pokedigimaniac
First Post
Thanks for the help, guys. I'll be using your suggestions for how to run Longtail when my second group gets there.
For today's session, I used the kyton encounter in place of Longtail. Let me tell you, it went VERY well.
Everyone said their favorite part of the battle was when Boyikt managed to nail the kyton with a Cause Fear, and got lucky enough to roll a 4 on the d4. So, the kyton goes pelting out of the room...
... I'll just tell the whole battle, I think. It deserves to be told.
The party enters the room, and is quite surprised to find it full of blood and gore-caked chains - 2 to every five feet, roughly. Achsyyx pops out of invisibility and takes a shot at the gnome sorceror when he starts casting Detect Magic, and hits him for a couple of HP before slipping back into invisibility and retreating. The sorceror makes his first Fort save, but the clock starts ticking for that second one...
Initiative is entered, and the party begins attempting to track Achsyyx south through the room, moving slowly through the chains and fanning out. The xeph soulknife sees a strange shape on one of the chains - about the size of a humanoid head, but misshapen somehow... He approaches it slowly, and is shocked to realize when he comes face to face with it that it is Longtail's severed head, locked in a death snarl and pierced through from top to bottom with a chain - with goggles still on. (Thereby making the prophecy [previously came from the region's lantern archon] come true that they would 'face Longtail, but not kill him.')
Now, Achsyyx had already heard these folks coming, and so had already alerted the kyton, Ka'narliss. Ka'narliss entered the main room and climbed up the chains into the shadows near the ceiling, and moved silently (an incredible roll on both Move Silently and Hide served him well here) up the east side of the room, attempting to get close enough to see the whole party before he cut loose with his Control Chains ability. (This kyton was changed slightly - most of it comes from an earlier post:
So, it ended up being a lot of fun.)
The kobolds had moved carefully down the east side of the room as well, from the north, remaining bunched together. This is probably what saved them, amazingly. One of them managed to spot the kyton, and raised the alarm. A hail of ineffectual slingstones followed, and then the kyton set the chains in motion... that was a shock for the party.![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
"So, let's see. With all the spiky chains flailing at you... that's 18 attacks. I don't think I have that many d20s. Wow."
The kyton moved through the chains, staying out of melee reach and leading the party back to the portal, hoping to exploit the portal to inundate the party with reinforcements. When the party saw the portal, they recognized it as similar to the one they had seen in a previous room, and attempted to close it while being harassed with chain attacks by the kyton. They failed, as I had decided that due to the kyton interrupting Longtail during part of his ceremony to attempt to control the portal, the portal was now partially tied to his life force - as long as he lived, the portal was much harder to close. (DC 25 Concentration check - for 4th level characters, even with exploding action dice, this is very challenging.)
No casualties were taken, and the battle raged as the party frantically tried to figure out some way to hurt the thing as it stayed out of reach and basically swung around the room in sheer glee while turning the room itself against the interlopers. Achsyyx would pop up every turn or two as well, distracting spellcasters and generally being a frighteningly random prescence. The gnome sorceror Color Sprayed it, but it managed to maintain its hold on the chains while still stunned, and an amusing episode ensued where the gnome sorceror yelled for one of the lizardfolk to pick him up so he could attempt to coup de grace it. The kyton made the Fort save against the CDG, luckily, and nearly took him down with a chain attack before moving a bit north again.
The second lizardfolk climbed up the chain underneath it and began hacking away with his sword, while the gnome sorceror dashed underneath and let loose another Color Spray. Naturally, the spell didn't get through the kyton's spell resistance, but the lizardman fell victim to it and crashed down on top of the gnome sorceror, stunned.
While this was happening, the portal (which was active, and was spitting out a creature every d10 rounds) disgorged its first creature of the battle - a fiendish rust monster, which created some major headaches for the party. It didn't eat any metal before dying, sadly... However, it did result in some funny interplay. When it came out, it headed straight for the rogue/cleric who was standing in front of the portal, and went for his chain belt. It missed, which led us to determine that its antennae had smacked the area around his crotch. (This halfling rogue/cleric of Olidimarra is quite the womanizer, so we decided that either the rust monster was a female checking him out, or a male attempting to remove the competition.) The rogue, intelligently, fled - letting the rust monster get an attack of opportunity. This one missed as well... meaning the rust monster's antenna slapped the rogue's ass as he turned tail and fled. Mind-scarring ensued. The gnome paladin then charged it (with all the players yelling "NO," as the paladin's continually flaming greatsword was one of the few available light sources/damage dealers) and missed, before backing up while the lizardman cleric beat on it with a Flame Blade.
