Post/Author/DateTime	Post
solbergb 12-01-07, 12:02 AM	This is part 3 of a players-eye-view of a Living Greyhawk adaption of Expedition to Demonweb Pit. There will be massive spoilers, even in this first post. The next and probably final game will be this Sunday. Prior parts can be found here: Part1: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=937863 Part2: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=940600 Cast of Characters. I don't know most of the exact builds, but will just give a kind of "role" as listing the PRC's doesn't actually show how the character is played. Several characters leveled in the last module. Unlike the RHOD cast, which is mostly Neutral, this party is entirely good and mostly lawful good. Four of the six charactes even have Aura of Good (cleric or paladin levels). Unlike RHOD also, all of us are experienced players and most of us have worked together before, often with these characters. Some of us even played and ran the original Q1 finale to the Giant/Drow/Demonweb 1st edition tournament modules. Olivia -L12 Human (Rhenee) Telekenetic themed Sorceress. She can trace the origin of most of her spells to about 3 (as an example, solid fog is just evards without a surface, according to her). Specializes in moving things around and battlefield control. Can do damage too, properly equipped. Weak on area damage. The only powerful spells she has out of the TK theme are oriented to magical analysis. Main improvement over part2 was swapping gloves of arrow snaring for gloves dex+2 and upgrading amulet of health to +4. Kyndiah - L12 Halfling light fighter, who has a strong religious vocation with Avoreen. A very fierce little warrior, she uses a variety of divine tricks to power her attacks and isn't afraid to wrestle with medium sized or smaller enemies. No change from part 2 in capability Tuvok - L12 Human "Ninja" - he's very much like an Anime character, (no levels in Ninja though) - very powerful charge+cleave attacks, lots of mobility but somewhat fragile. He makes a lot of use of boots of big stepping+knight's move to surround an enemy with hostile melee types. He will sometimes grapple enemies. He gained a level since part 2 but the player says he's pretty much the same except for extra BAB, stat bump and an attribute item upgrade similar to Olivia's. Kohan - L11 Dwarf Spike Chain Occult Slayer - He's a rare light armor dwarf. He's better at dealing damage than taking it, using hitpoints as his main defense. Kohan is unchanged since part 2. Ralin - L11 Dwarf Radiant Servant - A generalist cleric, preferences are offensive casting, buffing, healing in that order. Heavy armor dwarf. He's pretty much the same as in part 2. Argent - L10-11 Human Radiant Servant - Medic/Support style priest, also heavily armored, preferring healing, buffing to other cleric roles. This character has been active elsewhere since we last played, gaining a couple three levels in convention play. He will likely be a much stronger contributor. At this point the divergence between the Living Greyhawk expectation of 10th level and the actuality that this is a L10-12 module is reflected in the fact that the party is a strong level 12, even if we're only getting level 10 rewards in terms of xp and gold. The mission is to either slay Lolth or to disrupt her meeting with other equally powerful demon lords. Either way, our characters feel they're going to be in for the challenge of their lives and my character at least is not at all certain this isn't a suicide run. We're powerful on our scale, but this is a being that grants divine spells! On her home turf! I'll try to encourage the clerics to prepare plane shift....assuming we think it will work there..it might not. The GM is still grumbling about how weak drow are, so we expect him to do his best to beef up the humanoid enemies not with extra CR's but with better feat and spell choices, similar to chapter 2. He'll likely not tamper with anything else.
solbergb 12-04-07, 01:05 PM	The first order of business was to review why our characters felt they could accomplish this mission. It came down to the nature of gods, and what they'd risk in a meeting like this. According to our various sources (Bone Naga emissary of Orcus, Three and Olivia's planar traveleing boyfriend) there are three ways a deity or archdemon can manifest. 1. In person. Full power, unbeatable except by another deity. But if somehow destroyed, dead until the needs of followers eventually revive it, if the religion survives the crisis. 2. Avatar. Significant power, but the kind of thing a Robilar or Mordenkeinen might be able to challenge. Loss of an avatar is serious business, it causes great loss of face and can interfere briefly with ability to grant spells, commune and similar activities. 3. Aspect. It looks like the deity, has full knowledge of the deity but is only about as dangerous as, say, one of us. No significant consequences to losing it. As Olivia remarked - "Kind of like a divine projected image". In a meeting of chaotic evil demon lords, the odds are slim that anyone would send anything other than an aspect. We also reviewed the prophecy again - it referred to a serpent gate, a black gate and a stone gate, plus an exit home near Lolth's throne. We'd found the black gate and had both key and password. We were concerned about using the same gate to the Demonweb that we used when assaulting the Fane of Eclavadra. Figuring it might be guarded we instead researched and located a gate to another Material plane that Lolth had already conquered. We reasoned that on this world, Find the Path plus Phantom Steeds would rapidly locate the portal to the Demonweb.
