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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 6257711" data-attributes="member: 79141">Preamble to Session 101I've been looking forward to running the Borne to be Wild encounter  for a very long time.  Or rather, I've been looking forward to staging  the event.  Often when I'm really excited about an encounter, the end  result leaves me feeling a bit deflated.  The mechanics of the game take  over and it doesn't turn out to be as cinematic and exciting as I'd  hoped, or I forget something important in the heat of the moment and end  up kicking myself later when I realise what went wrong.  But this time I  planned much more carefully and everything turned out how I'd hoped.  Most of the players got to make a cool contribution, and Korrigan in  particular pulled off some truly heroic moves (which was great because his player is leaving the group for a while, perhaps permanently - which kind of screws the campaign up but, well, that's what you get if you take two-and-a-half years over heroic tier).In our campaign the Borne encounter took on a very different form to the one in the published adventure. Having been lured out of hiding, Lorcan Kell now languished in the RHC prison; Ekossigan was put out of his misery last session (to weave some narrative drive into the storming of the base).  So the BBEG for the climax of Cauldron Born was to be Leone Quital (with stats borrowed from Schism) with able support from the mysterious eladrin woman Lavanya and her  idekick Conquo. (I have attached the stats I drew up for her below, omitting only the fact that poor Leon has a -2 to shrug off her domination effects due to his infatuation with her; Conquo is a level 11 PC: a large-sized grappling warforged fighter with a +2 STR bonus.)  The  inclusion of Lavanya and Conquo meant the whole thing felt a lot more personal - as did the surprising conclusion of Malthusius' latest story  arc, and the presence of Leon as a dominated foe (with his player running Kvarti as a full PC).  I also had the canal defenders (guards and trolls) bringing up the rear in case the party dawdled, giving them a chance to get some payback for Unit B (though by the time they showed up, the party was rampaging round the upper levels). As Quital and Conquo would not be in combat for long, I decided not to go easy on the PCs for the first couple of rounds, just to frighten the living daylights out of them.  Over the course of the combat, Rumdoom took -  and withstood - well over 200hp of damage.  I also upped the ante on the environmental damage, handing out 4d6+10 and 4d6+40 damage when the ceiling crumbles and then collapses.I paced the encounter very carefully, with a clear idea of what events would happen when.  The only thing I couldn't predict was when Grappa would touch Borne.  In the end that happened a lot faster than I thought it would.Normally I don't report combat round by round or blow by blow.  Sessions that feature lots of fights get the shortest journal entries, while one with lots of storytelling and roleplay spread out over multiple posts.  But I felt that this encounter was pretty special, so I've included pretty much everything that happened.  DM's notes would spoil it, and the only thing really out of the ordinary was that Korrigan spent a Plot Twist Card to avoid certain death (25d6 falling damage when already bloodied). Word of warning to any DM who runs the combat as it is: even with Kell, Reder and Glenn involved, there are no defenders who can attack the PCs from range on top of the bridge (apart from Reder's one-off rifle shot).  Perhaps this was intentional, but I don't think it makes for a very satisfying encounter, even with Quital using Borne's arm (for a paltry 3d6 damage).  Better to give the slayers and the nethermancer some ranged attacks.  In my game I didn't do that, as Quital, Conquo and  Lavanya were damaging enough.One more thing: when describing  the full magnitude of Borne I told the players that to represent him accurately on the battlemap I would need a five-foot tall body builder in grey body paint.  This put things in perspective quite nicely!Full report to follow shortly.</blockquote>

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