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Excerpt #26

At the end of last session, after the mighty Cornugon was felled, there was an unexpected arrival. Helix, the mount of the late Albazsharok (the beheaded NPC we were supposed to be avenging), flew down into the fortress ground and alighted next to Balcoth. A white pegasus, Helix had chosen Balcoth (whom it deemed to be a lawful warrior pure of heart) to be its rider, should he wish it. I could have written another short fiction thingy about the encounter, but... I didn't.

A little more discussion ensued, but no progress was being made; there was an intrinsic disconnect between the two parties. Players' asserted that the damage output (and particularly the burst DPS) of most encounters required significant healing if combat-healing were to remain relevant in upper-mid-level gameplay, and that the dramatic scaling up in effectiveness of the next-highest level healing spell (Level 4, Cure Critical Wounds, which does 4d8+Caster level up to a max of 4d8+20) to that of Heal was due to the inherent weakness of the Cure line of spells at these levels (compared to the damage being dealt by a single enemy spell or full-attack-action). GM, on the other hand, felt that the players' numbers and generalizations about enemy damage output were ludicrously exagerated, and reiterated a basic truth of game design; that it must be easier to deal damage than to heal/prevent it... but the players in turn discounted that as something of a straw-man argument, since (under their assertions and assumptions) the supremacy of damage dealing was not in question. Finally, neither party could agree on the relevance of area-of-effect damage in the equation, with GM calling it irrelevant to the discussion at hand and "not that common amongst enemies anyway", while the players pointed to a number of recent examples (colored by the "AoE-ambush" theorem), stating firmly that as a high-level single target healing spell, a strong Heal was necessary for a primary healer to be able to usefully mitigate the between two and four-fold damage multiplying effect of enemy area attacks, particularly since the area Cure spells (Mass Cure Light Wounds, etc) were at NO risk of "outcompeting" the many area attacks. At least no one was arguing that Mass Cure Light Wounds was overpowered

This is met with general grumblings. Omit in particular (whose new character, Umit, happens to be the party's main healer, having completely shown up the half-assed level of combat healing provided by Rhaek, who is really a generalist not well suited to serve as cleric for a whole 13th level party.) felt that the current "adjusted" version of heal was the absolute minimum; that lowering the spell's effectiveness any further at all would compromise its effectiveness as a high-level single-target heal, and that if anything GM had already gone too far. GM's ambitions, however, ran much farther...

[Omit had run a campaign for a while before we started the current one with GM, and he was infamous for his descriptions of "how hurt" a monster was. He tended to base his accounts (assuming they were based on anything) on how much damage we had dealt to it, with little apparent regard for the actual remaining hit points of the creature. Thus, on some occasions (such as fighting a giant, which of course has quite a few HP) we would get answers like "It has big gashes in its chest, and you can see a bit of its lung pulsing in its chest." Several rounds and over fifty points of damage later, when asked if it was nearly dead yet, Omit replied that "it's lung is hanging out and you can see its intestines" and so on. Usually by the time anything actually died it sounded as though we had performed an improvised colonoscopy of our own, using a bastard-sword, a crossbow, and an array of level-3 damage-spells.]

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but the fact is that nobody was going to put up with GM tracking all our hit points (meaning he wouldn't tell us damage numbers when we are hit, so our HP would be a black box, known to us only by GM's qualitative updates). We moved on to the business of us describing the events of the preceding weak, but even this did not get very far. Working together, we quickly summed up our discovery of the already-dead dragon, and the menacing hooded stranger who presented himself to us.

Although few details survived the massive earthquake that struck our building at that point, experts believe that some heated discussion about the ratio of dragons defeated (many) to treasure hordes discovered (zero) may have occured. Regardless, we must skip ahead to the point where records-keeping resumed.

The heroes began searching the semi-ruined fortress: after all, a dragon had been roosting here, so any reasonable person (knowing how dragons work) would assume that its treasure horde would be nearby. Searching a pile of rubble, GM informed us that we had a spot check to make. Without Omit (the character) the party's spot checks were a lot less impressive, and whatever we were supposed to spot, we didn't.

GM has to check the book, but apparently pegasi [the plural of pegasus] do understand common speech, though they themselves lack vocal cords. Anyhow, we eventually determine that most of the pile of rubble is in fact an illusion; the result of a Permanent Image spell. However, knowing that it is illusionary doesn't let you see through it. Balcoth tossed a small stone into it to try to measure the depth.

