Pyramid of Shadows - session 2

On Saturday my cousins and I picked up Pyramid of Shadows right where we left off a year ago. I can't link to the first session report, because I never wrote one. There wasn't too much to it, as I recall. We spent a bit too long working on getting to the Pyramid, rather than delving right into it.

We left off with them having just killed some Knowledge Eaters in a big library, a fun fight that included running around on top of the book shelves. Picking up from there, they passed through into a smaller set of rooms, and found a few more knowledge eaters, and the first Karavakos.

The one on the right

It wasn't actually that interesting a fight. We were all working hard to remember who did what, and I missed one of the big terrain features. Not to say that it was easy for them, just lacked some of the really interesting possibilities that 4e has.

Moving on from there, they next explored a frozen room that their eladrin head in a ball told them had some magic weapons in it. Trapped in the rooms were some ice zombies and a demon who just wanted to get out of the cold. They didn't know that, not speaking abyssal, so they pulled out the head to ask her, and then the demon went nuts, tossed the monk grabbed the head and ran.

This was a more interesting fight since I actually remembered the terrain effects, and the demon had some nice personality. In the second picture you can see the demon making his escape from the chilled and slowed heroes. He didn't get much further, and they rescued the head once again.

Across the hall was a room with 4 pylons powering a force cage holding the head's body! Destroying a pylon released the body, and caused the head fly out of the hero's hands and become embedded in her own chest. Now this was a fight! Multiple area of effect spells, lots of hit points, interesting powers, and some tough decisions. I don't know if the heroes would have survived if I hadn't rolled so poorly so often.

I used wire to note the area of effect.

They did managed to survive, but it cost them, and they opted to return to the now less icy room to recover.

After that they pressed on, and found a hall of mirrors that spat fire attacks, some flying demons, and a couple of dark creepers with daggers. This is kind of like facing a trio of minotaurs, and a pair of kobolds. Now, maybe I could have used them better, but the heroes just ignored them and their 1d4+4 damage. A couple of higher level minions would have been a much better addition to this fight.

After this, they found themselves in a weird garden, and facing a giant boar, and some viscous plant creatures. This is a spot in the adventure I tweaked, but I wish I'd tweaked it more. According to the adventure, the creatures in the room a humanoids with scythes, and twigs and leaves sticking out of their cuffs and collars. Ok, sure they've got the whole classic death look, but... eh. I just made them really angry plant things. Unfortunately the players are really good at focused fire, and they took down the boar before it could charge, and slammed the first plant monster so very very hard it went from full health to almost dead in 1 round.

All in all it was a pretty good day, and we all had fun playing again, and since we're all done with school, we don't need to wait another year to play again!