...and then everyone died.
Dec. 5th, 2004 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothWe had a session of Tom's D+D demon-body-switching etc. campaign.
The party decided to wait out the wall of ice -- they didn't have any other minute per level spells up, and they figured the enemy might have just put them up. Plus, they didn't want to take the damage from crossing the wall. So they watched enemies swarming blurrily back and forth behind the seven foot thick wall for nine minues, until it finally came down.
As predicted, the enemy then attacked -- a mohrg (a skeletal creature with a paralyzing tentacle of intestine) backed up by a group of wights (energy-draining ghoulish things). Backed up by a dozen girillions (four-armed monkeys). Backed up by a squad of flesh golems, whose leader was part dragon and breathed acid.
These enemies were only potentially dangerous, but whittled away at the party -- with the exception of the mohrg, who was incredibly resistant to damage, and managed to paralyze Elrik (the energy-draining barbarian critter) with a lucky hit right at the beginning of combat. By the time the flesh golems came online, the cleric was reluctantly in the front lines, having been trapped there after failing to unparalyze him.
The party wanted the barbarian up to fight the golems, since he had the admantium axe -- the exotic, special-dwarven-weapon admantium axe, that only he could use to its full potential -- so they tried to delay the golems with a wall of ice to give him time to throw off the paralysis. Unfortunately, the golems were immune to such magics [for some reason, Wall of Ice is SR: yes] and smashed through the wall effortlessly.
So, with the party literally backed into a corner -- for Vlad (the sorcerer) had just put up another wall of ice to block an invisible assassin that his familiar had seen lurking to their rear -- the cleric activated Righteous Might, and between her, the paladin, and Felinne's now incredibly effective arrows -- it's amazing what getting your equipment back can do for you -- they managed to beat down all the golems. The only casualty, other than a few more of their remaining spells, was the shadow hound, who'd been caught behind the golems and eaten by the last wight.
Through the whole battle, a prisoner had been screaming and begging to be released, so the bard flew up and released him, triggering a massive electrical trap that he'd failed to spot. Which did nothing to him, as he was immune. The prisoner was a Vrock, but apparently hated the master of the tower even more than they did, and of course was willing to help a group of 'fellow demons' take him out.
But the party wasn't pausing to talk with him or kill him or whatever -- they had a haste up, and a bard song, and a righteous might, and suspected the master of the tower was in the very next room, and didn't want to waste these very short duration spells, so they pressed onwards. The wight who'd killed the shadow hound tried to give a threatening soliloquy and escape, but didn't do so well on the 'escape' part. They rushed past into a laboratory (which did NOT have the machine they were looking for) guarded by a large tombstone golem.
The golem didn't immediately attack them, so they got in position to whomp on it all at once -- except for Vlad and Cyris (the druid), who decided to open a different door, waking up another pair of flesh golems. Not a problem for the whole party, but too much for the two of them. Everyone ran back and took out the new threat, then... the spells expired. And they decided to heal up and such (and wait for Elrik to be unparalyzed) before pushing on any further.
They were really, really low on spells and resources, now, and decided that they didn't want to fight the tombstone golem -- so they tunneled through a wall using the admantium axe into a closet that they thought would let them bypass the lab -- and it would have, except that golem was smarter than they'd given it credit for, and came into the closet to pound them. It was big and scary, but it was also alone, and they managed to kill it without taking any losses (although not without taking any damage, and yet more of their limited resources were used up healing the whomps from the massive fists).
In the next room, they found the machine -- being disassembled by vampire spawn. They rushed in and disassembled the spawn before they could escape through the tree glyph in the wall, then ice-walled the glyph before the master of the tower could come through to retrieve the machine. Then put up a wall of stone over the glyph, after the ice-wall was fireballed. Then finished disassembling the machine, so that they could dimension door out, as planned.
"What?" said the Vrock, "You can't dimension door out of this place -- it's warded against teleportation. How do you think I was help prisoner?"
So, instead, they bickered about what to do. Enemies kept threatening to, well, threaten, but Vlad kept using charges off the staff of ice-wall to delay them and delay them so that they could bicker more. Eventually, they went with the very first plan they'd had, and used the admantium axe to carve a huge hole in the side of the building, and Vlad and three machine carriers lept out -- then dimension-doored to the ground after passing beyong the tower's walls. The Vrock carried one more person to the ground, and the bard and succubus archer flew up to the top of the tower to retrieve the three recovered bodies, then lept off the top (at the low point, on the far side) and featherfalled down to the ground.
