Sunday, July 29, 2012

I Have An Excuse!

Yeah, I screwed up again but I have a really good reason.  Drew got back on Monday from a year (almost) in Japan.  We had a lot of housework and errands to run to get things ready for him.  And then, we got busy just getting caught up with all he missed and hearing all his stories. 

Anyway, on with the play reports.  First up, last week's Pathfinder game with the Fishermen.

So, this time we were missing our two tanks: the heavy hitting half orc barbarian and the nimble dex fighter.  Our job was to go to the keep we had been avoiding to discover if the magic item we needed for the flying ship was there.  A quick reconnoiter of the place led us to be caught by a group of hobgoblins who were watching the place as well.  They were upset with the fire drakes and the elven wizard who had control of them.  After some careful bargaining, we got their promise to come help if we would be sure to eliminate the mage.  They gave us some good info on the flying habits of the drakes as well as how many may be in the keep.  Looking from cover, we saw that there was only one direct entrance into the keep and that one was in the wide open.  In fact, there was 600 yards of burnt earth between the scrub edge and the keep.  No way to sneak in there easily.

We talked amongst ourselves and looked over magic items trying to formulate a plan of attack. We finally settled on a judicious use of a very large bag of holding, a potion of invisibility, and a potion of climbing.  As we were prepping this, six of the drakes took off and headed toward the valley where the ship was.  Since we couldn't do anything to stop that, we took advantage of their absence.  I put everyone into the bag of holding, and drank the invisibility potion.  Then I took off, moving at a careful double move rate across the open toward the tower furthest from the cliff face.  A mild scare as one bugbear appeared initially to be looking at the tracks I might have been making, and then I was at the tower.  I drank the climb potion and went up the side of the tower.  At the top, I found only one bugbear sentry.  Again, taking advantage of the invisibility, I got to do my sneak attack and take him out.

There were four ballistae on the roof and we could see across to the cliff face into a cave where two fire drakes were fighting over some food.  Despite my pleadings to allow me to try a sneak attack with a ballista, I was told "no".  Pulling everyone out of the bag, we carefully rearranged the ballistae and took four shots at the drakes.  We managed to kill one and wound the other.  It flew up and started strafing us with fire.  Our wizard opened the trap door into the tower and saw it was a barracks, so he fireballed it.  Our psionic dwarf summoned a construct to help battle the drake and we finally managed to kill it. 

Entering the tower, I took a crit shot to the gut and that took me out of the game for a little while.  We tracked the lone bugbear survivor straight to the mage and started the fight.  It was hairy.  The cleric took a hit that dropped him to -12 (exactly his Con) and the mage had to revive him quickly with a potion.  I bagged the magic item as the mage was grabbed by another construct which upset her so much she opened the trapdoor under her which was meant for us.  She managed to escape but we got what we came for. 

We teleported out to the meeting spot for the hobgoblins, only to see them running toward the keep.  We decided that it was their battle now and we headed back to the ship.  On our arrival, we found the drakes dead and nearly everyone else hurt or killed.  The ship had taken some damage, but at least we don't have anyone breathing down our necks now.

Not sure where we're going from here.

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