Not getting a lot of information, we eventually delved down the hard way, finding an alcove with a narrow horizontal passage leading under the tower. Our first plan for exploring it, tying a chain around Rikkon's waist and sending the diminuitive mephing to scout ahead, did not meet with Azheron's approval, nor did our second plan (tying a chain around Rikkon's waist and shotputting her to scout ahead). Thus, we began crawling down the tunnel in regular party order. There was barely enough room for Azheron's small character to fly (but she did), Verian's character used his Cloak of the Arachnida to crawl along the ceiling instead of the floor, and when GM suggested for an instant that the girth of the tunnel might impede his heavily armored mobility (particularly with the inhuman amount of gear he lugs in his pack), Balcoth went into "engineering mode."

GM hates when his players try to get too mathematical/scientific, since it is after all a fantasy game, and also because you can be a perfectly good Game Master without being an expert on physics, geology, or any of the other fields that can come up in a roleplaying game. As such, he tried to steer the game in a more productive direction by changing the topic

Balcoth went back up, got out his pulleys and rigged a complex assembly with which to lower himself down, while the others climbed, flew and levitated themselves down (respectively). The water at the bottom was fast-moving, but Umit cast the powerful (but weird) cleric spell Lower Water, reducing the solid stream of water to a mere trickle underfoot, revealing (as we headed upstream) some worn handholds in the ceiling - metal bars inset for the apparent purpose of ascending the usually-submerged tunnel. We followed it into a large underwater chamber which had 4 troughs emanating from a central platform. Only the one we had come from had water flowing, and although the other troughs were empty, we rapidly established an elemental theme.

We checked the "air" trough, and found (feeling a tingling in passing) that it opened onto the Elemental Plane of Air.

But whatever we didn't see, it didn't attack. Though there are worse places in the Planes than the Plane of Air, and Azheron's character Rikkon felt quite comfortable there, we retreated rapidly, mostly wanting to establish if we could get back to where we came from. As we headed down the water shaft, we felt the tingling again, and were worried that we had been taken to the Plane of Water.

At that point GM pretty much gave up. Who knows where that fish came from, but we saw the handholds in the ceiling again, and sighed with relief, that we weren't stranded in "elemental junction". With Umit's Lower-Water spell still running, we found the up shaft easily, with the Continual Light stone at the bottom.

Once we made our way back out, we decided it was time to rest (we'd done two expensive fights since the last town). We all decided that the small space beneath the illusionary rubble would be a good semi-safe place, although there appeared to be some miscomunication about its size. The players had somehow got the impression that the illusion covered a sizeable recess (like a 10-foot cube or something), but the way GM envisioned it was actually that the mouth of the tunnel was at ground level, and the illusion of rubble (which works pretty well beside piles of real rubble) was not much bigger than was necessary to cover that entrance.

We begin to argue about setting watches; it didn't used to be so bad, because the two casters used to take first and last watch (respectively) and the other characters (who didn't need uninterrupted rest for any specific game functions) took watches in the middle. It was a little harder now that we had three spellcasters...

GM tries to get us back on track, and Balcoth confirms which watch he is on; only now, with the Pegasus complaints out of his system does it click in:

We were awoken during Balcoth's watch, by smoke in the distance. Rikkon flew up (invisible) to spot the source. At first, he saw a Salamander approaching through the "light woods". Salamander's are fairly powerful creatures from the Elemental Plane of Fire, but even after two fights, we should easily be able to take him. Then, Rikkon spotted another one's smoking trail, approaching the abandoned fort from another compass direction. Okay, two Salamanders... no problem. Rhaek casts Mass Resist Elements: Fire, shielding the party from most of their pyrokinetic abilities; Salamanders were also fierce melee combattants, but Balcoth could take one, and the rest of us could handle another at range...

...but THEN, Rikkon spotted another force approaching from a third side, including multiple creatures, one of which appeared to be a Marilith - a very powerful Demon. Suddenly our perspective changed; even with full spells, this was looking like a fight we would not be able to handle without casualties, and we didn't have full spells. Uttering a collective "screw THIS!", Umit cast Wind-Walk (a very powerful high-level cleric transportation spell), and we screwed off thoroughly, all the way back to the previous town. We were not pursued.

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Excerpt #27

Transmuted into a gaseous form by Umit's Windwalk spell, the players were whisked across the land by a divine wind at 60 miles per hour, until they landed back at the city they had left not long ago, and their bodies resolidified, making the transition back to normal in less than 30 seconds. They landed a respectful distance outside the city (in other words, out of sight) and approached the gates on foot. With Balcoth again disguised (the surly dwarf had been banned from the city earlier), we anticipated no resistance to entering the city. However, the guard told us that no-one was permitted into the city at this hour (apparently it was now the middle of the night). Still quite concerned about the powerful coalition of enemy forces we had fled, we tried to convince the guard that we were in need of shelter, and he merely dug in his heels and began complaining about our unusual appearances (including a blindfolded man, and one of us riding a pegasus).

