We started where we left off. Poised to attack the Ghoul librarians on level 3. There was simply nowhere else to go. We rolled initiative and one of the many ghouls went first. It stepped up to TerStegan. However, that quickly revealed the log jam problem. We couldn’t get into the room and we were limited as to who could attack. (Although it was really just Xeelie who was limited.) She went next and bravely Tumbled into the room, giving flanking to herself and TerStegan. But she was quickly surrounded. Since they couldn’t get past TerStegan even if they wanted to, there weren’t many targets. She hoped her Elvin immunity to paralysis, her Rogue immunity to flat-footedness and her new Shield cantrip would save her. The first two were true however the Shield did not work as BTO had hoped. Or at least the GM didn’t rule it that way. Brian thought that the Shield Block ability lasted until the hardness was overcome and it took damage. Kind of like a real shield. However, the wording was that once she used the Shield Block ability, she couldn’t use it again for 10 minutes. I.e. once an encounter. So, she was battered by the slices of a hundred cuts and badly damaged after a round or two.
Meanwhile, TerStegan destroyed ghouls that walked up to him but had no actions left to move into the room. (And no reason to.) Oakwood used his reach to attack around him and the casters fired over the both of them. In retrospect, we would have fared better in this configuration, healing TerStegan and shooting around him. However, Xeelie was near death so when Oakwood had a chance, he had to move into the room to help her. That worked temporarily in that he dropped a couple but he was soon surrounded as well. He lost hit points but the killer was that he had to make multiple paralysis saves. The lesser ghouls, it was a 75% chance and the greater ghouls was more like 50%. But with 3 attacks a ghoul and 4-5 saves a round, he had no chance. He pretty much stayed paralyzed for the rest of the fight. The casters had no reason (or desire) to get into the room so they fired from ranged safety. Brisco did an AOE heal that healed us and harmed them but because he was still in the hall, he didn’t get as many of each as we’d like. But the big problem was that there were so many of them. Each round, a few more arrived from the other areas of the library.
Clarisa used a Fireball from her necklace which damaged a lot of them but damage Xeelie, Oakwood and TerStegan as well. Did it help? It cut their numbers in half but they still outnumbered us, two to one. Soon enough, Xeelie and Oakwood were taking turns going down. And then TerStegan started falling as well. Various powers and skills were used to get them back up but that used up actions that could have been used to attack. When the named ghoul entered the fight, things got dire. Not enough actions, hero points, spells. Xeelie went down 3 times, TerStegan and Oakwood twice. Brisco nearly ran a couple of times but was talked into using his remaining heal spells to keep TerStegan from dying. Brian cut us a few breaks, having the ghouls attack Xeelie’s familiar or saving some of the books instead of finishing off the melee guys. Brian rolled extremely. Lots of 1s but lots of crits too. TerStegan made several attacks from Prone because he couldn’t afford the action to stand up. Finally, the tide started to turn. With our handful of hit points and Wounded, Dying and Paralyzed conditions, they started to fall. The last one turned to flee and Oakwood dropped him with a crit opportunity attack. By then it was after midnight. Wade had to shutdown so we left it there. We are battered and depleted but alive. We’ll probably do a quick 10 or 20 minutes of healing and run for home. Unless the draw of treasure cannot be resisted. Another perfectly balanced encounter to almost kill us all. Exciting but at one room a night, it’ll take 3 years to clear out this place.
