Without warning, a burning Energy Orb exploded across Bakbuk's shoulders, bloodying the dwarf and nearly driving him to his knees. The companions turned just in time to see a robed wyrmpriest slinking back into the shadows at the southern end of the waterfall chamber. The distraction caught Gildras off guard, and he was wounded by powerfully thrown spear from one of the remaining skirmishers. The true danger faced by the companions became apparent when Irontooth himself came charging out of the northeast corner of the cavern complex, twin battleaxes blazing, and tore into poor Paget, who was left bruised and bloodied by the assault. The agile halfling moved with the force of Irontooth's attack, and used his momentum to land a brutal Trick Strike on the goblin chieftain, causing the creature to stagger back. The wounded rogue saw his chance, and fled towards the relative safety of his friends.
Kobold Dragonshield, Wyrmpriest & Irontooth Tokens
Phoebe shoved the injured and stumbling halfling behind Bakbuk, turned, and launched a perfectly aimed Lance of Faith towards the Goblin. Irontooth bellowed with rage as the radiant projectile tore through his shoulder blade. The cleric raised an arm in defiant cheer, but then was almost knocked into the dirt by another explosive Energy Orb, which was lobbed haphazardly in her direction by a second, stealthy wyrmpriest who was hiding in the southeast corner. Raxil stepped forward and, drawing his arms back as if pulling on an invisible bowstring, he fired a magical Acid Arrow deep into Irontooth's chest. The creature screamed as the acid began to eat away at his armor, and his flesh. In response, a dragonshield kobold emerged from the eastern end of the cavern and ran straight at Raxil with an outstretched shortsword, but missed its mark. Likewise, one of the skirmishers broke away from the melee with a sloppy slash towards Gildras and attempted to charge at the wizard with its spear, but it only managed to receive a deep gash across its back as Gildras swung his sword wildly at the retreating lizardman. While the companions were mostly preoccupied with protecting the robed wizard, Irontooth waded into the fracas with a devastating assault against Phoebe with his dual axes, rendering the cleric bloodied before the goblin, himself, doubled over in pain as Raxil's Acid Arrow continued to eat its way through his chest. Gildras spoke an Inspiring Word to Phoebe, healing some of her
wounds, before moving her out of harm's way with his Wolfpack Tactics, and plunging his longsword into Irontooth's hip, bloodying him. A second dragonshield appeared from seemingly nowhere and nicked Phoebe with its shortsword, and at the same time managed to duck under Bakbuk's wild Cleave, which only barely clipped Irontooth's arm. The goblin turned and snarled with unfettered hatred in Bakbuk's face, giving the dwarf a close-up view of his demon skull tattoo (and a close-up whiff of his rancid breath).FG II Meta: During this particular round, there was a need to mix and match a lot of different, semi-complicated modifiers and effects. It felt a little bit clunky, and there was more rules-lawyering than I generally care to see during an encounter. I like it when we can focus on the action and role-play, not on the meta details. Some of the 4E effects that we tried to implement in Fantasy Grounds II didn't operate as planned, and expired at the wrong times. So, this past week I spent a considerable amount of time learning about situational powers (FGII's answer to handling things like class features, racial traits, certain feats, and other non-standard effects). Now, many of the often forgotten or incorrectly handled little buffs and debuffs that come along during the course of an encounter should be largely automated! This is what the Combat Tracker looks like to the players (the GM version has a lot more data). Notice all the cool effects that are applied to each of the PC's!
In the next post, the exciting conclusion of the party's epic battle against Irontooth!
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