I'm not dead! I'm just... resting!
May. 23rd, 2004 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothToday we had the sunday D+D game, back on Sunday now due to the lack of any intervening holiday. Eric's running HIS stargate game, which involves fewer animated paint smears than the stargate game on Fridays, and more Githyanki.
We fought a WHOOOOOLE bunch of Githyanki. I think we were originally supposed to fight a mix of Giths and Devils, before Erik discovered that the 'protection from evil 10' radius' spells Alaric and Dawn have been keeping up routinely rendered them almost entirely ineffective.
After the surviving naga fled through the portal its less fortunate sibling had opened, Dawn dismissed the black tentacles, and a bunch of prying eyes were sent through, along with Ethan's astral construct. None of them returned, possibly because the portal slammed shut just after they flew through.
A little searching revealed the control panel for the portal behind a pillar, with the combination the naga had entered with its tongue all cold and slimy and covered in naga spit. There were only so many sequences those four buttons could be pushed in, so eventually they re-opened the portal, and Dawn sent a prying eye she'd saved through, with orders to come right back. It didn't come back.
A brief discussion ensued, and the party decided that if the portal led to certain and instant destruction, the naga wouldn't have been so quick to flee through it -- therefore, it was probably just a one-way portal. But since creatures from the other side had been reported in the archaeologists' notes back at camp, there had to be *some* way back. So they all went through, ready for trouble.
And trouble waited. Ethan had just about enough time to say 'Watch out, there's a bunch of invisible cats!' before the hellcats pounced on the party, bouncing off the circles of protection Alaric and Dawn had up. Alaric did an invisibility purge, Dawn did a prismatic spray, and that was about that -- the spray took out the three githyanki controlling the cats, and what cats weren't slaughtered by Garden, Breya and Hiko turned and fled. Since they were invisible again as soon as they moved out of the purge, there wasn't a lot the party could do to stop them.
In the same room as the portal, Alaric's sister Aliera was held prisoner inside a wall of force. Ethan offered to disintegrate it, but Aliera had shoulder-surfed the combination to open it, so they did that instead. In another bubble was the leader of the archaeologists, who they also rescued, for completeness if nothing else.
Aliera pointed them to the control panel for the gate, but the same sequence didn't open it from this side, and neither did the reverse, or any other obvious permutation. They weren't trapped, really -- Ethan knew Plane Shift, and could take them home -- but it meant they couldn't send the archaeologist home by himself. He wanted to hide in the portal chamber, but they told him they weren't sure they'd be coming back to it, so he reluctantly agreed to come with them.
Meanwhile, Dawn's prying eyes were finally able to find her to report, but didn't have much to show besides a general layout of the place, the not-entirely-shocking news that it was full of githyanki, and the location of a really big, scary looking ruby-colored golem up some stairs, behind two sets of double doors. "Let's avoid that area," Ethan said, recognizing it as a device designed especially for killing psions. Surely, the remaining prisoners would be held in some corner of the complex, and not in such a central, well-guarded area.
So they decided to get some prisoners to interrogate. Breya listened carefully at doors until she heard voices on the other side, then the party opened the door and rushed in!
But it was an ambush! The gith had been *waiting* for them to try something like that, and half a dozen of them teleported in around the party and attacked. Again, Dawn's prismatic spray (shaped to avoid hitting party members) was more or less all she wrote, even if the rest of the party had mop-up to do. Dawn was pretty badly hurt before getting her spray off, though, and Gardan (who'd fought the two githyanki in the room) realized he hadn't gotten healed after the LAST fight, and was consequently in pretty bad shape. That was fixable, though -- Alaric had enough healing to go around.
One of the githyanki had been taken alive, but the party wasn't sure how they'd be able to question him -- as soon as he was awake, he'd just dimension door away. Ethan suggested coating him in the quintessence he always kept on the end of his staff, to render him timeless, then storing him in their bag of holding until they could memorize the proper spells to deal with him. Then realized that they didn't *have* a bag of holding.
So they killed him, and decided that questioning the githyanki was not going to happen, and that their new plan was to kill everything they came across that wasn't one of the prisoners they were looking for.
