So, I totally forgot to post up the past several sessions. Epic fail on my part there. Going to post the short versions now, since no one wants to read 28 hours worth of stuff.
[spoiler=And the party's makeup changes]
So the gnome was phased out the very next session, as it was the second character of the Ranger, and we had a new player join (Who, despite never playing before, put together a pretty decent Kineticist).
Party composition is now thus:
Elven Ranger 2
Half-drow Rogue 2
Human Cleric of Pelor 2
Warforged Kineticist 2 (With the psiforged feat, and mithril body, taking the pathetic flaw)
Comical side-story about the 'Forged, he rolled 14, 14, 14, 14, 11, 8 (Still wanted to play a kineticist though, and honestly isn't half bad at his job. 8 in Cha, and 11 in Wis, with the + to concentration psicrystal personality).
So, after returning to town, restocking on supplies (for the third time now), the party returned minus one generalist wizard, and plus one 6'9, 350lb deathrobot with mind-bullets.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=The Descent]
They moved ahead into room 34. The elf immediately killed the bound kobolds. Literally "Kobolds? I kill them! Don't care that they are tied up!" and started rolling dice. I only mention this because it should serve as foreshadowing, combined with his past actions towards the scaly draconians. After rescuing Erky Timbers and learning all they could from him, they escorted him back to the surface, dispatching several kobolds on the way.
Returning back to goblin-land, they moved into room 38. The elf was curious about what "Elf Pudding" meant, until I reminded him they were goblins. His curiosity died about then. They did take the five points of oil, though. Moving into room 39, they carefully scouted through the smoky haze, checking every square for traps. I think seeing the two spiked open traps in room 29, plus that pit trap they narrowly avoided at the entrance has made them a little paranoid. The player of the psiforged laughed at them the entire time. We'll see how long it takes before he stops laughing at the trap searching.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Wherein the party nearly TPKs to a below CR wyrmling dragon]
Finding the room empty, they moved to room 37. Their first steps into the room brought retaliation from Calcryx, resulting in a long-drawn out combat with the ecl 2 party taking over 2 minutes to defeat the cr1 wyrmling dragon. There were some epic failures for attack rolls, saving throws, failed AoO's, and balance checks. The rogue alone rolled multiple natural 1's vs the breath attack. They finally managed to drop Calcryx. I freely admit, I was a bad DM though, since I just started rolling everything in front of them and collapsing into giggle fits the entire fight. You'd have thought the death blow against that below-cr dragon was the death throes of the cr+3 BBEG fight that nearly resulted in a TPK from the way the party cheered. Recovering the treasure of the wyrmling, the party triggered the pit trap into hallway 35, but the rogue made that save (for once). While the psiforged and cleric walked around via the other door from room 35, the ranger jumped the pit instead. After making a ton of noise in the hallway, the ranger attempted to use his small mirror to stealthily check out the room by opening the door a crack. The goblins, fully aware of the party at this point, smashed the door into his hand. The Psiforged used his Control Object power to smash a goblin in the face. For two rounds. Then the party kicked in the door, and found an empty room. Following the line of thought that a giant metal creature would make awesome bait, since he's got a lot of metal on him or something like that (I'm still not sure of the logic they used), the Psiforged stepped into the room, and promptly got knocked about handily by the goblins' readied actions. Despite lots of horrible attack rolls, the party defeated the goblin bandits without major losses, though between the two fights they had burned through their spells and power points, so the rested in that room.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Tactical failure nearly causes yet another TPK]
They decided to make an about face, investigated the southernmost area of the map, encountered both the imp (nearly had two PC deaths due to being repeatedly knocked into the pit trap), the imp managed to escape, but not before dropping the rogue's dex to 0, and the PCs nearly had a TPK against the weak troll immediately afterwards. They tried moving back outside to rest, not wanting to chance alerting the kobolds who had entrenched themselves against the PCs, and the ranger had to scale the cliff face and secure a new rope after the Quasit cut the old one. The party ended up resting nine days so that the rogue would be back at full dex isntead of at 0. Much grumbling of desiring Lesser Restoration spells was to be had.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Goblins and Pit Traps and Kobolds, oh my!]
