The last few sessions: mean_liar loves his Lovecraft

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mean_liar
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The last few sessions: mean_liar loves his Lovecraft

Post by mean_liar »

Rather than go into the backstory and what-not, I thought I'd just throw out the last three encounters I ran and how they went:


GENERAL BACKGROUND: The intrepid PCs have been following a criminal organization's facilitation of the local region's crazies: an investigation of large quantities of alchemist fire (a controlled good with slightly-dangerous-to-acquire ingredient) sold at only slightly above cost to apocalyptic fire cultists has led to the discovery of a slaver's ring, which in turn has led to the revelation that the gang had been raiding slums and selling people off for sacrifice. They've gone to the sacrificial island to clean up.

The island itself is in a subarctic climate and is volcanic; the island is very small, less than a mile across and has more than a few lookout towers and only the barest trail leading up to... the lair inside the volcano, because I love that kind of shit. It's decided that the party should take the trail, shitty as that is, because they lack the gear and magic required to make a safe and protected five-person ascent up the mountain.


THE PARTY: The PCs are level 6, consisting of...
- Lizardfolk Fighter 1/Barbarian 1/Warblade 1/Swordsage (arcane) 2/custom Martial Adept PrC about achieving an amalgamation of savage natural fighting and high-falutin' exotic weapon Maneuvers
- Drow Swashbuckler X/Rogue Y/custom Avenging Executioner-Ghost Faced Killer-Assassin combopack PrC 1
- Halfling Monk 2/Rogue 3/custom gets-TurnUndead-to-power-Sneak Attacks and Stunning Fists against otherwise-immune foes with SkillMonkey and Stunning Fist augmentations PrC 1
- Human Ultimate Magus with Sorcerer and Wizard prereqs swapped using Practiced Spellcaster
- Githzerai Fighter (targeteer) 1/Ranger 2/Psion 1/custom Psionic version of augmented Arcane Archer PrC 1

Most ECLs have been tossed because I didn't think they were appropriate. The Drow and the Githzerai are at +1 LA.

The party gets their appropriate Wealth-by-Level in magical gear by virtue of the animistic spirits in all objects awakening in their presence. Mechanically, this means they automatically get their Wealth-by-Level solely on magical gear and can reconfigure at level-ups and all other wealth is extraneous. They have tons of mundane gear due to a patron, and a single item that casts Cure Minor Wounds at will.

On my end, I freely reassign the non-bonus-derived feats of the monsters to better choices: fuck Alertness. Also, experience is awarded in the form of levels whenever it generally seems appropriate and the party wants it. Crafting is limited to a percentage of by-level Wealth for consumable items only; intelligent items are made through Item Familiar and Weapon Legacy rules, and permanent magic items are spontaneously created at level-up as noted earlier. Artifacts are godly creations beyond the scope of non-Epic casters.


ENCOUNTER 1: The party, outfitted with a good selection of potions (water breathing and invisibility in small quantities) chooses to infiltrate the island at night. The island is generally surrounded by a sargasso sea and unidentified reefs so they have the darfellan captain take their small craft very close on a night of a new moon, then the party rows in on a dinghy. The BBEG's druid henchman patrolling from the air still spots them, but they're unaware of this. He can only muster up a token but deadly defense.

They get their first taste of terror when the pair of Aquatic Ogre Barbarian 1s ambush them forty feet from shore. The ogres are using harpoons (from Stormwrack); their first tactic is to pierce the hull of the dinghy and bring it to a rest fifty feet from shore, while trying to toss another harpoon through a likely-looking target and dragging them off the boat and into the kelp for a hearty stranglin'. The party panics - some take aim at the ogres and attempt to fight them, but only the archer and arcanist are effective since the ogres are at range; the drow drinks a potion and breaks for the shore, swimming madly.

The halfling gets tossed towards shore by the lizardman. He ends up about 5ft from shore... and gets ambushed by the Aquatic Chokers. They drag him back below the surface and into the kelp, and no one hears him.

The wizard gets pierced by a harpoon and is dragged off the boat, but the lizardman cuts the massive towline. He's still Choker-bait and spends the rest of the combat alternatively getting grappled, making Swim checks to avoid dying, and escaping.

