After three weeks away we got back to some D&D 4e and the final encounter of the (somewhat wayward) campaign.
I wanted a boss monster but my experience with solos had been a mixed bag. What I really wanted to do was give them an encounter in which would tax them on a tactical level and also push the party. Their opponent was the shade beneath Zendicon; Mirescythe.
Mirescythe was a solo-lurker with some nasty tricks behind him, he was accompanied by 3 Urn Minions who constantly buffed him with various effects and occasionally attacked the party. They took on Mirescythe in a room on many levels which made the most of their crafty opponents ability to teleport around and generally make life difficult for them.
The Urns were marked with symbolsthe p[arty recognised: Vigour, Unhallowing and Onslaught. Vigour stored temporary Hp for Mirescythe (leeched by his Vampiric Scythe on a critical), Unhollowing blocked the Channel Divinity class feature (Specifically to stop Katarakis from nullifying my criticals, as he had done all campaign) and Onslaught recharged Mirescythes powers one at a time.
Mirescythe himself had lots of tricks. Being undead he had Vulnerability 5 to Radiant Damage, however the Pattern Shift power would swap his Radiant Vulnerability and his Necrotic Resistance for a turn. However as a minor action this competed with Mirescythe's ability to revive an urn and so was little used. Apart from this Mirescythe had an evil 'channel divinity' power (Golghezel's Pillar) along with a burst daze attack, a ranged attack and his nasty hit-teleport which he employed to brutal effect.
In the opening round he teleported across the room and his Skurmesh Anklebiter with a critical, at this point Katarakis realised he couldn't channel divinity and the strike dropped Skurmesh to just under his bloodied value. The players looked on aghast as Mirescythe teleported away to safety, and thus began a cagey few rounds as the party tried to draw a bead on the errant monster and his urns, during this time Mirescythe threw out a few nasty tricks including using his hit-teleport to perform hit and run attacks whilst the Urn of Onslaught kept recharging the power, he also tossed in a few action points to teleport, hit-teleport and then launch his ranged attack.
The party to their credit did well, with a Warlord and two Paladins they are exceptionally resilient and as ever Caradoc's ability to draw the worst of the damage onto himself (Absorbing most of Golghezel's Pillar, for example) eased the worst of the party's sufferring. The big problem was their enemy's mobility but Celavorn and Du'nn'o's ranged attacks kept the damage ticking over, Skurmesh also made great use of his ability to grant his allies extra attacks (the Helm of Heroes turning them from base attacks into standard actions, this helm is a must for any Warlord!) and stayed in the middle for the occasional buff or heal.
Katarakis also deserves mention for granting most of the party a +4 to all damage rolls at the start of the encounter and then making Mirescythe even more vulnerable to Radiant damage.
All in all this party's ability to weather massive amounts of damage and then recover from it has been the bane of my life in this campaign. All attempts to kill the party have failed simply because no matter how much damage I do, no matter how hard I hit them they just turn around and manage to get healed. I was more threatening with Goblins during Keep on the Shadowfell. All in all though I must say the party works well, far better than my monsters fare, and this is down to teamwork.
So now we say goodbye to our party for the meantime whilst I attempt to concoct some strange new adventure for them to take on.
Showing posts with label session report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label session report. Show all posts
Monday, 27 July 2009
Monday, 20 July 2009
Uncle Joe's Quizzical Murder Mystery
It is the dead of night in frozen Stretford, part of the communist super state, and comerade Joseph Stalin lies dead in a greenhouse of the Stretford Hydroponic Research Centre...
I asked each of my four players (sans the absent Hair Dave) for an genre, an object, an authority figure and a place, in some kind of off the cuff mad-lib session and the results were... Well...
Giz decided that it should be a murder mystery.
Amanda decided it should be set in Stretford.
Medium Dave decided it should involve Joseph Stalin.
Rachael decided is should include a dart board.
Hence our steam-punk communist dystopia was born. I decided the party should be KRU agents sent as investigators into Comerade Stalin's death and they arrived via their zeppelin (The Red Oktober) and were wisked away to the scene of the crime.
What followed was a couple of hours of some of the most interesting roleplaying I've seen. We barely touched the dice as Giz and Rachel went off performing interrogations and Dave and Amanda went to Stalin's holiday home (in Stretford) and ended up involved in a Steam-Car chase (oh yes) in a blizzard, at the end of which they found Stalin's Steam Car and his driver slumped over the wheel having been shot in the head.
It was a delight to see the characters who emerged from this session and the quirkyness that emerged; Amanda's character wore a Cosmonaut's outfit because she dislikes contact and Giz's M-U had all 'psychic' powers and wore a gas mask alá Psycho Mantis.
In the end through a series of interrogations and a raid on a suspects house they discovered that Stalin in fact wasn't dead and that the body in the Greenhouse was a double killed to fake Stalin's death so that he could escape an assassination by the KRU. What I thought was a simple enough switch turned out to be quite difficult and in the end whilst the party found out what happened I had to fill in the 'why' which I had made a wee bit too difficult to uncover.
All in all despite the fact that it was entirely ad-libbed and much of the stuff I prepped in the 5 minutes the players were making their characters never got into the session, (Zombie Stalin!) including all the possible combat encounters, it worked quite well. Microlite sat unobtrusively in the back during all this and it was nice to know it was there but that we didn't feel obliged to use it but that it was there in case I needed it.
Some players are clamouring for a sequel knowing Stalin is now heading back to Russia via Zeppelin (The Stalingrad) and that they have their own Zeppelin with which to chase him down. This may not be the last we've seen of our communist steam-punk world!
I asked each of my four players (sans the absent Hair Dave) for an genre, an object, an authority figure and a place, in some kind of off the cuff mad-lib session and the results were... Well...
Giz decided that it should be a murder mystery.
Amanda decided it should be set in Stretford.
Medium Dave decided it should involve Joseph Stalin.
Rachael decided is should include a dart board.
Hence our steam-punk communist dystopia was born. I decided the party should be KRU agents sent as investigators into Comerade Stalin's death and they arrived via their zeppelin (The Red Oktober) and were wisked away to the scene of the crime.
What followed was a couple of hours of some of the most interesting roleplaying I've seen. We barely touched the dice as Giz and Rachel went off performing interrogations and Dave and Amanda went to Stalin's holiday home (in Stretford) and ended up involved in a Steam-Car chase (oh yes) in a blizzard, at the end of which they found Stalin's Steam Car and his driver slumped over the wheel having been shot in the head.
It was a delight to see the characters who emerged from this session and the quirkyness that emerged; Amanda's character wore a Cosmonaut's outfit because she dislikes contact and Giz's M-U had all 'psychic' powers and wore a gas mask alá Psycho Mantis.
In the end through a series of interrogations and a raid on a suspects house they discovered that Stalin in fact wasn't dead and that the body in the Greenhouse was a double killed to fake Stalin's death so that he could escape an assassination by the KRU. What I thought was a simple enough switch turned out to be quite difficult and in the end whilst the party found out what happened I had to fill in the 'why' which I had made a wee bit too difficult to uncover.
All in all despite the fact that it was entirely ad-libbed and much of the stuff I prepped in the 5 minutes the players were making their characters never got into the session, (Zombie Stalin!) including all the possible combat encounters, it worked quite well. Microlite sat unobtrusively in the back during all this and it was nice to know it was there but that we didn't feel obliged to use it but that it was there in case I needed it.
Some players are clamouring for a sequel knowing Stalin is now heading back to Russia via Zeppelin (The Stalingrad) and that they have their own Zeppelin with which to chase him down. This may not be the last we've seen of our communist steam-punk world!
Monday, 8 June 2009
On Top of the World: Session 6
In which the party go trading, meet a beautiful women, become assassins and finally get a cliff hanger.
Woo.
Like Kirk in Star Trek II I'm back in the chair and being chased chased around a nebula by Ricardo Montalban... Well, maybe not. Finally after our three week hiatus we're back in Zendicon and rapidly approaching some variety of ending for the current campaign.
In a breief recap last time Du'nn'o had managed to climb up into the tower above Gaol Zendicon, borked her sneak roll across and empty room and got carved up by the wardens. When this session began the party were considering the possibility of escape by going through the caverns beneath Zendicon and escaping that way. They left Du'nn'o to rest following her ordeal and pressed on.
