Dragons and Pirates
Apr. 24th, 2004 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothToday, after a long delay, we had another session of the DM-switching campaign, which is switching back to Eric now. Tom didn't get to run his epilogue after all, because of Easter, and he has to be at a school play tomorrow, so we had it a little ahead of schedule rather than wait two months between games.
We were using the high-level characters, but most of us made new ones -- Tom's Hiko was the 'same character' but completely remade (psionic warrior 5, monk 4, fighter 4 instead of Samurai/Barbarian/Something else), and the only other holdover was Breya, Michelle's rogue. We also had a bear warrior 'Garden' (pronounced 'Gar-DAN') played by Dave, a paladin 'Alaric' by Josh, a wizardess 'Dawn' played by Ed (gender-shifted at the last second for some reason) and my own 'Ethan', a halfling psion. I was the only non-human -- which makes me wonder, 'why does Tom keep complaining that humans are too weak, when EVERYONE plays them?'.
I rolled randomly for my alignment, and got 'Lawful Neutral', which seemed appropriate enough.
The mission they were given was to travel to the pirate isles by ship to find some missing archaeologists who had vanished while investigating a dimensional distortion, as well as the first recovery team that had also disappeared without a trace -- explaining why such powerful members of the adventurer's guild were being sent on the quest. Their leader was Alaric, whose sister had headed up the recovery team. The distortion kept the party from just teleporting in.
The first day of travel went well, but on the second they were attacked by a pair of dragons. The dragons were hideously outmatched, even though none of the party's fighters (except for Breya) had any form of ranged attack. Dawn made Garden fly, and turned Hiko into a gargoyle, while Ethan summoned a winged construct -- an ectoplasmic angel. There were also some spells flung around.
At any rate, the smaller dragon was grappled by the construct, and swarmed by the flying fighters who grievously wounded her, and forced her to dive underwater, where she escaped the construct and swam off. The larger dragon swooped in for an attack run... and was trapped in Dawn's force-cage. Since the cage would last about 26 hours, they just sailed off and left it there.
The next day it was misty and nasty. Ethan was below decks, so he was the last to know about the pirate attack. They came in from both sides, archers and mages lining the railings, slaughtering the ship's crew and mildly annoying the adventurers. Dawn took out most of one pirate ship's complement with a prismatic spray, while the other's was devastated by a summoned construct, a cold-bolt, an angry bear warrior, and a HOLY-FSCK smite by Alaric which killed the pirate captain in... well, in *two* blows.
The few survivors surrendered. Dawn teleported back to town and fetched some city guardsmen, who agreed to take the pirates into custody and force them to sail the captured pirate ships back to port, where they'd be auctioned off, with the party receiving a portion of the proceeds.
That still left the party's ship severely under-crewed, but it only one more day to their destination, and after fixing up the damage from the battle they once more got underway, and made landfall without further incident.
previous session, different campaign next session
The battle against the pirates took up most of the session, because there were SO MANY enemies -- two dozen 6th level fighters (fodder) and 8 named enemies (also fodder, to tell the truth).
Each battle as a psion took up about a quarter of my power points in two rounds of activity. Of course, I was casting multiple spells per round... still, not a lot of staying power. The constructs were really strong, though -- Alaric noted that going by pure melee stats, they were better than him.
And yes, both fights ended in two rounds of actual combat (after several rounds of preparation and maneuvering).
We were using the high-level characters, but most of us made new ones -- Tom's Hiko was the 'same character' but completely remade (psionic warrior 5, monk 4, fighter 4 instead of Samurai/Barbarian/Something else), and the only other holdover was Breya, Michelle's rogue. We also had a bear warrior 'Garden' (pronounced 'Gar-DAN') played by Dave, a paladin 'Alaric' by Josh, a wizardess 'Dawn' played by Ed (gender-shifted at the last second for some reason) and my own 'Ethan', a halfling psion. I was the only non-human -- which makes me wonder, 'why does Tom keep complaining that humans are too weak, when EVERYONE plays them?'.
I rolled randomly for my alignment, and got 'Lawful Neutral', which seemed appropriate enough.
The mission they were given was to travel to the pirate isles by ship to find some missing archaeologists who had vanished while investigating a dimensional distortion, as well as the first recovery team that had also disappeared without a trace -- explaining why such powerful members of the adventurer's guild were being sent on the quest. Their leader was Alaric, whose sister had headed up the recovery team. The distortion kept the party from just teleporting in.
The first day of travel went well, but on the second they were attacked by a pair of dragons. The dragons were hideously outmatched, even though none of the party's fighters (except for Breya) had any form of ranged attack. Dawn made Garden fly, and turned Hiko into a gargoyle, while Ethan summoned a winged construct -- an ectoplasmic angel. There were also some spells flung around.
At any rate, the smaller dragon was grappled by the construct, and swarmed by the flying fighters who grievously wounded her, and forced her to dive underwater, where she escaped the construct and swam off. The larger dragon swooped in for an attack run... and was trapped in Dawn's force-cage. Since the cage would last about 26 hours, they just sailed off and left it there.
The next day it was misty and nasty. Ethan was below decks, so he was the last to know about the pirate attack. They came in from both sides, archers and mages lining the railings, slaughtering the ship's crew and mildly annoying the adventurers. Dawn took out most of one pirate ship's complement with a prismatic spray, while the other's was devastated by a summoned construct, a cold-bolt, an angry bear warrior, and a HOLY-FSCK smite by Alaric which killed the pirate captain in... well, in *two* blows.
The few survivors surrendered. Dawn teleported back to town and fetched some city guardsmen, who agreed to take the pirates into custody and force them to sail the captured pirate ships back to port, where they'd be auctioned off, with the party receiving a portion of the proceeds.
That still left the party's ship severely under-crewed, but it only one more day to their destination, and after fixing up the damage from the battle they once more got underway, and made landfall without further incident.
previous session, different campaign next session
The battle against the pirates took up most of the session, because there were SO MANY enemies -- two dozen 6th level fighters (fodder) and 8 named enemies (also fodder, to tell the truth).
Each battle as a psion took up about a quarter of my power points in two rounds of activity. Of course, I was casting multiple spells per round... still, not a lot of staying power. The constructs were really strong, though -- Alaric noted that going by pure melee stats, they were better than him.
And yes, both fights ended in two rounds of actual combat (after several rounds of preparation and maneuvering).
