Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

After a long, long, long hiatus, we got together to play D&D again. It took a long time to find character sheets and somehow I seemed to have missed noting some stuff from where we left off last.

We ran a part of Vlindarian’s Vault from Dungeon 141. We managed to get to a fight with 3 beholders in fairly short order. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening fighting out that one fight. The fight went well - a couple of somewhat close calls, but nothing to tough. As they were in a treasure vault, they got some very nice loot.

I’d forgotten how much number crunching went into a D&D fight. I don’t think I want to run any more D&D games - way too much waiting and consulting with references. “I swing with my sword of +5 plus the crit bonus minus magic effects due to the anti-magic ray, plus flanking bonus, minus….” I’d like to find a game that still lets players do cool things without all the number crunching. I’m going to keep an eye out for such a game.

The nice bit of tabletop roleplaying is I can dynamically adjust the number and type of encounters. If the players want to feel amazing, they can blow through mooks (or trash mobs). If that gets boring, I can handwave the trash away and jump straight to the boss. I wish there were some way in WoW to say “I’ve done these fights before, let’s just jump to the boss.”

Here are my notes from my first campaign up to the point where I started writing blog entries. These are very fragmented.

She Loves Me Not

She Loves Me Not from DireKobold.com was the first adventure.

Retrieve darklit lily for Lord Emmery Yolance & his wife Quaria. Beat goblins of the Yellow Rover tribe, mudmen, and tarmen. Contact with the shadow plane, Justin got his sword from a cyrstal pillar that held the sword and a bald human with no facial features. They managed to talk their way past Glorp, the wizard’s ooze servitor.

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Emmery Yolace
Quaria Yolace
Glorp
Mysterious Magister

Highlights
Justin hacking his sword out of the pillar
Taking a goblin hostage, then killing him out of hand

Siege on Ebonring Keep

Siege on Ebonring Keep from Mystic Eye was the second adventure.

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Bean Silvertongue
Kainen the Shadowed
Irana
Nye-Fedoran
Liam
Consortium
Abrekin
Grugar the Heartrender
Warlord

Highlights
Learned to work as a group
Faith and Jaimie got a better idea of their characters
Strategy for taking back the keep
Searching for secret passages

Banewarrens
The third adventure was the Banewarrens from Malhavoc Press. I set it below Atarin (just south of De-Shamod). Players’ goal was to seal the Banewarrens and retrieve the sword of lies/truth. The Pactlords of the Quaan were the main opposition. House Vladaam didn’t play much of a role. They worked for the Inverted Pyramid and the Church of Lothian. There was a dramatic battle with Brother Heth’s supporters in the lobby of the Chapel of St. Thessina. The players sealed the Banewarrens and left the sword with both factions.

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Inverted Pyramid
Church of Lothian
House Vladaam
Pactlords of the Quaan
Sister Mara von Witten
Navanna Vladaam
Jevicca Norr
Brother Heth
Trolgir

Highlights
Trust your gut
Don’t bluff the magister!

Winding Way

After the Banewarrens, they went to the Bitter Peaks and fought undead (Dungeon # 117, The Winding Way).

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Nightwalker
Marik Draven

Highlights
Trial - Hall of 10,000 Blades
Saved Marik Draven by infusing him with positive energy

Region J
From there they went to the Roof of the World (Mount Arathamis from Mystic Secrets) and retrieved a council staff (Harrith) from Region J of the WLD. They got their butts whipped by Nuala Farsight, a loresong magister. Tyrus was released, though they don’t know that.

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Nuala Farsight
Tyrus

Highlights
Ran like rabbits from Tyrus
Hit and run and run tactics with Rasts

**edit Alas, Justin’s sword was destroyed.  I was gunning for the sword as it tuned out to be grossly overpowered.   A sword that boosts strength by 2-12 (?) one every 4th hit is just too much.  A couple hundred magmin kept attacking until finally the sword melted into an irretrieveable puddle, NEVER EVER TO BE RECOVERED.
Staff of the Greenbond
They met with Carlene, who persuaded them to trade the location of a Staff of the Greenbond and a Spryte figurine for the Council Staff. On their way to the twoer they ran into a mosslord and some shambling mounds, which they defeated with ease. They went to Phaern Nightflyer’s tower, found it collapsed, and searched the ruins for the staff and figurine. They are to deliver the Council Staff to Maedi Sparkborn. On their way back, they ran into troll hunters and wiped them out. They then contiued and faced hags and cyclopses. One hag kept making saves left and right and got away. The cyclopses went nuts on their last round and did over 150 points of damage to Justin, turning him into a fine pink mist. Tyrus showed up and offered to raise Justin in exchange for three tasks. Their first was to retreive a dragon amulet from a group of chorrim (Throne of Iuz).