But while they were doing that, those waiting below with the machine parts saw a trio of enemies featherfall down from the hole they'd carved -- a wight-like thing, a lichy wizard (the master), and the invisible assassin (which the familiar had seen before). They were a distance away, but instead of rushing to attack -- which would have coordinated them nicely with the other half of their party, who were ambling around the tower, unawares -- they held back and let the enemy cast a bunch of defensive spells. Like 'improved invisiblity'. They did put up a few spells of their own, like 'Invisibility Purge', but had little left -- they used what they had, though, figuring that if they didn't finish it now, they were finished in any case.
As Felinne, the bard, and the three bodies (the dominated paladin with a nonmagical sword and no armor, the charmed bard with no equipment at all and a 2 strength, and the unconscious and naked ranger) came around the corner, they charged! This didn't work as well as they'd hoped. The wight-thingie turned to intercept the second party, the assassin was, of course, already invisible and god-knows-where, and the wizard teleported to the machine to recover it.
So they turned right around and charged back. The cleric dispelled him, and got some important spells (like Displacement), but the lich-thing still had a stoneskin up, and a fly -- and flew up out of their reach, and cast an invisibility of his own. Not wanting to deal with an *invisible* flying wizard, Vlad had his familiar give the bard targetting coordinates, and the bard's last spell was used for a glitterdust to light him up. The assassin, at least, was ground-bound, and therefore vulnerable to the invisibility purge.
And, indeed, the assassin eventually blundered into the zone of no-invisibility and was swarmed and slaughtered by the mob of melee fighters who had no other targets. Vlad blew off his last few spells at the lich-thing, but didn't do much damage, since he appeared to resist every element. They really needed to get Felinne shooting at him, but she was 300 feet away and locked in combat with the wight. She did make short work of it (with some help from the paladin), but before she had a chance to really get going, he flung the illusion of her worst nightmare at her, and she failed to see through the phantasmal killer, and died.
Leaving the party with no ranged attackers and no spells left. At all. From anyone. Except for a single heal from the cleric, which *would* have been useful if it didn't require her to touch the target.
Oh, and the paladin, who'd been dominated by Felinne, was freed from her compulsion and now able to resume attacking the party.
last session
And that's where we had to stop. We didn't *exactly* finish the scenario, and didn't *exactly* end up with a TPK, but at the end of the day our chances for personal victory were pretty grim, although it was likely we'd be able to foil the enemy's plot by smashing the machine. Several people didn't want to play out the end two weeks from now (because it would be 'boring') (?) so we decided to summarize the ending and call it a game.
With Felinne down, the party couldn't take out the vampire-wizard, but he didn't have any especially devastating spells with which to kill all of them, or any reinforcements to call on for at least an hour (when the last vampire spawn killed, who'd never been staked, would be ready for action again). So he'd fly around overhead pinging them to death with magic missiles from a fully charged wand.
The party wouldn't stand for this -- if they couldn't carry the machine while running away (and they couldn't -- the flying wizard was faster) they'd give in and smash it -- maybe smashing the orb would release the souls that seemed to be trapped inside, and at the very least it would stop the enemies from taking over any more bodies. In actuality, this would reverse all the transformations, putting everyone back in their bodies.
Note that this was not a clear victory for them -- the barbarian would be just fine, since his body was in the castle, which would (after the machine was smashed) have only normal loyal humans in it. Pretty much everyone else was screwed.
Eric (the sorcerer) was most screwed, since his body had been polymorphed into a turtle and was still trapped somewhere in the tower. Turtles can't open doors. Or survive 300 foot falls. Or cast spells. He was toast, without help.
Felinne (the ranger) was of course dead, and would stay dead. In theory, she could be raised... but her body, along with the non-dead paladin and bard, would be in grave danger from the flying wizard and the gaggle of demons that had previously been the party -- who had all their equipment. Or at least all the equipment they'd found. There was little chance that a naked bard out of spells and songs and a paladin with a masterwork longsword would be able to fight off a full-powered marilith, hydra-demon, demonic harpy thing, energy-draining critter, and spiky thing. Oh, and throw in a Vrock. There wasn't even much hope that either of them would be able to run away and escape, since all the enemies were between them and the narrow chasm that provided the only exit from the area. Likely, they'd all be killed.
Meanwhile, the druid would be returned to his body... which was being stored in an anti-magic box in the middle of a camp full of what were now real demons. About 50 of them. He was probably toast too.
So, not *quite* a TPK.
Dave was angry that a player had been killed without doing anything 'stupid'. Um... high level D+D involves death spells -- not much the DM can do other than just not use them, really.
Eric was really angry that the enemy wizard chased us out of the tower when we were trying to run away. Oooookay. I didn't realize the ground outside was home base.
Eric was also really pissed that we'd been given misleading information about the machine, and had chosen to ignore the true hints, which left us in the position where to get a true win we needed to escape with the machine instead of just destroying it. So we were tricked into doing counterproductive things -- isn't that supposed to be a good thing? Eric's attitude towards plot and role playing (he seems to hate them both) annoys me sometimes.
