Author Topic: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?  (Read 3275 times)

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Cagemarrow

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So next session my party is going to begin defending the City of Brindol against the Red Hand of Doom. A horde of hobgoblins with giant, dragon, and other monsters providing support. Without providing any spoilers does anyone have any suggestions/tactics that my EBL 10 Knight of the Sacred Seal (2 Naberous) Binder can use to turn the battle to our side? My primary binds are Zceryll and Naberous usually, though I may trade out Nabrous during the battle for Haures for the at will Major Image.

I'm looking for battlefield control ideas and things to use in an emergency to turn the tide of battle. My primary abilities at the moment are Summon Monster V (creatures gain the pseudonatural template) every 5 rounds, Major Image (one at a time) at will, and Phantasmal Killer every 5 rounds.


A few of the ideas I have are:

Giant Killer: Summon 1d4+1 pseudonatural celestial Dire weasels, have them cast their True Strike and smite evil then charge attack the giant begining their latch (1d4+1 con dam/round). Should drop a single target pretty quick but not likely to work more then once.

Blinding Shield of Doom: Use Major Image to project a blinding light from my shield within the area of the spell (10 10ft cubes) surrounding my party. (DC 20 will to disbelieve) Providing full concealment to all those within the area of the spell without hindering their own ability to see (+5 to save knowing it is an illusion).[/li][/list]

Celestial Bison Stampede: Summon 1d4+1 pseudonatural celstial Bison and run them through the ranks outside the walls.


Anyone have any other suggestions that could prove effective, or have any other suggestions for Binds that will benefit the party as much as the two I'm thinking?

Cagemarrow

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #1 on: October 25, 2010, 02:07:19 PM »
I really wish there was a way I could get into Malconvoker with my Binder, I get funny looks from the Party's Paladin every time I summon a fiendish creature or devil are going to be a precursor to him smiting me I think. I think saving the town is going to necessitate summoning some of the nastier creatures, but it certainly isn't helping my PR image with the local clergy.

Shadowhunter

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2010, 02:10:29 PM »
Note that the designer clarified that Zceryll couldn't use the d(something)(-something) version.
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871830/Consolidated_Binder_Handbook?post_id=338417162#338417162

Of course, it's not in any errata, so it's up to you if you're going to use it as such.



It's a shame that Halphax are such a high level vestige, otherwise his abilities would work very well here I think.



I got an idea. Use Desharis and lots of  :)
That is, pile a huge amount of objects down on the horde - preferably with a catapult and some force behind it- and start animating objects, telling them to trip people all the time. Of course, might be bad to use the tiny items, go for something with Small size instead.

Or, look around in Brindol for a town statue or something... animate it, move it to the wall, rinse, repeat.
Now you got your own personal attack-golems (well, sort of).
[Spoiler]
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Cagemarrow

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2010, 02:51:39 PM »
I did point out that discussion to my DM but he's cool with being able to use the multiple creatures as the spell normally allows since there was no official errata for the bind as written. Makes moving the party around without a wizard quickly possible as it allows me to summon multiple Hippogriffs for the whole party. He is also allowing me to renew ongoing spells rather then having to resummon creatures every 10 rounds.

I like the idea of the animated objects but their low to hit and hp limit their use drastically and I wouldn't have any other offensive abilities with that bind. Tripping the army is fairly well covered by the druid with Trip Vine, from HoB.

Could be useful to animate a few ballistas on the wall with packets of arrows instead of the single big one, I love the idea of a huge sized shotgun. :) Wish the teleport was at will instead of 1/day even if it was short range. Could have all kinds of scooby doo fun if it was.

I've already outfitted the army with Continual Flame on all of their swords so light shouldn't be a problem during the battle for the soldiers on the wall. Thinking about using earth mephits to litter the battlefield with sink holes using their Soften earth and stone abilities, don't have enough time to setup really good traps using this though.

We expect the Horde within the next few days.

I forgot to mention our party makeup if that will help anyone make suggestions or alternate plans.

