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Post by Scott on May 16, 2021 8:31:22 GMT -5
Towards the end of the night, during the last encounter with drow, the party were so worried about being overwhelmed by the dark elves that they resorted to using Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn, which they haven't touched since Ember was taken over by the 'my precious' effect shortly after finding it. The battle was in the caves just west of area 15. The party had thrown up some magic walls to prevent the drow from circling around and surrounding them. For the first several rounds the drow magic resistance blocked all of the party's attack spells. The party was under the impression that they were just immune to magic. After the main drow spell caster hit them with a lightning bolt, the party got desperate. To cast the lightning bolt the drow wizard had to move up towards the front of the action for line of sight. in the chaos of battle, and assuming the drow were attempting to protect the spell caster I didn't let the party automatically target the wizard. If you wanted to hit the wizard you needed a 1 on a d6, and the party had their luckiest die rolls trying to kill the wizard. The next round the party won initiative and two fighters somehow managed to get threw to the spell caster, spoiling the next spell he started casting, a ray of enfeeblement targeting Plāsolder. The drow spell caster didn't have a lot of hit points. The next round they were able to hit him again and killed him. The party used the Lanthorn to hold the high level drow fighter, divided the remaining drow with a wall of force, killed the few drow left on their side of the wall, and ran like hell back to camp.
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Post by grodog on May 16, 2021 15:24:25 GMT -5
Sounds like a good time!
Based on your descriptions of running G1-3 to date, I think that building a checklist roster for the giant leaders and key NPCs and all of the drow encounters (at minimum, if not all of the encounters in general) is probably a good idea. I'm thinking of a working checklist roster vs. the single-line rosters in WG6 for example.
Do you think something like that would have helped running the encounters, Scott?
Allan.
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Post by Scott on May 16, 2021 19:22:52 GMT -5
Yes, something like that would come in handy, especially in situations where denizens from one area of the dungeon react to activity that goes on in another area. I cut the text from the pdf and paste it into Pages. I then add whatever additional info I want, color code to, etc.. It makes it easy to cut and paste to move monsters around etc. And I also use roll20 and have created some very detailed maps. It's just a matter of not having time to do it all, and choosing what to do. I had the rakshashas on the 1st level written out in great detail, and created a very detailed roll20 combat map with dynamic lighting, etc. And of course the party completely ignored the encounter.
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Post by grodog on May 16, 2021 19:49:52 GMT -5
I hear you there---the perpetual "what should I really prep?" question  Allan. |
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Post by Scott on Jun 23, 2021 15:04:54 GMT -5
We've run into some down time with a few vacations and soccer tournaments, etc. I've heading for the beach this Saturday. We should be back at it July 10th, and that may be the beginning of the G series. Looking forward to the change. The G series is such a combat slog. The D series provides a lot more opportunity for role playing. Whether the party opts to use it or not remains to be seen.
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Post by Scott on Jul 11, 2021 0:01:38 GMT -5
7/10/2021 Session
Our first in-person session in 16 months.
The Party:
Plāsolder: 10th level human fighter
Corbek: 10th level human cleric (St. Cuthbert)
Jastra: 5th/10th level gray elf fighter/magic-user (F)
Ember: 9th level human cleric (Pelor) (F)
Findros: 5th/9th level high elf fighter/magic-user (NPC)
Faeringar Bowman: 7th level human fighter (Corbek's henchman)
Ingo: 5th/7th level gnome fighter/thief (Jastra's henchman)
We didn't get started til 8, and the party spent a lot of time debating strategy and what they wanted to do. Eventually they left their camp in a cave and returned to the dungeon. They made it to the 3rd dungeon level without any encounters. Once there, they proceeded towards the cavern where the fought the drow at the end of the last session. They had Ingo scout ahead invisibly and he was able to see two drow guards in three passages that all appeared to go into the save chamber. With this info they decided to approach from the north and throw up a wall of force to block the drow from coming through the southern two passages. The party then charged through the northern passage. Most of the party has very good AC and with protection from evil, the drow had a hard time hurting the party. With the drow's magic resistance and good AC, the party had a hard time hurting the drow. It made for a long, looong, loooooong battle. The party got lucky with the wand of viscid globes. The first party member that got hit had a ring of free action on. After that the party used two bottles of oil of slipperiness to protect the other characters in the front rank. Eventually all of the drow were dead. The party collected their treasure, and moved on, heading north. They ignored the passage leading to the cave of Eclavdra's rival Nedylene, and ended up entering the glittering cavern where the mind flayers were dwelling. The mind flayers emerged and (after a reaction roll of 03) attacked immediately. Ember was his by a mind blast and became enraged and attacked Corbek. A mind flayer made a slave out of Plāsolder using domination and had him attack the party. Findros paralyzed Ember with a wand, but Plāsolder was a bigger problem because of his ring of free action, and he started thrashing Corbek. At some point one of the mind flayers closed on Ember and started trying to suck out her brain. Unable to neutralize Plāsolder, with Ember having her brain sucked out, and two mind flayers alive and attacking, Corbek decided to use a wish from his ring (leaving one more) and wished the party safely back to their base cave. It was getting late, so we called it there.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 11, 2021 5:55:03 GMT -5
Congratulations on putting the live game back together.