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Maedi Sparkborn
Carlene

Throne of Iuz
From Dungeon 118, used Chorrim instead of Orcs. The PCs found the chorrim where Tyrus had said they would be. They encounterd a foot patrol and wiped all of them except one out with no trouble at all. An air patrol came after them and suffered the same fate. The spryte magic user snuck into the camp and poisoned the main force.

A mighty chorrim warmain clad in crystal armor and a patrol was headed their way. The archer and the magic user were to be tied down by mooks while the tank would be fighting a higher level tank whose abilities matched or slightly surpassed his own.

The PCs saw this group heading out towards them. Then, for the first time ever, the magic user started using her buff abilities left and right. Suddenly the tank had another 45 hitpoints and +8 to his already considerable armor class. The archer suddenly had amazing climb and tumble skills so she set up for shooting from a tree 20 feet above the ground. The magic user can fly, so she hovered well above the tank.

The chrroim are deadly infantry and okay archers. They don’t use much magic. The leader missed his automatic critical on the tank, but the mooks managed to pepper the archer and the magic user with arrows. Thanks to the tank’s boosted AC and some bad rolls, the leader missed the tank a lot. The magic user kept barbecuing the mooks with area effect spells. The archer did some decent damage. The PCs each used one healing spell during the battle and that was about it.

The PCs rested up and then headed back to the serpent mound where the remaining chorrim were packing up. The spryte cast slow on the chorrim. The warmain kicked in the door to the solidest building around, revealing some shadow trolls at work. The chorrim moved to intercept the PCs - though it was pretty hopeless. The shadow trolls inside the building tossed up an elderitch wall to defend themselves. The shadow trolls conjured up three electric hydras. The warmain went through the hydras like cordwood. The trolls tries some other spells that were pretty ineffective, then dimension doored out when the warmain started to force his way in. Three made it, one didn’t.

The PCs then started down the tunnel in the serpent mound’s mouth. There was faen magic and memorials to ancient faen heroes in the tunnel. The PCs came to a large open area where they heard someone saying that they need to get it finished quickly. They spotted a giant toad and attacked. The warmain charged in and killed the human working on the throne. Two stone columns came to life and attacked. The toad slurped him up with its tongue and proceeded to chew on him. A boar charged out of the shadows and took the unfettered to negative hitpoints twice - the only thing that saved her was a defensive roll. After the warmain beat on the toad for a while with his fists and the magic user flung many sorcerous blasts, the toad tried to hop into the water, only to be zapped by a blast from the magic user’s rod of electricity and lightning. The columns only lasted another couple rounds before being turned into rubble.

On to the Shadowstaff!

Shadowstaff
The PCs’ next task for Tyrus was to retreive a Shadowstaff from a shadow dragon near Ebonring Keep. They started out by being ambushed by an avernac (from Poisoncraft) that they drove away. Then they returned the council staff to Maedi Sparkborn and went on a shopping trip in De Shamod. That ended the session.

The PCs made it to the borders of the Floating Forest where they encountered a human being chased by darkfire trolls. The PCs beat the trolls easily. The human turned out to be Liam. He told the party that the Ebonring dragged the Keep and the surrounding area into shadow, twisting the creatures around it into shadow beings. The party was reluctant to believe that the Ebonring was to blame.

Jaimie went to scout the keep and got jumped by dread wraiths who drained her down to 0 Constitution in the first blow. Her rune of cheating death kept her alive in a coma. Justin ran out and picked her up. He couldn’t outrun the wraiths so he turned and founght. It was a tough battle but they won. That left them pretty hard hit but thanks to a couple of potions of restoration and some heightened restoration spells, they were back in decent shape. (end of session)

When we left off last time, the party was facing a table that had a force bubble around it with an anti-magic field around that. They made some effort to get past the bubble, but couldn’t. They decided to finish exploring the area.

The unfettered set off the pentagram trap and got caught in the endless chute. Fortunately, she was the one with the ring of true phase so after exchanging a few blows with the vulturewretch hordlings, she escaped. They decided to leave that alone till the ring recharged.