They decided to bypass all the little rooms off the main hall, and look into the more unique areas at the corners. After exploring a laboratory with frustratingly little in the way of clues or prisoners, they passed the main hall to head to the next point of interest, and were fireballed. Coldballed, rather.
A githyanki psion hovered in midair, 200 feet down the main corridor, with a rank of gith warriors blocking the path to him. Most of the party charged towards the enemy, spreading out in the process so as not to be fireball bait a second time, while Dawn scurried up into a rope trick, nursing her last four hit points, and Ethan stood looking stupid and trying to shake off a really bad init roll.
The psion disintegrated Gardan -- thankfully unsuccessfully, despite a critical hit on the ray -- and the warriors moved to surround and isolate Gardan, Hiko, and Alaric. Things looked bad, so Ethan decided to try to end the largest threat in one fell strike -- a quickened Dispel Psionics, followed by a Crystallize.
"It's quickened, and augmented four points, which gives me +18 on the caster level checks."
"You can get a better bonus than your level?"
"Yeah, each point is +2." [rolling ensues] "Got it, got it, got it, got it, missed that one."
"Ah, you missed his Reddopsi. You're lucky it doesn't affect dispel magic -- it would have bounced it right back at you."
"Eheh. Does it affect Crystallize?"
Dawn saw Ethan turn to crystal out the door of her rope trick, and decided that despite her imminent demise, it might be wise to participate in the fight, as the surviving arcane caster. She poked her head out the door and disintegrated the psion -- who failed his save, but survived... so Aliera had to finish him off with a magic missile.
Without magical support, the githyanki warriors remained fearsome opponents, but were eventually overcome by the combined efforts of the various meleers in the party. When the dust cleared, the party took stock, and except for the borderline case of Ethan, everyone was alive, even the archaologist.
They weren't ready for another fight, though, and wouldn't be for some time -- they didn't even have enough healing left to get the tanks back up to speed, and until they leveled up (and had a higher level caster to dispel the crystallize) Ethan would stay a statue. And thus unable to plane shift them back to the material, where they could rest safely.
Hopefully, the githyanki had suffered enough losses to leave them alone for the time they needed, and they could hole up somewhere in a corner of the complex.
last session | next session
I managed to somehow escape injury this entire session as well, until I turned myself to stone. What a way to ruin a winning streak!
We fought a WHOOOOOLE bunch of Githyanki. I think we were originally supposed to fight a mix of Giths and Devils, before Erik discovered that the 'protection from evil 10' radius' spells Alaric and Dawn have been keeping up routinely rendered them almost entirely ineffective.
After the surviving naga fled through the portal its less fortunate sibling had opened, Dawn dismissed the black tentacles, and a bunch of prying eyes were sent through, along with Ethan's astral construct. None of them returned, possibly because the portal slammed shut just after they flew through.
A little searching revealed the control panel for the portal behind a pillar, with the combination the naga had entered with its tongue all cold and slimy and covered in naga spit. There were only so many sequences those four buttons could be pushed in, so eventually they re-opened the portal, and Dawn sent a prying eye she'd saved through, with orders to come right back. It didn't come back.
A brief discussion ensued, and the party decided that if the portal led to certain and instant destruction, the naga wouldn't have been so quick to flee through it -- therefore, it was probably just a one-way portal. But since creatures from the other side had been reported in the archaeologists' notes back at camp, there had to be *some* way back. So they all went through, ready for trouble.
And trouble waited. Ethan had just about enough time to say 'Watch out, there's a bunch of invisible cats!' before the hellcats pounced on the party, bouncing off the circles of protection Alaric and Dawn had up. Alaric did an invisibility purge, Dawn did a prismatic spray, and that was about that -- the spray took out the three githyanki controlling the cats, and what cats weren't slaughtered by Garden, Breya and Hiko turned and fled. Since they were invisible again as soon as they moved out of the purge, there wasn't a lot the party could do to stop them.
In the same room as the portal, Alaric's sister Aliera was held prisoner inside a wall of force. Ethan offered to disintegrate it, but Aliera had shoulder-surfed the combination to open it, so they did that instead. In another bubble was the leader of the archaeologists, who they also rescued, for completeness if nothing else.
