Laughter is the Worst Medicine
Sep. 4th, 2007 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothSunday, we had a session of Eric's Eberron campaign. We basically finished the module, although we might want to loot the rest of the ruin some more later, since we skipped so much of it.
The party 'snuck' up on the location they'd located one of the stolen schemas in, and found what looked like a researcher working with papers.
R: "Who are you?"
Z: "Who are you?"
R: "I'm a reasearcher. What are you doing here?"
I: "Tracking down some theives who stole some property of our employer's. Do you work for the Emerald Claw?"
R: "Well... yes. They forced me to work for them, under threat of death."
Z: "Ah! So threatening you will make you do what people tell you to, then?"
R: "As my rebuttal, let me drink this potion of invisibility."
Z: "My, what a cogent argument! Allow me to respond with a Glitterdust!"
- nothing happens -
Z: "Damn, you move fast."
R's voice: "Guards! Guards! Kill the interlopers!"
The guards ran out of a side corridor to attack the party, but Ignaceous summoned a dretch which cast a stinking cloud on them, taking two out of the fight immediately and forcing the others to scatter. Most of them were easy meat, but their leader was a fearsome warforged, in every way Heyyou's equal, except that she'd brought a bunch of weak-ass goons to the table, while Heyyou had a bard to give him +3 on attacks and damage with her bard song, and a mage to give his opponent -3 on attacks and damage with a ray of enfeeblement.
So it was hardly a fair fight. No one even took damage, which was good because the cleric spent the whole fight trying to pinpoint the invisible 'researcher' with Detect Magic. He did manage to get close enough to hear her read a strange chant from atop the giant throne they were fighting near. He wrote it down, and Moroni (remember Moroni? Cht'cht's cohort-or-something-because-he-didn't-actually-take-leadership?) recognized them as the names the giants gave to constellations.
As it turned out, all it really was was the keywords to activate the throne and have it teleport you to the place where the fourth schema was located. The 'researcher' was already there, of course, now in his true form as the white-faced vampire-looking thing that had tried to kill them with an airship -- apparently, he was one of those shapechanging half-doppleganger creeps Eberron has skulking about. He was also totally insane, talking to the three schemas and the creation pattern he'd stolen, until he got angry and threw it into the air like a frisbee.
Then he tried to attack the party, which didn't work at all. Eric refused to even run the combat, because it was just 'squish'. He was a mastermind, not an actual combatant.
Finding the fourth schema was easy -- it was on a big glowing pillar over there, along with a whole bunch of other schemas. Finding the first three was harder -- they'd been scattered and skittered away after falling out of the big metal frisbee-like creation pattern, and the room was full of pillars and wires. After an hour or so of searching, though, the party found them, and then, as they'd all been mind-controlled in the meantime, assembled the four pieces and activated the huge golem that tried to kill them.
"Zebu's mind is complete... and now Zebu has a body!"
Zebu's giant warforged body was really scary, and his three attacks per round for 15-25 damage each were even scarier. The party cast all their buff spells, while Ignaceous summoned a series of creatures to get in Zebu's way and slow him down.
I: "Er... I'm all out of good spells. Here, I can summon a medium monstrous centipede, he'll at least have to go around it instead of just stepping over."
Z: "Speedbump, I choose you!"
Cht'cht was the first to fall, but Zeffy -- emboldened by her mirror images -- tumbled in and healed him... at which point he tumbled out and drank a potion. Heyyou took three solid hits and calculated that there was a slim possibility that another round of combat would kill him, so he turned tail and fled. Efneisien was off to the side tossing magic bullets at the thing ineffectually, despite his +16 to-hit and +10 damage from assorted spells and effects.
This left Zeffy by herself to tank the thing, so she decided that a giant warforged was still a warforged, and tried out Tasha's Hideous Laughter on him... and somehow, it worked. The party had 36 seconds to beat on Zebu while he rolled on the floor laughing, and that was about 24 seconds more than they needed to smash him to bits, once they were able to focus on dealing damage instead of running away in terror.
Efneisien: "What other tricks do you have up your sleeve?"
Zeffy: "At the moment... nothing. That was my last spell."
So, victorious, they pried the (probably useless) schemas from the monster's chest, and... the suggestion hit them again, trying to get them rebuild the warforged. Luckily, this was something they were totally unable to do. The only way they could possibly rebuild it would be to get the schemas back to House Cannith, whose experts would be able to interpret them.
