Don't step on my toes, or "My Dad can beat up your dad!"
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
Returning from the realm of those pesky Mind Flayers, MC and co. decided to head west to the far end of the cavern, where another passageway led deeper into the earth. Taking the first left turn, the intrepid group wandered into a cave occupied by a beholder and two wee baby gauths. Awww, how cute! Hang on, who forgot to conjure up any scouts?
Yes, it was true, nobody had thought to call up the usual advance squad of skeletons. Neera accused Anomen of slacking, Anomen said he thought that it was Imoen's turn ... hey kids! Argue later! The eye guys made like magical machine guns, firing off spells, but Neera managed to get off a haste, MC berserked and ran after the beholder, and Keldorn and Jaheira each headed for a gauth. The team took a bit of hurt, but Jaheira's built like a tank, Keldorn has his magic resistance and free action, while MC was resistant to just about anything they could toss at him. The damage was actually fairly minimal, and the overinflated beach balls were punctured pretty fast. Still, it drove home a lesson. "Skeletons: Don't leave home without them". Two scouts were promptly conjured up after the tussle was over.
The group then headed all the way east. Crossing a narrow bridge of stone, the entire group was treated to their very own individual flame strikes. MC was untouched, having something like 120% fire resistance by now, but everybody else got fairly singed and healing was required. At the far edge of the bridge was a huge cave dominated by a towering statue of Demogorgon, with an inscription that roughly translated said "give me a present and I'll let you play with my kids". Umm, sorry, my play date calendar is full ... for like the next 100 years or so. And what's with all this Demogorgon nonsense anyway? This is the second time we had heard of him. What happened to Orcus, he has a crummy publicity agent?
OK, this looked like a dead end; lets head back and explore the central area. And so we did. Hah! This area was occupied by Cute Toes! There is something very wrong about fish having feet, so we went from room to room, stepping on as many of their toes as we could. With their toes mashed, they were a lot less cute. They weren't much of a challenge; even their Prince went down without much fuss. Inbred royalty probably, like their Sahuagin cousins. But we did score some magic items.
There was an exit door at the far west, guarded by more Drow. Who had ... skeletons of their own? Unfair! Copycats! Plagerism! Incensed, and threatening copywright infringement lawsuits, the party attacked in a fury. Soon, we had yet more temporary Drow equipment to lug around, and eventually sell to the friendly neighborhood Duergar upstairs. The door, however, was one of those ever so annoying ones that wouldn't open even if Helm himself pounded on it. Another dead end.
Yes, it was true, nobody had thought to call up the usual advance squad of skeletons. Neera accused Anomen of slacking, Anomen said he thought that it was Imoen's turn ... hey kids! Argue later! The eye guys made like magical machine guns, firing off spells, but Neera managed to get off a haste, MC berserked and ran after the beholder, and Keldorn and Jaheira each headed for a gauth. The team took a bit of hurt, but Jaheira's built like a tank, Keldorn has his magic resistance and free action, while MC was resistant to just about anything they could toss at him. The damage was actually fairly minimal, and the overinflated beach balls were punctured pretty fast. Still, it drove home a lesson. "Skeletons: Don't leave home without them". Two scouts were promptly conjured up after the tussle was over.
The group then headed all the way east. Crossing a narrow bridge of stone, the entire group was treated to their very own individual flame strikes. MC was untouched, having something like 120% fire resistance by now, but everybody else got fairly singed and healing was required. At the far edge of the bridge was a huge cave dominated by a towering statue of Demogorgon, with an inscription that roughly translated said "give me a present and I'll let you play with my kids". Umm, sorry, my play date calendar is full ... for like the next 100 years or so. And what's with all this Demogorgon nonsense anyway? This is the second time we had heard of him. What happened to Orcus, he has a crummy publicity agent?
OK, this looked like a dead end; lets head back and explore the central area. And so we did. Hah! This area was occupied by Cute Toes! There is something very wrong about fish having feet, so we went from room to room, stepping on as many of their toes as we could. With their toes mashed, they were a lot less cute. They weren't much of a challenge; even their Prince went down without much fuss. Inbred royalty probably, like their Sahuagin cousins. But we did score some magic items.
There was an exit door at the far west, guarded by more Drow. Who had ... skeletons of their own? Unfair! Copycats! Plagerism! Incensed, and threatening copywright infringement lawsuits, the party attacked in a fury. Soon, we had yet more temporary Drow equipment to lug around, and eventually sell to the friendly neighborhood Duergar upstairs. The door, however, was one of those ever so annoying ones that wouldn't open even if Helm himself pounded on it. Another dead end.
