World's Largest Dungeon in actual play [Spoilers!]

[rvalle]

My group hasn't done Tyrus yet. I'm thinking about forcing it but I'm not sure they can take it on yet (5-6 players at 14th level). They are going to make 15th very soon and I might force it then.

The Garrison is way to tempting to use. I have most the Garrison off fighting in region D taking care of 'a small Tarrasque problem' leaving just a few Garrisons members left in G (the Demons are now gone).

My group went through a rather dramatic change in character. While going though N they lost one of their main fighters (buffed up Cleric) who had a high ac and could cast D-Door's to get the party out of jams when it was time to run away. He moved into a room with 2 Greater Wraiths hiding. They ambushed him, drained con. Both got init on him and drained con again and he was at -10 hps.

The party retreated out of N and was heading through J when they were ambushed by the remaining Fire Giants. Without boring you with the changes I made, one of the Giants is now a half-dragon and is able to be buffed by Tyrus. He flew in and laid into the party. He was able to deal out 120 hps of damage a round! Tyrus kept putting up Mirror Images which the party was able to drop most of before he put them up again next round. The party cleric kept casting Heals on the Paladin to keep her up. She was running out of Heals so instead cast Air Walk on her and the Pally. Unfortunately the Giant still got an AoO on the Pally's way out and even with -10 DR for being Gaseous killed the Pally.

Mind you this Pally was a damage dealing machine and could do 100-200 points of damage a round with improved crits on a longsword, power attacks, ect.

Now the Cleric made a halfing fighter/ranger using daggers to TWF and the Pally is now a Monk. As one of the players said they are now a quick strike recon group.

In order to 'train' they are going back though I to fight Drider in order to get a feel for how the group will work now.

I'm torn on what to do for the future. We've been playing for about 2.5 years now. I can either level them up and let them fight their way out (they think there is an exit behind the Frost Giants in O but know they are not strong enough to fight though them yet).

Or, I can force a fight with Tyrus by saying the ice prison is failing and he needs to be taken care of. I can also force them to go though N by having the black negative energy wave start moving further and further from the Prison and the party has to go and take care of it.

Right now I'm tempted to split the diff... have them fight Tyrus as that will mostly be a one or two night fight and then let them work on getting out. Going though N will add 6 months onto the game. Both a good and a bad thing.

rv

 

[erucsbo]

I had my group encounter the Driders at about level 9. They had a big battle with the spider kings before running away and then dealt with Elotor in his lab while on a rescue mission to free some trapped party members. Hardest thing they took on in Region M was the air elementals who would pick them up and dump them from height, including trying to do so over Death Canyon. They negotiated a deal with the Driders after defeating Elotor to leave the caves and cross to the northern side of the lava. I found the top half of M (apart from the air elementals) to be really boring for the party so you might want to spice it up a bit - maybe place an item there that they have to find or have them try and find Norkor for information that might be useful against the Frost Giants (which he will give them if they retrieve an item that was stolen from him by the Driders). - Something that a quick strike recon group might be better suited to.
I think you will need to seriously ramp up the encounters to make it challenging for 14th level characters there.

 

[rvalle]

They are still in I right now. I got interesting in that they made a deal with... the Naga there where the party retrieved the spell books/notes from the wrecked lab and gave it to her. In return she removed the spell needed to kill Anguish and gave it to them.

She used the spell book and notes to change her self back to a Drider... mostly. She's a spider body but a snake head (picture provided by Hussar!). She then went up and took over the Drider area since she's a better caster then any of the Drider. Since she was working with the Drow resistance it was easy for her to crush it as well. The whole of I is now under her power.

The next time the party went though I she had a messanger waiting there for them. She had them brough to her and made a deal. She would leave the se corner alone so the party can move from E to J and they would leave her alone. They were pretty freaked out by her new look and were just from a fight with the Fire Giants so agreed and went on their way.

______

I'm not too worried about them not having a hard fight here. They pretty much have to take on the whole population of I. I'll bump up a few of the driders in caster level to make a decent 'boss' fight.

rv

 

[erucsbo]

Region I was pretty good for me - halls of flesh and all that (though the fight with Madness was over too quick). I did insert the fountain of fortunes folly that was mentioned way back in this thread in to Mahir's area and the party spent a fair bit of time with it (and still talk of going back).
You could create all sorts of abominations in I as a result of the Naga's experiments.

 

[rvalle]

You could create all sorts of abominations in I as a result of the Naga's experiments.

Hmm, I didn't think of that. Thats.... good! I did think about trying to give her some funky new spells to show what she learned from the spell book. I like your idea better.

I think they would tend to be spider/elf like ones though. Hmmm...

_______

The fight with Anguish was a push over for my group. But, they couldn't touch Madness and pretty much ran from him almost every time. When ever they did try to stand and fight 1 character would come close to dying. The only thing that saved them was Madness's very slow movment rate.

rv

 

[Kaptain O]

Resources

Hi, I'm obviously about 4 years late getting on the whole WLD bandwagon but I am starting a game and I was wondering if anyone could tell me where I can get resources for the sourcebook? I read at the beginning of this thread there were corrected and errata'd maps and additional areas not detailed in the original book (particularly region E) but the urls are all defunct.

 

[erucsbo]

Hi, I'm obviously about 4 years late getting on the whole WLD bandwagon but I am starting a game and I was wondering if anyone could tell me where I can get resources for the sourcebook? I read at the beginning of this thread there were corrected and errata'd maps and additional areas not detailed in the original book (particularly region E) but the urls are all defunct.

James Lorimor's site is still working though hasn't been updated in ages. I've made available some maps that should have been added to James' site but still haven't been uploaded.

There is quite a lot on Region E on James' site and a fair amount of discussion in this thread (a goodly way back though) and some got lost in the server crash.

 

[Hussar]

Hi, I'm obviously about 4 years late getting on the whole WLD bandwagon but I am starting a game and I was wondering if anyone could tell me where I can get resources for the sourcebook? I read at the beginning of this thread there were corrected and errata'd maps and additional areas not detailed in the original book (particularly region E) but the urls are all defunct.

Good God sir. Did you actually read this entire thread. O.O Wow. That's hardcore dedication.

 

[Kaptain O]

Nope, I got through about page 20 and then skipped to the end to make a post while I finish the other 130 pages.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

There's going to be a huge missing section where ENWorld crashed and lost several months of posts.

Unfortunately, that was the most interesting part of this thread (to me).