# [Whine] White Company vs. Ghasts



## memesis (Apr 14, 2003)

I'm sort of annoyed by this, but I also liked how it turned out, so all is not lost.

I play in a low-magic D&D game as a pure Fighter.  Our party has one Rogue/Bard (a venture capitalist), a Rogue/Sorcerer, a Cleric/Paladin, a Monk, and a Sorcerer NPC.  The PCs are all 4th-5th level, with few magic items.

On our way through rough country, we encounter a circle of a dozen stones, decide to camp out, and in an attack of common sense use some of our ropes and toss them up over the stones, for climbing aids (just in case). 

First watch comes around.  Three ghasts shamble out of the darkness.  My Fighter, who has been nominated tactician (since none of the other players care ^_^) says, "everyone up the ropes!" and tells our cleric/paladin (who has been adamant about staying on the gruond, saying he could handle it anyway), "guard".  Everyone scrambles up, makes a half-assed showing of firing crossbows and whatnot.  The Clr/Pal stays groundside and promptly gets flanked.  After a round or so, he's laying flat on his back, paralyzed.  One by one, the party begins jumping down (my Fighter as well, I admit, since I gambled and lost that his greatsword +1 would do enough damage to take out one of the hurt ghasts).  We ended up with two mobile combatants (the Rog/Sor and Monk, who both wisely stayed up top) and took a massive amount of damage before knocking over the ghasts.  The GM was cackling.

We heal up, swear a lot, then send out a sortie to scout.  One chanting spellcaster over the hill, working with two more ghasts, and of course they start coming for us.

This time, we're smart.  We put out two of our continual-light sources on the ground, and take a third up top.  Missile fire commences, with everyone concentrating fire (using a few shock crossbow bolts we had from awhile).  We take out both ghasts, and our Rog/Wiz unloads the lightning bolt scroll we had against the mage (who had protection from missiles going, we discovered).  There wasn't much left of him..

The GM was crying by the end of the second battle.  We'd gone from "ghast bait" to "total badass" in about three hours.

Among other amusing moments: the monk, who ended up fumbling and dropping his sling off the stone he was standing on, got the stone greased under him by a spell, fell off it, slow falled his way down, and promptly snagged his sling again.


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