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

Well I went to DnD Game Day yesterday, so I thought I would write a short write up about my… experience.

First off only 1 of the 2 FLGS in my area had it, but they had enough tables for 25 people and had 2 sessions. The first session was booked up so we (3 friends and I) opted for the second session.  We got there about a half an hour early and there was plenty of room, so we got a table as relaxed for a while. 

At about 5 o’clock they handed out character sheets. I had the most 4e experience in the group so I played 2 characters.  I chose the rogue and the wizard. After receiving our assignment and making some skill checks we headed off to rescue 2 abducted brothers.  Once we arrived at a mausoleum of an ancient warlord family we were contacted by the spirit of one of the warlords, who gave us some useful information and was evidently our guide tour of the adventure a la “The Dungeon Master” from the old 80s cartoon.

We found the secret passage into the “dungeon” with the help of a history and religion check.  As we descended the steps we were way laid by a pair of bugbears.  As we attacked them, we set off 2 traps that they had made (coffins filled with oil that would ignite if disturbed). We took out the bugbears relatively easily and continued to explore. 

We came to a large cavern with a cave to one side and a door at the other.  My rogue opened the door and we saw the two children in there. They said the room was trapped, but my rogue checked it out and declared it safe.  Brazenly marching in, we set off the afore mentioned traps and had to fight 2 animated statues.  The statues had a cool feature where if they hit you, you were knocked prone and they got a free stomp attack if you were still prone at the end of the round as well as an attack when you stood up. All in all it was a tough fight that we barely overcame.

After we de-animated the statues my thief failed to break the children free and set off a cave in at the same time.  The party had to shatter the kids manacles and the we ran for it through the cave in taking 5 HP of damage each round.

After barely making it out of the cave in we rested for a bit and were attacked by a necromancer and his 4 skeletons.  We made fairly short work of this encounter and returned the children home safely.

As news of our success spread the local Duke asked us to take out a white dragon that had been raiding caravans.

We made our way up to the dragon and fought it valiantly but alas we succumbed to his icey breath.  We made a good show of it and I think we –should- have killed him (we got him down to 30 HPs), especially since I take issue with some of the DMs calls as he seemed more interested in racking up a TPK than playing the game.  A few of the issues I have. 1) When the dragon approached he moved, used his breath weapon, spent an action point moved and used his fear aura.  Now I have 2 issues with this A) he got an extra move in there and B) we were not allowed OAs on his 2nd movement that was through 3 threatened squares.  2) My rogue (as well as the party cleric) was flanking him but the DM insisted I was not.  If I had been thinking right I would have grabbed on of the 30+ PHBs sitting 5 feet from me and checked flanking rules.  Now since I was denied flanking the whole combat due to terrain issues I will not get into, my 3 attacks that hit were denied their 2d6 sneak attack. I am 90% sure that at least 1 of my attacks missed by <2 so I should have gotten another attack, and I am willing to bet that a few of the fighter and clerics attacks would have hit as well.

I think that the 3 OAs we were denied, plus the 6d6 SA damage we were denied, plus any other attacks that missed by <2 would have added up to at least 30 points of damage.  Still I understand that at that point the DM had been DMing for almost 10 hours straight dealing with either 1) noobs, or 2) know it alls (like me) so I thanked him for taking the time to DM us and telling him what a wonderful job he did and what a good time I had.  Then I went home and looked up flanking rules and kicked myself in that butt for not having confidence in my rules knowledge.

All in all we had a blast and I got 2 sweet figures out of it.

Awesome!  Thanks for the report.  I was sad I couldn’t make it - Wizards moved the date of Game Day after I’d already agreed to travel down to my old college town and play Star Wars there.  It also sounds like the plot was even better than the previous Worldwide Game Day.

The first great thing about Game Day this year was that it was within walking distance of where I live (though I didn’t actually walk because I was running late and needed to get lunch first).  Last year I had to drive 1 hour just to reach the site.  I haven’t moved, but I do have an FLGS now for the first time in years.

The second great thing was that I had planned for it well in advance and didn’t have anything else to do that day so I didn’t have to leave early as I did last year.

Now for the run down:

I arrived at Game Day at 2:30 pm, as the store was planning on having two games, an early one for those with evening time commitments and a late one for those without.  Me, I figured if I showed up early I might just get to play in both.  That didn’t happen, but that’s because there were plenty of people who showed up at 2:30 and so the store owner, after starting the early game, got out the other activities for Game Day and the rest of us played around with those.

