The players stumbled into the final dungeon, weary from the long fight and ready to get this over with. They drove deeper and deeper into the complex, trying to clear as many rooms as they could and finish it on as few long rests as possible. Little did they know that the bad guys are focused on their days long summoning and won't chase them outside of the complex. No, not very original, nor is it realistic, but without bringing their own army to invest the walls and protect the party in between forays, there wasn't much else to do, so the original campaign's creators did the best they could. Inside the dungeon, very not safe; at the same time, outside the dungeon, minus the hag's power to attack at least one party member in their dreams with impunity, safe. My party still decided to try a short rest and got at least the benefits of the short rest, before they left their hidey hole and ran into an ambush. It was not too bad, though I was hoping for a worse result, actually convince them to leave the dungeon and try again tomorrow. Alas, all they did was drive further in.
Of course, not clearing all the rooms in the front portion of the dungeon just means they have bypassed the night hag, and if they get to the final battle of the dungeon with the hag still alive, that just means she escapes and continues to haunt the party. The end of this dungeon already contains a fight the party would be wise to run away from, which means they will already be hunted by one powerful being that they will have to deal with before going on to the next campaign. Oh well, they made the choice to charge forward instead of securing their flank or exit, and I'm not here to correct their tactical blunders. Of course, one thing that has been written into the adventure is that there are only so many roaming patrols and the BBEG at the heart of the adventure can replenish some of these every time the party takes a long rest, plus throw some more monsters into one of the rooms that has already been cleared out. By not taking a long rest, the party has for now short circuited that challenge out of their way. We shall see if that will work for them or against them in the long term.
The party finally hit the wall in tonight's session, going just a little too thin to try and finish the dungeon with only one short rest to tide them over, and teetered on the brink of complete failure and Total Party Kill (TPK). They saved themselves in the end, and forcemarched out of the dungeon and moved away from it, hoping they could distance themselves from whatever had haunted the druid's dreams. Unfortunately for them, that particular ability of the night hag has no range, just so long as they are on the same plane can she still affect the party. And she did, this time bringing the paladin's rest to a screeching ruin. More on this in a moment.
The paladin has received 2 cursed items, one which was intelligent and nasty, and the current one which just makes him far more violent and angry than usual (he is an Oath of Vengeance paladin, after all). The ranger is so worried that when the published adventure I am running finally gives him some magic items meant specifically for him, he goes all cautious and doesn't want to attune to them. Nope, sorry, just plain old magic items, no curses on these, but it is nice to watch him squirm.
Back to the night hag. While I could not convince the party to go looking for the hag on the way out, I did manage to pique their interest on the way back in, and she got them to come pretty close with a shape change that made her look like a sacrificial victim. Still, the party did almost half the hag's HP with the first PC to go, so she left when it was her turn shortly after. Hags are not meant to be close combat monkeys, more suited to working from the shadows, so when she had the chance to run, she took it. Plane shift and she was gone, which explains why her nightmare power only works on the same plane as her target. This will be fun, as even though the wizard managed to track her to the Shadowfell, there is no way they are following or keeping her from eventually returning to the Material plane to cause more trouble. I have been looking for things to fill the gap between the end of this campaign arc and the start of the next one, and this will fill at least some of that nicely.
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