My high level run on Tuesday night went quite well. I had 5 players with an average party level of 17 and I wanted a fun and challenging encounter, so I could see how well the group syncs during combat. Since the game is going to last through the summer, I wanted to start by building up group confidence and cohesion. I wanted a dramatic but easy combat. I used d20 Encounter Calculator from the Pen Paper and Pixel website to help (great job who ever wrote it). The generator is for 3.x versions of the game and is extremely useful. It said four CR9 monsters, one CR12 monster, one CR13 monster and 4 CR16 monsters, for and average party level of 17 would be easy and that is what I wanted and that is what I ended up with. Encounter distance is another way to give combat advantage to the players, I started the group at 130 feet on an open field. If you want to screw with players you shorten the encounter distance to absolute minimum. Since that was not my plan for tonight I stuck with 130 feet.
Encounter starts: 2d10x10 feet away (130ft)
1 Charnel Hound MM3 P26 CR13 running among the fallen
4 Goristros HoAbyss p40 CR16 holding pyramid chariot
4 Bulezau HoAbyss p32 CR9 pike men on chariot
1 Thredra the true necromancer Libris Mortis P53 CR12 calls out to parley to party on his turn
The plan was for the necromancer to monologue on his turn in combat which would give clues about the story for the later parts of the game. Now I know why “boxed text” is important. Usually the players are not allowed to interrupt “boxed text” which is a way to force story hooks on a party. I did not have any “boxed text” for this part of the game. It was a subtle mistake on my part, but from the cheers around the table as the general of the undead army was essentially detonated by multiple “force energy” spells from three players who all had higher initiative than the necromancer made the goof worth it. I will have opportunities to bring in the story line next session via another bad guy.
For the first combat I had placed the “general” on top of a multi-level pyramid shaped sedan chair being carried by the goristros all the other fiends were on the sedan chair also. The players at the table started joking about my dreaded general’s sedan chair after I described the necromancer as an extremely fat man sitting on a throne of gold. They kept saying it reminded them of Meet the Spartans (2008) which I had not seen. I was imaging the fat guy sitting in the bucket loader from Barb Wire (1996) for the general.
They took care of the general and his fiend guards in about 3hours of combat, and had a blast doing it. I nearly killed two players twice. The story continued via “boxed text” with the players leading an army south slowly over three days dispatching the remaining undead forces (bullywug zombies) until they reached the ruined Village of Bren, where they met up with other NPCs and roll-played for a bit with the innkeeper, his wife and his two daughters who were all vampires, but the players were so caught up in roll-playing dialogue and dinner with the troops who had followed them to Bren, that the party paladin had not suspected anything out of the ordinary, until late into the night. Shortly after the third watch started the players spotted the inn keeper’s daughters fooling around with the soldiers who were sleeping in camp with the party. The guys all thought teens. Get a room… But a decent spot check keyed into the fangs. This time the party dialogued with the vampires before dispatching them, and found clues for the next part in the series of dungeons. Everyone had fun.
On another quick note, I asked the DM of our Keoland adventure, if I could set up an encounter with the hag that captured our party last week. He said yes. So during the wait for players to arrive, I ran a quick encounter which included the “lead-in” hook to my high level game and also ended up freeing the 1st level PCs from the hag. Neat thing was 1st players “kill the hag!” 16th level players “lets use some diplomacy the hag.”
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