In sheer frustration, Boyikt shot off a Cause Fear spell, and as previously mentioned, managed to beat its spell resistance and Will save, and cause it to become frightened for 4 rounds! The thing fled north and east out of the room, with the gnome sorceror and lizardman ranger in hot pursuit. This is where the party said the battle became extremely enjoyable, as it became a two-front battle when the portal disgorged yet another creature - an Apocalypse Swarm of fiendish rats (yet another idea borrowed from earlier in this thread...) that did some major damage before a Flaming Sphere and the paladin's blessed greatsword managed to break it up. Most of the party began following the sorceror and kyton, while the other lizardman stayed behind with the kobolds to attempt to close the portal and kill anything else that came out of it.
Let me just say that Mirror Image was a great spell in this battle. It was the sorceror's first session as Level 4, so he had just picked it up. Twice in the chain-filled room, the chain attacks had entirely eliminated his mirror images, but the spell saved his life completely as he went toe-to-toe with the kyton... Surrounded by NINE images of the sorceror (he burned an Action die on the roll to see how many images were produced, and managed to max out the roll), the kyton was reduced to furiously attempting to smash the images until it found the true sorceror, as his escape back to the chain room was blocked by first the lizardman ranger, and then the rest of the party. Finally, after about five tries, the sorceror finally managed to get through the kyton's SR and will saves to Color Spray him, and then the lizardman promptly coup de graced him, leaving him to fail at a DC 24 Fortitude save.
The party dashed back to the portal, over 200 feet away. When they got there, they got there just in time to see one of the kobolds and the krenshar fall to two nasty darkmantles' attacks, while Boyikt (the kobold wizard) was left barely conscious with another darkmantle attached to his head. In the end, one kobold and the krenshar died, while another was barely saved at -9 HP. Much woe was had, as the paladin had truly liked the kobold that had died. (Actually, I managed to kill the paladin's two favorite NPCs - the kobold and the krenshar. Go me!) Finally, the portal was closed, and just in time, as the party saw the clawed paw of an owlbear stick out and grope around for something to kill before the portal closed on it.
Whew. Great battle today - that took about 8 hours to resolve. Thanks again to everyone in this thread for your help and suggestions. I'm looking forward to seeing where the party goes from here!
For today's session, I used the kyton encounter in place of Longtail. Let me tell you, it went VERY well.
Everyone said their favorite part of the battle was when Boyikt managed to nail the kyton with a Cause Fear, and got lucky enough to roll a 4 on the d4. So, the kyton goes pelting out of the room...... I'll just tell the whole battle, I think. It deserves to be told.
The party enters the room, and is quite surprised to find it full of blood and gore-caked chains - 2 to every five feet, roughly. Achsyyx pops out of invisibility and takes a shot at the gnome sorceror when he starts casting Detect Magic, and hits him for a couple of HP before slipping back into invisibility and retreating. The sorceror makes his first Fort save, but the clock starts ticking for that second one...
Initiative is entered, and the party begins attempting to track Achsyyx south through the room, moving slowly through the chains and fanning out. The xeph soulknife sees a strange shape on one of the chains - about the size of a humanoid head, but misshapen somehow... He approaches it slowly, and is shocked to realize when he comes face to face with it that it is Longtail's severed head, locked in a death snarl and pierced through from top to bottom with a chain - with goggles still on. (Thereby making the prophecy [previously came from the region's lantern archon] come true that they would 'face Longtail, but not kill him.'
)Now, Achsyyx had already heard these folks coming, and so had already alerted the kyton, Ka'narliss. Ka'narliss entered the main room and climbed up the chains into the shadows near the ceiling, and moved silently (an incredible roll on both Move Silently and Hide served him well here) up the east side of the room, attempting to get close enough to see the whole party before he cut loose with his Control Chains ability. (This kyton was changed slightly - most of it comes from an earlier post:
So, it ended up being a lot of fun.)
The kobolds had moved carefully down the east side of the room as well, from the north, remaining bunched together. This is probably what saved them, amazingly. One of them managed to spot the kyton, and raised the alarm. A hail of ineffectual slingstones followed, and then the kyton set the chains in motion... that was a shock for the party.
"So, let's see. With all the spiky chains flailing at you... that's 18 attacks. I don't think I have that many d20s. Wow."
