(no subject)
Let it be said: digestive problems suck. Thanks for passing that down the gene pool, Mom. >_<
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So I ran a ton of Balmuria the last two weeks. After a long delay the party went to explore the sealed ruins. The party was overdue for a dungeon crawl and we had an awesome time. In particular?
The first area was down a stairway near the main hall. As they approached, the party wisely scanned for both evil and chaos; they found both in overwhelming quantities. So there wasn't much chance of catching them off guard, yeah? Ah well, a GM's life is hard. So when they went down and found vast underground hill-piles of bones, they weren't too horribly shaken up.
The party speculated that this may be leftovers from the various battles that went down here; they were correct. Anyway, once they gabbed and gawked, in the heroes went! Deme took the lead and promptly botched his spot check. He didn't notice the Charnel Hound hiding in the first hill, who was more than happy to make a surprise attack. The PCs pretty much blundered into that encounter. They did okay in the first few rounds, softening it up and jockeying for position...until the other part came. An invisible Nightwalker was the real threat, and he promptly opened up by Cone of Colding the entire tightly packed melee. This was a nice bit of planning synergy, since Charnel Hounds are immune to cold and the PCs aren't.
The party largely focused on the Nightwalker from there, since Deme could keep the Charnel Hound busy and not take too many hits. While the Nightwalker did good damage thanks to Quicken Spell Like Ability: Unholy Blight and generally nasty status attacks, it wasn't a match. The Charnel Hound fell not long afterwards.
I didn't get to use Crush Item, which was the main reason I used a Nightwalker. I was going to destroy a PC item to do a bit of wealth adjustment, but the battle never worked out. Oh well. Anyway, the image of the PCs fighting at the edge of a sea of bonehills against a house sized hound of bones and a giant evil shadow is too awesome.
On searching, the party found a path leading deeper into the bonehills. Between this and half the party saying 'fuck it, let's fly!', they proceeded inward. After a bit of travel, they came on the back of this gruesome place. Here the bones were gathering into a protective, sealed dome. They were obviously protecting something or another inside, probably the controller or boss of the area. (It was.) So the PCs cast some spells to weaken the wall. This prompts 3 Deathshriekers to come out and tangle.
This was an exceedingly nasty fight. While they didn't have much luck statusing the PCs, they did manage to do charisma damage to Deme(He had a godawful run of dice all area.) and the 50% miss chance from being ethereal brought the party's melee centered offense to a grinding halt. Being beaten, battered and not doing much damage, the party retreated after finally dispatching two of the three shriekers, mostly by magic missile spam.
So anyway, the party came back after resting up and preparing for the undead. Oh, they got the undead all right. When they returned, they found most of the bones were gone. Pressing inward, they found out that the mid section was nearly all empty. Looming over them like a vast tower of bone was a Necronaut. Imagine a 10 story tower of bone, corpses and wailing souls. Give it a vicious artificial intelligence, enough hit points to outlast a Pit Fiend and vastly long, maneuverable 'arms' that have razor sharp and long talons. Oh, and it really, really, really fucking hates you and the fact that you're alive.
Needless to say it was an awesome battle.
I did change it around a bit. I gave it an awesome blow effect on every claw swipe it did in exchange for a damage die and a bit of strength loss. However, it had no AC whatsoever; it was all about batting things away and around to prevent it's weak AC from being exploited by full attacks. The PCs had a bitch of a time with it. It great cleaved through Seira's mirror images and beat Demedais and Antenora around like red headed step children. Alicia stayed back and fired Scorching Rays while her eladrin familiar fired silver arrows to chip in a little more damage. After a long, tiring battle, the Necronaut was about to collapse and Marie's turn came around. The little eladrin fired a silver arrow and did a whopping 7 damage.
It was enough. The entire abomination collapsed, unable to take a single bit more abuse. Have ever had a time when something happens and you just stare open mouthed? You can't do anything but gawk and want to scream, 'WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?' as your mind whirls in feverish incomprehension? Oh yeah, we were there. I think Eb just about shit himself laughing.
I have no complaints once I managed to recover from how it got finished off. The Necronaut did exactly what I wanted it to do - be a fearsome, vicious single opponent that gave the party a good thrashing. They won through perseverance and tactics, even if I omitted most of it since it's pretty technical and dry.
