10/02/04 8:00 AM

Open #2: Xen’drik

Team: Team Axis – Chris Lee (Corlin), Eng-Seng (Reginald), Austin (Larric), Chris Forster (Tannix), Robert (Beld), Tiffany (Sarlis)

Overview:
The people of Team Axis were razor-sharp analysts, and they had calculated every flaw in the characters designed for the open. As Sarlis, Tiffany bemoaned the lack of Weapon Finesse; others had similar complaints about spell selection, feats, and equipment. Before the game began, they traded equipment around, making sure that they got the most out of the tools the party had to work with. Aside from questionable design choices, the Axis players had found quite a few typos and mistakes on the characters – while I hadn’t written the characters, I must admit that this was a bit embarrassing.

They approached the first encounter with caution, and this ended up costing them. As Beld, Robert wanted to take on the drow single-handed, as his counterpart in the Iron Talons had done; if he had, the adventure might have been quite different. Instead, the others convinced him to hold back. For a few rounds they considered waiting in the cover of the jungle for the defensive spells of the drow wizard to wear off. However, the drow had no intention of waiting, and fell back into the temple to call for reinforcements. Not wanting to waste his rage and shifting, Larric charged up after them – but now he had to deal with two giants as well as the drow. Larric was quickly pounded into a Larric pancake; while the drow warriors were still fairly useless, one did have the satisfaction of killing Larric when the PC was at -9 hp. Meanwhile, the rest of the party was catching up as best as they could; they hadn’t used haste, and by the time slow-moving Corlin made it up to the hall both giants were down and the battle was over. Or was it? A lone drow warrior had fled to a corner of the room, and summoned additional reinforcements. In the battle that followed, Corlin ended up being hit with three lightning bolts and reduced to ashes. All in all, it was the longest time I have seen a group remain under initiative, as they dealt with three distinct encounters all in the space of a single initiative roll.

Once they made it into the throne room, the group had a fairly easy time. Beld charged the drow, resisting multiple attempts at hold person and ultimately tripping the cleric into the mist-filled chasm. Seeing the way combat was going, the flying drow rogue chose to flee. Nonetheless, having lost the favored soul the group was low on hit points by the end, and were content to trap the samurai and run off with the shard.  

Highlight: Using his robe of useful objects and a readied action, Eng-Seng (as Reginald) waited for the samurai to charge and then dropped a pit beneath the enemy’s feet, pushing a 10-ft door over the top. While there is now some question as to whether the door can be used in this way, it was clever and fun, and allowed the battle-worn group to evade a very dangerous encounter.   

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