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D&D tonight
We're in the middle of a big adventure that will be about half an hour of game time but several weeks of real time, so it'll be a while before any of this shows up in my character's journal. But I want to write about some of it now, so here we go.
We have known for a long time that we had to take on Garrett, a 500-year-old vampire (rogue? assassin? black-guard?) with an artifact-grade disease-bearing dagger and a pet at-least-tenth-level wizard named Melisande. We fought them once before and barely got away with our lives, and they've been scrying us and otherwise gathering intelligence. So this time will be even harder because we don't have the element of surprise. On the other hand, we've gained a couple levels since the last time and that helps.
We decided that subtlety is over-rated, so we tried to teleport directly to Garrett's throne-room. We'd seen it once; one of our party members had seen it a lot more than that, but what matters for teleport is what the caster has seen. It took me three tries to get it right. I'll bet most of the other characters no longer trust Larissa's teleportation. In-game, I'm rationalizing this as Larissa being so overcome with fear and dread that she couldn't concentrate.
That carried over into the first few combats after we arrived. Yeah, I got off some fireballs against undead that were vulnerable, but I never once managed to hit any of them with my undead-bane sword, and the party took a lot of damage. Our friendly ghost was particularly damaged, and we have no way of healing him.
So that's where things stood going into tonight's game. We picked up the action a minute or so later. We were on a vampire-hunt, using Larissa's not-exactly-detect-evil ability and some loose logic about the layout of the keep. The first fight was with four semi-skeletal creatures (Ralph will have to fill in the details here); they were tough but not too hard to hit. They had a touch-based paralysis attack, which kind of sucked, but it turned out that we made all our saving throws. First good news Larissa has had all day. And this was also not a fight for magic; we all waded in there with weapons. And Larissa has an undead-bane sword. And is currently polymorphed into a troll (which I did for reach + darkvision, though I certainly won't turn my nose up at the extra strength). And she was rocking. I was doing about 18-20 points per hit in that fight, getting two swings per round, and hitting more often than not. I didn't get the killing shot for either of the ones I damaged badly, but that's ok.
This path did not lead to the vampires, though, so we continued sniffing them out. This led us down a corridor ending in a door that was guarded by three creatures. Two spit blood (acid effect) and had a gaze-based fear attack; the third was a huge brute named Mongo.
In the first round, as we rounded the corner and caught sight of them, I said "hold back just a moment" and closed my eyes to avert the gaze attack. Everyone stayed back and I lobbed a fireball at them, but with my eyes closed I didn't see just how resistant to fire they were. Oh well. A second fireball later, after I gave up on the fighting-blind thing, pretty much confirmed that. Eventually I figured out that for Larissa, the saving throw against the gaze attack was "don't roll a 1". And I didn't.
But hey, I said, I'm a troll. I can fight Mongo over the heads of the other party members, including Charlos the friendly ghost who is immumne to their attacks. This fight was a lot of fun, and everyone was doing a good job of role-playing and trading taunts. Fun exchange: (Them:) "The master insists that he will not be disturbed at this time." (Us:) "Ok, then we'll kill you quietly." And somewhere during the first fight Larissa had taken to spitting at the undead for effect, after one of them spit at her, and she continued this through this fight to much player amusement.
But when Mongo did hit Larissa, it was a doozy. Lots of damage and a successful grapple, from which I did not break free the following round, so lots more damage. (That's where the down-to-7-hit-points problem came in.) But Liandra had been throwing lightning bolts around, and Turok and Charlos had been pounding on them, and Kyle had been doing his cuisinart immitation (four attacks per round), and they all died just in time. This may have been the first time that Larissa, rather than Turok, was on the receiving end of Liandra's heal-lots-of-damage-right-now spell.
During that fight, Kyle heard Garrett's voice behind the door. And that's where we paused for tonight.
When we blow through that door next session, Larissa will be flying, polymorphed as a troll, and holding a rod of absorption in one hand and her undead-bane sword in the other. She is primarily a sorceress, but there is a time for spell-casting and a time for hitting things. Her magic was almost useless against the vampires last time, and against a vampire in the earlier fight that got away, and this sword loves to hit undead, and I'm going to see if reach combined with fly-by attack can bring me some joy without bringing me death or artifact-grade disease. We'll see.
Character details: Turok is a 10th-level half-dragon fighter; Liandra is a 12th-level druid; Kyle is 12th level with some rogue and more ranger, favored enemy undead; Larissa is a 10th-level sorceress and 2nd-level paladin (have I mentioned lately how much divine grace, the charisma-based add to saving throws, rocks when you start out as a sorceress?). And Charlos is a ghostly fighter/paladin (6/4 I think).
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I loved the spitting and the taunts from Larissa. It also was funny when Liandra was grappled and yelled for Turok, and Kyle (who is down to about a third of his hit points or something awful like that) got all offended she didn't yell for him.
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There was a lot of good play all around. Ralph did a good job with both description and dialogue; Kevin played Charlos particularly well; Linadra and Kyle were in good form. Liandra should be fun to watch once she's got an elemental in play and the remaining lightning bolts and searing light readied against the first vampire we see upon opening the door. Whee!
(On reflection, I think I may need to be prepared to open with a little spell-casting -- dispel or glitterdust -- but will move to melee very quickly. In particular, once the rod has absorbed a spell or two from Melisande I should put it away and keep my options open.)
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