From there they went into Lady Arodnap’s resting-place. They did a little playing around with the Pandemonium box via telekinesis, but didn’t open it. They released Lady Arodnap from her sarcophagus. She was not in a mood to chat, particularly after the unfettered blasted her with a circlet of light. She proceeded to move towards the box and to guard it.

After some puzzling they managed to figure out the pentagram trap and bypass it. They freed the water elemental guarding one of the doorways and prodded at the acid water with a quarterstaff (instead of taking a drink as had originally been proposed). The unfettered managed to sweet-talk the dragon heads into letting them past. (At first they thought it was a logic puzzle - try to figure out which dragon head is lying.) They found The Book of Obscure Names, the goal for this quest, beneath a pile of illusory treasure. There was a very brief fight with some invisible nalfeshnee demons - brief due to the greenbond’s blindsense and a few see invisibility spells.

They then proceeded to gather up their loot and headed out. House Vlaadam was largely empty as they passed through it. A couple of weasly-looking characters spotted them and dashed out at full speed. The party then proceeded to make their way to the Inverted Pyramid.

Since the PCs have been taking their time looting the Chamber of Antiquities beneath House Vladaam, I thought that it would make sense for the Vladaams to send a party after them. I used NPC Designer to come up with a party of 4 half-fiends, each with a CR of 20. This resulted in a detour session of combat.

As they started the evening’s exploration, they found a room with a warning on the door (they left that door alone), a room full of shoes, and a room full of robes.

The human unfettered rolled an impressive listen check, so I let her hear a distant thump as the House Vladaam team broke through the secret door at the top of the stairs. The spryte greenbond snuck up the stairs and spotted them. As she made her way back to the party, they spotted her and began using their Summon Monster IX ability. She blasted them with a fireball and so they missed their concentration checks, interrupting the summonings. [1]

The HV team raced after the greenbond and ran into the warmain and the unfettered. Between the two of them, they slaughtered the rogue/shadowdancer [2]. The giant fighter charged into the room, while the cleric and wizard took up support positions.

The unfettered nailed the HV giant fighter pretty hard, and a series of pitiful rolls left him unable to hurt the PC warmain. The wizard tried for feeblemindedness on the warmain, but he rolled an impressive will save. The cleric did a heal on the giant fighter. Then the PC greenbond blasted the cleric and the wizard with a sorcerous blast, and the warmain took a big chunk out of the giant fighter.

Another series of shots from the unfettered left the giant fighter reeling. He did get a chop in at the warmain, but the wizard decided enough was enough and put up an icewall between them. The cleric went for a mass cure, the greenbond shot another sorcerous blast and ducked behind a wall, and the warmain ran around the icewall.

The unfettered continued to blast the giant fighter. He grabbed the shadowdancer/rogue’s corpse and ran. The wizard put up an icewall across the entrance. The cleric started to run, but got nailed by the greenbond’s sorcerous blast [3].

The warmain and greenbond destroyed the icewall and the party set off in hot pursuit. They chased the team most of the way up the stairs. The unfettered’s fancy bow rolled a force effect and nailed the wizard after she had cast wind walk. The greenbond put up a sonic wall and blocked the exit. The giant fighter, as the only one left standing, dragged his comrades back to the Pool of Afterthoughts in the Chamber of Antiquities, both to hide and to get restored. The unfettered remembered the special qualities of the pool - it transfers bathers to the ethereal plane (making them invisible to those on the material plane) and speeds healing. When the warmain stepped in there and found the remnants of the House Vladaam team, it was all over.

The PCs finished the evening by opening a granite door they had found earlier. Inside was a table with some tools on it. The table is surrounded by a wall of force, which is surrounded by an anti-magic field. We stopped there so that they can think about how they’re going to get through this.

———————————————
Notes

[1] First big mistake on my part - I forgot to ignore the first 10 points of fire damage. Some of them should have made their concentration checks. They should also have cast some buffing spells. As experienced adventurers in hostile territory, they should have had someone standing guard during the summoning spells to prevent just this kind of interruption.

[2] Second big mistake, the rogue/shadowdancer had a ring of blinking that I forgot about. Had I remembered, she probably would have survived another round and shadow jumped behind the unfettered as I had originally planned. Actually, she should have stopped to get her bearings and shadow jumped into the room rather than coming through the doorway. Too bad my Int isn’t as good as the NPCs’.

[3] Big, big mistake - when the House Vladaam team ran, they should have used wind walk or a plane shift or some such (they had those spells available to them). Instead I had them physically run out, which gave the PCs time to catch up and destroy them.