The party decided to wait out the wall of ice -- they didn't have any other minute per level spells up, and they figured the enemy might have just put them up. Plus, they didn't want to take the damage from crossing the wall. So they watched enemies swarming blurrily back and forth behind the seven foot thick wall for nine minues, until it finally came down.
As predicted, the enemy then attacked -- a mohrg (a skeletal creature with a paralyzing tentacle of intestine) backed up by a group of wights (energy-draining ghoulish things). Backed up by a dozen girillions (four-armed monkeys). Backed up by a squad of flesh golems, whose leader was part dragon and breathed acid.
These enemies were only potentially dangerous, but whittled away at the party -- with the exception of the mohrg, who was incredibly resistant to damage, and managed to paralyze Elrik (the energy-draining barbarian critter) with a lucky hit right at the beginning of combat. By the time the flesh golems came online, the cleric was reluctantly in the front lines, having been trapped there after failing to unparalyze him.
The party wanted the barbarian up to fight the golems, since he had the admantium axe -- the exotic, special-dwarven-weapon admantium axe, that only he could use to its full potential -- so they tried to delay the golems with a wall of ice to give him time to throw off the paralysis. Unfortunately, the golems were immune to such magics [for some reason, Wall of Ice is SR: yes] and smashed through the wall effortlessly.
So, with the party literally backed into a corner -- for Vlad (the sorcerer) had just put up another wall of ice to block an invisible assassin that his familiar had seen lurking to their rear -- the cleric activated Righteous Might, and between her, the paladin, and Felinne's now incredibly effective arrows -- it's amazing what getting your equipment back can do for you -- they managed to beat down all the golems. The only casualty, other than a few more of their remaining spells, was the shadow hound, who'd been caught behind the golems and eaten by the last wight.
Through the whole battle, a prisoner had been screaming and begging to be released, so the bard flew up and released him, triggering a massive electrical trap that he'd failed to spot. Which did nothing to him, as he was immune. The prisoner was a Vrock, but apparently hated the master of the tower even more than they did, and of course was willing to help a group of 'fellow demons' take him out.
But the party wasn't pausing to talk with him or kill him or whatever -- they had a haste up, and a bard song, and a righteous might, and suspected the master of the tower was in the very next room, and didn't want to waste these very short duration spells, so they pressed onwards. The wight who'd killed the shadow hound tried to give a threatening soliloquy and escape, but didn't do so well on the 'escape' part. They rushed past into a laboratory (which did NOT have the machine they were looking for) guarded by a large tombstone golem.
The golem didn't immediately attack them, so they got in position to whomp on it all at once -- except for Vlad and Cyris (the druid), who decided to open a different door, waking up another pair of flesh golems. Not a problem for the whole party, but too much for the two of them. Everyone ran back and took out the new threat, then... the spells expired. And they decided to heal up and such (and wait for Elrik to be unparalyzed) before pushing on any further.
They were really, really low on spells and resources, now, and decided that they didn't want to fight the tombstone golem -- so they tunneled through a wall using the admantium axe into a closet that they thought would let them bypass the lab -- and it would have, except that golem was smarter than they'd given it credit for, and came into the closet to pound them. It was big and scary, but it was also alone, and they managed to kill it without taking any losses (although not without taking any damage, and yet more of their limited resources were used up healing the whomps from the massive fists).
In the next room, they found the machine -- being disassembled by vampire spawn. They rushed in and disassembled the spawn before they could escape through the tree glyph in the wall, then ice-walled the glyph before the master of the tower could come through to retrieve the machine. Then put up a wall of stone over the glyph, after the ice-wall was fireballed. Then finished disassembling the machine, so that they could dimension door out, as planned.
"What?" said the Vrock, "You can't dimension door out of this place -- it's warded against teleportation. How do you think I was help prisoner?"
So, instead, they bickered about what to do. Enemies kept threatening to, well, threaten, but Vlad kept using charges off the staff of ice-wall to delay them and delay them so that they could bicker more. Eventually, they went with the very first plan they'd had, and used the admantium axe to carve a huge hole in the side of the building, and Vlad and three machine carriers lept out -- then dimension-doored to the ground after passing beyong the tower's walls. The Vrock carried one more person to the ground, and the bard and succubus archer flew up to the top of the tower to retrieve the three recovered bodies, then lept off the top (at the low point, on the far side) and featherfalled down to the ground.
But while they were doing that, those waiting below with the machine parts saw a trio of enemies featherfall down from the hole they'd carved -- a wight-like thing, a lichy wizard (the master), and the invisible assassin (which the familiar had seen before). They were a distance away, but instead of rushing to attack -- which would have coordinated them nicely with the other half of their party, who were ambling around the tower, unawares -- they held back and let the enemy cast a bunch of defensive spells. Like 'improved invisiblity'. They did put up a few spells of their own, like 'Invisibility Purge', but had little left -- they used what they had, though, figuring that if they didn't finish it now, they were finished in any case.