After looking through the packet, the group decided to start with Dungeon Feud.  We played two games, mixing up the teams in between and a good time was had by all (though two games really was the limit there).  Creatures of the underdark, most mispronounced/misspelled monster name, famous heroes, unique named weapons… Each category had everyone racking their brain to come up with what was on the list and we were definately debating some of the entries.  After the second game (I was on the winning team for the second game, but not the first) everyone had had enough of the brain wracking work and we moved on to the Against the White Dragon encounter.

The White Dragon encounter hadn’t been given by the store owner to late game DM to prepare, so they were looking for volunteers to run it.  Being the ambitous fellow that I was, I did just that.  A quick review of the stat block and the encounter setup later, I was telling characters to place their minis and we were off.

Most of the characters got to act before the dragon, but considering that it was supposed to delay acting until the characters got into a percarious position anyway, that was fine by me.  Unfortunately, the party proceeded to do exactly what I wasn’t expecting: they spread out.  Given that the dragon’s tactics involved an early use of it’s breath weapon, I was disapointed that I could only catch two with it.  It was also here, on the dragon’s first turn that I made what would ultimately prove to be a near-fatal mistake for the dragon.  Not fully appreciating the dragon’s hover ability, nor how quickly the characters were going to be able to close on it, despite their spread out configuration, I kept the dragon grounded as it came out of the tower to use its breath weapon.

The players quickly took advantage of this and before the dragon’s next turn, both fighters and the rogue were adjacent to the dragon (and flanking).  Now both the dwarf fighter and the rogue were slowed and weakened by the dragon’s breath weapon, but the human fighter (who had judiciously used his action point to get to that adjacent position) had the dragon marked, which meant even shifting would provoke an opportunity attack from him.

Finally, the wizard, who was well clear of this melee, used her acid arrow daily power, damaging the dragon, but also catching her companions in the splash.  Her players (a boyfriend/girlfriend team effort) would apologize for this profusely for the rest of the fight).

Second round, the dragon focuses its melee fury on the fighter who marked him, who in turn laughs as the dragon’s claws both miss.  The dragon also spends its second action point to use Frightful Presence and manages to stun the human fighter and the rogue, but not the dwarf.  With the human fighter stunned, however, the dragon can shift without provoking an OA and I begin a fight to get the dragon into the air.

That wasn’t before the cleric, however, got into the action adding his attacks (and healing for those who had been caught in the dragon’s breath weapon and the wizard’s acid arrow) to the mix and further whittling away at the dragon’s hp.

The dwarf, finally, had other ideas and managed to use his attack that could slide an enemy to not only bring the dragon back to earth, but also slide him towards a cliff edge (a fact that would ultimately prove key in my attempts to get the dragon airborne, albeit too late).  He also marked the dragon, superceding the other fighter’s mark, but preventing the dragon from shifting away.

So, once again, the dragon focused its melee fury on a single target and once again, said target did little more than chuckle at the attempt.

Of course, during all this the wizard, who was remaining a cautious distance away, kept peppering the dragon with magic missiles.

Once again the dragon’s turn and the ongoing acid damage takes it to 100 hp, it’s bloodied condition.  Immediately the dragon gets to use its breath weapon, catching 3 of the characters near it in the area.  Two take damage and are slowed and weakened, the third remains unscathed.  Then in the only good turn of luck for the dragon, I roll recharge on the breath weapon and it comes up 6.  So the dragon gets to use its breath weapon twice in one round!  Unfortunately, that 6 turned out to be all the luck the dragon had for that round and all three targets escape damage on the second attack.

Trying to shift away, the dragon is grounded by another OA (this time by the human fighter, who has taken that task back over from the weakened dwarf) and the party gets another round of attacks.  By now, however, the dragon has been driven to, and over, the edge of a cliff, so he is partially airborne even if he can’t escape yet.  I figure that next round I’ll use that to my advantage and get away and back to the sacred circle for some healing before starting the strafing.

The rogue, however, used that turn to employ his daily and put some serious hurt on the dragon, in addition to slowing him.

Unable to fly away effectively, and now down to just over a dozen hp, the dragon used his second wind to recover some of those hp and attempts nothing more than a shift away to limit the number of OAs to 1 (instead of 3).  Said OA misses (for the only time in the entire combat) and the dragon is now completely airborne over the edge of the cliff and any character who wants to attack him will have to deal with the snowpack overhang.

So what does the rogue do?  He backs off and uses his crossbow.  Smart move, especially since he’s still getting SA damage thanks to the dragon no making his save against the rogue’s daily.

The cleric has similar ideas and uses lance of faith to stay away from the cliff edge.

The dwarf risks the snowpack and moves up to take another swing.

