Vondal's Vandals: Karivakos numbered
Traversing this dimensional pyramid I had begun to have my doubts whether this was a prison for Karivakos or not. So often had we seen fragments of his soul taken vile form. So often had we cut them down. Were we just paying into his hands, killing him over and over again so that his soul would return to him and make him whole.
My doubts disappeared when I saw the 3 doors skipped through my journal to see the notes I had written next to my maps where we found clues. It was Enna that pieced it all together, a complicated puzzle lock designed to keep Karivakos in. Or perhaps to keep us out.
It would have been foolish to have expected Karivakos to not attempt some form of escape. That we stumbled upon him during his magical ritual suggests that if we hadn't ventured into this prison and killed his other selves then maybe he would not be able to make the attempt, but there would have been others, people who followed him and his memory, and they would have tried just as hard to free him as we did to vanquish him.
Vanquishing the age old sorcerer tyrant was no easy task. It was as if he had cast himself through a mirror. We had to cut through his visage over and over before we trapped the real Karivakos in a room away from his ritual and hacked him to death. He put up a fight with his mirrors but when we finally met him in battle, Enna, Harkill and I he was barely worth fighting.
It might have been the sight of so many faces of his hated foe but I think Thrullzon was driven mad in the end. His magics misfired and his god, whoever that is, laughed and pulled him back into death once Karivakos was dead. Akmenos did not wake for some time, but I was glad to see his soul when I looked into his eyes. Still Thrullzon may have wanted to reconquer the world but in the end he made a sacrifice to save Snowfoot. I was not in position to save her from the stunning black orbs that lined the walls, but Thrullzon risked himself to pull her free. Without her the battle might have been lost.
Veralis, now an ethereal spirit of the Eladrin she once was has asked us to escort her home. I can only imagine what new lands that will take us too.
Notes
So the logic puzzle to kick off the session was awesome. Sure it wasn't a hard one, a 3x3 with 4 elements, and ultimately you could have just done it with common sense rather than logic. The gold key goes in the sun door for example. But it was a cool way of getting the party together to solve something. Except that we didn't really do it in character and if we did we probably would have failed. Only Michael really played in character when he said he has no idea when it comes to logic puzzles. Well he may or may not, but Harkill certainly wouldn't, and Harkill theoretically has more intelligence than Vondal. Honestly though I think if I was redoing the stats on Vondal I would lose the Dexterity and pump either the Int or Charisma because he is both more of them than he is dextrous.
The fight was pretty interesting though not one of the best we have had. I think we got pushed enough to the brink to make a fitting finale, though it would have been cool if there was an imminent threat of failure, something else that was going on. Now theoretically there was because Karivakos was trying to complete his escape ritual, however we managed to trap him in a room away from there once we had hacked down his minion selves. And we didn't have the actual map because we didn't have the actual module and the person who did the conversion didn't make a map for the battles that already had a printed map. This would have clearly shown that something heavy was going on in the ritual room with all it's blue light.
That Karivakos did not teleport back to the ritual room was amazing because just about every wizard type we have met in here has teleported away from our entrapments. Enna and Vondal are just plain brutal if they can close on a mage and lock them down, but teleport is the best counter to our brand of mage hunting. So with his minions vanquished Karivakos was actually pretty weak sauce. Before then though he was pretty brutal. Enna went down briefly, We got caught a couple of times in an immobilizing cloud and Harkill and Snowfoot both almost collapsed.
So yeah it was a pretty tight fight but I felt that once the minion threat was gone we needed a timer threat or something to keep the tension up, perhaps a skill challenge to divert the attentions of some of the party from attacking Karivakos. Shadowfell did something similar in its final boss fight and I think that worked quite well.
Worst Maneuver
~Sending Enna back to the group to get healing when she was really low. Karivakos appears in one of his minions and blasts the grouping. We knew he had lots of AoE spells, what were we thinking.
Best Maneuver
~Hunting the minions down through the ritual room so that when we caught up with Karivakos he had no minions to escape to and wasn't in his room of power.
Achievement Unlocked
~Capping Stone: Completed the pyramid with all party members surviving
~Prison Warden: Defeated Karivakos' final form
~Protector: Expelled Thrullzon from an ally without killing him. (So we found out after that we could have been rid of Thrullzon at anytime had he actually died in battle.)
~Paragon: Reached level 11
Paragon Path
So we have finally reached level 11, or at least we are finally no allowed to level up to level 11. Lance didn't think we should level up to paragon while in the pyramid because we couldn't get the training. I also thought that it would make the final challenges a bit too easy.
Now that I have seen what you get at paragon, I take it back, it would have made the final fights way too easy.
It took a while to figure out what I wanted to do with Vondal but in the end I found the perfect path for his style. Dreadnaught is basically a tank, with a bunch of different forms of damage reduction and an ability to sacrifice hp to remove conditions that a save can end. Combine that with a nice double attack encounter power and some new feats that deal extra damage to foes I have marked and prevent combat advantage against while I wield a shield and I am ready to go. I'm still a mixed defender/striker as I deal quite a bit of damage and fight well while completely surrounded.
As for the others, Enna is going Daggermaster so she will be a deadly striker. Akmenos is going Hexer so he will become a controller/striker and I think Dan was looking at party buffs. Not sure what Brett has in mind for Snowfoot but I think it will involve more healing because while Vondal can take care of himself in a fight (I have second wind, 3 daily heals and regen), the others seem to be much weaker in that regard. But Vondal is a tank so he should be the last one standing. Also those bonus 10hp from Dreadnaught give me over 100hp now. Michael is going character, having Harkill go down a Dragonborn path to eventually get flight.
So I'm really looking forward to getting into a new adventures with more roleplaying. Lance has already bought the PDF, but the only thing now is that we don't really have the maps because the PDF maps have all the GM notes on them.