Realising quickly that they would need provisions for the trip the party decided to head to the Dust Market once again and eventually found the trader Avazan, a man who at first was happy to trade for what supplies the party had, but would not trade for gold. However he did mention his 'mistress' was rumoured to have some need of such precious things and directed one of his Ogre guards; Venerable Terry, to take the party to her.
The party came through many chambers to the ruined temple where the Lady Jazelle made her home, the party entered between drapes of precious fabrics into a room where an empty throne made of weapons sat unattended. As they waited Lady Jazelle seemed to appear from nowhere, a beautiful woman with almost luminous green eyes. The party traded with her for goods (15 trail rations, 10 flasks of water, and they managed to guess the price bang on) losing a quantity of gold and some sun rods for their trouble. Lady Jezelle for her part seemed interested in the Dwarf and bade them return to discuss a favour over dinner.
At dinner the Lady described her desire to control the trade of the market uncontested and solicited the party to remove her rival; the secretive Lord Lofang whose priests Caradoc and Du'nn'o had recently butchered. Caradoc was resistant to the idea of becoming an assassin but the party swayed him and in return Lady Jazelle promised to get her troops in the caverns below to allow them passage. Having agreed the party went to check her story out and found the cavern reinforced on both sides by a great many troops who barred the path with hails of arrows.
(Skurmesh also promised to make an army for the Lady, with whom he seemed infatuated. To this end, and given Dwarves unique biology in the Hearthlands, he was to impregnate the stone with his 'seed' thus giving rise to new Dwarves who must bear the sigil of his clan. Thus Skurmesh Anklebiter, last of the Anklebiters, has founded a new clan within this place.)
And so the party went to assassinate Lord Lofang, with a promise of aid from Lady Jazelle once the deed was done. To this end they took Caradoc and Du'nn'o bound and entered the 'Deeping Well' under the pretense that they had been captured by Katarakis and Skurmesh. The party were brought before Lord Lorfang, a grey skinned humanoid, and Talvil the priest Caradoc had maimed earlier. Words were bandied and eventually Caradoc head-butted Lord Lofang and the party jumped their collective adversaries.
The party aren't idiots and when Lofang went down they suspected he was a decoy, Skurmesh decided his manservent was in fact the real Lord Lofang, but he turned out to be a minion. Then with a terrible noise within his mind Caradoc was hit for a great deal of damage and upon the balcony above a voice entreated them and, coweled and robed, his face purple and festooned with tentacles; the Illithid Lord Lofang made himself known to the party.
Dun-dun-dunnnnn!
Woo.
Like Kirk in Star Trek II I'm back in the chair and being chased chased around a nebula by Ricardo Montalban... Well, maybe not. Finally after our three week hiatus we're back in Zendicon and rapidly approaching some variety of ending for the current campaign.
In a breief recap last time Du'nn'o had managed to climb up into the tower above Gaol Zendicon, borked her sneak roll across and empty room and got carved up by the wardens. When this session began the party were considering the possibility of escape by going through the caverns beneath Zendicon and escaping that way. They left Du'nn'o to rest following her ordeal and pressed on.
Realising quickly that they would need provisions for the trip the party decided to head to the Dust Market once again and eventually found the trader Avazan, a man who at first was happy to trade for what supplies the party had, but would not trade for gold. However he did mention his 'mistress' was rumoured to have some need of such precious things and directed one of his Ogre guards; Venerable Terry, to take the party to her.
The party came through many chambers to the ruined temple where the Lady Jazelle made her home, the party entered between drapes of precious fabrics into a room where an empty throne made of weapons sat unattended. As they waited Lady Jazelle seemed to appear from nowhere, a beautiful woman with almost luminous green eyes. The party traded with her for goods (15 trail rations, 10 flasks of water, and they managed to guess the price bang on) losing a quantity of gold and some sun rods for their trouble. Lady Jezelle for her part seemed interested in the Dwarf and bade them return to discuss a favour over dinner.
At dinner the Lady described her desire to control the trade of the market uncontested and solicited the party to remove her rival; the secretive Lord Lofang whose priests Caradoc and Du'nn'o had recently butchered. Caradoc was resistant to the idea of becoming an assassin but the party swayed him and in return Lady Jazelle promised to get her troops in the caverns below to allow them passage. Having agreed the party went to check her story out and found the cavern reinforced on both sides by a great many troops who barred the path with hails of arrows.