[This was around the end of the last week, and Azheron was looking pretty drowsy, although usually when we complain about him sleeping, he really is just resting his eyes and is actually paying attention. On those few times when we do catch him asleep, he manages to maintain a surprising level of situational awareness. If you wake him by saying "Azheron, the mummy hits you for 18 damage!", he will respond by sitting up and noting the damage on his character sheet with no transition - the only sign that he actually is asleep is that he doesn't hear you the first time. Regardless, although Azheron's Mephling (not Pixie), Rikkon, has about as much charisma as the sum total of the other three party members, she usually stays inisible during NPC interactions anyhow, because it just isn't worth dealing with their xenophobic reactions.]

So the next week, we took the vague adventure hook about organised caravan hijackings and a possible greater malice behind them, and began Windwalking into the hills to find the source. Passing high over the trees, we soon began to spot the movements of some undead skeletons in the forest below - the sort of cheap reanimated trash that plagues level 3 and lower heroes in backwater villages. To us, they are no more than an indicator... a clue that we are headed in the right direction...

Soon (and by soon I mean more than 2 hours later) we saw a cave opening down below, and skeletons moving in and out, so we set down, resolidified and went in to investigate. There wasn't much to the cave, or any sign of anything useful, and the traffic was less than... well, less than traffic. The skeletons we had spotted seemed to have been more of an anomaly than a nexus of activity. There was, however, a large boulder set into the wall which, though heavy, could have been moved by great strength, and may have in fact served as a relatively secure door. But the seal was nowhere near airtight, so rather than try to move it, we reactivated the windwalk and turned gaseous just long enough to pass through the cracks to the other side. We found a large passage going either way, lit by bioluminescent fungi. Returning to solid form (because you can take no actions while windwalking, and are more or less defenseless apart from the speed), we advanced some distance until we found a large cavern. A large cavern full of well-equipped Ogres.

Although a number of skeletons are working in the room, they are essentially noncombattants. But there are more than a dozen ogres, all wearing heavy half-plate armor, and two of them standing by the 10-foot statue of Grumsh were outfitted with fancier gear, probably making them out to be divine spell-casters. Omit cast Bless on the party (which is only a level one spell... although we had no evidence of the ogres' capabilities yet, and they almost certainly had class levels to enhance them, he had looked at the map, and the number of opponents, and decided that they wouldn't be a problem). Verian cast Haste on the party and scuttled back along the ceiling...

So Verian cast Blistering Radiance, a fairly unusual 4th level spell. Considered a Light spell (as well as a Fire spell) it counters and dispels any lower-level Darkness spells in its area (pretty much all Darkness spells are lower than 4th level), and its area is massive... a 50 foot radius from the point of origin. Although its hundred-foot diameter was big enough to hit the entire room, Verian could not see the ideal target point without moving into the area, nor did he want to hit the party (who were quite happy using the entry hall as a choke-point), so he settled for hitting most of the room. Causing a -1 penalty to To-Hit rolls and inflicting a mere 2d6 fire damage (Fortitude for half), the spell is not really a killing machine, except that it persists for 1/round per caster level, and so opponents do have to make efforts to get out, lest they, as Balcoth described it "get cooked". There was, however, another entrance on the far side of the room. But only two of the ogres took the far passage, hoping to surround the players, with the rest of them concentrating on killing their way out of the Blistering Radiance the hard way. Of course, the primary effect of the spell (which Verian apologized for in advance) was to give GM a great deal more bookkeeping, since he had to roll a savinng throw every round for each affected ogre, and track the damage (whether full or half) for each of them.

Meanwhile, Balcoth, using his Enlargement potion, managed to completely block off the passage (GM had thought he had left a gap, but checking the map again he found he was thwarted), and even using the "squeezing through" rules, the ogres couldn't get around the "Wall of Balcoth". They had no choice but to fight him, no more than four at a time, and all the while being burned for slight damage over time. In fact, they had a sufficiently hard time dealing with Balcoth's armor class that the rest of the party went into "power-saving-mode"; concerned that there may have been a lot more dungeon to explore, the casters decided that these ogres were no longer much of a threat, and so Azheron and Verian restrained themselves to level 1 and 2 spells, and Omit really didn't have anything to do - as a cleric, his spells tended towards either the utility or the reactionary, and while he is flexible enough that he can do other things, it is usually less efficient, which is not what we needed here.