The kyton moved through the chains, staying out of melee reach and leading the party back to the portal, hoping to exploit the portal to inundate the party with reinforcements. When the party saw the portal, they recognized it as similar to the one they had seen in a previous room, and attempted to close it while being harassed with chain attacks by the kyton. They failed, as I had decided that due to the kyton interrupting Longtail during part of his ceremony to attempt to control the portal, the portal was now partially tied to his life force - as long as he lived, the portal was much harder to close. (DC 25 Concentration check - for 4th level characters, even with exploding action dice, this is very challenging.)
No casualties were taken, and the battle raged as the party frantically tried to figure out some way to hurt the thing as it stayed out of reach and basically swung around the room in sheer glee while turning the room itself against the interlopers. Achsyyx would pop up every turn or two as well, distracting spellcasters and generally being a frighteningly random prescence. The gnome sorceror Color Sprayed it, but it managed to maintain its hold on the chains while still stunned, and an amusing episode ensued where the gnome sorceror yelled for one of the lizardfolk to pick him up so he could attempt to coup de grace it. The kyton made the Fort save against the CDG, luckily, and nearly took him down with a chain attack before moving a bit north again.
The second lizardfolk climbed up the chain underneath it and began hacking away with his sword, while the gnome sorceror dashed underneath and let loose another Color Spray. Naturally, the spell didn't get through the kyton's spell resistance, but the lizardman fell victim to it and crashed down on top of the gnome sorceror, stunned.
While this was happening, the portal (which was active, and was spitting out a creature every d10 rounds) disgorged its first creature of the battle - a fiendish rust monster, which created some major headaches for the party. It didn't eat any metal before dying, sadly... However, it did result in some funny interplay. When it came out, it headed straight for the rogue/cleric who was standing in front of the portal, and went for his chain belt. It missed, which led us to determine that its antennae had smacked the area around his crotch. (This halfling rogue/cleric of Olidimarra is quite the womanizer, so we decided that either the rust monster was a female checking him out, or a male attempting to remove the competition.) The rogue, intelligently, fled - letting the rust monster get an attack of opportunity. This one missed as well... meaning the rust monster's antenna slapped the rogue's ass as he turned tail and fled.
Mind-scarring ensued. The gnome paladin then charged it (with all the players yelling "NO," as the paladin's continually flaming greatsword was one of the few available light sources/damage dealers) and missed, before backing up while the lizardman cleric beat on it with a Flame Blade.In sheer frustration, Boyikt shot off a Cause Fear spell, and as previously mentioned, managed to beat its spell resistance and Will save, and cause it to become frightened for 4 rounds! The thing fled north and east out of the room, with the gnome sorceror and lizardman ranger in hot pursuit. This is where the party said the battle became extremely enjoyable, as it became a two-front battle when the portal disgorged yet another creature - an Apocalypse Swarm of fiendish rats (yet another idea borrowed from earlier in this thread...) that did some major damage before a Flaming Sphere and the paladin's blessed greatsword managed to break it up. Most of the party began following the sorceror and kyton, while the other lizardman stayed behind with the kobolds to attempt to close the portal and kill anything else that came out of it.
Let me just say that Mirror Image was a great spell in this battle.
It was the sorceror's first session as Level 4, so he had just picked it up. Twice in the chain-filled room, the chain attacks had entirely eliminated his mirror images, but the spell saved his life completely as he went toe-to-toe with the kyton... Surrounded by NINE images of the sorceror (he burned an Action die on the roll to see how many images were produced, and managed to max out the roll), the kyton was reduced to furiously attempting to smash the images until it found the true sorceror, as his escape back to the chain room was blocked by first the lizardman ranger, and then the rest of the party. Finally, after about five tries, the sorceror finally managed to get through the kyton's SR and will saves to Color Spray him, and then the lizardman promptly coup de graced him, leaving him to fail at a DC 24 Fortitude save.The party dashed back to the portal, over 200 feet away. When they got there, they got there just in time to see one of the kobolds and the krenshar fall to two nasty darkmantles' attacks, while Boyikt (the kobold wizard) was left barely conscious with another darkmantle attached to his head. In the end, one kobold and the krenshar died, while another was barely saved at -9 HP. Much woe was had, as the paladin had truly liked the kobold that had died. (Actually, I managed to kill the paladin's two favorite NPCs - the kobold and the krenshar. Go me!) Finally, the portal was closed, and just in time, as the party saw the clawed paw of an owlbear stick out and grope around for something to kill before the portal closed on it.
Whew. Great battle today - that took about 8 hours to resolve. Thanks again to everyone in this thread for your help and suggestions. I'm looking forward to seeing where the party goes from here!
