{SCEbJ} - Shackled City 25th session report

Justisaur's Eberron Shackled City Session 25, The Smoking Eye

Garrot - Male Human Rogue 11
Seven - Male Human Fighter 5 / Cleric 2 / Kensai 4 chain fighter
Zhray - Male Human Wizard 6 / Rainbow Servant 5
Lorash - Male Human Druid 11

The move is finished, so you'll be seeing these more regularly, and I
got to play again, yea! Down to 4 players, but Mot's player may be
back next time with something new, the party has written him off as
unrecoverable.

They spend a month so Lorash can train a new pet before heading back
to Occipitus. Seven picks up a wand of Alter self so he can change
into a large humanoid and be huge with his permanent enlarge. I ask
what humanoid he says half-ogre. I didn't bother to look it up, but
did now, that's a giant, so no good. It takes them 5 tries to get
there due to planeshifting off the plane.

They start down the maze ignore the glowing sword. They get ambushed
by the retriever, and of course some of the party stops & goes off the
path so they get teleported back to the beginning. They come back and
make sure no one goes off the path, but get tp'd back again. Being a
bit confused they take some time to try to figure out how it works.
As they keep TPing back I have a random encounter for them.

3 Vrocks is what I roll. I have them roll through the first 3 rounds
having 1 scream, 1 mirror image, and the last use spores. The spores
were surprisingly very effective, it doesn't look that bad on paper,
but that was about the only damage they did. After they'd run out of
screams stunning half the party, they were finally able to respond a
bit, and start doing some damage back. The last scream however got
seven, and the damaged vrock used tk to remove seven's locked gauntlet/
spiked chain. Zhray started taking out mirror images with magic
missile. Seven's reach was enough he was able to wrest it back the
next round though.

Seven whirlwinds and with the 30' reach he's got he's able to hit 2 of
the vrocks and remove their mirror images. Seven is doing about 80
ish damage on average against them with his holy weapon. Over the
next couple rounds the vrocks are waging a loosing battle, and start
flying up to get away. Zhray fireballs two and finishes off the 1st
heavily damaged one. Seven finished off the other.

The last one decides this is a good time to try something much
different so TPs up 100' and starts using TK to toss his dead vrock
companions at Seven. This isn't high enough to escape Zhray's magic
missiles, so he TP's away. 3 rounds later he's back 500' up and drops
a 50 lb rock on Seven using TK to aim it (so he doesn't take a -50 for
range penalties.) and does 20 dice to him, 90 points. Being already
injured this takes him to -21. Seven's player gets really pissed off
about this (I thought he was just seconds from punching me, I've only
seen someone this upset at a game 1ce before, and it wasn't about the
game). Seven's player remembers the fort save at -hp house rule I'm
using and calms down, and just makes it with an action point. Lorash
heals him. Vrock sees that his opponent has survived this and decides
it's way past time to hightail it away. Rest of the game Seven is
watching the sky. I also remember later that the ceiling of the plane
is rather low, looking it up it's 400' with a max of 200' before the
fire blobs attack. It wouldn't have made any difference other than
possibly Zhray being able to hit him with some magic.

They heal up and figure out the maze won't let them get off the path
or stop moving forward, so come up with taking 5' steps if they get in
combat forward to keep from being shunted back to the beginning.

They go on down the path and take care of the now healed retriever
with ease. They see the couatl stuck in one of the cocoons, and Zhray
tries to figure out some way to save it, but they can't stop or they'd
be sent back to the beginning, so they move slowly past it. They come
across the worshipers of wee-jas who I've changed to the dragon below,
the party takes not a single point of damage dealing with them, and
finishes the maze. They are teleported to the forest given the speil
from the test mummy and continue on. They get a couple more random
encounters - Two hezrou who they got initiative on, seven used a
silence to prevent them blaspheming, they killed one in round two and
badly damaged the other who decided to bugger off. They met a chaos
beast, which was quite ineffectual as well.

End of Session.

- Justisaur

Justisaur wrote:

> The move is finished, so you'll be seeing these more regularly, and I
> got to play again, yea!

Quite enjoying the tale, finally a reason to comment.

> They spend a month so Lorash can train a new pet before heading back
> to Occipitus. Seven picks up a wand of Alter self so he can change
> into a large humanoid and be huge with his permanent enlarge.

There are no large Humanoids. That trick is presicely what the
Giant type is for.

<etc>
> 3 rounds later he's back 500' up and drops
> a 50 lb rock on Seven using TK to aim it (so he doesn't take a -50 for
> range penalties.) and does 20 dice to him, 90 points. Being already
> injured this takes him to -21. Seven's player gets really pissed off
> about this (I thought he was just seconds from punching me, I've only
> seen someone this upset at a game 1ce before, and it wasn't about the
> game).

Yea, you sort of used a nuke (and I'd disagree about using TK to
aim a rock if it's moving faster than TK can move it). There's things
in the game that win with no real defence, the only sustainable
options being an agreement not to use them, or nerfing them: like
dropping rocks. If you hadn't run the Vrock away it'd have TPK'd the
party even without telekinesis, given time.

Still, your chainfighter needs a missile weapon, 500' is only -8
with a longbow (unless you've added house rules to account for
height). Real rock droppers start at 2000'+ and count the 20's; baby
dragon packs FTW.

> Seven's player remembers the fort save at -hp house rule I'm
> using and calms down, and just makes it with an action point.

So /that's/ what action points are for, stopping players killing
the DM. 8]

--
tussock

Aspie at work, sorry in advance.