Have fun storming the castle!
May. 20th, 2004 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight Jeff ran another session of the Dragonlance game. Last time we tracked the elven kidnappers to a fortress in the ruins of a city on the edge of the dragon overlord Frost's domain. This session we tried to go rescue some elves, and succeeded so easily that we decided to bite off more than we could chew, and ended up getting a bit chewed on.
While the party finalized their plans to assault the camp, Sonnet spotted a storm on the horizon. Soon, a cold windy snowstorm reduced visibility to nil, making it truly unpleasant to be outside -- but providing a unique opportunity to the would-be raiders. Maybe their plan would actually succeed!
And the first part did. The two frost giants guarding the outdoor elf cage were killed by fireballs, whose flashes were masked by the power of Morgan's luckstone, and the elves lifted out of the cage by an enlarged Kijj, and removed safely to the prepared rendezvous point.
But there were only three elves left in the cage -- the others had already been taken inside.
At that point, Mike wanted to bug out to Wayreth to get reinforcements, but everyone else thought that the snowstorm might be their only chance to raid the central tower without waking up the entire outer camp, and fighting hundreds of giants and ogres.
They let Kijj do the planning, so the plan was simple -- 'walk in a straight line through the camp to the nearest part of the tower's surrounding wall, then throw a rope over'. With the luckstone's illusions covering up the ogre barracks' windows without being obvious, and the 30 foot visibility of the storm, this actually worked pretty well.
The sun had set by this point, though, so the dogs were out, and attacked the party as they perched on the tower's outer wall, discussing the next step. One leapt up onto the wall to breathe supernatural cold all over the party, and was slain in a single (lucky) blow by Kijj's spear. The other spent some time dogfighting with Sawyer, and was scorching-rayed into oblivion. The opening to the doghouse was just below the spot where they'd climbed up the wall, and inside was the half-dragon winter wolves' nest, with a small horde, which the party quickly appropriated.
There were two doors out of the dog house, leading into the tower proper. After failing a listen check, and succeeding at open locks, Morgan opened one of them, and was instantly lightning bolted and magic-missiled twice, taking no damage. That set the tone for the entire battle against the five draconians waiting in ambush -- Mike countered the Aurak's spells, after blowing up the bozaks with a fireball, and the sivaks were easily slain in melee. The Aurak didn't even have time to dimension door away before being spitted on Kijj's spear...
Like many draconians, Auraks explode when they die. Unlike most, they explode more than once. This particular Aurak's chain of explosions seemed to follow the party (and Kijj in particular) with a vicious cruelty, before finally bouncing right through the wall of the tower and into the ogre barracks, to wake up the guards (painfully!) as a last act of spite.
The party heard stirring in the rooms around them, but instead of running immediately (running out to meet a barracks full of angry ogres while low on health didn't seem wise), stopped for a round to heal the grievous wounds from the Aurak's multiple explosions, and braced to fight the oncoming reinforcements.
The reinforcements consisted of six dragonspawn ogres from the kennel direction (via the door they didn't take), and four giants from farther into the tower. Murphy used his staff to wall-of-force the ogres out, while the party faced down the giants.
Gogo (Murphy's cohort) was dropped in the first round of combat, but Morgan, with Mike's Aegis on him, managed to survive a bit better. Kijj was surprised by the frost giants great-cleaving his mirror image to nothing, then bringing him to the brink of death... but then the giants were down, fireballs and scorching rays and rapiers and spears and flaming arrows from Sonnet's bow having taken their toll. Everyone was hurt, though, and in less than a minute the wall of force would drop, and the ogres would be on them...
They *actually* had less than ten seconds, though, before four of the ogres swarmed into the room. The fifth hung back to chuck a javelin... and the sixth ran off, yelling in draconic that he was 'going to fetch the blue bosses!'
The party was *not* in any shape to fight off ogre mages, so they decided to beat a fighting retreat. Three of the ogres were killed as the party maneuvered around to escape back to the wall without routing, and the other two delayed for a few critical seconds by a web spell and some pathetic animals from one of Sonnet's backup Bags of Tricks.
The whole party got back up onto the wall before the ogres could come out after them, and while they didn't *see* any ogres lying in wait from the Aurakked barracks, the snowstorm meant that they wouldn't -- it worked both ways. So Sawyer/Sonnet and Murphy/Gogo used Fly spells to sail gracefully into the air and out of the camp, while Kijj picked up Morgan and Mike and dimension-doored out of the camp.
And into the ocean. Luckily, he was a strong swimmer, and had another dimension door to get them back onto land. And prestidigitation was able to dry wet clothing before anyone froze to death in the snowstorm. And after getting an explanation of what Kijj'd tried to do, Morgan was able to lead them back to the rendezvous.