Or something. Basically, Eric didn't think we'd be able to ever escape the DC 25 suggestion spells hitting every round and lasting for 20 hours at a stretch -- especially since escaping involved climbing up a 50-foot giant's staircase to get to the exit, which would take several minutes at best -- so he decided that eventually we'd be able to escape, somehow.
last session | next session
The party 'snuck' up on the location they'd located one of the stolen schemas in, and found what looked like a researcher working with papers.
R: "Who are you?"
Z: "Who are you?"
R: "I'm a reasearcher. What are you doing here?"
I: "Tracking down some theives who stole some property of our employer's. Do you work for the Emerald Claw?"
R: "Well... yes. They forced me to work for them, under threat of death."
Z: "Ah! So threatening you will make you do what people tell you to, then?"
R: "As my rebuttal, let me drink this potion of invisibility."
Z: "My, what a cogent argument! Allow me to respond with a Glitterdust!"
- nothing happens -
Z: "Damn, you move fast."
R's voice: "Guards! Guards! Kill the interlopers!"
The guards ran out of a side corridor to attack the party, but Ignaceous summoned a dretch which cast a stinking cloud on them, taking two out of the fight immediately and forcing the others to scatter. Most of them were easy meat, but their leader was a fearsome warforged, in every way Heyyou's equal, except that she'd brought a bunch of weak-ass goons to the table, while Heyyou had a bard to give him +3 on attacks and damage with her bard song, and a mage to give his opponent -3 on attacks and damage with a ray of enfeeblement.
So it was hardly a fair fight. No one even took damage, which was good because the cleric spent the whole fight trying to pinpoint the invisible 'researcher' with Detect Magic. He did manage to get close enough to hear her read a strange chant from atop the giant throne they were fighting near. He wrote it down, and Moroni (remember Moroni? Cht'cht's cohort-or-something-because-he-didn't-actually-take-leadership?) recognized them as the names the giants gave to constellations.
As it turned out, all it really was was the keywords to activate the throne and have it teleport you to the place where the fourth schema was located. The 'researcher' was already there, of course, now in his true form as the white-faced vampire-looking thing that had tried to kill them with an airship -- apparently, he was one of those shapechanging half-doppleganger creeps Eberron has skulking about. He was also totally insane, talking to the three schemas and the creation pattern he'd stolen, until he got angry and threw it into the air like a frisbee.
Then he tried to attack the party, which didn't work at all. Eric refused to even run the combat, because it was just 'squish'. He was a mastermind, not an actual combatant.
Finding the fourth schema was easy -- it was on a big glowing pillar over there, along with a whole bunch of other schemas. Finding the first three was harder -- they'd been scattered and skittered away after falling out of the big metal frisbee-like creation pattern, and the room was full of pillars and wires. After an hour or so of searching, though, the party found them, and then, as they'd all been mind-controlled in the meantime, assembled the four pieces and activated the huge golem that tried to kill them.
"Zebu's mind is complete... and now Zebu has a body!"
Zebu's giant warforged body was really scary, and his three attacks per round for 15-25 damage each were even scarier. The party cast all their buff spells, while Ignaceous summoned a series of creatures to get in Zebu's way and slow him down.
I: "Er... I'm all out of good spells. Here, I can summon a medium monstrous centipede, he'll at least have to go around it instead of just stepping over."
Z: "Speedbump, I choose you!"
Cht'cht was the first to fall, but Zeffy -- emboldened by her mirror images -- tumbled in and healed him... at which point he tumbled out and drank a potion. Heyyou took three solid hits and calculated that there was a slim possibility that another round of combat would kill him, so he turned tail and fled. Efneisien was off to the side tossing magic bullets at the thing ineffectually, despite his +16 to-hit and +10 damage from assorted spells and effects.
This left Zeffy by herself to tank the thing, so she decided that a giant warforged was still a warforged, and tried out Tasha's Hideous Laughter on him... and somehow, it worked. The party had 36 seconds to beat on Zebu while he rolled on the floor laughing, and that was about 24 seconds more than they needed to smash him to bits, once they were able to focus on dealing damage instead of running away in terror.
Efneisien: "What other tricks do you have up your sleeve?"
Zeffy: "At the moment... nothing. That was my last spell."
So, victorious, they pried the (probably useless) schemas from the monster's chest, and... the suggestion hit them again, trying to get them rebuild the warforged. Luckily, this was something they were totally unable to do. The only way they could possibly rebuild it would be to get the schemas back to House Cannith, whose experts would be able to interpret them.
Or something. Basically, Eric didn't think we'd be able to ever escape the DC 25 suggestion spells hitting every round and lasting for 20 hours at a stretch -- especially since escaping involved climbing up a 50-foot giant's staircase to get to the exit, which would take several minutes at best -- so he decided that eventually we'd be able to escape, somehow.
last session | next session
