Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Demon Disappointment

I was really looking forward to last night's game. We'd wrapped up the previous session with the party having barricaded the hallway between the Asylum and the Reptile House, and the hobgoblins having released the demon they'd summoned. It had just rounded the corner, ready to charge the 50' to their front line and lay into them. 

The demon the party faced in Stonehell was based on the manscorpion monster, one I've been dying to use since I first got the RC, and never found a good place to put one in. Now I have... on steroids! And in spite of the cool stuff I wrote above, I just ran it as a manscorpion with the basic template. Didn't feel it needed any additional powers. The beast hits like a ton of bricks, it's fast, and since it's mostly immune to the stuff the hirelings can throw at it, there are only a few characters who can do much directly. I figured that being a pretty basic, if beefy demon, that it would have the usual resistance to fire damage. 

Sadly, a pair of lightning bolts (one failed save, one passed), and a critical hit with a magic arrow were actually enough to take it down before it had the chance to reach melee range. The line of hobgoblin crossbows (12) backed up by a lieutenant and the army priest barely slowed the rest of the party down. 

It's kind of rough having a big bad go down so quickly just because of a couple of bad initiative rolls. I really wanted to see him tear into the line. More importantly, so did the hobgoblin commander. I need to sit down again and figure out what his strategy is going to be.

2 comments:

  1. Anyway to 'ground' lightning bolts? Big copper cable down the hallway to a spike in earth. A moveable cart (?all metal?) with a tall metal post that likes to suck up electric charge? Force the PCs to rush in to destroy the thing as the crossbowers do their stuff?

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    Replies
    1. There wasn't anything like that in that location, nor was there any reason to be. The hobgoblins had things set up as best they could given what they knew.

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