Fighting Through a Gate
Getting past the 'just a bridge' is easy—once we defeat the undead monsters coming the other way, whilst avoiding the bridge's animated attacks trying to send us in to a sea of zombies below—and we press onwards to the city of Hordethrone. An alluring drow flanked by two ogres guards the gate in to the city, but Lughar's smooth tongue can get us past, obviously by trying to bluff the drow.
As we approach the guards, Lughar sings himself a little ditty to boost his confidence in his skills, and his charm then easily opens the gate for us. 'Oh, that went better than I expected', he says, as we stroll in to the city. But, sadly, we are still within earshot of the guards. As we enter melee combat, the gate itself comes alive, made of hundreds of severed and putrid humanoid arms. Luckily, it counts as undead, and I use my Nightbringer artefact to dominate it, which proves useful for us to retreat from its long reach and use its attack to immoblise one of the guards for a round.
The other ogre guard, finding himself alone, charges in to pound us heavily, knocking Adran prone. But with limited targets ourselves he soon finds himself deeply debuffed. A couple of attacks puts him at -10 to attack, his armour defence reduced, provoking an opportunity attack if he tries to shift, and provoking one anyway with his next attack. When Lughar wants to add to the ogre's growing list of status effects, the GM despairs at his latest pet being picked on. 'He's already got enough problems, you don't need to add to them.'
'Yes, but he's still got hit points.' But not for long. And the second ogre doesn't last much longer, quickly defeated when the animated gate doesn't want to be used for the ogre to hide behind, throwing the ogre back in to our midst to be slaughtered. I unleash a big encounter power, hoping to finish him off, but my weapon just misses the ogre's trembling body. Lughar takes the chance to slide us all around, with some weird bardic power that makes no sense at all, and provides my agile opportunist self with another attack. My miss becomes a hit, even if it does only a fraction of the damage of my wasted encounter power. It is enough, the ogre drops. Our party dynamics are working well.
Welcome to Hordethrone.