First time DM - "into the Dragons Lair

[Dwarfi]

the elves will most propably have a surprise round, as they waited on the cliff for the Pcs to come out. Which they did, whithout really hiding.

The archer and the rogue can shoot 2-3 arrows each. Enough to fill the ground with silence or darkness.
Our characters will pretty much just walk through it.

The wizzard could start a lv6 summon monster spell for a large fire elemental, though that might be dangerous, as my Players tend to burst down summoning characters. ^^ If he makes it he can  start casting burst dmg or other stuff. A nice point there: Thanks to the prison like plane they are in, summoned monsters dont disappear, so dispelling a summoned monster could be pretty difficult.

the cleric (ord. champ) gets up his buffs and prepares for battle, moving into position together with the warblade. Enough time for right. might as a swift cast and something else shield of faith mass. He then tries to block the only way out of the pit.

[Dwarfi]

I changed the elvish wizzard a little.
His high spells are now: Summon Monster VI, Cone of cold, ice storm and freezing fog. In an emergency he can use dim door to teleport inside the cave or on the other side of the pit. He can cast ice lance as well. That should be enough to blast out some nice damage. The wizzard has a burning hands spell prepared, just in case someone goes for his spellbook.

The warblade and the wizz both got Fox cunning cast on them as its the only spell that runs for some hours.

As this will be the final "boss" encounter, I will try to kill the group or at least give them a hell of a fight.

Quick question there: Ice lance - uses a range attack, so the caster actually throws that thing.
That makes a 1D20 + BAB + DEX(?) +4 (spell bonus) ? For a Lv11 wizzard with +5Dex that would make: 1d20+ 5+5+4= 1d20+14 Thats not really THAT much, if your enemys usually have AC of 22-28

[veekie]

the elves will most propably have a surprise round, as they waited on the cliff for the Pcs to come out. Which they did, whithout really hiding.

The archer and the rogue can shoot 2-3 arrows each. Enough to fill the ground with silence or darkness.
Our characters will pretty much just walk through it.

The wizzard could start a lv6 summon monster spell for a large fire elemental, though that might be dangerous, as my Players tend to burst down summoning characters. ^^ If he makes it he can  start casting burst dmg or other stuff. A nice point there: Thanks to the prison like plane they are in, summoned monsters dont disappear, so dispelling a summoned monster could be pretty difficult.

Strategy is simple:
Make sure the party is in difficult or obstructed terrain, have a few rocks or trees in the way.
The arrows will cut out vision and hearing, which slows them down and makes them stay in the terrain longer.
The Summon will then spawn right inside the darkness, so they have no idea what they are fighting. Fire Elementals add extra kick to this as you must melee them in darkness and melee is the worst way to fight a fire elemental.
Then you drop fireballs on top of the elemental, it doesn't care but they do.

[ksbsnowowl]

The warblade and the wizz both got Fox cunning cast on them as its the only spell that runs for some hours.

For clarification, are you playing 3.0 or 3.5?  Fox's Cunning lasts hours in 3.0; in 3.5 it lasts mere minutes.

[Dwarfi]

I am playing 3.5
I checked the D20 tools page. Usually they are more or less correct on the entrys, but this seems to be off. Ok, then its just the short version.

Question: How far can a fire elemental fight in a field of magical darkness/silence? Isnte he as blind as our players? He has darkvision, but that doesnt help in magical darkness. He could even hit them with Aoos.
Although he could use spring attack to come out, hit and get back in. He can move 50ft, +10ft reach, so that should cover some space. Aoos are almost impossible.
Fire elementals still take regular dmg from melee weapons. they only burn the enemy if its unarmed or natural weapons, right? (Or when they hit with the slam attack)

Im looking forward to this.

[ksbsnowowl]

Imbue Summoning feat + Ebon Eyes spell would allow the elemental to see inside the magical darkness.

Also note that if you are playing 3.5, Darkness is only shadowy illumination (20% miss chance), not total blackness.

In my campaign I have a True Darkness spell one level higher (3rd) that acts as 3.0 darkness.

[veekie]

Also note that if you are playing 3.5, Darkness is only shadowy illumination (20% miss chance), not total blackness.

Yep, the idea is to cut off their vision at a distance because of the darkness, but allow close range visibility(because the Fire Elemental is going to cast some light). All they can see is the giant flaming thing coming and they cannot scream.

[Dwarfi]

just checked the feats, the prereq give a nice STR boost to the elemental, but the imbue summoning doesnt work, as it increases the spell to a lv7 spell, which he can not cast. ^^°

Still playing around with the spells and looking for some meta stuff.
An epxlosive meta fireball would be funny. Would take up a lv5 slot.
Alternatively a cone of cold is really great too. ^^

The wizard is now very evocation heavy, scorching ray, wall of fire, 2 firebally(1 possibly with meta) freezing fog, ray of ice, ice storm and maybe cone of cold, depending on the meta fireball.
Of course he has spell focus evocation.

To make it even more evil, he uses the same immedi. 10ft teleport lv sub. that our group wiz uses. (The melees will hate it)

[ksbsnowowl]

Darkness, etc.  Then...

Evard's Black Tentacles or Web + Cloud Kill

[Dwarfi]

I think I will stick to the darkness, it gives the enemys way more time to cast buffs and be save.

The tentacles or web would hinder the elemental too (the web would even be destroyed) and my players would still be able to look behind it and shoot the wizzard before he can complete the summoning.

Or I cancel the elemental and use tentacles+ fog directly on them. Although my players still have lots of ways to get past those.

[Dwarfi]

Thanks, I played the session yesterday:
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=4863.new#new (See last post)

2 players didnt, but it was a glorious and more than challenging battle.
Nr1 was slayn by the evil cleric using a smight + inf. crit wounds stored in the weapon. That wasnt enough and so a spir. weapon finnished him off.
He was then revived by our cleric and instantly slayn again thanks to an ice storm.

Our cleric died with a blast: When his evil enemy was slayn he called to his god Hexxtor and triggered death throes.
The giant explosion instantly killed the already worn out cleric.

Im looking forward for the next session. Thanks to a godly stone "The eye of Tyr", our cleric might be able to come back to life. Although with a lv loss at least.
For the rogue it might be not be as easy... maybe he starts a new character.

[Dwarfi]

Now 2 players are dead.
The cleric can be resurrected with the help of his god. He is in posession of the eye of tyr, a powerful godly artifact with still unknown powers.
If his comrades decide to give up a small part of their power they can revife the cleric without a level loss.
Therefore they each have to give a certain amount of EXP.

Usually it would be 1 comlete lv loss. with this it would be EXP + gold. Burt the exp would be divided over the other characters, although the dead player would loose a bigger part of course.
Could be something like 15k total.

The rogueish character: Im pretty sure it was a suicide anyway. ^^
As long as our cleric doesnt cast a raise dead or resurrect spell himself, they will be forced to carry his dead body all the way back to a temple.
The other option would be, to give him a new character - Which isnt that far off as he seemed a little unhappy with his play.