The party continued to explore the Chamber of Antiquities. They’re trying to puzzle out where the workshops are for each of those who built the place.

I don’t have my notes with me, so here’s a scattered summary.

The PCs found a chamber that would alter characteristics. The greenbond got lucky and had her mental attributes enhanced. The unfettered had her physical attribues penalized. The warmain wasn’t interested in playing Russian roulette.

They fought a skullreaver hordling in what was a surprisingly tough fight due to its spell resistance, damage reduction, and high hitpoints. Unfortunately for it, the warmain blocked the exit so it couldn’t just run.

The greenbond nearly got killed when she touched a ring guarded by five statues. The statues turned to flesh and attacked her. Again, the warmain’s massive armor meant that he just stood there and took the former statues’ blows while beating the crap out of them.

That’s where we ended the session.

The warmain seems to constantly be far ahead of the others in combat. The first levels it was a massive strength-stealing sword. (I eventually took it away because it was taking 5 minutes of math to recalculate his abilities every time he hit something.) Now he has twice the greenbond’s armor class. It’s hard to get something that stands a chance against him that won’t instantly kill the rest of the party. Ah well, they’re at higher levels now so there’s more justification for mighty magic to be used against them.

The party continued to explore the Chamber of Antiquities. I think one of my favorite things about this adventure is the way they’re discovering the backstory of those who built this place. I didn’t expect that to play such a large part.

They started by exploring the central chamber then moved to the rooms on the west side. The granite doors have stopped the party in a few places, so they’re doing some exploring in the hope of finding a key. There were a few fights, but nothing terribly threatening. The spittlemaw hordlings’ acid globs were the nastiest surprise they’ve face thus far.

The session ended after the fight in Elluvia’s chamber. Due to a clever use of a magic lamp they had found earlier, the wraiths didn’t prove much of a threat. They left one trapped animating a table - they flipped the table over and left it kicking futilely like an overturned turtle. The warmain used the pool to restore the constitution the wraiths drained from him. The party did find some nice loot in the chamber - we’ll see how that works for them.

The adventurers climbed down a long set of spiral stairs below House Vlaadam into the Chamber of Antiquities (Dungeon 124). They did some careful exploring, but the unfettered’s first attempt to disable a symbol trap was a natural one which triggered the trap and awoke the Seven-Headed Juggernaut. The party was doing poorly - the unfettered had strength, constitution, and dexterity damage, the warmain was taking lots of damage in relation to what he was dishing out, and the greenbond was trapped in a forcecage. The greenbond tossed up a wall of ice which delayed the Juggernaut enough for them to escape up the stairs.

They passed a peaceful night at the top of the stairs, swapped out some spells and equipment, and went back down to try again. The greenbond used heightened walls of stone to slow and damage the Juggernaut - throwing up a new one whenever it broke through. So the unfettered hid, the greenbond tossed up walls of stone, and the warmain took a stab at the Juggernaut whenever it broke through a section of wall. In the end I handwaved the rest of the battle. The Juggernaut didn’t stand much of a chance against those tactics and the tactics were pretty much set. We ended the session with the Juggernaut destroyed and the Chamber of Antiquities ready to be explored.

The big problem with this session was that the unfettered didn’t have much to do. Basically she could only hit and do one point of damage if she rolled above 15 and max damage with her bow. Ah well, I’m going to need to watch those super tough constructs from now on.

I would say that Juggernaut is under-rated at a CR17. It was “programmed” not to give chase beyond a certain point and the magical walls confused it. I ruled that the slowing effects of cold spells meant that it could only use half its breath attacks each round that it was slowed. If it wasn’t for these limitations it would have destroyed my well-equipped 17th level party without breaking a sweat.

When we ended the last session, the players were taking on House Vlaadam. As the unfettered chased Navanna down the hall, Navanna activated the House’s defenses. A gargoyle attacked from the roof and a marilith appeard in the foyer. It was a decent fight, but the creatures were no match for the players even when a nalfeshnee was summoned by the marilith. Alister Vlaadam escaped with his possessions as the players were finishing off the marilith, while Navanna was left dead.

As most of the House’s defenses were aimed at 5th level players, the PCs proceeded to go through the House without breaking stride. They plundered the treasury, blazed through the Vlaadam’s private jail, and found a hidden staricase leading further down. That’s where the session ended.

Well, we actually got to game again yesterday. It was a very weird session.

