DM Chronicles, Session 14: You Wanted Planescape? You Got It!

This is part of a long running series that chronicles my current D&D campaign set in an adapted version of Ptolus.

Oh yeah… I’m not actually quitting.. While it is a lot of work, I’m still having fun here.

Last game I played a rather badly designed plot exposition scene that left our enjoyment of the game in a so-so state.

In order to salvage it and put the players back in their heroic groove, I took the liberty to do a little Ret-Con and adjusted things so that things ran more smoothly.

This week, all players showed up so we moved the game to Math’s (I can only sit 6 adults in my gaming room).

I made it there with no damage to my car or my house, which is quite a feat! (When I play away from my place, trees have a tendency to fall on my house or my car tends to be a magnet for sideswiping Minivans…)

We started the game at around 6h30 PM, with Cixi (Franky’s Iron Hero Archer) taking leave from her old patron (from the last campaign). Cixi had been called upon and given the mission of exploring Lolth’s Demonwebs for proof that the pact that kept her people imprisoned in Carceri had been broken by the Spider Queen herself (and therefore annulled).

It’s important to note that her old patron was a fiend posing as a human that happens to be one of the Carcerian Prison’s wardens (and that Cixi knew about that).

The party later obtained the information that the nearest portal to the Demonwebs would be found within the undercity’s Drow compound where countless raids on Ptolus had been carried out from lately.

As mentioned last time, the surface elves of Ptolus had already counter-attacked and forced the Drow to retreat into their compound. When the heroes joined the elven commander in charge of the counter assault, they were told that the Drow were entrenched into some mines, protected by some magic draining force and some powerful large spiders.

Of course, being the heroes that they are, the PCs charged in!

I had set up the fight with numerous adversaries. The opposition was 4 Large Lolth-Touched Spiders (A really strong, high hit point templated Spider, MM IV), 4 Drow Ninjas! (MM IV, woot!) and an Arcane Ooze (A magic absorbing/immune ooze, MM III). A CR 11.5 fight…

The fight was mostly a non-event (the players were actually a full level above what I had planned).

Inigo Firenze (The Scout/Swordsage) used it’s darkness combo (Inigo is invisible to Darkvision, but he himself has it) to kill spider. Nogard, the half-dragon tank/barbarian, was flanked simultaneously by 2 ninjas but his high AC protected him. Both Ninjas were dispatched almost instantly.

Cixi was hit by another pair of invisible ninjas and that’s only because Iron Heroes have an end-all weakness: they lose all their bonuses to AC when flat footed (giving her an AC of 10 instead of the mid 20s).

After cleaning up the place, the PC’s entered the glowing portal to find themselves in a large underground Drow temple. The temple was littered with torn Drow and spider bodies. A few Dead Umber Hulks, bearing the dreaded ‘skull’ marks (see my Game prep for notes on the ‘skulls’) were found as potential responsible for the Drow massacre.

Aside: While it does play a role in my story to have had the skulls kill all the Drow inside the compound before the heroes showed up , I actually didn’t want to have the players mow down wave after wave of Drow opponents all evening long. This was basically a shortcut to bring the PCs to the Demonweb and maintain some sort of minimal internal logic the players were willing to accept.

The players spent a few minutes exploring the recently abandoned temple and found another portal gate which they activated with a key they had just found.

They landed on a granite pedestal, in a room made of slightly sticky webs crafted out of damned souls…

Welcome to the Demonweb, please mind your step…

Following some vague directions they got back in Ptolus, the PCs set out to find a renegade drow scholar to get the lowdowns on the Spider Queen latest schemes and the sought after proof that Cixi was seeking.

After following a long 20′ diameter Web tunnel they arrived in an area where 4 such tunnels merged into a large figure 8 shaped chamber whose floor was made up of Cable thick strands weaved into an actual gargantuan web (spread over a limitless drop into the endless Abyss).

Being quite fearless (and mostly because he is, you know, a Scout) Inigo boldly advanced on the taut web cables to explore the various exits of that ‘room’…

…Only to be flanked by 2 Lolth-touched Phase Spiders who promptly phased out after hitting him hard (while another one hit another character).

The players spent a few rounds trying to deal with the spiders popping in and out of the ethereal plane, quite ineffectively. They were having a real hard time so I more or less skipped on the hazards caused by the room such asforcing balance checks whenever one was hit or having the players get stuck on the web’s various ‘sticky zones’.