And that was how most of the battle went. Balcoth kept hacking ogres, who couldn't even trip him let alone cause him significant injury. The arcane casters harassed the enemy casters (in fact, Azheron took to readying his action and using his Scorching Rays to disrupt their casting). Even a poor-rolling casting of Scorching Ray, when combined with the extra few points of continuous damage from the light, was too hard a concentration check for the ogre priests. GM was starting to get frustrated:

The two ogres on the "end-run" were coming up, and to be fair, they surprise Verian and got much closer than he intended before he trapped them in a Web spell. Eventually, they struggled through and because Balcoth was holding back a few ogres on the other side, and Azheron and Verian had been very cheap with their spells, the two ogres did manage to do a little damage before dying.

The last few were indeed taking longer than expected to finally die. It took both Rhaek and Balcoth to finish off the one that had hurt Rikkon, which left the remaining ogre priest (left alive due to its own prodigious struggle to make the best use out of all its spells, but mostly left alive due to the spell-conservation policy of certain arcane casters) annoying Umit. Balcoth shuffled back and switched to two-handing his axe to cut him down as well...

Just to show everyone, Omit rolled a 20 and scored a critical hit, inflicting 10 damage or so (a ridiculous amount for a sling), and thus was satisfied, even as Balcoth flayed this last ogre with two grievous axe-blows for 36 and 39 damage.

And to the victor go the spoils. Half-plate armor is quite heavy for its cost, but even used it sells for hundreds of golds per set, and armor for large-sized humanoids is worth even more, if you can find a buyer. Balcoth lopped the legs off the one surviving large-sized wooden table (it was in the far corner of the room, missed by the Blistering Radiance area), and began constructing a cart using parts from his portable hole, including his four large pulleys for wheels.

Soon we were totalling up all the look, including almost 30 minor potions, plus about a dozen sets of large armor and weapons, which Balcoth was calculating out...

Investigating the rest of the dungeon, we found there was not much else. There were only two passages which sloped down and widened into underground bodies of water. In the smaller area, we could see a glint of metal below the surface, which appeared to be another suit of armor (possibly containing another ogre).

Balcoth dredges up the suit of halfplate, which does indeed contain an ogre corpse.

Finally, we went around to the other side, which also just dropped off into water. This one, though, after a little investigation, appeared to open into a vast underground sea.

Although it was more or less common knowledge that GM had borrowed Azheron's copy of Lords of Madness as sort of bathroom reading, and that GM was very fond of Mindflayers, no one else had really made the connection between that and the water until Azheron mentioned it. The book in question is sort of the definitive compendium on Mindflayers, but also on other Aberations, including some that are similarly Lovecraftian superintelligent mindcontrolling creatures. Aboleths are a particularly nasty variant, a race of rare and little known tentacled whale-sized creatures who some suspect predate the universe as we know it. From a player's perspective, they are more akin to some kind of aquatic template-mindflayers...

Regardless, Verian is hesitant, but figures that if GM bothered to put the water here, there may be some reason to investigate (what Azheron commonly refers to as the "Paperclip-and-Socket Rule"; that anything that a GM bothers to describe, but which appears out of place, must be there for a reason), whereas Omit has no intention of giving up, his enthusiasm only increasing as GM points out more flaws in his underground-underwater-exploration plans, but GM carefully does so without ruling out that there may be something down there. To fast forward more inane GM-exasperating discussions, here is Omit's final plan:

GM can only deem the evening a loss. His ogres did not live up to expectations (he feels that had the players engaged them INSIDE the large chamber, he could have killed some of the squishier players for sure, but as things stand, the only reason they inflicted ANY damage at all was because the players had deemed them so pitiful that they refused to expend resources). Furthermore, over the last few discussions, his sanity had taken such a beating that he needed time to recover properly. So he let Omit and Balcoth calculate out how many Windwalk trips it would take to shuttle all the lewt back to the nearest town (three legs there and two back, which Omit could squeeze in to one full casting of Windwalk), and then we called it a night.

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Excerpt #28

[At this point, even GM would admit that the campaign is beginning to strain under the weight of rules and balance changes, if only because there are so many that it becomes hard for us to keep track. The difference therefore lies in how one interprets the changes as a package; GM sees it as a sign of how badly flawed the (unmodified) D&D system is in the first place, and as proof of his zealous commitment to game balance. The players, on the other hand, see that original system is far from perfect, but it maintains a sort of ugly equilibrium, and the changes amount to a domino effect, where each alteration is likely to throw some other spell, rule or principle out of whack, causing GM to see the need for even more changes. The amount of resistance he encounters has thus increased tremendously, compared to those early days when we were stomping back and forth, to-and-from the same dungeon/tower for four character levels, because each time we were forced to retreat, we returned to find it repopulated with even more dangerous foes. However, that by no means prevents him from trying...]