solbergb 12-04-07, 01:11 PM	The world was a desert, nearly devoid of life. We took appropriate precautions for a desert trip and a demonweb trip (endure elements, undetectable alignment, slot free to recast hero feast if needed, etc) We timed arrival to about 12 hours before the conclave was slated to end, to allow plenty of time to search out the gate. We located the gate within an hour and scouted the location. It had some tents, a lot of tunnels going underground and a couple uncomfortable looking drow plus some huge spiders guarding the inert gate. Our assault plan worried more about not letting them through the gate or rousing the locals than any danger they might pose. Evards around the gate to discourage approach, readied silence spells (used to block blowing a horn) and a blitz by the fighter types to rapidly butcher the guardians. During the looting we noticed that the guards had serpent tattoos and the gate had some serpent-motif carvings. We figured this was probably the serpent gate, and we were "on the rails" for the Pelorite prophecy. We then cautiously explored the areas. Detect evil showed faint auras going into a couple tunnels, we presumed "priests of lolth". We chose the largest tunnel and shortly discovered an entire underground city of drow. Not wanting to risk that kind of a fight when we had all of the demonweb to face yet, we backed off and settled for guarding the portal until we were ready to go through it. (we'd figured out how to activate it - one of the portal keys we'd located in the demonweb went here) Eventually another couple guards showed up and were swiftly dispatched. Nobody seemed to notice the lack of return of the original guards - there are advantages to Drow being sneaky and chaotic.
solbergb 12-04-07, 01:16 PM	About 2 hours before the conclave was scheduled to end, we entered the demonweb. The other side of the gate proved unguarded. We used the teleport nexus to get close to the black gate...into a shrine area where we'd looted the silver statue of Lolth last time we'd visited. The Bone Naga of Orcus was waiting for us there, accompanied by some giant zombies. It offered to give us the golden badge that identified it as a representative of Orcus. "That should get you into the meeting safely, and entitle you to an audience with Lolth". We were also given a moderately current map of the next level of the demonweb showing where the meeting would be, and were offered an alternate escape plan, through Orcus's domain (we were assured plane shift would work there, although the plane would be "uncomfortable" for the living). An item of gold was mentioned in the Prophecy, and Olivia agreed to represent Orcus in this meeting. After all, the goal of Orcus was to break up the meeting and foil Lolth's plans. Olivia swears fealty to no god, and as a rule is resistant to doing anything a fiend wants, but sees no reason to change what she was going to do anyway just because it also helps one demon lord of many. Most of the other party members would have been unable to accept the gift (two paladins, two clerics of an anti-undead god. Our occult slayer would have been the only other option and he probably would have been unhappy about it too)
solbergb 12-04-07, 01:25 PM	Armed with the key, the safe passage item and map, the main problem the party had was restraining their greed at all the shiny magic items that Kohan noticed with his auravision and not fighting meaningless battles with guardians that would have perhaps alerted Lolth that we were not in fact representatives of Orcus, come to hear her pitch. The gate guardian let us pass, as did the drow command post on the far side and a bunch of spiders in the "Molting" room. We had time, so we decided to explore side-passages. Some dead-ended. One however had a secret door light up. This was a room with a lot of statuary. (we considered looting these, but a string of tenser's disks with Lolth's statues floating behind us into the meeting would seem rather obvious) Using standard operating procedure, Olivia opened the secret door with an "open" cantrip. A portucllus swing down and the area inside it filled with an odd gas. Olivia recognized it with Kn Arcane as Gorgon Breath, and dispersed it with a gust of wind while the tanks busted down the portcullus. Unknown to us, there was an assassin in the room, but we were authorized so he did not interfere. This secret passage bypassed a "crystal fortress" and got us headed straight to where we wanted to go. That room had a spider golem guardian, another assassin we never spotted and some intriguing mirrors. Olivia spent an analyze dwoemer spell, discovering that the fog blocking vision to inside the stone door was just a mordenkeinen's sanctum-like effect, but the mirrors were some sort of transport device if used properly. The prophecy mentioned a stone gate, so we figured the stone door with stone guardian qualified. Figuring the room beyond was stuffed with demon lords, we did some round/level buffing (we had enough redundant spells for several fights, so if we were wrong, no big deal) - enlarged all 3 warriors, righteous wrath of faithful, recitation. Olivia turned on arcane sight and see invis from her mask of dragons. The clerics tossed around some other buffs (one circle prot evil, one prot evil, some shields of faith, etc) We enter and we take a food break while the GM draws out the giant room full of bad guys.....
solbergb 12-04-07, 01:30 PM	Going from our door backwards, left to right.....Olivia has no kn planes and no kn religion, so you're getting these from her point of view. Two Vrocks and a "Vrock God" (bigger with fancy equipment) eviscerating some drow that annoyed them by the door, and starting a "victory dance" (dance of ruin) Beyond them on left was a big distorted creature whose form changed and was hard to look at, accompanied by what looked like a miniature balor covered in eyes. To the right is a frost giant, backing away from the Vrocks. The center of the room has a platform where someone could give speeches, an aspect of Demogorgon was standing there, watching everything. Beyond him was a cluster of Gnolls with their god and a cluster of Minotaurs with their god glaring at each other. The back half of the room had a raised balcony, accessible by stairs on the right side (guarded by one drow, near the frost giant) or on the far side from the door. (terminating in a throne, guarded by two more drow, throne empty). On the balcony between the throne and the righthand stairs were three succubi and what looked like a succubus princess (like the Vrock, bigger and decked out in equipment). Near the succubi, between them and the throne was a giant incorporeal femaleish thing, very bright. The left side of the balcony had stairs going up into a 50'ish radius dark webbed area which our prophecy had referred to as a "black pearl" and where presumably the aspect of Lolth resided, ready for private audiences. We were....uncomfortable....with trying to fight all of this at once.
solbergb 12-04-07, 01:39 PM	The vrocks doing their dance were within full attack of our melees, but they decided to just go past them and see if any AOO's were taken. Olivia, as party spokesman, had settled on a strategy that had worked well in other chaotic evil societies that she visited. Initiate nothing....but if disrespected strike with maximum force and crush the person who insulted you. While moving past the Vrocks, the frost giant noticed the sword we'd taken in the first part and yelled "THIEF!" He unfortunately chose to do this in full attack range of our three fighters and was butchered instantly, while Olivia put up a wall of force to block dance of ruin effects. The Vrocks continued dancing. Nobody else in the room seemed to care about the fate of the frost giant (treated with same indifference as the two drow the Vrocks killed) It did however draw the attention of the "eye-demon", who saw through Kyndiah's illusion and noticed her demon-slaying bow. He ran over, raising an alarm and attacking. He lasted 2 rounds and managed to slay a phantom steed and do some damage. In the meantime Olivia conjured a servant horde to loot the frost giant and just said "Who are you to question our gifts to Lolth?" Again, most of the room showed indifference. But his patron, the big icky, hard-to-look-at monster came over to us. He introduced himself as an "Old One" and opined that demons were pathetic and disgusting and that his patronage would be useful if they were enemies. Again - this party is not one where anyone can swear fealty to a fiend. Two paladins, two clerics, one occult slayer and one Rhenee sorceress raised in the tradition of "gods are just powerful outsiders, and we don't enslave ourselves to them any more than we'd do it to anyone else". Olivia was having trouble even with arcane sight determining how dangerous the creature was, so she decided to try a diplomatic approach, explaining how we were already representing Orcus and it would not be good for our longterm health to renege before we'd met with Lolth. That worked (doing damage to our cash flow...his gift for cooperation is a 95k goldpiece javelin..oh well) and he backed off. When the Vrocks were done dancing, Olivia dropped the wall of force. They and the unseen servants finished up their looting, and we went up the stairs on the right.
