Treasure of Talon Pass, Part 6

Having crushed the imp and his iron defenders, the party was ready to enter the Test of Valor. The dragonborn paladin was ready, declaring his gung-ho-ness to anyone who would listen, and wound up being the one to break down the door and crash head first into the final room.

Once the defenders were in the room, the rogue raced in and started trying to climb out of the arena/pit. That was the signal for the BBEG to unleash all the monsters at once instead of one group at a time. Since the monsters included three guard drakes, just two of which had destroyed the first Garback, I was a little worried.

I had no reason to be. The paladin opened with a dragon breath on the minion skeletons and destroyed most of them, then closed on the burning skeleton and kept it from using its more effective ranged attacks. The guard drakes rolled horrible to hits, so their extra damage for being near allies rarely came into play. The burning skeleton's 1 hit point fire aura and melee damage were so laughable the rogue and paladin ignored them while beating the tar out of him.

The party had destroyed most of the arena monsters by the time the evil mage finished taunting them each round and started throwing spells at them. Once he did, every ranged character in the party ganged up on him and took him out in a round. I think when he went down he was bloodied, slowed, cursed, dazed and on fire. We've been using pipe cleaner rings to track effects, and all you could see of the mage mini at the end was his little head poking out the top of a pile of rings.

Analysis:
The party had re-gelled quite a bit by this point. They were remembering to always let the laser cleric go before someone who was about to expend an encounter or daily power, so she could set up a +2 to hit with lance of faith. Everyone was looking for opportunities to set up flanks for the rogue. The fire resistant tiefling was taunting the burning skeleton as best he could to draw its ongoing fire damage away from other party members and onto his obscene collection of temporary hit points from fallen cursed minions. A successful final battle all around.