In time honored tradition, the party then went to throw down with the boss. A bit of dome cleaving later and they made it in. They find a half skeletal, rotting Nalfeshnee waiting - who promptly chats them up, gregarious and curious to how it's creations fared. It had pretty clearly gone nucking futs being alone and isolated for so long, as it was a step away from curling up around Seira and licking her feet like the world's most demonic dog. The party pried a lot of information from him; as he was essentially all over the place and just happy to ramble on to things that could talk back intelligently to him.
After info mining him, the party reluctantly prepared to fight. Sure, he was evil incarnate, but he had clearly gone bonkers. If it wasn't for his open desire to go create a few villages of undead demon cultists, they might even have gotten along. Ah well. Anyway, he did mention that it was a pity that there wouldn't be much pain in the fight. He expected to lose, but the party's weapons are 'too businesslike' and altogether too fast at killing. This is when the party got creative. They chatted him up just a little more, asking about pain and getting him to talk about how he'd do it. With some successful bluffing...they got him to rip off a long, whiplike strip of rotted arm flesh, coat it in an Oil of Bless Weapon(Generously given to him by Seira) and promptly showing them how to painfully kill something. That is, he whipped himself to death.
Having abundant good sense, Antenora, Alicia and Marie excused themselves from this grisly display. Even the ex-devil, who had seen far worse from Pain Devils, had no desire to watch that. However, Seira wanted to watch, and Demedais felt duty bound to ensure this threat went through with it. As seeing a demon flay itself to death with it's own flesh is just a bit fucking disturbing, I had them both roll will saves. Seira naturally rolled a 20 to escape any harmful effects. Deme wasn't so lucky, getting nauseated and getting a further save later to see it did any real mental damage. He rolled well on that save and avoided it, so that was that.
That encounter ran way off course. I'd statted up the Nalfeshnee with a template that gives sorc casting and given him some thematic powers. He was going to be a caster/summoner, though he'd still lose even with summoning Dread Wraiths and more Charnel Hounds. I was so morbidly impressed by Seira and Demedais that this never happened. Incidentally, the DC of the first save there was infinite; the only way to pass was with a 20. Seira got dirt lucky. The second DC was entirely reasonable. Failing that would've lead to nightmares, night terrors and possible wisdom loss. This was the only time ever I'd have liked to have been using SAN rules of any sort. Fucking hell, that was disturbing.
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More on this in a later update. Next up: The great storm, the gnomish child reeducation camp, the path of fire and more. Yay.
---
So I ran a ton of Balmuria the last two weeks. After a long delay the party went to explore the sealed ruins. The party was overdue for a dungeon crawl and we had an awesome time. In particular?
The first area was down a stairway near the main hall. As they approached, the party wisely scanned for both evil and chaos; they found both in overwhelming quantities. So there wasn't much chance of catching them off guard, yeah? Ah well, a GM's life is hard. So when they went down and found vast underground hill-piles of bones, they weren't too horribly shaken up.
The party speculated that this may be leftovers from the various battles that went down here; they were correct. Anyway, once they gabbed and gawked, in the heroes went! Deme took the lead and promptly botched his spot check. He didn't notice the Charnel Hound hiding in the first hill, who was more than happy to make a surprise attack. The PCs pretty much blundered into that encounter. They did okay in the first few rounds, softening it up and jockeying for position...until the other part came. An invisible Nightwalker was the real threat, and he promptly opened up by Cone of Colding the entire tightly packed melee. This was a nice bit of planning synergy, since Charnel Hounds are immune to cold and the PCs aren't.
The party largely focused on the Nightwalker from there, since Deme could keep the Charnel Hound busy and not take too many hits. While the Nightwalker did good damage thanks to Quicken Spell Like Ability: Unholy Blight and generally nasty status attacks, it wasn't a match. The Charnel Hound fell not long afterwards.
I didn't get to use Crush Item, which was the main reason I used a Nightwalker. I was going to destroy a PC item to do a bit of wealth adjustment, but the battle never worked out. Oh well. Anyway, the image of the PCs fighting at the edge of a sea of bonehills against a house sized hound of bones and a giant evil shadow is too awesome.
On searching, the party found a path leading deeper into the bonehills. Between this and half the party saying 'fuck it, let's fly!', they proceeded inward. After a bit of travel, they came on the back of this gruesome place. Here the bones were gathering into a protective, sealed dome. They were obviously protecting something or another inside, probably the controller or boss of the area. (It was.) So the PCs cast some spells to weaken the wall. This prompts 3 Deathshriekers to come out and tangle.
