7 replies to this topic

[inv]

This guy!

[Glacies]

What kind of character were you playing? Is this the standard approach to these dudes? Most everything is a death check when fighting them, right?

[inv]

Oh man, it was intense. I'd never fought a Beholder before. I'm so happy to finally get to do it and survive to tell the tale. It was a particularly brutal encounter. I was playing Pog, my level 9 divination wizard I've been playing all year.

We entered this circular room, the floor was this really dark marble.  In the center was the pedestal that was about 20 feet high and whatever sat on it was covered with a dark cloth. As soon as everyone entered the cloth fell away showing this dark orb radiating magic.  It instantly caused our two armored PCs (cleric and paladin) to fly up and stick to it like a super sensitive magnet.  At the same time the floor became really slick causes Dex saves or fall prone on everyone's turns. That's when things really went to shit. We were like fish in a barrel.

Right away death rained down on us.  They have 7 different rays that shoot from their eye stalks. Disintegration is the real scary one since if you drop to 0 because if it you're insta-killed. One guy was instantly charmed (bard). I was hit by a disintegration ray and a sleep spell that failed.  To make matters worse the fucking thing was invisible.  We'd learn later that it was the result of a Wish spell for permanent invisibility lol.  So brutal.

 

Dispell magic on the orb freed our two heavy hitters and fixed the floor.  Basically all my spells are control but require sight: banishment, hideous laughter, wall of force.  The only AOE I had were three Hypnotic Patterns I cast at the ceiling in the hopes we'd nail it.  The paladin flew to the top and attacked as best as he could. Managed to hit a few times and use a few high level smites.  The cleric was the MVP and did something like 150 damage through their channel divinity boosted AOE spells.  Really made the difference.

 

Still, man that was a brutal room.  The DM had some bad rolls in there because realistically I think we would have had 2 players wipe otherwise.  I was 1 Disintegration hit from insta-death.

 

Funny enough we had a PC death from a disintegration spell that had NOTHING to do with this encounter earlier.

This is all apart of the final dungeon crawl of the Tomb of Annihilation campaign I started in January.  We're probably 6-8 more sessions before we finish.   I'm kind of shocked and proud that my wizard has survived the entire thing so far lol

[inv]

Ah shit, I forgot to say that the Beholder has this cone of anti-magic in front of it that caused the Paladin's flying boots to fail and he fell.  Then the bard polymorphed himself into a giant ape and was promptly paralyzed with an eye ray.  So the the Paladin just climbed the frozen ape and started attacking again lol

[Glacies]

Damn, you have a good and resourceful group. Sounds awesome.

[inv]

Nah, we're pretty awful lol.  It's kinda of a shitshow but fun in the "everyone plays like an old married couple" sort of way.

 

The tomb we're in is basically is an update on the classic Tomb of Horrors, which is a legendary deathfest.  The entire campaign was a death-march through the jungle to find it. We're about halfway through the Tomb, and it gets deadlier every level.  One guy died twice in the past 3 weeks but they were both totally his fault.

We scaled down a rope into a room with marked tile flooring. Clearly a trapped room, and we didn't have any context to solve it yet so we all left. Except Shag decided to touch one of the tiles out of curiosity and was then instantly killed and eaten by a locust swarm.

Then, two weeks later (this same session as the Beholder) he shot a firebolt at this mold creature that has been following up but also leaving us alone.  It disintegrated and insta-killed his character lol

 

I honestly hope our group continues after this campaign though

[Glacies]

so the DM is working with you a lot? New characters come in at the same level?

 

How much metagaming does he allow?

 

RP?

[inv]

Yeah, he's one of the pro DMs I pay on Roll20.  Super nice guy, I prefer his games because he just lets the group be the group it is. He also ran the Curse of Strahd campaign I finished last month.

 

Ours is very little RP, and that's kind of where I typically lean anyway.  You should start playing. I don't mind paying a dedicated DM if the game is run well.