Verian didn't seem to have an answer to that; high saving throws are simultaneously the main reason people make paladins and the disadvantage thereof, since you are "forced" to concentrate on one of the useless ability scores.

There was much quiet grumbling and a general current of dissent, but since nothing was happening immediately to cripple the value of the spell, we moved on to actually playing.

Balcoth, for his part, admirably resists the automatic temptation to correct the insipid runt, and the diminuitive guard moves along. We spend some time debating possibilities involving retrieving the ogre's head, since we killed him the previous week (the previous day in game-time), but apart from having to windwalk for 3 hours to get there and back, we would also have to find the correct head, and dig it out of... Well you see, the ogres had a big pit for... waste... and after stripping all their bodies of their armor, we... disposed of them. In the end, we decided it wasn't worth it, and Verian further shot down Balcoth's last-ditch suggestion of faking the head (he did not offend his Lawful Good sensibilities since we had in fact brought the individual in question to justice, and thus we'd be following the general intent of the law, if not the letter). Unfortunately, it was likely that (in these uncertain times) the authorities who pay out bounties probably have means of verifying the identity. Any fifth level priest could probably coax the information from a severed head with a simple Speak with Dead spell. So we changed gears... Balcoth had decided that the newer members of the party (which was everyone else; Rikkon, Rhaek and Umit now) needed to know the secret information that Balcoth had learned concerning vast important things - information that was supposedly dangerous to anyone who knew it.

A little while later, after the storekeeper cleared some old junk out of the old, expensive-to-build and apparently seld-used room (about the size of a moderately large closet), the party gathers inside with a lamp she provides. We leave the lamp outside (in case of "bugs") and use their own lightsources (Continual Flame torches), but when we shut the door and lock it from the inside, we're not even close to talking yet.

Thus secreted away, in the relative protection of the cramped lead chamber, Balcoth's paranoia was satisfied enough that he was willing to share with those of us who didn't know (and significantly, with all the new characters who had apparently earned the serious dwarf's trust) the information long-ago shared with him by the deific earth elemental Garom-arush-arush-arom-arush. He tells how the sinister name which some of us have noted several times in our travels (most recently written on the stone tossed over to Balcoth by the disguised Cornugon in the old fortress - the one Balcoth smashed), Cerebromax, is in fact a creature known as a Cathezar - a hybrid between a Devil of moderate power (a Kyton; the one with the chains) and one of the more powerful breeds of Demon (a Marylith). The half-breed is far more dangerous than any off its sires, and in this case the being known as Cerebromax has power over a great number of fiends, counting both Demons AND Devils amongst its followers, which is an extremely dangerous liaison. Balcoth has learned that Cerebromax may be getting involved with a destabilization of the ancient conflict between the two hellish factions, a very grave possibility that no-one wants to see. The other major piece on information, and one which explains some occasional odd behavior on Balcoth's part, is that the dwarven King (of a multi-ethnic nation) Grandular is in fact a disguised Pit Fiend; one tasked to preserving the balance of power on the prime material plane, by preserving the integrity of the ancient magical pact that has (until now) made transit to and from this world difficult (barring teleportation and planeshift, etc)... and this shows how many of our earlier adventures have tied in to this sinister revelation.

Sobered by these revelations, the party nevertheless found that they changed nothing... at this instant. We were sure that the ogre bandits were not the "dark presence" that was rumored to have been directing the recent organized attacks, particularly considering how little actual treasure they had in their lair. And so we set out again, Windwalking past their cave and beyond.

We see some smoke in the distance and follow it, until we descend to the level of treetops over a stand of forest that is in somewhat better health. In a clearing there is a large bonfire emitting quite a bit of smoke. This is unusual enough that we would have stopped anyway, when we see a skeleton walk out of the fire. Skeletons (animated or otherwise) are pretty combustible. We set down, and upon inspection, the fire was not emitting any heat. We entered the illusion to find a 20-foot diameter cylindrical shaft, with a spiral staircase descending into to ground.