Lvl 8 Prestige Paladin - mounted combat specialist
Lvl 9 Scout - skirmishing spring attacker, maxed tumble
Lvl 9 Swift Hunter - Archer, Improved Skirmish and Imp Favored enemy, single shot of doom against goblins and dragons.
Lvl 9 Druid - Bear form summoner, primary healer
Lvl 9 Binder - me (EBL 10), diplomacy master, group support
Lvl 7 Bard/Lyrical Thamuaturge - my cohort, additional group support, secondary healer

Havok4

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2010, 04:10:13 PM »
Another potential option for you during this battle would be to use Vanus if you are worried about enemies getting close to you and swarming you. The fear aura would keep most of the army off you and the free ally ability would allow you do some neat tactical mobility things with your allies.

 Remember that you get the nice abilities from the pseudonatural template, including DR 5/magic and spell resistance. The mindsight you get from zceryll should allow you to keep the enemies from sneaking up on you. 

Haures is still probably your best choice as you get the really nice illusions for battlefield control while your summons kill things, and phantasmal killer for use on the powerful enemies you encounter. Also the incorporeal movement ability will give you really nice mobility and keep the enemy from boxing you in. A good use of the major image power would be some really powerful but fake allies (like a group of wartrolls) to lure the army into traps.

A good way to make use of your summons would be summoned Achaierai for their poisonous clouds, have them rush the enemy from blind corners in the city to cause lots of confusion.

Shadow mastifs could be summoned and create huge amounts of confusion  in the middle of the army with their bay ability.  They are pretty much invisible so you could just keep on sending mastifs to the army to pretty much stop it dead in its tracks as the average will save of the army does not rise above 5 or so. Which means that roughly half of the army within 300 feat of the mastif will become panicked and try to escape. Trying to sack a city when every minute or so large groups of your troops try to run away will be very difficult. Eventually the enemy will realize they need to stuff  wax in their ears but by this point you should have done a lot of damage to the army and they take initiative penalties for this and the army would lose cohesion anyway as they would be unable to hear orders.

ImmortalSoul

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2010, 04:27:40 PM »
Our group used polymorph, summon monster (and DM-approval, luckily) to create gigantic trap holes all over the battlefield. We also used the river to flood parts of the land so the army would have to advance on a path we could at least narrow.
The paladin might have the time of his life in this battle btw :D

I really like the shadow mastif-idea, too.

Havok4

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #6 on: October 25, 2010, 04:58:12 PM »
The shadow mastiffs could drive some of the army off the path into those moats, where many would swim and drown.

Cagemarrow

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #7 on: October 25, 2010, 06:06:02 PM »
Oh, I like the traps idea, Earth Mephits get Soften earth and stone once per day each affecting 6 x 10ft blocks of earth reducing the consistency to fine sand. So 30 summons an hour, average 2 mephits per summoning, that's 360 x 10ft cubes of soft earth on the battlefield per hour of preparation. I think we've found a way to prevent them from being able to charge the walls effectively. :) Or could be used to add a moat, guess I'll need to find out the circumference of the wall.

Also using 2 Lantern Archons I can cast Continual Flame on 600 items per hour. Lets see the enemy commander keep his composure when it looks like every soldier on the wall has a flaming sword! :) Not really going to have a big effect, but they'll be attacked at night and its a lot safer then having that many torches lying around.


Shadow Mastif could be cool, definately a chance to sow confusion among the horde, but the save DC is really low so not likely to route the whole thing, but as a new summon every 30 seconds has the change to affect a lot.

Being immune to fear and mind-affecting things is going to come in handy. Range on the summons is really going to limit how much damage I can do with these tactics during the battle. 50-75ft I think, don't have my books right now to check.

Pseudonatural Template and Mindsight has already saved me, and the party from some ambushes, though the tentacles aren't exactly winning me any friends from the local church of Pelor.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2010, 06:12:43 PM by Cagemarrow »

Havok4

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #8 on: October 25, 2010, 09:22:48 PM »
You do not always have to look like you are made of tentacles, the pseudonatural template lets you turn it on and off at will. 

I agree that the shadow mastiff's dc is low, but so is the average hobgoblin fighter's will save, that thing has a 300 foot radius, so if you can get outside the walls safely using invisibilty and flight from the bard and druid you could summon the mastiffs in the middle of enemy formations and cause a significant portion of them to scatter.  I will agree that the really nasty enemies like the giants and dragons will be able to shrug that effect off with no effort but it will help keep the little guy's from massacring the non-pc defender's of Brindol,  it could also be used to keep the army from arrow swarming your characters.