First off, there were a LOT of interruptions. People kept phoning, and they were phone calls that had to be taken. Add in the interruptions with the kids and supper and we probably played for an hour or so of the seven we were there.

Second, there were almost no dice used. The PCs started out leaving Ebonring Keep, so they did a quick sneack check to avoid agents of the other shadow dragon. They gave the Shadowstaff to Tyrus as the second part of the payment for his resurrection of the warmain. He gave them their last task, retrieving The Book of Obscure Names from House Vladaam.

They returned to the city of Atarin where they had gone through the Banewarrens 10 levels earlier. They checked in with people they had dealt with before, Brother Fabitor of the Church of Lothian and Jevica Norr of the Inverted Pyramid, and caught up with what had been happening in the city. They decided to sell the Ebonring to the Inverted Pyramid so that the Inverted Pyramid could study it.

At the end of the evening, they headed into their only fight of the session. They tried to be diplomatic with Navanna Vladaam, but that didn’t work out too well. “You want to see our library? Sure, here we have a complete set of ‘Lives of the Great Accountants’, first edition, uncut. Over here we have the only known in depth study of Bugs of the Sword Coast… Other books are kept in our private libraries and you’re not getting in to see those.”

The PCs left, buffed up, and bluffed their way back in. We ended the session after they’d killed off a couple of low level guards and were in hot pursuit of Navanna as she fled. The magic user used telekinesis to pull Navanna’s headband off when Navanna tried to use it to dimension door out of a grapple. Navanna managed to flee after the house wards bypassed the warmain’s spell resistance by 2 points and convinced him he should leave.

Now to see what happens when House Vladaam’s full defenses activate…

I forgot to write up a session log for last game.

The PCs camped out, buffed up, and returned to face the wraiths. This time the wraiths had support from a sibbecai archer with an impressive bow. Once again, the magic user was nearly killed - this time on the last round of combat. Fortunately, they got a healing potion to her in time. She then used telekenisis to grab the dead sibbecai’s bow. They then went into the castle and were ambused by a dread wraith sovereign (based off of a magic user they had met last time they were here), a magic user, and the Keep’s former military commander. They managed to break the compulsion on the commander, but he got blasted by a wave of death the next round. The PC warmain broke through an eldertich wall and grappled the magic user and pounded on him. The other two PCs kept the wraith sovereign busy.

The PCs went down to the Ebonring chamber and used its scrying capabilities to look around. They spotted a human looking creature to the south and a black winged humanoid to the north. The diplomatic archer went out and chatted with them. The human looked feral and didn’t seem too sharp, the winged humanoid seemed sharp enough. She then killed the feral human. Thanks to an amazing roll on the archer’s part, boosted with her extremely high diplomacy score, she talked the winged humanoid into coming with her back to the keep, at which point the rest of the party ambushed him and peppered him with compelling questions. They found out that he was working for a shadow dragon who lives in a canyon to the north.

The PCs rested up overnight after using the Ebonring’s powers to seal up the Keep. They identified the sibbecai archer’s bow (they’d been very nervous about using it unidentified). In the early morning a shadow dragon came tearing in with a group of those winged humanoids. The archer and magic user went to the roof and stated blating at them. The warmain sat down in the Ebonring room and watched. They managed to get a few good shots in before retrating into the keep. The dragon summoned a gargantuan nightcrawler into the foyer of the keep and that started eating through walls left and right. The archer and magic user used murder holes and arrow slits to great advantage. The warmain finally game up and started fighting the nightcrawler. He was swallowed for his efforts, but hacked his way out. Once the nightcrawler was dead, the fight was pretty much over - the dragon got trapped in a narrow corridor, had his staff taken away, and was grappled when he shrunk in attempt to escape out a window.

The party returned to the site of their second adventure - Ebonring Keep. They rescued Liam from shadow-modified trolls. Liam blames the Ebonring for the corruption of the keep. This actually went quite well. I wanted to portray Liam as a little unbalanced - he’s convinced that the Ebonring is the root of all evil (so to speak). The PCs are skeptical that the Ebonring is really to blame for the current problems, so I must have done a good job playing him as a touch paranoid. (”A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what’s going on.” — William Burroughs)

After they’ve waltzed through encounters that should have been deadly, they nearly got killed by an encounter that should have been super easy. The encounter was just supposed to set a little atmosphere. The magic user was scouting invisibly and was detected by dread wraiths. Two of them jumped her and drained her constitution down to 0. The only thing that saved her was was a rune of cheating death left over from the last time they were at Ebonring Keep. The warmain ran out, grabbed her and ran. He was chased down so the PCs had to fight the wraiths and beat them after a tough fight.