"Wow, we really managed to do a lot of damage," Mike remarked, "We should go back tomorrow."
last session | next session
The DM had me make a spellcraft check to accurately aim the dimension door out of the city from the top of the wall without ending up in midair. I got a total of -1. Note to self: Restrict dimension door to line of sight in the future. Oh, wait, that was already my policy, I just forgot. }:P
While the party finalized their plans to assault the camp, Sonnet spotted a storm on the horizon. Soon, a cold windy snowstorm reduced visibility to nil, making it truly unpleasant to be outside -- but providing a unique opportunity to the would-be raiders. Maybe their plan would actually succeed!
And the first part did. The two frost giants guarding the outdoor elf cage were killed by fireballs, whose flashes were masked by the power of Morgan's luckstone, and the elves lifted out of the cage by an enlarged Kijj, and removed safely to the prepared rendezvous point.
But there were only three elves left in the cage -- the others had already been taken inside.
At that point, Mike wanted to bug out to Wayreth to get reinforcements, but everyone else thought that the snowstorm might be their only chance to raid the central tower without waking up the entire outer camp, and fighting hundreds of giants and ogres.
They let Kijj do the planning, so the plan was simple -- 'walk in a straight line through the camp to the nearest part of the tower's surrounding wall, then throw a rope over'. With the luckstone's illusions covering up the ogre barracks' windows without being obvious, and the 30 foot visibility of the storm, this actually worked pretty well.
The sun had set by this point, though, so the dogs were out, and attacked the party as they perched on the tower's outer wall, discussing the next step. One leapt up onto the wall to breathe supernatural cold all over the party, and was slain in a single (lucky) blow by Kijj's spear. The other spent some time dogfighting with Sawyer, and was scorching-rayed into oblivion. The opening to the doghouse was just below the spot where they'd climbed up the wall, and inside was the half-dragon winter wolves' nest, with a small horde, which the party quickly appropriated.
There were two doors out of the dog house, leading into the tower proper. After failing a listen check, and succeeding at open locks, Morgan opened one of them, and was instantly lightning bolted and magic-missiled twice, taking no damage. That set the tone for the entire battle against the five draconians waiting in ambush -- Mike countered the Aurak's spells, after blowing up the bozaks with a fireball, and the sivaks were easily slain in melee. The Aurak didn't even have time to dimension door away before being spitted on Kijj's spear...
Like many draconians, Auraks explode when they die. Unlike most, they explode more than once. This particular Aurak's chain of explosions seemed to follow the party (and Kijj in particular) with a vicious cruelty, before finally bouncing right through the wall of the tower and into the ogre barracks, to wake up the guards (painfully!) as a last act of spite.
The party heard stirring in the rooms around them, but instead of running immediately (running out to meet a barracks full of angry ogres while low on health didn't seem wise), stopped for a round to heal the grievous wounds from the Aurak's multiple explosions, and braced to fight the oncoming reinforcements.
The reinforcements consisted of six dragonspawn ogres from the kennel direction (via the door they didn't take), and four giants from farther into the tower. Murphy used his staff to wall-of-force the ogres out, while the party faced down the giants.
Gogo (Murphy's cohort) was dropped in the first round of combat, but Morgan, with Mike's Aegis on him, managed to survive a bit better. Kijj was surprised by the frost giants great-cleaving his mirror image to nothing, then bringing him to the brink of death... but then the giants were down, fireballs and scorching rays and rapiers and spears and flaming arrows from Sonnet's bow having taken their toll. Everyone was hurt, though, and in less than a minute the wall of force would drop, and the ogres would be on them...
They *actually* had less than ten seconds, though, before four of the ogres swarmed into the room. The fifth hung back to chuck a javelin... and the sixth ran off, yelling in draconic that he was 'going to fetch the blue bosses!'
The party was *not* in any shape to fight off ogre mages, so they decided to beat a fighting retreat. Three of the ogres were killed as the party maneuvered around to escape back to the wall without routing, and the other two delayed for a few critical seconds by a web spell and some pathetic animals from one of Sonnet's backup Bags of Tricks.
The whole party got back up onto the wall before the ogres could come out after them, and while they didn't *see* any ogres lying in wait from the Aurakked barracks, the snowstorm meant that they wouldn't -- it worked both ways. So Sawyer/Sonnet and Murphy/Gogo used Fly spells to sail gracefully into the air and out of the camp, while Kijj picked up Morgan and Mike and dimension-doored out of the camp.
And into the ocean. Luckily, he was a strong swimmer, and had another dimension door to get them back onto land. And prestidigitation was able to dry wet clothing before anyone froze to death in the snowstorm. And after getting an explanation of what Kijj'd tried to do, Morgan was able to lead them back to the rendezvous.
"Wow, we really managed to do a lot of damage," Mike remarked, "We should go back tomorrow."
last session | next session
The DM had me make a spellcraft check to accurately aim the dimension door out of the city from the top of the wall without ending up in midair. I got a total of -1. Note to self: Restrict dimension door to line of sight in the future. Oh, wait, that was already my policy, I just forgot. }:P