Cagemarrow

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #9 on: October 26, 2010, 02:03:21 PM »
Yep I know about being able to turn off the Alternate Form ability, had to show the party so they wouldn't freak out the first time I used it and attack me when I used it in combat for the first time. Since then they've all looked at my character differently and have been questioning his motivations for everything. All decent Roleplay fodder. Glad Naberous allows me to alleviate their suspicions as a standard action, think the Fonze repairing the Jukebox. :)

We did after all run into my character's father earlier in the campaign, a Cleric of St Cuthbert, who is after Jacob for violating the laws of the church. Luckily he was delirious from poison so didn't recognize his own son and we managed to avoid having to take on a Cleric and 4 Paladin's of St Cuthbert. In back story I established that his father was a zealot and had killed Jacob's uncle, his brother after discovering that he was Binding things. Jacob later found his uncles journal, ran away from home, and began studying it to become a Binder himself. His recent fame has drawn his father's attention and now he has a hit squad after him, in addition to having to deal with the horde.


So does anyone have any ideas on how to deal with the dragons we're sure to encounter during the siege? I'm expecting at least the Green from the bridge to show up again. Got on his bad side when I hit him with 2 1/2 fire 1/2 vile fireballs from my Astaroth - Diabalous bind. Vile damage scars don't heal. . .and I doubt the clerics in the horde would think to cast healing magic on sacred ground in order to fix it. He ran like a b***** after that and we didn't have the ranged damage or effects to take him down before he got away.

Havok4

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2010, 03:31:47 PM »
Have a flying summon grapple the dragon to bring it above its maximum load and cause it come crashing into the ground.  A Leskylor (NG, BoED) would work nicely for that, it even has improved grab and +16 grapple modifier.

ImmortalSoul

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #11 on: October 26, 2010, 03:55:00 PM »
Also, make sure their army sees it fall.

Additionally, we evacuated the outer rings and used every piece of furniture we could to create blockades in the streets. If you have any hard-hitting troups to spare (dwarf mercenaries, say; I don't know if they're actually in the adventure or if our DM invented them) make them hide in groups of 5-10 inside the outer houses and attack the goblins once the wall has fallen - if you have particular persistent foes anywhere, you can still order them around to go anywhere else.
Hm, what else? We split the "army" of Brindol - the professional soldiers, that is - into groups of two and placed them all around the walls to make sure the militia, not much more than farmers, don't just run away in panic once they see the army or the dragon.

A lot of what you can do before this battle is more about roleplaying than about hard rules, though. Think about what you personally would do if you had to organize the fight and act accordingly. I'm sure your DM will greatly appreciate innovative ideas even if they're not backed up by full rule support. Moreover, there's some things hard to express in rules, including vital points like the loyalty of the people of Brindol. Good roleplaying (and use of diplomacy, certainly) makes sure they will do their very best to support you, even if there's a dragon flying above their heads.

Two more things: The druid should get Haboob (Sandstorm) and Vortex of Teeth (Spc). A lot of no save damage there that will completely tear the average foot soldier to pieces. This is especially useful if any small area of the wall falls for whatever reason, because Haboob and Vortex of Teeth will mean the army cannot pass through at all without losing quite a lot. Whoever gets through can probably easily be picked up.
And, lastly, get flying mounts. In our campaign the elves in the swamp had trained owls and we borrowed some to improve the groups mobility, which really greatly helped.

Cagemarrow

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #12 on: October 26, 2010, 05:06:30 PM »
Well we have the owls on loan from the elves already, and hopefully the dwarves will make it in time to help during the siege. That was a fun encounter finding the payment that got taken by a patrol, managed to talk my way into possession of the gold and sent them on their way. Of course we had Saarvith captive and willing to help me back up that story, dropped the hint the Black Dragon was around hunting and would love the donation to his horde and the rest of the patrol decided they had somewhere else to be. :)

GM has ruled no Summons from BoED and Fiend Folio, he's not sure about their 3.5 ness even though there are errata to bring them up to date. I miss the tiger griffen with spells but can make do with the others. Miss the cure spells the Lesykor can cast though.

Good idea for the druid, will need to mention that to him before the game so he can prepare them for his spell list, GM's a stickler for having prepared spells ready before the session starts.