(Skurmesh also promised to make an army for the Lady, with whom he seemed infatuated. To this end, and given Dwarves unique biology in the Hearthlands, he was to impregnate the stone with his 'seed' thus giving rise to new Dwarves who must bear the sigil of his clan. Thus Skurmesh Anklebiter, last of the Anklebiters, has founded a new clan within this place.)
And so the party went to assassinate Lord Lofang, with a promise of aid from Lady Jazelle once the deed was done. To this end they took Caradoc and Du'nn'o bound and entered the 'Deeping Well' under the pretense that they had been captured by Katarakis and Skurmesh. The party were brought before Lord Lorfang, a grey skinned humanoid, and Talvil the priest Caradoc had maimed earlier. Words were bandied and eventually Caradoc head-butted Lord Lofang and the party jumped their collective adversaries.
The party aren't idiots and when Lofang went down they suspected he was a decoy, Skurmesh decided his manservent was in fact the real Lord Lofang, but he turned out to be a minion. Then with a terrible noise within his mind Caradoc was hit for a great deal of damage and upon the balcony above a voice entreated them and, coweled and robed, his face purple and festooned with tentacles; the Illithid Lord Lofang made himself known to the party.
Dun-dun-dunnnnn!
Sunday, 31 May 2009
So, six hours later...
[Warning: Possible Stonehell spoilers below]
The Stonehell party consisted of 3 players with 2 characters each, one was their primary and the other would be their secondary, in some cases this ended up with a master servant thing going on. The party was:
Boris, Human Fighter (Female, played by Amanda)
Ms. Gentleman, Human Magic-User (aka Ms. G, played by Amanda)
Jesus, Human Cleric (Played by Dave)
Tarquin, Elf (Played by Dave as a MU)
Agent Smith, Human Paranormal Effects Administrator (MU played by Giz)
Manservant, Halfling (Played by Giz)
The players had heard about how fatal older editions of D&D (and its retro clones) could be, and armed with this knowledge were incredibly cautious.... Ish. Manservant insisted on crowbar-ing every door he came across and Boris was a bit of a bimbo but they bumbled on quite well; meeting Dwarves, sleeping Orcs and generally performing a bit of murder whilst their enemies were sleeping.
At one point Boris found a rat with a name tag (which read: 'Precious'), instead of killing it she took the sleeping rodent and muzzled/hogtied it, runing it into her unofficial pet/mascot. Later the party surprised me by being ambushed by a group of orcs and wisely running away, back to their Dwarven 'allies' who took care of the mess.
There was a long period of exploration in which we discovered that I could roll more than a 1 when it came to rolling for the Hp of some cobras and the party eventually made it to the caves section killed some kobolds and took their precious guano.
Their next encounter with kobolds was random and was another work crew carrying mops and buckets, there was a brief roleplay encounter that left Giz twitching with the urge to kill everything in the room and put their eyes out. I obliged him when he fiddled with the cracks in the same room and lost his 10' pole for his trouble. Giant Centipedes were by far the most dangerous foes the party encountered with Agent Smith hitting the deck unconscious before the party fled into the fountain room.
They rested and then headed down and around to reach the entrance and then went back to the fountain room with the intention of heading through to the centipede room. Then Boris decided to touch the fountain (perhaps because I pointed out that whilst they had been in this room they hadn't 'explored' it) and activated the poison gas trap. She survived by Manservant and Jesus bought it.
Fortunately Jesus would return d3 days later, assuming we don't get smote for blasphemy.
The party (deciding against the centipedes) then went to the wheel of fortune room, which was always going to be a giggle. Ms. Gentleman pulled the lever first, I rolled up 'Wisdom' which I had dubbed the Exp bonus and went straight up to level 2. Agent Smith pulled the lever next, got the Bloody Eye and was instantly struck blind.
The last room dealt with was the crypts which the party raided in style, hacking down the few monsters there were (including no less than 2 ghouls) and finally gaining some good treasure for their troubles (about 600 gold and a magic item, which I ruled was an elven sword +1) and most of them reached level 2.
The party then fled the dungeon and went back to the town to spend some time carousing, healing and getting the sword identified. Due to their carousing several characters went up to level 3, in no small part due to the large sums of gold they had randomly acquired.
All in all it was a good session, and now that I have a handle on the rules I think it's time to do a little 'brewing' with them; I'd like to expand the spells list a little so that characters can have a few more interesting spells at level 1, especially for the cleric, who was relegated to doing very little. I'm also tempted to use Jeff Rient's carousing rules and I could also do with some reaction tables (given that I just fudged it this time).
All in all though, given we started character gen at 2.30pm and finished at about 9pm it was a damn good session and one of the longest I have ever run, so in short, it will be occuring again.
Next week is World Top; involving the party's stint in Zendicon and possibly the arrival of a new ally.
The Stonehell party consisted of 3 players with 2 characters each, one was their primary and the other would be their secondary, in some cases this ended up with a master servant thing going on. The party was:
Boris, Human Fighter (Female, played by Amanda)
Ms. Gentleman, Human Magic-User (aka Ms. G, played by Amanda)
Jesus, Human Cleric (Played by Dave)
Tarquin, Elf (Played by Dave as a MU)
Agent Smith, Human Paranormal Effects Administrator (MU played by Giz)
Manservant, Halfling (Played by Giz)
The players had heard about how fatal older editions of D&D (and its retro clones) could be, and armed with this knowledge were incredibly cautious.... Ish. Manservant insisted on crowbar-ing every door he came across and Boris was a bit of a bimbo but they bumbled on quite well; meeting Dwarves, sleeping Orcs and generally performing a bit of murder whilst their enemies were sleeping.
At one point Boris found a rat with a name tag (which read: 'Precious'), instead of killing it she took the sleeping rodent and muzzled/hogtied it, runing it into her unofficial pet/mascot. Later the party surprised me by being ambushed by a group of orcs and wisely running away, back to their Dwarven 'allies' who took care of the mess.
There was a long period of exploration in which we discovered that I could roll more than a 1 when it came to rolling for the Hp of some cobras and the party eventually made it to the caves section killed some kobolds and took their precious guano.
Their next encounter with kobolds was random and was another work crew carrying mops and buckets, there was a brief roleplay encounter that left Giz twitching with the urge to kill everything in the room and put their eyes out. I obliged him when he fiddled with the cracks in the same room and lost his 10' pole for his trouble. Giant Centipedes were by far the most dangerous foes the party encountered with Agent Smith hitting the deck unconscious before the party fled into the fountain room.
They rested and then headed down and around to reach the entrance and then went back to the fountain room with the intention of heading through to the centipede room. Then Boris decided to touch the fountain (perhaps because I pointed out that whilst they had been in this room they hadn't 'explored' it) and activated the poison gas trap. She survived by Manservant and Jesus bought it.
Fortunately Jesus would return d3 days later, assuming we don't get smote for blasphemy.
The party (deciding against the centipedes) then went to the wheel of fortune room, which was always going to be a giggle. Ms. Gentleman pulled the lever first, I rolled up 'Wisdom' which I had dubbed the Exp bonus and went straight up to level 2. Agent Smith pulled the lever next, got the Bloody Eye and was instantly struck blind.
The last room dealt with was the crypts which the party raided in style, hacking down the few monsters there were (including no less than 2 ghouls) and finally gaining some good treasure for their troubles (about 600 gold and a magic item, which I ruled was an elven sword +1) and most of them reached level 2.
The party then fled the dungeon and went back to the town to spend some time carousing, healing and getting the sword identified. Due to their carousing several characters went up to level 3, in no small part due to the large sums of gold they had randomly acquired.
All in all it was a good session, and now that I have a handle on the rules I think it's time to do a little 'brewing' with them; I'd like to expand the spells list a little so that characters can have a few more interesting spells at level 1, especially for the cleric, who was relegated to doing very little. I'm also tempted to use Jeff Rient's carousing rules and I could also do with some reaction tables (given that I just fudged it this time).
All in all though, given we started character gen at 2.30pm and finished at about 9pm it was a damn good session and one of the longest I have ever run, so in short, it will be occuring again.
Next week is World Top; involving the party's stint in Zendicon and possibly the arrival of a new ally.
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