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And D's kids came out for the party. 4 demon knights appeared; they were rather a bit tougher than the one MC had faced down in Durlag's tower, but then MC was a lot tougher himself by now. They all tossed off simultaneous remove magics (thereby pretty much de-buffing us) while MC berserked and everybody else fired off missiles and such. The next thing they did was toss off 4 symbols of fear. This was actually a pretty nasty tactic. Everybody was frozen with terror, except for Mr. Berserk and the skeletons. Once again, they proved their worth! While MC went from Knight to Knight delivering smackdowns, the Bone Boys helped defend the helpless members of the group when the demonic ones attacked. After a fairly frantic melee, MC and the undead warriors emerged victorious.
The Knights had some sort of life draining thing going on also, although it wasn't clear what the nature of it was; several party members needed restoration spells afterwards. Could have been nasty indeed. But at least they dropped a couple of decent magic items before they went back home, crying to dad about being beaten up by a bunch of bullies.
OK, time to head back upstairs, sell our excess loot, and lay plans.
Unlike the Sahaugin area, which has a well-developed outline and subplot, this entire scenario has a rather patchwork feel to it. There are discordant unrelated elements that seem totally unconnected; as if the developers suddenly got bored with creating yet another fish-man area and decided just to throw stuff together at random. OK, I can see a Drow patrol stationed as a door guard to prevent unauthorized entry into Drow territory, but while Demogorgon does have some relationship to the sea, he has no connection with the Kuo-toa (we are told they worship some sort of sea mother deity) and there is no explanation at all for the room with beholders and gauths being present. There are only 4 rooms that actually have Kuo-toa in them, and none of them seem to be interconnected. Seems odd to me somehow.
The upper level of the Underdark is where independent minded Duergar and Svirfneblin go to get away from overbearing Drow tax collectors. The Drow make occasional patrols to make sure all is quiet. Moving further down, we find that the Ilithids have established a colony, and created gladiatorial games to amuse themselves while they attend to the tasks set by their Big Brain; mind flayer bookies probably do a thriving business taking bets on the outcomes. This whole area is fairly well fleshed out.
Many areas of the game do have wandering creature encounters, who don't have any real connection with the main story line of a given area; that's why they are called "wandering". But this entire level feels like one big wandering encounter. There's no main unifying theme. We end up having to supply our own rationale for everything that occurs here.
There's a room with a beholder and some gaunts. OK, maybe they wandered in from elsewhere, got lost, and are now stuck there. Or maybe they made a wrong turn while looking for Beholderville, and are about to leave. Who can say?
The Drow group really should be guarding the other side of the door; if anything is powerful enough to get past those wards, the alarm needs to be raised. OK, maybe they are out on a snatch-and-grab plunder raid.
Fine, Demogorgon was worshipped by some long lost race, and now is lonely for attention. And who, besides MC, would be stupid enough to do such a thing, anyway? Big D isn't exactly promising you fame and fortune. Who put the altar there? We have no clue.
Which raises the question of who put up the flame strike barrier. Not Demogorgon; his boys are home from demon school, and he WANTS people to come by and get the kids out of his hair. Maybe some good deity didn't want them wandering around loose; Helm may have done it. But we aren't told any such thing. Another assumption is called for to explain this as well.
The kuo-toa are limited to 4 rooms, and they also feel like recent immigrants, without any real unifying concept. Who is this "Prince" and why is he visiting such a relatively small outpost with almost no entourage? I have no idea.
(1) Notice that there is a kuo-toa shrine, along with little hatcheries. Notice too that the prince is getting majorly buffed up by being there? It looks to me like you are fighting his entourage.
(2) The beholders there: You also find illithid and beholder diplomats in Urst Natha. I figured that they were doing the same for the kuo-toa.
(3) If the kuo-toa turned those tunnels into a site for their shrines, then my guess is that it used to be a holy place for Demogorgon. The kuo-toa turned it into theirs, but weren't able to convert the main shrine. So they set up the flame strike trap until they can manage to do so.
(4) The underdark area is a major city (or at least a small part of one) with nearby outposts and settlements from other underdark residents. In my mind, I figure that the area is much larger than it appears on the map. Either that, or the underdark settlements you see around it are there because of the dark elf city. That is, they are trading settlements from other underdark species built specifically because the drow are there.
