Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Senevri 12-29-07, 06:42 PM	The group just got the Soul Totem. APL is currently 21. They had trouble with the Solar and the Titan, but ran through rest. Balor was effectively a speedbump, doing decent HP damage and wasting some spells. Party composition: Druid 11/Planar Shepherd(fire) 10 - doesn't like not doing damage, so uses direct damage conjurations with no save, meaning low damage. Also uses Phantom Bears a lot. Sorcerer 6/Fiend-blood 10/Archmage 3 (Spell power +1, Mastery of Elements, Arcane Reach ) - Newbie. Likes Radiant Assault, Maw of Chaos. has Superior Invisibility. Dread Necromancer 21 ( Gorundal (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20061013a) Zombie dragon, as per Draconomicon ) - Not a lich yet, since they know they need to enter Positive plane. I felt lazy 'bout converting all the stuff to 3.5, so I found Ammet (http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/Half-Dragon_%28Red%29_Unique_Balor) from net, and I'm using Delve's Roathurr + Half-fiend template for Ashardalon. I'm expecting one or two visiting players willing to Cannon Fodder for the game. I'm giving them Tauroc and Stratos from Delve (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060929a) to play. Nurn is still a friendly at this point. One issue is the whole CL 40 Blasphemy. I may just end up not using it. All in all, I've found the Delve stuff to be extremely useful in itself, but also as a guide on how to write my monster notes down for fast access. Any tips/tricks/anecdotes on the trip to Bastion?
Senevri 12-31-07, 04:08 AM	Okay, didn't quite get to Ashy yesterday. Bombardment + some sort of stone spike took out the Retriever for most of the combat, and rest of the low-level mooks were easily wiped... It appears that tanks are relatively fun even at 20th level... even if they're not terribly effective all in all, they do save spells for casters. Grisly managed to grapple the druid, which was fun. The Sorceress has discovered Dispel Magic, and is hitting EVERYTHING with it the first time. So far no effect, but if she still does it, it'll help against the old red quite a bit. She chose to load up 3x3 Ice-Scorching Rays in three Spell Matrices, against the boss. After they get through it's shields, it'll be effective, but I'm expecting at least one of them to be wasted on it. I'll have to admit, I'm not rolling Scorchers right - I only ask for one SR and one Touch hit if used against single target. Avasculate does half HP damage even on a successful save. Ow ow ow! We're also taking the average of every 10 dice on spells, meaning some situations get resolved with hardly any rolling ( e.g. "20d12? Is 130 points of damage okay?" ) The wishes are going to be tricky - I ruled it cannot be reliably used to force a failed next save, since that makes "I wish opponent fails next save" + death spell overpowered in a party with 3 wishes/day. OTOH, my Ashy ( Roathurr with a half-fiend makeover and FH 15 ) is going to be veeery nasty against this group. I ran into some trouble with the tower, as I was already getting tired, and made a bunch of mistakes: - Started with immediate hostilities despite the parley options - Necro whipped out Wail of the Banshee, which was fun, really, but I ruled it didn't affect those inside the building ( effectively no line of sight or effect. ) took some flak for that. Sorceress took friendly fire there... - Had some trouble remembering who was inside and who was outside - Ruled Death Throes ignored DR. I think this is kosher, but my group has trouble understanding when DR comes to play. So do I, in fact - "DR applies against weapons and attacks" seems logical enough --- But, let me see - if a giant chucks a chunk of non-magical rock at you, it applies -- if a druid conjures up a chunk of non-magical rock, and drops it on you, it doesn't? I also made a boo-boo and didn't allow the group to take the Soul Totem indoors, which is illogical, as Ashardalon has his with him.
Senevri 01-01-08, 10:24 AM	Stupid New Year's Eve. T_T No time to play yesterday, and players not feeling well enough to play today. Thus, Bastion will have to wait 'til the end of the month. :( I'm a bit worried - There's not much in the way of loot, really - Sure, the paladin has some nice gear, but for the all-caster group, not so much... Using Stratos as a hireling has made me kinda feel that warforged are really quite cool.
Meijin 01-18-08, 06:17 PM	I'm actually looking at starting that adventure. I bought the module, but I haven't had a chance to run it yet. We rotate DMs in my group and it will be coming back to me in a couple weeks. The only problem is that my group isn't quite up to 18th level. I might have to give them a side adventure to work them up to it.
Senevri 01-19-08, 03:45 AM	My group ran through the early opponents. They took out a 3.5 upgraded Cathezar in roughly two rounds, so I'd have to say, 16-17 level group might manage. With the exception of second string, though. One Balor stuns with blasphemy, other hits you dead....
Meijin 01-19-08, 11:12 AM	I have a five person party at 15th level. They might be able to pull it off, they've surprised me before.
Senevri 01-19-08, 12:24 PM	Do note that Nurn comes to help if situation is going badly, so drop C on them, and then use that as a test to see how good they are. Oh, and the title is once again relevant. They still have 4 chambers to visit, and 5 unattuned. I was thinking of dropping a Lumi encounter there, since I have MM3, and they happen to be in PeP. Maybe as a go-between vs. them and the caretakers. Is there a 3.5 update on spiritovores somewhere, btw?
Meijin 01-22-08, 04:04 AM	I haven't looked for all the 3.5 updates yet. Actually, the only one I found was the link you had to Ammet. My party doesn't have a real priest, we have a healer instead. It's an awesome build as long as she doesn't have to actually fight. She adds 2 hp per spell level and her charisma bonus to all healing spells. But, healers don't get any divination spells and our mage doesn't have much in that area either, so towards the beginning of the adventure I'm going to send them to someone who can cast divination spells to help out. I have a few encounters planned around there. As far as C dropping by the party, without Nurn's help half the party will die and she'd get away whoever the decendent is. Of course, that might actually be fun. With Nurn's help, she could still do major damage and might get away with the decendent. My group is wrapping up our current adventure tomorrow. Then I'm out of town for two weeks. After that, I'll start Bastion. I'm thinking about using one of the other hooks to get it started, the soulless babies. I'm doing that just to be mean. Our group is very combat oriented, so anything involving knowledge (finding out why the babies are born without souls) is going to be a challenge for them.
Senevri 01-22-08, 06:12 AM	Well, at that level, a Cleric/Combat Medic would probably be the best healer. ( with possible RSoP, but we don't have completes. ) --- They took AGES, but I finally managed to drop them enough clues about how to get in. They had a friendly meeting with O.... wossname, Satyr guy. I played him off as a something of a hippie. He managed to give them a good word about the Gardeners ( one of which they already killed via Destruction, as it appeared in the battlefield to heal one character who had taken a lot of CON damage. ) I'm thinking of dropping one custom encounter at them, but... it would delay the game a bit further, and I want them to reach Ashardalon this week. Myra got away from them, though the dragon died. I'm planning on having her come back to pull a Raise Dead on it. Edit Okay, everyone's at level 22, and they've effectively cleared out the place - except for Ashardalon and the Kobold in Daern's Instant Fortress. I dropped two custom monsters on them, ( A swirfneblin half-dragon initiator using the auto-confirm critical trick, and a Marilith Warblade 2 using Combat Rhythm. ) and they defeated them quite easily. It was nice to see them freak out vs. the swirf's autosuccess on saves ( fortunately, they aimed at different saves, ) as well as it's autosuccess on the crits. Still, it turned out to be HP-poor, and the lack of SR really hurt. Maw of Chaos = nasty, but it only does 70+3d6 at this point, so it's not instant. Greater Spell Matrix'd Scorchers spontaneously changed thanks to Archmage ability deal 105+6d6, and are nice, but there aren't that many of them All in all.. I don't know. I think my best bet at playing Ashardalon is to use the heals a lot, early on. Since they like doing HP damage, I'll allow them to waste spells, dropping the occasional Breath Weapon in and grappling the NPC tanks to death. It'll be interesting... it worked well on the Solar.
Meijin 01-23-08, 07:54 PM	Here is my group's set up. I mentioned the healer, she's taking levels in Contemplative to get some domain spells. BTW, she's an NPC healbot that we created when we start the group (at 1st level). We have a dwarven warblade, an elven ranger/dervish, a tiefling conjurer, and my character is a ninja. I'm going to throw in a little level retraining mini because I screwed up my character. Not really screwed up, but I didn't think about what I was doing before I did it. I was trying to created Kakashi from Naruto 5 minutes before the game started two weeks ago since we were short a rogue (we used to have one, but he left the group). Now that I've been reading the message board I've discovered that the best way to make Kakashi is as a Erudite or possibly a warlock.