Point of Fashion: Mage's robes
Current Obsession: Dragon Age
My doubts disappeared when I saw the 3 doors skipped through my journal to see the notes I had written next to my maps where we found clues. It was Enna that pieced it all together, a complicated puzzle lock designed to keep Karivakos in. Or perhaps to keep us out.
It would have been foolish to have expected Karivakos to not attempt some form of escape. That we stumbled upon him during his magical ritual suggests that if we hadn't ventured into this prison and killed his other selves then maybe he would not be able to make the attempt, but there would have been others, people who followed him and his memory, and they would have tried just as hard to free him as we did to vanquish him.
Vanquishing the age old sorcerer tyrant was no easy task. It was as if he had cast himself through a mirror. We had to cut through his visage over and over before we trapped the real Karivakos in a room away from his ritual and hacked him to death. He put up a fight with his mirrors but when we finally met him in battle, Enna, Harkill and I he was barely worth fighting.
It might have been the sight of so many faces of his hated foe but I think Thrullzon was driven mad in the end. His magics misfired and his god, whoever that is, laughed and pulled him back into death once Karivakos was dead. Akmenos did not wake for some time, but I was glad to see his soul when I looked into his eyes. Still Thrullzon may have wanted to reconquer the world but in the end he made a sacrifice to save Snowfoot. I was not in position to save her from the stunning black orbs that lined the walls, but Thrullzon risked himself to pull her free. Without her the battle might have been lost.
Veralis, now an ethereal spirit of the Eladrin she once was has asked us to escort her home. I can only imagine what new lands that will take us too.
Notes
So the logic puzzle to kick off the session was awesome. Sure it wasn't a hard one, a 3x3 with 4 elements, and ultimately you could have just done it with common sense rather than logic. The gold key goes in the sun door for example. But it was a cool way of getting the party together to solve something. Except that we didn't really do it in character and if we did we probably would have failed. Only Michael really played in character when he said he has no idea when it comes to logic puzzles. Well he may or may not, but Harkill certainly wouldn't, and Harkill theoretically has more intelligence than Vondal. Honestly though I think if I was redoing the stats on Vondal I would lose the Dexterity and pump either the Int or Charisma because he is both more of them than he is dextrous.
The fight was pretty interesting though not one of the best we have had. I think we got pushed enough to the brink to make a fitting finale, though it would have been cool if there was an imminent threat of failure, something else that was going on. Now theoretically there was because Karivakos was trying to complete his escape ritual, however we managed to trap him in a room away from there once we had hacked down his minion selves. And we didn't have the actual map because we didn't have the actual module and the person who did the conversion didn't make a map for the battles that already had a printed map. This would have clearly shown that something heavy was going on in the ritual room with all it's blue light.
That Karivakos did not teleport back to the ritual room was amazing because just about every wizard type we have met in here has teleported away from our entrapments. Enna and Vondal are just plain brutal if they can close on a mage and lock them down, but teleport is the best counter to our brand of mage hunting. So with his minions vanquished Karivakos was actually pretty weak sauce. Before then though he was pretty brutal. Enna went down briefly, We got caught a couple of times in an immobilizing cloud and Harkill and Snowfoot both almost collapsed.
So yeah it was a pretty tight fight but I felt that once the minion threat was gone we needed a timer threat or something to keep the tension up, perhaps a skill challenge to divert the attentions of some of the party from attacking Karivakos. Shadowfell did something similar in its final boss fight and I think that worked quite well.
Worst Maneuver
~Sending Enna back to the group to get healing when she was really low. Karivakos appears in one of his minions and blasts the grouping. We knew he had lots of AoE spells, what were we thinking.
Best Maneuver
~Hunting the minions down through the ritual room so that when we caught up with Karivakos he had no minions to escape to and wasn't in his room of power.
Achievement Unlocked
~Capping Stone: Completed the pyramid with all party members surviving
~Prison Warden: Defeated Karivakos' final form
~Protector: Expelled Thrullzon from an ally without killing him. (So we found out after that we could have been rid of Thrullzon at anytime had he actually died in battle.)
~Paragon: Reached level 11
Paragon Path
So we have finally reached level 11, or at least we are finally no allowed to level up to level 11. Lance didn't think we should level up to paragon while in the pyramid because we couldn't get the training. I also thought that it would make the final challenges a bit too easy.
Now that I have seen what you get at paragon, I take it back, it would have made the final fights way too easy.
It took a while to figure out what I wanted to do with Vondal but in the end I found the perfect path for his style. Dreadnaught is basically a tank, with a bunch of different forms of damage reduction and an ability to sacrifice hp to remove conditions that a save can end. Combine that with a nice double attack encounter power and some new feats that deal extra damage to foes I have marked and prevent combat advantage against while I wield a shield and I am ready to go. I'm still a mixed defender/striker as I deal quite a bit of damage and fight well while completely surrounded.
As for the others, Enna is going Daggermaster so she will be a deadly striker. Akmenos is going Hexer so he will become a controller/striker and I think Dan was looking at party buffs. Not sure what Brett has in mind for Snowfoot but I think it will involve more healing because while Vondal can take care of himself in a fight (I have second wind, 3 daily heals and regen), the others seem to be much weaker in that regard. But Vondal is a tank so he should be the last one standing. Also those bonus 10hp from Dreadnaught give me over 100hp now. Michael is going character, having Harkill go down a Dragonborn path to eventually get flight.
So I'm really looking forward to getting into a new adventures with more roleplaying. Lance has already bought the PDF, but the only thing now is that we don't really have the maps because the PDF maps have all the GM notes on them.
Point of Fashion: Mage's robes
Current Obsession: Dragon Age