Well, That Was Fun :)

[the_gneech]

Revealing what [SPOILER] and [SPOILER] were, respectively, they were a mind flayer and a roper. The mind flayer had an alter self potion to make it appear as a woman in distress, and used its charm monster at will ability to enslave some gnolls to create an "ambush" for the characters to "rescue" it from. It then lured the heroes back to "a standing stone" in the woods, where a friend of the heroes from a previous adventure had been "left wounded."

Once they got to the scene, the mind flayer revealed its identity, announced that it was there to kill them as vengeance for slaying the son of Evard the Black (who is essentially my game's Voldemort), and the "standing stone" opened its baleful eye and maw and revealed itself to be a roper.

The fight didn't open well ... the mind flayer's mental blast stunned lythandra and the NPC monk/cleric right off the bat, camstone's ranger was hit with a massive strength drain from the roper's strands. Fortunately, jamesbarrett's fighter came bounding in to engage the roper, giving camstone the opportunity to get away. jamesbarrett's wizard started blasting the mind flayer (I forget its spell resistance until near the end, but since I'd given it a few other boosts, particularly magic armor and of course the alter self potion, I figure it about evens out), giving camstone the chance to bring it down with his arcane archery. (Fortunately, STR drain doesn't hurt your bowmanship!) Unfortunately, the mind flayer had managed to charm pholph's bard, causing him to take potshots at the wizard instead of helping with the fight.

Once the mind flayer was down and the group could concentrate on the roper, the rest of the fight went fairly quickly. The fighter got kinda chewed up, but well within survivability; by making the roper concentrate on him, he kept the ranger from being a roper snack. I seem to recall it was the ranger who got the killing shot on the roper as well, but it was definitely a group effort. All in all, nice teamwork all around. (Except, alas, for Laurie, who got unstunned just as the roper fell.)

Next week, pholph is not available and camstone asked for a break. I might try to run my long-neglected Star Wars game, and just say that pholph's Jedi Guardian is off on another mission somewhere.

-The Gneech

Comments

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

Star Wars? Man, makes me wish I could break out Art, my blue, Mon Calamari, fireplug, scout.

[kyrincat.livejournal.com]

Could have been worse.

We went up against a plant, can't remember what it was now, but it caused the character to sleep if they blew their roll. If the character was removed from the plant, they could attempt another saving roll, if successful they shook it off, if not they would go back to the plant, and resist any attempts to prevent them from doing so. Some were awake, but refused to be budged, those were the fun ones, cause they fought their companions.

Encountering this plant was supposed to be a short little incident. For our group it should have been, but unfortunately this is how it turned into a 3 hour battle.

Kyrin, an elf, low strength fighter was one of only two characters not affected. The Ranger blew it, and fought removal from the plant, as did our NPC cleric, and the cleric is not ordinary he is also a theif and escape artist. The Paladin wannabe fighter was massive and in full armor, elf could not move him without help. The half elf mage also female, was unaffected but got KO'd by the Ranger when she attempted to get him out. John, the NPC fighter was uncooperative...though the elf was able to move him and tie him up away from the influence of the plant, the influence could last minutes or hours, for John it lasted hours, so he was completely useless for this whole fight. Removing the cleric was also possible, but due to his rope untying skills, he had to be removed 3 times, after the third time, he made a saving roll and was able to help.

Basically all the characters expected to make their rolls blew it, and the ones who did make it, were not big or strong enough to do much to get the others out of the influence of the damn plant. Leaving them was not an option, as it would slowly kill them. Eventually the elf and mage managed to get some of the PC's out and functional enough to help...but the whole mess took about 3 hours of game time. The DM had originally expected it to take 15 to 20 minutes. It was fun though, and everyone got to do a lot of roleplaying...which our DM gave extra points for.

Of all the battles we had in the 9 years we played, this incident is the most memorable, and we still laugh about how it all went so horribly wrong.

Another interesting incidents were the meeting of the bronze dragon by our fighter turned Paladin, and the encounter with the gold dragon and unicorn, the dragon was in disguise as a maiden. Good thing we were polite, it could have gotten ugly. :)

I'd say the most interesting NPC our DM ever saddled us with was a goblin, yep a goblin...who ended up becoming a pretty decent if annoying little creep. Had a low opinion of women, and showed it...gotta love role playing. My character and a couple others who were playing female characters wanted to turn him into a pretzel a few times. *grin* Aaron our DM was very good at producing an annoying high pitched whiny goblin voice for this character...entertaining and obnoxious it was! LOL!

I miss our D&D says, but when we moved to Idaho, we had to leave our old playing group. We may start a new one someday, but right now we just don't have the time. *sigh*

Kyrin