Returning back to the goblin area with the smoky hallway, they moved down through the hallways to the kobold area again. They failed every check involving traps possible, attempted to assault the kobolds through use of Obscuring Mist, failed to account for the kobolds being ready for them to emerge from the mist after almost a full minute of loudly moving about, and nearly died to pit traps, readied actions, volleys of crossbow bolts, and a single magic missile from the spellcasting leader. They retreated, the warforged took his first real damage the entire module thus far, by falling into the pit trap with a horrifically failed jump check trying to clear the traps. Like, I mean seriously bad. He no longer laughs at the rest of the party's trap paranoia.
The party regrouped, healed up via wand, and then since they hadn't used any expendable personal resources, made their way back through the smoky room to the north east entrance into the goblin leader's throne room. Despite reinforcements, the party managed to utilize really effective group tactics to drop the entire goblin presence fairly quickly, and actually finally exhibited utilizing resources in expectation to the CR. The cleric going Large sized, and knocking people down into the pit in the center of the room through grappling helped them with that. Healing up with the wand again, looting both the throne room and the large goblin sleeping areas to the south, the party then descended into the lower levels of the Citadel. The cleric utilized turning to devastating effect against the skeletons, and then Balsag's roaring charge from his little cavern nearly caused a TPK. A critical hit against the ranger on the charge against them put the ranger to -8, the rogue was knocked by a normal hit the next round to -4. The Warforged utilized entangling ectoplasm and an augmented Mind Thrust for almost max damage dealt a strong blow against Balsag, which died the following round to a lucky critical from the cleric, and another very high damage augmented Mind Thrust from the warforged. The party stabilized the ranger and rogue, looted Balsag and his room, then set out to the south. The warforged was set on fire not once, but twice by two different Thoqqua, and nearly died each time before managing to put himself out, even with assistance from the party. The party rested, recovered, then tackled the main portions of the lower level. The goblins were massacred thanks to everyone hitting level 3, and the ranger taking the Lion totem pounce ACF level of Barbarian, and several good ranged sneak attacks from the rogue.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Scythe crits suck to get hit with]
The bugbear with a scythe nearly did in the ranger. Everyone decided that even though the cleric made a metric ton of noise, she would go first from now on since she had 4 more points of AC and was less likely to get beat down. Clearing out the side rooms was impossibly boring, and was usually done before anyone outside the party even managed to act in initiative. The second bugbear, for instance, was dropped via ranged attacks and the warforged before the surprise round was even finished. I think they are finally getting the hang of the "Don't just knock in doors and expect to win automatically because you are PCs" concept.
The cleric wasn't high enough level to outright destroy the Shadow, and so the party just bypassed it since they were low on hp, strength, and had no spells or power points enough left to kill it, and no-one wanted to try using Balsag's magical mace to try to go toe-to-toe with it. They moved on, not sure whether it would continue to pursue them or not, and wanting to put some distance between them and it first before resting.
The ranger set off the exploding book trap, catching the warforged on fire. Again. The sheer number of natural 1 saving throws have been no small amount of hilarity for me.
The party rested, recovered their spells and hp, restored strength damage via Lesser Restorations, and good heal checks, and moved on to the Grove.
The goblins posed almost no threat to the party at all. I don't think they even managed to made a successful attack roll the entire two rounds of combat before the last one managed to flee, only to get destroyed by twig blights, per the module. The twig blights, on the other hand, managed to deal enough damage to the party as they cut their way through the briars to require a single CLW spell from the wand.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=The Gulthias Tree]
The party makes it to the Gulthias Tree, the warforged manages to stay hidden in the tower, but the other three are readily made known to Belak. At first, the party attempts to drag as much information as the possibly can out of Belak, but in the end decides that violence is the only possible end. The druid wins initiative, dumps off an Entangle spell from his wand (I should have had him actually cast it, since the DC would have been higher, but oh well), aiming for far enough back to avoid Braford and his Tree Frog. This, unknown to Belak and the party both, also means the warforged (who failed his saves, again), ended up entangled behind the wall, and without LoS to anyone. Only the ranger made his save, and with his higher speed made it outside the Entangle effect his first activation, but everyone else had hell trying to make the break-free checks. The warforged made it, moved passed the wall finally to get LoS, but then failed again. He didn't really care, though, since he made the concentration checks on a roll of 3 or better to manifest, and started Energy Missiling people to death. Sharwyn made her first save for