Hmm Flying Grapplers. I like it, too bad most of them have a low check compared to what I expect the dragon to do. Tanglefoot bag might work too as long as none of them are Huge or larger. Of course if they're that big we have other problems. As for making sure the enemy can see the dragon fall, that's what the quiver of Continual Flame arrows for the archer are for. Also makes it easier for the others to hit it once its out of darkvision range.

bananaphone

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #13 on: October 26, 2010, 07:35:30 PM »
I love this module.  It's good 'ole fashioned D&D.  Goblins, Hydras, and Dragons (oh my!)   :D
I ran it for a good while and my players loved it.


I'm not that familiar with the Binder class, so I will only make general suggestions for this battle.
You seem to have a good handle on what you want to do to prepare.  This battle is one of endurance, so make sure to not deplete all your resources (unless you're about to die, or you are sure you're at the final battle) 
Any sort of long duration effects will be good, such as any sort of fogs, or poisonous clouds. 
Along with blockades, having all the main routes in the city littered with caltrops would be a good strategy while you have any available archers in the city rain death from the rooftops.  If mass quantities of caltrops are not available, I'm sure you could substitute broken glass, marbles, etc.

For the dragons, unless your party's ranged attacks are reliably hitting, have a dispel of sorts ready.  Not killing the green dragon will make this encounter much more difficult.  If you are able to somehow reduce their DEX to 0 (via ability damage, penalty, exhaustion effects), that will let you coup-de grace them. (Almost all dragons have a DEX of 10)
Be ready for your party to be called upon to "handle" the dragons while the rest of the forces deal with the regular army.  Make preparations to deal with any "property damage" caused by said dragons.

Edit:  I second ImmortalSoul's idea of using Haboob(from Sandstorm).  I'd actually use it over Vortex of Teeth(SpC). 
Haboob is 3rd level, duration is minutes/lvl, deals comparable damage, and obscures vision in a 20 foot radius cylinder. 
Vortex of Teeth is 4th level, duration is rounds/lvl, deals 13.5 average damage/round, however the radius is twice as large.

Good Luck!   :thumb

« Last Edit: October 26, 2010, 07:56:25 PM by bananaphone »

Cagemarrow

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #14 on: October 26, 2010, 08:50:11 PM »
Not having a wizard in the party is going to hurt, we won't have any dispels available unfortunately, maybe I should see if we can get any scrolls before hand, to bad my character and cohort are both out of gold. Last chapter really didn't give us much since we couldn't really loot the Lich's home without ruining our chances at negotiating. Hopefully others in the party will have a reserve of cash.

Property damage hmm, probably fires, which I am trying to prevent by giving soldiers Continual Flame weapons instead of having them run around with torches. Druid should be able to save some with weather spells but I could always summon some water elementals and have them put their quench ability to good use. Never thought that ability would come in handy. Nice Haboob can be used to put out fires too.

Endurance isn't going to be a problem for my character at least, I can do my thing 22 hours a day thanks to my ring of sustenance. Can even provide some minor healing if I trade out Haures for Buer, which gives me fast healing and a healing touch that does 1d8+10 once every 5 rounds. Not fast but infinate. Time is going to be the most pressing matter I think.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2010, 08:54:03 PM by Cagemarrow »

ImmortalSoul

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #15 on: October 27, 2010, 09:18:16 AM »
Well, if the dragons set fire to parts of the city you should consider getting those who won't be fighting (woman, people too old) to extinguish the fires. I mean, you can help them, especially as long as the dragon is still nearby and running around with buckets of water is too dangerous, but it's their city, so they can at least try their best.

Cagemarrow

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #16 on: October 27, 2010, 10:52:40 AM »
Thankfully the vast majority of the populous has already fled to the next defensible city, the only non combatants around are those to injured to go with them, so resources like that really aren't available.

Just got a message from my dm and it sounds like a cleric of st cuthbert has decided to go all glen beck and preach that the city has brought this doom down upon themselves and that our party isn't actually here to help but rather weaken the city at a key point. We're gonna have to go into PR mode and hopefully repair the damage to morale that this guy is doing. I only hope it isn't my characters dad, he wouldn't be able to bring himself to completely discredit and break his resolve like he could if it was a stranger. We don't have time for this nonsense!


Cagemarrow

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Re: Red Hand of Doom - Battle of Brindol - How should my Binder prepare?
« Reply #17 on: November 09, 2010, 11:05:44 AM »
« Last Edit: November 09, 2010, 02:42:14 PM by Cagemarrow »