solbergb 12-04-07, 01:47 PM	At this point the Boss Succubus, called something like Graath changed into his "normal" form (a size large dark skinned humanoid with a sword) and tried to indicate that weak mortals were an insult to the meeting and everyone should pile on us to destroy us. The demogorgon aspect responded with "if they're weak mortals, you shouldn't need our help" much to the amusement of the other demons. What we didn't know and never knew incharacter is that Three was Graath's creature, so Graath knew our capabilities very well and his plan was to get us to the black gate without the free-passage badge...and get killed. This had some tactical benefit about interfering mortals. Unfortunately for Graath, the Bone Naga had other ideas and leveraged Graath's plan to suit the needs of Orcus..... In any event, Graath was literally and figuratively in a corner. He also likely knew he was dead meat fighting us by himself, but he made a go of it. Graath went first, attempting an "instant seduction" on Olivia. Had he been in Rhenee form, or perhaps as an older Oeridean man (a type she tends to "go for") she might not have rolled a 30 saving throw and shook it off. (the DC was very high...29ish) The nearest succubus died in one swat from Kohan, who moved in to flank Graath for Tuvok's charge. Olivia tossed some cold iron arrows and Kyndiah at the further succubus, killing her and leaving the other succubus near Kyndiah. Kyndiah decided the remaining succubus was no threat and instead went for Graath....where she discovered he had an aura that made you not want to attack him (probably because he's "too hot" or perhaps the ability is called "not in the face!"). Sadly for Graath, she's a paladin of strong will and stabbed him anyway. The remaining succubus moved toward Kohan and was struck down with an AOO. We don't know what she planned to do, but it didn't work. Then Tuvok got his charge. Graath, probably believing we were mind blanked or something since his powers did nothing to us, chose to AOO Tuvok (instead of trusting his "Don't hit me" power) and did a little damage. Then Tuvok cut him in half. The bright incorporeal woman said "Mortals....disgusting...." and teleported or plane shifted out (both things that should have been impossible in Lolth's domain. Everyone in the room was shocked).
solbergb 12-04-07, 01:50 PM	By this time the room had been reduced enough that we felt more confident we could handle what remained if they tried anything. They must have felt the same....nobody else harassed us as we moved past the Drow and Bebelith guardians to the Pearl of Lolth. Lolth was dangling from a spider thread, in the center of the Pearl. A quick scan of the room indicated no other magical sources, and that she could cast 5th level spells...about right for an aspect. We let her monologue for a bit while we made sure she was the right target, then Olivia got a bag out of her Haversack (filled with holy water vials). She said "Orcus sends his regards!" and initiative began (as it was clear she was about to do something hostile) The first person to go however was yet another assassin we'd failed to spot. The GM had made this guy into an "Anti-Tuvok" - he was built along similar lines, with pious templar+barbarian instead of paladin and feats oriented toward a devastating charge attack. He charged Kohan while all of us were flatfooted, using his climb speed to run down the webs in the Pearl. Fortunately for Kohan, he rolled a "4" and just missed. (the GM rolled his damage, it was over 100 points, and he had about a 1 in 4 chance of critting, which would have killed Kohan instantly) Kohan counterattacked, ripping into the templar, while Olivia and the other two warriors waited for the recitation and righteous wrath of the faithful. While waiting, Lolth tried a confusion spell, which everybody saved against. (5 good will saves and immune to mind-affecting....) When the clerics were done, Olivia launched the Kyndiah and Tuvok at Lolth, along with 10 flasks of holy water, for good measure....and also a feather fall for Kyndiah and Tuvok. All of the flasks hit, Tuvok severed the spiderweb strand with one of his big attacks and Kyndiah added to the holy water damage with her holy sword. All 3 of them dropped to the bottom of the Web. The templar hacked into Kohan, doing respectable damage but not near enough to put him down. Kohan killed the templar. Lolth looked at her spell list, had nothing especially good, and got most of the party in a lightning bolt. She did not survive another round of Tuvok and Kyndiah. Olivia started sending her servants out to loot while the party did some rapid healing. An alarm had gone off downstairs, the cry "Treachery - Lolth was slain, the truce is off" was shouted and battle noises floated up the stairs.