Finally we have the human fighter, who in an act of sheer bravery or stupidity, jumps off the cliff at the dragon, attempting to grapple the beast to keep it on the ground.  He makes the jump, but can’t hold on to the dragon and falls into the snow below.

With the human fighter no longer adjacent to the dragon, he’s free to shift away from the remaining party and quickly does so, finally able to get the fight on his terms.  Unable to resist the opportunity though, now that be preceives himself as relatively safe (no one can reach him in melee) the dragon uses his recently recharged breath weapon to get off a parting shot, catching the cleric and the dwarf out in the cold.

Employing their ranged arsenal, most of the party members keep on ticking away at the dragon while the two fighters, who are stuck on the ground and whose ranged attacks are either limited in number or nonexistant, start heading into the caves behind the tower to get under cover.

Meanwhile the dragon manages to fly back around to the front of the tower, just barely reaching the sacred circle.  Before the healing bonus can trick up, however, the wizard manages to find a spot that gives her line of sight to the dragon and fires off one last magic missle.  That turns out to be enough to kill the dragon, who falls to the ground.

Given the new rules for healing and the sacred circle, however, we determine after the party finishes celebrating their victory that the dragon would actually heal at the beginning of his turn (which is right after the wizard’s) and then be able to fly away, never to be heard from again (or so the encounter ending states).

Our party victorious, it’s now 5pm, time for the main event and we swap some of the character’s around as I give up the DMing job to one of the other attendees and take on the role of the cleric.

Given that I’ve only about 3,000 of my 12,000 characters left, you’ll have to stay tuned for my next post that details the eventual heroic sacrifice of our heroes.

Setting out on their assignment to recover two lost boys from a haunted mausoleum, our heroes split into two groups upon reaching the mausoleum.  The first, and larger group, consists of the dwarf, wizard, and rogue and they wander around outside, exploring the shrubbery.  Meanwhile, the cleric and the human fighter enter the mausoleum in heroic fashion as the fighter kicks in the door (with the cleric groaning at the disrespect shown to those buried there).  Of course, there’s no one about inside to appreciate the drama, so the fighter begins circling the room warily while the cleric studies the writings on the obelisk in the center.

Eventually the rest of the party tires of poking around outside and come inside too.  Once inside, the dwarf decides that raiding the sarcophagi would be a good idea and our intrepid cleric is forced to restrain him.  This is, after all, the burial place of champions of both Pelor (our cleric’s god) and Bahamut.

While this is going on, our rogue and wizard, who are far more interested in the obelisk itself, rather than what is written on it, notice the draft from below it that the cleric missed and a shadowy spirit appears to present the party with a riddle:

“If intruders you by, my wisdom you will not heed.  From entry sinister, Sun follows Sire.” (Note, actual wording may vary. I don’t have the copy of the adventure that I got to keep in front of me.)

Forced to take Latin in my youth, I immediately recognize the fact that “entry sinister” is referring to the left of some door (’sinistra’ is left in Latin), either the one we came in, or the one hidden under the obelisk.  Most everyone in the party quickly agrees that “Sun follows Sire” means that one of the nice little statues of Pelor has to be placed after a statue of Bahamut some how, and after some debate, we arrive at the alternating pattern conclusion, starting with Bahamut in the alcove to the immediate left of the door we came in.

Lo and behold, the obelisk moves and we gain access to the underground part of the mausoleum.  Finding bones on the ground, our cleric is dismayed, but doesn’t have time to dwell on this as our dwarf rushes forward and is promptly spots the two hobgoblins who are behind the sarcophagi blocking further progress.

Into combat mode: human fighter moves up, positioning himself around the corner from one of the hobgoblins, intending to jump over the sarcophagus to get at him next round.  Said hobo, however decides that roasted fighter in two courses sounds tasty, however, and spills the sarcophagus in front of him, catching both fighters.

The two fighters, however, manage to come through the fire burned, but not over done, so our cleric moves forward to begin firing off lances of faith, but saves his healing for later.  Inspired to a heroic act of bravery, the rogue rushes forward around the fire and attempts to vault a sarcophagus to reach the hobo behind it (the one the fighter wasn’t getting ready to smack).  He stumbles on the shaky lid, however, and it crumbles beneath him, lighting the pool of oil within and burning him badly.  Now deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, our rogue beats a hasty retreat.

With fire on the offing, the wizard decides to cool things off and uses a spell to create some ice that puts out some of the fire, and causes one of the hobos to slip and fall.  With the fighter right near that hobgoblin, she then gets rid of the ice, paving the way for the fighter to take advantage of the hobgoblin’s prone position.

