Vondal's Vandals: The Lightning Trap
Enna's blade slide through the headless corpses chest from behind, narrowly missing the head of Veralis stuck in there. The corpse disintegrated into rags and nothing and Enna deftly caught the head before it hit the ground. Even that didn't silence her. Our allies were battered, bleeding all over the ground, lightning from the obelisks still crackling all around us, but Veralis still raged on about how we almost killed her and how she would get revenge on Karivakos for doing this to her body.
How did we ever come to this? Will barely surviving a litany of undead foes in a quest to kill Karivakos really help me free my homeland? I know we are trying to protect Fallcrest, and yet this pyramid, this tomb, this prison is meant to hold the darkness at bay. Karivakos is trapped here. Our trespass and destruction of the mechanisms of this place can only lead to disaster. Akmenos said we shouldn't try to help Veralis retrieve her body. He doesn't trust her, but he was still right. We should have left well alone. Have we inadvertently started a chain reaction that will free Karivakos from this place? Is that what he wanted all along? Or is the despair of the pyramid just becoming too much to bare?
Notes
So I was going to rant about this down in one of my sections below but I think it deserved it's own highlight. 4 Obelisks ooze lightning. They create a cage for a headless body. We have the head and she wants her body back. It turns out to be a trap and we have to fight the body to save the head. To break the trap you need to know over one of the obelisks. Easier said than done. Turns out you need to succeed at 3 strength checks. Strength checks are my least favourite check in the whole game. They usually have DC values equivalent to a skill check and yet you can never have as much modifier on a strength check. So I'm rolling +8 trying to get 19. %50 chance. On top of that the pillar does each something like 2d8+12 damage each time you try. If you get average rolls then that would be 12d8+72 damage (120 damage on average), which is actually completely insane when you think about it. And then you need to go and fight. Luckily Lance completely forgot about the damage. But in reality a strength check should be either an Endurance or Athletics check depending on what you are doing. Use the skills people they are there for a reason. Additionally this should have been a skill challenge for whoever wanted to participate, 3 successes before 3 failures. Success and Failure both push over the pillar but failure deals a ton of damage as the lightning flares out you as the pillar goes down.
That aside the fight after was brutal. We seem to have the most trouble against solo undead, though admittedly this guy had no radiant vulnerability anyway. Vondal was weakened for the entire fight (see below) so it took much longer because I was dealing half damage. It was brutal because while I could tie up the Headless Corpse and generally prevent it from attacking my allies (though it often chose to anyway), there was little I could do about the massive cloud of force sabres moving around the room targeting our weak members. In the end everyone but Vondal was bloodied, Enna and Akmenos close to zero. Vondal put on his resist 5 to all damage early on so once again could have gone on like the Energizer bunny. I still had a third wind, regen 5 when bloodied and wasn't actually bloodied yet when the fight finished. Anyway this was damn tough, though actually interesting. There weren't many maneuvering opportunities, but we were able to flank him quite often, though this did mean we were in a cloud for a while. The large room also made some of our short range stuff, like Snowfoot's healing, a bit of an obstacle.
The first fight wasn't nearly as hard. A couple of monsters and a mage in another room firing spells through the mirrors on the walls. Nothing we haven't fought before and definitely something that caters to our brand of crowd control.
Epic Fail
~Against the Headless corpse Vondal made one attack, which he missed, before he became weakened. Sadly that was a 3d12+9 attack so it was a shame to miss it. Then he became weakened and remained so for the entire battle (I just couldn't save even when someone gave me a reroll), until my very last attack, which I missed. But I spent an action point, hit and then did 29 of the 30 remaining damage. Poetry and the story of the story of the battle says I should have got the kill and Veralis' undying love but no, she still loves Enna.
~To compound this I was rolling pretty damn well for damage (though the +18 damage on Brash Strike helped). Of course all of this was halved. It was at its worst when Enna used Sneak in the Attack and I got her sneak attack damage. I rolled 45 damage on that attack, which sadly turned into 22. Sure 22 is pretty good but 45 is amazing.
Don't forget your modifiers
~I missed 3 attacks in a row all by 1. Sadly it wasn't until the third of these that I remembered I had +2 to hit against the Headless Corpse until the end of the encounter.
~On the bright side I was finally able to use the fighter ability to stop someone on an opportunity attack. I have had the chance in the past but had forgotten about it, or more recently missed. This time was extra sweet though because the shadow creeper was charging Snowfoot. Stopped in the middle of the action. Hah! Lance then attacked with it which I'm not sure how he did given it had used it's move and standard actions already. Nevermind I was too busy enjoying the glow of a successful use of an ability I never use.
~Okay so admittedly Dan did not forget this one because he has been taunting us for a while with it, always wanting to know whether our characters are bloodied or not. Finally the circumstances arose when someone was bloodied on his turn and adjacent to an enemy. The ability it turns out was just a normal attack with +4 damage, which really wasn't worth the anticipation. He even had to use an action point to show it off because he missed the first time. *headdesk* (Maybe this should have been in the Epic Fail section)
Best Vandalism
~Yeah we pushed that lightning obelisk over, what of it. It didn't even hurt is like it was supposed to. It wanted to be on the floor.
