The Monsters are Getting Smarter

I’ve been telling these guys for weeks now that the monsters aren’t stupid, and their encounters are going to be getting tougher.

As I learn more about how to make the encounters more challenging for my players (a party of seven level four adventurers), I’ve learned that adding additional creatures and/or changing out some monsters can be pretty effective. For the Westernmost Cottage I added an additional Twig Blight and three Razorvine Blights and for the Blighted Cottage the missed last week, I kept the monster count the same at six, but changed three of the Twig Blights the Razorvine variety. For both locations I hid them in the overgrown areas and played them as ambush creatures who didn’t react until a character got within melee range, so there were a lot of surprised groans as more creatures appeared unexpectedly. These monsters, while not overpowering, leveled the playing field again, shifting the action economy of the fight away from the party some.

This was also the first time they saw a creature with regenerative abilities, the Razorvine Blights have the ability to regain hit points with their Life-Draining Vines attack. It’s a rechargeable attack that hits all creatures in a 10-foot radius for 2d8 damage (half that on a DC 12 Dex save), so I was able to whittle them down some.

I’ve thought for a while that my party was getting a little cocky and it’s a lot of my fault because I haven’t really challenged them with the encounters, but they’ve also been lucky. Look at what happened when they went up against Cryovain a couple months ago.

I won’t say I was thrilled, but I can’t say that there wasn’t some level of satisfaction, when, during the second encounter, several members of the party were reduced to single digit hit points and Akkira was forced to use Mass Healing Word from the Staff of Healing to get them through the fight.

They took a much-needed long rest after the second Cottage battle. The following morning, they actually held a strategy conversation before striking out. It was suggested by Yatendouji, that they go and kill off the Cultists in the southeast corner of town before trying to take on the dragon – he wanted the fight, for sure, but they’re so close to level 5 that he made the argument that they should do it for the XP, making me rethink my choice of XP-based advancement for future campaigns – but it was voted down by the remainder of the group, and they decided to strike out for the Old Tower to take on the dragon.

The First Sign

The first sign that things were not going to go as easy as they usually do was when they lost Winnie. As the party approached the Tower, Yami had Winnie do a fly-by. I described to her what she saw through the owl’s eyes: the dragon lying on the roof of the tower basking in the sun. The familiar did not fly close enough to determine if it was asleep or not.

Zend, in typical Zend fashion, upon seeing the door to the cottage, ran up to it and… stopped, realizing that this door may be the only barrier between him and this creature. He checked to see if the door was locked – it was not – and opened it.

The room contains dusty furniture covered in cobwebs – Sagora gave a shiver at the thought of more spiders. I made sure to detail the presence of cobwebs to foreshadow my update to the encounter: the dead spider corpses are alive and act as allies of Venomfang in the Tower encounter.

The party all gathered in the cottage. Lazmr checked and opened the back door – smart, making sure there was more than one safe egress point if needed – and then Yami says, cocky as ever, “I’m a send Winnie up to cast Snare.”

And off she went. I asked if Yami was looking through Winnie’s eyes or if she was letting her go on her own. She was not watching. Winnie rolled stealth (fail) and, then, a Dex save (fail again).

The exchange went like this:

“You feel your connection to Winnie break. He does not return.”

 “I start to cast Find Familiar again,” Yami says immediately, reaching into her pack to locate her censer.

 “That’ll take an hour.”

“I thought it took 10 minutes?”

“No. An hour. I’ll confirm.” I confirmed. “An hour, plus ten minutes.”

“OK, I guess no Winnie then.”

It Was Almost Too Easy

The whole party then walked through the door from the Cottage into the Tower.

I described the tower as in the book, leaving the stairs intact, but covered in webbing, with massive webs spanning the center among the support beams. The roof was not completely gone, only a fifteen foot diameter opening – a  space large enough for Venomfang to enter and exit, leaving plenty of space on the rooftop for him to laze safely in the sun and also affording him an excellent vantage point to see oncoming parties – was torn from the roof at the top of the stairs allowing easier access for the Tower’s new master.

Determined, Lazmer, Yatendouji, Zend, Yami and Larn began to ascend the stairs. Three of the five passed a DC12 Stealth check to climb the stairs without alerting the dragon on the roof, so I allowed them to make the first landing, ten feet up the tower before they encountered the first of the giant spiders.

Arkanoid used their Web attack – which I accidentally upgraded from one creature to all creatures it can see – restraining Zend, Yami and Larn who failed their Dex saves – and everybody rolled initiative.

Akkira and Sagora joined as support from below when they saw something was happening, getting in a few hits on the spider. Lazmer and Yatendouji were able to hit with melee attacks and Zend with his longbow, taking out Arkanoid.

Then it was Venomfang’s turn.

“The light in the tower dims as a large creature covers the opening in the roof. You see a green dragon step with practiced ease into the top floor of the tower, using the cross beams for support. It descends the ten feet to the third-floor landing and says:

“’You dare invade my lair, mortals? Now you will feel the wrath of Venomfang!’”

The dragon unleashed its poison breath filling the lower thirty feet of it with a 30-foot cone of poison gas before backing out of the tower again to reassume his perch on the roof.

The dragon’s attack did 45 points (22 on a Con save) of damage to everyone, including the other spider, Sinkfang (this didn’t kill it, but made it an easy target for the party the next round), who had not yet made their presence known to the party.

Zend, Sagora, and Larn were knocked unconscious. Akkira, Yami, Yatendouji and Lazmr were still up, but barely.

The tension on the call was palpable. This was the closest they’ve come to facing their mortality. I think they might have thought for the first time: “Oh, my god, I might die.”

Yami failed to break out of the webs, Zend succeeded on a death save. Lazmr and Yatendouji were mobile, and Yaten was below twenty hit points, meaning that, if not resolved, on his next turn he would attack the nearest creature (Zend) and probably knock him unconscious too. The only one with healing power was Lazmr who was fortunately right next to him. He used his Lay on Hands pool to restore him to 20 HP and then made his way down the staircase to Zend to help him break out of the webs. Sagora, failed her death save.

Akkira used her Staff of Healing to heal the party, bringing several back to consciousness and they started to retreat. Yatendouji dispatched Silkfang with a well-placed serrated saber and began his retreat.

Larn, in the chaos, misheard the party’s decision to retreat as a decision to attack and used his Fey Step to teleport up to the third floor to ready himself to attack the dragon who, once again stepped through the opening, lashing out at Larn, hitting with a Bite and a Claw attack, knocking him unconscious again, his body falling 30 feet to the floor at the bottom of the tower below. The dragon once again retreated to the safety of the roof leaving Larn to the whims of the gods.

Yami and then Yaten made it out to the Cottage, Zend managed to hack free of the webs restraining him with Lazmr’s help. Sagora and Akkira failed to destroy the webs and remain restrained next to the door to the cottage.

Larn rolled his first death save for this fall, rolling a natural one, giving him two failed saves automatically.

This is where we called it. We had gone over by an hour and we all had other things that we had to do today, so we left it there to pick up next week. Venomfang is next in initiative order and nobody knows what he has planned. I thought this was a great session and I think I may have humbled some of the players egos moving forward.

Looking forward to next week!

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