It’s a good thing I did because Cixi got hit repeatedly by the spiders (AC 10 when flat foot remember?) and failed on her saving throw against poison (1d8 Constitution damage both times… ouch!!!)

After a few rounds of this, I pointed out to the players that they could use the ready action to interrupt a phase Spider’s turn. That tip helped turn the tide of the battle… at a certain point, the brighter than average spiders stayed in the ethereal plane to see how the secondary poison damage would turn out.

That’s when Cixi dropped to a constitution score of 2 and was still sitting alone on her side of the map. So I had one spider jump on Inigo (it was promptly killed by readied actions) and the 2 others jumped on Cixi… she was saved in-extremis by well timed readied actions and some luck.

As the fight was over, Franky indicated that they would have to return to Ptolus to recuperate (Iron Heroes in my campaign are immune to all forms of healing magic).. but before they could leave, I sprung a Drow patrol on them (thinking they’d choose to flee).

Of course, players beings D&D players, they stood their ground and vanquished the drow in 2 short rounds.

All in all it was an interesting fight except for Cruguer the Melee-only Crusader that spent the whole fight unable to reach a spider.

The rest of the session was mostly story related.

The players returned to the Undecity of Ptolus to recuperate for 48 hours, they returned to the Demonwebs and found the renegade Drow scholar.

She just happened to have been fascinated with the Iron Heroes and wanted to expose her Queen’s schemes for Cixi’s Homeworld to gain some leverage outside of the Demonweb.

She also indicated that Lolth had invited a host of Demon Lords to negotiate an alliance pact to end the internal strife of the Abyss and break the equilibrium of the Outer Planes to allow it’s full conquest. The invitation consisted in a Golden Ticket (as hinted in the heroes’ prophecy) to be shown at the impassable Black Gate to the Demonweb pits.

Then, the scholar pointed the party toward a non-descript gate. Using a portal key she was given by her ex-patron, Cixi opened up the gate into a temple overlooking a vast plain where countless thousands of humans were being subjected to never ending corruption processes to transform them into demonic forms of Iron Heroes.

Cixi had finally found her homeworld, snatched by Lolth 10 000 years before and hidden in her webs. The Spider Queen had violated the pact that forbade all powers in the Great Wheel from trying to exploit the Magic resistant, ultra powerful humans, as the dukes of Hell did before.

Cixi now had to find a way to Mechanus and present the case to the multiverse’s ultimate avatar of Law: Primus of the Modrons.

After that discovery, the players returned to the Demonweb, only to find it shaking violently, web walls tearing up and millions and millions of tiny spiders swarming all over the place.

Then a loud voice screamed of intruders invading her domain and Lolth showed up not far from the PCs, ready to open a can of WhooPC.

The players, wisely, chose to run from that aspect of the Spider queen and return to Ptolus. They made it…

Aside: This is one case where descriptions trumps crunch, because the Aspect of Lolth (at CR10, the party is level 11) involved in this little charade was so laughable that the Phase Spiders could have taken it down.

Once back under the city, I started describing how everything was shaking and cracking underneath the city (Like a typical Star trek Bridge shaking). The heroes rapidly made thier way to the surface, only to find the sky over the city shifting rapidly.

It looked like the whole city was flying through an alien landscape.

I then described a seemingly floating city appearing on the horizon and approaching Ptolus at a staggering pace…

Ptolus then crashed into Zelatar, the Demonic city of Demon Prince Grat’zz.

… a voice was heard throughout the cities:

“My name is Grat’zz, lord of Zelatar, welcome to you citizens of Ptolus, newest neigborhood of my domain…”

The heroes’ base of operations was now in the Abyss… Fade to black…

Lessons Learned:

• The Challenge Rating of special monsters like phase spiders means nothing for a party not equipped to deal with it.
• Complex combat encounters are usually the best, but when players are already having a hard enough time, it’s best to make things simpler on them.
• You can screw around with the setting and make things as grim as you like… as long as players are on board and trust that they can overcome it somehow.

What Players liked:

• Kicking Drow butt
• The dread-filled atmosphere of the Abyss and the schemes of the bad guys.
• They got a facefull of Planscape all right!

What players disliked:

• Cruguer sitting a whole fight because he couldn’t hit anything
• Franky’s finding that Cixi lost a lot of her shine in the last few games as her weaknesses came to the front in this game.

What next:

• Re-orienting themselves in Zelatar, the most civilized of demonic cities.