Once again CR was not a good indicator of actual difficulty. I need to put more work into figuring out how tough a particular encounter will be and rely less on straight CR. In this case, having the magic user wiped out in the first round was what made the encounter such a killer. It sure would be nice if the archer happened to find a better bow and maybe some magic ammunition…

We continued on the “Throne of Iuz” in our higher level game.

The PCs rested up and then headed back to the serpent mound where the remaining chorrim were packing up. The spryte cast slow on the chorrim. The warmain kicked in the door to the solidest building around, revealing some shadow trolls at work. The chorrim moved to intercept the PCs - though it was pretty hopeless. The shadow trolls inside the building tossed up an elderitch wall to defend themselves. The shadow trolls conjured up three electric hydras. The warmain went through the hydras like cordwood. The trolls tries some other spells that were pretty ineffective, then dimension doored out when the warmain started to force his way in. Three made it, one didn’t.

The PCs then started down the tunnel in the serpent mound’s mouth. There was faen magic and memorials to ancient faen heroes in the tunnel. The PCs came to a large open area where they heard someone saying that they need to get it finished quickly. They spotted a giant toad and attacked. The warmain charged in and killed the human working on the throne. Two stone columns came to life and attacked. The toad slurped him up with its tongue and proceeded to chew on him. A boar charged out of the shadows and took the unfettered to negative hitpoints twice - the only thing that saved her was a defensive roll. After the warmain beat on the toad for a while with his fists and the magic user flung many sorcerous blasts, the toad tried to hop into the water, only to be zapped by a blast from the magic user’s rod of electricity and lightning. The columns only lasted another couple rounds before being turned into rubble.

A fun time was had by all. The final fight was deadly but, thanks to some good luck and clever planning, nobody was killed. Now I just need to figure out how to keep that kind of challenge going.

I got a little bit frustrated with last night’s session. It wasn’t because of the players playing poorly, it was because they played too well!

I had set up an encounter that was a few notches below deadly. I had a strategy for their opponents that I thought would do a pretty good job of tying the players down. The archer and the magic user were to be tied down by mooks while the tank would be fighting a higher level tank whose abilities matched or slightly surpassed his own.

The PCs saw this group heading out towards them. Then, for the first time ever, the magic user started using her buff abilities left and right. Suddenly the tank had another 45 hitpoints and +8 to his already considerable armor class. The archer suddenly had amazing climb and tumble skills so she set up for shooting from a tree 20 feet above the ground. The magic user can fly, so she hovered well above the tank.

The opponents I had set up are deadly infantry and okay archers. They don’t use much magic. The leader missed his automatic critical on the tank, but the mooks managed to pepper the archer and the magic user with arrows. Thanks to the tank’s boosted AC and some bad rolls, the leader missed the tank a lot. The magic user kept barbecuing the mooks with area effect spells. The archer did some decent damage. The PCs each used one healing spell during the battle and that was about it.

Anyhow, I’ve learned a few things.
- Given some time to prepare the group can boost their effectiveness by quite a bit
- I need to figure out how to have sensible opponents be less vulnerable to area effect spells
- Opponents need some way of dealing with flying PCs
- Opponents without magic are at a severe disadvantage against magic users, no matter how tough they are
- Once again, CR/EL is not a solid indicator of how tough an encounter will be. It all depends on the players
- I need to remember that my players play to “Kill Things and Take Their Stuff” and to beat the crap out of annoying critters. If they’re happy, I’ve done well even if my elegant strategy falls apart.

Last week I was cruel to my party. I set them up against a 12th level magister who managed to immobilize all four 14th level characters. Nothing like a magic user who plays smart. She didn’t kill anybody, but the potential was there. I’m looking forward to their next encounter with her - I’ll probably put it in a civilized area so they can’t just haul off and blast her on sight without some serious consequences.

Anyhow, this week the party decided to jump through a portal that put them in Region J of the World’s Largest Dungeon. So far they’re really enjoying dealing with all the fire critters.

I’m planning to use the World’s Largest Dungeon in chunks like this. We went through the Banewarrens and the players are not interested in another protracted dungeon crawl. So far it looks as though this should work nicely. I may advance creatures in some of the lower level sections to boost them up to an appropriate challenge rating if/when I use those sections.