Tuesday, March 31, 2015

The Goblin Fort, End of 10th Round

A.  Cavalry organizes itself.  B.  The appearance of two brownies (call woodland beings spell from Pikel the druid).  C.  The mastodon, Pony, is out of here!  D.  Pass wall breaches the east wall; animated zombies move in to press the gap.

E.  Enemy hobgoblin footmen and standard slam into the elves.  F. Groups inside the wall move to defend the new breach.

Moving around the field clockwise, starting from the group being attacked by the goblin slingers; Helmut the NPC cleric (attached to Lord Karl) has healed his compatriots and they are getting ready to get out of range of the goblin slingers.

In the bottom left corner the combat between the elves and the hobgoblins goes on as ever. However, the arrival of the Lord and Penn the illusionist has started to turn the tide. The second wave of hobgoblins have arrived from the wall hardly makes a difference.  Every time the elf bowmen shoot, it makes a BIG difference.

At the west wall breach, the Queen has sacrificed her own minions with a wand of fireballs in order to hurt the mastodon.  Pony fails its morale check and now it is going to rampage right through the west wall again and leave the battle (which will have different effects).    The Queen covers a lot of ground as she rushes to the north wall.

The hippogriff (named Hathor) continues to defend its held master, Falyn the ranger, against a 7th level hobgoblin fighter.  Meanwhile, the glaivers still try to break through the breach and pass the drow elf Prince holding it closed.  He is just now being met by Ty, Lord Karl's hench, a 6th level npc fighter.  Ty will try to overbear in the next few rounds and push the much smaller drow elf from the breach.

You may also notice two small figures at the upper left, to the left of the combat just mentioned - these are marked as B1 and B2. They are a pair of brownies, lately conjured by the 9th level druid with the spell, conjure woodland beings.

You may also notice that the 6th level thief, Ivan, is on the Northwest Tower. As a matter of fact he is inside it, fighting a hobgoblin and a 4th level goblin fighter. They can be seen because, by convention, it is easier to pretend they are one floor lower than to create another tower layout for them to fight upon.

The battle royale at the north gate, the top of the map, gets more and more harried as the goblins and hobgoblins are clearly outflanking the left end of the human defendors. It looks horrifically bad, and has the party up at this part of the map pretty much beside themselves. The only thing really keeping them going at this point is Lyrial the bard, who is singing like hell and creating the equivalent to a prayer spell to all within 60'.

To the right, you can see the cavalry arranging themselves, but they have not yet started to charge (moving at normal speed at the moment). The three horsemen who were left behind are joining into their ranks, while there is one horseman moving at triple speed at the top of the map, vying to rejoin.

This leaves the Southeast Wall. The passwall has been cast (as I remember, we had recalculated out the length of time the mage had spent casting the spell, which was not known when I saved the end of the 9th round - if this does not jive with the description on the last post. This is the nature of D&D, and I am remembering things in the order that they happened). A host of hobgoblins has leapt from the wall (12' high) to fight on the ground, rather than open the gate, and to try to cut off the zombies marching into the created hole. And meanwhile the glaivers here are dispensing with the last of the pernicious dire wolves.

3 comments:

  1. I noticed that you said the queen was casting in the last post, and here you said she had used a wand of fireballs.

    I'm not here to quibble - what I want to know is, does using the wand take the same time as using a spell?

    My guess would be yes, with the advantage to the wand being you don't have to spend a spell.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maxwell, I don't see it as quibbling in the least.

    Remember that for my spells to function, the character must first 'cast' the spell, which means to gather the energy and control it within; during this time, if spellcasters are jarred or have their concentration broken (by a weapon, attack, another spell, etcetera), then the spell is RUINED and cannot be cast again that day.

    Once the spell is cast and ready (and with high level spells, this can take two to five rounds), it must be 'discharged,' which means sent out from the spellcaster's body at the thing to be influenced. Thus, the full procedure of using spells is loading the gun/firing the gun.

    A wand is point-and-click. The 'casting' has been caught in mid-process and then transfused into the wand, so that the user needs only to discharge the power of the wand by literally pointing it.

    So wands are much, much faster. But they run out of charges, so they don't last forever. Until they do, however, they can be used once per round as long as the charges hold out.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oops, forgot the detail about which you were right, Maxwell.

    I did make a mistake there with the Queen casting. I remind you, Maxwell, this was five years ago for me. I'm remembering things in slightly the wrong order. I have to take that line out.

    ReplyDelete

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