Point of Fashion: Gloves for cold hands
Current Obsession: T-Vo (Finally!)
How did we ever come to this? Will barely surviving a litany of undead foes in a quest to kill Karivakos really help me free my homeland? I know we are trying to protect Fallcrest, and yet this pyramid, this tomb, this prison is meant to hold the darkness at bay. Karivakos is trapped here. Our trespass and destruction of the mechanisms of this place can only lead to disaster. Akmenos said we shouldn't try to help Veralis retrieve her body. He doesn't trust her, but he was still right. We should have left well alone. Have we inadvertently started a chain reaction that will free Karivakos from this place? Is that what he wanted all along? Or is the despair of the pyramid just becoming too much to bare?
Notes
So I was going to rant about this down in one of my sections below but I think it deserved it's own highlight. 4 Obelisks ooze lightning. They create a cage for a headless body. We have the head and she wants her body back. It turns out to be a trap and we have to fight the body to save the head. To break the trap you need to know over one of the obelisks. Easier said than done. Turns out you need to succeed at 3 strength checks. Strength checks are my least favourite check in the whole game. They usually have DC values equivalent to a skill check and yet you can never have as much modifier on a strength check. So I'm rolling +8 trying to get 19. %50 chance. On top of that the pillar does each something like 2d8+12 damage each time you try. If you get average rolls then that would be 12d8+72 damage (120 damage on average), which is actually completely insane when you think about it. And then you need to go and fight. Luckily Lance completely forgot about the damage. But in reality a strength check should be either an Endurance or Athletics check depending on what you are doing. Use the skills people they are there for a reason. Additionally this should have been a skill challenge for whoever wanted to participate, 3 successes before 3 failures. Success and Failure both push over the pillar but failure deals a ton of damage as the lightning flares out you as the pillar goes down.
That aside the fight after was brutal. We seem to have the most trouble against solo undead, though admittedly this guy had no radiant vulnerability anyway. Vondal was weakened for the entire fight (see below) so it took much longer because I was dealing half damage. It was brutal because while I could tie up the Headless Corpse and generally prevent it from attacking my allies (though it often chose to anyway), there was little I could do about the massive cloud of force sabres moving around the room targeting our weak members. In the end everyone but Vondal was bloodied, Enna and Akmenos close to zero. Vondal put on his resist 5 to all damage early on so once again could have gone on like the Energizer bunny. I still had a third wind, regen 5 when bloodied and wasn't actually bloodied yet when the fight finished. Anyway this was damn tough, though actually interesting. There weren't many maneuvering opportunities, but we were able to flank him quite often, though this did mean we were in a cloud for a while. The large room also made some of our short range stuff, like Snowfoot's healing, a bit of an obstacle.
The first fight wasn't nearly as hard. A couple of monsters and a mage in another room firing spells through the mirrors on the walls. Nothing we haven't fought before and definitely something that caters to our brand of crowd control.
Epic Fail
~Against the Headless corpse Vondal made one attack, which he missed, before he became weakened. Sadly that was a 3d12+9 attack so it was a shame to miss it. Then he became weakened and remained so for the entire battle (I just couldn't save even when someone gave me a reroll), until my very last attack, which I missed. But I spent an action point, hit and then did 29 of the 30 remaining damage. Poetry and the story of the story of the battle says I should have got the kill and Veralis' undying love but no, she still loves Enna.
~To compound this I was rolling pretty damn well for damage (though the +18 damage on Brash Strike helped). Of course all of this was halved. It was at its worst when Enna used Sneak in the Attack and I got her sneak attack damage. I rolled 45 damage on that attack, which sadly turned into 22. Sure 22 is pretty good but 45 is amazing.
Don't forget your modifiers
~I missed 3 attacks in a row all by 1. Sadly it wasn't until the third of these that I remembered I had +2 to hit against the Headless Corpse until the end of the encounter.
~On the bright side I was finally able to use the fighter ability to stop someone on an opportunity attack. I have had the chance in the past but had forgotten about it, or more recently missed. This time was extra sweet though because the shadow creeper was charging Snowfoot. Stopped in the middle of the action. Hah! Lance then attacked with it which I'm not sure how he did given it had used it's move and standard actions already. Nevermind I was too busy enjoying the glow of a successful use of an ability I never use.
~Okay so admittedly Dan did not forget this one because he has been taunting us for a while with it, always wanting to know whether our characters are bloodied or not. Finally the circumstances arose when someone was bloodied on his turn and adjacent to an enemy. The ability it turns out was just a normal attack with +4 damage, which really wasn't worth the anticipation. He even had to use an action point to show it off because he missed the first time. *headdesk* (Maybe this should have been in the Epic Fail section)
Best Vandalism
~Yeah we pushed that lightning obelisk over, what of it. It didn't even hurt is like it was supposed to. It wanted to be on the floor.
Point of Fashion: Gloves for cold hands
Current Obsession: T-Vo (Finally!)