As Felinne, the bard, and the three bodies (the dominated paladin with a nonmagical sword and no armor, the charmed bard with no equipment at all and a 2 strength, and the unconscious and naked ranger) came around the corner, they charged! This didn't work as well as they'd hoped. The wight-thingie turned to intercept the second party, the assassin was, of course, already invisible and god-knows-where, and the wizard teleported to the machine to recover it.
So they turned right around and charged back. The cleric dispelled him, and got some important spells (like Displacement), but the lich-thing still had a stoneskin up, and a fly -- and flew up out of their reach, and cast an invisibility of his own. Not wanting to deal with an *invisible* flying wizard, Vlad had his familiar give the bard targetting coordinates, and the bard's last spell was used for a glitterdust to light him up. The assassin, at least, was ground-bound, and therefore vulnerable to the invisibility purge.
And, indeed, the assassin eventually blundered into the zone of no-invisibility and was swarmed and slaughtered by the mob of melee fighters who had no other targets. Vlad blew off his last few spells at the lich-thing, but didn't do much damage, since he appeared to resist every element. They really needed to get Felinne shooting at him, but she was 300 feet away and locked in combat with the wight. She did make short work of it (with some help from the paladin), but before she had a chance to really get going, he flung the illusion of her worst nightmare at her, and she failed to see through the phantasmal killer, and died.
Leaving the party with no ranged attackers and no spells left. At all. From anyone. Except for a single heal from the cleric, which *would* have been useful if it didn't require her to touch the target.
Oh, and the paladin, who'd been dominated by Felinne, was freed from her compulsion and now able to resume attacking the party.
last session
And that's where we had to stop. We didn't *exactly* finish the scenario, and didn't *exactly* end up with a TPK, but at the end of the day our chances for personal victory were pretty grim, although it was likely we'd be able to foil the enemy's plot by smashing the machine. Several people didn't want to play out the end two weeks from now (because it would be 'boring') (?) so we decided to summarize the ending and call it a game.
With Felinne down, the party couldn't take out the vampire-wizard, but he didn't have any especially devastating spells with which to kill all of them, or any reinforcements to call on for at least an hour (when the last vampire spawn killed, who'd never been staked, would be ready for action again). So he'd fly around overhead pinging them to death with magic missiles from a fully charged wand.
The party wouldn't stand for this -- if they couldn't carry the machine while running away (and they couldn't -- the flying wizard was faster) they'd give in and smash it -- maybe smashing the orb would release the souls that seemed to be trapped inside, and at the very least it would stop the enemies from taking over any more bodies. In actuality, this would reverse all the transformations, putting everyone back in their bodies.
Note that this was not a clear victory for them -- the barbarian would be just fine, since his body was in the castle, which would (after the machine was smashed) have only normal loyal humans in it. Pretty much everyone else was screwed.
Eric (the sorcerer) was most screwed, since his body had been polymorphed into a turtle and was still trapped somewhere in the tower. Turtles can't open doors. Or survive 300 foot falls. Or cast spells. He was toast, without help.
Felinne (the ranger) was of course dead, and would stay dead. In theory, she could be raised... but her body, along with the non-dead paladin and bard, would be in grave danger from the flying wizard and the gaggle of demons that had previously been the party -- who had all their equipment. Or at least all the equipment they'd found. There was little chance that a naked bard out of spells and songs and a paladin with a masterwork longsword would be able to fight off a full-powered marilith, hydra-demon, demonic harpy thing, energy-draining critter, and spiky thing. Oh, and throw in a Vrock. There wasn't even much hope that either of them would be able to run away and escape, since all the enemies were between them and the narrow chasm that provided the only exit from the area. Likely, they'd all be killed.
Meanwhile, the druid would be returned to his body... which was being stored in an anti-magic box in the middle of a camp full of what were now real demons. About 50 of them. He was probably toast too.
So, not *quite* a TPK.
Dave was angry that a player had been killed without doing anything 'stupid'. Um... high level D+D involves death spells -- not much the DM can do other than just not use them, really.
Eric was really angry that the enemy wizard chased us out of the tower when we were trying to run away. Oooookay. I didn't realize the ground outside was home base.
Eric was also really pissed that we'd been given misleading information about the machine, and had chosen to ignore the true hints, which left us in the position where to get a true win we needed to escape with the machine instead of just destroying it. So we were tricked into doing counterproductive things -- isn't that supposed to be a good thing? Eric's attitude towards plot and role playing (he seems to hate them both) annoys me sometimes.