Aliera pointed them to the control panel for the gate, but the same sequence didn't open it from this side, and neither did the reverse, or any other obvious permutation. They weren't trapped, really -- Ethan knew Plane Shift, and could take them home -- but it meant they couldn't send the archaeologist home by himself. He wanted to hide in the portal chamber, but they told him they weren't sure they'd be coming back to it, so he reluctantly agreed to come with them.
Meanwhile, Dawn's prying eyes were finally able to find her to report, but didn't have much to show besides a general layout of the place, the not-entirely-shocking news that it was full of githyanki, and the location of a really big, scary looking ruby-colored golem up some stairs, behind two sets of double doors. "Let's avoid that area," Ethan said, recognizing it as a device designed especially for killing psions. Surely, the remaining prisoners would be held in some corner of the complex, and not in such a central, well-guarded area.
So they decided to get some prisoners to interrogate. Breya listened carefully at doors until she heard voices on the other side, then the party opened the door and rushed in!
But it was an ambush! The gith had been *waiting* for them to try something like that, and half a dozen of them teleported in around the party and attacked. Again, Dawn's prismatic spray (shaped to avoid hitting party members) was more or less all she wrote, even if the rest of the party had mop-up to do. Dawn was pretty badly hurt before getting her spray off, though, and Gardan (who'd fought the two githyanki in the room) realized he hadn't gotten healed after the LAST fight, and was consequently in pretty bad shape. That was fixable, though -- Alaric had enough healing to go around.
One of the githyanki had been taken alive, but the party wasn't sure how they'd be able to question him -- as soon as he was awake, he'd just dimension door away. Ethan suggested coating him in the quintessence he always kept on the end of his staff, to render him timeless, then storing him in their bag of holding until they could memorize the proper spells to deal with him. Then realized that they didn't *have* a bag of holding.
So they killed him, and decided that questioning the githyanki was not going to happen, and that their new plan was to kill everything they came across that wasn't one of the prisoners they were looking for.
They decided to bypass all the little rooms off the main hall, and look into the more unique areas at the corners. After exploring a laboratory with frustratingly little in the way of clues or prisoners, they passed the main hall to head to the next point of interest, and were fireballed. Coldballed, rather.
A githyanki psion hovered in midair, 200 feet down the main corridor, with a rank of gith warriors blocking the path to him. Most of the party charged towards the enemy, spreading out in the process so as not to be fireball bait a second time, while Dawn scurried up into a rope trick, nursing her last four hit points, and Ethan stood looking stupid and trying to shake off a really bad init roll.
The psion disintegrated Gardan -- thankfully unsuccessfully, despite a critical hit on the ray -- and the warriors moved to surround and isolate Gardan, Hiko, and Alaric. Things looked bad, so Ethan decided to try to end the largest threat in one fell strike -- a quickened Dispel Psionics, followed by a Crystallize.
"It's quickened, and augmented four points, which gives me +18 on the caster level checks."
"You can get a better bonus than your level?"
"Yeah, each point is +2." [rolling ensues] "Got it, got it, got it, got it, missed that one."
"Ah, you missed his Reddopsi. You're lucky it doesn't affect dispel magic -- it would have bounced it right back at you."
"Eheh. Does it affect Crystallize?"
Dawn saw Ethan turn to crystal out the door of her rope trick, and decided that despite her imminent demise, it might be wise to participate in the fight, as the surviving arcane caster. She poked her head out the door and disintegrated the psion -- who failed his save, but survived... so Aliera had to finish him off with a magic missile.
Without magical support, the githyanki warriors remained fearsome opponents, but were eventually overcome by the combined efforts of the various meleers in the party. When the dust cleared, the party took stock, and except for the borderline case of Ethan, everyone was alive, even the archaologist.
They weren't ready for another fight, though, and wouldn't be for some time -- they didn't even have enough healing left to get the tanks back up to speed, and until they leveled up (and had a higher level caster to dispel the crystallize) Ethan would stay a statue. And thus unable to plane shift them back to the material, where they could rest safely.
Hopefully, the githyanki had suffered enough losses to leave them alone for the time they needed, and they could hole up somewhere in a corner of the complex.
last session | next session
I managed to somehow escape injury this entire session as well, until I turned myself to stone. What a way to ruin a winning streak!
