Runelords update

Rise of the Runelords is coming to a close. We finished off Book 5, gained 2 levels and jumped to near the ending of Book 6. Most of the session consisted of 2 fights. The first against 2 golems and the next was against a bunch of super storm giants and a high level fighter. Both were very tough.

As a party we tend to approach combat the same way just about every time. Unleash massive amounts of damage and kill them before they kill us. There isn't usually much battlefield control. When facing opponents that out gun you, there are going to be problems. And we had a lot.

Our biggest problem with the first battle is that we were largely unbuffed to start. There was lots of scurrying around trying to get the basic buffs to start. Things were further complicated by one of the golems grappling a party member. The other one pretty much would always auto-hit and inflict 50+ damage so no one really wanted to stand near it. It was a mad, chaotic fight but we managed to win with no casualties although the cleric had some work to do at the end of the fight.

The second fight was much harder. We quickly discovered that the squishier party members would probably die if they got hit with a full round attack so this battle was largely about positioning. The wizard flew around dodging statues being throw at him by a giant before getting grappled in mid-air by the fighter. The archer ran around trying to snipe the giants and not get killed. The palabard was running around invisible trying to kill the giants and not get smooshed. The rogue got caught in a bad spot and got pounded by 2 giants. He died not once but three times as the cleric kept using reach spells to heal him and bring him back. The last hit pushed the rogue so far into the negative that he was beyond clerical healing. The archer was also caught by one of the giants and did not survive the battle. If this is a sign of things to come, I think we are in trouble.