half damage, and didn't drop, but her spells were more or less useless against the PCs. She and the tree frog died to the second missile. Braford, on the other hand, sundered the rangers masterwork weapons with maximum damage rolls on both each time and got in one good hit before getting dropped by a maximum damage energy missile that he failed his save on since Belak had nothing to really help with that. The ranger got charmed thanks to a horrific failure on his saving throw when Belak was the only one left, and bought Belak's lie that the twig blights were trying to kill him as well, and he should go kill the ones left out in the grove, since he was such a skilled fighter and all. I've never seen a single PC roll so many 1's in a row in my life. After he left, the warforged nearly died to a Heat Metal spell, and a Burning Sphere spell, but he made it through both with the help of the Cleric's Lesser Vigor spell, and a nicely rolled CMW, despite the CMW only giving half-effect. Too bad he was out of power points by this time. Belak hid behind the tree to heal up, the rogue finally broke free of the entangle 1 round before it expired, snuck up on him successfully, and managed to sneak attack him twice thanks to good feinting. After the ranger managed to break the charm effect, and made it back to the party after spending nearly 4 hours hacking through briars, the warforged chopped down the tree using Shatterspike, they took cover behind it's downed trunk, rested, restored spells, and collected loot, including taking the white gulthias apple, then managed to escape the Citadel while successfully avoiding the kobolds. They are scared to death of those things now. It's amazing how this always happens in games with the ranger's player. He keeps forgetting large numbers of basic goons can still cause huge amounts of pain if you charge in like a retard everytime you try to fight them.
Returning to town, the party cashed in on rewards, comissioned some magic items (which were fairly minor, seeing the low gp limits of the town), and learned about the dwarven ruins of Kundarak, including it's probably location, from the dwarf blacksmith. In return for directions and a map, the party agreed to let him have half of any dwarven crafted weapons they might find inside Kundarak. I'm honestly not sure whether the party will uphold their end of the deal or not, but they now have their plot hook for the next module that's going to be run. I'm almost curious as to how long it will take them to deal with the Forge of Fury module, seeing as how it took them 32 days to deal with the Citadel, all said and done, though only 1 day for the second, and harder, level. The warforged has been forcing everyone to move at a faster rate, and not waste as much time diddling about as they previously had been, which is good.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=In which the party nearly dies to a randomly rolled DMG table encounter]
The party purchased a wagon and horses, feed for the three week trip to Kundarak, and then set off. The ranger expressed desire to see the random encounter tables in the DMG used, so I obliged him. All said and done, over the course of their trip the party encountered and killed 6 wererats, 3 cockatrices, 13 goblins, 1 ankheg, 3 locust swarms, and one 4th level fighter half-black dragon human. The half-dragon nearly resulted in a TPK thanks to the ranger surging ahead of the party and trying to go toe-to-toe with the guy, despite a successfuly check that told him the half-dragon seemed to be a stronger combatant than his character, and the cleric and rogue taking nearly max damage vs the breath attack. The psion utilized entangling ectoplasm to kite the guy to death with energy missiles and mind thrusts while at 2 hp, saving both the other PCs (The ranger and rogue both naturally stabilized, and the cleric's surprise round casting of Lesser Vigor saved herself), and preventing the half-dragon from escaping once his health got low. The party decided not to attack the 3 blink dogs they came across half-way through their trip, and despite the last fight with the half-dragon, all 4 players are demanding I utilize the random encounter tables for everything now, because it was so ridiculous (and to them, fun) some of the things that were generated that it was worth the possible risk of PC death, and they thoroughly enjoyed making me roll for random loot drops. I honestly think I've never once used the random tables for loot prior in my entire life. The PCs leveled to level 4 by the time they reached Kundarak, and now this thread is all caught up.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Final Analysis]
While the party has slid each of their characters into a decent power niche now, their grasp of tactical maneuvering is still lacking. The warforged psion has single-handedly made the difference in a lot of the fights now, thanks to good battlefield maneuvering and accurately nuetralizing threats in the most efficient order the PCs can see, and he's starting to rub off on the rogue. The ranger has been knocked around enough that he's starting to realize maybe he needs to start being more of a team player in combat. While the warforged is clearly the most "optimized" build in the group, the ranger is now starting to move into his own. The player has admitted next time he'll just utilize retraining to prevent having such a slow takeoff. Party optimization is their one big weakness now, which I'm hoping will not be an issue once they hit level 6 and finish the Forge of Fury module. Otherwise, they're liable to quickly die to the first couple encounters in the RHoD module.[/spoiler]
