OK, so we played session 3 tonight, the mission to rescue Artemis's (the ranger) sister and to assassinate the Cabal sorceress Althea. The group were snuck into the Cabals tower by an insider while their contact, The Grub, sealed off magical communication to or from it.
Before the session I was very explicit with the players that this would be a combat heavy session. I wanted to test out the system a bit and give them a chance to improve their familiarity with their class abilities and party tactics. I also spelled out the need to be careful about husbanding resources, especially daily powers and healing surges. This would become important later on.
Their insider contact gave them a good idea of how the place was laid out so they knew where they were going. They decided to head up the tower first to take out Althea and then resuce Kallista, hoping to get out before reinforcements arrive.
They enter in their disguises and confront the first guardian, a tentacled oozing monstrosity which detaches parts of itself to chase people down and immobilise them so it can eat them at its leisure. Powerful melee attacks were foiled utterly by Morns (the Paladins) massive AC as its razor sharp beak failed to penetrate his armour time and time again. The tentacly pseduopods did their job but the main critter couldnt hold off against the powerful attacks for long and dissolved into goop leaving the way ahead open.
The first floor served as the Cabals summoning room and contained its own imprisoned Angel. Attempts by the Angel to get the group chatting failed and even my hinting that Assamber (the Wizard) could use the summoning circle to bind it failed to get them to hang around. Thats one plot hook down the drain for now, who knows, maybe it will turn up again later.
The second floor contained the quarters for the Cabals senior members and was supposed to be empty. Unfortunately one of those members was busy in the giant steaming hot tub with several naked slave girls. Raising the alarm brought a group of guardian demons along with another Cabal sorceress. Unfortunately they all turned out to be punks, the sorceress went down in about a round and a half to Twin Strike followed by action point Twin Strike from Artemis. She did manage to hit Morn with a confusion effect which could have been nasty if he hadnt saved at the first opportunity. We also got to see the first use of Expeditious Retreat which was impressively effective.
The third floor was Altheas room about which they had no intelligence. They burst in to find themslves in an ante chamber with another door in front of them, effectively alerting her to their presence. The fight with her was long and tense. She was my first use of a solo monster in the game and it showed. She had two big abilities, the power to summon up to 4 shadow minions and a nasty AoE. The recharge for both was set at 6. The minions kept getting ganked by Assamber but I recharged the power four times in a row. The big AoE recharged only once much to my frustration and I kept missing the Paladin with her main flesh eating necrotic attack.
By the end of the fight the players were almost completely tapped out. Only one of them had any healing surges left, all but one daily had been used along with all of the magic item dailies. There was a period when the players were mostly down to at wills but it still remained pretty intense, something I was concerned would cause the fight to really flag.
At this point I gave them a cut scene. Darius, leader of the Cabal is pacing around his scrying pool. His efforts are being obscured by The Grub although he doesnt know it. As Althea dies he gets a brief image of her falling into darkness and immediately summons his demonic servants. The players know they have at best 1o minutes or so before he arrives via Linked Portal and kills them all.
They have next to nothing left and they know the prisoners, and Kallista in particular, are being held prisoner by a powerful demon and his maniacal guards. They decide to go for it and hope for the best.
The fight is short and brutal. Jacurutu does a lot of damage but cant hit for shit (oh how I hate Paladin marks). Dragonbreath works for about the first time ever clearing a bunch of minions. The Demon also releases a bunch of enraged semi naked slaves into the fight which gives Assamber some real concern. The player is looking to play a character who really values life in a very grim setting. He refuses to wipe out the slave minions, instead dropping some icy terrain to slow them down and focusing on the demon. He hopes if he kills the demon the slaves will flee.
Things are looking pretty dire. Everyone is down on health, healing surges are used up and Artemis has just managed to get surrounded by 6 minions. The proverbial shit is about to hit the fan when Azhanti, the greataxe wielding dragonborn cleric splits the demons head in two. I had the slaves run off at this point, perhaps it would have reinforced the brutality of the setting if they hadn't but it was getting late.
We then get a flashback to earlier in the day. One of the ongoing issues relates to a Tielfing noble woman, Kyia, who is the former owner of Morn when he was a slave. She is also the daughter of Akaran, hated enemy of Artemis as he kidnapped and raped his mother. She turned up last session looking for help as her father was trying to marry her off. She twisted Morn around her little finger to get him to help her escape the city. Unfortunately for her events intervened before she could get out and two of the players sold her whereabouts to The Grub who kidnapped her.
The cut scene dealt with the aftermath of their return to the safe house after the last mission. Morn is furious and rages about the place destroying what he can. Assamber is trying to keep him calm while Azhanti and Artmeis try to conceal the fact that they both sold her out. They manage to do so and Morn subsides for now.
With Jacurutu dead the group is free to release the captives. There are three of them, the tiefling Kallista, a human woman and a tiefling called Typhon who Morn recognises as a member of House Turath. I set this as a skill challenge, the goal is to get the prisoners out of the cages hanging over a shaft down to the underways before Darius arrives and cuts off their escape route. They disturb some vicious looking bats in the process but quickly rescue Kallista and the human. Assamber is all for rescuing Typhon but both Morn and Artemis are against it. Azhanti is already heading out of the door with one of the captives. To cut the argument short Morn smashes the link holding Typhons cage up and he plummets into the dark waters below. Who knows, he may turn up again at a future point.
The group flee and hole up in the City having accomplished their mission and grabbed a bunch of loot. Lingering resentments remain between some of them which need to be resolved and a message arrives later in the day. The Rebeelion has called a meeting of its members and they are invited. The time to move against the Cabal is soon, especially now they are in disarray with the loss of one of their leaders.
Overall I was very pleased. We played for five hours and the game involved four fairly complicated battles each with multiple different opponents. The game ran quickly and smoothly, we barely needed to refer to the books and everyone enjoyed themselves. The players got a real chance to test themselves to the limits and picked up a number of new tactics. There was also some useful character development, particularly between Assamber and Morn which will need to be addressed next session.
I set the encounters using the guidelines in the DMG with levels around 3 - 5 with the PC's being level 3. Each of them felt like a real fight with players being brought to the brink but not quite over it. We got our closest yet to a death, a second failed death save. I am pleasantly pleased that it works this well although they did get very lucky in the fight with Althea. Looking back at the stats I also realised I missed a few things. In particular Altheas Lifedrain should have recharged and been free when she hit bloodied and I gave Jacurutu some regeneration. Easy things to miss, especially when you try and keep all of your game info on index cards to make organisation simpler.
I have also been focusing on Morn as a target but his high defences are making that a losing startegy. I am not certain that eating up the -2 to hit and radiant damage is a beter idea but maybe its time to start spreading the love about a bit.
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