With Rikkon invisibly peeking around the corner at the bottom of the stairs, there was a broad hallway ending in double-doors, and guarded by two ogres. Nobody felt even remotely threatened by the ogres, but there was some concern about them giving the alarm and triggering whatever enemies lay in the room beyond. The spell Silence had been banned, so unless we had the means to kill or paralyze them in one or two actions they could certainly shout out warnings... instead of trying to prevent the noise, Rhaek stepped down from the wall, walked around the corner and cast a web over them, trapping the two firmly in an array of overlapping sticky cables as strong as steel - in such a way that it immobilized the doors behind them. The ogres struggled and shouted, but could do nothing, and the casters refused to "waste" any more spells on the goons, leaving it to Balcoth to stand outside the web and hack at them. The first one died quickly, but the second was deeper within the web than Balcoth could reach without pushing into the goo himself.

Instead, Balcoth moved one square into the web - it's easy to move IN one square, but any further movement would be a pain in the ass. The others were satisfied with this, because again they did not need to expend any magic.

Soon the miserable ogre was put down, and Verian dismissed his casting of web, releasing Balcoth, but also releasing the doors. The whole party got ready (well, Azheron and Verian were already pretty ready), and Balcoth opened a door.

Ignoring that last part, GM drew back in the closed door which he had assumed had been opened, then redrew the line, frustrated that not only could he not hit Rikkon anymore, but Verian's character Rhaek, due to his positioning (standing upside-down on the cieling) still couldn't be hit by the 5x5x100 or so beam-like acid breath-weapon. But, since he was redoing the attack, he ruled that the saving throws needed to be rerolled.

GM started rolling damage dice behind the GM screen... and kept rolling... and rolling.

GM rerolled using the ACTUAL number of dice specified, which would be closer to 10 or 12, as opposed to 24 or 26. The damage was less than half of the original reported number, and the players were suddenly much less awestruck and concerned about the attack.

[Some weeks not much happens, others contain an explosive combination of attitude and combat. So alas, the combat will have to wait until next report... Time constraints; you know.]

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Excerpt #29

As I broke up the report from last session, GM had revised down the damage on the breath weapons (fired by unseen dragons within the magically darkened room), having realized his error insofar as the number of damage dice rolled. The players still couldn't see what they were up against, as the one open door (of the large double-doors) revealed only a darkness spell.

Verian/Rhaek cast Blistering Radiance, dispelling the darkness and filling the room beyond with an atomic fireball of minor damage. The spell was almost immediately dispelled from the other side... followed by another enemy recasting the Darkness spell, but the players got a brief glimpse of the enemy (at least, what they could see through the one open door). There was a small black dragon (well, not Small, the size category, just small as in not very big for a dragon), and at least a handful of ogres similar to the ones we fought before, including at least one of their priests...

It soon became apparent that there was more than one ogre priest, and more that one Black dragon (judging by the second consecutive breath-weapon attack). Verian returned from the washroom to learn this:

However, that is not exactly how it works, so Verian cast Mass Resist: Acid to neutralize that particular threat in the future. The first dragon used its Flight movement to cross the large (and still largely unseen) chamber and land next to Balcoth, attacking but missing the dwarf. The "squishies" (AKA casters, AKA "the rest of the party") were scrambling to stay out of its reach and survive the acid breath, and we still couldn't see how much else was in the room or what the enemy casters were doing, thanks to the magical darkness.

Omit's save difficulty for this was not so high, since this class ability went off Charisma instead of Wisdom, but GM's luck was as good as Balcoth's and the dragon managed to fail as well, buying us a brief reprieve, instead of giving it a free round to beat on the dwarf with +2 to hit, without his shield and Dexterity bonuses. The stun only lasts one round, but the incredibly bright spell continues, and almost certainly precluded any further Darkness-type spells within its massive (and doubled) radius.

Rikkon flies back down the hall, past Rhaek (who has managed to find the time to cast one of his powerful defensive spells on himself), and having put some distance between herself and the dragon, she then Fireballs inside the room, finishing off the ogre caster and harming some other ogres who happened to be in the affected area. Balcoth gets up and picks up his dropped weapon, and the second dragon thrusts open the door and makes a trip attack on him.

Balcoth takes it quite seriously, however, and rolls well. And the dragon rolls much less well...

There was actually a little more genuine debate on this issue, testing the precedents and comparing circumstances, but the eventual conclusion was that the dragon could indeed be countertripped. Of course a dragon should have enough bonuses from its size and prodigious strength that it would normally never fail the opposed checks for both the initial trip, and the countertrip, but GM's poor luck with dice is already legendary. Then Omit returned from a brief rest stop, having missed the whole turn of events.

