DM Chronicles, Session 7: Of Performing Crunch and Norming Fluff, Part 1

Image Source: Paizo’s Pathfinder, Lamia Matriarch, copyright 2007 Paizo publishing (under Fair Use).

Please note that this post features spoilers of Paizo’s Pathfinder #2, more precisely the nature of it’s boss monster.

Previously in Phil’s game:

The heroes vanquished the last Child of Sehan, squared off against a Succubus (and won), dodged deadly traps and fought some giant, bloated, blood-infused undead.

Intro:

While I initially thought I had no significant preparation for this week’s game, I grew even more unsatisfied with the remaining encounters found in the adventure, which is ‘Spawn of Sehan’ from Dungeon Magazine #146.

Let’s just say that I made changes to it up to the moment I picked up my bag of RPG supplies and left the house for Stef’s place on Friday afternoon, packing my copies of Pathfinder #2 and #3 (of which I really should do a preview in the next mini-post).

This week we were playing at Stef’s place because his wife had her X-mas party and he was at home with his two kids. I drove there with apprehension because a snowstorm was brewing and exactly 1 year ago, a Tree smashed into my house while I was going to play at Stef’s.

I made it in one piece and my lovely wife called to say the house was fine.

As happens when we play at his place, we all got there more or less late (he lives in the suburbs of Montreal while my place, the usual game spot, is in town).

Snow-storm + stupid people with ‘4-seasons’ tires = slooooooow traffic.

We started around 7h30. Thankfully, all stragglers finished leveling up to 9 before we started so we wouldn’t waste any time when we would reach the planned point of leveling up of the evening. I reminded everyone that this session would probably be mostly be the Cliffhanger fight, the resting up/leveling up and then maybe another encounter.

They actually managed more than that…

The Anti-Climatic Cliffhanger:

When I left the last game, there was this large, freaky mutant creature made up of 2 fused girallons that was charging the party. I was a bit worried because this thing had all the attacks of both creatures (2 bites, 8 Claws + 1 potential rend attack per PC). On top of it all, the adventure’s authors were saying that it would concentrate all it’s attack on one PC and then drag it away to eat it…

I estimated that a full attack by that creature amounted to an average of 125 hp, roughly 30% more than the HPs of a single PC… yeah, like I was going to play it like that.

My worries were unfounded, Cixi managed to Critical-Kill it in one round (A first of many that night)…

Well that was short! 🙂

We can do one last room!

Okay, so the players had just destroyed what was supposed to be the last creature before resting. But after that sweeping victory, the group decided to forge on to the 3rd and last door of this dungeon’s level. Of course that’s where the dungeon’s boss was…

Initially, this room featured the cultists of Sehan gathered around an immensely fat, blind, tentacled ‘human’ cleric…

Thing is, I hate playing cleric NPCs. After having played a gazillion of them in Monte Cook’s various modules (possibly the highest cleric ratio of all d20 adventure writers), I felt I needed something new. All these spells to buff before the players come in and the relative boringness of fighting with a slow, clumsy fighter… meh.

So, as an alternative, I had Initialy chosen a cool melee-driven CR10 Demon from my monster books. I had even planned a gross cut-scene where the players would have witnessed the Fat human cleric melt in huge chunks of green Goo, leaving a skinny, charging goat-headed fiend!

That’s until I remembered, right before leaving for Stef’s, the Boss monster of Pathfinder #2. It’s a Lamia Matriach (see image), a 1/2 human female, 1/2 snake Spell-like loaded Sorcerer creature. Complete with awesome pictures and crunchy loot. She was as cool as she was flavourful!

While this fight was longer and more challenging than the one right before, the players managed once again to totally out-dice and outshine my creatures. Yan in particular was able to expertly use his spell list like the brilliant planner that he is, bringing the boss’ Armour Class down enough for the others to kill her.

It was a close call in that I almost managed to charm Nogard… which would have made the fight quite nasty had he turned on the side of the cultists. (Oh yeah, the 9 mooks got creamed in 2 rounds).

The Boss was killed, and being the Evil DM that I like to be, I made her death throws splash some concentrated Sehan on both Cruguer and Nogard.

Nogard finally managed to miss a saving throw and got a serious hit on Intelligence and Wisdom, bringing him closer to the awarness that awaits below.

At that point, It became quite apparent to me that the players were coming together as a fine-tuned team of efficient monster killers. It seemed that for the crunchy part of the game at least, we had finally found our way back to the performing stage of a RPG team… the I so craved to find again. Woot!

But I was still to be surprised and have to learn new things about DMing.

The rest tomorrow!