion he'd cast before leaving home, and was shocked to discover his body didn't move
The rest of the party caught up, killed one gloom and raised the wizard as the other 2 glooms fled. We ran the rest of the monastery as a running battle between glooms, barbed devils and PCs, with the PCs finally emerging victorious, but low on effective spells, with the rogue dead and the others injured badly enough for them to decide to rest before continuing.They were glad they'd rested once they went through to the Nexus tetrahedron, as Voursoul proved a formidable opponent. Up to this point, we'd never used Mordenkainen's Disjunction in the campaign, so I had her open the battle by casting it- taking down all the party's just-cast buff spells and destroying the spellthief's Hewards Handy Haversack (but, sadly, no other items). Panic set in, as Voursoul continued to be incredibly effective while the party were having great difficulty so much as scratching her, watching her successfully save against almost everything they cast, and taking a great deal of damage from her breath weapon (the wizard and bladesinger cast energy immunity (acid) on themselves after she first breathed, but these were taken down with her second disjunction). The spellthief was killed and the rogue fled after realising the gravity of the chamber prevented him from making any meaningful actions, and nobody had any fly spells left to cast to help him. The shifting gravity and it's effects really made this encounter challenging, for my group at least. The remaining two party members were getting low on spells and contemplating running after the rogue, when the inevitable happened- Voursoul rolled a 1 vs disintegrate
With some difficulty, the spellthief's body was removed from the sphere of ruined bodies, and they retreated to lick their wounds, calling me every name under the sun and declaring Dungeon magazine to be the work of the devil as they went. The fight took us about 4 hours real time to complete, the longest we've ever had outside of a mass combat situation.(We broke for the night there and the next week saw frantic debates about tactics and the like on our campaign messageboard, with everyone blaming everyone else for their general unpreparedness
)Day 3, and the fey'ri was really beginning to feel the effects of being aged and everyone else was starting to get seriously worried that they'd never get out of this place. Their tactics, however, had improved considerably, and they killed the Uvuudaum and forced Irivere's surrender without too much difficulty, with the bladesinger preventing the party from injuring the elven queen while he restored her (they had found a letter in the first tetrahedron which mentioned her past etc. and they realised who she was as soon as they entered the room, although the rest of the group were going to kill her anyway <rolls eyes> This gave us a nice opportunity for a bit of roleplay, so Baucojin spent some time preparing himself instead of immediately attacking. He was killed before he had chance to break his staff or flee, but there were a few rounds of panic beforehand as the party were split by forcecages and struck by his direct damge spells. The party didn't attack the phane until they'd defeaed Baucojin which probably made the fight easier. They spent some time studying the tablet, and attempting to remove it, but weren't sure what it meant.
So on to the Temple Tetrahedron....the wizard had forgotten the lessons of the monastery tetrahedron and entered the hall first- and was killed yet again, this time by a quivering palm attack. One monk was then killed in a single round by the rogue, who managed to flank, and the others fled to fight with Beshejaer. The resulting battle was over quickly- I'm not really sure why, perhaps I don't play enemy clerics effectively enough? But she had trouble injuring the party, while they barely broke a sweat, even with all the support she had. They took the bindings, mostly due to the strength of the magic they were radiating, but didn't try to use them.
I was looking forward to the Blackstone Gigant, since I don't have the fiend folio and hadn't used one before, and it didn't let me down, petrifying both the bladesinger and the rogue when they went to investgate the tablet it was holding. The other party members got the bladesinger out of the room, and after some deliberation and a stone-to-flesh spell, chose to rest.
I think it helped them a great deal that we stopped playing at that point, because it gave them a chance to research appropriate things to shapechange into (their chosen tactics, since the bladesinger had rolled an 18 on his fort save to avoid being petrified, and still failed) When we returned the next week, the bladesinger shapechanged into an infernal (they'd fought one recently, and found it was immune to petrification) and led the combat. The gigant was low on HP anyway, from the first battle, in which the rogue had got a full attack off before being turned to stone, and fell relatively quickly second time round. The party spent enough time searching the remainder of the temple to find all of the treasure and the scroll, and were suprisingly unphased when they realised they would have to fight a god. Casting every buff spell at their disposal (which left the lowest PC armour class at 60
) they followed the steps detailed and called Erivatius forth, barely pausing as they effortlessly killed the seven maruts. Any attempt by Erivatius to bargain was swiftly rebuffed, and battle commenced. I had some fun with his remaining divine powers, but the PCs pulled out all the stops- and five rounds later, the bladesinger confirmed a critical hit with his vorpal sword- and the material plane was saved. They spent a while talking to Morwel, and received her gifts, then prepared to travel home, with Irivere, who they plan to take to Evermeet where she will hopefully be able to regain a place in the elven nobility, in tow.
So in summary- The Voursoul encounter was particularly challenging, probably even more so then Erivatius himself because the environment hindered the PCs so much. We had 4 PC deaths and two petrifications in total, and a number of wishes were used by the party. The two primary casters ran through almost all their spells more than once, which had been almost unheard of for a long time before QH. The lack of teleportation magic really hurt the PCs and voided a lot of their favourite combat tactics. And we had a great time with it throughout
Ellie.
