Ravenscraeg Finale (in brief)
Last Tuesday we had the final battle with the rejuvenated Oni, whom we fondly called “Kim.”
It turned out to be fairly anticlimactic. We twigged early to the massive rune-laden club with the Thousand Words of Pain on it to being the real issue (and especially after several solid hits came to no good result on our part). We attacked the weapon directly, rolled really well, cut it in two . . . whereupon it exploded.
Dawn got pasted with a massive blow before that, but thanks to Ninja! Destiny/Bonus points, turned that into a miss/graze rather than an insta-kill with something like 20+ crushing damage in one blow.
After the club exploded, we had the big bad surrounded – the bane of many-on-one encounters in GURPS for the one – and more or less proceeded to pound him into jelly. As Mark points out in the comments, Shiba crippled Kim’s foot, rooting the Oni in place and allowing us to more or less go to town on the beast.
Afterwards, Cadmus cleansed the temple for an hour or two of prayer, and we went a-looting.
Staver, bored and a bit put off by all the praying (Infernal, after all) grabbed the keychain tossed to him by +Mark Langsdorf‘s new character, Shiba the Mystic Knight. He found the magical lock, turned the key . . .
. . . and the entire room burst into flames. Oops. Trapped.
That’s where we ended. We’ll see if Emily needs a new character, or is just lightly toasted.
****
Update. Staver survived, but pretty seriously singed. Loot was gathered, and totaled north of $25K per party member, looks like, plus some cool magic items. Big Pile of Character Points to be awarded later. Not sure what Cadmus will spend his loot on, but he has to spend it or give it away (pesky vow).
A couple of notes:
* Staver is male, Bruno is female. So "she found the magical lock" is a bit unclear.
* It wasn't just that we surrounded the big bad. Shiba had crippled her foot at that point and spoiled her nasty Hypnotic Hands, which means that Thumvar was going to participating and that the ogre's defenses were crap. I'm not sure how well she'd done on her feet, but I think Nate called it in part because we were about to get a free round of beat down before she could even get to a kneeling posture.
* Dawn wouldn't have been insta-killed, just forced to a death check and mortally wounded. Cadmus could probably have saved her with a miracle, even if she hadn't had the Destiny point.
I get Staver/Bruno pronouns mixed up all the time. It's a failing, I admit.
Fair point on the cripple, but the net/net of it was a pretty methodical seeming beat-down of the big bad by our group. It certainly could have gone the other way, but other than that one hit by Kim and Mr. Club'o'Pain on Dawn, the battle was the best kind: one-sided.
What's that, you say? You want more "challenging" fights? Very well. Bring on the flying murder weasels!
I think that the previous boss fight, which led Kim facedown in a frozen lake, was pretty good. We didn't pay as badly for the tactical mistakes we made, and I felt the victory at the end was hard-won, though it suffers from what seems to be a DnDism that the Zombies are tied to their creator and dissipate/disperse when he dies. Ran into that in Skull and Shackles playing Pathfinder a week or two ago too.
There were several points in the second fight that could have really not gone our way. As I recall, Kim rolled for crap, and we rolled VERY well. Crippling the weapon was relatively inspired – or at least effective – and the "cripple the leg/foot" strategy speaks to the value of that hit location.
So if we played it over (not saying we should), it mightn't have gone so well.
For what it's worth, I'm not mortally offended by confusing my gender, but Staver would probably punch you, and he's actually got a serious right hook.
I had a WoW guildmember who tried to re-assign my tauren male to female after finding out I wasn't a man. Didn't work out for him either.