So, did Ember get her brain sucked out? That was a bit unclear. That always seemed like a particularly gruesome death, as depicted on the back cover of D1-2, one of the first modules I ever bought (still have it)!
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Post by Scott on Jul 11, 2021 7:19:29 GMT -5
No. I considered the wish strong enough to pull her from the mind flayer’s grasp. Corbek used the wish the round after she was attacked.
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Post by Scott on Jul 11, 2021 12:26:00 GMT -5
One thing I noticed was how ineffective the mind blast is. The saving throws are so low for average, or above, PCs, that it's likely they will save, and if they do fail the save, the effects in that range are the least severe, 2-8 rounds of panic or enrage are by far the most likely effects the PCs will experience. The domination discipline is much more dangerous, but there's a good chance PCs of this level range will make their saves.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 11, 2021 15:41:42 GMT -5
I appreciate you posting your observations since it has been so long since I regularly DMed high level characters. There is a big shift in what works and what doesn't. A lot of things that used to be deadly become nearly ineffective due to much better saves. You can see the development of things still scary to even higher level characters with things like rust monsters, spells with no saves, magic resistance, and level draining... I know players who get nearly as upset at losing their favorite magic sword or armor, or getting level drained, as they do over character death!
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Post by Scott on Jul 11, 2021 16:22:56 GMT -5
Yes, the drow, for example, were obviously designed specifically to counter the abilities that a usual high level party would rely on.
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Post by Scott on Jul 11, 2021 18:00:54 GMT -5
Plāsolder's ring of free action has really been a problem for the party. The normal response to a PC party member being charmed, etc. is to hold him somehow, but the ring prevents that, and they've burned two wishes because they couldn't figure out another way to deal with him without really hurting him. He's been one of the party's toughest enemies to date.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 12, 2021 8:04:11 GMT -5
Did the player who named his character Plasolder (phonetic spelling of "Place Holder?") just give up on coming up with a name, or what? I've seen many silly names over the years, but that might be the laziest... Next to Dude and Dude II, two fighter characters played by a kid I went to high school with (Dude died and was promptly replaced by a newly rolled up fighter named Dude II).
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Post by Scott on Jul 12, 2021 9:10:35 GMT -5
When we rolled up the character I wrote Place Holder where the name would be. I gave him a copy, and a few minutes later he had replaced Place Holder with Plāsolder.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 12, 2021 10:34:18 GMT -5
If you want a character to live forever, give him a silly name. If you give a character the best name you've ever thought of, with a vibrant back story, he will fail his first saving throw versus poison and die.
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Post by Scott on Jul 12, 2021 11:36:56 GMT -5
We started this campaign for our kids almost five years ago after Stranger Things premiered and they were gung ho to try D&D. They dropped out, but we're still playing.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 12, 2021 13:28:49 GMT -5
Yeah, it's weird to think how D&D became a fad again. I heard 5th edition D&D is going great, and has outsold all previous editions... Can that be true? I don't keep up on modern gaming trends but if tabletop role-playing and D&D has come back in a big way that can only be good. All I can say is that we are living in a golden age in regards to variety of miniatures, terrain, fold out maps and all such accessories being produced. I have so much cool stuff I worry I won't live long enough to get to play with it all!
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Post by Scott on Jul 12, 2021 18:16:37 GMT -5
It's waning now, but wow, recently D&D was huge, bigger than it ever was.
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Post by Scott on Jul 13, 2021 22:00:44 GMT -5
Prepping for D1. There's so much work to do to run this right, if you want to run it smoothly and not spend lots of time checking books during play.
Attrition is an important part of the challenge, so you have to have the random encounters as listed. I roll a roster of what will be encountered in advance in each cavern type, so I have the encounters ready when they happen. I've also added in a random chance for crevasses and sink holes that may be dangerous.
The drow, and so many other monsters in this series, have so many special abilities that I need to have more ready than what is provided in the modules. I just prepped the first set encounter, the drow guard post, and it will be another all night fight.: over 20 drow with their list of special abilities and multiple spell casters, weird glitter bombs, and a rope of entanglement. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the rope. There's nothing in the DMG about a chance to hit, or a saving throw. It almost implies that it's automatic, but I tried that before and it's too unbalancing. I think the Polyhedron Dispel Confusion said it attacks as a 4HD monster, but I almost feel that's too much of a nerf, so I don't know yet.
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Post by Scott on Jul 13, 2021 22:05:01 GMT -5
Reading the DMG and the Greyhawk entry for the rope of entanglement, it definitely seems like automatic was the intent.
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