The dragons aren't letting this go so easily. The first unstuns, trips Balcoth (successfully this time), and moves further down the corridor pursuing Rikkon (and Umit, and Rhaek), and a couple of ogre warriors advance into the midst of the players. Balcoth stands up long enough to whack an ogre (power attacking for 7), before the second dragon picks itself up and knocks the dwarf back down. In response to this fearsome onslaught... Umit, moving back past one dragon towards the other (to stay in healing range of Balcoth), drew out his sling.

Verian cast Mirror Image, and tried to interpose his character between Rikkon and the dragon which seemed to be going for him. With two powerful defensive spells now running, he felt that he could "tank" the dragon well enough, and he moved into the middle of the 15 foot wide, 15 foot high wall (literally the middle, rising up a little ways with his boots of levitation, so that the large creature would not have enough space on any side to pass). The Mephling, for her part, was at the end of the hall (near the tall spiral stair that was concealed at the top by the illusionary bonfire), and was lining up spells to deal maximum damage.

Balcoth continued battling it out, which I point out here only because the continuous beatings he delivers in hand-to-hand are sufficiently consistent that they often fail to make the reports. Readers should assume that any time Balcoth is not complaining about hard-to-catch or hard-to-hit foes, and he has not been recently tripped, he is almost certainly cutting chunks out of any monsters within a 10-foot radius of his model. Anyhow, Rhaek - who now appeared as a hovering cluster of identical Spider-cloaked figures all blinking in and out of existence in unison in the vertical center of the hall - used the information from his Arcane Sight and dispelled 2 buffs from the dragon closest to Balcoth. He braced himself to dodge the nearer dragon's attacks... and it just walked around him, seeming to pass right through many of the illusionary Mirror Images.

So that one suffers full damage from the spell, while the other takes half. By this time, the dragons are getting fairly worn down. Balcoth sheaths his own Luckblade, changing from two-weapon fighting, to using both hands on his powerful waraxe. I should remind readers again that Balcoth doesn't "just play fighters because they are easy": he is always running the numbers, trying to calculate out the most efficient method of fighting for the present circumstances by manipulating the variables provided by his feats (Power-Attack, Combat Expertise, Two-Weapon Fighting) and other abilities; occasionally to the point that it slows down the game. By comparison, Azheron and Verian (both veteran D&D players also) tend to use a lot of math in building characters, but play more by feel and experience, and Omit, though he can't help calculating every little thing from a lot of different angles, does completely unpredictable things pretty much all the time, making it difficult to tell when he's just screwing around and when he is being his most serious. Regardless, Balcoth set about making fewer, more damaging attacks at this point in the battle, seeking to finish his opponents as quickly as possible (and making his attacks-of-opportunity more deadly, should he get the chance).

[To make a long story short: Luckblades, in addition to being a +2 weapon, give the wielder a +1 Luck bonus to all saves while they wield it, and allow them to reroll ANY die roll once per day. It is for these powers that pansy spellcasters such as Rhaek, Rikkon, and Verian Seth all lugged Luckblades around, despite having no interest in attempting to stab people with them. But to gain the benefits, one must wield the weapon. Balcoth and GM appear to have discussed at length the logical differentiations of how a magical weapon knows that it is being held in hand, as opposed to hanging from your wrist by a string, or whatever. Balcoth recieved his Luckblade from a Wish a long time ago, and it is in large part because of it that he learned two-weapon fighting, but while he wants the bonuses, he would prefer some way to retain them even when circumstances dictate that he change fighting styles. And GM was ever-so-thrilled that Azheron had accidentally stirred up this topic again.]

Anyhow, Umit jockeyed for position some more, getting hit by yet another attack of opportunity, then he cast Holy Smite on the obviously evil black dragons, and in addition to suffering some damage, the one in the doorway somehow managed to fail the save and be stunned for one round. History does not record whether it was finished off by Azheron and/or Verian with ray spells, or by Balcoth's persistent slicing, but the remaining dragon turned tail, using its immense movement to pass through and almost out of the massive hall which the players had yet to even set foot in. In fact, Rikkon, at the far end of the entry hall, would have to move 70 feet on the map just to get within sight of it (which would preclude attacking in the same turn). In fact, the dragon seemed poised to escape.

But there wasn't much... some more heavy-assed ogre weapons and armor (which Balcoth dutifully hauled away, since it was still hundreds of gold worth) and an array of level 1 potions carried by the ill-fated ogre warriors and clerics. So we turned our attention to certain rare animal pelts.

Exploring further, although there are more rooms, the complex is again quite small (like the previous ogre den), and there are no more battles. What we do find is a large room, lit only by bioluminescent fungus, that looks and smells like a swamp. With foul, muddy water about a foot deep, it seems to be the lair of the late black dragons, and it quickly becomes apparent that the water is filled with piles of coins. Copper coins.

