4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

For those of you that don’t know, the Ultimate Dungeon Delve is a series of six back-to-back encounters designed to test your party’s ability to survive tougher and tougher encounters.  All player characters are level 6 and can be any legal build from the Character Generator.  Each encounter is timed at 45 minutes.  You get a varying number of short rests between each encounter assuming you have time left on the clock as it doesn’t stop running.  The encounters generally get harder and harder.

We have been practicing for the Ultimate Dungeon Delve for the past several weeks; tweaking, testing, tweaking, and testing some more.  Chibby was gracious to lead us through many training encounters.  We worked on memorizing each of our character’s powers and ways to effectively combine with each other.  We focused on team-work and making sure we knew how to handle unknown situations without resorting to lengthy discussions about tactics.  Once we felt that we had our powers, tactics, and teamwork under control, we focused on beating the clock… the #1 killer of the Ultimate Dungeon Delve.  Running out of time is by far the largest reason why groups fail the delve.  We knew that we had to be quick in order to beat it. 

We practiced and practiced and practiced.  All that practice paid off… we beat the Ultimate Dungeon Delve!

Team RamRod

Ursa Pax - Dwarf Druid - Adam Robinson
Paxinator - Human Ranger - Kyle Watt
Chibby - Dungeon Master / Coach - Michael Sigler
David - RPGA Official Dungeon Master - David
Paxikar - Deva Artificer - Jim Goings
Farpaxia - Elf Ranger - Megan Farnsworth
Pax Balagor - Dwarf Warden - Kelly Nace

Fall of the Tower at Windrock

Our Delve was called “Fall of the Tower at Windrock”.  It was entirely comprised of Dungeon Tiles and gave me lots of ideas for how to use the tiles that I hadn’t thought of before.  A (mostly) spoiler-free synopsis of the encounters is below.

Encounter One

Right out of the gate, this encounter shows you that if you aren’t really careful, you can be dead or removed the game in the first round.  Risk of being turned to stone, falling into lava, and a nasty curse made this encounter hard.  We completed the encounter with only a couple of minutes left on the clock and we realized that we needed to speed up our turns if we were going to survive even tougher encounters.

Encounter Two

The terrain in this one is very aggravating.  Moving around is problematic and elevation plays a huge part.  Add in flying and insubstantial creatures and you’re in for a world of pain.  We survived though and did better on our time.

Encounter Three

This encounter is brutal and I saw three other Delve teams run out of time on this one.  Our movement was often hampered which made a particulary brutal trap very effective.  Add in some terrain issues and you are in for some heart-thumping scary moments where narrowly escaping death happens more than once.

Encounter Four

There was lots of terrain issues in this one and the risk of falling to your death was very high.  However, our party was optimized for range and we were able to pretty much stay in one spot and annihilate every baddie on the map in just under 19 minutes.  Adam’s Druid put up a wall that provided concealment to the enemies, but allow us to shoot through it just fine.  Unfortunately, Adam forgot to tell the DM that he was sustaining it, so down it went after only one round!  Oh well, we still kicked this encounter in the nads!

Encounter Five

And here’s where we lost our first player. Again, there were many terrain issues that we creatively worked through. Over the course of five rounds or so, my character was mauled by a large monster with a crit, then hit again into unconciousness to -13 HP, then critted again for over 37 (iirc) points of damage taking me well into D-E-A-D status.  As the party’s healer and buffer, we were all very worried that this was the end.  However, the team rallied and completed the encounter with just under two minutes left on the clock… not much!

Encounter Six

This encounter was over the top nasty and involved a very interesting skill challenge.  By this point in the competition, every other table had been defeated and there was a crowd gathered at our table to watch us.  Megan’s ranger was forced to tank a nasty creature and was defeated.  Kyle’s ranger also went down, leaving Kelly’s warden and Adam’s druid alone with some ugly baddies still on the map… including a level 13 skirmisher!  Kelly did his job as our tank and marked everything he could and kept the damage focused on him, but it cost him dearly as he was ultimately beaten into unconciousness.

After four hours of narrowly escaping death over and over, our efforts were reduced to a one on one combat between a level 6 druid and a level 13 skirmisher monster!

The fight came down to the level 13 monster and our Druid with very few hit points left.  It was very possible that one hit from the monster would render our druid unconcious.  With a crowd watching, Adam and the monster traded blows, with each miss eliciting “ooohs” and “aaahhhs” and cheers of excitement.  The crowd was rooting for us and the excitement in the room was palpable.  We might as well have been at a UFC cage match!  Needless to say we were all on edge, hearts pounding!  After four hours of narrowly escaping death over and over, our efforts were reduced to a one on one combat between a level 6 druid and a level 13 skirmisher monster!

Adam finally landed a hit and dealt exactly enough damage to drop the monster!!  The crowd ROARED and everyone in the large room stopped to see what the excitement was about.  We WON!!

Our award was a hard-cover WotC book of our choice, including the unreleased “Revenge of the Giants”.  The rest of the PAX experience was filled with high-fives, feed-the-birds, and much talk of our delve into the Ultimate Dungeon.  There were about 36 teams that played over three days at PAX and we were one of only four that won.

Advice to Other Delvers

• Teamwork and the ability to quickly decide and resolve your turn is critical.  On average, you should plan on completing your turn in 15 seconds.
• Prepare a well-rounded team - versatility is helpful.  Don’t be a one-trick pony as you will be crushed
• Practice many times with the encounters setup in the Dungeon Delve book.  Practice your teamwork first, then start timing your encounters and learn to beat the clock.
• Make sure you have some non-combat skills and abilities - perception and insight are great to have
• Have some options to inflict forced movement on monsters
• Teleportation or flight will be useful
• Do not diffuse your damage - focus on one creature to bring it down quickly, then move on to the next.
• Don’t focus too much on melee or ranged attacks.  Our focus on ranged attacks helped us cruise through one encounter, but made a couple of others much tougher.  Conversely, several melee parties we watched got destroyed because they had to grind through nasty terrain
• Thank your DM - they have a hard job and are under a lot of pressure to be on the ball

OUR THANKS

First and foremost, the entire team wants to thank Chibby for leading us through encounter after encounter to hone our skills and prepare for this event.  We could not have been successful without his help and advice.

Many thanks to the very talented David, our official RPGA event Dungeon Master.  He was on top of his game and ran each encounter with efficiency, fairness, and most of all, fun!  He was a such a pleasure to game with and although his home is in England currently, we hope to see him again!  PAX 2010??

Finally, I’ll close this article with a picture that best describes our feelings about defeating this challenge: