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Post by Dell on Oct 29, 2007 9:26:11 GMT -5
In a fight with two drider, we lost two broadswords, a figurine, some unidentified stuff on the horse, and two party members - Clift and Hugh.
I think it's time to cut our losses and get back to the prime material. Planeshift anyone?
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Post by Ginger on Oct 29, 2007 10:02:09 GMT -5
Yeah, Pfiffwin's broadsword he loaned Clift was burned, as was Hugh's Flametongue. Clift's goat figurine was burned as well.
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Post by venger on Oct 29, 2007 10:23:15 GMT -5
Yeah, Pfiffwin's broadsword he loaned Clift was burned, as was Hugh's Flametongue. Clift's goat figurine was burned as well. Pearl of Wisdom went up too. The recap is sort of jumbled: Otto was held well before Florin and Cedrus ran through the Wall of Fire. Hugh at some point cast Tritherion's Mark but Otto failed his savings throw even with the +3 bonus. Hugh and Raven were struck down by a combination of Ice Storm, Lightning Bolt and Fireball. Clift died. The drider cleric then beat a held Otto with its flail until Dell came back in nightmare form and encompassed him in his Minor Globe. Drider cleric retreats under the pathway. Winthrop spends three rounds casting Dispel Magics on 30' sections of the Wall of Fire. Dell and Otto both go off to fight the magic-user. Florin and Cedrus come through the Wall of Fire, with Endure Heat, and are both promptly Held by the returning drider cleric. Everyone else is occupied with the horse, or slowed. Dell and Otto finish off the magic-user, but the cleric flees under the pathway before they can get back. Antonus, in drider form, kills it with a lightning bolt.
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Post by Ginger on Oct 30, 2007 19:07:32 GMT -5
I think it's time to cut our losses and get back to the prime material. Planeshift anyone? Well, Cedrus can cast it without error. Adrienne has a 90% chance of the spell working, and then a further 95% chance that the failure will be non-catastrophic. Adler, if he's lucky (and he will be), has an 85% of successfully casting it and a 90% chance that failure will be non-catastrophic. That's pretty good.
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Post by Dell on Oct 30, 2007 20:46:21 GMT -5
I think you mean Adrienne instead of Hugh, there. But the point is essentially the same. We'll look for the gate, since we're theoretically back on the level where the gate is. Then if we can't find it, or if it's gone, we can shift out. Maybe.
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Post by Wolfgar on Oct 30, 2007 22:03:07 GMT -5
It is a shame that we were unable to find the Great Druid, but I agree that we should retreat.
Is it too early to have a postmortem? Any ideas on what we could have done so this would have gone better? I think when it comes to drow we don't have a way to level the playing field. They have better AC, better vision, better resistances, better movement and equally good magic. Only in fighting ability do we surpass them unless you consider the poisoned weapons and dual attacks. With demons in the mountain at least we were able to use protection from evil to divide in conquer. We are lucky we have avoided demons in the Abyss since protection doesn't work here.
I think in the end our large party worked against us. Our lower level characters were never very useful. They tended to wait in the hall or get attacked by something they couldn't fend against. Even our higher level characters probably could have used a level or two. That way their spells would have been more likely to work against resistant creatures. And having more double specialized, two-attack fighters would have been useful.
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Post by Dell on Oct 31, 2007 8:16:02 GMT -5
The thing that hurt us most of all last week was lack of direction. Did we get hit by anything that wasn't a random encounter? Did we ever go into a room?
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Post by Wolfgar on Oct 31, 2007 10:28:49 GMT -5
I agree we had a lack of direction. We also seem to have a lack of willingness to follow.
In general I feel we really haven't had a clear idea how to obtain the goal - rescue the Great Druid. We are fine with the usual dungeon crawl - open every door and kill anything that moves. But we suck at the more stealthy missions. And at least in the Abyss I don't think we have the fire power to kill everything that is behind every door until we find the Great Druid.
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Post by venger on Oct 31, 2007 11:07:15 GMT -5
I think the Abyss is getting to us. We haven't "fought a room" in two weeks. We did go into a room two weeks ago but immediately retreated, slowed and paralyzed. Then had some random encounters where people were poisoned. End session.
Last week we looked in a room that didn't seem too appealing so didn't bother to investigate at all. Then we sat around for a while waiting for people to be be unslowed. For some reason we decided that waiting an additional hour for the rest of the people to be unslowed wasn't worth it maybe because we were anxious to wander around some more fighting random encounters?
That was a mistake- and the driders were pretty rough- Dell's "nightmare/Minor Globe" tactic was spot on. Winthrop wasting three rounds and three Dispel Magics on the Wall of Fire was not. Cedrus and the Endure Heat, excellent- Pfiffwin and Antonus with the Passwall, ehhh.. not so much.
Is the loss of Clift, Flewingham and Hugh (who died from our own miscast spell) so demoralizing that we are just giving up???
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Post by Ginger on Oct 31, 2007 11:54:23 GMT -5
Don't forget Jasper. We've been here 5 weeks and lost 4 people. That's really bad.
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Post by Wolfgar on Oct 31, 2007 12:29:05 GMT -5
The stone horse did feather fall but not in the way you might expect. Pfiffwin was given the suggestion by the slowed Antonus to use his wand to cast passwall under the horse so it would just drop down. The spell worked but created a hole into the maelstrom. If we do stick around then Pfiffwin is going to use the wand on the offensive. Something in the way - create a hole into the maelstrom under it. Combine that with a couple of illusions of the floor disappearing and that will have people jumping. I don't suppose the magic users have this in their spell books?
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Post by Dell on Oct 31, 2007 13:04:13 GMT -5
I don't suppose the magic users have this in their spell books? Unless it's in one of the new books, we don't have Passwall. We have Dig... I doubt it would work the same, but if someone wants to memorize it, that's on them. Note that we've had four deaths, but only one of them was due to an actual fight - Clift. Flewingham died because he was attacked in his sleep, Jasper died because he ran into a 100' hole, and Hugh died because his boss is Chaotic. Jasper is the only one that didn't get killed in a random encounter, which shows again that we're wasting too much time wandering the halls.
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Post by Ginger on Oct 31, 2007 14:16:36 GMT -5
Our options: 1. Plain shift out immediately. 2. Keep wandering.
If 1, then we have lots of further decisions. While outside, we can Speak With Dead on the drider head and Lolthson's head. That should give us a lot to go on. We can also identify stuff and determine whether the demon weapons are magical or not. Whether we re-enter the Abyss immediately, later, or never can be left an open question, depending on what we are told. I lean towards this plan.
If 2, we can either avoid all doors and map the corridors or just start hitting every door we see. Whatever we do, we'll need to change our tactics a lot. We can discuss how to do that if we decide we want to stay.
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Post by Dead Greyhawk on Oct 31, 2007 20:57:49 GMT -5
Al thinks that the Company got split up and then separated. First by the danger of dropping between levels, then by the stinking cloud, and last by the wall of fire. The first caused the Company to hesitate in combining strength. Both of those spells caused the Company to be unable to concentrate its forces on the enemy. Also, the two level combat, with the occluding mists made it very hard to see what was happening and support each other. Finally, the Company had to protect against four fronts simultaneously, which also spread out the Company's strength. With Jasper dead, Al thinks it very important to get him and Grizela into the fight, as they have almost the same fighting ability. Since Grizela is less hearty than he is, perhaps she should get the ring and dedicate a healer to him.
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Post by Wolfgar on Oct 31, 2007 21:35:08 GMT -5
How drained are we right now in terms of hit points, healing and spells? Do we have anywhere we can rest? Do you think we are strong enough to take another room? How are we going to carry Hugh's body? Realistically I don't think the horse can carry four corpses, a dark elf and a bunch of treasure even if the encumbrance works out. Any chance we can make a travois? It should give us plenty of mechanical advantage for hauling the extra weight.
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Post by Ginger on Oct 31, 2007 21:44:08 GMT -5
Exactly right. Regarding the ring of regeneration, I'm very excited to hear that Al is willing to part with it, even if only temporarily. That said, I think it makes sense with Al since he has so many HP and such a bad AC that he usually has HP that need healing.
Generally speaking, in the Abyss, I think we need to use the polymorph and minor globe combo much more frequently. What Dell did worked out well. Another possibility is for a caster to have a minor globe and become a squirrel and jump on a fighter's shoulder familiar style.
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Post by Ginger on Oct 31, 2007 21:57:43 GMT -5
How drained are we right now in terms of hit points, healing and spells? Do we have anywhere we can rest? Do you think we are strong enough to take another room? How are we going to carry Hugh's body? Realistically I don't think the horse can carry four corpses, a dark elf and a bunch of treasure even if the encumbrance works out. Any chance we can make a travois? It should give us plenty of mechanical advantage for hauling the extra weight. We're probably good for one more room. However, do we want to do one more room? Or do we want to stay in the corridors until we locate ourselves on the map? We have enough people sprawled over enough space that we can haul stuff pretty well. Since Antonus and Florin travel at a 6, someone with exceptional strength and normal speed can hustle from the front to the back of the party carrying stuff while we travel from room to room.
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Post by venger on Oct 31, 2007 22:51:59 GMT -5
Al has been dismembered a lot. He should probably hold on to the ring. Otherwise Raven should get it.
Your confidence in the map is heartening. But possibly misplaced. We were teleported. I have honestly no idea if we were sent to a level above the gate, a level below the gate, ten levels above the gate, we might even still be ON THE SAME level as the gate, etc.
The overpasses and underpasses seemed to line up well enough... until we explored this latest section, with the save vs. death magic door.
After everyone ate all his rations Florin is up to a 9 with the Strength spell.
Oh yeah, we're out of food.
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Post by Wolfgar on Nov 1, 2007 12:56:28 GMT -5
Generally speaking, in the Abyss, I think we need to use the polymorph and minor globe combo much more frequently. What Dell did worked out well. Another possibility is for a caster to have a minor globe and become a squirrel and jump on a fighter's shoulder familiar style. Haven't we used bane midges (sp?) so that the magic user can still cast spells from a diminutive form? We could team Otto, Raven and Al with Dell, Antonus and Winthrop. Leaving everyone else as support. Grizela and Adrienne are the other heavy hitters. Do you think they could stay close enough to one groups to be protected? Do we have much in the way of polymorph potions left? Otto has half a potion. I like the way those stop Hold Person. And of course the extra movement is nice. Otto could almost move around by himself in drider form given the resistance to fire and necklace of adaptation. The main worries would be lightning, slow and charm person. So I would still prefer a mage buddy.
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Post by venger on Nov 1, 2007 13:46:05 GMT -5
Haven't we used bane midges (sp?) so that the magic user can still cast spells from a diminutive form? We could team Otto, Raven and Al with Dell, Antonus and Winthrop. Leaving everyone else as support. Grizela and Adrienne are the other heavy hitters. Do you think they could stay close enough to one groups to be protected? Do we have much in the way of polymorph potions left? Otto has half a potion. I like the way those stop Hold Person. And of course the extra movement is nice. Otto could almost move around by himself in drider form given the resistance to fire and necklace of adaptation. The main worries would be lightning, slow and charm person. So I would still prefer a mage buddy. I gave Raven my last potion of polymorphing for his birthday. I'm out. Minor Globe + Polymorph is a good idea. Except they're both 4th level spells and Minor Globe only lasts for 1 round/level. Antonus can only use that combo once, maybe twice per day - assuming the Polymorph lasts through to the next battle with spellcasters. I think the party mages should take turns using this trick with Otto instead of all at once with Raven, Otto and Al. Once we've perfected the Otto-delivery-system, we're in business. Our magics have proven ineffective against dark elves time and time again. Having a bane midge caster on your shoulder is worthless if his spells fail 50+% of the time. Otto, riding a fast-flying steed, immune to 1st-3rd level spells is a devastating force. The rest of the party can hang back and watch while he destroys enemy casters.
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Post by Wolfgar on Nov 1, 2007 15:06:44 GMT -5
The bane midge might be useful for attacking non-magic resistant opponents in the same combat. Also I figured the magic user wouldn't be thrilled with being out front with no chance to attack.
Really what we need is to figure out what we are fighting as quickly as possible and put together the best combinations. Here are some thoughts.
room full of gnolls: round 1: fighters move in to clear doorway but hang back. archers shoot from long range. magic users do half move and then area effect. clerics prayer/bless. illusions of extra combatants to engage in melee. round 2: fighters move en masse to melee. magic users pick off enemy clerics with magic missiles.
driders/drow: round 1: half move to fighter and minor globe. cleric prayer/bless. illusions of extra combatants to engage in melee. round 2: polymorph into nightmare and fighter mount round 3: melee
demons on prime material plane: round 1: cleric half move to fighter and protection from evil. illusions of extra combatants to engage in melee. round 2: melee
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Post by Ginger on Nov 1, 2007 22:02:08 GMT -5
The idea of a bane midge caster would be that he'd find a safe place on a fighter's shoulder to share the caster's minor globe. It's a variant of polymorphing into a mount. This way, the caster could still use a magic missile or something if needed.
I think we're losing some analytical perspective by conflating room encounters with random encounters. The random encounters are always risky because we never know whether it's a major threat and we should start using spells until it's too late. I mean, we got screwed by the driders because Otto was surprised, which is pretty unlikely. If we weren't surprised, we might have killed them without taking a hit. Compare these driders to the two driders we fought in the corridor the week before.
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Post by venger on Nov 2, 2007 7:58:18 GMT -5
Compare these driders to the two driders we fought in the corridor the week before. We were pretty lucky that time. We weren't surprised, we were close enough to see them and we won initiative. And one of them failed a channeling roll. I don't know if either of those driders was even a magic-user- the clerics aren't as scary.
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Post by Wolfgar on Nov 2, 2007 8:02:03 GMT -5
I just think we need more team work. We sometimes develop strategies that work in the course of a long combat but we rarely start an encounter in an organized manner. We have an innate disadvantage because we are acting as 6 or 7 individuals each with our own idea how best to proceed while the enemy works seamlessly under the direction of the DM. You never see the enemy get hit by friendly fire or choose to attack the same opponent. We need to have standard maneuvers in different situations. Otherwise we are going to be making it up as we go each time, resulting in mixed outcomes each time.
In terms of random encounters. I think we should go back to moving around in teams. No need to put all of the heavies at the front. When we went down to the lower walkway we should have gone in units. That way even if we are split on multiple levels there are full teams together still.
Finally, for this week I think the plan should be whatever Raven decides. We should take direction from a single leader.
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Post by Ginger on Nov 2, 2007 8:30:32 GMT -5
Finally, for this week I think the plan should be whatever Raven decides. We should take direction from a single leader. Isn't that the plan for every week?
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Post by Wolfgar on Nov 2, 2007 8:37:36 GMT -5
Only in theory. I suggesting there is no need to debate - either in or out of game. Make a decision and we will stick with it until you change the plan.
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Post by Ginger on Nov 2, 2007 9:29:01 GMT -5
FYI, I promise that I haven't hacked into Josh's message board account or anything.
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Post by Ginger on Nov 2, 2007 9:44:30 GMT -5
Well, since my authority will be absolute on Sunday, I'd like to collect input until then. Here's a decision tree kind of thing: A) Planeshift immediately or B) Stay in the Abyss. If A, then we will stay in the area for 4 days while Cedrus raises the fallen, we interrogate prisoner heads, and the casters identify the items. We'll Sepia Snake Sigil the captive until we get through his magic resistance.
If B, then 1) We do what we've been doing and keep barging through doors, 2) We don't go through any doors and move quickly through corridors in an attempt to fully map this level.
A1 is an easy choice, and is always the backup plan if we get into too much trouble. I like B1 the least, because it's what we've been doing and hasn't yielded much, except for a ton of loot and XP. B2 is probably my choice. As long as we keep moving, we can minimize the random encounters and we might eventually find the gate, or at least something we recognize.
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Post by Dell on Nov 2, 2007 10:47:13 GMT -5
So far, the random encounters have been more dangerous than the things we've encountered in the rooms. I'd say that's a strong incentive to go room-to-room.
You may recall, we encountered another pair of driders on an overpass. They didn't see us - but if they had, we would have been severely hosed, as everyone knows you can't win if your opponent has the high ground.
So, I'm in favor of B1, with the goal of finding more cooperative prisoners/native guides, like the gnolls.
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Post by venger on Nov 2, 2007 12:28:06 GMT -5
So far, the random encounters have been more dangerous than the things we've encountered in the rooms. I'd say that's a strong incentive to go room-to-room. It makes no sense to me to pass up rooms. The Great Druid is not going to be sitting out in the open, on one of these web-walkways. Even if we explore the entire section we'll eventually still have to backtrack to explore all the rooms. And "mapping" this level is going to lead to ONLY having random encounters next week. That's unbearable... Our Drow prisoner saw the Great Druid when he first arrived here. He arrived here from a portal to his dark elf city. We found him on the level we were teleported to. Have we established that he entered the same dark room we did and made telepathic contact with the same entities we did and was then transported to the same spot we were? If so, then we know that the portal to the dark elf city is on the same level as our gate. Either B1 or A1 has my vote, but I'm leaning towards A1: If we PlaneShift out at the least we can dump all this encumbering treasure we've found. And identify any of the items.. maybe there's something useful. We can come back more prepared for travel in the Abyss. With additional food, water, rope, Tenser's Floating Disc spells, mules, some charmed monsters, etc.
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