Senevri 01-24-08, 06:17 AM	Finale today. Everything except soul falls is cleared out. The beastly thing had a kobold bard in an instant fortress with him! That means +3 to hit and damage as long as he sings, and five rounds afterwards. As I said, I'm using Roathurr + Half-fiend as my Ashardalon, since I couldn't be bothered to update him to 3.0, so he's kind on the strong side. I'm mostly using Pemoka as-is, but I'm sneaking in some Spell Compendium spells, Inspirational boost and... something. Ashardalon doesn' have the Chaotic subtype, so he's easily taken out by stacking Maws on him. Since Time Stop doesn't exist in my game, I'm switching the contents in the ring to that. The rest... I'll have to try to dispel, I guess. Ninjas! Erudite is a solid pick for Kakashi. Beyond that, Swordsages are natural ninjas, especially combined with Dread Commando( miss chance variant. ) A Swordsage 15/Dread Commando 5 would net something like +8 init before dex or Improved Init, and a 25% miss chance. That's kinda neat. Oh well. They now have 2 out of 3 of the soul totem pieces. I think I'll drop a CR 23 Lumi encounter on them - a Crusader insisting they throw the Totem into the fortress and allow the doorway to close. I like Lumi, and I want to show off a Crusader's endurance. Most of my heavy-hitting critters die in two rounds against this group. ( can you say, unload a matrix full of scorchers + maw of chaos? That's 175+ average damage. And that's from one out of three casters. )
Senevri 01-25-08, 06:43 AM	... Well, that was anticlimactic. On the other hand, the party managed to get to lv22 before the encounter, but still: - The Druid managed to use Slime Wave on the dragon, making it lose one round of actions. Next round he managed to make a Bombardment trap the thing. Third round, the dragon failed the burst free DC. Ray of Entropy managed to cause a -4 penalty to physicals, no big. The -80 HP was probably the worst thing. Fourth round, the dwarf NPC managed to pull of three critical hits with a dwarven waraxe (3x burst + 9x damage), which meant the dragon was really hurting for a Heal. Unfortunately, the sorceresses turn came first, and she unloaded a spell matrix containing three icy scorching rays. Two of them got through for ~50 points of damage, which was then doubled. And so it died. The Balor almost managed to do something, too, but basically failed it's save vs. Bombardment. The amusing thing? After the group got to level 23, the Druid and the Dread Necro went for a stroll, and I had an encounter planned where the druid would rescue an animal companion for himself. Two Battletitans ate them. The Druid had a sufficient save, and I ruled that summoning an elemental would cause the titan to throw up. The dread necro died, but used the true rez... which he had to do anyway, since he's not a lich yet. ( Bad idea to be a lich on positive energy plane. ) But, basically, as expected a CR 18 encounter - two CR 16s vs two CR 23 spellcasters practically ended up a TPK. ( I fudged some saves when they were in the titan's stomaches, and I forgot the DN had DR/BLUDGEONING. ) That being said, Tsunami is a visually awesome spell. *edit*: My conclusion over this matter, after three way way too tough dragons easily taken out is thus: My players are quite good if they can prepare beforehand. They're not so good at dealing with surprises.
Meijin 01-29-08, 11:44 PM	I've given up on Kakashi. The build I found for his was Erudite with some prestige classes. I just wish I found the build before I made the character. I've decided to go a different route. I'm going to go Hand of the Winged Master. You get low light vision and can change your sudden strike damage into fire damage (and with another feat into cold damage which is what I plan on doing). The adventure we were doing is over and now I get to start Bastion. I was just going to the half fiend template to a great wurm red dragon for Asharalon. Maybe play with the spell list. I do allow Time Stop and can have Ashy cast that.
Meijin 01-31-08, 02:45 PM	I took a great wurm red dragon from the monster manuel and added the half fiend template. That's going to be a challenge to beat if I play him right. I'll post his stats when I get home. Edit: I just saw the link to the Delve dragon. I wish I had looked at that before hand.