Ah, welcome back to day two of the final fight. Remember, this is the game where walking thirty miles takes five minutes, but a five minute fight takes two months.
Now, where we left off, Lucius had Adam right where he wanted him. Everyone else was dealing increasing amounts of damage to the little bastard's reluctant allies. Round Four
Prince Adam's yellow streak increased as he immediately teleported away. Yes, he remembered to cast defensively. Yes, he made the concentration check. Yes, Lucius was incensed.
The bard continued his performance.
Aria pulled out a wand of enervate and began proclaiming 'Limbius Witherus!" as she pointed it at Gozer, who quickly became the most ineffective character of the team. But she still had that 53 AC. Enervate can't do anything about that.
Lucius, thinking the little bastard was hiding in the fog, began using his fireballs and flame breath to clear said fog out. When nothing began scampering about he assumed the little bastard had run further away.
Nelzask turned his attention to the poor Gallu Demon Adam had summoned to replace the Nelfeshnee. He crit twice. It was looking not good very quickly.
And speaking of crits, Killgore did all of this:
. . . to himself. In one shot. The first shot of his full round of attacks. First came the You'll Shoot Your Eye Out. Then he confirmed the crit against himself, because his to hit is insanely higher than his AC.
And yes, he damned near one shot himself. And nailed himself to the ground. And dealt 4 points of dex damage to himself (DM's choice). And disarmed himself for good measure. We spent the next ten minutes trying to explain how one arrow did all of this. Best we could come up with, the magic bullet from the JFK assassination has a companion arrow. He was certainly regretting the DM letting him use 'twist the knife' now. Having only made one attack, Killgore elected to exchange the rest for picking his bow back up.
{Player's Note: I never really realized how much fun it was watching someone else crit fail. That's usually my thing. I mean, sure there's that 'better thee than me' attitude. But the visceral joy of watching someone else's character become their own worst enemy was . . . indescribable.}
The Draco Liche then decided to butt in by swooping down to those on the right hand side of the group and breathing acid on them. Saves were made. It was almost like the epidermally challenged dragon was phoning it in, really.
Round Five
Hermin buffed and healed.
Aria continued playing with her wand. Seriously, at some point its just a phallic symbol . . .
Bereft of the target of his vengeance, Lucius used Dimensional Dervish to teleport to Jareth, knock him down (with full accompaniment of AOOs) and then teleported over to flank Gozer with Libya. He then proceeded to whiff at the demon repeatedly. All this while muttering cat calls to the smug bastard that had escaped.
Libya, having finished her good work with the Nelfeshnee, turned her attention to the uppity demon herself. Seriously, you'd have thought she would approach this group a bit more cautiously after the humiliating pasting she received last time out. Sadly, even with a flank buddy she was incredibly hard to hit, for either of them.
Victoria also moved in on Gozer.
The Gallu Demon hit Nelzask; it hurt.
Nelzask crushed the Gallu Demon; it died.
Killgore failed to remove the arrow pinning his foot to the ground.
The Draco Liche decided to fly through the area attacking anyone in reach on its way to Aria. Apparently, there can be only one dragon in this island. This tactic proved less than ideal when it also earned a whole mess of AOO's from Nelzask.
Paul . . . continued hopping his way back into the fight.
Round Six
Round six went pretty much the same as five. The only differences were: Tired of whiffing, Lucius summoned an Erinyes to hopefully entangle Gozer. It was a glass half full approach in a glass half empty situation. He also began pointing out in a loud voice that Adam was about to lose all of his help. You know how hard good help is to find, willing or otherwise.
Gozer cast an electrically adjusted Wall of Fire around her position. Too bad about that electrical resist 30 Aria had gifted the group with. It did make a cool Jacob's Ladder effect in the horns on Lucius's head though.
Paul actually made it to the group. His one attack bore no fruit. Or blood. Or anything of worth in a fight. Then again, these are the reluctant allies.
{Player's Note: This was also the round where my dice just went nuts with rolling 20's. I mean, over and over. You see, I'd noticed something; if I subjected a particularly unruly die to the salt water cleansing ritual it did better. But by the next week it was back to its grumpy old ways. I hypothesized that these cleansed dice were being re-corrupted by their twisted family. So I dunked them all, including the bag (you can never be too careful) and left them that way until they learned their lesson. About 30 minutes. And boy did they seem to learn their lesson.}
{Player's Note: On the other hand, they did start rolling those twenties against a creature with heavy fortification. Maybe they knew? Naaaahhh.}
{Player's Note: But maybe?}
Round Seven
Again, the status quo remained largely unchanged except:
Lucius threatened that they'd take all the bodies when they were done with the 'help'. A meager threat for the Draco-Liche, but considering how the group had ransacked the island, a very real threat for the rest of his cadre.
Adam was forced to reveal his proximity when he used a Hero point to telekinetically push the Draco Liche out of Nelzask's charge. Nelzask shrugged and walloped Jareth instead.
Jareth cast a wall of force. Aria noted this and warned everyone, but where was it? Hint: Pretty sure Nelzask's about to run smack into it.
Killgore succeeded in freeing himself from his own arrow. There was much rejoicing . . .
Gozer cast invisibility on herself. Yes she made the save. Yes, even though Victoria was adding 6 to the concentration check all by herself. Yes, she and Lucius were annoyed.
Round Eight
To Be Continued . . .