The archer shoots and shoots and shoots and gets missed by the harpoons. He eventually kills one ogre the easy way. The lizardman kills the other with a standing long jump into the water, Wraithstrike, a massive Power Attack and a spiked chain for reach.

Between the drow and halfling, one of them is always making Escape Artist checks and Sneak Attacking the shit out of whatever Choker is grappling the other.

The PCs eventually kill and clean up the place, several times only barely managing to avoid Death in the Water. The druid never engages.


INTERLUDE 1: The PCs trek overland the short distance to the trail from their landing zone. They hear what they identify as a group of arctic foxes in one direction and decide to take a trail through successively thicker underbrush. Successful Knowledge (nature) and Survival checks reveal that the forest on the island has been artificially cultivated to funnel traffic just in the direction they're going, so the party decides to bypass that and go into the tall evergreen woods rather than stay on the shoreline.

There they discover several ritual sites of varying age, each with the signs of a (now-moved) altar and (still there) sacrifices. Some Knowledge (religion) checks reveal that this is BoVD-style rituals, and they were performed with the intent of trying to score a DC 50 result to gain access to a wish (we're playing where a 1 rolled on a skill check taken under duress counts as a -10 and a 20 counts as a 30; take 20 still has the same effect of giving a 20). The sites consist of a series of totems covered in body parts: one covered in ears, with symbolic carvings of wind and listening, another with eyes and calls for vision. It's apparent that some of the sacrifices are being kept alive and harvested for parts for these rituals, while others are simply being killed horrifically.


ENCOUNTER 2: While moving to avoid the foxes, the party crests near the top of a steep slope running off the volcano. The trees shake and quake and its apparent that something massive is coming towards them. The jingle-jangle of something gives away whatever subtlety hadn't been destroyed by the violent shaking of the trees.

It is, of course, a treant (USUALLY neutral good :p). It is also angry and covered in corpses nailed to it, hanging off of limbs, dragging crow cages, and around one of its massive tree-arms is a series of thick ship's chains that end in more crow cages stuffed with what appears to be sacrificial leftovers. It stinks of rot and death.

The party is on a steep slope with thick underbrush inhibiting easy movement but also provides lots of cover and concealment. I did not give the treant the ability to summon other trees, because holy shit they were going to have their hands full already. Instead, I made it substantially taller (though not larger or with more reach) and added some Hit Dice.

The tree scares the shit out of the party for roughly a minute of table time before they roll initiative (no surprise for either party) with the result that the entire party goes before the treant. They get cover, quaff potions of invisibility, hide, and basically scatter... except the drow who "keeps it busy" by engaging it directly, doing minor damage since he's a TWF character that had to close distance, and the githzerai who hits it with Entangling Ectoplasm (he has Practiced Manifester). On the treant's turn, it Stomps (feat from Savage Species), knocking everyone in 50ft - everyone - prone except the mage (improbably). Most everyone fails the Balance check and slides a few feet down the hill.

The party breaths a small sigh of relief. "Seriously, its attack was to make us go prone? LOL." That sort of thing.

That's when the fleshy serpentir dropped from its upper branches.

These things look like two torsos with heads sown together at the waist, except that they also have a multitude of humanoid mouths and hands apparently fused onto their joint body around their midsection. They travel by use of the claws that come out of their two pairs of arms, and look terribly freaky.

What is a serpentir mechanically, you might ask. They're on p158 of Monster Manual 5. They're large, they grapple, and they have improved grab and a climb speed. And they smell emotions. I described it to the characters that made their Knowledge (arcana) that they smell fear, and that invisibility does you no good against them. These ones are fleshy because that's freakier so appearances are different, but mechanically they're the same.

So, the serpentir drop from the treant. One grabs the drow with a claw while its other half (using improved grab with a successful grapple check) rips its own body in half, revealing in the middle of where the torsos are a large cavity filled with more mouths and hands with metal shards embedded into them - and this is where the drow is stuffed. The halfling suffers a similar fate, having hid from the treant but still exuding the delectable smell of fear.

The other serpentirs scatter to engage the various characters. Due to the undergrowth they mostly take double moves despite serpentir's ridiculous 50ft land move speed.

The next round starts with the halfling making an Escape Artist check to leave the confines of the thing, move away, Tumble and Jump over undergrowth and backflip off of one of the serpentirs focused on the mage in order to get some respite. Due to the Tumbles and positions of terrain and enemies, the serpentir can't effectively chase. The mage levitates up up and away... and gets grappled with an AoO as he tries to fly away. The fleshy serpentir rips itself in half and eats the mage.