solbergb 12-04-07, 02:04 PM	We came down the stairs after a couple rounds of healing plus a haste scroll (for mobility) to see the minotaurs and gnolls locked in combat, Demogorgon, the Old One and the vrocks gone (presumably out the front door) and the drow and bebilith heading purposefully toward the stairs. Olivia could see that one was invisible, but rolled poorly on initiative and could not warn anybody. This fight was also nasty, brutish and short. Kohan, Kyundiah and most importantly, Tuvok's final smite+rhino rush charge dispatched the bebilith before it could move. Argent suppressed the cleric's spellcasting with a readied silence spell. The warmage got out of the silence and did a giant electric cone of damage, killing all remaining phantom steeds and singing everyone in the party who lacked evasion. (Olivia and her familiar took a couple points of damage after temp hitpoints...nobody was too badly hurt). The rogue-type tried to stab Kohan and learned he had uncanny dodge, so his damage was minimal. Meanwhile the minotaurs and gnolls had wrapped up their battle, with all minions slain and the minotaur god defeating the gnoll god. Olivia did a sculpted evards, getting all 4 remaining bad guys. Two had free movement on, and the Minotaur god beat the grapple check but the warmage got stuck. In another round of combat, the predictable result happened to the warmage and rogue who were near our fighters. The cleric had spellcasting suppressed again by a readied silence. The minotaur deity picked up the avatar of the gnoll god and....vanished. (another person able to plane shift or teleport when it should be impossible! actually no. He did a spell-like "maze" ability on himself, and decided to fail intelligence checks for a while, hoping to exit once we'd left. He guessed right, it worked. While teleport and plane shift don't work in the Demonweb, pocket dimensional spaces (such as haversacks) do. He took advantage of that and escaped getting his aspect killed and looted. clever) Having nothing better to do, Olivia tossed a fighter and some arrows at the cleric. Then there was rapid looting, and wand of secret doors turned up a door behind the throne.
solbergb 12-04-07, 02:10 PM	Not really wanting to go out into a fully alerted demonweb....(our clerics still had several fights left in them and our fighters were fine but Olivia had only one hard fight left in her and we'd lost our phantom steeds) we explored the secret door, looking for the prophecied "Portal Home" What we found was a Bodak in Bahumat robes/holy symbol and a glowing rock. We survived the death gaze and when one of the clerics told us about the death gaze, Olivia put it inside a solid fog after one fighter grappled it (and moved the other two fighters up close to it so they could pound on it) We then pondered the rock. It had healing and "prayer" properties to good and lawful people, but it wasn't precisely a portal, or at least not active. Olivia tried Analyze Dwoemer and her extensive knowledge of Arcane objects but it was inconclusive. It wasn't a normal constructed magical portal and she lacked the more specific "Analyze portal" spell which works even when the magic isn't active. We tried some obvious stuff - channeling positive energy, holy water, water, blood, touching it and wishing to go somewhere etc. The looting of the priest/bodak turned up a scroll of consecrate and daylight. We tried consecrate, and a portal opened for one round. We were all next to it, and jumped through.
solbergb 12-04-07, 02:13 PM	We found ourselves in a heavily guarded area on the plane of Celestia, and had to rapidly explain that, no, we weren't an invasion force from the abyss, and that rather we were fulfilling a Pelorian prophecy. It turns out that somehow Lolth got a chunk of Celestia in her demonweb, along with a priest she corrupted into a Bodak. Strengthening the tie to celestia transports those touching it to Celestia, a trick that Lolth has used in the past to launch raids. (Kn plains, of which our party was weak, could have given us the approach to open the gate). In any event, they had no objection to us plane shifting home. And with that, the adventure was over.
solbergb 12-04-07, 02:17 PM	In the context of the Living Greyhawk adventure, we only earned about 2/3 the XP and gold that was theoretically possible. This is the consequence of doing things the "easy" way - the way rational characters would. Had we battled our way in, I'm sure we would have achieved full rewards...if we didn't run out of gas before the meeting room. Had someone been willing to swear fealty to the Old One, the heavily enchanted returning javelin would have paide for our time all by itself. In any event, given that we don't seem to have acquired the personal emnity of Lolth, she's probably blaming our activities on Orcus and focusing her attention there. Olivia was I guess a convincing emissary of Orcus. (I even got to use my glamered shield to show his symbol...) In a home campaign...this adventure has several really expensive items (bow, sword, javelin and even the armor in the first encounter is 32k). The GM may want to look that over and balance the rewards more carefully. In all, we enjoyed the adventure even though our party was stronger than the module expected for most of it. If your adventurers are unlikely to take diplomatic or "disguise" type approaches to the module, the party will need to be stronger than 4 10th level characters. It seems balanced pretty well for a 10th level typical party if the players are willing to talk to and work with the NPC's.