Fascinate THIS

[the_gneech]

Finished off "And Madness Followed..." in my main D&D campaign tonight; it's the last adventure in which we'll see Ulf the Adequate as part of the adventuring party (he'll schlep the PCs' loot back to Pellak and sell it off for them, and use his share to open his new bar). This was a fairly unusual situation for our heroes, as this time they figured out who the baddies were, where they were going and what they were up to -- and pre-empted the whole thing with an almost-perfect ambush.

I say almost perfect because there was one tiny flaw in their planning: they forgot to account for one of the baddies's familiar, a bat. Their own standard procedure when traveling is to send the familiars ahead to scope out trouble or whatever -- it didn't occur to them that the badguys (who were 7th-9th and experienced adventurers as well) would do the same. I got Hide checks from the whole party vs. the bat's Spot check, then gave the PCs who would have a chance to notice the bat Spot vs. its Hide ... and they missed it entirely.

Thus, the baddies came into the ambush knowing the PCs were there. On the good side, the baddies didn't know that the people lying in wait for them ahead were a powerful party -- they assumed it was a handful of scruffy bandits that they'd just take out quickly. Overconfident, they went into battle unbuffed, rather than buffing up first and then coming around the blind corner -- that would have been a much tougher fight!

The first several rounds were an exercise in frustration on both sides; the baddies stood around casting buffs but were unable to achieve much due to camstone's well-placed entangle. The PCs, on the other hand, kept rolling badly and were pretty much unable to hurt the baddies. jamesbarrett's wizard Kyriela, in particular, spent the first several rounds contemplating her navel due to an enemy bard's fascinate.

Things started to look bad for the heroes as the badguys launched into their more damaging spells ... confusion and glitterdust being particularly worrisome. But then Ulf used countersong to break the fascinate and Kyriela hit the field with a dispel magic -- almost all the baddies' buffs went byebye, leaving them almost out of spells and facing a mostly-fresh party. Jaer went into "pincushion" mode, Dragor fired up the whirling dwarven waraxes of death, and Verdhaven and lythandra's rogue/fighter Angelina showed why "grapple" is considered the single most effective way to take out enemy spellcasters. A few short, violent rounds later, "The King's Players" were a dim and unpleasant memory.

Usually the party is in reactive mode -- chase the baddies who have a prisoner, or get ambushed and fend them off, etc.; so for them to carefully and methodically study the enemy and take 'em out like this (including spying on them the night before in a tavern) represents a real step forward in their adventuring "technique." It was also a learning experience -- "Oh, dang! They have familiars too! We'll have to plan for that in the future..." Even that slip wasn't a plankiller; it just meant that there was no "surprise round."

So, well-played, guys! :) Now I can beef up the opposition a bit more for next time... ;)

-The Gneech

Comments

[jamesbarrett.livejournal.com]

and we still managed to avoid becoming known as "the people who killed Sopharian, as we captured her instead of killing her. So she gets to rot in jail (and have her reputation destroyed), while we get to keep our name untarnished (or as untarnished as it can get. The whole acting strange part is really part of our rep, isn't it?) -Frisk

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Given Bissel's general anti-magic culture, I suspect she'll be rotting at the end of a hangman's noose, more likely.

-The Gneech

[the-lizard-rat.livejournal.com]

I ran something like this tonight in a "league" game, only it was an arena match. When you have people whose scarves can absorb spells and who have a half-celestial monk with 5 attacks in a round... yeah, my 23rd level badguys didn't last. Neither did the White Great Wyrm I threw into the mix to spice things up (he fled into a cave with an antimagic field in it to hide and lure people in, and all the heroes did was Wall of Force it shut and go about their merry way).

At the Epic Levels, everything seems like a blur to me.

Lizard Rat out.
Tired and Sleep Deprived Wolf in Albany NY

[katayamma.livejournal.com]

*growls* You are SO making me want to move out there just to be in your game!

I wish I could find a decent game here in KC. *sighs*