After he does so, the hobgoblins beat a retreat to stand back to back in front of a third sarcophagus and the party moves around, the melee types going over the fire while those with ranged attacks remain behind it so long as they have line of sight.

The hobgoblins prove to be adept at fighting together, but the human fighter manages to force one back into the last sarcophagus, tripping off another trap just like the first two and serving up a dish of roast hobo.  Now alone, the last hobgoblin fights as best he can, but quickly falls.

After waiting for the fire to burn itself out, the party takes the time to clean up the bones on the ground, reintering them in the sarcophagi and the cleric says a blessing over them.

The spirit from above seems to like this, as it shows up just before they get started to say something about honoring the dead, sticks around to watch, and then points the way to a healing potion when we’re done.

Moving forward into what is clearly a natural cave system now, the party finds a door with a devil’s head on it and looks through to find the boys they’ve come to rescue on the other side.  Carefully checking the door, the rogue finds it untrapped but locked.  The lock proves to be no problem however, as he picks it fairly easily and opens the door.

Warned by the boys about the trap, the rogue, wizard, and cleric team up to disable it and are successful in the attempt.  As the rogue goes to work on the boy’s shackles, however, we find out that there’s a problem with leaving two fighter types with nothing to do: they find something to amuse themselves.

Deciding to scout ahead, the dwarf and the human fighter sneak into the passage way to the next room.  Well, the dwarf sneaks, the human fighter on the other hand…

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0090.html

Needless to say the wizard in the next room is not pleased with this intrusion as he studies his book of evil rituals, and orders four skeletons to attack the two fighters.

Out numbered 5 to 2, the two fighters retreat to get back up and warn the rest of the party.  This they do, but they split up along the way with the dwarf going right up next to the rest of the party (who are still working on unshakeling the boys), while the human fighter simply heads across the room from the passage way that pursuit is going to be coming from.  Taking advantage of this split, the wizard sends two skeletons after each fighter, follows after them himself, and then activates the two statutes in the room with the rest of the party.

With the statues pounding them into the ground (literally) the cleric and the rogue are fighting for space to act while the two fighters have the skeletons to worry about.  The wizard, however, has a free moment to act and casts sleep on the enemy wizard and he’s quickly making an appointment with the sandman.  Further more, the spirit that had been floating around since the beginning shows up again and starts attacking the wizard, mumbling something about revenge.  He proves to be totally ineffective, however, as he never, not once, hits the enemy wizard, even when he’s prone and helpless because of the sleep spell.

Still stuck dealing with the statues, the rogue crawls away to stand up while the cleric valiantly fights from the ground (as there are too many people around him for him to crawl away.  The statures, however, keep laying down the beat down, putting a boy and the wizard down now in addition to continuing to beat on the cleric.

Using her teleport power to escape, the wizard gets away from the statues and goes to the aid of the fighters as they deal with the skeletons.  Furthermore, she manages to catch the enemy wizard who’s fast asleep with the same spells she’s using on the skeletons and the human fighter decides to gamble on the skeleton’s falling apart should the wizard die.

Well, the wizard does die, but that doesn’t stop the skeletons and the human fighter ends up paying for it with his life.

Still stuck dealing with the statues, the cleric and the rogue fight as best they can, the cleric using his healing in an attempt to keep them going, but that only prolongs the inevitable.

Still, it gives time for the boys to make a run for it and while the skeletons do catch one as he runs by, the other manages to escape as the skeletons close on the now exposed wizard.

Said wizard does her best to hold them off as the dwarf tries, and succeeds at reviving the human fighter, but no sooner is the human fighter back on his feet and fighting again than he goes down once more.

Finally out of options, the cleric and the rogue are killed by the statues, while the skeletons close on and take out the wizard.  Left alone, the dwarf attempts to flee, but the skeletons are faster and catch and kill him.

So in the end, one of the boys managed to escape the mausoleum and probably made it back to town (though we don’t know for sure) and the caverns below are short one wizard and two hobgoblins, but four skeletons and two animated statues remain to challenge the next band of adventurers brave enough to face the horrors that lurk below.

And who knows, perhaps that spirit gained some combat efficiency after we all died and managed to destroy some of the skeletons or statues before he two was eradicated.

***

All in all, Game Day was huge fun.  There were about 22 people that showed up for the event, though not everyone stayed the whole time.  The really surprising thing, however, is that Initiative 17 had over 70 people signed up for Game Day, which means the event was very under attended.  I don’t know what happened to all those people that didn’t show up, but they missed a good time.