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Snappa
Sneak
77 Posts
    
 | | 07/17/2006 1:58 PM |
| I ran the Ruins of Rhest encounters for my players this session, and they proved to be far more deadly than anything up to this point. The party came through the swamp by boat (loaned by the elves) and scouted the area a bit (noticing the guard tower for what it was) and then decided to take out the lizardmen camps.
A combination of surprise, ranged attacks, damage over time, (acid arrows) and good luck allowed them to take out the lizardmen surrounding the lake before they made for the ruins. Using a lizardman raft, at night (pre-dawn), in the rain, and with dead lizardmen propped up in front of the raft (I gave a +2 DC to the hobgob's spot check) led to them getting within 30 feet of the tower before being spotted. The hobgoblins were able to sound the bell, but the blademaster was unable to drink a potion and flee before the party was upon them.
Even with cover and the rain, the hobgoblins at the top of the tower were no match for 2 archery-optimized characters and a warmage. The tower fell with little trouble.
I had Saarvith and his gang react as follows:
The ogres on the roof (I gave them longspears after reading the ogre scout description in MM4) stayed on the roof and watched for the party's approach. The cowardly mindbender remained below calling on his ettin to guard him. Saarvith mounted Regiarix, and when the ogres gave him the signal (the party was within 100 feet on a raft), he took to the air. Saarvith launched normal arrows at the party while Regiarix held action and then dropped a darkness centered at the back of the raft, hoping it would confuse the party. For a round it did, as they stopped rowing and drew weapons those who acted before the dragon getting shots off, before realizing they were sitting ducks.
On the second round, the dragon did a fly-by attack breath weapon, using blindsense to strafe one side of the 10' wide raft. The party realizing they were in trouble, rowed forward. I quickly houseruled that each person rowing added 5' of movement per round to the raft (probably a bit easy on them, but as none of them had dispel magic or water breathing(!), it was the only way they were getting off the raft without a TPK from dragon breath or drowning.
The dragon made one more pass after spending a few rounds turning, breathing again at the same side of the raft, before returning to its lair. Saarvith figured the ogres would be enough to handle the weakened party, and they almost were. After the raft smashed into the boardwalk on the back side of the tower (away from the stairs), the party slowly made their way out of the darkness, feeling along the wall. As some went in either direction on the narrow walkway, they came under attacks of opportunity as they moved out of the darkness, and in range of the 20' reach of the ogres above.
2 ogres continued attacking from above, while the others manned the stairs up, ensuring AOOs from anyone coming up them. The party ranger was forced back from a strong hit by one ogre, and backed down the bridge toward the razorfiend hachery. As the ogre followed, I quickly made a judgement call that the sounds of combat had stirred battle lust in the razorfiend, which escaped the pen by a pair of jump checks (one to jump to the platform, another to scale the wall.
Just as the ranger jumped into the water and drank a potion of cure moderate to flee the ogre, the razorfiend splashed in next to her, critting with a wingblade (OUCH!) At -27 health, the ranger was no more. I gave her player the stats for Trellara, the elven bard who had joined the party after her brother's death, so she'd have something to do during the fight.
Meanwhile, the two ogres from above had jumped down to the walkway and were harrying the other party archer and the warmage, who were having a heck of a time avoiding AOOs while attempting to shoot and cast spells. Two failed concentration checks, followed by decent rolling on my part, and the warmage was nearly killed by spears. The archer managed to drop those two ogres, while the dwarf fighter and favored soul, with backup from the bard and wand of minor confusion (razorfiend confused into attacking the ogre it was based with) dealt with the two on the other side and the razorfiend.
At this point, I determined that Saarvith, with some help from Regiarix, would have gotten the mindbender and his ettin moving, with threats. The ettin led the way up the steps, and attacked the dwarf, after the mindbender suggested the dwarf drop his weapon and kneel before his master. This was enough to break the spell, but not before the dwarf had dropped his axe, giving the ogre another attack (which missed).
The dragon with Saarvith on back emerged from the hole in the roof, breathing on the archer, while Saarvith fired elfbane arrows at the gray elf warmage, killing him. A lucky failed save by Saarvith to the bard's wand had him plant 3 arrows in the hovering dragon's neck from point-blank range. Regiarix got a little mad at this, and bucked, throwing Saarvith down through the hole and into the water below. He took some time to get back out and into the keep, while Regiarix breathed once more and then disappeared back into his lair.
Meanwhile, the mindbender managed to land a hold person on the favored soul (I pulled the punches here, as the ettin would have killed the dwarf outright had I targetted him) and then fled back below. The dwarf made quick work of the ettin with a critical from his now-retrieved frost greataxe. Quiet fell upon the area.
Using the staff of life, the favored soul raised the warmage, who was down to 2 2nd level spells after losing a level and lost spell slots from dying. The party healed up as much as possible, the favored soul burned 5 1st level spells on protection from evil and descended the steps to the lower level. I had the enemies prepared as follows:
Regiarix used a second darkness spell in his lair, using blindsense to locate opponents in the room outside. Saarvith waited perched on his back. The mindbender fled to his room, to await word from the dragon that the enemies were outside. When they reached the bottom of the stairs (they decided to split up and go down both sets of stairs), Saarvith gave the word, and the hobgoblin opened the door, seeing the warmage, and attemping a charm monster, which would have been negated by the protection from evil, even if the _elf_ hadn't made the save. A face-full of scorching rays followed, and the mindbender was through.
Regiarix breathed, catching the newly-healed party, and thanks to potions of resist acid, it was fairly ineffective. He stepped out of the darkness on the following round (5 foot step), into melee range of the waiting dwarf. A bite landed, and arrows from Saarvith found their home, but the dwarf AOO'd with a vicious swipe at the goblin, wounding him severely. Arrows from the archer and bard finished him off, taking him to -1.
Regiarix was blasted with a pair of scorching rays (the warmage's last spell), and one of them confirmed a critical, dealing almost 50 damage with a single spell. The dragon attempted to flee, but unable to withdraw in a straight line, took an AOO from the dwarf, which finished him off. The party was victorious, but depleted, and had lost a member permanently (no one high enough to raise dead in Brindol or the area, and the player wants to try a new class).
They gathered the loot, and almost as an afterthought, checked out the hatchery. 12 hours of searching underwater without waterbreathing later, they had found all 30 eggs and destroyed them, after briefly arguing about "raising one as a pet". The party favored soul pointed out (so that I didn't have to) that these things are spawns of an evil dragon goddess, and apparently even followers of Tiamat tried to keep the things confined when not using them in battle.
This could easily have been a TPK, had I been a little more aggressive with the ettin and mindbender. My players commented that I managed the fight beautifully in the sense that they felt like they were all going to die for most of it, yet triumphed in the end. The party is now back with the elves, have the ghost lord's phylactery, and will have to take the long way back to Brindol, as they were 2 points away from getting use of the owls (I asked twice if anyone wanted to try and untrained perform at the funeral, but there were no takers).
So far this adventure has been a blast to run, and the players are having a great time with their mercenary company theme. They've "recruited" the vengeance-seeking wood-elven bard as an NPC party member, who will become a cohort if one of them takes Leadership at 9th level. They intend to renovate Vrath Keep, and turn it into a chapterhouse for their company at the end of the adventure, should they survive it, and I've started thinking about further play in the campaign once they're finished RHoD.
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Korhal_IV
Sergeant
852 Posts
| | 07/17/2006 7:04 PM |
| | See, you were an exceptionally nice DM. You didn't calculate how a dragon's acid breath is going to affect a primitive little reed raft. Even giving it hardness 5 and 10 HP, it's toast in the first breath weapon. | |
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Snappa
Sneak
77 Posts
| | 07/17/2006 8:17 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by Korhal_IV
See, you were an exceptionally nice DM. You didn't calculate how a dragon's acid breath is going to affect a primitive little reed raft. Even giving it hardness 5 and 10 HP, it's toast in the first breath weapon.
I actually gave it a brief moment of thought during the first breath attack. I decided that in this case, the story outweighed the reality, kind of like a cheesy action movie. That, and most of my players would have taken forever to roll new characters, and as we only play once every two weeks, it would have killed 4 hours of precious gaming.
Next week, the Ghostlord's lair. And I will not be pulling any punches with Varanthian. I think I'll give him a Scottish accent and have him scream "Git in mah bellay, dworf!"
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Most Edumacated
zenthrus
Warlord
5132 Posts
SLC, UT
| | 07/17/2006 8:41 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by Snappa
Next week, the Ghostlord's lair. And I will not be pulling any punches with Varanthian. I think I'll give him a Scottish accent and have him scream "Git in mah bellay, dworf!"
Varanthian's a she [)]
Sounds like a nice evening of gaming. I'm not opposed to pulling a punch or two if it will avoid TPK because the party is overwhelmed. I never pull punches if the party faces TPK because they did something really stupid. It sounds as though your players were largely cautious and intelligent in their assault on the bell tower, so I'd say you played it right [^] | |
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maijstral
Underboss
2105 Posts
| | 07/17/2006 9:31 PM |
| Just finished running the ruins of rhest for my party, two pc deaths and the npc bard got killed as well. It was very close but but the party won out in the end but let black dragon get away. Saavarth almost got away but a lucky nat 20 bow shot from a ranger with goblin favored enemy took care of him.
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