This was an exceedingly nasty fight. While they didn't have much luck statusing the PCs, they did manage to do charisma damage to Deme(He had a godawful run of dice all area.) and the 50% miss chance from being ethereal brought the party's melee centered offense to a grinding halt. Being beaten, battered and not doing much damage, the party retreated after finally dispatching two of the three shriekers, mostly by magic missile spam.
So anyway, the party came back after resting up and preparing for the undead. Oh, they got the undead all right. When they returned, they found most of the bones were gone. Pressing inward, they found out that the mid section was nearly all empty. Looming over them like a vast tower of bone was a Necronaut. Imagine a 10 story tower of bone, corpses and wailing souls. Give it a vicious artificial intelligence, enough hit points to outlast a Pit Fiend and vastly long, maneuverable 'arms' that have razor sharp and long talons. Oh, and it really, really, really fucking hates you and the fact that you're alive.
Needless to say it was an awesome battle.
I did change it around a bit. I gave it an awesome blow effect on every claw swipe it did in exchange for a damage die and a bit of strength loss. However, it had no AC whatsoever; it was all about batting things away and around to prevent it's weak AC from being exploited by full attacks. The PCs had a bitch of a time with it. It great cleaved through Seira's mirror images and beat Demedais and Antenora around like red headed step children. Alicia stayed back and fired Scorching Rays while her eladrin familiar fired silver arrows to chip in a little more damage. After a long, tiring battle, the Necronaut was about to collapse and Marie's turn came around. The little eladrin fired a silver arrow and did a whopping 7 damage.
It was enough. The entire abomination collapsed, unable to take a single bit more abuse. Have ever had a time when something happens and you just stare open mouthed? You can't do anything but gawk and want to scream, 'WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?' as your mind whirls in feverish incomprehension? Oh yeah, we were there. I think Eb just about shit himself laughing.
I have no complaints once I managed to recover from how it got finished off. The Necronaut did exactly what I wanted it to do - be a fearsome, vicious single opponent that gave the party a good thrashing. They won through perseverance and tactics, even if I omitted most of it since it's pretty technical and dry.
In time honored tradition, the party then went to throw down with the boss. A bit of dome cleaving later and they made it in. They find a half skeletal, rotting Nalfeshnee waiting - who promptly chats them up, gregarious and curious to how it's creations fared. It had pretty clearly gone nucking futs being alone and isolated for so long, as it was a step away from curling up around Seira and licking her feet like the world's most demonic dog. The party pried a lot of information from him; as he was essentially all over the place and just happy to ramble on to things that could talk back intelligently to him.
After info mining him, the party reluctantly prepared to fight. Sure, he was evil incarnate, but he had clearly gone bonkers. If it wasn't for his open desire to go create a few villages of undead demon cultists, they might even have gotten along. Ah well. Anyway, he did mention that it was a pity that there wouldn't be much pain in the fight. He expected to lose, but the party's weapons are 'too businesslike' and altogether too fast at killing. This is when the party got creative. They chatted him up just a little more, asking about pain and getting him to talk about how he'd do it. With some successful bluffing...they got him to rip off a long, whiplike strip of rotted arm flesh, coat it in an Oil of Bless Weapon(Generously given to him by Seira) and promptly showing them how to painfully kill something. That is, he whipped himself to death.
Having abundant good sense, Antenora, Alicia and Marie excused themselves from this grisly display. Even the ex-devil, who had seen far worse from Pain Devils, had no desire to watch that. However, Seira wanted to watch, and Demedais felt duty bound to ensure this threat went through with it. As seeing a demon flay itself to death with it's own flesh is just a bit fucking disturbing, I had them both roll will saves. Seira naturally rolled a 20 to escape any harmful effects. Deme wasn't so lucky, getting nauseated and getting a further save later to see it did any real mental damage. He rolled well on that save and avoided it, so that was that.
That encounter ran way off course. I'd statted up the Nalfeshnee with a template that gives sorc casting and given him some thematic powers. He was going to be a caster/summoner, though he'd still lose even with summoning Dread Wraiths and more Charnel Hounds. I was so morbidly impressed by Seira and Demedais that this never happened. Incidentally, the DC of the first save there was infinite; the only way to pass was with a 20. Seira got dirt lucky. The second DC was entirely reasonable. Failing that would've lead to nightmares, night terrors and possible wisdom loss. This was the only time ever I'd have liked to have been using SAN rules of any sort. Fucking hell, that was disturbing.
---
More on this in a later update. Next up: The great storm, the gnomish child reeducation camp, the path of fire and more. Yay.