Our last D&D 4e session, our four characters (a Paladin, a Cleric, an archer Ranger, and a two-blade Ranger) got lost in a labyrinth looking for a Medusa’s lair that we had previously been too. Our two-blade Ranger started us off by rolling a 1 on his dungeoneering check. Instead of finding the Medusa’s lair, we ended up wandering into a pillared hall that was littered with bodies from a battle long ago. While we were walking to the center of the room to look at a statue with jewels (aka, shiny objects) in it, all of the dead soldiers came to life as skeleton minions. This wasn’t a shock to us, but there were approximately fifty of them. It was actually a very easy fight though because our archer Ranger went into his death blossom stance and destroyed them all in about four or five rounds. The group escaped with extremely minor wounds.

Next, we found our way to the Medusa’s lair. Earlier we had killed the ‘baby’ Medusa while the mother was gone. We wanted to come back later though because we were exhausted from previous fights, missing our Paladin, and there was a tomb that was going to take time to break into. When we finally got back to the lair, we ran into the mother and the father Medusa. We did not know there were two and that made this fight extremely difficult. Our archer Ranger nearly killed the female Medusa solo while the three others were tied up with the male Medusa. I play the party Cleric and blew through pretty much every heal I had keeping the group alive. Our two-blade Ranger was having a real hard time dealing any damage that fight due to bad rolls, slowing attacks, and the high AC of the male Medusa. I actually ended up out-damaging him, as a Cleric, that fight because I got two huge critical hits on a couple of my attacks. We made it out of there eventually very drained but okay.

We then investigated the sealed tomb. Inside a sealed stone coffin we found a Lich that was bound inside. He tempted us to let him free with promises of fortune and power. Now we’re a pretty cocky and dumb group sometimes, but even we weren’t dumb enough to unleash this thing. Especially in the weakened state we were in from our previous battle. Even on our best day with full powers and hit points, that thing probably would have wasted us. So we closed it up and took off to head back to the city and recuperate.

On the way back, we were attacked by five or six groups of swarming beetles. Now the terrain we were in was of particular note in this battle. We were traveling along a U-shaped ridge with a seemingly bottomless cavern in the center of it. On the path you had wall on one side and bottomless pit on the other. Our archer Ranger immediately took off to the safety of the other side of the cavern where he rained down arrows on the swarming beetles. This left my Cleric, the two-blade Ranger, his wolf pet, and the Paladin to fight them on the narrow ledge.

The smart thing would have been for the two-blade Ranger and the Paladin to make a wall at the narrow point of the walkway. Then I could safely stand behind them to heal and attack from range, while the archer Ranger rained death from the safety of the other side of the cavern. However, our two-blade Ranger had just about had enough of things. He had been having a hard time with the character since day one for a variety of reasons. His main issue was that he seemed to be rolling pretty poorly for many of the sessions. Tonight was pretty much the last straw. He allowed himself to be surrounded by the swarming beetles. This made me and the other members of the group raise our eyebrows with a quizzical “what the hell is he doing” look on our faces. He was able to knock a group or two of the edge, but in the end he just got completely swarmed and mauled. I didn’t know he had decided to go on a suicide run and wasted one of my last heals on him.

Once he went down, the Paladin and I backed up and formed a wall. I ended up being very resistant to the beetles as my armor had a resistance versus their particular damage. This allowed me to actually stay up, where as the Paladin eventually went down. The remaining beetles continued to swarm me as I went on the complete offensive with the archer Ranger still firing down upon them. We eventually defeated them and I was able to heal up the Paladin once we were out of combat.

Beetle Seppuku – You’ll Never See It Coming

This leads me to the actual point of this post, beetle seppuku.  If you are going to go on a suicide run, let your party know so you don’t take any of them down with you. Our Paladin was one round away from death before I was able to stabilize him (he ended up making his last save even if I hadn’t though). If I had known our two-blade Ranger was going to commit beetle seppuku I would have saved my healing powers for the Paladin and myself. If you’re going down, don’t take us with you!

Our two-blade Ranger is remaking as an Eladrin Wizard. I think this is a very good choice for not only him as a player, but to balance out our group as well. Having an archer Ranger and a two-blade Ranger in a four person party was kind of redundant. I’m all for playing what you want to play, but they had overlapping skills that really didn’t diversify us as a group well. We’ll see how things turn out next week with our ‘new’ addition to the group. Our game master has quickly and easily written his character into the campaign. We were already waiting for a guide to lead us back into the labyrinth to a hidden base that belongs to some slavers terrorizing the area. Our two-blade Ranger didn’t know where it was, but I heard about this Eladrin Wizard that would make a good guide…