Why do you head down into the sewers? To wipe out the Beholder Cult.
You explore the Planar Sphere to help out Valygar.
You go to the Umar Hills to solve the mystery of disappearing townsfolk.
In Windspear, you need to rescue some guy's kid.
Sahuagin area: you can take sides in fish folk political infighting
All of chapter 4 has an underlying theme; rescuing Imoen from the clutches of Irenicus, with some in-town side quests added for fun
The Sverfneblin and Vithal have some problems they need help with
Even the mind flayers have a role for you to play; their own entertainment. Not a role you particularly want, but its why you are there.
You stumble into the Kuo-toa area by chance. There is no real reason for you to be there except to kill stuff and grab some loot. Nothing there even makes an attempt to interact with you except via combat. It feels like one big wandering encounter, a dungeon crawl with no underlying unifying theme, except that the critters stay in one fixed place instead of occurring randomly.
Well, OK, I guess you could put Demogorgon's demand for a sacrifice under the category of "interaction", but that would be really stretching the definition.
As for the interaction with you, the natural reaction of most Underdark denizens is to kill you first and ask questions later. It's a brutal world down there. Svirfneblin are different (alignment and culture-wise) but that's about it. The Duergar probably shouldn't try to talk to you but I think they're there from a game-balance/loot-sale perspective more than anything else.
It's kind of funny: the underdark -- a large series of caverns, which should facilitate linear game play -- ends up being one of the least linear portions of the game. Wandering around lost in the dark can do that for you, I suppose.
Right; this is correct from the point of view of simple logic and the motivation of the various races you encounter. However, from a Game Design point of view, having hack and slash as your only option leads to a boring scenario. Heck, we have had a fair number of those already in prior chapters. However, as I brought up before, even there you have had plenty of rationale WHY you are going out and fighting some group or other. You had a specific quest goal in mind.
Why were we fighting the Kuo-toa? The answer boils down to "Because they were there". Up until now, the designers have cleverly gotten around this problem in Chapter 5 by inventing various reasons for the Underdark folk you encounter to keep you alive and not kill you out of hand.
The Sahuagin would ordinarily have you in place of sushsi on the menu, but both sides want your help in their civil war.
The Ilithids may well decide to snack on your brains later, but they have enough food for now and want to be entertained.
The Githyanki would prefer to kill you for that silver sword blade, but they want your aid in escaping even more than their revenge.
The Duergar are more interested in making a profit from repeat customers, rather than just mindlessly attacking some total strangers.
The Kuo-toa have nothing to put on the table as far as interaction goes. I'm sorry, but Demogorgon wanting to get his bored kids out of the house does NOT qualify in this regard.
Well, clearly I haven't gotten to that point yet. However, even a great reason for being there doesn't explain why they are purely hostile when all the other encounters mentioned come with some way to work around the whole racial hatred thing. I am sure that if we had told the Githyanki in the Mind Flayer scenario to go sod off, a fight would have erupted. We could have gone into Banzai Mode and just attacked any Sahuagin we met. Hell, we could have attacked the Duergar merchants and looted their bodies. The point is, we had options open that provided a way to avoid any such combats.
Hmmm ... unless of course the thing that led to them being there has made them incurably paranoid, or rabidly xenophobic. I'll have to concede that possibility, at least until I find out for myself.
Honestly, one could make this exact argument about the myconids. Better, even, since they're not evil.
Contrary to popular opinion, I do have a life outside of playing SoA. I did manage the other day, however, to make a brief trip to the Beholder area. I may have a short commentary on that one later on. But what to title it?
"Wasting Away in Beholderville"? ... Hmm, too close to plagiarism.
"For Your Eyes Only"? ... Yeesh, same problem. Bond fans would send me hate mail.
"An Eye for an Eye"? ... Nah, too biblical; the religious far right might picket my house.
"I Only have Eyes for You"? ... Getting warmer; that's on the right track. At least the copyright on that one has expired.
OK, they are supposedly intelligent, but I don't buy that. I have never seen them make any attempt to even communicate in any way, they collect no treasures and their dwelling areas are pretty devoid of any structures. As far as I can see, they act on instinct; at best they function on the level of a chimpanzee. I consider them an environmental hazard. You just avoid them, or if you absolutely must traverse that area, fumigate it with some fireballs and move on.