This is where the drow takes 2d6 damage, thinks its weaksauce, and then everyone gasps a little as the serpentirs begin climbing the treant. It's functionally 50ft tall. Everyone knows that the serpentirs are going to grapple, grapple, grapple and climb, climb, climb, then toss the character off the treant to the ground only to be knocked prone again by the Stomp.

Fortunately for the PCs, the archer is a badass. He kills these things despite their DR with decent ease, slowly working through them. The mage gets thrown from the treant and just continues to levitate - he blasts the treant with Ray of Enfeeblement (twice) to lower its STR to the point where it can't sustain the weight of the climbing creatures and between that and the Entangling Ectoplasm the treant is basically out of the fight. The drow spends the fight escaping and getting grappled, and the halfling turned two of the serpentirs. After a desperate start, the PCs get through the fight easily. At no point does the treant actually use its 15ft Reach, Area Attack feat with Power Attack against Prone enemies and I am sorely disappointed.


INTERLUDE 2: Spent, the party retreats to a Rope Trick. The foxes continue to hunt them, though they roll so miserably that not even the Aid Anothers help them find the heroes with Scent. The PCs wait until morning, recover spells and HP and PP and drop down from the Rope Trick to continue to avoid the foxes and make their way up the volcano. What they discover is that the tracks are not just foxes "with a bizarre, unbalanced gait", but there's also a dire wolverine with a wholly unnatural slime trail, carrying a human rider. The PCs decide that instead of avoiding the foxes, they're going to counterambush them. They stalk them for half-an-hour and make contact.


ENCOUNTER 3: They watch, hidden, as the hunting group moves past. It's an obvious Druid riding a Dire Wolverine, with a group of arctic foxes in tow. The foxes are moving strangely because they each have a tiny harness behind their front shoulders with what appears to be a cape, along with a human head sutured onto their backs. The heads moan softly and look wide-eyed everywhere, though mostly down at the capes directly in front of them, on their fox's back. Both the heads and fozes are unnatural, suffering greatly, and nearly mindless.

The PCs decide these things all need a good killin' and so ambush them. The initial web locks down half of the foxes though not the wolverine or rider; the hail of arrows and sneak attacking alchemist's fire melts the druid to 5hp. Team Evil wins initiative completely.

The druid turns and points at the PCs, shouting commands; the foxes respond. As the foxes close, the PCs get a good look at the druid's shouted words activating the secret pages on the capes, revealing the word that activates the Explosive Rune. The heads, tears streaming down their faces, read aloud the rune and end their suffering. The lizardman eats suicide bombing fox/head symbionts to the tune of tons of HP, royally fucking him while basically doing no other damage to the other PCs since the lizardman was in front and the two next to him were the halfling and drow with Evasion. Then the sleet storm comes and the Half-Farspawn Monstrous Beast dire wolverine with poisonous claws fucks up the halfling to the tune of -3 HP. The party is blinded, unable to move easily and suddenly really fucking worried about a battle they thought they had all but wrapped up.

The PCs recover decently, mostly flailing about trying to get out of the sleet storm effect or trying to kill the foxes before the next wave arrives.

The druid drops Soften Earth on the archer, because that motherfucker does a shitload of damage. The Dire Wolverine proceeds to eat half his HPs, but the archer crawls out of the mud. The rest of the party tries to maneuver through the sleet storm and the foxes that weren't webbed are all done exploding. At this point its a race to see if they can prevent the dire wolverine from killing anyone, and they forget about the druid until he drops another soften earth on the lizardman.

The archer frees himself and the wolverine dies in one full attack action... and the druid flees as a bird into the forest.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Sounds fukkin' awesome. I'm impressed by your players; most groups would have probably ended with a TPK in any of those encounters.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France

Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.

-Josh Kablack

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mean_liar
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Post by mean_liar »

Thanks. :)

Honestly, I feel like they can handle playing on Nightmare mode because I've been training them for it. The spellcaster needs some more polish but I'm trying to give him hints and guiding some of his spell selection process at rest-time.

Dude still prepares Shield instead of Mage Armor though. He's awash in slots and I cannot change his mind.
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