Our heroes are too late to prevent the theft of one of Argent's greatest treasures, and then learn exactly why the giants are assaulting the city.
Read the full recap here.
The encounter in the guardian tower's vault offered a lot of opportunity for tactical and dynamic play. The sigils on the floor inflicted damage on those who came into contact with them, and then pushed the creature 4 squares. As icing on the cake, the room also contained cells sealed off by a wall of light that only allowed passage in one way: in. Those are pretty cool terrain features, but not terribly remarkable per se. They took on new significance when we realised that it was possible to push an enemy into a sigil, have that sigil push them into another sigil, then another, and so on (I think at one stage it was going to be possible for an enemy to touch 6 sigils in the same round) with the enemy finally ending up trapped in one of the cells. Sort of like a D&D version of pinball.
Of course, the tactical planners in the group (myself included), considered that level of mayhem inadvisable, and we convinced the DM to limit the number of pushes to once per turn regardless of the number of sigils passed though. He readily agreed, probably because he knew we had more forced movement powers than the monsters did.
Despite that concession, we still managed to push at least 2 of the enemies into the cells, from which they were unable to escape. Or so we thought. One of them, a human mage, almost immediately did what I was sure he would not be able to do: teleport out of the cell and escape with the item he had come to steal. What sort of fancy light-wall prison cell allows teleporting!?
Afterwards we got the massive info dump (and opportunity for prolonged discussion) that I had been wanting for the previous two sessions. There's a whole heap of stuff going on in and around Argent, and the threat to the city and to Faerun as a whole is significant. If there was any doubt about the sort of adventures that paragon tier was aimed at, Revenge of the Giants has certainly dispelled that.
My only real concern is that there seems to be a strong theme of time travel (or at least chronomancy in general) building around Argent. Time travel in the fantasy genre has never really sat well with me. It just seems too firmly rooted in science fiction, particularly early science fiction like H.G Wells. I've glossed over the time travel in the SSTL issue accordingly, but it remains to be seen how big a part it will play in the adventure.
Of course, the tactical planners in the group (myself included), considered that level of mayhem inadvisable, and we convinced the DM to limit the number of pushes to once per turn regardless of the number of sigils passed though. He readily agreed, probably because he knew we had more forced movement powers than the monsters did.
Despite that concession, we still managed to push at least 2 of the enemies into the cells, from which they were unable to escape. Or so we thought. One of them, a human mage, almost immediately did what I was sure he would not be able to do: teleport out of the cell and escape with the item he had come to steal. What sort of fancy light-wall prison cell allows teleporting!?
Afterwards we got the massive info dump (and opportunity for prolonged discussion) that I had been wanting for the previous two sessions. There's a whole heap of stuff going on in and around Argent, and the threat to the city and to Faerun as a whole is significant. If there was any doubt about the sort of adventures that paragon tier was aimed at, Revenge of the Giants has certainly dispelled that.
My only real concern is that there seems to be a strong theme of time travel (or at least chronomancy in general) building around Argent. Time travel in the fantasy genre has never really sat well with me. It just seems too firmly rooted in science fiction, particularly early science fiction like H.G Wells. I've glossed over the time travel in the SSTL issue accordingly, but it remains to be seen how big a part it will play in the adventure.
What a cool room.
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