[Once upon a time, Azheron and some other friends started a level one campaign with GM - in fact, it took place in the same world, starting in the city of Aberia Del-fayr at the wizards' academy. The misadventures were many, and scarred the participants in ways that still affect our games today whenever giant scorpions are mentioned. But the other gripe which has so often been carried forward (though probably not making the edit into these reports) was the echo of an adventure where several intrepid students were sent into sewers, battled a horrid disease-tentacled Otyugh, and emerging bloody from their wounds and stinking from the filth, they were rewarded with a couple hundred copper pieces by the wizard who felt that a few silver worth of small change was a fitting reward for the youths. Bitter, bitter youths...]

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Excerpt #30

[Sometimes, because my notes are just hastily jotted down, often while people are still talking and doing things, it becomes difficult to tell how to bridge the gap between one situation or wayward comment and another. I mention this, because this is one of those times, and I just refuse to try to figure out what happened in between. So, moving on... ]

Rikkon thus scouts ahead, and finds the source of the loud crashing and multilingual arguments. An large, ogre-like humanoid with two heads is lumbering through the barren woods. We later learn it to be an Ettin, a creature that could pose no threat to Balcoth, and little threat to even the "less-physical" members of the party. However, from the description at the time, some players take it to be a Fomorian giant, a far more dangerous two-headed foe, although still one too weak to really challenge the whole party without backup, or at the very least the element of surprise. And the element of surprise was firmly on our side, as the creature lumbered slowly through the trees, uprooting or smashing them out of the way thoughtlessly, scarcely cognicent of the destruction it was wrecking. The two heads were clearly arguing about something, but Rikkon didn't speak either language and so she returned to the others. Rather than be consoled by what Rikkon had seen, the party was certain that there had to be more to it, so as they advanced upon the Ettin all were wary of traps, invisible or flying monsters, or anything else they could think of... What could the trick be?

Balcoth did understand the tongue of Giants (like most dwarves he has studied a great deal about the ancient foes of their race), and somewhere in the course of his travels Rhaek had picked up goblin (his best justification was simply that it was a language so easy that even a goblin could learn it), so as we got closer we were able to piece together the conversation.

Despite his continued jocularity, Azheron did seem a little put-off. While Verian seemed thoroughly unsurprised about the outcome, displaying more sorrow for his wasted Haste spell than the poor helpless flavor-text delivery NPC which had been silenced, Azheron of all the players was the one who did seem a little disgusted at the party's blatantly anti-roleplaying actions. To be fair though, Verian and Balcoth were quite genuine in their distrust of the situation and their preconceptions about the likelyhood of an ambush, and now that the "threat" had passed, Balcoth turned his interest to the belated search for flavor-text.

With nothing further to gain from the two-necked corpse (there wasn't much for heads anymore), the players spend the requisite 5 rounds reactivating Windwalk and regained the skies, travelling on another couple hours until they entered a more mountainous region of the vegetally-devastated lands, still searching for the controlling force behind the increased bandit activity. Spotting a hillside cave from far up, the party decides to drop down some distance away and approach on foot, rather than to attempt the 5-round rematerialization near any potential guardians. We landed safely, and set out back uphill through the leafless forest towards the cave, encountering no resistance, but some of us thought we saw large wolves far away around the limits of our vision. Such sights were fleeting however, and after we spotted them once, they either went away, or were far more careful in concealing their presence.

We enter the cave, which GM lays out on the grid of the write-erase map table, drawing in the topography (a couple large stalagmites) and specifying the ceiling height as variable, but generally about 25 feet. Suspicious of traps, the party advances with the heavily armored dwarf in the lead, Umit following a steady 30 feet behind in order to remain within his anomalously long healing range, while Rhaek crawled up onto a rock outcropping some distance back and Rikkon flew invisibly. Omit unfortunately chose this time to excuse himself to do something in the kitchen, and sure enough, when Balcoth penetrated a certain distance into the apparently empty cave...

After the surprise attack we rolled initiative, and fortunately earth elementals have bad initiative modifiers (regardless of size), and so it was unable to capitalize with a second consecutive turn. Rikkon stayed invisibly airborne (and thus out of range of the enemy's tremorsense) and Azheron had her edge back a little ways and ready an action for the next emergeance of the elemental. Rhaek cast Haste on the party, then scuttled back even further towards the cave entrance, which was looking a lot more like an exit now. Both of them were noting that the height of the cave was not enough to provide an aerial "safe zone" outside the reach of even a moderate sized earth elemental, since it could (with a little jockeying) attack from either the floor or the ceiling.