Monday, November 07, 2005
Picture, if you will, an airborne harpy luring sailors and platemail clad heroes off their ship and out into the middle of the ocean...
Envisage the face of the iron-clad dwarf as he manages to pass the first swim check, only to swim further out to the calling harpy...
Imagine a 15 foot fiendish tigershark popping into mid-air just above the harpy, biting the fug-o, and pulling her down the rest of the drop and under the waves...
Harpies, which I have never actually fought before in D&D, are a pain. Turns out they don't sing so well with a hold person and they can't really fly or swim either. The shark took care of the other one, and a fireball had us singing we "feel like chicken tonight".
Between the Kraken and the charbroiled bird, we had enough rations to last a long sail.
The Mysterious Tower of Annoyance kept us busy the rest of the session. The courtyard wall is a permanent blade barrier but doesn't actually activate until you touch it. The interior tower had me thinking of something Gord once said regarding "1000 peices, each guarded by a god of war": There are four doors leading into the tower. The East door was almost blocked by bones of a small army that had attempted to force its way in, so we decided to leave that one for last. We tried the West door, only to get jumped by a small army of undead and constructs.
Now, were I a full level 11 cleric, the undead would have been no problem. However, due to my dragon devotions, I'm actually a feeble level 6 cleric when it comes to turning (but I'm real good against things with willpower to crush!). Fortunately a mage cast a wall of fire and the undead were scorched mightily.
Most of the damage the party took resulted from the massive golem (apparently had fast healing TWENTY and jackhammers for fists) or the two construct-like mages raining fireballs from the top of the tower. With three mages and a war cleric in the party, we managed to disintegrate the turret that they were standing on. Fortunately they did enough damage to cause our Ranger/Weretiger to involuntarily change shape, and he went almost toe-to-toe with the golem. I say "almost" as the golem mostly ignored the tiger, and beat on the dwarf (whom had spent most of this session prone or mindcontrolled...). A desperate deeper darkness by everyone's favorite dragon cultist managed to give the dwarf the miss chance that he needed to crawl away in retreat. It was quite amusing as the golem would have crit, hit 3 more times, and easily killed the tripped dwarf, but the 50/50 miss chance from the darkness saved him each time.
Oh, and did you know that weretigers have Blind-Fighting? Boy did that work out as a bonus!
One poor skeleton was also trapped in the darkness sphere, and once we were pretty sure the golem was dead, I cancelled the darkness spell, revealing that the skeleton was being stalked in the dark by the kitty. If only the poor guy still had muscles and lips to frown with instead of just a stupid grin.
It was here that we realized several of us almost died as we were completely unprepared for a battle like that. We also found out that this door was just an illusion.
Two down, only two more directions to go!
We're going to be adopting a scorched earth policy on the next door we attack. Most of the building will be coming down before the freaking constructs and undead get to annoy us again. There better be some nice l00t inside for this much trouble...
Envisage the face of the iron-clad dwarf as he manages to pass the first swim check, only to swim further out to the calling harpy...
Imagine a 15 foot fiendish tigershark popping into mid-air just above the harpy, biting the fug-o, and pulling her down the rest of the drop and under the waves...
Harpies, which I have never actually fought before in D&D, are a pain. Turns out they don't sing so well with a hold person and they can't really fly or swim either. The shark took care of the other one, and a fireball had us singing we "feel like chicken tonight".
Between the Kraken and the charbroiled bird, we had enough rations to last a long sail.
The Mysterious Tower of Annoyance kept us busy the rest of the session. The courtyard wall is a permanent blade barrier but doesn't actually activate until you touch it. The interior tower had me thinking of something Gord once said regarding "1000 peices, each guarded by a god of war": There are four doors leading into the tower. The East door was almost blocked by bones of a small army that had attempted to force its way in, so we decided to leave that one for last. We tried the West door, only to get jumped by a small army of undead and constructs.
Now, were I a full level 11 cleric, the undead would have been no problem. However, due to my dragon devotions, I'm actually a feeble level 6 cleric when it comes to turning (but I'm real good against things with willpower to crush!). Fortunately a mage cast a wall of fire and the undead were scorched mightily.
Most of the damage the party took resulted from the massive golem (apparently had fast healing TWENTY and jackhammers for fists) or the two construct-like mages raining fireballs from the top of the tower. With three mages and a war cleric in the party, we managed to disintegrate the turret that they were standing on. Fortunately they did enough damage to cause our Ranger/Weretiger to involuntarily change shape, and he went almost toe-to-toe with the golem. I say "almost" as the golem mostly ignored the tiger, and beat on the dwarf (whom had spent most of this session prone or mindcontrolled...). A desperate deeper darkness by everyone's favorite dragon cultist managed to give the dwarf the miss chance that he needed to crawl away in retreat. It was quite amusing as the golem would have crit, hit 3 more times, and easily killed the tripped dwarf, but the 50/50 miss chance from the darkness saved him each time.
Oh, and did you know that weretigers have Blind-Fighting? Boy did that work out as a bonus!
One poor skeleton was also trapped in the darkness sphere, and once we were pretty sure the golem was dead, I cancelled the darkness spell, revealing that the skeleton was being stalked in the dark by the kitty. If only the poor guy still had muscles and lips to frown with instead of just a stupid grin.
It was here that we realized several of us almost died as we were completely unprepared for a battle like that. We also found out that this door was just an illusion.
Two down, only two more directions to go!
We're going to be adopting a scorched earth policy on the next door we attack. Most of the building will be coming down before the freaking constructs and undead get to annoy us again. There better be some nice l00t inside for this much trouble...
