Scales of War update

Feb 06, 2010 00:37

Been a while since I've updated on Scales of War because it's been a while since we've played. Tonight we were able to gather and finish out our first adventure in the Paragon tier, Beyond the Mottled Tower. We found ourselves chasing an adversary from much earlier in the path.

Last time we rested within sight of the tower, so we entered fully recuperated. The DM was kind enough to let us know we had just three encounters here. The first two went pretty well- the first opened with our ranger critting a centaur brute and shoving him into some nasty elemental slime, and more crits in that fight and the next led to easy victories.

At the top of the tower, we saw our enemy encased in a force bubble working on a ritual. We'd have to batter down the bubble before we could hurt him, but first we had to deal with some githyanki guards. I was very pleased that my wizard, Nowhere, was able to hit with his blood boil- his paragon path encounter power, which had missed in both earlier encounters. This time, not only did I hit 3 of my 4 targets (thanks to another power providing a reroll) I rolled 2 nat 20s. One was against a minion, but the other tore up the githyanki target. Add in a Wall of Fire and some effort from my teammates and we polished off the githyanki pretty quickly.

Sarshan and his bubble were another story. He had some underlings who were just speedbumps, but he was an solo nasty. Among his powers was a horrid blast that did no damage but inflicted ongoing acid damage. Additional, if you failed two saves against it, you turned into a pile of slime- the fate of our warlord (thank the gods for remove affliction). Sarshan was also able to make three attacks in a round. Never was this so devastating as when he hit the tiefling arcanist brothers Nowhere and Torment with a powerful attack, then used an action point and cut into Nowhere. I put up my Shield spell hoping that it would deflect some of the attacks, but each one scored a hit, and I watched my health drop swiftly, ending up at 1 hit point after the first attack, then -15 and -31. With our healer a pile of gloop, Nowhere's turn came and the 5 ongoing damage from the attacks killed him.

Down to 3 characters, our ranger pelted him from afar while Torment flanked with Patrin, my dragonborn warrior. Each time Torment cast a spell, Sarshan responded with an attack, allowing Patrin to interrupt with his own attack. The free attacks for Patrin added up as did Torment gaining a bonus 5 damage for hitting with prime shot, while Sarshan never could seem to hit with his opportunity attacks.

Two characters down is usually something to worry about, but not while I still had Patrin standing. Although his damage was less than the strikers were capable of, I knew he wasn't going to fall. He had a ring to protect him from Sarshan's acid, and if Sarshan attempted to turn him to slime, I could cancel the effect at a cost of 10 damage. Physical damage did add up, but two of Patrin's daily powers included spending a surge to recover HP, and after those I had a utility power that would allow another surge. Patrin did me proud as the monster that would not go down until well after he avenged his fallen friends. Torment did attempt to throw Sarshan from the roof (even solo monsters don't like 200 foot drops), but I was glad that he failed, as it allowed Patrin to strike the killing blow (with one of his healing dailies- still had the utility power, so I guess Sarshan didn't hurt me too much).

The reward for our success contained the means to revive Nowhere and restore our slimy warlord. We also earned enough XP to advance to 12th level where I had to agonize over options for feats.

Now we head into a period of no gaming- our Saturday host will be off to work tomorrow and next weekend, and one of the other players will also be gone next weekend. We'll pick up in two weeks when we kick off Pendragon, probably followed Saturday with my Primordials game.

4e, sow, d&d, rpg

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